He was accused of embezzling 32 Billion FCFA belonging to the defunct national carrier, Cameroon Airlines, Camair, when he was General Manager.

The Yaounde-based Special Criminal Court, SCC, on Monday, April 25, 2016, sentenced Yves Michel Fotso to life imprisonment for embezzling 32.4 Billion FCFA during his tenure as General Manager of the defunct national carrier, Cameroon Airlines, Camair. 237online.com The ruling was for the second of two matters for which Fotso is standing trial at the SCC. Fotso was also fined 19 Billion FCFA for the financial losses caused Camair as a result of the embezzlement. Also, money in about 15 frozen Fotso bank accounts was confiscated. The ruling, just like recent court sittings, took place in the absence of Yves Michel Fotso and all his five counsel. The lawyers wrote to the court last February to announce their withdrawal from the trial, alleging unfair hearing. Their decision came after Fotso wrote to the SCC to announce that he will no longer appear in court because the trial was being conducted in a biased manner. The judgement was delivered by a trial team headed by Mrs. Justice Virginie Eloundou, assisted by Mrs. Justice Siewe Yvette and Mrs. Justice Hayatou Zakiatou. The Advocates General were Mr. Justice Tagim and Mr. Justice Omam Fils. Earlier, after declaring Yves Michel Fotso guilty of embezzlement, Advocate General Omam Fils asked for the maximum jail term for the accused and the confiscation of his seized property and frozen bank accounts. Counsel for the State, Barrister Sama Francis Asanga, supported the position of Mr. Justice Omam Fils, but also requested commensurate losses for his client caused by the embezzlement. 237online.com Barrister Ngongo Ottou, lawyer for Camair Liquidation, asked for losses equivalent to 6 per cent annual interest on the embezzled amount of 34.4 Billion from 2010 to 2016. He also demanded 500 Million FCFA as cost for moral losses caused the Camair Liquidation Committee. Prior to Mondays sentence, Yves Michel Fotso was already serving a 25-year jail term for alongside others, embezzling about 21 Billion FCFA meant for the purchase of a presidential aircraft, the Bbjet 2. They were sentenced on September 12, 2012 by the Mfoundi High Court in Yaounde.

Kimeng Hilton NDUKONG
 

         

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A former high-producing banking consultant with a big bank has decided to join the broker channel.Jason McKague, formerly with Manulife Bank, has joined Invis as a mortgage agent for the The Della Dwyer team in Barrie.Bringing on a high-volume producer like Jason McKague speaks volumes of our full-service brokerage model and of the support that Barb Morgan provides brokers in Ontario," Cam Strong, CEO, Invis Mortgage Intelligence , said in a release. "He's a very exciting new-age broker and we look forward to his fresh ideas and watching him achieve even greater success."McKague kicked off his career with TD Securities before moving to Manulife in 2008.He has worked in analyst roles as well as client services; he was awarded with the Manulife Sales Excellence Award in 2014 and 2015."I am so thrilled to have Jason join The Della Dwyer team in Barrie, bolstering our presence in this fast growing area," Barb Morgan, Vice-President, Ontario at Invis, said. "He has a stellar reputation and excellent financial planner relationships, and I look forward to helping him achieve his aggressive growth plans."A coup like this is a big win for the broker network and it certainly speaks to the strength of the channel.
Do you know one of the savviest women in the industry? Make sure to nominate them for this years Women of Influence issue Each year, CMP profiles the leading ladies in the mortgage industry; from brokers and agents, to underwriters and economists. Today, more than ever, women are blazing their own trail in what was once a male-dominated industry  and we want to feature the best of the best. Click here to nominate a woman of influence.Over the past three years, a total of 46 industry stars have made the list and this year we want to shatter that record.For this years list were looking to our faithful readers to help us identify these talented women. And, hey, dont shy away from nominating yourself  were looking for the best and the brightest females from across Canada and one of them may very well be you.While it's CMPs attempt to both honour and recognize individuals who have made positive contributions to the industry, the list is also a celebration of the growing influence of women in the industry.What the list is not is a ranking; its also not scientific and its absolutely not CMPs last word on the subject, but the magazines continued salute to broker women.So click here and let us know who you think should be featured in our second Women of Influence issue.
A big bank will pay $1 million to resolve a probe into allegations that it discriminated against minority mortgage applicants.



The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced that Fidelity Bank reached the agreement with the Fair Housing Project of North Carolina.



The agreement stems from a complaint lodged by the Fair Housing Project, Legal Aid North Carolina Inc.  a HUD agency based in Raleigh  alleging that Fidelity Bank denied housing and mortgage loans because of race. The Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race when setting the terms and conditions of a home sale or making houses or mortgages unavailable on the basis of race.



Whether intentional or not, stark disparities exist in lending patterns and access to credit along racial and ethnic lines, said HUD Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Gustavo Velasquez. HUD remains committed to not only enforcing the law, but also facilitating productive relationships between lenders and advocacy groups that help make lenders more aware of their obligations under the Fair Housing Act.



The agreement calls for Fidelity to make investments and community development loans in predominantly minority census tracts, with at least 40% of those loans promoting affordable housing, according to HUD. The bank has committed to earmarking at least $1 million over the next two years to the project.



The bank will also display a HUD Fair Housing poster at a branch in Raleigh, display its nondiscrimination policies in English and Spanish, and provide fair lending training to its mortgage staff, HUD reported.
The stereotype is so old that its enmeshed in popular culture: College students arrive on campus to find a surplus of food  enough for food fights in dining halls or to pack on the infamous freshman 15.

But lately, college administrators have discovered that some of their students face a different reality. Many are struggling to find enough to eat.

As a result, universities across the state have begun offering a different kind of meal option. All-you-can-eat dining halls are still a mainstay for students who can afford them. But now, campuses are also opening free food pantries to serve their needier students.

In recent years, at least 14 colleges in Texas and hundreds across the country have opened food pantries, according to the College and University Food Bank Alliance. They range from big public schools like Texas Tech University and the University of North Texas to community colleges like Tarrant County College and Amarillo College. Most were created after administrators or students realized that food insecurity was a growing problem at their schools.

We want our kids to go to college, but a lot of them cant afford nutritional and healthy foods, said Ashlee Taylor, a graduate student at Texas Tech who worked with classmates to open a pantry there this semester.

The reasons for opening them vary, but many campus officials cited two key factors. For one, the average cost of tuition and fees has increased more than 95 percent statewide since 2004, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Meanwhile, the number of college students from low-income families has grown. Many of those students get all or part of their tuition paid for, but with little or no financial support from their families, they struggle to keep up with other living expenses.

Often, when choosing between paying for a meal or paying for tuition, healthy eating habits will be sacrificed.

A lot of students are pretty much just one step away from being food insecure because there is not much of a cushion there, said Debra Reed, a professor of nutritional sciences at Texas Tech.

At the University of North Texas, the office of the dean of students opened a food pantry a little over a year ago after noticing a number of students were skipping meals. Some were attending school while homeless  they couch surfed in friends living rooms to get by, said Associate Dean of Students Rodney Mitchell.

Our stance here at UNT is that, with all of our students, we want to address all their needs, Mitchell said.

The pantry at UNT is similar to most of the others in the state. It is set up in a small room within the student union. Students can set an appointment or show up during open hours to pick through canned or dry foods, plus personal hygiene products and bottled water. There are no refrigerators, so fresh or frozen foods arent available.

This academic year, students have visited the pantry about 500 times, Mitchell said.

Many of the pantries are supplied by donations and staffed by volunteers. Maintaining them costs little, if anything. But their operations can provide a lifeline for students who may otherwise have to halt their education.

The Texas Tech pantry opened last month and mostly caters to international students. Those students, many of whom come from Asia, are unfamiliar with the culinary offerings of Lubbock. Some have families that they need to feed but have visas that dont allow them to work off-campus jobs.

Most graduate students make well below the poverty level, said Taylor, who is president of Techs Graduate Student Advisory Council.

But as the pantries proliferate, their creators say they still need to work on convincing students to use them. Students may feel embarrassed or believe that struggling to put food on the table is a rite of passage for people in college.

They need to understand that eating enough and staying healthy will help them succeed, said Catie McCorry-Andalis, dean of students at the University of Texas at El Paso, which opened a pantry about a year ago. And the food banks try to discretely give them that help, she said.

We need to make sure that there are virtually no obstacles and barriers to a student pursuing their education, McCorry-Andalis said.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)  Forecasters are warning that severe storms could bring "significant" tornadoes and grapefruit-sized hail to the Great Plains on Tuesday, while severe thunderstorms and strong wind gusts are predicted for Mid-Atlantic states where voters are casting ballots in primary elections.

The most dangerous weather  heavy winds, tornadoes and giant hail  will likely take aim at a 66,000-square-mile area stretching from southern Oklahoma to southern Nebraska, including the Oklahoma City and Wichita, Kansas, areas, according to the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. Parts of Texas and Missouri are also at risk for big hail and damaging wind gusts, forecasters said.

"We shouldn't assume that we're going to have a lot of information  you know, a lot of lead time," Storm Prediction Center meteorologist Matt Mosier said. "We may or we may not."

In all, nearly 50 million people from the Rio Grande in South Texas to Omaha, Nebraska, and the western regions of Missouri, Arkansas and Iowa are at a slight risk or higher of experiencing severe weather Tuesday. That tally also includes Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Baltimore, where a separate storm system could bring strong winds and thunderstorms to Mid-Atlantic states.

Storms are expected in Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania, where voters are casting ballots in primary elections Tuesday, though forecasters aren't expecting a severe weather outbreak there.

Mid-Del Public Schools, in the Oklahoma City suburb of Midwest City, decided Monday night to call off classes for Tuesday. The district said in a statement that the safety of students and staff was its top priority, noting that it reworked its tornado safety plan three years ago after a twister killed seven schoolchildren in the neighboring suburb of Moore.

Officials with Oklahoma City Public Schools and the University of Oklahoma were meeting early Tuesday to determine plans for the day. Other schools in Oklahoma canceled afternoon and evening activities, when the storms are expected to roll in.

In recent years, authorities have been able to predict storm conditions like these several days in advance with greater confidence, Mosier said, though he noted that the weather doesn't always pan out as expected.

"It's never straightforward when you're sitting here talking about (predicting) large tornadoes," Mosier said. "We're trying to be as confident or as accurate as we can."

Residents of affected areas should develop a plan to take shelter from a quick-forming storm without driving in severe conditions, Mosier said.

___
Racist City Employees Are on Notice, and 9 Other Greater Cincinnati News Stories You May Have Missed This Week

Catch up on local government, politics, sports, celeb sightings and Halloween fun.
Another day and another major concert canceled in North Carolina protesting their Anti-LBGT law HB2. Demi Lovato and Nick Jonas canceled a pair of shows they had scheduled for this summer in Charlotte on June 30 and Raleigh on July 2, but felt the need to cancel in response to the law.

"After much thought and deliberation, Nick and I have decided to cancel our shows in Raleigh and Charlotte. One of our goals for the Honda Civic Tour: Future Now has always been to create an atmosphere where every single attendee feels equal, included, and accepted for who they are," said the pair in a statement released to GLAAD.

"North Carolina's discriminatory HB2 law is extremely disappointing, and it takes away some of the LGBT community's most basic rights and protections. But we will not allow this to stop us from continuing to make progress for equality and acceptance.

We know the cancelation of these shows is disappointing to our fans, but we trust that you will stand united with us against this hateful law."

It is unlikely that the lawmakers in North Carolina are bumping much Nick Jonas or Demi Lovato, unlike some of the other artists to cancel their shows like Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam and Boston and Ringo Starr. However their kids very well might and few things influence parents like their kids.

Other artists like Father John Misty, Mumford & Sons and Cindy Lauper have said they will carry on with their shows, but proceeds from the gigs will go to support local groups fighting the bill.

Other businesses in the state have also protested including Paypal, which cut an expansion costing hundreds of jobs.

North Carolina passed HB2 in February, which overrides all local ordinances addressing employment, wages or public accommodations for the LBGT community. It also forces individuals to use the bathroom corresponding their sex assigned at birth, regardless of current gender identity and without finding statistics to support this being an issue.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Buenos Aires' government has taken strong action in reaction to the five deaths that occurred two weeks ago on the first night of the two-night house and techno festival Time Warp. The city government has decided to ban all large-scale electronic music festivals until it decides on a more permanent course of action.

According to the Associated Press, Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodriguez Larreta said the measure would remain in effect until the city legislature can approve a more permanent law that would prevent drug use at these types of events.

Five individuals died and another four were hospitalized in critical condition on the first night of Time Warp Festival on April 15. Five people have been arrested in connection to the drug related incidents.

Many complained that the event was oversold and too crowded to reporters afterwards.

"We couldn't stay inside, we couldn't breathe," one of the participants told local TV channel TN via the BBC.

"It was too hot and there were too many people."

Time Warp's second night was promptly canceled. This was the third year for Time Warp in Buenos Aires. It began in Germany in 1994.

The Buenos Aires city government could continue down the path towards banning all large-scale dance events for fear of more deaths, it could more strictly regulate the events that do happen so some of the issues that occurred with overcrowding and understaffing of medical personnel doesn't happen again or it could try other more liberal courses of action.

It is unclear how long this could take for the government to get legislation passed, but it could impact other brands like Ultra Music Festival, which has an edition in Argentina.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
In an attempt to intimidate his nephew, Aemond threatened to take out Lucerys' eye and later went after the young prince on dragon's back. The situation escalated to a bad one when Lucerys' dragon Arrax blew fire on Aemond's dragon Vhagar.
Someone should sue the President for ...
Summerville Bears logo View Photos

Tuolumne, CA  Expanding educational opportunities for the next school year and maintaining the parent nursery are on the Summerville trustees agenda this week.

At Wednesday nights meeting, District Superintendent Robert Griffith will roll out a memo-of-understanding (MOU) document that seeks to guide the new relationship in the next school-year between the school district and Summerville Parent Nursery School (SPNS). As previously reported here, the district has been winding down from a partnership that included providing financial support. Under the proposed agreement, SPNS would be able to remain license-exempt by having the district maintain program sponsorship, which also requires that it remain involved with facets of employment, operations and records. In addition to reimbursing it for all costs and expenses, SPNS, if it agrees to the MOU, would be required to assume all responsibility for its nursery facility and insurance.

Several new courses being proposed at Summerville for the coming school year will also be presented to the trustees at the Wednesday meeting.

Advanced Manufacturing Applications and Advanced Orchestra would both provide students with options not currently offered to further develop skills. The former is also part of one of the districts identified technical education career paths. Advanced Placement European History, designed to be the equivalent of a two-semester introductory college course, would also potentially allow students to earn college credits. Advanced Law Enforcement would bring more focused development and preparation for students planning to apply for police academy. A proposed afternoon Strength and Conditioning class with a studies component for varsity athletes in season would potentially carve out more time to train as well as study and get homework done ahead of practices and games.

In other action items, the board anticipates approving final graduation requirements for the districts new Adult Education program, previously reported here. Once these are finalized, Griffith states, Very soonwe are going to start to put out the word to our community that any adult who has not completed a high school diplomaand would like towe are going to offer an opportunity to do that. The Adult Ed requirements, he adds, will be much the same as for high school students; albeit, with a lot less electives.

Following a 5:30 p.m. closed session on various topics the meeting will open to the public at 6:30 p.m. in the high school library (17555 Tuolumne Road).
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The Disney Fantasy cruise ship rescued three people clinging to a capsized boat near Cuba late last week who turned out to be fugitives, the U.S. Marshals Service said.

3 wanted for violating supervised release on credit card fraud charges

They are Cuban nationals from U.S.

1 had valid Florida driver's license

Luis Rivera-Garcia, Juliet Estrada-Perez and Enrique Gonzalez-Torres were wanted for violating their supervised release on federal credit-card fraud charges in New Orleans.

At about 11:30 a.m. Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard was contacted by the Disney Fantasy, whose crew reported it had rescued three people clinging to a capsized vessel about 40 miles north of Varadero, Cuba, according to the Marshal's Service.

The three were all Cuban nationals from the U.S. One had a valid Florida driver's license, the Marshal's Service said. They were turned over to deputy marshals in Key West.

Rivera-Garcia, Estrada-Perez and Gonzalez-Torres all had been arrested on credit card fraud charges Oct. 7, 2015 by the U.S. Secret Service in New Orleans.

Just three days before they were rescued at sea, Estrada-Perez and Rivera-Garcia were arrested in Fort Myers by Lee County Sheriff's deputies and charged with trafficking in stolen credit cards.

The Marshal's Service thinks the three may have been fleeing to Cuba to avoid prosecution in the U.S.


Donald Trump is aiming for a sweep of all five Northeastern states holding primaries Tuesday, including Pennsylvania, leaving his rivals pinning their hopes of stopping the Republican front-runner on a fragile coordination strategy in the next rounds of voting.

For Democratic leader Hillary Clinton, wins in most of Tuesday's contests would leave little doubt that she'll be her party's nominee. Rival Bernie Sanders' team has sent mixed signals about his standing in the race, with one top adviser suggesting a tough night would push the Vermont senator to reassess his bid and another vowing to fight "all the way to the convention."

5 states holding primaries Tuesday



Democrats are competing for 384 delegates

Republicans are competing for 172 delegates

ELECTION 2016: Latest Headlines | Florida Decides Voting Guide

The calculator: How much does each candidate's tax plan affect you? Try it for yourself



Clinton was already looking past Sanders, barely mentioning him during recent campaign events. Instead, she deepened her attacks on Trump, casting the billionaire businessman as out of touch with Americans.

"If you want to be president of the United States, you've got to get familiar with the United States," Clinton said. "Don't just fly that big jet in and land it and go make a big speech and insult everybody you can think of."

Asked Monday whether she needed to do more to gain Sanders' support in the general election, she noted her loss in the 2008 Democratic primaries to Barack Obama.

"I did not put down conditions," she said on MSNBC. "I said I am supporting Senator Obama. ... I hope that we will see the same this year."

In addition to Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island hold primaries on Tuesday. Candidates and outside groups have spent $13.9 million dollars on advertisements in the states, with Clinton and Sanders dominating the spending.

Democrats are competing for 384 delegates in Tuesday's contests, while Republicans have 172 up for grabs.

The Democratic race is far more settled than the chaotic GOP contest, despite Trump having a lead in the delegate count. The businessman is the only one left in the race who can reach the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination before the convention, but he could very well fall short, pushing the nominating process to the party's July gathering in Cleveland.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are now joining forces to try to make that happen. Their loose alliance marks a stunning shift in particular for Cruz, who has called on Kasich to drop out of the race and has confidently touted the strength of his convention strategy.

Kasich has won just a single primary  his home state  but hopes to sway convention delegates that he's the only Republican capable of defeating Clinton in the general election.

Under their new arrangement, Kasich won't compete for votes in Indiana, allowing Cruz to take Trump on head to head in the state's May 3 primary. Cruz will do the same for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico.

"It is big news today that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana to give us a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump," Cruz told reporters as he campaigned in Indiana on Monday. "That is good for the men and women of Indiana. It's good for the country to have a clear and direct choice."

Trump panned his rivals' strategy as "pathetic."

"If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail," Trump said as he campaigned in Rhode Island. "But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude."

Cruz and Kasich's public admission of direct coordination was highly unusual and underscored the limited options they now have for stopping the real estate mogul. The effectiveness of the strategy was quickly called into question after Kasich said publicly that while he won't spend resources in Indiana, his supporters in the state should still vote for him.

Trump's path to the nomination remains narrow, requiring him to win 58 percent of the remaining delegates to reach the magic number by the end of the primaries. He's hoping for a solid victory in Pennsylvania, though the state's unique ballot could make it hard for any candidate to win a big majority.

While the statewide Republican winner gets 17 delegates, the other 54 are directly elected by voters and can support any candidate at a convention. Their names are listed on the ballot with no information about which White House hopeful they support.

Clinton is on solid footing in the Democratic race and enters Tuesday's contests having accumulated 82 percent of the delegates needed to win her party's nomination. While she can't win enough delegates to officially knock Sanders out of the race this week, she can erase any lingering doubts about her standing.

Pace reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Ken Thomas, Chad Day, Stephen Ohlemacher and Hope Yen contributed to this report.
Feeding coyotes could soon no longer be allowed in Indian Harbour Beach.

Coyote-human encounters on the rise

Ordinance would allow police to issue fines

Citation could cost as much as $250

The City Council will consider a ban on feeding coyotes within city limits at Tuesday night's meeting. The vote comes after an increasing number of human-coyote encounters, plus reports of missing pets.



"One came right up, 15 to 20 feet, from me," said Don Wahrendorf, who spends his mornings walking around Gleason Park. "(It was a) pretty good size."

Mark Ryan, the city manager in Indian Harbour Beach, said some of the coyotes are no longer afraid of humans.

"The behavior changed  I'm going to say  in early April," he said.

Ryan blames the behavior change on people feeding coyotes.

RELATED STORY: Coyote spotted in Indian Harbour Beach

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has jurisdiction in cases of humans feeding coyotes, but city leaders said their response is sometimes delayed.

So the City Council on Tuesday will consider approving an ordinance that will allow police officers to issue fines to people caught feeding coyotes on public property. The citation could cost $250.

You get a pack of coyotes here, you dont know what theyre going to do. You got little kids around here. Id be a nervous wreck if I had my grandkids walking around or something here, Wahrendorf said.



The ordinance will be taken up at the council meeting at 7 p.m. at the Indian Harbour Beach City Hall, 1116 Pine Tree Drive.


A special magistrate recommended raising teacher pay in Volusia County, following months of negotiations between the school district and the teachers union. But the school district says it cant afford to.

Magistrate recommends Volusia County give teachers an almost 4 percent pay raise

School district says it can't afford to, which the union disputes

The union says teachers will continue to "work to contract"

A special magistrate was called in after the school district declared an impasse in negotiations.

The magistrate recommended an almost 4 percent pay raise for teachers starting May 1.

But the school district says there is no money for raises and that the district expects a budget deficit going into next year.

"We've been saying all along that the money is not there, said school district spokesperson Nancy Wait. The money that the Union is talking about is money that is not recurring. It's one-time things that is not going to pay for those raises going forward."

The union disagrees.

"Based on just the numbers they've given us, that not only do we not have a deficit in Volusia County, we have a surplus," said Volusia Teachers Organization president Andrew Spar.

District leaders told union leaders they also want to change the way health insurance is provided as part of these recent negotiations.

"We believe it is illegal for them to force on us insurance changes for next year, since we're not negotiating for next year. And we've already talked to our attorney. We will look at filing an unfair labor practice charge," said Spar.

Meanwhile, teachers will continue to work to contract, working only the hours they are required to work and not attending field trips or other functions.

With graduation ceremonies about a month away, Spar says most teachers will sit on the sidelines and not take charge of the ceremony.

"They will not go and work the graduations this year," said Spar.

Both sides agree the magistrate's recommendations are non-binding.

Now both sides have 20 days to respond in writing to those recommendations.

The school board is expected to make a final decision.
Police at the University of Central Florida are investigating reports of a possible gunman at the campus library.

They are asking students to avoid the area.

*UCF ALERT* UCFPD responding to Library reference person with a gun. Please avoid area.  UCF Police Dept. (@UCFPolice) April 26, 2016

Police still investigating possible gunman at the library. More information to follow. Please avoid the library. #UCF #UCFPD  UCF Police Dept. (@UCFPolice) April 26, 2016

It is finals week at the school.

We have crews on the way to UCF to find out the latest.

This is a developing story. Check back for the latest.
WESLACO  Two Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists are studying the virtual tug-of-war that takes place when a pathogen attacks a plant.

In mid-battle, both aggressor, the pathogen, and the defending plant undergo dynamic changes to improve their chances of victory. Better understanding those changes could unlock new ways to improve plants by making them more disease-resistant, they say.

Specifically, were looking to improve the defenses of grasses that produce biofuel, like switchgrass, sugarcane and energy cane, as well as those that produce food, such as corn and sorghum, said Dr. Kranthi Mandadi, a plant genomics and molecular biologist at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Weslaco.

Mandadi is collaborating in the study with Dr. Karen-Beth Scholthof, a plant virologist at Texas A&M University in College Station. The two received funding of almost $500,000 for a three-year study from the U.S. Department of Agricultures Agriculture and Food Research Initiative.

Grasses feed and fuel the world, Mandadi said. And the demand for more such crops will grow tremendously in the coming decades.

The current worldwide estimate of cereal yields, which come from grasses, is just over 2,600 tons, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, he said. Agricultural economic analyses predict that global cereal demand will increase to more than 3,300 tons by 2030.

In addition, the demand for biofuel feedstocks will also increase to over 440 tons in that time period. One way to help meet those future demands is to reduce the crop losses due to disease, he said.

Improved grasses would have far-reaching implications, Scholthof said.

Developing grasses better able to defend themselves against viruses and other pathogens would mean grasses with increased and higher-quality yields, she said. There are also potentially important environmental gains, including less water use and fewer fertilizer inputs,

But until now, Mandadi said, little research has been done to study the defense mechanisms of grasses because of their complex genetics and long life cycles that can stretch from six months to several years. Some bioenergy grasses such as switchgrass are perennial.

Working with a smaller, faster-growing model grass reduces the time and expense normally associated with field research grasses, he said.

He and Scholthof found that working with diseases of grasses using model grasses such as Brachypodium and Setaria would be much more efficient. These two model grasses, developed by the U.S. Department of Energy for just such research, have a shorter lifespan of six to eight weeks and shorter stature, growing to only a few inches in height.

This is convenient to test several plant generations with a greatly reduced need for field or laboratory space and resources, and in relatively less time, Scholthof said. And more importantly for science, the genetic makeup of these grasses is closely related to their field grass cousins.

When a pathogen invades a plant, the plant begins to alter levels of so-called reactive oxygen species, or free radicals, much as the human body does, to defend itself, Mandadi said.

Thats when the tug-of-war begins, he said. The pathogen is trying to take down the plant defenses by fighting off free radicals. And the plant is trying to take down the pathogen by ramping up the free radicals. We want to identify all the molecular changes that are going on during these interactions in plant cells.

In the struggle for survival, both the plant and the pathogen will actually have to launch their defense strategies against each other in a very timely manner, Mandadi said.

In this highly orchestrated process, the genes and free radicals are actually modified and the end result will be either disease or defense.

Mandadi said knowledge begins, for example, when a particular plant gene is identified to be important for free radical defenses. To prove its function, the gene is removed from the plant by using novel gene editing tools, such as one known as CRISPR-CAS9, to test whether the plant will indeed become more infected.

Or we can find ways to make that gene work better to make the plants stronger, he said. We also want to know how the pathogen launches its genes to stay one step ahead of the plant defenses to inflict disease.

By working with model grasses, Scholthof said, they can speed up discoveries to improve food and bioenergy grasses vital to the worlds sustainability.

And this can be extended to other forage, turf and natural grasslands and to understand the ecology of host-virus interactions, she said.

Mandadi and Scholthof said they are looking forward to establishing their methods for plant improvement.

Well work with plant breeders and other crop scientists to eventually transfer our knowledge from the laboratory to the field to develop bioenergy and food grasses with better and more resistance to viruses and other pathogens that today cause serious crop losses worldwide, Scholthof said.
FLOYDADA - The annual Floyd County Old Settlers Reunion has been set for Saturday, May 28, in Floydada with most activities centered at the courthouse square in Floydada.

According to the Floyd County Historical Museum, the event will feature booths offering arts and crafts along with food items. A wildflower show and quilt show will be held throughout the day in the Barrow Building, on the corner next to the museum which is located at 105 E. Missouri St.

A hands-on rope making demonstration will be conducted as well, with museum volunteers providing instruction and assistance.

The Old Settlers Weekend will begin on Friday, May 27, with an open house at the museum from 1-5 p.m. Museum board members, staff and volunteers will be on hand to greet visitors, and refreshments will be served throughout the afternoon.

A special event during Fridays open house will be a program featuring Fonty Carthel of Plainview, who will present the story of his Texas Revolutionary War ancestor Alphonso Steele. The historical program relates to Steeles memoirs which were presented to the Texas Legislature. Carthel will tell of Steeles memories as a young militiaman during the fight for Texas Independence which culminated with the decisive Battle of San Jacinto, in which Steele participated.

Museum visitors during the Old Settlers Reunion will also have a chance to view Carl J. Smiths painting, Lantern At Old Emma. Smith is a native of Floyd County and grandson of Charlie Walker Smith, a founder of Lockney Christian College.

Carl Smith recently give his 46x60-inch painting to the museum, and it is now on display in the museums East Room.

The Floyd County Historical Museum is open weekday afternoons from 1-5 p.m., and by appointment. Contact the museum at 806-983-2415, or after hours, call Dorothy Turner at 806-983-2200 or Nancy Marble at 806-983-2937 to make arrangements.

The museum is conducting its annual membership drive. Dues are: students, $1; adults, $5; family, $10; contributing, $25; benefactor, $250, life, $500. They mau be sent to Floyd County Historical Museum, P.O. Box 304, Floydada, TX 79235.
HARTFORD  The Latest on Connecticut voters and the Democratic and Republican primary races in the state: (all times local):



6 a.m.



Voters are headed to the polls in Connecticut, a state unaccustomed to having its presidential primary carry much weight.



State election officials hope voter turnout will be high, given a surge in voter registration. The polls opened at 6 a.m. Tuesday and will close at 8 p.m.



The Democratic and Republican contests follow a spate of visits by four of the five major party candidates and their surrogates.



For the Democratic candidates, 55 of the states 71 delegates will be up for grabs. Theyll be distributed mostly on a proportional basis. Meanwhile, the Republicans are vying for 25 of the states 28 delegates, which will be distributed proportionally.



Last weeks Quinnipiac University Poll showed Donald Trump leading among Republicans and Hillary Clinton leading among Democrats.







5 a.m.



The nations eyes on Tuesday will be on Connecticut, a state unaccustomed to having its presidential primary carry much weight.



The Democratic and Republican contests follow a spate of visits by four of the five major party candidates and their surrogates.



For the Democratic candidates, 55 of the states 71 delegates will be up for grabs. Theyll be distributed mostly on a proportional basis. Meanwhile, the Republicans are vying for 25 of the states 28 delegates, which will be distributed proportionally.



State election officials hope voter turnout will be high, given a surge in voter registration.



Last weeks Quinnipiac University Poll showed Donald Trump leading among Republicans and Hillary Clinton leading among Democrats.



Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.






SOUTHINGTON  At Monday nights Town Council meeting, a public hearing on the budget attracted a handful of speakers who mostly focused on education spending.



The council is considering a $142.7 million budget approved unanimously by the Board of Finance. Under that spending plan the education budget increases by nearly $3 million, or 3.33 percent, for the 2016-17 fiscal year.



The Board of Education unanimously requested a $92.9 million budget, a $3.1 million, or 3.6 percent, increase from the current year. The boards request includes nine new teaching positions, four of which are funded through retirements of people who wont be replaced.



Dan Hart, Southington Education Association president, said the requirements of education now include technology, which must be funded along with training for teachers. This years education budget represents moving forward, he said. I hope youll continue to support these initiatives.



The proposed literacy and math specialist positions were important, Hart said, since they provide valuable education for students and help for classroom teachers.



Arthur Cyr questioned education spending and the addition of employees since enrollment has declined over the past decade. He also proposed that the education budget by cut by more than $800,000 since the town could lose that much with a change in state education funding. The board had assumed no change in state aid, an assumption that is now invalid Cyr said.



Brian Goralski, Board of Education chairman, defended the budget. He said it represented collaboration and cooperation between the boards and hoped the council could also come to agreement on a spending plan.



Enrollment had dropped, but Goralski said the decrease wasnt large in relation to the entire districts population. Requirements on local school districts have increased, though. Goralski said there are improvements funded by the 2016/17 budget but are in keeping with the districts plan of slowly implementing new efforts.



Thats what this budget has, incremental change, Goralski said.



Town officials and residents spoke about the dire financial news from the state and how to address revenue gaps. Cyr suggested taking some of the towns reserves, saying the $17 million in the fund was more than required by rating agencies.



If we have a choice of cutting services or raising taxes and were overfunded in our fund balance, then thats the place I think we should look, Cyr said.



jbuchanan@record-journal.com 203-317-2230 Twitter: @JBuchananRJ






Image Source: NXP Semiconductors.

NXP Semiconductors is a much larger company now that its merger with Freescale Semiconductor is complete. Revenue is expected to grow considerably year-over-year when NXP reports its first-quarter results on Monday, but the effects of the merger are hiding weak demand across all of the company's segments. NXP is reportedly considering selling off its Standard Products business in order to focus on high-margin areas, and NXP's conference call may provide more details for investors.

Social-media darling-turned-disaster Twitter is set to report its first-quarter results on Tuesday, and the company faces the difficult task of proving that its turnaround is on track. Active users stagnated last quarter, and Twitter is still generating massive GAAP losses as it rapidly grows its revenue. Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter was handing out additional bonuses of cash and stock in order to retain employees. Twitter may not have long before its top talent defects, leaving the company's turnaround hopes in tatters.

LinkedIn , another social-media company, will be reporting its first-quarter results on Thursday. The stock has tanked since LinkedIn issued guidance for 2016 calling for substantially slower revenue growth than analysts expected, and a slew of downgrades followed. Even after the decline, LinkedIn stock sells at a lofty premium, and there are plenty of risks involved in owning shares.

Click through the following slideshow for more details on these three stocks to watch.

A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity

The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.

The article 3 Stocks to Watch Next Week: NXP Semiconductors, Twitter, and LinkedIn originally appeared on Fool.com.

Copyright  1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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A Texas man charged with arson for allegedly setting a bank on fire while wearing a miniskirt has fled from a hospital where he was receiving treatment, according to a news report.

RELATED: Police: Texas high school employee accused of playground sex admits to relationship with 2nd student

Kirill Belchenko was charged with arson in Cedar Park in December for allegedly setting fire to the Lone Star Bank in May 2014.

Court records show Belchenko was found incompetent to stand trial on the charge in March.

More for you NWS predicts isolated strong, severe storms possibly on Monday

Officials at Austin State Hospital, where Belchenko was receiving treatment, told news station KEYE that Belchenko escaped from the hospital at around 3 p.m. Saturday.

Belchenko left the hospital when a delivery person came to the door, the news station reported.

RELATED: Central Texas police officer accused of assaulting, choking his wife until she passed out

Surveillance video from the December incident shows a man firing a pellet-style gun at the bank's front door before pouring liquid onto a carpet and lighting it, according to an arrest affidavit.

Belchenko admitted to police in a written statement that he was behind the fire and several other arson incidents in the Cedar Park area at that time, the affidavit said.

RELATED: S. Texas man sentenced to 5 life sentences for sexually assaulting mentally disabled twin girls

Stills from surveillance camera footage provided by the Cedar Park Police Department show a man wearing a beanie, long sleeves and a miniskirt.

jfechter@mySA.com

Twitter: @JFreports
SAN ANTONIO  Investigators are searching for 12 to 15 people suspected of participating in a organized theft at a convenience store in Seguin last week.

Seguin Police Department spokesman Officer Carlos Contreras said the suspects pulled up to the Circle K store in the 1600 block of Interstate 10 around 1:30 p.m.

MORE: New Braunfels police: Suspects stole credit cards from gym locker, tried to by video games

The alleged thieves showed up in more than 11 separate vehicles before entering the store and working together to swipe a large haul of merchandise.

Theft Case No. 16-19196 Heres a video worth watching. We REALLY want to catch every single person involved. Early Sunday morning, around 1:30 a.m., on 4/17/16, at the Circle K (previously known as Tiger Tote #12) located at 1609 IH-10 and Highway 46, a brazen, organized theft occurred involved an overwhelming number of suspects. Because of the highway location, the suspects may or may not be local. They were headed toward San Antonio. The entire incident was captured on store security video and is described by Seguin Police as appalling. At approximately 1:30 a.m., 11+ vehicles simultaneously entered the parking lot and parked at random locations. The suspects exited their vehicles, and as video indicates, entered the store staffed with a lone female clerk, and immediately began executing a well-orchestrated theft/loot (grab and run) operation. Multiple interior and exterior cameras confirm that the 12-15 suspects appear to arrive with a criminal plan already in place, enter the store and begin to brazenly steal items. At the beginning of the coordinated crime spree, several male suspects enter the store and attempt to distract the clerk with a bogus purchase of Swisher Sweet cigars. The entire theft operation takes less than a minute. While multiple male suspects attempt to distract the store clerk, the other accomplices grab items off the shelves and either stuff the merchandise into their clothing, or simply walk or run out of the store without hiding the stolen items. As all of the suspects arrived together, they all fled the scene together, heading west on IH-10 toward San Antonio. The video is particularly disturbing as it clearly shows a blatant disregard and total disrespect for others property and a brazen willingness of a large group of individuals rush into a store and loot. The suspects are described as black males, and one black female, all estimated to be in their early 20s. One suspect was wearing a #23 Michael Jordan jersey. We police believe that the vehicles in the video are:  Silver Dodge Avenger (With one blade rims)  Chevy Impala (Silver)  Chevy Impala (Red)  Honda Pilot (Dark Black or Blue)  Possible Buick LaSabre (Black)  Possible Buick LaSabre (Red)  Saturn Ion (Silver)  Chrysler 200 or KIA  Possible VW Passat (white) If you have any information and can help identify these suspects, please contact the Guadalupe County Crime Stoppers at (877) 403-TIPS or the Seguin Police Department at (830) 379-2123. Make an anonymous tip through Crime Stoppers and you may be eligible for a reward of up to $1,000. Thank you! ~ Public Information Officer C. Contreras **Play the video in HD** Posted by Seguin Police Department on Monday, April 25, 2016

At the beginning of the coordinated crime spree, several male suspects enter the store and attempt to distract the clerk with a bogus purchase of Swisher Sweet cigars, the department said in a Facebook post on Monday. The entire theft operation takes less than a minute. While multiple male suspects attempt to distract the store clerk, the other accomplices grab items off the shelves and either stuff the merchandise into their clothing, or simply walk or run out of the store without hiding the stolen items.

More for you NWS predicts isolated strong, severe storms possibly on Monday

Contreras said the suspects stole a variety of snacks and drinks, but an exact dollar amount of the stolen merchandise was not immediately available.

SEE ALSO: Victim in apparent double murder-suicide was on the phone with police just before his death

It wasnt very much, but what caught our attention was how organized and well planned it was and the numbers involved, Contreras said.

When caught the suspects involved will face charges of theft, and possible upgraded charges of engaging in organized criminal activity.

Contreras said the suspects took off on Interstate 10 toward San Antonio, and could be in the area.

Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call the Guadalupe County Crime Stoppers at (877) 403-TIPS or the Seguin Police Department at (830) 379-2123.

mdwilson@express-news.net

Twitter: @MDWilsonSA
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SAN ANTONIO  Two men were hospitalized Tuesday morning after a rollover crash just north of downtown.

The men, in their 20s, were driving near North St. Marys and West Josephine streets when the driver lost control of his vehicle and flipped.

Police said the car crashed into a pole on the side of the road, resulting in critical injuries to the driver, and serious injuries to the passenger.

Investigators are still working to determine what caused the crash.

More for you NWS predicts isolated strong, severe storms possibly on Monday

It was unclear whether alcohol was a factor.

mdwilson@express-news.net

Twitter: @MDWilsonSA
A Mexican police officer who recently was suspended by her employers in Monterrey after topless photos surfaced online has reportedly quit her job to pursue modeling offers and a potential venture into stripping, according to media reports.

The Mirror reports Nidia Garcia abruptly handed in her resignation as a means to halt the investigation into her NSFW photograph. Garcia made a confession and apology on social media following the initial fallout from the nude photo surfacing online, but the British publication also reports other racy photos of her have since surfaced online.
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U.S. border agents found almost 300 pounds of marijuana inside of the frame of a trailer trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border Friday at the Presidio port of entry in West Texas.

RELATED: This drug smuggling tunnel could be the largest ever found on the California-Mexico border, feds say

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers found the 283 pounds of marijuana  with an estimated street value of $225,000  in both of the trailer's frame rails, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Monday.

"Our officers are ever vigilant for this type of smuggling method," CBP Presidio Port Director John Deputy said in a news release. "Inspecting for contraband in the I-beams of a trailer is just one of a multitude of areas on a trailer checked by officers."

RELATED: Video shows suspected drug smugglers climbing U.S.-Mexico border fence in Arizona

Officers seized the drugs at around 12:15 p.m. when when a 2005 Dodge pickup truck towing the trailer entered the port from Mexico, the release said.

An x-ray scan of the trailer showed anomalies in the frame rails after a canine detector dog alerted officers that narcotics were present, according to the release.

CBP officers found 273 bundles, weighing a total of 283 pounds, drilled into a rail of the trailer and found a substance with the properties of marijuana.

RELATED: More than 100 undocumented immigrants captured in Texas after crossing U.S.-Mexico border

The driver 22-year-old Jesus Andres Gonzalez, a Mexican citizen from Chihuahua City  was arrested and turned over to Homeland Security Investigations agents.

Gonzalez is expected to be charged in connection with the alleged smuggling incident.

jfechter@mySA.com

Twitter: @JFreports
In many music circles, the 1980s are often referred to as Michael Jacksons decade. But in truth, the decade belonged to the perennially youthful Prince, who shockingly passed away at 57 last week.

Huge record sales dont necessarily equate to critical immortality. Just ask the Monkees. They had four No. 1 albums in the late 1960s, yet are remembered for being a lightweight novelty act.

Not surprisingly, an examination of Jacksons skimpy recording output as a solo artist, especially from his 1980s prime, doesnt hold up against Prince, who was his main challenger during the decade.

Jackson recorded three solo albums between 1979 and 1987  Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad. (He also collaborated with his siblings on two mediocre albums in that span, Triumph and Victory.)

While Thriller remains the all-time sales champion, it comes up short under critical scrutiny. In Rolling Stones The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, the critics, musicians and music industry types who participated in the poll ranked Thriller No. 20. It fared worse in Virgins All-Time Top 1000 Albums, where its a paltry No. 58.

Jackson, like Elvis Presley, was a performer with a singular voice and tremendous on-stage charisma, one whose evolution into a mass culture icon quickly turned his music into a calculated and superfluous byproduct of fame.

By comparison, the oft-enigmatic Prince released nine albums  almost all classics  during the 1980s (excluding 1987s The Black Album, which was finally released in the 1990s).

He frequently played all or most of the instruments himself and nearly always penned his own material, a heady mix of rock, funk, psychedelia, new wave and pretty much anything under the pop sun. Prince was also an underappreciated guitarist. He easily ranks with the top slingers of the 80s such as Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Four of Princes albums made the Rolling Stone poll, with two reaching the top 100, the same number that also reached the top 100 of the Virgin poll. Prince had two albums on Time magazines all-time list, while Thriller was Jacksons sole entry.

Six of Princes albums reached the Billboard Top 10 in the 80s. Three topped the chart, led by the 24-week run of Purple Rain at No. 1. In fact, Purple Rain is tied with Adeles 21 for the second-longest run at No. 1 in the last 35 years. Additionally, Purple Rain the movie was the No. 11 grossing film of 1984 and garnered Prince an Oscar the following year.

Princes success during the 80s, especially his consistent artistic brilliance, easily eclipsed Jacksons, which led me to pick Prince as the best artist of the 80s when I was pop music critic at the Dallas Morning News. By the way, Princes 1999 made my top 10 best of the decade list, although it easily couldve been Sign O the Times, Controversy or Purple Rain. No Jackson album came close to making the cut.

Princes critical and commercial stratospheric fortunes began to wane with the release of Graffiti Bridge, the 1990 soundtrack to a bad movie, but not as ridiculously awful as Princes vanity vehicle from 1986, Under the Cherry Moon. I gave Graffiti Bridge a passable review. Thats also when I began to lose interest.

To my surprise, he remained popular for the next 26 years, which is an epoch in popular music, even topping the Billboard album chart in 2006 with 3121. And every now and then, a Prince tune caught my attention, such as the playful Dinner with Delores from his 1996 disc Chaos and Disorder.

Looking back, Princes music was an important part of my high school and college years. As poor college students, my brother and I even scrapped enough money for tickets to one of his Dallas concerts during the Purple Rain tour; unfortunately, poor weather kept us away, which Ive always regretted.

What Ill never regret is having Princes music be part of my life.

Vincent Rodriguez, chief of staff at the University of the Incarnate Word, is the former pop music critic at the Dallas Morning News.
Two years ago, the Castle Hills community debated withdrawing from participation in VIA. No residents who do not have cars would be able to travel around San Antonio. No teenagers could exercise their freedom by catching a bus to San Antonio College, or to meet friends at The Pearl. Thankfully, at that time, cool heads prevailed, and instead of ousting VIA, our city leaders went to work with VIA to build better bus shelters and create more efficient routes.

Driving through my neighborhood, I see large black-and-white signs that say in block letters KEEP OUR MONEY VOTE NO VIA. These miserly signs can be found in the spacious front yards of large expensive homes, creating a visual display of stinginess and greed that is hard to un-see.

So I would like, once again, to break down the facts behind the sign. Oddly, little has changed since the topic of dropping VIA was first addressed two years ago, except that service has been increased and the cost to the city has remained the same. Zip.

VIA is funded through sales tax. When a business makes a sale, sales tax is collected. No responsible business owner considers this money to be his own. It is collected and passed on to the state of Texas, what we call in our business a pass-through. It is not reported as part of the businesss revenue; it is not our money.

So what those in opposition to VIA propose is that the sales tax be collected but placed in a newly created Municipal Development District fund to be used on development projects. The myth perpetrated is that the sales tax now being sent to VIA, less than $500,000 per year, would be diverted to fixing roads and drainage in Castle Hills. But this is a long shot. For three reasons the argument is not what it purports to be.

First, that half a million dollars per year will not make an appreciable dent in the funding needed to repair the streets and roads in Castle Hills. In fact, the figure to bring streets and drainage to the desired condition is closer to tens of millions. It would take decades of tax diversion to fix those streets. This does not even consider the decrease in sales tax were consumers not able to get into Castle Hills because they cannot take the bus. The money is insufficient by a long shot.

The next question is, can the sales tax dollars legally be diverted to streets and drainage? That is considerably more murky. Council members who support dropping VIA may want to spend the sales tax revenue for streets and drainage, but the state of Texas is not so lenient with sales tax collected. In fact, the state believes that the use of sales tax should be very carefully monitored. Even with the relatively small dollar amount of the tax, it is likely that the state will not allow the funds to be diverted to repairing and maintaining streets. Municipal Development Districts usually fund new development; they may not be used to repair neglected streets.

And then there is the matter of accrued debt owed to VIA. In accordance with Texas Transportation Code 451.611, Castle Hills must pay off what the city currently owes VIA, about $800,000. Castle Hills would receive no sales tax for that purpose, so it would have to come up with another way to pay that debt. Now we really are talking about our money.

One has to wonder, who is driving this idea? Why do people with large lovely homes and huge lots want to drop bus service? Why drop a transportation service used by thousands of people, many who cannot afford vehicles or are not able to drive: the mobility-impaired, the workers who staff local businesses, new customers from around the city, patients visiting doctors, students going to school, home care nurses and even housekeepers of these large homes?

The answer is about as ugly as the new yard signs. VIA is a cultural and financial asset to the city of Castle Hills, and only the most insulated and shortsighted would VOTE NO VIA.

Kathleen Fugate Laborde, MBA, Ed.D., is a lecturer at the University of Texas at San Antonio and finance officer for a locally owned business.
The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing, in the case of an alternate admissions process at the University of Texas at Austin, whether race can be used as one factor among many in admissions.

No matter how the court rules, the values driving UTs goal of a student body that looks like the state should be the same ones that Gov. Greg Abbott considers in appointments.

An analysis of the governors appointments so far indicates he is falling short.

Peggy Fikac and David Saleh Rauf of Hearst Newspapers Austin bureau looked at Abbotts appointments and found that three-fourths of his picks have been white and more than 60 percent have been men. This, in a state that is 43.5 percent white and a bit more than half female.

To be precise, among his 460 appointments, 72 percent have been white, 62 percent men, 45 percent white men, 27 percent white women, 15 percent Latino and 6 percent African-American.

UT and other universities defend race and ethnicity as factors among many in recognition of diversitys value. There is fairness inherent in giving access to quality education to a broader segment of the population, and creativity blooms when different experiences meet  as important in classrooms as it is in the workplace. The same applies to gender.

In workplaces in particular, different experiences mean an ability to strategize, plan and execute armed with broadened abilities to understand markets and constituencies, and it means an enhanced ability to communicate with them and to deliver what they need.

In the case of government, diversity potentially means fairer representation, an important concept even when positions arent directly elected. And this includes regional representation. We note that 12.6 percent of the governors appointments are from South Texas, an area that includes San Antonio. South Texas population is 17.32 percent of the total state population.

One in 4 of his appointees has been a campaign contributor, but were assuming that most are, in fact, qualified for their posts. And we know that this record of appointments that do not reflect the states demographics is one shared by Abbotts predecessors, including the last Democratic governor, Ann Richards.

But we also know for a certainty that race and ethnicity  and gender and the region you live in  dont spell lack of qualification.

Fikac and Rauf explained that the governor has the potential to make as many as 3,000 appointments in a four-year term. We urge him to consider diversity  and the states demographic composition. It will make for fairer  and more knowledge-based  representation.
The latest NACS Convenience Matters podcast focuses on how Jared and DeAnn Scheeler returned to their hometown with a new convenience store concept.

ALEXANDRIA, Va.  Home is where the heart is, but for Jared and DeAnn Scheeler, add one more element to that phrase: their business. In the latest NACS Convenience Matters podcast, the Scheelers talk about why they left successful careers in Minneapolis to create a new convenience retail concept in their hometown of Dickinson, North Dakota.

The result of their vision is the Hub Convenience Stores, which dispels negative stereotypes of the convenience store industry by delivering quality food products, clean facilities and restrooms, great security and lighting, and world-class customer service. Jared serves as managing director and DeAnn is director of human resources.

The Scheelers also talk about the challenges of building a new brand and growing the business during both boom and bust cycles related to oil and gas exploration in the area.

The convenience store industry is full of family businesses, whether multigenerational or a husband and wife team. The story of the Hub is similar to those of tens of thousands of other convenience retailers in our industry, said podcast co-host Jeff Lenard, vice president of strategic industry initiatives for NACS.

The Scheelers are featured in the podcast You Can Go Home Again, which can be downloaded on iTunes by searching for Convenience Matters. It also is available at nacsonline.com/podcasts. A new Convenience Matters podcast will be released every week, focusing on topics related to convenience retailing and fuels.

You can also read more about the Scheelers journey in the NACS Magazine feature, Breaking New Ground.
Indra K. Nooyi of PepsiCo and Brian Cornell of Target are co-chairing the campaign to achieve a 50/50 gender parity in the retail and consumer goods and services industries.

CHICAGO  The Network of Executive Women has launched the NEW Future Fund, a campaign aimed at achieving 50/50 gender parity in the retail and consumer goods and services industries.

The NEW Future Fund is a $5 million capital campaign to fund technology that delivers industry-specific data and insights, plus training and collaboration tools to increase the representation of women in leadership positions. Brian Cornell, chairman and CEO of Target Corporation, and Indra K. Nooyi, chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Inc., will co-chair the industrywide initiative.

On behalf of PepsiCo, Im proud to support the NEW Future Fund to make sure women are equally represented at the highest levels of our industry, Nooyi said. We know that when we open the doors of opportunity to extraordinary women, businesses thrive. Through the powerful partners NEW is bringing together, we have the chance to drive meaningful change across our industry, harnessing the talents of the best and brightest, women and men alike. This isnt just about doing the right thingits about doing the right thing for our businesses and our industry.

Im thrilled to represent Target and join Indra as co-chair of NEWs Future Fund, said Brian Cornell, chairman and CEO of Target. Ive had the opportunity to work for exceptional female leaders throughout my career and am proud to surround myself with strong female leaders at Target. Theres no question were making progress, but we still have work to do to achieve gender parity in the industry. The work that will be done as a result of this campaign is a critical step in this process.

The NEW Future Fund will create additional industry-specific insights and benchmarks on gender parity. In addition, the data provided through NEW Future Fund research will be essential to understanding performance and developing more effective ways to accelerate women in the retail, consumer goods and services industries.

This data will be coupled with online and on-the-go learning and team training resources tailored to the industrys needs and latest trends. Last year NEW introduced the NEW Career Accelerator Model with the Center for Creative Leadership to outline the 13 critical success factors specific to women leaders in the industry. The NEW Career Accelerator Modeland the career programs, events, webinars and content based on itprovide a strong formula for personal and organizational growth. More than 20,000 NEW industry leaders leveraged these training and collaboration tools in 2015.

Our future as an industry depends on more women in leadership roles, said NEW President and CEO Joan Toth. PepsiCo and Target are showing their commitment to driving innovation and business growth. Im convinced that working together, powered by the NEW Future Fund, we can achieve 50/50 gender parity in our leadership.

For more information on the NEW Future Fund, visit and follow the campaign on social media at #ournewfuture.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

TPP/TTiP/TISA

FOIA reveals [UK] governments assessment of TTIPs corporate courts  lots of risks and no benefit [Global Justice Now].

Andrea Montanino, Director of the Atlantic Councils Global Business and Economics Program: TTIP cannot be an argument during the electoral campaign because it is too sensitive [Atlantic Council]. Very Serious People indeed!

More Very Serious People: The occasional effort of a largely discredited political establishment across the Atlantic to do policies that are rational and forward-looking  to which I personally include TTIP  just cant withstand the force of popular anger [Borderlex].

Yet More Very Serious People: The Washington Post Says Doctors Without Borders Is Silly to Worry About the Impact of the TPP on Drug Prices [Dean Baker, CEPR]. Council on Foreign Relations doing its little bit for the cause!

And Almost The Ultimately Serious Person:  I think that we have to do a better job to counteract voices that are distorting the reality of trade agreements, Penny Pritzker told CNBC at a leading trade fair in Hannover, Germany [CNBC].  The 13th round of TTIP discussions are being held in New York from this Thursday. Hmm

And The Ultimately Serious Person: It is indisputable that [trade] has made our economy stronger, [Obama] said. It has made sure that our businesses are the most competitive in the world [New York Times].

Once more: President Obama this week said the prospects for congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership will be best after the election season ends, signaling that the White House still believes it can successfully navigate political headwinds and push the trade agreement through Congress this year [Inside Trade] (scroll to the bottom).

2016

Voters

Since the 1980s, if not earlier, the story of the Democratic Party has been a reasonably successful attempt to take or maintain control over the presidency at any costscombined with a complete failure to articulate a compelling, long-term vision, or to build lasting networks and institutions that provide the infrastructure for political change. We bet everything on the political skills of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, and then we act surprised when they end up following moderate Republican policies [James Kwok, Baseline Scenario]. Obamas 107-Year-Old Dance Partner Unable To Obtain Photo ID [TPM]. Great photo op. So why the heck doesnt the Democrat Party have a program to help this woman get an ID?

PA, MD, CT, RI primaries

Watch Philadelphia and the Delaware and Chester counties around it. Mr. Obama won all those places in 2008, but poll numbers and Mrs. Clintons strength in those kinds of communities in 2016 suggest those should be strong areas for her. As in New York [Wall Street Journal, What to Look For in Tuesdays East Coast Primaries]. Watch establishment bastions like Montgomery County (in Pennsylvania AND in Maryland), Fairfield County in Connecticut and Providence County in Rhode Island. If Mr. Trump wins in those places, we may have seen a significant change in this race. As always, the drama on the Democratic side is limited by those boring proportional delegate-allocation rules, which means Hillary Clinton isnt going to officially nail down the nomination until (probably) June 7, and Bernie Sanders wont be able to deny her the nomination until June, either. But by all accounts, March 26 should be a pretty good day for the front-runner [New York Magazine]. Maryland and Pennsylvania are holding down-ballot primaries as well. There are red-hot Democratic Senate primaries in both states, with representatives Chris van Hollen and Donna Edwards battling for the nomination to succeed Barbara Mikulski in Maryland, and former representative Joe Sestak trying to fend off White Housebacked Katie McGinty for the chance to face Republican senator Pat Toomey.

Money

Teachout tops among NY congressional candidates in 2016 fundraising [Capital New York]. $530,732 / 10,657 = $49.80. I think Teachout is terrific, but Id also like to see Sanders-level averages become a norm. Pro-Israel Billionaire Haim Saban Drops $100,000 Against Donna Edwards in Maryland Senate Race [The Intercept].

Corruption

Trump and Clinton share Delaware tax loophole address with 285,000 firms [Guardian]. Gee, thats odd. Or not.

New York

The Clinton coalition in New York City offers a concentrated expression of the Democratic Partys status quo: affluent, largely white, and highly motivated professional-class voters, joining forces with a largely nonwhite and significantly less enthusiastic working-class bloc [Jacobin]. In other words, class counts, and The Obama Coalition, as a concept, is a steaming load of crap.

The Trail

Sanders supporters knew Clinton was angry at them for voting for Bernie  they could tell by her comment saying that she feels sorry for young voters too misinformed to vote for her; or by Bill Clinton saying that Sanders voters are so unsophisticated that they just want to shoot every third banker on Wall Street; or by David Plouffe (a Clinton ally) saying that every person who donates money to Sanders is being taken in by an obvious fraud; or by the unnamed Clinton staffer so certain she or he was speaking in a tone and manner consistent with the view of the Clinton campaign that she or he told Politico that the Clinton campaign kicked Bernies ass in New York and that Sanders can go fuck himself' [LA Progressive]. But who knew that, with almost twenty primaries and caucuses left, and more than 1,400 delegates left to be awarded, Clinton would start vetting potential Vice Presidential picks in full view of an electorate she says shes still working hard to win over? Nice rant. [W]hen pressed about whether he would encourage his young supporters to back Clinton, the senator said the primary responsibility will be on Clinton, not him, to convince people that she is the kind of president this country needs to represent working people  [Yahoo News]. Hmm. Paths to a Sanders victory: Path #1: Clintons health fails in a very big and very public way [Counterpunch]. And then the email hairball, the Clinton Foundation hairball, and the Goldman speeches. Events, dear Boy. Events. That and Sanders pulling even in the national polls. The conservative medias obsession with Hillary Clintons coughing [WaPo]. Its out there, as we used to say Bernie Sanders floats Elizabeth Warren as possible VP [CNN]. Not sure the headline is accurate, however. What Sanders said: Im not going to commit  you have to look at the best candidates you can. But I think, as you know, there are people in life today, Elizabeth Warren, I think, has been a real champion in standing up for working families, taking on Wall Street. Lena Dunham: Why I Chose Hillary Clinton [Time]. The Other Progressive Challengers Taking On the Democratic Establishment [In These Times]. This is a good roundup. Donald Trump is bristling at efforts to implement a more conventional presidential campaign strategy, and has expressed misgivings about the political guru behind them, Paul Manafort, for overstepping his bounds, multiple sources close to the campaign tell POLITICO [Politico]. Remember, in kayfabe, everybody is part of the show! Despite all the noise from both sides of the debate, when you run the numbers, it turns out that Donald Trump could win the nomination on the first ballot precisely because of the GOPs delegate rules. Ted Cruz also benefits, but not until later ballots. The losers? John Kasich and all the other candidates, and their supporters [Cook Political Report]. Donald Trump has reached 50 percent support from Republicans and Republican-leaners nationally for the first time since the beginning of the NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll in late December [NBC]. This milestone is significant as the 2016 primary heads into its final few weeks of contests, as there has been intense speculation that Trumps support has a ceiling

Stats Watch

Durable Goods Orders: The factory sector posted a respectable March with orders for durable goods up 0.8 percent which follows a revised downswing of 3.1 percent in February and a very solid 4.3 percent gain in January [Econoday]. March reflects a big gain for defense goods which helped offset a downward swing for commercial aircraft. A negative in the report is a 3.0 percent decline for motor vehicle orders reflecting weakness at the retail level. Capex: Core capital goods orders were flat in March, also a disappointment after the 2.7% drop in February (revised from -2.5%). This aggregate is down 2.4% vs year-ago, but that only scratches the surface of the malaise in business investment.  [Amherst Pierpont Securities, Across the Curve]. Caveat: Durable goods is not a good economic forecasting tool as it contains too many false warnings of economic contraction [Econintersect].

Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index, April 2016: Advance indications are mixed for the April manufacturing sector but the Richmond Fed is pointing to strength [Econoday]. The factory sector in March was mixed, evidenced by todays durable goods report. But the outlook for April is still open with this report and Empire State showing strength but not the Dallas Fed nor the national PMI flash. And: Of the four regional Federal Reserve surveys released to date, all but one are in expansion [Econintersect].

PMI Services Flash, April 2015: The services PMI came in showing soft growth as expected [Econoday]. Uncertainty over the economy and also the presidential election are cited as negatives. The service sector is still sluggish and needs to pick up steam to help offset weakness in the factory sector.

S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index, February 2016: Appreciation in home prices may not be moderating but it is far from spectacular [Econoday]. Housing prices at least are showing stability if not acceleration but are probably not strong enough to pull new sellers into the housing market nor perhaps, as far as household wealth and spending are concerned, strong enough to offset weak wage gains. How in the world would home prices offset wage gains? Unless my house in an ATM  remember that one?  I cant pay the bills with it! And: The way to understand the dynamics of home prices is to watch the direction of the rate of change. Here home price growth generally appears to be stabilizing (rate of growth not rising or falling) [Econintersect].

Consumer Confidence, April 2016: A big drop in jobs-hard-to-get, which hints at strength for Aprils employment report, headlines an otherwise soft consumer confidence report for April [Econoday]. Weakness in the report is centered in the expectations component which fell 4.3 points to 79.3. This is near Februarys 79.9 and the lowest score since November 2013. [Here,] theres outright pessimism with 17.2 percent seeing fewer jobs ahead vs only 12.2 percent seeing more ahead. It will be interesting to see if and how that pessimism plays out in this election year. Alternatively: With real labor income gains likely to stay solid, I remain upbeat about the prospects for consumer expenditures: [Amherst Pierpont Securities, Across the Curve]. And: There is little question, however, that poor consumer sentiment corresponds to poor economic performance. Econintersect believes that consumer sentiment is mostly a coincident or lagging economic indicator [Econintersect].

State Street Investor Confidence Index, April 2016: Investor sentiment eased but is still over 100, at 109.1 in April to indicate demand for risk relative to safety [Econoday]. Risk taking has been centered among North American institutional investors.

Commodities: The death toll in the Pemex petrochemical plant explosion has risen to 32 after the discovery of four more bodies in the wreckage of the Petroquimica Mexicana de Vinilo (PMV) facility [Splash247].

Banks: $10 router blamed in Bangladesh bank hack [BBC].

Corruption: Mitsubishi Motors has said it has used fuel consumption tests that broke Japanese rules for the past 25 years [BBC].

Todays Fear & Greed Index: 71, Greed (previous close: 70, Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 74 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Apr 25 at 11:49am. Still dithering around. Come on!

Gaia

The Department of Environmental Conservation on Friday rejected a proposed 124-mile natural gas pipeline that would have stretched through four counties in New York [State of Politics]. Excellent.

The 420

Experts say listing cannabis among the worlds deadliest drugs ignores decades of scientific and medical data. But attempts to delist it have met with decades of bureaucratic inertia and political distortion [Scientific American]. I had no idea the Marihuana Tax Act (of 1937) was a New Deal reform.

Dear Old Blighty

Democratic control is the main reason why our NHS is one of the most efficient health services in the world  saving more lives per pound spent than any country in the past 30 years apart from Ireland, according to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine [Market quacks eye our NHS]. And thats in spite of the NHS being subjected to neoliberal dogma over that period  the madcap internal market introduced by the Tories in 1990, New Labours contracting-out calamities and, since the studys publication, outright privatisation under the 2012 Health and Social Care Act.

The Jackpot

Leak worsens in massive Hanford tank holding nuclear waste [KING5].

Shifting weather patterns  milder winters, wetter springs and storms that are more frequent and more severe  are increasingly changing the landscape for scientists who study flora and fauna in the field [Nature].

Class Warfare

The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade [David H. Autor, David Dorn, and CEPR Gordon H. Hanson (PDF; via)]. From MIT, NBER, CEPR:

Chinas emergence as a great economic power has induced an epochal shift in patterns of world trade. Simultaneously, it has challenged much of the received empirical wisdom about how labor markets adjust to trade shocks. Alongside the heralded consumer benefits of expanded trade are substantial adjustment costs and distributional consequences. These impacts are most visible in the local labor markets in which the industries exposed to foreign competition are concentrated. Adjustment in local labor markets is remarkably slow, with wages and labor-force participation rates remaining depressed and unemployment rates remaining elevated for at least a full decade after the China trade shock commences. Exposed workers experience greater job churning and reduced lifetime income. At the national level, employment has fallen in U.S. industries more exposed to import competition, as expected, but offsetting employment gains in other industries have yet to materialize.

But can you see the local labor market from the Acela? And more to the point, can the local labor market write anybody a fat check for a speech?

[Simon DeDeo, a complexity scientist at Indiana University[ and Indiana University undergraduate Bradi Heaberlin decided to examine the emergence of social hierarchy and online behavioral norms among the editors of Wikipedia using the 15 years of data [Gizmodo]. One of their most striking findings is that, even on Wikipedia, the so-called Iron Law of Oligarchya.k.a. rule by an elite fewholds sway. You start with a decentralized democratic system, but over time you get the emergence of a leadership class with privileged access to information and social networks, DeDeo explained.

News of the Wired

When Facebook and Google finally destroy the competition, a new age of feudalism will arrive [Evgeny Morozov, Guardian]. Izabella Kaminska, one of Alphavilles lead writers, even thinks that we are facing the Gosplan 2.0  a Soviet-like system of technocratic elites who, flush with cash from desperate investors, allocate money as they see fit based on purely subjective criteria, favouring some groups over others, and using proceeds from their advertising business to fund exotic moonshot projects of dubious civic significance.

[B]ehind the technology display here in Austin was something as formidable as the technology but far less noticed: Google is mounting a lobbying and public-relations campaign across America to win acceptance for autonomous vehicles, as theyre formally known, and to shape the rules of the driverless road [Reuters]. Nothing in the article about highway infrastructure at all. Maybe that will all be done selectively, as with Internet access. Yes, I understand the potential advantages in terms of highway deaths, but I dont trust todays Silicon Valley to create a future thats anything other than dystopian, so an antidote to the technological triumphalism so evident in coverage of this story.

No technology will automate away more jobs  or drive more economic efficiency  than the driverless truck [Tech Crunch]. The demonstration in Europe shows that driverless trucking is right around the corner. The primary remaining barriers are regulatory. We still need to create on- and off-ramps so human drivers can bring trucks to the freeways where highway autopilot can take over. We may also need dedicated lanes as slow-moving driverless trucks could be a hazard for drivers. These are big projects that can only be done with the active support of government. In other words, as above, massive infrastructural investment. Of course, as an MMTer, I know that Federal taxes dont fund spending. But are we sure this is the best way to invest real resources? Why? Is anybody even asking the question?

As networked computers disappear into our bodies, working their way into hearing aids, pacemakers, and prostheses, information security has never been more urgent  or personal. A networked body needs its computers to work well, and fail even better [EFF].

Facial recognition service becomes a weapon against Russian porn actresses [Ars Technica]. And anybody else, right?

The first rule of pricing is: you do not talk about pricing [Flux]. Interesting long read. But: Responding to price is hard-wired into our brains. Really?

For years culinary detectives have been on the chili peppers trail, trying to figure out how a New World import became so firmly rooted in Sichuan, a landlocked province on the southwestern frontier of China. [Nautilus]. The bite and the burn of the red chili pepper is a reminder of how the peasants of southwestern China, at the mercy of historical and economic forces, crafted culinary masterpieces from the basic instinct for survival. Out of poverty and war and the currents of globalization they fashioned fire for their palates, and ours.

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Readers, I still need to fix my fershuggeneh contact form! Hopefully noting that fact publicly will serve a lash and a spur to my endeavors. (Meanwhile, thanks to readers, who already have my email address, who sent in images of plants!)

See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And heres todays plant (Chet F):

Long exposure photos taken at night by the light of the moon and snow reflection. Missed this one, so even though its wintry, here it is. The Big Dipper (with trees).

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Readers, Water Cooler will not exist without your regular support. Your tip will be welcome today, and indeed any day. If you enjoy what youre reading, please click the hat!
By Mathew D. Rose, a freelance writer in Berlin

It is a visit most Germans would like to forget  quickly. Their Chancellor Angela Merkel travelled to Turkey last Saturday, dropped in at what is termed a sanitised refugee camp for a well-orchestrated public relations exercise, and then held a press conference, effusing over Turkeys exemplary treatment of refugees. It was Brown Nose Tour The Second to Turkey for Ms Merkel (the last in October, just before Turkish elections, in a veiled endorsement of Turkeys dictator Recip Erdogan in return for a deal to stop the flow of refugees from Turkey to Greece).

This spectacle was much more than a display of hypocrisy. Ms Merkels newest kowtow to Erdogan, following her recent decision to raise charges against the German satirist Jan Bohmermann for libelling Erdogan, demonstrated to the German people that they are not the generous, enlightened people they thought they were and the European Union has nothing to do with Beethovens ode of joy, its unofficial anthem. Still Ms Merkel hopes her brown nose may yet revive her failing political fortune.

Ms Merkel has every reason to be thankful to Erdogan. Since the two completed their deal on 20 March the number of refugees crossing from Turkey has steadily declined. In the past five weeks a mere 113 refugees have purportedly been transferred from Turkey to the EU. That is just over 20 per week.

Ms Merkels visit is however just one element in a vastly larger development. It is just eight months ago that the Germans were celebrating their Willkommenskultur, solidarity with refugees fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. At the forefront was Ms Merkel, nicking Barack Obamas 2008 election motto Yes we can! (Wir schaffen das). Currently Willkommenskultur is being redefined in Germany: Bringing Arab and African dictators and war criminals out of the cold to support the EUs anti-refugee policy.

The motivation for this generous gesture by Germanys Chancellor and the German government is to dump Willkommenskultur I. Willkommenskultur II will furnish authoritarian leaders and warlords with cash, weapons, equipment to secure borders and other assistance to keep refugees from reaching Europe as well as repatriating those that manage to survive the journey and enter EU territory. This has become an integral aspect of Ms Merkels present policy of closing EU borders and deportation.

Ms Merkels goal is to regulate and control the stream of refugees from Libya to Italy as has been done in Turkey, she recently announced, We are currently trying to arrange a similar cooperation with Libya. Libya however is not only a warzone and failed state; it does not even have a central government. Its territory is divided among war lords, clans, al-Qaeda and ISIS. Attempts to create a unity government with the two largest fractions, each of which claims to be the national government, have up to now been a failure. The Unity President designate, Fayez al-Sarraj, backed by the United Nations, is not recognised by the various factions, which claim al-Sarraj is nothing more than a puppet of western governments. The Unity President does not even control the capitol Tripoli and is apparently holed up in a heavily armed naval base on the edge of the city. Thus the nation currently has de facto three rival governments.

While the US is keen to organise a unity government in Libya to fight ISIS forces there, the EU needs a head of state to sign a deal to stem the flow of refugees using the perilous sea route to Italy. It comes as little surprise that one of the first requests Mr Serraj made to the EU was support to build up Libyas coast guard to stop people smugglers. With almost half the Libyan population dependent upon humanitarian aid, much of the nations infrastructure in ruins and the economy crippled, it is difficult to imagine that people smugglers are a national priority. International law does not permit refugees to be sent back to a war zone, although the German government appears to be confident that they can circumvent this should they find a legitimate head of state to sign a treaty.

President Obama is capitalising upon the EUs crisis, offering the use of NATO naval forces to block refugee access to Europe, as is already the case in the Aegean, in return for increased EU military support in its war against ISIS. The President has made no secret of his disappointment with Britain and France for not following through militarily in Libya after its last dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, had been removed from power. Up to now European governments have been more interested in balancing their budgets than initiating expensive foreign military interventions. Yesterday President Obama met with the leaders of Germany, France, Britain and Italy to change this attitude.

Ms Merkels plans go much further however. Her government has initiated a broad diplomatic offensive to prevent refugees arriving in Europe from Asia and Africa. Shortly after German Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere, declared that Germany is interested in arranging deals with all the Maghreb states similar to that in Turkey, Germanys Economic Minister and leader of the German Social Democrats, Sigmar Gabriel, not to be outdone by his political opponent, MS Merkel, was busy brown nosing Egypts current dictator General al-Sisi. During his visit to Egypt last week Gabriel declared that the dictator is an impressive president. The German government, which has already sold Egypt four submarines, is not only offering more weapons and equipment to control its borders, but to assist Egypts government to secure financial support for its desolate economy from the IMF and other institutions. The German government fears that should the economic and political situation in Egypt further deteriorate, its population will constitute the next wave of immigrants seeking safety in the EU.

Simultaneously the EU is offering the Eastern African nations Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea  all of these states are known for their egregious violations of human rights  incentive packages pending results on cooperation on returns of refugees from the EU. EU nations cannot simply send refugees back to their country of origin. This necessitates a bilateral agreement. These East African governments are more than happy to be rid of political dissidents or hope for remittances should their citizens find employment in Europe, thus up to now hindering such repatriation.

In the case of Sudan, against whom the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant in 2009 for its president Umar al-Bashir on counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, on offer is assistance in removing Sudan from the list of states supporting terrorism. The European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa already announced at the beginning of the month that it would provide Sudan with 100 Million Euros to assist returnees and improve security at the borders. This sounds more like nations being transformed into large prison camps. By thus supporting such regimes the EU perpetuates the reasons why so many refugees are seeking a new life in Europe.

Ms Merkels present domestic policy is stopping refugees entering Europe and throwing out as many as possible that have arrived. A third element of the German strategy is to force other EU nations to accept more refugees. While Poland, Hungary and Slovakia are not cooperating, other nations are prepared to receive only very limited contingents. Many EU governments see the agreement with Turkey as an attempt by Ms Merkel to save her political career. They feel they have solved the problem by building fences and using police and military personnel at the borders to defend these. Even Austria, Ms Merkels former ally on the issue of refugees, is currently building a fence on the Italian border at the Brenner Pass.

Similarly, many EU nations are becoming restless concerning Ms Merkels generous pledge on visa-free travel for Turks, part of a package Ms Merkel promised to Erdogan in return for blocking refugees from leaving Turkey as well as taking back those who made it to Greece, which was endorsed by the EU. Some 700.000 refugees may have been denied access to the EU, but soon 70 million Turks could be on their way. The agreement, made just before German state elections to save Ms Merkels Christian Democratic Party from a debacle, is apparently considered by many EU leaders as no longer binding. Turkey has threatened that any backtracking by the EU on this issue would result in the refugee floodgate via Turkey being re-opened.

Ms Merkels and the EUs strategy is simply a repetition of past mistakes. The Arab Spring was a reaction to oppressive dictators and a desolate economic situation. There is no sign of these issues being addressed by Ms Merkel or the EU. To the contrary, apparently the EU is not only considering sending ships to patrol the coast of northern Africa, but even to send soldiers and police to the relevant nations to enforce its policy of Fortress Europe. Furthermore the EU is not taking into account that the situation has changed with the expansion of al-Qaeda and ISIS into Africa, including Egypt and the Maghreb States. Where formerly authoritarian governments in these regions could easily suppress discontent, these frustrated people now have a ready alternative: joining radical Islamic militant movements such as ISIS and al-Qaeda. Germany and the EU may not merely be kicking the can down the road, but priming the next explosion.
Our latest update on not-promising state of private equity reform in California ran at Bloomberg yesterday. The editor provided the title Dont Let Private Equity Dupe California but that became Dont Let Private Equity Keep California in the Dark.

Regular readers may recall that in the wake of SEC and media disclosures of widespread abuses in private equity, such as charging authorized fees, which in most walks of life would be called embezzlement, California Treasurer John Chiang, who also sits on the boards of mega public pension funds CalPERS and CalSTRS, proposed path-breaking private equity legislation to combat this misconduct.

Getting a full accounting of fees and costs that the private equity portfolio companies pay is critical, since major media stories and SEC settlements have demonstrated that that is where most of the chicanery takes place. The private equity firms, which have managerial control over the portfolio companies, can load all sorts of charges onto them that are paid directly from the portfolio companies to entities controlled by the general partners or to individuals close to them. That means they bypass the private equity fund entirely, thwarting disclosure and oversight.

The first version of the bill, AB 2833, introduced by Assemblyman Ken Cooley in February, seemed to fulfill Chiangs promise. It called for the full disclosure of all private equity fees and costs, including carried interest and fees paid by portfolio companies by all California public pension funds investing in private equity.

Unfortunately, Chiang, who is the bills sponsor, left a big escape hatch for private equity firms, and worse, this looks to be by design.

When amendments in mid-March gutted the bill, alarmed supporters contacted Chiangs and Cooleys offices. They were assured the weakening of the bill was due to drafting errors and the bill would be restored to its original strong from quickly. That story changed in 24 hours. Hearings on the bill were pushed back two weeks to allow for more wrangling.

And when the pro-reform camp was pushing to have the bill restored to its original form, a key insider revealed what was really going on: CalPERS and CalSTRS would not back even the dead-on-arrival version of the bill. Their support, or at least acquiescence, is key to having it passed. Mind you, official positions on legislation are the purview of the board, not the staff. This means Chiang, who has more stature than anyone else on the board, was not willing, or more likely, never intended to arm-twist his fellow board members to back the bill, irrespective of the captured staffs objections.

So what are we to make of the next developments in this saga? The bill was amended again in mid-April. Superficially, the revisions appear to undo the damage done in March. But this iteration still leaves the key term, related party undefined. This matters because there is no standard definition and some definitions are virtually contradictory to others. For instance, a private equity firm could take the reasonable-sounding position of using the SEC definition which would again vitiate the bill, as opposed to the FASB definition as backers proposed. Moreover, the sponsors placed the bill on the consent calendar in the lower house. That means no hearings, and thus no opportunity to fix the fatal flaw.

As we concluded at Bloomberg:

Its not too late to make this right. Chiang must recognize that passing the bill in its current form would represent a failure to fulfill his promise, and use his considerable power to insist on real reform. If he doesnt, legislators must demand (or be prodded to demand) an effective fix. The financial security of millions of California public employees  and potentially other pension-fund beneficiaries across the country  depends on it.

CalPERS and CalSTRS are trying to pretend in public that they support Chiangs bill even as they oppose it privately. Worse, the fact that they couldnt stomach even a version of the bill that was toothless and at most purely symbolic means the odds favor it being watered down even further as it progresses through the Assembly and then the Senate. For instance, California has the unusual procedure called gut and amend which the states legislative glossary defines as follows: When amendments to a bill remove the current contents in their entirety and replace them with different provisions. Its controversial because it is used to get bills through at the end of a legislative session to revive measures that were stalled. And the objection is that this ploy denies the public its right to have its say during committee hearings. But Chiang and Cooley are using a process that is every bit as anti-democratic by putting the bill on the consent calendar, which means the public is denied the opportunity to testify and in this case, to act as a counterweight to CalPERS and CalSTRS behind-the-scenes sabotage and get the bills shortcomings remedied.

With the effort to keep reformers well away from the sausage-making process, the bill goes next to the Appropriations Committee, having passed last week on the consent calendar in the Public Employees, Retirement, and Social Security committee. Bills that pass on the consent calendar in their policy committee are automatically recommended to be placed on the consent calendar in the Appropriations Committee. Voters can write their Assemblymen, particularly those in districts whose representatives are on the Appropriations Committee and call for the bill to scheduled for hearings. Mind you, this is less than ideal, since committees typically reveal only the day before hearings whether a bill is on the consent calendar or not, again giving insiders an advantage. But weighing in that you care about having a strong, effecitive bill and are not happy with how the public is being shut out will send an important message.

Hence it is time for Naked Capitalism readers to saddle up yet again. The most important is to call or write to Chiang and his fellow elected board member, Betty Yee, as state-level elected officials who also sit on the CalPERS and CalSTRS boards. Please urge both to push for a bill that will provide for the disclosure that Chiang promised, and not the flawed version that is now moving through the Assembly. In addition, tell Chiang that you disapprove strenuously of the public being shut out of this process via the use (as in abuse) of the consent calendar to assure that only insiders will have a say on the bill. Since taxpayers backstop CalPERS, this bill is a matter of broad interest.

Please also circulate this post to your family members, colleagues, and friends in California, particularly government employees, and encourage them to write or call. Be sure to identify whether you are a taxpayer or also a current or future California public pension fund beneficiary.

Mr. John Chiang

California State Treasurer

Post Office Box 942809

Sacramento, CA 94209-0001

(916) 653-2995 Ms. Betty Yee

California State Controller

P.O. Box 942850

Sacramento, California 94250-5872

(916) 445-2636

You can use email to contact Chiang and Yee, and we encourage you, if you write, to send the letter you sent to Yee to other CalPERS board members:

Their addresses:

Robert Feckner (President) rob.feckner@calpers.ca.gov

Henry Jones (Chairman of the Investment Committee) henmarj@aol.com

Michael Bilbrey Michael.bilbrey@calpers.ca.gov

John Chiang john.chiang@calpers.ca.gov; Grant Boyken (Chiangs staffer; quoted in FundFire) grant.boyken@treasurer.ca.gov

Richard Costigan richard.costigan@calpers.ca.gov

Richard Gillihan richard.gillihan@calpers.ca.gov; Katie Hagen (one of Gillians staffers) katie.hagen@calhr.ca.gov

Dana Hollinger Dana.Hollinger@calpers.ca.gov

Ron Lind rlind1@me.com

JJ Jelincic jj@calpers.ca.gov

Priya Mathur Priya.mathur@calpers.ca.gov

Bill Stanton wjstanton@gmail.com

Theresa Taylor Theresa.taylor@calpers.ca.gov

Betty Yee b.t.yee@sco.ca.gov; Alan LoFaso (one of Yees staffers) alofaso@sco.ca.gov

For CalSTRS, the only contact information we have is for the board chairman, Harry Keiley. If readers have e-mail information for the remaining board members, please provide it in comments and we will update the post.

Harry Keiley

Board Chair, CalSTRS

Mobile Phone: (310) 428 3624

Email: hkcalstrs@aol.com

I request that you NOT call Keiley unless he fails to respond to an e-mail after two attempts.

If your Assemblyman is on the Appropriations Committee, I strongly encourage you to send a copy of your letter to him. Their names and contact information are here.

In addition, you can send a copy of your letter to the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee:

The Sacramento Bee

2100 Q. St.

Sacramento, CA, 95816

Or you can rework it as a letter to the editor or an op-ed and submit it using this form.

Please circulate this post widely among the people you know in California and encourage them to act. Calls, e-mails and letters are far more powerful in state politics than they are on a national level. An e-mail or letter does not have to be long to be effective. State that you are concerned that the bill is being deliberately shielded from public input, when it already has flaws that mean the private equity industry can circumvent it. And add that you are concerned that it will be weakened further given CalPERS and CalSTRS behind-the-scened efforts to weaken it. Stress that the SEC has exposed that the SEC has criticized all investors in private equity for doing a poor job of oversight, and this bill has come about only as a result of public pressure. These pension funds are serving as the stooges of the private equity industry and its important to let the legislature know how misplaced their loyalties are and demand that the public interest be served.

Please see our companion post today on the terms that CalPERS has accepted for its investment in a fund managed by Apollo as an illustration of the depth of capture. The SEC has warned how private equity investors have entered into unduly vague agreements with weak oversight. Chiang was concerned enough about this problem to join other state treasurers and New York state and city officials to ask the SEC for help, confirming that the limited partners were incapable of watching out for their own interests. Having correctly identified that limited partners like CalPERS are no match for private equity, dont let him cave into their special pleading.
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Above Board Chamber of Florida will present "The Power of Public Speaking" during its lunch meeting from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 9 at the Hilton Naples, 5111 U.S. 41 N. Information: www. aboveboardchamber.com

Appointments

The David Lawrence Center has promoted Maggie Baldwin to the Crossroads Adult Substance Abuse Continuum program supervisor, where she will provide clinical oversight to the Adult Detox, Residential Rehab, Partial Hospitalization, Intensive Outpatient and Aftercare programs.

Honors

Southwest Florida Regional Technical Partnership Inc. handed out its eighth annual Technology Partnership Awards: The Innovention Award to REfindly; The Transformation Award to Amerispec SWFL; the Woman in Technology Award to Tracey Lanham, Hodges University; and the Partnership Award to Dr. Al Ball, Hodges University.

To submit your business news directly online, go to naplesnews.com/BIZwire or email news@naplesnews.com.
Corey Perrine/Staff Customer Richard D. Sparkman, left, shakes hands with pharmacist Michael Aquino after he filled a prescription Monday at Naples Pharmacy.

SHARE Pharmacist Michael Aquino fills a prescription, metformin hydrochloride tablets, used to treat diabetes, Monday, April 25, 2016 at his business, Naples Pharmacy, in downtown Naples, Fla. The long-standing local business recently changed hands where Dr. Fritz Harrington used to have his establishment " Harrington's Pharmacy. Aquino, 34, a Naples native opened a couple months ago to continue his career, a-la self-employed, after working five years at Publix. "The reward is saying, 'Yes,' to people," Aquino said. "I don't have to answer to a corporation. It's rewarding helping others." (Corey Perrine/Staff) Larry Tierney, from left, a patient of Dr. Fritz Harrington, and Pharmacist Michael Aquino have a laugh Monday, April 25, 2016 at Aquino's business, Naples Pharmacy, in downtown Naples, Fla. The long-standing local business recently changed hands where Dr. Harrington used to have his establishment " Harrington's Pharmacy across the hall from his practice. Aquino, 34, a Naples native opened a couple months ago to continue his career, a-la self-employed, after working five years at Publix. "The reward is saying, 'Yes,' to people," Aquino said. "I don't have to answer to a corporation. It's rewarding helping others." (Corey Perrine/Staff) Bob and Jan Donley exit the Professional Arts Building Monday, April 25, 2016, where Naples Pharmacy is housed, shown left, in downtown Naples, Fla. The long-standing local business recently changed hands where Dr. Fritz Harrington used to have his establishment  Harrington's Pharmacy. Aquino, 34, a Naples native opened a couple months ago to continue his career, a-la self-employed, after working five years at Publix. "The reward is saying, 'Yes,' to people," Aquino said. "I don't have to answer to a corporation. It's rewarding helping others." (Corey Perrine/Staff) ABOVE: Aquino talks on the phone with a customer Monday. LEFT: Aquino fills a prescription for diabetes medicine. Related Photos Naples Pharmacy

By John Osborne, Daily News Correspondent;

When Naples native Michael Aquino was a schoolboy at Gulfview Middle School 25 years ago, he and his friends would venture over to Harrington's Pharmacy in the Professional Arts Building at 848 First Ave. N. after the final bell rang because it was the nearest place that sold candy and soda.

Two and a half decades later, with a pharmacy degree from Shenandoah University in northern Virginia under his belt, it is Aquino who now stands behind the counter in the same space as the proud owner of Naples Pharmacy, which opened its doors in February.

He didn't just open his doors, Aquino said, he keeps them propped open.

"A lot of times, people will see that we're open and pop their heads in," said the 34-year-old Naples High School graduate who nabbed an undergraduate degree from the University of Southern Florida in 2005 before attending pharmacy school. "They'll say, 'I don't know if I can come in here because I have a certain type of insurance.' "

Aquino said the answer to that question is always a resounding, "Yes, please come in."

"I actually printed out a sign for the front door that says, 'Do you know we accept all prescription plans, including Medicare Part D, and that your co-pays will be the same wherever you go?' "

So customers  Aquino calls them "patients" because he endeavors to provide each one with the highest possible level of care and customer service  not only get all the same features of a chain-store pharmacy, they also get something else: a personalized touch.

"Over 90 percent of the time, I have what you need right here in the store," said Aquino, who worked as a Publix pharmacy manager for five years before deciding to strike out on his own. "And if for some reason I don't have what you need, most times I can order it for the next day."

Aquino said the sheer speed of service at Naples Pharmacy takes most people by surprise.

"They're so used to waiting around for three hours or having to go home and come back for their medicine, but here it's easy," he said.

"Everyone is amazed how quickly their orders are filled. So why take three hours or get stuck in a drive-thru when at the end of the day I'm not only accessible, but there's none of the yelling and screaming or waiting around that you see at the big chain stores?"

Naples Pharmacy customer Corrina Standel said she enjoyed Aquino's personalized attention so much she followed him from Publix.

"I love it very much," the Netherlands native said of Aquino's new store, for which he took out a small-business loan to open.

"Michael is a very nice, pleasant man, and Naples Pharmacy is very clean and nice when you walk in. He always has a smile on his face when he greets you, and what I like the most is that he always takes the time to explain the medicine to you."

As a one-man operation, Aquino said he wanted the atmosphere at Naples Pharmacy to stand out from its larger competitors in more ways than one.

"At a lot of pharmacies, you might see a different face every day, or you might call and end up talking to a cashier or tech who doesn't know what's going on," he said. "But here you don't need an

appointment or anything like that. You just walk in and come see me at the counter. It's that easy. Patients like the fact that I can help them with ordering special medicine and that they're able to talk to me right away."

Aquino said a lot of work went into the aesthetics of the pharmacy, too.

"I ripped out all the carpets myself and put in hardwood floors, so there's a warm feeling when you walk in, not a white, sterile, cold space," he said. "There are floor-to-ceiling windows, and the paint is very calming, too."

Aquino, whose business also operates a prescription-delivery service, said it took six months to prep the space before he was ready to open.

"Needless to say, it was quite a scary experience to have all of the overhead and no business, but now the paper is off the doors and windows, and we're open for business, so I'm very happy about that," he said.

Aquino's neighbor in the Professional Arts Building said he's also happy to see the former kid with a sweet tooth open for business.

"He's going to do just fine," said Dr. Fritz Harrington, the former owner of Harrington's Pharmacy, who along with his wife, Dr. Jane Harrington, runs a medical practice across the hall. "I think it's great that he's open, because the town could always use another independent pharmacy. Michael is a good guy, a smart guy, and he'll do just fine if he stays the course."

Naples Pharmacy is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays. It is closed Sundays. For more information call 239-231-3026.
District 2 Commissioner Georgia Hiller debates during a Collier County Commission meeting at the Collier County Manager building in Naples, Florida on Tuesday, June 23, 2015. (Calvin Mattheis/Staff)

This time, I think she means it.

Collier County Commissioner Georgia Hiller raised almost no money in 14 months during her purported run for the Florida House of Representatives, a sure sign that her heart wasn't in the race.

But since declaring in late February her intention to instead try to unseat Clerk of Courts Dwight Brock, she's put her fundraising prowess to work, amassing nearly $50,000 in the month of March. It's reminiscent of Hiller's earlier runs for office, when she raised prodigious amounts of cash to help her win two terms on the county board.

Brock, no stranger to being outraised and outspent in re-election campaigns, has about $14,000 so far.

Neither candidate has reported much in the way of expenditures, setting the stage for an active summer campaign leading up to the August Republican primary, where the issue will be settled unless another candidate enters the race.

Both candidates have contributed significantly to their own cause. Hiller loaned her campaign $11,500, and Brock loaned $10,000 to his.

Aside from the loans, Hiller has outpaced Brock by close to 10 to 1 in terms of outside contributions.

Hiller's contributions come from both in state and out of state. Donors are mostly a mix of attorneys, developers and real estate professionals.

One notable donation for $500 comes from former Collier County Commissioner Fred Coyle.

To understand its significance, one needs a quick primer on the Coyle-Hiller-Brock triangle.

Hiller and Brock were allies when she first joined the commission in 2010. Coyle often stood in opposition to them, resisting Brock's efforts to audit county departments at will and opposing initiatives by Hiller to reshape county government.

A pivotal commission election in 2012 tipped the commission majority in Hiller's favor, and Coyle soon announced he'd had enough and wouldn't seek re-election.

But toward the end of his tenure, there was a noticeable thaw between Hiller and Coyle. She suggested the new county park at Golden Gate Parkway and Goodlette-Frank Road be named in Coyle's honor.

Meanwhile, the relationship between Hiller and Brock was deteriorating.

The rift exploded into public view in September 2014 when the two clashed over Brock's selection of a new bank to handle the county's money. In a heated exchange at a board meeting, Hiller called Brock "rude" and a "small man."

Coyle congratulated Hiller for taking on Brock and joined her, unsuccessfully, in voting to keep the county's business with Fifth Third Bank rather than Brock's choice, First Florida Integrity Bank.

Fast forward to today, and Coyle says his concerns over Brock's actions as clerk haven't changed.

Slow payment to vendors working for the county is just one example, Coyle said.

Brock's persistent refusal to make payments when the paperwork doesn't meet his satisfaction carries hidden costs for the county, as some contractors simply refuse to bid on jobs, Coyle maintains.

"I think Georgia Hiller would be a big improvement over Dwight Brock. I just think he's been there too long," Coyle said.

Having stepped away from politics at the end of 2014, Coyle said he doesn't plan to campaign on Hiller's behalf.

"I am finished with campaigning. I'm just trying to fade away as quickly as I can," he said.

Brock's contributors are mostly people associated with his office, including employees and outside attorneys who work for him.

Garrett Richter, a state senator and president of First Florida Integrity Bank, gave $500 to Brock's campaign.

In 2012, Brock raised more than $66,000 for his re-election but was outspent by businessman John Barlow, who had $157,000, most of it from loans he made to his campaign.

Brock ended up with 66 percent of the vote.

Running for county commission in 2010, Hiller raised more than $129,000, more than the three other candidates in the race combined. In 2014 she raised $189,000 and no one challenged her for the seat.

If she follows through with the run for clerk of courts, she'll have to forgo the final two years of that commission term.

There are now 50,000 reasons to believe she'll do just that.
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By Ted Wolfe, Citizen Contributor

Astrophotographer Ted Wolfe looks up at the night sky through telescopes from his home in Southwest Florida and photographs it through specialized cameras. His pictures of colliding galaxies, dying stars, supernovas, glowing nebulas, etc., are published in the leading national magazines in the field of astronomy. Exhibits of his pictures have appeared in numerous science museums, universities and institutions, including a 20-month show featuring a large number of his images at the Kennedy Space Center. A full collection of his pictures are on permanent display at the Center for Space Studies at the University of Florida.

Astronomers call M74 the "perfect galaxy" because of its wonderful symmetry and almost flawless composition. It is unusual in nature to find something so perfect looking.

It lies in the constellation of Pisces, the fish. The best distance estimates put M74 about 32 million light years away from the earth. It is the flagship (largest) galaxy of a small group of about seven galaxies located in this sector of Pisces. It's about 95,000 light years across, which is very similar in size to our own galaxy.

The galaxy was discovered by Pierre Mechain in September 1780. He told his friend, the great comet hunter Charles Messier about it, and Messier confirmed its exact position in the sky, and included it in his famous list of deep sky objects as M74.

This galaxy can be very difficult to see well in an amateur telescope. This is because it has a very low surface brightness. In fact, the second lowest on Messier's list. So very dark, clear skies with little light pollution are needed.

This speaks well about the low level of light pollution in Mechain's 1780 French site in the Paris environs, combined with his observational powers. After he spotted it with his small telescope he wrote: "It is quite broad, very dim and extremely difficult to observe." In fact, another popular name for it was the "phantom galaxy" since its total light is like taking a ninth magnitude star and stretching it over an area 10 arc minutes in diameter. (Most people cannot see a star that is over seven magnitudes with their naked eye in the best of conditions).

But what makes this galaxy so "perfect"?

First, its perspective in the sky. It lies almost face-on to us, like a pancake looking up from a skillet. The line of sight tilt is only about 6 degrees. Secondly, it is the proto-typical example of a "grand design" spiral galaxy. This type of spiral often features two major spiral arms that define its shape. And there they are  in all their glory.

Additionally, the whole structure is intact and pretty clean in its appearance. Galaxies usually show evidence of collisions with other galaxies with arms trailing off in different directions from the main rotation design. Not M74. This means it lies in a relatively quiescent region of space. There is no evidence of it being disfigured by the nearby passage or collision of another galaxy.

However, nature never seems to like perfection in any form, shape or living thing. Close examination of M74 shows even it is not blemish free on a smaller scale. For instance, note the slight backward "kinking" in the major arm on the left side. Got to believe something caused that.

Even more interesting is what astronomers have found with recent observations of one of the spiral arms. In one isolated area they found evidence of a strong ultraluminous X-ray source. This often traces to a black hole of about 10,000 solar masses. While this would be a large one it is not "super large" like the ones found in the center of galaxies. But what is one this large doing out on one of the spiral arms?

Astronomers believe the answer may be that a smaller galaxy was cannibalized (eaten during a collision) by M74 in the past. If so, M74 has not lived out its life in a totally benign neighborhood. Instead, its turning spiral waves have blurred out a previous serious encounter. (Sort of like putting a big celestial Band-Aid over the punctured area).

The galaxy is also a superb star-making machine, and seems to be amping up its star formation over the last 500 million years. Three supernova have been observed in it.

It took a combined exposure of 9 hours in our telescope to acquire the picture you see above. One wonders what Mechain would think if he could view this image, and learn that it was the same dim object he saw through his small telescope at the end of September 1780.

- - -

Ted Wolfe has a DVD and Blu-ray available, which features 70 of his deep space images with original background music. For more information, go to naples.net/clubs/eas/sales.html. Ted is a member of the Everglades Astronomical Society. Organized in 1981, it serves the community providing information in all aspects of amateur astronomy. Its goals include educating the general public, schoolchildren and other groups to the wonders of the universe. The Society meets at 7 p.m. every second Tuesday of the month at the Norris Center (public invited). Regular viewing visits to a special, dark sky site in the Everglades are held each month, allowing the general public to observe the night sky through telescopes, under pristine conditions. Information: naples.net/clubs/eas.
Leila Mesdaghi poses with her exhibit Privilege of Removal. Mesdaghi threw 300 dead fish at a glass wall and recorded the 22-minute video to capture how we treat others in society.

SHARE Cassie Bretagna poses with her exhibit Remnants of Flesh & Bone. The clay sculptures in her display show various pieces of coral and the destruction taking place in our reefs. Rachel Bass poses with her exhibit Deconstruction: Challenging the Privilege of Denial. Her project focuses on the ways in which we gloss over problems of racism in our daily rhetoric. Cassie Bretagna made pieces of coral out of clay for her project Remnants of Flesh & Bones. The pieces were fired using two different clay firing methods. Dead bait fish lay scattered following Leila Mesdaghi's exhibit Privilege of Removal. For her project, Mesdaghi threw 300 dead fish at a piece of glass and filmed the 22-minute performance which she plays on a loop at the gallery.

By Kristine Gill of the Naples Daily News

Growing up in Florida near the beaches, senior art major Cassie Bretagna always paid special attention to what was happening in her state's oceans and waterways.

The 25-year-old began as a biology major at Florida Gulf Coast University before eventually switching to art. When it came time for her senior project, focusing on the health of coral reefs for her project "Remnants of Flesh & Bone" was a natural choice.

"It's definitely something I've always thought about, especially going to this school where it's all about sustainability," she said.

Art from 19 graduating seniors at FGCU will be on display at the campus gallery through Friday. Graduating seniors display their work in an exhibit at the end of each semester. This year's group is the largest the school has seen so far as the major continues to grow, said Art Gallery Director John Loscuito.

"Students present an idea at the beginning of the semester and we help develop them," he said.

At first Bretagna wanted to do both paintings and sculptures with her project. Loscuito, her faculty mentor for the project, helped her narrow it down to just ceramics.

Bretagna used two different methods to fire her clay sculptures. The first, raku, is a Japanese technique that left her pieces with a metallic finish. The second, called saggar firing, relies on copper oxide and iron oxide to give color.

At first, Bretagna wasn't happy with the way some of the pieces turned out. They picked up various glaze colors differently than anticipated or turned out brighter or duller than she imagined. But that became part of the overall effect.

"I realized my project is all about the destruction and I kind of learned to like them," she said.

Senior Rachel Bass used her project to focus on issues of race and the ways in which the majority glosses over those problems in their daily conversation. Her project is called "Deconstruction: Challenging the Privilege of Denial."

Bass, 40, said she got the idea after nine people were killed in a Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting in June of 2015.

"I was devastated," Bass said. "But no one in my circle was talking about it."

To demonstrate her perspective, Bass carved 22 different sayings on 151 plaster bricks she poured herself. The bricks said things like "I'm not a racist but ..." and "But black on black crime ..."

Art that shifts the dialogue

She carved her own brick, too. It said "I married a black man."

Bass said being married to someone of another race has made her more aware of the ways in which non-minorities talk about race.

People visiting the exhibit are encouraged to remove the bricks from the wall and take them home. Underneath each is a different fact about minorities that cuts to the heart of the issue.

"These are the polite things you say vs. the things you know you're not supposed to say," Bass said. "It's easy to point the finger at extreme hate speech but all of us are contributing to it."

Bass said the response to the work has been great. A week after the exhibit opened, just four bricks were left and some said it changed the way they planned to think about race.

"I didn't expected it to impact so many people," Bass said.

Senior Leila Mesdaghi had perhaps the most unique experience for visitors to the gallery. Her project, called "Privilege of Removal," was a 22-minute video she recorded and played on a loop in a hot trailer outside the gallery.

"Just because we have the privilege to look from a distance and the privilege to remove ourselves, problems do not end and people do not stop suffering," Mesdaghi said in her artist statement.

The video showed Mesdaghi, 38, throwing 300 dead bait fish against a piece of glass, each landing with a loud thwack. The camera captured the splattering guts, and cut to black in between each fish.

The overall effect of watching the footage in a hot trailer and hearing the sounds of the dead animals striking over and over even when a viewer decided to avert his eyes, was meant to create an unpleasant experience, Mesdaghi said. She wants people to see the fish as "the other" and to the think about the sterilized and filtered ways in which we eat food that has been prepared by someone else or wear clothes another person has slaved to make.

"The viewer to my subject matter becomes a voyeur to my project," Mesdaghi said.

The exhibits will be on display through Friday.

Hours for the gallery are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. It is open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday.
Port Royal homes on the Gulf of Mexico. (DAVID ALBERS/STAFF)

By Jigsha Desai of the Naples Daily News

New York Post Page Six columnist Cindy Adams recently visited Naples and wrote about it. Titled 'My lavish time in the quiet Naples, Florida' Adams gives a biting review of Naples, describing our city as "So rich that dropping a hundred-dollar bill, its owner would hire someone to pick it up."

According to her column, Adams stayed with her friend, and television star, Judge Judy Sheindlin. Sheindlin, a Naples resident, recently sold a beach-front penthouse and purchased a home in Pelican Bay on Colony Drive. Her home has 6 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms and overlooks a man-made lake.

In addition to writing about the city's wealthy, Adams commented on Naples' litter-free environment calling the city "pure and pristine." She also shared differences between Naples and other Florida cities.

To read more of her commentery about Naples, read her full column on PageSix.com.
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By Daily News Staff

Florida tallied the year's 16th roadkill endangered panther Tuesday morning, bringing the 2016 death toll to more than half of last year's record of 30 panthers.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission recovered the remains of a 3- to 4-year-old female panther on Interstate 75 near Corkscrew Road in Estero. A vehicle killed the panther around 4:30 a.m.

So far this year, FWC biologists have found 18 dead panthers overall, most of them in Collier and Lee counties. The FWC lists the other causes of death as unknown.

Scientists estimate the panther population at 180 wildcats, but they acknowledge the number could be higher. A growing panther population is prompting debate about how to manage panthers in South Florida.
Jack Wert, executive director for the Naples, Marco Island, Everglades Convention and Visitors Bureau, speaks during a press conference on Tuesday, May 6, 2014 at the New Hope Event Center in Naples, Florida. (Dania Maxwell/Staff)

By Laura Layden of the Naples Daily News

Collier County owes its tourism marketer hundreds of thousands of dollars, jeopardizing the firm's ability to carry out future advertising campaigns.

On Monday, Jack Wert, the county's tourism director, asked the Tourist Development Council to do everything in its power to try to compel the county clerk's finance department to pay invoices for work completed by Paradise Advertising and Marketing Inc. dating to November.

The county, he said, approved the work and the firm submitted invoices as required by the contract agreement Collier County commissioners last approved in September 2014.

There are 112 invoices totaling more than $431,000 that are more than 45 days past due. "That's causing obviously cash flow challenges for a small business," Wert said.

He asked the Tourist Development Council, an advisory committee, to request that county commissioners use "all means at their disposal" to get the bills paid. "This board has the responsibility to tell the county commission we have a serious problem here, and we need to somehow try to resolve it," Wert said.

At first, Collier County Commissioner Penny Taylor, chairwoman of the Tourist Development Council, hesitated to get the council involved because, she said, its members needed to hear both sides.

She suggested delaying the discussion until the council's next meeting in May to make sure all sides are represented. Taylor changed her mind after Clerk Finance Director Crystal Kinzel, who was monitoring the meeting from her offices, ran down to explain the other side of the dispute.

Paradise, headquartered in St. Petersburg, handles the county's marketing campaigns  drawing up magazine and online advertisements, taping commercials and buying TV ad time in Chicago, Boston and other parts of the country.

Its latest contract expires in September, and Collier County commissioners will consider on Tuesday whether to renew it for another two years.

Some local marketing and advertising companies have argued the business should not given to a firm that's not based in the county.

Discussions about Paradise's unpaid bills have been going on for months.

There have been several meetings between county clerk and company representatives, Kinzel said. Bills aren't getting paid because the clerk's office is only getting one or two lines of information with the invoices it hasn't been paying.

In January, Kinzel said her office's concerns were shared with Paradise in detail and that "we thought we were on the right track."

"We are not in litigation right now," she said. "We're trying to work it out with the vendor."

She said as recently as Friday her office responded to a letter from the firm's attorneys. The clerk's office, she said, is scrutinizing invoices more closely following a scandal in Okaloosa County, where the tourism director spent more than $1.4 million in public money on a personal home, yacht and other luxuries.

"We don't expect that here in Collier County, but we need controls in place to make sure this does not occur," Kinzel said.

Several members of the Tourist Development Council still questioned what seemed to be a sudden change in the clerk's requirements for invoices submitted by Paradise.

Council member Robert Miller said Paradise has done its job successfully for many years and that he was aware the clerk's office has refused to pay the invoices for various other county vendors.

"This is wrong. I mean, you've got a business to run; you need the cash flow. You don't have the cash flow, you go out of business. And what he's doing to these people in this town is putting them out of business," he said.

Kinzel said the clerk's office has identified issues with Paradise in the past and that it needs to make sure no additional problems arise.

Cedar Hames, CEO of Paradise, said he used to submit pages of information for production invoices until he was told by county representatives it was too much. He said he could make a call as soon as he got out of the meeting to start gathering the information the clerk's office wants.

Joanne Markiewicz, the county's director of procurement services, said Paradise at one time submitted information that provided 15-minute intervals of how their staff spent their time on projects, which sometimes amounted to more than 40 pages of documentation coming in with its invoices.

She said there was an effort to simplify that process last year but that the company was still providing more detailed information to the county than what Kinzel represented.

"Paradise has performed in every way we have asked them to perform," Markiewicz said.

Members of the Tourist Development Council encouraged all sides to meet to get the problems resolved quickly.

In a phone interview, Commissioner Taylor said some of the invoices she's seen from Paradise seem vague, such as a $169,296 bill for a 2015 photo and video shoot that lists two line items, one for production and one for total labor costs.

The invoice, she said, shows that outside photographers and models were used for a photo shoot, and it includes a three-day itinerary for the crew to scout locations, shoot and eat lunch, but it doesn't have details on what travel, meals and hotels cost.

The money for marketing comes from a slice of the county's 4 percent charge on hotel and other short-term stays.

Paradise is paid 10 percent of the annual amount Collier County budgets and spends on advertising, which leaves little incentive for the company to keep costs down, Taylor said.

Daily News reporter Greg Stanley contributed to this story.
FILE - Paul Dorr, right, reads a book while at the Bonita Springs public library on Wednesday, June 5, 2013. Dania Maxwell/Staff

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By Patrick Riley of the Naples Daily News

Jan Geiger likes mystery books. He devours them, sometimes at a rapid pace.

"It depends on the book, you know," Geiger, 77, said on a recent April morning standing outside the Bonita Springs Public Library.

"Sometimes (I) read one a day."

Geiger's haul that day included four books, neatly tied up in a plastic bag, which he would soon throw into a basket affixed to his bicycle.

For five or six years, the bookworm has been riding his bicycle from his home on Sandy Hollow Lane about 1 miles south to the public library on Pine Avenue.

Geiger said he is content with the current 12,000-square-foot facility and didn't even know a new downtown library, a joint effort between the city and Lee County, was in the works.

"I think it's great," Geiger said of the present library. "But then I have nothing to compare it to other than a garage sale where you buy a book for 50 cents, you know."

Soon, Geiger, who has lived in Bonita Springs for about 15 years, will have a comparison.

Lee County staff will present county commissioners with a ranking of design firms for a new 30,000-square-foot two-story library at the board's May 3 meeting, Assistant County Manager Christine Brady said. Once commissioners sign off on a firm, county staff will enter into negotiations with the company, Brady said. The county will go through a similar process to hire a construction firm.

The library will be built on a 2-acre site at the southeast corner of Reynolds Street and Felts Avenue, not far from Old 41 Road.

Barring any unforeseen obstacles, construction on the $14 million project is set to start next summer, Brady said. The library, which officials say will have an urban design, is expected to open its doors to the public in spring 2019, according to an internal county timeline.

The cost to manage and build libraries in Lee County is covered through the public library system's dedicated property tax of 0.5956 mills, which is roughly 59 cents per every $1,000 of taxable value. The county expects to have collected an estimated $20 million by September 2017.

"Those are moneys that we started collecting a couple years ago, and we're continuing to collect not only for the Bonita Springs library but for the North Fort Myers library, as well," Brady said.

For now, Bonita Springs' public library will serve as a contingency site in case the county stumbles on any unexpected problems with the downtown site, Brady said.

If all goes according to plan, the county will evaluate what to do with the old library, Brady said. The building was constructed in 1974 and renovated and expanded in 1991.

"We'll take a look to see what the best uses are for that particular site and that particular building," she said.

The new library's design, Brady said, will depend on the rest of the infrastructure in the city's downtown redevelopment area and what is allowed in its land development code. The county also plans to gather input from residents at stakeholder meetings.

"So we have an understanding of what they want to see in this community," she said.

Over the years libraries have shifted from being places where people go to borrow books to a gathering place for the community, said Sheldon Kaye, director of the Lee County Library Service.

He foresees new libraries to be "porous" where the outside of the library becomes as important as the inside. But the driving force behind how libraries are adapting to today's world comes from its patrons, Kaye said.

"We'll remain vigilant about what people want, and we'll adjust to that," he said. "The people will tell us what they want from the library, and we'll respond."
Lee deputies arrested three women Wednesday during an undercover operation targeting prostitution.

Felicia Courtney Wright, 18, of Hollywood, was arrested at a hotel on Corkscrew Road in Fort Myers after deputies answered an online ad.

According to arrest reports, deputies called the phone number listed in the ad and spoke with a woman who called herself 'Nikki,' according to an arrest report. The woman, later identified as Wright, told the deputy she was staying at a local hotel and agreed to meet for one hour for $200.

Deputies say that when the undercover detective arrived at the hotel room, Wright answered the door in a bikini, reports said.

He asked if she was the same woman from the ad, stating that sometimes ads can be deceiving. She agreed it was her and asked him to leave the 'donation' on the table, reports said.

Once the detective placed the pre-recorded funds on the table, Wright removed all of her clothing and asked him to get naked. After further conversation, Wright asked him to put on a condom, reports said. At this time the undercover provided his team with a pre-arranged signal.

The arrest team made contact with Wright at the door and she was placed into custody without incident, according to reports.

The second woman arrested for prostitution was Jessika Ann Goodman, 20, of Fort Myers Beach. She had an ad on the same website.

According to deputies, Goodman used the name of 'Angelina' and requested they meet at a local hotel. She wanted $100 for a half hour of her time. The same tactics were used during the undercover operation, resulting in Goodman's arrest.

She is also facing charges of renting a room for prostitution, marijuana possession, and possession of narcotic equipment.

Also arrested was Amber Noel Cramer, 26, of Cape Coral. Deputies say the hotel room used by Goodman was rented under Cramer's name with Goodman as an authorized occupant.
SHARE Naples firefighter Austin Bleiweiss at the Naples Fire Station on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Bleiweiss helped save a man's life who went in to cardiac arrest during a flight from Puerto Rico to Fort Lauderdale on April 19. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) Naples firefighter Austin Bleiweiss at the Naples Fire Station on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Bleiweiss helped save a man's life who went in to cardiac arrest during a flight from Puerto Rico to Fort Lauderdale on April 19. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) Naples firefighter Austin Bleiweiss at the Naples Fire Station on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Bleiweiss helped save a man's life who went in to cardiac arrest during a flight from Puerto Rico to Fort Lauderdale on April 19. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff)

By Joseph Cranney of the Naples Daily News

Austin Bleiweiss was in a deep sleep during the second hour of a flight back from Puerto Rico last Tuesday when he heard the flight attendant's scream. The scream for help jolted him awake.

A man on the plane was slumped over in his seat, his bronze skin now a shade of ashen gray. A woman sitting in the row of seats across from him heard a small moan and saw the man, who was sitting alone in his row, go limp. One of the flight attendants yelled to the rest of the passengers, asking for anyone with a medical background.

Bleiweiss, a firefighter and paramedic in the Naples Fire-Rescue Department, stood out of his aisle seat several rows back and came forward. He saw a middle-aged man wearing a long-sleeved collared shirt lying face up across the row's three seats. He didn't see any rise or fall in the man's chest. He didn't feel a pulse.

Bleiweiss' training kicked in. He positioned himself at the man's head and directed another helper to the man's feet. Bleiweiss started chest compressions and called for an oxygen mask and the plane's automatic defibrillator.

"At that point, when you have somebody that's down and has cardiac arrest real quick, you're likelihood of getting them back are very good if CPR, oxygen and [defibrillator] are used," Bleiweiss said. "At that point, I'm thinking, 'We can save this guy, if we can get our stuff together and get it done.'"

Bleiweiss, 31, knew what to do, in part, because he's a nine-year veteran of the Naples fire department. But he also had been in a similar situation before.

Three years ago, during a flight to Las Vegas with his dad, Bleiweiss and a friend from the Bonita Springs fire department helped revive a man who lost consciousness. In that flight, the man was sitting in the seat directly in front of Bleiweiss, and Bleiweiss helped carry him into the aisle before starting chest compressions.

When he heard a call for help again last week, Bleiweiss thought he was dreaming, he said.

"This can't be happening two times in my life," he thought.

He knew from his previous experience that medical kits on airplanes have an oxygen mask different from the oxygen cups that drop from the ceiling during cabin destabilization. The mask is better because it pumps oxygen to the person, and in this case, the person wasn't breathing.

Bleiweiss squeezed a bag attached to the mask two times to give the man breaths during CPR. After two rounds of chest compressions  about four minutes  Bleiweiss attached the defibrillator to the man's chest.

By this point, the pilot was steering the plane toward an emergency landing in Ft. Lauderdale. Several rows back, Bleiweiss' friend Mike Morris was watching from his seat.

"It was awesome to watch him do what he does," Morris, 46, said. "It was super cool."

Other passengers in the cabin remained mostly calm, Morris said.

"It was pretty quiet and everybody was just waiting to see what happened," he said.

Bleiweiss used the defibrillator to shock the man once. It worked. The man regained a pulse. The man started to breathe on his own, but Bleiweiss continued to squeeze the oxygen bag every six seconds, or about 10 breaths per minute.

Bleiweiss never got the man's name. He said there was a language barrier. Someone in the cabin tried to translate.

"What happened?" the man said. "I want to sit up."

"He had basically just died," Bleiweiss said. "He went into cardiac arrest. I tried to remain calm and tell him what happened."

The plane had a speedy, rough, landing, and paramedics from the airport came onboard and carried the man out. After it was over, the passengers clapped for Bleiweiss. He even got an attaboy from the pilot.

Bleiweiss was also commended by Pete DiMaria, the acting fire chief of the Naples fire department. DiMaria sent an email celebrating Bleiweiss' actions to City Manager Bill Moss. Moss forwarded the email to the City Council and called the story "amazing."

DiMaria said it was rare for a firefighter to have to respond to an off-duty emergency, let alone have it happen twice on two different airplanes.

"I think it's extraordinary," he said."

"But he and many of our other guys are trained to respond in that situation," he added.

Bleiweiss said he's planning another trip soon: In about two weeks, he'll get married in Nicaragua.

"So I have another flight," he said.
SHARE The home at 620 12th Ave NE in Golden Gate Estates is pictured on Monday, April 25, 2016. It has the lowest median price per square foot in Naples. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) The home at 1832 Galleon Drive in Naples is pictured on Monday, April 25, 2016. It has the highest median price per square foot in Naples. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) The home at 620 12th Ave NE in Golden Gate Estates is pictured on Monday, April 25, 2016. It has the lowest median price per square foot in Naples. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) The home at 1832 Galleon Drive in Naples is pictured on Monday, April 25, 2016. It has the highest median price per square foot in Naples. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) Related Coverage Report: New home sales, starts up in 1Q

By June Fletcher of the Naples Daily News

Asking prices of homes shot up more in the Naples area than in Greater Fort Myers over the past three years.

But the listing price per square foot in both areas each rose by an identical 26 percent during the period, according to statistics from Realtor.com.

Why does this matter?

"Price per square foot is considered to be a more stable reference point than home price," said Jonathan Smoke, Realtor.com's chief economist.

And in a market like Southwest Florida, it's a good way to eliminate the fluctuations that come from seasonal variations, added supply, a flood of foreclosures and even the weather, Smoke said.

It also smooths over differences in the two cities' varying real estate cycles, he added.

After the recession Naples saw a faster recovery in new home construction than Fort Myers, Smoke said.

"It speaks to the fact that new home supply is much stronger in Naples and it came up faster," he said. "Now it's Fort Myers' turn."

Fort Myers-based appraiser Matt Simmons said it also is a sign that the two very different cities are "moving in lockstep relative to appreciation rates."

And it's an indication that Collier County's homebuilders have been reacting to the county's affordability problem by producing smaller, less pricey homes  new home sizes in the county shrank 11 percent over the year in January, to 2,128 square feet.

"The market has a way of self-policing," he said.

The influx of smaller, newer homes tended to mitigate the high median prices in Collier, he said.

Over the past three years, prices in Collier and Lee counties have largely recovered from the nosedive they took during the recession, Simmons said.

But the Naples area recovered more dramatically than Greater Fort Myers, according to Realtor.com.

In Naples the median listing price was $448,000 in March, up from $348,000 from March 2013, a 29 percent rise.

In the Greater Fort Myers area, prices increased by 24 percent over the same period, to $258,000 from $208,000.

But median prices per square foot grew at identical 26 percent rates in both cities, Realtor.com said.

In the Naples area, they hit $220 per square foot in March, compared with $175 per square foot in March 2013; in the Greater Fort Myers area, they were up to $145 from $115.

While many consumers pay a lot of attention to home price increases, most don't pay enough attention to price per square foot, real estate experts say.

"It's probably the best number to gauge what's something's worth," said David Cobb, regional director of housing research firm MetroStudy.

While price per square foot can be monitored by dividing a home's market price by its air-conditioned square footage, it can be maddeningly difficult to determine the proper market price, said Jeffrey Jones, managing director of Coldwell Banker.

That's because market price needs to take into account a number of factors, including the surrounding community and its amenities, the year built, the air-conditioned square footage, the land value, the quality of construction, any updating and views.

There's a bit of subjectivity involved as well, since a bigger home may be seen as more desirable in a family-oriented neighborhood, while a smaller one could be more appealing to retirees and empty nesters, he explained.

"That's why most buyers don't look at price per square foot unless they're the analytical type," he said. "They're looking at the location, features and their overall affinity with the property and reacting emotionally."

Price per square foot also can vary tremendously when you consider entire neighborhoods.

For instance, according to Trulia.com, which categorizes median square footage by ZIP codes, the lowest median price per square foot in the Greater Fort Myers area is $76, in ZIP code 33912, in the heart of the city; the highest is 33921, at the upper tip of Captiva, where it's $584.

In the Naples area, the lowest price per square foot is in 34142, Immokalee, where it is $69; the highest is 34102, in the heart of the city of Naples, where it's $546.

In an entire city, the upper and lower ends can differ even more drastically.

According to Naples real estate broker Phil Wood, the highest per square foot price in Naples is $3,834 for 1832 Galleon Drive, which is on the market for $49 million.

The lowest for a site-built home is in the 600 block of 12th Avenue Northeast in Golden Gate Estates, which is on the market for $347,000 and has a price per square foot of $93.

Woods described the lowest price per square foot home as "relatively large and nice-looking" and said it's proof of the adage that location, more than anything else, is the biggest determinant in a home's price per square foot.

"While the quality of the house matters some, the land value is the biggest factor," he said.
DAVID ALBERS/STAFF

- The Collier County Government Center on Dec. 30, 2013.

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By Alexandra Glorioso of the Naples Daily News

One Collier County commissioner said Tuesday he was disappointed that the state will not study the process of fracking this year after lawmakers rejected a bill establishing statewide regulation of the practice.

Commissioner Tom Henning said the $1 million study, part of a controversial bill that eliminated local say over fracking, is needed so that regulation would be based on facts instead of emotions. The bill died in the Senate.

"Everyone is afraid of the unknown," Henning said during a commission discussion about legislative priorities from the recently ended session. "But Collier County experts say there is nothing to be afraid of."

Collier County commissioners should expect legislation dealing with fracking again in next year's session, county lobbyist Keith Arnold said in an interview before the meeting. Arnold said the bill was "ripe for legislative attention" next year.

During the meeting, Commissioners Donna Fiala, Georgia Hiller and Tim Nance praised state and federal lobbying efforts on behalf of the county, including those by the Florida Association of Counties. Fiala remarked how the effort opened doors the commissioners would not be able to on their own. Hiller pointed to $2 million the county received ($5.5 million was requested) for its economic accelerator program despite cuts in economic development statewide. Nance said the county also benefits from $1.1 million in state money given to the Southwest Florida Research and Education Center in Immokalee under an agreement with the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

Other Collier state legislative priorities that did well this year included:

two bills that passed relating to human trafficking that increase penalties for offenders and protections for minors and victims;

funding for libraries;

a new law that annexes Isles of Capri and Collier Fire District into the Greater Naples Fire Rescue District;

$750,000 for a Naples Park water project and $76 million statewide for tourism marketing.

Commissioner Penny Taylor said in an interview she was disappointed that local water projects didnt receive more money.

I know the demands are great, but you cant separate Florida from the challenges of funding for water quality projects, she said.

Taylor said overall the results from the legislative session for Collier were a "mixed bag," noting a bike and pedestrian safety bill didn't pass. And while she was pleased the fracking bill didn't pass because it preempted local governments, she liked that the failed bill included the study.

"I think we have to understand how geology will be affected and most, importantly, our water supply," she said.

In the end, commissioners did not receive a briefing on federal priorities, which include a feasibility study for the Collier County beach project, a program that will offset losses in property, money for roads, and public safety on Alligator Alley.
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Along with the nation's next steps Tuesday in the presidential countdown, important issues regarding development and protecting marine creatures warrant attention in Southwest Florida in the coming week. Here are some key ones:

East Naples

While final decisions on two proposed projects aren't expected, two important discussions affecting East Naples immediately outside the Naples city limits are to unfold Tuesday before the Collier County Commission.

Each has implications for an area that historically has been a mix of single-family homes and small businesses. We've raised questions in the past about the compatibility of each project with the adjoining working-folk neighborhoods, as well as whether the two projects are complementary  a resort-like destination and high-rise across U.S. 41 East from a convenience store and mega gas station.

At 10 a.m., commissioners are to decide whether to take the next step toward allowing Real Estate Partners International to pursue a $6.4 million purchase of a 5-acre, county agency-owned tract to develop an 18-story condo, 11-story hotel and retail complex.

Notably, it's about a mile from where a treetop-level hotel along U.S. 41 East raised concerns about compatibility with the flight pattern for Naples Municipal Airport. If commissioners move forward Tuesday, county records show the developer would put up a $50,000 deposit and have to settle the project's allowable height with the Naples Airport Authority by the end of summer. If that occurs, the developer would submit a 10 percent down payment for the land within about a year and the deal would be in the hands of a newly constituted five-member commission, which will have either three or four new faces come November.

Another project proposed for the site was apartments, which caught our eye because county staff has documented a severe rental shortage and commissioners have professed a desire to provide more workforce housing.

Meanwhile, commissioners will decide Tuesday whether to send RaceTrac's revamped proposal for a 16-pump station and 24-hour convenience store east of U.S. 41 and Davis Boulevard to its Planning Commission or its hearing examiner.

A 24-pump proposal drew neighborhood objections in 2014 and the hearing examiner sent it to commissioners as a controversy they should decide. Considering that, and the expected level of neighborhood concern again, we hope commissioners back both a Planning Commission review and a proposal by Commissioner Penny Taylor to schedule the County Commission's ultimate decision-making at a night meeting so more working people may attend.

Commissioners meet starting at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the county government complex at U.S. 41 East and Airport-Pulling Road.

Sea turtles

Sunday will mark the beginning of sea turtle nesting season so the race is on to complete a dredging project at Clam Pass in North Naples, with sand deposited on nearby beaches.

In March, Collier commissioners declared an emergency at the pass, authorizing a $460,000 project that began this month and is scheduled to wrap up by Saturday.

Nesting season for threatened and endangered species of turtles runs until Nov. 1.

Manatees

As federal and state agencies continue sorting out regulations for protecting the endangered manatee, a new county government committee begins looking at whether manatee protection speed zones should be changed in Collier.

The panel meets at 1 p.m. Friday in Conference Room 609/610 in the county office building at 2800 N. Horseshoe Drive, north of Naples Municipal Airport.

Candidates

Any more endangered species in the race for the White House? We'll see what develops after Tuesday's votes in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island. Sunday's GOP anti-Donald Trump state-sharing agreement between Ted Cruz and John Kasich, in hopes of getting to a brokered convention, could make Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders the next endangered one in the race.
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A welcome chorus of voices may be uniting to take the next logical step in determining the future of hydraulic fracturing in Florida  to hit the pause button and scientifically study the question.

The sides are clearly drawn. Environmental groups want to restrict or ban the inland oil drilling practice; they worry about tainting groundwater by fracturing rock layers through drilling or injection of chemicals. Holding the opposite viewpoint are those who consider the practice safe and instrumental in the push to become energy independent.

Recently, the issue played out again as legislative candidates began speaking at forums and post-session updates were provided to civic and business groups.

Southwest Florida has been leading the debate so far. Bills by state Rep. Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, and outgoing state Sen. Garrett Richter, R-Naples, have been extensively debated the past two sessions. The House was on board but each year the legislation didn't make it through the Senate.

In one recent gathering, two veteran Naples lawmakers vying for Richter's seat offered somewhat different takes on the drilling question. But what we saw as a common denominator for the two, GOP state Reps. Kathleen Passidomo and Matt Hudson, was entertaining the idea of the need for a study.

In a recent meeting with the Naples Daily News editorial board, Conservancy of Southwest Florida leadership advocated that approach.

Tuesday, in a discussion between the Collier County Commission and a representative of the Florida Association of Counties, Commissioner Tom Henning asked about the absence of a state appropriation for a study while referring to "fear-mongers" raising their voices against fracking.

"Collier County's experts say there is nothing to worry about," Henning assured.

Even so, Henning urged a study with a "fact-based outcome instead of an emotional outcome" and said it's "because of the fear-mongers" who objected to the Rodrigues-Richter efforts that fracking still can occur today and the state Department of Environmental Protection can't adequately regulate and monitor it.

Lisa Hurley, legislative director for the Florida Association of Counties, likewise acknowledged the need for a state-specific study.

Past vs. future

Legislation the past two years has been multifaceted. It's covered outdated performance bonds that are insufficient in financially protecting localities if there is a drilling accident; the degree of access to well sites for state inspectors to track activities; the public disclosure of injected chemicals versus a driller's ability to protect trade secrets, and more.

This year, the sticking point was whether dozens of municipal and county governments could trump state law by passing ordinances or resolutions to maintain final say over fracking activities. The Collier County Commission wasn't one of those governments, but the Lee County Commission and councils in Bonita Springs and Estero councils objected to ceding their say.

Lost in the defeat of the legislation both years was the idea of studying how modern drilling practices interact with Florida's hydrology and geology, suspending any such activity until a one- to two-year study is completed.

Another state

Many in Southwest Florida may be disinclined to do anything the left coast way, but last year the California Council on Science and Technology delivered a study on drilling issues to help guide discussion in that state.

That nonprofit is rooted in five universities. We'd see an academic Florida-specific study as preferable to one industry-driven, or led by environmental groups who already are on record with a position, or directed by a state agency that then would be responsible for independently regulating whatever the outcome is.

Florida has many stellar institutions of higher learning that could lead an independent study targeted to the state's geology and hydrology.

Going forward, we hope to see a stripped-down effort to get money appropriated to get that academic study done first, suspending use of new drilling techniques while oil and gasoline prices are low and domestic production may not be as critical.
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Mary Carufe, Naples

Turned against socialism

I am writing in response to the letter from David Griffth headlined "Sanders' socialism" that tries to tell us how wonderful socialism is. And how Scandinavia is socialist and it's working wonderfully. Well, I have to disagree.

No one remembers, but Scandinavia wasn't always a watchword for social democracy. Sweden was such a free-market success story that Republicans should be citing it in their debates. It started as a poor country in the late 19th century, then achieved takeoff under a dynamic capitalist system into the middle of the 20th century. Its boom coincided with the time when its taxes were lower than those in the United States and the rest of Europe.

When Bernie Sanders and his ilk hold up Scandinavia as an exemplar, they are really thinking of a couple of decades beginning in the early 1970s when Sweden and others got their full Sanders on.

This was in The New York Post by Rich Lowry:

"In Sweden, the effective marginal tax rate topped 100 percent in some circumstances. There is a reason that IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad fled the country in 1973. Sweden instituted a scheme to confiscate corporate profits and hand them over to labor unions. The idea was, in the words of a Swedish economist, to have 'a market economy without individualist capitalists and entrepreneurs.'

"This was about as logical as it sounded  and delivered predictable results. The socialist 'golden years' weren't so golden for economic performance. Entrepreneurship plummeted. Job creation and wages sputtered. The Scandinavian story the last few decades has been a turn against socialism. Taxes have fallen and markets liberalized."
Aesthetic Treatment Centers (ATC), the newest medi spa specializing in innovative, non-invasive cosmetic procedures and anti-aging programs, is proud to announce the appointment of Dr. Gregory E. Leach as its Medical Director.



A native of Florida, Dr. Leach obtained his medical degree from the University of Florida and his MBA from the University of South Florida. Following graduation from medical school, Dr. Leach served in a branch of the military  the U.S. Public Health Service. After several years, he returned to Florida where in 1988 he established Advance Medical Center. Dr. Leach is currently the medical director of Advanced Medical of Naples.



We are proud to have Dr. Leach as our Medical Director, as he brings more than 30 years of medical expertise. One of the most revered family doctors in Naples, Dr. Leach has a holistic approach to medicine, which aligns perfectly with our medical spa environment and strategy. At ATC, we are dedicated to customizing a program for each patient in order to enhance his or her aesthetics and overall wellbeing, both from the inside and the outside, said Chuck Hallberg, CEO.



Headquartered in Naples, Florida, ATC has moved to a brand new address inside the Advance Medical of Naples building at 720 Goodlette-Frank Road, Suite 300. ATC specializes in non-invasive cosmetic procedures including fat reduction, skin tightening, wrinkle reduction and now, feminine rejuvenation and anti-aging programs. Our mission is to provide the highest quality of service with the latest innovative technology, a multi-modality approach and a consumer-focused mentality to help our patients achieve their best results.



For additional information about Aesthetic Treatment Centers, the new ThermiVa treatment, or to request an interview with Dr. Leach, please contact Melisa Tropeano at 201-572-1808 or melisa@mtlcommunications.com.


Though Tuesday morning and early afternoon will remain dry, we'll again need to monitor the chance for some scattered rain popping up in the area during the second half of the afternoon and into the evening. (NBC2)

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By NBC2

For Tuesday, look for another round of warm weather.

High temperatures during the afternoon are expected to push back into the upper 80s. A high of 87 is expected in Fort Myers, 86 toward Naples, and 89 in Ave Maria.



Though Tuesday morning and early afternoon will remain dry, we'll again need to monitor the chance for some scattered rain popping up in the area during the second half of the afternoon and into the evening.



Coverage of rainfall on Tuesday looks to be more isolated than what we're anticipating for this afternoon, but keep in mind a few showers will remain possible before Tuesday night is over.



Looking longer term into our weather, conditions look to stay warm as we move toward the weekend.



Highs are on pace to peak in the upper 80s near 90 through at least Friday.
Welcome to the Narco News Archives

Narco News published original investigative journalism & analysis for 19 years (2000 - 2019) on the "war on drugs" from Latin America, and on social movements, community organizing, nonviolent resistance and election campaigns throughout the world.

In 2001, Narco News won the landmark New York Supreme Court case, Banco Nacional de Mexico vs. Al Giordano, Mario Menendez and Narco News; this case extended First Amendment rights to the Internet and journalists who publish on it.

The independent online newspaper did not accept advertising but cut a wide swath (Boston Globe), with "hard-hitting reporting" (Fairness & Accuracy in Media), that "broke a string of scoops" (The Guardian), that were "on the mark and well documented" (Washington Post).

"The new, independent journalists of the Internet, as personified by Al Giordano" (Electronic Frontier Foundation), who "actually makes things happen" (Gary Webb, 1955 - 2004), invented "the platinum standard in Authentic Journalism" (Barry Crimmins, 1953-2018).

You can read more of what the critics have said at www.narconews.com/mediacritics1.html.

Here, free to the public, you will find two decades of reports in seven languages, including major drug war scoops by Bill Conroy, the censored San Jose Mercury-News "Dark Alliance" series by Gary Webb, early viral videos from Narco News TV, translations to English of Latin American and other international news stories otherwise unreported in the United States, in-depth reporting on the Obama presidential campaign in 2007 and 2008 by Al Giordano, "the prophet of the Obama paradigm shift" (Vanity Fair), and original reporting by hundreds of journalists from almost every corner of the planet.

The nonprofit Fund for Authentic Journalism is currently rebuilding the Narco News site to fix broken links and graphics that too often on the Internet get disappeared forever as the technology of web platforms becomes regularly replaced and must be updated to preserve the history of early online journalism.

We beg your patience as we complete this kind of archeological dig and repair of these vital reports and stories.

Please consider supporting the preservation of real reporting through the nonprofit Fund for Authentic Journalism, via the donate links at our website: authenticjournalism.org.

If you have tech skills and can volunteer to help repair and update this important historical record, please contact Al Giordano at al@organizeandwin.com.

Thank you for your readership and participation in 19 years of journalism history  and for your support as we continue to support authentic journalism in the present and future.

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
HUMPHREY  Screams pierced the air as Abbie Brandl was pulled from the wreckage just west of Humphrey.

To the left, a friend who was driving the vehicle received a blood-alcohol test before being handcuffed. To the right, another friend was lying lifeless on shattered glass in the red-stained gravel.

The majority of students standing behind the yellow tape were covering their eyes or looking down at the ground, not wanting to see what they were brought to the scene to witness.

It was so real, Brandl said. Too real. Once I saw what was happening all around me, it wasnt just a mock accident anymore. All I could do was scream.

Brandl, a senior at Humphrey High School, was the lead actor in Humphrey Fire and Rescue's mock accident held Monday morning.

Juniors, seniors and staff members from St. Francis and Humphrey high schools were at the scene to witness everything that occurs during a serious accident.

Brandl made it seem so real with her bloodcurdling screams as she was pulled from the silver car resting on its crushed roof.

As first responders wheeled her away on a stretcher then radioed for a medical helicopter, all she could do was scream out Damien Baumgarts name, calling for the St. Francis senior. She stretched to look, even though her neck was pinned down by a brace, to see emergency personnel clearing beer cans away from Baumgarts body before transferring the teen to a black body bag and zipping it shut.

It comes at you hard seeing this whole scene and everything, Brandl said. It was really scary.

Although it was a mock accident, Monday's event hit close to home for Brandl.

Ive lost quite a few friends in this town to car accidents, she said with tears in her eyes.

The Humphrey Volunteer Fire Department, Humphrey Police Department, Platte County Sheriffs Office and Nebraska State Patrol helped make the accident scene realistic for students. Platte County Sheriff's Deputy Troy Higgins later spoke to the students in Humphrey High School's gymnasium.

I cant tell you what to do and what not to do, but what I can tell you is what can happen, said Higgins, who shared a story of losing someone close to him and being the first person to the accident scene.

I always tell everyone, Dont make me do my job, Higgins said, holding back tears as he spoke to the crowd of students.

Humphrey Public Schools Superintendent Greg Sjuts said the district has gone through a lot of hard times in the 13 years hes been there. Losing someone in the community affects everyone, he said.

If we can impact just one decision, if we can keep just one student from making a bad choice like drinking and driving or texting, if we can keep just one person alive and safe to lead a productive life, then this will have all been worth it, Sjuts said.

The mock accident is held every other year because of the extensive planning required on the volunteers side. It is scheduled near prom and graduation to keep the consequences fresh in students minds.

The ultimate goal is to help change the way they think and do things, Sjuts said.
During his two-day visit to Finland, the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, General Petr Pavel met with the President of Finland, Mr Sauli Niinisto, Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Timo Soini, Finnish Minister of Defence, Dr. Jussi Niinisto and Chief of Defence, General Jarmo Lindberg. Discussions focused on regional security and NATO-Finnish military cooperation and interoperability.

Finnish cooperation with NATO is based on the country's long-standing policy of military non-alignment and firm national political consensus. Cooperation has been reinforced over the years since Finland joined NATOs Partnership for Peace programme in 1994, most recently in 2014 when Finland became one of NATO's Enhanced Opportunity Partners at the Summit in Wales.

General Pavel and the Finnish political and military leaders exchanged views on the security developments in the Baltic region, NATO and Finnish Defence Forces adaptation to the changed security environment and practical aspects of military cooperation between NATO and Finland. The discussions concluded with the General highlighting NATO's preparations in the run up to the Warsaw Summit in July. The Chairman was "impressed with the level of adaptation on the part of the Finnish Defence Forces" and commended General Lindberg for "Finland's active partnership with NATO, as evidenced through participation in NATO-led missions and operations, the NATO Response Force, training and exercises, trust funds, cyber defence and other activities that contribute to greater interoperability and security."

As part of his visit, the Chairman visited the Gulf of Finland Coast Guard District Command Centre and received briefings by the Finnish Border Guard and Navy on Maritime Authorities Cooperation and Common Maritime Surveillance Picture.

General Pavel also delivered an address to the Finnish National Defence Course Association on NATO on the way to Warsaw" and responded to questions from the audience of Finnish senior civilian and military leaders.
Only police will have them

All this fuss for 16 cases a year

(NaturalNews) Not only do congressional Democrats want to take away your constitutional right to own a firearm , they also want to extinguish all methods of protecting yourself from, even if it's the police doing the shooting.In case you missed it, a little more than a year ago Rep. Michael "Mike" Honda, D-Calif., introduced the inappropriately titled "Responsible Body Armor Possession Act," which, of course,personal possession of body armor because, you know, that's "responsible" (in the eyes of an authoritarian, maybe).A Congressional Research Service summary of the bill says:As reported by, the legislation caused some uproar when it was introduced in January 2015, but has since died down, and is now no longer top-of-mind for most people. But you can bet that the bill's sponsors and co-sponsors (there are six as of April 20) haven't forgotten about it.Asnotes, obviously the Act reverberates among gun-rights groups and Second Amendment supporters in the electorate, but it also goes to the heart of the issue of self-defense, as in,: When only police have guns and body armor, well, perhaps they won't need as much of the latter. But the point is, they don't, so why shouldn't citizens be allowed to have the added protection?You could also label this piece of legislation as the latest provision of a wider, "We Don't Want A Fair Fight In Case There Is A Rebellion Act," because that's what Honda and his fellow Stalin wannabes aregetting at. Lawmakers with this same kind of authoritarian mentality also want to ban guns outright, heap big taxes on guns and  in aappoint a new Supreme Court justice. And who would vote to reverse the high court's most important recent firearms decision  that the Second Amendment conveys anright to own guns, not a government-grantedright (think "militia").Now, as to the language of this legislation, it refers specifically to Level III body armor , which is designed to stop rifle rounds, primarily. Some Americans  maybe even most  would find this type of body armor cumbersome and even overkill (pardon the pun). But that really isn't the point, or shouldn't be:law-abiding citizensfind it useful, we are supposed to be living in "the land of the free," and there's that question about why Honda wants to strip Americans of this valuable protective gear, anyway.From a press release he put out at the time:But wait  aren't, primarily, the ones who are critical of "law enforcement" having too much military-grade equipment as it is? Wasn't that one of the arguments after police responded to rioting and raucous protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, among other cities?Then there is this: Just how may "active shooter situations" do police respond to in the U.S. that would necessitate this law? Well, according to the FBI in 2014  in a nation of about 310 million people.No, this legislation, which we wanted to remind you of, is not aimed at anything other than depriving Americans of yet another way to protect themselves from bodily harm and abuse from the powers that be.
Decades of wrongful cancer diagnoses and treatments

Cancers that are not cancers

A money-generating scheme

Time to change

(NaturalNews) Ever since President Nixon declared the "war on cancer" in 1971, cancer rates have been continuously rising. The incredibly expensive cancer treatments which promised to save the world don't seem to be able to give us a solution.Over $100 billion a year is spent on toxic chemotherapy, and even more money goes into the chemical research to find new treatments. Whenever the pharmaceutical industry comes up with a new promising drug or technique, the media jumps on the news declaring that the end of the "war on cancer" may be in sight. However, one of the biggest cancer stories was kept quiet and didn't even make the headlines.In 2013, a report commissioned by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) revealed how over 1.3 million people were wrongly misdiagnosed with cancer. For years, the focus has been on early diagnosis of cancer, resulting in millions of people being falsely treated for cancer with damaging surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, to cure a disease thatthey actually did not have.The government study, published in(JAMA), reported both overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis of cancer as the two major causes of this growing epidemic.This medical negligence has led to useless, harmful treatments for millions of healthy people. However, the media kept silent about it. No apologies to patients or their families were made, and nothing has changed in the conventional practice of cancer diagnosis, prevention or treatment.Only now, the NCI and high impact journals like JAMA are finally coming out with the news and they admit they were wrong all along.One of the most common misdiagnosed cancers is breast cancer. Often mistaken for a benign condition such as ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), thousand if not millions of women around the world have been treated for a condition that likely never would have caused them any harm.The same is seen in men, where high-grade prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (HGPIN), a type of premalignant precursor to cancer, is commonly mistreated as if it were an actual cancer."The practice of oncology in the United States is in need of a host of reforms and initiatives to mitigate the problem of overdiagnosis and overtreatment of cancer, according to a working group sanctioned by the National Cancer Institute," explains Medscape.com about the study. "Perhaps most dramatically, the group says that a number of premalignant conditions, including ductal carcinoma in situ and high-grade prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia, should no longer be called 'cancer'."We all agree that we need to focus on finding a way to cure this dreadful disease. However, as long as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) keeps approving drugs that actually do very little to improve longevity and/or the quality of life, these resources are diverted to the wrong people and companies who do not have our health as their main goal.According to Gina Kolata, a science journalist for, 60 to 80 percent of oncologists' revenue comes from an infusion of anti-cancer drugs in their offices. Many believe that such economic incentives are the main reason for the overuse of expensive chemotherapeutical drugs.Another study, recently published in, reports that a panel of doctors has officially downgraded a type of tumor that was classified as cancer but which is not cancer at all. Thanks to them, thousands of patients will be spared a removal of their thyroid and treatment with radioactive iodine As more studies like this are emerging, they call for a change and reformation of the way we classify, diagnose and treat some common forms of cancer."If it's not a cancer, let's not call it a cancer," said Dr. John C. Morris, president-elect of the American Thyroid Association and a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic.When it comes to your life or your loved ones don't put all your trust in oncologists who are paid by the cancer industry. To learn the truth about cancer and take your health into your own hands, watch the powerful series "The Truth About Cancer" here . It might save your life!
After resolving the "deep-fried rat" issue, KFC is once again in the headlines over concerns of the fast food chain's cleanliness and sanitation.

Undercover researchers from the BBC program Rip Off Britain found traces of bacteria that can be found in feces in the ice and water served in one of KFC's branches in Birmingham, UK.

Dr Margarita Gomez Escalada, who studied the sample at Leeds Beckett University, told the program, "The presence of faecal coliform suggests that there's faecal contamination either in the water that made the ice, or the ice itself, and so it increases the risk of getting sick from consuming this ice."

Dr. Escalada doesn't have any idea how the fecal bacteria got into the ice.

"The thing I think is most likely is that it got there through manipulation. So someone touched the ice and their hands weren't particularly clean," Dr. Escalada added.

Upon hearing the report, KFC quickly launched into action to close the branch in question for a deep clean.

"When we reported this to KFC, they were horrified. They literally leapt to action and they got the Food Standards Agency back," said Angela Rippon of Rip Off Britain.

KFC told the program that the company takes "food safety and hygiene extremely seriously". The fast food chain has also undertaken "a retraining programme with all team members on our standards for touch point cleaning and procedures".

At present, the branch in question now has a five out of five rating, which means they are thoroughly clean and safe.

Rip Off Britain is a BBC program that investigates food hygiene standards at big-name takeaways and coffee shops. Aside from the KFC at Martineau Place in Birmingham, the undercover researchers also visited a branch of Costa in Loughborough, the Chicken Cottage in Hampstead, a Cafe Nero in Bath and the Wimpy in Basildon.

In each of the places they visited, the undercover researchers asked for a glass of water and ice, which can tell a lot about behind-the-scenes cleanliness of a food place.

Among the restaurants visited, KFC was the only one with high concentration of fecal bacteria, while others have either low or none at all.


Is this the end of the banana?

A new strain of disease has caused banana production to collapse in parts of Asia, Africa and Australia. Called the "Panama Disease," or "Fusarium wilt," the deadly fungus is obliterating the commercially popular Cavendish bananas, threatening Latin America's export industry.

According to FAO, bananas are the eighth most important food crop in the world. The spread of the Panama disease has grave repercussions for the economic trade, banana value chain and livelihoods of thousands worldwide.

"With 85 per cent of all bananas being produced for domestic consumption, you can imagine the impact of this disease on food security and livelihoods in developing countries," notes FAO in an article published in UN News Centre.

This has raised alarms for experts around the world, causing them to shift the International banana Congress from Costa Rica to Miami, following concerns that attendees would spread the disease via contaminated soil on their shoes, The Guardian reports.

Banana experts have scrambled to stop the disease that is wiping out the fruit across the world. According to Panamadisease.org, the epidemic has not happened since 1960s when Panama disease wiped out almost all banana plantations in Central and South America, wiping out at least $2.3 billion worth of the delicious and popular banana variety called Gros Michel, or Big Mike in extinction.

Producers subsequently adopted the Cavendish banana, which was deemed an inferior product but was resistant to the disease, Pix11 notes. Now that the fungus has spread again, experts are searching for new species that might replace the Cavendish variety.

In an interview with CNN, Inge Van den Bergh, a senior banana scientist at Bioversity International in Belgium shared that there are already "mutant" Cavendish bananas being tested in the Philippines and China. However, he said they're not necessarily as tasty or suitable for long-distance transport.

As a repercussion, bananas may be sold at higher prices in regions where the Cavendish bananas are exported such as North America and Europe.

With the disease resurfacing, FAO stresses the significance of using disease-free seedlings and shunning the spread of infected soil and planting materials from farms, through transportation, visitors or other means.

Furthermore, panamadisease.org notes that while problems related to Panama disease are complicated, there are some ways we can combat it, such as finding ways to keep growing susceptible cultivars, having multilevel solutions and venturing into more research towards crop protection, food security and innovation.
For animal lovers, this is just too painful to see. Last April 16, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Ecuador left 7,000 ruined homes, 12,000 injured and 650 casualties. Amid rescue efforts hoping to find signs of life, a devastating sight was witnessed by one photographer. A dirty and sad dog was seen waiting for his owner to return, in the middle of their ruined home in Ecuador. It was later found out that the dog's owner was one of the casualties during the earthquake.

In an article by an animal lover magazine, they featured the story of the photographer Hugo Cadeno. Cadeno was in Ecuador after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake, taking photographs of the ruins. The photographer was with a group of rescuers trying to find other survivors when he spotted this heart-breaking scene.

Cadeno posted a video of a dog who appears to be patiently waiting for his owner to come back home. In the video, it is apparent that their house was destroyed by the quake. But despite the ruins, the dog's loyalty prevails. The heartbreaking video of the dog showed him gazing down on the rubble and scanning the area patiently, waiting for a glimpse of his owner.

Sadly, his owner was one of the casualties of the earthquake. The dog stayed still until rescuers and Cadeno rescued the dog himself.

Cadeno's video went viral, appearing in local and international news, including social media. Because of the dog's tenacity, he was dubbed as the Ecuadorian Hachiko, the loyal pet who waited every day for ten years for his owner to arrive at a train station in Japan.

Good thing Cadeno decided to rescue the dog. He worked with local animal rescue groups to bring the dog to safety. It was later found that the dog's name is Max. The owner's relatives found Max and adopted him as well.

Max is now famously called "the survivor". Rebuilding the lives of the people from Ecuador could be a long-term process, but at least people can be assured that in the midst of all the devastation, cooperation, compassion and loyalty remain intact in their community. Thanks to Max for reminding everyone what those words mean.
The Chinese recently celebrated Space Day with the proclamation of their mission to Mars. But they set their eyes for more than that. China wanted to become the next space giant and in order to make that happen, they are developing their own Space Station which is scheduled to be launched in 2018.

During the recent Space Day celebration, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed his desire to make China a "space giant". He said in a report that, "Becoming an aerospace power has always been a dream we've been striving for."

In his speech, he asked for the help of experts and scientists to make this dream a reality. The president also commended the ardent contributor to China's manned space program. Zhou Jianping, Chief engineer said, "It's our next goal to reuse manned spacecraft. We want to make our space exploration cost-effective."

Currently, China is building more state-of-the-art space labs. They are also preparing for their Mission to Mars in 2020. The success of this project will exhibit their capability to become the next space giant, that's why their scientists are working tirelessly to make it happen.

In a report by CCTV News, the Space Day coincides with the anniversary of the first Chinese satellite the "Dong Fang Hong". The National Space Administration announced that the country wanted to mark their centenary in 2021 with their ambitious space exploration and space science missions.

Zhang Rongqiao, chief designer of the first Mars exploration mission said in an interview with CCTV that there's a success rate of 50-50 in worldwide attempts to reach Mars. And China is confident in making a successful Mars mission in 2020. Rongquiao said "Such a big plan to achieve orbiting, landing and rover deploying in one mission will make a legend. Only by completing this Mars probe mission can China say it has embarked on the exploration of deep space in the true sense."

Aside from their Mars mission, China also wanted to launch their own space station which means they will have full autonomy and control over their space exploration projects.

In another report by CCTV they quoted the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp who stated that the country plans to their first space station in 2018.

Wang Zhongyang, spokesperson of the corporation, said that there will be two space labs docked to the module. China is developing their space power in order to become the next space giant. China is set to send Tiangong-2, their second orbiting space lab, to space this year. The first was Tiangong-1 launched in 2011.

And in 2017, a cargo ship, Tanzhou-1 will be sent to dock with their existing Tiangong-2 in space. China is also building a space telescope similar to the Hubble Space.

With funding, scientists and dedication, it is not impossible for China to develop such technologies and who knows, they might just become the next space giant if all their plans come into fruition.
A massive whale carcass is drawing attention after it washed ashore at one of Southern California's most legendary surf spots, and now whale watchers say they expect a second carcass will wash up in the area soon.

The carcass appeared along Lower Trestles on Sunday, a popular break at San Onofre State Beach south of San Clemente, according to Donna Kalez, general manager of Dana Wharf Sportfishing & Whale Watching.

Two carcasses, estimated to be about 40-feet long, were recently spotted in the area, and a boat captain expects the second carcass will wash up in the next several days.

The whale appears to have died of natural causes, as it had no visible signs of entanglements or abrasions. The discovery has attracted a wave of curious onlookers that flocked to the beach to snap photos of the dead animal.

"I've never seen anything like it before," one beachgoer said.

Officials said a necropsy will be performed to determine a cause of death.

State lifeguards will likely wait until high tide to take the marine mammal into the ocean.

A boat captain for the whale watching company said he recommends surfers stay away from the waters, as sharks are known to eat whale carcasses.
A babysitter has been arrested for allegedly striking, then shaking a 10-month old baby in Danville, police said.

Mikayla Ririe, 23, of Antioch, was arrested on suspicion of child abuse after the alleged incident was caught on video, according to police.

Ririe was arrested shortly after 2:30 p.m. Monday after officers responded to the home on Bordeaux Court. She was booked into the Martinez Detention Facility.

The infant was transported to San Ramon Regional Hospital as a precaution, police said.

Neighbors said the Ririe was working at the home Monday through Friday for the past few months. The mother suspected something was going on, so she placed a nanny cam inside the home, neighbors said.

"You just don't think these things happen, and then it's right there in front of my house," neighbor Mira Shmel said.

It is not known if Ririe was hired from a babysitter service. She is scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday.

Bay City News contributed to this report.
Nearly one year after Berkeley's deadly balcony collapse, state lawmakers are taking steps to prevent similar tragedies.

State senators said they never want a repeat of last year's tragedy.

The mother of Ashley Donohoe, one of the six young victims who died in the collapse, looked on Monday as lawmakers in Sacramento considered a measure that would alert the state when a contractor has a history of shoddy work.

"The firm that constructed the apartment complex, Segue Construction, had a history of questionable work," said State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo. "In previous years paid out $26.5 million in defect settlements."

The Irish Consul General of San Francisco thanked senators for taking action. Most of the students killed or injured in Berkeley were form Ireland.

"Clearly Ireland has been deeply impacted by the tragedy," said Philip Grant with the Irish Consul General. "It's in everybody's interest to see the necessary changes to industry standards and practices so we can make sure that we can prevent needless tragedies from happening again."

Senator Loni Hancock, D-Oakland, said she and others are committed to doing just that.

"So these families know it will never happen again," Hancock said.

Family members of the one of the victims on Monday attended what what is being called a "critical hearing" in Sacramento to consider potentially life-saving legislation.
The San Francisco public defender on Tuesday released a number of racist and homophobic text messages sent by a San Francisco police officer mired in the latest scandal rocking the San Francisco Police Department.

Jeff Adachi said that the bigoted messages exchanged between three San Francisco police officers may affect at least 207 criminal cases, including three murder cases.

Adachi released text messages from former SFPD officer Jason Lai after his office received them from SFPD on Friday in connection to a robbery case Lai was investigating.

Two other current SFPD officers  Curtis Liu and Keith Ybaretta  were also named by prosecutors as being involved in the texting scandal. Adachi said that his office didnt have their messages. San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon that their messages were equally reprehensible.

"Its time for officers to speak up when their colleagues exhibit this kind of bigotry," Adachi said. "It is corroding community trust and making it harder for good officers to do their jobs."

The messages, which are rampant with racial and sexual slurs, criticize African Americans, Latinos, Indians and the LGBT community, Adachi said.

According to Adachi, Lai compares black people to "barbarians" and "a pack of wild animals on the loose." Adachi's statement said that he used a Cantonese slang for blacks, writing: "Bunch of hock gwais shooting each other. Too bad none of them died. One less to worry about."

Another text read: "I hate that beaner, but I think the n-- is worse."

Another one reads: "Indian ppl are disgusting," while a third message says: "Burn down walgreens and kill the bums."

"It is chilling how casually former officer Lai dehumanizes the citizens he was sworn to serve, Adachi said. "He wished violence upon the very people he was being paid to protect and none of his colleagues turned him in."

This is the second texting scandal to mire the city's police department in recent years  the first one involving five officers who sent racist and homophobic texts between 2011 and 2012, was revealed during a police corruption trial.

Suhr said that his department had provided the text messages to the Public Defender's office after accessing cell phone records during the murder investigation.

"The department acted immediately by suspending these officers and recommending them to the Police Commission for disciplinary action," Suhr said.

Suhr said that four police officers were involved in this particular text messaging scandal, and three of them were behind the texts released Tuesday. All three voluntarily left the department, and a fourth one is currently appearing before the Police Commission.

"There is no room in the SFPD for anyone who holds this kind of discriminatory views, no tolerance ... Anytime an officer presents him or herself this way they will be gone," Suhr said.

When asked by a reporter if he was going to resign, Suhr said no.

"I plan to move the department forward," he said. "We're better than this ...99.9 percent of this police department is feeling the same way I am, betrayed by people who wear the same uniform."

CNN was able to obtain some of the text messages before they were released by the Public Defender's office.

Lais attorney Dan Nobles told CNN that the texts were not reflective of who he is" and that "there is no evidence he carried out any of those sentiments as an officer."

"He was well liked and well loved on his beat,"he said.

The text messages were revealed after police investigated a rape accusation against Lai, who was charged last month with two misdemeanor counts of unlawful possession of criminal history information and four misdemeanor counts of misuse of confidential Department of Motor Vehicles information.

Lai is currently free on bail.

"It would be naive to believe these officers bigotry was reserved solely for text messages," Adachi said. "It is a window into the biases they harbored. It likely influenced who they stopped, who they searched, who they arrested, and how they testified in criminal trials."

When asked about disciplinary action against the officers, Suhr said there was no discipline more severe than being separated from the department.

Suhr said that the entire police department would undergo bias training with help from the Department of Justice by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, activists are holding an ongoing hunger strike and are calling for Suhr to be fired. Suhr in response has said he has no intention of leaving the police department.

Read the texts:
Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms operating in San Francisco would be required to verify that hosts are registered with the city before they advertise a listing under legislation announced this week.

The legislation announced Monday by Supervisor David Campos and Aaron Peskin, to be introduced at Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting, would penalize booking platforms $1,000 a day for each unverified listing.

Campos said current city laws that require hosts to register but don't require booking platforms to verify that they have done so have not worked.

A city legislative analyst report released earlier this month found that as of this March, more than a year after current laws took effect, more than 75 percent of hosts had still failed to register and more than 25 percent of properties listed as an unhosted entire home were being rented for more than the 90 days allowed by the city. In addition, the report found that hosting platforms were not sharing data with the city that would assist in enforcement.

"This is about finally bringing corporate responsibility into the picture," Campos said.

Short-term rentals have become a hot issue in San Francisco largely due to concerns that landlords are evicting tenants or keeping multiple rental units off the market for use as tourist accommodations, adding to the ongoing housing affordability crisis. Current city laws limit short-term rentals to units owned and occupied by the host.

Peskin said the proposed legislation was not intended to target "mom and pop" hosts renting out a room to make ends meet, but "unscrupulous speculators" with multiple listings and other bad actors.

"We believe some 2,000 housing units have been permanently taken off the market," he said. "The only way to bring those thousands of units back to the market is by holding the platforms accountable, and that is precisely what this does."

The legislation provides several options for hosting platforms, including placing the registration number on the listing, requiring the host to add it themselves or sending the registration number to the city for verification before advertising the listing.

While federal law prevents online platform operators from being held liable for illegal behavior by their users, Peskin and Campos Monday expressed confidence that the legislation was narrowly written enough to survive legal challenge.

Airbnb successfully fended off an attempt to impose additional restrictions on short-term rentals through the ballot box last November, spending around $8 million in its campaign to defeat Measure F.

Earlier this month, the company announced it would begin investigating 288 hosts with multiple listings on the site for possible violations of city law. The company said those hosts, who were responsible for a total of 671 listings, generated an average of 17 percent of revenue collected in San Francisco over the past year.

The company said it had a total of 9,448 active listings managed by 7,046 hosts as of March 15.

In a Board of Supervisors committee hearing today, Kevin Guy, the director of the Office of the Short-Term Rentals, said that as of this month his office has registered 1,210 hosts and rejected the applications of 425 others.

The city's enforcement efforts have been largely complaint driven and so far have focused on major violators with multiple listings and full-time vacation rentals. Since Feb. 1, 2015, the city has opened 423 enforcement cases, issued notices of violation for 174 units and assessed nearly $700,000 in penalties, Guy said.

Airbnb officials did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
A San Francisco man is in police custody after detectives have linked him to the death of his ex-girlfriend in Colorado.

The woman's body was found in a storage unit in Colorado Springs, Colo. on Friday. The El Paso Sheriff's Office in Colorado has identified the victim as 33-year-old Julie Tureson.

Investigators believe Tureson's ex-boyfriend, 37-year-old James Woo, killed her, rented the storage unit and left her body there in her van.

Woo's neighbors in San Francisco are stunned to learn the man they described as quiet is accused of murder. Neighbors said police were in his apartment all weekend.

San Francisco police said officers served a search warrant at the apartment on Saturday. Investigators tracked Woo down at an airport in Seattle as he tried to leave the country.

"He was about an hour from leaving the state for Hong Kong," said Cliff Porter with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office.

Police were able to get Woo in custody with the help of homeland security. Detectives from Colorado Springs are heading to Seattle to question Woo about Tureson's death.

The El Paso Sheriff's Office is also asking people in San Francisco who know Woo to contact them. A spokesperson said investigators are working to piece together a picture of his recent past.

The sheriff's office also said Woo was active on the popular dating-app Tinder. A spokesperson said they do not believe there are additional victims, but would like to talk to anyone who has e-mailed, texted or met with Woo.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton toured a pair of manufacturing plants in Indiana Tuesday, a week ahead of the states May 3 primary.

During her tour of Munster Steel in Hammond, Clinton called for "a renaissance in manufacturing" and pledged her commitment to Indianas steel industry.

"Steel is crucial to our manufactuting base," Clinton said. "I will not let this vital industry disappear."

Clinton faulted the Republican-controlled Indiana legislature for passing a right-to-work law and repealing the common construction wage, calling the move a "total violation of economics 101."

During her speech, Clinton also touched on layoffs and outsourcing in Indiana manufacturing.

Clinton admonished Carrier Corp. and UTEC for shifting manufacturing operations from Indiana to Mexico earlier this year, costing the state 2,100 jobs. The companies specialize in heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Clinton blamed trade agreements for the plant closures.

The former Secretary of State also discussed Chinas trade abuses, like unloading cheap steel on the global market.

"China and other countries hace been dumping artificially cheap steel in our markets to gain advantage," she said.

If elected, Clinton has pledged to impose consequences if China continues to unload cheap products into the American marketplace.

The Democratic front-runner also announced a plan to invest $10 billion into a Renaissance Tax Credit for areas hit hard by job loss.

"We have to bring back middle class jobs and wages," Clinton said.

In the evening, Clinton will tour the AM General Plant in Mishawaka to lay out her Make it in America plan. The $10 billion plan looks to build on Clintons work as a New York senator.

She stood up to China when they tried to put tariffs on New Yorks exports, Clintons campaign site reads. In communities across the state, from Buffalo to Rochester to Albany, Hillary brought together government at every level, workers, and businesses large and small to join and invest in good-paying jobs and production in the state.

The initiative will be paid for using money from Clintons clawback proposal which would revoke tax breaks for companies that outsource jobs to China.

Clinton scored a pivotal primary win in New York last week. She currently holds a strong delegate lead over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Clinton holds 1,446 pledged delegates, while Sanders holds 1,202.

The two will also face-off in five Tuesday primaries: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. All told, 462 delegates are on the line Tuesday. In addition to this, 92 pledged delegates will be on the line next week in Indiana.

A watch party will be held at Reverie in River North for Tuesdays returns. The party will be attended by City Clerk Susana A. Mendoza, state Sen. Heather Steans, Ald. James Cappelman and Ald. Raymond Lopez, among others.
Illinois lawmakers responded Monday to news that Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a measure into law that will release $600 million to fund the states public colleges and universities through the summer.

Rauner and legislative Democrats have been deadlocked on a spending plan for the fiscal year that began July 1. The budget impasse led some state universities to institute layoffs and cutbacks.

The bills co-sponsor, Donne Trotter, was optimistic about the legislatures bipartisan effort but claimed there was more to be done to bolster the states education system.

"This emergency funding plan is the first step toward stabilizing our public universities," Assistant Majority Leader Donne Trotter said in a statement. "I am glad the governor is working with us but there's more to be done. College students shouldn't wait for piecemeal solutions. We should keep our economic engine strong by restoring the people's trust in our education system and our state."

Sen. Tom Cullerton said passing the measure was a step in the right direction but not a cause for celebration.

I look at is as a good first step towards a nice compromise, Cullerton told Ward Room. I dont think anyone should celebrate that were at this point ten months in.

Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno echoed those sentiments.

Lets not celebrate just yet, Radogno said on the Senate floor. We have a lot of work before us.

Chicago State University has been one of the hardest hit schools in the state. As a result of the impasse, the school cancelled its spring break and moved its commencement ceremonies up to April 28. Prior to Rauner signing the bill into law, CSU was on the verge of closing.

The school will now receive $20 million in funding to keep the school running.

Members of the Illinois House Legislative Black Caucus view the law's passage as a clear victory for CSU.

We actually did save CSU, Rep. Rita Mayfield said in a statement. Without this appropriation bill we put in place, CSUs doors would have closed next week.

Rep. Marcus Evans also claimed lawmakers stood up for the states beleaguered public colleges and universities.

We took a stand, Evans said in a statement. We took a stand for Western Illinois. We took a stand for Eastern Illinois. We took a stand for Southern Illinois but most importantly for Chicago State University.

Nevertheless, officials from CSU claimed the funding was not enough.

While appreciative and supportive of the emergency funding, limited allocation by the state will still require CSU to make difficult cost-cutting decisions moving forward, including additional workforce reductions, a statement from the university read.

Last week, Rauners office lauded the legislatures bipartisan effort.

By passing this bipartisan agreement, lawmakers in both chambers put aside political differences to provide emergency assistance for higher education, ensuring universities and community colleges remain open and low-income students can pay for school, Rauner spokeswoman Catherine Kelly said in a statement. We are hopeful the General Assembly will build on this bipartisan momentum in the weeks ahead as we negotiate a balanced budget with reform for Fiscal Years 2016 and 2017.

Rauners key Democratic counterpart, House Speaker Michael Madigan, placed blame on the governor last week for creating the dire situation.

Governor Rauner has said that crisis creates opportunity and leverage, and that government may have to be shut down for a while, Madigan said in a statement. Now, he has forced a situation where some universities are on the verge of closing.

Illinois is reeling from a budget impasse that dates back to July of last year. Over the course of the stalemate, the Democrat-controlled legislature has battled with Rauner over his pro-business, union-weakening Turnaround Agenda.

The states public colleges, universities and social services have suffered as a result of the impasse.

The funding is made possible because of a surplus in the state's Education Assistance Fund. The plan also includes nearly $170 million in tuition grants for low-income students.
Sen. Dick Durbin visited Chicago Monday to meet with students in one of the city's most violence-stricken neighborhoods and address gun violence prevention.

Durbin met with students at John Hope College Preparatory in Englewood to discuss the partnership between City Year Chicago and AmeriCorps. The partnership looks to aid students in challenges they face in the classroom, at home and in the community.

City Year currently deploys 206 AmeriCorps members into 24 of the citys highest-need schools. The partnership serves over 15,000 students daily.

According to the Chicago Tribune, 2016 has seen 1,051 shooting victims and 178 homicides. Students at the meeting voiced concerns about violence in their neighborhoods.

"I witnessed a lot of shootings myself growing up in the Bronzeville area," said Amari Ross, a City Year student.

During the meeting, Durbin also touched on Rahm Emanuels selection of Eddie Johnson as the Chicago Police Departments new superintendent.

I think it is a step forward that we have a new superintendent and I believe he has the potential of making a significant difference, Durbin said.

Despite his faith in Johnson, the senator called the citys gun issue one of the biggest gun violence in the nation.

They find these crime guns are being used over and over in the commission of crimes, Durbin said. They are passing from one person to the next.

Durbin also spoke out against illegal guns sold in Indiana and stressed the importance of background checks.

Prior to the meeting with students, Durbin met with the U.S. Attorney, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms at the Metcalfe Federal Building Monday. They reportedly addressed the daunting nature of combatting gun violence in the city.

It isnt like we can pass one law or one appropriation and end this, Durbin said of the meeting. It is a much bigger challenge.

A group of congressmen, led by Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly, visited Chicago last week to launch the Urban Progress Initiative, a federal initiative aimed at reducing gun violence and stimulating economic opportunity.

The group consists of 14 congressmen, including Rep. Danny Davis, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Rep. Cheri Bustos and Rep. Tammy Duckworth.

The group toured three community-based organizations that have successfully implemented progressive programs and strategies to reduce violence in their areas.
Tickets went on sale at 5 a.m. Tuesday for Ravinia's 2016 summer music lineup.

Ravinia typically sells more than 100,000 tickets, the equivalent of five United Centers, on its first day of sales, according to the festival's director of communications Nick Pullia.

By 6 a.m. Tuesday the festival's website was reported to be having issues processing the orders. Pullia told NBC 5 it was due to the credit card company the venue works with and they were working to resolve it quickly.

Customers are advised to stay online and to avoid trying to sign out before signing back in again, as that will only make the issue worse.

Tickets are available to the general public exclusively at Ravinia.org.

Among the more than 140 performers announced by the popular suburban venue to perform over the summer are Patti LaBelle, Bob Dylan, Diana Ross, Paul Simon, Steve Miller Band, Don Henley, Tony Bennett, Phillip Phillips and Matt Nathanson, Duran Duran, Buddy Guy and Jeff Beck, and the Barenaked Ladies.

Classical, jazz and family-oriented acts will also return to the Highland Park festival grounds, including the Chick Corea Trio, the returning Juilliard String Quartet, the Emerson String Quartet and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Even Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane will be coming for a June 22 show.

The festival runs Thursday, June 2 through Sunday, September 11.

See the full calendar here.
A 67-year-old man has been charged with murder after two people were found dead at a suburban senior living community in what police are calling a "brutal slaying."

John Arnold, 67, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder after two people were killed Sunday at the River Walk Senior Residences in the 8000 block of Ogden Avenue in southwest suburban Lyons.

Arnold was a neighbor of one victim and lived in the facility, police said.

The victims' bodies were discovered Monday afternoon during a well-being check. Among the two killed were 73-year-old David Bosseler and a 51-year-old woman, whose name was not being released as of Tuesday.

According to authorities, Bosseler and the female victim had been in an argument over the weekend about missing property. Arnold told police that Bosseler had taken his property.

Early Sunday, police allege Arnold waited outside Bosseler's apartment until the door opened. Then he lunged into the apartment and attacked both victims with a large knife.

Both victims died of multiple stab wounds, authorities said.

Crime data statistics show the safe, quiet Lyons community has a history of going years without murders reported.

Arnold is expected to appear in Bridgeview bond court Wednesday morning.
After a two-hour heated community meeting, the Chicago Board of Education's Chief Education Officer Janice Jackson says the removal of Troy LaRaviere, the outspoken principal of Blaine Elementary School, "was not a political decision."

Parents, students and community activists attended the packed meeting, though LaRaviere did not.

The charges against LaRaviere include ethics violations, insubordination and wrongful use of equipment. CPS spokesperson Emily Bitner said LaRaviere's removal involves a total of 12 charges.

He had received a warning in August 2015 and Jackson told the crowd Monday his removal was a "a disciplinary, legal issue."

The meeting featured chants against Mayor Rahm Emanuel as well as calls to solve the district's budget crisis before dealing with this crisis. Many in the crowd supported LaRaviere, yet some were weary of it being a distraction.

LaRaviere has been a vocal critic of Emanuel and CPS policies. He's also been politically involved in both Jesus "Chuy" Garcia's campaign for mayor and Bernie Sanders' presidential race. While not clearly identified, it appears one of the charges involves his political work either on Chicago Public Schools' time or with CPS equipment.

LaRaviere has been reassigned to his home. His first hearing -- which is not public -- will be held April 29th. The process may take six to nine months.

In the meantime, Jackson says LaRaviere is still able to run for President of the Principals and Administrators Association. That election will take place in the next few weeks.
Darryl Pinkins, who spent nearly 25 years behind bars, was released from prison Monday just in time for his daughters 26th birthday.

It feels good, Pinkins said. It feels real good.

Pinkins, now 63, was 38 when a jury convicted him in a 1989 gang rape of a woman in Gary, Indiana. He was released from Lake County Jail in Crown Point after new DNA evidence proved he was not involved in the crime.

Pinkins, a father of four and steel mill worker, was leaving a work mill in 1989 to cash checks on pay day with his good friend, Roosevelt Glenn, when they said their car broke down. The two went to get help, but when they returned, they claimed their coveralls were stolen from inside the vehicle.

Around the same time, a woman was gang raped by five men and her attackers left behind coveralls. Police linked Pinkins and Glenn to the crime but despite DNA evidence excluding them at the time, they were convicted and sentenced.

After lost appeals and decades behind bars, his attorney said new analysis conclusively excluded Pinkins DNA from the five attackers profiles. Lake County, Indiana, prosecutor Bernard Carter said the evidence was irrefutable.

If we took this to trial, we would lose, Carter said. I feel very confident in that and thats why I dismissed the case after review.

In 2009, Glenn was paroled, but the rape conviction remains on his record. Pinkins attorney, Frances Watson with the Innocence Network, said she is working to get his conviction vacated as well.

Glenn was among those who watched Pinkins walk free from prison Monday.

I knew there was a justice system higher than this and I hung onto that, Pinkins said.

His children range in age from 24 (a son born after his arrest) to 42; the family hugged Pinkins and celebrated his release on Monday. Pinkins added that he is not bitter for what happened to him, but hes looking forward to the life ahead of him.

Unfortunately [that time] is something well never get back, he said. What we have to look forward to is what we do from this point on and how much love we put into each day.

Carter said the 1989 rape case has been re-opened and investigators have three DNA profiles they are hoping to identify.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said a female vice president would be a "great idea" and mentioned Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as an example of a woman qualified to hold the office.

The senior senator from Vermont discussed the possibility on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" ahead of Tuesday's primary elections in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island.

"I think the women of this country  the people of this country  understand that it would be a great idea to have a woman as vice president," Sanders said. "It's something I would give very, very serious thought to."

When asked if any women were particularly well equipped to serve as vice president, Sanders scoffed.

"Pfft, are there any women? Yes, there are many women who would be qualified for that job," he asserted.

The senator said it was "a little bit early to be speculating" about a potential running mate, but named Warren as an example when pressed. He did not mention rival Hillary Clinton.

"Elizabeth Warren, I think, has been a real champion of standing up for working families, taking on Wall Street," he said. "There are fantastic women who have been active in all kind of fights who I think would make great vice presidential candidates."

Warren, whose name has also been floated as a possible pick for an all-female ticket with Clinton, has not endorsed a candidate but said she will likely make her choice known before the July convention.
In a front-runner's rout, Republican Donald Trump roared to victory Tuesday in five contests across the Northeast and confidently declared himself the GOP's "presumptive nominee." Hillary Clinton was dominant in four Democratic races and now is 90 percent of the way to the number needed to claim her own nomination.

Trump's and Clinton's wins propelled them ever closer to a general election showdown. Still, Sanders and Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich, vowed to keep running, even as opportunities to topple the leaders dwindle.

Trump still must negotiate a narrow path to keep from falling short of the delegates needed to claim the nomination before the Republican National Convention in July. Cruz and Kasich are working toward that result, which would leave Trump open to a floor fight in which delegates could turn to someone else.

Trump was having none of that. "It's over. As far as I'm concerned it's over," he declared at his victory rally in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York.

With Clinton's four victories  she ceded only Rhode Island to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders  she now has 90 percent of the delegates she needs to become the first woman nominated by a major party. Clinton kept her focus firmly on the general election as she spoke to supporters Tuesday night, urging Sanders' loyal supporters to help her unify the Democratic Party and reaching out to GOP voters who may be unhappy with their party's options.

"If you are a Democrat, an independent or a thoughtful Republican, you know that their approach is not going to build an America where we increase opportunity or decrease inequality," Clinton said of the GOP candidates. She spoke in Philadelphia, where Democrats will gather in July for their nominating convention.

Sanders, in an interview with The Associated Press, conceded that he has a "very narrow path and we're going to have to win some big victories."

Trump's victories in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island were overwhelming, winning his closest race by just about 30 points. The businessman is the only candidate left in the three-person race who could possibly clinch the nomination through the regular voting process, yet he could still fall short of the 1,237 delegates he needs.

Cruz and Kasich are desperately trying to keep Trump from that magic number and push the race to a convention fight. The Texas senator and Ohio governor even took the rare step of announcing plans to coordinate in upcoming contests to try to minimize Trump's delegate totals.

That effort did little to stop Trump from a big showing in the Northeast, where he picked up at least 105 of the 118 delegates up for grabs. Despite his solid win in Pennsylvania, the state's primary system means 54 of the delegates elected by voters will be free agents at the GOP convention, able to vote for the candidate of their choice.

Cruz spent Tuesday in Indiana, which votes next week. Indiana is one of Cruz's last best chances to slow Trump, and Kasich's campaign is pulling out of the state to give him a better opportunity to do so.

"Tonight this campaign moves back to more favorable terrain," Cruz said during an evening rally in Knightstown, Indiana. His event was held at the "Hoosier gym," where some scenes were filmed for the 1986 movie, "Hoosiers," about a small town Indiana basketball team that wins the state championship.

Trump has railed against his rivals' coordination, panning it as a "faulty deal" and has also cast efforts to push the nomination fight to the convention as evidence of a rigged process that favors political insiders.

Yet there's no doubt the GOP is deeply divided by his candidacy. In Pennsylvania, exit polls showed nearly 4 in 10 GOP voters said they would be excited by Trump becoming president, but the prospect of the real estate mogul in the White House scared a quarter of those who cast ballots in the state's Republican primary.

In another potential general election warning sign for Republicans, 6 in 10 GOP voters in Pennsylvania said the Republican campaign has divided the party  a sharp contrast to the 7 in 10 Democratic voters in the state who said the race between Clinton and Sanders has energized their party.

The exit polls were conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks.

Democrats award delegates proportionally, which allowed Clinton to maintain her lead over Sanders even as he rattled off a string of wins in recent contests. According to the AP count, Clinton has 2,089 delegates while Sanders has 1,258.

That count includes delegates won in primaries and caucuses, as well as superdelegates  party insiders who can back the candidate of their choice, regardless of how their state votes.

Sanders has vowed to stay in the race until voting wraps up in June. He continues to raise millions of dollars and attract big crowds, including Tuesday night in West Virginia, where he urged his supporters to recognize that they are "powerful people if you choose to exercise that power."

While Clinton's campaign expects Sanders to stay in the race, her advisers are eager for the Vermont senator to tone down his attacks on the former secretary of state. She's been reminding voters of the 2008 Democratic primary, when she endorsed Barack Obama after a tough campaign and urged her supporters to rally around her former rival.

According to exit polls, less than a fifth of Democratic voters said they would not support Clinton if she gets the nomination. The exit polls were conducted in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Erin Andrews has reached a settlement with the Marriott Hotel in her peeping tom lawsuit.

The sport reporter's attorney, Randall Kinnard, tells E! News, "The litigation is over. The terms of the settlement are confidential. Erin Andrews is satisfied with the settlement, and she was very courageous throughout this litigation."

The lawsuit stems from a 2008 video of Andrews that was posted online where she appeared nude while changing clothes in a hotel room. Michael David Barrett pleaded guilty one year later to stalking the sportscaster and shooting the video through a peephole in an adjacent room of the Nashville hotel.

While Barrett was sentenced to 30 months in prison, Erin also sued the hotel for $75 million.

In March, a jury reached a verdict in the highly publicized case, ruling that Barrett was 51 percent at fault and required him to pay out more than $28 million to Andrews. West End Hotel Partners, which owns and operates the Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt University, was found to be 49 percent at fault and asked to pay out more than $26 million.

However, the "Dancing With the Stars" co-host filed papers at the end of March, claiming that the Nashville hotel owner and its operator should pay the total $55 million.

According to court documents obtained by The Tennessean, Andrews argued that the hotel defendants are jointly and severally liable for all of the plaintiff's damages. In addition, the final judgment "should reflect that each defendant is jointly and severely liable for the entire verdict."

Erin Andrews Speaks Out Following $55 Million Judgment in Peeping Tom Case
The Original Brooklyn Water Bagel in Beverly Hills paid tribute to Prince by serving purple bagels Sunday in remembrance of the "Purple Rain" superstar.

While noshing on a purple bagel, shop co-owner and journalist Larry King reminisced about his hourlong interview with Prince in 1999.

"I remember Prince. I had a wonderful time interviewing him," King said. "He had a sensitivity next to no one. I never saw anyone as warm, tender and sweet as he was."

Prince even told the broadcaster, whose show "Larry King Now" airs on his Ora.tv website, that he should change his name to simply "King."

Employee Rodney Franklin felt the pressure of producing the purple bagels in tribute to Prince.

"I'm kind of sweating right now," Franklin said.

The bagels were arguably worth the sweat  for Prince, and for fans like Oona Styne's mom.

"I feel bad for her because she really liked Prince," said Oona, who got a bagel to comfort her mom.

King said Prince would've liked the bagels because he had a good sense of humor.

"But he probably would've wished there was real rain," King said, pointing to the sky.

The bagels were set to return to brown from purple on Monday, but "Purple Rain" will live on in the music.
A 46-year-old Woodbury woman is accused of buying alcohol for minors to drink during parties at her home and looking the other way when they did drugs.

The arrest warrant for Christine Nessel said officers have visited her home since 2008 to investigate reports of underage drinking parties, loud music, drug sales and criminal mischief and the incident that led to the charges happened early on the morning of Thursday, March 24.

"At first it was weird and cool because Christine was a parent allowing kids to drink alcohol and smoke marijuana but then it got scary," one juvenile witness told police during the investigation.

Three children live at Nessels home and police found four to six teens outside when they responded to the house just after 3 a.m. on March 24. Nessel told police that it was a sleepover and no one was drinking alcohol, police said. According to the calendar for Region 14 Schools, school was not in session on March 24 of March 25.

Later in the day, the guardian of a 15-year-old boy called police with concerns that hed been drinking and taking pills.

When police spoke with the teen, he told them that he took anti-anxiety drugs and drank beer while Nessel was at the house, according to the arrest warrant.

On April 1, police went to Nonnewaug High School to investigate drugs and officers found texts from Nessel on a teens phone asking if there was anything illegal in her room that needed to be cleaned up before the Department of Children and Families showed up. One text also informed the student that Nessel removed the alcoholic beverage Four Loko, according to the arrest warrant.

Police spoke with several witnesses and one told police that minors drank at the house and did drugs, including Xanax, marijuana, Adderall, LSD, Konopin and muscle relaxers and Nessel doesnt do or say anything about it, according to the arrest warrant.

Another teen told officers that teens had given Nessel money and a list of alcoholic beverages they wanted and she went out and bought the items for them.

In another interview, a teen said beer was present at a party at Nessels house, everyone was playing beer pong and smoking cigarettes, some teens were sniffing Adderall and it was weird that she was sharing a drink and making small talk.

When police arrived around 3:30 a.m. because someone threw up over the deck, the officers werent allowed in the house and everyone inside turned off the lights and whispered while Nessel spoke with police, the teen said, according to the arrest warrant application.

Other teens said Nessel bought children alcohol and didnt say anything when she saw children smoking marijuana, while another said the minors sometimes took Nessels prescription drugs.

Nessel has been charged with one count of risk of injury to a minor and five counts of permitting a monor to possess alcohol.

She was released on a $5,000 bond.

The police report says police contacted her, but she did not want to speak with police.

NBC Connecticut went to Nessels home and no one there and no attorney is listed for her on the online docket.
Berlin Police are continuing their voting day practice of dispatching officers to town schools that double as polling sites today.

Berlin schools are in session on this primary day and police said they want to make sure that children are safe while people from outside the school community enter their buildings to vote.

Theres a lot of people walking in to vote today that we dont know who they are and theyre not parents, theyre not faculty. On a normal day, you wouldnt let those people in. So just to be safe we elected to put officers in schools that are used as polling places. Weve done that for years, Deputy Chief John Klett said.

The department began the practice following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and Klett said there was no specific threat against any schools in town, but his department wanted to make sure that they were prepared in the event something was to occur inside of a school on a voting day.

Berlin Police officers already do random patrols at every school daily.
Some residents and students were offended when they woke up to see "Build That Wall" spray-painted on the Westbrook High School's spirit rock on the day of the state's primary.

On Tuesday, the superintendent and some staff, which is painted every-so often by students, was coated in blue paint with with "Trump 2016" and "Build That Wall" written in white, presumably in support of the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The superintendent said the school has identified the three male students responsible and have conducted interviews with them and their parents. The students said they thought painting the rock in support of Trump would be funny, the superintendent Pat Ciccone said.

Due to the political nature of the paint job, some people and students were offended by the message, Ciccone said. The superintendent said the school and district does not advertise for one candidate over another.

The rock was covered with a tarp and later spray painted to cover up the student's paint job.

Trump, even as recently as his trip to Connecticut, has said a number of times that he wishes to build a wall in order to keep people from Mexico to enter the United States.

The school is now taking restorative steps to the address the issue, Ciccone said.

There is no evidence of maliciousness, according to the district.
Costco has withdrawn its application to build a store in Branford.

"We remain concerned that the important issues Costco has raised have no been fully resolved," Thomas P. Cody, one of Costco's attorneys, wrote in a letter to the Branford Inland Wetlands Commissions.

Cody said that Costco had engaged in a "good faith effort" to answer all questions over the last 18 months of the planning process.

Costco concluded its letter to the town that it had expressed "specific" concerns about the manner in which the application was being reviewed and process by the wetlands commission, Cody said.

The Costco was expected to be built on a 44-acre lot across from exit 56 off I-95 in Branford.

First Selectman James Cosgrove said the news was "disappointing."

"I remain committed to bringing Costco to Branford," Cosgrove said. "As we embark on a variety of major investments to improve the quality of life in our town, we need corporate citizens who can significantly and responsibly expand our tax base."

The Brandford Inland Wetlands Commission said they have no comment on the application withdrawal.
Polls for the presidential primary opened at 6 a.m., and the nation's eyes are on Connecticut as voters cast ballots.

The Democratic and Republican contests follow several visits from four of the five major party candidates and their surrogates.

"It's really important to me that I get out here and have my voice heard," Bianca Slota, of Hartford, said.

For the Democratic candidates, 55 of the state's 71 delegates will be up for grabs. They'll be distributed mostly on a proportional basis.

The Republicans are vying for 25 of the state's 28 delegates, which will be distributed proportionally.

"I didn't know if we'd get to this point and I'd come out here more symbolically. But to know that Connecticut could actually make a difference in the total delegate count is really exciting," Slota said.

State election officials hope voter turnout will be high, given a surge in voter registration and a hotline has been set up to help voters in the case of any issues.

As of mid-day, preliminary data indicates voter turnout of 15.8 percent, according to the Secretary of the State's Office, but more than 50 cities and towns have not reported turnout figures.

It is too early to tell but we are hearing anecdotal reports of high activity. However, not in every part of the state. We should know more later in the day when we have more towns reporting, Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said.

Voters are excited about casting votes in the election.

"Congress has been at every turn trying to impede any kind of decision making or progress, so I want a candidate who as a president is going to try to overcome that," Candace Killian, of Hartford, said.

In New Haven, voters did not let rain dampen their determination to do their civic duty.

In this ward, people come out. They are dedicated voters and that is really wonderful. I think we have one of the highest voting wards in New Haven, Janice Underwood, of New Haven, said.

The number of registered voters in Connecticut hit 1,970,098, Merrill said in a statement on Monday.

"We are expecting a big turnout, which all of us must be prepared for including my office and the towns. This is an exciting moment for our state and for our democracy. However, we must do our best to make sure the voters understand the differences in the rules between primaries and the general election in November. There is no primary same-day registration. That means new or unaffiliated voters will not be able to register on April 26 for the purposes of participating in the 2016 Connecticut primary," Merrill said.

Voters must be a member of the party to vote in that party's primary.

Hillary Clinton is leading Bernie Sanders among the Democratic candidates with a little more than 50-percent of likely Democratic voters, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll.

The poll also says Sanders has support from about 42 percent of voters, but he is winning with several key voting blocks.



Donald Trump is leading among the Republicans over Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas.



The Quinnipiac University poll shows Trump with the support of just under half of likely Republican voters today.

Kasich comes in second with Cruz trailing nearly 10 percentage points behind him.

Voters need to bring a driver's license, bank statement or utility bill with your name and address on it.

Anyone who encounters a problem at the polls should call the voter hotline at 866-SEEC-INFO hotline or email mailto:elections@ct.gov.

The hotline and email address will be monitored between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. on Tuesday.

"We need to hear from you if something is not working as it should. Please let us know if you encounter any problems. Your vote must be counted. There is no acceptable margin for error on Election Day. None. We are grateful to the State Election Enforcement Commission for working with us on this valuable service," Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said in an email.

"We count on the public as much as we do election workers to report problems," Michael J. Brandi, executive director and general counsel of the State Elections Enforcement Commission, said in a statement. "Anyone with knowledge of election fraud or voting rights abuses is encouraged to call to report suspected violations. We will have the phones fully staffed to answer questions, advise on complaint procedures and, if appropriate, request the assistance of state criminal or federal law enforcement authorities."

Voters who use the hotline can report concerns anonymously, but are asked to provide the town and polling place where the problem is occurring and provide as many details as possible.

The Secretary of the State's office and the State Election Enforcement Commission will also hold two separate conference calls during the day on Tuesday to share information about potential problems or complaints at the polls and coordinate the appropriate response.

Voters should go to myvote.ct.gov to confirm that they are registered to vote, locate their polling places and check what type of identification to bring with them to the polls.
Officials at the Sept. 11 memorial said Monday that one of their security guards should not have stopped a North Carolina middle school choir from singing the national anthem on the memorial plaza.

"The guard did not respond appropriately," said the spokeswoman, Kaylee Skaar. "We are working with our security staff to ensure that this does not happen again with future student performances."

Some 50 students from Waynesville Middle School in western North Carolina were at the Sept. 11 memorial Wednesday and had just started singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" when a guard told them to stop.

Teacher Martha Brown said Monday a different security guard had given the OK for her students to sing. But the second guard said, "`You just can't do this. You've got to stop now,'" Brown said. "So we very reverently and quietly stopped what we were doing and complied with his request and quietly exited the park."

Video posted on Facebook by an adult on the field trip sparked outrage and led to an invitation for the students to sing the anthem live on Fox News. Brown and Principal Trevor Putnam joined the students for their performance at the school Monday.

Brown said her students learned from the experience. "We turned it into a teaching moment and taught them that even if you don't agree with it, or understand it, you must respect authority," she said.

Putnam echoed the sentiment.

"The lesson learned here is always to respect authority," the principal said in a telephone interview. "And I'm so proud of our kids for conducting themselves the way they did."

Crystal Mulvey, a parent who accompanied her daughter on the school trip, said she was shocked the guard interrupted the national anthem because "it's kind of a sacred song to us." But she added, "On the flip side, I completely understand following rules."

Striking a balance between remembering those killed by terrorists and rebuilding a bustling commercial district has been a challenge since the twin towers were toppled in 2001. Tourists paying their respect to the dead share the memorial plaza with neighborhood residents and office workers from the new World Trade Center towers lunching under the trees.

Sept. 11 memorial officials say groups wishing to perform on the crowded plaza are supposed to pay $35 to apply for a permit and obey a list of rules, such as no amplified sound and no interfering with the flow of traffic. Brown said she was not aware of the permit requirement.

Visitors to the memorial had mixed feelings about the rules.

"To me, the children's singing was in remembrance of people who had a soul. It was reverence for their lives so they're not forgotten," said Gwendolyn Tucker, herself a security guard from Los Angeles. But, she added, "the guards have to keep it orderly."
One of eight Ohio family members killed in a "pre-planned execution" may have been the target of a Facebook threat, according to a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office.

"I can confirm that the attorney general said he was aware of the Facebook threat," Jill Del Greco said Monday.

She declined to specify which family member may have been targeted or by whom.

Seven adults and one teenager, all members of the Rhoden family, were found shot in the head Friday at four crime scenes in the rural community of Piketon.

The victims were identified Saturday as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his 16-year-old son, Christopher Rhoden Jr.; 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden; 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden.

Three young children  including Hannah Gilley's 6-month-old baby and Hannah Rhoden's 4-day-old  were unharmed.

"To think of the scene of this baby  this 4-day-old baby being with its mom in bed  and someone comes in and executes the mother with the baby right by the mother's side is just, to me, beyond comprehension," said Attorney General Mike DeWine.

When asked why the children's lives may have been spared, Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said, "My only guess, and I would be completely speculating, but  they're not witnesses."

Autopsies were completed Monday, with authorities still scrambling to figure out who pulled the trigger and why. Surviving members of the Rhoden family have been offered police protection and told to arm themselves.

"There ultimately is a threat because there is someone who's done this and they're still at large," said Reader. "And I would consider them armed and dangerous."

Investigators have been tight-lipped about details of the crime, but a police report documenting one of the scenes  where two people were found dead  says no forced entry was made, indicating the gunman may have known the family.

Authorities also said they found marijuana grow operations at three of the crime scenes but didn't say if the killings were drug-related.

"Well, I think we can speculate what the motive was. You talk about revenge, you can talk about drug-related, but frankly, we just don't know," said DeWine. "We're not ruling anything in; we're not ruling anything out."

Marijuana seizures are common in Pike County, where authorities said a 2012 seizure may have been linked to a Mexican drug cartel. Some 20,000 pounds of marijuana plants were found on a single property in nearby Latham in 2010, according to data from the attorney general's office.

"You know, there's a lot of things have been covered up right here in Pike County," said Leonard Manley, the father of victim Dana Rhoden, in an interview Monday.

He declined to reveal whether his daughter ever feared for her safety or if he knew who might be responsible. Manley did say, however, his daughter's dogs were wary of strangers so "they must have been there all the time."
Kelly Ripa returned to her daytime talk show Tuesday ahead of news her co-host Michael Strahan will exit the show in May, not September as originally announced.

Ripa returned to "Live with Kelly and Michael" after time off to "gather [her] thoughts" when she learned Strahan was leaving, saying the incident had started a conversation about workplace respect.

She also said her bosses had apologized to her, and she'd received assurances that the "Live" show was important to the parent Walt Disney Co.

"Guys, calm down, they didn't say anything about Christmas bonuses," she joked after the audience applauded.

News that Strahan would leave on May 13 came from a "Live" spokesperson on Tuesday just hours after Ripa returned to the syndicated talk show. Strahan was originally slated to leave at the end of summer when he will begin full-time duties on "Good Morning America."

With the early exit Strahan is now available to be seen with increasing frequency on ABC's "GMA" over the summer in preparation for his start in September.

Ripa was reportedly upset after learning only a few minutes before the public last Tuesday that Strahan, her co-host since 2012, was leaving for the full-time job with "GMA." He works part-time on the morning news show now and executives there are looking for a way to turn around fading ratings.

"After meeting with the producers of both 'Live' and 'Good Morning America,' and after speaking with Kelly and Michael, we have decided on a plan that best advantages both shows for the future. To that end, Michael's last day on 'Live' will be on Friday, May 13, which not only gives the show the chance to have a nice send-off for him during the May book, but to also immediately begin the on-air search for a new co-host," a show spokesperson told E! News.

Ripa skipped Wednesday and Thursday's "Live" show and said she had a scheduled vacation Friday and Monday.

"I needed a couple of days to gather my thoughts," she said after returning to a standing ovation from the audience. "After 26 years with this company, I've earned that right."

Ripa said the time helped her gain some perspective and that "apologies have been made." She didn't say who apologized and ABC officials haven't publicly admitted to blowing the transition.

"What happened was extraordinary," she said. "It started a much greater conversation about communication and consideration and, most importantly, respect in the workplace. I don't consider this a workplace. This is my second home."

The former soap opera actress has been co-host of "Live" since 2001, first with Regis Philbin and then with Strahan. Besides the lack of communication that Ripa took issue with, the shifting of Strahan to take advantage of his popularity on "Good Morning America" sent an unmistakable message about which show was more important to ABC's bottom line.

Yet the network surely didn't anticipate the drama would play out in the media or how it would raise questions about when  or if  Ripa would return. ABC did not immediately comment Tuesday on Ripa's statements.

She walked hand-in-hand with Strahan onto the stage of her show Tuesday, and Strahan swiftly let his co-host stand alone to talk about the incident.

"I am fairly certain that there are trained professional snipers with tranquilizer darts in case I drift too far off message," said Ripa, who appeared emotionally taken aback by the audience response.

Strahan, when she was done, said he was happy Ripa was back.

"If there's one thing I know about you, you love the show, you love the staff, you love your fans and I love you," Strahan said. "You're the queen of morning television."
An Arlington police officer has been released from the hospital after he was shot late Monday night while helping Saginaw Police arrest a man suspected of murder. [[377087841,C]]

Police said the shooting happened at about 11 p.m. in the 400 block of Summit Avenue, near the University of Texas at Arlington campus.

Saginaw police secured a murder warrant earlier in the evening for 23-year-old Joel Carter McCommon, whom they believed was at the apartment complex. He was wanted in connection with the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Jordan Miles last weekend.

"Our investigators have been relentlessly tracking down leads and talking to witnesses, which ultimately brought us to this location in Arlington," Saginaw Police Department Sgt. Damon Ing said. "He is the only [suspect] we currently have any interest in."

Arlington police arrived at the apartment complex to assist Saginaw detectives with the arrest.

Police said as they approached the building, McCommon opened fire at them from inside the apartment.

"The suspect began firing at one of our officers and our officer was struck," Arlington Police Department Sgt. VaNessa Harrison said. "[That officer] was able to return fire on the suspect."

The officer, identified as "Officer Johnston" in a tweet by Arlington Police Chief Will Johnson, was transported to Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital, where he was released before 4 p.m.

Harrison said the officer has been with department for about three years.

"We're asking the community to keep our officer in their thoughts and prayers," she said.

McCommon was also shot during the exchange and taken to a hospital. Police said they expect him to be OK and took him into custody.

Ing said investigators have determined McCommon and Miles knew each other, though they're still working to determine the details of their relationship.

Because the incident took place off campus, police said they did not have to lock down any part of the UTA campus as students were not in danger.
Dallas Animal Services reported progress Monday on the city's dangerous stray dog problem and mapped out a plan to make more progress.

Six months ago DAS launched a targeted attack on stray dogs, rotating a month at a time of intense attention to individual problem neighborhoods.

Animal control officers boosted patrols in those areas, wrote extra citations and attempted to educate owners about responsible pet care.

The first area was around Overton Road, which had the city's worst stray dog problem according to 3-1-1 calls for animal complaints prior to the program.

Monday, neighbors said there has been improvement.

"Once the dog catchers came in, the area has been more secure, been a lot better," said resident Eldon Lockhart.

But Dallas City Council members Monday said they still hear many stray dog complaints.

"They're hanging out in our community like they're on vacation in South Beach," said Councilwoman Tiffinni Young. "It tears at my heart to see kids scared to walk to school and hiding out, late for school because they have so many stray dogs in their neighborhood."

City officials said DAS has made big improvements in the past six months. Dozens of new workers have been hired to fill staff vacancies that crippled progress last year. New technology has been added, including computers on carts in the animal shelter to speed record keeping and direct dispatch communication between 311 operators and animal control officers in the field.

Now animal control is replacing the targeted neighborhood program with a CARE team, Community Animal Resource Effort, aimed at more of Southern Dallas.

"What we've done now is taken those lessons learned, kind of rolled it out bigger, better, stronger," said Dallas Animal Services Director Jody Jones. "We need the public to calls us. You've got animal issues, please call 3-1-1, because we're going to be deploying our resources based on those calls for service."

City Council members were pleased with the progress.

"More citations, more than ever, that's good news," Councilman Rickey Callahan said.

But they were also concerned about making improvements permanent after years of struggling with dangerous stray dogs in Dallas.

"My concern, and I hope it is shared by other people, is sustainability," said Councilman Philip Kingston. "There may be some baseline level of animal service enforcement and education that we will always need to have, but I would like it to be lower. Show me a path to lower. Then that's going to make a big difference."

Critics of past animal control efforts attending the Council Quality of Life Committee briefing were optimistic.

"Yes, I think it does sound encouraging but there is also a lot of work to do," said animal activist Monica Spencer. "It will take commitment and accountability to keep that going and make it sustainable. I do think its sustainable because if it's successful then the problems should decrease and be less work over time hopefully."

Resident Eldon Lockhart said effective animal control is necessary for safety.

"We don't really need stray dogs in this neighborhood or around period," he said.
Christine Woo, the North Texas mother whose body was found inside a parked SUV days after she was reported missing, died from an overdose of diphenhydramine, according to the Collin County medical examiner.

The Collin County ME said on April 21 that Woo died of a suicide, but the toxicology report was not released until Tuesday.

"I am of the opinion that Christine Woo, a 39-year-old female, died as a result of diphenydramine toxicity," William B. Rohr, medical examiner, wrote in the autopsy report. "Law enforcement investigation and autopsy with toxicology results indicate that her excess self-ingestion of this drug was a deliberate act intended to end her life."

Woo, 39, was found dead March 31 in her 2011 Honda Pilot in the parking lot of the Target store on the 8900 block of Texas 121 at Custer Road. She and her children had been reported missing three days prior.

Frisco police determined there was no deliberate plan by Woo to harm her three children, who were found alive in the vehicle.

Authorities have said the children  ages 1, 3 and 5  were examined at a hospital and appeared to be well.

Christine Woo Autopsy Report
One man dead is dead and a woman is in the hospital after a shooting in front of a Dallas home.[[377181431,C]]

The shooting happened at about 12:30 Tuesday afternoon in the 300 block of Fordham Road in Oak Cliff.

Police say two individuals drove up to the house and became involved in a disagreement with 38-year-old Ronnie Lee Carter. Following the argument, one of the two men fired gunshots at Carter, killing him.

The pair then shot at the house, striking a 32-year-old woman who was inside. She was transported to a nearby hospital, where she is in critical condition. Her identity has not been released.

The two gunmen are described as black males, between the ages of 18 to 25, both with a thin build. There were in a newer model vehicle, according to officers.

Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to contact Dallas police. Callers who want to remain anonymous may call Crime Stoppers at 214-373-TIPS (8477).
Everyone in Texas should be aware by now that operating a motor vehicle in the state requires the driver to establish financial responsibility before driving on a public roadway.

Maintaining vehicle liability insurance is one of five methods to satisfy that requirement. The other four include surety bonds, deposits with the state comptroller or county judge and self-insurance. Operating a vehicle without establishing financial responsibility is a criminal offense that usually results in a citation from police when discovered during a traffic stop or at an accident scene.

Bowie County, Texas, authorities recently advised the Texas Attorney General's Office they had been approached by a company that utilizes real-time data gathered from law enforcement controlled Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) to identify, evaluate and cite those vehicle owners operating in the state of Texas, who are determined to be in violation of the state's motor vehicle compulsory insurance laws.

Bowie County said the company would provide all the equipment, such as the cameras and the computers, install them and provide training. To make the proposed program work, the county would provide the information from the ALPR system to the company, including images of the car's license plates. That information would be evaluated by the company, and if the evaluation indicated there was an insurance violation a letter would be generated by the district attorney's office to the registered owner of the vehicle advising a fine amount and requesting payment.

Per their proposed agreement, the company would receive 50 percent of the amount collected on a monthly basis.

Before starting such a program, Bowie County District Attorney Jerry Rochelle formally requested an opinion from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in October 2015, on whether Texas law would actually allow a photographic insurance enforcement system.

On Monday, the attorney general's office responded by issuing an opinion that "a court is likely to conclude that counties are not authorized to utilize an automated or similar system to enforce the financial responsibility laws in chapter 601 of the Transportation Code."
Last year, Texas Tech announced plans for a veterinary school to be housed at the TTUHSC campus in Amarillo. Despite doubts from the Texas A&M System which is home to the only veterinary school currently operating in Texas, the Texas Tech System is continuing their efforts to make this school a reality. One faculty member involved with the planning told EverythingLubbock.com that the goal is for the first group of students to begin taking classes in 2019 at the Texas Tech veterinary school.

Guy Loneragan, Professor of Food Safety and Public Health as well as Interim Vice President for Research at Texas Tech, said that he is one of many people on the team crafting TTU's veterinary school plans. Loneragan adds expertise to the team because he is also a veterinarian, and many of his students in Animal Sciences say they wish they'd had the chance to attend Texas Tech for veterinary school as well.

"We hear that from students today and we hear that from former students," Loneragan said. "In fact we were in a meeting with some veterinarians just last month, and we heard from a student who came to Texas Tech in 1967 because he heard there was going to be a vet school. He since became a veterinarian through Texas A&M and he is thrilled that Texas Tech will finally be moving forward."

Loneragan explained that Texas Tech has continued with their goal of building a veterinary school to train rural veterinarians who could provide assistance to the less populated and more agriculturally-based communities in Texas.

"We need to produce veterinarians who are willing to serve rural America, that's really where the shortage is," he said.

Loneragan said for the university that means selecting students with the desire to work in rural America and then providing them the training they will need to practice veterinary medicine in rural communities.

Tech is now looking for guidance from consultants and other universities.

"We've been working with the University of Calgary where they have a new model where they've graduated students and they've been able to produce students way above the North American average that go and work in rural America," Loneragan explained."So we want to take the strengths of what they're doing and implement them in West Texas."

Part of that goal involves partnering with local veterinarians to create mutually beneficial relationships which provide mentoring for students and energized young talent to local veterinary clinics.

Loneragan added that they hope to have approximately 6 students in each year, for a total of around 240 students. He said that TTU is hoping to make their veterinary school endeavor not prohibitively expensive for the students or the university.

"So veterinary education at the moment is one of those programs where there's large debt per student for graduates on average, so that's what we've been tasked to do is re-think the education model so that the graduates that we see have a much lower debt than the average," Loneragan said. "And we can do it [through] taking the best that we've learned from other schools on how to collaborate for a local communities."

Instead of having a large veterinary hospital on campus as many vet schools do, Texas Tech's main focus will be in pairing their 4th year students with rural private practices where they will gain hands-on experience.

"[These private practices] get the benefit of having a competent student contribute to their practice, and the student gets the benefit of having a really engaged mentor in the program," Loneragan explained. "It's been far more effective than we even hoped for, we've had vet practices that have volunteered to sign up already and we're still many years away from the program."

Loneragan explained that the next step for Texas Tech is to present their plans before the State Legislature and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating board for approval, a process he hopes will begin this summer.
On Monday night community members from Oak Lawn sat down for a town hall meeting with Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk.

"It's public knowledge that there's been an increase in crime in the Oak Lawn area," Hawk told the crowd. "We have heard you and we want to follow up with you."

The crowd asked questions about arrests. Police don't have any suspects.

"No one has been caught," Hawk said. "But that's not because (the) Dallas Police Department is not doing their job."

Michael Fletcher rose his hand to speak. He said he was attacked last August.

"I received a brain injury, concussion, lost two teeth," Fletcher told the crowd. "The officers arrived during the attack."

There were no arrests.

"A victim, is a victim, is a victim," said Deputy Chief Catrina Shead. "We will always support you and always make sure things are done right."

Shead went so far as to give out her phone number.

"We're still here to serve you," Shead said.

Both police and the district attorney encouraged victims and witnesses to the assaults to come forward. Some have not in the past.

"I want everyone in this room to understand, if we can prosecute a hate crime, we will," Hawk assured.
Firefighters said a woman and dog were killed and a man later died after a fire at a home in South Dallas early Tuesday morning. [[377091411,C]]

Dallas Fire-Rescue officials said they responded to a call about a fire at the one-story home in the 700 block of Havenwood Drive at 2:16 a.m. Neighbors told them the couple that lived there was still inside.

Firefighters made their way through burglar bars on the front porch and found a man unresponsive on the floor inside. Authorities said they transported him to a hospital where he was later pronounced dead.

Shortly after, firefighters said they found the body of a woman inside near the back door.

The couple's dog also died in the fire, authorities said.

Firefighters say they found a man unresponsive and a woman and dog dead after a fire at a home in South Dallas early Tuesday morning.

Neighbor Andre Sewell, came to the scene of the fire after hearing about it from a neighbor. He said the man who lived in the house fought in the Vietnam War and earned a Purple Heart.

"These are very, very good people," he said. "This one really hurts."

The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.
Seven of eight relatives slain in their southern Ohio homes were shot multiple times and some suffered bruising indicative of a struggle, according to autopsy results released Tuesday.

The victims  all members of the Rhoden family  appear to have been targeted. Authorities said the carefully planned slayings were carried out at four locations in the rural community of Piketon, east of Cincinnati.

Investigators uncovered marijuana growing operations at three of the crime scenes, according to Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, who cautioned that it's still too early to speculate about a motive.

"We're not ruling anything in; we're not ruling anything out," DeWine said.

He said one of the victims received a threat on Facebook but declined to go into detail.

Authorities also found evidence "consistent with cockfighting" at one of the properties, where birds were kept in "small, segregated cages," according to Jill Del Greco, a spokeswoman for Wine's office.

"Whether or not cockfighting was actually happening, we don't know, but it is part of the investigation," Del Greco said.

The victims have been identified as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his ex-wife, Dana Rhoden; their three children, 16-year-old Christopher Rhoden Jr., 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden and 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden; Christopher Rhoden Sr.'s brother, 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; their cousin, 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; and 20-year-old Hannah Gilley, whose 6-month old son with Frankie was unharmed. Two other children, a 6-month-old and a 3-year-old, were also spared.

The Hamilton County coroner said Tuesday the victims  three women, four men and a 16-year-old boy  suffered wounds to their heads, torsos and other areas.

According to the autopsy report, one victim suffered a single wound, another was wounded twice, and the rest had three or more wounds. The report didn't specify which victim was which.

A woman who called 911 Friday morning reported finding "blood all over the house" and two bodies that appeared to have been badly beaten. The coroner said "soft-tissue bruising" on some of the bodies indicated a possible struggle.

Investigators have received more than 300 tips and are continuing to serve search warrants in an effort to identify the killer or killers, according to DeWine. He said 79 pieces of evidence have been sent to a state crime lab for testing and analysis.

Dana Rhoden's father, 64-year-old Leonard Manley, said Monday his daughter was not involved in anything illegal.

"They are trying to drag my daughter through the mud, and I don't appreciate that," said Manley, whose three grandchildren  Dana's children  were also among the dead.

Manley also said the assailant was able to get by his daughter's two dogs, who were wary of strangers.

"Whoever done it knows the family," Manley said. "There were two dogs there that would eat you up."

A Cincinnati-area businessman offered a $25,000 reward for details leading to those responsible.
A bear led authorities on a wild chase through the Southern California community of Sylmar before wildlife officials sedated the gentle giant Monday night.

The black bear was first spotted near the Los Angeles Mission College campus, prompting officials to warn students and teachers to shelter in place.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department was assisting after the bear was spotted in the 13300 block of Eldridge Avenue at 9 p.m.

The bear scaled fences, running from police cruisers trying to scare it from the area for more than an hour.

No people were hurt by the bear, LAFD officials said.

The male bear is likely 2 to 3 years old and weighs 125 pounds, California Fish and Wildlife officials estimated.

The bear snoozed in a truck bed after a wildlife official shot it with a tranquilizer dart.

The animal was to be returned to the Angeles National Forest, officials said.
Almost as much as Hollywood, films and beaches, Los Angeles is also known for its street art  beautiful murals can be seen on walls and buildings, but now this art form is going in an unusual direction.

Utility boxes, often dark gray and industrial-looking, are becoming works of art.

For artists and South Pasadena residents Timothy Robert Smith and his wife Yuki Toy, their art pieces on the metal boxes are about the city where they live.

"Basically it is about all time being compressed into one single moment," Tim said of a painting of a train rushing through a station, which he modeled after the South Pasadena Metro Station.

Tom and Yuki are part of the city's Box Art Project, which so far has transformed 10 traffic signal boxes.

Yuki's painting included an ostrich in reference to the city's ostrich farm, and a coyote on a motorcycle.

"When I go for walks in the night around the library area, I see a coyote walking and they kind of look hungry and aggressive," she said.

Howard Spector from the South Pasadena Arts Council is behind getting this project to the streets of the city with a population of 25,000.

"We try to bring art to the people instead of the people going to the art," he said. "Sometimes people are intimidated by the arts. They don't necessarily go to museums or galleries because they think it's only for certain types of people."

The same idea is heading to more of the art boxes in areas such as Boyle Heights, Downtown Los Angeles and Highland Park.

Councilman Jose Huizar spearheaded a similar project in his district that has beautified 143 city-owned utility boxes. The city of Glendale has 60 painted boxes.

"All the cities have their own thing going on and it's really fun to find out what the city is about," Yuki said.

Local artists, including students, are getting the chance to showcase their visions and make art more hands-on.

Each city handles the funding for the art boxes, which usually includes a stipend for the artists and money for supplies.

In South Pasadena, local business donate to sponsor individual boxes, creating a community connection.

There will be 10 more boxes in South Pasadena and 11 more in Glendale.
The father of a Florida teen who vanished on a fishing trip with a friend said Monday amid a feud over his son's recovered cellphone he will share whatever data is obtained with the other boy's family and law enforcement.

Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen, both 14, disappeared last July when their boat capsized off the Florida coast during a severe storm. Their bodies were never recovered, but a Norwegian cargo ship spotted their 19-foot boat near Bermuda last month and recovered it. Onboard were Stephanos' iPhone and some fishing gear.

Blu Stephanos issued a statement Monday saying he was working with an IT professional and the phone's manufacturer in an effort to get the device working again.

"That would be the first order of business, since Austin Stephanos' phone has been submerged in salt water for over eight months," Blu Stephanos said.

Cohen's parents filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to prevent the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission from giving the phone to the Stephanos family before it could be examined by law enforcement. The FWC is the lead agency handling the investigation.

Cohen's mother, Pamela, announced plans to withdraw the lawsuit on Tuesday, saying, "We have full faith and confidence in the FWC to provide equal access to the contents of any retrievable information that is relevant to the tragedy, and to maintain confidentiality."

In a statement Monday, FWC spokesman Rob Klepper said that since this is not a criminal investigation, the agency would turn over the phone and other items to the respective families. Any retrieval of information from Austin Stephanos' phone would only be done with his family's permission, Klepper said.

The cellphone, two fishing rods and two small tackle boxes were recovered from the boat. The phone was shipped ahead to FWC, but the boat and other personal effects were crated and are expected to arrive at Port Everglades next month.

Robert Heller, a digital forensics expert in Texas, said the phone could contain the boat's location, its speed, its direction, distress text messages the boys tried to send, photos they took and other information, assuming it wasn't damaged beyond repair. Even if FWC turns over the phone to the Stephanos family, Heller suspects investigators will download its data for safekeeping, if it is accessible.

[NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More

"If they didn't make a forensic record, then shame on them," he said.

The Coast Guard searched for a week and the families' volunteer search lasted more than two weeks. During its search, the Coast Guard did spot the overturned boat near Daytona Beach, almost 200 miles from where the boys departed but it was gone when a recovery boat arrived at the location.

This is not the first rift to appear between the families since their sons' disappearance. Last October, Pamela Cohen asked that Austin Stephanos' parents not use her son's name or likeness while fundraising for their new foundation.
Police are investigating after four women and one man were shot in northwest Miami-Dade Monday night.

The drive-by shooting happened just before 6:30 p.m. in the 1500 block of Northwest 70th Street. Police said none of the victims are juveniles.

Miami-Dade Police and Fire Rescue responded to the scene to treat patients, who were taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital. Their conditions were unknown.

City of Miami Police also responded to the scene.

Police said they're looking for a grey Nissan Altima in the shooting. No other information was immediately known.

Check back with NBC 6 for updates.
Police are looking for a man who they say shot and killed a man and wounded another man after a fight in a Miami strip club.

Cedric Antoine Coleman, 29, is wanted in the 4 a.m. Sunday shooting outside Extacy Gentleman's Club at 726 Northwest 79th Street, Miami-Dade Police said.

Police said the victim, 29-year-old Jackson Wilton, may have been involved in a fight with Coleman in the club. Several people were kicked out of the club by security during the fight.

While Wilton was standing outside, Coleman drove by and shot at him, police said. Wilton was pronounced dead at the scene.

A while later, a second victim showed up at Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center with a gunshot wound. He remained in critical but stable condition Monday.

Anyone with information is asked to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.
A man wanted in a fatal shooting outside a strip club has been arrested, Miami-Dade Police said Tuesday.

Cedric Antoine Coleman, 29, surrendered to police Tuesday, officials said. He was being held without bond Tuesday and is expected to face a first-degree murder charge. It's unknown if he's hired an attorney.

Coleman was wanted in the 4 a.m. Sunday shooting outside Extacy Gentleman's Club at 726 Northwest 79th Street, police said.

Police said the victim, 29-year-old Jackson Wilton, may have been involved in a fight with Coleman in the club. Several people were kicked out of the club by security during the fight.

While Wilton was standing outside, Coleman drove by and shot at him, police said. Wilton was pronounced dead at the scene.

A while later, a second victim showed up at Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center with a gunshot wound. He remained in critical but stable condition Monday.
No threat was found after police responded to a report of a person with a gun at a library at the University of Central Florida on Tuesday.

Armed UCF Police officers were seen walking into John C. Hitt Library, which was evacuated. The lockdown was lifted around 5 p.m., about an hour after campus police announced they were responding.

UCF police said they received a social media report of a woman with a gun inside.

Police searched the library and said no threat was found. Campus operations were returning to normal.

*UCF ALERT* UCFPD responding to Library reference person with a gun. Please avoid area.  UCF Police Dept. (@UCFPolice) April 26, 2016

In a video posted to Twitter before the lockout was lifted, UCFPD Chief Richard Breary said the social media posts were unconfirmed and that officers were working to clear the building.

Message from UCFPD Chief Richard Beary. pic.twitter.com/dURMrZD0Kn  UCF Police Dept. (@UCFPolice) April 26, 2016

Police added that an officer's weapon accidentally discharged as it was being secured in a car at the scene. No one was injured.



Check back with NBC 6 for updates.
Taking his quest to lure jobs from other states up another notch, Gov. Rick Scott got Florida to start airing radio ads blasting California's decision to raise the minimum wage.

Scott announced Monday that the state's economic development agency will use taxpayer money to pay for spots that will run on Los Angeles and San Francisco radio stations ahead of a trade mission Scott is taking next week to the Golden State.

The radio ads, paid by Enterprise Florida, contend that a new law that gradually raises California's minimum wage to $15 an hour will cost the state 700,000 jobs.

"That's how many California jobs will be lost thanks to the politicians raising the minimum wage," an unidentified woman says on the radio ad, which then says companies will replace people with computer kiosks and robots. Later the ad states: "Ready to leave California? Go to Florida instead - no state income tax and Governor Scott has cut regulations."

Since winning re-election in November 2014, the Republican governor has taken several trips to states led by Democratic governors where he has asked companies to relocate to Florida. He visited California last year.

Florida's unemployment rate right now _ 4.9 percent _ is slightly better than California's 5.4 percent jobless rate. California, however, has bested Florida in the last year in job growth, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. California, the state with the country's largest population, has added nearly 421,000 jobs while Florida has added more than 234,000.

Evan Westrup, a spokesman for Gov. Jerry Brown, said California would "extend a warm welcome" to Scott so he can learn what's happening in the state.

"Since his last 2,000 mile cross-country jaunt, California has added twice as many jobs as Florida, while paying down debt, building a robust rainy day fund and taking bold action on issues Governor Scott continues to ignore, like climate change and poverty," Westrup said in an email.

Last week when he announced his California trip, Scott contended that companies would want to leave the Golden State because of a "crippling" increase in the minimum wage. Brown earlier this month signed into law a measure that will lift the statewide minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022.

It's not clear how many radio ads Enterprise Florida is paying for. Stephen Lawson, a spokesman for the agency, said the amount was still being worked out and a final figure was not available.
A recent college graduate is the latest driver to allege that the police force in a small New Jersey town is racially profiling motorists, the I-Team has learned.

Tevin Bell, 24, said that he's been stopped nearly two dozen times by police commuting through Bloomfield on his way to class from neighboring Newark over the last four years. Bell -- who said he was put in handcuffs during one of the stops -- is now fighting in court to get records of all traffic stops by the town's police department.

"Theyre just stopping minorities," Bell said. "Theyre stopping mostly blacks, because me and my friends, were stopped constantly."

Bell said in his latest encounter with Bloomfield police he and three friends were pulled over for a burned out headlight. The officers claimed they smelled marijuana, and searched the men, along with the car.

Bell was then accused of resisting arrest and was put in handcuffs. He was later given a summons for marijuana possession after officers claimed they found a bag of pot inside the patrol car where Bell had been placed.

He denied the allegations.

Bells attorney issued a subpoena to the police director and told the I-Team he wants records of all recent traffic stops.

"I am requesting records regarding race, time, date, and location," said Josh Denbeaux, who is representing Bell pro bono. "We think they stopped Tevin and the others because there were four young black men in the car."

Bell's case comes weeks after a Seton Hall University School of Law study found that more than 80 percent of those who appeared for court in the predominantly white town were black or Hispanic. The largest proportion of those who appeared in court were from neighboring towns Newark and East Orange.

The director of the school's Center for Policy and Research, Mark Denbeaux, said after the study was released that the town runs a "border patrol that targets people of color."

The Bloomfield Police Department released a statement calling the Seton Hall study deeply flawed and misleading, adding that its manpower is devoted to areas where there is the highest crime.

"Greater deployment of officers to the area means a greater number of summonses issued there," the statement said.

Still, at least one former cop says he thinks that racial profiling exists in the town. Richard Rivera, a former Hudson County police officer who is now a consultant in police practices, said he obtained dozens of police dashcam videos from four nights in January through an open records request.

"The police videos overwhelmingly show that minorities are getting searched in comparison to other demographics, Rivera said. "The Bloomfield Police Department engages in pre-textual stops."

The police departments statement said Bloomfield recorded the lowest number of crimes last year in more than two decades.

But Rivera said that low crime numbers shouldn't come at the expense of civil liberties.

"Crime shouldnt be lowered by violating peoples rights," he said.

A Municipal Court Judge will hold a hearing on Bell's subpoena on May 17. The city's legal counsel said it plans to fight the motion.
Local pre-schools, shopping centers -- even a casino and a farm -- all have had high levels of lead in water samples, an I-Team analysis has revealed.

The I-Team mapped more than 300 water systems in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, where regulators have discovered lead problems. The high lead tests are plotted on the interactive map above. The bigger the dot, the higher the lead result - over the federal action level of 15 parts per billion.

Water systems affected include public water supplies and private wells used by businesses and nonprofits. The water samples date as far back as 2012, and in many cases, after regulators found too much lead, the water systems successfully brought lead levels back into compliance.

The findings come after a water crisis in Flint, Michigan, raises concerns about lead levels in water tables across the county.

ISE Farms, one of New Jerseys biggest egg producers, is one of the businesses that registered a high levels of lead last year.

In September, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection issued a violation to the Warren County facility for a lead test that was 150 parts per billion - ten times the federal action threshold.

A DEP spokesperson said the concentration of lead was detected coming out of a faucet in the female bathroom located in the farm office  not in the hen houses.

"I dont think there is any inherent risk to the egg," said Gregg Clanton, a spokesman for ISE Farms.

Clanton emphasized that the facility has no history of problems with lead beyond this test, and after regulators re-tested the bathroom faucet it registered acceptable levels of the toxin.

Despite those assurances, the farm could not conclusively say its hens never consumed lead-tainted water, partly because state regulators only sample faucets used by humans. There is no requirement to test water used to hydrate livestock.

A 2003 study by Iowa State University found egg yolks can retain toxic levels of lead after hens consume lead paint chips.

Gerald Markowitz, a professor who studies lead poisoning at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said regulators may tend to focus on big public water systems, but more attention should be paid to all water infrastructure  including private wells that feed farms, rural communities, and business parks.

"We could require private entities to replace lead service lines, to replace lead fixtures and they bear the cost of that," Markowitz said. "Were not doing that."

Although regulators rarely order entities to replace all their water pipes, they do order stricter monitoring and repairs after high lead tests.

After Morristown Medical Center registered high levels of lead last month, the DEP ordered the hospital to repair a broken pump that injects chemicals to prevent lead contamination.

The facility issued a statement warning patients, employees, and other visitors that they may have been exposed to lead if they ingested tap water at the hospital between Jan. 22 and Feb. 25.

Currently, Morristown Medical Center is using bottled water for food preparation and drinking, but the facility has made repairs to the pump.

Our system is stabilizing, and lead levels continue to decline, said the statement.

Back at ISE Farms, the DEP has also requested owners install a chemical pump to reduce the threat of lead. But the facility has two years to install the pump, and if inspectors record a second consecutive low lead reading, the farm can discontinue plans for the new equipment.

The farm has avoided regulatory action in the past by bringing the level of other toxins down. Between 2013 and 2015, the DEP issued violations related to E. Coli, Coliform, and asbestos in the water at ISE Farms. But in each case, the DEP says the egg producer returned to compliance.

Clanton declined to talk about the farms past problems with asbestos, E. Coli, and coliform.

Weve done quite a bit of testing, he said. There have been farming activities on that property going back to the 1700s.
Mayor Bill de Blasio is facing new questions three days after The Daily News published a memo from state election officials asking whether he pressured donors to circumvent campaign finance laws.

The memo asked if de Blasio had urged billionaire John Catsimitidis and others to donate to the obscure Putnam County Democratic Committee to help upstate Democrats in 2014 seize control of the state Senate.

The author of the memo, state Board of Elections Chief Enforcement Officer Risa Sugarman, wrote, "I have determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a violation warranting criminal prosecution has taken place. The violations discovered by this investigation can only be described as a willful and flagrant."

Asked about the memo, de Blasio said Monday, "It's outrageous, and again, I don't know what's motivating it."

He said he could "unequivocally" say his campaign team broke no laws and that anything his team did was completely legal.

"My predecessor and so many other people lived by those exact same standards," he said. "I think it speaks for itself."

"Unfortunately it's the law of the land right now, so that's what we deal with," he said.

De Blasio has not been accused of any specific wrongdoing. His campaign lawyer, Laurence Laufer, on Sunday wrote a letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press, to the Board of Elections, accusing the group of selective, politically motivated enforcement and leaking confidential investigative material to the media.

The new questions follow a federal probe into fundraisers Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg amid allegations those wealthy backers sent NYPD officials expensive gifts in exchange for favors. One retired chief, Phil Banks, denies any wrongdoing, while several other top police commanders have been reassigned.
Investigators on Monday released new video of the man they believe stabbed a Manhattan motorist 11 times in a road rage fit Saturday night.

A man with dreadlocks driving a blue Ford with Rhode Island license plates stabbed the 45-year-old victim 11 times in the chest on East 61st Street at about 11 p.m. Saturday, police said.

The injured man tried to drive himself to the hospital but crashed on East 76th Street between Madison and Fifth avenues.

First responders brought him to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where he is in stable condition, police said.

Police are searching for the man pictured above in connection to the attack.

Anyone with information about the man should call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS.
A New Jersey police officer tackled a suicidal man seconds before he was going to leap off a bridge, dashcam video of the tense encounter shows.

Riverdale police Sgt. Greg Bogert pulled up to the man on Route 287 near exit 53 at about 11:30 a.m. Monday after multiple reports of a man walking on the ledge of the bridge.

The man was walking in front of a car on the shoulder of the busy road when Bogert pulled up to the scene, the video shows.

"I remember saying, 'It's not worth it, stay calm,'" Bogert told NBC 4 New York Tuesday.

When Bogert asked the man a question and tried to calm him down, the man sprinted for the ledge, according to the video.

Bogert chased him, yelling, "Don't do it! Don't do it!" before he caught up to the suicidal man. He tackled the man, pulling him to the ground just before he reached the ledge, the video shows.

"A lot of people don't realize how fast things happen for us, so a lot of it was instinct and reaction, more than training," said Bogert, an 18-year veteran of the force.

The man continued to struggle, and Bogert held him down on the highway. Cars came dangerously close to them until backup arrived, video shows.

Bogert's knuckles were raw from the encounter Tuesday but he said saving the man's life was a good feeling.

"There's a lot of good cops in New Jersey and I don't think they get credit," he said. "And it's nice to see when people recognize it."

Millions have watched the dashcam footage, and Bogert said he's reading all the positive comments on Facebook  including one from a woman whose family member committed suicide. She thanked Bogert for saving another family from the same tragedy.

The overpass near exit 55 is not known for suicides, police said.

The distraught man is being treated at a nearby hospital. Police are looking for his family in Pennsylvania.
Rutgers University students from the New Brunswick campus and the biomedical and health sciences schools will be allowed just three guests when President Obama delivers remarks at the schools commencement ceremony on May 15.

Rutgers made the announcement on their Facebook page this week, and it has drawn the ire of students who hoped to secure seats for more guests.

The tickets will be barcoded and will not be transferable. Ticket holders will be required to have photo identification, and all guests must have a ticket regardless of age, Rutgers said in the statement posted to their Facebook page.

"While the limit to three guests at the stadium is a change from past practice, it ensures that every graduating student from Rutgers UniversityNew Brunswick and from Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences is accommodated," the statement continued.

Students then used the platform to voice their disappointment with the decision.

I'll remember this when Rutgers sends me a letter requesting alumni donations.... Facebook user Kevin Moser wrote in response to the schools announcement.

This is a total disappointment and slap in the face. I've spent my full 4 years here working my hardest to graduate on time-just like many of my classmates, user Mike McGowen fumed on the schools Facebook page.

Rutgers announced this month that Obama would deliver remarks at the 2016 commencement ceremony, the first time a sitting president has addressed the school's graduates.

This is the first time in Rutgers Universitys history that a sitting president has agreed to speak at commencement, said university President Robert Barchi, who added that the New Brunswick campus is "delighted" about Obama's appearance.

And some students like Kiersten Formoso agree.

"Everyone's freaking out about it. I actually think it's incredibly reasonable," she said of the seating limits.

Formoso pointed out that because the president is speaking, Rutgers is shuttling in graduates from the Camden and Newark campuses. And with nearly 18,000 graduates, the seats fill fast.

"I'm excited, you know, to see Obama as my commencement speaker," she said.

Formoso said she'll narrow down her list and focus on commencement with the commander-in-chief.

There will be other viewing sites for people who have already arrangements to be at the ceremony, according to Rutgers. They include the Busch Student Center, the Livingston Student Center or the College avenue Student Center. No tickets are required for viewings there, and seating is general admission.
Big changes are in store for Philadelphia's annual July 4 celebration, Wawa Welcome America!, including Comcast NBCUniversal taking over as the event's new broadcast partner, event organizers announced.

NBC10, Telemundo62, Cozi TV and TeleXitos will be the regional broadcaster and events will also be live-streamed on the NBC10 and Telemundo62 websites, mobile apps and available via Xfinity On Demand on television.

The festival runs from June 27 through July 4.

Organizers also announced that Live Nation would have an expanded role in the musical production of the festival.

More than 500,000 people are expected at the eight-day event, which is the largest free festival in the country.

We are thrilled to be the presenting sponsor of Philadelphias iconic celebration of Americas independence, said David L. Cohen, senior executive vice president at Comcast Corporation. Through the combined assets of Comcast NBCUniversal, including multiple live broadcasts on NBC10 and Telemundo 62, plus extensive content available on Xfinity On Demand, Philadelphians across the region will be able to experience the festivities on television and online like never before. [[376803851, C]]

President and General Manager of NBC10 and Telemundo 62 Ric Harris also touted the diversity of Comcast NBCUniversal's local brands in expanding the potential audience for the massive celebration of America's founding.

NBC10 and Telemundo62 are proud to be part of this exciting new partnership between Wawa Welcome America and Comcast NBCUniversal," Harris said. "Our ability to reach and engage multicultural and multigenerational audiences will help make this event the most important celebration of our nations birthday.

Comcast is the parent company of NBC10.
Three girls, considered persons of interest, could face charges by week's end in a high school fight that left a Delaware teenager dead.

Wilmington Police Chief Bobby Cummings told a group at a meeting in the wake of Howard High School of Technology student Amy Joyner-Francis' death that he hoped to bring "closure" to the case, reported Delaware Online.

Joyner-Francis complained of head and chest pain after the fight with at least two other girls in the school's first-floor women's room. The 16-year-old lost consciousness, police said, before EMS arrived. A school resource officer performed CPR until medics got there. Joyner-Francis was flown to a nearby hospital where she died.

Some questions from concerned parents and the community remain unanswered after Joyner-Francis died following a fistfight in the girl's restroom Thursday morning.

"We did not want to rush to judgment," Cummings said. "We would rather take our time to conduct this investigation the proper way. Charges will be filed, and individuals will be held accountable for their actions." [[377009721, C]]

The medical examiner's report on the girl's death remained pending Tuesday.

Howard High School of Technology principal Stanley Spoor notified parents of meetings about the deadly incident in a recorded phone message Sunday. The school is breaking up the meetings in the school auditorium by grade, with meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday nights at 7 p.m. They will be for parents only, Spoor said.

Students held several vigils for their friend and classmate who they described as a peacemaker and caring person. [[377043171, C]]

A small memorial service was held outside school Monday morning by students as they arrived for class. There were no classes Tuesday because of Election Day.

School officials have yet to decide when they would hold a school-wide memorial service for Joyner-Francis, Spoor said. [[376815281, C]]

Loved ones of Joyner-Francis are invited to offer condolences to her family on Sunday, May 1 between 5 and 8 p.m. at St. Paul AUME Church on 3114 N. Market Street in Wilmington. Family members say there will be no viewing during the event and all other services will be private.
A New Jersey man with a mental illness was arrested for allegedly assaulting a priest in a Newark church, police said.

The 33-year-old suspect, of East Orange, allegedly entered St. Mary's Parish on Martin Luther King Boulevard Monday morning and slugged the Rev. Edwin Leahy in the face.

Other priests and parishioners chased after the suspect as he ran off and spotted him approaching Broad and Market streets, the Newark Department of Public Safety said in a statement.

The group flagged down two police officers, who arrested the suspect.

Leahy said that he wasn't badly injured in the attack and said he was more worried about the attacker, who authorities said had failed to take medications.

"They don't have anybody to make sure they've taken medication so you wind up with people off medication," he said. "All kinds of things happen."

Another priest, the Rev. Philip Waters, said he saw the attack just inside the church's doorway. He said he could tell that the attacker wasn't mentally sound.

"I could see he wasn't right," he said. "You don't even need a medical degree to see that."

The attacker was charged with assault and held on an outstanding warrant without bail, police said.
A New Jersey man has pleaded guilty to producing fake driver's licenses and filing bogus tax returns using stolen identity information. Authorities say Alexis Carthens and others sold the licenses for $150 apiece from a website whose published policy on returns was "no refunds, no snitching."

The 38-year-old Carthens, of Newark, pleaded guilty Monday to two counts of fraud conspiracy. One count carries a maximum 15-year prison sentence and the other carries a 10-year maximum. Sentenced is scheduled for August.

The U.S. attorney's office says Carthens and his alleged coconspirators sold fake New Jersey, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin driver's licenses that they claimed had genuine features like holographic overlays. Customers paid with bitcoin or prepaid payment cards.

The scam allegedly lasted from October 2012 through August 2014.
A prayer vigil is planned following a shooting in a suburban Philadelphia church during Sunday services that killed one church member.

Keystone Fellowship Church has announced a 7 p.m. Monday gathering at its Schwenksville campus in Montgomery County, 13 miles from the Montgomeryville campus where the shooting occurred.

The church sent a letter to members of the congregation on Monday that read:



To Our Keystone Family:

Words can never convey the sorrow we are feeling in light of the tragic shooting at our Montgomeryville campus on Sunday, April 24. My heart is deeply burdened for the two families whose lives were changed in an instant, and for our church family individually and collectively as we grapple with the shock and pain of it all.

We need healing. We need the peace and comfort of God like never before.

My prayer is that the healing process will begin tonight as we gather at our Skippack campus. This is a private service, just for our church family, but it is also an opportunity to approach Gods throne of grace in a time of prayer for our church and community.

I want you to know that even though I am deeply saddened, I am also hopeful. We serve a God who brings good out of the most tragic of circumstances, and I believe that we have an opportunity to unite as the body of Christ and overcome evil with good. Keystone has always been a church that loves God and loves people, not only with our words but with our actions.

May the peace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ fill our hearts and minds in the days and weeks to come, and may we emerge from this tragedy stronger and more united than ever before.

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,

for my hope is from him.

He only is my rock and my salvation,

my fortress; I shall not be shaken. Psalm 62:5-6

John Cope

Lead Pastor,

Keystone Fellowship Church

The church said in a post on its Facebook page that members were "shocked and heartbroken" by Sunday's events and were "coming together as a church family ... for a time of prayer and comfort."

District Attorney Kevin Steele said an 11 a.m. Sunday "disturbance" involving two members escalated into an altercation that ended in the shooting shortly before 11:30 a.m. Sunday.

Twenty-seven-year-old Robert Braxton of Montgomeryville died shortly afterward. Authorities are investigating whether the shooting was justified under the law.
It's a Friday night and you're ready to take on the town! Your Uber ride rolls up and you hop into the backseat of a GM Acadia beaming with bright blue neon lights, music bumping from the stereo, and a smiling Uber driver ready to feature your karaoke car ride on his Instagram page.

Does this traveling party sound too good to be true? For Newark residents this ride is a reality provided by Delaware's #1 Uber driver, Leroy.



Leroys unique personality and social media skills have driven him straight to the top of Uber's ranks. He averages 45 five-star rides per week, and makes twice as many trips as the average Delaware driver.

When you grab a ride with Leroy, expect to talk (or sing!) He's excited to chat with you and make your Uber experience enjoyable. "I have a really good relationship with my passengers, Leroy told NBC10, and like treating people the way I would want to be treated."

https://www.instagram.com/p/BDAAQjyNGXt/

And it isnt just about the party -- Leroy is just as concerned about safety as he is fun.



"It's all about getting the kids wherever they have to go safely and preventing DUIs and accidents," Leroy said. "Lots of accidents are fatal and having a designated driver at all times is something you can't beat."



Students couldn't agree more. He never drives fast and knows the area really well. He genuinely really loves people and gets them where they need to go safely, UDel senior Shawn Benesh told NBC10.

So the next time you're walking down Main Street and see those bright blue lights flashing from afar, be sure to request your Uber quick -- before someone else snatches him up!
In her only interview with Connecticut media on Monday, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton told NBC Connecticut about her recent rhetoric about guns and how the Sandy Hook tragedy has been a focal point of her campaign.

Clinton, who held a campaign rally at the University of Bridgeport over the weekend, said she hasnt politicized the tragedy, even with a campaign ad featuring the daughter of Sandy Hook Elementary School Principal Dawn Hochsprung who was killed that day.

"I think we have a real problem with guns in America. Thirty-three thousand people per year are killed by guns and politics, our government, our democracy, is supposed to be about solving problems," Clinton said backstage. "We need universal background checks. We need to end the universal immunity that has been given to the gunmakers themselves. We have to do more on mental health. We have to do more on education about the dangers of guns, so I think it's an appropriate and necessary topic to be discussing in this campaign."

That final comment was a nod to the lawsuit that families of Sandy Hook victims filed against the manufacturer and seller of the weapons used in the December 2012 massacre. A judge recently ruled the suit could move forward.

Clinton spoke several days ago during a campaign stop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, about how, as a child, she would spend time at a family cabin on Lake Winola. She said thats where she learned to use a gun.

NBC Connecticut political reporter Max Reiss asked Clinton if shes used a weapon recently.

"Well, not recently; I did go hunting when I lived in Arkansas. I haven't really had much chance to do it," she said. "I've done skeet shooting, but I wanted to make the point that I am not against responsible people having guns."

Clinton went on to say she believes in the Second Amendment and policies that can be good for both lawful gun owners and public safety.

"There is no contradiction between having safe gun policies that save lives and respecting Second Amendment rights," Clinton said.

On the issue of possible Supreme Court nominees, Clinton said some decisions by the high court have been "gifts to the gun lobby" and she would want a justice who could work to change those constitutional interpretations.

Additionally, Clinton said overturning Citizens United, the case that established that corporations could give unlimited sums to political campaign, would be a priority.

"I would certainly look for people who understood that Citizens United was one of the worst decisions the court has ever made," she said.

Connecticuts economy has struggled since the 2008 recession and wage growth has remained essentially flat. Mentioning some of Connecticuts largest cities, Clinton said her economic policies could provide some growth.

"I want to zero in [on] those places like Bridgeport and Waterbury that need those extra boosts and I will have those economics and jobs policy to do that. I will have an infrastructure policy and advanced manufacturing policy, a clean renewable energy policy, a small business policy and I want to do everything I can, working with the people in communities like Bridgeport and Waterbury to get back in the economic hunt to be able to provide more jobs that are going to provide good livings," she said.

The former secretary of state knows she will have to win over supporters of challenger Bernie Sanders, as well as independents, in the event she becomes the Democratic nominee. Clinton hopes her connections to the state as a student at Yale will play into voters decisions.

"I went to law school with Sen. [Richard] Blumenthal, so I've obviously known him for a very long time. Many other people in politics, in business and academia, and all kinds of civic groups so I do want people to know that I've spent a lot of time in Connecticut, driving around, seeing this beautiful state, and I want to be a partner to move the country forward," she said.

Clinton said her supporters in 2008 were polled as saying nearly half would not support then-Sen. Barack Obama in a general election but eventaully did.

Clinton hopes voters not only turn out for her Tuesday, but also that those who dont vote for her examine how their values may line up with hers.

"I think the vast majority of my opponent's supporters are going to look at who the two nominees are and I'm very confident that we will have their support and we will work hard for it because I want people who don't support me now, not just people supporting my opponent in a Democratic primary but Republicans and Independents to really take a look at my record," Clinton said.
Attention is shifting from a well-worn campaign trail to the voting booths as Pennsylvanians and Delawareans cast ballots Tuesday on presidential primary contests, including the first competitive Republican primary in decades, and races for Congress and state offices.



Pennsylvania voters will decide hotly contested Democratic primary races for U.S. Senate and state attorney general.



On the Republican side of the presidential primary, billionaire developer Donald Trump has topped opinion polls heading into the election, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the leader on the Democratic side, ahead of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. [[377087581, C]]



Clinton planned to remain in Philadelphia on Tuesday night to await returns.



On Monday, candidates kept up a heavy presence in Pennsylvania, with Clinton, Trump, Kasich and Sanders appearing at multiple events, sometimes on opposite sides of Pennsylvania and even a stop in Delaware for Clinton. [[377091591, C]]



Pollsters expect a record Republican voter turnout in Pennsylvania.

But they expect Democrats to turn out in lower numbers than they did in 2008, when 2.3 million voters, or nearly 56 percent, cast ballots in the race between Clinton and then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Clinton won Pennsylvania by about 200,000 votes. [[377087821, C]]



Polls are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. in both states.

Where is your polling place? Pennsylvania | Delaware



[NATL] Highlights From the 2016 Campaign Trail

Got a Question about voting? Call 1-866-OUR-VOTE

In congressional races, Democratic U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah of Philadelphia is running for a 12th term in a four-way primary as he faces trial on federal racketeering and bribery charges in May. [[377091791, C]]



Also, Democrats and Republicans are running to succeed retiring Republican U.S. Reps. Mike Fitzpatrick and Joe Pitts in southeastern Pennsylvania.
An Omaha woman has been sentenced to decades in prison for sexually assaulting several young members of her dance team. Online court records show that 24-year-old Brittianee Bates was sentenced Thursday to 28 to 56 years in prison after pleading no contest earlier this year to two counts of first-degree sexual assault and one count each of third-degree sexual assault of a child and intentional child abuse. Prosecutors say Bates sexually assaulted several girls who were on the same drill team as Bates and a fourth girl who went to a day care where Bates worked. Prosecutors say the abuse dated back to 2015 and that all of victims were younger than 13.
THE APPEAL OF GLOBAL WARMING

Scientists talk about Global Warming as a problem (or even pending disaster) so often that it may be hard to take seriously. After all, most people seem to like warmer winters, the flowers to bloom earlier and a warmer ocean to swim in. No wonder Global Warming is always WAAAAY down on the list of things the public worries about the most.

GLOBAL WARMING FEELS QUITE PLEASANT

I didnt say it-its the title of an article in the New York Times last Thursday. A paper in the latest issue of the journal Nature, the authors write that for a vast majority of Americans, the weather is simply becoming more pleasant. Over the past four decades, winter temperatures have risen substantially throughout the United States, but summers have not become markedly more uncomfortable.

(Of course, there are some who hate many of the changes weve seen: skiers who bemoan the shorter season; snow plow operators not happy about making less money; and certain students and teachers who are upset about fewer snow days. But that is a small minority.)

So, the obvious result is a contradiction between what many scientists and politicians have been saying. Its hard to be concerned about something that is showing so few obvious signs of the serious problem that is likely ahead of us. We can raise our voices and point at charts of ice loss in the Arctic and all we get is yawns from too many people. And Im afraid that theres not much that can be done about this. Its hard to tell folks to not believe what theyre seeing with their own eyes.

HERES WHAT PEOPLE ARENT SEEING

Not many people have traveled to the Arctic to see the dramatic loss of ice that has occurred from Alaska to Greenland (and beyond). And even if you do travel there, theres no basis for comparison. Only the people who live in those areas can clearly see the dramatic changes that have occurred over recent decades.

Here is what those of us in the Continental U.S. cannot see:

1. Carbon dioxide itself-it has no color or smell. But it can be measured, and has steadily increased for more than 50 years.

2. Deadly heat waves-in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia (India/Pakistan), East Asia (Japan/China), Russia, and more:

2003 Europe 50,000-70,000 killed

2010 Russia 56,000

2006 Europe 3400+

2015 India 2500

2015 Pakistan 2500

2010 Japan 1700+

3. Loss of Arctic sea ice

4. Loss (and darkening) of Greenland sea ice

5. Warming ocean temperatures

6. Warming of subsurface ocean

7. Rising sea level

8. Retreat of most glaciers

9. Ocean acidification

10. Coral bleaching

THIS IS WHAT IS BECOMING MORE OBVIOUS

1. More downpours=worse flooding

2. Intensity of winter storms (warming=more water vapor=wetter storms

3. More frequent and more severe coastal flooding

All of the above changes are agreed on by most climate scientists. These are not computer projections-this is based on actual data.

There is more disagreement about the following, but evidence of a global warming connection seems to be increasing:

1. More intense tropical cyclones (hurricanes & typhoons). Total numbers of storms havent changed much, but a greater percentage has become intense in recent years.

2. More heavy snowstorms. The total number of days with snow has decreased in many areas, but a greater percentage of snowstorms has become major in recent years

3. More frequent and more severe droughts. Many scientists are convinced that warming temperatures have already led to this.

IF YOU THINK ITS OBVIOUS NOW

It wasnt that long ago that most climate scientists didnt expect many of these major changes to show up for decades. For example, the Arctic ice melt is happening WAAAAY faster than their computer models showed. These changes are not likely to reverse themselves in the future, as long as global temperatures continue to rise.

Eventually, with enough of these changes becoming obvious, more and more people will care a lot more about climate change. Unfortunately, by the time this happens, it will be even harder to stop the changes, let alone reverse them. Weve been teased by the nice weather. So far.

Glenn Hurricane Schwartz

Chief Meteorologist, NBC10 Philadelphia
Two suspects were arrested after fleeing a border patrol checkpoint in Jamul Monday night.

Border Patrol officials and Sheriff's deputies pursued the suspects from the Highway 94 border patrol checkpoint after they were stopped in a stolen vehicle, Border Patrol Supervisor Todd Naegele confirmed.

The vehicle was spiked as soon as it took off from the checkpoint at the Otay Lake exit.

The vehicle was only able to drive about one or two miles afterwards, but officials continued to search for the suspects until they were captured at 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. respectively.

One of the suspects was tased as he was captured but is expected to be okay.

Both had fake firearms in their possession.

They fled the checkpoint sometime between 7:15 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Monday.

Their legal status is unknown. If they are found to be U.S. citizens they will be handed over to the Sheriff's Department the Border Patrol said.

No other information was immediately available.

Check back for updates on this breaking news story.
A tiny black puppy found clinging to life in a cardboard box, abandoned in the middle of the desert and the lone survivor in a box full of his dead siblings, is now up for adoption.

A Southern California family found the cardboard box as they were biking through the inland desert hills east of San Diego County last month, according to Helen Woodward Animal Center.

The family quickly rushed the puppy to their home for nourishment and shelter. They then called a local animal rescuer, who took the puppy to the Helen Woodward.

The Center says the box of puppies was abandoned near the bike track running through the desert, surrounded by dirt, dusty-green rocks and cacti blooms, about a month ago.

The puppies struggled to survive without food or water and most succumbed to the heat of the sun. The family named the box's sole survivor Rico. Rico weighed about 3.5 pounds at the time of his rescue, said the Center.

Rico, a tiny chihuahua terrier blend, now weighs just under five pounds. Hes a male, neutered puppy. Officials estimate he is about 3 months old; they describe him as very friendly and social.

Rico's health took a toll from being abandoned in the desert, vets said. Despite developing a respiratory infection, he is slowly gaining weight and recovering his strength.

More than a month after he was found abandoned in the wilderness, Rico is now up for adoption.

If you would like to adopt Rico, you can learn about the process or make a donation to support him on Helen Woodward Animal Center's website.
Jurors who threaten to derail trials by researching them on Google or posting comments about them on Twitter are often dismissed with nothing more than a tongue-lashing from a judge.

But that may soon change in California. Legislation supported by state court officials would authorize judges in some counties to fine jurors up to $1,500 for social media and Internet use violations, which have led to mistrials and overturned convictions around the country.

As jurors and judges have become more technology savvy in recent years, the perils of jurors playing around with their smartphones have become a mounting concern, particularly in technology-rich California. A 2011 state law made improper electronic or wireless communication or research by a juror punishable by contempt.

Supporters of the latest California measure say a potential fine would give teeth to existing prohibitions against social media and Internet use and simplify the process for holding wayward jurors accountable.

"It's disruptive of the judicial process, and there ought to be a fairly simple and convenient way for a judge to sanction a juror based on the order that the judge has given," said Assemblyman Rich Gordon, D-Menlo Park, who authored the legislation.

But critics question whether it will have any practical effect on jurors who are constantly on sites such as Facebook and Twitter and suggest judges vet the social media activity of potential jurors before seating them.

"If you have an Internet addict who just can't psychologically stop, you may want to excuse that person," said Paula Hannaford-Agor, who studies juries at the National Center for State Courts.

Brian Walsh, a judge in the Silicon Valley county of Santa Clara, said a fine could also change the dynamic between judges and juries.

"You want to present the jurors' obligations to serve as an inviting opportunity to participate in the democratic process," he said. "One could consider it counterproductive to be laying out all the penalties a juror can incur if they blow it."

It is not clear exactly how many times juror social media or Internet use has affected trials. But anecdotal evidence suggests it is more than sporadic.

Eric Robinson, co-director of the Press Law and Democracy Project at Louisiana State University, said he used to track cases of juror social media or Internet misconduct using news accounts and other sources, but there were so many "it got to be more trouble than it was worth."

"Those are the ones we hear about," he said. "I'm sure it happens a lot more."

An Arkansas court in 2011 threw out a death row inmate's murder conviction in part because of Tweets. One said "Choices to be made. Hearts to be broken." Another said "It's over" less than hour before the jury announced its verdict.

A New Jersey appeals court in 2014 tossed the heroin possession conviction of two men after a juror was accused of searching the defendants' names online and finding information about their criminal records.

A California appeals court in January cited juror Internet research in throwing out a fraud conviction against an investment firm CEO. The juror looked up a case involving an accountant the defendant blamed for the fraud.

Judges warn jurors against using social media and the Internet, and have the power to hold them in contempt if they violate those rules.

Greg Hurley, a lawyer who studies juries at the National Center for State Courts, said he is unaware of any state that fines jurors outside the contempt process.

California judges say the contempt process can be time consuming and is rarely invoked. A juror facing contempt has a right to an attorney, and the court could get bogged down in a lengthy formal hearing. So judges often opt to replace a wayward juror with an alternate to keep the proceedings moving.

"Historically, contempt has been something judges are told, `Don't do,"' said J. Richard Couzens, a retired judge from California's Placer County who now rotates through courts around the state. "You have to follow so many rules to institute a contempt process."

Couzens, a member of the judicial committee that recommended the fines legislation, said he dismissed a juror years ago in a theft case for using a cellphone to figure out the value of a stolen item.

The fine would be similar to a traffic citation, making it relatively easy to dispense, Couzens said.

Judges could mention it when warning jurors against Internet and social media use, said Steve Austin, presiding judge in California's Contra Costa County.

"At the very least with the sanction, it would be a good thing you'd be able to tell the jurors," he added.

The legislation initially called for giving all state judges the power to fine wayward jurors. But it was scaled back after legislators expressed concern that it could dissuade potential jurors from serving.

The bill now authorizes the judiciary to select some county courts for a five-year pilot program, which a legislative analysis said could save participating courts money. It is before the full assembly.
Vast wildfires have created lengthy gaps in Southern California sections of the famed Pacific Crest Trail, which hikers must bypass via shuttles or alternate routes to avoid dangerous conditions like unstable trees and loose rocks.

Long-distance backpackers must be shuttled by van around the closures or risk incurring $2,500 fines, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported Monday (http://bit.ly/1SEUHRv).

To get around a 15.5-mile gap caused by a wildfire last year in the San Bernardino National Forest, hikers are driven from the Whitewater Trail House in Cabazon to Onyx Summit on State Route 38, where the trail reopens.

About 14 miles of the trail approaching the mountain town of Idyllwild are closed three years after a blaze scorched more than 27,000 acres.

Each year, thousands trek sections of the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from Mexico to Canada.

Some of the adventurers  who often take on nicknames for their journeys  aren't thrilled with the idea of getting into a van after retreating into the wilderness. Last week in Idyllwild, Bruce "Man in Black" Cornish of San Diego planned to research an alternate hiking route to bypass the closed section while waiting for friends.

At 59, he retired early from a job as an eighth-grade science teacher to hike the entire route after dreaming about the trip for 20 years.

"The philosophy of this trail is, 'Hike your own hike,' " he told the newspaper. "If people want to hitch ahead, that's cool. It's just not for me."

Danger in the unstable areas can come from falling branches dubbed "widow-makers," dead giant trees with weak roots that can fall and crush hikers, the U.S. Forest Service said. Loose rocks, debris including rolling logs, flash floods, trailside stump holes and slippery ash can also pose a danger.

Crews are working to remove charred trees and fill in holes to make the trails passable again. While some hikers are impatient for the work to finish, others don't mind catching an occasional ride.

"I know some other people who are what we call 'purists'  want to hike every inch of the trail," said Robert "Bobcat" Donnellan, 38, of Asheville, N.C., sitting at a picnic table outside the Whitewater home where he was staying April 13. "I personally don't care."
A boy who found his young cousin face down in a San Diego pool said he will never forget his attempts to save the 8-year-old's life.

"I remember how I picked him up out of the water," said Juan Galindo, who was swimming with his cousin, Brandon Reynoso, at a family party over the weekend. "He was dying in my hands and I couldn't do nothing."

The family had gathered Saturday at the Del Rio Apartments on Fenton Parkway near Rio San Diego Drive in Mission Valley.

Juan said he saw his cousin motionless in the water and thought at first Brandon was playing a joke, then realized the seriousness of the situation.

"I got so scared, I didn't know what to do," said Juan. "So I just brought him over there where everybody was."

Brandon was not a strong swimmer, according to Juan, and was wearing a dive mask over his face. The snorkel was not attached.

Emergency crews tried unsuccessfully to revive Brandon, who did not regain consciousness or take another breath on his own, authorities said.

"I was crying a lot, because I was scared," said Brandon's sister, Jennifer Reynoso. "I had hoped that he would be safe because it was just water."

Family members raised money at a food sale Monday to help cover the cost of Brandon's funeral. They remembered him as a happy child who loved to swim.

"We never thought that the water would take his life away, what he loved so much," said Jennifer.

"He was the only little brother I have," she added. "We used to call him Baby Brandon, in a nice way."

She was grateful to the 50 people who turned out Monday to buy food and raise money.

"They show that they care about him, even if they only knew him a little bit, or they only saw him once," Reynoso said.

The family has set up a GoFundMe to help cover funeral costs.

SDPD's Child Abuse Unit is investigating the drowning, as is the protocol in all sudden child deaths.

Irvine Company owns the property but declined to comment out of respect for the family.
The man accused in the slaying of his toddler stepson, Jahi Turner, pleaded not guilty and denied all charges in a San Diego courtroom Tuesday.

Tieray Jones, 37, was formally charged with one count of murder and one count of felony child abuse causing death. He denied all charges. Both carry a 25-years-to-life sentence.

Prosecutors asked for $5 million bail.

Deputy District Attorney Nicole Rooney said Jones had multiple failures to appear in court; she said Jones had assault with a firearm, drugs and theft convictions which resulted in a 5-year prison commitment.

His ties are all in Maryland and North Carolina which is where his family is, his friends are, and we believe he would flea and go back somewhere else where we wouldnt be able to find him," Rooney said.

The defense argued his client had cooperated in the investigation the whole time and willingly returned to San Diego. The judge ordered no bail.

After the arraignment, the prosecutor said they will not disclose any new evidence that led to the arrest at this point.

"Cold cases are always an ongoing investigation and the homicide team never gave up on it and we finally developed evidence sufficient to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt and once we had done that we were able to file charges," Rooney said.

NBC 7 is asking a judge to unseal the San Diego Police Department's arrest warrant that led to Jones' arrest.

The warrant could contain details about why, after almost 14 years, law enforcement had enough evidence to arrest him.

The District Attorney is against the unsealing.

At a court hearing on May 12, NBC 7 San Diego, along with KFMB, will argue why it should be unsealed, citing the First Amendment.

Once Jahi went missing, hundreds of volunteers and police officers spent weeks searching for traces of the 30-pound toddler when he was reported missing in 2002. Law enforcement officers raked through 5,000 tons of garbage at the landfill, but came up with nothing.

The case had gone cold, but last week, the San Diego County District Attorney's office announced they had cracked the case and filed charges against the boy's stepfather. Though new evidence has been uncovered in the case, authorities have not found Jahi's body or remains, police said.

Rooney said the family has mixed feelings.

The family is obviously devastated that its confirmed their worst fear that Jahi is in fact dead, but they are happy that they are finally going to get justice and resolution," she said.

According to police, Jones told officers he was with the toddler at the park when he left to get a drink. Jones said he returned 15 minutes later and Jahi was gone.

At the time of the toddler's dissapearance, his mother was deployed aboard a Navy ship.

However, officials were unable to locate Jahi's fingerprints on playground equipment, prompting speculation the child never visited the area, authorities announced Monday.

Officers interviewed Jones several times after the boys disappearance but did not have enough evidence to arrest him at the time, police said.
A three-day-old infant attacked by the family dog died from bite injuries to his head, according to an autopsy report by the San Diego County Medical Examiner's office.

The newborn, Sebastian Caban, was attacked by the dog while it was in bed with his parents who were watching television in bed on Thursday, police said. According to the report, the dog who was also in bed with the family and was startled when the mother coughed.

"The dog made contact with the baby leading to traumatic injuries," Sgt. Tuu Nguyen, of the Child Abuse Unit San Diego Police Department (SDPD), said.

The ME's office ruled the death an accident.

Shortly after the accident, the couple made two unsuccessful 911 calls, SDPD officials confirmed.

The family waited 28 seconds before hanging up during their first 911 call, then waited an additional 34 seconds on their second emergency call before finally hanging up and driving the baby to the hospital themselves.

Hospital staff tried to save the baby's life, but the attempts were unsuccessful.

"Our heartfelt condolences go out to the family in this very tragic case. We know every second counts in an emergency, Lt. Scott Wahl of SDPD said in a statement Saturday.

According to SDPD, between 7:15 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. when the family was calling for assistance, dispatch received 73 total 911 calls.

Dan DeSousa, of the San Diego County Department of Animal Services, said the family has not yet decided if they would like to keep the dog.

The dog, a 2-year-old American Staffordshire Terrier is in the custody of the Department of Animal Services and under quarantine.

Any decision on the fate of the dog will be made by the department after speaking with the family.
If you will be heading to the voting booth for the primary in June, do not take a selfie.

According to the San Diego Registrar of Voters, taking photos inside a polling place during voting hours is banned.

But for many voters, especially the younger generation, a voting booth photo is a must.

According to an article published in the New York Times Tuesday, several states like Pennsylvania and Vermont have banned taking pictures inside the voting booth. Those who violate the ban can be fined up to $1,000.

Now, Snapchat is joining the fight against the photography ban. The company filed an amicus brief in New Hampshire Friday.

Some supporters of the ban argue there may be attempts to manipulate voters through pictures taken inside the booth. Others are afraid of election fixing.

But those against the ban say there is not enough evidence to back up that argument.

Snapchat says ballot selfies and photos is a way for younger voters to participate in politics.

A photography ban is also in place at all polling locations in San Diego.

So, if you love to Snapchat or Instagram, try to take your selfie before or after you vote.
The parents of a 3-day-old baby killed by the family dog in a mauling last week twice called 911 but didnt get an answer, and critics are calling for change.

"It's absolutely tragic and I think every parent who heard this story had their heart break a little bit," said Matt Awbry, a spokesperson for San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer.

Faulconers office responded to NBC 7s request for information on what happened when the Mira Mesa couple tried to reach a 911 operator.

The newborn, Sebastian Caban, was with his parents and the family dog Thursday in a bed when the mother suddenly coughed, according to an autopsy report.

"The dog made contact with the baby leading to traumatic injuries," said Sgt. Tuu Nguyen, of the San Diego Police Department Child Abuse Unit.

Shortly after the incident, the couple made two unsuccessful 911 calls, SDPD officials confirmed.

The couple called once, waiting 28 seconds for an answer, police said. The couple then called again and waited 31 seconds.

They ended up driving the newborn to Rady Childrens Hospital where medical staff pronounced him dead. The San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office has ruled the death an accident.

The issue has been ongoing for years. The San Diego Police Officers Association say the dispatch center is not fully staffed with its operators on mandatory overtime for more than 3 years.

San Diego police say they have been losing people to retirement, other agencies or stress leave.

Now critics are calling out city leaders, saying they need to come clean about just how bad the issue is.

Mayoral candidates Ed Harris and Lori Saldana say the issue is out of control. They believe more should be done to protect the publics safety.

Awbry said this is the first year the full staff has been fully funded in the citys budget. He added that recruitment has been going on year-round.

"What we don't want to do is politicize it," Awbry said. "That's why Mayor Faulconer is focused on making sure we have solutions, making changes so we're actually hiring more through."

Between 7:15 p.m. and 7:45 p.m., when the family was calling for assistance, dispatch received 73 total 911 calls, according to SDPD.

The department has asked for the publics help in making sure those with emergencies can get through on 911 by using the non-emergency line for requests for information, reports of minor theft and crimes that are not in progress.

The dog, a 2-year-old American Staffordshire Terrier, is in the custody of the Department of Animal Services and under quarantine.

Any decision on the fate of the dog will be made by the department after speaking with the family.
LINCOLN  On a day when Sen. Ted Cruz braced for a string of likely losses to Donald Trump in the Northeast, Heidi Cruz told supporters in Lincoln that Nebraska will be a vital part of her husband's comeback surge.

"You are in a position of great power and that's why I've come here," she said Tuesday. "We will spend a lot of time here.

"Your vote really matters; your voice is going to be heard."

Nebraska Republicans will cast their presidential primary votes May 10, one week after Republicans in Indiana vote. Ted Cruz is counting on wins in both states to put the brakes on Trump's momentum.

"With Nebraska and Indiana, Donald Trump will not have the delegates needed" to clinch a first-ballot nomination in advance of the GOP national convention in July, state Sen. John Murante of Gretna said, and that would mean the prize is up for grabs.

"Tomorrow, it's our turn," he said.

"The people of Nebraska are going to have a voice for the first time in a long time," Murante told more than 100 supporters gathered in the Apothecary atop the Haymarket. He is state chairman of the Cruz campaign.

When the Texas senator comes to Nebraska to campaign, it appears likely he will be greeted by an endorsement from Gov. Pete Ricketts.

Cruz endorsed Ricketts in his hotly contested 2014 Republican gubernatorial primary battle, and national funding from the family of Joe Ricketts, the governor's father, has been directed at defeating Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.

At stake in Nebraska next month will be a valuable winner-take-all bloc of 36 delegates.

Heidi Cruz made campaign stops in Omaha, Norfolk, Fremont, York and Lincoln on Monday and Tuesday.

She said constitutional liberties, freedom of speech and religion and the right to bear arms are all at stake in this year's presidential race.

The U.S. Supreme Court is in balance, stuck now in a 4-4 division between conservative and moderate or liberal justices, she noted, with the next president positioned to nominate the justice who may swing the court's future decisions.

"If we don't get it right," she said, that could "destroy American values."

Heidi Cruz said President Barack Obama's "disastrous foreign policy" makes Americans less safe from terrorism.

Her husband, she said, would push for tax reform that creates a flat-rate income tax and abolishes the Internal Revenue System, institutes regulatory reform, creates "the strongest military this nation has ever seen" and secures U.S. borders from illegal immigration.

"Strong, principled conservatives do what they say they will do," Heidi Cruz said.
A teenage boy was stabbed and wounded Tuesday morning near a school in Northwest D.C., and the two suspects being chased by police ran down an alley only to find it was a dead end.

The Cardozo Senior High School student was attacked about 9 a.m. on the 4400 block of Georgia Avenue NW, near the new, unoccupied Roosevelt High School building, about a half-mile northwest of the Georgia Ave-Petworth Metro station.

Deangelo McCombs and Malik Dominique Lambert, both 19, were arrested and charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.

Two men approached the victim from behind as he got off a bus at Georgia and Webster avenues NW, police said. The victim tried run, but the men tripped him and then stabbed him, according to police.

The suspects fled and the teen walked into an emergency room with non-life-threatening injuries.

Police spent the morning searching the neighborhood for the men, who were seen being chased by police about 11:30 a.m.

"I seen two guys running from where the school was. They ran behind our construction site. We heard the fence rattling, and we just heard the police say, 'Put your hands up! Put your hands up!'" a man who asked not to be identified said.

The men ran into an alley but were stuck when the saw it was a dead end.

Police held them in the alley for almost two hours and then took them into custody for questioning.

A woman who said she was the mother of one of the suspects arrived near the alley after the men were taken away. Police refused to tell her if her son had been arrested. News4 showed her video of the two men being taken away.

"That's him," she said and walked away.

Police believe the victim may have known the two suspects.

A high school student was stabbed Monday morning on his way to Woodrow Wilson High School, as News4 reported. The attacker tried to rob the teenager and stabbed him in the leg, police said.
The man who accidentally left a 2-year-old girl in a hot car for hours last week, leading to her death, had no right to drive and drank a beer as the child sweltered in the back seat, police said.

Police and court documents obtained Tuesday say Daiquan Fields, 32, had had his driving privileges revoked and drank a beer and watched television as his girlfriend's toddler sat forgotten in the car.

Fields faces felony child neglect and involuntary manslaughter charges after he left the Annandale, Virginia, toddler in the back seat Wednesday. Court documents suggest a change in Fields' routine dropping off the 2-year-old and her siblings, who are 10 and 15, may have contributed to the tragedy.

Fields said in an interview with police that he normally dropped the toddler off with a babysitter and then took the two older children to school. But on Wednesday, they were running late dropping off the oldest child. Fields dropped off the oldest child first and then the middle child, he told police. He then returned to the family's apartment in Annandale, leaving the 2-year-old strapped in her car seat.

Fields told police he was home all day, even meeting a housing inspector who stopped by. He drank a beer and watched television before he left late in the afternoon to pick up the children's mother from her job at the mall in Pentagon City, he told police.

An investigator wrote that when Fields pulled up at the mall and sent a text message to his girlfriend, he saw the toddler in the back seat. The child appeared blue and fluid dripped from her nose, he told police. He called 911 and told the dispatcher he was trying to preform CPR. The toddler was pronounced dead at the hospital.

The temperature Wednesday was about 70 degrees, but the toddler had a body temperature of 107 degrees when she was rushed to a hospital, a search warrant says. The child had second-degree burns where her body made contact with the car seat, the document says.

Police executed a search warrant of the family's home and found suspected marijuana, a plastic pipe and other drug paraphernalia, police said. Fields reportedly told police he had last smoked marijuana Sunday, April 17, three days before the child died.

A change in routine can contribute to a child being left in a car, Don Goddard of the Fairfax County Police Department said.

"When people get into routines like this, they become accustomed to doing things in an order," he said. "If that routine or habit changes, sometimes it leads to a tragedy."

The inside of a car can reach 115 degrees in an hour when it is hotter than 70 degrees outside, according to researchers at San Francisco State University.

Fairfax County police said last week they did not believe Fields had any criminal intent.

Heatstroke is a leading cause of death among children.

"We have seen children die in hot cars on days where it was in the 50s outside, so what feels comfortable to us is not comfortable to our children," said Amber Rollins, the director of the safety group KidsAndCars.org.

The group recommends leaving a stuffed animal in a child's car seat. When you buckle in the child, move the stuffed animal to the front seat as a reminder the child is there. Or, move your bag, work identification card or even your left shoe into the back seat as a reminder.

News4 has tips on how to keep children safe, including by giving yourself visual and audible reminders that children are in the car.
The owner of a day care center in Maryland was charged with murder after a 6-month-old girl in his care was rushed to a hospital and later died, police said.

Miller "Millie" Lilliston, of Rockville, was taken to a hospital when she began vomiting on April 19 at Little Dreamers Creative Learning Center, a licensed home day care provider on Grandin Avenue, Montgomery County Police said.

Doctors found the infant had multiple injuries that were the result of repeated incidents of abuse. The baby died three days later, on April 22.

Kia Divban, 35, was charged with second-degree murder and first-degree child abuse and was held on $2 million bond.

Divband told detectives Lilliston began choking and vomiting as he fed her milk as she sat in her stroller. When the infant stopped vomiting, he took her into a bathroom to clean her face and saw she was unresponsive and her lips had turned blue.

He said he performed CPR and yelled to his wife to call 911.

At Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, doctors saw several injuries on the baby, including rib fractures and bruises on her face and body, according to police. Lilliston then was flown to Children's National Medical Center.

Doctors found injuries in various stages of healing, which were the result of "non-accidental, inflicted trauma," police said.

Lilliston's parents said she had been in good condition, with no serious injuries, when they dropped her off at day care that morning. They had a photo of Lilliston from the day before that showed no facial bruising, police said.

Police and prosecutors said Lilliston's injuries, along with evidence recovered from the day care, revealed her death was caused by injuries from repeated physical abuse.

"I think the total is 11 or 12 of her ribs were broken," Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy said. "There was head trauma."

Her death was ruled a homicide caused by multiple blunt-force injuries.

Divband, of Rockville, appeared in court Tuesday afternoon. His lawyer, Terrence McGann, said his client is innocent.

"The statement of charges, which you heard in court today, is just an allegation," he said.

Little Dreamers was registered with the Maryland State Department of Education's Office of Child Care. The business was registered in July 2015 and was not due for another inspection until this July, state officials said. No complaints about the center had been filed with the state.

Little Dreamers was inspected after Divband was charged, and the owner relinquished the license. The day care center is closed with a suspended license, state officials said.

The Little Dreamers' website said Divband and his wife ran the facility. Divand immigrated to the U.S. as a child and lived in D.C. for years, according to the page, which was later removed. He worked in early childhood education for more than a decade and had been a camp counselor in D.C., Bethesda and Silver Spring, the page said.

The prosecutor said the focus is on getting justice for Lilliston.

"[With] her injuries, she really didn't have much of a chance when she left that home," McCarthy said.

News4 has tips on how to check if your day care center is safe.
The former finance director of a Vermont nonprofit that works to combat hunger and food insecurity has agreed to plead guilty to stealing approximately $165,000 from the charity.

Sally Hartford Kirby of Essex Junction worked from 2004 until late 2015 for Hunger Free Vermont, an organization that advocates for statewide nutrition policies and programs serving vulnerable Vermonters, including senior citizens and children who rely on free school meals.

Kirby signed a plea agreement that was filed Monday in federal court in Burlington. In the document, Kirby waived indictment and agreed to plead guilty to forging securities. By signing the plea agreement, Kirby acknowledged she is aware she will face several penalties at sentencing, including restitution.

"I think it's an incredibly painful crime," said Marissa Parisi, the executive director of Hunger Free Vermont. "We never thought this would happen to us."

Parisi said Kirby had a salary of $62,000, but stole at least $165,000 from the non-profit's reserve accounts by devising phony invoices and forging her boss's signature on checks, including ones made out to herself. A local bank eventually told the charity something seemed fishy about some checks, Parisi explained, which led to the discovery of the scheme.

The non-profit said it believes the amount stolen was likely greater. However, because the organization no longer has financial records going as far back as Kirby's term of employment, Parisi noted the theft of money on top of the sum of $165,000 could not have been proven irrefutably.

In December, necn reported that the charity was "heartbroken" at learning the money was missing.

Monday, necn attempted to reach Kirby for comment at her home, but was unsuccessful.

Parisi told necn as a result of the missing money, she had to leave two staff positions vacant and deny cost-of-living pay raises to other employees.

"We're doing extra work to make sure we're keeping our services available to the community," Parisi said.

"It is, fundamentally a crime of opportunity," said Tris Coffin, who oversaw many embezzlement cases when he was U.S. Attorney for Vermont.

Coffin, who is now in private practice with the Burlington law firm Downs, Rachlin, Martin, PLLC, said his advice to organizations is they should avoid having one person with unilateral control over finances. Instead, Coffin suggested small businesses or non-profits should require co-signers on checks and institute regular audits.

"Unfortunately, a responsible business owner can't just trust people," Coffin told necn. "They have to put reasonable safeguards in place."

Parisi said since the embezzlement was detected, her financial systems have been completely retooled, with new payment methods and surprise inspections on records.

"We are, without a doubt, stronger today than we were six months ago," Parisi said. "We've certainly learned a lot, and do hope we can share what we've learned with the broader non-profit community to help protect others."

In December, Hunger Free Vermont launched what it called the "Phoenix Fund" to help with costs associated with the investigation, and to restore its reserve funds. The non-profit said Monday it still has $25,000 more to raise toward its $150,000 goal.
Fare evaders are costing the Boston-area transit system up to $42 million a year, and officials are trying to figure out what to do about it.

A two-day survey in March by Keolis, which operates commuter rail for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, found between 15 and 20 percent of customers weren't paying the correct fare.

Keolis officials told the MBTA control board Monday that fare evasion could cost the system $35 million this year. The company suggests building what it calls a "ring of steel," or automatic ticket gates, around three major Boston train stations.

The T estimates the Green Line loses up to $4.5 million per year when passengers board above-ground trains through rear doors at rush hour. Fare evasion on buses costs up to $2.5 million annually.
A woman was critically injured after a gunman opened fire, barricaded himself in a building and killed himself Tuesday afternoon in Lawrence, Massachusetts, according to police.

Investigators say the SWAT situation began to unfold around noon, when a man shot his girlfriend inside their third-floor apartment of a triple decker on Melrose Street.

Officers from the Lawrence Police Department arrived on scene before 1 p.m. Tuesday in response to a call for shots fired at 16 Melrose St. State police said the barricaded suspect was armed with a long gun.

For more than three hours, police tried to make contact with the shooter, identified by the Essex District Attorney's Office as Antonio Gonzalez, 34, but they had no luck.

Family and friends of the couple anxiously waited for word as the tense situation dragged on. Eventually, officers went inside.

A 36-year-old woman was found with a gunshot wound to the head. She is in critical condition and has not been identified.

A 4-year-old boy, one of the couple's three children, was also taken out of the building. He was not injured, but he and a 10-year-old, who was at school during the incident, are now in the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families.

Gonzalez died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to authorities.

Family and friends are relieved that all three children were unharmed, and they're grateful to police.

City officials say this is a case of domestic violence between a boyfriend and a girlfriend.
A former Vermont selectman has pleaded guilty to a federal drug charge and has agreed to forfeit $75,000 before he is sentenced later this year.

Fifty-seven-year-old Bernard Savage, of Alburgh, pleaded guilty Monday to conspiring to distribute cocaine and oxycodone between 2014 and June 2015.

He could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison and fined $1 million.

As part of the plea agreement, Savage agreed to forfeit $24,620 in currency seized at the time his home was searched last July and pay an additional $50,280 before sentencing to satisfy the $75,000 forfeiture.

Bernard Savage's attorney Karen Shingler says they look forward at sentencing "to presenting the evidence establishing the context in which these offenses took place."

Sentencing is set for Aug. 29.
The Maine attorney general's office says the LePage administration violated Maine's Freedom of Access Act by holding the first blue ribbon education commission hearing behind closed doors.

Assistant Attorney General Brenda Kielty, who handles FOA issues for the attorney general, said she's aware of no exemption that allowed the closed meeting on Monday.

The Blue Ribbon Commission to Reform Public Education Funding and Improve Student Performance held its first meeting Monday in the governor's mansion. Commission member Sen. Justin Alfond, a Portland Democrat, said LePage barred reporters and two state lawmakers from attending.

A spokeswoman for Republican Gov. Paul LePage, Adrienne Bennett, said the meeting was an informal, "get-to-know-you gathering" before the commission starts its work at a later date.
Jonathan Calvin, a New Hampshire man accused of carjacking two people, was arraigned from his hospital room on Monday.

Calvin, 31, of Nashua is currently at the Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts.

He was arraigned on a fugitive from justice charge stemming from his alleged involvement in multiple crimes.

Judge David Frank ordered the defendant to be held without bail.

Calvin will undergo a competency evaluation. His next scheduled court date is May 23.

Authorities say a New Hampshire man stabbed a good Samaritan who stopped to help him, stole her car and then led police on a pursuit before causing an eight-vehicle crash. State police say the carjacking was reported Friday afternoon in Nashua, and the vehicle crashed on the Everett Turnpike shortly afterward. Authorities say 31-year-old Nashua resident Jonathan J. Calvin faces multiple charges
The city of Rutland, Vermont, is opening its doors to Syrian refugees.

Mayor Christopher Louras announced Tuesday his community will resettle up to 100 Syrians and other refugees fleeing oppression and violence in their homelands.

The mayor dismissed concerns about possible security risks refugees may pose, saying the federal government rigorously screens refugees.

"Do not give into your fears, because that's all they are - fears and not facts," Louras said.

"We have a chance here to do good in the world. We have a chance to be an example. Not just for Vermont, but for the world at large," said William Notte, the president of the Rutland Board of Aldermen.

The refugees could start arriving in Rutland as early as October. The Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program will help connect them with housing and work.

Louras' announcement did not go unnoticed by prominent lawmakers.

According to a statement released by Governor Peter Shumlin, Vermont would be a state "welcoming those fleeing war and violence in Syria and elsewhere."

U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders along with Rep. Peter Welch issued a joint statement saying they were proud of Rutland's action on the issue.

"Struggling families, fleeing peril and motivated to start their lives anew, always have and always will enrich America and contribute immeasurably to our state," the statement read.
In Vermont, winter just won't give up, even though the calendar says it's spring.

On Route 7 in Charlotte Tuesday morning, road spray made visibility poor, but the wet snow wasn't sticking to paved surfaces.

At Middlebury College, Marquise McGraw was snapping selfies in the snow after wrapping up an economics class he teaches, betting his friends in New York City will be surprised to see it's still snowing where he now lives.

"It's May on Sunday and I was expecting sunshine and 70 degrees," McGraw said, smiling. "That's not this. But this is okay. One last hurrah for winter!"

Communities at higher elevations, such as Duxbury, were expecting more accumulation than the valleys.

"We never really got to ski this year, so maybe we'll get back out there a little bit," said Sola Farquhar, a Middlebury College senior.

Cold-loving skiers and riders made a beeline to Killington Resort, eager to enjoy the waning days of the 2015-2016 ski season with some fresh snow to make late-April feel more like the heart of winter.

"I could have this year-round and be pretty happy," said Alicia Titzmann, a snowboarder who hit the slopes during her lunch break from work. "Moved here to Killington because of the late season, and I guess this year, we're getting a few surprises!"

"I'm glad it's snowing this time of year, because I'm not ready to stop skiing yet," added skier James Osler of Stamford, Connecticut, who was at Killington Tuesday. "I thought we'd get more snow today but I'll take what we can get at this point, because the season has not been that good at all."

In Rutland, Tuesday morning brought a sloppy mix of sleet and rain.

Meals on Wheels driver Patty West thought she'd be done with this nastiness by now, but her mission of nutrition and visits with Rutland seniors has her out in all elements.

"A lot of people depend on us," West said, adding the conditions were not going to keep her from her appointed rounds.

Snow totals varied around the state, and depended a lot on elevation. Many communities saw two to four inches, but the central Vermont community of Williamstown reported more than five.

Of course, any snowfall this late in the year likely will not last long at all. Vermont's expecting warmer temperatures and sunnier skies over the next several days.
Police have arrested a suspect in the murder of a 22-year-old man during his birthday party at a New Haven club in 2013.

The murder happened inside the Cheetah Club, at 169 East St., which is no longer in business, according to police.

A young man celebrating his birthday was shot to death inside a club in New Haven.

The club was hosting a hip-hop party and rap performance that night and officers who were patrolling the parking lot next to the business heard a gunshot at 1:23 a.m. on Aug. 11, 2013, police said. Then they saw customers running from the club.

Inside, police found Torrance Dawkins with a gunshot to the head.

Officers reviewed surveillance video and said it showed the shooter specifically targeted Dawkins, who had just turned 22 years old at midnight.

On Friday, police obtained a warrant for Jean Bruny, 24, of Brooklyn, New York.

He is currently in federal custody and bond is set at $1 million.
A Vermont man arraigned Tuesday in court in connection with a fatal crash that happened near Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts, is out on bail.

Joseph Castano, 20, of Williston, was arraigned in Salem District Court on charges of motor vehicle homicide by operating under the influence (liquor) and negligent operation causing death, minor in possession of alcohol, marked lanes violations and speeding.

Police say he was traveling down Hale Street early Saturday morning and crashed into a pole.

Craig Sampson, 19, also of Williston, was taken to Beverly Hospital, where he was pronounced dead after the crash, police said.

Castano was injured in the crash. Sampson and Castano were friends.

Police believe alcohol and speed played a factor in the crash, which remains under investigation.

The conditions of the $25,000 bail include sobriety checks, a driving ban, and no contact with the Sampson's family.

Castano will return to court on June 7 for a pre-trial hearing.
The Green Pastures Christian bookshop in Dereham has won a national award for providing boxes of Christian books to 21 local schools.

The Green Pastures Christian bookshop in Dereham has won a national award for providing boxes of Christian books to 21 local schools.

Norma's care home jigsaw challenge complete A resident at Norwich-based care home Corton House has completed an incredible 70 jigsaw puzzles in celebration of the homes 70th anniversary this year. Read more

Norwich charity's appeal to support Palestinian students A Norwich educational charity, set up in memory of a Norwich Anglican priest, to support students from a Palestinian refugee camp, is inviting people to support its Christmas appeal  to be launched on November 29. Read more

Norfolk drug and alcohol charity pays tribute to its founder Andy Sexton, CEO of the Matthew Project, introduces a series of tributes from the charity to its founder, Peter Farley. Read more

Cliff look alike at Cromer Church breakfast Cliff Richard tribute performer Will Chandler will be the speaker at a special Mens Breakfast at Cromer Parish Hall next month, and all men are welcome to come along. Read more

Heartsease Lane Methodist church to close As part of a reorganisation of the Norwich Methodist Circuit, Heartsease Lane Methodist Church will be closing towards the end of the year. Read more

Free Julian of Norwich reflection and prayer day The Friends of Julian of Norwich present a free Quiet Half-Day with Robert Fruehwirth, author and former Priest Director of the Julian Centre, on Saturday November 12, 10.30am-2pm. Read more

What it means for us to repent Nigel Fox believes that now is the time for a tide of repentance, and shares his thoughts about what that actually means for our society. Read more

Christmas card shop opens in Norwich church Thousands of Christmas cards from around 30 local Norfolk charities have gone on sale today (October 19) at the Original Norwich Charity Christmas Card Shop inside St Peter Mancroft church in Norwich city centre. Read more

Revelation Christian Resource Centre and Cafe Revelation in Norwich is a Christian resource centre, offering a bookshop, a meeting place and a welcoming refuge for refreshment open to visitors of any faith or none. Read more

Farewell as Yarmouth church leader moves on Captain Marie Burr, the Salvation Army leader in Great Yarmouth, has paid tribute to everyone at the church and charity after she left her post at the end of last month to move to a new role. Read more

Norwich Cathedral chorister in BBC final Norwich Cathedral chorister Alice Platten has her sights set on being crowned BBC Young Chorister of the Year after reaching the final stages of the prestigious nationwide competition. Read more

Norwich to hear pastor, Policeman and tramp tale Essex Baptist Pastor Dave McDowell has been a Policeman, fed orphans in India and lived under a boat as a tramp. He will tell his remarkable story at the October dinner of Norwich FGB on Wednesday October 26. Read more

Pioneer UK leader speaks at Sheringham church Ness Wilson, national leader of the Pioneer network of churches, was the main speaker at a day of teaching and worship held at Lighthouse Community Church in Sheringham on 12 October, to be followed up by Word and Worship sessions at October half term. Read more

Norwich event to give tips on bouncing forwards St Stephens in Norwich will be hosting an evening in October with Patrick Regan OBE, as he explores themes from his book Bouncing Forwards. Read more

Youth for Christ lights a fire in north Breckland North Breckland Youth for Christ will be putting on a mini residential camp this year to coincide with Bonfire Night. Read more

Delia Smith interviewed at Norwich church Top TV cook and well-known writer Delia Smith spoke about her faith at SOUL Churchs weekly Chapel gathering on October 11. Read more

Children's Christian holiday club in Briston A half term childrens holiday bible club is taking place in Briston next week, and there is no charge to take part in the fun. Read more
Data science may have dominated recent discussions about IT skills in chronically short supply, but it's not the only area facing a shortage. Cloud computing is another big one, and on Monday the OpenStack Foundation launched a new program it hopes will help.

The group's new Certified OpenStack Administrator (COA) exam is designed to give cloud professionals a way to prove their worth while also helping employers identify qualified candidates. Originally announced in October at OpenStack Summit Tokyo, the performance-based exam can now be delivered virtually anywhere in the world through the OpenStack Foundation's training marketplace. It is the foundation's first professional certification offering.

Cloud computing has challenged companies to re-skill engineers and redefine culture and processes, said Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation.

OpenStack was among the 10 top-paying tech skills identified by IT careers site Dice earlier this year, earning qualified professionals an average yearly salary of US$138,579.

The number of OpenStack job listings doubled in 2015, according to jobs site Indeed.com.

A Certified OpenStack Administrator typically has at least six months of OpenStack experience as well as the skills required to operate and manage an OpenStack cloud, the foundation said.

Representatives from dozens of training companies around the world -- some of which offer their own certification programs -- helped to define the exam's requirements. Some will bundle the COA exam with their training programs.

The exam will be available on a limited basis at this week's OpenStack Summit in Austin, Texas, as well. Intensive training courses will be offered free of charge to registered participants by sponsors including Cloud Foundry, Mirantis, Rackspace, Red Hat, Solinea and SUSE.
It might have been a pretty nice life for Thomas Hauk -- for a while anyway -- but frauds usually explode and this one was nothing different.

The US Marshals this week announced the auction of the Hauks spoils -- 25 vehicles, including Ferrari, Mclaren, BW and Porche cars worth more than $1.5 million.

+More on Network World: +

According to the United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, Hauk embezzled over $4 million from investors from his firms clients and just went to town with it. Aside from the high-end cars and motorcycles, during a five-year period, Hauk spent approximately $1,207,639 using three credit cards to purchase such items as: $30,500 at Hannoush Jewelry on a 2.5 karat diamond ring, $4,725 at Hannoush Jewelry on a 1887 Carrera bracelet, $6,458 at Hannoush Jewelry on a Tag Heuer Carrera watch, $4,464 at Hannoush Jewelry on another Carrera 1887 bracelet, $8,000 at Custom Wheels related to vehicle accessories, $10,123 at Renos Powersports related to motorcycles and vehicle accessories, $24,555 on insurance related expenses, $9,700 on Paypal transactions, $8,819 on airline related expenses, $6,468 on hotel related expenses, and $5,436 on Apple products and services.

Among the cars Hauk purchased a 2006 Ford GT for $223,249, a 2009 Ferrari for $205,953 and a 2014 Ducati motorcycle for $64,160. Hauk stored the vehicles and motorcycles in three storage units he purchased in Kansas City, Mo., for $163,500, the US Marshals office stated.

According to the US Marshals, Hauk perpetrated what it called an On-the-Books fraud scheme. The perpetrator of an On-the-Books scheme attempts to balance debits and credits in the accounting system to obfuscate transactions and avoid detection. Hauk stole money through a variety of methods and created false accounting entries in his companys -- Assured Management -- accounting system. Hauk deposited checks from the victims into his business accounts and then wrote checks and cashiers checks from his companies to his personal accounts and his trust.

Hauk was employed as an accountant at Assured Management from approximately 2005 to July 2015.

+More on Network World: FBI grows Cyber Most Wanted list with Syrian Electronic Army members+

The U.S. Marshals are holding the live and Web simulcast auction in Kansas City, Missouri, Thursday April 28.

The sale follows a February federal court forfeiture order related to the criminal case against Thomas Hauk in the Western District of Missouri. Hauk pleaded guilty to a $4 million embezzlement scheme on December 22, 2015.

Hauks case is currently in the sentencing phase which sees him facing a 16-count federal case with five counts of bank fraud, two counts of wire fraud, five counts of counterfeit securities and four counts of money laundering. Hauk is subject to a sentence of up to 30 years in federal prison without parole for each count of bank fraud, 20 years in federal prison for each count of wire fraud, 10 years in federal prison for each count of counterfeit securities and 10 years in federal prison for each count of money laundering, the US Marshals stated.

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Youd think youd hear about a hack that affects over 7 million people  unless the company chooses to cover it up. Thankfully that is changing thanks to security researcher Troy Hunt, via Have I Been Pwned.

Scale-wise, it's a big breach. Lifeboat is listed in Have I Been Pwneds top 10 breaches; it currently is ranked eighth with 7,089,395 compromised accounts.

In search results, Lifeboat Network is summarized as Join eight million others in a game changing Minecraft Pocket Edition experience. The Pocket Edition is the mobile version of Minecraft. Once Minecraft PE is installed on a mobile device, a user connects to the Lifeboat Network and registers a username and password using a valid email address. In the words of Lifeboat, Use a real email  You will need to use it if if [sic] you ever forget your password, so be sure it is valid. By the way, we recommend short, but difficult to guess passwords. This is not online banking.

Of course its not online banking; you should pray for the safety of any poor soul using the same password for a game that they use for banking as it likely happens. The chances are much greater that many people reuse their Lifeboat password for other online sites. A prime example of that was given by Hennihenner, a self-described casual gamer in Germany.

Hennihenner was notified by Have I Been Pwneds Troy Hunt to help verify if a new breach was legit. It was, and Hennihenner was spooked, worried about accounts he considers important, such as YouTube, Reddit, Twitter and Steam, because he had used the same password since 2011. Although he knew it was a bad idea, he had justified his password reuse by thinking he only used safe websites or thought no one would hack an account that is not connected to money. But after learning Lifeboat had been breached and his password was floating around in the cyber ether, he got to work changing all his passwords.

Why did Hennihenner not change his password after Lifeboat notified him about the breach? Because Lifeboat didnt notify him about the breach, which occurred in January. In fact, it seems likely that Lifeboat didnt notify any of the more than 7 million users. Instead, a Lifeboat representative told Motherboard:

When this happened [in] early January we figured the best thing for our players was to quietly force a password reset without letting the hackers know they had limited time to act. We did this over a period of some weeks. We retain no personal information (name, address, age) about our players, so none was leaked.

Hunt told Motherboard he was notified of the Lifeboat breach by an individual actively involved in trading whos sent me other data in the past.

Regarding the fact that Lifeboat tried to cover it up, Hunt said, Let me put the insanity of this in context: multiple people I contacted were left totally exposed with no idea that their long-held, tried-and-tested password they'd used everywhere was now in the hands of hackers.

Like it or not, this is what people do, Hunt wrote. Even if developers of a new site are careful with setting up account management features, people will use credentials that will unlock their bank account or, even worse, their email.

The passwords, according to Hunt, had been stored with a weak MD5 hash and were not salted, meaning it was very close to useless cryptographic storage. Combine that with Lifeboat not alerting users to the breach, and Hunt said, I'm not sure that I've seen such a blatant disregard for personal account information before. It's no wonder I'm kept so busy these days!

In defense of not notifying its users of the breach, another Lifeboat spokesperson told Motherboard, We have not received any reports of anyone being damaged by this.

If a user had no clue their data was in the hands of bad actors thanks to the site being hacked, then there would be no reason for anyone to contact Lifeboat with a damaging report. Now that the hack is hitting the news, I guess well see if that holds true.
The ninth annual Verizon Data Breach Report came out this morning with bad news on multiple fronts, including click-through rates on phishing messages, how long it takes companies to detect breaches, and even whether companies spot the breaches at all.

Phishing emails continued to be a primary starting point for attacks, said Bryan Sartin, executive director, global security services at Verizon.

The number of phishing email messages that were opened hit 30 percent in this year's report, up from 23 percent last year.

In addition, 12 percent of users don't just open the email but open the attachment as well, while 11 percent follow links in the email to online forms where they then input sensitive data such as login credentials.

[ MORE FROM VERIZON: Verizon provides a behind the scenes look at data breaches ]

The median time for the first user of a phishing campaign to open the malicious email was 1 minute, 40 seconds and the median time to the first click on the attachment was 3 minutes, 45 seconds.

The vast majority of the attacks, or 89 percent, were by financially-motivated crime syndicates, and the other 9 percent by state-affiliated actors.

Another problem that continues to plague enterprises is the lack of basic two-factor authentication, said Sartin. "It would mitigate an entire swathe of these breaches."

In fact, 63 percent of all breaches included the use of stolen credentials, up from 51 percent in last year's report.

Sartin suggested that enterprises might be getting buried in all the complexity of operational security management, or be too driven by compliance.

"Sometimes people get lost and can't see the forest through the trees," he said.

Then, once the attacker is in the system, enterprises are actually getting worse at detecting the problem.

In 92 percent of breaches, it took attackers just minutes to get into a company after the first attempt, with 30 percent able to exfiltrate the first data within hours, and another 68 percent able to get data out within days. But the number of enterprises that were able to spot a breach as it was happening in "days or less" was less than 25 percent.

In fact, the gap between the time to compromise and the time to discovery rose from 62 percent in last year's report to 84 percent this year.

In fact, the number of breaches detected internally, or via fraud detection mechanisms such as those in the credit card industry, have also fallen. Instead, most breaches are now detected by law enforcement authorities or other third parties.

"Third-party detection and law enforcement collaboration is getting better," said Sartin.

Once security experts take down one command and control server, for example, they may find that the same infrastructure was used to go after a number of victims. They also spot sensitive information as it shows up for sale on the dark web, he said.

This story, "Enterprises fall behind on protecting against phishing, detecting breaches" was originally published by CSO .
Four years ago tensions between OpenStack and Amazon Web Services were at a high. The open source cloud computing platform was being developed as an alternative to AWSs and members of the community spoke despairingly about the public cloud behemoth.

Fast-forward to today, and the relationship between these two cloud platforms seems quite undefined.

+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: OpenStack fending off Amazon, Microsoft and VMware | OpenStack's "Killer use case": Telecos and NFV +

OpenStack Foundation survey Amazon Web Services is the top cloud that OpenStack users connect to.

According to OpenStacks survey of its members, AWS was the top cloud that OpenStack users connect their clouds to. More than three-quarters of respondents claimed to provide integration between their OpenStack clouds and AWS. But at the OpenStack Summit this week in Austin, Amazon seems to be somewhat of an elephant in the room: No ones really talking about it.

During the Day 1 keynote, AWS was not mentioned. OpenStack is a cloud conference and Amazon Web Services is arguably the most dominant vendor in the cloud market. Furthermore, users attending this conference show they connect their clouds to AWS.

After the keynotes OpenStack Foundation Executive Director Jonathan Bryce told me there are efforts within the OpenStack Community to codify formal integration between the open source software and AWS. Theres a working group working on integration with Amazons Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) but, he said its basically just not a high priority in the overall Nova compute project.

Some people argue the OpenStack project doesn't need to provide integration with AWS; vendors will do that for customers. Alan Clark, the chairman of the OpenStack Board of Directors and Director of Open Source at SUSE, says his companys software runs on customers premises and in AWS. Red Hat, Ubuntu and a myriad of other OpenStack vendor products run in both environments and enable customers to build hybrid clouds spanning the two.

At the conference officials from Microsoft are here touting their integrations with OpenStack. Why cant AWS and OpenStack just get along?
Dropbox has a futuristic vision for how its users will be able to share massive files and have quick access to them on their computers, without their hard drives overflowing.

The cloud storage company announced a new initiative at its Open conference in London on Tuesday called Project Infinite. It's a push to create a new Dropbox interface that allows users to see all of the files they've stored in the cloud in their computer's file explorer without requiring them to keep local copies of each document, image, spreadsheet or other file.

With Project Infinite, users will be able to manage their files in the cloud by moving them around inside the Mac OS X Finder or Windows File Explorer, just like they would any local files that are taking up space on their hard drives.

Right now, Dropbox users who want to see the items they have stored in the company's cloud among all their other files need to have those files downloaded to their Mac or PC -- just like they did when Dropbox launched its product to the public seven and a half years ago.

Users can save storage space on their computers with a selective sync feature that only downloads some files, but the data people leave out can't be seen on their computers at all.

Project Infinite would take Dropboxs basic concept of creating folders that sync to the cloud and make it easier to work with an epic volume of files. It's part of the company's emphasis on helping users share files between one another, specially business users who pay for one of the company's premium tiers.

There's still a lot the company hasn't said about the new initiative. Dropbox won't say when it plans to include Project Infinite in the publicly available version of its desktop applications, or even which customers it will be available to when it does launch. (It's entirely possible that the company's millions of free users will be left out in the cold.)

Still, it's a cool tech demo that could help convince more businesses to choose Dropbox when they're considering a paid cloud storage service. The company is pushing hard for commercial adoption and announced Tuesday that it has more than four times the commercial customers now in Europe than it did two years ago.

The company also announced a new File Properties API that will allow people to apply custom metadata to files stored in Dropbox for use with third party tools. That should help better enable applications like digital loss prevention services and data migration services.
Nearly 50 business leaders, including many enterprise IT company executives, have joined dozens of governors and educational system representatives in urging Congress to support the teaching of computer science in every K-12 school across the United States.

An open letter/petition, titled "Offer Computer Science in our public schools," had accumulated more than 1,000 signatures on Change.org as of Tuesday morning. The petition was launched by the CS Education Coalition in partnership with Code.org.

MORE: Top 25 computer science colleges, ranked by alumni earnings

Among those backing the petition are Bill and Melinda Gates, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

While computer science has attracted a growing number of students, as evidenced by a building boom on college campuses, supporters of the petition say much more needs to be done in light of more than 1 in 10 job openings in the United States being in computing fields, such as programming. The petition reads in part:

"Technology is transforming society at an unprecedented rate. Whether its smartphones or social networks, self-driving cars or personalized medicine, nothing embodies the American Dream so much as the opportunity to change or even reinvent the world with technology. And participating in this world requires access to computer science in our schools. We ask you to provide funding for every student in every school to have an opportunity to learn computer science."

The CS Education Coalition says that $48 million in new private contributions have been committed to the cause, including fresh $10 million pledges by Google and Microsoft. The petition urges Congress to approve $250 million in federal funding to enable school districts to begin offering or broaden their computer science courses.
Plans for 'much needed' replacement school get thumbs up from majority of residents

THEALE residents are showing their support for a much- needed new primary school in the village.

West Berkshire Council has said that it risks losing 7m of government funds to replace the school, which is rated by Ofsted as outstanding, and is oversubscribed.

However, Theale Parish Council has yet to decide whether it will relinquish five acres of land at North Street playing fields as the site for the new school.

As reported in last weeks Newbury Weekly News, Theale Parish Council objected to the new school plans as it felt the district council had failed to provide adequate information.

Concerns about traffic and the impact on childrens safety led parish councillors to their objection.

And while villagers recognise the urgent need for a new school, they are divided over the chosen site. The application has attracted 65 letters of support and 13 objections

One resident said: A village such as Theale should have a primary school that is big enough for all of the children of the village, this is of huge benefit to the cohesiveness of a community.

The current school is of inadequate size and facilities for the number of children who attend. They deserve so much more, a school building and playing fields that suit the outstanding teaching provision they receive. These plans deliver this.

I think the location is ideal and is such that many families can continue to walk to school.

I do not think the traffic will be any worse than the traffic at the current school, possibly better as it may discourage use of Englefield Road as a rat run. I hope this project can continue with a few delays as possible.

Sam Kahliq said: Securing the best for our future generation is vital, especially in a time when nationally the government is making so many cut- backs that are impacting our childrens future education, for example the possible closure of libraries, children centres etc.

We/you have an opportunity to provide a much-needed service for the children of Theale, one that is well overdue.

The school has been doing so well with such limited space; and as a result resources too... imagine what they could do with a new school that will not constrain or inhibit their abilities to get the best out of our future children.

The management committee of Theale Village Hall, which lies opposite the proposed school, has objected to the plans.

The plans include removing a hedge to provide footpaths for parents and children. However, the committee said that the land was part of a deed of gift to the village hall and that it had not received any correspondence from West Berkshire Council to discuss the land ownership.

The committee also objected to parents potentially using the private car park as a drop off and pick up point, and that parents would block the car park entrance: This arrangement would endanger pedestrians walking between parked cars, and negotiating cars accessing/exiting the car park.

A final decision will be made by West Berkshire Council and a decision is expected to be made by Thursday, June 23.

View the application entering 16/00724/COMIND into the councils planning website.
TUESDAY, April 26, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Flu shots may be more effective when people get them in the morning than in the afternoon, a new study suggests.

British researchers assessed 276 people 65 and older who received vaccinations against three different flu strains between 2011 and 2013. The patients received the vaccines either between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m., or 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.

People in the morning group had a much larger increase in antibodies against two of the flu strains one month after vaccination, the researchers found. However, with the third flu strain, there was no significant difference between the morning and afternoon groups.

"We know that there are fluctuations in immune responses throughout the day and wanted to examine whether this would extend to the antibody response to vaccination," said lead investigator Anna Phillips. She's with the University of Birmingham's School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences.

"Being able to see that morning vaccinations yield a more efficient response will not only help in strategies for flu vaccination, but might provide clues to improve vaccination strategies more generally," Phillips said in a university news release.

According to study co-author Janet Lord, "A significant amount of resource is used to try and prevent flu infection each year, particularly in older adults, but less than half make enough antibody to be fully protected."

Lord, a professor at the university's Institute of Inflammation and Aging, said, "Our results suggest that by shifting the time of those vaccinations to the morning we can improve their efficiency with no extra cost to the health service."

The researchers said they plan to conduct a larger study on the timing of flu vaccinations to test their hypothesis. And they will also examine if morning vaccinations boost the effectiveness of the pneumococcal vaccine, which protects against pneumonia.

The study was published online April 26 in the journal Vaccine.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about flu vaccination.
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NOTICE: This Consumer Medicine Information (CMI) is intended for persons living in Australia.

Fosaprepitant dimeglumine Consumer Medicine Information

What is in this leaflet This leaflet answers some common questions about EMEND IV. It does not contain all the available information. It does not take the place of talking to your doctor or pharmacist. All medicines have risks and benefits. Your doctor has weighed the risks of you using EMEND IV against the benefits they expect it will have for you. If you have any concerns about using this medicine, ask your doctor or pharmacist. Keep this leaflet with the medicine. You may need to read it again.

What EMEND IV is used for Chemotherapy Induced Nausea and Vomiting EMEND IV, in combination with other medicines, is used to prevent nausea (feeling sick) and vomiting associated with cancer chemotherapy. EMEND IV belongs to a group of medicines called neurokinin 1 (NK1) receptor antagonists. It works by blocking the actions of substances in your brain, called substance P neurokinins, that cause nausea and vomiting. Your doctor may have prescribed EMEND IV for another reason. Ask your doctor if you have any questions about why EMEND IV has been prescribed for you. The safety and effectiveness of EMEND IV in children and teenagers under the age of 18 years have not been established. EMEND IV is not addictive.

Before you are given EMEND IV

When you must not be given it Do not use EMEND IV if you have an allergy to EMEND IV, aprepitant or any of the ingredients listed at the end of this leaflet. Do not use EMEND IV if you are taking: cisapride, used to treat stomach reflux pimozide, used to treat psychotic conditions terfenadine (Teldane#) and astemizole (Hismanal#), antihistamines used for allergic conditions, including hayfever # not available in Australia St John's Wort - a herb used to treat depression Using EMEND IV with these medicines may cause serious or life-threatening reactions. Do not use EMEND IV if you are breast-feeding or plan to breast-feed. It is not known if EMEND IV passes into breast milk. You and your doctor should discuss whether you should stop breast-feeding or not be given EMEND IV. Do not use EMEND IV if: the packaging is torn or shows signs of tampering the expiry date on the pack has passed. If you use this medicine after the expiry date has passed, it may not work. If you are not sure whether you should start using EMEND IV, talk to your doctor.

Before you are given it Tell your doctor if: 1. you have or have had any medical conditions 2. you are pregnant or intend to become pregnant EMEND IV has not been studied in pregnant women. EMEND IV should be used during pregnancy only if clearly needed. 3. you have any allergies to any other medicines or any other substances, such as foods, preservatives or dyes. If you have not told your doctor about any of the above, tell them before you are given any EMEND IV.

Taking other medicines Tell your doctor if you are taking any other medicines, including medicines that you buy without a prescription from your pharmacy, supermarket or health food shop. Some medicines should not be taken with EMEND IV. These include: cisapride, used to treat stomach reflux pimozide, used to treat psychotic conditions terfenadine (Teldane#) and astemizole (Hismanal#), antihistamines used for allergic conditions, including hayfever # not available in Australia St John's Wort - a herb used to treat depression Using EMEND IV with these medicines may cause serious or life-threatening reactions. Some medicines and EMEND IV may interfere with each other. These include: warfarin, used to prevent blood clots. Your doctor may order additional blood tests to check the effect of warfarin after you have been given EMEND IV. rifampicin, an antibiotic used to treat tuberculosis and other infections ketoconazole, used to treat fungal infections oral contraceptive pills (also known as the pill). Alternative or "back-up" measures of contraception should be used during treatment with EMEND IV and for one month following the last dose of EMEND IV paroxetine, used to treat depression, and obsessive compulsive and panic disorders diltiazem, used to treat angina and high blood pressure midazolam, triazolam, or alprazolam, used as sedatives or to treat anxiety or panic disorder dexamethasone or methylprednisolone, steroid medicines used for a variety of conditions certain cancer chemotherapy agents, including etoposide, vinorelbine, paclitaxel tolbutamide, used to treat diabetes phenytoin, used to treat epilepsy These medicines may be affected by EMEND IV or may affect how well it works. You may need different amounts of your medicine, or you may need to take different medicines. Your doctor or pharmacist has more information on medicines to be careful with or avoid while using EMEND IV.

How EMEND IV is given

How much to be given EMEND IV is to be given intravenously by your doctor and it contains 150 mg of fosaprepitant as the active ingredient. EMEND IV must only be administered by your doctor or nurse. Day 1 (Day of chemotherapy) - EMEND IV 150 mg may be given to you as an infusion over 20-30 minutes approximately 30 minutes before you start your chemotherapy treatment. Follow all directions given to you by your doctor carefully. They may differ from the information contained in this leaflet.

How long to use it Chemotherapy Induced Nausea and Vomiting EMEND IV 150 mg is given only on the day of chemotherapy.

While you are using EMEND IV

Things you must do Women taking oral contraceptive pills for birth control should also use other methods of contraception during treatment with EMEND IV and for one month following the last dose of EMEND IV This is because oral contraceptive pills may not work as well when using EMEND IV. If you become pregnant while using EMEND IV, tell your doctor immediately. If you are about to be started on any new medicine, tell your doctor and pharmacist that you are using EMEND IV.

Things to be careful of Be careful driving or operating machinery until you know how EMEND IV affects you. EMEND IV generally does not cause any problems with your ability to drive a car or operate machinery. However, as with many medicines, it may cause certain side effects in some people, including tiredness and dizziness. Make sure you know how you react to EMEND IV before you drive a car or operate machinery.

Things that may be helpful to manage your chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting Small, frequent meals or eating a snack before your chemotherapy treatment may help you to tolerate it better. Talk to your doctor, pharmacist or nurse for more information.

Side Effects Tell your doctor or pharmacist as soon as possible if you do not feel well while you are being given EMEND IV. EMEND IV helps most people with nausea and vomiting associated with cancer chemotherapy, but it may have unwanted side effects in a few people. All medicines can have side effects. Sometimes they are serious, most of the time they are not. You may need medical treatment if you get some of the side effects. Ask your doctor or pharmacist to answer any questions you may have. Tell your doctor if you notice or have any of the following and they worry you: tiredness generally feeling unwell muscle weakness headache, dizziness constipation, diarrhoea indigestion, heartburn, loss of appetite gas from the stomach or bowel, wind hiccups/hiccoughs vomiting disorientation chills hot flushes bloating pain on urination changes to your walking pattern acne injection site pain hardening at the injection site redness and/or itching at infusion site Most of these are the more common side effects. For the most part these have been mild. Tell your doctor immediately if you notice the following: slow, fast or irregular heart beat severe upper stomach pain symptoms of severe sunburn, such as redness, itching, pain, swelling or blistering signs of anaemia such as, being short of breath when exercising, looking pale frequent signs of infections such as fever, severe chills, sore throat or mouth ulcers Infusion site reactions (ISR) at or near the infusion site. These reactions have happened with EMEND IV. Most severe ISR have happened with a certain type of chemotherapy medicine that can burn or blister your skin (vesicant) with side effects, including pain, swelling and redness. Death of skin tissue (necrosis) has happened in some people getting this type of chemotherapy medicine. These may be serious side effects. You may need urgent medical attention. These side effects are rare. If any of the following happen, tell your doctor immediately or go to accident and emergency at your nearest hospital: swelling of the face, lips, mouth, throat or tongue which may cause difficulty in breathing or swallowing pinkish, itchy swellings on the skin, also called hives or nettlerash severe skin reactions, including the inside of the nose or mouth serious decrease of blood pressure These may be serious side effects. If you have them, you may be having a serious allergic reaction to EMEND IV. You may need urgent medical attention. These side effects are rare. Other side effects not listed above may also occur in some patients. Tell your doctor if you notice any other effects. Do not be alarmed by this list of possible side effects. You may not experience any of them.

After using EMEND IV

Storage EMEND IV will be stored in the pharmacy or on the ward. It is kept in a refrigerator where the temperature stays between 2-8C.

Product description

What it looks like EMEND IV comes as a white to off-white powder in a glass vial.

Ingredients Active ingredient: Each vial of EMEND IV 150 mg contains fosaprepitant dimeglumine equivalent to 150 mg of fosaprepitant free acid. Inactive ingredients: disodium edetate polysorbate 80 lactose sodium hydroxide or hydrochloric acid EMEND IV does not contain gluten, sucrose, tartrazine or any other azo dyes.
Streptococcus pyogenes (beta-hemolytic group A streptococcus) represent the most common bacterial cause of tonsillopharyngitis that necessitates antibiotic therapy. Regardless of its widespread prevalence, the ideal approach to disease management still remains a matter of debate.

In a majority of cases, streptococcal pharyngitis represents a self-limited illness, even if no antimicrobial therapy is administered. The primary goal of treatment is the prevention of acute rheumatic fever, but benefits also include alleviation of symptoms, shortening the duration of the disease, limiting household spread, and averting suppurative complications.

Image Credit: Inside Creative House / Shutterstock

Penicillin as a drug of choice

The value of penicillin in the management of strep throat was already established in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and it remained the treatment of choice to this day. The main reasons are the uniform susceptibility of Streptococcus pyogenes strains to this beta-lactam antibiotic and its effectiveness in both primary and secondary prevention of acute rheumatic fever.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), the American Heart Association (AHA), the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) endorse either a single intramuscular injection (benzathine penicillin G) or a 10-day course of oral treatment (phenoxymethylpenicillin or penicillin V) as a first-line approach.

If the therapy is initiated within the first 48 hours of illness, a prompt resolution of fever ensues and the spread of Streptococcus pyogenes is contained (therefore children can return to school). Failure to respond clinically should cast doubt on the accuracy of the diagnosis.

An adjunctive therapy with anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen and diclofenac, or analgesic agents such as paracetamol can help in reducing severe symptoms and control high fever. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that acetylsalicylic acid (Aspirin) should not be used in children in order to avoid rare, but potentially fatal Reyes syndrome.

Alternative treatment options

Sometimes penicillin is substituted with oral amoxicillin suspension due to its better taste, which is also available in the form of chewable tablets. The standard regimen is a 10-day course, three times per day (although there is some evidence that a once per day regimen is of comparable effectiveness).

In patients with penicillin allergy (and without immediate-type hypersensitivity to beta-lactam antibiotics), first-generation oral cephalosporins are acceptable alternatives. Still, there is increased usage of more expensive, broad-spectrum cephalosporins of second and third generation without clinical justification.

The penicillin-allergic individuals may be treated with erythromycin, azithromycin or clarithromycin. However, approximately one-third of patients do not complete treatment with erythromycin due to drug-induced adverse reactions. Furthermore, extensive use of these antimicrobial drugs can result in a community-wide increase of erythromycin-resistant beta-hemolytic group A streptococcus.

Certain studies suggest that azithromycin administered at a dose of 60 mg per kilogram of body weight in children or given for 3 days at a dose of 500 mg per day in adults may be more effective than other treatment schemes in eradicating and curing streptococcal tonsillopharyngitis. There is also a factor of improved compliance to the treatment.

In conclusion, albeit several antimicrobial drugs appear to be effective in eradicating Streptococcus pyogenes present in the throat, the current recommendation is still a 10-day course of penicillin, or erythromycin for patients that are allergic to penicillin.

Sources http://www.aafp.org/afp/2009/0301/p383.html

http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/12/1748.full

http://www.scielo.br/pdf/rsbmt/v47n4/0037-8682-rsbmt-47-04-409.pdf

www.mayoclinic.org/.../txc-20166052

www.idsociety.org/.../2012%20Strep%20Guideline.pdf

Shulman ST, Tanz RR, Gerber MA. Streptococcal Pharyngitis. In: Stevens DL, Kaplan EL, editors. Streptococcal Infections: Clinical Aspects, Microbiology, and Molecular Pathogenesis. Oxford University Press, 2000; pp. 76-101.

Further Reading
What is obstructive salivary gland disease and who does it affect?

Everyone is familiar with urinary stones (kidney stones). The same thing can actually happen in your salivary ducts. These types of stones and strictures occur not nearly as frequently as kidney stones but they still occur quite often. The latest data we have seen showed about 1 in 5,000 patients actually have some type of obstructive salivary duct disorder.

Obstructive salivary gland disease can affect the very young all the way up to the elderly so it is not really a specific patient population. It occurs twice as often in males as it does in females, but it is very similar to kidney stones as well where sometimes it can just be hereditary. Also, in the patients affected, salivary stones, like kidney stones, tend to reoccur.

We all salivate throughout the day  all day long. Any time you put something in your mouth your salivary glands produce saliva so you can help chew your food. What happens in obstructive salivary disease is that every time a patient eats something, the side and/or floor of their mouth becomes very painful or even starts to swell.

This is because the duct (a long tube), which normally secretes saliva into the mouth, becomes blocked by either a stone or by the tightening of that tube. Consequently, the saliva cant go anywhere. Thus every time you eat, the gland is trying to produce saliva but the saliva cant go anywhere, this causes pain and swelling. This usually leads to infections as well.

What are the symptoms of obstructive salivary gland disease and how it is diagnosed?

It is usually diagnosed today when the patient experiences pain and swelling and goes to see their physician or local ENT physician. They will usually get some either X-rays or CT scans (CAT scans). These are the primary ways.

Some more advanced ways that we are seeing today is by using ultrasound guidance. This is used more in Europe than in the US at the moment. There are some select centers in North America that are using ultrasound to diagnose obstructive salivary gland disease as well.

How has obstructive salivary gland disease traditionally been treated?

Traditionally, the patients will be given medications. If they have an infection they will be given antibiotics. If it is swelling, theyll be given medications, such as steroids, to decrease swelling. However, these medications dont treat the underlying problem.

If the stone is small enough and they can feel it with their fingers, they even try to manually manipulate it out of your duct. This is not always successful  especially if the stone is large.

Predominantly the obstructive disease is caused by stones that are lodged in there, but you also have strictures which are tightenings of the tubes or the ducts. These have not been able to be treated in the past. But now using endoscopes they can see that it is a stricture. When they see that it is a stricture theyll either put some medications in there or put some of our dilators in there to open up those strictures.

Historically it has been mostly a conservative approach because they didnt want to go to the surgical approach because they knew of all the complications that can occur.

What happens if you dont treat obstructive salivary gland disease?

If you dont treat salivary gland disease it continues to swell and causes a major quality of life issue, consequently people dont even want to go out. We had a conversation with one of our physicians in North America this week who has patients that wont even go out to eat at dinner with friends because it is too painful and they are embarrassed.

What risks are involved with invasive open surgery to treat obstructive salivary gland disease?

There may be complications of surgically removing the salivary duct or the gland. When you are removing a salivary duct in your cheek you have the potential for hitting the very vital structures  particularly the nerves in your face. There are facial nerves that run all along your face and one of the common complications of this procedure is facial paralysis. There is a 35% chance of facial paralysis with traditional surgical techniques to treat obstructive salivary gland disease.

Some of the other risks would be that it can clearly also cause significant pain. You have these two major ducts that are in your cheeks but you also have two major ducts that are in your jaw  on the lower floor of your mouth. When they have to remove those they have to surgically open up the floor of your mouth, which is a highly sensitive area. So there is significant pain associated with that post surgery.

The three main complications that can occur with this surgery are:

Facial paralysis

Post-operative pain

Potential airway complications caused by a lot of bleeding in your mouth

Please can you outline the suite of salivary duct access products that Cook Medical has recently launched that offer minimally invasive options for the treatment of obstructive salivary gland disease?

We are really excited about this as we feel that we can advance the minimally invasive procedure and give both clinicians and patients an option. One of the most challenging parts of performing a procedure that is minimally invasive with these very small endoscopes is actually accessing these very small salivary ducts. You can imagine how small these ducts are as we cant see them with the naked eye. You actually have to use a microscope to see into the mouth and identify where these salivary ducts are located.

What our early tools do is allow you to more easily access those ducts. The small instrumentation with our guidewires helps us to get in and then we have our dilator set which allow us to open up the papilla (opening of the salivary duct) so it widens and opens up that area.

Then we have our Kolenda introducer set, which comes in after we have dilated the salivary duct, to put into the duct to maintain the access so we can pass the instrumentation in the duct during the entire procedure. Maintaining access is vital and can greatly reduce procedural time. Those are some of our early products.

We also have our nitinol extractor baskets which allow us, once weve accessed the duct and maintained access using the introducer, along with the endoscopes to go in and take out and retrieve the stones that are inside the ducts.

How were these devices developed?

These devices were developed in conjunction with working with experts here in North America. We worked particularly closely with one of the inventors of the introducer - Dr Jack Kolenda from Toronto, Canada. He was the first physician in North America to begin performing this procedure.

How do these products differ from others on the market?

There are numerous differences. It is a very young procedure  it was invented and pioneered in Europe, particularly in Germany because a company that is based in Germany that makes endoscopes made an endoscope that was small enough to go into these ducts. You can imagine the salivary ducts are very small  the largest size of these ducts is only about 5mm in diameter.

Even though it was pioneered in Europe this procedure has started to be performed over the past 4 or so years in North America. Where Cook comes in and where we differ is that we make the disposable devices that can help advance the procedure. We are very different to anything on the market.

In fact the only other tools that are available are the endoscope tools. They dont have the tools that we are bringing to the market.

Is there a learning curve associated with using Cook Medicals salivary duct access products?

Absolutely there is and that is where physician training comes into play. We are conducting physicians training throughout the United States. There is a training session upcoming at a medical conference in Orlando in the middle part of April and another at an university hospital in Chicago in mid-May.

What impact do you think Cook Medicals salivary duct access products will have on the treatment of obstructive salivary gland disease?

I think we have the ability with not only these first introduction products that will start off by helping physicians more readily access these ducts, but I think that because in the pipeline we have several more products that are going to be released over the next 6months to 1 year, we have the ability to advance this procedure to the next level where more patients will be able to be treated.

Today there are limitations to the procedure. The limitations are that if there are stones that are larger than the salivary duct in North America there is no FDA approved product that is commercially available to help fragment those stones . In the kidney stone world there is shockwave lithotripsy which helps break up those stones, but that is only available in the urinary system in the kidneys, that is not available a in North America for the salivary glands.

So there are some limitations to the procedure but with the developments that we have in the pipeline we believe we are going to take this innovative approach to the next level.

Do you have plans to add further salivary duct access devices to this range?

Were developing more interventional tools to help complete the procedure and broaden the patients that can be treated through more minimally-invasive salivary endoscopy. We are starting off with the accessing the duct, but where we are going next is the therapeutic interventional tools.

What are Cook Medicals OHNS divisions plans for the future?

We are quite excited about the future, because this is just the start. We began commercialization with this new clinical division in March of last year; we are already expanding into the UK and Germany markets as we speak. We are going launching our new products in Europe during another conference at the end of April.

The future is certainly bright.We have a pipeline that is full to meet the unmet clinical needs in this patient population. We certainly expect to expand over the next 3-5 years and bring these devices and minimally invasive tools to help address these patients needs.

Cook is energized about this new clinical division and educating patients as well as clinicians about what we can do to help advance these procedures so that more patients can be served. We are here to improve patient outcomes. We are committed to the otolaryngology space and we look forward to

seeing what we can do to help this patient population.

Where can readers find more information?

About Thomas Cherry

Thomas Cherry joined COOK Medical as District Sales Manager with the Critical Care Division in 1999.

Mr. Cherry has held numerous management positions of increasing responsibility over the past 14-years, including Product Manager, Product Development Manager, Director, Business Development, and now Global Business Unit leader of COOKs newest division, Otolaryngology/Head & Neck Surgery.

Mr. Cherry has extensive experience with global product launches and driving adoption of new technologies including minimally-invasive salivary introducers, antibiotic impregnated central venous catheters, self-advancing enteral feeding tubes, and balloon-assisted percutaneous tracheostomy products.

Prior to joining COOK, Mr. Cherry was clinically active for 6-years as a Critical Care Registered Nurse in cardiovascular, trauma, and surgical intensive care units.

Mr. Cherry holds a BSN from Southeastern Louisiana University and has also served 11-years in the United States Army National Guard as both an Officer in the Army Nurse Corps and Combat Flight Medical Specialist.

Mr. Cherry has been committed to advancing early-stage technologies into commercialization and education of the product development process while serving on the Advisory Board for the Northwestern University NUvention Medical Device Innovation Course and Fellowship program.

He has been an active member of Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), and Association of Professionals in Infection Control (APIC), while serving on various committees within each.
Restrictions on alcohol availability may be an important crime-control policy, given that alcohol availability appears to influence crime by increasing consumption and alcohol-induced impulsivity. In 2003, Pennsylvania repealed its Sunday alcohol-sales ban for a portion of its state-run liquor stores. This paper investigates whether this change in alcohol policy, which affected alcohol availability, had an impact on crime occurring within the vicinity of liquor stores that opened on Sundays in Philadelphia.

Researchers employed a triple-difference (difference-in-difference-in-differences) model that compared reported crime before versus after the change in alcohol policy, Sundays versus other days of the week, and the fraction of liquor stores affected versus not affected by the repeal. The authors utilized crime-incident data in Philadelphia between 1998 and 2011.

Results show that the repeal was associated with a significant increase in total and property crime incidents occurring around Sunday-open state liquor stores in low socioeconomic status neighborhoods. There was no consistent evidence of displacement of crime to nearby areas. This is the first triple-difference alcohol study that attempts to isolate the micro-spatial effects of a shift in alcohol availability on local crime patterns, and it shows that the repeal of Sunday alcohol-sales restrictions may increase crime in poor urban areas.
Beckman Coulter Life Sciences will unveil a fast, low sample volume bioanalyte analyzer, the Vi-CELL MetaFLEX, at INTERPHEX 2016. This years event, showcasing pharmaceutical and bioprocessing innovation, is being held in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, New York, April 26-28 2016. The new, small footprint system will be premiered at the companys Booth # 1533.

Image credit: Beckman Coulter

The company has leveraged the clinical precision technology behind Radiometers world leading acute care blood gas analyzer to create the Vi-CELL MetaFLEX. As Beckman Coulters Lena Lee, Global Product Manager, Particle Counting & Characterization, explained:

Our collaboration with Radiometer, also a Danaher company, is a powerful example of the cross pollination of technological expertise within the Danaher companies.

Designed for micro to large-scale cell culture applications, the biochemistry analyzer delivers fast, accurate bioanalytical analysis (measuring pH, pO2, pCO2, glucose, lactate, electrolytes and more parameters). The compact and reliable Vi-CELL MetaFLEX is designed to be operational more than 22 hours a day, with a turnaround time of less than 60 seconds.

The magic is in the sensor cassette. The sensor is based on thick-film technology  several layers of ceramic slabs, microelectrodes and membranes; miniaturization of conventional electrodes. The result is a shorter measuring time, and smaller sample size.

In early stage research and process development, cell cultures are generally small scale. The Vi-CELL MetaFLEX delivers levels of pH accuracy that we know is critical to cell viability, Ms Lee added.

The instrument is able to store up to 2,000 results on-board, with an automated sampling arm so that samples can be introduced from a syringe, tube, microfuge or Vi-CELL sample cup. Testing is quick and intuitive. The only consumables required are the sensor cassette and solution pack. The solution pack includes reagents, wash solutions, QC controls and waste collection. Inserting a new cassette and solution pack is the only maintenance needed. The Vi-CELL MetaFLEXs quality management system automatically measures on three dedicated QC solutions, detecting and correcting any failures, and locking out any parameter that fails QC.
Patients, especially children, who undergo blood transfusions in sub-Saharan Africa are at high risk of transfusion-transmitted malaria. A new trial, published in The Lancet today, suggests that treating donated blood with a new technology that combines UV radiation and vitamin B is safe and could minimise the risk of malaria infection following blood transfusions.

In many countries in sub-Saharan Africa where malaria is endemic, a high proportion of the population carry the parasite but do not show any clinical symptoms. This is particularly problematic when it comes to donated blood transfusions as it puts the recipients at high risk of infection if no blood treatment procedure is provided, says Professor Jean-Pierre Allain, lead author from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. Testing for parasites such as malaria is expensive and until now, there have been no technologies capable of treating whole blood, which is most commonly used in transfusions in sub-Saharan Africa. This is the first study to look at the potential of pathogen-reduction technology in a real-world treatment setting and finds that although the risk of malaria transmission is not completely eliminated, the risk is severely reduced.

The study is published ahead of World Malaria Day (Monday 25th April). Every year, approximately 214 million people worldwide are infected with acute malaria, the majority of whom are in Africa. Malaria is caused by the parasite Plasmodium. It is usually transmitted by mosquito but can also be transmitted through blood transfusions  this is particularly dangerous for children who have not developed any immunity, or adults with some degree of immunodeficiency such as pregnant women.

Currently, in Europe, donated blood is subjected to a large number of safety measures. Commonly used procedures for whole blood include nucleic acid testing, blood filtration or bacterial culture but these are not done in most developing countries because of a lack of resources. A number of pathogen reduction technologies also exist to treat blood components such as plasma or platelets. However, in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, 70% of blood transfusions are of whole blood. Detecting Plasmodium in donated blood is very difficult  the only current, affordable option is using microscopes but this is insensitive and unreliable.

In Ghana, 50% of blood donors carry the Plasmodium parasite, and 14-28% of patients who receive a blood transfusion will later test positive for Plasmodium. In this study, researchers investigated the effectiveness and safety of a new pathogen reduction technology that uses UV light and vitamin B2 (riboflavin) to reduce the levels of the parasite in donated whole blood. The study follows earlier work which found that the technology was capable of inactivating Plasmodium and other pathogens, including HIV, hepatitis C, and hepatitis B virus in vitro.

223 adult patients from the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana who needed a blood transfusion because of severe anaemia or haemorrhage took part in the study. The study was a double blind randomised controlled trial. As would be the case in normal clinical practice, neither the doctors nor the patients knew whether the donated blood units or recipients carried the Plasmodium parasite.

The research team analysed blood samples for all of the transfusion recipients on the day of the transfusion and 1, 3, 7 and 28 days later. By studying the sequences of Plasmodium genes present in the blood, the researchers were able to tell whether the patients were likely to be carrying the donor parasite after the transfusion.

A total of 65 patients were not previously carrying the parasite  half received parasite treated blood, and the other half received parasite untreated blood. 22% of patients (8/37) who received untreated blood later tested positive for malaria parasite, compared 4% (1/28) of patients who received treated blood.

Coagulation parameters, platelet counts and haemostatic status of the patients were similar whether patients received treated or untreated blood. The technology did not appear to affect the coagulation properties of the blood, and patients who received the treated blood had slightly fewer allergic reactions to those who received the untreated blood (5% vs 8%).

The technology is currently in the testing phase, and the authors add that further studies, in larger population groups, and in particular at risk populations such as young children and pregnant mothers are now needed.

Writing in a linked Comment, Dr Sheila F OBrien, Canadian Blood Services, Canada, says:

Pathogen reduction technology inactivates not only Plasmodium parasites but also a broad range of transfusion-transmissible pathogens, including HIV, hepatitis C, and hepatitis BThe anticipated introduction of this technology for all products including red blood cells heralds a dramatic transformation in approach in transfusion medicine. In developed countries, pathogen reduction technology would further reduce the already low risk of transmitting infections. It would also address concerns from emerging pathogens such as Babesia microti, West Nile virus, Chikungunya virus, and Zika virus. The cost of implementation of the technology would be countered by a range of efficiencies in the manufacturing process  notably, a reduction in infectious disease testing and donor deferral.

She adds:
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The banking industry is being profoundly impacted by changing customer expectations and new technologies brought about by fintechs and non-traditional banking players such as e-commerce and social media platforms. They are disrupting the financial services value chain and business models of traditional banks. The future success of banks depends on their ability to collaborate and harness digital opportunities.DBS, Southeast Asias largest bank by assets is transforming itself to become more nimble, and is reimagining customers experiences to make banking joyful. DBS CEO Piyush Gupta said, We want to create a unique banking experience that is simpler, smarter and faster by embedding ourselves in our customers lives. To do this, bankers cannot just be subject matter specialists. They must be proficient in myriad trends impacting the industry.The most adaptable organisations will survive and thrive. DBS has been changing its culture by adopting the habits of digitally native companies while marrying this with the professionalism expected of a best-in-class bank with a deep understanding of Asias cultural nuances and environment.The bank has three strategic priorities:1. Embrace the digital world  conquer mobile, social and data2. Embed itself in the customer journey3. Live its PRIDE! values  being purpose-driven, relationship-led, innovative, decisiveness, everything fun!DBS is creating an enabling environment and providing tools and processes for digital adoption, agile work processes, experimentation and employee collaboration. A key initiative of internalising innovation is to integrate hackathons into talent development programmes to give employees an opportunity to work on business challenges alongside startups. More than 2,000 employees out of 22,000 in the group have participated in hackathons, digital workshops, user experience and human-centred design workshops. Khoo Teng Cheong, Head of Learning and Development at DBS said, These hackathons serve as a sandbox for employees to experiment like startups, and utilise lean startup methodology and human-centred design to identify and act on opportunities quickly.DBS is one of the first few banks in the region to launch hackathons, and also wholly own a pre-accelerator programme  DBS HotSpot. This programme aims to drive a more innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem. Selected digital startups including fintechs, social entrepreneurs and DBS intrapreneurs can gain access to a network of successful entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and are given seed grants  participants do not need to give up equity. Intrapreneurs can take sabbatical leave to develop their business ideas and build prototypes. Last year, one employees startup that was incubated is Crux, a news data analytics tool for Asia. Another startup is Cinch, an integrated financial management system to help SMEs manage invoicing and cashflow. Both startups are exploring collaborative opportunities with the bank and external partners.In 2016, the bank announced Uni.Corn, a programme to reinvent internship for university students in Singapore. Instead of a conventional internship, students will be trained in human-centred design and lean startup methodologies to solve business challenges faced by DBS.The bank has invested heavily in learning and development to build deep leadership and specialist skills. The DBS Academy in Singapore and learning centres across the region were launched to offer courses on experiential learning, scenario-based applications and digital competencies such as big data analytics and social media marketing. The DBS Academy space is made available to SMEs and social enterprises that are also the customers of the financial services group.In addition, external collaborations are sought for the banks talent to be continuously exposed to new, cutting-edge technologies. With the Agency of Science Technology and Research (A*STAR), a public sector agency in Singapore that spearheads science and technology research, DBS established joint-research labs to develop predictive analytics for operational efficiencies and better risk management. The bank is also working with IBM to deploy IBM Watson cognitive computing to enhance its client wealth management advisory services.Proactive engagement between management and staff remains a hallmark of DBS leadership. Senior management holds regular group-wide and departmental townhalls, while country heads host bank-wide online video webchats to answer questions from staff. Across the group, close to 4,500 employees participated, which generated 730 topics and over 1,600 comments in 2015.The bank also gives opportunities for its employees to give back and to adopt social causes that they feel strongly about. In 2015, more than 4,000 staff contributed to the community and reached out to 16,000 people through 27,000 hours of volunteering activities. Employees also mentor social enterprises. In 2015, more than 300 employees across the bank volunteered their time and expertise to support social enterprises on their strategies and operations. Employees also participated in DBS scalathons, which are intensive brainstorming sessions to tackle business problems faced by social enterprises.(This is a sponsored article by DBS to educate consumers about its digital initiatives.)
The Bombay High Court has once again has given directions to the Maharashtra government to tackle the drought crisis.The Aurangabad Bench of the high court has called for a 60 per cent cut in water supply to liquor factories in 12 district of Maharashtra.



Another 50 per cent water cut has been ordered till May 10 and a 60 per cent water cut post that date.



The zonal commissioner is directed to take a further call on the water cut if needed, and inform the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court.



The remarks came as several areas in Maharashtra are facing severe water crisis. Recently, water trains were sent to Latur.


When it comes to India's most wanted criminal Dawood Ibrahim, nothing is confirmed information. His aides allege that rumour mills in the security establishments keep news hungry journalists busy.Every time some media organisation runs something explosive on Dawood, his number two Chhota Shakeel dismisses them as a figment of imagination. After Dawood fled to Pakistan more than 23 years ago, there has been no authentic news about him.All the news related to him is attributed to some source in the Pakistani spying agency ISI or Pakistani Army which are sheltering him. Sometimes it is also attributed to Indian security agencies or a rival gang of Dawood in the Mumbai underworld.Minutes after CNN News18 broke the story about Dawoods failing health quoting sources in Pakistan, Chhota Shakeel spoke to Indian media rubbishing it. He has claimed that Dawood is perfectly fine and has no serious health issues.However, CNN News18 story on Dawood suffering from gangrene was confirmed by the highest level in Indias security establishments, which tracks every move of the dreaded don.In December 2015 Shakeel had dismissed all rumours which claimed that Dawood's empire was in danger due to close monitoring by intelligence agencies. Speaking to India Today Shakeel had said that his boss was not affected by such rumours.We are doing our business and not affected by such things. Our business is going strong and your information is wrong," he claimed.A few years ago, international media had reported that Dawood had shifted his base to Afghanistan border to save himself from any possible attack on him in Karachi. It was also rubbished by Shakeel.In 2007, conflicting reports on Dawood's detention in Pakistan had kept rumour mills busy for days. According to Rediff some Indian television channels claimed that Dawood, wanted in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, had been wounded in a shootout in Karachi while others reported that the gangster had been detained in Quetta along with his aides Tiger Memon and Shakeel.No security official or hospital in Karachi had any inkling of any shootout involving Dawood, who was designated as a global terrorist by the US recently."Is he in Karachi?" asked a top security official in Karachi, who dismissed the reports as "rumours". No official was willing to say anything on record. Another official in Karachi pointed out that with the then Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf being in town, it was hard to believe that a shootout had taken place at a four-star hotel in the port city's busiest areas.D-company insiders blame Indian security establishments for such rumours. They argue that such news reports affect the morale of his gang members in India who may leave the killing profession or switch sides.
Bengaluru: In a shocking administrative decision, the Karnataka government has suspended a Conservator of Forests (ACF) without the concerned minister's authorisation.



It is intriguing that the officer T Venkatesh has been suspended when the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF, Forest Force) had merely recommended that he be transferred to a forest division where there is less pressure.



Intyerestingly, the suspension order has been issued without the concurrence of Karnataka Forest Minister Ramanath Rai. When contacted, Rai said that he was looking into the matter.



Moreover, Principal Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) Hosmath was not taken into confidence before the suspension order was issued by the Under Secretary, Forest and Environment, Karnataka.



There are rumours that a powerful lobby motivated the government to oust the officer who had been a thorn in the flesh to a couple of wildlife wardens.



Incidentally, he has been suspended as 151 hectares of forest cover was reduced in ashes in Bandipurs Moleyur range a few months back. Strangely, no action has been taken against a range forest officer where more than 2000 hectares of forests were engulfed by fire in the adjoining Nagarhole tiger reserve.



This is the second instance when the ACF has faced action.



Earlier, he had filed a case against a wildlife warden for allegedly illegally constructing a resort inside the Bhadra tiger reserve, notified by the National Tiger Conservation Authority as an inviolate area. Bhadra is a critical tiger habitat.



In fact, as many as 300 families had been relocated from the Bhadra tiger reserve to ensure wildlife wasnt disturbed by the presence human habitations.



Though Venkatesh had been steadfast in his findings that the resort had infringed on forest land, an inquiry conducted by the forest department had absolved the wildlife warden.



The resort, according to senior forest officers, does not impede the movement of wild animals, including tigers, elephants and gaur.



Later Venkatesh was transferred on October 14, 2015 to the Bandipur tiger reserve.



As an officer of the forest department, Venkatesh took on the high and mighty including conservator of forest BB Mallesh.



His supporters list out the following points for the action against Venkatesh:



1. Questioning the administration of the conservator of forest, Bandipur tiger reserve.



2. Stopping a power line from being allegedly illegally drawn without clearance from the ministry for environment, forest and climate change.



3. Throwing the spanner in the works of public works department (PWD) which had allgedly illegally started to construct a road inside the tiger reserve



4. Raising the issue of a wildlife warden constructing a farm house adjacent to the Nugu wildlife reserve



Instead of commending his sincerity to protect our dwindling forests and wildlife, the Karnataka government has inadvertently suspended Venkatesh to please some wildlife wardens.



God save our wildlife.



(Joseph Hoover is a wildlife photographer, tiger expert and a member of Karnataka State Wildlife Board)
Bengaluru: The Karnataka government has pulled up Ola and Uber cabs for failing to obtain licence to provide cab services in the state. The government has asked the cab aggregators to stop operations if the necessary documents are not in place.



Though both the cab aggregators have applied for license, they have not yet submitted the documents needed for the same.



The government had made it mandatory for aggregators to get a licence in a bid to put an end to surge pricing and to ensure better safety for cab users.



During peak hours, the cab aggregators used to charge two or three times the regular cost, making it unviable for many in the city.



The government has also set specific guidelines for cabs to ensure safety of passengers. These include compulsory background check of drivers, panic button in cabs and continuous GPS monitoring of cabs.




A massive fire broke out at FICCI on the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday. The fire was detected at the sixth floor of the building.



The National Museum of Natural History which is located inside the building has been completely gutted in fire.



Seven fire officials were seriously injured while trying to contain the blaze and were rushed to hospital where they are in a critical state, an official said.



According to Joint Commissioner of Police, New Delhi Range, Mukesh Kumar Meena, the police were informed about the fire at around 1:52 am on Tuesday.



He added that 37 fire tenders are working to extinguish the fire.



Officials said fire in the building has been brought under control. The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained.







Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, who visited the spot, described the fire mishap as "unfortunate" and ordered a safety audit of all museums under his ministry.



"This is unfortunate. Museum of Natural History is a national heritage. Thousands of exhibits were there and thousands of people visit the museum everyday," he said, adding that officials were ascertaining the extent of the damage and ways to restore it.



Javadekar said the museum was operating out of a FICCI property. "This is a rented property. Its not the Ministry's property, but a FICCI property. Therefore, we have limitations. The issue is that this is a real loss and we will assess the loss when the building is again handed over to us. We will see how the recovery plan can be made," he said.



"The fire personnel are looking after it. But we will assess the damage as soon as they hand it over to. We will see how this can be restored. We will be able to get the details in two days and then chalk out a strategy," he said.



The Minister ordered a safety audit of all museums under his jurisdiction.


Pakistan raked up Kashmir once again but also reiterated its commitment for peaceful relations with India when the Foreign Secretaries of the two countries met in New Delhi on Tuesday. Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar met his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry where the two discussed all bilateral issues.



The meeting was the first Foreign Secretary-level talks after the terror attack at the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot in January.



While calling Kashmir a "core issue", Pakistan reiterated its commitment for peaceful ties with India. After the meeting the Pakistani side said its Foreign Secretary "emphasised that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution in accordance with UNSC resolutions and wishes of Kashmiri people".



Ahead of the meeting, the Indian officials had maintained that Pathankot attack and a possible visit by the NIA to Pakistan will be raised during the FS-level talks, which were deferred in January in the wake of the strike at the strategic air base at Pathankot.







India has been pressing for action against terrorists responsible for the audacious attack on the IAF base, to take the talks forward.



This is also the first time the two foreign secretaries are meeting after the announcement of Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue (CBD) by the Foreign Ministers in Islamabad in December 2015. The two secretaries had an informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March 2016.



The efforts to resume CBD at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the Pathankot attack that India said was carried out by terrorists from Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror group.



Jaishankar was scheduled to travel to Islamabad to hold talks with Chaudhary on January 15 but both the countries had announced deferment of the talks with "mutual consent" in the wake of the Pathankot attack.



The meeting came in the backdrop of Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit's recent comments that the bilateral peace process was suspended, evoking a sharp reaction by Indian side.



India has been maintaining that communication channels were on at various levels but also made it clear it wants to see action on terror and Pathankot first before the dialogue could be resumed.


New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed business tycoon Vijay Mallya to furnish details of assets held by him and his family members in India and abroad to banks in a sealed envelope.



The apex court found as untenable the objections raised by Mallya that assets of his NRI wife and children cannot be disclosed to banks. The SC also said the banks' plea for recovery of dues before the Debt Recovery Tribunal in Bengaluru should be decided within two months.







The top court, which said Mallya has not complied with its April 7 order in its letter and spirit, observed that "the whole purpose of asking for disclosure was to give a fair idea to banks for entering into a meaningful and viable settlement."



It asked the Debt Recovery Tribunal in Bengaluru to "expeditiously decide" within two months, the pleas of banks and financial institutions for recovery of their loans.



The direction was issued after Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi submitted that there was "total non-compliance" with the apex court's April 7 order as Mallya was neither indicating the date of his return to the country to make an appearance before the court nor was he showing his bonafide for reaching a settlement with the lenders by not showing willingness to deposit a substantial part of the amount he owed them.



"He is a fugitive from justice in India," the Attorney General said, adding the embattled businessman was playing "hide and seek" and cooking "cock and bull story". Rohatgi said Mallya was "deliberately concealing something from the court" as he had "no intention to come back".



However, senior advocates C S Vaidyanathan and Parag Tripathi, appearing for Mallya and his companies respectively, submitted that he was a "defaulter but not a wilful defaulter" and "here this is a case of business failure and not that of wilful default".



Vaidyanathan submitted the accumulated loans of Kingfisher Airlines stood at Rs 16,000 crore in 2013 and all loans were given on the basis of personal assets of Mallya which is in the records of the banks.



That being the case the liabilities cannot be attached to his estranged wife living abroad and NRI children who are protected under the law from disclosing their overseas assets, he contended.



Mallya has defaulted on repayment of loans of Rs 9,400 crore to a State Bank of India-led consortium.



With PTI Inputs.
India has asked Pakistan to stop being in denial on terror while seeking action on the 26/11 and Pathankot attacks. Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar told his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry that terror groups cannot be allowed to operate with impunity when the two officials met in New Delhi on Tuesday, according to Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup.



Jaishankar clearly conveyed that terrorism will affect bilateral ties. While emphasising the need for "early and visible progress" in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks and Pathankot, India also sought details of the progress in the probe against Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar.



Even as Chaudhry once again raked up Kashmir, Jaishankar denied India's involvement in the insurgency in Pakistan's Balochistan. Jaishankar also added that former naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was arrested in Pakistan on charges of espionage, has a right to consular access adding that no nation would dispatch a spy with his own passport.



But Pakistan maintained that Kashmir remained a core issue and stressed on the Samjhauta Express blasts probe, saying it was concerned over the environment created to release the prime accused adding that India has not shared any investigation report. During the talks Chaudhry said that Kashmir "required a just solution in accordance with United Nations Security Council resolutions and wishes of Kashmiri people".



The meeting was the first Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan after the terror attack at the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot in January 2016.



This is also the first time the two foreign secretaries are meeting after the announcement of Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue (CBD) by the Foreign Ministers in Islamabad in December 2015. The two secretaries had an informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March 2016.



The efforts to resume CBD at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the Pathankot attack that India said was carried out by terrorists from Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror group.



Jaishankar was scheduled to travel to Islamabad to hold talks with Chaudhary on January 15 but both the countries had announced deferment of the talks with "mutual consent" in the wake of the Pathankot attack.



The meeting came in the backdrop of Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit's recent comments that the bilateral peace process was suspended, evoking a sharp reaction by Indian side.



India has been maintaining that communication channels were on at various levels but also made it clear it wants to see action on terror and Pathankot first before the dialogue could be resumed.
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj was admitted to the country's premier All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on Monday after she complained of severe chest congestion.



According to sources at AIIMS, she was admitted to the old private ward under Pulmonary Medicine Department around 5 PM.



Around 10 PM, sixty-four-year-old Swaraj was shifted to the Cardio-Neuro Centre of the hospital.



A senior doctor said her condition was stable.


How cool is this. Well done @HyundaiIndia for an amazing track #DriveMeinJunoon, I just added it to my playlist.https://t.co/KsnAHPXELT

 Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) April 6, 2016

Hyundai Motor India Ltd. has created a lot of buzz with the release of its music video Drive Mein Junoon which has crossed 10 Million views on YouTube now. The music for this innovative video is exclusively composed using 118 sounds of the Elite i20 and the video features Indias music youth icons - Arijit Singh and Clinton Cerejo. This youth anthem is the fastest ever music video to reach the 10 million views mark in the automobile category in India.The Drive Mein Junoon music video has struck a chord with the youth generating positive conversations. The youth anthem is exclusively available on Hyundai India YouTube channel Commenting on the success of Drive Mein Junoon video, Mr. Rakesh Srivastava, Sr. Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Hyundai Motor India Ltd said, We are delighted with the appreciation that the music video has received by recording over 10 million views. Hyundai as a youth centric brand constantly endeavours to connect with the youth through innovative content and form a lifetime association.General Manager and Group Head  Marketing, Mr. Puneet Anand, added: the success of Drive Mein Junoon is a benchmark in unconventional and innovative marketing. Hyundai will continue to engage with the youth through such innovative initiatives in the future to add Brilliant Moments to the viewers.Key celebrities from the Film industry also appreciated the innovation of the campaign including Mr Shah Rukh Khan, Corporate Brand Ambassador, Hyundai Motor India Ltd said on Twitter, How cool is this. Well done @HyundaiIndia for an amazing track #DriveMeinJunoon, I just added it to my playlist.
The Congress on Tuesday dismissed the allegations levelled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the VVIP chopper deal, saying the first inquiry into the scandal was in fact carried out during the previous UPA government's regime.



"We blacklisted the company as we got to know about it. The CBI probe was done by our government and blacklisting the company was also done by UPA," said Congress leader and former defence minister AK Antony.



Hitting back at the BJP-led NDA government, he said, "The present government just has to complete the CBI inquiry. We are requesting the government to complete the incomplete work and tell us who the culprits are, and punish them."



Earlier on Tuesday, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had raked up the AgustaWestland issue, saying it had "exposed Congress and proved that the party was all about scams". He also sought an answer from the opposition party.



The BJP had raised the issue in Lok Sabha on Monday as well following an Italian court's reported observation that the UPA government showed "substantial disregard" in arriving at the full truth behind the multi-crore scam.



Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Meenakshi Lekhi had said that the observations of the Italian court that found corruption in the Rs 3,565-crore AgustaWestland deal were serious.



Seeking a statement from the Defence Ministry, she said Italy had requested India in April 2013 to get full documentation in the case but was provided with only three documents and that too in 2014.



She wanted a thorough probe into the matter as also a discussion in the House.



Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu assured the member that he would bring the matter to the notice of the Defence Minister.



(With PTI Inputs)
In less than three weeks since she assumed the office of Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti is beset with two major issues - the fracas at the National Institute of Technology(NIT) and the Handwara killings. Handling these sensitive issues, and many more that can confront her ahead, would determine the kind of leader that Mehbooba would be, or wants to be.Mehbooba is not done yet with these two crucial issues, and how she handles them would be watched very keenly by observers in Srinagar and Delhi. Her maiden test as head of a sensitive state, which is always under Centres radar, begins now.All the non-local students of NIT Srinagar are yet to join classes after they set difficult conditions to return to the campus, and the issue has the potential to blow up in the face of the Mehbooba government in the coming days. They have demanded setting up of a permanent CRPF camp on the campus and delinking of local faculty from the exam grading. Although they did climb down on their initial demand of transferring the NIT to Jammu, the matter is still hanging fire.The immediate crisis over maintaining law and order may be over but Handwara poses a serious challenge to Mehbooba the leader. Four young boys and an elderly woman lost their lives in firing by security forces, after a violent clash threatened to go out of hand. The incident poses big questions to Mehbooba who has been busy fighting the fallout of the killings while promising fair investigations. Would the probe have a different meaning this time around? Would it reach a conclusion and fix accountability? Would any uniformed man be punished, or would it be just another probe to contain swirling anger.An entrance gate of NIT, Srinagar (File Photo)Unfortunately, on both issues of NIT and Handwara, Mehbooba was found wanting. In the NIT crisis  so what,if it started during the last leg of Governor NN Vohras rule  she was found missing in action. Rather that leading from the front, she kept hiding behind the BJP, handing over the floor to deputy chief minister Nirmal Singh. Her reluctance to come forward, to listen to students on both sides of the divide, did betray a sense that she was not in control. In fact, she seemed naive when Centre decided to post CRPF columns inside the campus  rare for an educational institute. Her colleagues would argue she dealt with the issue properly because the students would be more comfortable with BJP. The fact, however, is that we are not talking party politics. She is the head of a government, not president of a party. The issue is still alive, and that gives her a chance to make amends and take charge.On the contrary, in Handwara, Mufti was quick to hit the ground after violence spiralled out to Kupwara neighbourhoods. Yet she was lucky that it did not travel to Srinagar and further to south Kashmir like the 2010 summer uprising. Her reaching out to families with compensation did help to stem the violence, but her job does not end here.File photo of protests in Srinagar on April 19, 2016, following the Handwara killings. (Getty)Mehbooba has to ensure that accountability is fixed in all the five killings. For example, how was a 70 year-old-woman killed, six km away from Handwara  where security forces fired to quell a protest that was getting bigger. She needs to cross check the charge levelled by villagers that security men exceeded their brief and breached standard operating procedure.She also needs to seek explanation how a 16-year-old girls confessional video  that she was molested by village boys and not by a soldier - was leaked out and then owned by the Army. She needs to punish the officials who did not protect the identity of the girl against the apex court's norms. If Mehbooba had her way, heads would have rolled by now. At least, being the boss of the police, she could have set an example. Will she, or wont she, make an example? That will show her character and how she acts in future if a wrong is committed.By now Mehbooba would have figured out there is a huge difference between heading a government and opposing it. In Opposition, you hold all the aces. It gives you unbridled licence to hit out at the government left, right and centre; but power in strategically important Jammu and Kashmir can actually shackle you. With power comes responsibility and fine balancing, and in J&K, a king's or queen's crown always weighs heavy.Whether she faces critical issues like these chin up, or she choose to continue as just another chief minister, is what people in the Valley would like to know. Will she assert herself and go against the tide, or will she reconcile to the fact that the chief minister in this part of the country has very little say on matters of security and policy? That is a question she needs to pose, more to herself than to anyone else.Unlike for her father, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, and the other former chief minister Omar Abdullah, Mehboobas stakes are higher. She has been a firebrand leader who calls a spade a spade. She has been unsparing in her criticism of the government  whether the one led by her father or the one led by Omar. She has been vocal on issues confronting peoples security and human rights.As opposition leader, she used to edge out separatist leaders in championing human rights causes in Kashmir. Mehbooba used to travel to godforsaken villages to question alleged excesses by police and security forces. She used to take up issues concerning women, children and the deprived. As Mufti Mohammad Sayeed said during his first tenure as chief minister: "She is the bigger opponent to my government, more than those facing me in Assembly."Mehbooba's success as chief minister would depend on how she manoeuvres on an ice-slippery ground. As chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, she needs to cut concessions from the Centre on economic, political and security fronts. She would have to bridge the trust deficit between Srinagar and Delhi, find ways to re-engage with separatists, reduce the footprint of security forces and take the state towards peace, reconciliation and development.How much she extracts from the Centre now determines the kind of leader she would become in future.On the party front, she needs to repose trust in people who can build it into a strong and vibrant platform. She would need to blood young, educated, serious people. Or find a pool of talent which would carry the party's agenda to the grassroots.Mehbooba will face a crucial test in both Assembly and Parliamentary by-polls later this year. She will contest to the state assembly from a constituency that was held by her father. She will also vacate her Anantnag Parliamentary seat, and hope her brother or a family member emerges victorious. The two seats pose a challenge to her family and to her party. Retaining both would be the target she has set herself.
The Opposition took on the government in Parliament over the National Institute of Technology in Srinagar issue. The Centre came under attack over deployment of central forces inside NIT in Srinagar.



The government told Lok Sabha that it was not a suo motu or unilateral decision but it was done following requests from the institute authorities.



"It was not our decision, not a suo motu decision. There was a request from the NIT authorities and hence the decision was taken to deploy central forces in the campus. It was not a unilateral decision of the central government," Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said.



Rijiju's remarks during Question Hour came after Congress chief whip Jyotiraditya Scindia alleged that by deploying the central forces in the NIT campus, the central government had undermined the Jammu and Kashmir Police.



The NIT in Srinagar had witnessed clashes between local and outstation students after India lost to West Indies in World T-20 semi final match on March 31, following which paramilitary forces were deployed at the campus.



Scindia accused the Jammu and Kashmir Police of "brutally" attacking the protesting students of NIT, claiming that they resorted to lathicharge on those students who were shouting slogans like 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.







The Congress leader's comments invited strong protests from treasury benches, particularly from BJP MP and former Union Home Secretary RK Singh, who said Jammu and Kashmir Police is known for its sacrifices for the country's unity and integrity and such comments are unwarranted.



Rijiju said it is a known fact that it is the state police which takes action wherever necessary and the central forces only help the local authorities.



He said three companies of paramilitary personnel were deployed inside the NIT campus while outside is being guarded

by the Jammu and Kashmir Police.



A company of central forces comprises of around 100 personnel.



(With additional information from PTI)
New Delhi: Panic button will be mandatory for all mobile phones to be sold in India January 1, 2017, onwards to enable users make emergency call easily.



Besides, in-built GPS navigation system would be mandatory for all phones a year later with effect from January 1, 2018, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today.



"Technology is solely meant to make human life better and what better than using it for the security of women... from January 1, 2017, no cell phone can be sold without a provision for panic button and from January 1, 2018 mobile sets should have also GPS inbuilt," Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a statement today.



An official notification dated April 22, said, "With effect from January 1, 2017, no mobile phone handset manufactured company shall sell in India... Feature phones without the facility of panic button by pressing 'Numeric key 5' or 'Numeric key 9' to invoke emergency call".



Further, it said that no smartphone should be sold in India without the facility of emergency call button. This button should function in a manner that by pressing the same for long time to invoke emergency call or the use of existing power on or off button, when short pressed thrice in quick succession.



"With effect from January 1, 2018, no mobile phone handset manufactured company shall sell the new mobile phone hand set in India without the facility of identifying the location through Satellite based GPS," the notification said. At present, only smartphones come with inbuilt GPS system.



The concept of a device with panic button feature was floated after brutal gangrape of a paramedical student in Delhi.



The Ministry of Finance in December 2013 had approved a Nirbhaya Fund, following the incident, under which integration of the police administration with mobile phone network to trace and respond to distress calls with minimum response time was to be done.



Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi had approached leading mobile manufacturers in this regard. Gandhi had earlier said the customers will be able to upgrade their existing phones at dedicated centres.



The government has asked the companies to built at least 10,000 centres across the country to facilitate mobile phone users in upgrading their phones and adding the button. However, the notification did not mention about upgradation of existing phones.
Dhaka: SWIFT, the global financial network that banks use to transfer billions of dollars every day, warned its customers on Monday that it was aware of "a number of recent cyber incidents" where attackers had sent fraudulent messages over its system.



The disclosure came as law enforcement authorities in Bangladesh and elsewhere investigated the February cyber theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank account at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. SWIFT has acknowledged that the scheme involved altering SWIFT software on Bangladesh Bank's computers to hide evidence of fraudulent transfers.



Monday's statement from SWIFT marked the first acknowledgement that the Bangladesh Bank attack was not an isolated incident but one of several recent criminal schemes that aimed to take advantage of the global messaging platform used by some 11,000 financial institutions.



"SWIFT is aware of a number of recent cyber incidents in which malicious insiders or external attackers have managed to submit SWIFT messages from financial institutions' back-offices, PCs or workstations connected to their local interface to the SWIFT network," the group warned customers on Monday in a notice seen by Reuters.



The warning, which SWIFT issued in a confidential alert sent over its network, did not name any victims or disclose the value of any losses from the previously undisclosed attacks. SWIFT confirmed to Reuters the authenticity of the notice.



SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions.



Also on Monday, SWIFT released a security update to the software that banks use to access its network to thwart malware that security researchers with British defense contractor BAE Systems said was probably used by hackers in the Bangladesh Bank heist.



BAE's evidence suggested that hackers manipulated SWIFT's Alliance Access server software, which banks use to interface with SWIFT's messaging platform, to cover their tracks.



BAE said it could not explain how the fraudulent orders were created and pushed through the system.



But SWIFT provided some evidence about how that happened in its note to customers, saying that in most cases the modus operandi was similar.



It said the attackers obtained valid credentials for operators authorized to create and approve SWIFT messages, then submitted fraudulent messages by impersonating those people.



Following The Money



Cyber security experts said more attacks could surface as SWIFT's banking clients look to see if their SWIFT access has been compromised.



Shane Shook, a banking security consultant who investigates large financial crime, said hackers were turning to SWIFT and other private financial messaging platforms because such attacks can generate more revenue than going after consumers or small businesses.



"These hacks specifically target financial institutions because smaller efforts result in much larger thefts," he said. "It's much more efficient than stealing from consumers."



Justin Harvey, chief security officer with Fidelis Cybersecurity, said hackers followed the money and would be drawn into such schemes in hopes of emulating a big heist like the one on Bangladesh Bank.



"After the Bangladesh Bank heist became public, every other attacker out there is looking to see if they can do the same," he said.



SWIFT spokeswoman Natasha Deteran told Reuters that the commonality in these cases was that internal or external attackers compromised the banks own environments to obtain valid operator credentials.



"Customers should do their utmost to protect against this," she said in an email to Reuters.



SWIFT told customers that the security update must be installed by May 12.



"We have made the Alliance interface software update mandatory as it is designed to help banks identify situations in which attackers have attempted to hide their traces - whether these actions have been executed manually or through malware," she said.
Each year, more than 600,000 citizens return to their communities after serving time in federal and state prisons while another 11.4 million individuals cycle through local jails.

Nearly one in three Americans of working age has had some encounter with the criminal justice system for mostly minor, non-violent offenses. The long-term impact of criminal records prevents many people from obtaining employment, housing, higher education and credit.

As part of National Reentry Week, U.S. Attorney Fishwick, along with members of the United States Attorneys Office staff, will be meeting with community groups who work with reentry programs to discuss future partnership opportunities to help individuals returning in the Western District of Virginia.

Our office is committed to assisting non-violent offenders to become productive, law-abiding citizens, Fishwick said in a Monday news release. We are proud to support community groups, and other agencies, who work every day to do this very important work.

The U.S. Attorney will continue a series of on-going meetings with court and probation offi-cials regarding reentry programs aimed at helping former federal inmates returning to their communities.

 Tobi Walsh
CHARLOTTESVILLE -- Police have identified 23-year-old Benjamin Worthington as the man who was found dead Saturday morning at an auto business on East Market Street.

Just before 11 a.m., officers received a call about a man trapped under a piece of equipment at Bobs Wheel Alignment, located at 923 E. Market St. When they arrived, officers found Worthingtons body inside the building, which was not open for business at the time.

Police said it appeared the man fell through the roof of the building and succumbed to his injuries from the fall.

Police said the death of Worthington, a resident of Acworth, Georgia, and a student at Liberty University, appears to be nothing more than an unfortunate accident, according to a news release.
Red Hulk, Ronin, and more: 10 Heroes and Villains whose secret identities were hidden from readers

There's a longstanding superhero tradition of hiding the identity of certain characters even from readers
Poetry stars at Bocas

Among those in the constellation is American poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips. Phillips was only this month shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, which is Canadas most generous poetry award for his latest book, Heaven.

Birds flyin high you know how I feel, Phillips said on Twitter after being short-listed.

Lifting more of Nina Simones lines, he continued, Sun in the sky you know how I feel / Breeze drifting on by you know how I feel. Phillips received a 2013 Whiting Writers Award and has also received the PEN/ Joyce Osterweil Award, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Poetry, and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. He will read on April 30 at the Old Fire Station, Port-of-Spain, alongside fellow American poet Reginald Betts.

The reading, which starts at 11 am, is sponsored by the US Embassy.

Also at Bocas this year is acclaimed poet Vahni Capildeo, whose latest book Measures of Expatriation is shortlisted for the 2016 T S Eliot Prize. On April 28, Capildeo will trace her devious route through the landscapes of language, in conversation with writer Anu Lakhan, according to the Bocas programme.

Capildeo has judged the Forward Prize and was the 2014 Judith E Wilson Visiting Fellow in Poetry at the University of Cambridge.

She is due to participate in several other events, including a discussion on Shakespeare which will also feature Phillips.

Dionne Brand, Torontos third poet laureate, will also participate in the festival.

Brand has won Canadas Governor Generals Award for Poetry as well as the Griffin Poetry Prize, among many others.

She is also a novelist and her most recent novel, Love Enough, was nominated in 2015 for the Trillium Book Award.

She is the chief judge of the 2016 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and will participate in a talk with poet and critic Shivanee Ramlochan on April 29.

Olive Senior, a poet, novelist, short-story writer and non-fiction writer, will also attend the festival once more.

The winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, she is the winner of the fiction category of the 2016 OCM Bocas Prize.

Hannah Lowe will also be featured.

Lowes first poetry collection Chick was short-listed for the Forward, Aldeburgh, and Seamus Heaney Best First Collection Prizes.

Tishani Doshis first book, Countries of the Body, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

Her debut novel, The Pleasure Seekers, was shortlisted for the Hindu Literary Prize and long-listed for the Orange Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Her lastest book is The Adulterous Citizen, poems, stories and essays.

Additionally, the festival, based at Nalis, Port-of-Spain, will feature: Sarah Beckett, Jacqueline Bishop; John Robert Lee; Vivek Narayanan; and Karen McCarthy Woolf among others.

Full details are available at bocaslitfest.com
UNAIDS: Stop attacking transgenders

UNAIDS condemns killings and violations of human rights against transgender people reported in recent months by civil society and media in different countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, including Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Guyana, Honduras and Venezuela. The statement listed recent deaths.

In Bolivia, two transgender women were murdered in the city of Santa Cruz, leading UNAIDS to urge that the State expedite the investigation and punishment of these deaths.

In Venezuela, seven transgender people were killed.

The statement said, In Brazil the situation is also serious. This year some 48 transgender and transvestite persons were murdered, according to an LGBT lobby, as reported in Brazil newspaper, O Globo.

In Honduras, LGBT group, Comunidad Gay Sampedrana para la Salud Integral, urged the Public Prosecutor and the human rights groups to punish the murder of transgender activist Alejandra Padilla.

In Argentina, last month, repressive and violent actions carried out by law enforcement officers against transgender people were reported in the province of Salta, during eviction operations.

Violence against transgender people in Latin America and the Caribbean is compounded by their lack of access to justice, said UNAIDS. Last month in Guyana, three transgender women were forbidden to attend court or to appear before the court because they were wearing female attire. The plight of transgender persons was spelt out in a recent report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). It said, Trans women are immersed in a cycle of violence, discrimination and criminalization which usually starts at an early age with exclusion and violence suffered in their homes, communities and schools.

UNAIDS urges governments in the region to do everything in their power to investigate, prosecute and punish those responsible for the killings of trans people and increase their life expectancy through measures that reduce vulnerability to violence and death.
'He Had the Chance to Go in

and Save the Children'
There can be many reasons for workplace stress. While racism and gender differences could lead to it, a motivational boss might also be a big reason for it.

In a three-year longitudinal study by experts from the Norwich Business School of University of East Anglia, the link between transformational leadership and the health of workers, especially the rate of sickness and absenteeism was established. Even presenteeism, through which employees work even if they're sick, could contribute to poor health.

While assessing 155 employees in a Danish postal office, experts noted their attendance and reviewed their managers' leadership style.

They found that transformational leadership may be inspirational and charismatic enough to make them work well in the short term, but it would be harmful in the long term.

"The assumption that 'more transformational leadership is better' does not hold over time," said Kevin Daniels, university organizational behavior professor and one of the authors. He is addressing issues with the work and organizational psychology professor Karina Nielsen.

In the long run, such a style may lead to continuous effort from sick employees, along with delays in treatment, persistent sickness and the spread of infection.

Hence, even though the study finds a number of advantages in transformational leadership, it also concludes that the leaders have complex relationships with components. Yet corporate leaders have been told to maintain a "balanced managerial strategy."

"They should monitor and check them, and encourage workers to look after their own health. Managers need to strike a balance, they can still encourage staff to perform well, but in a way that is not at the expense of their health and well-being," Daniels said.
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Dhaka:

Two persons, including a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni, were brutally murdered in a flat here by unidentified killers who entered the building impersonating as courier officials, the latest in a series of brutal attacks on bloggers and intellectuals in Bangladesh.

Julhash Mannan, a cousin of Moni, and his friend Tanay were murdered at the flat in capitals Kalabagan, the Dhaka Tribune reported quoting deputy commissioner of Ramna division police Abdul Baten.

Baten said armed assailants in guise of courier company officials entered the flat on the second floor of a six-storey building in Kalabagan around 7 PM and killed Mannan, 35, a former protocol officer of the US embassy and his friend.

There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners.

Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home. In the latest attack, liberal professor AFM Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, 58, was brutally hacked to death on

Saturday by machete-wielding ISIS militants who slit his throat using sharp weapons and left him to die near his home in Rajshahi city.

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Ottawa:

A Canadian held hostage by Islamic militants in the Philippines has been executed, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced today, after Filipino authorities said they had found the head of a foreign man on a remote island.

Im outraged by the news that a Canadian citizen, John Ridsdel, held hostage in the Philippines since September 21, 2015, has been killed at the hands of his captors, Trudeau said. This was an act of cold blooded murder and responsibility rests with the terrorist group who took him hostage.

Ridsdel, fellow Canadian tourist Robert Hall, Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipina Marites Flor were kidnapped seven months ago from yachts at a marina near the major city of Davao, more than 500 kilometers from Jolo.

Six weeks after the abduction, Abu Sayyaf gunmen released a video on social media of their hostages held in a jungle setting demanding USD 21 million each for the safe release of the three foreigners.

The men were forced to beg on camera for their lives, and similar videos were posted over several months in which the hostages looked increasingly frail.

In the most recent video, Ridsdel, a retiree aged in his late 60s, said he would be killed on April 25 if a ransom of 300 million pesos was not paid.

Hours after the ransom deadline passed, police in the Philippines said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, a mostly lawless island about 1,000 kilometers south of Manila that is one of the main strongholds of the Abu Sayyaf militant group.

We found a head in a plastic bag, provincial police chief Wilfredo Cayat told AFP.

He said the head belonged to a caucasian man, but emphasized it was impossible to immediately identify. The local police chief issued a report to journalists with similar details.

Trudeau said Canada was working with the government of the Philippines to pursue and prosecute Ridsdels killers, and that efforts were underway to obtain the release of the other hostages.

The Abu Sayyaf is also believed to be holding a Dutch bird watcher kidnapped in 2012, and has been blamed for abducting 18 Indonesian and Malaysian sailors from tugboats near the southern Philippines over the past month.

The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of Islamic militants listed by the United States as a terrorist organization that operates from Jolo and nearby islands.

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Tokyo:

Japanese nuclear regulators said they will revise laws, nearly double inspection staff and send some inspectors to the US for training to address deficiencies cited by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority announced the plans yesterday in response to an IAEA evaluation of Japans nuclear safety regulations since the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The report was submitted to the government last week.

The IAEA review, its first since the Japanese nuclear authoritys establishment in 2012, was conducted in January to determine whether the countrys new regulatory system meets international standards.

The IAEA report said even though Japan has adopted stricter safety requirements for plant operators, inspections are reactive, inflexible and lack free access. The report noted that the nuclear authority has made efforts to increase its transparency and independence.

The authoritys commissioners met yesterday and decided to give inspectors greater discretion and free access to data, equipment and facilities.

Current on-site checks have largely become a choreographed routine. Inspectors requests for access to data and equipment outside of regular quarterly inspections are not mandatory, and there is no penalty for plant operators that fail to meet safety requirements.

Inspections also tend to be limited to a checklist of minimum requirements. The IAEA report came as nuclear safety concerns increased among the Japanese public following two powerful deadly earthquakes in southern Japan.

Three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant suffered meltdowns in March 2011 following a massive earthquake and tsunami.

A series of investigations have blamed safety complacency, inadequate crisis management skills, a failure to keep up with international safety standards, and collusion between regulators and the nuclear industry as the main contributing causes of the disaster.

The authority plans to revise laws next year and enact them in 2020 to implement the IAEAs recommendations, officials said yesterday.

The authority also said it would increase the size and competency of its staff. The IAEA urged Japan to develop training programs and step up safety research and cooperation with organisations inside and outside the country. Japan plans to send five inspectors to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission later this year for training in nuclear safety inspections.

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New Delhi:

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) announced its collaboration with Sun Pharma to initiate research for malaria eradication and other steps related to it. This is Indias first public-private-partnership agreement for a Malaria Free India and promoting preventive health measures. The malaria elimination demonstration programme will start in Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh as MP along with five other states contributes 60 percent of malaria cases in India. Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda said the agreement between ICMR and Sun Pharma reiterates Indias commitment to eliminate malaria.

It will take time of 3 to 5 years for public-private-partnership stakeholders to execute the malaria elimination programme. This private-public initiative is governed by six-point goals:

-demonstrating feasibility of malaria elimination in Mandla district of MP

-elimination of malaria-attributable deaths in infants, children and pregnant women

-to make Madla a malaria-free district

-strengthen and upgrade existing health systems

-Introduce mobile based surveillance and treating all malaria cases as per NVBDCP guidelines.

-Inform communities by using information, education and communication tools.

For all these six goals, e rapid diagnostic tests, prompt treatment of effective antimalarial drugs will be used for checking the feasibility of malaria elimination and prevention of its re-establishment.

This Malaria Free India initiative will also demonstrate health benefits of clean environment as envisioned by Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan initiative.
New York:

India has sought time to implement the Paris climate agreement, saying it should not be done in haste and all countries should be allowed to follow their national processes. A debate about early entry into force of the Paris Agreement is unfortunate. Early ratification can be understood, but it will take time as per the national processes of approval, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said at the Major Economies Forum Meeting in New York.



We should not make haste because Paris climate Agreement is to be implemented post 2020. There is enough time for ratification and all countries should be allowed to follow their national processes, he said.



According to reports, the US and China are leading a push to bring the Paris climate accord into force much faster aided by a typographical glitch in the text of the agreement.



India on April 22 signed the historic deal along with more than 170 nations, marking a significant step that has brought together developing and developed nations for beginning work on cutting down greenhouse gas emissions.



Paris climate agreement is a historical achievement for mankind. All countries should implement it in letter and spirit. After signing of Paris agreement, developed world needs to immediately ratify the Kyoto Protocol second commitment period and should present enhanced pre-2020 actions, he said.



The minister also urged developed nations to announce their enhanced pre-2020 climate action plans and undertake the urgent task of mobilising USD 100 billion, lack of which will hamper implementation of nationally determined contributions of developing countries.



The second urgent task to be done is Mobilisation of USD 100 billion. Without this crucial mobilisation, many of the developing countries cannot implement their nationally determined contributions, Javadekar said.



He said the need of the hour is to lay out the complete institutional mechanism for building up on the Paris accord.



The plan to work for the first meeting of Ad hoc group on Paris Agreement (APA) and additional works by Subsidiary Body for Implementation and Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBI/SBSTA)...should be prepared in consultation with all stake holders as issues covered under these bodes have a direct bearing on the Provisions of the Paris climate Agreement. There is a need for coherence between COP, APA, SBI, SBSTA and other institutions, he said.



Observing that India has led from the front as far as pre-2020 action is concerned, he said that though it is not mandated to take pre-2020 actions as per Kyoto Protocol, the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has showcased to the world that if there is political will, there is a way.



India has shown its leadership by action. It is now actions of developed countries which will be watched by the world against the backdrop of Indias proactive achievements, he said.

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Mumbai:

Maharashtra Government is seeking a loan of Rs 5,000 crore from the World Bank for implementing drought-mitigation steps, from water conservation to changing crop pattern, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said. He said the government has submitted a proposal with the External Affairs Ministry as per the instructions of World Bank and a meeting was held between officials of both sides when the Maharashtra legislature was in session recently.



We have requested World Bank officials to help us tackle drought from the specific fund they have created for drought mitigation, Fadnavis told reporters. The State is seeking Rs 5,000 crore from the world bodys drought mitigation fund, he said. The WBs help is being sought to make Maharashtra, currently reeling under severe water shortage, free of drought, Fadnavis said.



The Chief Minister said generally, the process of submitting a proposal and disbursement of loan amount takes about a year-and-a-half but he has requested the World Bank officials to consider their proposal at the earliest.



The World Bank will support 3,000 villages from Marathwada and 2,000 from Vidarbha to make them drought free. We will focus on water conservation works and later decide the crop pattern of drought-prone regions. The scheme will be implemented in Aurangabad, Beed, Latur, Osmanabad and Akola, Buldhana and Amravati districts.



Asked about the governments stand on the sugarcane crop, which consumes large quantity of water, Fadnavis said cane farming is sustainable and thus the first choice of agriculturists. We cannot stop sugar mills (from operating) but we can bring sugarcane crop under drip irrigation. Replying to another question, Fadnavis said municipal corporations have been directed to provide treated sewage water to industries.



Kalyan Dombilvli and Thane Municipal Corporations have been specifically asked to adopt this system as the industries around these cities use fresh water supplied by Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation, he added.

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New Delhi:

As many as 275 zones around wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in India have been declared as 'ecologically sensitive' and the figure includes six in Gujarat. The declaration has been approved by the Union Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change. Union Minister of State for Environment Prakash Javadekar informed the same in the Rajya Sabha on Monday in reply to a question raised by Parimal Nathwani from Jharkhand.



According to Prakash Javadekar, total 282 proposals were received for the status of eco-sensitive zones from various states and out of it 275 were approved. In Gujarat, the eco-sensitive zones that are identified include Marine National Park and Marine Wildlife Sanctuary, Girnar Wildlife Sanctuary, Narayan Sarovar Wildlife Sanctuary, Purna Wildlife Sanctuary, Vansda National Park and Thol Wildlife Sanctuary.



215 of the eco-sensitive zones have been notified in the Gazette of India, said Javadekar, adding out of these 183 are draft notifications and 32 are final notifications.



"Eco-sensitive zone is to conserve bio-diversity and endangered wildlife and protect the environment around national parks and wildlife sanctuaries as a safety zone, without impeding legitimate socio-economic development of the area," said Javadekar.

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New Delhi:

The Supreme Court today dismissed beleagured Vijay Mallyas prayer for protection from disclosure of his assets and those of his family, in India and abroad, to Kingfisher Airlines lenders, saying no tangible grounds have been raised to maintain secrecy of information. We dont find any tangible objection in disclosing the assets (of Mallya, his wife and children) to banks, a bench comprising Justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman said.



The bench directed the apex court registry to furnish to the lenders, a consortium of banks, the details of assets, both domestic and foreign, declared by the former liquor baron of himself and his family members, in sealed cover to the apex court.



The top court, which said Mallya has not complied with its April 7 order in its letter and spirit, observed that the whole purpose of asking for disclosure was to give a fair idea to banks for entering into a meaningful and viable settlement.



It asked the Debt Recovery Tribunal in Bengaluru to expeditiously decide within two months, the pleas of banks and financial institutions for recovery of their loans.



The direction was issued after Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi submitted that there was total non-compliance with the apex courts April 7 order as Mallya was neither indicating the date of his return to the country to make an appearance before the court nor was he showing his bonafide for reaching a settlement with the lenders by not showing willingness to deposit a substantial part of the amount he owed them.



He is a fugitive from justice in India, the Attorney General said, adding the embattled businessman was playing hide and seek and cooking cock and bull story. Rohatgi said Mallya was deliberately concealing something from the court as he had no intention to come back.



However, senior advocates C S Vaidyanathan and Parag Tripathi, appearing for Mallya and his companies respectively, submitted that he was a defaulter but not a wilful defaulter and here this is a case of business failure and not that of wilful default.



Vaidyanathan submitted the accumulated loans of Kingfisher Airlines stood at Rs 16,000 crore in 2013 and all loans were given on the basis of personal assets of Mallya which is in the records of the banks. That being the case the liabilities cannot be attached to his estranged wife living abroad and NRI children who are protected under the law from disclosing their overseas assets, he contended. Mallya has defaulted on repayment of loans of Rs 9,400 crore to a State Bank of India-led consortium.

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Dhaka:

The Al Qaeda terrorist outfit today claimed responsibility for the brutal killings of Bangladeshs first gay magazine editor along with a friend here, saying they were executed for pioneering homosexuality in the Muslim-majority country.

Julhash Mannan, the editor of Roopban - the only magazine in Bangladesh advocating gay rights - and his friend Tanay Fahim were killed yesterday by armed assailants who entered the flat impersonating as courier company officials, police said.

The Al-Qaeda in the Indian Sub continent (AQIS) claimed responsibility for killing the duo, saying that the two were because they were pioneers of promoting and practicing homosexuality.

The mujahidin of Ansar al-Islam (AQIS, Bangladesh branch) were able to assassin Julhash Mannan and his associate Tanay Fahim. They were the pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh, the AQIS said in a Twitter post.

They were working day and night to promote homosexuality among the people of this land with the help of their masters, the US crusaders and its Indian allies, it was quoted as saying by Dhaka Tribune.

Mannan, 35, a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni and ex-protocol officer of the US embassy, was known for his gay rights activism.

Fahim, the other victim, was also a LGBT activist.

The assailants barged into Mannans flat on the second floor and stabbed him and his friend indiscriminately, Abdul Bari, a sub-inspector of Special Branch (SB) of police, was quoted as saying by the Daily Star.

The two died immediately on the spot.

Mannans body was found lying at the entrance of the house while Fahims body was found inside.

The killings came two days after the grisly murder of liberal university professor Rezaul Karim Siddiquee in the northern Rajshahi city. The attack was claimed by the ISIS.

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Starmus will have its musical agenda through shows like the Sonic Universe concert, in which Hans Zimmer, Sarah Brightman, and Anathema will offer exclusive performances.

From June 27 to July 2, Tenerife will become the meeting place for the brightest minds in the world in the fields of science and music.



Madrid, April 26, 2016. Make science accessible and enjoy exclusive artistic performances inspired by the universe is the spirit of Starmus Festival. And in its third edition this year, it pays a special tribute to Professor Stephen Hawking. On this occasion, the organization, led by Garik Israelian in collaboration with the government of the Canary Islands and the Council of Tenerife, wanted to make a major effort to bring together not only top-level speakers in the scientific field, but musicians and artistic performances that really inspire the beauty of the universe and the stars.



"We know that Professor Hawking is a great lover of music, and to celebrate this new edition of Starmus, we have made a careful and thoughtful selection of surprise guests and musical performances aimed to be a tribute to the professor," said Garik Israelian.



Warped Side of the Universe will be the artistic contribution that Hans Zimmer, who won an Oscar for his work in the film The Lion King (1995) and was nominated 10 more times, Paul Franklin, also a winner of two Oscars for best special effects for Inception (2010) and Interestellar (2014), and the legendary astrophysicist Kip Thorne will offer to Starmus and Stephen Hawking. It is a multimedia recreation in which the audience will be involved in the sensations that produce gravitational waves, colliding black holes, explosions of supernovas and the birth of our universe. All of these effects will be experienced through music, videos, computer simulations, poetry and prose.



Sarah Brightman, soprano, music icon, actress and UNESCO ambassador, will bring her Dreamchaser world tour performance (which touched upon 5 continents and over 100 concert dates) to Tenerife, in honor of Stephen Hawking. Together with the Tenerife Symphonic, the artistic and inspiring performance will include stunning visions of the universe and will take the audience on a high-resolution journey through space, from the bursts of explosive celestial energy to the static beauty of nebulae. Brightman added, I am delighted to have been invited to perform at this unique event in support of the new Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication and Starmus, and look forward to performing with the acclaimed Tenerife Symphony Orchestra.



Landing in Tenerife from Liverpool, the progressive rock band Anathema, will stage the strength, emotion and intensity of their powerful songs ."We're very honoured to be invited to play Starmus festival this year. To be in the company of so many luminaries from the worlds of science and music in the year that Starmus pays tribute to Professor Stephen Hawking is going to be a once in a lifetime experience," Anathema said.



About Starmus

Starmus Festival was born with the aim of making the most universal science and art accessible to the public. The festival brings together the brightest minds from astronomy, prominent space travelers, astrophysicists, and stargazers with tech business leaders and creative industries thinkers to debate the future of humanity.



After two ground-breaking editions in 2011 and 2014, gathering together the most important representatives in these fields, such as the astronaut Neil Armstrong and Professor Stephen Hawking. In this new edition, the Starmus III program will include the participation of twelve Nobel laureates in disciplines such as Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Astronomy, along with other guests of great prestige.



In addition to the lectures, another of the highlights will be the Ask Hawking segment which, as in the previous edition, will enable members of the public to pose questions to the great scientist.



The Canary Islands  the stage for Starmus

Tenerife and La Palma, as leading astro-tourism destinations, are the privileged venues for Starmus Festival for the third time. Tenerife is acknowledged as one of the best locations in the world for stargazing due to the low level of light pollution in the archipelago, and in recent decades both Tenerife and La Palma have established themselves a centres for researching and observing the universe, with two unique world-class observatories: Teide, in Tenerife, and Roque de los Muchachos, in La Palma, the latter containing the world's largest telescope. Additionally, the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands participates in some of the world's key astrophysics projects.



Since its first edition, the festival has been supported and sponsored by the Tenerife Island Government through Turismo de Tenerife, its tourist agency, as part of its ongoing bid to position the island as one of the great meeting places for the astrophysical community thanks to the privileged conditions of the Tenerife sky, coupled with the experience of astronomical observation and research accumulated by the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands and related institutions, with the result that the island is one of the world's top locations in this field.



About the Canary Islands

The Canary Islands is the place with the best climate in the world for enjoying exceptional holidays any time of the year. Seven different and unique islands, perfect for disconnecting from your daily routine, recharge your batteries and return home feeling physically and mentally refreshed. The beaches, volcanic landscapes, lively and hospitable lifestyle and the possibility of choosing from all sorts of outdoor activities, as well as a wide range of quality accommodation and leisure activities mean that the majority of visitors repeat the experience more than once.



About Promotur-Turismo de Canarias

Turismo Islas Canarias is responsible for promoting the Canary Islands destination brand. Created in 2005, the main goal of this public company is to study, promote and market the huge tourist offer the Canarian archipelago affords, in conjunction with the other institutions on the islands related to the tourist sector.



About Turismo de Tenerife

Turismo de Tenerife is a public organization answerable to the Island Council of Tenerife that seeks to promote the values of the island as a tourist destination. Its scope also includes the regeneration of the destination or the attracting of foreign investors to undertake different projects on the island. Its management system, which includes the figure of the associates (over 500), combines different public authorities and the private sector to develop and strengthen the planning of tourist strategies.



About Island Council of Tenerife

The Island Council of Tenerife is the governing, administrative and representative body of the Island. Its scope includes the provision of supra-municipal services and the coordinating of services with different municipalities from its different areas of government: Tourism, Environment, Roads, Landscape or Regional Planning, among others.



For Further Information:

Marisa Toro Managing Partner

MARLOW -Starmus media partner

marisa.toro@marlowinsight.com




Beijing:

India and Pakistan should resolve the issue over Masood Azhar through direct and serious consultations, China today said, weeks after blocking Indias bid in the UN to ban the JeM chief that generated negativity in bilateral ties.

We encourage all parties related to the listing matter of Masood Azhar to have direct communication and work out a solution through serious consultations, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said in a written communication to PTI here on the issue which drew serious protests from New Delhi over Beijings last minute move to block its bid to slap a UN ban on Azhar.

Replying to a question about whether there is any change in Chinas stand on the issue after a number of top Indian officials conveyed Indias strong concerns over the move, Hua said as per the rules of the UN Committee on counterterrorism, the relevant countries should have direct talks.

In addition to Huas comments, Chinese officials expressed confidence that the issue will be resolved as Beijing is also in touch with Islamabad on the issue.

Her comments came as Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan held talks in New Delhi today, in which India raised the Azhar issue.

While External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took up the issue with her counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of Russia, India, China (RIC) Ministers meet in Moscow on April 18, it was raised by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar with his Chinese counterpart the same day in Beijing.

The issue was subsequently raised by National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi during the just-concluded 19th round of India-China border talks.

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New Delhi :

A teenager, who had allegedly run over a 32-year-old man with his fathers Mercedes, today succeeded in securing bail in his third attempt from Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) for appearing in entrance examinations. Principal Magistrate Vishal Singh granted bail to the boy, who has just turned major, on furnishing a bond of Rs 50,000.

The board had earlier denied bail to the juvenile twice by observing that he was a repeat offender and had blamed his parents for allowing him to drive at such an age.

The boy sought bail saying he has given his 12th standard exams and has to appear in various entrance examinations and that he was depressed as he was away from his family.

Advocate Vikas Manchanda, who appeared for the youth, submitted that the future prospects of the child were involved here and if he is not allowed to give competitive exams, it can ruin his career.

He said the boy has already missed several exams during his stay in the reform home and he should be granted bail to enable him to appear in the rest of the examinations.

The board had earlier asked the counsel to furnish the admit cards and other documents relating to the exams which were given to JJB.

The bail plea, however, was opposed by the police and prosecutor Atul Shrivastava sought to see the psychology reports of the boy.

While rejecting the boys earlier bail pleas, the board had observed that repeated traffic rule violation challans failed to have any reformative effect upon the juvenile and it seemed his parents did not care.

The incident took place on April 4 when marketing executive Siddharth Sharma was trying to cross a road near Ludlow Castle School and the speeding Mercedes hit him.

A case under IPC sections 304 A (causing death by rash or negligent act), 279 (driving on a public way so rashly or negligently as to endanger human life) and 337 (causing hurt by an act which endangers human life) was lodged against him.

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New Delhi :

Buoyed by record sales in the previous fiscal, Maruti Suzuki India today said it expects to continue with the same momentum to clock a double-digit growth and has earmarked Rs 4,400-crore capex for 2016-17. The company, however, said the auto industry will be up against unfavourable conditions such as foreign exchange rate, increase in commodity prices and environmental lobby in the ongoing fiscal.

We are taking forward Make in India programme with our manufacturing and we hope to grow in double digits in 2016-17. We are again setting a target of repeating double-digit growth despite the many challenges in the way. Its not going to be an easy year in any way, Maruti Suzuki India Chairman R C Bhargava told reporter here.

He further said that all the positive factors including the softening of commodity prices and foreign exchange rates are not that positive now as they were earlier.

The company has been focussing on increasing its manufacturing activities, localisation through more vendors and would continue the same this fiscal, Bhargava said.

However, it is not going to be easy as some of the favourable factors in the previous fiscal such as forex rate, and commodity prices are reversing this year, Bhargava said, adding we also have the environmental lobby which would like to stop or reduce our production of cars.

In 2015-16, MSI posted 10.6 per cent increase in sales at 14,29,248 units, out of which 1,23,897 units were exported. Its net sales were also the highest at Rs 56,350.4 crore, beating the previous best of Rs 48,606 crore in FY2014-15.

When asked about the capital expenditure plans of the company for the new fiscal, he said: This year, we will be spending around Rs 4,400 crore. This will be mainly used for strengthening our R&D and building our marketing and sales infrastructure.

Last fiscal, the company had spent Rs 2,500 crore on capex.

He said the companys team for land acquisition is in place and already Rs 800 crore has been invested for expansion of its sales network.

Commenting on the companys production plans, Bhargava said commencement of roll out of vehicles from the Gujarat plant has been advanced by five months.

Originally, the Gujarat plant was scheduled to start production from May 2017 but we are likely to start from January 2017, he said.

The production at Gujarat plant would begin from January and on a single-shift basis and the company is looking to churn out around 10,000 units from there in the current fiscal.

In the meantime, the company is working to stretch production at its two existing facilities in Gurgaon and Manesar to produce a total of around 1.57 million units a year.
New Delhi:

NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal, who was arrested one month ago in connection with a corruption case, looks drastically changed now. The stark change in the appearance of former deputy CM of Maharashtra can be seen in his recent picture, which has gone viral on the internet. The picture shows Chhagan Bhujbal sitting on a wheelchair as he reportedly waits for a CT scan at the St Georges Hospital in Mumbai.

The 68-year-old was admitted to a hospital after he complained of a toothache. Reports said that Chhagan Bhujbal was sent to St Georges instead of a dental hospital and he complained of a chest pain.



Chhagan Bhujbal is a diabetic and also suffers from high blood pressure. In the recent picture he looks exactly opposite to his previously robust self.

The picture, which shows him frail, dishevelled, slumped in a wheel chair, has gone viral. He has reportedly lost 10 kg weight since his arrest on March 14.

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New Delhi :

BJP plans to target Sonia Gandhi and other Congress leaders on the issue of bribes in the AugustaWestland chopper deal during the UPA regime in a bid to corner the main opposition party which has been paralysing Rajya Sabha on the Uttarakhand affair.

The top brass of the BJP including its President Amit Shah and parliamentary leaders including Finance Minister Arun Jaitley met here to chalk out a strategy following media reports that an Italian court, which has convicted AugustaWestland chief Giuseppe Orsi, has reportedly described how the firm paid bribes to top Congress leaders to bag the Rs.3,600 crore deal.

The issue also figured in the BJP Parliamentary Party where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also present. Congress would also be targeted on the controversial Aircel Maxis deal and the affidavits in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case.

According to media reports, the Italian court judgement states how the firm lobbied with Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her close aides besides the then NSA M K Narayanan and the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Gandhi was described as the driving force by the judge behind the deal.

Subramanian Swamy, who took oath as the newly-nominated member of Rajya Sabha today and the bete noire of Congress first family, will rake up the chopper deal issue in the Rajya Sabha for which notice has been given. Meenakshi Lekhi is expected to do the job in the Lok Sabha tomorrow.

A top BJP leader said it is significant that for the first time the bribe giver has been convicted but still people do not know who the bribe-taker is. (More) PTI SKC KR SPG SAP Similarly, the Ishrat Jahan case pot will be stirred by Kirit Somayya in the Lok Sabha.

To specific questions whether Sonia Gandhis name would be taken up in connection with the chopper scam, a top leader refused to give a direct reply but party leaders indicated she would be targeted.

For the record, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was fielded by the BJP to attack Congress on the chopper deal. He asked the defence minister in the Manmohan Singh government A K Antony to name the party leaders allegedly involved in the scandal.

Bribe-givers have been convicted. Why are bribe-takers silent? Antony should answer if leaders of Congress are involved in it or not. Are they from your party or not? Please come clean, he told a press conference.

The Congress hit back and said rejected any allegations against Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh saying we reject it with the contempt they deserve.

No one should be making loose comments. The Congress President and the former PM, whose integrity and intellect was never in question, party deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma told the media.

He said the BJP has been making irresponsible statements and wild allegations and the Congress was not going to accept this.

Sharma also claimed that a businessman close to Modi has entered into an MoU with AgustaWestland. But he refused to name him.

He also questioned the government why it removed AgustaWestland from the blacklist in which the UPA government had put it in.

On his part, Antony asked the Modi government to fast track the probe into the chopper scam and find out the truth as the UPA government had cancelled the contract and ordered a CBI investigation into it.

When the primary allegation came out in the media, we immediately ordered a CBI inquiry. We cancelled the contract and fought the case in the Milan court. We won the case and got back all the money we paid in advance by bank guarantee, he told reporters.

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New Delhi :

Nearly 170 firefighters braved infernal heat for over four hours to douse the massive blaze at the National Museum of Natural History in the wee hours today that gutted its huge collection of exhibits. The fire broke out at around 1.45 PM on the top floor of six-storeyed FICCI building in central Delhis Mandi House area.

Initially eight fire tenders from the Connaught Place Fire Station were rushed to the spot and a team of 12 fire officials went inside the building to assess the situation.

In no time, they rang the alarm bells and a dozen more firetenders were rushed from Safdarjung and the headquaters fire stations, Deputy Director of Delhi Fire Services Atul Garg said, adding, 35 fire tenders in total and two skylifts were pressed into service in the operation that lasted for over four hours.

In such scnarios, firefighters have to brave extreme heat and temperature that may exceed 800 degrees Celsius and can even touch 1000 degrees Celisus. They are dressed in proper uniform and equipped with tecniques to meet the challenges. However, it never stops being a difficult task, he said.

Around 170 firefighters joined the operation and they went inside the building that was virtually turned into a burning furnace, by turns, in teams comprising 8-12 officials, said former fire chief A K Sharma who was also supervising the operation.

The operation hit a critical point when six firefighters including an Assistant Divisional Officer, a station officer and a sub-officerwere stuck on the fourth floor of the building.

The fire, that originated from the fifth floor, had spread till the fourth. The aim was to do damage control there. What the officers could not assess well was the rate at which the flame were spreading, Sharma said.

When they were trying to control the situation on the fourth floor dodging burning fibre ceilings which was falling down in pieces, the fire made its way to the third floor too. They tried to retreat but the approach zone towards both staircases were blocked by burning material.

The officials gave visual signals with their flash lights and one of them managed to make an SOS call through his wireless, following which a rescue operation was launched immediately.

While two of them were rescued with the help of the skylift, the others came down using scaffoldings that was installed outside the building, part of which is undergoing repair.

They were all rushed to a hospital after having inhaled excessive smoke, and discharged later by this evening, Sharma said.

The cause of the fire is still to be ascertained and Delhi Fire Services have started preparing a report on the incident, a senior official said.

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New Delhi :

Karbonn today said it will roll out an SOS app for women on its handsets in the next two months, much ahead of the governments mandate of installing a panic button on phones from January 1.

The directive is a step towards harnessing the full potential of mobile devices which could be a potent tool in ensuring womens safety, Karbonn Mobiles said in a statement.

The firm added it has been working on developing a mobile SOS app for women which would be rolled out over the next two months.

This safety app would allow users to send alert messages to emergency contacts with a single tap on home screen; share their location to select contacts at a predefined time or distance automatically enabling their emergency contacts to keep tab on the users location in real time, it said.

The feature will also allow users to raise and send alarms discreetly by simply shaking the device without unlocking the screen as well as send alerts by pressing down the power button for a certain duration.

The government has made installing a panic button on mobile phones mandatory from January 1, 2017. An in-built GPS navigation system would be mandatory for all phones a year later with effect from January 1, 2018.

Handset industry body Indian Cellular Association (ICA) also welcomed the notification.

We all understand that mobile handsets are all pervasive and the ideal information technology device for the vast Indian population. It was extremely important that we come up with a very simple solution both for feature phones and smart phones, so simple that anyone can understand it, ICA National President Pankaj Mohindroo said.

On implementation of satellite-based GPS on mobile handsets, ICA said the same needs to be relooked at and ICA is requesting DOT to have a relook.
Lahore:

The 108-carat famed Koh-i-Noor diamond cannot be brought back to Pakistan as it was handed over to the UK under the Treaty of Lahore in 1849, provincial Punjab government today told the high court.

Maharaja Ranjeet Singh had inked the agreement with the East India Company in 1849 under which the precious diamond was given to the UK. Therefore, the UK government cannot be approached for return of the diamond, a law officer of the provincial government told the court during the hearing of a plea seeking direction for the Pakistan government to bring back Koh-i-Noor, which India has also been trying to get from the UK for years.

Petitioner Barrister Javed Iqbal Jaffrey, however, opposed the governments plea, arguing, both governments were not authorised under the law of the land to sign such an agreement.

LHC Justice Khalid Mahmood Khan directed the governments counsel to submit a copy of the agreement between then Maharaja Ranjit Singh and the East India Company on the next hearing on May 2.

In his plea, Barrister Jaffrey has alleged that Britain had snatched the diamond from Daleep Singh, grandson of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh and took it to the United Kingdom.

The diamond became part of the crown of incumbent Queen Elizabeth-II at the time of her crowing in 1953. Queen Elizabeth has no right on the Koh-i-Noor diamond, which weighs 105 carats and worth billions of rupees, he said.

He claimed that Koh-i-Noor diamond was cultural heritage of Punjab province and its citizens owned it in fact, it said and prayed to the court to direct the federal government to bring the diamond back to Pakistan from the British government.

The Indian Government had recently said that it will make all efforts to bring back the valued diamond, even as it had earlier told the Supreme Court that the diamond was neither stolen nor forcibly taken by British rulers but given to East India Company by erstwhile rulers of Punjab 167 years back as compensation for helping them in the Sikh wars.

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In 1887, a well-known businessman named Adam Orris and his business partner Austin G. Eberly built two identical mansions along the prestigious residential end of what would become Main Street Mechanicsburg.

One of those buildings at 318 W. Main St. in the borough, became historically known as the Adam Orris Residence, taking its name from its co-constructor, who was a partner in the Eberly and Orris Wheel Works, a well-known manufacturer of wheels and wheel parts.

Orris himself was a member of an established Cumberland County family. Born in 1838, he started his business career by clerking in several area stores. After serving in the Army as a sergeant-major of the 157th Regiment Pennsylvania Infantry, he managed a store until 1870.

Orris formed a partnership with Eberly, also a member of a prominent county family, in 1885. At the time, Eberly had been involved in the Eberly Brothers manufacturing firm with his brother John Eberly. In 1884, John Eberly sold his share of the company to Orris. The company soon changed its name to reflect the new partnership at hand.

Little else is known about Orris  with the exception that he was one of the proprietors of Irving Female College.

The residence, located at 318 W. Main St., exhibits a blend of Second Empire and Victorian period styling. Today, it remains a notable example of a fashionable late nineteenth century residence.

Deeds indicate that Orris owned the residence until 1919, when he was apparently forced to sell it. This sale may have been a result of the same financial difficulties that led to the decline of the wheel firm. Deeds also show that Eberly sold the other residence next door.

From 1919 to 1926, the residence served as the United Methodist Home for Children. Since 1927, it has been used as a private residence and has been a Bed & Breakfast since 2006.

Editor's Note: This story was updated to reflect changes at 3 p.m. on April 26.
It took almost 12 hours for power to be restored and for Route 34 in Mount Holly Springs to open on a day when the borough could ill afford such misfortune.

A tractor-trailer crashed into a house Tuesday morning, knocking down power lines along Baltimore Avenue around 3 a.m.

Scott Surgeoner, a spokesman for Met-Ed FirstEnergy, which serves upwards of 560,000 people in 13 counties in Pennsylvania, said that as of 2:45 p.m., power has been restored to those without it in Mount Holly Springs.

Route 34 opened up moments later, according to Borough Maintenance employee Jim Horner.

The borough was able to prevent any disturbance to hopeful voters amid the crash by bringing in generators to Mount Hollys fire station to ensure residents could still vote in Tuesdays primary election.

The boroughs Police Cpl. Brandon Ritchie said he didnt believe any voters were affected, and that he hadnt noticed any long lines or any other unusual activity at the fire station stemming from the crash.

We restored 766 at 3:21 a.m. that left about 1,050 and they were just restored, he said just after 2:45 p.m.

Bill Behler, a line leader for Met-Ed said a 45-foot and 35-foot pole were knocked over in the crash. Surgeoner said the poles had to be replaced.

Abc27 reported that the driver of the truck suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to Penn State Hershey Medical Center. No one inside the home was injured, but a person who tried to help the driver of the rig suffered smoke inhalation.

Police said that as of Tuesday evening the cause of the crash remained unknown.

"Honestly, we have no idea," Ritchie said. "There's suspicions from data we collected in the vehicle, but we weren't able to speak with the driver because he got taken out by Life Lion."

Posted at 3 p.m. on Cumberlink:

Power has been restored to most of Mount Holly Springs as of 2:45 p.m.

Posted at 11 a.m. on Cumberlink:

Route 34 in Mount Holly Springs remains closed at 10:30 a.m. after a tractor-trailer crashed into a house Tuesday morning, knocking down power lines.

The crash happened around 3 a.m. Tuesday on Baltimore Avenue in the borough.

Bill Behler, a line leader for Met-Ed FirstEnergy said a 45-foot and 35-foot pole were knocked over in the crash after the tractor-trailer ran into a home along the street. Multiple wires were knocked down, knocking power out in the borough.

Four Met-Ed trucks were on scene and Behler said they hoped to have power restored by noon.

"We have to remove the wires from the top of the truck before the truck can be moved, which takes time," Behler said.

Abc27 reported that the driver of the truck suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to Penn State Hershey Medical Center. No one inside the home was injured, but a person who tried to help the driver of the rig suffered smoke inhalation.

Mt. Holly Springs Elementary operated on a 2-hour delay this morning. Generators were also brought to Mt. Hollys fire station to ensure that people could still vote in today's primary election.
         :       ,        
Have you heard of the Ghost Sniper destroying ISIS one shot at a time?

Its just like something out of a Hollywood script  war, espionage, intrigue, suspense, death.

As reported by the Supreme Patriot website, there is one thing that has leaders of the Islamic State shuddering in fear: Sudden death from someone who happens to be a pretty good shot.

As further reported by the UK Daily Mail, ISIS chiefs are living in fear of a mystery sniper following rumors that three of the terrorist groups leaders have all recently been assassinated by long-range shots within 10 days of each other with.

The paper reported further:

The leaders are said to have been picked off one-by-one in Sirte, the Libyan coastal city where Muammar Gaddaffi was born, which the militants took control of last year. According to unconfirmed social media reports, ISIS fighters are now sweeping the city for the man ordinary Libyans are said to be dubbing Daesh hunter.

The men have reportedly all been shot and killed one-by-one in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte, birthplace of the late Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddaffi, which ISIS militants and others took control of in 2015.

Assasinations

Unconfirmed social media reports say that ISIS fighters are currently sweeping the city, conducting a search for the mysterious sniper that ordinary Libyan citizens are calling Daesh hunter, after a slang term for ISIS used by locals.

The first to be assassinated was Hamad Abdel Hady, a Sudanese national who was killed on Jan. 13, according to a report in Libya Prospect. Reports said he was an official in the sharia court system established by ISIS, which metes out a warped and violent sense of justice.

State of terror prevailed among the IS ranks after the death of Al-Muhajer, they randomly shot in the air to scare inhabitants, while searching for the sniper, one source told the news site.

Next was Abu Mohammed Dernawi who was killed on Jan. 19 near his home in Sirte, other reports said. And the most recent official killed is rumored to be Abdullah Hamad al Ansari, a top-ranking ISIS commander from southern Libya; he was shot dead after he left a mosque on Jan. 23.

Still, some think that the assassinations may not be part of a larger strategy against ISIS in Libya. A journalist, Daniele Raineri, said that a similar killing took place in July when an ISIS preacher was shot, the Daily Mail reported.

The reporter further urged caution in believing something that may just little more than wild rumors, according to his Twitter feed, the paper reported.

Culture clash

That said, social media is afire with reports and rumors about the sniper who has become like a local folk hero to Libyans living under the strict control of the vile terrorist organization, the Libyan Herald said.

ISIS is not very popular in the city; days after the first assassination a photo report showed up depicting members of the Islamic State executing three men and whipping another just for taking a drink of alcohol [this, from the same group whose members have no problem having sex with teenage and preteen girls].

According to some estimates ISIS has about 3,000 fighters in Sirte. The group has implemented strict rules that are well-known to residents in the Islamic States defacto capital, in Raqqa, Syria.

Beheadings and crucifixions beset the town, which has been deserted by thousands of citizens.

Throughout the Middle East, ISIS has caused turmoil and devastation wherever the terrorist group has gone, displacing hundreds of thousands of people in Libya, Iraq and Syria. Many of those have become refugees and are streaming into Europe, creating a backlash from some Europeans as their cultures clash.

Sources:

Supreme Patriot

Daily Mail

Science.NaturalNews.com

Submit a correction >>
Pesticide spraying of marijuana fields harms local residents

In March 2014, while harvesting marijuana in a remote valley outside Port St Johns, South Africa, Cynthia (not her real name) was sprayed with herbicide from a police helicopter. This is apparently a regular occurrence in this part of the world, an area with very little employment where rural farmers rely on small marijuana crops to survive.

Cynthia reported that she ran away and tried to hide, but the helicopter followed her and sprayed the area, the droplets coming into contact with her unprotected skin.

It burned and itched and the poison smelled of strong chemicals. Afterwards there were black marks on my body, she commented. Two years later she still suffers with sinus problems.

A marijuana cultivator since her teens, Cynthia relies on marijuana for an income, despite the poor quality of the plants she grows. The little she earns goes towards buying groceries and paying for school fees. What upsets locals like Cynthia the most, is that in a country known for its violent crime, the police are slow to respond to incidents of murder and robbery, yet the small cannabis growers are targeted as if they were the worst of criminals.

Marijuana in South Africa

South Africa is termed a major cannabis producing country by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The quantities of marijuana seized annually by the South African Police Service (SAPS) consistently rank among the highest in the world. South Africa is also a transit hub for marijuana grown in neighboring countries in the region, for example Lesotho and Swaziland.

In 2004, the United States government donated a helicopter and three aerial spraying devices, worth a lot of money, to the SAPS Air Wing, stating that it is in the interests of the US to fight the war on drugs. Before spraying marijuana fields with pesticides, police patrols cleared plantations by hand, burning uprooted shrubs with petrol.

The type of high-grade, export-quality marijuana grown by agricultural farmers in the region is not the same as the cheap marijuana (dagga as it is called locally) that is grown by Cynthia and other villagers. Yet these small rural farmers bear the brunt of aerial eradication programs run by SAPS.

Glyphosate, the chemical used to clear marijuana plantations, is the worlds top-selling herbicide. It is most commonly marketed under the brand name Roundup. According to Monsanto, the manufacturer of the product, Glyphosate poses no unreasonable risks to humans or the environment when used according to label instructions, a notice on Monsantos website states.

However, instructions for using Kilo Max, the glyphosate formulation used by SAPS, suggests wearing elbow-length gloves, eye protection, waterproof clothing, and impervious footwear when preparing the substance, in order to protect oneself against the toxins. The instructions also specify what to do in case of skin contact: Immediately take off all contaminated clothing. Wash skin immediately with cold water, followed by soap and water  Contaminated clothing should be washed before re-use.

Sources:

//allafrica.com/stories/201604200400.html

//ecowatch.com/2015/01/23/health-problems-linked-to-monsanto-roundup/

Submit a correction >>
Secret aircraft attempted to capture Edward Snowden

Officials are demanding that the U.K. government disclose information about a confidential flight through Scottish airspace, which many suspect was intended to capture whistleblower, Edward Snowden.

The plane took off from the American east coast on June 24, 2013 after Snowden moved from Hong Kong to Moscow. The plane was part of contentious U.S. rendition missions.

According to Scottish journalist Duncan Campbell, the flight was part of a secret mission to seize Snowden after he released documents disclosing mass surveillance from secret services, based in the U.S. and U.K..

Since the plane passed over Scotland airspace  which is regulated by the U.K.  its been suspected that the U.K. and political officials in Scotland were involved in a scheme to capture Snowden.

Official demands transparency from U.K. Government

Alex Salmond, a SNP foreign affairs spokesman, is demanding complete transparency from the U.K. Government on this matter. As a matter of course and courtesy, any country, particularly an ally, should be open about the purposes of a flight and the use of foreign airspace or indeed airports, he told sources.

What we need to know now is, was this information given to the U.K. Government at the time. If so, then why did they give permission? If not, then why not? As a minimum requirement, the U.K. authorities should not allow any activity in breach of international law in either its airspace or its airports.

That is what an independent Scotland should insist on. Of course, since no rendition actually took place in this instance, it is a moot point as to whether intention can constitute a breach of human rights. However, we are entitled to ask what the U.K. Government knew and when did they know it.

The flight occurred in wake of U.S. federal prospectors filing a criminal complaint against Snowden on June 14th. The FBI and CIA met regularly about how they planned to arrest Snowden for breaching the Espionage Act.

Questions about the N977GA plane

Fresh documents, provided by Danish media group Denfri, verified that the N977GA plane was harbored at Copenhagen airport for state purposes of a non-commercial nature. Two days later, Danish officials received notification from the U.S. Department of Justice to help capture Snowden.

N977GA was first discovered by Dave Willis, as an airplane used by the CIA to transport U.S. prisoners. Snowden pressed that the Danish Government plotted to arrest him. Remember when the Prime Minister Rasmussen said Denmark shouldnt respect asylum law in my case? Turns out he had a secret, Snowden said.

John MacDonald, director of foreign policy group the Scottish Global Forum, said, Given the constitutional arrangements, there are a number of areas in which the Scottish Government may well have interests or concerns but will be excluded because security arrangements with the US are deemed out of bounds for Scotland.

However, if you take serious the supposition that all responsible governments have a moral and legal obligation to raise questions about flights which may be involved in dubious security and intelligence activities, then the Scottish Government may well have an interest in  or even be obliged to raise questions.

Questions have already been raised about the nature of military and intelligence air traffic through Scotland and if this activity is raising concerns within Scottish civil society  and it seems to be  then it is surely incumbent upon the Scottish Government to raise the issue with London.

The National Air Traffic Control Systems (Nats) claims rendition flights have been a recurring issue for the U.K. Government. They have so far declined to provide any information about attempts to capture Snowden, or the passage of the N977GA flight.

Sources include:

(1) TheNational.Scot

Submit a correction >>
VANCOUVER, April 26, 2016 /CNW/ - Absolute (TSX: ABT), the industry standard for persistent endpoint security and data risk management solutions, today announced that it will host a conference call on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 at 8:30 a.m. ET (5:30 a.m. PT) to discuss its fiscal 2016 third quarter financial results. Mr. Geoff Haydon, Chief Executive Officer, will host the call.

A press release announcing the quarterly results will be issued at 7:00 a.m. ET (4:00 a.m. PT) that same day. The corresponding Management's Discussion and Analysis and financial statements will also be made available at www.absolute.com.

All interested parties can join the call by dialing 647-427-7450 or 1-888-231-8191. Please dial-in 15 minutes prior to the call to secure a line. The conference call will be archived for replay until Tuesday, May 17, 2016 at midnight. To access the archived conference call, please dial 416-849-0833 or 1-855-859-2056 and enter the reservation code 87740234.

A live audio webcast of the conference call will be available at www.absolute.com and http://bit.ly/1WBLg8s. Please connect at least 15 minutes prior to the conference call to ensure adequate time for any software download that may be required to join the webcast. An archived replay of the webcast will be available for 90 days.

About Absolute

Absolute Software Corporation (TSX: ABT) is the industry standard in persistent endpoint security and data risk management solutions. Persistence technology from Absolute provides organizations with visibility and control over all of their devices, regardless of user or location. If an Absolute client is removed from an endpoint, it will automatically reinstall so IT can secure each device and the sensitive data it contains. No other technology can do this. Persistence technology is embedded in the firmware of computers, netbooks, tablets and smartphones by global leaders, including Acer, ASUS, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, Panasonic, Samsung, and Toshiba, and the Company has reselling partnerships with these OEMs and others, including Apple. For more information about Absolute, visit www.absolute.com.

2016 Absolute Software Corporation. All rights reserved. Absolute and Persistence are registered trademarks of Absolute Software Corporation. For patent information, visit www.absolute.com/patents. The Toronto Stock Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved of the information contained in this news release.

SOURCE Absolute Software Corporation

For further information: Public Relations: Becky Obbema, Interprose, [email protected] or 1 408 778 2024 or Toru Levinson, Absolute, [email protected] or 1 604 730 9851 x208; Investor Relations: Kristen Dickson, NATIONAL Equicom, [email protected] or 1 416 848 1429
VANCOUVER, April 26, 2016 /CNW/ - The Government of Canada today announced a commitment of $2.2 million in support of the Pathways to Technology project in British Columbia. Pathways to Technology is a First Nations-led initiative managed by the All Nations Trust Company to bring broadband connectivity to unserved or underserved First Nations communities. Funding was secured by Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada through the Building Canada Fund.

All communities, including remote First Nations require high-speed Internet to access social connectivity, educational resources, economic development opportunities, emergency services and efficient healthcare delivery.

The eight communities that benefitted from this investment are: Takla Lake First Nation, Ucluelet First Nation, Shackan, Nooaitch, Seton Lake, Nuxalk Nation, Homalco, and Upper Nicola First Nation.

Budget 2016 will invest an additional $255 million over two years starting in 201617 through the First Nations Infrastructure Fund to support investments in a range of community infrastructure, including roads and bridges, energy systems, broadband connectivity, physical infrastructure to mitigate the effects of natural disasters and fire protection.

Quotes

"Regardless of where you live, being able to access broadband internet is an absolute necessity for all Canadians. This is why I am are proud to support the Pathways to Technology project as it enables First Nation in all corners of British Columbia to connect with the resources the internet provides, supporting better health, education and economic outcomes."

The Honourable Carolyn Bennett, M.D., P.C., M.P.,

Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs

"By ensuring that reliable, high-speed internet is available to the First Nation communities in B.C., the Pathways to Technology Project is having a positive impact in education, health care, culture and economic development. The success of the Project is largely based upon the partnership approach taken to involve the First Nation communities and the provincial and federal governments."

Paul Donald,

CEO, All Nations Trust Company

Quick Facts

Since 2011, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada has invested over $16 .4 million to help connect First Nations in British Columbia to broadband Internet through the Pathways to Technology project.

.4 million to help connect First Nations in to broadband Internet through the Pathways to Technology project. 95 percent of British Columbia First Nations now receive broadband internet service.

Related products

Building Canada Fund

Pathways to Technology

First Nations Infrastructure Fund

Aboriginal Connectivity Profiles in British Columbia

You can subscribe to receive our news releases and speeches via RSS feeds or e-mail. For more information or to subscribe, visit www.aandc.gc.ca/subscriptions.

SOURCE Government of Canada

For further information: Sabrina Williams, Press Secretary, Office of the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, 819-997-0002; Media Relations, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, 819-953-1160
OPDIVO is the first and only anti PD-1 immuno-oncology agent in Canada approved for the treatment of advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma to deliver significant overall survival

Announcement marks third approval for OPDIVO in just over six months, in a third distinct tumour type

MONTREAL, April 25, 2016 /CNW/ - Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) Canada Co. today announced that Health Canada has approved OPDIVO (nivolumab) injection, for intravenous use, for the treatment of adult patients with a form of kidney cancer, renal cell carcinoma (RCC), who have received prior anti-angiogenic therapy in the advanced or metastatic setting.i

Today's announcement marks the first and only anti PD-1 immuno-oncology agent in Canada approved for the treatment of advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma to deliver significant overall survival in adults with advanced or metastatic RCC versus the current standard of care (everolimus).

This marks the third approval for OPDIVO in three distinct tumour types in just over six months. Health Canada approved OPDIVO for the treatment of adult patients with locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer with progression on or after platinum-based chemotherapy on February 26, 2016, and for the treatment of adult patients with unresectable or metastatic BRAF V600 wild-type melanoma in previously treated adults on September 25, 2015.

The OPDIVO melanoma, lung and RCC submissions received priority reviews after meeting the criteria of substantial evidence of clinical effectiveness providing an improved benefit/risk profile over existing therapies. As well, the phase 3 studies for the three tumour types were stopped early by an independent data monitoring committee for demonstrating superior overall survival in patients receiving OPDIVO versus standard of care.

RCC is the most common type of kidney cancer, with a low five-year survival rate of just 12 per cent in metastatic patients.ii Approximately 6,200 Canadians are diagnosed each year, and it is more common in men than women.iii

"While the treatment landscape for RCC has improved over the last decade, long-term overall survival has remained elusive for many patients," said Dr. Daniel Heng, medical oncologist at the Tom Baker Cancer Center and clinical associate professor at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. "OPDIVO provides a significant survival advantage compared to a standard of care, and represents an exciting paradigm shift in the treatment of this type of cancer."

"Immuno-oncology is a revolutionary advance in the treatment of this disease,'' said Dr. Anil Kapoor, uro-oncologist and Professor at McMaster University, and chair of the Kidney Cancer Research Network of Canada. "OPDIVO is the first anti-PD-1 agent to deliver significant overall survival to patients with advanced RCC, which is an area of high unmet need. This is an exciting time for patients."

"This is a milestone day for cancer care," said Dr. Nawal Peacock, President and General Manager, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada Co. "As a company, we continue to lead the way with advances in immuno-oncology with the ultimate goal of improving long term survival in a broad range of cancers. With the approvals for OPDIVO in melanoma, lung cancer and RCC, we are able to offer hope for more survival to more patients in Canada. Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the patients and physicians who participated in the OPDIVO clinical trials."

As an immuno-oncology (I-O) treatment, OPDIVO activates the body's own immune system to attack and kill tumours. It is not only the first and only I-O treatment (anti-PD-1 agent) to deliver significant overall survival to adult patients with advanced or metastatic RCC after prior anti-angiogenic therapy, but also to adult patients with unresectable or metastatic BRAF V600 wild-type melanoma and locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer.i

"Advanced kidney cancer is a challenging malignancy with few durable treatment options," said Heather Chappell, Executive Director Kidney Cancer Canada. "The patient community appreciates each new treatment option as an important step forward towards longer term management of this disease."

About Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada Co.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada is an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, a global biopharmaceutical company whose mission is to discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases. For more information about Bristol-Myers Squibb global operations, visit www.bms.com. Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada has been delivering innovative medicines for serious diseases to Canadian patients in the areas of cardiovascular health, oncology, neuroscience, immunoscience and virology for over 80 years. Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada employs over 300 people across the country. For more information, please visit www.bmscanada.ca.

Additional Information:

About CheckMate -025

The data to support Health Canada's approval was based on CheckMate -025, an open-label, randomized Phase 3 study in which patients treated with OPDIVO achieved a statistically significant median overall survival (OS) of 25.0 months (95 per cent confidence interval [CI], 21.7 to not estimable) and 19.6 months (95 per cent CI, 17.6 to 23.1) with everolimus, with a 27 per cent reduction in risk of death for OPDIVO.i The trial randomized 821 patients to receive either OPDIVO 3 mg/kg intravenously every two weeks or everolimus 10 mg tablets by mouth daily until documented disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. The objective response rate was superior in the OPDIVO group compared with everolimus (25 per cent vs. 5 per cent; odds ratio, 5.98 [95 per cent CI, 3.68 to 9.72]; P<0.001).i The safety profile of OPDIVO in CheckMate -025 was consistent with prior studies. In the study, the most frequently reported adverse drug-related adverse events (occurring at  10 percent) in patients receiving OPDIVO versus everolimus were fatigue (37 per cent vs. 39 per cent), rash (18 per cent vs. 31 per cent), pruritus (14 per cent vs. 10 per cent), nausea (14 per cent vs. 17 per cent), diarrhea (12 per cent vs. 21 per cent), and decreased appetite (12 per cent vs. 21 per cent).i Serious adverse drug reactions occurred in 12 per cent of patients receiving OPDIVO and 13 per cent of patients receiving everolimus. The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in at least 1 per cent of patients of patients receiving OPDIVO were pneumonitis and diarrhea.i

The Checkmate -025 phase 3 study was stopped early in July 2015 because an assessment conducted by the independent Data Monitoring Committee concluded that the study met its primary endpoint of overall survival, demonstrating superior overall survival in patients receiving OPDIVO compared to the control arm.

About OPDIVO

Cancer cells may exploit "regulatory" pathways, such as checkpoint pathways, to hide from the immune system and shield the tumor from immune attack. OPDIVO is a PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor that binds to the checkpoint receptor PD-1 expressed on activated T-cells, and blocks the binding of PD-L1 and PD-L2, preventing the PD-1 pathway's suppressive signaling on the immune system, including the interference with an anti-tumor immune response.

OPDIVO's broad global development program is based on Bristol-Myers Squibb's understanding of the biology behind Immuno-Oncology. Our company is at the forefront of researching the potential of Immuno-Oncology to extend survival in hard to treat cancers. This scientific expertise serves as the basis for the OPDIVO development program, which includes a broad range of Phase 3 clinical trials evaluating overall survival as the primary endpoint across a variety of tumor types. To date, the OPDIVO clinical development program has enrolled more than 18,000 patients.

OPDIVO was the first PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor to receive regulatory approval anywhere in the world in July 2014, and currently has regulatory approval in 46 countries including the United States, Japan, and in the European Union. In Canada, OPDIVO (nivolumab) is indicated for the treatment of adult patients

With advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma who have received prior anti-angiogenic therapy,

With locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with progression on or after chemotherapy (Patients with EGFR or ALK genomic tumour aberrations should have disease progression on a therapy for these aberrations prior to receiving OPDIVO),

With unresectable or metastatic BRAF V600 wild-type melanoma who have been previously untreated.i

Bristol-Myers Squibb & Immuno-Oncology: Advancing Modern Oncology Research

At Bristol-Myers Squibb, we have a vision for the future of cancer care that is focused on Immuno-Oncology, now considered a major treatment choice alongside surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and targeted therapies for certain types of cancer.

We have a comprehensive clinical portfolio of investigational and approved Immuno-Oncology agents, many of which were discovered and developed by our scientists. Our ongoing Immuno-Oncology clinical program is looking at broad patient populations, across multiple solid tumors and hematologic malignancies, and lines of therapy and histologies, with the intent of powering our trials for overall survival and other important measures like durability of response. We pioneered the research leading to the first regulatory approval for the combination of two Immuno-Oncology agents, and continue to study the role of combinations in cancer.

We are also investigating other immune system pathways in the treatment of cancer including CTLA-4, CD-137, KIR, SLAMF7, PD-1, GITR, and LAG-3. These pathways may lead to potential new treatment options  in combination or monotherapy  to help patients fight different types of cancers.

Our collaboration with academia, as well as small and large biotech companies, to research the potential of Immuno-Oncology and non-Immuno-Oncology combinations, helps achieve our goal of providing new treatment options in clinical practice.

At Bristol-Myers Squibb, we are committed to changing survival expectations in hard-to-treat cancers and the way patients live with cancer.

References

i Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada Co. OPDIVO Product Monograph. Revised: April 25, 2016.

ii SEER Cancer Statistics Factsheets: Kidney and Renal Pelvis Cancer. National Cancer Institute. Bethesda, MD. Available at: http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/kidrp.html. Accessed April 6, 2015.

iii Canadian Cancer Society. Kidney Cancer Statistics http://www.cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/cancer-type/kidney/statistics/?region=on. Accessed on February 5, 2016

SOURCE Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada

For further information: For media requests please contact: Monica Flores, Public Affairs Lead, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada, 514.333.3845, [email protected]; Aislinn Mosher, Public Affairs Manager, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada, 514-333-2530, [email protected]; Fiona Buchanan, Account Supervisor, GCI Group Canada, 416-486-5921, [email protected]
CALGARY, April 26, 2016 /CNW/ - WestJet will hold its quarterly analysts' conference call on Tuesday, May 3, 2016, at 8 a.m. MDT (10 a.m. EDT) following the release of its 2016 first quarter financial results.

President and CEO Gregg Saretsky and Executive Vice-President of Finance and CFO Harry Taylor will discuss WestJet's 2016 first quarter results and answer questions from financial analysts and members of the media.

The conference call will be available in Toronto by calling 416-915-3239, in Vancouver by calling 604-638-5340 and across Canada and the United States through the toll-free telephone number 1-800-319-4610. The call can also be heard live through an Internet webcast accessible via the Media and Investor Relations section of westjet.com.

A recording of the call will be available until May 17, 2016, across Canada and the United States by calling the toll-free number 1-800-319-6413 (password 00382#). The webcast will be archived in the Media and Investor Relations section of westjet.com for 90 days following the call.

Annual general meeting (AGM)

WestJet will hold its AGM at 10 a.m. MDT (12 p.m. EDT) on Tuesday, May 3, 2016, at WestJet's Calgary campus, which is located at 22 Aerial Place NE, Calgary, Alberta. The AGM will be available through an Internet webcast in the Media and Investor Relations section of westjet.com.

About WestJet

We are proud to be Canada's highest-rated airline for customer service, powered by an award-winning culture of care and recognized as one of the country's top employers. We offer scheduled service to 100 destinations in North America, Central America, the Caribbean and Europe. Through our regional airline, WestJet Encore, and with partnerships with airlines representing every major region of the world, we offer our guests more than 150 destinations in more than 20 countries. Leveraging WestJet's extensive network, flight schedule and remarkable guest experience, WestJet Vacations delivers affordable, flexible travel experiences with a variety of accommodation options for every guest. Members of our WestJet Rewards program earn WestJet dollars on flights, vacation packages and more. Our members use WestJet dollars towards the purchase of WestJet flights and vacations packages on any day, at any time, to any WestJet destination with no blackout periods  even on seat sales. For more information about everything WestJet, please visit westjet.com.

Recent recognition includes:

2015/2011/2010/2008/2007/2006/2005 Canada's Most Admired Corporate Culture (Waterstone Human Capital)

2015 Best Employers in Canada (Aon Hewitt)

2015/2014/2013 WestJet RBC World Elite MasterCard ranked #1 in Canada (MoneySense magazine)

2014/2013 WestJet RBC World Elite MasterCard ranked #1 in the Canada's Choice ranking (RewardsCanada.ca)

2014 Interbrand Canada's Best Canadian Brands (Rank #20)

2014 Brands of the Year (Strategy magazine)

2014 Canada's Most Preferred Airline (Ipsos)

2014 Value Airline of the Year (Air Transport World magazine)

2014/2013/2012 Canada's Most Attractive Employer (Randstad)

2014/2013/2012/2011 Highest equity score: airline, vacation package supplier brands (Harris/Decima EquiTrend Study)

Connect with WestJet on Facebook at facebook.com/westjet

Follow WestJet on Twitter at twitter.com/westjet

Subscribe to WestJet on YouTube at youtube.com/westjet

Read the WestJet blog at blog.westjet.com

SOURCE WestJet

For further information: WestJet Media Relations, 1-888-WJ-4-NEWS (1-888-954-6397), Email: [email protected], WestJet Investor Relations, 1-877-493-7853, Email: [email protected], Website: www.westjet.com
TORONTO, April 25, 2016 /CNW/ - In honour of Melanoma Monday on May 2, La Roche-Posay will be holding a pop-up event outside the Hudson's Bay Centre on Bloor Street in downtown Toronto to continue the fight against skin cancer. The company has teamed up with dermatologists to offer free mole checks for Canadians to educate themselves on how to detect and prevent skin cancer. Skin cancer prevention is at the heart of La Roche-Posay's DNA, and the event is part of the company's 'Become a Skin Checker' campaign. Now in its second year, La Roche-Posay is on a mission to have one million Canadians support the cause by visiting the event or downloading guidelines for detecting suspicious moles.

As many as 6 out of 10 Canadians care more about the health of loved ones than their own. Become a Skin Checker encourages Canadians to play an active role in protecting friends and family from this preventative but potentially deadly disease.

WHAT Become a Skin Checker pop-up event outside the Hudson's Bay Centre on Bloor Street in downtown Toronto. La Roche-Posay has partnered with well-known dermatologist Dr. Sonya Cook for free mole checks. Canadians can visit the event and download the ABCDEs of moles to learn and understand how to detect suspicious moles.



WHY Since 2000, melanoma has increased 2.4 times faster than other cancers, affecting both men and women at an alarming rate.1 As many as one out of three cancers diagnosed in Canada this year will be skin cancer.2 Despite the fact that 90 per cent of skin cancers are curable if detected early, 2 out of 3 Canadians have never had a mole checked by a dermatologist.3



WHO Jasmine Tsang, La Roche-Posay Product Manager

Dr. Sonya Cook, Dermatologist



WHERE Hudson's Bay Centre, 2 Bloor St E, Toronto, ON M4W 1A8 (outside, in front of the main entrance on Bloor Street.)



WHEN Monday, May 2, 2016

The event will be open all day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with spokespeople onsite for media interviews from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

VISUALS/INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITY

La Roche-Posay and well-known dermatologist Dr. Sonya Cook appearing at a pop-up event outside the Hudson's Bay Centre on Bloor Street in downtown Toronto meeting and interacting with consumers, leading informative discussions and examining people's skin.

ABOUT LA ROCHE-POSAY

La Roche-Posay is a division of L'Oreal Canada, a wholly-owned subsidiary of L'Oreal Group, the largest cosmetics company in the world. Headquartered in Montreal, L'Oreal Canada had sales of $1.07 billion in 2014 and employs more than 1,200 people. The company's prestigious portfolio of 35 brands encompasses all aspects of beauty.

Through the La Roche-Posay Foundation, under the aegis of the Fondation de France, the brand has been actively supporting research in the clinical, biological and pharmacological fields of dermatology as well as supporting and encouraging generous initiatives from dermatologists.

______________________________

1 Statistics Canada, 2000 & 2014

2 Canadian Skin Cancer Foundation

3 Ipsos 2015

SOURCE La Roche-Posay

For further information: Stella Karami, The Colony Project on behalf of La Roche-Posay, T: (416) 306-6739, E: [email protected]
The Bonne Terre Police Department is looking for a driver who struck a child on Route K Sunday evening.

Chief Doug Calvert said officers were dispatched to the 200 block of Spring Drive at 6:33 p.m. for a child struck by a vehicle.

The child involved was 8 years old and was struck by a red passenger vehicle being driven by an unknown black female, said Calvert. Witnesses stated the boy and another one of his friends were playing chicken in the middle of the road on Route K.

Calvert added that the driver stopped to check to see if the children were OK, but the kids ran away from the scene.

The responding officer reported from his observation that the child who was hit did not appear to have any kind of major injuries, just some scrapes and a bump on his head, said Calvert. The mother was to call later with discharge information once he was taken to the hospital.

Calvert said at 12:55 a.m. the mother called and said the child was on his way to St. Louis for a fractured skull. The child was diagnosed with having a left orbital fracture.

We are looking for the driver and we would like to talk to her," he said. "She needs to contact us.

Anyone with any information is asked to contact Central Dispatch at 573-431-3131 to speak to a Bonne Terre officer.

In other accidents this weekend, several Richwoods children were injured in a one-vehicle accident Sunday afternoon at 1:30 p.m. off Indian Creek Road in Washington County.

According to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Robert Rankins, 35, was driving northbound on Indian Creek Road a half a mile north of Route A in his 1999 Chevrolet Blazer when he failed to negotiate a curve to the right. His vehicle went off the left side of the road and struck a tree head-on.

The driver was wearing his seat belt and was not injured. His passengers, 10-year-old Derek Rankins was wearing his seat belt and was airlifted by Air Evac to Childrens Hospital in St. Louis with serious injuries. Both Joshua Rankins, 8, and Robert Rankins, 13, were wearing their seat belts and both were taken to Washington County Memorial by private conveyance with minor injuries.
The Lagos State Government yesterday disclosed that 2,200 houses will be saved from demolition with the new alignment designed for the cons...

The Lagos State Government yesterday disclosed that 2,200 houses will be saved from demolition with the new alignment designed for the construction of the proposed 4th Mainland Bridge.Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure Ganiyu Johnson said the old alignment for the bridge was to claim over 3,000 houses which would mean huge economic losses to the economy.He said with the new design, about 800 houses will now be affected, adding that the affected owners would be compensated by the government.He explained that the when constructed would drastically reduce traffic volume on Eko, Cater and Third Mainland Bridges.According to him, The proposed bridge will traverse from Ajah to North West direction towards the lagoon shoreline to Lagos-Ibadan Expressway via Ikorodu. The approximate length of the road/bridge is 37.9km with a design speed of 140km/h.Lagos State Government has held discussions with a consortium of consultants in furtherance of the project, said the commissioner.He further explained that the significance and value of the project, saying this lies in its capacity to rapidly decongest the traffic gridlock within the Lekki corridor and redistribute traffic towards Lagos Mainland which serves to meet increased future road infrastructure demands.He attributed the delay on the ongoing work at Badagry express way to paucity of funds, adding that Julius Berger, the construction firm handling the Lot I between Eric Moore to Mile 2, will finish the median lanes and hand over by August this year while CCECC to which the Lot II as awarded will continue construction in phases towards Agbara.He added that the state government initiated a study to upgrade the network of roads in Ikeja to improve and boost the economic stature of the seat of government to word-class standard commensurate with other capital cities and also to reduce to the barest minimum, traffic gridlock along the corridor.This will involve the expansion of Awolowo Way with an elevated highway from the Airport Hotel to Alausa to decongest the traffic gridlock along Allen Round-about, Kudirat Abiola Round-about and Agidingbi Round-about. There will also be an expansion of the Allen/Opebi Road to Odo Iya-Alaro via a link bridge at Ogudu to the 3rd Mainland Bridge.These networks of roads when upgraded will boost the economic activities in Ikeja being the seat of government, the commissioner said.
A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Osita Okechukwu, has reacted to Former Governor Sule Lamido's presidential bid.

A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Osita Okechukwu, has reacted to Former Governor Sule Lamido's presidential bid.According to reports, Okechukwu asked the former governor of Jigawa state, Sule Lamido, to be ready to tell Nigerians what his party, the People Democratic Party, did in the last 16 years to warrant another shot at the presidency.''It is now incumbent on him to tell us his programme what he want to do that PDP did not do in the last sixteen years or whether for him, PDP did so well, if he tells us the PDP did so well, then we have enough armour and arms to confront him with."
The 19 Northern States and Abuja of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), has stated that it will be unwise for President Muhammadu ...

The 19 Northern States and Abuja of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), has stated that it will be unwise for President Muhammadu Buhari to order the arrest of his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan.Every honest Nigerian knows that the fellers on the ground is that this administrations popularity is dwindling rapidly among Nigerian people. It is, therefore, not advisable to think or plan to arrest former President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan," the body's Public Relations Officer, Rev. Joseph Hayab, said.Let me warn that such a misadventure will set a wrong precedent and only open door for mischief people to set this nation into confusion," he added.Former President, Jonathan is deservedly seen in Nigeria and beyond as a hero of democracy because of his actions before, during and after the 2015 elections.As such, it will be an ill advice for the Buhari administration to initiate the arrest of such a statesman at this time and with the current realities.Our government must know that there are individuals serving today that are also been accused of corruption but since there are claims that nothing has been established against them, they are walking and speaking like saints.While ignoring all these, Government now wants to arrest a man of peace like Jonathan? CAN Northern States wishes to advice that such an action, if actualized, has the capacity to lead to serious confusion that will affect Nigeria economically and otherwise.We believe Former President Jonathan deserves praise and should receive gratitude from those in power today not scorn.Let it not be that this purported planned arrest is meant to distract Nigerians from speaking or complaining about the reality of what and how they are feeling since the past eleven months, we are afraid that such an action may spark a chain of reactions.If our President wants to arrest anything for now then he should arrest the incessant spate of herdsmen attacks in Nigeria which has led to the deaths of almost a thousand of innocent Nigerians under his watch.He should arrest the dangerous slide in the power sector.he should arrest the slide in the economy.
Scores of youths have shut down the National Assembly complex, demanding the immediate resignation of Nigeria's Senate President Bukol...

Scores of youths have shut down the National Assembly complex, demanding the immediate resignation of Nigeria's Senate President Bukola Saraki.The reporters also demanded that the lawmakers revisit the grey areas identified in the 2016 budget by President Muhammadu Buhari and return the 36 exotic cars they recently acquired.The protesters, under the aegis of the Occupy National Assembly, marched from the Unity Fountain within the Central Area of the city to the National Assembly, a journey of about two kilometers and forced their way to the main gate, defiling all security network mounted by regular and riot police officers.The youths forced the main gate closed thereby preventing staff, lawmakers and visitors from either entering or leaving the premises.The protesters, armed with placards containing various inscriptions, vowed to seal off the federal parliament for the initial three days to see whether their demands would be met.They also said they would resume a permanent protest that would paralyse all activities in the National Assembly until all their demands were fully met.
Childrens footprints have been spotted in Sambisa Forest, the Boko Harams stronghold by Nigerian soldiers, according to Commander of t...

Childrens footprints have been spotted in Sambisa Forest, the Boko Harams stronghold by Nigerian soldiers, according to Commander of the 29th Task Force Brigade, Brigadier-General B.A. Raji.He explained that it was from this intelligence that troops use the most basic of tracking skills to hunt for evidence of people passing through.Sometimes we see childrens footprints, he said, according to an agency report.Commenting on the intelligence capabilities in gathering data relevant to the search, Ragi said 30 ISR drone planes provide an eye in the sky that has helped the soldiers immeasurably, directing them to enclaves of Boko Haram captives. But not their target  the Chibok girls.On his part, the theatre commander of Lafiya Dole in the NorthEast, Major-General Leo Irabor, stressed the need for more international support to crush the insurgents.
Ibe Kachikwu, minister of state for petroleum, has appealed to Nigerians not to judge his work by their difficulties in obtaining fuel.

Ibe Kachikwu, minister of state for petroleum, has appealed to Nigerians not to judge his work by their difficulties in obtaining fuel.Speaking in Lagos at the town hall meeting hosted by Lai Mohammed, the minister of information, he explained that the ongoing fuel crisis has persisted mainly because the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) cannot track fuel trucks.He urged Nigerians to be endure the hardship because his ministry and the NNPC are working hard at solutions even though the situation is blighting.Do not judge our work on the basis of the difficulties you have had in fuel supply, he said. I love your patience, I appreciate it; we are working feverishly at solution. We are looking at intelligent solutions.Kachikwu said fuel trucks are being diverted to other countries rather than points of sale in Nigeria, revealing that no truck in Nigeria has a tracker and the NNPC is at the mercy of the truck drivers.Over 30 per cent of (fuel) supply is diverted, he said.For example, in the last five days, we have pumped 400 trucks of product into Lagos state. The total consumption (in the state) at the maximum is 250 trucks, and most of those trucks are diverted from Lagos to the hinterland of Chad and Cameroon.We need, literally, a whole army to stop this from happening. So I continue to supply and over-supply and so we struggle.He said Nigerians, therefore, cannot afford to live the work of tackling the fuel scarcity to the government alone, and must take initiative, including repenting from traffic indiscipline, which causes long queues.Kachikwu also implored Nigerians to report incidents of diversion of fuel.We started publishing deliveries and telling you the filling stations they were allocated to, so if you dont find products in those filling stations, there are hotlines to call and for police to report.Kachikwu said the NNPC has mostly dealt with the shortfall in supply resulting from debt to marketers; and then foreign exchange scarcity, has, by itself, substantially improved supply of products.He, however, described this as a short-term solution because the private sector needs to drive this business because ultimately, without doing that, we are never going to find a solution to this problem.Kachikwu said the NNPC is currently burdened with the entire work of supply and regulation, and takes all the loss.That model must change, he said. The private sector will have incentive to drive their business.Tracing the difficulties in the oil sector to years of systematic enclosure of opportunities and lack of transparency, he said significant gains are now being made.Contracts are awarded through open bids; monthly transactions are now being published by the NNPC with favourable business policies now in place after a 20-year lull, he said.For the first time, average loss position of NNPC, which was about N300bn per month, has been reduced to about N3bn as of January 2016.The Direct Sale Direct Purchase (DSDP), which was the Offshore Processing Arrangement (OPA) which we reviewed, has saved us over $1bn.Payment of subsidies, which last year was over N1trn has been reduced to zero  except in April, which was prepared for because of over-recovery.Finally we are focusing on the business  not just bleeding government  and benefitting Nigerian people.Kachikwu said pipelines and refineries, including the Warri and Port Harcourt refineries, had been revived, while the Kaduna refinery would begin to work in a week.Today, we commissioned for the first time in seven years, we commissioned the crude supply pipeline both from Brass to Port Harcourt and from Escravos to Warri refinery.Kachikwu charged Nigerians to channel energy to solutions for Nigerias myriad of problems to relieve the government.
Edo state deputy governor, Dr. Pius Odubu, has denied reports published by some national newspapers on Sunday that he was plotting with ...

Edo state deputy governor, Dr. Pius Odubu, has denied reports published by some national newspapers on Sunday that he was plotting with some native doctors to kill his boss, Governor Adams Oshiomhole.The cordial relationship between Governor Oshiomhole and his deputy had plummeted since the latter had declared interest in vying for the governorship position of Edo State.But denying the reports on Monday, Odubu who debunked the allegation in a statement issued by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Kelly Odaro, described them as part of the campaign of calumny to smear the good working relationship he had enjoyed with his boss in the past.He said the allegation was being fuelled by mischief makers and blackmailers who are bent on destroying his cordial relationship with his boss, even as he raised the alarm over alleged plots by some persons to circulate fliers round Benin City with a view to further destroy his image and fuel the crisis between him and the Comrade Governor.As a practicing Catholic, Dr. Odubu will not do anything that is unbecoming of a true Christian in the name of politics. God knows that he has never had any pact with any witch/native doctor to kill anyone or avenge for him and he will never condescend to that extent as long as God lives. It is against his faith.The Bible teaches that even when the innocent suffers and mischief makers and traducers appear to triumph, by their chief blackmail, it is for God alone to avenge.The Deputy Governor, Rt. Hon. (Dr) Pius Egberanmwen Odubu will, by the special Grace of God, continue to disappoint the dubious expectations of those who are bent on driving a wedge between him and the Comrade Governor. It is his nature and character to be loyal to those who God has set over him because they are His instruments.At times like this, blackmailers are at their best but the Deputy Governor has decided to take solace in God who knows the hearts of men, trusting and believing as always that God will vindicate the just. He wishes to reiterate that he has no rift with the Comrade Governor who he revers and deeply appreciates, the statement said.
The death of three doctors of the Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido-Ekiti (FETHI) in an accident on the Abuja-Kaduna Expressway on Sunday has...

The death of three doctors of the Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido-Ekiti (FETHI) in an accident on the Abuja-Kaduna Expressway on Sunday has sparked a protest and strike by their colleagues.They accused the CMD of using juju to kill workers in a bid to secure a second term. The protest which started at about 6am went on for several hours.Trooping out en masse in a protest which forced the closure of the hospital yesterday, the workers claimed that the doctors death on the Chief Medical Director, Dr. Lawrence Ayodele.They claimed that workers have been dying mysteriously during Ayodeles tenure, accusing the CMD of carrying out rituals in the dead of the night in the hospital.Various unions, including the Medical Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN), Senior Staff Association (SSA), National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives (NANNM), locked the hospitals main gate.Singing dirges, they barricaded the Ido-Otun Highway preventing human and vehicular traffic. According to the irate staff, 42 of them had died in the last 42 monthsSome of their placards read: 42 Months 42 Dead; No To Occultism and Ritual Actions in FETHI; Give Us New CMD in FETHI and Buhari, Save Our Souls, among others.
Apostle Johnson Suleiman, the president of Omega Fire Ministries (OFM), has reiterated his prophecy that Governor Nasir El-Rufai will die.

Apostle Johnson Suleiman, the president of Omega Fire Ministries (OFM), has reiterated his prophecy that Governor Nasir El-Rufai will die.In a new video, Apostle Suleiman describes El-Rufai is a pathological liar.In the Video, he said, "Pray for the plan of the enemies (those in authority), to turn Nigeria to a country of one religion; it will not work. I said something sometime back about one governor that is trying to Islamise Kaduna,he said he want to put a bill to try and control preaching and the reason he wants to do that is because of the Islamic uprising i.e. the issues of insurgency in the Islamic world.
The North County High School Choirs are calling for all alumni of the program to come out and participate in an alumni reunion concert to be held in the high school auditorium May 20-21.

Its a great way to celebrate the tradition of excellence that our choral program has established, said current North County Choral Director Allyn Rizo. Our slogan is the tradition of excellence continues. I speak about that tradition often to my current students. What better way to teach them about that tradition, which they are charged with upholding, than to show them the many people who have shared so many memories in the same classroom making music with their peers.

In addition to former students, the choirs of North County will be welcoming back two former directors, Dee Schlemeier and Jeff Kindle.

I hope to see some of my students, expressed Schlemeier, who directed the choirs from 1971 until her retirement in 1999. Its been a while, but we can give it our best shot.

Each of the three participating directors will select a few pieces to be performed by the Alumni Choir.

I am excited to come back and celebrate music at North County, said Jeff Kindle who taught at North County from 2003 to 2009. Kindle currently teaches in the Kirkwood area where he lives with his wife and two children.

I wish we could have featured all of our past directors, added Rizo in reference to former director Kathy Sutterfield who taught at North County from 1999-2003. Mrs. Sutterfield is now living out of state, and regrettably could not attend due to scheduling conflicts. She wanted, however, to send her best wishes and warmest regards to all her beloved kids.

All alumni who are interested in participating in the Alumni Reunion Concert are asked to register at the North County Choir website at www.ncchoirs.weebly.com by May 1.

Already we have received just over 50 registered participants, as current as the class of 2016 and going back to the class of 1971, said Rizo.

Information can also be found on the choirs Facebook page. A rehearsal for the Alumni Concert will be held on May from 6-9 p.m., with the concert to follow on May 21 at 7 p.m. in the North County High School Auditorium. The concert will be free and open to the public.
Tears flowed Tuesday morning as Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State visited Ukpabi, Nimbo, in Uzo-Uwani local government area of the ...

Tears flowed Tuesday morning as Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State visited Ukpabi, Nimbo, in Uzo-Uwani local government area of the state.The community was attack Monday morning, leading to the reported death of 21 persons.Ugwuanyi, who could not hold back tears, was in the company of Enugu State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Nwodibo Ekechukwu the GOC 82 Division, Nigerian Army, Major General Ibrahim Attahiru, as well as the Enugu State Commandant, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC.The Governor, thereafter, declared two days fasting and prayer in the State, asking residents to commit the situation into Gods hand.It calls for sober reflection; this is a trying period, not just for this community but for all of us.On Sunday, we were in the church for Nigeria Prays, with General Yakubu Gowon; I got a call from the council chairman and immediately, I summoned a security council meeting; prior to that we had met with the Fulani leaders, and it was indeed yesterday that we would have inaugurated a joint committee of the Fulani and the Enugu government.Be that as it may, what has happened, has happened; this is not the to blame any body; government will do what it is supposed to do; I understand that economic activities have been shut down here, we will as a government make available the sum of N5m to the leaders of this community and then from there proceed to the hospital, settle all the bills and then later we go to the next line of action the governor said.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara on Tuesday said there is need for deliberate and proactive actions to end the inces...

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara on Tuesday said there is need for deliberate and proactive actions to end the incessant farmers and herdsmen clashes spreading across the country, noting that if not properly checked could divide Nigeria.Also, the Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbe cautioned against creating grazing routes for the nomads as this cannot solve the incessant clashes between them and farmers in different states of the federation.Dogara noted this at the opening of the public hearing on the motion on the urgent need to address the incessant clashes between herdsmen, farmers and their host communities in Nigeria and introduction of micro irrigation (drip irrigation) for farmers in Gombi/Hong Federal Constituency in Adamawa State and in other parts of Nigeria, held by House Committee on Agricultural production and services.Dogara who was represented by Onyema Chukwuka, assured that the Committee and stakeholders to make appropriate recommendations that will go a long way in guiding the House in the enactment of appropriate legislation that will guarantee peaceful co-existence amongst the rural communities, provide affordable credit to Nigerian farmers, enable the farmer to procure fertilizer and other farm inputs with minimum effort, provide enabling environment for all season farming, ensure increased agricultural production both as a means of guaranteeing internal food security and diversifying the economy from over dependence on oil, amongst many other prospects.In his contribution, Audu Ogbe, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development who expressed concern over criticism trailing proposed importation of grasses for cattle especially on social media, warned that the challenge may boomerang if no concrete action is taken in checkmating the menace.He said I hear there is a bill in the Senate seeking to create grazing routes, where are they grazing to, to another mans farm.Creating grazing routes is not the solution as it is known world wide that cows kept in ranches produce better than grazing cows.According to him, 12 States of the Federation out of the 36 states contacted by Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development have already confirmed readiness to partner on the grazing and irrigation initiatives, adding that 9 States have agreed to provide 5,000 hectares of land each for the project.
Nollywood actress, Stella Damasus, has cleared the air concerning her marriage to Daniel Ademinokan, who was the ex-husband of fellow act...

Nollywood actress, Stella Damasus, has cleared the air concerning her marriage to Daniel Ademinokan, who was the ex-husband of fellow actress, Doris Simeone.In an interview with ThisDay, Damasus said she has been quiet about the husband snatching allegation for too long, but now deems it fit to express herself concerning the matter.
I am aware some people may not be comfortable with my title, but I need to share my perspectives nonetheless. Hear me and hear me well: ...

I am aware some people may not be comfortable with my title, but I need to share my perspectives nonetheless. Hear me and hear me well: If I were to do it again, I will vote Buhari. I have few regrets in my life, one of them is not voting for Muhammadu buhari in 2011.Why? I was beclouded by ethnic ambitions to vote a shoeless person who expects me to get him shoes by voting him!The reason I voted Buhari was simple: I do not want to vote Goodluck Jonathan a second time. Mark you; I dont regret voting for him in 2011. He was the best candidate. But in 2015, the demands and skills required are different. I have to be realistic and I am sure I took my decisions based on every assumptions of rationality!Voting Jonathan on March 28, 2015 would mean I am deliberately promoting him beyond his level of existing competency, a reversal of the management theory known as Peters Principle where managers stop being promoted when they have risen to their level of incompetence. Jonathan was just at that point. This is why I have always maintained that last years presidential election more than just a rejection of Jonathan but of saving our country from the brink of total collapse.For those wondering how I arrived at the conclusion that Jonathan is incompetent, check his records in the fight against insurgency. Our army became so demoralized that a ragtag team of 18 Boko Haram members arriving on seven motorcycles had our soldiers fleeing, ahead of civilians, as it happened in Mubi before the town fell to the sect. I cant even talk about Baga and the sadness of the massacre coupled with the presidential silence on the matter, especially when he couldnt wait to express grief at 17 people killed in France. Chibok girls were kidnapped and he has no clue as to the direction of whom to believe. My goodness!Need I ask: How many fuel subsidy thieves have been prosecuted since the scam was revealed in 2012? If my memory serves me right, how does Jonathan rank in managing the economy? What was the exchange rate of the Naira when he came to power? What was it before he left? What was the pump price of petrol when he came to power? What was it before his uncelebrated end? What has become of our external reserves? The Nigeria became the biggest economy in Africa thanks to Goodluck Jonathan, not because of Ebele Jonathan!Enter General Buhari. Since he was elected President, Buharis professional critics have settled into their new roles as opposition. Not wanting to be classified as failures after their hero last the presidential election, President Muhammadu Buharis opponents or better still critics appear to be cruising off with an early lead. They regret for those of us who voted and supported Buhari in the last election.They are now in the Didnt I Tell You? mode. They appear to cry more than the rest of us these days on social media. At the comfort of their mansions built from syphoned public money, they give crumbs to some spin doctors to write on why the economy (they crumbled) is now crumbling. Some of them, having no shame, will even go as far as China to manifest symptoms of madness. Good enough we tolerate these madness at home, but what happens when this goes as far as the market place?Watching from a far, I have come to realize that Buharis critics can fall under any of the following categories: First, are the career Jonathanians or Wailing Wailers (apologies to Femi Adesina) as they are now popularly known. Leading this pack is our dear Femi Aribisala. In fact one of these people had openly written that he will not accept Buhari as his President. These people were so sure that their boss or hero will win no matter the costs. They prophesized that Buhari will never smell Aso Rock. In fact, Aribisala once wrote under the title: How To Lose Presidential Election Four Times in one of his columns stating his reasons why Buhari would lose the fourth time. If wishes were horses, they say, men will ride. How time flies. Anyways, they are foremost among Buharis critics!Not all Buharis critics are pro-Jonathan as many may think though it is very difficult to vouch for this distinction. We can have a second group as those having issues either personally with Buhari himself or his party the All Progressives Congress (APC). This group accommodates people like a former Governor of old Kaduna state Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa and a renowned writer Okey Ndibe.One really cannot explain Balarabe Musas issues with Buhari considering the fact that they are from the same state, Katsina. He was noted to have criticized President Jonathan vociferously at some points and I am not aware he has rescinded on his opinion about Jonathan. His criticisms of President Buhari is what one finds hard to explain, other than the fact that he may probably know something about Buhari (both of whom come from the same state) that is not to public knowledge. On the other hand, Okey Ndibes case can be because he had issues at some point with the way the APC was been run. I am not sure Ndibe will be your first choice of a Jonathanian or GEJite. Either way they constitute a pack of their own.The third group is perhaps the most reckless. They are nothing but tribal pirates, ethnic buccaneers and religious Vikings. In this group, we boldly include Biafran agitators and their sponsors. They are myopic in views; tactless in approach and reckless in criticisms. On the one hand they urged their people not to vote in the election on the other hand they want Jonathan to win in an election they forced their people not to vote. I find it difficult to reconcile these contrasting objectives. More confused was I when I knew that former President Jonathan is Ijaw, a tribe that proudly supported the Federal Army during the Nigerian Civil War. It was only Radio Biafra (a source of dissemination of slanderous messages and propaganda) that broadcast the news that President Buhari authorized the bombarding of Biafran territories, by which they mean Cross Rivers and Akwa Ibom. While they told their viewers that Igbos are not Nigerians, one is left to wonder at what point did the Efiks, Ibibios, Orons, etc., (which they also claim as part of Biafran territories) became Igbos.Apart from this pirate radio which, I later knew, broadcasts from London, no other credible news medium reported the bombardment!The fourth group can be neglected as mere professional critics, wanting no more than mere attention or patronage. Some of them may have good intentions you never can tell!Now that we have analyzed Buharis critics and their intentions, I guess the time has come for us to give them a direct replies to the issues they raised.We voted Buhari, not to magically solve the problems created for more than 16 years of misrule, but to help us keep the goats far away from the yams. If he is doing this job (as we all agree he is doing), I wish to disappoint again that I will vote Buhari again if I have to!
Concerned by untold suffering as well as hazard emanating from the activities of black marketers, especially those who sell petroleum prod...

Concerned by untold suffering as well as hazard emanating from the activities of black marketers, especially those who sell petroleum products inside plastic containers/jerry-cans, the Inspector-General of Police, Solomon Arase, has directed all Zonal Assistant Inspectors-General of Police and State Commissioners of Police to arrest anybody found selling petrol and other petroleum products in plastic container.A statement signed by the Force Public Relations officer, ACP Olabisi Kolawole quoted the IGP saying that apart from the hardship this act is causing to fuel buyers, it has also rendered some innocent and law abiding citizens homeless due to fire outbreak from jerry-can petrol storage.He noted that fuel products such as petrol are highly flammable and if not stored and handled properly, can seriously endanger people, property and the environment.While warning fuel attendants at filling stations to desist from selling petrol inside jerry-can/plastic container, the Inspector-General of Police said both the buyers and the sellers of the products will be arrested and prosecuted under the law.The IGP, while assuring Nigerians of the Police readiness to fulfill its constitutional mandate, appealed for a more cordial relationship.
Following incessant attacks by Fulani herdsmen in some states of the federation, Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign States o...

Following incessant attacks by Fulani herdsmen in some states of the federation, Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign States of Biafra, MASSOB, have given a 30 days ultimatum to President Muhammadu Buhari to end the attack on innocent Nigerians or face its wrath.MASSOB which said it is worried by the inability of the federal government to stop the increasing destruction of farmlands, raping of women, armed robbery, kidnapping, as well as killing of innocent Nigerians by Fulani herdsmen, accused President Buhari of protecting the attackers who are his kinsmen.National Director of Information of MASSOB, Sunny Okereafor who handed the ultimatum in an interview with journalists in Aba, said the federal government has been playing with fire over the attacks and threatened that MASSOB will not fold its arms and allow Fulani herdsmen invade Igbo communities, rape women, kill residents and burn their houses.According to him, MASSOB is worried that Fulani herdsmen have become very daring in their attacks since President Buhari came to power. We are not saying Buhari is their sponsor, but his silence over the attacks is suspicious. MASSOB is giving Buhari 30 days ultimatum to stop the attacks or face our wrath.Again, we are warning Fulani herdsmen and their sponsors to withdraw from Biafra land. They should count Igbo land out of their Islamization policy. We are also warning Ndigbo to remain at alert as these Fulani herdsmen are terrorists posing as herdsmen. Soon, they will pay for all their atrocities against the people of Biafra.Okereafor who disclosed that that his group has set up a committee to monitor the activities of Fulani herdsmen in Igbo land, added that MASSOB would be forced to abandon her non violent policy to protect Biafrans if the federal government refuses to check the invasion of its communities by the herdsmen.
The Leader of the Senate, Sen. Mohammed Ali-Ndume, said on Tuesday that no amount of protest would force any legislator to resign. Ndume w...

The Leader of the Senate, Sen. Mohammed Ali-Ndume, said on Tuesday that no amount of protest would force any legislator to resign. Ndume was reacting to a protest by Occupy National Assembly group, calling for the resignation of the President of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki.Ndume stressed that there was a democratic process of recalling any senator, adding that protest was not the constitutionally recognised process. He described the protest as a wrong precedence and anti-democratic.That is why we are not trying to say anything about them because what is happening out there is a very dangerous precedence that we are trying to set. I contested to represent Borno South. I did not force myself on my people and therefore somebody out there, especially the one that did not elect me cannot force me out because I didnt come in by force.I came in by ballot not by gun, not by placard, I have posters not placards. So, if for example, I am short of performance and my constituents feel that they do not have time to waste, there is a clear cut process by which they can ask me to be recalled.They will collect signatures, ask for me to be recalled, that is the democratic way, not by coming in here to stand and say you want to occupy NASS. You occupy NASS to do what, to be leader or to be senator? It does not work that way, he said.According to recent reports, protesters stormed the National Assembly to demand the resignation of Saraki. The protesters; Occupy National Assembly also called on the legislators to conclude all issues on the 2016 budget, return their luxury cars and cut their N115 billion budget.However, another group was also on ground to counter the call for Sarakis resignation, saying the group calling for his resignation was anti-Nigeria.
Despite the deluge of petrol pumped into Lagos, the biting scarcity remains  no thanks to unscrupulous dealers who truck supplies out ...

Despite the deluge of petrol pumped into Lagos, the biting scarcity remains  no thanks to unscrupulous dealers who truck supplies out of the country.Minister of State (Petroleum) Dr. Ibe Kachikwu told a town hall meeting in Lagos that 30 per cent of the fuel supplied is diverted to neighbouring countries.Listening were Nigerians from all walks of life and some ministers. Kachikwu said: I have had countless sleepless nights. I work round the clock to solve this problem because whatever touches you touches me. Over 30 per cent of fuel is diverted to Chad and Cameroon. But I continue to oversupply and you see some people making money out of the agony of Nigerians.Apologising for the lingering fuel crisis, the minister said: What we met on the ground when we came was complete lack of transparency but we have worked to put everything in order. The loss of N300 billion by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has been reduced to N3billion, subsidy payment has been reduced to near zero. We are focusing on business, not bleeding the government.He went on: We are working on ideas to solve the problems. I worry about a lot of things, about the trucks. What we want to do now is to make sure that we select only truckers who can install trackers on their trucks; we are looking at intelligent solutions. Dont judge us by the supply of fuel; we are working hard at all the issues and believe me I have energy to throw at everything.The minister explained that the NNPC loads 1,400 tankers for Lagos alone.The Federal Government said it was working hard to address the problems facing the country. We hear you, we care about you, the officials said.Ministers at the Town Hall meeting organised by the Federal Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism, are: Alhaji Lai Mohammed (Information, Culture and Tourism), Babatunde Raji Fashola (Power, Works and Housing), Kachukwu (Petroleum), Geoffrey Onyema (Foreign Affairs), Okechukwu Enelamah (Industry, Trade and Investment) and Rotimi Amaechi (Transport).Host Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, represented by his deputy Mrs. Idiat Adebule, said the town hall meeting was a way to get a feedback from the people. He said the government has made great strides in the fight against corruption and in the economy. However, some of the changes have not been seen because President Muhamadu Buhari has been painstaking in addressing the many problems facing the country. This is not the time to despair, but to keep faith with this administration. We need to focus because the gains of the ongoing efforts will start to materialise, Ambode said.Mohammed highlighted the achievements of the administration on the three broad areas of tackling corruption, Security of lives and property and the economy. The minister said in tackling the Boko Haram insurgency, the President sought the support of neighbouring countries.He said: That explains why the Presidents first trips outside the country, after he was sworn in, was to rally the support of our neighbours  Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger  for the efforts to tackle the insurgency.The President also rallied the support of the international community, starting with the G7, and then the US, France and the UN. Today, the Presidents efforts have paid off. Boko Haram has been defeated. This is a rare feat. The insurgents have lost their capacity to carry out the kind of spectacular attacks for which they became infamous. This did not happen by accident. It was the result of purposeful, credible and courageous leadership being provided by President Muhammadu Buhari, who started off by ordering the relocation of the command and control centre of the battle against insurgency from Abuja to Maiduguri, rallied regional and global support for Nigerias efforts and boosted the morale and fighting capability of armed troops.On tackling corruption, the Minister said the government was winning the war against treasury looters.  I can tell you today that we have also squarely taken on corruption, and we are winning. The situation is serious and no government can fight the battle alone. That explains why we have launched a nationwide sensitisation campaign to make Nigerians to buy into the anti-graft war. In this campaign, our focus is not to vilify anyone, but to put a face to corruption instead of talking about it in the abstract.He said between 2006 and 2013, 55 people allegedly stole N1.34 trillion, which is more than a quarter of the 2015 national budget and represents the total earnings of four African nations.On the economy, Mohammed said while Nigeria has lost a sizeable portion of her earnings due to the crash in oil revenue, the administration has decided to turn the disaster into a blessing by working assiduously to diversify our economy away from oil. Agriculture, solid minerals, culture and tourism are some of the sectors we are currently working to rejuvenate so they can earn huge revenues for the country and create jobs.He said the administration also plug all the financial loopholes through the Treasury Single Account (TSA) which now has over two trillion naira in savings. Also, about 36,000 ghost workers have been discovered and weeded out, saving the government millions of naira.On the 2016 budget, he said it was the first budget with a capital expenditure being increased to 30 per cent. He said there are six social interventions that will touch the lives of the citizens, including: 500,000 graduates to be employed and trained as teachers; 370,000 non-graduates (artisans, technicians) to be trained and employed; 1 million people (farmers, market women, etc) to be granted loans to set up small businesses; Conditional Cash Transfer to the most vulnerable people; School Feeding targeting 4.5 million school children; Bursaries/scholarships for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) students.Defending the Presidents numerous travels, Onyema, said the trips were carefully selected to align with the governments three cardinal priorities of economy, tackling corruption and security of lives and properties.The trips of Mr. President are not selected on a random basis; they were carefully selected and designed to fit into the priorities of government. On security, the trips initially were to the neighbouring countries. At that time, Boko Haram was a threat to the existence of this country, Mr. President targeted his initial trips to the neighbouring countries because the Boko Haram were using these countries as base to attack Nigeria.The first foreign policy thrust was in that direction and the results are clear for all to see. The personae of our President also inspires confidence in some of the powerful countries in the world who have refused to help us or sell arms to us because they didnt have any confidence in the government of the day.Onyema called on Nigerians to exercise patience and show understanding with the government because the President is laying the foundation for a lasting sustainable development for the country. He said President Buhari put corruption on international agenda.He said the Presidents many trips, especially the last to China, would begin to yield positive results for the economy and Nigerians. He said Nigeria is diversifying from doing business with a single block of countries and looking towards the East and globally.Most governments will take the easy way out, go to the ( International Monetary Fund, IMF) take some loans and devalue your currency. These are quick fixes, which is like putting back the evil days. But if you are going to industrialise, we will have to put in place a sustainable development mechanism. We have to build solid blocks, lay the foundations for us to take off. It takes time and difficult because you might not be putting resources in the places people expect you to do.Fashola said the fact that almost every good is made in China is a pointer that Nigeria should be doing business with the country and that informed the change in the direction the country is taking on trade.Fashola said the Federal Government was feeling the pains Nigerians are going through and the ministers are working as a team to solve the problems.The reason why we are here is to tell you that we hear you loud and clear; we are connected and our feet are on the ground. We are working backstage, we are here because we care and believe this job can be done, we are here because we know the right to know is very important in a democracy, Fashola said.He assured Nigerians that results of planning will soon materialise. I acknowledge we are in a result-driven business and today result can be measured by how many roads have done, how much power do you have, how much housing can you get; now those results have not yet been delivered but I assure you they will be delivered. But some results are becoming evident to us in government and they may seem intangible to those outside the government; it clearly understands why we are where we are.He said the power problem is generation, describing it as not just enough.I am looking at some of the things that have been done well and some of the things that could have been done better, but I will summarise the power issue in one word: there is not enough power, 5,000 megawatts for 170 million people is not just enough, he said.On roads, the minister said the Federal Government will require about N2trillion to complete no fewer than 226 road projects inherited from the previous administration.He said the total amount allocated to all the sectors under his ministry in the 2016 budget is less than N500billion, adding that the government did not have enough resources to complete all the projects at present.The Ministry of Power, Works and Housing proposed N423billion at the Federal Executive Council and the information reaching us is that we are not going to get all that . Ongoing road projects alone awarded by the government before we came about 266 roads awarded in the various states the liability to complete them is about N2trillion.So, when you look at N400billion,you know that it is not enough, but when you compare what this administration is going to do with the N400billion, with what the last administration did, you will know it is much progress.What the last administration did was to budget N18billion for all the roads in the country, knowing the liability was in excess of N2trilion. For the three sectors, that is Works, Housing and Power, the total budget by the last administration was N24.5billion.So ,this administration decided to move away from that and that is why we have a figure that may not be enough, but substantial for the sectors, he said.The minister said the government would design a housing model for the country that would consider the cultural suitability of every Nigerian and acceptable to them.
Leading lights of the Peoples Democratic Party in Nigerias South-west geopolitical zone are threatening to dump the party en masse should...

Leading lights of the Peoples Democratic Party in Nigerias South-west geopolitical zone are threatening to dump the party en masse should the zone be blocked from producing the next national chairman of the party.A former presidential aide, Doyin Okupe, told newsmen on Monday night that party leaders in the zone met in Ikoyi, Lagos, last week and took a position on how to respond if the zone is robbed at the partys national convention next month.We took a firm position which was that we will dump the party en masse if we get robbed again at this years convention, Mr. Okupe said.Some of the PDP leaders present at the meeting included a former Deputy National Chairman of the party, Olabode George; the governorship candidate of the party in Lagos in the 2015 election, Jimi Agbaje and Gbenga Daniel, a former governor of Ogun State.A former Minister of State for the Federal Capital Territory, Olajumoke Akinjide; a former Minister of Works, Adeseye Ogunlewe and party chieftain, Bode Olajumoke were also at the meeting, Mr. Okupe said.He therefore advised Governor Emmanuel Udom of Akwa Ibom State to resist pressure from politicians and do the right thing by zoning the chairmanship position of the Peoples Democratic Party to the southwest geopolitical zone.Mr. Okupe said Mr. Udoms final decision would determine if history would judge him kindly or as a villain.The PDP zoning committee is expected to meet On Tuesday (today) in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, where the partys zoning formula would be redesigned.
Femi Adesina, the Senior Special Assistant to Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Media, in a recent interview on Radio Continenta...

Femi Adesina, the Senior Special Assistant to Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Media, in a recent interview on Radio Continental, spoke about the conditions surrounding the passage of Nigeria's 2016 budget."The exact situation is that the legislature and the executive are still consulting," he stated."There has to be a lot of consultation on this because naturally, a President should not sign a budget that will become unimplementable. It is even an impeachable offence because they will say later that he didnt implement it. And a President should not sign a budget that is not in favour of the people. Those budget projections were sent to the National Assembly, and what came back didnt in any way look like what was sent,"He also said the 30 day grace for Buhari to assent the budget has not expired."I wouldnt think it would be 30 days by Tuesday because that budget was sent about two weeks ago. And the constitution gives the executive a 30 days window. What I will just say is that it is in nobodys interest to have a constitutional crisis because the party that is governing in the centre also has the majority in the two chambers of the National Assembly. That party has to do the right thing. They need to call themselves, sit down and tell themselves; we are the party in government, and we must do the right things for the people.
After decisive victories by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the New York primaries, Democratic leaders need to send a strong, stern message to Bernie Sanders: Back off. Stop attacking Hillary. If you want to stay in the race to propound your policy ideas, fine. But don't keep undercutting the one candidate who can save the party -- and the country -- from a President Trump.

Lately, Sanders has been going in the opposite direction. As his chances for the Democratic nomination slip away, he's turned angry and acerbic, providing Republicans with an arsenal of ammunition to use against Clinton in the fall. That's a dangerous and selfish game.

Some Republicans keep insisting they can stop Trump on their own. Clearly he fails to command a majority in his own party, with only 2 out of 5 Republicans backing him in national polls. Among all voters, his favorable rating in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll stands at 24 percent, with his negatives soaring to 65 percent -- the worst showing in the history of that poll for a major presidential contender.

But suppose Trump falls short of a majority. As Robert Gates, the former defense secretary, is fond of saying: The three words not spoken often enough in Washington are, "and then what?"

Anti-Trump Republicans seem to be saying that if The Donald fails to win on the first ballot, his reaction will be: "That's fine. I concede. Have a nice day." But the exact opposite is much more likely. He'll fight like a demon and threaten to trash the party if he loses.

Add in the fact that the only plausible alternative to Trump, Ted Cruz, is widely despised in the party for his extreme policies and obnoxious personality and ran a dismal third in New York. By far, the most likely scenario is a Trump victory in Cleveland.

Which brings us back to the Democrats. Give Sanders credit: He's run a strong campaign that has energized young voters, raised vast amounts of money and exposed Clinton's weaknesses.

In the Journal/NBC poll, her negative rating hits 56 percent and only 19 percent of all voters view her as honest. Even among Democrats, only 40 percent fully trust her, down from 52 percent in October.

"The cracks are showing, and she is losing strength," says Bill McInturff, the Republican pollster who helped conduct the survey.

Some of this is Clinton's fault. By her own admission, she's handled the State Department email mess badly. And since she's been running for president since 2008, it made absolutely no sense for her to take huge speaking fees from questionable sources that could be used against her.

But Sanders is making her problem worse, precisely because he has credibility on the issue of Wall Street influence. Trump is a billionaire, with a long record of unsavory financial dealings, so his ability to attack her on money issues is very limited.

Now he doesn't have to; all he has to do is quote Sanders about her perfidy. And Bernie keeps handing Trump new material. His latest assault implies that Clinton violated campaign finance laws in her complicated dealings with the Democratic National Committee.

That comes after he questioned her qualifications to be president -- a silly but potentially damaging accusation that will certainly find its way into Republican ads next fall.

Robby Mook, Clinton's campaign manager, accused Sanders of "poisoning the well for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket," and he has a point.

"The damage is hardly fatal, but it is starting to matter, especially in Mrs. Clinton's standing with crucial independent voters," writes the Journal's Gerald Seib. Sanders' "line of attack," he adds, "seems almost designed to hit Mrs. Clinton in her area of greatest vulnerability, which is voter doubts about her honesty and trustworthiness."

Clinton offered an olive branch after New York, pointedly saying, "To all the people who supported Sen. Sanders, I believe there's much more that unites us than divides us."

Will Sanders now accept that gesture? It's virtually certain that he will never be president of this country, and that's a very hard pill for any politician to swallow after such a long and exhausting campaign. But swallow it he must.

It's time for Sanders to face reality. Who does he want running the country? Filling Supreme Court vacancies? Negotiating with foreign leaders?

Clinton or Trump?

If the answer is "Clinton," he has to start helping her, not hurting her.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has called for the support of the private sector for the ongoing efforts t...

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has called for the support of the private sector for the ongoing efforts to re-position the creative industries so they can contribute more to national development.We are calling on the private sector to partner with us to sponsor, in a more holistic manner, our arts and festivals, the Minister said in a keynote address at the Creative Industries Conference and Expo, organised by the British Council in Abuja on Tuesday.We are ready to name our creative centres after corporate sponsors in these areas. This will be a win-win situation for us and our partners in the private sector, who will enhance the visibility of their products and services, he said. Alhaji Mohammed said the Ministry of Information and Culture is partnering with the British Council and the Tony Elumelu Foundation to map out the nations creative industries and build the capacity of practitioners.We will work with our partners to train festival managers in order to bring them at par with their counterparts elsewhere in the world, including those who organise the popular Brazil Carnivals in Rio and Copacabana as well as the Edinburgh festivals, he said.He commended the British Council for organising the conference, and noted that the timing could not have been better, considering that it is coming just a day before we kick-start our own National Summit on Culture and Tourism.This conference will not only enrich the summit, but will play a major role in our ongoing efforts to leverage on the Culture and Tourism Sectors to further the governments economic diversification agenda, the Minister said. He said the Arts, Culture and Tourism Sectors are among those whose potentials are being harnessed as we move to diversify our economy away from oil.The Creative Industries alone offer incredible opportunities in terms of job creation, stability in the polity, moving millions of people out of poverty, addressing the issue of crime,stopping rural-urban migration and creating a local economy, the Minister said.
NEWARK -- Documents produced by Bridgegate defendant Bill Baroni during legislative hearings before he was indicted can and should be used in the federal case against him, prosecutors say in the latest filings in the case.

In a six-page brief filed Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman rebutted Baroni's argument that testimony he gave to the New Jersey Select Committee on Investigation was covered by a grant of immunity.

Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was ordered by legislative subpoena to testify before the committee about the lane closures in 2013 from Fort Lee to the George Washington Bridge. He told the committee that the lane closures, which caused massive traffic jams in Fort Lee, were part of a traffic study.

Using that testimony against him, his lawyers argued, would be "fundamentally unfair."

Baroni's attorneys, Michael Baldassare and Jennifer Mara, also argued in papers filed earlier this month that courts have "overwhelmingly" found that individuals' testimony could not be used against them even if they were not sworn.

Citing a letter from the special Counsel to the select committee, however, Fishman said Baroni was told his information would not be under immunity.

"The committee writes to ensure you are aware that Mr. Baroni's production of documents to the Committee in no way confers immunity on Mr. Baroni, including for any testimonial aspect of the production," says the letter from Special Counsel Reid J. Schar to Baroni's former counsel.

According to the government brief, New Jersey's legislative immunity provision only is in force when the individual is both subpoenaed and sworn in.

Fishman also noted that when the committee wanted immunized testimony, it made it explicit. Bridget Anne Kelly, a former top aide to Gov. Chris Christie and Baroni's co-defendant in the lane closure case, was among those permitted to invoke a Fifth Amendment right by the committee because the subpoenas "did not offer any form of immunity," the brief says.

In addition, the government argues that an agreement it had with Baroni allows prosecutors to use the records "without restriction."

Baroni and Kelly are facing charges related to the lane closures, which prosecutors allege was political payback to Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for not endorsing Christie's re-election.

Former Port Authority official David Wildstein pleaded guilty to conspiring to misuse Port Authority property and to violate the civil rights of Fort Lee residents.

The issue of whether Baroni had immunity will be one of several before U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton on Thursday, when the defendants and prosecutors debate defense motions to dismiss the charges.

Baroni's and Kelly's trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 12.

Tim Darragh may be reached at tdarragh@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @timdarragh. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
HACKENSACK - After a three-year reorganization of the police department, Police Director Michael Mordaga said Tuesday he will step down May 16 to pursue opportunities in the private sector.

Mordaga was hired to reorganize the department, a task he said ended recently with a series of promotions.

"It's a young department, there's a lot of opportunity," Mordaga told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday. "I'm going back to the private sector."

Mordaga previously worked as chief of detectives in the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office. He was hired in January 2013 as Hackensack's civilian police director, earning $150,000 a year. He also collects an annual pension of $127,000 a year.

City officials hired Mordaga for a one-year term, which was extended after the PBA and local leaders asked for more time, according to Mordaga.

The police director's term has not been without controversy.

In February, The Record reported that lawyers for a suspended captain were asking the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office investigate Mordaga for allegedly making decisions beyond the scope of his authority.

On Monday, The Bergen Dispatch reported Joseph J. Blaettler, a retired deputy chief of the Union City Police Department, accused Mordaga of overstepping the authority of a civilian police director, which led to "numerous lawsuits" against the police department.

On Tuesday, Mordaga brushed aside the criticism, saying he was leaving because his work in Hackensack is complete.

"There's nothing factual about (Blaettler's comments)," he said.

Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
MOUNT LAUREL TWP. -- About an hour before Eva Priestley officially became one of the United States' 323 million residents, a television screen inside the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Field Office posed a civics question.

"Who did the United States fight during World War II?"

Priestley -- who was born one year before Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933 and spent the first half of the war living in war-torn Berlin -- knows the answer all too well: She was that enemy.

On Monday, after going through a thorough vetting process, the 84-year-old gave up her allegiance to her homeland and became a citizen of the United States.

"I am so happy I finally took the step. I have felt like an American for so long, so why not have this [naturalization] certificate in my hand to make it official?" she said. "It's about time to get my act together," she joked.

Priestley came to the United States in 1954 with her late husband, whom she married in Berlin during June of that same year. She raised two daughters, worked as a freelance writer and teacher and has lived in Mount Laurel ever since immigrating here.

Asked what it was like to be at the epicenter of German politics, culture and militarization during the years that threw the world head-first into turmoil, Priestley said some life-lessons are still ingrained in her.

"I learned to be very frugal," she said, adding that it upsets her that younger generations of Americans are not.

Priestley was 7 years old when war broke out in Europe. Her book, "A girl named Eva," pits the horrors of war against someone trying to grow up and lead as normal a life as possible.

In all, 27 people hailing from 17 different countries became citizens on Monday. To merely qualify for a certificate of naturalization, one most have a permanent U.S. address for five years or be married to a U.S. citizen for 3 years.

"Nobody is asking you to forget where you came from," said Keith Dorr, an immigration services supervisor with the Department of Homeland Security.

After Monday's event, which amazingly enough takes place every weekday at 3 p.m. at the Mount Laurel office, Priestley reflected on the new doors open to her: running for office, serving on a jury and obtaining a passport.

There was one other right now afforded to her that she so desperately wanted to exercise this November and hoped her naturalization process would be complete before.

"I want to vote," she said.

Greg Adomaitis may be reached at gadomaitis@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregAdomaitis. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
CAMDEN -- Two Camden County Board of Social Services employees who reportedly spent hours on the phone making calls to the Dominican Republic -- while they were on the clock -- were unable to appeal their firings.

Wanda Fernandez and Werfy Fernandez, who are sisters and served social services clients, appealed a June 2014 decision by the state Civil Service Commission that found the two failed to perform their duties and were involved in conduct unbecoming of a public employee.

According to the decision rendered Tuesday by judges Susan Reisner and George Leone, the sisters racked up tens to hundreds of hours in overseas calls between 2010 and 2011 using their employer's telephone.

The offenses cost Camden County a combined $28,922.95, according to court documents.

The matter, which was previously heard before an administrative law judge in 2014, resulted in the sisters losing their jobs due to their "sufficiently egregious" behavior that went on while they were being paid.

The two, who represented themselves in court, appealed on the grounds of termination being "excessive and unfair."

However, the Superior Court judges sided with the civil service commission and said the firings were not disproportionate to offenses and thus not "shocking to our sense of fairness."

Greg Adomaitis may be reached at gadomaitis@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregAdomaitis. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), the first member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump, said in a recent interview that he thinks the business mogul "will make sure he's surrounded by nothing but the highest-caliber talent if he occupies the West Wing ... I'm convinced he will have the best Cabinet that's ever been assembled by a president."

This is a mantra frequently recited by Trump supporters who seem oblivious to his serial business failures and habitually fraudulent business practices. They confuse Trump's branding success, which can be attributed to his impressive marketing skills, with business management skills.

So let's test Collins' theory that President Trump can be expected to fill his administration with only the "highest-caliber talent" by examining the track record of the man Trump recently hired to oversee the management of his presidential campaign: Paul Manafort.

Manafort has made a fortune representing some of the worst people in the world during his four-decade career as a Washington, D.C., fixer and lobbyist. His clients have included a sordid assortment of kleptocratic dictators, corrupt narco states, Mafia-connected oligarchs and African warlords who use child soldiers, systemic rape and mass starvation as weapons of war.

A recent article in The Daily Beast by Betsy Woodruff and Tim Mak, "Top Trump Aide Led the 'Torturers' Lobby,'" noted that "a 1992 report from the Center For Public Integrity listed (Manafort's firm) as one of the lobbying firms to profit the most by doing business with foreign governments that violated their people's human rights."

Threats to U.S. national security and the integrity of the political process aren't obstacles to Manafort's personal enrichment. Yahoo News' Michael Isikoff reported this week that Manafort was investigated by the FBI for his representation of an American front organization of the ISI, Pakistan's notorious intelligence service. According to Isikoff, FBI and court documents show that Manifort's lucrative lobbying contract was approved at the highest levels of the ISI, whose goal was "to secretly influence U.S. policy toward the disputed territory of Kashmir."

Isikoff quotes a former Pakstani official who met with Manafort and says the lobbyist knew that his fees were being paid by the Pakistani government (which would have required Manafort to register with the DOJ as an agent of a foreign government). The official also told Isikoff he discussed with Manafort funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to members of Congress.

Isikoff noted the irony of Manafort being selected to lead the campaign of "a presidential candidate who repeatedly decries the influence of Washington lobbyists and denounces the manipulation of U.S. policy by foreign governments."

Manafort was also at the center of the Reagan administration's Housing and Urban Development scandal in the 1980s.

A 1989 article in The Washington Post reported that during testimony before a congressional committee, Manafort grudgingly admitted that he engaged in influence peddling to obtain millions of dollars in low-income housing rehabilitation grants to fund real estate projects in New Jersey, Connecticut, Georgia and Puerto Rico.

Manafort used his connections as a Republican Party insider to obtain the grants by simply calling a high ranking HUD official. Then-Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) would later observe that "(f)or some (well-connected) individuals, obtaining these scarce rent subsidy funds was as easy as phoning in an order to Domino's for a pizza."

A 1989 United Press International article reported that Manafort formed a partnership to purchase a dilapidated 326-unit apartment complex in Upper Deerfield Township, New Jersey, two weeks before the New Jersey Public Housing Authority was notified that HUD had approved funding. Manafort admitted he received advance notice that HUD would fund his project, which the township's mayor described as "a horrible waste of taxpayers' money."

The partnership eventually made $31 million on this project and an additional $3.3 million by selling the federal tax credits to investors. Manafort also took $326,000 in personal fees for obtaining the grants, which amounted to the equivalent of more than $1,000 an hour for the time he expended.

While Manafort and his partners got rich, the low-income tenants the program was supposed to benefit had their rents doubled and saw no improvement in their living conditions. A 1989 article in The Los Angeles Times reported that more than two years after being acquired by Manafort and his partners, the apartment complex "still resembles a slum."

The abuse of the program by Manafort and others was so rampant that HUD Secretary Jack Kemp was forced to suspend the program. Although Manafort and his insider cronies rigged the HUD grant system in their favor, he defended his actions by claiming he followed the rules. Such a defense should sound familiar to Trump supporters. The irony should give them pause.

The question everyone should be asking is, will this be the way President Trump's appointees administer government programs? Put another way, will Trump's appointees be channeling the spirit of Abraham Lincoln or Gordon Gekko?
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Weapons confiscated by the Washington Parish Sheriff's Office from motel room near Bogalusa. Cody E. Young, of Mississippi, is accused of accused of selling stolen weapons and jewelry from the motel.
Better training for police costs less than settlling with brutality victims
WASHINGTON (AP)  The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has issued a subpoena to Donald Trump. The nine-member panel sent a letter to the former president's lawyers on Friday, demanding his testimony under oath by mid-November and outlining a series of corresponding documents. The decision by lawmakers to exercise their subpoena power comes a week after the committee made its final case against the former president, who they say is the "central cause" of the multi-part effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It remains unclear how Trump and his legal team will respond to the subpoena, if at all.
Iowa Western Community College will mark its 50th anniversary this Sunday with an open house, presentation and activities.

Doors to the Kanesville Arena, located on the colleges Council Bluffs campus, will open at 12:30 p.m., with festivities beginning at 1 p.m. A free lunch of hot dogs, chips and drinks will be provided.

A presentation is scheduled to begin at 1:15 p.m. including a proclamation by Mayor Matt Walsh followed by remarks by Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, Iowa Western Board of Trustees President Doug Goodman and Bob Laubenthal, the colleges longtime attorney.

Were celebrating our 50th anniversary, said Stacy Shockey, alumni director. We are proud of our campus that has grown and changed. The open house will be a great opportunity for everyone to check out the campus and to get a peek behind the scenes as we showcase a variety of academic programs.

Group photos of alumni and retirees will be placed in a time capsule to be buried on campus this fall as part of the anniversary festivities.

Performances will be offered by the Reiver Cheer Team as well as the colleges mens and womens music ensembles. Self-guided tours of campus will show off the colleges facilities, with giveaways offered along the way.

The day will conclude with free admission to a band concert at 3 p.m. at The Arts Center. Free admission will also be offered to a Reiver track meet, the Region XI championships, with the mens decathlon beginning at 2 p.m. and the womens heptathlon at 2:10 p.m.

Iowa Western set up a dedicated section of its website for its anniversary at iwcc.edu/50. The college plans to continue its anniversary celebration at Homecoming on Saturday, Oct. 15.
A 100-member contingent from Omaha is preparing to take the Kerrie On legacy to the nations capital and to urge Americans to Support Blue.

Ray Somberg, founder and president of the Omaha-based First Responders Foundation, said the group will attend May 12-15 events during National Law Enforcement Officers Week in memory of slain Officer Kerrie Orozco, a Walnut native who lived in Council Bluffs.

And they hope that organizers of a May 13 candlelight vigil will tell her story in a special way.

This year, Somberg said, we hear they will feature Kerrie nationally.

Steve Groeninger, spokesman for the National Law Enforcement Memorial, declined to comment on whether Orozco will be singled out at the vigil in front of an expected 20,000 people. But he said the events organizers are well aware of her police work and humanitarian activities and how her death touched so many people.

Orozco, the first female Omaha officer to die in the line of duty, was 29 and the mother of a 3-month-old when shot and killed last May 20 by a fugitive who then was killed by gunfire from another officer.

She became one of 123 officers in the U.S. who died in the line of duty in 2015. The 10-year average is about 140.

Lt. Darcy Tierney, public information officer for the Omaha Police Department, said the current roster of travelers to Washington shows 70 officers, 20 members of Orozcos family and 10 civilians, including board members of the First Responders Foundation.

No taxpayer funds will pay for the trip, the costs for which will come from donations, T-shirt sales or travelers own money. Donations are still being accepted at firstrepondersomaha.org.

The First Responders Foundation last year created a Support Blue program to build respect and appreciation for police and firefighters that sold more than 12,000 T-shirts. Somberg said at least 500 of the shirts will be taken to Washington, and other cities will be urged to join with Omaha and Support Blue.

The foundation, he said, is seeking a nationally known figure to become spokesperson for the program.

Meanwhile, the foundation continues activities in Omaha. Last fall, it presented checks totaling $120,000 to seven causes about which Orozco had felt strongly.

In the aftermath of her death, as the community was urged to help continue her work, Omahans rallied around the stirring Kerrie On.

Kerrie had mentored and coached young people, especially in poor neighborhoods, and did what she could to bring people together.

Tierney said Orozco really made a huge difference in peoples lives, and people immediately get the meaning of the popular phrase.

To me, she said, Kerrie On means to carry on Kerries legacy and the good we want to see in this world. If we could all be a little more like Kerrie, our community would be an even better place to live.

The Omaha Police Departments honor guard has been chosen as the official presenting agency for the United States Honor Flag, which dates to 9/11. At a tribute to law enforcement on May 12, Omaha police will present the flag to U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter at the Pentagon.

Said Tierney: This is a huge honor.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy proclaimed May 15 as National Peace Officers Memorial Day and the week in which it falls as National Police Week.

A National Law Enforcement Officers Museum is under construction in Washington, scheduled to open in 2018.

The names of Orozco and the 122 other law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty in 2015 will be engraved in an existing memorial, along with the names of 129 from past years. That will bring the total to more than 20,000.

Through Sunday, 33 officers had died in the line of duty in 2016  17 by firearms, 12 in traffic and four from other causes.

Groeninger, of the National Law Enforcement Memorial, said people can donate money and watch the May 13 candlelight ceremony online at unitedbylight.org.

Somberg, of Omaha, said misconduct by officers occasionally happens, but it is far from the norm.

The vast majority of police officers, he said, act properly, are well-trained and follow the rules.

Orozco, a seven-year police veteran at the time of her death played high school volleyball and basketball at the former Walnut High School. Her extended familys trip to Washington is being funded by the COPS organization of Iowa, which stands for Concerns of Police Survivors.

We do not have a COPS chapter in Nebraska, Tierney said, but we hope to organize one in the near future.
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Ireland United States Minor Outlying Islands United States of America Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
Kerrville, TX (78028)

Today

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms in the morning. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High 87F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Mostly clear skies with gusty winds developing overnight. Low around 50F. Winds NW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.
School holidays are a time where kids get to enjoy a break from school and there is no better way to enjoy getting away from school than learning fun rugby league skills and games while playing with new friends.

The National Rugby League Pacific Outreach Program delivers Rugby League activities in Tonga with a focus on education, active lifestyles and inclusive programs. The Holiday Clinic held on Wednesday April 13 was our inaugural clinic, with plans in place to run holiday clinics across the Kingdom in all future school holiday periods.

NRL Tonga staff and volunteers put the participants through lots of skill games and activities while also learning a about healthy eating and looking after their bodies while playing sport.

It was also a highlight to have the Tongan Community Police in attendance to deliver some important messages to the children and also to let them know that the Police are their friends.

The NRL Tonga free school clinics are proudly sponsored by Digicel Tonga.
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Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
A local legend in Northwest Indiana automotive sales who helped turn Merrillville into a mecca for car shoppers has died.

Schepel Buick-GMC Inc. President Richard Schepel died early Monday. Schepel, who started his storied career cleaning cars at a Lansing dealership six decades ago, won almost every award one can as a car dealer, including Buicks Best In Class, GMCs 5 Star General, and GM Dealer of the Year every year since 2010.

He was inducted into the Northwest Indiana Business and Industry Hall of Fame last year.

The Dyer resident was in his early 80s. Schepel was a U.S. Army veteran who prided himself on providing superior customer service during his lengthy career.

Schepel Buick-GMC-Cadillac has succeeded for over 45 years in the car business because we have treated our customers like they are family, he told The Times last year. In doing so, our customers have been extremely loyal in both good and bad economies.

In 1970, after buying the former Ray Shem Buick in Crown Point, the kid who grew up reading car magazines opened the first car dealership on the stretch of U.S. 30 in Merrillville, which was then farmland and is now lined with dealerships, and became the No. 1 volume Buick dealer in Chicago and Northwest Indiana. In 1987, Schepel bought the GMC Light Truck franchise, which became part of Schepel Buick-GMC Truck Inc.

His two dealerships sold more than 100,000 vehicles over the past 48 years.

He had served as president and chairman of the board of the Buick Dealers Association, was a deacon at Redeemer United Reformed Church, and was a supporter of many local charities, including the Red Cross Blood Drive and Elim Christian Services, which provides services to children and adults with disabilities. He helped needy families through the church and traveled around the world as part of Bible League International.

Our company has always supported local charities because we believe in the people of Northwest Indiana, Schepel told The Times last year. Our business has been blessed by this community. We, in turn, feel called to give back to organizations that improve the lives of citizens in our area.

His dealership is still family-owned

I would want my legacy to be a businessman who truly cared about his customers enough to impact the next generation of this company, so that they will continue in our heritage of delighted customers, he told The Times last year.
The Times has won three awards in the Local Media Associations recent Excellence in Local News Coverage contest. The association has membership in the United States and Canada.

Ed Bierschenk won a second place for Best In-Depth Reporting, an individual award, for his series on how drunken driving cases are handled in Lake and Porter counties.

Carmen McCollum and Marc Chase won second place for Best Investigative Reporting, a team award, for six stories on Garys abandoned school buildings.

The Times staff won second place for Best Coverage of Local Business and Economic News for local business and economic coverage.
CROWN POINT  A Gary couple who alleged they battered a police officer in self-defense were sentenced Friday.

Lake County Criminal Judge Salvador Vasquez sentenced Reginald S. Harris, 36, to two and a half years of probation after a Lake County jury found him guilty of battery against a public safety official, a Level 5 felony.

Summer C. Snow, 35, was sentenced to six months in Lake County Jail followed by two years of probation after she was found guilty of battery against a public safety official and resisting law enforcement.

Snow was ordered to report Friday to Lake County Jail.

The charges stem from when Snow called police about 4:50 a.m. on Nov. 30, 2014, asking for help removing Harris from her car.

Gary Patrolman Terry Peck arrived to the 1100 block of Jennings Street and found Harris, who refused to get out of a red Dodge Durango despite repeated warnings that he could be arrested.

A scuffle ensued between the men that led to Harris' arrest, according to court testimony. After the arrest, Snow refused to give Peck her identification card so he could complete his report.

That led to a verbal altercation that turned physical. Snow and Peck were injured during the incident.

Defense attorney Russell Brown argued at trial that it was Peck, not his clients, who escalated the situation. Brown argued Peck used excessive force, and his clients were defending themselves.

Brown argued Friday the officer did not sustain serious injuries from the incident. He noted that though Harris has a 2006 felony conviction for cocaine, he has stepped up to support Snow's children.

Letters of support for the couple also were sent to Vasquez in anticipation of the sentencing hearing.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Quinton White argued the case involved two people who did not want to obey the law. He said Peck was simply doing his job by responding to Snow's 911 calls.

"What was (Peck) supposed to do?" White said. "Just walk away? He had to do his job, even if it required him to take blows."
HAMMOND  A Gary man already facing a murder charge in state court was indicted Monday on a federal firearms charge related to the same homicide.

Mark "Knuckles" Cherry, 23, is accused of causing Rolando Correa Jr.'s death by using a firearm as part of a conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute marijuana and to commit a robbery.

Correa, 22, of Gary, was shot during a home invasion Dec. 1, 2013, in the 6200 block of West 29th Avenue in Gary and later died at Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus, police said.

Cherry's trial in Lake Criminal Court on murder, attempted murder, criminal confinement and battery charges is scheduled to begin June 27, according to online records.

Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter said his office intends to move forward with the trial. He said the government's case will run concurrently to the pending murder case in Lake Criminal Court.

According to state records, three men armed with guns on Dec. 1, 2013, knocked on a door at a home in the 6200 block of West 29th Avenue in Gary.

The homeowner, who told the men where he stored marijuana, was forced to the floor and had a gun pointed at his head, an affidavit said.

The homeowner's brother, who lived next door, and Correa heard gunshots and went to the house to investigate, according to court records.

Correa was shot during a fight and returned to the home next door, where officers later found him, the affidavit said.

Cherry was wounded during the struggle, and officers found him after stopping a vehicle fleeing the scene, police said.

Andre J. Woods, 28, of Gary, was found dead with a gunshot wound hours after the home invasion on the side of the road in the 2100 block of Georgia Street. Gary police previously said they believed Woods also was involved in the home invasion.
EAST CHICAGO  A 17-year-old was arrested Saturday after a police officer noticed him slumped over the wheel of a vehicle, stopped to check on him and spotted three bags of suspected marijuana inside the car, police said.

The East Chicago teen was arrested on suspicion of possession of marijuana and later released to his mother, Lt. Marguerite Wilder said.

The officer was on patrol about 10:15 p.m. when he noticed a suspicious vehicle parked at 143rd Street and Northcote Avenue, she said.

When the officer approached the vehicle, he smelled burnt marijuana and noticed three knotted bags on the floor of the vehicle, she said.

The vehicle was towed, police said.
EAST CHICAGO  A 29-year-old Calumet City man was arrested after a woman flagged down a police officer and said the man had beaten her and held her inside for at least 10 hours, police said.

The 25-year-old East Chicago woman was able to escape from a home in the 4900 block of Indianapolis Boulevard about 7:45 a.m. and found the officer, Lt. Marguerite Wilder said.

She told police the man had been holding her in a bedroom and punched her and kicked her in front of her children. She attempted to call for help, but he took the phone away from her, Wilder said.

The woman, who was visibly injured, was taken to St. Catherine Hospital for treatment.

Police found the man in the home's bedroom. He told police the woman was injured when she tripped and fell through a door, Wilder said.

The man was taken into custody, and police were seeking formal charges Monday afternoon.

The children were placed in the custody of Child Protective Services, she said.
GARY  A man with a face mask and a gun entered an adult bookstore Sunday and told employees "don't nobody move" and "somebody gonna open this register" in the seventh robbery at the business since mid-February, police said.

A witness saw the suspect leave the Romantix store, 8801 Melton Road in Gary's Miller section, about 12:45 p.m. and leave in an older white Jeep Cherokee with a black bottom, Lt. Dawn Westerfield said.

Police later recovered the Jeep in the 500 block of south Vigo Place in the Woodlake Village area, she said. No suspects were with the vehicle, which was towed to a police garage.

Employees at the store told police a man with a black handgun took $130 from a register and also robbed three customers, Westerfield said. He allegedly became upset because one customer didn't have much money before he left the store.

The man was described as black, with black clothing and a black jacket. His face was obscured by a black hood and mask, and he was wearing gloves, police said.

Anyone with information about the robbery is asked to call detectives at (219) 881-1210. To remain anonymous, call (866) CRIME-GP.
LAPORTE  A man sought for three days after police said he shot his ex-girlfriend multiple times in LaPorte was arrested in South Bend.

Thomas Hardy, 47, is charged in LaPorte Circuit Court with two counts of Level 1 felony attempted murder and aggravated battery.

Hardy was grabbed Thursday outside an apartment complex in South Bend where he had been living out of a car, police said.

Tom Thate, LaPorte police chief of detectives, said members of the Fugitive Apprehension Street Team and U.S Marshals Service developed information on his whereabouts and with help from South Bend police took him into custody without incident.

Hardy had previously been staying at different locations with friends in the South Bend area.

''He used the parking lot to park and basically lived out of the car,'' Thate said.

According to police, Hardy shot Ava Strieter, 31, at least three times in the backyard of a home in the 1300 block of Wright Avenue.

He then pointed a gun at her 33-year old brother, Baret Strieter, and pulled the trigger at close range, but the gun was empty, police said.

Thate said Strieter was last reported in critical but stable condition in an induced coma at a South Bend hospital.

Two of the gunshot wounds were in her torso while another was in her thigh, police said.

According to authorities, Ava Strieter recently ended a relationship with Hardy. Police said Hardy got out of a car and walked to the backyard where Ava Strieter was smoking a cigarette and shot her.

Her brother, Baret, said Hardy turned, pointed the gun at him and pulled the trigger but it was empty.

Hardy initially was held in the St. Joseph County Jail where he has a pending charge of auto theft filed in February.

According to authorities, he could be brought to LaPorte as soon as Friday for an initial hearing on the more serious allegations.
CROWN POINT  Darryl K. Pinkins looked through a barred window Monday at Lake County Jail as he awaited his release after spending more than two decades incarcerated in the 1989 "bump-and-rape" attack that shook the community.

Inside the jail lobby, three carloads of family members and supporters waited for word from officials about his release.

As Pinkins, 63, walked through the security door that separates the lobby from the jail, the crowd erupted in cheers and clapping. Family members lined the lobby waiting for their turn to embrace Pinkins.

Wearing a blue polo shirt and jeans, Pinkins said, "Man, lord," as he embraced family members.

One of the people Pinkins embraced was Roosevelt Glenn who also was convicted in the case. The two men told each other, "We made it," and, "It's over," before going outside to face the swarm of reporters.

"It feels good," Pinkins said about his release. "It feels like this day was meant to be. I knew it was, God knew it was."

His release comes days after the Lake County prosecutor's office filed a motion granting Pinkins' successive petition for post-conviction relief, which vacated his 1991 convictions for rape, criminal deviate conduct and robbery. He had been serving a 65-year sentence at New Castle Correctional Facility.

Pinkins was one of three men who were prosecuted in the Dec. 7, 1989, "bump and rape" of a Hammond woman. The woman told police she was driving home about 1:30 a.m. after visiting friends in Griffith when someone rear-ended her vehicle while she was stopped for a red light.

When she got out to see the damage, the woman said she was dragged into the other car by five men who took her to a remote area of Gary. The men released her two hours later after she was sexually assaulted.

The men left behind a pair of green overalls that was later traced to a subcontractor working out of Bethlehem Steel in Burns Harbor. Seven men, including Pinkins, who worked there at the time were charged in the case.

Prosecutors dropped charges against four of the men. In two of the cases, prosecutors at the time cited laboratory tests that had cleared the men of wrongdoing.

William Durden, of Gary, stood trial in 1991 on charges related to the rape, but jurors were unable to reach a verdict. The state opted not to try him again.

Glenn was found guilty at trial of rape and was sentenced in 1993 to 36 years in prison. He was released in 2009 after completing his sentence.

Though the woman identified Pinkins at trial, DNA evidence never exactly identified Pinkins as one of the assailants. According to the state's motion, only three DNA profiles at the time were developed from the evidence.

Pinkins' DNA profile did not match those three profiles, and his DNA was thus excluded from the forensic sample before the trial, according to the motion.

Frances Watson, a clinical professor of law at Indiana University's Robert H. McKinney School of Law, said the state's theory at the time was that Pinkins' DNA could have been in the mixture of the DNA collected. However, Watson said a recent analysis using TrueAllele Casework testing of the DNA evidence developed the two missing profiles in the case, which did not match Pinkins' DNA.

In the state's motion, prosecutors conceded that the new DNA analysis would entitle Pinkins to a new trial. According to the motion, prosecutors opted not to retry Pinkins because of the passage of time.

Pinkins told the crowd gathered outside the jail that he wasn't bitter, and that Monday felt like a new beginning for him.

"I knew there was a justice system that was higher than this," he said.

Though he has missed out on much of his now four adult children's lives, Pinkins said he will treasure the time he will be able to spend with them. The family planned a cookout to celebrate his release.

His mother, Mildred Pinkins, said she prayed to God every night for her son. His sisters, Janice Spencer and Tracey Pinkins, said the family's religious views has helped them throughout the years.

Tracey Pinkins said the family has taken things one day at time, noting they've lost 15 family members during the 24 years her brother spent in prison.

She wonders how many other men like her brother are wrongfully incarcerated.

"When the DNA said it wasn't him, we thought he was going to get out," Tracey Pinkins said. "But he didn't. It was a shock."

Janice Spencer said she, too, has doubts about the justice system.

"I feel like the system has no regard for human life, period," she said. "To know you didn't do it, and you can't do nothing about it."

Glenn, now 54, said he expects paperwork to be filed within the next couple of weeks to vacate his conviction. He hasn't been able to communicate with Pinkins because of his label as a felon.

"I wanted to be here to support him and to tell him that he can make it out of here," Glenn said. "I'll be here for him. I've always been here for him."

Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter was among those who watched Pinkins' release. The men shook each others' hands as Pinkins thanked Carter for his office's decision.

Carter said his office wasn't characterizing what happened as Pinkins being exonerated, because the woman maintains Pinkins was one of the men who raped her. He said the woman was in disagreement with the prosecutor's office decision to grant Pinkins' petition.

The woman initially told Hammond police she couldn't identify the suspects because they covered her eyes. At trial, she told jurors she recognized Pinkins as a suspect after seeing him in court.

She testified at Pinkins' trial that she saw him during the attack, "quite clearly, right in front of my face, for a full five seconds."

Carter said his office intends to run the recently developed DNA profiles in the FBI's Combined DNA Index System to find the perpetrators in the case. He said there is no statute of limitation because the rape was a Class A felony.

"This is a rarity," Carter said. "Juries usually get it right. In this case, they didn't get it right."
EAST CHICAGO  East Chicago schools Superintendent Youssef "Dr. Joe" Yomtoob is retiring effective July 31.

The announcement came as a surprise to most people in the district when he read a letter at Monday night's School Board meeting.

Yomtoob, who accepted the position a couple of years ago, signed a five-year contract. In the letter, Yomtoob talked about the district's accomplishments and said, in part:

"As someone who was happy in retirement before I joined the district, my intention was always to stabilize the district, set it on a path to success and position the district for future leadership. For this reason, I am proud to announce that it is time for the district to transition to a new generation of leadership.

"I believe that the progress we've accomplished has the highest probability of continuation by maintaining leadership continuity. For this reason, I recommend the board look closely at the current leadership team and look at promoting from within rather than considering outside candidates."

The assistant superintendent is Paige McNulty, and it's no secret Yomtoob has been grooming her to become the next superintendent. McNulty has been with East Chicago schools a little more than a year.

Yomtoob, who will be 77 on July 10, was off for about five weeks following double bypass surgery Dec. 2, 2015.

"My doctor told me that added 15 years to my life. I might as well retire and enjoy life," he said Tuesday.

Yomtoob said the East Chicago community has become part of his life.

"I want to tell everyone I am so proud of a couple of things  my Latino friends call me Dr. Jose and some of my African-Americans friends call me Brother Joe," he said. "I will spend more time in Arizona where we have a house. As people have heard about it, the feedback has been that I've built a good foundation for the people of East Chicago."

Jesse Gomez, an East Chicago School Board member who was on the board which hired Yomtoob, said it's hard to part with someone when you know you've got the best.

"He promised he would bring in someone who was a strong leader to succeed him," Gomez said. "I am not sure in which direction the board will head, but my guess is that if we stay internal, we'd have a great superintendent in Paige McNulty. She has been a great support to Dr. Joe and they are both well respected in the school district and the community at large."

Joel Rodriguez, East Chicago School Board president, said Yomtoob's retirement came as a surprise.

"He put together a good team of administrators but we need time to absorb this information and come back together as a group and discuss what we need to do," Rodriguez said. "In the past, we worked with a university group and we'll share that recommendation. Personally, I have reached out to the Indiana School Board Association and the National School Board Association."

Yomtoob, who has retired three previous times as superintendent in other school districts, said the surgery had nothing to do with his decision.

During his tenure at the School City of East Chicago, Yomtoob said the deficit has decreased to about $3.4 million from $6 million. Yomtoob has made numerous cuts and consolidations since he began, including refinancing a building and eliminating some staff positions.

Yomtoob reconfigured elementary and middle school buildings effective this school year. The elementary schools contain kindergarten through sixth grades, with 500 to 700 students in each of the buildings. The two middle schools  Block and West Side  have only seventh- and eighth-graders. Block has just under 300 students. West Side has about 360 students.

Yomtoob said he also built a strong relationship between the district and the community, the district and the city of East Chicago and built a new leadership team within the district.
SPRINGFIELD  Gov. Bruce Rauners administration and a union representing 38,000 state workers began a legal showdown Monday over whether contract talks have reached an impasse.

Lawyers for the state and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 are arguing their cases before Sarah Kerley, an administrative law judge for the Illinois Labor Relations Board. The parties began bargaining over a new contract in February 2015, and the Rauner administration in January moved to have an impasse declared, which could ultimately clear the way for the state to impose its contract terms on the union.

The state and the union have reached tentative agreements on many issues, but wages and health care benefits remain major sticking points.

The administration argues that the union has stuck to unreasonable demands in a time of unprecedented financial difficulties for the state, while AFSCME argues that the contract talks have been mired by Rauners hostility toward the collective bargaining rights of public employees. Each side accuses the other of bargaining in bad faith.

Tom Bradley, an attorney for the state, said in his opening statement Monday that the AFSCME has repeatedly refused the administrations proposal to freeze wages and institute a merit-based bonus system that would reward employees for their job performance. Those measures and proposals to have employees cover a greater share of their health insurance costs are necessary as the state grapples with its fiscal challenges, Bradley said.

The state was not negotiating in a vacuum, he said. To the contrary, the state was negotiating under the very heavy weight of the worst fiscal crisis in the states history, a fiscal crisis in which the states very best fiscal experts projected that the state would, over the (four-year) life of the contract, incur budget deficits in excess of $20 billion.

Although the state made numerous concessions, Bradley said, the sides were unable to reach agreements on a dozen issues, including wages and health benefits.

AFSCME attorney Steve Yokich argued in his opening statement that the union was still willing to negotiate when the state walked away from the bargaining table in early January.

Contract talks have been slowed because the state sought in its initial proposal to throw out provisions that have been in place for 30 years or more, he said, illustrating his point by tearing pages out of the previous agreement.

The governor has a well-known hostility toward  collective bargaining by government unions, Yokich said, pointing out numerous anti-union statements Rauner made before being elected.

You have two situations at work here, Yokich said. One situation is that you have a chief executive who despises the idea of government employee collective bargaining, and you have an original proposal that shreds the contract.

The administrations very public pronouncements on issues like merit pay tied negotiators hands and prevented them from making serious concession, he said.

As for the states fiscal crisis, Yokich called it a self-inflicted wound.

Rauner refused to back an extension of the states temporary income tax increase, which in January 2015 rolled back from 5 percent to 3.75 percent, taking an estimated $5 billion in annual revenue with it.

Several more days of hearings are scheduled, and a final decision from Kerley is not expected for some time.

Meanwhile, Rauner has yet to act on a bill thats been sitting on his desk since mid-March that would send the stalled contract talks to binding arbitration. He vetoed similar legislation last year.
EAST CHICAGO  John Warren, who operates King Seeker Charters, hopes the release of 67,000 chinook salmon fingerlings at the East Chicago marina will give the fish a better chance for survival.

The fingerlings have been released by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources at Gary's Buffington Harbor in the past, but Warren thinks the breakwalls, docks and boats at the marina may give the fingerlings more protection from predators, such as gulls. The fingerlings released Tuesday were 3.75 inches long.

"After discussion with our angling groups," said Michelle Cain, wildlife information specialist with the state DNR, "both the DNR and angling groups believe stocking in East Chicago marina will offer boat anglers more and easier opportunities to target these fish when they return to spawn as adults, and possibly offer better survival of the young fish at the time of stocking."

Both Warren and Cain also noted this could provide more opportunity for shore fishermen to catch the mature fish when they return. Cain said the East Chicago Marina area has access for shore anglers that Buffington Harbor doesn't currently provide.

"We are kind of fortunate this year," Warren said.

A similar number of chinook salmon fingerlings were released into the East Branch of the Little Calumet River and along Trail Creek, for a total of about 200,00 fingerlings.

It is likely these numbers won't be as high in the future. Warren said because of officials' concerns about a decline in bait fish, the number of the chinook salmon has been reduced dramatically from what it was a few years ago.

Ben Dickinson, assistant Lake Michigan Fisheries biologist, said of concern over the amount of bait fish in the lake, "it is likely that chinook salmon reductions will happen in the future in order to bring predator and prey back in balance."

Dickinson said these reductions possibly could occur as early as next year, although no formal decision has been made. He indicated a lot of factors need to be considered and data reviewed first.

He said the decision on stocking quotas are made cooperatively with agencies in Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.
GARY  For homeless individuals and families, Village of Hope will be a place that offers permanent supportive housing, mental health counseling, parenting classes, nutrition services and much more.

Its been a dream of Sister Peg Spindler, executive director of Sojourner Truth House, for the last 15 years, and on Monday, the groundbreaking ceremony on the empty city block where the three-story complex will stand brought that dream one step closer.

Shovels in hand, project and local partners joined to signal the construction of the 40-unit complex that should begin in the next 30 days, said Sherita M. Brewer, development services manager at Sojourner Truth House. STH is a limited partner with TWG Development LLC of Indianapolis as the general project partner.

Over approximately the next year, the wood and brick facade Village of Hope will be built at the southwest corner of 11th Avenue and Madison Street.

Plans call for the permanent supportive housing facility to contain 21 one-bedroom units, 17 two-bedroom apartments and two, three-bedroom units, Brewer said.

In the winter of 2014, Sojourner Truth House was accepted in the Permanent Supportive Housing Institute, which is required by the state. Sister Peg and I attended the six-month program, Brewer said. That enabled the project to use tax credit dollars and funding from other investment groups.

Earlier this year, the Gary Common Council agreed to rezone the site for the project and the Gary Plan Commission recommended approval of vacating the alley needed for development.

Spindler estimated applications for the units will probably be taken around the end of 2016 or early 2017. Many of the tenants will likely come from referrals from provider organizations, she said.

We will serve homeless individuals and families with a concentration on those who have experienced homelessness and sometimes chronic homelessness, Brewer said. Some have mental illness and substance abuse issues. There will be case managers on site.

In addition to counseling, Brewer said the wrap-around services will help Village of Hope residents make application for disability services and obtain vital records such as birth certificates and Social Security cards.

We will help residents secure employment through a number of community partners, including WorkOne Northwest Indiana, Brewer said, adding that there is no time limit on how long residents can live at Village of Hope.

Local partners at the groundbreaking included Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson, 4th District Councilwoman Carolyn Rogers of the Gary Common Council and Bishop Donald J. Hying of the Catholic Diocese of Gary.

Project partners include TWG Development, Alliant Investment, the Regional Mental Health Center, Continuum of Care Region 1A, the Indiana Housing & Community Development Authority and the Corporation for Supportive Housing.
MICHIGAN CITY  Police on Monday were continuing to investigate the homicide of a Michigan City used car lot owner.

Hufracio Artega, 65, was found dead about 11 a.m. Saturday at Easy Drive Auto Sales at 117 W. 11th St.

The body was discovered by a co-owner of the property, police said.

Michigan City Police Detective Bureau Cmdr. Lt. Cary Brinkman said an arrest had not been made.

He declined to release further details citing the ongoing investigation.

Police are requesting anyone with information to contact lead investigator Sgt. Ken Drake at (219) 874-3221 ext 331 or kdrake@michigancity.com

LaPorte County Chief Deputy Coroner Mark Huffman would not shed light on the cause of death stating he is waiting on the findings of a pathologist who conducted the forensic examination of the body.

Huffman did say there were obvious signs of trauma to the body.

"It's certainly a homicide," he said.
VALPARAISO  Three years after being sentenced to 60 years behind bars for murdering his former girlfriend, Union Township resident Dustin McCowan is taking another shot at overturning his conviction.

McCowan filed what is known as post conviction relief, claiming "ineffective assistance of trial counsel" and "ineffective assistance of appellate counsel."

Unlike earlier challenges, McCowan is not relying on an attorney. He opted instead to fill out the paperwork himself by hand.

Porter County deputy prosecutors Matt Frost and Cheryl Polarek filed a response Tuesday denying the allegations and pointing out that McCowan's conviction has been upheld by the state appellate and supreme courts.

"Accordingly, the issues raised in the petition provide no present grounds for relief to the petitioner," according to the response.

The challenge is pending before Porter Superior Court Judge Bill Alexa, who presided over the high-profile trial in February 2013.

The post conviction relief was one of two remaining options mentioned by a defense attorney a year ago when the Indiana Supreme Court upheld McCowan's conviction.

McCowan, who is now 23, was found guilty of shooting 19-year-old Amanda Bach, of Portage, in the throat early on Sept. 16, 2011, after she showed up at the Union Township home he was living in at the time with his father.

The Portage woman's partially clothed body was found the following day, less than 300 yards from the house in a wooded area along County Road 625 West at the Canadian National railroad tracks.

McCowan's attorney at the time also said he would be meeting with McCowan's family to discuss pursuing the post conviction relief and/or a challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The state Supreme Court rejected a claim that Alexa failed to provide the jury with adequate instructions, according to the ruling.

While the judge rejected an instruction proposed by the defense calling on jurors "to fit the evidence to the presumption that he (McCowan) was innocent," the overall instructions covered that requirement as spelled out in the law, the court said.

The state Supreme Court did not address challenges to cellphone evidence pertaining to McCowan's location at the time of the murder or Alexa's decision not to recuse himself after learning about a telephone call involving McCowan from the jail.

The call included derogatory and threatening remarks about prosecutors, police and their family members.
MUNSTER  The human rights ordinance became law Monday night to thunderous applause.

The council adopted the ordinance on second reading, with Ward 3 Councilman Joseph Simonetto casting the sole no vote. Simonetto said he could have supported the ordinance if two conditions were changed: if the town hired a human resources manager well-versed in the matters covered in the ordinance, and if a section on restroom access could be clarified.

Most everyone who attended the crowded meeting supported the ordinance, though there were a few exceptions. Sheryl Georges was among those who opposed the ordinance, saying that it would be better left up to voters as a ballot issue, and that it could open up local business owners to lawsuits.

Its said, 'government governs the best that governs the least,' said Erik De Vries, who opposed the measure. (The ordinance) is an attempt to solve a problem that heretofore hasnt existed. I think (passage) is ill-advised and unnecessary at this time.

Most in attendance appeared to agree with Ann Bachnowski, a representative of We Are Munster, a local community group that has spearheaded a drive to get the human rights ordinance adopted since last year. Prove to all the people here that Munster is a town we can be proud to call home, she said.

Like other members of We Are Munster, Bachnowski carried a rainbow-colored sign, all of which were displayed during the meeting.

The new ordinance, modeled on a similar law passed in Carmel, Indiana, prohibits discrimination against anyone on the basis of race, sexual orientation, disability or gender identity, making it illegal to obstruct someone from entering a business, entering into a contract, obtaining and maintaining employment or participating in any type of program or service available to the general public based on the classifications cited. Religious worship, clergy while engaged in religious activities, nonprofit clubs organized exclusively for religious purposes and private gatherings not open to the public would be excluded from the ordinance.

It gives equal rights, Council President John Reed said prior to the vote. It (ensures) no one will be treated poorly.
Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton said she'd fight to save America's troubled steel industry while touring Munster Steel in Hammond, one of two Indiana campaign stops she made Tuesday in anticipation of Indiana's May 3 primary election.

"Steel is crucial to our manufacturing base, crucial to our national security, and I will not let this vital industry disappear," Clinton said.

"I'm going to make the steel industry's survival one of my top priorities."

Clinton said she would stand up to China, which she said continued to flood the world market with steel even though demand there has slowed. She said she would appoint a trade prosecutor who would answer directly to the president and who could initiate trade cases against steel dumping without waiting on steelmakers or unions to complain.

"China and other countries have been dumping artificially cheap steel into our markets to gain an unfair advantage," Clinton said. "I really appreciate the fact that Munster Steel buys domestic steel."

Lukas Mitcheltree, a Crown Point resident who's worked for Munster Steel for two and a half years, said he was surprised a presidential candidate would visit a company that only employs around 30 workers but liked what she had to say, particularly about the effects of steel imports.

"It affects me," he said. "People have been laid off."

China is widely blamed for the global import crisis after exporting a record 112 million tons of steel last year, flooding the world market and depressing prices. It produced a record 70.7 million tons of steel last month.

"Why is China doing this? Demand in their own country has slowed down, but they want to keep their steel mills going, because they want to keep people employed while they try to figure out what to do with their economy," Clinton said.

"Well, that's their problem. They shouldn't try to dump it onto us. They're trying to solve their domestic problems on the back of American workers. It's illegal, pure and simple."

Clinton made her remarks at Munster Steel, a third-generation family-owned company that fabricates structural steel for buildings and bridges.

"You can see people, including probably some in this plant, who are working the same jobs as their parents, but for less pay and fewer benefits," she said. "They're doing everything right. Maybe they can't even find a job in their chosen profession. It's got to be hard to be optimistic about the future. It's really clear we're giving too many Americans, particularly working Americans, a really raw deal."

She directed jabs at Republicans Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, whom she accused of being short on specifics.

"It's important in this campaign that people not just give speeches and get everybody riled up," she said. "It's important we ask what they're going to do and how they're going to do it. Give me the specifics. Don't just give me the rhetoric, and the demagoguery. That's why I'm going to be as specific as possible. I'm just bewildered when I hear the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump say wages are too high."

She bashed Cruz's proposal for a national right-to-work law, eliciting cheers from union members who remain upset over Indiana's right-to-work law, which allows workers to opt out of paying union dues at unionized workplaces.

"Right-to-work is wrong for workers, and it's wrong for America," Clinton said.

She accused Indiana leaders of waging a "relentless assault on workers' rights, including by repealing the common construction wage for trade unions."

Indiana Republicans fired back, saying Clinton wanted to put the state's coal industry out of business and that she would say anything to get votes.

"The Clinton Machine is on the warpath against Republicans," Republican Party Chairman Jeff Cardwell said. "Her campaign is desperate to hide her flaws and make her desirable to Hoosiers."

Union members applauded Clinton when she said Indiana lawmakers ignored "economics 101" when they got rid of prevailing construction wages for publicly financed projects. She said workers deserved to be paid well for their work, and that the nation's economy depended on it.

"We have a 70 percent consumption economy," she said. "If we don't pay people, we don't grow the economy. That's not good for families, that's not good for businesses, that's not good for Indiana, and it's not good for America... That's why I've been a strong supporter of the prevailing wage and ensuring the people who build our country get paid what they deserve for it."
SPRINGFIELD, Ill.  Brian Nelson's years in solitary confinement left him terrified of other people, and he says he can still taste the concrete dust from his cell, even though he's been free since 2010.

The 51-year-old is afraid to ride the bus, he takes five psychotropic drugs and sees a psychiatrist every week. Even when he's at a park surrounded by grass, he says everything starts turning gray and he remembers how tiny air pockets in the walls kicked up dust whenever he would clean his cell at a now-shuttered maximum security prison in Tamms, in Illinois' southern tip. There he was confined for the final 12 years of a 26-year sentence for murder and armed robbery.

"Those four walls beat me down so bad," he told members of an Illinois House committee during a recent emotional hearing on the state's solitary confinement practices.

Stories like Nelson's have led Illinois lawmakers to push prisons to restrict the use of solitary confinement, joining a national movement that has policymakers rethinking the longstanding form of punishment that critics say has a profound psychological impact on inmates.

Legislation sponsored by Democratic Rep. La Shawn Ford, of Chicago, would limit solitary confinement to no more than five consecutive days and five total days during a 150-day period. That would be a dramatic change from the current rules, which allow prisons to isolate inmates for weeks or years at a time.

The bill, which received the House committee's initial approval on Wednesday, would also require prisons to allow inmates in solitary to spend four hours per day outside of their cells. The measure awaits a vote by the full chamber.

"If a bill like this passed, it would be a real milestone in solitary reform," said Jean Casella, the co-director of Solitary Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based group that monitors the use of solitary confinement nationally.

State corrections officials oppose the measure, telling lawmakers it would go too far and that they want the chance to change things on their own.

"There are aspects, quite a few aspects of the bill, that seriously diminish the department's ability to separate the most violent offenders from the general population," said Mike Atchison, the chief of operations at the Illinois Department of Corrections. He said the department is in the process of finalizing new rules to reduce the use of solitary confinement.

Ford expressed little faith in the department's pledge to make changes.

"I'm committed to getting it right, but I'm not committed to waiting for you to do it right," he said at the hearing.

In Rhode Island, legislation is pending that would limit stays in solitary confinement to no more than 15 days at a time. In 2014, Colorado stopped placing inmates in solitary confinement if they have mental illness, and last December, New York agreed to reduce its solitary confinement population as part of a settlement that U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin called "historic."

The judge cited literature saying inmates in solitary exhibit symptoms including hypersensitivity to stimuli, hallucinations, increased anxiety, lack of impulse control, severe and chronic depression, appetite and weight loss, heart palpitations, sleep problems and depressed brain function.

As many as 82,000 inmates are in solitary on any given day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Illinois had about 1,830 inmates in solitary confinement as of April 14 for disciplinary reasons. An additional 148 are there for their own safety or other reasons. The state has an estimated 45,000 inmates overall, meaning Illinois is at the daily national average of about 4.4 percent for prisoners in segregation, according to federal data.

Illinois opponents of solitary confinement say many inmates are put there for minor infractions. But the most recent breakdown available, which the state provided last year to the Uptown People's Law Center, is from 2008. The group, where Nelson now works to help inmates find legal representation, is suing Illinois over its use of solitary confinement.

The 2008 figures show that out of the 12,332 inmates placed in segregation that year, nearly a third were punished for violating rules or disobeying an order.

Atchison told lawmakers that he agrees the system needs to be improved, but he insisted that segregating some inmates is necessary.

"We have an obligation to protect other offenders," he said.

___

Find Ivan Moreno on Twitter at http://twitter.com/IvanJourno . More of his work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/ivan-moreno .

___

Online: House Bill 5417: http://bit.ly/1SAyxDd
With five states holding presidential primaries this Tuesday, Donald Trump is denouncing his rivals for colluding against him, while on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is looking to cement her path to the nomination. Washington bureau reporter Alberto Pimienta filed the following report.



In a new move to deny Donald Trump the Republican nomination, Ted Cruz and John Kasich are joining forces, announcing a divide and conquer strategy.



Kasich will step back during the Indiana primary, while Cruz will follow suit in Oregon and New Mexico.

"After discussions with the Kasich campaign, we made a decision about allocating resources," Cruz said. "We decided to allocate our time and energy and resources on the state of Indiana. Governor Kasich decided to allocate his resources elsewhere."



"Look, this is a matter of resources, and, you know, we are running a national campaign and we want to apply our resources where we think they can be used more effectively, and its all designed to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming president," Kasich said.

In Rhode Island, Trump lashed out against the plan.



"If you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail. But in politics, because its a rigged system, because its a corrupt enterprise, in politics, youre allowed to collude. So they colluded," Trump said. "And actually, I was happy, because it shows how weak they are. It shows how pathetic they are."

The arrangement doesnt include Tuesdays primaries in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, where Trump is expected to add to his delegate lead.

On the Democratic side, Tuesday is also key for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.



Clinton is trying to seal the deal. With nearly 400 Democratic delegates up for grabs, and with a close lead in polls in the five states, big wins could set her even farther apart from Sanders.

On the stump, Clinton is already setting her attacks on a possible general election rival.

"Donald Trump says wages are too high in America and doesn't support raising the minimum wage. And I have said, 'Come out of those towers named for yourself and actually talk and listen to people,'" she said.

But the Vermont senator says the race is not over, vowing to stay in it until the last vote is cast in the primaries this June.
The New York City Police Department is looking for a man they say tried to attack a subway rider in Manhattan early Tuesday morning.

Investigators say it happened on an uptown 6 train near 42nd Street around 3 a.m.

Police say the two men got into a dispute and one of them pulled out a knife.

The 40-year-old victim tried to grab the weapon and ended up cutting his hand.

He was treated at a local hospital.

Anyone with information on the case should contact the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS, or text CRIMES and then enter TIP577, or visit www.nypdcrimestoppers.com.
Louis and Jessica remember the encounter that started it all in Fresh Off the Boat. Scientists visit the site of the worst nuclear accident in history in Life After: Chernobyl. And a young bride confronts the end of the world in Melancholia.

Whats on TV

FRESH OFF THE BOAT 8 p.m. on ABC. Evan opens his first bank account but cant decide whether he should use his American or his Chinese name. That leads Louis and Jessica to reminisce about how they acquired their own American names, and the first time they met. (Image: From left, Randall Park, Hudson Yang and Ian Chen)

CHOPPED JUNIOR 8 p.m. on Food Network. Go ahead and play with your food: Young chefs concoct meals out of mystery ingredients for a $10,000 prize. The competition begins as theyre challenged to transform strange hot dogs and unmeltable cheese into appetizers, create entrees from retro candies and whip up dessert from raw cookie dough. Sarah Michelle Gellar is guest judge; Ted Allen hosts.
The gift to the U.C.S.F., the biggest ever to the school, is also among the biggest ever by the Weills, who have sought over the years to make themselves known at least as much for their philanthropy as for Mr. Weills business achievements.

Bullet Train to Nowhere : Construction of the California high-speed rail system, Americas most ambitious infrastructure project, Construction of the California high-speed rail system, Americas most ambitious infrastructure project, has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare

A Piece of Black History Destroyed: Lincoln Heights  a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California  endured for decades. Lincoln Heights  a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California  endured for decades. Then came the Mill fire

Warehouse Moratorium: As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In Californias Inland Empire, As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In Californias Inland Empire, the anger has turned to widespread action

Research on the brain, which is the most complex part of the human body, is far behind work done in other areas of medicine, Mr. Weill said in an interview in Sonoma. Weve always liked to support the underdog.

Brain science has been enjoying fresh attention from philanthropists and investors, particularly in light of the Obama administrations announcement in 2013 of a 10-year effort to build a comprehensive map of the human brain, in the hope of advancing the fight against diseases like Parkinsons and Alzheimers.

With the newest donation, the Weills  who have signed the Giving Pledge, the drive created by Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates for the worlds richest to donate most of their wealth to philanthropy  have now pledged more than $1 billion to charitable causes.
A recent history of mistakes, slip-ups and management blunders is woven into the fabric of Tribune Publishing, the struggling publisher of The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune.

Now, the company may be about to add to the list.

On Monday, Gannett, publisher of USA Today, disclosed an eye-popping $815 million bid for what is left of the Tribune publishing empire. But instead of Tribunes board popping Champagne corks and shouting Hallelujah, it told Gannett, astonishingly, in effect: Wait. Were not sure we want to do that and, actually, were not sure we even want to talk to you about it.

Two weeks ago and behind the scenes, Gannett made its bid, valued at $12.25 a share, known to Tribunes board in the form of a private letter. Thats 63 percent higher than Fridays share price. At most public companies that at least pretend to think about their shareholders, a firm that gets an unsolicited offer hires bankers relatively quickly to sort out its options. And perhaps it engages in a bit of back-and-forth with the suitor in hopes of feeling them out and maybe getting an even higher bid.

Not Tribune.

Its board sat on the offer for nearly 10 days without retaining outside advisers. Then, Tribune wrote Gannett a letter saying it was still working on hiring outside advisers, but is in the midst of significant transformation, and pointed out that the company will undergo some change after June 2, almost six weeks from now.
COURTLAND, Ala.  In this forlorn Southern town whose once-humming factories were battered in recent years by a flood of Asian imports, Rhonda Hughes, 43, is a fervent supporter of Donald Trump. Her 72-year old mother is equally passionate about Senator Bernie Sanders.

Disenchantment with the political mainstream is no surprise. But research to be unveiled this week by four leading academic economists suggests that the damage to manufacturing jobs from a sharp acceleration in globalization since the turn of the century has contributed heavily to the nations bitter political divide.

Ms. Hughes avoids discussing the election with her mother, but their neighbor Benjamin Green, 83, knows just what Washington needs. Itll take a junkyard dog to straighten this country out, he said.

Cross-referencing congressional voting records and district-by-district patterns of job losses and other economic trends between 2002 and 2010, the researchers found that areas hardest hit by trade shocks were much more likely to move to the far right or the far left politically.
Just two years ago, Volkswagen was actively supporting the United Auto Workers in its push to organize the companys plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.

But in September, the German automaker was plunged into turmoil over revelations that it had equipped almost 600,000 diesel cars sold in the United States with software to cheat on tailpipe emissions tests.

Since then, a large portion of Volkswagens senior management has changed  and so has its approach to the union drive. Now, rather than cooperating with the U.A.W., Volkswagen is trying to block the union.

The change signals a retreat from Volkswagens previous efforts to replicate in Chattanooga a German model of labor relations, in which workers have a strong voice influencing factory operations.
The transactions usually took place in a car parked near West 166th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Manhattan. Abdul Davis would arrive from New Jersey, carrying guns in a bag, the authorities said. He sold them in batches of three or four: revolvers, semiautomatic pistols, shotguns, assault rifles.

All told, prosecutors said, he unloaded 82 weapons over 13 months in exchange for about $94,000, with the money wired to his bank account in advance. What Mr. Davis did not know was that his customer was an undercover police officer, and that the Manhattan district attorneys office had obtained a wiretap on his phone.

On Monday, Mr. Davis, 52, and his girlfriend, Shelita Funderberk, 50, who is accused of helping him with the sales, were arrested in Linden, N.J., where they live, and await extradition. They are charged with criminal sale of firearms, conspiracy and other crimes, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, said.

Mr. Davis and Ms. Funderberk could not be reached for comment because they were in custody in Union County, N.J., and had yet to be arraigned or obtain legal counsel.
Unlike what has happened in other cities, Health & Hospitals will remain a vibrant public system  it is not for sale and the city will not abandon it, the report says, promising that the unparalleled investment will help turn the 280-year-old network into a community-based model more focused on primary care that can better compete for patients.

The 55-page report is not the first to point to the dire financial future facing the citys health care and hospital system, which has maintained its mission of treating all patients regardless of their ability to pay or their immigration status. But the new report reflects the impact of the Affordable Care Act, and points to trends that make adaptation daunting.

As previously uninsured low-income New Yorkers have gained insurance, they also have gained new health care options. The city system has been losing those patients to other providers that are seen as more upscale or convenient to patients. At the same time, it remains the major source of care for nearly one million city residents who remain uninsured, many of them unauthorized immigrants who are ineligible for public insurance.

Uninsured patients and those covered by Medicaid, the federal and state program for the poor, now represent nearly 70 percent of Health & Hospitals total hospital stays, compared with 40 percent for other hospitals in the city, the report says. Yet federal and state funding that helps cover the cost of caring for the uninsured is projected to decline by almost $1 billion  from $2.2 billion in the 2016 fiscal year to $1.4 billion in the 2020 fiscal year.

As other nonprofit hospitals consolidate, they have begun to compete for the citys Medicaid patients. While other major systems saw a 5 percent increase in managed Medicaid hospital stays, Health & Hospitals experienced a 3 percent decline between 2012 and 2014. MetroPlus, the city hospitals own managed-care plan, grew by 17 percent over a six-year period, to 500,000 members, but still lost out to private competitors as the market grew by 27 percent.
On the face of it, President Obamas decision to send 250 more members of the military to Syria to fight the Islamic State may seem like a small move. The number is a far cry from the 180,000 American troops who were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan when he took office in 2009.

But there is good reason to be concerned about this expanding mission, which increases the United States involvement in Syria well beyond the 50 Special Operations personnel there now. In announcing his decision on Monday in Germany, Mr. Obama said he wanted to capitalize on the recent success the Americans and Syrians have had in driving the Islamic State out of key areas. The American troops will be engaged in training and assisting local forces and are not going to be leading the fight on the ground, he insisted.

While American forces will not be leading the ground war in Syria, they will be involved in military operations and working without proper authorization from Congress. Unlike the American troops in Iraq, which are fighting the Islamic State at the request of the Iraqi government, the troops in Syria will be operating in another sovereign nation with no clear legal right.
Reading, Pa.  KEITH MANDICH had been to this theater before, to see John Mellencamp.

Now Mr. Mandich, a retired steelworker, was back in downtown Reading, Pa., to see another guy he thought of as a hero for working-class America: Senator Bernie Sanders.

In his bid for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Sanders has nurtured vocal support from young, college-educated liberals. But he also has fervent support from people who remember the era of well-paying union jobs at manufacturing plants  and who are very aware of how far we are from that time.

I just like Bernie because hes old like me, joked Mack Richards, 70, another retired steelworker at the Reading event.

Pennsylvania is among the five states holding a primary on Tuesday, and it has the most delegates at stake. Since neither party has locked up its nominee yet, the states white working-class voters have more of a voice in the primary process than they have had in years past. In 2008, they were considered Biden voters  the white working-class denizens of Scranton, Pa., and places like it  whom Joe Biden, Scrantons own, was supposed to win over for Barack Obama.
DURING my many years as a correspondent in Mexico, some of my best reporting happened around dinner tables. So on a recent trip back, I dined with a range of old contacts to catch up on how Mexico was handling its most pressing challenges, like the 2014 student massacre in southern Mexico, which shocked the world and ignited protests across the country.

But all anyone wanted to talk about was Donald Trump.

My dinner companions were not alone in their fixation. About a week later, the Mexican government announced that it was shaking up its diplomatic corps to address the anti-Mexico rhetoric spewing from the Trump campaign, which a Mexican official told The Washington Post threatened to damage the image of Mexico in the United States.

On Sunday, however, Mexico showed that the deeper damage to the countrys image is self-inflicted.

An independent investigative panel released its final report on the massacre in the state of Guerrero, which left 43 students of a rural teachers college in Ayotzinapa missing and presumed dead. Its findings were devastating.

The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts, whose work has led to high-profile prosecutions against the Colombian military, a Guatemalan dictator and American oil companies, not only provided the most chilling account of what the students had suffered one night in September 2014, but it also showed that the Mexican government had, at the very least, badly mishandled the investigation, and quite possibly attempted a cover-up.
Walter Kohn, an Austrian-born American scientist and former refugee who shared a Nobel Prize in Chemistry  a subject that he had last formally studied in high school  died on last Tuesday in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 93.

The cause was cancer of the jaw, his wife, Mara Vishniac Kohn, said.

As a teenager, Dr. Kohn had escaped to England from Nazi-occupied Vienna less than a month before World War II erupted, found himself shipped to Canada as an enemy alien and later built a long, distinguished academic career in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1957.

He was awarded the chemistry prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1998. At the time, he was teaching at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He shared the award with John A. Pople, a British-born mathematician at Northwestern University.

Dr. Kohn was credited with a discovery that applied quantum mechanics and advanced mathematics to explain complex chemical reactions.
Until two years ago, the photographer Eamonn Doyle, whose new work End. goes on show at Londons Michael Hoppen Gallery this May, was not known for his photographs. After graduating art college in 1991, he founded a record label and a festival in his native Dublin, immersing himself in the local music scene for almost 20 years. It was after the economic crash in 2008 that, feeling burned out and in need of a change, he bought a camera and began to photograph life on the streets around his home.

Doyle self-published his first photo book, i, in 2014, and planned to spend the next few years selling the 750 copies. On a whim, he sent one to the British photographer Martin Parr. I receive many books in the post  many good, and some poor, Parr recalls now, but from time to time a book stops you in your tracks. When he received it, he posted on a Flickr forum for fans of street photography, describing it as the best new street photo book, I have seen in a decade. I think it was sold out within a couple of weeks after that, says Doyle.

That first book and Doyles subsequent publications, ON in 2015, and now End., the last in the trilogy, have focused mainly on his own street in central Dublin. The neighborhood, he says, is heavily populated by immigrants from West Africa, China and Eastern Europe; he finds it kind of raw, vibrant, but also weary and often sad. His images capture glimpses of life, shot in bright sunlight and from disorienting angles, almost treating the figures as just purely abstract forms, looking at the texture and shapes. Two little girls, photographed from above, appear to tumble around the corner of a street; a man shot from ground level seems laden. The more Im photographing, the more Im realizing that its just sort of scratching the surface  even now, after the three books, says Doyle.
A Pennsylvania appeals court on Monday blocked Bill Cosbys effort to have criminal sexual assault charges against him thrown out, opening the way for the case to proceed.

Court officials on Tuesday scheduled a preliminary hearing in the criminal case for May 24th.

Though Mr. Cosby has been sued in civil courts by several women, the Pennsylvania case is the only criminal case to arise from the many sexual assault accusations leveled against him in recent years.

The case involves a former Temple University staff member, Andrea Constand, who says the entertainer drugged and molested her at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.

Mr. Cosby, 78, has denied all wrongdoing. Andrew Wyatt, a spokesman for Mr. Cosby, could not immediately say whether Mr. Cosby would appeal.
ATLANTA  Joseph C. Meek Jr., a friend of Dylann S. Roof, the man charged with killing nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., has agreed to cooperate with the authorities and plead guilty in his own criminal case. He is charged with lying to federal investigators and concealing information about the June 17 attack.

The plea agreement, which was filed in federal court Monday in Charleston, states that Mr. Meek has agreed to be fully truthful and forthright with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and provide full, complete and truthful information about crimes he knows of. He agreed to testify in court proceedings, and submit to polygraph tests, if requested by the government.

If prosecutors determine that Mr. Meeks cooperation is substantial, the agreement says, they will petition the court to be more lenient in sentencing him. Mr. Meek, 21, faces a maximum of eight years in prison for the two charges: misprision of a felony, which means concealing knowledge of a crime, and making a false statement.

Mr. Roof, 22, who appeared to be enamored of white supremacist symbolism and ideology, unleashed his attack on members of the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17, after he had asked to join the weekly Bible study class held in the fellowship hall of the church, located in downtown Charleston.
MIDWEST

Illinois: Emergency Funds Provide

A Lifeline for Colleges

Chicago State University, which may have been battered more than any other Illinois university by the states budget crisis, will soon receive $20 million in funding after Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a bill on Monday granting $600 million to state universities and community colleges. Chicago State, which serves mostly poor and African-American students, lacks an endowment and an affluent alumni base. It depends on 30 percent of its $105 million budget from the state. Lawmakers in Springfield and Mr. Rauner, a Republican, have been unable to agree on a budget for the past 10 months, leaving higher education unfunded. Officials from Chicago State said in a statement that while they appreciate the emergency funding, they will still have difficult cost-cutting decisions soon, including possible staff reductions. The school has been operating without state funding since last summer and has feared extensive layoffs or shutdown. It moved its commencement to April 28 and canceled spring break because of the funding shortage.

JULIE BOSMAN

Minnesota: College Student Pleads Guilty to Supporting the Islamic State

Another Minnesota man pleaded guilty Monday to conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State group. The man, Hamza Naj Ahmed, 21, changed his plea in Federal District Court in Minneapolis. He had been scheduled to go on trial next month. His plea came 11 days after another defendant, Adnan Abdihamid Farah, accepted a plea deal. Mr. Ahmed pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization and to financial aid fraud. Mr. Ahmed, a college student, was accused of using a $2,700 school loan to try to join the Islamic State. Prosecutors will move to dismiss the remaining charges, including conspiracy to murder outside the United States, at Mr. Ahmeds sentencing. He avoided a possible life sentence with his plea. Six defendants have now pleaded guilty and three are to go on trial May 9. A 10th man is at large, believed to be in Syria.

(AP)

SOUTH

Louisiana: U.S. Seeks to Remove Jail From Sheriffs Control

The Justice Department on Monday asked a federal court to appoint a third party to operate the New Orleans jail, saying new leadership is essential because the citys sheriff, Marlin Gusman, has failed after years of effort to improve conditions that endanger inmates. The government also sought to place Sheriff Gusman in contempt over what it called his noncompliance with overhauls mandated in a settlement agreement involving the jail and the Justice Department and inmates. The sheriff has said he is making progress in jail reforms and faulted the city for providing too little money.

(AP)

Georgia: Deputy Fired and Charged

For Pepper-Spraying Inmate

A sheriffs deputy was fired Monday and charged with a felony after an investigation found she used pepper spray to punish a jail inmate who spit in her face while his hands and feet were in restraints, the sheriff said. Sgt. Charlesetta Hawkins was arrested on a charge of cruelty to an inmate. Her arrest came less than a month after Chatham County Sheriff John Wilcher, who promised during his campaign to rid the county jail of excessive force by deputies following the high-profile death of a detainee last year, won election. The sheriff said the authorities plan to charge the inmate, Jonathan Mahone, with assault for spitting on the deputy.

(AP)
But critics vowed to appeal the ruling, and charged, as they often have, that the legislature sought to eliminate tools that made it easier for everyone, but particularly minority voters, to get to the polls.

By meticulously targeting measures that were most used by people of color  in addition to imposing a restrictive photo ID requirement  the legislature sought to disturb the levers of power in North Carolina, ensuring only a select few could participate in the democratic process, Penda D. Hair, co-director of the Advancement Project and a critic of the law, said in a statement. This fight is not over.

In his ruling, the judge suggested that past discrimination had abated. There is significant, shameful past discrimination, he wrote. In North Carolinas recent history, however, certainly for the last quarter century, there is little official discrimination to consider.

The law, which originally included a much stricter voter ID provision, was passed by the Republican-controlled legislature in summer 2013, shortly after the Supreme Courts 5-to-4 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder.

The ruling effectively eliminated what was known as the preclearance process, in which certain states and local governments had to submit proposed voting changes to the Justice Department or to a federal court in Washington.

Judge Schroeders decision capped a trial court record that stretched more than 23,000 pages and included weeks of testimony about the General Assemblys revisions to the election laws here. The voter identification standard, which required voters to display one of six forms of documentation, was central to an overhaul that supporters described as a bulwark against fraud.

But opponents of the changes said they were intended to disenfranchise black and Hispanic voters, an assertion they repeated on Monday.
PITTSBURGH  Gov. John Kasich often speaks about mental health in his campaign for president. He has defended his decision to expand Medicaid in Ohio by highlighting its benefits for mentally ill residents.

He is probably the only Republican candidate this year to ask a crowd, Do you know what its like for somebody to live with depression?

The question, posed at a rally in upstate New York recently, threw a hush over a room of 1,000 people. Mr. Kasich went on:

There are people here who know exactly what Im talking about.

Mr. Kasich is one who knows.

His only brother, Richard, 59, has struggled with depression disorders since college. He was occasionally hospitalized and today receives disability benefits for mental illness.

The Kasich brothers have taken vastly different paths from their hometown, McKees Rocks, Pa., an industrial suburb of Pittsburgh.
OTTAWA  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the heinous killing in the Philippines on Monday of a Canadian who had been held captive by Islamic militants for seven months.

Mr. Trudeau confirmed that John Ridsdel, 68, a mining executive, had been killed by the Abu Sayyaf group after a ransom deadline expired.

This was an act of coldblooded murder, and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage, Mr. Trudeau told reporters.

On Sept. 21, members of Abu Sayyaf kidnapped Mr. Ridsdel along with Robert Hall, another Canadian, Kjartan Sekkingstad of Norway, and Marites Flor, a woman from the Philippines, from a marina and resort on Samal Island. Several news reports indicated that the group was seeking about $6.4 million in ransom for each of the hostages.
Just like any social movement, the tide goes out, said Rodrigo Gonzalez, 22, a student in Mexico City and one of the volunteers who has lived on-and-off in the tent for the last year. People have jobs, run out of money, they get distracted. The government bets on this exhaustion, and the forgetting, but what we are here for is to remind society that they should never forget.

Public pressure has been building in recent days, as it became clear that the international panel, brought in to uncover what happened to the missing students, was unable to do so after a sustained campaign of government stonewalling, including the refusal to hand over information or grant interviews with certain officials.

The panels final report, issued Sunday, detailed the failings of the governments investigation, saying it was based on confessions obtained by torture. The departure of the foreign investigators has left the families of the missing students devastated. They had come to trust the panel as a credible interlocutor between them and the government.

Without the experts, or an outpouring of popular outrage, the families wonder if their cause is lost. We have seen the support from society drop, perhaps because many people do not think it important and others believe the government, said Bernabe Abrajan Gaspar, the father of one of the students, Adan Abrajan.

Other families interviewed Monday expressed similar dismay, and a belief that they will never know what happened to the young men.
BEIJING  Qi Benyu, a Chinese Communist Party propagandist who climbed to power in the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution; served as an aide to Mao Zedong and his powerful wife, Jiang Qing; and spent the rest of his life defending their legacy, died on Wednesday in Shanghai. He was 84.

He had been treated for cancer, Ye Yonglie, a historian who visited Mr. Qi in a hospital last month, said in confirming the death.

Mr. Qi (pronounced chee) was the last surviving member of the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group, which Mao created in May 1966 to guide his tumultuous movement. To the end of Mr. Qis life, he revered Mao and remained unrepentant about the upheavals that erupted across China 50 years ago, even though he was purged by Mao and then jailed for nearly 20 years.

Back then, the chairman told me with great assurance that a young fellow like me might be able to see the dawn of communism so long as we continued making revolution, Mr. Qi wrote in an essay published several years ago. But, sadly, even now I see no such dawn.
Theyre not going to be leading the fight on the ground, Mr. Obama said before meeting with the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and Italy to discuss the situation in Syria. But they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces.

Mr. Obama and his top aides concede that his incremental approach in Syria is unlikely to rapidly destroy the Islamic State  certainly not in the nine months that he has left in office. They say it will take many years of steady, concerted action by a coalition of nations to rid the world of the terror groups in Syria and Iraq.

The point that the president made in the Berlin speech is that when the world stands together in collective, multilateral action, we will be able to deal with the challenges that confront us, said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the presidents deputy national security adviser and an architect of his approach.

Mr. Rhodes argued that the presidents reluctance to act alone had served him  and the world  well. Actions by coalitions of nations, led by the United States, have helped beat back Ebola, turn the global economy away from the brink of collapse, and reach deals on climate change and Irans nuclear program, he said.

After Mr. Obamas nearly eight years in the Oval Office, the 2008 speech in Berlin can be seen as a kind of road map to the foreign policy he sought to put into practice. As he marched toward claiming the White House, he spoke of securing nuclear material, bolstering European defenses, reasserting diplomacy as a centerpiece of American power, closing down unpopular wars and extending our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world.

Just months after he took office in 2009, that vision of a new kind of foreign policy led the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award Mr. Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. In its citation, the committee said it had sought for 108 years to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the worlds leading spokesman.

In his acceptance speech, Mr. Obama acknowledged being surprised by the honor because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.
BELGRADE, Serbia  An official vote tally confirmed on Monday that the pro-European Union party that governs Serbia won a landslide victory in the countrys general election.

The results, presented by the state electoral commission, also showed that pro-Russian nationalists will return to Parliament.

With about 96 percent of ballots counted, the governing Progressive Party won 48 percent in Sundays vote, and its Socialist coalition partner received 11 percent. Two right-wing parties lagged far behind: the Radical Party with 8 percent and D.S.S.-Dveri with 5 percent.
I personally intend to visit as soon as the situation here allows, Mr. Dostum said in the interview, which was conducted and broadcast in Dari.

He assured listeners that he had many friends in Washington  I am well acquainted with our Pentagon friends and congressmen, he said  and that he would tell them how things were in Afghanistan.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? Whats their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source. Learn more about our process.

I want to discuss the situation with them, he said. They have to take this issue seriously. Otherwise, it might get out of control.

That discussion seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. Mr. Dostums inability to secure entry to the United States is in fact a longstanding issue.

In 2013, Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who has known Mr. Dostum for decades, personally asked Secretary of State John Kerry to grant him a visa. At the time, Mr. Rohrabacher said he was seeking to bring Mr. Dostum to Washington to discuss the war and the future of the Afghan government.

No visa was issued then, and Mr. Dostums election as vice president the following year has not changed the Obama administrations view of him or its willingness to let him visit the United States, said two senior American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the Afghan government. American officials do not want to be seen with him, one said.

At the outset of the war, Mr. Dostum fought alongside Central Intelligence Agency operatives and Special Operations forces to oust the Taliban, and he was initially very close to the United States military. In the years immediately after the Taliban fell, he was known to show American guests at his compound in the northern city of Shibarghan a pistol that he said had been given to him by Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who was then in charge of the United States Central Command.
The top intelligence official in the United States said on Monday that a review to declassify 28 pages of material in a Sept. 11 report, which families of victims and some lawmakers are demanding be made public, could be completed by June.

The official, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, suggested the timing of the release of the pages to reporters at a breakfast meeting in Washington.

Amid speculation about a possible Saudi role, several members of the House and Senate have joined the victims families in pressing for declassification of the pages, which are part of government documents compiled on the Sept. 11 attacks.

Some officials say the material could reveal that Saudi Arabia backed the men who hijacked airplanes, flying two into the World Trade Center in New York and another into the Pentagon.
Iran said on Monday that it would seek to sue the United States at the International Court of Justice at The Hague to prevent the distribution of nearly $2 billion in impounded assets from Irans central bank to compensate American victims of overseas attacks.

Distribution of the impounded assets, which the United States Supreme Court validated in a decision last week, has enraged the Iranians and threatened to damage the improvement in relations created by the deal reached last July on Irans nuclear activities.

The Supreme Court decision affected more than 1,000 Americans  survivors of, and relatives of people killed in, attacks that the American authorities have attributed to Iranian operatives.

The attacks include the 1983 truck bombing of a Marine base in Beirut and a truck bombing in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, in 1996.
ADEN, Yemen  Yemeni government forces and allies from the United Arab Emirates took back control of Yemens largest oil export terminal from Al Qaeda on Monday, security officials said, a day after routing the militants from their nearby stronghold, the southern port city of Al Mukalla.

About 80 percent of Yemens modest oil reserves were exported in peacetime from the terminal in Ash Shihr, 42 miles east of Al Mukalla. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula tried last year to export the two million barrels of oil stored there with the approval of Yemens government, which refused. The terminal has been shut since Al Qaeda seized the area.

Local Yemeni officials said on Sunday that some 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops had advanced into Al Mukalla, taking control of its seaport and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the city.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is widely considered the militant groups most dangerous affiliate, was taking about $2 million a day in taxes from the port.
To teach people how to notice details they might otherwise miss, Amy E. Herman, an expert in visual perception, likes to take them to museums and get them to look at the art. Recently she escorted a group of New York City police officers to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and asked them to describe some of the things they saw.

They did their best. This seems to be a painting of some males with horses, one officer said of Rosa Bonheurs mid-19th-century work The Horse Fair, a scene of semi-chaos as horses are driven to market. He tried to abide by Ms. Hermans admonishment to avoid words like obviously. It appears to be daytime, and the horses appear to be traveling from left to right.

Another pair of officers tackled Picassos 1905 At the Lapin Agile, which depicts a wilted-looking couple sitting at a French bar after what might have been a long night out. They appear to have had an altercation, one observed. The other said, The male and female look like theyre together, but the male looks like hell be sleeping on the couch.

The officers asked that their names not be used because they were not authorized to speak to reporters. They said that they did not know much about art  their jobs allow little opportunity for recreational museumgoing  and Ms. Herman said she preferred it that way.
Oliver Sacks, the neuroscientist and author who died of cancer last year, will be honored in a tribute to open this years World Science Festival in New York.

The festival, which runs from June 1 to June 5, will feature various talks and other events in Manhattan and Brooklyn, including a revival of Light Falls: Space, Time and an Obsession of Einstein, a popular theatrical production from last year.

The tribute, Awakening the Mind: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Oliver Sacks, June 1 at 8 p.m., will bring together Dr. Sackss famously bizarre stories, as well as those of his friends, co-workers and patients, for a multimedia presentation to remember the doctor who used his patients disorders as starting points for eloquent meditations on consciousness and the human condition, as Gregory Cowles wrote in The New York Times.

Light Falls  a collaboration among the festivals co-founder, the scientist Brian Greene; the House of Cards composer Jeff Beal; and others  will be featured on June 3.
NEW BERLIN, N.Y.  The 2,000 full-time employees of the yogurt company Chobani were handed quite the surprise on Tuesday: an ownership stake that could make some of them millionaires.

Hamdi Ulukaya, the Turkish immigrant who founded Chobani in 2005, told workers at the companys plant here in upstate New York that he would be giving them shares worth up to 10 percent of the company when it goes public or is sold.

The goal, he said, is to pass along the wealth they have helped build in the decade since the company started. Chobani is now widely considered to be worth several billion dollars.

Ive built something I never thought would be such a success, but I cannot think of Chobani being built without all these people, Mr. Ulukaya said in an interview in his Manhattan office that was granted on the condition that no details of the program would be disclosed before the announcement.
RIO DE JANEIRO  A justice on Brazils high court has freed Andre Esteves, the former chief executive of the Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual, his lawyer said in an interview on Tuesday.

Mr. Esteves is accused of obstructing justice in a broad corruption investigation of the state-owned oil giant Petrobras. The investigation involves accusations that members of the leftist Workers Party of Brazils president, Dilma Rousseff, conspired with top Petrobras executives and outside contractors in an elaborate money laundering and bribery ring that involved bricks of cash, Rolex watches and expensive bottles of wine, among other luxuries.

The scandal has shaken Brazils political and business establishment and sent many people to jail. The fallout, combined with the countrys prolonged recession, has eroded Ms. Rousseffs support so much that she faces impeachment proceedings. Brazils Senate is expected to vote next month whether to begin an impeachment trial over allegations of fiscal crimes.

Mr. Esteves, a billionaire who built BTG Pactual into a banking powerhouse, is under suspicion of conspiring with a leader of the Senate, Delcidio do Amaral, to interfere with testimony regarding the kickbacks at Petrobras. He was accused of financing the silence of a key witness and former Petrobras executive. Mr. do Amaral  who was arrested on Nov. 25, the same day as Mr. Esteves  was freed after he agreed to a plea deal in which he implicated both Ms. Rousseff, his former political ally, and a former Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The $60 billion implied valuation of the Chinese financial technology group Ant Financial sounds like a case of disruption on steroids.

That price tag, implied by a funding round the company disclosed Tuesday, easily tops the $48 billion market capitalization of the United States payments giant PayPal. But look under a metaphorical microscope, and its clear that these are different species. The pumped-up Ant Financial rests on uniquely Chinese characteristics.

Ant Financial is best known as the financial affiliate of the e-commerce giant Alibaba and the owner of Chinas dominant online payment engine, Alipay. A planned initial public offering of stock would therefore be a good way for investors to get their tentacles into a rapidly growing, and slowly liberalizing, market for consumer finance in China. Its $4.5 billion funding round suggests Ant Financial is already following a similar route as its former parent Alibaba, whose valuation rose as it edged toward an I.P.O. in 2014.

Though the injection of funds into Ant Financial doesnt necessarily mean the whole is really worth $60 billion, its possible to rationalize that kind of valuation. PayPal has fewer than half the users of Alipay, and it processed $282 billion of transactions in 2015. By 2018, Credit Suisse reckons, Ant Financial will be handling $1.7 trillion.
The Alibaba Group of China has become a colossus in the global Internet world, with a market value of nearly $200 billion.

Now its online payment affiliate is aiming for a similarly lofty financial goal: becoming one of the most valuable privately held technology companies in the world.

The affiliate, known as the Ant Financial Services Group, said on Tuesday that it had raised $4.5 billion from investors. The private financing round suggests that the company is now valued at about $60 billion  or more than $10 billion over the market value of PayPal Holdings, its closest analogue.

Ant Financial may not be as well known in the West as Silicon Valley darlings like Uber Technologies, which was most recently valued at about $62.5 billion. But Ant Financial  whose controlling shareholder is Alibabas billionaire founder, Jack Ma  has become an online power in its own right. It is one of the biggest electronic payment companies in the world by virtue of Alipay, a payment service that is commonly used in China.
Half a century ago, harvesting Californias 2.2 million tons of tomatoes for ketchup required as many as 45,000 workers. In the 1960s, though, scientists and engineers at the University of California, Davis, developed an oblong tomato that lent itself to being machine-picked and an efficient mechanical harvester to do the job in one pass through a field.

The battle to save jobs was on.

How could a publicly funded university invest in research that cut farmworker jobs only to help large-scale growers? That was the question raised in a lawsuit filed by a farmworker advocacy group against U.C. Davis in 1979.

Cesar Chavezs United Farm Workers union made stopping mechanization its No. 1 legislative priority. In 1980, President Jimmy Carters agriculture secretary, Robert Bergland, declared that the federal government would no longer finance research that could lead to the replacing of an adequate and willing work force with machines.
A post-mortem had already begun in Japan over the failure of the joint Mitsubishi-Kawasaki bid, after leaks to the news media in Australia in recent weeks suggesting the government in Canberra was cooling on the Soryu-class submarine being offered by the two companies. They were proposing to sell the Australians an enlarged version of the 4,200-ton Soryu, which is powered by a combination of advanced diesel engines and lithium-ion batteries.

Mitsubishi and Kawasaki have built eight of the submarines for the Japanese Navy, the Maritime Self-Defense Forces, and have orders for 12 more. But they have never orchestrated this sort of multinational building project, with assembly taking place in a foreign shipyard  a requirement of the Australian bid.

Gen Nakatani, the Japanese defense minister, said he was very disappointed and would seek a detailed explanation from Australia for its choice. He added that Australia would remain a special strategic partner.

The Japanese companies have struggled to meet Australian requests to modify the Soryu to make it larger and give it longer range, experts said, and appeared less enthusiastic than the French to share technical secrets with the Australian contractors who would help build the submarines.

The French were very adroit in putting forward a bid that that was really an industry play, as well as a technical proposal, said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. As for the Japanese, he added, there really was a risk in asking Japan to relocate an entire industrial capability for the first time in modern history.

The successful French proposal involves swapping an advanced diesel engine for the nuclear power plant normally used in a DCNS-made Barracuda-class submarine, a proven vessel that already has the size and range the Australians were looking for.

The French state owns about two-thirds of DCNS, which is the countrys largest naval contractor, while most of the rest is held by the defense and aerospace group Thales. Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French defense minister, told Europe 1 radio on Tuesday that the deal was a great victory for the French naval industry that would provide as many as 4,000 jobs in the Cherbourg region, where the companys shipyards have been struggling.
LONDON 



BP, the first of the major oil companies to report earnings this week, said on Tuesday that it had lost $583 million in the first quarter of 2016, compared with a $2.6 billion profit in the same period last year.

Lower oil prices were behind the loss for BP, whose results were nonetheless better than analysts had expected. That, and the fact that the company said it would keep its dividend at 10 cents a share, helped buoy BPs share price, which was up more than 3 percent in midmorning trading in London.

In the current environment, analysts say an oil companys stock price is largely determined by the dividend. Sustaining it is the first priority within our financial framework, BPs chief financial officer, Brian Gilvary, told analysts in a conference call on Tuesday.

BP said it had lost $1.2 billion in its key oil and gas exploration and production unit, which was a big money earner when prices were high. Oil prices for the quarter averaged $34 a barrel for Brent crude, more than a third lower than a year earlier.
Headliner

Amada For Jose Garces, opening a restaurant in Manhattan is something of a homecoming. The chef, whose parents came from Ecuador, spent his early years working in Spain and New York before relocating to Philadelphia with his mentor, Douglas Rodriguez. Mr. Garces spacious wood-toned restaurant, hung with blue weavings, has a patio in front and a separate cafe and wine bar called Amadita. I want to take people on a tour of Andalusia, he said, referring to the sunny, southern, citrus-scented province where he worked, but also of Spain in general. The open kitchen, led by Justin Bogle, chef de cuisine, turns out tapas, traditional and inventive; cheeses and charcuterie to be picked up with slender forks; various ingredients seared on the plancha; a couple of paellas; and suckling pigs to order ahead and for carving tableside. Michael Laiskonis consults on the sweets. The all-Spanish wine list is rich with sherries and that Spanish predilection, gin and tonics. 250 Vesey Street (West Street), 212-542-8947, amadarestaurant.com.

Opening

Agern This Grand Central Terminal restaurant with Nordic roots (the name means acorn in Danish) has the highest profile of the culinary entrepreneur Claus Meyers many projects in New York. Best known as a founder of the much-lauded Noma in Copenhagen, he already has bakery and cooking-school outposts in Brooklyn. Here, in what was a mens room and barbershop, he has installed undulating wood panels and chevron-patterned tile designed by his wife, Christina Meyer Bengtsson. The chef, Gunnar Gislason, who owns Dill in Reykjavik, Iceland, seeks out local and seasonal ingredients like nettles, wild mushrooms, celeriac and rutabagas: 89 East 42nd Street, 646-568-4018, agernrestaurant.com.

Bills New York City The restaurateur Curt Huegel has had his eye on the venerable Bills Gay Nineties for many years. He said that he missed out on the multistory townhouse when John DeLucies Crown Group took it over, and now with it gone, he grabbed it. His makeover is subtle, and the food emphasizes American classics like Caesar salad, lobster thermidor, steaks, roast chicken and layer cake. (Wednesday): 57 East 54th Street, 212-518-2727, bills54.com.

The Butchers Daughter, West Village A branch of the Kenmare Street vegan cafe offers additions like pizza from a wood-burning oven and cold-pressed cocktails. (Sunday): 581 Hudson Street (Bank Street), 917-388-2123, thebutchersdaughter.com.
Health officials in Tennessee have confirmed six cases of measles in the Memphis area since Thursday, surpassing in one weekend the nationwide total for all of 2016.

Until the recent outbreak, there had been four cases reported this year, a steep decline from 2014 and 2015. But health officials say the frequency and intensity of outbreaks are unpredictable, and they were racing to try to contain this one.

Dr. Tim Jones, the state epidemiologist for the Tennessee Department of Health, said in a telephone interview that none of the six patients had been immunized. They included infants who were too young to be immunized and at least one adult who chose to forgo immunization, all in Shelby County.

What concerns Dr. Jones is that the six people were divided into three unrelated clusters in different parts of town, and officials had been unable to piece together how their paths might have crossed.
MUMBAI  Bollywood has a long history of portraying gay characters with cliches or using them as an ostensibly comic sideshow. Often they are sexual predators whom the male leads, epitomes of heterosexual masculinity, must be wary of.

But several recent movies have challenged those stereotypes, suggesting that attitudes in Indias movie industry, or at least within an influential section of it, may be changing.

Aligarh, based on the true story of a gay professor who was hounded, possibly to death, opened nationwide in India in February to critical acclaim. (On May 14 the movie will be the closing offering at the New York Indian Film Festival.) It features mainstream actors  with Manoj Bajpayee in the lead role  a casting approach without precedent in Bollywood and unthinkable just a few years ago.

Aligarh was followed in March by Kapoor & Sons, a multistar big-budget Bollywood movie in which one of the two male leads is revealed to be gay. A tale of messy family relationships inspired by Woody Allens Hannah and Her Sisters, the film surpassed roughly $16 million in revenues, the Bollywood gold standard for commercial success.
In 1964, when Eva Hesse went to Germany on a fellowship with her husband, the sculptor Tom Doyle, she was a talented 28-year-old painter with a blue-chip education (Cooper Union and Yale) and a foothold in the art world. By the time of her death six years later, from brain cancer, she was widely recognized as a major artist, a maker of category-confounding forms  abstract and visceral, minimalist and feminist, sculptural and painterly  that have lost none of their power in the decades since.

Eva Hesse, Marcie Begleiters conscientious and moving documentary, tells the full story of its subjects tragically foreshortened life, but it focuses on those years of artistic emergence, a period of rapid development and furious productivity, with few parallels in the history of art. Hesse herself is both a ubiquitous presence in the film and something of a specter  an animating spirit and a ghost haunting the frames. She is remembered by friends, colleagues and her sister, Helen Hesse Charash. Her work is analyzed by curators and critics. Mr. Doyle is on hand to reflect, tactfully and ruefully, on the ups and downs of their relationship.

Everyone is middle-aged or older, mostly dressed in 21st-century studio or academic mufti. Hesse, in contrast, is a revenant from a cooler, smokier, scruffier decade, eternally and intriguingly youthful. At times resembling the actress Dakota Johnson, she appears mainly in black-and-white still photographs, some of which are digitally massaged so that they seem to move ever so slightly. Her voice is heard once, in a snippet of audiotape. But Ms. Begleiter has made ample and judicious use of Hesses letters and diaries, passages of which are read in voice-over by Selma Blair. These selections, along with the pictures, create a powerful illusion of immediacy, a sense of the personality disclosed and obscured by the art.
Film buffs soon will have a new viewing option for contemporary and classic movies with the start of a streaming service called FilmStruck this fall.

Developed by Turner Classic Movies in partnership with Criterion Collection, the new subscription-based service will feature hundreds of films from independent and major Hollywood studios. Those include Seven Samurai, Breaker Morant, Blood Simple and Mad Max.

FilmStruck also will be the exclusive streaming destination for Criterion Collection, which specializes in licensing classic and contemporary films. Criterion will operate a channel on the service to spotlight more than 1,000 films and other content such as commentary on films and filmmakers.

The service will be advertising free. Specific pricing details are still being determined.

FilmStruck is a terrific example of our strategy to meet consumer demand for great content across all screens, John Martin, chief executive of Turner, said in a statement. Its tailor-made for the die-hard movie enthusiast that crave a deep, intimate experience with independent, foreign, and art house films. And it takes advantage of TCMs powerful curation capabilities as well as its proven track record of building a long-term relationship with passionate film fans.
Donald J. Trump has managed to get his once-grounded Cessna jet back in the air, by selling it  to himself.

The private jet that Mr. Trump has been using to get to and from many campaign events was grounded last week by the Federal Aviation Administration, after The New York Times reported that its registration had expired on Jan. 31.

The paperwork problem threatened to ground the 1997 Cessna 750 Citation X for weeks, if not more. But Mr. Trump found a way around this.

On Friday, the plane was registered to a new owner, DT Endeavor I, according to records kept with the F.A.A. DT Endeavor I is a limited liability company that was registered in Delaware in early January, and is controlled by Mr. Trump.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Tuesday that he would earmark additional money for New York Citys third water tunnel to ensure that clean drinking water could be delivered to Brooklyn and Queens within 48 hours of an emergency shutdown of City Water Tunnel No. 2.

Previously, officials said that it would take several months to make even nondrinkable water available, which would have been crippling to the five million residents and the businesses in the area.

The city will spend $21 million to disinfect and test the new section of City Water Tunnel No. 3 to prepare it as a backup water source to Tunnel No. 2 by the end of 2017. Tunnel No. 2 is 80 years old, has been in continuous use and has never been shut for inspection. The mayor said the investment would provide critical redundancy in our system.

Most of the infrastructure for Tunnel No. 3 is in place, except for two shafts that will connect parts of the tunnel in Queens to the current distribution system and future parts of the system. But the tunnel can deliver water without them and already carries water to parts of the Bronx, Manhattan and Queens.
So it goes as Republicans contend with the prospect of Mr. Trump, with his haters agenda, becoming the partys standard-bearer. Some of the party leaders are far from uncomfortable with that idea. In fact, a growing swath of the party leadership now seems determined to embrace Mr. Trump. And Mr. Trump calls Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, regularly to chat about the election. Yes, the election that Mr. Trump says is rigged by the establishment that Mr. Priebus leads.

Ive just never seen us so thoroughly screwed up, says a Republican operative with roots in the Reagan administration. Another party official said, Maybe we really do need time in the wilderness to figure out what we dont get about our own voters.

Democrats would be foolish to gloat about this G.O.P. mess. The Democratic Party has also been caught by surprise by the anger of middle-class voters it thought it could rely on, even while failing to move meaningful legislation on college affordability, gun control, the minimum wage and better care for veterans. The Democratic leadership is also too often captive to its own elites. Though they practically invented the ideal of campaign finance reform, Democratic politicians, including Hillary Clinton, now at times seem tone-deaf to public anger while they take vast amounts of money from industries with business before the federal government. The Democratic Party has long considered itself the institutional champion of the poor, unemployed and indebted. Now, for many young voters who flock to Bernie Sanders, that is a falsehood.

Yes, the Republican leaderships oscillation from avoidance to accommodation of Donald Trump is almost funny. But nobody in Washington should be laughing, because his rise carries a grim lesson for all.
MILAN  IF you walk around Rome, and you survive the speeding mo-peds and the taxi drivers fuming at the tourists wandering across the road, you soon understand why locals claim to live in the most beautiful place in the world. The city is a breathtaking concentration of history, art and charm  every corner could fill your eyes, your camera and your typical American romantic comedy.

But Rome, despite all of this, is a gloomy place these days. The economy is stagnant, corruption is rife and no one seems to know or even care how to get things moving again.

In contrast, if you walk around Milan, and you survive the bus drivers swearing at pedestrians who cross against the lights, hunched over their phones, you soon understand why the Milanese think their city is Italys actual guiding light. It has become, in the last few years, an irresistible magnet for young people from all over the country, who flock here to work in design, media, fashion and food.

You can hear regional accents from every corner of the country and see all kinds of faces, from wiry, dark-haired Sardinian girls to tall, blond boys from Alto Adige. Thats why Milan, today, is happy.
The boom seems to be playing out under the radar of the public, in part because data centers prefer to keep a low profile, largely for security reasons. Average citizens are most likely unaware that the large, windowless buildings they pass on their morning commutes might be data centers housing equipment to facilitate their computer-reliant lives.

The general public today probably doesnt realize how they tap and touch and utilize the data center all throughout their day, said Bo Bond, a leader of JLLs data center solutions team.

State and local leaders across the country have increasingly made data centers a target of their community development strategies, often by offering tax incentives and other inducements. While data centers, with relatively small staffs, are not a big source of jobs, they contain millions of dollars of components that provide a lucrative source of tax revenue, even with abatements.

Large enterprises like Facebook often maintain their own centers, but many companies are shedding that costly and complex function to concentrate on their core business, giving rise to a continuing increase in multitenant centers that offer security and expertise to a range of clients.

Across the 13 counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, the governors office says, there are at least 200 enterprise and multitenant data centers.

Richardson, Tex., whose registered trademark is Telecom Corridor, was one of the states first municipalities to actively pursue data centers, said John Jacobs, executive vice president of the citys chamber of commerce.
A rare and finely preserved skull unearthed in Argentina belonged to a dinosaur with a drooping head, far bigger eyes and keener hearing than some of its more evolved relatives, providing new clues about this group of lumbering plant-eaters.

The discovery of the skull and part of the neck led paleontologists to announce on Tuesday in the journal PLOS One the naming of a new dinosaur, Sarmientosaurus musacchioi.

The fossil is from a dinosaur that was part of a group known as titanosaurs, and is considered modest in size, about 40 feet long and 10 tons in weight, in contrast to some others in that grouping. About two elephants worth, estimated Matthew C. Lamanna, an assistant curator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

Titanosaurs were plant-eaters with long necks and long tails that could be as small as a cow or as big as a house. While much is known about them, researchers still do not know much about their brains because so few skulls have been found.
SAN FRANCISCO  From the iPod to the iPhone to the iPad, Apple created more than a decades worth of new gadgets to fuel its historic growth.

But the technology companys dazzling 13-year run of quarterly revenue growth ended on Tuesday  a casualty of Apples already immense size, weakness in key global markets like China and the lack of another hot product to pry open the wallets of customers.

Apple, the Silicon Valley giant that has spent much of the last five years as the worlds most valuable company, said on Tuesday that revenue for its second fiscal quarter, which ended in March, declined 13 percent to $50.6 billion as sales of its flagship product, the iPhone, fell, with little else to take its place.

Nearly half of the smartphones sold in the United States are iPhones, and Apple may be reaching the saturation point among potential customers in other developed countries. Rival smartphone makers using Googles Android operating system continue to challenge the company with powerful, less expensive devices.
Over the years, Broadway theaters have been home to The Smell of the Kill, The Sweet Smell of Success and The Roar of the Greasepaint  The Smell of the Crowd.

This spring, the Brooks Atkinson Theater is home to the smell of apple pie.

In an unusual step, the producers of the new musical Waitress, which opened on Sunday night, have been trying to perfume the theater with the scent of baking, adding an olfactory extension to the shows set, which replicates a small-town diner specializing in fresh pies.

The shows title character, played by Jessie Mueller, dreams of using her pie-making talents to finance an escape from her abusive marriage; the score, by Sara Bareilles, features an oft-sung refrain of ingredients (sugar, butter, flour), and the book, by Jessie Nelson, includes the frequent concoction of creatively named pies.

I wanted that aroma, and I wanted it desperately, said one of the shows lead producers, Barry Weissler. Its a wonderful intense surround for the show.
Plans for the appeals, which the laws opponents had vowed to pursue after Monday nights decision by Judge Thomas D. Schroeder of Federal District Court in Winston-Salem, did little to diminish the good mood of Republicans, who have argued that key modifications are safeguards against fraud in a state that is among the nations most contested in presidential elections. (Democrats say the kind of misconduct the law targets is virtually nonexistent.)

In a statement on Tuesday, the chairmen of the General Assemblys Joint Legislative Elections Oversight Committee welcomed the ruling by Judge Schroeder, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, and made a pointed jab toward the federal government, which joined the litigation against the state.

We are glad the court recognized the law provides all voters an equal opportunity to vote and stopped this politically motivated overreach from the Obama Justice Department, said the chairmen, State Representative David R. Lewis and State Senator Bob Rucho.

A spokeswoman said Monday that the Justice Department was disappointed in the ruling, reviewing the decision carefully and evaluating our options.

The changes to North Carolinas elections procedures, which the Republican-controlled legislature first approved in 2013, are sweeping. Beyond the identification requirement, which state officials relaxed substantially amid the litigation, lawmakers and Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, abolished same-day voter registration and ended preregistration, which had permitted some teenagers to sign up for the voting rolls before their 18th birthdays.
If voters are free to take photos, outsiders could also compel voters to take photos, Mr. Gardner said. Corrupt forces that would seek to buy votes could demand evidence that the bought votes were actually cast. By not allowing voters to record that proof, he said, no one would be foolish enough to try to manipulate anyone elses vote.

In the past, election fixers trying to eliminate voter privacy might have made people deposit their yes and no votes into different boxes, or link ballots to an identity. Modern voting setups had effectively prevented such behavior for many years, but the ability of smartphones to eliminate the privacy of the voting booth has created a new form of the old trick, Mr. Gardner said. And politicians and their supporters have never been shy about trying to find new ways to win elections.

Whether an exchange of money, or for having to live with someone or some other fear, you dont want anyone to go into that booth and end up voting for someone they didnt really want to vote for, but felt they didnt want to pay that price for whatever reason, he said.

Why Should Selfies Remain Free?

Those opposed to photography bans say concerns about vote-buying are overblown.

There isnt much evidence, if any at all, that this kind of activity is actually occurring, said Justin Silverman, the executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition. It was one of three organizations to file amicus briefs on Friday, along with Snapchat and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

No one wants to see vote-buying, but in combating that murky threat, officials have placed real restrictions on First Amendment rights, Mr. Silverman said. Millennials and other active social media users use photos as a fundamental part of how they communicate and ought to be able to express their excitement at participating in democracy, he said. Whether a selfie with a completed ballot or an artistic shot of the booth, an Instagram or Snapchat post can be as much a part of expressing civic pride as an I Voted sticker.

Mr. Silverman said the image of a goofy selfie with a ballot has obscured what he described as more serious benefits of allowing photography, like serving as an alert system for confusing ballots.
Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, a Republican who has led negotiations for his party, said Tuesday that his talks with Senator Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat, had produced the outlines of an agreement that would provide about $1.1 billion in additional financing.

Mr. Blunt said negotiators were still discussing details, including how much money would need to be restored for work on Ebola. I think were close to a plan that we think would work, he said. But wed like a little more input. Id like a little more input from the administration.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said lawmakers understood the seriousness of the Zika threat. We made a down payment on the work on this virus based on the Ebola funds, he said. And were going to do everything thats necessary in a responsible way to deal with this threat because we know its real.

Senate Democratic leaders, including Ms. Murray, insisted on Tuesday that there was still no agreement, accused Republicans of stalling and said they were holding out for President Obamas full request of $1.9 billion.

There is no deal, the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said at a news conference, thumping his hand on the lectern. I havent seen it. I dont know who has seen it. We have an outline of it, but its not enough. We want $1.9 billion. Thats what it takes.
In the past few weeks, Brooke and a handful of other female students have come forward, first at a rape-awareness conference and then in The Salt Lake Tribune, to say that after they made complaints of sexual abuse they had faced Honor Code investigations into whether they drank alcohol, took drugs or had consensual sex.

They treated me in such an un-Christlike way, like I was some sinner, said Brooke, who agreed to be identified by her first name. There was no forgiveness and mercy.

Their accounts have brought a national debate over colleges disparate treatment of women who have reported sexual assaults crashing onto this faith-driven campus, where Mormon students gather from around the globe, skirts must fall to the knee and beards are outlawed. The womens complaints have focused attention on how the university deals with such cases as it also seeks to uphold a moral code that lies at the heart of its identity.

Brigham Youngs policy on sexual misconduct urges students to come forward even if they have broken university policies. The university says that it investigates sexual assault complaints fully, but that it also has an obligation to pursue misconduct under the Honor Code. According to the sexual misconduct policy, violations of its code discouraging consensual sex are not exempt from scrutiny.

Brigham Young University cares deeply about the safety of our students, Carri Jenkins, a university spokeswoman, wrote in an email. When a student reports a sexual assault, our primary focus is on the well-being of the victim.
He was dismissed by Mr. Kiir in July, and fighting erupted in Juba that December, quickly splitting the nation along ethnic lines. Mr. Kiir belongs to the Dinka ethnic group, the countrys largest, while Mr. Machar is a Nuer, believed to be the second largest.

Opposition leaders say that Dinka soldiers hunted down and killed hundreds of Nuer civilians in a few days. Clashes then spread across the country as troops vied for control of South Sudans oil fields and regional capitals.

Fighters on both sides have been accused of mass atrocities, including rape, the wanton killing of civilians and the recruitment of child soldiers. The clashes were further complicated by smaller-scale divisions among the countrys ethnic groups, leaving no clear battle lines in the conflict.

In accordance with the negotiations, the opposition leader, Mr. Machar, who had been living in exile at eastern bases in South Sudan and in neighboring Ethiopia, had refused to return without the presence of 1,370 opposition soldiers in Juba, and the last of them arrived last week.

But recent events brought more disruptions: Mr. Machar was scheduled to be sworn in last Monday but postponed his flight to Juba because of disagreements with the government over how many soldiers would accompany him and his chief of general staff, General Gatwech. On Wednesday, the government agreed to allow 195 more opposition soldiers into the capital.

The delays have been unfortunate, Mr. Machar said on Tuesday, as he waited to board a plane that would take him to Juba. I expected to be a little bit earlier, but the organization was problematic. Now Im going to Juba, and hopefully Ill take the oath. Then we start forming the transitional government of national unity.

Despite the long-awaited moment, the mood in Juba was subdued. An idea to organize a public rally welcoming Mr. Machar was discussed, then discarded.
Within the past two weeks, nearly a million and a half people have watched a YouTube video clip featuring an explanation of quantum computing. Such an esoteric subject may not generally attract intense interest, but when Canadas new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is involved, these things have a tendency to go viral.

Mr. Trudeau has become a digital star many times over since his election in October. Videos of the leader explaining his brand of feminism or hugging baby pandas have become a near-weekly staple of social media feeds.

The clip of Mr. Trudeau, 44, excitedly breaking down quantum computing during a visit to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, this month prompted admiring write-ups from both Canadian and American news media outlets.

The Toronto Star: The man who has been called Canadas new heartthrob, yoga hotshot, feminist PM  apparently eager to show hes more than a now globally recognized pretty face  promptly showed he has computer-geek talents previously little known.
Some analysts and political leaders have begun to question whether the armed forces are capable of carrying out Mr. Aquinos order to defeat the group.

Considering how long this problem has been with us, it appears that the government  not just under this administration but under past administrations as well  has failed miserably to put an end to the kidnapping for ransom operations of the Abu Sayyaf, wrote Ramon J. Farolan, a former military official, in a column for The Philippine Daily Inquirer this month.

Vice President Jejomar Binay, who is a presidential candidate in an election set for May 9, is among those who have called for more efforts to eliminate kidnap-for-ransom groups operating on the island of Mindanao.

These groups are bandits, not rebels, and should be dealt with immediately and decisively, he said.

Though the military vastly outnumbers Abu Sayyaf and has better training and more sophisticated weaponry, the soldiers face formidable obstacles fighting in the dense jungles where the group operates, said Col. Restituto Padilla Jr., a spokesman for the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

At the tactical level, the bandits have the edge on mastery of the terrain, he said. They have clearly mapped the whole area and know every nook and cranny.

In the last two decades, the group has kidnapped dozens of foreign citizens, receiving millions of dollars in ransom money, and some of that has been distributed to the local population, Colonel Padilla said. In addition, many of the Abu Sayyaf fighters have relatives and traditional clan ties to residents, all of which puts them at odds with government troops.
NEW DELHI  The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan on Tuesday held a brief bilateral meeting on the sidelines of a regional gathering here, a noteworthy development in its own right, and later put out separate statements saying they had discussed several hot-button issues.

The two foreign secretaries exchanged ideas on taking the relationship forward and agreed to remain in touch, said a statement from Indias Ministry of External Affairs.

Officials gave no clear idea of when the countries will resume a bilateral peace dialogue that has been stalled since 2008, when militants from Pakistan attacked two hotels and the main train station, a hospital and a Jewish center in Mumbai, Indias financial capital, killing more than 160 people.

The nuclear-armed neighbors have fought three wars since independence and partition in 1947, and tensions remain high, with frequent border skirmishes.
JAKARTA, Indonesia  Indonesias president has instructed his government to investigate one of the countrys darkest periods, the bloody anti-Communist purges of the mid-1960s, perhaps ending decades of official reluctance to confront the militarys killings of hundreds of thousands of people.

One of President Joko Widodos most senior ministers, Luhut B. Pandjaitan, said at a news conference Monday night that the president had told him to begin gathering information about mass graves that are said to be scattered across the Indonesian archipelago. Haris Azhar, the head of an Indonesian research organization, said on Tuesday that the government had begun contacting his group and others about the data.

The purges of 1965-66, in which hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have been killed by the Indonesian military and others, have remained an extremely delicate issue for senior government officials, many of whom were generals.

Mr. Luhut, a retired general who is now the coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, appeared to cast doubt on the need for an investigation into the mass graves. The president asked me to find them, if there are any, he said in his remarks on Monday night.
NEW DELHI  A fire swept through the National Museum of Natural History in New Delhi early Tuesday, spreading downward from the top floor and possibly destroying the 160-million-year-old bones of a dinosaur, local news outlets reported.

This is a real loss, and we will assess the loss when the building is again handed over to us, said Prakash Javadekar, the minister of environment and forests. Mr. Javadekar said the ministry, which oversees the museum, would carry out a fire and energy audit of all 34 of its museums in the country.

The building sustained major damage, and most of the museums exhibits were destroyed, said Rajesh Panwar, the deputy chief fire officer in New Delhi. They consisted primarily of taxidermied specimens and models of forests and other ecosystems in the three-story exhibition space.

The authorities were investigating the cause of the fire. It began around 2 a.m. in the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry building in central Delhi, which houses the museum, and was doused by 5 a.m.
HONG KONG  The organizer of a party at a water park in Taiwan last year that ended with a fiery explosion that killed 15 people and injured hundreds was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for negligence on Tuesday.

The so-called Color Play Party at the Formosa Fun Coast park in New Taipei City in June featured tons of colored powder that was thrown over participants as they listened to music and danced. But the material was flammable, and it ignited when it was blown over a hot electric light, the Shihlin District Court said in its ruling.

Color Play Asia, the company that organized the party, had said the powder was a mixture of cornstarch and food coloring.

Lu Chung-chi, the owner of Color Play Asia, was found guilty of negligence and sentenced to four years and 10 months in prison. Last year, he apologized for the disaster.
The Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea ruled on Tuesday that the Pacific island nations detention of people seeking asylum in Australia was illegal, but an Australian official said the decision would not change his countrys tough stand on seaborne migrants.

More than 800 men who tried to reach Australia by boat in recent years are being held in an Australian-funded detention center on Manus Island in northern Papua New Guinea.

In its ruling, the five-judge court ordered the governments of Papua New Guinea and Australia to end those detentions. The ruling gave no timetable for the release of the detainees, and it was unclear what would happen to them.

The court declared that because the asylum seekers had not entered Papua New Guinea of their own accord, they were not guilty of immigration violations, and that holding them ignored constitutional protections of personal liberty.
MOSCOW  The Supreme Court in Crimea on Tuesday banned the legislature of the Crimean Tatar minority, a body that the local authorities have harassed repeatedly for opposing the 2014 Russian annexation of the peninsula.

Following a similar action by the Russian Justice Ministry last week, the presiding judge declared the legislature, known as the Mejlis, an extremist organization and outlawed its activities on Russian territory.

Natalya V. Poklonskaya, the Crimean prosecutor appointed by Russia, argued before the court that the Mejlis is supported by international terrorist organizations and aims to destroy Russias territorial integrity.

Today, the honorable court, we build a world in which every Crimean will be safe and joyful, where roses will blossom and grapes will grow, Ms. Poklonskaya was quoted as saying by Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper. The Mejlis opposes this as much as it can, so why do we need it?
PARIS  Ten young Muslim men, bored by a mundane life in France and haunted by a feeling of uselessness, as one put it, were seduced by a leading Islamic State recruiter in Europe in 2013. Within months, they were in Syria under the watchful eyes of hooded, Kalashnikov-wielding militants, doing push-ups, fiddling with weapons and imbibing the ideology.

But the harsh regimen, most have since told investigators, was not to their liking, and it was not long before they hastened back to their families in the Strasbourg area, where they were almost immediately picked up by the French authorities.

What to do with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such young men in Europe is now among the biggest challenges facing governments and security services.

After the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks, which were carried out in part by Europeans who had spent time in Syria with the Islamic State, France and other countries are grappling with how far to go in tightening laws to prosecute, monitor and restrict the movements of returnees.
ROME  If an ancient legend is to be believed, Rome was established on the banks of the Tiber River, where the mythical founders of the city, Romulus and Remus, were rescued and suckled by a she-wolf. For centuries, the waterway  once even deified as the god Tiberinus  bolstered the citys greatness.

More recently, however, the Tibers fortunes have been something less than godlike.

Great stretches of the riverfront walkways that abut the high travertine embankments built after disastrous flooding in 1870 have been abandoned to the dubious artistic talents of graffiti taggers. Joggers and cyclists must dodge litter, overgrown vegetation and improvised encampments of homeless people, despite decades of promises by city officials to clean up the rivers banks.

The rivers filthy waterfront and murky waters are a painful reflection of the more widespread neglect and degeneration that has been increasingly blemishing Romes beauty, the inattention a symptom of turbulent  at times corrupt  governance on the part of inadequate city administrations.

Faced with the citys inaction, which it justifies by citing a lack of means and money, several associations of do-gooders have been taking matters into their own hands. Some of these groups have adopted the Tiber as a neglected resource to promote, develop and defend through a variety of initiatives.
TEHRAN  An Iranian revolutionary court handed down long prison terms on Tuesday to four journalists supportive of the government of President Hassan Rouhani, Iranian news media reported. All were convicted on charges of having acted against national security.

Noting that Mr. Rouhani has called for more press freedom in several speeches, analysts said the prison sentences were a warning by Irans conservative-dominated judiciary that it would not accept any relaxation of the rules for journalists.

A prominent reporter and actress, Afarin Chitsaz, was sentenced to 10 years, the Iranian Students News Agency reported. Last year, she wrote an impassioned defense of the nuclear agreement between Iran and major world powers in the daily Iran, an official government newspaper.

All of the journalists worked for reformist newspapers. They included the editor in chief of Farhikhtegan, Eshan Manzandarani, who received a seven-year sentence. The other two were Davood Asadi, who received five years, and Eshan Safarzaiee, who received seven years.
Marni Senofonte, who oversaw the creation of outfits for Beyonces Lemonade visual album, showcased a range of looks from known labels, like the Yeezy two-piece that she paired with a Hood by Air fur in Dont Hurt Yourself, to lesser-known ones, like that of the Kuwait designer Yousef al-Jasmi, who made the crystal bodysuit in Sorry.

Ms. Senofonte got her start in fashion as Norma Kamalis assistant and started styling 19 years ago for celebrities like Mary J. Blige, Jay Z, Kim Kardashian, Brandy, Monica and Lauryn Hill.

She has worked with Beyonce since 2007, first helping out on smaller projects like American Express commercials and looks for the On the Run tour. In the last couple years, she has styled the videos Formation, Feeling Myself and 7/11, in which she outfitted Nicki Minaj and Beyonce in bodysuits and matching pink fur coats. The interview has been edited and condensed.
When Kim Moffitt uses most eye creams, they sting. If she tries to layer sunscreen and moisturizer, she breaks out. Traditional exfoliators like fruit enzymes or glycolic acid leave her looking as if she had sandpapered her face.

The one time she tried an eyebrow wax, it looked like I had rug burns around my eyebrows, said Ms. Moffitt, an illustrator in Portland, Ore., who has hunted over the years for products for her sensitive skin.

Lately, though, the search has been easier. Companies large and small are racing to serve the growing number of adults in the United States with skin like Ms. Moffitts  anywhere from 25 percent to 80 percent of the population, depending on which survey you read. (People generally self-diagnose sensitive skin; its a marketing term, not a medical one.)

Roughly a quarter of product debuts in 2014 and 2015 were for sensitive skin, according to the market research company Mintel.
It used to happen every day at the London Zoo: Out came the dainty table and chairs, the china cups and saucers  afternoon tea, set out for the inhabitants of the ape enclosure to throw and smash. It was supposed to be amusing  a comic, reckless collision of beasts and high culture. But, as Frans de Waal explains in Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, apes are actually innovative, agile tool-users. For example  one of many examples  wild chimps in Gabon have been observed employing five different tools, in a methodical sequence, to break open beehives, pry the chambers apart, scoop out the honey and convey it to their mouths. Not surprisingly  to de Waal, at least  the apes in London quickly mastered the teacups and teapot too. They sat there civilly, having tea.

When the public tea parties began to threaten the human ego, something had to be done, de Waal writes. The apes were retrained to spill the tea, throw food around, drink from the teapots spout, and so on. The animals had to be taught to be as stupid as we assumed they were. But, of course, the fact that they could be taught to be stupid is only more perverse evidence of their intelligence.

For centuries, our understanding of animal intelligence has been obscured in just this kind of cloud of false assumptions and human egotism. De Waal, a primatologist and ethologist who has been examining the fuzzy boundary between our species and others for 30 years, painstakingly untangles the confusion, then walks us through research revealing what a wide range of animal species are actually capable of. Tool use, cooperation, awareness of individual identity, theory of mind, planning, metacognition and perceptions of time  we now know that all these archetypically human, cognitive feats are performed by some animals as well. And not just primates: By the middle of Chapter 6, were reading about cooperation among leopard coral trout. (The books main weakness is that de Waal has too much evidence, from too many corners of the animal kingdom, to convince us with; eventually, it feels a little repetitive  were not at all surprised that the bonobo knows to look in the stupid tube for the piece of food.)

Frankly, it all deals a pretty fierce wallop to our sense of specialness. And it can provoke some desperate resistance. De Waal quotes one American psychologist, insistently holding the line of our humanness at our ability, even as children, to work together toward a shared goal: It is inconceivable that you would ever see two chimpanzees carrying a log together, the psychologist says. But then, 25 apes at a Dutch zoo prop a tree trunk against the wall of their enclosure, climb out and raid the restaurant. What is true, it becomes clear, is that youll never see animals doing such intelligent things if you smugly refuse to look for them, or  and this is de Waals real point  if you dont know how to look.
Frank is hardly the first critic to remark upon a disconnect between the lives of wealthy liberals and the grittier constituencies they supposedly serve. As the historian Steve Fraser demonstrates in his wide-ranging new book, the idea of the limousine liberal has a long and messy history all its own. The term originated during the 1969 New York mayoral campaign, when the Democratic candidate Mario Procaccino charged the highborn Liberal Party incumbent John Lindsay, formerly a Republican, with acts unbecoming to his social class. Procaccinos accusation differed slightly from Franks: Procaccino believed that Lindsay genuinely sought ambitious programs to empower the poor and the black and the disenfranchised. The problem was that Lindsay did it all from the silk-stocking district of the Upper East Side, where his wealth insulated him from the dire consequences of his actions.

Though Procaccino lost the mayoral election, his biting phrase went on to have an illustrious political career of its own. Nowadays, Fraser writes wryly, Hillary Clinton serves as Exhibit A of this menace, the quintessential limousine liberal hypocrite. Despite its title, however, Frasers book is not really about liberals and their supposed foibles. Instead, he seeks to describe how right-wing populists have insulted, vilified, mocked and analyzed those liberals in both the present and the past.

According to Fraser, suspicion of highborn reformers extends back at least to the Progressive Era, when the idea of an activist government administered by well-educated experts began to take hold. Since then, these villains of American consciousness have labored under a variety of epithets: parlor pinks, Mercedes Marxists, men in striped pants. In each iteration, what seems to drive the attacks is not only the tincture of hypocrisy but the unrestrained confidence with which such liberals express their expert views. In that sense, Franks fuming at the smug knowledge workers of Boston might have come straight from the pages of National Review, circa either 1955 or 2015.

Fraser does not deny a certain reality behind the limousine liberal image. Limousine liberalism was never a myth, he writes, however absurd and scurrilous the political rhetoric may have been. Something did change beginning in the early 20th century, as the complexities of modern society began to demand new forms of expertise and new institutions to coordinate them. Resentment of limousine liberals is nothing less than a reaction to the modern condition, Fraser argues, though some politicians have more effectively navigated its challenges than others. Franklin Roosevelt managed to transcend his patrician upbringing to emerge as a genuine champion of the little man  and to become enormously popular while doing it.

Fraser agrees with Frank that the Democratic Party can no longer reasonably claim to be the party of the working class or the little man. Instead, he argues, the Republican and Democratic parties now represent two different elite constituencies, each with its own culture and interests and modes of thought. Fraser describes todays Republicans as the party of family capitalism, encompassing everyone from the mom-and-pop business owner on up to entrepreneurial maestros such as the Koch brothers, Linda McMahon and Donald Trump. The Democrats, by contrast, represent the managerial world spawned by modernity, including the big universities and government bureaucracies as well as techno frontiersmen like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. These are two different ways of relating to the world  one cosmopolitan and interconnected, the other patriarchal and hierarchical. Neither one, however, offers much to working-class voters.

One liberal whose reputation still seems to be up for grabs is Barack Obama, now on his way out of office and into the history books. Frank gives Obama a middling-to-poor grade  something in the D range, lets say  for what he deems to be the presidents vague and rambling answer to the social question. Frank compares Obama unfavorably with Franklin Roosevelt, another Democratic president who inherited an economic crisis from his Republican predecessor. Roosevelt took advantage of the Great Depression to reshape American society in fundamental ways, introducing social welfare and labor protections that shifted real power into the hands of the middle and working classes. (Frank largely gives Roosevelt a pass on the New Deals own structural inequalities, including its exclusions of women and nonwhite workers.) Obama, by contrast, let the crisis go to waste, according to Frank, tweaking around the regulatory edges without doing anything significant to change the economic balance of power. Our economy has been reliving the 1930s, Frank mourns. Why hasnt our politics?

Part of the answer may be that our economy did not, in fact, relive the 1930s. By the time Roosevelt won his first presidential election, the economy had been in free-fall for more than three years and the stock market had lost nearly 90 percent of its value. Three years into the Great Recession, the stock market had begun its climb toward record highs, though that prosperity failed to trickle down to the middle and working classes. Frank sees this uneven recovery as a tragedy rather than a triumph, in which Obama saved a bankrupt system that by all rights should have met its end. He says little, however, about what sort of system might have replaced it, or about what working-class voters themselves might say that they want or need. In a book urging Democrats to pay attention to working-class concerns, there are decidedly few interviews with working people, and a lot of time spent on tech conferences and think tanks and fancy universities.
SWEET LAMB OF HEAVEN

By Lydia Millet

250 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $25.95.

Its not bragging if its fact: Few novels surprise me. This is not because Im a genre writer, but because Im a genre reader, sampling broadly  crime, horror, romance, speculative, dystopian and, more often than not, literary fiction. (Yes, honey, youre a genre too.) When I teach creative writing, I ask my students to experiment with their television remote controls. Mute the sound and scan the channels, landing on a film or television show heretofore unknown to you. Normally, it takes only seconds to identify, by shot composition alone, whether we are watching a comedy or a drama, a soap opera or a police procedural. We have intuited each worlds rules even if weve never articulated them.

But Lydia Millets Sweet Lamb of Heaven confounded me, delightfully so. After serving as a judge for the 2015 National Book Awards fiction category, I have little patience with literary novels that claim to have the propulsive momentum of a thriller, yet Millet pulls it off. About 80 pages in, I scrawled on the title page: I dont know where Im going. Then, a few pages later: How do we leave ourselves behind when we read? The main characters well-earned paranoia infected me; I felt as if Millet had mined my metadata: mom, concerned citizen, conspiracy skeptic, overwhelmed social media user. But I also sensed that Millet was asking me to transcend my own narrow interests, to open my mind to the possibility of a world I had not  possibly could not  imagine.

The story begins simply enough. Anna is a mother, living in Anchorage and married to Ned. Having a baby was not part of Neds plans. Anna accepts his coldness as the price of an unfortunate marriage. Besides, she has more pressing concerns: After giving birth to her daughter, Lena, she begins hearing strange voices, an interior stream of words that cannot be explained.

Later, I would hear volumes and forget almost all of it, but the first phrase I picked out stayed with me despite my exhaustion. It started out as a string of foreign words. . . . And then it was English. The living spring from the dead.
I, too, collect found photographs, but my collection is in the dozens, not in the thousands. I buy not with any idea that I might show them to anyone, but because I like the way certain pictures look. A few years ago, I bought a cache of photographs from a thrift store in Brooklyn, 35 or so pictures that I selected out of a pile of hundreds. There was a photo of a group of well-dressed Asians in a restaurant, with Westerners in military uniforms. There were pictures of babies, and pictures of blurred landscapes.

Twenty-two of the pictures I bought that day featured the same woman at different stages in her life. She was sometimes alone and sometimes with family. But there she was, in picture after picture, from as far back as the late 1930s until at least 1980. She was dark-haired (was she Italian?) and had an unmistakable, toothy smile and cheeks that rose high on her face. A few of these photos had inscriptions, in pencil or pen, on the back or along the white border on the front. Rock of Gibralter [sic]  Margaret, Kate & myself. Lake Huntington, May 1939. I felt I was somehow rescuing these pictures from the anonymity of the pile. I named the woman Mrs. X.

I didnt put my images of Mrs. X online, in part because I didnt want anyone to recognize her. I also felt a little guilty: my images of Mrs. X? I had the sense that my possession of these pictures was not their ideal posterity. They should be in the keeping of people who knew this woman, who cared about her. (Imagine your own most precious family photos permanently in the hands of a complete stranger.) And yet, despite my doubts, I was also happy to have the pictures. Here she is in 1939 in her bathing suit, here she is with her husband (?), her son (?). Here she is abroad. We have color pictures now. Then shes noticeably older, and the husband (?) is no longer there, but there are friends (?) and relatives (?). I looked at each of the photographs through a mesh of question marks, sustained by Mrs. Xs absolutely distinctive smile. From time to time, returning to the pictures, I am aware that I am touching a photograph that Mrs. X also touched. Is this woman still alive? Its possible, but I doubt it.

The photos Zun Lee collected, digitally scanned and put out in public, have had a different life from the photos in my collection. He wrote back to the man who was tagged in some of them and suggested meeting. After all, he did not consider himself the owner of the photos, only their custodian. Perhaps, Lee offered, he might fly to Los Angeles and hand the photos over in person. The man said no. Lee was disappointed but sympathetic. He said hed already been thinking about how databases and tags are not neutral, how they can wind up being hostile toward communities of color. I completely understood, Lee told me. This man was saying, We are not willing participants. The black body is used as a commodity, as something that is surveilled. The man was telling me, No, youre not welcome, this is not art, get the hell out of our lives. And I understood it.
Last month, Bruce Springsteen canceled a concert in Greensboro, N.C., to protest a new state law that, among other things, requires people to use the bathrooms of the biological sex reflected on their birth certificates. Springsteen released a statement saying he wanted to show solidarity with those waging a fight against prejudice and bigotry against trans people. In response, United States Representative Mark Walker, a Republican who supports the bill, told The Hollywood Reporter that Springsteens boycott was a bully tactic, thereby joining a growing chorus of people who seem to have mixed up their Davids and Goliaths.

A few days later, a (white) North Charleston, S.C., police chief refused to attend a community meeting on the one-year anniversary of the death of Walter Scott because of what he called the bullying tactics of its (black) members at previous meetings. Last September, Kylie Jenner, a reality star worth millions, claimed that she was being cyberbullied by commenters on socialmedia. In 2009, the blogger Heather Armstrong tweeted that no one should buy a Maytag washer because of what she called the companys inadequate response to her broken appliance, and onlookers on Twitter accused her of bullying Whirlpool, the companys $19 billion parent corporation.

In the old days, bullies were tough guys who picked on wimpy guys, a predictable, archetypal clash that inevitably led to a heroic outcome. Picture the brute kicking sand in the face of the scrawny wimp in the Charles Atlas comic-book ads, inspiring our hero to pump up his muscles and seek revenge. Picture Bluto, Popeyes hulking nemesis, imperiling Olive Oyl time and again so our favorite sailor man could eat his spinach and save the day. For decades, Western culture treated bullying as an expected rite of passage that tested a mans mettle, an unpleasant but surmountable obstacle on the path to glory.

As a result, bullying has long been a rich source of comedy, with even its insults and injuries mined for laughs, all the better to set up that final, triumphant scene in which the bully gets his comeuppance. The 1989 cult hit Heathers took this final act of vengeance to an extreme: A merciless group of high-school girls harasses their peers until the characters played by Winona Ryder and Christian Slater murder them one by one, then blow up the entire school.
In Denvers Union Station, the Great Hall, a grand public foyer, is unlike most bench-filled waiting rooms. On a recent visit, clusters of friends shared cocktails after work, mobile office workers tapped at computers from a library table, backpackers lounged on sofas, diners grabbed upscale burgers and one homeless man enjoyed the comfort of a wingback chair.

The 1914-vintage downtown landmark underwent a $54 million renovation completed in 2014 that filled the sprawling, blocklong station with a roster of restaurants and bars by some of Denvers top chefs, branches of local shops and a stylish 112-room boutique hotel, all while preserving its use as an Amtrak station.

As of April 22, the station took on a new role as the citys transportation heart when the electric commuter rail line from Denver International Airport, 22.8 miles east, began making the 37-minute trip into the city.

The station is the focal point of a $500 million project to reorder Denvers transit system, creating a hub for Amtrak, additional light-rail lines throughout the city (three are expected to open this year) and local and national bus services. Currently an estimated 30,000 commuters and visitors use Union Station daily. With the introduction of the new airport train, named the University of Colorado A Line, management expects traffic will climb to 104,000 people daily by years end.
He worked fast, making eye contact as he sliced. He told me about the history of the building, once a hotel where Scott and Zelda lived until the birth of their daughter in 1921. The newly renovated bar sits below what are now apartment units, but the bar itself, a former speakeasy when the Fitzgeralds lived there during Prohibition, is the centerpiece. When you walk up to the building, even the signs asking you not to let your dog use the grass as a bathroom are in the same Art Deco font that you see on the famous Gatsby cover by Francis Cugat. The drinks on the menu, featuring cocktails made before and during the nationwide ban on alcohol, are almost 85 to 90 percent made with spirits from within a bootleggers distance, Mr. Davis said.

A time-tested classic that somehow survived a 1978 natural gas explosion that destroyed almost everything in the space and injured dozens, the bar itself lacks stools but has an old brass rail across the front for patrons loaded on gin and tonics to hold on to. Mr. Davis kicked the bar. See that, he said. Its got all that weathering. He mentions that besides the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway drank there (although he couldnt confirm if it was with his friend and rival Fitzgerald), as did Al Capone, Ma Barker and nearly every other gangster who has entered American folklore. A Jazz Age hot spot in a city not exactly known for its jazz or wild parties, the bar stayed open after Prohibition was repealed in 1933, but fell out of fashion, along with the entire neighborhood. The great houses emptied out as people moved to the suburbs. Today, the newly remodeled Commodore is a tribute to a former glory that seems to be returning to the neighborhood.

Image Fitzgerald spent his youth in St. Paul, going to school, beginning to write and living with his wife and new daughter. Credit... Bettmann/Getty Images

The splendor the area once had, while not the bright lights and tall buildings of Manhattan or the movable feast of Paris, must have been attractive to Fitzgerald. There was still danger, and undesirables: bootleggers coming down from Canada and hiding their barrels. St. Paul had a pulse, and he was familiar with it. (And his parents still lived there.)

That coffee shop across the street, said Matt Sutton, the senior manager at W. A. Frost and Company, a bar and restaurant a few blocks away from the Commodore that looks as if it hasnt been changed much since the late 1970s (in the best way possible). That used to be a brothel when Fitzgerald lived here. The tunnels went under there, to under here, to the church, to the river, providing a route for bootleggers. The tunnels are mostly sealed off now, although the basement of the bar was part of the tunnels. I made my way down the stairs and found a cozy, chilly, dimly lit and somewhat spooky space, where one can drink wine or whiskey, legally now, around a fireplace.

Coincidentally, the building W. A. Frost and Company occupies is where the pharmacy of William A. Frost was located at the turn of the century, and will probably get a mention from any local Fitzgerald tours if you pass by. Its where Fitzgerald used to get his cigarettes, the bartender told me.
Honda's first compact SUV, the BR-V is all set to debut on 05 May 2016. Pre-bookings are already under way across dealerships, for a token amount of Rs. 21,000. Moreover, the automaker is leaving no stone unturned to create a buzz on social media with the 'Where Next with BR-V' campaign. It enters a segment where the Hyundai Creta and the Renault Duster have been battling it out to come out on top. For Honda to topple these established players, the price has to be nothing short of spot on. Let's figure out where the prices for the BR-V should start!

For starters, it is based on the same platform as the Amaze and the Mobilio and shares its engines with the City. The sharing will play a significant role in keeping costs in check for Honda. The BR-V is likely to be slotted above the Mobilio in the line-up and be considerably more expensive, compared to the MPV.

Its rivals, such as the Hyundai Creta and the Renault Duster start at prices that hover around the Rs. 9.5 lakh mark for the base petrol trims. We expect Honda to match this, adopting a similar price for the base petrol variant of the BR-V.

The diesel can command a premium of a lakh over its petrol counterpart. We expect prices to start at around 10.5 lakh for the base diesel variant. Honda's usual strategy of premium pricing might not work in this segment. In fact, the BR-V would have to try and equal, if not undercut the prices of its rivals to get the cash registers ringing.

We've already driven the BR-V in Japan, click here to read initial impressions. We will be driving the SUV in India soon, so, stay tuned for an in-depth report. Meanwhile, take a look at how the BR-V fares against its rivals, in this spec comparison here.

Source: CarDekho.com
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on April 26 refused to entertain a plea challenging the reappointment of U K Sinha as Chairman of market regulator Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) till 2017, saying there is no bar on it.

"We are not inclined to hear this," a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur said, when senior advocate Indira Jaising, appearing for the petitioner, sought issuance of a notice on the plea seeking quashing of appointment of Sinha as SEBI head.

Jaising referred to the alleged flouting of rules or norms by the Centre in appointing Sinha and said that he has been reappointed despite the fact that the selection committee did not include his name in the list of the shortlisted candidates for the post.

Moreover, no vigilance clearance was there, she said, alleging that there has been some connection of this appointment with the Saradha Chit Fund scam case.

"We have already directed the CBI to look into all the aspects, including the role of regulators (SEBI, RBI) in the scam," the bench also comprising Justices R Banumathi and U U Lalit said.

The bench was hearing a plea filed by a former Indian Revenue Service officer Udai Babu Khalwadekar. The tenure of Sinha, who had taken over as SEBI chief in 2011, was extended by the government with his reappointment in 2014 for a period of three years -- till March 1, 2017.
Although new technologies bring problems, they mostly make our lives better. No city should know that better than Irvine, a global center for innovation in many fields.

Which is why were disappointed at its crackdown in online vacation rental services, such as Airbnb. These services use smartphone apps or computers to rent out rooms, or entire homes, for people on vacation. Stays commonly are a couple of days.

Citing rules about hotel taxes and zoning laws that ban hotels from residential neighborhoods, city code enforcement officials have issued written warnings to nearly 70 people offering their properties for rent online, with most warnings over the past 15 months, the Register reported. Though such crackdowns arent unheard of  Irvine is suppressing the practice without a public hearing.

This month, Anaheims City Council extended by a year its moratorium on short-term rentals as it mulls regulations. And Laguna Beachs moratorium is set to expire in October.

We understand concerns about renters partying, littering and otherwise causing problems. But those negatives can be dealt with through enforcement of noise and nuisance ordinances.

Airbnb and other companies, such as ride-booking services Uber and Lyft, enable micro entrepreneurship, Matthew Feeney told us; the Cato Institute scholar has written often on this controversy. This is a trend lawmakers and regulators ought to welcome. Regrettably, some officials have cracked down on Airbnb hosts, claiming that homeowners are violating local regulations that govern hotels. It is inappropriate for private homes to be regulated as if they are hotels.

As to objections by hotels that its unfair they have to follow regulations and pay taxes the Airbnb homes avoid, Mr. Feeney said the solution is deregulating the hospitality industry in order to ensure that it can compete with new upstarts on a level playing field. Indeed, despite the citys opposition, the Register reported that, in September, 370 Irvine homes were listed on Airbnb.

The future prosperity of Irvine  and the rest of Orange County  lies in freeing technological innovation, not suppressing it.
HAVANA  ardinal Jaime Ortega, who oversaw a warming of relations with the Communist government and played a role in the secret negotiations that led to U.S.-Cuba detente, has stepped down, the Vatican announced Tuesday.

He is being replaced as archbishop of Havana by Juan de la Caridad Garcia Rodriguez, the archbishop of the eastern city of Camaguey.

Ortega was named Archbishop of Havana in 1981 and oversaw three papal trips to Communist Cuba. He was so trusted by Cuba that he ferried messages between Presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama during detente negotiations.

Under his leadership, the Roman Catholic Church has quietly established itself as practically the only independent institution with any widespread influence on the island. Expanding into areas once dominated by the state, the church is providing tens of thousands of people with food, education, business training and even libraries stocked with foreign best-sellers. Under economic reforms launched by Castro, hundreds of thousands of Cubans have launched small businesses or gone to work for them, and the church is increasingly playing a key role in supporting them.

However, the church has made little headway in its hope for more access to state-controlled airwaves and permission to run religious schools.

The church said Pope Francis had accepted Ortegas resignation, which was presented in 2011 under a church rule requiring archbishops to offer their resignation when they are 75. His being kept on four more years was seen, particularly in retrospect, as a reflection of the importance of his being at the helm of the Havana archdiocese at a critical time for Cuba.

Garcia, 67, was born in Camaguey, the son of a railway worker and a homemaker. He attended seminary in Havana, as part of the first group of Cuban priests who received their entire training inside the country, and was ordained in 1972. He became archbishop of Camaguey in 2002 and was elected president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops 2006, a post formerly held by Ortega.

The church described Garcia as a man whos been characterized by his simple life, apostolic devotion, prayer and virtuous living. It described him as particularly devoted to caring for priests with as much with gestures of great understanding, service and help as discreet and firm authority.

Per Vatican custom, church statements made no mention of Garcia also being appointed cardinal.

Important archdioceses traditionally have cardinals at the helm, but sometimes many months can pass before an archbishop is made a cardinal, often in a special decree naming several at a time.

The son of a sugar worker, Ortega was born Oct. 18, 1936, in the sugar mill town of Jaguey Grande, in the central province of Matanzas, and moved to the provincial capital as a child. There, he attended public schools and began studying for the priesthood at San Alberto Magno Seminary. He completed his studies with the Fathers of Foreign Missions in Quebec, Canada, and returned to Matanzas to be ordained on Aug. 2, 1964  just as the new Communist government was further weakening an already feeble Cuban church.

The church, long identified with Cubas wealthier citizens, took a vehemently anti-communist line shortly before Castro declared Cuba to be socialist in 1961. The government later accused prominent Catholics of trying to topple Castro.

Public religious events were banned after processions were transformed into political protests, sometimes turning violent. Hundreds of foreign priests, mostly from Spain, were expelled. The more than 150 Catholic schools that once operated across the island were nationalized.

Ortega was among many Cuban priests sent to military-run agricultural work camps, spending a year beginning in 1966. After his release, Ortega worked as a parish priest in his hometown.

Ortega was named bishop for western Pinar del Rio province in December 1978 and was consecrated the following month. He became archbishop of Havana in November 1981. At the time, the Cuban government was officially atheist. Believers of all faiths were banned from the Communist Party, the military and some other professions.

But Ortega quietly helped rebuild the church infrastructure around Havana, establishing new parishes and renovating more than 40 churches. He also set up Caritas of Havana, the first office of the Catholic relief charity in Cuba. That planted the seed for Caritas of Cuba, now among the countrys most successful non-governmental organizations.

In November 1994, Pope John Paul II named Ortega the first cardinal in Cuba in more than three decades  and the second in the islands history. In 1992, the government dropped its constitutional references to atheism, and a gradual thaw in church-state relations began, culminating with the papal visit on Jan. 21-25, 1998, and government acceptance of some outdoor religious events. While Ortega refrained from publicly confronting the Cuban government, on some trips abroad he expressed disappointment that the opening had been modest.

After Benedict XVI visited in 2012, Cuba made Good Friday an official holiday. Pope Francis visited in Sept. 2015, flying straight to Washington from Cuba in a gesture aimed at showing his support for the normalization of relations.
MEXICO CITY  In a drab white tent along Reforma Avenue here, across from offices of the attorney general, a small group gathers each day to maintain the vigil for the 43.

The tent bears their black and white images: forty-three students from a teachers college, seized by the police in the city of Iguala in September 2014 and never heard from again; literal and figurative reminders of their absence.

The same street once teemed with hundreds of thousands of protesters, whose collective anger helped turn the disappearances into a global indictment of the impunity gnawing at Mexico, and a symbol of the tens of thousands of people who have vanished during the nations drug war.

Yet that rage, like the crowds themselves, has dissipated, raising fears that in spite of its handling of the case, which was recently criticized by an international panel of experts, the government will face few political consequences.

Just like any social movement, the tide goes out, said Rodrigo Gonzalez, 22, a student in Mexico City and one of the volunteers who has lived on-and-off in the tent for the past year. People have jobs, run out of money, they get distracted. The government bets on this exhaustion, and the forgetting, but what we are here for is to remind society that they should never forget.

Public pressure has been building in recent days, as it became clear that the international panel, brought in to uncover what happened to the missing students, was unable to do so after a sustained campaign of government stonewalling, including the refusal to hand over information or grant interviews with certain officials.

The panels final report, released Sunday, detailed the failings of the governments investigation, saying it was based on confessions obtained by torture. The departure of the foreign investigators has left the families of the missing students devastated. They had come to trust the panel as a credible interlocutor between them and the government.

Without the experts, or an outpouring of popular outrage, the families wonder if their cause is lost. We have seen the support from society drop, perhaps because many people do not think it important and others believe the government, said Bernabe Abrajan Gaspar, the father of one of the students, Adan Abrajan.

Other families interviewed Monday expressed similar dismay, and a belief that they will never know what happened to the young men.

And though it will likely define the presidency of Enrique Pena Nieto, his political party, the PRI, may not suffer. In past elections, the party has managed to outperform its rivals in the face of controversy, and some in and outside of government say the discontent, frustration and grief over the students will do little to dampen the partys status as the dominant political force in the nation.

Will that harm the PRI? Im not convinced of that, said Pamela Starr, a professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in Mexico. The PRI still has a powerful base, and the opposition is in complete disarray.

It should hurt them, and if it was the PRI against two united opposition parties, it might, she added.

Pena Nietos approval ratings plummeted after the disappearances and a political scandal that involved his wife. But last year, the party managed to win the midterm elections anyway. And recent polling suggests that the party is expected to retain majority control in governors elections in June.

The PRI strategists understand very clearly that the levels of rejection and disapproval wont have an effect on electoral results, said Alfonso Zarate, a political analyst and consultant.

Still, the government faces a renewed wave of international condemnation over its handling of the case, even as Pena Nieto has been trying to project Mexico as an emerging economic power. As he flies across the world, signing trade agreements and visiting dignitaries, the case of the missing students, and other domestic troubles, have tarnished the image his government has cultivated from its arrival in 2012.

They know they have lost the battle for international public opinion, but they think they can win the domestic public opinion battle, said Jorge Castaneda, a political analyst and former foreign minister. They may be right. There may be no serious consequences domestically.

Commenting on the panels report, the U.S. State Department said in a statement Monday that it trusted that the Mexican authorities will carefully consider the reports recommendations, evaluate suggested actions to address the issue of forced disappearances, provide support to the victims families, and continue their efforts to bring the perpetrators of this terrible crime to justice.

In part, the frustration stems from the governments insistence that its initial conclusion is correct: that the students were abducted by the local police and handed over to gangs who killed them and incinerated the bodies in a dump in the city of Cocula.

Despite experts who testified that such a fire could not have taken place where the bodies were said to have been burned, the government has defended its inquiry and criticized the experts for not solving the case after a year. Officials cited a separate panel that indicated a fire might have occurred at the site.

There are certain levels of the government that have the clumsy idea that if you talk about the economy and spend a lot on advertising, it will all disappear, Zarate said. But I think that their image depends on what they are doing and not what they say they are doing.

If that is true, the strategy is not playing well abroad. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recently issued a scathing report on the use of torture by the security forces in Mexico. And the U.N. special envoy on torture in Mexico, Juan E. Mendez, made similar criticisms last year.

Mendez said torture in Mexico was generalized, a finding that was disputed by the Mexican government. He said in an interview Monday that such responses did not help the state.

Though these things happen in other countries, it is more serious because Mexico looms so large in the international arena and because Mexican citizens have the right to expect better after decades of exclusion, Mendez said. It is about time that a serious democracy starts delivering.
Prosecutor Jim Mendelson recalls that he was four weeks into the murder trial of two gang members when a juror turned to Google for more details about the crime.

During deliberations, the juror shared what he had learned with other jurors.

That prompted Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank Fasel to declare a mistrial. The defendants later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, voluntary manslaughter, for the beating death of a 26-year-old Huntington Beach man.

It was very frustrating, Mendelson said of the 2006 mistrial. Jurors using the internet is a big concern for us.

Judges typically scold and dismiss jurors caught researching cases on the internet or posting on social media. But new legislation could make those violations punishable with fines.

Assemblyman Rich Gordon, D-Menlo Park, has introduced a bill that would allow judges to fine jurors up to $1,500 for social media and internet use violations as part of a pilot project. The bill does not specify which counties would participate in the project.

Its disruptive of the judicial process, and there ought to be a fairly simple and convenient way for a judge to sanction a juror based on the order that the judge has given, Gordon said.

Jurors are admonished to consider only the evidence presented in court during criminal and civil trials. They also are told not to discuss a case until they are in the deliberating room after hearing all the evidence. But as technology and smartphones become more prevalent, court officials say they are more concerned over the potential to taint jury trials.

A 2011 state law already makes improper electronic or wireless communication or research by a juror punishable by contempt charges. Supporters of the new legislation say potential fines could further hold jurors accountable.

But critics question whether fines would have any effect on people who are frequent social media users and suggest judges vet the internet activity of potential jurors before seating them.

If you have an internet addict who just cant psychologically stop, you may want to excuse that person, said Paula Hannaford-Agor, who studies juries at the National Center for State Courts.

Orange County Superior Court Judge John D. Conley said he always cautions jurors in his courtroom about the perils of internet use.

Im not convinced its a huge problem, but we really dont know, Conley said. It does worry us.

Conley recalled a trial where a juror was caught viewing the prosecutors profile on LinkedIn, a professional networking website. On LinkedIn, users can see who has reviewed their profiles.

The prosecutor had to disclose to the court that a juror looked at her profile. Conley dismissed the juror and seated an alternate.

If we hadnt had an alternate we would have had a mistrial, so these are very serious issues, Conley said.

The judge said many jurors dont understand that sharing seemingly minor details can have grave consequences.

We tell them, Dont even talk about the prosecutors tie, Conley said.

Eric Robinson, co-director of the Press Law and Democracy Project at Louisiana State University, said he used to track cases involving jurors social media or internet misconduct using news accounts and other sources, but there were so many it got to be more trouble than it was worth.

Those are the ones we hear about, he said. Im sure it happens a lot more.

A California appeals court in January cited juror internet research in the decision to throw out a fraud conviction against an investment firm CEO. The juror looked up a case involving an accountant the defendant blamed for the fraud.

Judges have the power to hold jurors in contempt if they violate the rules, but the process can be time-consuming and is rarely invoked, judges say.

Greg Hurley, a lawyer who studies juries at the National Center for State Courts, said he is unaware of any state that fines jurors outside the contempt process.

Judges could mention the fines when warning jurors against internet and social media use, said Steve Austin, Contra Costa Countys presiding judge. At the very least with the sanction, it would be a good thing youd be able to tell the jurors, he said.

The jury bill is pending before the full Assembly. Under the legislation, the Judicial Council would evaluate the pilot project and provide a report to the governor by 2021.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact the writer: kpuente@ocregister.com
Lighting company Lightopia, founded in Laguna Beach in 2006, is moving in June to South Coast Collection in Costa Mesa.

The store sells modern lighting fixtures, including the Italian brand Flos and California designer Cerno.

Over the next two months Lightopia will sell merchandise at its Laguna Beach store 25 percent to 75 percent off. There will also be a garage sale April 30 to sell warehouse items.

Furniture shop Room & Board also will relocate its Costa Mesa showroom this fall from South Coast Plaza Village to SoCo.

The 11,800-square-foot showroom is about one-third of the size of Room & Boards current shop. It will be part of the companys small-store concept.

Contact the writer: hmadans@ocregister.com or Twitter: @HannahMadans
At Mondays U.S. Senate debate, Rep. Loretta Sanchez was asked about her comment last December that as many as 20 percent of Muslims worldwide support establishing an Islamic caliphate in any way possible. She stood resolutely by the estimate and said afterward that more people seem to be accepting that estimate.

No one has refuted those numbers, the Democrat from Orange said in a phone interview from Stockton following the five-person faceoff. People are beginning to understand that those are the numbers that are out there.

Sanchez has referred to several sources, including the respected Pew Research Center, for her December comment on the Larry King show that 5 percent to 20 percent of Muslims support establishing an international Islamic state that transcends borders  even if violence is involved.

Some Muslims at the time acknowledged her positive track record with the Islamic community, but condemned her statement as inappropriately characterizing Muslims and unnecessarily arousing paranoia.

Sanchez also defended herself from GOP candidate Duf Sundheims on-stage attack that she often missed Homeland Security Committee meetings. She reiterated her debate comment that those meetings are held at the same time as those of another key committee she sits on  Armed Services.

Its a pretty heavy load, she said afterward. I stay up to speed on whats going on and sometimes Im running from one meeting to the other to be there for key votes. Thats just what happens in Congress. It was clear to me that the other people on the stage dont understand how Congress works.

Contact the writer: mwisckol@ocregister.com
Fifty countries are represented in movies at this years Newport Beach Film Festival, which makes it a way to see new places without leaving Orange County. The festival wraps up on Thursday, but there are still tickets available for documentaries, dramas and comedies from Europe to Asia to Central America.

Some movies in the festival are set in Southern California, like Nobody Walks in LA (11:30 a.m. Wednesday, Island Cinema, Newport Beach and 8:15 p.m. Thursday, Edwards Big Newport, Newport Beach).

The stereotype about Los Angeles is that its little more than the Kardashians and cops and crime, said the films writer and director Jesse Shapiro. He said he hopes his movie will get Orange County residents to drive up the freeway, despite whatever cultural divide there may be between Orange County and the big city to the north.

People that live down here still have an appreciation for Los Angeles, Shapiro said. This film will make people want to go to L.A. and explore it in a different way than maybe theyre used to exploring it, through their car. It shows L.A. in a different light.

Here are our other picks for the festivals final three days.

Today

Since: The Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 is a fresh look at the 1988 airplane bombing that killed 270 people and ushered in a new era of terrorism. It focuses on three families who turned their grief into activism to improve airline security. 7:15 p.m., Island Cinema, Newport Beach

Summer of 8 is another chance to see Orange County on the big screen. Filmed in Corona del Mar, it tells the story of eight high school friends on the cusp of leaving for college and hoping to experience a perfect final, summer day together. 8 p.m. (also 8 p.m. Wednesday), Island Cinema, Newport Beach

A Man Called Ove is a sweet story about an old man finding a new lease on life. In this Swedish film, Ove is a grumpy widower set on killing himself until a chatty, friendly family move in next door and into Oves life. 7:45 p.m., Starlight Triangle Square Cinemas, Costa Mesa

Forward. Side. Close! is another sweet story, this one from Austria, of an old grump reassessing his life. As Dr. Reinhard Nagl is about to celebrate his 70th birthday, secluded behind the walls of his dismal castle home. An overzealous childhood friend shows up and tries to bring fun and love into Nagls life. 2:15 p.m., Edwards Big Newport, Newport Beach

Speed Sisters is a documentary that follows the first Middle Eastern all-woman racecar driving team. Five women push into the male-dominated Palestinian street car-racing scene, competing at improvised tracks across the West Bank. 4:45 p.m., Island Cinema, Newport Beach

Wednesday

Dirty Old Wedge sold out of its three other shows at this years festival, but now theres a fourth screening. The documentary on Newport Beachs world-famous surfing spot spans The Wedges history and those obsessed with riding its waves. 8:30 p.m., Lido Theater, Newport Beach

Epitaph, part of the Latino Showcase at the festival, will take you to the time of the Spanish conquest of Latin America. Its a dramatically filmed drama about Spanish conquistadors ascent of the Popocatepetl volcano in Mexico in 1519. 7:30 p.m., Edwards Big Newport, Newport Beach

Thursday

The Lennon Report is a drama that takes another look at the day John Lennon died, from the moments after he was shot outside his New York apartment to the fight to save him in the hospital emergency room. 2:30 p.m., Edwards Big Newport, Newport Beach and 8 p.m.Island Cinema, Newport Beach

The Fixer closes this Newport Beach Film Festival. Dominic Rains plays Osman, a former fixer for Western journalists covering the Afghan war. Osman settles in a small town in Northern California, where he gets a local news reporting job and discovers corruption and danger. 7:30 p.m., Lido Theater, Newport Beach

Contact the writer: aboessenkool@ocregister.com
New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to dispose of a petition filed by former law minister and senior advocate Ram Jethmalani on black money stating that nothing survives after the enactment of a law on black money.

Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar made this submission before a Bench headed by Justice Anil R. Dave even as counsel Balaji Srinivasan, appearing for the petitioner sought for time till July. In his petition, Mr Jethmalani had pointed out that the German government was willing to share the names of 1,400 persons, most of them are Indians who had stashed their money in Liechtenstein Bank. But he said no step was taken to get this information.

He said the Centre had sought information under amended DTAA knowing fully well that only data about future transactions could be obtained under this treaty and not past transactions.
When fans describe Spoleto as the Italian Chipotle, U.S. company president John Velasquez doesnt complain.

Well take that any day, Velasquez said. We respect the hell out of concepts that are largely accepted and change the way people deal with culinary.

At Spoletos 350 international locations, diners choose a pasta, a sauce and up to six toppings for $8. The fast casual pasta bar was founded in 1999 in Rio de Janeiro, which boasts a large Italian population, said Velasquez, who is heading Spoletos U.S. expansion. The first U.S.-based Spoleto restaurants opened last year in central Florida.

The chains first West Coast restaurant is coming later this year to Irvine.

While the original Brazilian concept sells only pasta plates, the U.S. menu has been expanded to include build-your-own flatbreads and salads.

No one is doing it this way, said Velasquez. We can grow like Panera and Chipotle. We envision over 1,000 stores across the U.S.

Though Velasquez loves the Chipotle Mexican Grill comparison, he said the Italian pasta bar is not the same when it comes to food preparation. Chipotle assembles burritos; Spoleto cooks its pastas at the exhibition counter.

It is a walk-along but your food is cooked in front of you, he said.

Spoleto is also known for elegant plating on porcelain plates. Most sauces and dressings are made in-house, but not the pasta. Each Spoleto uses imported dried pasta from La Molisana in Italy.

Sauce choices for pastas include pesto, bolognese, Alfredo and marinara. Customers can choose up to six toppings from 25 different items such as broccoli, carrots, truffle roasted mushrooms, roasted peppers, eggplant, sundried tomatoes, sausage, ham, bacon and Gorgonzola. Premium items such as a 6-ounce giant meatball, prosciutto and burrata can be added for an up-charge.

Spoleto is expected to open in late September at University Center near UC Irvine. Over the last few years, the retail center has evolved by adding fast-casual concepts such as Tender Greens, Mendocino Farms and Blaze Pizza. Adya, an Indian street food eatery, is opening in June. Luna Grill is coming to the center in September.

Contact the writer: nluna@ocregister.com
Stella Awittor immigrated to the U.S. from Ghana and for the past 12 years voted Democrat in every election. But no more. Donald Trump is her choice to lead the nation.

At a weekend Trump rally, Awittor vowed to fight any attempt to muzzle her candidate. That includes Anaheim Councilwoman Kris Murrays proposal to denounce what she calls the candidates divisive rhetoric.

Murrays resolution goes before the City Council tonight and declares Trumps statements are contrary to the fundamental principles of the Constitution as well as Anaheims principles of inclusiveness and kindness.

Awittor on Monday likened Murrays proposal to condemning free speech. The more they say bad things about Trump, the more I like him.

The child care worker drove Saturday from her home in San Ysidro to join about 60 other Trump supporters at a rally at El Dorado Regional Park in Long Beach, just over Orange Countys north border. Awittor said she made the five-hour round-trip because of the number of undocumented workers who come through her neighborhood.

Her husband serves in the U.S. Navy, and she says she came to this nation legally.

Large numbers of illegal immigrants get through the U.S. border fence near her home, Awittor says, and she believes Trump will put an end to that.

Her point was echoed Saturday on T-shirts worn by Trump supporters. The shirts were emblazoned with a towering wall and Trumps slogan: Make America strong again.

BORDER PROTECTION

The rally lasted three hours, and the crowd included young adults in their 20s, veterans in their 70s, white, blacks, Latinos and Asians. Several speakers condemned the media for calling Trump racist. The diverse gathering booed.

Necita Udarbe, 65, is Filipino by birth and became a U.S. citizen in March. She echoed Awittor in supporting a wall along the United States southern border. The wall will not only protect illegal immigrants from coming in, it will keep out drug pushers, drug lords and protect Border Patrol officers.

Like the supporters at the recent Bernie Sanders rally I wrote about, many in the Trump crowd sported clothes representing their candidate. Udarbe wore a white Trump hat and a red Trump shirt.

She is an accountant and tax professional and offered a list of reasons she will vote for Trump. Hes the only businessman running. He knows how to bring jobs back from China to America. He can reverse the trend of bankruptcies.

Like others at the rally, Udarbe also blasted the national health care mandate. I call it Obama-no-care. She said several of her tax clients couldnt afford or didnt want to pay for Obamacare. Accordingly, they had to pay fines.

What kind of government, she asked, is this?

STANDING GUARD

Dave Duringer is a Laguna Hills attorney with a concealed weapons permit. He shouldered a Dont Tread On Me flag at the rally, wore a bulletproof vest and said he carried pepper spray as well as two pistols.

In a followup email conversation, Duringer wrote, I would have been open-carrying (firearms visible) if it were still legal.

Duringer said the previous week he attended a Costa Mesa Trump rally visited by gang members. Given what happened, I think it is important to remind people how hot things can get because Mr. Trump is seeking real change. Gang bangers need to be warned, and ralliers need to be prepared.

As a grass roots Trump organizer for two congressional districts, Duringer emphasized his points of view are his own and that he doesnt speak for the campaign. He said he offers free handgun training at Trump phone call parties.

This is gun safety training, he emphasized, which can only help them avoid accidents and avoid confrontation and teach them the importance of de-escalation.

COUNCIL REBUKE

On Monday, Murray stood firm on her proposal to scold Trump.

Yet she was measured, too. I respect and defend Mr. Trumps right to discuss and defend any issue. She said Trump was welcome in Anaheim, just as robust debate is welcome.

The two-term councilwoman complained that Trump denigrates the people she is elected to serve, including Muslims, women and Latinos, and that his statements are escalating. Its more important to lift people up than unite us through derision.

We have to have respectful debate in this country. Civil discourse dates back to our founding principles.

Murray is to be commended for her call for civil discourse. But this election year is like no other in modern U.S. history. Her proposal is akin to putting out a fire with gasoline.

A council scolding plays to Trumps campaign style: using discord to fuel votes.

Contact the writer: dwhiting@ocregister.com
Voters in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island and Maryland are casting primary ballots for presidential candidates in contests pivotal for Republicans and Democrats alike. Democrats are choosing between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, while Republicans are deciding among Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Donald Trump.

Here are some voters thoughts:

 Gerson Mendoza, a 23-year-old native of Venezuela, cast his first ballot as an American citizen for Bernie Sanders.

The owner of a cleaning business, Mendoza graduated from the University of Connecticut a year ago with $40,000 in debt. He said he was attracted to Sanders pledge to make higher education more affordable.

College was particularly expensive for me, more than anyone should have to pay just for an education, he said after voting in East Hartford, Connecticut. But I couldnt picture myself without going to college. If he could make that easier for future generations, that would be great.

Mendoza, who came to the U.S. at age 14 and achieved citizenship a few months ago, said he believed Hillary Clinton would probably be a good president but was too incremental in her approach.

 Karin Bryan voted for Ted Cruz because she believes he has campaigned in a more presidential manner.

Bryan, 73, a homemaker in Annapolis, Maryland, described herself as a staunch conservative who had a tough time deciding.

I think that Trump albeit he says some good things, I think hes a bit of a loose cannon, Bryan said.

 Yvonne Hunt had a hard time deciding because she liked both Sanders and Clinton so much.

I wish they could be co-presidents, said Hunt, 40, who works at the National Institutes of Health.

Hunts entire family was divided in the Democratic race: one of 10 siblings, she said half are voting for Sanders and half for Clinton.

Ultimately, she voted in Silver Spring, Maryland, for Clinton, citing her foreign policy experience.

I just feel like its Hillarys time, she said.

 Sig Ruskaup, 72, a registered Republican from Warwick, Rhode Island, said the GOP race began with a large cadre of qualified people but Trump stood out to her because he wasnt a career politician.

I felt things would be different with him, she said. He has hardworking children and grandchildren and he wants to make America great again for the country and his family.

Ruskaup, who said she owns several properties, was impressed with Trumps work ethic and negotiating skills as a businessman. She sounded resentful of those within the Republican party trying to derail Trump before the convention.

Everyone is working against him. Theyre part of the big boys club and they want to keep things the way they are, like Kasich and Cruz working together, she said. I think we need a real leader.

 Laura Seyler calls Donald Trump a bully.

Thats why she voted for him.

Im a very solid Cruz fan, and I think Cruz would do an excellent job. But I think Trump is a bigger bully, Seyler, 63, a senior buyer for a direct marketer, said Tuesday at a polling place in Hamburg, Pennsylvania. That may sound strange, but I think thats kind of what we need.

Seyler, a Republican, said the country is going in the wrong direction  away from constitutional principles and toward socialism  and Trump will lead a restoration.

I believe Trump will take the bat and straighten things out. I dont think hes afraid, he doesnt owe anybody anything, and I think hes very much an American that loves his country, and he sees Americans suffering, she said.

Hes not perfect. He has flaws. But who is? We could go through every list of politician and pick him apart, but I think hes pulling the people together, and that says a lot, she added.

 Loretta Becker, a pharmaceutical sales representative, said she generally doesnt vote in primaries but came out Tuesday to cast her ballot for Clinton because she considers her the most qualified candidate and is worried about a potential Trump presidency.

He slurs, his negativity, his racism, the comments that he makes about different ethnic groups I just find it appalling, Becker said after voting in Warwick, R.I.

A former social worker and onetime Vermont resident, Becker indicated she also liked Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, but Clinton was her first choice.

Why Clinton?

The fact that I really loved having Obama for president and now having Hillary as a president, feeling like shell do a great job and knowing that shes the best candidate and wanting to vote for her and support her, Becker said.

 Jon Passauer works two jobs, at a coffee shop in the morning and at a bike shop in the afternoon.

On Tuesday, he biked to a polling place in Pittsburgh to vote for Sanders.

A registered Republican until this year, Passauer, 29, voted Republican in the last two presidential elections but switched his registration to Democrat to vote for Sanders.

I really like Bernies message, he said. What hes got going for him is some fresh ideas.

Passauer said a key issue for him was the number of people incarcerated in the U.S. He said he would like to see nonviolent criminals not locked up as frequently, or for as long.

 Retired physical education teacher George Reid, 73, of Hagerstown, Maryland, said he voted for Kasich because hes a moderate versus the other two extremes, Trump and Cruz.

I think we need somebody whos kind of willing to compromise. Im not sure those other two guys are, Reid said.

He said he wants a president who can persuade recalcitrant lawmakers on the left and right to work together on issues including the economic divide.

You see these people getting bonuses of $430 million, $500 million. Thats ridiculous when you see someone else whos working his tail off whos making nothing, just trying to make ends meet, Reid said.

 Ryan Shiring voted in his first presidential primary on Tuesday, casting a ballot in Glastonbury, Conn., for Trump.

I just feel as a young Republican he appeals to us, said Shiring, 20, an engineering major at the University of Connecticut. He is anti-establishment, and thats something I gravitate toward.  Its my first time voting. I felt it was important to come out. I wanted to feel like my vote counted, and I feel like it definitely did.

Shiring said he agrees with Trumps immigration policy, and he admires Trump for speaking his mind and taking on the Republican establishment.

Associated Press writers Michael Rubinkam in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, Rodrique Ngowi and Jennifer McDermott in Warwick, Rhode Island, Joe Mandak in Pittsburgh, Dave Collins in Glastonbury, Connecticut, Michael Melia in East Hartford, Connecticut, Matthew Barakat in Hyattsville, Maryland, Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, and David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Maryland contributed to this report.
STOCKTON  Californias Democratic state attorney general cemented her front-runner status Monday night in a debate that spanned substantive policy issues among the top five candidates but yielded few zingers or breakthrough moments for voters trying to sort through a large field.

Attorney General Kamala Harris and U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Orange, a fellow Democrat who is vying for second place in the June primary, distinguished themselves dramatically in style, with Harris maintaining her typically reserved, poised approach and Sanchez delivering a shoot-from-the-hip approach, but differed little when it came to policy. Both backed free community college and expanded Pell grants and said they would strengthen gun laws and loosen federal drug policy on marijuana.

With only six weeks remaining until the primary, the top five candidates vying to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer met for the first debate of their campaign at the University of the Pacific in Stockton.

Harris said she wants to bring a rational approach to issues such as drug policy and gun control that doesnt cast them as all-or-nothing choices.

Its just pretty simple, reasonable stuff. If somebody has been convicted of a felony that proves them to be a dangerous person, they should not be able to own a gun. If somebody has been found by a court to be mentally ill to the point that they are danger to themselves or other people, they should not be able to own or possess a gun, she said.

Republicans Tom Del Beccaro, Duf Sundheim and Ron Unz acknowledge theyre hoping to come in second to Harris, as does Sanchez, who played up her roles as the second-ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees.

I know the tough votes. They havent been under the pressure, Sanchez said of her competitors.

The first open Senate seat in decades was expected to attract outsize attention and a strong field of candidates, but so far has drawn mostly yawns from voters and prompted a low-profile campaign, although there will be 34 candidates on the June 7 ballot.

Polls show about half of likely voters remain unengaged in the race and undecided about whom to support.

A Field Poll earlier this month found Harris in the lead with support from 27 percent of likely voters and Sanchez with 14 percent. The three Republicans included in Mondays debate were all within the polls sampling of error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Del Beccaro used his highest-profile opportunity to date to take a few shots at Harris and cast himself as the only candidate with a free-market approach, noting several times that he wants to reduce reliance on government programs, not expand them.

They want a government solution to this but government cant solve everything, Del Beccaro said of the other candidates on stage.

Democrats are strongly favored to retain the seat in November. The party controls every statewide office and holds a 2.7 million edge in voter registration.
Santa Margaritas Grant Shoults received a humorous congratulatory message on Twitter after the Foothill Swim Games from a legendary Orange County swimmer.

Tustin graduate Michael Cavic, who famously almost beat Michael Phelps at the 2008 Olympics if not for a touch at the wall, noticed a mention on Twitter that the Stanford-bound Shoults broke his 2001 meet record in the 100-yard butterfly by about three-quarters of a second.

Congrats, @grantshoults! Cavic wrote on Twitter over the weekend. Stanford, though? Been a while since a Cardinal did anything mentionable in swimming.

Cavic attended Cal, Stanfords heated rival. In 2008, the ex-O.C. Register swimmer of the year raced for Serbia when he lost to Phelps in the 100-meter butterfly final by one one-hundredth of a second in a controversial finish.

Cavic ended his post on Twitter to Shoults with a wink symbol. You can follow Cavic at @milorad_cavic. The former Irvine Novaquatics star still holds O.C. records in the 50 free (19.69 seconds) and 100 butterfly (47.13) from 2002.

Please send swimming news to Dan Albano at dalbano@ocregister.com or @ocvarsityguy on Twitter

Cavic back in the day:
Adding to the madness of the 2016 US presidential election is American lawyer Andrew Basiago. He claims to have traveled through time nearly all his life, and is pretty sure that hes going to become either president or vice president between 2016 and 2028. Polling data is obviously of little use to this guy.

Basiago, a Washington-based attorney, first started talking about his experience with time travel in 2004, with Project Pegasus  a top secret organisation studying the effects of time travel and teleportation on children. So between 1968 and 1972, when Basiago was a young boy of seven, he claims to have participated in several experiments that transported him through time, space, and even parallel universes. His mission, supposedly, was to provide the US President at the time with important information about past and future events.

Now, Basiago is using the knowledge gained over years of time travel to further his political ambitions  hes running for president this year as an independent candidate, and is fairly confident hes going to win. I have prior knowledge that not only will I run for president, but that during one of the elections  which would have to be between 2016 and 2028, because Im not running past that  Im either elected president or vice president, he explained, confidently.

Photo: Andrew D. Basiago/Facebook

Basiagos greatest qualification to hold office, of course, is his first-hand information of past and future events. Basiago claims to have gone back in time to 1863 and witnessed Abraham Lincolns speech at Gettysburg. Hes also been to the future  the year 2054  so he as an idea of the pitfalls that a president should be avoiding. Having traveled widely in time, Basiago has held conversations with President Bush, President Clinton, and President Obama decades before they were elected to office, notifying them in advance of their presidencies. More importantly, he has been to Mars in 1981, which makes for unrivaled experience in foreign relations.

But hes had enough of all the secrecy now. In the all-new version of Project Pegasus that hes leading himself, Basiago is campaigning for the US government to publicly disclose all the advances made in teleportation technology. Hes calling for truth, reform, and innovation, which would benefit humanity as a whole and make transportation across the Earth and beyond instantaneous as well as environment friendly.

Photo: Andrew D. Basiago/Facebook

Primarily, my goal has been to bring forth the teleportation technology that Project Pegasus developed forward, and utilize it in the civilian sector, he said. Our secret time-travel capability is informing things like the process by which we select the president. The cover-up has gone on for too long.

Basiago has lashed out at President Obama in particular, accusing him of lying and betrayal. He claims that as a teenager, Obama served as a fellow chrononaut on the Mars mission in the 80s, but has disclosed nothing about it to the American public. Basiago calls this literally lying, to deny the involvement of a set of Americans who put their lives at risk at a very young age, doing what their country asked of them. This, he believes, is telling of the calculating, shallow opportunism of the nations current leadership.

Photo: video caption

Not wanting to keep things under wraps anymore, Basiago has offered a rudimentary explanation of teleportation technology himself. He claims that the devices they use have quantum access capability and can be divided into two categories  one that enables physical teleportation to the past or future, and another that creates a hologram to serve as a looking-glass into a specific time or place without actually being there. Physical teleportation, he claims, was developed using the papers left behind by Nikola Tesla, after his death in 1943. Chronovision, on the other hand, was invented by two Vatican musicologists and later passed on to the US government by Rome.

These technologies have apparently been around for a long time, but according to Basiago, US scientists advised the government to hide them from the public because they could potentially erase entire industries and jobs that are focused around existing transportation methods. But Basiago disagrees. Knowing about these things will allow the public to understand and participate in the advancement of new technologies, he said.

So there you have it, if neither Hillary nor Trump seem like US President material to you, or if you simply always wanted to travel through time and space, Andrew Basiago is your man.

via Inverse
On Sunday evening last, February 23 at 9.20pm, the Offaly SPCA was contacted by Tullamore Garda Station Informing us they had received a report involving an equine in distress in the Edenderry area.

On Sunday evening last, February 23 at 9.20pm, the Offaly SPCA was contacted by Tullamore Garda Station Informing us they had received a report involving an equine in distress in the Edenderry area.

Despite the best efforts of a team of dedicated individuals, the horse could not be saved and the sad decision was taken on Monday afternoon that, on humane grounds, it was best to euthanise the increasingly weak animal.

That evening a volunteer with Offaly SPCA attended the scene along with a vet from nearby Eden Veterinary Clinic, but unfortunately due to the location of the horse and lack of daylight the vet and OSPCA volunteer were unable to reach the distressed equine. The Irish Horse Welfare Trust and the ISPCA were informed of the situation that evening.

The following morning the OSPCA volunteer and her colleague returned to the location to discover the horse was a further 200 yards off the roadside, a road known locally as the tunnel road. The location itself proved problematic due to the distance from the main road. The lane way was accessible by foot only as the entrance was protected by a locked gate, the pathway was overgrown, marshy swamp land.

On sight of the equine it was clear that she was alive but in a very distressed state. The horse was chest deep in a drain close to the Grand Canal, the water was freezing cold, filthy and stagnant.

The equine was a mare approximately 10-12 years old, skewbald (mostly brown) in colour and approximately 15 hands in height with distinct markings. She had been recently shod. She was in a very emaciated condition with spine, ribs, pelvis, and shoulder blades all clearly visible. The mare was not microchipped.

The Offaly SPCA volunteer remained with the distressed equine trying to coax her closer to the edge with food as it was clear she was starving as she made valiant efforts to edge closer and closer, however despite her efforts she only managed two or three steps, at this point her exhaustion was clearly evident.

At approximately 11.30 am ISPCA inspector Michael Keane arrived at the scene as did a number of locals in a bid to free the troubled mare. Offaly SPCA managed to raise the alarm with the land owner and get the entrance gate unlocked and made accessible. Donal ODwyer, a vet from nearby Eden Veterinary Clinic arrived as did local man Martin Brerteon with his jeep and winch.

A dedicated team now surrounded the distressed animal and managing to secure her with ropes and straps and pull her to the drain edge and out of the water. At this stage vet Donal ODwyer assessed the mare. Her condition was very weak and she was borderline hypothermic. He recommended she be kept warm with rugs and fed in an effort to keep her warm in th ehope of bringing her to her feet.

The Offaly SPCA volunteer fetched rugs, hay, water and feed. The mare appeared a little brighter and did eat some hay but unfortunately did not manage to get up on her feet. As the afternoon went on it became evident that the mare was becoming weaker and weaker and slowly becoming less responsive to the people around her.

The ISPCA inspector along with the Offaly SPCA volunteer made the decision to again call upon the vet to further access the mare and her appearing failing condition. Donal ODwyer returned to access the mare. Her condition had indeed deteriorated and the vet made the tough decision that continuing the rescue effort was only prolonging her suffering so a decision was made to euthanize her on humane grounds.

The rescue operation took nine hours from start to finish. A fantastic dedicated number of people generously gave their time, resources, and energy but sadly despite all their efforts the unfortunate mare did not pull through.

The Offaly SPCA would like to sincerely thank Donal O Dwyer and Liam Carroll of Eden Veterinary Clinic, ISPCA inspector Michael Keane, Carrie & Claire of The Irish Horse Welfare Trust, Martin Brereton, Goss Kerrigan, Nevin Farrell, Michelle and Maria Foran who kindly offered temporary stabling, and all who assisted in the rescue operation.

The ISPCA and other animal welfare groups around Ireland are dealing with a major increase in horse, pony and donkey cruelty and neglect cases. Ireland is in the midst of an equine crisis. A number of factors cause more and more horses to suffer. Irresponsible breeding during the boom years has caused Ireland to be inundated with unwanted equines. Added to this is the increasing cost of horse feed and the failing value of equines.

Legislation is clear every equine needs to have a passport and microchip which forces accountability and traceability, but without sufficient resources put in place to enforce this legislation, more and more horses are being neglected and abandoned and ultimately left to suffer and die.
New Delhi: Seems like love story Raabta turned into a punch-story for actor Sushant Singh Rajput.

Posting a snap with the Dilwale actress, 30-year-old actor tweeted, Got a severe jab from my punjaban costar during rehearsals .. Way to go Sanon .. Round 2 @kritisanon.

Got a severe jab from my punjaban costar during rehearsals .. Way to go Sanon .. Round 2  @kritisanon pic.twitter.com/P5U2z7Me2Q  Sushant S Rajput (@itsSSR) April 25, 2016

The picture showed the Kai Po Che actor treating himself with an ice-can and his 25-year-old co-star standing behind with hands on her face with and Oh I am sorry expression.

Earlier, speaking to a leading magazine, Kriti said that she, along with Sushant under-went intense workshop for the Dinesh Vijans directorial debut, where sometimes she used to hurt herself and Sushant took care of her.

Reportedly, this closeness with the Heropanti actress became the reason for split between Sushant and his long-time girl-friend Ankita Lokhande.
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Inaya Thalaimurai, which features Ashwin Kumar and Manisha Jith, is a film related to elections. Directed by Eshwar, theres a message about the importance of voters discharging their democratic duty and exercising their franchise to vote.

The hero comes up with a quirky way to convince the people to come to the polling booth and vote. The Election Commission appreciates his simple yet effective tool. The film will have a major impact on the forthcoming elections, claims director Eshwar.

At the same time, it is not preachy and has a mix of action, romance, and comedy, he adds.

The filmmakers have aptly chosen Sahayam, the IAS officer from Madurai who shot to fame by exposing the granite mafia in his district, to unveil the audio of the film on April 29.
Agents acting on behalf of the Nazi party systematically stole art and cultural property from occupied territories. (Photo: Representative image)

Three late 15th century paintings missing since they were looted by Nazi troops from a Tuscan villa over 70 years ago have been recovered and two people have been accused of receiving stolen goods, police announced on Monday.

The works, of religious themes, seized in two private homes in Milan last July, were described by art historian Paola Strada as "of immense interest because of their unique character, and because they are from artists considered rare on the market".

Part of a vast collection of art of the House of Bourbon- Parma, the paintings were plundered in 1944 by German troops from a villa in the Tuscan town of Camaiore, where Prince Felix, consort of the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, once lived.

Most of the stolen pieces, kept in the villa of a high-ranking member of the Nazi SS military organisation, were found and returned to Luxembourg soon after the end of the war.

The paintings recovered in Milan, and held in the city's Pinacoteca di Brera art museum since July, were three of almost 40 pieces still missing.

A criminal investigation linked to the recovery of the paintings has been initiated, the head of of the Art Crimes department Riccardo Targetti said, with two unnamed people accused of receiving stolen goods.

SYSTEMATIC LOOTING

Experts from Italy's culture ministry said they were not able to give a value for the art pieces.

"For the time being, there are no parameters we can use to quantify how much they are worth," art historian Strada said.

The pieces include the "Trinity" by Alessio Baldovinetti, a scholar of Renaissance painter Beato Angelico, and the "Presentation of Jesus to the Temple", by Verona-based Girolamo Dai Libri, a famous miniaturist artist.

According to Antonella Ranaldi, superintendent for the arts at the culture ministry, the paintings require restoration as "their state of conservation is not great".

They need not be returned to Luxembourg as compensation had already been paid for the loss, police said.

Police based in the northern town of Monza began investigations to recuperate the three pieces of art in 2014, drawing on analysis of old documents.

The team recovered three other art pieces in 2009 and 2015, belonging to the Mason Perkins and the Loeser Calnan collections.

Agents acting on behalf of the Nazi party systematically stole art and cultural property from occupied territories. In those years many Jewish artists and collectors were also forced to sell their art and other pieces were confiscated.

While a majority of art work was recuperated by allied armies soon after the war, much is still missing, feeding into an illegal multi-billion dollar international trade, estimated to be the third largest after drugs and arms trafficking.
As a black woman, Dr. Renaisa Anthony hated Rachel Dolezal.

Hated the fraud of a white woman presenting herself as black. Hated the way the news media glommed onto the story, when the subject of race really centers on more serious concerns, such as the fact that black people get sick and die at higher rates than whites from major diseases.

But as a doctor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center who studies these disparities  and is tasked with reducing them in Nebraska  Anthony saw the disgraced Dolezal as an opportunity.

What if she brought this lightning rod to Omaha? What if she could confront her own anger and discomfort? And what if the resulting conversation  because you know people will talk  would be productive? What if it helped address the big fat elephant of race that gets too little attention in hospitals and medical schools in every city and state?

In a UNMC lecture hall on Monday, Anthony explained her reasoning behind Dolezals visit last week. The visit was roundly criticized on social media. Some Omahans protested the invitation and called it a sign that the mostly white medical school is out of touch with the minority patients it serves. Others, including some of Anthonys colleagues at UNMC, wondered why they were left out.

Anthony got right to it. The 38-year-old is not from Omaha but has spent enough time here  six years as deputy director of UNMCs College of Public Health Center for Reducing Health Disparities  to realize that when Omahans talk about race, they talk in code. North Omaha equals blacks. South Omaha equals Latinos. West Omaha means whites.

The diversity talk here is muted and often takes place among the like-minded. Little seems to change. Of the 132 first-year medical students at UNMC, there is only one black person.

And among Omahas minority populations, problems continue to exist, according to various measures of health and well-being.

The citys diversity was a surprise to Anthony when she was tapped to come to UNMC in 2010. The other places she has lived have bigger black populations, and each place has shaped her own outlook about race and her role as a doctor reducing health disparities.

Anthony was born in Detroit to a single mother who became overwhelmed by her children and multiple jobs. When Anthony turned 13 she was whisked away to a black boarding school in what she calls The Middle of Nowhere, Mississippi. Piney Woods Country Life School drew wealthy and poor students alike to its campus about 20 miles south of Jackson. There, Anthony bristled at first against the strict rules and farm life.

Then she loved it. She had adult mentors who told her she had value, she had purpose and shed do something with her life. Unlike in her Detroit neighborhood, college was seen as a certainty. The only question was where.

Anthony, president of the National FFA Organization chapter at her high school, landed at the University of Minnesota with plans of becoming a veterinarian.

Those plans changed after graduation, a job with Dow AgroSciences, a talk with a mentor and a visit back to Detroit.

Back home, she felt a terrible survivors guilt. Around her were people with all kinds of poverty-related struggles. Her friends were mothers with baby mama drama. People were sick.

I saw all this, she said, and it bothered me.

She then decided that if she became a doctor she could fix it all. She got her medical degree from the University of Chicago. She earned a masters in public health from Harvard. She completed an internship at Vanderbilt University, becoming a generalist trained in womens health. While working long hours in Tennessee, Anthony learned she could relate to poor and black patients in a way few of her colleagues could. But she found that she couldnt spend as much time with patients as she wanted and decided instead to make her mark in policy.

She did a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health and Office of the Surgeon General. She also taught at George Washington University. When her mentor there moved to UNMC to head the Center for Health Disparities, he asked her to come to Nebraska, too. At first she said no, protesting that she knew nothing about American Indians or rural issues. But he addressed her misconceptions about Omaha. Theyve got everyone here, he told her.

After six years, however, Anthony wants to make more progress in reducing black infant mortality and other big health gaps. To do that, she said Monday, she needed to talk about racism.

The big elephant in the room is race, Anthony said. We cant talk about reducing health disparities if we dont talk about race.

Enter Dolezal.

Last year, Dolezal lost her position as head of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP when her parents revealed that she is white. It also was learned that Dolezal had sued historically black Howard University, alleging the school discriminated against her because she is white.

Anthony had to press hard to bring this woman to Omaha, and colleagues voiced concern. UNMC said she could not host her in a public format on campus. She finally got UNMCs permission to host a small, private event away from the university. She could invite only 25 people. She felt she had to keep the event secret because of questions Dolezal had asked: Will I be safe in Omaha? Will my baby be safe?

Anthony found those questions disarmingly human. She found Dolezal, waiting for her at Eppley Airfield with her baby in tow, all too human. Anthony felt so conflicted: She didnt approve of what Dolezal had done, but this woman was vulnerable. Suddenly, the stranger Anthony had demonized became a human being.

Not everyone who heard this story at Wittson Hall on Monday agreed. Several young black women walked out.

I cant make everyone happy, and I cant make everyone understand, Anthony said.

Carolyn Green, director of health access at Girls Inc., asked Anthony a pointed question:

If I had committed such a fraud, she began, would I be accepted and asked to come to such a prestigious place to tell my story?

But Anthony stood by her decision. How could she call for an uncomfortable public discussion of race if she wasnt willing to do something uncomfortable herself?

She said shes brought in other speakers with great credentials. Dr. Camara Jones, an expert in health disparities who is president of the American Public Health Association, is coming Wednesday. Anthony also is hosting an event Thursday she hopes will generate more ideas and discussion.

About 90 people had come Monday to hear Anthony speak about race, inclusion, diversity and equity.

One of them was Sebastian Lane, the only black person in his UNMC class, who is wrapping up his first year of medical school.

On his first day of school, he recalled, he had looked around the room and realized he was the only one.

That hit me, he said, his voice choking with emotion.

This is the story Anthony wants us to talk about.

She wants everyone in North Omaha and South Omaha and West Omaha to lose the code, confront our discomfort and really, truly talk about a subject that touches all of us, whether we realize it or not.
A Douglas County District Court judge said Monday that she would not allow taxpayer money be used to pay for some $3,400 in expenses that Patricia Urbanovsky, owner of Creative Creations, has incurred as part of her defense against three counts of felony theft.

Thats in conflict with a report earlier Monday that she had ruled to allow the taxpayer reimbursement.

Judge Leigh Ann Retelsdorf said she reviewed Urbanovskys request but hadnt issued a formal ruling earlier in the day, as the prosecution and defense thought she had, and as had been reported.

Im not going to use taxpayer money, Retelsdorf told The World-Herald.

Instead, the judge said, part of Urbanovskys $10,000 bond might be used toward some of her defense.

But first, Retelsdorf said, she plans to hold another hearing so she can listen to arguments from both sides as to whether any bond money can be used for defense costs. Urbanovsky put up a $10,000 bond last summer to be released from the Douglas County Jail.

Prosecutors and Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine couldnt immediately be reached for comment on the judges afternoon comments.

A hearing date has not yet been scheduled.

Earlier Monday, Urbanovskys attorney, Steve Lefler, and county prosecutors left a meeting in the judges chambers, both saying that the judge was going to rule in favor of Urbanovskys request. Lefler had filed a motion last week asking that Douglas County pay for some part of her defense because she had run out of money.

Urbanovsky ran the Omaha Creative Creations company, which is accused of bilking people out of money for millions of dollars in worthless travel vouchers.

In a recent court filing, Urbanovsky claimed that she is indigent  essentially broke. The document says she lacks the financial resources to mount a defense against the three felony charges against her in connection with the sale of the travel vouchers.

She doesnt have any real assets, stocks, accounts or other valuables, the filing says.

Last week, Lefler filed a motion asking that Douglas County pay the bill for the five depositions, $3,407. He said the depositions  witness statements  are vital to Urbanovskys defense.

Lefler said he paid for the depositions himself.

If she had the public defender ... these costs would be paid for, he said at the time, adding, Im trying to get some help with the deposition costs, not for my attorney fees.

Urbanovsky is not asking to be represented by a public defender.

Lefler would not say who is paying Urbanovskys attorney fees, only that she hired him to defend her.

I do not discuss my clients financial terms, he has said.

The charges stem from allegations that she duped three employees out of more than $141,000, persuading them to use their own credit cards to cover some of the companys business expenses. A trial date has been set for Oct. 3.

Separately, Urbanovsky also faces 25 federal charges: 16 counts of wire fraud and nine counts of money laundering. Federal prosecutors allege that she devised a Ponzi-like scheme that bilked thousands of customers throughout the United States out of millions of dollars.

Square Inc., a San Francisco credit card processor, ran more than $7 million in charges for Creative Creations and has said it is out more than $4.7 million. If convicted on the federal charges, Urbanovsky faces up to 365 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. A federal trial date has not yet been set.

Urbanovsky has been out on bail Jail since July.

Contact the writer: 402-444-1142, janice.podsada@owh.com

*****
David Sokol, who some once considered a Warren Buffett heir apparent and who departed from Berkshire Hathaway amid a stock-trading controversy in 2011, has re-emerged in the business world as an activist investor, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Sokol-controlled Teton Capital owns stakes in a variety of companies, including a $57 million stake in a 13-branch Virginia bank called Middleburg Financial, the paper said. Sokol has urged the bank to put itself up for sale to a larger financial institution, raising the issue in letters that the company published in regulatory filings, the paper said.

The thesis is that small banks such as Middleburg Financial, with assets of $1.3 billion, cant compete with the post-crisis capital and regulatory requirements placed upon the financial services industry.

Sokol, owner of 30 percent of Middleburgs shares outstanding, has hired lawyers and investment bankers in his effort to extract value from the bank, which said it looks forward to maintaining a constructive dialogue with Sokol, the Journal said.

The Middleburg Financial issue is the first high-profile business-related sighting of Sokol since the stock controversy of 2011, the Journal reported. Omaha-born Sokol was a favorite Buffett lieutenant for many years, a University of Nebraska at Omaha graduate from modest means who rose to head MidAmerican Energy Holdings, the owner of Iowas largest electric utility.

It became the crown jewel of Buffetts wind-turbine expansion program after Berkshire acquired it in 2000, leaving Sokol at the helm, and ushering him into the rarefied world of chief executive of a Berkshire-owned company.

Sokol was frequently mentioned as Buffetts successor, the Journal said. But that all came to an end in 2011. Sokol bought $10 million of stock in Ohio-based chemicals maker Lubrizol, and then recommended Berkshire Hathaway buy the company, which it did in March 2011 for $9 billion in cash, a 28 percent premium over the closing price a few days before the deal. Sokol then resigned.

Not long after, Buffett made a public statement saying he thought the executives behavior with regard to the Lubrizol affair was inexplicable, inexcusable and violated the companys code of ethics.

Why he chose to do that I will never understand, the paper quoted Sokol as saying about Buffett, who didnt comment for the article.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. owns the Omaha World-Herald.

Contact the writer: 402-444-3197, russell.hubbard@owh.com
Bengal polls: Is children's betterment any issue for the parties?

Feature

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

A lot is being talked about the ongoing Assembly election in Bengal. The ruling party is not ready to give the Opposition the slightest of chance while the latter is not ready to give up so easily. The Election Commission is also hell-bent to make the election a fair one while there is no dearth of media channels and experts sitting in their air-conditioned studios analysing the outcome of the election---in terms of seat and vote shares.

Assembly Polls 2016 Coverage; List of 53 seats going to polls on April 30

But do elections only mean votes and seats? Do the people of Bengal think that only change of guards in the state secretariat the only aim an election serves? In an era when negative verdict rules the roost, have we given up the thought that an election should be treated as an opportunity to better our condition and not take a bullet-less revenge? [High-profile candidates of April 30 phase]

Heckling of a child in polls violence has brought tears to our eyes: Are those tears real?

Take one aspect of our social life and try to connect it with the ongoing election in Bengal, often said to be inhabited by progressive-minded people. How many parties contesting this election are sparing a thought for the children and their conditions? The heckling of a three-year-old girl in North 24 Parganas district by goons allegedly backed by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) rocked the conscience of the state on Monday when the fourth phase of the election was held. Has our conscience really been rocked?

Enough of govt initiatives but what about their implementation on the ground?

The children have been a part of this election but only as petty pawns in a big game of serving the self-interest. The Mamata Banerjee government has intended to show enough 'mamata' (kindness) to the schoolgoers by giving them bicycles or create a lot of noise over the pet Kanyashree project to improve the girls' lot, especially those from families that are socio-economically not well off, through conditional cash transfer. But there are reports about the money not getting utilised in the way it should.

BJP was seen using children in ad campaign which is terrible

The government has done it right to back the children and girls through these initiatives but is it doing enough for these innocent lives to genuinely help them and not extract a mileage during the election? The BJP, for instance, used children in its election ad for Bengal by means of a teacher making them learn that 34 plus five gives us zero (34 years of Left rule added with five years of TMC rule has given the state nothing). The poll panel later asked the party to withdraw this ad but why should a party, which is in power at the Centre and has the responsibility to look after the nation's children, take such a shameful step?

The parties though have mentioned about their plans and programmes for the children in their manifestos for this election, but how far will they be implemented is the million-dollar question.

Stats show how poor the state of children in Bengal still is

There are thousands of questions related to the condition of children in West Bengal: be it education infrastructure, drop outs, health status, etc. To give some examples, 31 per cent of schools are yet to have separate toilets for the girl students and that has pushed many of them to drop out in higher-primary and secondary levels. Twenty-eight per cent schools do not have kitchen for cooking midday meal. The state of electricity supply and drinking water is poor in a good number of schools.

As per the latest national family health survey, only 47 per cent of children in Bengal get mother's milk after birth while only 52 per cent have been fed only breast milk for the first six months. Thirty-one per cent children are still underweight while 54 per cent of children below five years are anaemic. The count of women getting married below is as as high as 40 per cent.

What's the parties' plans for this menace? Do any one of them have any whole-hearted vision to better the picture, apart from aiming to grab 148 seats in the Assembly on May 19?

Or have they been conveniently forgotten since they don't vote?

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Story first published: Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 15:04 [IST]
Court holds writ by Hindu petitioners in Gyanvapi case maintainable: What does this mean

On camera: Varanasi folks in panic as 'ghost in white' goes for a walk on rooftops

India readies to Attract More Foreign Tourists

Feature

oi-Lisa

By Lisa

People travel for various purposes including pleasure, business, sports, education, health and many more. As per the United Nation World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) projection International Tourist Arrivals is to grow by four percent worldwide during 2016.

India too wants to make sure that it gets to attract as many more foreign tourists to India as possible. This is the reason why Government of India has undertaken various initiatives to attract foreign tourists to India.

Multilingual Tourist Infoline:

The Ministry of Tourism has launched the 24x7 Toll Free Multilingual Tourist Info Line from 8th of February this year. Besides English and Hindi, the languages handled by the contact centers include ten International languages namely, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

The multi-lingual helpdesk in the designated languages provides support service in terms of providing information relating to Travel and Tourism in India and assist the callers with advice on action to be taken during times of distress while travelling in India and if need be alert the concerned authorities.

E - Tourist Visa (e-TV):

The Government of India has introduced the facility of e-TV for the citizens of 150 countries at 16 airports. Introduction of e-TV is a Path breaking measure by the Government in easing entry formalities in the country.

The Visa on Arrival facility has been extended to the nationals of Japan with effect from 1st of March this year.

Revision of the e-TV fee:

The e-TV fee has been revised in four slabs of zero, US $25, US $48, and US $60 from 3rd of November last year. Earlier, e-TV application fee was US $60 and bank charge was US $2 which was uniform for all the countries. Bank charges have also been reduced from US $2 to 2.5 % of the e-TV fee.

Publicity and Promotion:

The Ministry of Tourism promotes India as a holistic destination in the international markets. As part of its promotional activities, the Ministry releases campaigns in the international markets under the Incredible India brand-line to showcase various tourism destinations and products including its cultural heritage.

Moreover, a series of promotional activities are being undertaken in tourist generating markets overseas through the India Tourism Offices abroad with the objective of showcasing India's tourism potential and promoting tourism to the country.

These promotional activities include participation in travel fairs and exhibitions; organising road shows, Know India seminars & workshops; organizing and supporting Indian food and cultural festivals; publication of brochures, offering joint advertising and brochure support, and inviting media personalities, tour operators and opinion makers to visit the country under the Hospitality programme of the Ministry.

The Ministry of Tourism provides financial assistance to Stakeholders and Tourism Departments of States and Union Territories for undertaking promotional activities under the Marketing Development Assistance Scheme.

Central Financial Assistance:

Ministry of Tourism operates various schemes through which Central Financial Assistance is provided to States and UTs for overall development and promotion of tourism. Following two schemes have been launched for development of tourism in thematic manner:

Swadesh Darshan:

Swadesh Darshan was launched for development of theme based tourist circuits in a way that caters to both mass and niche tourism in a holistic manner.

Thirteen Circuits namely North-East India Circuit, Buddhist Circuit, Himalayan Circuit, Coastal Circuit, Krishna Circuit, Desert Circuit, Tribal Circuit, Eco Circuit, Wildlife Circuit, Rural Circuit, Spiritual Circuit, Ramayana Circuit and Heritage Circuit have been identified for development under this Scheme.

National Mission on Pilgrimage Rejuvenation and Spiritual Augmentation Drive (PRASAD):

This Scheme has been launched for the development and beautification of pilgrimage sites to tap the growth of domestic tourists driven by religious sentiments and to augment tourism infrastructure at places of pilgrimage to facilitate pilgrims and tourists.

Cities namely Amritsar, Kedarnath, Ajmer, Mathura, Varanasi, Gaya, Puri, Dwarka, Amaravati, Kanchipuram, Vellankanni, Kamakhya and Patna have been identified for infrastructure development under the scheme.

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Story first published: Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 15:24 [IST]
Pakistan's Kashmir irritant for India, but key is not to be irritated

Feature

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Pakistan did deliver the Kashmir message during the meeting of the two foreign secretaries that was held in New Delhi a while ago. There should be a just solution to the Kashmir issue, Pakistan said in a statement released following the meet.

The statement on Kashmir could be interpreted in many ways. Pakistan has several times in the past tried to throw in an irritant during the talks which has always led to the process being derailed. This time around both countries appear to be decided that they would do all it can to take the talks forward.

India must make the best of it:

The Kashmir issue will be discussed over and over again. The fact is that the Pakistan army will not permit anyone to speak with India unless the Kashmir issue is raised. While it is an irritant for India, this time around it looks as though the decision is not to get irritated.

The Kashmir issue has been raised over and over again in the past. However what the experts feel is that the Kashmir issue should not come in the way of other outstanding issues. There are various other issues such as cross border terror, trade and maintaining peace in the region. No matter what we should continue to talk with Pakistan and ensure that the other issues are resolved feels former Chief of the Research and Analysis Wing, C D Sahay.

In addition to this there is also the important SAARC summit coming up in November. The summit takes place in Islamabad and both countries want the same to go on. The cancellation by one nation means the summit is called off and both India and Pakistan do not want to be accused by the other member nations of being responsible for this. The other member nations have often accused India and Pakistan of throwing a spanner in the wheel when it came to the SAARC summit.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi did make a bold move by paying a surprise visit to Pakistan. It was criticised by many, but appreciated by an equal number of people too. It was a big step by the Prime Minister. The Pathankot attack did threaten to derail the entire process. Since then India and Pakistan have been back and forth. However today's talks do signal a certain amount of maturity with both countries indicating, " no matter what we need to talk."

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Story first published: Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 13:14 [IST]
With AQI of 259, Delhi's air on day before Diwali least polluted in 7 years

Delhi LG and CM greet people on Diwali, ask people to be mindful of pollution

Centre plans show at India Gate to mark 2nd anniv of Modi govt

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Apr 26: To mark the second anniversary of the Modi dispensation, the Centre is planning to organise an eight-hour show -- 'Zara Muskura Do' -- at the India Gate here on May 26, highlighting its achievements and successes through films and panel discussions.

According to official sources, a leading Bollywood personality, most likely Amitabh Bachchan, could be the host of the show which will be beamed across the country by Doordarshan. Various schemes and programmes, particularly Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Digital India and Rural Electrification, will be highlighted during the show.

The government has formed a panel of ministers, headed by Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu and comprising Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, to supervise preparations for the show.

The panel has been holding discussions regarding the government schemes which need to be highlighted. Last year, the Modi government had celebrated its first year in office with a tagline 'Saal Ek, Shuruaat Anek'.

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has also asked other ministries to provide details of their achievements.

PTI
After the 'Jihad' comment, Patil now claims \"I never said it\"

Caught on camera: Congress MLA lands in trouble after booze sting in Bihar

India

oi-PTI

Patna/Bettiah, April 26: A Congress MLA in Bihar has landed in trouble after a sting operation caught the legislator on camera purportedly offering liquor to his guests, despite total prohibition imposed in the state by the Nitish Kumar government.

The man caught in the booze sting is Congress MLA from Narkatiaganj in West Champaran district Vinay Verma. Sub Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Aman Kumar said that the MLA had arrived at Sikarpur police station this morning to give a petition for registration of case against unknown journalists behind the sting operation.

As the police was deliberating on his request, the MLA's supporters smelling trouble, created ruckus to help the legislator get away.

The SDPO said the police and Excise Superintendent Rakesh Kumar are deliberating on further action against the MLA after his vanishing act from the police station. The sting showing the Congress MLA allegedly offering booze to guests at a posh hotel in Patna has created a major embarrassment for the grand secular alliance headed by Kumar in which Congress is a partner.

However, the embattled Congress MLA claimed "conspiracy" behind the sting. He claimed that he is a vegetarian and a teetotaler and any talk of offering liquor to guests was not true.

A few persons claiming to be journalists came to me at a hotel in Patna and after talking on various subjects came to liquor ban on which he said the step has been appreciated by people particularly women in rural areas in particular.

He claimed the questioners falsely put words in his mouth in the sting as part of a conspiracy to tarnish his image as well as that of the JD(U), RJD and Congress grand secular alliance.

PTI
Taiwan artist outlined the facial features and accompanying Chinese characters with a needle-point pen on to the surface before carving and then dabbing black paint into the grooves. (Photo: Screen grab)

A Taiwan artist has refused to see the big picture and instead captured the likeness of president-elect Tsai Ing-wen, to celebrate her inauguration next month, on a single grain of rice.

Chen Forng-Shean, who has also sculpted the face of China's late Chairman Mao Zedong on rice, said the staple was a fitting medium for his work because it met the basic needs of ethnic Chinese.

"Rice gives nourishment to the proverbial belly of the ethnic Chinese people. I used rice (as a medium) to encourage Taiwan's leader, Tsai Ing-wen, hoping that she can take care of the common people, so they don't need to endure hunger, and improve their financial situation," he said.

He outlined the facial features and accompanying Chinese characters with a needle-point pen on to the surface before carving and then dabbing black paint into the grooves.

It took three months and more than 10 tries to get the sculpture to Chen's satisfaction. Visitors to his cluttered workshop near the capital Taipei can view more than 150 of his works using a magnifying glass.

Chen reminded Tsai, who takes office on May 20, that she pledged in her acceptance speech in January to work for the people of Taiwan.

"'(Be) modest, modest and even more modest.' I wrote this sentence of hers on to this grain of rice."
D-Syndicate raises its ugly head again: This time on the target are Hindu leaders

Dawood Ibrahim is perfectly fit, says aide Chhota Shakeel

India

oi-Jagriti

New Delhi, Apr 26: Chhota Shakeel, the close associate of underworld don and India's most wanted Terrorist Dawood Ibrahim has refuted media reports about don's health.

According to a report surfaced earlier it was claimed that Dawood has been diagnosed with gangrene in his legs which is not likely to be cured.

Gangrene disease is caused by the loss of effective local blood supply due to high BP blood sugar.

His fitness has been confirmed by both Shakeel and senior intelligence officials, reported the Times of India.

"This kind of rumour is being spread to damage the D-Company's business," Shakeel was quoted as saying. Shakeel also claimed that the Indian agencies are ill informed about the don who is said to be the mastermind of 1993 Mumbai serial blasts that left more than 200 people dead.

India has intensified its efforts to nab Dawood,who is believed to currently living in Karachi, fled from India in 1986.

Dawood on his death bed? Underworld don is suffering from life-threatening disease, says report

Pakistan has denied time and again the fugitive's presence on its soil.

The report also claimed that Dawood is currently getting treated at the Liaquat National Hospital and the Combined Military Hospital, Karachi under the protection of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Reports further suggest that ISI is unlikely to move him out of the country.

Dawood along with Tiger Memon and Yakub Memon had orchestrated 1993 Mumbai serial blasts. Last year, Yakub Memon was hanged to death after court found him guilty in the case. Both Dawood and Tiger are still rooming free.

OneIndia News
Explained: What is the KYC-Based Caller Name Display and how does it help

Rs 71,000 crore worth spectrum to be bought by three telecom players in 5G spectrum auction

DoT writes to Defence Ministry for releasing 3G spectrum

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Apr 26: Gearing up for mega spectrum auction, DoT has written to the Defence Ministry for release of spectrum under the harmonisation process as well as 3G radiowaves under the swapping pact.

"The DoT has written to Defence Ministry for releasing spectrum that were to be freed under harmonisation process and 3G spectrum under swapping agreement," an official told PTI.

Around 200 megahertz of spectrum across the country is to be released by the Defence as also 15 Mhz of 3G spectrum which Department of Telecom plans to put up for auction that is being planned for July. Another telecom ministry official said that DoT has requested the Defence to release the spectrum by May.

"Things have already been resolved among all ministries. The communication is just part of formal process," the official said.

Telecom ministry had proposed to exchange 15 Mhz spectrum it holds in the 1900 Mhz band with same quantum of radiowaves held by the Defence in 2100 Mhz. The 2100 Mhz band is currently used for 3G services.

The Cabinet had approved swapping of spectrum between Ministries of Telecom and Defence in January 2015 and process was to be completed in a year as part of harmonisation of all radiowaves among all ministries.

All ministries and departments like Aviation, Space, Prasar Bharti, Defence, Telecom etc that are holding spectrum were asked to harmonise radiowaves among themselves, identify timeline by when will they be able to vacate spectrum not marked for them in 4-5 years.

DoT expects to get about 200 mhz of spectrum freed from Defence under harmonization process. For 3G spectrum in 2100 band, Trai suggested pan-India base price of Rs 3,746 crore.

The Defence Ministry and the DoT had signed a pact in 2009-10 under which the former had agreed to vacate 25 megahertz (MHz) of 3G spectrum and 20 MHz of 2G in phases.

In return, DoT had committed to set up an exclusive defence network for its communication services. The Defence Ministry had vacated 15 MHz of 3G spectrum which was auctioned in 2010.

It had also vacated 15 MHz of 2G spectrum, which was allocated to new operators in 2008. Under the pact, the remaining spectrum - 10 MHz in 3G and 5MHz in 2G - was to be vacated only after alternative communication network is completed.

Though alternative communication network for Defence is yet to be completed, it provided 5 Mhz of 3G spectrum which was auctioned across 17 circles in 2015 fetching bids worth Rs 10,115 crore as against the estimate of Rs 17,555 crore.

The inter-ministerial panel Telecom Commission is expected to meet on April 30 to discuss spectrum auction modalities.

It is expected suggest a final base price for spectrum to be auctioned which will need the Cabinet approval. The auction is scheduled for July and has potential to fetch Rs 5.36 lakh crore to the Exchequer.

PTI
Why the probe into the Ahmedabad serial blasts was one of the most challenging

IM operative Zainul Abedin arrested by Maha ATS

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, April 26: The Maharashtra ATS has arrested Zainul Abedin an alleged operative of the Indian Mujahideen in connection with the Zaveri Bazaar blasts case. Abedin has been on the wanted list of several state police forces.

He is also accused of supplying explosives for the Dilsukhnagar, Hyderabad blasts and the attacks at Ahmedabad. The ATS Maharashtra had found him to be linked with the Zaveri Bazaar blasts which took place in 2011. These attacks were carried out by the Indian Mujahideen then headed by Yasin Bhatkal.

India hopes IM operative Abedin will be extradited from Saudi Arabia soon

According to the investigations that were conducted in the 2008 Ahmadabad blasts, it was found that Abedin was the one who arranged for the explosives. His name had cropped up in the Dilsukhnagar and Ahmedabad blasts as well.

His name had also cropped when a Bhatkal resident Syed Afaq had named him.

The Karnataka police have been trying to find the explosives' trail in several cases. It is alleged that Abedin had helped supply explosives for both the Hyderabad Dilsukhnagar and Mumbai Zaveri Bazaar blasts.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 16:45 [IST]
In Dawood's health bulletin there is a message of transition in the syndicate

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, April 26: On December 26th 2015 when underworld don, Dawood Ibrahim celebrated his birthday there was an indication that he would retire.

While the news of his retirement did spread around quite soon, the same was immediately denied by his camp.Now another news of him suffering from gangrene has surfaced.

There are several messages that can be read in the above mentioned news items. The don has not been in the best of health for a relatively long time. Around four years back an officer suggested that he walked around with the help of two people.

He is not the suave cigarette smoking don that one gets to see in the photographs which were shot nearly 2 decades back.

The D gang runs on the name of this man. If he dies, then there will be a vacuum and what the syndicate wants is a peaceful transition without their business being affected. The importance of the D Gang can be found in the manner that the ISI shelters him in Karachi.

Not in the best of health:

Dawood has been suffering from health issues for sometime now. While there were various reports that suggested time and again that he is being moved around constantly, they were false. For him his Karachi home is the best safe house as even those sheltering him in Pakistan would find it easier to guard him.

Dawood has been running his business over phone for several years now. His movements have been completely restricted for various issues. While his health has been on the decline for sometime now, there is also this fear of him being apprehended.

Several intelligence bureau officials tell OneIndia that his health has been on the decline. His associates are the ones who run the business.

It is a well established empire thanks to the establishment support he gets in Pakistan and the kind of money he rakes in.Off late there have not been any intercepts on him which suggests he has taken a complete back seat.

Moving on:

What the syndicate does not want is a tussle breaking out between Dawood's right hand men and his brothers to take control over the syndicate. As of now there appears to be no rift as D is still alive. None of the major decisions are taken by Dawood these days and it is either his brother or Shakeel who call the shots.

What the ISI or the syndicate cannot afford is a split in the syndicate. Any news of a split would be music to India's ears.Moreover, the syndicate is the biggest money spinner for the ISI.

There will be many more attempts to test the waters in the days to come. The problem for the syndicate is not just appointing a leader, but also ensure that he is approved of by the henchmen who works in different corners of the world.

OneIndia News
In Samjhauta and Malegaon probes, the NIA walks a tight rope

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Apr 26: The National Investigation Agency finds itself in a tough position today. It is never easy to probe cases which have taken u-turns and more importantly mired in political controversy.

There has been a war of words that have broken out in almost all quarters about the Samjautha Express and Malegaon blasts case.

At first both these blasts were blamed on Muslim outfits and later on, the course changed with Hindus being termed as the accused in the case.

The same was witnessed in the Malegaon 2006 case as well and yesterday a court had discharged 8 Muslims accused of the offence.

A tight rope walk

Although the Ministry of Home Affairs has clearly stated that there is no pressure on the NIA where these cases are concerned, there is a raging public debate about the political conspiracy.

In the Samjautha Express blasts case, the case is already at a trial stage. It is entirely up to the courts to decide about the fate of the accused persons.

In the Malegaon 2008 case the Maharashtra ATS had filed two chargesheets against 14 persons. In this case, Sadhvi Pragya Singh and Lt Colonel Purohit were named as accused persons.

The NIA states that this case is still under investigation. "We are not trying to go soft on any of the accused. We are just trying to ascertain if all the facts are right," an NIA official says.

Even if the NIA is trying to ascertain if there are new facts in the case, the evidence it would have to place on record will need to extremely strong in nature.

The NIA cannot afford strictures from the court as it is India's premier investigating agency. The NIA deals with various foreign agencies and if it has observations made against it then the standing of the agency could go down.

What the NIA will need to do in these cases which have seen several twists and turns is make it clear before the court their stand.

No pressure

The Home Ministry has however said that there is absolutely no pressure on the NIA and it has a free hand to probe the case.

The ministry says that the only thing that needs to be put to rest is if there are any anomalies in the probe.

What set eye balls rolling was when the NIA team visited the US to probe the Lashkar-e-Tayiba link to the Samjautha blasts case.

The US had in fact claimed at the time of the attack that one of the financiers of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba had a role to play in it.

Now this was being visited 6 years after the NIA took over the probe into the case.

The NIA however said that it is not as though they woke up suddenly. We just wanted to get all facts in order so that the case is not weakened before the court.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 13:21 [IST]
Jayalalithaa DA case: For B V Acharya petitions challenging his appointment not new

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Apr 26: Karnataka is not too concerned with the two petitions in the Supreme Court that have challenged the appointment of the special public prosecutor and also questioned its locus standi in filing the appeal in the J Jayalalithaa disproportionate assets case.

While the hearing on the appeals were coming to a close a petition was filed yesterday by an advocate from Madurai challenging the appointment of B V Acharya as the Special Public Prosecutor in the case.

The petition has been adjourned by the Supreme Court by two weeks. It is most likely to come up with a petition that was filed at the start of the appeal proceedings challenging the locus standi of Karnataka in filing the case in the first place.

Well settled points

Karnataka has not given much thought to both these appeals and these are all well settled points. Once it comes up we will put forth our point of view before the Bench. However where the appointment of Acharya is concerned there is not a single anomaly in the same.

With regard to the locus standi, it has been said time and again both by Karnataka as well as the courts that only the prosecuting state has the right to file an appeal.

In this case, Karnataka is the prosecuting state. Hence there is not much to argue on that. When it comes up for hearing, we will putforth out arguments.

When a senior official in Karnataka was asked if these petitions were aimed at delaying the proceedings, he said it could be.

Acharya had trouble in the past as well

For Acharya, the troubles in the Jayalalithaa case are not new. He had been appointed as the Advocate General of Karnataka and at the same time was the special public prosecutor in this case.

Some petitions had been filed stating that he is holding two posts and this was illegal. However many were withdrawn after he quit the post.

However Acharya contended that there is no bar in holding the two posts. He however chose to resign from the post of Advocate General citing pressure from the then BJP government in the state.

At that the AIADMK was termed as a natural ally by senior BJP leader L K Advani and many had felt that this could have been the reason for the pressure on him to resign.

Six months after quitting as the AG, he stepped down as the Special Public Prosecutor in the case. He stepped down at a time when the case before the trial court was at a crucial stage.

When he had quit the post he had cited untold hardship and embarrassment at the hands of interested parties. Several petitions had been filed before the high court and the governor of Karnataka seeking his removal as SPP.

These petitions had come up after interested parties had failed to achieve the objective by inducements and threats he had said.

However after Jayalalithaa was convicted by the trial court and she went up in appeal to the Karnataka there was another complication. Bhavani Singh who was appointed SPP after Acharya resigned had to step down after a petition had challenged his appointment.

Acharya was brought back as the SPP and in the last leg of the hearing on the appeal in the Karnataka High Court he had filed written submissions.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 15:17 [IST]
Pakistan prepared to ''go to any extent'' to help Kashmiris: Army chief Gen Bajwa

It is Jihad says Imran Khan on support for Kashmir issue

Has any separatist lost their child to terrorism?

Kashmir remains core issue with India: Pakistan

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, April 26: Kashmir remains the "core issue" with India, Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry told his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar as they met on the sidelines of a global conference on Afghanistan here on Tuesday, April 26.

A statement from the Pakistan High Commission said "all outstanding issues, including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, were discussed".

"The Foreign Secretary (Chaudhry) emphasized (in his meeting with Jaishankar) that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution, in accordance with UN resolution and wishes of the Kashmiri people," the statement said.

IANS
Four persons of family returning from funeral killed as car rams into BMTC bus

Kerala fire tragedy: Five Puttingal officials surrender

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Kollam (Kerala) April 12: Two days after the fireworks tragedy at Puttingal Devi temple in Paravur in Kollam that left 109 people dead and more than 350 injured, five temple officials who were booked earlier by police surrendered late Monday night.

The surrendered include P.S. Jayalal (president), Krishnankutty Pillai (secretary), J. Prasad, Somasundaram Pillai and Ravindran Pillai -- all top office bearers of the temple.

They are now in the custody of the crime branch police.

Paravur police had earlier charged around 30 people including the temple committee members, the contractors of the fireworks display and his workers under charges of culpable homicide.

The temple officials, after the tragic incident that occurred around 3.30 a.m on Sunday, had gone into hiding.

On Sunday, the Kerala government had ordered a judicial probe and a crime branch probe.

IANS
What is Anti-doping bill? Does India really have a doping crisis?

Lok Sabha discusses railways' demand for grants

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, April 26: The Lok Sabha on Tuesday, April 26 took up for discussion the demand for grants by the railways for the 2016-17 fiscal, with the Congress demanding more rationalisation in the functioning of the railways.

Responding to the debate, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said moves were on to restructure the Indian Railways.

He said restructuring will be ensured to bring about more efficiency, adding that it cannot be achieved without cooperation from all.

Prabhu said the theme of this year's rail budget was to bring the railways back on track and assured that the government was taking steps regarding the safety aspect.

Earlier, the Congress criticised the government for what it said was indulging in gimmicks and said more rationalisation in the railways functioning was needed.

Initiating the debate, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge opposed the proposed bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad and said that the huge funds earmarked for the project could have been diverted to areas where there's need for better communication.

He said the ambitious project will be implemented at a cost of Rs.1 lakh crore, implying that each km of track will cost Rs.200 crore.

Kharge, who was railway minister for a short period, said the government was only indulging in gimmicks.

Moreover, he said, a study by the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad said the bullet train can be economically feasible only if there were 100 trips daily.

Kharge said 64 people died in railway accidents in 2015-16, higher than 54 in 2013-14.

He said the government had in 2015 announced setting up of a 'Rashtriya Rail Sanrakshan Kosh' of Rs.1 lakh crore. "I want to know how much fund has come and how much has been spent on passenger safety," the Congress leader said.

Kharge accused the Centre of not releasing funds for a metro project in Bengaluru in Karnataka.

Participating in the debate, Yogi Adityanath of the Bharatiya Janata Party said the railway budget for the first time rose above political considerations.

"This year's rail budget has given a roadmap for taking the railways forward," Adityanath said.

Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav appreciated the railways for according priority to completion of certain pending projects.

He, however, wanted steps to be taken to start a train service between Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai.

Tapas Mandal (Trinamool Congress), Biju Janata Dal member Rabindra Kumar Jena, Shrirang Appe Barne of the Shiv Sena were among those who also participated in the discussion.

IANS
Not the way to treat people says Sadhvi Pragya after court appearance

Malegaon blasts 2006: Unlikely that Muslims would kill Muslims

India

oi-Vicky

Mumbai, Apr 26: It appears highly impossible that men from the Muslim community would have tried and killed their own people and this theory by the Maharashtra ATS which probed the Malegaon blasts case is not digestible.

These were the observations made by the sessions judge, V V Patil who discharged 8 Muslim men who were accused of carrying out the Malegaon blasts case of 2006.

Malegaon blasts: Breather for accused as NIA says no to MCOCA

After being arrested by the Maharashtra ATS and spending 9 years in jail, 8 persons, were discharged by the court. Signs of them being discharged became evident after the NIA took over the case and had stated that there is no substantial evidence against these persons.

The NIA probe had shown that four Hindus were behind the attacks. On September 2008, four powerful bombs ripped through Malegaon in Maharashtra killing 31 persons and injuring 312.

Unlikely that Muslims will kill Muslims

The court made some strong observations against the ATS. It said that the theory that Muslims would kill their own men in a bid to spread communal disharmony seems highly impossible. It appears that these men had become scapegoats at the hands of the ATS, the court further observed.

The court also took note that there was a Ganesh immersion across Maharashtra prior to these blasts. Had they wanted to cause riots they would have planted bombs at the time of the Ganesh immersion which would have caused the death of Hindus. They would have done this had their intention been to create communal riots the judge also observed.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 9:33 [IST]
Washington: Researchers have recently isolated the parts of the human genome that could explain the differences in how humans experience happiness.

These are the findings of a large-scale international study in over 298,000 people, conducted by VU Amsterdam professors Meike Bartels and Philipp Koellinger.

The researchers found three genetic variants for happiness, two variants that can account for differences in symptoms of depression and eleven locations on the human genome that could account for varying degrees of neuroticism.

The genetic variants for happiness are mainly expressed in the central nervous system and the adrenal glands and pancreatic system.

Prior twin and family research using information from the Netherlands Twin Register and other sources has shown that individual differences in happiness and well-being can be partially ascribed to genetic differences between people.

Happiness and wellbeing are the topics of an increasing number of scientific studies in a variety of academic disciplines. Policy makers are increasingly focusing on wellbeing, drawing primarily on the growing body of evidence suggesting that wellbeing is a factor in mental and physical health.

These findings, which resulted from a collaborative project with the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium, are available for follow-up research.

The study appears in the journal Nature Genetics.
Museum fire could mean losing vital piece of history: Experts

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Apr 26: While the damage accrued to the nearly 40-year-old National Museum of Natural History, which housed among its exhibits several taxidermied animals and a life-size model of a dinosaur, is yet to be assessed, experts said the mishap could mean losing a "vital" piece of history.

A massive fire destroyed the museum in FICCI building in central Delhi in the wee hours today leaving several nature lovers in shock. As many as 35 fire tenders were pressed into service. It took firefighters more than four hours to douse the flames.

"It is indeed a tragic accident. Loss of collection is losing a vital piece of history. Natural history collections are invaluable pieces of scientific knowledge," Director of Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) Deepak Apte said. The incident highlights the importance of taking utmost care of such treasure troves, he said.

Among the prized collections of the NMNH, envisioned to mark the silver jubilee of the country's independence, is a life-size model of a dinosaur and an equally imposing model of an Indian rhino, which have been its crowd-pullers, especially for children during the summer vacations.

The NMNH, which opened to the public in 1978, is one of the two museums focusing on nature in India. It functions under the Ministry of Environment and Forests. "We have a large collection of natural flora and fauna, few fossils and collections of natural history.

According to our policy, we had only displayed one third of our total collection and the rest was kept in reserve. We are not allowed to enter the premises as of now and so have no clue about the extent of the loss in the fire," Naaz Rizvi, a scientist at the museum, told PTI.

She said they were waiting for official clearance to enter the premises and begin estimation of the damage caused. "It is definitely a loss, the collections and specimens were important.

We will try to rebuild our collections. This comes at a time when we were preparing to begin our summer programmes, which are very popular with school children. Our exhibits were planned in such a way that it would help them in their curriculum," Rizvi said.

The NMNH, housed in a six-storied building, has three exhibit galleries, "Introduction of Natural History', 'Nature's Network: Ecology' and 'Conservation'. It also has separate sections dedicated to the 'Universe And The Solar System' and 'Endangered Animals' besides a 'Discovery Room' and an 'Eco Theatre'.

Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, who visited the spot, described the fire mishap as "unfortunate" and ordered a safety audit of all museums under his ministry.

"What happened cannot be reversed, but institutions having natural history collections must be provided support by central government to strengthen its safety and maintenance," Apte said.

"Fossils will be difficult to replace but other specimens of living things like reptiles and insects they would hopefully be able to rebuild," GVR Prasad, Geology Professor at Delhi University said.

PTI
NIA yet to get concrete information on alleged ISIS recruiter's death

India

oi-Vicky

Bengaluru, April 26: The National Investigation Agency is yet to get a confirmation on the death of Shafi Armar, an alleged recruiter for the ISIS in India.

Yesterday some Intelligence Bureau reports suggested that Armar may have died in an air strike in Syria. While most officials confirmed the news, the NIA wanted to double check on the same as he is on their list of most wanted persons.

The confusion is however being caused since there is no real detail on his exact whereabouts. Those arrested by the NIA in a nation wide raid by the NIA were also not sure about his locations. While some stated that he was in Abu Dhabi others felt that he may have been in Syria.

More confirmation needed:

The NIA says that there is still some confirmation needed. It is difficult to ascertain such information so soon. There have been times when operatives have faked their death only to reduce the heat on them.

The first information regarding the death of Armar came from the Americans who believe had killed him in an air strike.

Normally when such an important operatives dies, there are tributes flowing on the social media accounts run by the ISIS. This was noticed in the case of his brother Sultan Armar. Even in the case of Sultan the news about his death was on and off for long.

In the case of Sultan the news about his death made the rounds at least five times. It was only once his followers put out tributes on the social media accounts and announced that Shafi would replace him did the confirmation come by.

For us to have the news of Shafi confirmed is important. He is wanted by us in several cases of alleged recruitments into the ISIS from India, the NIA official also said.

OneIndia News
Toddler from Pakistan undergoes bone marrow transplant in Bengaluru

The persecution of Hindus in Pakistan continues with a Hindu girl forcibly converted and married

'India won't listen to anyone': Anurag Thakur gives strong reply to PCB

Pakistan out of FATF's grey list

'Vindication of determined efforts': PM Shehbaz Sharif on Pakistan's exit from FATF's grey list

Pakistan off the FATFs grey List: What this means

News Flash: Fire accident at Biomax Fuels Limited in Duvvada, Visakhapatnam

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Bengaluru, Apr 26: Pakistan Foreign Secretary to arrive in Delhi to attend 'Heart of Asia' conference, will also hold bilateral meet with his Indian counterpart.

Get all the latest news updates of Tuesday, April 26 here:

10:25 pm: Fire accident at Biomax Fuels Limited in Duvvada, Visakhapatnam. 4 fire tenders at the spot, 7 more on the way.

9:30 pm: I am not against Sanskrit but what will one get out of teaching Sankrit in IITs where technology should be discussed?: Manish Sisodia.

8:45 pm: In a free country the freedom fighters can't be called terrorists: Meenakshi Lekhi, BJP.

8:24 pm: South Sudan rebel chief Machar sworn in as vice-president.

8:05 pm: The two foreign secretaries have met, it is a good thing: Ashraf J Qazi, Ex Pak Envoy.

8:02 pm: We won't tolerate if someone tries to damage and target Congress: Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress.

7:40 pm: Central trade unions call for nationwide protest on April 29 over Finance Ministry's move to reduce EPF interest rate to 8.7%.

7:39 pm: TMC leader and Saradha chit fund scam accused Madan Mitra admitted to hospital due to chest pain and difficulty breathing.

7.16 pm: Shyam Benegal Committee submits report on revamping of Censor board on film certification, to I&B Min Arun Jaitley.

7.06 pm: Union Minister Arun Jaitley to release NDA's vision document in Thiruvananthapuram on 30th April for Kerala Assembly election.

6.58 pm: Sheena Bora murder case: Letter rogatory issued to the USA, Singapore & Hong Kong. LR issued by Special CBI court to trace fund trail.

6.57 pm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend five election rallies in Kerala from May 6 to May 11

6.55 pm: FIR registered in Patliputra police station in Patna against Narkatiaganj Congress MLA Vinay Verma who was caught on camera drinking alcohol.

6.41 pm: PM Modi sends 2-member high level team for spot assessment of damage in Tawang on Arunachal Pradesh landslide.

6.29 pm: A girl climbed up a mobile tower to protest as her family was being grilled by police (25/04/16) in AP.

6.28 pm: Actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan speaks on Salman Khan.

6.27 pm: HC clarified already attached properties of Himachal CM's son & daughter (in connection with money laundering case),will remain attached.

6.15 pm: Delhi HC stays all further proceedings of ED against CM Virbhadra Singh's son and daughter regarding provisional attachment of their properties.

6.07 pm: Children find relief in a pond as vacations in Odisha schools extended till June in view of heat wave in Titlagarh.

6.00 pm: Deserted streets in Odisha's Titlagarh where highest temperature of 48.5*C was recorded on Sunday (24th April).

5.52 pm: Shyam Benegal Committee to submit its report on revamping of CBFC (Censor board on film certification) to I&B Minister Arun Jaitley, shortly.

5.30 pm: It was also decided that specific BJP leaders will raise specific issues. Subramanian Swamy to raise Augusta Westland issue in RS, says Sources.

5.27 pm: We have obtained Zain ul Abedin's custody till 6th May, further investigation underway, says Special IG(ATS) Niket Kaushik.

5.15 pm:It's believed explosives used during 2011 Mumbai blast were procured by Zain ul Abedin, says Special IG(ATS) Niket Kaushik.

5.00 pm: Cabinet decides to restructure crop loan amounting to 10942 cr fr different yrs providing relief to mre than 16 lakh farmers of Maharashtra.

4.45 pm: Complaint filed in ACB against CM Siddaramaiah,BDA Commissioner Shyam Bhat and others for involving in corruption practices while de-notifying lands.

4.30 pm: High level inquiry committee is casteist, we do not heed it's report and it's actions demanded, says Kanhaiya Kumar.

4.15 pm: A senior citizen cuts off his tongue outside Telangana Secretariat as a mark of protest over not being heard on old age pension issue.

4.00 pm: Congress President Sonia Gandhi addressing an election rally in Hooghly, West Bengal.

3.55 pm: SC directs that details of Vijay Mallya's overseas assets be made available to banks as per law.

3.30 pm: The way Modi Govt is working,it is dangerous for democratic values, secularism and democracy as whole, says Sonia Gandhi.

3.15 pm: A team was there to seize the farmer's property after he failed to pay back his loan, farmer had sought some time to pay back bt was refused.

3.00 pm: Trinamool showed you some dreams some years ago and duped you to vote for them. Modiji did same 2 years ago, says Sonia Gandhi.

2.55 pm: SC stays MP HC order cancelling garbage cleaning contract granted to Global Waste Management Pvt Ltd.

2.45 pm: Rajya Sabha adjourned till 3 pm after uproar by Congress over Uttarakhand issue.

2.30 pm: Governor directed CM of #Uttarakhand to prove his majority on March 28. Did BJP govt wait till 28? says GN Azad in RS

2.23 pm: Congress didn't wait for the proclamation to be laid before LS and RS to be discussed, says Arun Jaitley,Union Minister in RS.

2.15 pm: Discussions also covered humanitarian issues including those pertaining to fishermen and prisoners, says Vikas Swarup,MEA.

1.45 pm: I'm v happy about it, it's a game changer, says Maneka Gandhi,Min of Women and Child Development, on panic button in mobiles

1.30 pm: Foreign Secratary clearly conveyed that the Pakistan cannot be in denial on the impact of terrorism on the bilateral relations, says MEA.

1.15 pm: SC extends Italian marine Massimiliano Latorre's stay outside India till September 30th since arbitration proceedings are underway.

1.05 pm: India- Pakistan Foreign Secretary level meeting ends in Delhi.

1.00 pm: Congress and BJP both win 16 seats each in Gandhinagar (Gujarat) Municipal Corporation elections.

12.55 pm: Call drop compensation matter: TRAI to SC: Telecos only interested in filling its coffers and Telecos responsible for majority of call drops.

12.50 pm: Kirit Somaiya gives notice in LS on abuse of tax havens which includes AgustaWestland chopper deal, Panama papers and Karti Chidambaram.

12.45 pm: In Bengaluru, Youth Congress protests against Karnataka BJP President Yeddyurappa for speaking against Yettinahole Project.

12.40 pm: 4 member delegation of Cong & DMK leaders met EC. We told commission, how AIADMK is misusing Govt machinery, says Ghulam Nabi Azad.

12.30 pm: Aurangabad bench of Bombay HC orders upto 60% cut in water supply to liquor factories. 50% water cut till May 10 & 60% water cut post May 10.

12.25 pm: Rajya Sabha adjourned again for 30 mins as noisy protests by Cong MPs over Uttarakhand issue continues.

11.50 am: One CRPF jawan injured in a Naxal attack during search operations in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh.



11.20 am: Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry reaches South Block to meet Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar.

10.33 am: Cooling ops underway at Natural History Museum(Delhi) after massive fire broke out last night, 5 firemen injured

Cooling ops underway at Natural History Museum(Delhi) after massive fire broke out last night, 5 firemen injured pic.twitter.com/f1vb2sB0rd  ANI (@ANI_news) April 26, 2016

10.15 am: Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry arrives in Delhi to attend 'Heart of Asia' conference

Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry arrives in Delhi to attend 'Heart of Asia' conference pic.twitter.com/AMgPpfbGZp  ANI (@ANI_news) April 26, 2016

9.50 am: Loss cannot be counted in money: Union Minister Prakash Javadekar on Delhi museum fire.

9.05 am: Union Minister Prakash Javadekar at National Museum of Natural History, Delhi.

8.40 am: Natural History Museum(Delhi) fire: Smoke and flames still billowing out from a section of the building's top floor

Natural History Museum(Delhi) fire: Smoke and flames still billowing out from a section of the building's top floor pic.twitter.com/PmmlXgbHrc  ANI (@ANI_news) April 26, 2016

8.10 am: Sushma Swaraj admitted with respiratory problem to AIIMS.

8.00 am: Fire which broke out at Delhi's Natural History Museum now under control.

OneIndia News
Pratyusha Banerjee suicide: Should case be handed over to CBI?Sign online petition if you support

Suicide or murder? Rahul Raj Singh gets anticipatory bail in Pratyusha Banerjee case

India

oi-Shalini

Mumbai, April 26: After so many twists and turns relating to the suicide of famed TV actress Pratyusha Banerjee the Bombay High Court on Monday, Apr 26 granted anticipatory bail to her boyfriend Rahul Raj Singh, accused of abetting the suicide of Pratyusha.

During the first hour of hearing process, Justice Mridula Bhatkar also heard three minutes of the audio clip of a telephonic conversation between Pratyusha and her boyfriend Rahul just before an hour before she hanged herself inside her apartment in Mumbai.

According to media reports, Justice Batkar observed that there where no certain evidence to show that the accused instigated or intended the suicide. However, the court also directed Rahul Raj to appear thrice a week for two weeks at the Bangur Nagar police station, which is investigating the case.

Justice, Batkar also observed that from witness' point of view that there were incidents of harrashment and dispute between the couple but there was no certain evidence to prove that Rahul Raj was gulity as there where no sign of abetment in the recorded conversation.

On the other hand, arguing over the bail plea Rahul's lawyer, Abaad Ponda said: "Both the couple were happy with each other and had partied together the night before Pratyusha commited suicide."

In addition to this he also cited the autopsy report which claimed that Pratyusha committed suicide and that it was not murder.

OneIndia News
Thief calls cops for help after being caught by mob

Bangladesh: 2 Gay Rights activist hacked to death

International

oi-Pallavi

Dhaka, April 26: In a horrifying incident, two gay rights activists in Bangladesh were hacked to death for their ideologies. The incident happened on Monday night at a 7-storied apartment in Dhaka. Dhaka metropolitan police spokesperson Maruf Hossain said that at least 6 men entered th ebuilding in the guise of delivery boy and entered the apartment with machetes.

He told journalists, "Unidentified attackers entered an apartment at Kalabagan and hacked two people to death by machetes. Another person was injured."

Private Station Jamuna TV said that the assailants cried "Allahu Akbar" while attacking the men. They fled while firing blanks to ward people off.

Roopbaan, the country's only LBGT magazine identified one of the victims as their editor and gay rights activist Xulhaz Mannan.

This magazine promotes the rights of LGBT Bangladeshis in a country where gay relationships are a punishable offence. The US informed that Mannan had also been working at the American development agency USAID in Bangladesh.

US ambassador Marcia Bernicat said, "I am devastated by the brutal murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another young Bangladeshi."

She also added, "We abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders."

In the wake of the incident, USAID chief Gayle Smith called for the attackers to be brought to justice, describing Mannan as a "righteous" person and willing to fight for what he believed in.

He, along with few of his friends had started the magazine Roopbaan and had also started a rainbow parade that is held every year on April 14, which is a Bengali New Year. Police banned the parade this year for security measures and also held 4 participants who tried to hold the event anyway. Meanwhile, ahead of the parade, Mannan had told media groups that he was receiving threat messages from Islamists online.

"They have even set up an online group to threaten us," he said.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 12:35 [IST]
Canadian executed by Islamic militants in Philippines: Trudeau

International

oi-PTI

Ottawa, Apr 25: A Canadian held hostage by Islamic militants in the Philippines has been executed, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced today, after Filipino authorities said they had found the head of a foreign man on a remote island.

"I'm outraged by the news that a Canadian citizen, John Ridsdel, held hostage in the Philippines since September 21, 2015, has been killed at the hands of his captors," Trudeau said.

"This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests with the terrorist group who took him hostage." Ridsdel, fellow Canadian tourist Robert Hall, Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipina Marites Flor were kidnapped seven months ago from yachts at a marina near the major city of Davao, more than 500 kilometers from Jolo.

Six weeks after the abduction, Abu Sayyaf gunmen released a video on social media of their hostages held in a jungle setting demanding USD 21 million each for the safe release of the three foreigners. The men were forced to beg on camera for their lives, and similar videos were posted over several months in which the hostages looked increasingly frail. In the most recent video, Ridsdel, a retiree aged in his late 60s, said he would be killed on April 25 if a ransom of 300 million pesos was not paid.

Hours after the ransom deadline passed, police in the Philippines said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, a mostly lawless island about 1,000 kilometers south of Manila that is one of the main strongholds of the Abu Sayyaf militant group.

"We found a head in a plastic bag," provincial police chief Wilfredo Cayat told AFP. He said the head belonged to a caucasian man, but emphasized it was impossible to immediately identify. The local police chief issued a report to journalists with similar details.

Trudeau said Canada was working with the government of the Philippines to pursue and prosecute Ridsdel's killers, and that efforts were underway to obtain the release of the other hostages. The Abu Sayyaf is also believed to be holding a Dutch bird watcher kidnapped in 2012, and has been blamed for abducting 18 Indonesian and Malaysian sailors from tugboats near the southern Philippines over the past month.

The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of Islamic militants listed by the United States as a terrorist organization that operates from Jolo and nearby islands.

AFP
RSS to help building Fifth Dham in Cambodia by popularizing Indian culture

RSS to provide a road map for Fifth Dham in Cambodia; report to be given to senior leadership

Elephant collapses and dies after 40-minute tourist ride in Cambodia

International

oi-Shubham

Phnom Penh, April 26: In a sad incident, a female elephant which gave tourists lifts at Cambodia's famous Angkor Wat Temple, collapsed and died after her last trip last week, a Phnom Penh Post report said.

The elephant, named Sambo, was employed since 2001 when she started working for the Angkor Elephant Company. On Friday (April 22), the elephant, believed to be aged between 40 and 45, collapsed in an archaeological spot near Bakheng Mountain, never to get up again. She gave a 40-minute ride to the tourists in 40-degree Celsius temperature before the tragedy struck.

It was said that Sambo died of heart attack in the heat.

Animal rights activists raised their voice after this incident, seeking to stop the practice of using elephants for tourist rides at the Angkor archaeological park in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

An image of Sambo's carcass was shared online and Facebook posts were shared several thousand times. A petition was also launched on change.org to stop the practice. It asked Apsara (Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap) to take note of the incident, adding that there are no cruelty-free elephant rides.

The Elephant Valley Project in nearby Mondulkiri said the Angkor Elephant Company still has 13 animals and asked them to put an end to the practice.

Angkor Wat, which is the largest religious monument in the world, is Cambodia's biggest tourist attraction.

Oneindia News
India, Pak should have direct talks on Masood Azhar: China

International

oi-PTI

Beijing, April 26: India and Pakistan should resolve the issue over Masood Azhar through "direct" and "serious consultations", China on Tuesday, April 26 said, weeks after blocking India's bid in the UN to ban the JeM chief that generated negativity in bilateral ties.

"We encourage all parties related to the listing matter of Masood Azhar to have direct communication and work out a solution through serious consultations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said in a written communication to media here on the issue which drew serious protests from New Delhi over Beijing's last minute move to block its bid to slap a UN ban on Azhar.

Replying to a question about whether there is any change in China's stand on the issue after a number of top Indian officials conveyed India's strong concerns over the move, Hua said as per the rules of the UN Committee on counterterrorism, the relevant countries should have direct talks.

In addition to Hua's comments, Chinese officials expressed confidence that the issue will be resolved as Beijing is also in touch with Islamabad on the issue.

Her comments came as Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan held talks in New Delhi today, in which India raised the Azhar issue. While External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took up the issue with her counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of Russia, India, China (RIC) Ministers meet in Moscow on April 18, it was raised by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar with his Chinese counterpart the same day in Beijing.

The issue was subsequently raised by National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi during the just-concluded 19th round of India-China border talks.

PTI
Islamic State bomber detained in Russia for attempting attack in India was recruited through Telegram

Why India should get access to Islamic State bomber detained in Russia

Prosecutions story may be attractive but should be backed by evidence

ISIS militants ask for fake sick notes from doctors: Here is why

International

oi-Jagriti

London, Apr 26: In a bid to escape fighting on the frontline, the Islamic State (ISIS) militants have started asking doctors to issue them sick notes, media reported.

Territory losses military pressure, financial problems and poor management have emerged as main reasons behind militants low morale to fight.

"Now some militants are so disillusioned they are looking for any way they can to get out of the fighting," a report by the US military's think-tank, the Centre for Combating Terrorism (CTC) said.

"This was reflected on a wider level when the Islamic State issued a general amnesty for deserters at the beginning of October 2015. The personnel shortages were also evidenced by an Islamic State document that emerged last year," it said.

ISIS facing financial hardship: 50 percent salary cut for militants

Amid financial hardship earlier this year, ISIS decided to reduce the salaries of all its militants by 50 percent. The decision was taken after the massive airstrikes launched by the US led international coalition hit its banks in Iraq.

The militants now get the equivalent of just 100 pounds a month because of "exceptional circumstances", according to a document released by Bayt al-Mal, the Treasury Ministry of ISIS.

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Story first published: Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 11:07 [IST]
Obama boosts Islamic State fight, asks Europe to do the same

International

oi-PTI

Hannover, Apr 25: Evoking history and appealing for solidarity, President Barack Obama today cast his decision to send 250 more troops to Syria as a bid to keep up "momentum" in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State extremists.

He pressed European allies to match the US with new contributions of their own. Obama's announcement of the American troops, which capped a six-day tour to the Middle East and Europe, reflected a steady deepening of US military engagement, despite the president's professed reluctance to dive further into another Middle East conflict.

As Obama gave notice of the move, he said he wanted the US to share the increasing burden. Obama discussed the IS fight with British Prime Minster David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minster Matteo Renzi. The president formally announced the new troop deployment in a speech about European unity and trans-Atlantic cooperation, a running theme of his trip.

Speaking in Germany, he evoked the continent's history of banding together to defeat prejudice and emerge from the "ruins of the Second World War." "Make no mistake," Obama said.

"These terrorists will learn the same lessons as others before them have, which is, your hatred is no match for our nations united in the defense of our way of life." The rhetoric belied an underlying frustration in his administration about allies' contributions to the US-led fight in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

Although the coalition includes some 66 nations, the US has conducted the vast majority of the air strikes, and there has been little appetite by other nations to send in ground troops of their own. The president recently rattled leaders in Europe and the Middle East by describing allies as "free riders."

He made a passing reference to that complaint on Monday, as he noted that not all European allies contribute their expected share to NATO: "I'll be honest: Sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense."

On stops in Riyadh, London and Hannover this week, Obama repeatedly pushed allies for more firepower, training for local forces and economic aid to help reconstruct regions in Iraq that have been retaken from Islamic State control but are still vulnerable. Obama appeared to come up short in Riyadh, when he met with Arab allies.

AP
The findings support the idea that, although continental splitting undoubtedly reduced intercontinental migration of dinosaurs, it did not completely inhibit it.

Washington: Using 'network theory' for the first time to visually depict the movement of dinosaurs around the world during the Mesozoic Era, a team of researchers has suggested that dinosaur families chose to exit Europe.

The research also reaffirms previous studies that have found that dinosaurs continued to migrate to all parts of the world after the 'supercontinent' Pangaea split into land masses that are separated by oceans.

Study lead Dr Alex Dunhill from the University of Leeds, said: "We presume that temporary land bridges formed due to changes in sea levels, temporarily reconnecting the continents."

Dunhill added, "Such massive structures - spanning, for example, from Indo-Madagascar to Australia - may be hard to imagine. But over the timescales that we are talking about, which is in the order of tens of millions of years, it is perfectly feasible that plate tectonic activity gave rise to the right conditions for such land bridges to form."

In the study, the researchers used the Paleobiology Database that contains every documented and accessible dinosaur fossil from around the world. Fossil records for the same dinosaur families from different continents were then cross-mapped for different periods of time, revealing connections that show how they have migrated.

Some regions of the world, such as Europe, have extensive fossil records from a long history of palaeontology digs, while other parts of the world have been largely unexplored. To help account for this disparity in fossil records, which could otherwise skew the findings, the researchers applied a filter to the database records to only count the first time that a dinosaur family connection occurred between two continents.

The findings support the idea that, although continental splitting undoubtedly reduced intercontinental migration of dinosaurs, it did not completely inhibit it.

Surprisingly, the research also showed that all connections between Europe and other continents during the Early Cretaceous period (125-100 million years ago) were out-going. That is, while dinosaur families were leaving Europe, no new families were migrating into Europe.

Dr Dunhill said: "This is a curious result that has no concrete explanation. It might be a real migratory pattern or it may be an artefact of the incomplete and sporadic nature of the dinosaur fossil record."

The study is published in the Journal of Biogeography.
Bengal polls: Don't vote for us if you think I am a thief, Mamata says in rally

Kolkata

oi-Shubham

Kolkata, April 26: Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee on Monday (April 25) told the audience in an election rally in South Kolkata that if they thought she is a thief, they may choose not to give her their votes. "We will not be there if the people don't want us," Banerjee said.

Assembly Polls 2016 Coverage; List of 53 seats going to polls on April 30

Canvassing support for the local party candidate Monish Gupta, a former chief secretary and the state's power minister now, Banerjee said people can vote for him since he is not a thief.

The chief minister has clearly been rattled by the "Choreder sarkar, ar nei dorkar" (we don't need the thieves' government) slogan which has been raised against her party, feels the Opposition. A number of leaders, ministers and MPs of the TMC have been accused in the Saradha chit-fund scam and the more recent Narada sting operation, posing a serious threat to Banerjee' bid for the second successive term in office. [High-profile candidates of April 30 election]

In another rally a few days ago, Banerjee said she could have given a thought to selection of her party's candidates had the Narada sting operation came to the fore earlier. She said once the candidates were selected, she did not have much to do. According to the Opposition, the TMC supremo has been unsettled by the Narada sting operation issue and she is confused between who is a thief and who is not.

In Monday's rally, Banerjee also urged the people not to allow the "murderers" to power.

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Story first published: Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 16:26 [IST]
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The machine is for the people who cannot afford to buy food or water. (Photo Jiji K Ninan/ Facebook)

Mumbai: There are times when you go out of your way to help someone who is unprivileged and somewhere between the lines you end up making a small difference in the world.

At times your small act of kindness can encourage other people to help others in need as well.

Recently a restaurant in Kochi, installed a public refrigerator for donating food to the poor and homeless. Following their footsteps, Mar Gregorious Orthodox Church in Janakpuri, Delhi installed a food vending machine in its vicinity.

The machine is for the people who cannot afford to buy food or water. These people can take products in the fridge as per their need from this machine.

As the climate is hot, chilled water and some seasonal water fruit is what our body craves for and there are some under privileged people who cant afford these things. However, this little step by the church can bring some change and help those who are in real need, says Nancy Roger, a visitor of the church to Deccan Chronicle.

The machine, which is named Share N Care', is stocked up with water and fruit. The aim behind this act of charity is to serve those who are in genuine need and cant afford these basic necessities throughout summer.
Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pregnancies. When deliberate steps are taken to end a pregnancy, it is called an induced abortion, or less frequently "induced miscarriage". The unmodified word abortion generally refers to an induced abortion.
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When one thinks of Ted Talks the first image that pops up in the mind is that of a huge hall with speakers and guests who are waiting to hear them. But, taking a break from AC halls and everything related to just talks were the members of TEDxHyderabad recently. Last week, 10 thought leaders and 30 guests were part of a moving bus event. Its called the salon event and it isnt your usual Ted Talk, says Viiveck Verma, co-organiser of TEDxHyderabad.

This was the first moving bus Tedx event in the world. We also got featured under the innovation initiative by TED. When you ask Viiveck why they came up with the idea to go on a small tour he says, Most of the time the speaker is in some huge hall giving a talk on a very important issue. But, the implementors are far away. We wanted to bring the speakers and implementors together at the place where this issue is taking place, so that we could see what the practical problems are. So we came up with this concept.

The topics were simple and very relevant to the city. The two problems right now that Hyderabad is facing are water conservation and traffic, he explains. So, after a session at Raahgiri where the group educated people about water conservation, the bus left for Gandipet. Where they drove near the dry bed of the lake and we watched various talks. The group then discussed what could be done to conserve water, now that the monsoon is a month away. After that, the next place that the bus stopped was the city Traffic Control Room. There we discussed traffic issues that plague us. The additional DGP of Police hosted there, he adds.

For now, the Salon event has a lot of takers and the organisers are gearing up for more events on the moving bus. Viiveck says, We have one event about healthcare in May and two events on art and education in June. All these events will take place at areas that have a connection with the topics.
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The foreign exchange liquidity problem in Papua New Guinea is taking a toll on many business houses, according to the head of foreign exchange at Moni Plus, Mal Parsonson.He said Moni Plus FX, which began trading in January 2013, faced the same difficulty as all other foreign exchange dealers in the PNG market, and was forced to ration currency sales.Parsonson said that the liquidity problem had been chronic for some years  since the end of the PNG LNG project construction stage.The effective revaluation and imposition of the trading ban has appeared to exacerbate the situation since June last year, he said.Prime Minister Peter ONeill had said last week that the Government was resorting to short-term agreements to address the problem.ONeill said a Government delegation was in Washington holding talks with the lending arm of the Work Bank - the International Finance Corporation - with other partners.Last week, Puma Energy, a major importer of crude oil, said it had been badly affected by the forex shortage.Puma Energy Business Support general manager Hulala Tokome said it was no secret that the economy faced forex liquidity and Puma faced the same problem.Parsonson said the US$250 million facility which the Government was trying to secure did not seem enough.Anecdotal evidence suggests the orders outstanding are more in the order of K3 billion. The IFC facility would provide only short-term relief, he said.He said the one of the problems was the large amount of private sector investment in Port Moresby.Look around the city at all the cranes in the air, and the cars that arrive every fortnight, he said.Those developments require very large purchases from overseas, and the economy just does not have the FX liquidity at the moment to fund those imports.We need the big new projects such as Gulf LNG, Wafi-Golpu and Frieda River to come online, but those are all over 12 months away.The National/ ONE PNG
The Member for Manus is calling on Prime Minister Peter O'Neill and Foreign Affairs and Immigration Minister, Rimbink Pato, to push for the return of two expatriates to face questioning and possible prosecution in relation to the murder of an asylum seeker, two years ago.Ronny Knight, says evidence in court says the two guards, an Australian and a New Zealander from contractor G4S Security, were the last seen kicking Iranian Reza Berati prior to his death, following a riot at the asylum center in February 2014.The pair had been suspects but fled the country, while police were investigating the murder.Mr. Knight says, justice has been served on convicts Joshua Kaluvia and Louie Efi, and the two expatriates must also return to face the law.Ronny Knight says, the Government's ignorance in pushing to bring back the two expatriates, will show that there are two sets of laws, one for Papua New Guineans and another for foreigners. NBC / ONEPNG
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A contractor from Indore to whom the couple had allegedly sold the girl has been arrested on charges of employing a minor as a child labourer. (Representational image)

Harda, Madhya Pradesh: A step-father was arrested for allegedly molesting and trying to rape his minor daughter, police said on Tuesday. Police also arrested the victim's mother for aiding her husband in the criminal act.

Besides, a contractor from Indore to whom the couple had allegedly sold the girl has been arrested on charges of employing a minor as a child labourer.

All three of them were arrested on Monday, Additional Superintendent of Police, Kiranlata Kerketta said. The victim belongs to Timarni town in the district.

After allegedly selling her to contractor Kamlesh (32) her step-father Dayaram (55) and mother Sunderbai (49) filed a complaint with police that he (contractor) forced his daughter to work as a child labourer.

However, when police rescued the girl from Indore, she narrated an all together different story by alleging that her step father used to molest her and also tried to rape her and her mother used to aid her husband in the act, the ASP said.

Acting on the complaint of the victim, police arrested Dayaram, Sunderbai and Kamlesh under section 363, 354 and 370 of IPC and also under relevant sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO), she added.
Since EbonyLife launched back in 2013, theyve churned out some of the biggest films Nollywood has ever seen. Following the success of their latest star-studded film, Chief Daddy, weve now learnt more about their next effort, Oloture, and were understandably hyped.

The film follows the story of a young journalist, Oloture (Sharon Ooja), who goes undercover to expose the shady underworld of human trafficking. New to this brutal environment, she finds warmth in the relationships she forms with the prostitutes she takes up residence with.

EbonyLife usually doles out romantic comedies  from the game-changing Fifty to the record-shattering The Wedding Party  and given how successful those have been, were surprised that theyre trying out a new formula with such a dark and gritty drama.

Speaking about this, Mo Abudu, the CEO of EbonyLife, said

Oloture explores a world very few people know anything about and had to be dealt with in a particular way. Its not a documentary, but it addresses real issues most of our society doesnt see. Harnessing the talents of some of the countrys top actors and filmmakers to produce a film that is both intelligent and profound  and breaks bold new genre and stylistic ground for Nollywood.

Oloture also stars Segun Arinze, Omawumi, Lala Akindoju, Omoni Oboli and Blossom Chukwujekwu. While no release date has been announced yet, were expecting a trailer soon and are super excited. Hopefully, we wont have to wait until Christmas time before the film is released.
According to the police official, the complainant has a Facebook and a Gmail account, which she accesses on her cellphone. (Representational image)

Mumbai: A case was registered against an unknown person for sending a vulgar message to a teacher in Tulinj area of Nalasopara, on Sunday.

The 32-year-old teacher resides at Achole Cross Road, with her husband and eight-year-old son. According to police officials, the teacher received a text from one Ashish Trivedi on Facebook messenger. At the time she thought that the sender was one of her students so she replied to him, but later the accused started sending her vulgar texts on the social media sites app, after which she went to the police station and lodged a case.

Confirming the development, police inspector Prakash Birajdar told The Asian Age, As per the profile of the accused, he is a Madhya Pradesh resident, and we are verifying the facts. As of now a complaint has been registered under the Section 509 (Word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) and 354D (Stalking) of the Indian Penal Code.

According to the police official, the complainant has a Facebook and a Gmail account, which she accesses on her cellphone. On April 18, around 10 am when she was sitting in a school office, she received at text saying good morning on Facebook messenger. The complainant avoided replying, but again on April 20, she received a text from the same person. After which she replied, after which the accused started sending her vulgar messages.

After receiving a few vulgar texts, the teacher told him not to text her, and threatened to inform the police, but the accused kept on messaging her. The complainant also stated that the accused had started sending her vulgar texts at midnight too, said an official.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), on Friday, announced the end of the emergency phase of Lassa fever outbreak in the country.

This was made known in a statement signed by the Chief Executive Officer of NCDC, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, on Friday, in Abuja.

Ihekweazu said that the announcement followed a joint epidemiological review by the NCDC, WHO Nigeria and other partners.

According to him, on the 22nd of January 2019, the NCDC activated a national Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), to coordinate response activities.

He said that the EOC was in response to an increase in Lassa fever cases at the beginning of the year.

Ihekweazu added that since the beginning of the outbreak, 578 confirmed cases including 129 deaths have been recorded from 21 states as at May 26.

He said that the NCDC, Federal Ministry of Environment, and that of Agriculture and Rural Development, as well as other partners coordinated by WHO Nigeria, led response activities across the country.

He, however, noted that lessons from the 2018 outbreak and strategic response had improved preparedness through training of health workers across the country and communications campaign before the outbreak.

According to him, this included early deployment of One-Health Rapid Response Teams, to affected states and support for surge staff deployment.

Establishment of new treatment centres in Kebbi, Benue and Kaduna and strengthening of existing treatment centres.

Re-positioning of medical and treatment supplies in all 21 states with confirmed cases in 2018.

Improved collaboration with agricultural and environmental health stakeholders and introduction of rodent control strategies among others, he said.

Ihekweazu said that following a robust response, the Lassa fever case count has significantly declined in the past seven weeks and has now dropped below levels considered to be a national emergency.

He added that this year, there was also a decline in case fatality rate of Lassa fever, from 27 percent in 2018 to 22 percent in 2019.

The NCDC boss said that despite the end of the emergency phase of the outbreak, NCDC expects that sporadic cases may continue to be reported in endemic areas.

He also said that the agency would coordinate preparedness and response activities through a multi-sectoral Lassa Fever Technical Working Group.

The groups focus is to continue monitoring cases, as well as improve disease prevention, surveillance, diagnosis and response activities across all levels in Nigeria.

According to Ihekweazu, the agency will continue to improve its knowledge, preparedness and response to Lassa fever outbreaks.

Given that Lassa fever is endemic in Nigeria, it is likely that the country will continue to record cases of Lassa fever.

However, we have several research strategies to improve our knowledge of the disease.

We are also working with states and partners to establish more long-term strategies, such as improved risk communication, infection prevention and control, regular environmental sanitation.

Others are; enhanced capacity of health workers and improvement of treatment centres, among others,  he said.
Mohammed Salah

Jurgen Klopp has finalised his 23-man Liverpool squad that will travel to Madrid to face Tottenham in the Champions League final at the Wanda Metropolitano on Saturday evening.

As expected, Naby Keita misses out through injury having failed to recover in time from a very serious adductor issue picked up in the Reds semi-final first-leg clash with Barcelona.

There is hope, however, that the diminutive midfielder will be fit to represent his country at the Africa cup of nations, with Guinea having included the 24-year-old in their provisional squad.

Doubts had also been raised over the fitness of Brazil forward Roberto Firmino, who had been struggling with a muscle injury picked up on April 21.

Klopp, however, indicated on Tuesday that the former Hoffenheim man would play some part, stating: Everything is fine. What we saw so far looked really good, Im pretty sure he will be fine.

The German trainers assessment has rung true, with Firmino having been included in the travelling party that will be eager to end a long-term trophy drought at one of Europes most storied clubs.

Full Liverpool squad:

Goalkeepers  Alisson Becker, Caoimhin Kelleher, Simon Mignolet

Defenders  Virgil van Dijk, Dejan Lovren, Joel Matip, Andy Robertson, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Joe Gomez, Alberto Moreno

Midfielders  Fabinho, Jordan Henderson, Adam Lallana, James Milner, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Giorginio Wijnaldum

Attackers  Roberto Firmino, Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane, Divock Origi, Daniel Sturridge, Xherdan Shaqiri, Rhian Brewster

While Liverpool travelled to Spain on Friday, Tottenham made the trip two days earlier, with both star striker Harry Kane and midfielder Harry Winks deemed fit enough to make the trip.

Pochettino, however, has remained coy on whether England captain Kane will feature from the start  or at all.

Full Tottenham squad:

Goalkeepers  Hugo Lloris, Michel Vorm, Paulo Gazzaniga, Alfie Whiteman

Defenders  Kieran Trippier, Danny Rose, Toby Alderweireld, Jan Vertonghen, Davinson Sanchez, Kyle Walker-Peters, Juan Foyth, Serge Aurier, Ben Davies

Midfielders  Harry Winks, Victor Wanyama, Eric Dier, Moussa Sissoko, Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen, George Marsh, Oliver Skipp

Attackers  Heung-min Son, Harry Kane, Erik Lamela, Fernando Llorente, Lucas Moura

After a recent tweak in UEFA regulations, both Klopp and Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino will be able to name up to 12 substitutes for the big game.
Kanpur: A 16-year-old boy allegedly committed suicide after being scolded by his mother for failing in his exams in Trivedi Nagar area here, police said on Tuesday.

Amit, son of Sushil Tiwari, had failed in his Class XI exams recently. On Monday evening, when he was going out to play his mother scolded him following which he got upset and went back to his room.

Late in the evening when he did not come out of his room, the family members went there and found him hanging from a ceiling fan, they said.

As soon as the neighbours heard their screams, they reached there and rushed him to a near by hospital. He was later transferred to the Medical college where he was declared dead, they said.

Police have registered a case and investigation are on into the matter, they said.
SOURCE: GISTVIC.COM

Adeyemi Semilore Also Known As Semilore comes through with a pre-Friday surprise banger titled Pray, produced by Masta Tee. Gistvic Reports.

This comes after sharing The Pre Viral Video produced by Masta Tee and his early 2019 banger Monifere produced by Masta Tee.





Semilore is on fire this year, releasing 3 tracks in the span of 5 months, the best weve experience from the musical god himself.





Follow Him On Instagram @OfficialSemilore



DOWNLOAD SEMILORE-PRAY

SOURCE: GISTVIC.COM

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The Milan Court of Appeals overturned lower court's order, sentenced Finmeccanica's former chief Giuseppe Orsi to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption in the deal of 12 VVIP choppers to India. (Photo: AFP/Representational Image)

New Delhi: CBI has approached External Affairs Ministry seeking help of diplomatic channels to get a copy of an Italian court's order in the AgustaWestland helicopter deal.

Sources said the agency has completed domestic portion of its investigation in the case but judicial requests sent to eight countries are still pending.

They said the agency cannot react on the basis of media reports and any action will be possible after it gets the copy of the order issued by Milan Courts of Appeal equivalent of high courts in the Indian legal system.

The sources said once the order, in Italian, is received, the agency will get an authentic translation done before taking note of the observations made by the court there.

The Milan Court of Appeals, which overturned lower court's order, sentenced Finmeccanica's former chief Giuseppe Orsi to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption in the deal of 12 VVIP choppers to India for over Rs 3,600 crore while former CEO of Finmeccanica's helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland, Bruno Spagnolini, has been handed over four year sentence.

On January 1, 2014, India scrapped the contract with AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW101 VVIP choppers to the Indian Air Force (IAF) over allegations of kickbacks by it for securing the deal.

The then UPA government had also barred Finmeccanica and its group companies from participating in any new programme of the defence ministry.

A case was registered by CBI against former IAF chief S P Tyagi and 12 others, including his cousins, for alleged cheating, corruption and criminal conspiracy in the Rs 3,600 crore VVIP helicopter deal, in which Rs 360 crore is alleged to have been paid as kickbacks.

The former IAF chief had strongly refuted the allegations against him. CBI has alleged in its FIR that middleman Guido Haschke, through his Tunisia-based company, Gordian Services Sarl, entered into several consultancy contracts with Agusta Westland from 2004-05 onwards and, "almost on a back-to-back basis he also made consultancy contracts with the Tyagi brothers".

Under the cover of these contracts, Haschke is alleged to have sent Euro 1.26 lakh (about Rs 1.06 crore) and Euro 2 lakh (about Rs.1.68 crore) to the Tyagi brothers.

The allegation against the former IAF chief is that he reduced the height of the VVIP helicopters so that AgustaWestland could be included in the bids.
A video has emerged online showing a Nigerian lady was lucky to find hard drugs hidden inside some slippers her friend gave her to carry abroad.

The lady, who was apparently shocked to find the hidden drugs including Tramadol hidden inside the slippers, could be heard shouting Jesus Christ repeatedly.

It took more than one person to tear open the sole of the slippers were the hard drugs were hidden. At a point, a knife had to be used to open it up

It would have been a disaster and jail term if she was caught by the authorities on her way in or out of the country.

Watch the video below:
New Delhi: Under attack over deployment of central forces inside National Institute of Technology in Srinagar, the government on Tuesday said in Lok Sabha that it was not a suo moto or unilateral decision but it was done following requests from the institute authorities.

"It was not our decision, not a suo moto decision. There was a request from the NIT authorities and hence the decision was taken to deploy central forces in the campus. It was not a unilateral decision of the central government," Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said.

Rijiju's remarks during Question Hour came after Congress chief whip Jyotiraditya Scindia alleged that by deploying the central forces in the NIT campus, the central government had undermined the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

The NIT in Srinagar had witnessed clashes between local and outstation students after India lost to West Indies in World T-20 semi final match on March 31, following which paramilitary forces were deployed at the campus.

Scindia accused the Jammu and Kashmir Police of "brutally" attacking the protesting students of NIT, claiming that they resorted to lathicharge on those students who were shouting slogans like 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.

The Congress leader's comments invited strong protests from treasury benches, particularly from BJP MP and former Union Home Secretary R K Singh, who said Jammu and Kashmir Police is known for its sacrifices for the country's unity and integrity and such comments are unwarranted.

Rijiju said it is a known fact that it is the state police which takes action wherever necessary and the central forces only help the local authorities. He said three companies of paramilitary personnel were deployed inside the NIT campus while outside is being guarded by the Jammu and Kashmir Police. A company of central forces comprises of around 100 personnel.

AIMIM member Asaduddin Owaisi also disapproved of Scidia's comments saying 3,000 personnel of Jammu and Kashmir Police have laid down their lives serving the nation. Owaisi said after deployment of central forces, there was a perception that non-locals can be protected only by central forces, which was not good.

"Alienation of youth has been increasing and if we do not take action to stop alienation of youth, there will be problems," he said.

Rijiju said the reports of HRD Ministry's fact-finding team, Jammu and Kashmir government-appointed Magisterial Inquiry and an internal committee were yet to come and action will be taken as per their recommendations.

Intervening in the debate, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said when the non-local students had requested to go home, the state government made all arrangements and many of them now have returned to the campus.

Singh said those students who missed their examination will now be given opportunity to appear in the tests between May 26-29.

Tension started brewing inside the NIT campus, located on the banks of Dal lake, after some local students burst crackers to celebrate Indian team's defeat in the T-20 match. This was protested by the outstation students resulting in clashes.

During the Zero Hour later, Scindia mocked at the government over the Srinagar NIT row, questioning when it would hoist the national flag there as he referred to the HRD Ministry's recent directive that central universities will fly the tricolour at 207 feet.

The former Union Minister also said that official policy is to have a majority of teachers from outside the place where such institutes are located but in NIT most of the teachers are locals.

"I will ask the HRD Minister when will you fly the national flag at the entrance of the NIT? I am sure members sitting in front of me who preach about nationalism will agree with me," he said, in a jibe at the treasury benches.
Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia:

Former Fortress Investment Group (FIG) portfolio manager and managing director Maggie Arvedlund is trying to raise $500m to launch her own debt, equity fund, Turning Rock Capital.

A report by Reuters said that Arvedlund is planning to launch the hedge fund by year-end. It added that Turning Rock will imitate the approach of Partners Fund and will focus investing in debt and equity investments. Reuters added that the new fund will also cater to smaller and mid-market opportunities in North America and "below-the-radar" securities an......................

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Reprinted from The National

In Israel's evermore tribal politics, there is no such thing as a "good" Arab -- and the worst failing in a Jew is to be unmasked as an "Arab lover." Or so was the message last week from Isaac Herzog, head of Israel's so-called peace camp.

The shock waves of popular anger at the recent indictment of an Israeli army medic, Elor Azaria, on a charge of "negligent homicide" are being felt across Israel's political landscape.

Most Israeli Jews bitterly resent the soldier being put on trial, even though Azaria was caught on camera firing a bullet into the head of a badly injured Palestinian, Abdel Fattah Al Sharif.

In the current climate, Mr Herzog and his opposition party Zionist Union have found themselves highly uncomfortable at having in their midst a single non-Jewish legislator.

Zuheir Bahloul, an accommodating figure who made his name as a sportscaster before entering politics, belongs to the minority of 1.7 million Palestinian citizens, one in five of the population.

Unlike most of Israel's Palestinian politicians, he preferred to join a Zionist party than one of several specifically Arab parties. Nonetheless, he embarrassed colleagues by briefly pricking the bubble of unreason cocooning the country.

Attacks on soldiers were wrong, said Mr Bahloul, but a Palestinian such as Mr Al Sharif -- who tried to stab soldiers at a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron -- was not a "terrorist" by any normal definition. Terrorists target civilians, Bahloul noted, not soldiers enforcing an illegal occupation.

Other Zionist Union MPs raced to disown Mr Bahloul, while Mr Herzog warned that the party was unelectable as long as it was seen as full of "Arab lovers."

Mr Bahloul is hardly the first Palestinian politician in Israel to find himself denounced as a "bad" Arab. But the others have mostly sinned by demanding an end to Israel's status as a Jewish state. Israel is currently promulgating a law to oust such dissenters from the parliament.

Now the earth is shifting beneath the feet of formerly "good Arabs" such as Mr Bahloul, the small number who cling to the belief that a self-declared Jewish state can be fair to them.

It is no longer just the state's Jewishness that is sacrosanct. The occupation is too.

Salim Joubran, the only Palestinian judge in the supreme court, fell foul of this creed last week as the court considered an appeal from Raed Salah, leader of the northern Islamic Movement, against his jail sentence for incitement to violence.

There is almost continual incitement by Jewish political and religious leaders, but indictments are almost unheard of. Two rabbis who wrote a book, the King's Torah, calling for the killing of Palestinian babies were investigated but not charged.

In his minority opinion, Mr Joubran thought it reasonable to observe that Mr Salah's remark urging the Arab world to support the Palestinians with a "global intifada" to protect Jerusalem's Islamic holy sites under occupation was more rhetorical than a call to arms.

He was wrong. Israelis took to social media calling for an "intifada" against both him and the supreme court.
The media is vital to a democracy when it informs readers about current political situations. When media that take one sides on controversial subjects and events limit the information presented to the readers who will then take misinformed and incorrect actions to improve events.

Accurate news is the priority of media because media must live up to higher values and serve the interests of truth, freedom, justice and democracy. The media's positive influence can be put to strengthen democratic building processes.

We can't forget how the media can work to deflate rumors and propaganda that promotes racism, and violence.

So, media must play a very constructive role in educating the people about the our situation etc. Media's growing role in highlighting terrorism and stressed the need for creating awareness among the people, women and children. Media also have a duty to report accurately on acts of violence and terrorism.

Media organizations also can encourage appropriate support for democratic society. Create pressure to address the problems and also help maintain a balance of power. Democratic-oriented articles can contribute to build a democratic society. Media should not be either partisan or outright controlled.

What media can do is to keep writing and keep publicizing the problems to get more people attention and pressure on decision-makers.

On the other hand, killing of media people violates international humanitarian law. Any journalists covering issues should be able to report effectively.

Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, journalists must be treated humanely. We should remember that media can be an instrument of resolution. It is a media that reduces violence, terrorism and fosters human security and democracy.
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Legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh weighs in on the foreign policy positions of the 2016 presidential candidates. "For me to say who I'm going to vote for and all that ... I'm not a political leader, that's not what I'm into," Hersh says. "But I will say this: Something that's amazing is happening in this country, and for the first time, I do think it's going to be very hard for a lot of the people who support Sanders to support Hillary Clinton. ... There's a whole group of young people in America, across the board, all races, etc., etc., who have just had it with our system."



TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Yes, we're on our 100-city tour marking Democracy Now!'s 20th anniversary. Today, I'll be speaking in Albuquerque, and I'll be in Las Alamos and Santa Fe at the Lensic on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I'll be in Flagstaff, Thursday in Phoenix and Tucson, then on Friday in Fresno, Saturday in Grass Valley. Then we're on to Houston and New Orleans on Sunday, and beyond. Check democracynow.org.

As we turn right now back to Seymour Hersh, who has a new book out -- it's called The Killing of Osama bin Laden. Sy, I want to ask you about the presidential race. Last year at a debate in New Hampshire, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders accused former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of being, quote, "too much into regime change." This is what he said...

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: But I think -- and I say this with due respect -- that I worry too much that Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be. Yes, we could get rid of Saddam Hussein, but that destabilized the entire region. Yes, we could get rid of Gaddafi, a terrible dictator, but that created a vacuum for ISIS. Yes, we could get rid of Assad tomorrow, but that would create another political vacuum that would benefit ISIS. So I think, yeah, regime change is easy, getting rid of dictators is easy. But before you do that, you've got to think about what happens the day after.

HILLARY CLINTON: Now, with all due respect, Senator, you voted for regime change with respect to Libya. You joined the Senate in voting to get rid of Gaddafi, and you asked that there be a Security Council validation of that with a resolution. All of these are very difficult issues.

AMY GOODMAN: That's Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debating in New Hampshire a while ago. So, Seymour Hersh, if you could talk about this issue and this most recent news, Charles Koch, the Republican megadonor, the oil baron, saying he could see himself actually supporting Hillary Clinton over a Republican nominee.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, I don't believe that for a minute, but that's another story. What Koch said, I think that's just all part of pressure to get rid of Trump, who, in some ways, Trump's pretty -- I mean, who ever heard of a Republican talking about "NATO is useless"? Which, of course, pretty much a lot of people I know believe it is pretty much useless. There's a lot of things Trump said that are pretty remarkable. He would talk to Putin, etc. It's a pretty interesting campaign on the Republicans, how they're sort of internally eating up themselves.

But Sanders is right, of course, about that issue. I don't think Sanders is as sound on foreign policy as I'd love him to be, I wish him to be. I don't think he really -- he doesn't quite understand the consequences of -- he doesn't -- I don't think he's terribly -- he just hasn't done enough to make me comfortable. But, of course, Hillary -- my favorite line about Hillary Clinton is, after Gaddafi was executed -- as you know, he was killed by his own people. He was actually sodomized by swords. It was a horrible death. And she said on one show, "We came, we saw, and he died," with a laugh. And that kind of talk is sort of almost bizarre.

You know, here's what I think about this campaign. It doesn't -- you know, it's clear where my political thoughts are, but it's -- for me to say who I'm going to vote for and all that, I don't think anybody -- you know, I'm not a political leader. That's not what I'm into. But I will say this: Something that's amazing is happening in this country. And for the first time, you know, I do think it's going to be very hard for a lot of the people who support Sanders to support Hillary Clinton. Now, times can change. There's a lot more time to go. We've got months before an election and a convention, etc. But at this point, I'm at the point where -- I go back to the old days. Remember, if you -- you might not remember. We had a lot of talk about a third party in America, a progressive third party. Barry Commoner was one of the people who was going to run it. It went nowhere. But there's really -- it seems to me, with what's going on now with these people, 45 and under, the enormous support they're giving to Sanders, just we know by polling, etc. -- doesn't always show up in the -- it turns out, in the election results. I mean, it certainly didn't show up in New York. And so -- but they are there. There's a whole group of young people in America, across the board, all races, etc., etc., who have just had it with our system.

And there's something wonderful in the -- you know, look, I've been to Israel many times, have a lot of friends there, and there's a lot of very good people there, but we all know it's headed for -- it's chaos coming. And here we have a guy running for president. This is something, I guess, you know, forbidden -- a forbidden statement. But he's the first Democrat since I've been watching politics, 50 -- I'm old, older and crankier than Bernie. But anyway, it's the first Democrat that I can remember that actually did not have to go to the Jewish community in New York to get money to run. And that's something amazing. We may be able to actually change our policy and let the Israelis know that there's going to have to be a settlement -- not just divided, not just two countries, but a real settlement, a peace settlement, in that area.

And we've seen some terrific changes happening in this election, as the Democratic Party has been moving to the left, with a lot of contempt for the way the party manages itself, by the people who are pro -- working -- are interested in Sanders, that look at the chaos on the right. Our system is basically breaking apart right now in this election. And you can only say, "Yay! It's great!" So, it's inchoate. It's not very good. It's a little bit like the new generation of journalism we have with the tweeting and -- you know, and blogging, that's going to clearly replace the newspapers, which are dying as we sit, every day. It's all sort of a new world coming.

AMY GOODMAN: Sy, President Obama appeared on Fox News on Sunday a few weeks ago, and he was asked what was the worst mistake of his presidency. This was his response.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond, and particularly focus on Hillary as secretary of state under President Obama?
On April 16, 2016, I read one of his latest posts entitled "Animal Cruelty or the Price of Dinner?" He wrote: "....almost nine billion chickens will be dangled upside down on conveyor belts and slaughtered; when the process doesn't work properly, the birds are scalded alive."

This topic made him recall his own family's experience: "Poultry farming now is entirely different from what it was when I was a farm kid in Oregon with our family's flock of chickens. Today's business model is infinitely more efficient, but it also raises environmental concerns such as antibiotic overuse and is FUNDAMENTALLY OPPRESSIVE for animals and farmers

alike."

Classic Kristof in my opinion. I also remember seeing him years ago on an Oprah Winfrey show where the topic dealt with animal factory farms. Kristof's views and statements did not disappoint. Sadly, I cannot recall them now but I remember knowing them to be compassionate, and he certainly was not a proponent of factory farming.

The real irony of my being taken up with his thoughts and views is that for a long time I was somewhat angry with people of Hungarian descent of which he is. Of course, I was wrong to discriminate even though at the time I felt my reasons were justifiable.

In brief--in the 80s I was doing research work for a Slovak Monograph--one of 18 ethnic communities in Cleveland. The brainchild of Dr. Karl Bonutti of Cleveland State University, he found people from each ethnic group to accomplish this task, which certainly had much merit. We would all be happy to learn more about our ethnicity.

However, history can be painful as I soon found out. I was very saddened to read about how my people suffered under the Austro-Hungarian Empire reign. The "lucky" Czechs were governed by Austria and many of them I believe were able to receive an education and even job opportunities. Sadly, my people under Hungarian rule were not as fortunate. I believe

most of them had to work long hours on the farms owned by Hungarian barons. They also probably received little in monetary compensation if at all, and there was probably virtually very little educational opportunities for their children.

But, thank God, I have finally come to realize how wrong it was for me to blame present-day persons of Hungarian ancestry for what happened in the past.

As for Mr. Kristof, I look forward to all of his writings and any of his TV appearances. On one of them he and his crew visited one of the African villages where the horrible genital mutilations were being carried on. I am sure that this was an effort on his part to make the viewing audience aware of an archaic procedure which needed to be stopped. Sadly, I believe it still continues. But hopefully, with efforts such as his, one day the people who

believe in this cruelty will recognize it as such and it will stop. How wonderful if the new generations of young girls reaching this age will not have this horribly cruel procedure done to them.

As a writer, Mr. Kristof has written countless articles and anyone who has read them will probably vouch for his twin gifts of caring and compassion. I was sorry to read his recent acknowledgement of losing a writing Pulitzer Prize to Farah Stockman. He graciously wrote that she had written terrific columns in the Boston Globe about race. One day I hope that he too will receive this honor. Thank you again, Mr. Kristof, for your inspired and caring articles. Tributes and honors are great, but in the scheme of things-- just how important are they really?
Reprinted from Middle East Eye

The controversy surrounding the infamous "28 pages" on the possible Saudi connection with the terrorists that were excised from the joint Congressional report on the 9/11 attacks is at fever pitch. But that controversy is a distraction from the real problems that Saudi Arabia's policies pose to the United States and the entire Middle East region.

The political pressure to release the 28 pages has been growing for the past couple of years, with resolutions in both houses of Congress urging the president to declassify the information. But now legislation with bipartisan sponsorship has advanced in Congress that would deprive any foreign government of sovereign immunity in regard to responsibility for a terrorist attack on US soil and thus make it possible to sue the Saudi government in court for damages from the 9/11 attacks.

That development prompted Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir to threaten last month to pull out as much as $750 billion in Saudi assets held in the United States. The Obama administration opposes the legislation, warning of "unintended consequences" -- specifically that the US government could face lawsuits because of its actions abroad. Analysts of Saudi economic policy, however, do not take al-Jubeir's threat very seriously since it would simply punish the Saudi economy.

Meanwhile, Obama in an interview with Charlie Rose of CBS News on 16 April, said that his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is reviewing the 28 pages "to make sure that whatever it is that is released is not gonna compromise some major national security interest of the United States." Obama said Clapper was nearly finished so the issue might finally come to a head within the next few weeks.

But it is unlikely that the declassification of the redacted 28 pages would add any dramatic new revelation to the story of the Saudis and the hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks. Former Senator Bob Graham, who was head of the Senate side of the joint intelligence committee, has implied that the 28 pages contain incriminating evidence about the hijackers' links to the Saudi government. But Graham's smoking gun is more likely to be speculative leads rather than real evidence of Saudi government support for the hijackers.

Past suspicions of an official Saudi role in assisting the hijackers has focused on the two Saudi al-Qaeda operatives, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, who moved to the San Diego area in early February 2000 and were immediately assisted by a Saudi man who was suspected by Saudis in the San Diego area of working for the Saudi intelligence service.

What many have cited as even more suspicious is the fact that $130,000 in certified bank checks were sent to the wife of Omar al Bayoumi, the suspected Saudi intelligence agent, by the wife of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi Ambassador to the United States and -- more than a decade later -- head of Saudi intelligence.

But even if those checks were a covert way of supporting an intelligence operative, the broader theory that Bayoumi's job was to take care of the hijackers does not hold up in light of the information now available. Investigations by the FBI, the CIA and the two major public 9-11 bodies turned up no evidence that Bayoumi provided any financial support to hijackers. On the contrary they showed that Hazmi and Mihdhar were getting money when they needed it through a direct al-Qaeda channel.

On the contrary, the 9/11 Commission learned that the hijackers had left the apartment they had gotten through Bayoumi very soon after moving in, apparently because al-Bayoumi had organized a party in the apartment that was videotaped by one of the participants, and that the al-Qaeda operatives had seemingly not welcomed the attention. Very soon after that, moreover, Mihdhar actually left the United States and didn't return until mid-2001. And in June 2000, Hazmi moved to Arizona apparently through a network of contacts that al-Qaeda had established in Tucson in the 1990s.

So Bayoumi did not play any role in the plans of Hazmi and Mihdhar, and the efforts to find any other evidence that the Saudi government was knowledgeable about bin Laden's 9/11 plans have so far turned up nothing. It is unlikely that the leads related to suspicions of Saudi involvement to be found in the 28 pages are completely different from those that have already been widely discussed in the media.

Bayoumi's relationship with Hazmi and Mihdhar has given rise to speculation about why the CIA failed to inform the FBI about the presence of Mihdhar in the United States until just two weeks before the 9/11 attacks. White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke was outraged that the CIA had known that an al-Qaeda terrorist was on his way to the United States and had kept him in the dark, even though he was supposed to receive every intelligence report on terrorism. He said in a 2009 interview that the only reason he could think that the CIA kept the information to itself was that Cofer Black, the head of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center, was determined to recruit Hazmi and Mihdhar as CIA agents inside al-Qaeda. Clarke speculated that the CIA would have used Saudi intelligence to approach the two al-Qaeda operatives and obviously assumed that Bayoumi was the Saudi agent who made the contact.

But more than a year had passed after the contact between the two al-Qaeda operatives and Bayoumi had been broken off before the CIA contacted the FBI and other agencies to request that Mihdhar be put on a watch list and began its own search for Mihdhar. That delay was obviously not the result of an effort to recruit Mihdhar and Hazmi. The truth is far more shocking: as the 9/11 Commission report makes clear, the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center had not even continued to focus on Mihdhar after first learning about his visa in February 2000. It had already lost track of him, and had moved on to other issues. Not until a review in August 2001 had revealed its oversight did the CTC do anything about Mihdhar, which is why the hijackers were not tracked down before 11 September.

The Saudi regime certainly played a role in the trail of events that led to 9/11, but there is no need to wait for the declassification of the 28 pages to understand that trail. It has long been well documented that the socio-political constituency for bin Laden's anti-US organization in the kingdom was so large and influential that the government itself was forced to tread with extreme caution on al-Qaeda until the group's attacks on the Saudi regime began in 2003.

The Clinton administration had learned that Saudi supporters of bin Laden were being allowed to finance his operations through Saudi charities. The regime systematically denied CIA requests for bin Laden's birth certificate, passport and banks records. 9/11 Commission investigators learned, moreover, that after bin Laden's move from Sudan to Afghanistan in May 1996, a delegation of Saudi officials had asked top Taliban leaders to tell bin Laden that if he didn't attack the regime, the 1994 termination of his Saudi citizenship and freezing of his assets would be rescinded.

The US government has known that Saudi financing of madrassas all over the world has been a major source of jihadist activism. The Saudi regime's extremist Wahhabi perspective on Shia Islam is the basis for its paranoid stance on the rest of the region and the destabilisation of Syria and Yemen. The 28 pages should be released, but at a time when the contradictions between US and Saudi interests are finally beginning to be openly acknowledged, the issue is just another diversion from the real debate on Saudi Arabia that is urgently needed.
The delivery of postal articles was badly affected in and around Pudukkottai on Monday, following a flash strike by postmen, protesting against the alleged attack against a postman by a city-based woman advocate.

Pudukottai: The delivery of postal articles was badly affected in and around Pudukkottai on Monday, following a flash strike by postmen, protesting against the alleged attack against a postman by a city-based woman advocate.

The postman Bharathi attached to the head post office here went to deliver a registered article to advocate Ms Gracy Vinitha at her residence. The latter came out of her house, quarreled with the postman and allegedly attacked him, following which he fainted. Passersby admitted the postman to the Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy memorial government hospital here.

On information, other postmen left the delivery of postal mails abruptly. Nagarajan, in-charge of the Postal Department Employees Association told newsmen that a complaint was preferred with Ganesh Nagar police station and warned that if suitable action was not taken against the concerned person, the delivery of postal mail and other articles will be stopped across Tamil Nadu from Tuesday.

Meanwhile, advocate Gracy Vinitha also filed a counter complaint against the postman with the same police station, informed sources said.
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Global Handheld spotlight Market 2016 Size, Key Trends, Demand, Growth, Size, Review, Share, Analysis to 2021

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Solar Photovoltaic (PV) in Portugal Market 2016 Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles 2025

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Solar Photovoltaic (PV) in Portugal, Market Outlook to 2025, Update 2016  Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company ProfilesSummarySolar Photovoltaic (PV) in Portugal, Market Outlook to 2025, Update 2015  Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles is the latest report from the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the solar photovoltaic (PV) market in Portugal.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global solar photovoltaic (PV) market with forecasts up to 2025. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Portugal (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2025. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes hydro, small hydro, biopower and solar photovoltaic (PV)) and provides forecasts up to 2025. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2001 to 2025 in Portugal solar photovoltaic (PV) market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to solar photovoltaic (PV) is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.Download Sample Report Here :ScopeThe report analyses global renewable power market, global solar photovoltaic (PV) market, Portugal power market, Portugal renewable power market and Portugal solar photovoltaic (PV) market. The scope of the research includes  A brief introduction on global carbon emissions and global primary energy consumption. An overview on global renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends, generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources. The information is covered for the historical period 2001-2014 (unless specified) and forecast period 2015-2025. Renewable power sources include wind (both onshore and offshore), solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), small hydro power (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal. An overview on Portugal renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends (2001-2025), generation trends(2001-2025) and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources in 2014. Detailed overview of Portugal solar photovoltaic (PV) market with installed capacity and generation trends and major active and upcoming solar photovoltaic (PV) projects. Deal analysis of Portugal solar photovoltaic (PV) market. Deals are analyzed on the basis of mergers, acquisitions, partnership, asset finance, debt offering, equity offering, private equity (PE) and venture capitalists (VC). Key policies and regulatory framework supporting the development of renewable power sources in general and solar photovoltaic (PV) in particular. Company snapshots of some of the major market participants in the country.Reasons to buy The report will enhance your decision making capability in a more rapid and time sensitive manner. Identify key growth and investment opportunities in Portugal solar photovoltaic (PV) market. Facilitate decision-making based on strong historic and forecast data for solar photovoltaic (PV) market. Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industrys growth potential. Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events. Identify key partners and business development avenues. Understand and respond to your competitors business structure, strategy and prospects.About Us:QY Market Research is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact Us:Joel JohnDeerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Web: QY Market ResearchEmail: sales@qymarketresearch.com
Gas Generator Market 2016 Industry Size, Equipment Share and Competitive Analysis to 2025

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Gas Generator Market  Global Market Size, Equipment Share and Competitive Analysis to 2025SummaryGas Generator Market  Global Market Size, Equipment Share and Competitive Analysis to 2025 is the latest market analysis report from the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the power industry.The report gives detailed information on the current gas generators market, focusing on key countries, as well as covering the global scenario. The report analyzes the annual installations, revenues, share of the various voltage levels for the eight key countries in the market. The market shares for the key players in each country have been provided. The drivers and restraints of the global market as well as the specific countries are also provided.Download Sample Report @ScopeThe report analyses global gas generators market. Its scope includes  An in-depth analysis of the gas generators market in US, UK, Germany, China, Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa and India. It covers annual installations and market size for the period from 2006 to 2025 for gas generators. Market share of players/leading players for gas generators in 2014. It discusses the key drivers and restraints impacting the gas generator market at global and country level.Reasons to buyThe report will enhance your decision making capability in a more rapid and time sensitive manner. It will allow you to  Facilitate decision making, by providing historical and forecast data on the revenue and volume for gas generators market. Develop strategies based on the various market developments in the gas generators market. Identify key partners and business development avenues, based on an understanding of the market movements of the major competitors in the power transformers market. Respond to your competitors business structure, strategy and prospects.About Us:QY Market Research is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact Us:Joel JohnDeerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Web: QY Market ResearchEmail: sales@qymarketresearch.com
Hydropower in Italy Market 2016 Industry Size, Research, Review, Trends & Forecast 2025

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Hydropower in Italy, Market Outlook to 2025, Update 2016  Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company ProfilesSummaryThe report Hydropower in Italy Market Outlook provides in depth analysis on Hydropower market in Italy with forecasts upto year 2025. This report analyzes the Hydropower market scenario in Italy (also includes renewable energy, nuclear, conventional thermal and large hydro sources) and includes future outlook upto 2025. The report ( Hydropower Market in Italy ) highlights installed capacity as well as power generation trends in Italy Hydropower market from 2001 till year 2025. Italy Hydropower Market Research Report also provides company snapshots of some of the major Hydropower market participants.Scope:-The report analyses global renewable power market, global Hydropower market, Italy power market, Italy renewable power market and Italy Hydropower market. The scope of the research includes  Italy Hydropower market includes a brief introduction on global carbon emissions. Report on global Hydropower market also provides brief introduction on global primary energy consumption on Hydropower market scenario. An review on Italy power market, highlighting installed capacity Hydropower Market trends, Hydropower generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources Hydropower energy scenario.Get Sample Copy of Report Here : Report Italy Hydropower market covered for the historical period 2001-2014 and Hydropower Market forecast in Italy during period 2015-2025. Hydropower Renewable power sources include wind (both onshore and offshore), concentrated solar power (CSP), solar photovoltaic (PV), small hydropower (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal. Overview of the global Hydropower market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity split by major Hydropower countries in 2014 and key owners information of various regions on Hydropower market scenario. Hydropower Power market scenario in Italy and provides detailed Hydropower market overview, installed capacity and power generation trends by various fuel types (includes thermal conventional, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) with Hydropower forecasts up to 2025.Reasons to buy The report (Italy Hydropower market) will enhance your decision making capability time sensitive manner. Hydropower Italy Market report will help you to identify key growth as well as investment opportunities in Italy Hydropower renewable power market. Facilitate decision-making based on deep historic (2001-2014) and forecast data (upto 2025) for Hydropower market in Italy. Hydropower Italy Market report will help you to position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the Hydropower industrys growth potential. Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events. Identify key partners and business development avenues. Understand and respond to your competitors business structure, strategy and prospects.About Us:Market Research Store is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact Us:Joel JohnDeerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Web: Market Research StoreEmail: sales@marketresearchstore.com
Power Market in Qatar 2016 Industry Size, Research, Trends, Demand Review & Analysis 2025

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Power Market in Qatar,Outlook to 2025, Update 2016  Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company ProfilesSummaryThe report Power Market in Qatar Outlook provides in depth analysis on Power market in Qatar with forecasts upto year 2025. This report analyzes the Power market scenario in Qatar (also includes renewable energy, nuclear, conventional thermal and large hydro sources) and includes future outlook upto 2025. The report ( Power Market in Qatar ) highlights installed capacity as well as power generation trends in Qatar Power market from 2001 till year 2025. Qatar Power Market Research Report also provides company snapshots of some of the major Power market participants.Scope:-The report analyses global renewable power market, global Power market, Qatar power market, Qatar renewable power market and Qatar Power market. The scope of the research includes  Qatar Power market includes a brief introduction on global carbon emissions. Report on global Power market also provides brief introduction on global primary energy consumption on Power market scenario. An review on Qatar power market, highlighting installed capacity Power Market trends, Power generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources Power energy scenario.Get Sample Copy of Report Here : Report Qatar Power market covered for the historical period 2001-2014 and Power Market forecast in Qatar during period 2015-2025. Power Renewable power sources include wind (both onshore and offshore), concentrated solar power (CSP), solar photovoltaic (PV), small hydropower (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal. Overview of the global Power market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity split by major Power countries in 2014 and key owners information of various regions on Power market scenario. Power Power market scenario in Qatar and provides detailed Power market overview, installed capacity and power generation trends by various fuel types (includes thermal conventional, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) with Power forecasts up to 2025.Reasons to buy The report (Qatar Power market) will enhance your decision making capability time sensitive manner. Power Qatar Market report will help you to identify key growth as well as investment opportunities in Qatar Power renewable power market. Facilitate decision-making based on deep historic (2001-2014) and forecast data (upto 2025) for Power market in Qatar. Power Qatar Market report will help you to position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the Power industrys growth potential. Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events. Identify key partners and business development avenues. Understand and respond to your competitors business structure, strategy and prospects.About Us:Energy Market Study is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact Us:Joel JohnDeerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Web: Energy Market StudyEmail: shane@EnergyMarketStudy.com
Nurse Call Systems Market: Increasing Demand for Better Healthcare from the Global Geriatric Population Favors Growth

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The global nurse call systems market is currently growing at a CAGR of 13.9% from 2014 to 2020. The market was previously worth US$598.5 million in 2013. Should the markets CAGR hold, its estimated value by the end of 2020 will be US$1,579.5 million. This shows a promising picture for healthcare companies that are already in, or wish to enter, the global nurse call systems market. The Information and Communication Technology sector is currently rife with advancements. This has led to a vastly improved demand for better communication in the healthcare domain. Accompanying this fact is the growing level of awareness of consumers and market players alike towards the global nurse call systems market. Below is a brief insight into the market, along with its fads and foibles, and what the current market players are looking at.Download Brochure:Aging Population Calls on the Global Nurse Call Systems MarketThe well-documented baby-boomer era is slowly coming to a close. This is creating a unique global situation of a staggeringly large population of the elderly. The geriatric population, along with their medium to large amounts of savings or funds of their progeny, is in need of greater levels of healthcare than any previous generation. Increasing expenses of elderly healthcare, the growing number of assisted living centers across the world, and improved communication systems, are all set to push the global nurse call systems market into greater heights.Mobile and Wireless Communications are the Way to GoThere are four critical equipment in the global nurse call systems market: integrated communication systems, mobiles systems, intercoms, and call buttons. Of these, the nurse call integrated communication systems segment is the largest one in the 2013 global nurse call systems market, according to equipment. The curse call mobile systems, however, are the ones that show the fastest growth of all, and are expected to keep driving the market till 2020.The communication technology used in the global nurse call systems market is either wired or wireless. The largest market share was held by wired communication systems in 2013. The market is currently phasing in to the wireless communication systems due to a growing requirement for increasing flexibility and mobility. Other segments that holds great promise is the OPD and assisted living centers. These segments are driven by the increasing need for effective healthcare communication systems in the acute care department. As ensuring patient safety and timely medical support becomes a greater need, the global nurse call systems market sees growth.North America Could be Toppled by Asia PacificThe global nurse call systems market was, till 2013, dominated by North America. This fact was a causation of the large scale adoption of nurse call systems in all North American regions across multiple healthcare settings. Next in line in the global nurse call systems market was Europe. This region, however, is expected to see a declining market due to the economic slowdown and the relative drop in public expenditures.Conversely, the Asia Pacific region is set to display substantial growth in the global nurse call systems market. The region is expected to be an extremely driven market place due to the growing economies of India, China, Singapore, and Japan. The growing rate of income is also coupled with the increasing population in the region. Africa and Latin America are two other regions that are set to experience positive levels of growth in the global nurse call systems market till 2020.Browse Full Global Nurse Call Systems Market Report With Complete TOC @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.ContactMr.Sudip S90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) Market to be Driven by Rising Investment in Emerging Economies

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Negative pressure wound therapy has evolved considerably since its advent in 1997, with advanced functionalities and dressing features being developed to improve the efficiency of the procedure and make it more patient-friendly. The growing demand for portable, compact, and easy-to-use negative pressure wound therapy devices that are convenient for at-home use and have minimum side effects is a major factor driving the global market.The alarming rise in the global diabetic population has also remarkably fueled the demand for negative pressure wound therapy. According to the American Diabetes Association, nearly 30 million adults and children worldwide are affected by diabetes, 15.0% of which suffer from foot ulcers at some point in time. Ulcers can often result in gangrene and infections and negative pressure wound therapy has emerged as a treatment option for such conditions.Get a Free Sample Brochure:High Incidence of Chronic Diseases Driving Demand for Negative Pressure Wound TherapyOne of the leading factors propelling the global negative pressure wound therapy market is the growing incidence of chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, neurological disorders, and peripheral vascular diseases, and the rising prevalence of acute and chronic wounds worldwide. Acute long-term illnesses often result in longer hospital stay or bed occupancy, which can lead to increased rate of decubitus ulcers, thereby spurring the demand for negative pressure wound therapy. Apart from this, increase in patient awareness, surge in disposable income and healthcare expenditure, rise in geriatric population, and availability of novel technologies and products have driven the negative pressure wound therapy market.All of the aforementioned factors are anticipated to boost the global negative pressure wound therapy market to expand at a 10.20% CAGR from 2014 to 2020, growing from a value of US$1.5 bn in 2013 to US$2.9 bn by 2020.Rising Investments in Emerging Markets Fueling GrowthNorth America is the most prominent market for negative pressure wound therapy at the moment, driven by increasing levels of patient awareness, rapidly aging population, growing prevalence of chronic diseases, high percentage of diabetic population, and favorable and supportive reimbursement policies. Europe is also a key market for negative pressure wound therapy, propelled by increased prevalence of chronic wounds and high incidence of transit accidents.However, emerging economies have been identified as the most lucrative market for negative pressure wound therapy, thanks to rising investments in healthcare and development of novel technologies. Asia Pacific is anticipated to witness the highest growth among other regional markets and this development can be attributed to supportive government policies, strong economic development, increased demand for advanced wound care products, and rise in healthcare expenditure.On the down side, high cost of advanced wound care devices, unfavorable reimbursement policies in certain countries, and reluctance in adopting technologically advanced devices in some regions are anticipated to restrict the growth of the market.Realizing the potential of negative pressure wound therapy, the competition within the global market has increased, making room for advanced and more convenient solutions. Some of the leading vendors engaged in the global negative pressure wound therapy market are Devon Medical, Inc., Medela AG, Genadyne Biotechnologies, Inc., ConvaTec, Inc., Kinetic Concepts, Inc., ArjoHuntleigh International AB, Prospera Technologies LLC, Talley Group Limited, Smith & Nephew PLC, and Molnlycke Health Care AB.Browse Full Global Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Market Report With Complete TOC @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.ContactMr.Sudip S90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Since no auspicious date is available in the next few months, Naidu formally inaugurated the complex early on Monday morning. (Photo: PTI)

Vijayawada: A day after inaugurating the interim government complex at Velagapudi village in the state's new capital region Amaravathi, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu symbolically held two meetings in his chambers in the fourth block on Tuesday.

The campus has been named as 'AP Government Transitional Headquarters'. With six blocks under construction on a war footing, the government hopes to shift its functional base to Velagapudi from Hyderabad by June 15. One of the blocks will be for the state legislature and its next session will be held in the new capital only.

Since no auspicious date is available in the next few months, Naidu formally inaugurated the complex early on Monday morning.

As a sentiment, he went to Velagapudi for the second day on Tuesday and held a meeting with representatives of Indo-UK Institute of Health on the proposed health care facility to be set up in Amaravathi.

Naidu later conducted a meeting with officials from the Japan International Cooperation Agency for expediting the lending process for the Amaravathi Metro Rail project to be taken up in Vijayawada city.
iso15693 rfid clear tag for asset tracking systems (gyrfidstore)

RFID Disc Tags are widely used for inventory tracking system or Automatic production systems. The RFID Disc Tag can also work on metal surface with anti-metal layer on it, also can be attached to goods surface by adhesive layer. There are abundant size options from 12mm to 50mm. GYRFID presents several types with different material and size to suitable customers application.DIP Series- PVC Disc Tag, PVC Laminated, thickness of 1.0-1.2mmDIT Series- Clear PVC Disc Tag, clear PVC Laminated, thickness of 1.0-1.2mmFOT Series- Foil Tag, Clear PVC Sealed, Thickness of 0.45-0.7mm.STE series  Epoxy PVC Sticker, the surface covered by epoxy, thickness 2.0mmTKA series- ABS Token, ultrasonic welding ABS type, various size options.TKPPS series  PPS Token, ultrasonic welding, mini size 12mm.Features:Model number: FOTMaterial: Clear PVCDimension: 13/ 14/ 15/ 17/ 18/ 20/ 22 / 25/ 30/ 35/ 40/ 50mm;Thickness 0.76mm at chip position, 0.45mm at the antenna position.Color options: WhiteWater Proof: YesNotes: can be with anti-metal layer and 3M layerPersonalization Support: Chip encodingApplication: NFC payments Patrol Guard Systems Logistic management Parcel tracking Inventory Control Automatic production management Asset tracking Device embeddedIC options:125KHz RFID: EM4200, EM4102, EM4100, GK4001; T5577; EM4305; Hitag1, Hitag2, Hitag S256  13.56Mhz ISO14443A: NXP MIFARE Classic 1K, MIFARE Classic 4K, MIFARE Ultralight, MIFARE Ultralight EV1, MIFARE Desfire 2K, MIFARE Desfire 4K, MIFARE Desfire 8K, MIFARE Plus, Fudan FM11RF08; NTAG203, NTAG213, NTAG215, NTAG216; LEGIC MIM256, LEGIC ATC1024, LEGIC ATC2048 13.56Mhz ISO15693: ICODE SLI; ICODE SLI-X; Tag-it 256, Tag-it 2048 840-960Mhz UHF: Alien Higgs, Monza 3, Monza 4D, Monza 4QT; NXP UCODE G2iLAbout GYRFID STOREGYRFID Store is a brand of Go Young International Ltd, which is an online purchase platform of the RFID products.GYRFID Store sells a wide range of Cards and RFID tags embedded with 125KHz, 13.56Mhz, 868Mhz-915Mhz, as well as the personalization to apply in access control and industrial management. We also provide the accessories like lanyard, card holders, badge, ibuttons for office daily usage. We also welcome the personalization like serial number printing, offset printing, encoding service etc.GYRFID Store is located in Shanghai, China mainland. We have customers all around the globe and can ship products all worldwide.GYRFID Store will help you to make the best choices for your RFID system requirements. Shop in GYRFID Store will make your purchase much reliable and flexible.Should any of these items be of interest to you, please let us know. We will be happy to give you a quotation upon receipt of your detailed requirements.ADD:Rm1516, Qiangjin Building, QiXin Rd No.1318 ,Shanghai, 201100, China
Nanotechnology Drug Delivery Market to reach US$ 11.9 Bn in 2023

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Transparency Market Research has published a new market research report titled, Nanotechnology Drug Delivery Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2015 - 2023. According to the report, the global nanotechnology drug delivery market was valued at US$ 4.1 Bn in 2014 and is estimated to reach US$ 11.9 Bn in 2023, expanding at a CAGR of 12.5% from 2015 to 2023.Get A Free Report Brochure:Application of nanotechnology is aimed at improving drug delivery. Advancement in nanotechnology has revolutionized the delivery of nanometer range of drug molecules. Rising prevalence of infectious diseases and cancer, significant nanotechnology research, and increasing demand for novel drug delivery systems are driving the nanotechnology market. However, unspecific regulatory guidelines for novel nanotechnology based drugs is expected to hamper market growth during the forecast period. The global nanotechnology drug delivery market was valued at US$ 4.1 Bn in 2014 and is anticipated to reach US$ 11.9 Bn by 2023, expanding at a CAGR of 12.5% from 2015 to 2023.Nanoparticles dominated the global nanotechnology drug delivery market in 2014 due to wide range of applications and increase in demand for nanoparticles globally. The dendrimers sub-segment dominated the nanoparticles segment owing to factors such as polyvalency, flexibility in size and shape, monodispersity, biocompatibility, and better transfection properties than other technologies. However, the nanotubes segment is expected to expand at the highest growth rate during the forecast period. Growth of this segment is attributed to high efficiency of nanotubes in health care specifically in drug delivery, bio-sensing methods for disease treatment, and health monitoring.Oncology was the largest application segment of the nanotechnology drug delivery market in terms of revenue in 2014. The segment is expected to dominate the market during the forecast period. Rise in demand for effective treatment therapies for cancer coupled with increasing incidence of this disease drives the oncology application segment. Neurology was the second largest application segment of the nanotechnology drug delivery market in 2014 due to efficient application of nanotechnology in neuromolecular diagnostics and discovery of neurodegenerative markers.The cardiovascular application segment is expected to expand at the highest CAGR during the forecast period from 2015 to 2023. Most of the research studies related to nanotechnology-based cardiovascular treatment drugs are in pipeline; however, groundbreaking innovation in this field is expected to drive this market.The global nanotechnology drug delivery market is consolidated, with relatively small number of companies accounting for majority of the market share in 2014. AbbVie, Inc., Amgen, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Novartis AG, and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. are the key players in the global nanotechnology drug delivery market.The global nanotechnology drug delivery market is segmented as follows:Global Nanotechnology Drug Delivery Market, by TechnologyNanocrystalsNanoparticlesDendrimersGold NanoparticlesDendrimersFullerenesOthersLiposomesMicellesNanotubesOthersGlobal Nanotechnology Drug Delivery Market, by ApplicationNeurologyOncologyCardiovascular/PhysiologyAnti-inflammatory/ImmunologyAnti-infectiveOthersGlobal Nanotechnology Drug Delivery Market, by GeographyNorth AmericaEuropeAsia PacificLatin America (LATAM)Rest of the World (RoW)Read Full Report Description With TOC:About Us:-Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact Us:-Mr.Sudip.STransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
LED Materials Market: Latest Innovations, Drivers, Restraints, Challenges and Key Events in the industry by 2015 to 2021

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A light emitting diode or LED is a semiconductor device. LED produce incoherent narrow spectrum of light when it is in forward biased condition. The color of the light emitted depends on the composition of the semiconductor material used in manufacturing of LED. It is extensively used in an array of application such as displays devices on clock, digital watches, lighting bulbs, radios, and calculators. LEDs also find its applications in high definition television display, camera, camcorder, telecommunications, optical fiber communication, and TV remote controls. The application of LED is even exceeded to the Jewelry and WearablesOn the basis of semiconductor material, the global LED material market can be broadly classified in four broad categories namely gallium arsenide (GaAs), gallium arsenide phosphide (GaAsP), gallium phosphide (GaP) and others. Gallium arsenide is the most widely used chemical in all major classes of led such as miniature led, high power led and application specific led. Gallium arsenide grasped the largest market share in 2013.Based on the various precursor used during the metal organic chemical deposition vapor (MOCVD) the lead material can be classified as trimethylgallium (TMGa), trimethyl aluminum (TMA), trimethylindium (TMIn), triethylgallium (TEGa) and C2Mg2. trimethylgallium (TMGa) is the most widely used LED material and grasped the largest market share in 2013.The global LED material market is mainly driven by the rising application and demand of LED in energy efficient and high resolution displays in smart phones and high definition television. The rising application of LED in automotive lighting and display, home and industrial lighting requirement is further boosting the market of LED which in turn is driving the demand for LED materials. Moreover, favorable government policies including various labeling and certification programs are providing new growth opportunities for the LED industry. One of the major reasons for rapid adoption in LED lights is its relatively less power consumption as compared with normal lights. In certain cases, the power consumption is as low as one-third.Countries such as the U.S., New Zealand, UK, Canada, Taiwan, Australia, Japan, and Brazil, and Venezuela have taken several initiatives to replace tradition less durable, high power consuming bulbs with energy efficient LED bulbs in order to save power and to meet environmental sustainability by reducing the green house gases emission.Asia Pacific is the largest market for LED material followed by North America and Europe, The demand for LED material in Asia Pacific is mainly driven by the large scale LED manufacturing industries located in China, South Korea, and Taiwan. Moreover with growing emphasis on information technology industry, strengthening power generation and distribution infrastructure of emerging economies and decreasing prices of LED mainly due to the advancement in manufacturing technology is expected to provide a higher growth rate during the forecasted period. The growing application of LED in various display technology is expected to provide moderate growth to LED material market in North America and Europe.Request Brochure of this Report:Some of the major companies operating in global agrochemicals market include, Dow Chemicals Company, Intematrix, DuPont, and Sabic, Cree, Inc., OSRAM, Opto Semiconductors and Seoul Semiconductor.Request to view TOC:About Us:Persistence Market Research (PMR) is an innovative provider of market research reports and consulting services. The three PMR pillars of strength that have helped us win clients for years are: Quality Research, Quick Research, and In-depth Research.PMRs team of seasoned analysts and consultants are experts in their domain. At PMR, we process complex, exhaustive primary and secondary research data into valuable insight. We Understand that each client has a unique problem statement, and address it with our strengths.Contact:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Automotive Wiring Harness Market to Witness Robust Growth and Account for US$ 91.53 Bn by the end of 2025

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http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/global-automotive-wiring-harness-market

Future Market Insights (FMI) recently announced the release of its report titled Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025. According to the report, the global automotive wiring harness market was valued at US$ 36.82 Bn in 2014 and is anticipated to reach US$ 91.53 Bn by 2025, expanding at a CAGR of 8.7% throughout the forecast period.Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe global automobile industry registered an annual growth rate of over 5.5% from 2010 to 2015, and is estimated to be valued at US$ 5.1 trillion by end of 2015. Consistent growth in the parent industry is expected to fuel demand for automotive wiring harness in the near future.Currently, increasing fuel costs and stringent government regulations regarding CO2 emissions are boosting demand for electric vehicles in regions such as North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific.Governments across various geographies have mandated use of certain electronic safety features such as Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS), Electronic Stability Program (ESP) and other features in both passenger and commercial vehicles. Furthermore, rise in demand for high-end electronics and safety features in vehicles, particularly passenger cars, along with cost reduction and enhanced reliability is leading to increase in global demand for automotive wiring harnesses.Request Free Report Sample@Automotive Wiring Harness Market TrendsUse of automotive Ethernet by automotive OEMs represents a new trend in the external as well as internal electronics devices connectivity in an automobile. These automotive Ethernets minimise the use of complex wiring harness structures to a great extent and, thereby, may act as a restraint for growth of the global automotive wiring harness market in the coming years.Rise in technological developments is expected to create favourable growth opportunities in the market in the near future. Growing demand for connectivity and car digitisation, which not only helps establish connectivity within the integral parts of a vehicle but also enables communication with other vehicles through improved and intelligent roadway infrastructure, is an emerging trend in the market.Automotive Wiring Harness Market SegmentationRegion-wise, APEJ (Asia Pacific Excluding Japan) dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014, accounting for 38.3% value share of the overall market. Furthermore, APEJ is foreseen to expand at a relatively high CAGR of 10.4% during the forecast period and is expected to maintain its revenue share dominance till 2025 end. Rise in automotive production and sustained economic growth are some of the factors driving the APEJ automotive wiring harness market currently.Request For TOC@North America and Western Europe are expected to register high Y-o-Y growth during the forecast period, owing to increasing demand for e-vehicles and e-bikes in these regions. Growth of the connected car market has resulted in rise in demand for multiple electronic devices in vehicles in North America and Western Europe.Japan is currently witnessing moderate growth in demand for e-bikes, and the trend is expected to continue during the forecast period as well. The Japan automotive wiring harness market is expected to register a sluggish CAGR of 4.0% during the forecast period, due to the matured automotive industry in the country.On the basis of vehicle type, the passenger vehicles segment dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014 in terms of revenue, and is foreseen to expand at a CAGR of 8.6% during the forecast period. In terms of revenue, the hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles segments are expected to register significant CAGR between 2015 and 2025, in view of the stringent government regulations and growing fuel prices globally.On the basis of application type, the chassis & safety segment dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014 in terms of revenue, accounting for 40.8% share of the overall market. This segment is expected to lose its market share to the HVAC segment, which is projected to expand at a significant CAGR of 10.1% during the forecast period. Furthermore, HVAC manufacturers are designing new eco-friendly devices in order to follow the environment standards along with introducing new innovating designs.Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Key CompaniesKey market players covered in the report include YAZAKI Corporation, Aisin Seiki Co., Samvardhana Motherson Group (SMG), Delphi Automotive PLC, Fujikura Ltd., Sumitomo electric Industries, Ltd., Lear Corporation, LEONI AG, Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. and PKC Group PLC.Browse the full "Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025" market research report atMost players in the market are engaged in various activities, such as mergers and acquisitions, increasing investments in technological and product developments, geographical expansion and brand building via strong marketing strategies, in order to sustain their position in the competitive market.Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018Valley Cottage, NY
Global and China Continuous Epidural Tray Market 2016: Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Segment, Demands and Forecast-2021

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Global and China Continuous Epidural Tray Market 2016-2021 Market Research ReportThe report on the Global and China Continuous Epidural Tray Market 2016 Industry meticulously addresses the various drivers, restraints, and opportunities that exist in this space. Compiled by a team of expert analysts, the report offers an overview of the all the key performance indicators of the Global and China Continuous Epidural Tray Market 2016 Industry.Complete report With TOC available:The study analyzes the Global and China Continuous Epidural Tray Market 2016 Industry in terms of revenue and volume, where applicable. By doing so, the team of authors working on this report have been able to offer a complete and realistic picture of the future course that the Global and China Continuous Epidural Tray Market 2016 is expected to adopt.All internal and external factors influencing the growth trajectory of the Global and China Continuous Epidural Tray Market 2016 Industry are taken into account. With a firm focus on the companies that compete for a share of revenues within the Global and China Continuous Epidural Tray Market 2016 Industry, the report is a valuable resource that supports competition mapping and strategy development.Get Sample:Besides the drivers and restraints that will be conspicuous by their presence over the next few years, the Global and China Continuous Epidural Tray Market 2016 Industry report also conducts a detailed analysis of the trends and opportunities that currently prevail. The report doesnt stop at listing the various opportunitiesit also picks out threats, growth pockets as well as white spaces that exist therein.MRS Research group provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Prof Research cover more than 30 industries including energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442
Lead Acid Battery Market Poised to Hit US$ 31,708.4 Million by 2020

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Future Market Insights, in its latest report titled,Lead Acid Battery Market: Asia Pacific, Latin America, Japan, Middle East & Africa Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2014 - 2020, states that the target regions lead acid battery market accounted for US$ 24,210.5 Million in 2014, and is expected to reach US$ 31,708.4 Million at a CAGR of 4.6% during the forecast period. Asia Pacific, which accounted for the major chunk in the target regions lead acid battery market, is expected to expand at an estimated CAGR of 4.5% during the forecast period.By application type, the target regions lead acid battery market is segmented as transportation, stationary industrial, motive industrial, commercial, residential, and grid storage. Transportation and stationary industrial collectively contributed to around 82.4% of market revenue in 2014. Transportation was the largest end-use application in the target regions lead acid battery market in 2014, and is anticipated to continue its dominance through 2020. Stationary industrial is the second largest contributor to the target regions lead acid battery market, and is expected to register the fastest CAGR of 8.5% during the forecast period.The report finds that grid storage is one of the smallest end-use application segments in the target regions lead acid battery market, but is anticipated to register the fastest CAGR of 7.2% during the forecast period.Request Free Report Sample@Lead acid batteries are predominantly used in passenger cars, commercial vehicles and two wheelers. In addition to that, demand for lead acid battery has also surged due to the increasing adoption of UPS, owing to rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Adoption of grid storage technology in developing countries such as India and China is expected to fuel the target regions lead acid battery market. In addition to that, an increase in the demand for electric vehicles is expected to further accelerate the expansion of the lead acid battery market globally.Moreover, key challenges in the lead acid battery market are raw material price volatility and stringent emission regulations. Lead is the essential raw material used in the manufacturing of lead acid batteries. Lead prices account for approximately 49% of the overall cost of the lead acid batteries. Any fluctuations in lead prices affect the overall profitability of lead acid battery manufacturers.Download TOC@Region-wise, Asia Pacific is the largest contributor in the target regions lead acid battery market, and is expected to continue its dominance till 2020. Currently, the Asia Pacific lead acid battery market is valued at US$ 15,995 Million and is expected to reach US$ 19,881 Million by 2020. Latin America and Japan are other major markets contributing 14.4% and 14.1% respectively, to the target regions lead acid battery revenue. Middle East & Africa accounted for the lowest contribution in terms of revenue in 2014, but is expected to register a significant growth at a CAGR of 4.9% over the forecast period.Browse Full: "Lead Acid Battery Market: Asia Pacific, Latin America, Japan, Middle East & Africa Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2014 - 2020" Market Research Report atThe degree of competition in the target regions lead acid battery market has been analysed in the report, which also presents the comparative view of the key strategies and financial outlook of major companies operating in target regions lead acid battery market. These include Johnson Controls INC, Exide Technologies, GS Yuasa Corporation, EnerSys and Yokohama Industries.Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018Valley Cottage, NY
Ballistic Protection Materials Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016  2023

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The ballistic protection materials market is one of the major markets globally with a huge growth potential. Factors such as increasing violence and growing terrorism attacks worldwide are generating huge demand for ballistic protection materials. These materials play a vital role in offering protection and safety against explosive chemicals, bullets, mortars, falling glass materials, mines, and other hazardous materials. The global ballistic protection materials market can be segmented on the basis of materials as aramid, carbon fiber composite, glass, lexan, and plastic. On the basis of application, the ballistic protection materials market can be segmented into defense, homeland security, commercial, personal protective equipment, and vehicle armor. On the basis of product type, the ballistic protection materials market can be segmented into three categories: soft armor, hard armor, and head gear.Get FREE PDF Brochure For More Professional and Technical Insights :The materials primarily employed in the ballistic protection equipment include aramid, carbon fiber composites, glass, lexan, and plastic. Aramid accounts for a major share of the global ballistic protection materials market due to its high strength, durability, and functionality. Kevlar is one of the renowned brands of aramid material, and is manufactured by DuPont. This material is in huge demand among the manufacturers of defense apparels and equipment globally on account of its high strength, durability, and lightweight. Kevlar is mainly utilized for making protective vests, body armor, helmets, and up-armored vehicles. Kevlar is composed of elongated molecular chains of poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide, which enhance its strength by five times as compared to steel.In the product type, soft armor offers features such as light weight, high flexibility, and high shear strength. On exposure to higher impacts, the high modulus of elasticity of the soft armor allows the energy generated through impact to dissipate over as large an area as possible. Hard armors are comparatively thicker and more rigid. This type is made from polymer composites reinforced with steel and ceramics.The defense sector holds a major share of the global ballistic materials market due to increasing conflict among countries across the globe. Factors such as increasing number of terror attacks and growing regional violence is anticipated to propel the demand for ballistic protection materials higher. Soft armors are witnessing huge demand in recent years which is expected to increase in the next few years. Due to rising demand for soft armor, the global companies are largely investing in R&D activities in a bid to develop and manufacture light weight and composite materials, which can be employed in the manufacturing of ballistic protective equipment. It was also observed that there is huge demand for ballistic protective materials in the up-armored vehicles due to their enhanced capability to bear the high piercing ballistic impact during wars. Factors such as increasing rivalry among countries, growing armed conflicts, and cross border threats are driving the demand for ballistic materials market higher in the manufacturing of different protective gear and armors such as ballistic helmets, armored vehicles, ballistic shields, and bulletproof vests or jackets. A key challenge for this market lies in the weight of the armor.Browse The Full Research Report At :The conventional armor is composed of metals such as steel and iron which increases its weight further. This hinders the mobility and flexibility of the armor, hence enabling new entrants to enter into the market with new technologies and materials, which are light in weight and possess high strength.Some of the key players operating in the global ballistic protective materials market are BAE Systems plc, DuPont, Honeywell International, Inc., Koninklijke Ten Cate N.V., Teijin Aramid, Ceradyne, Inc., Morgan Advanced Materials plc, Rheinmetall AG, and ArmorWorks Enterprises, LLC.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.90 State Street, Suite 700New York
Simethicone Industry United States Market Trends, Share, Size and 2021 Forecast Report

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DeepReseachReports.com provides an overview of the research on United States Simethicone Industry 2016 Market Research Report published through its high quality database- Buy Now or inquire about this report online.The report provides key statistics on the market status of the Simethicone manufacturers and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the industry.Complete report on Simethicone market spreads across 136 pages profiling 12 companies and supported with 172 tables and figures @Key Companies Analysis: - Dow Corning, Basildon Chemicals, RioCare, Akhil Healthcare, Prosil Silicones, Salius Pharma, Dongyue, Ruichem, Shandong Dayi, Beijing Hagibis, Xiamen Jinanhua and Qingdao Zhongbao profiles overview.The United States Simethicone Industry provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Simethicone market analysis is provided for the international markets including development trends, competitive landscape analysis, and key regions development status.Development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures are also analyzed. This report also states import/export consumption, supply and demand Figures, cost, price, revenue and gross margins.Place a Direct Purchase on this Report @The United States Simethicone Industry focuses on United States major leading industry players providing information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also carried out. The Simethicone industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed. Finally the feasibility of new investment projects are assessed and overall research conclusions offered. With the tables and figures the report provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Major Points Covered in Table of Contents:1 Industry Overview2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Simethicone3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis4 Production Analysis of Simethicone by Regions, Technology, and Applications5 Sales and Revenue Analysis of Simethicone by Regions6 Analyses of Simethicone Production, Supply, Sales and Market Status 2010-20167 Analysis of Simethicone industry Key Manufacturers8 Price and Gross Margin Analysis9 Marketing Traders or Distributor Analysis of Simethicone10 Development Trend of Simethicone industry2016-202111 Industry Chain Suppliers of Simethicone with Contact Information12 New Project Investment Feasibility Analysis of Simethicone13 Conclusion of the United States Simethicone industry 2016 Market Research ReportList of Tables and FiguresDeep Research Reports is digital databank of syndicated market reports for worldwide and China businesses. deepresearchreports.com offers market research reports to businesses, entities and organizations with an objective of assisting them in their decision making process. Our collection of 500,000+ industry & nation research reports shields 5000+ micro markets. We provide 24X7 available, online and offline support to our clients.Ritesh TiwariUNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZMagarpatta city, Hadapsar,Pune, Maharashtra 411013, IndiaTel: +1-888-391-5441sales@deepresearchreports.com
Global Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder Consumption 2016 Market Research Report

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"The Report Global Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder Consumption 2016 Market Research Report provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"DescriptionThe Global Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder Consumption 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder market.First, the report provides a basic overview of the Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. And development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures.Secondly, the report states the global Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder market size (volume and value), and the segment markets by regions, types, applications and companies are also discussed.Third, the Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder market analysis is provided for major regions including USA, Europe, China and Japan, and other regions can be added. For each region, market size and end users are analyzed as well as segment markets by types, applications and companies.Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specifications, sales, market share and contact information. Whats more, the Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Download Detail Report With Complete TOC at:Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.In a word, the report provides major statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder1.1 Definition and Specifications of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder1.1.1 Definition of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder1.1.2 Specifications of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder1.2 Classification of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder1.3 Applications of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder1.4 Industry Chain Structure of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder1.5 Industry Overview and Major Regions Status of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder1.5.1 Industry Overview of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder1.5.2 Global Major Regions Status of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder1.6 Industry Policy Analysis of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder1.7 Industry News Analysis of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder2.2 Equipment Suppliers and Price Analysis of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder2.4 Other Costs Analysis of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Environmentally Friendly Washing Powder2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Environmentally Friendly Washing PowderBrowse all latest Press Releases of Market Research Reportsat:About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports.MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients.We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated researchreports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and typesof companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. Nachiket90 Sate Street,Suite 700 Albany,NY 12207 USATel: +1-518-621-2074Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Global Cannula Market Gains Impetus from Increasing Preference for Minimally Invasive Surgeries

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A new research study by Transparency Market Research (TMR) on the global cannula market states that the increasing preference for minimally invasive surgeries is fueling the demand for cannulae significantly.The research report, titled Cannula Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023, presents a comprehensive overview of the worldwide market for cannulae by analyzing the driving forces, restraints, market trends, opportunities, challenges, and the future prospects of this market.In this report, the global market for cannulae has been studied on the basis of the type and size of the cannulae as well as the raw material used to manufacture them. Based on the type of cannula, the market has been classified into cardiac cannulae, arthroscopy cannulae, vascular cannulae, nasal cannulae, dermatology cannulae, and other types of cannulae such as vitreoretinal cannulae, floating spinal cannulae, and hysterosalpingography cannulae. The cardiac cannulae segment has led the overall market in the last few years, owing to the increasing incidence of cardiovascular disorders across the world.By raw material, the market has been segmented into silicone, metal, and plastic. The demand for cannulae made from silicone is expected to register the fastest growth in the global market for cannulae. The increasing popularity of silicone cannulae, owing to the non-irritant nature of silicone, is boosting this segment significantly. Along with this, the softness and flexibility of these cannulae, which make their application easy, are also driving the growth of this market, notes the research study.On the basis of size, the worldwide market for cannulae has been classified into violet (26G), yellow (24G), blue (22G), pink (20G), green (18G), grey (16G), and orange (14G) in this study.Download PDF:The report has also analyzed the global cannula market on the basis of its regional distribution and identified North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Rest of the World as the major regional markets for cannulae. Technical advancements, as well as infrastructural developments in the medical and healthcare sector, are propelling the cannula market in North America and Europe.Asia Pacific is also exhibiting remarkable growth in its market share owing to the rising prevalence of various chronic diseases in this region. Analysts expect this regional market to witness a steady rise over the forecast period on account of the increasing pool of patients needing surgical procedures.Edward Lifesciences Corp., Sorin Group, Medtronic Plc, Conmed Corp., Smith & Nephew, Teleflex Inc., MAQUET Holding B.V. & Co. KG, Boston Scientific Corp., and Terumo Corp. are the leading manufacturers of cannulae in the global market, states the research report.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a U.S.-based provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Contact us:Mr. Sudip STransparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Patna: Bihar government on Tuesday said rate of heinous crimes has decreased by 27 per cent in the month of April since the imposition of total prohibition in the state.

A high-level meeting held by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with senior officials of Patna division comprising six districts of Patna, Nalanda, Bhojpur, Rohtas, Buxar and Bhabua, highlighted that the rate of heinous crime from April 1 to April 23 this year was 2,328 as compared to 3,178 during the corresponding period in 2015.

The fact regarding lowering of crime rate was stated by Commissioner Patna division Anand Kishore during the meeting held by Nitish Kumar to take stock of situation in the wake of promulgation of total ban on liquor in the state on April 5 last, an official statement said.

The Commissioner informed the meeting that cases of death in road accidents have also come down during this period after declaration of the state as total dry. Besides, tension during communal procession and other kind of march have also witnessed a slide due to prohibition, it said.

The CM during the meeting, in which Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav, Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh and state police chief P K Thakur were present, asked about raids conducted to enforce prohibition and arrest of persons under the new Excise law.

He also enquired about check posts and barriers put in the districts for catching liquor bottles and functioning of de-addiction camps in the districts. Kumar, who took a decision to declare Bihar a complete dry state from April 1, has been leaving no stones unturned to plug the loopholes in implementation of the decision.

Starting Tuesday, the CM is scheduled to hold such high level review meetings of other divisions too to ensure success of total prohibition and also make preparation for implementation of seven resolves of his government, which has been adopted as a policy of governance of the grand secular alliance for the next five year.
Kamdhenu Limited winner of WCRC Awards 2015 Asias Best Brand in steel

Kamdhenu Limited, one of Indias most reputed and growth oriented companies in infrastructure & construction products sector has been selected as the Asias Best Brand in steel and conferred with the prestigious WCRC Award -2015. Organized by one of the best global consultancy body, World Consulting & Research Corporation (WCRC) Awards are very sought-after accolades given to corporate.This Awards is another recognition of Kamdhenu at global forum after receiving Worlds Greatest Brand, 2015Asia & GCC in the Iron and steel category in the last December in Dubai.March 2016, the Felicitation of Kamdhenu at the grand event of Asias Most Promising Brands 2015 in front of the august audience including media professionals, Marketing Gurus, Corporate Leaders etc., took place at Hotel Amary Water Gate, Bangkok, Thailand. The directors of the Company, Mr. Sunil Agarwal and Mr. Saurav Agarwal had received this coveted award on behalf of Kamdhenu Limited.Giving away the WCRC Award - 2015 the organizer acknowledged the contribution of Kamdhenu towards revolutionizing the business model and bringing forth advance technologies in the steel industry.Kamdhenu Limited is a well established group dealing in manufacturing, marketing, branding and distribution of wide range of quality construction products. Since 1994, operating in the business of National and International quality of Steel bars manufacturing in India the Company has successfully made its mark in global market. The company is also credited for pioneering franchisee association model in construction material segment in India.After receiving the Award, the Director of Kamdhenu, Mr. Sunil Agarwal spoke among the gathering of International Media, This prestigious conferral is an occasion to thank all stakeholders for contributing towards the growth of Kamdhenu. With every award we at Kamdhenu refuel ourselves with renowned sense of purposefulness. Our commitment to excellence and consumer-centric service with the best in class Iron and Steel solutions would reinforced with such endorsements at prestigious platforms like, WCRC Awards. Today for many millions, Kamdhenu has become A part of their lives and dreams' and we are poised to touch many more millions of lives globally.About Kamdhenu Ispat Limited:Kamdhenu Ispat Limited (KIL), a frontrunner company of Kamdhenu Group, is engaged in the manufacturing, marketing, branding and distribution of a broad spectrum of construction products including steel, paints, plywood etc. The company is an ISO 9001:2008 certified entity, listed on BSE and NSE with sales turnover of Rs. 1011 crores in F.Y 2014-15. However, the overall brand turnover of Kamdhenu products is more than Rs. 6,000 crores. The company is having more than 50 franchisee manufacturing units and 4000 dealers of paint division and 3500 dealers & distributors of steel, spread across the country.For further information, kindly contact:Simran, India News Communications Ltd., M: +91 9810591323, E-mail: simran@inclgroup.comIndia News Communications is the Public Relation (PR) service providing entity of the INCL Group. Established in the year 1996, we engage in providing a comprehensive scale of PR communication focusing wholesome uplift of a brand image and its positioning. From chalking out the right strategic planning, devising the best communication mix to seamless implementation we undertake every aspect with agility.Comprehending the intricacies of a particular brand and framing appropriate strategy in relation to it is the core of our approach. Complementing our endeavor is the decorous professional rapport with various media and media personnel. The edge of News Communications lies in its adaptability to the recurrently changing parameters of media and its specific functioning.B-121Sector-71, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India, PIN-201301
WOODBAY LTD TAKE INITIATIVE BY TRANSITIONING TO ISO 9001:2015

Woodbay Ltd is a care home provider for elderly residents based in Scotland with two locations, Abbotsford Nursing Home in Ardrossan and Burnlea Nursing Home in Largs, both of which are located in Ayshire. Renowned for its attention to detail in the delivery of person-centred care, Woodbay has been providing high quality care in the local community since 2002, consistently maintaining high grades with their regulators and the Care Inspectorate. Woodbay has recently remodelled their facility at Abbotsford with a new extension and major upgrade works to provide leading amenities to its residents.Abbotsford Nursing Home was originally certified for a Quality Management System standard in 1995 through SGS, having recognised the fundamental need for certification. At that time, with the recent implementation of the Community Care Act, we felt we would benefit from a recognised quality assurance system that involved audit and scrutiny beyond our existing system. We have maintained this approach since then, developing our quality systems in line with the evolving ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems standard, says Nigel Wanless, Managing Director at Woodbay Ltd.Due to the nature of a care homes operations it is essential that high levels of quality and safety are maintained at all times. By cultivating a culture of continuous improvement alongside ISO 9001, Woodbay is committed to ensuring that these needs are met.The integration of health and social care in Scotland brings with it new demands on the business of care homes, says Nigel. We intend to be fit for the purpose of delivering new models of care to our local community in this landscape of change, and the organisational requirements of ISO 9001:2015 certification will undoubtedly assist us in these new challenges and opportunities.WHAT IS ISO 9001:2015?ISO 9001 is the most internationally recognised standard for quality management systems (QMS), representing almost 72% of the total number of certificates issued globally. The standard helps organisations achieve, benchmark and monitor high quality performance across all business operations. It provides a framework to ensure requirements are consistently met, whilst keeping up to date with market developments and enhancing customer satisfaction.A new version of the standard, ISO 9001:2015 was published in September last year and organisations already certified to the old version, ISO 9001:2008, have until September 2018 to make their transition to the new standard. ISO 9001:2015 positions the new version of the standard as an integral part of an organisations efforts towards the broader aim of sustainable development and promotes it as a tool for improving an organisations overall performance.The quality system is tailored specifically to an organisations requirements, ensuring that it works for their business, says Kate Breslin, Auditor at SGS United Kingdom Ltd. This enables the organisation to better understand their own context and manage the risks that they encounter in the best possible way.WHY WOODBAY CHOSE SGSSGS has been the certification body of choice for Woodbay since 1995, consistently providing guidance and support throughout processes, with a strong commitment to helping Woodbay achieve its requirements and set objectives.We originally chose SGS upon recommendation by our then quality assurance consultant, says Nigel Wanless. We were one of the first care homes in Scotland to achieve BS 5750 certification. Since then, we remain fully satisfied with the level and method of scrutiny and with the ongoing support and advice available to us from SGS.WOODBAYS TRANSITION TO THE NEW STANDARDWoodbay already held ISO 9001:2008 certification with SGS and, as such, the company was eligible to undergo a transition to the 2015 version of ISO 9001. The process involved a transition audit that consisted of two stages.Stage 1 is a preliminary review of the company to evaluate the capability of its quality management system and to confirm whether or not it complies with all of the requirements of ISO 9001:2015. In Stage 2 the auditor interviews Woodbays employees and examines their working practices to determine whether or not the company had implemented an effective QMS and, crucially, to confirm whether its methods were compliant with the standard and its own business.Kate Breslin was responsible for carrying out the transition audit for Woodbay and commended the organisations positive attitude towards the process. Woodbay has always been proactive with monitoring and improving its quality management systems, she recalls. Therefore, when it was time to transition, the organisations openness and honesty enabled a clear trail of communication to be verified from the top through the whole organisation.The managements hands-on approach ensured that everyone within the organisation had a good understanding of its context, the interested parties, and the risks to the business, continues Kate. Good communication throughout the teams ensured that all employees were able to contribute by involving themselves in the auditing process and speaking to the auditor one-on-one.The transition to ISO 9001:2015 required an understanding of the differences between the old and new standards, mainly the introduction of risk assessment into the system, continues Nigel. Thanks to the useful guidance and support from SGS the process of articulating our risk assessment work provided a helpful focus on this activity.HOW CERTIFICATION HAS HELPED WOODBAYSince originally gaining certification in the mid-90s there have been many occasions where we have been required to evidence different areas of our service to external parties, including regulators, HSE and local authority, Nigel explains. Our quality management system developed alongside ISO 9001 has helped us demonstrate our capabilities to these parties in both an easy and immediate way.As new regulation emerges, we have always responded using our quality management system as the vehicle to embed any new process and train our staff accordingly. In the 2015 version of ISO 9001 the process of articulating the risk assessment work we do has provided a constructive focus on our current activity, says Nigel.Implementing ISO 9001, along with external scrutiny on a regular basis, provides an important discipline to any business. This is particularly important where people can be a valued asset and help to make a lasting difference to organisational performance.ADVICE TO COMPANIES CONSIDERING ISO 9001 CERTIFICATIONFirstly, read the standard documentation, recommends Kate. You may find that you are already doing a lot of what is required. It is then up to you to determine how you manage the documented information that enables you to demonstrate your compliance to the requirements."If your organisation already has a quality management system, you do not have to start over; use the processes that are in place that work for you. It is, however, a great opportunity to review and develop the processes that are not working for you, allowing you to make them better suited to ensuring the quality of the service or product being provided.Any organisation interested in implementing ISO 9001:2015 has a responsibility to provide effective learning, development and guidance in this respect, says Nigel.Developing a quality system and becoming certified to ISO 9001:2015 is therefore a worthwhile challenge for any organisation with aspirations of proving its quality.SGS is the worlds leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company with more than 85,000 employees operating in a network of 1,800 offices and laboratories around the world.For more information, contact Lesley Pilbeam, Marketing Manager (tel: 01276 697670 / email: lesley.pilbeam@sgs.com).Image Line Communications8 Skylines Business VillageLondonE14 9TS
Polymerase Chain Reaction Technology - Preference Study

Polymerase Chain Reaction

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The overall market for Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technology market is expected to grow rapidly owing to the expansion of its application areas and increased accuracy and precision. Furthermore, specific technology segments of the PCR market, such as dPCR (real-time PCR) and qPCR (digital PCR), are witnessing higher market growth owing to their benefits such as real-time process monitoring, low reagent consumption, automation of workflow, and greater reproducibility and precision. The real-time PCR segment commanded the largest share of the global PCR market in 2014, due to several factors including technological advancements, increasing use of qPCR in research and medical diagnostics, growing use of robotics for lab automation, and expansion of installation base.The conclusion are drawn by the report "Polymerase Chain Reaction Usage Pattern and Replacement Trends, End User Analysis, Pricing Analysis, Comparative Analysis, Competitive Landscape Comparative Analysis and End User Preference Study" , which analyzes and studies the PCR technology in terms of pricing, replacement trends, competitors portfolio analysis, and selection criteria for adopting PCR instruments from an end-user perspective.For Queries and Assistance Talk to Report Expert at(In case of particular requirement related to the report of this market (if any), please mention it in Specific field of Interest section to serve you better)The growing geriatric population, coupled with an increasing prevalence e of chronic diseases, and technological advancements in the field of life science are the key factors driving the growth of qPCR and dPCR market. The rising incidence of infectious diseases and genetic disorders and increased public-private investments, funds, and grants for PCR-based research are further assisting the market growth.Avail PDF Brochure of Report atHowever, the high cost of dPCR instruments and technological limitations associated with qPCR and dPCR are the key factors limiting the growth of this market. In addition, the implementation of the Minimum Information for the Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments (MIQE) guidelines is a key challenge faced by industry players in this market.The study provides granular information regarding pricing of PCR instruments with breakdown into various cost components. These cost components include machine cost, accessories cost, training cost, services and software cost, and maintenance cost, among others. The report also provides insights on replacement trends and end-user preferences for PCR systems.The report also contains detailed analysis of end users of PCR instruments and their preferences. The PCR instruments end-user market can be divided into four distinct segments, reference laboratories, research laboratories/academic institutes/hospitals, medium-sized laboratories, and others (clinical research organizations and forensic laboratories). Reference laboratories commanded the largest share of PCR instrument market owing to increased test volume of infectious diseases and various types of cancers.The research findings cited in the report encapsulates the important selection criteria for PCR machines from an end-user point of view. It analyses each end-user segment and importance given to the particular criteria while selecting a PCR machine. Some of the important criteria for selection of PCR systems include consistent quality of data, sensitivity, services and support, high-throughput ability, multiplexing capacity, ease of use, and price and brand of instrument.About Report Publisher:MarketsandMarkets is the worlds No. 2 firm in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.Markets and MarketsUNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZMagarpatta city, HadapsarPune, Maharashtra 411013, India1-888-600-6441
Germanys Mining Fiscal Regime: H2 2015 Published By :MarketResearchReports.biz

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MarketResearchReports.Biz announces addition of new report  Germanys Mining Fiscal Regime: H2 2015  to its database.DescriptionGermanys Mining Fiscal Regime: H2 2015SynopsisTimetrics German fiscal regime report outlines governing bodies, governing laws and tax-related information on one commodity: coalSummaryTimetric's fiscal regime report covers Germany which has a variety of mineral resources such as coal, lignite and natural gas. Hard coal produced in the country is a result of underground mining in Ibbenbren, Ruhr and the Saar basin in western Germany. Brown coal production originates from surface mine basins across the country.ScopeThe report outlines governing bodies, governing laws and key fiscal terms which includes corporate income tax, wthholding tax, depreciation, losses carry forward, loss carry back, trade tax (Gewerbesteuer), real property tax rate, value added taxDownload Full Version PDF report at:Reasons To BuyGain an overview of Germany's mining fiscal regime.Key HighlightsThe main objective of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (FMET) is to strengthen the economy of GermanyThe Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (Bundesanstalt fr Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe BGR) is an agency within the FMETThe Federal Mining Act 1980 (Bundesberggesetz) was passed on August 13, 1980 and applies to the exploration and exploitation of mineral resources in GermanyTable of Contents1 Executive Summary2 The German Mining Industry Governing Bodies2.1 Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology2.2 Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR)3 The German Mining Industry Governing Law3.1 Federal Mining Act 19804 The German Mining Industry Key Fiscal Terms4.1 Corporate Income Tax4.2 Withholding Tax4.3 Depreciation4.4 Losses Carry Forward4.5 Loss Carry Back4.6 Trade Tax (Gewerbesteuer)4.7 Real Property Tax Rate4.7.1 Real property transfer tax4.8 Value Added Tax5 Appendix5.1 Abbreviations5.2 Secondary Research5.3 Primary Research5.4 Contact Timetric5.5 About Timetric5.6 Timetrics Services5.7 DisclaimerAbout usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports.MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients.We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated researchreports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and typesof companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Solar Photovoltaic (PV) in Turkey, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2016 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles

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The report analyzes and presents an overview of " Solar Photovoltaic (PV) in Turkey, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2016 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles " worldwide."Solar Photovoltaic (PV) in Turkey, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2016 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles is the latest report from GlobalData, the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market in Turkey.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market with forecasts up to 2030. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Turkey (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2030. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes hydro, small hydro, biopower and Solar Photovoltaic (PV)) and provides forecasts up to 2030. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2006 to 2030 in Turkey Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to Solar Photovoltaic (PV) is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.The report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, secondary research and in-house analysis by GlobalDatas team of industry experts.Download Sample copy of this Report at:ScopeThe report analyses global renewable power market, global Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market, Turkey power market, Turkey renewable power market and Turkey Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market. The scope of the research includes -- A brief introduction on global carbon emissions and global primary energy consumption.- An overview on global renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends, generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources. The information is covered for the historical period 2006-2015 (unless specified) and forecast period 2015-2030.- Renewable power sources include wind (both onshore and offshore), Solar Photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), small hydro power (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal.- Detailed overview of the global Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity split by major Solar Photovoltaic (PV)power countries in 2015 and key owners information of various regions.- Power market scenario in Turkey and provides detailed market overview, installed capacity and power generation trends by various fuel types (includes thermal conventional, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) with forecasts up to 2030.- An overview on Turkey renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends (2006-2030), generation trends(2006-2030) and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources in 2015.- Detailed overview of Turkey Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market with installed capacity and generation trends and major active and upcoming Solar Photovoltaic (PV) projects.- Deal analysis of Turkey Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market. Deals are analyzed on the basis of mergers, acquisitions, partnership, asset finance, debt offering, equity offering, private equity (PE) and venture capitalists (VC).- Key policies and regulatory framework supporting the development of renewable power sources in general and Solar Photovoltaic (PV) in particular.- Company snapshots of some of the major market participants in the country.Reasons to buy- The report will enhance your decision making capability in a more rapid and time sensitive manner.- Identify key growth and investment opportunities in Turkey Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market.- Facilitate decision-making based on strong historic and forecast data for Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market.- Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industrys growth potential.- Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events.- Identify key partners and business development avenues.- Understand and respond to your competitors business structure, strategy and prospects.Browse Latest News at :Table of Contents1 Table of Contents 21.1 List of Tables 51.2 List of Figures 62 Executive Summary 72.1 Government Support in Conjunction with Technology Development Driving Global Renewable Power Installations 72.2 Power Market in Turkey Characterized by Transparent Regulatory Framework 72.3 Domestic Content Requirement to Drive Component Manufacture in Turkey 82.4 Regulatory framework and license free segment is expected to drive the solar PV Power market in Turkey 93 Introduction 103.1 Carbon Emissions, Global, 2001-2015 103.2 Primary Energy Consumption, Global, 2001-2025 123.3 Solar PV, Global, Technology Definition and Classification 143.4 Report Guidance 154 Renewable Power Market, Global, 2006 - 2030 164.1 Renewable Power Market, Global, Overview 164.2 Renewable Power Market, Global, Installed Capacity, 2006-2030 184.2.1 Renewable Power Market, Global, Cumulative Installed Capacity by Source Type, 2006-2030 184.2.2 Renewable Power Market, Global, Cumulative Installed Capacity Split by Source Type, 2015 and. 2030 204.2.3 Renewable Power Market, Global, Comparison among Various Sources, Cumulative Installed Capacity, 2015 - 2030 224.3 Renewable Power Market, Global, Power Generation, 2006-2030 244.3.1 Renewable Power Market, Global, Power Generation by Source Type, 2006-2030 244.3.2 Renewable Power Market, Global, Power Generation, Source Comparison Based on Power Generation, 2015-2030 264.4 Renewable Power Market, Global, LCOE Comparison of Power Generating Sources, 2014-2015 285 Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Market, Global, 2006-2030 315.1 Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Market, Global, Overview 315.2 Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Market, Global, Installed Capacity, 2006-2030 335.2.1 Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Market, Global Cumulative Installed Capacity Share by Region, 2015 and 2030 355.2.2 Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Market, Global Cumulative Installed Capacity Share by Country, 2015 and 2030 375.3 Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Market, Global, Power Generation, 2006-2030 395.3.1 Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Market, Global, Generation Share by Region, 2015 and 2030 415.3.2 Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Market, Global, Generation Share by Country, 2015 and 2030MarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.Mr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Hydropower in Turkey, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2016 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles

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The Report Hydropower in Turkey, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2016 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz""Hydropower in Turkey, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2016 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles is the latest report from GlobalData, the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the hydropower market in Turkey.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global hydropower market with forecasts up to 2030. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Turkey (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2030. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes hydro, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2030. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2006 to 2030 in Turkey hydropower market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to hydropower is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.The report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, secondary research and in-house analysis by GlobalDatas team of industry experts.Download Sample copy of this Report at :ScopeThe report analyses global renewable power market, global hydropower market, Turkey power market, Turkey renewable power market and Turkey hydropower market. The scope of the research includes -- A brief introduction on global carbon emissions and global primary energy consumption.- An overview on global renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends, generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources. The information is covered for the historical period 2006-2015 (unless specified) and forecast period 2015-2030.- Renewable power sources include wind (both onshore and offshore), solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), small hydropower (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal.- Detailed overview of the global hydropower market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity split by major hydropower countries in 2015 and key owners information of various regions.- Power market scenario in Turkey and provides detailed market overview, installed capacity and power generation trends by various fuel types (includes thermal conventional, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) with forecasts up to 2030.- An overview on Turkey renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends (2006-2030), generation trends(2006-2030) and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources in 2015.- Detailed overview of Turkey hydropower market with installed capacity and generation trends and major active and upcoming hydro projects.- Deal analysis of Turkey hydropower market. Deals are analyzed on the basis of mergers, acquisitions, partnership, asset finance, debt offering, equity offering, private equity (PE) and venture capitalists (VC).- Key policies and regulatory framework supporting the development of renewable power sources in general and hydropower in particular.- Company snapshots of some of the major market participants in the country.Reasons to buy- The report will enhance your decision making capability in a more rapid and time sensitive manner.- Identify key growth and investment opportunities in Turkey hydropower market.- Facilitate decision-making based on strong historic and forecast data for hydropower market.- Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industrys growth potential.- Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events.- Identify key partners and business development avenues.- Understand and respond to your competitors business structure, strategy and prospects.Read our latest Press Release atTable of Contents1 Table of Contents 21.1 List of Tables 61.2 List of Figures 72 Executive Summary 82.1 Government Support in Conjunction with Technology Development Driving Global Renewable Power Installations 82.2 Top 10 Countries Account for Over 70% of Hydropower Capacity 82.3 Power Market in Turkey Characterized by Transparent Regulatory Framework 92.4 Turkey Hydropower Capacity will continue Growth Momentum during 2015-2030 102.5 Domestic Content Requirement to Drive Component Manufacture in Turkey 113 Introduction 123.1 Carbon Emissions, Global, 2001-2015 123.2 Primary Energy Consumption, Global, 2001-2025 143.3 Hydropower, Global, Technology Definition and Classification 163.4 Report Guidance 174 Renewable Power Market, Global, 2006 - 2030 184.1 Renewable Power Market, Global, Overview 184.2 Renewable Power Market, Global, Installed Capacity, 2006-2030 204.2.1 Renewable Power Market, Global, Cumulative Installed Capacity by Source Type, 2006-2030 204.2.2 Renewable Power Market, Global, Cumulative Installed Capacity Split by Source Type, 2015 and. 2030 224.2.3 Renewable Power Market, Global, Comparison among Various Sources, Cumulative Installed Capacity, 2015 - 2030 244.3 Renewable Power Market, Global, Power Generation, 2006-2030 264.3.1 Renewable Power Market, Global, Power Generation by Source Type, 2006-2030 264.3.2 Renewable Power Market, Global, Power Generation, Source Comparison Based on Power Generation, 2015-2030 284.4 Renewable Power Market, Global, LCOE Comparison of Power Generating Sources, 2014-2015 295 Hydropower Market, Global, 2006-2030 325.1 Hydropower Market, Global, Overview 325.2 Hydropower Market, Global, Installed Capacity, 2006-2030 335.2.1 Hydropower Market, Global, Installed Capacity Share by Region, 2015 and 2030 355.2.2 Hydropower Market, Global, Installed Capacity Share by Country, 2015 and 2030 365.2.3 Hydropower Market, Global, Installed Capacity Share by Segment, 2015 and 2030 385.3 Hydropower Market, Global, Power Generation, 2006-2030 395.3.1 Hydropower Market, Global, Generation Share by Region, 2015 and 2030 415.3.2 Hydropower Market, Global, Generation Share by Country, 2015 and 2030 43MarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.Mr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
What The Afterlife Is Like - It's Not What We Think Says Brian McLaughlin, Award Winning Author Of Book About NDE,' A Flight Without Wings'

Author Brian McLaughlin

http://www.brianmclaughlinbooks.com

What is the afterlife like? And who would know? In the past we had to rely on opinions, vague generalities and conjecture. These were offered up primarily by religious systems, many of which had a hidden agenda. Today, however, advances in medical technology offer our generation the opportunity to hear directly from people who have been declared clinically dead. Author Brian McLaughlin is one of those people. His experience in the afterlife is the subject of his book about his near death experience, 'A Flight Without Wings, My Experience With Heaven'.Brian McLaughlin's book about his near death experience stands apart from the rest. It is raw and it's real. There is no embellishment and no hidden agenda. There are no angels or heavenly choirs. Religion is not the same as spirituality so, while his book has a spiritual flavor, there is no preaching. It is his NDE, just as it happened. While there are no overt religious messages, there is a message. That message is peace.McLaughlin died during a trip to Mexico. That event changed the course of his life forever. It instilled in him what we all seek - certainty about life after death. And with that a peace of mind that can never be shaken, nor can it be doubted. His near death experience brought a sense of clarity. It brought a sense of real, lasting peace. He now knows with certainty that we exist forever. It is that simple message he brings to his audience.There is a certain peace that I feel in understanding and embracing the experience I had. The clarity of seeing the big picture, and the purpose, had initially been overwhelming. I spent years struggling with the magnitude of it all. When I broke it down to individual components, and accepted the value of each one, it was easier to put into practice. Rather than trying to adjust to this whole new way of feeling and vision, I tried to handle them one at a time. Eventually I was able to see the connection and formulate a new strategy.Brian McLaughlin will be making several live appearances in the Long Island, NY area during April and May:* Saturday, April 30th - Book signing and reading at Barnes & Noble in Bay Shore NY* Saturday, May 7 - Book signing at Applebee's in Baldwin, NY* Saturday, May 21 - Book signing at Turn of the Cork Screw in Rockville Center NYBrian McLaughlin was chosen as one of '50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading' in 2015. Reviews of 'A Flight Without Wings' have been overwhelmingly positive. Jack Magnus, a reviewer with Readers Favorite, called the book a "well written and moving memoir that neither delves into the fanciful or dogmatic,... "Well worth reading, and is highly recommended." Another stated, "Being a mother who lost her only child I found it to be a great comfort to me." Another said, "I have read many accounts such as these, but this beautifully written account simply touched my heart in ways that previous ones have not."Mark Feuerstein, Actor (Royal Pains, USA Network) wrote: I have read it and I think its an inspiring tale of deep insight and so personal and yet so universal . . . such profound perspective.Brian McLaughlin is available for media interviews and can be reached using the information below or by email at bamplaya@msn.com. 'A Flight Without Wings' is available at Amazon, Payhip and other book retailers. More information is available on his website.Brian McLaughlin is the award-winning author of 'A Flight Without Wings'. In his inspirational book, Brian vividly depicts his journey into Heaven and his following return to life caused by a massive head trauma sustained while vacationing in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico twenty-one years ago.PO Box 1613Shallotte, NC 28459
BOPP film Market 2015 -2021: Industry Opportunities and Challenges for Global and China Regions Forecast Report

http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-and-chinese-bopp-film-market-2015-industry.html

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The global and China BOPP film Market 2016-2021 Industry Starting with a broad overview, the report narrows down to offer an overview of the BOPP film Market 2016-2021 Industry globally as well as with a specific focus on China. By conducting a check of the current status of the BOPP film Market 2016-2021 Industry, the report is able to then delve deeper into the various forces that directly and indirectly impact the Market.Access Full Report With TOC:Given the ever-shifting and ever-evolving nature of the technologies that enable the products and services contributing to the growth of the BOPP film Market 2016-2021 Industry, the report conducts a detailed analysis of the technological trends and developments. This report then moves ahead to focus on the various global and China-based players in the BOPP film Market 2016-2021 Industry. In order to obtain specific information about the Market participants, the report focuses on the following key aspects: Company Profiles, product/services information, contact information, as well as production/revenues.The report then delves deeper by segmenting the global and Chinese Market for BOPP film Market 2016-2021 into sections, based on parameters such as applications, end-users, geographical regions, or product/technology, where applicable. The degree of competition that exists in the BOPP film Market 2016-2021 Industry in the context of both China and the world, is studied in detail.Request For Sample:Table of ContentChapter One Introduction of BOPP film Market 2016-2021 Industry1.1 Brief Introduction of BOPP film Market 2016-20211.2 Development of BOPP film Market 2016-2021 Industry1.3 Status of BOPP film Market 2016-2021 IndustryChapter Two Manufacturing Technology of BOPP film Market 2016-20212.1 Development of BOPP film Market 2016-2021 Manufacturing Technology2.2 Analysis of BOPP film Market 2016-2021 Manufacturing Technology2.3 Trends of BOPP film Market 2016-2021 Manufacturing TechnologyChapter Three Analysis of Global Key Manufacturers3.1 Company A3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Product Information3.1.3 2011-2016 Production InformationFull Report With Toc @:MRS Research group provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Prof Research cover more than 30 industries including energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 FREE (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803 FREEEmail: sales@mrsresearchgroup.comWebsite:
Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Industry 2015 -2021: Industry Opportunities and Challenges for Global and China Regions Forecast Report

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The global and China Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-2021 Industry Starting with a broad overview, the report narrows down to offer an overview of the Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-2021 Industry globally as well as with a specific focus on China. By conducting a check of the current status of the Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-2021 Industry, the report is able to then delve deeper into the various forces that directly and indirectly impact the Market.Access Full Report With TOC:Given the ever-shifting and ever-evolving nature of the technologies that enable the products and services contributing to the growth of the Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-2021 Industry, the report conducts a detailed analysis of the technological trends and developments. This report then moves ahead to focus on the various global and China-based players in the Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-2021 Industry. In order to obtain specific information about the Market participants, the report focuses on the following key aspects: Company Profiles, product/services information, contact information, as well as production/revenues.The report then delves deeper by segmenting the global and Chinese Market for Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-2021 into sections, based on parameters such as applications, end-users, geographical regions, or product/technology, where applicable. The degree of competition that exists in the Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-2021 Industry in the context of both China and the world, is studied in detail.Request For Sample:Table of ContentChapter One Introduction of Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-2021 Industry1.1 Brief Introduction of Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-20211.2 Development of Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-2021 Industry1.3 Status of Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-2021 IndustryChapter Two Manufacturing Technology of Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-20212.1 Development of Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-2021 Manufacturing Technology2.2 Analysis of Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-2021 Manufacturing Technology2.3 Trends of Titanium Dioxide Denitration Catalyst Market 2016-2021 Manufacturing TechnologyChapter Three Analysis of Global Key Manufacturers3.1 Company A3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Product Information3.1.3 2011-2016 Production InformationFull Report With Toc @:MRS Research group provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Prof Research cover more than 30 industries including energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 FREE (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803 FREEEmail: sales@mrsresearchgroup.comWebsite:
Personalised sashes are the #1 hen party accessory

Personalised hen party sashes

The hen party has become a cornerstone of British culture, with blushing brides and their BFFs routinely spending hundreds of pounds on extravagant celebrations both at home and abroad. Much of that money goes toward the cost of travel and activities, but a surprising amount is also spent on accessories.From tutus and tiaras to devil horns and deely boppers, brides-to-be now have a staggering variety of hen party accessories to choose from. However, according to hen party specialists HenStuff, there's one particular hen accessory that's more popular than all the others: personalised party sashes!Personalised sashes are the most-purchased products in HenStuff's range. This stat suggests that Britain's hens are growing more and more keen to add a personal touch to their bachelorette parties; some women simply order sashes with their own names on them, but others come up with nicknames for each other and get their sashes emblazoned with these. Many suppliers (including HenStuff) have even started offering emoji-style symbols on their sashes, allowing customers to include stars, hearts, and even martini glasses in their custom designs!The full list of HenStuff's top 5 most popular hen party accessories is as follows:1. Personalised sashes2. Personalised t-shirts3. Novelty drinking straws4. Sashes (non-personalised)5. Bridal veilsHenStuff is an online business selling hen night accessories and party supplies to customers throughout the UK and Ireland.HenStuffSully Moors RoadSullyVale of GlamorganSouth WalesCF64 5RPTelephone: 01446 339399Email: info@henstuff.co.ukContact Name: Joel Dear
New Delhi: The Aam Admi Party (AAP) on Tuesday mocked Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani, after she announced on Monday in Lok Sabha that IITs would now teach Sanskrit for facilitating study of science and technology.

One should understand Sanskrit is the only language which can compete with C++, Java, SOL, Python, Javascript. All computers in India using languages like C+, Java, SOL, Python..should b declared anti-national once IITians learn working in Sanskrit, AAPs Manish Sisodia said in a Tweet.

All computers in India using languages like C+, Java, SOL, Python..should b declared antinational once IITians learn working in sanskrit.2/2  Manish Sisodia (@msisodia) April 26, 2016

A panel, chaired by former CEC N Gopalaswami, in its report had earlier suggested that IITs may facilitate study of science and technology as reflected in Sanskrit literature along with inter-disciplinary study of Sanskrit and modern subjects.

"Accordingly, IITs have been requested to teach Sanskrit language especially with reference to study of works which contain scientific knowledge," Irani had said.

The announcement had elicited sharp remarks from the Opposition, especially Congress and the left parties, who alleged that the BJP was slowly trying to accommodate RSS agenda.
E-bike commonly known as electric bicycle or booster bicycle is a bike that has an integrated electric motor used for propulsion. According to the power that an electric motor can deliver and the control system, e-bikes can be classified as e-bikes with pedal-assist only, with power-on-demand and pedal-assist, or with power-on-demand only. Depending on the laws, in many countries, e-bikes are classified as bicycles than mopeds or motorcycles so that 
A market study based on the "Mobile Display Market" across the globe, recently added to the repository of QY Market research, is titled Global Mobile Display Market 2016. The research report analyzes the historical as well as present performance of the global Mobile Display market, and makes predictions on the future status of Mobile Display market on the basis of this analysis. The report studies the market for Mobile Display across 
Austin Taylor Cook

Deputies say a Washington man stole two bikes from outside the Oak Grove Fred Meyer -- possibly to sell for drug money.

Austin Taylor Cook, 33, faces second-degree theft and methamphetamine possession charges, according to court records. He's accused of stealing the bikes -- which belong to exchange students from Thailand -- from a bike rack outside the store, the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office said in a news release.

Deputies said they arrested Cook in a neighborhood close to the store Sunday afternoon. A Fred Meyer employee reported the bikes stolen and followed Cook as he drove away from the store, deputies said.

They said they found a small amount of meth, drug paraphernalia, a helmet and two bikes in Cook's Jeep Grand Cherokee. He told them at first that he bought the bikes at a different store but eventually conceded that he stole them.

Cook said he might have tried to sell them to make money for drugs or gas, deputies said.

A deputy made arrangements Monday to return the bikes to their owners, deputies said. The owners saw pictures of the bikes Sunday on the sheriff's office's Twitter account and contacted the office.

Cook is being held on $40,000 bail and is next scheduled to appear in court May 2, records show.

-- Jim Ryan

jryan@oregonian.com

503-221-8005; @Jimryan015
The court directed the counsel representing union government to file its reply to the petition filed by the mother of the girl. (Photo: PTI)

Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Tuesday reserved orders on a public interest litigation which had sought a judicial probe into the alleged Handwara molestation incident that led to widespread protests, resulting in death of five persons.

A Division Bench comprising Justice Ali Mohammad Magrey and Justice Tashi Rabstan, reserved orders after hearing arguments of petitioner Kashmir High Court Bar Association and the state counsels.

The lawyers' body had filed the PIL last week seeking investigation by an official of IGP rank into the killings in Handwara and Kupwara towns. They had also sought that the probe be monitored by a sitting High Court Judge.

Bar Association president Mian Abdul Qayoom submitted that there is discrepancy in the age recorded in the girl's statement before the magistrate where her age is shown as 19 years while as per school records she is only 16.

"It is a manipulation by the police," Qayoom claimed.

The Advocate General, respresenting the state, said the Bar Association had no right to file the PIL as a case has already been moved before the High Court by the mother of the victim.

"Certain facts at this stage need not to be made public which are under investigation. However as and when directed by the court, diaries and other relevant material can be placed at the disposal of the Hon ble Court," he said.

The court directed the counsel representing union government to file its reply to the petition filed by the mother of the girl.

The mother's petition was clubbed with the PIL on the court directions on April 20 as the Division Bench was already seized of the matter.

Meanwhile, Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society said the girl will continue to remain in "police custody" against her will.

"For the third time, the case of the 16 year old girl under unlawful police detention and subject to daily intimidation and harassment was heard by the Division Bench with a simple prayer: that she be set free.

The Handwara minor girl has been video recorded, slapped, spat at, had her phone snatched, personal space violated, randomly moved around, been under constant surveillance and kept detained.

All of this against her will," the organisation said in a statement.

Massive protests were witnessed in Handwara town of north Kashmir on Arpil 12 following allegations that a girl was allegedly molested by an army soldier.

Three persons were killed in security forces firing on protestors on the same day while two other persons were killed in similar action over the next three days of protests.

The girl, in her statement to police as well as before a judicial magistrate, has not mentioned anything about molestation but named two local youths for harassing her while she had gone to a public lavatory to answer the call of nature.

One of the youths has been arrested while the other youth is on the run. The state government has ordered a magisterial probe into the incident.
Seder dinner

Women celebrate a Seder in West Linn in 2005.

(Brent Wojahn/The Oregonian)

This spring, Christians across the country are observing Passover, a weeklong Jewish festival celebrating the Israelites liberation from slavery in Egypt, with ceremonious seder dinners.

You read that right. Christians.

The Religion News Services reports there's a growing interest among Christians in the faith's Jewish roots. Some Christians even hold seder dinners -- with a Jesus-friendly script -- for friends and family.

Is that kosher?

With the two distinct faiths sharing a holy text, the line between observing a historic ritual and cultural appropriation is blurred.

Some Christians -- and some Jews -- say the experience is spiritually enriching for Christians.

"Knowing the Passover story, knowing the journey to freedom, experiencing that journey to freedom can enrich one's faith as a Christian because the Exodus story is part of the Christian Bible, as well. It's part of the whole package. So that story resonates for Christians just as it does for Jews," a reform rabbi told the Religion News Service.

CatholicCulture.org advises Christians on seder observance, saying the "ritual meal celebrates not only our tradition of Christ's last supper but our own Jewish heritage which provided the context for Jesus' institution at the last supper."

But not everyone agrees it's appropriate for Christians to hold their own rendition of a Jewish ritual.

"It's a lot like people doing a sweat lodge or sun dance that are not Native American," an Episcopal priest told The Religion News Service. "You're taking the benefits without having suffered."

The Religion News Service isn't the first to raise this question. Two years ago, a Christian woman married to a Jewish man wrote for Religion Dispatches, saying Christianizing the ritual is "like adding salt to the wounds of history for a Christian family to take one of the most sacred Jewish celebrations and twist it to reflect our own beliefs."

What do you think? It is permissible for Christians to hold a seder to enrich their own spirituality, or is it salty cultural appropriation?

-- Melissa Binder

mbinder@oregonian.com

503-294-7656

@binderpdx
South Waterfront project.jpg

A construction project on the South Waterfront by Oregon Health & Science University will include guest housing, a cancer research building and space for outpatient clinics.

(Oregon Health & Science University)

A Vancouver couple is donating $12 million to lodge families and patients of Oregon Health & Science University.

The money, donated by Gary and Christine Rood, will go toward building five stories of guest housing on the South Waterfront that will provide temporary housing for patients and their families who have to travel long distances for care. The building, which is expected to house 3,000 people a year, will be named the Gary & Christine Rood Family Pavilion in their honor.

The donation was announced at a ground-breaking ceremony Tuesday.

"We know how important it is for patients going through stressful health experiences to be surrounded by their loved ones and feel part of a supportive community," Dr. Joe Robertson, president of OHSU said in a statement. "We are so grateful to Gary and Christine for recognizing this community need, and providing such a generous gift to help OHSU serve new patients and families for generations to come."

Christine and Gary Rood

Gary Rood is a former hospital administrator at OHSU and at the Mid-Columbia Medical Center in The Dalles. Longtime Clark County residents, the Roods own 30 senior housing and commercial real estate properties in 10 states.

"During the 1960s and 70s when I was administrator of University Hospital South (now OHSU Hospital), I saw families and patients who needed this type of guest housing facility on a daily basis," Gary Rood said in a statement. "So it is extremely meaningful to Christine and me to be able to provide this level of support for a project that will serve thousands of children and adults each year and make hospital stays much less stressful for their families."

The guest house is part of a $350 million project on the South Waterfront. It includes a 14-story health care facility and a 10-story mixed-use building that includes the guest housing and parking. The top seven stories of the heath care building will be dedicated to Knight Cancer Institute outpatient clinics and space for clinical trials.

Last year, the institute matched the $500 million challenge by Nike co-founder Phil Knight. The institute will use the $1 billion to build an early detection cancer research center over 10 years. Dr. Brian Druker, who leads the Knight Cancer Institute, hopes to discover biological changes in the body that can be measured in blood, saliva or urine that signal the start of a tumor. The earlier cancer is tackled, the easier it is to control.

A separate building will also be constructed for Knight research. In March, the institute hired a Turkish born nanoengineer, Sadik Esener, to lead the early detection effort. He starts in June.

Construction on the South Waterfront buildings is due to be finished by July 2018.

-- Lynne Terry
120dollarbill.JPG

This April 17, 2015, file photo provided by the U.S. Treasury shows the front of the U.S. $20 bill, featuring a likeness of Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States.

(US Treasury via AP)

By Robert J. Samuelson

WASHINGTON -- Harriet Tubman is in; President Andrew Jackson is out.

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew's decision to replace Jackson on the front of the $20 bill with abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor Tubman has been widely praised. It honors women's role in American history and, indirectly, disparages slave-owner Jackson, who moves to the back of the $20 bill. But there is another irony to Jackson's traditional place on the $20 bill: He was an ardent critic of paper money.

To illuminate this oft-forgotten part of the story, we put some questions to historian Jessica Lepler of the University of New Hampshire and author of "The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis." Here are her edited and condensed answers.

Q. What was the paper currency of Andrew Jackson's era?

In Jackson's time, gold and silver coin (commonly called specie) were the only federally sanctioned currencies. But coin was scarce, and to supplement the money supply, banks issued paper notes that were, in theory, redeemable for coin. In practice, banks printed more notes than they could ever redeem in coin at one time. (Indeed, part of the point of paper money was to promote economic growth by expanding the currency.) The value of any bank's paper notes depended on the bank's ability to fulfill its promise to trade the paper for coin. When Jackson was elected in 1828, there were more than 300 U.S. banks, and the number doubled during his administration. People had to evaluate whether to accept many varieties of paper money as payment for goods. If they miscalculated, they could suffer significant harm.

Q. Why was Jackson so opposed to paper currency and their bank creators?

A. His hostility stemmed partly from personal experience. At a young age, he speculated in land and paper. But his opposition was also political and focused on the Second Bank of the United States (BUS), which was the closest thing America had to a central bank. The BUS was the only bank chartered by the federal government. It was entitled to hold government funds and, unlike state-chartered banks, it could operate in many states. In practice, the BUS collected bank notes from one part of the country and returned them to banks in other parts of the country, demanding specie in exchange. This checked banks' ability to create too much paper money, but it also conferred huge powers on the BUS -- powers that Jackson considered undemocratic.

Q. Who else opposed paper currency?

A. Jackson was elected by a coalition within the Democratic Party. Some of his supporters detested paper money, banks and the economic change they fostered. But other allies simply wanted to limit the power of the BUS and transfer the government deposits to their own local banks. The BUS's main supporters were the other major party, the Whigs, who saw the national bank as a tool for economic development.

Q. What was the "bank war"?

A. It consisted of a series of battles. Most important, Jackson vetoed the renewal of the BUS's charter, which forced the BUS to reorganize as a state-chartered bank. Jackson also ended the BUS's monopoly over government deposits. The Treasury was being flooded with money from a combination of the sale of confiscated Indian lands and tariffs on imported goods purchased largely with money from the sale of slave-grown cotton. So great was the inflow of revenues that the government actually paid off the national debt. Jackson diverted all the Treasury's revenues into so-called "pet banks" -- the state-chartered banks of his supporters. The BUS responded by tightening credit for merchants and demanding that banks honor their promises to convert paper currency to specie.

Q. What was the Specie Circular, and why did Jackson issue it?

A. Jackson's redistribution of government funds to "pet banks" pleased one faction of his supporters but infuriated the other. The anti-bank faction demanded an end to the explosion of paper money and the multiplication of banks. The Specie Circular was an executive order requiring all purchases of federal lands be made in specie. With the Specie Circular and other policies, Jackson aimed to attract gold coin to the U.S. and to eliminate the need for banks and bank paper.

Q. What was the Panic of 1837, and did Jackson's policies cause it?

A. On March 4, 1837, even as Jackson's successor -- Martin Van Buren -- was being sworn in, the financial system was falling apart. In New York, New Orleans and London, there were commercial and financial failures. By May, banks suspended specie payments. To this day, economists and historians argue whether Jackson's policies caused the panic or whether other forces were involved.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post Writers Group
New Delhi: In their first formal bilateral meeting after Pathankot attack, foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan held talks on Tuesday focussing on a range of sticky issues including probe into the strike and Kashmir, which the Pakistani side asserted was the "core issue".

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry, here to attend the Heart of Asia conference, met after which the Pakistani side said its Foreign Secretary "emphasised that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution in accordance with UNSC resolutions and wishes of Kashmiri people".

There was no immediate formal word from the Indian side on the meeting.

Read: Ready to resume dialogue when India is ready, says Pakistan

Ahead of the meeting, the Indian officials had maintained that the Pathankot attack and a possible visit by the NIA to Pakistan would be raised during the FS-level talks, which were deferred in January in the wake of the strike at the strategic air base at Pathankot.

"In line with our PM's vision of a peaceful neighbourhood, FS underscored Pakistan's commitment to have friendly relations with all its neighbours/India. All outstanding issues including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute were discussed," the Pakistan High Commission here said.

Another important bilateral for Foreign Secretary as he meets with his Pakistan counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry pic.twitter.com/tk5ZKYwxeU  Vikas Swarup (@MEAIndia) April 26, 2016

India has been pressing for action against terrorists responsible for the audacious attack on the IAF base, to take the talks forward.

This is also the first time the two foreign secretaries are meeting after the announcement of Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue (CBD) by the Foreign Ministers in Islamabad last December. The two secretaries had a informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March this year.

The efforts to resume CBD at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the Pathankot attack that India said was carried out by militants from Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror group.

Read: India, Pakistan should not foreclose any options on talks, says Pak official

Jaishankar was scheduled to travel to Islamabad to hold talks with Chaudhary on January 15 but both the countries had announced deferment of the talks with "mutual consent" in the wake of the Pathankot attack.

Today's meeting came in the backdrop of Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit's recent comments that the bilateral peace process was suspended, evoking a sharp reaction by Indian side.

India has been maintaining that communication channels were on at various levels but also made it clear it wants to see action on terror and Pathankot first before the dialogue could be resumed.

Earlier, Jaishankar met Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Karzai and discussed issues of mutual interests.
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Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said that these five files, which are with Japan, could be crucial to resolve the mystery over the fate of Bose.

New Delhi: Two crucial files relating to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose will be declassified by Japan this year-end, but the country has given no assurance regarding three more such files in its custody, government on Tuesday said.

Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju told Lok Sabha that these five files, which are with Japan, could be "crucial" to resolve the mystery over the fate of Bose.

"Japan has conveyed to us that they will declassify two of the five files by the end of this year but no commitment has been given to the rest of the three files. But we are hopeful that they will declassify the remaining three files too," he said during Question Hour.

Rijiju said two files relating to Netaji which were with the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Home Affairs continue to be missing and efforts were on to trace them.

While the file, which was with the PMO, related to bringing back the ashes believed to be of Netaji from Renkoji temple in Japan to India and installation of his statue at Red Fort, the file which was with the MHA too related to the ashes, he said, adding efforts were on to find these two files.

Rijiju said India has approached a number of countries to retrieve any documents related to Netaji and they have responded to the requests.

While Austria, Russia and the United States have conveyed to the Indian government that they do not have any file or document relating to Netaji, the United Kingdom said that all 62 files under their possession were given to British Library and are available for public.

Germany too has said that the files relating to Netaji were archived after declassifying them, he said. Rijiju said the first two inquiry commissions had suggested that Bose died in a plane crash in Taihoku (now Taipei) on August 18, 1945, but the Mukherjee commission had rejected the conclusions of the previous two inquiry commissions.

"We are not in a position to say actually what had happened to Netaji," he said.

The Minister said around 150 Netaji files have been declassified so far and were available online, while 25 more files each are being uploaded online every month.

In October last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met the family members of Netaji and announced that the government would declassify the files relating to the leader whose disappearance 70 years ago remains a mystery.

While two commissions of inquiry had concluded that Netaji had died in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945, a third probe panel, headed by Justice M K Mukherjee, had contested it and suggested that no such aircrash had taken place.
Maoists soon fled from the spot as jawans launched retaliatory attack on them. (Photo: PTI/Representational image))

Raipur: A CoBRA (Commando Battalion forResolute Action) jawan was on Tuesday injured in an exchange of fire with naxals in the dense forests of Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Bijapur district, police said.

The skirmish took place early this morning when a team of CRPF's elite unit - CoBRA 204th battalion was conducting an anti-naxal operation in the interiors of Basaguda police station limits - a naxal hotbed, Bijapur Additional Superintendent of Police Indira Kalyan Elesela told PTI.

While cordoning off the region, located around 450 kms away from the state capital, when security forces reached Puvarti village forests, naxal opened indiscriminate firing on them leaving a constable Deepu Das injured, he said.

However, Maoists soon fled from the spot as jawans launched retaliatory attack on them, he said. "Das, a constable belonging to CoBRA 204th battalion sustained bullet injuries on his back," Elesela said.

Reinforcement was rushed to the spot and the injured jawan was evacuated from the forests, he said adding that he has been airlifted to Raipur for treatment.
Journeys of Discovery

Damian Scarf

PhD Graduate

Lecturer

Department of Psychology

You will have heard the advice that the key to success is finding something you love. Damian Scarf is rather extreme proof of this.

In his seventh form year he failed the three subjects required for University Entrance, failed sixth form maths for the second time, and forgot to turn up to his tourism exam. When he finally made it into University to major in Zoology (he had been a fan of the Crocodile Hunter as a kid), he added in a Psychology paper because I was told it had a multi-choice exam and therefore was easy.

He soon realised he was misinformed. But what Psychology did have over all previous educational experiences was Professor Mike Colombo.

Mike was teaching a paper on comparative cognition, comparing the intellectual processes of different animals as a way of better understanding how cognition works. I was completely hooked.

And so it was that Damian began his explorations into the thought processes of pigeons. His work began as a masters project, and was later upgraded to a PhD. Not that his feathered friends made life easy for him.

I actually started with chickens. I was trying to compare them with some previous work on how pigeons learned to use touch screens to access food. But it was hopeless. Chickens are totally impulsive, they just peck at anything. That was a year and a half gone.

I thought we needed a smarter bird. So I tried again with magpies from a farm. After five months of spending 12 hour days with them, grinding livers to feed them and constantly smelling like a meat processing plant, I never got them to do anything. They just wouldnt habituate to a lab environment.

Meanwhile, says Damian, his scholarship was ticking away. We had to change direction. We relooked at the pigeon data, and set up new experiments involving these birds. In the end, we were able to come up with a much broader understanding of their cognitive processes.

Despite these obstacles, Damian says he never processed those challenges as failures. I loved it. He worked hard, typically spending 12 to 14 hours a day carrying out experiments and writing them up as journal articles and, ultimately, thesis chapters. In total, he generated eight first author publications during his PhD  not that this was his focus: If you only worry about getting published, you ruin the experience.

He also spent seven amazing months at Columbia University in New York on a Fulbright scholarship. There, he explored the cognitive processes of monkeys and children, working with Professor Herbert Terrace, one of the preeminent comparative psychologists of the 21st century.

Now Damian is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology, and theres no place he would rather be. Not only are the academics interesting and encouraging, the technicians are incredible. They can do anything. If I want a touch screen on a cage, someone is there to make it for me.

And no doubt to the great surprise of his high school teachers, he comments, I could read, write and lecture all day.

Damians thesis was formally recognised by the Division of Sciences as being of exceptional quality.
Shalini Kennedy

Classics

As a child growing up in Auckland, Shalini Kennedy fell in love with museums and ancient history, so she decided to study Classics at Otago.



Ever since I visited the Auckland War Memorial Museum on a school trip, I knew I wanted to work in a museum. I knew Classics could get me there in an enjoyable way, she says.



I was attracted to the fact that Classics is an interdisciplinary degree that covers two millennia and multiple countries. You can take classes ranging from pottery and sculpture to literature, philosophy and languages.



Shalini also wanted to gain her independence and experience Otagos legendary student lifestyle.



I didnt know anyone when I got there, but I made friends immediately  friends that I still have to this day. There was always something going on and I loved it.



She loved the Classics Department too.



You might think youd have to go overseas to study Classics but the department is world class. The lecturers are awesome, their classes are interesting and the entire department is incredibly supportive.



Immediately after completing a masters degree focused on Roman copies of Greek sculpture, Shalini landed work running programmes at the Otago Museum.



Id previously worked with children during summer camps, and had worked as a tutor at the University. In the process I realised I really enjoyed teaching.

At the museum I could combine my love of working with ancient objects with being able to interpret them for people. Dream job accomplished!



When Shalinis husband  they met in the Classics Department  found work in his native Canada, Shalini gained a position as Programs Co-ordinator at the Maritime Museum of British Columbia.



People ask how I could apply a degree in Classics to working with boats and maritime history, but my degree was broad and the skills I gained were easily transferable.

Studying classics allowed me to think outside the box and gave me the confidence to do anything.
Paris Potaka-Goossens

Oral Health

Paris Potaka-Goossens didnt know what career she wanted when she left school, so she took a couple of years out.

I admire people who know what they want to do straight from school, but if you dont, I recommend taking a gap year to explore a few options and find something youre passionate about, she says.

After a few months visiting family in Italy, Paris returned home and found work as a dental assistant, which led to her enrolling in Otagos three-year Bachelor of Oral Health.

I wanted to learn from the best so I chose Otago for its highly respected international reputation, and because its where many of New Zealands leading experts in the dental industry are based.

I felt an Otago degree would give me an advantage when it came to applying for jobs.

Its a versatile qualification in high demand, so itll give me the freedom to work in any part of New Zealand or Australia, with flexible hours if I have a family one day.

The course has gone really fast and exceeded my expectations. It helped that I was familiar with the industry, rather than coming straight from school.

Ive really enjoyed Dunedin. Theres a great student-friendly atmosphere with so much to get involved in, and I have made some really good friends.

What I love about the course is that you can do both hygiene and therapy rather than having to choose one or the other. It gives you more options and more variety. When I graduate Ill look for a job in where I can do both.

During her career, Paris (Ngati Tuwharetoa, Ngai Te Rangi) plans to do some voluntary work overseas in less fortunate countries with limited resources, and work with Maori health.

Dental problems are highly prevalent among Maori in New Zealand, so that is an area of particular concern and interest for me that I would like to explore further.


Dr Joshua Ramsay

Otago graduate Dr Joshua Ramsay is a lecturer and researcher in molecular microbiology at Curtin University in Western Australia.

My mother told me that she dreaded the word why when I was a child, as it was every second word that came out of my mouth, Josh says.

As an undergraduate at Otago Josh took papers from across the sciences to help decide what area to pursue. I did better in physics, maths, and chemistry than biology, but I found genetics and evolution most interesting, so in the following years I switched.

At first I didnt think I did so well in biology, and I worried that I had made a terrible decision. I was very relieved when Otago Genetics lecturers presented an incredibly refreshing and demystified view of genetic analysis from the perspective of the founding geneticists, microbiologists, and chemists. I pretty-much instantly decided this was what I wanted to do.

Near the end of a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge Josh was considering whether to return to New Zealand, or move to Australia.

The Health Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship allowed me to come back to New Zealand and develop many of the exciting discoveries made during my PhD, and gave me a chance to take on a more senior role.

I chose Otago because Id worked well with people in the Ronson laboratory and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Professor Ronson has always been very altruistic about students career development, so I felt I could trust his mentorship. He has gone out of his way to help me progress my careereven when it has led to me leaving his lab!

The Fellowship at Otago was definitely a good decision. It gave me an opportunity to quickly get more research published, and put me in a better position to apply for grants, and subsequently jobs.

Josh researches the process of gene transfer between bacteria (bacterial sex), and how this aids pathogenesis, symbiosis and the transfer of antibiotic resistance. He has also started researching the transfer of antibiotic resistance between dangerous pathogenic superbugs like MRSA.

I simply like problem solving and understanding living organisms. Evolution has always fascinated me because of clear patterns in nature that emerge from it. Once you understand the simple rules of evolution, you can very easily make predictions and then design experiments to directly test it in nature.
The court was hearing a petition filed by Khosla who had sought exemption for lawyers from the odd-even scheme and also against imposition of Rs 2,000 as fine for violation without proper amendments in the Motor Vehicles Act. (Photo: Representational Image)

New Delhi: Lawyers in the capital will not be exempted from the ongoing phase of the odd-even scheme with the AAP government on Tuesday informing Delhi High Court that it will consider the issue if the scheme comes into force again.

The government assured a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath that if the odd-even scheme will come again after the ongoing phase would be over on April 30, it would consider the issue of whether to exempt lawyers from it.

"Next time if it (odd-even scheme) happens, we will give an appropriate consideration. If the petitioner will take up the issue again, we will consider it positively," Delhi government senior standing counsel Rahul Mehra told the bench.

The bench, however, observed, "this is a fact that many sections of people are facing inconvenience (due to odd-even scheme). Even the Parliamentarians are now facing inconvenience."

The bench, after hearing the submissions, said that "all the legal issues (raised in the petition) are kept pending to be decided at appropriate stage."

After Mehra told the bench that government would consider the issue if the odd-even scheme is implemented again, the petitioner, advocate Rajiv Khosla, agreed to it.

The court was hearing a petition filed by Khosla who had sought exemption for lawyers from the odd-even scheme and also against imposition of Rs 2,000 as fine for violation without proper amendments in the Motor Vehicles Act.

The court had on Monday asked the Delhi government whether there was any possibility of exempting advocates for the remaining period of the ongoing odd-even scheme which would continue till April 30.

In its affidavit filed in the court, the government had said that the odd-even scheme was in the "light of dangerous levels of pollution which have plagued the NCT region and is harming the health and safety." The government had also said that a "massive public opinion" exercise was carried out on the issue.
There are inputs that LeT is recruiting vulnerable Pakistani youths for carrying out terrorist acts in India and pushing such trained youths into Indian territory, says government. (Photo: Representational Image)

New Delhi: Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is recruiting Pakistani youths for carrying out terrorist acts in India and training them in terror camps in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Lok Sabha was informed on Tuesday.

Terrorist training camps continue to function in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. As per reports, there are several terrorist training camps of LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Hizbul Mujahideen in PoK, Minister of State for Home Affairs Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said in response to a query.

"There are inputs that LeT is recruiting vulnerable Pakistani youths for carrying out terrorist acts in India and pushing such trained youths into Indian territory," the Minister said.

Chaudhary said the government has consistently emphasised the need for Pakistan to put an end to cross-border infiltration into India and terrorism, and dismantle the infrastructure of support to terrorism in that country on a permanent basis.

"In the joint statement of January 6, 2004, the Government of Pakistan assured India that it would not permit any territory under Pakistan's control to be used to support terrorism in any manner. India has consistently emphasised to Pakistan the need to implement its solemn assurances of January 6, 2004," he said.
SOUTH HAVEN, Mich. (AP)  Authorities say a small plane went off a runway in southwestern Michigan after the pilot made an emergency landing due to thunderstorms.

No one was injured in Monday night's landing at South Haven Area Regional Airport.
The Mount Pleasant Police Department is investigating allegations of child abuse after a call to respond to a child possibly experiencing a seizure, according to a press release.

Police officers were sent to a home in the 1300 block of Lyons Street at 11:47 p.m. April 24 and discovered a 2-year-old child having difficulty breathing. The child was transported to a local hospital, where an evaluation led to the discovery of multiple bruises in different stages of healing all over the childs body, the press release stated.

The doctor provided a provisional diagnosis of fresh bruises to the skull, arms, legs and feet, and believed the child may be suffering from shaken baby syndrome. The child was sent to a specialty hospital for treatment, according to the press release.

The father of the child, Donald Bebee II, 30, of Mount Pleasant, was later questioned and taken into custody. He is currently lodged at the Isabella County Jail on charges of first-degree child abuse, a felony, and second-degree child abuse, a 10-year felony. Bebees bond was set at $600,000, or 10 percent.

The Mount Pleasant Police Department continues to investigate, and was assisted by the Department of Human Resources.
A Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) request submitted by Lockwood Developers was approved at Mondays regular meeting of Midland City Council, with the mayor saying the request is not perfect but helps more people than before.

The PILOT request is for a renewed program at Bracken Woods Apartments, and has been the subject of several public comments both in support and opposition of the request.

Members of city council approved the request 5-0.

I know its been a long process but I think due to the process, the best possible proposal has come out of it, said Mark Lockwood, of Lockwood Developers. Despite being a very long process, its really been a pleasure working with all of you and I appreciate you hearing us out.

Ron Parmele, a supporter of the PILOT request, reminded city council of the 28 organizations that make up the Continuum of Care and their support for the request.

Throughout the process, members of the Midland Area Real Estate Investors Association (MAREIA) have spoken out against the request. At the first reading of the PILOT request, Sid Hanson proposed using proportional or fixed ratio formulas in order to measure the necessary data.

This process really needs to be driven by the unmet rental housing needs, Hanson said, adding that vague criteria should be addressed in future PILOT discussions.

He urged city council to vote no and work more consistently with the Michigan State Housing Development Authority to ensure PILOT programs help those they are meant to help.

His statements were echoed by Rev. Ken Hitch of St. Johns Episcopal Church, who brought with him a petition of 120 signatures of residents opposed to the PILOT request. He respectfully disagreed with a statement made by Mayor Maureen Donker, Ward 2, at the last city council meeting that the rules were being changed mid-game, and asked for a moratorium on all PILOT programs until they are amended to meet the housing needs of Midland.

We have simply turned up the volume on key issues. Furthermore, we are not changing the rules in midstream, MAREIA President AnnaMaria Morgan said.

The original request from Lockwood Developers was an insult to Midland taxpayers, Morgan said, who would have been paying for a failed PILOT if not for the opposition by MAREIA. She reminded members of city council there are future discussions to be had about PILOT, and said her organization wants to be a part of those roundtable conversations.

MAREIA has been portrayed as villains throughout the PILOT process, but chose to be involved because we are committed and passionate about doing the right thing, Morgan said.

We work hard and do not profit off the backs of Midland taxpayers and more importantly, we dont exploit the working poor in our community but provide for them to the best of our ability, Morgan said.

She urged city council to table or to reject the current proposal and work on a new proposal that would more consistently meet the needs of the extremely poor.

Once all public comments were made, members of city council discussed the PILOT proposal and what they heard from residents at Mondays meeting

I think my comments still stand from two weeks ago, said Diane Brown Wilhelm, Ward 4, in support of the request. Its not perfect and theres work we still have to do.

Steve Arnosky, Ward 3, said he disagreed with the characterization of MAREIA and added it has been helpful to have people provide information and things for city council to consider when looking at PILOT programs. There were benefits to those discussions that were applied to the PILOT, like additional extremely-low income units.

Theres some compromises, Arnosky said. I do appreciate all comments that were made, both for and against. Its given us a lot to think about. We heard you and we dont disregard your comments in any way.

For Tom Adams, Ward 1, the need to understand the current unmet housing needs was an important part of the discussion as well as why certain groups are unable to find housing.

I would like to understand, better, the people who have not been able to find housing. But I think we did listen to the original critiques last summer and have moved with the proposition here, to some degree, Adams said.

Donker acknowledged the PILOT request is not perfect, but said city council has worked hard to understand the issue and listen to all the parties involved while making its decision on whether to approve it.

This is not perfect, and we know its not perfect, and we know we can be better, Donker said. This is what we have on the table now, and it is helping more people now than the way it currently exists.

Lockwood Developers plans to go full-speed ahead with getting contracts approved by MSHDA and starting to plan a multi-million dollar renovation project at the apartment complex that could begin in July or August.
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department.

Sunday, April 24

12:03 a.m.  Deputies were called to a report of trespassing in Ingersoll Township.

4:52 a.m.  A Gladwin County woman, 48, was arrested in Jerome Township for driving while her license was revoked and cited for no insurance.

9:46 a.m.  A mailbox in the 1300 block of West Hines Street was damaged.

2:31 p.m.  Gasoline, valued at $25.07, was stolen from a Jerome Township gas station.

Saturday, April 23

5:08 a.m.  A motorist was arrested at North Stark and East Airport roads for drunken driving.

6:52 a.m.  Police investigated a noise ordinance violation in the 1100 block of Haley Street.

11:02 a.m.  A deputy received a report of the road caving in at Hull and Hope roads. The information was forwarded to the road commission.

11:37 a.m.  A Jasper Township resident reported her neighbors dog was in her yard. Last year the dog killed some of her livestock. The information is being forwarded to animal control.

2:59 p.m.  An anonymous caller reported a yard sign with a message she felt was inappropriate in Edenville Township. A deputy checked the sign and found it was not a vision obstruction and contained no offense language, and determined it was a form of free speech.

3:26 p.m.  Police investigated a case of fraud and theft in the 1900 block of Shepherd Drive.

5:41 p.m.  Police investigated a case of retail fraud in the 900 block of Joe Mann Boulevard.

7:34 p.m.  Deputies were called to a Larkin Township address to investigate a hit and run traffic crash.

7:56 p.m.  A deputy received a tip that there was going to be a party with minors drinking alcohol at a Jerome Township address. The deputy spoke with a 17-year-old male who said he was having friends over for a bonfire and there would be no alcohol.

8:02 p.m.  Property was stolen from the 700 block of George Street.

8:25 p.m.  Officers were called to a domestic assault at a Claremont Street address.

9:17 p.m.  Officers investigated a case of harassment in the 1500 block of North Saginaw Road.

9:58 p.m.  A motorist was arrested at Isabella and Smith streets for driving on a suspended license.

Friday, April 22

3:53 a.m.  Deputies were called to a report of an unwanted person at a Mills Township home.

9:42 a.m.  A deputy blocked North Alamando Road near West Shaffer Road after a semi struck a power line. Also at the scene was the Coleman Community Fire Department and Consumers Energy.

8:48 p.m.  A Lee Township man, 27, was cited for driving with an improper registration in that township.
A plea deal has been offered to a man who is accused of impersonating a Michigan Department of Natural Resources officer and firing a revolver after an argument on state land in the fall.

Ridge Tyler Watson, 25, Mount Morris, was charged with seven felony counts after he was arrested on the morning of Oct. 12. He faces four counts of felonious assault, and one count each of felony firearms, impersonation of a public officer and reckless discharge of a firearm. He is being held on a $100,000 cash or surety bond.

The case is scheduled for a May 24 Cobbs hearing before Midland County Circuit Court Judge Michael J. Beale. During a Cobbs hearing, which is not open to the public, the judge uses the information at hand to inform the defendant of the likely sentence in a case, and the defendant can then use that information in deciding whether to enter a plea. The defendant can withdraw the plea if the judge does not deliver the expected sentence.

Court documents state prosecutors have offered a plea arrangement calling for Watson to plead guilty to two counts of felonious assault and one count of reckless discharge of a firearm.

Watson is being represented by attorney Kenneth S. Karasick of Flint.

The incident occurred about 4:30 a.m. Oct. 12 on state land in Geneva Township when a group of four people were riding quads and were confronted by two people.

One of them told the group he was a DNR conservation officer, and demanded to see their hunting licenses and ORV stickers, the Midland County Sheriffs Office reported. The people told him they didnt believe he was law enforcement, and an argument ensued, during which the man unholstered a .45-caliber handgun and fired into the ground next to the vehicles.

Felonious assault is punishable by up to four years in prison; felony firearm is punishable by up to two years in prison. The remaining charges  impersonating a public officer and reckless use of a firearm  are misdemeanors.
Indore: Shivraj Singh Chouhan 'shocked' at number of on-paper BPL people in Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Monday said he was shocked that of the over seven crore people in state, more than five crore are below the poverty line as per the records.

"The population of MP is around seven and a half crore, of which more than five crore have been registered under the BPL category. I was shocked and baffled, as to wherefrom so many people came," Chouhan said at a function during the ongoing 'Gram Uday Se Bharat Uday' Abhiyan near here.

"In some places the number of those with BPL status (in records) was more than the overall population there," he added. "Those whose names figure in the BPL list wrongly should come forward honestly to get the name struck off, so that the poor reap the benefit of government welfare schemes," he said.

Some residents of Dewas district had got their names removed from the BPL list, he pointed out.
ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. (April 22, 2016) -- U.S. Army technology advisors converged for an exercise in South Korea March 7-18 to talk with Soldiers about topics such as combat vehicles, weapons systems, aviation and satellite communications.

Army Reserve officers deployed for the annual Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercise to augment the full-time Field Assistance in Science and Technology team.

Lt. Col. Marc Meeker is the forward-deployed FAST advisor at U.S. Forces Korea.

"Our goal is to leverage RDECOM's engineering expertise to expedite technology to the Soldier, while taking requirements back to our labs that will guide the development of future technologies," Meeker said.

The Army Research, Development and Engineering Command stations FAST advisors around the world to provide commanders with access to its thousands of subject matter experts.

The Reserve officers, who are assigned to Army Sustainment Command's Detachment 8, are selected for their knowledge in scientific and engineering disciplines, Meeker said. They met with units to identify and discuss capability gaps, which are then directed to RDECOM's network for evaluation.

Soldiers of the 25th Infantry Division's 1-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team commented on all variants of the Stryker wheeled personnel carrier.

Maj. John Kelly, a Detachment 8 officer who has a doctorate in electrical engineering, said his Field Artillery experience helps him understand the wheeled and tracked vehicle systems as part of RDECOM's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center.

"I spent several years working for the automotive industry, and there are many similarities between Army vehicles and what people drive," Kelly said.

FAST advisors fielded questions about the Remote Weapons Station; interoperability of communication systems; and challenges with the subsystems on the Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, Reconnaissance Vehicle. The team relayed input to engineers at TARDEC and RDECOM's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center.

"There was a challenge with the interface between the M2 .50 Cal and the Remote Weapon Station. ARDEC engineers, working with Project Manager Soldier Weapons, were able to provide an immediate solution," Meeker said.

Lt. Col. Brian Wood works as a full-time Army civilian at RDECOM's Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center.

"The Soldier is a complex platform with a wide array of requirements from clothing, shelter and equipment to nutrition, physical and cognitive wellbeing, all of which must be considered and in synch to continue to field the best equipped, most capable fighting force," Wood said. "It is exceptionally important to meet with and understand the needs of our Soldiers from their perspective and communicate these back to RDECOM for solutions."

Aviators and air crews from the 3-25 General Support Aviation Battalion suggested improvements to CH-47 Chinook fast-rope systems and a novel idea on developing biodegradable over-the-water targets for aerial gunnery, Meeker said. RDECOM engineers are evaluating those as well.

Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Miller of the 319th Expeditionary Signal Battalion provided subject matter expertise on networks and satellite communications as the team traveled in South Korea.

"Having him on board was great, since most of us have a mechanical engineering background," Meeker said. "He assisted in the cyber side of things at USFK as well because he has exactly the right skill set, and we were fortunate to have him on loan during the exercise."

The team spoke with about 120 students at Seoul American High School on the benefits of a career in the science, technology, engineering and math fields.

"We covered different paths to success and the importance of working hard and keeping doors open for future opportunities," Wood said. "We were able to share our different paths to success in STEM-related careers and field their questions about scholarships, internships and careers as a scientist working on the coolest new technologies for our warfighters."
Asian-Pacific Americans have fought and served with the United States military for more than a century. That legacy continues today with three Filipino-American Airmen deployed with U.S. Pacific Commands Air Contingent at Clark Air Base, Philippines, where they fulfill a number of roles ranging from medical support to aircrew flight equipment and aircraft maintenance.

Knowing I am supporting the mission while working alongside the Philippine military makes me so proud of where I'm from and what I'm doing, said Staff Sgt. Jay Perocho Acasio, an aircrew flight equipment journeyman with the 51st Operations Support Squadron, Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, from Ozamiz City in the Misamis Occidental, Philippines. I've had the opportunity to talk with the Philippine pilots and show them what I do. Seeing how excited and interested they were really made me glad I'm here.

Similarly, Tech. Sgt. Kathlyn Hidalgo, an independent duty medical technician with the 25th Fighter Squadron at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, and a Guiguinto, Bulacan, Philippines, native, explains how she draws strength from her heritage while serving at home as a U.S. Airman.

It makes me feel so proud to be both an American Airman and a Filipino, she said. To be able to serve the country I hold citizenship in and the country I grew up in at the same time is such an honor. Looking at myself wearing the U.S. Air Force uniform and to be in my home countryI have no words to describe how I feel.

Airmen join the U.S. Air Force for a number of reasons, but for these Filipinos, serving in the U.S. armed forces affords them an opportunity for their military commitment to transcend serving a single nation.

"Knowing that my service benefits not only the U.S. and Philippines, but the international community, opens my eyes to a broader view of the military, Acasio said. "We have so many diversities serving in the U.S. military and knowing that as a U.S. Airman working with the military of the country I was born init just amazes me."

"I have gotten a few questions from Filipino military members about my national background and it makes me proud to say, 'I'm Filipino serving in the U.S. military, he added.

This service before self attitude stems from a long line of Filipinos who have served in the U.S. armed forces dating as far back as the War of 1812. While the battlefields have changed, their commitment to service remains the same.

I wanted to be a part of the U.S. Air Force, said Senior Airman Nikkie Javier, a precision guided munitions crew chief with the 51st Munitions Squadron at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, and a Norwalk, California, native, whose family moved to the U.S. from the Philippines. Our mission here is very important because were here supporting our Filipino allies. We dont take our allies for granted and instead show the world where we stand, side-by-side, with the Philippines. It makes me proud to be a part of something so great.

Both nations benefit from Filipino Airmen serving in the U.S. military, as they are able to translate cultural differences in a way both nationalities can understand.

I feel like I am a liaison or bridge for both countries, Hidalgo said. I am able to explain what is going on to my fellow Airmen and, likewise, to the Filipinos. No matter how big or small a country is, we need each others support, and thats really why we are here, supporting our friends and for me, my family too.

When asked how she feels about being home, Hidalgo said that for the first time in seven years, Its so good to be home.

Just being able to interact with Filipinos on a daily basis isamazing! she added.

Hidalgo, Acasio and Javier are here with the newly stood up Air Contingent created at the invitation of the Philippine government, utilizing the Airmen and aircraft already in place at the conclusion of Balikatan. The purpose of the Air Contingent is to help build the capacity of the Philippine Air Force in order to address local and regional security concerns. These three Filipino-American Airmen are serving both countries as a result of the partnership.

Ive seen the sacrifices service members make to keep our nations free, Javier said reflecting on her reasons for joining the U.S. Air Force. Im humbled to be here and a part of this mission.

The Air Force has given me hope, added Hidalgo. It has given me the motivation to work harder and be betterexcellence in all we do. I mean here I am back in the Philippines and serving at home. No other job can offer this and its exciting to share that hope with my fellow Filipinos.
AMINDAN, Philippines, April 22, 2016  At the break of dawn, a Philippine army platoon and one U.S. Army platoon from 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, geared-up on Antique Airfield to conduct the final mission of Operation Handa Koa, part of this years Balikatan exercise.

The team of soldiers boarded two CH-47 Chinook and four UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters to launch an air assault. Together, they trekked through the jungle to reach their main objective, code-named "Rhino".

"We started off with a combined-joint amphibious assault on the island itself, and then a Marine air assault onto Antique Airfield. The combined Marines then took control of the airfield expand the lodgment, and conducted a defense," said Army Capt. James Hodges, 25th Infantry Division assistant operations officer.

"We then conducted an air landing with U.S. Army forces and Philippine army forces via C-130 to occupy the airfield, and then conducted air assaults from the airfield to a northern objective on Panay itself. Simultaneously, we had Philippine Special Forces conduct reconnaissance missions on the same two objectives to the north," Hodges added.

Working Together

The first phase of the operation began on the island of Luzon, which included numerous days of planning and synchronization at Camp Emilio Aguinaldo. A combined-joint U.S. and Philippine forces team then worked together to project assets from Luzon to conduct a large-scale operation on the island of Panay.

"As we transitioned out of the initial projection phase-down to our initial staging base, it gave us the opportunity to do final rehearsals here on the airfield and then understand a little more about the operational environment that we were going to go into specifically to the island of Panay, and then conduct the air assault today on the objective," said Army Lt. Col. Jared Bordwell, Task Force Patriot commander.

Soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment had the opportunity to work closely with their Philippine army counterparts at Fort Magsaysay before executing their mission on Panay. The soldiers conducted jungle survival training, close quarters training, and counter improvised explosive device training.

"The initial phase back at Magsaysay is when we started to understand each other and gain that appreciation for capabilities as well as form that camaraderie between the two forces," Bordwell said. "An infantryman is an infantryman. So the [Philippine soldiers] and their capabilities and our capabilities -- as we understood each other a little bit more -- they meshed very well with actions on the objective. It was just like having two U.S. platoons or having two [Philippine] platoons out there. Both company commanders did an incredible job of planning, synchronizing, and really enabling that communication during the actions on to facilitate the execution of the mission."

By training together, the U.S. and Philippine soldiers developed tactics, techniques, procedures, and built partnerships.

A Great Opportunity

"I think Balikatan was a great opportunity for my soldiers and myself to learn a lot about the Philippines, understand our partner here, and understand some of the unique challenges of the operational environment," Bordwell said. "I think its also a great teaching tool as we continue our partnership in the Pacific in the future, and more likely than not soldiers will be back here doing Balikatan or other operations. Its a great partnership and a great ability for us to learn from our partners as well hopefully teach them some capabilities, and refine some of their overall abilities."

This year marked the 32nd iteration of the annual Balikatan exercise. The U.S. and the Philippines have a continued interest in strengthening their longstanding security alliance, which has provided a platform for security and stability in the region throughout the decades.
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NORMAL  A Bloomington minister involved in anti-bias, interfaith and educational outreach efforts has been named this year's recipient of the Grabill-Homan Community Peace Prize from the Illinois State University peace and conflict resolution studies program.

Kelley Becker, associate minister of First Christian Church in Bloomington, is the sixth person to receive the award, which recognizes individuals in Bloomington-Normal for achievements in peacemaking, leadership, initiative, activism and inspiration within the community.

Programs that Becker oversees as associate minister include the West Side Back to School Party, which annually brings together several churches to provide children with school supplies.

She also has worked to improve relations between the public and local police, served as an advocate for homeless people and worked on behalf of greater inclusion for African-American, Latino and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Becker also has leadership roles with Not in Our Town, the Advocate BroMenn Delegate Executive Committee and INtegrity Counseling and has supported improvements in community mental health care.
Hyderabad: A 28-year-old man whose wife has gone missing for almost a month from Rajasthan has sought Chief Minister Vasundhara Rajes help to find her. Vinay Babu, who works at a bank in Hyderabad, was married to Mamatha for two months.

Vinay alleged that his wife was abducted by her family members as they were not in favour of their inter-caste marriage. The in-laws, who are originally from Rajasthan, had also threatened to move her to Jodhpur, claimed Vinay. He had reported the matter to the police following which the family was summoned for counselling.

"My appeal to Rajasthan Chief Minister (Vasundhara Raje) is to please help me find my wife. She is missing for one month and I am really worried about her safety. If she was fine, she would have definitely called me,'' he told NDTV.

After the threat, when Mamatha filed a complaint against her family and asked for security, the local police said it was not possible to provide her security. Mamatha had gone missing last month while Vinay was at work.

As neighbours had seen Mamatha 'being taken away forcibly', the police registered a case of kidnapping. Anand Reddy, a senior police office told the news channel that they had sent a team to Jodhpur, but they could not trace her.

Mamathas family in Jodhpur filed a police case against her claiming that she ran away with five kilos of gold after her marriage.
BLOOMINGTON  A Bloomington woman was sentenced to probation and 180 days in jail Monday for stealing more than $180,000 from the Eagles Club in Bloomington.

Theresa Fitchorn, 44, pleaded guilty Nov. 2 to theft of over $10,000. She admitted to taking money from the Eagles between February and July 2014.

Eagles President Bob Fisher said he and other members were disappointed that Fitchorn, a member who served as treasurer and secretary before the embezzlement was discovered, received probation.

"We were really disappointed she didn't get actual prison time. This was heinous. It didn't just affect us. She damaged the whole community," said Fisher, who attended the sentencing hearing with about a dozen other members.

Fisher said Big Brothers Big Sisters of McLean County, Habitat for Humanity, YouthBuild and local veterans organizations were among the groups that lost out on donations from the Eagles after its bank account was drained to a $31 balance.

Judge Robert Freitag noted in his comments that the law requires a sentence of probation for first-time felons unless a community-based sentence would deprecate the seriousness of the offense. Fitchorn's conduct supports a prison term, said Freitag, but her need to work to pay restitution also was a consideration.

"I expect you to work and make restitution to the victims in this case," said Freitag.

Fitchorn also was ordered to serve 180 days in jail but with day-for-day credit for good behavior and credit for eight days she served before her release on bond, she will serve 82 days.

In comments to the judge, Fitchorn apologized to Eagles members and her family for the theft.

"All I can say is I'm sorry," said Fitchon, adding that she bought groceries, clothing and jewelry with a portion of the money.

Assistant State's Attorney Brad Rigdon asked for the three-year maximum term outlined in a plea agreement that included dismissal of more serious theft and financial crimes charges.

"The seriousness of the offense warrants more than a slap on the wrist," said Rigdon.

Bloomington police Detective Jared Roth said bank records showed Fitchorn withdrew more than $180,000 in cash and used the Eagles credit card for purchases. Groceries, clothing and gambling trips accounted for some of the money but a complete accounting was never made, said Roth.

Defense lawyer Stephanie Wong argued that Fitchorn was receiving mental health treatment and had undergone bariatric surgery. She also attends a support group for gambling addicts, said Wong.

The consequences of having a felony record will be long-lasting and severe for Fitchorn, said Wong.

The Eagles has tightened its bookkeeping measures since the theft, said Fisher. The organization, which puts its actual losses from the theft closer to $250,000, is rebuilding, said Fisher.

"The lights are still on and we're in the black. The Eagles is very strong and once again helping people," said Fisher.
Market vendor meeting set

PONTIAC  The Pontiac PROUD farmers market will have an informational meeting for vendors at 7 p.m. May 10 at the Pontiac City Council chambers, 115 W. Howard St., Pontiac.

The market will run 7 to 11 a.m. June 4 to Oct. 29 on the courthouse lawn at Washington and Main streets as part of WOW Wednesday events every second Wednesday in May through October.

The market needs vendors for fruits; vegetables; baked goods; dairy products; farm-fresh eggs; locally produced meats, plants and preserves; antiques; and arts and crafts and jewelry.

Applications are available at the PROUD office, 218 N. Main St., Pontiac. For information call 815-844-6692 or email proudofillinoismarketplace@gmail.com.
NORMAL  Developers are still mum about what restaurant will occupy the first floor of a new uptown building, but details continue to trickle out and plans are set to be finalized soon.

A website for the One Uptown on the Circle project lists the eatery as an "American-themed bistro."

The group we were most interested in is also interested. ... This is someone independent thats operating in the market currently at a high level," Doug Reichl, president of developer Tartan Realty Group, told the council in March. I would be hopeful we could announce that (restaurant) in the near term."

The council approved a redevelopment agreement for the site, across the street from Uptown Station, last month. More detailed plans passed the town's Uptown Design Review Commission on Monday and will appear on the May 2 council agenda.

Construction on the $14 million, 65,000-square-foot, five-story building is expected to begin this summer.

Changes approved Monday include additional signage for the development, including one for the restaurant, and replacing a first-floor arcade  an open area with part of the building overhead  with a canopy over the restaurant's outside seating.

Matt Wylie, a principal at Chicago-based Eckenhoff Saunders Architects, told the commission the outside area will need an exterior fence to comply with liquor regulations. Commissioner Dennis French said the fence could be an opportunity for artistic flourishes.

Wylie also told the commission the project is likely to use local contractors. Plans are 45 percent to 50 percent complete, so contractors may bid on the project next month, he said.

Reichl said the restaurant could hold more than 150 customers. He referred to it as the "piece that everybody's looking at" in the building.

"We'll take care to be sure that it's the right restaurant," he said.

Plans call for apartments on the third, fourth and fifth floors, town offices on the second and a restaurant on the first. A basement would allow residents to park at the site, but restaurant patrons would be expected to park in nearby decks operated by the town.

The project is phase two of Tartan's plans in uptown that also include the Hyatt Place hotel next door to One Uptown on the Circle. The new building is set to use some building materials identical to those used in the Hyatt.

The town lent Tartan $5.1 million for the hotel and will lend another $2.5 million for the new building. Normal also has promised to sell the land to Tartan for $1 and pay top-of-the-market rent for office space there for 15 years.
BLOOMINGTON  Thad Hughes and Jill Parrent are 18 years old and want to help their generation do great things.

They are trying by example and by teaching other youth through 4-H.

"There's a great outcome when you show someone they can do great things, when they realize, 'I can do this too,'" said Hughes, of Shirley.

Hughes and Parrent, of Normal, were among 4-H youth honored this month in the Washington, D.C. area.

Hughes received the nationwide 2016 Youth in Action Award for science, technology, engineering and math during the National 4-H Council Youth in Action Legacy Awards Gala.

Parrent was among six 4-H delegates nationwide to be on the National 4-H Youth Leadership Team that organized the national conference.

At one point, Hughes and Parrent were among 10 4-H'ers nationwide being honored on stage.

"For 20 percent of us to be from McLean County was definitely cool and showed the world how strong McLean County 4-H is," said Parrent, a senior at Normal West High School and a member of Greenleafers 4-H Club.

"Two kids from McLean County were recognized nationally of six million 4-H kids in the United States  that's huge," noted Carolyn Hansen, 4-H youth development educator serving McLean County.

Hughes, a member of Team Metal Cow and Linden Lead 'em 4-H clubs, is a freshman at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Ind.

He was recognized for accomplishments in robotics and for sharing his passion and skills with other youth. Hughes has inspired more than 6,000 young people statewide with his technology and engineering talks, demonstrations and workshops.

Included was the Spinning Robots after-school program that he developed and taught to 50 McLean County middle-school students. The program taught basic circuitry and how to build simple robots.

"Robotics is the avenue but the end goal is helping students to do great things," Hughes said. "I want to make sure that we have a whole generation of people who are willing to do good things in engineering and in other fields."

Hughes received a $5,000 scholarship for higher education. Another $5,000 was awarded to McLean County Extension that will use the money for technology lesson plans for 4-H members and other students, Hansen said.

Parrent is a 10-year 4-H member who has had leadership positions at the club, county and state levels.

She was among six 4-H'ers nationwide who organized the national conference, whose speakers included U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and whose activities included workshops and meetings with national leaders.

The purpose is for 253 youth and national leaders to educate each other about issues important to young people, Parrent said.

"We want to show today's youth how they can be better citizens," Parrent said.

"This is one way of letting their peers, their county and world know what we already know  that 4-H is important to developing tomorrow's leaders," Hansen said.

About 2,500 children and teens are 4-H members in McLean, Livingston and Woodford counties, Hansen said.

"Nothing compares to 4-H for the vast opportunities," Parrent said.
NORMAL  The Normal Police Department is seeking the publics help in locating a missing and possibly endangered elderly woman.

Betty Fetters, 90, suffers from dementia and cannot care for herself, according to a news release Tuesday from the NPD.

She is described as white, 4 feet 10 inches tall, weighing 125 pounds and having blue eyes and gray hair.

She is possibly in the company of her daughter, Janice Elsner, and may be traveling to Indiana in a 1995 Maroon Saturn with Illinois registration V802920, police said.

If you have any information pertaining to the whereabouts of either woman, contact Detective Nicole Bruno at the Normal Police Department, 309-454-9702 or 309-454-9535.
BLOOMINGTON  A highly contagious but rarely fatal respiratory infection in dogs apparently has spread to Bloomington-Normal, so owners of dogs at higher risk of disease should take precautions.

Canine influenza has been confirmed in at least one dog in Bloomington-Normal, said Dr. David Bortell of Bortell Animal Hospital, Bloomington. The dog is not a patient of Bortell.

But the longtime veterinarian advised Monday that owners of dogs who go to day care or boarding facilities, a dog park or grooming salon should ask their dog's veterinarian whether the dog should be vaccinated against canine influenza. The vaccine may reduce the severity of illness, Bortell said.

The emerging disease is a concern because most dogs have never been exposed to it so they have not developed immunity, Bortell said.

Nearly all dogs exposed to the virus become infected but most have a mild form of the disease and recover in two to three weeks, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.

"The flu has come to the area," Bortell told The Pantagraph. "We want people to take steps so this is isolated and doesn't turn into an epidemic."

Canine influenza is not transmitted from dogs to people, according to Bortell and the association. As a result, the McLean County Health Department is not involved, said the health department's Lisa Slater.

"It's an issue for people to discuss with veterinarians," she said.

Canine influenza became an issue last spring when there was an outbreak in the Chicago area that sickened an estimated 1,700 dogs and killed six.

At the time, Bloomington-Normal vets said there were no local confirmed cases  but there were suspected cases  and they urged pet owners to avoid taking dogs on trips to Chicago. The uptown Normal Pooch Parade was postponed last May.

Owners of dogs who are lethargic, have fever, cough, sneezing, vomiting and diarrhea should call their vet, Bortell said. Dogs with flu are kept isolated from other dogs for three weeks and are given supportive care.

The virus may be passed to cats, guinea pigs and ferrets.
As Archie Bunker might say, the world is going down the terlet.

And how.

Who could have predicted that politics would require serious discussion of who uses what restroom? Or, personally speaking, a second column?

Alas, it seems that yet greater clarity is needed regarding this terribly serious, faux dilemma of proper bathroom usage in North Carolina.

As you likely know, the state recently passed a hastily written bill, signed by Gov. Pat McCrory, to pre-empt a Charlotte law that would have allowed transgender folks to visit the facility corresponding to their gender identity.

Tar Heel lawmakers, ever alert to the presumably rampant problem of gender fakery, so ordered: Men and women must use the restroom that corresponds to their sex as indicated on their birth certificate.

It is actually not insane to insist that men use the mens room and women use the womens. Most people reckon this system has worked fine for as long as anyone can remember and see no reason to make accommodations for the roughly 700,000 Americans who are transgender. What has become clear, however, is that North Carolinians and others arent worried about transgender people; theyre worried primarily about heterosexual men who pretend theyre transgender in order to gain access to womens quarters.

For what purpose would a man do this? I can imagine a fraternity initiation prank or a punk on a dare using the womens facility as a foil. Oh what fun to hear the ladies shrieking. Or, perhaps, not. Maybe the women tackle the idiot and toss him out the door. Thats where Id put my money.

As to the would-be rapist/fondler/exhibitionist, why would anyone imagine that a law forbidding transgender people from entering the womens room would stop him from walking through an unlocked door?

The backlash to the new law has been harsh. In the latest squeeze, Pearl Jam canceled a concert in Raleigh, following Bruce Springsteens example. Several cities and states, including Boston and Connecticut, have cut government-subsidized travel to North Carolina. And recently, Duke University President Richard Brodhead said that the law has damaged the states reputation and is having both financial and material impact on its colleges and universities.

In response to these concerns and other financial losses stemming from the law, McCrory last week issued an executive order almost as abruptly as he signed the original bill. He has said hell urge the Legislature to amend the law to reinstate state employees right to seek legal recourse in cases of discrimination for sexual orientation or gender identity. The bathroom part of the bill would remain, as would the laws mandate that cities and municipalities may not pass their own non-discrimination laws. For McCrory, who is up for re-election, the issue comes down to conservative principles of limited government.

On a recent Sundays Meet the Press, he told host Chuck Todd that he will always call out government overreach. This might be a good campaign motto, but isnt the state overreaching by telling the residents of towns and cities that they cant pass their own laws? In effect, this means that a business in, say, Hamlet, North Carolina, where McCrory recently visited what he termed an African-American buffet restaurant, could deny service to my delightful gay married neighbors.

As luck would have it, McCrorys appearance on the NBC program coincided with my own, exactly one day following The Washington Posts publication of a letter from McCrory excoriating me and my earlier column. What fun! Before the show, we found ourselves seated just inches apart in makeup. Nothing quite neutralizes tensions like comparing foundation notes. Miraculously, I was able to suppress the transgender quip that was performing cartwheels on the tip of my tongue.

We chatted in that Southern way  with Dentyne smiles and lizard eyes. Bless his heart.

While it is certainly understandable that some people would be uncomfortable with the idea of faux transgender males ogling their daughters, Id be far more concerned about sending a boy into the mens room where even pedophiles are allowed to relieve themselves. Imagine what would happen to Caitlyn Jenner if she were forced to use the mens room. Or, what about a transgender man, who, though hes bald, bearded, muscled and rough, is forced to use the womens room?

But of course, she and he wont. Because this bathroom law is utterly unenforceable and therefore unnecessary. What we have is a non-solution to a non-problem.

And my guess is McCrory knows it. He should flush HB2 down the terlet.
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A high school prom in northern Wisconsin ended abruptly after a lone gunman burst onto the scene and opened fire at the building where students were partying. Thankfully, there were no reported fatalities on the aggrieved side. The shooter, on the other hand, was killed after participating in a brief shootout with the police.

Gunman Killed, Two People Injured

According to the official police report via CNN, Jakob Wagner, 18, arrived at Antigo High School at about 11 p.m on Saturday. Armed with a rifle, Wagner opened fire just outside the entrance of the building where the prom event was being held.

Authorities who were patrolling the area quickly responded and started shooting at the gunman. Wagner was fatally wounded during the short skirmish and was taken to the nearest hospital. After many attempts to save the suspect's life, doctors pronounced him dead at 1:06 a.m.

ABC News reported that Wagner's unexplained attack on Antigo High School injured two partygoers. District Administrator Donald Childs said a boy and a girl were shot as they were exiting the school. The boy was a student at Antigo and the girl was his out-of-state date.

Both received treatment at Aspirus Langlade Hospital. The boy is still recuperating from surgery while the girl has since been discharged from the health facility.

Swift Police Response Saved The Day

As for the other partygoers, they were escorted away from the school shortly after the shooting took place. The Unified School District of Antigo said in a statement that swift response from the police prevented what could have been a much more disastrous scenario.

"I didn't see anything suspicious. I didn't feel any bad vibes. It seemed like it was going to be a normal prom," said Sonia Reed, a mother who was present during the event. "I have two other children that's in the high school, and they don't want to go back, period. They're just beyond freaking out here."

Antigo High School administrators refrained from divulging further details about the incident, claiming they don't want to preempt pending investigation. However, they did indicate that Wagner did not enter the building because there were policemen present at the prom.
New Delhi: Under relentless attack over the Uttarakhand crisis, the BJP has decided to counter the Congress by raking up the AgustaWestland VVIP helicopter scam, in which the names of the Congress top brass, including its president Sonia Gandhi, has also cropped up. The ruing party will also raise issues like Ishrat Jahan case and Aircel-Maxis deal to target the Congress within Parliament and outside.

In a counter-offensive, the Congress on Tuesday sought a discussion on the VVIP helicopter deal and pointed to the role of an industrialist said to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The ruling party members have already submitted notices while demanding a discussion on these issues. Sources said nominated member Subramanian Swamy, who took the oath in the Upper House on Tuesday, will raise the VVIP helicopter scam on Wednesday while in the Lok Sabha BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi will raise it.

Media reports said an Italian court ruling stated how the firm lobbied with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her close aides, besides then NSA M.K. Narayanan and then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the VVIP helicopter deal. Mrs Gandhi was described as the driving force behind the deal in these court papers. The VVIP helicopter scam also figured prominently in the BJP parliamentary party meeting, that was also attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The party focused on this strategy to take on the Congress, which is leading the Opposition attack on the government on the Uttarakhand crisis. The BJP has issued a whip asking its Rajya Sabha members to be present in the House during the week as the government plans to push some important bills in the Upper House.

The CBI has, meanwhile, approached the external affairs ministry seeking the help of diplomatic channels to get a copy of the Italian courts ruling in the AgustaWestland helicopter deal. Sources said the CBI has completed the domestic portion of its investigation in the case, but the judicial requests sent to eight countries are still pending.

The Milan court of appeals, which overturned a lower courts order, sentenced Finmeccanicas former chief Giuseppe Orsi to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption in the sale of 12 VVIP helicopters to India for over Rs 3,600 crores, while former CEO of Finmeccanicas helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland, Bruno Spagnolini, has been handed a four-year sentence.

Sources said that under the BJPs strategy to take on the Congress, the ruling party will also demand a discussion on the Aircel-Maxis scam, in which the role of former finance minister P. Chidambaram has been questioned. BJP MP Anurag Thakur will raise it in the Lok Sabha, and Bhupender Yadav will bring it up in the Rajya Sabha. Mr Chidambaram is also likely to come under attack by the BJP over the affidavits filed in the Ishrat Jahan case. Mr Chidambaram has been accused of changing the affidavit to conceal Ishrats alleged terrorist links. The BJPs Kirit Somaiya will raise it in the Lok Sabha, while another BJP member will bring it up in the Rajya Sabha.

Attacking the Congress over the VVIP helicopter scam, communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad asked the defence minister in the Manmohan Singh government, Mr A.K. Antony, to name the party leaders allegedly involved in the scandal. Bribe-givers have been convicted. Why are the bribe-takers silent? Antony should answer if the leaders of the Congress are involved or not. Are they from your party or not? Please come clean, the minister said.

Hitting back at the ruling party, the Congress also rejected the allegations against Mrs Gandhi and Dr Singh, saying that we reject it with the contempt they deserve.

No one should make loose comments (about) the Congress president and the former PM, whose integrity and intellect was never in question, Congress Rajya Sabha deputy leader Anand Sharma said. He said the BJP had been making irresponsible statements and wild allegations and the Congress was not going to accept this. Mr Sharma also claimed that a businessman close to Mr Modi had entered into an MoU with AgustaWestland, but he refused to name him. He also asked the government why it had removed AgustaWestland from the blacklist it had been put by the UPA government.

Mr Antony asked the Narendra Modi government to fast track the probe into the scam and find out the truth as the UPA government had cancelled the contract and ordered a CBI investigation into it. When the primary allegation came out in the media, we immediately ordered a CBI inquiry. We cancelled the contract and fought the case in the Milan court. We won the case and got back all the money we paid in advance by bank guarantee, Mr Antony said.

On January 1, 2014, India had scrapped the contract with AgustaWestland to supply 12 AW101 VVIP helicopters to the Indian Air Force over allegations of kickbacks by it for securing the deal. The then UPA government had also barred Finmeccanica and its group companies from taking part in any new defence contract bidding.
Oklahoma is pushing and strengthening its measures as a pro-life state. The Oklahoma House of Representatives recently approved a bill that would bar doctors who perform abortions from obtaining or renewing medical licenses.

Reuters reports that Oklahoma's Republican-dominated legislature approved the pro-life bill on Thursday after garnering a 59-to-9 vote. The bill, authored by Republican Senator Nathan Dahm, is now on the desk of Governor Mary Fallin waiting to be signed. Fallin has not yet confirmed whether she will support the proposed legislation.

The Oklahoma Pro-Life Bill And Its Abortion Restrictions

Under the said Oklahoma pro-life bill, the medical licenses of doctors, who are found guilty of performing abortions, will be revoked. Aside from revoking medical licenses, doctors who commit the so-called "unprofessional conduct" will also be barred from acquiring or renewing their medical licenses.

The bill, however, would exempt doctors who perform abortion in favor of a mother's life. "This is our proper function, to protect life," Dahm said. Supporters of the Oklahoma pro-life bill echoed Dahm's statement, saying that the proposed legislation would protect the sanctity of life against abortion.

Advocates For Abortion Rights Oppose The Okalhoma Pro-Life Bill

Several House representatives have strongly opposed the Oklahoma pro-life bill, stating that the measure is misguided and unconstitutional. They argued that revoking a doctor's medical license for performing abortion will violate the Constitution because abortion is a legal medical procedure under the law.

According to The Washington Post, Amanda Allen, senior state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement that the Oklahoma pro-life bill is a new low from politicians who kept on restricting women's access to vital health care services. Allen, who advocates abortion rights, strongly urged Fallin to reject the "cruel and unconstitutional" bill.

Oklahoma's Bill Against Abortion Is About Principles

In response to the arguments, Rep. David Brumbaugh, co-sponsor of the Oklahoma pro-life bill, said that the proposed legislation is not about policy and politics. He emphasized that it is about principles. "If we take care of the morality, God will take care of the economy," he stated.

A 2015 report of Americans United For Life showed that Oklahoma is the most pro-life state in the United States. It is among the few states in the country that passed pro-life legislations to protect women and unborn children against abortion.

Are you in favor with Oklahoma's newest pro-life bill? Is it reasonable enough to revoke the medical licenses of doctors who perform abortion? Share your thoughts below.
Bedwetting or nocturnal enuresis is common among school-age kids and is the misery of most, especially during sleepover invites. Help your kid to end this embarrassing issue with these helpful tips.

The National Institutes of Health said that more than 5 million children aged 5 and up suffer from nighttime incontinence or bedwetting as Parenting.com reported. That's 15 percent of children bedwetting by age 5 according to Mayo Clinic. The rate lowers down to less than 5 percent by ages eight to 11.

The website also says that bedwetting is more common among young boys than in girls; ratio goes two boys is to one girl. While kids generally outgrow this stage, here are some tips you can help your kid overcome this dilemma:

1. Stop Blaming the Kid

Putting pressure on your child will just make bedwetting worse. Don't get angry and avoid punishing him, Parents.com advised. Try to reassure your child that this is just a normal phase and he is not alone in dealing with this. Don't make a big deal out of a normal situation, instead offer some comfort.

For nights that they successfully remained dry, reward your kid. It could be a small toy or a simple treat out to the park. This positive approach works better than punishing the kid, creating unnecessary trauma.

2. Urinary Bed Alarms

This is considered as the most effective tool in bedwetting treatment. It includes a moisture sensor and an alarm. The moisture alarm wakes up your kid as soon as the device detects moisture. It will prompt your kid to wake up and go to the bathroom instead. The interruption in sleep can train the brain to control bladder better.

A study published in the Journal of Paediatric Child health revealed that 79 percent of 505 children who used bed alarms was able to achieve being dry within 10 weeks. Around 73 percent were dry six months later.

3. Seek Professional Help

There are many misconceptions about bedwetting. Some parents believe that bedwetting is due to laziness or spite, a common misunderstanding about the strange phenomenon, WebMD reported. According to Dr. Howard J. Bennett, a paediatrician in Washington and author of "Waking Up Dry", bedwetting mostly runs in families; a child outgrows the phase at the same time their parents did.

A study published in the Journal of Urology revealed that children following their doctor's advice about bedwetting were found to recover faster than those children whose parents provided their own treatment. So a simple recommendation from the doctor is simple: limit fluids at night and eliminating caffeine. You may also encourage your kid to pee before going to sleep.

So seek your doctor's help for more tips and to rule out any medical condition. It is important to be understanding and offer reassurance to your child. For more tips, check out the video below:
A hospital was raided after police officers received a tip that it sells and swaps newborns. The hospital is said to have a "baby farm" wherein parents in search of a child can purchase and even swap a newborn from the establishment.

According to Mirror, the babies came from unwanted pregnancies. When the mother would opt to have the baby aborted, the hospital management would convince her to have the child which would then be sold for about 1000.

The private hospital is located within the Gwalior district in India. Times in India released a report stating that the hospital's manager was already arrested. The police then added that majority of the babies' mother were raped or got pregnant out of wedlock.

"When a girl or her parents approached them for termination of pregnancies," the officer, Prateek Kumar stated. "Doctors at this hospital used to convince them assuring a safe and secret delivery. Once baby is delivered and mother gets discharged, hospital authorities start hunting for gullible couples who could buy them."

The hospital does not only sell newborn babies but they also offer child swapping. The officers noted that there was once a couple who swapped their daughter into a baby boy.

The police have been doing their best to resolve the issue as it was mentioned that the hospital manager could not give then a concrete answer. According to the police, the hospital manager Arun Bhadoria did not provide the whereabouts of the babies that were sold. It was stated that Bhadoria hired agents to fetch the mothers in the Chambal region and continue the transaction from then on.

Several arguments have been discussed in regards to the case. While some posted their opinions expressing that selling babies should be illegal, there are those that are in favor of selling newborns as long as they are in good hands. Do let us know your opinions on the comments section below.
An advocacy group is calling for schools to start at a later time so students could sleep longer. Later school times have been found to be beneficial to the well-being of the students and their academic performance.

"Start School Later" is an advocacy group with the mission to allow students more sleep by changing the time public schools start everyday, according to Huffington Post. Sleep is essential for every human being, especially for teenagers since they are growing and developing at a rapid rate, according to Terra Ziporyn Snider, executive director of the advocacy group.

In more than 40 states, nearly 75 percent of public schools start earlier than 8:30 a.m. Some students are forced to wake up at 5 or 6 a.m. in time for the long commute to school.

Snider explains that most teenagers in the U.S. cannot get enough sleep with the current hours being implemented in schools. Over two-thirds to students are getting under 8 hours of sleep a night while 40 percent of high school students get less than six hours of sleep a night.

Due to busy schedules, teens are experiencing an epidemic of sleep disorders that may lead to narcolepsy, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The hours of 5 and 6 a.m. are when teens are at their lowest point of alertness in their 24-hour cycle, according to Judith Owens, director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders of Boston Children's Hospital.

Several studies have recommended starting high school at 8:30 a.m. or later to allow students between 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep per night. Nauset Regional High School decided to push their start time to 8:35 a.m. instead of the initial 8 a.m. to give students a few more minutes to sleep in.

Aside from students showing up to school more refreshed, tardiness fell by 35 percent and unsatisfactory grades fell by half. Most of nearly 1,000 students at Nauset Regional High School agree that starting school is better even if it pushed dismissal to 3 p.m., according to Boston Globe.

Schools that have implemented changing the time classes to a later hour noticed fewer absences, fewer suspension, better graduation rates, less alcohol, less substance abuse, fewer signs of depression and less car crash rates. Better cognitive functions and better test scores were also noticed among students who woke up at a later time.
Tragedy struck Tufts Medical Center in Boston over the weekend when a 2-year-old girl was bumped by an ambulance just outside the hospital's emergency department. The toddler was quickly rushed to the health facility, but all efforts to revive her failed.

Routine Afternoon Turns Into Gut-Wrenching Incident

Little Isabella Wu was walking home with her mother and sister to their apartment on Nassau Street when the accident occurred Saturday afternoon. Isabella was hit by an ambulance just a few steps from the apartment's entrance. Raymond Pereyra, the family's neighbor, immediately stepped outside after hearing someone sobbing in the street.

"I came down through the lobby and saw mom on the floor in the pavement just crying in agony," Pereyra shared to My Fox Boston. "She was just crying rolling in agony on the pavement, and there was blood near her."

Mei Lee, another neighbor, said the family moved to Chinatown in 2015. Isabella and her older sister spend most of their time at a nearby playground.

"It's so sad. "I can't believe it," Lee lamented upon hearing the sad news. "They're friendly. They like to come here every day."

Police Investigation Still Going On

The ambulance that hit Isabella was from a New England-based ambulance services company called EasCare. The company's official website boasts it's one of the largest of its kind in the region.

"Everyone at EasCare is deeply saddened by the incident that occurred earlier today," said Tim Coolen, the company's chief executive. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of the victim. EasCare will continue [to] co-operate fully with the investigation in an open and transparent manner."

Rachel McGuire, a spokesperson for the Boston police, declined to comment on how fast the ambulance was going when it hit Isabella. The officer told Boston Globe that the information would only be revealed if it proved to be a factor in the accident.

No charges had been filed against the ambulance driver just yet, but authorities say they aren't ruling out any possibilities. According to eyewitness accounts, the vehicle was beyond the hospital's ambulance bay when the accident occurred.
Cybersecurity education in the United States is still weak, a research revealed. Despite the increasing threats brought by skilled cybercriminals, universities in the country are still lagging behind.

According to CIO, hacks of high-profile website have become common in the recent years scaring businesses and agencies about the information they store online. Many have improved the security features on their websites but cybercriminals prove that they can get into any form of security.

The study conducted by CloudPassage revealed that a look into 122 universities in the US showed that they had poor performance in terms of cybersecurity education. "In a world of escalating threats and attacks -- universities have a responsibility to address security with their students," CloudPassage CEO Robert Thomas.

It was further disclosed in the study that the top 10 computer science programs in the US do not include a cybersecurity course. Only three schools reportedly require students to take a cybersecurity course to graduate.

Thomas explained that these educational institutions should require cybersecurity training for the students. He noted that this is important to provide better security for various websites.

"There needs to be a fundamental shift in the cybersecurity paradigm," Thomas said. "We must get to a point where every university requires computer science majors to complete cybersecurity training as a graduation requirement, so that the programmers and developers of the next generation have security front-of-mind when delivering products to market."

Despite this poor output, Carnegie Mellon Security and Privacy Institute director David Brumley told SC Magazine that the educational institution is serious in arming students with the necessary information and skills on cybersecurity.

Brumley said that the Carnegie Mellon University has more than 50 courses on cybersecurity and privacy. "CMU believes security is fundamental, and has created an entire University-level institute called CyLab to bring together end-to-end expertise to help solve today's security and privacy challenges," he added.
Merriam-Webster upgraded its dictionary this 2016 after the company officially acknowledged almost 2,000 words and phrases last week. Popular acronyms like ICYMI, FOMO and TMI are among the Merriam-Webster dictionary's latest additions.

According to the New York Post, Merriam-Webster said in a press release that the latest additions to its unabridged dictionary are a reflection on how the English language evolved. Most of the new entries are words and phrases used in science, technology, fashion, personal identity and slang conversations.

Widely Used Acronyms Made It To The Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Time reports that some of the notable new entries of the Merriam Webster dictionary are the popularly used acronyms. Among these are ICYMI (in case you missed it), FOMO (fear of missing out) and TMI (too much information).

Merriam-Webster disclosed that the dictionary's latest additions were thoroughly screened. "It doesn't happen quickly - we monitored many of these words for years before they'd met our criteria for entry," the company stated.

Merriam-Webster Added New LGBTQ Terms

Several terms related to the LGBTQ community were also officially recognized by Merriam-Webster on its dictionary's latest additions. These include "genderqueer" (a person who does not want to be identified as solely male or female) and "cisgender" (a person whose gender identity corresponds with their sex at birth).

Moreover, the dictionary also acknowledged the use of "Mx." as a gender-neutral title for those who do not want to be tagged as Mr. or Mrs.

More Modern And Odd Terms On Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Modern words and phrases used online also made it to Merriam Webster dictionary's latest additions. "Dox" (to publicly publish private information as a form of punishment or revenge), "revenge porn" (sexually explicit images posted online as a form of revenge or harassment) and "trigger warning" (a statement cautioning that content may be disturbing or upsetting) are part of the new entries.

Moreover, Merriam-Webster also recognized some odd words. Among these are "wacky tobacky" (marijuana), "nomophobia" (fear of being without access to a working cell phone) and "waggle dance" (a series of figure-eight movements performed by a bee to indicate the direction and abundance of a distant food source).

Do you find these new words and phrases appropriate? Share your thoughts below.
A London airport took shaming breastfeeding women to the next level. A nursing mom was asked by Heathrow London airport staff to dump four gallons of collected breast milk meant for her breastfed 8-month-old son.

At Heathrow's Terminal 5, security officials didn't let Jessica Coakley Martinez off the hook if she didn't throw the breast milk she brought for her baby. As a nursing mom who balances work and family, Martinez pumps and collects milk during travels so as to provide for her baby's needs.

London Airport officials make Jessica Martinez dump her 4 gallons of breast milk https://t.co/X7JI4Eh9Mp  The Global Dispatch (@Global_Dispatch) April 24, 2016

The angry mother, according to City News, posted her frustration and humiliating experience on Facebook, which was shared for almost 4,000 times. In Martinez's post, she vented out her ordeal at being shamed publicly.

Only At Heathrow Airport

Martinez brought a "giant block of frozen breast milk" but she was denied through British customs. She said that she successfully brought frozen breast milk through four countries and she's appalled why Heathrow airport wouldn't let it through.

Heathrow's limit for liquids in carry-on bags is only at 100 ml. The breast milk that Martinez brought was way beyond the limit set by Heathrow airport.

Pumping Breast Milk Whenever Possible

"I resolved to pump at every possible moment between my meetings, presentations, business lunches and dinners, taxis, flights, and long waits in airports," said Martinez. She added that it meant "pumping while sitting on toilets in public restrooms" and even in stuffed airplane bathrooms.

"You made me dump nearly 500 oz. of breast milk in the trash," said Martinez. "You made me dump out nearly two weeks' worth of food for my son," Martinez said via Daily Mail.

No Compromise

Martinez also acknowledged that she should have familiarized herself with Heathrow's regulations, but at the same time, the airport staff should have agreed on a compromise. She was willing to throw the liquid milk, and at least, she should have been allowed to carry the more than 300 ounces of frozen breast milk.

Despite her crying and begging, Heathrow officials didn't give her the consideration. According to an airport representative, their regulations are clearly stated on their website, implying that nursing moms should read these regulations before traveling.

However, the mom is not the only victim of shaming breastfeeding at the Heathrow Airport. Last year, actress Alyssa Milano had her pumped breast milk confiscated at the same airport.

What do you think about Heathrow Airport's policies? Share your thoughts below!
In most cases, a woman won't be concerned with fertility until they decide to have a baby. Then when she finally decides to start getting pregnant, she gets surprised with infertility issues that often involve ovulation kits, fertility monitors and apprehension.

Thanks to the many celebrities, who opened up about infertility, many women and men are choosing to discuss the matter openly. This week, women and men who experienced infertility have joined forces to spread awareness about this disease and how it can tremendously affect the life of a person.

National Infertility Awareness Week helps raise awareness & serves as a reminder that you are not alone. #1in8 #NIAW pic.twitter.com/LoiBk3oth7  CCRM Minneapolis (@CCRM_MN) April 25, 2016



National Research Findings

Chicago Tribune conducted a national survey composed of 1,208 women aged 25 to 45 to gauge knowledge on fertility and family planning. The results are as follows:

More than half of the women (51 percent) said they would like to have children but only 48 percent have the proper knowledge about fertility rate after age 35. After the age of 35, there are high chances of miscarriage and ovarian reserve declines. Most of them (89 percent) agreed that doctors should discuss infertility issues during a consultation. While 79 percent of them said that this vital information should be included in school sex education.

More than half (52 percent) of the women aged over 35 admitted they would have made different life choices if they had been informed about infertility earlier in life. This prompted to raise more awareness and encourage women to openly ask about infertility.

Basic Fertility Facts

Refinery29 supports the celebration of National Infertility Awareness Week and dedicated a full week of open discussion about conceiving and dealing with infertility. It is important to learn basic facts about the disease. Check out information provided by Refinery29, Chicago Tribune and Romper:

1. Around 7.3 million Americans are affected by infertility. One in eight couples suffers from infertility or difficulty of getting pregnant.

2. There's no turning back the clock. Beyond the age of 35, fertility potential declines faster. A 30-year-old woman has a 20 percent chance of getting pregnant in a given cycle. Infertility is defined when a woman over 35 fails to get pregnant after six months of trying or fails to carry a pregnancy to live birth. For women under 35, infertility is attempting to conceive for a year without success. Seek professional help if you experience infertility based on the definition above.

3. The blame is equally distributed to both male and female. Infertility affects women and men equally.

4. The common causes of infertility in women are Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and other ovulation disorders. It can also be declining of ovarian reserve or blockage of the fallopian tube. For men, the main causes are hormonal imbalance, low sperm count, poor sperm movement and abnormal sperm shape.

5. Irregular periods may signal difficulty conceiving in the future. Start asking about your reproductive history when your reach your 20s. Ask your mom about your family history. Individuals can have their fertility potential assessed through check-up, blood tests, ultrasound and semen analysis.

There are many groups, which openly discuss this issue. This is the perfect time to discuss and raise awareness about infertitliy. Check out the video about infertility below:
A man from China had been living with a mass in his stomach the size of a beach ball for over 10 years. After many failed attempts to try and cure his condition through natural remedies, he finally decided to seek professional help.

Doctors at the Military General Hospital in Sichuan Province told Zhang Cheng, 33, that the mass in his stomach was actually a 33-pound tumor. Despite it being a benign growth, the tumor still had to be removed as it was already pressing on Cheng's internal organs and bowel.

Man's Condition Required Complex Surgery

According to Daily Mail, the intricate six-hour operation needed the combined forces of three different clinical departments at MGH. Dr. Dai Ruiwu, the lead operating surgeon, said Cheng needed to be kept in the hospital's intensive care unit after the successful operation.

"Because our family is poor, my brother missed several opportunities to treat the illness," said Cheng's sister. "We have visited many other hospitals in the past, doctors said the success rate was low so we were sent home."

Disheartened By So Many Rejections

Cheng's massive tumor not only hindered him physically, but romantically as well. His sister revealed to Chengdu Business Daily that his condition made it difficult for him to get a date. Cheng was single for most of his life as women were usually appalled at the sight of his awkwardly "pregnant" stomach.

Cheng initially went to the doctors sometime in 2004 when he started feeling discomfort in his stomach. It wasn't until two years later when doctors discovered the lump. Cheng wanted to have the lump removed, but he eventually became disheartened when all the hospitals he visited refused to operate on him due to the complexity of the operation.

Fast forward to this week, Cheng's successful operation wouldn't have been possible had it not been for his family's collective effort. They were the ones who raised money for Cheng's admission and operation at MGH.
The Union home minister has stated in response to an RTI query filed by this newspaper that the Constituent Assembly on July 22, 1947, adopted the Indian National Flag but doesnt attribute the design of the national flag to any individual.

Hyderabad: It seems that the identity of the designer of the Indian tricolour will remain a mystery forever.

The Union home minister has stated in response to an RTI query filed by this newspaper that the Constituent Assembly on July 22, 1947, adopted the Indian National Flag but doesnt attribute the design of the national flag to any individual.

Read: Centre website names Pingali Venkayya as the flag designer

It has also been made clear that it has no information about whether the flag was designed by Pingli Venkayya of Andhra Pradesh or Suraiya Tayyabji, wife of a civil servant in New Delhi, whose names generally come up in this context, or any other person. This newspaper had filed an RTI query with the ministry seeking information regarding who designed the national flag and when; and who approved the design.
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Croatia is no longer Europes best-kept secret, thanks in part to Game of Thrones. Hugging the glittering waters of the Adriatic Sea, the Southeastern European country has seen tourism spike in recent years, and the medieval town of Dubrovnik claims that Game of Thrones fans have pumped $10 million into the local economy. Then again, maybe its growing popularity has something to do with the countrys picturesque villages, mild climate, 1,200 islands and budget-friendly prices. In fact, entire-place Airbnb rentals in Dubrovnik currently average just $91/night, and many come complete with stunning views of the red rooftops and the sea. Here are 10 of our favorites.

1. La Boheme apartment 2. Spacious Apartment 3. Studio Kornelija 4. Renovated Studio Apartment 5. Luxury Apartment 6. Mlini Apartment 7. Sunny Studio 8. Carpe Diem 9. Roomy Two Bedroom 10. Lapad Apartment

Pastes Airbnb columnist Erica Jackson Curran is a former alt-weekly editor turned moonlight freelancer based in Richmond, Virginia.

1 of 10 Located just steps away from Ploce Gate and Dubrovnik's Old Town, "La Boheme" apartment combines a rustic, old-world look with modern amenities. There's a tiny, bright orange kitchen, seating areas, a terrace, and a shower that past guests describe as "incredible" and "super dope." The decor is inspired by Jim Morrison. Airbnb

2 of 10 This spacious apartment offers plenty of room to spread out, plus an incredible view of the water. The view comes with a price: lots of stairs from Old Town, which is about five minutes away. But there's a good-sized kitchen, dining area and living room, a king-sized bed, and a large terrace with lounge chairs. There's also a free parking spacea rare find in the cityor the host can provide an airport transfer. Airbnb

3 of 10 Studio Kornelija is situated in a historic villa once used by local noblemen as a summer escape. Surrounded by gardens with an on-site chapel, the petite apartment has a private entrance and terrace, and it's a 10-minute bus ride from Old Town. It's also close to Harbour Gruz, perfect if you're planning excursions to nearby islands like Lopud, Korcula or Sipan. Airbnb

4 of 10 This recently renovated studio apartment is in a quiet area a scenic walk away from the harbor, Old Town and other local attractions. With a bedroom and fold-out couch, there's room for four guests. Also convenient: a free parking space and a nearby storage room for your luggage if your arrival and departure doesn't line up with check-in/check-out times. Airbnb

5 of 10 The views are the star of this luxury apartment five minutes from Old Town. Take in a bird's eye view of the city and the sea from the apartment's living room and bedroom, plus enjoy a full, modern kitchen and bathroom, a large bedroom, and private parking. Host Ana currently boasts 164 five-star reviews from guests calling the apartment "amazing" and "magical." Airbnb

6 of 10 Get a taste of the Croatian village life with this ground-floor apartment in Mlini, nine kilometers from the center of Dubrovnik. The pool and terrace, shared among the building's residents, have breathtaking views of the sea. The building also has a parking lot if you're driving, or there are local buses into the city every half hour. Airbnb

7 of 10 In a 17th century building in the center of Old Town, this sunny studio has all the basics for a short stay in Dubrovnik. Just down the street is lively Buza Bar, which is only accessible through a hole in the wall, and the beach Banje is just five minutes away. Airbnb

8 of 10 The pretty-in-pink "Carpe Diem" apartment is right on Stradun, the main pedestrian street in the city. The bed is on a cozy loft up a small flight of stairs, and there's a tiny kitchenette, a table for two, and futon. Past guests praise the apartment for being easy to find, perfectly located, and surprisingly quiet. Airbnb

9 of 10 Bring the family to this roomy two-bedroom apartment in Gornji Kono, which has views of the Dubrovnik coast and walking paths to Old Town. From the brightly tiled bathroom to the midcentury modern furniture, the place has a cool vintage vibe. Past guests rave about the large furnished terrace, the perfect spot for watching sunsets over the Elaphite Islands. Airbnb

10 of 10 Surround yourself with ancient stone in this Lapad apartment, located in a quieter but still convenient part of town. The kitchen is small but well-equipped, and there's a little terrace for soaking up the sun. There's a bus stop on the same street that will take you into the city. Airbnb
All these years later, and I can still recall the first protest I ever attended. Id been adopted only two or three years before, and my new mom wasted no time molding another young feminist. It was a march for womens rights, specifically survivors of domestic violence. Out of the kitchen and into the streets, we refuse to be discreet! I shouted along with the others. Boston, Massachusetts. I was 9 or 10.

The last photo of my mother healthy (to the naked eye) was taken at a demonstration for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Shes holding a black and white FREE MUMIA sign. It was the last time she was able to march. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Maybe 1999 or 1998. The next protest I attended was at Bushs inauguration. She was already gone. Fuck cancer, etc.

Its been one year since Devin Allens incredible photograph made the TIME cover on the Baltimore riots. Before the publication, when Allen posted the photo on his Instagram account, he wrote a simple caption:

We are sick and tired. #Baltimore #ripfreddiegray

There were myriad reasons so many of us rejoiced at the sight of the image. At the time, it felt like the worlds biggest weekly news magazine may as well have printed the words FUCK THE POLICE on the cover, because that is what the shot signified to so many of us. A single, black man, with a sea of officers in riot gear chasing behind him. The man is not in a suit and tie. Hes not on his knees, praying. He doesnt have his arms linked in with the arms of other black protestors, singing We Shall Overcome. Regarding the difference between the Civil Rights movement of 1968 and Americas Black Lives Matter movement of the present, TIME proposed to consider What has changed. What hasnt. And Allens image represented one powerful response: this is not your mamas protest movement.

This is, for some, a difficult message of Black Lives Matter to get behind, because it seems to work in exact opposition to Americas most beloved (at least today, because he was considered a terrorist by much of America when he was alive) civil rights icon, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The majority of the activists of my time are not interested in catering to white empathysome of us have outright rejected it. Pulling on the heartstrings of white America, many of us have decided, isnt our job, and isnt going to bring down the body count in cities like Baltimore anyway. It cant save us, and we dont need it, even if appealing to white America represented a key strategy in Kings movement.

Because there is such blatant rejection of certain tenants of the civil rights movement (tenants that also included sexism and homophobia), there has been much to do about the methods of BLM. Artists like Devin Allen continue to reflect those methodsespecially a certain willingness to embrace black rage (at injustice, tragedy and all forms of oppression) as sacred and powerful.

The Baltimore Uprising represented a boiling over, and a critical shift for those of us who werent content with holding up signs, marching, singing and/or praying. I admit that, in spite of my mothers hard work, I did arrive at a certain point, where I was disillusioned with the concept of protest. Im not allowed to say itbecause black people are [still] not allowed to say that we get angry, to the point of wanting to exact violence against a person or thing, or that we support uprisings both non-violent and otherwisebut I wanted to see the windows smashed out of a police car. For every black person killed by police, pulled over without just cause; for every black child unjustly suspended from school, or sitting in a classroom with mold coming out of the ceilingyes. Id like to see some symbol of their oppression burned, broken or destroyed. In a world where so few will actually pay for the crimes against the poor and black in Americain a society that still finds the concept of reparations for slavery laughableit feels good to see a people rise up. To see such an uprising celebrated by TIME was a welcome shock.

Protest does not look how it looked in the 60s, and it seems ridiculous to have to say that. Why would it? And why should that matter? What matters is that we are still out here, protesting. If not the practices and methods, the spirit of protest that inspired the generations before ours continues to move us.

And its that spirit that should be the topic of discussion. That same spirit moving through the Baltimore riots is part of what inspired the Chicago shutdown of a Donald Trump rally. That spirit of revolt is what inspired Michael Moore to reject those well-meaning water bottle donations, because what Flint, Michigan needs is a revolt. That spirit has led to more BLM representatives disrupting campaign speeches (not just Trump, but Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both been taken to task)granting more visibility to the movement and forcing the issue of racial injustice into the presidential campaign. That spirit is in the streets of North Carolina, right now. And its not always a grand gesture that the whole world can see. I cant help but think of an incredible scene from last weeks Underground, where a little black boy refused a piece of Necco candy from his white half-brotherhis soon-to-be legal master on a plantation. A small protest that bears no witnesses, can be as significant as a riotous uprising.

One year after the iconic TIME cover, and Devin Allens work continues to be reflected in signs of protest big and small. From the visuals and lyrics we experienced with Kendrick Lamars To Pimp a Butterfly, to Beyonces Formation, his aesthetic prevails in the culture. If you follow his work, you cant even look at the images in Beyonces Lemonade without considering similarities in the treatment of the black feminine as fierce, sensual and vulnerable. All of these artistic performances are a reminder of the unique force of the artist as activistsuch a force is how battles are won, and how legends, like Prince, are made.

Its true that my motherwho would have turned 69 this monthlikely wouldnt approve of all the ways protest has evolved. My personal favorite photograph of Allens shows a little boy on a bike, throwing up his middle fingers at a group of cops. I suspect she wouldnt celebrate that image as much as I do. And thats okay. Like the other mothers of civil rights and early black activism, she has passed on a legacy that Ive interpreted, and one which I have to make for my own. She had her Nina Simone, her Gordon Parks. I have Kendrick, Janelle Monae, Beyonce. And I have Devin Allen.

And the spirit I inherited will be passed on. Yesterday night I came home from the grocery store and some kids in our apartment complex were standing outside. The loudest of the bunch yelled at me, WERE PROTESTING! Theyd recently been banned from playing in the grassiest (and therefore, most kid-friendly) area of the complex for reasons none of us could figure out, and they wanted to make signs, asking for a park or playground area. We live in subsidized housing. There is, technically, already, a playground, which is a small empty, gated area with a tiny bench and literally nothing else. There were about 10 kids in total, and they had started to makes signs that read, We Need A Playground! Some of the parents looking on told them to stop wasting their time. Another scolded that if they hung up the signs theyd get in trouble. I went inside, put down my groceries and got the crayons.



Shannon M. Houston is a Staff Writer and the TV Editor for Paste. This New York-based freelancer probably has more babies than you, but thats okay; you can still be friends. She welcomes almost all follows on Twitter.
Penang, an island city located off Malaysias west coast, might just be the best hidden food gem in the world. Historic George Town, a UNESCO protected section of the city and Penangs tourist hub, is covered with street art and modern murals, but its the food, a variety of native Malay dishes and a range of Chinese and Indian offerings, thats been driving both locals and travelers madin a good wayfor hundreds of years. Youll sweat and feast and enjoy every delicious second of it. If you truly love food, Penang simply cannot be missed.

Ayer Itam Assam Laksa

Like so many restaurants in Penang, Ayer Itam Assam Laksa does one thing and does it incredibly well. Assam laksaa sweet, sour and spicy minced fish noodle soupmight just be the unofficial dish of Penang, combining shrimp paste, tamarind (or assam) and what can only be described as dark magic. Located in the shadows of Penang Hill and the Kek Lok Si temple complex, Ayer Itam is a destination that even the most informed travelers might never find on their own. Should you make the trip to the west side of the city, youll experience the most authentically Penang meal of your trip.

Tandoori Set at Kassim Mustafa Nasi Kandar

Photo by Max Bonem

Locals initially adopted tandoori chicken, the flamingo-esque Indian grilled staple, when Indians arrived in Penang after the British colonized the island in the 1800s. Hanging on long skewers at countless shops in and around Penangs Little India, tandoori chicken is hard to miss but the tandoori set found at Kassim Mustafa Nasi Kandar, open 24/7, is truly special. Served with whichever naan you fancy, the chicken is accompanied by sweet tomato and mint chutneys, yellow daal, and an array of lime, onion and carrot to use at your discretion. Coupled with a pineapple or mango lassi, the tandoori set is a great late dinner or early morning snack, depending on when the craving hits.

Nasi Kandar at Line Clear

Nothing in Penang can quite prepare you for the madness that is Line Clear. Open 24 hours, theres always a line sprouting from the depths of this local favorite for nasi kandar, a Penang halal specialty involving rice and any combination of chicken, fish, mutton, and vegetarian curries. Its loud, bright, and congregates patrons from both the nearby mosque, and clubs and bars located just a few blocks away. Like most establishments serving nasi kandar, the portions are enough to feed a small army and youll notice many of your fellow diners mixing all of their food by hand into a giant mountain of blended flavors and textures. Its not for everyone, but should you give the technique a try, youll undoubtedly be met with both giggles and respect.

Wan Tan Mee at CF Hawker Centre

Photo by Max Bonem

One of the many Malay-Chinese hybrid meals found throughout Penang, wantan mee is one of the areas signature dishes and CF Hawker Centre, located just outside George Town, does it to near perfection. The food court, which offers more than 20 different stalls selling a wide range of Penang specialties, is one of the greatest places to sample any number of dishes while in Penang, but the wantan mee stall stands above the rest. The dishmade with egg noodles fried in a dark, sweet, and spicy soy sauce; and topped with char siu (barbecue pork), wontons, choy sum, and pickled green chiliesis all about balance. From the aggressiveness of the chilies to its palatable sauce to the multitude of noodles, it just might be the perfect dish to kick off a lunch that will undoubtedly involve another plate or two of food from one of the many neighboring stalls.

Wen Chang Hainan Chicken Rice

Originating in Chinas Hainan province, Hainan chicken rice is synonymous with the Malaysian peninsula and beloved by just about every person youll meet in Penang. Its a simple dish built around chicken fat infused rice, either tender boiled or roast chicken and dipping sauce, but its also fairly common to accompany the staples with roast duck or pork. Although you can enjoy the dish on any number of Penang street corners, Wen Chang is very popular, super cheap and, most importantly, delicious.

Tuai Pui Curry Mee

Photo courtesy of Max Bonem

Tuai Pui Curry Mee is everything you want Malaysian food to be and more. Fiery, curry broth? Check. Noodles? Of course. Tofu, chicken and an unknown quantity of pigs blood? Yes, yes and yes. When coupled with a milo ais (a sweetened, iced coconut drink), you have the makings of the perfect hot and cold way to start your day. Curry mee stacks up with assam laksa as Penangs most popular soup and like the rest of them, curry mee is most commonly eaten in the late morning or early afternoon. In the grand pantheon of Penang food, curry mee might just be the most addicting.

Muthus Banana Leaf Rice

Photo courtesy of Max Bonem

Thousands of tourists walk by Muthus signless, shadowy entrance each day without giving it a second thought. Referred to by locals as The Mess, Muthus Banana Leaf Curry is as old school as Penang gets when it comes to the Indian communitys impact on local cuisine. The process is simple: you walk in, sit down, and prepare to be served more food than any one human should ever consume. A large banana leaf will be placed in front of you and then it will be topped with rice and any of the following: chicken curry, mutton curry, crab curry, lentils and chickpeas in various preparations, pickled vegetables, and papadum. Each of these will be administered routinely should the staff notice youre running low. And if that doesnt make you utter uncle, additional chicken, mutton and crab curry gravy (pictured above) are available at the table should you need it.

Ming Xiang Tai Pastry Shop

Photo courtesy of Max Bonem

Should you find yourself in need of a low-key snack, either of Ming Xiang Tai Pastry Shop s two locations in and around George Town will do the trick. Offering a wide variety of traditional Cantonese pastries and biscuits, you can satisfy both your sweet tooth and craving for something savory all for little more than a few dollars. The ko-chaw siew pao, wutaro yaki, and wedding cookies are only three of their more than 20 daily offerings, but be weary. Ming Xiang Tai tends to sell out so get there early to stock up.

Top photo courtesy of Flickr/lostdagame

Max Bonem is a writer and eater currently traveling through Southeast Asia. You can follow his travels via his blog, Instagram or Flickr.
The national Flag of India was designed by Pingali Venkayya and adopted in its present form during the meeting of the Constituent Assembly held on July 22, 1947.

Hyderabad: This newspaper also sought from the Union home ministry, in its RTI query, a copy of the resolution approving the final design of the flag; and a copy of the original proposal or first proposal of the tricolour, as submitted by Pingli Venkayya or Suraiya Tayyabji, or any other person.

In a reply, Mr Anuj Sharma, director (A&V) and Central Public Information Officer of the Union home ministry, stated: It is informed that as per the book, Our Flag published by the publications division of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Government of India, the Constituent Assembly on 22 July, 1947, adopted the Indian National Flag. Copies of the relevant extracts are enclosed herewith. No other information related to your queries (name of designer of the national flag) is available with the undersigned.

In a contradiction, the Indian government website, India.gov.in, in its page History of Indian tricolor acknowledges even today that the National Flag of India was designed by Pingali Venkayya and adopted in its present form during the meeting of the Constituent Assembly held on July 22, 1947, a few days before Indias Independence from the British on August 15, 1947. It served as the national flag of the Dominion of India between August 15, 1947 and January 26, 1950 and that of the Republic of India thereafter. In India, the term tricolour refers to the Indian national flag.

Read: Centre has no name for Indian National Flag designer

As per the extracts sent by the home ministry official titled Adoption on July 22, 1947, Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru moved the resolution in the Constituent Assembly.

Describing the flag, Nehru had said, We thought of a design for a flag which was beautiful, because the symbol of a nation must be beautiful to look at. We thought of a flag which, in its combination and in its separate parts, would represent the spirit of the nation, the tradition of synthesis which has characterised us for thousands of years...

He had added: Resolved that the National Flag of India shall be a horizontal tricolour of deep saffron (kesari), white and dark green in equal proportions. In the centre of the white band, there shall be a wheel in navy blue to represent the Charkha. The design of the wheel shall be that of the wheel (Chakra) which appears on the abacus of the Sarnath Lion capital of Asoka...

The resolution was followed by a speech by the Prime Minister, which ended all controversy. I am sure that many in this House will feel the glow and warmth which I feel, for behind this resolution and the Flag, which I have the honour to present to this House for adoption, lies history, the concentrated history of a short span in a nation's existence.

Capt. L. Panduranga Reddy, a freedom fighter, said though Venkayyas name is promoted, former AICC president Dr Bogaraju Pattabhi Sita-ramayya of Machilipatnam, AP, in his book Congress Charitra in 1935 had stated that the Congress had adopted the red, white and green flag of the Home Rule League of Dr Annie Besant, replacing the red with saffron.

First flag version hoisted in Kolkata

The current National Flag is a horizontal tricolour with deep saffron (kesaria) at the top, white in the middle and dark green, navy-blue wheel, which represents the chakra. It was adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India on July 22, 1947.

The Indian National Flag went through many changes to arrive at what it is today. In a way, it reflects the political developments in the nation and historical milestones:

The first national flag in India is said to have been hoisted on August 7, 1906, in the Parsee Bagan Square (Green Park) in Calcutta (now Kolkata). The flag had three horizontal strips of red, yellow and green.

The second flag was hoisted in Paris by Madame Cama and her band of exiled revolutionaries in 1907. This was similar to the first flag except that the top strip had one lotus and seven stars denoting the Saptarishi. This flag was also exhibited at a Socialist conference in Berlin.

The third flag went up in 1917. Dr. Annie Besant and Lokmanya Tilak hoisted it during the Home Rule movement. This flag had five red and four green horizontal strips arranged alternately, with seven stars in the Saptarishi configuration super-imposed on them. In the

Left-hand top corner (the pole end) was the Union Jack. There was also a white crescent and star in one corner.

At the AICC meet at Bezwada in 1921 (now Vijayawada), an Andhra youth prepared a flag and took it to Gandhiji. It was made up of two colours - red and green - representing the two major communities i.e. Hindus and Muslims. Gandhiji suggested the addition of a white strip to represent the remaining communities of India and the spinning wheel to symbolise progress of the nation.

The year 1931 was a landmark in the history of the flag. A resolution was passed adopting the tricolour as our national flag.

This flag, the forbearer of the present one, was saffron, white and green with Mahatma Gandhi's spinning wheel at the centre. It was stated that it bore no communal significance.

On July 22, 1947, the Constituent Assembly adopted it as the Free India National Flag. After the Independence, the colours and their significance on the flag remained the same and retained their values and meanings. The Dharma Charkha of Emperor Asoka was adopted in place of the spinning wheel as the emblem on the flag.
Its gonna be May! And to celebrate, Netflix is coming out with a whole bunch of film and television content, including a number of original movies and series (like the Emmy-nominated Grace & Frankie), classic films like Pleasantville and The Nutty Professor, and two of the Bring It On movies, because you know you need more cheerleading in your life. Read on for some of our recommendations and the full list of programming.



Year: 1984

Director: John Hughes

Its the movie that made Molly Ringwald a star, and rightfully so: as Samantha, the everywoman whose parents forgot her birthday and whose crush doesnt know she exists, she appeals to the angsty high-schooler yearning to be seen in all of us. Samanthas undeniably middle-of-the-roadshes not popular, but shes not a geek; her home life is messy, but its not dysfunctionaland that gives her mass appeal, so much so that her storys become sort of a modern fairy tale, the American Dream of teen romantic comedies. Bonnie Stiernberg





Year: 2014

Director: Daniel Barber

Available: May 4

The Keeping Room is the intimate story of three women and two menthe women, Southern daughters, sisters and slaves, and the men a pair of marauding Union soldiers rampaging through Georgia in the days before Shermans conquest of Atlanta. At its heart, the strongest comparison is to call it something akin to a home invasion period piece, although the film is continuously reaching for something more poetic. That gravitas, however, is just barely outside its grasp, despite beautiful imagery and a near-perfect capturing of the stifling, war-torn American South, captured in high definition, bathed in reality and natural light. Jim Vorel





Year: 2015

Director: Rob Letterman

Available: May 11

A riff on R.L. Stines enormously popular series of childrens horror stories, at its best its a kids movie like Joe Dantes Explorers or some of the better Pixar entries. While many filmmakers in recent years seem to be motivated by their love of the 80s, Goosebumps is the first film Ive seen that actually recreates the charm of something like The Goonies or (again, from Dante) Gremlins and successfully updates it rather than merely imitating it. Jim Hemphill





Year: 2015

Director: Ted Geoghegan

Available: May 15

The movie never wants for scares. It might actually be the single most terrifying movie of 2015, even next to David Robert Mitchells acclaimed and unsettling It Follows. But Geoghegan handles the transition smoothly, from the story We Are Still Here begins as to the bloodbath it becomes. Theres no sense of baiting or switching; the director flirts with danger confidently throughout. Plus, theres that New England winter to add an extra layer of despair. The elements forebode and forbid in equal measure. The weather outside is frightfuland the carbonized wraiths in the basement even more so. Andy Crump





A Study in Sherlock (2016)

Admiral (2015)

Avas Possessions (2015)

Bring It On (2000)

Bring It On: All or Nothing (2006)

Easy Living (Seasons 1-3)

El Critico (2013)

FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue (1998)

Finger of God (2007)

Gary Gulman: Its About Time (2016)

Great Expectations (1998)

I Am Road Comic (2014)

Jesus Town, USA (2014)

Just Friends (2005)

Kevin Hart Presents Keith Robinson: Back of The Bus Funny (2015)

Kevin Hart Presents Lil Rel: RELevent (2015)

Kevin Hart Presents: Plastic Cup Boyz (2015)

LoliRock: Season 1 (2014)

My Last Day Without You (2011)

The Nutty Professor (1996)

Off the Map (2013)

Palm Trees in the Snow (2015)

Pleasantville (1998)

Shark Lake (2015)

Shes Beautiful When Shes Angry (2014)

Sixteen Candles (1984)

Sugar Coated (2015)

Terra (2015)

Things We Lost in the Fire (2007)

To Catch a Thief (1955)

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin Down a Dream (2007)

Whos Driving Doug (2016)



The Replacements (2000)



Submerged (2015)



The Keeping Room (2015)

Shanghai Knights (2003)



Fourth Man Out (2015)

Marseille (Netflix Original)



Ali Wong: Baby Cobra (Netflix Original)

Baby Daddy (Season 5)

Grace and Frankie (Season 2: Netflix Original)

Young and Hungry (Season 3)



The Chosen Ones (2015)



A Stand Up Guy (2015)



Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015)



Chelsea (Netflix Original)

Goosebumps (2015)

They Look Like People (2015)



Bleeding Heart (2015)



We Are Still Here (2015)

Yo Soy la Salsa (2014)



American Dad! (Season 10)

Kindergarten Cop 2 (2016)

Slasher (Season 1, 2016)



A Girl Like Her (2015)



Benders (Season 1, 2015)



Lady Dynamite (Season 1, Netflix Original)



David and Goliath (2015)

The Letters (2014)

The Ouija Experiment 2: Theatre of Death (2015)



Electricity (2014)



Graceland (Season 3)

The Last Man on the Moon (2016)



Bloodline (Season 2, Netflix Original)

Chefs Table (Season 2 Part 1, Netflix Original)

The Do-Over (2016, Netflix Original)

Mako Mermaids (Season 4, Netflix Original)



Hell on Wheels (Season 5)
Nokia is to acquire French health tech and wearables company Withings for 170 million ($191 million), all cash. The deal is expected to close in early Q3 this year.

Withings was founded in 2008. It develops health and fitness tracking and monitoring devices like smartwatches, fitness trackers, and baby monitors.

The deal is still awaiting approval from regulators, but if passed, it will see the French company join OZO, makers of high end VR cameras, as one of Nokias latest acquisitions as the one-time phone giant begins to reinvent itself after selling off its phone division to Microsoft a few years ago.

The acquisition marks Nokia official entry into the digital health industry. Rajeev Suri, president and CEO of Nokia stated: We have said consistently that digital health was an area of strategic interest to Nokia, and we are now taking concrete action to tap the opportunity in this large and important market.

With this acquisition, Nokia is strengthening its position in the Internet of Things in a way that leverages the power of our trusted brand, fits with our company purpose of expanding the human possibilities of the connected world, and puts us at the heart of a very large addressable market where we can make a meaningful difference in peoples lives.

Since we started Withings, our passion has been in empowering people to track their lifestyle and improve their health and wellbeing, said Cedric Hutchings, Withings CEO. Were excited to join Nokia to help bring our vision of connected health to more people around the world.

The Withings Activite Pop shown above.

The Internet of Things, and now with digital health factoring into that, Nokia has been re-positioning itself for the future. Fitness trackers and health wearables are still on the up with sales of the Apple Watch not significantly affecting the market for digital health devices. Nokia may even been planning to take on Apples HealthKit with Withings by its side.

The Finnish company has had a difficult couple of years, first by losing the smartphone wars to Apple and Google when it once dominated mobile, before selling the beleaguered business to Microsoft. It also recently announced plans to cut 1,000 people from its workforce.

But with this acquisition as well as stepping into VR with the purchase of OZO (which just signed a deal with Disney), it remains unclear what direction Nokia is going in in the future and where its focus will lie.
Pastes home state of Georgia been in the news a little too often recently for controversial reasons. Last month, Governor Nathan Deal vetoed a bill that would have legalized discrimination against the LGBTQ community, a move that likely saved the states now-bustling film industry. Now, hes got another inflammatory bill to consider: this one would legalize concealed carry on college campuses. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people think that is a really bad idea, and speaking for the widespread opposition to the bill, REM frontman Michael Stipe wrote a strong op-ed in yesterdays USA Today asking Governor Deal to veto the measure.

For me, this battle hits close to home, wrote Stipe. I met my future R.E.M. bandmates when we were all students at the University of Georgia in Athens.

Stipe went on to talk about the adverse effects the proposed bill would have on campus life, citing everything from the potential use of guns in sexual assault to the possibility of violence at alcohol-fueled tailgates or in contentious classroom discussions. He then discussed the overwhelming public opposition to the bill78% of Georgians are against itand warned the governor of potential ramifications of signing it into law, including the costs of preparing campuses for guns and the possibility of professors leaving.

You can read Stipes full editorial here.
Microsoft has introduced a Public Preview of Skype for Business for Mac. Commercial customers can request an invite to test the Mac client. The preview will release in three cumulative stages leading to public availability, planned for the third quarter of 2016. Today's initial release lets you see and join your meetings.

The introduction video reviews the new modern user interface, the Skype Meeting experience and talks about the client from the ground up.

To get started, IT administrators can sign up their organization by visiting the Skype for Business Preview site. Each day, Microsoft will issue invitations to IT administrators, with the goal of extending invitations to everyone in the coming weeks. Once an IT administrator downloads the preview client, they can manage its distribution to end users within their organization.

Administrators could learn more about this in a new Microsoft blog entry titled "New to Office 365 in AprilSkype for Business Mac Preview, bringing collaboration to the forefront in Office and more."

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It's being reported late today that there's a justice department bid to rewrite an arcane rule that has critics warning of a dramatic expansion of the FBI's power to hack suspect computers  no matter where in the world they are located.

Federal prosecutors say the change is needed to keep pace with technology that lets computer users mask their identity and thwart the traditional process for obtaining search warrants.

The Financial Times reports that "Magistrate judges can usually authorize searches only of property located within their geographic districts. The justice department wants them empowered to approve remote searches of computers anywhere, even outside the US.

Ron Wyden, the Democratic Senator from Oregon says that "This is a major policy change. It vastly expands the government's hacking authority and gives the government authority to plant malware on 1m computers with one warrant from one judge."

The report further noted that "Over a two-year period, the FBI used hacking techniques in at least 16 cities, including Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans and St Louis, according to a recent law journal article by Brian Owsley, a law professor at Texas Tech University School of Law. Agents employed the tools, more commonly used by digital outlaws, to investigate bomb threats, bank fraud and identity theft.

When authorised by a judge, the FBI uses special software  known as a network investigative technique or NIT  to remotely search computers suspected of criminal use. The technology is often used to investigate child pornography websites hosted on the Tor browser, which cloaks users' identities by bouncing their digital traffic among numerous servers.

Last week, a judge in Massachusetts threw out evidence gathered by FBI spyware in a case against a man accused of possessing child pornography. District Judge William Young ruled that the magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Virginia who had approved the warrant application lacked authority to do so because the defendant's computer was located in Massachusetts." The proposed changes to Search and Seizure Rule 41 would expand the reach of warrants in the U.S. and around the world.

As for the timing of this change, The Financial Times notes that "The proposal, which also makes it easier for the government to target automated networks of computers known as "botnets", is among two dozen changes expected to be adopted by the Supreme Court by May 1. Barring congressional intervention, the new rules take effect on December 1.

Technology companies such as Google, the American Civil Liberties Union and an association representing more than 10,000 criminal defence attorneys fear the shift will open the door to unconstitutional searches. All say that the rule change  and the FBI's use of sophisticated digital tools  should be debated by Congress."

Earlier this month we reported that the 'Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016,' or Anti-Encryption Bill was working its way to members of the Senate while Silicon Valley voiced its opposition.

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Earlier this month we reported that an Apple-Samsung iPhone OLED Display Deal Rocked LG's Stock Price. We noted in that report that Samsung Display is considering building a separate production line to produce organic light-emitting diode displays exclusively for Apple's iPhone. Today we're learning that Samsung will now be turning its sights on bringing OLED to notebook and tablet markets.

A supply chain report published this morning states that "Parade Technologies has announced collaboration with Samsung Display to deliver AMOLED panels for the tablet and notebook markets.

Parade, which supplies eDP timing controllers (Tcons) for both tablet and notebook display panels, worked together with Samsung Display. The DP699 supports the VESA Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) Standard version 1.4b and supports resolutions up to 3200 by 1800" which is slightly above Apple's current Retina resolution of 2560 by 1600.

The report noted that "AMOLED displays offer high contrast and low power consumption, but until recently have been limited to phones, some tablets and TVs. Through the joint development effort with Parade, Samsung has enabled AMOLED panels for the Windows PC market."

Of course this could technically open the door to Apple introducing OLED displays on future iPads and/or MacBooks as well. With Apple using Samsung's OLED displays for their 2017 iPhone, they'll be able to negotiate better volume pricing for other products. If the 2017 iPhone is a hit with Apple fans loving the new displays, then it's only natural that Apple would eventually decide to fundamentally shift all products to one standard.

Jimmy Chiu, executive VP of marketing at Parade stated that "We're glad to be part of the solution enabling AMOLED panels into the PC market. We think Samsung's introduction of AMOLED panels for notebooks is an important milestone in the PC industry, and we are honored to be chosen as a development partner by Samsung in this endeavor."

Last week The Korean Times reported that both LG and Samsung are looking to bring OLED displays to different markets in search of better profit margins. With the television market killing profits, both companies are now working with automotive and aerospace industries. The report noted that "Carmakers want OLED. They love the idea of curving the display into the dashboard because the car looks cool with it."

With Samsung Display winning Apple's business for the iPhone, making a deal for OLED displays for the iPad and MacBooks (if not the iMac) would provide them with a new market that they're actively seeking. They could reach higher volumes in a shorter span of time than catering to the automotive industry that is only in the experimental phase of using next-gen windshields used as heads-up displays (HUDs). And if you think about it for a moment, Apple's Project Titan may decide to go with such HUD's in the future as well which would be a bonus to Samsung. It would be killing two birds with one stone.





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A Year After the Earthquake, Nepal Is a Man-Made Disaster.

This is the headline today at the Huffington Post at least. The news from PRI isnt much better: One year after Nepals devastating earthquake, much of the country is still in ruins. And this CNN video concludes with a quote from residents saying that they dont think their country will ever be the same again.

When I wrote about the Nepal earthquake a year ago, I listed 5 Ways to Help victims, with a link to Global Giving second on the list.

This week they have written about lessons learned from that disaster in the hopes for a stronger and more rapid recovery in Japan and Ecuador.

Here are the 5 lessons learned after the Nepal earthquakes that have implications for donors who want to support Ecuador or Japan, from GlobalGiving:

Provide support now. Local organizations need fast, flexible funding after a disaster to be able to pivot their work to support their communities. Waiting until after the dust settles is often too late. Breaking through standard fundraising barriers will enable those in need to get immediate emergency support. Donate to local organizations. According to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the UKs leading independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issues, 81 percent of funding from donor countries goes to big-name nonprofits and agencies. Go direct to the source and use crowdfunding to connect with local organizations to have the greatest impact. Cash is best. Monetary support (instead of in-kind donation of things) is usually the most effective way to support people in times of crisis. For guidance on how to donate, check out the USAID Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI) Donation Guidelines. Self-reliance drives sustainable recovery. By providing flexible, ongoing support, and appropriate training and follow-up, we can help communities become more self-reliant than they were before the disaster. This ensures that communities can have a sustainable recovery from a disaster and will continue to thrive even after international aid organizations leave and emergency relief operations wind down. Stay Involved. In addition to funding during and immediately after a crisis, local organizations need ongoing funding to sustain the recovery for months and even years. According to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, the largest percentage of post-disaster giving is focused on initial rescue and relief (42 percent) while a far smaller percentage (19 percent) targets longer term reconstruction and recovery efforts. Longer-term funding is critical to help communities become more resilient against future disasters.

The events in Nepal have shown us that we are in a very critical time with both the Ecuador and Japan relief efforts, said Mari Kuraishi, co-founder and president of GlobalGiving. We know donors like to give the majority of funds right after a disaster occurs, but that these funds need to last for the duration of the recovery efforts, which can span years. Thats why weve been working day and night to support the best local organizations that provide the greatest impact to drive relief and recovery.

Supporting Ecuador & Japan

GlobalGiving has created an Ecuador Earthquake Relief Fund to support relief and recovery efforts after the Ecuador earthquake. Initially, the funds will help first responders meet survivors immediate needs for food, fuel, clean water, hygiene products, and shelter. Once initial relief work is complete, the projects will transition to support longer-term recovery efforts run by local, vetted organizations. To donate or stay up to date on the support being provided to Ecuador, visit http://www.globalgiving. org/ecuador.

The GlobalGiving Kumamoto Relief Fund is supporting immediate and long-term recovery efforts in Kumamoto, Japan after two deadly earthquakes, significant aftershocks, and landslides. GlobalGiving has relationships with many nonprofits in Japan and is getting funds quickly to vetted, locally-driven organizations who are best-positioned to provide immediate relief and to drive long-term recovery in their own communities. To donate or stay up to date on the support being provided to Japan, visit http://www.globalgiving. org/japan.

GlobalGiving and its partners will be providing ongoing updates and reports on both recent disasters. For up-to-the minute reports and to learn how funds are being used, visit https://www. globalgiving.org.

One-Year Later: Reflecting on Nepal Disaster, How To Help Rebuilding Efforts

On April 25, 2015, Nepal was impacted by an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8Mw. The disaster shocked the world, and the event impacted more than 8 million people, caused 8,000+ deaths and injured 21,000 people.

Since the crisis occurred, GlobalGiving has worked with local nonprofits and organizations on the ground to provide relief and to help rebuild the community, raising more than $6 million in donations that went to 83 local organizations. The funding supported the initial search and rescue work through the ongoing rebuilding of infrastructure in the affected areas.

GlobalGiving continues to stay involved and support the local rebuilding efforts. Here are some examples of the impacts this funding has made:

Search and rescue efforts. Nimble first-responders like IsraAid were critical to finding survivors like Krishnadevi, a 24 year old woman who was rescued five days after the first earthquake when most efforts had moved from rescue to search.

Nimble first-responders like IsraAid were critical to finding survivors like Krishnadevi, a 24 year old woman who was rescued five days after the first earthquake when most efforts had moved from rescue to search. Emergency supplies to survivors in remote areas. Local relief organizations are best equipped to handle these responsibilities because they know the terrain. For example, World Concerns team was the first organization to reach and provide aid to Khalte, a remote village in the Himalayan foothills where 95 percent of the homes were destroyed or damaged.

Local relief organizations are best equipped to handle these responsibilities because they know the terrain. For example, World Concerns team was the first organization to reach and provide aid to Khalte, a remote village in the Himalayan foothills where 95 percent of the homes were destroyed or damaged. Providing water safety and ongoing medical care to prevent the outbreak and spread of illnesses. One such organization is the Environmental Camps for Conservation Awareness that distributed a water purification solution and mobile health camps throughout area of Kathmandu.

One such organization is the Environmental Camps for Conservation Awareness that distributed a water purification solution and mobile health camps throughout area of Kathmandu. Supporting communities as they begin to rebuild. Within a month of the earthquakes, the dZi Foundation began working to construct schools so that children could return to school quickly and safely. Schools will continue to be built over the next three years. Other organizations, like Tewa, launched a range of programstraining women to generate income for their families, providing tuition funding for displaced children to return to school, and training youth volunteers to promote psychosocial counseling for survivors.

Beginning on April 25, 2016, the anniversary of the first earthquake in Nepal, GlobalGiving will match donations up to $100,000 to local organizations in Nepal that are still driving the long-term recovery effort. To see the work thats still being done and continue to support the efforts, visit globalgiving.org/ leaderboards/nepal- anniversary/.

For the latest information on global natural disasters or to support local communities in need, visit www.globalgiving.org.

About GlobalGiving

GlobalGiving is the first and largest global crowdfunding community for nonprofits. GlobalGiving makes it safe and easy for people and companies to give to local projects anywhere in the world, providing nonprofits with the tools, training, and support they need to become more effective. Since 2002, GlobalGiving has helped raise more than $200 million from more than 500,000 donors for more than 14,000 projects. Because GlobalGiving works with nonprofit organizations in more than 165 countries, when earthquakes and other disasters occur, GlobalGiving can quickly deliver funds to locally driven organizations that are best-suited to provide relief in their own communities.

To donate to charities involved in disaster relief or if you are a charity looking to further your impact when disasters occurs, please visit www.globalgiving.org.
The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the world.

 Henry David Thoreau, Walking (emphasis added)

In this sentiment, Thoreau, who was influenced by the Indian philosophy trickling into the Euro-American mindset of his time, echoes the Buddhas words about life in the forest (Pali aranna). Much scholarly ink has been spilled on Buddhism and the environment. An excellent starting point here is Damien Keowns Very Short Introduction to Buddhist Ethics. There, Keown notes some of the early passages that support a pro-nature/pro-animal attitude, including the 1st precept, which advocates non-harming toward all living beings. However, early Buddhist thought is wide and complex, and to overlook the contexts and complexities in order to only see ones own favored teachings does both Buddhism and the reader a disservice. And, as Buddhism is a 2500 year-old religion with many developments, one must expect shifts in thought over time.

But in this particular text we find a fairly obvious praise of a kind of life in nature.

The text is called the Discourse on The Forest (or Wilderness), the Aranna Sutta (SN 1.10). And in the discourse the Buddha is met with a deva, or divine being, who asks Those living in the forest, tranquil and of pure life, eating only one meal a day: how is it they appear so radiant?

The Buddhas response found its way to me today on the American Buddhist Perspectives facebook page (celebrating 2000 likes today, with gratitude!), shared by the Indiana Buddhist Temple:

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly. atitam nanusocanti, nappajappanti nagatam. paccuppannena yapenti, tena vanno pasidati. For the past they do not mourn, nor for the future pine; they are nourished by the present, so does their colour shine. anagatappajappaya, atitassanusocana. etena bala sussanti, nalova harito lutoti. In pining for the future, or over the past forlorn, by this do fools wither up, just as green reeds once shorn.

There is undoubtedly something special about time in nature, where one is surrounded by the unfamiliar in every moment, a certain aliveness enveloping you. Growing up and living again in Montana its easy to take that feeling for granted. Its described by avid outdoors-people as an instant shot of joy, a humbling experience, a de-centering of the self as ones past and future worries melt away.

Of course, Wilderness alone is not the answer; certainly not in Buddhism at least. The key to really building on and maintaining these experiences is the meditation the forest-dwellers would have been engaging in. It is with meditation that one unravels and releases the thick cord of the past -as was well-depicted in Dan Woos recent guest post and it is with meditation that one develops the autonomy to choose a more mindful and open presence in life, whether in the forest or home with a spastic puppy, in the boardroom or in a dentists chair.

Stay in touch with American Buddhist Perspectives on Facebook:

Further reading:
Long before the English colony of Georgia existed where Catholics were forbidden, Spanish missions linked to the cities of San Agustin, Florida and La Havana, Cuba marked the Georgia coast. Beginning in 1568, almost two hundred years before James Oglethorpe founded the city of Savannah, fearless Catholic missionaries established a network of missions to evangelize the Guale nation.

This past weekend, I traveled with my bishop to three parishes located where Spanish missions once stood: Nativity of Our Lady, Darien, Our Lady Star of the Sea, Saint Marys, and Saint William, Saint Simon Island. Almost five hundred years later, the presence of the Catholic Church continues as she announces the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Older and larger than the better known California missions of the 18th century, there are minimal physical remains of the Georgia missions which marked the northernmost limit of Spanish civilization along the Atlantic Coast. For almost forty years, Dr. David Hurst Thomas of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City has led archaeological explorations and investigations at Saint Catherine Island, an island with only two permanent residents. In the late 1970s, Dr. Thomas called Bishop Lessard of Savannah with exciting news, I have found the oldest church in Georgia, and its a Catholic church. He had found the Santa Catalina de Guale Mission founded by Franciscan Friars in the 16th century and destroyed in 1597 in an uprising. Rebuilt soon after, it stood until an English-led slave raid from Charleston in 1687 destroyed it completely. Many of the Guale were taken as slaves by the English.

The last recorded sighting of Santa Catalina de Guale Mission was in 1687 when an English captain recorded seeing ruined buildings and corn fields on the island. Dr. Thomas identified a Spanish well, the kitchen, the friary, and the church buried under fourteen inches of hurricane debris. The mission was organized around a central plaza with significant town planning according to Spanish ordinances. Archaeologists have noted that Santa Catalina was not an insignificant outpost, but rather, it was organized as every other Spanish colony of its time.

The Georgia missions formally came to an end in 1706 when the remaining missionaries, pushed south by the growing English presence along the Atlantic coast, crossed the Saint Mary River into Florida with the remaining faithful. The Guale descendants who lived in the missions eventually migrated to Cuba.

In 1984, Bishop Lessard reconsecrated the church and gave proper burial to the 432 bodies found underneath the church. Beautiful palm trees now mark the site where the mission church once stood. Climate change and rising water levels have put the site at risk. Dr. Thomas believes that the remains of the church will be lost in less than 100 years.

The mission on Saint Catherine Island was the site of the martyrdom of two Franciscan Friars in 1597. Dr. Thomas believes that their grave has been recently identified, research is still being conducted. In the span of a few days in September, a total of five friars were martyred at different locations. Archaeologists have found no evidence of Guale animosity towards the Spanish missionaries, but have realized there were many disputes between the native inhabitants. Dr. Thomas argues that the Franciscans may be considered a peace corps that interceded between warring native groups. In 1597, Fray Pedro de Corpa who was stationed at Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Tolomato Mission near present-day Darien, insisted that those baptized should be faithful to their spouses by living in monogamous relationships. The heir to the local chief, Juanillo, openly took a second wife. When confronted, Juanillo gathered a group of men and murdered Fray Pedro and the other friars who lived in nearby missions. Fray Miguel de Anon and Fray Antonio de Badajoz were martyred at Saint Catherine Island. These five friars died as defenders of the sacredness of marriage.

In 1984 Bishop Lessard of Savannah formally opened the beatification process for the Georgia Martyrs and the results of the investigation were presented to Rome in 2007. Working with the Holy Name Province of the Franciscan Friars, the process has advanced at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints so these men may be counted as martyrs and blessed.

The story of the Georgia missions has been neglected. If told, it is often filled with overt negativity directed towards the Spanish and the Catholic Church. Dr. Thomas believes that this history is important because it transcends historical biases and stereotypes while telling a story many do not know. He argues that it helps involve descendant communities of the Guale, and puts history in the active voice. The missions are not only something of the past, but they challenge our present understanding of history. Christianity was first preached in Georgia by Catholic friars who linked coastal Georgia to the great Spanish empire of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Fray Pedro de Corpa, pray for us

Fray Blas de Rodriguez, pray for us

Fray Antonio de Badajoz, pray for us

Fray Miguel de Anon, pray for us

Fray Francisco de Verascola, pray for us

All the pictures are mine, all rights reserved.
This is the latest letter from Maronite Archbishop Samir Nassar in Syria. Many thanks to Sr. Margaret Charles Kerry, FSP for always translating the archbishops letters from French so we can continue to keep the Christians in Syria in our prayers.  Sr. Theresa Aletheia

THE FOUR CHALLENGES OF EASTERN CHRISTIANS

1. The Challenge of History

The Christians of the East bear the burden of the Christological disputes of the first four Ecumenical Councils:

Nicea in 325 A.D.

Constantinople in 381 A.D.

Ephesus in 431 A.D.

Chalcedon in 451 A.D.

These councils defined and transformed Christian doctrine.

The thirteen churches of the East possess a rich heritage, yet in the 7th century a competing and divided Eastern Christianity could not cope with Islam.

In the 12th and 13th century these Eastern Christians allied themselves to the Crusaders who came to liberate Jerusalem. After the defeat of the Crusaders, the Muslims continued to be suspicious of their fellow Christians who were still considered allies of enemy. These churches suffered a severe persecution during the 14th and the 15th century.

The collective memory of Christians and Muslims does not forget these injuries.

How can you forget a damning past and purify a collective memory? Could a request for forgiveness turn the page on these dark spots in our history?

2. Demographic Challenge

Now a minority, Eastern Christians in a world dominated by Muslims are in decline: declining birthrate, and sectarian laws requiring non-Muslim partners to convert to Islam in mixed marriages in all Arab countries except Lebanon. A marriage partner can become a Muslim but they cannot become a Christian.

Added to this are higher emigration numbers among Christians. This accelerated population decline weakens parishes, families and the social and political weight of Christians in Eastern societies. Because of the isolation and marginalization a minority endures many live in society with a low public profile.

How does this heroic minority survive? The early Church could be a good model.

3. Challenge of Evangelization

Catholic schools are nationalized; there is no longer access to the education of our children, so does a generation ignore their faith? How do we fill this gap? We fill it with parish catechism which is only an effective solution for 5% of the resettled schoolchildren. This is a precarious and costly solution. Transportation is expensive so student attendance is irregular. The children need to be picked up at their homes.

A plan designed to hold biblical evenings in families was scheduled to begin before the war. Now many of the trained catechists are missing and some have left the country. With the rise of fanaticism, fundamentalism and intolerance evangelism becomes too risky.

The Gospel continues to attract a lot of people but it is not possible to baptize them. Freedom of religion without freedom of conscience is not enough. To co-exist with Islam is our difficult and unavoidable choice.

Faced with this challenge the hidden life of Jesus seems to be a good way.

4. Economic Challenge

The scattered Christian minority has long lost the financial means to support their parishes and their pastors. These Eastern Churches are not viable without contributions from Western Churches and the charitable solidarity movements. Without their support 80% of the places of worship would be closed. This fraternal generosity during the global crisis may not continue. The future is hard to imagine.

A poor Church closer to the gospel is the best testimony.

The Challenge of Challenges:

In the face of this long and profound Calvary, some have changed religion, others have chosen to leave. The little flock that remains look upon Mary at the foot of the cross and meditate on these words of Christ:

Whoever does not bear my cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Luke 14: 27

Damascus April 25, 2016.

+ Samir NASSAR

Maronite Archbishop of Damascus
Indian Coast Guard ship, Shoor, commissioned in Goa on April 11 arrived to its base in Mangaluru on Tuesday. A grand ceremony was organised by the Coast Guard Karnataka to welcome the ship. (Photo: KPN)

Mangaluru: The Indian Coast Guard Ship, Shoor, commissioned recently in Goa by shipping minister, Nithin Gadkari, arrived at its base port, Mangaluru on Tuesday.

A press statement by the Coast Guard said the commissioning of this sophisticated and state-of-the-art Offshore Patrol Vessel gave an impetus to the protection of the vast coastline on the Western Seaboard, and especially Karnataka.

Fitted with advanced navigation and communication equipment, sensors and machinery, the ship is designed to carry one twin engine Light Helicopter and five

high speed boats, including those used for fast boarding operations, search and rescue, law enforcement and maritime patrol. It can also carry pollution response equipment tocombat oil spills at sea.

Commanded by Deputy Inspector General, Surendra Singh Dasila, Shoor was indigenously designed and built by GSL, Goa. Its features include a 30 mm CRN 91 Naval Gun, Integrated Bridge System, an Integrated Machinery Control System, Power Management System and a High Power External Fire Fighting System.
Patna: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders in Patna on Monday accused Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of trying to steal the thunder from the Central government by taking credits for center-sponsored projects in Bihar.

Former Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi and BJP state President Mangal Pandey, at a press conference in Patna, said that Nitish Kumar was taking credit for works done that had nothing to do with him or his government.

"We are not going to sit idle and let the Chief Minister take credit for things he had nothing to do with. We are also going to expose the Chief Minister for his so-called 'Seven Resolves' that is nothing more than a cheap political stunt to pull a fast one on the unsuspecting voters of Bihar," Modi said.

Pandey said that the seven resolves were in fact center projects but Nitish Kumar had hijacked them and given them new monikers to claim them as his own.

"The plan is centrally proposed and funded but the Chief Minister, in his lust to earn accolades, is claiming them to be his own," he said.

On the occasion, Modi said that the BJP state working committee meet will be held in Patna on June 18 and 19.
Iranian Judiciary insists ailing physicist's sentence for espionage is final

04/26/16 Source: Radio Zamaneh

The spokesman for Iran's judiciary says Omid Kokabi's sentence is final and he is "being provided with all necessary facilities". ISNA reports that on Sunday April 24, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said that Omid Kokabi, the physicist who has served five years in jail, was tried for espionage and his 10-year sentence is final.



Omid Kokabi



Omid Kokabi is suffering from cancer of the kidney, and last Wednesday his right kidney was removed. His predicament has garnered widespread coverage on social media with everyone calling for his release.

Mohseni Ejei said prisoners get sick like any other person outside of prison. If it's possible to provide medical treatment inside prison facilities, it will be done, and if not, he will be transferred outside.





Hope for Freedom

Read related article (in Persian) by Ghanoon daily





Kokabi's lawyer says the Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that the charges against Kokabi were "lacking sufficient evidence".
Iran Said Ready To Release Jailed Cartoonist Farghadani Soon

04/26/16

Source: RFE/RL

A lawyer for prominent jailed Iranian artist and activist Atena Farghadani has said that the authorities will soon release his client.



Atena Farghadani



Mohammad Moghimi told The Associated Press and Cartoonists Rights Network International on April 25 that an appeals court reduced Farghadani's 12-year, nine-month prison sentence to 18 months, which means "she will be freed soon."

Moghimi said the exact date for her release had not been set yet.

In June 2014, a court sentenced Farghadani for a cartoon that depicted Iranian politicians who passed a law limiting women's access to birth control as goats and monkeys.

"Eighteen months in jail for a simple satirical drawing is still an insanely harsh fine, but the international outcry against the even harsher sentence may have helped get her jail time reduced," Heidi MacDonald of Comicsbeat.com said.

Based on reporting by AP and Comicsbeat.com

Former French embassy staffer released on bail

Source: Radio Zamaneh

Nazak Afshar, a former staff member of the French Embassy in Tehran, was released from Evin Prison on Sunday evening, April 24.



Nazak Afshar



Mizan Khabar reported that Afshar was released on Sunday but did not indicate whether the release is temporary.

The Kaleme website later reported that Afshar was released on bail of 500 million toumans.

The release came just hours after it was announced that she had been sentenced to six years in prison. It's not yet clear what charges she faces.

Afshar left the country after the 2009 election protests, during which she had been arrested for sheltering protesters in the embassy. She was not charged and upon her release she left the country.

She was arrested in March at the Tehran airport when she returned to visit her ailing mother.

Reports indicate she was held in solitary for two days and fainted on several occasions during the interrogations.
US seizure of USD 2 billion in Iranian assets highway robbery: FM Zarif

04/26/16

Source: Press TV

Iran says the seizure of around $2 billion in frozen assets recently authorized by a US court ruling is "highway robbery," vowing that the Islamic Republic will retrieve the sum anyway. "It is a theft. Huge theft. It is highway robbery. And believe you me, we will get it back," Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told The New Yorker in an interview published on Monday.



Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif

(cartoon by Farsheed Rajabali, Ghanoon daily)





Last Wednesday, the US Supreme Court ruled that the money had to be turned over to the American families of the people killed in a 1983 bombing in Beirut and other attacks blamed on Iran.

Iran has denied any role in the attack, and the money confiscated under the US court ruling belongs to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI). The assets have been blocked under US sanctions.

Zarif lashed out at the US justice, saying it was the same system which last month held Iran liable for damages in the 9/11 terror attacks.

He was referring to a federal judge in New York who ordered Tehran to pay $11 billion in compensation to families of 9/11 attack victims.

"I have lost every respect for U.S. justice. The judgment by the Supreme Court and the other, even more absurd judgment by a New York circuit court deciding that Iran should pay damages for 9/11 are the height of absurdity," Zarif said.

"How would you explain Iran being held accountable for the damages to the victims of 9/11-and others being absolved of any responsibility, those who were actually responsible for it?" he said apparently referring to Saudi Arabia.

"These cases cannot stand in any serious civilized court of law. When a U.S. court condemns Iran for 9/11, it finishes the credibility of the U.S. justice system when it comes to Iran," he added.

Zarif said the US was setting a bad precedent with such rulings. "People can legislate in other countries to confiscate American assets. Would you be happy with that?"

The foreign minister said, "The United States has committed a lot of crimes against Iranians, against the people of Vietnam, the people of Afghanistan, the people of Iraq."

"Can they legislate in their own countries that for every collateral damage suffered because of American bombing, for every person who was tortured by the Savak, which was created by the United States, those people can claim money from the United States and go confiscate it? Would you be willing to accept it?"

Savak was the intelligence service of the deposed Shah's regime in Iran, which was a close ally of the United States.

Zarif said, "The Supreme Court is the Supreme Court of the United States, not the Supreme Court of the world. We're not under its jurisdiction, nor is our money."

On Monday, Zarif had said that Iran would act to sue the United States at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague to retrieve the USD two billion.

"We hold the US administration responsible for preservation of Iranian funds, and if they are plundered, we will lodge a complaint with the I.C.J. for reparation," he said.

'Iran's defense not up for debate'

In the interview, Zarif also rejected US-led pressures on Iran over the country's missile defense program.

"Our defense is not subject to bargaining," the Iranian foreign minister said. "That's the problem with the United States. It believes it can control everybody's behavior. The missile tests are our right."

On October 11, Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) successfully test-fired its first guided ballistic missile dubbed Emad. Washington slammed the test, claiming the projectile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and vowed to respond with sanctions.

The US Treasury Department subsequently blacklisted five Iranian citizens and a network of companies based in the United Arab Emirates and China.

Zarif reiterated that Iranian missiles are for defensive purposes only, recalling Iraqi war of the 1980s under Saddam Hussein when missiles were "pouring on Iranian cities with chemical weapons," and Iran "didn't have any to defend ourselves."

He also reiterated the assertion by the Iranian government and military officials that none of the country's missiles are nuclear-capable.

"We have made it very clear that these will not be used other than in self-defense. They're not designed to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons," he said.

Iran and the P5+1 group of countries - which include the US - reached a nuclear agreement in July 2015, which was endorsed by the United Nations Security Council in the form of Resolution 2231 (2015).

The claim against Iranian missile activities come even as Resolution 2231 does not prohibit Iran from testing missiles, and only "calls upon" the Islamic Republic to refrain from developing missiles "designed to be capable of" carrying nuclear warheads.
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Dropbox has a futuristic vision for how its users will be able to share massive files and have quick access to them on their computers, without their hard drives overflowing.

The cloud storage company announced a new initiative at its Open conference in London on Tuesday called Project Infinite. Its a push to create a new Dropbox interface that allows users to see all of the files theyve stored in the cloud in their computers file explorer without requiring them to keep local copies of each document, image, spreadsheet or other file.

With Project Infinite, users will be able to manage their files in the cloud by moving them around inside the Mac OS X Finder or Windows File Explorer, just like they would any local files that are taking up space on their hard drives.

Right now, Dropbox users who want to see the items they have stored in the companys cloud among all their other files need to have those files downloaded to their Mac or PC  just like they did when Dropbox launched its product to the public seven and a half years ago.

Users can save storage space on their computers with a selective sync feature that only downloads some files, but the data people leave out cant be seen on their computers at all.

Project Infinite would take Dropboxs basic concept of creating folders that sync to the cloud and make it easier to work with an epic volume of files. Its part of the companys emphasis on helping users share files between one another, specially business users who pay for one of the companys premium tiers.

Theres still a lot the company hasnt said about the new initiative. Dropbox wont say when it plans to include Project Infinite in the publicly available version of its desktop applications, or even which customers it will be available to when it does launch. (Its entirely possible that the companys millions of free users will be left out in the cold.)

Still, its a cool tech demo that could help convince more businesses to choose Dropbox when theyre considering a paid cloud storage service. The company is pushing hard for commercial adoption and announced Tuesday that it has more than four times the commercial customers now in Europe than it did two years ago.

The company also announced a new File Properties API that will allow people to apply custom metadata to files stored in Dropbox for use with third party tools. That should help better enable applications like digital loss prevention services and data migration services.
New Delhi: Brushing aside industrialist Vijay Mallyas objection that he was not bound to disclose his assets abroad, the Supreme Court on Tuesday asked its Registry to furnish to the consortium of banks details of the assets of Mallya, his estranged wife and children.

A bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and Rohinton Nariman passed this order after Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for banks submitted that the information in the sealed cover should be disclosed to the banks to go after him and recover the dues.

Rejecting the submission made by senior counsel C.S. Vaidyanathan, for Mallya that such information can be shared only if there is an assurance that they will not be used for any other proceedings, the A-G said Mallya, a fugitive who is fleeing from justice cannot claim any immunity from disclosure.

Earlier, Mr. Vaidyanathan argued that at the time of granting loans, only domestic assets were put under consideration by the lenders. Hence, the banks cannot claim details of Mallyas foreign assets. He said Mallya had put forward two proposals but the banks have rejected them.
Dropbox recently announced a revolutionary new concept it says re-imagines how people will manage their files in the cloud. Called Dropbox Infinite, this new service for PC and Mac differentiates between whether a file is stored locally on your PC or only available online in Dropbox. All your files still appear in File Explorer, but if its not saved to your PC the file takes up zero space.

If that sounds familiar, you were (or are) a Windows 8.1 user.

The truth is theres nothing all that new or revolutionary about Dropbox Infinite. With Windows 8.1, Microsoft introduced a similar feature for OneDrive called smart filescommonly called placeholders. Many users despaired when Microsoft reversed course nearly two years later and left smart files out of Windows 10.

If were being honest, though, smart files was never an intuitive feature. In fact, Dropbox Infinite is an example of what smart files for OneDrive shouldve been.

Dropbox Infinite builds off the familiar green check-mark badge everyones used to seeing on their Dropbox files: If you see the green check mark you know your files been synced; if you see a circle with two directional arrows instead, you know your file hasnt made it up to the cloud yet.

Dropbox Infinite on Windows.

Dropbox Infinite adds a third icon to this that looks like a gray cloud. When you see it, you know that your file is on Dropbox but not saved locally to your hard drive. If you need a file thats only saved online, click it and it downloads instantlylocal bandwidth permitting.

Thats an easy-to-use interface that Dropbox users will intuitively understand. Contrast that with smart files, which added a new category row called Availability to File Explorer indicating whether the file was available offline or not. Thats far less obvious than a badge that sits right there on a file or folder. To be fair, Windows 8.1 did use icons to indicate online or offline functionality if you used the OneDrive Windows Store app. But most PC users worked as hard as they could to avoid full screen Windows Store apps whenever possibleOneDrive was no exception.

Perhaps if Microsoft hadnt been so focused on Windows Store apps at the time, the company wouldve re-thought the interface to File Explorer. Who knows? Those icons in the OneDrive app for Windows 8.1 might have made their way to File Explorer.

Why this matters: Dropbox Infinite and OneDrives smart files speak to the evolving PC landscape where PCsespecially laptopsare offering less storage than they used to. Although you can get high capacity solid state drives, many mid-to-low range laptops are offering around 128GB-256GB SSDs. To compensate for less storage, many people stash their files online where they are readily available when needed.

If youre hoping to see Dropbox Infinite pop-up on your desktop soon you may be disappointed. It appears to be a feature planned only for business customers. At least Dropbox is only talking about Dropbox Infinite as a feature for Dropbox Business. When we reached out to the company for clarification, a Dropbox spokesperson said, We are not sharing information on pricing and packaging for Project Infinite at this time.

As for OneDrive, theres still hope that smart files will return. Rumors in late 2015 said the feature would return with the Redstone update now known as the Anniversary Update due out this summer. If smart files do return, hopefully Microsoft will take a few design cues from Dropbox Infinite.

This article was updated at 8 a.m. Pacific time on Tuesday, April 26 to add comment from Dropbox.
SWIFT, the international banking transactions network, has warned customers of a number of recent incidents in which criminals sent fraudulent messages through its system.

The warning from SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) suggests that a February attack on the Bangladesh Bank, in which thieves got away with US $81 million, was not an isolated incident.

SWIFT is aware of malware that aims to reduce financial institutions abilities to find evidence of fraudulent transactions on their local systems, the organization said Tuesday. The malware has no impact on SWIFTs network or core messaging services, it added.

SWIFT has informed customers that there are other instances in which customers internal vulnerabilities have been exploited, the organization added. SWIFT is calling on customers to take steps to secure their systems and has issued a mandatory software update.

Attackers in these incidents have compromised bank systems and obtained valid credentials for creating and submitting messages on the network, SWIFT said. The malware is designed to hide the traces of fraudulent payments from customers local database applications and can only be installed on users local systems by attackers that have successfully identified and exploited weaknesses in their local security, the organization said.

The hackers, who attacked the Bangladesh Bank, appeared to use custom malware designed to interfere with SWIFTs transaction software, researchers said this week.

SWIFT is now aware of a number of recent cyber incidents in which malicious insiders or external attackers have managed to submit SWIFT messages from financial institutions back-offices, PCs or workstations connected to the SWIFT network, said a confidential notice seen by Reuters, according to a news story posted Tuesday.

SWIFT did not name any victims or disclose the amount of losses related to the recent cyberattacks.

The organization has issued a security update on Monday aimed at the malware that researchers identified as used in the Bangladesh attack. The likely Bangladesh malware, identified by researchers from BAE Systems, appears to be a custom attack toolkit, they said. The malware was designed to monitor, delete and alter transaction records in the database used by the SWIFT client software.
The European Commission plans to invest a billion euros in quantum computing as part of a larger initiative to strengthen Europes competitiveness in the digital economy.

The investment, about US $1.1 billion, will be made through an effort called Quantum Flagship, akin to existing flagship projects in the European Union focused on graphene and on the human brain. It is expected to be partly funded by EU research and innovation programs.

The aim is to place Europe at the forefront of the second quantum revolution, bringing transformative advances to science, industry and society, said Nathalie Vandystadt, an EC spokesperson.

Scheduled to launch in 2018, the quantum computing project will be described in more detail at the Quantum Europe Conference in Amsterdam next month.

Quantum computing is widely anticipated for its potential to deliver huge performance gains. Whereas todays computers rely on transistors to process bits of information in the form of binary 0s or 1s, quantum computing relies on atomic-scale qubits that can be simultaneously 0 and 1  a state known as a superposition thats far more efficient.

Realizing it in a working system, however, remains a challenge.

The first quantum revolution entailed understanding and applying physical laws of the microscopic realm, resulting in groundbreaking technologies such as the transistor and laser, explains an EC staff working document on quantum technologies. Now, our growing ability to manipulate quantum effects in customized systems and materials is paving the way for a second quantum revolution, the document explains. Its industrial and societal impact is likely to be again radically transformative.

The Quantum Flagship was announced as part of a European Cloud Initiative that will give Europes 1.7 million researchers and 70 million science and technology professionals a virtual environment to store, manage, analyze and re-use a big amount of research data. The EU says it has already supported quantum technologies for almost 20 years with funding investments totaling about 550 million euros.

A Quantum Manifesto published earlier this year by a team of EU researchers identified the need for a large-scale initiative to move forward in the field.

Harry Buhrman, executive director of Dutch quantum research center QuSoft, helped to initiate the new investment proposal.

It is essential that we do not only invest in the development of the quantum computer, but also in quantum algorithms and software, Buhrman said. At the moment, nobody really understands how to apply the spectacular possibilities of quantum hardware. Large-scale research is necessary, and the Quantum Flagship enables this.
The Americans with Disabilities Act was intended to prohibit discrimination against people with physical or mental impairments and to improve access for the disabled to public accommodations. Too often, however, it has been used to shake down businesses for minor violations, such as a door sign affixed an inch too high or too low or a disabled parking logo that is a little too faded or painted in the wrong shade of blue.

California is a particular magnet for extortionary ADA litigation, thanks to state law which mandates a minimum $4,000 penalty for each violation  no matter how small  plus the plaintiffs attorney fees. It is home to about 12 percent of the countrys disabled population, but accounts for 40 percent of ADA lawsuits. Its disability access lawsuits were one of the main reasons the American Tort Reform Foundation once again named California the nations No. 1 Judicial Hellhole last year.

Several legislative proposals would reform the system simply by requiring the aggrieved party to submit its complaints about alleged ADA violations to business owners in writing, and then allowing businesses a reasonable amount of time, usually 90 or 120 days, to fix any problems before litigation could be filed. Such federal bills include Rep. Ken Calverts, R-Corona, H.R. 241, the ACCESS Act of 2015, and Rep. Jerry McNerneys, D-Stockton, H.R. 4719, the COMPLI Act.

At the state level, Senate Bill 1142 has been introduced by state Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, and Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, has proposed SB269. Both bills have been named among the California Chamber of Commerces 12 job creator bills this year.

Nitpicky standards about whether a sink or a mirror is a fraction of an inch off or an outdated sign is the wrong shape or color go well beyond the original intentions of the ADA. They cost business owners tens of thousands of dollars for minor repairs, killing jobs and entire businesses in the process.

Legislators should explore eliminating some of the most restrictive regulations, particularly those that do not actually affect accessibility. In the meantime, it is only fair that businesses are afforded the opportunity to correct violations, which will dissuade frivolous lawsuits while encouraging corrections for legitimate claims.
German grocer Aldi is bringing its distinctive brand of retailing to Temecula, a city that already features numerous specialty markets and big-box retailers that sell groceries.

The location, slated for a long-vacant parcel on Rancho California Road west of the Moraga Road intersection, is part of the companys bold expansion plan in California, which includes stores in Beaumont, Fontana, La Quinta, Lake Elsinore, Menifee, Moreno Valley, Palm Springs, San Bernardino and Yucaipa.

The 18,555-square-foot store, which stocks around 1,400 commonly purchased items, will be sandwiched by Vons to the west and an Albertsons to the east.

The city Planning Commission last week approved the plans by unanimous vote.

Im sure people are disappointed to see that empty lot disappear after 100 years, joked commission Chairman Ron Guerriero.

The chain is hoping to compete in the crowded Temecula market by offering house brands.

Instead of 25 brands of ketchup, the store will stock one and sell it for less than the name brands at rival stores. The model is similar to the one used by Trader Joes, which has proved successful in Temecula and elsewhere in Southern California. About 90 percent of the brands sold at a typical Aldi are house brands, a company official said Wednesday.

The Temecula location will be open 9 a.m.-9 p.m. It will employ around 20 people, with four to eight employees working at the store during a typical shift.

The city gave special attention to the loading area at the rear of the building, which abuts an apartment complex. This area is relatively close to residential units and the applicant has provided additional architectural features to enhance the aesthetics and mitigate the potential noise that may be created by truck deliveries and trash pick-up, wrote city planners in a report.

Additional features include a 4-foot screen wall with 12-foot columns and a trellis structure that runs the length of the dock.

The store is scheduled to open before the end of the year, according to a message from Aldis Facebook account.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9698 or aclaverie@pressenterprise.com
Eastvale voters may find themselves voting for City Council members by district rather than at large in the Nov. 8 general election.

In response to the threat of a legal challenge, the Eastvale City Council on Wednesday, April 27, will take the first steps toward the new system of elections.

Under the existing at-large system, council candidates can live anywhere in the city and any registered voter could vote for any candidate. Under a district system, candidates must live in the district they seek to represent and are elected by voters in that district.

The threat of force has been put to our heads and the prospect of having to pay large legal fees is something the city of Eastvale is not interested in doing, city attorney John Cavanaugh said this week.

The City Council will meet at 6:30 p.m. at Rosa Parks Elementary School, 13830 Whispering Hills Drive.

A letter from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund received earlier this month contends that Eastvale is violating the California Voting Rights Act of 2001 and robbing Latino voters of the right to elect candidates of their choice. If sued, cities may be obligated to pay litigation costs, even if they win.

Included in Eastvales meeting tonight is a presentation by National Demographics Corp., the Claremont company selected by the city to study and evaluate Eastvales population and draw the district boundaries. Officials may vote to adopt a schedule for moving to by-district voting in time for the November election and to set a May 11 public hearing on the issue.

The company will be paid $20,000.

Eastvale is the latest Inland area city grappling with the issue including Chino, Hemet, Wildomar, Corona, Banning and Rancho Cucamonga, Cavanaugh said in his staff report.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9647 or sstokley@pressenterprise.com
A Corona man was arrested early Monday, April 25, on suspicion of striking a store clerk with a metal hammer, stealing camping gear and leading police on a pursuit.

James Puentes, 27, was taken into custody after the pursuit ended in Riverside, near the intersection of Indiana and Buchanan avenues, according to a Corona police news release. He was booked into jail on suspicion of robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and evading a peace officer.

The crime spree started about 2:23 a.m. at the Wal-Mart at 1290 E. Ontario Avenue, which is open 24 hours, Corona police spokesman Sgt. Paul Mercado said. The stores manager called police reporting that a man had stolen some camping equipment. When the manager confronted the man outside, the man brandished a box cutter and attempted to slash him, the news release said.

The suspect got into an older blue four-door Toyota sedan and fled the scene.

The man proceeded to the Arco AM/PM at the corner of East Sixth Street and East Grand Boulevard. He came across a clerk who was taking a break outside and struck him over the head with a metal hammer, Mercado said.

It was an unprovoked attack, Mercado said.

The man stole some money from inside the store and fled in the Toyota sedan. The clerk flagged down police and pointed them in the suspects direction before being transported to a hospital.

The clerk received several staples in his head after the attack.

Police found a car that matched the vehicle descriptions near the intersection of East Sixth Street and Rimpau Avenue. Officers attempted to pull the car over, but the driver kept driving.

Twice during the pursuit, the driver intentionally swerved his vehicle towards pursuing officers, the news release said. Near the intersection of Indiana and Buchanan avenues, an officer performed a PIT maneuver on the car and immobilized it, Mercado said. Only then did the suspect surrender.

When the pursuit ended and Puentes was taken into custody, witnesses identified him as the suspect in the robberies. Police believe he may have been under the influence of narcotics.
Riverside Countys director of disease control on Tuesday urged caution around certain rodent species after 10 mice carrying the potentially deadly hantavirus were found in San Timoteo Canyon near Beaumont.

The California Department of Public Health confirmed the animals, which lived in the Norton Younglove Preserve near Beaumont, tested positive for the disease after being live-trapped in March with 14 other rodents.

The virus was found in deer mice, harvest mice and the California or parasitic mouse. Hantavirus is common in the Inland region, said Dottie Merki, Riverside Countys environmental health program chief.

Most of the time, these types of rodents are out in the wild so we dont have these close contacts with them, she said.

People can be infected with hantavirus by inhaling contaminated droplets from rodent droppings and urine, or being bitten by infected mice. The virus is carried in saliva.

Symptoms include fatigue, fever, muscle aches, headaches, dizziness, chills and abdominal problems. In the United States, 659 people have been documented with hantavirus pulmonary syndrome since 1993 and 235 of them have died, the Centers for Disease Control reports.

No human cases have been reported in Riverside County, Merki said. Three cases were reported in San Bernardino County by December 2014, the state public health department reports.

Sixteen hantavirus deaths were reported among California residents from 1980 to 2006. None were in the Inland region.

Merki advised people to avoid picking up wild rodents and to be careful when cleaning mouse droppings in and around cabins, summer homes, barns and outbuildings.

Riverside County Director of Disease Control Barbara Cole agreed, adding only certain species can put people at risk for hantavirus.

If people take appropriate precautions, it greatly reduces their risk of becoming infected, she said.

Hantavirus can be carried by certain mice and rat species, but common house mice havent been known to transmit the virus. Squirrels cant carry or transmit hantavirus, Merki said.

County officials urge people to avoid stirring up potentially contaminated material while cleaning mice-infested areas in or around homes. They advise people to wear rubber gloves, avoid sweeping or vacuuming rodent droppings, and disinfect surfaces with a 10 percent solution of bleach or household disinfectant at least 15 minutes before cleaning.

Disinfecting before cleaning will help prevent the virus from becoming airborne.

If youre going to a cabin thats been locked up and theres rodent droppings, your first instinct is to start sweeping them up. So its very important to spray them with that bleach solution first, Merki said.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9444 or shurt@pressenterprise.com
A bill in Sacramento that will require state and local road planners to consider reversible, capacity-increasing traffic lanes on state streets and highways got a 15-0 approval from the Assembly Transportation Committee.

The bill, AB 2542 by Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, requires the state Department of Transportation and regional transportation agencies to consider reversible lanes for major street alignments or capacity-increasing projects, Gattos office said.

After the April 18 vote, the bill went back to the Appropriations Committee.

Neither the Riverside County Transportation Commission nor the San Bernardino Associated Governments has taken a position on the bill, which was introduced Feb. 19.

But one RCTC official said reversible lanes require a very strong and defined travel pattern  and those can be difficult to discern on highways that carry heavy traffic loads in both directions, regardless of time of day.

Such direction-changing lanes, in which existing traffic lanes are adapted for traffic patterns and time of day  one direction for the morning commute and the other direction for the afternoon return trip  are used sparingly so far in California.

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco uses reversible lanes, as does the San Diego-Coronado Bridge, where a 30-ton, 58-foot-long contraption known as a Zipper picks up and moves concrete barriers to switch lanes around.

A stretch of Express Lanes on I-15 in San Diego is rearranged by a Zipper on Thursdays to accommodate traffic patterns, a regional Caltrans spokesman said.

The $20.5 million system has been criticized for being rarely used and for the time it takes to rearrange lanes for an unplanned event such as an accident.

Gatto said in a telephone interview that he believes reversible lanes need to be in the mix more often, and that technology such as road sensors and traffic cameras can provide the data to make reversible lanes manageable.

We are very much stuck with what a road was 50 years ago  a paved surface with a barrier in the middle as a median, he said. Sometimes the folks in charge of managing our roads dont always come up with the most common-sense solutions, and policymakers have to kind of steer them in the right direction.

While RCTC has not taken a position on the bill, commission Deputy Executive Director John Standiford said in an email, We will have significant concerns should it move forward.

He said several options already are considered while road projects are being planned, and local agencies are better suited to determine them.

It appears to be yet another way of making it harder to add highway capacity, since this is directed only on projects that add capacity, he said.

Gatto said his bill would likely not address already-approved capacity work, but could come into play for latter stages of an existing project.

Gatto said surface streets designated as state highways as well as projects with significant state funding could be affected if his bill becomes law.

In 2015 Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a Gatto bill that would have allowed all motorists to use carpool lanes during off-peak hours on the 134 from North Hollywood to Pasadena and I-210 from Pasadena to Glendora.

Contact the writer: rdeatley@pressenterprise.com or 951-368-9573
I must admit that the P-Es editorials have been my favorite part of the paper since arriving in Anza in 2004 from San Diego because I judged them to be consistently thoughtful, credible, articulate advocacy. I didnt know about the Orange County Register Editorial Board being a solitary voice against the internment of Japanese-Americans following the Pearl Harbor attack  that is a truly spectacular achievement.

Yet this thoughtful advocacy is challenged by more recent P-E editorial advocacy in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana in California. This is inconsistent with the P-Es general conservative outlook. I cant figure out why you advocate such view while printing news stories of Colorados negative experience since it legalized pot. The new pot is much more potent, approaching heroin for its addictive properties, and it is incorporated into lollipops and edibles that can easily get into the hands of children. How do you justify taking this pro-legalization editorial position?

Tulvio Durand

Anza

Scourge of mail theft

My small street of six residences has a group mailbox that was recently pried open and our mail stolen. The theft and vandalism was bad enough but the total lack of interest or action on the part of the Post Office was even worse. I think this problem is much more widespread than we know. The people I spoke with while picking up my mail were from many neighborhoods and some had boxes vandalized multiple times. If the Post Office were a private company, it would be out of business in short order.

John Ray

Woodcrest
BELAGAVI: Acting on the state government's appeal, Maharashtra on Tuesday released one TMC feet water from Koyna dam to the river Krishna to help local authorities supply water to drought-hit areas.

According to sources in Irrigation department, water released by Maharashtra will be able to help avoid a crisis in drought-hit areas on the border only if another TMC feet of water follows within the next one or two days.

However, sources feel it is impossible to ensure release of another TMC feet of water by Maharashtra government within such a short span of time. MLA from Kudchi assembly segment, P Rajeev urged Chief Minister Siddaramaiah at a meeting held in Belagavi on Monday to ensure release of additional water to Krishna from Maharashtra within one or two days while stating that the water released by Maharashtra will reach the tail-end of Krishna river in drought-hit areas in Kudchi and Raibag belt only if more water is released quickly.

As per water sharing agreement between the two states, Maharashtra is supposed to release 4 TMC feet of water to Krishna river every April-May while Karnataka will release 4 TMC feet of water from Almatti dam to Maharashtra once the dam is full.

Until the onset of monsoon, all drought-hit areas of north-Karnataka including Bagalkot, Vijayapura and Belagavi will be facing water crisis if Maharashtra failed to release all the 4 TMC feet of water to the river Krishna over the next two weeks.
The trio of girls darted across the floor and leaped in the air. Three boys chatted while other kids giggled as they waited to practice a ballet routine.

A moment later, most of the students in Suzanne Lindens dance class were on the ground doing push-ups for misbehaving.

If I cant make em dancers, at least Im going to make em strong, she said.

Linden, a veteran teacher at Sunnymead Middle School in Moreno Valley, knows the buttons to push to motivate her students during a critical time in their education.

The campus dance program she started in 1994 has contributed to Sunnymeads success as one of the states model middle schools.

Its among five in the Inland area and 13 in California to earn first-time honors this year in the Schools to Watch  Taking Center Stage program, given to campuses that are academically excellent, developmentally responsive, socially equitable and structured for success.

Its significant that more than a third of the new honorees are from Riverside and San Bernardino counties, said Irvin Howard, co-director of Schools to Watch and a longtime educator specializing in the middle grades.

Riverside County had as many as recipients  three  as Los Angeles County, whose student enrollment is almost four times larger. San Bernardino County received two awards, twice as many as Orange County, which has more students than either Riverside or San Bernardino counties.

MAKING THE CUT

Besides Sunnymead, other Inland winners are Vista Heights Middle School in Moreno Valley, San Gorgonio Middle School in Beaumont, Curtis Middle School in San Bernardino and Serrano Middle School in Highland.

What it shows is there are finally some schools in the Inland Empire that are making the cut, said Howard, a professor emeritus of education at Cal State San Bernardino. A lot of these schools that have made it have known about the criteria and have been working on it for a few years.

Middle schools play a key role in the transition from childhood to adolescence. Students are growing, becoming independent thinkers and discovering their sexuality, Howard said.

Educators have to address students social and emotional needs while still teaching reading, writing, math and other subjects.

We cant just focus on academics, he said. We have to focus on the whole child.

The winning schools are meeting the challenge by putting kids on teams in which counselors and teachers help them with classes as well as family and personal issues.

BETTER BEHAVED

San Gorgonio uses a master schedule, where each grade level is split into two academic teams led by a group of teachers. The same group of students rotates among the teachers, which allows educators from different subjects to assist the children.

The same themes are taught through each subject, as is AVID, the Advancement Via Individual Determination college preparedness program.

Students take robotics, yearbook, speech and debate, sports, jazz band and chess club and other electives.

Kids are better behaved and do better at school because they have opportunities, Principal Drew Scherrer said.

Moreno Valleys Sunnymead has a mentoring program aimed at improving the behavior of 40 to 50 students who need continuous in-depth support, Principal Jennifer Castillo said.

Each student in the program is paired with a teacher, counselor, campus supervisor, office worker, librarian or other adult. They meet regularly for breakfast or lunch, go to movies after school and participate in fun activities together.

MOTIVATING KIDS

Some mentors buy footballs for boys who get a 2.0 GPA and dont fail any courses. Many give out their cell phone numbers in case kids need advice or help outside school hours.

The school, which is 79 percent Latino and 12 percent black, has more than 90 percent of its students eligible for free and discounted lunches.

Theres so little for these kids to do that doesnt cost money, said Linden, the dance teacher.

Only four of her students had studio training before they arrived.

Lindens kids put on two concerts a year that raise money for competitions and uniforms.

Other kids dont have this kind of opportunity, sixth grader Olivia Ortiz, 11, said after a recent class.

Olivia said she likes choreographing her own routines and gaining strength and conditioning.

Most of the kids in the class are your friends and you can be yourself, she said.

SO MUCH ENERGY

Ricardo Cortez, 12, is one of three boys among 36 students in a beginning course that includes ballet lessons. Taking dance has improved his self-confidence and boosted his grades, he said.

The same is true for Lizbeth Aguas, 13, who was too scared to participate until eighth grade.

Dance is my favorite class, she said. I pay attention more in my other classes so I can stay in dance.

Samuel Satterfield, 12, said the class helps him relax and let go of all your energy. Hes also applying some of the same concepts hes learning in dance  timing, coordination and angles  to math and other subjects. French, geography and history are also sprinkled into lessons about ballet and other dance styles.

We have to make it symmetrical so it looks good and not sloppy, Satterfield said.

Linden gets a thrill watching kids mature. The wall of her dance studio is covered with pictures of former students, many of whom have excelled in high school dance and beyond.

These kids are going through so many changes at this point in their lives, she said. They have so much energy. They have so much to give. This gives them a place to be comfortable.

She talks to them about diet, nutrition and how to properly stretch and condition. She relishes the chance to turn around kids who have bad attitudes and discipline problems.

Theres so many kids the only reason they come to school is this class, she said.

HELPING KIDS ADJUST

Less than four miles away, students at Vista Heights Middle School can take a beginning Spanish course and an integrated math class that combines algebra and geometry.

The classes help students meet admission requirements for University of California and California State University campuses.

Rather than having different teachers for each subject, most sixth-graders have two teachers who share three groups of kids. This helps them adjust to middle school academics and culture and allows teachers to work together to better understand their needs, Principal Mark Hasson said.

Vista Heights also offers group counseling sessions that allow students to discuss drugs, alcohol, tobacco, bullying and other issues.

Its important there is a support system at any school to have a conversation with students around the possible consequences of negative behaviors, Hasson said.

Howard, of the Schools to Watch program, praised the winning campuses for their focus on learning, centering instruction on students and close collaboration between administrators and teachers.

Students must understand why learning is important by the time they reach high school or its too late, he said.

All the research says if we dont capture them academically by eighth grade, we have lost them, Howard said.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9292 or swall@pressenterprise.com
Riverside County supervisors voted this month to approve a 90-acre winery expansion in Temecula Valley Wine Country.

But the supervisor who represents the vineyard-dotted region didnt vote. Citing a conflict of interest, Chuck Washington recused himself before the Board of Supervisors OKd Mount Palomar Winerys expansion plans, which include a 124-foot, bell-tower-like structure; a 134-room hotel; 46 cottages; a restaurant; a lake; and an 1,800-seat amphitheater.

Since his appointment to the board in March 2015, Washington has abstained from discussing or voting on at least seven land-use items pertaining to wine country due to his investment in a winery there. His recusals leave decisions in the hands of supervisors who dont represent the unincorporated county area east of Temecula.

Washington, 63, said hes trying to sell his interest in Europa Village. When he invested in the winery almost a decade ago, he had no idea he would become a supervisor, he said. He has repeatedly listed the investment on the required financial disclosure forms.

I live my life as an open book, Washington said. I never hid anything.

I respect the rules, he added. Voters havent been known to get mad when someone adheres to the law and recuses themselves when they need to. Voters get upset when they dont do those things.

But the two candidates challenging Washington in the June 7 primary election argue that Washingtons conflict hurts his ability to effectively represent an economically important area.

He is not leading in the manner in which he should because he has investments in that district and he is leaving the decisions up to the other four supervisors who dont even live in that district, said one of the candidates, Murrieta Mayor Randon Lane.

Hemet Councilwoman Shellie Milne, who also is running, said Washington should have known hed have a conflict of interest.

Please dont sit there and tell me youre ignorant  all of a sudden, youre not going to be able to vote. You knew darn well this was a conflict of interest and you werent able to vote on it.

As an unincorporated area, wine country is under the countys jurisdiction for land-use matters; theres no city council to turn to. As a Temecula councilman for more than a decade, Washington, who also previously served on the Murrieta City Council, did not have a direct say in wine country matters.

Roughly an hours drive from Los Angeles and San Diego, wine country is home to more than 40 wineries and is a popular destination for wine tasting, horseback rides, hot-air balloon rides and weddings. Many wineries offer fine-dining restaurants and lodging, and in 2014, supervisors passed the Wine Country Community Plan, a master plan to guide the areas growth.

BIG INVESTMENT

Washingtons Europa investment, which dates to 2007, is valued at between $100,000 and $1 million, according to his 2015 financial disclosure. A former naval aviator and airline pilot, Washington said he used a lump sum payment he received after retiring from Delta Air Lines to invest in Europa and other properties.

Dan Stephenson, a prominent southwest Riverside County developer, is Europas founder. Stephenson and Washington have long-standing ties, and Stephenson has contributed to Washingtons political campaigns.

In March 2015, Gov. Jerry Brown chose Washington, a fellow Democrat, to serve out the unexpired term of Republican Jeff Stone, who was elected to the state Senate. Washington now is running for a four-year term to represent the 3rd Supervisorial District, which includes Temecula, Murrieta, Hemet and San Jacinto.

Washington said he disclosed his investments to the governor during the appointment process. Browns press office did not respond to a request for comment.

Washingtons first recusal from a wine country matter came in September when he abstained from a proposed zoning change for an existing winery as well as an order to staff to create an amendment to wine country zoning categories. Both items passed without opposition.

In November, Washington abstained from a proposed contract with an engineering firm to do preliminary work for three planned wine country traffic circles. And he said he did not participate in closed sessions dealing with a lawsuit filed against the county over the community plan.

Supervisor Marion Ashley said Washingtons absence did not hinder the board when it came to wine country business. All the supervisors are very interested in wine country, said Ashley, who noted he represented the area as interim supervisor between the time Stone left and Washington took over.

A GRAY AREA

The Temecula Valley Winegrowers Association, which represents area wineries and winegrowers, recently endorsed Washington.

Through your many years of service with the cities of Temecula and Murrieta and most recently as our districts supervisor, youve been a strong advocate for our regions beautiful wine country and continually provide your support in our endeavors, association president and Europa vineyard manager Ben Drake said in a news release from Washingtons campaign.

Danny Martin, a wine country resident, said the Wine Country Community Plan provides a solid blueprint for land-use matters.

Would I like to see Chuck not recuse himself and vote? Absolutely. Do I think its hurt us to this date? No, he said.

As long as were moving the wine country forward and its within the context of the plan, I think were fine.

Jim Carter, who owns two winery resorts in the region, said hes very satisfied with Washingtons representation. When Washington sells his Europa interest, that problem will go away, he said.

Washington said he put his Europa investment up for sale soon after being appointed and that its generated some interest. But he said that even if he got an offer today, he doubts the sale could close before the June 7 election.

Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who specializes in governance and ethics, said its very hard to find active community members willing to serve in public office who have absolutely no conflicts of interest.

Its very difficult because it sounds like overall, (Washington is) able to perform in his job and it does not affect the vast majority of what he does (as supervisor), said Levinson, who is president of Los Angeles ethics commission.

On the other hand, people in wine country are relying on officials who do not represent that area  like everything in life, this issue probably lives in a gray area.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9547 or jhorseman@pressenterprise.com
Summers inching closer on the calendar in drought-parched Southern California. Thank goodness we can count on May gray and June gloom to bathe us with refreshing, cool air before the real heat arrives.

No so fast.

A possible victim of Californias off-kilter weather of recent years, our annual cloudy relief from the relentless assault of triple-digit temperatures likely will be cut short this year, weather watchers say.

It looks like a long, hot, dry spring through summer, said Bill Patzert, a climate scientist at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

Its something else you can blame on El Nino, Patzert added, because that weather pattern is warming water all over the Pacific seascape. Thats expected to disrupt the conditions that invite all that pe-summer cloud cover to hang around for weeks at a time.

Were definitely going to see less marine layer coverage in the next couple months, said Tom Rolinski, a U.S. Forest Service meteorologist based in Riverside.

That has implications for everything from beach outings and park-trek barbecues  to the likelihood of wildfire season arriving early.

http://cdn.thinglink.me/jse/embed.js

LOST TRADITION?

In a region marked by blurry distinctions between seasons, May gray-June gloom stands out. It is a fairly reliable weather phenomenon characterized by a deep marine layer that pushes well inland  on some days all the way to the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains.

It cools you off as it moves into the great Inland Empire cul-de-sac, Patzert said.

Southern Californians have a sort of love-hate relationship with the period of low clouds and morning fog. Inland residents mindful of the scorching days ahead cheer the temporary reprieve, while coastal residents eager for the sun to come out jeer unwanted chilly, gloomy days on the seaside sand.

The marine layer helps us in a huge way, said Richard Minnich, a UC Riverside earth sciences professor and expert in fire ecology.

Besides holding temperatures down, Rolinski said the clouds hold moisture in the dead and dying vegetation in the hills that will dry out later.

Rolinski said the marine layer generally affects areas 3,000 feet above sea level and lower. Those fuels are going to be more moist than fuels that are farther inland and higher in elevation, he said.

Some years, the clouds persist well into summer.

Those are years that we dont have much fire activity in the grass and brush in the lower elevations, Rolinski said.

But this isnt expected to be one of those years.

WHY LESS GLOOM?

Whats going to chase the clouds away? According to James Brotherton, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in San Diego, its the water temperature offshore.

El Nino may not have been able to douse Southern California with drought-erasing rains, but he might be able to undercut our pre-summer overcast.

At many locations, Brotherton said, the El Nino-warmed ocean surface is running 62 to 64 degrees. And the normal this time of year is 60 degrees.

That may not seem like a big increase, but its enough to make a potentially big difference in the weather, forecasters said.

Patzert said the strength of the marine layer is generated by the sharp contrast between the cool ocean and rapidly warming land.

Said Brotherton: That clash of the air over the land is what causes that June gloom in a normal year.

The contrast tends to be particularly strong in May and June, Patzert said, but will be less pronounced this year.

Brotherton said the ocean has been warm for many months.

If those abnormally warm waters would continue, that would put a damper on the June gloom, he said.

And those conditions just may strip away our gray. Which left at least one forecaster feeling gloomy.

May gray  some people whine about it. But I always look forward it, Patzert said. Especially when it comes to my air-conditioning bill.

RELATED

Sunny today, possibly rainy tomorrow

Overnight rain, wind leaves hundreds without power in Moreno Valley

Contact the writer: 951-368-9699 or ddowney@pressenterprise.com
The Riverside County Registrar of Voters is recruiting people interested in being poll workers for the June 7 primary election.

No experience is needed and the registrar will provide training. The pay is up to $125 for precinct inspectors or $90 for precinct officers.

Workers must attend a training class and be ready to help voters when polls open at 7 a.m. on June 7. A stipend will be provided to attending the training session.

English speakers who also are proficient in Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese or American Sign Language also are being sought.

Information: 951-486-7341 or 877-663-9906.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9547 or jhorseman@pressenterprise.com
The Bank Hotel in Newtown came under fire yesterday for hosting their annual ANZAC Day game of 2-up, which is hosted by drag queens.

Unfortunately, for years theyve used an incredibly awful, transphobic term in the name, calling it Tr*nny 2-up.

A quick note to perhaps point out here: transgender person does not equal drag queen, or vice versa. They are totally different and separate groups of people. While the term has previously been used within the drag queen community, its incredibly outdated, and very inappropriate for cisgender people to use.

Stephanie McCarthy, the musician who was assaulted because she is transgender, while she was playing at The Town Hall Hotel in Newtown last year, commented on the post, expressing her feelings about a venue using such a derogatory term. She mentions that the word was one of the insults the two men hurled at her as they were assaulting her:

This REALLY isnt cool. 50 metres from where I got bashed, on a day when every young guy will be blind drunk. Letting these drunk young men know that its OK to use highly offensive slurs (slurs that were yelled at me when I was repeatedly getting punched in the head) is just so unbelievably irresponsible, some would say dangerous. But hey, as long as you have a great day financially, who cares right?

The Bank Hotel Newtown is running Tranny Two Up today, run by drag queens. 50 metres from where I got bashed. Real classy.  Stephanie McCarthy (@tallpunksteph) April 25, 2016

While many believe that this is okay because its been called that for years! and toughen up, its always been a term of endearment! or (the cherry on the top of every transphobia sundae) I have trans friends and they say its fine for me to use it!, they are unfortunately, ignorantly incorrect.

In an ever-changing world that learns, grows, and adapts language to suit accordingly, these excuses dont cut the fucking mustard anymore.

And The Bank Hotel agreed, responding the Stephs request with a thoughtful and respectful response  they directly apologised for causing Steph distress, and promised to change the name of the event.

Social media managers  this is how you do it. Take notes.

Source/Photos: Facebook.
NEW DELHI: Despite admitting a rise in frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall in the past 40-50 years, minister of state for environment Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday refused to link the changing pattern to climate change.

While responding to a question raised in Parliament, the minister said: Extreme rainfall events that occurred at some isolated places (heavy rainfall over Mumbai, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Kashmir) are highly localized and are part of the natural variability of the Indian monsoon system. Although some recent studies hint at an increasing frequency and intensity of extremes in rainfall during the past 40-50 years, their attribution to global warming is yet to be established, Mr Javadekar said, adding, there is no conclusive evidence to attribute observed weather and climate variability to the increased concentrations of Green House Gases and associated global warming.

Daily mean temperature over the country is found to be increasing more or less at the same rate as the global mean (0.63 degree Celsius since 1901). Spatial pattern of trends in the mean annual temperature shows significant positive (increasing) trend over most parts of the country except over parts of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Bihar, where significant negative (decreasing) trends were observed, he added.

This comes about five months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his radio programme Mann ki Baat had expressed concerns over incessant rains in Tamil Nadu, that had claimed over 250 lives, in November last year.

There is continuous news of natural calamities from various parts of the world. And sometimes the news is very bizarre, never seen or never heard of, Mr Modi had said in his radio programme.
GUBAREVICHI, Belarus (AP) -- On the edge of Belarus' Chernobyl exclusion zone, down the road from the signs warning "Stop! Radiation," a dairy farmer offers his visitors a glass of freshly drawn milk.

Associated Press reporters politely decline the drink but pass on a bottled sample to a laboratory, which confirms it contains levels of a radioactive isotope at levels 10 times higher than the nation's food safety limits.

That finding on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident indicates how fallout from the April 26, 1986, explosion at the plant in neighboring Ukraine continues to taint life in Belarus. The authoritarian government of this agriculture-dependent nation appears determined to restore long-idle land to farm use -- and in a country where dissent is quashed, any objection to the policy is thin.

The farmer, Nikolai Chubenok, proudly says his herd of 50 dairy cows produces up to two tons of milk a day for the local factory of Milkavita, whose brand of Parmesan cheese is sold chiefly in Russia. Milkavita officials called the AP-commissioned lab finding "impossible," insisting their own tests show their milk supply contains traces of radioactive isotopes well below safety limits.

Yet a tour along the edge of the Polesie Radioecological Reserve, an 850-square-mile ghost landscape of 470 evacuated villages and towns, reveals a nation showing little regard for the potentially cancer-causing isotopes still to be found in the soil. Farmers suggest the lack of mutations and other glaring health problems mean Chernobyl's troubles can be consigned to history.

"There is no danger. How can you be afraid of radiation?" said Chubenok, who since 2014 has produced milk from his farm 28 miles north of the shuttered Chernobyl site, and a mile from the boundary of a zone that remains officially off-limits to full-time human habitation. Chubenok says he hopes to double his herd size and start producing farmhouse cheese on site.

His milk is part of the Milkavita supply chain for making Polesskiye brand cheese, about 90 percent of which is sold in Russia, the rest domestically. The World Bank identifies Russia as the major market for Belarusian food exports, which represent 15 percent of the country's export economy.

Since rising to power in 1994, President Alexander Lukashenko -- the former director of a state-owned farm -- has stopped resettlement programs for people living near the mandatory exclusion zone and developed a long-term plan to raze empty villages and reclaim the land for crops and livestock.

The Chernobyl explosion meant 138,000 Belarusians closest to the plant had to be resettled, while 200,000 others living nearby left voluntarily.

One of the most prominent medical critics of the government's approach to safeguarding the public from Chernobyl fallout, Dr. Yuri Bandazhevsky, was removed as director of a Belarusian research institute and imprisoned in 2001 on corruption charges that international rights groups branded politically motivated. Since his 2005 parole he has resumed his research into Chernobyl-related cancers with European Union sponsorship.

Bandazhevsky, now based in Ukraine, says he has no doubt that Belarus is failing to protect citizens from carcinogens in the food supply.

"We have a disaster," he told the AP in the Ukraine capital, Kiev. "In Belarus, there is no protection of the population from radiation exposure. On the contrary, the government is trying to persuade people not to pay attention to radiation, and food is grown in contaminated areas and sent to all points in the country."

The milk sample subjected to an AP-commissioned analysis backs this picture.

The state-run Minsk Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology said it found strontium-90, a radioactive isotope linked to cancers and cardiovascular disease, in quantities 10 times higher than Belarusian food safety regulations allow. The test, like others in resource-strapped Belarus, was insufficiently sophisticated to test for heavier radioactive isotopes associated with nuclear fallout, including americium and variants of plutonium.

The Belarusian Agriculture Ministry says levels of strontium-90 should not exceed 3.7 becquerels per kilogram in food and drink. Becquerels are a globally recognized unit of measurement for radioactivity.

The Minsk lab informed the AP that the milk sample contained 37.5 becquerels. That radioactive isotope is, along with cesium-137, commonly produced during nuclear fission and generates most of the heat and penetrating radiation from nuclear waste. When consumed, scientists say strontium-90 mimics the behavior of calcium in the human body, settling in bones.

Milkavita chief engineer Maia Fedonchuk rejected the findings.

"It's impossible. We do our own testing. There must have been a mix-up," she said, adding they test samples from every batch of milk they receive from Chubenok and do an "in-depth" analysis every six months. She said the plant's own lab analysis indicates its overall milk supply contains an average of 2.85 becquerels per kilogram.

The deputy director of Belarus' Institute of Radiobiology, Natalya Timokhina, said Belarus permits food producers to conduct their own food safety monitoring and lacks the lab equipment necessary to identify the presence of americium, which is estimated to be present in about 2 percent of Belarus' top soil and is expected to remain a health risk for another 270 years.

"One-time ingestion of contaminated food is not very dangerous," Timokhina said. "What's dangerous is the accumulation of radionuclides in the body."

Ausrele Kesminiene, a doctor in the cancer research unit of the World Health Organization, said the consumption of radioactive food is linked chiefly to the development of cancer in the thyroid, a gland in the neck that produces body-regulating hormones. Thyroid cancer is typically not fatal if diagnosed early.

WHO officials say they are dependent on reports from sister agencies in Belarus to alert them to cancer clusters or other signs of unresolved Chernobyl-related dangers. Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman in Geneva, said the agency had no authority to regulate or oversee food safety -- even products exported to other countries -- because that is a domestic responsibility.

"Radiation effects and the development of cancers and the effects on the region are something which go on over a long, long period. So we haven't seen the end of it," Hartl said. "Undoubtedly there is going to be some increase in cancers."

Hartl said WHO officials have not received "any red flags" from Belarus.

Environmentalists critical of Belarus' Chernobyl cleanup record says that's hardly surprising, since the government has funded no machinery to scrutinize corrupt practices in the food industry. As a result, they say, no Belarusian food maker has ever been prosecuted for using ingredients or producing goods containing excessive levels of radioactive materials.

The division of the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry responsible for cleaning up the consequences of Chernobyl says that the rate of thyroid cancer in children runs 33 times higher than before the nuclear blast. It says thyroid cancer rates run several times higher in adults.

Farmers working both on the edge of, and inside, the prohibited zone say they see no obvious signs of nuclear dangers, have been given no guidelines on reducing the risk of permitting radioactive isotopes into the food chain, and aren't worried about this.

Chubenok, the dairy farmer, said he had never heard of the sorbent substance Ferocin, known as Prussian Blue, which farmers in Ukraine feed their cattle to accelerate the removal of the cesium-137 isotope from their digestive tracts.

A tractor driver on one of his neighboring farms, where an abandoned village has been demolished to make way for fields of grain, says he's never seen an official testing for radiation levels in the soil. But Leonid Kravchenko said there was no reason for alarm.

"Nobody's in danger," he said.
APTOPIX Prom Shooting Wisconsin

Nikita Deep, 16, embraces a family friend at Antigo United Methodist Church following a morning service Sunday, April 24, 2016, in Antigo, Wis. According to police Jakob E. Wagner, 18, opened fire with a high-powered rifle outside of the a prom at Antigo High School late Saturday. (Jacob Byk/The Marshfield News-Herald via AP)

ANTIGO, Wis. (AP) -- Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Monday called for a discussion on how to deal with bullying in schools after friends of a gunman who wounded two people outside a high school prom said the 18-year-old had been bullied.

Authorities have not revealed a motive for the

in northern Wisconsin and declined to comment Monday on whether bullying may have been a factor. Police fatally shot former student Jakob E. Wagner after he opened fire on students outside the school Saturday night, authorities say.

Wagner's mother, Lorrie Wagner, told The Associated Press that her son "wasn't a monster."

"If anything, I hope it shines light on bullying and how deeply it affects people," she said, before ending the interview.

Former classmate Dakotta Mills, who said he had known Wagner since sixth grade, told The Associated Press that he had "some rough spots now and then" and that he had witnessed him being bullied. Another former classmate, Emily Fisher, told the Wausau Daily Herald that

, in part because of poor hygiene. The bullying started in middle school, Fisher said, and continued through high school.

Walker, a Republican, said authorities should address bullying and mental health, as well as teaching students how to resolve disagreements peacefully rather than impose new limits on firearms. He said that if there were a ban on rifles in Wisconsin, "you wouldn't have hunting here."

At a news conference Monday, authorities said they couldn't confirm that Wagner had been taunted by fellow students or say whether it was a possible motive in the shooting.

"I can't get into the specifics on that," Antioch Police Chief Eric Roller. He added, "That's still part of the investigation."

However, Roller said it didn't appear that the victims had been specifically targeted.

The state Department of Justice has taken over the case because it involves a police shooting. Agency spokesman Johnny Koremenos said in an email that it was too early to offer a motive or provide other details of the investigation.

Roller said the officers' response "saved lives by stopping the threat" in that the suspect "didn't end up inside a building that was full of prom-goers."

Wagner arrived on a bicycle armed with a rifle and opened fire as two couples were leaving the dance, Roller said. One 18-year-old male student was struck in the leg and a bullet grazed his date's thigh. The other couple wasn't struck. Two officers were stationed in front of the school and one quickly shot the gunman.

The couple who wasn't shot helped the 18-year-old male victim by wrapping a necktie around his leg as a tourniquet to stanch the bleeding, Roller said.

The victim's family requested privacy, but said in a statement that their son was doing well after a long surgery. They thanked everyone who helped and asked that people "pray for the family of Jakob Wagner.

"As much as we are struggling through this event, we cannot imagine the grief they are experiencing at this time," the statement read.

Roller said no weapons were recovered aside from the rifle. He declined to describe the weapon further or say how many rounds of ammunition Wagner was carrying.

Zamzow, wearing a burgundy T-Shirt that read "Antioch Pride" in bold white letters, said that classes were back in session Monday and that attendance was normal. Counsellors were on campus to help students.

A school official told AP on Sunday that Wagner had not graduated as scheduled last May, but Principal Tom Zamzow said Monday that he was a graduate.
Joey Meek

In this June 18, 2015, file frame from video, Joey Meek, friend of Dylann Roof who is accused of killing nine black church members during Bible study on June 17 in Charleston , S.C., speaks to The Associated Press. Meek is set to plead guilty to two federal charges, according to an agreement signed by federal prosecutors and filed online Monday, April 25, 2016. (APTN via AP, File)

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- A friend of the white man accused of fatally shooting nine black parishioners in Charleston last year is set to plead guilty to two federal charges, according to an agreement signed by federal prosecutors and filed online Monday.

The plea would mark the first conviction in a mass killing that stunned the country, reignited discussions about race relations and led to the removal of a Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina Statehouse. Dylann Roof, who is charged with the slayings, had previously posed for photos with a rebel flag.

Joey Meek, 21, has agreed to plead guilty to lying to authorities and failure to report a crime, according to the agreement, and a hearing is set for 1 p.m. Friday in Charleston. He could face up to eight years in prison on those charges, although prosecutors note in the agreement they will argue he deserves less time if he's helpful in their ongoing case.

Authorities have said that Meek failed to tell investigators all he knew about Roof's plans to shoot the parishioners at Emanuel AME Church last June.

This Thursday, June 18, 2015, file photo, provided by the Charleston County Sheriff's Office shows Charleston, S.C., church shooting suspect Dylann Roof. (Charleston County Sheriff's Office via AP, File)

Roof, 22, is charged with nine counts of murder in state court and with hate crimes and other charges in federal court. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in his state trial, which has been delayed until next year, and federal authorities haven't said if they will also seek a death sentence for Roof. No trial date has been set on those charges.

Before he was charged himself last fall, Meek has long been a part of the story centered on Roof and his arrest. A day after the massacre, Meek, who had hung out with Roof off and on in the weeks before the June 17 shooting, told The Associated Press that Roof had drunkenly complained to him that "blacks were taking over the world" and "someone needed to do something about it for the white race."

Meek also told the AP he called the FBI after recognizing Roof in surveillance footage from the church, down to the stained sweatshirt he wore while playing Xbox videogames in Meek's home the morning of the attack.

"I didn't THINK it was him. I KNEW it was him," Meek told AP after being interviewed by investigators, also saying Roof told him he used birthday money from his parents to buy a .45-caliber Glock semi-automatic handgun.

But authorities say that Meek knew more. An indictment alleges he knowingly lied to an FBI agent when he said "that he did not know specifics of Dylann Roof's plan to shoot individuals on a Wednesday, during Bible Study, at an AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina."

Meek's agreement specifies that he will help authorities and remain truthful with them. When prosecutors are able to work out such plea deals, one expert said, they do so because they are trying to strengthen their case against someone else. As for Meek, he's hoping for a break on his own sentence.

"The fact that he's entering a plea is a signal that he's intending to help the authorities with Mr. Roof's ultimate prosecution," said Joe McCulloch, a longtime criminal defense attorney in Columbia. "The last man standing always ends up with people testifying against him, with the hope of consideration in their own cases."

Meek, who was released from jail after his bond was lowered in November, had been set to go on trial later this year. His attorney did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
MONTGOMERY -- Five years ago, one of the oilfield services giants was planning expansion in Lycoming County because of the rapid development in Marcellus Shale natural gas activity.

Today, employment at the Halliburton Co. facilities along Route 405 between Muncy and Montgomery is down to about 40 from a peak of 600, according to Vincent J. Matteo, president and chief executive officer of the Williamsport-Lycoming Chamber of Commerce.

Although Halliburton does not provide numbers for competitive reasons, spokeswoman Emily Mir Tuesday confirmed there was a major layoff Friday. Matteo said the chamber was told it was about 200 employees.

The layoffs are attributed to the slowdown in natural gas drilling operations in northcentral Pennsylvania. There are no drilling rigs currently operating in the county, officials said.

"The nature of the operations we support require a mobile workforce and, as such, many of our employees will now change their focus to work in different areas of the Northeast," Mir said.

The company, based in Houston, Texas, last week confirmed it had cut more than 6,000 jobs in the first quarter due to the decline in drilling and production in North America.

Revenue fell to $4.2 billion in the first quarter, a 40 percent drop from the same quarter in 2015.

Halliburton broke ground in late 2009 on a 24-acre site in Lycoming County for a facility to serve gas well needs in 15 counties.

Employment had reached 350 by 2011, and the company acquired another 55 acres nearby that it also developed.

Halliburton last week projected spending on drilling and production in North America would decline 50 percent this year after a 40 percent drop in 2015.
SANDERS MSNBC TOWN HALL.jpeg

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders at an MSNBC Town Hall in Philadelphia on Monday.

PHILADELPHIA _ As he made his closing arguments to voters in a state key to his chances in Tuesday's primary, Democrat Bernie Sanders said he'd fight a Republican takeover of the White House, but stopped short of calling on his supporters to back Hillary Clinton if he's denied the party nomination.

"I will do everything in my power to make sure no Republican gets into the WH in this election," Sanders said during a televised town hall meeting at the National Constitution Center put on by cable network MSNBC.

The back-to-back sessions featuring both Clinton and Sanders came little more than 12 hours before voters head to the polls across Pennsylvania and four other states on Tuesday.

A Pennsylvania win by Clinton, who has roots in Scranton, would make it nearly impossible for Sanders to close the all-important delegate gap.

The former Secretary of State held an 8-point, 53-41 percent, polling advantage heading into Tuesday's contest, according to a CBS News Battelground tracking poll released Sunday.

Sanders acknowledged those challenges in conversation with MSNBC host Chris Hayes.

But he argued that it was he, not Clinton, who stood the best chance of beating GOP frontrunner Donald Trump in a fall campaign.

Sanders also said the onus was on Clinton to demonstrate her support for some of his key issues, such as debt-free college, a $15/hour minimum wage and fighting climate change, to woo his supporters to her side if she wins the nomination during this July's Democratic convention here.

"We're not a movement where I can snap my fingers and say this is what you should do. If we end up losing," Sanders said, adding that Clinton will have to "come out with an agenda that will represent the interests of the working class, not just big-money interests."

Pointing to his own tenure in the U.S. House and Senate, Sanders told Hayes that he's been able to work with Republicans and would be able to do if he's elected president.

"I will use the bully pulpit to rally the American people to demand that Congress," listens to demands for change, he said.

Sanders ducked a question from Hayes about whether he'd accept a position in a Clinton cabinet or a spot on her ticket - or the other way around.

"Chris, let me answer in exactly the way you knew I'd answer it: Right now we are working as hard as we can to win this thing, and the end of we'll take a look at it," he said.

Like Clinton, Sanders took a variety of questions from the audience of about 200 ticketed attendees. They ranged from criminal justice reform to immigration reform and the need for pre-kindergarten education.

New Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney has proposed a tax on soda to fund a campaign promise to provide universal pre-kindergarten for the city's children. Sanders has denounced the legislation, saying it would hurt the poor because it's regressive.

"The argument is not whether we have a quality Pre-K system, the issue is that we ask the people who are doing phenomenally well to pay for it by paying for their own fair share of taxes," he said.

When it comes abortion, Sanders said he'd "use the Department of Justice to go after" Republican-controlled state legislatures that try to whittle away at a women's right to choose. He also vowed to "expand funding for Planned Parenthood," which some Republicans have tried to de-fund.

Sanders charged that the current GOP "has moved so far the right, they are way, way out of touch with the American people.

"They want to cut social security and give tax breaks to billionaires," he said. "They want to end the Affordable Care Act, but they have nothing to replace it with," he said.

The Sanders Town Hall on MSNBC was set to air at 8 p.m. Eastern Time.
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Republican delegate candidate Amy Brennan campaigns in Cumberland County (PennLive photo by John L. Micek)

Meet Amy Brennan.

She's a 42-year-old finance manager at the Hershey Co.

And if you're Donald Trump, Ted Cruz or John Kasich - she's also among this primary day's biggest prizes.

Brennan is on the ballot this Election Day, running for Republican delegate. And she's uncommitted.

"It's a fascinating cycle and I wanted to be part of it," Brennan said, as she greeted voters outside a Presbyterian church in Lower Allen Township's Allendale neighborhood.

The three GOP presidential hopefuls have been doing everything they can to court the support of delegates, even going so far as releasing lists of those known to support them, so that voters know whom to vote for today.

While other GOP delegate hopefuls have been courted heavily by the presidential campaigns, Brennan said Tuesday she hasn't heard from them.

But then, "I haven't really been answering my phone either," she added, with a laugh.

Cruz has been urging his supporters to "vote four times." That is, once for him and three times for delegates backing him in each of the state's 18 Congressional Districts.

Pennsylvania has 71 Republican delegates at stake on Tuesday: 17 of whom are committed to the winner of the state's popular vote and 54 who are "unbound."

Some of those 54 have publicly stated which candidate they're supporting, but those affiliations are not listed on the ballot in the voting booth. Others have said they'll back whichever candidate wins their home district.

Brennan said Tuesday that she's weighing three factors: The winner of her Congressional District; whether that person is what she believes to be a true conservative, and whether that person is capable of defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton, the expected Democratic nominee, this fall.

"I'm trying to stay open until the convention," in Cleveland in July, she said.

Traffic was heavy at the Allendale precinct at mid-morning on Tuesday, which is among the area's largest voting districts.

State Rep. Mike Regan, of Carroll Twp., a Republican candidate for the 31st Senate District, was on hand to greet voters.

Local real estate agent Bob Foster, a Republican, cast his presidential ballot for Ted Cruz. He started out as a Trump supporter, but believes Cruz ran the more effective campaign in the closing weeks of the Pennsylvania primary fight.

Still, "if Trump is the nominee, I'll vote for him," Foster, who sported an American flag tie, said.
rainbow flag art

A newly appointed Montoursville Area School Board member is facing scrutiny for her past Facebook posts. One of the posts from July 2015 stated, "I am fed up with the rainbows and flags and 'I'm offended' crap. Suck it up, buttercup."

((File photo))

A central Pennsylvania school board member's apparent history of taking to Facebook to share controversial views -- such as being "officially against Muslims" and not tolerating the prospect of a group "dividing us and turning our children into zombie fairies" -- is being scrutinized by a local LGBT public support group.

Karen Wright, whose Facebook page no longer appears to be publically available, was appointed to the Montoursville Area School Board in a 5-3 vote on April 12, according to board minutes. The Williamsport Sun-Gazette has reported that a majority of the board appointed Wright even after they were provided an email "containing 15 allegedly racist, xenophobic and/or homophobic posts that Wright had made to Facebook over the past year."

Screenshots of Karen Wright's posts circulating on Facebook include a "Monday morning rant," dated July 13, 2015, that stated: "I am fed up with the rainbows and flags and 'I'm offended' crap. Suck it up, buttercup. This is still America. We will tolerate you, for now."

"... You want to marry the same sex? Fine, marry a goat, I really don't care," the post under Wright's name stated. "But when you start demanding we like what you do and have to cater to you, we are done with you."

The Sun-Gazette reported that Wright said on April 12 that her statements were taken out of context, that she had "no hidden agendas" and simply wanted to "make a difference in the school."

"I am not the person they made me out to be," Wright said, according to The Sun-Gazette.

But the controversy doesn't appear to be over.

On Tuesday night, while many others are heading to the polls to vote, The Spectrum Alliance of Williamsport is scheduled to give a presentation on the effects of Wright's Facebook postings during Montoursville Area School Board's workshop meeting.

The meeting is set for 7 p.m. at Montoursville Area High School, 100 N Arch St. in Montoursville.

Kris Waldrab, vice president of The Spectrum Alliance of Williamsport, told PennLive that his group posted a survey online, with questions concerning Wright's postings and appointment to the school board, about a week ago, and it's received about 189 responses.

The results are pretty clear, Waldrab said: "The public isn't very happy with what's going on with Montoursville."

Concerning Wright's Facebook posts, he said respondents, while supporting freedom of speech, didn't think such language was appropriate for someone representing a school district.

The fact that the school board appointed Wright "comes across to the minority population as the school board reinforcing discriminatory views," Waldrab said.

Some respondents also felt that Dottie Mathers, the second candidate vying for the vacant seat, was more qualified, Waldrab said.

PennLive's effort to reach Wright for comment prior to this posting was unsuccessful.

A screenshot of one of Karen Wright's Facebook posts, which were shared on Radio Free Montoursville's Facebook page.

NOTE: This post has been updated to include the time and location of Spectrum Alliance's presentation.
Outside Penn State University Park's student union building, groups of students stood guard near the doors eagerly passing out flyers and holding posters bearing the names of the presidential candidates they hope will dominate today's primary.

Students supporting Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump roamed outside the HUB-Robeson Center, where those living on or near campus could cast their votes. Many passesrby ignored the question, "Will you be voting today?" and the offers to take a flyer, with some hurling insults at the students representing candidates they did not support.

Junior Matthew Kremer, holding a red, white and blue Trump sign, eagerly encouraged those around him to "make your voice heard," even to a student who responded that he would be voting for Clinton.

Kremer, a member of Students for Trump, had been standing outside the HUB since noon and said he would planned to stay for "as long as it takes."

"I want students to vote, so they can make their voice heard," Kremer said. "It's important, especially on a college campus where a lot of your [political] roots are generated."

Inside the HUB, county Commissioner Michael Pipe oversaw students voting. He said the student turnout was slow but steady until about noon, when there was a steady rush.

After about an hour, Kremer said, it began to slow down again.

Pipe said about 1,000 students had voted as of about 1 p.m., and in comparison, about 3,000 students voted overall in the HUB during the 2008 presidential primaries.

Senior Ragine Williams, who voted for Sanders, said she was voting because her grandmother encouraged her to.

Her grandmother was the person who first interested her in Sanders, Williams said, and her support grew after listening to his speech during his visit to Penn State last week.

"Because he's so pro-college student is the reason I'm voting for him," Williams said. "He's all about supporting us financially."

Back outside, sophomore Johnna Purcell handed out flyers encouraging Democrats to vote for attorney general-candidate Josh Shapiro, while proudly wearing a Clinton pin. She said she was representing both the Penn State College Democrats and Penn State Students for Hillary, for which she serves as the president.

"I actually got a little choked up today going in voting," Purcell said. "I supported her in 2008 when she first ran, but I obviously couldn't vote then. So thinking about, 'Oh my gosh, this is the first time I'm able to cast my vote for Hillary after supporting her for so long,' it was just like a very surreal experience being able to fill in that bubble."

Purcell said many of the people she spoke to said they wanted to vote in today's primaries but never registered or are registered in another county but forgot to fill out an absentee ballot. She said some people she met went to vote as registered independents and didn't realize Pennsylvania has a closed primary.

"It makes me really upset," Purcell said. "It's so important for our democracy."
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Daniel A. Negron-Rosario

(Submitted photo)

Calling his appeal "woefully undeveloped," a state court panel Tuesday refused to void the 20- to 40-year prison sentence for a Harrisburg man who fired a rifle at a state police sergeant during a car chase.



Daniel Negron-Rosario, 30, received that penalty from a Cumberland County judge last year after being convicted of attempted murder, assault on a law enforcement officer and other charges for a December 2013 incident on Route 581 in Lower Allen Township.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2015/01/harrisburg_murder_suspect_sent.html



Police said Negron-Rosario fired the high-powered rifle at Sgt. Matthew Nickey from the sunroof of a car driven by another man. The pursuit began when Nickey tried to pull the car over for an expired tag. Nickey wasn't injured. Negron-Rosario and the driver were captured after their car crashed.



In the three-page state Superior Court opinion denying his appeal, Judge Jack A. Panella found Negron-Rosario had cited no basis for his single claim that his rights were violated because he didn't receive notice that he faced a 20-year minimum jail sentence for the assault on a law enforcement officer charge.



Negron-Rosario wouldn't be a free man even if the state court had overturned his sentence for shooting at Nickey.



He is serving a life prison term after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in February for the September 2013 slaying of a 32-year-old man who owed him money. Negron-Rosario took a plea deal to avoid a possible death sentence for that killing in Harrisburg.



It marked his second murder conviction. Authorities said Negron-Rosario served 13 years in prison on a 2001 conviction for a murder in Puerto Rico. He was 15 when he killed a 16-year-old boy in that case.




Bengaluru: Indias most wanted terror fugitive Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar will never have a single successor to his global syndicate of blood money, terrorism and international crime, said an official source, who countered media reports on the fugitives ill health and his line of succession.

Dawood is ailing but is not critical. He is a chronic diabetic but his health is under the careful scrutiny of Pakistans Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which is largely funded by the fugitive's notorious D empire.

Dawoods business interests in India have not dried up completely. He still draws 30 to 40 per cent of his revenues by flooding Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICNs) in the Indian market with the help of the ISI. His most recent business interest in blood diamonds from South Africa may also have connections in India, which is a major processor of diamonds in the world with almost 95 per cent of the diamonds, which are sold globally being cut and polished in the country, mainly Gujarat, said the officer.

Dawood is a family-oriented man and will like to distribute the largess among his family members and old trusted aides, who he has assigned to take care of his various business interests because his movement outside Pakistan is restricted. But he holds the reins to his multi-billion dollar empire. His right hand man Chota Shakeel is on the run and has moved base from Dubai to South Africa. He recruits men from India for supari killings of Right wing leaders and extortion. His nephew Sohail Kaskar, who was handling the drug syndicate, was arrested in the US recently for indulging in narco-terrorism. Sohail is the elder son of Dawood's brother Noora and has been linked with Colombia's FARC terrorist group.

Dawoods coterie of includes his pointman Rehmat in South Africa, Feroze Owaisi, who is a South Indian and Javed Chutani alias Doctor in Dubai. They now shunt between Zimbabve and Kenya because Dubai is no longer safe for them, added the source.

Earlier, the news that 1993 serial blast mastermind Dawood Ibrahim is soon to kick the bucket owing to gangrene that is spreading quickly took the Indian media by storm, prompting close watchers to wonder if a successor to the infamous 'D-Gang' may be announced soon.

Reports of Dawood's ill health went rife after doctors were seen near his Clifton area residence in Karachi. Dawood is undergoing treatment at Liaquat National Hospital and the Combined Military Hospital in Karachi as ISI, whos protection he enjoys, is not keen on moving him out of the city.
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PHILADELPHIA _A day ahead of Pennsylvania's high stakes primary, Democrat Hillary Clinton vowed gains Monday on issues ranging from the minimum wage and early childhood education to combating gun violence and healthcare reform.

In a town hall meeting sponsored by cable network MSNBC, the former Secretary of State drew bright line distinctions with her rival, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, on issues ranging from banking reform to college tuition assistance.

"I've been as specific as it's possible to be in a campaign and i think voters responded to that," Clinton told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. "People want to not just understand what the problem is, but what we're going to do about it. At the end of the day that's what it's all about."

Under questioning from Maddow, Clinton also stressed something else: "I'm winning."

Ahead on both the popular vote tally and all-important delegate count, Clinton appeared to brush aside Sanders' recent suggestions that his support, if he fails to win the nomination at July's Democratic National Convention here, might come with conditions.

Clinton said she offered her unqualified support to President Barack Obama after it became clear that he'd win the presidential nomination in 2008.

"I nominated him at the convention in Denver," that year, Clinton said. "I spent an enormous amount of time convincing my supporters to support him ... I hope we see the same thing this year."

The back-to-back sessions featuring both Clinton and Sanders came little more than 12 hours before voters head to the polls across the state.

A Pennsylvania win by Clinton would make it nearly impossible for Sanders to close the all-important delegate gap.

The former Secretary of State held an 8-point, 53-41 percent, polling advantage heading into Tuesday's contest, according to a CBS News Battelground tracking poll released Sunday.

Like Sanders, Clinton took a variety of questions from the audience of about 200 ticketed attendees. They included such issues as closing the gender pay gap and boosting the federal minimum wage from the current $7.25 an hour. She and Sanders both want to raise the minimum wage, but disagree over the mechanism to get there.

"My difference is not with Sen. Sanders, but Republicans who don't want to raise," the wage, she said. Republicans "refuse to acknowledge the terrible struggles people are facing."

In a city racked by gun violence, a clearly animated Clinton drew some of her most raucous applause when she called for not only tighter gun controls but addressing the "gun culture" that caused young people to turn to violence to settle their problems.

Then she upped the ante: "If you care about this issue, vote against people who give in to the gun lobby all the time," she said, to applause.

Pennsylvania has traditionally been friendly ground for the Clintons.

Former President Bill Clinton carried the state in his two elections in 1992 and 1996. Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama here in 2008, though she went on to lose the nomination.

Both Sanders and Clinton barnstormed the state on Monday, making a last-minute push to both win over supporters and to rally the troops.

She started her day with an event at Westmoreland County Community College in western Pennsylvania.

Clinton was also set to rally supporters at City Hall on Monday night after her town hall appearance.

Sanders held a rally Monday morning at the University of Pittsburgh before heading to Philadelphia for the cable town hall.

The Clinton Town Hall was scheduled to air at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Monday.
Temple University voting

Temple University polling place volunteers, from left, Becky Fenton (student), Lena Kinney (student), Jessie Stanard and Theresa Nelson.

(Aaron Kasinitz)

Voter turnout during Tuesday's primary was up at the polling place on Temple University's campus in Philadelphia, judge of election Danna Gass said.

As of 1:30 p.m., 74 voters had cast ballots at the Norris Homes polling location, according to Gass, who estimated 20 of them were students. Gass suggested the spike in local turnout could be credited to Democratic presidential nominee Bernie Sanders, the U.S. senator from Vermont has made a strong appeal to students during his campaign.

Among his appearances in Pennsylvania were stops at Penn State's main campus, Millersville University, Gettysburg College, Drexel University and the University of Pittsburgh.

Sanders' campaign opened an office on the outskirts of Temple's campus several weeks ago, and sophomore Taylor Lam said his presence energized politically aware students searching for an alternative to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

"He believes in something different," Lam said. "Hillary Clinton represents the same old, same old."

Lam added that Sanders has a history of advocating for shifts in policy that would benefit students, which has kept young voters engaged despite Clinton's hefty delegate lead. Sanders' aims to lower the cost of higher education and boost the minimum wage to $15 an hour have resonated across the Temple student body, Lam said.

Kirsten Tiroly, another Temple sophomore, believes student voter turnout would be much lower if Sanders weren't involved. She's noticed a distaste for Clinton, the former secretary of state and first lady, among her peers.

"We grew up with the ramifications of the first Clinton administration," Tiroly said. "So it doesn't excite us when we think about the possibility of the next one."

Lam and Tiroly, both first-time voters, said they've talked with fellow classmates about the importance of this election and their generation's role in politics moving forward.

"I hope our votes can make an impact," Lam said. "Even if it's a small one at first."
Mumbai: Former Maharashtra deputy chief minister and senior NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal, who was undergoing treatment at state-run St George Hospital, was discharged on Monday but would be back for his dental treatment. However, for his shrunken kidney, the doctors clarified that he doesnt need any surgery.

The superintendent of St George hospital, Dr Jagdish Bhawani, said, He went for dental treatment today. He was breathless as he is suffering from asthma but he is stable. So after observing his health condition, we have discharged him. In future if he needs any further treatment, we will let him go to JJ Hospital.

Dr Mansingh Pawar, dean of the dental hospital, said, Mr Bhujbal requires root canal for which he needs to come again for further treatment. He already has diabetic and too many health complications.

Since the time of his arrest in March of this year, he had been complaining of health issues. He also lost 10 kg since his arrest. His recent picture from the hospital, where is shown sitting in a chair in a white apron, has gone viral on social media that has again raised question regarding his health.

The CT scan conducted on Saturday at JJ Hospital showed that his right-sided kidney had shrunk, while the left-sided kidney is normal. Dr Bhawani, who is a senior urologist, said that it is normal and he doesnt require any surgery. For his enlarged prostate, medicines are also been given.

On March 31, the special court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act cases in Mumbai had extended their judicial custody till April 27. The ED has filed two FIRs against Chhagan Bhujbal, his family members and others under the anti-money laundering laws, based on FIRs filed by the state Anti-Corruption Bureau, to probe alleged irregularities in the construction of the state guest house Maharashtra Sadan in Delhi and the Kalina land grabbing case in Mumbai.
Election Q&A: Meet the candidates for Emmet County Commission

The first, third, fourth, fifth and sixth districts are all contested races on Nov. 8.
For the first time in the history of the National Health Service, thousands of junior doctors are staging an all-out strike in England in protest against the imposition of a new working contract by the government.

Never before have NHS doctors undertaken a full withdrawal of care, including emergency and intensive care cover, highlighting the strength of feeling over new conditions, which, they argue, are bad for the future of patient care, the profession and the NHS as a whole.

The impact of the next two days of strike action will be unprecedented, with over 110,000 outpatient appointments and over 12,500 operations cancelled.

These two days of industrial action mark one of the lowest points in the wonderful history of the NHS, said BMA junior doctors committee chair Johann Malawana. We have made the Government a clear offer as to what it will take avert industrial action. We offered a simple choice - lift imposition and the strikes would be called off, but unfortunately the health secretary simply refuses to do that.

Saturday pay

But in a letter to BMA council chair Mark Porter, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt argued: had the BMA not gone back on its word to negotiate on the principal outstanding issue - Saturday pay - we would have an agreed contract by now and imposition would have been avoided.

The BMA is rejecting Hunts stance that the key bone of contention is Saturday pay, citing a number of critical issues concerning work-life balance, excessive working hours, improvements in training and crucially, workforce and funding implications for seven day services.

The proposed contract is deficient in failing to address these issues properly, hence our concerns for patient care, the long-term future of the NHS and the recruitment and retention of doctors, Dr Porter said.

In a statement to parliament, Hunt noted that, over the course of this pay dispute, around 150,000 sick and vulnerable people have seen their care disrupted, and the public will rightly question whether this is appropriate or proportionate action by professionals whose patients depend on them.

Public backing

However, a new poll by Ipsos MORI for the BBC shows that the majority of the public still stands behind junior doctors, although support has dipped somewhat with the complete withdrawal of care.

Of more than 800 adults surveyed, 57 percent said they are in favour of the all-out strike and 26 percent were opposed; the previous survey, undertaken just before the 48-hour action (excluding emergency care) in March, showed that 65 percent were in support of junior doctors.

The poll also found that the majority of those surveyed (54 percent) still blame the government for the current impasse, and last night the leaders of 13 royal colleges also urged prime minister David Cameron to end the damaging stand-off.

In our view, as leaders of the medical profession, the ongoing impasse in the dispute between Government and junior doctors poses a significant threat to our whole healthcare system by demoralising a group of staff on whom the future of the NHS depends.

At this eleventh hour, we call upon you to intervene, bring both parties back to the negotiating table, end this damaging stand-off, and initiate an honest debate about the serious difficulties facing UK health services, they wrote to the PM.
New Delhi: A massive fire destroyed the National Museum of Natural History in FICCI building in central Delhi in the wee hours of Tuesday, with many exhibits like herpetological specimens and taxidermied animals gutted.

Six fire officials were rushed to hospital after they inhaled excessive smoke during the four-hour operation to control the blaze that broke out at 1:45 am. Their condition is said to be stable now, officials said.

Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, who visited the spot, described the fire mishap as "unfortunate" and ordered a safety audit of all museums under his ministry.

"This is unfortunate...Museum of Natural History is a national heritage. Thousands of exhibits were there and thousands of people visit the museum everyday," he said, adding that officials were ascertaining the extent of the damage and ways to restore it.

The fire broke out on the top floor of the museum, located in FICCI Building in Mandi House, where some repair work was underway and quickly spread to all other floors of the building.

As many as 35 fire tenders were pressed into service. It took firefighters more than four hours to douse the blaze after which a cooling operation was launched which lasted for another few hours, a fire official said.

Read: Delhi museum blaze: Fire safety mechanism was 'not functioning', say officials

Many exhibits like taxidermied (stuffed) animals and specimens were gutted in the fire. The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained, a senior police official said.

There were not too many people in the building, which was evacuated by the time fire officials reached the scene.

WATCH: Fire which broke out at Delhi's Natural History Museum at around 2 am today morning (earlier visuals)https://t.co/ygh6K86G4Y  ANI (@ANI_news) April 26, 2016

Javadekar said the museum was operating out of a FICCI property. "This is a rented property. Its not the Ministry's property, but a FICCI property. Therefore, we have limitations. The issue is that this is a real loss and we will assess the loss when the building is again handed over to us. We will see how the recovery plan can be made," he said.

"The fire personnel are looking after it. But we will assess the damage as soon as they hand it over to. We will see how this can be restored. We will be able to get the details in two days and then chalk out a strategy," he said.

The Minister ordered a safety audit of all museums under his jurisdiction. "I have given orders to conduct a safety audits of museums under our jurisdiction, so that loss of precious artefacts and exhibits can be avoided," he said.

There are around 34 museums (under the Ministry) including ones of ZSI Zoological Survey of India and Botanical Survey of India.

Established in 1972, the National Museum of Natural History in New Delhi is one of two museums focusing on nature in India. It functions under the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended the stay of marine Massimiliano Latorre, who along with his colleague Salvatore Girone is accused of killing two fishermen off Kerala coast in 2012, in Italy till September 30.

The court was informed by the Centre that international arbitration proceedings in the matter would be completed by December 2018.

A bench comprising Justices A R Dave, Kurian Joseph and Amitava Roy asked the Italian authority here to give an undertaking to abide by the conditions under which Latorre was allowed to leave India.

It said a fresh undertaking has to be furnished before April 30 when the earlier extension of his stay comes to an end.

Solicitor General (SG) Ranjit Kumar apprised the bench about the schedule of proceedings fixed before International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Germany.

"End of 2018 is when the award will come," the SG told the bench, saying that India had not agreed for the conclusion of proceedings in 2019.

The apex court had on January 13 asked the Centre to apprise it of the status of international arbitration proceedings in the case.

The court had earlier stayed all criminal proceedings, including the trial of the two marines.

While allowing the joint request of India and Italy, the apex court had said the proceedings would remain stalled till the jurisdictional issue about which country has the right to conduct trial was decided through international arbitration.

The SG said that all the proceedings will remain stayed in India till the matter is pending in the tribunal. He also said the Government of India is clear that nothing can proceed till the tribunal passes the award.

Senior advocate Soli Sorabjee, appearing for the marine, wanted the extension of Latorre's stay in Italy till the year end but the court did not agree with him.

Sorabjee was of the view that since there was no trial, there was no point in compelling him to come back.

The marines, who were on board ship 'Enrica Lexie', are accused of killing two Indian fishermen off the Kerala coast on February 15, 2012.

The counsel, appearing for victim fishermen, raised an objection that identical relief of allowing the other accused marine Salvatore Girone to leave India, should not be given.

The SG said that it has been told to the tribunal that India has the freedom to go ahead with the trial.

The apex court had on August 26, 2015 suspended all court proceedings here in pursuance of an interim order of the ITLOS asking India to maintain "status quo" in the case.

The Centre had then said that a five-member tribunal (ITLOS Annex VII arbitral tribunal) would be set up, probably to decide the issue of jurisdiction.

The court, in August last year, had extended the stay of Latorre, who underwent a heart surgery in Italy, by six months while asking him to file an undertaking that he would abide by its conditions.

Latorre, who had suffered a brain stroke on August 31, 2014, was allowed by the apex court on September 12, 2014 to go to Italy for four months and after that, extensions have been granted to him.

The complaint against the Italian marines was lodged by Freddy, the owner of the fishing boat 'St Antony', in which the two Indian fishermen were killed when the marines opened fire on them allegedly under the misconception that they were pirates.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu, MoSes Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Rajiv Pratap Rudy addresses the media on the first day the new session of Parliament in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Butchers cannot be preachers, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said on Monday, mounting a counteroffensive against Congress, which has accused the Modi government of "murdering democracy" by imposing President's rule in Uttarakhand.

"Butchers cannot be Preachers. Congress which dismissed more than 100 non-congress governments right from E M S Namboodiripad, under article 356, is now criticising BJP. Ridiculous!," Naidu tweeted on a day Congress disrupted proceedings in Parliament over bringing Uttarakhand under central rule.

Butchers cannot be Preachers. Congress which dismissed more than 100 non-congress governments (1/2)  M Venkaiah Naidu (@MVenkaiahNaidu) April 25, 2016

right from E. M. S. Namboodiripad, under article 356, is now criticising BJP. Ridiculous!! (2/2)  M Venkaiah Naidu (@MVenkaiahNaidu) April 25, 2016

Naidu had earlier targeted Congress calling it "mother of defections".

Read: On day 2, Congress MPs protest over Uttarakhand disrupts RS proceedings

"The Congress government at the Centre dismissed EMS Namboodiripad's first democratically-elected Left government in Kerala, despite its majority in the Legislative Assembly in 1959," Naidu had said against the backdrop of Left joining hands with Congress in targeting the Centre over the political developments in Uttarakhand.

Facing opposition onslaught over the Uttarakhand issue, the Modi government has decided to take rivals head-on, citing instances of states being placed under central rule when Congress, Janata Party and United Front were in power.

Read: In Parliamentary meet, BJP decides to corner Cong over VVIP chopper scam, Ishrat case

An internal document circulated in the government notes that out of 111 times President's rule has been imposed since 1951, "Congress governments and those propped by it imposed it 91 times" including "45 times during the 16-year tenure of Indira Gandhi" and "10 times during the 10-year rule of Manmohan Singh".

Parliament session began on Monday with a face-off between the ruling and opposition benches as the Modi government was slammed over imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh.

Read: Ruckus in Parliament as Government, Opposition spar over Uttarakhand

Amid opposition demand for a discussion on the issue, Congress members created a ruckus in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, accusing the BJP-led dispensation of toppling democratically-elected governments of opposition parties, a charge rejected by Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
New Delhi: A vociferous Congress on Tuesday sought the expunction of remarks by Leader of Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley against the Uttarakhand Speaker while justifying the imposition of central rule in the state.

The opposition party members, who raised slogans and trooped into the Well at regular intervals disrupting proceedings, demanded expunction of Jaitley's remarks that the "real breakdown of constitutional machinery" had occured when the presiding officer (Speaker) of the assembly "ignored" the vote of 35 out of 67 members against the appropriation bill to declare it passed.

They argued that the remark by Jaitley was akin to questioning the decision of the Speaker. "The remarks are deplorable and should be expunged," Congress leader Anand Sharma said when the House reconvened at 2 pm after three adjournments earlier.

Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said he respected Jaitley a lot because he had always spoken for maintaining the dignity of the Speaker. He also said that he and his party had always listened to Jaitley on the decision of the Speaker being supreme even when the opposition had earlier questioned the Lok Sabha Speaker's decision to bring in certain bills as money bills.

"He (Jaitley) has always said the Speaker's decision is final and cannot be challenged. But then he questions the decision of the Speaker of the (Uttarakhand) Assembly. We cannot accept two understandings," he said.

Azad said "a bad practice" was being set by questioning the ruling of the Speaker and imposing President's Rule.

Responding to Azad, Jaitley said when the proclamation for President's Rule is discussed in the House, the government will justify each clause and reason why it was imposed.

Hitting back, Jaitley asked how the Appropriation Bill was passed in the assembly and reiterated that 35 out of 67 legislators had written to the Governor saying they had voted against it.

"It was breakdown of constitutional machinery. A defeated Bill was shown as being passed," Jaitley asserted, adding that "it is for the first time in 70 years that a defeated government was allowed to continue".

Jaitley also accused the Congress of not waiting for the proclamation to be placed in the House for debate.

Azad immediately retorted to say that the NDA government had not even waited for "24 hours" before declaring President's Rule, even when the Governor had given time till March 28 to prove majority in the assembly following consultations between him, the Speaker and the government.

JD(U) leader K C Tyagi sought a detailed discussion on the anti-defection law and suggested that no defector should be made a minister for the next five years. He said Congress had also used the President's Rule route many a times and now the BJP, which has also been a victim, was doing it.

Addressing Jaitley, Tyagi said, "you have always stood for morals and even went to jail as a youngster on moral grounds. But such things are being done even when you are around. We should all agree and have a discussion on the anti-defection law".

As Jaitley continued to defend government's stand on its Uttarakhand decision, Congress members trooped into the Well shouting slogans against the government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman P J Kurien then adjourned the House for the day.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi flanked by Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu, MoSes Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Jitendra Singh and Rajiv Pratap Rudy arrive to address media on the first day of the new session of Parliament in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Facing opposition attack over the Uttarakhand crisis, BJP on Tuesday sought to corner Congress over the VVIP chopper scam and Ishrat Jahan issue, alleging that the UPA government stood with LeT to prove a "terrorist" as a nationalist.

In the first Parliamentary Party meeting after the Session began yesterday, both issues besides the row over President's Rule in the hilly state were deliberated and senior union ministers Arun Jaitley and M Venkaiah Naidu articulated the party's position on different matters. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also attended the meeting.

Jaitley told the MPs that the whole world knew that Ishrat was a "terrorist and LeT operative" but Congress and the then Home Minister P Chidambaram allegedly tried to help her and whitewash the case, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told the media after the meeting.

"This was the first time that a Home Minister was trying to prove a terrorist as a nationalist. The Home Minister appeared to be working with LeT," he charged, adding that it was done to politically finish Modi, the then Gujarat Chief Minister, and Amit Shah, then a minister in the state government.

"The national would not have seen something as abhorrent and shameful as this," he said, adding that there would be a discussion on this in Parliament.

The Agusta Westland issue was also taken up and the new revelations, he said, had exposed Congress and proved that it was all about scams. The opposition party would have to answer, he said.

BJP has also issued a whip asking all its members to be present in both the houses.

On the Uttarakhand issue, the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs said BJP was willing for a discussion when the matter is scheduled for a debate in Parliament.

However, there would not be any new discussion on this as it has to be taken up in Parliament anyway, he said.

Referring to the Ishrat Jahan issue, Naqvi said Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and her deputy Rahul Gandhi travelled across the country to attack Modi over it.

BJP members also expressed happiness at the Modi government's efforts to empower villages, farmers, the poor and the youth, he said, claiming that the whole world is acknowledging India's progress.

The party, though, accused the opposition, especially Congress, of continuously working to derail the government's developmental efforts. "They have not been able to get over their hangover of the Lok Sabha election defeat," he said.

BJP also defended the imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand and Naqvi said the constitutional machinery in the state had broken down and it was a state without a budget.

The government yesterday wanted to take up in the Rajya Sabha an important bill aimed at the welfare of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes but Congress did not allow it, he said, accusing the opposition party of working against the country's development.

He said Telecom Ministry has developed several provision for protection of women and Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will make an announcement in Parliament in this regard. BJP wanted a positive and constructive debate in Parliament, he said.
Chennai: DMK chief M. Karunanidhi has declared total asserts worth Rs 13.42 crore, while his first wife Dayalu Ammal has over Rs 15 crore and second wife Rajathi Ammal has about Rs 42 crore.

The DMK leader does not have any immoveable property, not even a car, the affidavit filed with the Election Commission said. He has moveable assets of around Rs 13.42 crore as bank deposits and cash on hand.

He doesn't own a car and has no agricultural land and or house, it said.

The premises where he is residing in has been donated to Anjugam Trust, to start a hospital after his life time.

Dayalu Ammal has a share of Rs 6 crore in Kalaignar TV while Rajathi Ammal has a share of Rs 2.5 crore in West Gate Logistics Pvt Limited. According to the affidavit, Dayalu Ammal has jewels worth Rs 17 lakh and Rajathi Ammal has jewels worth about `14 lakh. Dayalu Ammal owns a housing site at Thiruvarur and Rajathi Ammal, a house in CIT Colony in Chennai.

The DMK chief has an annual income of Rs 1.21 crore in 2014-15, Rajathi Ammal has earned Rs 1.16 crore in the same year, while Dayalu Ammal's income in that year is 9.21 lakhs.

In 2011, Karunanidhi has submitted his asserts as Rs 4.93 crore. The DMK patriarch had declared moveable assets of Rs 15.34 crore for his first wife, Dayalu Ammal and `20.83 crore for his second wife Rajathi Ammal.
New Delhi: Slogan-shouting Congress members forced the adjournment of Rajya Sabha till noon on Tuesday after the government rejected their demand for a discussion on a motion on dismissal of the party's government there.

Congress members trooped into the Well of the House raising slogans against the Government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Leader of the House and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said no discussion other than on proclamation of President Rule in Uttarakhand can take place.

Justifying imposition of central rule in the state, Jaitley said the "real breakdown of constitutional machinery" happened in Uttarakhand when the presiding officer (Speaker) "ignored" the vote of 35 out of 67 members against the appropriation bill to declare it passed.

Deputy Chairman P J Kurien's pleading that the Chair was in favour of a discussion and the protestors should allow the House to function went unheeded, forcing him to adjourn the proceedings till 1200 hours.

Congress leaders Anand Sharma and Pramod Tiwari gave notices under rule 267 seeking suspension of business to take up discussion on use of Article 356 by the Centre to dismiss a democratically elected government in Uttarakhand.

While Naresh Agrawal (SP) too gave notice under same rule for discussion on the issue, Mayawati (BSP) supported the demand for suspension of business to take up the debate.

Jaitley said it had never happened in the history of independent India that a presiding officer of a state assembly has converted majority into minority and vice versa.

"This is the real breakdown of constitutional machinery," he said.

He said 35 out of the 67 members in Uttarakhand assembly voted against the appropriation bill but the presiding officer came to conclusion that the bill has been passed. "That is breakdown of constitutional machinery."

The Minister said discussion will take place when the proclamation for President's Rule is placed before the House. "There is no procedure of having pre-proclamation discussion," he said.

Earlier, Anand Sharma (Cong) said he had given a notice under rule 267 for suspension of business to discuss and pass a resolution brought by his party on the destabilisation of a democratically-elected government by the Centre through gross "misuse and abuse of power."

He said rule 267 as well as rule 176 for short duration discussion do not provide any condition for initiating a debate on any issue and there have been umpteen number of precedents when sub-judice matter have been debated in the House.

"This government cannot hide under rules to cover what they have done in Uttarakhand," he said.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi asked if the Congress party actually wanted a discussion or was looking at disrupting proceedings. Naresh Agrawal (SP) said he too did not agree with the government's contention that sub-judice matters cannot be discussed and said the Chair should take the opinion of the House on initiating a discussion under rule 267.

Pramod Tiwari (Cong) said Constitution has been "murdered" in Uttarakhand and "we condemn" the government's action.

Mayawati (BSP) said parties in power have misused Article 356 of the Constitution to dismiss opposition-ruled state governments for political reasons and sought a discussion on the issue.

After Jaitley said no discussion can take place before the proclamation is placed before the House, Congress members trooped into the Well raising anti-government slogans. "Modi teri taanashahi nahi chalegi, nahi chalegi (dictatorship of Narendra Modi will not be tolerated)," they shouted.

Deputy Chairman P J Kurien asked shouting members to return to their seats and allow a discussion. "Chair is not against discussion. Chair is in favour of discussion. You are not allowing discussion," he said.

As the members remained unrelenting, he adjourned the House till 1200 hours.

Similar scenes continued when the House reassembled. Chairman Hamid Ansari took up the Question Hour but as the slogan-shouting by Congress members in the Well continued unabated, he adjourned the House for 30 minutes.
For DMK, yellow best beholds the eye of party chief and former chief minister Karunanidhi, who for many years now has been wearing a shawl of the same hue. (Photo: PTI)

Chennai: What is there in a colour, some may wonder, but not the bosses of the two leading parties in Tamil Nadu for whom green and yellow are the hues of the election season.

For Chief Minister and AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa, starting from her saree colour, the backdrop of the stage at party election meetings and the ornamental decorations in the venue, it is the suffusion of green everywhere.

Interestingly, even shawls used by players of traditional music instruments like 'Chendaimelam' in AIADMK election meetings and the colour of sarees of her several supporters are green. Add to this the colour of the pen used by her, the party website's backdrop, important headlines in party Tamil daily Dr Namadhu MGR all hued green.

AIADMK's love for green, a senior party functionary says, "Springs from the fact that it symbolises prosperity, peace and progress, which is also the party's tagline and the party symbol two-leaves also means the same."

As for as Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, yellow best beholds the eye of party chief and former chief minister Karunanidhi, who for many years now has been wearing a shawl of the same hue.

The yellow link only begins there and could be seen everywhere else in DMK, especially in the party meetings.

Yellow was the colour of the stage's backdrop in Karunanidhi's grand election meetings, be it in Tiruvaur or Cuddalore. Against the bright yellow backdrop, party's red and black flag colours take the rest of importance.

Interestingly, the party's symbol, the 'rising sun', too is invariably in yellow and the colour has often been used for key headings and backdrops in DMK Tamil daily "Murasoli".

On the DMK's yellow link, a party leader, said, "It is strange that media looks into all these things. We are a party of rationalists." However, Karunanidhi's choice of yellow shawl had invited barbs from his political rivals in the past.

Tamil Nadu's Dravidian parties and their leaders have a very long association with shawls stretching to over seven decades. AIADMK founder and former Chief Minister M G Ramachandran too used to wear a short shawl on his shoulder.

The practice of wearing a shawl by Dravidian party leaders began as part of efforts to end inequalities and discrimination as early as in 1940's. In those days, when upper caste men claimed exclusive right to wear shawls or 'angavasthiram', reformist leader and ideological fountain of Dravidian parties Thanthai Periyar EVR encouraged all men to wear it. Tamil Nadu goes for Assembly polls on May 16.
Kolkata: "My party has made country self-reliant in every sphere,"said Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday as she criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for saying Congress has not done anything for country in 60 years.

Sonia also took a jibe at Modi over his tall promises of shielding India's borders from any intrusion, asking how the latter would protect the borders from intrusions when he could not protect the fish into the Indian waters from foreign fishermen.

"The BJP and the Trinamool have banned fishermen's trawlers, but neighbouring countries' fishermen are openly fishing into the Indian waters. Prime Minister Modi, who makes tall promises on the border security, is unable to save your fish, then how will he protect our borders? The recent Pathankot incident is a living example of it," said Gandhi while addressing an election rally in the Canning Paschim assembly constituency in South 24 Parganas district.

"On the one hand, the Bengal Government has left the fishermen on their own condition; while on the other hand, the Modi government at the Centre is taking away their livelihood," she alleged, citing that the BJP and the Trinamool have banned fishermen's trawlers.

Recounting that Bengal was a leader in rice production, Gandhi said, "Since the Trinamool Government came to power, rice mills are closing down one after another. Bengal, which used to export rice, is craving for it now."

"The entwinement of Mamata ji and Prime Minister Modi ji has given this gift to the people of Bengal," she added.

The fourth phase of West Bengal Assembly elections was concluded in 49 constituencies of Bidhan Nagar, Howrah and North 24 Parganas today. Over 1 crore voters cast their vote to decide the fate of 345 candidates, including 40 women, in this round.

Bengal goes to the fifth phase of polling on April 30 in 53 assembly constituencies.




INSIDE



BLISS





WORDS AND PHOTOS: MATT WRAGG



Bliss certainly keep it low-key in terms of their choice of warehouse building...

On the inside it's not your average industrial unit, however.

With an office this small you have a very different relationship to with your boss - founder and owner, Matthias Ascherl, is involved in every aspect of the business. His background is in product management, he created Bliss to produce the products he was looking for when he was out on the slopes or the trail.

There are signs of creativity everywhere - this is the development of their space-age-looking Armorgel kneepads. On the right is the old pad, on the left, is the improved design they are working on. To create the new shape they partnered with one of Britain's leading colleges to examine the shape of the knee and how it could be best protected. The new pad on the left shows the evolution, it is far more curved to sit more naturally around the knee and the surface area is dramatically increased to offer better protection.

The offices take up less than half of the space in the unit - most of it is devoted to their warehouse (which is in no small part co-opted as the staff bike store). The offices take up less than half of the space in the unit - most of it is devoted to their warehouse (which is in no small part co-opted as the staff bike store).

While they don't throw their budget into sponsoring global superstars, as one of the main sponsors of the Cube Global Squad, they clearly value their sponsored athletes incredibly highly - all the customization for their kit is done by hand.

The small, dedicated team behind Bliss.
Last week the Narendra Modi government gave an electronic visa to attend a conference with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala to Dolkun Isa, a leader of the World Uyghur Congress. Mr Isa is a permanent resident of Germany. But on Tuesday the visa was withdrawn after Beijing indicated it was far from pleased with this development. The Uyghur leader had to leave his home in East Turkestan or Xinjiang, as China has made that region known. Beijing deems Mr Isa to be a terrorist but the latter protests against such a tag, and has said in interviews that his is the way of non-violent resistance against the Chinese authorities for swallowing up his land.

It had been widely assumed  and the government, if anything, encouraged the belief  that giving the visa to Mr Isa was a reaction to Beijing using its clout in the UN Security Council to prevent the placing of the Pakistani terrorist mastermind, Masood Azhar, on the UN list of proscribed individuals at Indias initiative. India believes the Jaish-e-Mohammed leader is involved in the attack on the Pathankot airbase in January.

In an official statement, directed obviously at New Delhi, Beijing just had to say that Mr Isa was on a red corner list of Interpol and all concerned should take note of this  meaning they had to arrest him if they came by him  and India revoked the visa. The United States and major European countries have ignored such pleas regarding the Uyghur dissident.

The government seems to be red-faced and is coming up with a variety of implausible explanations for this turn of events. Evidently it had not thought things through, busy as it seemed to be in trying to create the impression that it was seeking to stand up to China, playing the reciprocity card in the context of Beijing saving Masood Azhar from UN action. It appears the external affairs ministry was kept on the sidelines in the whole affair of issuance of the visa to Mr Isa.

It may also be pertinent to ask why an American NGO was cleared by New Delhi to hold a conference in India of several leading international dissidents. Were the implications of this properly examined? If the government thought it was duty-bound to hold up its credentials as a democracy in this fashion, then the sudden withdrawal of the visa, clearly on flimsy grounds, cannot be a great advertisement for this country. Big and small countries in our region are likely to draw their own conclusions from this caving in. The resultant whittling of diplomatic heft could affect us more widely. Indians too could now perceive themselves as being smaller and mousier.
Chip Off the Old Block: Rick Block Wins Western New York Poker Challenge Main Event

April 25, 2016 Marty Derbyshire

Alden, New York pro Rick Block took down the 2016 Western New York Poker Challenge Main Event at the Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino on Monday.

Block, who picked up his second major Seneca Niagara title, following up on his 2014 Seneca Fall Classic win for $40,050, came into Monday's final six as the chip leader and never really looked back on the way to a $52,768 score.

Additional success for Block came in 2015 and 2013 when he won the first event of the 2015 Seneca Niagara Summer Slam for $15,000 and the 2013 Seneca Niagara Fall Poker Classic $500 Reentry for $9,127.

Final Table Results

Place Player Prize 1 Rick Block $52,768 2 Charles Johnson $33,168 3 Dan Wagner $23,907 4 Newton Graziano $17,661 5 Ray LaRouech $13,138 6 Joseph Reichenbacher $9,907 7 Frank Dellaria $7,754 8 Jeff Wells $6,031 9 Jeremy Halaska $4,846

The first elimination of the day came quickly when Joseph Reichenbacher ran a small pair into Dan Wagner's trips to say goodbye in sixth. Wagner then continued to do all the heavy lifting, busting Ray LaRouech in fifth and Newton Graziono in fourth, taking the chip lead into three-handed play.

But that's when Block put his foot on the gas, taking a series of mid-sized pots outpipping Wagner's pairs and snatching the lead away. Ultimately, Block four-bet shoved a set and Wagner called off with two pair to end his solid run in third.

Heads-up play did not last long, with Block shoving two pair in just the first few hands this time, pumping his fist when Charles Johnson called it off with jacks on an ace-high board. Two pair held and Block was suddenly and decisively the 2016 Western New York Poker Challenge Main Event champion.

Another successful poker series now comes to a close inside the Niagara Falls Poker Room, with Block proving his mettle against a field of 244 entries that once again smashed the event's $200,000 guarantee.

It's goodbye for now from Niagara Falls, but look for PokerNews to be back in the Western New York area for the 2016 Seneca Niagara Summer Slam coming up in July.

Get all the latest PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+!
Photos: Chandler (AZ) PD

After what Chandler, AZ, police are saying looks like an "ambush" on police, an officer remains hospitalized and is preparing to undergo a second surgery, reports ABC 15 Arizona.

According to the Chandler Police Department, two officers were shot by a suspect at a Walmart on Saturday morning. The suspect, Mitchell Oakley, 24, opened fire on two officers multiple times and injured both.

One officer has been released from the hospital and is recovering at home with family. A second officer is still hospitalized and will undergo a second surgery in the next few days, officials said.

Police say crews were called out at 6:20 a.m. when Oakley, a transient, trespassed on store premises.

Two officers were called out to respond and when the first officer arrived, witnesses saw Oakley fire at the officer. Chandler police said an "ambush" on the officer occurred and he was shot in the face.

A second officer responded to the scene and fired back at the suspect but was also shot by Oakley. Officials told ABC15 the second officer shot and killed Oakley.

The officers have now been identified as Officer Joshua Pueblo, 34, and Officer Daniel Colwell, 28, reports KPNX.

"When the first officer walked into the store, the suspect began firing at the officer immediately," Chandler police spokesman Det. Seth Tyler said. "You can call it what you want. It sounds like an ambush to me," reports the Arizona Republic.
The Obama administration will likely soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry into 9/11 that may shed light on possible Saudi connections to the attackers, reports the Associated Press.

The documents, kept in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol, contain information from the joint congressional inquiry into "specific sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the United States."

Bob Graham, who was co-chairman of that bipartisan panel, and others say the documents point suspicion at the Saudis. The former Democratic senator from Florida says an administration official told him that intelligence officials will decide in the next several weeks whether to release at least parts of the documents. The disclosure would come at a time of strained U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, a long-time American ally.

"I hope that decision is to honor the American people and make it available," Graham told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "The most important unanswered question of 9/11 is, did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported?"
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During an MSNBC town hall moderated by Chris Hayes, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders argued that the superdelegates that came out early in support for Hillary Clinton deserve a chance to change their minds.

Sanders said:

Lets talk about principle. Hundreds and hundreds of superdelegates parts of the Democratic establishment voted for Hillary Clinton, or chose to come on board her campaign before I even announced by candidacy, and those people have a right to rethink the decision that they made, and if they conclude that we are the stronger campaign for a dozen different reasons that we are a stronger campaign. And by the way, this is not just talking off the top of my head virtually every poll thats out there as you know shows that Bernie Sanders does better against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton does better against other Republican candidates. Should that be taken into consideration? Yeah, I think so.

Sen. Sanders has the right to stay in the race for as long as he wants. If Hillary Clinton wanted Sanders out of the race sooner, she should have won even more states. Sanders did not commit himself to taking the fight the whole way to the convention, so it is clear that he is going to try to flip the superdelegates, and if he fails, he will back Hillary Clinton.

However, there is no hurry for Sen. Sanders to get out of the race and the superdelegates do deserve a chance to ponder their decision. Bernie Sanders and his supporters have also earned the right to make that case.
At the MSNBC town hall, Hillary Clinton took on the NRA and the gun lobby and urged Democrats to vote against anyone who caves on guns.

Transcript via MSNBC:

CLINTON: Well, in the last month he has come out with some very tough regulations and getting those implemented  and I hope he gets them done before he leaves but I will certainly make sure they are  theyre executive orders. They have to be re-introduced and signed with a new president. That will give us a base we havent had before to build on. If we take back the Senate which I believe we can and you here in Pennsylvania have a real opportunity to help us take back the Senate by 

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Electing a Democrat  that the Democrats have decided they will be led by Chuck Schumer (ph) and Chuck Schumer (ph) has been one of the most effective legislators in taking on the gun lobby. He and I work together to get the Brady bill passed way back in my husbands administration. So I think that its the kind of issue you have to start early, you have to work on it every day and we need to make it a voting issue.

We were talking about people not showing up in midterm. Well, thats when you can hold legislators, members of Congress accountable with  if they continue to be intimidated by the gun lobby and indeed here in Pennsylvania and I see my friend Red Rendell (ph) there  the legislature in Pennsylvania has passed some of the worse kind of legislation favoring the gun lobby. Its just outrageous.

And you have these killings going on in Philadelphia and it wasnt just this weekend. Last weekend 12 people were shot, four people were killed. There was a man executed on the streets here in Philadelphia. Talking to somebody, running for office. This is out of control and if anything were killing 33,000 Americans a year we would all be working as hard as we could to save lives.

I am determined were going to save lives and were going to do it by taking on the gun lobby and getting common sense gun safety measures. But were also going to do it by addressing the gun violence culture. Too many young in particular are turning to guns to settle disputes, grievances, resentments. We have got to help our young people understand guns are never an answer and there have to be other ways. And thats going to take all of us working in our schools, working through our churches and our houses of worship.

Weve got to break the grip of the gun culture on our young people because the number one leading cause of death for young African American men are guns. It outranks the next nine together so this is a  this is a health issue, a safety issue, a cultural issue, and Im going at it from the very first day. Im going to keep talking about it, and we are going to make it clear that this has to be a voting issue. If you care about this issue, vote against people who give in to the NRA and the gun lobby all the time.
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MSNBC is so obsessed with Donald Trump that they took a break in the middle of the Bernie Sanders town hall in Philadelphia to throw it back to the studio so that Chris Matthews could discuss Donald Trump.

Video:

https://youtu.be/mkZwiRoRlog?t=1h30m39s

After roughly 30 minutes of Bernie Sanders talking about issues with Chris Hayes, MSNBC took a commercial break where they went back to the studio so that Chris Matthews could discuss Donald Trumps call for Ted Cruz and John Kasich to drop out of the presidential race. Matthews spent a few minutes talking to Jonathan Capehart about what Trumps empty rhetoric meant, and then after an additional commercial break viewers were returned to Bernie Sanders.

What MSNBC felt the need to discuss was not breaking news. Trump has been calling for Cruz and Kasich to drop out of the race. The Republican frontrunner is calling for his remaining opponents to quit because he is afraid that they will team up and steal the nomination away from him.

MSNBC is so obsessed with Trump that they could not go one hour without talking about him. The dysfunction and lack of leadership in the Republican Party are why Trump was able to survive the primary, but the medias never ending free publicity for Trump is why he is leading the Republican race.

For those who believe that the job of the media is to educate the voters, MSNBCs need to discuss Trump was an example of media malpractice.
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Activists will be delivering a petition to Google headquarters that has been signed by 400,000+ concerned citizens demanding that the search engine giant dump Trump and not fund the Republican convention.

According to a statement from ColorofChange:

On Thursday local activists will deliver more than 400,000 petition signatures to Google headquarters urging the company not to sponsor the Republican National Convention if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. As activists deliver the petition, a plane will fly over Google headquarters with a banner that reads Google: Dont be evil. #DumpTrump. The plane will also fly over San Franciscos Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge later that day. The petition delivery event is part of a national campaign led by ColorOfChange calling on major corporations like Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and Walmart not to provide a platform for Donald Trumps hateful rhetoric by sponsoring the Republican National Convention. Progressive and civil rights groups have spearheaded a series of sign-on letters to major corporations that have sponsored the RNC in the past. The New York Times reported that Coca-Cola has already backed away from its 2012 level of support and that other corporations are growing nervous.

Coca-Cola has already withdrawn their funding from the Republican convention, as pressure is growing on corporate sponsors not to fund a Republican convention that is headlined by Donald Trump. Corporations fund the political conventions of both parties through exclusive licensing deals and sponsorships.

Any corporation that funds a Republican convention headlined by Donald Trump needs to understand that they will be linking themselves to the Republican frontrunners bigotry and hate speech. Businesses will be risking the reputation of their brand with consumers by giving the RNC money to fund a convention that will nominate Trump.

If Google cares what their users think, they will listen to nearly half a million people and dump Trump.
In various parts of the world, people of all faith, traditions go in large numbers to visit the shrines of Sufi saints and sages. In India, the most visited shrines are of the Sufi Hazrat Khwaja Gharib Nawaz Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer, Piya Haji Ali in Mumbai, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi, Makhdoom Ashraf Jahangir in Kichaucha Sharif and Sabir Pak Kaliyar Sharif. The Sufi practice of visiting graves of saintly people, popularly known as Ziyarat, is an age-old tradition deep-rooted in many religions and cultures. It is believed to be an ennobling way to seek divine blessings and extraordinary virtues that greatly help in the purification of ones mind, soul and heart.

The core objectives of grave-visiting in Islam are multifold, most notably, Taqwa (attaining righteousness and piety) and Tazkeer al-Akhirah (remembrance of the Day of Judgment). Visiting any grave, not just Sufi shrines, means inculcating spiritual inclinations, moral and ethical values. The grave-visitors are exhorted to thoughtfully look at the silent graves where all the buried ones, whether s/he was, in this world, poor or rich, white or black, member of an upper-caste or lower, weak or powerful, look like one family.

They all are buried with only three pieces of cloth. Thus, the grave-visitors are supposed to learn from them  to purge their minds and hearts of all diabolic evils and impulses, false pride, jealousy, greed, malice, avarice, etc. Stressing this spiritual aspect of grave visitation, Prophet Muhammad once said: Visit the graves; for visiting them becomes the source of remembrance of Allah and the next eternal world. The holy Quran has also reinforced the idea of visiting graves.

Going by some prophetic sayings, both Muslim men and women were prohibited from visiting graves and shrines in the earliest period of Islam. Actually, the Prophet had forbidden grave visitation or Ziyarat temporarily. Men were prohibited because, influenced by the superstitious customs of the pre-Islamic era of ignorance, they used to write inauspicious elegies and un-Islamic quotations over the graves of their dead relatives. Similarly, women were prohibited from visiting graves, as reported by Imam Tirmidhi, due to a tribal custom of pre-Islamic Arabia. That is, women would mourn and wail at the graves of their relatives and to inflict further pain, they would harm themselves by cutting their hair and nails.

But after the advent of Islam, Prophet Muham-mad broadened peoples minds and their intellectual horizons so that they could rise above their pre-conceived notions and superstitions about the matters of daily life, including visiting graves. Afterwards, Prophet lifted the prohibition and encouraged his followers to visit the graves in pursuit of abundant spiritual benefits. Notably, he did not make any distinction between men and women while lifting his temporary prohibition. He issued a general permission for the common masses to go for Ziyarat.


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If you ever wonder how people could be stupid enough to vote Republican, you have only to look at Ammon Bundys defense of himself and his fellow conspirators in the takeover and occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge this past January. He was arrested 26 days later with several of his followers, the rest dispersed or surrendered within a few days.

Bundys defense now that he sits in jail is about as far-fetched as his justification while he was terrorizing an entire community. On the other hand, being shown to be in violation of previous Supreme Court ruling isnt going to predispose other domestic terrorists to become law-abiding citizens. We have ample evidence of how conservatives feel about the Supreme Court when it doesnt rule in favor of their misguided preconceptions.

Here is the thing: Bundy says he was just exercising his First Amendment rights when he seized federal property, because, so goes his argument, the federal government cant own property. He and his co-defendants interfered with federal employers when they seized the wildlife refuge but according to Bundy, if the federal government cant own property, they sure cant pay people to work on it.

And this isnt just Bundy spouting nonsense here. He has actual lawyers, who presumably went to law school, spouting it for him. Presenting Bundys attorney Mike Arnold, who says his client isnt a lawbreaker, but just a patriot who had every right to do what he did. Writes co-counsel Lissa Casey in a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction,

The motion to dismiss in this case will challenge the Federal Governments authority to assert ownership over the land that is now known as the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. It is Defendants position that this authority is critical to the Federal Governments authority to have federal employees work on that land.

Jurisdiction in this case will determine whether the Federal Government can prosecute protesters for being there at all.

On this basis, they wanted the charges dismissed. To no ones surprise, Judge Anna Brown said no. You know, because of that pesky thing called the law:

The Court notes it appears Ammon Bundys anticipated motion relies on the type of historical and legal facts that do not ordinarily necessitate an evidentiary hearing or the examination of live witnesses. Accordingly, the Court directs Ammon Bundy to file any necessary supporting material in the form of declaration(s) together with his anticipated motion.

The supporting material will focus on the Enclave Clause (Article 1, Section 8) of the United States Constitution. The Enclave Clause allowed for not only the establishment of military depots and forts in various states, but for the establishment of the District of Columbia and the federal capital.

Casey wrote that,

Defendant will cite to the Enclave Clause for the Governments power over such property once it stops being a Territory and becomes a State. In other words, Congress lost the right to own the land inside the state, except for purposes outlined in Article I, section 8, clause 17 (Enclave Clause) of the United States Constitution.

The Oregonian relates that similar arguments have been made by other defendants in federal court in the past, without much success:

Most recently, a Bundy co-defendant Kenneth Medenbach attempted to make that same argument in U.S. District Court in Eugene, but federal Judge Michael J. McShane dismissed it as lacking merit.

The only fly in the ointment is that this matter was settled in 1935 by the Supreme Court when the wildlife refuge they seized was established to be on federal land in the first place: The United States v Oregon.

The original decision, written by Justice Harlan Stone, found that the United States had not surrendered its claim to the land in question and that the state has no right, title, or interest in any part of the remainder of the area, which is superior to that of the United States.

There is literally nothing going for Bundys chosen defense. Another Supreme Court ruling, Kleppe v. New Mexico (1976) also established federal land ownership. As the Portland Patch tells us,

The unmistakable legal reality is that a series of solid, indisputable U.S. Supreme Court cases establishes that the federal government is constitutionally empowered to own land, control that land through federal statutes and regulations as it sees fit, and dispose of that land if it chooses to without limitation, Willamette University Law Professor Susan Smith wrote in a paper she was requested to research and write by the Association of Oregon Counties in January.

Bundy plans to go all the way back to 1787 to overturn 200 years of legal precedence, citing previously unknown documents (probably still in the process of being written by David Barton) and calling witnesses who are willing to make appallingly absurd statements about the role of the federal government and the legality of a few men seizing what is the common property of all Americans.

If it looks like the Bundy defense team is stretching things just a wee bit it is because they are doing precisely that.

Their entire defense is predicted upon the idea of a weak federal government a la the Articles of Confederation, and they seem to be conflating that document with the United States Constitution, which established a stronger federal government.

It is an effort certainly doomed to failure, but an effort necessitated by the Liberty Movements long-established claim to the federal government that Youre not the boss of me!
MSNBCs Joe Scarborough tried to bait Sen. Bernie Sanders into attacking Hillary Clintons foreign policy, but the Democratic presidential candidate refused to harm the frontrunner.

Video:

Transcript via MSNBCs Morning Joe:

SCARBOROUGH: Is Hillary Clinton a hawk? Because we were talking to a New York Times reporter yesterday, and having a hard time getting her to admit what her own paper wrote over the weekend.

Do you believe that Hillary Clinton is a war hawk?

SANDERS: Let me just say this, my views on foreign policy are different than Secretary Clintons. I helped lead the opposition to the war in Iraq. I think that force, military force is the last resort not the first resort. And I think my views are a lot closer to President Obamas than they are to Hillary Clintons.

SCARBOROUGH: But do you think shes a hawk?

BRZEZINSKI: Or hawkish.

SCARBOROUGH: Is she  is she  is she an interventionist?

SANDERS: I dont want to  you know, I dont want to  Joe, I dont want to characterize it.

SCARBOROUGH: But not  what about an interventionist? It really matters to people in the Democratic Party.

SANDERS: It does matter.

SCARBOROUGH: Especially after eight years of Bush and Cheney, and then the tripling of troops in Afghanistan and all the things that Hillary Clinton proposed while she was secretary of state.

It does matter to a lot of Democrats on whether theyre going to nominate someone who is an interventionist. Do you believe shes an interventionist?

SANDERS: No, thats right. I think  look, again, I dont want to characterize her, but I think our views on foreign policy are different.

I think what we have got to understand is that there are terrible dictators all over the world, but regime change, overthrowing some dictator often has unintended consequences.

Lets go way, way back to Guatemala, to Iran, when we overthrew a Democratically elected prime minister there.

So, I am more cautious about that. And in terms, certainly, the Middle East right now with ISIS, I believe it must be Muslim troops on the ground who do the fighting with the support of the United States. I will do everything that I can to prevent our troops from getting involved in perpetual warfare in the Middle East.

So, I think if the question is, do Secretary Clinton and I look at foreign policy in a different way? The answer is yes, we do.
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Republicans love Andy Jackson because, as Samantha Bee so eloquently pointed out Monday night on Full Frontal, he was a genocidal pr*ck. In other words, his memory plays right into the current Republican Partys wheelhouse.

Republicans are, of course, incensed at abolitionist Harriet Tubmans takeover of the front face of the $20 bill  a reminder that their particular brand of exclusiveness doesnt sell anymore. That African-Americans can also be important players on Americas historical stage.

And they are not alone: former Democratic presidential candidate Jim Webb showed an equal propensity to delusion when in a Washington Post op-ed Sunday he denounced attacks on Jackson as evidence of a myth of universal white privilege that is, in fact, quite real.

Only a fool could not see it, which tells us all we need to know about Jim Webb.

The victory of Tubman over Jackson brought Brian Kilmeade, always to be counted on to say stupid things when they need saying, who complained that, ousting a past president who has done so much in the founding of our country an unbelievable sign of disrespect.

As Bee pointed out to the fact-challenged Kilmeade,

Hate to break it to you, Sparky, Jackson wasnt involved in the founding of our country, because the Revolutionary War happened before Old Hickorys pubes came in. He was not a Founding Father, he was a genocidal pr*ck who forced the relocation of nonwhites and fomented populist rebellion  kind of like a Trump with better hair.

Watch courtesy of Full Frontal:

In fact, as historian Gordon S. Wood notes (The Idea of America, 2011), the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 as a common man in contrast to our earlier, aristocratic presidents, marked the completion of the unfinished business of the Revolution.

The problem is that though not a Southern aristocrat like Washington or Jefferson, Jackson was not  unlike those two earlier presidents  a man modern Americans can look up to. His is a note entirely distasteful legacy. For example, in 1832 his message when he vetoed the Second Bank of the United States is one that resonates today:

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society  the farmers, mechanics, and laborers  who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.

But he is also the man who betrayed the Cherokee, who had made every attempt to live like white men, and drove them from their lands in an act that can only be described as genocidal. In fact, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law just two years before the above denunciation of necessary evils in government. The actual removal of the Cherokee (the Trail of Tears) was enforced by Jacksons successor, Martin Van Buren, but Jackson was its author.

And one thing Republicans refuse to acknowledge is any of the darker moments of American history, like slavery, genocide, and the theft of Native American lands.

Irony abounds in Republican defense of Jackson, not only a Democrat but the first president who was a Democrat, and nothing shows the evolution of American political parties like Republicans today defending the worst impulses of the Democrats of yesteryear.

As Wood explains,

Democrats felt they could reassert some of the older aspects of monarchism inherent in the presidency without fear of political retributionThe Jacksonians developed the use of patronage  the spoils system  to a fine art; they build up the federal bureaucracy and under Jacksons leadership they turned the presidency into the most popular and powerful office in the nation.

There are numerous problems with President Andrew Jackson, who did in fact win a significant but historically meaningless victory at New Orleans against British invaders  you know, because the war was already over when the battle was fought.

This was not Jacksons fault, because communications in that era were what they were over such vast distances, but the fact remains the battle not only did not help found our country but did nothing to preserve it.

Jackson is a historically problematic president, and any time you judge the past by present mores you are going to run into these problems. But if somebody has to go, certainly better Jackson than Washington, Lincoln, or Jefferson. If Jackson did not help found America, certainly Harriet Tubman helped re-found it, as a country that is indeed open and welcoming to all.
There is more than what meets the eye of the recent controversy on the issuance and withdrawal of visas to Dolkun Isa and Omar Kanat of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC). Things are not entirely what they seem. The visas were given despite or because of the antecedents of all the parties concerned. The WUC describes itself as an international organisation that represents the collective interest of the Uyghur people both in East Turkestan and abroad. The main objective of the WUC is to promote the right of the Uyghur people to use peaceful, non-violent and democratic means to determine the political future of East Turkestan.

The WUC is Washington based. It also has a large presence in Germany and Rebiya Kadeer heads it. A successful businesswoman, Ms Kadeer was at one time one of the five richest people in China. Ms Kadeer was not always at odds with the government and was once a delegate to the National Peoples Congress. She was also an official Peoples Republic of China representative to the Fourth UN World Conference for Women in 1995. She left China in 1996, to fight for the rights of the Uyghur people. She is clearly a woman of substance as well as means.

The other organisation that was at the centre of the recent events is a somewhat lesser known outfit called Initiatives for China (IFC). The IFC describes itself as a grassroots movement dedicated to advancing a peaceful transition to democracy in China. It was ostensibly the IFC which organised Sixth Interethnic/Interfaith Leadership Conference to bring together various ethnic and religious groups from China. This conference series is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which in turn is funded by the US Congress.

The NEDs aim is to support groups abroad who are working for freedom and human rights, often in obscurity and isolation. Clearly it aims to use aspirations for democracy and self-determination to pry open otherwise closed or highly centralised regimes, but very selectively.

What is interesting is that the Interethnic/Interfaith Leadership Conference was taking place in India. All such conferences need Government of India permission. Did the Indian government grant it permission? The roles of some think tanks which have come into some prominence after the regime change in New Delhi are being spoken about in this connection. National security adviser Ajit Doval is, by past association and present relationship, at the apex of two of Delhis busiest and most well-funded think tanks.

The better-known one is the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) that

Mr Doval headed till he joined the government, and the other is India First Foundation, headed by his son, Shaurya Doval. Both these outfits have risen up the food chain due to the munificence of Western agencies and other organisations that have increasingly kept them sleek and well-fed with conference partnerships and research grants from several top US-based think tanks like Atlantic Council, Heritage Foundation, USIP, German Marshall Fund and Brook-ings. Little of this money is for free. The advancement of agendas never lets up. Besi-des, Rightist think tanks the world over usually think alike and act in concert.

Under the NDA dispensation, US think tanks like Brookings and Carnegie Foundation set up shop in New Delhi to influence, if not make policies. The raking up the Uyghur issue is not without reasons. Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is a perceived weak link in the post-1949 Chinese empire. Both regions are also across Indias frontier with China. Xinjiang or East Turkestan abuts the Ladakh district of J&K.

Like Tibet, Xinjiang also had a troubled relationship with China. Chinese dominance waxed and waned with the ebbs and tides of imperial power in Beijing. After 1912, when Sun Yat-sen proclaimed a republic, by now enfeebled China for all practical purposes lost all authority in Tibet and Xinjiang. Chinese garrisons were driven out and local leaderships assumed complete authority.

While Tibet was securely under the control of the Buddhist theocracy, Xinjiang came under the sway of several warlords till 1941, when a renegade Kuomintang (KMT) general-turned-warlord, Sheng Shicai, established a Soviet Republic under the close guidance of the Comintern in Moscow. The Russians now moved in. They took over all international relations and trade.

It had consequences in India, because it caused the British to extend Ladakhs border outwards by incorporating Aksai Chin to create a buffer. In 1949, Joseph Stalin handed over Xinjiang to the newly-established Peoples Republic of China of Mao Zedong. It was during the process of occupying Tibet and Xinjiang that China occupied Aksai Chin. In 1949, the population of Xinjiang was comprised almost entirely of various Turkic nationalities of which the Uyghurs were the largest. Han Chinese only accounted for six per cent. Thanks to a continuous migration sanctioned and blessed by the authorities in Beijing, that proportion has now gone up to almost 48 per cent. Much of this is centered in Urumqi, Xinjia-ngs capital, which is over 80 per cent Han. The Uyghurs are still the majority in the region below the Khotan and Kashgar line. This is the region that abuts India.

The gas and oil finds in the region have given impetus to the development of the area. But, unfortunately, the gains have not been equally shared. When I last visited Urumqi, shopkeepers in the bustling ancient marketplace were quite open and vocal about being left out in development. Many Uyghurs speak a bit of Urdu due to the relationship developed with Pakistan after the construction of the Karakoram Highway. Urumqi has several restaurants that advertise themselves as serving Pakistani food.

There is also another unintended but nevertheless burgeoning Pakistan connection. Well known Pakistani institutions like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and the Jamaat-ud-Dawa have trained no less then 4,000 Uyghurs to wage a jihad in their homeland. The ISI connection of these outfits is well known to the Chinese. Ostensibly keeping the lid on them helps the Pakistanis keep the Chinese obliged to them.
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Researchers have now come across a new mobile malware distribution campaign that facilitates infecting devices with ransomware without any user interaction. (Representational image)

Mumbai: Smartphones have become an irreplaceable part of our demanding lives but users should now be cautious about abundant malevolent malwares that have the capability to breach any device without even touching it.

As per recent reports, researchers have now come across a new mobile malware distribution campaign that facilitates infecting devices with ransomware without any user interaction.

The root cause is a malicious Javascript code which is triggered when users visit a infected website. According to Blue Coat Labs, the malicious code is delivered via advertisements and the process is termed malvertising.

Moreover, security researchers from Zimperium have confirmed that the hacking team data breach leaked last year had a similar malicious code.

Malvertising hits Android devices

While the problem with spam advertising has been significant for all Android device users, malvertising is the latest addition to their list of concern.

The malicious code injected into the system utilises vulnerability in the libxslt Android library, allowing attackers to download a Linux ELF binary called module.so on the device.

According to the Softpedia report, the binary code uses a rooting toolkit, dubbed Towelroot Android, to get rooting privileges on a particular device. Once rooting has been enabled, the module.so downloads an additional Android APK with the ransomware code.

Using the root access, the hacker or attacker can discreetly plant the ransomware on a users device without any permission.

While all Android devices are constantly in danger of getting infected, older devices face a greater risk. The ransomware Trojan in discussion is Cyber.Police, first discovered in December 2014.

In comparison to desktop-based ransomwares that encrypt files, the Cyber.Police ransomware locks the users screen and ask them to purchase two Apple iTunes gift cards worth $100 each.

While demanding Apple iTunes gift cards may seem uncanny to some, these gift cards can be passed around as virtual currency in the underground hacking market.

At a time when malwares can be deployed remotely without even touching a device, users should be cautious about the content they download or view, as clicking on any phising or suspicious link is enough give access to these malwares .

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
The couple - American Gordon Lake and Spaniard Manuel Santos, both 41 - have been stuck in Thailand since launching their legal battle after Carmen was born in January 2015. (Photo: Pixabay)

Bangkok: A same-sex American-Spanish couple has won a high-profile custody battle against a surrogate mother in Thailand who gave birth to their child but then decided she wanted to keep the baby when she found out they were gay.

The couple, American Gordon Lake and Spaniard Manuel Santos, both 41 have been stuck in Thailand since launching their legal battle after baby Carmen was born in January 2015.

The couple's lawyer, Rachapol Sirikulchit, said that Bangkok's Juvenile and Family Court on Tuesday "granted legal custody of Carmen Lake to Gordon Lake."

Lake is the biological father of Carmen, who is now 15 months old. The egg came from an anonymous donor, not the Thai surrogate, Patidta Kusolsang.
Templeton Rye , bottled in a small namesake town in west-central Iowa today, has built a brand around the legacy of Al Capone not his violent criminal acts, but his love of the rye whiskey grown and produced in the region during Prohibition.

In an era when mobsters and bootlegging were the norm, a drink known as Templeton rye was considered the tops. It helped rejuvenate a small-town economy during the Depression, and helped that community (current population: 362) survive through lean economic years.

The story of Templeton Rye is partly the story of Templeton, Iowa.

In 2001, Scott Bushand Keith Kerkhoff, the grandson of a bootlegger, revived the renowned Templeton Rye as their own brand, inspired by history and with a nod toward Capone's legacy.

The formula is a recreation, with today's Templeton Rye is made legally and commercially. It is distilled in Indiana and then bottled out of the plant in Templeton, but it's been a boost to the small town once again, drawing curious history fans and whiskey lovers alike to visit the scene of what could be called a former crime site.

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"The townspeople defied Prohibition as a necessity since no one was buying corn," Kerkhoff said.

It's not that it was a city of outlaws, but a desperate city in a desperate time. The small town utilized its resources: fertile land and agricultural know-how, to get economic advantage in a time of need.

Rye wasn't a lucrative crop  it was used mostly as a cover crop  but it grew well in the region and it also makes for a unique whiskey experience, seeds which sprouted today's Templeton Rye.

"Think of rye bread versus corn bread," Kerkhoff said. "Rye bread is spicy and dry with lots of characte. Corn bread is softer, rounder, sweeter."

Those same elements transfer to bread's cousin, whiskey. Templeton Rye became a favorite of Capone's, allegedly finding its way to his holding celllater in life. The passing of time has lightened Capone's criminal history, now an icon of a foregone era.

Templeton, Iowa, celebrates National Bootlegger Dayevery Jan. 17, not to celebrate criminal activity, but the restoration of their town.

"(It was) the beginning of Templeton Rye," Kerkhoff said.

From the cemetery where folks used to hide their bootlegged hooch behind tombstones to the new Community Center, the spirit hasn't changed all that much over the past century in the small community. Today, Templeton Rye uses a variety of grains grown outside of town and is distilled out of state, but the barrels always return to Templeton, where they are filled and people will come to see where the mythology began.

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Beyond Capone's lore, there's also the story of a small town's continued prosperity. As Kerkhoff said, "By visiting the facility, you experience the small town of Templeton where it all started," and where it continues today.
You've cleaned up the grill, the weather has warmed up and finally grilling season is here.

First up? Probably beef, specifically steak. And here is this beautiful piece of meat you paid a small ransom for and you don't want to ruin it.

The goal is perfectly seared, tender and with just the right amount of juice. So, rise to the occasion. Perfection can be yours.

The first thing is to get the best steak you can afford. Right now they can be everywhere from $9 a pound for a top sirloin to over $20 for tenderloin and over $30 if you are looking for prime. Dan Miller, manager and butcher at Ye Olde Butcher Shoppe, says prices are likely to go up as summer grilling gets underway.

For best results get a steak that's 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 inches thick. It's also not weird to ask to smell it  good beef should smell fresh, beefy, with no sour or "off" odor. The surface should be moist but not sticky, and the fat around it white with no brown or darkened areas.

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This is also the time to ask for advice from the butcher  cultivate that relationship. He can help with choosing as well as cooking tips. Make him your new best friend.

If buying pre-packaged steaks, check for three things: that there is no liquid around the meat, that the package is intact and that the sell-by-date hasn't passed.

Butchers at Ye Olde Butcher Shoppe, Just Rite Foods and Hy-Vee all named these cuts as customer favorites:

 Tenderloin. It's tender, more lean and also the most expensive. Prices range from $34 a pound for prime at Ye Olde Butcher to almost $11 for select at Just Rite. Choice cuts were in the $12 to $15 range. (Who can afford prime?)

 New York Strip. By far the biggest seller at all three counters. Usually boneless with fat on one edge, which you can trim off. Some marbling through the meat makes it tender. The average price was $15.99. Clearly a butcher favorite.

 T-bone. Here you get two steaks in one. The bone is shaped like a "T" with meat on both sides, a tenderloin on one side, strip steak on the other. The best of two worlds. Generous marbling and the bone makes this flavorful and tender. A good steak to share. Look to pay $12 to $16 per pound.

 Ribeye, either boneless or bone-in. This is basically a prime rib or standing rib roast cut down to individual steaks. What makes these so good is the amount of marbling and pockets of fat. It brings great flavor, but beware of flare-ups on the grill. This cut was the favorite of Keith Pflaum, long-time butcher at Hy-Vee Barlow. "You can't beat the flavor of it," he said. You'll pay $12 to $16 per pound.

Less expensive options also make good eating though they need to be marinated or have a rub applied to bring out both flavor and tenderness. Think hangar steaks, flank steaksand a tri-tip(not as well known here but ask the butcher for a sirloin cap almost the same thing.) Instead of going for the more expensive cuts, they are seeing increased sales of top sirloin steaks, a less expensive option at $8.99 (on sale at Hy-Vee).

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All three butchers I spoke to  Miller, Pflaum and Pat Schulte of Just RIte  emphasize that before you start cooking, the grill has to be searingly hot to get that steakhouse exterior. As the grill is heating - allow at least 15 minutes  the meat should be at room temperature and the surface wiped of moisture. Then sprinkle it liberally with kosher salt and ground pepper, and onto the grill it goes.

Sear about two minutes per side and then either turn the heat down (gas) or move to indirect heat (charcoal). Now it's important to pay attention. Let someone else do drink refills. Decisions: grill lid up or down? Personal preference. If using charcoal the grill lid down could give the steak a resinous smoky taste. If you need to baste, melted butter is always a good choice.

When is the steak done? It depends on the thickness of the cut. For an average cut, it's three to four minutes per side for rare, six minutes for medium-rare, and then increments of two minutes up from there.

A digital thermometer is almost essential  you want 125 degrees for rare, 130-135 for medium rare, 140 for medium.

Miller and Pflaum also mentioned the "touch" test. If the meat is just beginning to resist your touch in the middle, it's done to rare. It resists more the more done your steak gets. Professionals likely have that technique down pat. If you are worried about it, you can always make a small cut. That way you'll be sure. Once the meat comes off the grill it should sit for at least five minutes for juices to retract.

Steaks, because of price, are a treat when we have them. The various cuts do go on sale, so that gives you the chance to stock up and put some in the freezer. Interestingly, Memorial Day, not July 4 or Labor Day, is the biggest day for grilling steaks.

California steak rub

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2 tablespoons finely ground coffee beans

1-1/2 tablespoons kosher salt

1-1/2 tablespoons granulated garlic or garlic powder

1 hefty teaspoon ground black pepper

1 tablespoon brown sugar\

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

1/4 teaspoon cloves

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Whisk all ingredients together in a bowl, then store. To use, rub over a tri tip (or sirloin cap) or any steak that needs tenderizing for at least two hours.. This rub gives amazing flavor.

----------------------------------

Henry Bain sauce

Serve this alongside whatever steak you are having.

1/3 cup mango or peach chutney

4 tablespoons your favorite steak sauce

4 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

2 tablespoons ketchup

Kosher salt and black pepper

Put all ingredients in a small saucepan and stir together over medium heat. Heat until just slightly thick but do not boil. Take off heat, cool, and refrigerate.
Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon and one of the highest-ranking officials of the Catholic Church in France, is among six ecclesiastical officials targeted by complaints for not reporting child sex abuse cases to judicial authorities. (Photo: AFP)

Paris: A French cardinal said his diocese has made some mistakes in the management and nomination of certain priests amid allegations that he had covered up child sex abuse cases.

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin stressed the importance for the victims to see their right to truth and justice recognised in a statement issued Monday following a meeting on the issue with 220 priests from the Lyon region.

Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon and one of the highest-ranking officials of the Catholic Church in France, is among six ecclesiastical officials targeted by complaints for not reporting child sex abuse cases to judicial authorities.

The French Catholic Church has decided this month to set up a new independent commission made up of secular experts in charge of advising bishops and helping them handle child sex abuses cases.
Income tax refund checks are arriving now, and the IRS says the average taxpayer is getting back $3,120. Does it give you any ideas?

Now I know you have bills to pay, college loans to defray and retirement plans to fund.

But would you be upset if I made one little irresponsible-ish suggestion  that you invest just a small percentage of that refund in your wine education?

I mean, when else can you do it? And if life is too short to drink bad wine, it's surely long enough for one little splurge.

It's easy to be cynical and believe, as a friend once told me  that any wine priced over $15 a bottle is just the winemaker's ego.

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But there are reasons why some wines cost more than others, just as a Jaguar costs more than a Prius. An acre of vineyard land in California's Napa County can go for more than $200,000, and one in Sonoma County over $100,000, according to an article in the Napa Valley Register. That compares to the average acre of farm land for the whole state of California at $7,200.

In part, it's because Napa and Sonoma are seen to have the great combinations of soil, weather and tradition that makes great wine.

And some grape growers go to incredible lengths to make great wines. Some of them drop half of their crop to the ground during the growing season with the idea that vines that average three or four tons per acre make better wine that those producing nine or 10 tons per acre.

Labor costs vary greatly too. Some finicky growers pay workers to go down rows of vines picking off individual grape leaves, one by one, to let just the absolute perfect amount of sunlight caress their grapes.

Some fancy French oak barrels for aging wine cost $1,000 or more, while American oak barrels often cost less than $500, according to Wines & Vines magazine.

So, while I'm not saying every $50-and-over bottle of wine is worth the money, you can see why some of them might be.

Sure, you still should go to your savvy wine friends and favorite wine shop staffers and ask for their advice.

But you'll never know until you try.

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(P.S.: You might not want to show this column to your spouse. Or your heir. Or your boss.)

Highly recommended

 2012 Freemark Abbey Cabernet Sauvignon, Rutherford, Napa Valley, Calif. (82.3 percent cabernet sauvignon, 8.3 percent merlot, 4.6 percent petit verdot, 3.9 percent cabernet franc): aromas of toasty oak and black cherries, flavors of black raspberries and black pepper, big, mellow tannins, full body; $70.

 2013 Robert Mondavi Fume Blanc Reserve, "To Kalon Vineyard" (98 percent sauvignon blanc, 2 percent semillon): aromas of toasty oak and white grapefruit, flavors of tropical fruit and minerals, big and lush, long, powerful finish; $50.

 2012 Matanzas Creek Winery Merlot, "Jackson Park Vineyard," Bennett Valley, Calif. (98 percent merlot, 1 percent cabernet sauvignon, 1 percent cabernet franc): intense aromas of flowers and black raspberries, flavors of dark chocolate, spices and herbs, long, smooth finish; $60.

 2013 Merry Edwards Pinot Noir, "Klopp Ranch Vineyard," Russian River Valley, Calif.: toasty oak and brown sugar aromas, flavors of black raspberries, chocolate and spice, rich and full-bodied; $63.

 2013 Gallo Signature Series Zinfandel, Dry Creek Valley, Calif.: big and hearty and rich, with complex aromas and flavors of black plums, anise and spice, with smooth tannins; $50.

Recommended

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 2011 Poggio al Tesoro Sondraia Bolgheri DOC Superiore "Super Tuscan" red wine, Italy (cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc): aromas of black cherries and spice, bitter chocolate flavors, big, ripe tannins, full body; $55.

 2013 Three Sticks "One Sky" Chardonnay, Sonoma Mountain: aromas of oak and spice, opulent flavors of ripe yellow apples and vanilla, powerful acids, long, lush finish; $50.

 2012 La Jota Vineyard Cabernet Franc, Howell Mountain, Napa Valley: hint of oak, aromas and flavors of black plums and black raspberries, full-bodied, opulent, big, ripe tannins; $75
Fries move from the side to center stage in this new book by Blake Lingle.

Through five informative and entertaining chapters, "Fries! An Illustrated Guide To the World's Favorite Food" (Princeton Architectural Press, $17, 143 pages) explains the origin of fries (possibly ancient Egypt or Rome), where fries "grow" (mostly in factories), types of fries (including the tornado and the puff) and their condiment partners (mayo is big in Holland).

The book also covers how to make them (from cutting to serving), the culture surrounding them (Belgium "boasts more fry dispensaries and consumption than any other country," and in Ireland they're called "scealloga"), and, finally, speculation about their future (the European Space Agency is working on a project to cook fries in outer space).

Spicing the book are color pics of fries in all their incarnations.

Here's a related issue: Last year, my colleague Blair Anthony Robertson and I compiled a list of 10 restaurants that, in our opinions, serve the best fries in the area. We rated them on appearance, texture and flavor. You might find a surprise or two.
There are few things easier to make, and more delicious, than a good hash. This one will be on the table in less than 30 minutes and works for dinner just as well as it does for brunch. Which means, of course, that it's time to break out the wine. Below, three that will match beautifully  including a fun, fizzy red and, surprisingly, a white that can stand up to beef.

Roast beef hash

Heat 2 tablespoons vegetable oil and 1 tablespoon butter in a skillet until butter melts. Add 1 small onion, finely chopped; cook, stirring occasionally until soft, about 4 minutes. Stir in 1 teaspoon paprika, 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper to taste; cook, 1 minute. Stir in 1 large cooked potato, cut into 1/2-inch pieces, and 2 cups cooked roast beef, cut into 1/2-inch pieces. Cook, undisturbed, over medium heat until crust has formed, about 10 minutes. Turn hash; cook until lightly browned, 5 minutes. Serve with poached eggs, if desired. Makes: 4 servings

Adapted from a recipe by James Beard

Pairings by sommelier Ryan Arnold, divisional wine director for Lettuce Entertain You restaurants, as told to Michael Austin:

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2014 Monte da Ravasqueira White, Alentejo, Portugal: The heartiness of this dish begs for a white with some body and weight to it, but one that retains bright acidity and freshness. This wine, a blend of viognier, semillon and a few Portuguese varietals (including alvarinho and arinto), has nice minerality and salinity. The viognier also offers overripe, sweet tropical fruit, which will offset the heat of the paprika.

2014 Fiorini Becco Rosse Lambrusco, Emilia-Romagna, Italy: Lambruscos range in style, from bone dry to sweet. This dry one  full of dried dark cherry, raspberry, plum and green herb characters  has the acidity needed to work through the butter and oil. Remember: Lambrusco isn't bottled under as much pressure as Prosecco (spumante) but has a light perlage, which Italians call frizzante.

2013 Castello di Verduno Pelaverga Basadone, Piedmont, Italy: In Piedmont, the pelaverga grape is planted in the heart of Barbaresco, where most vineyards are reserved for the legendary nebbiolo variety. Full of bright red fruit such as cherries and strawberries, this pelaverga wine (best served slightly chilled) is balanced by notes of black pepper and nutmeg. It's a lighter-bodied red, which will allow the flavors of the beef, potato and paprika to shine through.
AUSTIN  The Austin police officer and the man he shot after a high-speed chase through town Wednesday have been identified by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

Officer Adam Scott has been with the Austin Police Department for six months; he has been placed on standard leave while the incident is investigated.

Edgar Fernando Rodriguez, 25, of Austin, had an injury to his left hand believed to be from a gunshot; Scott fired his weapon after Rodriguez rammed his squad car.

Rodriguez was released from a Rochester hospital into custody at the Mower County Jail.

He made his first appearance Monday in Mower County District Court, where he's been charged with second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle, both felonies.

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He remains in jail in lieu of $50,000 conditional bail and is due back in court May 5.

The incident began about 8:10 p.m. Wednesday with a 911 call about a man in a silver car driving recklessly.

The caller had confronted the driver  later identified as Rodriguez  and believed he was under the influence, but had parked the car and was walking toward a residence in the 2000 block of Fourth Avenue Northwest.

As officers responded to the area, Scott clocked a silver Mercedes driving about 72 mph in a 30 mph zone. He initiated a pursuit that went through residential streets at speeds "well in excess" of the posted limits, reports say; another officer and a Mower County sheriff's deputy also joined the pursuit.

After about three minutes, the car  which was driving on a rim after a front tire was flattened  stopped at a stop sign at the intersection of 19th Street and Fifth Avenue Northeast. When the three squads stopped behind it, Rodriguez reportedly put his vehicle into reverse, ramming Scott's vehicle.

That's when Scott  who was getting out of the squad car when it was hit  fired a shot at the Mercedes, which drove off, heading south on 19th Street with another officer immediately behind it. Rodriguez turned east onto Fourth Avenue Northeast; the deputy following him bumped the Mercedes, causing it to spin out.

Both vehicles ended up in the front yard of a home. As the arresting officer approached, he spotted a black handgun in the waistband of Rodriguez's pants, court documents say; though it looked like a Ruger 9 mm handgun, it turned out to be a BB/pellet gun.

Rodriguez was taken by ambulance to Mayo Clinic Hospital in Austin, then to Mayo Clinic Hospital-Saint Marys Campus in Rochester for treatment of his hand injury. No officers were injured during the incident.

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The BCA investigation into the incident is ongoing; a preliminary review of the squad car's video corroborated the officers' accounts. Once the investigation is complete, the BCA will forward its findings to the Olmsted County Attorney's Office for review.
A Rochester woman accused of taking more than $50,000 from two people in her care has been sentenced in the cases.

Kelly Lynne Johnson, 47, received a stay of adjudication on two counts of felony financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult. She was ordered to pay restitution, reserved for 45 days, must complete 50 hours of community work service and was placed on probation for five years.

With a stay of adjudication, the defendant pleads guilty, but the court doesn't "accept" the plea. When probation and its conditions are successfully completed, the charges are dismissed and the defendant's criminal record doesn't reflect a conviction. The arrest record remains.

Johnson was charged in July with 12 felony counts of financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult. She pleaded guilty to two of the counts in March in Olmsted County District Court; the remaining counts were dismissed at Monday's sentencing.

The investigation began last April, when the first victim's caregiver reported that the man's bills weren't being paid. The caregiver said Johnson had power of attorney for the man and was responsible for all of his bills and finances, including home health care, prescriptions and dentist bills.

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The investigator obtained copies of Johnson's and the victim's financial records and determined Johnson had been using the man's money for herself, the complaint says. In addition to "a large number of transfers" into Johnson's own account, two loans were reportedly taken out in the victim's name, signed only by Johnson as power of attorney.

From August 2012 through April 2015, Johnson allegedly took $37,163.57 from the man's accounts for her personal use.

During the course of that investigation, the deputy learned Johnson was not paying for prescriptions in another case. That victim was a 96-year-old woman for whom Johnson also had power of attorney, the complaint says.

The investigator again obtained financial records for Johnson and the victim. According to court documents, Johnson used $13,271.27 of the woman's money for her own needs between September 2012 and April 2015.
Omar Nazzal, a member of the general secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), was detained by Israeli officials on Saturday at the border between the occupied West Bank and Jordan. (Representational Image)

Jerusalem: Israels Shin Bet security service on Monday accused a Palestinian journalist arrested on the weekend of belonging to a terror group after colleagues called for international support for his release.

Omar Nazzal, a member of the general secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), was detained by Israeli officials on Saturday at the border between the occupied West Bank and Jordan.

He was seeking to travel to a meeting of the European Federation of Journalists in Bosnia.

The Shin Bet service said in response to an AFP query that he had been recently appointed a director of Palestine Today, a TV channel it declared illegal in February, and was active in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- a leftist political party Israel accuses of terrorism.

Omar has for years been known to be a Popular Front activist -- he was arrested now because of his involvement in current Popular Front activities, Shin Bet said in a written reply.

It said he was not detained because of his journalism but over his involvement in terror group activities.

The PJS called on Sunday for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to intervene in Nazzals case.

Union officials met an ICRC representative Sunday in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, as journalists held a sit-in protest over the arrest.

We explained to the ICRC that it was imperative to quickly visit Omar Nazzal, Musa al Sher, general secretariat member, said.

The ICRC is the only international organisation allowed to visit Palestinians held by the Israeli authorities.

Nazzals wife said she did not know where he is being held.

I have no idea of his fate since he told me by phone on Saturday that he was arrested by Israel, she said.

The Palestine Today offices in Ramallah were raided in March by soldiers after Israel accused it of incitement.

The Palestinian information ministry on Sunday again accused Israel of targeting Palestinian journalists, sating that several local radio stations had also been raided in recent months.

In March, the International Federation of Journalists said it was very concerned by a wave of arrests of Palestinian journalists.
Prince Mohammed bin Salman was speaking to reporters after the unveiling of a vast plan, known as Saudi Vision 2030, to transform the oil-dependent economy. (Photo: AP)

Riyadh: Saudi society, not the government, will determine whether women will be allowed to drive cars, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Monday.

He was speaking to reporters after the unveiling of a vast plan, known as Saudi Vision 2030, to transform the oil-dependent economy. Mohammed was asked whether one of the plan's goals, to increase women's participation in the workforce from 22% to 30%, could lead to their right to drive.

"So far the society is not persuaded -- and it has negative influence -- but we stress that it is up to the Saudi society," he said, adding that change cannot be forced. Saudi Arabia has one of the world's toughest restrictions on women and is the only country where they cannot get behind the wheel.

The sexes are separated in restaurants and other public facilities. Women are subject to male "guardians", family members who must authorise a woman's travel, work or marriage. The kingdom's major cities are expanding their public transport networks but for the moment they remain limited, and a woman's ability to work is hindered unless she can afford a driver.
An Austin man is in custody after a high-speed pursuit on Sunday on Interstate 90.

Minnesota State Patrol, with the help of Freeborn County Sheriff's deputies, arrested Robert Wayne Hoium, 57, of Austin, according to Minnesota Department of Public Transportation spokesman Troy Christianson.

State patrol officers responded to a pair of driving complaints of an erratic driver on I-90, and witnessed the vehicle just east of the Minnesota Highway 13 exit in Freeborn County to mile marker 136 near Walnut Lake State Wildlife Management Area, Christianson said.

State patrol performed a "tip maneuver," which is a pursuit maneuver where patrol vehicles spin out the car being pursued at lower speeds.

Hoium is being held in Freeborn County on charges of fleeing. Christianson said other charges are pending.
They say when one door closes, another opens.

That's certainly true for Rochester restaurateurs Sammi Looand Lawrence Wong.

On Saturday, Sushi Nishiki will close its doors at 2854 41st NW for good. However, it will not be the end for Loo and Wong making sushi in Rochester.

The pair are working on a new place  Ootori Sushi in Suite 100 at 2665 Commerce Drive NW. That's at the end of the US Bank commercial center, just off West Circle Drive.

Details for this new sushi restaurant still are being worked out, but they hope to open this summer, possibly in June. Expect Ootori to offer non-sushi entrees, such asa wafu-style ribeye steak and a deep-fried pork cutlet dish called Ton Katsu, as well as the wide array of sushi rolls that Loo and Wong are known for.

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Wong explained this change is happening for a couple of reasons. They had a silent third partner who is leaving the sushi business and the lease is up for Sushi Nishiki. That inspired the pair to create something new. This will be their third Rochester eatery.

Loo and Wong originally opened Sushi Nishiki in the Rochester Marketplace, near IBM's hungry campus, in 2008.

In 2011, they also opened Impiana Kitchen and Sushi Bar at 318 S. Broadway  the former home of Sushi Itto/Katz's. Impiana Kitchen didn't find a niche on Broadway and that restaurant closed in 2013. Mango Thaisoon moved into that spot and started cooking.

Biz buzz

For fast-food fans, there has been a lot of buzz lately about a new brand or two looking for spots in the Med City.

Meanwhile, the rumors really are thick about a long-absent national hamburger haven and how it is trying to work out a deal to return to Rochester's streets.

We'll keep a watch out for any imminent additions to Rochester's fast-food lineup.
PINE ISLAND  By a 3-2 vote  with Mayor Rod Steele casting the tiebreaker  the Pine Island City Council decided Monday night to place a bond referendum on the November ballot and let voters decide the next step for the city's problem-plagued swimming pool.

Steele and council members Jason Johnson and Joel Knox voted to put the referendum on the ballot. Council members Jerry Vettel and Erik Diskrud voted no.

The city's aging pool has faced compliance issues with both the Americans with Disabilities Act and state health code, Knox said. Those compliance issues would run hundreds of thousands of dollars if not a million or more, depending on which items can be done by city staff and which will require bids for a pool repair contractor. Meanwhile, a new pool, according to a 3-year-old study, would cost roughly $2.4 million.

"We can recommend what we think the city can handle, but I'd like to see the voters make the decision," Steele said.

What the city can handle was a matter of debate at the special council meeting. On one hand, said City Administrator David Todd, is the southwest street project planned for next year. The project will be funded by bonds, and the city's bond rating will almost certainly be affected by the additional debt for a new swimming pool. Additionally, the city faces other big-ticket maintenance costs such as fixing the waste water system and needed upgrades to the library,

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Additionally, the pool's operating budget runs at a deficit of roughly $65,000, Todd said. That figure would likely increase if a new pool was built.

Todd stressed that even if a bond referendum failed, the city would still have its existing pool. But the city would need to implement a backup plan to pay to fix that pool and bring it up to code.

Cyrus Callais, who recently moved to Pine Island from Rochester, said he would vote against a pool referendum.

"My taxes doubled when I moved here," he said. "I'm not angry that happened, but people my age, they can't afford that every year."

Callais said for him, streets, sewers and water were the priority. Everything else was a luxury.

Steele argued that the pool is a quality-of-life issue, and that a safe, accessible pool is as necessary as city parks and other amenities the public expects from the city. That said, a $2.4 million pool would likely put off the scheduled street repairs.

"I can't hammer this home enough, if they vote for this, we'll have to put off the repairs or we'll pay a higher rate," Steele said. "We wouldn't go broke with a $2.4 million pool, but we would jeopardize our bond rating for future projects."

For Pete Bushman, when it comes to affordable streets or a new pool, there would be no contest. "My concern is you're equating this against the streets," he said. "I don't think that's fair."

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Street Superintendent Todd Robertson said thus far the city has bought a chair lift to make the pool more accessible, and the city has replaced an electric panel in the pool house. The city was planning to make changes to the pool house to make the restrooms ADA compliant, but Steele and the council agreed that work should wait. A new pool would probably mean the destruction of the existing pool house, Steele said.

Vettel said his opposition to the project was tied to its affect on the street project. "We've already put it off two years," he said. If the ballot measure passed, the debt's affect on the bond rating would mean putting off the street repairs.

"I think we're not prepared," Diskrud said. "If it costs $3 million, what happens?"

"We don't do it," Steele said. "Or we ask the private sector for donations to make up the difference."
A Rochester nonprofit that works with individuals and families touched by crime has new executive director.

Tierre Webster is leaving his role as program supervisor at Rochester Family Services to take on the duties of executive director at Next Chapter Ministries. The nonprofit Next Chapter manages three residential aftercare homes, support for families of prisoners, a youth center for high risk teenagers, and an outreach for children.

Webster is taking over for Next Chapter's founder, Andy Kilen, who previously served as director. Next Chapter began in 1991 as a weekly Bible study in the Olmsted County Jail. An outside Bible study/support group was created later to continue to help individuals after release. Next Chapter evolved from there and it became an active nonprofit in 2000.

"Tierre's experience and leadership in the community, and his desire to minister to those in need will help the ministry continue with the founder's vision and bring a fresh set of eyes to the current programs," stated NCM Board President Janet Topazian in a statement about the hiring.
A Rochester woman is facing multiple charges after police found 6 grams of methamphetamine and $7,800 in cash during a routine traffic stop early Monday.

A 34-year-old woman was arrested at 1:21 a.m. while sitting in the passenger seat of a vehicle that had been stopped within a mobile home park at 1618 Marion Road in Southeast Rochester. She's expected to face multiple drug-related felonies.

The driver of the vehicle, a 30-year-old male from Rochester, was also arrested at the scene. He is expected to face a drug-related misdemeanor charge due to marijuana possession and other minor traffic offenses, according to Capt. John Sherwin of the Rochester Police Department.

The Post-Bulletin does not typically name suspects until they've been formally charged.
HIMARS would allow Turkey to hit IS positions within a 90-kilometre range, while Turkish artillery has a more limited range of 40 kilometres. (Photo: AFP)

Ankara: Turkey has struck a deal with the US to deploy American light multiple rocket launchers on its border with Syria to combat the Islamic State (IS) group, according to the foreign ministry.

The High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) "will be deployed on the Turkish border in May as part of an agreement" with Washington, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview published on Tuesday.

The system is being brought in "so we will be able to hit Daesh targets more effectively," he told the Haberturk newspaper, using an acronym for IS.

Turkey, a member of the US-led coalition against the IS group, has increased its strikes in Syria after a series of deadly attacks on its soil was blamed on the jihadists. Ankara also allows US jets to use its airbase in southern Turkey for air bombardments on the extremist group.

In recent weeks, the Turkish border town of Kilis has come under frequent attack from rockets fired across the border, prompting the army to respond with howitzer fire.

Cavusoglu said HIMARS would allow Turkey to hit IS positions within a 90-kilometre range, while Turkish artillery has a more limited range of 40 kilometres.

The aim is to gain control of the so-called Manbij Gap, a backdoor border route favoured by IS for smuggling jihadists into Syria.

Turkey wants to establish a safe zone in the 98-kilometre stretch between Manbij and the border in which to shelter Syrian refugees, the Foreign Minister said.

Ankara has long pressed for the creation of safe zones in the war-torn country. German Chancellor Angela Merkel this weekend said the zones were "of the utmost immediate importance also in our negotiations for a ceasefire" in Syria.

But, Washington is set against the idea, saying it would require a no-fly zone, something that could lead to conflicts with Russian planes flying over Syria.

"As a practical matter, sadly, it is very difficult to see, how it would operate short of us essentially being willing to militarily take over a big chunk of that country," US President Barack Obama said during a visit to Germany at the weekend.
Islamabad: Dialogue is the best option between Pakistan and India and the two sides should not think in terms foreclosing any options, a top Pakistani official said on Thursday.

"During Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi's visit to Pakistan in December last, it was decided that the two Foreign Secretaries should meet soon. It is hoped that both sides would work out modalities for the Foreign Secretary-level talks," Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said when asked if the word "suspended" correctly defines the current state of the bilateral peace process.

"Dialogue is the best option! Diplomacy is for interaction and engagement between countries," he said.

Zakaria's comments came days after Pakistan High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit said the bilateral peace process stands "suspended".

When asked if the position in Islamabad is similar to Pakistan's High Commissioner to New Delhi, he said, "There is a difference between comments on day to day ground situation as compared to broader policy and future vision and prospects.

At our level here in the Ministry, we do not give a day to day running commentary on official policy."

He said Pakistan was committed to resolving all outstanding issues with India through a sustainable, uninterrupted and meaningful dialogue without any preconditions, in order to address each other's concerns, and establish lasting peace.

On a question regarding the death Indian prisoner Kirpal Singh in a Pakistani jail, Zakaria said he died due to heart attack and preparation were underway to send his body to India.

He said Singh was convicted by an anti-terrorism court for spying.

"It is not appropriate to see everything through the prism of suspicion and conspiracy. He was kept in intensive care at the hospital but he could not survive," he said.

India had raised the issue of Singh's mysterious death with Pakistan authorities and sought a probe into the matter.

On Pathankot investigation, Zakaria said that the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) after visiting India was "evaluating the information shared by the Indian side" which is part of the ongoing investigation into the Pathankot attack.

On a question about alleged Indian 'spy' arrested in Pakistan on charges of terrorism, Zakaria said investigations are still going on regarding Kulbhushan Jadhav and some arrests were already made as a result of interrogation.

"As investigations continue more aspects related to this may come to light," he said.

He said Pakistan expects that its neighbour would respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity by refraining from any interference or subversive activities.

The recent arrest and confessional statement by the RAW s officer has vindicated Pakistan s position that Indian state institutions are involved in conducting terrorist activities in Pakistan, he claimed.

Zakaria said that Pakistan was a peace-loving nation and maintenance of peace and stability in South Asia is the cornerstone of Pakistan's policy.

He said there was an increased understanding at the international level of Pakistan's genuine concerns regarding rapidly growing Indian conventional and nuclear capabilities and their offensive force postures and military doctrines such as the Cold Start Doctrine.

He said Pakistan remains ready to discuss arms control and restraint measures with India.

"Our proposal for Strategic Restraint Regime (SRR) can provide a basis for mutually agreed restraint measures and avoidance of unnecessary arms race in the region. We believe that the limited resources of Pakistan and India should be channelled to meeting the social needs of our people," he said.

He also expressed concern over recent violence in Kashmir.

"We expressed our deep concern on what is going on in Handwara," he said.

"We have always condemned these violations and would continue to extend political, moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people," he said.

Zakaria said that the issue of unprovoked LoC ceasefire violations are responded appropriately and also taken up strongly with the Indian side.

"We believe in observance of 2003 LOC ceasefire agreement. The issues related to the international borders, LOC and Working Boundary are addressed in the spirit of rules of engagement on ground. The mechanism of DG MOs' consultation plays an effective role," he said.
To another question, he said that Pakistan and India are the two neighbors which "must live in peace and harmony". (Representational image)

Islamabad: Pakistan on Friday said it was ready to talk to India when the latter is ready.

"Pakistan will be ready to talk when India is ready," Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said when asked about resumption of peace process.

"This question has been repeatedly asked and I would not enter into the debate of what words were used by both sides," he said at the weekly briefing.

To another question, he said that Pakistan and India are the two neighbors which "must live in peace and harmony". On the Pathankot terror attack probe, he said relevant departments were dealing with the finding of JIT which visited India and once the investigations had been completed and a report compiled, "we will share with you the shareable information."

About an Indian NIA team's visit to Pakistan, he said, "I am not aware of any official request in this regard." Commenting on reported test of a Submarine Launched

Ballistic Missile by India, Zakaria said the development of a nuclear submarine fleet would "impact the delicate strategic balance of the region."

On Kashmir, Zakaria said Pakistan highlights the alleged human rights violations of Kashmiris at all the forums. He said the arrest of alleged "Indian agent" Kulbushan

Yadav vindicated Pakistan's longstanding position that India has a hand in terrorist incidents taking place in the country.

He also claimed that based on Yadav's confessional statements, "arrests have been made". He, however, refused to share the details of those arrests.

When asked to comment on Col. Purohit, arrested on charges of planning and carrying out the Samjhauta Express blast in 2007, he said the train attack mastermind Swami Aseemanand in public named Purohit and other officials.

"We will not go by media reports. Our requirement and request of sharing details of the Samjhauta Express terrorist attack investigations is pending with the Indian government.

Despite promises, the investigations have not been shared. Lets see when will they get back to us about the outcome of the investigations of this incident in which a lot of innocent Pakistanis lost their lives," he said.
Bangladeshi journalists and onlookers gather in front of an apartment in Dhaka. (Photo: AFP)

Dhaka: Bangladesh police detained a college student and claimed to have found some "important evidence" in connection with the brutal killing of two gay rights activists at an apartment in the national capital.

"We have detained a college student last night for questioning," a police spokesman said on Tuesday, a day after the machete-wielding killers hacked to death USAID staff Xulhaz Mannan and his friend Mahbub Tonoy, a university student.

Senior Assistant Police Commissioner Shibli Noman said that police found a bag used by the assailants which appeared as "important evidence" in investigating the case.

"Police ASI Momtaz Ahmed chased the killers and managed to snatch a bag from them as they were fleeing the scene during the scuffle the officer was also injured," Noman said.

One police official said they found several items including a mobile phone in the bag. But no-one from the law-enforcing agency would give further details.

Mannan, a cousin to former foreign minister Dipu Moni, also edited 'Roopban', the first magazine in Bangladesh that advocates the gay rights.

Dhaka police's joint commissioner Krishnapada Roy earlier said that the pattern of killings of the two activists suggests the incident was carried out by suspected Islamists.

The killing of Mannan, who had worked at the US embassy in Dhaka, prompted US Ambassador Marcia Bernicat to ask Bangladesh in the "strongest terms" to apprehend the killers.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ordered intensified steps to nab the killers and bring them to justice. She also accused main-opposition outside parliament BNP and its ally fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami of hatching the murder plots.

"Everybody knows who were behind such killings...The BNP-Jamaat nexus has been engaged in such secret and heinous murders to destabilise the country," she said.

Witnesses said a group of youths, clad in T-shirts and jeans, carried out the murders and also attacked and injured a security guard with sharp weapons.

They said the attackers had fled the scene after firing from their guns and shouting 'Allah-o-Akbar' (God is great).

There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners.

Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home.
ST. PAUL  House Republicans advanced a bill Monday that wouldn't allow Minnesota residents to keep their older IDs as the state makes upgrades to satisfy the federal government  the latest in the list of issues the Legislature will need to address as lawmakers weigh how to comply with Real ID.

With less than a month to go until the legislative session winds down, there are no shortage of conflicting views between the House and Democrat-controlled Senate over the federal ID standards. A top Senate lawmaker said they'll push to maintain the option of using an older ID and roll out the newer cards on a slower timeline than Republicans have envisioned.

Minnesota's debate over the federal law boosting ID security standards goes back years, but has ramped up this year over concern about residents getting turned away from domestic flights. The Department of Homeland Security has said it will start requiring the upgraded IDs at gates in early 2018, but Minnesota is seeking an extension that could push that deadline back to October 2020.

Rep. Dennis Smith's bill would set the upgrades in motion this fall, ensuring residents can get their current licenses replaced with a federally backed card in the normal, four-year renewal window. And the new IDs would be the only option. Despite some calls to allow residents wary of the federal card to opt out, Smith argued that could cause administrative problems for the state.

"There isn't very much difference between the federal Real ID requirements and what we currently use," the Maple Grove Republican said.

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Republicans rejected an amendment that would have allowed residents to opt out of the new IDs by maintaining the current cards. The House Civil Law Committee later passed the bill Monday.

Sen. Scott Dibble said that's the approach the Senate will take, arguing residents should be able to choose whether they want the new card. And he said a bill set to be introduced later this week wouldn't start issuing new IDs until 2018, citing a cost savings of up to $5 million of a slower timeline.

There's not much time to work out those differences. Lawmakers have less than a month of the session to go, and state officials say they need an answer on how to handle Real ID by mid-May.
Direct peace talks between Kabul and the Afghan Taliban began in Pakistan in July 2015 but were scrapped after the belated revelation that Mullah Omar, the group's founder, had died two years earlier. (Photo: Representational Image)

Islamabad: A delegation from the Afghan Taliban's political office in Qatar arrived in Pakistan Tuesday to discuss the restarting of peace talks with Kabul, militant sources said.

Their visit to Karachi came a day after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani threatened diplomatic reprisals against Pakistan if it refused to take action against Taliban leaders, a new hardline stance after a brazen insurgent attack killed 64 people in Kabul.

A senior Afghan Taliban source based in Pakistan said that the three-member team would "soon begin initial contacts with Pakistani and Afghan officials".

"The main purpose of the visit is to explore ways and means to bring peace in Afghanistan," the source, who is based in northwest Pakistan, told AFP.

"It is an initial stage and formal peace talks have yet to begin. They have arrived on Pakistan's invitation," he added.

Two other Afghan Taliban sources confirmed the arrival of the negotiating team, though Pakistani and Afghan officials have yet to formally comment.

Qari Yousuf, one of the Taliban's official spokesmen, said he was unaware of the visit.

Direct peace talks between Kabul and the Afghan Taliban began in Pakistan in July 2015 but were scrapped after the belated revelation that Mullah Omar, the group's founder, had died two years earlier.

The disclosure sparked infighting within the militant group.

A four-member group comprising Afghanistan, the United States, China and Pakistan has been attempting since January to revive the talks. But the lack of progress has left many frustrated, as the Taliban ramp up their insurgency which began in 2001 after they were deposed from power by a US-led invasion.

Ghani angrily denounced Pakistan for failing to rein in the Taliban.

Islamabad recently admitted, after years of official denial, that the Taliban leadership enjoys safe haven inside Pakistan.

"I want to make it clear that we no longer expect Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table," Ghani said in a sombre address to both houses of the Afghan parliament.

"But we want Pakistan to fulfil its promises... and take military action against their sanctuaries and leadership based on its soil. If they can't target them they should hand them over to our judiciary."

The Taliban have repeatedly said they will not negotiate until their demands are met, including the departure of 13,000 foreign soldiers deployed to train and advise their Afghan counterparts.

The April 19 bombing in Kabul, which also wounded nearly 350 people, was seen as the opening salvo in this year's Taliban offensive widely expected to be the bloodiest in 15 years.
France has beaten Japan and Germany to win an Australian mega-deal to build a fleet of 12 new submarines in Australia, for the Australian Navy SEA 1000 program. The decision was formally announced by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today. The SEA 1000 program is the largest acquisition program in the history of Australian defense, representing an investment of around $50 billion. The submarines will replace the six Collins class submarines (Kockums Type 471 submarine) commissioned between 1996 and 2003. The lead ship of the Collins class is expected to retire by the early 2030s.

The Australian Governments requirements addressed by the new design are superior sensor performance, stealth characteristics and range and endurance similar to the current Collins Class submarine.

Industry watchers had anticipated a decision to come later in the year, but Turnbulls gamble on a July 2 general election sped up the process. The submarines selected for the Australian Navy are based on a diesel-electric version of the 4,200-tonne Barracuda nuclear-powered submarine designed by DCNS. The first Barracuda submarine is expected to be commissioned with the French Navy next year. Subject to discussions on commercial matters, the design of the Future Submarine with DCNS will begin this year.



The variant offered by DCNS is a conventionally powered diesel-electric design of the submarine  named Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A, a version of the Barracuda specially designed for the Australian Navy. The boat has a length of 94 meters, and displacement of 4,000 tons (when submerged), 200 tons lighter than the French Barracuda. It is designed as a sea-going submarine for long range and long endurance.

The Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A, will be the recipient of Frances most sensitive and protected submarine technology and will be the most lethal conventional submarine ever contemplated. DCNS announced. The boats hydroplanes will be retractable, to reduce drag and noise.

According to the designers, the boat will be powered by new Pump jet propulsion, to further reduce the acoustic signature much further than conventional propeller technology. The new submarine will be offered with a quiet sonar suite provided by Thales, considered be the best available ever for a submarine this size.

The submarine is expected to be armed with advanced cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles and torpedoes, although the specific details have not been announced yet, as the selection of contractors for the submarines combat systems and weapons will be made at a later stage. The United States will be responsible for supplying integrated combat systems to the Future Submarines, as well as the submarines weapons. Raytheon, which provided the systems for the current Collins class and Lockheed Martin, providing such systems for the US Navy are the two likely competitors for the system.

France is offering the Australian Government complete access to the stealth technologies utilised on board French nuclear-powered general-purpose attack submarines (SSNs) and ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). These technologies are the crown jewels of French submarine design and have never been offered to any other country. The very nature of these stealth technologies and the decision to release them to the Australian Government is a significant demonstration of the strategic nature of this program for the French authorities. DCNS commented.

All 12 submarines will be built in Adelaide, Australia. The project would create more than 6,000 jobs in Australia and France, benefiting shipyards and industrial sites in Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney Australia, and Lorient, Brest, Nantes and Cherbourg in France. Since the boats will be built in Australia, DCNS will share nearly US$9 million, less than a quarter of the contract amount estimated at $40 billion.

Japan had offered to build Australia a variant of its 4,000 metric ton Soryu submarine. Japans government with its Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries boat had been seen as early frontrunners for the contract. Such a deal would have cemented closer strategic and defense ties with two of Washingtons key Asia-Pacific allies, but risked antagonizing China, Australias top trading partner. Another strong contender was Germanys ThyssenKrupp AG that proposed to scale up the 2,000-tonne Type 214 class submarine.

The contract will have an impact on thousands of jobs in the shipbuilding industry in South Australia, where retaining votes in key electorates will be critical for the governments chances of re-election. The submarine project .. will see Australian workers building Australian submarines with Australian steel, said Turnbull said.
Linn-Benton Community College has announced winners of the college's Distinguished Staff Award and Pastega Excellence awards.

The recognition took place during the college's April 12 inservice day.

Mark Weiss, Career and Counseling Center faculty member, received this years Distinguished Staff award.

Weiss, of Philomath, began work at the college in 1981, serving as part-time, non-contracted faculty in Parenting Education through 1982. He was re-hired as a part-time counselor in 1989 and became full-time in 1990, providing career counseling, crisis counseling and consulting with the college's child care center.

Weiss has served as president of the college Faculty Association and chair of Academic Affairs, and as president of two professional organizations: The Oregon University and College Counseling Association, and the Oregon Career Development Association.

Weiss was recognized for his dedication to students, helping to remove barriers and create paths for students to succeed academically, and in their careers and lives. He was lauded for his inspired leadership and mentorship to faculty and staff, and for his advocacy to find solutions for public health issues. Weiss is retiring from LBCC this June.

Roger Maurer, LBCC mathematics faculty member, received the Pastega Faculty Excellence Award.

Maurer, of Lebanon, began teaching at the college in 1988, serving his first three years as a part-time non-contracted math instructor and a part-time classified instructional assistant at the math help desk. He became a full-time contracted math faculty member in 1991.

Maurer was recognized for his selfless service to the college and his students, and for serving as a model of how to keep the focus on service to our students and our community. Maurer was also recognized for having served on countless committees, often serving on his own time.

Vickie Keith, administrative assistant for LBCC Student Services, received the Pastega Classified Excellence Award.

Keith, of Lebanon, has been at the college since 1999. Previous positions include working as a liaison for HP Education Services and as an assistant in the colleges Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence.

Keith was recognized for her excellence in helping students succeed and for providing excellent support to students and staff. She has served on several college committees over the years, including on the Classified Association and on the LBCC Relay for Life team.

LBCCs Distinguished Staff Award was established in 1980 to recognize employees for their contribution of both time and energy to the college. Nominees must have completed 10 years of continuous employment with LBCC.

LBCCs Pastega awards were established in 2000 by the Mario Pastega Foundation to honor faculty and classified staff for their outstanding contributions to the LBCC community. Winners receive a $1,000 honorarium.
GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz promises as president, "I will protect your religious liberties." What does he mean by that?

The U.S. Constitution already protects religious liberties. Americans have the freedom to practice their religions without government interference. Nor does the document establish religion as a basis for the running of government and the enactment of laws. The separation of church and state is vital.

Ted Cruz believes America was founded as a Christian nation. It was not. America is a secular nation made up of Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics and other religions and nonreligious groups.

Cruz has called for the patrolling of Muslim neighborhoods for radicalization. Cruz need only to look in the mirror as to who the radical is. Other religions are not calling for the shutdown of Planned Parenthood, abolishing the ACA, enacting laws that discriminate against the LGBT community, gutting Social Security and Medicare, gutting programs that aid the poor or for more war in the Middle East.

What Ted Cruz proposes is dangerous. Cruz is playing with fire if he thinks he can impose his religious morality on Americans via law. We have that already through our respective religious leaders.

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Kathleen Castrovinci

Rochester
As residents of Winona County, we are blessed to live in what is arguably the most beautiful part of Minnesota with the scenic bluff land of the Mississippi River and some of the best trout fishing in the state, both right in our backyards. For now.

I respect one's right to do what they will with land they own until what they do infringes on the rights of others. We all have the right to breathe clean air. We also have the right to clean water and safety on our roads. Silica sand is a known carcinogen.

The scale of frac-sand mining operations and transportation introduces fugitive dust that is spread across roads and communities. The amount of water required for processing silica sand drains aquifers at an alarming rate, and the waste water isn't recycled. Lastly, who pays for needed road repair that increased hauler traffic creates?

What are the benefits? Jobs? The proposed silica sand processing plant outside of St. Charles would have been the largest in the world, and it would have created an estimated 20 jobs  20  and the majority of the sand would have been transported by a rail system with one of the worst safety records in the nation.

Our community took a firm stand against this, and it is my hope that we are leading by example.

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Kyle Schweitzer

St. Charles
A week ago, Olmsted County's drug court started accepting applicants. By embracing a heavier emphasis on treatment rather than punishment, drug courts give nonviolent offenders with drug and alcohol addictions a chance to gain ground in the pitched battle against their demons.

With a start date of June 3, we expect the program to help our county travel closer to a brighter horizon for everyone.

The county's drug court will be a five-phased, highly structured program lasting at least 15 months with features like individualized treatment and case plans, trauma screening, mental health and cognitive behavioral therapy, a minimum of two random drug tests each week, structured monitoring and supervision, established support group and continued judicial oversight with collaboration by multiple agencies.

According to drug court coordinator Joe Vogel, taxpayers can expect a return of $3.36 for every dollar invested. Financial figures seem trivial compared to the program's best attribute  the effect it will have on participants. Successful treatment leads to less family conflict, lowered child development costs and continued participation in school and work. These are all crucial components for a healthy society.

Vogel said 75 percent of drug court graduates remain arrest free for at least two years after leaving the program.

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Neighboring counties have seen positive results.

"Our system is evolving, and it's a really exciting time to be in the field of corrections," said Travis Grancee, director of Dodge, Fillmore and Olmsted County Community Corrections. "We're moving away from the tough-on-crime period."

Overcrowded prisons are the legacy of the tough-on-crime period. Reduced recidivism is not. A different response, based on research and data, hopefully will garner a different outcome, one that fosters a greater sense of optimism and forgiveness in our community.

"They are our community members, and if we wrap around services and a high level of supervision while they're in our community, we know that they'll have a greater opportunity for success. Prisons don't reduce recidivism, but community supervision and developing skills in the community, those things do," Vogel said.

Some folks in drug court are going to relapse  that's the nature of the beast. Occasionally, Vogel said, departments come under scrutiny when someone violates their probation and is not thrown in jail.

Drug courts offer alternative responses, such as community sanctions, to give people another chance. The idea is to play the long game.

"Drug court isn't the last chance. Drug court is a different opportunity for a next chance," Vogel said.

The sooner people recognize that as a feature of the new court, the sooner benefits can begin to blossom. Community support is a huge factor in the success of programs like this and supervising people requires giving them a second and third chance while ensuring public safety.

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Employment opportunities, education and other methods of support are what keep programs like this alive, which means the community must rally around it and its participants.

"We recognize that folks that come through the drug court often haven't had a lot of experience with positive reinforcements throughout their life," Vogel said.

We are proud to live in a county willing to risk bad optics to show its citizens a path toward positive growth and hope our readership can take the leap with us. The future of our region depends on it.
Today in Hannover, Germany, President Obama laid out for Europes citizens his vision of the world. In a wide-ranging speech, which you can read here, Obama urged Europeans to uphold the European Unionthat message was directed largely to the Englishto welcome endless numbers of refugees, and much more. Parts of the speech were pretty good. Other parts, one is tempted to dissect line by line. But I will try to resist that temptation.

Instead, lets highlight just one part of Obamas lecture, in which he acknowledged the tough economic times over which he has presided:

Across our countries, including in the United States, a lot of workers and families are still struggling to recover from the worst economic crisis in generations.

The worst since 1980, anyway. The real problem is the weak recovery, the worst in modern history.

And that trauma of millions who lost their jobs and their homes and their savings is still felt. And meanwhile, there are profound trends underway that have been going on for decades  globalization, automation that  in some cases, of depressed wages, and made workers in a weaker position to bargain for better working conditions. Wages have stagnated in many advanced countries while other costs have gone up. Inequality has increased. And for many people, its harder than ever just to hold on.

Obama acknowledges that globalization, a phenomenon for which he is not responsible, has depressed wages, especially among the less skilled. He completely fails to admit, however, that in the U.S. as well as Europe, mass immigration of millions of unskilled and semiskilled workers has likewise, and even more, held wages down. If competition from a worker in Bangladeshglobalizationholds down wages in the U.S. and Europe, why doesnt it depress incomes at least as much, if not more, if millions of unskilled Bangladeshis (or whatever) are imported into the U.S. or Europe? Economists have documented a significant negative impact on wages resulting from our feckless policy of mass importation of unskilled workers.

It is interesting, too, that Obama recognizes that automation can unemploy workers or suppress their wages. How much greater this impact will be if we make it illegal to hire anyone for less than $15 an hour, Obama doesnt say.

This is happening in Europe; we see some of these trends in the United States and across the advanced economies. And these concerns and anxieties are real. They are legitimate. They cannot be ignored, and they deserve solutions from those in power.

This is typical Obama: the problems that he describes deserve solutions from those in power, but hasnt he been in power for more than seven years? What have his solutions been? Why have they failed? As usual with Obamas speeches, reality never intrudes. Obama blithely encourages Europeans to admit unlimited numbers of immigrants from the Islamic world, while refusing to address the social and economic consequences of such a feckless policy.

Barack Obamas view of the world is weirdly myopic. Thus, he said:

For a lot of years, it was thought that countries had to choose between economic growth and economic inclusion. Now we know the truth  when wealth is increasingly concentrated among the few at the top, its not only a moral challenge to us but it actually drags down a countrys growth potential. We need growth that is broad and lifts everybody up.

Does Obama really not understand that the ultimate instance of concentrating wealth among the few at the top was Cuba? Doesnt he know that socialist Venezuela under Chavez, whom Obama apparently admired, spawned a a few multi-billionaires in an ocean of poverty? As is so often the case, it is hard to tell whether Obama is ignorant of the facts or is laughing at the poor suckers who take him seriously.

How many days before this liar/ignoramustake your pickdeparts the stage? It cant come too soon.
A disaster of sorts struck Harford County, Md., April 22 when several major communications systems went out at once, as noted in a report from the Baltimore Sun. Government buildings and other facilities lost access to computer systems, landline phones, email service and even Internet access that morning.

Serviceaccording to an announcement on the countywide emergency radio networkwas restored to all operations by 5:09 p.m., which means most of Friday was lost to the outages. The emergency radio network remained unaffected by the shutdown, which may have been the only point of good news about the whole affair.

The outage came about after a power outage in downtown Bel Air that took the county's servers with it, a power outage that hit sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. Standby generators were on hand but failed to activate, causing a complete server shutdown. This didn't hurt emergency communications systems, nor the 911 Center located in a separate annex north of Bel Air in nearby Hickory, but it took out a large portion of operations all the same.

Despite this, only a few operations were lost. Permit operations and treasury cashiers were active, though only taking payment by cash or personal checka point which demonstrates why cash will likely never completely die despite advances in mobile paymentswith payments to be officially logged in later when the computers were re-established.

It wasn't immediately clear why the standby generators failed to activate, though this isn't the first time that we've heard a similar story. Washington D.C.'s 911 call center lost power following a recent storm, and backup generators failed to engage, a matter that proves the importance of checking a generator before a disaster strikes. It proves the importance of backup systems in general, like those offered by Minuteman power systems. With such backups, users get the ability to save work and shut down a computer properly instead of just losing everything mid-keystroke. If the outage is sufficiently shortas happens every so oftenusers can just carry on as though nothing happened. It may not be enough power to keep a county's servers running, but having backup power in generatorsand in battery backupsmay be a smart idea given the increasing fragility of the nation's power grid.

Protecting a system with power backups is smart no matter what it does, and power outage news demonstrates how likely it is that a system will experience that power loss at some point. It just happened for Harford, and it's already happened for Washington D.C and a set of others as well. It's really a matter of when, not if, power will go out, and when that happens, will your business be ready?
The U.S. State Department on Tuesday in Washington accused the South Sudans government of refusing to give landing permission to planes carrying Riek Machar, saying such action was inimical to peace deal.

It also accused both sides in South Sudans two-year conflict of blocking peace efforts.

The department said Mr. Machar had obstructed arrangements by arbitrarily asking for more forces and heavy weapons to precede his arrival.

Mr. Machars return to join a unity government with his foes, originally scheduled for early last week, was meant to seal a peace deal signed in August to end fighting that has killed thousands and forced a million to flee their homes.

Washington said it has been a major player in the accord that eventually secured South Sudans secession from Sudan in 2011 and has been a donor ever since.

It insisted that its future engagement would depend on the leaders involvement in the peace process.

Meanwhile, Mr. Machars Chief of Staff, Simon Dual, flew into Juba on Monday, accompanied by the 195 soldiers and the weapons the rebel leader had asked for.

Mr. Dual, who did not say when Mr. Machar would come into the country, expressed his happiness to be back in the country.

I am happy that I am in Juba.

Our coming is to implement the peace process and we are not going back to war, he said.

William Ezekiel, spokesman for Mr. Machars SPLM-IO group, said the U.S. decision to withdraw funding for a charter flight would delay the return for yet another day.

Right now, we are still working on the issue and probably by tomorrow the first vice president will arrive in Juba, he added.

(Reuters/NAN)
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Tuesday announced the appointment of Abiodun Bashua of Nigeria to lead the special investigation into the attack against the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) which is protecting civilians at Malakal.

The announcement is contained in a statement made available in New York.

According to the statement, the special investigation will undertake detailed examination of the circumstances which led to the incident from Feb. 17 to Feb. 18, in which at least 25 civilians died and an additional 144 injured.

It added that the investigation would complement the UN Headquarters Board of Inquiry announced on March 11, also conducting an in-depth investigation into the overall response of UNMISS in the attack.

Bashua recently concluded his assignment as Deputy Joint Special Representative of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur, during which he also served as acting Joint Special Representative in 2014 and 2015.

In addition, he served at senior levels in Cote dIvoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Sudan.

He also served as Secretary to the Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. (NAN)
Leading lights of the Peoples Democratic Party in Nigerias South-west geopolitical zone are threatening to dump the party en masse should the zone be blocked from producing the next national chairman of the party.

A former presidential aide, Doyin Okupe, told PREMIUM TIMES on Monday night that party leaders in the zone met in Ikoyi, Lagos, last week and took a position on how to respond if the zone is robbed at the partys national convention next month.

We took a firm position which was that we will dump the party en masse if we get robbed again at this years convention, Mr. Okupe said.

Some of the PDP leaders present at the meeting included a former Deputy National Chairman of the party, Olabode George; the governorship candidate of the party in Lagos in the 2015 election, Jimi Agbaje and Gbenga Daniel, a former governor of Ogun State.

A former Minister of State for the Federal Capital Territory, Olajumoke Akinjide; a former Minister of Works, Adeseye Ogunlewe and party chieftain, Bode Olajumoke were also at the meeting, Mr. Okupe said.

He therefore advised Governor Emmanuel Udom of Akwa Ibom State to resist pressure from politicians and do the right thing by zoning the chairmanship position of the Peoples Democratic Party to the southwest geopolitical zone.

Mr. Okupe said Mr. Udoms final decision would determine if history would judge him kindly or as a villain.

The PDP zoning committee is expected to meet On Tuesday (today) in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, where the partys zoning formula would be redesigned.

The meeting is part of the partys preparation ahead of its upcoming national convention on May 21 in Port-Harcourt.

Mr. Okupe said the Yoruba people had endured relegation for too long within the PDP, adding that the only way the party could atone for this injustice was to let the south-west nominate the next chairman.

Governor Udom is a young gentleman whom I believe still has a long future in Nigerian politics ahead of him, Mr. Okupe said. It will be unfortunate if he allowed himself to be used to relegate Yoruba people within the affairs of the party once again. The PDP has done a lot of wrongs to the Yoruba people and our position now is that they should start making amends by allowing us to present the next chairman.

Mr. Okupe also argued that since the PDP had already zoned its presidential ticket in 2019 to the north, zoning the partys topmost position to the same zone would amount to a robbery and betrayal on the part of the partys leadership.

As you can see from the rally that was held by PDP yesterday in Jigawa State, its very clear that the presidential slot is going to the north, so I dont think the chairmanship should go back to the same north unless theyre determined to carry out another robbery and betrayal against the southwest.

Mr. Okupe said Mr. Udom should remember when the Yoruba were at the forefront of Nigeria, fighting for the plight of the minorities across the country, especially in the south-south and in the north.

Nigerian history is replete with several instances in which the Yoruba people led the struggle for the actualisation of the minority agenda in the country, we fought for the people of south-south and the minorities in the north to have a say about the process of governance in this country, so it will be an utmost betrayal if Udom failed to let the chairmanship position come to the south-west as should be, Mr. Okupe said.

Mr. Sheriffs decision to contest for a full term in office, which enjoys the support of most of the governors on the platform of the party, has continued to generate ripples across the partys state and national structures.

While the proponents of Mr. Sheriffs leadership maintained that the former Borno State governor remained the right man to lead the party at this point in the nations history; others, especially the youth wing of the party, said Mr. Sheriff did not fit into the partys contemporary status and threatened mass defection should he return as chairman after the convention.
The National Assembly Service Commission has said there is no basis to withdraw the appointment of Mohammed Sani-Omolori as the new Acting Clerk of the National Assembly.

The senate president, Bukola Saraki, had demanded a reversal of Mr. Sani-Omoloris appointment, arguing that the appointment should have rather gone to the clerk to the Senate, Ben Efeturi.

But in a letter to Mr. Saraki, copied to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, Adamu Fika, the Executive Chairman of the NASS commission said the decision to appoint Mr. Sani-Omolori was because Mr. Efeturi would proceed on terminal leave on August 2.

He said that date would just be 12 days before the current Clerk, Salisu Maikasuwa, hands over to his successor.

This means that Mr. Efeturi is time barred for the acting appointment, hence the choice of Mr Sani-Omolori to act and ensure continuity in that very important public service office.

In arriving at the commissions decision, the chairman did not use his casting vote, because eleven commissioners were in support while only one voted no, he said.

He clarified that the rejection of Mr. Efeturi for the position was not due to the allegation that he (Efeturi) was not duly appointed as Deputy Clerk as contained in Mr. Sarakis letter.

On the issue of seniority, he noted that the duo were both appointed acting clerk on the same day, February 4, 2010, and were later appointed Substantive Clerks on March 25.

However, he added that Mr. Omolori was made a Director on January 1, 2007, one year earlier than Mr. Efeturi, who was made a Director on January 1, 2008.

It should be noted that in the Nigeria public service, seniority is determined at the time of consideration for promotion and career progression chart leading to it.

Seniority has never and is never decided by the date of appointment to the service nor date of retirement from service or indeed the number of years spent in the service.

From the above analysis, denying Mr Mohammed Sani-Omolori appointment as Deputy Clerk to the National Assembly in 2014 was improper being that he was senior to Mr. Benedict Efeturi.

With the above explanations, the issue of misleading and misinforming your good self and the Honourable Speaker of the House of Representatives does not arise.

The commission properly evaluated the two officers and took into account their service records as a determining factor for the appointment of Acting Clerk to the National Assembly.

In light of all the foregoing, Your Excellency will agree that reversing the decision of the commission appointing Mr Mohammed Sani-Omolori as the Acting Clerk to the National Assembly cannot be tenable in the circumstance, he said.

(NAN)
Two engineers who constructed the collapsed guest house of the Synagogue Church of All Nations  Akinbela Fatiregun and Oladele Ogundeji  are to remain in Kirikiri Maximum Prisons till May 3, a court ruled on Tuesday.

Justice Lateef Lawal-Akapo of an Ikeja High Court gave the order in a ruling on their bail applications.

Ruling is reserved for Tuesday, May 3, 2016, Mr. Lawal-Akapo told a crowded courtroom.

The engineers were on April 26 ordered to be remanded in Kirikiri Prisons by Mr. Lawal-Akapo following their not guilty plea to a 111-count charge bordering on gross negligence and criminal manslaughter.

Earlier during Tuesdays proceedings, counsel to Mr. Fatiregun, Titi Akinlawon, in her submission before the court, promised that the defendants would not jump bail.

The fifth defendant has been charged before at the Magistrates Court and he did not jump bail; he presented himself at all times.

Prior to when he was granted bail by the magistrates court, he was granted police bail and he always presented himself.

Since the entire essence of remand is for the defendant not to jump bail, the defendant going by his antecedents, has proven himself to be honourable by not jumping bail on previous occasions, Mrs. Akinlawon said.

Olalekan Ojo, counsel to Mr. Ogundeji in his application before the court, said Mr. Ogundeji needed to be on bail in order to build his defence.

He said: The case of the prosecution is founded on gross negligence, it will collapse or succeed on the strength of experts opinion and it is not pertinent for anyone to state the evidence is overwhelming on technical issues.

Because of the technical nature of the evidence, there is need for the fourth defendant to be on bail to liaise with experts to build his defence.

He cannot do this while on remand at the Kirikiri Maximum Prisons.

However, the prosecution led by Idowu Alakija, the State Director of Public Prosecutions, noted that the court was not obliged to grant bail to the engineers.

She said: The granting of bail is not mandatory, this court has the discretion to grant bail; but in so doing, it has to look at the facts before it.

My Lord, both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal had in an avalanche of cases held that a court needs not restrict itself to matters in the affidavit, but the proofs presented in court.

We have emphasised that Oladele Ogundeji has no address within the jurisdiction of the court.

If this court is to grant bail, I urge the court to grant accelerated hearing without delay because we have had too many delays caused by applications presented by the defence in this case.

The collapse of the guest house on Sept. 12, 2014 led to the deaths of 116 persons, 85 of who were South Africans.

The Coroners Inquest instituted by the Lagos State Government had in its verdict on July 8, 2015, said the building collapse was caused by structural failure due to a combination of designs and detailing errors.

The coroner ordered that Synagogue church should be investigated and proceeded against by the relevant authorities for not possessing necessary building permits while the two engineers involved in the construction of the building should be tried for criminal negligence.

(NAN)
A group, Occupy National Assembly, on Tuesday stormed the National Assembly, demanding the resignation of the president of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki.

Members of the group wore green and white T-shirts, carrying placards with various inscriptions: Legislators stop budget padding, Return exotic cars, Saraki must go, Enough is enough, among others.

One of the leaders of the group, Sadiq Jidda, told journalists that based on all the allegations against Mr. Saraki, it was time he resigned.

Mr. Jidda said the National Assembly had not delivered in its business of lawmaking.

He also complained about the salaries, allowances and constituency projects of the legislators.

What does a legislator have to do with projects? We are gathered here to occupy National Assembly.

Senate President should resign, his integrity is in question and he has been indicted.

Yes, he has not been convicted but his integrity is in question, he said.

However, some other members of the group said that they were not only demanding Sarakis resignation but were protesting many other issues in the National Assembly.

Meanwhile, a pro-Saraki group Save Nigeria Group insisted that it was not necessary for Mr. Saraki to resign.

The leader of the group, Solomon Adodo, said those calling for Mr. Sarakis resignation did not mean well for the country.

To prevent the two groups from gaining entry into the complex, security agencies closed the gate.

The gate remained closed while the protests lasted.

(NAN)
The development of Nigerias steel sector will help speed up the countrys industrialisation process, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said.

The vice president said despite having the 12th largest iron ore deposit in the world and the second largest in Africa, about 70 per cent of Nigerias deposits were yet to be proven.

He said in Ilorin, Kwara State, on Tuesday that the federal government was looking at options to solve the challenge of developing the sector, including mobilising government capacity and private sector competencies to certify existing deposits.

Because steel is the world most important engineering material, Buharis presidency is determined to bring about a faster industrialization process in the country through the active development of the steel sector, he said.

With about 2 billion metric tonnes of iron ore reserves, he said Nigeria must be extremely ambitious in her industrialization efforts, adding that never has the need to increase investment in Nigeria been more crucial than time.

Mr. Osinbajo who was speaking at the foundation laying ceremony of Kam Steel Integrated Complex at Jimba Oja, said steel plays an important role in the present administrations economic agenda.

To demonstrate the administrations commitment to make the country a net exporter of steel, he said President Muhammadu Buhari had directed that everything be done to ensure that Nigeria progressed in the ease of doing business ranking this year.

Mr. Osinbajo said the federal government was working on the right macro-economic policies to attract investors.

Diligent efforts are being made to realise the clear instructions by the president that we must make significant progress in the ease of doing business ranking this year. We have set up an inter-ministerial committee with a presidential oversight to pursue that mandate, he said.

Earlier, Minister of Solid Minerals, Kayode Fayemi, observed that the achievement of Kam Steel Company was capable of galvanizing the development of the sector, describing it as the single-largest private investment in the steel industry in Nigeria.
Both parties sort voters by color and gender. Though there's nothing new about promoting solidarity on the basis of genetics, it can get old really fast.

One sees some utility in this brand of politicking, especially for Democrats. The party of Donald Trump has done its darnedest to offend the growing Latino electorate. But Republicans will get smart about this and reverse course.

Even Trump? Especially Trump. As Trump continues his pivot to normality, his campaign will take a long shower and start making nice to women and Latinos  some of whom have shown interest in him, if only he'd stop attacking them.

Memory is short, and Trump's skill at self-mockery could ease the transition. With his support of programs that help the working class, Trump could pick off chunks of the Democratic coalition.

Note that the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce invited Trump to join a candidates forum in Washington (which he did not attend). While in no way an endorsement, this is not how one treats the devil.

Democratic strategists expect America's rapidly growing Latino and Asian populations to guarantee their electoral success. But history shows demographic firewalls crumbling as descendants of recent immigrants become culturally indistinguishable from the older European stock.

Meanwhile, the seeming obsession with minorities and women sends a "don't bother" sign to the white working class. Hostility toward dark people doesn't adequately explain why so many struggling whites have decamped for the Republican side.

Consider how a white working guy might respond to a headline like this one: "White Man or Black Woman? Senate Race Tears at Maryland Democrats."

The subject is the Democratic Senate primary race pitting Rep. Donna Edwards against Rep. Chris Van Hollen. The "conflict": Edwards, a black single mother, may be an attractive candidate, but Van Hollen has a long record as an effective progressive in Washington. There is no reason for liberals to abandon him unless they think race and gender are reason enough.

EMILY's List apparently thinks so. Dedicated to promoting female candidates who support abortion rights, EMILY's List has put its resources behind Edwards. Many contributors who've worked with Van Hollen are fuming, as well they might.

There's no item on the liberal women's agenda that Van Hollen has not championed, and, you know, there are other issues. There was a time when female candidates were a rarity, but that time has passed  and so has any rationale, frankly, for EMILY's List.

Move on to the U.S. Supreme Court. President Obama has nominated Merrick Garland to fill the seat held by the late Antonin Scalia. According to a Washington Post analysis, "some top Democrats" are complaining that Obama threw away a "golden opportunity" by opting for "a mild-mannered white man."

"If he had picked an African American, a Latino or even an Asian candidate  and especially a woman," the unnamed Democrats (allegedly) told the writer, "he could have helped energize the coalition that got him reelected in 2012 and arguably pushed his nominee onto the court."

Set aside the reality that Republican leaders in the Senate have vowed to stop any Obama nominee. Ponder how such messages rile not only white men but also nonwhite men and women who regard themselves as intellectual equals (or superiors) to the sitting members and not tokens.

Trump's magic formula has been to crush a political correctness that habitually puts white men in the stocks while breaking with the Republican Party on positions that hurt the working class. A toned-down Trump would move from a tropical storm to a Category 3 hurricane threat for Democrats. And identity politics would not be their friend.
The Nigerian Army on Monday said fighters of the extremist Boko Haram sect had acquired new sets of uniforms.

A statement by the spokesperson for the Army, Sani Usman, said, Troops of 22 Brigade Garrison and elements of 3 Battalion that went out on long range fighting patrol yesterday, Monday 25th April 2016, to Gima village in Ngala Local Government Area made a startling discovery; Boko Haram terrorists now have new means of identification.

The patrol came in contact with some elements of the Boko Haram that started escaping in disarray on sighting the team.

However, they were able to apprehend 2 terrorists in their new styled uniform of green colour and use of ropes on their legs and necks. This is a new development in the ongoing clearance operations of the remnants of the Boko Haram terrorists in the north east.

In addition, the patrol team recovered 1 Isuzu Canter lorry which found concealed with grasses, 5 motorcycles and 2 bags of guniea corn. Other items recovered include 3 Dane guns, a Solar panel, 3 bows and arrows.

The arrested terrorists are currently being interrogated to further assist in the clearance operations.


A Federal High Court in Abuja has refused an application filed by the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu.

Mr. Kanu is standing trial on charges of treasonable felony.

His lawyer, Chucks Muoma, had asked the court to stay proceedings, pending an application filed by his client at a higher court.

The appeal filed at the higher court challenged a former ruling of the court on the protection of witnesses in Mr. Kanus ongoing trial.

But responding to the said application, the prosecution counsel, in a counter affidavit, prayed the court to refuse Mr. Kanus application, describing it as lacking in merit.

In his ruling, the trial Judge, John Tsoho, said the application could only be granted if it was made following the principles of the appeal.

Stay of proceedings should follow the process of attaining speedy trial and must be based on peculiar facts and findings, said Mr. Tsoho.

He noted that there was no dispute as to the jurisdiction of the court to try the matter, but added that the trial of Mr. Kanu will continue unless an order from a judicial authority disallows its continuation.
The Nigerian government has ordered security agencies in the country to crush and deter all crises that have the potential to breach the peace and national stability.

The order followed an upsurge in deadly communal clashes that have claimed many lives.

On Monday, suspected Fulani herdsmen killed no fewer than five people in Nimbo, Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State.

Amid growing condemnation of the attacks, the Federal Government on Tuesday restated its resolve to deal decisively with threats of crisis and conflict that are capable of disrupting peace and security in Nigeria.

The Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan-Ali, stated this at the opening of a three-day seminar on Information Management in Crisis Situations in Nigeria.

He said the security of lives and property of citizens remained top on the agenda of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

The government of President Muhammadu Buharis number one priority is to ensure the security of lives and property of its citizens, guarantee a secure environment for socio-economic activities to thrive without hindrance.

To this end, all security agencies in Nigeria have been called upon to crush and deter the threats of crisis and conflict that have potential to disrupt peace and security of our country.

Our security and response agencies are constantly engaged in the essential tasks required for meeting these internal security objectives, our government will not relent in this primary objective, he said.

He said the government would no longer tolerate unpatriotic acts that were capable of undermining the present administrations efforts in entrenching sanity in the polity.

Mr. Dan-Ali acknowledged the efforts of troops and their commanders in the various theatres of operations in ensuring that Nigerian territories were not only secured but conducive for socio-economic activities to thrive.

The minister assured members of the armed forces and other security and response agencies of the present administrations commitment to their welfare.

He said despite the prevailing economic condition in the country, efforts were underway to improve the capacity of security and response agencies to discharge their duties effectively.

Mr. Dan-Ali said the seminar was timely as it would facilitate a robust interaction between information managers in the security and disaster management sector, and the media.

He said officers from the various security and response agencies would find a common ground to learn new skills, share experiences and build capacity of one another on information management.

The Executive Secretary of the Centre for Crisis Communication, Yusuf Anas, said the seminar was one of the centres intervention in crisis management in Nigeria.

He said the centre believed in developing and nurturing a symbiotic relationship between information managers and the media in managing information during crisis situations.

The centre is evolving proactive measures and systematic approach to crisis communication aimed at filling existing communication gaps.

One such gap identified by the centre is the occasional unsavoury relationship with the media by the security and response agencies in times of crisis.

The centre believes that peace and security are very essential for Nigerias socio-economic development, he said.

Mr. Anas said the seminar would be a regular feature in its calendar of activities for information managers in Nigeria.

Participants at the seminar were drawn from the media, various security and response agencies, the ministries of defence and interior, and non-governmental organisations.

(NAN)
Police in Ebonyi State have rescued a kidnap victim who was abducted in Umuoghara quarry site in Ezza North local government area of the state.

Kidnap gang in police uniforms had invaded the victims shop and pretended to be looking for someone when they saw the victim and immediately abducted him.

Confirming the incident on Tuesday, the police spokesman, George Okafor, an assistant superintendent of police, said the hoodlums took the victim whose name could not be immediately ascertained and demanded N30million ransom.

The hoodlums kept the victim in a hideout in Umuoghara and demanded N30million ransom which they later reduced.

The ransom was taken to where the kidnappers said it should be dropped. Policemen had cordoned everywhere.

So, the police opened fire on them and killed one of them. The victim was rescued unhurt, he said.

He noted that one of the policemen who engaged the kidnappers in gun duel sustained injuries during the shoot-out and was receiving treatment at an undisclosed hospital.
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has called on the Federal Government to ignore calls for the arrest of former President Goodluck Jonathan.

The association said the calls were coming from mischievous Nigerians, and were aimed at throwing the country into chaos.

Such call will only set a wrong precedence in the political development of our dear nation and open doors for mischievous people to set the country into confusion, CAN said in a statement signed by the associations Public Relation Officer in the 19 northern states and the FCT, Rev. Joseph Hayab.

CAN said the call for the arrest was mainly designed to distract Nigerians from asking for the dividend of democracy due to them based on the change they voted for.

The statement said Nigerians were suffering and urged the government to act urgently.

It is our opinion that such action if taken, with the current economic realities, will throw the country into chaos, the statement said.

It urged the government to resolve the lingering problem of insecurity, power outage and fuel scarcity and other issues affecting the masses.

The popularity of the present administration in the country is rapidly diminishing due to the prevailing problems of insecurity, power and fuel scarcity.

What Nigerians need urgently is availability of fuel, electricity, prompt salary, security of lives and property, amongst other issues that are begging for urgent answers.

The government should address the security threat posed by the spate of Fulani herdsmen attacks in the country leading to the death of thousands of innocent Nigerians.

Government must equally as a matter of urgency, arrest the acute shortage of power supply that is crippling our economic activities, it said.

(NAN)
The Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, has ordered the immediate arrest of persons found selling or buying petrol and other petroleum products in plastic containers.

A statement by the police spokesperson, Olabisi Kolawole, said Mr. Arase gave the directive to forestall the untold suffering and hazard emanating from the activities of black marketers.

According to the statement, Mr. Arase ordered the Zonal Assistant Inspectors-General of Police, commissioners of the force across the states and that of the FCT command to arrest anybody found selling petroleum products in plastic container.

Mr. Arase issued the directive in Abuja, stressing that fuel products such as petrol, are highly flammable and can seriously endanger people, property and the environment.

It has also rendered some innocent and law abiding citizens homeless due to fire outbreak from jerry-can petrol storage, said Mr. Arase.

While warning pump attendants at filling stations to desist from selling petrol inside jerry-cans or any plastic container, Mr. Arase said both the buyers and sellers of the products would be arrested and prosecuted under the law.

Mr. Arase, who assured Nigerians of the police readiness to fulfil their constitutional mandate, appealed for a more cordial relationship between the police and the public.
The leader of the Senate, Mohammed Ali-Ndume, said on Tuesday that no amount of protest would force any legislator to resign.

Mr. Ndume was reacting to a protest by the Occupy National Assembly group, calling for the resignation of the president of the Senate, Bukola Saraki.

Mr. Ndume said there is a democratic process of recalling any senator, adding that protest was not the constitutionally recognised process.

He described the protest as a wrong precedence and anti-democratic.

That is why we are not trying to say anything about them because what is happening out there is a very dangerous precedence that we are trying to set.

I contested to represent Borno South.

I did not force myself on my people and therefore somebody out there, especially the one that did not elect me cannot force me out because I didnt come in by force.

I came in by ballot not by gun, not by placard, I have posters not placards.

So, if for example, I am short of performance and my constituents feel that they do not have time to waste, there is a clear-cut process by which they can ask me to be recalled.

They will collect signatures, ask for me to be recalled, that is the democratic way, not by coming in here to stand and say you want to occupy NASS.

You occupy NASS to do what, to be leader or to be senator? It does not work that way, he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the protesters stormed the National Assembly to demand the resignation of Mr. Saraki.

The protesters; Occupy National Assembly also called on the legislators to conclude all issues on the 2016 budget, return their luxury cars and cut their N115 billion budget.

However, another group was also on ground to counter the call for Mr. Sarakis resignation, saying the group calling for his resignation was anti-Nigeria.

(NAN)
The Judicial Commission of Inquiry on Shiite/Military clash established by the Kaduna State Government, on Tuesday visited various scenes of the clash in Zaria.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that members of the commission were led by the chairman, Justice Mohammed Lawal-Garba.

They visited Ban Zazzau, where mother of Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzaky was buried, the Shiites shrine in Dambo village, and Elzakzakys residence in Gyallesu.

The team also inspected Hussainiya, the Shiite main shrine located on Sokoto road, Zaria, where the sect members had allegedly blocked the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff on Dec. 12, 2015.

The action had triggered the clashes, with the Army claiming in a statement that the sect members had attempted to assassinate the Army chief, Tukur Buratai.

Subsequent events had led to the death and arrest of the sect members, with some of them already in court on various charges including culpable homicide.

The sect had since denied instigating the crises, and demanded the release of their leader and other members in government custody.

The sitting of the commission had been boycotted by the Shiite members on the orders of Mr. El-Zakzaky.

NAN reports that the commissions chairman declined comment on the visit.

The commission would, however, continue its sitting on Wednesday, April 27, when some Army officers involved in the clash are expected to testify.

(NAN)
The Senate president, Bukola Saraki, on Tuesday, called for an end to the spate of deadly violence blamed on herdsmen in various parts of Nigeria to safeguard the countrys unity and security.

Many communities, particularly in the North Central and Southern states, have faced severe attacks allegedly perpetrated Fulani herdsmen recently.

Speaking at the Senate plenary, Mr. Saraki urged the Senate Committee on Agriculture, chaired by Adamu Abdullahi, to fast-track the execution of the report of the Senate public hearing aimed at addressing the herdsmen crisis.

After the plenary, Mr. Saraki took to his official social media pages on Twitter and Facebook, to emphasise the imperative of curbing growing herdsmen violence to safeguard Nigerias unity.

It is important that the violence attributed to herdsmen is addressed and curbed to ensure the safety, well-being and unity of the people and the country, Mr. Saraki said.

On Monday, no fewer than five people were killed in Nimbo, Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State by suspected herdsmen.

In March, PREMIUM TIMES published a special report featuring horrifying details of attacks by suspected in Agatu, Benue State.

The report detailed how communities and farmlands were burnt down, and how charred bodies littered the streets.
The National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Olisa Metuh, on Tuesday slumped and was rushed to the National Hospital, Abuja, an associate and an aide have told PREMIUM TIMES.

The incident occurred during the inauguration of the Yobe and Borno states caretaker committees at the Wadata Plaza party secretariat of the party located in the Wuse Zone 5 District of Abuja, witnesses said.

A source close to the PDP chieftain said Mr. Metuh suddenly collapsed during the event, and was unable to move his body.

The incident happened in the full glare of all those who attended the programme including party members and journalist, the source told PREMIUM TIMES.

He also confirmed that Mr. Metuh was being treated at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the National Hospital.

Mr. Metuh has had a troubled time in the past few weeks, with his arrest by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission which accused him of receiving N400million from funds released to former NSA, Sambo Dasuki, to buy arms from the military.

The PDP chieftain denied any wrongdoing, but he is currently being prosecuted over the matter.
Justice Ibrahim Buba of the Federal High Court sitting in Ikoyi, Lagos, on Tuesday convicted 20 persons for illegal dealing and storing of petroleum products.

The convicts are Daniel Lebile, Ala Ibanibo, Wole Ajayi, Adesunloye Fani-Kayode, Michael Mgbanwa, Segun Ekundemi, Johnson Mashebinu, Ndidi Benjamin, Bright Nwaezuoke, Blessing Omoviye and Kayode Ireti.

Others are Chuks Isiwepkweni, Friday Nchikpa, Peter Bayo, Ubom Amos, Zuopamo Embiowei, Olabamerun Owolemi, Adams Husseini, Ebisingha Timmy and Godwin Oputeh.

The rest are MV Long Island and their companies, Afa Global Impex Services Limited and GFL Marine Service Limited.

They all pleaded not guilty to the charges.

In the course of the trial, the prosecution called four witnesses.

In his judgement, the judge held that the prosecution had proved its case beyond all reasonable doubt.

He therefore sentenced the convicts to two years imprisonment on each of the three counts, starting from December 2, 2014, when the convicts were arrested with an option of N200, 000 fine for each count.

The convicts are to forfeit all the seized vessels, cargoes and properties to the Federal Republic of Nigeria, while the jail terms will run concurrently.
No fewer than five people in Nimbo, Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State were on Monday killed by suspected herdsmen.

The spokesman of the police in Enugu State, Ebere Amaraizu, confirmed the incident to newsmen in Nsukka.

Mr. Amaraizu said the Commissioner of Police, Nwodibo Ekechukwu, had already moved to the local government to ensure that normalcy returned.

The police are aware of the attack in Uzo-Uwani and the state commissioner of police is already there to ensure that the situation is brought under control.

Th police are also collaborating with sister security agencies like the army, civil defence and the Department of State Services to handle the situation, he said.

The Chairman of Uzo-Uwani local government, Cornell Onwubuya, who also confirmed the incident, regretted that in spite of efforts to stop the crisis through dialogue, the suspected herdsmen had continued to attack the people.

Yes, there is serious problem in the local government as suspected herdsmen today attacked Nimbo community.

Information reaching us said many people were killed but I do not know the actual number now, he said.

A witness who pleaded anonymity told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Nsukka that the suspected herdsmen numbering up to 300 invaded the community with guns and machetes, shooting sporadically and killing people.

As they were killing the people, they were also setting houses and vehicles ablaze. Many people have been killed; I do not have the actual number.

The residents of Nimbo and motorists have fled the community for safety, the witness said.

Some residents of Nsukka wept uncontrollably when the five bodies from Nimbo were deposited at the Bishop Shanahan Hospital, Nsukka.

A resident, Dennis Ezema, urged the Federal Government to urgently intervene in the activities of the herdsmen before it escalated to a full blown war.

It is unfortunate that people can be mercilessly killed without human feeling.

You can see how these people were killed and sliced like bread; people should respect the sanctity of human life, he said.

Scores of people who fled from Nimbo are now taking refuge in some primary schools in Nsukka. (NAN)
A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State, Bode George, on Tuesday appealed to party members to be peaceful and united during the forthcoming party congress.

Mr. George, a former Deputy National Chairman of PDP, made the plea at the Lagos State PDP General Assembly held at the party secretariat in GRA, Ikeja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the meeting, attended by party chieftains and faithful, was organised to prepare for the forthcoming party congresses scheduled to commence on April 30.

It was also to prepare for the local government polls in the state.

Mr. George said the PDP remained a party to reckon with and urged the party members not to let it go down.

Today, PDP has become an Iroko tree. This party must not go down. I want to beg you that even when we disagree, let us allow the people to decide in our congresses.

Lets avoid personal interest; lets do away with imposition; only the competent people should be elected into positions. Please, go about the congresses peacefully, I am pleading.

We have to be united since everybody cannot become a leader; everybody cannot become chairman. Only one person can do it.

Lets support whoever God has ordained to lead. PDP will win hands down if other contestants of any post support whoever emerges as winner, he said.

The party chieftain said there was no division or faction in the party in the state.

Another chieftain of the party, Adeseye Ogunlewe, urged the leadership of the party to give room for the youth in the forthcoming ward, local and state congresses.

According to him, the older generation in the party should leave the party leadership for the youth in order to give hope and future to the party.

We need youths to take over the leadership of the party at the ward, local, state and even national level; lets give them a chance.

The youths should do it, let the older people leave the youth alone; they are matured enough, he said.

Mr. Ogunlewe, a former Minister of Works, urged party elders to avoid greed and support youths with good counsel in order to move the party forward.

He also advised the youth to shun all forms of violence during the congress.

On the party leadership tussle, Mt. Ogunlewe said that Mr. George remained a leader to beat in the party.

Earlier, the State Chairman of the Party, Tunji Shelle, said the meeting was to prepare party members for the forthcoming council polls in the state and the national convention of the party.

Mr. Shelle said; We are fully prepared in Lagos State for the convention and we expect other states to follow suit. The state is preparing for the 2019 elections too.

The chairman said that the party would field good candidates in all council elections.

(NAN)
ATLANTIC CITY  Mayor Don Guardian and John Palmieri, the director of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, did their best to sell Atlantic Citys strong points Tuesday to an audience that was in a buying mood.

The two did tag-team talks to about 40 members of the Public Relations Council of Greater Atlantic City, telling the crowd that theres much more going on in town than its highly publicized financial crisis and stalemate with the state.

No matter what happens in the coming months, Atlantic City is still going to be here, and its still going to be a hot summer, Guardian told the crowd at Kelseys, on Pacific Avenue.

Shabazz to propose 20 percent pay cuts for city council, others ATLANTIC CITY  City Councilman Kaleem Shabazz said Tuesday that hes sponsoring a resolution to give council members, the city clerk and coun

The citys menu for summer includes more beach concerts, Guardian said, along with the previously announced shows on the beach by country acts Toby Keith and Florida Georgia Line. The lineup of six beach shows will include an R&B concert and a rock concert by as-yet-unnamed acts, and we dont know the other two, Guardian said.

Guardian talked up plans for Stockton Universitys future campus in the citys Chelsea section, a rebuilt Boardwalk along Absecon Inlet, new housing in several areas and even a Wawa-like store off Pacific Avenue.

If I am successful as mayor, one day, in my second term, I will bring a Wawa to Atlantic City, Guardian joked.

But Palmieri, the CRDA executive director, started the talking on a serious note.

Obviously, your work is cut out, he told the PR people in the crowd, because of all the media attention to the citys threatened shutdown. This is when people like you earn your stripes.

His talk was much shorter than Guardians and only briefly touched on the financial troubles.

Fate of Atlantic City piano tuner's house rests with judge ATLANTIC CITY  A state-court judge heard evidence Tuesday to decide whether the Casino Rein

Im hopeful, as a state employee, that whatever works out benefits the city, Palmieri said. After he spoke, he showed a new promotional video for the CRDA, which he has headed since 2011, showing some of the CRDAs involvement around town, from the Boardwalk Ambassadors security program to the Margaritaville beach-bar complex at Resorts Casino Hotel to Miss Americas return to the city and much more.

Guardian told the PR Council to imagine the ripple effects a new Stockton campus will have on Chelsea, with faculty, staff and students living and spending money within walking distance of the planned development off Albany Avenue. Guardian added that the university gave up some rooms in its dorm plans to give space for students to store their surfboards.

Farther Uptown, where Stockton bought but then sold the former Showboat, the mayor said three different people have three different proposals for a piece of beachfront, city-owned land between Showboat and Revel, another of the citys four closed casinos.

In response to a question on the future of Bader Field, the mayor said it and much more city-owned property is scheduled to be auctioned off in June.

Still, if someone comes up with half the assessed value of it, its gone, Guardian said  meaning the city would sell it today for $155 million.

But not all the citys property in that complex is for sale, he said, adding that the the minor-league baseball stadium and the ice rink next door are both being held out. The mayor said a total of about 30 acres is intended for use by Stockton as athletic fields.

Contact: 609-272-7237
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The New Jersey Forest Fire Service fought a 95-acre blaze Tuesday in Winslow Township, Camden County, just near the border with Atlantic County, the service said.

Fire crews battled the fire on Piney Hollow Road near Bangers Gun Club, authorities said. The road was closed between Mays Landing Road and Route 322.

Firefighters gathered at Bangers to debrief as a rainstorm hit the area at about 7 p.m.

Eyes in sky catch Pinelands forest fires HAMILTON TOWNSHIPIts 143 steps up to fire observer Larry Birchs office each day.

As of 5:30 p.m., the fire had been 75 percent contained, the fire services Section B10 announced on social media.

Fire companies from Hammonton, Collings Lakes and Winslow were on the scene to protect structures, firefighters at the scene said.

Wildfire in Wharton State Forest at 113 acres near Atsion A wildfire broke out Sunday in Wharton State Forest in Shamong Township, Burlington County, 

The Forest Fire Service has been warning of high fire danger throughout South Jersey due largely to low humidity and not much rainfall.

Brush fire contained near Garden State Parkway in Port Republic The brush fire near exit 48 off the Garden State Parkway has now been contained, Section C7 

Despite last nights rain in some parts of the region, temperatures surpassed 80 degrees Tuesday, which can warm fuels, such as fallen leaves, faster.

Contact: 609-272-7260
LITTLE EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP  In a confidential settlement signed in January 2015, the townships Municipal Utilities Authority agreed to pay $140,000 to settle a former employees lawsuit claiming the previous executive director had sexually harassed her while the two were employed there, court documents say.

Nicole Kelley, a former MUA senior clerk, alleged former Executive Director David Johnson subjected her to severe and pervasive sexual harassment from the start of her employment at the MUA in 2000, which worsened from 2012 to 2013, when he began to punish her professionally until she was fired in 2014, according to court documents.

Citing a confidentiality agreement, Executive Director Earl Sutton declined to comment on the matter. Kelleys attorney declined to comment as well.

Kelley alleges in court documents that Johnson would call her into his office, close the door and ask her about her personal life. He would end the chats by hugging Kelley and kissing her on the lips.

Along with making inappropriate comments toward Kelley, Kelley alleged he once asked to come to her home.

Upon Johnsons arrival, within the documents it states that he kissed her. Kelley reported feeling uncomfortable and told Johnson her boyfriend was on his way and he promptly left.

Court documents state that on one occasion the pair ran into each other at a local bar, Johnson was allegedly drunk and asked Kelley to be her sugar daddy, saying that he was unhappy in his marriage and wanted to have some fun.

But when Kelley attempted to leave, she alleged Johnson followed her to her car where he forcibly kissed her, shoving his tongue into her throat.

The following day at work she claimed Johnson expressed a hope that the incident would not impact their working relationship. Still, she said, the harassment did not stop.

Kelley said Johnson violated the states law against discrimination.

Kelley also said Johnson retaliated while the two were at work after she rejected him. She said this culminated in her being fired.

Before being terminated, court documents state, Kelley had filed for temporary disability, citing a doctors note for anxiety, but it was contested.

In one instance, the documents state, Kelley says she wrote the MUA, explaining why her doctor had placed her on medical leave. She said she had referenced the sexual harassment and retaliation and the stress it caused her. The court documents say she informed an attorney for the MUA of the harassment and retaliation as well.

Contact: 609-272-7093
For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.





to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.





Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.





View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.




TORONTO, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

AuRico Metals Inc. (TSX: AMI) ("AuRico" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Environmental Assessment Certificate application (the "Application") for its Kemess Underground Project has been screened and formally accepted for detailed review by the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office ("BC EAO"). AuRico is making revisions and reformatting the Application to integrate the clarifications and additional information provided by AuRico during the screening period. The BC EAO will initiate the 180-day review once AuRico has submitted the revised Application - expected to be in approximately two weeks. The BC EAO is managing the environmental assessment in a Substituted Process on behalf of British Columbia and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

About AuRico Metals

AuRico Metals is a mining royalty and development company whose producing gold royalty assets include a 1.5% NSR royalty on the Young-Davidson Gold Mine, a 0.25% NSR royalty on the Williams Mine at Hemlo, and a 0.5% NSR royalty on the Eagle River Mine - all located in Ontario, Canada. AuRico Metals also has a 2% NSR royalty on the Fosterville Mine and a 1% NSR royalty on the Stawell Mine, located in Victoria, Australia. Aside from its diversified royalty portfolio, AuRico owns (100%) the advanced Kemess Gold-Copper Project in British Columbia, Canada. AuRico Metals' head office is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Cautionary Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information as defined under Canadian and U.S. securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are, or may be deemed to be, forward-looking statements. The words "expect", "believe", "anticipate", "will", "intend", "estimate", "forecast", "budget" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements related to the Company's outlook and key deliverables on Kemess over the next 12 months. These statements are based on a number of factors and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by management at the time of making such statements, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Known and unknown factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements and the factors and assumptions underlying them in this document include the timing of the government decision in response to the Company's environmental assessment application.

Actual results and developments are likely to differ, and may differ materially, from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained herein. Such statements are based on a number of assumptions which may prove to be incorrect, including assumptions about: the timing and ability to obtain provincial and federal approval of the environmental assessment application, the number of comments or questions raised by partners or the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office, and additional studies required in order to address concerns raised and the results of those studies. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

Readers are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

For further information:

Chris Richter, President and Chief Executive Officer, AuRico Metals Inc., +1-416-216-2780, chris.richter@auricometals.ca

SOURCE AuRico Metals
PUNE, India, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Driven by 'natural' and 'organic' products, global baby soothers and teethers market is seeing marketing strategies aimed at the emotional appeal of parents rather than logical and point-based appeal. The end-user of this market are parents, who are always concerned about getting the best and the safest products for their children. The prospects for growth in this market are bolstered by the launch of products that are organic in nature.

Complete report on baby soothers and teethers market spread across 53 pages, analyzing 5 major companies and providing 26 data exhibits is now available at http://www.reportsnreports.com/reports/533989-global-baby-soothers-and-teethers-market-2016-2020.html.

The analysts forecast global baby soothers and teethers market to grow at a CAGR of 3.63% during the period 2016-2020. An important factor that fosters growth in baby soothers and teethers market is the rise in demand for natural and organic soothers. Parents today prefer using baby care products that are not harmful to the children and do not cause any adverse reactions. Consequently, the demand for natural and organic products is on the rise, which in turn will aid in the growth of this market during the forecast period. An example of such a product is the Hevea soother, which is made from real rubber from the Hevea tree.

The global baby soothers and teethers market analyst said online portal has become one of the key retailing channels for all types of retail services over the past few years. Today, owing to their hectic lifestyles, consumers prefer to shop online rather than visit physical stores. The prices offered online are often lower than those in physical stores because of overhead cost reduction. Online portals such as Amazon and Firstcry in India are some of the major vendors who provide baby products, while Babies"R"Us and Kiddicare are some of the popular online vendors in the UK.

According to the baby soothers and teethers market report, most vendors are focused on employing innovative marketing techniques to increase their brands' visibility and customer base. Such strategies will propel market growth to a significant extent during the forecast period. Packaging as a part of marketing techniques plays a crucial role in consumers' purchase decisions. Manufacturers today are continually experimenting with different sizes, new styles, designs, and descriptive websites for increasing the sales of baby soothers and teethers.

Segmentation by Age and Analysis of the Baby Soothers and Teethers Market - 0-6 months, 6-12 months and 12-24 months

In this market research, analysts have estimated the 6-12 months segment to account for a market share of more than 51% by 2020. This segment's popularity stems from the fact that babies start developing teeth when they are 6-12 months old. Additionally, factors such as new product launches and the advent of products that are natural will foster the growth of baby soothers and teethers market segment during the predicted period.

Key players in the global baby soothers and teethers market: Handi-Craft, Mayborn Group, Munchkin, Phillips, and Pigeon. Other prominent vendors in the market are: Chicco, MAM, nip, Nuby, Playtex, NUK, Medela, Zhejiang Rikang Baby Products, Summer Infant, Richell, and Mee Mee. Order a copy of Global Baby Soothers and Teethers Market 2016-2020 report @ http://www.reportsnreports.com/Purchase.aspx?name=533989.

Another related report is Global Baby Stroller and Pram Market 2016-2020: this research shows changing lifestyles as a major factor triggering market growth, which has resulted in a projected CAGR of over 5% for the global baby stroller and pram market during the forecast period. Key players in the global baby stroller and pram market: Baby Jogger, Chicco, Dorel, Evenflo and Graco. Other prominent vendors in the market are: Baby Trend, Brevi, Britax, Bugaboo, Bumbleride, Combi, Concord, Inglesina, Joovy, Mamas and Papas, Mee Mee, Mother Care, Orbit Baby, Peg Perego, Stokke, Thule, and UPPAbaby. Browse complete report @ http://www.reportsnreports.com/reports/451933-global-baby-stroller-and-pram-market-2016-2020.html.

Explore other new reports on Consumer Goods Market @ http://www.reportsnreports.com/market-research/consumer-goods/.

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SOURCE ReportsnReports
Gunter Sandmann Focused on Continuing to Expand BlueCat's European Sales Team and Market Share

TORONTO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- BlueCat, a leading provider of DNS, DHCP and IP address management solutions, today announced the appointment of Gunter Sandmann to the position of Vice President of Sales of Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa to drive new business and partnerships in Europe. The appointment signifies the company's commitment to meet the demands of BlueCat's growing European customer base.

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Sandmann brings a broad range of experience to his new position at BlueCat, including executive sales and business development roles for both startups and large enterprise organizations. Sandmann joins BlueCat from CallidusCloud where he was responsible for building and leading sales across Central Europe. During his career, he has also held leadership positions at Coupa, Eloqua (acquired by Oracle) and IntraLinks.

"Gunter has a proven history of high growth, building sales organizations and delivering results. We look forward to having him lead BlueCat's sales efforts in Europe as that market continues to grow," said Eric Vermillion, SVP of Sales at BlueCat. "Gunter has served more than twenty years in senior sales and management positions in the software industry and is a driven professional, capable of ramping up our European sales efforts."

"Having followed BlueCat's track record in driving innovation and expanding their product portfolio to address rising global market demand stemming from cloud, mobile and security, I was excited to join the company," said Sandmann. "BlueCat's customer base includes well known brands from all over the world which is proof that the company is a market leader. I look forward to being part of this dynamic team and making a positive impact on the company during this time of explosive growth."

About BlueCat

BlueCat delivers software-based DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management solutions that enable our customers to build and manage their most complex network infrastructure to meet the rapid pace of change of their business. With offices around the globe, leading enterprises trust BlueCat. For more information visit www.bluecatnetworks.com.

Related Links

http://www.bluecatnetworks.com



SOURCE BlueCat
PEORIA, Illinois, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT/Euronext: CATR) informs it shareholders that on 25 April 2016, it filed an annual Proxy Statement with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC").

Caterpillar files electronically with the SEC required reports on Form 8-K, Form 10-Q, Form 10-K and Form 11-K; proxy materials; ownership reports for insiders as required by Section 16(a) of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended; and registration statements on Forms S-3 and S-8, as necessary; and other forms or reports, as required. All of the forms and reports filed electronically with the SEC are available on the SEC Internet site (www.sec.gov ).

Caterpillar also maintains an Internet site (www.Caterpillar.com) and copies of its annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, proxy materials and any amendments to these reports filed or furnished with the SEC are available free of charge through Caterpillar's Internet site (www.Caterpillar.com/secfilings ) as soon as reasonably practicable after the relevant document has been filed with the SEC.

CONTACT: Rachel Potts, Corporate Public Affairs, Office, +1-309-675-6892

This is a disclosure announcement from PR Newswire.

SOURCE Caterpillar Inc.
DUBLIN, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Financial Assessment and Credit Risk Analysis of the Fertilizer Industry in China 2016" report to their offering.

This report analyzes the financial assessment and credit risk of the fertilizer industry. It will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of this industry from the following aspects: development scale, operating benefit, related policies and industry analysis of major regions and provinces,as well as make scientific predictions on the future development fertilizer industry.

The Aim of this report

- To provide readers with comprehensive & in- depth understanding of financial situation and credit risk on China's fertilizer industry;

- To understand the position of the fertilizer industry in China;

- To Gain information on the major fertilizer produced regions;

- To predict the future of China's fertilizer industry will be;

- To find out the region be worth for investment and the investment risks of fertilizer industry in China;

- To reveal opportunities in the Chinese fertilizer industry.

Scope of Investigation

- Development analysis (Industry scale, Industry cost, etc.)

- Operation situation (Debt paying ability, operation ability, etc.)

- Major areas (major regions and top 5 provinces)

- Future forecast

- Commercial opportunity

Key Topics Covered:

1 Overview and policy of fertilizer industry in China

1.1 Overview of fertilizer industry

1.2 Policy of fertilizer industry

2 Development scale of China's fertilizer industry

2.1 Industry scale analysis of fertilizer industry in 2011-2015

2.2 Industry cost analysis of fertilizer industry in 2011-2015

3 Operating benefit analysis of fertilizer industry

3.1 Debt paying ability analysis of fertilizer industry in 2011-2015

3.2 Profitability analysis of fertilizer industry in 2011-2015

3.3 Operation ability analysis fertilizer industry in 2011-2015

4 Fertilizer industry analysis in major regions

4.1 East China

4.2 Central China

4.3 South China

5 Fertilizer industry analysis in Top 5 provinces

6 Future forecast of fertilizer industry in China

6.1 Investment prospects

6.2 Investment risk analysis

6.3 Investment advices

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/j4f7nk/financial

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Related Links

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SOURCE Research and Markets
SANTA CLARA, California, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Crown Bioscience, a wholly owned subsidiary of Crown Bioscience International (TWSE: ticker 6554) and a global drug discovery and development solutions company providing translational platforms to advance oncology and metabolic disease research, has announced the launch of MuScreen, a new immuno-oncology (IO) service platform utilizing CrownBio's unique fully characterized syngeneic models.

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MuScreen will be offered as a streamlined service for in vivo pharmacodynamic (PD) and efficacy testing using up to 20 syngeneic models. Tissue microarrays can be run in parallel to the in vivo study for high throughput molecular analysis of multiple syngeneic treatment naive tumor samples. MuScreen enables users to quickly identify the correct model and relevant PD effect for immuno-oncology agents. It is particularly relevant for testing combination strategies, allowing next stage decisions to be made rapidly and efficiently.

"As a leading oncology preclinical solutions provider, our ultimate goal is to deliver superior data in a well-organized and cost-effective manner," said Qian Shi, vice president of cancer pharmacology and in vitro cancer biology at CrownBio. "By pooling our agents together in a single run, we can dramatically reduce model usage and resource requirements, thus accelerating the process while optimizing its productivity."

By running MuScreen on a large scale, CrownBio is confident that the quality of PD data will improve, providing an even more complete dataset for both pharmacodynamics and efficacy studies.

Joining CrownBio's broad range of models, including the world's largest commercial portfolio of PDX models, the launch of MuScreen is testament to CrownBio's continued commitment to providing industry-leading service for global drug discovery.

The platform will become operative the first week of May. Compounds will be enrolled into the screen on a first come, first served basis until 10 group studies have been reached. Additional orders will be given priority for enrollment into the following screening round.

For more information about MuScreen and CrownBio's commitment to improving clinical outcomes, visit www.crownbio.com.

About Crown Bioscience Inc.

Crown Bioscience is a global drug discovery and development solutions company providing translational platforms to advance oncology and metabolic disease research. With an extensive portfolio of relevant models and predictive tools, Crown Bioscience enables clients to deliver superior clinical candidates. For more information, please visit www.crownbio.com.

Related Links

http://www.crownbio.com



SOURCE Crown Bioscience Inc.
LONDON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- This April Diccon Wright announces the opening in October 2016 of Amano, a new 80 cover bar and cafe, in West Malling, Kent.

The 1.5 million project sees the complete refurbishment of the Grade II listed pub, formerly known as the Lobster Pot into a modern, bright day-time venue, which will welcome families for accessible, high quality dishes. The menu will have a strong modern Italian influence and include home-cured meats, freshly-made pasta and sourdough pizzas from an authentic wood burning oven.

The interior of the cafe is modern and bright and the development will also see the conversion of the first floor into four private letting suites and the introduction of a conservatory with 40 covers.

The project is an expansion of Diccon's existing partnership with Daryl Healy and Nick Levantis, which began with the Swan, also in West Malling.

Diccon Wright said, "Having established the Swan at West Malling as a much-loved local brasserie and restaurant, we were keen to open a slightly more casual and family-friendly venue. Our food will continue to be as honest and high quality as ever, but we are looking forward to having some fun with a purpose-built wood-fired pizza oven and curing our own charcuterie. We are also delighted the Amano will see the restoration of a lovely old building in the heart of the village."

Diccon Wright is a restaurateur and property specialist with a strong track record in establishing and growing successful food and beverage operations in the UK and Mediterranean. These include Swan at the Globe, which is made up of a much loved bar, 90 cover restaurant, events business and running all the catering outlets on the site of the Globe Theatre, Bankside.

Find out more about Diccon Wright at http://www.dicconwright.co.uk

Related Links

https://plus.google.com/117277311405529273833



SOURCE Diccon Wright
Gain insight from Keynote Speakers Martin Hill-Wilson, Brainfood Consulting, and Elizaveta Rybinskaya, Eldorado, at 10th Anniversary Customer Contact Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange

LONDON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Frost & Sullivan is pleased to announce Martin Hill-Wilson, Founder, Brainfood Consulting, and Elizaveta Rybinskaya, Customer Care Director, Eldorado, will be the featured keynotes at the 10th Anniversary Customer Contact Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange. The event will take place on 13th to 15th June, 2016 at the Royal Olympic Athens Hotel in Athens, Greece.

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To register and download the event agenda for the 10th Anniversary Customer Contact Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, please visit: www.frost.com/cce.

Hill-Wilson, a noted author and expert on customer engagement strategies and team leadership, will deliver the opening keynote, Disruptive Customer Care: The Competitive Differentiator in a World of New and Evolving Business Models. He will address how the common organizational strategy of investing in occasional technology and competency refreshes is no longer working. Martin will present the case for planned, ongoing and co-created disruption becoming the new "business as usual" model.

Hill-Wilson's essential take-aways will include:

Insight into mastering the technique of 'horizon thinking' to kick-start a never ending challenge of doing things differently

Examples of service frameworks that generate disruptive thinking

Key ingredients of a service disruption strategy

Rybinskaya possesses over 20 years of contact centre and customer service experience and has also garnered international recognition as a subject matter expert in retail and e-commerce. Currently, she is responsible for customer experience, e-commerce and communications at Eldorado, one of the largest electronic retailers in Russia.

Rybinskaya's keynote, Emotional Brand Engagement: Nurturing Empathetic Agents, will explore the tools needed to create agents who are exceptionally empathetic and skilled. She will present best examples and best practices to achieve breakthrough results with customer service agent recruitment and training.

Participants will gain insight on:

Approaches to evolve their training system

How to organize the experience exchange

Basic everyday working principles

Thinking about the client

Preventing burnout and turnover

Being active and proactive

Additionally, Rybinskaya will discuss the main KPIs and assessment tools; satisfaction, involvement and revenue.

This highly interactive event will offer contact centre and customer experience executives the opportunity to benefit from:

Truly innovative case studies and best practices

Dynamic collaboration zones fostering disruptive and transformational thinking

Panel discussions led by industry trailblazers

Networking opportunities with peers and professionals leading the way in customer contact

Don't miss out on the opportunity to leverage the latest customer service thinking for competitive advantage. For additional information, please email events.us@frost.com or contact Alan Bowman at +44 1865 398 644.



About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants.

Our "Growth Partnership" supports clients by addressing these opportunities and incorporating two key elements driving visionary innovation: The Integrated Value Proposition and The Partnership Infrastructure.

The Integrated Value Proposition provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation.

provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation. The Partnership Infrastructure is entirely unique as it constructs the foundation upon which visionary innovation becomes possible. This includes our 360 degree research, comprehensive industry coverage, career best practices as well as our global footprint of more than 40 offices.

For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organisation prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies?

Contact:

Chiara Carella

Corporate Communications

P: +44 (0) 753 301 7689

E: chiara.carella@frost.com

Related Links

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan
"The 1350 has a large display area measuring 83 mm x 68 mm (the biggest display area in its category), which enables operators to easily read the settings, alarms and messages," said Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Archit Kohli. "The controller has three displays; the first shows the actual present value, the second shows the set point, and the third checks for direct and immediate interaction during the initial configuration and operation."

The 1350 has an energy monitor function that can alert the user of a possible breakdown and helps prevent unexpected system shutdowns by giving operators ample time to schedule maintenance in advance. Similarly, it also detects machine error and recommends remedial action to save users time.

Meanwhile, the controllers can be configured easily with the GF_eXpress programming tool for the computer. Gefran's PID controllers can be connected to a communication network using the MODBUS communication standard, which is one of the most widely adopted industrial communication standards.

The company is one of the first to develop a PID controller with a message storage facility and can store up to 300 messages. The solution is customized to the users' needs, and the operators can choose from three languages.

The temperature on the controller is visible at a distance due to its large numbers and a white-on-black contrast on a large liquid crystal display (LCD) screen. Gefran has also ensured that the controller is a user-friendly human machine interface and highly configurable because the customer can require the desired frame color.

The 1350, which has the largest display, is supported by Zapper, a portable, battery-powered configurator that allows the operator to save and store up to four programs. Additionally, operators can copy/paste parameters when the PID controller power supply is off. The packaging of the controller is specifically studied to allow the configuration of the product "on the shelf".

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed a product with innovative features and functionality, gaining rapid acceptance in the market. The award recognizes the quality of the solution and the customer value enhancements it enables.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

About Gefran

Fifty years of experience and know-how, a customer-based organization, and constant technological innovation make Gefran a leader in automation components and industrial process control systems.

Gefran designs and produces sensors, automation and motion control solutions for a number of industrial applications: plastic, mobile hydraulic, electrical furnaces, lift, hois&crane and metal.

Gefran operates directly on the main international markets, through sales branches in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, Belgium, Spain, Turkey, the US, Brazil, China, Singapore, India, and through manufacturing branches also in Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, US and China.

The key factors behind Gefran's success are specialist know-how, design and production flexibility, capacity for innovation and the quality of its processes and products. Absolute control of process technology and application knowhow also enables Gefran to produce instruments and integrated systems for specific applications in a variety of industrial sectors.

Gefran has been listed on the Italian Stock Exchange since 9 June 1998. In 2001, it became part of the STAR (high requisite stock) segment, which became the FTSE Italia STAR in June 2009.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants.

Our "Growth Partnership" supports clients by addressing these opportunities and incorporating two key elements driving visionary innovation: The Integrated Value Proposition and The Partnership Infrastructure.

The Integrated Value Proposition provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation.

provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation. The Partnership Infrastructure is entirely unique as it constructs the foundation upon which visionary innovation becomes possible. This includes our 360 degree research, comprehensive industry coverage, career best practices as well as our global footprint of more than 40 offices.

For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies?

Contact Us: Start the discussion

Join Us: Join our community

Subscribe: Newsletter on "the next big thing"

Register: Gain access to visionary innovation

Contact:

Mireya Espinoza

P: 210. 247.3870

F: 210.348.1003

E: mireya.espinoza@frost.com

Related Links

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan
LUGANO, Switzerland and HOUSTON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

- Collaboration Plans a Comprehensive Range of Clinical Studies to Evaluate Helsinn Commercialized and/or Under Development Pipeline Products in Cancer Supportive Care and Palliative Settings

- MD Anderson to Provide Clinical Expertise and Oncology Network.

Helsinn, the Swiss pharmaceutical Group focused on building quality cancer care, and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center today announce that they signed a strategic alliance on a broad, multi-year programme of clinical studies in cancer supportive and palliative care.

Under the terms of the collaboration agreement, MD Anderson, one of the world's most comprehensive and prestigious cancer hospital networks, will conduct 14 studies into Helsinn programmes with enrollment projects of 420 patients. The collaboration aims to investigate new uses and better outcomes for these programmes for people with cancer in the supportive and palliative settings. This relationship will leverage MD Anderson's significant clinical expertise and access to world recognized key opinion leaders, providing Helsinn with an unparalleled network or oncology specialists.

The collaboration will focus on six major disease areas; fatigue, anorexia/cachexia, diarrhea chronic nausea, pruritus and chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain in a five-year time frame.

Riccardo Braglia, Helsinn Group Vice Chairman and CEO, commented: "MD Anderson is among the world's most prestigious cancer hospital networks with an unparalleled clinical capability. At Helsinn, we are committed to finding ways to offer people with cancer the best possible quality of life. We believe that this collaboration will allow us to explore new outcomes for our existing commercialized products and to explore alternative uses for our pipeline programmes to maximise our chances of being able to offer new, innovative solutions to people with cancer."

"There is a great opportunity to develop new and effective drugs to treat the main symptoms caused by cancer, such as weight loss, fatigue, nausea, pain, pruritus, diarrhea, and anorexia/cachexia," said Eduardo Bruera, M.D., chair of Palliative, Rehabilitation & Integrative Medicine at MD Anderson. "There is also a great opportunity to develop drugs to treat the side effects of emerging and highly effective new targeted and immunological treatments for cancer patients".

Notes for editors:

About Helsinn Group

Helsinn is a privately owned cancer supportive care pharmaceutical group with an extensive portfolio of marketed products and a broad development pipeline. Since 1976, Helsinn has been improving the everyday lives of patients, guided by core family values of respect, integrity and quality, through a unique integrated licensing business model working with long standing partners in pharmaceuticals, medical devices and nutritional supplement products. Helsinn is headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland, with operating subsidiaries in Ireland and the US, a representative office in China, as well as a product presence in about 90 countries globally.

In 2016, our 40th anniversary year, you can meet representatives from Helsinn at:

ASCO Annual Meeting ( Chicago , USA , 3-7 June)

, , 3-7 June) MASCC Annual Meeting ( Adelaide, Australia , 23-25 June)

, 23-25 June) ChemOutsourcing Conference ( Parsippany, New Jersey , 19-21 September)

, 19-21 September) CPhI Worldwide ( Barcelona, Spain , 4-6 October)

, 4-6 October) ESMO Congress ( Copenhagen, Denmark , 7-11 October)

, 7-11 October) BioEurope (Koln, Germany , 4-6 November)

For more information, please visit www.helsinn.com

About MD Anderson

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston ranks as one of the world's most respected centers focused on cancer patient care, research, education and prevention. The institution's sole mission is to end cancer for patients and their families around the world. MD Anderson is one of only 45 comprehensive cancer centers designated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). MD Anderson is ranked No.1 for cancer care in U.S. News & World Report's "Best Hospitals" survey. It has ranked as one of the nation's top two hospitals since the survey began in 1990, and has ranked first for 11 of the past 14 years. MD Anderson receives a cancer center support grant from the NCI of the National Institutes of Health (P30 CA016672).

For more information, please contact:

Helsinn Group

Paola Bonvicini

Head of Communication & Press Office

Tel: +41 91-985-21-21

Info-hhc@helsinn.com



MD Anderson

Ron Gilmore

Tel: 713-795-1898

Rlgilmore1@mdanderson.org



SOURCE Helsinn Group
SAN FRANCISCO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The global HVDC power supply market is expected to reach USD 4.88 billion by 2022, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. These systems, integrate easily with renewable or alternative energy sources such as photovoltaic, fuel cells, and wind power, and provide considerable avenues for industry growth. The emergence of the hybrid HVDC circuit technology that utilizes Voltage Source Converters (VSC), and is compact in design when compared to traditional design is anticipated to fuel product demand over the next seven years. Further, the HVDC supply industry has also witnessed the development of high power Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBT) that has reduced the HVDC system size resulting in substantial economic benefits.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150105/723757 )



HVDC supply enhance the reliability of an electrical system and is the only possible solution available in the market today; which can be utilized in renewable energy sources. The ability of these products to efficiently transmit bulk power over long distance has significantly contributed to the development of direct-drive wind turbine, which supports the sustainable development of the current energy infrastructure.

Browse full research report with TOC on "High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) Power Supply Market Analysis By Voltage (1,000 V, 1,000-4000 V, >4,000 V), By Application (Telecommunication, Medical, Industrial, Oil & Gas) And Segment Forecast To 2022" at: http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/high-voltage-direct-current-hvdc-power-supply-market

Further key findings from the report suggest:

The industrial segment accounted for over 40% of the overall revenue in 2014 and is estimated to grow at a CAGR exceeding 11% over the forecast period. It can be ascribed to rapid industrialization in emerging countries, such as India and China , along with rising demand for efficient power supply.

and , along with rising demand for efficient power supply. The telecommunication application segment is anticipated to witness healthy growth and accounted for over 25% of the market in 2014. It can be primarily attributed to the reliable and long-distance transmission with minimal loss offered by these products. The rapid infrastructure development owing to the widespread usage of the internet may also contribute significantly towards the segment growth.

Over 4,000 V voltage segment accounted for more than 45% of the overall revenue in 2014. It may be primarily ascribed to the enhanced features such as low output noise, creation of an automated high voltage test system, and improved sourcing precision and measurement sensitivity provided by these products.

Asia Pacific HVDC power supply market accounted for over 20% of the overall revenue share in 2014, which may increase over the next seven years. Healthy demand across the transmission grids owing to the ability of these products to connect remotely located electricity generation plants is expected to fuel the demand over the next seven years. Europe is also projected to witness a significant growth owing to increasing emphasis on the use of renewable energy resources in the region.

is also projected to witness a significant growth owing to increasing emphasis on the use of renewable energy resources in the region. The notable companies in the market include ABB Ltd., Excelitas Technologies, General Electric, Glassman Europe Ltd., Siemens AG, Spellman, General Electric, UltraVolt, Inc., Toshiba Corporation, and Alstom SA. The leading industry participants emphasize on quality control and testing, wherein manufacturing activities are monitored right up to final testing to ensure that the product is manufactured in conformance with specific customer requirements and industry standards.

Grand View Research has segmented the global high voltage direct current power supply market on the basis of application, voltage and region:

HVDC Power Supply Voltage Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2012 - 2022) <1,000V 1,000-4,000V >4,000V

HVDC Power Supply Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2012 - 2022) Telecommunication Medical Industrial Oil &Gas Others

HVDC Power Supply Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2012 - 2022) North America Europe Asia Pacific Latin America Middle East & Africa



Browse related reports by Grand View Research:

Tunable Lasers Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/tunable-lasers-market

Gallium Nitrite Semiconductor Devices Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/smartphone-applications-market

Smart Water Bottle Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/smart-water-bottle-market

Microdisplays Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/microdisplays-market

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.

Read Our Blogs - grandviewresearchinc.blog, grandviewresearch.com/blog

Contact:

Sherry James

Corporate Sales Specialist, USA

Grand View Research, Inc

Phone: 1-415-349-0058

Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519

Email:sales@grandviewresearch.com

Web: http://www.grandviewresearch.com



SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc.
BANGALORE, India and LONDON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Platform integration will enable secure mobile banking through advanced biometrics and multi-factor authentication

Infosys Finacle, part of EdgeVerve Systems, a product subsidiary of Infosys (NYSE: INFY), and Onegini today announced a partnership to integrate the Onegini mobile security platform with Finacle banking solutions.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151104/283829LOGO )

The integration will allow banks to provide their customers enhanced security to access and transact across channels. Using this solution, banks can offer customers an option to select advanced authentication methods, including fingerprint, facial, eye and voice recognition as well as multi-factor authentication for added security as they transact on devices. The end-user will be presented different authentication methods depending on device, location and type of transaction.

Andy Dey, President of Customer & Operations at EdgeVerve, said, "A bank is no longer somewhere to go - you carry it with you. This offers a new level of convenience, but at the same time our customers demand secure solutions. Through this partnership, we aim to provide advanced security with convenience to customers."

"Since we started the company, we have worked with many multinational enterprises in the financial industry. By combining EdgeVerve's product capabilities and deep experience with global banks, we will further strengthen our combined offering to reach new markets and customers in the digital era," said Denis Joannides, CEO, Onegini.

About Onegini

Onegini is an international software company and focuses on security and user-friendly disclosure of personal data for the use in mobile apps. Organizations such as AEGON, ING/NN, and the Dutch Railroads use Onegini to address the growing need for digitization of customer access.

Onegini has offices in the Netherlands and Poland.

About Infosys Finacle

Finacle is the industry-leading universal banking solution from EdgeVerve Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys. The solution helps financial institutions develop deeper connections with stakeholders, power continuous innovation and accelerate growth in the digital world. Today, Finacle is the choice of banks across 84 countries and serves over 547 million customers - nearly 16.5 percent of the world's adult banked population.

Finacle solutions address the core banking, e-banking, mobile banking, CRM, payments, treasury, origination, liquidity management, Islamic banking, wealth management, and analytics needs of financial institutions worldwide. Assessment of the top 1000 world banks reveals that banks powered by Finacle enjoy 50 percent higher returns on assets, 30 percent higher returns on capital, and 8.1 percent points lesser costs to income than others.

To know more, visit http://www.finacle.com

About EdgeVerve Systems Ltd

EdgeVerve Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys, develops innovative software products and offers them on-premise or as cloud-hosted business platforms. Our products help businesses develop deeper connections with stakeholders, power continuous innovation and accelerate growth in the digital world. We power our clients' growth in rapidly evolving areas like banking, digital marketing, interactive commerce, distributive trade, credit servicing, customer service and enterprise buying.



Today EdgeVerve products are used by global corporations across financial services, insurance, retail and CPG, life sciences, manufacturing, and telecom. Finacle, our universal banking solution, is the choice of financial institutions across 84 countries and serves over 547 million customers - nearly 16.5 percent of the world's adult banked population.

To know more, visit http://www.edgeverve.com

Safe Harbor

Certain statements in this press release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2015. These filings are available at http://www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. Any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law.

SOURCE Infosys Finacle
HURLEY, England, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Licence marks first combination foam spray for plaque psoriasis: Enstilar (calcipotriol/betamethasone dipropionate) 50 micrograms/g + 0.5mg/g cutaneous foam

LEO Pharma today announced that it has received Marketing Authorisation (MA) for Enstilar for the topical treatment of plaque psoriasis in patients 18 years of age or older in the UK.[1]

The application for MA licence was based on on the pivotal Phase 3a PSO-FAST study[2], which evaluated the efficacy and safety profile across a four week period versus placebo, and a Phase 2 MUSE safety profile study[3]. In the PSO-FAST clinical trial, over half (53.3%) of patients treated with Enstilar were "Clear" or "Almost Clear" by Week 4 as measured by the Physician's Global Assessment (PGA) improvement score, compared to 4.8% in the placebo arm of the study.[2] Additionally, more than half of patients treated with Enstilar achieved a 75% improvement in Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) score from baseline.[2]

"Receiving Marketing Authorisation for Enstilar is a great step forward for people living with psoriasis and LEO Pharma," comments Geraldine Murphy, Managing Director of LEO Pharma UK and Ireland. "Due to the innovative foam spray delivery, Enstilar is easy-to-apply and a offers a convenient, effective and generally well-tolerated new treatment option for people living with plaque psoriasis in the UK."[3],[4]

Enstilar was developed to treat patients with plaque psoriasis[1] - the most common clinical form of psoriasis.[5] In the UK, around 1.8 million people have psoriasis.[6]

Data shows that Enstilar is an effective topical combination (calcipotriol/betamethasone dipropionate) treatment and is generally well-tolerated[3], with some patients in clinical trials experiencing visible signs of improvement within the first week, and more than half achieving treatment success after a four-week period.[2]

Marketing Authorisation is anticipated in the other European countries involved in this regulatory procedure, including Ireland.

Notes to editors

About Enstilar

Enstilar (calcipotriol/betamethasone dipropionate) is a topical, alcohol-free, foam spray treatment for all severities of plaque psoriasis in patients who are 18 years or older.[1] It is designed to provide patients with a convenient treatment option that can be easily applied.[4] In clinical trials, the foam spray was generally well-tolerated and provided relief from psoriasis symptoms, including itch.[2],[3] Patients treated with the new product in clinical trials experienced visible signs of improvement within the first week, and more than half achieving treatment success after a four-week period.[2]

About Psoriasis

Psoriasis is a chronic, inflammatory skin disease, which is frequently accompanied by multiple physical and/or psychological comorbidities, such as psoriatic arthritis, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and depression.[7]

Psoriasis is estimated to affect up to 3% of the population of the UK.[6] 80% of patients are affected by plaque psoriasis - the most common type of psoriasis.[5]

Topical treatments can be used as first-line therapies for the majority of patients with psoriasis.[8]

For more information about psoriasis visit our QualityCare [ TM ] website at: http://www.qualitycarebyleo.co.uk

website at: http://www.qualitycarebyleo.co.uk For practical advice to make small changes that can have a big impact on psoriasis, download the MyPso app at the Apple App Store or Google Play

About LEO Pharma

LEO Pharma helps people achieve healthy skin. By offering care solutions to patients in more than 100 countries globally, the company supports people in managing their skin conditions.

Founded in 1908 and owned by the LEO Foundation, LEO Pharma has devoted decades of research and development to delivering products and solutions to people suffering from skin diseases.

LEO Pharma is headquartered in Denmark and employs around 4,800 people worldwide. The UK/IE affiliate is headquartered in Hurley, Berkshire.

For more information about LEO Pharma UK/IE, visit http://www.leo-pharma.co.uk.

References

Enstilar SmPC; UK Available http://www.mhra.gov.uk/home/groups/spcpil/documents/spcpil/con1461299716483.pdf. Last Accessed April 2016 Leonardi C, et al. Efficacy and Safety of Calcipotriene Plus Betamethasone Dipropionate Aerosol Foam in Patients With Psoriasis Vulgaris - a Randomized Phase III Study (PSO-FAST). Journal of Drugs in Dermatology 2015; 14:12 Taraska V, et al. A Novel Aerosol Foam Formulation of Calcipotriol and Betamethasone Has No Impact on HPA Axis and Calcium Homeostasis in Patients With Extensive Psoriasis Vulgaris. Journal of Cutaneous Medicine and Surgery 2015; 1-8 Koo J, et al. Superior efficacy of calcipotriene and betamethasone dipropionate aerosol foam versus ointment in patients with psoriasis vulgaris - A randomized phase II study. Journal of Dermatological Treatment 2015; 1471-1753 American Academy of Dermatology. Psoriasis. Available https://www.aad.org/media/stats/conditions/psoriasis. Last accessed April 2016 Psoriasis Association. About Psoriasis. Available https://www.psoriasis-association.org.uk/pages/view/about-psoriasis. Last accessed April 2016 National Psoriasis Foundation. Comorbidities associatied with psoriatic disease. Available https://www.psoriasis.org/about-psoriasis/related-conditions. Last accessed April 2016 Psoriasis Assocation. Topical Treatments. Available https://www.psoriasis-association.org.uk/pages/view/about-psoriasis/treatments/first-line-treatments. Last accessed April 2016

Date of preparation: April 2016

Job code: 1070/00036c

SOURCE LEO Pharma
DUBAI, UAE, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai and The Big Heart Foundation, an initiative of Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi, Wife of His Highness the Ruler of Sharjah and UNHCR Eminent Advocate for Refugee Children, are working together to treat a three year old Syrian girl called Salma Mustafa Asaad, aged three and was born with around two thirds of one of her eyelids missing, due to a rare condition called Congenital Eyelid Coloboma. This is where the eyelid and eyebrow are cleft and need repair- her right eye is healthy.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/359890 )



The first of a series of surgical procedures to correct this was recently completed successfully at Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai by a specialist oculoplastic team, led by Consultant Ophthalmic & Oculoplastic Surgeon Dr. Yassir Abou-Rayyah. They removed eyelid tissue from her lower lid and grafted it in the upper lid to close the defect. Salma is recovering from the procedure at present and will require a series of further specialist eye surgeries planned over the next 12-18 months.

Salma's father, Mustafa Ahmed, said: "I want to extend my profound thanks to Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher Al Qasimi, Wife of His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, and The Big Heart Foundation and all its administrators, and to the doctors and medical staff at Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai and especially Dr. Yassir Abou-Rayyah, for facilitating this eye surgery for my daughter Salma, and bringing joy and happiness to our hearts."

Mariam Al Hammadi, Director of Salam Ya Seghar, added: "Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi seeks to alleviate the suffering of children and refugees wherever and whenever her Highness can. It is through her Highnesses' The Big Heart Foundation (TBHF) that the surgery for little Salma can be provided in collaboration with Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai. It is a beautiful thing to give a child her sight back, it is a gift that will last her lifetime. TBHF always strives to provide support to children in need through various charitable projects and relief campaigns, and we hope that this assistance will reach all people who need our help and support."

Commenting on the medical condition and treatment, Dr Yassir Abou-Rayyah, Consultant Ophthalmic & Oculoplastic Surgeon, said: "Salma has a rare congenital disease, which severely affects her vision. The surgical team was very pleased with the first stage surgery to separate her eyelid from the eye globe and her condition is now very stable, and we now look forward to seeing Salma grow and develop over the next few months, before we continue the treatment to fully restore her upper and lower eyelids. We are very optimistic about the outcome because she is so young and still growing, and look forward to helping Salma achieve normal healthy vision.

Moorfields is delighted to work with The Big Heart Foundation to help Salma and her parents through a challenging series of surgeries, as part of our charitable work in the region and after her referral from the Palestine Children's Relief Fund."

Yara Al Saleh, UAE Chapter President, Palestine Children's Relief Fund, concluded: "Our primary goal is to identify and treat every child in need in the Middle East region, regardless of their nationality, religion, race or gender. We are doing the best we can to make a positive difference in children's lives and bring back the hope and smiles to their faces again. We are pleased to have great volunteers and partners like Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai and Salam Ya Seghar to support us in the treatment of Salma and many others."

Notes to editors:

About the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF)

A registered 501(c)(3) non-governmental organization.

The PCRF is a non-political, non-profit organization established in 1991 to address the medical and humanitarian crisis facing children in the Middle East. Today the PCRF provides medical and humanitarian aid for hundreds of children living in the Middle East region - regardless of their nationality, religion or gender.

The PCRF sends medical volunteer teams to Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan to treat children in urgent surgical need and train local medical personnel. More than 20,000 children already benefitted from this program.

Children who cannot be treated locally are provided with cost-free treatment abroad. Since 1991 the PCRF has sent over 1,500 children from Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Iraq oversees for free medical care, which is provided by supporters in North and South America, Europe, Asia and other parts of the Middle East.

The PCRF also runs numerous humanitarian programs for children in need, especially the ones suffering in war-torn Syria and Gaza through providing food, clothes, heaters, wheelchairs, eyeglasses, cancer medicine and other medical supplies.

To learn more visit:

http://www.pcrf.net

Facebook : PCRFUAE

Twitter : PCRF_UAE

Instagram : PCRF_UAE

About The Big Heart Foundation

Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi, Wife of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Ruler of Sharjah was appointed as UNHCR's first Eminent Advocate for Refugee Children in May 2013. In this role, Sheikha Jawaher helped increase public awareness about refugees and the work of UNHCR, with a focus on children. Her previous work with charities and her fund-raising initiatives are testament to her commitment to helping relieve the suffering of people affected by war, especially women and children. After the huge success of the Big Heart Campaign during its two years, it was re-launched by Her Highness in 2015 as an independent foundation. The Big Heart Foundation has currently three divisions supporting childhood cancer, children in Palestine and refugee children and their families. In future new philanthropic initiatives for the family and children may be added to the foundation's scope of work as per Her Highness's directives.

About Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai

Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai (MEHD) is the first overseas branch of Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, the oldest and one of the largest centres for ophthalmic treatment, teaching and research in the world. Located at the Al Razi Medical Complex in Dubai Health Care City, the facility provides day case surgery and outpatient diagnostic and treatment services, for a variety of surgical and non-surgical eye conditions. MEHD will also raise standards for research and teaching in the region. MEHD is owned and managed by the NHS Foundation Trust, and maintains close links with London, to ensure that patients in the GCC receive the best eye care treatment in the world.

Issued on behalf of Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai by WPR.

SOURCE Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai by WPR
WARSAW, Poland and SAN FRANCISCO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Stanford University study demonstrates effectiveness of Light Therapy in helping long-haul travellers to readjust their circadian rhythms

As the demand for air transport continues to grow and long-distance flights become increasingly commonplace, travellers are looking to cutting-edge technology to help combat the sleep disruption, fatigue and poor concentration that often accompanies jet lag. A recent study at Stanford University demonstrated how exposing a person to short flashes of light during sleep could be the secret to minimising these effects. Through manipulating levels of melatonin in the body, there was a significant speed-up in the process of the body adjusting to its rescheduled circadian rhythm. Using this principle, Neuroon is a revolutionary wearable device that launched in December 2015, providing jet lag therapy for its user.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160421/358226 )



(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160421/358227 )



(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160421/358225LOGO )

Through combining advanced brain wave and pulse measurement technology with a comfortable sleeping mask commonly used in air travel, Neuroon uses Bright Light Therapy to improve sleep efficiency, and most importantly to alleviate jet lag. Using built-in biometric sensors, the Neuroon system monitors the user's sleep architecture, providing advanced sleep analysis, calculates a sleep efficiency score, and offers optimization advice. Of all the consumer-grade sleep trackers, Neuroon is the most sophisticated. It tracks light, deep, REM, and sleep interruptions, conveniently displaying the totals in a daily dashboard. Neuroon is comprised of three components: a comfortable mask made of soft, hypoallergenic material, the Smartpack, which contains the device's sensors and electronics encased in medically certified silicone, and the Neuroon app that controls the mask wirelessly using Bluetooth.

Jet Lag Blocker is one of the main features of the Neuroon which helps combat the sleep problems associated with rapid time zone changes. After setting the travel destination in the mobile app, the mask automatically fine-tunes the appropriate light therapy during sleep (without interfering with it) and offers a number of recommendations to help the user optimize their circadian rhythm while traveling. For the best results users should start the therapy several days before traveling. By adjusting a person's biorhythm before their travel, the Neuroon can effectively minimize the effects of a long-distance trip before they occur.

Contact data: Inteliclinic, Polish - US startup, Inventor of the Neuroon.

Dagna Frydrych, Communications Manager: dagna@inteliclinic.com / +14159925216

SOURCE Neuroon and Inteliclinic
LONDON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

BE OPEN presents the new tour of the Young Talent Award (YTA). This year it unites several continents under the topic of "Graphic Design". The jurors and participants represent Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain, UK, USA and New Zealand.

The main winner and the Founder's choice winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in Nottingham, on April 28th, at the annual Cumulus conference. The online voting for the web choice winner will continue till May 15th.

Earlier the candidates presented their works to the judgment of the international jury, consisting of Luisa Collina, Professor of Design, Head of the Master of Science program at Milano Politechnico; President of the Cumulus Association; Annabel Pretty; Senior Lecturer at the Department of Architecture, Unitec Institute of Technology, New Zealand; Umberto Tolino, Professor of Communication Design at Milano Politecnico; Jose Allard, associate Professor and researcher at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile and Fred Murrell, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Graphic Design, Rocky Mountain College of Art.

According to the rules of YTA, the jury first selected the long-list of 30, and then shortened it to ten finalists: Sofia Drum Bento (USA), Jacque Kemp (USA), Natalie Mcqueen (USA), Catalina Perez (Chile), The Clocksmiths (Italy), Jenifer Wisler (USA), Pablo Gonzalez (Chile), Caroline Konarkowska (New Zealand), Passport Design Bureau (UK) and QQO (Italy).

Out of the finalists three winners will be named:

Main winner chosen by the jury voting ( 16000 Euro );

); the Founder's choice winner named by BE OPEN Founder Yelena Baturina ( 5000 Euro );

( ); Web choice winner chosen by online voting on BE OPEN Facebook page ( 2000 Euro ).

Yelena Baturina: "We believe that incubating talent is vital in the design sphere, helping new designers get a firmer foothold on the career ladder through contacts made within our professional networks, and also through giving them the time they need to develop their thinking without financial pressure - or, in fact, to have the luxury of 'being open' to new ideas. That is the founding principle behind everything BE OPEN does - taking the risk of supporting great ideas that have the potential to change the way we live."

The new tour of the YTA is implemented in partnership with Cumulus International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media, and curated by Luisa Collina. Cumulus is the only global association to serve art and design education and research.

SOURCE BE OPEN Foundation
DUBLIN, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Bayer AG has reported first-quarter profits of USD 3.83 billion before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The earnings are the result of a strong market performance from the German multinational's best-selling drugs Xarelto and Eylea, drugs Bayer is banking on to spur growth in the coming years. Xarelto's patent expiration date was extended by four years this week to Aug 28, 2024. The global pharmaceuticals market is expected to reach a value of USD 1,147.1 billion by 2019, according to a report available from Research and Markets, providing Bayer with a strong market for increased sales.



(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160330/349511LOGO )



Bayer was reorganized into three divisions on Jan 1 2016 to facilitate a focus on developing new drugs. In addition to its pharmaceuticals, consumer health and crop sciences divisions, Bayer also operates an animal health unit, but the company recently indicated that it would either bolster the unit with deals or sell it. The global animal health market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 3.96% by 2019, according to an industry report, providing Bayer with a stable market should it decide to expand its animal health offerings.



Bayer's reshaping in 2014 by outgoing CEO Marijn Dekkers, who will be replaced by chief of strategy Werner Baumann, is believed to have contributed to Bayer's present success. Dekkers was responsible for the acquisition of Merck & Co.'s over-the-counter drugs branch, a move that expanded Bayer's market reach. A recent industry report noted that while the OTC drugs market remains highly competitive, leading companies can consolidate their market position through strategic acquisitions.



Bayer's first-quarter profits rose company shares by 1.9% to EUR 111.75 in Frankfurt trading, giving Germany's biggest company a market value of EUR 92.4 billion. Bayer's stock had declined by 5% this year before the profit postings.

For further information on this topic, and a full list of all related documentation, please visit the Pharmaceuticals section at http://www.researchandmarkets.com/rm/NQQQ.

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-26/bayer-beats-estimates-as-demand-for-latest-drugs-stays-buoyant

About Research and Markets

Research and Markets is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.





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SOURCE Research and Markets
DUBLIN, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

France's DCNS Group has been awarded one of the world's biggest defense contracts to build 12 submarines for Australia. The USD 39 billion contract is expected to generate around 2,800 jobs in Adelaide, Australia, where the submarines will be built by Australian workers using Australian steel. DCNS's triumph has come as a disappointment to Japan, as both Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. had made offers for the deal. Germany's Thyssenkrupp AG also made an unsuccessful offer. The deal will bolster the global submarine market, which is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 4.44% by 2020 according to a recent report from Research and Markets.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160330/349511LOGO )



DCNS's diesel-electric powered Shortfin Barracuda submarines will replace Australia's Collins Class models, and the 12 new submarines are expected to enter service by the early 2030s. The decision to award the contract to the French state-controlled DCNS was likely influenced by China's position as an economic partner of Australia. China and Japan are currently contesting territories in the South and East China Sea, and the disputes have led to somewhat of an arms race in Asia. A recent Australian Defense White Paper estimated 50% of the world's submarines will be located in the Indo-Pacific region by 2035.



The defense deal will likely influence other markets related to submarines. For instance, the global SONAR systems market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.01% by 2019, as noted in an industry report, but could be higher due to the contract. The SONAR systems market may also grow if neighbouring countries decide to improve their defense detection systems in response to Australia's 12 new submarines.



Similarly, the global high-voltage power cable market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 7.25% by 2019, as predicted in a market report. High-voltage power cables are used extensively in submarines, and DCNS's contract may result in a higher demand for such cables.

For further information on this topic, and a full list of all related documentation, please visit the Maritime section at http://www.researchandmarkets.com/rm/NQRN.

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-26/france-wins-39-billion-contract-to-build-australian-submarines

About Research and Markets

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SOURCE Research and Markets
ESPOO, Finland, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Picosun Oy, the leading equipment and solutions provider for high end ALD (Atomic Layer Deposition) thin film coating technology, continues breaking sales records with its PICOPLATFORM production cluster tools.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140528/689557 )



Increasing sales of high volume PICOPLATFORM clusters to key industrial customers boosted the company's 12-month rolling sales to 57% growth, further accelerating the strong growth seen in 2015. Both batch and single wafer cluster tools are being installed in the leading semiconductor companies in the USA and Asia.

The main factors behind the continuous success of the PICOPLATFORM technology are low cost of ownership due to fast processing with multiple batch or single wafer ALD reactors in the same cluster tool, and easy maintenance with several support agreement options. Fully automated, SEMI S2 certified hardware solutions offer the leading process quality with record-low particle levels and excellent yield for up to 300 mm wafer size. The flexible, modular configuration of the cluster tools enables optimized production solutions tailored for every customer's individual needs.

The strong sales promote substantial investments towards even stronger growth for Picosun. Best-in-class contract coating facilities, advanced service product portfolio, and expanding premises and worldwide locations affirm Picosun's position as the ALD solutions provider of choice for the global microelectronics industries.

"We are proud of the success of our PICOPLATFORM technology. Fast, fully automatic batch processing ensures continuously new design wins with economical production and excellent end product quality. Customer satisfaction is everything to us. We are happy to witness how our dedication to ALD and our decades of ALD expertise now enable manufacturing in the most advanced semiconductor technology nodes," states Mr. Juhana Kostamo, Managing Director of Picosun.

Picosun provides the most advanced ALD thin film coating technology to enable the industrial leap into the future, with high end production solutions and unmatched expertise in the field. Today, PICOSUN ALD equipment are in daily manufacturing use in numerous major industries around the world. Picosun is based in Finland, with subsidiaries in North America, China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan, and a world-wide sales and support network. For more information visit http://www.picosun.com.

Contact Details: Juhana Kostamo, Managing Director (email juhana.kostamo@picosun.com; tel. +358-50-321-1955)

SOURCE Picosun Oy
BOSTON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Paul Mydelski, Chairman and Founder of RE/MAX Leading Edge located at 53 Hereford Street has welcomed Michelle Hediger and James Marsden to the Back Bay office. Hediger and Marsden join RE/MAX Leading Edge from Bushari Group. Before coming to Leading Edge, Hediger and Marsden's Team, SellBoston, was the #1 sales team at Bushari.

Hediger and Marsden specialize in new construction condominium sales in Boston and can be credited with the sale of the new 10 unit condo development known as the Residences at 945 East Broadway in South Boston. These brand new units are the highest priced condominiums under agreement in the City Point neighborhood of South Boston.

"Our success is based on the strategy of understanding pricing trends and pricing property where you push to the end of the envelope without breaking through," said James Marsden.

"We study both consumer and design trends and are experts in the local market," said Michelle Hediger. "We get into these buildings at the ground level and partner with the developer to navigate through the entire process from layout and design to choosing paint colors, staging, pricing, marketing and negotiating the property to close."

Hediger has a dual Biology and Chemistry degree and achieved success early on in pharmaceutical advertising before pursuing a career in real estate. She was recently a featured speaker at the revered Inman CONNECT conference in New York in January. Marsden is a seasoned real estate professional, having worked in the industry since 1989. Marsden started his real estate career in New York as a RE/MAX agent and moved on to own his own real estate brokerage before making the move to Boston. Hediger and Marsden teamed up in 2011.

"We are honored to have SellBoston on the RE/MAX Leading Edge team," said Paul Mydelski, Chairman and Founder of RE/MAX Leading Edge. "Michelle and James are leaders in the Boston real estate market and we're excited to support their efforts and help them achieve their growth goals and take their business to new levels."

In addition to 945 East Broadway, SellBoston successfully marketed and sold numerous other new homes like:

349 Silver Street #1-3 - South Boston

10 Beech Street #1-3  Somerville

230 - 232 Bowen Street #1-3 - South Boston

112 West 9th Street #1-4 - South Boston

945 East Broadway #1-10 - South Boston

109 - 123 Dresser Street (5 Townhomes) - South Boston

166 - 179 Gold Street (4 Townhomes) - South Boston

For more information about Michelle and James, visit their website at www.sellboston.com.

About RE/MAX Leading Edge

RE/MAX Leading Edge is one of Greater Boston's leading full-service real estate companies offering residential real estate services to buyers and sellers. Founded in 2001, RE/MAX Leading Edge has grown to more than 180 sales professionals and serves the communities of Arlington, Back Bay, Lexington, Lynnfield, Melrose, Newton, Reading, Somerville, Wakefield, Watertown and Winchester. The Company is the highest-producing RE/MAX office in New England and fifth largest real estate firm in Massachusetts.

RE/MAX Leading Edge is affiliated with RE/MAX INTEGRA, New England and RE/MAX, LLC with a global network of 1000,000 agents in 99 countries worldwide. For more information about RE/MAX Leading Edge, visit www.LeadingEdgeAgents.com.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151217/297009LOGO

SOURCE RE/MAX Leading Edge

Related Links

http://www.leadingedgeagents.com


NEW YORK, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Fourth Annual Aerospace Manufacturing Conference presented by Penton's SpeedNews Conferences will take place in Charleston, South Carolina on May 3-4, 2016 at the Belmond Charleston Place hotel. To register, visit http://speednews.com/aerospace-manufacturing-conference.

The Aerospace Manufacturing Conference will bring together the leaders of major manufacturers and suppliers in the aerospace industry's southeast region to discuss manufacturing capabilities and processes, innovation within manufacturing, modern machining technologies and automation, as well as industry trends. Scheduled speakers include representatives from:

Accurus Aerospace

Alcoa Forgings & Extrusions

Aries Manufacturing

Boeing

Composites Horizons

Dassault Systemes

Dufieux Industrie

Gardner Aerospace

GKN Aerospace

Hexcel

ICF International

Kennametal

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics

Makino

Moog Aircraft Group

Motormindz

Okuma America

Peaxy

Pratt & Whitney

SC Aerospace

Siemens PLM Software

Spirit Aerosystems

Stratasys

Toray Composites (America), Inc.

The Conference will focus on all key manufacturing aspects including tooling, machining, equipment, components, electronics, advanced materials and manufacturing, engineering, and technological systems. The agenda will cover what is really behind the hype of Internet of Things (IoT), a major theme across Penton impacting many industry sectors including aviation; as well as Additive Manufacturing (AM), Big Data, and how the Auto and Aero industries learn from each other. Attendees will also have the chance to participate in a tour of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner final assembly facility.

Event sponsors include the Aero Metals Alliance, ARIES Manufacturing, Charleston Regional Development Alliance, Crosspoint, Dassault Systemes, K&L Gates, Mazak, Okuma, Piedmont Triad International Airport, and Siemens.

For information on registration, promotional and advertising opportunities, contact Joanna Speed at +1-424-465-6501 or [email protected]. On Twitter, follow @speednewsconf (https://twitter.com/speednewsconf). For information about all SpeedNews events, visit http://speednews.com/all/conference.

ABOUT PENTON'S AVIATION WEEK NETWORK

Penton's Aviation Week Network is the largest multimedia information and services provider for the global aviation, aerospace and defense industries that has a database of 1.2 million professionals around the world. Industry professionals rely on Aviation Week for analysis, marketing and intelligence. Customers include the world's leading manufacturers, suppliers, airlines, business aviation operators, militaries, governments and other organizations that serve this global market. The product portfolio includes Aviation Week & Space Technology, AC-U-KWIK, Aircraft Blue Book, Airportdata.com, Air Charter Guide, Air Transport World, AviationWeek.com, Aviation Week Intelligence Network, Business & Commercial Aviation, ShowNews, SpeedNews, Fleet and MRO forecasts, global maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) tradeshows and aerospace & defense conferences.

ABOUT PENTON

Penton is an innovative information services company that empowers nearly 20 million business decision makers in markets that drive more than 12 trillion dollars in purchases each year. Our products inform with rich industry insights and workflow tools; engage through dynamic events, education and networking; and advance business with powerful marketing services programs. Penton is the way smart businesses buy, sell and grow.

Headquartered in New York, Penton is privately owned by MidOcean Partners and Wasserstein & Co., LP. For more information, visit http://www.penton.com or follow us on Twitter @PentonNow.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Joanna Speed

SpeedNews

424-465-6501

[email protected]

@speednewsconf

Facebook.com/SpeedNews

linkedin.com/company/speednews

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359565LOGO

SOURCE Penton

Related Links

http://speednews.com/all/conference


COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP) has named Lonni L. Dieck senior vice president and treasurer. Dieck currently is senior vice president - Corporate Planning and Budgeting for AEP. Oliver J. "Ollie" Sever will succeed Dieck as AEP's senior vice president - Corporate Planning and Budgeting. Sever is currently managing director - Financial Forecasting for AEP. Both changes are effective May 2.

Dieck, 57, will have responsibility for AEP's treasury, corporate strategy, trusts and investment activities. Dieck will replace Julie A. Sloat, who was named president and chief operating officer of AEP Ohio April 14. Sever, 59 will have responsibility for financial planning, budgeting and reporting; fundamental analysis; and integrated resource planning. Both Dieck and Sever will report to Brian X. Tierney, executive vice president and chief financial officer.

"Lonni's financial acumen and deep understanding of our company and industry make her the right person to advance our strong treasury organization. Her leadership of our Corporate Planning and Budgeting organization has helped AEP realize significant operational savings and achieve earnings growth," Tierney said.

"Ollie's experience and skill in managing our financial planning and forecasting and the valuable analysis he provides to support our operational and regulatory efforts gives me confidence that the success of our Corporate Planning and Budgeting organization will continue under his leadership," Tierney said.

Dieck has served as senior vice president - Corporate Planning and Budgeting at AEP since 2008. She also has held leadership positions as vice president - RTO and Public Policy, vice president - Regulatory Case Management, vice president - Commercial Business Services, and director - Strategic Analysis-Projects. Dieck joined AEP in 1991 as a senior treasury staff accountant. Before joining AEP, Dieck was an audit manager for Arthur Andersen LLP.

Dieck has a bachelor's degree in accounting from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. She is a member of the board of trustees and treasurer of the Ronald McDonald House of Central Ohio and serves on the board of directors for the Women's Fund of Central Ohio. She also is a member of the executive committee for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Light the Night Walk in Columbus.

Sever has been managing director - Financial Forecasting at AEP since 2000. He has held several leadership positions in AEP's Financial Planning organization including director - Financial Planning and Forecasting and manager - Financial Planning and Forecasting. Sever started working at AEP in 1983 as an assistant financial analyst. Before joining AEP, Sever worked in the Controller's Division at Dayton Power & Light.

Sever has a bachelor's degree in business administration from The Ohio State University and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Dayton. He completed the Darden Partnership Program at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia.

American Electric Power is one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, delivering electricity and custom energy solutions to nearly 5.4 million customers in 11 states. AEP owns the nation's largest electricity transmission system, a more than 40,000-mile network that includes more 765-kilovolt extra-high voltage transmission lines than all other U.S. transmission systems combined. AEP also operates 223,000 miles of distribution lines. AEP ranks among the nation's largest generators of electricity, owning approximately 31,000 megawatts of generating capacity in the U.S. AEP's utility units operate as AEP Ohio, AEP Texas, Appalachian Power (in Virginia and West Virginia), AEP Appalachian Power (in Tennessee), Indiana Michigan Power, Kentucky Power, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, and Southwestern Electric Power Company (in Arkansas, Louisiana and east Texas). AEP's headquarters are in Columbus, Ohio.

SOURCE American Electric Power
MEXICO CITY, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Grupo Aeromexico S.A.B. de C.V. ("Aeromexico") (BMV: AEROMEX), today reported its unaudited consolidated results for the first quarter 2016.

KEY FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE FIRST QUARTER 2016

Grupo Aeromexico's first quarter 2016 revenues reached $12.1 billion pesos, a 12.9% year on-year increase.

pesos, a 12.9% year on-year increase. Grupo Aeromexico reported an operating profit of $641 million pesos, a 24.6% year-on-year increase. Operating margin reached 5.3%, a 0.5 percentage point improvement compared to the same period of 2015. This represents the 24 th consecutive quarter of positive EBIT results.

pesos, a 24.6% year-on-year increase. Operating margin reached 5.3%, a 0.5 percentage point improvement compared to the same period of 2015. This represents the 24 consecutive quarter of positive EBIT results. During the quarter, EBITDAR reached $3.1 billion pesos, a 27.8% increase compared to the prior year. EBITDAR margin amounted to 25.5%, a 3.0 percentage point increase compared to the first quarter of 2015.

pesos, a 27.8% increase compared to the prior year. EBITDAR margin amounted to 25.5%, a 3.0 percentage point increase compared to the first quarter of 2015. Net income reached $161 million pesos with a 1.3% margin for the first quarter 2016.

pesos with a 1.3% margin for the first quarter 2016. These financial results reflect the positive impact of reduced fuel prices and the negative impact of Mexican peso depreciation against the US dollar.

In the first quarter of 2016 cash flow generation remained strong with $1.0 billion pesos incremental net cash flow generated from operating activities. Aeromexico's cash position as of March 31 st 2016 was $6.6 billion pesos.

pesos incremental net cash flow generated from operating activities. Aeromexico's cash position as of 2016 was pesos. During the quarter, the Company added two aircraft to its fleet under operating lease agreements: one Embraer-170 and one Embraer-190. Grupo Aeromexico's operating fleet comprised 126 aircraft, an increase of one aircraft compared to the fourth quarter of 2015.

To access the full text of this earnings release, please visit Aeromexico's Investor Relations website at: http://www.aeromexico.com/investors/welcome.html

CONFERENCE CALL DETAILS

DATE: Grupo Aeromexico will hold its Q1 2016 results call on April 26, 2016



TIME: 9:00 am ET/8:00 am Mexico City Time & Central Time



DIAL-IN: US Toll Free: 1-866-320-0174

International Toll: 1-785-424-1631



SPEAKERS: Andres Conesa Labastida, CEO

Ricardo Sanchez Baker, CFO

Registration is required; please dial in at least ten minutes prior to the scheduled start time.

The conference call will be available for replay until May 26, 2016 at 11:59 PM:

Toll Free US 1-877-481-4010

Toll International 1-919-882-2331

Replay Conference ID Number: 10021

The conference call replay can also be accessed via Grupo Aeromexico's Investor Relations website:

http://aeromexico.com/investors/welcome.html

Safe Harbor Statement

This release contains forward-looking statements regarding the Company's results and business prospects. The readers should know that the results obtained may differ from that stated on this release. Past performances do not guarantee the behavior of future performances. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any of these statements, either as a result of new information, future actions or other related events.

About Grupo Aeromexico

Grupo Aeromexico, S.A.B. de C.V. is a holding company whose subsidiaries are engaged in commercial aviation in Mexico and the promotion of passenger loyalty programs. Aeromexico, the largest airline in Mexico, operates more than 600 daily flights from its main hub in Terminal 2 at the Mexico City International Airport. Its destinations network features more than 80 cities on three continents, including 47 destinations in Mexico, 17 in the United States, 12 in Latin America, three in Europe, two in Asia and one in Canada.

The Group's fleet of more than 120 aircraft is comprised of Boeing 787, 777, 767 and 737 jet airliners and next generation Embraer 145, 170, 175 and 190 models. In 2012, the airline announced the most significant investment strategy in aviation history in Mexico, to purchase 100 Boeing aircraft including 90 MAX B737 jet airliners and 10 B787-9 Dreamliners.

As a founding member of the SkyTeam airline alliance, Aeromexico offers customers 1,000 destinations in 178 countries served by the 19 SkyTeam airline partners rewarding passengers with benefits including access to 530 premium airport lounges around the world. Aeromexico also offers travel on its codeshare partner flights with Delta Air Lines, Alaska Airlines, Avianca, LAN, TACA and TAM with extensive connectivity in countries like the United States, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia and Peru. www.aeromexico.com www.skyteam.com

SOURCE Grupo Aeromexico S.A.B. de C.V.

Related Links

http://www.aeromexico.com


CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Net income: $250 million

GAAP EPS: $0.49 and Adjusted EPS 1 : $0.52

GAAP ROTCE: 7.3% and Core ROTCE 1 : 9.8%

GAAP Tangible Book Value: $27.10 /share and Adjusted Tangible Book Value 1 : $25.36 /share, up 7% YoY

Core pre-tax income, ex. repositioning items 1 : $419 million

Net financing revenue, ex. OID: $964 million , up 12% YoY

Higher than normal insurance weather losses, up $22 million YoY

Adjusted efficiency ratio 1 : 45%

Announced elimination of all remaining Series A preferred stock

TradeKing acquisition announced, adding online brokerage and digital wealth management to franchise

Simplified regulatory structure, Ally Bank approved as Federal Reserve state member bank

Consumer auto originations of $9.0 billion with improved risk adjusted returns; Growth channel originations up 23% YoY, highest ever quarterly used volume

Auto credit and lease residual performance in line with expectations

Surpassed $70 billion in total deposits, up 15% YoY

Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) today reported net income of $250 million for the first quarter of 2016. This compares to net income of $576 million for the first quarter of 2015, which included a one-time gain of $397 million from discontinued operations resulting from the completed sale of the Chinese auto finance joint venture.

The company reported core pre-tax income of $412 million in the first quarter of 2016, increasing from $299 million in the comparable prior year period, which included a $190 million repositioning expense related to the early extinguishment of high-cost legacy debt. The company reported core pre-tax income, excluding repositioning items, of $419 million in the first quarter of 2016, compared to $490 million in the prior year period, primarily due to a $65 million net gain on the sale of Troubled Debt Restructuring (TDR) mortgage loans a year ago that did not repeat.

Adjusted earnings per diluted common share for the quarter were $0.52, compared to $0.52 in the previous quarter and $0.52 in the prior year period. Ally reported generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) earnings of $0.49 per common share in the first quarter of 2016.

Strong quarterly operating results continued to be driven by improved net financing revenue, excluding original issue discount (OID), which totaled $964 million in the first quarter of 2016, up from $860 million a year ago, as the result of strong loan growth. Net interest margin (NIM), excluding OID, improved 16 basis points year-over-year to 2.63 percent, as a result of higher asset yields and the company's continued focus on lowering its cost of funds.

Ally incurred $220 million in provision expense, an increase of $104 million year-over-year, driven by the continued shift toward more retail auto loan assets on the balance sheet and fewer leasing assets which do not contribute to provision expense, as well as a full credit spectrum portfolio mix. Also driving results was a non-recurring provision release from favorable credit performance on the dealer floorplan loans in the first quarter of 2015. Credit performance during the quarter remained on target with net charge-offs up slightly year-over-year at 64 basis points, as the portfolio continued to perform within the company's expectations. Ally experienced higher than normal first quarter weather losses in its insurance unit, increasing $22 million year-over-year.

Consumer auto originations remained strong at $9.0 billion for the quarter, down from $9.8 billion in the prior year period. Ally received a record number of applications in the quarter and continued to deploy a disciplined originations strategy with an emphasis on asset quality and loan profitability in its continued effort to allocate capital efficiently. The risk adjusted yield, which measures expected annual revenue less expected annual credit losses, on retail originations during the quarter improved 52 basis points year-over-year. Gains in the Growth2 and Chrysler channels continued to drive consumer auto originations, and excluding GM lease and subvented business, originations increased 10 percent year-over-year. Used vehicle originations continue to expand, growing to 45 percent of total quarterly originations, which is the highest in Ally history.

"Ally's first quarter results demonstrate the strengths of our operations, and highlight the significant progress made to further diversify and grow as a leader in digital financial services," stated Ally Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Brown. "We remain fully committed to exploring all options to enhance shareholder value. From our announced acquisition of TradeKing, which will further expand our digital offerings, to efforts to rationalize our capital structure and pursue share repurchases and shareholder dividends, our priorities remain centered on driving enhanced returns and growing shareholder value for the long term."

Brown continued, "Ally's auto finance operation continued to post consistently strong profitability. As a result, pre-tax income was up 10 percent over last year, and risk adjusted returns far outpaced losses. This is a testament to our ability to adapt to an evolving marketplace, including expanding relationships with online auto retailers that specialize in offering used vehicles in an innovative way to a growing base of customers looking for a digital auto experience."

"The deposits business continued to show strong momentum with $3.5 billion of retail deposit growth in the quarter and over 53,000 new customers joining the Ally family  with about half of those customers being millennials," Brown explained. "We are very encouraged by the growth we are seeing in the franchise and the success of the brand in the marketplace. This is a strong foundation to build upon as we introduce additional consumer products to the portfolio later this year, such as credit card, wealth management and mortgages."

He concluded, "Operational momentum remains on our side  the franchises continue to strengthen, customers continue to support our brand, and we are being disciplined stewards in managing expenses and deploying capital. We will aggressively focus on executing our plans over the remainder of the year and beyond that we believe will drive quality returns for our shareholders."

TradeKing Acquisition

In early April, Ally announced it has signed an agreement to acquire TradeKing Group, Inc., a digital wealth management company, for $275 million, subject to certain adjustments, with the transaction expected to close during the second or third quarter of 2016. The addition of an online brokerage and wealth management business are the next key steps in Ally's digital product evolution and will create a powerful combination of segment-leading direct banking and innovative investment services in a single, integrated customer experience. The addition of this growth business will enhance shareholder value over time by strengthening the overall franchise, adding attractive fee-based revenue and approximately $4.5 billion of client assets under management, including over $1 billion of cash and sweep deposit balances, thereby reducing Ally's capital markets footprint and reducing cost of funds over time. The business is expected to contribute an annual pre-tax earnings run-rate of over $80 million by year-end 2018, through commission revenue, asset management fees and funding efficiencies.

Change in Segments

In the first quarter of 2016, Ally changed the composition of its operating segments as a result of how management views and operates the business. Corporate Finance is now presented as a separate reportable segment, having previously been included in Corporate and Other. Additionally, Mortgage Finance was introduced and includes ongoing bulk acquisitions of mortgage loans along with other originations and refinancing. The activity related to the management of our legacy mortgage portfolio is now included in Corporate and Other. The Automotive Finance and Insurance segments remained unchanged.

Results by Segment ($ millions)











Increase/(Decrease)

vs.

1Q 16 4Q 15 1Q 15

4Q 15 1Q 15 Automotive Finance $337 $333 $306

$4 $31 Insurance 50 78 78

(28) (28) Dealer Financial Services $387 $411 $384

$(24) $3 Mortgage Finance 2 9 1

(7) 1 Corporate Finance 11 9 17

2 (6) Corporate and Other (ex. OID)1 19 17 88

1 (69) Core pre-tax income, excluding

repositioning items2 $419 $446 $490

$(28) $(71) Repositioning items3 (7) (3) (190)

4 (183) Core pre-tax income2 $412 $443 $299

$(32) $112 OID amortization expense 15 12 17

2 (3) Income tax expense 150 155 103

(5) 47 Income / (loss) from discontinued

operations4,5 3 (13) 397

16 (394) Net income $250 $263 $576

$(13) $(326)













GAAP ROTCE6 7.3% (28.8%) 14.2%





Core ROTCE6 9.8% 9.8% 9.1%





Adjusted Efficiency ratio6 45% 44% 48%





GAAP Earnings / (Loss) Per Common Share

(diluted)6 $0.49 $(1.97) $1.06

$2.46 $(0.57) Adjusted Earnings Per Common Share7 $0.52 $0.52 $0.52

$0.00 $0.00

1. Corporate and Other primarily consists of Ally's centralized treasury activities, the residual impacts of the company's corporate funds transfer pricing and asset liability management activities, and the amortization of the discount associated with debt issuances and bond exchanges. Corporate and Other also includes the legacy mortgage portfolio, certain investment portfolio activity and reclassifications, eliminations between the reportable operating segments. 2. Core pre-tax income, a non-GAAP financial measure, is defined as income from continuing operations before taxes and OID amortization expense primarily from bond exchanges and liability management actions (accelerated OID). 3. Repositioning items for 1Q15 are primarily related to the extinguishment of high-cost legacy debt and non-recurring strategic expenses. Refer to slide 27 of the Ally Financial Inc. 1Q16 Earnings Review presentation, which is available at www.ally.com/about/investor/events-presentations/ for a reconciliation to GAAP. This presentation will also be furnished on a Form 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 4. Includes non-recurring gain on sale and related special tax item in 1Q15 in connection with completed sales of the automotive finance joint venture in China. 5. The automotive finance joint venture in China (sale completed in 1Q15) is classified as discontinued operations. 6. See slide 28 in the Ally Financial Inc. 1Q16 Earnings Review presentation which is available at www.ally.com/about/investor/events-presentations/ for definitions and details. Calculations can be found on page 22 of the 1Q16 Financial Supplement. 7. GAAP Earnings Per Common Share for 4Q15 is inclusive of a per share impact of $2.43 for the redemption of the remaining Series G preferred securities. Adjusted Earnings per Common Share is a non-GAAP financial measure. See slide 8 in the Ally Financial Inc. 1Q16 Earnings Review presentation which is available at www.ally.com/about/investor/events-presentations/ for detail.

Liquidity and Capital

Highlights

Announced redemption of $697 million of Series A Preferred Stock in April, which will eliminate all remaining legacy preferred stock, drive greater efficiency and remove high-cost preferred dividends to further build shareholder value.

of Series A Preferred Stock in April, which will eliminate all remaining legacy preferred stock, drive greater efficiency and remove high-cost preferred dividends to further build shareholder value. Submitted Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) plan, which incorporated a common dividend and share repurchases.

Maintained strong capital levels in first quarter 2016 with Basel III Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio3 at 9.2% on a fully phased-in basis.

Ally's total equity was $13.8 billion at March 31, 2016, up from $13.4 billion at the end of the prior quarter as a result of strong first quarter earnings. Ally's preliminary first quarter 2016 Basel III Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio was 9.2 percent on a fully phased-in basis, and Ally's preliminary Tier 1 capital ratio was 11.5 percent on a fully phased-in basis, both improving as a result of continued profitability and deferred tax asset utilization.

Ally's consolidated cash and cash equivalents decreased to $5.0 billion as of March 31, 2016, from $6.4 billion at Dec. 31, 2015, primarily as a result of lower secured debt. Included in this quarter's cash balance are $2.0 billion at Ally Bank and $1.2 billion at the insurance subsidiary.

Ally continued to execute a diverse funding strategy during the first quarter of 2016. This strategy included strong growth in deposits, which represent approximately 51 percent of Ally's funding portfolio, completion of new term U.S. auto securitizations, which totaled approximately $2.8 billion for the quarter, including one off-balance sheet securitization of $1.1 billion. The company also completed a $1.5 billion prime retail auto whole loan sale. Additionally, during the quarter Ally executed or renewed more than $13.0 billion in credit facilities at both the parent company and at its banking subsidiary, Ally Bank. After the conclusion of the quarter, during the first week of April, Ally issued approximately $900 million in unsecured debt in preparation for the redemption of its Series A Preferred Stock on May 16.

Ally Bank

Highlights

Deposit customer base grew 16% YoY, totaling 1.1 million customers including approximately 395,000 millennial customers.

Nearly 50% of new customer growth QoQ came from millennials.

Retail deposits totaled $59.0 billion for the first quarter, up $8.3 billion or 17% YoY.

for the first quarter, up or 17% YoY. Approximately 71% of Ally's total assets were funded at Ally Bank at the end of the quarter.

Won two Gold Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service for Ally Assist SM virtual assistance technology.

virtual assistance technology. Honored for fifth straight year as 2016 TNS Choice winner for Direct Banking, Nationally, and recognized for organic growth, superior customer retention and share of customers' total banking business.

Added Apple Pay for iPhone to list of services available via mobile devices, helping make banking convenient and simple.

Introduced Touch ID and Android  Wear ATM locator app to help consumers manage their personal lives digitally.

For purposes of financial reporting, operating results for Ally Bank, the company's direct banking subsidiary, are included within Auto Finance, Mortgage Finance, Corporate Finance and Corporate and Other, based on its underlying business activities.

Deposits

Ally Bank continued to build its deposit base and maintained strong customer loyalty, attracting and retaining customers with its proven track-record in digital financial services. Retail deposits at Ally Bank increased to $59.0 billion as of March 31, 2016, compared to $55.4 billion at the end of the prior quarter. Year-over-year, retail deposits increased $8.3 billion, up 17 percent. Retail deposit growth continued to be driven largely by savings products, which represent 62 percent of the retail deposit portfolio. Brokered deposits at Ally Bank totaled approximately $11.0 billion as of March 31, 2016, up slightly compared to the prior quarter. Ally Bank continued strong expansion of its customer base with approximately 1.1 million deposit customers, growing 16 percent year-over-year.

Automotive Finance

Highlights

Core pre-tax income improved by $31 million or 10% YoY to $337 million .

or 10% YoY to . Risk adjusted yields on new retail originations improved 52 bps YoY.

Auto credit and lease residual performance in line with expectations.

Consumer auto financing originations totaled $9.0 billion for the quarter, with strategic focus on improved risk adjusted yields.

for the quarter, with strategic focus on improved risk adjusted yields. Record application volume, up 12% YoY, with more than 50% from the Growth channel.

Strong performance in the Growth channel continued as originations increased 23% over prior year period and surpassed originations from GM dealers.

Solid growth in Chrysler channel with first quarter originations up 19% YoY.

Highest used origination volume in Ally history, totaling $4.1 billion for the quarter.

for the quarter. Extended financing relationship with online auto retailer Carvana.

Automotive earning assets increased slightly to $112.2 billion , up $1.6 billion year-over-year, despite $5.2 billion in loan sales over the past 12 months.

Auto Finance reported pre-tax income of $337 million for the first quarter of 2016, compared to $306 million in the corresponding prior year period. Results for the quarter were primarily driven by strong net financing revenue due to continued growth in both new and used retail loans, which more than offset lower lease volume. Provision expense increased as a result of strong retail loan portfolio growth comprised of a full credit spectrum mix, as well as a non-recurring provision release from favorable credit performance on the dealer floorplan loans in the first quarter of 2015. On first quarter originations, Ally continued to optimize our use of capital toward better risk adjusted assets. Ally's risk adjusted yield on new retail originations improved by 52 basis points year-over-year, as pricing more than offset expected losses. Auto credit and lease residual performance remained in line with expectations for the portfolio.

Earning assets for Auto Finance, which are comprised of consumer and commercial receivables and leases, increased to $112.2 billion year-over-year, despite approximately $5.2 billion in retail auto loan sales in the last 12 months. Consumer earning assets totaled $77.9 billion, flat year-over-year, due to continued strong retail originations offsetting lower lease volumes and asset sales. End-of-period commercial earning assets were up slightly year-over-year at $34.3 billion, as a result of growth in the dealer loan portfolio and higher average vehicle values on dealer lots.

Consumer financing originations remained strong in the first quarter of 2016 and were $9.0 billion, compared to $9.3 billion in the prior quarter and $9.8 billion in the corresponding prior year period. Excluding GM lease and subvented originations, first quarter consumer financing originations increased 10 percent year-over-year. Year-over-year growth in the used channel resulted in $4.1 billion in originations, the highest volume for used originations in Ally's history and accounted for 45 percent of total originations. Originations in the quarter also included $4.1 billion of new retail, and $0.8 billion of leases. In addition, volume from Growth dealers increased 23 percent year-over-year, and now account for 37 percent of total originations.

Insurance

Highlights

U.S. vehicle service contracts (VSCs) written through Growth dealers increased 51% YoY.

Since launching a year ago, sales of Ally Premier Protection, our flagship VSC, have grown to 60% of total U.S. VSCs sold in March, as the result of strong dealer conversion.

Insurance, which focuses on dealer-centric products such as extended VSCs and dealer inventory insurance, reported pre-tax income from continuing operations of $50 million in the first quarter of 2016, compared to pre-tax income of $78 million in the prior year period. The decrease was driven by higher than normal weather losses from earlier and more severe hail storms, and lower investment gains. This was partially offset by lower non-weather related losses from fewer VSC claims. Total investment income was $34 million in the first quarter, down from $43 million in the prior year period. Written premiums declined $17 million to $222 million compared to the prior year period, primarily resulting from the discontinuation of the agent channel.

Mortgage Finance

Highlights

Total assets increased $3.6 billion year-over-year to end at $7.5 billion for the quarter.

Mortgage Finance operations manages a held-for-investment consumer mortgage loan portfolio. As previously announced, Ally plans to introduce limited direct mortgage originations in late 2016.

During the first quarter of 2016, Mortgage Finance reported core pre-tax income of $2 million, compared to $1 million in the prior year period. Results were primarily driven by improved net financing revenue resulting from $4.8 billion in bulk loan purchases in the past year, which was partially off-set by portfolio runoff, increased provision expense in connection with the purchases, and expansion of the mortgage operating model. As mortgage assets continue to grow, we expect this segment to drive additional operating leverage and provide meaningful future income.

Corporate Finance

Highlights

Total assets grew 43% YoY, as its growth strategy was executed across all segments.

Portfolio comprised of broad spectrum of industries, with emphasis on health care, industrial, service and technology companies.

Corporate Finance, which provides senior secured leveraged cash flow and asset-based loans primarily to U.S.-based middle market companies, reported core pre-tax income of $11 million in the first quarter of 2016. This compared to $17 million in the prior year period. Net financing revenue grew more than 30 percent in the quarter from higher asset levels, which was more than offset by higher recoveries on non-accrual loans in the prior year period, as well as higher provisions due to asset growth. Total assets grew to $2.8 billion as of March 31, 2016, up from $2.0 billion in the prior year period.

Corporate and Other

Corporate and Other primarily consists of Ally's centralized treasury activities, the residual impacts of the company's corporate funds transfer pricing, asset liability management activities, and the amortization of the discount associated with debt issuances and bond exchanges. Corporate and Other also includes the legacy mortgage portfolio, which primarily consists of loans originated prior to Jan. 1, 2009; certain investment portfolio activity and reclassifications; and eliminations between the reportable operating segments.

Corporate and Other reported core pre-tax income (excluding core OID amortization expense and repositioning items) of $19 million, compared to $88 million in the comparable prior year period. Results were primarily driven by a gain on the sale of TDR loans in the legacy mortgage held-for-sale portfolio a year ago that did not repeat.

Core OID amortization expense totaled $15 million, compared to $17 million reported in the corresponding prior year period.

Additional Financial Information

For additional financial information, the first quarter 2016 earnings presentation and financial supplement are available in the Events & Presentations section of Ally's Investor Relations Website at http://www.ally.com/about/investor/events-presentations/.

About Ally Financial Inc.

Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) is a leading U.S. financial services company. Ally's automotive services business offers a full spectrum of financial products and services, including new and used vehicle inventory and consumer financing, leasing, vehicle service contracts, commercial loans and vehicle remarketing services, as well as a variety of insurance offerings, including inventory insurance, insurance consultative services for dealers and other ancillary products. Ally Bank, the company's direct banking subsidiary and member FDIC, offers an array of deposit products, including certificates of deposit, savings accounts, money market accounts, IRA deposit products and interest checking. Ally's Corporate Finance unit provides financing to middle-market companies across a broad range of industries.

With approximately $156.5 billion in assets as of March 31, 2016, Ally operates as a financial holding company. For more information, visit the Ally media site at http://media.ally.com or follow Ally on Twitter: @Ally

Forward-Looking Statements

In this earnings release and in comments by Ally Financial Inc. ("Ally") management, the use of the words "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "forecast," "initiative," "objective," "plan," "goal," "project," "outlook," "priorities," "target," "explore," "positions," "intend," "evaluate," "pursue," "seek," "may," "would," "could," "should," "believe," "potential," "continue," or the negative of any of those words or similar expressions is intended to identify forward-looking statements. All statements herein and in related charts and management comments, other than statements of historical fact, including without limitation, statements about future events and financial performance, are forward-looking statements that involve certain risks and uncertainties.

While these statements represent our current judgment on what the future may hold, and we believe these judgments are reasonable, these statements are not guarantees of any events or financial results, and Ally's actual results may differ materially due to numerous important factors that are described in the most recent reports on SEC Forms 10-K and 10-Q for Ally, each of which may be revised or supplemented in subsequent reports filed with the SEC. Such factors include, among others, the following: maintaining the mutually beneficial relationship between Ally and General Motors, and Ally and Chrysler, and our ability to further diversify our business; our ability to maintain relationships with automotive dealers; the significant regulation and restrictions that we are subject to as a bank holding company and financial holding company; the potential for deterioration in the residual value of off-lease vehicles; disruptions in the market in which we fund our operations, with resulting negative impact on our liquidity; changes in our accounting assumptions that may require or that result from changes in the accounting rules or their application, which could result in an impact on earnings; changes in our credit ratings; changes in economic conditions, currency exchange rates or political stability in the markets in which we operate; and changes in the existing or the adoption of new laws, regulations, policies or other activities of governments, agencies and similar organizations (including as a result of the Dodd-Frank Act and Basel III).

Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Ally undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or other such factors that affect the subject of these statements, except where expressly required by law.

Contacts:

Gina Proia

646-781-2692

[email protected]

Sarah Comstock

313-656-6954

[email protected]

_______________________ 1 The following are non-GAAP measures which are important to the reader of the Consolidated Financial Statements, but should be supplemental to primary U.S. GAAP measures. Adjusted EPS, Core Pre-Tax Income, Core Return on Tangible Common Equity (ROTCE), Adjusted Efficiency Ratio and Adjusted Tangible Book Value are each non-GAAP financial measures. Refer to the Results by Segment table in this press release for details and slide 28 in the 1Q Earnings Presentation for definitions. 2 Originations from non-GM/Chrysler dealers. 3 The following is a non-GAAP measures which is important to the reader of the Consolidated Financial Statements but should be supplemental to primary U.S. GAAP measures. Ally's preliminary Basel III Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio, reflective of transition provisions, is 9.5%. Common Equity Tier 1 is a non-GAAP financial measure. See page 17 of the 1Q16 Financial Supplement for details.

SOURCE Ally Financial
BEIJING, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Alpha's Super Wing Robot, which is loaded with Turing OS, will start its crowd-funding project on April 27 on JD.COM. The Super Wing Robot will be aimed at ordinary families and is sure to be a hit with kids.

Early this year, Alpha revealed its strategic partnership with Turing Robot to build China's first "Smart Home Ecosystem." The Super Wing Robot is the first successful commercialization to come from this partnership.

The Super Wing robot, nicknamed Jett, is a companion robot for preschoolers based on the character from the popular animated series Super Wings. It is powered by the Turing operating system developed by Turing Robot. Enabled with voice recognition, semantic analysis, emotion recognition, visual identification, and self-learning capabilities, the smart robot can hear, see, analyze, and decide, empowering it to accompany children in their growth.

The world's first AI robot operating system, Turing OS is also capable of multimodal human-machine interaction, including multidimensional input methods such as text, voice, touch and environment, and multidimensional output methods such as text, voice, facial expressions and body language.

SOURCE Turing Robot
DALLAS, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- NexPoint Capital, Inc. (the "Company"), a non-traded publicly registered business development company and affiliate of Highland Capital Management, L.P., today announced the expiration and final results for its tender offer (the "Tender Offer") for up to 2.5% of its outstanding common stock ("Shares") at a price equal to 90% of the offering price per Share in effect on the Expiration Date (as defined in the Offer to Purchase) (the date of repurchase) and any unpaid dividends accrued through the expiration date of the Tender Offer. The Fund's Tender Offer expired on March 31, 2016 at 5:00 p.m. New York City time. 3,232 shares of the Company were tendered for repurchase in the Tender Offer.

Any questions regarding the Tender Offer can be directed to the Company's Tender Agent, DST Systems, Inc., at 1-844-485-9167. The Company's current offering price for its Shares, as well as other information, including information about management and the healthcare-focused investment strategy, are available at http://nexpointcapital.com. The information on or accessible through http://nexpointcapital.com is not incorporated by reference herein.

About NexPoint Advisors and NexPoint Capital, Inc.

NexPoint Capital, Inc. is a healthcare-focused business development company sponsored and managed by NexPoint Advisors, L.P., an affiliate of Highland Capital Management, L.P. NexPoint Advisors, L.P., is an SEC-registered investment advisor to the closed end fund, NexPoint Credit Strategies Fund.

About Highland Capital Management, L.P.

Highland Capital Management, L.P. is an SEC-registered investment adviser which, together with our affiliates, has approximately $17.1 billion of assets under management. Founded in 1993 by Jim Dondero and Mark Okada, Highland is one of the largest and most experienced global alternative credit managers. Highland specializes in credit strategies, such as credit hedge funds, long only funds and separate accounts, distressed and special situation private equity, and collateralized loan obligations (CLOs). Highland also offers alternative investments, including emerging markets, long/short equities, and natural resources. Highland's diversified client base includes public pension plans, foundations, endowments, corporations, financial institutions, fund of funds, governments, and high net-worth individuals. Highland is headquartered in Dallas, Texas and maintains offices in New York, Sao Paolo, Singapore, and Seoul.

Except for the historical information and discussions contained herein, statements contained in this news release constitute forward-looking statements. These statements may involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including the performance of financial markets, the investment performance of NexPoint Advisors, L.P.'s or Highland Capital Management L.P.'s sponsored investment products, general economic conditions, future acquisitions, competitive conditions and government regulations, including changes in tax laws. Readers should carefully consider such factors. Further, such forward-looking statements speak only on the date at which such statements are made. NexPoint Advisors, L.P. and Highland Capital Management L.P. undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statement.

This material has been distributed for informational purposes only and should not be considered as investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, strategy or investment product. Neither the Company, nor the Company's Board of Directors, nor NexPoint Advisors, L.P., makes any recommendation as to whether to tender or not to tender any Shares in the Tender Offer. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form, or referred to in any other publication, without express written permission.

For information on the Tender Offer:

Financial Advisors: 855-498-1580

Shareholders: 844-485-9167

Highland Media Relations: 972-419-6272

SOURCE NexPoint Capital, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.nexpointcapital.com


"We are very pleased that Ted is running our commercial lighting sales team, which generates a significant amount of revenue for our company," explains Amerlux CEO/President Chuck Campagna. "He brings a wide range of lighting expertise, including nearly 10 years with Amerlux. Ted is leveraging our product development, client services and industry leadership to deliver innovative tailor-made lighting solutions for challenging commercial lighting projects."

Mr. des Enfants works closely with lighting designers, architects and end-users across multiple channels and attends all major industry events including Lightfair, LEDucation and many IALD, DLC, IES and AIA events. To grow the company's industry footprint, he is driving product innovations, lighting solutions and program initiatives to provide key specifiers with award winning lighting designs and technologies.

Throughout his tenure with Amerlux, Mr. des Enfants served as Vice President of International Sales and Vice President, Sales East. He has an impressive international career in the lighting industry covering both established and fast growing emerging markets, including Europe, Mexico, Asia, the Middle East, and Central and South America. He is a true entrepreneur with a clear strategic vision who has helped lead the global transformation to energy efficient LED based lighting solutions.

About Amerlux LLC

Amerlux creates lighting designed around its customers and will stop at nothing to help realize their vision. Amerlux works closely with customers every step of the way, from design through construction, to ensure total success and total satisfaction. Amerlux is fueled by a passion to consistently deliver in a fraction of the time of competitors, even on short-run custom orders, and that includes making sure every order is accurate, every product performs flawlessly, and every customer is successful.

Amerlux speaks the language of light for design and construction professionals around the world by manufacturing a broad array of optically superior, energy efficient lighting solutions for the retail, supermarket, hospitality, commercial and exterior lighting markets. Amerlux products and services include track lighting, recessed downlighting and multiples, pendants, linear systems, and custom lighting solutions, as well as support for energy reduction plans that can be used as a guide to state, city and local utility rebate programs for maximum energy savings and utility incentives. The company's domestic and international clients receive the support of Amerlux's highly trained specification sales force, as well as expert service from initial design to on-time delivery made possible by strategically located manufacturing, warehousing and shipping locations.

Contact:

AMERLUX, LLC

178 Bauer Drive

Oakland, New Jersey 07436

www.amerlux.com

[email protected]

T 973.882.5010

F 973.882.2605

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359390

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SOURCE Amerlux

Related Links

http://www.amerlux.com


WASHINGTON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ankura Consulting Group (Ankura), a business advisory and expert services firm, announced today that it has agreed to a strategic combination with ARPC, a financial and economic consulting firm with over 40 years of experience assisting law firms, corporations and governments with complex legal and business challenges.

ARPC and its professionals bring extensive quantitative and organizational capabilities to Ankura and, together, the two firms will offer a broad range of services that help clients prepare for and manage complex issues. The management teams of both Ankura and ARPC will remain in place with both having significant ownership positions in the combined firm. Ankura will shift its headquarters to Washington, DC.

"A strong foundation exists between the Ankura and ARPC principals, built upon mutual respect and trust from previous working relationships and years of knowing each other," said Roger Carlile, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ankura. "We look forward to welcoming ARPC and its entire team to Ankura, where we can build leading positions in growing sectors by attracting, developing and retaining the very best talent in our chosen fields."

"We have known Roger and the other leaders of Ankura for over 20 years, and we are thrilled to team with such a dynamic organization, with a collaborative culture and a personal commitment to client service," said Tom Florence, Ph.D., founder and Partner of ARPC. "Together, we are well positioned to expand and strengthen our areas of expertise and mobilize quickly to address rapidly changing environments."

"Through the strategic combination of Ankura and ARPC, we aspire to an environment where our professionals can maximize their potential," said Philip Daddona, Co-President of Ankura. "Our firm's collaborative culture enhances our ability to deliver solutions to our clients' critical challenges and capitalizes on opportunities to enhance value."

Led by a management team with leadership experience at some of the world's top consulting firms, Ankura provides expert, personalized counsel to clients facing business opportunities and risks from changing conditions. Over the last year, the firm has achieved strong growth, broadening and deepening its expert talent and opening or acquiring offices in Dallas, New Jersey, New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Los Angeles.

Over the last quarter, the firm has been even more active, announcing first a $100 million strategic growth commitment from Madison Dearborn Partners, and more recently acquiring turnaround and restructuring experts Marotta Gund Budd & Dzera.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., ARPC possesses a substantial breadth and depth of expertise in a range of economic and financial disciplines. ARPC is a leader in providing advisory and management services in mass tort and other complex situations. It is particularly well known for its ongoing management and support to a number of the largest settlement trusts in existence. ARPC will operate under the Ankura brand name following an appropriate brand transition period.

The combined firm will focus on deepening its presence in growing, segments such as anti-trust and competition consulting, corporate investigations, crisis and recovery consulting, forensic and dispute consulting, financial risk and controls advisory, geopolitical advisory, mass tort and product liability consulting, transaction advisory, turnaround and restructuring, valuation services and visual communications consulting.

About Ankura Consulting Group

Ankura Consulting Group is a business advisory and expert services firm. Its deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges clients face enables its team to provide impactful, senior-level counsel. As an independent firm built on five key principles  Integrity, Quality, Diversity, Collaboration and Longevity  Ankura's relationships extend beyond one engagement or issue. The firm empowers its industry experts to provide a high-touch, unique approach for its clients in critical times. Ankura's offering includes a wide range of corporate investigation, disputes/litigation support, expert witness, forensic accounting, geopolitical advisory, transaction advisory, turnaround and restructuring, valuation, visual communications and business advisory services. For more information: www.ankuraconsultinggroup.com.

About ARPC

ARPC is an expert services and business advisory firm dedicated to providing world-class analytical expertise and guidance to clients facing complex legal and business challenges. For over 40 years, ARPC's consultants have assisted law firms, corporations, governments and non-profit organizations in addressing their economic and financial concerns in the courtroom, board room and marketplace through their economic, financial, statistical, business analytics and operational expertise. For more information: www.arpc.com.

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SOURCE Ankura Consulting Group
"This is a monumental acquisition for us, one we've been looking forward to for quite a while," said Jack Lentz, founder, chairman, and CEO of Annex Brands. "We are very excited to be adding this long-standing, successful brand in the pack and ship industry."

This is the sixth acquisition for Annex Brands since 2006. Lentz commented the company's growth strategy continues to be a two-pronged approach: sales of new franchises as well as acquisitions. "Each time we've completed an acquisition, we've found the acquired brand brings something new to the existing brands, and vice versa. It's even more so with Pak Mail because of its size."

Annex Brands' president and CFO Patrick Edd said many of the Pak Mail franchisees not only ship parcels via UPS, FedEx, DHL, and the USPS, but also have significant experience in shipping freight as well, a good fit for Annex Brands' support system which serves that market with over 80 commercial locations. "Effectively, this acquisition makes Annex Brands, the largest multi-carrier packaging and shipping organization in North America, if not the world," Edd said. He commented the acquisition fits the company's vision to "build a franchise network that offers more service to more people in more places."

Steve Goble, Annex Brands' vice president of marketing communications added, "The acquisition of Pak Mail  ramps up the economies of scale and provides significant, additional resources for all our franchisees. It also increases the reach and access for all our customers and carrier partners."

Alex Zai, former CEO of PMCA, will continue with Annex Brands in a new role. "Bringing these two companies together creates great synergies for both organizations," said Zai. "As the companies continue to expand on their core business functions of packaging and shipping, the resources and tools they combine will be a great asset for the franchisees of both groups."

"Pak Mail's franchisees will gain from additional support, greater opportunities, added resources, and expanded access to experienced team members in the industry. Annex Brands' franchisees will have new sources of experienced shipping, freight, and international services via Pak Mail's franchisees. The increased territory coverage created by both organizations will allow the companies and their franchisees to increase market share and provide increased service to their communities."

Both Annex Brands, Inc. and Pak Mail Centers of America, Inc. are privately owned. No purchase price was disclosed.

About Annex Brands

Annex Brands, Inc., is headquartered in San Diego. It is the franchisor of 8 brands in the business services and shipping industry. Each location is an individually owned and operated franchise. For more information on the company's history, services and franchise information, visit www.AnnexBrands.com.

Contact: Steve Goble

Vice President of Marketing Communications

Phone: (619) 563-4800

Fax: (619) 563-9850

Email: [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359602

SOURCE Annex Brands, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.annexbrands.com


One of several innovative archiving and information management solutions, ARC's Facilities Information Management reduces the day-to-day complexity inherent in buildings and facility operations through the use of touch-based interactive dashboards.

ARC's customized FIM solution links drawings, maintenance, safety, and other critical operations documents, making them accessible on mobile devices, large touchscreen displays, and computers by creating a central repository for all documents and information. Paper documents of all kinds and sizes are converted to digital files, organized, and incorporated into a simple-to-use graphical interface. The resulting cloud and mobile-enabled dashboard provides a portable and comprehensive information system that makes finding and using facilities documents quick and easy from any location.

Facilities Information Management enables access to all essential facilities maintenance, operations and safety information and provides compliance and inspection and audit readiness. It enhances workflow efficiency and team productivity.

Keeping Critical Documents within Reach

With tap/swipe/pinch simplicity on a mobile device or point-and-click familiarity on a computer, owners or operators of any real estate asset can easily deploy a linked and customized library of documents that:

increases understanding of a facility's current state with integrated tenant improvements

links to operations and maintenance manuals and warranties

helps manage workspaces and key infrastructure, including IT network mapping

provides access to life safety and emergency response plans

controls site planning and signage packages

tracks equipment and maintenance logs

informs operating and business decisions

The city of Wilsonville, Oregon, is one of the early adopters of ARC's Facilities Information Management solution.

Matt Baker, Wilsonville Public Works Supervisor, said, "Organizing and updating facilities documents is a big job. Who is the go-to person to access those documents? Is that person available to others? With ARC's Facilities Information Management solution, we can now manage documents easily and ensure that all the relevant and critical information is available quickly and not with just one person."

Putting Your Hands on FIM...Literally

For three days, AIIM Conference attendees will be able to join Kumar Wiratunga, ARC's Corporate Vice President of Archiving and Information Management, at an 84" touchscreen to see just how easy  and powerful  ARC's FIM solution is.

"Once facilities managers see how easy the touch-based dashboard is to use, how quickly they can access their current documents, and how customizable and scalable ARC's solutions are, they recognize very quickly what they've been missing," said Wiratunga. "The concept of facilities information on a touchscreen is intriguing  but to see it in practice and literally put your hands on it is very appealing."

On April 26, Wiratunga will also be moderating one of the tradeshow panel discussions, "Working at the Speed of Digital with Cloud and Dashboards." A long-time industry veteran in document management, ECM, and business process management, Wiratunga will lead the discussion on how cloud and mobile access to mission-critical content can be enhanced via graphical dashboards.

ARC Document Solutions is a sponsor of the AIIM Conference 2016.

About AIIM

AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) is the global community of information professionals. The organization's mission is to help organizations survive and thrive in the era of Information Chaos by helping to manage the risk of growing volumes of content, automate content-intensive business processes, use content to better engage and collaborate, and gain business insight from information.

About ARC Document Solutions (NYSE: ARC)

ARC Document Solutions distributes documents and information to facilitate communication for design and construction professionals, real estate managers and developers, facilities owners, and a variety of similar disciplines. The company provides cloud and mobile solutions, professional services, and hardware to help its customers around the world to reduce costs and increase efficiency, improve information access and control, and communicate faster, easier and better. Follow ARC at www.e-arc.com and on Facebook , LinkedIn and Twitter.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359808

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SOURCE ARC Document Solutions

Related Links

http://www.e-arc.com


FOSTER CITY, Calif., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Arena Solutions, the pioneer of cloud-based product lifecycle management (PLM) applications, today announced highlights of the company's performance in the first quarter of 2016, the best in the company's history.

For the past two years, Arena has released innovation after innovation, including the Arena Quality, Analytics, Scribe, Projects and Demand modules. While any size company can benefit from these solutions, Arena's intense focus on developing a broader, integrated, highly advanced set of capabilities was aimed at expanding its reach deeper into larger global enterprises. In Q1 2016, the number of enterprise deals grew 53 percent from Q1 2015 to Q1 2016, and for the first time, enterprise deals accounted for more than half of new customers for the quarter.

"This quarter, Arena passed a key milestone: the majority of our new customers in Q1 were enterprise deals," said Craig Livingston, chief executive officer of Arena Solutions. "With the significant investments we've made in our solutions over the past several years, this continued uptake validates our leadership position in the PLM space. And today we provide the functionality the enterprise needs, but with the flexibility, connectivity, ease-of-use and cost-savings of the cloud. Enterprise customers are taking note."

In addition, despite IT budgets declining around the globe  Gartner analysts have been quoted saying that technology spending worldwide would shrink by half a percent in 2016  Arena continued to see growth within its own customer base. Upsells to current customers grew by 52 percent over the same period in 2015, illustrating that demand for the expanded product footprint continues as customers delve deeper into Arena's product offering.

Additional highlights in Q1 2016 include:

Record total bookings made Q1 2016 the best quarter in the company's history;

Average deal size grew 59 percent over the same period in 2015; and

New customer subscriptions plus existing customer upsells led to 31 percent category growth over Q1 2015.

New customers in Q1 2016 include:

IntraOp Medical Corporation: The pioneer in portable electron-beam Intraoperative Radiation Therapy (IORT).

The pioneer in portable electron-beam Intraoperative Radiation Therapy (IORT). HiQ Solar: Innovates in the area of solar power and renewable energy.

Innovates in the area of solar power and renewable energy. Microvision, Inc.: The creator of PicoP scanning technology, an ultra-miniature laser projection and imaging solution based on the laser beam scanning methodology we pioneered.

The creator of PicoP scanning technology, an ultra-miniature laser projection and imaging solution based on the laser beam scanning methodology we pioneered. Soloshot, Inc.: Designs and manufactures its SOLOSHOT line of robotic cameraman products and accessories.

Designs and manufactures its SOLOSHOT line of robotic cameraman products and accessories. Vanderbilt International: A global leader in creating state-of-the-art security products and systems encompassing access control, intruder detection, CCTV and integrated security management.

A global leader in creating state-of-the-art security products and systems encompassing access control, intruder detection, CCTV and integrated security management. Fluidic Energy: Delivering a revolutionary sustainable energy storage solution to support critical loads and backup power applications worldwide.

"We are seeing strength on the enterprise side of our business due to the new enterprise-class capabilities delivered in our recent Spring release," said Steve Chalgren, executive vice president product management & chief strategy officer at Arena Solutions. "We are also looking forward to our upcoming Summer release where we will deliver a new training management solution designed to help regulated companies ensure their employees are given effective SOP training. This new solution reflects Arena's continued investment towards helping its customers better manage their QMS processes and help them maintain compliance in regulated environments such as FDA 21 CFR, ISO, OSHA, SOX and SOC."

About Arena Solutions

Arena invented cloud PLM. Its holistic suite of PLM, supply chain and QMS solutions enables innovative OEMs with complex electronics to manage their bill of materials, facilitate engineering change orders and speed prototyping to improve margins and collapse time to market. Arena has been ranked a Top 10 PLM provider and won the coveted Design News Golden Mousetrap Award in 2016. For more information, please visit http://www.arenasolutions.com.

To learn more about Arena Solutions:

Visit the Arena Solutions website.

Read the Arena blog on product design, development and manufacturing.

Follow @arenasolutions on Twitter.

Follow Arena on LinkedIn.

Arena and Arena Solutions are trademarks of Arena Solutions, Inc., Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. All rights reserved. Other product and company names are the property of their respective holders.

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SOURCE Arena Solutions

Related Links

http://www.arenasolutions.com


Thailands leading retailer Central Group has bought e-commerce firm Zalora Vietnam from Germanys Rocket Internet for $10 million to increase its investment in the Vietnamese market.

According to TechCrunch, the Bangkok-based Central Group won the bidding to buy Zalora after putting $10 million into the business in both Thailand and Vietnam. The deal is awaiting finalization.

Central Group is interested in Vietnam's retail market. Photo by TechCrunch

Rocket Internet offloaded the company after failing to meet its e-commerce profit projections. The Berlin based company has also sold a 9.1 percent stake in leading Vietnamese online retailer Lazada to Chinese billionaire Jack Mas Alibaba for $137 million.

E-commerce is estimated to account for about three percent of total transactions in Southeast Asia and has been growing continuously as the internet has gained in popularity and become easier to access. However, traditional retailers still consider this a new segment and are reluctant to invest in this potential market, TechCrunch said.

Based on Rocket Internets latest financial report, Zaloras revenue increased 78 percent year-on-year to $234 million in 2015, but it's profit fell by 36 percent ($105 million).

According to TechCrunch, Central Group may not be a well-known global brand, but it is one of the largest retailers in the region. The Thai retail giant has expanded its network to Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia with numerous shopping malls and supermarket chains worth nearly $10 billion, and more than 700,000 staff.

A Central Group representative said: Vietnam has been becoming a target market with large potential for retail investors.

Central Group has expanded Vietnam both online and offline, trading in fashion, electrical goods and household appliances. The Thai retailer has already bought a 49 percent stake in local retailer Nguyen Kim and opened two Robins Shopping Centers in Vietnam.

Central Group also has interests in Vietnam with SuperSports, Crocs and New Balance, and introduced globally famous brand Marks & Spencer to the local market.
NEW YORK, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- On April 5, 2016, the Stiftung Salle Modulable released the "New Theatre Lucerne Strategic Planning and Feasibility Study" produced by Arup, the interdisciplinary engineering, consulting, and design services firm. The study presents a holistic technical concept for the ground-breaking new theatre, defining design requirements in the context of a broader public sector plan to create new infrastructure for the arts community in Lucerne.

The newly released study builds on earlier work where Arup assisted the Stiftung Salle Modulable to define a vision and key requirements for the project. The technical concept included in the study will serve as a basis for the architectural design process to follow, subsequent to the planned international architectural design competition. This study reflects Arup's superb and in-depth experience, its highest professionalism and  as it seems to us, a key success factor  a very creative, constructive and efficient co-operation between top specialists within the team involved in this exciting and challenging project," says Hubert Achermann, Chairman of Stiftung Salle Modulable.

Lucerne enjoys a global reputation as a music capital of Europe through the acclaimed Lucerne Festival, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and the Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Luzern facility with its internationally celebrated concert hall. This project aims to build on that reputation, adding a focus for creative and experimental dramatic performances with music, providing a platform for the Lucerne Theatre and the independent theatre companies in the area with a world-class arena to showcase their work. At the same time, the Lucerne Festival will be expanding its profile featuring creative exploration in opera and other dramatic forms with music.

The New Theatre Lucerne / Salle Modulable aspires to become a cultural focal point of the city and the home of the entire theatre community of Lucerne. Centrally located in the southern portion of Inseli, a park within walking distance of the central transportation hubs, the theatre will be convenient to other arts venues, making it a defining component of the city's cultural infrastructure.

Arup's performing arts team in New York lead a team that leveraged the firm's global expertise in performances art venues, working with colleagues in Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The comprehensive study, which outlines the vision, concept framework and technical concept, also analyzes the project's feasibility with regards to site evaluation, construction cost modeling, operational requirements, and project planning recommendations for the venue. This report is a key milestone in Arup's broader role as client advisor role in supporting the realization of this landmark project.

Tateo Nakajima, Arup Principal and Project Director, notes that guiding the client through the early pre-design planning process is critical to mitigating project risks. "By leveraging our global experience with a wide range of cultural and performance arts venues," says Nakajima, "we are able to bring to bear our understanding of not only the building process but also the experience from both the audience and artist perspective. As a client advisor, we are able to assist the clients to develop a project that brings stakeholders together and help them navigate the practical realities and risks of an artistic building project."

When realized, the New Theatre will be a transformative environment, inspired by the Salle Modulable proposal created by the late composer and conductor Pierre Boulez. A key element of the design is the unique flexible infrastructure that will serve as a platform for a wide range of creative performances. Movable balconies, lifts, sophisticated overhead rigging systems, and immersive sound and video infrastructure are some of the key elements that will enable artists to explore novel, flexible forms and creative experiments in the areas of musical theatre, opera, dance, and drama.

Arup Principal and Global Acoustics and Theater Consulting Leader Raj Patel said, "Through our work, we are very close to understanding the needs of both traditional and contemporary artists. We work closely with our clients and their artistic stakeholders to define spaces where the boundary between audience and artist can be a space for exploration. The New Theatre aspires to create a new paradigm for performance art and live music experiences."

Arup has worked in an advisory capacity similar to this concept-through-completion role in the New Theatre Lucerne / Salle Modulable project for several recently completed cultural institutions, including the National Music Forum in Wroclaw, Poland; the Star Performing Arts Centre in Singapore; Harpa Reykjavik Concert Hall and Conference Centre, Iceland, and La Maison Symphonique in Montreal. The firm has contributed its performing arts expertise to numerous iconic arts buildings, including The Sage - Gateshead, Oslo Opera House, Melbourne Recital Hall, the Copenhagen Opera House, and the new Opera House in Athens and the Grand Theatre de Rabat in Morocco (both currently under construction).

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About Arup

The preeminent provider of interdisciplinary engineering, consulting, and design services, Arup drives the world's most prominent projects, from city-building to iconic architecture. The firm opened its first US office over 30 years ago, and now employs 1,300 people in the Americas. Since its founding in 1946, Arup has pioneered groundbreaking strategies, technical excellence, and social purpose. As a responsive and respectful business partner, Arup honorably serves its clients and shapes a better world. For additional information, visit Arup's website at www.arup.com and the online magazine of Arup in the Americas at doggerel.arup.com.

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FREMONT, Calif., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Asterias Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NYSE MKT: AST), a biotechnology company with three clinical-stage development programs focused on the emerging field of regenerative medicine, today announced that Katharine Spink, Ph.D., Chief Operating Officer, will present at the Stem Cell Summit 2016 to be held on April 25-27, 2016 in Boston, MA. Dr. Spink will provide an overview of the Asterias AST-OPC1 (oligodendrocyte progenitor cells) therapeutic development program that is currently in a Phase 1/2a dose escalation clinical trial in spinal cord injury.

Presentation Details



Event: Stem Cell Summit 2016

Conference 2: Stem Cell Product Development & Commercialization



Date: Wednesday, April 27, 2016



Time: 9:40 a.m. EDT



Location: Hyatt Regency, Boston, MA

The title of Dr. Spink's presentation is "AST-OPC1: Clinical Development of a Novel Cellular Therapeutic for Spinal Cord Injury." The presentation will be available on Asterias' website at www.asteriasbiotherapeutics.com.

About Asterias Biotherapeutics

Asterias Biotherapeutics, Inc. is a leading biotechnology company in the emerging field of regenerative medicine. The company's proprietary cell therapy programs are based on its immunotherapy and pluripotent stem cell platform technologies. Asterias is presently focused on advancing three clinical-stage programs which have the potential to address areas of very high unmet medical need in the fields of oncology and neurology. AST-VAC1 (antigen-presenting autologous dendritic cells) demonstrated promise in a Phase 2 study in acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and completed a successful end-of-Phase 2 meeting with the FDA in advance of initiating planning for a single pivotal Phase 3 AML study. AST-VAC2 (antigen-presenting allogeneic dendritic cells) represents a second generation, allogeneic immunotherapy. The company's research partner, Cancer Research UK, plans to begin a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of AST-VAC2 in non-small cell lung cancer in 2017. AST-OPC1 (oligodendrocyte progenitor cells) is currently in a Phase 1/2a dose escalation clinical trial in spinal cord injury. Additional information about Asterias can be found at www.asteriasbiotherapeutics.com.

SOURCE Asterias Biotherapeutics, Inc.

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MEXICO CITY, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S.A.B. de C.V.(NYSE: ASR; BMV: ASUR) (ASUR), the first privatized airport group in Mexico and operator of Cancun Airport and eight others in the southeast of Mexico, as well as a 50% JV partner in Aerostar Airport Holdings, LLC, operator of the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, today announced that shareholders adopted the following resolutions and considered the following matters at the General Ordinary Shareholders' Meeting held in Mexico City on April 26, 2016:

General Annual Ordinary

Meeting Summary of Resolutions

1. Approval of the report submitted by the Chief Executive Officer to the Board of Directors, accompanied by the independent auditor's report, with respect to the operations and results of the Company during the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015, as well as the Board of Directors' opinion of the content of such report.

2. Approval of the report submitted by the Board of Directors which contains the principal accounting and information policies and criteria followed in the preparation of the Company's financial information. Furthermore, note was taken of the report submitted by the Board of Directors with respect to the transactions entered into with Related Persons, Relevant Shareholders or contracts exceeding US$2,000,000.00.

3. Note was taken that the report of the activities and operations in which the Board of Directors intervened, pursuant to article 28 IV (e) of the Securities Market Law, was not prepared because during the fiscal year ended on December 31, 2015, the Board of Directors did not intervene in any activities or operations to be reported.

4. Approval of the audited individual and consolidated financial statements of the Company for the year ended December 31, 2015.

5. Approval of the report submitted by the Audit Committee of the Company with respect to its operations during the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015.

6. Approval of the activities of the Board of Directors during the year ended December 31, 2015.

7. Approval of the report on and the fulfillment of the tax obligations of the Company for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2014. Note was taken that the report for the year ended December 31, 2015 has not been issued yet and that it will be presented for approval at the first General Shareholders' Meeting to be held after the report is issued.

8. Approval of an increase in the legal reserve of the Company by Ps. 146,055,804.78 (One hundred forty six million, fifty-five thousand, eight hundred four pesos and seventy-eight cents Mexican currency) from the accumulated net profits for the year ended December 31, 2015.

9. Approval of (i) an ordinary cash dividend from accumulated retained earnings in the amount of Ps.5.61 (five pesos and sixty-one cents Mexican currency) per share, which will be paid starting on June 15, 2016 in a single installment to each of the outstanding common Series "B" and "BB" shares representing the paid-in capital stock of the Company, and that are issued, subscribed, fully paid and released on such date and (ii) the taxes for which the Company is responsible with respect to the dividend payment.

The payment of the dividend shall be made through the variable income (Renta Variable) area of S.D. Indeval, S.A. de C.V., at its offices located at Paseo de la Reforma No. 255-3rd floor, Colonia Cuauhtemoc, 06500, Mexico City, Mexico, from Monday through Friday from 9:30 through 13:00 hours as of June 15, 2016. Payment of the dividend shall be made against delivery of coupon "09" (nine) of the outstanding stock certificates in accordance with the terms notified to shareholders.

The dividend payment notice shall be published no later than April 27, 2016 in a newspaper of general circulation.

10. Approval of the amount of Ps. 1,092,060,290.84 (One billion, ninety-two million, sixty thousand, two hundred ninety pesos and eighty-four cents Mexican currency) from the accumulated net profits for the year ended December 31, 2015, as the maximum amount that may be used by the Company to repurchase its own shares during the fiscal year 2016, pursuant to article 56 of the Securities Market Law.

11. Approval of the activities of the Board of Directors, Chief Executive Officer, Secretary and Assistant Secretary during the year ended December 31, 2015, and release from any liability they might have incurred in the due execution of their position.

12. Ratification of Mr. Fernando Chico Pardo as President of the Board of Directors.

13. Ratification of all other members and alternate members of the Board of Directors.

Ratification of Secretary and Assistant Secretary, non-members of the Board of Directors.

14. Ratification of Mr. Ricardo Guajardo Touche as President of the Audit Committee.

15. Ratification of Mr. Fernando Chico Pardo, Mr. Jose Antonio Perez Anton and Mr. Roberto Servitje Sendra as members of the Nominations and Compensation Committee.

16. Approval of the proposal made by the Nomination and Compensation Committee to pay the following compensation to the members of the management bodies of the Company:

Each member of the Board of Directors will receive Ps.50,000.00 ( Fifty thousand pesos 00/100 Mexican currency), plus travel expenses, if any, per meeting attended.

00/100 Mexican currency), plus travel expenses, if any, per meeting attended. Each member of the Operations Committee will receive, Ps.50,000.00 ( Fifty thousand pesos 00/100 Mexican Currency), plus travel expenses, if any, per meeting attended.

00/100 Mexican Currency), plus travel expenses, if any, per meeting attended. Each member of the Nominations and Compensations Committee will receive Ps.50,000.00 ( Fifty thousand pesos 00/100 Mexican Currency), plus travel expenses, if any, per meeting attended.

00/100 Mexican Currency), plus travel expenses, if any, per meeting attended. Each member of the Audit Committee will receive Ps.70,000.00 ( Seventy thousand pesos 00/100 Mexican Currency), plus travel expenses, if any, per meeting attended.

00/100 Mexican Currency), plus travel expenses, if any, per meeting attended. Each member of the Acquisitions and Agreements Committee will receive Ps.15,000.00 ( Fifteen thousand pesos 00/100 Mexican Currency), plus travel expenses, if any, per meeting attended.

Special Delegates of the General Annual Ordinary Shareholders' Meeting were appointed to appear before Notary Public to legalize the minutes of this meeting and undertake any other action necessary to formalize and give effect to the resolutions undertaken at this meeting.

About ASUR:

Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S.A.B. de C.V. (ASUR) is a Mexican airport operator with concessions to operate, maintain and develop the airports of Cancun, Merida, Cozumel, Villahermosa, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Huatulco, Tapachula and Minatitlan in the southeast of Mexico, as well as a 50% JV partner in Aerostar Airport Holdings, LLC, operator of the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport of Puerto Rico. The Company is listed both on the Mexican Bolsa, where it trades under the symbol ASUR, and on the NYSE in the U.S., where it trades under the symbol ASR. One ADS represents ten (10) series B shares.

SOURCE Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste S.A.B. de C.V.
PUNE, India, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The report "Automotive Head-up Display (HUD) Market by HUD type (Windshield & Combiner), Application (Premium, Luxury & Mid Segment Cars) and by Geography (Asia-Oceania, Europe, North America & RoW) - Industry Trends and Forecast to 2021", The global market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 21.67%, to reach a market size of USD 1.33 Billion by 2021. The base year for the study is 2015, and the forecast period is 2016 to 2021.

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Browse 90 market data Tables and 42 Figures spread through 125 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Automotive Head-up Display (HUD) Market"

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automotive-head-up-display-market-11272971.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

The Automotive Head up Display Market is primarily driven by stringent safety norms and the increasing global demand for convenience and comfort.

The demand for premium and luxury passenger cars is set to grow at a high rate during the forecast period, particularly in emerging economies. For instance, despite the restrictive 2016 budget in India, the market size is projected to reach twice the current volume by 2020. German auto brands such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi are expected to dominate the Indian luxury car market.

The North American and European regions impose stringent emission and safety regulations. Various automakers are incorporating active and passive safety systems to comply with these norms and to reduce the possibility of accidents. Safety features in a car currently drive consumer buying behaviour around the world. The head up display decreases distraction while driving, and therefore acts as an important safety feature. Thus, growing safety awareness will likely spur the demand for automotive head up displays.

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Combiner projected head up display: Gaining traction in mid-segment passenger cars

The combiner projected head up display is essentially a compact version of the windshield projected head up display. The former requires less installation space than the windshield projected head up display. In a combiner projected head up display, the information is displayed on a small, translucent screen mounted on the dashboard of the vehicle.

The Asia-Pacific combiner projected Head up Display Market is projected to register the highest growth, followed by the North American market, by 2021. Currently, combiner projected head up displays, which are supplied by Robert Bosch GmbH, Continental AG, and Visteon Corporation, are available in vehicle models from Peugeot, Mini, and Mazda.

Growth in the luxury and premium car segments: Key driver of the windshield projected Head up Display Market

The windshield projected head up display is an advanced technology that is offered as a standard feature in some luxury cars and an optional feature in various other segments. The North American windshield projected Head Up Display Market is estimated to record the largest market size, and is projected to grow from 502.9 thousand units in 2016 to 1,745 thousand units by 2021. Europe is estimated to constitute the second-largest market, followed by Asia-Pacific. Tier-1 suppliers such as Continental AG, Nippon Seiki Co. Ltd., and Denso Corporation are focusing on cost reduction to enable this feature to be incorporated in lower priced models.

The report covers all the major players in the Automotive Head up Display Market, including companies such as Nippon Seiki (Germany), Continental AG (Germany), Denso Corporation (Japan), Delphi Automotive PLC (U.K.), and Visteon Corporation (U.S.).

It analyzes the Automotive Head up Display Market, in terms of volume ('000 units) and value (USD million). It explains the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the market on the basis of region, application, and head up display type from 2016 to 2021.

Browse related reports:

Automotive Interior Components/Accessories Market by Product (Cockpit Module, Seat, Door Panels, Infotainment System, Lighting & Headliner), Application (Passenger Car, LCV & HCV) and by Region - Global Forecasts & Analysis to 2019

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Air Conditioning Market by Technology (Manual/Semi-Automatic and Automatic), Component (Compressor, Evaporator, Drier/Receiver, and Condenser, Vehicle Type (PC, LCV, HCV, Off-Highway and Locomotive), and by Region - Global Trend and Forecast to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/air-conditioning-market-119713356.html

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MarketsandMarkets is the world's No. 2 firm in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.

M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.

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AMSTERDAM, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AVG Technologies N.V. (NYSE: AVG), the online security company, announced today that it has filed its 2015 Annual Report on Form 20-F, including financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015, and its 2015 Remuneration Report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

AVG's 2015 Annual Report on Form 20-F and 2015 Remuneration Report are available on AVG's investor relations website at investors.avg.com, where they can be viewed and downloaded. Shareholders may request a hard copy of the audited financial statements, free of charge, through the 'Request Information' tab on the investor relations website or by emailing [email protected]. AVG's Annual Report on Form 20-F and its 2015 Remuneration Report will also be available at www.sec.gov. The Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (AGM) of AVG will be held on June 9, 2016 at 9:30 a.m. CET in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

About AVG Technologies (NYSE: AVG)

AVG is the leading provider of software services to secure devices, data and people. AVG's award-winning consumer portfolio includes internet security, performance optimization, location services, data controls and insights, and privacy and identity protection, for mobile devices and desktops. The AVG Business portfolio, delivered through a global partner network, provides cloud security and remote monitoring and management (RMM) solutions that protect small and medium businesses around the world.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

www.avg.com

investors.avg.com

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SOURCE AVG Technologies N.V.
CHICAGO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Avionos, a digital solution company, has helped Bear Naked Granola marry the best of the old world and the new world with their development of a new consumer facing website: BearNakedCustom.com. The site utilizes IBM's Chef Watson to guide consumers in developing a personalized granola recipe, made with hand-packed, local-sourced ingredients, and CloudCraze to power the eCommerce engine. The website launched on April 18, 2016.

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Avionos was challenged with the mission of providing consumers with a highly customizable granola product that would not impact Bear Naked's existing retail channel business, and would draw new customers. The site's intuitive GUI provides users with the option to create their own granola blend utilizing 50 different ingredients, collectively yielding 1000 combinations. Users pick a name and label art, save their mix, share it through social channels, and invite others to enjoy it. They're provided with a complete nutrition label.

The eCommerce-enabled website will yield invaluable data on consumers, and popular combinations will be reviewed for inclusion in the company's retail line. The combination of consumer taste input, coupled with suggestions from IBM's Chef Watson, represents the next level of informed, crowd sourced data.

Avionos implemented CloudCraze, an eCommerce solution built natively on the Salesforce platform, to execute on the vision of BearNakedCustom.com. The website was constructed in just four months, at a fraction of the cost of traditional commerce solutions.

"CloudCraze is pleased to be the foundation of Bear Naked's launch of their direct-to-consumer online business," says Ray Grady, EVP at CloudCraze. "BearNakedCustom.com is proof that with CloudCraze, agile cloud commerce built on Salesforce, major brands can launch a new online channel at lightning speed."

"Bear Naked provided Avionos with a great opportunity to demonstrate our ability to assemble the right suite of cloud based technologies and bring their product to market in a short period of time. We anticipate they'll be receiving a return on their investment within months," says Dan Neiweem, Principal at Avionos.

About Avionos

Avionos is the digital services and solutions firm that delivers connected customer engagement and extends the brand promise beyond traditional expectations. Avionos brings together marketing, sales, and customer care to drive unparalleled business outcomes via connected and cloud technologies, working with clients such as the American Medical Association, Kellogg's, Plantronics, and Sears. Avionos was recently named 2016 partner of the year for Acquia. www.avionos.com

About CloudCraze

CloudCraze delivers robust B2B and B2C eCommerce native on Salesforce. CloudCraze allows businesses to deploy mobile storefronts quickly, generate online revenue in weeks, and easily scale for growth. In a single Salesforce instance, CloudCraze shares data and processes with existing Salesforce CRM deployments for a 360-degree view of the customer. And, it's all easily managed through the point-and-click Salesforce interface. CloudCraze powers eCommerce for Coca-Cola, Avid, ABInBev, Barry-Callebaut, Ecolab, GE, L'Oreal, Kellogg's and more. www.cloudcraze.com.

BIGfrontier for Avionos

Wendy Glavin

917-680-8517

Email

SOURCE Avionos

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NASHVILLE, Tenn., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Nashville Chapter will present its 2016 Music City Gold Pen Awards, recognizing area professionals and agencies for their top communication projects, on Thursday, May 19, 6-7:30 p.m. at the Oak Room at Nelson's Green Brier Distillery located at 1414 Clinton St, Nashville. The event's emcee is April Eaton, host of the long-running popular program "Urban Outlook" on the NewsChannel5 Network.

The IABC Nashville 2016 Music City Gold Pen Awards reception and ceremony honors Middle Tennessee/Southwestern Kentucky area business communicators and provides an evening of networking, celebration and an opportunity to hear about award-winning projects in diverse categories that demonstrate excellence in creativity, effective strategy, and measurable results. Go to the IABC Nashville website to reserve your spot to attend this prestigious event.

This year marks a relaunch of the prestigious regional awards program, which honors individuals, agencies and companies who are leading the communication profession as measured by international quality and impact standards.

"This year's awards program, which always showcases impressive entries, also provides an opportunity to connect with industry professionals who are setting new standards for communication excellence," says IABC Nashville President Philip J. Matisak, ABC. "And, this year, the celebration is in a popular new venue, providing an appropriate setting to recognize the best, as well as providing an opportunity to enjoy a unique, historical and trendy atmosphere in our vibrant and growing city."

Proudly sponsoring this year's event is Lellyet & Rogers Company, StagePost and Bernadette Ruby.

ABOUT IABC NASHVILLE

IABC Nashville is one of more than 100 chapters in 70 countries providing learning opportunities for its members and professional development sessions that offer new insights into the latest communication trends, technology and issues facing the industry. The chapter is diverse, with members representing area agencies, broadcast stations, corporations, universities and nonprofit organizations. IABC Nashville also offers ties to job bank services and the annual Music City Gold Pen Awards program. IABC is the only place to connect with communicators globally. Connect here. Go Anywhere!

SOURCE IABC Nashville

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MONTREAL, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - BioAmber Inc. (NYSE: BIOA), a leader in renewable materials, today announced that its Canadian subsidiary BioAmber Sarnia Inc., a joint venture with Mitsui & Co., has secured a CAD$10 million loan from BDC Capital (BDCC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC).

The loan does not contain any convertible features or warrants, and is subject to the completion of certain customary conditions. The details of the loan have been disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Form 8K.

"This loan will strengthen the balance sheet and increase the working capital of our Sarnia operating company while establishing a business relationship with BDC, an important Canadian lending institution", said Mario Saucier, BioAmber's Chief Financial Officer. "Our ability to obtain such a loan speaks to the strong business case of our Sarnia plant, which is now in operation. We view this as the first step in a long term partnership with the BDC, an organization that could help us to further deploy our clean technology in the future" he added.

"The financing announced today will enable BioAmber Sarnia to expand its working capital and grow its renewable chemicals business," said Jerome Nycz, Executive Vice President, BDC Capital. "Companies such as BioAmber Sarnia are helping Canada transition toward a clean growth economy. By supporting companies that invest in clean technologies, we will help diversify and strengthen our economy while also generating jobs and prosperity for the long-term."

About BioAmber

BioAmber (NYSE: BIOA) is a renewable materials company. Its innovative technology platform combines biotechnology and catalysis to convert renewable feedstock into building block materials that are used in a wide variety of everyday products including plastics, paints, textiles, food additives and personal care products. For more information visit www.bio-amber.com

About BDC Capital

A subsidiary of Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), BDC Capital offers a full spectrum of specialized financing and investment solutions to help Canadian entrepreneurs achieve their full growth potential. With more than $1.6 billion under management, BDC Capital takes a strategic, patient approach to nurture companies' development over the long term. From venture capital to equity to growth and transition capital, our team of over 100 experienced, local professionals partner with entrepreneurs to identify and meet their needs on flexible terms. Some of the sectors in which we specialize include IT, industrial/clean/energy technology, and healthcare. For more information, please visit www.bdccapital.ca or follow us on Twitter at @BDC_Capital.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements related to the disbursement of the loan. All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements often include words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "estimate," "seek," "will," "may" or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which involve factors or circumstances that are beyond BioAmber's control. BioAmber's actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements due to a number of factors. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee that the events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements will be achieved or occur and the timing of events and circumstances and actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. All such statements speak only as of the date made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For additional disclosure regarding these and other risks faced by BioAmber, see disclosures contained in BioAmber's public filings with the SEC including, the "Risk Factors" section of BioAmber's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015.

SOURCE BioAmber Inc.

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http://www.bio-amber.com/


DALLAS, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Blackhill Partners, an investment bank specializing in complex situations, has completed the reorganization of RAAM Global Energy Company, guiding the company through a pre-negotiated chapter 11 bankruptcy in under 100 days. RAAM engaged Blackhill Partners as a restructuring advisor and chief restructuring officer for the financial and operational reorganization.

Led by Managing Director Jim Latimer, the Blackhill Partners team managed cash, reduced expenses, and consolidated operations. Blackhill guided a sale process and managed the transfer of RAAM's onshore and offshore assets to the senior secured lender. Latimer served as Chief Restructuring Officer for the period leading up to the filing through plan confirmation.

"RAAM has a good management team and good assets, but had a capital structure that was unsustainable with oil in the $30's," said Latimer. "Blackhill's job was to help make and implement the tough decisions swiftly and then develop a plan of reorganization that everyone could accept. This minimized costs and enabled them to emerge as a stronger, leaner organization. RAAM benefited from the Blackhill team's broad industry knowledge and specific experience in energy restructurings, which enabled us to complete the reorganization in reasonably short order."

RAAM was a Delaware corporation with public debt and is now known as Upstream Exploration LLC, engaged in the exploration, development, production, exploitation and acquisition of oil and natural gas properties. The company's producing assets were located offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and onshore in Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and California. Other members of the Blackhill team serving RAAM included Joe Stone, Managing Director, Joel Brown, Vice President, and Matt Denny, Associate. Harry Perrin, Partner of law firm Vinson & Elkins, assisted by Senior Associate Brad Foxman and Associate Reece O'Connor, served as counsel to RAAM.

About Blackhill Partners

Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Blackhill Partners, LLC is an investment bank specializing in complex situations. Blackhill's professionals have advised Fortune 500 and middle-market companies on over $100 billion of mergers, acquisitions, financings and restructurings across a broad range of industries, with particular depth in energy and industrial businesses. www.blackhillpartners.com

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151110/286023LOGO

SOURCE Blackhill Partners, LLC

Related Links

http://www.blackhillpartners.com


NEW YORK, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The subject of terror is ever-present on the national mindset. With the recent tragic attacks in Brussels and the ongoing threat of ISIS, Nigerian political activist and global terrorism expert, Ambassador Abayomi Nurain Mumuni provides insightful commentary on the sociological, psychological, political, and economical toll of terrorism, and shares comprehensive research on the nature of terrorist demands.

Mumuni's new book Demand by Terror examines the demands that are usually made by terrorist organizations to justify their actions and to force authorities to subscribe to their objectives. In discussing this, Demand by Terror examines the types of terrorist demands along patterns of terrorist groups and common characteristics noticeable in describing the demands. This book is a follow-up to his breakthrough book, Global Terrorism and its Effects on Humanity.

Written from the unique multi-cultural vantage point of a global scholar, businessman and political activist, Demand by Terror discusses the following:

What needs to be done to defeat terrorism.

Why different tactics need to be employed beyond military action to battle terrorism.

Why we need to understand what terrorists want.

Why we should negotiate with terrorists.

The different types of terrorists out there  political, religious, nationalist, etc.  and how they differ.

Whether a terrorist's demand is a form of terrorism.

The moral way to deal with terrorists.

Mumuni brings an international perspective to the discussion about terrorism, having earned numerous advanced degrees and certifications on mediation, conflict resolution, public administration, international humanitarian law, UN peacekeeping operations, global and domestic terrorism, and homeland security from higher institutions of learning in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Israel, Nigeria, and the United States. He is presently the CEO of a multi-national financial corporation and often travels across the globe. He founded a political party in his homeland of Nigeria and ran for president there.

One of the conclusions arrived at in Demand by Terror is that "terrorist demands may as well pass as terrorism, with governments  the usual targets of terrorist demandsbeing the main victim. This conclusion is drawn against the backdrop of the political trauma, fear and embarrassment most responsible governments may suffer in handling terrorist demands."

Contact: Brian Feinblum, Media Connect 212-583-2718, [email protected].com

Issued by Media Connect NY, NY

SOURCE Abayomi Nurain Mumuni
Masan Consumer JSC has announced plans to expand its market share among ASEAN's 250 million consumers with Thailand as its first target through a partnership with Singha.

At the company's AGM on April 26, Masan Consumer revealed its strategy to enlarge its market share throughout the region from this year to achieve double digit growth and a revenue of $5 billion by 2020.

Seokhee Won, general director of Masan Consumer, said that in the past three years, Masan Consumer has witnessed a slowdown in revenue and profits due to the saturated domestic market, so foreign markets are the next strategy.

In the ASEAN market, we will reinforce Masans brand in five Southeast Asian countries with 250 million consumers by providing Masans quality products, not only fish sauce and seasoning, but also coffee, he underlined.

Masan plans to bring its products to the regional market. Photo by VnExpress

Won said Thailand's 160 million consumers will be the first target with local partner Singha Group, and Masan expects it can surpass Thaibev and become the market leader.

Masan expects to have its products in every ASEAN household by 2020 with revenue of $5 billion.

Masan Consumer reported revenue of VND13.2 trillion ($594 million) and post-tax profit of VND2.9 trillion ($130 million) in 2015. Last year, parent company Masan Consumer Holdings signed a strategic partnership agreement with Singha Corp. The total value of the deal was $1.1 billion, and Singha now owns 25 percent of Masan Consumer Holdings capital and 33 percent of Masan Brewery.

Masan Group previously purchased a $64 million stake in state-owned food processor Vissan in its IPO.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Capstone Mining Corp. ("Capstone") (TSX: CS) today announced its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2016. Operating cash flow before changes in working capital (1) was $18.9 million or $0.05 per share, with a net loss of $12.8 million and an adjusted net loss of $1.5 million after adjusting for certain non-cash and non-recurring charges. Copper production for the quarter totalled 24,500 tonnes (23,700 tonnes of payable copper) at a C1 cash cost (1) of $1.72 per payable pound produced with copper sales for the quarter of 28,000 tonnes at a C1 cash cost (1) of $1.77 per payable pound sold.

Capstone will hold a conference call and webcast on Wednesday, April 27, 2016 at 11:30 a.m. Eastern time (8:30 a.m. Pacific time) to discuss these results; call-in details and information on associated slides are provided at the end of this release. This release should be read in conjunction with Capstone's consolidated financial statements and management's discussion and analysis ("MD&A") for the quarter ended March 31, 2016, which are available on Capstone's website at http://capstonemining.com/investors/financial-reporting/default.aspx and on SEDAR. An updated corporate presentation, including results to March 31, 2016, in addition to the Q1 2016 webcast slides, will also be available at http://capstonemining.com/investors/events-and-presentations/default.aspx.

Overview

















Q1 2016 Q1 2015 Revenue ($ millions)



126.2 102.9









Copper produced (tonnes)



24,547 23,677









Payable copper produced (tonnes)



23,694 22,853 C1 cash cost per payable pound produced (1) ($)



1.72 1.97 All-in sustaining cost per payable pound produced (1) ($/lb)



2.21 2.40 All-in cost per payable pound produced (1) ($/lb)



2.23 3.00 Fully-loaded all-in cost per payable pound produced (1) ($/lb)



2.36 3.09









Copper sold (tonnes)



27,985 20,082 Realized copper price per pound sold ($/lb)*



2.19 2.47 Adjusted realized copper price per pound sold ($/lb) **



2.35 2.47 C1 cash cost per payable pound sold (1) ($/lb)



1.77 1.89 All-in sustaining cost per payable pound sold (1) ($/lb)



2.21 2.36 All-in cost per payable pound sold (1) ($/lb)



2.22 3.05 Fully-loaded all-in cost per payable pound sold (1) ($/lb)



2.33 3.15









Net loss ($ millions)



(12.8) (17.4) Net loss per common share ($)



(0.03) (0.04)









Adjusted net (loss) income (1) ($ millions)



(1.5) (8.9) Adjusted net (loss) income per common share ($)



(0.00) (0.02)









Adjusted EBITDA (1) ($ millions)



39.3 24.3 Adjusted EBITDA (1) per common share ($)



0.10 0.06









Operating cash flow before changes in working capital (1) ($ millions)



18.9 16.5 Operating cash flow before changes in working capital per common share (1) ($)



0.05 0.04









Cash and cash equivalents ($ millions)



121.1 122.6 Net debt (1) ($ millions)



228.2 177.2

* Q1 2016 includes a negative provisional pricing adjustment of $5.6 million (2015  negative $12.7 million) related to prior shipments, equivalent to $(0.09) per pound (2015  $(0.29) per pound) of copper sold during the quarter. ** Adjusted realized copper price includes the realized gain of $9.6 million related to the put contracts the Company exercised in Q1 2016 (2015  nil).

"In the first quarter of 2016 our operating cash flow was $32.2 million. Our cash balance increased $20 million to $121.1 million, reducing our net debt to $228.2 million and our senior secured leverage ratio to 2.1 at quarter end, down from 2.6 at the end of 2015," said Darren Pylot, President and CEO of Capstone. "Our continued focus on mine site cost efficiencies and optimization were demonstrated in the first quarter with Pinto Valley posting the second straight quarter of new daily, monthly and quarterly throughput records and exceeding targeted throughput for the quarter."

"We took action in the quarter given recent commodity price volatility to preserve our financial flexibility and protect our covenant compliance for 2016," continued Mr. Pylot. "Through a combination of price fixing and hedging we have ensured covenant compliance at copper prices above approximately $1.65 per pound for the remainder of 2016, with substantially lower costs expected as we reach the higher grade portion of Minto North."

Financial Highlights for the Quarter Ended March 31, 2016

Net loss of $12.8 million or $0.03 per common share which included: Earnings from mining operations of $2.1 million , Production costs included a $1.5 million non-cash charge related to the write-down of inventory at Minto and Pinto Valley, A gain on commodity derivatives of $3.2 million , comprising $1.5 million on the January and February $2.60 copper puts and $1.7 million on new copper forward contracts, $2.9 million in current and deferred tax expense.

or per common share which included: Working capital increased marginally to $163.4 million at March 31, 2016 from $162.4 million at December 31, 2015 . More impactful was the increase of $19.5 million in cash and cash equivalents (a component of working capital) to $121.1 million , driven by proceeds of $14.0 million on the $2.60 copper put contracts combined with the reduction of finished goods inventory balances.

Production and Additional Highlights for the Quarter Ended March 31, 2016

Pinto Valley Mine:

Produced 16,365 tonnes of copper in concentrates and cathode during Q1 2016 at a C1 cash cost (1) of $1.64 per pound of payable copper produced.

of per pound of payable copper produced. During Q1 2016 the mine achieved daily, monthly and quarterly throughput records of 62,400, 56,700 and 55,000 tonnes per day ("tpd"), respectively.

Cozamin Mine:

Produced 3,660 tonnes of copper in concentrates during Q1 2016 at a C1 cash cost (1) of $1.50 per pound of payable copper produced.

Minto Mine:

Produced 4,522 tonnes of copper in concentrates during Q1 2016 at a C1 cash cost (1) of $2.19 per pound of payable copper produced, which included $0.05 per pound of cost allocated from stockpile that was spent in prior periods, bringing the actual cash expended during Q1 2016 to $2.14 per pound of payable copper produced.

Santo Domingo:

On March 10, 2016 the Maritime Concession for the port location was granted to Minera Santo Domingo .

Operating Outlook

Capstone's 2016 production guidance for 108,000 tonnes (5%) of copper with C1 cash cost (1) of $1.45 to $1.55 per pound, and Fully-Loaded All-In Cost (1) of $2.05 to $2.15 per pound of payable copper produced, net of by-product credits and selling costs, remains unchanged.

Conference Call and Webcast Details

Date: Wednesday, April 27, 2016 Time: 11:30 am Eastern Time (8:30 am Pacific Time) Dial in: North America: 1-888-390-0546, International: +416-764-8688 Webcast: http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1144309&s=1&k=B5BC94165864B3E62231036C08453949

North America: 1-888-390-0541, International: +416-764-8677 Replay: Replay Passcode: 982010#

The conference call replay will be available until Wednesday, May 11, 2016. The conference call audio and transcript will be available on Capstone's website within approximately 24 hours of the call at http://capstonemining.com/investors/events-and-presentations/default.aspx.

About Capstone Mining Corp.

Capstone Mining Corp. is a Canadian base metals mining company, focused on copper. We are committed to the responsible development of our assets and the environments in which we operate. Our three producing mines are the Pinto Valley copper mine located in Arizona, US, the Cozamin copper-silver mine in Zacatecas State, Mexico and the Minto copper mine in Yukon, Canada. In addition, Capstone has two development projects; the large scale 70% owned copper-iron Santo Domingo project in Region III, Chile, in partnership with Korea Resources Corporation, and the 100% owned Kutcho copper-zinc project in British Columbia, Canada, as well as exploration properties in Chile and US. Capstone's strategy is to continue to extend the lives of our current mines with mineral resource and reserve expansions, maintain the optionality on the Santo Domingo development project, prudently progress the exploration portfolio and grow through acquisitions in politically stable, mining-friendly regions. We will pace our growth with our financial capacity, to retain, as a priority, sufficient financial flexibility to meet the requirements of our existing operations and our committed development projects, while maintaining an adequate cushion to deal with market volatility and operating risks inherent in the mining industry. Our headquarters are in Vancouver, Canada and we are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). Further information is available at www.capstonemining.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This document may contain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this document and Capstone does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable securities legislation.

Forward-looking statements relate to future events or future performance and reflect our expectations or beliefs regarding future events. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the estimation of mineral resources and mineral reserves, the realization of mineral reserve estimates, the timing and amount of estimated future production, costs of production and capital expenditures, the success of our mining operations, environmental risks, unanticipated reclamation expenses and title disputes. In certain cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", "believes" or variations of such words and phrases, or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved" or the negative of these terms or comparable terminology. In this document certain forward-looking statements are identified by words including "guidance", "ensured" and "expected". By their very nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Such factors include, amongst others, risks related to inherent hazards associated with mining operations, assumptions related to geotechnical condition of tailings facilities, future prices of copper and other metals, compliance with financial covenants, surety bonding, our ability to raise capital, counterparty risks associated with sales of our metals, use of financial derivative instruments and associated counterparty risks, foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations, changes in general economic conditions, accuracy of mineral resource and mineral reserve estimates, operating in foreign jurisdictions with risk of changes to governmental regulation, compliance with governmental regulations, compliance with environmental laws and regulations, reliance on approvals, licences and permits from governmental authorities, impact of climatic conditions on our Pinto Valley, Cozamin and Minto operations, aboriginal title claims and rights to consultation and accommodation, land reclamation and mine closure obligations, uncertainties and risks related to the potential development of the Santo Domingo Project, increased operating and capital costs, challenges to title to our mineral properties, dependence on key management personnel, potential conflicts of interest involving our directors and officers, corruption and bribery, limitations inherent in our insurance coverage, labour relations, increasing energy prices, competition in the mining industry, risks associated with joint venture partners, our ability to integrate new acquisitions into our operations, cybersecurity threats and other risks of the mining industry as well as those factors detailed from time to time in the Company's interim and annual financial statements and management's discussion and analysis of those statements, all of which are filed and available for review under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those described in our forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause our results, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that our forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as our actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements.

National Instrument 43-101 Compliance

Unless otherwise indicated, Capstone has prepared the technical information in this news release ("Technical Information") based on information contained in the technical reports, news releases and MD&A's (collectively the "Disclosure Documents") available under Capstone Mining Corp.'s company profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Each Disclosure Document was prepared by, or under the supervision of, a qualified person (a "Qualified Person") as defined in National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects of the Canadian Securities Administrators ("NI 43-101"). Readers are encouraged to review the full text of the Disclosure Documents which qualifies the Technical Information. Readers are advised that mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. The Disclosure Documents are each intended to be read as a whole, and sections should not be read or relied upon out of context. The Technical Information is subject to the assumptions and qualifications contained in the Disclosure Documents.

The technical information in this news release ("Technical Information") was prepared by, or under the supervision of, a qualified person (a "Qualified Person") as defined in National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects of the Canadian Securities Administrators ("NI 43-101"). The disclosure of the Technical Information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Gregg Bush, P. Eng., Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Technical Information related to mineral exploration activities has been reviewed and approved by Brad Mercer, P. Geol., Senior Vice President, Exploration. Both are Qualified Persons under NI 43-101.

Alternative Performance Measures

The items marked with a "(1)" are alternative performance measures and readers should refer to Alternative Performance Measures in the Company's Consolidated Management's Discussion and Analysis for the quarter ended March 31, 2016 as filed on SEDAR and as available on the Company's website.

Cautionary Note to United States Investors

This news release contains disclosure that has been prepared in accordance with the requirements of Canadian securities laws, which differ from the requirements of US securities laws. Without limiting the foregoing, this news release may refer to technical reports that use the terms "indicated" and "inferred" resources. US investors are cautioned that, while such terms are recognized and required by Canadian securities laws, the SEC does not recognize them. Under US standards, mineralization may not be classified as a "reserve" unless the determination has been made that the mineralization could be economically and legally produced or extracted at the time the reserve determination is made. US investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of indicated resources will ever be converted into reserves. US investors should also understand that "inferred resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and as to whether they can be mined legally or economically. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of "inferred resources" will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Therefore, US investors are also cautioned not to assume that all or any part of inferred resources exist, or that they can be mined legally or economically. Accordingly, information concerning descriptions of mineralization and resources contained in this news release may not be comparable to information made public by US companies subject to the reporting and disclosure requirements of the SEC.

(1) This is an alternative performance measure; please see "Alternative Performance Measures" at the end of this release.

Cindy Burnett, VP, Investor Relations and Communications, +1-604-637-8157, [email protected]

SOURCE Capstone Mining Corp.

Related Links

http://capstonemining.com/


NEW YORK, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Robert Manse is set to release an exclusive Sterling Silver and Gemstone Balinese-style hinged, bangle exclusive to HSN.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359772

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359771LOGO

Perfect for Mother's Day. Handcrafted Sterling Silver and Gemstone bangles by Robert Manse Designs. Amethyst and Citrine bangles boast over 5 carats of gemstones. Blue Topaz and White Topaz have over 8 carats of top quality gemstones.

Handcrafted in Bali, this rich bangle makes a perfect everyday statement, or a must-have accessory for a night out. It's designed for the trendy mom, the classic mom, the on-the-go mom, or for the mom who just loves things that sparkle! "This stunning bangle from our Bali Romanse Collection is designed to last a lifetime, just like a mother's love," said Robert Manse designer for Robert Manse Designs. "Jewelry allows us to mark important moments in our lives, and what better day than Mother's Day to create a meaningful memory with a beautiful piece of hand-crafted jewelry," added Manse.

Available in two (3) sizes, Petite, Small/Medium and Medium/Large, in a choice of stunning Swiss Blue Topaz, African Amethyst, White Topaz, or Madeira Citrine. The Amethyst and Citrine bangles boast over 5 carats of gemstones while the Blue Topaz and White Topaz bangles have more than 8 carats of gemstones. The top quality genuine gemstones are sourced exclusively from Brazil and Africa. Each bangle is gift boxed. Matching earrings, rings and necklaces are available.

Exclusive to HSN this bangle is sure to sell fast!

$399

www.robertmansedesigns.com

www.hsn.com

About Robert Manse and Robert Manse Designs

Live, love, laugh is the mantra of Robert Manse Designs. What started out as a personal quest to create lively, collectible silver jewelry transcended into a passion and an amazing life-journey for Robert Manse. Robert's love for life's adventures and exploration have taken him all over the world seeking insight and direction for what was to become Robert Manse Designs -- signature Sterling Silver collections; exotic treasures of glimmering silver and saturated gemstones full of brilliant color and sparkle.

RMD is able to express its creativity and timeless design though texture, shape and dimension. Clean, unique sterling silver pieces are elegant and range from bold statement to simple everyday styles. Each piece is timeless and easily wearable, individually or alongside other RMD pieces. Other RMD jewelry collections include Gem Romanse and Bromanse for Men.

Press Contact:

Alex Stewart

310.887.7077

Email

SOURCE Robert Manse Designs

Related Links

http://www.robertmansedesigns.com


CAIRO, Egypt, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Cequens, the largest A2P SMS provider in MEA, announced today a partnership with Capacity Media as Official SMS Sponsor of this year's ITW (International Telecoms Week). Now it's 9th year and with an expected 6000+ participants, ITW is the world's largest meeting for the global wholesale telecommunications community and will take place in Chicago, IL from 8 to 11 May 2016.

In addition to Official SMS Sponsor, Cequens will also be exhibiting as a Prime Sponsor at ITW to meet the wholesale telecoms community, and discuss new deals and business opportunities. With direct operator routes covering more than 99% of mobile subscribers in the Middle East and Africa, status as a GSMA Associate Member, and its proprietary PCI/DSS compliant messaging platform, Cequens is well positioned as MEA's largest A2P SMS network.

Hania Tolba, Cequens VP of Carrier Relations, emphasized the importance of the event, "We're proud of our deep roots in the Middle East and Africa, and it's our obligation to represent the region at ITW, an event that has proven year-over-year to be the ideal opportunity to create new relationships, exchange ideas, and discuss industry challenges."

Under the terms of the partnership, Cequens will extend its world-class SMS messaging services to ITW to disseminate timely agenda updates and important event notifications to registered participants.

"ITW has continued to grow year-over-year through its 9-year history. This the first time we have an exclusive SMS sponsor during the event and we look forward to partnering with Cequens to communicate with our guests." said Ross Webster, Event Director, ITW.

The Cequens Carrier Relations team can be found at ITW on the Purple level at Booth 1208.

About Cequens

Cequens Messaging empowers enterprises and OTTs with A2P bulk SMS text messaging, verification, and OTP services with direct connections to over 1.2 Billion Middle East and Africa (MEA) mobile subscribers. The Cequens mobile messaging platform, powered by our proprietary technology, is PCI/DSS compliant, fully cloud-based, and boasts several security and performance features that ensure carrier-grade availability and reachability to every mobile anywhere in the world. Cequens is a GSMA member and serves its 5000+ clients from offices all over the world. For more info cequens.com/sms.

About ITW

Now in its 9th year, ITW is the annual meeting point for the global wholesale telecommunications community and offers various networking opportunities through meeting rooms, an integrated exhibit and bilateral table area, numerous breakfasts, lunches and cocktail receptions and provides a wide range of conference sessions for attendees to benefit from. ITW 2016 will take place 8 to 11 May at Hyatt Regency & Swissotel in Chicago, IL. For more info www.internationaltelecomsweek.com.

Media Contact:

Sherif Hussein

Marketing & Communications Director

[email protected]

Middle East & Africa +2-011-2233-9000

Europe +44-20-3129-4057

North America: +1-415-914-1559



SOURCE Cequens
SAN FRANCISCO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Moments are going global! Cheetah Mobile (NYSE: CMCM), a leading mobile app developer, has officially partnered up with Kiip, a mobile rewards platform. Cheetah Mobile has integrated Kiip rewards into their first-party apps, including Clean Master, Battery Doctor, CM Security, and Piano Tiles 2. This partnership will bring scale to "moments marketing" globally, while engaging Cheetah Mobile's presence in APAC to help expand the model with more brands regionally there.

To do this, the Kiip platform is being white-labelled as "Cheetah Moments," and operations in Asia involving Cheetah Mobile's apps will operate under that name. Cheetah Mobile's Global Business Development team will also assist Kiip to expand the size of their network by offering the "Cheetah Moments SDK" to publishers across the globe, predominantly in APAC as well. This partnership will also enable Cheetah Mobile's global sales team of 100+ to sell into Kiip's placements within Cheetah Mobile's first party apps, as well as Kiip's network of 4,000+ apps.

"We're excited to launch Cheetah Moments with Kiip because we know the rewards will delight our users," said Sheng Fu, CEO of Cheetah Mobile. "Balancing user experience with monetization is a top priority for us, so our partnership with Kiip is a perfect fit."

"I'm beyond thrilled to announce this partnership with Cheetah Mobile. Both companies believe in creating amazing brand experiences that respect the consumer and we believe that the model to do that is through targeting moments. With Cheetah's scale and Kiip's moments technology, we believe we can change the mobile advertising landscape for the better." said Brian Wong, Co-Founder and CEO of Kiip.

Kiip has been the leader of rewarding mobile users during in-app moments since 2010, while Cheetah Mobile, founded in 2010, has more than 635 million monthly active users.

About Cheetah Mobile Inc.

Cheetah Mobile (NYSE: CMCM) is the world's leading mobile security and utility app developer. Its flagship products include Clean Master, the world's No. 1 cleaning app, and also CM Security, the world's top anti-virus and privacy protection app.

Cheetah Mobile is also one of the top three mobile game developers in the world, with its mobile game Piano Tiles 2 having reached the No. 1 ranking in more than 150 countries globally on both iOS and Android.

Its other mission-critical applications include Battery Doctor, CM Locker, Photo Grid, and more. In June 2015, Cheetah Mobile introduced the Cheetah Ad Platform to the global market.

As of December 31, 2015, Cheetah Mobile had approximately 2.34 billion global installations and 635 million global mobile monthly active users. Five of Cheetah Mobile's products have entered the top 40 in Google Play's global top app charts.

About Kiip

Kiip (pronounced "keep") redefines how brands connect with consumers through a rewards platform that targets "achievement moments" in mobile apps. This innovative approach to mobile marketing creates meaningful engagements driven by positive emotion between users, developers and advertisers. Backed by Hummer Winblad, Relay Ventures, True Ventures, Verizon Ventures, Digital Garage, IPG and others, the company has raised $24 million in funding to date.

Press Contact

Cheetah Mobile

Josh Ong

[email protected]

1.415.684.3947

Kiip

Emily Hodges

[email protected]

SOURCE Cheetah Mobile; Kiip
The China exhibition industry leader and the world-renowned social network platform have increased their ties to a global comprehensive strategic partnership through the agreement. Xu Bing, Vice President of CFTC, and Yu Zhiwei, Vice President of LinkedIn China signed the agreement as representatives of the two parties, initiating the collaboration between China's exhibition industry and social networks.

This collaboration is based upon complementary advantages, resource sharing and the common goals of the two entities. China Foreign Trade Centre looks forward to expanding global sales and precision marketing by employing LinkedIn's advanced information technology and Big Data platform. CFTC also expects to provide more convenient, efficient and higher quality services for international buyers and exhibitors.

"China has already become the world's most popular trade show market," said Li Jinqi, Chairman of the board of CFTC. "CFTC will function as the industry benchmark, and lead China's exhibition industry to a higher quality level. CFTC expects to increase online communication efficiency for buyers and exhibitors and we have increased the application of internet and information technology into investment and exhibition invitations, as well as on-site services over the past few years. I hope our agreement with LinkedIn will lead to a win-win cooperation and mutual benefits for both of us."

Shen Boyang, vice president of LinkedIn and president of LinkedIn China, suggested that by employing LinkedIn's social network solutions and services, the Canton Fair is expected to enhance its worldwide reputation and influence. "LinkedIn aims to be the very first successful transnational internet company in China," said Shen. "Furthermore, we expect to help more Chinese enterprises step towards the international market via our global platform."

The Canton Fair's LinkedIn platform has now attracted around fifteen thousand users in just two months, with both China Foreign Trade Centre and LinkedIn devoted to establishing the world's most powerful commercial network and enhancing brand awareness of both two parties worldwide.

About China Foreign Trade Centre

China Foreign Trade Centre is a government sponsored institution affiliated to the Ministry of Commerce of China. It has been responsible for organising the Canton Fair since 1957. The China Foreign Trade Centre (Group) is a subsidiary business entity of China Foreign Trade Centre, mainly conducting exhibitions, including foreign exhibitions in China and Chinese exhibitions both at home and abroad. It also covers exhibition-relevant business such as advertising, import and export, tourism, hotels, restaurants and property.

About Canton Fair

China Import and Export Fair, also known as the Canton Fair, is held biannually in Guangzhou every spring and autumn. Established in 1957, the Fair is a comprehensive exhibition with the longest history, highest level, largest scale and largest number of products as well as the broadest distribution of global buyers and the highest business turnover in China.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/359889

SOURCE Canton Fair
MINNEAPOLIS, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Christopher & Banks, a women's specialty retailer, today announced plans to celebrate amazing women across the U.S. with "Celebrating You" events in their 516 stores on April 30, 2016. The events, honoring all women as a lead-in to Mother's Day, will feature several in-store activities and mark the launch of the company's next round of the national Amazing Women contest.

"Women are not only Christopher & Banks' foundation and inspiration, they are incredible forces in our lives that we are privileged to honor," said LuAnn Via, Christopher & Banks President and CEO. "Celebrating You is about recognizing the invaluable knowledge and support we provide each otherthe life advice we get from our female relatives, the career guidance we gain from our female colleagues and the honest opinions we appreciate from our female friends. We want our customers to bring their circle of women to our stores for a day filled with celebration, laughter and style."

In-Store Celebrating You Events

Stores will celebrate all women at the April 30 event with the following offers from 11 am to 2 pm local time:

Discounts : 25% off regular price items, 35% off if using a Christopher & Banks credit card

: 25% off regular price items, 35% off if using a Christopher & Banks credit card Photo ops : A special photo booth will encourage customers, their family and friends to celebrate the amazing women they are with #CelebratingYou

: A special photo booth will encourage customers, their family and friends to celebrate the amazing women they are with #CelebratingYou A free gift : Christopher & Banks has partnered with a team of two young amazing women to bring a special gift to customers at the Celebrating You events. The first 25 shoppers in each store who make a purchase will receive limited edition white tea bath fizzers created exclusively for Christopher & Banks customers by da Bomb Bath Fizzers. Da Bomb is a local Minneapolis company started by two sisters, currently age 13 and 15.

: Christopher & Banks has partnered with a team of two young amazing women to bring a special gift to customers at the Celebrating You events. The first 25 shoppers in each store who make a purchase will receive limited edition white tea bath fizzers created exclusively for Christopher & Banks customers by da Bomb Bath Fizzers. Da Bomb is a local Minneapolis company started by two sisters, currently age 13 and 15. Words of wisdom : Find wisdom and quotes shared throughout the storeattributed to everyone from famous women to Christopher & Banks moms and customers.

: Find wisdom and quotes shared throughout the storeattributed to everyone from famous women to Christopher & Banks moms and customers. Style advice: Check out Pinterest top-picks and get personal styling assistance from our associates. Select stores will have in-store appearances from top style bloggers sharing their tips for wearing the best of spring and summer.

Amazing Women Contest

The celebration of inspiring women will be extended with the launch of the next round of Christopher & Banks' national Amazing Women contest. From April 27-May 8, nominations will be accepted for the contest that recognizes the contributions women make to their family, friends and community every day. One Amazing Woman and several runners up will be selected in June. Nominate in-store during the Celebrating You event or online at the Christopher & Banks Facebook page or website.

Use the store locator to find the Celebrating You event at the store nearest you.

About Christopher & Banks

Christopher & Banks is a Minneapolis-based specialty retailer of women's clothing. Our mission is to provide our customers with style, value and service that help her look fabulous and feel amazing, every day and for life's special moments. Christopher & Banks sells missy, petite and women's sized clothing in more than 500 stores nationwide and online at christopherandbanks.com.

SOURCE Christopher & Banks

Related Links

http://www.christopherandbanks.com


MONTREAL, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Claude Mongeau, president and chief executive officer of CN (TSX: CNR) (NYSE: CNI), said today the company has made huge strides since its 1995 initial public share offering (IPO), transforming itself into a North American railway and true backbone of the economy.

"CN's journey since its IPO is the story of a remarkable and uniquely successful business transformation," Mongeau told the company's annual meeting of shareholders here.

Once an industry laggard based largely in Canada, CN today is the clear North American rail industry leader. Following five successful acquisitions, the company now efficiently spans eight Canadian provinces and 16 U.S. states, transporting more than C$250 billion worth of goods annually over a 20,000-route-mile network that reaches all three coasts on the continent.

Mongeau said core financial measures attest to CN's superior record of efficiency, profitability and shareholder value-creation since the IPO:

The railway's operating ratio  a key measure of efficiency  in 2015 improved to a record 58.2 per cent from 89.4 per cent in 1994, the year before privatization, and has consistently been the best in the industry since 1998.





CN has generated almost 20 per cent average annual growth in adjusted diluted earnings per share since becoming a publicly-traded company.





From an initial value of C$2 billion in 1995, CN's market capitalization has increased several fold to stand at C$63 billion currently. Close to C$70 billion of capital gains and dividend distributions have been generated since the IPO for the benefit of loyal investors who rely on CN for the effective stewardship of their stock ownership.

The privatization of CN 20 years ago was a pivotal policy decision by the Canadian government that gave impetus to a wave of broadly positive change and fundamental innovation. CN's uniquely successful business transformation unlocked significant and lasting value for all stakeholders involved, and it serves to underscore the importance of a vibrant commercial policy framework staying in place for the North American rail industry.

"We are extremely proud of our transformational journey," Mongeau said. "Today we touch just about every sector of the economy, serving thousands of valued customers with high quality and reliable service at world-class freight rates. With the right policy framework in place, we will continue to fulfill the extraordinary promise of CN's business transformation with significant investments in our business and bold customer service innovation."

CN is a true backbone of the economy, transporting more than C$250 billion worth of goods annually for a wide range of business sectors, ranging from resource products to manufactured products to consumer goods, across a rail network of approximately 20,000 route-miles spanning Canada and mid-America. CN  Canadian National Railway Company, along with its operating railway subsidiaries  serves the cities and ports of Vancouver, Prince Rupert, B.C., Montreal, Halifax, New Orleans, and Mobile, Ala., and the metropolitan areas of Toronto, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Calgary, Chicago, Memphis, Detroit, Duluth, Minn./Superior, Wis., and Jackson, Miss., with connections to all points in North America. For more information about CN, visit the Company's website at www.cn.ca.

SOURCE CN

Related Links

http://www.cn.ca


VERNON, Calif., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Coast Packing Company  the largest producer of animal fat shortenings in the Western U.S. and home of popular VIVA brand lard  is among those area businesses supporting Para Los Ninos on its 35th anniversary, at a gala event scheduled for May 5 at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.

Para Los Ninos is a nonprofit organization that has worked for 35 years to create academic success and social well-being for children. Through early education centers, charter schools, and wellness centers, the organization offers high-quality education integrated with family supports, mental health services, and community engagement opportunities to thousands of children living in at-risk neighborhoods in Los Angeles County.

The Para Los Ninos 35th Anniversary Gala, which will feature a special tribute to the organization's alumni, kicks off with a 6 p.m. cocktail reception and silent auction, followed by dinner, the program and live auction at 7 p.m.

"We are proud and delighted to join with leading businesses in Southern California  among them the CBS Radio Network, US Bank, City National Bank and Walmart  in support of the children, families and programs of Para Los Ninos," said Eric R. Gustafson, CEO, Coast Packing. "The 35th Anniversary Gala will bring together the community, students and families of Para Los Ninos for a tribute showcasing the organization's work and strengthening bonds among all involved."

About Para Los Ninos

Founded in 1980, Para Los Ninos is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the academic success and social wellbeing of children. Our mission is to help children and families succeed in school and in life. With ten early education centers and three charter schools serving low-income children (ages 6 months to 14 years), we place education at the core of our mission to break the cycle of poverty and close the achievement gap for our students. We provide a comprehensive educational model that incorporates: high-quality education, family support and mental health services, and parent engagement and community skill-building opportunities. Para Los Ninos serves 7,500 children, youth and their families throughout Los Angeles each year.

About Coast Packing Company

Coast Packing Company (www.coastpacking.com), a closely held corporation, is the number one supplier of animal fat shortenings  particularly lard and beef tallow -- in the Western United States. The company sells to major manufacturers, distributors, retailers, smaller food service operations and leading bakeries. The company participates actively in various ethnic markets  from Hispanic retail chains, with its VIVA brand, to various Asian specialty markets. Based in Vernon, Calif., Coast Packing Company is regional, national and, increasingly, global. In some cases, supplier relationships are multigenerational, extending back 50 years and more.

For more information about Coast Packing Company, visit: www.coastpacking.com. Follow us via social media on Facebook at www.facebook.com/coastpackingco, Twitter @coastpackingco and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/coastpackingco.

Media contact:

Ken Greenberg

Edge Communications, Inc.

[email protected]

323/469-3397

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359540LOGO

SOURCE Coast Packing Company

Related Links

http://www.coastpacking.com


Hardeep Grewal establishes major MBA endowment at his alma mater

MONTREAL, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - It's an incredible story of success that's worthy of a Hollywood rags-to-riches screenplay. Concordia graduate Hardeep Grewal, BComm 83, went from having $7 in his pocket when he immigrated to Canada in the 1970s to becoming a present-day business magnate.

Grewal credits his Concordia experience as a key to his success. And, as thanks to his alma mater, he is donating $1 million to endow MBA scholarships at the university's John Molson School of Business (JMSB).

Before succeeding in the business world, Grewal's' circumstances were challenging. To make ends meet as a university student he pulled double duty: classes by day and driving a taxi by night.

"My father and mother were farmers in India  with only elementary school learning," says Grewal, who is originally from Punjab. "Their dream for my three siblings and me was to get an education."

Appreciation for a flexible education

Concordia's flexibility made it possible for Grewal to achieve his ambitions. As he says, "The university took me in. That's why I've always been loyal."

Today, Grewal is an immensely successful businessman. As president and CEO of Los Angeles-based OhCal Foods, Grewal manages 2,100 Subway restaurant locations in California, Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland in the United States and in Ontario, Canada. He's one of the biggest franchise developers in North America.

"Many JMSB graduates do incredibly well," says Concordia President Alan Shepard. "One way they show appreciation is by supporting Concordia students, who are in turn equally successful and it keeps perpetuating."

"Such a significant gift has the capacity of creating a branching effect. There will be future generations of business leaders who can be traced back to this donation," says Concordia's Vice-President, Advancement and External Relations, Bram Freedman.

In recognition of the major gift, the university is naming a bright, airy space in its Molson Building after the Concordia grad and his wife. Hardeep (Hardy) Singh Grewal and Patwant Kaur Grewal Atrium.

"The naming of spaces at the John Molson Building sets an aspirational goal," says JMSB interim dean Stephane Brutus. "Many students come to Concordia with the hopes of achieving that kind of impact themselves."

"I know where I came from," says Grewal. "I'm proud to have my name attached to the school that was a building block for me."

Related links:

John Molson School of Business: concordia.ca/jmsb

of Business: OhCal Foods: ohcal.com

Hashtags:

#CUalumni #CUgratitude #JMSB

SOURCE Concordia University

Related Links

http://now.concordia.ca


At Mainiway's booth, the impressive C2M platform enthralled the audience with an innovative process to customize a gift.

The audience booked a gift on a tablet and logged in a customized E-commerce interface. After the order was complete, the audience was able to trace the whole process under backend big data center precisely - accepting direction, analyzing optimal manufacturing route, estimating timeline, choosing materials and arranging intelligent scheduling. With the above preparation, the automation assembly line began the production. The robot arms precisely grabbed a box according to the chosen color and placed it onto the assembling line. After CCD testing and seal cutting, it was delivered to the finished products zone and the audience was informed that it was to be delivered. It actually took 2 minutes for the audience to receive the gift with QR Code, and the process was totally transparent.

"Mainiway C2M is to overturn traditional C2B2M business model via connecting consumers to manufacturers directly and meeting the consumers' customized demands", said Ning Chen, CEO of Mainiway. "It can find the best vendor with the help of big data analysis and industrial cloud, and allows consumers to trace the whole manufacturing process to guarantee the quality. Meanwhile, the precise manufacturing platform makes the automation assembly line more intelligent and informative."

It's known that the United States has the most developed IOT and Germany tops the automation technology. Mainiway C2M combines the leading IOT and automation technology to shape a traceable E-commerce and intelligent manufacturing ecosystem. It helps to protect consumers' benefits by tracing supplies, process and production cycle, which will be a milestone help to change the impression of "Made In China is synonymous with terrible quality".

Regarding Mainiway C2M

Mainiway C2M provides a software service to combine business management and intelligent production, especially for manufacturing industry. The service model will help the traditional enterprises realize "Internet plus" operation, manufacturing and selling, which accelerates the whole business being of information, procedure and standard. Through O2O marketing-manufacturing integration, market-driven manufacturing and inventory, Mainiway C2M is to save cost with optimized supply chain and keep pace with the intelligent customized trend.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/359919

SOURCE Mainiway
Philipp Rosler, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, said the digital revolution presents an opportunity for Vietnam to step up its game in global competitiveness.

Focusing on developing a start-up ecosystem like the Sillicon Valley is essential for Vietnams start up community to strive, said Rosler at a meeting with Hanois prominent start ups last night.

The former German minister of economics and technology drew from his own experience of brining his countrys start-ups to the valley for six months to learn and connect.

Im convinced that Vietnams start up community is equally dynamic and creative, said Rosler. What the country needs now is to highlight its unique culture and creativity to attract venture capital funding.

Philipp Rosler speaking at the event. Photo by Nhat Minh.

As the world is shifting to new production ways like 3D printing and artificial intelligience, technology is starting to replace cheap workforce. If you focus on tech, you have a great chance. Start right now with new production ways; try to merge the classical industry with the digital one, said Rosler.

In order to achieve that, Rosler noted Vietnam has to up its research in science and technology and encourage entrepreneurship among its young population. Meanwhile, the government should act as a bridge between start ups and venture capital funding.

Responding on VnExpress comment that Vietnams productivity is 16 times lower than Singapores, Rosler stressed on looking forward and taking the advantage of the countrys young population, what developed countries like Germany and Japan don't have.

However, Nguyen Viet Thang, a team leader at See Space, a start up developing smart TV technology, has a different outlook on Vietnams start up scene.

Hanois start up community is far behind the level of Silicon Valley. Catching up would require a lot of work, said Thang. Instead of trying to compete with countries like the U.S., Vietnam should use its cheap workforce to its advantage as the digital outsourcer. See Space itself is based in Silicon Valley but its team of developers works in Hanoi.

For the start-up community to strive, Thang thinks first the publics attitude to start-ups should change. Doing a start-up requires tremendous amount of hard work, while many are just looking for a short cut to success, said Thang.

Moreover, he said, what Vietnams workforce lacks is problem solving. Creating a skilled workforce Vietnam needs to strive is not about merely teaching coding. Its about allowing young people to practice critical thinking and problem solving, and coding is one way to do it.

The event was organized by Global Shapers Hanoi Hub (GSC Hanoi Hub) and Up-Coworking Space for startup entrepreneurs to discuss startups in the context of global integration.
Rail Safety Week starts April 25. #SeeTracksThinkTrain #RSW2016

CALGARY, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Canadian Pacific (CP) and the CP Police Service (CPPS) will be educating the public throughout Rail Safety Week (April 25  May 1) about the importance of safe, smart decisions in and around railway property, 365 days a year.

In conjunction with Operation Lifesaver and other stakeholders, CP is reminding motorists, cyclists and pedestrians that any route that includes illegally crossing railway tracks or using railway tracks as a shortcut is the wrong route. During the week, CP and CPPS will conduct rail safety blitzes in communities across our network with participation from other police agencies and schools to educate the public about the role we each play in staying safe.

"Railway tracks are not an extension of a public pathway, nor are they a safe shortcut," said Laird Pitz, CP Vice President and Chief Risk Officer. "While Rail Safety Week is a good reminder, rail safety requires ongoing vigilance every minute of every day. Crossing incidents can have tragic consequences for all involved, but it's important to remember that they are preventable."

The safe operation of our trains through the communities in which we operate is a priority for CP. During Rail Safety Week, CPPS will be visible in the community educating people about the dangers of trespassing on railway property. CPPS will focus on high traffic areas where the railway sees high instances of trespassing or dangerous behavior around the railway right-of-way.

Although the number of crossing and trespasser incidents and fatalities has declined year-over-year, one incident is one too many.

Federal Railroad Administration statistics (all railroads)

2,059 vehicle vs. train incidents in the U.S. in 2015 resulting in 240 fatalities

893 trespasser vs. train incidents in the U.S. in 2015; 486 resulted in fatalities

People can follow CP's rail safety outreach activities and get safety tips on Facebook and Twitter. Share your rail safety story using #SeeTracksThinkTrain #RSW2016.

More information about safety around tracks and trains can be found at oli.org. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

About Canadian Pacific

Canadian Pacific (TSX:CP)(NYSE:CP) is a transcontinental railway in Canada and the United States with direct links to eight major ports, including Vancouver and Montreal, providing North American customers a competitive rail service with access to key markets in every corner of the globe. CP is growing with its customers, offering a suite of freight transportation services, logistics solutions and supply chain expertise. Visit cpr.ca to see the rail advantages of Canadian Pacific.

About CP Police Service

The CP Police Service (CPPS) is a fully accredited police agency operating in both Canada and the U.S. created by Federal Statute with full federal, state and provincial powers. CPPS officers are peace officers as defined by the Criminal Code. The CPPS plays an important role by contributing to public safety and enforcement activities in the communities where Canadian Pacific operates. CPPS officers promote public safety through trespasser abatement patrols, enforcement of traffic legislation at and near railway crossings and participation in education activities to raise awareness of community safety issues. The CPPS also help to protect the critical infrastructure of Canada and the U.S. by ensuring supply chain integrity and ensuring the operational efficiency of the transportation network.

SOURCE Canadian Pacific

Related Links

http://www.cpr.ca


--- Montreal Heart Institute Leads Worldwide Study ---

-- Dalcetrapib to be Studied in Genetically Distinct Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) --

- Global Study to be Conducted at 1,000 Sites in 33 Countries -

LONDON and MONTREAL, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- DalCor Pharmaceuticals today announced it has randomzied the first patient in the Phase 3 "dal-GenE" clinical trial, a cardiovascular outcomes study of dalcetrapib in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and the AA genotype in the ADCY9 gene. The worldwide clinical trial will be led by the Montreal Heart Institute.

The double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, multicenter Phase 3 clinical trial will enroll 5,000 patients recently hospitalized with ACS and who express the AA genotype at variant rs1967309 in the ADCY9 gene, determined by an investigational companion diagnostic test developed by Roche Molecular Systems (RMS). The primary endpoint of the study is the time to first occurrence of any component of the composite of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction (heart attack) and stroke. The trial will be conducted at 1,000 sites in 33 countries.

Researchers at the Montreal Heart Institute (MHI), who will be leading the dal-GenE study, discovered the importance of the AA genotype in determining patients' clinical response to treatment with dalcetrapib. MHI's Biobank was also used in this pharmacogenomic research. Approximately 20 percent of the general population harbor the AA genotype.

Quotes

Robert McNeil, Ph.D., chief executive officer of DalCor, said, "We believe that targeting a genetically specific patient population with dalcetrapib has the potential to dramatically reduce cardiovascular risk in this select patient population. Success would represent a major breakthrough in an important therapeutic area that has seen a tremendous amount of interest. This trial represents a major step forward in cardiovascular medicine, opening new doors and creating therapeutic options for patients of specific genetic composition suffering from heart disease and who can benefit from the compound. We expect to complete the trial in the first half of 2020."

Andre Desmarais, O.C., O.Q., deputy chairman, president and co-chief executive officer of Power Corporation, said, "I am extremely proud to have contributed to this advancement through the financing of the MHI BioBank and my involvement with DalCor. This is a perfect example of how making impact investments can have actual social effects. Individual success and collective welfare should be seen as two sides of the same coin, in the end creating value for all. I believe that the Montreal Heart Institute is underway to changing the lives of millions of people and further positioning itself globally in the world of science, which will continue to attract talent and investors in Montreal. I look forward to seeing the results of the trial."

Jean-Claude Tardif, C.M., M.D., director of the Research Center at the Montreal Heart Institute and professor of medicine at the Universite de Montreal, said, "We are thrilled to initiate this important clinical trial and prove the observation that patients with a specific genetic profile will respond favorably to dalcetrapib. This is a major step forward in our quest for precision cardiovascular medicine against atherosclerosis, the leading cause of mortality in the world."

Donald Black, M.D., chief medical officer of DalCor, said, "We have established a strong network of investigators who are eager to assess a therapeutic mechanism that is distinct from lowering LDL-cholesterol. With the dal-GenE trial, we are expecting to demonstrate a very significant reduction in heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths with the addition of dalcetrapib to the standard of care including statins in patients with ACS."

Didier Leconte, MBA, ASC, senior director, life sciences investments at Fonds de solidarite FTQ, said, "Our direct and indirect investments in DalCor are evidence of our strong support for the work they and the team at the Montreal Heart Institute are doing. We believe deeply in both teams' ability to develop this treatment with the potential to help so many people who are at risk of heart attacks and strokes because of cardiovascular disease."

About Dalcetrapib

Dalcetrapib is one of four CETP inhibitors to have reached full-scale development. Over 17,000 patients have participated in dalcetrapib clinical trials. A large, double blind cardiovascular (CV) study, dal-Outcomes, randomized over 15,000 patients already taking statins. The drug was well tolerated but the study results were globally neutral  there was no significant reduction in CV events in the dalcetrapib group.

In 2012, investigators at the Montreal Heart Institute led by Professors Jean-Claude Tardif and Marie-Pierre Dube found a significant association between the effects of dalcetrapib in altering CV events and the polymorphism at the rs1967309 location in the adenylate cyclase type 9 (ADCY9) gene. Patients with the AA genotype had a 39% reduction in CV events when treated with dalcetrapib compared to placebo, while GG patients had a 27% increase and AG patients had a neutral effect. This analysis was conducted in 5749 patients. Additional analyses of other studies also demonstrated reduced atherosclerosis in the AA population when treated with dalcetrapib.

DalCor secured a worldwide exclusive license for dalcetrapib together with rights to the genetic marker for use with dalcetrapib and is sponsoring the dal-GenE study, which is planned to include 5,000 patients to prospectively confirm the results of the pharmacogenomic analysis in the dal-Outcomes study in a patient population with the AA genotype at the rs1967309 location in the ADCY9 gene.

About DalCor Pharmaceuticals

DalCor is developing precision treatments by genetically targeting patients that will derive clinical benefits. By integrating clinical and genetic insights, DalCor intends to deliver superior clinical cardiovascular outcomes. The company's first development program, dalcetrapib, is intended to reduce cardiovascular events in a specific genetic subset of patients. DalCor Pharmaceuticals has offices in Montreal, San Mateo, Calif., Zug, Switzerland and Stockport, U.K. For more information, visit www.dalcorpharma.com

About the Montreal Heart Institute

Founded in 1954 by Dr. Paul David, the Montreal Heart Institute constantly aims for the highest standards of excellence in the cardiovascular field through its leadership in clinical and basic research, ultra-specialized care, professional training and prevention. It is part of the broad network of health excellence made up of Universite de Montreal and its affiliated institutions. The Montreal Heart Institute ranks as the No. 1 research hospital in Canada for research intensity and research funds per researcher, according to Research Infosource. For more information, please visit www.icm-mhi.org

About the Fonds de solidarite FTQ

The Fonds de solidarite FTQ helps drive our economy. With net assets of $11.2 billion as at November 30, 2015, the Fonds is a development capital fund that channels the savings of Quebecers into investments in all sectors of the economy to help create and maintain jobs and further Quebec's development. The Fonds is a partner, either directly or through its network members, in more than 2,550 companies. With more than 600,000 shareholder-savers, the Fonds helps create, maintain and protect more than 176,000 jobs. For more information, visit www.fondsftq.com.

DalCor Contacts:

Corporate

DalCor Pharmaceuticals

Donald Black, M.D.

(609) 613-6637

[email protected]

Media

Russo Partners

Matt Middleman, M.D.

(212) 845-4272

[email protected]

Montreal Heart Institute

Lise Plante

(514) 376-3330

[email protected]

SOURCE DalCor Pharmaceuticals

Related Links

http://dalcorpharma.com


NEW YORK, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Direct Agents won the 4th annual Hermes Creative Award presented by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals for an integrated Omni-Channel strategy for its client Zeel, - the first, largest, and leading on demand massage company  across Search, Programmatic, Social and Creative. An international competition for professionals working to develop and design traditional and emerging media, the Hermes Creative Awards distinguishes individuals for outstanding creative work.

Direct Agents received the prized Gold Award for its work with Zeel, the company that created Massage On Demand and brings same-day massages to homes, offices, hotels, and events across the US. Using a unified data-driven approach across various media platforms, Direct Agents and Zeel collaborated to drive downloads through mobile app campaigns, build brand awareness, and increase booked massages.

"Direct Agents is a true partner of Zeel and an extension of our internal marketing team," says Cynthia Irons, Chief Marketing Officer, Zeel. "We're incredibly proud of the work we've done with them. To now say it is award-winning is exceptional. They understand our brand and messaging, and drive hard for results to meet and beat KPIs each month."

In an attempt to increase massage bookings, the Direct Agents Social Team utilized various features, such as geo-targeting and using 1st party data to build sophisticated look-a-like models, on Twitter and Facebook in order to segment Zeel's audience.

Simultaneously, the Direct Agents Search and Programmatic teams utilized rigorous multi-variate testing across various platforms to help recruit Zeel Massage Therapists with search and display ads. These joint efforts allowed Direct Agents to help Zeel expand to over 25 cities nationwide, including Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, D.C., San Francisco, and Seattle, among others.

Implementing a combination of innovative targeting, cross-channel analysis, and data-driven response, Direct Agents utilizes a cohesive approach that promises business growth and exceeds expected customer acquisition. Its Hermes Creative Awards win demonstrates Direct Agents' state-of-the-art holistic strategy, and it assures to continue delivering omni-channel success.

"It's been a pleasure supporting Zeel with their customer acquisition efforts as they rapidly scale their business," says Josh Boaz, Managing Director/Co-Founder, Direct Agents. "They have a data-driven, performance oriented mindset that matches well with our agency DNA and media buying methodologies. This award is a testament to the strong work we've done together."

ABOUT DIRECT AGENTS

Direct Agents is a full-service digital marketing agency that specializes in customer acquisition solutions. Our data driven approach to campaign strategy, combined with best-of-breed technology, allows us to identify and dynamically engage customers, while dramatically increasing the efficiency of marketing spend. For more information, please visit www.directagents.com.

ABOUT ZEEL

Zeel delivers Massage On Demand  top-quality massages from licensed, vetted massage therapists to homes, hotels, workplaces, and events in as little as an hour, or up to a month in advance. With Zeel, customers enjoy a massage in the comfort, convenience, safety, and privacy of the place and time of their choosing, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, with start times as early as 8 am and as late as 10:30 pm. Booking, scheduling, and payment are made easy with the Zeel app for iPhone and Android. Zeel Massage On Demand is available in the following metro areas and their surrounding cities: Boston, Chicago, Denver, the NYC Tri-State Area, the San Francisco Bay Area, Greater Los Angeles Area, Orange County, San Diego, Palm Springs, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Tampa, Las Vegas, Austin, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Phoenix, and Washington D.C. - with more locations coming soon. For more information, please visit www.zeel.com.

Contact:

Regina Hong

[email protected]

(646) 852-9049

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160422/359128LOGO

SOURCE Direct Agents

Related Links

http://www.directagents.com


FAIRFIELD, Ohio, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The board of directors of DNA Diagnostics Center (DDC, or the Company), one of the world's largest providers of private DNA testing services, named Lori Tauber Marcus chair of the board of directors effective immediately.

Leveraging more than 20 years of experience in senior marketing and general management roles with Keurig Green Mountain Inc., The Children's Place Retail Stores, and PepsiCo Inc., Lori Tauber Marcus has guided corporate boards and senior management through business expansion. She has directed P&Ls of up to $1B, leading in key operating roles as an influential change agent establishing partnerships and business infrastructure for new product development, manufacturing, distribution and sales.

Marcus is Chief Marketing Officer for Peloton, where she leads the company's global marketing organization. In addition, she currently serves as a Board Member and C-suite advisor for corporate and not-for-profit organizations. As a Board Member and now Vice Chair of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation Board, over the past decade, she has helped double corporate giving and triple overall revenue, introducing a new corporate development model and leading strategic re-branding and customer/patient-centric digital marketing efforts. Marcus also serves on the CMO Advisory Board for VentureBeat and as an Advisor to the CEO and CMO of Carrington Farms.

Previously in global corporate roles, Marcus was a lead marketing and operating executive. Most recently, as Chief Global Brand and Product Officer for Keurig Green Mountain Inc., Marcus directed an approximate $1B P&L while establishing a global footprint for multiple business lines and leading the launch and commercialization of new multibillion-dollar products. In this role, she drove product R&D, technology, supply chain development and all digital and e-commerce marketing to drive sales.

Earlier, Marcus served as Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President for The Children's Place Retail Stores. Prior to that, Marcus built a successful 24-year career with PepsiCo, holding national and global Senior Vice President and general management roles. She started her career with a division of A.C. Nielsen.

Marcus holds a business degree from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been inducted into the YWCA's Academy of Women Leaders.

Lori Tauber Marcus, chair of the DNA Diagnostics Center board of directors, commented: "My role as board chair of DDC is a great match for my background in consumer products, retail and direct-to-consumer marketing and my deep personal interests in healthcare, as reflected by my work with the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation Board. DDC is on the frontier of DNA testing. I very much look forward to exploring that frontier with my fellow board members, investors and the staff of DDC as we work together to expand the applications for DNA testing while growing the company and strengthening DDC's leadership role in this exciting, fast-moving industry."

Connie Hallquist, President and CEO of DNA Diagnostics Center, said: "I am pleased to welcome Lori Tauber Marcus as Chair of the Board of DDC. Lori brings a wealth of experience in corporate governance and board leadership in addition to her successful track record as a senior executive managing and growing strong consumer brands. As Board Chair, Lori will play a key role in taking DDC to the next level. I look forward to working with Lori and our fellow board members."

About DDC

DDC is one of the largest DNA testing companies in the world. Founded 20 years ago, and with offices in Fairfield (Ohio) and London (United Kingdom), DDC offers comprehensive DNA testing for paternity and family relationships, forensics, genetic traits of animals, cell line authentication, and ancestry. DDC's Dual Process ensures all collected DNA samples are independently tested twice producing legal results of unmatched quality and reliability. DDC is recognized through a number of accreditations nationally and internationally including those performed by the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB), The Ministry of Justice, and the College of American Pathologists (CAP). DDC is also accredited by ACLASS to meet the standards of ISO 17025 and the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors / Laboratory Accreditation Board-International and follows the DNA Advisory Board (DAB) guidelines, which attests to DDC's superior forensic testing service. For more information, please visit www.dnacenter.com.

In 2015, DDC was acquired by specialist healthcare investor GHO Capital who will support the future development of the company.

About GHO Capital

Global Healthcare Opportunities, or GHO Capital Partners LLP, was founded in 2014 as a specialist healthcare investment adviser based in London. Its vision is to apply global capabilities and perspectives to build a world-class healthcare specialist private equity firm by recognising and seizing the highly attractive and under-penetrated European market opportunity. GHO Capital has a powerful combination of transaction, investment and industry skills which sets it apart from traditional private equity firms. For further information, please visit www.ghocapital.com.

Contacts:

Jan Strode

DNA Diagnostics Center

T +1 619 890 4040

E [email protected]

SOURCE DNA Diagnostics Center

Related Links

http://www.dnacenter.com


NEWARK, Calif. and LEBANON, N.H., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- DNA2.0 Inc. announced that it has entered into a definitive asset purchase agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of MIGS LLC. MIGS is a Lebanon, NH-based integrated contract research organization specializing in humanization and the production of antibody and antibody-like molecules that support preclinical studies with microgram to gram quantities of protein. MIGS Founder Dr. Michael Feldhaus will join the DNA2.0 team as senior vice president of antibody technologies.

"We are delighted to welcome the MIGS team into DNA2.0," said Jeremy Minshull, PhD, CEO of DNA2.0. "MIGS' antibody expertise and protein expression technology is a great fit with DNA2.0's industrialized bioengineering pipeline. We aim to provide an unparalleled antibody production and engineering platform under one roof, and together we will continue to provide the excellent customer service MIGS customers expect, while growing our service offerings."

DNA2.0 has recently expanded into a new 50,000 SF facility in Newark, CA, allowing the company to make a significant investment in mammalian protein production capacity. "With MIGS' antibody expertise, we now have the ability to go from virtual sequence to producing proteins at gram-scale in mammalian cells," said Dr. Minshull. "Adding this to our machine learning and DNA synthesis platforms, we aim to help our customers to reimagine their research."

"We are excited to join forces with DNA2.0," said Michael Feldhaus, PhD, founder and CEO of MIGS. "We have worked closely with DNA2.0 for some time and there is a clear opportunity for us to be more than the sum of our parts. MIGS customers will continue to have access to the highly integrated synthesis through purification process that delivers highly characterized antibody and antibody-like molecules in only a couple of weeks' time. Customers will now also have access to DNA2.0's next generation of mammalian expression vectors, translating into higher yields and faster turnaround times. We believe the protein pharmaceutical market will find this integrated offering an exceptional platform to accelerate their research."

MIGS CEO Michael Feldhaus and key personnel will transfer to the DNA2.0 site in Newark, CA. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

About DNA2.0

DNA2.0 is the leading bioengineering solutions provider, offering an integrated pipeline of solutions including gene design, optimization and synthesis, expression vectors, and platforms for protein and strain engineering. DNA2.0 explores novel applications for synthetic genes and the synergy between efficient gene design and protein optimization technologies. DNA2.0's tools and solutions are fueling the transformation of biology from a discovery science to an engineering discipline. The company is privately held and is headquartered in Newark, California. For more information, please visit http://www.DNA20.com.

About MIGS

MIGS was founded by two world renowned antibody engineers, Michael Feldhaus and James Marks, who have a combined total of greater than 150 papers in the field, greater than 100 patents in the antibody space, and more than 15 antibodies currently in clinical trials or approved for clinical use. The founders' vast experience was leveraged to build the company's unparalleled antibody production and analysis platform, which is applied to humanization and antibody engineering projects.

Media Contact:

Kate Caves

323-861-6361

[email protected]

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SOURCE DNA2.0 Inc.

Related Links

http://www.DNA20.com


RICHMOND, Va., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Dominion will continue its 32-year legacy of celebrating volunteerism and community service during Benjamin J. Lambert, III, Volunteer of the Year events in Virginia and Ohio. The events will honor 18 outstanding employee/retiree volunteers whose efforts in 2015 brightened the lives of others and made lasting improvements in communities across the Dominion footprint.

"Last year, Dominion volunteers collectively contributed nearly 110,000 hours of time and focused on multiple good causes," said Thomas F. Farrell II, chairman, president and chief executive officer. "I salute our volunteers for stepping up and getting involved; for going the extra mile to enrich lives and make good things happen in their communities."

Hailing from Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin, the 2015 Volunteers of the Year will be recognized during awards ceremonies to be held in Akron, Ohio, on April 14, and in Richmond on April 26. As part of the awards, the company will donate $1,000 to each honoree's charity of choice.

Dominion volunteers dedicate their time and skills to a variety of charitable activities  from stocking food pantries to building outdoor classrooms, weatherizing homes to reading to children. A wide range of nonprofit organizations have benefited, including those working to revitalize communities, meet human needs, promote education and improve the environment.

In 2015, Dominion and its charitable foundation invested more than $23 million in programs that helped improve the quality of life for people in the communities where they work and live. Dominion's longstanding volunteer program was recognized with several awards, including the Commonwealth of Virginia's 2015 Governor's Volunteerism and Community Service Award and the Oil & Gas Industry Northeast Summit's Corporate Responsibility Award.

Dominion (NYSE: D), is one of the nation's largest producers and transporters of energy. The Dominion Foundation is dedicated to improving the physical, social and economic well-being of the communities served by Dominion companies. Dominion and the Dominion Foundation support nonprofit causes that meet basic human needs, protect the environment, support education and promote community vitality. For more information about Dominion, visit www.dom.com.

For photographs and details about the winners, please visit www.dom.com/VOTY. To learn more about Dominion's volunteer programs, go to www.dom.com; search volunteers.

SOURCE Dominion

Related Links

http://www.dom.com


ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Defense Services Marketing Council (DSMC) are thrilled to announce that Tawazun Dynamics will be the official host of the inaugural Joint Precision Fires Future Conference (JPF2) in 2016. The JPF2 will be the largest joint precision fires conference in the Gulf Cooperation Council for the Arab States (GCC).

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/359929

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/359928

The central involvement of Tawazun Dynamics as the official host gives a tremendous foundation to an impressive lineup of event sponsors and participants. Tawazun Dynamics participation as the official host not only further demonstrates the importance of the JPF2 Conference to military cooperation in the GCC region, but specifically highlights the key role that the UAE is playing in the advancement of joint precision fires technologies.

Mr. Matthew Cochran, Chairman and CEO of Defense Services Marketing Council (DSMC), said of Tawazun Dynamics organization's involvement: "We are thrilled that Tawazun Dynamics will be the official host of the JPF2 Conference in its inaugural year. As an organization, Tawazun Dynamics strives to be at the forefront of new technological developments that support the best strategic outcomes for their clients. Conferences like this one present an unrivaled opportunity to share knowledge and inspiration that will secure stronger, more effective results that benefit us all."

Tawazun Dynamics is the Middle East's first facility for the development, manufacture, assembly and integration of precision-guided systems for conventional air munitions. The company is part of the Emirates Defence Industries Company (EDIC).

With still more than seven months to go until the event, the organizers have been overwhelmed by the level of interest demonstrated by industry participants, reflecting a strong desire for bringing together the key regional stakeholders from around the globe to discuss growing need for timely and accurate precision fires.

Speakers and participants from dozens of countries have been invited to participate in the Conference, representing a broad cross-section of partner militaries and an extensive knowledge base in the development, deployment and use of precision fires system.

The growing need for an effective, targeted military response to emergent threats has once more brought into sharp focus the importance of cooperation across the Gulf Cooperation Council in developing collective approaches to security.

To this end, acknowledging the importance of high-level policy collaboration in engaging with common threats, the Conference will provide key regional stakeholders with the opportunity to consider avenues for even closer cooperation in the development and deployment of new defense technologies in the area of precision fires.

Mr. Cochran said, in making the announcement: "2016 will be the first ever Joint Precision Fires Future Conference and the involvement of Tawazun Dynamics as the official host, with their extensive experience developing and manufacturing cutting-edge weapons systems, will be a serious partnership that adds a lot of value for our GCC delegates."

The Joint Precision Fires Future Conference 2016 will take place in Abu Dhabi, UAE at the Armed Forces Officers Club on November 16, 2016.

For more information, please visit the JPF2 Conference website at: http://www.jpf2firescon.com/.

Press Contact:

Name: Ms. Barbara Figueroa

Email

Phone: +971505597883

Company: DSMC

DSMC is a marketing incubator organization that accelerates the growth of international Defense, Space & Security industry-related companies.

SOURCE Defense Services Marketing Council (DSMC)
LONDON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The current weak US IPO conditions have resulted in a slight change of plan for Bavarian Nordic. It recently shelved its US listing plans and instead completed a private share placement, which raised c $100m vs. the expected $86m in the F-1 filing. New funds will be used for the same purposes as the IPO, namely advancing the development of CV-301, MVA-BN RSV and for capex. Prostvac has passed its first interim analysis and the Phase III trial will continue without modification.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130417/608168 )





We are updating our valuation to $1.97bn or $21.4/ADR (from $1.83bn or $65.55/ADR) on account of rolling forward in time, updating net cash and a strengthening DKK/US$ rate. With an improved cash runway, there is now more clarity on development plans/timelines for MVA-BN RSV and CV-301. RSV is a significant opportunity; however, in the absence of clinical data, we do not yet include a contribution for MVA-BN RSV. CV-301, which has clinical data and will be tested in three oncology indications, is now included in our valuation. Further insight into the clinical program for MVA-BN Brachyury (not yet included in our valuation) and additional income from J&J for MVA-BN Filovirus and MVA-BN HPV represent further upside.



Click here to view the full report.

All reports published by Edison are available to download free of charge from its website www.edisoninvestmentresearch.com.

About Edison: Edison is an international equity research firm with a team of over 110 analysts, investment and roadshow professionals and works with both large and smaller capitalised companies, blue chip institutional investors, wealth managers, private equity and corporate finance houses to support their capital markets activity. Edison provides services to more than 400 retained corporate and investor clients from offices in London, New York, Frankfurt, Sydney and Wellington. Edison is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Edison is not an adviser or broker-dealer and does not provide investment advice. Edison's reports are not solicitations to buy or sell any securities.

Contact details: Learn more at www.edisongroup.com and connect with Edison on:

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For more information please contact:

Will Forbes Edison Investment Research +44 (0)20 3077 5749

Ian McLelland Edison Investment Research +44 (0)20 3077 5756 [email protected]



SOURCE Edison Investment Research
GREENVILLE, S.C., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Duke Energy has been powering South Carolina for more than a century, and continues to power the minds of its students by investing in innovative education programs and initiatives across the state.

Through the Duke Energy Foundation, $500,000 in grants will go to initiatives across the state that emphasize science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), as well as programs that increase childhood reading proficiency.

"Supporting effective education programs that focus on fields related to science and technology are a critical focus for our company," said Clark Gillespy, Duke Energy's South Carolina president. "These initiatives will help strengthen the pipeline of highly skilled workers that fuel the economic engines that drive South Carolina."

Duke Energy's education grants this year include:

Arts Partnership of Spartanburg : To support a mobile science and arts program for students in Spartanburg County schools.

: To support a mobile science and arts program for students in schools. Children's Museum of the Upstate : To provide energy education programs for Title 1 schools with visits to the museum and programs that go to schools.

: To provide energy education programs for Title 1 schools with visits to the museum and programs that go to schools. Clemson University Women in Science/Programs for Educational Enrichment and Retention (PEER) : To provide continued support to programs that provide camps for minority engineering majors, and to provide camps, encouragement and support to women pursuing careers in science and math.

: To provide continued support to programs that provide camps for minority engineering majors, and to provide camps, encouragement and support to women pursuing careers in science and math. Florence County School District 2 : To support Project Lead The Way, which provides hands-on STEM programs for all students in the district.

: To support Project Lead The Way, which provides hands-on STEM programs for all students in the district. Governor's School for Math and Science : To support summer training for teachers in Pickens , Florence and Kershaw counties with hands-on STEM activities and curriculum, and summer camps that focus on STEM topics.

: To support summer training for teachers in , and counties with hands-on STEM activities and curriculum, and summer camps that focus on STEM topics. iMAGINE Upstate : To support pre-event activities focused on science and engineering for students leading up to the STEM-focused community festival.

: To support pre-event activities focused on science and engineering for students leading up to the STEM-focused community festival. Junior Achievement of the Upstate : To provide kits that will help middle school children in Greenville County understand STEM career paths.

: To provide kits that will help middle school children in understand STEM career paths. Northeastern Technical College : To help provide summer STEM camps and counselor training for better understanding of STEM career fields.

: To help provide summer STEM camps and counselor training for better understanding of STEM career fields. Public Education Partners : To help curb the loss of reading skills of students in Greenville County schools through summer book fairs and family reading nights.

: To help curb the loss of reading skills of students in schools through summer book fairs and family reading nights. School District of Oconee County : To support a district-wide initiative of accelerated professional development for the implementation of STEM curriculum.

: To support a district-wide initiative of accelerated professional development for the implementation of STEM curriculum. School District of Pickens County : To provide literacy teacher training for all kindergarten through 5 th grade teachers.

: To provide literacy teacher training for all kindergarten through 5 grade teachers. South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities : To provide scholarships for STEM majors at independent colleges and universities in Duke Energy service areas.

: To provide scholarships for STEM majors at independent colleges and universities in Duke Energy service areas. United Way of Greenville County : To support afterschool programs for students from underserved neighborhoods that engage in hands-on STEM activities.

: To support afterschool programs for students from underserved neighborhoods that engage in hands-on STEM activities. United Way of Pickens County : To expand the successful "Camp iRock" summer literacy program countywide.

: To expand the successful "Camp iRock" summer literacy program countywide. Upcountry History Museum : To support literacy development through the Upcountry History Museum Book Club.

: To support literacy development through the Upcountry History Museum Book Club. Winthrop University : To support internships for students pursuing STEM majors.

"Camp iRock is an innovative educational program in Pickens County that addresses summer literacy loss in students advancing to second, third and fourth grades," said Julie Capaldi, president of the United Way of Pickens County. "More than 200 struggling readers will experience intensive literacy instruction from highly qualified teachers in a fun camp atmosphere this summer thanks to Duke Energy."

"Our portable training program is designed to improve student outcomes by empowering middle-school math and science teachers with quality, hands-on lab experiences that integrate useful technologies into standards-based curriculum," said Kim Bowman, CEO of the Governor's School for Math and Science Foundation. "Duke Energy's investment in our statewide outreach programs will have a tremendous impact this summer on teachers and students in Florence, Kershaw and Pickens counties."

In addition to these grants, Duke Energy and Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), the nation's largest children's literacy organization, recently announced a partnership to minimize the summer slide and improve the reading proficiency of more than 3,000 current second graders in South Carolina. The $400,000 program will be available in 36 Title I elementary schools in the Pee Dee region in northeast South Carolina.

The grants are administered through the Duke Energy Foundation, which provides philanthropic support to address the needs vital to the health of its communities, with a focus on education, environment, economic and workforce development and community impact.

The Foundation annually funds more than $25 million to communities throughout Duke Energy's six-state service area. Last year, the Foundation donated more than $1.7 million to nonprofit organizations throughout South Carolina.

About The Duke Energy Foundation

The Duke Energy Foundation provides philanthropic support to address the needs vital to the health of its communities. Annually, the Foundation funds more than $25 million in charitable grants, with a focus on education, environment, economic and workforce development, and community impact. Duke Energy has long been committed to supporting the communities where its customers and employees live and work, and will continue to build on this legacy. For more information, visit www.duke-energy.com/foundation.

Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Duke Energy is a S&P 100 Stock Index company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DUK. More information about the company is available at duke-energy.com.

The Duke Energy News Center serves as a multimedia resource for journalists and features news releases, helpful links, photos and videos. Hosted by Duke Energy, illumination is an online destination for stories about remarkable people, innovations, and community and environmental topics. It also offers glimpses into the past and insights into the future of energy.

Follow Duke Energy on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Contact: Ryan Mosier

Office: 864.370.5036 | 24-Hour: 800.559.3853

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SOURCE Duke Energy

Related Links

http://www.duke-energy.com


NEW YORK, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Embassy of Ecuador together with the U.S. Fund for UNICEF today announced a fundraising partnership to support the children affected by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake which struck the country on Saturday, April 16.

More than 655 people lost their lives in the Pacific coast of Ecuador as a result of the earthquake a number which is likely to rise given that over 8,000 people were wounded. Hundreds are still missing and more than 29,000 people are in shelters. Of those affected, more than 250,000 are children who are in need of urgent assistance. Several UNICEF teams are in the hardest hit areas of Ecuador, assessing children's needs and coordinating the response. An appeal of $23M was launched by UNICEF and humanitarian partners last week to support relief and recovery efforts.

"The Embassy of Ecuador encourages those who wish to help those affected to donate funds through UNICEF. We are longtime partners and are confident that they are best poised to deliver assistance  including urgently needed supplies, clean water and sanitation support to prevent the spread of disease, education and psychosocial assistance to help children cope with the trauma they have faced," said His Excellency Francisco Borja Cevallos, Ambassador of Ecuador.

"For more than 40 years, UNICEF has partnered with the Government of Ecuador to provide healthcare, access to education and protection for children. In this time of catastrophic need, we are working around the clock in partnership with the Embassy and Consulates to raise critically needed funds for the children of Ecuador," said Caryl M. Stern, President & CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

The Embassy of Ecuador and the U.S. Fund for UNICEF are encouraging those who wish to help to make monetary donations. UNICEF has an extensive infrastructure in place for procuring and distributing materials in more than 190 countries and territories worldwide. Donated goods must be screened, sorted, stored, transported and delivered, resulting in higher associated costs and delays in reaching those who need relief and supplies most. By prepositioning supplies and purchasing from regional or local sources, UNICEF eliminates expensive transportation costs, funding which can help purchase more supplies rather than being spent on shipping.

The U.S. Fund for UNICEF will provide donors and the Embassy with accountability for donations, and receipts for tax purposes.

How to help:

For more information or to make a tax-deductible contribution to UNICEF's relief efforts, please contact the U.S. Fund for UNICEF:

Website: www.unicefusa.org/ecuador (English) or www.unicefusa.org/apoyeecuador (Spanish)

Toll free: 1-800-FOR-KIDS

Text: Text "Relief" to 864233 (UNICEF) to make a $10 donation

Mail: 125 Maiden Lane, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10038

Find us on Twitter: @unicefusa; join us on Facebook: UNICEF-USA

About UNICEF

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) works in more than 190 countries and territories to put children first. UNICEF has helped save more children's lives than any other humanitarian organization, by providing health care and immunizations, clean water and sanitation, nutrition, education, emergency relief and more. The U.S. Fund for UNICEF supports UNICEF's work through fundraising, advocacy and education in the United States. Together, we are working toward the day when no children die from preventable causes and every child has a safe and healthy childhood. For more information, visit www.unicefusa.org.

SOURCE U.S. Fund for UNICEF

Related Links

http://www.unicefusa.org


UNIONDALE, N.Y., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- PSEG Long Island, in partnership with New York State Urban Forestry Council and the Arbor Day Foundation, provided 1,000 of its customers with a free tree through the Energy-Saving Trees program. Designed to conserve energy through strategic planting, the program will help PSEG Long Island customers save up to 20 percent on their summer energy bills once the trees are full grown, while also improving air quality and reducing storm water run-off for all residents across the company's service territory.

"The Energy-Saving Trees program brings multiple benefits to Long Island, helping our customers save money on their energy bills and helping to improve the environment," said Michael Voltz, Director of Energy Efficiency and Renewables, PSEG Long Island. "The program also helps our customers better understand how the right trees in the right location can reduce their utility bills and promote ongoing system reliability."

PSEG Long Island customers reserved their free trees at www.arborday.org/pseglongisland, an online tool that helps customers estimate the annual energy savings that will result from planting trees in the most strategic location near their homes or businesses. All customers that participated will receive one tree and are expected to care for and plant them in the location provided by the online tool, taking into account utility wires and obstructions. The types of trees offered include the following: Black Tupelo, Eastern Redbud, Black Tupelo, Scarlet Oak, and American Linden.

The program was launched on April 6, 2016 and ran for approximately three weeks, with all 1,000 trees reserved for customers across the PSEG Long Island service territory. Four distribution sites were established at PSEG Long Island offices in Roslyn, Hicksville, Brentwood and Riverhead, for customers to claim their trees on April 30, 2016.

"Energy savings is just one of the many benefits that trees provide," said David Moore, President of the NYS Urban Forestry Council. "We hope this program will not only save folks money on their power bills, but also help beautify their homes and enrich the local environment."

The 1,000 trees are estimated to produce more than 1,531,357 kWh in energy savings within 20 years.

Mary Kramarchyk, New York State Urban Forestry Program Manager said, "Planting trees for energy conservation is a priority of the urban forestry program throughout New York State. This project is a small step toward restoring the canopy lost to recent storms and to neighborhoods with very low tree cover."

The "Energy-Saving Trees" online tool was created by the Arbor Day Foundation and the Davey Institute, a division of Davey Tree Expert Co., and uses peer-reviewed scientific research from the USDA Forest Service's i-Tree software to calculate estimated benefits. In addition to providing approximate energy savings, the tool also estimates the trees' other benefits, including cleaner air, reduced carbon dioxide emissions and improved storm water management.

PSEG Long Island operates the Long Island Power Authority's transmission and distribution system under a 12-year contract. PSEG Long Island is a subsidiary of Public Service Enterprise Group Incorporated (NYSE:PEG), a publicly traded diversified energy company with annual revenues of approximately $10.4 billion.

The Arbor Day Foundation is a nonprofit conservation and education organization of one million members, with the mission to inspire people to plant, nurture and celebrate trees. More information on the Foundation and its programs can be found at arborday.org, or by visiting us on Facebook, Twitter or our blog.

Contact:

Media Relations Hotline

516.229.7248

[email protected]

SOURCE PSEG Long Island

Related Links

http://www.psegliny.com


CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- At the Energy Storage Association (ESA) 26th Annual Conference and Expo, the industry honored Audrey Zibelman, Chair of the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC), and Customized Energy Solutions (CES), for their leadership in defining and creating the industry's successful future.

"The future of energy storage is being shaped by the work of Audrey Zibelman and the unique market insight and analysis that Customized Energy Solutions delivers. On behalf of all of our member companies, we are pleased to recognize them and their contributions to the energy storage industry's significant growth," said Matt Roberts.

Honored for her expansive career creating and evolving energy markets, and her current work on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's "Reforming the Energy Vision" (REV) strategy, Zibelman, received ESA's Phil Symons Energy Storage Award. She accepted the award via video link from New York.

Through REV, New York is transforming the retail electricity market to create a cleaner, more affordable, more modern and efficient energy system in New York. REV includes the increased development of distributed energy resources, including energy storage. As Chair of the Public Service Commission, Zibelman is working to align markets and the regulatory landscape with the overarching state policy objectives of giving all customers new opportunities for energy savings, local power generation, and enhanced reliability to provide safe, clean and affordable electric service.

CES was awarded the Brad Roberts Outstanding Industry Achievement Award. CES was recognized for its critical role in analyzing energy storage market structures and technologies that allow the industry, utilities and regulators in ISO/RTO markets and states, such as California, Texas and Massachusetts, to create energy storage deployment opportunities. The Award highlights the accomplishments of a member company or organization in the storage marketplace and recognizes their comprehensive industry commitment and participation.

"We are honored to be nominated and recognized by the Energy Storage Association and member companies. Today, the energy storage industry is at an important turning point for adoption and growth. Understanding how markets can be defined to capture the value of energy storage is important for the future of the industry as well as grid reliability and resiliency," said Stephen Fernands, the Founder and President of CES, who accepted the award on behalf of the company. "My thanks goes out to the Customized Energy Solution's associates for their pursuit of integrating and operating energy storage technologies in the wholesale and retail markets - we have only just begun."

In addition to the awards ceremony, day two at the conference included numerous sessions and panels highlighting topics such as scaling storage deployments, the lifecycle of a storage project, and system design. The sessions ended with a utility executive panel focusing on distributed resources reshaping the modern utility, including: Lola Infante, director of generation fuels and market analysis at Edison Electric Institute; Zachary Kuznar, director of CHP, energy storage and microgrid development at Duke Energy; Curt Kirkeby, fellow electrical engineer technology strategy at Avista Utilities; Howard Smith, manager of distributed energy resource policy at Southern Company; and Richard Benedict, directed of project development at Indianapolis Power and Light.

Video from the event is available at www.worldenergytv.org/ESA2016.

The ESA 26th Annual Conference and Expo Conference and Expo is being held in Charlotte, NC from April 25-27, 2016, to learn more visit www.energystorage.org/conference.

About Energy Storage Association

The Energy Storage Association (ESA), the national trade association for the energy storage industry, is the leading voice for companies that develop and deploy the energy storage technologies we rely on every day. ESA's mission is to promote, develop and commercialize competitive and reliable energy storage delivery systems for use by electricity suppliers and their customers. With more than 200 member organizations, ESA members represent a diverse group of entities, including electric utilities, energy service companies, independent power producers, technology developers deploying advanced batteries, flywheels, compressed air energy storage, thermal storage, pumped hydropower, supercapacitors, and component suppliers, such as power conversion systems.

The ESA Annual Conference and Expo is the industry's largest and fastest growing conference. To learn more about ESA visit www.energystorage.org. Stay connected with ESA on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

CONTACT: Samantha Nevels, Makovsky

(707) 486-5344 / [email protected]

SOURCE Energy Storage Association

Related Links

http://energystorage.org


ATLANTA, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Western region is at the forefront for developing clean energy strategies and energy efficiency programs and standards, to that end the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) has teamed up with event host Puget Sound Energy (PSE) and sponsors Seattle City Light, Snohomish County PUD, Tacoma Power and the Northwest Energy Efficiency Council (NEEC) to present the 34th West Coast Energy Management Congress (EMC). The West Coast EMC is the premier energy conference and exposition held in the western U.S. detailing the latest policy and technological advances for the energy industry. EMC 2016 will be held May 25-26, 2016 at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle.

EMC keynote speakers will include a welcome from Jason Teller, Vice President Customer Solutions, Puget Sound Energy, Kara Hurst, Director, Worldwide Sustainability and Social Responsibility, Amazon discussing sustainability and Rob Bernard, Chief Environmental Strategist, Microsoft speaking on the future of big data and IoT. Delegates can also earn continuing education units (CEU) or professional development hours (PDH) towards renewal requirements for Professional Engineers' license and AEE certification programs such as the Certified Energy Manager (CEM), by attending sessions tracks on policy, trends and local initiatives, high performance and green buildings, trends in energy management and advanced technologies and renewable energy. View full conference details at www.energyevent.com/conference

Bringing the content from the conference full circle, the EMC expo provides attendees with an opportunity to view real-world energy management solutions with technologies on display ranging from lighting, metering, hvac, wind, solar, building automation and more. Co-presented by the U.S. EPA ENERGY STAR the expo also features the Pacific Northwest Green Showcase highlighting leading providers of environmentally friendly, green energy efficiency related products and services. In addition, EMC will also feature a full line-up of professional training seminars focused on current topics such as water efficiency, energy auditing, building commissioning, power quality and renewable energy. Additional special events at EMC include free exhibit hall workshops showcasing energy optimization and efficiency case studies, the Council on Women in Energy & the Environment (CWEEL) breakfast featuring speaker Kimberly Harris, President & CEO of Puget Sound Energy, and the AEE Pacific Northwest Chapter Luncheon with featured speaker Yoram Bauman, Founder & Co-Chair, Carbon Washington.

View full event details at the EMC website, www.energyevent.com and follow along @AEE #EMCexpo for live event updates.

For a FREE Expo Pass, click link for complimentary online registration, www.energyevent.com/FreeExpoPass

Dates: May 25-26, 2016

Location: Washington State Convention Center, Seattle, WA, Hall 4D, 4E, 4F

Website: www.energyevent.com

Free Expo Pass: www.energyevent.com/FreeExpoPass

About AEE: The Association of Energy Engineers (AEE), a professional association, is augmented by its strong membership base of over 17,500 professionals in 90 countries and its widely recognized energy certification program in the fields of energy engineering and energy management, renewable and alternative energy, power generation, energy services, sustainability, and all related areas. AEE's network of 95 local chapters located throughout the U.S. and abroad meet regularly to discuss issues of regional importance.

For more about AEE, visit www.aeecenter.org. Follow the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) on LinkedIn, Twitter: @AEE , and Facebook.

SOURCE Association of Energy Engineers

Related Links

http://www.aeecenter.org


MONROE TOWNSHIP, N.J., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Faith M. Knabe (Faith K. Goldschmidt) MA, MPH, is recognized by Continental Who's Who with the 2015-2016 Lifetime Achievement award as a result of fifty years of excellence in the field of Healthcare.

Faith's areas of concentration are varied and include Public Health; Research; Information Analysis; Report Writing; Grant Writing and Monitoring; Project Management; Education and Training; Database Creation, Management, and Data Security; Institutional Review Board Participation and Chairing; Healthcare Systems; Quality of Care; Cost of Care and Treatment Pattern Analysis; Community Health; Health Needs Interviews; and Community Coalition Building; as well as Online Education, and the clinical microbiology research areas of wound care and burn care.

Now retired, Faith most recently was a Research Scientist and Manager of Data Evaluation with the New Jersey Department of Health (DOH), Division of HIV, STD and TB Services (DHSTS), HIV/AIDS Care and Treatment Unit. She spent almost twenty-five years with the State of New Jersey, first in the Division of Health Planning and Resources Development (HPRD), and then in DHSTS. Faith was a member and Chair of the Department's Institutional Review Board (IRB) which oversees all research on human subjects for almost ten years. She also spent four years at New Jersey Medical School as a Research Scientist, Coordinator of Research projects, and liaison with University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey's IRB.

While in HPRD, Faith was one of the creators, implementers and administrators of New Jersey's Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) system of hospital payment which was adopted by Medicare in 1983 as the basis for its Prospective Payment System (PPS). As a Unit Director, Faith coordinated and managed the tasks of 5 teams (30 staff) which ran New Jersey's DRG System (Clinical and Quality of Care, Development, Certificate of Need, Financial Feasibility and Audit, and Data Teams). Considered an expert on the DRG system, Ms. Knabe presented testimony on the System to numerous federal and state committees, and gave many lectures on various aspects of the DRG system. The PPS and various adaptations of it still exist as the federal method of payment for hospitals, federally qualified health centers, home health agencies, etc.

In the Division of HIV, STD and TB Services, Faith oversaw the collection, management and analysis of data from agencies funded by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Ryan White CARE Act and by the State and oversaw report creation for HRSA, the State, and other requestors. She was the Chairperson of the Data Group charged with linking Division and external databases to determine trends and outcomes in the HIV epidemic, and efficiency and efficacy of care and treatment.

Faith was also Chairperson of the Division Security and Confidentiality Policy Committee which created the Division Security and Confidentiality Policy for data collected by the Division, and reviews, updates and trains employees on the Policy on an annual basis. As Chairperson, Faith assumed the role of data Security Officer for the Division and worked with the State Office of Information Technology (OIT), the Department's Office of Information Technology Services (OITS) and State Security Officers to ensure security and confidentiality of HIV/AIDS information. In her capacity as Security Officer, she also formally investigated potential breaches of confidentiality and security of HIV/AIDS data, documented and made recommendations to upper management, Legal and Regulatory Affairs, the Office of the Attorney General and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as necessary.

Ms. Knabe worked for twelve years in community health and online education, both as an independent consultant, and as a member of two Local Advisory Boards (liaison organizations between communities and the State Department of Health) on various projects such as county health needs surveys, community focus groups, primary and secondary data analyses, sudden cardiac death, the value of Automated External Defibrillators, and services for juveniles at risk or in the juvenile justice system. She also analyzed hospital data, and trained hospital staff in three New York hospitals to analyze their clinical, financial, and personnel information collected in a proprietary database system created to identify growth, profit and problem areas. She helped initiate the online Master of Health Administration program, and taught two courses online for a New Jersey university for four years.

Ms. Knabe started her career in healthcare in 1967 as a Research Scientist in the Clinical Microbiology Section of the Research Division of Johnson & Johnson (J&J). During her eleven-year tenure, she developed, organized, coordinated and managed projects to test and identify effective and efficient new and existing products for wound care, burn care and topical therapies.

Faith earned her M.A. in Microbiology from Smith College in 1963, and also holds her M.P.H. in General Public Health from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health (1978). In addition, Faith received a B.A. in Biology from Clark University in 1962 and is currently a member of the NY Academy of Science, Sigma Xi; the National Association of Professional Women, and Continental Who's Who.

Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who

Related Links

http://www.continentalwhoswho.com


LOS ANGELES, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- UBM plc (LSE: UBM-LN), a leading global business-to-business event organizer and marketing services organization, and producer of MAGIC, fashion's largest global trade show, today announced the launch of IFF MAGIC Japan, a new joint venture between MAGIC and JFW-International Fashion Fair, Japan's longest running, bi-annual fashion business tradeshow organized by renowned publisher Senken Shimbun.

The two fashion powerhouses will join forces to launch the first IFF MAGIC Japan event next April 26-28, 2017 at the Tokyo Big Sight exhibition center.

MAGIC will bring its 80+ years of fashion tradeshow experience to guide JFW-International Fashion Fair in cultivating the overall look-and-feel of the new show. IFF MAGIC Japan 2017 will be held as the cornerstone of Japan Fashion Week in Tokyo and will feature a re-imagined and re-merchandised show floor with new brands, laid out in easily to navigate fashion neighborhoods that will maximize the experience for both retailers and exhibitors. IFF MAGIC Japan will also launch with a freshly developed social media presence, innovative marketing strategies and show floor activations, taking note from its U.S. counterpart's longstanding success.

"Fashion is a truly global industry, and we are thrilled for MAGIC's upcoming expansion into the Japan market in partnership with JFW-International Fashion Fair, and UBM Japan," said Chris DeMoulin, Managing Director, Fashion, UBM America's. "Our combined expertise will not only help IFF MAGIC Japan evolve quickly to meet the dynamic needs of the Japanese market, but will provide a new platform for UBM Fashion's global customer base to find new business partners and brands in Japan as well."

Japan is the third largest fashion market in the world after the USA and the EU. Japan's fashion trends influence the fashion markets not only of Asia but all around the world and until now, Japan has not hosted a truly international trade fair for the fashion industries.

With the launch of IFF MAGIC Japan, UBM aims to further educate, inspire and facilitate commerce for retail buyers and attendees  while providing a unique experience to the Asia market. IFF MAGIC Japan will serve as a high-profile showcase for Japanese fashion brands and designers to promote themselves to Japan and the global market, and also as an opportunity for international brands and suppliers to access the lucrative Japanese market.

About MAGIC

Every August and February, the fashion industry converges in Las Vegas for the most influential event in the business  MAGIC. As an incubator of fashion, MAGIC is where new trends surface and develop into what will be seen on the consumer. The show's goal is to connect and inspire the fashion community. The August 2016 MAGIC will run from August 15  17, 2016. For up-to-date exhibitor listings, seminar scheduling, travel support and registration information please visit www.magiconline.com.

About UBM plc

UBM plc is a leading global marketing services and communications company, whose primary focus is events. We help businesses do business, bringing the world's buyers and sellers together at events, online and in print. Our 5,100 staff in more than 20 countries are organized into specialist teams which serve commercial and professional communities, helping them to do business and their markets to work effectively and efficiently. Running over 400 events per year, UBM is the second largest exhibitions organizer globally and the largest independent organizer in the US and China.For more information, go to www.ubm.com; for UBM corporate news, follow us on Twitter at @UBM_plc and go to http://media.ubm.com/social for more UBM social media options.

UBM Americas, a part of UBM plc, delivers events and marketing services in the fashion, technology, licensing, advanced manufacturing, automotive and powersports, healthcare, veterinary and pharmaceutical industries, among others. (www.ubmamericas.com)

UBM is also one of the leading trade fair organizers in Japan, organizing the annual Japan Jewellery Fair as well as events for the beauty, health, food, pharmaceutical and information technology industries (www.ubmjapan.com)

About Senken Shimbun Co Ltd

Senken Shimbun Co Ltd is the publisher of the Senken Shimbun, a Japanese language daily newspaper for the fashion industry, and an English-language version called The Senken, which is published quarterly. Since 2000 it has organized the International Fashion Fair, IFF, twice a year in Tokyo. (www.senken.co.jp).

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359787LOGO

SOURCE UBM plc; MAGIC

Related Links

http://www.ubm.com


LONDON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Leading Companies & Forecasts by Application: Food, Beverage, Healthcare, Personal Care, Industrial & Other, By Type: Plastic Bags, Pouches & Films

Visiongain's new 237 page report assesses that the global flexible (converted) plastic packaging market will reach $152.40 billion in 2016.

Are you involved in the Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging market or intend to be? If so, then you must read this report

It's vital that you keep your market insight up to date. You need this report.

Market scope: This brand new report from visiongain is a completely fresh market assessment of the Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging sector based upon the latest information. Our new market study contains forecasts, original analysis, company profiles and, most crucially, fresh conclusions. The report not only gives detailed forecasts and analysis of the Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging markets by region but also by end-use sectors.

The Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging Market Report 2016-2026 responds to your need for definitive market data:

 Where are the Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging market opportunities?

- 186 tables, charts, and graphs reveal market data allowing you to target your strategy more effectively

 When will the Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging market grow?

- Global, national and Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging submarket forecasts and analysis from 2016-2026 illustrate the market progression

 Which Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging end use submarkets will flourish from 2016-2026?

- Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging Market Forecast for Food 2016-2026

- Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging Market Forecast for Beverage 2016-2026

- Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging Market Forecast for Healthcare 2016-2026

- Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging Market Forecast for Personal Care 2016-2026

- Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging Market Forecast for Industrial 2016-2026

- Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging Market Forecast for Other End-Use Sectors 2016-2026

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on [email protected]

 What type of Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging submarkets will grow from 2016-2026?

- Plastic bags

- Plastic Pouches

- Plastic films

 Where are the regional Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging market opportunities from 2016-2026?

- Focused regional forecasts and analysis explore the future opportunities

- US forecast 2016-2026

- Japan forecast 2016-2026

- China forecast 2016-2026

- Germany forecast 2016-2026

- France forecast 2016-2026

- UK forecast 2016-2026

- Russia forecast 2016-2026

- Italy forecast 2016-2026

- India forecast 2016-2026

- Canada forecast 2016-2026

- Spain forecast 2016-2026

- Mexico forecast 2016-2026

- Brazil forecast 2016-2026

- Turkey forecast 2016-2026

- Australia forecast 2016-2026

- South Korea forecast 2016-2026

- Indonesia forecast 2016-2026

- RoW forecast 2016-2026

 What are the factors influencing Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging market dynamics?

- SWOT analysis explores the factors.

- Research and development (R&D) strategy

- GDP growth

- Supply and demand dynamics

- Advances in product technologies

- Demographic changes

- Environmental and regulatory factors

- Consumer preferences

 Who are the leading 8 Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging companies?

- We reveal positioning, capabilities, product portfolios, R&D activity, services, focus, strategies, M&A activity, and future outlook.

- AEP Industries

- Amcor

- Bemis

- Berry Plastics

- Constantia Flexibles

- DS Smith

- Sealed Air

- Sonoco

 Who should read this report?

- Anyone within the packaging value chain, including

- Packaging companies

- Packaging designers & engineers

- Packaging machinery manufactures

- Packaging R&D staff

- Retailers

- Plastic film suppliers

- Wholesalers

- Distributors

- CEO's

- COO's

- CIO's

- Business development managers

- Marketing managers

- Suppliers

- Technologists

- Investors

- Banks

- Government agencies

Get our report today Flexible (Converted) Plastic Packaging Market Report 2016-2026. Avoid missing out - order our report now.

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on [email protected]

To request an exec summary of this report please email Sara Peerun at [email protected] or call Tel: +44 (0) 20 7336 6100

Or click on https://www.visiongain.com/Report/1622/Flexible-%28Converted%29-Plastic-Packaging-Market-Report-2016-2026

Companies Mentioned in This Report

Admiral Packaging Inc

Advanced Barrier Extrusions LLC

AEP Industries

AEP Industries Inc

AGI-Shorewood Tobacco Packaging

Airlite

Akyboard

Akylux

Akyprint

Akyver

Alcan Medical Flexibles

Alcan Packaging

Aluprint S de R.L. de C.V.

Amcor

American Packaging Corporation

AMGRAPH Packaging, Inc.

Ampac

Aperio Group

Aptar Group

Automated Packaging Systems, Inc.

Ball Plastics Packaging

Beacon Converters, Inc.

Beijing VPS minority interests

Bella Prima Packaging

Belmark, Inc.

Bemis Company, Inc.

Berry Plastics

Berry Plastics Corporation

B-Pack Due

Braksem

Bryce Corporation

cei (Coating Excellence International)

Celplast Metallized Products Limited

Chengdu minority interests

CL&D Graphics

Clear Lam Packaging, Inc.

Coca Cola

Coldpack, Inc.

Constantia Flexibles

Constantia Hueck Foils LLC

Correx

Covers High Performance Packaging

C-P Flexible Packaging

Craft

Cryovac, Inc.

CTI Industries Corporation

Cukurova Group

Detmold Flexibles

Diversey, Inc.

DS Smith Plc

Eagle Flexible Packaging

Emplal Participacoes S.A

Encon's perform manufacturing business

Exopack, LLC

Flex America Inc.

Flexo Manufacturing Corporation

Foshan New Changsheng Plastics Films Co., LTD

GAE Smith

Genpak LP

Glenroy, Inc.

Globalpack Group

Graffo Paranaense de Embalagens S/A (Graffo)

Graphic Flexible Packaging LLC

Graphic Packaging International, Inc.

Grupo Lantero

Hilex Poly Co. LLC

Hood Packaging Corporation

Huhtamaki Oyj

International Playcard & Label Company

Jiangsu Shenda Group

Johnson & Johnson

Label Technology Inc.

Letica

LPS Industries, LLC

Markenburg International Foods Corporation

Max Katz Bag Company, Inc.

Mayor Packaging

Mondi Jackson, Inc.

Multifilm Packaging Corporation

Nampak Flexibles

Oliver-Tolas Healthcare Packaging

Optimum Plastics, Inc.

Oracle Packaging

Orora Limited

P&G

Packaging India Pvt. Ltd.

Paharpur 3P

Parikh Packaging

Parry Enterprises India

PERUPLAST S.A.

Plastic Packaging Technologies, LLC

Platinum Equity

Polymer Packaging, Inc.

Polytainers

Prime Label and Packaging, LLC

Printpack Inc.

Prolamina Corporation

Qingdao P&B Co., Ltd

Rexam

Reynolds

Robbie

Rollprint Packaging Products, Inc.

SCA Packaging

Sealed Air

Sealstrip Corporation

Sheetfeeding

Shield Pack, LLC

Shorewood

Silgan

Sizzlepak

Sonoco

Southern Film Extruders, Inc.

Spear Group

Spearsystem Packaging Limited

St. Johns Packaging Ltd.

Star Packaging Corporation

SunFlex Packagers Inc.

Techni-Chem

Technipaq Inc.

Tetra Pak

Transco Plastics

Uniglobe

Virox Technologies

Vitex Packaging Group

Wal-Mart

Wihuri OY

Winpak ltd

Zhongshan Tian Cai Packaging Company

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on [email protected]

Media Contact:

Sara Peerun

[email protected]



SOURCE Visiongain Ltd
HOUSTON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- FMC Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:FTI) today reported first quarter 2016 revenue of $1.2 billion, down 29 percent from the prior-year quarter. The decline was driven by lower activity and the negative impact of the strengthening U.S. dollar. Diluted earnings per share were $0.09, which includes total Company pre-tax impairment and other charges, restructuring and other severance charges, and inventory write-downs of $47.6 million, or $0.13 per diluted share.

"Subsea Technologies delivered operating margins of 13.1 percent, excluding charges, as we benefited from solid execution and restructuring savings," said John Gremp, Chairman and CEO of FMC Technologies.

Total inbound orders were $671.6 million, including $345.9 million in Subsea Technologies orders. Backlog for the Company was $4 billion, including Subsea Technologies backlog of $3.4 billion.

"While operators' reduced capital spending continues to delay large deepwater projects, we believe that our subsea service orders will remain fairly resilient in 2016," added Gremp.

Review of Operations  First Quarter 2016

Subsea Technologies

Subsea Technologies first quarter revenue was $864 million, down 25 percent from the prior-year quarter. After excluding the $57 million of negative impact due to the strong U.S. dollar, total revenue was down 20 percent year-over-year.

Subsea Technologies operating profit decreased 35 percent from the prior-year quarter to $109.5 million. Operating results include an $8 million negative impact related to the strong U.S. dollar. The segment results also include $3.7 million of charges. Total operating profit, excluding foreign currency impact and charges in both periods, was down approximately 28 percent year-over-year, primarily due to the decline in subsea revenues.

Subsea Technologies operating margins were 13.1 percent, excluding charges.

Subsea Technologies inbound orders for the first quarter were $345.9 million. Backlog was $3.4 billion.

Surface Technologies

Surface Technologies first quarter revenue was $265.5 million, down 41 percent from the prior-year quarter, primarily due to the significant decline in North American land activity.

Surface Technologies reported an operating loss of $28.6 million, which includes charges of $41.8 million. Adjusted operating results were down 81 percent from the prior-year quarter, when excluding charges in both periods, primarily driven by the severe North American activity decline and less favorable pricing.

Surface Technologies operating margins were 5 percent, excluding charges.

Surface Technologies inbound orders for the first quarter were $258.5 million. Backlog was $429.4 million.

Energy Infrastructure

Energy Infrastructure first quarter revenue was $84.1 million, down 17 percent from the prior-year quarter. The revenue decline was primarily due to lower market activity in our measurement solutions business.

Energy Infrastructure reported an operating loss of $3.3 million, which includes charges of $2.1 million.

Energy Infrastructure inbound orders for the first quarter were $73.8 million and backlog was $157.7 million.

Corporate Items

Corporate expense in the first quarter was $14.3 million, a decrease of $2 million from the prior-year quarter. Other revenue and other expense, net, increased $3.6 million from the prior-year quarter to $30 million of expense, due largely to the strength of the U.S. dollar.

The Company ended the quarter with net debt of $209.6 million, down $30.2 million sequentially, due to strong operating cash flow. Net interest expense was $7.5 million in the quarter.

The Company repurchased approximately 1.1 million shares of common stock at an average cost of $25.58 per share in the quarter.

Depreciation and amortization for the first quarter was $63.3 million and capital expenditures were $35.3 million.

The Company recorded an effective tax rate of 23.4 percent for the first quarter.

Summary

FMC Technologies reported first quarter diluted earnings per share of $0.22, excluding total Company pre-tax impairment and other charges, restructuring and other severance charges, and inventory write-downs of $47.6 million, or $0.13 per diluted share.

The Company recorded Subsea Technologies revenue of $864 million with margins of 13.1 percent in the quarter, excluding charges.

Total inbound orders of $671.6 million in the first quarter included $345.9 million in Subsea Technologies orders.

The Company's backlog stands at $4 billion, including Subsea Technologies backlog of $3.4 billion.

About FMC Technologies

FMC Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: FTI) is the global market leader in subsea systems and a leading provider of technologies and services to the oil and gas industry. We help our customers overcome their most difficult challenges, such as improving shale and subsea infrastructures and operations to reduce cost, maintain uptime, and maximize oil and gas recovery. The company has approximately 16,500 employees and operates 29 major production facilities and services bases in 18 countries. Visit www.fmctechnologies.com or follow us on Twitter @FMC_Tech for more information.

This release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words such as "expected," "continue," "outlook," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, which are generally not historical in nature. Such forward-looking statements involve significant risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from our historical experience and our present expectations or projections. FMC Technologies cautions you not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Known material factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in the forward-looking statements include those set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K, as well as the following: demand for our products and services, which is affected by changes in the price of, and demand for, crude oil and natural gas in domestic and international markets; potential liabilities arising out of the installation or use of our products; U.S. and international laws and regulations, including environmental regulations, that may increase our costs, limit the demand for our products and services or restrict our operations; disruptions in the political, regulatory, economic and social conditions of the foreign countries in which we conduct business; fluctuations in currency markets worldwide; cost overruns that may affect profit realized on our fixed price contracts; disruptions in the timely delivery of our backlog and its effect on our future sales, profitability, and our relationships with our customers; the cumulative loss of major contracts or alliances; rising costs and availability of raw materials; a failure of our information technology infrastructure or any significant breach of security; our ability to develop and implement new technologies and services, as well as our ability to protect and maintain critical intellectual property assets; the outcome of uninsured claims and litigation against us; deterioration in future expected profitability or cash flows and its effect on our goodwill; a downgrade in the ratings of our debt could restrict our ability to access the debt capital markets; continuing consolidation within our industry; and our dependence on the continuing services of certain of our key managers and employees. FMC Technologies undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any of its forward-looking statements after the date they are made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by law.

FMC Technologies, Inc. will conduct its second quarter 2016 conference call at 9 a.m. ET on Thursday, July 21, 2016. The event will be available at www.fmctechnologies.com. An archived audio replay will be available after the event at the same website address. In the event of a disruption of service or technical difficulty during the call, information will be posted at www.fmctechnologies.com/earnings.

FMC TECHNOLOGIES, INC. AND CONSOLIDATED SUBSIDIARIES CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME (In millions except per share amounts, unaudited)























Three Months Ended



March 31



2016

2015









Revenue $ 1,208.7 $ 1,695.2 Costs and expenses

1,164.1

1,496.6



44.6

198.6









Other expense, net

(11.3)

(6.3)









Income before net interest expense and income taxes

33.3

192.3 Net interest expense

(7.5)

(7.3)









Income before income taxes

25.8

185.0 Provision for income taxes

6.0

36.9









Net income

19.8

148.1 Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests

-

(0.5)









Net income attributable to FMC Technologies, Inc. $ 19.8 $ 147.6









Earnings per share attributable to FMC Technologies, Inc.:







Basic $ 0.09 $ 0.63 Diluted $ 0.09 $ 0.63









Weighted average shares outstanding:







Basic

228.0

233.0 Diluted

228.6

233.9

FMC TECHNOLOGIES, INC. AND CONSOLIDATED SUBSIDIARIES

BUSINESS SEGMENT DATA

(Unaudited and in millions)

















Three Months Ended





March 31





2016

2015

Revenue





















Subsea Technologies $ 864.0 $ 1,157.2

Surface Technologies

265.5

446.3

Energy Infrastructure

84.1

100.9

Other revenue (1) and intercompany eliminations

(4.9)

(9.2)



$ 1,208.7 $ 1,695.2













Income before income taxes





















Segment operating profit (loss)









Subsea Technologies $ 109.5 $ 168.7

Surface Technologies

(28.6)

62.9

Energy Infrastructure

(3.3)

2.9

Total segment operating profit

77.6

234.5













Corporate items









Corporate expense (2)

(14.3)

(16.3)

Other revenue (1) and other expense, net (3)

(30.0)

(26.4)

Net interest expense

(7.5)

(7.3)

Total corporate items

(51.8)

(50.0)













Income before income taxes attributable









to FMC Technologies, Inc. (4) $ 25.8 $ 184.5





























(1) Other revenue comprises certain unrealized gains and losses on derivative instruments related to unexecuted sales contracts. (2) Corporate expense primarily includes corporate staff expenses. (3) Other expense, net, generally includes stock-based compensation, other employee benefits, LIFO adjustments, certain foreign exchange gains and losses, and the impact of unusual or strategic transactions not representative of segment operations. (4) Excludes amounts attributable to noncontrolling interests.

FMC TECHNOLOGIES, INC. AND CONSOLIDATED SUBSIDIARIES BUSINESS SEGMENT DATA (Unaudited and in millions)

















Three Months Ended







March 31







2016

2015



Inbound Orders

























Subsea Technologies $ 345.9 $ 552.0



Surface Technologies

258.5

326.3



Energy Infrastructure

73.8

95.8



Intercompany eliminations and other

(6.6)

(5.1)



Total inbound orders $ 671.6 $ 969.0

















































March 31







2016

2015



Order Backlog

























Subsea Technologies $ 3,372.5 $ 4,825.0



Surface Technologies

429.4

519.5



Energy Infrastructure

157.7

173.1



Intercompany eliminations

(4.5)

(10.6)



Total order backlog $ 3,955.1 $ 5,507.0





FMC TECHNOLOGIES, INC. AND CONSOLIDATED SUBSIDIARIES CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (In millions)























March 31,

December 31,



2016

2015



(Unaudited)

As Adjusted









Cash and cash equivalents $ 1,032.3 $ 916.2 Receivables, net

1,413.3

1,522.4 Inventories, net

719.7

764.1 Other current assets

672.6

727.5 Total current assets

3,837.9

3,930.2









Property, plant and equipment, net

1,340.9

1,371.5 Goodwill

520.1

514.7 Intangible assets, net

237.2

246.3 Other assets

377.1

356.7 Total assets $ 6,313.2 $ 6,419.4









Short-term debt and current portion of long-term debt $ 23.5 $ 21.9 Accounts payable, trade

418.0

519.3 Advance payments and progress billings

630.0

664.6 Other current liabilities

975.4

1,099.5 Total current liabilities

2,046.9

2,305.3









Long-term debt, less current portion

1,218.4

1,134.1 Other liabilities

427.7

436.8 FMC Technologies, Inc. stockholders' equity

2,604.1

2,524.1 Noncontrolling interest

16.1

19.1 Total liabilities and equity $ 6,313.2 $ 6,419.4

FMC TECHNOLOGIES, INC. AND CONSOLIDATED SUBSIDIARIES CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (Unaudited and in millions)













Three Months Ended



March 31



2016

2015 Cash provided (required) by operating activities:







Net income $ 19.8 $ 148.1 Depreciation and amortization

63.3

57.8 Receivables, net

146.9

254.8 Inventories, net

51.5

(23.3) Accounts payable, trade

(110.9)

(78.5) Advance payments and progress billings

(53.3)

(138.9) Asset impairment charges

34.4

3.9 Other

(42.7)

(48.3) Net cash provided by operating activities

109.0

175.6









Cash provided (required) by investing activities:







Capital expenditures

(35.3)

(86.7) Other investing

(7.4)

5.3 Net cash required by investing activities

(42.7)

(81.4)









Cash provided (required) by financing activities:







Net increase in debt

84.2

8.4 Purchase of stock held in treasury

(30.5)

(30.8) Other financing

(16.4)

(8.5) Net cash provided (required) by financing activities

37.3

(30.9)









Effect of changes in foreign exchange rates on cash and cash equivalents

12.5

(7.0)









Increase in cash and cash equivalents

116.1

56.3









Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of period

916.2

638.8









Cash and cash equivalents, end of period $ 1,032.3 $ 695.1

FMC TECHNOLOGIES, INC. AND CONSOLIDATED SUBSIDIARIES RECONCILIATION OF NON-GAAP TO GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES (In millions except per share amounts, unaudited)























Three Months Ended



March 31



2016

2015









(after-tax)







Net Income attributable to FMC Technologies, Inc., excluding charges $ 51 $ 156









Impairment and other charges (1)

(24)

(3) Restructuring and other severance charges (2)

(6)

(5) Inventory write-downs (3)

(1)

-









Net Income attributable to FMC Technologies, Inc., as reported $ 20 $ 148









Diluted EPS, excluding charges $ 0.22 $ 0.67









Diluted EPS, as reported $ 0.09 $ 0.63



(1) Tax benefit of $12 million and $1 million during the three months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015, respectively. (2) Tax benefit of $3 million and $2 million during the three months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015, respectively. (3) Tax benefit of $1 million during the three months ended March 31, 2016.

FMC TECHNOLOGIES, INC. AND CONSOLIDATED SUBSIDIARIES RECONCILIATION OF NON-GAAP TO GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES (In millions, unaudited)































Three Months Ended



March 31, 2016



SubseaTechnologies

SurfaceTechnologies

EnergyInfrastructure













(pre-tax)











Segment operating profit (loss), excluding charges $ 113.2 $ 13.2 $ (1.2)













Impairment and other charges

(0.1)

(35.6)

- Restructuring and other severance charges

(3.6)

(4.0)

(2.1) Inventory write-downs

-

(2.2)

-













Segment operating profit (loss), as reported $ 109.5 $ (28.6) $ (3.3)













Segment operating profit (loss) as a percent of revenue, excluding charges 13.1%

5.0%

(1.5)%













Segment operating profit (loss) as a percent of revenue, as reported

12.7%

(10.8)%

(4.0)%



























































Three Months Ended



March 31, 2015



SubseaTechnologies

SurfaceTechnologies

EnergyInfrastructure













(pre-tax)











Segment operating profit, excluding charges $ 169.7 $ 71.0 $ 4.3













Impairment charges

(0.3)

(3.6)

- Restructuring and other severance charges

(0.7)

(4.5)

(1.4)













Segment operating profit, as reported $ 168.7 $ 62.9 $ 2.9













Segment operating profit as a percent of revenue, excluding charges

14.7%

15.9%

4.2%













Segment operating profit as a percent of revenue, as reported

14.6%

14.1%

2.9%

FMC TECHNOLOGIES, INC. AND CONSOLIDATED SUBSIDIARIES RECONCILIATION OF NON-GAAP TO GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES (In millions)























March 31,

December 31,



2016

2015



(Unaudited)













Cash and cash equivalents $ 1,032.3 $ 916.2 Short-term debt and current portion of long-term debt

(23.5)

(21.9) Long-term debt, less current portion

(1,218.4)

(1,134.1) Net debt $ (209.6) $ (239.8)

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081222/LAM028LOGO

SOURCE FMC Technologies, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.fmctechnologies.com


LINDON, Utah, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

ForeverGreen Worldwide Corporation (OTCBB: FVRG), a leading direct marketing company and provider of health-centered products, today announced the company has continued to make profitability a priority in 2016 with several advances in its business operations, some of which include cost cutting, trimming markets, staff reorganization among other changes to make operations more efficient.

"During the first quarter of 2016, our sales reached approximately $12 million," said Jack Eldridge, CFO. "Our recent cost cutting measures have cut over $500,000 a month in overheard. With these efforts, including staff and region reorganization, and anticipating the launch of several new products in the next few weeks, we anticipate second quarter revenues to be stable and then accelerating and moving forward into the third quarter and thereafter. We remain on track for meeting or exceeding our guidance for the year. Our previously stated guidance for 2016 is $55-$60 MM with 2-4% net profit margins," he continued.

CEO Ron Williams commented, "ForeverGreen is on the move! There are many new, exciting projects currently in the works. Region restructuring has recently happened primarily in our Asian and Latin American Markets resulting in significant cost savings and business efficiencies. Some personnel have switched roles or have taken on new responsibilities to be in their most effective positions. We can't wait for the new, exciting changes everyone is bringing to their new roles."

The revenue estimate is preliminary and has not been reviewed by the Company's independent accountants. Significant updates and revisions may be required before the release of the Company's first quarter financial results in May. In addition, the Company's quarterly financial results will include other factors necessary to calculate additional financial metrics, including gross profit and net income.

For more information on ForeverGreen's products, visit http://www.forevergreen.org.

ForeverGreen Worldwide Corporation develops, manufactures and distributes an expansive line of all natural whole foods and products to North America, Australia, Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, including their new global offerings, PowerStrips, SolarStrips and BeautyStrips. They also offer their new North America weight-management line Ketopia, along with Azul and FrequenSea, whole-food beverages with industry exclusive marine phytoplankton, a line of hemp-based whole-food products, immune support and weight management products, Pulse-8 powdered L-arginine formula, 24Karat Chocolate.

Forward-Looking Statement

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that certain statements in this release are "forward-looking statements" and involve both known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. Such uncertainties include, among others, certain risks associated with the operation of the company described above. The company's actual results could differ materially from expected results

Contact:

ForeverGreen Worldwide Corporation

Craig Smith

+1-801-655-5500

[email protected]

or

Brokers and Analysts:

Chesapeake Group

+1-410-825-3930

[email protected]



SOURCE ForeverGreen Worldwide Corporation
WASHINGTON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hudson Institute announced today that Ron Prosor, the former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, has joined Hudson as a Distinguished Fellow. In this role, Prosor will examine U.S.-Israel relations, broader Middle East economic, political, and security questions, and challenges facing the United Nations.

"Ron Prosor is arguably Israel's most illustrious career diplomat, a man who has served with great distinction at the UN and the Court of Saint James, and in Berlin and Washington," said Ken Weinstein, President and CEO of Hudson Institute. "He will now bring his unparalleled perspective on alliance-building, public diplomacy, and the challenges facing the Middle East to a growing team of noted experts at Hudson Institute. We are honored to welcome him to Hudson."

Prosor's career as a diplomat and political consul spans three decades. Prior to joining Hudson, he served as Israel's 16th Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2011 to 2015. He has previously completed a four-year tenure as Israel's Ambassador to the United Kingdom, and served as Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he oversaw Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Prior to his career in the diplomatic service, Prosor served as an officer in the Artillery Division of the IDF, attaining the rank of Major. He holds a Master's degree in Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

His last permanent post in Washington was during the Clinton-to-Bush transition, as the Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs at the Israeli Embassy from 1998 to 2002. In addition to his fellowship at Hudson, Prosor has recently joined the faculty of the Interdisciplinary Center at Herzliya, as the Abba Eban chair in international diplomacy.

At Hudson Institute, Prosor will be joining a growing foreign policy team that includes such leading experts as Walter Russell Mead, Michael Doran, Hillel Fradkin, Samuel Tadros, and Lee Smith, Prosor's official biography is available here and at Hudson Institute's website: http://www.hudson.org . Prosor becomes the third former foreign ambassador currently serving on Hudson Institute's staff, joining former Costa Rican Ambassador to the U.S. Jaime Daremblum and former Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. Husain Haqqani.

To arrange an interview with Ambassador Prosor, please contact Carolyn Stewart at [email protected].

CONTACT: Carolyn Stewart

EMAIL: [email protected]

Hudson Institute is a research organization promoting American leadership and global engagement for a secure, free, and prosperous future. http://www.hudson.org

SOURCE Hudson Institute

Related Links

http://www.hudson.org


"Latinas are an influential segment of the U.S. population and are projected to reach 30 percent of the total female population by 2060," said Mark Williams, analyst for Kelley Blue Book. "With the Hispanic market's purchasing power expected to reach $1.7 trillion by 2019 1 , Latinas' growing importance to the automotive industry can't be ignored by automakers and dealerships."

Highlights from the Kelley Blue Book Latinas on Wheels Survey:

Vans? No, Thank You: Latinas may be looking for a vehicle that can move their family around, but that doesn't mean they are willing to forego style. Only 6 percent say they want their next vehicle to be a van, while more than a third (34 percent) prefer SUVs, and nearly a third (32 percent) want a sedan. In addition, 14 percent of Latinas ages 20-29 would like their next vehicle purchase to be a luxury car.

Latinas may be looking for a vehicle that can move their family around, but that doesn't mean they are willing to forego style. Only 6 percent say they want their next vehicle to be a van, while more than a third (34 percent) prefer SUVs, and nearly a third (32 percent) want a sedan. In addition, 14 percent of Latinas ages 20-29 would like their next vehicle purchase to be a luxury car. Spanish Language Isn't a Must: Contrary to popular belief, a majority (63 percent) of Latinas surveyed do not feel it's important for car salespeople to speak Spanish. Only 17 percent feel a Spanish-speaking dealer is very important.

Contrary to popular belief, a majority (63 percent) of Latinas surveyed do not feel it's important for car salespeople to speak Spanish. Only 17 percent feel a Spanish-speaking dealer is very important. Latinas are Savvy Car Buyers: More than half of Latinas (56 percent) say their first step when purchasing a car would be to conduct research online, compared to just 15 percent who would consult friends or family. They also cite vehicle history reports (27 percent), consumer reviews (21 percent) and expert reviews and ratings (21 percent) as the most helpful online tools when researching a car to buy.

More than half of Latinas (56 percent) say their first step when purchasing a car would be to conduct research online, compared to just 15 percent who would consult friends or family. They also cite vehicle history reports (27 percent), consumer reviews (21 percent) and expert reviews and ratings (21 percent) as the most helpful online tools when researching a car to buy. Confidence May Be Lacking When Visiting the Dealership: While 40 percent feel they know more about the car-buying process than their significant other, 95 percent of respondents say they would ask someone to accompany them when visiting a car dealership.

While 40 percent feel they know more about the car-buying process than their significant other, 95 percent of respondents say they would ask someone to accompany them when visiting a car dealership. More Concerned About Budget Than Technology: Unlike many other Millennial consumers, Latinas in their 20s place significantly more importance on fuel efficiency (60 percent) and safety (57 percent) over technology features, suggesting that more practical features are more important to them than the latest tech innovations when buying a car.

Unlike many other Millennial consumers, Latinas in their 20s place significantly more importance on fuel efficiency (60 percent) and safety (57 percent) over technology features, suggesting that more practical features are more important to them than the latest tech innovations when buying a car. Comfort Matters: Latinas want to be comfortable while driving, and dual air conditioning control is a favorite feature for most respondents (51 percent), followed by heated/cooled seats (37 percent), keyless entry and start (36 percent), and a sunroof (21 percent).

Latinas want to be comfortable while driving, and dual air conditioning control is a favorite feature for most respondents (51 percent), followed by heated/cooled seats (37 percent), keyless entry and start (36 percent), and a sunroof (21 percent). Car Safety Remains a Priority: Among the safety features Latinas look for, collision prevention and automatic brakes top the list at 44 percent, followed by blind spot monitoring (35 percent).

Among the safety features Latinas look for, collision prevention and automatic brakes top the list at 44 percent, followed by blind spot monitoring (35 percent). Latinas are Ready to Buy: More than half of Latinas in their 20s and 30s (55 percent of Latinas in their 20s and 53 percent of those in their 30s) say they expect to purchase a car within the next year.

"It is important for the automotive industry to keep in mind that today's Latina car buyer is a practical consumer who knows what she wants and is doing her homework before visiting the dealership," said Williams. "While Spanish-language salespeople are not a priority for her, survey results suggest she could use more confidence when visiting the sales floor. Highlighting the cost savings of environmentally friendly vehicles, touting safety features in new models, and making the car dealership a place where Latinas feel comfortable, are all good ways to reach her."

The 2016 Kelley Blue Book Latinas on Wheels Survey was conducted by Wakefield Research among 1,000 nationally representative U.S. Hispanic women ages 20-39 between March 22-30, 2016.

To discuss this topic or any other automotive-related information with a Kelley Blue Book analyst on-camera via the company's on-site studio, please contact a member of the Public Relations team to book an interview. For more information and news from Kelley Blue Book's KBB.com, visit www.kbb.com/media/, follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/kelleybluebook (or @kelleybluebook), like our page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kbb, and get updates on Google+ at https://plus.google.com/+kbb.

1 According to the Selig Center for Economic Growth's "The Multicultural Economy 2015" report.

About Kelley Blue Book (www.kbb.com)

Founded in 1926, Kelley Blue Book, The Trusted Resource, is the vehicle valuation and information source trusted and relied upon by both consumers and the automotive industry. Each week the company provides the most market-reflective values in the industry on its top-rated website KBB.com, including its famous Blue Book Trade-In Values and Fair Purchase Price, which reports what others are paying for new and used cars this week. The company also provides vehicle pricing and values through various products and services available to car dealers, auto manufacturers, finance and insurance companies, and governmental agencies. Kelley Blue Book's KBB.com ranked highest in its category for brand equity by the 2015 Harris Poll EquiTrend study and has been named Online Auto Shopping Brand of the Year for four consecutive years. Kelley Blue Book Co., Inc. is a Cox Automotive company.

About Cox Automotive

Cox Automotive Inc. is transforming the way the world buys, sells and owns cars with industry-leading digital marketing, software, financial, wholesale and e-commerce solutions for consumers, dealers, manufacturers and the overall automotive ecosystem worldwide. Committed to open choice and dedicated to strong partnerships, the Cox Automotive family includes Autotrader, Dealer.com, Dealertrack, Kelley Blue Book, Manheim, NextGear Capital, vAuto, Xtime and a host of other brands. The global company has nearly 30,000 team members in more than 200 locations and is partner to more than 40,000 auto dealers, as well as most major automobile manufacturers, while engaging U.S. consumer car buyers with the most recognized media brands in the industry. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., an Atlanta-based company with revenues of $18 billion and approximately 55,000 employees. Cox Enterprises' other major operating subsidiaries include Cox Communications and Cox Media Group. For more information about Cox Automotive, visit www.coxautoinc.com.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160420/357803-INFO

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121108/LA08161LOGO

SOURCE Kelley Blue Book

Related Links

http://www.kbb.com


In Rice, Cong Tri used the legendary Vietnamese silk My A, available only in jet black. The fabric, once known by all but only afforded by a few, is famous for its coolness in the summer and warmth in the winter.
In 2008, to mark the 40 th anniversaries of Frank Zappa's masterworks Lumpy Gravy and We're Only In It For The Money , the Zappa Family Trust assembled an anniversary edition of their Project/Object Audio Documentary series entitled Lumpy Money Project/Object . The expansive release contains three CDs of unique and rare versions of the legendary albums, including the mono mixes for both, as well as many nuggets from the Vault, from various studio outtakes to single versions, instrumental mixes, and Frank Zappa interview excerpts. Lumpy Money Project/Object also includes a booklet filled with photos, oddities and featuring liner notes from David Fricke and Gail Zappa. Both albums' mono mixes make their download debuts with the new digital release of Lumpy Money Project/Object .

Zappa worked on Lumpy Gravy and We're Only In It For The Money during essentially the same time period in 1967 and 1968. The original Lumpy Gravy sessions were produced by Nick Venet and recorded at Capitol Studios with a host of primo studio musicians, including members of the famous Wrecking Crew. After delays from Zappa's record company, Lumpy Gravy began anew. Armed with the Lumpy Gravy session tapes and a razor blade, Zappa sat in his New York City apartment and transformed the project into the masterwork collage we know today. We're Only In It For The Money has gone down in history as one of the most essential rock albums of our time. With its scathing messages, use of parody, musique concrete & DADA-ist tendencies, there truly is nothing like it.

The Road Tapes series focuses on Frank Zappa concert audio from the Vault that is historical yet sonically less than stellar. Described by the man himself as "Guerilla Recordings," Zappa tried to document every performance. Road Tapes, Venue #1 takes us to summertime 1968, Vancouver, B.C., where the Mothers of Invention played Kerrisdale Arena to an enthusiastic crowd. Captured on mono reel-to-reel, the concert is inspired and showcases a mixture of classic Mothers and live improvisations.

Road Tapes, Venue #2 takes us back to August 1973 in Helsinki, Finland. The performances, compiled from three shows at Finlandia Hall, were recorded by engineer Kerry McNabb while on his first tour with Zappa. This band consists of a lineup that is often regarded as one of Zappa's finest. Stars like George Duke, Jean Luc Ponty, and Ruth Underwood shine. The compositions become increasingly challenging yet still maintain the humor expected at a live Zappa show, making for a potent and rewarding release.

New to the Road Tapes series, Road Tapes, Venue #3 features two complete shows from Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, MN. The July 1970 Mothers line-up featured Flo & Eddie, George Duke, Ian Underwood, Aynsley Dunbar & Jeff Simmons. Frank Zappa's vast Vault does not contain many full shows from this time period, making this release a particularly special one. The tapes were recorded to stereo reel-to-reel, but not without problems. Due to their historical relevance, Zappa Records determined it was worth it, warts 'n all! Venue #3 does not disappoint.

www.zappa.com

Frank Zappa: Lumpy Money Project/Object [3-CD; digital]

CD1

Lumpy Gravy (Primordial)

Frank Zappa's Original Orchestral Edit for Capitol Records

Original tracking sessions at Capitol Studios, Produced by Nick Venet

Mono Version, 4-Track Master Tape Sequence

Source: " Analog  Master Tape T-2719 dated 19 May 1967

CD1 mastering & audio restoration engineer: John Polito, 2008

1. I Sink Trap

2. II Gum Joy

3. III Up & Down

4. IV Local Butcher

5. V Gypsy Airs

6. VI Hunchy Punchy

7. VII Foamy Soaky

8. VIII Let's Eat Out

9. IX Teen-Age Grand Finale

We're Only In It For The Money

1968 Original Mono Mix, Produced by Frank Zappa

This is not a fold-down mix from stereo to mono. This is a separate discreet mono mix created by Frank Zappa with Dick Kunc in 1968.

Source: " Analog Master

10. Are You Hung Up?

11. Who Needs The Peace Corps?

12. Concentration Moon

13. Mom & Dad

14. Telephone Conversation

15. Bow Tie Daddy

16. Harry, You're A Beast

17. What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?

18. Absolutely Free

19. Flower Punk

20. Hot Poop

21. Nasal Retentive Calliope Music

22. Let's Make The Water Turn Black

23. The Idiot Bastard Son

24. Lonely Little Girl

25. Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance

26. What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body? (Reprise)

27. Mother People

28. The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny

CD2

Lumpy Gravy 1984 UMRK Remix

CD2 mastered by Bernie Grundman, 2008

Although this version was unreleased until 2008, Frank Zappa did include a track entitled "Lumpy Gravy (Excerpt)" in a promotional disc for The Old Masters, Box One. All 3:01 of it is here. This promo disc was serviced to radio station program directors. Lucky them.

Source: 1630 Digital Master

1. Lumpy Gravy - Part One

2. Lumpy Gravy - Part Two

We're Only In It For The Money 1984 UMRK Remix, Produced by Frank Zappa

Originally released on CD, 1986

Source: 3324 Digital Master

3. Are You Hung Up?

4. Who Needs The Peace Corps?

5. Concentration Moon

6. Mom & Dad

7. Telephone Conversation

8. Bow Tie Daddy

9. Harry, You're A Beast

10. What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?

11. Absolutely Free

12. Flower Punk

13. Hot Poop

14. Nasal Retentive Calliope Music

15. Let's Make The Water Turn Black

16. The Idiot Bastard Son

17. Lonely Little Girl

18. Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance

19. What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body? (Reprise)

20. Mother People

21. The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny

CD3

All music produced/composed & performed/conducted by Frank Zappa

All recordings were transferred from original 2-track analog tapes, except tracks 4 through 6 & 13.

CD3 mastering & audio restoration engineer: John Polito, 2008

1. How Did That Get In Here?

Recorded on Sunday, 13 February 1967 at Capitol (original multi-track masters are currently not in evidence). This is a Frank Zappa construction. Small excerpts from this material appear in Zappa's Masterwork, Lumpy Gravy. Source: " stereo mixdown.

2. Lumpy Gravy "Shuffle"

Recorded 21 February 1969 at The New School, NYC, during Frank Zappa lecture/Q&A

3. Dense Slight

Lumpy Gravy Building Block by Frank Zappa

4. Unit 3A, Take 3

5. Unit 2, Take 9

6. Section 8, Take 22

Tracks 4-6 recorded for Lumpy Gravy 14 March 1967 at Capitol. Mixed from the original 4-tracks by Joe Travers, UMRK, 2008.

7. "My Favorite Album"

Interview excerpt, 22 October 1971, KBEY- FM, Kansas City

8. Unit 9

In Lumpy Gravy, this piece is VSO-controlled by Frank Zappa. Recorded at Capitol Records

9. N. Double A, AA

Lumpy Gravy Building Block by Frank Zappa

10. Theme From Lumpy Gravy

In Lumpy Gravy, this piece is VSO-controlled by Frank Zappa. Recorded & mixed by Frank Zappa at Studio Z, Cucamonga

11. "What The Fuck's Wrong With Her?"

West Village Apt., NYC, working on Lumpy Gravy, late 1967

12. Intelligent Design

Alternate Frank Zappa building block of the Gary-Kellgren-whispering/JCB-dialog. Includes the famously censored line infamously deleted by MGM from the Masterwork. Recorded at Mayfair

13. Lonely Little Girl (Original Composition - Take 24)

From the original 8-track masters recorded at Mayfair. Mixed by Joe Travers at UMRK 2008

14. "That Problem With Absolutely Free"

Interview, Mixed Media, Detroit, 13 November 1967

15. Absolutely Free (Instrumental)

16. Harry, You're A Beast (Instrumental)

17. What's The Ugliest Part of Your Body? (Reprise/Instrumental)

18. Creationism

Recorded during the "Money" sessions, Mayfair, 6 September 1967

19. Idiot Bastard Snoop

Mayfair Studios 1967, Vocal Overdub session snippet as-is

20. The Idiot Bastard Son (Instrumental)

21. "What's Happening Of The Universe"

Interview with David Silver, Boston, 1969

22. "The World Will Be A Far Happier Place"

Recorded at Mayfair

23. Lonely Little Girl (Instrumental)

24. Mom & Dad (Instrumental)

25. Who Needs The Peace Corps? (Instrumental)

26. "Really Little Voice"

Recorded during the Money sessions, Mayfair Studios 1967

27. Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance (Instrumental)

28. Lonely Little Girl - The Single [C P 1967]

Released prior to the album in November, 1967. Curiously, Frank Zappa considered this thoroughly discrete construct (yes, that's right, this is a collage) potentially commercial.

29. "In Conclusion"

Recorded at Mayfair

Frank Zappa: Road Tapes, Venue #1 [2-CD; digital]

Kerrisdale Arena, Vancouver B.C. (25 August 1968)

CD1

1. The Importance Of An Earnest Attempt (By Hand)

2/3. Help, I'm A Rock/Transylvania Boogie

4. Flopsmash Musics

5. Hungry Freaks, Daddy

6. The Orange County Lumber Truck

7. The Rewards of a Career in Music

CD2

1. Trouble Every Day

2. Shortly: Suite exists of Holiday In Berlin Full Blown

3. Pound For A Brown

4. Sleeping In A Jar

5. Oh, In The Sky

6. Octandre (written by Edgard Varese)

7. King Kong

Frank Zappa: Road Tapes, Venue #2 [2-CD; digital]

Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, Finland (23, 24 August 1973)

CD1

Show 3

1. Introcious

2. The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue

3. Kung Fu

4. Penguin In Bondage

Show 1

5. Exercise #4

6. Dog Breath

7. The Dog Breath Variations

8. Uncle Meat

9. RDNZL

Show 3

10. Montana

11. Your Teeth And Your Shoulders and sometimes your foot goes like this.. / Pojama Prelude

12. Dupree's Paradise

Show 1

13. All Skate/Dun-Dun-Dun (The Finnish Hit Single)

CD2

Show 3

1. Village Of The Sun

2. Echidna's Arf (Of You)

3. Don't You Ever Wash That Thing?

Show 2

4. Big Swifty

Shows 2, 3

5. Farther O'Blivion

Encore, Show 1

6. Brown Shoes Don't Make It

Frank Zappa: Road Tapes, Venue #3 [2-CD; digital]

Tyrone Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, MN (5 July 1970)

CD1

Show 1

1. Tyrone Start The Tape

2. King Kong

3. Wonderful Wino (Zappa/Simmons)

4. Concentration Moon

5. Mom & Dad

6. The Air

7. Dog Breath

8. Mother People

9. You Didn't Try To Call Me

10. Agon - Interlude (Stravinsky)

11. Call Any Vegetable

12. King Kong / Igor's Boogie

13. It Can't Happen Here

14. Sharleena

Show 2

15. The 23rd "Mondellos"

16. Justine (Harris/Terry)

CD2

Show 2, continued

1. Pound For A Brown

2. Sleeping In A Jar

3. Sharleena

4. "A Piece Of Contemporary Music"

5. The Return Of The Hunchback Duke (incl.: Little House I Used To Live In, Holiday In Berlin)6. Cruising For Burgers

7. Let's Make The Water Turn Black

8. Harry, You're A Beast

9. Oh No/Orange County Lumber Truck

10. Call Any Vegetable

11. Mondello's Revenge

12. The Clap (Chunga's Revenge)

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359807

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150324/184009LOGO

SOURCE Zappa Records/UMe

Related Links

http://www.zappa.com


LONDON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The report analyzes and forecasts the fuel additives market on the global and regional level. The study provides historical data for 2014 along with the forecast from 2015 to 2023 based on volume (kilo tons) and revenue (US$ Mn). The report provides a decisive view of the fuel additives market by segmenting it in terms of product, application, and region.



This report provides detailed industry analysis of the fuel additives market. Industry analysis includes product information and applications that it serves along with its function. Fuel emission standards in some key regions and countries are also included to help understand the market dynamics. We have included detailed value chain analysis of the fuel additives market to provide a comprehensive view of the fuel additives market. The analysis of value chain includes information such as integration in the market, distribution channels, and end-user industries. The study also comprises drivers and restraints of the fuel additives market and their impact on demand during the forecast period. The report also analyzes the opportunities in the fuel additives market on the global and regional level. Drivers, restraints, and opportunities mentioned in the report are justified through qualitative and quantitative information. These factors have been verified through primary and secondary resources.



The report includes Porter's Five Forces Analysis that describes the competitiveness in the fuel additives market. The study comprises market attractiveness analysis, which has been benchmarked based on market size, compound annual growth rate (CAGR), general attractiveness, and company market share. We have also incorporated company market share analysis to provide detailed analysis of the market.



The study provides a decisive view of the fuel additives market by segmenting it on the basis of product and application. Product and application segments have been analyzed based on current and future trends, and the market has been estimated from 2015 to 2023 in terms of volume (kilo tons) and revenue (US$ Mn). Regional segmentation includes current and forecast demand for fuel additives in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. It also includes demand for individual products and applications in major countries in the respective regions.



The report provides detailed competitive outlook that includes profiles of Afton Chemical Corporation, Akzo Nobel N.V., Baker Hughes Incorporated, BASF SE, Chemtura Corporation, Evonik Industries AG, Huntsman Corporation LLC, Innospec, Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS), The Dow Chemical Company, The Lubrizol Corporation, and Total S.A. Company profiles include attributes such as company overview, brand/product portfolio, financial overview, business strategy, and key/recent developments related to the market.



Constant currency rates have been considered while forecasting the market. Prices of fuel additives by product vary in each region. Hence, a similar volume-to-revenue ratio does not follow for each individual region. Regional average price has been considered while breaking down the market by product segment and application in each region. Models and estimates have been used to produce comprehensive datasets where hard data was not available. We have used the bottom-up approach by considering product and application segments, and integrating them to arrive at the global market. Products and applications have been further divided using the top-down approach to derive the consumption of fuel additives in the regional market.



We conducted in-depth interviews and discussions with a wide range of key industry participants and opinion leaders to compile this research report. Primary research represented the bulk of research efforts, supplemented by an extensive secondary research. We reviewed key players' product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents for competitive analysis and market understanding. Secondary research includes a search of recent trade, technical writing, internet sources, and statistical data from government websites, trade associations, and agencies. This has proven to be the most reliable, effective, and successful approach for obtaining precise market data, capturing industry participants' insights, and recognizing business opportunities.



The global fuel additives market has been segmented into:



Fuel Additives Market  Product Analysis



Deposit control additives

Cetane improvers

Antioxidants

Amines

Hindered phenols

Others (mixture of alkyl phenols and aromatic diamines)

Stability improvers

Lubricity improvers

Corrosion inhibitors

Cold flow improvers

Others (Including dyes and markers, metal deactivators, fuel dehazers, etc.)

Fuel Additives Market  Application Analysis



Gasoline

Diesel

Aviation fuel

Others (Including heating oils, etc.)

Fuel Additives Market  Regional Analysis



North America

U.S.

Rest of North America

Europe

U.K.

Germany

France

Spain

Italy

Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific

China

Japan

ASEAN

Rest of Asia Pacific

Latin America

Brazil

Rest of Latin America

Middle East & Africa (MEA)

GCC

South Africa

Rest of Middle East & Africa

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3783316/



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

http://www.reportbuyer.com


CHICAGO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Savage Smyth, Chicago's newest event venue, announced today it will host funk band Vulfpeck on June 7. Based on the band's new single "Flow State," Vulfpeck will debut a new concept of paying fans to attend their show at Savage Smyth.

Founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2011, Vulfpeck is an American funk group based in Los Angeles that has gained recent exposure from its album "Sleepify" and its appearance on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."

"For Vulfpeck to hit the road again, every audience member must get paid to attend our show," said Vulfpeck co-founder Jack Stratton. Cue the "Flow State" single, which is the resonate frequency of Planet Earth  a tone that exists well below the realm of human hearing. Fans can stream the single on repeat to generate enough royalties for the band to not only play a free show, but also pay attendees some of the royalties. "We're excited to team with Savage Smyth. The new venue works out great for what we're up to  playing music and reinventing the wheel  the musical wheel."

A multi-functional venue in Chicago's River North neighborhood, Savage Smyth lends itself to endless programming opportunities including corporate meetings and events, thought leadership programs, community forums and artistic showcases.

"Vulfpeck's unique concept of paying fans as they walk through the door naturally aligns with the philosophy of Savage Smyth," said the venue's co-founder, Gabrielle Martinez. "We aim to provide a space for people to innovate and connect by hosting their own authentic programming, so we're thrilled to welcome Vulfpeck to perform at Savage Smyth."

Free tickets will be available through universe.com on April 27. Doors for the Flow State Show will open at 7pm on Tuesday, June 7, accessible through Savage Smyth's west alley entrance. Michigan favorite Short's Brewing Co., - another new entrant to Chicago - will be at the show to serve a collaboration brew, Compression  an American Sour Ale, inspired by the Vulf Compressor, a mixing tool created by the band to give their music its signature sound.

In addition to the upcoming Vulfpeck show, Savage Smyth will host a series of events during the week of June 6, introducing the venue to the Chicago community. Encompassing two floors including an 8,000 square feet rooftop space, Savage Smyth is now taking bookings for summer 2016.

Savage Smyth (www.savagesmyth.com) is Chicago's first and only space dedicated to fostering creative dialogue and collaboration across all disciplines. Savage Smyth offers 8,000 square feet of customizable indoor space, with an additional 8,000 square-foot roof deck, for unique programming, experiences and events.

Vulfpeck (http://vulfpeck.com) is an American funk group based in Los Angeles. The band aims for a sound that is minimal, raw, and approaches that of a live performance. The band has released four EPs and a full-length album, Thrill of the Arts. Vulfpeck will be appearing this summer at Bonnaroo, Outside Lands in Golden Gate Park, Red Rocks, and the North Coast Music Festival in Union Park. In the fall the band will do an intercontinental tour including Brooklyn Bowl New York and Brooklyn Bowl London.

Media Contact:

Hollie Lewandowski

Savage Smyth Marketing Coordinator

[email protected]

312.985.0196

SOURCE Savage Smyth

Related Links

http://www.savagesmyth.com


WASHINGTON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- G2 Speech, a leading provider of speech recognition and workflow management solutions with operations in the UK and Benelux, and LogicNets, the Washington D.C.-based developer of the LogicNets decision support platform, are pleased to announce the formation of a new strategic partnership.

The two organizations plan to jointly develop and release to the European and North American markets later this year a clinical workflow management solution with embedded clinical decision support (CDS). G2 Speech's innovative workflow platform, SpeechReport, which uses the Recognosco SDK, will now be significantly enhanced to include decision-based, structured reporting  technology provided by LogicNets. With this new offering, medical professionals can dictate their observations directly into a dynamic, rules-based report template which is integrated into the EPR/PACS/RIS workflow and accurately captures clinical data input, and processes it for downstream workflow and analytics. Now, professionals in radiology, pathology and other clinical fields can use advanced speech recognition to create significantly more complete, accurate and standardized reports while completing their customary workflow in a timely and efficient manner.

"The addition of LogicNets' CDS platform means it will be possible for our customers to not only create structured documents with actionable results, but to deliver decision support on top of that," commented Bert Groeneveld, Chief Executive of G2 Speech. "This will help our users to easily follow clinical guidelines as they are guided through even the most complex decision-making processes to the appropriate diagnostic and treatment outcomes. The benefits extend beyond just the clinicians to referrers, upper management and, most important, the patients."

"G2 Speech's established presence in the clinical marketplace at the point of critical medical data collection represents an ideal application for LogicNets," said Jelle Ferwerda, LogicNets CEO. "While clinical users maintain ease-of-use through speech recognition, the healthcare organization can leverage the decision support power of our platform to ensure appropriate outcomes and to drive a wide range of outcomes-based research, both of which are dependent on properly collected clinician input. We look forward to benefiting from G2 Speech's experience and knowledge servicing this important market."

About LogicNets

Since 2004, LogicNets has focused on developing its LogicNets Decision Support platform allowing organizations to capture both clinical and operational expertise and make it available on-demand to all staff, partners and customers via online applications accessible from any location or standard device. The LogicNets Clinical Decision Support platform is offered either as a cloud-based, hosted service (SaaS) or a locally installed, web-enabled application.

medical.logicnets.com

About G2 Speech

G2 Speech was founded in 1998, since then the company has polished and perfected the art of providing digital dictation, speech recognition and workflow management solutions. G2 Speech successfully provides their products in the UK, Ireland, Belgium and Holland. Within the UK they currently deliver solutions to over 35 major NHS Trusts. Globally they have around 25,000 users accessing their solution every day.

www.g2speech.com

For more information please contact:

Patrick Dowling

VP Business Development

LogicNets

Tel: +1 202.715.3725

Email: [email protected]

Gemma Sandford

Head of MarCom

G2 Speech

T: (0208) 555 9041

E: [email protected]

SOURCE LogicNets

Related Links

http://medical.logicnets.com


ANTWERP, Belgium, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

genae, a Contract Research Organization (CRO) and services provider for the medical industries, announced today the appointment of Prof. Dr. Jorn Balzer to the role of Chief Medical Officer. Prof. Balzer's responsibilities will include all clinical, safety and risk management related to genae's research services.

"We feel privileged and honored with the acceptance of Prof. Balzer to join our team," said Bart Segers, CEO at genae. "Prof. Balzer's impressive and extensive background make him a perfect fit for the genae team, as his extensive clinical and research expertise will play a key role in helping us to achieve our goals and strategic priorities."

Prof. Balzer is Head Physician and Medical Director at the Katholische Klinikum Mainz, Germany. Previously, he was Assistant Medical Director at the Klinikum der Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitat in Frankfurt Am Main, Director at the Universitatsklinikum des Saarlandes in Homburg /Saar, and Intern at the Charite Campus Virchow Klinikum in Berlin. His scientific and research work is illustrated by peer-reviewed publications and presentations during international congresses and symposia.

About the genae group

genae is involved in the development and commercialization of medical devices, biologics and therapies that change medical practice. genae is a full service CRO and services provider for the medical industries and aims at improving health and quality of life by innovating and accelerating high quality research. The group's Quality Management System has been tested rigorously and continues to pass regulatory and sponsor's audits and inspections.

genae associates nv is a privately held company with principal offices in Antwerp, Belgium and is part of the genae group, the medical device CRO.

To learn more about genae, please visit http://www.genae.com .

Contact

genae associates nv

Bart Segers, CEO

+32-3-290-03-06

Justitiestraat 6B, 2018 Antwerp, Belgium

[email protected]



SOURCE genae
"It has been a devastating time for the people of Ecuador and we are diligently working with officials and organizations to ensure that the people who need it the most will directly receive the food," says Rafael Toro, Director of Public Relations of Goya Foods. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by the earthquake and we thank everyone who is helping to make this donation possible."

The donation is part of the Goya Gives campaign, a series of annual donations that serves to encourage others to participate in the message and act of helping those in need. Goya has a long history of providing aid to those impacted by natural disasters and has made significant donations both at home, including those impacted by Hurricane Sandy, Katrina and Isaac in the United States as well as abroad in Mexico, Haiti, Chile, Peru and El Salvador, among others.

About GOYA: Founded in 1936, Goya Foods, Inc. is America's largest Hispanic-owned food company, and has established itself as the leader in Latin American food and condiments. Goya manufactures, packages, and distributes over 2,500 high-quality food products from Spain, Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America. Goya products have their roots in the culinary traditions of Hispanic communities around the world; the combination of authentic ingredients, robust seasonings and convenient preparation makes Goya products ideal for every taste and every table. For more information on Goya Foods, please visit www.goya.com

For more information & photos:

Natalie J. Maniscalco

845.659.6506 / [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359821

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140904/143145

SOURCE Goya Foods

Related Links

http://www.goya.com


DOWNEY, Calif., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Grand Sierra Resort is notifying guests of an unfortunate situation regarding a data security incident that may have affected the security of certain guest payment card information. Below is information on the incident and resources available to protect potentially impacted guests against identity theft or fraud, should they feel the need to do so.

WHAT HAPPENED? On or around September 29, 2015, the Grand Sierra Resort was contacted by law enforcement regarding an investigation into a potential compromise of payment card information used at food and retail locations at the Grand Sierra Resort. The Grand Sierra Resort immediately began to cooperate with law enforcement and to investigate this matter. Third party forensics investigators were retained to assist the Grand Sierra Resort. On or around January 11, 2016, these investigators confirmed that certain guest payment card information for cards used at food and retail locations at the Grand Sierra Resort may have been compromised.

WHAT INFORMATION WAS INVOLVED? The investigation has determined that payment card information used at the Grand Sierra's onsite food and retail locations between February 19, 2014 and March 13, 2014 or March 20, 2015 and August 6, 2015 could be at risk. This includes information like the cardholder's name, credit card number, credit card expiration date, Track 1 data and Track 2 data. Please note that this incident did not affect payment cards used to book or pay for lodging.

WHAT WE ARE DOING. Since discovering the compromise, the Grand Sierra Resort has worked closely with law enforcement and its forensics investigators to determine what happened, what information may be at risk and to whom this information may relate. Additionally, as part of the Grand Sierra Resort's ongoing commitment to the security of the personal information in its care, the Grand Sierra Resort has worked diligently to enhance existing security measures to prevent further unauthorized access to guest payment card information.

WHAT YOU CAN DO. The Grand Sierra Resort encourages potentially impacted guests to review the information below on how to better protect against identity theft or fraud.

FOR MORE INFORMATION. The Grand Sierra Resort apologizes for any inconvenience and concern this incident causes guests. The security of our guests' personal information is one of the Grand Sierra Resort's highest priorities. Should guests have any questions about the content of this notice or ways that they can protect themselves from the possibility of identity theft, please call the Grand Sierra Resort's dedicated hotline at (877) 216-3789 between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. EST, Monday to Friday. Please use reference number 6216041816 when calling.

ADDITIONAL STEPS YOU CAN TAKE TO PREVENT IDENTITY THEFT AND FRAUD

You may take action directly to further protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss. We encourage you to be vigilant against incidents of identity theft by reviewing your account statements regularly and monitoring your credit reports for suspicious activity. Under U.S. law, you are entitled to one free credit report annually from each of the three major credit bureaus. To order your free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call, toll-free, 1-877-322-8228. You may also contact the three major credit bureaus directly to request a free copy of your credit report.

At no charge, you can also have these credit bureaus place a "fraud alert" on your file that alerts creditors to take additional steps to verify your identity prior to granting credit in your name. Note, however, that because it tells creditors to follow certain procedures to protect you, it may also delay your ability to obtain credit while the agency verifies your identity. As soon as one credit bureau confirms your fraud alert, the others are notified to place fraud alerts on your file. Should you wish to place a fraud alert, or should you have any questions regarding your credit report, please contact any one of the agencies listed below.

Equifax Experian TransUnion P.O. Box 105069 P.O. Box 2002 P.O. Box 2000 Atlanta, GA 30348 Allen, TX 75013 Chester, PA 19022-2000 800-525-6285 888-397-3742 800-680-7289 www.equifax.com www.experian.com www.transunion.com

In addition to a fraud alert, consumers may place a security freeze on their credit reports. A security freeze prohibits a credit reporting agency from releasing any information from a consumer's credit report without the consumer's written authorization. However, please be advised that placing a security freeze on your credit report may delay, interfere with, or prevent the timely approval of any requests you make for new loans, credit mortgages, employment, housing, or other services.

If you have been a victim of identity theft, and you provide the credit reporting agency with a valid police report, it cannot charge you to place, lift or remove a security freeze. In all other cases, a credit reporting agency may charge you a fee to place, temporarily lift, or permanently remove a security freeze. You will need to place a security freeze separately with each of the three major credit bureaus listed above if you wish to place the freeze on all of your credit files.

To find out more on how to place a security freeze, you can contact the credit reporting agencies using the information below:

Equifax Security Freeze Experian Security Freeze TransUnion LLC P.O. Box 105788 P.O. Box 9554 P.O. Box 2000 Atlanta, GA 30348 Allen, TX 75013 Chester PA 19022-2000 800-685-1111 888-397-3742 888-909-8872 800-349-9960 (NY Residents)



www.freeze.equifax.com www.experian.com freeze.transunion.com

You can further educate yourself regarding identity theft, fraud alerts, and the steps you can take to protect yourself, by contacting the Federal Trade Commission or your state Attorney General. For North Carolina residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 9001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-9001, 1-919-716-6400, www.ncdoj.gov. For Maryland residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 200 St. Paul Place, 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202, 1-888-743-0023, www.oag.state.md.us. The Federal Trade Commission can be reached at: 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20580, www.ftc.gov/idtheft/, 1-877-ID-THEFT (1-877-438-4338); TTY: 1-866-653-4261. The Federal Trade Commission also encourages those who discover that their information has been misused to file a complaint with them. You can obtain further information on how to file such a complaint by way of the contact information listed above. Instances of known or suspected identity theft should also be reported to law enforcement.

SOURCE The Grand Sierra Resort
LUGANO, Switzerland and HOUSTON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

- Collaboration Plans a Comprehensive Range of Clinical Studies to Evaluate Helsinn Commercialized and/or Under Development Pipeline Products in Cancer Supportive Care and Palliative Settings

- MD Anderson to Provide Clinical Expertise and Oncology Network.

Helsinn, the Swiss pharmaceutical Group focused on building quality cancer care, and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center today announce that they signed a strategic alliance on a broad, multi-year programme of clinical studies in cancer supportive and palliative care.

Under the terms of the collaboration agreement, MD Anderson, one of the world's most comprehensive and prestigious cancer hospital networks, will conduct 14 studies into Helsinn programmes with enrollment projects of 420 patients. The collaboration aims to investigate new uses and better outcomes for these programmes for people with cancer in the supportive and palliative settings. This relationship will leverage MD Anderson's significant clinical expertise and access to world recognized key opinion leaders, providing Helsinn with an unparalleled network or oncology specialists.

The collaboration will focus on six major disease areas; fatigue, anorexia/cachexia, diarrhea chronic nausea, pruritus and chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain in a five-year time frame.

Riccardo Braglia, Helsinn Group Vice Chairman and CEO, commented: "MD Anderson is among the world's most prestigious cancer hospital networks with an unparalleled clinical capability. At Helsinn, we are committed to finding ways to offer people with cancer the best possible quality of life. We believe that this collaboration will allow us to explore new outcomes for our existing commercialized products and to explore alternative uses for our pipeline programmes to maximise our chances of being able to offer new, innovative solutions to people with cancer."

"There is a great opportunity to develop new and effective drugs to treat the main symptoms caused by cancer, such as weight loss, fatigue, nausea, pain, pruritus, diarrhea, and anorexia/cachexia," said Eduardo Bruera, M.D., chair of Palliative, Rehabilitation & Integrative Medicine at MD Anderson. "There is also a great opportunity to develop drugs to treat the side effects of emerging and highly effective new targeted and immunological treatments for cancer patients".

Notes for editors:

About Helsinn Group

Helsinn is a privately owned cancer supportive care pharmaceutical group with an extensive portfolio of marketed products and a broad development pipeline. Since 1976, Helsinn has been improving the everyday lives of patients, guided by core family values of respect, integrity and quality, through a unique integrated licensing business model working with long standing partners in pharmaceuticals, medical devices and nutritional supplement products. Helsinn is headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland, with operating subsidiaries in Ireland and the US, a representative office in China, as well as a product presence in about 90 countries globally.

In 2016, our 40th anniversary year, you can meet representatives from Helsinn at:

ASCO Annual Meeting ( Chicago , USA , 3-7 June)

, , 3-7 June) MASCC Annual Meeting ( Adelaide, Australia , 23-25 June)

, 23-25 June) ChemOutsourcing Conference ( Parsippany, New Jersey , 19-21 September)

, 19-21 September) CPhI Worldwide ( Barcelona, Spain , 4-6 October)

, 4-6 October) ESMO Congress ( Copenhagen, Denmark , 7-11 October)

, 7-11 October) BioEurope (Koln, Germany , 4-6 November)

For more information, please visit www.helsinn.com

About MD Anderson

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston ranks as one of the world's most respected centers focused on cancer patient care, research, education and prevention. The institution's sole mission is to end cancer for patients and their families around the world. MD Anderson is one of only 45 comprehensive cancer centers designated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). MD Anderson is ranked No.1 for cancer care in U.S. News & World Report's "Best Hospitals" survey. It has ranked as one of the nation's top two hospitals since the survey began in 1990, and has ranked first for 11 of the past 14 years. MD Anderson receives a cancer center support grant from the NCI of the National Institutes of Health (P30 CA016672).

For more information, please contact:

Helsinn Group

Paola Bonvicini

Head of Communication & Press Office

Tel: +41 91-985-21-21

[email protected]



MD Anderson

Ron Gilmore

Tel: 713-795-1898

[email protected]



SOURCE Helsinn Group
MANSFIELD, Mass., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hartmann, the 139-year-old American luggage brand, is introducing an innovative technology system called StrideAlignTM in a new luggage style, GliderTM cases. Hartmann's GliderTM cases will feature the new StrideAlignTM technology in two collections; Ratio and Ratio Classic Deluxe. This unique technology system incorporates patent pending technologies. The GliderTM cases featuring StrideAlignTM were unveiled last month at the Travel Goods Association show and will be available to consumers in department and specialty stores beginning in April.

Hartmann's StrideAlignTM technology has one goal: to ease the demands of travel for the consumer. For decades, luggage has towered skyward vertically, making every piece top-heavy and more prone to tipping and falling over. The new technology includes a unique, low profile and wide wheelbases that provide ease of movement and helps the GliderTM cases remain stable across all surfaces and terrains. Over 172 luggage prototypes were created during the development process before perfecting all aspects of the StrideAlignTM technology which includes details such as realigning the center of gravity, triple ball bearing wheels, wide contoured handles with options of twelve varying heights and ergonomic proportions making carrying the case easier and visual aesthetics.

In the past, luggage has been carried, dragged and rolled; each movement with its own difficulties  heavy and cumbersome, oscillating and swerving. The GliderTM cases mark a new era in luggage, where the traveler conducts and guides movement of the luggage naturally and effortlessly. The new luggage is also exceptionally lightweight making pushing while in line, pulling down a concourse or lifting over a curb, easier and extremely manageable for the traveler.

"Hartmann specifically developed this luggage technology, shape and style with the road warrior in mind," said Mark Salander, Vice President of Design and Product Development of Samsonite, the parent company of Hartmann. "I've travelled through countless airports and have personally watched travelers struggle in the process. No matter how luxurious their luggage is the experience is still cumbersome. Our goal with The GliderTM cases was for Hartmann to provide a permanent solution to the ongoing problem all travelers have. We've created a revolutionary movement in luggage that will improve the travel experience at every twist and turn."

Both the Ratio and Ratio Classic Deluxe collections include eight GliderTM case styles; five carry on sizes and three checked luggage sizes, as well as and one duffel bag. The Ratio comes in True Black and ranges in price from $525-$625 and the Ratio Classic Deluxe comes in Safari with full grain leather details altering the price slightly for this collection from $550 - $650.

About Hartmann

For more than a century, Hartmann has been the icon of sophistication for the world's most discerning travelers. Our uncompromising heritage of craftsmanship and innovation continues to exceed the expectations of our consumers, whose investment is rewarded with enduring quality and a level of style and refinement that is legendary Hartmann. In May 2012, Samsonite International SA, the global industry leader in the category, acquired Hartmann. Samsonite is listed on the Main Board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited under the stock code 1910.

SOURCE Hartmann
Ho Chi Minh Citys police department has temporarily suspended Colonel Nguyen Van Quy, head of Binh Chanh district police, following a bizarre criminal case that led to the intervention of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on April 21.

Quy had signed an order to undertake criminal proceedings against Nguyen Van Tan, a "pho" restaurant owner in the district, for being five days late obtaining a business registration certificate.The Supreme People's Procuracy also stepped in after carefully reviewing the case, saying Tan was not guilty of conducting business illegally. On Sunday, the Peoples Procuracy of Binh Chanh said they will stop all legal proceedings against Tan. Quy's suspension will need approval from the Ministry of Public Securitys General Department of Politics.

Tan opened his restaurant in August last year. The restaurant became a regular eating place offering "pho" and drinks during breakfast and lunch.

Five days after opening, two local policemen came to check on his business registration, and Tan was given an administrative warning for doing business without a business registration certificate.

Despite the fact that Tan took immediate action to redeem the violation and managed to obtain the certificate just five days later, he still faced a heavy fine of up to VND17 million ($800).

The Law on Enterprise makes it an offence to run a business without a registration certificate, but the maximum fine for such an infraction should only be VND7.5 million.

Police in Binh Chanh district explained that the reason for the heavy fine was that the restaurant owner also had to pay a penalty of nearly $800 for breaking other regulations on food safety standards.

Tan was unable to pay the fine after investing all his money in the restaurant, including a huge upfront five-year lease payment. He was forced to temporarily shut the restaurant while waiting for food safety and hygiene certificates. But the local policemen kept coming back to inspect the restaurant, and issued two more fines for having toxic insects in the kitchen and using below-standard water.

Murphys Law, which states things tend to go from bad to worse, seems to be at play in this situation as local police authorities in late September decided to probe the case and bring criminal charges against the restaurant owner.

On March 11, the district prosecutor issued an indictment against Tan for illegally doing business.
CANCUN, Mexico, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In just four months Hyatt Ziva Cancun, Punta Cancun's newest and most buzzworthy resort, has made quite the splash. Today, the all-inclusive resort proudly announced that it has been honored by the American Automobile Association (AAA) with the prestigious Four Diamond Award, a monumental accomplishment for a brand-new hotel. This distinction for Hyatt Ziva Cancun also marks another milestone: now every Hyatt Ziva and Zilara property in the Playa Hotels & Resorts portfolio is a AAA Four Diamond Award-winning resort.

The AAA Four Diamond Award is one of the most well-known and respected distinctions in the global travel industry. Hyatt Ziva Cancun was awarded Four Diamond status after a thorough evaluation by seasoned AAA staff. These well-respected members of the hospitality industry determined Hyatt Ziva Cancun upholds their criteria for extensive amenities, stylish, upscale physical attributes and a high degree of hospitality, service and attention to detail truly the Evolution of All Inclusive.

According to the AAA, only 5.7 percent of the nearly 28,000 hotels approved by AAA, make the elite Four Diamond list.

"Hyatt Ziva Cancun is on its way to become the premier all-inclusive resort in the Cancun market," stated Tony Perrone, AAA Director. "It is a resort that fully embodies what the all-inclusive segment represents in the 21st century."

Completely reimagining the all-inclusive experience, Hyatt Ziva Cancun, which celebrated its grand opening in November 2015, is no newcomer to recognition. The unique all-ages resort consistently holds a top 5 spot on Trip Advisor's list of all-inclusive resorts in Cancun, in addition to its AAA Four Diamond status.

"We are thrilled to have received such an important recognition at such an early stage. This award reflects the outstanding work of our staff and our commitment to providing Service from the Heart and a travel experience that exceeds our guest's expectations," said Alexandre de Brouwer, Hyatt Ziva Cancun General Manager.

"From the start, Hyatt Ziva Cancun, we have delivered a beautiful property in the best location in Cancun with innovative offerings and top-notch service, all of which has helped us differentiate and showcase our unique resort," said Daniel Reyna, Vice President of Operations, Mexico, Playa Resorts Management. "Our best asset is our people; we are proud of their work and passion to serve. Our guests can feel their care and warm hospitality and I want to thank them all for delivering Service from the Heart."

About Playa Hotels & Resorts: Playa Hotels & Resorts B.V. is a leading owner, operator and developer of all-inclusive beach resorts. Playa's portfolio consists of 14 premier hotels comprising 6,142-rooms that are located in prime beach locations in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. Playa owns and manages Hyatt Zilara and Hyatt Ziva Cancun, Hyatt Zilara and Hyatt Ziva in Rose Hall Jamaica, Hyatt Ziva Puerto Vallarta and Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos. The company also owns and operates three resorts under Playa's brands, The ROYAL and Gran, as well as 5 resorts in Mexico and the Dominican Republic that are managed by a third party. Under an agreement with an affiliate of Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE: H), Playa will pursue the acquisition or development of new all-inclusive resort opportunities under two new Hyatt all-inclusive brands-Hyatt Ziva and Hyatt Zilara. Playa will also have certain rights to operate Hyatt-branded all-inclusive resorts in five Latin American and Caribbean countries. For more information visit: www.playaresorts.com.

Media Contact:

Amy Sedeno

Public Relations

Playa Hotels and Resorts

305.677.3904

[email protected]

SOURCE Playa Hotels & Resorts

Related Links

http://www.playaresorts.com


AUSTIN, Texas, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In a move to drive greater cloud interoperability, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has contributed significant new features to the RefStack Project, which was created as part of the OpenStack community's effort to drive interoperability across clouds. The ability to move data and apps from one cloud to another is a major obstacle in the evolution of cloud and business.

RefStack, officially launched last year and to which IBM is the lead contributor, is a critical pillar of IBM's commitment to ensuring an open cloud  helping to progress the company's long-term vision of mitigating vendor lock-in and enabling developers to use the best combination of cloud services and APIs for their needs.



RefStack's new functionality includes improved usability, stability and other upgrades, ensuring better cohesion and integration of cloud workloads running on OpenStack.



RefStack testing ensures core operability across the OpenStack ecosystem, and passing RefStack is a prerequisite for all OpenStack certified cloud platforms. By working on cloud platforms which are OpenStack certified, developers will know their workloads are portable across IBM Cloud and the OpenStack community.



"The OpenStack ecosystem is very rich and rapidly evolving, and provides an extremely strong foundation for real interoperability. However, achieving this will require deep, sustained collaboration across the open community," said Angel Diaz, Vice President of Cloud Architecture and Technology at IBM. "We are ready and willing to work with every single OpenStack cloud provider on this, and are challenging the OpenStack community to collaborate with us. We are determined to provide customers with the flexibility they want  regardless of their provider  so that they have a global platform for business and innovation."

At the OpenStack Summit in Austin, Texas, IBM also announced a formal challenge to community members, asking them to pledge participation in the first-ever October 2016 Interop Challenge. This project will directly work towards building a core language between OpenStack cloud providers by building and deploying test cases for real-world activities performed by everyday users of OpenStack across environments. In October 2016, it will culminate in a public demonstration of interoperability across on-premises, public and hybrid OpenStack cloud deployments.

As the primary resource for cloud providers to test OpenStack compatibility, RefStack also maintains a central repository and API for test data, allowing community members visibility into interoperability across OpenStack platforms.



The specific upgrades to the upcoming RefStack release include:

User functionality and usability enhancements to allow easier, more streamlined visibility into test data for OpenStack release compatibility.

to allow easier, more streamlined visibility into test data for OpenStack release compatibility. Tempest plug-in enablement to allow users to expand existing test suites to include external test cases.

to allow users to expand existing test suites to include external test cases. Stability enhancements to expand the availability of the RefStack service and support a growing number of RefStack users.

Additionally, RefStack will soon enable vendor registration, allowing community members to easily correlate test results in RefStack's central repository with specific OpenStack vendors  ensuring results are more transparent.



For more information on IBM Cloud and its work with the OpenStack community, visit here .

Media Contact

Erin Lehr

IBM Media Relations

1 (212) 671-9363

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO

SOURCE IBM
BANGALORE, India and LONDON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Infosys Finacle, part of EdgeVerve Systems, a product subsidiary of Infosys (NYSE: INFY), and Onegini today announced a partnership to integrate the Onegini mobile security platform with Finacle banking solutions.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151104/283829LOGO )

The integration will allow banks to provide their customers enhanced security to access and transact across channels. Using this solution, banks can offer customers an option to select advanced authentication methods, including fingerprint, facial, eye and voice recognition as well as multi-factor authentication for added security as they transact on devices. The end-user will be presented different authentication methods depending on device, location and type of transaction.

Andy Dey, President of Customer & Operations at EdgeVerve, said, "A bank is no longer somewhere to go - you carry it with you. This offers a new level of convenience, but at the same time our customers demand secure solutions. Through this partnership, we aim to provide advanced security with convenience to customers."

"Since we started the company, we have worked with many multinational enterprises in the financial industry. By combining EdgeVerve's product capabilities and deep experience with global banks, we will further strengthen our combined offering to reach new markets and customers in the digital era," said Denis Joannides, CEO, Onegini.

About Onegini

Onegini is an international software company and focuses on security and user-friendly disclosure of personal data for the use in mobile apps. Organizations such as AEGON, ING/NN, and the Dutch Railroads use Onegini to address the growing need for digitization of customer access.

Onegini has offices in the Netherlands and Poland.

About Infosys Finacle

Finacle is the industry-leading universal banking solution from EdgeVerve Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys. The solution helps financial institutions develop deeper connections with stakeholders, power continuous innovation and accelerate growth in the digital world. Today, Finacle is the choice of banks across 84 countries and serves over 547 million customers - nearly 16.5 percent of the world's adult banked population.

Finacle solutions address the core banking, e-banking, mobile banking, CRM, payments, treasury, origination, liquidity management, Islamic banking, wealth management, and analytics needs of financial institutions worldwide. Assessment of the top 1000 world banks reveals that banks powered by Finacle enjoy 50 percent higher returns on assets, 30 percent higher returns on capital, and 8.1 percent points lesser costs to income than others.

To know more, visit http://www.finacle.com

About EdgeVerve Systems Ltd

EdgeVerve Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys, develops innovative software products and offers them on-premise or as cloud-hosted business platforms. Our products help businesses develop deeper connections with stakeholders, power continuous innovation and accelerate growth in the digital world. We power our clients' growth in rapidly evolving areas like banking, digital marketing, interactive commerce, distributive trade, credit servicing, customer service and enterprise buying.



Today EdgeVerve products are used by global corporations across financial services, insurance, retail and CPG, life sciences, manufacturing, and telecom. Finacle, our universal banking solution, is the choice of financial institutions across 84 countries and serves over 547 million customers - nearly 16.5 percent of the world's adult banked population.

To know more, visit http://www.edgeverve.com

Safe Harbor

Certain statements in this press release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2015. These filings are available at http://www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. Any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law.

SOURCE Infosys Finacle
SAN FRANCISCO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Intersolar North America, the most attended solar industry exhibition and conference dedicated to the North American market, will feature an expanded conference program, including four conference tracks and access to the co-located ASES conference SOLAR 2016. Over the course of three days, conference speakers will discuss the key technologies in the areas of solar and energy storage, financial tools and legislative actions driving the North American solar market, and the solar industry's worldwide growth. The event will be held July 11  13 at the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco, and program registration is now available online. In honor of Intersolar's 25th anniversary, a 25 percent discount is available on all conference registrations until May 6.

With more than 200 reputable solar executives confirmed to speak, attendees will learn about the new technologies and financing options innovating and improving the North American solar energy market, as well as the drivers behind the global expansion of solar. Confirmed program tracks include:

Markets , which includes sessions on global PV markets, such as "Emerging Markets Across the Americas: Mexico / Chile / Brazil ", "A Sustained Boom Across North America?", " Asia's Support Policies," and "Net Metering: Present and Future", among other sessions, including Asset Management Sessions and the popular Growth Company Forum.

, which includes sessions on global PV markets, such as "Emerging Markets Across the Americas: / / ", "A Sustained Boom Across North America?", " Support Policies," and "Net Metering: Present and Future", among other sessions, including Asset Management Sessions and the popular Growth Company Forum. PV Technologies , which includes panels such as "Crystalline Silicon PV: Addressing the Future", "PV Plants: Design, Reliability and Monitoring", "Balance of Systems: Inverter  the Pacemaker of PV Power Plants", and "The Future of PV: Executive Panel".

, which includes panels such as "Crystalline Silicon PV: Addressing the Future", "PV Plants: Design, Reliability and Monitoring", "Balance of Systems: Inverter  the Pacemaker of PV Power Plants", and "The Future of PV: Executive Panel". Smart Renewable Energy , which will feature the sessions "Building a Smarter Grid", "Grid Structure & Big Data", and "State Approaches to Distributed Energy Sources".

, which will feature the sessions "Building a Smarter Grid", "Grid Structure & Big Data", and "State Approaches to Distributed Energy Sources". Finance, which will offer discussions like "Improving the Bankability and Investability of Solar", "Smart Energy Asset Management", and "Advanced Topics for New Business Models and Operations".

Several conference sessions, such as "The Future of PV: Executive Panel" and "Hot Spots of the U.S. Storage Market" will cover the broad policy, financing and technical trends shaping the solar and energy storage industry. Intersolar North America organizers drew on the input and expertise of its roster of conference partners to develop this year's program. This year's partners are the California Solar Energy Industries Association (CALSEIA), American Solar Energy Society (ASES), Fraunhofer ISE, Greencity Freiburg, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC), Joint Forces for Solar, NAATBatt International, the North California Solar Energy Association (NorCal Solar), Solar Energy International, NABCEP and the Sunspec Alliance.

"Year after year, Intersolar is a major event for North America's solar industry. CALSEIA is proud to partner with Intersolar event organizer to bring the latest news on financing, net metering and smart grid technologies to this international stage," said Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of CALSEIA. "We have designed sessions at Intersolar 2016 to provide attendees with key information to help them master the rapidly evolving U.S. solar market."

Additionally, due to popular demand, Intersolar North America has expanded the number of its special events and site tours. These events provide valuable networking opportunities, in addition to showcasing landmark Bay Area solar installations, as well as some of the companies moving the solar and energy storage industry forward. Attendees can register for private Tesla factor tours, tours of San Francisco solar sites, a SF Bay Area sailing tour, and a trip to a solar-powered winery, which benefit CALSEIA and NorCal Solar. New this year is the Sol Systems Run for the Sun, a 5k benefitting CALSEIA. A full schedule for the Intersolar North America conference program, including off-site events, is available online. The schedule will be updated with the names of speakers as they are confirmed. Registration for the Run for the Sun is open online.

Registration for the Intersolar and ees North America conferences brings added value this year in the form of access to the co-located SOLAR 2016. All Intersolar and ees conference attendees (either the full three-day package or one-day ticket) can gain access to concurrent tracks at the other event free of charge.

After a successful debut at last year's Intersolar 2015, where conference panels drew standing-room only crowds, ees North America has been upgraded from a program track to a standalone event. ees North America's 2016 program tracks, curated with NAATBatt and other industry partners, will discuss emerging policies promoting adoption of renewable energy solutions and showcase the latest energy storage and management technologies.

"This year's ees program includes an inside look at the energy storage technologies transforming our relationship with solar energy," said James Greenberger, executive director of NAATBatt International. "From financing to applications, panels at ees in 2016 will share how developers can maximize profits with innovative energy storage solutions."

Additionally, Intersolar is proud to announce that the 2016 conference will also be held in conjunction with the American Solar Energy Society's (ASES) SOLAR 2016. ASES SOLAR 2016 will discuss the advancement of renewable energy in the United States, and share cutting-edge research contributing to the advancement of the PV, solar thermal, and energy storage industries. The powerhouse combination of Intersolar North America, ees North America, and SOLAR 2016 will provide attendees with the most comprehensive overview of factors driving solar industry growth.

All registered conference attendees are also welcome to attend the opening ceremony and welcome reception of Intersolar North America on Monday, July 11.

About ees North America

The ees global exhibition series is the electrical energy storage industry's hotspot for manufacturers, distributors, users and suppliers of stationary and mobile storage solutions. ees exhibitions are organized in cooperation with Intersolar, the world's leading exhibition series for the solar industry.

The ees exhibitions and accompanying conferences are focused on storage solutions for renewable energy, from residential and commercial applications to large-scale storage systems for stabilizing the grids. ees also features energy management, electric transportation and uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

There are three ees events around the worldees North America in San Francisco, ees Europe in Munich, and ees India in Mumbai. The ees North America debuted in 2015 as a special exhibition in San Francisco. In 2016, ees North America becomes a stand-alone exhibition co-located with Intersolar North America.

With 100 expected exhibitors and 18,000 visitors at the co-located events, it will be the most-attended solar-plus-storage event in the U.S.

For more information on ees please visit www.ees-northamerica.com

About Intersolar North America

With events spanning four continents, Intersolar is the world's leading exhibition series for the solar industry and its partners. It unites people and companies from around the world with the aim of increasing the share of solar power in our energy supply.

Since its establishment in 2008, Intersolar North America has become the most attended solar event and the premier networking platform for the North American solar industry. Co-located with SEMICON West, Intersolar North America takes place annually at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, in the heart of the United States' pioneering solar market. The event will expand to host a co-located energy storage-focused exhibition, ees North America. ees grew out of Intersolar North America's popular energy storage exhibition segment.

A total of 521 exhibitors and around 17,835 visitors participated in Intersolar North America in 2015. The conference and exhibition program featured 47 sessions with more than 200 speakers and 25 workshops.

Intersolar North America's exhibition and conference focus on photovoltaics, energy storage systems, smart renewable energy and solar heating & cooling technologies. Since being founded, Intersolar has become the most important industry platform to connect manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, service providers, policy makers, start-up founders, financiers, installers and partners in the global solar industry.

With 25 years of experience, Intersolar has the unique ability to bring together members of the solar industry from across the world's most influential markets and solar supply chain. Intersolar exhibitions and conferences are held in Munich, San Francisco, Mumbai, and Sao Paulo, and, starting in 2016, in Dubai. These global events are complemented by the Intersolar Summits, which take place in emerging and growing markets worldwide.

For more information on Intersolar North America, please visit: http://www.intersolar.us

Organizers: Intersolar North America is organized by Solar Promotion International GmbH, Pforzheim and Freiburg Management and Marketing International GmbH (FMMI).

SOURCE Intersolar North America

Related Links

http://www.intersolar.us


CHICAGO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

First-quarter 2016 Highlights:

Revenue of $267.1 million , up 19 percent from prior-year period

Segment operating profit of $27.3 million , up 27 percent

Diluted earnings per share of $0.17 and adjusted earnings per share of $0.34 vs. diluted earnings per share of $0.27 in the first quarter of 2015

Inbound orders increased 13 percent; order backlog up 39 percent year over year

JBT Corporation (NYSE: JBT), a leading global technology solutions provider to high-value segments of the food & beverage industry, today reported results for the first quarter of 2016.

Revenue for the first quarter of 2016 increased 18.7 percent from the prior year, with organic growth of 3.6 percent. Segment operating profit increased 27.0 percent year over year. Segment operating profit margin increased 67 basis points to 10.2 percent for the first quarter of 2016.

Diluted earnings per share from continuing operations was $0.17 for the first quarter of 2016 versus $0.27 in the first quarter of 2015. Excluding restructuring charges of $7.2 million in the first quarter of 2016, adjusted diluted earnings per share from continuing operations was $0.34.

"JBT's Next Level strategy and investments continue to enhance growth and profitability," said Tom Giacomini, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "We are particularly pleased with the performance of the FoodTech aftermarket business in the quarter, which contributed to year-over-year margin expansion."

Orders and Backlog

For the first quarter of 2016, inbound orders of $344 million increased 12.5 percent, reflecting an 8.1 percent increase in FoodTech orders and a 21.3 percent increase in AeroTech orders. Backlog expanded 39.0 percent year over year.

Optimization Program

JBT recorded restructuring charges of $7.2 million in the first quarter of 2016 associated with its optimization program and continues to expect total pretax restructuring charges of $11 - $13 million for the full year. The optimization program will realign FoodTech's Protein business in North America and Liquid Foods business in Europe; accelerate JBT's strategic sourcing initiatives; and consolidate smaller facilities. The Company expects to achieve around $2 million in savings in 2016 and more than $8 million in run rate savings by late 2017.

2016 Outlook

For 2016, JBT re-affirms its prior guidance and continues to anticipate revenue growth of approximately 15 percent, reflecting organic growth of 4 - 5 percent and external growth from acquisitions of about 10 percent. The Company expects total segment operating margin in 2016 to expand 25 - 50 basis points relative to 2015. The Company forecasts adjusted diluted earnings per share in the range of $2.15 - $2.30 in 2016, and $1.90 - $2.05 on a GAAP basis.

First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call

A conference call is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 27, 2016 to discuss first quarter 2016 financial results. Participants may access the conference call by dialing (877) 201-0168 in the U.S. and Canada or (647) 788-4901 for international callers and using conference ID 94587862, or through the Investor Relations link on our website at http://ir.jbtcorporation.com. An online audio replay of the call will be available on the Company's Investor Relations website at approximately 1:30 p.m. EDT on April 27, 2016.

John Bean Technologies Corporation (JBT) is a leading global technology solutions provider to high-value segments of the food & beverage industry with a focus on proteins, liquid foods and automated system solutions. JBT designs, produces and services sophisticated products and systems for multi-national and regional customers through its JBT FoodTech segment. JBT also sells critical equipment and services to domestic and international air transportation customers through its JBT AeroTech segment. JBT Corporation employs approximately 4,200 people worldwide and operates sales, service, manufacturing and sourcing operations in more than 25 countries. For more information, please visit http://www.jbtcorporation.com.

This release contains forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are information of a non-historical nature and are subject to risks and uncertainties that are beyond the Company's ability to control. These risks and uncertainties are described under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission that may be accessed on the Company's website. The Company cautions shareholders and prospective investors that actual results may differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements.

JBT CORPORATION CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME (Unaudited and in millions, except per share data)

















Three Months Ended

March 31,

2016

2015







Revenue $ 267.1



$ 225.0

Cost of sales 190.3



160.5









Gross profit 76.8



64.5









Selling, general and administrative expense 53.9



47.4

Research and development expense 5.5



3.7

Restructuring expense 7.2





Other expense (income), net 0.5



(0.3)









Operating income 9.7



13.7









Net interest expense 2.0



1.8

Income from continuing operations before income taxes 7.7



11.9

Provision for income taxes 2.5



3.9

Income from continuing operations 5.2



8.0

Loss from discontinued operations, net of taxes (0.1)





Net income $ 5.1



$ 8.0









Basic earnings per share:





Income from continuing operations $ 0.18



$ 0.27

Loss from discontinued operations (0.01)





Net income $ 0.17



$ 0.27









Diluted earnings per share:





Income from continuing operations $ 0.17



$ 0.27

Loss from discontinued operations 





Net income $ 0.17



$ 0.27









Weighted average shares outstanding





Basic 29.5



29.6

Diluted 29.8



29.8











JBT CORPORATION NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES (Unaudited and in millions, except per share data)







The results for the three months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 include several items that affect the comparability of our results. These include significant expenses that are not indicative of our on-going operations as detailed in the table below:









Three Months Ended

March 31,

2016

2015







Income from continuing operations as reported $ 5.2



$ 8.0









Non-GAAP adjustments:





Restructuring expense 7.2













Impact on tax provision from Non-GAAP adjustments (2.3)













Adjusted income from continuing operations $ 10.1



$ 8.0

















Income from continuing operations as reported $ 5.2



$ 8.0

Total shares and dilutive securities 29.8



29.8

Diluted earnings per share from continuing operations $ 0.17



$ 0.27









Adjusted income from continuing operations $ 10.1



$ 8.0

Total shares and dilutive securities 29.8



29.8

Adjusted diluted earnings per share from continuing operations $ 0.34



$ 0.27

















The above table contains non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted income from continuing operations and adjusted diluted earnings per share from continuing operations. Adjusted income from continuing operations and adjusted diluted earnings per share from continuing operations are intended to provide an indication of our underlying operating results and to enhance investors' overall understanding of our financial performance by eliminating the effects of certain items that are not comparable from one period to the next. In addition, this information is used as a basis for evaluating Company performance and for the planning and forecasting of future periods. This information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP.

JBT CORPORATION NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES (Unaudited and in millions, except per share data)



















The tables below show a reconciliation from Operating income to EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA by segment and consolidated for JBT.



















For the three months ended March 31, 2016:













Operating income

Depreciation and Amortization

EBITDA

Adjustments

Adjusted EBITDA JBT FoodTech $ 18.8



$ 7.6



$ 26.4



$ 



$ 26.4

JBT AeroTech 8.5



0.6



9.1







9.1

Corporate expense (10.4)



0.4



(10.0)







(10.0)

Restructuring expense (7.2)







(7.2)



7.2





Total $ 9.7



$ 8.6



$ 18.3



$ 7.2



$ 25.5





















For the three months ended March 31, 2015:













Operating income

Depreciation and Amortization

EBITDA

Adjustments

Adjusted EBITDA JBT FoodTech $ 13.1



$ 5.9



$ 19.0



$ 



$ 19.0

JBT AeroTech 8.4



0.5



8.9







8.9

Corporate expense (7.8)



0.4



(7.4)







(7.4)

Restructuring expense 

















Total $ 13.7



$ 6.8



$ 20.5



$ 



$ 20.5





















The tables above provide our operating income as adjusted by depreciation and amortization expense booked during the period to arrive at a segmental and consolidated EBITDA value. Further, we add back to EBITDA significant expenses that are not indicative of our ongoing operations to calculate an adjusted EBITDA for the two periods reported. Given the Company's Next Level focus on growth through strategic acquisitions, management considers adjusted EBITDA to be an important non-GAAP measure. This measure allows us to monitor business performance while excluding the impact of amortization due to the step up in value of intangible assets. We use adjusted EBITDA internally to make operating decisions and believe this information is helpful to investors because it allows more meaningful period-to-period comparisons of our ongoing operating results. This information is not intended to nor should it be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP.

JBT CORPORATION BUSINESS SEGMENT DATA (Unaudited and in millions)









Three Months Ended

March 31,

2016

2015 Revenue





JBT FoodTech $ 177.5



$ 139.2

JBT AeroTech 90.1



86.2

Intercompany eliminations (0.5)



(0.4)

Total revenue $ 267.1



$ 225.0









Income before income taxes





Segment operating profit





JBT FoodTech $ 18.8



$ 13.1

JBT AeroTech 8.5



8.4

Total segment operating profit 27.3



21.5









Corporate expense (1) (10.4)



(7.8)

Restructuring expense (7.2)













Operating income $ 9.7



$ 13.7









Other business segment information







Adjusted EBITDA





JBT FoodTech $ 26.4



$ 19.0

JBT AeroTech 9.1



8.9

Corporate (10.0)



(7.4)

Total adjusted EBITDA $ 25.5



$ 20.5









Inbound Orders





JBT FoodTech $ 222.7



$ 206.1

JBT AeroTech 121.7



100.3

Intercompany eliminations (0.4)



(0.5)

Total inbound orders $ 344.0



$ 305.9











As of March 31,

2016

2015 Order Backlog





JBT FoodTech $ 360.3



$ 255.5

JBT AeroTech 244.8



179.9

Total order backlog $ 605.1



$ 435.4









(1) Corporate expense includes corporate staff-related expenses, stock-based compensation, pension and other postretirement benefit expenses not related to service, LIFO adjustments, certain foreign exchange gains and losses, and the impact of unusual or strategic transactions not representative of segment operations.

JBT CORPORATION CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (Unaudited and in millions)









March 31,

December 31,

2016

2015







Cash and cash equivalents $ 36.0



$ 37.2

Trade receivables, net 210.9



212.5

Inventories 136.9



104.9

Other current assets 46.7



41.6

Total current assets 430.5



396.2









Property, plant and equipment, net 188.8



181.1

Other assets 302.9



298.8

Total assets $ 922.2



$ 876.1

















Short term debt and current portion of long-term debt $ 2.0



$ 2.2

Accounts payable, trade and other 110.5



110.7

Advance and progress payments 138.2



115.8

Other current liabilities 120.5



124.4

Total current liabilities 371.2



353.1









Long-term debt, less current portion 297.4



280.6









Accrued pension and other postretirement benefits, less current portion 85.6



90.7

Other liabilities 30.2



22.0









Common stock and paid-in capital 65.9



65.8

Retained earnings 213.2



211.1

Accumulated other comprehensive loss (141.3)



(147.2)

Total stockholders' equity 137.8



129.7

Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $ 922.2



$ 876.1



JBT CORPORATION CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (Unaudited and in millions)









Three Months Ended

March 31,

2016

2015







Cash Flows From Operating Activities:





Income from continuing operations $ 5.2



$ 8.0









Adjustments to reconcile income to cash provided by operating activities:





Depreciation and amortization 8.6



6.8

Other 3.5



5.4









Changes in operating assets and liabilities:





Trade accounts receivable, net 4.6



26.2

Inventories (29.6)



(11.7)

Accounts payable, trade and other (1.6)



0.8

Advance payments and progress billings 19.9



24.9

Other - assets and liabilities, net (10.4)



(29.9)









Cash provided by continuing operating activities 0.2



30.5









Cash required by discontinued operating activities 













Cash Flows required by Investing Activities:





Acquisitions, net of cash acquired (3.2)





Capital expenditures (11.4)



(7.8)

Proceeds from disposal of assets 0.4



0.3









Cash required by investing activities (14.2)



(7.5)









Cash Flows provided (required) by Financing Activities:





Net proceeds (payments) on credit facilities 16.4



(22.3)

Dividends (3.1)



(3.0)

Purchase of treasury stock (1.1)



(3.1)

Other (1.1)



(2.5)









Cash provided (required) by financing activities 11.1



(30.9)









Effect of foreign exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents 1.7



(5.6)









Decrease in cash and cash equivalents (1.2)



(13.5)









Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of period 37.2



33.3









Cash and cash equivalents, end of period $ 36.0



$ 19.8



SOURCE JBT Corporation

Related Links

http://www.jbtcorporation.com


CHICAGO, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Kendall College is proud to announce a new collaboration with the James Beard Foundation (JBF) in which the school is the exclusive culinary education sponsor of the 2016 James Beard Awards, taking place in Chicago on May 2, 2016 at the Lyric Opera. As Chicago's number one program for preparing students for careers in culinary arts and hospitality management (TNS Global Survey, 2013), Kendall is committed to fostering relationships between the culinary and hospitality industries and its current and future leaders.

"It's an honor to partner with the James Beard Foundation in celebration of the men and women who have forged new paths and have made a difference within our industry," said Kim Shambrook, interim president of Kendall College. "For more than 30 years, Kendall has offered future chefs an education in the core culinary and business skills required for success in the restaurant industry, and many of our graduates have gone on to be recognized by the James Beard Awards."

"The James Beard Foundation is proud to partner with Kendall College as the exclusive culinary education sponsor for the 2016 Awards," said Foundation president Susan Ungaro. "Kendall alumni have gone on to do wonderful things within the industry, and we're grateful for their support both here at the Awards and year-round through various culinary educational programs and the James Beard Foundation Scholarship Program."

In honor of its network of nearly 10,000 alumni, including seven past winners of the JBF Award and 14 semi-finalists, Kendall College will award a $7,500 scholarship through the James Beard Foundation Scholarship Program to an eligible student seeking an associate degree in culinary arts. In addition, more than 25 students and graduates of the culinary arts and hospitality management programs at Kendall will work as volunteers alongside top chefs and beverage professionals from across the country to prep and execute the gala reception.

"Our curriculum is designed to help students enter, and one day, lead in the industry," said Christopher Koetke, vice president of the School of Culinary Arts at Kendall College. "At Kendall, we foster this education by incorporating a global mindset and practical experience into our practices and by providing access to a world-class food city like Chicago. We are proud to see how the alignment of our mission with that of the James Beard Foundation is brought to life through this incredible volunteer opportunity in Chicago."

Prior to the gala reception and announcement of the 2016 winners, Kendall College will welcome the Foundation's local host committee for an on-campus brunch, featuring a panel of 2016 JBF Award nominees as they discuss their path to success and nomination. The college's Michelin-recommended, open-to-the-public student-run restaurant, The Dining Room at Kendall College, will also participate in James Beard Eats Week in Chicago with a special menu that celebrates James Beard. For more information about Kendall College, visit www.kendall.edu.

Established in 1990, the James Beard Awards recognize culinary professionals for excellence and achievement in their fields and further the Foundation's mission to celebrate, nurture and honor America's diverse culinary heritage through programs that educate and inspire. For more information about the James Beard Foundation and its 2016 awards, visit www.jamesbeard.org.

About Kendall College:

Kendall College, founded in 1934 and located in Chicago, offers undergraduate degrees in culinary arts, hospitality management, business and early childhood education to a diverse and passionate community of more than 2,100 students each year. The curriculum combines strong academics with practical experience and international educational opportunities to give students in business, hospitality and culinary arts programs the skills and expertise to be leaders in their professions. Kendall College was ranked the No. 1 program in Chicago for preparing students for careers in hospitality management and culinary arts in a survey of hiring managers at Chicago's leading hotels and Michelin Guide restaurants (TNS Global - 2013 Survey). Kendall College is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission. For more information, visit www.Kendall.edu.

Kendall is part of the Laureate International Universities networka global network of more than 80 campus-based and online universities in 28 countries. For more information, visit www.laureate.net.

About The James Beard Foundation:

Founded in 1986, the James Beard Foundation celebrates, nurtures, and honors America's diverse culinary heritage through programs that educate and inspire. A cookbook author and teacher with an encyclopedic knowledge about food, the late James Beard was a champion of American cuisine. He helped educate and mentor generations of professional chefs and food enthusiasts, instilling in them the value of wholesome, healthful, and delicious food. Today JBF continues in the same spirit by administering a number of diverse programs that include educational initiatives, food industry awards, scholarships for culinary students, publications, chef advocacy training, and thought leader convening. The Foundation also maintains the historic James Beard House in New York City's Greenwich Village as a "performance space" for visiting chefs. For more information, please visit jamesbeard.org. Get food news, recipes, and more at the James Beard Foundation's blog. Follow the James Beard Foundation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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SOURCE Kendall College

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CHERRY HILL, N.J., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- E Mortgage Management, LLC (EMM) has announced the donation of office furniture to the San Diego, California Habitat ReStore, a discount home improvement center that sells donated building materials to fund the construction of Habitat for Humanity homes in the San Diego County area. The San Diego chapter, a local affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International, is celebrating its 28th anniversary at building and repairing homes for local hardworking families in need in the San Diego County area.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359735

In making this announcement, Kevin Crichton, EMM's President and Chief Operating Officer, said, "As a nationwide lender, our footprint reaches the California market and our company culture believes in contributing active community service to organizations such as San Diego Habitat ReStore that works to provide assistance to local families in need."

"The ReStore is a major contributor to the execution of Habitat for Humanity's mission to provide affordable housing solutions," said John Stockman, Director of ReStore Operations at San Diego Habitat for Humanity. "We rely on quality donations to raise money so that we can serve local hardworking families in need, and are so appreciative of the generosity of E Mortgage Management."

EMM exhibits community service commitment on a national level through a number of community services that focus on our country and community. Habitat was founded on the conviction that every man, woman and child should have a simple, decent and affordable home to live in dignity and safety. The San Diego Habitat for Humanity has the philosophy of a community coming together to offer a hand up, not a hand out to its neighbors in need. Habitat partner families are selected on the basis of housing need, willingness to partner with Habitat and the ability to repay an affordable mortgage loan.

Habitat for Humanity exists through volunteer labor and contributions of money, land and materials, including purchases and donations such as EMM's to the ReStore, San Diego Habitat for Humanity's discount home improvement retail center. For more information about the work of San Diego Habitat ReStore, visit www.sdhfh.org or call 619-283-HOME (4663).

About E Mortgage Management LLC (EMMLOANS.COM)

Lender NMLS 2926. Equal Housing Lender, Equal Opportunity Employer. emmloans.com is a private, direct-endorsed local lender, rated A+ with the Better Business Bureau (BBB). The company offers products sponsored by Fannie Mae (FNMA), Freddie Mac (FHLMC), Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), Federal Housing Administration (HUD-FHA), U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), individual state programs, and has access to a portfolio of private investors, nationwide. 3 Executive Campus, Suite 520 - Cherry Hill, NJ 08002

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE E Mortgage Management LLC

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https://emmloans.com


LOS ANGELES, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today the LA Film Festival, produced by Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that also produces the Film Independent Spirit Awards, unveiled the official U.S. Fiction, Documentary, World Fiction, Nightfall and LA Muse sections. The 2016 LA Film Festival will screen a diverse slate of feature films, shorts and web series, along with programs such as the Filmmaker Retreat, Coffee Talks and Master Classes. The Festival runs June 1-9, 2016 at the ArcLight Cinemas.

"Our Programming team, led by Roya Rastegar and Jennifer Cochis, killed it," said Festival Director, Stephanie Allain. "The competition lineup of 42 world premieres echoes Film Independent's mission to celebrate diversity and showcases a multitude of innovative, fresh voices. We can't wait to share these films with audiences and industry alike, and, following years which saw films like Meet the Patels, Code Black, Nightingale, The Drew, Out of My Hand and French Dirty acquired out of the Festival, are confident that 2016 will mark our best Festival yet."

"Discovering storytellers is our raison d'etre," said Roya Rastegar, Director of Programming. "We invest a great deal to learn about filmmaking communities across the globe. We look for films with conviction in perspective, style and voice."

"Curating films for LA audiences is so special because Angelenos have a uniquely homegrown love of cinema," added Creative Director, Jennifer Cochis. "It's with true film lovers in mind that we program: from political theater to musical theater, we're highlighting storytelling in all its forms."

The 2016 LA Film Festival, which will have its headquarters at the ArcLight Culver City, announces a diverse slate of 56 feature films, 58 short films and 13 short episodic works representing 28 countries. Previously announced, the Opening Night Film is the World Premiere of Ricardo De Montreuil's Lowriders, sponsored by Jaeger-LeCoultre. This year's Guest Director is Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed) and Ava DuVernay (Selma, Middle of Nowhere) and Array Releasing will receive the Spirit of Independence Award. More special screenings and programs will be announced in the coming weeks.

The Festival's five competitions feature 42 World Premieres. Across the five feature competition categories, 43% of the films are directed by women and 38% of the films are directed by people of color.

This year, LA Film Festival Director Stephanie Allain is joined by Creative Director Jennifer Cochis, Director of Programming Roya Rastegar and Managing Director Ralph Rivera. Film Independent Curator Elvis Mitchell continues to oversee signature programs and LACMA events.

Passes are currently on sale to Film Independent Members and the general public. In addition to access to screenings and events (even after they sell out), Festival passes provide access to networking receptions and the Festival Lounge, where pass holders interact with Festival filmmakers and professionals in the film community. General admission tickets to individual films go on sale to Film Independent Members beginning Thursday, May 5 and to the general public beginning Tuesday, May 10. Contact the Ticket Office for passes, tickets and event information by calling 866.FILM.FEST (866.345.6337) or visit lafilmfestival.com.

US Fiction Competition (12)

Original voices with distinct visions from emerging and established American independent filmmakers.

11:55, dir. Ari Issler, Ben Snyder, USA, World Premiere

72 Hours, dir. Raafi Rivero, USA, World Premiere

Blood Stripe, dir. Remy Auberjonois, USA, World Premiere

Chee and T, dir. Tanuj Chopra, USA, World Premiere

Destined, dir. Qasim Basir, USA, World Premiere

Dreamstates, dir. Anisia Uzeyman, USA, World Premiere

GREEN / is / GOLD, dir. Ryon Baxter, USA, World Premiere

My First Kiss and the People Involved, dir. Luigi Campi, USA, World Premiere

Paint it Black, dir. Amber Tamblyn, USA, World Premiere

Tracktown, dir. Jeremy Teicher, Alexi Pappas, USA, World Premiere

The View from Tall, dir. Erica Weiss, Caitlin Parrish, USA, World Premiere

Woven, dir. Salome Mulugeta, Nagwa Ibrahim, USA, World Premiere

Documentary Competition (12) Sponsored by Loyola Marymount University School of Film and Television.

Compelling, character-driven non-fiction films from the U.S. and around the world.

Company Town, dir. Natalie Kottke, Erica Sardarian, USA, World Premiere

Denial, dir. Derek Hallquist, USA, World Premiere

Dr. Feelgood, dir. Eve Marson, USA, World Premiere

Dying Laughing, dir. Lloyd Stanton, Paul Toogood, USA/UK, World Premiere

The House on Coco Road, dir. Damani Baker, Grenada/USA, World Premiere

Jackson, dir. Maisie Crow, USA, World Premiere

The Last Gold, dir. Brian T. Brown, Germany/USA, World Premiere

Looking at the Stars, dir. Alexandre Peralta, Brazil/Nicaragua/USA, World Premiere

Olympic Pride, American Prejudice, dir. Deborah Riley Draper, USA, World Premiere

Out of Iraq, dir. Eva Orner, Chris McKim, Canada/Iraq/Lebanon/USA, World Premiere

Political Animals, dir. Jonah Markowitz, Tracy Wares, USA, World Premiere

They Call us Monsters, dir. Ben Lear, USA, World Premiere

World Fiction Competition (6)

Unique fiction films from around the world from emerging and established filmmakers, especially curated for LA audiences.

Heis (chronicles), dir. Anais Volpe, France, World Premiere

Like Cotton Twines, dir. Leila Djansi, Ghana/USA, World Premiere

London Town, dir. Derrick Borte, UK, World Premiere

Lupe Under the Sun, dir. Rodrigo Reyes, Mexico/USA, World Premiere

A Moving Image, dir. Shola Amoo, UK, World Premiere

Play the Devil, dir. Maria Govan, Trinidad/Bahamas/USA, World Premiere

LA Muse (6)

Fiction and documentary films that capture the spirit of L.A.

Actors of Sound, dir. Lalo Molina, Argentina/Finland/Germany/India/Ireland/USA, World Premiere

Girl Flu., dir. Dorie Barton, USA, World Premiere

Manchild: The Schea Cotton Story, dir. Eric "Ptah" Herbert, USA, World Premiere

Namour, dir. Heidi Saman, USA, World Premiere

No Light and No Land Anywhere, dir. Amber Sealey, USA, World Premiere

Sensitivity Training, dir. Melissa Finell, USA, World Premiere

Nightfall (6)

From the bizarre to the horrifying, these are films to watch after dark.

Abattoir, dir. Darren Lynn Bousman, USA, World Premiere

Beyond the Gates, dir. Jackson Stewart, USA, World Premiere

Don't Hang Up, dir. Alexis Wajsbrot, Damien Mace, UK, World Premiere

Mercy, dir. Chris Sparling, USA, World Premiere

Officer Downe, dir. M. Shawn Crahan, USA, World Premiere

Villisca, dir. Tony Valenzuela, USA, World Premiere

Short Films (58): From over 2,500 submissions, the short films selected represent 15 countries and 64% are directed by women. Short films are shown before features and as part of seven short film programs. Shorts will compete for juried prizes for fiction and documentary shorts, as well as an Audience Award for Best Short Film.

Future Filmmakers Showcase: High School Shorts (33) : The LA Film Festival's Future Filmmaker Showcase brings to the big screen the best films made by budding young filmmakers from across the country and the globe. In this diverse slate of films, incredibly accomplished high school students will present wild comedies, moving dramas, mesmerizing animation, introspective experimental films and everything in between. Program sponsored by Loyola Marymount University School of Film and Television and Time Warner Foundation.

Episodes: Indie Series from the Web (13)

A showcase of independently crafted web series, celebrating rising creators whose work and subjects are innovative and unfiltered.

20 Seconds to Live, dir. Ben Rock, USA

Brothers, dir. Emmett Jack Lundberg, USA

Caring, dir. Maggie Kiley, USA

Fridays, dir. Anna Kerrigan, USA

The Ghost and the Negro, dir. Sylvester Folks, USA

Her Story, dir. Sydney Freeland, USA

Instababy, dir. Rosie Haber, USA

Literally So Busy, dir. Jerad Sloan, USA

Little Things, dir. Lex Halaby, Mila Shah, USA

Outside Comedy: Beth Stelling, dir. Thomas Wood, USA

Quirky Female Protagonist, dir. Yulin Kuang, USA

Shangri-LA, dir. Drew Rosas, USA

Time Out with Yes Please!, dir. Kholi Hicks, USA

PLEASE REFERENCE THE ADDENDUM IN THE PRESS RELEASE SECTION OF WWW.FILMINDEPENDENT.ORG FOR ALL FILM TITLES, SYNOPSES, CAST, AND CREDITS.

Online & Social Media:

www.lafilmfestival.com Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/LAFilmFestival and Twitter @LAFilmFestival. Official event hashtag: #LAFilmFestival.

Press materials can be found at filmindependent.org/press/. The deadline for press to submit applications for credentials is May 5.

For sponsorship opportunities, contact Albina Oks, Director of Sponsorship at Film Independent, [email protected].

ABOUT THE LA FILM FESTIVAL

The LA Film Festival is a key part of the exhibition arm of Film Independent, showcasing new American and international cinema that embraces diversity, innovation and unique perspectives. The Festival produces one-of-a-kind events featuring critically acclaimed filmmakers, industry professionals and award-winning talent from Los Angeles and around the world. The Festival's signature programs include the Filmmaker Retreat, Celebrating Women Filmmakers, Master Classes, Spirit of Independence Award, Coffee Talks, LA Muse and more. The Festival also screens short films created by high school students. Presenting Media Sponsor is the Los Angeles Times. Premier Sponsor is Peroni Nastro Azzurro and Principal Sponsor is Jaeger-LeCoultre. Platinum Sponsors are American Airlines, Dolby Laboratories, Inc., EFILM | Company 3 and HBO. The University Sponsor is Loyola Marymount University School of Film and Television. WireImage is the Official Photography Agency. More information can be found at lafilmfestival.com.

ABOUT FILM INDEPENDENT

Film Independent is the non-profit arts organization that champions creative independence in visual storytelling and supports a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision. Film Independent helps filmmakers make their movies, builds an audience for their projects and works to diversify the film industry. Film Independent's Board of Directors, filmmakers, staff and constituents, is comprised of an inclusive community of individuals across ability, age, ethnicity, gender, race and sexual orientation. Anyone passionate about film can become a member, whether you are a filmmaker, industry professional or a film lover.

Film Independent produces the Spirit Awards, the annual celebration honoring artist-driven films and recognizing the finest achievements of American independent filmmakers. Film Independent also produces the LA Film Festival, showcasing the best of American and international cinema and the Film Independent at LACMA Film Series, a year-round, weekly program that offers unique cinematic experiences for the Los Angeles creative community and the general public.

With over 250 annual screenings and events, Film Independent provides access to a network of like-minded artists who are driving creativity in the film industry. Film Independent's Artist Development program offers free Labs for selected writers, directors, producers and documentary filmmakers and presents year-round networking opportunities. Project Involve is Film Independent's signature program dedicated to fostering the careers of talented filmmakers from communities traditionally underrepresented in the film industry. For more information or to become a member, visit filmindependent.org.

ABOUT ARCLIGHT CINEMAS

ArcLight Cinemas, created by Pacific Theatres, a privately owned, Los Angeles based company with 60 years of theatrical exhibition history throughout California, Hawaii and Washington is a premiere moviegoing experience with an unparalleled commitment to bringing a variety of rich cinematic content to moviegoers in all markets. ArcLight Cinemas operates eight theaters in California including Hollywood, Pasadena, Sherman Oaks, El Segundo, Santa Monica, Culver City and La Jolla, as well as one theater in Bethesda, Md, Chicago and Glenview, Ill, with a new location in Boston for early 2018. ArcLight also owns and operates the historic Cinerama Dome and programs the TCL Chinese Theatre and IMAX in Hollywood. Pacific Theatres currently operates theaters in Los Angeles that include The Grove and The Americana at Brand in Glendale, Calif. Additional information about ArcLight Cinemas is available at www.arclightcinemas.com/

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SOURCE LA Film Festival

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COMPANY ACTS QUICKLY IN RESPONSE TO HIGH LEAD COUNT CLAIMS

RANDOLPH, N.J., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- LaRose Industries, LLC., the parent company of Cra-Z-Art, a prime manufacturer and leader in trendy toy, art and stationery products, announced today that the Company has enacted additional safety measures in response to recent claims by the New York State Attorney General's Office of alleged high levels of lead in a part contained in a very small number of its toy items.

The items in question passed rigorous testing by a third party laboratory accredited by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission ("CPSC") and were found to have complied with all applicable product safety requirements. Nevertheless, LaRose has already launched its own thorough investigation into the matter with respect to these claims, which the company only learned of last Friday, April 22nd. Additionally, in cooperation with the NY State Attorney General's Office, LaRose has suspended sales of the three products identified and has instructed retailers that sell the products to remove them from store shelves immediately. LaRose will continue to cooperate fully with the NY State Attorney General's Office and also provide all necessary information to the CPSC.

"The safety of our products and the welfare of our consumers is our highest priority. All of our items go through stringent testing to ensure they comply with all U.S. product safety requirements," said Nellie Mahabir, President of LaRose. "We take great pride that the Cra-Z-Art name is known for safe, imaginative play for kids. We are acting swiftly to responsibly investigate these claims and take all appropriate action. We remain committed to ensuring that our products continue to be a safe and enjoyable experience for consumers, particularly kids."

LaRose contracts with third-party vendors to produce some of their products including the three products identified. As part of its investigation, LaRose is also conducting a review of all of its manufacturing partners to determine if additional procedures need to be put in place to further insure product safety.

The affected products are:

Shimmer N' Sparkle Cra-Z-Art Cra-Z-Jewelz Gem Creations Ultimate Gem Machine (UPC 884920174504);

Shimmer N' Sparkle Cra-Z-Art Cra-Z-Jewelz Gem Creations Gem Charm and Slider Bracelets (UPC 884920174849).

My Look Cra-Z-Art Cra-Z-Jewelz Gem Creations Ultimate Gem Machine (UPC 884920174849).

For additional information, contact Cra-Z-Art at (800) 598-3800, or visit the company's website at www.cra-z-art.com.

About CRA-Z-ART

CRA-Z-ART, based in Randolph, NJ, offers original, creative, exciting and trendy activity, toy, art and stationery products. The CRA-Z-ART management team has over 120 years of experience in creating, manufacturing and marketing stationery and activities products. At CRA-Z-ART, we clearly understand the needs of the retailer and the desires of our consumers. We make it a point daily to be - Always creative! To learn more, please visit www.cra-z-art.com.

CONTACT: Charlie Zakin, Cra-Z-Art  973-598-3800 x 256

SOURCE LaRose Industries, LLC

Related Links

http://www.cra-z-art.com


Chemicals such as powdered lime, chlorine and formaldehyde are put in together with the dead sea fish before they are buried. Photo by Hoang Tao

Local people have been burying dead fish that have washed up en masse along the central coast of Vietnam in an effort to avoid environmental damage.

The provinces of Ha Tinh, Quang Binh and Quang Tri have ordered localities to collect and dispose of the dead fish to stop them from decomposing and polluting the environment. Local people have also been told not to eat the fish or try to sell them.

Quang Tri's Department of Natural Resources and Environment has instructed people on how to dispose of the fish, recommending they choose remote areas to bury the fish with chemicals such as chlorine, formaldehyde or powdered lime. These guidelines, however, were issued two to three days after the dead fish started washing up, and many of them had already been collected and buried naturally by locals.

A fisherman in Quang Tri said he is concerned that the toxic substances that killed the fish will simply seep back into the sea again, as many of them were buried near the coastline.

On April 25, dead fish were continuing to wash up in Ha Tinh's coastal communes. Nguyen Dinh Vin, chairman of Nam Ky ward's People's Committee, said the number of dead fish collected in the province that morning only amounted to a few kilograms. Many fish show signs of sickness, swiiming sluggishly in the water, he said.

In Quang Binh province, there are still dead fish in many places, mainly deep-sea fish that have died over the last few days, said Nguyen Ngoc Hieu, chairman of Bao Ninh commune. Some people are taking the dead fish home to use as fertilizer. Fish that have been dead for a long time are being buried on the seashore or under the trees.

The mass fish deaths along the central provinces of Vietnam were first reported in Ha Tinh province where thousands of natural sea fish and farm fish started washing up dead. Since then, the phenomenon has spread to Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue. Statistics show that Ha Tinh has recorded 10 tons of dead fish, while a massive 30 tons has been found in Quang Tri.

Experts are still working to find out the cause while many people and scientists have raised questions over the waste discharged from a Formosa project in Vung Ang ward, Ha Tinh.

Related ministries and authorities have all agreed that the mass fish deaths are due to a strong toxic substance in the environment.
PAOLI, Pa., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A recent study conducted by Dr. James Pellicane, MD FACS and the breast surgeons at the Bon Secours Virginia Breast Center demonstrated a 79% reduction in the rate of re-excisions for breast cancer patients when MarginProbe was used in conjunction with the SSO/ASTRO clear margins "no ink on tumor" assessment guidelines. The study also found no significant difference in the volume of tissue removed or changes in expected cosmetic outcomes when using the MarginProbe device.

Presented earlier this month during the 2016 American Society of Breast Cancer Surgeons Annual Meeting, the study, entitled "The Effects of MarginProbe in the Era of 'No Ink on Tumor' Clear Margins Definition," is a retrospective review from sets of consecutive patients who underwent lumpectomy surgery between April 2014 and August 2015.

The research looked at the impact MarginProbe had on the rate of re-excision and the total volume of tissue removal for patients compared to procedures performed before Dr. Pellicane began using the non-invasive MarginProbe assessment technology during surgeries.

Key findings from the study include:

MarginProbe was used in 89 consecutive lumpectomy cases between November 2014 and August 2015 compared to 99 similar cases performed without the device between April 2014 and November 2014. (Table 1)

Table 1 -

Subjects baseline

characteristics

MarginProbe set

(N=89) Historical set

(N=99) Age Mean (STD) 62.5 (12.6) 62.3 (11.0) Tumor type Invasive Ductal 75% 58% Invasive Lobular 5% 13% DCIS 20% 29% Receptor status ER+ 67% 93% PR+ 58% 75% HER2+ 11% 17%

In more than 55% of the cases there was DCIS present in the tumor and more than 70% of the tumors were smaller than 2 cm. (Table 2)

Table 2 -

Tumor characteristics,

based on final

pathology Tumor composition IDC 37% 19% DCIS 20% 29% IDC + DCIS 38% 40% ILC 5% 13% Tumor/lesion size Mean (STD) [cm] 1.5 (1) 1.5 (1.5) <1cm 30% 37% 1 cm to 2 cm 41% 42% >2 cm 29% 21%

The re-excision rate in the device set was 3.4% compared to 16.2% re-excisions in the comparison set. (Table 3)



MarginProbe

cases Historical

set Absolute Reduction

(% points) Relative

reduction P-value Lumpectomy procedures 89 99





Re-excision procedures 3 16





Re-excision rate 3.4% 16.2% 12.6% 79% P<0.01

Table 3  Comparison of re-excision procedures between the sets

The total volume of tissue removed during the initial lumpectomy was 91cc in the device set and 92cc in the comparison set. (Table 4)



MarginProbe

cases Historical

set Shavings with no clinical benefit, per case;

Mean (STD) 1.8 (1.4) 0.9 (1.6) Main Specimen volume; Mean (STD) 78 (62) cc 87 (72) cc Shaving volume; Mean (STD) 7.5 (6.9) cc 5.8 (5.2) cc Total volume removed in the lumpectomy

procedure; Mean (STD) 91 (63) cc 92 (72) cc





Table 4  Comparison of additional margins taken and tissue volume

removed between the sets

While the SSO/ASTRO assessment guidelines have led to an overall reduction in re-excision rates, the percentages are even greater when combined with MarginProbe.

"Even in the era of 'no ink on tumor' margin assessment where some reports suggest that re-excision rates are falling, utilizing MarginProbe further reduces the need for additional surgeries," said Dr. Pellicane. "The study also found a slightly lower volume of tissue removed. The combination of these factors gives patients the best chance for a successful surgery with good cosmetic results."

Traditionally, one-in-four women who undergo a lumpectomy require additional surgery to remove cancer missed during the initial procedure. The Pellicane study is just the latest research to show how MarginProbe, the first and only FDA-approved technology, offers surgeons a non-invasive, real-time detection of cancer at the surface of excised tissue specimens during surgery.

"Using MarginProbe in every lumpectomy gives patients the best chance of getting all the cancer in their first and only surgery," said Lori Chmura, President of Dune, Inc. "Getting clean margins in one surgery moves a patient through to radiation and recovery more quickly giving them the best possible surgical and cosmetic outcomes and ultimately improving their level of satisfaction."

About Dune Medical Devices

Dune Medical Devices was founded in 2002 by Dr. Dan Hashimshony, CEO, to realize the extraordinary medical potential of its proprietary tissue characterization technology. Offering surgeons and radiologists the real-time ability to identify cancerous tissues and react immediately, this technology holds the potential for a broad range of surgical and diagnostic applications. Dune Medical Devices is a privately held company with offices in the U.S. and Israel. For more information, please visit www.dunemedical.com and www.marginprobe.com.

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SOURCE Dune Medical Devices

Related Links

http://www.dunemedical.com


DUSSELDORF, Germany, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Lumesse, a global leader in talent solutions, today announced the launch of ETWeb empower, a SaaS or private cloud Talent Management suite which includes modules for Core HR, Performance Management, Learning, Succession Management and Rewards delivered with a common user interface on an integrated data foundation.

Designed to engage employees and equip organizations to more efficiently manage, analyze and optimize talent management processes, ETWeb empower was developed with a consumer-like user experience and a common data foundation for all modules. A single, end-to-end data foundation frees employees from time-consuming and labor-intensive data integration tasks. A consumer-like interface common across all modules encourages broad employee adoption throughout the career journey. The result is much simpler enablement of perform-to-reward and assess-to-develop processes.

Lumesse is the most experienced talent management provider in the world and has embedded thirty years of accrued knowledge gained with over 2450 customers into the new suite. Organizations can now, for the first time, tap that depth of experience while exploiting the inherent efficiencies, reconfigurability, and economic benefits of a SaaS or private-cloud platform.

"A single repository for data aggregation from a set of performance management tools is an effective foundation for sharpening workforce insights," said Lisa Rowan, research vice president, HR, Talent, and Learning Strategies for IDC. "With ETWeb empower, Lumesse is incorporating its many years of Talent Management expertise into a suite that offers a consumer-like experience on a single data foundation."

Lumesse ETWeb empower as an end-to-end integrated, people-centric Talent Management suite empowers employees to contribute to their company's success by putting them at the heart of the business. New concepts such as Fluent Performance and the Career Navigator bring transparency and productivity to employees. Lumesse ETWeb empower equips employees to reach their (career and business) goals in their everyday work," said Dr. Carsten Busch, CEO of the ETWeb Business Unit. "Lumesse ETWeb empower delivers a strong consumer-like user experience that encourages employees, HR professionals and department managers to use it and a 'responsive design' so they can use it on any device."

ETWeb empower can be delivered through a Software-as-a-Service model for faster and regular updates, simplified deployment and scalability. To allow customers a choice for their preferred option ETWeb empower can also be deployed through a private cloud or on premise behind a customer's corporate firewall.

Over time ETWeb empower will introduce several additional, fundamentally new components to the ETWeb offering - Onboard, Recruit and Ideate  to build out a holistic state-of-the-art Talent Management suite.

Current customer investments are protected as existing ETWeb users will benefit from continued investment in ETWeb 11 and previous versions.

Lumesse ETWeb empower is immediately available.

About Lumesse

Lumesse provides Talent Solutions to over 2450 organizations in over 70 countries enabling them to engage and nurture the best talent in an ever changing and demanding global environment. With our unique and highly adaptable Talent Solutions our customers are well prepared to capitalize on the fast evolution of new technologies and disruptive business conditions, while meeting all business needs locally and globally.

For further information visit www.lumesse.com.

Press contacts:

Lumesse

Allen Johnson

[email protected]

281-381-1515

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SOURCE Lumesse

Related Links

http://www.lumesse.com


VANCOUVER, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated (NYSE and TSX: RBA), the world's largest industrial auctioneer, invites interested parties to participate in its first quarter 2016 earnings conference call, occurring on Monday, May 9, 2016 at 11:00 am Eastern time / 8:00 am Pacific time / 4:00 pm BST. During the call company executives will discuss Ritchie Bros.' earning results and answer questions from analysts and institutional investors. The Company's first quarter 2016 earnings results will be released before NYSE and TSX market open earlier that day.

Analysts and institutional investors may participate via conference call, using the following dial-in information:

1-888-231-8191 (toll-free North America )

) 0-800-051-7107 (toll-free UK)

1-647-427-7450 ( Toronto & overseas long-distance)

Please ask to participate in Ritchie Bros.' first quarter 2016 earnings conference call, and quote conference ID 99958136 if prompted.

Media and other interested parties may listen to the conference call via webcast, by selecting the first quarter 2016 earnings call webcast link at www.rbauction.com/investors.

Please note that there will be presentation slides accompanying the earnings call. The slides will be displayed live on the webcast, and will be available to download via the webcast player or at www.rbauction.com/investors the morning of the call.

A replay of the conference call can be accessed after 2:00 pm Eastern / 11:00 am Pacific time / 7:00 pm BST until June 6, 2016 at 416-849-0833 or 1-855-859-2056 (using passcode 99958136#).

About Ritchie Bros.

Established in 1958, Ritchie Bros. (NYSE and TSX: RBA) is the world's largest seller of used equipment for the construction, transportation, agriculture, material handling, energy, mining, forestry, marine and other industries. Ritchie Bros. TM solutions make it easy for the world's builders to buy and sell equipment with confidence, including live unreserved public auctions with on-site and online bidding (rbauction.com), the EquipmentOneTM secure online marketplace (EquipmentOne.com), a professional corporate asset management program, and a range of value-added services, including equipment financing for customers through Ritchie Bros. Financial Services (rbauctionfinance.com). Ritchie Bros. has operations in more than 19 countries, including 44 auction sites worldwide. Learn more at RitchieBros.com.

SOURCE Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers

Related Links

http://www.rbauction.com


Making simple, reliable, sterile-to-sterile fluid connections is critical to successful biomanufacturing. Previous disposable connector technology allowed users to make only a single sterile connection per device, requiring the use of multiple devices per unit operation. Previous technology also required a dry, non-pressurized flow path during connection and disconnection. These limitations are resource- and cost-intensive when industry standards demand increased productivity and improved efficiency at all stages of the drug manufacturing process. With the Lynx CDR connectors, users can perform faster, more economic fluid management when the flow path is wet and pressurized.

Lynx CDR connectors allow efficient fluid management through sterile connection, disconnection and reconnection giving customers a fail-safe alternative to the time-consuming tube welding processes and costly manifold configurations traditionally used in upstream and downstream processing. The connectors provide efficient fluid management with six sterile connections, disconnections and reconnections from one disposable device.

INTERPHEX attendees should visit booth #2841 to learn more about MilliporeSigma's products and speak with company experts. Follow us on Twitter @MilliporeSigma.

About the Life Science Business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

The life science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, which operates as MilliporeSigma in the U.S. and Canada, has 19,000 employees and 72 manufacturing sites worldwide, with a portfolio of more than 300,000 products enabling scientific discovery. Udit Batra is the global chief executive officer of MilliporeSigma.

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany completed its $17 billion acquisition of Sigma-Aldrich in November 2015, creating a leader in the $130 billion global life science industry.

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany is a leading company for innovative and top-quality high-tech products in healthcare, life science and performance materials. The company has six businesses  Biopharmaceuticals, Consumer Health, Allergopharma, Biosimilars, Life Science and Performance Materials  and generated sales of 12.85 billion in 2015. Around 50,000 employees work in 66 countries to improve the quality of life for patients, to foster the success of customers and to help meet global challenges.

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany is the world's oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company  since 1668, the company has stood for innovation, business success and responsible entrepreneurship. Holding an approximately 70 percent interest, the founding family remains the majority owner of the company to this day. Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany operates as EMD Serono, MilliporeSigma and EMD Performance Materials in the U.S. and Canada.

All Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany news releases are distributed by email at the same time they become available on the EMD Group website. In case you are a resident of the USA or Canada please go to www.emdgroup.com/subscribe to register again for your online subscription of this service as our newly introduced geo-targeting requires new links in the email. You may later change your selection or discontinue this service.

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SOURCE MilliporeSigma

Related Links

http://www.emdgroup.com


DUBAI, UAE, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai and The Big Heart Foundation, an initiative of Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi, Wife of His Highness the Ruler of Sharjah and UNHCR Eminent Advocate for Refugee Children, are working together to treat a three year old Syrian girl called Salma Mustafa Asaad, aged three and was born with around two thirds of one of her eyelids missing, due to a rare condition called Congenital Eyelid Coloboma. This is where the eyelid and eyebrow are cleft and need repair- her right eye is healthy.

3 year old Salma with her father Mustafa (PRNewsFoto/Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai)

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/359890 )



The first of a series of surgical procedures to correct this was recently completed successfully at Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai by a specialist oculoplastic team, led by Consultant Ophthalmic & Oculoplastic Surgeon Dr. Yassir Abou-Rayyah. They removed eyelid tissue from her lower lid and grafted it in the upper lid to close the defect. Salma is recovering from the procedure at present and will require a series of further specialist eye surgeries planned over the next 12-18 months.

Salma's father, Mustafa Ahmed, said: "I want to extend my profound thanks to Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher Al Qasimi, Wife of His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, and The Big Heart Foundation and all its administrators, and to the doctors and medical staff at Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai and especially Dr. Yassir Abou-Rayyah, for facilitating this eye surgery for my daughter Salma, and bringing joy and happiness to our hearts."

Mariam Al Hammadi, Director of Salam Ya Seghar, added: "Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi seeks to alleviate the suffering of children and refugees wherever and whenever her Highness can. It is through her Highnesses' The Big Heart Foundation (TBHF) that the surgery for little Salma can be provided in collaboration with Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai. It is a beautiful thing to give a child her sight back, it is a gift that will last her lifetime. TBHF always strives to provide support to children in need through various charitable projects and relief campaigns, and we hope that this assistance will reach all people who need our help and support."

Commenting on the medical condition and treatment, Dr Yassir Abou-Rayyah, Consultant Ophthalmic & Oculoplastic Surgeon, said: "Salma has a rare congenital disease, which severely affects her vision. The surgical team was very pleased with the first stage surgery to separate her eyelid from the eye globe and her condition is now very stable, and we now look forward to seeing Salma grow and develop over the next few months, before we continue the treatment to fully restore her upper and lower eyelids. We are very optimistic about the outcome because she is so young and still growing, and look forward to helping Salma achieve normal healthy vision.

Moorfields is delighted to work with The Big Heart Foundation to help Salma and her parents through a challenging series of surgeries, as part of our charitable work in the region and after her referral from the Palestine Children's Relief Fund."

Yara Al Saleh, UAE Chapter President, Palestine Children's Relief Fund, concluded: "Our primary goal is to identify and treat every child in need in the Middle East region, regardless of their nationality, religion, race or gender. We are doing the best we can to make a positive difference in children's lives and bring back the hope and smiles to their faces again. We are pleased to have great volunteers and partners like Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai and Salam Ya Seghar to support us in the treatment of Salma and many others."

Notes to editors:

About the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF)

A registered 501(c)(3) non-governmental organization.

The PCRF is a non-political, non-profit organization established in 1991 to address the medical and humanitarian crisis facing children in the Middle East. Today the PCRF provides medical and humanitarian aid for hundreds of children living in the Middle East region - regardless of their nationality, religion or gender.

The PCRF sends medical volunteer teams to Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan to treat children in urgent surgical need and train local medical personnel. More than 20,000 children already benefitted from this program.

Children who cannot be treated locally are provided with cost-free treatment abroad. Since 1991 the PCRF has sent over 1,500 children from Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Iraq oversees for free medical care, which is provided by supporters in North and South America, Europe, Asia and other parts of the Middle East.

The PCRF also runs numerous humanitarian programs for children in need, especially the ones suffering in war-torn Syria and Gaza through providing food, clothes, heaters, wheelchairs, eyeglasses, cancer medicine and other medical supplies.

To learn more visit:

http://www.pcrf.net

Facebook : PCRFUAE

Twitter : PCRF_UAE

Instagram : PCRF_UAE

About The Big Heart Foundation

Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi, Wife of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Ruler of Sharjah was appointed as UNHCR's first Eminent Advocate for Refugee Children in May 2013. In this role, Sheikha Jawaher helped increase public awareness about refugees and the work of UNHCR, with a focus on children. Her previous work with charities and her fund-raising initiatives are testament to her commitment to helping relieve the suffering of people affected by war, especially women and children. After the huge success of the Big Heart Campaign during its two years, it was re-launched by Her Highness in 2015 as an independent foundation. The Big Heart Foundation has currently three divisions supporting childhood cancer, children in Palestine and refugee children and their families. In future new philanthropic initiatives for the family and children may be added to the foundation's scope of work as per Her Highness's directives.

About Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai

Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai (MEHD) is the first overseas branch of Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, the oldest and one of the largest centres for ophthalmic treatment, teaching and research in the world. Located at the Al Razi Medical Complex in Dubai Health Care City, the facility provides day case surgery and outpatient diagnostic and treatment services, for a variety of surgical and non-surgical eye conditions. MEHD will also raise standards for research and teaching in the region. MEHD is owned and managed by the NHS Foundation Trust, and maintains close links with London, to ensure that patients in the GCC receive the best eye care treatment in the world.

Issued on behalf of Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai by WPR.

SOURCE Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai by WPR
WASHINGTON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The public is invited to a free talk called "The Science of Interstellar" with Dr. Jeremy Schnittman in the Pickford Theater, third floor, Madison Building, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 3, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. EDT.

Jeremy Schnittman is a research astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. His research interests include theoretical and computational modeling of black hole accretion flows, X-ray polarimetry, black hole binaries, gravitational wave sources, gravitational microlensing, planetary dynamics, resonance dynamics, and exoplanet atmospheres.

"One of the great things about studying black holes is that you are constantly pushing your imagination and intuition to the limit," Schnittman said. "The same is true about good science fiction movies like Interstellar: by stretching our imaginations, we can better understand how black holes behave in the real world."

The presentation will address the "habitability zone" around supermassive black holes and will discuss the Hollywood movie in light of the physics governing accretion, relativity, and astrobiology.

The Library of Congress maintains one of the largest and most diverse collections of scientific and technical information in the world. The Science, Technology and Business Division provides reference and bibliographic services and develops the general collections of the library in all areas of science, technology, business and economics. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/.

The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world and holds nearly 151.8 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The library serves Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.

For inquiries about this or upcoming talks at the Library of Congress, the public can contact the LOC Science, Technology and Business Division at 202-707-5664. ADA accommodations should be requested five business days in advance at 202-707-6382 (voice/tty) or [email protected].

The lecture will be later broadcast on the library's webcast page and YouTube channel "Topics in Science" playlist.

For more information visit: http://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/

For directions, visit: http://www.loc.gov/visit/maps-and-floor-plans/

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Russell Slifer, Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and deputy director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and Paul Sanberg, president of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), signed a Memorandum of Agreement during the NAI Fellows Induction Ceremony, the closing event for the NAI's fifth annual conference on April 15, 2016.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359759LOGO

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359760

Russell Slifer of USPTO and Paul Sanberg of NAI

The agreement outlines the opportunity for the USPTO and the NAI to work closely on mutually beneficial projects to enrich education outreach, honors and awards, and programs relating to intellectual property. The agreement includes a commitment from the NAI to host its annual meeting every other year at USPTO headquarters.

"It has been our pleasure at the USPTO, for the last five years to have a relationship with the Academy and it is my pleasure also to sign our Memorandum of Agreement," said Slifer. "We will continue to cooperate to host events and awards. The NAI annual meeting will continue to be held here every other year, which will allow for our employees to meet with NAI members and Fellows to discuss how the work they are doing comes together to help the nation and innovators around the world."

David Kappos, former Under Secretary of Commerce and previous director of the USPTO, embraced the NAI soon after it was founded in 2010 and suggested the need for a higher level program for leading academic inventors to be honored and recognized for their contributions to society.

In his speech at the 2012 NAI annual meeting in Tampa, Kappos said, "The NAI is a breakthrough for our country. It couldn't be more timely to have an organization like this to be championing innovation."

"We are very grateful that the USPTO has provided vital support to the NAI since our inception," said Sanberg. "We are pleased to announce the signing of this Memorandum of Agreement which solidifies our important friendship and we look forward to a bright future of collaborations."

The National Academy of Inventors is a 501(c)(3) non-profit member organization comprising U.S. and international universities, and governmental and non-profit research institutes, with over 3,000 individual inventor members and Fellows spanning more than 200 institutions, and growing rapidly. It was founded in 2010 to recognize and encourage inventors with patents issued from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation, encourage the disclosure of intellectual property, educate and mentor innovative students, and translate the inventions of its members to benefit society. The NAI publishes the multidisciplinary journal, Technology and Innovation, Journal of the National Academy of Inventors. www.AcademyofInventors.org

Media Contact:

Lauren Maradei

National Academy of Inventors

813-974-0820

Email

SOURCE National Academy of Inventors

Related Links

http://www.academyofinventors.org


WASHINGTON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Hundreds of recent news stories have documented the destruction of Yazidi communities in Iraq, the persecution of Christians in Syria and in African nations, and the departure of the last Jews to reside in Yemen. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former Archbishop of Washington and Azizah al-HIbri, Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Richmond, will discuss the landmark Marrakech Declaration designed to improve the lives of religious minorities in Muslim countries at a National Press Club Newsmaker in the club's Bloomberg Room at 10 a.m., May 10. The National Press Club is located on the 13th floor of the National Press Building at 529 14th St., NW, Washington, D.C.

In January 2016 more than 250 Muslim religious leaders, heads of state, and scholars, reached agreement on the Marrakesh Declaration, which spells out the rights of religious minorities in predominantly Islamic countries. The conference held in Morocco included both Muslims and non-Muslims and was the first such meeting since the 622 C.E. Charter of Medinathe Muslim world's first constitution, which spelled out the rights of minorities in Islamic law.

Like all Newsmakers, this event is open to credentialed media and NPC members, free of charge. No advance registration is required.

Contact: Tony Gallo, NPC Newsmakers 202-544-6973, [email protected]

SOURCE National Press Club
PEARLAND, Texas, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- To commemorate its Grand Opening, the Neighbors Emergency Center Brownsville, TX location is inviting the community to a free outdoor public celebration next Saturday, April 30 from 11 a.m. to 3p.m. The center is located at 2073 E. Ruben Torres Sr. Blvd., Brownsville, TX 78526.

The family friendly event will feature a variety of giveaways and activities for everyone to enjoy. Complimentary food and refreshments will be served.

The Brownsville emergency center was the second Neighbors Emergency Center in the South Texas region to open and represents one of many new locations to open this year.

Neighbors Health System, the parent company of Neighbors Emergency Center, was named the 4th fastest growing company in 2015 by the Houston Business Journal's Fast 100 companies, along with being named the HBJ's #3 Best Place to Work for 2015. Neighbors Emergency Center freestanding emergency rooms have also been awarded "The Best ER" in Baytown, TX and Pearland, TX along with the Houston Chronicle's Top Workplaces #1 midsize company for 2015.

About Neighbors Emergency Center:

Neighbors Health System operates Neighbors Emergency Center, a series of 24-hour freestanding emergency centers that have seen exponential growth in Texas since 2009. Neighbors Emergency Center believes in providing extraordinary care that is dedicated to making lives better every day, with an unfaltering vision to be The Best Neighbors Ever. This means providing unparalleled medical care driven by compassion, respect, and dedication and a focus on our patients, our culture, and the community.

Neighbors' 20+ locations service many communities, including Houston, Austin, El Paso, Beaumont, and the Permian Basin, with plans for centers in areas that include Texarkana and Colorado in 2016.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20141208/162979LOGO

SOURCE Neighbors Emergency Center
Launched in 2002, the NetSuite Solution Provider Program is the industry's leading cloud channel partner program, providing hundreds of channel partners with a cloud solution to offer prospective customers and grow their businesses as well as industry-leading margins and incentive programs. With cloud computing at the forefront of the hottest trends and cloud ERP leading the way, channel partners representing on-premise products are continuing to build new practices based on NetSuite's superior cloud business management suite. Designed to help solution providers transform their business model to fully capitalize on the revenue growth opportunity of the NetSuite cloud, the NetSuite Solution Provider Program delivers unprecedented benefits that begin during recruitment and range from business planning, sales, marketing and professional services enablement, to training and education. For more information about the NetSuite Solution Provider Program, please visit www.netsuite.com/portal/partners/solution-program.shtml .

To determine the 2016 5-Star ratings, The Channel Company's research team assessed each vendor's application based on investments in program offerings, partner profitability, partner training, education and support, marketing programs and resources, sales support and communication.

"Solution providers have more choices than ever before when it comes to selecting vendor partners. Identifying the right vendor with the right technologies and the right channel approach can mean the difference between successful adoption of a new technology or business model and an awkward, unnecessarily difficult integration," said Robert Faletra, CEO, The Channel Company. "Our annual Partner Program Guide and 5-Star ratings recognize the best channel programs available in the market today and serve as a valuable resource for solution providers looking for the right fit."

"NetSuite is committed to fully enabling the channel, and receiving a 5-star rating from CRN for the sixth consecutive year solidifies that we are offering the programs and support our partners need to be successful," said Craig West, Senior Vice President of Channel Sales at NetSuite. "More and more solution providers have chosen to partner with NetSuite, the #1 cloud ERP, leaving behind legacy systems and immature cloud solutions that cannot offer the breadth and depth of functionality fast growing companies need."

The 2016 Partner Program Guide will be featured in the April issue of CRN and online at www.CRN.com/ppg2016.

Today, more than 30,000 companies and subsidiaries depend on NetSuite to run complex, mission-critical business processes globally in the cloud. Since its inception in 1998, NetSuite has established itself as the leading provider of cloud-based financials/enterprise resource planning (ERP) and omnichannel commerce software applications for businesses of all sizes. Many FORTUNE 100 companies rely on NetSuite to accelerate innovation and business transformation. NetSuite continues its success in delivering the best cloud business management software to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of the cloud accelerates.

About the Channel Company

The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers and end users. Backed by more than 30 years of unequaled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelco.com.

Follow The Channel Company: Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook

Follow NetSuite's Cloud blog, NetSuite's Facebook page and @NetSuite Twitter handle for real-time updates.

For more information about NetSuite please visit www.netsuite.com.

NOTE: NetSuite and the NetSuite logo are service marks of NetSuite Inc.

CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. The Channel Company logo is a trademark of The Channel Company, LLC (registration pending). All rights reserved.

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Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090924/SF81218LOGO-b

SOURCE NetSuite Inc.

Related Links

http://www.netsuite.com


Nguyen Van Tan could have never imagined that opening a restaurant directly opposite a police station that also happened to serve food would lead him to face criminal charges, and his case became national headlines.

A few days after his charge of illegally doing business without a license was dropped, Nguyen Van Tan is weighing up the possibility of filing a compensation claim for being wrongfully prosecuted.

However, he has made it clear that all he wants is to reclaim the VND17 million (about $800) he paid fines for various so-called violations, ranging from breaking food safety and hygiene regulations to illegally doing business without a registration certificate.

I don't want to ask for too much because I'm very happy right now. I have asked my lawyer to look into my case. We'll then come to a decision about how to claim compensation. The first step is to get back my VND17 million that I was forced to pay in fines. That amount of money is huge to my family, said Tan.

Nguyen Van Tan standing in front of his '"Xin Chao" (literaly means "Hello") restaurant. Photo by Quoc Thang

The fact that Binh Chanh districts prosecutors have withdrawn the indictment against Tan proves the pho restaurant owner was unjustly prosecuted, said lawyer Ha Hai from the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association, adding that Nguyen Van Tan has enough legal basis to sue the Peoples Procuracy of Binh Chanh district for wrongly issuing a criminal indictment against him.

The lawyer has advised Tan to demand financial compensation from those responsible for his suffering, both physical and mental.

Binh Chanh districts prosecutors must also make a public apology to restore Tans reputation, publish a correction statement in a newspaper for three consecutive issues, and publicly withdraw the criminal charges in front of his neighbors and co-workers with local authorities as witnesses.

"Xin Chao" is directly opposite Binh Chanh district's police station. Photo by Quoc Thang

On August 18 last year, Binh Chanh district police accused Nguyen Van Tan of illegally selling food and drinks without a license and made him pay a fine of $800. Tan quickly redeemed the violation and managed to obtain a business registration certificate five days later. However, just one month after the first check, despite the fact that Tan had shut down his restaurant while obtaining food safety and hygiene certificates, the police came back for another check and accused Tan of repeating the offence of illegally doing business without a license. On March 11, the district prosecutor issued an indictment against Tan.

The case has provoked public outrage and even prompted the Prime Minister to step in to prevent possible public outcry about an unfair business environment and public doubt over the administration of justice.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc last week requested Ho Chi Minh Citys government to intervene and identify the individuals responsible for bringing criminal charges against the restaurant owner.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Nevada Energy Metals Inc. "the Company" TSX-V: BFF (OTC: SSMLF) (Frankfurt: A2AFBV) is pleased to announce the Company has increased the exploration potential of the San Emidio property by adding 69 additional claims to its land position. The property now includes 155 claims (approximately 3,100 acres/1255 hectares) in the San Emidio Desert, Washoe County, Nevada, 95 km northeast of Reno.

The additional claims were staked to cover a portion of the playa evaluated in 1976 by Chevron Oil Company (Phoenix Geophysics report by Bruce S. Bell) for its geothermal power potential. The report states, "Almost the entire survey area exhibits definite anomalous responses which have a true resistivity less than three ohm meters. The apparent resistivity data exhibits near horizontal contours throughout parts of the anomalous area, but there is also sufficient lateral variations within each anomaly to suggest that the conductive zone is not due entirely to conductive sediments." Drilling will be required to determine if the responses identifies in the resistivity survey confirm the presence of brine aquifers. Importantly, historical results by previous operators exploring the playa for lithium reported lithium value in sediments up to 312 ppm and up to 80 ppm lithium in brine from a depth of 1.5 meters.

The San Emidio Desert basin is an alkali playa environment underlain by unconsolidated sediments and clays being fed by Lithium bearing geothermal fluids (US. Geothermal analyses) reported in bounding faults, and/or faults along the east side of the basin. Since mid-Tertiary time, the rocks on the eastern edge of the San Emidio Desert have undergone extensive hydrothermal alteration and the presence of near-surface thermal fluids, suggest that the thermal fluids represent deep circulation of meteoric water (Moore, J.N., 1997). The property adjoins the Empire geothermal power plant with production of 4.6 MW of electricity from a 155C resource thereby providing a substantial heat source for the circulation of meteoric groundwater believed important in the formation of Lithium brine deposits as found at Clayton Valley, Nevada host to North Americas preeminent Lithium brine production. US Geothermal has reported anomalous Lithium values in the trace element analysis of their geothermal brines at Empire.

The company is pleased to report that no royalties, option payments or work expenditures have been incurred as a result of the acquisition of the San Emidio Lithium exploration project. Nevada Energy Metals Inc strives to be a leader in the exploration and development of economic Lithium deposits. Our principal activities are in Nevada and our project portfolio is expanding.

The technical information in this press release has been prepared in accordance with the Canadian regulatory requirements of National Instrument 43-101, and has been reviewed and approved on behalf of Nevada Energy Metals by Alan Morris, CPG, a qualified person.

About Nevada Energy Metals: http://nevadaenergymetals.com/

Nevada Energy Metals Inc. is a well-funded Canadian based exploration company who's primary listing is on the TSX Venture Exchange. The Company's main exploration focus is directed at lithium brine targets located in the mining friendly state of Nevada. The Company has 100% ownership in 87 claims in Clayton Valley, only 250m from Rockwood Lithium, the only brine based lithium producer in North America. Nevada Energy Metals has also acquired, 100 claims (Teels Marsh West) covering 2000 acres (809 hectares) at Teels Marsh, Mineral County, Nevada, a highly prospective lithium exploration project, 100% owned without any royalties, located on the western part of a large evaporation lake where a phase one, 20 hole shallow auger exploration program is in progress. Recently the Company announced the addition of the San Emidio Desert lithium project, consisting of 155 claims (approximately 3,100 acres/1255 hectares) in Washoe County, Nevada. The Company's first lithium project, Alkali Lake, in Esmeralda county, is a 60% earn in option agreement from Dajin Resources Corp, where near surface lithium has been confirmed.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

Harry Barr

Chairman & CEO

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.



450-789 West Pender St

Vancouver, BC, V6C 1H2

+1-604-428-5690

http://www.nevadaenergymetals.com

[email protected]

SOURCE Nevada Energy Metals Inc.
"The Cheesy Chicken Stuffed Burrito is so good, it melts in your mouth," said Julie Hoefling, director of marketing for TacoTime. "Combine all these fresh ingredients and then throw in some jalapeno and cheese Stuffed Mexi-Fries and you've got yourself a cheese lover's dream come true."

The gooey Cheesy Chicken Stuffed Burrito's second stand-out ingredient behind the creamy cheese is TacoTime's very popular Stuffed Mexi-Fries. These seasoned, crispy golden potatoes stuffed with melted cheddar cheese and jalapenos amplify the flavor profile of this delicious burrito.

Visit your nearest TacoTime today to try the Cheesy Stuffed Chicken Burrito!

About TacoTime

Headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz., TacoTime has been an industry leader in quality quick-service Mexican food for over 50 years. Founded in 1960, TacoTime has grown to nearly 400 franchised restaurants across the U.S. and Canada. In 2003, TacoTime became part of Kahala Brands, one of the fastest growing franchising companies in the world with a portfolio of 16 quick-service restaurant brands.

About Kahala Brands

Headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz., Kahala Brands is one of the fastest growing franchising companies in the world with a portfolio of 18 quick-service restaurant brands with approximately 3000 locations in over 34 countries including Cold Stone Creamery , Blimpie , TacoTime , Pinkberry , Samurai Sam's Teriyaki Grill , Maui Wowi , NrGize Lifestyle Cafe, Surf City Squeeze , Planet Smoothie , tasti D-lite, Johnnie's New York Pizzeria, Cereality , Kahala Coffee Traders , Frullati Cafe & Bakery, Rollerz, Ranch One , America's Taco Shop and The Great Steak & Potato Company.

For more information about TacoTime, visit www.TacoTime.com.

For more information about Kahala Brands, visit www.KahalaBrands.com.

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SOURCE TacoTime

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"Today, working Americans are facing the prospect of retiring far later than previous generations ," said Kyle Ramsay, head of investing and retirement for NerdWallet. "At NerdWallet, we want to empower consumers to take control of their futures by helping them make the best financial decisions. Our new retirement tools give our users a clear picture of where they stand today and guidance on how to improve, particularly by reducing fees that can drain their hard-earned retirement savings."

One of the biggest challenges facing Americans today is effectively managing 401(k) accounts. According to a study by ING Direct, 30% of Americans fail to roll over old 401(k)s into new retirement vehicles. The average American couple also pays about $155,000 in retirement fees over a lifetime, according to Demos.

With a new 401(k) Rollover Center  delivered in partnership with FeeX  users can now easily uncover hidden costs and fees, estimate potential savings from rolling over their 401(k)s and find new providers that may better suit their needs.

To get started, users answer a few simple questions, such as former employer's name, the investment firm that holds the account and the type of investment funds in the account. Within minutes, FeeX analyzes the fees and delivers a cost comparison of the existing account and other investment alternatives. Consumers will be able to see how much they pay in annual fees and the potential savings amount depending on their retirement age, and roll their 401(k) to an investment alternative of their choice. The service is free to all users and does not require sensitive personal identifiers.

"NerdWallet is a leader in providing balanced and thoughtful personal finance advice. Combining their superb content with innovative technology from FeeX will further empower consumers in their fight against excessive fees," said David Goldman, director of Business Development at FeeX. "Our mission is to bring transparency to the retirement market and empower Americans to make smarter, data-driven investment decisions. We are excited to be partnering with NerdWallet, and we think this is another important step in our story to help Americans retire richer."

NerdWallet is also introducing its Retirement Calculator, which gives Americans a clear picture of their retirement savings, suggests next steps based on their needs and gives them access to expert advice through its Ask an Advisor platform. By answering a few simple questions  such as age, when they expect to retire, current income, retirement savings and contributions  users can see how they stand versus their retirement goals. Through an interactive interface, NerdWallet estimates how much someone should save monthly if they wish to comfortably retire at different target ages. Consumers will also be able to connect to NerdWallet's trusted community of advisors who can answer any questions related to retirement. The tool and access to experts are free.

About NerdWallet

NerdWallet offers consumers clarity for all of life's financial decisions. Whether it's credit cards, insurance, loans or investing, people lack the clear, unbiased information they need to make the best choice. With NerdWallet, consumers have free access to user-friendly tools and advice that save time and money, and give them the freedom to do more. NerdWallet is based in San Francisco and employs more than 300 Nerds. For more information, visit nerdwallet.com.

"NerdWallet" is a trademark of NerdWallet Inc. All rights reserved. Other names and trademarks used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

About FeeX

FeeX is a service that finds and helps reduce fees within investment and retirement accounts like IRAs, brokerage accounts and more. Simply link investment accounts and FeeX's sophisticated algorithm uncovers advisory, investment and expense ratio fees and suggests alternative ways to save and reduce the cost of retirement. In 2015, Fast Company named FeeX No. 3 of the World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Personal Finance. The company was founded in September 2012 by Yoav Zurel, David Weisz, Eyal Halahmi and Uri Levine  creator of Waze (which was acquired by Google in mid-2013). FeeX is a Registered Investment Advisor with the SEC. For more information, visit: www.FeeX.com.

Contact

Jessica Ayala

[email protected]

(760) 705-8505

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SOURCE NerdWallet

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Nexmo, the leading cloud communications platform company, today announced it is empowering KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to communicate with customers on Facebook Messenger and WeChat. Nexmo Chat App API is the only solution that allows businesses to communicate with customers on Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Viber and other chat apps, through leading CRM platforms including Salesforce, SAP, Marketo, and Bright Pattern with a single API.

"Nexmo's Chat App API is the only solution that can allow businesses to scale and manage their customer communications across the growing messaging landscape," said Tony Jamous, CEO and co-founder of Nexmo. "By connecting chat apps to KLM's CRM platform, they can continue to deliver award winning social customer care consistently across the growing number of chat apps like Facebook Messenger and WeChat."

Having used Nexmo's Chat App API to communicate with passengers on WeChat via its Salesforce Service Cloud portal, KLM is now using the same API to communicate with passengers on Facebook Messenger. This allows KLM to use its existing customer database and recognize when a customer contacts them via any medium, be it via Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Twitter or any other social medium.

"At KLM we believe we should be where our customers are. This means we want to offer our customers meaningful interactions on the platforms they already use and love, such as WeChat and Messenger," said Martine van der Lee, Manager Social Development & Technology at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. "Nexmo enables us to do just that: by leveraging the Chat App API we are able to connect to these platforms and continue to innovate."

The growing popularity of chat apps reflects how communications is changing, as the number of ways people communicate is rapidly increasing and it's difficult for companies to keep up. Nexmo eliminates the technical and regulatory complexity of communications with its easy to use APIs, industry leading partnerships and superior customer service. To learn more how Nexmo works with KLM, read the joint case study.

About Nexmo

Nexmo is the global cloud communications platform leader providing innovative communication APIs and SDKs for voice, text, messaging and phone verification services. Nexmo enables applications and enterprises to communicate with their customers reliably and with ease, no matter where in the world they are located. High-volume communication companies such as Alibaba, and Viber send millions of messages per month using Nexmo APIs. Nexmo has been recognized by Roaming Consulting Company as a Tier 1 A2P SMS Messaging Vendor in 2015, a Top 20 Most Promising API Solution Providers in 2015 by CIO Review and was selected as an Aragon Research Hot Vendor in Real-Time Communication and Collaboration Platform as a Service in 2015. www.nexmo.com

SOURCE Nexmo

Related Links

http://www.nexmo.com


NEW YORK, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Nearly 75% of global respondents, on average, say a brand's country of origin is as important as or more important than nine other purchasing drivers, including selection/choice, price, function and quality, according to findings from the Nielsen Global Brand-Origin Survey released today. The new research examined whether consumers prefer goods produced by global/multinational brands (defined as those that operate in many markets) or by local players (those operating only in a single marketthe respondent's home country), based on responses from more than 30,000 online respondents in 61 countries spanning 40 categories.

Respondents in Asia-Pacific and Africa/Middle East are likelier to say that origin is more important than the other selection factors (33% and 32% on average, respectively). European, North American and Latin American respondents, in contrast, are likelier to say brand origin is less important than the other selection factors (35%, 32% and 31% on average, respectively).

"One of the more surprising findings from the survey is that country of origin is as important asor even more important thanother purchasing criteria such as price and quality," said Patrick Dodd, group president, Nielsen Growth Markets. "In a crowded retail environment, brand origin can be an important differentiator between brands, but sentiment varies by category and by country, and leveraging a powerful brand presence needs to be managed carefully regardless of whether it is global or local. Ultimately, the brands that deliver on a strong value proposition and connect personally to consumers' needs will have the advantage in any given market."

THE WHY BEHIND THE BUY

Why do global consumers choose local brands over global brands or vice versa? When asked to select the top three decision factors for choosing a global brand and for choosing a local brand, respondents offered similar response patterns across all regionsemphasizing the factors that typically are top rated in consumer surveys. Globally, better price/value is the top-selected reason for choosing global (42%) and local (43%) brands. Positive experience with the brand (32% for global brands, 28% for local), safer ingredients and processing (31%, 28%), better product benefits (31%, 25%) and a sale or promotion on the brand (26%, 24%) also are among the top-selected reasons for selecting a product.

National pride is the only selection factor for which there is a notable difference between local and global brands, which is unsurprising, given that one would not buy a global product for reasons of national pride, unless it was a global product widely recognized as 'American,' such as Marlboro, or 'Japanese,' such as Toyota. Logically, this is a more important reason for buying local products than global ones. One-fifth of global respondents (21%) say national pride is the most important reason they buy local products, with sentiment highest in Africa/Middle East (25%), Asia-Pacific (24%) and Latin America (21%) and lower in Europe (16%) and North America (10%).

LOCAL BRANDS HAVE ADVANTAGE IN FOOD AND BEVERAGE CATEGORIES

For fresh foods, local brands are, not surprisingly, the clear preference. The majority of global respondents who have purchased the category say they prefer local brands to global ones for vegetables (68% vs. 11%), meat (66% vs. 13%), fruit (64% vs. 12%), seafood (57% vs. 18%) and yogurt (52% vs. 22%). The preference for local brands holds for nearly every fresh category in every region. Local brands also are preferred for beverage categories where spoilage is a concern or flavor preferences differ by region. Respondents in every region prefer local brands for juice, water and milk. Among those who purchase carbonated soft drinks, global brands are preferred in every region except Europe, where the largest percentage say brand origin is not important to them.

For packaged foods and snacks, local taste preferences dominate. Local brands are preferred to global brands for ice cream (44% vs. 27%, respectively), cookies/biscuits (40% vs. 28%), crisps/crackers (40% vs. 28%), breakfast cereal (44% vs. 29%), instant noodles (47% vs. 24%) and canned vegetables (53% vs. 20%).

GLOBAL BRANDS ARE PERCEIVED AS QUALITY FOR BABY CARE CATEGORIES

When it comes to baby care, global brands are clearly preferred for diapers in every region except Asia-Pacific, where preferences for local and global brands are evenly split. However, for food and formula, preferences are split largely along developed- and emerging-market lines. Global food and formula brands are preferred in Asia-Pacific and Latin America, while local brands are preferred in Europe and North America. The strongest preference for global brand baby food and formula comes, unsurprisingly, from respondents in China and Hong Kong, where in recent years product-quality issues for local baby food and formula have made headlines. In Africa/Middle East, global brands are just slightly preferred for formula, but local brands are more preferred for baby food.

"For many categories, a global brand name is an indicator of quality, safety and trustworthiness in emerging markets," said Dodd. "In North America and Europe, the baby-care product industry is highly regulated, and consumers may automatically expect that the baby foods they buy are safe and nutritious. For these consumers, local brands carry an assurance of quality."

CONSUMERS LOVE GLOBAL BRANDS FOR PERSONAL CARE AND BEAUTY

For personal-care and beauty products, global brands are the clear favorite around the world. Global brands are preferred to local for razors, shampoo and conditioner, cosmetics and deodorant in every region. Global brands are also preferred for toothpaste, hand and body soap, and hand and body lotions in four of five regions (Asia-Pacific is the exception). In Europe, the largest percentage of respondents say brand origin isn't important for several categories, including razors, toothpaste and hand and body soaps and lotions.

"Global brands are able to leverage their scale and expertise, research and development capabilities, and strong brand equity to provide high-quality and innovative personal-care products to local markets around the world," said Dodd. "In addition, in some markets, the number of local brands is limited for nonedible categories, so consumers naturally gravitate to offerings from global brands because they are widely available."

ABOUT THE NIELSEN GLOBAL SURVEY

The Nielsen Global Homecare Survey was conducted Aug. 10 - Sep. 4, 2015 and polled more than 30,000 online consumers in 61 countries throughout Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East/Africa and North America. The sample includes Internet users who agreed to participate in this survey and has quotas based on age and sex for each country. It is weighted to be representative of Internet consumers by country. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. However, a probability sample of equivalent size would have a margin of error of 0.9% at the global level. This Nielsen survey is based only on the behavior of respondents with online access. Internet penetration rates vary by country. Nielsen uses a minimum reporting standard of 60% Internet penetration or an online population of 10 million for survey inclusion.

ABOUT NIELSEN

Nielsen Holdings plc (NYSE: NLSN) is a global performance management company that provides a comprehensive understanding of what consumers Watch and Buy. Nielsen's Watch segment provides media and advertising clients with Total Audience measurement services across all devices where contentvideo, audio and textis consumed. The Buy segment offers consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers the industry's only global view of retail performance measurement. By integrating information from its Watch and Buy segments and other data sources, Nielsen provides its clients with both world-class measurement as well as analytics that help improve performance. Nielsen, an S&P 500 company, has operations in over 100 countries that cover more than 90% of the world's population. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.

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SOURCE Nielsen

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HOUSTON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- OleumTech Corporation (www.oleumtech.com), a leading provider of M2M communications and industrial automation solutions, is exhibiting and presenting at the 88th Annual ENTELEC Conference & Expo.

OleumTech will be kicking off ENTELEC's three day event with two key presenters by top executives Jim Gardner, Regional Sales VP (retired), and Brent McAdams, VP of Sales, OEM & Strategic Accounts at OleumTech. Gardner has 40+ years of experience in wireless automation and will present "Wireless Automations Role in Sustaining Oil Production." McAdams is an industry expert in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and he will be presenting "Wireless Sensor Networks  Applications in Oil & Gas."

Details on the two presentations by OleumTech:

Wireless Automations Role in Sustaining Oil Production

Tuesday, April 26th @ 9am, Room 361D

Jim Gardner, Regional Sales VP (retired)

Wireless Sensor Networks  Applications in Oil and Gas

Tuesday, April 26th @ 2:45pm, Room 361D

Brent McAdams, VP of Sales, OEM & Strategic Accounts

"Wireless sensor networks are increasingly being deployed in the entire oil and gas value chain as connected assets lead to lower costs and optimized processes," said McAdams who went on to say his presentation, "will focus on wireless sensor network applications. Of course, to have connected operations one must first have connected devices."

OleumTech will be exhibiting in Booth #217 featuring:

Live demonstrations of OleumTech enabling Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)

Three new innovative products will be showcased at the booth:

About OleumTech Corporation

OleumTech Corporation is a leading manufacturer of industrial automation systems that represents the new paradigm of remote monitoring and control for industries such as Oil & Gas, Refining, Petro-Chemical, Utilities and Water/Wastewater. With over 300,000 nodes deployed, the patented system eliminates costs associated with running cables and digging trenches with the use of its wireless tank monitoring, wellhead monitoring and peer-to-peer oilfield process automation solutions. Forming the foundation of a highly scalable, peer-to-peer wireless infrastructure, the OleumTech Wireless Systems enables "last mile" connectivity in any wireless SCADA and telemetry application.

Contact:

Marketing and Sales

OleumTech Corporation

19762 Pauling

Foothill Ranch, CA 92610

Toll-free: 866.508.8586

Phone: 949.305.9009

Fax: 949.305.9010

[email protected]

oleumtech.com

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SOURCE OleumTech Corporation

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AUSTIN, Texas, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- OpenStack Summit Austin  A month after announcing intentions to bring OpenStack as an application on Kubernetes, CoreOS today introduces "Stackanetes", an initiative to deploy and manage OpenStack as an application on Kubernetes. "Stackanetes" containerizes OpenStack and includes upstream Kubernetes and upstream OpenStack to deliver dynamic management, self-healing deployments and painless upgrades. CoreOS, an innovator in the security, deployment and management of container-enabled infrastructure, will work with the OpenStack community to integrate "Stackanetes" into upstream OpenStack. Today a prototype is available for Kubernetes managed OpenStack on Tectonic, the universal enterprise solution for Kubernetes.

"We've seen the power of Kubernetes firsthand in the OpenStack community," said Mark Collier, Chief Operating Officer at OpenStack Foundation. "Our recent OpenStack User Survey showed that Kubernetes is a popular method of managing apps on OpenStack clouds. We are excited that CoreOS is helping to bring together the Kubernetes and OpenStack communities and contributing their extensive container expertise."

Today at the OpenStack Summit Austin keynote, Alex Polvi, CEO of CoreOS, is demonstrating the power of "Stackanetes" with Tectonic, following on a collaboration with Intel. With "Stackanetes" on Tectonic, enterprises get the benefits of consistent deployments of OpenStack together with the robust application lifecycle management of Kubernetes. Tectonic helps enterprises to achieve GIFEE (Google's Infrastructure for Everyone Else), a hyperscale, application-focused style of managing infrastructure that focuses on distributed systems, security and availability.

"Cloud native computing patterns, as embodied by Kubernetes, offer remarkable benefits for application management," said Craig McLuckie, Cloud Native Computing Foundation Chair, and Google Group Product Manager. "Cloud native apps are more efficient, more scalable and easier to operate. By bringing a first class cloud native management framework to OpenStack, 'Stackanetes' brings this power to the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud and to all classes of applications."

Tectonic, CoreOS' completely supported technology stack for deploying containers in production, is built on CoreOS Linux and the Kubernetes cluster management platform that packages an array of tools for deploying, monitoring and managing applications and infrastructure. With "Stackanetes" on Tectonic, enterprises benefit from:

Simplified lifecycle management of OpenStack services from deployments to upgrades

Single platform for consistently managing both IaaS and container workloads

Ability to easily scale, operate and ensure resilience of OpenStack IaaS within their data center environments

"'Stackanetes' is our first big stride in bringing GIFEE to the OpenStack community," said Alex Polvi, CEO of CoreOS. "With this next step of development for OpenStack on Kubernetes via Tectonic, enterprises can begin to evaluate and bring their OpenStack environments along their journey to GIFEE."

CoreOS is showcasing Tectonic at OpenStack Summit Austin, April 25-29, 2016. Contact [email protected] to set up a meeting.

Supporting resources

CoreOS blog about open source and running the world's containers, https://coreos.com/blog/

Tectonic blog for enterprises, https://tectonic.com/blog/

Sign up for Tectonic, https://tectonic.com/

About Tectonic and OpenStack, https://tectonic.com/openstack/

Demo of CoreOS Tectonic running OpenStack, https://youtu.be/DPYJxYulxO4

Learn more at CoreOS Fest, https://coreos.com/fest/

About CoreOS, Inc.

CoreOS, Inc. runs the world's containers securely on CoreOS, Tectonic and Quay. CoreOS is the creator of Tectonic, the universal Kubernetes solution, that combines Google's Kubernetes and the CoreOS stack to deploy, manage and secure containers anywhere. CoreOS' Quay technology allows companies to securely store Linux containers in private hosted repositories or behind customer's firewalls. In addition, CoreOS is the creator and maintainer of open source projects CoreOS Linux, etcd, fleet, flannel and rkt. The strategies and architectures that influence CoreOS allow companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter to run their services at scale with high resilience. Learn more at https://coreos.com/ or follow CoreOS on Twitter @coreoslinux.

SOURCE CoreOS

Related Links

https://coreos.com


SOUTHFIELD, Mich., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Since exploding onto the greater Detroit technology scene in 2015, ONU continues striding towards the forefront of emergent business in Michigan, from serving clients to supporting the local economy.

ONU One, the flagship product, enables manufacturers to increase their bottom-line using 3D visualization. The ONU One platform allows customers to leverage existing CAD files and digital assets, bringing products-to-life on both web and mobile devices. Customers utilize the service to create engaging and informative experiences for Sales & Marketing Teams, Training organizations and Service Teams.

A number of Michigan companies have adopted ONU One, including Xenith, myCharge, Warrior and Odyssey Tool. By taking CAD files and making them available to a range of employees, ONU One is enabling these companies to more actively engage their audience for B2B and B2C sales, as well as at trade shows.

"We expect 3D to be a part of most digital experiences in the near future -- ONU is our partner in this transition to 3D," said Cale Werder, Director of Marketing for Xenith.

ONU recently acquired new talent, including senior sales and technical staff, to cement their stake in the Software-as-a-Service sector. This is in line with the trend of Michigan's budding reputation as the next Silicon Valley.

Armen Kabodian brings a wealth of experience to his role as Executive Sales Manager. His extensive background includes sales and leadership responsibility at large technology companies including IBM, Salesforce.com, and smaller local entrepreneurial companies including ePrize and Covisint.

Shawn Dorsey, Senior 3D Visualization Engineer, is responsible for the optimization of heavy engineering CAD. Most recently, he was responsible for CAD optimization at 3DEXCITE. "The ability to leverage existing CAD geometry, optimize, enhance, animate, and utilize on a mobile device is a very intriguing and exciting opportunity. I am thrilled to be part of ONU's next-level thinking and technology," Dorsey said.

ONU also hired Kristin Hope as the Media Specialist, and is hiring the brightest full-stack developers and talent in Michigan.

"In the future, all products will be sold, marketed and serviced using 3D visualization. We are proud to be a Detroit-based company at the forefront of this transformation," said President Sam Sesti.

To learn more about ONU, visit us at http://onu1.com and http://bit.ly/ONU_in_75_seconds

For media inquiries, contact Kristin Hope at [email protected]

SOURCE ONU

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http://www.onu1.com


PORTLAND, Ore., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- First Liberty Institute and Boyden Gray, former White House Counsel for President George H. W. Bush, filed a brief with the Oregon Court of Appeals on behalf of Aaron and Melissa Klein, an Oregon couple who lost their bakery for running their business according to their religious beliefs. Read the full brief | Read a summary of the arguments

In the brief, the Kleins' attorneys argue that the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) violated the Kleins' constitutional rights to religious freedom, free speech, and due process.

The attorneys note that, before hearing the Kleins' case, BOLI Commissioner Brad Avakian made numerous public comments on social media and in media interviews revealing his intent to rule against them. He stated that the Kleins had "disobey[ed]" Oregon law and needed to be "rehabilitate[d]." By failing to recuse himself from the case, while harboring a bias against the Kleins, Commissioner Avakian deprived the Kleins of their right to due process with a fair hearing before an impartial tribunal.

Additionally, the attorneys argue that the $135,000 penalty levied against the Kleins was excessive and gratuitous. They conclude that the BOLI order is unjustified under Oregon law, the Oregon Constitution, or the U.S. Constitution.

"In America, you're protected by the Constitution and you're also innocent until proven guilty," said Kelly Shackelford, President and CEO of First Liberty Institute. "Commissioner Brad Avakian decided the Kleins were guilty before he even heard their case. This is an egregious violation of the Kleins' rights to due process. We hope the Oregon Court of Appeals will remedy this by reversing or dismissing the government's case against the Kleins."

"The Constitution guarantees the rights of free exercise of religion, free speech, and due process for every American," Boyden Gray, former ambassador to the European Union and founding partner of Boyden Gray and Associates, says. "We hope the Oregon Court of Appeals will defend the Kleins' rights in accordance with state and federal law."



Case Background

First Liberty Institute, Boyden Gray, Tyler Smith, Anna Harmon, and Herbert Grey are representing Aaron and Melissa Klein, former owners of the bakery called "Sweet Cakes by Melissa," in a legal case centering on the Oregon couple's religious freedom. In 2013, a woman asked the Kleins to make a cake for her same-sex wedding. Aaron and Melissa had served the women before, but as devout Christians, the Kleins believed that participating in the wedding celebration would violate their faith, so they declined to design and create the custom cake. The Oregon government responded by punishing them with a $135,000 penalty and ordering them never again to say certain things about their religious faith. As a result, the Kleins were forced to shut down their bakery. The Kleins appealed the ruling to the Oregon Court of Appeals on April 25, 2016. Oral arguments are expected later this year.

Read more about the Kleins' case at FirstLiberty.org/Kleins

About First Liberty Institute

First Liberty Institute is the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious freedom for all Americans.

SOURCE First Liberty Institute

Related Links

https://firstliberty.org/


TORONTO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Osprey Capital Partners Inc. is announcing today that it assisted Moulure Alexandria Moulding Inc. in completing a partnership and recapitalization with Industrial Opportunity Partners.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359608LOGO)

Osprey Capital was engaged by Alexandria to find a partner and investor that could bring additional resources, experience and expertise to enable them to capitalize on the unprecedented opportunities within the marketplace.

Alexandria is a manufacturer and distributor of wood mouldings and related millwork products for the Canadian and Northern U.S. markets selling directly to retailers, wholesale building product distributors and industrial customers. The Company, headquartered in Alexandria, Ontario, Canada, has a manufacturing and distribution facility in Alexandria and a hardwood manufacturing operation in Bradford, Ontario. The Company also has a manufacturing and distribution facility in Moxee, Washington and two other distribution facilities in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania and La Porte, Indiana.

IOP is partnering with the Cholette Family to re-capitalize the business to help the transition from the 3rd generation and to support future growth. Andre Cholette, President & CEO, and the rest of the Alexandria Sr. management team, all of whom will have ownership interests, will remain in their current management roles to continue to grow the business. Dave Mackin, an IOP Operating Principal, will assume the position of Chairman.

As Mr. Cholette explains, "Osprey were true professionals from start to finish. They took us through a systematic process, backed with a wealth of experience, to help find the best possible partner. This process was about making the company stronger and poised for growth; Osprey helped us achieve exactly that."

"The shareholders and management team have built a great business, one that will continue to grow and be successful with IOP as a new partner. We are happy to have helped them along the way." said Stephen Jakob, Co-Founder and Partner of Osprey Capital.

Osprey Capital represented the shareholders of Alexandria. Wells Fargo and Scotiabank provided financing, and McDermott, Will & Emery provided legal representation to IOP.

About Osprey Capital Partners

Since 1998 Osprey Capital has become one of Canada's leading independent mid-market investment banking and financial advisory firms. Our Partners have broad experience assisting owners, managers and companies to finance, buy and sell businesses. For more information, visit Osprey's website at www.ospreycapital.ca.

SOURCE Osprey Capital Partners

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Severe drought and salinity have destroyed around 1 million tons of rice crops so far this year, according to the Ministry of Agricultue, which clearly proves climate change is taking a heavy toll on Vietnam.

Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat estimated that the summer-autumn rice crop is likely to suffer the same fate, and Vietnam will lose an additional 400,000 tons this year.

Soldiers are helping farmers to water their pepper plantations in Gia Lai, but a large area of pepper in Binh Phuoc has withered and died, said Minister Phat.

He went on to point out that El Nino has left about 150,000 families in the Mekong Delta lacking water, and locally stationed naval forces have had to step in to buy clean water and deliver it to local people for free.

The impacts of climate change on Vietnam have hit faster than previously expected, said Tran Hong Ha, minister of Natural Resources and Environment. He also admitted that Vietnam, due to its limited capacity, has been unable to come up with effective measures to combat climate change. For instance, no government agency has been held accountable for managing water resources needed for agricultural production.

Chairman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan and Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Tran Hong Ha in a meeting on Monday. Photo by Hoang Long/VGP

We urgently need to adapt to climate change, said Nguyen Thien Nhan, chairman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee, during meetings with senior officials from the two ministries on Monday.

He added that the agricultural sector, in the first quarter of this year, experienced negative growth for the first time in at least a decade.

Vietnam has to get ready to live with climate change and prepare for inevitable changes, he highlighted.

Chairman Nguyen Thien Nhan suggested a series of solutions including forest protection, sustainable agricultural development and effective water management to cope with the problem.
RESTON, Va., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Paul A. Pagnato, Founding Partner of PagnatoKarp has been named by Barron's as one of the Top 100 Financial Advisors of 2016. This is the fourth consecutive year Mr. Pagnato has been included on the list of America's best financial advisors.

"As a firm, we are focused first and foremost on providing our clients with transparent, objective advice," said Pagnato. "To have our efforts recognized by Barron's is a distinct, greatly appreciated honor."

As a True Fiduciary, PagnatoKarp oversees $2.5 billion in client assets. The firm has a primary focus on serving founders of privately held businesses, with an emphasis on pre-sale planning, and has assisted more than 70 individuals through their liquidity events. Providing independent and transparent investment advice for more than 20 years, Pagnato Karp emphasizes controlling costs, taxes and market entry points while also offering custom portfolio solutions and unique direct private investment opportunities.

Barron's Top 100 Advisor list is based on the value of assets under management by the advisor and their teams, revenue generated for the advisor's firms and the quality of advisors' practices. The scoring system assigns a top score of 100 and rates the rest by comparing them with the top-ranked advisor.

Earlier this year, Mr. Pagnato was also included on the Barron's 2016 list of Top 1,200 Financial Advisors by state compilation in Virginia. The full state-by-state ranking can be seen here: http://www.barrons.com/report/top-financial-advisors/1000/2016. Previously, Mr. Pagnato was also named a Top 100 Independent Wealth Advisor by Barron's four years running.

About PagantoKarp

Founded by Paul A. Pagnato and David W. Karp, PagnatoKarp is one of America's premier independent wealth protection specialists and family wealth advisors. PagnatoKarp specializes in high net-worth individuals, families and entrepreneurs. The firm represents $2.5 billion in assets managed and their family office supports all aspects of sudden wealth events so their clients can confidently get on with their life's pursuits knowing their wealth is being protected and preserved. PagnatoKarp strictly adheres to the True Fiduciary standard they created to assure clients they are always acting in their best interests. Learn more at www.pagnatokarp.com.

Media Contact: Kim Boeckenstedt

Kimberly Communications

C) 319.389.6953

[email protected]

SOURCE PagnatoKarp

Related Links

http://www.pagnatokarp.com


NEWINGTON, Conn., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- PCX Aerostructures is pleased to announce that it is now providing AH-64 Apache Main Rotor Head overhaul services worldwide. U.S. Government-approved and OEM licensed, the latest addition to the company's integrated offerings provides for quick turnaround of AH-64 Rotor Head overhaul including full replacement of Critical Safety Items.

"The technicians in our Rotor Head overhaul and repair division are some of the best in the world," said Al Haase, President and CEO of PCX Aerostructures. "We are extremely proud of the quality of the work performed by our skilled team. Customer Rotor Heads come to us from all over the world with major wear and repair issues, and our staff is able to repair and rebuild these complex assemblies to like new condition."

As one of the company's growing business units, the dedicated O&R service operation provides unparalleled highly-skilled evaluation, disassembly, component repair, final assembly & testing of the complete AH-64 Apache Main Rotor Head. Being a preferred provider to key customers, PCX also offers field repairs by qualified technicians, providing unique "one-stop-shop" overhaul capabilities in addition to individual rotorcraft component repairs with OEM approved parts.

PCX Aerostructures is a world class supplier of highly engineered, precision, flight critical and structural assemblies for rotorcraft and fixed wing aerospace platforms. The company serves defense and commercial markets as well as the power generation industry through facilities in Connecticut, New York and Texas. PCX is a leader in producing complex assemblies machined from hard alloys such as titanium, Inconel and steel - where tight tolerances and quality are imperative. The company is also a premier producer of large structural airframe assemblies providing direct delivery, as well as Blue Streak manufacturing support, to production lines of customers such as Airbus, Boeing, General Electric Aircraft Engines, Bell Helicopter, Sikorsky and Triumph Aerostructures. PCX Aerostructures is owned by RFE Investment Partners, 24/6 Capital Partners, as well as PCX Management.

RFE Investment Partners  based in New Canaan, CT - is a private equity investor with over 30 years of lower middle market buyout experience investing in growth companies in partnership with strong management teams.

To learn more please visit www.pcxaero.com.

For more information :

Trevor Hartman

Vice President  Sales & Marketing

(860)594-4388

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SOURCE PCX Aerostructures, LLC

Related Links

http://www.pcxaero.com


MENLO PARK, Calif., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Lex Machina, a LexisNexis company and creator of Legal Analytics, today announced the release of its second Hatch-Waxman/ANDA Report, which surveys the landscape of patent litigation related to Abbreviated New Drug Applications (ANDAs) submitted to the FDA under the Hatch-Waxman Act. The report focuses on trends and insights from 2,249 ANDA cases filed in U.S. district courts between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2015.

Among the report's key findings is that ANDA patent litigation has risen sharply since Lex Machina's initial ANDA report in 2014. Between 2009 and 2013, the average number of ANDA cases filed each year was 269, but over the last two years the average number of filings rose to 451  a 68% increase.

The two U.S. districts that have received an overwhelming majority of ANDA filings are Delaware, with 911 cases filed since 2009 (up nearly 35% since 2014), and New Jersey, with 725 cases (up nearly 51% since 2014). The combined total of ANDA cases that have been filed outside of Delaware and New Jersey since 2009 is only 613.

"Although ANDA filings constitute only about 10% of all patent litigation in U.S. district courts in recent years, growth rates for those filings have been steadier than filing rates for other patent litigation. With the abundance of new filings, it is critical for corporate legal teams and outside counsel to have the most accurate data on opposing parties, counsel, judges and judicial outcomes in order to develop winning legal strategies," said Owen Byrd, Chief Evangelist and General Counsel, Lex Machina.

The Hatch-Waxman/ANDA Report draws on a combination of litigation data from Lex Machina's Legal Analytics platform and Orange Book data published by the FDA on ANDA applications and related patents. Together with traditional research and intuition gained from experience, the report's insights can provide users with a distinct advantage over their competition.

Jeffrey Gargano, Partner at McDermott Will & Emery, said, "Lex Machina's analytics and use of boxplots to understand trends and the historical timing of significant case events (e.g., claim construction, summary judgment) is extremely useful in proposing realistic case schedules within the 30-month regulatory time frame. I also find the judge-specific data invaluable in preparing meaningful case budgets, which clients always appreciate."

Other facts and report findings:

Sandoz has participated in the most ANDA cases since 2009 (426), followed by Actavis (including Allergan and Watson Laboratories; 359 cases), and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (188 cases)

Among the top parties, AstraZeneca (139 cases), Novartis (133 cases), and Pfizer (130 cases) have the largest number of cases as claimant

OxyContin remains the most litigated trade name

The vast majority (97%) of applications are for prescription drugs; over-the-counter and discontinued drugs are a tiny minority

The median time to a Markman hearing was 475 days from the case filing date

Only 25% of temporary restraining order motions are granted in ANDA cases, while the success rate for preliminary injunctions is 50%

ANDA cases are less likely to end in a settlement (57.9%) than other patent litigation (77.1%), and more likely to be won by the claimant (14.6% in ANDA cases vs. 4.4% in other litigation)

Only five ANDA cases filed since 2000 have resulted in actual damages

For additional insights into Lex Machina's 2015 Hatch-Waxman/ANDA Litigation Report, the company will be hosting a live webcast on April 28, 2016 at 11:00 PDT. Speakers will include Jeffry Gargano, Partner, McDermott Will & Emery; Mark Rachlin, Senior Patent Counsel at Glaxo Smith Kline; and Owen Byrd, Chief Evangelist and General Counsel at Lex Machina, who will review the report findings and answer participant questions. Legal practitioners and other interested parties are welcome to register here for the event.

About Lex Machina

Lex Machina's award-winning Legal Analytics platform is a new category of legal technology that fundamentally changes how companies and law firms compete in the business and practice of law. Delivered as Software-as a-Service, Lex Machina provides strategic insights on judges, lawyers, parties, and IP, mined from millions of pages of legal information. This allows law firms and companies to predict the behaviors and outcomes that different legal strategies will produce, enabling them to win cases and close business.

Lex Machina is used by established companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Nike, and eBay, and prominent law firms like Wilson Sonsini, Fish & Richardson and Fenwick & West. Lex Machina was named one of the "Best New Legal Services" by readers of The Recorder in 2014 and 2015, and received the "Best New Product of the Year" award in 2015 from the American Association of Law Libraries.

Based in Silicon Valley, Lex Machina is part of LexisNexis, a leading information provider and a pioneer in delivering trusted legal content and insights through innovative research and productivity solutions, supporting the needs of legal professionals at every step of their workflow. By harnessing the power of Big Data, LexisNexis provides legal professionals with essential information and insights derived from an unmatched collection of legal and news contentfueling productivity, confidence and better outcomes.

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SOURCE Lex Machina

Related Links

http://www.lexmachina.com


AMSTERDAM, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG; AEX: PHIA) today announced that any hospital or healthcare facility with one of its indicated computed tomography (CT) models can now become a lung cancer screening center. Philips' suite of CT solutions has achieved 510(k) clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for low-dose lung cancer screening (LCS). The suite includes 27 CT and PET/CT models, as well as integrated software and services, which together are the industry's most comprehensive lung cancer screening solution.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women in the U.S.[1], and the source of one in four cancer deaths[2]. Screenings are recommended by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to help identify the disease earlier in high risk populations when treatment can be more successful. Early detection using this method has been shown to not only improve prognosis and treatment, but decrease death rates up to 20 percent[3]. In addition, if diagnosed in stage one, patients can have up to a 49 percent chance of surviving, compared to a diagnosis at stage three where the survival rate is as low as 5 percent[4].

"Lung cancer is the number-one cancer killer in America, taking more American lives than colon, breast and prostate cancer combined, and early detection is key to fighting this terrible disease," said Brady J. McKee, radiologist at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center, a pioneer in the early detection of lung cancer, featuring the largest clinical lung cancer screening program in the country. "The work Philips has done to improve a provider's screening capability not only benefits individual patients, but hospitals at each step of their Lung Cancer Screening program implementation and execution, which is often a very complicated process that includes community outreach, physician education, patient and data management, and reporting."

Philips' low-dose CT solutions now give healthcare organizations of varying clinical and economic needs  from community hospitals to multi-facility health systems  the ability to build robust lung cancer screening programs. Through its integrated radiology solutions and services, Philips can work with healthcare executives to better assess availability of existing scanners and to establish an enterprise-wide lung cancer program that will deliver advanced patient care and access.

"Our robust portfolio of CT solutions offers our customers in the United States a turnkey approach to lung cancer screening," said Rob Cascella, CEO, Diagnostic Imaging, Philips. "This is a complementary offering to utilize existing systems to bring low-dose CT screening to healthcare facilities of all sizes who want to drive earlier detection for patients at high risk for lung cancer."

Philips lung cancer screening solutions also provide several benefits for patients and referring physicians, including:

Personalized management of radiation dose  Offering one of the most accelerated screening approaches in the industry, the 27 models of Philips CT and PET/CT solutions qualified with the indications for use to perform CT lung cancer screening also utilize active dose management tools.

 Offering one of the most accelerated screening approaches in the industry, the 27 models of Philips CT and PET/CT solutions qualified with the indications for use to perform CT lung cancer screening also utilize active dose management tools. Greater insights throughout the process  Referring physicians are better able to manage the process from end-to-end through "control center" software tools that enable digital access to patient tracking data that proves insight into scheduling, results and follow-up activities.

 Referring physicians are better able to manage the process from end-to-end through "control center" software tools that enable digital access to patient tracking data that proves insight into scheduling, results and follow-up activities. Advanced image data sharing and analytics  Through its IntelliSpace Portal, Philips offers one of the most comprehensive solutions for detection, diagnostics and therapy follow up. To address the increasing interest in pulmonary care, the latest version, IntelliSpace Portal 8.0, now includes the new CT Lung Nodule Assessment (LNA) application designed for a more efficient and longitudinal workflow to provide additional clinical decision support.

The Philips commitment to innovative radiology solutions includes improving services and continuing to engage with radiology customers, delivering integrated software, solutions and services that resonate with their specific needs. Philips provides radiology practices with the critical insights needed to transform care, enabling practices to be more efficient and effective, while shaping positive clinical, financial and operational environments. This commitment helps to improve people's health and enable better care across the entire health continuum.

For further information, please contact:

Adrienne Smith

Philips Diagnostic Imaging

Tel: +1 781-277-1170

Email: [email protected]

Kathy O'Reilly

Philips Group Communications

Tel: +1 978  221  8919

Email: [email protected]

@kathyoreilly

About Royal Philips

Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) is a leading health technology company focused on improving people's health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. The company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. Philips' wholly owned subsidiary Philips Lighting is the global leader in lighting products, systems and services. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips posted 2015 sales of EUR 24.2 billion and employs approximately 104,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. News about Philips can be found at www.philips.com/newscenter.

[1] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Health Statistics. CDC Wonder On-line Database, compiled from Compressed Mortality File 1999-2012 Series 20 No. 2R, 2014.

[2] American Cancer Society, Key Statistics for Lung Cancer, 2016

[3] N Engl J Med, 2011; 365:395-409. National Lung Screening Trial research team. Reduced lung cancer mortality with low dose computed tomographic screening.

[4] J National Cancer Institute, 100, no.9 (2008): 630-641; Oncology Roundtable interviews and analysis.

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SOURCE Royal Philips

Related Links

http://www.usa.philips.com


LONDON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

"The high potential from the textile and leather industry, and increasing global demand for automotive is driving the market for polyurethane dispersions"

The market size for polyurethane dispersions is projected to reach USD 2.04 billion by 2020, registering a CAGR of 6.8% between 2015 and 2020. Increasing demand from the leather & textile industry is the major driver for polyurethane dispersions market. The global textile and leather industry is expected to rise with the growing demand from various end-use industries. With some major economies, such as India, China, Germany, Italy, and France, the market is expected to boost further. The leather industry is another major segment boosting the growth of polyurethane dispersions, globally. Further, the production of synthetic leather, incorporating polyurethane dispersions is hugely driving the demand for polyurethane dispersions at present. The global automotive industry is witnessing strong growth and profitability. Asia-Pacific is the growing market for the automotive industry. Japan and China are the major exporters of automobile products in Asia-Pacific. In addition, the expanding automobile industry in the developing economies of the Central and South American region contributes hugely to the polyurethane dispersions market.



Coatings, the largest application for polyurethane dispersions

Coatings are the largest application of polyurethane dispersions. Polyurethane dispersions are used widely for coatings application in various end-use industries such as construction, automotive, aerospace, electronics, leather, textile, wood, and other sectors. As polyurethane dispersions are characterized with adhesion to a range of substrates, resistance to chemicals, solvents and water, abrasion resistance and flexibility, it is the ideal material for the coatings application. Additionally, the coatings segment is expected to boost further with the shift in industries from developed to developing economies, particularly from the U.S. to China. Different types of coatings such as decorative coatings, industrial coatings, architectural coatings, and maintenance coatings market are growing individually. Polyurethane dispersions are the ideal material performing significantly in the coatings market with the growing environmental legislations and government regulations on low VOCs; hence, enhancing the growth of coatings application in the polyurethane dispersions market.



Asia-Pacific, the largest and fastest-growing market for polyurethane dispersions

Asia-Pacific is the largest market for polyurethane dispersions globally, with China being the most dominant market. This region is witnessing the highest growth rate which is attributed to the rapid economic expansion currently undergoing in the region. The demand of polyurethane dispersions is highly dependent on the economic growth of a region. Further, rapid development in Asia-Pacific is vigorously driving the demand for polyurethane dispersions for coatings, leather production, adhesives, and other applications.



This study has been validated through primaries conducted with various industry experts globally. These primary sources have been divided in three categories: by company; by designation; and by region.

- By Company Type- Tier 1- 50%, Tier 2- 37% and Tier 3- 13%

- By Managers- 50%, Research & Consultants- 25% and Others- 25%

- By Region- Asia-Pacific- 62%, and Europe- 38%



The report also includes company profiles and competitive strategies adopted by the major market players, such as Covestro AG (Germany), Alberdingk Boley GmbH (Germany), Lamberti SPA (Italy), The Dow Chemical Company (U.S.), Chemtura Corporation (U.S.), Mitsui Chemicals Inc., (Japan), BASF SE (Germany), Chase Corporation (U.S.), COIM (Italy), and ICAP-SIRA Chemicals (Italy), among others.



Reasons to buy the report:

- To understand the global, regional, and national scenarios.

- To understand the market trends and dynamics along with key factors affecting

- To identify the present and upcoming market opportunities

- To identify the potential markets in various regions for polyurethane dispersions

- To track the recent developments in polyurethane dispersions market

- To understand the competitive background of the industry, and positioning of participants in the market



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3458916/



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Potrero Medical, Inc. announced today that it received 510 (k) clearance through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the company's Accuryn Monitoring System, which transforms the traditional urinary catheter into a next-generation diagnostic tool for patients requiring tight fluid management, including patients at risk of sepsis and acute kidney injury.

Accuryn provides accurate, real-time urine output (UO), intra-abdominal pressure (IAP), and temperature measurement. By automatically clearing the drain line, Accuryn enables accurate UO and reduced urinary retention  a known risk for catheter associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI). Accuryn is also designed to improve clinical workflow by eliminating manual intervention of drain line blockages and by providing out-of-the box EMR integration.

"Urine output monitoring is a very important field that has stagnated for decades. Based on my personal experience using Accuryn in our burn unit, I can say that this device establishes a new state of the art," Said Bruce Friedman, clinical care co-director of the Joseph M. Still Burn Center. "Accuryn is able to eliminate urinary outflow obstruction that is ubiquitous in current urine drainage systems. Solving this problem significantly improves the accuracy and diagnostic value of urine output monitoring and also prevents urinary retention- a major risk factor for CAUTI."

Potrero Medical, Inc. has demonstrated superiority of Accuryn in a multicenter randomized clinical study of Accuryn against the current gold standard device. The company is currently engaged in a multi-center study of Accuryn to detect sepsis and critical illness (PRESCIENT), which is projected to enroll up to 100 patients in the United States.

Daniel Burnett, MD, Founder and CEO of Potrero Medical stated, "Sepsis and Acute Kidney injury accounted for over $25 Billion in US healthcare costs in 2011 and these costs are growing unsustainably. The Accuryn device will provide actionable data to clinicians which will enable them to improve patient outcomes and to reduce the financial burden of these critical illnesses."

Potrero Medical will exhibit the Accuryn Monitor at the American Burn Association 48th Annual meeting at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas, NV between May 3rd-6th 2016. For more information, please visit http://www.ameriburn.org.

The Accuryn Monitoring System  Important information

The Accuryn Monitoring System is intended for use in the drainage and/or collection of urine, and in the monitoring of urine output and core body temperature, in degrees Fahrenheit and degrees Celsius. The Accuryn Monitoring System is also intended for use in the monitoring of intra-abdominal pressure. The measured pressures can be used as an aid in the diagnosis of intra-abdominal hypertension (IAH) and the associated clinical syndrome of abdominal compartment syndrome (ACS). The Accuryn Sensing Urinary Catheter is a single use device intended for short-term use (less than 30 days).

For information on purchasing Accuryn, please contract Potrero Medical at (415)-926-8616 or [email protected].

About Potrero Medical, Inc.:

Potrero Medical, Inc., the latest spinout of medical device incubator Theranova, LLC, is headquartered in San Francisco, CA and was founded with a mission to improve outcomes, reduce costs and expand access to healthcare. For more information about the company, please visit www.potreromed.com.

Potrero Medical, Inc., Contact:

Daniel Burnett

+1 (415) 926-8616

SOURCE Potrero Medical, Inc.

Related Links

http://potreromed.com


VANCOUVER, April 25, 2015 /PRNewswire/ - Pure Industrial Real Estate Trust ("PIRET") (TSX: AAR.UN) today announced that it intends to release its financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2016, after the close of the Toronto Stock Exchange on Friday, May 13, 2016.

Management will host the conference call at 1:00 pm (EST), 10:00 am (PST), on Monday, May 16, 2016, to review the financial results and corporate developments for the three months ended March 31, 2016.

To participate in this conference call, please dial one of the following numbers approximately 10 minutes prior to the commencement of the call, and ask to join the Pure Industrial Real Estate Trust Conference Call.

Dial in numbers:

Toll free dial in number (from Canada and USA).................................... 1 888 390 0546

International or Local Toronto...................................................................... 1 416 764 8688

Conference Call Replay

If you cannot participate on May 16, 2016, a replay of the conference call will be available by dialing one of the following replay numbers. You will be able to dial in and listen to the conference 120 minutes after the meeting end time, and the replay will be available until May 23, 2016.

Please enter the Replay ID# 874640, followed by the # key.

Replay toll free dial in number (from Canada and USA).......................... 1 888 390 0541

Replay international or local Toronto............................................................ 1 416 764 8677

About Pure Industrial Real Estate Trust

PIRET is an unincorporated, open-ended investment trust that owns and operates a diversified portfolio of income-producing industrial properties in leading markets. PIRET is an internally managed REIT that focuses exclusively on investing in industrial properties.

Additional information about the PIRET is available at www.piret.ca or www.sedar.com.

Toronto Stock Exchange  AAR.UN

THE TORONTO STOCK EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR THE ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

SOURCE Pure Industrial Real Estate Trust (PIRET)

Related Links

www.piret.ca


NEW YORK, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Toronto, ON Conference Expects to Attract Over 200 Participants.

Q BioMed Inc. (OTCQB: QBIO) a biotechnology acceleration company, today announced that the company will present at the Global Chinese Financial Forum (GCFF). The GCFF is the most prominent series of bi-lingual financial functions in both North America and China. Established in 2000, GCFF's mandate is to provide a world-class platform connecting both the Asian and North American financial markets. GCFF assembles companies, financial institutions and investors who are interested in exploring new investment ideas and financial opportunities.

The conference is being held at the Marriott Courtyard Hotel in Markham, Ontario Canada at 7095 Woodbine Ave, Markham, Ontario.

The conference runs from 9am to 5pm. Q BioMed CEO, Denis Corin, will present at 10:20am.

Organizers expect the conference to attract over 200 participants consisting of pre-qualified investors, industry executives and professional service providers.

For more information or to register as an attendee of the conference, please click HERE.

To stay informed on Q BioMed developments please visit our website http://www.qbiomed.com and sign up for our news distribution.

About GCFF - GLOBAL CHINESE FINANCIAL FORUM

Organized by NAI Interactive, the Global Chinese Financial Forum (GCFF) is the most prominent series of bi-lingual financial functions in both North America and China. Established in 2000, GCFF's mandate is to provide a world-class platform connecting both the Asian and North American financial markets. We assemble companies, financial institutions and investors who are interested in exploring new investment ideas and financial opportunities.

With an extensive network covering both the North American and Chinese market alongside expertise in the global capital market, GCFF is supported by a strong foundation of financial resources. It enables GCFF to organize resourceful financial events that facilitate business growth and networks among financial institutions, public corporations, private companies, and investors of all levels.

In the past 16 years, over 35 GCFF conferences have been held in multiple locations worldwide including Vancouver, Toronto and China. The latest LNG Investment Conference was held in April 2014 to enlighten the Chinese community on the latest LNG development in British Columbia. The conference attracted over 200 participants consisting of pre-qualified investors, industry executives and professional service providers.

About Q BioMed Inc.

Q BioMed Inc. "Q" is a biomedical acceleration and development company. We are focused on acquiring companies and biomedical assets. Q is dedicated to providing these target companies and assets, strategic resources, developmental support, and expansion capital to ensure they meet their developmental potential enabling them to provide products to patients in need.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release may contain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Such statements include, but are not limited to, any statements relating to our growth strategy and product development programs and any other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could negatively affect our business, operating results, financial condition and stock price. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those currently anticipated are: risks related to our growth strategy; risks relating to the results of research and development activities; our ability to obtain, perform under and maintain financing and strategic agreements and relationships; uncertainties relating to preclinical and clinical testing; our dependence on third-party suppliers; our ability to attract, integrate, and retain key personnel; the early stage of products under development; our need for substantial additional funds; government regulation; patent and intellectual property matters; competition; as well as other risks described in our SEC filings. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in our expectations or any changes in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based, except as required by law.

Contact:

Q BioMed Inc.

Denis Corin

+1-888-357-2435

[email protected]

http://www.qbiomed.com



SOURCE Q BioMed Inc
SAN DIEGO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, the nurses and medical technicians, who are members of the United Nurses of Children's Hospital (UNOCH), overwhelming approved affiliating with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The final vote revealed more than 70 percent of members that voted approved of the formal affiliation.

UNOCH had been an independent union for many years, but the leadership believed that a formal alliance with Teamsters would provide for a more promising future in order to sustain good wages, benefits, and working conditions. The 1,700-worker unit will receive a charter as Local 1699, affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Randy Cammack, President of Teamsters Joint Council 42, applauded the outcome.

"I am proud to welcome these professionals into our union," Cammack said. "These nurses and medical technicians provide valuable life-saving services to countless children in need of care.The Teamsters will add value to the excellent work UNOCH representatives have done for so many year."

"This was a clear choice that our members made to reaffirm their commitment to the mission of Children's Hospital, while voicing their need for a better future for themselves and their families," said Katie Langenstrass, RN, and UNOCH's Executive Director.

The vote to affiliate with the Teamsters means more than 1,700 nurses and medical technicians will become members of a 1.4 million member international union.

"I'd like to welcome our new brothers and sisters from UNOCH," said Michael Filler, Director of the Teamsters Public Service Division. "The vote by Rady nurses and medical technicians is reflective of our union's growing experience in the medical/health care fields, where we represent over 38,000 employees in 32 states."

"The Teamsters have the resources, expertise and clout to negotiate the strongest contracts possible in the health care professions. This vote shows that Rady Children's Hospital employees understand this and want Teamster power at the bargaining table," said Jim Hoffa, Teamsters General President. "We have been successful representing health care employees across the country, including those employed in cities, towns, counties and public universities, such as the University of California system and San Bernardino County."

Teamsters Joint Council 42 is the parent body of 22 Teamster local unions in Southern California and other areas of the West, with more than 200,000 working Teamsters and retirees.

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Visit www.teamster.org for more information. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and "like" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters.

Contact:

Randy Korgan (951) 906-1508

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SOURCE International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Related Links

http://www.teamster.org


BELOIT, Wis., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mark J. Gliebe, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Regal Beloit Corporation (NYSE: RBC), announced that the Board of Directors, at its regular quarterly meeting held on April 25, 2016, declared a dividend of $0.24 per share. The dividend is payable on July 15, 2016, to shareholders of record at the close of business on July 1, 2016. This represents the 224th consecutive quarterly dividend declared by the Company and is the 11th annual increase out of the past 12 years.

Regal Beloit Corporation (NYSE: RBC) is a leading manufacturer of electric motors, electrical motion controls, power generation and power transmission products serving markets throughout the world. The company is comprised of three business segments: Commercial and Industrial Systems, Climate Solutions and Power Transmission Solutions. Regal is headquartered in Beloit, Wisconsin, and has manufacturing, sales and service facilities throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit RegalBeloit.com

SOURCE Regal Beloit Corporation

Related Links

http://www.regalbeloit.com


One of the diesel-powered 636 Kilo-class submarines in Cam Ranh Naval Base. Photo by Ha My

Vietnams Minister of National Defense Ngo Xuan Lich is in Russia on his first overseas visit since being appointed to the position earlier this month.

Russia is Vietnam's largest arms supplier. In 2009, Vietnam signed deals to buy six diesel-powered 636 Kilo-class submarines from Russia to modernize its navy. Five of them have already arrived at the Cam Ranh naval base in the central region.

In their meetings on Monday, Lich and his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu reaffirmed that the two countries are important partners and long-term friends. Many Vietnamese military officers are studying in Russia, and the latter is considering sending military personnel to study in Vietnam, the Vietnamese government said in a statement on Tuesday.

Russia considers Vietnam a strategic ally and a friendly country. Maintaining a close relationship based on trust with Vietnam is one of Russia's foreign policy priorities, Russias Ministry of Defense said on April 25.
In all four of its collegesthe College of Arts and Sciences, the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, the College of Education and the College of Business and Economicsand in fields cutting across all disciplines, Lehigh researchers are engaged in work that is impactful, powerful and groundbreaking. The university strives to foster an atmosphere in which those researchers are empowered to pursue answers to the greatest questions of our time.

Coinciding with the launch of the inaugural issue, four members of the Lehigh facultyProfessor Martin Harmer, Professor Lee Kern, Professor Naomi Rothman and Professor Damien Theveninspoke on camera about their passion for the work in a video called: "'A 24/7 Experience.'"

In it, Martin Harmer, professor of material science and engineering, says research is "a 24/7 experience. You don't close the door when you go home and then forget about it. It's always on your mind, you're always thinking about it. You're always trying to solve the problems."

Harmer and his colleagues are exploring "Uncharted Territory" in their latest project as they seek to discover and study the anti-thermal processes which appear to reverse nature by becoming slower or remaining unchanged as the temperature increases.

Adds Damien Thevenin, whose research interests include biochemistry, membrane protein biophysics and drug delivery: "Lehigh University, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Chemistry have been very helpful at supporting young investigators. We are able to build collaboration with other colleagues here, but also outside."

Most recently, Thevenin and his students have been collaborating to develop "A Focused Attack on Cancer Cells," via a unique targeting and delivery system that uses a peptide, or amino acid chain, to seek and destroy cancer cells.

Lee Kern, professor of special education whose work is "Moving Youth Toward Success"especially those experiencing severe mental health and behavioral disordersechoes the importance of collaboration in her work:

"Lehigh has been just a really great place to do research. We have schools that have collaborated with us and are interested in finding new techniques and ways to improve their practices," says Kern. "We have wonderful doctoral students who are engaged in the research. They're motivated, they're enthusiastic and they're interested in research. And, I have great colleagues. I have colleagues that support research, that understand why it's so important and that are wonderful to collaborate with."

Among the unique aspects of Lehigh is its equal emphasis on research and teaching.

Naomi Rothman, assistant professor of management, describes what Lehigh's commitment to the teacher-scholar models means to her: "What Lehigh has offered me in many ways is this ability to combine the things that I study with teaching opportunities that very much complement and progress my research."

Rothman's research focuses on the social consequences of emotions in the workplace, power, justice and negotiations, exploring emotional ambivalence and questions such as "To Lead or Not to Lead?"

Adds Harmer: "We have a research-active faculty that is involved in a very wide range of very exciting research project areas and that gets communicated to the students. I see research and education go hand-in-hand. We engage our studentsundergraduates, graduatesin research at all levels as much as we can. And I think that makes for a well-rounded university."

Finally, research, according to Harmer, takes dedication: "It's just ingrained, I think, in those of who pursue this career to never give up on trying to solve big problems."

Adds Thevenin: "Lehigh is really showing, in my opinion, progress. We are going up and it's always good to be part of something that is growing."

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SOURCE Lehigh University

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ROCKFORD, Ill., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Rock Oak Capital Partners LLC led the $1.1 million seed funding round for AkitaBox, a startup whose software automates maintenance, planning and inspections in building management.

AkitaBox is based in Madison, and is a recent graduate of the gener8tor accelerator programthe most successful startup accelerator in Wisconsin and named the 14th most successful program in the country by Seed Accelerator Rankings Project.

Rock Oak Capital Partners is the investment vehicle of Practice Velocity, a medical software and services company based in Machesney Park.

"We're excited to support another technology company that's being built from the ground up, much like the Practice Velocity urgent care software company we founded a decade ago," said David Stern, MD, CEO of Practice Velocity and Senior Partner with Rock Oak Capital Partners. "Todd and his team saw a need for more effective and efficient building management, and he figured out a way to develop software that fills the void in the market. We believe AkitaBox is going to be a big success."

Founded in August 2015, AkitaBox sells to building operators in healthcare, property management, and education. Building managers use the software to reduce manual data entry and optimize maintenance and capital planning.

"Building operators waste a large majority of their day looking for information, responding to emails or manually entering data into complicated software programs," said Todd Hoffmaster, Co-founder and CEO of AkitaBox. "AkitaBox automates these workflows, making the outdated process four times faster. This helps building managers prevent problems before they occur to ultimately save money in building operations."

Over the past six months, AkitaBox's customer base has grown to include a number of nationally recognized brands including University of Wisconsin Health and Aramark. AkitaBox will use the seed funding to fuel continued sales growth and to enhance its product offering.

"There are a lot of rooftops out there. Our mission is to fundamentally improve the way buildings we live and work in are managed," Hoffmaster said.

Rock Oak Capital Partners learned about AkitaBox from Stateline Angels, a group that provides investment capital to vetted early-stage companies with leading-edge technology in the Illinois-Wisconsin region.

About Practice Velocity

Practice Velocity provides award-winning medical software and services designed to improve efficiency, support delivery of quality care for urgent care centers, occupational medicine clinics, primary care physicians, and outpatient specialty providers. Practice Velocity has software installations in more than 1,200 clinics in all 50 states. For more information, visit www.practicevelocity.com or call 888-357-4209.

About Rock Oak Capital Partners

Rock Oak Capital Partners is a new merchant bank focusing on early-round investments in technology and healthcare. Learn more at www.rockoakcapital.net.

About AkitaBox

AkitaBox is a SaaS application for proactive building management. AkitaBox saves building owners time and money by providing information for maintenance and capital planning that reduces reactive building management. AkitaBox is a Wisconsin C-Corp headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information, email [email protected] or visit www.akitabox.com.

SOURCE Practice Velocity

Related Links

http://www.practicevelocity.com


NEW YORK, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ryan's Case for Smiles will be recognized by Mutual of America for its Ryan's Case for Smiles program during a special hometown luncheon and award presentation at The Paramour at the Wayne Hotel in Wayne on Tuesday, April 26 at 12:00 p.m.

The program was named a Merit Finalist Award recipient in Mutual of America's 2015 Community Partnership Award competition, which received entries from organizations nationwide. As one of 10 finalists in the competition, Ryan's Case for Smiles received a monetary award from Mutual of America.

Ryan's Case for Smiles was founded in 2007 by Cindy Kerr, who began making colorful pillowcases to brighten her son Ryan's hospital room as he battled cancer. The program, which is dedicated solely to helping sick children cope with the stress of their illnesses or injuries, began with a simple goal: to create and distribute whimsical pillowcases that give children an emotional boost and remind them that they are not defined by their illness.

The program has expanded to include an innovative partnership with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder experts at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, providing access to valuable web-based information and tools designed to help families understand and navigate traumatic illness. Ryan's Case for Smiles serves nearly 50,000 children and families each year and has delivered more than one million pillowcases to more than 330 children's hospitals.

"Working together to create a unique pillowcase is an empowering experience, especially for children who often feel powerless in a hospital environment," said Ms. Kerr. "Through these vital partnerships, every stitch, every yard of fabric and every pillowcase brings us closer to our goal of helping kids feel better to heal better."

About the Mutual of America Community Partnership Award

The Mutual of America Community Partnership Award annually honors the outstanding contributions that 10 nonprofit organizations, in partnership with public, private and other social sector organizations, make to society. Last year, Mutual of America celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Community Partnership Award. Since 1996, 200 partnerships from cities and towns across America have been recognized. To learn more, visit mutualofamerica.com/cpa. To watch videos of all 20 national award-winning programs, visit the official YouTube channel for the Mutual of America Foundation Community Partnership Award.

About Mutual of America

Mutual of America specializes in providing retirement products and services to organizations and their employees, as well as to individuals. Since 1945, Mutual of America has remained committed to offering plan sponsors, plan participants and individuals carefully selected, quality products and services at a competitive price and the personal attention they need to help build and preserve assets for a financially secure future. For more information, visit mutualofamerica.com .

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SOURCE Mutual of America

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CINCINNATI, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The E.W. Scripps Company (NYSE: SSP) is taking bold steps in its local markets to differentiate its political coverage from the competition. Scripps, in each of its TV news markets across the country, is committing 100 minutes of political coverage each week, in the 45 days leading up to Election Day. Leading the national coverage is Mike Sacks, the new political correspondent based at the Scripps News Washington Bureau in Washington, D.C., effective immediately.

Sacks is fresh from Capitol Hill where he covered Congress for the National Law Journal/Legal Times. From 2012-2014 he was one of the founding host of HuffPost Live. He interviewed elected officials, judges, authors, CEOs and celebrities. Also for The Huffington Post he covered the Supreme Court during a pivotal time when the justices ruled on issues ranging from the Affordable Care Act and affirmative action to voting rights and same-sex marriage. A member of the D.C. and Pennsylvania bars, Sacks holds a Juris Doctor from Georgetown Law and a Bachelor of Arts from Duke University.

"Mike is well-known and well-respected as a political journalist," said Sean McLaughlin, vice president of news for Scripps. "He will track down the stories that matter most to our local markets. He has deep knowledge of the national political scene and will follow the national races closely. Mike also is a sensitive journalist who will provide context and impact for our audiences all across the country."

Sacks will report for The Now, a Scripps original program produced locally in 11 markets. His stories also will appear in other Scripps markets and across online and mobile platforms. As part of the 100 minutes of political coverage, Scripps will continue its partnership with PolitiFact focusing on accuracy of claims and ads in both presidential and U.S. Senate races. Scripps coverage also includes digital segments inviting audience engagement:

"You ask the questions"  on TV station Facebook page the public can ask questions of candidates.

The "Hot 5 Issues" series will cover how the local vote will impact the top issues in each of the Scripps markets.

"The Battlegrounds"  a series of stories highlighting the biggest issues on Main Street in key battleground states.

Mobile audiences will have access to all of the coverage including candidate interviews and profiles.

Coverage will include live debates and town hall meetings in many markets.

Scripps has an impressive footprint in key battleground states. There are eight Scripps stations in the pivotal states of Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and Colorado. Political attention is high in these states and Scripps intends to maximize political advertising opportunities as well as be the market leader for political coverage.

About Scripps



The E.W. Scripps Company (NYSE: SSP) serves audiences and businesses through a growing portfolio of television, radio and digital media brands. Scripps is one of the nation's largest independent TV station owners, with 33 television stations in 24 markets and a reach of nearly one in five U.S. households. It also owns 34 radio stations in eight markets. Scripps also runs an expanding collection of local and national digital journalism and information businesses, including multi-platform satire and humor brand Cracked, podcast industry leader Midroll Media and over-the-top video news service Newsy. Scripps also produces television shows including "THE LIST" and "The Now," runs an award-winning investigative reporting newsroom in Washington, D.C., and serves as the long-time steward of the nation's largest, most successful and longest-running educational program, the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Founded in 1878, Scripps has held for decades to the motto, "Give light and the people will find their own way."

SOURCE The E.W. Scripps Company
CINCINNATI, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Joel Davis is the new vice president and general manager for KGTV 10News, the ABC affiliate in San Diego, effective immediately.

For the past seven years, Davis has been a leader at the station owned by The E.W. Scripps Company (NYSE: SSP). He arrived in 2009 as news director for 10News and was promoted to station manager in 2014. As news director, he restructured the news team, leading to increased viewership, a more engaged digital audience and an impressive collection of Emmy awards.

Davis embraced that same drive and determination when promoted to station manager at KGTV in 2014. In his leadership of all departments, he concentrated on achieving local news dominance and revenue growth. In the February ratings book, KGTV was the only station in the market to finish #1 or #2 in every newscast among the prized adult 25-54 audience. For the past few months, in addition to his station manager role at KGTV, he served as interim GM at KERO, the Scripps station in Bakersfield, California.

"Joel is an award-winning journeyman in the news industry," said Brian Lawlor, senior vice president of Scripps broadcast division. "He has spent his career traveling much of the country learning this business from both the content and the sales side. He personifies the Scripps mission with his concentration on journalistic excellence and his creative solutions for supporting businesses in the San Diego area. We have seen him flourish in each new professional opportunity, and I believe that will continue for him as leader at KGTV."

Before KGTV, Davis was a managing editor at WFTV in Orlando, Florida. In that top-20 market he coordinated daily news coverage including investigations. Other newsroom experiences included news director at KFSN in Fresno, California, from 2001-2006, and news director at KBAK in Bakersfield, California.

He has a long list of journalism awards including 15 regional Emmy awards for best newscast at KGTV.

Davis has a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and mass communication from Iowa State University.

About Scripps



The E.W. Scripps Company (NYSE: SSP) serves audiences and businesses through a growing portfolio of television, radio and digital media brands. Scripps is one of the nation's largest independent TV station owners, with 33 television stations in 24 markets and a reach of nearly one in five U.S. households. It also owns 34 radio stations in eight markets. Scripps also runs an expanding collection of local and national digital journalism and information businesses, including multi-platform satire and humor brand Cracked, podcast industry leader Midroll Media and over-the-top video news service Newsy. Scripps also produces television shows including "THE LIST" and "The Now," runs an award-winning investigative reporting newsroom in Washington, D.C., and serves as the long-time steward of the nation's largest, most successful and longest-running educational program, the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Founded in 1878, Scripps has held for decades to the motto, "Give light and the people will find their own way."

SOURCE The E.W. Scripps Company

Related Links

http://www.scripps.com


EAST STROUDSBURG, Pa., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Secretary of Education Pedro A. Rivera facilitated the final It's On Us PA roundtable at the East Stroudsburg School District Administration Building today, engaging with district administrators, teachers, and students who highlighted the district's ongoing efforts to promote awareness about and prevent sexual assault.

"In the past many of the discussions about sexual assault awareness and prevention have been geared toward college and university communities," Rivera said. "It's On Us PA has been expanding those discussions to the K to 12 community since the campaign's inception, to empower students to recognize what safe and healthy relationships look like and the role they can play in changing the culture to prevent sexual violence."

The It's On Us PA campaign, launched by Governor Tom Wolf at an event in January, builds on a national initiative started by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in 2014 to bring awareness to and prevent sexual assault.

In Pennsylvania, the goals are to:

Improve awareness, prevention, reporting, and response systems in schools, colleges and universities to better serve all students.

Remove/reduce barriers that prevent survivors from reporting and/or accessing vital resources by creating a more consistent, empowering reporting process for student survivors of sexual violence.

Demonstrate significant, proactive, and sustainable leadership by challenging Pennsylvania's education leaders as well as students, teachers, faculty, staff, families, and communities to pledge to foster a safe and respectful campus culture.

The East Stroudsburg event was the first of the campaign to be held at a Pennsylvania school district; earlier roundtables had been hosted by community colleges, and state and state-related universities. Students at East Stroudsburg High School South have been involved in educating their classmates about the topic of sexual assault, and the event highlighted the ongoing initiatives at the school.

"Governor Wolf's It's On Us PA initiative is an important step in drawing attention to the issue especially in our K to 12 schools," said Sharon Laverdure, East Stroudsburg School District superintendent. "Educating students about their role in preventing sexual violence is critical."

"The students who attended today's event have been engaged in and leading the discussion around sexual assault in their school," Trish Tiernan, English and gender studies teacher at East Stroudsburg High School South, said. "We are so proud of their efforts and of how the entire community has supported these students in bringing awareness to this important issue."

The It's On Us PA campaign is a partnership between several state agencies and organizations including Governor Tom Wolf's Office, the Departments of Education and Health, The Office of the State Physician General, the Pennsylvania Commission for Women, and others.

Rivera said the Wolf Administration and the Department of Education will continue to engage stakeholders from across the commonwealth to develop state-level policy recommendations to address the pressing issue of sexual assault in Pennsylvania schools and postsecondary institutions. PDE is working develop and share resources with the state's secondary and postsecondary institutions that will help inform policy, research, and practice.

MEDIA CONTACT: Nicole Reigelman, 717-783-9802.

SOURCE Pennsylvania Department of Education

Related Links

http://www.state.pa.us


tado fills a major hole in the market where Nest and other whole home thermostat solutions fall short, offering smart climate control for the millions of people with remote-controlled heating and cooling units. The tado Smart Thermostat and Smart AC Control products bring these heating and AC systems online, turning any smartphone into a geo-aware remote control. tado automatically detects a user's proximity to their residence and adjusts the temperature accordingly  so it's comfortable when you get there, but conserves energy by 30-40 percent when you're away. Integration with local weather forecasts and adapting algorithms can add to the savings and convenience. Users can also adjust the temperature using their phone from any location inside or outside the home.

"It's expected that a whopping 32 million smart thermostats will have been installed worldwide by 2020, and there's no reason why those without central heating or AC should be left out in the cold. The fact is, millions of window, portable, and wall units use infrared remote controls that just don't work with Nest and others like it," said Christian Deilmann, Co-Founder and CEO of tado. The new round of financing will be instrumental in fueling tado's rapid expansion in the US market."

"tado has impressed us with their proven historical growth as well as their service oriented strategy and INVEN CAPITAL will support their further international expansion," said Petr Mikovec, Managing Director of INVEN CAPITAL.

tado is carried by a number of retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy and Home Depot. In addition to growing its retail sales channel, tado is building up additional resources to integrate with all major connected home platforms such as AT&T Digital Life, and many more. The clear goal is to lead the intelligent climate control sector across the globe and to be an integral part of any connected home.

Images

High-resolution images are available here: https://www.tado.com/us/press https://www.tado.com/gb/press

About tado Inc:

tado, a market leader in intelligent home climate control solutions, was founded in 2011. With its Smart AC Control and Smart Thermostat, tado revolutionizes the way energy is consumed at home. Through the use of a geo-aware app, tado automatically adjusts the temperature based on the residents' locations, enabling households to save significantly on energy costs while reaching a higher level of comfort. tado operates in 12 European countries, in the U.S. and in Singapore. www.tado.com

Sources:

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SOURCE tado

Related Links

http://www.tado.com


SAN MATEO, Calif., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Apttus, the category-defining Quote-to-Cash solution provider, today announced the participation of its customer Spark Digital in an upcoming Connected Leaders webinar, scheduled for 4/28 at 11am PT.

In this webinar, Spark Digital will discuss how their use of Apttus CPQ with Salesforce is helping to drive sales transformation in an increasingly competitive IT and telco market. Benefits of this solution include:

Cutting down complex proposal time from five weeks to two days.

Reducing simple proposals from two days to a single hour.

Increasing sales by fifteen percent, year over year

Utilizing a smaller sales team while increasing overall sales

Transformed the Spark Digital user experience and creating scalable, consistent customer relationships.

Learn more about the unique advantages Apttus provides to telecommunications organizations here. Apttus is a sponsor at the upcoming TM Forum Live (May 9-12), where it will showcase capabilities of the Apttus Intelligent Cloud throughout this industry.

"We needed to find a way to build relationships with thousands of customers, without the need for face-to-face contact. Success in our field demands in-depth, dedicated solutions that fit the exact needs of telco," said Mark Redgrave, Head of Marketing at Spark Digital. "Utilizing Apttus CPQ, we have transformed the way our sales teams generate proposals and quotes, completely transforming the customer experience for the better."

"Apttus solutions are built to facilitate the growth and long-term success of customers in any industry, and we're extremely proud to work with a telecommunications leader like Spark Digital," said Kamal Ahluwalia, CRO at Apttus. "We've spent a decade working with telco clients, developing the intricate, complex solutions that their industry requires. Join this webinar to see for yourself the value and utility that Quote-to-Cash can bring to every organization."

Apttus, as the category-defining provider of Quote-to-Cash solutions, continues to drive the industry forward. Information on recent product updates and many more can be found at Apttus.com . The Connected Leaders webinar can be found here.

About Spark Digital

Spark Digital is a proud member of the Spark New Zealand family. Our solutions for business, enterprise and government customers help them to meet the demands of increasingly connected customers. Spark Digital's core services include cloud, collaboration, managed services, mobility, network, and security. www.sparkdigital.co.nz

About Apttus

Apttus, the category-defining Quote-to-Cash software company, drives the vital business process between the buyer's interest in a purchase and the realization of revenue. Utilizing a patented combination of SaaS-based applications, the Apttus Intelligent Cloud maximizes the entire revenue operation by driving behavior and providing prescriptive data to company decision-makers. Apttus offers enhanced Configure Price Quote (CPQ), E-Commerce, Contract Management, Renewals and Revenue Management solutions on the world's most trusted cloud platforms, including Salesforce and Microsoft Azure. Apttus is based in San Mateo, California, with additional offices located across the globe. For more information visit: apttus.com.

Press Contact: Alex Cohen

[email protected]

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SOURCE Apttus

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AUSTIN, Texas, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- SparkCognition, the world's first Cognitive Security Analytics company, today announced that it has closed a $6M oversubscribed Series B funding round adding new investors CME Ventures, the venture capital arm of CME Group, and Verizon Ventures with participation from existing investors The Entrepreneurs' Fund (TEF) and Alameda Ventures. SparkCognition will use the funding to fuel its rapid growth as the company continues to gain major traction in the IoT and cyber security verticals.

"We are already well on our way to an AI-powered Industrial IoT Revolution  where cognitive systems will truly augment human capabilities, but at machine speed and big data scale," said Amir Husain, Founder and CEO of SparkCognition. "Our collaboration with CME Ventures and Verizon Ventures further validate the work we are doing at SparkCognition and speak to the industry needs we are addressing within the Industrial IoT and cyber security markets."

SparkCognition has developed cutting-edge machine learning technology that model physical and virtual assets, continuously learn from data, and derive intelligent insights to secure and protect assets round the clock. In just under two years of launching its solution, the company has acquired dozens of major clients, including multiple Fortune 500 and Fortune 1,000 organizations. SparkCognition was awarded IBM's InnovateApp 2014, has been named a Gartner Cool Vendor and Austin's Hottest Start Up by SXSW in 2015 and the winner of Nokia's Global Open Innovation competition. The company was also selected as one of the top companies enabling the safety and security of the Industrial Internet by CIO Review.

"We are excited to have CME Ventures and Verizon Ventures joining as strategic investors," said Manoj Saxena, Chairman of the Board of SparkCognition and Former General Manager of IBM Watson. "The executive team at SparkCognition has done a remarkable job of acquiring an impressive list of clients, bringing on the best and the brightest, producing cutting edge IP, growing revenue, and building strong industry partnerships."

"CME Ventures is pleased to welcome SparkCognition as its latest investment given the potential for its technology to impact the markets of the future," said Rumi Morales, Executive Director, CME Ventures.

SparkCognition's technology is capable of harnessing real time infrastructure data and learning from it continuously, allowing for more accurate risk mitigation and prevention policies to intervene and avert disasters. The company's cybersecurity centered solution analyses structured and unstructured data and natural language sources to identify potential attacks in the IoT environment. The uniqueness of the cognitive platform is resonated by the fact that it can continuously learn from data and derive automated insights to thwart any emerging issue.

"With the emergence of connected devices, cyber security becomes extremely important and solutions that can analyze structured and unstructured security data is needed," said Vijay Doradla, director at Verizon Ventures. "The uniqueness of SparkCognition's cognitive platform is clear. We look forward to working with this innovative group as their powerful technology propels IoT and cyber security forward."

About SparkCognition

SparkCognition, Inc. is the world's first Cognitive Security Analytics company based in Austin, Texas. The company is successfully building and deploying a Cognitive, data-driven Analytics platform for Clouds, Devices and the Internet of Things industrial and security markets by applying patent-pending algorithms that deliver out of-band, symptom-sensitive analytics, insights, and security. SparkCognition was named the 2015 Hottest Start Up in Austin by SXSW and the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, was the only US-based company to win Nokia's 2015 Open Innovation Challenge, was a 2015 Gartner Cool Vendor, and is a 2016 Edison Award Winner. SparkCognition's Founder and CEO, Amir Husain, is a highly awarded serial entrepreneur and prolific inventor with nearly 50 patents and applications to his name. Amir has been named the top technology entrepreneur in Austin by the Austin Business Journal, is the 2016 Austin Under 40 Award Winner for Technology and Science, and serves as an advisor to the IBM Watson Group and the University of Texas Computer Science Department. For more information on the company, its technology and team, please visit http://www.sparkcognition.com.

About CME Ventures

As an industry leader, CME Group recognizes the need to foster innovation  both within and outside of our company. With that in mind, CME Ventures LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CME Group, Inc., makes minority stake investments in early stage technology companies whose innovative products and services may impact CME Group's business in the longer term.

CME Ventures seeks companies with technologies that could impact platforms and systems, enhance user experience, or provide new products and services in the financial ecosystem of the future.

About VerizonVentures

Combining smart capital with access to Verizon's vast ecosystem and strategic roadmap, Verizon Ventures delivers entrepreneurs smart money and targeted resources. From collaboration to commercialization, Verizon Ventures is a valuable bridge connecting innovators with pathways that advance their businesses.

Media Contact:

Nicolia L. Wiles

PRIME|PR

O: 512.477.7373

M: 512.698.7373

[email protected]

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE SparkCognition

Related Links

http://www.sparkcognition.com


The governments National Financial Supervisory Commission (NFSC), which oversees financial and monetary policies, will develop a realiable database on the financial market and better monitor capital flows between credit institutions, securities companies and insurance businesses, said Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue on Monday.

The Deputy Prime Minister asked the NFSC to work with the Ministry of Investment and Planning to advise the government on developing policies and creating measures aimed at boosting economic reforms between 2016 and 2020, maintaining economic growth in the long term and stabilizing the national financial system, according to a statement on the government's website.

The NFSC will also cooperate with the Ministry of Finance and the State Bank of Vietnam to keep public debts under control, restructure state-owned enterprises (SOEs), clear non-performing loans at credit institutions and help the Vietnam Asset Management Company offload bad debts. In addition, the governments financial supervisory arm will play a larger part in issuing government-guaranteed bonds in line with momentary policy.

Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue at the meeting on Monday. Photo by Nhat Bac/ VGP

Vietnam plans a massive market overhaul by restructuring the banking sector, securities market and insurance businesses, said the deputy prime minister.

Hue also highlighted the crucial role that the NFSC plays in helping the Prime Minister to introduce rules and regulations designed to monitor the financial market.

He added that the NFSC is responsible for putting forward proposals relating to risk management so that the government can address uncertainties in the financial market and macro-economy.

According to the deputy prime minister, the NFSC will coordinate its activities with related ministries and government agencies to develop a realiable database on the financial market which is sharable among financial monitoring agencies, and be in charge of drafting regulation amendments to tackle possible violations in the banking, securities and insurance industries.

"The NFSC needs to strengthen its ability to analyze and make macroeconomic forecasts and perform as a proactive advisor to the Prime Minister on macroeconomic policies so that [Vietnam] will not be caught off guard by any unfavorable situations," said Deputy Prime Minister Hue.
SILICON VALLEY, Calif., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Stand4Lyme Foundation has launched a groundbreaking, collaborative Lyme research platform to accelerate a cure for Lyme disease partnering with the Stanford School of Medicine's Stanford Lyme Disease Working Group (SLWG), which includes collaboration at other leading institutions such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Columbia. Leveraging Stanford's critical assets fills major gaps in Lyme research and holds great potential to develop a cure, "Making Lyme History."

Stand4Lyme's Catalyst 4 The Cure concert

"Today we do not have accurate diagnostics to assist physicians in diagnosing Lyme disease or screen donated blood for our blood banks, nor do we have therapies that cure all stages of Lyme. We now have an unprecedented opportunity joining forces with brilliant minds who share our urgency to accelerate a reliable diagnostic and a cure for the millions who remain debilitated. However, it requires the private sector to take a STAND and fund these initiatives."

- Sherry Cagan - Stand4Lyme Foundation Founder and President

For the first time, Stand4Lyme's "Lyme in the 21st Century," video has brought together ten of the world's top collaborating scientists such as Dr. Irving Weissman discussing their scientific insights on Lyme disease and the urgency to act. These interviews may shed light on the "Lyme and Tick Borne Disease, Prevention, Education, and Research ACT."

While reintroducing bill S.1503, Senator Blumenthal states during his speech to the US Congress on April 4th, "The cases of Lyme disease are exploding in numbers and the severity impacts our economy as well as the quality of life for Americans. It affects people's ability to perform their jobs, children's ability to go to school, and families' ability to function normally. The disease, if undetected and untreated, can cause the most severe kinds of pain and disability," (speech Senator Blumenth#252F0AD)

Stand4Lyme's Catalyst 4 The Cure concert, to be held at a Silicon Valley private estate on May 22nd, offers a rare opportunity to meet and discuss the issues of Lyme with some of these world experts. Featuring KC and the Sunshine Band live in concert, along with celebrity Honorary Chairs: Yolanda Hadid, Chynna Phillips and Billy Baldwin benefiting the work of the SLWG.

"We are honored to have the support of the Stand4Lyme Foundation. Its founders Sherry and Laird Cagan have been steady supporters of Stanford University and have been instrumental in helping advance national research for Lyme disease. In their personal quest for a curative treatment and as catalysts for the creation of the Stanford Lyme Working Group, they inspire us to accelerate medical advancements to make Lyme disease history."

- Mark Davis, PhD and Laura Roberts, MD, MA, Co-Directors, Stanford Lyme Disease Working Group

Lyme disease is the fastest growing infectious disease in the US, with more than 300,000 new cases reported each year (six times more than HIV). This public health epidemic; costing the US health care system billions annually is significantly underfunded and the public remains largely unaware. Lyme disease is a bacteria spread by ticks. Patients are often misdiagnosed with other diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, ALS, autism and Alzheimer's. If not treated promptly, this bacterium similar to syphilis may progress to a debilitating stage, becoming difficult or impossible to cure. It can be potentially fatal.

Stand4Lyme Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit based in Silicon Valley, founded by Sherry and Laird Cagan, who's catalyst to their commitment draws from Sherry's personal near death experience with Lyme disease. Stand4Lyme Foundation joins forces with Stanford scientists paving a medical path to wellness for patients at all stages of the disease, ending prolonged suffering of millions, "Making Lyme History."

Website: http://www.stand4lyme.org

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SOURCE Stand4Lyme Foundation

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ANDORRA, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ramon and Higini Cierco, the majority shareholders of Banca Privadad'Andorra ("BPA") will take all necessary and appropriate actions against JC Flowers & Co. and the Andorran Government to block the illegal expropriation of BPA.

JC Flowers & Co.'s bid for BPA is another dispiriting chapter in a process shrouded in secrecy and devoid of accountability, due process, and the rule of law. The Ciercos cannot understand why a U.S private equity fund with i) a questionable investment track record, ii) a history of rejection by the Spanish government in its attempts to acquire a financial institution in Spain and iii) in poor financial condition is the chosen solution to a problem of Andorra's own making.1 J. Christopher Flowers, the CEO of the company, once described their business model as "lowlife grave dancers."2 JC Flowers & Co. currently face their own financial restructuring problems, legal claims, and reputational harm as its investors learn that their funds are "exposed to several faltered deals, including MF Global".3 JC Flowers & Co. is not a serious or responsible option to resolve this debacle that has been mismanaged by the Andorran Government from the beginning until today.

With regards to the selection of JC Flowers, the Chairman of BPA's Andorran administrator, stated, "The selected offer achieves every single objective pursued by the Resolution Plan for Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA)." This is a ludicrous continuation of Andorra's attempt to avoid accountability for the mismanagement of this process and the squandering of value and loss of Andorran jobs. There can be little doubt that JC Flowers & Co. is acquiring BPA assets at a bargain basement price and is likely to terminate employees, strip assets, reduce customer service and contribute nothing to the Andorran economy or financial sector. It is the Ciercos who have continually attempted to pursue a constructive dialogue that preserves value, jobs, and customer service while maximizing the future prospects of the Andorran financial sector. All of the Ciercos' attempts at constructive dialogue for the benefit of all stakeholders have been thwarted by the Andorran authorities. Although the fine print of the deal has not been made public, it appears that JC Flowers will only put up a tiny amount, 7.5 million euros at closing, and any future payments are highly contingent. Why would Andorra shut down a bank worth in excess of 500 million euros and then sell it at a knock down price without any assurances that this deal will be good for the Andorran financial sector, Andorran jobs or the reputation of Andorra? This is simply a continuation of the cover-up by the Andorran authorities of their own incompetence.

In March 2015, the United States Department of the Treasury designated BPA an "institution of primary money laundering concern" citing at its basis information that had been disclosed properly to authorities by the bank more than a year before. The Andorran government immediately fell into line with the United States and put BPA into administration and launched a massive internal audit of BPA, from which no findings have been made public. In May 2015, a US Embassy official admitted in public that the action against BPA was in fact rooted in the US government's dissatisfaction with Andorran financial regulators and the Andorran financial system as a whole.

It is remarkable that in this day and age, two contemporary governments, that of the United States and that of a European state, Andorra, can first have a fight about bank regulation, the United States then "uses the hammer" against a single bank, BPA, in order to teach a recalcitrant government a lesson, and then these two governments can make up by Andorra appeasing its more powerful partner, creating a non-transparent structure to expropriate the original shareholders, prevent either government from being held accountable, and transferring the supposed "new bank" consisting of the expropriated assets to some new purchaser through a secret process. Since the outset of this, all the Ciercos have wanted the best for BPA clients, its employees and Andorra. They have simply asked for an open dialogue, a transparent process, and an understanding of why their bank was stolen from them. Instead, they have been faced with stonewalling and threats that one would expect from a totalitarian state.

After fourteen months, the Government of Andorra has neither charged the Ciercos with any wrongdoing nor disclosed any specific information to support their ousting of the Ciercos from BPA's Board of Directors. The Andorran regulator has never disclosed why it endorsed the expropriation of a highly solvent and successful the financial institution over a more reasonable, restructuring option to assess and eventually correct any weakness in Anti Money Laundering controls. It is now well known that, in their multi-million Euro audit of BPA, PwC has not applied the current Andorran standards applied to all the other banks. Consequently the Andorran government has breached the civil rights of BPA and, its owners, and moreover, has never allowed PwC to make public the audit with detailed information on the actual status of BPA's accounts.

The Ciercos are committed to fighting for their civil and human rights, in both the courts of the United States and Europe. What has happened here is a threat to the rule of law and the rights of all participants in the international financial system. This lawless action cannot be permitted to stand.

1 JC Flowers Said to Mull Restructuring Fund to Gain Time, Bloomberg News, 8/5/15, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-05/jc-flowers-said-to-mull-restructuring-fund-to-gain-time-cash

2 As Investors Circle Ailing Banks, Fed Sets Limits, 5/5/09, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/business/06equity.html?_r=0

3 JC Flowers Said to Hold Fund Recapitalization Talks With Coller, Bloomberg News, 2/10/16, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-10/jc-flowers-said-to-hold-fund-recapitalization-talks-with-coller

SOURCE Ramon and Higini Cierco
ATLANTA, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Atlanta Business Chronicle announced The Creative Momentum as a winner of the 2016 Pacesetter Awards. Chosen from hundreds of companies in the Atlanta area, this is the second year in a row The Creative Momentum has landed in the Top 100 of Georgia's fastest growing privately-held companies.

"We are grateful to the Atlanta Business Chronicle for recognizing us again this year," says Michael White, President of The Creative Momentum. "We have received the award back-to-back years now and continue to thrive in the Atlanta business community. We provide high-quality digital marketing solutions for every client -- from online branding to custom web design, from inbound marketing to SEO and PPC management and web application development. Consecutive wins means we are meeting client needs consistently. We could not do that without our team of senior web marketing experts and loyal clients."

The Pacesetter Awards look at companies based within the 20 counties of Metro Atlanta. Companies must be privately held and meet ambitious growth and revenue benchmarks to be considered.

The Creative Momentum has been recognized and won dozens of awards in the last 3 years. Highlights include:

More information on The Creative Momentum is at thecreativemomentum.com or call 678-648-1445.

About The Creative Momentum

The Creative Momentum is an Atlanta-based, full-service creative and digital marketing agency, specializing in custom web design and development for businesses. The Creative Momentum provides custom Web/Interactive, Inbound Marketing, SEO, Custom Graphic/Logo Design, Branding, Advertising, Media, Mobile Design and Strategic Planning to clients in high-tech B2B, B2C, consulting, security and non-profit industries. Learn more at thecreativemomentum.com or call 678-648-1445.

SOURCE The Creative Momentum

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The FruitGuys Community Fund today announced the 10 recipients of their 2016 small farm sustainability grants. More than $40,000 was awarded to farm projects that will help save bees, conserve water and energy, improve soil health, train future farmers, and feed and nurture the hungry. The FruitGuys Community Fund, a non-profit fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives, supports farms, non-profits and policies that practice and promote sustainable agriculture.

This year, The FruitGuys Community Fund received a record 110 sustainable agriculture grant applications, a 55 percent increase from 2015. The 2016 grant recipients will use the funds for projects ranging from organic cover crops and urban orchards to owl box and beehive installations. The winners include family-owned farms that produce certified organic meat and crops to farmers who donate produce to low-income and homeless individuals.

"Small sustainable farms are essential to today's changing agricultural landscape, where there is an increasing consumer demand for humanely-raised food," said Chris Mittelstaedt, Founder and Project Director of The FruitGuys Community Fund and CEO of The FruitGuys. "We are committed to supporting these farmers who are the catalysts for environmental and economic sufficiency, sustainability, food safety and food access."

The 2016 winners of The FruitGuys Community Fund Sustainable Agriculture Grants are:

Buffalo Street Farm , Detroit, MI  an urban farm that supports the City Commons CSA.

,  an urban farm that supports the City Commons CSA. Butterbee Farm , Pikesville, MD  grows flowers, edibles and herbs.

,  grows flowers, edibles and herbs. Canvas Ranch , Petaluma, CA  producers of heritage grains, fruits, vegetables, and wool.

,  producers of heritage grains, fruits, vegetables, and wool. Casa Rosa Farms , Woodland, CA  produces certified-organic, pastured, and grass-fed beef, lamb, pork, and chicken; eggs, olives and specialty fruit.

,  produces certified-organic, pastured, and grass-fed beef, lamb, pork, and chicken; eggs, olives and specialty fruit. FARM Davis , Davis, CA  grows fruit and vegetables to be turned into meals for local low income and homeless people, who can also learn to farm.

,  grows fruit and vegetables to be turned into meals for local low income and homeless people, who can also learn to farm. From The Ground Up Farms, Inc., Chico, CA  a nonprofit organization that operates 10 community garden farms located on the sites of homeless shelters, residential treatment facilities, women's shelters, youth homes and daycare facilities.

 a nonprofit organization that operates 10 community garden farms located on the sites of homeless shelters, residential treatment facilities, women's shelters, youth homes and daycare facilities. Sunnyside Farm, Dover, PA  Pasture-raised beef, pork, and Thanksgiving turkeys; eggs, heirloom vegetables and edible flowers.

 Pasture-raised beef, pork, and turkeys; eggs, heirloom vegetables and edible flowers. Troy Community Farm, Madison, WI  runs a beginning farmer-training program and produces certified organic herbs, and cut flowers.

 runs a beginning farmer-training program and produces certified organic herbs, and cut flowers. Turtle Creek Gardens, Delavan, WI  growers of certified, organic vegetables.

 growers of certified, organic vegetables. Two Boots Farm, Hampstead, MD - grows fruits and vegetables.

Please visit The FruitGuys Community Fund website for complete descriptions of the 2016 grantees and their projects. The FruitGuys Community Fund will issue its call for applicants for the 2017 grant cycle in December 2016.

About The FruitGuys Community Fund

The Community Fund evolved from The FruitGuys Farm Steward Program, which supported small farms' sustainability projects from 2008-2011 to aid small farms to remain competitive among large, corporate-run farms. The FruitGuys, is a South San Francisco-based private, family-owned and operated business that pioneered office fruit delivery.

Media Contact:

Tracy Rubin / Jill Fox

JCUTLER media group

[email protected] / [email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359567LOGO

SOURCE The FruitGuys

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http://www.fruitguyscommunityfund.org


PENDLETON, Ore., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Oregon Tourism Commission (dba Travel Oregon) is proud to announce the recipients of the 2015 Travel and Tourism Industry Achievement Awards, presented at the 2016 Governor's Conference on Tourism in Pendleton, Ore.

The annual awards recognize people and organizations across the state that go the extra mile to enhance the travel and tourism industry in Oregon. The award recipients are outstanding examples of professionals who, by virtue of their vision, perseverance and dedication, are a credit to Oregon's tourism and hospitality industry.

The state's most prized recognition is the Governor's Tourism Award . This year's award recognizes the sister park agreement between Crater Lake National Park and Wuyishan National Scenic Area (a UNESCO World Heritage Site in China). To honor their efforts in finalizing the agreement, the award was presented to Carolyn Hill, Executive Director of the Crater Lake National Park Trust and CEO of Travel Southern Oregon, and to Craig Ackerman, Superintendent of Crater Lake National Park.

"I applaud Carolyn Hill and Craig Ackerman for their efforts to further strengthen the bond between Oregon and her sister state in China, the Fujian Province," said Oregon Governor Kate Brown. "By achieving greater understanding of our respective natural environments, we cultivate mutual respect for and understanding of each other's cultures."

The 2015 Travel and Tourism Industry Achievement Awards were announced in these categories:

The Gene Leo Memorial Award was established in 1994 to honor the late Gene Leo, known for his Oregon tourism contributions as Director of the Oregon Zoo, Portland Rose Festival and the Portland Oregon Visitors Association (now Travel Portland). Gene revered Oregon's natural beauty, loved her people and enjoyed the outdoors with gusto. This award recognizes an outstanding contribution for a tourism-related activity or attraction focused on Oregon's natural beauty or outdoor recreation. The award was presented to the Willamette Riverkeeper, for its efforts to protect and restore the Willamette River. The group also provides opportunities to learn and explore the river through paddling trips and presentations from its River Discovery Education Program.

The Outstanding Oregon Tourism Volunteer Award recognizes the significant commitment by an individual or a group of individuals who exemplify the positive impact volunteers have on Oregon's travel and tourism industry. The award was presented to Marie Longfellow of Cottage Grove, for her work leading the city's graffiti rapid response team. Longfellow voluntarily assists the city in removing graffiti from covered bridges and other high-traffic locations to keep Cottage Grove beautiful.

The Oregon Heritage Tourism Award recognizes outstanding incorporation of Oregon's authentic cultural or natural history as a way to draw visitors to the state. Distinguished as America's longest running community pageant, the Happy Canyon Indian Pageant and Wild West Night Show and its 800 volunteers lauded this year's award. Volunteers recreate the history of Pendleton, beginning with the proud traditions of its first citizens, the peoples of the Cayuse, Nez Pearce and Umatilla nations. They then trace the arrival of settlers in search of a new promised land, and the coming of the cowboys who have forever left their mark on the frontier town. The pageant runs annually in conjunction with the Pendleton Round-Up.

The International Sales and Development Award recognizes excellence in the creative sales, marketing and development of Oregon as a destination in the international marketplace. The award was given to Lorna Davis, Executive Director of the Greater Newport Chamber of Commerce. An ambassador for the state, Davis helps sell Oregon to visitors across the globe through creative and collaborative efforts at international trade shows and by facilitating familiarization tours.

The Oregon Tourism Development Award recognizes creation of an innovative program, promotion, or product, utilizing best practices, sustainability, and creative problem-solving. This year's award was presented to the Redfish Rocks Community Team for their efforts in creating a Scuba fill station in Port Orford. As a result of this new infrastructure, an additional 135 miles of coastline are now easier to access for Scuba activities to take advantage of year-round diving conditions.

The Outstanding Oregon PR Initiative Award recognizes the best domestic PR program that resulted in quality earned media coverage and inspired travel to Oregon. The Jupiter Hotel earned the award for its efforts to position itself as the epicenter of Portland's artisan community by focusing on local partnerships. The hotel's #Portland blog focuses on local beer, food, music, arts and travel and its "Portland Experience" packages highlight these same destination activities.

The Outstanding Oregon Social Media Program Award recognizes the best international or domestic social media program that engages or inspires potential travel to Oregon. For the second consecutive year, the award was presented to Oregon's Mt. Hood Territory. It's "Win Bigfoot's Dream Date" two-month campaign netted 995 contest entries and 416 new email subscribers while engagements on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter swelled. The interest in Bigfoot from this short campaign has spurred integration into future marketing strategies.

The Outstanding Oregon Visitor Guide Award celebrates the best domestic or international content program that inspires potential travel to Oregon. Oregon's Mt. Hood Territory earns the award for its 2015 Travel Planner. The 36-page book was created as a trip-planning resource, but its photography, local voices and easily digestible content inspire visitors to keep the publication as a point of reference and to display it once their journey is complete.

The Oregon Outstanding Advertising Award recognizes superior advertising communication, regardless of budget size or medium. The award was presented to the Tillamook County Creamery Association for their Co-Op advertising campaign that targeted dairy lovers everywhere who believe in the power of real, honest food, and encourages these everyday people to make decisions about the company's products.

The Outstanding Oregon Website Award celebrates websites that utilize industry best practices in design, technology, strategy and content to impact travel to Oregon. The City of Seaside Visitors Bureau earned the award for www.seasideor.com. In a colorful, simple and informative format, the website allows visitors to navigate easily so they can spend less time online and more time walking the Promenade, enjoying the carousel or riding the waves where surfing conditions are known as some of the best in the Northwest.

The Outstanding Overall Oregon Marketing Program Award recognizes the best integrated domestic or international overall marketing program or campaign that attracted visitors to Oregon. The award was presented to the Central Oregon Visitors Association for its "Adventure Calls" campaign. Targeting young adults in the Bay Area and Pacific Northwest, the print, digital and social campaign connected with travelers interested in adventure, trying new things and making memories. Website sessions increased 141 percent and the California audience grew by 334 percent. Most telling of the campaign's success, occupancy rates rose by 4.9 percent.

The Oregon Tourism Leadership Award recognizes individuals who champion the value of tourism and whose leadership behind the scenes contributes significantly to the recognition and impact of Oregon's travel and tourism industry. Paving the way for the next generation to gain knowledge and a growing passion for tourism, Melissa Steinman, owner of the Kayak Shack in Waldport, earned the award. A Waldport High School teacher, Steinman runs and operates the Kayak Shack alongside her students in an effort to educate them on tour operating. She has also received a grant to fund tourism curriculum to allow students to learn more about getting jobs in coastal tourism and rural marketing.

The Oregon Tourism Commission, dba Travel Oregon, works to enhance visitors' experience by providing information, resources and trip planning tools that inspire travel and consistently convey the exceptional quality of Oregon. The commission aims to improve Oregonians' quality of life by strengthening economic impacts of the state's $10.6 billion tourism industry that employs more than 105,000 Oregonians. www.TravelOregon.com

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SOURCE Travel Oregon

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ATLANTA, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Triad Advisors, Inc. today announced that Nathan M. ("Nate") Stibbs has been promoted to the position of Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer. In this newly-created position, Stibbs will be responsible for Triad's ongoing development and execution of strategic initiatives, including advisor recruiting, branch office expansion, and advisor mergers and acquisitions. He will also oversee Triad's Registered Investment Advisor and fee-based platforms. Triad Advisors is a leading independent broker-dealer supporting independent hybrid financial advisors and registered investment advisory (RIA) firms, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services Inc. (NYSE MKT: LTS).

Stibbs, 40, joined Triad in 2001 as a marketing associate on the business development team and rose through a series of promotions to eventually become executive vice president of national business development. Prior to that position, he was senior vice president, responsible for coordinating and implementing the firm's marketing, advisor recruiting, and transition departments. Before joining Triad, he worked as a financial advisor with Legg Mason, and he has been featured in several industry publications. He has a BBA in International Business from the University of Georgia and holds the Series 6, 7, 63 and 65 securities licenses.

Jeffrey L. Rosenthal, President and CEO of Triad Advisors, said, "We are very pleased to announce Nate's new position and his advancement to increased responsibilities. I have worked closely with Nate for over a dozen years and he has been a powerful force in Triad's rapid growth and its successful emergence as one of the leaders in the hybrid RIA universe. He has been instrumental in helping to create the firm's unique culture and working with our independent financial advisors to drive the growth of their practices. We look forward to his continued contributions in bringing the firm to new levels of achievement as it builds on its strong reputation as one of the top destinations of choice for independent hybrid advisors and RIA firms across the country."

Mark Mettelman, Chairman and Co-Founder of Triad Advisors, said, "We are thrilled to promote Nate Stibbs to his new role at Triad. This promotion, which follows the succession of Jeff Rosenthal earlier this year to the position of President and CEO, marks the continuation of the firm's transition to its next generation of leadership, and its success in maintaining its leadership role and outstanding client service within the rapidly evolving financial advisory landscape."

About Triad Advisors

Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, Triad Advisors, Inc. is a national, independent broker-dealer and multi-custodial SEC-Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) that is an early pioneer and continued leader in the Hybrid RIA marketplace. The company provides a comprehensive platform of products, trading and technology systems, as well as customized wealth management solutions. Recognized as one of the most successful and fastest-growing independent broker-dealers in the industry (including being named the leading broker-dealer for Hybrid RIAs five years in a row by Investment Advisor Magazine). Triad Advisors is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services Inc. (NYSE MKT: LTS). For more information, please visit www.triad-advisors.com.

Media Contact:

Matthew Griffes / Joseph Kuo

Haven Tower Group LLC

424 652 6520 ext 103 / 424 652 6520 ext 101

[email protected] or [email protected]

SOURCE Triad Advisors, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.triad-advisors.com


CHANGZHOU, China, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Trina Solar Limited (NYSE: TSL) ("Trina Solar" or the "Company"), a global leader in photovoltaic (PV) modules, solutions and services, today announced that its State Key Laboratory of PV Science and Technology of China has set a new world record of 23.5% for a high-efficiency silicon solar cell with an Interdigitated Back Contact (IBC) structure on a large-area 156x156 mm2 n-type mono-crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafer. This new record has been independently confirmed by the Japan Electrical Safety & Environment Technology Laboratories (JET), Yokohama, Japan.

The record-breaking n-type mono-crystalline silicon solar cell was fabricated with a process that integrates the advanced Interdigitated Back Contact structure with industrial low-cost processes. The best 156x156 mm2 solar cell fabricated entirely with a screen-printed process reached a total-area efficiency of 23.5%, which breaks the previous record of 22.94% for the same type of solar cell that was also established by the Company in May, 2014. Particularly, this remarkable result has been achieved just two years after the previous announcement by Trina Solar of 24.4% efficiency for a small area (2cm x 2cm) laboratory IBC solar cell developed in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia.

Dr. Pierre Verlinden, Vice-President and Chief Scientist, who leads the development of high-performance solar cells at the State Key Laboratory of Trina Solar, said: "We are very pleased to announce the new efficiency result achieved by our scientists and researchers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a mono-crystalline silicon IBC solar cell with an area of 238.6 cm2 exhibits a total-area conversion efficiency of 23.5%."

Dr. Pierre Verlinden continued: "Interdigitated Back Contact (IBC) silicon solar cells are the most efficient silicon solar cells to date but require a complicated fabrication process. Trina Solar has been developing IBC solar cells since the establishment of its State Key Laboratory with the objective to reach record efficiencies with the lowest possible cost. From the beginning we developed a scalable technology for IBC solar cells around large-area 156mm x 156mm wafers as we believe that the wafer size is the key to manufacturing cost reduction of this efficient solar cell."

About Trina Solar Limited

Trina Solar Limited (NYSE: TSL) is a global leader in photovoltaic modules, solutions and services. Founded in 1997 as a PV system integrator, Trina Solar today drives smart energy together with installers, distributors, utilities and developers worldwide. The company's industry-leading position is based on innovation excellence, superior product quality, vertically integrated capabilities and environmental stewardship. For more information, please visit www.trinasolar.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical fact in this announcement are forward-looking statements, including but not limited to, the Company's ability to raise additional capital to finance its activities; the effectiveness, profitability and marketability of its products; the future trading of the securities of the Company; the Company's ability to operate as a public company; the period of time for which the Company's current liquidity will enable the Company to fund its operations; general economic and business conditions; demand in various markets for solar products; the volatility of the Company's operating results and financial condition; the Company's ability to attract or retain qualified senior management personnel and research and development staff; and other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections about the Company and the industry in which the Company operates. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent occurring events or circumstances, or changes in its expectations, except as may be required by law. Although the Company believes that the expectations expressed in these forward looking statements are reasonable, it cannot assure you that such expectations will turn out to be correct, and the Company cautions investors that actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results.

Trina Solar Limited Christensen IR Teresa Tan, CFO (Changzhou) Linda Bergkamp Email: [email protected] Phone: +1 480 614 3014 (US)

Email: [email protected] Yvonne Young

Investor Relations Director

Email: [email protected]



SOURCE Trina Solar Limited

Related Links

http://www.trinasolar.com


QUEBEC CITY, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - TSO 3 Inc. (TSX: TOS), an innovator in sterilization technology for medical devices in healthcare settings, will report its first quarter 2016 financial results ended March 31, 2016 via press release on Wednesday, May 4, 2016 before the market opens.

TSO 3 will also hold its Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on the same day. The meeting will be held at the Musee national des beaux-arts du Quebec in Quebec City. TSO 3 President and CEO R.M. (Ric) Rumble and CFO Glen Kayll will host the meeting, where management will also discuss its first quarter 2016 financial results and provide an operational update, followed by a question and answer period.

The meeting will be webcast live and available for replay at http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1150732&s=1&k=3DFE465AE18FD41AF931DADAA9BD8D10 and via the Investors section of the company's website at www.tso3.com. A replay of the meeting will be available on the same day through August 2, 2016.

About TSO 3

Founded in 1998, TSO 3 is committed to improving the standard of healthcare sterile reprocessing by providing breakthrough sterilization systems, related consumable supplies and accessories for heat-sensitive medical devices. TSO 3 designs products for sterile processing areas in the hospital environment that offer an advantageous replacement solution to other low-temperature sterilization processes currently used in hospitals. It also offers services related to the maintenance of sterilization equipment and compatibility testing of medical devices with such processes.

For more information about TSO 3 , visit the company's web site at www.tso3.com.

The statements in this release and oral statements made by representatives of TSO 3 relating to matters that are not historical facts (including, without limitation, those regarding the timing or outcome of TSO 3 's sales, business or operations) are forward-looking statements that involve certain risks, uncertainties and hypotheses, including, but not limited to, general business and economic conditions, the condition of the financial markets, the ability of TSO 3 to obtain financing on favourable terms and other risks and uncertainties.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities, in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

The TSX has neither approved nor disapproved the information contained herein and accepts no responsibility for it.

SOURCE TSO3 Inc.

Related Links

http://www.tso3.com


WASHINGTON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today United States Steel Corporation (NYSE: X) filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to initiate an investigation under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, against the largest Chinese steel producers and their distributors. The 337 complaint alleges illegal unfair methods of competition and seeks the exclusion of all unfairly traded Chinese steel products from the U.S. market.

The complaint alleges three causes of action: the illegal conspiracy to fix prices, the theft of trade secrets and the circumvention of trade duties by false labeling.

"We have said that we will use every tool available to fight for fair trade," said President and Chief Executive Officer Mario Longhi. "With today's filing, we continue the work we have pursued through countervailing and antidumping cases and pushing for increased enforcement of existing laws."

Section 337 provides relief in light of specific actions, the threat or effect of which is to destroy or substantially injure a domestic industry, prevent the establishment of such an industry, or restrain or monopolize trade and commerce in the U.S. The actions covered under Section 337 include the infringement of intellectual property rights (patents and copyrights) as well as unfair methods of competition and unfair acts in the importation and sale of products in the U. S. The ITC remedy is the exclusion of the unfairly traded products from the U.S. market.

The International Trade Commission has up to 30 days to evaluate the petition for relief and decide whether to initiate the case. If the matter proceeds, an administrative law judge is then assigned to the case. During the evidentiary discovery process, the parties may seek the issuance of nationwide subpoenas and orders for the production of relevant documents.

SOURCE United States Steel Corporation

Related Links

http://www.ussteel.com


LOUISVILLE, Ky., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Approximately eighty members of the Independent Pilots Association (UPS pilots) working in Cologne, Germany will honor the picket lines of ver.di at the Cologne Bonn airport. The strike is scheduled to last 24 hours beginning at midnight local Germany time tonight.

"Ver.di, which represents the ground staff at the Cologne Bonn airport, has asked the IPA to withhold our services as pilots during their 24 hour strike," said IPA President, Captain Robert Travis. "We will honor their strike and not cross the ver.di picket lines."

It is estimated that the ver.di strike will impact about sixty UPS flights into and out of the Cologne Bonn airport.

"Last week we opened our strike center in anticipation of a potential strike of UPS by our pilots. Now, less than a week later, we are operating the strike center in support of our German co-workers," said Travis. "We will demonstrate our solidarity with our co-workers in Germany, and we are confident they will support us, should that time come."

SOURCE Independent Pilots Association

Related Links

http://www.ipapilot.org


After spending up to $12,000 for so-called trips to Jeju Island, 59 Vietnamese tourists tried to avoid authorities and search for work in South Korea.

Police in Hanoi recently brought charges against Nguyen Thi Thanh Tam, 38, Nguyen Trong Tuong, 34, and Le Thi Tuyet Hanh, 35, for arranging for Vietnamese people to live illegally in South Korea.

On January 1, 155 guests boarded an airplane in Hanoi headed for Jeju Island. After gaining entry to South Korea, 59 of them fled. Since then, 34 have been identified by South Korean authorities and deported.

Police said that 33 admitted to paying from $8,500 to $12,000 to be taken to Jeju posing as visitors with a guarantee they would be helped to find jobs there.

After an initial investigation, police found that Tam, Huong and Hanh were tied up in the case. The scale of the investigation is being expanded.
CHESAPEAKE, Va., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Navy's Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) has awarded Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) up to $104 million to conduct operations and maintenance for the Relocatable Over-the-Horizon Radar (ROTHR) program. ROTHR is a long-range surveillance radar used by the U.S. government in counter narco-terrorism operations. Raytheon designed and built ROTHR and will provide operations support, modernization and maintenance of the radar system.

"Raytheon and ROTHR technology help to make the world a safer place," said Dave Wajsgras, president of Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services (IIS). "Our team will work closely with the U.S. Navy's Forces Surveillance Support Center and the Joint Interagency Task Force South, tracking hundreds of illegal activities every year that threaten to enter our borders."

ROTHR is a high-frequency radar system originally designed and built to provide long-range detection and tracking of aircraft and ships. Each radar provides more than 2.5 million square miles of coverage area, resulting in extremely low operational costs.

"Raytheon will provide critical mission support to ROTHR, collecting vital detection and tracking data for operational commanders," said Todd Probert, vice president of Mission Support and Modernization at Raytheon IIS. "This new contract demonstrates trust in Raytheon to bring innovative, no-fail sustainment, modernization and operations support to the critical mission of securing our borders."

ROTHR is the primary long-range air detection system for the Join Interagency Task Force South, or JIATF-S, which coordinates the detection and interdiction of illicit trafficking and other narco-terrorist threats to U.S. national security. In just one interdiction, ROTHR operations led directly to the seizure of 4.5 metric tons of cocaine, valued at approximately $90 million. The new contract covers operations and maintenance at ROTHR's six locations in Puerto Rico, Texas and Virginia.

About Raytheon

Raytheon Company, with 2015 sales of $23 billion and 61,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 94 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, C5I products and services, sensing, effects, and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Mass. Visit us at www.raytheon.com and follow us on Twitter @Raytheon.

Media Contact

Raytheon

Rachael Duffy

571-250-1517

[email protected]

SOURCE Raytheon Company

Related Links

http://www.raytheon.com


SAO PAULO, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S.J.  Acucar e Alcool S.A. (the " Company ") announced today that it has extended and amended its previously announced private offer to exchange (the " Exchange Offer ") any and all of its outstanding 9.875% Senior Notes due 2019 (the " Existing Notes ") and its concurrent solicitation of consents (the " Consent Solicitation ") to certain proposed amendments with respect to the indenture dated as of November 9, 2012, by and among the Company, the guarantor party thereto and The Bank of New York Mellon, as trustee, and The Bank of New York Mellon (Ireland) Limited, as Irish paying agent, pursuant to which the Existing Notes were issued (the " Existing Notes Indenture ").

Under the amended terms of the transaction, in addition to the Exchange Offer and the Consent Solicitation, the Company is soliciting (the " Plan Approval Solicitation " and, together with the Exchange Offer and the Consent Solicitation, the " Offer ") approvals with respect to an extrajudicial restructuring plan (the " Plan ") pursuant to a potential recuperacao extrajudicial proceeding under the applicable provisions of Brazilian Federal Law No. 11.101/05, which subsequently may be submitted to a U.S. bankruptcy court for recognition pursuant to Chapter 15 of Title 11 of the United States Code. In connection therewith, the Consent Solicitation now includes a limited waiver of the bankruptcy event of default provision in the Existing Notes Indenture, solely to permit the Company to commence and continue the applicable proceedings before the applicable bankruptcy courts for confirmation and implementation of the Plan by no later than October 31, 2016.

If holders representing more than 90% of the aggregate principal amount of the Existing Notes participate in the Exchange Offer and the Exchange Offer is consummated, Eligible Holders will now be eligible to receive the exchange consideration of U.S.$750.00 in aggregate principal amount of newly issued 9.875%/12.00% Senior Secured PIK Toggle Notes due 2021 (the " New Notes ") for each U.S.$1,000 in aggregate principal amount of Existing Notes validly tendered on or prior to the Expiration Date (as defined below) and accepted for exchange. In addition, any accrued and unpaid interest on the Existing Notes accepted for exchange from the last date on which interest has been paid on the Existing Notes up to but excluding the settlement date will be added to the principal amount of the New Notes.

If holders representing more than 60% but less than 90% of the aggregate principal amount of the Existing Notes participate in the Exchange Offer, the Company receives certain corporate approvals and the bankruptcy courts approve the Plan, Eligible Holders, subject to certain conditions, will now be eligible to receive the consideration of U.S.$700.00 in aggregate principal amount of New Notes for each U.S.$1,000 in aggregate principal amount of Existing Notes validly tendered on or prior to the Expiration Date. In this case, holders of the Existing Notes will only receive the New Notes after the Plan is approved by the bankruptcy courts.

The Offer will now expire at 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on May 6, 2016, unless further extended by the Company (such time and date, as the same may be extended, the " Expiration Date "). The Offer was previously scheduled to expire at 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on May 2, 2016. As of 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on April 25, 2016, Eligible Holders had validly tendered and delivered consents with respect to U.S.$59,453,000 in aggregate principal amount of the Existing Notes.

The complete amended and restated terms and conditions of the Company's offer to Eligible Holders, including amendments to the terms of the New Notes, are set forth in the Company's amended and restated exchange offer memorandum, consent solicitation statement and statement soliciting approval of an extrajudicial restructuring plan, dated April 25, 2016 (the " Amended and Restated Exchange Offering Memorandum ").

The Offer is being made, and the New Notes are being offered and will be issued, only (a) in the United States to holders of Existing Notes who are "qualified institutional buyers" (as defined in Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the " Securities Act ")) and (b) outside the United States to holders of Existing Notes who are persons other than U.S. persons in reliance upon Regulation S under the Securities Act. The holders of Existing Notes who have certified to the Company that they are eligible to participate in the Offer pursuant to at least one of the foregoing conditions are referred to as " Eligible Holders ."

The Offer and the New Notes have not been, and will not be, registered with the Brazilian Comissao de Valores Mobiliarios. The Offer and the New Notes are not offered or sold in Brazil, except in circumstances that do not constitute a public offering or unauthorized distribution under Brazilian laws and regulations.

The New Notes have not been registered under the Securities Act or any state securities laws. Accordingly, the New Notes will be subject to restrictions on transferability and resale and may not be transferred or resold except as permitted under the Securities Act and other applicable securities laws, pursuant to registration or exemption therefrom.

This press release is neither an offer to sell nor the solicitation of an offer to buy any security. This press release is also not a solicitation of any consent to the proposed amendments to the Existing Notes Indenture. The Offer is being made solely pursuant to the Amended and Restated Exchange Offering Memorandum. No recommendation is made as to whether the holders of Existing Notes should participate in the Offer.

D.F. King & Co., Inc. has been appointed as the information agent and the exchange agent for the Offer. Holders may contact the information agent to request the Amended and Restated Exchange Offering Memorandum and any related documents at (212) 269-5550 or toll free at (877) 283-0318.

NOTICE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains statements that are forward-looking within the meaning of Section 27A of Securities Act and Section 21E of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements are only predictions and are not guarantees of future performance. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are and will be, as the case may be, subject to many risks, uncertainties and factors relating to the Company that may cause the actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable based on information currently available to the Company's management, the Company cannot guarantee future results or events. The Company expressly disclaims a duty to update any of the forward-looking statements.

SOURCE U.S.J. - Acucar e Alcool S.A.
PITTSBURGH, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- United Steelworkers (USW) International President Leo W. Gerard issued the following statement today in support of a new petition filed by United States Steel Corporation (U.S. Steel) under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930. The petition was filed at the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) seeking relief from China's unfair and illegal practices in the steel sector.

"America's steel sector is under attack by China. Repeated illegal and predatory trade practices have devastated production and employment in steel and many others sectors. Last week, China made clear at the OECD steel meetings that it has no intention of cooperating with other countries to help manage the problems caused by overcapacity in the steel sector. As China pushed its chair away from the negotiating table, new data was released highlighting its steel shipments reaching a new record. China's steel exports continue to swamp the world, jeopardizing the very survival of free markets.

"Today the USW stands with U.S. Steel in its effort to put a stop to China's illegal and predatory acts targeting our country's steel sector. The approach the company is taking is bold, but necessary. The USW has joined with the company on many antidumping and countervailing duty cases. U.S. Steel is now utilizing a provision of the law that has primarily been used to combat intellectual property rights violations. But the underlying law also provides broad authority to stop the kind of actions China is utilizing. When implemented, it will prohibit imports altogether from entering our market.

"China has made clear that it wants to reap the benefits of trade without abiding by the rules it agreed to follow. Repeatedly China has broken the rules  often with no response. This effort is adding a new arrow in the quiver to attack their actions. We will continue to do whatever it takes to ensure that America's steel producers and workers can continue to support our national and economic security.

"In recent months, more than 13,500 steelworkers have received layoff notices. Facilities are being shuttered, some never again to resume production. Families are being devastated and communities are suffering as their tax bases decline.

"The case clearly lays out the array of actions China has taken to steal market share and jobs, including conspiring on pricing among producers; creating elaborate evasion schemes to make enforcement difficult; and using state-sponsored hackers to steal trade secrets and proprietary technologies. These technologies are vital to the production of lighter and stronger materials used in the auto sector, the single largest consumer of steel in the United States.

"In addition, U.S. Steel production is being undermined by the support and coordination of the activities of Chinese state-owned firms under its Five Year Plans and associated policies to dominate world steel production, while decimating competitors.

"The American people are sick and tired of business-as-usual trade policies. This case launches a new effort to restore stability to our steel sector and allow free market principles, not communist party goals, to guide our economy."

What is Section 337?

Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 authorizes the U.S. International Trade Commission to take action against "unfair methods of competition and unfair acts in the importation of articlesthe threat or effect of which is  1) to destroy or substantially injure an industry in the United States; 2) to prevent the establishment of such an industry; or, 3) to restrain or monopolize trade and commerce in the United States." Initial consideration of a complaint at the ITC is by an Administrative Law Judge and their decision will be reviewed by the full Commission. If relief is authorized, the United States Trade Representative has the authority to review any recommendation.

The USW represents 850,000 workers in North America employed in many industries that include metals, rubber, chemicals, paper, oil refining and the service and public sectors. For more information: http://www.usw.org/.

CONTACT: Holly Hart (202) 778-4384

[email protected]

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SOURCE United Steelworkers (USW)

Related Links

http://www.usw.org


DETROIT, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- WALK Fashion is proud to announce the 13th WALK Fashion Show, with lead support by Quicken Loans, Opportunity Detroit, Les Stanford Cadillac, national Villa Shoe Store, Blue Nectar Tequila and Gypsy Vodka. The May 22, 2016 event will take place at the historic EASTERN MARKET beginning at 11:00 am with Shop Detroit WALK Boutique featuring over 50 Detroit business owners and concludes with a 7:00 PM Independent Designer Showcase featuring Project Runway Star Richard Hallmarq and hosted by the phenomenal, Maurielle Lue, Fox 2 News Anchor.

"With WALK Fashion, our designers are provided with a professional platform to present their concepts to a larger and accessible audience. When people think fashion, they often think New York or Paris or L.A.," says WALK co-producer Crystal Bailey. "As an entrepreneur, we are proud to cultivate emerging designers. We are more than just the Motor City."

For additional tickets, please visit www.WALKFashionShow.com to purchase tickets.

DESIGNERS

Project Runway Star Richard Hallmarq, Negash, Artwear, Fly Ty, Vaughn Glover, Lamaj CO, Citizen Ciao, Lena Harbelli, Kizzed Clothing, Ashley Douglass, Nefelibata Creations, Voo Doo Couture and Bailee Dai Vintage.

PROGRAM DETAILS

11:00 AM  3:00 PM | Shop Detroit WALK Boutique

2:00 PM | WALK University Showcase

4:00 PM | Emerging Designer Showcase

7:00 PM | Independence Designer Showcase

ABOUT WALK FASHION

Founded in 2009 by Crystal Bailey and Daishawn Franklin, WALK Fashion Show was created to further propel the emerging fashion scene in their hometown of Detroit. Over time, the production has grown into a traveling show, providing a stage for independent designers, models, and other artists abroad.

The production has proven its success by hosting sold out events at lavish venues including the DiMenna Center for Classical Music during New York Fashion Week, The Michigan Science Center, The Detroit Opera House, and The Charles H Wright Museum of African American History. With celebrity hosts such as Naima Mora (winner of America's Next Top Model cycle 4) and Whitney Thompson (winner of America's Next Top Model cycle 10), WALK has built successful relationships with modeling agencies and buyers across the country, adding value to the WALK brand and making it the largest fashion show in the region.

WALK University was established in 2010 to provide young adults with an entrepreneurial focus on production, design, event management for an afternoon fashion show.

BaileeDai Agency was established in 2012 to allow the models to gain exposure by solidifying paid employment as a professional model, actor and or dancer.

WALK Fashion Academy was established in 2016 to educate those interested in learning runway modeling, sewing and beauty techniques by providing training and instruction by local emerging and established artists.

www.WalkFashionShow.com

C | Jaclyn Tacoronte

E | [email protected]

C | 210.215.0621

SOURCE WALK Fashion

Related Links

http://www.WALKFashionShow.com


BETHESDA, Md., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- WealthEngine (WE), the leading provider of predictive marketing, analytics and audience development services, is pleased to announce its partnership with the Ellucian Ethos Platform. As part of Ellucian's efforts to provide higher education institutions with enhanced capabilities, WealthEngine's comprehensive donor and prospect insights will be accessible from within the Ellucian Ethos Platform, further enhancing an organization's ability to find and engage with the ideal donor.

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The Ellucian Ethos Platform provides a data transport mechanism for out-of-the-box integration of in-house and 3rd party software applications. Overtime, the integration will provide Ellucian users with direct access to WealthEngine's rich insights and scores on wealth, capacity to give and affinity across 300MM individual profiles and 122MM households in the U.S.  giving them what they need to optimize and streamline their fundraising initiatives.

WealthEngine is proud to call over 600 colleges and universities successful clients which includes over 200 Ellucian customers. WE has been the leader in higher education fundraising for over fifteen years.

"WealthEngine's proprietary wealth screening services, gift capacity and Propensity to Give scores are a critical component providing on-demand integrated in-depth donor intelligence with wealth insight from within Ellucian applications," said Mark Logan, CEO at WealthEngine. "Our insights empower higher education fundraising teams to access powerful insights and target, segment, and engage their best donors to increase fundraising initiatives critical to meet the needs of today's educators."

For more information on WealthEngine's wealth intelligence solutions, visit www.wealthengine.com or contact JB Rauch, VP Strategic Alliances and Channels at 240.786.3493 or email [email protected].



About WealthEngine

WealthEngine, Inc. is the leading provider of predictive marketing analytics, audience development and wealth intelligence services to nonprofit organizations, financial services, and luxury brands. Recently named a Cool Vendor in Data-Driven Marketing by Gartner, marketers and fundraisers use WealthEngine's comprehensive insights to understand what drives consumer decisions and when best to engage them. Headquartered in Bethesda, MD, WealthEngine serves both the United States and the United Kingdom. For more information, please visit http://www.wealthengine.com

About Ellucian

Ellucian is the world's leading provider of software and services higher education institutions need to help students succeed. More than 2,400 institutions in 40 countries rely on Ellucian to help enable the mission of higher education for over 18 million students. Ellucian provides student information systems (SIS), finance and HR, recruiting, retention, analytics and advancement software solutions. With more than 1,400 institutions subscribing to Ellucian's cloud services and SaaS offerings, the company is one of the largest providers of cloud-based solutions. Ellucian also supports the higher education community with a range of professional services, such as application software implementation, training, education, and management consulting. Visit Ellucian at www.ellucian.com.

 20092015 Ellucian Company L.P. and its affiliates.

SOURCE WealthEngine

Related Links

http://www.wealthengine.com


HOUSTON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Westlake Chemical Corporation (NYSE: WLK) today announced it has filed a definitive proxy statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission and updated its investor presentation in connection with its nomination of nine highly-qualified and independent candidates for election to Axiall's Board of Directors at the 2016 Annual Meeting of Axiall Corporation (NYSE: AXLL).

In the updated investor presentation, which can be accessed at www.WestlakeAxiall.AcquisitionProposal.com, the Company noted:

Westlake's compelling revised proposal represents a substantial premium of over 143% to Axiall's closing price on January 22, 2016 , the last trading day before Westlake submitted its initial proposal;

compelling revised proposal represents a substantial premium of over 143% to Axiall's closing price on , the last trading day before submitted its initial proposal; Axiall shareholders will share in the benefits from approximately $90-100 million in expected synergies, which Westlake has increased from its initial estimate of $60 million . Westlake increased its synergy estimate after Axiall allowed it to conduct due diligence, and this information enabled Westlake to increase its proposal price, which was announced on April 4, 2016 ;

in expected synergies, which has increased from its initial estimate of . increased its synergy estimate after Axiall allowed it to conduct due diligence, and this information enabled to increase its proposal price, which was announced on ; Axiall's refusal to negotiate regarding Westlake's revised proposal left Westlake with no alternative other than to take its proposal directly to Axiall's shareholders and nominate an alternate slate of directors;

revised proposal left with no alternative other than to take its proposal directly to Axiall's shareholders and nominate an alternate slate of directors; How Westlake's proposal provides Axiall shareholders with greater value and certainty than Westlake believes can be achieved by Axiall's standalone strategy; and

proposal provides Axiall shareholders with greater value and certainty than believes can be achieved by Axiall's standalone strategy; and Axiall's track record of value destruction and underperformance, repeated failed attempts to deliver on expectations, and "in-process" initiatives that Westlake believes are unlikely to generate value creation anywhere near that of Westlake's proposal.

Westlake noted that Axiall has not yet set a date for its Annual Meeting and expressed its concern that Axiall intends to delay the meeting and therefore the opportunity for Axiall shareholders to voice their concerns in a formal manner.

For additional information about Westlake's proposal, slate of directors and updated investor presentation, please visit www.WestlakeAxiall.AcquisitionProposal.com.

About Westlake Chemical Corporation

Westlake Chemical Corporation is an international manufacturer and supplier of petrochemicals, polymers and building products with headquarters in Houston, Texas. The company's range of products includes: ethylene, polyethylene, styrene, propylene, caustic, VCM, PVC suspension and specialty resins and PVC building products including pipe and specialty components, windows, fence, deck and film. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.westlake.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This communication contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Westlake Chemical Corporation's ("Westlake") proposal to acquire Axiall Corporation ("Axiall") (including financing of the proposed transaction and the benefits, results, effects and timing of a transaction), all statements regarding Westlake's (and Westlake's and Axiall's combined) expected future financial position, results of operations, cash flows, dividends, financing plans, business strategy, budgets, capital expenditures, competitive positions, growth opportunities, plans and objectives of management, estimated synergies from the proposed transaction and statements containing the use of forward-looking words, such as "may," "will," "could," "would," "should," "project," "believe," "anticipate," "expect," "estimate," "continue," "potential," "plan," "forecast," "approximate," "intend," "upside," and the like, or the use of future tense. Statements contained herein concerning the business outlook or future economic performance, anticipated profitability, revenues, expenses, dividends or other financial items, and product or services line growth of Westlake (and the combined businesses of Westlake and Axiall), together with other statements that are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements that are estimates reflecting the best judgment of Westlake based upon currently available information. Statements concerning current conditions may also be forward-looking if they imply a continuation of current conditions.

Such forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain, and stockholders and other potential investors must recognize that actual results may differ materially from Westlake's expectations as a result of a variety of factors, including, without limitation, those discussed below. Such forward-looking statements are based upon management's current expectations and include known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which Westlake is unable to predict or control, that may cause Westlake's actual results, performance or plans with respect to Axiall to differ materially from any future results, performance or plans expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors discussed below and detailed from time to time in Westlake's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC").

Risks and uncertainties related to the proposed business combination transaction include, but are not limited to: (i) the ultimate outcome of any possible transaction between Westlake and Axiall, including the possibility that Axiall will not accept a transaction with Westlake, (ii) the ultimate outcome and results of integrating the operations of Westlake and Axiall if a transaction is consummated, (iii) the ability to obtain regulatory approvals and meet other closing conditions to any possible transaction, including any necessary stockholder approvals, (iv) potential adverse reactions or changes to business relationships resulting from the announcement, pendency or completion of the proposed transaction, (v) competitive responses to the announcement or completion of the proposed transaction, costs and difficulties related to the integration of Axiall's businesses and operations with Westlake's businesses and operations, (vi) the inability to obtain, or delays in obtaining, cost savings and synergies from the proposed transaction, (vii) uncertainties as to whether the completion of the proposed transaction or any transaction will have the accretive effect on Westlake's earnings or cash flows that it expects, (viii) unexpected costs, liabilities, charges or expenses resulting from the proposed transaction, (ix) litigation relating to the proposed transaction, (x) the inability to retain key personnel, and (xi) any changes in general economic and/or industry-specific conditions.

In addition to the factors set forth above, other factors that may affect Westlake's plans, results or stock price are set forth in Westlake's Annual Report on Form 10-K and in its reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K.

Many of these factors are beyond Westlake's control. Westlake cautions investors that any forward-looking statements made by Westlake are not guarantees of future performance. We do not intend, and undertake no obligation, to publish revised forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this communication or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Additional Information

This communication relates to a proposal which Westlake has made for a business combination transaction with Axiall. In connection with the solicitation of proxies for Axiall's 2016 annual meeting of stockholders (including any adjournment or postponement thereof and any meeting of Axiall's stockholders that may be called in lieu thereof, the "Annual Meeting"), Westlake filed a definitive proxy statement in connection therewith on Schedule 14A with the SEC on April 25, 2016 (the "Westlake Proxy Statement"). In connection with the proposal and subject to future developments, Westlake (and, if a negotiated transaction is agreed, Axiall) may also file one or more registration statements, additional proxy statements, tender offer statements, prospectuses or other documents with the SEC. This communication is not a substitute for the Westlake Proxy Statement or any other proxy statement, registration statement, tender offer statement, prospectus or other document Westlake and/or Axiall has filed or may file with the SEC in connection with the proposed transaction. INVESTORS AND SECURITY HOLDERS OF WESTLAKE AND AXIALL ARE URGED TO READ THE WESTLAKE PROXY STATEMENT AND ANY OTHER PROXY STATEMENT(S), REGISTRATION STATEMENT(S), TENDER OFFER STATEMENT(S), PROSPECTUS(ES) AND OTHER DOCUMENTS FILED WITH THE SEC CAREFULLY IN THEIR ENTIRETY IF AND WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE AS THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE ANNUAL MEETING AND/OR PROPOSED TRANSACTION. Westlake expects to mail the Westlake Proxy Statement and accompanying GOLD proxy card to stockholders of Axiall promptly after Axiall sets the record date and meeting date for the 2016 Annual Meeting. Any other definitive proxy statement(s) or prospectus(es) (if and when available) will be mailed to stockholders of Westlake and Axiall, as applicable. Investors and security holders will be able to obtain copies of these documents (if and when available) as well as other filings containing information about Westlake and Axiall, without charge, at the SEC's website, http://www.sec.gov. Those documents, when filed, as well as Westlake's other public filings with the SEC, may be obtained without charge at Westlake's website at http://www.westlake.com.

Participants in Solicitation

Westlake, Westlake NG IV Corporation and certain of their respective directors and executive officers and the individuals nominated by Westlake for election to Axiall's Board of Directors may be deemed to be participants in any solicitation of proxies from Axiall's stockholders in connection with the Annual Meeting and/or the proposed transaction, as applicable, under the rules of the SEC. Information about the participants, including a description of their direct and indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, is available in the Westlake Proxy Statement and will be available in any other proxy statement(s) or prospectus(es) (if and when available). You can obtain free copies of these documents from Westlake using the contact information above. Investors may obtain additional information regarding the interest of such participants by reading the Westlake Proxy Statement and/or any other proxy statement/prospectus regarding the proposed transaction if and when they become available.

This document shall not constitute an offer to sell, buy or exchange or the solicitation of an offer to sell, buy or exchange any securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No offering of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended.

SOURCE Westlake Chemical Corporation

Related Links

http://www.westlake.com


BENTON HARBOR, Mich., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE: WHR) announced today first-quarter GAAP net earnings of $150 million, or $1.92 per diluted share, compared to $191 million, or $2.38 per diluted share, reported for the same prior-year period. Ongoing business earnings per diluted share(1) totaled a first-quarter record $2.63 compared to $2.14 in the same prior-year period, primarily driven by acquisition synergies, the benefits of cost and capacity-reduction initiatives and ongoing cost productivity.

Net sales in the quarter were $4.6 billion compared to $4.8 billion during the same prior-year period. Excluding the impact of currency, sales increased by 1 percent.

"Our record first-quarter results were in line with our expectations and we completed our existing share repurchase program," said Jeff M. Fettig, chairman and chief executive officer of Whirlpool Corporation. "We remain confident in our ability to deliver our 2016 guidance as we capitalize on robust demand in the U.S., new product introductions and strong productivity around the globe."

First-quarter GAAP operating profit totaled $283 million compared to $303 million in the same prior-year period. Record first-quarter ongoing business operating profit(2) totaled $339 million, or approximately 7.3 percent of sales, compared to $318 million, or 6.6 percent of sales, in the same prior-year period. Acquisition synergies, the benefits of cost and capacity-reduction initiatives, and ongoing cost productivity more than offset unfavorable currency and weak emerging market demand.

For the three months ended March 31, 2016, the company reported cash used in operating activities of $(661) million compared to $(569) million in the same prior-year period. Whirlpool Corporation reported free cash flow(3) of $(739) million in the first three months of 2016 compared to $(651) million in the same prior-year period.

OUTLOOK

For the full year 2016, Whirlpool Corporation expects to report GAAP earnings per diluted share of $11.25 to $12.00 and ongoing business earnings per diluted share of $14.00 to $14.75.



2016 EPS Outlook GAAP Diluted EPS(i) $11.25 - $12.00 Restructuring Expense 2.50 Combined Acquisition Related Transition Costs 0.32 Legacy Product Warranty and Liability Expense 0.04 Ongoing Business Diluted EPS(i) $14.00 - $14.75

(i) Diluted EPS available to Whirlpool.

For the full year 2016, the company expects to generate free cash flow(3) of $700 to $800 million. Included in this guidance are acquisition related restructuring cash outlays of up to $200 million, legacy product warranty and liability costs of $155 million and capital spending of $700 to $750 million.

"Our strategy to create long-term value for our shareholders remains unchanged," said Fettig. "We remain focused on delivering substantial shareholder value by leveraging our leading brand and product innovation, larger global footprint and best cost structure. In addition to our strong business performance, with our $1 billion share repurchase program and increased dividend we have appropriate flexibility to deliver on our capital allocation priorities."

FIRST-QUARTER REGIONAL REVIEW

Whirlpool North America

Whirlpool North America reported first-quarter net sales of $2.4 billion, compared to $2.3 billion in the same prior-year period. Excluding the impact of currency, sales increased 5 percent.

The region reported a first-quarter operating profit of $250 million, compared to $276 million in the same prior-year period. Ongoing business segment operating profit(4) totaled a first-quarter record of $253 million, or 10.5 percent of sales, compared to $230 million, or 9.8 percent of sales, in the same prior-year period. Revenue growth and ongoing cost productivity more than offset unfavorable currency.

The company expects full-year 2016 industry unit shipments to increase by 5 - 6 percent.

Whirlpool Europe, Middle East and Africa

Whirlpool Europe, Middle East and Africa reported first-quarter net sales of $1.2 billion, compared to $1.3 billion in the same prior-year period. Excluding the impact of currency, sales decreased 3 percent.

The region reported first-quarter operating profit of $55 million, compared to $17 million in the same prior-year period. Ongoing business segment operating profit(4) totaled $58 million, or 4.9 percent of sales, compared to $35 million, or 2.7 percent of sales, in the same prior-year period. Acquisition synergies and ongoing cost productivity more than offset unfavorable currency and lower unit volumes.

The company expects full-year 2016 industry unit shipments to be flat to up 2 percent.

Whirlpool Latin America

Whirlpool Latin America reported first-quarter net sales of $0.7 billion, compared to $0.9 billion in the same prior-year period. Excluding the impact of currency, sales decreased by 4 percent.

The region reported first-quarter GAAP operating profit of $42 million, or 5.9 percent of sales, compared to $59 million, or 6.6 percent of sales, in the same prior-year period. Improved price/mix and the benefits of cost and capacity-reduction initiatives partially offset unfavorable currency and a weaker demand environment in Brazil.

The company expects full-year 2016 industry unit shipments in Brazil to decrease by 10 percent.

Whirlpool Asia

Whirlpool Asia reported first-quarter net sales of $371 million, compared to $378 million in the same prior-year period. Excluding the impact of currency, sales increased 3 percent.

The region reported a first-quarter GAAP operating profit of $25 million, compared to $24 million in the same prior-year period. Ongoing business segment operating profit(4) totaled $27 million, or 7.3 percent of sales, compared to $26 million, or 6.9 percent of sales, in the same prior-year period, primarily driven by ongoing cost productivity and unit volume growth.

The company expects full-year 2016 industry unit shipments to be flat.

(1) A reconciliation of ongoing business earnings per diluted share, a non-GAAP financial measure, to reported net earnings per diluted share available to Whirlpool and other important information, appears below.

(2) A reconciliation of ongoing business operating profit, a non-GAAP financial measure, to reported operating profit and other important information, appears below.

(3) A reconciliation of free cash flow, a non-GAAP financial measure, to cash provided by (used in) operating activities and other important information, appears below.

(4) A reconciliation of ongoing business segment operating profit (loss), a non-GAAP financial measure, to reported segment operating profit (loss) and other important information, appears below.

FIRST-QUARTER 2016 // PRODUCT LEADERSHIP, INNOVATION AND AWARDS

Whirlpool Corporation is the global home appliance industry leader with deep consumer insights and a strong portfolio of brands worldwide. We offer compelling home solutions both within and beyond our core appliance business, delivering innovation that matters to consumers and positioning our company for continued growth and profitability.

Company Awards & Recognition

Fortune Magazine named Whirlpool Corporation as one of the World's Most Admired Companies in 2016 for the sixth consecutive year in the Home Equipment, Furnishings industry.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized Whirlpool Corporation with the 2016 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year - Product Brand Owner Award for outstanding contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by manufacturing energy-efficient kitchen and laundry appliances.

Product Innovation

Three KitchenAid brand dishwashers were awarded the top spot as ranked by an industry leading consumer magazine in the United States .

brand dishwashers were awarded the top spot as ranked by an industry leading consumer magazine in . Whirlpool brand received nine International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Innovation Awards.

brand received nine International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Innovation Awards. The KitchenAid Torrent Magnetic Drive Blender was chosen by Red Dot as a winner of the "Best of the Best" award for ground-breaking product design.

Magnetic Drive Blender was chosen by Red Dot as a winner of the "Best of the Best" award for ground-breaking product design. Bauknecht brand PremiumCare washers and dryers received the iF Design Award for Design Excellence.

About Whirlpool Corporation

Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE: WHR) is the number one major appliance manufacturer in the world, with approximately $21 billion in annual sales, 97,000 employees and 70 manufacturing and technology research centers throughout the world in 2015. The company markets Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Maytag, Consul, Brastemp, Amana, Bauknecht, Jenn-Air, Indesit and other major brand names in nearly every country around the world. Additional information about the company can be found at whirlpoolcorp.com, or find us on Twitter at @WhirlpoolCorp.

Whirlpool Additional Information:

This document contains forward-looking statements about Whirlpool Corporation and its consolidated subsidiaries ("Whirlpool") that speak only as of this date. Whirlpool disclaims any obligation to update these statements. Forward-looking statements in this document may include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expected earnings per share, cash flow, industry unit shipments, productivity and raw material prices. Many risks, contingencies and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from Whirlpool's forward-looking statements. Among these factors are: (1) intense competition in the home appliance industry reflecting the impact of both new and established global competitors, including Asian and European manufacturers; (2) acquisition and investment-related risk, including risk associated with our acquisitions of Hefei Sanyo and Indesit, and risk associated with our increased presence in emerging markets; (3) Whirlpool's ability to continue its relationship with significant trade customers and the ability of these trade customers to maintain or increase market share; (4) risks related to our international operations, including changes in foreign regulations, regulatory compliance and disruptions arising from natural disasters or terrorist attacks; (5) fluctuations in the cost of key materials (including steel, plastic, resins, copper and aluminum) and components and the ability of Whirlpool to offset cost increases; (6) the ability of Whirlpool to manage foreign currency fluctuations; (7) litigation, tax, and legal compliance risk and costs, especially costs which may be materially different from the amount we expect to incur or have accrued for; (8) the effects and costs of governmental investigations or related actions by third parties; (9) changes in the legal and regulatory environment including environmental and health and safety regulations; (10) Whirlpool's ability to maintain its reputation and brand image; (11) the ability of Whirlpool to achieve its business plans, productivity improvements, cost control, price increases, leveraging of its global operating platform, and acceleration of the rate of innovation; (12) information technology system failures and data security breaches; (13) product liability and product recall costs; (14) inventory and other asset risk; (15) the uncertain global economy and changes in economic conditions which affect demand for our products; (16) the ability of suppliers of critical parts, components and manufacturing equipment to deliver sufficient quantities to Whirlpool in a timely and cost-effective manner; (17) our ability to attract, develop and retain executives and other qualified employees; (18) the impact of labor relations; (19) Whirlpool's ability to obtain and protect intellectual property rights; and (20) health care cost trends, regulatory changes and variations between results and estimates that could increase future funding obligations for pension and postretirement benefit plans.

Additional information concerning these and other factors can be found in Whirlpool's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the most recent annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and current reports on Form 8-K.

WHIRLPOOL CORPORATION CONSOLIDATED CONDENSED STATEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (UNAUDITED) FOR THE PERIODS ENDED MARCH 31 (Millions of dollars, except share data)





Three Months Ended

2016

2015 Net sales $ 4,616

$ 4,846 Expenses





Cost of products sold 3,795

3,993 Gross margin 821

853 Selling, general and administrative 473

498 Intangible amortization 18

19 Restructuring costs 47

33 Operating profit 283

303 Other income (expense)





Interest and sundry income (expense) (30)

(53) Interest expense (38)

(43) Earnings before income taxes 215

207 Income tax expense 59

9 Net earnings 156

198 Less: Net earnings available to noncontrolling interests 6

7 Net earnings available to Whirlpool $ 150

$ 191 Per share of common stock





Basic net earnings available to Whirlpool $ 1.94

$ 2.42 Diluted net earnings available to Whirlpool $ 1.92

$ 2.38 Dividends declared $ 0.90

$ 0.75 Weighted-average shares outstanding (in millions)





Basic 77.3

78.8 Diluted 78.1

80.0







Comprehensive income (loss) $ 312

$ (13)

WHIRLPOOL CORPORATION CONSOLIDATED CONDENSED BALANCE SHEETS (Millions of dollars, except share data)





March 31,

2016

December 31,

2015

(Unaudited)





Assets







Current assets







Cash and cash equivalents $ 699

$ 772 Accounts receivable, net of allowance of $171 and $160,

respectively 2,695

2,530 Inventories 3,096

2,619 Deferred income taxes 452

451 Prepaid and other current assets 952

953 Total current assets 7,894

7,325 Property, net of accumulated depreciation of $6,182 and $5,953,

respectively 3,800

3,774 Goodwill 3,054

3,006 Other intangibles, net of accumulated amortization of $342 and $327,

respectively 2,697

2,678 Deferred income taxes 1,847

1,850 Other noncurrent assets 380

377 Total assets $ 19,672

$ 19,010 Liabilities and stockholders' equity









Current liabilities







Accounts payable $ 4,286

$ 4,403 Accrued expenses 701

675 Accrued advertising and promotions 518

706 Employee compensation 474

452 Notes payable 998

20 Current maturities of long-term debt 760

508 Other current liabilities 950

980 Total current liabilities 8,687

7,744 Noncurrent liabilities



Long-term debt 3,251

3,470 Pension benefits 1,010

1,025 Postretirement benefits 347

390 Other noncurrent liabilities 681

707 Total noncurrent liabilities 5,289

5,592 Stockholders' equity







Common stock, $1 par value, 250 million shares authorized, 111 million shares issued, and 76 million and 77 million shares outstanding, respectively 111

111 Additional paid-in capital 2,645

2,641 Retained earnings 6,803

6,722 Accumulated other comprehensive loss (2,177)

(2,332) Treasury stock, 35 million and 33 million shares, respectively (2,624)

(2,399) Total Whirlpool stockholders' equity 4,758

4,743 Noncontrolling interests 938

931 Total stockholders' equity 5,696

5,674 Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $ 19,672

$ 19,010

WHIRLPOOL CORPORATION CONSOLIDATED CONDENSED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (UNAUDITED) FOR THE PERIODS ENDED MARCH 31 (Millions of dollars)





Three Months Ended

2016

2015 Operating activities





Net earnings $ 156

$ 198 Adjustments to reconcile net earnings to cash provided by (used in) operating activities:





Depreciation and amortization 168

161 Curtailment gain 

(47) Changes in assets and liabilities:





Accounts receivable (107)

58 Inventories (398)

(394) Accounts payable (228)

(285) Accrued advertising and promotions (200)

(227) Accrued expenses and current liabilities (30)

37 Taxes deferred and payable, net (21)

(48) Accrued pension and postretirement benefits (19)

(17) Employee compensation 13

(45) Other 5

40 Cash used in operating activities (661)

(569) Investing activities



Capital expenditures (85)

(126) Proceeds from sale of assets and business 4

33 Change in restricted cash 3

11 Investment in related businesses 

(15) Other (15)

 Cash used in investing activities (93)

(97) Financing activities





Proceeds from borrowings of long-term debt 

523 Repayments of long-term debt (5)

(69) Net proceeds (repayments) from short-term borrowings 966

(41) Dividends paid (69)

(60) Repurchase of common stock (225)

 Common stock issued 3

34 Cash provided by financing activities 670

387 Effect of exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents 11

(43) Decrease in cash and cash equivalents (73)

(322) Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period 772

1,026 Cash and cash equivalents at end of period $ 699

$ 704

SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION - CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

RECONCILIATION OF GAAP TO NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES

(Millions of dollars except per share data)

(Unaudited)

We supplement the reporting of our financial information determined under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) with certain non-GAAP financial measures, some of which we refer to as "ongoing business" measures, including ongoing business operating profit (loss), ongoing business operating margin, earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) margin, ongoing business earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), ongoing business earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) margin, ongoing business earnings (loss) before income taxes, ongoing business earnings per diluted share, ongoing business segment operating profit (loss), ongoing business segment operating margin, and free cash flow. Ongoing business measures exclude items that may not be indicative of, or are unrelated to, results from our ongoing business operations and provide a better baseline for analyzing trends in our underlying businesses. Management believes that free cash flow provides investors and stockholders with a relevant measure of liquidity and a useful basis for assessing the company's ability to fund its activities and obligations. We believe that these non-GAAP measures provide meaningful information to assist investors and stockholders in understanding our financial results and assessing our prospects for future performance. Because non-GAAP financial measures are not standardized, it may not be possible to compare these financial measures with other companies' non-GAAP financial measures having the same or similar names. These ongoing business financial measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for reported operating profit (loss), net earnings per diluted share available to Whirlpool, reported operating profit (loss) by segment, and cash provided by (used in) operating activities, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures reflect an additional way of viewing aspects of our operations that, when viewed with our GAAP results and the following reconciliations to corresponding GAAP financial measures, provide a more complete understanding of our business. We strongly encourage investors and stockholders to review our financial statements and publicly-filed reports in their entirety and not to rely on any single financial measure.

First-Quarter 2015 Ongoing Business Operating Profit, Ongoing Business Earnings Before Interest and Taxes and Ongoing Business Earnings per Diluted Share

The reconciliation provided below reconciles the non-GAAP financial measures ongoing business operating profit, ongoing business earnings before interest and taxes and ongoing business earnings per diluted share, with the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, operating profit and net earnings per diluted share available to Whirlpool, for the three months ended March 31, 2015. Ongoing business operating margin is calculated by dividing ongoing business operating profit by net sales.



Three Months Ended

March 31, 2015

Operating

Profit

Earnings

Before

Interest &

Taxes(5)

Earnings per

Diluted Share Reported GAAP Measure $ 303

$ 250

$ 2.38 Restructuring Expense(a) 33

33

0.31 Benefit Plan Curtailment Gain(b) (47)

(47)

(0.44) Combined Acquisition Related Transition Costs and Inventory Purchase Price Allocation(c) 16

17

0.20 Pension Settlement Charges(d) 12

12

0.12 Antitrust and Dispute Resolutions(e) 

10

0.09 Normalized Tax Rate Adjustment(f)









(0.52) Ongoing Business Measure $ 318

$ 276

$ 2.14

(5) Earnings Before Interest & Taxes is a non-GAAP measure calculated by adding Interest and sundry income (expense) [approximately $(53) million] and Operating Profit.

First-Quarter 2016 Ongoing Business Operating Profit, Ongoing Business Earnings Before Interest and Taxes and Ongoing Business Earnings per Diluted Share

The reconciliation provided below reconciles the non-GAAP financial measures ongoing business operating profit, ongoing business earnings before interest and taxes and ongoing business earnings per diluted share, with the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, operating profit and net earnings per diluted share available to Whirlpool, for the three months ended March 31, 2016. Ongoing business operating margin is calculated by dividing ongoing business operating profit by net sales.



Three Months Ended

March 31, 2016

Operating

Profit

Earnings

Before

Interest &

Taxes(5)

Earnings per

Diluted Share Reported GAAP Measure $ 283

$ 253

$ 1.92 Restructuring Expense(a) 47

47

0.47 Acquisition Related Transition Costs(c) 5

5

0.05 Legacy Product Warranty and Liability Expense(g) 4

4

0.04 Normalized Tax Rate Adjustment(f)









0.15 Ongoing Business Measure $ 339

$ 309

$ 2.63

(5) Earnings Before Interest & Taxes is a non-GAAP measure calculated by adding Interest and sundry income (expense) [approximately $(30) million] and Operating Profit.

Ongoing Business Segment Operating Profit (Loss)

The reconciliation provided below reconciles the non-GAAP financial measure ongoing business segment operating profit (loss) with the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure, reported segment operating profit (loss), for the three months ended March 31, 2015. Ongoing business segment operating margin is calculated by dividing ongoing business segment operating profit (loss) by segment net sales.

Three Months Ended March 31, 2015

Segment

Operating

Profit (Loss)

Restructuring Expense(a)

Benefit

Plan

Curtailment

Gain(b)

Combined

Acquisition Related

Transition Costs and

Inventory Purchase

Price Allocation(c)

Pension

Settlement

Charges(d)

Ongoing

Business

Segment

Operating

Profit (Loss) North America $ 276

$ 

$ (47)

$ 

$ 

$ 230 Latin America 59









59 EMEA 17





6

12

35 Asia 24





2



26 Other/Eliminations

(73)



33







8





(32) Total Whirlpool Corporation $ 303

$ 33

$ (47)

$ 16

$ 12

$ 318

The reconciliation provided below reconciles the non-GAAP financial measure ongoing business segment operating profit (loss) with the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure, reported segment operating profit (loss), for the three months ended March 31, 2016. Ongoing business segment operating margin is calculated by dividing ongoing business segment operating profit (loss) by segment net sales.



Three Months Ended

March 31, 2016

Segment

Operating

Profit (Loss)

Restructuring Expense(a)

Acquisition Related

Transition Costs(c)

Legacy Product

Warranty and

Liability Expense(g)

Ongoing Business

Segment Operating

Profit (Loss) North America $ 250

$ 

$ 

$ 3

$ 253 Latin America 42







42 EMEA 55



2

1

58 Asia 25



2



27 Other/Eliminations

(89)



47



1





(40) Total Whirlpool Corporation $ 283

$ 47

$ 5

$ 4

$ 339

Note: numbers may not reconcile due to rounding

Full Year 2015 Ongoing Business Operating Profit, Ongoing Business Earnings Before Interest and Taxes and Ongoing Business Earnings per Diluted Share

The reconciliation provided below reconciles the non-GAAP financial measures ongoing business operating profit, ongoing business earnings before interest and taxes and ongoing business earnings per diluted share, with the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, operating profit and net earnings per diluted share available to Whirlpool, for the twelve months ended December 31, 2015. Ongoing business operating margin is calculated by dividing ongoing business operating profit by net sales. Ongoing business EBIT margin is calculated by dividing ongoing business EBIT by net sales.



Twelve Months Ended

December 31, 2015

Operating

Profit

Earnings Before

Interest & Taxes(5)

Earnings per

Diluted Share Reported GAAP Measure $ 1,285

$ 1,196

$ 9.83 Restructuring Expense(a) 201

201

2.03 Acquisition Related Transition Costs(c) 57

64

0.66 Benefit Plan Curtailment Gain(b) (62)

(62)

(0.63) Gain/Expenses Related to a Business Investment(h) 

(46)

(0.44) Legacy Product Warranty and Liability Expense(g) 42

42

0.42 Pension Settlement Charges(d) 15

15

0.16 Antitrust and Dispute Resolutions(e)

21



35

0.35 Ongoing Business Measure $ 1,559

$ 1,445

$ 12.38

(5) Earnings Before Interest & Taxes is a non-GAAP measure calculated by adding Interest and sundry income (expense) [approximately $(89) million] and Operating Profit.

Full Year 2016 Ongoing Business Operating Profit, Ongoing Business Earnings Before Interest and Taxes and Ongoing Business Earnings per Diluted Share

The reconciliation provided below reconciles the non-GAAP financial measures ongoing business operating profit, ongoing business earnings before interest and taxes and ongoing business earnings per diluted share, with the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, operating profit and net earnings per diluted share available to Whirlpool, for the twelve months ending December 31, 2016. Ongoing business operating margin is calculated by dividing ongoing business operating profit by net sales. Ongoing business EBIT margin is calculated by dividing ongoing business EBIT by net sales.



Twelve Months Ending

December 31, 2016

Operating Profit

Earnings Before

Interest & Taxes(5)

Earnings per

Diluted Share Reported GAAP Measure $ 1,525 - 1,625

$ 1,400 - 1,500

$ 11.25 - 12.00 Restructuring Expense(a) 250

250

2.50 Acquisition Related Transition Costs(c) 32

32

0.32 Legacy Product Warranty and Liability Expense(g) 4

4

0.04 Ongoing Business Measure $ 1,800 - 1,900

$ 1,675 - 1,775

$ 14.00 - 14.75

(5) Earnings Before Interest & Taxes is a non-GAAP measure calculated by adding Interest and sundry income (expense) [approximately $(125) million] and Operating Profit.

Note: Adjustments are required to calculate full-year 2016 ongoing operating margins for the North America, Latin America, EMEA and Asia regions. The acquisition related transition cost adjustment is expected to have a $29 million impact in the EMEA region and a $2 million impact in the Asia region. The legacy product warranty and liability expense adjustment is expected to have a $3 million impact in the North America region and a $1 million impact in the EMEA region.

Footnotes:

a. RESTRUCTURING EXPENSE - During the first quarters of 2015 and 2016, we recorded restructuring charges of $33 million and $47 million, respectively. The earnings per diluted share impacts are calculated based on income tax impacts of $8 million and $10 million, respectively. During the full year 2015, we recorded restructuring charges of $201 million. The earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on an income tax impact of $41 million. For the full year 2016, the company expects to recognize restructuring charges of $250 million. The earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on an income tax impact of $55 million.



b. BENEFIT PLAN CURTAILMENT GAIN - During the first quarter of 2015, we recorded a benefit plan curtailment gain of $47 million. The earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on an income tax impact of $11 million. During the full year 2015, we recorded a benefit plan curtailment gain of $62 million. The earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on an income tax impact of $13 million.



c. COMBINED ACQUISITION RELATED TRANSITION COSTS AND INVENTORY PURCHASE PRICE ALLOCATION - During the first quarter of 2015 and 2016, we recognized acquisition related transition costs of $15 million and $5 million, respectively, associated with the acquisition of a majority interest in Hefei Sanyo and the acquisition of Indesit. The earnings per diluted share impacts are calculated based on an income tax impact of $4 million and $1 million. During the first quarter of 2015, we recognized a $2 million inventory purchase price allocation adjustment. The earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on an income tax impact of $0 million. During the full year 2015, we recognized acquisition related transition costs of $64 million, associated with these acquisitions. The earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on an income tax impact of $13 million. For the full year 2016, the company expects to recognize acquisition related transition costs of $32 million. The expected earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on income tax impact of $7 million.



d. PENSION SETTLEMENT CHARGES - During the first quarter of 2015, the company recognized expenses of $12 million related to an EMEA pension settlement. The earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on an income tax impact of $3 million. During the full year 2015, the company recognized expenses of $3 million related to a Canadian pension settlement and $12 million related to an EMEA pension settlement. The earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on an income tax impact of $3 million.



e. ANTITRUST AND DISPUTE RESOLUTIONS - During the first quarter of 2015, we recognized expenses of approximately $10 million related to antitrust resolutions. The earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on an income tax impact of $2 million. During the full year 2015, we recognized expenses of $35 million related to antitrust and dispute resolutions. The earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on an income tax impact of $7 million.



f. NORMALIZED TAX RATE ADJUSTMENT - During the first quarters of 2015 and 2016, we made adjustments to ongoing business diluted EPS to reconcile specific items reported to anticipated full-year effective tax rates of approximately 24% and 22%, respectively.



g LEGACY PRODUCT WARRANTY AND LIABILITY EXPENSE - During the first quarter of 2016, the company recognized expenses of $4 million related to legacy product warranty and liability actions. The earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on an income tax impact of $1 million. During the full year 2015, we recognized expenses of $39 million related to legacy product warranty and liability actions on heritage Indesit product in Europe and a $3 million charge associated with a separate product recall in North America. The earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on an income tax impact of $9 million.



h. GAIN/EXPENSES RELATED TO A BUSINESS INVESTMENT - During the full year 2015, we recognized a gain related to a business investment of $63 million and an expense of $17 million. The earnings per diluted share impact is calculated based on an income tax impact of $13 million.

Free Cash Flow

As defined by the company, free cash flow is cash provided by (used in) operating activities after capital expenditures, proceeds from the sale of assets and businesses and changes in restricted cash. The reconciliation provided below reconciles three months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 and projected 2016 full-year free cash flow with cash provided by (used in) operating activities, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure.

















Three Months Ended March 31,







(millions of dollars) 2016 2015

2016 Outlook Cash Provided by (Used in) Operating Activities $(661) $(569)

$1,400 - $1,550 Capital expenditures, proceeds from sale of assets/businesses and change in restricted cash* (78) (82)

(700) - (750) Free Cash Flow $(739) $(651)

$700 - $800

*The change in restricted cash relates to the private placement funds paid by Whirlpool to acquire majority control of Hefei Sanyo and which are used to fund capital and technical resources to enhance Whirlpool China's research and development and working capital.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20040202/DETU004LOGO

SOURCE Whirlpool Corporation

Related Links

http://www.whirlpoolcorp.com


TULSA, Okla., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Whitlock Packaging Corporation, the largest contract manufacturer of liquid refreshment beverages in North America, is pleased to announce the recent investment of $12 million in the Fort Gibson, Oklahoma manufacturing plant. Since 2012, Whitlock has invested over $15 million in construction, equipment, and other capital expenditures to grow its base of business in the region. Mr. David Moller, Chief Executive Officer stated, "This significant investment is a measure of Whitlock's commitment to its shareholders, employees, customers, and the Fort Gibson community. We are extremely proud that we can strengthen our roots and commitment to Oklahoma and especially the city of Fort Gibson where our Chairman, Jerry Whitlock started producing the very first cases of liquid refreshment beverages for national brands."

The investments made in building and equipment will create an additional 43 jobs. We believe every dollar spent on salaries or supplies will generate additional spending and economic activity throughout the local community. Jerry Whitlock stated, "We are proud to contribute to the economic prosperity throughout the community by creating new jobs, sustained incomes, and ultimately supporting a better overall community."

About Whitlock Packaging Corporation|



Whitlock Packaging Corporation was founded in 1980 and is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Whitlock is privately-held and wholly-owned by Jerry Whitlock, founder and Chairman of the Board. Whitlock is the leading contract manufacturer of liquid refreshment beverages in the United States.

Media Contact:

Contact: Ted Smith

Vice President, Human Resources

Whitlock Packaging Corporation

6655 South Lewis

Suite 105

Tulsa, OK 74136

918.524.4029

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SOURCE Whitlock Packaging Corporation
ALBANY, New York, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Transparency Market Research has released a new market research report titled Wind Turbine Operations and Maintenance Market, by Application (Onshore and Offshore) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends and Forecast, 2015-2023. According to the report, the global wind turbine O&M market stood at US$9.3 bn in 2014 and is likely to reach US$ 20.6 bn by 2023, expanding at a CAGR of 8.8% between 2015 and 2023.

The global wind turbine O&M market has been segmented into four different regions: North America, Europe, Asia pacific, and Rest of World (RoW). The market was dominated by Europe in 2014. Demand for wind turbine O&M is anticipated to be high in the region due to increasing share of wind energy in the total energy mix. Wind turbine O&M services are important as they reduce the number of wind turbine breakdowns and losses caused due to the shutdown of production at wind farms. Countries such as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the U.K have observed substantial increase in demand for wind turbine O&M services. The offshore wind turbine O&M services are being availed at a faster rate in European countries such as the U.K., Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, and the Netherlands owing to increasing share of offshore wind energy in total wind energy mix of these countries.

Get free research PDF for more Professional and Technical insights: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=7904

Asia Pacific was the second-largest market globally in terms of revenue for wind turbine O&M services in 2014. Onshore wind turbine O&M services accounted for the major share of the wind turbine O&M market in Asia Pacific in 2014. Increasing adoption of wind energy has boosted the demand for wind turbine O&M services in Asia Pacific. Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan are some of the countries which have a major share of wind turbine O&M market in the region. China is the market leader in terms of wind turbine O&M services demand in Asia Pacific. Factors such as government incentives and strict environmental laws are anticipated to boost the wind energy market in Asia Pacific. This, in turn, would augment the demand for wind turbine O&M services in the near future.

Browse Research Press Release: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/wind-turbine-operations-maintenance-market.htm

Demand for wind turbine O&M services in North America is increasing due to rising awareness about benefits of timely wind turbine O&M services. Onshore wind turbine O&M was the largest application segment of the wind turbine O&M market in North America, accounting for approximately 99% of the market share in 2014. Growth in the demand for wind turbine O&M services in North America is primarily driven by increasing share of wind energy in the total energy mix and government support for wind energy projects. Rest of the World (RoW) accounted for the least share of the global wind turbine O&M market in 2014.

Research Article: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/article/wind-turbine-operations-maintenance-market.htm

Key participants in the global wind operation O&M market include Enercon GmbH, Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica, GE Wind Energy, Nordex SE, Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co. Ltd., Vestas Wind Systems A/S, Siemens Wind Power GmbH, Suzlon Group, Guodian United Power Technology Company Ltd., and UpWind Solutions Inc. The report provides an overview of these companies, followed by their financial revenues (on availability), business strategies, and recent developments. The global wind turbine O&M market has been segmented as follows:

Global Wind Turbine Operation and Maintenance Market: By Application

Onshore

Offshore

Global Wind Turbine Operation and Maintenance Market: By Region

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Rest of World (RoW)

Research Blog: http://www.tmrblog.com/2016/04/wind-turbine-operations-and-maintenance.html

Browse Other Research Reports:

Offshore Wind Turbines Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/offshore-wind-turbines-market.html

Wind Turbine Inspection Services Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/wind-turbine-inspection-services-market.html

About TMR

Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The company's exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.

TMR's data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.

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During her 20-year career, Bilshausen has led-multi-discipline teams assigned to some of the most complex, high-profile airport design projects in the aviation industry. From 1999 to 2003, she was a project manager in the Program Management Office at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on the World Gateway Program, Capital Improvement Program, and O'Hare Modernization Program. From 2010 to 2013, she led design and construction management of major projects totaling $1.5 billion at Heathrow Airport in London. Bilshausen has achieved success throughout her career in delivering fully integrated design-build solutions for exceptionally complex projects on tight schedules.

"It's an understatement to say we are excited to have Yvonne join our team," says Bret Pilney, vice president of Burns & McDonnell's Aviation Group. "When you walk through some of the most outstanding, well-designed airports in the U.S. and Europe, there is a good chance you will be looking at work done by Yvonne and her team."

"Yvonne has achieved stellar success and recognition everywhere she has been in her career," says Scott Newland, senior vice president and general manager of the Chicago Region. "That's because she is both a gifted designer and detail-oriented project manager. She believes in the same principles Burns & McDonnell has always lived by  delivering projects that reflect excellent design and are on budget, on schedule and meet safety targets."

Bilshausen earned both her Master and Bachelor of Architecture degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago and attended the Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Architecture school in Versailles, France.

About Burns & McDonnell

Burns & McDonnell is a company made up of more than 5,300 engineers, architects, construction professionals, scientists, consultants and entrepreneurs, with offices across the country and throughout the world. We strive to create amazing success for our clients and amazing careers for our employee-owners. Burns & McDonnell is 100 percent employee-owned and is proud to be No. 16 on Fortune's 2016 List of 100 Best Companies to Work For. For more information visit burnsmcd.com.

For more information, click here

Contact: Roger Dick

(816) 822-3339

[email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/360056

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Vung Tau citizens in uproar against new ban on beach food stalls

Hundreds of people prevented authorities in Vung Tau from removing vendors and stalls along the beach. : Xuan Thang

Vung Tau city  a popular seaside resort in Vietnam  has started to enforce a new law banning commercial activities along its beaches, but has faced fierce opposition from locals.

Hundreds of people protesed in Vung Tau as the citys police and security forces started to remove food vendors and stalls from the beach area this morning.

They lined up in rows in front of police vehicles and stood on furniture and equipment to prevent them from being moved.

The protesters said they have being doing business for dozens of years on the beach, and it's their main source of income. The citys ban will affect my family, a local said.

In response to the overwhelming reaction from the people, authorities said they have tried to convince the public citizens that the ban is part of the citys plan to boost tourism.

Vung Tau's Peoples Committee had ordered locals to move their property and equipment from the beach area before April 26 when the law came into effect. The businesses are to be relocated in Vung Tau Tourism Market.

Truong Thi Huong, deputy chairman of the city's Peoples Committee, said that authorities will focus on convincing locals to move their businesses to the market.

By noon tomorrow (April 27), the city will complete the beach cleanup. Anyone who still opposes the authorities will be punished," Huong said.

Equipment used for commercial activities on Vung Tau's beach. Photo by Xuan Thang.

One official from Vung Tau said that people who conduct commercial activities by the beach are violating the law and do not have business licenses.

Beside the commercial ban, Vung Tau will launch a campaign to urge tourists not to bring alcoholic drinks to the beach, hold parties or litter in public areas.
ATLANTA, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Real Estate Sales Process software company Zenergyst was chosen to participate in the eight-month REach program, run by Second Century Ventures, the technology fund and strategic arm of the National Association of Realtors.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/360053

REach was created to identify and support new companies that NAR believes will benefit both Realtors and the broader real estate industry. The program provides real estate-focused education, mentorship and market exposure for selected companies. In this case, Zenergyst was one of seven companies chosen for the program out of hundreds that applied because of its innovative business model focused on reinventing the real estate sales process experience, according to a company press release.

"We are very excited to have this opportunity to work with both Second Century Ventures and the National Association of REALTORS," said Jack Berube, CEO of Zenergyst. "We have focused diligently on the transaction technology needs of Brokers and Agents over the last 6 years, and are very excited to bring the Zenergyst platform and substantial cost savings to the members of the National Association of REALTORS. Having this recognition from NAR is very exciting for us," added Berube.

About Zenergyst

Zenergyst, based in Alpharetta, Georgia, a technology driven suburb of Atlanta, is the real estate industry's first fully-integrated mobile real estate sales process management system. This cloud-based platform features just the right tools agents need to manage their business, including CRM, lead generation, transaction management, drip marketing, email, calendar and task tracking, workflow checklists, integrated electronic signatures and shareable document storage. Zenergyst offers subscribers one system to reduce operating risk, boost efficiency and improve the overall customer experience. Discover Zenergyst online at http://www.zenergyst.com.

About Second Century Ventures

Second Century Ventures(link is external) (SCV) is an early-stage technology fund, backed by the National Association of Realtors, that leverages the association's 1 million members and an unparalleled network of executives within real estate and adjacent industries. SCV systematically launches its portfolio companies into the world's largest industries including real estate, financial services, banking, home services, and insurance. SCV seeks to define and deliver the future of the world's largest industries by being a catalyst for new technologies, new opportunities, and new talent.

About National Association of Realtors

The National Association of Realtors, "The Voice for Real Estate," is America's largest trade association, representing 1 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Zenergyst

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Beyond GDP  is it time to rethink the way we measure growth?

April 26, 2016 | 04:48 am PT

For decades, GDP was the measure of all things. Many economists argue that this is no longer the case.

Is our love affair with GDP coming to an end? If you were following this years Annual Meeting in Davos, youd be forgiven for thinking that this is indeed the case.

In three separate sessions, two giants of the financial world and one leading academic were all in agreement: gross domestic product  the estimate of the total value of goods and services a country produces  is up for review.

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, IMF head Christine Lagarde and MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson all said GDP is a poor indicator of progress, and argued for a change to the way we measure economic and social development.

We have to go back to GDP, the calculation of productivity, the value of things  in order to assess, and probably change, the way we look at the economy, said Lagarde.

As the business landscape reinvents itself, demographics shift, inequality expands, climate change gets worse and technology continues to advance at breakneck speed, GDP is struggling to stay relevant.

In order to keep up with the changes brought on by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, many are arguing that we need to find a new measure to assess the health of our economies and  more importantly  the people living in them.

What is GDP? And more importantly, what is it not?

For decades, GDP was the measure of all things. Some countries, like China, remain obsessed with it and use it to set their own targets for growth. As the World Economic Forums chief economist Jennifer Blanke writes in this in-depth explainer on GDP, the evolution of GDP remains a fixation for governments around the world and it is also a regular topic on the agenda of global and regional groupings, such as the 2016 Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank.

But amid this obsession, Blanke argues, its easy to forget that it was not initially intended for this purpose, it merely provides a measure of the final goods and services produced in an economy over a given period, without any attention to what is produced, how its produced or who is producing it.

Put simply, focusing on GDP growth is not the way forward. She writes: GDP is a partial, short-term measure, whereas the world needs more wide-ranging and responsible instruments to inform the way we build the economies of the future.

Blanke mentions three key questions that GDP overlooks: is growth fair, is it green, and is it improving our lives?

This last question is one that would resonate with Richard Easterlin, professor of economics at the University of Southern California, who has been writing about the link between happiness and income for 40 years.

We are faced with an enticing opportunity, he says in this essay. To consider happiness as the leading measure of well-being, supplanting the current favourite  GDP.

Crunch the numbers, and youll find that the relationship between happiness and income probably isnt what you thought it was, he argues. In short  money isnt everything:

In rich countries  rich or poor, democratic or autocratic  happiness for most is success in doing things of everyday life. That might be making a living, raising a family, maintaining good health, and working in an interesting and secure job.

The silent  unmeasured - majority

Inclusive growth, environmental outcomes and well-being are not the only missing parts of the puzzle. Another controversial  but sadly, unsurprising  omission is the women whose unpaid efforts are overlooked by economic policy.

If GDP counted women, argues economist Diane Coyle in this piece, then GDP would look very different. In a 2011 study, the OECD found that so-called home production would add between 20% and 50% to the GDP of its member countries.

Thankfully, old barriers are breaking down, and an equal opportunity GDP  or its equivalent  could be closer than we think. This is down to two things: the rise of the sharing economy and shifting demographic trends in many countries (ageing populations, for example). Coyle writes:The time has come to reopen the 1950s debate about how we should define the economy, and ensure that GDP or its replacement counts the vital work that goes on in the home, and in the community, as well as the marketplace.

However we decide to put a number on progress, our cities will remain the main engines of economic growth. Elsewhere in our series, Parag Khanna, a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore and a Young Global Leader alumni, breaks down the extraordinary contribution of the worlds urban clusters towards a nations economic status.

Within many emerging markets, he writes, the leading commercial hub accounts for at least one-third or more of national GDP. In the UK, London accounts for almost half of Britains. And in America, the Boston-New York-Washington corridor and greater Los Angeles area together combine for about one-third of Americas GDP.

With the rapid growth of megacities and urban corridors (some as big as 100 million people) soaking up investment and attracting talent from smaller cities and rural areas, spreading this wealth around is a challenge governments around the world will have to face up to.

Inequality, happiness, sustainable development  all are inextricably linked to whatever the worlds leading economists and policy-makers decide to do next. This matters to all of us, and we hope this is reflected in this series.

As Joseph Stiglitz said in Davos: What we measure informs what we do. And if were measuring the wrong thing, were going to do the wrong thing.

Ross Chainey is digital media specialist. This article was published on World Economic Forum.
According to the 2015 Country Reports On Human Rights Practices, issued by the State Department in mid-April, Russias authoritarian government continues to commit and ignore numerous human rights violations.

First, citizens right to choose their leadership in free and fair elections was consistently restricted through the governments efforts to suppress dissent. New and existing repressive laws were used to harass, discredit, and punish individuals and organizations that criticized the government. The government particularly targeted those who spoke up in support of the Government of Ukraine or opposed the Russian Governments activities in Ukraine.

Further the Russian Government continued to selectively prosecute racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities and migrant workers.

In addition, officials denied due process to defendants in politically motivated cases. The government used secret detentions and convictions based on questionable treason and espionage charges, and even tried and convicted non-Russian citizens taken illegally from other countries, especially Ukraine. Yet at the same time, authorities failed to bring to justice individuals responsible for the deaths of prominent journalists, activists, whistleblowers, and opposition politicians.

Indeed, Russias support of separatists in eastern Ukraine, and its two-year occupation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula, were responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in the region. According to international monitors and human rights NGOs, the combined Russian-separatist forces in the Donbas region and the Russian occupation authorities in Crimea caused thousands of civilian deaths and injuries. Russian occupation authorities in Crimea cracked down on members of certain groups, in particular Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, who spoke out in opposition to the occupation.

And finally, conflict in Northern Caucasus between government forces, insurgents, Islamist militants, and criminal forces led to numerous human rights abuses and a general degradation in the rule of law.

Such abuses imperil the future of Russia and its people. In the words of Secretary of State John Kerry, A government that fails to respect human rights, no matter how lofty its pretentions, has very little to boast about, to teach, and very little indeed in the way of reaching its full potential.
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Former Refugee Helps Victims of Crisis

Story Updated July 2017

In 1999, the war in Kosovo forced 7-year-old Krenare Jasharis family to leave their home and become refugees in Macedonia. Nearly 17 years later, Krenare returned to Macedonia, this time to help others now caught up in the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. Krenare, now volunteered at a refugee camp in Tabanovce, Kumanovo, where Project HOPE continues to help with the donation of supplies, medicines and volunteer medical help. Recalling her own personal history as a refugee, Krenare reflects on the emotional considerations that refugees experience.

Looking back

My first memory as a young refugee in Macedonia begins with the sound of a crib rocking, as my mother tried to put her youngest to sleep while attempting to keep her two other small daughters warm. She was also just two months away from giving birth to another baby.

I remember being scared. I could hear people moaning and crying. My sisters little voice was saying she wanted to go home now, where she could she see our nana. Two nights later, I lay down looking at the dark sky, pretending that I was asleep. All I could hear is what sounded like a happy voice: They are here. It was my fathers voice. As I lifted my head up, I saw a few men who were handing over blankets. As my father laid a blanket over me, I told him I did not want to sleep, so he took me into his arms.

We spent two months in Stenkovec, the refugee camp in Macedonia. Queuing for a piece of bread took forever. We would practically peel our skin off scrubbing it, a desperate attempt to get the ink stamp off our little hands so we could get back in line for more food.

I remember people coming to visit us; any sign of affection made me feel like I belonged somewhere. Often I wondered: Where did they come from? Why do they seem different  a lot paler? Everything I had known was taken from me. One minute I had a big family  aunts and uncles that I would visit every weekend  and the next moment I was surrounded by strangers.

I remember being scared.

I could hear people moaning and crying. My sisters little voice was saying she wanted to go home now, where she could she see our nana.

Going back in time overwhelmed me with memories I had as I went from living in a small tent at the refugee camp in Macedonia with my mom and dad and my two little sisters to then living in a big castle in Millstreet, Co. Cork, Ireland  a place for asylum seekers.

Todays refugee crisis

Now, as a 24-year-old adult walking around the camp in Tabanovce, Kumanovo (a municipality of Macedonia), I had so many questions: Who are those children playing with? Is it a brother or a sister or a complete stranger?

I began to ask myself more questions: Where will these people go? Who will be their salvation? As an adult now I see things differently. How does a parent feel when their child wants their favorite toy or wants to go home? Whats the impact on a teenager whos already going through physical and emotional changes? How does the former teacher or engineer feel  now a refugee sleeping in a tent?

From my personal experience, I can truly say that being forced to flee your home and leave behind everything thats familiar and dear to you is one of the toughest challenges anyone can face. However, seeing how various NGOs such as Project HOPE are working together to offer basic needs such as food, water, shelter and access to health services, really makes me proud of my colleagues who work hard day and night to help the refugees through the darkest moments of their lives.

I would like to use this opportunity to thank Project HOPE for making it possible for me to be part of their volunteering community which allowed me to spend some time at the refugee camp in Kumanovo. Lets all take a moment to reflect on the things that really matter and help a little every day to make the world a safer place.

Project HOPE has been supporting the Syrian Refugee Crisis through our program in Macedonia since September of 2015. Krenare hopes to be able to return to Macedonia to provide more assistance with volunteers.
New Delhi, April 21 : A fire broke out in a first-floor room of the Lady Hardinge Hospital in central Delhi on Thursday, damaging an air conditioner and some medicines, fire officials said.

A fire official told IANS: "The fire office received information about the incident at 12.20 p.m. and four fire tenders were sent to the spot immediately."

Officials suspect electrical short-circuiting caused the fire.

The fire broke out in the medicine wing room on the first floor. An air-conditioner and some medicines kept there were damaged in the blaze.

The fire tenders doused the flames in 40 minutes.

There were no injuries.
Rome, April 21 : Italy's President Sergio Mattarella on Thursday voiced solidarity with the Italian marines facing trial in India for the killing of two fishermen in 2012, saying the legal wrangle over the case is lasting "too long".

"I want to express my personal closeness and that of Italy to Salvatore Girone, who is still far away, and to Massimiliano Latorre," Mattarella told Italian military associations at the presidential palace in Rome.

"I confirm Italy's commitment to the favourable resolution of this case, which has been dragging on for too long," Mattarella said.

The shooting dead in February 2012 of the fishermen by Latorre and Girone off the southern state of Kerala as they guarded an Italian oil tanker sparked a diplomatic incident and the case has strained relations between the two countries.

In August last year, India's Supreme Court has extended until April 30 the sick leave in Italy for Latorre, where he has been since he suffered a stroke in 2014. He had previously been detained in India since his and Girone's arrest there in 2012.

Girone has not been allowed to leave India since his arrest and is staying at the Italian embassy in New Delhi.

A long series of delays, and fears that the marines could be executed if convicted of murder by an Indian court prompted Italy to take the case to international arbitration in June last year.

The Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruled in August that India had no jurisdiction in the case and referred it to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

The Hague tribunal said in January that the arbitration verdict in the case would not come before August 2018.

Meanwhile, Italy wants the two marines to be allowed to remain in their home country until the verdict.
In Tunisia, against great headwinds, the people are proving that democratic reforms can become a reality. In just a few short years, the Tunisian people have negotiated a peaceful transfer of power from a transitional government to a democratically elected coalition government. For the second year in a row, Freedom House has categorized Tunisia as "free"  the first Arab country to be recognized in this way.

Nevertheless, Tunisia continues to face great challenges, including eradicating corruption, engaging marginalized populations, reducing bureaucracy, and creating jobs.

Unless, these challenges are met, said Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a recent speech, "the hope and promise of this extraordinary democratic transition is at risk." That's why the U.S. is determined to deepen its political, economic, and security support for Tunisia.

The U.S. is committed to help Tunisians consolidate their democratic gains as the greatest bulwark of long-term growth and stability.Tunisia has worked to improve accountability among security services, combat corruption, and hold the first-ever municipal elections. The U.S. has invested in efforts to reform the security and justice systems.

In order to help the Tunisian government and private sector create jobs for youth, the U.S. is providing technical assistance and support while Tunisias leaders are enacting tough economic reforms and working to create an environment in which business can thrive. The U.S. has extended almost one billion dollars in loan guarantees to help the Tunisian government gain affordable financing. And with $60 million in seed funding from the U.S., the Tunisian American Enterprise Fund is ramping up its investments in small and medium-sized businesses, which are engines for growth and employment. We are continuing to support educational exchanges and training to enable young Tunisians to obtain 21st century skills to find jobs.

And finally, the U.S. is deepening its security cooperation with Tunisia in order strengthen Tunisia's capability to defeat those who threaten its freedom and security.

As Tunisia seeks to build the Arab world's newest democracy, they continue to have the full support of the United States.
Mumbai, April 23 : Actor Manoj Bajpayee will be honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in the Best Actor category (Critics' Choice) for his performance in Hansal Mehta's biographical drama, "Aligarh".

Mehta took to Twitter to mention about the award.

"Dadasaheb Phalke Award in the Best Actor (Critics' Choice) to Manoj Bajpayee for his portrayal of Professor Ramchandra Siras in 'Aligarh'," Mehta tweeted on Friday night.

The "Shool" star mentioned that he feels extremely honoured and also thanked everyone for their love and appreciation.

"Thank you for your tremendous appreciation and love. Feeling extremely honoured," Manoj tweeted.

The award ceremony will take place here on Sunday.

On the work front, the actor will next be seen as a traffic constable in the upcoming film "Traffic".
New Delhi, April 24 : Around one crore families have till date given up cooking gas subsidy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday.

"I want to congratulate those one crore families who gave up their subsidies. It is not a small thing," he said in his monthly 'Mann ki Baat' broadcast on All India Radio.

The prime minister recalled how he had urged people to give up the subsidy on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

Moreover, over 80 percent of small-income families of pensioners, farmers, school teachers and shopkeepers, forming the overwhelming bulk of those who surrendered the subsidy, chose to do so by visiting LPG distributors.

"They did not avail of the option of surrender available on mobile apps, online or by simply giving a missed call," he said.
Ujjain, April 24 : A 'sadhu' taking part in Simhastha Kumbh here was seriously injured on Sunday in a murderous attack, one of several incidents to have happened since the start of the pilgrimage on April 22.

Someone attacked sadhu (religious ascetic) Tapasvi Giri with a sharp weapon near Bhukhi Mata temple, injuring him seriously, a police officer said.

The sage has been hospitalised.

Late Saturday night, a motorcade of sadhus was attacked at two places, resulting in damage to the vehicles, said the police officer.

Incidents of theft have also been reported from the Simhastha Kumbh pilgrimage site.

Sadhus participating in the pilgrimage have been much agitated by these incidents.

On Sunday, they took out a march and blocked traffic to protest the incidents of violence and thefts.

Sunday is the third day of Simhastha Kumbh that will conclude on May 21.
New Delhi, April 24 : The Arvind Kejriwal government's odd-even traffic scheme on Sunday got a word of support from an unexpected quarter -- from a parliamentarian of Odisha's Biju Janata Dal.

The issue figured at an all-party meeting and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan intervened to announce that she has directed parliament officials to arrange additional vehicles for members as per the traffic restriction.

Amid criticism of the scheme, BJD member B. Mahtab supported it.

"We will try that we provide vehicles to members as per the odd-even scheme. We will try (to see that) members should not suffer problems while coming to parliament," Mahajan told reporters after the meeting.

Raising the issue of problems faced by people due to restricted traffic norms, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leader A.P. Jithender Reddy expressed concern about how the lawmakers could perform their duties when they have only one car officially allotted.

"The speaker as the custodian of parliament and members should know about this important issue," he reportedly said at the meeting wherein some other members, irrespective of party affiliation, supported him.

However, Biju Janata Dal (BJD) floor leader in Lok Sabha Mahtab said members should cooperate and try to help in implementationof the scheme as it was aimed at curbing pollution and decongestion on Delhi roads.

At this, while a few members laughed, taking things in a lighter vein, Reddy maintained that his complaints were genuine.

"Some members rightly said that they may face problems. Even parliament can face problems, as half the vehicles can be used at a time and half will not. But we will try and find a solution," Mahajan said.

The Delhi government has, meanwhile, appealed to the parliamentarians to cooperate with the odd-even norms and has also arranged six buses to ply specially for MPs.

Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai spoke to Mahajan on the issue during the day and sought her support to make the anti-pollution traffic drive a success.

While the president, vice president, prime minister, union ministers, Chief Justice of India, judges of high courts, women and students, among others, are exempted under the odd-even norms, there has been no exemption for MPs.

The second phase of the odd-even scheme started on April 15 and will continue till April 30.
New Delhi, April 24 : The Delhi government will run six 'special buses' during the ongoing odd-even traffic scheme to facilitate the movement of MPs for parliament's session beginning from Monday.

"We have decided to run six special buses to ferry MPs to parliament as they are not exempted under the odd-even scheme," Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai told IANS on Sunday.

The MPs are not exempted in the Delhi government's car restriction scheme. The second phase of the odd-even scheme started on April 15 and will continue till April 30.

Rai said: "I appeal to all parliamentarians to follow the odd-even rule and also do car-pooling with other MPs."

Three special buses for MPs will leave from North Avenue and South Avenue via Akbar Road and Ashoka Road, respectively, the minister said, adding that the city government will run more buses, if required.

The minister also spoke to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and sought her co-operation to make the scheme a success.
New Delhi, April 25 : India has cancelled the tourist visa issued to a dissident Chinese Uyghur activist based in Germany to attend the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) in Dharamsala.

Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa has voiced disappointment at the cancellation.

The union home ministry cancelled the tourist visa as is not a valid travel document to attend a conference, sources said.

"We have cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa," a home ministry spokesperson confirmed on Monday.

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is scheduled from April 28 to May 1 in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh.

It is being organised by the US-based Initiatives for China.

Voicing his disappointment at cancellation, Isa said that Indian authorities had granted him a tourist e-visa, "but it was cancelled after my visit was widely reported in the Indian press".

He said the Indian authorities cancelled the tourist visa on April 23.

"I recognize and understand the difficult position that the Indian government found itself, and regret that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy," he said.

The conference was to see ethnic and religious communities in China as well as scholars and activists meet and openly to discuss and "exchange ideas, promote peaceful dialogue, and reinforce bonds between disparate communities".

Isa also said that China has "regularly attempted to block or interfere with my human rights work at the UN in Geneva, in particular".

The invite to the dissident Uyghur activist was bound to have rankled China.

Last week, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met with her Chinese counterpart Wang Li in Moscow on the sidelines of the Russia, India, China trilateral, while National Security Advisor Ajit Doval was in Beijing to meet with State Councillor Yang Jiechi, special representative on the Chinese side for the 19th Special Representatives' Meeting on the China-India Boundary Question.

India has raised with China its disappointment over Beijing blocking the move in the UN to ban Jaish-e-Mohamed chief Masood Azhar, the mastermind of the Pathankot attack.

China, a close friend of Pakistan, had said there were not enough grounds to ban Azhar.

The move to give Isa a visa to attend the Uyghur conference was seen as a tit-for-tat move by India.
New Delhi, April 25 : The Rajya Sabha was repeatedly disrupted on Monday as Congress members opposed the imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand and raised slogans against the Narendra Modi government.

As soon as the house met, Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad accused the central government of vitiating the atmosphere just before the parliament session so as to lead to disruptions.

"We want the house to function and legislation passed. But we have seen how an atmosphere was created to stall the proceedings of the house... For the first time ... President's Rule was imposed in Uttarakhand without following any rules and regulation," said Azad.

"We are witnessing attempts by the ruling party to hinder the functioning of parliament. The central government provokes the opposition and induces disruptions," he said.

Azad also cited the example of Arunachal Pradesh, where a Congress government has been toppled.

He congratulated the judges of the Uttarakhand High Court who ruled against the President's Rule. "I congratulate judges who have the guts to face the central government."

To this, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the matter was "subjudice" and hence cannot be commented upon. The opposition disagreed.

"We will discuss it and expose you," Congress leader Anand Sharma thundered.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the issue will be discussed in the house but not now.

"The issue can be discussed when the proclamation comes up for discussion. It cannot be discussed at a pre-proclamation stage," Jaitley said.

As per rules, once Article 356 is imposed on any state, it has to be approved by parliament within two months.

Following this the Congress members trooped near the chairman's podium raising slogans against the central government. Amid the ruckus, the house was first adjourned till 12 noon and then till 2 p.m.

When the house met post lunch, MPs demanded exemption from the odd-even traffic scheme under which only cars with odd registration numbers ply on odd dates and those with even registration numbers on even days.

Soon after, Congress MPs were again on their feet raising slogans against the government. The house was then adjourned again till 3 p.m., and then for the day.
Lucknow, April 25 : The Lucknow bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), in an interim order on Monday, stayed IPS officer Amitabh Thakur's suspension and ordered his reinstatement with full salary with effect from October 11, 2015.

A CAT bench comprising Navneet Kumar and Jayati Chandra said there was no denial of the fact that there was a delay in extending the suspension period.

The tribunal said it could not find any provision in the rules where the state government had the power to give 'post facto' extension in suspension after 90 days.

As per the order, the central government had filed an affidavit before the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court, stating it had revoked the suspension of Thakur and an affidavit before the high court cannot be taken lightly.

Hence, the CAT directed that the state government order of March 31 extending the Indian Police Service officer's suspension for 95 days shall remain stayed till the petition's disposal and he shall be reinstated with effect from October 11, 2015, with full salary.

The CAT directed the central and state governments to file their replies within two weeks, and fixed May 12 as the next date of hearing.

In his petition, Thakur said that after the central government quashed his suspension, the Uttar Pradesh government was bound to comply with the order.

Thakur was suspended after he lodged a case against Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav on charge of threatening him over phone.
New Delhi, April 25 : Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai on Monday appealed to Members of Parliament to follow the city government's odd-even scheme after a few lawmakers were found violating vehicle restriction norms.

"I appeal to all the MPs to follow the odd-even scheme to contribute in saving the environment," Rai told IANS.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader's remarks came after several lawmakers were found violating the vehicle restriction scheme of the Delhi government as they drove in even-numbered cars on a day meant for odd-numbered cars.

Bollywood actor and BJP MP from Gujarat Paresh Rawal on Monday flouted the odd-even rule along with other Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs, including Choudhary Babulal, Prahlad Patel, Udit Raj, Ashwani Chopra, K.P. Maurya and B.C. Khanduri.

Members of Parliament have not been given exemption under the odd-even scheme which started on April 15 and will end on April 30.

"The government had already deployed six special buses to facilitate the MPs so that they don't face any problem while attending the Parliament session," Rai added.

The Delhi government had on Sunday announced six special buses to ferry the lawmakers to Parliament House from North Avenue and South Avenue via Akabar road and Ashoka road.

However, one special bus had only two passengers in BJP MP Ranjan Bhatt and Hari Om Singh.

Asked about people complaining about heavy traffic in the city during office hours, the AAP leader said: "Heavy traffic was reported on some routes due to local issues in the last few days. As the issues have been addressed, smooth traffic was witnessed today."

Rai claimed that the second phase of the odd-even scheme was a success as more people were adhering to the restriction.
New Delhi, April 25 : The odd-even traffic scheme hit lawmakers and also rocked parliament on Monday, the first day of budget session part II, with some forgetful members violating the scheme while some MPs car-pooled to arrive at Parliament House. One MP cycled it, while AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi walked to parliament.

The issue also rocked the Lok Sabha with both the road rationing scheme and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal coming in for criticism. This created a ruckus for a while forcing Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to adjourn the house till lunch.

The issue reverberated in the Rajya Sabha too, as members demanded exemption from the odd-even scheme, stating that it was preventing them from executing their duties as members of parliament.

Bollywood actor Paresh Rawal, Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Keshav Prasad Maurya, BJP MPs Chaudhry Babulal, Udit Raj. B.C. Khanduri and Prahlad Patel were among others who violated the scheme.

Rawal realised his mistake when he reached parliament by travelling in his personal car with an even-number plate, and was immediately questioned by reporters.

"Yaar, galti ho gayi," he said.

Later on, Rawal apologised to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for violating the scheme and said it was a "serious blunder".

"Made a serious blunder... Sorry to Arvind ji and Delhiites," the BJP MP tweeted.

Maurya, who was recently appointed BJP chief of Uttar Pradesh, said: "I am having one car. Will take care (tomorrow) Tuesday."

However, some MPs with even number car plates travelled to parliament either by car pooling or by some other mode.

BJP Rajya Sabha member Anil Dave took a bicycle to reach parliament while Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP Bhagwant Mann car-pooled with some MPs.

All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi walked to parliament, and raised questions on the traffic scheme.

"We are not from Delhi and come here only when parliament is in session. So, they should think over this. However, they claimed to have made some arrangements like bus but I didn't find anything," Owaisi told reporters.

The Delhi government had announced a special DTC bus service for MPs to reach parliament, but there were very few takers.

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Pappu Yadav, who has been critical of the scheme, raised the issue during zero hour, stating that the measure has only added to people's problems.

The traffic rationing has only sought to help CNG companies and bus manufacturers, alleged the Madhepura MP from Bihar.

Yadav also alleged that the new traffic system was launched by the Delhi government under Arvind Kejriwal only for achieving "cheap popularity".

The issue was also raised in the Rajya Sabha with Samajwadi Party members criticising it.

The issue of odd-even had figured at an all-party meeting on Sunday too.

The issue was raised in the Rajya Sabha by Samajwadi Party leader Naresh Agrawal.

"Being an MP, it is our special privilege that we participate in the proceedings of the house," Agrawal said.

"We get only one security pass, which is for one car. They (Delhi government) did not exempt MPs (from the odd-even) on purpose to insult them," he alleged.

Congress leader Anand Sharma spoke up in support of the MP and said: "Parliament has reconvened today. Except for 10 members, all parliament members come from outside Delhi. Vehicles without security label cannot enter, and the parliament bus is not able to ferry all MPs. It (odd-even) is coming in the way of discharging their duties," Sharma added.

"The house should decide when the house is sitting on how do members come? This issue needs to be addressed," said Sharma.

Janata Dal-United (JD-U) member K.C. Tyagi said while the intention of the Delhi government is good, "they should exempt MPs".

Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien agreed and said: "It is the government's duty to facilitate discharge of duties of parliament. This has become an inconvenience for MPs in discharging their duty."

The deputy chairman also observed that it delayed some meetings.

"I have been told that one committee was delayed for more than one hour because MPs could not reach," he said.

"Why not the parliamentary affairs ministry take up the matter with the Delhi government or consider the suggestion that MPs should be exempt," Kurien said.

Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad also said he had received complaints from MPs and suggested that MPs may be exempted from the odd-even scheme when parliament is in session.

To this, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said: "We will talk to the appropriate authorities; and we would not want any obstruction for the MPs in executing their duties."
New Delhi, April 25 : Imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand dominated both the houses of parliament on Monday with the Congress raising the matter in the Lok Sabha and creating ruckus in Rajya Sabha, where no meaningful business could be conducted amid uproar.

The Congress members created almost identical scenes in both houses over the issue as they raised slogans against the central government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for imposing President's rule in Uttarakhand.

Minutes before parliament met on the first day of the second half of the budget session, Prime Minister Modi expressed the hope that parliament would be able to transact business smoothly during the session.

"In the last session also, we transacted important business. Most of them were on financial issues. The satisfaction about it reflected on the face of our members. I hope similarly business will be transacted smoothly this time as well. We hope all (parties) will cooperate in making the session a success," Modi told reporters in the Parliament House premises.

The Congress members did exactly the opposite as they trooped near the speaker's podium in the Lok Sabha shouting slogans like "Stop killing democracy" and "Murder of democracy will not be accepted".

The leader of the Congress party in the house, Mallikarjun Kharge, had even given notice of adjournment of Question Hour to discuss the issue.

Aam Aadmi Party's Bhangwant Mann had also given notice of adjournment on the issue of farmers' suicides in Punjab and the drought situation in Maharashtra.

The Lok Sabha, however, was able to pass the Sikh Gurdwara (Amendment) Bill, 2016, with the house unanimously adopting the measure -- but only after a heated debate involving members of the Shiromani Akali Dal, the Congress and the AAP.

According to the amending bill, every Sikh above the age of 21 and registered as a voter will be entitled to vote in Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) and various gurdwara management committee elections.

However, no person who trims or shaves his beard or hair will be entitled to vote in these elections.

The bill, in this manner, seeks to amend the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925, which regulates the administration of gurdwaras in Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.

Introduced in the Rajya Sabha by Home Minister Rajnath Singh on March 15, the bill was passed by the upper house on the next day.

In the Lok Sabha, members, including those from the BJP, also demanded a ban on the import of Chinese goods since, they said, substandard materials from the communist country were harming India's small and medium enterprises.

Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said any blanket ban on imports from a country "is just not possible under the World Trade Organization norms". She, however, assured members that adequate steps are being taken to safeguard the interest of Indian manufacturers and consumers.

The Rajya Sabha was disrupted thrice before being adjourned for the day without it being able to conduct any business.

The Congress members raised the Uttarakhand issue vociferously, saying "Modi teri tanashahi nahi chalegi" (Prime Minister Narendra Modi your dictatorship will not be tolerated).

It had already witnessed three adjournments before it met at 3 p.m., but the Congress members assembled in front of the chair soon after and started raising the issue once again.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi tried to defuse the tension urging them that there were a number of important bills that were to be passed, hence the house be allowed to work.

On this, Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said that the Congress too wants to pass the bills but it could not be done as the house was not in order.

Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien tried to pacify the agitating members but they ignored his pleas and went on shouting slogans against the Modi government.

Kurien, realizing the mood of the opposition, adjourned the house for the day.

Azad blamed the central government for creating an "atmosphere" just before the parliament session that would lead to disruptions.

"We as the opposition want the house to function and legislation passed. But in the recent past, we have seen how an atmosphere was created to stall the proceedings of the house. For the first time in the history of Indian politics, President's Rule was imposed in Uttarakhand without following any rules and regulation. We demand a discussion on this," said Azad.

"We are witnessing attempts from the ruling party to hinder the functioning of parliament. The central government provokes the opposition and induces disruptions," he added.

Uttarakhand was plunged into political uncertainty after nine Congress legislators ganged up with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Later, central rule was imposed in the hill state.

In a major blow to the central government, the Uttarakhand High Court set aside President's Rule -- but a day later, the Supreme Court stayed the HC order. The matter in pending in the apex court.

Meanwhile, the Congress said it will not compromise on the Uttarakhand issue and will not let parliament function till the issue was settled.
Shimla, April 26 : Tourist destinations in Himachal Pradesh could turn out to be hotter for international backpackers too if positioned properly. Members of the international hospitality industry say the authorities need to showcase the state's potential to the global travellers in their dialect, through micro-blogging and online videos.

"When a tourist is planning his foreign trip, he may not know exactly where to begin. But he's interested to know the visiting place's culture, history, nature, people and the local facilities," visiting Germany's travel guide Eu-Asien De's managing director Mark Lich told IANS.

He said a lot of German travellers say India is their dream destination.

"But the only hiccup with the German visitors, who prefer spending lavishly overseas, is that they expect that they should have all first-hand information before finalizing their itinerary," the 27-year-old online travel guide said.

He was here along with his Russian-born father Gennady Lich - who migrated to Germany in 1995 - at the invitation of the state tourism department to attend the two-day Himachal Travel Mart over the Weekend.

During the first such event to showcase the state's potential, 1,260 business-to-business (B2B) meetings were held between the state tourism stakeholders and the travel delegates mainly from Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the UAE, besides India.

Britain-based travel guide Anita Larkin was impressed with the grand British-era heritage of Shimla, once British India's summer capital.

"It is lovely and homely to be in this town," she told IANS as she took a casual stroll through the streets of this capital town.

Strolling down the Mall, a famous shopping street, she said: "This is my first visit to the town and the state. It, of course, gives me a feeling of my hometown in Yorkshire. Before coming here, I was not familiar about the grand legacy of the British still preserved here."

"I would love to bring tourists from Britain to this place where my grandfather's sister's husband, a man named Bancraft, spent his lifetime," Larkin, who runs Ladies on Tour agency that organises holidays for women only.

She also visited the local Christ Church - built in 1857 in neo-Gothic style.

Echoing Lich's views, restaurateur-cum-travel advisor Richard Key of South Africa said tourist destinations in this Himalayan nation have much potential to allure high-end tourists from his country.

"The whites are difficult to convince. They prefer to travel to Europe and Australia. They have misconceptions that they will fall sick if they travel to India. They are also fearful about chaotic traffic, filthy surroundings and noise and air pollution," he said.

"The pollution-free environs of this state can be an allurement for them. For me it's the most beautiful place but it needs to be showcased at the international expos to change their mindset," said Key, who is a fan of India.

Second, he said, the state tourism agency needed to develop tour packages to allure international travellers.

Records with the state tourism department said 406,000 international tourists arrived in the state last year against 17.125 million domestic travellers.

The hill state has a bed capacity of 70,869 in about 2,600 hotels, including state-run Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation's 59 units.

Lich said there was no authentic travel information available in German about the favourite tourist destinations in Himachal Pradesh.

"The state tourism department should provide the literature in German online and promote its destinations through videos on YouTube," he said.

Writer Anoj Tillekeratne from Sri Lanka's travel magazine Travel Talk said before coming here he had no information about this state's tiny helmets spread over the Himalayan peaks, adjoining Tibet, that takes one to a land of Buddhism and virgin nature.

"Every year tens of thousands of Sri Lankans travel to India to visit Bodh Gaya, considered the birthplace of Buddhism, for spirituality. In this travel mart I came to know about a treasure trove of Buddhist monasteries that this state hosts," Tillekeratne told IANS.

For instance, near Kaza in the remote Spiti Valley is Tabo, known for a more than 1,000-year-old cave Buddhist monastery. Founded in 996, Tabo is located at an altitude of 3,050 m and is also called the Ajanta of the Himalayas.

Tourism commissioner Mohan Chauhan said the response of the international travel delegates was positive.

"The participants, mainly comprising members from the hospitality industry, got 40 to 50 business queries from the national and international delegates. The results will start coming after five to six months," he said.

Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation managing director Dinesh Malhotra said they are going to redesign the existing literature around the state's allures -- the majestic Himalayas, gurgling rivers, virgin mountains, cool hills coated with Himalayan cedars and rich culture.

Tourism contributes 7.2 percent of the state gross domestic product.

(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
Mumbai, April 26 : Filmmaker Ali Abbas Zafar, currently busy shooting "Sultan", says stories regarding the plot of the movie are completely "baseless and fabricated".

Zafar, who has also shot in the capital with superstar Salman Khan, has even requested his fans and well-wishers to wait till it hits the screens this Eid.

"All the stories doing rounds regarding the plot of 'Sultan' are completely baseless and fabricated. Wait till Eid please," the director tweeted on Tuesday.

After Delhi, the whole cast of the film will shoot in Uttar Pradesh from Wednesday onwards.

The film, being produced by Yash Raj Films, will be shot in and around the Morna area in Muzaffarnagar.

"Sultan" also stars Anushka Sharma and Randeep Hooda.
Lucknow, April 26 : Seven people, including two children, were killed and five others injured on Tuesday when a speeding van collided head on with a car here, police said.

The accident occurred in Telibagh area. The dead also included a woman and four men, a police officer told IANS. Three of the injured were said to be in critical condition.
Paravur (Kerala), April 26 : The daughter of one of Kerala's most respected former chief ministers has taken on veteran Congress legislator in assembly polls here in what is widely seen as a triangular contest.

Sarada Mohan of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and V.D. Sateeshan of the Congress are the two main candidates in Paravur, which is different from the Paravur where a temple tragedy this month claimed over 110 lives.

Sarada Mohan's father, the late P.K. Vasudevan Nair, was chief minister for less than a year in 1978-79. After he quit, the down to earth political leader won innumerable hearts by taking a bus to go home.

The 59-year-old woman, who lived in Bangalore for close to three decades, quit her job as a teacher to take forward her father's legacy. She won from the Kalady ward in Ernakulam district panchayat last year.

"Development in this constituency has stagnated," she says at election rallies big and small. "Nothing much has happened here in the past 15 years."

Sateeshan, who is looking at a fourth consecutive win from Paravur, located 30 km from Kochi, Kerala's commercial capital, does not agree of course.

The three-time legislator, 51, is vice president of the ruling party but he doesn't mind pointing out errors in governance.

Velapally Natesan, the Hindu Ezhava leader and founder of the Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS) party, an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party, has fielded Hari Vijayan, 49, to ensure that Sateeshan loses.

But Sateeshan is not bothered. "During elections, people will vote, not social group leaders."

In 2011, the CPI fielded its state secretary and former Lok Sabha member Panniyan Ravindran but Satheesan won by 11,349 votes.

All three contestants have finished the first round of campaigning by visiting the main market places and junctions and will now focus on family meetings.

The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) counts Ernakulam district as one of its strongest areas. In 2011, it won 11 of the 14 assembly seats. This is one reason Satheesan may be breathing easy.

(Sanu George can be contacted at sanu.g@ians.in)
New Delhi, April 26 : Following the foreign secretary-level talks between Indian and Pakistan here on Tuesday, the Pakistani foreign office stated that Islamabad has sought early resumption of the comprehensive bilateral dialogue between the two south Asian neighbours.

According to Pakistan foreign office spokesman Mohammed Nafees Zakaria, Pakistani Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry, during the talks with his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar, expressed the confidence that building on the goodwill generated by the recent high-level contacts, the two countries should remain committed to a sustained, meaningful and comprehensive dialogue process.

"He underscored the need for early commencement of comprehensive dialogue for which the Indian foreign secretary's visit to Pakistan is due," Zakaria tweeted after the meeting ahead of the Heart of Asia Conference on Tuesday.

During External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's visit to Islamabad in December last year for the Heart of Asia Conference, India and Pakistan agreed to start a comprehensive bilateral dialogue.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's December 25 stopover at Lahore to greet and meet Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on his birthday also gave a fillip to the dialogue process.

However, the foreign secretary-level talks as part of this dialogue, scheduled earlier for the middle of January this year, got stalled following the cross-border attack on the Pathankot airbase on January 2 in which seven Indian security personnel were killed by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed militants.
New Delhi, April 26 : A massive fire destroyed the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) here early on Tuesday, reducing its priceless collection including fossils to ashes, officials said.

The shocking devastation forced Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar to order an urgent fire audit of all museums across the country as it emerged that the fire fighting system failed to work at the museum.

The blaze erupted around 1.50 a.m. and quickly spread in the multi-storey building which housed the museum, just across the Nepalese embassy and around three kilometres from the Parliament House.

"The museum was on FICCI property. We will assess the damage as soon as we (can) and see how we can restore it," said a stunned Javadekar.

Museum officials were more forthright.

"Everything has been damaged, some by fire, some by gases and some by the water used to douse the flames," an official said on the condition of anonymity.

Added Vikas Rana, a museum official: "The museum had many fossils and species. Everything is lost... Around 3,000 children from Delhi and nearby regions used to visit it daily."

Some 35 fire tenders battled the leaping flames, bringing the fire officially under control by about 6 a.m. By then, virtually nothing in the museum of importance could be saved.

Delhi Fire Service chief G.C. Mishra blamed "an electrical gadget" for the inferno.

"No human intervention was involved in causing the fire that started from the seventh floor. However, we have completely doused the fire but cooling operation is still on," Mishra told IANS.

Five fire fighters were rushed to hospital after being injured while trying to contain the blaze.

Then prime minister Indira Gandhi initiated the idea of the museum in 1972 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of India's independence.

She desired a museum to depict India's flora, fauna and mineral wealth to provide an out of school facility for education of children and to promote environmental awareness among the masses, according to the museum's website.

The museum opened in June 1978, coinciding with the World Environment Day.

It had both permanent and temporary galleries, and provided guided tours by trained educational assistants.

Gallery 1 portrayed the origin and evolution of life and the variety and diversity of the flora and fauna in India.

Gallery 2 gave an overview of major eco-systems of the world, role of plants as primary producers, food chains, and interrelationship among plants, animals and human beings.

Gallery 3 dealt with many aspects of conservation of nature.

The museum provided opportunities to children to handle and examine specimens, participate in creative activities such as modelling and painting and exploration of discovery boxes.
Kolkata, April 26 : Effective management of land erosion and water and promoting organic farming are some of the key features in sustainable development and ecological protection agenda showcased in manifestos by political parties, perhaps for the first time, in the fray for assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and the union territory of Puducherry.

Corresponding with the diversity of the pressing problems seen in these states - from the eastern Himalayas to the Western Ghats down south - the manifestos offer variety in terms of a wishlist for balancing development goals and impacts on the environment.

In Assam, home to the endangered one-horned rhino, the ruling Congress highlighted recovery through scientific research of land eaten away by the mighty Brahmaputra so that these areas could be used for industry and other purposes.

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (in an alliance with the Asom Gana Parishad and the Bodo People's Front) has in its vision document advocated enacting legislation to ensure protection of all water bodies in the state as well as preventing poaching of rhinos using latest technologies of electronic monitoring and preventing water pollution.

In West Bengal, cradling the Indian side of the Sundarbans mangroves under threat from climate change, the ruling Trinamool Congress has dedicated merely one line to environmental issues. It says in its manifesto: "Environmental issues will be tackled". It goes on to say "in-situ water preservation and regulated use of underground water would be looked into."

Pitted against it is the BJP and a tie-up of the Left Front and the Congress.

The Left Front talks about conserving biodiversity and tackling effluents from factories in its manifesto. It also focusses on generating awareness among the public on reducing use of plastic and non-biodegradables that impact environment and human health.

While stressing on encouraging organic farming, the BJP also harps on its pet aspiration to "actively implement the National Solar Mission thereby providing cheap and clean alternate energy to consumers".

In Kerala, plagued with pollution of the Periyar river, that originates in the remote forests of the famed Periyar Tiger Reserve, the ruling Congress-led United Democratic Front's manifesto has sought to bring the spotlight back on the rampant reclamation of water bodies, paddy fields and wetlands and the destruction of mangroves.

It has promised to implement a special package for environment protection of ecologically-sensitive areas, including paddy fields and wetlands. Subsidies for organic farming is also on its agenda.

In Tamil Nadu, the DMK, the leading opposition party, plans to bring to the table a proposal to prevent floods and provide training in organic farming under a scheme to be launched in the name of the late popular green crusader Nammazhvar.

According to Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director (Research and Advocacy) at New Delhi's Centre For Science and Environment (CSE), there is an increasing political articulation of environmental concerns and that, in many ways, is a reflection of what kind of mobilization has happened across the country on certain issues.

"It is also about how sharp public opinion is on these issues to which there has to be a political response. Water management has a very strong popular appeal because states are water stressed today and there is a recognition coming in.

"There is also the other side, of whether there is a move on the part of the political party itself to bring this on the agenda even if public opinion is not sharp enough," Roychowdhury told IANS.

(Sahana Ghosh can be contacted at sahana.g@ians.in)
New Delhi, April 26 : The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed beleaguered liquor baron Vijay Mallya to disclose all the overseas assets held by him and his estranged wife and children to the banks which are seeking the recovery of more than Rs.9,000 crore in the principal and interest, loaned to his now-grounded Kingfisher Airlines.

The direction came after the court noted the unwillingness of Mallya to return to India and personally apper before it.

The banks would act on the disclosures in accordance with law, the apex court bench of Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman said, directing the disclosure of the assets Mallya holds abroad.

The court also directed the Bengaluru-based debts recovery tribunal to dispose of the matter pending before it expeditiously, possibly within two months.

The court recorded the statement of senior counsel C.A. Vaidyanathan that these assets held by Mallya, his estranged wife and children were not covered under the personal guarantee given by Mallya to the banks to return the loans that the consortium of 13 banks, headed by the State Bank of India (SBI), to his now-grounded Kingfisher Airlines.

The court also recorded a submission by Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, reserving his right to refute the submission made on behalf of Mallya.

Mallya had submitted the details of the overseas assets held by him and his estranged wife and children in a sealed cover to the court.
New Delhi, April 26 : One of India's largest hospital chains Fortis Healthcare on Tuesday launched the first pasteurised human milk bank, "Amaara", in Delhi and the National Capital Region.

The milk bank is a result of a collaboration between Fortis La Femme, a specialised hospital for women and newborns in New Delhi, and the non-profit organisation Breast Milk Foundation (BMF), an official statement said.

"The Amaara Milk Bank at Fortis La Femme is Delhi-NCR's first Milk Bank that will make available pasteurised human milk to infants hospitalised in our neonatal intensive care units as well as those admitted in other hospitals," said Bhavdeep Singh, CEO, Fortis Healthcare, in a statement.

This initiative is aimed at curbing infant mortality rate by providing pre-term babies the best food that they need for survival.

"India faces its own set of unique health challenges, one of them being the high vulnerability associated with pre-term babies who are significantly under-weight," Singh pointed out.

"Providing human breast milk to these fragile neonates can substantially cut the risk of infection and help save their lives," Singh said.

Keeping in mind the physiological inability of the mother in many cases to breastfeed, human milk banks assume great importance.

Although, globally, human milk banking is a common practice, in India, the progress has been slow and only 14 such banks exist, as per the Indian Academy of Paediatrics, the statement noted.

Key reasons for this are lack of awareness among the public and promotion of formula milk.

"At the 'Amaara' Milk Bank at Fortis La Femme, milk once donated will be tested, pasteurised and frozen (for a period of six months) and made available to needy newborns. It is a public milk bank and, therefore, accessible to all mothers who need it," the statement added.

"Many mothers of vulnerable, hospitalised babies are unable to breastfeed feed them. In addition, many mothers due to their own poor health or other reasons are not able to produce sufficient milk for their babies. For all of them, pasteurided donor milk is recommended as an essential alternative," Raghuram Mallaiah, director, Neonatology, Fortis La Femme, pointed out.
New Delhi, April 26 : The Rajya Sabha on Tuesday again witnessed disruptions over the Uttarakhand issue, and the chair finally adjourned the upper house for the day.

Soon after the newly nominated members were administered oath, the Congress and other opposition parties started raising slogans against the Narendra Modi government and demanded a debate on the Uttarakhand issue.

As the house met at 2 p.m., the Congress demanded the Centre's apology for, what it termed as, destabilising the duly-elected Harish Rawat government in Uttarakhand.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the Congress and other opposition parties were actually not interested in what the government had to say on the issue.

"You want to discuss the Uttarakhand issue, but you don't want to listen," he said amid noisy scenes.

Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad raised a point against Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, saying Jaitley was trying to set a wrong precedent by accusing Uttarakhand assembly Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal of "turning a minority government into a majority government".

"It's a wrong precedent that the central government is trying to set," Azad said, adding it was not in the interest of the country's democracy to interfere in the internal matters of the state assemblies.

Jaitley defended the Modi government's decision by saying that once President's Rule is imposed in a state, the said proclamation is to be laid in both houses of parliament.

"But the Congress is not interested (in letting the proclamation to be placed before parliament)," he alleged, and said that once it was done, the government would explain why it was done.

In response, the entire opposition opposed him vociferously.

Congress leaders and others assembled in the well of the house, shouting slogans like "Modi teri tanashahi nahi chalegi (Prime Minister Narendra Modi, your dictatorship will not be tolerated)".

Earlier in the day also, similar scenes were witnessed in the Rajya Sabha.

The upper house witnessed four adjournments till 3 p.m. When the house reassembled at 3 p.m., the chair adjourned it for the day as its plea to let the house discuss and pass important bills went unheeded.

The Rajya Sabha was disrupted thrice on the Uttarakhand issue on Monday as well, before it was adjourned for the day without conducting any business.

The BJP-led government is in minority in the upper house.
London, April 26 : Indian High Commissioner Navtej Sarna lauded the Parsi community for its role in India's freedom struggle as well as in post-independence nation-building.

Sarna was speaking at an event held under the aegis of the Zoroastrian All Party Parliamentary Group, in association with the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe (ZTFE), in the committee hall of the British Parliament.

The envoy recalled that a handful of people from Iran had landed on Indian shores more than a thousand years ago seeking a place where they could freely profess and pursue their religion. The Zoroastrians, or Parsis as they came to be known, had been absorbed into India's patchwork quilt of religions and ethnicities.

Maintaining their strong sense of identity and culture, the Parsis had contributed to India richly over the centuries. The high commissioner recalled personalities like Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, Dr Homi Bhaba, Field Marshall Sam Maneckshaw and Maestro Zubin Mehta who had all played a great role in various fields in modern Indian history, said an official statement from the Indian high commission on Tuesday.

Sarna was the special guest speaker along with two others, David Landsman, Head of TATA in the UK, and Sir Mominic Cadbury, former chairman of Cadbury and Schweppes, on the topic 'Faith-based ethics in Business: The Cadbury and The Tata Way'.

The event was chaired by Lord Karan Bilimoria.
New Delhi, April 26 : The BJP on Tuesday asked former defence minister A.K. Antony to clarify if any Congress leader was involved in accepting bribe in the $750 million AgustaWestland VVIP helicopter deal.

BJP leader and union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Antony had confirmed corruption in the deal.

"If he (Antony) said clearly that bribe has been given, he should tell if any Congress leader is involved," Prasad said.

"Bribe-givers have been convicted; why are the bribe-takers silent?" he asked.

He alleged that a Central Bureau of Investigation probe in the case was hindered by the then United Progressive Alliance government.

The CBI probe in the helicopter deal is on.

"The government expects the CBI to pursue the matter vigorously," the minister said, adding that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) too should probe the money laundering charges.

Italian group Finmeccanica's former chief Giuseppe Orsi and AgustaWestland's former head Bruno Spagnolini were sentenced by a Milan appeals court to jail terms for false accounting and corruption in the sale of the firm's 12 VVIP choppers to India.

While Orsi was given four and a half years in jail, Spagnolini was awarded a four-year jail term.

Three of the helicopters were delivered to the Indian Air Force before the contract -- signed in February 2010 -- was cancelled.

The IAF sought the AgustaWestland choppers as a replacement for its Mi-17 cargo helicopters that have been modified for VVIP deployment.

The Comptroller and Auditor General had made adverse comments, saying it was a waste of resources.
New Delhi, April 26 : Patanjali Ayurved is eyeing over Rs.10,000 crore turnover in 2016-17, more than doubling it from the Rs.5,000 crore in the last fiscal, yoga guru Ramdev, its founder, said here on Tuesday.

"We are targeting to cross Rs.10,000 crore turnover in the current fiscal from Rs.5,000 crore in 2015-16," Ramdev told reporters at a press meet.

"The profit is minimal and would be around 8-10 percent," said managing director Acharya Balkrishna.

He also said the company will be investing Rs.1,000 crore this year in setting up five to six new processing units of its various products in different states.

"We will set up five to six processing units in Assam, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Out of these, four will be fully functional within this year," Balkrishna said.

"The water requirement by our processing units is very less, and the water can be recycled and used again. So our processing units in areas where there is water scarcity will be beneficial for farmers," he said.

Ramdev said they currently take 1,000 tonnes of agricultural produce like wheat, peas, carrot, etc. from farmers every day. "Our target is to increase it to 10,000 tonnes per day. Our amla and aloe vera produce is 500 tonnes per day, which we want to increase to 1,000 tonnes per day," he said.

The Ayurveda-based FMCG company that has been growing exponentially in the last four years, plans to foray into exports and e-commerce this year.

"E-commerce tie-ups with major players is on the cards this year. On the export front, we are expecting 5-10 percent revenues this year. We will be exporting honey and cosmetics to 10-12 countries, including US, Britain, Canada, African and Arab countries," Balkrishna said.

Patanjali will also be expanding into new consumer lines like dairy products, and even yoga clothing.

"Patanjali curd, cheese and other dairy products will soon be in the market," Ramdev said while Balkrishna added that clothing made of natural fibres like jute is also on the anvil.

On being asked about reports of Patanjali cutting into the market share of multinational FMCG companies, Ramdev said: "We have created our own market. We have not eaten into other companies' share."

"We are totally vegetarian," the yoga guru said, but added that Patanjali will overtake brands like Colgate, Nestle and Pantene in terms of sale this year. "Our products like 'dant kanti', 'kesh kanti' and ghee are doing very well. We rely on quality, purity and low prices. We will be able to compete with Unilever in another 1-2 year," he added.

Asked the reason how Patanjali Ayurved is managing to grow exponentially at a time when other FMCG companies are fighting for market share, Ramdev said: "We do not have paid brand ambassadors. Wrestler Sushil Kumar, who features in Patanjali's ghee add, did the advertisement for free. I am brand ambassador of the company for free."

Patnajali intends to have 4,000 distributors, 10,000 Patanjali stores and 100 mega stores in the country this year.

The company's plans also include investing Rs.150 crore for setting up of an ayurveda clinical laboratory for animal and human trials, Balkrishna said.

The 1,200 Patanjali clinics across the country will be linked to an online system to be able to collate the patient data effectively, which can be used for research, he said.

Another Rs.500 crore will be invested on research and improvement of the indigenous breeds of cows in the country, he said.

The company's bigger plans include foraying into the education sector with 500 schools and a university.
New Delhi, April 26 : President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday extended his greetings to the Dutch people on their King's Day, to the people of Sierra Leone and Togo on their National Day and South Africans on their Freedom Day.

In his message to King of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, Mukherjee said: "On behalf of the government and people of India, I would like to extend warm greetings and felicitations to you, the government and the people of the Netherlands on the occasion of 'King's Day'."

He said that India and the Netherlands enjoy warm and friendly bilateral relations evolved over the last 400 years which are anchored in a rich and multifaceted partnership.

Marking the day of the current monarch, King's Day is a national holiday in the Netherlands, celebrated on April 27 (April 26 if the 27th is a Sunday).

In a message to his Sierra Leonean counterpart Ernest Bai Koroma, Mukherjee said: "Your participation in the 3rd India-Africa Forum Summit held in New Delhi in October 2015 provided a valuable opportunity for both sides to discuss ways to further strengthen our multifaceted engagements.

The West African country's National Day marks its independence from Britain on April 27, 1961.

In a message to his Togolese conterpart, Faure Essozimna Gnassingbe, Mukherjee said: "India and Togo enjoy warm and friendly relations. I am confident that our bilateral engagement will further strengthen in the years ahead to the mutual benefit of our two peoples."

The West African nation obtained its independence from France on this day in 1960.

Extending his greetings to the people of South Africa, Mukherjee said that India and South Africa share a longstanding friendship that is rooted in history and their shared values, and their cooperation has evolved into a strategic partnership-nurtured by multifaceted and vibrant engagement covering diverse sectors of the nations' mutual interest.

"Your participation in the Third India Africa Forum Summit held in New Delhi in October, 2015 contributed substantially to the efforts of this forum and will serve to reinforce the ties between India and Africa in the coming year," Mukherjee said in his message to his counterpart Jacob Zuma.

South Africa celebrates Freedom Day on April 27 to mark the liberation of the country and its people from colonialism and apartheid.
Jammu, April 26 : Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday stressed the need for timely completion of various highway projects in her state.

Describing connectivity as a prerequisite for bolstering economic growth, Mufti called for more effective coordination between different agencies so that work on prestigious road projects in the state was carried forward with greater urgency.

She said constructing roads in a hilly state like Jammu and Kashmir was a daunting task and sought the Centre's active support in removing hurdles in the way of completion of these projects.

The chief minister made the remarks while chairing a high-level meeting to review the progress of work on national highways in the state.

The review comes in the backdrop of her meeting with Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari in New Delhi earlier this month.

She described as unacceptable the delay in timely completion of projects in Jammu region.

Mehbooba Mufti urged all state departments concerned to work in unison and resolve pending issues with the road transport ministry.

She said that while new projects were being implemented, maintenance of existing national highways, the Jammu-Srinagar highway in particular, should not be ignored.
Beijing, April 26 : A day after India cancelled the visa of Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa, China said on Tuesday that it had approached the Indian side through diplomatic channels against his visit to Dharamsala for a global Uyghur meet.

Chinese foreign office spokesperson Hua Chunying, answering a query at a press briefing, said that India and China "should respect each other's concerns and properly handle relevant issues".

Isa had voiced disappointment after the Indian home ministry cancelled his tourist visa saying it is not a valid travel document to attend a conference.

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is scheduled from April 28 to May 1 in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, as a closed door event. It is being organised by the US-based Initiatives for China.

Asked about her comments on the cancellation, Hua said: "We have noted the relevant report. Upon learning that the Indian government would grant a visa for Dolkun, the Chinese side has immediately expressed its concerns with the Indian side through the diplomatic channel.

"What I would like to stress is that Dolkun is a terrorist on the red notice of the Interpol and the Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is the due obligation of relevant countries. Sino-Indian relationship enjoys a sound momentum of development. The two sides should respect each other's concerns and properly handle relevant issues," she said.
New Delhi, April 26 : Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Tuesday told the Lok Sabha that the government had provided Rs.1.34 lakh crore in food subsidy to the Food Corporation of India and various states during the 2015-16 fiscal.

"The government gave Food Corporation of India Rs.1.12 lakh crore, Andhra Pradesh Rs.1,364.25 crore, Bihar Rs.2,540.92 crore, Chhattisgarh Rs.3,328.93 crore, Gujarat Rs.55.57 crore and Kerala Rs.834.42 crore," the minister said in a written reply.

The minister said Madhya Pradesh got Rs.5,737.29 crore, Odisha Rs.3,331.39 crore, Punjab Rs.300 crore, Rajasthan Rs.155.11 crore, Tamil Nadu Rs.936.89 crore, Telangana Rs.1,390.08 crore, Uttarakhand Rs.408.67 and West Bengal Rs.2,465.87 crore.

Chandigarh received Rs.14.31 crore, Puducherry Rs.54.59 crore and Dadra and Nagar Haveli Rs.71 lakh in food subsidies.

"Rs.2.79 crore was given to Andaman and Nicobar, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Delhi, Goa, Lakshdweep, Mizoram and Sikkim as central assistance under the National Food Security Act," Paswan said.
Mumbai, April 26 : The heart of a 17-year-old road accident victim was flown in a chartered flight from Surat to Mumbai in 75 minutes to save the life of a 43-year-old man from Rajasthan's Alwar, a hospital official said.

The patient at Fortis Hospital was suffering from Dilated Cardiomyopathy and desperately needed a new heart which became possible after the Surat youth's family consented to donate his heart, as well as his kidneys and liver.

With meticulous planning involving airport authorities at Surat and Mumbai, besides traffic and police officials, the heart travelled the 269-km distance in 75 minutes.

The heart was harvested and transported from Sunshine Global Hospital in Surat to Fortis Hospital in Mulund in the latter's fifth inter-state heart transplant in recent months.

The airports and traffic police in both cities swiftly prepared a 'green corridor' and the donated heart left the Surat hospital at 10.33 a.m., reaching the local airport in five minutes.

It was taken onboard a chartered flight which took off at 10.41 a.m. and landed in Mumbai at 11.20 a.m. and was out of the airport in a ready ambulance at 11.31 a.m.

Again, another 'green corridor' enabled it to traverse the heavy late morning peak traffic areas of eastern and central Mumbai to reach the Fortis Hospital at 11.47 a.m. and into the operation theatre a minute later.

A team of doctors led by Anvay Mulay, head of the cardiac transplant team, carried out the successful transplant surgery.

The recipient's condition was described as stable in the ICU.

He will be under observation for the next 2-3 days which will be critical for him, Mulay said.

Since the first heart transplant in August 2015, the hospital has carried out 14 such operations, including five inter-state and three PaedCard transplants.

The hospital said the successful operation was possible with the coordination of the Maharashtra and Gujarat airport authorities, Surat and Mumbai traffic police, state government official Gauri Rathod, NGO Donate Life, medical social workers and the medical teams.
Ahmedabad, April 26 : The Gujarat Congress on Tuesday launched a three-day 'Pani Yatra' (march for water) across the state to give what it called a "wake-up call" to the BJP government for the severe water crisis in the state.

The march launched simultaneously from 14 places across Gujarat will cover all the districts before culminating in four cities in four different zones -- Rajkot (Saurashtra), Mehsana (north Gujarat), Vadodara (central Gujarat) and Surat (south Gujarat).

Giving details, state Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki said: "In spite of the acute water shortage in many villages, the state's Bharatiya Janata Party government is still shying from declaring them as scarcity-hit or drought-hit."

"To wake up this government, the Congress has launched the 'Pani Yatra' across Gujarat on April 26, 27 and 28," Solanki added.

Congress national general secretary Gurudas Kamat, who is in charge of theparty's affairs in Gujarat, along with Leader of Opposition in the assembly Shankersinh Vaghela, was present at a meeting held to discuss the water issue as well as several other problems facing the state.

Solanki also announced protests across Gujarat on April 30 to corner the BJP government on alleged irregularities in the KG oil basin operations.

Vaghela asked party workers to gear up for the 2017 elections and announced holding of a 'Lok Darbar' in his constituency of Kapadvanj in Kheda district.

"The Congress will start public meetings in the form of 'Lok Darbar' from May 9. It will kick-start from Kapadvanj and later be held across the state. In these meetings, we will highlight the issues concerning people, such as rampant corruption, unemployment and law and order," Vaghela said.

Kamat said: "Time has come to highlight the problems faced by the people of Gujarat as this government has miserably failed to keep its promises. The Congress will initiate a mass movement to address the plight of the state's residents."
Ujjain, April 26 : Trikal Bhavanta, a female ascetic, on Tuesday said she is ending her life by taking 'samadhi' after the government failed to allocate her all women 'Akhara' space and time for a sacred bath at the Simhastha Kumbh pilgrimage here.

She has been sitting in a 10 feet deep ditch in which, Trikal Bhavanta said, she would be buried alive.

The police has been trying to dissuade the 'sadhvi' (female sage) from committing any such act, Additional Superintendent of Police Amarendra Singh told reporters.

"Three policewomen have gone down the ditch to tell her to draw back from taking her life," he said.

Allahabad-based Trikal Bhavanta in 2014 founded the 'Shri Sarveshwar Mahadev Baikunth Dham Muktidwar' - known in short as 'Pari' Akhara and billed as the first female Akhara in India.

She has since been waging a campaign for the 'Pari' Akhara to be given the same status as the male Akharas in Kumbh melas.

An Akhara is an order of Hindu renunciates who see themselves as defending and protecting 'Dharma'. They trace their origin to the work of the 8th-century philosopher Adi Shankaracharya.

They have always had male members.

The 'Akharas' are allotted special place and time for 'shahi snan' (royal bath) at every Kumbh pilgrimage.

The Madhya Pradesh government recognises 13 Akharas -- all male -- for the purpose of Simhastha Kumbh.

Earlier, Trikal Bhavanta had gone on a hunger strike to voice her demand that 'Pari' Akhara be given the same status and facilities at Simhastha Kumbh as the male Akharas.

She had ended the hunger strike on the assurance of Madhya Pradesh's minister in charge of Simhastha Kumbh Bhupendra Singh that her demand would be looked into.

"Despite the assurance, my demands have not been heeded," she said on Tuesday.

"Unless Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan himself gives an assurance, I will not back down," she added.

Trikal Bhavanta's agitation comes in the backdrop of a series of unsavoury incidents at Simhastha Kumbh which 'sadhus' (male sages) taking part in the pilgrimage blamed on government mismanagement.

On Sunday, a 'sadhu' Tapasvi Giri was seriously injured in a murderous attack near a temple.

There were also incidents of theft at the pilgrimage site.

Some sadhus demonstrated against these incidents of violence and theft on Sunday.

Chief Minister Chauhan was here on Monday to placate the sadhus.
Washington, April 26 : The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group wants to expand its operations in Bangladesh to boost its image among local radicals, US-based intelligence assessment company Stratfor said in a report on Tuesday.

"The Islamic State will attempt more sensational attacks in Bangladesh to gain the support of extremists in the country," the report stated, according to Sputnik News.

The IS militants have published their goals for expansion in the latest edition of their magazine Dabiq, according to Stratfor.

IS head of operations in Bangladesh Sheikh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif said the group wants to target Christian missionaries and foreigners, along with Hindu and Shiite figures.

Al-Hanif also noted that Bangladesh is strategically important due to its proximity to eastern India and Myanmar, as well as its involvement with the UN peacekeeping missions in Muslim-majority countries.

"Bangladeshi nationals and foreign extremists of Bangladeshi descent fighting in Iraq and Syria will provide the Islamic State with skilled bombmakers and operational planners in Bangladesh," the report added.

The Islamic State, also known as Daesh, has been designated as a terrorist group and is outlawed in the United States, Russia and numerous other countries. The infamous group has seized large areas in Iraq and Syria, and declared a caliphate on territories under its control.
New Delhi, April 26 : Vice President Hamid Ansari on Tuesday said the experience of the Indian Muslim minority community living in a secular polity having a composite culture could be a model for others to emulate.

"Thinking minds should look beyond questions of identity and dignity in a defensive mode and explore how both can be furthered in a changing India and a changing world," Ansari said, while releasing a book "Fikr" brought out by the National Institute of Faith Leadership.

"The Indian experience of a large Muslim minority living in secular polity having a composite culture could even be a model for others to emulate," he said.

He said the book was an effort to remove widespread prejudices about Islam as a faith and Muslims as a people.

Ansari said he felt "there is a crying need to look at the unexplored or inadequately explored requirements of all segments of the community particularly women, youth, and non-elite sections" who remain trapped in a vicious circle of a culturally defensive posture that hinders self advancement and well being.

"This would necessitate sustained and candid interaction with fellow citizens without a syndrome of superiority or inferiority and can be fruitful only in the actual implementation of the principles of justice, equality and fraternity," he said.
New Delhi, April 26 : The BJP on Tuesday targeted Congress president Sonia Gandhi in the AgustaWestland chopper deal, alleging that her name crops up four times in an Italian court judgment that observes bribes were indeed paid to Indian authorities to secure the $530 million contract. Denying the allegation, the Congress threatened legal action for defamation.

"The Milan Court of Appeals in its judgment has said that bribe was paid by AgustaWestland to Indian officials to get the contract for the supply of 12 AW101 choppers. The 225-page judgment on page 193 mentions Sonia Gandhi's name, apart from other places," said Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesman Sambit Patra.

The Congress, however, vehemently denied the charges, saying that the judgment, neither directly nor indirectly, says that Gandhi was a beneficiary of the kickbacks and threatened legal action for defaming their top leader.

"This kind of baseless, defamatory allegations are made and I reserve to myself the right to take all appropriate action and defamation law as well. There is no finding - prima facie interim or final, tentative or otherwise - by any Italian court remotely suggesting that money was paid or taken," said Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

However, Patra said that the truth could not be brushed under the carpet through threats of legal action.

"A supposed video footage of Sonia Gandhi taking the money and putting it in the locker could not be the only concrete evidence. The legal procedure and the courts have other ways to establish a person's guilt," he said.

Singhvi dismissed the allegations saying: "What is being bandied around are unsigned internal documents which have not been adjudicated, which have not been decided, which are not part of any finding in any judgment of the lowest court."
Mumbai, April 26 : Actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who will soon be seen in the Omung Kumar-directed "Sarbjit", said she thinks Cannes is the best platform for showcasing of the biopic.

"I do not know if the team will be able to make the opportunity possible on that platform as well because Cannes will be happening in the last week. Given the timeline, if it is possible, the team will look for the opportunity. But, however if there are too many deadlines to match regretfully, that chance may have to be cut off," she said at the launch of the collection of renowned cosmetic line Loreal.

Being a regular face in Cannes, the former beauty queen will be walking on the red carpet as a brand ambassador of Loreal.

The 69th annual Cannes Film Festival is scheduled to be held from May 11 to 22 and "Sarbjit" is slated to release on May 20. "We have to wait for the last 10 days to announce but that would have been the perfect platform to share the film. Somehow it is coinciding with the final week with Cannes," she said.

Directed by Omung Kumar, "Sarbjit" is based on the life of Indian farmer Sarabjit Singh, who strayed into Pakistan, was convicted of terrorism and spying in Pakistan and sentenced to death. He was killed by fellow prisoners in jail.

While Aishwarya will be seen playing Dalbir Kaur, Sarabjit's sister, who suffered severe difficulties in trying to get her brother released, Randeep Hooda will be seen in the title role.

Apart from "Sarabjit", the actress will also be seen in "Ae Dil Hain Mushkil" along with Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma. The romantic drama, helmed by Karan Johar, is scheduled for release on October 28.
Cairo, April 26 : Members of the Egyptian parliament's human rights commission will visit the Italian parliament to discuss the murder in Cairo earlier this year of Italian student Giulio Regeni, the commission's president said Tuesday.

Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat made the announcement to journalists in Cairo but did not give a date for the visit.

Before the Egyptian lawmakers leave for Rome, they will hold talks with government officials on the circumstances of Regeni's abduction and murder, Sadat said.

"Egyptian civil society organisations have a different version of the young Italian's killing from that of Egyptian investigators - we will listen to all the accounts."

Regeni's mutilated, half-naked body bearing signs of torture was allegedly found in a ditch on Cairo's western outskirts on February 3, nine days after he vanished in the capital on January 25.

Cairo has vowed to "unravel the mystery" surrounding Regeni's brutal killing and strenuously denies claims by human groups that Egypt's security forces were behind the crime.

The 28-year-old Cambridge PhD student was researching independent trade unions, a sensitive topic in Egypt, and had written articles critical of the government that were published in an Italian newspaper under a pseudonym.

Italy recalled its ambassador to Egypt earlier this month after the failure of talks between Italian and Egyptian officials aimed at ending the deadlock over a probe into Regeni's killing.

Rome has accused Cairo of lack of cooperation in bringing Regeni's killers to justice and the case has strained ties between the two major trading partners.
Los Angeles, April 27 : Socialite Paris Hilton has split from her boyfriend Thomas Gross.

The 35-year-old has parted ways from the Swiss businessman after almost a year of dating, reports usmagazine.com.

Hilton, who had relocated to Europe to be with Gross, previously described him as her "soulmate".

She had also spoken of her desire to marry and have children with Gross, whom she met at the Cannes Film Festival last May.
Commercial rents in Londons prime skyscrapers are rising faster than those in any other global city, according to the latest index specifically for office tower blocks.

The Skyscraper Index from international real estate firm Knight Frank, which examines the rental performance of commercial buildings over 30 storeys across the world, shows that rents in skyscrapers in London rose 9.7% in the second half of 2015.

London also topped the table for rental growth in the previous Skyscraper Index, which covered the first half of 2015.



This far outstripped the growth in rents seen in other global cities, with rents in skyscrapers in San Francisco and Hong Kong rising 4.76% and 3% respectively over the same period.



Singapore was the only global city where skyscraper rents significantly decreased for the period, with the 4.75% drop attributed to over-supply and diminishing occupier confidence as a result of the slowdown in the Chinese economy.



Rents in Hong Kongs skyscrapers continue to be the highest in the world by some margin, reaching $263 per square foot in the second half of 2015. New York retained its second position, where skyscraper rents are currently $155 per square foot, followed by Tokyo at $129 per square foot.

There has been much debate around the future of Londons skyline, but the rental performance of the capitals skyscrapers points to the fact there is huge demand for space in landmark, tall buildings and we expect the upward pressure on rents to continue, said Will Beardmore-Gray, head of Knight Frank's Tenant Rep and Agency Business.



It is the second time in 12 months that London is the fastest growing office tower market in the world due to its diversity of occupier demand and constrained supply.

Ally McDade, Knight Frank research team associate, also pointed out that in the United States the rapid expansion of the tech sector is underpinning rental growth for towers in cities like San Francisco and Boston.

Interestingly, Mumbais emergence as a top performer has benefited from growth in tech, as it surpassed financial and business services as the top occupier of office space in the second half of 2015, McDade added.

Some locations have seen rents fall, including Singapore with a decline of 4.76% over six months, Beijing with a fall of 0.71%, Frankfurt down 1.16%, and Toronto, La Defence in Paris and Dubai seeing no change.


Today, Altep, Inc., an international leader in litigation support, cyber security and e-discovery solutions, announced the relocation of their European headquarters to the prestigious Leadenhall Building in London. The new office will be located on level thirty, and is only a short distance from their present location on Lime Street. Importantly, this allows Alteps expert teams to remain strategically close to Lloyds and the surrounding market professionals.

We are very pleased with this new location, said Margaret Valenzuela, Executive Vice President of Altep. This move not only provides a better working environment for our London branch, but a better, more accommodating space to meet our clients needs.

From their Corporate Headquarters in the United States, Altep has been providing innovative information management solutions to Fortune 100 and AMLAW clients for over 20 years. Since opening their European branch in 2014, Altep has been better positioned to assist European firms and companies, providing cost-effective and proactive discovery management, compliance risk assessment, and data forensics services.

For Timothy LaTulippe, Director of Altep Europe, the new office provides an ideal location from which to meet client expectations. LaTulippe will be celebrating his third year with Altep next month, and is a regular contributor to the companys blog.

The Leadenhall Building, or cheese grater embodies the qualities we value in our operations: convenience in location, unrivalled client service and best-in-industry security and infrastructure provisions, said LaTulippe. This move represents our commitment to providing the best possible experience to our Insurance, Corporate, and Law Firm client base.

About Altep

Altep, Inc. is a Relativity Best in Service  Orange Level hosting provider, with certified Experts, Administrators, Analytics Specialists, Reviewer Specialists, Assisted Review Specialists, Infrastructure Specialists, and Sales Professionals on staff. The firm assists Fortune 100 and AM Law 100 clients with data forensics, discovery management, and compliance risk assessment. E-Discovery services include early data assessment, ESI and traditional paper processing, and secure hosting.

Alteps data and process management experts hold a variety of certifications and credentials, including Project Management Professional, EnCase Certified Forensic Examiner, Certified Forensic Computer Examiner, Licensed Private Investigator, Certified Information Systems Security Professional, Certified Information Privacy Professional, SNIA Certified Storage Professional, and Content Analyst Advanced Analytics Certification. Find more information about Altep, Inc. at http://www.altep.com
Global Futurist Jack Uldrich Sometime in the next century the utilities industry will be challenged in a way for which it has no precedent.

"From the outside, the utility industry may appear to many as slow, cumbersome and resistant to change," says global futurist and energy trend expert Jack Uldrich. "These characterizations may or may not be fair, but what is clear, " he says, "is that the industry is poised for an extraordinary change in the years ahead--what has served the industry well in the past wont be sufficient for remaining competitive in the future. So it is imperative that the leadership in the industry embrace a new approach."

Uldrich's concept for leadership is based on "The Big AHA." AHA is his acronym for Awareness, Humility, and Action. Uldrich says these three tenets are critical for leaders. He goes on to state that "AHA", combined with a willingness to "unlearn", will provide fertile ground for leaders for future growth.

On April 28, Uldrich is slated to provide insight into energy trends and leadership for Power South Energy Cooperative. He will deliver his presentation: "Leadership for a Changing World: The Big AHA."

Uldrich, who has been hailed as the "Chief Unlearning Officer" by Businessweek says, "Continuous disruption is the new normal. And the most successful innovators/leaders in the utility industry will ask better questions, and as a result better answers."

Uldrich's School of Unlearning was founded in 2003. (More can be read about it in this recent Minnesota Business Magazine article.)

A distinguished thought leader and global futurist, Jack Uldrich is the author of 11 books and a regular guest and contributor for a number of national news outlets. He also frequently appears on the Science Channels FutureScape and Discovery Channels Inside Out.

He is known throughout the world for his assessment of renewable energy and technological trends and their effect on our society. He has delivered keynote presentations and workshops for San Diego Gas & Electric, the Southern California Gas Company, Southern Company, Northwestern Energy, the Wabash Valley Power Power Association, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Idaho Power, Northwestern Energy, the Minnesota Rural Electric Cooperative, the Western Energy Institute, Idaho Power, the American Public Power Association, the Northwest Public Power Association, the Eugene Board of Water and Electricity, the Missouri River Energy Service, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Wisconsin Public Power, among others.

Uldrich says, Sometime in the next century the utility industry will be challenged in a way for which it has no precedent. He hopes the information he shares with organizations will shed some light on how to prepare for and weather the storms they will face in the future.

Parties interested in learning more about Jack Uldrich, his books, his daily blog or his speaking availability are encouraged to visit his website.
Today, Altep, Inc., an international leader in litigation support, cyber security and e-discovery solutions, announced the relocation of their European headquarters to the prestigious Leadenhall Building in London. The new office will be located on level thirty, and is only a short distance from their present location on Lime Street. Importantly, this allows Alteps expert teams to remain strategically close to Lloyds and the surrounding market professionals.

We are very pleased with this new location, said Margaret Valenzuela, Executive Vice President of Altep. This move not only provides a better working environment for our London branch, but a better, more accommodating space to meet our clients needs.

From their Corporate Headquarters in the United States, Altep has been providing innovative information management solutions to Fortune 100 and AMLAW clients for over 20 years. Since opening their European branch in 2014, Altep has been better positioned to assist European firms and companies, providing cost-effective and proactive discovery management, compliance risk assessment, and data forensics services.

For Timothy LaTulippe, Director of Altep Europe, the new office provides an ideal location from which to meet client expectations. LaTulippe will be celebrating his third year with Altep next month, and is a regular contributor to the companys blog.

The Leadenhall Building, or cheese grater embodies the qualities we value in our operations: convenience in location, unrivalled client service and best-in-industry security and infrastructure provisions, said LaTulippe. This move represents our commitment to providing the best possible experience to our Insurance, Corporate and Law Firm client base.

About Altep

Altep, Inc. is a Relativity Best in Service  Orange Level hosting provider, with certified Experts, Administrators, Analytics Specialists, Reviewer Specialists, Assisted Review Specialists, Infrastructure Specialists, and Sales Professionals on staff. The firm assists Fortune 100 and AM Law 100 clients with data forensics, discovery management, and compliance risk assessment. E-Discovery services include early data assessment, ESI and traditional paper processing, and secure hosting.

Alteps data and process management experts hold a variety of certifications and credentials, including Project Management Professional, EnCase Certified Forensic Examiner, Certified Forensic Computer Examiner, Licensed Private Investigator, Certified Information Systems Security Professional, Certified Information Privacy Professional, SNIA Certified Storage Professional, and Content Analyst Advanced Analytics Certification. Find more information about Altep, Inc. at http://www.altep.com
PerformLine, the leading SaaS marketing compliance company, today announced that it has been accepted as a Merchant Monitoring Service Provider (MMSP), providing monitoring services to acquirers participating in the Merchant Monitoring Program (MMP) of MasterCards Business Risk Assessment and Mitigation (BRAM) Program. As part of this program, the companys PerformMatch platform will provide acquirers in the Merchant Monitoring Program (MMP) complete surveillance of their merchant websites to ensure full compliance with the MasterCard Business Risk Assessment and Mitigation (BRAM) program rules. PerformMatchs ongoing and automated monitoring is designed to manage risk and prevent fraud while creating time and cost-savings for acquirers, processors and merchants who must adhere to the BRAM rules.

We are excited to be part of the MasterCard Merchant Monitoring Service Provider program and help the companies that process payments to fully monitor their merchants activities online, said Alex Baydin, CEO of PerformLine. Our deep experience in marketing compliance, coupled with the strength of our automated and scalable platform, will help ensure that processors and merchants comply with federal laws and MasterCard program requirements.

PerformMatch uniquely uses customizable rule sets to provide specialized monitoring of possible compliance violations across a variety of marketing channels. In addition, the platform provides continuous, 24/7 monitoring and automated daily screenshots to analyze every merchant website to identify possible infringements. As part of the monitoring process, the companys web crawler discovers both known and unknown merchant web pages and monitors for potentially illegal product offerings like the sale of counterfeit merchandise, the illegal sale of prescription drugs, and the sale of illegal electronic devices. The platform then identifies the web pages in violation of BRAM program rules, and can do the legwork to notify merchants and remediate potential violations.

MasterCards BRAM initiative was designed to protect MasterCard and its customers from illegal and brand-damaging transactions.

PerformLine works with the top brands in lending, banking, mortgage, credit and debt services, credit cards and education, providing them the most comprehensive marketing oversight platform available. To date, PerformLine has helped clients proactively uncover and resolve more than 29 billion potential marketing compliance violations before they became issues. Underscoring this effort, the company hosts COMPLY, the first of its kind conference strictly focused on the intersection of marketing and compliance designed to help their clients and marketers stay informed and up-to-date on regulations and compliance issues. On June 7, 2016 at the Dream Downtown in NYC, COMPLY2016 will bring C-level compliance executives, marketing professionals, leading advertising lawyers and consultants, and contact center directors from top brands who are interested in making sure their efforts to reach consumers are compliant with all federal regulations. Learn more about COMPLY2016 and register at http://www.COMPLY2016.com.

About PerformLine

PerformLine is the industrys leading marketing compliance company bringing SaaS automation and scale to companies looking to mitigate risk and ensure brand safety. PerformLine empowers marketers with the most comprehensive marketing oversight solution for multiple channels within a single platform  PerformMatch. The PerformMatch platform automatically monitors contact centers and the web to ensure full regulatory, brand and TCPA compliance for marketers, as well as provide automated agent compliance and performance monitoring in their contact centers. PerformLine saves clients money by automating compliance activities across channels and departments, creating significant cost-savings. For more information about PerformLine, Inc. and the PerformMatch compliance platform, visit performline.com, email marketing(at)performline(dot)com or follow us on twitter @PerformLine. For media inquiries, contact Cari Sommer, Sommer Communications Group, 646-480-7683.
Dynamics solutions are all developed in-house by Dynamics Subject Matter Experts. This organic development allows for the industrys only comprehensive and completely integrated solution.

Dynamic Healthcare Systems' April 2016 release of its End-to-End solution suite includes significant enhancements for clients with Medicare Advantage Health Plans. Added functionality has been added to the Premium Billing, EDPS, and Revenue Reconciliation solutions. Dynamic's flagship solution suite Voyager, is widely utilized by both startup and established Medicare Advantage Health Plans. This single-source Software-as-a-Service solution empowers health plans to efficiently manage their Medicare Advantage population within the strict regulations of CMS.

With the comprehensive Voyager solution, health plans can efficiently enroll members, validate secondary payers, bill premiums, generate all required correspondence including invoices and delinquency letters, submit RAPS and EDPS encounters, perform risk adjustment and HCC analytics, reconcile CMS revenue, perform PDE Audit of the plans PBM, and various other operational processes. All of these functions are performed within one user interface and utilize one relational database. The Voyager solution was developed based upon the regulatory requirements mandated by CMS. In order to ensure that Voyager stays current with the ever-changing CMS regulatory requirements, Dynamic attends all CMS call letter conference calls and updates Voyager as necessary to keep pace with regulatory changes.

Unlike other offerings in the marketplace, Dynamics solutions have not been developed through acquisitions of single solutions and then attempted to be pieced together, said Kathy Feeny, President and CEO of Dynamic Healthcare Systems. Instead, Dynamics solutions are all developed in-house by Dynamics Subject Matter Experts. This organic development allows for the industrys only comprehensive and completely integrated solution.

Having a fully integrated system enables the automation of processes and the ability to leverage work queues based on skills-based routing. Alerts are triggered and work routed to the right resource with the right skills at the right time. This coordination is crucial to meeting CMS deadlines and detecting revenue issues and other potential discrepancies with CMS. Synchronization found with Dynamics end-to-end Voyager solution is not readily possible for plans that utilize a patchwork of systems from a variety of vendors resulting in business silos. Dynamic helps plans break down these silos by allowing all operating units to work together from a single system and a single data source.

About Dynamic Healthcare Systems

Dynamic Healthcare Systems, Inc. delivers comprehensive enterprise-wide solutions and services for health plans with Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and Marketplace lines of business striving to succeed amid new and evolving regulatory requirements. Headquartered in Irvine, California, the company brings world-class innovations to companies serving the government-regulated healthcare population. For more information, visit http://www.dynamichealthsys.com or call 949.333.4565.

Contacts:

Dynamic Healthcare Systems

Media Relations

Bob Cordisco

Phone: 949.333.4565 ext. 101

Web: http://www.dynamichealthsys.com
Its a privilege to be able to be able to partner with ILG to broaden the impact of sustainability across the State, said REV CEO Elliot Hoffman.

The Institute of Local Government (ILG) and REV, a sustainability services firm, are pleased to announce their new partnership, under the Institutes Partner Program. This public-private partnership aims to help California municipalities become more sustainable and help the businesses and organizations within their communities accelerate sustainability impact.

ILG, a non-profit research affiliate of the League of California Cities, the California State Association of Counties, and the California Special Districts Association, administers the well-regarded Beacon Program that helps California cities and counties adopt money saving best practices using their Sustainability Best Practices Framework as its guidepost.

San Francisco-based REV provides a unique hybrid of sustainability education, expert resources, and individualized consulting that enables businesses, municipalities, and institutions to enhance engagement, save resources, and build resiliency. To date, the company has served over 350 organizations though their flagship Sustainability Circle Program.

As a member of the Institutes Partner Program, REV will work with ILG to convene local leaders, interested companies, and organizations to discuss how to implement sustainability best practices and policies in their community. The partnership will advance the awareness and visibility of REVs unique services in the realm of sustainability among a wide array of local elected officials, top administrators, and the community leaders they represent.

One key objective of the partnership is to empower municipalities to more effectively meet and exceed their Climate Action Plan goals. To that end, REV has also recently published a whitepaper  Roadmap for Sustainability Engagement  which provides information and resources to help cities engage their business communities for greater sustainability impact.

REV will closely collaborate with ILG to reach local officials with a keen interest in sustainability through events such as the League's annual conference, policy committees, and related activities and events.

Its a privilege to be able to be able to partner with ILG to broaden the impact of sustainability across the state, said REV CEO Elliot Hoffman. If California is to meet our GHG reduction and resource conservation goals, it is imperative that all of us  cities, government agencies, local leaders, and business communities  engage together to make sustainability the bedrock of good business and healthy communities.

About REV

REV is a sustainability services firm that empowers businesses, municipalities, and institutions to move their vision forward. They provide a unique hybrid of education, expert resources, and individualized consulting that inspire and enable organizations to create positive change in their business and broader community  enhancing employee engagement, saving money and resources, reducing risk, and building resiliency.

REVs flagship Sustainability Circle program integrates the best of sustainability with behavior change in a proven peer-learning model to accelerate business impact. The outcome is a 5-year sustainability action plan.

Since 2010, REV has served over 350 organizations. Combined annualized recurring savings achieved through initiatives implemented by 60 organizations in the first 6 months after completing the Program included 142,354,250 gallons of water; over 9 million kWhs; 79,374 therms; over 6,849 mt of CO2, and $4,049,180. More information at revsustainability.com

About ILG and the Beacon Program

ILG is a non-profit dedicated to promoting good government at the local level and supports Californias local governments as they work to establish and implement good governance policies and practices to better serve their communities. ILG conducts research and provides education through technical assistance, trainings, webinars and resources in an effort to: foster ethical, transparent local governments; create active and engaged communities; and ensure elected officials have the tools they need to make informed, ethical decisions.

The Beacon Program provides a framework for local governments to share best practices that create healthier, more efficient and vibrant communities. The program honors voluntary efforts by local governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save energy and adopt policies that promote sustainability. The Beacon Program currently supports 83 jurisdictions, representing more than 25% of the states population, that are implementing effective climate action practices that are improving the quality of life in their communities. The Beacon Program is funded by California utility ratepayers and administered by Pacific Gas and Electric Company, San Diego Gas and Electric Company, Southern California Edison and Southern California Gas Company under the auspices of the California Public Utilities Commission. To find out more, visit http://www.ca-ilg.org.
Reltok Nasal Products proudly announces that Boston Medical Products, Inc., a leading international distributor of devices and products for the head and neck/ear, nose and throat specialty, has added the KOTLER NASAL AIRWAY to its diverse product line.

A Unique Safety Device

The KOTLER NASAL AIRWAY is a newly patented safety device secured by nasal surgeons onto the floor of the nasal passages, at the conclusion of any sinus and/or nasal surgery.The one-piece, soft silicone, dual-tube device assures access by the anesthesia specialist for clearing the airway in preparation for awakening the patient.

Formerly, the anesthesia specialist had access to clear the throat solely via the mouth which was challenging if the awakening patient were uncooperative. The nasal route avoids the perils of possible injury to the teeth and other mouth structures.

A Popular Patient-Pleaser

Patients have long expressed dissatisfaction over nasal blockage after surgery without any provision for clear breathing. Despite the surgical procedures success, the experience has heretofore suffered from bad press because of the clogged nasal passages. The KNA provides clear breathing through the nasal passages immediately after surgery and throughout the immediate post-operative period. The airway prevents the congestion, ear-clogging, dry throat and even claustrophobia.

_________________________________________________________________

Boston Medical Products, Inc., which has acquired the distribution rights to the Kotler Nasal Airway (KNA) was founded in 1980 by three physicians, including world-renowned Harvard surgeon William W. Montgomery, MD, as a way to make Dr. Montgomery's original innovations widely available to fellow physicians. Boston Medical Products, Inc., is part of the Bess Group, based in Germany, a multinational manufacturer of products for the specialties of head & neck surgery, pulmonology and gastroenterology.

Reltok Nasal Products, LLC manufactures the KNA airway in Pacoima, CA, for distribution in the U.S. and abroad. Its incubator arm aids MD-inventors and developers with patentable devices and products for nasal and sinus procedures. Reltok Nasal Products was founded by veteran nasal surgeons, Robert Kotler, MD, FACS, a UCLA faculty member, and Keith Wahl, MD, FACS of La Jolla, CA, retired faculty at UC San Diego.
On Saturday, May 7, 2016, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) will present the ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism to journalists Lydia Cacho and Jeremy Scahill. One of the largest monetary awards for human rights in the world, this $100,000 cash prize is granted annually by ALBA and the Puffin Foundation to honor the International Brigades and connect their inspiring legacy with contemporary causes.

Cacho and Scahill both shine as rare examples of investigative journalists who place human rights at the center of their work, said ALBA board member and 2012 award recipient Kate Doyle. Their reporting not only affects government policies, but seeks to champion and protect the lives of the worlds most vulnerable citizens. ALBA is proud to honor them.

Working on both sides of the volatile Mexico-United States border, Lydia Cacho and Jeremy Scahill have dedicated their careers to exposing the corruption, violence and abuse of power which go routinely unchallenged in the mainstream media. Cachos and Scahills work exemplifies the intersections of expository reporting and human rights activism. Their commitment to breaking the most profound silences has prompted investigations into the United States shadow wars across the Middle East and Africa as well as Mexican authorities use of censorship, torture and corruption.

Part of an initiative designed to sustain the legacy of the experiences, aspirations and idealism of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism supports current international activists and human rights causes. The Award was created by philanthropist and visionary Perry Rosenstein, President of the Puffin Foundation, which in 2010 established an endowed fund for the award.

This award recognizes and encourages individuals or groups whose work has a positive impact on the advancement and/or defense of human rights. Jeremy Scahill and Lydia Cacho have courageously used their investigative journalism to expose reactionary forces and the information they wish to conceal, Rosenstein said.

Honorary Committee: Vinie Burrows, Alfonso Cuaron, and Naomi Klein

Award Ceremony  Saturday, May 7th at 2:30pm

Japan Society

333 East 47th St.

New York, NY 10017
Virtual reality takes students to places they could only dream of visiting, but it is also an open canvas for students to imagine and build new worlds and experiences."

Interactive media platform ThingLink (http://www.thinglink.com) has launched its first virtual reality content app called VR Lessons. The app is designed for elementary school students, their teachers and parents.

VR Lessons by ThingLink is a collection of high quality, interactive, 360 image and video journeys on a variety of topics including science, language, and arts. The first stories take students to visit different kinds of ecosystems from the French Alps to a jungle in the archipelago of northern Australia. As students turn their heads to look around, they can spot details and unlock additional information of each habitat in a narrated virtual reality environment.

Virtual reality can take students to places they could only dream of visiting, but it is also an open canvas for students to imagine and build new worlds and experiences. We are making it possible for schools to use virtual reality as an engaging learning platform, says ThingLinks founder and CEO Ulla Engestrom.

VR Lessons by ThingLink utilizes three key feature additions to ThingLinks core product, the image editor: audio annotations, background audio for 360 images, and the ability to connect several 360 images or videos into a one immersive story.

Audio annotations work wonderfully in a mobile VR environment, adding depth to the overall experience of the space. For example, in VR Lessons we added the sound of the wind in the background of an image from the Norwegian tundra, and an owl howling in the image of a cold winter forest in Finland. In annotations we are using both human and computer voiced files, and students can vote which voice they like the best, says Engestrom.

The first VR lessons have been created by ThingLinks own content team using the companys new VR editor. Later, educators from around the world will be able to publish their virtual reality lessons in ThingLinks VR Lessons app.

About ThingLink

ThingLink, founded in 2010, is an interactive media platform that empowers online publishers to create more engaging content by adding rich media links to photos, videos and virtual reality. With over 3 million content creators, ThingLink has become the most popular cross-platform solution and creative community for interactive images and videos.

For more information, visit http://www.thinglink.com.
BLUEFISH is due to release its latest service taste of BLUE BritWeek's partnership with BLUEFISH was a perfect fit. They offer access to exciting, dynamic events, such as those featured as part of BritWeeks program, constantly pushing boundaries to create innovative experiences.

BritWeek, the celebration of British creativity and innovation, has announced an exciting partnership with BLUEFISH. Founded by British Founder and CEO Steve Sims, BLUEFISH was named by Forbes as the best concierge in the world. This partnership comes just as BLUEFISH is due to release its latest service taste of BLUE, a membership specifically built for todays' desires and needs, which people can signup for more information at tasteofblue.com

Our partnership with BLUEFISH was a perfect fit, said BritWeek Chairman Bob Peirce. They offer access to exciting, dynamic events, such as those featured as part of BritWeeks program, constantly pushing boundaries to create innovative experiences.

From our underground status as a secret society in the 90s to our impressive involvement with such high profile events as Hollywood Award Shows, Formula 1 Paddock Club, Polo, Movie Premieres, New York Fashion Week, and of course, BritWeek, said BLUEFISH Founder Steve Sims, over the past decade Bluefish has secured its provocative reputation as the premier lifestyle, concierge, and travel service to the rich and famous."

Recognized in Forbes, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and Londons Sunday Times, BLUEFISH offers unique, once-in-a-lifetime memories that are beyond imagination and have become the Bluefish trademark, from supersonic military jet flights in Russia, to submersible dives in the Atlantic Ocean to view the Titanic, to a spectacular flight into space, the Bluefish team of travel experts places you in astonishing life experiences and offers you the finest travel opportunities worldwide.

BritWeek is a nonprofit organization that hosts a program of events every Spring to promote British creativity, innovation and excellence across multiple categories including, film & television, music, art, fashion, design, retail, sport, philanthropy, business, and more. The events take place throughout Greater Los Angeles and this year includes the BritWeek Tenth Anniversary Gala. For more information visit britweek.org
Woolpert will evaluate sewer lines and waterways throughout Gwinnett County, Ga., as part of a $4.5 million sewer and stormwater assessment project. Well be using pole cameras with high-power zoom to look for defects and debris in the pipes. The contract is all-inclusive. It includes cleaning, CCTV (closed captioned television) and structure inspections.

Woolpert has been awarded a sewer and stormwater assessment project by the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners for the Department of Water Resources.

The annual contract is valued at $2.9 million for Section B (sewer) and $1.6 million per year for Section A (stormwater), respectively. The contract includes the evaluation of sewer lines and waterways throughout the county, which is located in Metro Atlanta.

Well be using pole cameras with high-power zoom to look for defects and debris in the pipes, said Eric MacDonald, Woolpert project manager. The contract is all-inclusive. It includes cleaning, CCTV (closed captioned television) and structure inspections.

Woolpert has 30 years of sewer system experience and 20 years of stormwater system assessment experience across the U.S. The firm has worked with Gwinnett County for more than a dozen years, performing flow monitoring, wastewater inspections and sewer system evaluation surveys (SSES).

MacDonald lauded the countys approach to sewer and stormwater management.

Without a stormwater utility like this that gets ahead of the problem, pipes often fail, and creek beds erode and become channels for flash flooding, MacDonald said. Kudos to Gwinnett County for being proactive, and for their participation in the voluntary CMOM program for their sanitary sewers.

This Capacity Management, Operation and Maintenance (CMOM) program is run through the Georgia Environmental Protection Division. CMOM requires an ongoing inspection and rehabilitation process for the management of wastewater collection systems.

These projects are underway.

About Woolpert

Woolpert is a national architecture, engineering and geospatial (AEG) firm that delivers value to clients by strategically blending engineering excellence with leading-edge technology and geospatial applications. With a dynamic R&D department, Woolpert works with inventive business partners like Google; operates a fleet of planes, sensors and unmanned aerial systems (UAS); and continually pushes industry boundaries by working with advanced water technologies, asset management, Building Information Modeling (BIM) and sustainable design. Woolperts mission is to help its clients progressand become more progressive. For over 100 years and with 24 offices across the United States, Woolpert serves the needs of federal, state and local governments; private and public companies and universities; energy and transportation departments; and the United States Armed Forces. For more information, visit woolpert.com or call 937-531-1258.
Rapid Response Systems mostly in general floors, we have intermittent vital signs checks. These checks would go and somewhere between every six hours or even eight hours or sometimes four hours, but certainly not continuous

The Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS) recently released an interview with Eyal Zimlichman, M.D., MSc.. Dr. Zimlichman holds dual appointments as Deputy Director General and Chief Quality Officer at Sheba Medical Center in Israel and at the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at Brigham and Womens Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

There is a need to improve rapid response teams and code blue activations, says Michael Wong, (Executive Director, PPAHS). 50% of Code Blue events involve patients receiving opioids. Moreover, unrecognized postoperative respiratory failure that results in cardiopulmonary arrest is a daily occurrence at healthcare facilities across the United States.

In a recent interview with PPAHS, Eyal Zimlichman, M.D., MSc., spoke at length about improving rapid response teams and code blue activations.

The success of rapid response team deployment and Code Blue activations is hugely dependent on timing - the earlier patient deterioration is identified and acted upon, the sooner intervention may take place.

In the interview, Dr. Zimlichman spoke about the need for early detection and intervention:

 mostly in general floors, we have intermittent vital signs checks. These checks would go and somewhere between every six hours or even eight hours or sometimes four hours, but certainly not continuous  So by the time of intervention between one vital sign check to the other, we actually would get to the patient bedside only when he goes into cardiac arrest. If that deterioration occurs. So being able to continuously monitor patients on general floors, much like we do on ICUs, could be something that would make a significant contribution to preventing these preventable deaths inside hospitals.

Dr Zimlichman says that continuous electronic monitoring of patients holds the key to improving early detection and intervention:

 I think that's a common notion today among the experts that continuous monitoring is what we call the missing link to making rapid responses to the work 

[Research has] shown that hospitals have implementation of rapid response system have not shown an improvements in outcomes, have not shown a decrease in mortality that we were aiming to see. And there is always that question, why is that the case? And if we look closely into rapid response systems, we know that there's an efferent and an efferent we're mainly saying that there is first of all, understanding that there's a need to activate the team and then once we understand that there's the actions that the team take 

[Using the continuous monitoring system in our research] there's a 50% chance that [when the alarm sounds] this patient would need an ICU. When the nurse gets that alert on top of her clinical judgement, it reinforces her decision making and I think that factor alone contributes to a better and efficient activation of the system.

To listen to the complete interview with Dr. Zimlichman, please click here.

For another interview with a clinician who has been able to reduce the need for rapid response activations by more than 50%, please click here.

About Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety

Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety is a non-profit 501(c)(3) whose mission is to promote safer clinical practices and standards for patients through collaboration among healthcare experts, professionals, scientific researchers, and others, in order to improve health care delivery. For more information, please go to http://www.ppahs.org
As recently announced on national television, The Stinger will be auctioned leading up to the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 by Barrett-Jackson, the Worlds Greatest Collector Car Auctions, bringing the one-of-a-kind fundraising project for St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital to a close.

The Stinger IndyCar is an interpretation of the 1911 Marmon Wasp, the first-ever Indy 500 winning car. Racing great John Andretti is lapping the country with The Stinger to get the signature of every living Indy 500 veteran. The car, adorned with 249 Indy drivers autographs, will be auctioned off the week before the Indy 500 with one hundred percent of the money raised to be donated to St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital. Window World commissioned the building of The Stinger, including state-of-the-art aerodynamics and a meticulous recreation of the yellow and black color scheme and infamous wasp-like tail of the Marmon Wasp. Honda graciously donated an Indy-race-winning engine.

We are extremely excited to partner with Barrett-Jackson, the nations leader in collector car auctions, said Tammy Whitworth, CEO of Window World. We need a powerhouse auctioneer so we can raise the most money possible for the children fighting for their lives at St. Jude.

Barrett-Jackson is the industry leader in collector car auctions and automotive lifestyle events. For more than 45 years, the company has specialized in providing products and services to discerning classic and collector car owners and automobile enthusiasts around the world. It also has an extensive history with philanthropic events with more than $88 million in sales for charity car auctions.

We are honored Window World reached out to us to be a part of this very important event, said Barrett-Jackson Chairman and CEO Craig Jackson. The Stinger is a unique piece of racing memorabilia, and we are determined to excite the crowd to raise as much money possible for such a great cause.

Steering to Success

The names on The Stinger are a whos who of racing legends from all genres and forms that have raced in the Indianapolis 500. Big names like four-time winners A.J. Foyt, Rick Mears and Al Unser Sr. are prominent, along with other greats such as Jackie Stewart, Emerson Fittipaldi and Cale Yarborough, as well as recent superstars like Danica Patrick and Tony Stewart.

The Stinger is a piece of history and a monument to the sport. Window World believes that the car will sell for $1 million or more. Whitworth anticipates that heavy hitters in the racing world will bid, along with some corporate giants who want to show their philanthropic spirit.

###

About The Stinger: The Stinger is a history-making IndyCar, an interpretation of the 1911 Marmon Wasp, the car that won the first-ever Indianapolis 500. Racing great John Andretti is lapping the country with The Stinger to get every living Indy 500 veteran to sign it. The car, adorned with 249 racer autographs, will be auctioned May 25 ahead of the 100th running of the Indy 500. One hundred percent of the money will go to St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital. Window World, Americas largest replacement window and exterior remodeling company, paid for the meticulous building of The Stinger.

About Window World

Window World, headquartered in North Wilkesboro, N.C., is Americas largest replacement window and exterior remodeling company, with more than 200 locally owned and operated offices nationwide. Founded in 1995, the company sells and installs windows, siding, doors and other exterior products, with more than 10 million windows sold to date. Window World is an ENERGY STAR partner, and its window products have earned the Good Housekeeping Seal for seven consecutive years. Additionally, through its charitable foundation Window World Cares, the Window World family provides funding for St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital, where it was named New Corporate Partner of the Year in 2010. Since its inception in 2008, the foundation has raised more than $5 million for St. Jude. Window World, Inc. also supports the Veterans Airlift Command, a nonprofit organization that facilitates free air transportation to wounded veterans and their families. To begin your exterior remodeling project today, visit http://www.WindowWorld.com or call 1-800 NEXT WINDOW. For home improvement and energy efficiency tips, decor ideas and more, following Window World on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Barrett-Jackson Auction Company:

Established in 1971 and headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, Barrett-Jackson, The Worlds Greatest Collector Car Auctions, is the leader in collector car auctions and automotive lifestyle events. The company produces auctions in Scottsdale, Arizona; Palm Beach, Florida; at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut and Las Vegas. With broadcast partners Velocity and Discovery Channel, Barrett-Jackson will feature live television coverage in 2016, including broadcasts in more than 100 countries internationally. Barrett-Jackson also endorses a one-of-a-kind collector car insurance for collector vehicles and other valued belongings. For more information about Barrett-Jackson, visit http://www.barrett-jackson.com, or call 480-421-6694.
Summer Energy, LLC, a retail electric provider based in Houston, Texas, announced today that it is launching an immediate effort to support the Red Cross in assisting communities affected by the recent flooding across the Gulf Coast areas.

When customers sign up with Summer Energy using promo code REDCROSS16 the Company will donate $50 on their behalf to the Red Cross. Additionally the company will donate $1.00 (up to $2,500) for any new Like received on the company Facebook page through the end of this month.

According to their website The American Red Cross Texas Gulf Coast Region, headquartered in Houston, provides life-saving services to over 9 million people in cities such as Corpus Christi, Galveston & Houston. The Region is made up of 4 local chapters: Beaumont, South Texas, Coastal Bend & Greater Houston.

About Summer Energy Holdings, Inc.: Summer Energy Holdings, Inc. is the parent company of Summer Energy, LLC, a Texas-based retail electric provider which entered the market in February 2012. Summer Energy offers residential and all size commercial customers in the Texas restructured retail energy market competitive prices, pricing choices, and improved customer friendly service.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release may contain forward-looking statements, including information about managements view of the Companys future expectations, plans and prospects, within the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the Act). In particular, when used in the preceding discussion, the words believes, expects, intends, plans, anticipates, or may, and similar conditional expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Act, and are subject to the safe harbor created by the Act. Any statements made in this news release other than those of historical fact, about an action, event or development, are forward-looking statements. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the results of the Company, its divisions and concepts to be materially different than those expressed or implied in such statements. These risk factors and others are included from time to time in documents the Company files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to, its Form 10-Ks, Form 10-Qs and Form 8-Ks. Other unknown or unpredictable factors also could have material adverse effects on the Companys future results. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made only as of the date hereof. The Company cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Finally, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements after the date of this release, except as required by law, and also takes no obligation to update or correct information prepared by third parties that are not paid for by the Company.

For More Information Contact:

Angela Hanley, President

Direct: 713-375-2777
IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS Global), the world leader in EdTech interoperability and impact, has announced that six leading Japanese organizations are forming IMS Japan Society (IMS Japan) as a non-profit organization. IMS Japan will provide leadership in the regional e-learning, publishing and education sectors to further the development and adoption of IMS open standards. IMS Japan will collaborate with IMS Global to provide support to Japanese organizations and individuals seeking to benefit from the open ecosystem of interoperable products enabled by IMS standards.

The formation of IMS Japan was preceded by several successful workshops and seminars on IMS standards in Japan with a focus on successful IMS standards such as Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI), EDUPUB and Caliper Analytics. The six organizations forming the initial IMS Japan Society are: Digital Knowledge Inc., Hosei University, Japan Electronic Publishing Association, NetLearning Holdings Inc., Open University of Japan (OUJ), and Uchida Yoko Inc.

We are very pleased that our partners in Japan have decided to take this very important step in building our long term relationship for the benefit of e-learning and education sector development in the region, said Rob Abel, CEO of IMS Global. IMS Japan Society industry and education leaders are creating the foundation for next generation sector development by partnering with IMS Global on open standards.

Dr. Katsuhiko Shirai, Chancellor, OUJ said, Japanese educational sectors and corporates need collaborative framework and eco-system for sustainable ICT-enhanced education. We consider IMS standards and community are indispensable elements for our success.

Mr. Noboru Ohkubo, President and CEO, Uchida Yoko Inc. comments, Japanese K-12 education also need the standards for digital textbooks and big data analysis for education.

Mr. Toru Kishida, CEO, NetLearning Holdings Inc. said, Japanese education sectors should participate in international standardization activities more in order to adapt the trends of internationalization and globalization.

For Japanese organizations interested in IMS Japan, please send email to IMSJapan@imsglobal.org .

About IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS Global)

IMS Global is a nonprofit organization that advances technology that can affordably scale and improve educational participation and attainment. IMS members are leading suppliers, institutions and government organizations that are enabling the future of education by collaborating on interoperability and adoption initiatives. IMS sponsors the Learning Impact Leadership Institute, a global program focused on recognizing the impact of innovative technology on educational access, affordability, and quality while developing the people and ideas that are going to help shape the future of educational technology. For more information visit http://www.imsglobal.org.
Daniel Costello, a retired NYPD police officer, has completed his new book Penny Doctors: a gripping and intriguing story detailing the atrocities committed to unsuspecting masses in the 1920s and 30s.

Mr. Costello shares that this phenomena had been brought to his attention by his late mother-in-law. My story about The Penny Doctors was told to my wife by her mother many years ago. Her mother grew up in Northern Wisconsin in the 1920s.

Published by New York City-based Page Publishing, Daniel Costellos tale explains that, through the years, a majority of experimental medical research has been done on unsuspecting people, children and adults alike. However, children with disabilities were most vulnerable. Many of these practices were done in a hush-hush manner. One can only imagine the fear of knowing about these actions and having to be out after sunset.

Many of these children and adults were returned home with a bag of coins and often times in a more debilitated condition than when originally taken. No amount of money could ever compensate the families who cared for these unfortunate ones. Despite the inhumanity, generations to come have benefited by the accomplishments done by the medical profession. These professionals work relentlessly for answers to give humanity a better quality of life, and for the greater good.

Readers who wish to experience this mesmerizing work can purchase Penny Doctors at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes store, Amazon, Google Play or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708.

About Page Publishing:

Page Publishing is a traditional New York based full-service publishing house that handles all of the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create - not bogged down with complicated business issues like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes and the like. Its roster of authors can leave behind these tedious, complex and time consuming issues, and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com.
WinDocks announced plans today to add SQL Server 2005 container support to WinDocks, the Practical Windows container. SQL Server 2005 applications will run in WinDocks containers on Windows Server 2012 with improved security and support, using Docker commands and API.

Interest in WinDocks SQL Server containers has exploded since WinDocks 1.0 was launched, and were responding to customer demand for SQL Server 2005, said Paul Stanton, VP and co-founder of WinDocks. WinDocks currently supports SQL Server 2008, 2008r2, 2012, and 2014, so adding support for SQL Server 2005 is a logical next step. Customers can extend the useful life of SQL Server 2005 applications, while upgrading the host to Windows Server 2012 and benefit from an agile support infrastructure.

WinDocks SQL Server containers are based on a port of the Docker Engine, the defacto container standard. Using WinDocks SQL Server containers, organizations can start Docker based development and operations, and align with Microsofts support of the Docker API in Windows Server 2016. Industry surveys show that Windows Server 2012 will continue to grow share-of-usage for the next 3-4 years.

WinDocks is already used to provide workload portability between on-premise and Public Cloud. WinDocks has collaborated with NetApp to demonstrate a containerized application is provisioned in the cloud, using a private ~1 TB database, in just 45 seconds (see https://youtu.be/2IRNx-6d4Oc ). WinDocks containers are lightweight and a team is supported with identical container environments on a single VM.

Availability of SQL Server 2005 containers is slated for later this Spring. WinDocks 1.0 is available in two versions. WinDock Standard includes .NET and Windows application containers. WinDocks SQL+ adds SQL Server support. Developers licenses are available for $249/year.

WinDocks is also available for a no-cost, cloud hosted Test Drive. Visit http://www.windocks.com to sign up.
A HERO DEFINED We will be announcing the HERO 9400-UA at Interop on Wednesday May 4

Accelerated announced today that it will be showcasing its next generation SDN universal network appliance, along with its award-winning cellular LTE connectivity and remote management out-of-band products at Interop. Interop Las Vegas is happening May 2-6, 2016 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

At the conference, Accelerated engineers will be providing a live demonstration of the to-be-announced HERO 9400-UA Universal Network Appliance which can run an unrestricted number of VNFs and supports network function virtualization (NFV). Tom Butts, CEO of Accelerated, will host a theater session titled: Delivering an SDN Appliance Today: The State of SDN.

In addition, Tom will be interviewed live at the Interop News desk among other journalist interviews. Tom said: Stay tuned. We will be announcing the HERO 9400-UA at Interop on Wednesday May 4. Accelerated has invested heavily in this design over the course of the last year. The 9400-UA highlights our strength in building high performance low cost network solutions. We are leveraging our cloud-based portal, Accelerated View which is used by 100,000s of customers worldwide today to bring software-defined networking to reality now.

In addition to its new product release, Accelerated will also be showcasing its award winning 6300-CX & 6300-LX cellular LTE fixed wireless routers and its innovative award winning data center product: the 5400-RM Out of Band Cellular Remote Manager appliance.

Tom Butts, Jason Dorough & Matt Ramsay will be involved in a number of press interviews and analyst meetings, and we invite you to come visit them at Interop Las Vegas in booth 847.

For more information and to sign up for email updates, visit Accelerated.com/HERO.

About Accelerated - Connected Is Everything

Accelerated is an innovator in global cellular, cloud and network communications with industry-leading hardware and software solutions that expand primary and failover data connectivity and management capabilities. Since the creation of its flagship product NetBridge in 2006, Accelerated continues to innovate its line of cellular hardware, network management software and virtual private network (VPN) technology. Accelerated offers a range of wireless WAN (WWAN) products including the 6300-CX and 6300-LX products ideal for retail locations or even Machine to Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) environments. More advanced communication technologies such as its 5301-DC Dial-to-IP Converter and its 5400-RM Cellular Out-of-band (OOB) Remote Manager, a compact, high-performance, remote network management platform complement its cellular expertise. All Accelerated products can be centrally managed using Accelerated View cloud-based network management software. Accelerated is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, with offices in Chicago, Atlanta and Brisbane, Australia. For more information, visit: Accelerated.com.

ABOUT INTEROP

Interop is the leading global IT infrastructure event series, offering in-depth education alongside a showcase of emerging technologies in an independent, vendor-neutral environment. For 30 years, Interop has brought the IT community together to explore the latest in network infrastructure, encouraging collaboration, and interoperability. Through dynamic conference programs, Interop helps professionals at all career levels leverage the network, systems and applications that enable business innovation. The Interop Expo and InteropNet Demo Lab provide immersive, hands-on experiences, while connecting enterprise IT buyers with leading suppliers. Interop Las Vegas is the flagship event held each spring, with an annual event in Tokyo and Cloud Connect China in Shanghai. For more information, visit interop.com. Interop is organized by UBM Americas, a part of UBM plc (UBM.L), an Events First marketing and communications services business. For more information, visit ubmamericas.com.
Website Hosting Provider Over the years Bitcoin has proven its validity in the market place as a reputable form of currency, and it continues to grow in its foundation and stability. Bitcoin, through its maturation, bounces back stronger each time. To ignore the decentralized...

Ultra Web Hosting, a leading web hosting provider since 2002, has announced they are now accepting Bitcoin as an available payment method. Individuals and business owners looking for a premium provider for web hosting and related services may now pay with Bitcoin at Ultra Web Hosting.

Ultra Web Hostings founder, David Turner, said, Over the years Bitcoin has proven its validity in the market place as a reputable form of currency, and it continues to grow in its foundation and stability. Bitcoin, through its maturation, bounces back stronger each time. To ignore the decentralized digital currency would be a naive.

Ultra Web Hosting was launched in 2002, and the company offers web hosting, WordPress optimized hosting, Weebly hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, marketing tools, upgrades, and more. The Ultra Web Hosting team is proud to offer high quality servers, on-site technicians, top-rated customer support, fast loading websites, and a low price guarantee.

Bitcoin is among the worlds leading digital currency, and it is becoming accepted at more retailers around the world than ever. During the economic crisis in Greece, people and businesses turned to digital currency due to its stability and versatility. Now, the Wall Street Journal speculates that Bitcoin is becoming more stable than gold.

With a growing backing, Bitcoin is more in-demand than ever in its history, and Ultra Web Hosting recognizes this shift and the benefits of the decentralized digital currency. Ultra Web Hosting is offering those who use Bitcoin a way to pay for premium web hosting services with their preferred payment method. Many other web hosting companies are still requiring customers to pay with means such as credit cards, but Ultra Web Hosting is offering a rare opportunity for customers to pay with Bitcoin.

Ultra Web Hosting sees Bitcoin as a no-brainer. With more and more people opting for digital currency, Bitcoin will become stronger as it matures. As these changes occur, even more people will choose Bitcoin.

Ultra Web Hosting sees this, in combination with the fact that their prices are 10% less than competitors, as a chance to reach even more customers. The company offers 24/7 live support and a number of customer-centric programs designed to drive down costs. Their team looks forward to working with customers who are looking for a new way to use Bitcoin while enhancing their websites with premium web hosting and marketing tools. Details can be found at https://www.ultrawebhosting.com/.

About Ultra Web Hosting

Ultra Web Hosting was founded in 2002 and continues to offer world-class web hosting, marketing tools, and more.

Contact

Ultra Web Hosting

Phone: 877-850-7850

Website: https://www.ultrawebhosting.com
The founding members gave us our start, and perhaps more importantly, gave our industry its start.

In 1986, Michele Nichols had a vision to create a company that would connect non-traditional meeting and event venues with planners looking to break out of the norm. In the beginning, the burgeoning company focused on college and university venues, which were broadcast in a ledger called The Guide to Convening on Campus.

Thirty years later, Unique Venues has become a trusted resource for campus facilities as well as 700-plus additional historical and cultural venues, arenas and stadiums, camps and retreat centers, conferences and business centers, and special event venues. The company also produces its own publication and annual marketing conference and gives out yearly Best Of awards that exclusively tout unique venues, a name that has now been trademarked. Yet, as founder Nichols points out, the company wouldnt exist without its original members who took a chance on the idea.

The founding members gave us our start, and perhaps more importantly, gave our industry its start. They were pioneers willing to take a risk, and everyone involved in collegiate conferencing today owes some of their success to them, Nichols says of the 12 current members of Unique Venues who were among the first to join the company in 1986. That list includes the University of California, Los Angeles; California State University, Northridge; Purdue University; University of Massachusetts Amherst (Hotel UMAss); Tufts University; The Conference Center at Bentley; University of Nebraska Lincoln; Hofstra University; Oregon State University; Trinity University; The College of William and Mary; and the University of Washington.

Unique Venues has worked in conjunction with my department and so many others in the collegiate conference and events industry over these past 30 years, and our client base has grown because another world of meeting venues was put at the fingertips of meeting professionals, says Mariellynn D. Maurer, CCEP, director of conference services at The College of William and Mary. Our relationship is mutually beneficial  when we win, we win together.

Claire Davis, associate director for administrative services, student housing & conference services at California State University, Northridge adds, We have always felt that Unique Venues works hard to showcase their clients and to ensure potential clients see their resources. Had we not partnered with Unique Venues we are confident our conference program would not have the national recognition we are proud to have achieved.

Unique Venues will recognize the original 12 this year with a special landing page, full-page ad in Unique Venues Magazine, and a presentation at the annual marketing conference in October in Denver, Colorado.

About Unique Venues:

Unique Venues has been the go-to source for non-conventional meeting and event venues, and the planners looking for them, for 30 years. The marketing and membership company has grown to be the largest online database in the U.S. and Canada with member venues including colleges and universities, historical and cultural venues, arenas and stadiums, camps and retreat centers, conferences and business centers and other special event venues. Services include free RFP submissions, assisted searches and a quarterly magazine distribution that help planners find the perfect fit every time.
TruCrowd Logo [...] the regular investors (non-accredited) will be the primary source of funds for early stage companies

TruCrowd, Inc - the equity crowdfunding portal allowing any US company to raise funds from non-accredited investors, announced today that it has been selected as one of the finalists to participate at the Washington, DC Crowdfunding Demo Day. During the event TruCrowd 's CEO will explain how startups can use equity crowdfunding to raise capital by spending a minimal amount of dollars up front. Will talk about the advantages as compared to other capital raising methods and present the portal's integrated services and features.

"Under Regulation Crowdfunding, Funding Portals will play an important role for Main Street entrepreneurs that wish to seek funds from their immediate community and dont want or need all the ancillary services (or added costs) of a broker-dealer. Says Mr. Sherwood Neiss, General Partner at Crowd Capital Venture Fund (LinkedIn) TruCrowd represent a viable alternative from Broker-Dealers for these Main Street businesses particularly with their backend deal room technology and controls over protecting sensitive data.

TruCrowd has several features built to protect the intellectual property of startups (NDA, ID-verified Investors, DataRoom) while decreasing both the risk of fraud (Twitter-like Q&A, Regulatory Checks) and the risk associated with startup investing (The Bonus feature, IRA).

By many estimates, in the US, the non-accredited investors will be the primary source of funding for early stage companies, explains Vicent Petrescu, CEO of TruCrowd.When 135 million Americans already familiar with investing will invest in early stage companies, an average of $1,000 per year, it will translate into $135 billion capital available for US startups. Compare this amount with the $80 billion invested by Angel/VCs (2015).

TruCrowd, Inc is inviting anyone interested to attend RSVP here and join us on Day One of this new industry that will create new jobs, a new segment of mini-angel investors and will consolidate the national economy.

About TruCrowd:

TruCrowd.com is the leading funding portal that allows any company from US to raise up to $1 million per year from non-accredited investors (anyone). Launched in 2013 to operate under the regulations resulted from JOBS ACT of 2012, TruCrowd built its crowdfunding engine to permit scalability and flexibility.
These families are already going through so much, says Dave Owens, president of Midland IRA, we want to help out in any way that we can.

On April 26 employees from Midland IRA, a local self-directed IRA administrator, are volunteering their time to make the families at the Ronald McDonald House a homemade meal. The Midland IRA staff is preparing a three course dinner.

The Ronald McDonald House is a local non-profit that serves as a home-away-from-home to many families who have children who are seriously ill and are undergoing medical treatment. The house is a place where families can stay while still enjoying the comforts of home. The Ronald McDonald House includes a full size kitchen and individual bedrooms and bathrooms for the guests to stay comfortably. Most nights volunteers will create a nice dinner for the families to enjoy each evening.

Midland IRA is volunteering to make dinner for the families of the Ronald McDonald House. These families are already going through so much, says Dave Owens, president of Midland IRA, we want to help out in any way that we can. The staff at Midland IRA is planning to make a three course Italian dinner consisting of meat and vegetarian lasagna, chicken caesar salad, garlic bread, and a homemade cannoli cake.

More employees from Midland IRA will be going to the Ronald McDonald House on June 7th to cook another home-cooked meal for the families.

About Midland IRA

Midland IRA is a self-directed IRA administrator that provides tax-deferred and tax-free investment opportunities, superior customer service, and educational tools to assist investors in realizing the maximum benefits possible within IRAs. Midland IRA makes it easy to use self-directed retirement plans to invest in assets that the individual investor knows, understands, and can control. Midland IRA is also a 1031 exchange qualified intermediary. To learn more visit www(dot)MidlandIRA(dot)com.

About Dave Owens

Dave Owens is president of Midland IRA in Fort Myers, Chicago, Miami, Gainesville, New England, and the Florida Panhandle. Owens opened the Fort Myers headquarters in 2003. His background as a certified public accountant, combined with a long history of personal retirement self-direction, provides his audiences and clients with solid advice and practical solutions to their IRA investment questions. Dave holds a BS in accounting from Purdue University. He also earned the prestigious Certified Exchange Specialist designation through the Federation of Exchange Accommodators.
Robert Langer Robert Langer's invention unlocks a new generation of medical treatments as a powerful weapon against cancer.

The European Patent Office (EPO) today announced that M.I.T. Professor Robert Langer has been named as one of three finalists for the European Inventor Award 2016 in the category Non-European countries. The winners of the 11th edition of the EPOs annual innovation prize will be announced at a ceremony in Lisbon on June 9th.

A new generation of anti-cancer drugs starves tumors by interrupting their connection to the bodys blood supply. But as a downside, these so-called angiogenesis inhibitors lose efficacy while traveling the bloodstream before reaching tumors. A "smart" drug delivery method invented by American biotechnologist Robert Langer (67) solves the problem. It encapsulates cancer-starving drugs within wafers created out of biodegradable plastics. Implanted right at the tumor site, they dissolve for targeted release. And, cancer-fighting drugs are really just the beginning for the M.I.T. professor who is regarded as a pioneer in an emerging field of medical technologies. Langer's bioplastics can also be shaped into ingestible capsules, cardiovascular stents, and into "scaffolding" supporting the growth of new body tissue.

Robert Langer's invention unlocks a new generation of medical treatments as a powerful weapon against cancer, said EPO President Benoit Battistelli announcing the European Inventor Award 2016 finalists. On the way to a medicine of the future, the concept of biodegradable plastics provides doctors with new and previously unthinkable approaches that are already changing treatment outcomes around the world.

TARGETED TREATMENT FOR BRAIN CANCER

Thanks to Langers innovation, doctors now have a powerful weapon against an aggressive form of brain cancer known as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). GBM is both particularly difficult to treat due its proximity to healthy tissue and relatively prevalent: it accounts for 52% of all primary brain tumors. Approved for clinical use in 1996, Langer's ingenious method allows GBM to be targeted at the tumor site, precisely delivering drugs in exact dosages without exposing healthy tissue to aggressive chemicals. The biologically tolerable polymers are now the building blocks for previously unthinkable treatment approaches, especially targeted drug delivery.

STARVING TUMORS AT THE SOURCE

The idea of starving tumors with angiogenesis inhibitors is not a new one. As early as 1971, Robert Langer and other physicians saw their potential for stunting tumor growth. But as tests soon revealed, the effectiveness of angiogenesis inhibitors declines radically when injected or ingested. Plus, in the case of brain tumors, transporting the drugs past the blood-brain barrier proved an additional challenge. In order to solve the problem, Langer and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology envisioned a delivery vector that would transport the drugs right where they are needed: the site of the tumor.

After researching the emerging field of bioplastics, Langer zeroed in on so-called Poly(beta-amino ester)s, a family of biodegradable polymers that can be moulded via nanotechnology into a wafer-like form. During minimally invasive surgery, doctors implant the drug-laden wafer next to the tumor, where it is gradually broken down by the body's metabolism, thereby releasing its payload of cancer-starving drugs with maximum efficiency. This method not only avoids the blood-brain barrier altogether, but it also solves a second problem: the powerful cancer drugs can have neurotoxic effects  harming healthy brain tissue  if delivered in an untargeted manner.

A NEW ERA OF TARGETED MEDICINE

The innovation ushers in a new era of targeted therapies for ailments such as cancerous tumors and heart disease. Doctors can now integrate powerful drugs into moldable bioplastics wafers that dissolve at exactly the right location to release their payload. You get high concentrations in the brain where you want them, explains Langer. And low concentrations in the rest of the body where it might cause harm. During Langer's clinical trials, patients with GBM achieved a survival rate of 63%, compared with 19% in the control group. To date, over 20 million patients worldwide have been treated with angiogenesis-inhibiting substances, and therapies derived from Langer's bioplastics, including drug-coated cardiovascular stents, have benefited more than one million.

HEAD OF WORLD'S BIGGEST BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING LAB

Robert Langer started his career with a BSc in Chemical Engineering at Cornell University in 1970, followed by his PhD in Chemical Engineering at MIT in 1974. Although his interest in bio-polymers started as a young researcher, Langer spent almost 28 years perfecting the implantable bioplastics technology after publishing his first findings  US FDA approval final came in 1996  and he experimented with over 200 variations of polymers at M.I.T.'s Folkman laboratory in the first two years alone. Named the most-cited engineer in history by Science magazine, the prolific inventor has authored over 13,000 articles and contributed to 1,100 patents, with inventions licensed by 300 pharmaceutical companies. His publications have been cited over 194,000 times.

A constant advocate of bridging the gap between research and the marketplace, Langer leads the world's largest biomedical engineering lab  the David H. Koch Institute at M.I.T.  with over EUR 8.9 million (US $10 million) in annual grants and over 100 researchers. His inventions jumpstarted a new class of treatments for GBM, prostate cancers, endometriosis, and mental illnesses with considerable market success. The bioplastics-encapsulated drug Gliadel (GBM) generated sales of around EUR 32.5 million (US $35.8 million) in 2006, Zeneca Zoladex (prostate cancer) netted around EUR 905 million in 2013, and Risperdal Consta (schizophrenia) EUR 1.4 billion in 2014. Third-party analysts expect the GBM treatment market to grow from about EUR 273 million in 2013 to EUR 566 million by 2020.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

YouTube video on Robert Langer

Additional video and photo material

Read more about the inventor

View the patents: EP1639029, EP2075015

FIGHTING CANCER WITH PATENTED TECHNOLOGIES

Robert Langer's bioplastic-coated drugs are part of a new wave of medical technologies that provide safe and efficient alternatives to radical surgery and aggressive chemotherapy. Nano capsules, proton radiation, ultrasound, antibodies, and more: Innovative concepts, protected by patents, are already benefitting patients worldwide.

Read more about new weapons against cancer.

About the European Inventor Award

About the European Patent Office (EPO)
Stevens & Tate Internet Marketing Director Nicole Wagner Regardless of current program efforts or online marketing skill level, there is something new for all to take awayultimately leading to enhanced success with attracting prospects and converting them to occupancy.

Continuing on the tradition of educating the senior living and aging care services industry on successful marketing techniques, Stevens & Tate Marketings Internet Marketing Director Nicole Wagner is heading to Pennsylvania this May to host a special seminar for the Marketing and Public Relations Society of Senior Housing and Service Professionals. The three hour session, being held from 9am-12pm on May 6, 2016, will cover a myriad of online marketing topics, including social media, search engine marketing and website strategies.

Social Success: Enhance Your Online Presence and Attract New Prospects will take attendees through an in-depth look at specific strategies and tactics that can strengthen their online marketing programs, generate traffic, convert and nurture leads through to sale.

Wagner said, I have custom-tailored this session for the senior housing audience and to help aging care services professionals learn relevant, actionable techniques that make sense for their market. Regardless of current program efforts or online marketing skill level, there is something new for all to take awayultimately leading to enhanced success with attracting prospects and converting them to occupancy.

The Marketing and Public Relations Society of Senior Housing and Service Professionals (MPRS) is a non-profit, professional society dedicated to providing educational and networking opportunities to enhance and develop the professional development and skills of its members. Senior living/aging care professionals from all around Pennsylvania will be attending the days seminar.

Stevens & Tate Marketing (http://www.stevens-tate.com) is a digital advertising agency focused on making things happen for our clients. Stevens & Tate offers an array of integrated marketing solutions including strategic planning, StoryBranding, inbound marketing, and search & social.

To learn more about the speakers at Stevens & Tate Marketing, visit http://www.stevens-tate.com/speaking. To discuss specific speaking opportunities for your organization or association, contact Kelsey Nihiser directly by calling (630) 627-5200 or via email at knihiser(at)stevens-tate(dot)com.
Shmoop's comprehensive curriculum supports our efforts as educators. They have the tools to make learning relevant for students while still treating them with respect. The students then show respect and integrity in turn.

Nobody likes a teacher's pet...except teachers. That's why Shmoop (http://www.shmoop.com), a digital publisher known for its award-winning test prep and certified online courses, is proud to be a teacher's pet, beloved by educators across the country. Recently, Shmoop's overachieving ways have earned it a-g approval on ten elective courses, bringing its a-g course total to 20...and counting.

In order to receive certification, courses must meet iNACOL's rigorous National Standards for Quality Online Courses; according to the University of California A-G guide, approved courses "are to be academically challenging, involving substantial reading, writing, problems and laboratory work (as appropriate), and show serious attention to analytical thinking, factual content and developing students' oral and listening skills." Shmoop nailed it with each and every one of its core high school courses, along with ten electives including Women's Literature, Critical Thinking and Study Skills, and Greek and Roman Mythology.

Having received course approval from other organizations such as the College Board AP Course Audit, Shmoop's catalog of over 300 courses now has the seal of approval from the people who count. Shmoop's standards-aligned courses include readings, scaffolded activities, teacher notes, and more, and all subscriptions and licenses come with access to Shmoop's virtual classrooms and gradebook. Translation: Shmoop is a one-stop shop for everything academic.

Ramiro Rubalcaba, principal of Azusa High School in California, says "Shmoop's comprehensive curriculum supports our efforts as educators. They have the tools to make learning relevant for students while still treating them with respect. The students then show respect and integrity in turn." Ahem...teacher's pet.

Individual users can subscribe to Shmoop and access all of Shmoop's Online Courses and Test Prep guides for $24.68/month, while schools and districts can receive bulk discounts by contacting sales(at)shmoop(dot)com.

About Shmoop

Shmoop offers hundreds of thousands of pages of original content. Their Online Courses, Test Prep, Teaching Guides, Learning Guides, and interactive Study Tools are written by teachers and experts and balance a teen-friendly, approachable style with academically rigorous concepts. Shmoop sees 14 million unique visitors a month across desktop and mobile. The company has won numerous awards from EdTech Digest, Tech & Learning, and the Association of Educational Publishers. Launched in 2008, Shmoop makes the magic happen from a labradoodle-patrolled office in Mountain View, California.

AP is a registered trademark of the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.
SBS Group, a leading technology firm headquartered in New Jersey, announced the agenda for their 10th Annual Summit. Summit is SBS Groups annual event to gather their clients and other interested parties to discuss emerging trends in enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence (BI) and cloud with a focus on Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Cloud technologies.

The agenda for Summit 2016 consists of presentation topics, speakers and times. After breakfast and a keynote presentation, the event will be split into four tracks: strategy, customer, business processes and financial. Each track consists of multiple presentations focused on topics related to each track. The content within these four tracks are built to meet Summit 2016s theme, embrace innovation, inspire evolution. Some topics include: Improving Business Outcomes with Cloud Technologies, From Strategy to Results: Communication and Engagement to Drive Execution and Transform Sales and Service with a Mobile Strategy. In addition, there will be training and product updates for all Microsoft Dynamics products. CPE credits are available at select presentations.

About SBS Group

SBS Group is a national Microsoft master VAR (Value Added Reseller) with Gold level competency in enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). Over the past 25 years, they have been recognized as Microsoft Partner of the Year, Inner Circle Member and Microsoft President's Club member multiple times. The company is headquartered in Edison, New Jersey and operates offices across North America. For more information, please visit SBS Group's website at http://www.sbsgroupusa.com. Follow us on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/sbs-group and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/sbsgroup.
ODU AMC High-Density

ODU, a worldwide leader in designing and manufacturing high-performance connector solutions and cable assemblies is announcing its smaller- lighter- faster advanced connector solution portfolio designed for military night vision and navigation devices to the US market.

ODU AMC product portfolio responds to an increasing market need for connector solutions that can provide a significant size and weight reduction, high data transfer capability, high water protection with an option for submersion, high shock and vibration resistance.

ODU AMC and ODU AMC High-Density are advanced miniature connectors that respond to all the requirements of digital and thermal night vision devices as well as military GPS/GNSS devices that facilitate activities like force locations, navigation and deployment as well as all weather & around the clock operations. These types of applications include handheld receivers for soldiers, GPS-aided navigational systems, navigational devices for vehicles, GNSS jammers or anti-jamming devices.

The ODU AMC connector series include ODU AMC High-Density, ODU AMC Easy-Clean, ODU AMC Push-Pull and ODU AMC Break Away, which offer high-performance data transmission, high reliability and easy handling.

Being up to 70% smaller and lighter than any other connector solution available on the market while providing a metal robust housing and high data transfer capability (USB 3.0, USB 2.0, HDMI 2.0 and Ethernet CAT5+CAT6A), the ODU AMC connectors also benefit from IP68 water protection that is up to 20M submersible, high shock and vibration resistant and they can be terminated to wire, PCB or flex.

ODU responds in a very time efficient and pragmatic manner to all the customer needs by providing an advanced portfolio of value added services such as cable assembly integrated solutions, local one-to-one technical support and expertise, fast sample availability, PCB and flex assembly integration.

For more product information go to: http://www.militaryconnectorsolutions.com/

ODU Group: global representation with perfect connections

The ODU Group is one of the worlds leading suppliers of connector systems, employing 1,650 people around the world. In addition to its company headquarters in Muhldorf am Inn (Germany), ODU also has an international production and distribution network throughout Europe, North America and Asia. ODU combines all relevant areas of expertise and key technologies including design and development, machine tooling and special machine construction, injection, stamping, turning, surface technology, assembly and cable assembly. The ODU Group sells its products globally through its eight subsidiaries in Denmark, England, France, Italy, Sweden, the US, China and Japan, as well as through numerous international sales partners. ODU connectors ensure a reliable transmission of power, signals, data and media for a variety of demanding applications including medical technology, military and security, eMobility, energy, industrial electronics, and measurement and testing.

For press inquiries, please contact:

Dana Stoica - Head of Marketing, North America

Phone +1 (805) 484-0540 Fax: +1 (805) 484-7458

Email: dana.stoica(at)odu-usa.com
One year after announcing its plan to incentivize early or on-time degree completion for its graduates, Howard University is making good on its promise. As the University approaches its 148th Commencement, students have started to receive a 50% rebate from their final semesters tuition. The direct payments are currently being made via cash, credit card or installment plan now through May graduation. This leading-edge tuition rebate solidifies the University as one of the foremost private-research universities dedicated to college affordability and on-time graduation.

Howard University has an unwavering commitment to the needs of its students. We are excited to offer our students this financial rebate as a reward for accomplishing their goals on time, said Howard University President Dr. Wayne A. I. Frederick, We certainly hope some financial relief is provided as well.

The University also leveraged its financial aid resources to support students with high financial need through its Graduation & Retention Access to Continued Excellence (GRACE) Grant. The GRACE Grant pays the remaining tuition and selected mandatory fees for highest need students who are on track for graduation. Over $2 million was awarded directly to students this spring through the GRACE Grant program.

The rebate program was unanimously supported by the Board of Trustees to incentivize any student completing their degree within 4 years. Howard University remains committed to addressing the academic needs of our nation, in particular the needs of the African American community and underserved populations.

About Howard University

Founded in 1867, Howard University is a private, research university that is comprised of 13 schools and colleges. Students pursue studies in more than 120 areas leading to undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees. The University has produced three Rhodes Scholars, nine Truman Scholars, two Marshall Scholars, over 60 Fulbright Scholars and 22 Pickering Fellows. Howard also produces more on campus African-American Ph.D. recipients than any other university in the United States. For more information on Howard University, call 202-238-2330, or visit the University's Web site at http://www.howard.edu
David will provide the strategic vision to lead national business development and marketing initiatives positioning SelectAccount to deliver on the expectations of our consumers as they navigate the changing health care landscape.

SelectAccount, a leading provider of medical spending accounts including HSA, FSA, HRA and VEBA accounts along with WalletDoc  a suite of consumer resources, announced the appointment of David Cantu to the position of Chief Marketing Officer.

David joined SelectAccount in 2014 as Vice President Marketing, Sales and Public Relations with the responsibility of managing all aspects of sales and distribution through consultants, regional insurance brokers, general agencies, health plans and alternative channel distribution partners. He was also responsible for the formulation and execution of marketing and sales strategies, retention of existing client relationships and achievement of account and revenue growth objectives. In his new role, David will provide the strategic vision to lead national business development and marketing initiatives positioning SelectAccount to deliver on the expectations of our consumers as they navigate the changing health care landscape. He will guide our consumerism approach as an account administrator to the consumer-driven health market through product development, marketing communications, consumer resources, vendor relationships and sales growth.

Davids expertise led to the development of WalletDoc, our market leading suite of consumer tools that help our customers save time and money by making smarter health care decisions, said Matt Marek, president and CEO. David understands the market as well as the importance of consumerism, and I am excited to work with him as we lead the charge for consumerism in health care.

With over 15 years of experience working for one of the most recognized insurance companies in the country and one of the top three largest consulting firms in the world, David brings the perspective of the consultant, employer and insurance company to the strategic discussion. David serves on the board of directors of the Twin Cities Human Resource Association and is a member of the Minnesota Association of Health Underwriters. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and is a certified Health Savings Account Expert (HSAe).

About SelectAccount

SelectAccount has been driving innovation in medical spending administration for over 25 years. By offering a full suite of tax-advantaged solutions  HSA, HRA, FSA, VEBA, transportation and dependent care accounts  as well as WalletDoc consumer tools, SelectAccount is positioned to meet clients changing needs as they plan for upcoming health care expenditures. SelectAccount is one of the leading medical spending administrators in the country, serving over 450,000 account holders and managing approximately $800 million dollars in consumer medical account savings assets. SelectAccount is integrated with numerous partner data exchange connections, serving over 8,500 employers with account holders in all 50 states. MII Life, Inc., d.b.a. SelectAccount has been approved by the U.S. Department of Treasury as a non-bank HSA Trustee. SelectAccount is headquartered in Eagan, Minnesota with locations in Chicago, IL, Dallas, TX, Fresno, CA and New York, NY. Visit http://www.SelectAccount.com to learn more.
Neil Grimmer, Co-founder and Chairman of Plum Organics uBiomes non-invasive tests can be used to check babies and toddlers too. At Plum, weve learned first hand just how passionate parents are about what they feed their little ones. Great health starts with knowledge.

uBiome, the leading microbial genomics company, welcomes Neil Grimmer, Co-founder and Chairman of Plum Organics, to a new position on the companys Advisory Board. Prior to co-founding Plum in 2007, Neil Grimmer was Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at Clif Bar & Co, and Senior Designer at IDEO.

A renowned, innovative designer of ideas, products, and brands, Grimmer has been at the forefront of launching more than 175 new products at Plum Organics, making it the number one organic baby food brand in the United States. He pioneered an innovative first-to-market spouted pouch that revitalized the dormant baby food category.

Educated at Stanford and the California College of the Arts, Grimmer is widely recognized as an industry game-changer and has received prestigious awards including "Entrepreneur of the Year" for Ernst & Young Northern California, Most Admired CEO by the San Francisco Business Times and Bloomberg Businessweeks Top 5 Americas Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs. He has also been highlighted in numerous media outlets, including recent features in Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes and Inc. Magazine. Under Grimmers leadership, Plum Organics was ranked three consecutive years on the Inc. Magazine 500 list of fastest-growing privately held companies in America.

As the worlds leading microbial genomics company, uBiome uses next generation high-throughput DNA sequencing technology to generate detailed analyses of the human microbiome, the ecosystem of trillions of bacteria which populate the human body, both in and on it.

While most of an individuals bacteria is found in the gut, there are dozens of other bacteria-harboring sites on the body, most with their own distinct microbial profiles. Individuals can have their own microbiomes tested by uBiome by providing a straightforward self-swabbed sample, returned by mail. Analysis is currently provided for five sites  gut, oral, nose, genitals, and skin.

Bacteria in the gut play a vital part in health, supporting digestion and the synthesis of vitamins. However pathogenic bacteria are associated with a range of conditions, some of them serious, such as celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease  including both Crohns disease and ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, esophageal reflux and esophageal cancer, Clostridium difficile infection, colorectal cancer, and many others.

I love the way uBiome is giving individuals a detailed picture of whats going inside of themselves, says Neil Grimmer, Co-founder & Chairman, Plum Organics. And uBiomes non-invasive tests can be used to check babies and toddlers too. At Plum, weve learned first hand just how passionate parents are about what they feed their little ones. Great health starts with knowledge. Im excited about working with uBiome in its mission to empower its customers.

Jessica Richman, co-founder and CEO of uBiome, says: Neil Grimmer has created some amazing products with his leadership positions at Plum Organics, Clif Bar, and IDEO. Were looking forward to benefiting from his inspiration and insight as he joins our stellar team of advisors.

uBiome was launched in 2012 by scientists and technologists educated at Stanford and UCSF after a crowdfunding campaign raised over $350,000 from citizen scientists, around triple its initial goal. The company is now funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, and other leading investors.

uBiomes mission is to use big data to understand the human microbiome by giving users the power to learn about their bodies, perform experiments, and see how current research studies apply to them.

Contact:

Julie Taylor

julie(at)ubiome.com
The speakers we have lined up for the WT Industry Days at ACQUIRE are going to deliver important insights on how small businesses can find opportunities at their agencies.

Washington Technology is excited to announce the Industry Days lineup at the ACQUIRE show, a new two-day educational event and tradeshow for government and military professionals looking to deliver on their agencies missions.

Washington Technology Industry Days will focus on contracting opportunities for small businesses across the defense and civilian agencies. Executives from the Air Force, Social Security Administration, U.S. Marine Corps, Federal Bureau of Investigation, General Services Administration and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will describe their priorities, buying habits, and specific contracts to help small business gain an inside edge.

The speakers we have lined up for the WT Industry Days at ACQUIRE are going to deliver important insights on how small businesses can find opportunities at their agencies, said Nick Wakeman, editor-in-chief of Washington Technology. In addition to our sessions, the ACQUIRE Show will be a great opportunity for industry to network with customers and potential partners.

Speakers for this event include:

Mark Teskey

Director

Air Force Small Business Programs

Wayne McDonald

Director

Social Security Administration, Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization

Dave Dawson

Associate Director for Small Business Programs

United States Marine Corps, Marine Corps Systems Command

Paul Courtney

Chief Acquisition Officer

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Dean Cole

Business Management Specialist

General Services Administration

Mario Lopez

Program Director, NOAALink Program Office, Office of the Chief Information Officer

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Victoria Mason

Senior Action Officer for NOAALink, Contracting Officers Representative (COR)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Produced by the media teams behind the FCW, GCN, Washington Technology, Defense Systems and Federal Soup brands, ACQUIRE is a new two-day conference & EXPO for government, military and contractor professionals looking to deliver on agency missions. Covering a programs entire lifecyclefrom policy setting to end user experienceACQUIRE offers thought leadership, training courses from a diverse range of government agencies and an exhibit hall packed with vendors. Featuring leading providers of products, solutions and services to the government market, the EXPO floor has multiple pavilions: Information Technology, Acquisition Management, Professional Services and Office Managementplus a Federal consumer experience in Happy Fed.

Registration is free for government and military professionals. Sponsorships and booth sales for ACQUIRE are available. Please visit: https://ACQUIREshow.com.

About 1105 Public Sector Media Group

1105 Public Sector Media Group, a division of 1105 Media, Inc., provides information, insight and analysis to the Government IT and Education IT (FED/SLED) sectors. Our content platforms include print, digital, online, events and a broad spectrum of marketing services. http://1105publicsector.com

About 1105 Media, Inc.

1105 Media, Inc., is a leading provider of integrated information and media in targeted business-to-business markets, including the public sector (FED/SLED) information technology community; enterprise computing; industrial health, safety, and compliance; security; environmental protection; and home healthcare. 1105's offerings span marketing services; print and online magazines, journals, and newsletters; seminars, conferences, and trade shows; training courseware; web-based services. 1105 Media is based in Chatsworth, CA, with offices throughout the United States. https://1105media.com

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STAR Center's world renowned sensory playground. STAR Center in Greenwood Village, Colorado announced its 2016 summer sensory friendly childrens activity schedule, which now includes Bike Riding Camp and toddler classes in addition to Social Skills Camps.

On April 25, 2016, STAR Center in Greenwood Village, Colorado announced its 2016 summer sensory friendly childrens activity schedule, which now includes Bike Riding Camp and toddler classes in addition to Social Skills Camps. STAR Center is the premier treatment center for children and families impacted by Sensory Processing Disorder and feeding disorders, ADHD, autism and other developmental disorders.

STAR Center is offering their first Bike Riding Camp taking place August 8-12 for children ages 3-10 years. This camp uses the Strider learning method combined with enjoyable therapist led activities while catering to all levels. Each child will have individualized goals in a fun and low-pressure environment where children are encouraged to discover the joy and independence of riding a bike.

Sometimes children need a little help learning the subtleties of social skills so they can form enriching relationships with their peers. STAR Centers Social Skills Summer Camps increase each childs ability to self-regulate in social interactions, build social cognition and awareness, expand communication, improve problem-solving skills, and encourage interactive play skills. Social skills lessons are taught within the context of multi sensory-based games and play while meeting a childs individual sensory needs. The program is geared for verbal children that have basic peer awareness and would benefit from therapeutic activities to build reciprocal interactions. These positive experiences are foundational building blocks for a childs social development. Social Skills Group Camps run June 13-24 and July 11-22.

STAR Center is now hosting toddler classes led by Belly Bliss, Denvers premier pregnancy center. The Play + Explore toddler classes for children ages 1-3 years take place every Friday throughout the summer. Caregivers and their children will participate in structured activities through yoga, movement, sensory play, and music. Each class will include activities specific to each age childs motor development, emotional stage, and social development. Siblings are welcome, with the understanding that activities will be directed for the 1-3 year age group. There will be time after class to explore STAR Centers world famous sensory playground.

Interested in a camp or class? Visit the STAR Center website for more information or call 303-221-7827.

About STAR Center: STAR Center, a Colorado 501(c)(3), is the premier treatment center for children and families living with Sensory Processing Disorder, feeding disorders, and other sensory conditions associated with ADHD, autism, and other developmental disorders. STAR Center offers intensive burst treatment that research shows is effective in treating sensory issues. Parents are involved throughout the process so families can learn to create sensory lifestyles and continue to see progress after the formal treatment program ends. Dr. Lucy Jane Miller, founder of STAR Center and Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation, is widely recognized as the leader in Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) research worldwide. For more information about the Greenwood Village, Colorado clinic, visit http://www.SPDStar.org.
A glimpse at the new lizardtech.com homepage We are happy to announce the launch of our new website and the improved experience it offers to our customers, partners and the media.

LizardTech, the creator of MrSID and provider of software solutions for managing and distributing geospatial content, announced today the launch of its newly redesigned website. The new website boasts a clean uncluttered design, improved functionality and enhanced content. The new website went live today and can be accessed at: http://www.lizardtech.com,

We are happy to announce the launch of our new website and the improved experience it offers to our customers, partners and the media, said Lisa McLeod, LizardTechs Director of Product & Development. The redesigned website is part of our ongoing efforts to provide our customers with quick and easy access to LizardTech products and essential industry information.

LizardTechs new website will be updated on a regular basis with news of product launches, business activity, events and partner information. Visitors are encouraged to explore the new website and sign up for the companys newsletter at http://www.lizardtech.com .

About LizardTech

Since 1992, LizardTech has delivered state-of-the-art software products for managing and distributing massive, high-resolution geospatial data such as aerial and satellite imagery and LiDAR data. LizardTech pioneered the MrSID technology, a powerful wavelet-based image encoder, viewer, and file format. LizardTech has offices in Seattle, Denver, London and Tokyo. For more information about LizardTech, visit http://www.lizardtech.com.

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 2016 Celartem, Inc. d.b.a. LizardTech. All rights reserved. LizardTech, MrSID, GeoExpress, Express Server, and Express Suite are registered trademarks in the United States and LiDAR Compressor and the LizardTech, GeoExpress, Express Server, Express Suite, LiDAR Compressor, ExpressView and GeoViewer logos are trademarks, and all are the property of Celartem Inc. d.b.a. LizardTech. Unauthorized use is prohibited.

All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

For more information, press only:

Jenny Parker LizardTech, (206) 902-2800, press(at)lizardtech(dot)com.
Pianist Luis Perdomo and bassist Mimi Jones. I always loved the flexibility and freedom of being able to take the music in different directions.

Hot Tone Music, the artist-run label founded by bassist /composer Mimi Jones in 2009, announces the simultaneous release on May 13 of new CDs by Jones ("Feet in the Mud") and pianist/composer Luis Perdomo ("Montage").

Perdomos "Montage" is his eighth album as a leader but the first solo piano recording in his distinguished career. After hed begun playing solo concerts three years ago, this ever-evolving artist reached out to his pianist friend Fred Hersch to fine-tune some aspects of my own solo playing. Of "Montage," he says, I felt the time was right for me to do it, and I felt ready to take on the challenge. I always loved the flexibility and freedom of being able to take the music in different directions.

Repertoire on the new CD is an intriguingly personal mix of favorite jazz and Songbook standards (Monks Dream, Body and Soul, Stanley Cowells Cal Massey), studio improvisations, and songs from his Caracas childhood that left an indelible impression on him (Mambo Mongo, La Revuelta de Don Fulgencio, the bolero Si Te Contara). While "Montage" offers ample evidence of Perdomos musical mastery, the pianist claims that he wanted the music to serve as a soundtrack for everyday life. You dont have to go to Carnegie Hall and put on a suit to listen to this music.

For her third Hot Tone Music album, "Feet in the Mud," Mimi Jones called on an amazing crew consisting of her frequent drummer Jonathan Barber as well as new colleagues Jon Cowherd on piano and Fender Rhodes and soprano saxophonist Samir Zarif. They provide the perfect support for the leaders deeply satisfying bass lines and haunting vocals, which are anchored in the jazz tradition yet stylistically elastic enough to encompass other genres.

The CD, says Jones, is a tribute to those who have left a huge imprint on me and the world, as well as those who are still alive and making an imprint as we speak. Its also about finding true joy within yourself, having an open mind and spirit and a connection to the earth. Joness originals (among them Lymans Place, the buoyant Elevate, and the appealing opening track Mr. Poo Poo) reflect these themes and concerns; the program also includes Wayne Shorters Fall, Enoch Smith Jr.s arrangement of Blackbird, and Feet in the Mud, composed by Perdomo.

Born in New York City (in 1972) and raised in the Bronx, Mimi Jones attended Fiorello LaGuardia High School and earned a B.A. in music at the Manhattan School of Music Conservatory. She missed her graduation, however, because shed been hired to tour Japan with saxophonist Masa Wada and drummer Denis Charles. It was the first of numerous overseas tours that would take her to Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, some under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. In addition to leading her own groups, Jones has worked with jazz artists including Kenny Barron, Joanne Brackeen, Terri Lyne Carrington (who chose Jones to play on her Grammy-winning "The Mosaic Project"), Ravi Coltrane, Lizz Wright, Toshi Reagon, Roy Hargrove, and many more. She has previously recorded two albums as leader"A New Day" (2009) and "Balance" (2014), both for Hot Tone Music.

Luis Perdomo was born (1971) and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, where he received an excellent music education from his fathers vast LP collection and his teacher Gerry Weil. He was awarded a scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music and studied there with Harold Danko and Martha Pestalozzi, earning his B.A. in 1997; three years later he received his masters at Queens College after study with Sir Roland Hanna. Perdomo became a first-class sideman, recording and/or touring with Dave Douglas, Tom Harrell, Steve Turre, and many other jazz and Latin artists. He was a member of Ravi Coltranes Quartet for ten years, and is a founding member of the Miguel Zenon Quartet. Among his recordings as a leader are "Focus Point" (2005), "Pathways" (2008), "Universal Mind" (2012), and his 2015 Hot Tone Music debut, "Twenty-Two," featuring his Controlling Ear Unit with Mimi Jones and drummer Rudy Royston.

Perdomo and Jones, who have been a couple for the last 12-plus years, frequently work together, both on the stage and in the studio.

I was afraid for the longest time of having my wife in my band, says the pianist. What if we have a fight, and if affects the music? But actually she knows what influences me, what I like and dont likeand shes a solid bass player.

On Wednesday 6/1, Luis Perdomo will perform a CD release show for "Montage" at the Jazz Standard, NYC, with special guest The Controlling Ear Unit (Luis Perdomo, p; Mimi Jones, b/voc; Rudy Royston, d). Other Perdomo dates include: 7/25-7/31 Langnau (Switzerland) Jazz Nights; 10/21 Cafe Tra le rigge, San Severo, Italy; 10/29 Jazzkeller Esslingen (Germany).

The Mimi Jones Band will be appearing 5/7 at Casita Maria Center for the Arts in the Bronx (3:00-3:45 pm, free/outdoors), with a New York City CD release show soon to be announced. Other dates include 7/9 at the Lighthouse Jazz Festival, Michigan City, IN; 7/11 Arts Incubator, Chicago; 9/6 Jazz Showcase, Chicago; and 9/10 IRock Jazz Festival, Holland, MI. A Japanese tour is set for 10/5-17, and a European tour for November.
The blockchain  the protocol that underpins digital assets like Bitcoin and Florincoin  is the ideal location to safeguard privileged data like election results.

Blockchain Technologies Corp. (BTC), the New York-based innovator in blockchain-based voting solutions, has been chosen by the New York Libertarian Party (NYLP) to provide balloted-election services during the party's 2016 state convention. The event will cover election of officers, members of State Committee and delegates to National Convention, nomination of US Senate candidate, and approval of proposed by-law amendments.

The blockchain  the protocol that underpins digital assets like Bitcoin and Florincoin  is the ideal location to safeguard privileged data like election results. Cutting-edge blockchain technology enables the creation of publicly viewable, time-stamped, signed records that are, once entered, virtually impossible to alter or delete. All election data -- down to each individual ballot -- is permanently recorded on a public blockchain database. Imagine the county clerk's office or state voting authority -- but governed by math, transparent by default, and absent human error.

Just weeks ago, BTC executives flew to San Antonio, Texas to provide similar voting services for the Libertarian Party of Texas' (LPTexas) 2016 State Convention. LPTexas Convention Chairman Kurt Hildebrand said, "I was very impressed with Blockchain Technologies Corp.'s services and greatly appreciated how much they went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure the success of our elections and our convention."

"Recent headlines show problems during the presidential primaries -- voting machines not working on election day, allegations of fraud, and registered voters being turned away from the polls." said Nick Spanos, CEO of Blockchain Technologies Corp. "As the world's premier democracy, the US must set an example for others to follow. BTC is bringing trust, transparency, and efficiency to elections, and thereby restoring faith in democracy and increased voter enfranchisement."

The NYLP 2016 State Convention will occur on April 30th and will feature party elections, a presidential debate, a seminar on effective dissent, and a live musical performance. For more information, visit their website.

Blockchain Technologies Corp. is based in New York, NY. They bring sorely-needed technology and increased transparency to the election process. The company has filed a non-provisional utility patent on their blockchain voting systems. For more information visit their website, follow them on Twitter, or email info(at)blocktechcorp(dot)com.
I am very proud of Samantha and all of these young artists, and thrilled to be part of her first gallery sale. I has been wonderful to watch Samantha handle every aspect of this exhibition. All of the artists who participated displayed great pieces.

The Young@Art opening reception on April 22 was well attended at Ferrari Fine Art Gallery. The shows curator, Samantha Hughes, solicited submissions and selected works from aspiring, emerging and established young artists age 25 and under. Hughes is currently a senior studying art history and painting at the University of Georgia. The show represents the culmination of her semester-long internship with Ferrari Fine Art.

This week-long show was Hughes gallery debut as a curator as well as an artist. Additionally, this was the first opportunity for many of these artists to have works displayed in a gallery. Hughes was responsible for all aspects of the Young@Art exhibition, including the call-for-submissions, artist selection, arrangement and hanging of the artwork, creating the marketing materials, and promoting the event. The artists featured in the show are Abby Gregg, Andrew Huang, Daniel Byrd, Logan Shirah, Rachel Feels, Samantha Hughes, Wood Adamson and Zach Werbalowsky.

I am very proud of Samantha and all of these young artists, and thrilled to be part of her first gallery sale, said Atlanta artist and the founder of Ferrari Fine Art, Carolyn Ferrari. I has been wonderful to watch Samantha handle every aspect of this exhibition. All of the artists who participated displayed great pieces. We look forward to this becoming an annual event!

Young@Art will be on display through April 29, 2016 at Ferrari Fine Art Gallery, located at 425 Peachtree Hills, Suite 3, Atlanta, Georgia 30305. For additional information visit http://www.ferrarifineart.com/ or call 404.698.5035.

About Ferrari Fine Art:

Ferrari Fine Art seeks to exhibit artwork that depicts the simple joy, harmony and beauty that exists but is often overlooked in the rush of our daily lives or overshadowed by the predominance of suffering, conflict and injustice in our world. By connecting with causes and the organizations that are working to improve our community and the human condition, we hope to flip the paradigm of the community supporting the arts to create a venue through which art is supporting the community.

Founded by Atlanta artist Carolyn Holderness Ferrari as continuation of a career dedicated to the principles of social responsibility and cause consciousness, Ferrari Fine Art is unique in its mission to create a venue in which art supports the community.
Owner/Winemaker John Benedetti with wife Melanie and baby Lucca Sante Accurately expressing  and doing justice to a great vineyard is the objective.

Sante Arcangeli Family Wines recently announced that several of its wines achieved high marks from Wine Enthusiast, including a few Editors Choice awards, while another wine was named in Wine & Spirits list of the Best U.S Pinot Noirs. From the last few vintages, reviews include the 2012 Split Rail Vineyard Pinot Noir (94 pts), the 2014 Split Rail Vineyard Pinot Noir (93 pts), and the 2014 Split Rail Vineyard Chardonnay (92 pts). Additional wines that garnered great reviews include the 2013 Split Rail Vineyard Chardonnay (92 pts), the 2014 Lester Family Vineyard Pinot Noir (92 pts), the 2013 Split Rail Vineyard Pinot Noir (92 pts) and the 2014 Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot Noir (91 pts) among others. Nearly every wine submitted over 3 vintages has scored 91 or better.

While most of Sante Arcangelis wines are single-vineyard wines, the 2014 Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot Noir, also known as Corralitos Cuvee, was Sante Arcangelis first attempt at an Appellation Cuvee. The wine has been named by Wine & Spirits in their Best U.S. Pinot Noir list. The wine is a blend of pinot noir grapes from 3 Corralitos vineyards: Hicks, Split Rail and Lester Family vineyards.

Sante (with an accent on the E) means health and is used to say cheers in French. But theres a lot more to the name here. Sante Arcangeli is a person. In fact, hes the great grandfather of the winerys owner and winemaker, John Benedetti. John decided to name the winery after his Great Grandfather as a way of honoring his familys local legacy and for providing him with the tools that allow him to do what he does best  make wine that tastes good.

The Sante Arcangeli Tasting Room occupies an unassuming 130 year-old building in the bucolic town of Pescadero, just south of San Francisco off Highway 1. Sante-- the man-- started the family bakery and grocery in Pescadero in 1929, and John's brothers still operate it just up the street from the tasting room, producing unique artisanal breads that pair wonderfully with the wines.

My goal has always been to make the best possible wine, period, says John Benedetti. For me the 'best possible wine' starts with an intimate understanding of a vineyard or appellation, and making key, but subtle, adjustments that help to accent the best qualities of that particular fruit so the vineyard can shine through the wine. Accurately expressing  and doing justice to a great vineyard is the objective.

Sante Arcangeli Vineyards: Where warm valley winds meet cool ocean air

Split Rail Vineyard, Sante Arcangelis signature vineyard source, is located in Corralitos California (Southern Santa Cruz Mountains AVA). The vines are planted on an old lake bottom that got pushed up to 1700 feet above sea level. This spectacular mountain-top vineyard features dramatic views of the Monterey Bay, and is grown on sandstone and clay soils with a limestone vein deep below. Its unique location is where warm valley currents meet cool ocean breezes in summer, allowing the rare mix of heritage clones to ripen slowly in a long growing season. Approximately 5 acres is dedicated to Pinot Noir, whereas the rest is planted with Chardonnay clone 4, with a light mix of French clones 95/110R, 76/110R and 809/110R.

Also essential to Sante Arcangeli is the Lester Family Vineyard. Perched between 400 and 500 elevation, this vineyard is the bucolic jewel of the Corralitos and is perfect for pinot noir. The Monterey Bay generates a strong maritime influence in the area. Morning fog gives way to moderate temperatures during the day, allowing the fruit to stay relatively cool during the prime growing season, which allows for long hang-time and optimal flavor development.

The vineyard is meticulously managed by Prudy Foxx, sustainably farmed, with no herbicides. Deficit watering and careful canopy management yield fruit that is consistently some of the best available in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Click here for information on all Sante Arcangeli vineyards.

I'm happy that the wines are getting noticed and that people are seeing that high-quality wines are coming from the Santa Cruz Mountains, Mr. Benedetti continues. There are several great producers and great vineyards here. So I'm happy to be maybe bringing some attention to the area, in some small way, which will maybe also help my friends and colleagues. Rising tides raise all boats.

About Sante Arcangeli Family Wines

Sante Arcangeli is owned and operated by winemaker John Benedetti out of Aromas California, where he produces only 1000-1500 cases each year. Most of the grapes are sourced from unique vineyards in the Corralitos region of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA that produce small crops of well-tended fruit. Notable exceptions are the Mardikian Vineyard on the Sonoma Coast and the Toulouse Vineyard in Anderson Valley.

About Winemaker John Benedetti

John got his start by teaching himself to brew beer and eventually segued to wine with the support of friends Ryan Beauregard (of Beauregard Wines), the Brassfield Family (producers of Heart O the Mountain wines), and James MacPhail (of MacPhail Wines). Johns first barrel of wine was pinot noir, fermented with native yeast, from a very rare Santa Cruz Mountains vineyard. Happy with the results, hes gone on to make some of the most delicate, layered, nuanced pinot noir and chardonnay in Santa Cruz.
Were grateful to the team at First Baptist Dallas and everyone who competed in the Easter Run for raising $4,800 to bring clean water to Liberia. With fundraising efforts like these, were confident that well meet our goal.

Access today announced that its partner The Last Well (TLW), a Dallas-based non-profit, has raised $4,800 through an Easter Run organized by First Dallas Baptist and held on March 26. This year was the third year that the race course wound its way through downtown Dallas, and attracted a record number of runners of all ages and abilities.

The new funds will be put toward new water projects in the impoverished West Africa nation of Liberia. As it costs just $3,000 to provide an entire village with clean, disease-free water, the Easter Runs support will enable TLW to a whole community and will contribute to a second well. To date, TLW has reached more than 1,000,000 Liberians with over 1,500 water projects.

Were grateful to the team at First Baptist Dallas and everyone who competed in the Easter Run for raising $4,800 to bring clean water to Liberia, said Dr. Todd Phillips, founder and director of TLW. With fundraising efforts like these, were confident that well meet our goal of reaching the entire nation by 2020.

To hit this target, TLW still needs the funds to reach 900,000 more Liberians with 2,500 additional water projects. Anyone wishing to support this cause can visit TLWs website to start a fundraiser or make a recurring or one-off donation. Those wishing to send a check can do so to:

The Last Well

attn. Jennifer Holland

2255 Ridge Road, Suite 206A

Rowlett, TX 75087

About The Last Well

The Last Well exists to do something that has never been done: provide access to clean water for the entire nation of Liberia  border to border  and offer the Gospel to every Liberian we serve by 2020. At the same time, were encouraging the next generation of Christ-followers to live out Gods purpose for the church and to be the agent of change for the world, regardless of the need. Learn more at http://www.thelastwell.org.

About Access

For more than 15 years, Access has developed electronic forms management solutions that eliminate the unnecessary expense, risk and inefficiency of paper forms. Our 100 percent paperless technology enables organizations in any industry to capture, manage, sign and share forms data without printing or scanning. Learn more at http://www.accessefm.com
The CSU Institute for Palliative Care is also pleased to announce that a collaboration for support of the Symposium has been established with the Gary and Mary West Health Institute. Engaging the Next Generation: First National Symposium on Academic Palliative Care Education and Research

The California State University Institute for Palliative Care today announced an inaugural national conference for academic faculty interested in advancing palliative education and research with the goal of improving care and quality of life for the countrys most chronically ill patients. Undertaken with the support of the Gary and Mary West Health Institute, the two-day conference, Engaging the Next Generation: Academic Palliative Care Education and Research, will be held September 30  October 1, 2016 and brings together faculty from across the U.S. in higher education and palliative care research on the campus of California State University San Marcos.

Palliative care provides those with a serious or chronic illness  from the time of diagnosis throughout the course of treatment  care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing, and managing suffering. It is delivered by an interdisciplinary team of physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains, pharmacists and other practitioners to address the physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual needs of patients and their families.

There is a growing demand for community-based palliative care, yet the number of health professionals knowledgeable in this discipline is limited. It is vital that tomorrows healthcare professionals understand palliative care, according to CSU Institute for Palliative Care Executive Director, Helen B. McNeal. Current research demonstrates that palliative care reduces emergency room visits and hospital readmissions, and increases longevity, satisfaction and quality of life for patients and their families. In order to achieve the transformation necessary for palliative care to become the standard of care nationally, we need higher education faculty and researchers to share innovations in teaching the field, and explore opportunities for research and collaboration.

With many seniors facing challenges associated with serious chronic illnesses, new models of palliative care have great potential to help those seniors maintain independence and improve their quality of life while preserving dignity, says Zia Agha, MD, MS, executive vice president of medical research and informatics of the West Health Institute, a strategic alliance collaborator of the symposium. This symposium offers the West Health Institute an opportunity to collaborate with leading experts, and explore how high-quality palliative care can become widely adopted wherever its best for the patient and their families.

The symposium will feature nationally-recognized presenters including:



Amy Berman, Opening the conference will be Amy Berman, an advocate for better care of the seriously ill and Senior Program Officer with The John A. Hartford Foundation, an organization that has invested significantly in advancing awareness of and access to high quality palliative care.

David J. Casarett, MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine; Director of Hospice and Palliative Care at the University of Pennsylvania Health System; and author of Stoned: A Doctor's Case for Medical Marijuana and Shocked: Adventures in Bringing Back the Recently Dead, will discuss how he and his team bring innovation and creativity into educating students about palliative care.

Christine Ritchie, MD, MSPH, FACP, FAAHPM, the Harris Fishbon Distinguished Professor in Clinical Translational Research and Aging in the Division of Geriatrics, Department of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco will highlight her work at the interface of palliative care and geriatrics that seeks to improve quality of life and patient outcomes for those experiencing complex serious illnesses.

Angelo E. Volandes, MD, practicing internal medicine physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Medicine, faculty member at Harvard Medical School, and author of The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End-of-Life Care will present his current research and publications on patients and families.

The two-day conference will be held on the campus of the California State University San Marcos in North San Diego County, California. Faculty members interested in or engaged in palliative care education and research are invited to submit proposals to present. To learn more or register for the conference, please visit csupalliativecare.org/symposium or call the CSU Institute for Palliative Care at 760-750-4006.

About the CSU Institute for Palliative Care

The CSU Institute for Palliative Care is dedicated to increasing access to and awareness of palliative care by educating current and future professionals as well as community members. It offers palliative care-focused professional development and continuing education courses that are enhancing the skills of current and future healthcare professionals across the country and around the world. With its Symposium, it is also fostering the expansion of palliative care research that can enhance care and engage future professionals. Housed within one of the largest university systems in the United States, the Institute helps organizations, professionals and communities achieve the palliative care workforce needed to meet the growing needs of chronically or seriously ill people in all care settings.

About the Gary and Mary West Health Institute

The Gary and Mary West Health Institute is a nonprofit medical research organization solely funded by Gary and Mary West to make successful aging a reality for Americas seniors. The Institute works in close collaboration with the related Gary and Mary West Health Policy Center and Gary and Mary West Foundation using applied medical research, policy and advocacy initiatives and outcomes-based funding from the Foundation to advance healthcare delivery models that enable seniors to age in place, on their own terms, preserving and protecting their dignity, quality of life and independence. For more information, visit westhealth.org and follow us @westhealth.

CSU Institute for Palliative Care Media Contact:

Steve Dahl

(760) 750-7292

West Health Media Contact:

Tim Ingersoll

(858) 412-8727
SVGives provides the opportunity to make a bigger impact with your donations because of generous sponsors who are matching gifts and providing prizes that will benefit nonprofit organizations. - Mari Ellen R. Loijens of SVCF

Just one week remains before Silicon Valley Gives, the regions 24-hour online giving day to support local charities. More than $4 million in matching gifts and prizes is available on May 3 to participating nonprofit organizations. More than 1,000 organizations are registered to participate.

Silicon Valley Gives  also called SVGives  is hosted by Silicon Valley Community Foundation with lead sponsorship from Microsoft. The event raises millions in charitable donations for nonprofit organizations in San Mateo, Santa Clara, San Francisco and San Benito counties during 24 hours of online giving.

Events to celebrate the day will be held at Microsoft retail stores, selected Safeway markets and other locations on May 3. Anyone can support their favorite charities by making online contributions starting at just $10 at svgives.org.

On May 3, SVGives provides the opportunity to make a bigger impact with your donations because of generous sponsors who are matching gifts and providing prizes that will benefit nonprofit organizations, said Mari Ellen R. Loijens, SVCFs chief business, development and brand officer.

For example, during the 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. hours, Skoll Foundation will provide $50,000 in dollar-for-dollar matches for donations to any participating nonprofit on a first come, first served basis, capped at $1,000 per nonprofit. Donors can track their favorite nonprofits progress throughout the day on live leaderboards; top performing nonprofits by dollars raised or unique donors will be eligible for $130,000 in prize grants from an anonymous donor and SVCF.

On May 3, SVGives volunteers will be onsite at the Microsoft stores at Westfield Valley Fair mall in Santa Clara, at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto and at the Westfield San Francisco Centre. Volunteers will also be present at three Safeway markets: at 3970 Rivermark Plaza in Santa Clara, at 1655 El Camino Real in San Mateo, and at 298 King Street in San Francisco.

To view a video about SVGives, click here.

SVGives would not be possible without the generosity of its sponsors, including Microsoft, Google, Silver Spring Networks and Symantec. View a complete list of sponsors. Recently added sponsors include Krishnan Shah Family Foundation, 1440 Foundation, Jill + Nicholas Woodman Foundation, Intuitive Surgical, NVIDIA and Twilio.org.

Media sponsors are NBC Bay Area, Silicon Valley Business Journal, San Francisco Magazine, New SV Media Inc., Bay Area News Group, The Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com and Metro Silicon Valley. The event is also being promoted through Pandora.

For more information about Silicon Valley Gives, visit svgives.org.

About Silicon Valley Community Foundation

Silicon Valley Community Foundation advances innovative philanthropic solutions to challenging problems. As the largest community foundation in the world, we engage donors and corporations from Silicon Valley, across the country and around the globe to make our region and world better for all. Our passion for helping people and organizations achieve their philanthropic dreams has created a global philanthropic enterprise committed to the belief that possibilities start here. Learn more at siliconvalleycf.org.
RPI team that presented in Summer Classic Series Its great to see RPI make this kind of investment in the user group community.

RPI Consultants is proud to Sponsor the Keystone Lawson User Group (KLUG) Meeting being hosted at the Lehigh Valley Health system in Allentown, Pennsylvania on Friday, April 29th. RPI will be offering a general presentations on our experiences migrating customers to Infors Lawson Cloud solution and multiple breakout sessions  Contract Management, S3 and GHR Differences, RNI for Finance, Best Practices for Par Management and a Panel on Landmark Configuration Console Overview.

Richard Stout, Partner with RPI Consultants responsible for Technical Services, and Chip Cunningham, Director of Managed Services and Senior Lawson Technical Consultant, will lead the general session - Adventures in the Cloud. The presentation will focus on lessons learned from migrating Lawson customers from on premise and 3rd party hosting solutions to Infors Lawson Cloud Suite. This presentation is scheduled for 10:00 AM (EST).

With 10 years of experience working on a variety of highly complex system integration projects for Lawson Customers, Mr. Stout has developed a nuanced understanding of Lawson architecture. He has worked with organizations across all industries to translate business requirements into the development and implementation of a solution leveraging a variety of available technologies. As a certified Lawson technical consultant, Richard has installed and supported the full suite of Lawson products. He has worked extensively with ProcessFlow / Infor Process Automation (IPA) and various reporting, workflow, and imaging solutions. At the forefront of early adoption of Infor technologies, Richard is a regular presenter and is recognized as a thought leader and IPA advocate in the Lawson community.

Chip Cunningham brings deep expertise in Lawson systems across all its major technologies including LSF and Landmark on both Windows/MS-SQL and Unix/Oracle platforms. With experience managing people and projects and implementing large scale enterprise systems and comprehensive knowledge of the application stack from OS to user interface, Chip has been helping Lawson customers make the most of their technology investment for over ten years as a technical lead, architecture manager, integration architect, systems administrator, systems analyst, and programmer. Previous to joining RPI, Mr. Cunningham was technical lead at Ciber, worked as the Enterprise Architecture Manager at Lakeland Regional Medical Center and was a Senior Systems Analyst at Platform One  supporting multiple customers on Lawson.

They will be joined by KLUG board member Jeremy Stoltzfus and RPI Lawson consultant Dan Farruggio for a breakout session providing a Landmark Configuration Console overview. The overview will cover Personalization, Application, Business Classes, Action Requests, Extensions, MIME Types, Actors, Roles and Classes. Dan Farruggio has established himself as one of the foremost Lawson Security experts in the industry, having assisted dozens of client with security migrations. Jeremy Stoltzfus has co-chaired a panel with RPI in the past focused on Landmark Technologies.

Senior Lawson Procurement Consultant Stephanie Kowal will lead breakout sessions on Contract Management and Best Practices for Par Management. Mrs. Kowal is certified in Lawsons Procurement Suite, and has extensive experience working in materials management, process improvement, and project management and system administration. She is a frequent presenter on Lawson Procurement Best Practices including RQC. The Contract Management presentation will focus on how the solution integrates with S3 Procurement modules to improve your contract management process. Stephanie Kowal will be joined by Dan Farruggio and Jason Kwasnik to deliver the breakout session on Par Management Best Practices, which will focus on IC12/IC81 Maintenance, Managing Par Levels, Removing Obsolete items, Communication, Reporting and MSCM Configurations. Mr. Kwasnik, also certified in Lawsons Procurement Suite, has been implementing Lawson procurement applications since 1999. Hes implemented Lawsons IC, PO, RQ and WH at many large organizations with a variety of system configurations and business needs. Prior to consulting he worked in Materials Management in the healthcare industry.

Melissa Olson, HCM Practice Manager at RPI and Jackie Dudas, HCM Consultant at RPI will co-present S3 to Global HR differences, a session focused on educating Lawson customers on the feature functionality now available in Infors Global HR solution and the significant process improvement opportunities available during its implementation. Melissa Olson combines her experiences managing Lawson HCM as a former Lawson customer with deep consulting expertise in HCM implementation and process improvement efforts to understand client business process goals and how to achieve them. Jackie has led HCM differences and change management for dozens of RPI upgrades. Both are frequent presenters on Lawson HCM topics.

Keith Wayland, Partner at RPI Consultants will deliver a presentation on RNI for Finance. Mr. Wayland has pioneered techniques and business processes for RNI and INR cleanup, buyer message reduction and other procurement system optimizations. As one of the foremost invoice matching experts in the Lawson industry, he has provided expertise to dozens of Invoice Matching implementations with multiple configurations and business processes in both Shared Service and decentralized environments. He has developed a deep understanding of the general ledger impact of procurement and distribution of goods, PO invoice discrepancy management and vendor payments and has used this experience to help finance departments to better understand and troubleshoot discrepancies.

Also attending will be Bill Geddy, RPIs VP of Marketing and Sales. Bill brings vast experience in executive sales & marketing leadership, sales management and sales operations enablement in the mid to large market Lawson professional services space. He has over 30 years experience in the healthcare, public sector, and technology markets.

Its great to see RPI make this kind of investment in the user group community to really get the consultants out there sharing their expertise. I think its going to be a great meeting and Im looking forward to it, said Mr. Geddy.

The Keystone Lawson User Group is an independent organization developed to provide opportunities for Lawson clients to exchange ideas and experiences.

About RPI Consultants

RPI Consultants is a business applications implementation and optimization firm focused on delivering best practices through technology, systems integration, and process redesign. The RPI team includes certified technical and functional experts in Lawson, Kronos, Perceptive Content, Perceptive Capture and Kofax as well as other automation technologies to enhance the procure-to-pay, financial reporting, and human resources processes.

RPIs model focuses on delivering solutions to specific business problems through on-demand strategic intervention. Our team-based approach allows us to leverage the best resources part-time, on a task-by-task basis, while working closely with our clients to identify opportunities to minimize costs associated with travel and downtime. RPI prides itself on providing customers with the most value for their dollar, delivering value-added information and genuinely caring about the outcome of an engagement.
North-West Collge This latest accreditation visit attests to the quality of the programs offered at North-West College.

On April 4 and 5, the Accreditation Review Council on Education in Surgical Technology and Surgical Assisting (ARC/STSA) evaluated North-West College's Surgical Technologist program at its Santa Ana campus. Working in collaboration with the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP), the council subjected the program to a rigorous, two-day inspection as part of its initial accreditation process.

"One of the ways we validate whether we are preparing students well is by seeking outside evaluation of our programs through the programmatic accreditation process," explained Corporate Director of Compliance Ann Marie McGuiness-Leary. "At the close of their visit, the ARC/STSA evaluation team members noted several areas of strength in the Surgical Technologist program at our Santa Ana campus and found no areas of non-compliance."

Designed to equip students with real-world experience, the Surgical Technologist program pairs quality classroom instruction with hands-on training, giving students the opportunity to put their newfound knowledge into practice. To further ensure the preparedness of College graduates, the program also includes an externship componentallowing students to work with clinical partners in hospital and surgical centers prior to graduation from the program. North-West College students graduate equipped to hit the ground running as entry-level practitioners in their field.

"At North-West College, one of our Core Values is: We Will Always Remain Totally Compliant with Our Regulators," McGuiness-Leary shared. "This latest accreditation visit attests to the quality of the programs offered at North-West College. It's also a testament to the Team Members at our Santa Ana campus, who work diligently to ensure that we provide our students with a quality programand that our students are trained to be valuable employees for the health care community."

About North-West College

Founded in 1966, North-West College has been committed to training individuals to enter and advance in the health care field for 50 years. A leader in allied health education, the College offers 12 short-term programs at seven campuses throughout Southern California, including West Covina, Pomona Valley, Pasadena, Glendale, Riverside, Santa Ana, and Long Beach. Accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC) and approved by the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE), North-West College offers a supportive educational environment for those ready to start a health care career. To date, the College has graduated more than 45,000 studentsindividuals who have gone on to raise the standard of excellence at health care organizations of all types.

For more information about North-West College and its programs, visit http://www.nw.edu.
Ralph Guyot-Jeannin Our new partnership with ITMI is a wonderful way to promote guiding as a profession and to bring some international visibility to ITMI's graduates.

The International Tour Management Institute (ITMI), Americas premier school for professional tour directors and guides has teamed with Paris-based Meetrip to significantly expand its market reach and employment opportunities for its graduates.

The robust booking portal developed by Meetrip is an ideal marketing tool for our tour directors and guides, states Ted Bravos, CEO of ITMI. With Meetrip, our graduates can create personal profiles that attract clients from all over the world. Meetrip also allows our guides to more effectively market themselves to tour operators, event planners, travel agents and professional associations.

"As we're now established in Europe and Asia, we're looking forward to increasing our presence in North America, says Meetrip Founder and CEO Ralph Guyot-Jeannin. We are thrilled to take our first steps into North America with ITMI, as the demand for tourist guides in the US and Canada continues to grow. Our new partnership with ITMI is a wonderful way to promote guiding as a profession and to bring some international visibility to ITMI's students. We hope that this partnership brings success to their graduates worldwide."

Meetrips sophisticated technology is designed to accept payment in any currency and automatically converts it into the currency of the recipient. Payments are delivered to the tour guide electronically upon completion of the tour, either instantly and free of fees via Paypal, or within the following week through wire transfer. Well-designed profile pages provide details about the experience of the guide, the languages they speak and other relevant information. The calendar feature instantly shows prospective clients the availability of a guide, to streamline the entire booking process.

About ITMI:

Since 1976, ITMI has been Americas premier training and certification program for professional tour directors, guides and travel staff. For more information about ITMI contact Annemarie Osborne Annemarie.Osborne(at)gmail(dot)com (800) 442-4864 (415) 957-9489 or visit http://www.itmisf.com.

About Meetrip: Meetrip.com is an innovative new platform for certified tourist guides, helping travelers connect with professional guides across the globe. Meetrip uses the latest technologies to revolutionize the guiding industry, making it easier and safer for tourist guides to establish their business and be hired by tourists, travel agencies and tour operators worldwide. For more information, contact Jason Schmidt, the business developer for North America, at +33 7 82 49 05 63, email jason.schmidt(at)meetrip(dot)com; or visit https://www.meetrip.com.

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If youre planning a wedding, you need to be aware that you may be paying a premium for products and services in some cases, said Tobie Stanger, senior editor at Consumer Reports.

Its a day many dream about their whole lives and the $60-billion-a-year wedding industry knows just how to stoke expectations and drum up sales. While many couples have a limit on what they plan to spend on their wedding, a new Consumer Reports survey found that many of them go over budget, with some even dipping into savings and retirement accounts to pay for the occasion.

Consumer Reports National Research Center surveyed 464 Americans whod had a wedding reception in the last five years; 78 percent of those newlyweds reported they had budgeted for their reception. But almost two-thirds of those who went over budget said they had overspent by at least 20 percent. To afford the bill, 41 percent said they withdrew from savings; 11 percent took out a loan from a bank or credit union; and 9 percent, all under age 50, withdrew some money from a 401 (k) or 403(b), or IRA  a move that can trigger a tax penalty and be a potential threat to savings.

What Consumer Reports found when it sent its secret shoppers out to determine whether couples planning a wedding are being overcharged may explain why some people may go over their budgets. Pairs of shoppers called the same photographers, florists, limousine services, caterers and other party vendors at least a week apart and got comparative estimates for a wedding and a 50th anniversary party that were identical in every other respect. They gathered prices from 40 vendors in 12 states. Among the results that could be compared, vendors quoted higher prices for the wedding than for the anniversary party in more than a quarter of the cases.

Among the findings uncovered by Consumer Reports secret-shopper investigation were built-in wedding-based gratuities up to 26 percent and a $7 per person cake-cutting fee buried in some caterers fine print; photographers who inflated their prices because the affair was a wedding; and limousine companies that priced bridal packages higher than other, comparable services.

If youre planning a wedding, you need to be aware that you may be paying a premium for products and services in some cases, said Tobie Stanger, senior editor at Consumer Reports. You may not think to bargain, but you should. While our findings arent enough to indict an entire industry, theyre a warning to wedding shoppers to read fine print, ask smart questions, and negotiate before signing anything.

The full report, Get More Wedding for Your Money, appears in the June 2016 issue of Consumer Reports and online at ConsumerReports.org. In addition to the survey and secret shopper investigation, the article also features 31 money-saving strategies, advice on avoiding wedding-shopping gotchas, what to spend on a dress, wedding planner costs, and how much guests should give as a gift.

How to Get More Wedding for the Money

According to The Wedding report, Americans now spend an average of $27,000 on a wedding, but there are ways to keep a lid on costs. Below are some money-saving strategies that were uncovered:



Negotiate. Consumer Reports secret shoppers were able to strike deals with different types of vendors including limousine companies, photographers and florists. Its worth asking for a lower price, all the vendor can do is say no.

Choose low-demand season, day or time-of-day. In many locations, January and February weddings are the least expensive. Friday and Sunday weddings are less costly than those on Saturday nights. Booking a venue before dinnertime for lunch or brunch can also yield savings; 21 percent of survey respondents said they chose a less timely-cost of day for their reception.

Compare buffet and sit-down pricing. Thirty-five percent of respondents to Consumer Reports survey said they chose a less costly menu. Surprisingly, a buffet may sometimes be more costly because people eat more and often there is more variety offered than in a sit-down menu.

Save on alcohol. Limit the open-bar to a certain amount of time. Skipping premium brands and sticking to the venues house spirits can also reduce costs. Find a caterer that allows you to provide the booze and ask them to hire a licensed bartender. Then you can take home what hasnt been used.

Forget the favors, or DIY. If not, give something people may really use. Order enough for half the guests and still expect to see leftovers. In Consumer Reports survey, 22 percent of respondents said they made favors themselves to save money.

About Consumer Reports

Consumer Reports is the worlds largest and most trusted nonprofit, consumer organization working to improve the lives of consumers by driving marketplace change. Founded in 1936, Consumer Reports has achieved substantial gains for consumers on health reform, food and product safety, financial reform, and other issues. The organization has advanced important policies to cut hospital-acquired infections, prohibit predatory lending practices and combat dangerous toxins in food. Consumer Reports tests and rates thousands of products and services in its 50-plus labs, state-of-the-art auto test center and consumer research center. Consumers Union, a division of Consumer Reports, works for pro-consumer laws and regulations in Washington, D.C., the states, and in the marketplace. With more than eight million subscribers to its flagship magazine, website and other publications, Consumer Reports accepts no advertising, payment or other support from the companies whose products it evaluates.

 30 

APRIL 2016

 2016 Consumer Reports. The material above is intended for legitimate news entities only; it may not be used for advertising or promotional purposes. Consumer Reports is an expert, independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to work for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers and to empower consumers to protect themselves. We accept no advertising and pay for all the products we test. We are not beholden to any commercial interest. Our income is derived from the sale of Consumer Reports, ConsumerReports.org and our other publications and information products, services, fees, and noncommercial contributions and grants. Our Ratings and reports are intended solely for the use of our readers. Neither the Ratings nor the reports may be used in advertising or for any other commercial purpose without our permission. Consumer Reports will take all steps open to it to prevent commercial use of its materials, its name, or the name of Consumer Reports.
Smartsheet, the collaborative work management platform used by millions of people worldwide, and the first project management solution to be Recommended for Google Apps for Work, today announced its participation in Google Apps for Works mid-market campaign. The campaign includes an offer that covers the fees of Google Apps until a customer's existing enterprise agreement (EA) runs out. Customers who choose Smartsheet to complement Google Apps for Work will benefit from a matching offer.

Smartsheet was recently named the 2015 Marketplace App of the Year by Google Apps for Work at Googles annual TeamWork summit in Las Vegas. The companies have a history of working together to improve workplace productivity and collaboration, starting in 2010 when Smartsheet was an initial launch partner in the Google Apps Marketplace.

Smartsheet is excited to be a part of this compelling program with Google Apps for Work, and help organizations get access to the cloud tools and services they need to be successful, said Jennifer Savage, Vice President of Product and Partner Marketing. As more and more companies move important work and workflows to the cloud, were committed to working with Google to ensure every employee can seamlessly migrate their projects and processes.

Smartsheet's collaborative work management solution integrates across the Google Apps for Work product suite  Gmail, Calendar, Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Forms and Hangouts. Benefits of using Smartsheet with Google Apps include:

 Easy administration and use. Administrators can add Smartsheet for all users directly from their administration consoles.

 Single signon. Sign-on to Smartsheet with Google credentials to provide seamless access to accounts.

 Secure storage. Access and store documents in Google Drive directly from the context of work in Smartsheet.

 Google Apps Marketplace availability. Individuals with proper administrative privileges can use self-service to add Smartsheet directly from the Google Apps Marketplace.

 Shared dates. Synchronize dates in Smartsheet with Google Calendar to always see the latest dates.

 Instant meetings. Start a Google Hangout from within Smartsheet with everyone currently collaborating on the same work.

 Gmail integration. Update work in Smartsheet directly from inside Gmail.

 Form data collection. Collect responses to Google Forms in Smartsheet to organize them and take additional actions.

 Merge document data. Use lists of data in Smartsheet to generate multiple customized Google Docs.

 Mobile access. Access work in Smartsheet from anywhere with the Smartsheet Android App.

For more information about Smartsheet and its integrations with Google Apps for Work, visit the Smartsheet listing on Googles Recommended Apps Page.

About Smartsheet

Smartsheet is redefining the way that individuals, teams, and organizations deliver their best work. Our award-winning collaborative work management platform is trusted by over 8 million registered users at 80,000 customers across more than 190 countries. Customers like Cisco, Salesforce, the GSA, Google, and over half of the Fortune 500 use Smartsheet across a range of departments to create more than 10,000 new projects every day. Visit http://www.smartsheet.com to learn how we help individuals and teams drive organizational speed and performance.
New Penn Financial announced today that they will be hosting a job fair on May 5th from 11:00am  4:00pm at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel at 900 Newport Center Dr, Newport Beach, CA. The national lender will be looking for candidates with experience in the mortgage industry, and has over 100 job openings in the greater Orange County area. New Penn will be filling roles for Underwriters, Ops Leaders, Processors, Sales Managers, Loan Officers, and Closers.

For the Philadelphia area lender, this is one of several westward expansions in 2016. Earlier this year, New Penn opened branches in Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, and last year they opened an office in Pasadena. The company currently has over 140 locations in 30 states. In addition to appearances on the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies list for four consecutive years, New Penn has been consistently recognized as a Top Mortgage Lender by Scotsman Guide and has appeared on Mortgage Executive Magazines lists for Top Lenders and 50 Best Companies to Work For.

About New Penn Financial

New Penn Financial continues to assemble deeply experienced and highly seasoned industry leaders, making us one of the fastest growing lenders in the nation. As a direct lender and servicer, we have positioned ourselves to be able to provide loans that serve a variety of scenarios. This allows us to assist more customers while maintaining the highest compliance standards, ensuring great customer service at every stage. Our leadership has successfully and strategically directed their teams to be prosperous during the downs of a challenging economy while capitalizing on the potential of a robust one. This depth of wisdom and focus on quality allows us to innovate with confidence, develop superior products, provide exceptional service and support, and back it up with the kind of solid foundation that is renewing the American Dream, all across the country.
EuroGarage deploys Datalogic Heron HD3130 bar code scanners Mike Doyle, Regional Director UK and Ireland for Datalogic said, Datalogics range of scanners are carefully developed to provide bar code scanning solutions that are able to integrate with a vast range of point-of-sale technologies. "

Datalogic, a global leader in Automatic Data Capture and Industrial Automation markets, and world-class producer of bar code readers, mobile computers, sensors, vision systems and laser marking equipment, today announced that Euro Garages, one of the UKs largest privately-owned forecourt operators, is the first in the UK to roll out the Heron HD3130 bar code scanners via Datalogic partner OpalTec.

Euro Garages, which had acquired 195 Esso sites in the UK from a series of sales that started in 2012, needed a bar code scanning solution at the point-of-sale that would integrate seamlessly with its Verifone chip and pin system. We looked at a number of options before choosing the Datalogic device, comments Guy Bickerstaffe, Regional Manager at Euro Garages. The Heron bar code scanner, which was the only device that was compatible with our Verifone chip and pin system, enables us to scan a customers loyalty card to award Tescos Clubcard points.

The Heron linear imager, which was launched earlier this year, brings sophistication and style to the retail point-of-sale and delivers best-in-class scanning technology. The device comes with an autosensing stand that allows for easy transition between handheld and presentation modes. In addition, the Heron HD3130 imager has Datalogics patented Green Spot technology, providing users with visual confirmation of a good bar code scan.

The Datalogic device offered the functionality we needed in a durable unit that would cope with everyday knocks and bumps that are typical of any point-of-sale area, continues Bickerstaffe. Once Euro Garages had identified the unit that best fit its requirements, OpalTec worked with the Datalogic technical team to find software that would connect the scanner to the chip and pin device. OpalTec configured each of the 280 units ensuring they were ready to use right out of box.

OpalTec and Datalogic worked hard and fast to ensure that we had a reliable working solution in the quickest time possible. All of the Datalogic Heron scanners are now successfully in place and helping us transact efficiently across all our Esso sites in the UK, concludes Bickerstaffe.

Mike Doyle, Regional Director UK and Ireland for Datalogic said, Datalogics range of scanners are carefully developed to provide bar code scanning solutions that are able to integrate with a vast range of point-of-sale technologies. We are pleased that this first roll out of Heron HD3130 scanners with OpalTec provides the perfect solution to meet Euro Garages needs.

Datalogic Group is a global leader in Automatic Data Capture and Industrial Automation markets. As a world-class producer of bar code readers, mobile computers, sensors for detection, measurement and safety, vision systems and laser marking systems, Datalogic offers innovative solutions for a full range of applications in the retail, transportation & logistics, manufacturing and healthcare industries. With products used in over a third of worlds supermarkets and points of sale, airports, shipping and postal services, Datalogic is in a unique position to deliver solutions that can make life easier and more efficient for people. Datalogic S.p.A., listed on the STAR segment of the Italian Stock Exchange since 2001 as DAL.MI, is headquartered in Lippo di Calderara di Reno (Bologna). Datalogic Group as of today employs about 2,500 members of staff worldwide distributed in 30 countries. In 2015 Datalogic Group achieved revenues for 535,1 million Euro and invested over 48 million Euro in Research and Development with a portfolio of about 1,200 patents and pending patent applications in multiple jurisdictions.For more news and information on Datalogic, please visit http://www.datalogic.com.

Datalogic and the Datalogic logo are registered trademarks of Datalogic S.p.A. in many countries, including the U.S.A. and the E.U. Heron is a registered trademark of Datalogic ADC Inc. in the U.S.A.

Contact:

Pam McQueen:

pam(dot)mcqueen(at)datalogic(dot)com

541-302-2012
Bob Zuckerman More than ever people are concerned about their pets health needs. Pet Wants South Orange will ease their worry, said Zuckerman. Resident pet owners of the area will have more nutritious options for their dogs and cats.

Pet Wants South Orange, a new addition to the South Orange Village Center, will open its doors by Memorial Day weekend. Located at 67 South Orange Avenue, Pet Wants South Orange is a franchise of the Pet Wants Franchising Systems. The store will serve the communities of South Orange, Maplewood, Millburn, Short Hills, Montclair, Upper Montclair, Glen Ridge, West Orange, Livingston and Summit. As part of being in the Pet Wants family, customers will be offered free delivery service to their homes.

Pet Wants shoppers will be greeted with an experience not seen before in the tri-state area. Designed like an urban feed store, Pet Wants will feature: healthy food choices sold by the pound out of bins; a variety of accessories and homemade dog treats and balms for dogs; pet adoption days throughout the year; store-sponsored community events for pets and families; and more.

Owners Bob Zuckerman and his husband Grant Neumann decided to open the business in South Orange to invest in the town and surrounding areas future.

"Investing in a storefront business has been something I've wanted to do for a long time. The Pet Wants product and business model really spoke to me  the food is nutritious, its made fresh in a plant thats never had a recall and customers can either drop by the store or have the food delivered right to their door. I think customers will really love the quality and convenience Pet Wants offers, said Zuckerman, who learned about Pet Wants while scouting businesses to recruit to South Orange in his role as Executive Director of the South Orange Village Center Alliance. Zuckerman will remain full time at the helm of the Alliance as the day-to-day operations of Pet Wants will be handled by director of operations Jonathan Javins and his husband Jack Denelsbeck, who will serve as the marketing director. Javins has extensive experience in luxury retail and customer service and both men have a real passion for animals.

When we learned about Pet Wants, a business dedicated to providing fresh, high-quality food for cats and dogs, I knew we stumbled across something special, said co-owner Neumann. Its a perfect fit for the community we love so much.

Zuckerman and Neumann, devoted humans to their two rescue cats Willie and Ozzie, wanted to provide a new and all-natural pet food alternative for fellow pet lovers. Pet Wants carefully develops their proprietary pet food thats slow-cooked with all-natural ingredients. The company makes the dog and cat food in small batches once each month so every kibble is guaranteed to be fresh and packed with nutrition.

Pet Wants only sources the best salmon, chicken, lamb, brown rice and other ingredients available. Theres no sugar added, no fillers and no animal by-products. And, since Pet Wants never uses corn, wheat, soy or dyes, the food is also a great fit for pets with allergies.

More than ever people are concerned about their pets health needs. Pet Wants South Orange will ease their worry, said Zuckerman. Resident pet owners of the area will have more nutritious options for their dogs and cats.

Customers will be able to order food for their companions by visiting the store, calling 973-762-4300 or ordering online once the website is launched.

About Pet Wants

Pet Wants originally launched in Cincinnati in 2010. Founded by Michele Hobbs, the business was built to provide proprietary crafted, fresh, slow-cooked, all-natural pet food delivered to customers through a retail store and a convenient home-delivery service. Hobbs turned the business into a franchise in 2015 with the help of Franchise Funding Group, an investment and franchise-development company designed to help entrepreneurs scale their companies nationally as franchise systems. For more information, email jjavins(at)PetWants(dot)com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook and post pictures of the best looking dogs and cats you know!
The Owners Counsel of America is pleased to announce that New Jersey condemnation attorneys Anthony F. DellaPelle and Edward D. McKirdy, partners with McKirdy & Riskin, PA, have been named among the Top 100 New Jersey Super Lawyers for 2016. Both DellaPelle and McKirdy have earned the distinction of being among the Top 100 New Jersey Super Lawyers every year since 2009.

For over 25 years, Anthony DellaPelle has focused his practice on eminent domain, redevelopment, and real estate tax appeals earning multiple professional honors for his achievements. Designated as a Board Certified Civil Trial Attorney by the Supreme Court of New Jersey, DellaPelle has represented property owners in numerous contested condemnation matters and has secured several multimillion dollar awards for his clients. He is a designated member of the Counselors of Real Estate and serves on its Board of Directors. DellaPelle represents New Jersey in the Owners Counsel of America (OCA), a nationwide network of leading eminent domain lawyers, also serving on OCAs Board of Directors.

Defending the property rights of landowners in eminent domain and condemnation matters for nearly 50 years, Edward McKirdy has received numerous accolades for his success in and out of the courtroom. An Emeritus Member of OCA, McKirdy served as the organizations New Jersey member for over a decade, representing exclusively New Jersey property owners in condemnation and property rights matters. Throughout his career, McKirdy has advocated for the advancement of private property rights and has helped establish a number of key principles of New Jersey condemnation law.

Super Lawyers, a Thomson Reuters business, is a rating service for lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. Annual selections are made using a patented multiphase process that includes a statewide survey of lawyers, an independent research evaluation of candidates and peer reviews by practice area.

Super Lawyers lists are published nationwide in Super Lawyers Magazines and in leading city and regional magazines and newspapers across the country. Each year, no more than five percent of the lawyers in a state are selected by the Super Lawyers research team to receive the annual honor. The Top 100 list highlights the 100 attorneys who obtained the highest points in the 2016 New Jersey Super Lawyers nomination process.

Since 1967, McKirdy & Riskin, P.A. has focused on assisting New Jersey property ownerslarge corporations, family-owned businesses and individualsin eminent domain, redevelopment, property tax and other real estate valuation matters. The firm has earned its reputation for knowledgeable and aggressive representation by fighting for clients' Constitutionally-guaranteed property rights in many of New Jersey's landmark cases. McKirdy & Riskin lawyers have helped hundreds of private individuals and businesses successfully challenge the government in eminent domain takings, property tax appeals and redevelopment issues. This year, seven of the firms nine attorneys have been selected for inclusion in the 2016 New Jersey Super Lawyers list under the eminent domain practice area.

About Owners' Counsel of America:

The Owners Counsel of America (OCA) is a nationwide network of eminent domain lawyers dedicated to protecting the rights of private property owners large and small, locally and nationally, and to advancing the cause of property rights. The condemnation attorneys affiliated with OCA are in private practice in nearly every state and help individual owners and businesses stand up against federal, state, and local governments, utilities, redevelopment authorities and other entities armed with eminent domain power. For more information or to locate an eminent domain lawyer in your state, please visit http://www.ownerscounsel.com.
Asset Based Lending congratulates partners Daniel Leyden, Paul Ullman, and Kevin Rodman for leading the hard money lending firm to a Scotsman Guide 2015 Top Originator designation. Asset Based Lending was ranked among the top loan originators for both the Top Dollar Volume and Closed Loans categories.

Scotsman Guide, the leading resource for mortgage originators, released its seventh annual Top Originators rankings on April 1. The list, which ranks the nation's top mortgage producers, appears in Scotsman Guide's April 2016 residential edition.

Asset Based Lending was ranked among entries from more than 2,400 mortgage professionals across the country. To be eligible for initial consideration in Scotsman Guides Top Originators rankings, originators must have had at least $40 million in loan volume or 100 closed home loans for the 2015 calendar year. After receiving submissions, Scotsman Guide required written verification of top entrants volume data from a certified public accountant, the chief financial officer at the originator's company or a similar source.

The award comes just after a record breaking month for Asset Based Lending, closing 33 loans for $11.75 million and returning $2.83 million in capital. We endeavor to fund good projects for good people, and we feel honored that our borrowers and investors continue to put their faith in us, says Paul Ullman, ABL Managing Partner.

Asset Based Lending, LLC is a direct hard money lender that specializes in helping real estate investors finance fix and flip projects, new construction, and cash out refinances. ABLs hard money lending programs funds non-owner occupied real estate investments up to $2 million in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida, Virginia, and Washington D.C. Since its inception in 2010, Asset Based Lending has funded over 700 real estate transactions, while lending over $160 million.

Scotsman Guide Media Inc. publishes a residential edition and a commercial edition of Scotsman Guide, in addition to Scotsman Guide News, Loan Post, Scotsman Guide Community and other platforms at ScotsmanGuide.com. Each month, the magazines reach tens of thousands of subscribers nationwide. Scotsman Guide is the leading resource for mortgage originators and connects mortgage originators with wholesale and commercial lenders.

For more information, visit http://www.abl1.net or call (201) 942-9089
Simon Sinek is the opening keynote speaker for ATD 2016. ATD 2016 is the premier international event for trainers and others in the talent development profession.

The Association for Talent Development will hold its 2016 International Conference & Exposition on May 22-25, at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. The conference is the premier international event for trainers and others in the talent development profession.

ATD 2016 is anchored by three General Sessions featuring bestselling author Simon Sinek, Brene Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, and Jeremy Gutsche, the CEO of Trend Hunter, a company that is the leading showcase for innovation and The Next Big Thing. These dynamic speakers will share their perspectives on leadership that inspires, courage, and the power of innovation and creativity.

Learning opportunities at this conference are abundant. There are:



more than 300 education and networking sessions.

content tracks include career development, global human resource development, human capital, instructional design, leadership development, learning measurement & analytics, learning technologies, management, training delivery, and science of learning.

industry tracks include government, healthcare, higher education, and sales enablement.

Attendees can build their own schedule and manage it in the conference app. Select session recordings will be available for 90 days to full conference attendees after the conference.

ATD 2016 offers the worlds largest EXPO dedicated to the talent development field. More than 400 suppliers with latest tools and resources will be on hand to share their expertise.

For more information about the ATD 2016 International Conference & Exposition, visit http://www.atdconference.org. Follow the conference conversation on Twitter with #ATD2016.

About ATD

The Association for Talent Development (ATD) is the worlds largest professional membership organization supporting those who develop the knowledge and skills of employees, improve performance, and help to achieve results for the organizations they serve. Originally established in 1943, the association was previously known as the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD).

ATDs members come from more than 120 countries and work in public and private organizations in every industry sector. ATD supports talent development professionals who gather locally in volunteer-led U.S. chapters and international member networks, and with international strategic partners. For more information, visit http://www.td.org.
Broadleaf Commerce will be sponsoring the upcoming B2B Online conference. Were looking forward to understanding B2B Online attendee challenges across customer experience, supply chain, marketing, and globalization needs, whether Broadleaf is a direct fit or not.

Demonstrating B2B commerce and content solutions for manufacturers, distributors, franchise businesses, and global resellers, Broadleaf Commerce, the enterprise software provider for leading Fortune 500 companies, will be sponsoring the 2016 B2B Online conference taking place May 9-11 at the Loews Hotel in Chicago. At the event, Broadleaf will host a workshop, run eCommerce site management demos, and lend B2B solution insight.

Broadleaf specializes in solving complex eCommerce and content needs through performant and scalable solutions, stated Brad Buhl, COO of Broadleaf Commerce. Were looking forward to understanding B2B Online attendee challenges across customer experience, supply chain, marketing, and globalization needs, whether Broadleaf is a direct fit or not.

On May 10 during the conference, Broadleaf will host a private luncheon for B2B executives. Presented by Broadleaf consulting firm partner, Credera, the luncheon will provide mini case studies and experience sharing. Brian Lynch, VP of Sales Development and Training at Ben E. Keith, will be in attendance to provide the featured case study. Invited attendees will learn how B2B enterprises leverage technology to drive revenue, streamline marketing initiatives, optimize distribution channels, and move sales teams from order takers to advisors.

Experts from Broadleaf and Credera will be able to answer questions and provide live demos at booth #204. Broadleaf also invites those who are interested to attend the upcoming web event: Platforming for B2B Commerce with Broadleaf Commerce on May 17. For more information about Broadleaf Commerce or to request an invitation to the private luncheon, please contact info(at)broadleafcommerce(dot)com.

About Credera

Credera is a full-service management consulting, user experience, and technology solutions firm with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to emerging industry leaders. Clients hire us to own their toughest challenges; they retain us because we keep our promises. Capabilities in strategy, analytics, technology, and design ensure client success. http://www.credera.com.

About Broadleaf Commerce, LLC

Broadleaf Commerce provides B2B and B2C eCommerce platform solutions to simplify the complexities of multi-channel commerce and digital experience management. As the market-leading choice for enterprise organizations requiring tailored, highly scalable commerce systems, Broadleaf is fully customizable and extensible. Trusted by Fortune 500 corporations, yet priced for the mid-market, Broadleaf provides the framework for leading brands, including Google, The Container Store, OReilly Auto Parts, and Vology. For more information, visit: http://www.broadleafcommerce.com.
Global Stem Cells Group The symposium will be co-sponsored by Global Stem Cells Group and the University of Santiagos Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department.

Global Stem Cells Group has announced that affiliate Kimera Research Labs founder Duncan Ross, Ph.D., a GSCG Advisory Board member, will be the keynote speaker at the Asia-Pacific Symposium in Santiago Chile, July 1-2, 2016. The abstract for Ross's lecture will be, The mechanism of action of stem cells in regenerative medicine is increasingly being understood to be effected through paracrine factors. Central to the question of when and how to treat an individual disease is where and for what duration a transplanted cell will persist to generate these factors.

In the absence of a robust ability to track cell persistence in humans, Dr. Ross will present current research in murine hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem cell transplantation with support from human transplant results.

The symposium will be co-sponsored by Global Stem Cells Group and the University of Santiagos Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department, and will focus on regenerative medicine and stem cell applications to anti-aging and aesthetic medicine. University of Santiago faculty will lead the symposium, which will host qualified academic and medical groups from around the world who will present their scientific papers.

The symposium is the first joint endeavor between Global Stem Cells Group and the University of Santiago since establishing an alliance recently, and which will be announced at the Asia-Pacific Symposium. It also marks Rosss first appearance as a member of the Global Stem Cells Group Advisory Board.

Ross received a Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Miami and specializes in research, mesenchymal stem cell applications, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for hematologic disorders, the suppression of graft vs. host disease, and various methods of immune suppression.

Global Stem Cells Group and Kimera Labs share a commitment to research and development, and providing stem cell treatments to patients in clinical settings worldwide.

To learn more, visit the Global Stem Cells Group website, email bnovas(at)stemcellsgroup(dot)com, or call +1 305 560 5337.

About Global Stem Cell Group:

Global Stem Cells Group, Inc. is the parent company of six wholly owned operating companies dedicated entirely to stem cell research, training, products and solutions. Founded in 2012, the company combines dedicated researchers, physician and patient educators and solution providers with the shared goal of meeting the growing worldwide need for leading edge stem cell treatments and solutions. With a singular focus on this exciting new area of medical research, Global Stem Cells Group and its subsidiaries are uniquely positioned to become global leaders in cellular medicine.

Global Stem Cells Groups corporate mission is to make the promise of stem cell medicine a reality for patients around the world. With each of GSCGs six operating companies focused on a separate research-based mission, the result is a global network of state-of-the-art stem cell treatments.

About Kimera Labs:

Kimera Labs is currently focused on the use of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for the suppression of various immune mediated pathologies and regenerative medicine in the US, Latin America, and the Bahamas. Founder Duncan Ross, Ph.D., is an immunologist and researcher who has studied hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for hematologic disorders, the suppression of graft vs. host disease, and various methods of immune suppression.

Kimera Labs provides patients access to stem cell treatment in the U.S. according to U.S. laws. In order to provide the greatest benefit to patients, Ross frequently travels to treat patients in Central and South America where specialists are available in a different regulatory environment.

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Swedenborg and Life 100th YouTube Episode Event Poster The offTheLeftEye YouTube channel explores faith and spirituality through video and has over 30,000 subscribers, generating an average of 325,000 views and 2.5 million minutes watched each month

The 100th Swedenborg and Life episode titled 3 Simple Ways to Love Everyone will stream live to a worldwide YouTube audience while an in-person audience participates for the first time since the shows inception in 2014. The episode will be filmed at Pendleton Hall on the campus of Bryn Athyn College, which is just north of Philadelphia in Bryn Athyn, PA. The event is open to the public and there's no cost to attend.

Encapsulating one of the major themes of the series, the 100th episode will focus on ways to think and act with compassion, offering practical techniques and exercises for a love-centered approach to everyday interpersonal interactions. A question-and-answer session during the show will give audience members a chance to interact in real time with beloved producer and host Curtis Childs.

The videos created by Curtis and his team on the offTheLeftEye YouTube channel have been showing viewers of various faiths how spirituality can uniteeven in a tense social climate where political, religious, and economic turmoil persists.

Event Details

Date: Monday, May 9, 2016

Time: 8:00 p.m. ET

Attend in person: Pendleton Hall, 2965 College Drive, Bryn Athyn, PA 19009

Attend online: http://www.youtube.com/offTheLeftEye

No registration required.

About offTheLeftEye and the Swedenborg Foundation

The offTheLeftEye YouTube channel explores faith and spirituality through video. Thanks to a dedicated production and writing team, the channel has been providing hope and meaning to a worldwide audience from a small production studio in Montgomery County, PA, since 2010. Creator, producer, and host Curtis Childs became part of the Swedenborg Foundation in 2012 because of their mutual goal to share the work of eighteenth-century spiritual teacher, philosopher, and writer Emanuel Swedenborg with the world. Swedenborg and Life, which streams live every Monday at 8:00 p.m. ET, launched in 2014. The addition of the hour-long weekly web series added depth to the channels preexisting short video repertoire as well as viewing consistency for its 30,000+ subscribers. The Swedenborg Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, independent, educational organization and book publisher based in West Chester, PA.
Nasstar PLC Logo Achieving our Microsoft Gold Hosting Certification was an important milestone for Nasstar and our technical team, senior management and board of directors are all justifiably proud of this fantastic achievement.

Nasstar PLC today announced that they had achieved the coveted Microsoft Gold Hosting Partner certification for their datacenter hosting operations. Nasstar PLC is now an accredited Microsoft Gold Hosting Partner, certified by Microsoft and able to deliver hosted desktop solutions that meet Microsofts stringent technical demands.

The Microsoft Gold Hosting Partner accreditation certifies that Nasstar PLC has an in-depth and highly qualified technical resource, a proven track record in delivery and strict procedures and guidelines that are adhered to in each and every hosted solution provided.

Nasstar CEO Nigel Redwood said today Achieving our Microsoft Gold Hosting Certification was an important milestone for Nasstar and our technical team, senior management and board of directors are all justifiably proud of this fantastic achievement.

Nasstar Head of Infrastructure Shannon Johnston said today The certification process is incredibly hard and rightly so, it encompasses customer references, employee certifications, SPLA revenues, technical certification, multiple accreditations and a solid track record.

Nasstar plans to tell the story of their journey through the Microsoft Gold Hosting Partner accreditation process by hosting a webinar entitled The Quest for Microsoft Gold.

The webinar is on Weds May 18 at 11:00 AM BST (London).

Register here : The Quest For Microsoft Gold

ABOUT NASSTAR PLC: Nasstar PLC is listed on the London Stock Exchange under ticker symbol NASA. They provide fully managed and fully hosted IT services from their ISO27001 certified data centers.

Nasstar PLC, Datapoint House, Telford, TF1 7UL, United Kingdom
Owler  the free service that business professionals use to outsmart their competition, gain competitive insights, and uncover the latest industry news and alerts  announced that they have crossed 250,000 active users. This is significant growth, up from 100,000 active users at the end of last year. Each month, members of the highly engaged Owler community contribute unique business intelligence such as privately-held company revenue, headcount, and likelihood of an outcome.

Similar to LinkedIn, Owler is used by all business professionals like CEOs, salespeople, marketers, recruiters, product managers, and anyone that wants to gain daily, actionable competitive insights to help them outsmart their competition. Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa says, My entire team uses Owler to keep our finger on the pulse of our competitive graph.

With unique data on 15 million companies and proprietary Competitive Graph, Owler helps business professionals uncover competitive insights and discover new companies that participate in their space. Jim Fowler, Founder & CEO of Owler explains that, Owler has become a required tool for all business professionals. Owler is used by 96% of the Fortune 500, many of which have hundreds to thousands of employees using the online service. Start-ups, mid-size organizations, and investment professionals are also among the 250,000 active users of Owler.

Owler members enjoy three products: Weekly Showdown, Instant Insights, and Daily Snapshot. Weekly Showdown provides performance benchmarks between a users employer and their competitors across web traffic, CEO approval ratings, press coverage, social follows, and more. Instant Insights delivers funding announcements, acquisitions, and leadership changes directly to ones inbox. And, Daily Snapshot brings top news stories and blog posts, along with new competitors, to members attention.

About Owler

Owler is the free service business professionals use to outsmart their competition, gain competitive insights, and uncover the latest industry news and alerts. Each month, members of the highly engaged Owler community contribute unique business intelligence such as privately-held company revenue, headcount, and likelihood of an outcome. Owler is used by 96% of the Fortune 500, along with thousands of start-ups, mid-sized organizations, and investment professionals. Launched in 2014, and funded by Norwest Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures, Owler is headquartered in San Mateo, CA with offices in Coimbatore, India.

Sign up for Owler on our website: http://www.owler.com

Read our blog: http://blog.owler.com/

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/owlerinc/

Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/owlerinc
Recruiting for Good Rewards Travel Join and enjoy rewarding travel to experience the Natural Wonders of the World

Recruiting for Good is rewarding 10 people a trip to experience the Northern Lights in Norway during New Years 2016 with Fuzeus Founder Kenny Warner.

According to Carlos Cymerman, Recruiting for Good founder, "We love helping people accomplish their travel bucket lists to experience and see the world for good. Big thanks to Kenny Warner for inspiring the Natural Wonders Bucket List Adventures."

Rewarding Natural Wonders Destinations

1) Norway, Northern Lights (New Years 2016)

2) Australia, Great Barrier Reef (New Years 2017)

3) Mount Everest in Nepal.

4) Victoria Falls in Zambia/Zimbabwe.

5) Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA.

6) Paricutin volcano in Mexico.

7) Harbor of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

How to Earn Bucket List Destination Rewards

Recruiting for Good finds technical professionals jobs with companies to generate proceeds and fund travel. People make candidate referrals to earn travel destinations.

1) A person simply participates by referring 1 person for 1 technical job to earn 1 travel destination.

2) Once Recruiting for Good gets the referred person a technical job with a company, and the person completes probation period (90 days after person starts new job).

3) Recruiting for Good rewards travel for 1 person to experience one of the Natural Wonder travel destinations listed our website.

About

Recruiting for Good, a fun cause based staffing company, has been connecting talented technical professionals to great jobs since 1998. Our mission every year is to reward people fun adventure travel to make a difference. People earn travel rewards by making referrals. Every successful candidate referral that leads to 1 person getting a job, equals one rewarded destination...1 for 1.

FuzeUs is a platform and community that connects Non-Profits and Brands, while engaging people to collaborate on socially conscious campaigns and daily activities. Through this FuzeUs delivers valuable marketing and engagement insights to Non-Profits, Brands, and Foundations by leveraging the platforms data and analytics. To build our grassroots community and increase socially conscious engagement, we introduced our monthly "Do Goodies" and ambassador program. Carlos Cymerman, founder says "Recruiting for Good works with FuzeUs to inspire participation and reward travel around the world," to learn more visit Fuzeus.com
...a secured lenders agreement with its borrower commonly provides the lender with very strong legal remedies in the event the borrower defaults on the loan... Past News Releases RSS Financial Poise Announces...

Financial Poise Announces...

Financial Poise Announces...

Companies fail all the time, for all sorts of reasons. Some companies become distressed, or even insolvent, because of mismanagement; others because of fraud; others for myriad other reasons- some intrinsic to the company and some extrinsic.

Regardless of the cause, failing or failed companies create a unique set of issues, risks, and even opportunities for all involved. This area of law and finance has become so specialized that no fewer than five (American Bankruptcy Institute; Association of Insolvency & Restructuring Advisors; Commercial Law League of America; National Association of Federal Equity Receivers; Turnaround Management Association) national organizations exist to help those who specialize in the field to stay up to date on the latest developments, strategies, and tactics in the area.

Join some of the leading experts in World, from among the membership of these organizations, as they discuss- in plain English for the non-expert- the basics and the latest in Restructuring, Insolvency & Troubled Companies.

As with all Financial Poise Webinars, each episode in the series is designed to be viewed independently of the other episodes, and listeners will enhance their knowledge of this area whether they attend one, some, or all of the programs.

Episode #4 of the Restructuring, Insolvency & Troubled Companies series is "A Distressed Company and its Secured Lender,"(Register Here) airing on May 6, 2016 at 10am CST. Moderator Jonathan Friedland will be joined by Dimitri Karcazes of Goldberg Kohn, Hamid Rafatjoo of Venable and Allen Wilen of EisnerAmper.

Most businesses of any meaningful size in the United States have a line of credit or term loan with a bank or other lender that is supported by a lien on substantially all of the assets of that business. And a secured lenders agreement with its borrower commonly provides the lender with very strong legal remedies in the event the borrower defaults on the loan (whether the default is a payment default or a covenant default). What can a secured lender do upon a borrowers default? What will a lender actually do upon a borrowers default? What factors can and should a secured lender consider when deciding what action to take? What can and should a borrower do in this situation? This webinar discusses the industry norms and practices that secured lenders and advisors to distressed companies tend to follow when dealing with a defaulting borrower. It paints a picture of the path a workout may follow, discusses the leverage points that both the secured lender and the borrower may have, and explains the various possible outcomes.

ABOUT FINANCIAL POISE:

Financial Poise provides unbiased news, continuing education, and intelligence to private business owners, executives, investors, and their trusted advisors. For more information contact Emily Goldin at egoldin(at)financialpoise(dot)com or 312-469-0135.
After more than five years of working together as partners, Storage.com has purchased US Storage Search, Inc., including the website and business operations of USstoragesearch.com. The acquisition comes one year after the acquisition of Storage.com by its management team. Financial terms of the transaction were not released.

The ownership and management teams for the two sites have been involved with the development and operations of both sites since they were first launched.

USstoragesearch.com traces its roots back to the late 1990s when the ownership group built a regional network of self storage websites operating independently in several Midwest markets. With the launch of USstoragesearch.com in 2004, the ownership group combined the regional websites into a single platform that served the entire United States.

USstoragesearch.coms initial online marketing offering for self storage operators was a directory listing on the website that connected the facility with consumers searching for available self storage units. In 2009, USstoragesearch.com partnered with others in the storage industry to build the first real-time self storage reservation system and became the first shop-and-compare website to offer online storage unit rentals.

Storage.com launched in 2011 as a website for consumers to find, compare, and rent available storage units across the United States. Initially, Storage.com was powered with USstoragesearch.com listings and inventory. Shortly thereafter, Storage.com began adding its own storage facility clients, which were soon found in search engine results alongside USstoragesearch.coms facility clients.

In 2012, USstoragesearch.com and Storage.com became clients of B2 Interactive, a web design and SEO company opened by former US Storage Search, Inc. executives Bill Hipsher and Brandon Taylor. Both sites used the agencys web development, SEO, and other marketing services.

For many years, we worked for these two websites that shared inventory and offered similar services to the storage industry but had very little in common besides that, stated Bill Hipsher, CEO of Storage.com and co-founder of B2 Interactive. We had different ownership groups wanting very different things, and we kept seeing more opportunity if they worked on a parallel path. Brandon and I approached the owners of both websites with an offer to acquire their businesses and websites at the same time with this day in mind from the beginning. It just took a little bit longer to make the deal with the ownership group of USstoragesearch.com.

USstoragesearch.com members will see little impact to their services as a result of the acquisition. The same management team that has been in place for the last decade will still be the primary points of communication for all members.

For the shareholders, this deal made sense for many reasons, and the timing was perfect, said Michael Kucera, former President and CEO of US Storage Search, Inc. For me personally, the timing was perfect as well. I came into USstoragesearch.com after many, many years in commercial real estate. Over the last 12 years or so, Ive had the opportunity to meet some really great people within the self storage industry, and as Ive watched what so many have done successfully within the industry, my background in commercial real estate development has been calling to me.

Kucera continued, Those relationships Ive built over the years have led to some great new opportunities to be a part of the development, acquisition, and management of storage facilities. Doing this and competing against our clients is something I couldnt in good conscience do while working for USstoragesearch.coms clients. I look forward to continuing in the storage industry, and I definitely know who to use for the online marketing needs of my future storage endeavors.

About Storage.com

Storage.com is a managed services solution dedicated to serving the online marketing and website needs of the self storage industry. Storage.com helps storage facilities find more tenants online with its directory, website design, local search, and SEO services. Storage.com works with storage operators of all sizes but is focused on providing affordable and effective online marketing and website solutions to small and medium-sized self storage operators. Storage.com is owned and operated by former storage operators who built their first website solutions for the self storage industry in 1997.
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Barbara was born in Kimball, NE. She attended St. Marys Academy of Nursing in San Francisco, CA and graduated as an RN. Barbara served in the military and moved back to Kimball with her husband Lyle Rosendahl. She worked at Kimball County Hospital and became the administrator until she retired 33 years later. Barbara and her husband retired to the Gibbs Ranch, later moving to the Denver area to be with their daughters. She was quite the artist and known for her ghost roses.
Overcoming loss and tragic circumstances, Kate St. Clair dedicated her life to education and the elderly.

She taught school in Elko, served as state deputy superintendent, and worked to advance services for senior citizens  forming what would become the Elko Senior Citizens Center.

Mary Kate Reed was born in Springdale, Arkansas, Jan. 14, 1891, as one of seven children.

She developed her love of learning in a crowded one-room schoolhouse and attended the University of Arkansas.

After completing the first year of her two-year degree, she traveled west in 1911 to visit her brother and uncle in Elko.

Kate liked Elko and accepted a teaching job near Lamoille.

I found I really enjoyed teaching, she recalled.

After the school year ended, she finished her degree in Arkansas. In 1914, Kate moved to North Starr Valley to teach school and met Arthur St. Clair.

They married in 1914 and had two sons, Reed and Jim. The family settled in Deeth where Arthur worked as constable and postmaster.

Tragically, 2-year-old Jim died in a drowning accident, followed by Arthurs death in 1920 when he was killed on duty.

Five months later, Kate gave birth to Arthur Lee. With her familys help, Kate moved back to Arkansas and earned her bachelors degree.

Returning to Elko in 1927, Kate St. Clair taught both elementary and high school classes.

In 1944, she was appointed as a State Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction supervising 45 schools throughout Elko and Eureka counties, a position she served in for 15 years. She drove to each school in her jurisdiction, 42 of them rural. Kate retired in 1959.

By 1962, both Reed and Arthur Lee had died. Kate turned her attention to serving the senior citizens and initiated the AARP program in Elko, becoming the organizations first local president. Using Elko Grammar School No. 1 for meetings and activities, the group eventually developed into the Elko Senior Citizens Center.

A member of Gov. Mike OCallaghans Council for the Aged, St. Clair was appointed to a delegation that participated in a conference at the White House in 1971.

On a vacation in Montana, Kate died of a stroke, Sept. 19, 1973 at the age of 82. She was remembered by friends for her cheerfulness, zest for life and dedication to helping others.
Humorist Firouzeh Dumas, author of two bestselling memoirs about growing up as an Iranian immigrant in America, Funny in Farsi (Random House, 2003) and Laughing Without an Accent (Random House 2008), now mines her childhood in her debut middle-grade novel, It Aint So Awful, Falafel (Clarion, May). Currently living in Munich, she spoke from there with PW about how Iran has changed since the 1970s, the difference between writing straight memoir and fictionalized memoir, and the importance of kindness.

Lets start with geography. Iran, California, now Germany  where else have you lived? What took you to these different places? And where do you call home?

My husband was working in Silicon Valley and four years ago he lost his job. Hes French and had always wanted to work in high tech in Europe, so he got a job in Germany. Our second child was a senior in high school at the time, and I stayed with her in California until she finished. I didnt want to leave  Im on the lecture circuit and I knew it would be hard to do that from Europe. Many of the places that book me are high schools and universities, and dont have the budget to bring me from Germany. So I moved reluctantly. This is not a permanent move; I really miss the lecture circuit. One of the reasons Im especially excited about my new book is that it will bring me to the U.S.A. a lot.

I originally came to America because my father was an engineer who worked for the National Iranian Oil Company, and back in the day when Iran and the U.S.A. had good relations, he came to California to help an American company set up an oil refinery in Iran. We came when I was in second grade and stayed for two years, then went back to Iran for two years, and then came back and simply stayed. After the Iranian Revolution, my father lost his job and traveled to Texas and other states  wherever he could get work. My mother and I stayed in California.

As for home  my home is where my children are. We have three and right now two are in the U.S.A. Even though wed be living in different cities if I were in the U.S.A., there is something about being in the same country. America is definitely home! I lived most of my life in California and am so used to the diversity there, which I really miss  especially when it comes to food and restaurants. I especially miss guacamole! Avocadoes are ridiculously expensive in Germany, so its a real treat to have guacamole.

Youve written two memoirs about growing up in the U.S. as an Iranian immigrant. What made you want to fictionalize your memories? And why for a middle-grade audience?

My first book, Funny in Farsi, was written for adults, but it ended up being used in middle schools and high schools. When I was visiting a middle school 13 years ago, I realized there was another story I needed to tell this audience. I consider myself a well-adjusted immigrant, but its all due to the many kindnesses I experienced as an immigrant. I cant even describe the generosity I experienced. The point of the story I wanted to write is kindness.

I chose to write a fictional book because I knew that I needed to tell the story with fewer characters. I wanted to write a concise story. I was 13 and older than the character in It Aint So Awful, Falafel during the Iranian Revolution and I was faced with hardships nobody around me had experienced. Nobody I knew had a father without a job. Nobody I knew was from a country that had just had a revolution. I had no support network of relatives nearby. I survived because of my friends and community. In fact, Im still friends with Carolyn and Howie [two characters in the book] today. You can see their pictures on my website, as well as another close friend, Tracy. Unfortunately, I ended up having to cut Tracy out of the book.

Another reason I wrote for this audience is because I am the only Iranian-American humorist writer. My one gripe  and its huge  is that every time a book is published about the Middle East, its so depressing. It doesnt have to be depressing. I wanted to write a character kids would fall in love with.

How was the process of writing fiction different from writing memoir?

It was really hard! Im not so much a writer as a reteller. I have a very good memory for detail, but this book involved plot. And I had to condense time, so everything takes place in less time than it actually did in my life. I wrote 26 versions of this book  I just couldnt get it right. I worked for one full year on integrating Iranian history into the story. Originally I had way too much. It took over the plot. I went through many rewrites just to find out how much history should be in the book. And the jury is still out on this: middle-schoolers havent read it yet. Im waiting for them to read it and let me know if I got it right.

Did you keep a diary when you were young? Or is your memory just that good?

I did not keep a diary. I have always been very introspective; memories stay with me. And when you start writing about your past every day, you start remembering everything. Its like going down a tunnel.

How do your parents feel about how you depict them in this book?

They havent read it yet!

Are you worried about how they will react?

It took me seven years to write this book and I spent two of them worrying about that  especially about my mother. Depression is very taboo in our culture, and in my family. But I thought about all the kids who have depressed parents and decided its time to be honest about that. Depression exists in every culture. I wanted to do my part in acknowledging that. When you watch The Brady Bunch, the kids go to their parents when they have a problem. When you have a depressed parent, you cant do that. I feel that the one thing I owe my readers is authenticity.

The main character in Falafel speaks excellent English. What was it like for you to learn English?

I knew seven words when I arrived in America: white, yellow, red, orange, blue, green, purple. That was because in my kindergarten, the color chart was in English. When I met my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Sandberg, my father said: Tell her what you know, and I recited the colors in my thick accent. But within a month I was fluent. Mrs. Sandberg confirms this. Children are like sponges. My youngest daughter came to Germany when she was seven and now she speaks like a native. I, on the other hand, have not mastered the language at all. So now my daughter is in the position of translating for me, as I did for my mother. But she has the audacity to say Im tired of translating for you! German is a very difficult language, and so many Germans speak excellent English, so I havent had to really learn it. I speak several languages, and I used to say Im good at languages, but I dont say that anymore!

Were you brought up as a Muslim?

I was born into a Muslim family, like most Iranians. But my family never practiced any religion, which was very controversial. My father was a huge advocate of education. He always said if he could give people only religion or only education, he would give them education. And now I say that myself.

Its important to understand that when I lived in Iran, it was a very different country. It was a country of all kinds of people: people who were devoutly religious and people who wore mini-skirts. It didnt have the rules and laws that exist now. The Iran I knew no longer exists.

Yes, your characters express disbelief and grief at the changes that overtake Iran.

And it is grief  you see it in the older generations of Iranian communities all over the United States. The older generation is still grieving for what happened to Iran.

Even though your book is set in 1979, its very relevant today, when the country is filled with controversy about immigrants, and particularly Muslim immigrants. What are your thoughts about that?

I hope this book adds depth and nuance to conversations about the Middle East. Generally everything we hear and read on the news is in sound bites. So Im excited that Time magazine is reviewing my book! Im also a little worried about it. [The review, Are You There, Allah? Its Me, Cindy, ran on April 25.]

One thing Im really proud of as a writer is that my readers tell me they laugh out loud when theyre reading my books. I want middle-grade readers to know how much humor there is in every culture. I want to expand the view of Middle Eastern culture and to show how big a part humor plays. You have to hook kids with something to get them involved in a story, so as a humorist Im very grateful to have that secret tool  its my superpower!

Also, as I wrote this book I realized it would be great for educators. Ive included a lot of material for educators on my website, including videos and music from that era.

You didnt start writing until you were 36. What kind of work did you do before then, and what made you start writing when you did?

I had been working since I was 14  my first job was delivering newspapers. For me, work was always something you did to pay the bills. Many years ago I was watching Oprah and her guests were saying something I absolutely couldnt understand: they said they loved their work so much they would do it even if they didnt get paid. My last job before I had kids was in marketing in a big company. Then I was a full-time mom for eight years. We had no relatives nearby and couldnt afford babysitters, so for eight years I walked around with a child Velcro-ed to my hip. I was so excited when the youngest went to kindergarten. I remember trying not to look exuberant at the idea of finally having two and a half hours to myself! Thats when I joined a writers group.

What made you join a writers group at that time?

I wanted to be with a group of adults who werent always talking about their children! But also, I decided I wanted to write stories for my children for when they were older. I didnt want them to be afraid of people who are different. Thats the one thing I learned as a child: the human experience is entirely universal. No matter what we eat, what we wear, what language we speak, we all want to be the best versions of ourselves. Every mother wants that for her child.

What are you working on now?

At this moment, nothing, but ideas are percolating. Im really interested, for example, in the differences between how people eat in Germany and America  its very different. Im shocked. Especially children! Its not that theyre healthier, its just that their minds arent polluted yet. For example, I have to pack my daughter a snack every day. I asked her what is the most popular snack among her friends and she said, cherry tomatoes. So every day I have to pack her cherry tomatoes  in fact, I have to pack extra so she can share. And I have yet to see chicken nuggets on any menu. Of course they have fast-food places, but Im talking about real restaurants. Kids here eat real food.

It Aint So Awful, Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas. Clarion, $16.99 May ISBN 978-0-544-61231-0
ELKO  Cattle grazing will likely be reduced on allotments south of Wells this summer because of an overpopulation of wild horses.

Elko County Commissioner Rex Steninger said he was told by Nevada State Director John Ruhs that the BLM planned to closed several of the allotments.

Director Ruhs said his agency would be sending letters out Monday notifying the permittees that they needed to schedule meetings with their BLM representatives, Steninger said.

The Elko BLM office confirmed Monday that letters were being sent to 10 permittees regarding 14 allotments.

The letters are about starting a conversation regarding utilization objectives on allotments, specifically in areas that are affected by excess wild horse use, said Greg Deimel, BLM public information officer.

The allotments are located in four herd management areas: Antelope Valley, Maverick-Medicine, Goshute, and Spruce-Pequop.

Elko County Commissioner Demar Dahl said Tim Smith of the state BLM office told him most of the allotments would be completely closed to grazing, but a few of them could be left open with 50 percent reductions in grazing levels.

Deimel said the BLM negotiated last year with ranchers in the area and they agreed to voluntarily reduce grazing by 10,000 AUMs (animal unit months), or about half their normal level.

Grazing conditions are expected to be better this year because of greater precipitation. Deimel said the BLM wants to meet with permittees on the ground in each allotment to evaluate range conditions.

He said there are no current applications in progress for horse gathers in that part of the state.

According to Steninger, Ruhs has submitted requests for horse gathers to ease the problems, but even if those requests were approved, it would be too late for this grazing season. The earliest a horse gather could be organized now would be this fall, he said.

This is going to be really tough news for the affected ranchers, Steninger said. Everyone is already getting ready to turn their cows out on these grazing allotments and to announce the closures now leaves no time to find alternatives.

Deimel said the agency would be discussing options with ranchers such as using alternative pastures.

He said the has BLM gathered 1,750 horses in the region since 2011 and it is still overpopulated by thousands of horses. Getting the numbers down to the minimum authorized level would involve removing approximately 1,000 horses from each of the four herd management areas, he said.

Other permittees might be affected beyond the current allotments now being evaluated, according to Deimel.

They had to have known what the horse numbers were for months, said Steninger. I dont understand why they waited until now to make the announcement.

Ive worked with Director Ruhs before and he has proven to be a good man. He was very helpful during the disputes over the closed allotments in Lander County. He was a welcome relief over his predecessor, Steninger added. I suspect he is following orders from above. This doesnt sound like something he would do.

Julie Gleason, a member of the local Resource Advisory Council to the BLM, said the planned closures were news to her.

We just met with the director last month and nothing was said then, Gleason said in a press release.

The only solution is to remove horses from the ranges, she said, but every time we get something going, the environmentalists stop us.

It is an absolute disgrace that the misguided whims of environmentalists are given precedence over the livelihoods of our ranching families, Steninger said.

The BLM has had little success at controlling wild horse populations. The most common method has been to round up horses and burros exceeding the congressionally authorized limit of 26,715. Yet, there are now more than 58,000 still on the ranges, according to BLM estimates.

Deimel said their numbers double every few years.

Everyone is already getting ready to turn their cows out on these grazing allotments and to announce the closures now leaves no time to find alternatives.  County Commissioner Rex Steninger
Stevenson is v-p and publisher of Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

I accepted an invitation to join the Flemish Literature Tour in Belgium, focused on childrens literature, because I thought the experience would be informative and fun. It was both.

I learned later that the tour, which took place this past February, was one of the International Publishing Fellowships sponsored by the governments of many countries where the arts receive government support. (Not here in the U.S.). I felt honored to represent the United States at a gathering of childrens book publishers from nine different countries: Canada, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Serbia, and Turkey, as well as the U.S. Wed find common ground, I imagined, and take note of the differences among us. And, in the words of the tour organizers, discover the world of our wonderful childrens and youth books.

With the exception of a day trip to Ghent, the tour stayed in Antwerp. The first evening, we visitors gave brief introductions to our publishing houses. My international colleagues represented houses of varying sizes, and all expressed the desire to create wonderful books and reach as wide a market as possible. Although we all shared these concerns, once again I was impressed by how many different meanings we attach to the same words. The Mexican visitor, for example, didnt identify herself as an educational publisher but emphasized that all of her childrens books were published for the school market.

I showed daytime and nighttime views of the Empire State Building as bookends to my presentation of two Clarion titles. The Empire State photos were what people wanted to talk about afterward. We were all on information overload, and an icon is an icon.

For the rest of the time, the focus was on Flemish publishers, agents, authors, illustrators, and translators. Flemish publishers face the challenge of doing business in a country divided into two linguistic regions, Flemish in the north, French in the south.

Translation is the lifeblood of childrens book publishing in Flanders. Few people outside Flanders speak or read Flemish, so the Belgian government supports the spread of Flemish literature by underwriting translations into other languages. A full translation requires a commitment from a foreign publisher. I heard about some middle grade and YA fiction that sounded interesting, but I wouldnt want to acquire a novel without reading it first. This strikes me as a particularly American bind. Every European book professional seems to speak at least two languages and to know people at home who can read many others. The tour was conducted in English, which at present is most European book peoples second language and the only language most Americans speak.

Flemish literature is often lumped in with Dutch literature by people who dont know any better, and that included me before my visit. The Dutch and Flemish share an extensive stand at the Bologna Book Fair, and I hadnt consciously separated the two countries literature or even their languages, neither of which I can read. [Authors update: I misspoke when I referred to Flemish and Dutch as separate languages. Flemish is basically Dutch, with regional variations. My education continues.] Flemish book creators and publishers proudly display their unique identity; one of our group commented, I felt a sense of feisty spirit for such a small region that has to struggle to prove itself within a bilingual and bicultural nation.

The authors and artists who spoke to us showed slides, demonstrated their process, and booktalked their work. A lot of Flemish childrens books, even those for quite young readers, emanate darkness. I have found a somber note in books from other parts of Europe  Germany and France, for example  but in Flanders it seemed more prevalent, more concentrated. A fellow tour member commented, There seem to be almost no restrictions on the topics of [Flemish] childrens books. Books with suicide and murder are difficult to publish in our market. But we saw examples of Flemish childrens books on these subjects, including picture books.

Many of the picture books we saw were allegorical, with nameless characters, and in many of them, characters died. Several of the illustrators worked with a palette of red and black. In one picture book titled (in English) Red Red Red Riding Hood, the unpleasant grandmother stays dead, Red kills the wolf with an axe in a spread drenched in blood, and a wolfskin rug appears on her bedroom floor. Highly creative and graphically striking, but it's unlikely that the book would see the light of day in the U.S.

Likewise, we heard about middle grade and YA novels that centered on suicide, abandonment, depression and other mental illnesses, damaged kids and parents, and death. We found ourselves joking about this subject matter to dispel our discomfort with it. I didnt get the sense that Flemish writers and publishers were back in the Problem Novel era where U.S. publishers began opening doors decades ago, rather that they see these issues as the core reality of young peoples lives today  even in the picture book age group. A tour member observed, In Flemish literature there is no sharp line of demarcation between childrens books and books for adults. Another called the examples we saw picture books for adults and felt they showed that adult readers also give importance to illustrated books. Librarian and childrens book expert Eva Devos shared her view that a lot of sadness makes for the most interesting stories.

There were humorous books as well. We heard about two middle grade novels featuring a mischievous Pippi Longstocking-esque girl. Her second adventure was titled, in English, Tracy Trouble and the Funky Finger. Reflecting the same childhood fascination with the gross and yucky but somehow vastly different from Walter the Farting Dog  isnt it?

For many of the writers and artists and publishers I met during the tour, the U.S. market is a rosy dream. Theyre aware that being published in a huge, wealthy country can mean success for the select few whose books cross the pond. Like other European countries, Belgium doesnt have a large enough population to make publishing for their own market cost-effective. Everyone I met in Antwerp was hopeful about having work accepted in the States, at the same time taking for granted that only a fraction of what is published in Europe, especially fiction, makes its way to the U.S. For one thing, our sensibility is just different. Apart from that, I suspect that more European fiction would be acquired by U.S. publishers if we were able to read novels in their original language.

Apart from one evening spent in a local familys home, a remarkable restoration of a building dating back to the 14th century, the venues for our sessions in Antwerp and Ghent reflected centuries of Flemish reverence for books: the awe-inspiring Heritage Library Hendrik Conscience, with a collection dating back to 1481; a fabulous independent bookstore, De Groene Waterman, with an impressive childrens section; the Poetry Centre; the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where numerous illustrators do their work; the Translators House; and the Plantin-Moretus Museum, a 16th-century printing house exhibiting some of the original equipment.

And, of course, we had fun. None of us was prepared to take seriously the item in the tour program that read Dinner: Fries, but it was true. Antwerp has numerous cafes devoted to Belgiums iconic snack food. We consumed an astonishing quantity of fries with seven different sauces, including the traditional mayonnaise. We havent stopped reminiscing about our fried dinner in follow-up emails. We drank amazing Belgian beer in a bar where a rowdy group of young men presented one of their number with a live pheasant in a cardboard box as a birthday gift. We made the acquaintance of the high-octane gin called genever and of Belgiums national liqueur, Elixir dAnvers, a powerful spirit considered healthful for horses with colic as well as for humans. And we talked incessantly, to one another, to the tour organizers, to the amazingly creative people we met at our numerous sessions.

I came away nourished by community, hospitality, and fries. I admire the staunch devotion to books and literature in Flanders and will keep hoping for the right Flemish book to appear on my radar  as well as books originating in other countries where childrens books are published. Is there a more basic building block for world peace and understanding than a book shared by children across national borders?

Artist Peter Goes talks with Viktoria Dian of Hungary and Burcu Unsal of Turkey about his debut picture book, Tajdlijn (Timeline), on display in its English-language edition.

Dutch/German translator Rolf Erdorf (l.) with Dutch/Chinese translator Minya Lin.

Alessandro Gelso of Italy chats with author-artist Klaas Verplancke.

Artist Jan De Kinder displays his work at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent.

Artist Carll Cneut shows his new book to Ljiliana Marinkovic of Serbia.

Organizers Vanoosthuyse (l.) and Devos toast a successful tour.
CHICAGO -- A preliminary hearing was held Monday before the state's medical disciplinary board for a Moline doctor accused of having sexual relations with a former disabled patient.

Based on allegations made by a former patient, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation is seeking to suspend or revoke the license of Dr. Benjamin Shnurman. The case is being heard by an administrative law judge for the Illinois State Medical Disciplinary Board.

Monday's hearing allowed both sides time for discovery and to set a hearing date, according to IDFPR spokesman Terry Horstman. A hearing date was unavailable late Monday afternoon.

Dr. Shnurman, who did not attend the hearing in Chicago, denied the allegations, saying they're false, malicious and "absolutely not true.

"After being in practice for 30 years without any complaints, this totally devastates your life and reputation."

According to the complaint, the alleged victim suffers from mild to moderate mental retardation.

"On numerous occasions during office visits, Respondent engaged in sexual intercourse (vaginal) with patient C.A. in the examination room," the complaint alleges. "On numerous occasions during office visits, Respondent engaged in rectal intercourse with patient C.A. in the examination room."

The complaint indicates the IDFPR's chief of medical prosecutions Laura E. Forester, is seeking medical license revocation, suspension, or other discipline.

Moline Police Department Detective Scott Williams confirmed his department investigated the case along with another one against Dr. Shnurman in 2004.

"Upon review with the state's attorney's office, they found no crime had been committed and therefore no charges were issued from that office," Detective Williams said. "We investigated them (allegations)."

According to the IDFPR's complaint, Dr. Shnurman started treating the patient in 1992 and last treated her in August 2014. He also treated her approximately two times per year for Special Olympics physicals.

The alleged victim filed a police report with Moline police in September 2014. The alleged victim told police the incidents took place multiple times. According to one police report, the alleged victim's mother always remained in the examination room during appointments, but after she died, the alleged victim said the incidents started taking place.

According to Moline police, in 2004, a battery allegation was filed against Dr. Shnurman by a female patient who accused the doctor of touching her breast.

At the time, Rock Island County Assistant State's Attorney Jeff Terronez advised there was insufficient evidence to file criminal charges against Dr. Shnurman.

"Although I believe your complaint is credible, cases such as yours are very difficult to "prove beyond a reasonable doubt" in a criminal court," Moline Police Detective Michael Hutton wrote back to the complainant in August 2004.

In February 2005, the IDFPR's Medical Disciplinary Board reviewed the 2004 case and determined that no violation had occurred and ordered the file closed.

Dr. Shnurman said he has had no comment with the alleged victim who filed the police report in 2014.

"Oh gosh, no," he said. "She was being manipulated by a relative to make these accusations."
Police on Monday were seeking a Moline man in relation to a hit-and-run accident that left a pedestrian badly injured.

Charged in connection with the crash is Robert David Wilson, 21. He is accused of knowingly failing to stop the vehicle he was driving after it was involved in a crash at about 8:40 p.m. March 18 in the 1500 block of 40th Avenue, Moline.

The pedestrian, Brandon Lee Robinson, 31, was hit a short distance west of Moline's Best Buy, and people living in the area told investigators they heard a "loud thud," authorities said.

Mr. Wilson is charged with failing to alert the Rock Island County Sheriff's Office or another policing agency within 30 minutes of a crash involving injuries. The offense is a Class 2 felony punishable by up to seven years in prison if convicted.

The sheriff's department on Wednesday issued a $100,000 arrest warrant for Mr. Wilson, who was not in custody as of Monday evening, Rock Island County Jail officials said.

According to court documents, deputies and an accident investigator responded to the scene of the crash to find broken glass. They collected evidence, including shoes, a sock and a ball cap.

Mr. Robinson was taken to Trinity's 7th Street Campus Hospital in Moline, where he was treated for injuries until his release on April 6. Police photographed the man's injuries, including a bruise on his left leg "that may be in correlation to the bumper height of a vehicle," records said.

Attempts to interview Mr. Robinson were unsuccessful, as "Robinson had no recollection of the incident," records said.

Earlier this month, Rock Island County Judge Lori Lefstein granted a request by police to search a black 2004 Saturn Ion.

A search warrant request stated police, based on a tip, believed the vehicle was involved in the hit-and-run and contained evidence pertaining to the crash. The vehicle, registered to an East Moline woman, was believed to have been driven by Mr. Wilson at the time of the crash, the document said.

On April 11, police saw the vehicle parked outside its owner's home and observed damage to the vehicle's passenger side hood and front bumper, as well as broken glass on the dash, records said.

The vehicle's owner told police the damage stemmed from having hit a deer the month prior, and she said she had reported the incident to police. The Rock Island County Sheriff's Office, however, could find no evidence of such a report, court records said.
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says the officer was shot in the shoulder while responding Monday to an armed person in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood. The officer was taken to Stroger Hospital for treatment of his injury.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson says the nine-year veteran and other officers spotted three suspicious people on the street, one of them possibly with a gun, and tried to stop them. The three ran as the officers got out of their squad car.

Johnson said details on how the officer was shot were under investigation. One suspect has been arrested.

Monday's victim is the fifth Chicago police officer wounded this year, the fourth while on duty. All survived their wounds.
MOLINE  A public hearing concerning the establishment of a tax-increment-financing district for the downtown is scheduled for tonight.

The TIF would be for the Moline Centre Redevelopment Project Area, and the hearing will be at about 6:45 p.m. during the city council meeting at Moline City Hall, 619 16th St.

Moline Centre incorporates most of the downtown, and its borders are 12th Street to the west, 34th Street to the east, the Mississippi River to the north and 5th through 7th avenues to the south, depending on the section, according to the Moline Comprehensive Plan.

Many of the properties included in the proposed TIF have been in an existing TIF for many years.

The comprehensive plan states that goals for this region include the development of "The Q" passenger rail complex and filling in with business/residential projects the areas that will be freed up by the replacement of the Interstate 74 bridge.
Meng Brings NASA Astronaut To Queens On October 17, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D-Queens) brought NASA astronaut Dr. Jonny Kim to Queens where he met and spoke with students at Francis...

Celebrating Columbus The Federation of Italian-American Organizations of Queens (FIAO) held their annual Columbus Day parade in Astoria, on Saturday, October 8, during Italian Heritage Month. The...

Russo-Elling Mourned More than 300 first responders lined up on Thursday night to honor FDNY EMT Lt. Alison Russo-Elling, as her body was placed into a waiting...
ELKO  Family of the victim and her alleged killer filled the jail courtroom observation area to hear Eduardo Estrada-Puentes plead not guilty Monday to the murder of Stephanie Gonzalez.

About five years after Estrada-Puentes, 34, allegedly strangled his estranged wife, he will be tried for her death. Stephanie Gonzalez was killed June 25, 2011.

He waived his right to a speedy trial  within 60 days of arraignment  before District Judge Al Kacin.

This case has a lot of notoriety, so have you talked about how many jurors? Kacin asked Estrada-Puentes attorney Sherburne Macfarlan.

The defense attorney said he had not discussed it with the District Attorneys office, but the state estimated five days would be needed for trial and he estimates the court will need six.

Kacin said he will schedule the jury selection to begin on a Monday to move the proceedings along. Jury selection normally begins on a Tuesday. Kacin also said it will be held in the county commissioners room since his courtroom is not big enough to handle a large jury pool  at least 150 people.

The other part of it is I know its got a lot of interest, Kacin said. We have a lot of people, I assume, here to observe these proceedings out in the gallery at this courtroom attached to the jail and so were going to need the room just for that as well. So well select that jury at the commissioners room.

Kacin brought up another issue, that he was the judge who signed the warrant of arrest in Elko Justice Court.

The way the rules for judges work in our state, if youve been a judge in another court for the same case, you are subject to disqualification; however, that can be waived, Kacin said. Im here to tell Mr. Estrada as well as the state that I can be fair and impartial. I have no actual or personal bias against either the state or Mr. Estrada, but this would be whats called an implied bias issue.

Kacin asked the defense and prosecution to get together to decide if a waiver can be done.

If you cant agree on that simply let me know, and I will have to disqualify in this case, he said.

I suspect you will be the presiding judge, Macfarlan said.

The trial date will be set after the defense and prosecution discuss the courts calendar with the judges staff.

Gonzalezs mother, Lidia Cortes, was one of several family members in the gallery of the courtroom.

Im pretty devastated, Cortes said after the proceedings. I was hoping that he would plead guilty so we didnt have to go through a trial, especially the two little ones, the girls having to testify all over again.

 Its been a tough, almost five years. I just want to say thank you to everyone that has supported us throughout this ordeal; family, friends and our community. I know theyll be there with us throughout the whole thing too.

She said the justice system scares her, but she hopes the court will be able to seat jurors.

Im hoping for a guilty verdict, she said.

Cortes also said she is still active in advocating for domestic violence education throughout the community.

I want to continue advocating against domestic violence, and hopefully help the women in our community to get out safe, she said. These horrific violent acts still plague our community. It saddens me very much to hear and see that it still continues. I think I just need to be out there more and hopefully get the abusers the help that they need.

Estrada-Puentes was bound over to district court in March by Elko Justice of the Peace Mason Simons.

According to Free Press files, the amended criminal complaint on a charge of open murder was filed Sept. 27, 2011, and can include first-degree murder and all lesser included offenses.

According to NRS, sentencing for first-degree murder can include life without parole; life with a 20-year minimum for parole; or 50 years with a minimum of 20 years for parole.
For any aspiring entrepreneurs, Basson said to make sure you have a product or idea that retailers want to sell and consumers want to buy.

1 hour ago
The successful bidders for the contract were announced in February and the project involves rebuilding parts of the existing line with elevated sections, which will enable the elimination of the nine major level crossings between Caulfield and Dandenong. Three sections totalling 8.2km will be elevated, creating 225,000m2 of public open spaces along the line. The viaduct sections will be built over the existing line to minimise disruption during construction.

The project also includes the rebuilding of stations at Carnegie, Murrumbeena, Hughesdale, Clayton and Noble Park, and upgrading signalling and power supplies along the corridor.

Construction will begin later this year with completion planned for 2018.

The Victorian government has committed to remove at least 20 of the state's most dangerous level crossings by 2018, and a total of 50 by 2022.

As part of the project 30 station platforms along the line will also be lengthened to cater for the 37 new high-capacity metropolitan trains, which are currently in the process of being tendered, with three competing groups - led by Bombardier, Alstom and Downer EDI - currently on the shortlist.
April 23

Morgan A. Bell, 27, of Elko was arrested at 485 S. Fifth St. for violation of probation or condition of suspended sentence. No bail listed

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Cody G. Carroll, 24, of Elko was arrested at Sixth and River streets on two counts of failure to appear after bail on a misdemeanor, possession of a hypodermic device, and use or possession of drug paraphernalia. Bail: $3,815

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Richard S. Common, 23, of Elko was arrested at 550 S. 12th St. on a warrant for failure to appear on a traffic citation. Bail: $495

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Leena M. Eastwood, 43, of Elko was arrested on Commercial Street on a warrant. Bail: $1,140

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Paul G. Forgnone III, 41, of Elko was arrested at 485 S. Fifth St. on a warrant for failure to appear on a traffic citation. Bail: $455

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Heather N. Jacobs, 40, of Elko was arrested at 1111 Idaho St. for possession of a controlled substance and failure to appear after bail on a misdemeanor. Bail: $7,000

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Travis B. Johnston, 38, of Elko was arrested at 1940 Idaho St. on a warrant for failure to appear on a traffic citation. Bail: $515

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Anthony L. Lepak, 22, of Ely was arrested at 548 Commercial St. for possessing a gun while under the influence. Bail: $1,140

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Ryan J. Macias, 22, of Elko was arrested at the Elko County Library for affray. Bail: $640

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Jawdat T. Mansour, 67, of Twin Falls, Idaho, was arrested at Cactus Petes for assault. Bail: $1,140

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David E. Turner, 45, of Elko was arrested at the Wells Conservation Camp on a warrant for two counts of failure to appear after bail on a misdemeanor. Bail: $320

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Braxton J. Winters, 18, of Rexburg, Idaho, was arrested at 1660 Mountain City Highway for minor in possession of alcohol in public and person under 21 loitering in a gaming area. Bail: $704
Eurostar plans to introduce services to the Netherlands in December 2017, subject to the necessary approvals being obtained for operation of the new Siemens Velaro e320 (class 374) trains on the Belgian and Dutch networks. Testing on the Dutch network is due to begin next month.

Eurostar says it would prefer immigration controls for London-bound services to be carried out at Amsterdam, although it currently seems likely that the existing arrangement used for the Marseille - London service will apply, with passengers having to disembark at Lille Europe station for 1h 15min for British passport checks.

In addition to the Amsterdam route, CEO Mr Nicolas Petrovic explained Eurostar is looking at a further expansion of services from London to Bordeaux following the opening of the new Sud-Europ Atlantique high-speed line next year.

Petrovic also outlined how the company is supporting for educational activities ranging from language teaching in schools in London and Kent through to work experience for teenagers living near the company's main St Pancras and Temple Mills operating locations in London. Eurostar says it has focussed on reducing its environmental impact through both large-scale actions such as buying new energy-efficient trains and smaller scale water conservation measures at its depots.
Smart proposes constructing five of the six lines as light rail. The Beach Corridor (formerly Bay Link) would connect the city centre with Miami Beach via the MacArthur Causeway, while the South Dade Transit Way would replace bus lanes along US Highway 1 south of the city with a light rail line.

The East-West Corridor would relieve the congested Dolphin Expressway between the city centre and the western suburbs, while to the south a second east-west line, the Kendall Corridor, would run west along Kendall Drive from Dadeland Metrorail station. The fifth line would run north from North West 79th Street along 27th Avenue.

In addition to these light rail projects, Smart also includes the Tri-Rail Coastal Link, which would introduce commuter rail services on a 136km section of the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) north from Miami to Boca Raton and Jupiter.

The MPO says will now carry out further studies to determine costs and potential sources of funding for project development and environmental studies on the six corridors.

All six of the projects listed by Smart were endorsed by voters in a 2002 ballot which authorised a 0.5% sales tax to fund expansion of the urban rail network. However, much of the revenue generated by this tax has been used to maintain the current system, adding only a 3.8km extension of the Metrorail network to Miami International Airport.
InnoTrans, the semi-annual global railway industry trade exhibition and the largest event of its type, is offering discounted tickets to North American attendees. As well, this years event will have a strong Canadian presence. InnoTrans take place every 2 years in Berlin and show dates are Sept. 20-23, 2016.

The discounted tickets are 60% off the regular price. North Americans who plan a trip to InnoTrans 2016 can use the following registration link:

https://mb-av-usa-innotrans.shop.secutix.com/https://mb-av-usa-innotrans.shop.secutix.com/

For questions on attending or exhibiting at InnoTrans, contact North American Representative Mary Jo Balve, (732) 933-1118, [email protected]

Yves Desjardins-Siciliano, President and CEO of the state-owned Canadian transport company VIA Rail Canada Inc., will be the featured speaker at the Opening Ceremony at the Palais am Funkturm. He will use this event to address a number of issues, including an appeal to the rail sector to demonstrate its shared responsibility toward the subject of climate change, InnoTrans organizers said. In his opinion, the most difficult task confronting industrialized countries such as Canada is to overcome mankinds dependence on automobiles. The CEO has formulated some clear objectives for VIA Rail: Private cars are the main emitters of greenhouse gases. VIA Rail aims to meet this challenge and triple its passenger numbers over the next 30 years.

Canadian exhibitors strongly represented

The Canadian exhibitors at InnoTrans 2016, whose numbers have tripled over the past eight years, are also preparing for an expansion of rail transport. As a result, these companies are presenting a wide range of products and services on the Berlin Exhibition Grounds, ranging from integrated software solutions (Giro Inc.) to flooring applications for the rail sector (Baultar Concept Inc.) and specialist components (Rail and Traction Canada Inc.).

In Hall 11.2, trade visitors can learn about the capabilities of the economic sector in Quebec. Twenty regional firms will be represented on the joint stand, which is being organized by the Quebec Ministry of Economic Development in cooperation with the representatives of the Government of Quebec and the Quebec Ground Transportation Cluster.

Attendance at InnoTrans 2016 is essential, which is why the Province of Quebec and its companies are exhibiting here, in order to present the innovative capabilities and the expertise available in Quebec to potential partners in Germany, Europe and the world, explains Claude Trudelle, Director of the Quebec Government Office in Munich.

InnoTrans is the worlds largest trade fair for transport technology and takes place every two years in Berlin. At the 2014 event 2,761 exhibitors from 55 countries presented their rail industry innovations to 133,595 trade visitors who came from 146 countries. The five segments at InnoTrans include Railway Technology, Railway Infrastructure, Public Transport, Interiors and Tunnel Construction. InnoTrans is organized by Messe Berlin GmbH. More details are available online at www.innotrans.com.
Miami proposes six new urban rail lines Written by Keith









The Miami-Dade Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) adopted a resolution on April 21, 2016 endorsing the Strategic Miami Area Rapid Transit (SMART) plan, which envisages the construction of six new urban rail lines in Miami-Dade County.

SMART proposes constructing five of the six lines as light rail. The Beach Corridor (formerly Bay Link) would connect the city center with Miami Beach via the MacArthur Causeway, while the South Dade Transit Way would replace bus lanes along U.S. Highway 1 south of the city with a light rail line.

The East-West Corridor would relieve the congested Dolphin Expressway between the city center and the western suburbs, while to the south a second east-west line, the Kendall Corridor, would run west along Kendall Drive from Dadeland Metrorail station. The fifth line would run north from North West 79th Street along 27th Avenue.

In addition to these light rail projects, SMART also includes the Tri-Rail Coastal Link, which would introduce commuter rail services on a 22.4-mile section of the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) north from Miami to Boca Raton and Jupiter.

The MPO says it will now carry out further studies to determine costs and potential sources of funding for project development and environmental studies on the six corridors.

All six of the projects listed by SMART were endorsed by voters in a 2002 ballot which authorized a 0.5% sales tax to fund expansion of the urban rail network. However, much of the revenue generated by this tax has been used to maintain the current system, adding only a 2.4-mile extension of the Metrorail network to Miami International Airport.
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The Pardee RAND Graduate School (PardeeRAND.edu) is home to the only Ph.D. and M.Phil. programs offered at an independent public policy research organizationthe RAND Corporation.
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; a contributor to Atlantic Media's Defense One; and author of the best-seller Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield. She spoke at RAND in 2015, just prior to the U.S. Secretary of Defense's decision to officially open all military occupations to womenincluding service in direct combat roles.

On How Recent Conflicts Changed the Role of Military Women

There was a security gap on the battlefield. In the most conservative and traditional parts of Afghanistan, where the insurgency was strongest, there was no way, culturally, that women were going to be able to talk to male soldiers. And you couldn't clear rooms that had women in them of weapons or explosives because you couldn't enter them. So Afghan women and everything they knew, everything they saw, everything they understood about their communities was being left behind and remained unknown.

Admiral [Eric T.] Olson, who was the first Navy SEAL to lead U.S. Special Operations Command, had a distinct view that we will never kill our way to the end of this warwhat we will need is more knowledge. And if you want to get more knowledge, you want access to half the population. So this [opening of all military occupations to women] was never about a social program or political issue. It was always about purpose and patriotism and filling a security gap that was threatening the well-being and the mission of American soldiers in uniformand the Afghans who were at that point transitioning to taking the lead in the Afghan war.

On Being the Girl

One woman, a military police officer, was on a ranger mission. Horrendous terrain. So steep that you'd be on hands and knees climbing up. Her legs were burning and [all she's thinking is,] I cannot be the one who falls or breaks. Please, God, do not let it be the girl who falls. Because it won't just be meit'll be all of us. She felt this huge responsibility to all of these young women who were so ready and hungry to be out on these kinds of missions, and if she were to be the one, it would not be a soldier fell out, it would be the girl fell out.

On How We See Service Members

There's a story in North Carolina about a woman in the Air Force who parked in a veterans parking lot only to be scolded by somebody for taking a service member's spot. It's on all of us as a country to acknowledge what women have already been out there doing. Officially, the combat ban may have been in place, but the battlefield realities required their skill.

The missing story about women in uniform is valor. They've been out there for years with the American public barely noticing.

One study came out and people were shocked that the suicide rate among women service members was comparable to that of men. But in terms of what they've spent the last several years doing, these women have so much more in common with the men they were serving alongside than with the women in the civilian population. There is an enormous imagination gap, when it comes to imagining what a veteran is or what a hero is. I would tell people, Oh, I'm doing a story on U.S. Special Operations. And they'd say, That's amazing!  everybody had seen American Sniper and Lone Survivor. And then I'd say, This story has women in it. And their next question would be, So is it about rape or PTSD?

The missing story about women in uniform is valor. They've been out there for years with the American public barely noticing because they are a minority within a minority. I never set out to tell a story about women in uniform. I set out to tell a war story we hadn't heard about a group of Americans who answered a call to serve. But if I say, Imagine a veteran, my guess is, nine times out of ten, you don't see a woman.
CARSON CITY  Gov. Brian Sandoval is requesting Attorney General Adam Laxalt pursue all legal options to force the federal government to fund the management of Nevadas wild horse population at appropriate levels.

Sandoval called for action after the Bureau of Land Management confirmed the agency is looking at grazing reductions in Elko County because of an overpopulation of horses. He said the abundance of horses could affect sage grouse habitat as well as the livestock industry in this part of the state.

The BLM has underfunded the wild horse program for years and as a result, the livelihood of our local economies is now being threatened. For too long, Nevada has been forced to compensate for the federal governments inability to manage these growing populations without the appropriate resources, stated Sandoval in a press release.

I have asked the Attorney General to review the federal funding formula which determines the allocation of resources necessary to manage these burdensome populations. If the Department of the Interior refuses to adequately fund this program, the State will pursue all legal options to protect our local producers and communities, he added.

Economic losses could be nearly $2 million in Elko County, according to Nevada Department of Agriculture director Jim Barbee.

While we are encouraged by the BLMs efforts to collaborate with ranchers to improve rangeland health, current horse populations hinder the multiple uses of public lands, Barbee said. Livestock producers could see anywhere from 25 to 100 percent grazing reductions on their allotments. Elko County could see an estimated $1.8 million loss as a result of the decision, negatively impacting jobs and the economy on a local and state level.

As of March 2015, the grazing allotments in question contained 5,174 wild horses, nearly 20 percent of the total wild horse population in the state. Current horse populations in the area are 351 percent more than what is considered by the BLM to be appropriate management levels.

Southeast Elko County is also home to abundant wildlife, most notably the greater sage-grouse. The area contains priority, general and other habitat for the sage-grouse population.

Whenever habitat is impacted to a level that results in this kind of action, we have concerns, said Tony Wasley, Nevada Department of Wildlife director. Nevadas wildlife, including the greater sage-grouse, also relies on healthy, intact ecosystems.
Australian pay-TV operator Foxtel will introduce the Sky News Election Channel on 1 May to provide live coverage from both the national campaign trail and that of the US.





The dedicated political channel will provide live 24-hour coverage of news conferences, policy announcements and events during the run into Australias Federal Election and the US Presidential Election in November. The channel, which draws on services from Sky News UK, C-SPAN, CBS News and ABC World News in America, will also cover the UK EU Referendum on 23 June 2016.At this pivotal time on the local and international political landscape we are delighted to be partnering with Foxtel to bring viewers a standalone election channel, a key addition to our unrivalled multi-channel and multi-platform news offering in 2016. The Sky News Election Channel underscores our commitment to providing unparalleled live political news coverage and analysis 24/7, said Angelos Frangopoulos, CEO, Australian News Channel.Brian Walsh, executive director of television, Foxtel, added: Foxtel is the place to go for the most incisive coverage of our nations political landscape and global affairs including the US and Europe. The launch of the Sky News Election Channel ensures our subscribers will have the most comprehensive and current coverage of both our Australian election and the US Presidential race in 2016.The channels launch coincides with US President Obamas last speech at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner, which will be broadcast live from 11.45am AEST.
Moscow court upholds sentence against Bolotnaya activist Nepomnyashchikh

MOSCOW, April 26 (RAPSI)  The Moscow City Court on Tuesday upheld a 2.5-year prison sentence handed down to activist Ivan Nepomnyashchikh in the high-profile Bolotnaya Square riot case, RAPSI reported from the courtroom.

In December, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow found Nepomnyashchikh guilty of participation in the riots and application of force against police officers in May 2012.

Nepomnyashchikh has pleaded not guilty.

According to lawyer Olga Dinze, the riots were provoked by police officers.

The march on Yakimanka Street and the rally on Bolotnaya Square in May 2012, both authorized by the officials, resulted in mass riots and clashes with the police. Dozens of people were injured, over 400 protesters were detained.

The riot organizers, Sergei Udaltsov and Leonid Razvozzhayev, were sentenced to 4.5 years in prison. Other participants received prison terms from suspended sentences to four years. Several defendants were pardoned; one is undergoing compulsory mental treatment.
BELGRADE-The Serbian parliamentary snap elections held yesterday were always going to be about consolidating the incumbent Prime Minister's position and the strategic goal of taking the country forward toward full EU membership. The result was more than convincing with 48% of the votes won and a full parliamentary majority. With this, Serbia continues full steam ahead into the EU accession process and opening the next key negotiation chapters 23 and 24 on justice and home affairs. And some would say most importantly, the Serbian electorate has once again demonstrated that it chooses the West.

Since the democratic, peaceful, electoral victory over the Milosevic regime in 2000, pundits continue to ask whether Serbia has finally chosen between the EU (the West) and Russia. But every election in the past 15 years has produced pro-EU majorities. Occasionally these majorities have translated into governing coalitions with somewhat murky orientations, but every government since 2000 has contributed to and led, sometimes admittedly at a snail's pace, the country toward the EU.

Ahead of the election, some opinion polls showed rising pro-Russian, or anti-western, sentiments. This trend reflects a certain discontentment, as opposed to genuine attachment to the Kremlin. Serbia's economy is struggling with high unemployment and stagnant, if not sinking, standards of living, and uncertainty about tomorrow is undermining people's confidence.

In the light of this, what do these elections confirm? The Eurosceptic or blatantly anti-western, far-right parties garner overall less than 15% of the vote. Only two anti-EU parties secured a place in parliament: Vojisslav Seselj's Serbian Radical Party (8%) and coalition of the Democratic Party of Serbia-Dveri (5%). The remaining 87% of party representatives are pro-EU. Serbia is thus at low-end of European countries with a far-right vote.

Given the travails of the EU currently and growing Euroscepticism across the continent, Serbia's choice may seem paradoxical. However, despite everything, the EU still attracts as a peace project - and being inside seems to offer somewhat more certainty, predictability, and prosperity than is offered outside. After all, Serbia, as part of former Yugoslavia, "did" war in the 1990s. No one, neither citizens nor politicians, wish to return to that, despite the sometimes heightened political rhetoric.

The promise of potential full membership given to the countries of the Western Balkans in 2003 in Thessaloniki by the EU has proven to be a key incentive and attraction. Negotiations were transparent in December 2015. The government's plan is to fulfill all the required conditions by 2020.

The voters' endorsement of the EU, the Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, and his party obliges him to move toward the 2020 goal. This challenge is undeniably huge, especially given the taxing economic situation and low growth in Europe. Vucic has to continue to attract investments. The recent deal with a Chinese company to keep the biggest steel mill in Serbia operational has been welcomed. The IMF and the World Bank have recently praised the macro-economic achievements, but difficult structural reforms still lie ahead, as does the necessary furthering of judicial reform and overall strengthening of the rule of law.

The Prime Minister made his mark by tackling corruption head on and has won votes and retained them. Systemic corruption will continue to be a major challenge and test of the success of reforms. Also the freedom of the media and the general openness for public debate will need to be both fought for and defended by government and citizens alike to dispel any doubts of possible authoritarian tendencies.

On the European and international domain, the Prime Minister has developed a close and strong relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In the continuing migration crisis Serbia has proven itself as a reliable partner in going the extra-mile, understanding that only a comprehensive and concerted solution with active participation is the way forward. Relations with the United States have been significantly enhanced as has the relationship with NATO during the past year.

One only has to look at a geographic map of Europe to see where Serbia belongs, as it's fully surrounded by EU and NATO member-states in a region that is anchored in the euro-atlantic arena. It is now incumbent upon this government to take Serbia where its place is waiting.
"Get em out!" That's what Donald Trump shouted to peaceful, silent protestors last week at his rally at the Indianapolis State Fairgrounds.

People wearing Trump masks or anti-Trump T-shirts - even if they were silent and just stood there -were removed from the political event as the crowd jeered. This is Donald Trump's approach to free speech in a democracy.

As we know from other rallies, Trump has lamented the "good old days" when police could crack people's skulls with impunity, and he has encouraged violent action by his followers, going so far as promising to pay the legal fees of those arrested for assaulting protesters. If this is how Trump behaves toward non-violent political dissent as a candidate, imagine what he would do with the power of the presidency.

Trump supporters love his mantra about building a wall and "making Mexico pay for it." The Republican frontrunner says he would withhold billions of dollars in remittances that Mexican workers (documented as well as undocumented) lawfully send home to support their families until the Mexican government paid for a wall along the border. What would this act of extortion (a violation of international law) look like domestically? Every Western Union in the country would require police surveillance to implement an unconstitutional interference by government in private commerce.

In denouncing Carrier's decision to move its assembly plant from Indianapolis to Mexico, Trump promised to force the company's return by slapping a tariff on its Mexican-made products. "You're going to bring it across the border, and we're going to charge you a 35 percent tax," he told the Indianapolis crowd. "Now within 24 hours they're going to call back. Mr. President, we've decided to stay. We're coming back to Indianapolis.'" With this promise, similar to what he's said in reference to Ford plants leaving Michigan, Trump is selling his followers a bill of goods.

Trump's "import tax" would be a blatant violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was enacted into law with strong bipartisan support more than 20 years ago. While such tariffs, illegal under NAFTA, would not likely force Carrier or Ford to return to the U.S., they could ignite a trade war with both Mexico and Canada. Slapping punitive tariffs on Chinese imports, which Trump has also proposed repeatedly, would likely provoke even greater economic retaliation. There are no winners in a trade war; instead, everyone loses. When it comes to trade policy, Trump is either being disingenuous with his supporters or this builder of hotels and casinos doesn't know anything about the global economy beyond real estate.

As for foreign and national security policy, Trump is even less knowledgeable and more reckless. He has suggested that the United States pull out of South Korea and Japan and that both countries should obtain nuclear weapons to defend themselves. In other words, at the same time that Trump is advocating economic warfare against a rising China, he would have the United States abandon its Asian allies.

He has taken a similarly irresponsible position on Europe. With Vladimir Putin's Russia becoming increasingly aggressive on the continent and beyond, Trump has called for the U.S. to reduce its commitment to NATO and to our longstanding European allies. Is it any wonder that The Economist magazine has identified a Trump presidency as one of the Top Ten global risks?

Donald Trump has never really been a Republican. Instead, he is using the Republican Party as a vehicle to achieve power. Yes, he is energizing and bringing new voters into the party, but as with their leader, many of them have no loyalty or commitment to the party itself. Trump's is a personalist movement with fascist tendencies; its leader is a thin-skinned narcissist who thinks the rules don't apply to him.

He is not just a threat to the Republican Party but to our republic as well. I'm not sure yet whether I will vote for Ted Cruz or John Kasich in the May 3 Indiana GOP primary, but of one thing I am certain. #NeverTrump.
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HOME > The Amazing Race > The Amazing Race 28 Exclusive: 'The Amazing Race' eliminees Zach King and Rachel King talk (Part 1)

By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 04/25/2016



eliminated "Newlyweds" Zach King and Rachel King during Friday night's broadcast of the CBS reality competition's 28th season.



ADVERTISEMENT Zach and Rachel became the sixth team



The team struggled when Rachel opted to take on a Roadblock task that was very physically draining. She was the only girl to attempt the task.



During an exclusive interview with Reality TV World on Monday, Zach and Rachel talked about their experience. Below is the first half. Check back with us soon for the concluding portion.



Reality TV World: It seemed like you got to the Pit Stop on the sailing boat like a minute or two behind Kurt Gibson and Brodie Smith. Is that accurate?



Zach King: Yeah, we were -- I think what I heard from the first and last place was that there was a 15-minute spread from the first check-in to us. So yeah, the whole day was so tight, and yeah, we were probably just about a minute behind Brodie and Kurt when we got to the boat, which was hard. We rowed our little hearts out.



Reality TV World: So obviously the issue in this leg was the fact Rachel took on the Salt Roadblock task. What was your mindset when deciding that? Did you assume the task would be something else, or were you just switching Roadblock tasks back and forth and it was her turn?



Rachel King: I think it was a little bit of both. I mean, we couldn't see what the Roadblock was because it was around the corner. We were pretty much blind-guessing. And I heard "salt," so in my mind, I think I thought maybe it was cooking or something like that. In addition, we had been doing our best to go back and forth for Roadblocks, and Zach had done the last one or two. So, it was my turn to do it.



Reality TV World: Rachel, you said you wanted to cry during that Roadblock task. How hard was it for you to not give up and hold your tears back?



Rachel King: Yeah, it was rough. It was physically probably one of the hardest things I've ever done just in terms of strength. And it's funny because I always joke with people about how I have no upper-body strength whatsoever, and that's exactly what I needed.



So, yeah. You definitely, in those moments, there's that temptation to sit in the sand and cry and just not do anything. But I knew, honestly, Zach was the biggest reason I kept pushing.



Just seeing him, I knew I didn't want to let him down, and I didn't want to give up. I feel like that's the worst part, and I'm not really a quitter. So, even though it was extremely hard, I knew that just stopping and crying would just be even worse because it wasn't going to help me in any way.



Reality TV World: Zach, what was it like to watch Rachel do that task? It must've been pretty brutal observing her as she struggled like that.

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Zach King: It was so heartbreaking to see. When we walked around that corner after we had chosen [her] -- because we didn't know what it was and the clue was very vague -- and at this point, we were switching on and off.



And it was tough because we saw, as I walked around the corner, [Tyler Oakley] drenched in sweat. And then Kurt was there. And I knew these guys were, like, Kurt and Tyler are pretty -- they can lift stuff!



And they workout, and so, it was hard to know that Rachel had to do that. But she stuck through it and I was really proud of her. We just sat down, and I don't know, maybe it was an hour she was doing that in the hot sun, and it was humid. So, I was proud of her.



Reality TV World: Did you end up with a pretty bad sunburn, Rachel?



Zach King: Oh she did! It was bad.



Rachel King: Yeah. It was close to blistering probably. So, I sunburn easily anyway, and we had been out in the sun all day. Yeah, it was pretty bad, the sunburn.



Reality TV World: Zach, could you talk about the Kite Roadblock task you did afterward? Do you think you got it done quickly and it just wasn't fast enough considering Brodie had a huge jump on you time-wise, or did you struggle with it at all?



Zach King: You know, I kind of plowed through it fairly quickly. It was just one of those things you had to do and take your time, making sure you got it right. And I was going as fast as I could looking at the example.



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Reality TV World: Brodie and Kurt have pretty much won half the legs this season, but obviously Kurt has done all the Roadblocks. The times Brodie did them, they used their Express Pass and almost finished in last place. At the time you left the Race, did you predict their streak was going to end? Would you have viewed them as less of a threat if you all had stayed in it?



Zach King: We knew that luckily Kurt had used all his Roadblocks by that point and it, you know, Brodie isn't the best at puzzles and you saw with the kite, like tying the small knots and detail work -- he's more about heavy lifting and the really physical challenges, which he's great at.



So we were thinking, you know, if we had stayed in the Race past this episode, we would have that to help us, where we speed up generally during all the Roadblocks and the Detours. So, we were hoping that if we stayed in it, Brodie [doing Roadblocks] would be to our advantage.



Reality TV World: You two seemed to get along great during the Race, unlike couples who bickered a lot. Were you almost surprised by how well you two worked together? Because the Race is a stressful and hectic experience, it tends to bring out the worst in people.



Rachel King: Yeah, I think we went into the Race just very aware that those situations can bring out the worst in people, so we even, like, before the Race, talked about how we were going to make sure that we work well together, because that will be our biggest downfall, is if we fight.



Most teams, if they fight -- especially for us, like, we knew in real life that when we fight, we don't do things as productive. And so, we were very intentional going into the Race, making sure that wasn't going to be something that hindered us. And it worked well.



We did, I think, work even better than we expected together, which was a good thing. Because we were nervous having been married less than a year and doing the Race, but yeah!



Reality TV World: Did you learn anything new about each other on the Race?



Zach King: What was unique about the experience, I mean, there were probably a lot of little things that I learned through conversation, but you know, my job is so -- I'm always on my computer; I'm always on my phone.



And it was a weird experience. The only reason I was really hesitant about the Race was giving up, like, the month without a phone and a computer and any Internet access. So, Rachel and I really did have, like, 100% us time.



It was time to work on our marriage, talk through -- not only the Race, but we did have a lot of downtime in airports or hotels later after the legs. So, we just got to have a lot of heart to hearts and talks and kind of just very intentional time that we usually don't get in a very concentrated amount.



Check back with Reality TV World soon for the concluding portion of Zach and Rachel's exclusive interview.

About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON GOOGLE NEWS eliminated "Newlyweds" Zach King and Rachel King during Friday night's broadcast of the CBS reality competition's 28th season.Zach and Rachel became the sixth team eliminated from the around-the-world competition after they arrived at the Race's ninth Pit Stop at a sailing boat called Phinisi in Bali, Indonesia, in last place.The team struggled when Rachel opted to take on a Roadblock task that was very physically draining. She was the only girl to attempt the task.During an exclusive interview with Reality TV World on Monday, Zach and Rachel talked about their experience. Below is the first half. Check back with us soon for the concluding portion.Yeah, we were -- I think what I heard from the first and last place was that there was a 15-minute spread from the first check-in to us. So yeah, the whole day was so tight, and yeah, we were probably just about a minute behind Brodie and Kurt when we got to the boat, which was hard. We rowed our little hearts out.I think it was a little bit of both. I mean, we couldn't see what the Roadblock was because it was around the corner. We were pretty much blind-guessing. And I heard "salt," so in my mind, I think I thought maybe it was cooking or something like that. In addition, we had been doing our best to go back and forth for Roadblocks, and Zach had done the last one or two. So, it was my turn to do it.Yeah, it was rough. It was physically probably one of the hardest things I've ever done just in terms of strength. And it's funny because I always joke with people about how I have no upper-body strength whatsoever, and that's exactly what I needed.So, yeah. You definitely, in those moments, there's that temptation to sit in the sand and cry and just not do anything. But I knew, honestly, Zach was the biggest reason I kept pushing.Just seeing him, I knew I didn't want to let him down, and I didn't want to give up. I feel like that's the worst part, and I'm not really a quitter. So, even though it was extremely hard, I knew that just stopping and crying would just be even worse because it wasn't going to help me in any way.It was so heartbreaking to see. When we walked around that corner after we had chosen [her] -- because we didn't know what it was and the clue was very vague -- and at this point, we were switching on and off.And it was tough because we saw, as I walked around the corner, [Tyler Oakley] drenched in sweat. And then Kurt was there. And I knew these guys were, like, Kurt and Tyler are pretty -- they can lift stuff!And they workout, and so, it was hard to know that Rachel had to do that. But she stuck through it and I was really proud of her. We just sat down, and I don't know, maybe it was an hour she was doing that in the hot sun, and it was humid. So, I was proud of her.Oh she did! It was bad.Yeah. It was close to blistering probably. So, I sunburn easily anyway, and we had been out in the sun all day. Yeah, it was pretty bad, the sunburn.You know, I kind of plowed through it fairly quickly. It was just one of those things you had to do and take your time, making sure you got it right. And I was going as fast as I could looking at the example.But also, my example -- because we were the last team there -- we were probably a little bit further away from the actual example I had to look at to figure out how to build it. So, I had to keep running back and forth, up and down the beach a little harder than the other teams. But, no, I did it as fast as I could and made up a little bit of time, but not enough.We knew that luckily Kurt had used all his Roadblocks by that point and it, you know, Brodie isn't the best at puzzles and you saw with the kite, like tying the small knots and detail work -- he's more about heavy lifting and the really physical challenges, which he's great at.So we were thinking, you know, if we had stayed in the Race past this episode, we would have that to help us, where we speed up generally during all the Roadblocks and the Detours. So, we were hoping that if we stayed in it, Brodie [doing Roadblocks] would be to our advantage.Yeah, I think we went into the Race just very aware that those situations can bring out the worst in people, so we even, like, before the Race, talked about how we were going to make sure that we work well together, because that will be our biggest downfall, is if we fight.Most teams, if they fight -- especially for us, like, we knew in real life that when we fight, we don't do things as productive. And so, we were very intentional going into the Race, making sure that wasn't going to be something that hindered us. And it worked well.We did, I think, work even better than we expected together, which was a good thing. Because we were nervous having been married less than a year and doing the Race, but yeah!What was unique about the experience, I mean, there were probably a lot of little things that I learned through conversation, but you know, my job is so -- I'm always on my computer; I'm always on my phone.And it was a weird experience. The only reason I was really hesitant about the Race was giving up, like, the month without a phone and a computer and any Internet access. So, Rachel and I really did have, like, 100% us time.It was time to work on our marriage, talk through -- not only the Race, but we did have a lot of downtime in airports or hotels later after the legs. So, we just got to have a lot of heart to hearts and talks and kind of just very intentional time that we usually don't get in a very concentrated amount.Check back with Reality TV World soon for the concluding portion of Zach and Rachel's exclusive interview. THE AMAZING RACE 28 MORE THE AMAZING RACE 28 NEWS << PRIOR STORY

Jodie Sweetin: I'm surprised at how often I cry on 'Dancing with the Stars' NEXT STORY >>

'Dancing with the Stars' recap: Doug Flutie and partner Karina Smirnoff cut as Wanya Morris tops leaderboard

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British Columbia's real estate growth has been phenomenal, providing the means for the province to balance its budget. With this windfall though, according to a report from CTV news, is a loophole being exploited by many to avoid paying real property transfer taxes to the state.

The current tax imposable on transfers on real property is pegged at one percent for the first $200,000. The rate increases to two percent when the property is worth $2 million and anything over that is taxed at three percent. Many first time buyers are exempt from this tax. With this tax alone, a projected $1.5 billion in revenues are expected to be collected between 2015 and 2016 alone.

There is a loophole though being utilized by many to avoid payment of the tax altogether. This is done by having the property ownership vested in a trust or corporation. Even if the owners remain the same, the tax is avoided by having a corporation be the named owner.

This is legal and is common practice in commercial real estate. The problem is, the state loses out on possible revenues under the tax, thus the need to close this avenue of tax avoidance.

This has become such a pressing issue that Finance Minister Bill Morneau is studying ways and means to close this and many other tax loopholes in the Canadian real estate sector. In a report from The Star, one of the other loopholes sought corrected was discovered when information from a Panamanian law firm was leaked. In the leak, 350 Canadians were identified who had been using tax havens and shell companies to avoid taxes imposed on property purchases.

Another loophole sought corrected is the so called 'shadow economy' where the public coffers lose about $81 billion per year.
With social media suddenly and inexplicably recirculating news of the horrifying attack on a man  by his cat  in Bates Township, Michigan in 2005, the story of Joseph Stanton has taken center stage in the election circuit. Stanton, then 29, was reportedly struck in the lower torso by a bullet after his cat allegedly knocked a loaded gun off the kitchen counter while he was busy cooking. According to Michigan State Police reports he was taken to the Iron County Community Hospital and no charges were filed against the cat.

Though news of the assault first broke over a decade ago, its resurgence into Facebookstagooglegram has not only prompted many people to share it, it has also caught the eye of Democratic Presidential hopefuls.

Said Hillary Clinton recently,

You know, joining a gang is like having a family. It's feeling like you're part of something bigger than yourself. So we're either going to have gangs that murder and rob and do the things that are so destructive to the gang members and to the community. Or, we're going to have positive gangs. We're going to have positive alternatives for young people.*

Told of the shooting in Michigan, she responded,

America's gun violence epidemic is out of control. No more excuses  we need to act save lives. We need to hold these gun manufacturers accountable and we clearly need to ban assault cats. People should not live in systemic fear in their own home. They should not live in fear of cats or the police. These murderous felines have got to go. They're especially dangerous to children. They present a systemic risk. I used to work with the Children's Defense Fund.**

Said Clinton's primary opponent, Bernie Sanders,

It is immoral and unjust to leave tens of millions of Americans living in homes with potentially murderous cats. I'm motivated by a vision which exists with having peaceable household pets in every home, not just a handful. Now, go vote! This is a people's campaign! Vote Democrat, it's easier than working!***

Later Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump weighed in.

You know what were great cats? Sabertooth Tigers. Those were great cats, and they had tremendous teeth. If Sabertooth Tigers were alive today they'd be be American cats, if we let them. I had a cat once, it was the greatest cat. It was a Sabertooth Tiger. I should have sicced it on Rosie O'Donnell.

Neither Ted Cruz, John Kasich or Vermin Supreme had commented on the matter as of press time, however we're confident all but the latter would have said something similarly inane.

Bates Township is a small town in Iron County, Michigan, adjacent to Ottawa National Forest and not too far from Lake Superior. Detroit is also in Michigan and there are cats there. According to the United States Census Bureau, Bates Township has a population of just over 1,000 people in roughly 450 households. Until this latest crime spree, Bates Township had never suffered crimes of this nature, nor for that matter any serious feline-related criminal activity. A cursory search of Iron County Sheriff's Office and Michigan State Police records failed to turn up any evidence this might be a serial crime and Iron County Sheriff Mark Valesano was unavailable for comment. Probably because we didn't ask.

*She really did say something this astonishingly stupid.

**She didn't say the stuff about the cats, but the rest of it is all her.

***We made this up, but it's what he would have said given the chance.

****Admit it. This is completely plausible, and is actually something we'd like to see. You can like Trump or not as you prefer, but you can't argue how cool it would be to have a sabertooth tiger.

Yes this article was moronic. But so is most of what we're hearing from the campaign trail  which you have to admit, because a lot of people believed this story. Plus, the cat really did shoot that guy. We didn't make up the cat part. It's not our fault drooling cretins sometimes run for office, or that gibbering idiots then vote for them.
ELKO  Voters will have a chance to visit on Wednesday with Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle in Elko.

She is scheduled to be at Sierra Java, 1657 Mountain City Highway, at 11 a.m.

Angle said she wants to discuss voters concerns, her Senate campaign and get signatures on three petitions: the Pupil Information Privacy Protection Initiative, Healthcare Freedom Protection Act, and Voter ID initiative.

She is one of nine Republicans who will be on the ballot in the June 14 primary election.

Angle said she will have a gift for everyone who attends.
ELKO  There are around 5,000 veterans living in Elko County, according to veteran Chuck Galloway, and some veteran services exist in our area but they are not as plentiful as in urban areas.

Galloway is trying to overcome this imbalance by hosting the second Veterans Outreach Program. The first was held in October and was very well attended.

This all started because of our VFW motto, No one does more for veterans, explained Galloway. It made me think about what we could do just for vets.

Galloway talked to veterans and then took an online course about veteran benefits. From the course he gained credentials as a Veterans Service Officer, who assists veterans by helping them navigate the bureaucracy of the US Department of Veteran Affairs. Then he came up with a plan to get that information out.

The first veterans outreach was at VFW Post 2350. Around a hundred people showed up, which was a lot for the small group to process and for the VFW post to accommodate.

This time Galloway has asked the city for help and he and his volunteers will be manning the operation at the old city airport terminal on Mountain City Highway. The event will also take place over a two-day period, from 9 a.m. through 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

A number of service organizations will be there to help veterans and answer their questions. Nevada Legal Services will be among them, offering free legal services including will preparation.

We are taking every opportunity to get the information out, said Galloway.

Fliers have been put up in surrounding communities and Galloway has reached out to all local media in hopes that the event will have a large attendance.

If we can help just one person we are successful, said Galloway. What I would like to see happen is that Elko County will be the most vet-friendly in the state.

Call Galloway for information about the event at 738-6272 or visit the VFW Facebook page.
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The Mayors office of Athens-Clarke County has submitted a $120.7 million budget proposal for the fiscal year 2017, which runs from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017, for review by the public and the commission. The proposed budget is nearly $5 million more than the 2016 fiscal year budget.
Through the UGA Idea Accelerator, which is into its second year and fourth cohort, students with entrepreneurial aspirations are being taught the basics of developing a business.
President-elect Donald Trumps victory has been met with nation-wide resistance. Anti-hate and anti-Trump marches swept the country, including downtown Athens, for days following Election Day. However, some activists are now protesting with pins rather than picket signs.
Students can study hard, get involved on-campus, be in leadership positions and do a number of things to construct an ideal future for themselves during their time at the University of Georgia  only to have it all taken away.
Last week, several organizations including Active Minds, To Write Love on Her Arms, the Student Government Association and Psi Chi partnered together to bring the first Mental Health Awareness Week to the University of Georgia.
Bottling beer at the Wildcard Brewery in Redding.

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Wildcard Tied House hosts fundraisers

Wildcard Brewing Co.'s Tied House in downtown Redding will host a series of fundraisers from 5 to 7 p.m. each Thursday in May.

Community leaders will act as guest bartenders to help raise money for a nonprofit of their choice.

The lineup is as follows:

May 6: Jake Mangas, CEO of Redding Chamber of Commerce, will raise funds for North Valley Catholic Social Service Court Appointed Special Advocates of Shasta County program.

May 12: Redding City Councilwoman Francie Sullivan will raise money for One SAFE Place.

May 19: Hope Seth, Shasta County EDC entrepreneurial development director, will raise funds for Catalyst Redding Young Professionals.

May 26: Maria Orozco, Redding Rancheria public relations director, will raise money for Redding Rancheria.

The brewery will donate a portion of proceeds to each organization.

Cornerstone Bank reports earnings

Cornerstone Community Bancorp earned $203,000 for the three months ended March 31, 2016, the company announced Monday.

The bank's earnings were down from $226,000 for the same period a year ago. Diluted earnings per share were 15 cents in the first quarter of 2016, down from 17 cents a share a year ago.

Bank CEO Jeff Finck noted that loan totals are up $9.2 million since the beginning of the year.

Cornerstone Bank, based in Red Bluff, had total assets of $180.8 million as of March 31, 2016, compared with $167.2 million a year ago.

Reporter David Benda can be reached at 225-8219 or at david.benda@redding.com.
UPDATE: One northbound lane of I-5 open after big rig crash near Lakehead

A crash north of Lakehead has forced officials to close all northbound lanes of traffic on Interstate 5.
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By Joe Szydlowski of the Redding Record Searchlight

Shasta Lake has begun looking into how it should increase its water-use rates while in a water shortage or a drought.

City staff had their kick-off meeting with Los Angeles-based Raftelis Financial Consultants Inc., last week to craft a study for water rates during a crisis, such as the drought, said John Duckett, city manager. The goal is to balance the increased prices for scarce water, static labor and repair costs and the decreased revenue as customers conserve, he said.

"Having two years of (drought) data, two years of new mandates, we thought this would be a good time to move forward with a rate study to make sure a water utility can operate properly (in a shortage)," he said.

The study would establish water rates that, in lieu of excess water use fees, would take effect depending on the severity of the shortage, which has five stages, he said.

"Our vision is to have rates increase in times of drought ... rates would come down as the drought decreases," he said.

The drought, government mandates and coping with conservation-reduced revenue and rising costs provide a good real-world opportunity to examine what's appropriate.

The drought has squeezed the water treatment utility's coffers from both ends, Duckett said. As customers conserved, they exceeded a state-required goal of 25 percent to 28 percent cuts in usage. But that meant the revenue coming into the utility began to dry up, even though the agency had to deal with a steady flow of costs for labor and repair of its 70-year-old infrastructure, he said.

"That doesn't disappear when sales go down," he said.

In addition, the Bureau of Reclamation cut Shasta Lake's water allocation to 25 percent, or 643 acre feet, of its normal 2,582 acre feet, Duckett said. So the city had to buy water from the McConnell foundation at $253 an acre-foot, he said.

The city also largely can't turn to groundwater wells because of its soil.

He said he hopes to have a set of rates to bring before the council by early June.

Rate study timeline

April 19: Kick-off meeting

Week of May 23: Draft water rates available for review with staff

May 31: Meeting with high water users (all non-residential)

June 7: Present financial plan and rates to the Shasta Lake City Council

June 8: Inform customers of the study

July: Finish draft and final report

Aug. 2: Public hearing

Dates may be subject to change

Source: City of Shasta Lake
Janet Napolitano

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By Alayna Shulman of the Redding Record Searchlight

University of California President and former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will be in Redding Friday for a free public talk at Shasta College.

Napolitano, who served on President Barack Obama's cabinet for four years before becoming the UC system's 20th president in 2013, will encourage students to consider her network of schools during the talk at 12 p.m. in Shasta College's theater. It ties into her campaign to increase enrollment by 10,000 students over the next three years and is the latest in a speaker series from the Shasta College Foundation and the McConnell Foundation. Seating is first-come, first-serve.

Traditionally, UC schools have been the least common transfer path for Shasta College students, said Kevin O'Rorke, vice president of student services for the school. That's not necessarily because they're more expensive or harder to get into, but in large part a geographical issue, O'Rorke said, since the nearest UC is Davis.

According to UC data, Shasta College had 58 students admitted to UC schools in the 2014-15 school year and 90 who applied. That compares to about 350 admitted to California State universities and 150 accepted into in-state private colleges or out-of-state universities.

In recent years, applications peaked in 2011-12, when 100 Shasta College students applied to UC schools, and acceptance peaked in 2013-14, when 66 Shasta students got in.

For context, nearby Butte College had 79 students apply and 58 accepted into the UC system in the last school year.

Steve Montiel, press secretary for Napolitano's office, said part of the push to get more students into the UC system is about the network's role as a research university, which gives students more opportunities.

"It's a place where students can have the opportunity, even as undergraduates, to be involved in research, creating knowledge," Montiel said

He said Napolitano's chief message to prospective students will be: "Don't let financial worries keep you from applying."

That's because Montiel said there are many misconceptions about the UC system, which some paint as the elite public-school avenue for only the wealthiest and highest achieving California students. But over half of the system's students receive full financial aid, Montiel said, and around 30 percent transferred from community colleges. Meanwhile, over 40 percent are first-generation college students and about the same amount are eligible for federal Pell grants, meaning their families make less than $50,000 annually, Montiel said.

"President Napolitano is a big believer in opportunity for everyone and every part of the state," he said

Peter Griggs, marketing director for Shasta College, said community college students even have their own advantages when it comes to UC admissions.

"(Transfer students) bring a whole different level of life experiences and also skill sets that perhaps a student starting at the UC system doesn't have," he said.

O'Rorke said it's also exciting for the North State to get its voice heard, so to speak.

"We think she's done a good job of not ignoring our region," he said. "We're really happy to see that the head of the UC system sees what we have to offer up here."

Shannon Phillips, vice president of operations and director of program services for the McConnell Foundation, echoed O'Rorke's sentiments and said her organization is excited to be co-sponsor of the event because of its longtime dedication to higher education.

"Any time somebody of this stature, in a state as big as California, comes north and gets a sense of the North State needs, where they fit or don't fit with urban needs, is a value to us," she said.

Napolitano's trip to the North State will also include a session with students at Enterprise High School earlier Friday and a stop in Humboldt County on Thursday. While normally Shasta College and the McConnell Foundation divide the cost for their speakers evenly, Napolitano is speaking for free because of her role as a public servant.
Image from Kibler & Kibler and Omni Means The Bridge View Villas development would include open space and shared driveway areas.

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The Redding Planning Commission will consider the Bridge View Villas condominiums at its meeting today.

Developer Allen Ansari wants to build 161 four-bedroom units on canyon property behind the Masonic Lodge and west of Highway 273 in north Redding.

The meeting is scheduled to start at 4 p.m.

For more on the project, go here.



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By Sean Longoria of the Redding Record Searchlight

Charles David Berlinghoff died early today after apparently hanging himself inside Shasta County jail, the Redding Police Department said.

Berlinghoff, 45, accused of disappearing from Redding with his now 16-year-old niece for a month late last year and having repeated sex with her, was charged with 87 felony counts, including felony unlawful detention of a minor, incest and lewd acts with a minor.

Police said a corrections officer at the jail was doing an hourly check at about 12:12 a.m. today and found Berlinghoff hanging from a bed sheet in his cell. Berlinghoff was the only person in the locked cell at the time, Redding police Sgt. Brian Barner said.

Medics at the jail attempted to revive Berlinghoff, who was taken to a Redding hospital and pronounced dead, Barner said.

Redding police were named the lead investigators in the hanging under Shasta County's interagency, officer-involved critical incident protocol, Barner said.

The jail is referring all questions on the hanging to Redding police, a receptionist said this morning.

Investigators interviewed 29 inmates who have had contact with Berlinghoff during the past few days, Barner said, adding that police learned Berlinghoff had been depressed about his current court case.

Sheriff Tom Bosenko said this afternoon Berlinghoff had not exhibited any signs of suicidal behavior and was not under a suicide watch at the jail.

He also said he was unaware of Berlinghoff leaving behind a suicide note, but adding that the investigation is continuing.

Berlinghoff's death comes only five days shy of the one-year anniversary of his much-publicized Nov. 10, 2010 disappearance with his niece.

Berlinghoff, who had been in custody since December of last year, was scheduled to stand trial Jan. 10 in his sex-crime case.

He faced up to 40 years if convicted, Barner said.

A San Bernardino resident who once lived in Red Bluff, Berlinghoff allegedly started a sexual relationship with his niece last fall.

Although the girl's name was widely reported while she was missing last year, the Record Searchlight is now withholding her identity because it has been alleged she is the victim of sex crimes.

Meanwhile, Berlinghoff's brother, Jacob Berlinghoff, 34, declined this morning to discuss his brother's death.

"I have no comment right now," he said. He also said immediate family members did not want to talk about their relative's death.

The twin sister of Charles Blerlinghoff, who lives in Florida, did not reply to an email sent to her by the Record Searchlight asking he she wanted to discuss her brother and his death.

Jacob Berlinghoff himself is slated to begin standing trial on Jan. 24 for allegedly fondling his then-13-year-old daughter three years ago.

His daughter accused him of forcing her to drink hard liquor and touching her bare breast under her shirt, as well as her inner thigh, as punishment for bringing alcohol to school in September 2008.

He faces a maximum of eight years in prison if convicted.

His daughter lodged her allegations against him after she and her uncle were found in San Francisco last year following their disappearance.

He has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges against him.

Shasta County Senior Public Defender Max Ruffcorn Sr., who represented Charles Berlinghoff in his sex-crime case, could not be reached for comment this morning about his client's death.

But Charles Berlinghoff and Ruffcorn had a rocky relationship with Berlinghoff recently filing federal lawsuit against him and the public defender's office, claiming professional negligence and legal malpractice.

In his lawsuit, Berlinghoff claimed that Ruffcorn had slandered and defamed his character and labeled his defense attorney as a "surrogate prosecutor."

He also claimed that Ruffcorn had been trying to pressure him into taking a plea bargain "for crimes I am not guilty of and to which he has evidence of my innocence."

Berlinghoff, who was representing himself in his civil lawsuit, was seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Shasta County District Attorney Stephen Carlton said he learned of Berlinghoff's death late this morning.

"I'm shocked," he said. "I'm just shocked. Nobody wants that kind of outcome."

But Carlton also said he does not believe Berlinghoff's death will have much of an effect, if any, in the case against Jacob Berlinghoff.

"I can't see it," he said.

Deputy District Attorney Curtis Woods, who was handling both cases and learned of Berlinghoff's death around 5:30 a.m., agreed, saying the case against Jacob Berlinghoff would not be affected.

"I don't see why it would," he said.

Berlinghoff's suicide is the second in-custody death at the jail in two days.

Around noon on Friday, an inmate was found unconscious in a single-occupied medical cell and was later pronounced dead at Mercy Medical Center.

But Bosenko said the inmate's death was not an apparent suicide and there were no signs of foul play.

His name has not yet been released, and an autopsy is scheduled to be conducted early next week.

Bosenko said the sheriff's office was investigating that death, noting that he did not ask RPD to investigate because the inmate's death did not appear to be a suicide or a homicide.

Although Berlinghoff was involved in a minor jail fight with another inmate in July, Bosenko said he had no other reports of Berlinghoff causing trouble at the jail while he had been in custody.

He did say, however, that Berlinghoff staged a three-day hunger strike after he was initially arrested and booked into jail last year.

"I don't know what he was protesting," Bosenko said.
For many months, California's ongoing race to replace retiring four-term U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer has bored most voters to the point they've virtually ignored it.

The casual assumption has been that Democrat Kamala Harris, currently state attorney general and formerly district attorney of San Francisco, would win in a cakewalk, given she's raised millions of dollars more than her leading rival in the polls, Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, of Orange County.

The probability has been strong for an all-Democrat November runoff election, as the two Republicans in the race, former state GOP chairmen George "Duf" Sundheim and Tom Del Beccaro, register well under 10 percent in the latest polls and have had little success raising campaign money.

Enter Ron Unz, 54, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has been out politics since his 1998 Proposition 227 eliminated most bilingual education programs in California public schools. But as an individual candidate in 1994 at age 32, he won 35 percent of the Republican primary vote against then-incumbent Gov. Pete Wilson.

"It's a very unusual election cycle," Unz understated in an interview. The other two sort-of significant Republicans in the race have very low poll standings and I think I can shake things up by focusing on controversial issues."

Anyone watching closely might have gotten a hint that Unz was up to something a week before he officially filed his candidacy papers at the March 16 deadline. "Is the Republican Party just too stupid to survive?" he asked in a blog post that railed against likely GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and blasted the party for continuing to insist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were good, honest ideas.

But most of all, he says he got in because of his party's legislative support for a November ballot proposition that would virtually negate Proposition 227 by letting parents of English learner students choose whether to put their kids in bilingual education. "227 has been a very good thing," he said. "Kids have learned English better and faster through immersion. I found it hard to believe most Republicans in the Legislature voted for this new measure."

Some might say that Unz's entry further ensures that Republicans won't even have a Senate candidate on the November ballot. It's true that if the three GOP candidates now running all stay in, Republican votes could splinter, assuring a Harris-Sanchez all-Democrat runoff this fall.

But if Unz takes off, the others might not be major factors at all and California could end up with a truly independent U.S. senator.

Unz would need money to do that, but said he's unable to put more than $100,000 of his own cash into the race. "I'm just not wealthy enough to write multi-million-dollar checks for a campaign that might well lose, like some people," he said. Meanwhile, he insists he will take no donations over $99.

There is, however, the possibility that if his candidacy somehow catches on, he might reach a little deeper into his pockets, as he did in spending more than $500,000 on 227. At the time, he still had a financial analytics software firm, later sold to the Moody's investment rating service. "I did OK with that, but not like some," he said.

"Some people may be attracted to my ideas," Unz openly hoped, saying he figures to buy very little media advertising. "Maybe a little radio," he allowed. Even that would be more than Sundheim or Del Beccaro seemingly can afford.

If Unz takes off, it might be because California Republicans want to assure they at least have someone on the fall ballot. It could also happen if the 45 percent of likely voters in the undecided column in the latest polls glom onto him as an anti-establishment hope. One thing for sure: Unz has never been an establishment anything.

If he should beat out the two other Republicans now running, the blame should go to the GOP establishment itself, for not developing candidates with sufficient popular appeal to make a respectable Senate run. And things don't look much better for Republicans two years from now, when both the governor's office and another Senate seat will be up for grabs.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.
Stephanie Izard's take on Chinese food is worth the headache of landing a reservation.

Review: Duck Duck Goat

857 W. Fulton Market 312-902-3825

Rating: !!! (out of four) Off to a good start

>>Read more about our ratings

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"I thought it was normal for your mom to make Mandarin pancakes when you were growing up. It was only later I realized nobody was doing that," said Stephanie Izard, chef and partner behind West Loop's new Duck Duck Goat. Armed with childhood memories of cooking Chinese food alongside her mother and recent travels to China, Izard teamed up with Boka Restaurant Group principals Rob Katz and Kevin Boehm for her third restaurant, a gourmet take on Chinese cuisine in Chicago.

I stopped in recently to see if her efforts could satisfy General Tso's army or if they'd leave me yearning for P.F. Chang's orange peel shrimp.



Indiana Jones and the Temple of Goat



Entering the Duck Duck Goat dining room feels like parachuting into a Steven Spielberg set or, more specifically, Spielberg's idea of 1930s Shanghai in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." The beige and red room is filled with woven-back, honey-colored banquettes and a bunch of tchotchkes including vintage electric fans. The room is meant to evoke a place where Chinatown workers might take a break or play a spirited game of mahjong.

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Duck Duck Goat (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

Another red room is dotted with tasseled lanterns, gold-trimmed tables, handsome tufted stools and lush flowered drapes. There's also a tearoom featuring imported Chinese teabags and an epic foodie-friendly voyeuristic view of hanging Peking ducks. Finally, you'll spot a tiny parlor with a bar lined in jade-green subway tiles accompanied by a flock of goat figurines. The central meeting point for all of these rooms is a corrugated metal-topped bar meant to feel like, as Izard told me, an "outdoor bar shack."



I've been mesmerized by New York-based design firm AvroKO's attention to detail at other Boka Restaurant Group properties such as Momotaro and Swift & Sons, but those rooms were also cavernous. Though Duck Duck Goat holds a crowd, the individual spaces make the restaurant feel intimate and comforting.



Semi-authentic eats, fully awesome flavors



Our server was quick to tell us that the menu is made up of "semi-authentic" dishes, a smart move considering some will undoubtedly question whether or not anyone in China actually eats goat (they do) or how Izard could consciously serve that American tiki restaurant invention known as crab rangoon.



In the spirit of so many Chinese restaurantsauthentic or notthe menu at Duck Duck Goat is long. You'll have to venture back a few times to make your way through it. Many of the menu items herefrom hand-pulled noodles to chili-spiced Chongqing chickenare nuanced interpretations of dishes you might find at a 100-year-old restaurant in China.

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Dim sum, a Chinese phrase that roughly translates to "touch the heart" in English, is a good place to start. Izard describes her culinary style as aiming to "make your whole mouth happy." With her dim sum, she's also burning a fiery glow in your heart with smoky wood-fired duck heart slices swimming in a sesame- and horseradish-spiked mayo ($12) and char siu ribs ($16). For the latter, babybacks are cooked sous-vide style until tender and then glazed with a sticky sweet fermented tofu-, bourbon- and honey-infused housemade hoisin sauce. Cooking low and slow can sometimes result in mush, but Izard has expertly retained a delightful Southern barbecue pit-like bite to the flesh. The caramelized glaze finishes with notes of French roast and molasses.



The soup dumplings ($11) here aren't quite as supple or bursting with broth as the ones I had a few weeks ago at newbie Imperial Lamian in River North, but the porky richness and contrasting vinegar punch from a side sauce are just as satisfying.

Octopus, cucumber and peanut salad at Duck Duck Goat (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

After dim sum, I picked an interlude from the cold dishes portion of the menu, a salad with octopus, peanut and crunchy cucumber ($14). The dish is laced with chili, cilantro and a deeply savory condiment Izard and her team refer to as "drool sauce" because "it makes your mouth water," she explained. This dish refreshed me in the same way chomping on a cold slice of watermelon staves off suffocating summer heat.



The bowl of rice that started it all



There are also fried rice and noodle offerings on the menu. Izard said that the genesis of Duck Duck Goat came while she was sitting on the couch with husband Gary Valentine eating leftover fried rice from a Sunday Supper at Little Goat and realizing that the recipe was far less greasy than typical Chinese takeout fried rice.



Having sampled the seafood fried rice ($17) at Duck Duck Goat, I agree with her epiphany. By adding bright lemon notes and a touch of funky fish sauce to her rice, Izard transforms what is usually a gut bomb into a lighter intermezzo before hitting the main entrees. Smoked clams, ribbons of briny shrimp and chunks of flaky bass popped in my mouth like buried seafaring treasures.



It's getting hot in here



Chongqing chicken ($16), fried nuggets of poultry covered in mouth-searing peppercorns and a mountain of grassy shishito peppers, snuck up on me with searing heat. The intensity grew, numbing my mouth like novocaine and coaxing out a narcotic-like high in my brain. I felt like the mix could have used a touch more salt and the chicken pieces could have been a bit smaller so I could toss them in my mouth popcorn-style. But then again, I'm also lazy.



A bowl of glistening eggplant spears topped with frizzled onion and sprouts mounded over tender rounds of goat sausage ($15) had a spicy edge tempered by zingy hints of black vinegar.



Washing it down

Valentine has curated a tight beer list featuring my all-time favorite, Miller High Life ($5). I also enjoyed a funky farmhouse saison from Brasserie St. Feuillien ($9) that complemented the fermented notes in many of the dishes I tried. But thanks to a tip from my server, the best sip came with an Anderson Valley Brewing Co. Briney Melon gose ($8); the sour, fruity finish cut through the heat of the Chongqing chicken.

Duck Duck Goat (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

A fine finish

I've been a big fan of Duck Duck Goat pastry chef Nate Meads ever since he started making killer macarons at his now-defunct bakery, Fritz Pastry. After plowing through a bowl of Taiwanese pineapple dessert ($10)a supremely moist cake swimming in a moat of lustrous, gooey soy caramel and melting cashew ice creamI'm thinking about upping my fanaticism to full stalker status.



Bottom line: Duck Duck Goat, just like Imperial Lamian, isn't entirely real-deal Chinese cuisine. However, it's a smart, exciting melding of American ingenuity and authentic regional Chinese food imbued with Izard's joyful spirit, creating its own delightful new thing.

Michael Nagrant is a RedEye contributor.

Reporters visit restaurants unannounced, and meals are paid for by RedEye.
The Modi government has ambitious plas to achieve 10% growth, but there is no assessment of how much money is needed for the whole package of measures, and where it will come from.

In short, there is no plan for how to get from here to there, points out T N Ninan.

The Modi government has just launched an interesting exercise: how to plan for rapid economic growth withoutwell, a plan.

The stated goal is to achieve 10 per cent annual growth over the next 16 years (to 2032) - something that only one country has achieved in recorded history.

And the way to get there is known to senior officials in the government, whom the prime minister tasked last December with throwing up new ideas, working through eight teams, and putting together a package of measures that would achieve transformational results.

In two months, they produced action points totaling (by the looks of it) a few hundred. These are now presented in a Transforming India document that has 98 pages of bullet points. The goal: to take the country from a $2.2 trillion economy to $10 trillion (China is $11.3 trillion just now), with zero poverty, by 2032.

The action points are a mish-mash of the macro and micro, the important and the marginal. Mention of the semi-fast train from Delhi to Agra is not accompanied by any over-all plan for fast trains.

The Ganga is to be rejuvenated, but what about the larger water crisis? Drivers of heavy trucks are to be properly trained, and there will be Swachhta geet during the serving of mid-day meals in schools, even as manufacturing is to grow at 10-12 per cent (though how is not really explained).

All of which begs the first question: Is there any prioritisation here? And are the subjects and programmes included in Transforming India more important than the many left out? Or is this a variant of what it reminds one of: Indira Gandhis 20-point programme, magnified 10-fold?

The Modi government is known for its downplaying of policy, and for its preferred focus on ambitious projects and programmes. That brings up the second question: How is one to fit the parts into a whole?

There is no evident link between the action points and the macro-economic targets. There is no assessment of how much money is needed for the whole package of measures, and where it will come from; after all, roads and freight corridors, manufacturing hubs and digital networks all cost money.

But there are no savings and investment figures, no fiscal projections, no assessment of external trade and capital flows. In short, there is no plan for how to get from here to there; no roadmap with milestones. This may be understandable since a certain former Gujarat chief minister thought the annual Plan discussions with the now-defunct Planning Commission were a waste of time.

But any company that plans for the future looks at cash flows to see where the resources will come from. Surely, there must be some logic to why 10 per cent growth, and not 12 per cent or 8 per cent. And why we think there will be 165 million new jobs in 16 years, not 200 million or 80 million.

In the fiscal area, the document says the Budget should be presented on the last day of December (there goes your New Years Eve); the tax agreement with Mauritius is to be re-negotiated (but it takes two to do that); partnership firms will not be taxed, only their partners will; the minimum alternate tax should be based on assets or turnover, not profits, and so on.

While such specifics are mentioned (and some of them certainly need more application of mind), there are no broad fiscal goals specified. But we do have an ambiguous promise on retrospective taxation, which is not to be allowed except in cases of reasonable prima facie evidence of evasion. Is that official admission that what we have had so far are unreasonable? If not, what has changed?

Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters
Uber was growing under the nose of state agencies - in markets across the globe - without being under a regulated regime. What perhaps turned the tide against Uber was the plight of the consumer, says Somasekhar Sundaresan.

The legal battle over "surge pricing" by Uber and Ola in the Delhi High Court presents the classic regulatory dilemma over the conflict between the illegal and the just.



On the one hand, the very legal basis of providing taxi services on demand by terming the platform as a mere aggregator is suspect.



On the other, the provision of the service is so widely prevalent that a legal dispute has arisen over the terms on which it is provided.

This is an interesting conflict. It can emerge in just about any regulated area of activity.



Depending on how well the dramatis personae present themselves, discourse in any situation will range from endorsing and defending an innovator to attacking a violator.



Take the case of Uber. It is seen as an innovator by many.

It merely provides a software platform to aggregate information about vehicle owners and taxi service consumers.



Yet, it regulates the terms of service, controls the cash flows and works towards ensuring service assurance.



Without owning a single vehicle, it does all that a good taxi service should do.



Such work not being regulated at all, it is completely outside the regulated system - a parallel market between willing buyers and willing sellers of taxi services.

Picture the same situation with a financial service - say, an art fund.



The securities regulator raised eyebrows over 10 years ago and aggregated monies from art lovers to buy and sell art.



After a few hearings, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) took no action under its extraordinary sweeping powers to stop the activity.



In other words, under Sebi's nose the activity went on, with a tacit endorsement, particularly since despite notices being issued and hearings conducted, Sebi chose not to interfere with the activity.

Years later, courts have been presented with proceedings calling on judges to decide if such activity constitutes a "collective investment scheme".

What perhaps turns the needle one way or the other is the plight of the consumers.

Uber was growing under the nose of state agencies - in markets across the globe - without being under a regulated regime.

It was truly an innovation and gave consumers an alternative to tardy and unclean services from regulated cabs.

It is when the central bank brought in a security feature for electronic payments that the conflict between innovation and regulatory compliance was first taken note of.

This time, it was the consumers who were inconvenienced by the security meant to protect them, and the security feature was not very popular - even such a tiny measure attracted public defence and comment from none less than the RBI governor himself.

A sexual assault in a vehicle on the Uber platform in New Delhi led to the balance in the conflict swinging the other way.

Suddenly state government after state government started taking note of the platform, and talked about banning unregulated activity.

The innovator was suddenly seen as a violator. Statistics on sexual assaults in licensed taxis in cities - from New York to London to New Delhi - became irrelevant.

Uber indeed held out assurance that its services were safe, but that was a matter of contract.

As regards statutory regulation, it was outside the reach of the State.

A black-and-yellow taxi driver who commits crime may lose his licence, but with Uber there was no licence or permission to lose.

And for the mob, that was enough to tilt the scales from innovation to violation.

Some jurisdictions like Singapore started proposing draft law to regulate Uber.

So did New Delhi, too. But the applications for regulation are reported to have been rejected.

Over time, as memories of good service overwhelmed memory of crime, it was an innovator again.

Overwhelmingly useful, it created a new market and Indian aggregators like Ola, too, are said to be doing as well operationally, if not better financially.

Now cut to the surge pricing issue.

With Delhi implementing the road rationing policy of allowing only odd-numbered and even-numbered private vehicles to ply on alternate dates, the demand for the unregulated aggregation service would obviously rise.

The "surge pricing" - discovery of higher vehicle rental prices with the interplay of higher demand as against smaller supply - model is opaque. Being unregulated, one does not know what metric and algorithm is used for computing the surge pricing.

For the consumer, it is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.

Suddenly, the craving for regulation comes to the fore and the scales tilt again from innovator to violator.

The Delhi government's affidavit is inexplicable. It is reported to state: "Not only are the app-based companies unlicensed but they are also not allowed to charge more than the prescribed rates of fare in the shape of 'surge price' or 'peak time charge'..."

If an activity that needs licence is being carried out without licence, it becomes illegal.

When Delhi refused to license Uber and Ola it should have thought through what then was the consequence for carrying out unlicensed activity.

It should have taken the plunge to test its stance on whether the activity legally requires licensing at all.

Then, it's the same story over and over again.

When the consumer earns extraordinary assured returns from a mutual fund or a Ponzi scheme or an unregulated trading platform, she enjoys the party and celebrates the "disruptive innovator".

When the law gets declared and the activity is held to be illegal, the consumer not only goes scot-free but also gets protection from the law.

If it is necessarily only the "disruptive innovator" who has to swing to the status of the criminal who "gamed the system", there is no other assured way to kill future innovation.

The author is a partner of JSA, Advocates & Solicitors. Views expressed are his own.
The first meeting of the high-powered joint committee of India and Japan to operationalise the bullet train project is likely to be held in the far eastern country on May 15.

The meeting will consider both the technical and financial aspects of the project.

The Indian side will be represented by Railway Board Chairman A K Mittal, vice-chairman of NITI Aayog Arvind Panagariya, and the finance secretary.

The current finance secretary Ratan Watal is likely to retire by then and economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das is tipped to replace him.

The proposed bullet train will run between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

According to a recent report by the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, it will have to ferry 88,000-118,000 passengers a day, or undertake 100 trips daly, for the Railways to keep the project financially viable.

Japan has offered a concessional loan of Rs 97,636 crore (Rs 976.36 billion) to fund 80 per cent of the project cost.

The image is used for representational purpose only. Photograph: Reuters
Big workforce expansion is expected in manufacturing, mining, construction and services



A policy focus on generating employment offers many payoffs.

Apart from winning votes, high employment is associated with good tax revenues and lower crime. Employment data are also useful for investors, as it can be correlated to future revenue and profits.

Unfortunately, India has little reliable or timely data.

That may be one reason why policy has not worked well.

There are several other reasons why Indias workforce is persistently underemployed.

A weak educational system churns out unemployable youngsters.

Extremely complex and rigid labour laws encourage rampant unionism and make it hard to hire and fire in flexible fashion.

Poor infrastructure and red tape make it hard to set up businesses, get goods to market and so on.

As of now, 12 million Indians join the workforce every year.

This creates a need to generate 1,000,000 new employment opportunities every month.

Only one nation -- China -- has met targets on that scale consistently and it took an entirely different path with an emphasis on manufacturing and exports.

Most nations release timely employment data.

The US for example, releases monthly payroll data, as do most European nations.

Indian data are more scattered and less timely.

In many cases, such as the National Sample Survey Organisation s reasonably comprehensive surveys, Indian data can be five years old.

One can only hope data will improve in speed and reliability with wider use of Aadhaar, Permanent Account Number, etc.

The last NSSO survey was released in 2011.

The next one is due in June 2016.

A trend of labour shifting out of agriculture during 2005-10 was reflected in the 2011 survey.

Some 25 million agricultural workers (classified as self-employed) shifted to formal jobs between 2005 and 2010.

Employment intensity, measured as the number of persons generating every Rs 100,000 of real gross domestic product, declined during 2005-10 to 1.05 persons/lakh, from 1.7 persons/lakh during 1999-2004.

Lower intensity means fewer jobs are generated by GDP growth.

After 2011, we are groping for data.

As of April, a very small percentage, about 30 million persons were formally employed in either public or private sector jobs out of a total workforce of about 525 million.

Only two per cent of that force is considered highly skilled.

The workforce was around 470 million in 2011 when the last NSSO survey was released and it should have grown by 55 million since.

Over 330 million were based in rural areas in 2010.

The massive urban migration and urbanisation of the past five years must have led to some change in that rural/ urban split but we dont know what for sure.

Formal hires in manufacturing actually declined between 2005-10. This doesnt mean employment generation in manufacturing fell.

Manufacturing grew strongly through this period.

But employers circumvented complex labour laws by hiring casual labour and that trend continues.

Construction, which generates high employment, has been in the doldrums since 2013.

Low generic growth and consumption will have impacted jobs in retail and the financial sector.

But corporate compensation for employees rose in 2015-16, a year when many other costs came down.

Higher compensation suggests some degree of tightness, at least in terms of skilled labour.

That impression is backed by the Manpower Employer Outlook Survey, which says hiring has been strong for the past few quarters.

These are quarterly estimates from ManpowerGroup, an American MNC focussed on workforces.

The Indian survey asks 5,203 employers, How do you anticipate total employment at your location to change in the three months to end of June 2016, compared to the current quarter?

The responses suggest robust hiring.

Employer confidence is reckoned to be very strong.

Broadly 38 per cent of survey recipients expect to hire in this quarter.

In fact, Indias hiring patterns and employer confidence are projected to be the strongest of the 42 countries surveyed by Manpower, although 39 nations will see expansion.

The April- June survey suggest Indian hiring will be south-focussed.

The pace of hiring will decline slightly in north and west and remain around the same in the east.

The big expansions will be in manufacturing, mining and construction and services.

Transportation, utilities, wholesale and retail trade will contribute the least.

Those trends should translate into improved financials sometime in the future for beaten-down manufacturing and construction firms.
Ask your HR department for details about the fund, trustees and returns

The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA)s recent proposal to bring unregulated pension funds under its ambit will largely impact superannuation ones that are offered by employers and managed by their private funds.

These funds follow the Income Tax Act with regard to formation of the trust and investments. However, many feel that despite being governed by the I-T Act, there should be more transparency.

Superannuation funds can be of two kinds. They can be either self-managed trusts or those managed by life insurance companies. For the latter category, insurance company gives a consolidated statement to the employer, but might not provide it to individual employees. In case of self-managed trusts, trustees are supposed to give an annual statement to employees.

Earlier, manufacturing companies used to offer superannuation benefits to their employees. Some multi-national companies, too, used to offer superannuation benefits. Even today, many of the leading companies offer this benefit, either through the insurance company or their own private trusts.

But, the superannuation scheme lost its popularity when the fringe benefit tax was introduced. Today, there are very few superannuation trusts, says Anil Lobo, India business leader (retirement) at Mercer.

Ideally, superannuation is part of the cost to company and the employer should disclose how much money goes to the fund, returns generated etc. And, since employees can also contribute an additional amount to the fund, they must ask for details of the investments.

Superannuation benefits are of two kinds  defined contribution or super-defined benefit. In case of defined contribution, up to 15 per cent of the employees basic salary would go towards superannuation benefits. The tax benefit was capped at Rs 100,000. In case of defined benefit, the superannuation amount was calculated based on the last drawn salary of the employee.

It is not a big concern if the superannuation fund is not regulated by one authority, since these funds are governed by I-T rules. But logically, they must be regulated by PFRDA since it is the pension regulator, Lobo adds.

Today, companies are more focused on benefits that address the current needs rather than retirement, such as healthcare, leave allowance etc. This has taken away the focus from retirement benefits like superannuation, says Sudip Mukhopadhyay, managing partner, Vantage Health and Benefits Consulting.

To judge the performance of your superannuation fund, check if returns match the current PF rates. Superannuation funds can invest only in safe instruments, mostly debt, Mukhopadhyay adds.

According to I-T rules, the investment pattern for superannuation funds is as follows: government securities - minimum 45 per cent and maximum 50 per cent; debt securities and term deposits of banks - minimum 35 per cent and maximum 45 per cent; money market instruments - up to five per cent; equity and equity-related instruments -minimum five per cent and up to 15 per cent (this also includes exchange traded funds, index funds and derivatives); and asset-backed securities, units of real estate/ infrastructure investment trusts - up to five per cent.



Due to the lack of transparency regarding superannuation funds, and because employees dont ask for details, a lot of times the management and trustees might not be very proactive in investing and the fund might fail to generate optimum returns.



There could also be cases where the employers might not make the contribution on a regular basis, especially if cash flow or profits have been low in a particular year. The only way to know this is to ask for annual statements from your company about the fund.



While so far there have been no cases of fraud where money is not paid to the superannuation fund, there have been cases where the record administration is not clear and individual allocation is not disclosed. Employees who face such problems can approach the labour court. That is the only recourse, says Lobo.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com
As Donald Trump and Ted Cruz battle to become the Republican nominee for president, it is time to closely consider their policies. Although both propose cutting taxes, the details of their plans are very different. Ted Cruz is proposing a drastic revision of the tax code that would replace the progressive income tax with a flat tax. Donald Trumps proposal, though it would lower the top tax rate, preserves higher rates on the rich. In terms of sound principles that should guide discussions of future tax policy, Cruzs proposal is better than Trumps.

Cruzs plan, which includes a 10-percent flat-tax rate on income and a value-added tax to replace the payroll tax, would reduce overall taxes paid by almost everyone. He proposes repealing the corporate-income tax, the payroll tax, estate taxes, and gift taxes and replacing those taxes with a 16-percent value-added tax. By altering incentives to work and save his plan could have a large positive effect on economic growth.

Trumps plan would also lower tax rates for most Americans, reducing top tax rates to 25 percent. Trump proposes a flat corporate-income tax rate of 15 percent and would also repeal federal estate and gift taxes. It would not change the payroll tax, which is used to fund Social Security and Medicare.

Trumps plan would reduce government revenue by more than Cruzs plan. It cuts middle-class taxes by more but reduces rates less for those with high incomes. The Tax Policy Center estimates that Cruzs plan would reduce revenue by $8.6 trillion over 10 years, while Trumps would reduce revenue by $9.5 trillion over ten years.

Cruzs tax plan also has some other positive features that are worth noting. It effectively exempts savings and investment income of the middle class from taxation. This incentivizes greater savings and investment, which are important for promoting economic growth.

Because each plan substantially reduces the amount of revenue collected by the federal government, it would raise the federal deficit unless Congress has the political will to enact similarly large spending cuts. The Tax Policy Center estimates that by 2025, the annual reduction in revenue from either plan would exceed the entire military budget.

Both candidates plans are consistent with the view that people can make better decisions than the government about how to spend their own money. Both also are based on the premise that lower tax rates on the rich increase their incentives to save, invest, and create business. But in proposing a flat tax, Cruz goes one step further than Trump. With his plan, the wealthy get to keep the same percentage of each additional dollar they earn by working harder, as do the middle class. Those with more income would pay proportionally more, but would have the same incentive as everyone else to earn more.

The Tax Policy Center may be overestimating the revenue lost from each plan because it fails to account for all the ways that lower tax rates increase incentives to work longer hours, take risks, and start businesses. These effects will be particularly pronounced for high-income earners, who are the most capable of starting businesses and investing in business expansions that can lead to more employment opportunities for low- and middle-income workers. By promoting faster economic growth, tax cuts may increase the amount of income earned before taxes, partially offsetting some of the revenue lost due to lower tax rates. Tax cuts are more likely to promote growth if they are financed by cuts in government spending rather than by increases in the deficit.

The problem with past cuts in federal income-tax rates, such as those implemented by Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, was that they were not accompanied by comparable reductions in spending. If spending is not reduced by the same amount as revenue is reduced, tax cuts may do more harm than good. It is much easier for a candidate to propose large tax cuts than it is for Congress to enact even modest cuts in federal spending.

Of the two proposals, Cruzs is better because it is simpler and because it treats additional income earned by the wealthy the same way as income earned by everyone else. Either Cruzs or Trumps plan would improve incentives by reducing personal income-tax rates and reducing or eliminating the corporate-income tax, which is much higher in the United States than in other countries. If one of them is elected, the large tax cuts he is proposing should only be implemented if Congress approves drastic cuts in spending. Otherwise, we wont have to wait very long before the federal government can no longer pay the Medicare bills and send out the Social Security checks it has promised.

Cruzs plan is the preferable of the two, particularly if it is used as a starting point for a discussion about principles to consider in fixing the federal government. But cutting spending also needs to be a part of that discussion.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed Vijay Mallya and family members to furnish details of all assets in India and abroad to the banks in a sealed cover.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed beleaguered Vijay Mallya's prayer for protection from disclosure of his assets and those of his family, in India and abroad, to Kingfisher Airlines' lenders, saying "no tangible" grounds have been raised to maintain secrecy of information.

"We don't find any tangible objection in disclosing the assets (of Mallya, his wife and children) to banks," a bench comprising Justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman said.

The bench directed the apex court registry to furnish to the lenders, a consortium of banks, the details of assets, both domestic and foreign, declared by the former liquor baron of himself and his family members, in sealed cover to the apex court.

The top court, which said Mallya has not complied with its April 7 order in its letter and spirit, observed that "the whole purpose of asking for disclosure was to give a fair idea to banks for entering into a meaningful and viable settlement."

It asked the Debt Recovery Tribunal in Bengaluru to "expeditiously decide" within two months, the pleas of banks and financial institutions for recovery of their loans.

The direction was issued after Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi submitted that there was "total non-compliance" with the apex court's April 7 order as Mallya was neither indicating the date of his return to the country to make an appearance before the court nor was he showing his bonafide for reaching a settlement with the lenders by not showing willingness to deposit a substantial part of the amount he owed them.

"He is a fugitive from justice in India," the Attorney General said, adding the embattled businessman was playing "hide and seek" and cooking "cock and bull story".



Rohatgi said Mallya was "deliberately concealing something from the court" as he had "no intention to come back".

However, senior advocates C S Vaidyanathan and Parag Tripathi, appearing for Mallya and his companies respectively, submitted that he was a "defaulter but not a wilful defaulter" and "here this is a case of business failure and not that of wilful default".

Vaidyanathan submitted the accumulated loans of Kingfisher Airlines stood at Rs 16,000 crore (Rs 160 billion) in 2013 and all loans were given on the basis of personal assets of Mallya which is in the records of the banks. That being the case the liabilities cannot be attached to his estranged wife living abroad and NRI children who are protected under the law from disclosing their overseas assets, he contended.

Mallya has defaulted on repayment of loans of Rs 9,400 crore (Rs 94 billion) to a State Bank of India-led consortium.

When the bench said presence of Mallya was required for a settlement and asked when was he prepared to come to India, Vaidyanathan replied "I have no instruction" and added that the businessman's personal liberty was under challenge.

Counsel for Mallya, who is also an NRI, claimed that he did not own any "benami properties" in the name of his family members.

Tripathi alleged information gathered in a civil matter was used against Mallya in criminal proceedings launched by agencies like Enforcement Directorate and others to seek issuance of non-bailable warrant against him and get his passport revoked.

Vaidynathan said, "In spite of all investigation since July 2015, not a shred of evidence was found (against Mallya) of misuse or diversion of funds secured as loan" and that the only purpose of insisting on his return was to see him in Tihar Jail on his return to India.

He said asking for details of overseas assets of Mallya and his family was in violation of right to privacy.

The Attorney General said despite revocation of Mallya's passport, if the fugitive businessman shows his willingness to return, "a one-way travel permit could be arranged".

"We will even approach the United Kingdom government, if required, for recovery of loans through liquidation of Vijay Mallya's overseas assets," he submitted.

He said the liquor baron, who has not agreed to deposit a "substantial amount" as part of the Rs 9,400 crore loan repayment to establish his bonafide, was in fact leaving it to the apex court to pass orders for release of funds/pledged shares held back by the orders of different courts.

Rohatgi rubbished the plea that Mallya lacked cash and said he received $40 million by divesting his shares in a UB group firm.

"This is all a cock and bull story. Your Lordships, order has not been complied with at all. Its not even the lip service," the law officer said referring to the content of the affidavit filed by Mallya.

"The money belongs to the banks which, in a way, is public money and not to the King... not only he is playing with this court, but is concealing information sought," the AG said, adding that the details of assets given in sealed cover be given to the banks for pursuing the case to the logical end.

Rohatgi strongly objected to Mallya's contention that he was not under any obligation to disclose his offshore assets on the ground that he was an NRI and the loans had been secured against his Indian assets only.

"He says that he is an NRI and NRI is not obliged to diclose his overseas assets. In don't know from where he gets this exemption. He is an Indian citizen," Rohatgi said.

The apex court also noted Mallya's submission that Rs 1,591 crore can be deposited before it after realising the amount from sale of shares of UB Group held by United Spirits Limited.

Further, the amount of Rs 1,329 crore (Rs 13.29 billion) deposited by Kingfisher Airlines in Airbus Holding can also be realised, the counsel said, adding Mallya has also filed a statement disclosing his personal assets totalling Rs 2,01,74,106.

The court had on April 7 directed Mallya to disclose by April 21 the total assets owned by him and his family in India and abroad while wanting to know when he will appear before it.

It had asked Mallya, who owes over Rs 9,000 crore to around 17 banks, to deposit a "substantial amount" with it to "prove his bonafide" that he was "serious" about meaningful negotiations and settlement.
Sarvjit Singh Samra's Capital Local Area Bank offers attractive features.

Jalandhar-based Capital Local Area Bank, which started off as a hire-purchase financier for commercial vehicles in 1964, is set to graduate to a small finance bank this Sunday.

When most banks in India are grappling with asset quality, profitability and capital adequacy issues, Capital Local Area bank boasts of a clean balance sheet.



And, leading the bank from the front is its managing director, Sarvjit Singh Samra, who was among the first 10 applicants to get a licence from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to start a small finance bank.

Despite hailing from the Doaba belt of Punjab, known for its non-resident India diaspora, Samra (51) never had the desire to migrate.

After his MBA from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, in 1986, he joined his family business of hire-purchase financing of commercial vehicles.

RBI had issued guidelines in August 1996 for setting up local area banks in the private sector (with minimum paid-up capital of Rs 5 crore and area of operation restricted to three geographically contiguous districts).

Samra conceptualised Capital Local Area Bank, obtained necessary approvals, including a licence from RBI, and forayed into organised banking in January 2000 from Nakodar in Jalandhar district.

As private banks those days were required to open branches in rural areas, Samra decided to focus on low-cost, small-ticket, rural markets.

Keeping in mind the profile of customers, Capital Local Area Bank offered attractive features.

For one, one could open a savings bank account with Rs 100.

Its branches were open on all seven days a week. Also, the bank hired local talent in all branches.

Thanks to its sound due diligence process, the bank remained insulated from economic slowdown and stressed assets.

Capital Local Area Bank, along with nine other entities, was granted the in-principle approval by RBI to set up small finance bank on September 16, 2015.

It got the final clearance from RBI on March 4 this year. On April 24, it became the first small finance bank to start operations in the country.

It will be called Capital Small Finance Bank. It will also be open on all seven days.

With this, the bank will get the scheduled bank status and be allowed to open branches anywhere in India.

The bank's business is expected to grow from the present level of Rs 3,000 crore (Rs 30 billion) to Rs 11,800 crore (Rs 118 billion) by March 31, 2021.

"Since we have already invested in the technology required to meet the challenges in retail banking, our investments to support expansion will be modest. We might add a staff strength of 200 in the first year of expansion to the existing 700 employees and will source them locally. Customers connect to the local staff spontaneously and this helps in rapid growth of business," said Samra.

Capital Local Area Bank was ranked No 1 in the banking sector among India's 100 best companies to work for in 2015, in a survey by San Francisco-headquartered Great Place to Work Institute.

Samra says officials from leading banks have joined his bank thanks to its work culture.

In the first year, the bank plans to add 29 branches to the existing 47.

By March 31, 2021, the branches are expected to grow to 216 covering mostly the northern sates of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, and parts of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, besides the Union territories of Chandigarh and Delhi.

The employee strength is expected to grow to 2,300.
Minister of state for power Piyush Goyal will gift wooden-framed 'appreciation letters' to one million govt employees.

Image: Power Ministry celebrates two years of NDA government. Photograph: Reuters

The two years of the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre would be celebrated with much aplomb in the power sector.



Piyush Goyal, minister of state for power, coal, new and renewable energy, will distribute wooden-framed 'appreciation letters' to one million employees under the power, coal and new and renewable energy ministries.

The idea is to thank the government employees for their contribution in achieving the goals set by the PM for the power sector.



Every letter, of 8.5x14 size, will be accompanied by a list of achievements made during the past two years.

On the left corner of the letter, taken in colour, is Modi's picture while on the right is Goyal himself.

"Each and every one of you put in your heart and soul, committing yourself to the mission. And today after two years of your dedicated hard work, I can say with great confidence and pride that we are steadily and systematically transforming the seemingly impossible into the possible. With your achievements, I can even venture to suggest that we may accomplish the goal by 2019," said the letter reviewed by Business Standard.

The letter mentions the progress made in different government programmes ranging from rural electrification to adding solar power capacity and revival of power distribution companies.



All this is aimed at achieving PM's target of '24X7 Power for All by 2022', says the letter dated April 14.

The accompanying list of achievements mentions the reforms initiated by the three ministries - Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY), amendments to the Tariff Policy, rationalisation of coal supply, and the four real-time mobile apps launched to depict transparency in the system.

Under separate heads, it enlists the increase in generation and transmission capacity under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government enhancing coal production and transparent auction of mines, increase in renewable energy generation capacity, and record LED lamp distribution.

The minister's office has been mandated to take up the dispatch of letter as "most urgent matter" with a deadline of May 10, 2016.

The NDA government completes two years on May 26.

Among the achievements, UDAY bonds worth Rs 1 lakh crore issued in 2015-16 finds the top position.



The ministry has signed 24X7 'Power for All' documents with 18 states and Union territories.

Besides, movement of 23 million tonnes of coal has been rationalised, leading to potential annual savings of Rs 1,371 crore.

Goyal is also applauding the highest ever conventional power capacity addition of 24,172 Mw, the largest ever wind power capacity addition of 3,300 Mw exceeding target by 38 per cent, and the biggest ever solar power capacity addition of 3,019 Mw, exceeding target by 116 per cent.

All of this was achieved in 2015-16.

GIFT FOR ALL
This is possibly the last election in Bengal where two sides are squaring off against each other. Dont expect the BJP to be a bystander five years hence, says Devanik Saha.

With four phases of polls over in West Bengal -- and two more to go -- the battle between the ruling Trinamool Congress and Left-Congress alliance has become fiercer.

In March, the announcement of six-phase polls in West Bengal drew Chief Minister Mamata Banerjees ire, who had accused the Election Commission of meting out step-motherly treatment to her state. Despite the long-drawn-out poll schedule, Bengal has been marred by excessive violence, voter intimidation, hurling of crude bombs, and killing of polling agents and workers.

Electoral analysts and journalists say the TMC is set to regain power, albeit with a reduced majority, owing to the partys strong rural presence and it development work -- though not exemplary, sufficiently visible nevertheless -- will help the party sail through.

Whatever be the facade the TMC is hiding under is in reality a pack of cards waiting to crumble should the party lose the election. Massive infighting, dissidence due to ticket distribution, resurgence of the Communist Party of India-Marxist are some of the factors which have weakened the TMC internally.

Formed in 1998, apart from Banerjee and few other leaders, the TMC has primarily been a party of opportunists who didnt get the desired favours from the Left dispensation and therefore switched ranks to the TMC.

Many of the TMC party workers and cadres actually worked for the CPI-M for several years. Lagging behind in industrialisation and privatisation, a government job is considered a dream, which leads to workers joining the ruling party in expectation of a government job for themselves or their family members.

Post the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, where the BJP had cornered a 17 per cent vote share, there was speculation that Krishendu Narayan Chowdhury, food processing minister and MLA from English Bazaar constituency, Malda, was eyeing a BJP entry until it became clear that the BJP wasnt going to build on its impressive performance in the Lok Sabha elections.

Chowdhury, who first became an MLA in 2006 and 2011 on a Congress ticket, later shifted to the TMC in 2013, where he won the by-poll as well.

This time it is being speculated that Nihar Ghosh, an independent candidate unofficially supported by the Left, is poised to defeat Chowdhury and should he lose, would waste no time in joining the Congress or the BJP.

In the dangerously volatile Birbhum, TMC leader Anubrata Mondal, a feared man in the region, is being challenged by a former TMC member Sheikh Kajal, who is supporting the Left. Apart from Birbhum, Haringhata and Darjeeling have also witnessed severe infighting among the TMC ranks.

T o avoid disintegration, the only way out for the TMC is to win the polls and remain a magnet for those who run their illegal businesses and crime syndicates openly with the states support, and which serves to bind the party together.

For the CPI-M, it is an opportunity to resurrect itself in Indian politics amidst the massive rise of the BJP and the decline of the Congress in India. Down from 62 Lok Sabha seats in 2004 to around 10 seats currently, winning Bengal can augment its revival.

The CPI-M, a legacy-based party, is supported by people who strongly believe in communism and the partys principles, unlike the TMC which attracts workers and politicians for the sake of making a quick buck through means fair and foul. Job promises and lure of quick money, however, can and have challenged the partys survival.

After being ousted in 2011, many CPI-M workers shifted ranks, and it has now been compelled to form an alliance with the Congress (which is fighting it in Kerala) in its attempt to defeat the TMC.

Generally, it doesnt take any big donations from corporates but is mainly run by contributions from members and well-wishers, whereas on the other hand the TMC has left no stone unturned to fill its coffers in the five years it has ruled the state, with Saradha scam being just one instance of the rot that has set in.

Land mafia, extortion businesses, bomb factories, real estate syndicates and cross-border illegal smuggling have all been having a free run under the TMCs rule, with the party using its money and brute power to intimidate voters and crush the CPI-M support base.

If it fails to win this election, the CPI-M will find it extremely tough to keep its party supporters and workers together, and its hopes of a national revival will be dashed as well.

Finally, this is probably the last bipolar election in Bengal, thanks to the BJP playing truant. Post the Lok Sabha polls, it was in a strong position to make deep inroads into the state, until Mamata and Modis quid pro quo (slowdown of the Saradha scam investigation by the CBI for support in the Rajya Sabha) came into force.

But in the next election, due in 2021, it is highly unlikely the BJP would continue with its soft stand but will definitely fight it with its full might and strength.

Image: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at an election rally in Kolkata. Photograph: Swapan Mahapatra/PTI Photo.
Opposition to tri-service structures comes not just from bureaucrats and politicians as the generals like to lament, but equally from within the military. Neither the army, navy or air force chiefs want to relinquish control over their theatre commands, with these cutting edge units placed under some commander who reports elsewhere, says Ajai Shukla.

IMAGE: A glimpse of the amphibious training exercise, Jal Prahar, held in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands between March 27 and April 18. Photograph: Indian Navy/Twitter

In a small amphibious training exercise called Jal Prahar that terminated last week, India's military paid token obeisance to the notion of tri-service command, which serious, warfighting militaries have embraced decades ago.

Jal Prahar was conducted by the Andaman & Nicobar Command, India's only tri-service command -- which means it owns assets from the army, navy and air force and is commanded, in turn, by general officers from all three services.

It involved a hundred soldiers, a handful of amphibious assault craft mostly borrowed from the navy's eastern command, and three Jaguar strike aircraft that the Indian Air Force kindly made available.

The ANC, which military reformers established in 2001 in the forlorn hope that this might catalyse similar tri-service structures across the military, has failed spectacularly in achieving this aim.



While this sideshow played out in the Bay of Bengal, the army chief's attention was focused on the high-profile Exercise Shatrujeet, involving tens of thousands of army soldiers, practising mechanised warfare and live fire tank drills in the Rajasthan desert.

True, there was a substantial air power component to Exercise Shatrujeet, but it was primarily an army exercise in planning and conception.



Meanwhile, early this year, the People's Liberation Army of China adopted a tri-service credo in full, signalling its determination to undertake the deep systemic reforms needed to create an effective command structure that might someday credibly challenge the United States.

In Beijing, on February 1, the PLA's seven "military regions", traditionally led by the army, gave way to five geographic theatre commands (termed "battle zones") that will now function on a tri-service basis, incorporating elements from the PLA Navy and PLA Air Force.



In India, the woeful debate over tri-service structures has focused mainly on appointing a tri-service commander -- a five-star "chief of defence staff" recommended by a Group of Ministers in 2001; or a four-star "permanent chairman chiefs of staff", a half-way house solution proposed in 2013 by the Naresh Chandra committee.

But there is little focus on the need to simultaneously restructure India's single-service theatre commands, merging 17 army, navy and air force commands into five-six tri-service commands.

Creating a CDS/PCCOS to oversee long-range force structuring and to deliver single-point military advice to political leaders would unquestionably make the military leaner and more effective.

But creating tri-service theatre commands is crucial for enhancing battlefield performance.



Opposition to tri-service structures comes not just from bureaucrats and politicians as the generals like to lament, but equally from within the military.

Neither the army, navy or air force chiefs want a military boss (CDS) or even another equal (PCCOS). And they certainly do not want to relinquish control over their theatre commands, with these cutting edge units placed under some commander who reports elsewhere.

But what really strangles tri-service babies at birth are ill-founded, political-bureaucratic apprehensions about concentrating military power in one hand.

The ANC and the IDS were spared this fate only because they were adjudged too weak to threaten either the three services or the political-bureaucratic class.



If the whispered (and to the military, deeply offensive) need to "coup proof" the command structure is standing in the way of this reform, it can be addressed structurally by creating tri-service theatre commanders, who report directly to the political leadership, like in the US.

The three service chiefs, with their combat units distributed between the theatre commanders, would be freed from command responsibility and mandated to focus on their respective services' manpower, equipping and training.

These are currently given short shrift, with the chiefs weighed down by time consuming daily responsibilities of operational command.

The non-operational commands -- such as the three services' "training commands" and the air force's "maintenance command" could remain under the service chiefs.

Operational commands like the Special Forces command, cyber command and the strategic forces command (the nuclear arsenal) could be hived off like the theatre commands.



Outside this command structure, the political leadership could select a five-star CDS, from any service, preferably on merit and trust rather than mere seniority, who would function as a "second opinion" military advisor.

In many ways, this would mirror the US system, which has functioned admirably through inter-continental global challenges.



While distributing power between more commanders, this could be made palatable to the military by upgrading ranks -- which would also somewhat flatten the military's unacceptably steep promotion pyramid.

Each theatre commander, now handling independent, tri-service operational responsibilities, could be upgraded to four-star rank.

The army, navy and air force chiefs would continue to be four-star generals, thus having a dozen four-star generals -- including the commanders of five geographical theatres, the ANC, and the Special Forces, strategic forces and cyber commands.

The five-star CDS would be a respected figurehead.



This would allow Prime Minister Narendra Modi to credibly lay claim to genuine military reform.

While making multiple promises in its April 2014 election manifesto and in numerous public statements since, the National Democratic Alliance government has delivered only on populist promises: like One Rank, One Pension, albeit in a diluted form; and sanctioning a national war memorial in New Delhi.

On the promised structural reforms -- like implementing tri-service command, involving the military in defence ministry decision-making; establishing a National Marine Authority to oversee coastal security; boosting defence R&D; improving border management, and setting up a Veterans Commission to look after retired soldiers -- there has been little delivery.



Addressing the military's top commanders on December 15, Modi declared: "We have been slow to reform the structures of our armed forces. We should shorten the tooth-to-tail ratio. And we should promote 'jointness' across every level of our armed forces. We wear different colours, but we serve the same cause and bear the same flag. Jointness at the top is a need that is long overdue. We also need reforms in senior defence management. It is sad that many defence reform measures proposed in the past have not been implemented. This is an area of priority for me."



Modi is right, promises of reform have never been implemented, particularly the move towards tri-service command structures. He should now implement this priority.
'The Pakistani side was so cocksure of itself that it had come to the table with a pre-set agenda -- an agenda of unilateralism, knowing full well that nothing was going to come out of these talks,' says Rajeev Sharma.

IMAGE: Foreign Secretary Dr S Jaishankar with his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry in New Delhi, April 26, 2016. Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit, right, is also seen. Photograph: PTI

Most India-Pakistan talks are usually a dialogue of the deaf wherein the two sides merely end up reiterating their previously stated positions.

Tuesday's edition between Foreign Secretaries Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Aijaz Ahmed Chaudhry on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia conference on Afghanistan in New Delhi was no different.

There was one difference this time, though. The Pakistani side was so cocksure of itself that it had come to the table with a pre-set agenda -- an agenda of unilateralism, knowing full well that nothing was going to come out of these talks.

The Pakistanis resorted to a below-the-radar practice which it had never done before. A Pakistani diplomat started sending updates on social media about the meeting even though the talks were still on.

Manzoor Ali Memon, whose job is to interact with the media, started sending updates every 15 minutes from 11.15 am, 15 minutes after the meeting started.

Memon's updates were on core issues from the Pakistani perspective which the Pakistani side was to raise with the Indians. It didn't matter to the Pakistani side whether those issued had actually been raised by the Pakistani side by that time at the ongoing talks.

The Pakistani official was merely working on a script which had already been written and his job was to onpass this script in regular intervals to the news hungry Indian media through social media, irrespective of the fact whether these points had actually been made at the ongoing talks by then.

The most breathtaking part of the Pakistani brazenness was that this official was not even present in the room where the foreign secretary-level talks were going on. It showed that the Pakistanis had come for these talks with a pre-set agenda.

Obviously, it showed that the Pakistanis were just not interested in any substantive outcome.

Perhaps, their domestic situation is just not suitable for a breakthrough with India at a time when Pakistan's powerful military establishment is at loggerheads with the civilian government. Even the Pakistanis themselves are not sure whether Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will keep his position for long.

For the record's sake, the two sides stuck to their already known positions on all points of dispute. The Pakistanis heard India's twin major concerns -- a credible action taken report on all terror issues, particularly the most recent terror attack on the Pathankot airbase, and specific dates on which the National Investigation Agency can pay a reciprocal visit to Pakistan in the Pathankot case. The Pakistanis did not say 'yes,' but did not say 'no' either.

The fact that the two sides agreed to disagree was clear from the fact that they came up with separate statements, making clear their divergences.

Sample the brief statement issued on behalf of the Pakistani high commissioner in New Delhi: 'FS emphasised that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution in accordance with UNSC resolutions & wishes of Kashmiri people. All outstanding issues including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute were discussed.'

The Indian statement focused on five points as follows:

'1. India's foreign secretary emphasised the need for early and visible progress on the Pathankot terrorist attack investigation as well as the Mumbai case trial in Pakistan. He also brought up the listing of JeM leader Masood Azhar in the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee.

2. Foreign Secretary Jaishankar clearly conveyed that Pakistan cannot be in denial on the impact of terrorism on the bilateral relationship. Terrorist groups based in Pakistan targeting India must not be allowed to operate with impunity.

3. We pressed for immediate consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav, the former naval officer abducted and taken to Pakistan.

4. The discussions also covered humanitarian issues including those pertaining to fishermen and prisoners, and people to people contacts including religious tourism.

5. The two foreign secretaries exchanged ideas on taking the relationship forward and agreed to remain in touch.'

On the Kulbhushan Jadhav issue, Jaishankar confronted his Pakistani counterpart and asked him whether he seriously believed that India would believe the web of lies which the Pakistani side was flaunting as his 'confessional statement.'

Jaishankar said India would like to hear these things from Jadhav himself, but that could be possible only when India gets consular access to Jadhav.

India knows that getting consular access to Jadhav is a long haul. An Indian national Hamid Ansari was arrested by Pakistan some three years ago. India is yet to get consular access to him.

Rajeev Sharma is an independent journalist and strategic analyst who tweets @Kishkindha
The issue of rustication of three Jawaharlal Nehru University students and slapping of fine on students union leader Kanhaiya Kumar was raised in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday by the Left parties, which termed the action as vindictive and vengeful.

When the House started proceedings after some new members took oath and the listed papers were laid on the table, Tapan Kumar Sen (Communist Party of India-Marxist) said he had given notice under rule 267, seeking suspension of business to raise the serious issue of arrogant and anti-democratic actions by JNU authorities.

He termed the rustication of Umar Khalid for one semester, Anirban Bhattacharya till July 15 and Kashmir student Mujeeb Gattoo for two semesters as well as the Rs 10,000 fine on Kanhaiya Kumar as vindictive and vengeful action taken in an unjust manner.

This is part of governments project to tamper with the rights of citizens... In the name of Constitution, they are tampering with the Constitution itself, Sen said.

The students were penalised for taking part at an event in JNU where slogans were raised in support of 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, who was hanged in February 2013.

D Raja (CPI) said Parliament cannot remain a mute spectator to the university rusticating students in a vindictive manner on the basis of doctored and false videos.

Deputy Chairman P J Kurien expunged certain remarks of Raja against the university saying since its representatives cannot defend themselves, such harsh words should not be used.

Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said, We totally support whatever our colleagues have said.

Anand Sharma (Congress) said, We are worried how the atmosphere in one after the other university is being vitiated.

The Chair could not give a ruling on the notice, as Congress members disrupted proceedings over dismissal of their partys government in Uttrakhand, leading to adjournment of the House.
A group of Islamist terrorists have killed a Canadian businessman in the Philippines after a deadline to pay a ransom expired.

John Ridsdel, 68, was one of four tourists captured by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines in September 2015.

While spending his vacation in the Philippines, Ridsdel, a 68-year-old former mining executive, was captured along with several others by the militants in September 2015.

On Monday, Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, confirmed Risdels death, after a severed head was found on a remote Philippine island on Monday, just five hours after the deadline for a $6.4million (Rs 42.68 crore) ransom set by the terrorists expired.

Trudeau described Risdels death as an act of cold blooded murder. I am outraged by the news that a Canadian citizen held hostage has been killed, he said.

Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers and this unnecessary death. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage. The government of Canada is committed to working with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act, the prime minister added.

In a statement, Ridsdels family said they were devastated his life had been cut tragically short by this senseless act of violence despite us doing everything within our power to bring him home.

Abu Sayyaf is a small but brutal militant group known for beheading, kidnapping, bombing and extortion in the south of the mainly Catholic country. Abu Sayyaf pledged allegiance first to Al Qaeda and now Islamic State.

They are also holding other foreigners, including one from the Netherlands, one from Japan, four Malaysians and 14 Indonesian tugboat crew.

Image: John Ridsdel was taken hostage while he was spending his vacation in Philippines in September 2015.
Former Indian Air Force chief S P Tyagi on Tuesday denied allegations that he had influenced the 3,600-crore deal for VVIP helicopters in favour of Italy's AgustaWestland.

"My first reaction is shock... How can anybody say this, on what basis?" Tyagi told NDTV when asked whether he was involved in the VVIP chopper scam.

"They have blamed me for corrupt practices in which I changed the height to assist AgustaWestland, although this decision was not against the public interest. But I was nevertheless being (called) corrupt," the former IAF chief said.

"It would appear that the part of the loot came to me. I am shocked," he said.

Referring to the case, he said, "This is not a new case. (It has been) going on for years. All the evidences were also presented to the court in Milan itself. The trial court in

Milan gave judgement in which they said there was no case of corruption.

"Same evidence was now produced in High Court. They seem to feel that it was done in corrupt practices. Why they have aid it I am not in a position to comment," he said.

Asked pointedly whether he had received money for the Augusta deal, Tyagi said, "No, no, no, no. This question hurts me." Asked whether his family members had received kickback, he said, "No, no no."

On the change of height parameter of the helicopters, Tyagi said this is in public domain why the height was changed and who changed it.

He said it involved two governments led by the National Democratic Alliance and the Inuted Progressive Alliance and the National Security Advisors of both the governments were part of the meetings.

"They insisted on the Special Protection Group and the SPG got into it. They did not like the height, they did not like the single window...these are all in the public domain," he said. Defending himself, he said, "Proforma clearance was given to me. The decision must have been taken by the government. The users were VVIP. IAF was not the user. SPG had to be consulted, therefore PMO stepped in. Otherwise the Prime Ministers Office does not come into air force purchase. They took the decision and they asked the air force to change the requirement."

"The SPG was not happy with the cabin height. SPG guards will not be able to stand with their guns to protect VVIP. These were issues and they discussed at length. Then decision was taken. IAF was asked to redo them. Now you are saying chief of AIF changed to assist Augusta. It was a collective decision," he asserted.

When told that Congress president Sonia Gandhi's name came up repeatedly for allegedly lobbying for the deal, Tyagi said, "All the documents available with Italian court are also

available to investigating agencies. For the past three years, the investigating agencies have looked into all these documents. They have interviewed the former Cabinet Secretary, former NSA, former DG of SPG."

We are still investigating with all the documents. Some of the documents have not been received and you have already decided who is corrupt... I find it very strange."

Image: Former Air Chief Marshal S P Tyagi
A suspected Indian Mujahideen terrorist was arrested today by Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad in connection with the 2011 serial bomb blasts in which 26 people were killed.

The terror suspect was nabbed from the city airport on Tuesday morning and produced before a local court, which sent him in 10-day ATS custody.

We arrested one Zainul Abedin, a suspected IM terrorist, from the airport this morning. We produced him in the court and got his remand for ten days, a senior ATS official said.

We will be questioning him in connection with the 2011 Mumbai serial blasts case, he said.

A red corner notice was issued against the accused, based on which the ATS sleuths of Kalachowki unit arrested him, police said.

According to police, Abedin was allegedly responsible for supplying explosives for operations of the banned outfit, blamed in the past for a string of terror strikes in various parts of the country.

Besides the Maharashtra ATS, Abedin was also wanted by the anti-terror wings of Karnataka and Gujarat Police, and the National Investigation Agency.

Three coordinated bomb explosions occurred in Opera House, Zaveri Bazaar and Dadar West on July 13, 2011, killing 26 people and injuring nearly 130 others.
PSOE leader Pedro Sanchez in a file photo in Congress. ULY MARTIN

In a last-minute attempt to avert new elections in Spain, the Socialist Party (PSOE) on Tuesday accepted nearly all of the policy points contained in a document seeking the creation of a leftist governing alliance.

The partys congressional spokesman, Antonio Hernando, said that the PSOE was ready to say yes to 27 of the 30 items presented to them by Compromis, a regional party from Valencia that wants to see a government made up of the Socialists, Podemos, United Left and themselves.

Hernando added that the new government should be headed by Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez and made up of independent members. He said that this hypothetical Cabinet would submit to a vote of confidence two years after taking office, in June 2018.

A similar government of change had already been suggested earlier by Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias

A similar government of change had already been suggested earlier by Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, but his demands for Cabinet positions and his stance on a number of issues had put him at odds with Sanchez.

Instead, the PSOE entered into a preliminary governing deal with Ciudadanos, Spains other emerging, reform-oriented party. But their combined seats were not enough for an overall majority in Congress (176), and the project has failed to gain support from other parties.

If no deal is struck between now and May 2, the king will dissolve parliament and call new elections for June 26.

On Tuesday, Ciudadanos announced that it will not be backing this latest document introduced by Compromis, citing its vagueness on almost all the issues.

I have seen three pages discussing how six parties are to govern for four years. I think that says it all, said party leader Albert Rivera.

On Tuesday, Ciudadanos announced that it will not be backing this latest document introduced by Compromis

Rivera, whose party holds 40 seats in Congress, also noted that the Socialists dont really need Ciudadanoss support if they instead associate with the parties mentioned in the Compromis proposal. He [Sanchez] did not need us on December 21 and he doesnt need us now.

But Socialist spokesman Hernando sought to counter the suggestion that his party was ready to break its agreement with Ciudadanos.

Lets make it clear that we are going to honor the commitments of this agreement and of the agreement signed with Ciudadanos, he said at a press conference held inside Congress.

Hernando said he was aware that Spains two emerging parties are refusing to work together.

Podemos and Ciudadanos have manifested their incompatibility, he said. That is why we feel that a reasonable way out is to have a Socialist government with the addition of independents in various fields.

Lets make it clear that we are going to honor the commitments of this agreement and of the agreement signed with Ciudadanos PSOE spokesman Antonio Hernando

Hernando said that this proposal is compatible with their agreement with Ciudadanos, which would also have a place in the new administration.

While the political situation remains complicated and a new election looms large on the horizon, this new initiative by Compromis has re-opened the debate.

Pedro Sanchez had an appointment with Felipe VI later on Tuesday to discuss Spains political situation. The monarch is seeing 14 political leaders this week in the third and last round of contacts to determine whether there is still a chance to avoid a new vote, following the inconclusive election of December 20.

King Felipe is seeing 14 political leaders this week in the third and last round of contacts to determine whether there is still a chance to avoid a new vote

Given the latest developments, Sanchez may ask the king to wait until the last possible minute before dissolving parliament. There is a precedent in Catalonia, where three months of political gridlock following regional elections came to a head in January with a last-minute deal to elect a new regional premier that avoided fresh elections.

We have until zero hours of next Monday to negotiate, said Hernando. There would still be time for an investiture vote to be held between Friday and Saturday, he added.

If Ciudadanos, Podemos and its associates, and Compromis all vote in favor of investing Pedro Sanchez with the premiership, there would be time. We have to try.

English version by Susana Urra.
IMAGE: Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar with his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry after a meeting at South Block in New Delhi on Tuesday. Photograph: Atul Yadav/PTI Photo



India and Pakistan on Tuesday indulged in some plain speaking on bilateral issues with the neighbouring country being firmly asked not to be in denial over the impact of terrorism on bilateral ties while Pakistan harped on Kashmir terming it as the core issue.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry met for nearly 90 minutes, during which sticky issues -- including probe into Pathankot terror attack, 26/11 trial and Samjhauta Express blast investigations -- figured.

Todays meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry, who is primarily in New Delhi to attend the Heart of Asia conference, was the first formal interaction since their scheduled talks were deferred in the wake of the Pathankot attack in January.

During the meeting, India raised the issue of abduction of former Naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, saying he has been taken to Pakistan, and sought immediate consular access. This is for the first time India has categorically said Jadhav was abducted.

However, in its statement, Pakistan said it raised capturing of Jadhav and expressed serious concern over Research and Analysis Wings alleged involvement in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi, a charge which was strongly rebutted by India.

Indias foreign secretary emphasised the need for early and visible progress on the Pathankot terrorist attack investigation as well as the Mumbai case trial in Pakistan. He also brought up the listing of JeM (Jaish-e-Mohammed) leader Masood Azhar in the United Nations 1267 Sanctions Committee.

Foreign Secretary Jaishankar clearly conveyed that Pakistan cannot be in denial on the impact of terrorism on the bilateral relationship. Terrorist groups based in Pakistan targeting India must not be allowed to operate with impunity, a statement by the External Affairs Ministry said after the talks.

On its part, the Pakistani statement said Chaudhry brought up the issue of Kashmir emphasising that it remained the core issue that requires a just solution in accordance with UNSC (United Nations Security Council) resolutions and wishes of Kashmiri people.

Interestingly, the Pakistani side released the talking points while the meeting between the two foreign secretaries was still on.

The statement by Pakistan also said, In line with our PMs vision of peaceful neighborhood, the FS underscored Pakistans commitment to have friendly relations with all its neighbors/India. All outstanding issues including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute were discussed.

Describing the discussions as frank and constructive, India said humanitarian issues including those pertaining to fishermen and prisoners, and people to people contacts including religious tourism were also covered.

The two foreign secretaries exchanged ideas on taking the relationship forward and agreed to remain in touch, the MEA said.

According to Pakistan High Commission, Chaudhry also expressed serious concern over RAWs alleged involvement in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi. The allegations were firmly rebutted by Jaishankar.

In the context of Jadhav, the Indian foreign secretary also asked which spy agency would put their agent in the field with their own passport, and without a visa.

On Samjhauta Express blast, Chaudhry conveyed concerns over efforts by Indian authorities for the release of the prime suspects of the Samjhauta Express blasts.

The foreign secretary further pointed out that, despite repeated requests India has not shared investigation reports in which 42 Pakistanis had lost their lives

He also conveyed concern over the environment being created in India for the release of the prime suspects of the Samjhauta Express blasts, the Pakistan High Commission said.

The Pakistan High Commission said Chaudhry expressed confidence that building on the goodwill generated by the recent high level contacts, the two countries should remain committed to a sustained, meaningful and comprehensive dialogue process.

In this spirit, the foreign secretary underscored the need for early commencement of comprehensive dialogue for which the Indian Foreign Secretary's visit to Pakistan is due, it said.
At 1:23 am on April 26, 1986, a botched routine safety test at the control room of Reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power facility led to an explosion and a fire that burned for 10 days.

The infamous nuclear accident devastated the lives of millions of people in Western Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine. The radioactive fallout spread over tens of thousands of square miles, driving more than a quarter of a million people permanently from their homes. It remains the world's worst nuclear disaster to date.

Till this date, people are still frightened, turning the area almost into a ghost town.

A painting of a girl decorates an empty building in the abandoned town of Pripyat in the 30 km exclusion zone around the closed Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Around 50,000 Pripyat residents were evacuated after the disaster, taking only few belongings. Ukraine is preparing to mark the 30th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear disaster, when a reactor at the Chernobyl plant exploded, spreading radioactivity across Europe and the Soviet Union. Photograph: Reuters

A child's gas mask and a shoe are seen at a kindergarten in the abandoned city of Prypiat near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Photograph: Gleb Garanich/Reuters

A tree grows out of the door of an abandoned barn in the 30 km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, in the abandoned village of Krasnoselie, Belarus. Photograph: Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

A house is seen in the abandoned village of Zalesye near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine March 28, 2016. Photograph: Gleb Garanich/Reuters

The interior of a kindergarten is seen in the abandoned city of Prypiat near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Photograph: Gleb Garanich/Reuters

A raven stretches its wings as it sits on a post inside the 30 km (18 miles) exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor near the village of Babchin, some 370 km southeast of Minsk. The sign reads: "Radiation hazard". Photograph: Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters
Slogan-shouting Congress members on Tuesday forced the adjournment of Rajya Sabha till noon after the government rejected their demand for a discussion on a motion on dismissal of the partys government in Uttarakhand.

Congress members trooped into the Well of the House, raising slogans against the government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Leader of the House and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said no discussion other than on proclamation of Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand can take place.

Justifying imposition of central rule in the state, Jaitley said the real breakdown of constitutional machinery happened in Uttarakhand when the presiding officer (speaker) ignored the vote of 35 out of 67 members against the appropriation bill to declare it passed.

Deputy Chairman P J Kuriens pleading that the Chair was in favour of a discussion and the protestors should allow the House to function went unheeded, forcing him to adjourn the proceedings till 12 in the afternoon.

Congress leaders Anand Sharma and Pramod Tiwari gave notices under rule 267 seeking suspension of business to take up discussion on use of Article 356 by the Centre to dismiss a democratically-elected government in Uttrakhand.

While Naresh Agrawal (Samajwadi Party) too gave notice under same rule for discussion on the issue, Mayawati (Bahujan Samaj Party) supported the demand for suspension of business to take up the debate.

Jaitley said it had never happened in the history of independent India that a presiding officer of a state assembly has converted majority into minority and vice versa.

This is the real breakdown of constitutional machinery, he said.

He said 35 out of the 67 members in Uttrakhand assembly voted against the appropriation bill but the presiding officer came to conclusion that the bill has been passed. That is breakdown of constitutional machinery.

The minister said discussion will take place when the proclamation for Presidents Rule is placed before the House. There is no procedure of having pre-proclamation discussion, he said.

Earlier, Sharma said he had given a notice under rule 267 for suspension of business to discuss and pass a resolution brought by his party on the destabilisation of a democratically-elected government by the Centre through gross misuse and abuse of power.

He said rule 267 as well as rule 176 for short duration discussion do not provide any condition for initiating a debate on any issue and there have been umpteen number of precedents when sub-judice matter have been debated in the House.

This government cannot hide under rules to cover what they have done in Uttarakhand, he said.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi asked if the Congress actually wanted a discussion or was looking at disrupting proceedings.

Agrawal said he too did not agree with the governments contention that sub-judice matters cannot be discussed and said the Chair should take the opinion of the House on initiating a discussion under rule 267.

Pramod Tiwari (Congress) said the Constitution has been murdered in Uttarakhand and we condemn the governments action.

Mayawati said parties in power have misused Article 356 of the Constitution to dismiss Opposition-ruled state governments for political reasons and sought a discussion on the issue.

After Jaitley said no discussion can take place before the proclamation is placed before the House, Congress members trooped into the Well, raising anti-government slogans.

Modi teri taanashahi nahi chalegi, nahi chalegi (dictatorship of Narendra Modi will not be tolerated), they shouted.

Kurien asked shouting members to return to their seats and allow a discussion. Chair is not against discussion. Chair is in favour of discussion. You are not allowing discussion, he said.

As the members remained unrelenting, he adjourned the House.

Similar scenes continued when the House reassembled.

Chairman Hamid Ansari took up the Question Hour but as the slogan-shouting by Congress members in the Well continued unabated, he adjourned the House for 30 minutes.

Image: Opposition members protest in the Well of Rajya Sabha. Photograph: PTI Photo
The Shiv Sena on Tuesday said the outcome of the meeting between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia -- Istanbul Process conference in New Delhi would be futile.

We have become tired speaking on this issue (Indo-Pak talks). What would be the benefit of these talks? The two prime ministers met in Lahore. But then what happened? We had the Pathankot terror attack, Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said.

There is no use of these stop-start talks. We know the outcome, its futile. The people of this country have been bored with such moves by the government, he added.

Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry, who is leading his countrys delegation to the Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process, will meet his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar around 11:00 am on Tuesday.

The meeting between the Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries to restart the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue was derailed after the January 2 Pathankot terror attack.

Since then, no date for talks between the foreign secretaries was decided, but both sides have been in touch.

India is expected raise the issue of investigation of the Pathankot attack, apart from discussing modalities of resuming the CBD.

Foreign ministers of both nations had last met on the sidelines of the SAARC ministerial meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal in November last year.
In a noble move, a group of IT professionals has come together to raise funds for repaying loans of over 100 debt-ridden farmers in drought-hit Vidarbha region, notorious for farmer suicides.

The IT professionals have united under the banner of an Non-Governmental Organisation, Apulkee (sense of belongingness), with an objective to help debt and drought-ridden 121 farmers in five districts of the cotton belt.

The NGO has so far raised Rs 3 lakh from people who are known to IT professionals and their circle of friends and companies. It aims to collect Rs 85 lakh to close the loans of the identified farmers.

Describing the criteria for selecting the farmers, Mayuri Dhavale, a senior associate working with Apulkee, said, "We shortlisted most affected five districts of the state and then zeroed in on marginal farmers with less than 5 acres of landholding. Additionally, priority was given to the families affected by farmer suicides."

The list was prepared after sifting through data provided by local NGOs and volunteers associated with Apulkee. Teams visited the selected farmers to study their current condition and collected 7/12 extract (a key land ownership document) along with bank and loan details.

Dhavale gave district-wise break-up of beneficiary farmers and their pending loans which was Wardha (25 farmers -- loan amount Rs 21,38,582), Washim (25 farmers -- Rs 12,57,762), Amaravati (27 farmers -- Rs 18,34,402), Yavatmal (25 farmers -- Rs 12,72,104) and Akola district (19 farmers -- Rs 18,62,200).

Abhijeet Falke, head of the NGO, said, "The situation (in Vidarbha) is grave and it cannot be solved by any one organisation, individual, NGO or government body. Only a collaborative movement will give some relief and therefore we have launched a small initiative seeking (financial) support from our personal contacts."

"The amount raised will be used only for loan closure and directly given to the banks. No cash amount will be handed over to the farmers. The loan closure report will be shared with all the companies and individuals who contribute towards the cause and uploaded on the website apulkee.org," said Falke, who himself runs an IT company in Pune.

The NGO also plans to seek funds from its foreign-based volunteers and other companies if the target from Indian sources is not met.
Senator John Cornyn, founder and Republican co-chair of the Senate India Caucus, strongly defends his vote against a resolution to block the sale of F-16s to Pakistan.

Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com reports from Washington, DC.

IMAGE: Senator John Cornyn, second from right, has opposed a resolution intended to block the Obama administration's decision to sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.

United States Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and founder and GOP co-chair of the Senate India Caucus -- the only country-specific caucus in the US Senate since its inception over a decade ago -- has strongly defended his vote last month against a resolution aimed at blocking the Obama administration's decision to sell eight F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, saying he did so in America's 'national interests.'

Citing a provision in the 1976 Arms Export Control Act, Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, had attempted to win Senate approval of his Resolution of Disapproval on the sale.

However, the Senate voted overwhelmingly by 71-24 to table Senator Paul's Resolution of Disapproval, pushing it to the backburner, which essentially gave the administration the green light to go ahead with the sale.

In the US, to 'table' usually means to postpone or suspend consideration of a resolution, legislation or a pending motion -- which essentially means shelving it -- unlike in the United Kingdom or Commonwealth countries and the rest of the English-speaking world, where 'tabling' vis-a-vis parliamentary procedure means the opposite -- to begin consideration or reconsideration of a piece of legislation, or a resolution as introduced by Paul or any other such proposal.

The vote by the Senate to table the Resolution of Disapproval to block the sales of the F-16s was a victory for the Obama administration -- not to mention Islamabad -- which had announced on February 12 that it had approved the $700 million (around Rs 460 billion) sale of the aircraft as well as radar and other equipment to Pakistan.

A conference on Monday, April 25, hosted by the Atlantic Council, a Washington DC-based think- tank -- titled 'Unlocking the Potential of US-India Trade' -- featured Cornyn and Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic co-chair of the Senate India Caucus.

Jay Kansara, Washington director of the Hindu American Foundation, asked Cornyn to "explain your rationale on why you voted in that way as co-chair of the India Caucus given the concerns of religious extremism in Pakistan."

Expressing absolutely no qualms over his vote, Cornyn argued, "Just as we've been discussing, each of our countries has to pursue its national interests and not be forced to pick between different countries."

"Clearly, the United States needs to maintain our engagement with Pakistan," he said, adding, "I believe because obviously Pakistan -- because of geography, because of history -- even though I do not -- many of us do not approve of a lot of their policies in what they are doing, particularly in supporting terrorist activities in Afghanistan by the Haqqani Network and others."

"But," he reiterated, "I believe, it's important for us to maintain our relationship with Pakistan and that's the reason I voted the way I did -- not because I believe Pakistan is always a good actor."

"There's complicated relationship, which is the reason why you saw the divergence on voting on that (Senator Paul's resolution)," Cornyn said.

"I don't think anybody is fooled by the complexity and the importance of trying to resolve our relationships with both Pakistan and India," he said, and emphasised, "I don't think the United States has to choose between the two."

"We need to be actively engaged and pursue our national interests with both India and Pakistan," Cornyn added.

Interestingly, even before Cornyn could respond to Kansara's question, Warner jumped in and while pointing out that he voted for the resolution to block sales of the F-16s to Pakistan, obviously perceiving the question to be embarrassing to Cornyn, declared that there is no better friend of India than Cornyn.

"I voted with Senator Paul because of my grave concerns about Pakistan's behaviour," Warner said.

"But let me also state that on the Democratic side, the (Senate) India co-chairs come and go -- (then Senator Hillary) Clinton, (Senator Christopher) Dodd, Warner," he said, and asserted, "But nobody is a better friend of India than John Cornyn -- he has stayed as co-chair of the Caucus for more than a decade."

Cornyn founded the Senate India Caucus after a visit to India more than a decade ago after being convinced to do by an Indian-American constituent of his, Ashok Mago, who founded the Indo-American Chamber of Dallas-Fort Worth, who accompanied Cornyn on this trip.

On his return, Cornyn, after a year or so with a handful of members, invited then Senator Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic co-chair and the number of members of the Caucus soared and has held steady with about 40 Senators currently.

With regard to the Paul resolution to block the sales of the F-16s to Pakistan, which Cornyn voted against, Warner made a most passionate appeal on the Senate floor in support of the resolution.

In his intervention, Warner warned, 'If we move forward with these sales without putting some markers down, I think we potentially not only do damage to holding Pakistan's feet to the fire in terms of the threat of terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region but also potentially could do damage to one of the most important relationships our country has, and that is the strategic relationship between the United States and India.'

'This relationship,' Warner pointed out, 'has been one of enormous growing importance. India has been a valuable and strategic partner of the United States and is a tremendous ally in promoting global peace and security.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party plans to target Sonia Gandhi and other Congress leaders on the issue of bribes in the AgustaWestland chopper deal during the United Progressive Alliance regime in a bid to corner the main opposition party which has been paralysing Rajya Sabha on the Uttarakhand affair.

The top brass of the BJP including its President Amit Shah and parliamentary leaders including Finance Minister Arun Jaitley met in New Delhi to chalk out a strategy following media reports that an Italian court, which has convicted AgustaWestland chief Giuseppe Orsi, has reportedly described how the firm paid bribes to top Congress leaders to bag the Rs.3,600 crore deal.

The issue also figured in the BJP parliamentary party where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also present. The Congress would also be targeted on the controversial Aircel Maxis deal and the affidavits in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case.

According to media reports, the Italian court judgement states how the firm lobbied with Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her close aides besides the then National Security AdviserM K Narayanan and the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Gandhi was described as the "driving force" by the judge behind the deal.

Subramanian Swamy, who took oath as the newly-nominated member of Rajya Sabha and the bete noire of Congress's first family, will rake up the chopper deal issue in the Rajya Sabha for which notice has been given. Meenakshi Lekhi is expected to do the job in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

A top BJP leader said it is significant that for the first time the bribe giver has been convicted but still people do not know who the bribe-taker is.

The Aircel Maxis issue is likely to be raked up by Anurag Thakur in the Lok Sabha while in the upper house it may be raised by Bhupender Yadav.

Similarly, the Ishrat Jahan case pot will be stirred by Kirit Somayya in the Lok Sabha.

To specific questions whether Sonia Gandhi's name would be taken up in connection with the chopper scam, a top leader refused to give a direct reply but party leaders indicated she would be targeted.

For the record, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was fielded by the BJP to attack the Congress on the chopper deal. He asked the defence minister in the Manmohan Singh government A K Antony to name the party leaders allegedly involved in the scandal.

"Bribe-givers have been convicted. Why are bribe-takers silent? Antony should answer if leaders of the Congress are involved in it or not. Are they from your party or not? Please come clean," he told a press conference.

The Congress hit back and said rejected any allegations against Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh saying "we reject it with the contempt they deserve".

"No one should be making loose comments. The Congress President and the former PM, whose integrity and intellect was never in question," party deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma told the media.

He said the BJP has been making irresponsible statements and wild allegations and the Congress was not going to accept this.

Sharma also claimed that a businessman "close to" Modi has entered into an MoU with AgustaWestland. But he refused to name him.

He also questioned the government why it removed AgustaWestland from the blacklist in which the UPA government had put it in.

On his part, Antony asked the Modi government to fast track the probe into the chopper scam and find out the truth as the UPA government had cancelled the contract and ordered a CBI investigation into it.

"When the primary allegation came out in the media, we immediately ordered a CBI inquiry. We cancelled the contract and fought the case in the Milan court. We won the case and got back all the money we paid in advance by bank guarantee," he told reporters.
It offers a lease of life to terminally ill patients since heart transplant still remains out of reach for most.

Pallav Bagla reports.

Rocket science may not be able to fix broken hearts, but very soon technology mastered at the Indian Space Research Organisation may be able to help patients who are in need for a heart transplant.

Materials and mechanisms used on Indian rockets have been tweaked by the ISRO to make a device which some describe as a step towards the making of an 'artificial heart.'

The heart-assist device has been tested on animals and found to be successful.

Better known for orbiting satellites and flying giant rockets, the multi-talented team at the ISRO made this heart pump as a spinoff technology development in the spare time.

Cardiologists are very excited with this development as it offers a lease of life to terminally-ill patients since heart transplant still remains out of reach for most.

Using materials and knowhow perfected to make lightweight rockets and satellites, scientists at the ISRO have perfected a device that assists the human heart to pump blood especially in cases where the left ventricle, the most powerful part of a human heart, starts to fail.

Called the 'left ventricular assist device.' this small electrical device can pump 3 to 5 litres of blood every minute.

ISRO Chairman Kiran Kumar said this rocket technology offered an alternate system to pump blood in very ill patients and can definitely save human lives.

The special pump made by the Indian space agency can also be powered using an indigenously made highly energy dense battery, the Lithium Ion cell, that has also for the first time been made in India again by another team of rocket scientists.

The pump, which weighs about 100 grams, can be fitted inside the body or placed externally and it needs a hook up to a battery to power it.

Made from a special alloy of titanium, the device is 'bio-compatible,' says K Sivan, director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram, where the special heart pump has been mastered.

Rocket scientists at VSSC use titanium alloys for making rocket engines and satellite components as a consequence they have total mastery on the metallurgy and manufacturing of the material.

The same material that is flown on rocket engines has been remodeled to make the compact but high tech pump.

"We have seen that the device is meeting all the bio-mechanical requirements, and the pumping requirement," says Sivan. "This particular device was tested on six animals. It was tested for 6 hours, and after that, the other organs of the animal were checked. They were intact."

,p> "This is a very great achievement. It's a successful device," Sivan adds. "Definitely it is a major step towards the ultimate development of an artificial heart by ISRO."

The device pumps blood using a common technology called a centrifugal pump. The electronics and the magnets used in the tiny pump have been fabricated by the same engineers who make lightweight systems used on Indian satellites. The pump had to be designed in such a fashion that even with continuous operation it should not heat up and should obviously be fail proof.

The device which is akin to an artificial heart has been tested on half a dozen pigs.

Cardiologists at the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology in Thiruvananthapuram surgically operated healthy pigs and replaced the functioning of the left ventricle of the pig with this special pump developed by ISRO.

The pig survived a full 6 hours, which was the full design of the experiment. No damage was reported to the blood as it was pumped by the device after it had bypassed the biological heart. Even the other organs of the pig suffered no damage for the full duration of the experiment.

Scientists at the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology say "this remains a work in progress" and further experimentation will be done on animals before the device can be tried on humans.

Wealthy Indian patients needing a heart transplant but unable to get the matching donors already import these devices and some of these left ventricular assist devices have already been installed on patients at some private hospitals and even at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

Importing a heart pump device and then implanting it costs over a crore of rupees, say cardiologists familiar with the technology. In contrast, scientists at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre say the device developed by them cost just Rs 125,000.

The rocket scientists say the cost differential is so large simply because the expertise and the materials already existed at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre and all they had to do was to assemble the right team of specialists that included metallurgists, electronics engineers, specialists on flow mechanics and designers who worked alongside cardiologists to come up with a suitable design.

It took a team of about two dozen specialists about six years and after many permutations and combinations, they came up with the right design.

"It is a complicated device to make and this is an exciting development," says Balram Bhargava, professor of cardiology, and executive director, Stanford India Biodesign Centre, School of International Biodesign, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi who confirms that no one in India has till date to the best of his knowledge designed indigenously a left ventricular assist device, adding that it is an important bridge for patients awaiting a heart transplant.

Professor Bhargava cautions that the device is to be used only in very specific medical circumstances.

Interestingly, the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre has also very recently developed a high value lithium ion battery which could now be used to power the heart pump.

India has all along been importing these lithium ion cells, but recently Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari mandated ISRO to master this technology so that it can be used to power zero pollution electric vehicles.

The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Sivan says, will try to miniaturise these Lithium Ion cells which can hopefully power the left ventricular assist device.
IMAGE: Manipur students during a protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. Photograph: PTI Photo

Nine young men killed in police firing last August have become symbols of oppression of the tribals of Manipur.

Rashme Sehgal reports for Rediff.com

Nine tribal mothers in Manipur whose sons died as a result of police firing in August last year have dug in their heels and refused to bury them till such time as the government does not revoke three contentious bills.

The three bills in question are the Protection of Manipur People Bill, 2015, the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms (Seventh Amendment) Bill, 2015, and the Manipur Shops and Establishments (Second Amendment) Bill, 2015 which were passed by the Manipur assembly on August 31, 2015.

The Congress government led by Chief Minister Okram Ibibi Singh has repeatedly expressed its inability to revoke the bills taking shelter under the garb that if it were to do so it would face 'major consequences' from Concom, the umbrella organisation of militant groups which operates out of Myanamar.

The genesis of the problem is that development in Manipur has taken place largely in the Imphal valley leaving the hilly regions out of its loop.

Benefits from educational institutions, health facilities and employment have been lapped up by the dominant Meiti community living in the Imphal valley while tribals belonging to the Kuki, Paite, Hmar Naga and Zomi tribes who live in the hill regions have not been able to prosper educationally or economically.

"We have serious reservations to these three bills which were passed," points out Mainio, coordinator of the Manipur Tribal Forum, Delhi. "They have been passed as a money bill without holding any prior consultations with the Hill Areas Committee. The drafting of these bills took place without any tribal representatives being present and that alone is a matter of serious concern for us."

"When we consulted former solicitor general Soli Sorabjee, he told us that these bills are completely unConstitutional," Mainio adds.

"The Protection of the Manipur Peoples Act states that those persons are of Manipuri origin whose names are in the National Register of Citizens, 1951, Census Report 1951 and Village Directory of 1951," explains Mainio. "Their descendants will on that basis classify to be called Manipuri."

"But the tribals are an uneducated lot and the majority at that time had not even heard of such a register. No village records were being maintained at that time nor was there any evolved systems of communication. Are all these people now going to lose their citizenship?" asks Mainio.

"That is a matter of tremendous concern for the tribals as this will not allow outsiders access to buy tribal land," Mainio adds.

The passage of the bills saw protests break out across the hilly areas. As tensions rose, protestors took to violence and arson and the police resorted to firing on August 31, 2015 in the Churachandpur district of Manipur.

Six boys died, one of them just 11 years old, while three other succumbed to their injuries the following day.

Nianglian, a friend of the nine mothers, whose boys have died, has come down from Churachandpur along with three other women to highlight what is happening in their state.

"The nine bodies of these boys have been kept on slabs of ice in a morgue located in the district hospital. We will not bury them till such time as these three acts have not been revoked," says Nianglian.

"These boys have become martyrs. Every day, members of the different tribes come together to sing hymns and shout slogans against the government. Earlier these tribals including the Kuki, Paite, Hmar and Zomis used to fight one another. The killings have succeeded in uniting all of them," says Nianglian.

"They now say that these boys died for a cause and they will be buried only when the demands are met," Ninaglian adds. "Churachandpur is in the centre of this agitation"

Buonozamawi, another Manipuri woman, says they have had to raise funds to travel to New Delhi especially since the local people are poor cultivators and were able only to give donations of Rs 10 to Rs 20.

These women along with members of the Manipur Tribal Forum, Delhi met Home Minister Rajnath Singh last week. The home minister has promised to do his best, but wants them to bury the dead.

They also met Congress President Sonia Gandhi who gave them a patient hearing. "Since Manipur is ruled by the Congress, we expected her to help us. She has sent for the chief minister to see how the situation can be resolved. But she asked us very specifically, 'Why was the Centre not helping us?" says Minzsial, one of the four Manipuri women who has traveled to the national capital from Manipur.

"We must provide better facilities for the people of Manipur," says Tarun Vijay, the Bharatiya Janata Party MP and president, Solidarity for the Youth of the Northeast. Vijay, who has been vocal in his support for the Manipuris, has raised the issue of the killings in Parliament.

Vijay also expresses concern about how "the entire North East is in the grip of unprecedented Christianisation with the help of foreign money."

The tribals are largely Christian while those living in the Imphal valley are mainly Hindus and Muslims. Culturally, the BJP has an affinity and sympathy for the Hindu population.

"With elections in 2017, it suits the BJP to allow this issue to simmer so that they can gain from the sympathy vote. That is the main reason why the central government is dragging its feet in the whole matter," alleges a senior member of the Manipur Tribal Forum, Delhi.

"We have met political leaders across all parties. And they all ask the same question: Why after eight months is the central government not moving to resolve this crisis? Civil society is crying out demanding a solution, yet nothing is happening," says another Manipur Tribal Forum, Delhi member.

"When we went to meet the chief minister he said he could do not anything as he was under pressure from the underground (militants) Meitie community who are living in Myanmar," the MTFD member adds.

The other equally crucial issue relates to the long history of subjugation and discrimination being faced by the tribals in Manipur.

Despite the fact that tribals across the country are covered by both the Fifth and Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, the Manipuri tribals are the only ones in India who are not protected by either Schedules.

"The Sixth Schedule applies to the tribals of Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. The Fifth Schedule applies to the tribals of the North East except Manipur," says T Romeo, convenor, Manipur Tribal Forum, Delhi.

"Initially, we were not covered because both Manipur and Tripura were princely states, but when the tribals of Tripura were covered by the Fifth Schedule, we Manipuris demanded we must also be included," he adds.

"Then prime minister P V Narasimha Rao had declared publicly that Manipuri tribals must also be protected by the Sixth Schedule, but this has not happened," says Romeo. "Are we any less Indians than the others? When we posed this question to Minister of State for Home Kiran Rijiju, he said this issue was linked with the Naga peace accord."

"But when we spoke to Naga leader T H Muivah, he told us, 'This is your Constitutional right, why should we object to it?" Romeo adds.

On December 9, a coffin rally was organised at Jantar Mantar in Delhi to mark 100 days of the Churachandpur killings. A similar, long-term, protest will be held at Jantar Mantar to highlight the Congress government's discriminatory practices in Manipur.

Protests in Churachandpur will continue till such time as the state government accedes to their demands. The four Manipur women who travelled to Delhi echo the sentiments of the public in their state.

"We will not bury our sons for another four years if need be," says Buonozamawi speaking for the aggrieved tribals of her state. "Let the world know the cruelty being practised against our young boys."
The king and Sanchez meet on Tuesday. ANGEL DIAZ ((EFE))

After meeting with Spains King Felipe VI on Tuesday afternoon, as part of the last round of talks with politicians before new elections will have to be called, Socialist Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sanchez announced that he had told the king that he will not have enough support to win a second investiture vote in Congress.

I dont have enough votes to unblock the opposition of the Popular Party [PP] and Podemos, Sanchez told reporters. The former party won most votes at the inconclusive December 20 elections in Spain, but fell well short of a majority. The latter, meanwhile, has refused to do deals with any of the other Spanish parties in the negotiations that have ensued.

Earlier in the day the Socialists had announced that they were in agreement with most of the policy points submitted by Valencian leftist party Compromis, with a view to forging a leftist alliance. But that deal was rejected outright by emerging center-right force Ciudadanos.

Speaking on Tuesday afternoon, Sanchez defended the deal he had reached with Ciudadanos, and which he took to Congress for the first investiture vote  which he ended up losing, despite the support of the new party.

But he had harsh words for Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos. Iglesias has slammed the door and bolted it, he said in reference to the refusal of the party chief to do a deal. He has put his positions ahead of change in this country. He never wanted to do a deal with the PSOE and never wanted to see a Socialist prime minister, he said. Perhaps Iglesias thinks that democracy is all about imposing and not about reaching consensus, he continued.

Change has been delayed by two months, but change will arrive, the PSOE chief said in reference to new elections, which will most likely be held in June.

English version by Simon Hunter.
NKR MoD: Two servicemen killed: all types of artillery weapons used

Nagorno-Karabakhs Defense Ministry reports that Azerbaijani violated the verbally agreed ceasefire 80 times on April 25-26 overnight, firing from almost all types of artillery weapons, including 60-mm mortars (26 shots), 82-mm mortars (75 shots), RPG-7 (7 shells), HHN-9 (2 shells) and HAN-17 (3 shells) grenade launchers and Zu-23-2 mm anti-aircraft twin-barreled autocannon (200 shells), TR-107 rocket launcher and tank. In addition to the military positions, the adversary also shelled Martakert settlement from MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher (14 shells). Mataghis was also shelled (8 shells). As a result of the ceasefire violations by the adversary, the DA contractual servicemen Tigran Mkhitar Poghosyan (born in 1992) and Aram Nikolay Arushanyan (born in 1972) received fatal gunshot wound. The NKR Ministry of Defense shares the heavy grief of loss and expresses its support to the family, relatives and fellow servicemen of the deceased servicemen. In order to neutralize the aggressive actions by the adversary, the Karabakh Army took preventive actions and opened targeted fire at the adversarys frontier positions and artillery bases, causing significant losses of manpower and military equipment. At the moment the situation is relatively calm along the entire Line of Contact between the opposing forces. On April 25-26 overnight 15 cases of ceasefire violation were registered in the northeastern part of the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border. The Azerbaijani side opened sporadic fire from different caliber rifle and sniper weapons in the direction of the Armenian positions. The RA AF vanguard units, displaying restraint, took retaliatory actions only in case of strict necessity and confidently keep the border situation under control. RA MoD
Cameroon: The process of naming a successor to traditional chiefs within the Metta ethnic group; consequences for refusing the title and whether there is state protection

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 8 February 2012 Citation / Document Symbol CMR103993.E Related Document(s) Cameroun : information sur le processus de designation des chefs traditionnels chez les Mettas; les consequences du refus de devenir chef et information indiquant si une protection est offerte par l'Etat Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Cameroon: The process of naming a successor to traditional chiefs within the Metta ethnic group; consequences for refusing the title and whether there is state protection, 8 February 2012, CMR103993.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f07d74.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

1. General Information on the Metta

Sources report that the Metta (or Meta) live in the Northwest region of Cameroon (MECUDA-USA n.d.; Heath Evangelical Church n.d.). A Welsh church that manages a project to translate the New Testament into the Metta language specifies that "[t]he Metta people live in the grasslands of the Bamenda plateau" in the Northwest region (ibid.). An online synopsis of a book on the Metta language (also known as Menemo) states that approximately 45,390 Metta speakers can be found in Northwest Cameroon (Fogwe Chibaka 2006).

2. The Process of Naming a Successor to Traditional Chiefs

2.1 Selection of a Successor

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, an ethnologist and associate researcher at the Paris-based Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales' Centre of African Studies (Centre d'etudes africaines), who has published on historical sociology in West Cameroon, stated that the selection of the successor to a chief within the Metta ethnic group is usually done by the existing chief before his death, who generally chooses one of his sons (4 Feb. 2012). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a professor emeritus of anthropology at University College London (UCL), who has published on ethnic identity in Cameroon and conducted fieldwork in the country, similarly stated that a chief chooses a successor among the legitimate children born to his wives (3 Feb. 2012). Sources said that the chief's relatives (Ethnologist 4 Feb. 2012) or the elders of the community (Professor Emeritus 3 Feb. 2012) would be made aware of who the successor is. The ethnologist also indicated that the chosen successor is generally not involved in the succession decision and may not campaign for the title (4 Feb. 2012). According to the ethnologist, it is also possible that important persons in the chief's entourage make their own choice of a successor (4 Feb. 2012).

It is the opinion of the UCL Professor of anthropology that "[t]here can be serious disputes between potential succes[s]ors and their supporters," with "accusations that the elders had been corrupted" (3 Feb. 2012). Somewhat similarly, the ethnologist stated that [translation] "violent disputes" over successions to "important or prestigious chieftaincies" may lead to violent conflicts (4 Feb. 2012). However, the ethnologist nuanced that the succession to [translation] "small chieftaincies" is not highly sought after, as these chieftaincies impose responsibilities without providing the resources to perform them (4 Feb. 2012).

2.2 The Process of Naming a Successor

The UCL Professor of anthropology stated that the choice of a successor is announced at the death of the existing chief (3 Feb. 2012). The ethnologist explained that the chosen successor is forcibly taken to the chief's hamlet on the day of succession to show that the successor yields to the group's will (Ethnologist 4 Feb. 2012). However, the ethnologist explained that this forced confinement of the successor is usually staged (ibid.). According to the UCL Professor, the "successor is taken in the sense that it is as[s]umed he might try to escape. But this is usually part of the ritual of being stripped of his former life to become invested with the title" (3 Feb. 2012). The ethnologist indicated that a new chief usually stays cloistered within the hamlet for a variable length of time, depending on the importance of the chieftaincy and the successor's occupations (4 Feb. 2012).

3. Consequences for Refusing the Title of Chief

The UCL Professor of anthropology stated that "it is generally true that a successor, once named, has to take the title" (3 Feb. 2012). The ethnologist said that in the case of a refusal, the process of a naming a successor becomes a [translation] "showdown" between the chosen successor and the deceased chief's entourage (Ethnologist 4 Feb. 2012). He further explained that if the chosen successor has the means to flee and to go live in the city, the deceased chief's entourage has little recourse (ibid.). Similarly, the UCL Professor mentioned that the chosen successor "may try to disappear into the big city [of] Yaounde or Douala or across the border into Nigeria" (3 Feb. 2012). He added that in the Metta villages, the designated successor may then "simply be forgotten after a suitable time and a new successor created" (Professor Emeritus 3 Feb. 2012). However, the ethnologist nuanced that depending on the entourage's capabilities and influence, the chosen successor may be subject to a variety of [translation] "pressures," including "moral pressure, sanctions imposed by the group, ostracism and, sometimes, physical violence" (4 Feb. 2012). For his part, the UCL Professor of anthropology stated that if a chosen successor refused to be installed and flees, "if he is captured, he might disappear in some mysterious circumstances so that a new successor could be installed" (3 Feb. 2012). He added that there have been cases where individuals involved in succession conflicts in large chieftaincies of the Grassfields have been poisoned (Professor Emeritus 3 Feb. 2012).

The ethnologist indicated that he was not aware of any legal recourse that could be taken against someone who refused a succession (4 Feb. 2012).

4. State Protection

The ethnologist explained that a designated successor who has been victim of physical violence could resort to criminal proceedings, provided that he has access to counselling, although he added that succession quarrels are not seen as different that any other types of disputes that could lead to violence (4 Feb. 2012). However, the UCL Professor of anthropology said that "[g]enerally, the Cameroon government will not interfere in succession disputes" (3 Feb. 2012). Nevertheless, he also said that in some instances where the designated successor refuses the title and tries to flee, the government might "[step] in and [insist] the elders choose another successor who will be more compliant" (Professor Emeritus 3 Feb. 2012). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a professor of anthropology who is also the Director of the African and African-American Studies Program at Carleton College, in Minnesota, likewise stated that in cases of disputes about succession of traditional chiefs within Cameroon in general, "[s]tate protection would be inadequate or non-existent" as "the state claims that it does not want to interfere with 'internal' affairs of chiefdoms" (26 Jan. 2012). He also stated that

royalty are often aligned with the party in power, while the greater populace in both eastern and western Grassfields chieftaincies are aligned with opposition parties (including the well-known SDF [Social Democratic Front], but also other opposition and pro-democracy movements/parties). A refusenik may be assumed to be part of the opposition and for this reason (often ungrounded) would not only not receive state protection but also be subject to police harassment. (Professor of anthropology 26 Jan. 2012)

Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Ethnologist and Associate Researcher, Centre d'etudes africaines, Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, Paris. 4 February 2012. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Fogwe Chibaka, Evelyn. 2006. A Grammatical Description of Metta (Cameroon) in Relation to Focus Parametric Variation Evident in Focalisation and Wh-fronted Questions. Grammatical Analyses of African Languages. Vol. 28. Edited by Wilhelm J. G. Mohlig and Bernd Heine. Cologne: Rudiger Koppe Verlag. [Accessed 1 Feb. 2012]

Heath Evangelical Church. N.d. Janice Spreda. "The Metta Story." [Accessed 24 Jan. 2012]

Meta' Cultural Development Association, USA Branch (MECUDA-USA.) N.d. "Home." [Accessed 31 Jan. 2012]

Professor of anthropology, Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota. 26 January 2012. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Professor Emeritus of anthropology, University College London (UCL). 3 February 2012. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: The following individuals were unable to provide information for this Response: a professor of anthropology, Amsterdam School for Social Research; a retired development sociologist, Bielefeld University; and a researcher at the GIGA Institute of African Affairs. Attempts to contact the following individuals were unsuccessful: a professor of anthropology, formerly at the University of Yaounde; the Director of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in France; and a professor of history, Humboldt University. A professor of comparative politics and development studies, University of Toronto, and representatives of the African Studies Association, in the United States, and of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom did not provide information within the time constraints of this Response.

Internet sites, including: Africa Confidential; Africa Knowledge Project; Africa Research Bulletin; African Studies Association; African Studies Association of the UK; African Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania; Cameroon News; Cameroun-online.com; Cameroon Tribune; Cameroon Web News; Cameroun Actualite; European Country of Origin Information Network; Factiva, Heinrich Boll Foundation; Ireland Refugee Documentation Centre; Jeune Afrique; United Kingdom Home Office; United Nations - Integrated Regional Information Networks, Refworld; United States Department of State.
Sri Lanka: Activity of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, including arrests, whether LTTE members have been responsible for extortion, disappearances or bombings since the government defeated the LTTE, and whether the LTTE has the capacity to regroup within Sri Lanka (2010-Feb. 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 15 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol LKA105432.E Related Document(s) Sri Lanka : information sur les activites des Tigres de liberation de l'Eelam tamoul (TLET) au Sri Lanka, y compris les arrestations; information indiquant si les TLET ont ete responsables d'actes d'extorsion, de disparitions ou de bombardements depuis que le gouvernement les a demanteles; si les TLET ont la capacite de se reconstituer au Sri Lanka (2010-fevrier 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Sri Lanka: Activity of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, including arrests, whether LTTE members have been responsible for extortion, disappearances or bombings since the government defeated the LTTE, and whether the LTTE has the capacity to regroup within Sri Lanka (2010-Feb. 2016), 15 March 2016, LKA105432.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f0b304.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

In a 2013 country guidance case concerning appellants from Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom's Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), the body "responsible for handling appeals against decisions made by the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum) relating to visa applications, asylum applications and the right to enter or stay in the UK" (UK n.d.), found that "[t]he LTTE in Sri Lanka itself is a spent force and there have been no terrorist incidents since the end of the civil war" (UK 5 July 2013, para. 356(2)). In its 2013 report, Freedom House indicates that in the territory previously controlled by the LTTE, "[its] rule has been replaced by that of the army, which controls most aspects of daily life, including local government in some districts" (Freedom House 2013). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, the Sri Lanka Project Director at International Crisis Group stated that "there is no evidence to indicate the LTTE still exists as an organisation anywhere in the world" (International Crisis Group 29 Feb. 2016). Similarly, according to a researcher at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS) at the University of Bristol, whose research focuses on post-war Sri Lanka and who conducted fieldwork in the country from 2012-2014,

[t]he LTTE as a fighting force was destroyed in May 2009 ... the organisation was rendered completely combat ineffective in a permanent sense, in that the vast majority of their fighters were killed or detained, their infrastructure decimated and their territory occupied and dominated. (Researcher 18 Feb. 2016)

The same source stated that since the end of the civil war, the government of Sri Lanka has maintained a heavy military and intelligence presence in the territory previously controlled by the LTTE and that the government "retains complete control over all areas of Sri Lanka" (ibid.).

A 2014 working paper on the history of the LTTE, published by the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) of the Graduate Institute Geneva, indicates that "[w]hile the LTTE military wing was almost totally annihilated during the last years and months of the war, the LTTE's international network remained largely intact" (CCDP Nov. 2014, 71). Similarly, the US Department of State's Country Reports on Terrorism for 2014 states that "[d]espite its military defeat at the hands of the Sri Lankan government in 2009, the LTTE's international network of sympathizers and financial support persists" (US June 2015, 365). According to a list of "terrorist entities" published online by the government of Canada's Department of Public Safety, "[a]lthough the LTTE was militarily defeated in May 2009, subversion, destabilization, and fundraising continue, particularly in the diaspora" (Canada 20 Nov. 2014).

According to the US Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook, the Sri Lankan government has released "the vast majority of former LTTE combatants captured by Government Security Forces" (US 11 Feb. 2016). In its report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in September 2014, the government of Sri Lanka states that, as of 31 July 2014, over 96 percent of the 12,288 "former LTTE combatants that have surrendered or come under court order" were "rehabilitated and integrated into society;" 157 were "undergoing rehabilitation" and 85 "remain under legal proceedings" (Sri Lanka 17 Sept. 2014, para. 25).

2. Activities of LTTE

According to the 2015 Crime and Safety Report for Sri Lanka, published by the US Department of State's Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), "[t]he LTTE leadership did not survive the war, and there have been no terrorist attacks since 2009" (US 4 May 2015). Similarly, sources report that there have not been any instances of extortion, disappearances, bombings or human rights violations perpetrated by the LTTE against the Sri Lankan population since 2009 (Researcher 18 Feb. 2016; International Crisis Group 29 Feb. 2016; Chair 15 Feb. 2016). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, the Chair of the Department of Conflict Analysis and Dispute Resolution (CADR) at Salisbury University, who specialises in conflict and peace-related issues in Sri Lanka, stated that the LTTE no longer has the capacity to engage in such activities (ibid.). Information on incidents of extortion, disappearances or bombings committed by LTTE since 2010 could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

2.1 Revival Attempts

Sources report that in 2014, security forces shot and killed three LTTE members leading an attempt to revive the LTTE in northern Sri Lanka (Daily Mirror 25 Apr. 2014; Sri Lanka 11 Apr. 2014; The Telegraph 11 Apr. 2014). Sources report that 65 people were arrested in connection with the revival attempt (ibid.; Daily Mirror 25 Apr. 2014). In a press release issued on 11 April 2014, the Ministry of Defence confirmed the killing "in the jungle off Padaviya" of three LTTE leaders, who "attempted resurgence of the LTTE" in Pallai in the Jaffna Peninsula (Sri Lanka 11 Apr. 2014). According to the press release,

[i]t was  revealed that this local group was functioning under the instructions of LTTE leaders Nediyawan and Vinayagam who are based in Europe. They were preparing the ground for another armed struggle. Immediate objectives of the local group included the recovery o[f] war like material dumped by the LTTE during retreat, re-establishment of LTTE intelligence network, regrouping of the potential cadre including those rehabilitated, collecting information on potential targets including in other provinces.

Investigations revealed that the funds for these activities  came from EuropeIt was also revealed that many safe houses, vehicles and other resources required for resurgence of the LTTE had been procured by them using this money. (ibid.)

According to sources, this was the first major military encounter that occurred between the LTTE and the government forces since the end of the civil war (The Telegraph 11 Apr. 2014; BBC 11 Apr. 2014). Furthermore, an article by the Daily Mirror, a Sri Lankan newspaper, states that the incident was the third attempt of LTTE revival since the war (Daily Mirror 25 Apr. 2014). According to the newspaper, the first two attempts, "about which very little details are available," occurred in 2012 (ibid.) The same source notes that in March 2012, the body of "a Tamil youth," a member of the Eelam Peoples Democratic Party (EPDP), [a pro-government paramilitary organisation (US 25 June 2015, 5)] was found in the Trincomalee district accompanied by a note saying "'death to traitors'" and an LTTE flag (Daily Mirror 25 Apr. 2014). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

Sources also report on an incident in December 2012, in which the LTTE attempted to recruit Tamil youth in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to carry out attacks on infrastructure in Sri Lanka (ibid.; The Times of India 20 Dec. 2012). According to the Daily Mirror, the arrest of "an unrehabilitated ex-LTTE cadre in Colombo" and six more Tamil youths, including two former Tigers who had formerly been rehabilitated and released, resulted in the discovery of a "clandestine campaign" in Tamil Nadu aimed at recruiting Tamil youth (The Daily Mirror 25 Apr. 2014). The same source reports that the recruits were being "indoctrinate[d]  with extreme LTTE ideology," with "[t]he ultimate objective  to infiltrate the island and conduct explosive attacks against key installations and important individuals in Sri Lanka" (ibid.). The source adds that this was being "financed by Tiger elements in Europe" (ibid.).

3. LTTE Capacity to Regroup

A January 2015 BBC article states that "the overwhelming majority of analysts" agree that there are no chances of the return of the Tamil militancy to Sri Lanka, "in the short term at least" (BBC 9 Jan. 2015). In his article on LTTE revival, R. Hariharan, a retired senior Indian military intelligence officer [1], who collected intelligence on the LTTE during his tenure as a member of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (International Law Journal of London 22 Jan. 2014), writes that "while the revival of the LTTE in Sri Lanka is possible, the current socio-political environment is not conducive for it. Neither the historical context nor the popular upsurge for an independent Eelam that fostered Tamil militancy in the 1980s exists today" (Hariharan 2014, 71). The Project Director at International Crisis Group stated that while many Tamils in Sri Lanka and abroad may still be sympathetic with the political goals of the LTTE, "it is highly unlikely it could regroup within Sri Lanka" (International Crisis Group 29 Feb. 2016). According to the same source, the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009

was followed by the collapse of its remaining international infrastructure following the arrest and rendition of the LTTE's international head, S. Pathmanathan (aka KP), in August 2009. It is likely that some hundreds, possibly thousands, of LTTE members escaped Sri Lanka in the final half-year of the war and are now living outside Sri Lanka. It is also certain that there remain many Sri Lankan Tamils outside Sri Lanka who once worked actively to support LTTE activities through fundraising and propaganda work. It seems likely that some of them still retain control over funds originally gathered to support the LTTE, but the amounts involved are not known. (ibid.)

According to the findings of the UK Upper Tribunal, "[the Government of Sri Lanka] is reasonably confident that there is a low risk of resurgence of the internal armed conflict from within Sri Lanka. Its concern is with the risk of resurgence coming from the diaspora" (UK 5 July 2013, para. 303). In a speech delivered at an international forum on global security held in Malaysia in April 2014, the Sri Lankan Secretary to the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development stated that "although there is no more terrorism in Sri Lanka, the terrorists' global network continues to function largely unhindered," adding that its operatives continue to engage in illegal activities "and are constantly seeking ways to revive terrorist activities in Sri Lanka" (Sri Lanka 29 Apr. 2014).

4. State Response

Sources report that the government continues to arbitrarily arrest suspected LTTE members (International Crisis Group 29 Feb. 2016; Human Rights Watch 2016, 530; AI 23 Feb. 2016, 340). For further information relating to the arrest and detention of Tamils suspected of being affiliated with the LTTE, see the Responses to Information Requests LKA105041.E and LKA105042.E

In March 2014, the government of Sri Lanka announced that it had designated 16 organizations, including the LTTE and 424 individuals, under paragraph 4(2) of the United Nations Regulations No. 1 of 2012 [2] (Sri Lanka 21 Mar. 2014). Human Rights Watch states that the resolution "empowers the government to designate individuals, groups or entities believed to 'commit or attempt to commit or participate in or facilitate the commission of terrorist acts' and freeze their financial assets and economic resources" (Human Rights Watch 7 Apr. 2014). According to the US Country Reports on Terrorism for 2014, the organizations and individuals placed on the designated list were said to be engaging in terrorist activities aimed at reviving the LTTE (US June 2015, 249). The same source states that the Sri Lankan government did not elaborate on the criteria or provide evidence for designation (ibid.).

In contrast, Human Rights Watch states that the designation was "aimed at restricting peaceful activism" of the Tamil population and "'putting all Tamil activists at risk by delegitimizing the major Tamil organisations abroad'" by linking them to the LTTE (Human Rights Watch 7 Apr. 2014).

According to a 2014 article published by Foreign Policy and written by a Washington-based Sri Lankan journalist and a former visiting fellow at Harvard University, the government's "narrative" that the LTTE is regrouping with assistance from the Tamil diaspora is a means for Sri Lanka to use the "counterterrorism narrative" in order to "hide its own crimes" with regards to "poor governance" and human rights abuses (Foreign Policy 23 June 2014). The Researcher stated that, in his opinion,

the government of Sri Lanka's position has overplayed the threat of a revived LTTE beyond all reasonable possibility. I conclude that the government's exaggeration of this practically non-existent threat has been part of an attempt by the government to promote a culture of fear within Sri Lanka and thereby justify militarisation and overly harsh methods of control and abuses of human rights by the government. (Researcher 18 Feb. 2015)

Similarly, Hariharan writes that the Sri Lankan government "has been keeping alive the threat" of LTTE revival for political gains and to maintain an "oversized" army presence in "permanent camps" in the Tamil regions (Hariharan 2014, 70-71). However, the same source states that

there is a strong case to suspect that the overseas LTTE had made a bid to revive the movement in Sri Lanka. The LTTE's overseas network had survived the total destruction of the LTTE and its entire leadership, including its founder V Prabhakaran, in May 2009. It has access to the LTTE's large assets stashed abroad, waiting to be tapped. So Sri Lanka's concerns on this count are real. (ibid.)

Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

In a March 2015 address to the parliament, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka, appointed in January 2015 after the country's elections (Sri Lanka n.d.), stated the following about the previous government's decision to designate the 16 organisations and 424 individuals on a UN terrorism list:

This was done to build up the hysteria about the LTTE regrouping. They banned several Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora groups under these provisions for their alleged links to the LTTE. However, most of the organisations listed may have merely been vocal proponents of Tamil rights. There was hardly any tangible evidence to link them to the LTTE. Some of the individuals listed had even been dead for some time. (Sri Lanka 18 Mar. 2015)

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Notes

[1] R. Hariharan's article is published in Scholar Warrior, a journal of the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) in New Delhi, which is "an autonomous think tank on strategic studies and land warfare in the Indian context" (CLAWS n.d.). According to the article, Hariharan is "a former military intelligence officer  associated with the Chennai Centre for China Studies and the South Asia Analysis Group" (Hariharan 2014).

[2] The United Nations Regulation No. 1 of 2012 is a Sri Lankan regulation, adopted by the Ministry of External Affairs of Sri Lanka on 13 May 2012, that facilitates the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001) on the fight against the financing of terrorism (Sri Lanka 15 May 2012).

References

Amnesty International (AI). 23 February 2016. "Sri Lanka." Amnesty International Report 2015/16: The State of the World's Human Rights. [Accessed 8 Feb. 2016]

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 9 January 2015. "Q&A: Post-war Sri Lanka." [Accessed 8 Feb. 2016]

_____. 11 April 2014. Charles Haviland. "Suspected Tamil Rebels Shot Dead in Sri Lanka." [Accessed 23 Feb. 2016]

Canada. 20 November 2014. Public Safety Canada. "Currently Listed Entities: Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)." [Accessed 18 Feb. 2016]

Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP), Graduate Institute Geneva. November 2014. Joanne Richards. An Institutional History of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). [Accessed 18 Feb. 2016]

Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS). N.d. "About Us." [Accessed 10 Mar. 2016]

Chair of the Department of Conflict Analysis and Dispute Resolution (CADR), Salisbury University. 15 February 2016. Telephone interview with the Research Directorate.

Daily Mirror. 25 April 2014. "Third Abortive Diaspora-backed Attempt to Revive the LTTE." [Accessed 17 Feb. 2016]

Foreign Policy. 23 June 2014. J.S. Tissainayagam. "LTTE: Sri Lanka's Scapegoat for Its Own Terror." [Accessed 17 Feb. 2016]

Freedom House. 2013. "Sri Lanka." Freedom in the World 2013. [Accessed 24 Feb. 2016]

Hariharan R. 2014. "Revival of Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka." Centre for Land Warfare Studies Scholar Warrior. [Accessed 17 Feb. 2016]

Human Rights Watch. 2016. "Sri Lanka." World Report 2016: Events of 2015. [Accessed 8 Feb. 2016]

_____. 7 April 2014. "Sri Lanka: Asset Freeze Threatens Peaceful Dissent." [Accessed 18 Feb. 2016]

International Crisis Group. 29 February 2016. Correspondence from the Sri Lanka Project Director to the Research Directorate.

International Law Journal of London. 22 January 2014. Parasaran Rangarajan interviewing Colonel Hariharan in "Interview with Indian Peacekeeping Forces Intelligence Corps Head Col. Hariharan (RH)." [Accessed 19 Feb. 2016]

Researcher, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS), University of Bristol. 18 February 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Sri Lanka. 18 March 2015. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "Statement by Hon Mangala Samaraweera, Minister of Foreign Affairs to Parliament on 18th March 2015." [Accessed 17 Feb. 2016]

_____. 17 September 2014. Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Article 40 of the Covenant: List of Issues in Relation to the Fifth Periodic Report of Sri Lanka. Addendum: Replies of Sri Lanka to the list of issues (CCPR/C/LKA/Q/5/Add.1). [Accessed 17 Feb. 2016]

_____. 29 April 2014. The Official Government News Portal of Sri Lanka. "Influence of Non-State Actors: Impact on Global Security." [Accessed 18 Feb. 2016]

_____. 11 April 2014. Ministry of Defence. "Press Release: Attempted Resurgence of the LTTE and the Incident in the Jungle off Padaviya on 11 April 2014." [Accessed 16 Feb. 2016]

_____. 21 March 2014. "Government Notifications: the United Nations Act No. 45 of 1968. List of Designated Persons, Groups & Entities Under Paragraph 4(2) of the United Nations Regulations No. 1 of 2012." Gazette Extraordinary of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. No. 1854/41. [Accessed 18 Mar. 2016]

_____. 15 May 2012. "Government Notifications: the United Nations Act, No. 45 of 1968. Regulations made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Under Section 2 of the United Nations Act, No. 45 of 1968." Gazette Extraordinary of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. No. 1758/19. [Accessed 11 Mar. 2013]

_____. N.d. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "Minister of Foreign Affairs." [Accessed 22 Feb. 2016]

The Telegraph. 11 April 2014. David Blair. "Sri Lankan Army Quash Tamil Revival in First Battle Since End of Civil War." [Accessed 19 Feb. 2016]

The Times of India. 20 December 2012. A. Selvaraj. "LTTE Operative, 3 Others Arrested." [Accessed 23 Feb. 2016]

United Kingdom (UK). 5 July 2013. Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber). GJ and Others (Post-Civil war: Returnees). Sri Lanka CG [2013] UKUT 319 (IAC) of 2013. [Accessed 16 Feb. 2016]

_____. N.d. Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber). "What We Do." [Accessed 8 Mar. 2016]

United States (US). 11 February 2016. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). "Sri Lanka." The World Factbook. [Accessed 22 Feb. 2016]

_____. 25 June 2015. Department of State. "Sri Lanka." Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2014. [Accessed 8 Feb. 2016]

_____. June 2015. Department of State. "Sri Lanka." Country Reports on Terrorism 2014. [Accessed 8 Feb. 2016]

_____. 4 May 2015. Department of State, Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC). "Sri Lanka." 2015 Crime and Safety Report. [Accessed 8 Feb. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: International Crisis Group; Post-doctoral fellow, Wilfred Laurier University; Professor, University of Gothenburg; Professor, Nanyang Technological University; Professor, Universite du Quebec a Montreal; Research Associate, National University of Singapore, Researcher, Centre for Land Warfare Studies.

Internet sites, including: Canada - Global Affairs Canada, High Commission in Colombo; ecoi.net; EU - European Parliament; Europol; Factiva; Interpol; Jane's Intelligence Review, Jane's Terrorism Watch Report; National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism; South Asia Terrorism Portal; Sunday Observer (Sri Lanka); UN - OHCHR, Refworld, UNHCR, UNODC, UN in Sri Lanka; York University (Canada); United States - Embassy to Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
Sri Lanka: The National Identity Card (NIC); its issuance, cost, validity period, security features and description of front and back

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 14 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol LKA105433.E Related Document(s) Sri Lanka : information sur la carte d'identite nationale; sa delivrance, son cout, sa periode de validite, ses caracteristiques de securite et la description de ses recto et verso Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Sri Lanka: The National Identity Card (NIC); its issuance, cost, validity period, security features and description of front and back, 14 March 2016, LKA105433.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f0e3f4.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

1. Handwritten NIC

In correspondence to the Research Directorate, the Canadian High Commission in Colombo stated that it had no information regarding changes to NICs since 2008 (Canada 16 Feb. 2016). For the description and security features of the handwritten NIC, see Response to Information Request LKA102742. A sample of the handwritten NIC is attached to this Response (Attachment 1).

2. Printed NIC

Sources report that as of February 2014, the Sri Lankan government would begin to issue printed NICs (Sunday Observer 2 Feb. 2014; Daily Mirror 25 Jan. 2014). In an article published in January 2014, The Daily Mirror, an English-language newspaper in Sri Lanka, cites the Commissioner General of the Registration of Persons as stating that "'[w]e still issue hand-written IDs'" (ibid.). The same source reports that on 28 February 2014, the first batch of approximately 200 new NICs were issued with printed data and that "the data will no longer be handwritten as before" (ibid. 28 Feb. 2014). According to a February 2014 article published by the Sunday Observer, an English-language Sri Lankan newspaper, the printed NICs would contain the following features:

Front page: the personal registration number, the photograph, date of issue, and the signature stamp of the Commissioner General of the Registration of Persons will be printed;

Back page: personal data, including name, address, date of birth, occupation [printed instead of handwritten as was done in the handwritten NIC in the past];

The NIC is printed "on special security proof paper" and the card is laminated with cut edges "to give a finishing" (Sunday Observer 2 Feb. 2014).

Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

Sources report that the new cards would be bilingual and issued in both the Sinhala and Tamil languages (ibid.; Daily Mirror 28 Feb. 2014). The Sunday Observer further specifies that, when issuing the new NICs, the personal data of the NIC holder will first be entered into a computer system in English and then transliterated into Sinhala and Tamil (Sunday Observer 2 Feb. 2014). A sample of a printed NIC that was published in an article by the Sunday Observer is attached to this Response (Attachment 2).

2.1 Issuance Procedures

According to information provided on the website of the Government Information Centre of Sri Lanka, NICs can be issued to a Sri Lankan citizen 16 years of age or older (Sri Lanka 7 Oct. 2010). First time applications can be obtained from and submitted to the Grama Niladhari [the Village Headman (ibid. 16 Aug. 2010)] of the applicant's residential area; or to the estate superintendent, if the applicant resides in an estate; or to a school principal or the Parivenadhipathi of a Pirivena [Buddhist monastic college (ibid. Jan. 2013)] for students (ibid. 7 Oct. 2010). According to the website of the Government Information Centre, applicants who wish to obtain NICs for "urgent purposes" may utilize a "one-day service" (ibid. 31 Oct. 2012). The applicant must appear in person at the Department of Registration of Persons to avail of this service, and if they are unable to present themselves, a "family member whose relationship  is supported by documentary evidence or [a] person who possesses an authorization letter by the applicant can obtain the applicant's NIC" (ibid.).

The fees for NIC applications are as follows:

for first time applications: 3.00 Sri Lankan rupees (LKR) (C$0.027) for applicants under 17 years of age, 13.00 LKR for applicants older than 17 (ibid. 7 Oct. 2010);

15.00 LKR for a "duplicate" NIC, "in respect of a lost ID card" (ibid. 5 Oct. 2010);

500.00 LKR (C$4.50) for a one-day service NIC (ibid. 31 Oct. 2012).

Information on the documents required to apply for NIC for the first time, and to obtain a duplicate, which is posted on the website of the Government Information Centre, is attached to this Response (Attachments 3 and 4 respectively).

3. 12-Digit NIC Number

According to a January 2016 article by Hiru News, a news portal of the Colombo-based Asia Broadcasting Corporation Private Ltd. (Hiru News n.d.), the government of Sri Lanka "has decided to issue a 12 digit national identification number card from the 1st of January 2016" (ibid. 1 Jan. 2016). Similarly, a 2 January 2016 article published by Sri Lanka Mirror, a "trilingual news website officially registered with the Ministry of Media and Information in Sri Lanka" (Sri Lanka Mirror n.d.), cites the Department of Registration of Persons as stating that a new national identity card would "begin to be printed within the next couple of months in accordance with international standards" (ibid. 2 Jan. 2016). News Radio, a news website of the Sri Lankan radio network TNL (TNL Radio Network n.d.), states that, according to the Department of Registration of Persons, the "previous 9 digit national identity card number will be printed while issuing the new 12 digit NICs  the previous 9 digit National ID number will be printed at the back of the new ID card" (News Radio 2 Jan. 2016). The same source reports that "[t]he first four digits of the NIC will contain the year of birth while a zero will be included before the final four digits" and that "the public can use the existing national identity card however the 12 digit national identity cards will be issued for the new applicants" (ibid.). According to sources, cards with a 12-digit number will not have an English letter as they did previously (ibid.; Sri Lanka Mirror 2 Jan. 2016).

Hiru News reports that the 12-digit cards "will be first printed according to the existing system. However, the Department of Registration of Persons has taken measures to print the ID on a plastic card from February onward" (Hiru News 1 Jan. 2016). News Radio similarly reports that NICs with a 12-digit number will be printed on a plastic card as of February 2016 (News Radio 2 Jan. 2016).

4. Electronic NICs

Sources report that the Sri Lankan government plans to introduce new electronic National Identity Cards (e-NICs) (SDW 15 Oct. 2015; Sri Lanka 4 Sept. 2014; The Sunday Times 31 Aug. 2014). According to a 15 October 2015 article published by Security Document World (SDW), a "web-based news portal" that provides information on "security-document and human identity centred solutions" (SDW n.d.), Sri Lankan officials confirmed that the e-NICS would be "issued to all before the end of 2017" (SDW 15 Oct. 2015). In November 2015, the Sunday Times, an English-language newspaper in Sri Lanka, cited the Internal Affairs Minister as stating that electronic NICs would not be issued for another two years (The Sunday Times 15 Nov. 2015). In contrast, a January 2016 article by a Sri Lankan news website, News First, quotes the Department of Registration of Persons as indicating that "they will begin to issue Electronic National Identity Cards within the next three months" (News First 6 Jan. 2016).

According to the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence, electronic NICs will include "the person's photograph, biometric authentication, bio data, fingerprints, and also the blood group" (Sri Lanka 4 Sept. 2014). Sources report that the new NIC will be available for persons 15 years of age and older (The Sunday Times 15 Nov. 2015; The Republic Square 26 Aug. 2014).

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Canada. 18 February 2016. High Commission of Canada to Sri Lanka. Correspondence from an official to the Research Directorate.

Daily Mirror. 28 February 2014. Yohan Perera. "Video: NICs with Printed Data for First Time in SL." [Accessed 11 Feb. 2016]

_____. 25 January 2014. Ajith Siriwardana and Indika Sri Aravinda. "Video: Computerised Bilingual IDs from Feb." [Accessed 11 Feb. 2016]

Hiru News. 1 January 2016. "New NIC's to Be Printed on a Plastic Card." [Accessed 3 Feb. 2016]

_____. N.d. "Contact Us." [Accessed 3 Feb. 2016]

News First. 6 January 2016. Rishan Hannan. "Electronic National ID Cards to Be Issued Within the Next Three Months." [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016]

News Radio. 2 January 2016. "New 12 Digit NICs to Carry the Previous Number." [Accessed 12 Feb. 2016]

The Republic Square. 26 August 2014. Shania Smith. "Sri Lanka's New e-NICs Collect Personal Data, Family Information, Adoption Details." [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016]

Security Document World (SDW). 15 October 2015. "Sri Lanka Pledges New eIDs for All in 2 Years." [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016]

_____. N.d. "About Us/Contact Us." [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016]

Sri Lanka. 18 December 2015. The Official Government News Portal of Sri Lanka. "Safety of Information Will Be Assured with New NIC." [Accessed 12 Feb. 2016]

_____. 4 September 2014. Ministry of Defence. " E-National ID Card is a Sign of Development." [Accessed 12 Feb. 2016]

_____. 3 July 2014. The Official Government News Portal of Sri Lanka. "New National Identity Cards to All by 2016." [Accessed 3 Feb. 2016]

_____. January 2013. Ministry of Education. Education First. [Accessed 7 Mar. 2016]

_____. 31 October 2012. Government Information Centre. "Obtaining Duplicate Identity Card Copies." [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016]

_____. 7 October 2010. Government Information Centre. "Obtaining a National Identity Card (NIC) for the First Time." [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016]

_____. 5 October 2010. Government Information Centre. "Obtaining Duplicate Identity Card Copies." [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016]

_____. 16 August 2010. Embassy of Sri Lanka, Washington DC. "Registration of Marriages." [Accessed 4 Mar. 2016]

Sri Lanka Mirror. 2 January 2016. "New NIC with 12 Digits from This Year." [Accessed 12 Feb. 2016]

_____. N.d. "About Us." [Accessed 3 Mar. 2016]

Sunday Observer. 2 February 2014. Kurulu Kariyakarawana. "Automated NICs from This Month." [Accessed 3 Feb. 2016]

The Sunday Times. 15 November 2015. Chrishanthi Christopher. "Biometric NICs Will Take Another 2 Years: Minister." [Accessed 3 Feb. 2016]

_____. 31 August 2014. Chandani Kirinde. "Concerns, Misgivings, Unease Aside, E-NIC Set to Invade Individual Privacy." [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016]

TNL Radio Network. N.d. "Profile." [Accessed 12 Feb. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Agriteam Canada; Canada - Canada Border Services Agency, High Commission in Sri Lanka; Sri Lanka - High Commission in Ottawa, Lanka Logistics & Technologies Ltd.

Internet sites, including: Amnesty International; ecoi.net; Factiva; Keesing's Reference Systems; Pakistan - National Database & Registration Authority; Sri Lanka - Consulate in Toronto, Department of Registration of Persons; Embassy in Washington DC, High Commissions in Canberra, Ottawa and London, Ministry of Defence; United Kingdom - Foreign and Commonwealth Office; United Nations - ICAO, Refworld; United States - Department of State, Embassy to Sri Lanka and Maldives.

Attachments

1. Keesing's Reference Systems. N.d. "Sri Lanka - Domestic Identity Card: General (B1)." [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016]

2. Sunday Observer. 2 February 2014. Kurulu Kariyakarawana. "Automated NICs from this Month." [Accessed 3 Feb. 2016]

3. Sri Lanka. 7 October 2010. Government Information Centre. "Obtaining a National Identity Card (NIC) for the First Time." [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016]

4. Sri Lanka. 5 October 2010. Government Information Centre. "Obtaining Duplicate Identity Card Copies." [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016]
Somalia: Security Council 'gravely concerned' over fragile security situation

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Somalia: Security Council 'gravely concerned' over fragile security situation, 22 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f24fb40b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

22 April 2016 - Expressing 'grave concern' at the fragility of the security situation in Somalia, the United Nations Security Council has called for progress on the constitutional review process in the country, and for the completion of the Federal State formation process to be accelerated.

In a press statement issued following a briefing to the Council earlier this week by the President of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Somalia, Michael Keating, the Council underlined that a "peaceful, transparent and inclusive" electoral process in 2016 will mark a "historic step forward" for all Somalis, and will be fundamental for the country's continued progress towards democracy and stability.

Expressing its full support for the Special Representative and the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM), the 15-member body recalled its expectation that there will be no extension of the electoral process timelines in Somalia, underlining the importance of good faith cooperation between federal and regional authorities in the country on these issues.

The Council also commended President Mohamud and the Federal Government of Somalia for the political progress made in the country in the past four years, in particular the agreement on a model for the electoral process planned for August 2016, which it said should be a "stepping stone" to one-person-one-vote elections in 2020.

In addition, the Council commended the Federal Government's commitment to reserve 30 per cent of seats in the Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament for women, calling on the Parliament to swiftly endorse the implementation plan decided by the National Leadership Forum as soon as possible.

Reiterating their "strong condemnation" of attacks and recruitment of children by the terrorist group Al-Shabaab, the members of the Council also underlined the importance of the continuation of offensive operations against Al-Shabaab by the Somali National Army and the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), in "a well-coordinated manner" and in line with the qualitative improvements requested in Council resolution 2232 (2015), and in full compliance with international humanitarian law and the protection of civilians.

The Council was also briefed by the African Union on the financial, operational and logistical challenges facing AMISOM. It underscored the importance of enhancing command and control, and improving coordination within AMISOM, as well as the importance of ongoing cooperation between the UN and the African Union.

Urging the swift completion of the National Security Policy and National Security Architecture, the Council also welcomed the Federal Government of Somalia's steps to establish professional, inclusive and accountable security forces, with sound financial management.

Expressing its full support for this process, the Council encouraged the Government to intensify efforts, urging Member States to contribute to the process and reiterating that security sector reform is critical to enable Somalia to assume control of its own long-term security.

In addition, the Council expressed concern about the fragile humanitarian situation in Somalia and the humanitarian impact of El Nino, urging all parties to facilitate "timely, unhindered and safe" access for humanitarian actors and to find durable solutions for the 1.1 million Somalis who are internally displaced.
Baghdad suicide bombing an act of 'unparalleled criminality' UN envoy

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Baghdad suicide bombing an act of 'unparalleled criminality' UN envoy, 22 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f250e40d.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

22 April 2016 - The most senior UN official in Iraq has strongly condemned a terrorist suicide bombing that targeted worshippers at a mosque in Radwaniya in southern Baghdad today, killing and injuring many innocent civilians.

"Targeting innocent people during Friday prayers is an act of unparalleled criminality," said Jan Kubis, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq, in a press release.

He offered condolences to the families of the victims and wished the injured speedy recovery.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) also underlined that the terrorists aim from such attacks is to weaken national unity and undermine the State.

"Da'esh terrorists benefit from the Iraqis' divisions and disputes. The answer to such crimes is for Iraqis of all affiliations and backgrounds to redouble their efforts to work towards unity and reconciliation," Mr. Kubis stressed.

He called on the Iraqi Government to do its utmost to bring those behind the terrorist attacks to justice.
Right to adequate housing in India a matter of 'urgency'  UN expert

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Right to adequate housing in India a matter of 'urgency'  UN expert, 22 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f254c40d.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

22 April 2016 - Expressing grave concern over a number of issues regarding the right to housing in India, an independent United Nations human rights expert today called on the Government for immediate attention and implementation of the right to ensure adequate housing for the most disadvantaged.

"I am extremely concerned for the millions of people who experience exclusion, discrimination, evictions, insecure tenure, homelessness and who lack hope of accessing affordable and adequate housing in their lifetimes," Leilani Farha, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, warned at the end of her two-week official visit to the country.

Discrimination and social exclusion, urban homelessness, and evictions are among some most complex housing issues, according to the UN rights expert.

"I have been told that evictions are most often carried out against the most vulnerable populations, most of whom are living below the poverty line," said Ms. Farha, adding that "forced evictions are often implemented without any consultation with residents, without sufficient or any notice, and commonly result in homelessness."

While recognizing India's efforts to address disparities and the living conditions in slums throughout the country, as well as ensuring water, sanitation and electricity in some rehabilitation and redevelopment sites, Ms. Farha stressed that much more needs to be done to improve mounting inequality in urban areas.

"A two-track policy response is urgently needed, one that addresses the backlog of housing shortage, and the other that prepares India for upcoming housing needs," she said.

The UN expert further urged the Government to adopt national housing legislation based in both its national and international human rights commitments.

A moratorium on evictions, immediate obligations to adequately address homelessness, and that is in line with some of its most progressive state plans for in situ rehabilitation for slum dwellers are of great urgency and priority, Ms. Farha noted.

Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.
Burundi: one year into political crisis, UN agency warns thousands of people still fleeing country

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Burundi: one year into political crisis, UN agency warns thousands of people still fleeing country, 22 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f256340c.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

22 April 2016 - One year after the crisis in Burundi began, the United Nations refugee agency today said that almost 260,000 people have fled the country, warning that the number could increase by thousands throughout the year  unless a political solution is found and a civil war averted.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), to date, 259,132 people have fled the country, and we are planning our humanitarian response based on a figure of some 330,000 refugees by year's end.

In spite of the increasing difficulty in crossing borders, people continue to arrive in neighbouring countries with reports of human rights abuses in Burundi that include torture, sexual violence, arbitrary detention and extortion.

Speaking from the Palais des Nations, UNHCR spokesperson Leo Dobbs said that continuing international support is needed to help ease the tension and encourage an inclusive dialogue.

With mass returns not currently expected soon, UNHCR will in the coming year put greater emphasis on education for children and youth, and encourage refugees to become self-sufficient at a time when budget shortfalls are leading to cuts in some assistance.

UNHCR noted that it is seeking almost $175.1 million for its Burundi crisis operations this year, yet has to date only received $47.8 million  or some 27 per cent.

This means we are struggling to provide even the basics such as shelter, household items and latrines. The provision of services such as specialized counselling, care for the disabled and elderly, protection of the environment and even primary health care may also fall by the way side, he explained.

The situation one year in is tense and marked by sporadic violence that has killed more than 400 since last year. At least 25,000 people having fled to safer areas in Makamba, Rutana and Kirundo, however freedom of movement is becoming onerous.

While people continue to cross to neighbouring countries from the provinces of Ruyigi, Muyinga, Kirundo, Rutana, Makamba, Rumonge, Bujumbura and Kibitoke, small numbers have been returning spontaneously.

Meanwhile, worsening economic conditions inside Burundi threaten to exacerbate the situation, fuelling further displacement and discouraging refugees and thousands of internally displaced from returning home under.

Tough exile conditions

Mr. Dobbs said elaborated that large refugee influxes would present further challenges to the already arduous conditions.

Of the 135,941 Burundian refugees in Tanzania, more than 71,000 live in an overcrowded camp in Nyarugusu, which has become one of the largest refugee camps in the world. Already living under very hard conditions, the country continues to admit an average 130 people a day. UNHCR has put a priority on decongesting the camp.

In Rwanda, host to some 76,404 people, arrivals continue to be registered at a rate of about 130 per week. Urban refugees have been increasingly approaching UNHCR to move to Mahama camp, in the Eastern province, after spending the last of their savings to keep alive.

Uganda, where some 24,583 have sought safety, the April arrival rate has levelled off to about 25-35 a day. Last week, 167 Burundian refugees who arrived at the Nakivale settlement reported difficulties crossing borders, especially without papers.

At the same time, refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which currently accommodates 22,204 people, have steadily increased  with the first three months of this year registering 900 people each. Most are staying at the Lusenda camp, which, with a capacity for 18,000, now hosts more than 16,000 refugees.

Despite space restrictions and capacity problems, these countries generously continue to accept people, but will need increased international support to host more.

We urge host countries to keep their doors open and donors to continue and step up support for the refugee response, UNHCR concluded.
Yemen stands 'closer than ever to peace,' says UN envoy, as talks continue in Kuwait

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Yemen stands 'closer than ever to peace,' says UN envoy, as talks continue in Kuwait, 22 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f25ed40b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

22 April 2016 - The United Nations envoy for Yemen said that today's sessions of the UN-brokered peace negotiations among Yemeni parties were "positive and promising," as both sides continue to work towards achieving an agreement on ending the violence and devastation in the country.

"We hope they will forge a long-awaited new phase, the phase of peace, security and respect for human rights," said Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, UN Special Envoy for Yemen, in a press release.

The envoy said that despite "alarming breaches" in some areas to the cessation of hostilities pact that came into force at midnight on 10 April, there has been a marked improvement in security, according to independent sources. This morning, he heard about clashes in Taiz and other regions.

"We have called on all concerned parties to address these violations and we are actively following up on these issues," the envoy said from Kuwait, where the talks are under way.

In particular, he commended the De-escalation and Coordination Committee (DCC) and local committees for their continuing efforts to strengthen the cessation of hostilities.

The envoy said that the current round of the talks will focus on five points that are based on UN Security Council resolution 2216 and the agreed-upon agenda that guided the Biel Talks this past December.

"We in the United Nations do not believe that these points have to be implemented sequentially. We have proposed that committees working in parallel to discuss implementation mechanisms in each area," the envoy said.

The overall objective of the peace talks - which opened yesterday in Kuwait after a three-day delay - is to reach a comprehensive agreement that lays the foundations for a return to a "peaceful and orderly transition" based on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) initiative and its implementation mechanism and the outcomes of the National Dialogue Conference.

The proposed working plan constitutes a strong framework for a new political process that would help Yemen and Yemenis achieve stability and live in peace, Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed noted.

"Reaching a practical and positive solution undoubtedly requires concessions from all sides. These concessions will reflect their commitment and efforts to reach an inclusive agreement," the special envoy said.

"Today's sessions were positive and promising," he added.

Calling the present time a "critical juncture," the special envoy highlighted that security, stability and rights for the Yemeni people are the top priorities.

"Yemenis are the beating heart of Yemen," the envoy said.

"I am aware that the situation is critical and the conflict has been going on for a long time, but I am also certain that the Yemenis will never give up. Today, we stand closer than ever to peace," he stressed.

Turning to the participants in the talks, the special envoy reminded them that their political positions make them responsible for the Yemeni people.

"Consult your conscience, address discord in a positive spirit and transform disputes into differences that enrich the political life while maintaining the social fabric and civil peace," Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed emphasized.
Syria peace talks to continue 'as planned' into next week  UN envoy

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Syria peace talks to continue 'as planned' into next week  UN envoy, 22 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f260e411.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

22 April 2016 - The UN envoy mediating a resolution to the crisis in Syria today announced that the latest round of peace talks will continue as planned through Wednesday, despite reports that the opposition delegation could suspend its official participation due to the lack of progress on the humanitarian front.

"Bottom line, I plan to continue the proximity talks both at formal level and at technical level until next week, probably Wednesday as originally planned," said UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura at a press conference in Geneva on the state of the intra-Syrian talks he has been mediating.

"We need to try until Wednesday to get as deep as possible in the areas we have been starting discussing" he added, noting that he thinks he will be in a position by the middle of next week to report on where negotiations are and what has been reached during this round of talks.

Mr. de Mistura also indicated that according to all "objective criteria," the cessation of hostilities is still in effect: "I repeat, is still in effect. None of the sides have renounced to it [] But it is in great trouble if we do not act quickly."

He reminded reporters that the central point of the talks is to get ideas, concepts, and a vision of what could be either the Transitional Governing Body or what the Government is referring to as the "Government of broad-base."

"The secret for us and the usefulness of these proximity talks is to get the respective visions of what is their view of the political transition and that is what we have been working on," he said, highlighting that the difference compared to past talks is that both sides are aiming for a political transition.

He recalled how on Monday, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) - the opposition delegation - showed "displeasure" about the non-progress of the humanitarian situation by talking about postponing their official participation in the talks.

"But luckily there is also a strong feeling of urgency in not dropping what is the mother of all issues: political transition, and getting deeper in this," Mr. de Mistura said. "And therefore since Monday, we have been having formal meetings with the Government, and been able to consult and meet representatives of the Moscow, Cairo, Damascus platforms, the Women Advisory Board, civil society and indeed at the technical level, we had very deep meetings with the HNC representatives."
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Ban welcomes South Sudan Government's decision to accept proposal on return of Riek Machar

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Ban welcomes South Sudan Government's decision to accept proposal on return of Riek Machar, 22 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f262840b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

22 April 2016 - Welcoming the decision of the Government of South Sudan to accept the compromise proposal on the arrangements for the return of First Vice President-designate Riek Machar to the country, United Nations Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon today expressed the hope the deal would enable the swift formation of the transitional unity government.

According to a statement issued by Mr. Ban's spokesperson, the compromise was developed through the efforts of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (JMEC) along with regional and international partners.

"The Secretary-General is hopeful that this will enable the swift formation of the Transitional Government of National Unity, and the full implementation of the country's peace agreement," said the statement, adding that maintaining a spirit of cooperation will be crucial as the country's leaders begin the work of reversing the years of destruction this conflict has brought upon the people of South Sudan.

The statement said that Mr. Ban now calls on Mr. Machar to return to the capital, Juba, without delay and without further conditions which could jeopardize the fragile peace process and prolong the suffering of the South Sudanese people.

The UN chief in his statement commended the efforts of JMEC Chairperson, former President Festus Mogae [Botswana] and of the African Union High Representative, former President Alpha Konare [Malia], to resolve the impasse.

"He urges all regional and international partners to support actively the continued implementation of the peace agreement," the statement concludes.

The Secretary-General emphasized the importance of quickly establishing the Transitional Government of National Unity, which was agreed to as part of a peace agreement signed in August of last year by both South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and his former deputy, Mr. Machar.
Security Council deplores maritime tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 23 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Security Council deplores maritime tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea, 23 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f264540d.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

23 April 2016 - The United Nations Security Council has deplored the recent maritime tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea that resulted in up to 500 deaths when an overcrowded boat capsized en route from Libya to Europe, emphasizing the need for better coordination of efforts to deal with the smuggling of migrants.

In a press statement, the members of the Council expressed grave concern at the proliferation of, and endangerment of lives by, the smuggling of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea, including off the coast of Libya.

The members of the Security Council expressed their concern at the implications for regional stability posed by transnational organized crime and illicit activities such as human trafficking and the smuggling of migrants and condemned and deplored the said acts which undermine further the process of stabilization of Libya and endanger the lives of people, the statement said.

Extending its deepest condolences to all those affected by the tragedy, the Council underlined the need bring the perpetrators of the acts to justice.

The Council also called for the full implementation of resolution 2240 (2015), which is intended to disrupt the organized criminal enterprises engaged in migrant smuggling and prevent the loss of life.

Expressing its strong support to countries in the region affected by the smuggling of migrants, the Council emphasized the need to improve coordination of efforts in order to strengthen an effective multilateral response to this common challenge, and in order to protect vulnerable migrants from being victimized by human traffickers.

The Council also urged all Member States, including countries of origin, destination and transit, to cooperate with one another and with relevant international and regional organizations, including the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in addressing illicit migration flows, and dismantling smuggling networks in the region.

In addition, the Council reemphasized that migrants, including asylum-seekers and regardless of their migration status, should be treated with humanity and dignity and that their rights should be fully respected.

In this regard, the Council urged all States to comply with their obligations under international law, including international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and refugee law.

Earlier this week, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that as many as 500 people had lost their lives when an overcrowded boat carrying refugees and migrants sank in the Mediterranean Sea at an unknown location between Libya and Italy.

The 41 survivors of the incident  which could be one of the worst involving refugees and migrants in the past 12 months  include 37 men, 3 women and a 3-year-old child who were rescued by a merchant ship and taken to Kalamata, in the Peloponnese peninsula of Greece, on 16 April, UNHCR said.

Those rescued include 23 Somalis, 11 Ethiopians, 6 Egyptians and a Sudanese.

The survivors told UNHCR staff that they had been part of a group of between 100 and 200 people who departed last week from a locality near Tobruk in Libya on a 30-metre-long boat.
DR Congo: UN envoy expresses 'serious concern' over rising political tensions

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 23 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, DR Congo: UN envoy expresses 'serious concern' over rising political tensions, 23 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f267040b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

23 April 2016 - The head of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) has expressed serious concern about rising political tensions in some parts of the country.

In a press release, MONUSCO said the situation follows the announcement by certain political groups and parties of their intention to organize political gatherings in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, and subsequent measures taken by the security forces to prevent the holding of these gatherings.

According to the statement, Maman Sidikou, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the DRC and Head of MONUSCO, stresses the need for all Congolese political actors to demonstrate maximum restraint during this critical period in the political evolution of their country.

He urges the Congolese authorities to do their utmost to scrupulously uphold the rule of law and desist from any actions that could impede political actors from exercising their constitutional rights and freedoms, including the freedom of expression, association and assembly, the statement also said.

Mr. Sidikou reaffirmed the critical importance of adequate political space to foster a genuinely inclusive political dialogue that would pave the way for the holding of peaceful, transparent and credible elections.

In that regard, he reiterated the readiness of MONUSCO to support the African Union-designated facilitator, Edem Kodji, and work with him in the pursuit of his efforts, bearing in mind the relevant provisions of Security Council resolution 2277 (2016) and the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Good Governance.
Yemen: UN envoy says 'significant differences' remain in talks, but notes consensus on peace

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 24 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Yemen: UN envoy says 'significant differences' remain in talks, but notes consensus on peace, 24 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f26a240b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

24 April 2016 - The fourth day of the United Nations-brokered peace negotiations among Yemeni parties in Kuwait included extensive discussions on security, political and humanitarian issues in meetings in joint sessions as wells as bilateral sessions with each delegation, the UN envoy for Yemen has said today.

Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, UN Special Envoy for Yemen, said in a press release that significant differences in the delegations' points of view remain but nonetheless there is consensus on the need to make peace and to work intensively towards an agreement.

Representatives from the two sides, who were appointed yesterday to support the work of the De-escalation and Coordination Committee, acknowledged there has been notable improvement in the security situation in most parts of the country, the envoy said.

During today's discussions, the delegations proposed a number of practical measures to also strengthen Local De-escalation Committees, which the special envoy said are playing a critical role in support of the cessation of hostilities.

Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed said he met with the heads of delegations and representatives of the diplomatic community to review the latest developments and find mechanisms of advancing the pace of the discussion.

There are only two alternatives; war or peace and everyone should assume responsibility for the choices they make, he added.

Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed also said he intends to intensify his efforts to reinforce the cessation of hostilities and to resume the talks tomorrow morning.
Somalia: sexual violence must be subject to criminal justice, says UN expert

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 25 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Somalia: sexual violence must be subject to criminal justice, says UN expert, 25 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f26c742c.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

25 April 2016 - A United Nations human rights expert today called on the Government of Somalia to enhance the capacity of the judiciary and police force in handling cases of sexual and gender-based violence, and to prohibit the handling of such cases by traditional clan elders.

"I call on the Government to prioritize the creation and implementation of a twin strategy: to enhance the capacity of the judiciary and the Somali Police force, and to prohibit clan and traditional elders from resolving or adjudicating such cases," said the UN Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Somalia, Bahame Tom Nyanduga, in a press release.

"There is also a crucial need to create human rights awareness among clan elders and religious leaders about women's rights, as one way of facilitating change within communities," he added.

Mr. Nyanduga began his visit to Somalia on 16 April. During his mission, he visited Mogadishu, Kismayo and Baidoa, and met the Speaker of the Federal Parliament, Federal Government authorities in Mogadishu, representatives of Jubbaland state, and the South West state.

On Saturday, at the end of his third mission to the country, Mr. Nyanduga noted that the Xeer Somali traditional dispute resolution system continues to play a key role in the country, given that rule of law institutions are still being established. He was concerned to learn that traditional elders adjudicate sexual and gender-based violence cases, such as rape, due to the absence of a fully functioning criminal justice system in many parts of Somalia.

He called for the adoption of the Sexual Offences Bill during the forthcoming session of Parliament to further guarantee the protection of women's rights and also urged the Government to implement the recommendations arising from Somalia's 2016 Universal Periodic Review before the Human Rights Council, including the adoption of a moratorium on the death penalty.

Mr. Nyanduga commended the Federal and regional authorities and Parliament for committing themselves to holding elections later this year, widening the electoral base and ensuring that a 30 per cent women representation is met. However, he expressed concern that representation of youth, minorities and persons with disabilities, is not similarly guaranteed.

Independent Expert on the Situation of Human Rights in Somalia Bahame Tom Mukariya Nyanduga. UN Photo/Ilyas Ahmed

The Independent Expert also reiterated the need to address the human rights challenges that journalists and media in Somalia face. He warned that the Media Law must not be used as a tool to harass journalists, but rather to ensure respect for the rights to freedom of opinion and expression.

He noted with satisfaction the Government's commitment to adopt the National Human Rights Commission Bill, establishing an independent National Human Rights Institution before the end of its tenure, and urged that this commitment be met.

"However, another bill, the Counter Terrorism Bill, could potentially negatively affect the enjoyment of human rights," Mr. Nyanduga said. "I urge the authorities to ensure that this bill conforms to international human rights guarantees in accordance with Somalia's international human rights obligations and the revised Federal Constitution. To be effective in fighting terrorism, the law must be firmly entrenched in human rights."

AMISOM's role in Somalia

The Independent Expert commended the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) for the role it continues to play in the country. He noted its commitment to comply with human rights and international humanitarian law, including ensuring accountability for violations committed by its forces. Regarding the incident on the killing of the four civilians by AMISOM forces in Bullo Mareer, Lower Shabelle, the expert urged the Mission to conduct thorough, independent investigations and make the findings of its inquiries public.

In this regard, he welcomed the plan by the UN and AMISOM to hold the first UN Human Rights Due Diligence Policy implementation review workshop on 26 and 27 April, urging that stronger collaboration on the ground will foster compliance with human rights and international humanitarian law, which is a shared objective for both the United Nations and the African Union.

Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.
Equality and justice 'not luxuries' but crucial foundations of Iraq's stability  deputy UN rights chief

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 25 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Equality and justice 'not luxuries' but crucial foundations of Iraq's stability  deputy UN rights chief, 25 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f26df40b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

25 April 2016 - Iraq must immediately take concrete steps to plan for "the day after" the defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a senior United Nations human rights official urged today, calling for measures grounded in equality, the rule of law and a vision that has earned the confidence of all the country's diverse communities.

"Iraq, it seems, has a long memory but is short on vision," UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kate Gilmore, said at the end of a week-long visit to the crisis-gripped country.

"It is like a vehicle travelling over rocky terrain, with a large rear view mirror but only a keyhole for a windscreen, despite a vicious contest for the wheel. The dominant narrative among many of Iraq's leaders is of 'my community's grievance,' failing to acknowledge the widespread nature of Iraqis' suffering and failing to chart a course for an inclusive future."

She added that Iraqis are "crying out for fairness, recognition, justice, appreciation and meaningful participation in shaping their future - a process that goes forward and not backwards."

"All the leaders of Iraq, at every level, in both word and action, need to demonstrate a far greater commitment to peace, equality and to the rule of law than to grievances or to vengeance hardwired by sectarianism. There is a worrying absence of a political narrative that brings together all the diverse communities in Iraq, a narrative that includes all the minority communities. This must be urgently addressed," she warned.

'Future is not solely a matter of defeating ISIL'

Ms. Gilmore stressed that Iraq's challenges are not military alone and its future is not solely a matter of defeating ISIL and liberating its territories.

"The existence of armed conflict in certain regions does not excuse or justify the absence of the rule of law in the broader Iraq. Judicial independence, an end to arbitrary detentions, respect for due process, the prohibition of torture - these are neither ideals nor luxuries, but are indispensable foundations of stability," she said.

"Firm steps must be taken - now - to plan for the day after ISIL, steps that broaden inclusion and deepen fairness, including through structured local, regional and national dialogue on inclusion, peaceful co-existence and mutual respect," she continued.

Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore (left) meets with the Chair of Iraq's Parliamentary Human Rights Committee Arshid al Salehi. Photo: UN Iraq

"Unchecked corruption, lack of accountability for past and present crimes, the problem of tribal militias, the growing number of internally displaced people, the partial or total destruction of entire villages and towns, violence against women, and the need for constitutional and legislative reforms are some of the many pressing human rights concerns in Iraq that need priority attention," she stressed.

Abuses perpetrated by ISIL 'must neither be forgotten, nor silenced'

During her mission to Iraq, Ms. Gilmore visited Baghdad, Najaf, Erbil and the Shariya camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Dohuk. She met the Minister of Foreign Affairs and other senior Government officials, as well as the President of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, leaders of civil society, including religious and ethnic communities, human rights defenders, and survivors of human rights violations.

"The blight of ISIL was made tragically clear by the stories of survivors of violations that we met in IDP camps in Dohuk. The Yezidi man who was forcibly convicted, subjected to mock executions and who witnessed a pregnant woman stoned to death; the woman who was subjected to sexual slavery for more than a year; the man whose entire family - wife, daughters, son - were abducted by ISIL and who couldn't afford the $30,000 ransom demanded for their release," Ms. Gilmore recounted, in an emotional statement.

"The human rights abuses being perpetrated by ISIL must neither be forgotten, nor silenced. The right to truth is crucial, as is the possibility of accountability for those who have committed what may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity or even genocide. Evidence must be preserved and testimony must continue to be gathered," he insisted.

The Deputy High Commissioner also urged the international community to provide more support to humanitarian needs, the rebuilding of essential infrastructure and towards justice and reconciliation in Iraq.

"We all have responsibilities towards the people of Iraq. While there is an international military coalition in place, a comparably resourced international coalition of practical compassion is also needed to help with the building blocks towards a sustained peace in Iraq," she said.
UN report reveals increasing incidents of female genital mutilation in Guinea, including on infants

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 25 April 2016 Related Document(s) Rapport sur les droits humains et la pratique des mutilations genitales feminines/excision en Guinee Cite as UN News Service, UN report reveals increasing incidents of female genital mutilation in Guinea, including on infants, 25 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f26fe40b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

25 April 2016 - Despite being forbidden by national and international law, according to a new United Nations report, female genital mutilation shows no sign of abating in Guinea - with more infants and very young girls undergoing the excisions than before.

"Although female genital mutilation appears to be decreasing worldwide, this is not the case in Guinea, where this practice is widespread in every region and among every ethnic, religious and social group," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein in a press release on the report.

In recent years, female genital mutilation and/or excision has been inflicted on girls at a younger age. According to a recent study, 69 per cent of women aged 20 to 24 were excised before the age of 10.

In Guinea, female genital mutilation is mostly seen as an initiation rite. Groups of girls from multiple families are often excised together, either at home or in camps. However, due to financial constraints and out of fear of legal sanctions, the report shows an increasing trend towards individual excisions, especially when it comes to excising infants or very young girls.

Although FGM/E is usually carried out by traditional excision practitioners, there is also a growing trend towards its medicalization - despite a 2010 decree specifically prohibiting public or private health institutions from practicing it.

Mr. Zeid noted that after Somalia, Guinea had the highest rate of female genital mutilation in the world, by far surpassing its immediate neighbours - Senegal, with 25 per cent; Cote d'Ivoire, with 38 per cent; and Liberia with 50 per cent.

"Female genital mutilation is not only extremely detrimental to women and girls' health and well-being, it is also an atrocious act of violence. There is no possible justification for this practice - no cultural, religious or medical reason whatsoever," he said.

While most women in countries where the practice is still occurring advocate for its abolition, an increasing number in Guinea support it. A study by the Institut national de la statistique showed that the proportion of women and girls in favour of the practice rose from 65 per cent in 1999 to 76 per cent in 2012.

Six-year-old Asmah Mohamad, who was forced to undergo the painful FGM/C procedure, is is comforted by her mother Bedria.  UNICEF/NYHQ2005-2229/Getachew

"Broadly speaking, non-excision of girls is considered dishonourable in Guinean society," the report said. "Social pressure is such that girls may request excision for fear of being excluded or forced to remain unmarried if they do not suffer the practice."

No repercussions

The report acknowledged that the Guinean Government has attempted to prevent and sanction the practice by adopting numerous legislative texts and regulations, and organizing training for judicial, security and medical personnel. However, due to some political and religious leaders' support, these efforts have thus far not resulted in any decrease of this harmful practice.

According to the report, the persistence of the practice is in large part due to the lack of action by the judicial authorities.

The report said: "Generally speaking, legal texts prohibiting [female genital mutilation and/or excision are not respected. Thousands of young girls are excised across the country every year, during school vacations, with the full knowledge of judicial personnel, including prosecutors and instructing magistrates."

Excision practitioners are rarely subjected to legal proceedings and no medical professionals have been sanctioned for carrying out female genital mutilation. The report also notes that when justice personnel have tried to address the issue, they have often been subjected to severe pressure and threats. Since 2014, only eight people have been convicted in connection with FGM/E and all of them received suspended sentences and/or small fines.

The report warned that Government-, national and international organization-launched awareness campaigns focusing on associated health risks have, paradoxically, seemed to have contributed to the medicalization of the practice rather than to its reduction.

The report made several recommendations to the Government, non-governmental organizations and the international community to enhance the fight against female genital mutilation. In particular, it calls on the authorities to ensure the full respect and enforcement of all relevant legislation, with independent and impartial investigation of every suspected case of such excision, and the prosecution of perpetrators and their accomplices.
UN chief condemns murder of Burundian General and his family in Bujumbura

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 25 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN chief condemns murder of Burundian General and his family in Bujumbura, 25 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f27ae40c.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

25 April 2016 - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the assassination of Brigadier General Athanase Kararuza, his wife and daughter today in the crisis-torn country's capital, Bujumbura.

According to a statement issued by Mr. Ban's Spokesperson, Brigadier General Kararuza had served in senior positions in both the African-led International Support Mission to the Central African Republic (MISCA) and the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA).

Extending his deepest condolences to all affected by this tragic loss, the UN chief said the assassination of Brigadier General Kararuza comes in the wake of several instances of politically-motivated assassination attempts in Burundi over recent weeks, including yesterday's attack on Martin Nivyabandi, Minister of Human Rights, Social Affairs and Gender, as well as those on prominent members of the security forces.

"All such acts of violence serve no purpose other than to worsen the already volatile situation in Burundi. The Secretary-General urges that a rigorous and prompt investigation of these events is undertaken," the statement indicated.

"The Secretary-General underlines that a political process is the only way for Burundians to put their country back on the path of national reconciliation and peace. He calls on all political leaders, including those in exile, to firmly renounce the use of violence in pursuit of political agendas and commit to an inclusive and genuine dialogue," it added, noting that the UN will continue to provide its full support and assistance to all efforts aimed at promoting a peaceful settlement in Burundi.

It has been one year since the political crisis in the country began; according to the UN, to date more than 400 people have been killed and almost 260,000 people have fled the country.
Security Council urges stronger regional approach on eradicating piracy in Gulf of Guinea

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 25 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Security Council urges stronger regional approach on eradicating piracy in Gulf of Guinea, 25 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f27ee40b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

25 April 2016 - United Nations officials today reiterated a call for a comprehensive regional framework to eradicate piracy and armed robbery at sea in the Gulf of Guinea, with the Security Council stressing the importance of addressing underlying causes and strengthening justice systems and judicial cooperation in the region.

"The Security Council remains deeply concerned about the threat that piracy and armed robbery at sea in the Gulf of Guinea pose to international navigation, the security and economic development of States in the region, to the safety and welfare of seafarers and other persons, as well as the safety of commercial maritime routes," the 15-member body said in a presidential statement adopted today.

Expressing its deep concern at the reported number of incidents and level of violence of acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea in the Gulf of Guinea since 2014, the Council strongly condemned the acts of murder, kidnapping, hostage-taking and robbery by pirates operating in the Gulf of Guinea and called upon States in the region to cooperate on the prosecution of suspected pirates and intensify efforts to secure the safe and immediate release of all seafarers held hostage in or around the Gulf of Guinea.

"The Security Council emphasizes that regional peace and stability, the strengthening of State institutions, economic and social development and respect for human rights, and the rule of law, are all necessary to create the conditions for a durable eradication of piracy and armed robbery at sea in the Gulf of Guinea," the presidential statement said.

The Council also encouraged States in the region, regional organizations and international partners to make fully operational all the regional counter piracy and armed robbery at sea mechanisms, and urged bilateral and multilateral partners to continue assisting States of the Gulf of Guinea with funds, skills, training and equipment.

At today's meeting, the Security Council heard from Taye-Brook Zerihoun, Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, who noted that while there has been a steady decline in the number of recorded incidents of piracy, armed robbery at sea and other illicit and illegal activities in the Gulf of Guinea over the past few years, insecurity at sea remains a source of concern.

In the first quarter of 2016, the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre recorded six attacks and six attempted attacks in the Gulf of Guinea, including nine in Nigeria, one in Cote d'Ivoire, and two within the territorial waters of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mr. Zerihoun said.

"Ultimately, countering the current threats requires a combination of capacities in including qualitative improvements in the collection of intelligence; the sharing and improved analyses of intelligence; enhancement of the capacities - both infrastructure and training - of local enforcement agencies of the Gulf of Guinea countries; and the establishment of an effective customs and border control system throughout the sub-region," he said.

In addition, he said it is important to avoid duplication of international capacity-building efforts with respect to maritime safety and security in the Gulf of Guinea.

Mr. Zerihoun noted that the African Union (AU) is scheduled to hold an Extraordinary Summit on Maritime Security and Development for Africa on 15 and 16 October 2016 in Lome, Togo.

"We believe the Summit will provide a unique opportunity for the countries of the region to renew their commitment to jointly enhance the maritime security architecture in the Gulf of Guinea," he said.
Haiti: UN chief 'deeply concerned' as agreed upon election deadline goes unmet

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 25 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Haiti: UN chief 'deeply concerned' as agreed upon election deadline goes unmet, 25 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f282f40d.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

25 April 2016 - Deeply concerned that the agreed upon date for holding elections in Haiti was not met over the weekend and that no alternate electoral calendar was announced, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today reiterated his strong support for the completion, "without delay," of the 2015 polls.

A statement issued by his spokesperson noted that the agreed upon date of 24 April set in the 5 February Agreement for the holding of elections in Haiti was not met.

"The Secretary-General reiterates his strong support for the completion, without further delay, of the 2015 elections and calls on all Haitian actors to ensure the prompt return to constitutional order, as the country can ill afford a period of prolonged transitional governance while facing major socio-economic and humanitarian challenges," said the statement.

Noting the intended establishment of a commission to evaluate and verify the elections held in 2015, Mr. Ban in his statement stressed the need to conclude the process with the required urgency.

"The Secretary-General reaffirms the commitment of the United Nations to extend its full support to the Haitian people in the fulfilment of their democratic aspirations," the statement concluded.

The political agreement signed February 5, 2016 between the main political actors in the country set out a roadmap for the rapid conclusion of the electoral process initiated in Haiti August 9, 2015.
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Thailand: UN human rights chief concerned over growing military role in Government

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Thailand: UN human rights chief concerned over growing military role in Government, 22 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f283d40d.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

22 April 2016 - The United Nations human rights chief today on expressed growing concern about the military's deepening role in Thailand's civilian administration, as well as tight curbs on dissent, as the country prepares to vote on a final draft Constitution.

An open and dynamic public debate on the draft Constitution would foster national unity, strengthen the legitimacy and acceptance of the Constitution and provide a sense of collective ownership, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a statement.

I urge the Government to actively encourage, rather than discourage, dialogue and engagement on the draft Constitution. This would be an important step in establishing a solid foundation for a sustainable democracy in Thailand, he added.

The High Commissioner said that several critics of the draft Constitution have already been arbitrarily arrested, detained and harassed since the draft was made public at the end of March.

On Monday, former Government minister Watana Muangsook was detained by the military over remarks he posted on social media criticizing the draft. He was released on bail yesterday. On Tuesday, five human rights defenders were taken into military custody for joining a peaceful assembly against the Government's restrictions, but have since been released, the High Commissioner said.

Mr. Zeid expressed particular concern that the clampdown on criticism would intensify following hardline comments by the Prime Minister and other senior Government figures. A new law governing the referendum places limits on groups and individuals advocating for or against the draft Constitution. The law, which is awaiting royal assent, could be interpreted arbitrarily and used against opponents, the High Commissioner said.

While Mr. Zeid said he appreciated that the public had been allowed to make submissions and some human rights provisions have been incorporated into the draft Constitution, he stressed the need for the general public, members of political parties, and civil society, including non-governmental organizations, journalists and academics, to be given the space to express their views without fear of harassment, reprisals or arrests.

According to Mr. Zeid's Office, since the military coup of 2014, the Thai Government has issued a number of new orders to strengthen the role of the military in policy-making and law enforcement after years of political upheaval and violent protests.

Extending the military's powers is not the answer to rebuilding Thailand's political landscape, the High Commissioner said. On the contrary, Thailand has competent civilian institutions and should be looking to strengthen the rule of law and good governance, not undermine it.

The High Commissioner said that on 30 March 2016, the military Government issued Order Number 13/2016 providing military officers and paramilitary forces with a range of powers over a number of offences under at least 27 laws. These include authorizing officers to search places, seize assets, suspend financial transactions, ban suspects from travelling and detain individuals for up to seven days, without any warrant, judicial oversight or administrative accountability.

Although the Government has stated these powers are targeted at organised crime, there are fears they will be used against opponents. Another order issued by the National Council of Peace and Order (NCPO) on 4 April 2016 gives the military more power in the Southern Border Provinces of Thailand, which have been prone to violence and conflict.

In addition, the final draft Constitution released in March institutionalizes the role of the military in policymaking and law enforcement. Section 265 and 279 of the draft provide for the legalization and continuation of military orders issued under Article 44 of the Interim Constitution, which has effectively allowed the head of the NCPO to issue any legislative, executive or judicial order. Over the past year, 61 NCPO orders have been issued under Article 44, Mr. Zeid said.

As a matter of priority, I call on the Government to suspend the application of these dangerously sweeping laws and orders that have bestowed more power upon the military, the High Commissioner said.

He also repeated a call for all cases involving civilians to be transferred from military to civilian courts. In addition, the High Commissioner appealed to the Thai Government to fully abide by the international human rights treaties it has ratified.
Two thirds of unimmunized children live in conflict-affected countries  UNICEF

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Two thirds of unimmunized children live in conflict-affected countries  UNICEF, 22 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f28a9411.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

22 April 2016 - Almost two thirds of children who have not been immunized with basic vaccines live in countries that are either partially or entirely affected by conflict, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said today, ahead of World Immunization Week.

Of countries in conflict, South Sudan has the highest percentage of unimmunized children, with 61 per cent not receiving the most basic childhood vaccines, followed by Somalia (58 per cent) and Syria (57 per cent), UNICEF said in a press release.

"Conflict creates an ideal environment for disease outbreaks," said UNICEF Chief of Immunization Robin Nandy. "Children miss out on basic immunizations because of the breakdown - and sometimes deliberate destruction - of vital health services. Even when medical services are available, insecurity in the area often prevents them from reaching children."

The major causes of childhood illness and death include measles, diarrhoea, respiratory infections and malnutrition, which can worsen in conflict and emergencies, according to UNICEF.

When children contract measles in non-conflict settings, less than one per cent of them die. In areas where crowding and malnutrition are rife, such as refugee camps, child deaths from measles can increase to up to 30 per cent of cases. Overcrowding and lack of basic necessities like food, water and shelter make children even more vulnerable to disease, the agency noted.

Children in areas in conflict also see the killing of health workers and the destruction of medical facilities, supplies and equipment, all of which have a disastrous effect on their health.

Conflict-affected areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan are the last remaining strongholds of poliovirus, which has otherwise been eliminated from the rest of the world, UNICEF said.

In Syria, immunization levels have decreased from more than 80 per cent in 2010, prior to the conflict, to 43 per cent in 2014. Polio resurfaced in the country in 2013, after 14 years with no cases.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more than 2,000 suspected cases of measles have already been reported in 2016, with 17 deaths, most of them among children under five years old.

UNICEF said vaccination - particularly against highly contagious measles - is a high priority in humanitarian emergencies and is a central part of its response to protect children's health in such settings.

In Syria, a vaccination campaign planned to start on Sunday will target young children who have missed out on routine vaccination, especially those in besieged and hard-to-reach areas. Many of these children, born since the conflict began, have never been vaccinated, UNICEF said.

The agency said that during 2014-2015, it supported emergency immunization campaigns against measles for more than 23 million children in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

In emergencies and conflicts, UNICEF works with partners to restart the cold chain for vaccines and other essential medical supplies; put health teams back in place; and train health workers to provide immunization, nutrition screening, vitamin A supplements and medical treatment for women and children.

Immunization in conflict helps to revive other badly needed health services. For example, in conflict-affected areas of Iraq, Syria and Yemen, health workers also offer health and nutrition services, as well as care for childhood illnesses, to populations that come forward in response to immunization campaigns.

"Children affected by conflict are pushed into a downward spiral of deprivation that robs them of their health and, by extension, their futures. Vaccination can help to break this vicious cycle," said Mr. Nandy. "Immunization is a vital service that deserves and requires protection from all parties to a conflict."

World Immunization Week is marked annually at the end of April to promote the use of life-saving vaccines for all children - particularly those who are consistently excluded. The event is observed by UNICEF, immunization partners, governments and civil society organizations around the world. World Immunization Week 2016 runs from 24 to 30 April.
'Make peace your choice' urges UN envoy, as Yemen talks begin in Kuwait

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 21 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, 'Make peace your choice' urges UN envoy, as Yemen talks begin in Kuwait, 21 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f28c3411.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

21 April 2016 - Following a three-day delay, the United Nations-brokered peace negotiations among Yemeni parties started today in Kuwait, with the aim of reaching an agreement on a clear way to end the violence and devastation in the country.

"The consultations should provide a strong foundation for a new political consensus, to help Yemen achieve the stability and security that its people deserve and its future requires," Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for Yemen said in a press release. "The path to peace may be difficult but I believe that it is clearly in reach if all parties engage in good faith."

The talks will seek to develop agreements which will restore security and peace in the country, strengthen state institutions and help speed economic recovery. In order to provide a conducive environment for the talks and enable expanded humanitarian assistance, a cessation of hostilities came into force at midnight on 10 April.

Despite some serious violations in various areas, reports indicate that there has been a noticeable improvement in the security situation.

"The choice today is between two paths; a safe country that guarantees the stability and the rights of all, or the broken land where children die on daily basis," the special envoy said at the outset of the talks.

Praising the constant work of the De-escalation and Coordination Committee (DCC) and the Local De-escalation Committees, he urged the delegations to work together to overcome their differences and to develop compromise solutions based on the framework of Security Council resolution 2216.

"Differences in opinion are permissible but there are always middle grounds," he said. "Gaps are plentiful but constructive ideas can address them. Challenges may hinder us but solutions are available. Divisions exist but they can be overcome. Most regimes in the world are built upon the diversity of their political spectrum which is turned into a positive force."

"It is impossible to turn the clock backwards and change the past but we can look forward to the future and improve the present," he stressed. "Peace is a choice, make it your choice," he added.

The opening ceremony was also attended by Sheikh Sabah Khaled Alhamad AlSabah, the First Deputy Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kuwait.
Egypt: Ban calls for fair trial standards in judicial proceedings against rights defenders

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 20 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Egypt: Ban calls for fair trial standards in judicial proceedings against rights defenders, 20 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f28df193.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

20 April 2016 - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has announced he is closely following the judicial proceedings in Egypt against a number of civil society organizations and human rights defenders.

Case number 173, commonly referred to as "the case on foreign funding of civil society", is expected to resume on Wednesday in Cairo. In March, UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein expressed grave concern over the closure of hundreds of non-governmental organizations in Egypt and the prosecutions of numerous rights defenders for their legitimate work, urging the Government to end such repressive measures.

"Defendants in the case must be able to benefit from all due process and fair trial standards," indicated a statement issued by Mr. Ban's spokesperson.

The UN chief also underscored the important role that civil society plays in ensuring that States meet developmental, social and civic objectives and obligations. He stressed the need for human rights defenders and civil society in general, as well as the media, to work without undue restrictions.

"The Secretary-General notes that the Government of Egypt has accepted a number of recommendations under the second Universal Periodic Review cycle to promote and protect the rights to freedom of association, as well as to adopt a new non-governmental organization (NGO) law that is compliant with the Egyptian Constitution and international human rights," the statement added.
UN refugee agency says up to 500 lives lost after boat sinks in Mediterranean

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 20 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN refugee agency says up to 500 lives lost after boat sinks in Mediterranean, 20 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2a3640d.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

20 April 2016 - The United Nations refugee agency said today that as many as 500 people may have lost their lives this past week when an overcrowded boat carrying refugees and migrants sank in the Mediterranean Sea at an unknown location between Libya and Italy.

The 41 survivors of the incident - which, if confirmed, could be one of the worst involving refugees and migrants in the past 12 months - include 37 men, 3 women and a 3-year-old child who were rescued by a merchant ship and taken to Kalamata, in the Peloponnese peninsula of Greece, on 16 April, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a press release.

Those rescued include 23 Somalis, 11 Ethiopians, 6 Egyptians and a Sudanese.

The survivors told UNHCR staff that they had been part of a group of between 100 and 200 people who departed last week from a locality near Tobruk in Libya on a 30-metre-long boat.

"After several hours at sea, the smugglers in charge of the boat attempted to transfer the passengers to a larger ship carrying hundreds of people in terribly overcrowded conditions," UNHCR said. "At one point during the transfer, the larger boat capsized and sank."

The survivors include people who had not yet boarded the larger vessel, as well as some who managed to swim back to the smaller boat. They drifted at sea possibly for three days before being spotted and rescued, the agency said.

UNHCR visited the survivors at the local stadium of Kalamata, where they have been temporarily housed by local authorities while they undergo police procedures.

Thus far this year, 179,552 refugees and migrants have reached Europe by sea across the Mediterranean and Aegean. At least 761 have died or gone missing attempting the journey, UNHCR said.

The agency reiterated a call for increased regular pathways for the admission of refugees and asylum-seekers to Europe, including resettlement and humanitarian admission programmes, family reunification, private sponsorship and student and work visas for refugees.

"These will all serve to reduce the demand for people smuggling and dangerous irregular sea journeys," UNHCR said.
Ban strongly condemns violent demonstrations in northern Mali

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 20 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Ban strongly condemns violent demonstrations in northern Mali, 20 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2a4f40c.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

20 April 2016 - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has strongly condemned the violent demonstrations that took place on Monday 18 April, in Kidal, in the north of Mali, which, according to preliminary information, left two protesters dead and several others injured.

Regretting the loss of life and injury, the Secretary-General, in a statement issued by his spokesperson, also regretted the unacceptable damage to the Kidal airfield, a crucial asset for the delivery of services and support to the people in the region, including by the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA).

Mr. Ban expressed his sincere condolences to the families of those who have died, and wished a prompt recovery to the injured. Further, the statement expressed the UN chief's commitment to establishing the facts surrounding the loss of life and injury.

The Secretary-General urgently calls on all concerned and local leaders, including the leaders of the Coordination des mouvements de L'Azawad to cooperate in defusing tensions and exercising restraint so as to allow for a prompt investigation into the events, the statement continued, and underscored that a return to calm and order in the area would facilitate a resumption of the functioning of the airfield in Kidal and promote common efforts in support of the peace agreement.

Finally, Mr. Ban reiterated the United Nations' commitment to supporting the stabilization of Mali and implementation of the peace agreement.
Hundreds evacuated from four besieged areas in Syria  UN mediator

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 21 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Hundreds evacuated from four besieged areas in Syria  UN mediator, 21 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2a7d40d.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

21 April 2016 - In what he called "modest but very real" progress on the humanitarian track of the crisis in Syria, the United Nations envoy for the country today reported that, among other steps, more than 500,000 civilians have been reached during the cessation of hostilities, and yesterday, some 500 people were medically evacuated from several besieged areas.

"So far, 560,000 people have been reached, between hard-to-reach areas and besieged areas. This means that about 220,000 people in the besieged areas have been so far reached, which is more or less half the people [in those areas]," UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura told reporters in Geneva, where he has been mediating intra-Syrian talks towards a resolution to the five-year conflict.

He went on to say that 515 people were medically evacuated yesterday, simultaneously from Zabadani, Madaya, Kefraya and Foah, with the very active participation of the Syrian Arab Red Cross (SARC) and "with a lot of homework done by the UN."

"Another [example] of modest but real progress is the fact that Khawla Mattar - a woman, I want to underline, because we should remember that when we have the privilege of having courageous colleagues like her - led a convoy for the first time since 2012 to Darayya," Mr. de Mistura said, underscoring that Darayya, a suburb of the capital, Damascus, "has become a symbol of inaccessibility."

"Her report is certainly a wake-up call," he continued, noting that there are children there and other civilians in need of food and medicine. "And we will, together with, hopefully everyone who has been helping us, in particular I must give credit to the Russian Federation, who had been certainly arguing very much in favour of this UN convoy to Darayya [] we will follow-up on this. It is clear we cannot stop at simply a fact finding, there is a need to follow-up," he said.

Turning to Deir ez-Zor he spotlighted eight "successful and unprecedented, from that altitude - about 5,000 to 6000 meters - [air drops]," which have reached an estimated 65,000 people, according to World Food Programme (WFP). He said WFP has reported that it plans to double the number of the agency's air drops, and that he hoped the required funding would be made available.

As for issues of concern he said "we are not yet there" on the parties allowing in medical supplies. Items like dialysis equipment have still not been allowed through. In addition, vitamins, antibiotics, pain killers, surgical items, and basic medical kits were not allowed by the Ministry of Health in Syria the other day when they were supposed to go by convoy.

"And this is not only worrisome but unacceptable according to international law. Even the worst enemies should allow this," said Mr. de Mistura, reiterating that medical items have become an urgent priority request from the humanitarian taskforce, in particular to the Government of Syria.

"That of course applies to all besieged areas including Kefraya and Foah, not only those besieged by the Government," he added.

He went on to note that the Humanitarian Taskforce also addressed problems caused by the armed opposition, in particular the access by SARC, to reach and start working again in Azaz and eastern Aleppo. On detainees he announced that he would nominate senior person working with his team to address the issue of detainees and abducted people.

"[The] bottom line is there has been modest but real progress, not enough to make us comfortable at all [] the Humanitarian Taskforce is very much involved in pushing this to become more solid. If humanitarian aid increases, as should be, and the cessation of hostilities goes back into what we consider a 'hopeful mood,' that will certainly help the political discussions," Mr. de Mistura explained, adding that he plans to brief the press again tomorrow on the state of the political track.
Central Africa Republic: UN condemns killing of Moroccan peacekeeper

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 18 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Central Africa Republic: UN condemns killing of Moroccan peacekeeper, 18 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2ad8411.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

18 April 2016 - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the killing of a Moroccan peacekeeper from the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) yesterday in the town of Rafai in Mbomou prefecture.

In a statement attributable to his spokesman, the Secretary-General said the incident occurred when a MINUSCA patrol was dispatched to Rafai in response to an attack on the nearby village of Agoumar by alleged elements of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

The peacekeeper was shot by unknown assailants and succumbed to his wounds later that afternoon.

"The Secretary-General reiterates that attacks against those who are working towards peace and security in the Central African Republic are unacceptable," the statement said. "He calls on the newly elected Government to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice."

The UN chief also offered his sincere condolences to the family of the victim and to Morocco.

Later in the day, the members of the UN Security Council also condemned the attack, as well as all attacks and provocations against MINUSCA by armed groups. They reiterated that attacks against peacekeepers may constitute war crimes and reminded all parties of their obligations under international humanitarian law. They called on the CAR Government to investigate this attack and hold the perpetrators to account.

Council members reiterated their full support for MINUSCA to assist the newly-elected Government, which bears the primary responsibility to protect its population, and the people of the Central African Republic in their efforts to bring lasting peace and stability to their country.
Addressing sexual violence central to Mali peace process, UN envoy says

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 18 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Addressing sexual violence central to Mali peace process, UN envoy says, 18 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2af740d.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

18 April 2016 - Concluding her first visit to Mali, a United Nations envoy has stressed the need to make the issue of sexual violence in conflict a central consideration of the ongoing peace process in the African country.

During the 11-17 April visit, Zainab Hawa Bangura, the Secretary-General's Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, discussed a joint communique that outlines critical actions that must be taken in the areas of security, justice and services.

The communique will serve as a framework for cooperation for action in key areas such as fighting impunity that is essential for prevention; legislative reform and strengthening the justice system; and, specific action plans of the army and police.

One of the critical gaps that must also be addressed is the lack of adequate medical, psychosocial and other services for survivors. The sexual and gender-based violence sector is the most underfunded area of the humanitarian response for Mali, she stressed.

The Special Representative also emphasized that the unimaginable suffering of the victims must serve as a collective call to action.

"It is our sacred duty to survivors and their families to make this one of the central considerations of the ongoing peace process, because if we do not, it will undermine the possibility and durability of our efforts to resolve the crisis in Mali," she said. "I stand in solidarity with the victims as well as all those women, children and men who remain acutely vulnerable to sexual violence in Mali and conflicts the world over," she added.

During the visit, she met with Prime Minister Modibo Keita, and held extensive consultations with ministers of defence, security and civilian protection, justice, religious affairs, health and women's affairs, as well as the heads of the army, police and gendarmerie.

She also met with the President of the National Assembly, the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, religious and community leaders, the diplomatic and donor community, women's groups, human rights associations, service providers and UN staff.

Ms. Bangura also spoke with representatives of armed groups under Coordination des Mouvements de l'Azawad (CMA) and Plateforme who are signatories to the Peace Agreement, to tell them that they must make specific commitments to prevent and punish sexual violence crimes. A majority of violations are being perpetrated by armed groups, as well as the extremist or terrorist groups operating in Mali.

She received assurances from religious leaders that they will speak out against conflict-related sexual violence, particularly in the context of violations being committed by extremists such as Ansar Dine, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

"As a Muslim woman, I understand the role religion plays and how it is being used in some contexts, including Mali, to further the strategic objectives of violent extremists groups," she said. "They are using it as a recruitment incentive to entice fighters with the promise of women, or for fundraising through the trafficking and sale of women and girls. This is an affront to the most sacred and fundamental tenets of Islam."

The Special Representative met with survivors of sexual violence when she visited Timbuktu, in Northern Mali, where a large proportion of conflict-related sexual violence cases have been documented.

"Not only do they endure the devastating physical and psychological trauma of rape, but long afterwards they continue to suffer as they and their children are cast out and shunned by husbands, families and communities," she said. "Sexual violence is the only human rights violation where the stigma and shame are focused on the victims rather than the perpetrators. Everyone has a role to play to change this unacceptable reality and raise the cost and consequences for committing these crimes."
Syria: UN envoy to 'take stock' of peace talks by week's end

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 18 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Syria: UN envoy to 'take stock' of peace talks by week's end, 18 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2b1b40b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

18 April 2016 - Following reports that the opposition delegation had announced a pause in the intra-Syrian talks under way at United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, the UN envoy mediating a resolution to the crisis said today that he plans on continuing discussions with all sides and take stock of the situation on Friday.

"On the political track, we should not, and no one should, expect that after five years of conflict, a political transition by miracle in one week is sold. Let's be frank about that," Staffan de Mistura, UN Special Envoy for Syria, told the press after separate meetings with the delegations of the Syrian Government and the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC).

"In fact, indeed, there is one major improvement in what we used to have: everybody agrees the word 'political transition' is the point of the agenda. So far our discussion with the two sides has been focusing on what is the interpretation of the political transition, but (there is) no doubt about the need of doing that," he added.

Mr. de Mistura said the HNC told him of their intension to remain in their hotel in Geneva, and possibly, at his suggestion, to pursue technical discussions with himself and his team, particularly on the issues related to Security Council resolution 2254 and the political transition.

"They do realize that this requires time and cannot be solved in one week or three days," he stressed.

The envoy said he plans to continue discussions and consultations with every side, "in the Palais or anywhere else," and on Friday will "take stock of the discussions, review what we have come up with, having learned from every side their own positions, and then decide on how and when to move forward on what is expected to be a series of discussions, on and off, in order to focus on concrete political transition."

It is no secret, Mr. de Mistura said, that one side is insisting on the implementation of the Transitional Governing Body and the other side - the Government - has been indicating their interest in launching an initiative for a broad-based Government.

"Both of them are claiming that this is the road towards political transition. The gap is clearly wide, but this is exactly the nature of negotiations. Especially when the agreement exists about the fact that there is no doubt that there needs to be a political transition, according to Security Council resolution 2254," he said.

"Our strategy is to be able to get, from each of the two sides, as much information as possible of their own vision and see whether there are some areas that can be combined in view of the need of producing a real political transition," he continued.

"As you know, the timetable is up to August. That is what has been so far seen as a timetable for getting a new constitution and getting the political transition. So, we do have some time, not much in history, but we do, and it is certainly not today or tomorrow," he said.

Providing an assessment of developments in Syria, Mr. de Mistura noted that the cessation of hostilities is still holding in many areas, but that there is an increase in fighting.

"No one can deny that the fighting currently taking place in some areas, particularly in Aleppo, is becoming particularly worrisome," he said.

In addition, the envoy said that humanitarian access is still "going too slowly." Some convoys might be moving tomorrow, and there were indications about evacuations of wounded and sick people. There might also be some vaccination campaigns over the weekend, although progress on that front was also too slow. Both issues and concerns would be raised at the two task forces tomorrow, he said.

"Indeed, if this trend continues, which is still worrisome, we will be obviously expecting and hoping that the two co-chairs of [the International Syria Support Group] ISSG will be convening a special meeting," he said.

Mr. de Mistura added that there was a small fact-finding mission in Daraya, led by Khawla Mattar, who is working on behalf of his office. Ms. Daraya will report tomorrow, he noted.
Title China: Decree No. 637 of 2013, Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Administration of the Entry and Exit of Foreigners

Publication Date 12 July 2013

Country China

Cite as National Legislative Bodies / National Authorities, China: Decree No. 637 of 2013, Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Administration of the Entry and Exit of Foreigners, 12 July 2013, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2b318.html [accessed 24 October 2022]

Comments This is an unofficial translation.
UN envoy announces delay in Yemen peace talks

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 18 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN envoy announces delay in Yemen peace talks, 18 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2b3240b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

18 April 2016 - The United Nations envoy for Yemen has announced that the start of the Yemeni-Yemeni peace negotiations set to begin today in Kuwait has been postponed.

In a press release, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for Yemen, thanked the Government of Yemen for its commitment and its delegation's arrival on time.

"I hope that Ansar allah and the General People's Congress do not miss this opportunity that could save Yemen the loss of more lives and put an end to the circle of violence that has engulfed the country," he said.

According to media reports, these delegations representing the Houthi rebel group and the party of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh have yet to depart for the talks, citing heavy fighting and Saudi-led air operations as the reason.

"We are working to overcome the latest challenges and ask the delegations to show good faith, participate in the talks in order to reach a peaceful resolution to the crisis in Yemen," the special envoy said.

"The next few hours are crucial. We call on the parties to take their responsibilities seriously and agree on comprehensive solutions," he said.

The negotiations are expected to centre on a framework that paves the way for a peaceful and orderly process based on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) initiative and the outcomes of the national dialogue conference.
Afghanistan: UN condemns Taliban attack in Kabul

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 19 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Afghanistan: UN condemns Taliban attack in Kabul, 19 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2b8440d.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

19 April 2016 - The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) today condemned the Taliban attack in Kabul that killed at least nine people and injured an estimated 300 others.

According to the Mission, provisional information indicates that at least two of those killed and the vast majority of the injured are civilians, including seven children and seven women. The civilian casualty toll is expected to rise.

"This attack shows the devastation caused by the use of explosive devices in urban areas and once more demonstrates complete disregard for the lives of Afghan civilians," said Tadamichi Yamamoto, the Secretary-General's Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, in a press release.

"The use of high explosives in civilian populated areas, in circumstances almost certain to cause immense suffering to civilians, may amount to war crimes," he added.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack centred around a National Directorate of Security (NDS) office in the Puli Mahmud Khan area of the Afghan capital. It reportedly took place during rush hour on a crowded street when a vehicle borne improvised explosive device detonated, followed by armed men entering the NDS compound. The blast caused extensive harm, injuring civilians within a one kilometre radius.

UNAMA said it reiterates its call for the Taliban to immediately cease all attacks in civilian-populated areas. The Mission also extended its condolences to the families of those killed and a speedy recovery for those injured, and affirmed its continued support to the people of Afghanistan.
UN rights chief welcomes release of 83 prisoners in Myanmar

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 19 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN rights chief welcomes release of 83 prisoners in Myanmar, 19 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2ba0142.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

19 April 2016 - The United Nations rights chief today welcomed the release of a second wave of 83 prisoners on Myanmar's New Year last Sunday, by Presidential amnesty.

This follows the release of 199 political prisoners on 8 April who had charges dropped against them or were pardoned, including students who were facing a prolonged trial following a protest against the National Education Law in March 2015.

At a press briefing in Geneva, Ravina Shamdasani, the Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, reported that the newly released prisoners include:

Land rights activist Naw Ohn Hla who had been jailed six times for various peaceful protests

Human rights defender Nay Myo Zin

Community campaigner Htin Kyaw

Five journalists from the Unity newspaper who were sentenced to seven years in prison in 2014 after the publication of an article

Four labour activists convicted for supporting garment workers on strike

Htin Lin Oo, sentenced in 2015 to two years in prison with hard labour for "insulting religion" after he delivered a speech criticising the misuse of religion to incite religious hatred

The Government announced that these releases were part of its commitment to promote national reconciliation. President U Htin Kyaw also stated in his New Year address that sustained effort would be made in the future to prevent "those who act legally for political causes or for their own conscience from being imprisoned".

"The continued release of political prisoners and the commitment to take preventive measures are important steps in the right direction," said Ms. Shamdasani. "We encourage the Government to build upon such human rights gains to ensure that all the people of Myanmar enjoy their fundamental freedoms. In doing so, we encourage the Government to ensure that all those who have been arbitrarily detained, including in remote areas, are also promptly released."

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), among those who remain behind bars are interfaith activists, Pwint Phyu Latt and Zaw Zaw Latt, who were sentenced in February 2016 to two years' imprisonment with hard labour under the Immigration (Emergency Provisions) Act 1947, and U Gambira, also known as Nyi Nyi Lwin, a prominent figure in the 2007 Saffron Revolution, who is currently on trial in Mandalay under the same legislation.

"Our office stands ready to provide its expertise in support of efforts by the Government and Parliament to reform remaining laws that do not conform with international standards and have been used in the past to jail peaceful critics, and to take further strides in promoting and protecting human rights in Myanmar," Ms. Shamdasani concluded.
UN agency welcomes Jordan's measures to improve Syrian refugees' access to jobs

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 19 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN agency welcomes Jordan's measures to improve Syrian refugees' access to jobs, 19 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2bce40b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

19 April 2016 - The United Nations refugee agency today welcomed a series of recent measures by the Government of Jordan that could help up to 78,000 Syrians to be able to work legally in Jordan in the short term and thousands more in the coming years.

We believe the combined effort of these various initiatives will go a long way to help Syrian refugees become more sufficient and bring economic benefits to Jordan, which has felt the macro-economic consequences of a region in flux and the heavy cost of fighting in Syria, Spokesperson Ariane Rummery of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told the media in Geneva.

Over 640,000 Syrian refugees are registered with UNHCR in Jordan, with more than 85 per cent living outside of camps. A recent study showed nine out of 10 Syrians living outside camps live below the Jordanian poverty line of JOD68, or $87, per capita per month.

The most recent of the new measures, launched earlier this month, is a 90-day grace-period that allows employers in the informal sector to freely obtain work permits for Syrian refugees, regularizing their employment. This potentially puts those refugees on the same footing as migrant workers who are allowed to work in areas such as construction, agriculture, the service industry, food and beverages, wholesale and some factories, the spokesperson said.

The temporary waiver of fees, which range between $170 to $1,270, depending on the sector, is an important reprieve as many Syrian refugees have been sinking into poverty amid the prolonged war at home, increasing the risk that they would work illegally, she added.

For employers, the new grace period also allows them to legalize workers and avoid steep fines of between $280 and $2,100 that led to the closure of some 70 businesses to date.

Since the beginning of March, Jordanian authorities have also allowed Syrian refugees to use UNHCR-issued asylum-seeker cards and Jordanian Ministry of Interior identity cards to obtain work permits. Previously, the only way to do so was using a passport and proof of legal entry into the country.

As most Syrian refugees lack passports and proof of legal entry status, many were precluded from having jobs. Authorities have now removed that requirement, paving the way for thousands more Syrians to be legally employed.

UNHCR launched earlier this month a pilot project to help 2,000 Syrians get jobs in the export garment sector, as a partner of the 'Better Work Jordan' programme run by the International Labour Organization (ILO). The refugee agency is also running weekly job fairs for Syrian refugees in community centres close to the relevant industrial zones, including in Irbid and Zarqa. The first refugees are expected to start work in garment factories next week.
South Sudan: UN refugee agency warns of worsening civilian situation

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 19 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, South Sudan: UN refugee agency warns of worsening civilian situation, 19 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2bfc40b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

19 April 2016 - The United Nations refugee agency today expressed extreme concern over a combination of new fighting in previously peaceful areas, food insecurity and severe humanitarian funding shortages, which continue to cause a worsening of the situation in South Sudan for many civilians.

Recent fighting between Government and opposition forces in Western Bahr al Ghazal has displaced more than 96,000 people to Wau town, in the northwest of the country, Ariane Rummery, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters in Geneva, noting that neighbouring countries are now reporting rising refugee inflows.

"With the Regional Refugee Response Plan funded at just 8 per cent, many life-saving services are threatened," Ms. Rummery said. "UNHCR is extremely concerned."

The spokesperson said that an estimated 52,000 South Sudanese have fled into Sudan since late January, exceeding planning projections for 2016. At present, the refugees are mainly in East and South Darfur and West Kordofan.

UNHCR non-food item distributions by truck in East Darfur are expected to begin on Wednesday and distributions have already taken place to all new arrivals in South Darfur and to some of the new population in West Kordofan, she said.

Ms. Rummery noted that the World Food Programme (WFP) has been distributing one-month food rations to new arrivals in East and South Darfur, and is prepared to begin distributions in West Kordofan pending security clearance from authorities. Together with partner agencies, a three-month response plan has been prepared to accommodate an additional 120,000 new arrivals before June.

In addition, Ms. Rummery said that Uganda has seen a sharp increase in refugee arrivals from South Sudan since January, sometimes as many as 800 individuals per day. In all, 28,000 South Sudanese - 86 per cent of them women and children - have sought refuge in Uganda.

A group of refugees from South Sudan at a settlement in Uganda. Photo: UNICEF/UNI183475/Wandera

The site where the South Sudanese refugees are sheltered, Maaji III, which is in the north-west of the country, is nearing capacity and basic life-saving services and other services are severely stretched, the spokesperson said.

She also said that Ethiopia, which hosts some 285,000 South Sudanese refugees, is seeing a recent - albeit more modest - increase in arrivals after a long period in which there were very few new refugees.

This recent spike in the rate of arrivals from South Sudan followed a long lull with an average daily arrival rate of less than one for the past two months, according to Ms. Rummery. UNHCR and partners have been providing basic assistance, including corn soya blend to children, plastic sheets, mosquito nets, blankets, sleeping mats and water jerry cans at the camp.

Ms. Rummery went on to say that while fighting has subsided in the Western Equatoria region of South Sudan since February, some 12,000 people crossed into the Democratic Republic of the Congo and sought shelter in the north-eastern province of Haut-Uele in the past few months.

The local communities have been welcoming of the refugees, but capacities are stretched, and thousands of the more recent arrivals have settled in very precarious conditions. The area is difficult to access and there are few humanitarian organizations present, the spokesperson said.

In addition, the conflict in Western Equatoria has forced thousands of South Sudanese from Source Yubu and Ezo to cross the border and seek asylum in the Central African Republic. As of 11 April, UNHCR had registered 10,454 South Sudanese refugees in the town of Bambouti, located in a difficult-to-reach area in the easternmost part of the Central African Republic.

The new arrivals in Bambouti greatly outnumber the host community, estimated at about 950 inhabitants, putting a severe strain on resources. Many refugees are suffering from malaria, waterborne diseases and malnutrition. Access to potable water, food, health care, sanitation and shelter is urgently needed for the entire population, Ms. Rummery said.

The spokesperson also said that UNHCR's Kakuma Operation in north-eastern Kenya has recorded a steady increase in new arrivals from South Sudan, rising from an average of 100 people a month at the start of this year to 350 people a week over the past two months.

Ms. Rummery noted that 2.3 million people have had to flee their homes since violence broke out in South Sudan in December 2013, 678,000 of these across borders as refugees and 1.69 million displaced inside the country.
Somalia: UN envoy welcomes progress in preparations for elections in 2016

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 19 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Somalia: UN envoy welcomes progress in preparations for elections in 2016, 19 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2c3c40b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

19 April 2016 - The Security Council heard today from the top United Nations official in Somalia that political progress is being made in the country, but that much remains to be done in a short period, including completing the electoral process for 2016 and boosting support to the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM).

"The progress is real but reversible," Michael Keating, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM), told the 15-member body during an update on the situation in the country.

"The State formation and electoral processes remain vulnerable spoilers. AMISOM needs financial and management support and cannot stay forever," he added.

The Special Representative highlighted that this past week, Somali leaders from all Federal member states and interim regional administrations reached agreement on the electoral model to be used later this year.

"This significant achievement paves the way for practical planning," he said, noting that "much remains to be done in a very short period."

Mr. Keating said that the electoral process envisaged for 2016 will be significantly different from 2012, as the electoral college will be "a hundred times larger" and there will be a "genuine choice" of candidates.

Voting will take place not just in the capital, Mogadishu, but in each of the capitals or seats of government of the existing and emerging Federal states. A two-tier structure comprising federal and state-level representatives will implement the process.

In addition, Mr. Keating highlighted that 30 per cent of the seats in Parliament are being reserved for women, an "admirable commitment" that he said in practice will not be easy in a clan-based model, but could mark a "major milestone" in making women's political empowerment and leadership a reality.

He said that once the cabinet has formalized the National Leadership Forum decision, it will go to the Federal Parliament.

"We call upon it to expedite endorsement of the model to allow timely implementation," Mr. Keating said. "I welcome the continued commitment by Somali leaders, in line with this Council's expectations, that there will be no extension of constitutionally mandated term limits."

Calling the 2016 electoral model "literally unique, a once-off," the Special Representative said it is a midway point between the election of 2012, when only 135 electors selected 275 Members of Parliament and 2020, when "all Somalis will have a say."

"Work is now under way to that end," he stressed.

Progress amid insecurity

As for the "many outstanding issues" in the country, the Special Representative said that the state formation process in Hiraan and Middle Shabelle has encountered difficulties and delays.

"The international community is eager to support an inclusive agreement reached among clan leaders in both regions," he said.

A wide view of the Security Council meeting on the situation in Somalia. UN Photo/Loey Felipe

Expressing hope that the formation of the next state administration will take place soon, Mr. Keating said that this will set the stage for agreeing on the status of the Federal capital.

In addition, he said that the technical review of Somalia's Provisional Federal Constitution has advanced, and that "politically contentious issues" are scheduled to be discussed at the next Leadership Forum meeting in May.

"This activity amounts to a historic opportunity for all Somalis to contribute to shaping the political and legal foundations of their country," Mr. Keating said.

"Some major issue may only be addressed after the electoral process. But already there has been significant progress. The rule of law and its centrepiece, the Federal constitution, will be the strongest guarantee of long-term stability and democracy in Somalia," he added.

Progress, however, is taking place "amid great insecurity," the Special Representative stressed, another reason why progress is reversible.

Assistance needed to address short-term realities

Moreover, he said that Al Shabab remains a potential threat, and an incursion into the coastal area of Puntland in mid-March highlighted the vulnerability of the north. Although facing significant casualties, Al Shabab continues to carry out repeated asymmetric and conventional attacks.

Paying tribute to the bravery of AMISOM and its troops, and to the courage of the Somali security forces and people in confronting Al Shabab, Mr. Keating also emphasized that "they need and deserve our continued support."

"The trilateral partnership - between the Federal Government, the African Union and the UN - remains a cornerstone of the peace- and state-building endeavour in Somalia," he said.

The country's security and prosperity depend on success in reversing dependency on aid and in addressing the root causes of fragility, conflict and violent extremism, Mr. Keating said. A comprehensive political strategy is also required, embracing economic investment in the drivers of growth, job creation, education, the rule of law and respect for human rights, as well as in capable security and counter-terrorism forces.

"This is a formidable agenda," he said. "It requires commitment both by Somalia's political and traditional leaders, as well as concerted support from its neighbours and international partners.

It also requires addressing short-term realities, such as drought and acute food insecurity, Mr. Keating said. While donors are responding with assistance, "much more" is needed, he stressed.
'Yemeni people deserve no less,' says Ban, urging start of peace talks

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 19 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, 'Yemeni people deserve no less,' says Ban, urging start of peace talks, 19 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2c67411.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

19 April 2016 - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today urged all parties to the peace process in Yemen to "engage in good faith" with his envoy, so that talks can start without further delay.

"The Secretary-General is convinced that seizing this opportunity to move the process forward will help resolve outstanding issues and bring the end of this prolonged conflict closer. The Yemeni people and the region deserve no less," said a statement attributable to the UN chief's spokesperson.

The Secretary-General noted that the Yemeni Government delegation has arrived in Kuwait and looks forward to the participation of the Ansar Allah and representatives of the General People's Congress in the talks.

He also recalled the commitment of all parties to a cessation of hostilities, which took effect on 10 April, and to the convening of inter-Yemeni talks in Kuwait.

Yesterday, the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, announced that the start of the peace negotiations had been postponed.
Comoros elections 'important step in consolidation of democracy'  UN chief

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 15 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Comoros elections 'important step in consolidation of democracy'  UN chief, 15 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2ca940b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

15 April 2016 - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has commended the Comorian people for peacefully fulfilling their civic duty by participating in the second round of the elections for President of the Union of Comoros and for Governors of Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli on Sunday 10 April 2016.

The elections are an important step in the consolidation of democracy in Comoros, said a statement issued by his spokesperson.

According to the statement, following the announcement of the provisional results of the elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) today, Mr. Ban called on all stakeholders to maintain a democratic spirit and resolve any dispute that may arise from the elections through legal and peaceful means.

The Secretary-General reaffirms the commitment of the United Nations, in coordination with the African Union and other international partners, to support the Comorian people in their efforts to further consolidate democracy, peace and the rule of law for the benefit of all sectors of society, the statement concluded.
Disclaimer

This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.
Gambia: Ban calls for release of detained protesters after death of opposition members

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 17 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Gambia: Ban calls for release of detained protesters after death of opposition members, 17 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2cc7411.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

17 April 2016 - Concerned about the apparent use of excessive force on peaceful demonstrators in Gambia, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all those arrested during Thursday's protest.

In a statement from his spokesperson, the Secretary-General said he learned with dismay of the death of political activist and opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) member Solo Sandeng and two fellow party members.

Mr. Ban calls on the authorities to conduct a prompt, thorough and independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths. He also extended his heartfelt condolences to the families of the deceased.

Mr. Sandeng and two other UDP members died following their arrest on 14 April 2016 for participating in a peaceful protest in the capital city of Banjul, the statement noted.

The UN chief expressed deep concern about the apparent use of excessive force and the arrest and detention on that day. Among those still being detained is UDP leader, Ousainou Darboe.

Mr. Ban calls on the authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all those arrested, his spokesperson said, and uphold the rights of the Gambian people to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

Last month, the UN Human Rights Council presented a report on proper preparations and precautions to protect the rights of the demonstrators, bystanders and police during public gatherings.

It discusses a wide range of rights impacted, and emphasized the State's obligation not only to protect, but also facilitate, the exercise of these rights.
Civilians in embattled Yarmouk facing 'starvation and dehydration,' UN agency warns

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 16 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Civilians in embattled Yarmouk facing 'starvation and dehydration,' UN agency warns, 16 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2cf340c.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

16 April 2016 - Up to 10,000 civilians in Yarmouk camp in Damascus, Syria, have gone without food and water for more than a week due to ongoing fighting, today warned the United Nations relief agency charged with the well-being of Palestinian refugees across the Middle East.

Credible reports from inside Yarmouk indicate extensive, deliberate fire-damage to homes and other civilian buildings on a scale hardly seen before, according to a statement by Chris Gunness, the spokesperson for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

He said that people are trapped in their homes, hunkered down to avoid being hit by bullets and shrapnel.

Whatever supplies of food and water they had have long been exhausted, Mr. Gunness said.

He added that civilians in Yarmouk are facing starvation and dehydration alongside the heightened risks of serious injury and death from the armed conflict which has continued unabated for 10 days.

The UN agency strongly deplores the inhumane deprivation imposed on civilians in Yarmouk, and calls on the individuals and entities involved to cease hostilities, to comply with the obligations under international humanitarian law.

Humanitarian missions are on standby to deliver aid to Yarmouk and neighbouring Yalda areas, as soon as the situation allows such access, the statement notes.

In a press statement in February, UNRWA noted that the camp had been taken over by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group on 1 April last year, and humanitarian access remained acute.
In telephone calls, UN chief speaks with South Sudan's leaders about transitional government

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 17 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, In telephone calls, UN chief speaks with South Sudan's leaders about transitional government, 17 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2d0740b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

17 April 2016 - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today spoke by phone with President Salva Kiir, and separately with Riek Machar, who is tomorrow expected to be sworn in as the First Vice President of South Sudan.

The Secretary-General emphasized the importance of quickly establishing the Transitional Government of National Unity, which was agreed to as part of a peace agreement signed in August of last year by both President Kiir and his rival, Mr. Machar.

According to a readout of the telephone calls, Mr. Ban also urged both leaders to continue working together with the Chairman of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission, former president Festus Mogae, and the African Union High Representative for South Sudan, former president Alpha Oumar Konare, towards the implementation of the peace agreement.

While speaking with President Kiir, Mr. Ban commended his decision to welcome Mr. Machar back to Juba and to swear him in as the First Vice President on 18 April.

Mr. Ban also called for the expeditious implementation of the security arrangements envisaged in the peace agreement and the withdrawal additional SPLA troops from Juba, referring to the Sudan People's Liberation Army.

In his call with Mr. Machar, Mr. Ban welcomed the decision of the First Vice President Designate to return to Juba and urged him to work with President Kiir to prevent any further violence.
Afghanistan: children increasingly struggle to access health care and education, UN reports

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 18 April 2016 Related Document(s) Education and Healthcare at Risk: Key trends and incidents affecting children's access to healthcare and education in Afghanistan Cite as UN News Service, Afghanistan: children increasingly struggle to access health care and education, UN reports, 18 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2d2340b.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

18 April 2016 - Conflict-related violence in Afghanistan has harmed health and education personnel, reduced the availability of health care and limited children's access to essential health and education services, the United Nations said in a new report released today.

The report Education and Healthcare at Risk: Key trends and incidents affecting children's access to healthcare and education in Afghanistan, was jointly produced by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and covers the three-year period from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2015.

"The report's findings are deeply troubling. It is simply unacceptable for teachers, doctors and nurses to be subjected to violence or threats, and for schools and medical facilities to be misused or attacked," said Nicholas Haysom, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan.

"All parties must take measures to protect education and health services in Afghanistan," he added.

In 2015, UNAMA and UNICEF documented 125 incidents affecting access to health care, compared with 59 in 2014, including 20 health workers killed, 43 injured and 66 abducted. Some 132 conflict-related incidents affecting access to education and education-related personnel were also documented, including 11 education personnel killed, 15 injured and 49 abducted, a sharp increase from 2014 figures.

Of the 257 incidents documented in 2015, the majority consisted of threats and intimidation, and represented an increase of 182 per cent compared with 2014.

Acts of threats and intimidation included death threats; assaults of health and education personnel; forced closures of schools; letters prohibiting school attendance, particularly against girls; and extortion and other harmful acts.

UNAMA and UNICEF also documented incidents of improvised explosive devices detonated near schools and clinics, killing and injuring health care and education personnel.

"In 2015 children increasingly struggled to access health and education services in Afghanistan due to insecurity and conflict-related violence, further exacerbated by high levels of chronic poverty throughout the country," said Akhil Iyer, UNICEF Representative in Afghanistan.

Conflict-related violence resulted in the partial or complete closure of more than 369 schools in 2015, affecting more than 139,000 students and 600 teachers.

The report highlights the particular vulnerabilities faced by girls, noting attacks, threats and explicit prohibitions imposed to restrict girls' education.

"Conflict-related violence not only puts Afghan children at risk of harm, but also limits their fundamental rights to education and health care," said Danielle Bell, UNAMA Human Rights Director. "Efforts must be redoubled to enable children - particularly girls - free and safe access to medical services and education."

The report includes several recommendations to all parties to the conflict so as to enable children's unimpeded access to education and health care.
Torture and illegal detention on the rise in Burundi  UN rights chief

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 18 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Torture and illegal detention on the rise in Burundi  UN rights chief, 18 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f2df840c.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

18 April 2016 - The United Nations human rights chief today warned of a "sharp increase in the use of torture and ill-treatment in Burundi" and voiced concerns about worrying reports of the existence of illegal detention facilities, both in Bujumbura and in the countryside.

"Since the beginning of the year, my team has recorded at least 345 new cases of torture and ill-treatment. These shocking figures are a clear indicator of the widespread and growing use of torture and ill-treatment by Government security forces," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, in a press release.

His Office (OHCHR) estimates that some 595 people have been ill-treated or tortured since April 2015, a figure which is likely to be an under-estimate. "Torture and ill-treatment mainly take place at the time of arrest, upon arrival or during detention, especially in facilities run by the Service national de renseignements (SNR), the police and, to a lesser extent, the army. Perpetrators of torture and ill-treatment have so far enjoyed total impunity," Mr. Zeid said.

"Many detainees visited by our team in the past few weeks had fresh wounds on their bodies. Some were unable to walk without assistance after being beaten with belts, iron rods or sharp objects, or burned. I am profoundly disturbed by these terrible accounts and I urge the Burundian Government, in the strongest terms possible, to put an immediate end to these unacceptable and illegal practices," he added.

Most of the tortured and ill-treated detainees say they were denied medical treatment. Some said intelligence services hid them in the toilets for days so their torture wounds could heal before they were returned to cells holding other prisoners.

Signs of torture in SNR facilities and police stations

During a visit by a UN human rights team to SNR facilities in Bujumbura last week, 30 of the 67 people held there displayed physical signs of torture. Many irregularities were identified during the visit, including the fact that 25 of the detainees had been kept in custody beyond the prescribed maximum time limit. In addition, while all detainees had been arrested for what were reportedly minor offences, the accusations entered against many of them in the SNR registry were for much more serious criminal offences, including undermining State security, illegal possession of arms and espionage.

OHCHR also indicated that several cases of ill-treatment and torture have also been reported at police stations, especially in those located in the two Bujumbura neighbourhoods of Citiboke and Musaga, and at the Mutakura military camp.

The High Commissioner noted that the use of torture and ill-treatment was also widespread in the countryside, noting a case of two men who said they were arrested by SNR agents in Nkamba province at the end of March. They said they were seriously beaten and repeatedly dropped in Lake Tanganyika with their hands tied on several occasions in order to force them to confess to crimes.

"I recognize the efforts made by the Government in releasing at least 45 demonstrators following the Secretary-General's visit. However, in addition to the reports of torture and ill-treatment in official detention facilities, I am deeply concerned about information emerging about the existence of secret detention facilities across the country," the High Commissioner said.

Executions of detainees witnessed

According to OHCHR, a man who was arrested at the end of March by unidentified armed individuals stated that he was taken blindfolded to an unfinished building in an unknown location, where nine other people were also being held. The victim reported witnessing the execution of two fellow detainees before he managed to escape. Reports have also been received of another illegal detention facility, allegedly set up by the police with the support of the Imbonerakure militia, in the city of Ngozi, in the northern part of the country.

The High Commissioner said he had also received "persistent reports of arrest, detention, torture, ill-treatment, enforced disappearances and assassination of certain members of the police and military by other government forces." Members and officers of the former Burundian Armed Forces - known as ex-FAB and which was predominantly Tutsi - appear to have been particularly targeted, including some retired soldiers.

Many soldiers interviewed by the UN Human Rights Office while in detention said that the torture or ill-treatment they endured was aimed at forcing them to confess their support for rebel groups or to provide names of other people suspected of supporting them.

Some soldiers detained at the SNR facilities claimed to have witnessed the killing of a number of their colleagues. On 10 April, the body of an ex-FAB soldier, who had been arrested the previous day by the police, was found in Gesenyi, near Citiboke. At least five soldiers have also been reported missing following their arrest by police or military forces over the last few weeks.

Attacks by unidentified armed men

Mr. Zeid also deplored the increase in attacks by unidentified armed men, reportedly linked to rebel groups. At least 30 attacks in Bujumbura and in several provinces took place in March, killing one civilian and four soldiers. Around five civilians were also reportedly killed during a rebel attack near the Tanzanian border on 11 April.

He also condemned the targeting of members of the ruling party, the CNDD-FDD, including the assassination of a local official and member of the party who was shot at his home by unidentified armed men on 13 April in the town of Kajaga, in Bujumbura Mairie province.
Nations in Transit 2016 - Moldova

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 April 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Nations in Transit 2016 - Moldova, 12 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f71c7c.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Regime classification: Transitional Government or Hybrid Regime

Nations in Transit Category and Democracy Scores

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 National Democratic Governance 5.75 5.75 5.75 6.00 5.75 5.75 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.75 Electoral Process 3.75 3.75 4.00 4.25 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 Civil Society 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.50 3.25 3.25 3.25 3.25 3.25 3.25 Independent Media 5.25 5.50 5.75 5.75 5.50 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 Local Democratic Governance 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.50 Judicial Framework and Independence 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.75 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.75 4.75 4.75 Corruption 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 5.75 5.75 5.75 6.00 Democracy Score 4.96 5.00 5.07 5.14 4.96 4.89 4.82 4.86 4.86 4.89

NOTE: The ratings reflect the consensus of Freedom House, its academic advisers, and the author(s) of this report. If consensus cannot be reached, Freedom House is responsible for the final ratings. The ratings are based on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 representing the highest level of democratic progress and 7 the lowest. The Democracy Score is an average of ratings for the categories tracked in a given year. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the author(s).

Executive Summary:

Political infighting, extensive corruption, and deep social divisions have put Moldova's democratic development on hold. In 2015, the country experienced further setbacks to developing inclusive, transparent, and efficient governance.

From the start of the year, the country's deep political crisis triggered instability that pushed reforms into the background. Conflict between two oligarchs formally in coalition, Vlad Filat of the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM) and Vlad Plahotniuc of the Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM), disabled the functioning of the state and led to three changes of government during the year. Despite positive technical efforts in the modernization and European integration of state institutions, reforms have stalled and trust in institutions like the parliament and government has fallen below 7 percent.

The banking scandal that emerged at the end of 2014, in which over $1 billion  equivalent to one-eighth of Moldova's GDP  disappeared from the state-owned Banca de Economii and two other private banks, dominated politics in 2015. The theft fed into a worsening economic situation and fueled protests starting in February against the failure of law enforcement institutions to investigate. Piggybacking on the initial civic protests by the "Dignity and Truth" platform, pro-Russian parties organized parallel demonstrations with a similar agenda beginning in September. The protests, political infighting, and finally a self-denunciation by Ilan Shor, a powerful oligarch suspected in the theft, eventually resulted in the arrest of former prime minister Vlad Filat. The circumstances of Filat's arrest cast doubt on its efficacy in Moldova's fight against corruption, however, since it came only after Shor's statements although much additional evidence had accumulated by that time. Furthermore, despite being named from the start as a key figure in the theft, and despite implicating himself in his own statements, Shor remains at liberty after being elected mayor of Orhei in June 2015.

The formal and informal competition between these main actors to control the public narrative also caused an increase in pressure on the media. Oligarch-controlled business groups that distort information for their benefit control most of the country's media, albeit with some notable exceptions. During the year, the parliament also made attempts to change legislation in ways that would increase the role of these groups in the media market under the guise of fighting propaganda. Yet civil society, with the support of international organizations, effectively put these changes on hold and successfully fought for regulations governing transparency of media ownership.

Reform of Moldova's judicial sector has stagnated. Positive steps, like the parliament's first reading of a new law on the prosecutor's office, or the 2012 establishment of a National Commission of Integrity to deal with conflicts of interest and declaration of assets, have been offset by political interests' blocking legislation and preventing the consolidation of strong institutions and practices. There is a clear unwillingness among the competing political elites to implement necessary reforms.

Surprisingly, local elections in June 2015 were well managed and largely considered free and fair, despite fierce competition. The results were not disputed, and even though the governing alliance secured a majority in many regions, left-wing opposition parties also gained significant control of certain areas. In local governance, implementation of a new law on local public finances was a positive development, changing the system of transferring funds from the central government to local entities and thus freeing local authorities from a significant mechanism of political influence. Aside from this law, however, other steps foreseen under the decentralization strategy that expired in 2015 have not been taken.

Implementation of Moldova's Association Agreement with the European Union was limited to more technical issues, while relations with the EU worsened due to a lack of progress in internal reforms. Negotiations within the 5 + 2 framework to settle the Transnistrian conflict have been on hold since 2014, and with the exception of a decision to expand the application of the economic part of the Association Agreement to Transnistria, there were no significant changes in that area.

Score Changes:

National Democratic Governance rating declined from 5.50 to 5.75 due to political infighting and unremitting political turmoil resulting in constant government instability.

Local Democratic Governance rating improved from 5.75 to 5.50 due to the implementation of a law on public finances that significantly reduced the ability of national authorities to pressure local authorities.

Corruption rating declined from 5.75 to 6.00 due to the state's inability to investigate and take action against the theft of $1 billion from the banking sector and other corruption scandals.

As a result, Moldova's Democracy Score declined from 4.86 to 4.89.

Outlook for 2016: The conditions that caused the political crisis throughout 2015 are unlikely to be resolved in 2016 without a wide national political compromise, which seems improbable. In a country where reforms have barely progressed when political stability was ensured, the crisis has rendered them nearly impossible. The economic prognosis is grim. The banking sector theft, endemic corruption, and a worsening regional context will impact quality of life even more in 2016 than in the previous year. Early elections, if they occur, would likely strengthen the position of pro-Russian parties, worsening relations with the European Union, but not necessarily damaging the reform process more than the current crisis. The country's main challenges remain the same: implementation of the Association Agreement with the EU; de-politicization and de-oligarchization of state institutions, judiciary, and media; and implementation of reforms in areas like the justice system and decentralization.

National Democratic Governance:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 5.75 5.75 5.75 6.00 5.75 5.75 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.75

After a relatively stable political year in 2014, Moldova saw in 2015 the most intense political turmoil and instability since the regime change in 2009, with three different governments in the course of the year. Following the November 30, 2014, parliamentary elections, the political parties were unable to form a governing alliance for two and a half months. After nontransparent negotiations, a new minority government joining the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM) and Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM) was installed in February as the Political Alliance for a European Moldova, headed by PLDM-affiliated Chiril Gaburici. Unable to reach agreement with the Liberal Party (PL) on joining the coalition, it relied instead on the communist party (PRCM), which remained formally in opposition but often acted de facto as part of the coalition. The country's two top oligarchs, Vlad Filat of PLDM and Vlad Plahotniuc of PDM, divided the ministerial portfolios as well as other important institutions, [1] as has been the custom since 2009. [2] For instance, PLDM took the State Tax Office and customs control, and PDM took the prosecutor's office and National Anticorruption Center.

The coalition barely functioned at a minimum level of competence  in April it adopted a state budget without a parliamentary vote, as required by law [3]  and did not last long. Infighting led to its collapse in June, and a new coalition was formed by PLDM, PDM, and the Liberal Party (PL), headed by Valeriu Strelet of PLDM. The Strelet government was sacked in late October, formally on allegations of corruption. It then took two months for president Nicolae Timofti to nominate businessman and public figure Ion Sturza to form a new cabinet. Lacking the political support of parties other than PLDM, most MPs boycotted the parliament session, and Sturza was not able to present his cabinet and program. The fact that it took the president almost two months to nominate a prime minister with a slim chance of support illustrates the depth of Moldova's political crisis and inability of the political parties to find compromise.

Public protests begun in February by the civic platform "Dignity and Truth" over the failure of law enforcement to investigate the $1 billion banking theft and the country's worsening living conditions gathered momentum through the year and into the fall. Although some leaders of the platform were connected to Victor and Viorel Topa  oligarch brothers who fled the country five years ago due to conflict with Plahotniuc and later convicted of a variety of crimes  the initial protests were authentically civic in nature. In September, pro-Russian parties, namely, the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (of Igor Dodon) and "Our Party" (of Renato Usatii), piggybacked on civic protests with a similar goal to force early elections, while also backing the idea of a referendum for direct election of the president to replace Moldova's current system of selection by parliament.

With protests ongoing in October, prosecutors detained former prime minister Vlad Filat on accusations of masterminding the $1 billion banking theft and taking a $250 million cut. The arrest was hardly a credit to investigators, however, as it was based on self-denunciation by the newly elected mayor of Orhei, Ilan Shor, whom many had named as involved in the theft at the time it was committed. [4]

Through all of these events, the population's trust in governing elites dropped to a new low. Clear evidence of oligarchic capture of state institutions and use of ostensibly independent institutions for political ends decreased the level of trust in the parliament to 6 percent (compared to 41 percent in 2009) and similarly low levels for the government and president. [5]

Against this backdrop of deep disappointment in the ruling elite, new parties started to form. In March, former prime minister Iurie Leanca, who had avoided both camps in the political dispute, split from PLDM to form the European People's Party of Moldova (PPEM). [6] In December, Dignity and Truth became a political party, polling a solid 12 percent of public support in surveys, [7] although ties between party leader Andrei Nastase and Victor Topa may damage its credibility. Also in December, former education minister Maia Sandu announced she would start her own party, "Action and Solidarity," drawing on her reputation for integrity and positive results she takes credit for in reforming the education system. [8] However, polls at the end of the year still showed the pro-Russian Our Party (16 percent) and Party of Socialists (10 percent) performing well. [9]

Relations with the EU worsened significantly as the reform agenda under the 2014 Association Agreement stalled, with implementation of only 19 percent of its planned activities. [10] Rampant evidence of grand corruption and lack of basic progress in good governance among ostensibly pro-European elites undermined the pro-EU agenda and strengthened the positions of Euroskeptic and Russia-loyal center-left parties.

Transnistria received little attention in 2015, despite parliamentary elections unrecognized by Moldova or the international community in December. The 5 + 2 negotiations format has been on hold since summer 2014, and contacts between the government in Chisinau and the Tiraspol administration are limited. The only visible progress was the decision to apply the economic component of the Association Agreement to the entire territory of Moldova, including Transnistria, as of January 1, 2016.[11]

Electoral Process:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 3.75 3.75 4.00 4.25 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00

Local elections were held in June for Moldova's 898 mayors, elected under a two-round majoritarian system, and 11,680 local council members, elected under a proportional representation system without a threshold. [12] Unlike the problematic 2014 parliamentary elections, the 2015 local elections were generally free and fair and well administered by the Central Electoral Commission. The elections offered the public a diverse choice, despite a difficult political context compounded by the resignation of the prime minister just two days before the first round. The declared pro-European incumbent parties won the most seats and mayoralties in the elections, although Euroskeptic center-left parties also secured significant support. [13] Ilan Shor, an oligarch publicly named as a participant in the $1 billion banking theft, was elected mayor of Orhei (see Local Democratic Governance).

There were documented issues in the election. According to the local election monitor PromoLex, [14] one major problem was access to voter-list verification, which diminished voter confidence in the electoral process. An inconsistent interpretation of the electoral law on the preparation of voter lists relating to the use of residence permits created circumstances that may have allowed for fraud. [15] A dramatic increase in the number of voters registered in some districts since November 2014 (for instance, a 10.6 percent increase in Codru) could indicate vote manipulation and may have affected the results. [16]

Additionally, the law on funding political parties and campaigns was adopted in March 2015 and the Electoral Code was amended in April 2015, [17] thus violating the Venice Commission recommendation that electoral legislation should not be changed less than one year before an election. The OSCE also criticized changes to the law that prohibited the use of state and foreign symbols and images and forbade involving foreign citizens in campaigning, stating that this is a "disproportionate restriction challenging freedom of expression." [18]

Certain amendments were positive, such as making vote-buying and illegal campaign funding criminal offenses. Other sanctions for electoral violations include warnings, fines, confiscation of funds, suspension of public funding, and deregistration. However, the provision on sanctions is ambiguous and sometimes conflicting, as well as non-exhaustive. The OSCE noted that this could lead to discretionary application by the Central Electoral Commission, which also received more powers under the legislative amendments. [19]

Following the elections, OSCE/ODIHR and PromoLex offered additional recommendations to improve the legal framework with regard to party funding, election administration, media, voter registration, and the election campaign. So far, the recommendations have not been converted into policies.

Moldova also held elections in March for the position of baskan, or head of local government, in the Gagauz Autonomous Region. Socialist candidate Irina Vlah, running as an independent, won in the first round with 51 percent of the vote. These results were not surprising, as the Socialists had already won control of the region from the Communists in the November 2014 parliamentary elections. The election of Vlah means the central authorities will need to make even more of an effort to keep the region from becoming isolated, which would make it an easier target for Russia should the Kremlin decide to destabilize Moldova.

Civil Society:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.50 3.25 3.25 3.25 3.25 3.25 3.25

Civil society organizations (CSOs) continued to play an important role in the public life of Moldova in 2015. The number of CSOs is growing, with 10,074 at last count, [20] but the number of organizations functioning properly is much smaller. Despite their participation in dialogue platforms with the authorities, and even their role organizing mass demonstrations in 2015, the impact of CSOs on policy remains limited.

One factor hampering their work is the suspicion that many civil society figures or experts are "sponsored" by political actors, especially from the dominant parties PDM and PLDM. Yet despite constant rumors about biased experts advocating for their patrons, there has been no serious investigation proving allegations of hidden political affiliation. In a November survey, only 24 percent of the population expressed trust in civil society in Moldova. [21]

In 2015, civil society was critical to monitoring local elections and pressuring the political elite to investigate the $1 billion banking theft. The Dignity and Truth platform organized in February, which initiated mass protests against the captured state that continued throughout the year, included within its founding ranks a number of influential civil society leaders. [22]

Seeking to defuse the protests, Prime Minister Valeriu Strelet ordered in September that civil society be included in a number of governmental bodies. Civil society groups rejected the proposal, arguing that the government was trying to deflect attention away from the banking scandal with a show of dialogue. [23]

One sign that the government was uninterested in cooperation with civil society was the failure to renew the mandate of the National Participation Council (NPC), a civil society body created in 2010 to advise the government through formal mechanisms. The NPC was intended to increase civil society and private sector participation in the government's decision-making process and improve expert input in policymaking. [24] The two-year composition of the NPC expired in 2015, but new members have not been selected. The Strelet government held a call in June for candidates to the NPC, but no new members were announced. Then, in September, Strelet changed his opinion, saying that the format of the NPC was obsolete and should be changed to include nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the colleges, or consultative bodies, attached to each ministry. This step, however, has not been fulfilled. [25]

Funding of CSOs comes mainly from foreign sources. The financial sustainability of the sector slightly increased in 2015, due not to a change in the amount of money available but to improvements in government cooperation, with a few ministries providing a small amount of funds for cooperative projects with CSOs. Local private funding for the CSO sector is provided mostly by businesses like telecommunications, but these funds go only to charitable causes. [26] Companies are unwilling to support CSOs that deal with democracy-related issues for fear of being perceived as taking a stand in opposition to incumbent political elites.

The financial sustainability of CSOs hypothetically should improve in the near future due to the adoption of amendments to the Fiscal Code in 2014 that established a framework for individuals and legal entities to donate two percent of their income taxes to CSOs with public benefit status. Yet, despite the law having been adopted in the previous year, no regulations had been implemented by the end of 2015, meaning the impact of the law will not be seen until 2017. [27] In May, the NGO Council organized a meeting with the parliament speaker and other officials to discuss the financial sustainability of CSOs.

Media CSOs dealing with corruption through investigations were particularly active and effective in 2015, and generated wide public discussion and reactions from state officials. For instance, RISE Moldova investigated the illegal leasing of forests and schemes to export and re-export fruits to Russia despite that country's embargo on Moldova.[28] Additionally, the Center for Investigative Journalism's online portal anticoruptie.md explored the businesses, assets, and interests of deputy ministers, leading to a reaction from the prime minister, who asked the National Integrity Commission to verify the data presented in the investigation.[29]

Independent Media:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 5.25 5.50 5.75 5.75 5.50 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00

The strident politicization and oligarchization of the media remain key problems for Moldova that are rooted in institutions. Members of the Audiovisual Coordinating Council (CCA) are appointed by the parliament and nominated on political criteria. The selection process for the Council of Observers of the public company Teleradio-Moldova is also politically driven. For more than a year, the ostensibly nine-member council was dysfunctional while the parliamentary committee on mass media delayed the election of six of its members. In March 2015, the parliament elected four members from the ranks of PDM and PLDM, while "certain independent media experts were refused due to lack of political protection," as a civil society monitoring report put it. [30] The other two council positions remain vacant.

In a somewhat positive development, a law on transparency of media ownership was finally adopted in March 2015. [31] However, the law was missing a key prohibition on registering companies in offshore areas that has been used to conceal media ownership. The positive side of the law is that individuals are now obliged to declare their ownership in media.

Various politico-oligarchic groups or individuals control most of Moldova's influential media and use them to present distorted information, especially about their political opponents. In terms of ownership, there is greater transparency thanks to the new law on media ownership and the resulting declarations. PRIME TV, Publika TV, Canal 2, and Canal 3 belong to Vlad Plahotniuc of PDM. [32] TV7 and THT Bravo belong to Chiril Lucinschi of PLDM. JurnalTV belongs to Victor Topa, who is said to be close to the civic platform Dignity and Truth. Accent TV belongs to an individual close to Igor Dodon of PSRM, while Euro TV and AltTV belong to a person identified in the Kroll report on the $1 billion banking theft as an affiliate of Ilan Shor. [33] [34] Another influential channel is PRO TV, a subsidiary of the Romania-based Central European Media Enterprise. [35] State-owned Moldova 1 public television is in theory impartial but in fact presents mostly positive news on the incumbent parties, mainly PLDM, PDM, and PL.

In 2015, a proposal to modify the Audiovisual Code and Law on Freedom of Expression by officials from PLDM and PDM resulted in a wave of protests from journalists and civil society. The MPs argued that the law needed to be modified in order to protect against Russian propaganda, which had significantly increased after the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. During the year, a series of Russian journalists were prohibited from entering Moldova. However, media experts stated that along with fighting propaganda, the aim of the amendments was to "protect and consolidate the interests of certain media owners," because the proposals were made in secrecy and without consultation with the wider public, media organizations, and civil society. [36] The amendments would have likely consolidated the positions of media controlled by the country's dominant oligarchs.

Strong reaction to the proposed amendments from media and civil society put them on hold and initiated a wider dialogue. At the request of the parliament speaker, the OSCE provided a legal analysis of the proposals, giving a negative assessment and suggesting improvements. [37] After the amendments were adjusted, the OSCE issued a new opinion with a rather positive assessment, although it pointed out certain inconsistencies still not in line with international practices that could lead to restrictions of expression and self-censorship. [38] The amendments remained stalled at year's end.

Investigative journalism in Moldova is becoming more powerful as more investigations uncover corruption, leading to pressure from public opinion and, on occasion, legal actions. At the same time, investigative journalists and their newspapers are often subject to political pressure and called into court. The mainstream newspaper Ziarul de Garda published numerous investigations on such issues as conflicts of interest in the Civil Aviation Authority and the business activities of customs head Tudor Balitchi. [39] It has faced a number of lawsuits and threats as a result of its work. The latest example is a letter from a judge who forbade the newspaper to write about her activities and interests, and threatened to call the paper into court if such items continued to be published. [40]

Local media have been unable to provide Russian language content of sufficient quality to prevent Moldovans from relying on Russian media for information. According to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, 69 percent of the general population and 85 percent of Russian-speakers use Russian-language media.[41] Many stations rebroadcast Russian content, including that produced by Russian state media.[42] The dependence on Russian media makes it easy for Russian-language propaganda and disinformation to be effective in Moldova. The Coordinating Audiovisual Council and media CSOs monitoring Russian media found serious misconduct on several occasions.[43]

Local Democratic Governance:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.50

In Moldova's local democratic governance in 2015, implementation of the Law on Local Public Finances significantly reduced the political influence of central authorities over local governments. Yet elections during the year did not bring significant changes to actual local governance, as incumbent parties managed to secure most of the votes. There were disturbing developments in the election of Renato Usatii, a controversial politician with an alleged criminal background, [44] as mayor of Balti, the country's second-largest city; and the election of Ilan Shor, an oligarch under investigation in the $1 billion banking theft, as mayor of Orhei. Balti is a broadly Russophone city, and Usatii was likely elected due to his links to Russia and a pro-Russian vision. Shor was elected in Orhei as a kind of protest candidate due to the deep dissatisfaction of residents, and because he is widely known as the owner of the local football team.

On the positive side, the Law on Local Public Finances was fully implemented for the first time across the entire country, following a pilot implementation in certain regions in 2014. [45] The main achievement of the law is to change the system of transferring funds from the central budget to local authorities with a new objective formula, removing political influence from the process. [46] This reduces the ability of politicians to make budget allocations based on mayors' political allegiances, freeing local decision-makers from being hostage to political parties and allowing them to put the interests of the local community first. So far, the law functions well in all districts, or raions, with the exception of Chisinau, which is facing a budget deficit as the new law puts the capital at a comparative disadvantage.

Despite this important positive step, there remain serious deficiencies at the institutional level. The Parity Commission on Decentralization, which is in charge of implementation of the decentralization plan, did not meet at all in 2015. The state chancellery is also not involved in the decentralization effort due to political turmoil, which means there is no state body overseeing the coordination process. [47] The decentralization strategy for 2010-15 expired, and a series of laws scheduled for adoption within the strategy were not pushed forward. If there are three pillars of the strategy  local public finance, strengthening the fiscal base, and capital investments  only the first has been implemented. Aside from the general strategy, sectoral strategies were also supposed to be adopted this year; some of these were not adopted at all while others were adopted but not implemented. Decentralization is not a priority for the political elite. [48]

Based on the 2012 recommendation of the Congress for Local and Regional Authorities, local authorities should have received more competences and power, such as the ability to bring cases in the Constitutional Court, adopt laws, or grant jurisdiction over zoning. But although draft laws to this effect have been registered in the parliament several times, these also have not been adopted.

Territorial administrative reform in Moldova is still an outstanding issue. With more than 30 raions, the country has too many units for its small territory. But there is no political will to address the problem, since it is a burdensome process that threatens many different interests. A study supported by the UNDP has offered several scenarios for reform but has not garnered support, including from the Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova, because its plan was prepared hastily and deemed unacceptable. [49]

Finally, a specific problem that undermines local democracy is that despite the decentralization of local public finances, the central government still decides what taxes are applied. This leaves local authorities to suffer for decisions taken at the central level.

Judicial Framework and Independence:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.75 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.75 4.75 4.75

Moldova has adopted a largely adequate legal framework, but implementation is still lacking. The main problems of the judiciary are insufficient reasoning of judgments, defective and random assignment of cases, lack of audio recording of court proceedings, [50] lack of transparency in the appointment of judges, promotion of judges with poor evaluation results, and uneven judicial practice, including at the Supreme Court of Justice. Further judicial reform is unlikely since the current political actors  whether in the government or the opposition  are not interested in an independent judiciary.

Within the legal framework there are still weaknesses, such as the disciplinary responsibility of judges and operation of the Superior Council of Magistracy. The biggest problem is the unreformed prosecutor's office. Draft legislation has been ready for over a year, and was voted on in its first reading in May 2015, [51] but it is still awaiting final adoption by the parliament. The delay in adoption is due exclusively to political reasons, as the prosecutor's office has become one of the main tools to exert control over the political landscape. The reform envisions reduction of hierarchical subordination in the prosecutorial system, provides for more effective disciplining of prosecutors, and increases social guarantees like housing for prosecutors. [52] The most important improvements narrow the powers of the prosecutor's office and the prosecutor general while increasing the powers of the Superior Council of Prosecutors and reducing political influence over the office.

An investigation by the National Anticorruption Center in 2014 found that supposedly random assignment of cases was manipulated in order to "direct" certain cases to a specific judge. In March, the Superior Council of Magistrates reported that it had fixed the issue and, according to the council, it is now impossible to manipulate the docket. [53]

A mandatory polygraph test for candidates to become judges and prosecutors was supposed to start as of January 1, 2015. The test was postponed on the excuse that the necessary conditions for buying a polygraph machine and instructing personnel in how to use it had not been fulfilled.[54] However, political unwillingness and internal resistance would seem the actual cause for delay, since a polygraph machine only costs about $9,000.

Corruption:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 5.75 5.75 5.75 6.00

The theft of $1 billion from the banking sector in 2014 reverberated throughout 2015, and, as in previous years, the main problem in tackling this corruption was the lack of political will. The partly state-owned Banca de Economii (BEM) had been left financially vulnerable by extensive mismanagement and corruption. Between 2012 and 2014, ownership of BEM and two other private banks was gradually acquired by a variety of individuals and entities linked to Ilan Shor (see "National Democratic Governance" and "Local Democratic Governance"), which then issued loans to newly formed Moldovan entities connected to Latvian bank accounts held by UK limited partnerships. In November 2014, the loans were cleared down from the Moldovan banks, leading to the banks' collapse. [55] At the end of 2014, the amount of money needed to save the banks was estimated at MDL 15 billion ($1.025 billion), or about one eighth of Moldova's GDP. The government decided to liquidate BEM and the two other banks involved.

Due to law-enforcement agencies' inaction and opposition by the political class to investigating the theft, the EU decided to freeze its budgetary support to Moldova until the government reached an agreement with the IMF and carried out a credible investigation. Other donors followed suit. As a result, the National Bank hired the risk and consulting firm Kroll, which produced a confidential report in April that was leaked to the public in May. Although the government has opposed the second phase of the investigation, as a result of external pressure and pressure from street protests, the prime minister has allowed it to move forward.

The first Kroll report identified a group of companies linked to Ilan Shor as being behind the theft. [56] The head of the National Commission for Financial Markets, Artur Gherman, who spoke out about illegal activities in the banking system, was sacked. [57] In October, Shor claimed that former prime minister and PLDM leader Vlad Filat had received $250 million in bribes since 2010, and was the initiator of the theft. Filat was deprived of his parliamentary immunity and arrested the same day. [58] By December 2015, the National Anticorruption Center (CAN) had initiated 44 criminal cases related to the $1 billion theft, of which 20 had already been sent to court. But the head of the center also said that state institutions had known in 2013 that BEM could go bankrupt, again raising the question of why the anticorruption center, prosecutor general, and national bank did not act sooner. [59]

Filat's arrest was the first time that a former prime minister had been detained in Moldova, and it is still unclear what the consequences of this will be. Certainly, the fight against corruption at the highest level now comes at the risk of political instability. But Filat's arrest should not be necessarily considered part of an efficient fight against corruption, since his detention comes mainly as a result of Shor's self-denunciation in his cooperation with CAN, rather than as a result of the work of anticorruption bodies. It will be important to see what other arrests take place in order to judge the sustainability of the anticorruption fight. Over the last 10 to 12 years, public tolerance towards corruption has diminished dramatically in Moldova, and access to information and relative press freedom have increased significantly. Mistakes that the public forgave in previous governments will no longer be tolerated. [60]

As in the judicial sector, lack of political will is the most obvious issue that stymies effective work against corruption. A clear illustration of this is the refusal to depoliticize and enhance the work of the National Integrity Commission (NIC). An inter-ministerial task force with the participation of civil society experts drafted a packet of legislation in 2015 to improve the work of the NIC, but the government opinion was negative and the legislation was not passed. [61] The government's negative position is likely because the proposals would not only consolidate the NIC's power to sanction decisions on conflict of interest but also create the proper conditions for confiscating ill-gotten wealth.

In April 2015, following a Venice Commission assessment, the Constitutional Court declared the law on testing of professional integrity as partly unconstitutional due to lack of a genuine control mechanism to ensure a permanent and effective verification of compliance with the legal authority conducting the test. The court also determined that CAN, whose director is appointed and dismissed at the proposal of the prime minister, is a body under control of the executive and therefore lacks the required independence. The Ministry of Justice is currently working on a new law.[62]

Author: Leonid Litra

Leonid Litra is a senior research fellow at the Institute of World Policy in Kyiv, Ukraine. Previously he worked for more than 10 years in the Moldovan NGO sector. His research focuses on the relationship between the Eastern Partnership countries and the EU, democratization, and conflict settlement.

Notes:

1 Vitalie Calugareanu, "PLDM-PL-PDM incep sa scrie acordul de coaliiie" [PLDM-PL-PDM start to draft the coalition agreement], Deutsche Welle, 14 July 2015, http://www.dw.com/ro/pldm-pl-pdm-incep-sa-scrie-acordul-de-coaliiie/a-18583217

2 Kamil Calus, "A captured state? Moldova's uncertain prospects for modernization," Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), 22 April 2015, http://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2015-04-22/appropriated-state-moldovas-uncertain-prospects-modernisation

3 "Moldavan Government Decides to Adopt Budget Laws Without Discussion in Parliament," Infotag, 9 May 2015, http://www.infotag.md/politics-en/202126/

4 "Details about case of ex-Premier," Info Prim Neo, 19 October 2015, http://www.ipn.md/en/politica/72415

5 "Barometer of Public Opinion, Republic of Moldova, November 2015," Institute for Public Policy, November 2015, http://www.ipp.md/public/files/Barometru/Brosura_BOP_11.2015_first_part_ENGLISH_V1.pdf; "Barometer of Public Opinion, Republic of Moldova, November 2009," Institute for Public Policy, November 2009, http://www.ipp.md/public/files/Barometru/2009/BOP_noiembrie_2009_Englsih...

6 "The former premier Iurie Leanca has launched his party; "The RM is led by the Communists,"" Jurnal.md, 23 March 2015, http://jurnal.md/en/politic/2015/3/23/the-former-premier-iurie-leanca-ha...

7 "Barometer of Public Opinion, Republic of Moldova, November 2015," Institute for Public Policy, November 2015, http://www.ipp.md/public/files/Barometru/Brosura_BOP_11.2015_first_part_ENGLISH_V1.pdf

8 "Ex-Minister Maia Sandu Creating Political Party," Infotag, 23 December 2015, http://www.infotag.md/politics-en/215317/

9 "Barometer of Public Opinion, Republic of Moldova, November 2015," Institute for Public Policy, November 2015, http://www.ipp.md/public/files/Barometru/Brosura_BOP_11.2015_first_part_ENGLISH_V1.pdf

10 "IPRE: Moldova a aplicat numai 19% din masurile aflate in Acordul de Asociere cu UE" [IPRE: Moldova applied only 19% of activities within the Association Agreement with the EU], Radio Europa Libera [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty], 1 December 2015, http://www.europalibera.org/archive/news/20151201/445/445.html?id=27399732

11 "Tiraspolul minimalizeaza rolul Chisinaului in extinderea Zonei de comeri liber cu UE asupra regiunii transnistrene" [Tiraspol is minimizing Chisinau's role in the extension of the free trade area with the EU on the Transnistrian region], Radio Europa Libera [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty], 26 December 2015, http://www.europalibera.org/archive/news/20151226/445/445.html?id=27450597

12 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), "OSCE/ODIHR Limited Election Observation Mission Final Report, Local Elections 14 and 28 June 2015," OSCE/ODIHR, 20 August 2015, http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/moldova/178226?download=true

13 The results are as follows: for rayon and municipal councillors: PLDM (23.21 percent); PDM (23.12 percent); PSRM (14.25 percent); PCRM (12.37 percent); PN (12.10 percent); PL (8.24 percent); PPEM (six percent). For town and commune: PLDM (25.58 percent); PDM (26.57 percent); PSRM (12.23 percent); PCRM (11.27 percent); PN (7.42 percent); PL (7.15 percent); PPEM (4.84 percent). For mayoral elections: PLDM (31.81 percent); PDM (31.92 percent); PSRM (5.80 percent); PCRM (8.59 percent); PN (4.80 percent); PL (5.80 percent); PPEM (3.01 percent). Full results available at www.cec.md

14 "Promo-LEX a prezentat rezultatele monitorizarii alegerilor locale generale din 2015" [Promo-Lex presented results of the local general elections' monitoring], Civic.md, 17 September 2015, http://www.civic.md/stiri-ong/29778-promo-lex-a-prezentat-rezultatele-monitorizarii-alegerilor-locale-generale-din-2015.html#sthash.7v56N2qf.dpuf

15 OSCE, "OSCE/ODIHR Limited Election Observation Mission Final Report, Local Elections 14 and 28 June 2015," 20 August 2015, http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/moldova/178226?download=true

16 "Raport Final, Monitorizarea Alegerilor Locale Generale din 14 (28) iunie 2015" [Final Report, Monitoring of Local General Elections from 14 (28) June 2015], Promo-Lex, 2015, http://www.promolex.md/upload/publications/ro/doc_1442821363.pdf

17 "Deputaiii au adoptat proiectul de lege privind finantarea partidelor politice" [MPs adopted the law on financing of political parties], Ministry of Justice, 19 March 2015, http://www.justice.gov.md/libview.php?l=ro&idc=4&id=2507

18 OSCE, "OSCE/ODIHR Limited Election Observation Mission Final Report, Local Elections 14 and 28 June 2015," 20 August 2015, http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/moldova/178226?download=true

19 Ibid.

20 State registry of non-commercial organisations, accessed 9 November 2015, http://rson.justice.md/organizations

21 "Barometer of Public Opinion, Republic of Moldova, November 2015," Institute for Public Policy, November 2015, http://www.ipp.md/public/files/Barometru/Brosura_BOP_11.2015_first_part_ENGLISH_V1.pdf

22 Gina S. Lentine, "Moldovans Settle In for a Standoff with Corruption," Freedom House, 10 September 2015, https://freedomhouse.org/blog/moldovans-settle-standoff-corruption

23 Author interview with Serghei Ostaf, former head of NPC, 11 November 2015.

24 See NPC website at http://www.cnp.md/en/about-npc/overview

25 Author interview with Serghei Ostaf, former head of NPC, 11 November 2015.

26 "The 2014 CSO Sustainability Index for Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia," United States Agency for International Development (USAID), https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1863/EuropeEurasia_F...

27 "Buletin informativ No 6" [Informative bulletin No 6], Legal Resources Center for Moldova, June 2015, http://crjm.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Buletin-informativ-nr.-6.pdf

28 "Reactia Ministerului Mediului la investigatia RISE: Ancheta la Moldsilva" [Reaction of Ministry of Environment on the RISE material: Investigation at Moldsilva], RISE Moldova, 28 October 2015, https://www.rise.md/reactia-ministerului-mediului-in-urma-anchetei-rise-...

29 "Premierul Valeriu Strelet s-a autosesizat dupa ce portalul Anticorupiie a publicat o investigaiie privind averile si interesele viceministrilor" [Prime Minister Valeriu Strelet took action after Anticorruptie portal published an investigation on the wealth and interests of deputy ministers], Anticoruptie.md, 7 October 2015, http://anticoruptie.md/ro/stiri/premierul-valeriu-strelet-s-a-autosesizat-dupa-ce-portalul-anticoruptie-a-publicat-o-investigatie-privind-averile-si-interesele-viceministrilor

30 "Memoriu privind libertatea presei in Republica Moldova 3 mai 2014  3 mai 2015" [Memoir on press freedom in Republic of Moldova 3 May 2014-3 May 2015], Jurnal de Chisinau, May 2015, http://www.jc.md/memoriu-privind-libertatea-presei-in-republica-moldova-3-mai-2014-3-mai-2015/

31 Ibid.

32 Anastasia Nani, "Oficial Vlad Plahotniuc, proprietar a patru televiziuni si trei posturi de radio" [Official Vlad Plahotniuc, owner of four TV channels and three radio stations], Anticoruptie.md, 13 November 2015, http://anticoruptie.md/ro/stiri/oficial-vlad-plahotniuc-proprietar-a-pat...

33 Julieta Savitchi, "Cine sunt proprietarii posturilor de radio si televiziune din Moldova" [Who are the owners of radio and television stations in Moldova], Anticoruptie.md, 18 November 2015, http://anticoruptie.md/ro/stiri/cine-sunt-proprietarii-posturilor-de-rad...

34 Kroll, "Project Tenor  Scoping Phase: Final Report," Candu.md, 2 April 2015, http://candu.md/files/doc/Kroll_Project%20Tenor_Candu_02.04.15.pdf

35 "Stapanii televiziunilor" [The TV owners], Ziarul de Garda, 19 November 2015, http://www.zdg.md/editia-print/investigatii/stapanii-televiziunilor

36 Valeria Vitu, "Situaiia presei din R.Moldova este foarte proasta" [The situation of media in Moldova is very bad], rfi.ro, 8 April 2015, http://www.rfi.ro/stiri-politica-56947-expert-media-situatia-presei-rmoldova-este-foarte-proasta

37 Office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media, "Legal Analysis of Proposed Amendments to the Audiovisual Code of the Republic of Moldova and the Law on Freedom of Expression of the Republic of Moldova," OSCE, April 2015, http://www.osce.org/fom/152301?download=true

38 Office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media, "Legal Analysis of Proposed Amendments to the Audiovisual Code of the Republic of Moldova," OSCE, July 2015, http://www.osce.org/fom/175681?download=true

39 "Sase ani la Vama: Afacerile si proprietaiile familiei Baliichi" [Six years at Customs: the business and property of Balitchi family], Ziarul de Garda, 29 October 2015, http://www.zdg.md/editia-print/investigatii/sase-ani-la-vama-afacerile-s...

40 "Judecatoarea interzice ZdG sa mai scrie ... " [The judge prohibits ZdG to write ... ], Ziarul de Garda, 22 October 2015, http://www.zdg.md/editia-print/editoriale/judecatoarea-interzice-zdg-sa-mai-scrie

41 "Role of Russian Media in the Baltics and Moldova," Broadcasting Board of Governors, February 2016, http://www.bbg.gov/wp-content/media/2016/02/BBG-Gallup-Russian-Media-pg2...

42 IREX, "Europe and Eurasia Media Sustainability Index 2015," International Research and Exchanges Board, 2015, https://www.irex.org/sites/default/files/u105/EE_MSI_2015_Moldova.pdf

43 Activ, "Televiziunea ca instrument de propaganda intr-un razboi informational" [Television as an instrument of propaganda in an information war], Association of Independent Press (API), http://api.md/upload/files/Activ-2(56)-rom-web.pdf

44 Mihai Popsoi, "The Rise and Fall of Renato Usatii: Politics in Moldova 2.0," Moldovan Politics, 27 November 2014, http://moldovanpolitics.com/2014/11/27/the-rise-and-fall-of-renato-usatii/

45 See a detailed explanation of the main provisions of the law in the Nations in Transit 2015 report at https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2015/moldova

46 Natalia Zaharescu, "Descentralizarea administraiiei de stat trebuie sa continue in R. Moldova" [Decentralization of state administration should continue in Moldova], Radio Chisinau, 8 October 2015, http://www.radiochisinau.md/descentralizarea_administratiei_de_stat_trebuie_sa_continue_in_r_moldova-27193

47 Interview with international organization representative, Chisinau, 17 October 2015.

48 Interview with expert on local public administration, Chisinau, 16 October 2015.

49 Interview with an official from Council of Europe, 17 October 2015.

50 Audio recording of court proceedings is needed in order to ensure transparency of justice, fair trial, increasing the accuracy of registration information during trial and eliminating the perception of misconduct and improper communications in court.

51 "Moldovan government approves law on Prosecution," Government of Republic of Moldova, 5 October 2015, http://gov.md/en/content/moldovan-government-approves-law-prosecution

52 Andriana Cheptine, "Vlad Gribincea: E Timpul Sa Se Faca un Pas Decisiv In Reformarea Procuraturii" [Vlad Gribincea: It is time to make a decisive step in reforming the prosecutor office], Tribuna, 14 October 2015, http://tribuna.md/2015/10/14/interviu-vlad-gribincea-e-timpul-sa-se-faca-un-pas-decisiv-in-reformarea-procuraturii/

53 "Judecatorii nu vor mai putea sa imparta cum vor dosarele. Presedintele CSM: "Garantii nu-s, pentru ca moldovenii sunt... inventivi"" [Judges will not be able to assign cases as they wish. The President of SCM: "There are no guaranties since the Moldovans are ... inventive"], Protv.md, 11 March 2015, http://protv.md/stiri/actualitate/prblema-fentarii-sistemului-de-repartizare-aleatorie-a-dosarelor-899011.html

54 "Buletin informativ Nr 5" [Informative bulletin No 5], Legal Resource Center for Moldova, March 2015, http://crjm.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/CRJM-Buletin-info.-nr.-5.pdf

55 Ana Sirbu, "DOCUMENT. Raportul KROLL, publicat oficial de presedintele Parlamentului" [Document: Kroll Report, officially published by speaker of parliament], 4 May 2015, http://agora.md/stiri/8401/documentraportul-krollpublicat-oficial-de...

56 Ibid.

57 "Vlad Filat a dat ordin ca Artur Gherman sa fie dat afara de la CNPF pentru ca era impotriva fraudelor de la BEM" [Vlad Filat order to sack Artur Gherman from NCFM because he was against the frauds from BEM], Realitatea, 19 October 2015, http://www.realitatea.md/-vlad-filat-a-dat-ordin-ca-artur-gherman-sa-fie-dat-afara-de-la-cnpf-pentru-ca-era-impotriva-faudelor-de-la-bem-_28501.html

58 "Filat has been arrested  a new stage in the war of the Moldovan political elites," Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), 21 October 2015, http://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2015-10-21/filat-has-been-arrested-a-new-stage-war-moldovan-political-elites

59 "Viorel Chetraru: CNA a pornit 44 de dosare penale pe marginea furtului miliardului" [Viorel Chetraru: CNA initiated 44 criminal cases on the one billion theft], Radio Europa Libera [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty], 2 December 2015, http://www.europalibera.org/archive/news/20151202/445/445.html?id=27402917

60 "INTERVIU // Lilia Carasciuc: "Daca nu va vasli spre Uniunea Europeana, tara noastra va lua o directie gresita" [Interview // Lilia Carasciuc: "If Moldova will not head towards the European Union, our country will take a wrong path"], Ziarul National, 15 October 2015, http://www.ziarulnational.md/interviu-lilia-carasciuc-daca-nu-va-vasli-spre-uniunea-europeana-tara-noastra-va-lua-o-directie-gresita/

61 Ibid.

62 "Buletin informativ Nr 6" [Informative bulletin No 6], Legal Resource Center for Moldova, June 2015, http://crjm.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Buletin-informativ-nr.-6.pdf

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Nations in Transit 2016 - Georgia

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 April 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Nations in Transit 2016 - Georgia, 12 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/571f71ce15.html [accessed 24 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Regime classification: Transitional Government or Hybrid Regime

Nations in Transit Category and Democracy Scores

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 National Democratic Governance 5.50 5.75 6.00 6.00 5.75 5.75 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 Electoral Process 4.50 4.75 5.25 5.25 5.00 5.00 4.75 4.50 4.50 4.50 Civil Society 3.50 3.50 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 Independent Media 4.00 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.00 4.00 4.00 Local Democratic Governance 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.25 5.25 Judicial Framework and Independence 4.75 4.75 4.75 4.75 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 4.75 Corruption 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 4.75 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 Democracy Score 4.68 4.79 4.93 4.93 4.86 4.82 4.75 4.68 4.64 4.61

NOTE: The ratings reflect the consensus of Freedom House, its academic advisers, and the author(s) of this report. If consensus cannot be reached, Freedom House is responsible for the final ratings. The ratings are based on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 representing the highest level of democratic progress and 7 the lowest. The Democracy Score is an average of ratings for the categories tracked in a given year. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the author(s).

Executive Summary:

Democratic institutions and practices in Georgia saw signs of development, stagnation, and even regression in 2015. Positively, the year saw increased evidence of political pluralism and a noticeable slowing in new prosecutions against former officials from the previously ruling United National Movement (UNM), while the structural independence and functionality of the Georgian judicial system were largely sustained in 2015. However, there were also signs of stagnation and even possible regression in other areas, and particularly in the realm of media freedom. While the Georgian media landscape remains diverse and largely pluralistic, the investigation and prosecution of the leading opposition media outlet, Rustavi2, points to political pressure by elements of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) coalition.

After gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Georgia was mired in a succession of separatist conflicts, civil wars, and persistent economic depression in the 1990s. After peaceful protests known as the Rose Revolution ousted former President Eduard Shevardnadze in late 2003, the UNM's Mikheil Saakashvili held the presidency from 2004 to 2013. The UNM was effective in combating low-level graft, strengthening state institutions, and diminishing both organized and petty criminality, but its agenda often ran contrary to the rule of law, and power was concentrated among a small circle of UNM elites. Growing popular dissatisfaction led to a surprise victory by the GD coalition in 2012, and Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili became prime minister, resulting in an uneasy cohabitation with Saakashvili. Ivanishvili resigned from the premiership in 2013, upholding previous promises to remain in office only briefly, and his longtime associate Irakli Gharibashvili assumed the post through December 2015. Despite Ivanishvili's departure, he remained active in GD party affairs, leading to accusations from the UNM and other opposition politicians that he maintained power through informal means and was therefore unaccountable. After coming to power in 2012, the GD-led government also embarked on a campaign of what some GD leaders termed "restorative justice," which targeted former state officials from the UNM. While UNM officials did engage in abuses during their period in power, critics claimed that the GD's campaign was politically motivated and largely arbitrary. Frequent statements by senior GD officials assuming UNM officials' guilt lent further evidence to this view.

New cases against UNM ex-officials largely ceased in 2015, though litigation against existing defendants continued. In a particularly high-profile case, former Tbilisi Mayor Gigi Ugulava was found guilty on a variety of corruption charges and sentenced to four and a half years in prison in September, after extended periods of pretrial detention that the Georgian Constitutional Court had found unconstitutional. Another former UNM official, onetime Defense Minister Davit Kezerashvili, was acquitted in absentia in the same month. Additionally, senior Defense Ministry staffers arrested and charged with corruption in 2014, coinciding with a public fallout between Ivanishvili and former GD Defense Minister Irakli Alasania, were released from pretrial detention and allowed to return to work. While the prosecutions raised questions about politicization, regular contrary rulings by various Georgian courts highlighted a degree of independence not previously seen in the judiciary.

However, there is evidence of potential regression in independence of the media. Rustavi2, the country's most popular television channel that is also closely linked with the opposition UNM, was subjected to court-imposed limited asset freezes in 2015. The August court decision came amid a lawsuit by a previous owner seeking to reclaim shares of the company that he claims had been illegally seized under the UNM government. While asset freezes and injunctions are not uncommon in such cases, independent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) detected problematic patterns in the handling of the case suggesting that the process could be politicized. Comments from senior GD officials presuming Rustavi2's guilt did nothing to dispel this notion. Also of concern was a string of cancelled television programming across multiple channels during the summer, which critics claimed was a result of government pressure. Allegedly, senior GD officials were pressuring channels to modify their talk show programming in favor of new content to boost GD's flagging public image ahead of planned parliamentary elections in 2016.

The question of Rustavi 2's ownership raises major questions about the integrity and freedom of the media in Georgia, which have seen significant improvement in recent years but remain fragile and susceptible to potential abuse. At the same time, it also underscores the problems with maintaining a democratic trajectory while redressing the abuses of the previous regime when that regime is the principal opposition party.

Score Changes:

Judicial Framework and Independence rating improved from 5.00 to 4.75 due to evidence of sustained structural improvements and increased judicial independence compared to previous years.

As a result, Georgia's Democracy Score improved from 4.64 to 4.61.

Outlook for 2016: The parliamentary elections, scheduled for October, will be next year's most significant political event. Given the expected tight race, the year is likely to see increased levels of political activity from the ruling GD coalition and from parliamentary and non-parliamentary opposition groups. Due to falling support for GD and largely stagnant backing for UNM, the main beneficiaries of the elections could be non-parliamentary opposition parties, if current trends continue. These parties include a number of pro-Russia and anti-West groupings, which have the potential to fundamentally change the character of Georgian parliamentary politics, though they are unlikely to win enough support to gain power on their own. The fate of Rustavi2 and former Tbilisi mayor Gigi Ugulava will remain a topic of discussion as appeals cases are likely to conclude in 2016.

National Democratic Governance:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 5.50 5.75 6.00 6.00 5.75 5.75 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50

For the most part, 2015 was characterized by relative political stability. The intensity of partisan rancor between the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) and the opposition United National Movement (UNM) was somewhat less apparent during the year, likely due in part to the absence of high-profile election events.

Billionaire and former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, who founded GD in 2011, is widely believed to be playing a prominent role in Georgian political life. Opacity surrounding the extent of his involvement in governmental affairs is a regular source of tension as well as confusion. Because of the ambiguity, critics tend to associate most negative steps by the government as evidence of Ivanishvili's influence. Yet, uncertainty regarding Ivanishvili's relationship with the government makes it difficult to assess his influence one way or another. Not dissimilarly, former president Mikheil Saakashvili, now regional governor of Odessa, Ukraine, has also continued to be involved in decision-making within the opposition UNM  even after he was stripped of his Georgian citizenship for taking a Ukrainian passport. [1]

Ambiguity over shared power between the presidency and premiership put Prime Minister Gharibashvili and President Giorgi Margvelashvili increasingly at odds in 2014 and 2015. [2] In 2014, Gharibashvili and Margvelashvili fought over attendance at the United Nations (UN) Climate Summit, and in September 2015, the two leaders sparred again over representation at the UN General Assembly. [3] Margvelashvili, preempted from a UN appearance by Gharibashvili, took a separate trip to the US in the same period, [4] and complained publicly that the Georgian Ambassador to the US, who accompanied the prime minister at the UN, showed insufficient deference to the presidential office. [5] In December, Gharibashvili resigned in a surprise move and was replaced by former foreign minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili. [6]

GD feuding with Margvelashvili, while a source of political uncertainty, also appears to highlight some welcome pluralism. The president, though elected with GD backing earlier, has publicly broken with the GD mainstream on several occasions and has used the presidency as a check on the prime minister as well as the wider GD parliamentary majority. In July 2015, Margvelashvili vetoed a proposed bill to strip the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) of banking oversight functions and invest them instead in a separate Financial Supervisory Agency. [7] Margvelashvili opposed the bill because it threatened the independence of the NBG. Some in GD argued that the NBG was partially responsible for the large-scale depreciation of the lari in late 2014 and 2015. [8]

Recent coalition jockeying in parliament shows that pluralism is an increasingly ordinary feature of Georgian political life. The defection of the Free Democrats (FD) party from GD in late 2014 added new, centrist voices to the parliamentary opposition. [9] The departure of FD has also strengthened the GD-aligned Republican Party, which now bears the standard for a liberal policy agenda within GD. Republican Davit Usupashvili has been the Speaker of Parliament since 2012, and the parliament appointed fellow Republican Tinatin Khidasheli (who is Usupashvili's wife) defense minister in May 2015. [10] Earlier, in March, former defense minister Irakli Alasania reignited accusations of Ivanishvili's involvement in his abrupt dismissal in November 2014. Alasania claimed that Ivanishvili precipitated the 2014 political crisis, which saw two additional cabinet members resign in protest, by trying to pressure him into canceling an arms deal with France, presumably in favor of Russia. [11] GD dismissed the allegations, and Khidasheli signed two arms agreements with French firms in June 2015. [12] Compared to previous years, prosecutions of high-level UNM officials slowed considerably. The only significant case in 2015 was the drawn-out trial and detention of UNM official and ex-Tbilisi mayor, Gigi Ugulava (see Judicial Framework and Independence). Additionally, seemingly prejudiced comments by government officials in another high-level case over the disputed ownership of Rustavi2 TV, Georgia's most popular broadcaster, also highlighted problems related to politicization (see Independent Media). [13]

Related to the Rustavi2 case, in October, a Russian website called Ukrainian Wikileaks published wiretapped recordings of phone calls between Saakashvili, UNM's International Secretary Giga Bokeria, and Rustavi2 Director Nika Gvaramia. [14] The intercepts, which Bokeria and Gvaramia acknowledged as authentic, feature Saakashvili and Bokeria discussing with Gvaramia the Rustavi2 controversy as a means of fomenting violence and mass protests in a bid to overthrow the GD government. While the UNM has accused GD of obtaining the wiretaps illegally, Russian intelligence services are the likelier culprit  in a bid to discredit the two major political parties and destabilize Georgia ahead of 2016 parliamentary elections. [15] Yet, regardless of how the calls were intercepted and leaked, the episode reveals a potential willingness on UNM's part to subvert constitutional mechanisms and embrace violence as a means to regain power.

Recent polls indicate that some segments of the Georgian public increasingly embrace pro-Russian and anti-Western policies,[16] though they continue to represent the minority and their support significantly lags behind that of Euro-Atlantic integration. Pro-Russian political parties in Georgia are widely seen as being funded by Moscow and part of Russia's efforts to extend its influence over Georgia and destabilize the country.[17]

Electoral Process:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 4.50 4.75 5.25 5.25 5.00 5.00 4.75 4.50 4.50 4.50

The year 2015 was the only year without major elections since the ruling GD coalition came to power in 2012. However, two by-elections were held on October 31 in the Martvili and Sagarejo single-mandate constituencies to fill vacancies left by the death of UNM deputy Nauli Janashia in March 2014 and the appointment of Tinatin Khidasheli as defense minister in May 2015, respectively. [18] GD candidates won both elections, although UNM and FD boycotted them due to unmet demands for early elections. [19] GD won a dominant majority in Martvili, but only narrowly in Sagarejo, in a close race with Irma Inashvili, the head of the populist Alliance of Patriots party. [20] Though Inashvili accused the winner, Tamar Khidasheli, of manipulating the results, an independent assessment of the by-elections found no major violations. [21]

The by-elections highlighted the growing demand from some political parties for electoral reform. Georgia currently has a mixed system with 73 members of parliament (MPs) elected in single-mandate ("majoritarian") constituencies and 77 MPs elected on party lists. In late May, the Georgian Constitutional Court ruled that large discrepancies in the size of majoritarian constituencies violate the equality of votes. [22] The current system uses electoral districts based on current municipal boundaries, which means that the biggest district is 25-times the size of the smallest. The Council of Europe's Venice Commission, the advisory body for legal matters, suggests that variations between the size of electoral districts be no more than 15 percent. [23]

Fourteen political parties and eight civil society organizations signed a petition in late May that called on authorities replace the current mixed system with a "regional-proportional" one. [24] The regional-proportional alternative would see half of parliament's 150 MPs elected from nationwide proportional, party-list votes, and the other half in multi-mandate constituencies at the regional level. [25] The ruling GD coalition's proposed reforms, offered in June, [26] would largely maintain the current system through the 2016 parliamentary elections and do away with the majoritarian component thereafter. In the interim, GD offered to make several reforms ahead of the 2016 elections, including: raising the threshold for first round victories in single-mandate districts from 30 percent to 50 percent; and redistricting to provide greater equality. [27]

Virtually all opposition parties opposed GD's proposal, claiming that the majoritarian component favors the incumbents. FD and the UNM, which strongly backed the majoritarian system during its period in power, joined extraparliamentary opposition parties and argued in favor of doing away with the majoritarian process altogether. [28] The final bills, which passed parliamentary reading at the end of December and were awaiting the president's signature at year's end, increased the threshold required for first-round victories to 50 percent and significantly redrew electoral districts. Opposition MPs criticized the redistricting, arguing it is artificial and will confuse voters. [29]

Previous elections since 2012 were broadly free and fair. [30] While incidents of voter intimidation occurred, international observers noted these events were largely isolated and unlikely to have appreciably impacted electoral outcomes. Yet, lopsided victories by the ruling GD coalition in recent major elections, particularly the 2013 presidential and 2014 local elections, raised questions about a "winner-take-all" tendency in Georgian political culture.

New parliamentary elections are scheduled for late 2016. As the 2016 elections near, the issue of electoral reforms as well as broader partisan rancor is likely to become more pronounced. Polls in late 2015 also suggest that the 2016 elections will be particularly competitive,[31] with no one party poised for domination and amid high levels of voter uncertainty. This also coincides with evidence of growing anti-West sentiments  and concomitant growing support for anti-West policies in the polls  that is likely to make the 2016 elections especially hotly contested.[32]

Civil Society:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 3.50 3.50 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75

The civil society sector in Georgia is robust and active. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play a prominent role in policy research, advocacy, and opinion leadership. NGOs are frequently referenced in the media, and NGO leaders are regularly sought after for their commentary and analysis. For the most part, Georgian NGOs also express a wide spectrum of ideological views and have a history of consulting with the government on policies or proposals. For example, local NGOs closely collaborated with the parliament on open government initiatives in 2015. [33] However, cooperation with the government appeared closer and more consistent in 2014 and especially in 2013 compared to 2015.

Overall, NGOs in Georgia are able to work without harassment or intimidation. The Georgian legal code offers sufficient protections for NGOs to operate freely, and the autonomy of organizations is customarily observed. In practice, registering and maintaining legal requirements for NGOs is simple, straightforward, and can often be accomplished in short order. The overall strength of the civil society sector is evidenced by a large number of NGOs representing a multitude of ideologies and groups.

However, while Georgia's civil society is diverse, it is also polarized. There is a broad sense in the civil society sector that individual NGOs "belong" to a particular party, movement, or personality. [34] In addition, it is not uncommon for NGOs representing divergent views to come into open, in some cases even physical, confrontation with one another. For example, in March 2015, activists from the pro-UNM Free Zone clashed with activists from the pro-GD Free Generation after the demonstration against the government's economic policy. [35] Similarly, in September, Free Zone members got into a fight with activists from the Erekle II Society in opposition to the latter's largely pro-Russia advocacy. [36]

The polarization of the civil society sector is exacerbated by periodic comments from former prime minister and GD founder Bidzina Ivanishvili. In April, Ivanishvili spoke out against the leaders of Transparency International (TI) Georgia and the Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA) during a television talk show on GDS TV, a channel owned by his son. Ivanishvili claimed that TI and GYLA  broadly regarded as high-functioning, nonaligned organizations  were allied with the UNM. [37] In February, in response to similar previous attacks, 46 Georgian NGOs released a statement calling Ivanishvili a "threat" to the sector. [38] Ivanishvili's accusations highlight the tendency by many to conflate criticism with sympathies for the "other side," in this case the political opposition. Such tensions are further complicated by Ivanishvili's unparalleled wealth and, relatedly, his role as founder and head of his own NGO, Citizen.

The role of Ivanishvili's wealth also highlights other problematic aspects of the civil society sector. For the most part, NGOs are funded either by a small number of wealthy Georgians  such as Ivanishvili or, previously, by the late UNM financier Kakha Bendukidze[39]  or by foreign organizations. Foreign funding is largely made up of grants from large international agencies and private foundations mostly based in the US or Europe. However, there is also growing evidence that Russian state-linked groups are increasingly funding pro-Moscow "Eurasianist" NGOs in Georgia.[40] In addition, pro-Russia political groups, Eurasianist NGOs, and elements of the powerful Georgian Orthodox Church  which nominally favors Euro-Atlantic integration but is deeply socially conservative  appear to be increasingly aligned in an anti-Western agenda and coordinate their activities through joint events, rallies, and the use of common rhetoric.[41]

Independent Media:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 4.00 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.25 4.00 4.00 4.00

The Georgian media landscape is generally vibrant and pluralistic. Media freedom rates strongly in the region, [42] with a generally robust legal framework and relatively diverse media outlets. Television remains the most dominant medium, but 2015 polling by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers reported for the first time that most Georgians access the internet on at least a weekly basis. [43] Radio and newspapers are less influential, but are frequently connected to other forms of media, especially online outlets. However, the media landscape is also highly polarized and still largely perceived to be tied to partisan interests. In 2015, a number of developments suggested some degree of regression in media freedom.

According to an October 2015 report by Transparency International Georgia, there were no significant changes in the ownership of major outlets in the previous year and media ownership is relatively transparent. [44] This has not always been the case  media freedom was significantly curtailed under the UNM, particularly in the latter period of their tenure in power. While TI reported that political parties do not own any major media outlets directly, most television channels and online outlets are seen as being aligned with one political force or another. This is not only true of the ruling GD coalition and the UNM, but also of extraparliamentary opposition groups, including pro-Russian and anti-Western NGOs and political movements. However, outlets in the latter category have shown little advertising revenue, raising questions over their sources of funding. [45]

At the same time, partisanship among major media networks appears to be decreasing over time. The major exception is Rustavi2, the country's most popular television channel, which has frequently criticized the current government. Rustavi2's legal case is apparently intertwined political motivations, which represents a worrying turn from GD's periodically acerbic but mostly liberal approach towards the media sector following its accession to power in late 2012.

Rustavi2's legal quandary is rooted in one of several ongoing disputes over the channel's ownership. The television company, which has close ties to the UNM, changed ownership frequently during the UNM's tenure and some of these changes took place under unclear circumstances. [46] In August 2015, a previous owner, Kibar Khalvashi, filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming that his shares had been improperly liquidated in 2005 and 2006. [47] A few days later, a Tbilisi court ordered a freeze on Rustavi2's assets, in line with Khalvashvi's request, though not on its bank accounts. [48] While it is not unusual for courts to order certain injunctions and even asset freezes in similar situations, seven prominent NGOs issued a statement that noted a number of inconsistencies in the court's ruling, including the fact that Khalvashvi's shares had changed hands several times since their sale. [49] These inconsistencies made it likely that the Rustavi2 lawsuit is at least partially politically motivated. [50]

In early November, the Tbilisi City Court ruled in favor of Khalvashi. [51] Shortly before the ruling, the Constitutional Court suspended a legal clause in Georgia's civil code which allows for immediate enforcement if a case is under appeal. Rustavi2's legal representation requested the suspension. [52] However, two days after the ruling, Khalvashi's lawyers filed a motion for remedy and the Tbilisi City Court judge issued an interim injunction, appointing temporary administrators to the channel. [53] Following international and domestic criticism, including from Marvelashvili and Ivanishvili, [54] the Tbilisi City Court reversed its earlier decision and reinstated the previous Rustavi2 management on November 12. [55] Shortly thereafter, the Constitutional Court suspended legal clauses that allowed the Tbilisi City Court to temporarily transfer Rustavi2's management. [56]

There were other signs of increasing government pressure on the Georgian media. Throughout the summer, a number of Georgian channels unexpectedly canceled several popular television talk shows. This led to broad speculations that GD elements, and Ivanishvili in particular, were behind the sudden shake up as a measure to better prepare for upcoming parliamentary elections in 2016.[57] One of the talk shows taken off the air in this period included 20/30, a show on the Ivanishvili family-owned GDS channel (where Ivanishvili earlier appeared regularly), which lends greater credence to the idea that the cancelations were interrelated and likely politically motivated.

Local Democratic Governance:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.25 5.25

Georgia is divided into 12 main regions, including Tbilisi, a special administrative unit, and two autonomous republics, Adjara and Abkhazia. Beneath the provincial level are 69 local municipal units, of which 12 are legally defined as "self-governing cities." Prior to 2014 reforms, only the cities of Tbilisi, Batumi, Kutaisi, Poti, and Rustavi held self-governing status, and mayors were only directly elected in Tbilisi. Local government reforms in 2014 not only expanded the number of self-governing cities to include all provincial capitals, but also ensured that all mayors and district executives were directly elected along with local legislatures. [58]

Local government was significantly expanded in early 2014, transferring substantial powers to the provincial and local levels. [59] The 2014 laws also reversed long-term trends favoring the centralization of power under the UNM, and local elections that year marked the first direct elections that took place outside Tbilisi. While the reforms were relatively far reaching and reversed a highly centralized model of governance, the final slate passed in 2014 was significantly less robust than provisions originally proposed in 2013. The strongest criticism of decentralization came from extraparliamentary opposition groups and the Georgian Orthodox Church, which warned that such reforms would bring about national "disintegration." [60] The church's opposition may be tied to fears that greater local control would empower regionally clustered non-Orthodox minorities  such as Shi'a Muslims in Kvemo Kartli, Sunni Muslims in Adjara, or Armenian Christians in Javakheti  and thus undermine its national power. Facing such criticism, GD loosened several proposals, including a concept to make provincial governors accountable to regional councils made up of municipal leaders. However, GD officials implied that such reforms could be revisited in the future.

Despite these pledges, there were no further changes or expansion of local government laws in 2015. In particular, the 2014 reforms called for the restoration of some form of fiscal autonomy, including the provision of revenue-sharing agreements with the central government, by September 2014. However, the central government failed to meet this target and there was no evidence of progress in this direction in 2015. Yet, without the added incentive of revenue sharing and expanded fiscal decentralization, local governments lack the authority and wherewithal to respond to local voters' needs.

It is likely not coincidental that polling in October 2015 revealed that many ordinary citizens regarded their local officials as unresponsive and largely out of touch.[61] Fifty-seven percent reported they did not know anything about the work of local government bodies; only 6 percent reported having ever been contacted by district council officials, and even fewer from mayoral offices or provincial governors. Nonetheless, further local reforms appear unlikely in the near future due to the unexpectedly strong opposition from key segments in society, such as the Georgian Orthodox Church.

Judicial Framework and Independence:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 4.75 4.75 4.75 4.75 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 4.75

The Georgian constitution provides a robust framework for a strong, independent judiciary, guaranteeing high levels of political rights and civil liberties. However, these guarantees are not necessarily observed in practice. Before 2012, the judiciary was characterized by high levels of politicization and, concomitantly, low popular trust. The acquittal rate was a fraction of 1 percent, and the plea bargaining system was widely regarded as a mechanism of extortion. [62] After the 2012 change in power, GD started extensive reforms, which resulted in an increased acquittal rate, [63] significant changes to the plea bargaining system, and a general improvement in the independence of the judiciary. [64] The US State Department's 2014 Human Rights Report for Georgia, released in 2015, noted that "changes in the plea bargaining provisions of the criminal code established more safeguards for due process." [65]

While popular attitudes toward the judiciary are unlikely to change quickly, polls released in late 2014 show a growing trust as a result of these improvements. [66] A strong plurality (37 percent) claimed to trust the court system, compared to 21 percent reporting distrust; while a larger plurality (46 percent) agreed that the judiciary had improved since the 2012 change in power, compared to 6 percent saying it had worsened.

High-profile court cases against a number of UNM ex-officials on various corruption charges have marred these improvements. Although repairing the rule of law required addressing genuine cases of criminality under the previous government, UNM members and their supporters claimed that the process of charging high-level former officials was arbitrary and politicized. [67] In an effort to address growing concerns, the government assembled a panel of international legal experts in mid-2014 to advise the Georgian Chief Prosecutor's Office on the review and handling of high-profile cases. [68] The group's activities were sparsely reported, however, and it was quietly disbanded in 2015. [69] A July 2014 Transparency International report assessing high-profile cases did not reveal significant irregularities. [70]

While new judicial action against UNM officials had largely ceased, ongoing high-profile cases continued to be an issue in 2015. In particular, circumstances surrounding the trial of former Tbilisi Mayor Gigi Ugulava reinforced concerns about politicization. Ugulava, on trial on a slate of corruption charges, was remanded into pretrial detention in July 2014. When the detention period expired in March 2015, prosecutors used a loophole created in 2010 by the then-ruling UNM, and filed new charges against Ugulava, extending his detention. [71] State prosecutors had used similar tactics during the trial against UNM official and former Defense Minister Bacho Akhalaia in 2013-14. [72] In September 2015, the Georgian Constitutional Court ruled this practice unconstitutional, which was met with protests and apparent threats by pro-GD groups, [73] suggesting at least indirect government interference. Only some 24 hours later, the Tbilisi City Court found Ugulava guilty on misappropriation charges and the former mayor was taken into custody again to serve a four-and-a-half year sentence. Another UNM official, former Defense Minister Davit Kezerashvili, also under trial on corruption charges, was acquitted in September. [74] While Ugulava's prominent party role makes it likely he was involved in government abuses under the UNM, GD pressure and periodic prejudicial statements raised questions about the integrity of the trial process. [75]

In October, a graphic video was leaked showing sexual abuse committed by law enforcement officers under the previous UNM government in 2011. [76] The leak led to problematic statements by Gharibashvili, who called the UNM a "criminal organization" and claimed aggression against the party was "natural" after the leaks. [77] Progovernment groups held rallies in front of UNM offices and up to 20 locations were vandalized. Gharibashvili appealed to the public to remain calm following the events.

Despite credible claims that high-level prosecutions were politicized, the Ugulava and the Rustavi2 cases underscored Georgian courts' increased willingness to contradict prosecutors  and even other courts  demonstrating a sustained, higher level of judicial independence compared to previous years. However, there is a growing danger that judicial pluralism could translate to judicial partisanship, in which certain courts and judges are seen as affiliated with a particular party or ideology and are actively in competition with one another. Apparently contradictory rulings from the Tbilisi City Court and the Constitutional Court during the Rustavi2 case lent the appearance of dueling chambers, in which the courts are judicial proxies of GD and the UNM, respectively. While this would be a simplistic interpretation of events, the perception of a judiciary fragmented by partisanship will likely grow if these circumstances remain. At the same time, it is notable that the Constitutional Court's decisions were largely adhered to despite an atmosphere of political polarization.

Corruption:

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 4.75 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50

The GD government inherited a system that had been largely freed from petty corruption under the UNM. The UNM government also succeeded in diminishing the power of organized crime. However, this anticorruption drive often bypassed, or contravened entirely, the rule of law, while a number of UNM officials used the levers of power to amass wealth and take ever-greater control over swaths of the economy. [78]

Many of the gains from the UNM era remain intact. Despite worries in the immediate aftermath of the 2012 elections, petty corruption continues to be rare. Under GD's administration since 2012, anticorruption efforts have been largely split between "restorative justice," in which senior UNM figures were investigated and in many cases tried over corruption or abuse of power charges; and detecting cases of malfeasance within government. In the latter category, anticorruption efforts have identified a number of offenders within GD's administration, including several cases in 2015. [79]

However, evidence of politicization has marred anticorruption efforts. In late 2014, several high-ranking officials within the Ministry of Defense were detained and charged with corruption, which coincided with the firing of FD Defense Minister Irakli Alasania. Alasania claimed the charges against ministry staff were largely politically motivated, arguing that GD officials, and Ivanishvili in particular, were behind them. The probe triggered a major domestic political crisis that led to the departure of FD from the governing coalition. In June 2015, two of the accused defense ministry staffers were released from pretrial detention and were reinstated in the ministry several weeks later  though their trials had yet to conclude at year's end. [80] This appears to support Alasania's insistence that the charges were unsubstantiated and politically motivated. This was not the only case of alleged political corruption. There were also allegations that pardons were effectively being sold by some members of parliament. [81]

There is also a growing perception that nepotism is an increasing problem in Georgian society. According to a poll commissioned by Transparency International Georgia, those believing that senior officials using their positions for personal purposes more than doubled in 2015  from 12 percent in 2013 to 25 percent in 2015.[82] Approximately 44 percent of Georgians reported hearing of nepotism in public service employment. To counter this trend, TI proposed new laws in March to criminalize nepotism in the civil service,[83] which is regarded as lacking transparency in recruitment and hiring practices. The same 2015 TI poll also found that bribery continued to be a rarity. More than 99 percent reported that neither they nor their families had been asked to pay a bribe for public service.

Author: Michael Hikari Cecire

Michael Hikari Cecire is an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and co-founder of the Tbilisi-based Georgian Institute of Politics. He has researched politics and foreign relations in Georgia and the wider Black Sea region since 2007, and has lived and worked in Georgia for over three years. Cecire is co-editor of Georgian Foreign Policy: The Quest for Sustainable Security (2014), and has published peer-reviewed articles on Eurasian politics in Orbis (2013), Demokratizatsiya (2014), E Cadernos CES (2014), and has a chapter in a forthcoming multiauthor volume from Routledge. His analyses on the region have recently appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, World Politics Review, the Washington Post, the Caucasus Analytical Digest, and Business New Europe, where he is the Colchis columnist. He holds a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Notes:

1 "UNM Opts Not to Elect New Chairperson," Civil Georgia, 6 December 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php/article.php?id=28835

2 "Georgian Prime Minister Acknowledges 'Worsened' Ties with President," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), 15 September 2014, http://www.rferl.org/content/garibashvili-margvelashvili-un-ties-worsening-problem-visit-statement/26584943.html

3 "President and PM at Odds over UN Visit, Again," Civil Georgia, 19 August 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28509

4 "With His UN Visit 'Thwarted,' President Responds to Critics, Lays Out His Role," Civil Georgia, 11 September 2014, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=27658

5 "Georgian President Criticized Ambassador to the US," Georgia Today, 6 October 2015, http://georgiatoday.ge/news/1457/Georgian-President-Criticized-Ambassador-to-the-US

6 Ivan Nechepurenko, "Georgia Lawmakers Approve a New Prime Minister," New York Times, 30 December 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/world/europe/georgia-prime-minister-giorgi-kvirikashvili.html

7 "President Vetoes Controversial National Bank of Georgia Bill," Agenda.ge, 31 July 2015, http://agenda.ge/news/39971

8 "Ivanishvili's Old and New Comments on the Devaluation of Lari," Rustavi2, 26 February 2015, http://rustavi2.com/en/news/10650

9 "Free Democrats: New Opposition Party in Georgia," Agenda.ge, 8 November 2014, http://agenda.ge/news/24214

10 Giorgi Lomsadze, "Georgia Nominates its First Female Defense Minister," EurasiaNet.org, 1 May 2015, http://www.eurasianet.org/node/73266

11 Joshua Kucera, "Ex-Def Min's French Arms Deal Claims Reignite Georgian Political Crisis," EurasiaNet.org, 3 April 2015, http://www.eurasianet.org/node/72856

12 Nicholas de Larrinaga, "Paris Air Show 2015: Georgia Signs Major Air-Defence Contract with Thales," HIS Jane's 360, 19 June 2015, http://www.janes.com/article/52430/paris-air-show-2015-georgia-signs-major-air-defence-contract-with-thales

13 "NGOs Respond to the Rustavi 2 Asset Freeze," Transparency International Georgia, 10 August 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/post/general-announcement/ngos-respond-rustavi2-asset-freeze

14 "Wiretapped Recordings of Saakashvili Discussing Rustavi 2 TV Leaked," Civil Georgia, 30 October 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28713

15 Author interviews with Georgian officials and diplomats from other countries, January 2016.

16 Laura Thornton and Davit Sichinava, "Public Attitudes in Georgia: Results of a April 2015 Survey Carried Out for NDI by CRRC Georgia," National Democratic Institute (NDI), 11 May 2015, https://www.ndi.org/files/NDI%20Georgia_April%202015%20Poll_Public%20Issues_ENG_VF_0.pdf

17 Maia Edilashvili, "Moscow Calling?," Transitions Online, 15 July 2014, http://www.tol.org/client/article/24385-moscow-calling.html

18 "CEC Sets Date for MP By-Elections," Civil Georgia, 31 August 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28536

19 "Early Results Give Narrow Victory to GD Candidate in Sagarejo MP By-Election," Civil Georgia, 1 November 2015, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28728

20 "Parliament Endorses Credentials of Two New NPs," Civil Georgia, 25 November 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28803

21 "Assessment of Parliamentary By-Elections Held in Sagarejo and Martvili," Transparency International Georgia, 31 October 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/node/5624

22 "The Constitutional Court Upheld Ucha Nanuashvili's Claim," Public Defender of Georgia, 28 May 2015, http://ombudsman.ge/en/news/the-constitutional-court-upheld-ucha-nanuashvilis-claim.page

23 "Constitutional Court Orders Overhaul of Majoritarian Part of Electoral System," Civil Georgia, 28 May 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28304

24 Liz Fuller, "Georgian Opposition Launches New Push for Election Law Reform," RFE/RL , 24 June 2015, http://www.rferl.org/content/georgia-oppositionelection-law-reform-/27090980.html

25 "Political Parties and CSOs Urge Parliament to Reform Electoral System," Transparency International Georgia, 2 June 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/node/5290

26 "GD Unveils Electoral System Reform Proposal," Civil Georgia, 5 June 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28329

27 "Electoral Redistricting Passed with First Reading," Civil Georgia," 12 December 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28851

28 "Opposition, NGOs Call for Scrapping Majoritarian Part of Electoral System," Civil Georgia, 30 May 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28312

29 "Bill Increasing Threshold for Electing Majoritarian MPs Approved," Civil Georgia, 24 December 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28880

30 "Georgia Presidential Election: OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission Final Report," Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), 27 October 2013, http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/110301; Jos Wienen, "Observation of Local Elections in Georgia (15 June 2014)," Council of Europe, 15 October 2014, https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=2247289

31 Laura Thornton and Koba Turmanidze, "Public Attitudes in Georgia: Results of August 2015 Survey Carried Out for NDI by CRRC Georgia," National Democratic Institute (NDI), 19 October 2015, https://www.ndi.org/files/NDI_August_2015_Survey_public%20Political_ENG_vf.pdf

32 Laura Thornton and Davit Sichinava, "Public Attitudes in Georgia: Results of a April 2015 Survey Carried Out for NDI by CRRC Georgia," National Democratic Institute (NDI), 11 May 2015, https://www.ndi.org/files/NDI%20Georgia_April%202015%20Poll_Public%20Issues_ENG_VF_0.pdf

33 "Parliament of Georgia has Finalized Working on the Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan," Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), 15 July 2015, https://idfi.ge/en/parliament-of-georgia-has-finalized-working-on-the-open-parliament-georgia-action-plan

34 "National Integrity System  Georgia: Civil Society," Transparency International Georgia, 2011, http://www.transparency.ge/nis/2011/civil-society

35 "Six Detained in Clashes Outside Parliament in Tbilisi," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 12 March 2015, http://dfwatch.net/six-detained-in-clashes-outside-parliament-in-tbilisi-34262

36 "Free Zone Members Were Beaten at Pro-Russian Rally," Rustavi2, 24 September 2015, http://rustavi2.com/en/news/27068

37 "Ivanishvili Slams NGO's Head and President's Adviser," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 27 April 2015, http://dfwatch.net/ivanishvili-slams-at-ngos-head-and-presidents-adviser-35323

38 Ana Robakidze, "Georgian NGOs: Ivanishvili a Threat to Civil Society," The Messenger Online, 3 February 2015, http://www.messenger.com.ge/issues/3300_february_3_2015/3300_ani.html

39 Khatuna Chigogidze, "Who Will Inherit Kakha Bendukidze's Wealth," Georgian Journal, 18 November 2014, http://www.georgianjournal.ge/society/28771-who-will-inherit-kakha-bendukidzes-wealth.html

40 Nata Dzvelishvili and Tazo Kupreishvili, "Russian Influence of Georgian NGOs and Media," Damoukidebloba, 15 June 2015, https://idfi.ge/public/upload/IDFI/media.and.NGO.pdf

41 Michael Cecire, "The Kremlin Pulls on Georgia," Foreign Policy, 9 March 2015, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/09/the-kremlin-pulls-on-georgia/

42 "2015 World Press Freedom Index," Reporters Without Borders, 12 February 2015, http://index.rsf.org/#!/; "Eastern Partnership Media Freedom Index: Updated," Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum, 26 September 2014, http://eap-csf.eu/en/news-events/news/eastern-partnership-media-freedom-index-updated/

43 "Public Attitudes in Georgia, August 2015," Caucasus Barometer, 12 October 2015, http://caucasusbarometer.org/en/ns2015ge/FRQINTR/

44 "Who Owns Georgia's Media," Transparency International Georgia, 19 October 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/post/report/who-owns-georgia-s-media

45 "Who Owns Georgia's Media," Transparency International Georgia, 19 October 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/post/report/who-owns-georgia-s-media

46 Ana Dabrundashvili, "The TV Station of 'Victorious People': The Story of Rustavi 2," Transparency International Georgia, 2 August 2013, http://www.transparency.ge/en/blog/tv-station-%E2%80%98victorious-people-story-rustavi-2

47 "One of Ex-Owners in Court Bid to Reclaim Rustavi 2 TV," Civil Georgia, 7 August 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28484

48 "Court Orders Rustavi 2 TV Asset Freeze," Civil Georgia, 07 August 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28486

49 "NGOs Respond to the Rustavi 2 Asset Freeze," Transparency International Georgia, 10 August 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/post/general-announcement/ngos-respond-rustavi2-asset-freeze

50 "Who Owns Georgia's Media," Transparency International Georgia, 19 October 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/post/report/who-owns-georgia-s-media

51 "Judge Rules in Favor of Ex-Owner in Rustavi 2 TV Ownership Dispute," Civil Georgia, 3 November 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28738

52 "Constitutional Court Suspends Clause on Immediate Enforcement of Verdicts in Civil Disputes," Civil Georgia, 2 November 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28733

53 "Judge Orders Rustavi 2 TV's Chief Executives to Be Replaced," Civil Georgia, 6 November 2015, http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28748

54 "In Quotes: Int'l Reactions to Rustavi 2 TV Case," Civil Georgia, 7 November 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28756; "Giorgi Margvelashvili Made a Statement on 'Rustavi 2' Case," Rustavi2, 6 November 2015, http://web1.rustavi2.com/en/news/31041; "Ivanishvili Has Questions to Tamaz Urtmelidze," Rustavi2, 10 November 2015, http://rustavi2.com/en/news/31375

55 "Court Reverses Rustavi 2 Director's Dismissal and Reinstates Management," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 12 November 2015, http://dfwatch.net/court-reverses-rustavi-2-directors-dismissal-and-reinstates-management-38942

56 Giorgi Lomsadze, "Georgia's Rustavi2 Case: Was Justice Served?," EurasiaNet.org, 16 November 2015, http://www.eurasianet.org/node/76111

57 "Host of Cancelled Talk-Shows: Politics was Behind the Decision," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 1 September 2015, http://dfwatch.net/host-of-cancelled-talk-shows-politics-was-behind-the-decision-38069

58 "Local Self-Government in Georgia: 1991-2014," International Center for Civic Culture, 2 July 2015, http://www.ivote.ge/images/doc//local%20democracy%20development%20report_english%20final%202.pdf

59 Katharina Hoffmann, Arman Melkonyan, Anar Valiyev, and Michael Cecire, "No 74, Caucasus Analytical Digest: Local Governance," Caucasus Analytical Digest, 30 June 2015, http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?lng=en&id=192096

60 "Orthodox Church Weighs in Local Self-Governance Reform Debate," Civil Georgia, 4 December 2013, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=26760

61 Laura Thornton and Koba Turmanidze, "Public Attitudes in Georgia: Results of August 2015 Survey Carried Out for NDI by CRRC Georgia," National Democratic Institute (NDI), 19 October 2015, https://www.ndi.org/files/NDI_August_2015%20survey_Public%20Issues_ENG_V...

62 "Georgia 2012 Human Rights Report," US State Department, 13 April 2013, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/204499.pdf

63 "Pillay Praises Georgia's Plans to Introduce Comprehensive Human Rights Reforms," UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 21 May 2014, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=14624

64 "Judiciary After Parliamentary Elections 2012," Transparency International Georgia, 25 July 2013, http://www.transparency.ge/en/node/3280

65 "2014 Human Rights Reports: Georgia," US Department of State, 25 June 2015, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2014/eur/236526.htm

66 "Attitudes Towards the Judiciary in Georgia, 2014," Caucasus Research Resource Centers, 7 October 2014, http://caucasusbarometer.org/en/ji2014ge

67 David Herszenhorn, "Loss of Power in Georgia Can Bring Trial, or Worse," New York Times, 25 October 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/26/world/europe/loss-of-power-in-georgia-can-bring-trial-or-worse.html

68 "International Legal Experts Offer Advice to Georgia's Chief Prosecutor's Office," Agenda.ge, 22 July 2014, http://agenda.ge/news/18432

69 Author Interviews with Georgian Officials, October 2015.

70 "Country Summary: Georgia," Human Rights Watch, 01 January 2015, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/georgia_5.pdf

71 "Ugulava Found Guilty of Misspending, Sentenced to 4.5 Years in Prison," Civil Georgia, 18 September 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28580

72 "Ex-Defense Minister Akhalaia Remaded in Pre-Trial Detention," Civil Georgia, 05 July 2014, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=27447

73 "Statement by the Constitutional Court of Georgia," Constitutional Court of Georgia, 21 September 2015, http://www.constcourt.ge/en/news/statement-by-the-constitutional-court-of-georgia.page

74 "Court Delivers Partly Guilty Verdict Against Gigi Ugulava, Acquits Davit Kezerashvili," Inter Press News, 19 September 2015, http://www.interpressnews.ge/en/justice/72295-court-delivers-partly-guilty-verdict-against-gigi-ugulava-acquits-davit-kezerashvili.html

75 "PM Garibashvili Comments on Ugulava's Charge," Agenda.ge, 5 July 2014, http://agenda.ge/news/17361

76 "PM Questions Credibility of NDI-Commissioned Poll," Civil Georgia, 18 October 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28666

77 "PM: UNM Has 'No Right to Remain in Politics,'" Civil Georgia, 22 October 2015, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28679

78 Paul Rimple, "Who Owned Georgia (2003-2012)," Transparency International Georgia, 18 December 2012, http://www.transparency.ge/en/node/2619

79 "Tbilisi Mayoral Officials Resign Amid Corruption Scandals," RFE/RL, 5 March 2015, http://www.rferl.org/content/tbilisi-mayoral-officials-resign-amid-corruption-scandal/26883443.html

80 "Two Defense Officials Accused of Corruption Given Their Jobs Back," Democracy and Freedom Watch, 13 August 2015, http://dfwatch.net/two-defense-ministry-employees-accused-of-corruption-given-their-jobs-back-37778

81 "Former Head of Pardon Commission Alexander Elisashvili Being Questioned at Prosecutor's Office," Inter Press News, 9 December 2015, http://www.interpressnews.ge/en/justice/74459-former-head-of-pardon-commission-alexander-elisashvili-being-questioned-at-prosecutors-office.html

82 "Nepotism, Abuse of Power, and Bribery: Public Opinion Survey Outcomes," Transparency International Georgia, 25 September 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/blog/nepotism-abuse-power-and-bribery-public-opinion-survey-outcomes

83 "TI Georgia Proposes Criminalization of Nepotism in the Civil Service," Transparency International Georgia, 10 March 2015, http://www.transparency.ge/en/node/5078

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Geoffrey Robertson confirms NKR's legal right to self-determination

On Wednesday, April 20, the Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly) hosted a successful book presentation of An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians? written by United Kingdom's leading human rights attorney and author Geoffrey Robertson QC in Universal City, CA. The event sold out, reaching over capacity. "The Armenian Assembly of America was proud to feature a giant in the field of international human rights to speak to us about his findings while researching the history that led to the indisputable Armenian Genocide," Assembly Board of Trustees Co-Chair Anthony Barsamian said. "The Armenian Assembly is eager to keep this momentum going as the Assembly's Western Region office continues to do similar substantive work. Mihran Toumajan and Aline Maksoudian went above and beyond to ensure this event was a success." During the event, Barsamian discussed the Assembly's work in Washington, D.C., the Nagorno Karabakh Republic's right to self-determination, and Turkey's irresponsible actions in the region, with a direct message to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "Mr. Erdogan, stop killing your own people. Stop killing your Kurdish population. Stop killing Christians in the region, and stop promoting violence against Karabakh Armenians," Barsamian stated during his speech. The Assembly Co-Chair introduced Robertson, who spoke about the latest edition of his book. An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians? was originally published in 2014, and then released for a second printing in 2015 to reflect the Armenian community's achievements and developments as a result of the centennial year commemorations of the Armenian Genocide. He applauded the Armenian American community's tireless efforts to incorporate the Armenian Genocide in school education. "Unless we learn from the Armenian Genocide, we will not understand the Holocaust and genocides that follow," Robertson explained. Robertson also spoke about the rights of the citizens of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic and believes "independence is possible." "Armenians, the world over, are grateful for [Mr. Robertson] for bravely speaking the truth in the face of systematic denials and obfuscation of historical facts by Turkey and Azerbaijan not only on the veracity of the Armenian Genocide and the Armenian nation's rightful case for restitutive justice, but also as a champion for the self-determination and inviolability of the basic human rights of the heroic and proud Armenians of Artsakh," Assembly Western Region Director Mihran Toumajan said. "It was an honor to host Mr. Robertson and to not only hear his presentation about his book but also his thoughts and feelings regarding the current conflict in Nagorno Karabakh, which so many in our community are concerned about," Western Region Manager and Community Relations Coordinator Aline Maksoudian added. Special guests in attendance include well-known designer Michael Aram, the Honorable Deputy Consul General of the Republic of Armenia in Los Angeles Valery Mkrtoumian, Facing History and Ourselves Los Angeles Office Director Liz Vogel and Advisory Board Member Charlene Achki-Repko, and Congressman Adam Schiff's (D-CA) District Representative Pamela Marcello.
Why IU lost to Rutgers: Hoosiers blow early lead, drop 5th straight

Indiana scored two touchdowns on its first two possessions but didn't score another in a 24-17 loss to Rutgers on Saturday
March of Hayazn ended without incidents (video)

19:50 March organized by Hayazn party ended. The march proceeded very calm and without incidents. Marching on central streets of Yerevan, the action participants returned to Liberty Square. Members of Hayazn party note that they will again organize such a march-rally. 19:00 The march of Hayazn party members kicked off from the Liberty Square with the slogan Artsakh is Armenia. The action participants mainly demand from the authorities not to cede any territory from Artsakh. At the moment they are on North Avenue and will march on several central streets of the capital. Member of the party board Armen Hovhannisyan in the interview with A1+ touched upon todays statement of the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) lawmaker and the NA Deputy Speaker Hermine Naghdalyan and noted, By what right Hermine Naghdalyan is speaking about the concession of territories, those territories were liberated at the expense of our soldiers blood and belong to us. They are the buffer zone, they have become burden on the society like parasites. If they want a march, we will ensure them that march to Baku. Let them leave their property here and go to Baku, he said. Armen Hovhannisyan noted that the main reason for their march is the recent events. These four days showed that the parasite class, which deprived us of our country, will not change. There is one joint Armenian territory, which has been occupied by a number of parasites, he noted. Touching upon the Kazan document discussions, he noted that the agreement of the president is unacceptable. The organizers also noted that the news on the NKR recognition also should stop and there must be a joint country, roaming service must be removed, there must be no checkpoint while travelling to Artsakh.
Incident reports released Monday by the Abilene Police Department:

Criminal mischief, 5400 block of South 7th Street, Sunday

A woman told police her former boyfriend slashed her vehicle's tire, causing about $200 in damage.

Theft, 2000 block of South Clack Street, Monday

A man told police someone stole his firearm from his apartment.

Criminal trespass, 1700 block of South 6th Street, Monday

Police arrested a 31-year-old man after they found him asleep inside a vehicle not belonging to him.
Surprise! It turns out there's one more original Long Elementary faculty member living in Abilene. And he's got his own stories to tell.

Bill Jenkins, an 88-year-old World War II veteran who helped open the school in 1959, walked into Principal Lisa McCool's office Monday to let her know he is still alive and kicking.

She was excited to talk to him once she realized what was going on. She said she was having a meeting with her instructional coordinator, Janaye Wideman, and heard a man's voice asking to see her. Immediately, she knew something interesting would be happening when she saw what he'd brought with him.

"As I looked up from my desk, I saw him holding a blue folder," McCool said. "My immediate thought was he might have pictures about the school since he had materials in his hand. I was excited to see him because he made the effort and time to come see me. I've always been fascinated listening to the stories of elders and I knew as soon as I shook his hand, he had stories to tell, and I listened."

Long Elementary is scheduled to close at the end of this school year before being converted into an early childhood center for the start of the 2017-18 school year.

McCool was under the impression only one teacher from the inaugural year's 12 educators was still alive. It turns out, though, that Patricia Bogar  whom McCool had been in contact with  had simply lost touch with Jenkins.

He said the two have since reconnected after reading articles about the fate of Long Elementary in the Reporter-News and have determined the two of them are actually all who remain.

Jenkins said he wished he could've attended the party the school held on Saturday but other commitments got in the way.

"I regret other things that got in the way of my not being able to be (at the school)," he said. "They seemed imperative, but I could've refused. Jane Long was a big part of my life."

He recalled mornings way back, when the teachers would huddle around the break room drinking coffee and about some of his favorite students. He said it's unfortunate that favorites develop, because he loved each and every one of his charges throughout his 30-year career, but some do develop.

Visiting the school Monday he stepped inside his former classroom where he taught sixth grade. Currently occupied by fourth grade students in Janet Proffitt's class. There, he wished for the students to be successful and content as they finish the school year.

"Coming here brings back so many memories," he said.
On the first day of early voting Monday, 347 Taylor County residents voted in person for the May 7 city and school board elections.

The total includes voters in the Abilene City Council and Abilene ISD school board races, plus six other elections in towns and school districts within the county.

Two years ago, 398 people cast ballots on the first day of early voting in city/school elections that included a contested race for Abilene mayor and three seats on the AISD board. The 2014 elections also included four out-of-town races.

Early voting Tuesday will be at:

Taylor County Plaza, 400 Oak St.  8 a.m.-5 p.m.

Mall of Abilene, 4310 Buffalo Gap Road  10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Kmart, 4565 S. First St.  10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Abilene City Hall, 555 Walnut  8 a.m.-5 p.m.

Tye City Hall, 205 North St.  8 a.m.-5 p.m.

Merkel City Hall, 100 Kent St.  7:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

Merkel ISD administration office, 300 Ash St.  8 a.m.-4 p.m.

Trent ISD administration office, 12821 E. Interstate 20  8 a.m.-3 p.m.

Tuscola City Hall, 418 Graham St.  8:30 a.m.-noon and 1-5 p.m.

Jim Ned CISD administration building, 830 Garza St.  7:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
For almost 15 years, one thing about the 9/11 attacks has been inconveniently true  15 of the 19 attackers were Saudis, citizens of one of America's most important allies in the Middle East.

In the wake of President Obama's visit to Saudi Arabia this week, many issues separate the two nations, including Saudi furor over the U.S.-Iranian nuclear deal, the Saudis' continuing embrace of radical Wahhabi Islam, and Obama's barbed public comments about nations such as Saudi Arabia being "free riders" on U.S. military efforts. But the unanswered questions about the Saudi role in the worst terror attack on American soil are particularly damaging.

A bill in Congress with rare bipartisan support seeks to strip Saudi Arabia of its sovereign immunity against lawsuits stemming from the 9/11 attacks, and Saudi officials have publicly threatened to sell $750 billion in U.S. holdings if the bill passes, rather than potentially see the assets frozen by court proceedings.

Just what was the Saudi role in 9/11? There has long been more innuendo than fact, thanks in part to the continuing classification of the notorious "28 pages," a section of the 2002 congressional report on 9/11 that some officials say names Saudis in and out of government as aiding the hijackers before they flew jetliners into buildings in New York and Washington.

All that most Americans know about the redacted pages comes from what people who have read them can say without violating their confidentiality pledges, and that seems to vary from damning to confusing. On CBS' 60 Minutes, former senator Bob Graham, D-Fla., co-chair of the congressional commission that produced the report, said the Saudi government, wealthy Saudis and Saudi charities all had a hand in supporting the terrorists.

But Philip Zelikow, director of the 9/11 Commission, which subsequently expanded on the work of the congressional commission, told The New Yorker that the 28 pages contained "preliminary, unvetted reports" that commission investigators could not substantiate.

There's an obvious way to settle this, but the 28 pages have remained locked up for nearly 14 years, despite reported promises by Obama to the 9/11 families, and even a request from Saudi officials, to release them. Make them public.

The rest of the relationship might not be so easy. Obama's visit to Riyadh demonstrated how chilly things are between allies once so close that President George W. Bush famously held hands with Saudi Arabia's aging Crown Prince Abdullah as they walked along a path at Bush's Texas ranch.

Saudi King Salman declined to greet Obama at the airport but showed up to welcome other regional allies. After private talks between the two leaders, White House officials said Obama "really cleared the air" with Salman, but Prince Turki al-Faisal, former Saudi chief of intelligence, told CNN that the Saudis no longer had complete faith in the U.S. and would have to "recalibrate" the relationship.

The relationship has always been a difficult one, matching a secular democracy that prizes human rights with a conservative religious regime that has a repellent human rights record. While U.S. dependence on Saudi oil has lessened, America still imports 1 million barrels of Saudi oil a day, about 5% of U.S. daily oil use. Despite deep Saudi enmity against Iran and deep anger at the U.S. for making the nuclear deal with Tehran, the longtime allies continue to need each other in the fight against the Islamic State group's terrorism and the struggle in Syria.

Congress might be getting ahead of itself with the bill to strip Saudi Arabia of its sovereign immunity against lawsuits over terrorism ties, though it's hard to argue against the measure when Americans have successfully sued the Iranian government for the same thing. The difference between the two nations is that Iran is on the official U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, while Saudi Arabia is not.

The Saudi threat to unload American assets seems hollow, given that it would probably hurt the Saudis worse than the U.S. But the risk that other nations could void U.S. immunity and label U.S. anti-terror operations as terrorism  the chief White House argument against the bill  is worth considering. Without immunity, the U.S. cannot operate in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Better to start by declassifying the infamous 28 pages and begin to publicly sort out what the Saudi role in 9/11 really was. Proof of Saudi government complicity would be a powerful argument for letting lawsuits proceed.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its editorial board, separate from the news staff.
Today in history: On April 26, 1913, Mary Phagan is found dead in the basement of an Atlanta, Georgia, pencil factory at which she worked. The 13-year-old had been sexually molested. Blame was passed around and eventually fell on Leo Frank, the Jewish business owner. Frank was tried and convicted. The prosecutor was a known bigot and the jury was said to be threatened. The governor deemed Frank innocent but the accused was kidnapped and hanged by a mob. Frank in 1986 was pardoned.
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Cambodian opposition lawmaker Um Sam An (C) is escorted by police officials at the Ministry of the Interior in Phnom Penh, April 11, 2016.

Cambodian prison authorities have subjected jailed opposition lawmaker Um Sam An to round-the-clock surveillance and placed restrictions on the visitors he is allowed to see, said a parliamentary deputy who visited him on Tuesday.

Son Chhay, a lawmaker from the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) who led an official delegation of 10 politicians to the countrys notorious Prey Sar prison in the capital Phnom Penh to visit Um Sam An, said authorities have denied him basic rights to which prisoners are entitled.

We listened to all his difficulties inside Prey Sar prison, he told RFAs Khmer Service. We will try to do whatever we can to make sure that he will be treated just like a regular prisoner. He is being persecuted.

A guard is stationed outside Um Sam Ans cell 24 hours a day and follows him whenever he leaves it to take a break, Son Chhay said.

Although the official CNRP delegation was allowed to visit him, Um Sam An cannot receive family members or others who come to see him, he said.

Nuth Savna, spokesman for the Interior Ministrys General Department of Prisons, denied that Un Sam Ans rights as a prisoner are being restricted and said authorities are providing extra security for him.

He is a lawmaker, so we must protect him to prevent any incidents, he told RFA. Otherwise, they [the CNRP] will blame the government for injuring the lawmaker. In general, we have good intentions for him.

Prey Sar, the countrys largest prison with about 4,000 inmates, is renowned for crowded and deplorable conditions.

Not justified

Am Sam Ath, a senior investigator with the domestic rights group Licadho, said prison authorities should not restrict the lawmakers freedom. He said that the lawmakers arrest was not justified, and he still has parliamentary immunity from being charged and prosecuted.

On April 12, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court officially charged Um Sam An with two criminal offenses over his accusations that the government had conceded land to Vietnam along its border. The court placed him in pretrial lockup for incitement to commit a felony and incitement to cause discrimination.

Prime Minister Hun Sen, who critics say routinely uses such tactics against the political opposition, has said that Um Sam Ans arrest was lawful and justifiable.

Um Sam An faces up to five years in prison under the two incitement charges, the first of which carries a penalty of six months to two years in jail plus a fine. The second charge is punishable by one to three years in jail and a fine of 2 million-6 million riel (U.S. $500-U.S. $1,500), according to his lawyer Chhoung Chou Ngy.

Also on Tuesday, the Interior Ministry denied a request by CNRP vice president Kem Sokha to visit party media director Meach Sovannara who is serving a 20-year sentence for participating in and directing an insurrectionary movement.

He was arrested along with other CNRP activists after a demonstration in July 2014 that resulted in violent clashes between protesters and security forces in Phnom Penhs Freedom Park.

Ministry officials said they turned down Kem Sokhas request in order to prevent political tension.

Reported by Morm Moniroth for RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Thousands of Cambodian migrant workers have paid traffickers up to U.S. $100 per person to illegally transport them across the border in the northwestern part of the country during the last 10 days to find better work opportunities in Thailand, human rights groups said.

The workers, who do not have passports, have paid traffickers 300,000 to 400,000 riel (U.S. $75 to U.S. $100) each to help them cross over the border in Banteay Meanchey and Battambang provinces after the Khmer New Year on April 17, said Sum Chankea, the Banteay Meanchey provincial coordinator for the domestic rights group Adhoc.

At least 500 Cambodians are crossing from Banteay Meanchey province into Thailand daily, but local authorities are not trying to stop them, even though they are at risk in Thailand as illegal workers, he told RFAs Khmer Service.

Workers have traveled to Thailand like ants, Sum Chankea said. I appeal to authorities to stop them from traveling to Thailand because they are at risk.

Even though many Cambodians are increasingly seeking work abroad, they are at risk of physical abuse by employers, harsh work conditions and expulsion from Thailand. The Cambodian government has urged them to migrate legally to ensure they are protected by both countries laws.



We stop them right away

A military official who works in the region that covers Banteay Meanchey and Battambang provinces, who declined to be named, denied that local authorities are doing nothing to stop the outflow of Cambodians.

The military work day and night to prevent workers crossing the border illegally because Thai authorities can imprison them or they can be killed, he said.

We have constantly patrolled the border, he said. If we see people who want to cross the border, we stop them right away.

On April 21, the Cambodian government agreed to a request from the Thai labor ministry to temporarily stop migrant workers from traveling to the country during the next four month so it can conduct a census of migrants, The Cambodia Daily reported.

Cambodias labor ministry has stopped issuing documents to citizens who plan to go to Thailand to work until July 29, the report said.

Cambodians already working illegally in Thailand would have to request a permission letter from Thai labor officials to leave the country during the census, the report said, citing Heng Sour, spokesman for Cambodias labor ministry.

Like a broken dam

But the efforts have yet to stem the flow of Cambodians to Thailand.

One Cambodian migrant worker, Ny Sanet, told RFAs Khmer Service during a break on her trek to Thailand that she was waiting for traffickers to escort her over the border at the crossing in Banteay Meanchey province.

Some other Cambodians had waited at the border for a week before they could cross illegally and enter Thailand, she said.

I asked them why they were waiting here, and they said they were waiting for traffickers, she said. Those who hired traffickers to take them across the border do not have passports.

Prack Thon, a motor taxi driver, said at least 3,000 people have crossed the border illegally via Battambang province after buying a border pass for 10,000 to 20,000 riel (U.S. $2.50 to U.S. $5) in Cambodia and then paying traffickers to take them to the Thai capital Bangkok.

People were travelling to Thailand just like a dam was broken, he said. They were transported here by cars and trucks.

Caram Cambodia, an NGO that assists migrant workers and their families, estimates that at least one million Cambodians worked illegally in Thailand last year.



Reported by Hum Hour for RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
The wife of jailed Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti is facing extreme hardship and increasing isolation as she struggles to raise the couple's young sons in Beijing, she told RFA.



Guzelnur has been left with scant income to care for the couple's young sons in Beijing while her husband serves a life sentence for "separatism," she said.



"Sometimes I get financial help from friends or relatives, but they've got their own kids too, and their own expenses to meet," she said in an interview on Tuesday.



"I make 3,500 yuan (U.S.$540) a month, and the nursery fees for my youngest are 1,200 yuan a month, while it costs 300 yuan a month for my eldest just to eat lunch in school," she said.



"Sometimes a friend called Huang helps out by buying the kids some clothes, but he has his own family too."



Guzelnur said she has also asked Tibetan poet and writer Woeser for help when things get tough.



She said she is unable to take time out from her children's routine to visit her husband, who is serving his time in the remote northwestern Xinjiang region in spite of having made a life in Beijing.



Life sentence



Tohti, a former professor at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing was sentenced to life in prison following his conviction on a charge of separatism by the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court in Xinjiang on Sept. 23, 2014.



Asked if she visits her husband, Guzelnur said: "There is nobody to take care of the kids, and I am busy doing it."



She said authorities at Urumqi's No. 1 Prison, where Tohti is being held, are refusing to allow any items to be delivered to him by visitors, including clothing.



But she said the family has plans to travel back to the region during the summer holidays.



"I will be back at my parental home for those two months," Guzelnur said.



Socially isolated



Beijing-based rights activist and family friend Hu Jia said Guzelnur has also become socially isolated since Tohti's incarceration, as many of the couple's former friends have withdrawn contact for fear of political reprisals.



"Guzelnur and the two kids have been living a very lonely life in Beijing since Ilham Tohti was detained," Hu said in an interview on Tuesday.



"The Uyghurs who live here don't dare have anything to do with them because they are afraid, and they are in economic hardship too," he said.



Hu said Tohti, who was jailed over content posted on his UighurOnline website, is currently serving the longest sentence handed down to a political prisoner in China.



"His kids only get to visit him once a year, during the summer vacation," Hu said. "I call on the international community to show more concern and support for his family and the hardship they face."



Asked if she had considered leaving the country, or sending her children overseas to study, like the families of a number of other jailed dissidents, Guzelnur said none of the family has a current passport.



"None of us has a passport, and we don't even have a household registration here in Beijing; it's back in [Xinjiang]," she said. "We haven't managed to get it transferred yet."



"It's too hard for us to get a passport [in Xinjiang]."



Migration controls



China's nationwide "hukou," or household registration system, gives families access to local services like education and health care, while unregistered people in China are excluded from social subsistence and health care reimbursement schemes, and are vulnerable to official harassment and fines.



Throughout most of Chinas larger cities, migration is strictly monitored, and only arrivals with advanced degrees or special skills are able to qualify for a transfer of their hukou registration card.



While the government recently eased restrictions on household registration in Xinjiang, critics said the move was aimed at promoting ethnic majority Han Chinese resettlement to the area, with the mostly Muslim ethnic minority Uyghurs subject to a much more stringent application process.



Uyghurs and members of other non-Han Chinese groups in Xinjiang face huge barriers to applying for passports, and those who already hold them have been ordered in some regions to hand them in to police stations.



China has been keen to portray its Uyghur population as potential terrorists after a wave of violent incidents hit the region following a crackdown on deadly ethnic riots in Urumqi in July 2009.



Many Uyghurs try to leave China illegally, saying they are fleeing systematic persecution by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, which then puts strong diplomatic pressure on neighboring countries to return the fugitives to China rather than treating them as refugees.



Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
China's parliament is considering a new law that would require foreign charities and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to be supervised by its police force.



The standing committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) began its third review of a draft law this week, and are unlikely to drop requirements for NGOs to register with police, according to the Global Times newspaper, which has close ties to the ruling Chinese Communist Party.



If passed, the law will extend restrictions on civil society and rights groups to cover those incorporated overseas, amid an ongoing crackdown on their activities under the administration of President Xi Jinping.



The NPC already passed a Charities Law on Mar. 16 that will bar Chinese NGOs from raising funds without government approval on pain of criminal investigation.



Rights groups say that both laws seem targeted to hit organizations defending the rights of vulnerable groups in China.



"The engagement of police departments is unlikely to change, as the law was designed for national security," the Global Times quoted Huang Haoming, deputy director of the China Association for NGO Cooperation, as saying.



Foreign agendas



Xi's government has cited concerns that foreign NGOs might be used by overseas governments to promote their objectives, values, or political agendas, the paper said.



The draft currently under consideration will require NGOs to be "registered, supervised and managed by public security departments," it said.



"It also says that police can check the offices of overseas NGOs, question their employees, look at their materials and seal their offices," the paper said, citing recent police raids on a legal aid organization that culminated in the arrest and deportation of Swedish national Peter Dahlin.



Dahlin's group had "train[ed] unlicensed lawyers and support[ed] petitioners to defame China and sensationalize social issues," according to the state news agency Xinhua.



Beijing-based rights lawyer Liang Xiaojun told RFA that the aim of the law is to restrict the involvement of overseas rights groups in activities within China's borders.



"It doesn't matter how they amend it; the aim of this legislation hasn't changed," Liang said. "I'm not optimistic about the future outlook for foreign NGOs in China."



Vague, arbitrary



The law will enable Chinese authorities to blacklist NGOs deemed guilty of national security-related crimes like subversion or separatism, Liang said.



But the definitions of such crimes remain vague and subject to arbitrary interpretation by the authorities at any time, he said.



Another Chinese rights lawyer, Yang Zaixin, agreed, saying Xi's administration is about to launch a "clean-up" of foreign groups operating in China.



"They feel compelled to control every detail of what NGOs do, including their sources of funding and the people who work for them," Yang said.



U.S.-based NGO Freedom House said the move is a clear indication that Xi's administration wants to get rid of foreign NGOs operating in China.



"The details released about Chinas draft law on NGOs highlight the Chinese governments intention to cripple independent civil society by giving security forces greater authority to monitor NGOs' work," the group's president Mark Lagon said in a statement on its website.

"New regulations would allow security agencies to monitor, interrogate, and interfere in the daily activities of most NGOs operating in China, including those that scrutinize government conduct and advocate for civil and human rights," Lagon said.



'Drinking tea'



Li Qiang, who founded the New York-based NGO China Labor Watch, said NGOs were already subject to low-level police harassment in the form of invitations to "drink tea."



Now, that practice will become formal, said Li, whose organization has exposed poor labor practices at Chinese factories, including unsafe working conditions and the use of child labor.



"If we were to keep them informed about what we did, they'd stop us doing it," Li said. "This is a retrograde step."



"The groups that don't want to be restricted won't come [to China] in the first place," he said. "This will have a negative impact on environmental protection, the civil rights movement, and public health in China."



Jeremy L. Daum, senior researcher at the China Center of Yale Law School, said foreign NGOs will also need to find a Chinese sponsoring body before they can operate in China, no easy task considering the extra administrative burden placed on the "supervisory body."



"It would be regretful, but not surprising, if some groups simply decide they cannot meet these burdens as has happened in other countries with similar legislation, or that the limits on freedom of association are incompatible with their mission statements, and stop exchanges with China," Daum wrote in a commentary on the China Law Translate blog.



Officials say there are currently more than 7,000 overseas NGOs in China, carrying out environmental protection, science and technology, educational, and cultural activities.



Reported by Ha Si-man and Wen Yuqing for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Yang Jiadai for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.




Performers wearing colorful ethnic costumes celebrate the Myanmar New Year under a portrait of State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon, April 14, 2016.

Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi will begin a new round of nationwide peace talks on Wednesday with the cease-fire Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC), the first such meeting since the new government pledged to work for peace and reconciliation with the countrys various ethnic groups, an official from the group said.

The Union-level JMC was formed by eight armed ethnic groups who signed a so-called nationwide cease-fire agreement (NCA) with the government military last October under the former military-backed government led by Thein Sein. His administration had held four previous meetings to discuss peace.

The new government has said many times that it will work to prioritize national reconciliation and peace as its policy, said Lieutenant General Yar Pyae, vice chairman of the JMC, following a meeting on Tuesday in the capital Naypyidaw to discuss the groups future agenda and the formation of state-level joint monitoring committees in southern Myanmars Mon and Karen states.

The previous government excluded other rebel groups from the NCA because of ongoing hostilities with them, while others opted not to join.

The groups that have signed the NCA should work [as examples] for achieving national reconciliation and peace, Yar Pyae said. We will work to stop fighting by connecting with each other, because we have networks.

Continue the process

Aung San Suu Kyi, who also holds the titles of foreign minister and minister of the Presidents Office, said last week that her ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party seeks to create a democratic federal union under President Htin Kyaw that includes all ethnic groups in order to bring peace to the Southeastern Asian nation wracked by decades of civil war.

Im happy to hear that President Htin Kyaw and State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi said they will continue working on the peace process that we began during [former] President Thein Seins term, said General Saw Issac Po of the Karen National Union (KNU), a political organization with an armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), that represents the ethnic Karen people.

I wish the other groups that didnt sign the NCA participate in working towards peace, he said referring to the new round of discussions beginning on Wednesday.

But Saw Issac Po, who also a vice chairman of the JMC, pointed out that the new governments attitude toward the JMC remains unknown, and that there is speculation that Aung San Suu Kyi will set up another organization dedicated to working on the peace initiative.

We dont know if it will be formed with only new members or include some people from the Myanmar Peace Center, he said, in reference to the government-affiliated organization in Yangon where peace discussions are held. It will depend on Daw [honorific] Aung San Suu Kyis decision.

Rebel groups decline meeting

In the meantime, three rebel groups that did not sign the NCA have rejected a proposal by the military to hold informal peace talks.

The Arakan Army (AA), Kokang/Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), and Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) issued a joint news release on Tuesday, declining an invitation from former Lieutenant General Khin Zaw Oo to hold informal peace discussions in Chaing Mai, Thailand.

Retired Lieutenant General Khin Zaw Oo wanted to meet with the three groups in May along with leaders of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), an alliance of nine ethnic armed groups that did not sign the NCA.

We discussed the current situation and decided not to meet them this time because we have questions as to who they would be representing and how they would meet with us, said Mine Phone Kyaw, general secretary of the TNLA. Thats why we released a statement and said we cant meet them right now.

[But] if the new government offered to meet usthe TNLA alone or as part of a groupwe would welcome it, he said.

Mine Phone Kyaw also said that if military commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing or his representatives offered to meet with the TNLA, the group also would agree.

If we want peace, we have to talk, he said.



Reported by Win Ko Ko Latt and Kyaw Thu for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
This photo shows the main part of Taiwanese conglomerate Formosa's steel mill in Ky Anh district, in the central coastal province of Ha Tinh, Dec. 3, 2015

The giant Taiwanese conglomerate that appears to be at the center of an investigation into an environmental catastrophe that has seen thousands of tons of dead fish wash ashore in Vietnam is backing away from comments made by an executive concerning the disaster, RFAs Vietnamese service has learned.

Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation, which operates as a subsidiary of Formosa Plastics Corporation, attempted to distance itself from statements made by a company executive, Chou Chun Fan, who was identified as the external affairs manager, which dismissed concerns about the fish kill.

In a copy of a letter from Formosa to media outlets, the company wrote that an interview Chou gave the media the day before was unauthorized and failed to reflect the companys views.

Our commitment is to contribute to the development of Vietnams industry and comply with Vietnams law, protecting the environment, Formosa wrote.

In the letter, the company defended its environmental record in Vietnam, telling authorities Formosa has invested $45 million in the waste water processing system of the steel plant Formosa owns in Ha Tinh province.

Water tested

All wastewater generated from the factory is processed properly, the company wrote. It is tested in accordance with Vietnams standards before being released to protect the marine ecology and at the same time to ensure Formosas adaptation with the area and that our development is on par with the development of the local area.

Formosa told the authorities it hopes they find the answer to the fish kill.

We wish that relevant authorities would find out the cause of the mass fish deaths in the Central Coast, the company wrote. According to the letter, Chou is not the companys external relations manager. It directed questions on the issue to company Environmental Director Khau Nhan Kiet.

When contacted by telephone, Chou told RFA: What I said was not right. I am waiting for a discipline decision from the company, and I cant do an interview now.

On Monday, the AFP news agency quoted Chou as telling Vietnams state-run VTC14 television channel, that [You] need to choose whether to catch fish and shrimp or to build a state-of-the-art steel mill.

Slow reaction

Ho Uy Liem, vice chairman of the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations, criticized what he said was the governments lethargy on the fish deaths.

This issue is very serious and needs to be addressed. However, local governments are very slow in their reactions, especially Ha Tinh province, he said. They were too busy with something else, and did not take care of this. The central government was quicker, but we still have not had any result.

What caused the fish kill is still murky, but the investigations focus appears to center on a mile-long pipe that runs from Formosas $10.5 billion steel and port facility.

While Formosa admits it owns the pipe, it is unclear if they had the authority to build or use it.

Ho Anh Tuan, director of the Ha Tinh Economic Zone Management Authority, said that Formosas wastewater pipe system was approved by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, according to a report by the Vietnam Investment Review. But Hoang Duong Tung, deputy director of the MoNRE Environmental Department, said Formosa was not yet allowed to discharge wastewater into the sea, according to the report.

Company controversy

Formosa is no stranger to controversy in Vietnam. The company has been cited for building an unauthorized temple on the property it leased for 70 years in Vung Ang industrial zone in 2014, the Tuoi Tre News reported at the time.

Formosa has been criticized for demanding more and more concessions from the government, even though it had received a huge number of tax and business incentives from the Vietnamese government.

The plant was also the site of violent protests when Vietnamese attacked the plant after reports that China had moved an oil rig into a disputed part of the South China Sea. Vietnam considers Taiwan to be part of China, which claims sovereignty over the self-governing island. According to a Reuters report, one Chinese worker died and 90 were injured in the riot which took place before the plant opened.

While authorities have warned people not to eat the fish, some people see them as an unexpected bounty and are picking them off the beach and then selling them.

Many traders suddenly showed up with refrigerated trucks offering to buy the dead fish, Tuoi Tre News reported.

A woman in Quang Binh province told RFA They told people not to eat the fish. They forbid us to eat the fish for safety reasons. However they still sell dead fish.

Reported for RFAs Vietnamese Service by Nam Nguyen and Gia Minh. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
A spokesman for Armenian-backed Nagorno-Karabakh separatist forces says two separatist fighters were killed early on April 26 by gunfire that came from Azerbaijan's side of the "line of contact" separating the combatant sides.

Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry confirmed on April 26 that its troops fired at separatist positions more than 100 times during the previous 24 hours.

But the ministry in Baku claimed all of the shooting by Azerbaijani forces was in response to cease-fire violations by the Armenian-backed side.

Baku also said Armenian-backed forces "shelled the city of Terter and its vicinity"with mortars, howitzer artillery, and multiple-rocket launchers.

In early April, Nagorno-Karabakh saw its worst violence since a shaky cease-fire was reached in 1994 that effectively froze the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenian-backed separatists in the breakaway region.

A fresh cease-fire went into effect on April 5.

But both sides have accused each other of violating the April 5 cease-fire.

Based on reporting by Reuters, Interfax, and TASS
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says he hopes jailed pilot Nadia Savchenko will return home from Russia as part of a prisoner swap "in a few weeks."

"We agreed a formula for resolving this problem. We agreed on its preliminary terms," he said in a televised interview late on April 24, speaking of his phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week about exchanging Savchenko for Russian prisoners in Ukraine.

"And right now, I firmly hope that the presidential plane with my representatives will return Nadia to Ukraine in a few weeks. I think it will be a big day for me personally and for many Ukrainians."

There was no immediate response to Poroshenko's comments from Russia, where Savchenko is serving a 14-year prison sentence for involvement in the murder of Russia journalists -- charges that Savchenko denies and Western leaders have called trumped up.

Savchenko's Russian lawyer, Mark Feygin, wrote on Twitter on April 25 that he was skeptical that she will be released within a few weeks, however.

"Most probably, Savchenko will not be released...by the end of May," he said.

Based on reporting by AFP, Interfax, and TASS
KYIV -- Ukrainian officials said vile Russian missile strikes on civilian energy sites have caused power outages nationwide, leaving more than a million households without electricity, while Russian authorities ordered residents to leave Kherson "immediately" ahead of an expected effort by Kyivs forces to retake the crucial southern city.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, Russian protests, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram on October 22 that Russia carried out a "massive attack" on Ukraine overnight and that "the aggressor continues to terrorize our country."



"At night, the enemy launched a massive attack: 36 rockets, most of which were shot down...These are vile strikes on critical objects. Typical tactics of terrorists," he wrote. "The world can and must stop this terror."



Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Zelenskiys office, said Ukrainian air defense forces had shot down 18 of the missiles.



Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a number of missiles had been shot down on the approach to the capital.



"Several rockets flying toward Kyiv were shot down in the region by air defense forces. Thanks to our defenders!" Klitschko said.



There was no immediate word on deaths related to the missile attacks, but officials said several people had been injured.



It was not possible to verify the reports on either side.



In the face of continued Russian strikes, Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba again urged Ukraine's Western allies to speed up the delivery of modern air defense systems.



"We intercepted some, others hit the targets. Air defense saves lives. In [Western] capitals, there should not be a single minute of delay in the decision regarding air defense systems for Ukraine," Kuleba said.



Local officials said power stations were hit in the regions of Odesa, Kirovohrad, and Lutsk, while other regions reported problems with electricity.



"Another rocket attack from terrorists who are fighting against civilian infrastructure and people," the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on the Telegram app.



Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told a government meeting that from October 10 to October 20, Russian strikes damaged more than 400 facilities in 16 regions of Ukraine, including dozens of energy facilities.



"The Russian Army has identified our energy sector as one of the key targets for its attacks," Shmyhal said on October 21.



"Russian propagandists and officials speak openly about the purpose of all these attacks: Ukraine, according to them, should be left without water, without light, without heat," he said.



Meanwhile, Russian-appointed authorities in the occupied and illegally seized southern Kherson region on October 22 ordered the estimated 60,000 residents of the region's eponymous main city to leave "immediately" in the face of Kyiv's advancing counteroffensive.



"Due to the tense situation on the front, the increased danger of mass shelling of the city and the threat of terrorist attacks, all civilians must immediately leave the city and cross to the left bank of the Dnieper River," the region's Russia-backed authorities said on social media.

Russina-installed officials are moving people out of the strategic city in what they are calling an evacuation but which Ukrainian officials label as deportations.



The order came in spite of a claim by Russia's Defense Ministry on October 22 that its forces had prevented an attempt by Ukraine to break through its line of control in Kherson.



"All attacks were repulsed, the enemy was pushed back to their initial positions," the Defense Ministry said, adding that Ukraine's offensive was launched toward the settlements of Piatykhatky, Suhanove, Sablukivka and Bezvodne, on the west side of the Dnieper River.



The ministry's statement said Russian forces had also repelled attacks in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.



Kherson city, which had a prewar population of 280,000, is one of the first urban areas occupied by Russia at the start of the invasion.



Zelenskiys office said 88 settlements in the southern Kherson region and 551 settlements in the northeastern Kharkiv region have been de-occupied, while the Ukrainian forces' counteroffensive in the Kherson region moves ahead.



Ukraine is trying to drive Russian forces in Kherson back east across the Dnieper. Russian soldiers on the western bank, where the city of Kherson is located, are reportedly close to being cut off from supply lines and reinforcements.



Natalya Humenyuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraines southern operational command, said the Ukrainian military struck the Antonivskiy Bridge over the Dnieper in the city of Kherson during an overnight curfew Russia-installed officials put in place to avoid civilian casualties.



We do not attack civilians and settlements," Humenyuk told Ukrainian television.



Ukrainian strikes made the Antonivskiy Bridge inoperable, prompting Russian authorities to set up ferry crossings and pontoon bridges to relocate civilians and transport supplies.



Russia has sent in thousands of recently mobilized troops to reinforce the defense of Kherson, the General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said on October 21.



Zelenskiy again on October 21 urged the West to warn Russia not to blow up a dam at the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant on the Dnieper River as this could flood settlements toward Kherson.



Zelenskiy said Russian forces had planted explosives inside the dam, which holds back an enormous reservoir, and were planning to blow it up.



"Now everyone in the world must act powerfully and quickly to prevent a new Russian terrorist attack. Destroying the dam would mean a large-scale disaster," he said in his nightly address.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, AP, and the BBC
At the recent Globsec global security forum in Bratislava, veteran Kremlin-watcher Edward Lucas presented an intriguing outside-the-box idea.

He proposed that the West hold what he called "snap financial exercises."

Lucas suggested forming what he called "a transatlantic group of financial regulators, spooks, cops, and prosecutors" to work out a scenario of how the West could quickly freeze Russian assets and shut Moscow out of the global economy in the event of a security emergency.

"Simply holding such exercises and leaking a few details would signal to Russia that we are serious about deterrence," he wrote on Facebook.

I think Edward is on to something here for a couple reasons.

First, and most obviously, such a strategy plays to the West's strength -- its total hegemony over international finance -- and exploits Russia's biggest vulnerability.

But beyond deterring more military adventurism, the idea is important for a deeper reason as well.

And that is because the nonkinetic threat from Russia is just as deadly as the kinetic threat.

Moscow's weaponization of globalization -- its willingness and ability to infiltrate the West's transparent institutions and turn them against us -- is a long-term threat that needs to be addressed.

Russia's insidious infiltration of the West's banks is as dangerous as Moscow's menacing posturing with its tanks.

And containing this threat is just as important as creating military tripwires with NATO troop rotations in the Baltic states.

Keep telling me what you think on The Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page.
Any lingering hopes Georgias leaders may still have nurtured that the country would be formally offered a Membership Action Plan (MAP) at NATOs Warsaw summit in July have been exposed as misplaced.

Addressing the Aspen Security Forum: Global In London on April 22, Douglas Lute, who is the U.S. ambassador to the alliance, said that in light of Russias perceived internal weakness, there is little additional room for the next few years, and possibly longer, for further NATO expansion.

Lute explained that I think Russia plays an important part in the strategic environment, and the strategic environment will put a brake on NATO expansion.

If you accept the premises that weve heard here [during the panel discussion] about Russias internal weakness, and perhaps steady decline and so forth, it may not make sense to push further now and maybe accelerate or destabilize that decline. So in practical terms, I dont think there is much additional room in the near term -- the next several years perhaps or even longer -- for additional NATO expansion, he said.

Lute added that there is no way NATOs 28 members will reach the necessary consensus any time in the near future on admitting Georgia or Ukraine. Just days earlier, in acknowledgement of what NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg termed the need to keep channels of communication open despite profound and persistent disagreements, the NATO-Russia Council met in Brussels for the first time since before Russias annexation of Crimea in early 2014.

Lutes statement implies that Georgia will remain for the foreseeable future in the ambiguous limbo with regard to NATO to which it was relegated in 2008.

True, at the NATO summit in Bucharest in April of that year, at which Albania and Croatia were formally invited to begin accession talks, the alliance declared that both Georgia and Ukraine will become members of NATO, and that MAP is the next step for Ukraine and Georgia on their direct way to membership once questions still outstanding are resolved.

But just a few months later, Georgias chances of accession were set back years according to U.S. expert Ronald Asmus, by the brief Russia-Georgia war.

At subsequent NATO summits, including that in Wales in 2014, the alliance has consistently reaffirmed its willingness in principle to admit Georgia. At the same time, it continues to stipulate that the next step toward doing so is a MAP comprising reforms and other criteria that any aspiring NATO member must meet to qualify. To date, neither Georgia or Ukraine has been formally offered such a MAP, whether because doing so would bring into clearer focus the time frame for admission, or because NATOs existing members are divided over whether the military and strategic benefits of admitting them outweigh the damage to NATO-Russian relations that would inevitably result.

For Tbilisi, NATOs continued reluctance to offer a formal MAP rankles, especially in light of what then-Defense Minister Irakli Alasania described two years ago as the countrys great leap forward in enhancing both its defense capability and its interoperability with NATO. Then-Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili argued in February 2014 that Georgia should be offered a MAP at the Wales NATO summit in acknowledgment of that progress.

Instead of a MAP, however, NATO offered a Substantial NATO-Georgia Package encompassing additional measures to enhance Georgias defense readiness, including joint exercises and a Joint Training and Evaluation Center inaugurated in August 2015. Moscow denounced that initiative as provocative and likely to impact negatively on regional security.

Parliament speaker Davit Usupashvili similarly told NATOs Parliamentary Assembly in May 2015 that Georgia is as ready to join the alliance as unnamed other prospective members were, and therefore NATO should either make a formal offer of a MAP at the 2016 Warsaw summit or state clearly that a MAP is no longer required as a precondition for NATO membership.

A statement adopted at the NATO foreign ministers meeting last December acknowledged that Georgias relationship with the alliance contains all the practical tools to prepare for eventual membership, but at the same time again designated MAP an integral part of that process.

William Lahue, who heads the NATO Liaison Office in Georgia, was quoted as saying at a conference in Tbilisi last week that while a MAP is a technical issue, it has become heavily politicized

And in addition to the crucial precondition of a MAP, NATO is constrained, as Ambassador Lute admitted, by the need for consensus among its 28 members on the time frame for admitting new members. Some NATO member states, including Turkey, believe that technically Georgia could and should receive a formal invitation to join without first graduating from a MAP. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu declared as much in Strasbourg last week. France and Germany, by contrast, are believed to be unwaveringly opposed.

Georgian Defense Minister Tinatin Khidasheli admitted last week that while NATO membership remains the ultimate objective, she would consider the Warsaw NATO summit a success if it yielded unspecified additional instruments for improving Georgias defensive capabilities in the face of existing threats. A detailed plan listing such instruments was discussed during a NATO-Georgian ministerial meeting in February, she added.
Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili says his country will remain on a pro-Western path even as it restores some ties with Moscow.

In an interview with The Associated Press on April 25, Kvirikashvili said that the future of his post-Soviet country lies with the European Union and NATO.

That's the "very clear will of [the] Georgian people," he said.

Kvirikashvili was in Washington to meet with Vice President Joe Biden, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, and International Monetary Fund officials.

Kvirikashvili is a close ally of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, a Russia metals mogul who founded the Georgian Dream party that ousted the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili in 2012.

The new government has continued reforms aimed at economic, political, and military integration with the West.

But it also has sought to restore economic relations and ease tensions with Moscow despite a five-day war with Russia that left the country divided in 2008.

"This does not mean that we do not need to try to normalize relations with Russia, with our neighbor, but not at the expense of Georgia's territorial integrity and sovereign decisions," Kvirikashvili said.

Based on reporting by AP and Vestnikkavkaza.net
After a horrifying crime sent shock waves through Iranian society, hard-line conservatives found the perfect scapegoat -- technology.

"When there are pornography websites and Internet freedom, any underage child can easily buy a SIM card and access this material," the ultraconservative news outlet Rajanews.ir wrote in a recent commentary. "The result is the bitter tragedy that we are witnessing today."

The website, which has ties to prominent hard-liners, is referring to the April 9 killing of a 6-year old Afghan girl that has prompted an outpouring of remorse among ordinary Iranians.

The outcry over the death of Setayesh Qoreishi, allegedly at the hands of an Iranian teenager, has been fueled by the widespread belief that the girl was sexually assaulted and her body doused with acid in an attempt to cover up the crime. Neither assumption has been been confirmed by police, who are still awaiting autopsy results.

But while society has taken the tragedy as an opportunity to question the treatment of minorities on Iranian soil, Rajanews was in no mood for self-reflection.

Running with the belief that a sexual assault occurred, the news website, which has close ties to a former member of the powerful Guardians Council, blamed the messaging app Telegram for motivating the accused teenager to commit the crimes.

Rajanews claimed the boy, who reportedly confessed to the killing while being interrogated by police, had used Telegram to access pornography on his mobile phone.

The underage boy, who was 15 or 16, bought an android phone and installed Telegram on it and entered a sea of pornographic channels," the commentary read. "He went into a sea that turned red with blood.

That, apparently, is enough to motivate a teen to commit unspeakable acts, although the commentary does not explain how or why.

Telegram, one of the few digital social platforms not filtered or banned in Iran, has become the most popular messaging and content-sharing application in the country. According to a poll by the Iranian Students News Agency, one-quarter of the population -- or about 20 million Iranians -- use the app.

Telegram has come under fire for spreading "immoral" content, and Iran's main Internet watchdog has met to discuss filtering the site. But the Supreme Council for Cyberspace decided there was no basis to do so, and the app has continued to operate unhindered.

Pinning the blame on Telegram was seen by some as a way for conservatives to capitalize on the situation and regain some of the ground they have lost to more moderate political forces.

"The fact that a killing took place in a part of the country has filled the hearts of all Iranians with pain for the victim," Iranian lawmaker Gholam Ali Jafarzadeh Imanabadi was quoted as saying by the ILNA news agency on April 22. "However, linking the issue with Telegram and cyberspace just indicates the size of the damage that [hard-liners] have suffered in the elections."

Iran has one of the world's toughest online censorship regimes, with tens of thousands of websites, including social media and news sites, filtered to remove content deemed sensitive or immoral.

"[Hard-liners] are after filtering cyberspace so that they limit information and channel it to their benefit," Imanabadi said. However, this will never happen. People get information through various ways."

Outpouring Of Support



Iranian media has been criticized for initially failing to cover Qoreishi's killing, but the overwhelming response of the Iranian people has kept the crime and its ramifications in the public eye.



Many took to social media to condemn the killing and to question whether negative attitudes toward Afghan migrants and refugees may have contributed to the tragedy. In a show of solidarity, dozens joined Afghan nationals in an unauthorized but peaceful protest outside the Afghan Embassy in Tehran, before it was dispersed by police.



Officials have pledged to see that Qoreishi's killer is punished to the full extent of the law, and street graffiti honoring the victim has surfaced on the streets of Tehran.

As the case has placed a spotlight on the estimated 1 million Afghans living in Iran, many of whom claim to face violence and injustice in the Islamic republic, the Iranian media have been keen to report that the victim's family has been satisfied with the handling of the case.

Afghanistan's Tolo News, however, paints a different story, saying that the family has called on Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to intervene and make sure the perpetrator is brought to justice.

RFE/RL's Radio Farda contributed to this report
Four Iranian journalists have been given prison sentences of between five and 10 years on charges of acting against Iran's national security.

Lawyers for the journalists announced the sentences to Iranian state media on April 26.

All four were arrested in November on accusations of being members of what Iranian state media described as an "infiltration network belonging to the U.S. and United Kingdom governments."

Davoud Assadi, an opinion columnist, was given a 10-year sentence while Afarine Chitsaz, a woman journalist, received a five-year term.

Ehsan Mazandarani, editor in chief of the Iranian daily Farhikhtegan, was ordered to seven years in prison.

Saman Safarzayi received a five-year sentence.

The fate of a fifth arrested Iranian journalist, Issa Saharkhiz, remains unclear.

Saharkhiz, manager of the banned publication Aftab, was the head of the Culture Ministry's press office under reformist former President Mohammad Khatami.

Nearly 100 Iranian journalists signed a statement in December calling for the release of the journalists -- saying the charges against them were "baseless and repetitive."

Based on reporting by AFP, IRNA, and ISNA
A lawyer for prominent jailed Iranian artist and activist Atena Farghadani has said that the authorities will soon release his client.

Mohammad Moghimi told The Associated Press and Cartoonists Rights Network International on April 25 that an appeals court reduced Farghadani's 12-year, nine-month prison sentence to 18 months, which means "she will be freed soon."

Moghimi said the exact date for her release had not been set yet.

In June 2014, a court sentenced Farghadani for a cartoon that depicted Iranian politicians who passed a law limiting women's access to birth control as goats and monkeys.

"Eighteen months in jail for a simple satirical drawing is still an insanely harsh fine, but the international outcry against the even harsher sentence may have helped get her jail time reduced," Heidi MacDonald of Comicsbeat.com said.

Based on reporting by AP and Comicsbeat.com
Iran has threatened to appeal to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) if the United States diverts $2 billion in frozen funds to the victims of terror attacks.

Iran has warned that it views as "theft" a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week to divert $2 billion from Iranian assets frozen in U.S. banks to survivors of those killed in attacks blamed on Tehran.

"We hold the U.S. administration responsible for preservation of Iranian funds, and if they are plundered, we will lodge a complaint with the ICJ for reparation," Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said while visiting Macedonia on April 25.

The U.S. court decision affects more than 1,300 Americans whose relatives were killed in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

Iran has denied involvement in the bombings and Zarif said any diversion would be a "misappropriation" of Iranian funds.

"We have announced since the beginning that the Iranian government does not recognize the U.S. extraterritorial law and considers the U.S. court ruling to blockade Iranian funds null and void and in gross violation of the international law," he said.

Based on reporting by AFP, IRNA, and Voice of America
The Iraqi parliament has approved a partial reshuffle of the country's cabinet as proposed by Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi.

The controversial vote on April 26 came amid mounting public pressure led by mass protests headed by Shi'ite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in central Baghdad.

The anticorruption protests have been held for months in an effort to force the government to undertake reforms and replace officials viewed as corrupt.

Parliament spokesman Emad al-Khafaji told the AP news agency that lawmakers approved the new heads of six ministries: health, labor and social affairs, water resources, electricity, higher education, and culture.

Abadi proposed last month to reduce the number of government ministers to 16 from the previous 21 and submitted the names of independent "technocrats" for 14 cabinet positions.

He said he would not yet replace the defense and interior ministers because of Iraq's security problems.

But Abadi's plans have been opposed by the country's established political blocs and dozens of lawmakers who are demanding that the prime minister and other top officials resign.

Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP


ASTANA -- Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev has vowed to "punish provocateurs" who are disrupting social order by spreading disinformation about pending land sales.

Speaking at a gathering of the Assembly of Kazakhstans Peoples on April 26, Nazarbaev said that "those, who spread false information, saying that the land will be sold to foreigners, must be apprehended and punished."

Nazarbaev's statement came two days after at least 1,000 local residents rallied in the western city of Atyrau to protest against the government's decision to privatize land through public auctions beginning on July 1.

The protesters said the land should not be privatized, and were especially angry about rumors that public land would be sold to foreigners.

The rare mass protest in Atyrau was not sanctioned by city officials.

Nazarbaev insisted on April 26 that public land will not be sold to foreigners under the privatization plan.

He said foreigners would be allowed to rent agricultural land under leases with a duration of 10 to 25 years.
In what some observers are dubbing the "Colorful Revolution," thousands of protesters wearing vibrant clothes threw paint balls at Macedonia's Foreign Ministry building in Skopje on April 25.

The building was constructed during a controversial government revamp project in 2014 and is seen as a symbol of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevskis waste and extravagance.

The antigovernment rally was held despite pouring rain and organized by the civil movement Protestiram ("I Protest") with support from the opposition Social Democratic Party.

As in previous protests spanning over 12 nights, demonstrators denounced President Gjorgje Ivanovs decision on April 12 to end criminal investigations against top politicians, largely from Gruevski's ruling VMRO party, stemming from a wire-tapping scandal.

They also demanded the postponement of June 5 elections set by the government.

Protesters chanted "Jail for Gruevski" and "No justice, no peace."

The protest started in front of the Special Prosecution building where investigators have been probing alleged wrongdoing by pardoned officials.

Based on reporting by Balkan Insight, Deutsche Welle, and TASS
U.S. President Barack Obama has said Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin views European unity as a threat and is trying to undermine it.

In an interview with CBS News due to air on April 26, Obama cited Europe's migrant crisis as an example.

"The strain it's putting on Europe's politics, the way that it advances far-right nationalism, the degree to which it is encouraging a break-up of European unity -- that in some cases is being exploited by somebody like Mr. Putin," he said.

Obama said he has sought to disabuse the Russian leader of his belief that NATO and the European Union are threats.

"I think he's mistaken," Obama said. "I've indicated to him that, in fact, a strong, unified Europe working with a strong, outward-looking Russia, that's the right recipe. So far, he has not been entirely persuaded."

Obama was speaking at the end of a visit to Europe, which he said is facing a "defining moment" as it deals with the migrant crisis and threat of Islamist terrorism, and needs to show greater unity.

Based on reporting by AFP and AP
UPDATE: On May 16, RFE/RL was presented its 2016 Webby People's Voice Award, for the social video Watch This Disabled Boy's World Change In Two Minutes, at a star-studded ceremony in New York. The award was accepted by Kyrgyz Service journalist Ulanbek Egizbaev, DIGIM video producer Mykola Nemchenko, and Nurgazy Yakshilik uulu, the young disabled teenager featured in the video. This was Nurgazy's first trip to the United States. As Nurgazy said in his 5-word acceptance speech at the Webby Awards, "Everyone can dream... and win."



RFE/RL Wins Webby Peoples Voice Award

WASHINGTON, April 26, 2016 -- A feature video produced by RFE/RLs Kyrgyz Service has won the prestigious Webby Peoples Voice Award.

Watch This Disabled Boy's World Change In Two Minutes tells the story of a disabled teenager who relies on his friends to push him in his wheelchair everyday along the rugged path to school, and his elation when a local NGO surprises him with a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle he can operate himself to make the journey. Produced by Bishkek-based correspondent Ulanbek Egizbaev and repackaged by RFE/RLs Current Time digital team for social media, it was viewed more than a million times globally in Russian, English, and the original Kyrgyz.

"We deeply value this recognition of the quality of RFE/RL reporting, and thank the many, many voters globally who felt the impact of this story just as powerfully as we did," said RFE/RL Editor-in Chief Nenad Pejic.

Two other RFE/RL entries were selected as Official Honorees in the 2016 competition. Desperate Honeymoon, a documentary by Multimedia Producer Ray Furlong, follows Syrian newlyweds as they make the arduous trek across the Balkans in search of a better life in Europe. Honored in the Documentary: Individual Episode category, it won Silver and Bronze medals at the New York Festivals International Television and Film Awards earlier this month.

RFE/RLs Pangea Digital team, which manages the companys content management system, was recognized by The Webby Awards in the Mobile Sites & Apps: News category for RFE/RLs new responsive design website.

The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Established in 1996, The Webby Awards received nearly 13,000 entries from over 70 countries worldwide this year, and were judged by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, an organization based in New York that presents the prize. The award will be presented at an awards ceremony in New York on May 16.
Moscow investigators levied criminal charges against the man considered to be the godfather of Russia's blogosphere, accusing him of extremism for a post that called for "wiping Syria off the face of the Earth."

The charges against Anton Nosik -- announced on April 26 by the capital's branch of the national Investigative Committee -- were widely anticipated.

A prolific blogger whose writings are some of the most widely viewed on the Russian-language Internet, Nosik has not denied publishing the remark about Syria in October and making similar comments in a radio interview later.

But he said the case highlighted the "delusional and ridiculous" nature of extremism as defined in the Russian Criminal Code.

Nosik wrote the controversial post a day after Russian launched its air campaign in Syria to bolster the forces of longtime ally President Bashar al-Assad.

The post also likened the Assad regime to that of Nazi Germany.


The agents from Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) wanted to know who put 85-year-old Nikolai Suvorov up to it. After all, pensioners in the provinces of southern Russia don't decide all by themselves to file lawsuits naming President Vladimir Putin an "enemy of the people" and calling for his removal from office.

Or do they?

"They thought the Communist Party made me write the complaint," Suvorov told RFE/RL's Russia Service by telephone from his home in the town of Balakovo in Saratov Oblast. "The Communist Party doesn't have anything to do with this. I always voted Communist. The Communist Party is the only party for the people, while the rest are for the rich. But I wrote my complaint myself by hand, and the lawyers then typed it up."

"They don't type my things up anymore -- they are all afraid," Suvorov added.

Suvorov made headlines earlier this month when he filed his suit against Putin. Saratov appellate court Judge Tatyana Leskina caused an even bigger scandal by accepting the case and setting a date for a preliminary hearing.

But just days later, the court reversed itself, deciding that Putin had constitutional immunity from prosecution. The case was quashed, and Leskina resigned "of her own accord."

[The FSB agents] were polite. They didn't try to frighten me. They just wanted to know who put me up to it."

"They told me that she left on her own," Suvorov said. "But they are lying to me. I think the judge was fired. She paid the price for letting the case go forward."

And that's when the police and the FSB showed up to question Suvorov.

"They were polite," he said. "They didn't try to frighten me. They just wanted to know who put me up to it."

Suvorov, who said he intends to continue trying to push his lawsuit, is certainly an unlikely revolutionary.

"I don't know what the Internet is," he said. "All I have is television." He said he doesn't even have a radio, and he doesn't listen to relatively liberal stations like Ekho Moskvy or RFE/RL's Russian Service.

"All the information in my complaint I took from the television," he said. "But I don't just watch television. I also look around and see how the people are living. After the war, people were building, repairing things, lifting themselves up. But now the country doesn't need anyone."

Suvorov was quick to restate his indictment of Putin.

"Putin is an enemy of the people," he said. "There are 17 points in my complaint. The main one is that he has impoverished the people. Every year, he sends $2 trillion to other countries, and nothing remains for the people. Pensions are a joke, and most of that money goes to housing costs. Utilities are now terribly expensive. Some prices in stores have quadrupled in the last two years."

Suvorov, however, praised Putin for his annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea and for supporting separatists in Ukraine's Donbas.

His friends and relatives -- who are also mostly Communist supporters, although some support Vladimir Zhirinovsky's nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia -- unanimously supported his case against Putin, Suvorov said.

The experience with the ill-fated lawsuit has added one more point to Suvorov's indictment.

"Our judges are not independent and Putin can never be held to account," he said. "What do we need such a president for?"

RFE/RL correspondent Robert Coalson contributed to this report
A Russian-run court in the annexed Crimean Peninsula has branded the executive council for the region's Tatar minority an extremist organization and ordered it banned.



The April 26 ruling by the region's Supreme Court was the latest in a series of moves restricting the activities of Crimean Tatars, many of whom have strongly resisted Russia's efforts to consolidate authority over the Ukrainian region.



Last week, Russia's Justice Ministry said the Crimean Tatar council, known as the Mejlis, had been placed on a list of civic and religious organizations for alleged extremist activity.



The court ruling endorsing that Justice Ministry announcement gives local officials new authority to begin shutting down enterprises, including newspapers, or potentially confiscating computers or other property.



Many Tatars, who make up around 12 percent of the peninsula's 2.5 million residents, fled Crimea after Russia occupied then seized the region two years ago.



Russia's top prosecutor for the peninsula, Natalya Poklonskaya, was quoted by the Russian news agency TASS as saying that any actions taken by the Mejlis on Crimean territory would now be considered unlawful.



Refat Chubarov, a Tatar lawmaker who heads the Mejlis, told reporters in Kyiv that the council, and other related bodies, would move operations in full to Kyiv.



Many Tatars who have remained complain of persistent harassment under the Moscow-backed authorities. An unknown number have disappeared as well, possibly detained by security agencies.



The Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic group has had a tortured history on the peninsula, going back centuries, and an uneasy relationship at times with Russians, Ukrainians, and other ethnic groups living there.



During World War II, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tatars were deported to Central Asia by order of Soviet leader Josef Stalin, who alleged they were collaborating with Nazi Germany.



Many of those deported and their descendants began returning to Crimea in the 1980s. The Mejlis itself was established in 1991 amid the Soviet breakup, but was only authorized by the central government in Kyiv in 1999.

During the 2014 referendum in occupied Crimea that Moscow organized as a prelude to the annexation, the Mejlis declared Crimean Tatars would boycott the vote.



The United Nations has voted overwhelmingly to insist on Crimea's status as Ukrainian territory.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry condemned the ruling, and called for "unhindered access" by human rights organizations to the peninsula to monitor problems there.



Many Western governments, along with rights groups, have also repeatedly criticized Moscow and local authorities for policies restricting Crimean Tatar activities.



Last year, authorities closed down the peninsula's Tatar-language TV channel, along with other independent broadcasters.



The U.S. government responded to last week's announcement by the Russian Justice Ministry by saying Russian authorities have no jurisdiction over Tatar issues in Crimea.



"This action is the latest in a series of abuses perpetrated by de facto authorities against those in Crimea who oppose the occupation, including Crimean Tatars and members of other ethnic and religious minorities in Crimea," U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said on April 21. "Such abuses include arbitrary detentions, beatings, and police raids on their homes and places of worship."



Crimean authorities have targeted other individuals and organizations who have criticized the Russian annexation or reported on some of the problems that region has faced.



A local journalist who has contributed to RFE/RL and its Krym.Realii website is under criminal investigation for allegedly "undermining the Russian territorial integrity via mass media."

With reporting by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service


ON MY MIND

It's nice to see that despite what appears to be a campaign of pressure from the Kremlin, the journalists at RBK aren't easing up a bit. Yesterday they published an investigative piece about the meteoric rise of businessman Dmitry Mazurov in Russia's oil business. A rise that got a big assist, according to the report, from friends of Vladimir Putin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. Of course, if the Kremlin wants to tame or shut down RBK, they'll find a way. But the fact that one of Russia's last outposts of independent journalism is prepared to be so defiant is cause for some guarded optimism.

IN THE NEWS

Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster

U.S. President Barack Obama Says Vladimir Putin is trying to undermine European unity

Investigators are saying that robbery was the motive in the mass killing of a police officer and five members of his family in Samara Oblast.

The BBC is disputing Russian claims that a documentary the broadcaster is due to air in May will show that Ukraine is responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.



WHAT I'M READING

Humanitarian Enemies of the People

Katerina Gordeeva at Meduza has a nice piece on the Kremlin's assault on NGOs: From Charity To Treason: How Russias Philanthropists Went From Heroes To Traitors.

Unpacking The Attack on RBK

Kevin Rothrock at Global Voices gives a comprehensive rundown of the Kremlin's attack on Mikhail Prokhorov and RBK.

RBK, meanwhile, has just published an investigative report about how cronies of Vladimir Putin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin turned businessman Dmitry Mazurov into an oil mogul.

Rumors in the Corridors

In case you're wondering what's making the rounds on the Russian rumor mill, here's a quick rundown. (Teaser: Dmitry Medvedev was angry about Aleksandr Bastrykin's controversial article in Kommersant Vlast and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin's relations with United Russia aren't great, just to name a couple.)

How Russia stopped loving the West

Denis Volkov of the Levada Center has a piece in Vedomosti looking at Russia's deteriorating attitudes toward the West and the United States. (Meduza has just posted a translation in English)

Steinmeier's Ostpolitik

It appears that German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier wants to end the standoff with Russia.

The Spy Who Went Out In The Cold

In The Daily Beast, Michael Weiss looks into Andrew Fulton, a former high-ranking spy with Britain's MI-6, who now works for Team Putin.

The Eurasian Disunion

Anton Barbashin of the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding has a piece in Foreign Affairs, The Eurasian Illusion: The Myth Of The Myth Of Russia's Economic Union.

How to Guerilla-Market a Stereotype

Euromaidan Press takes a granular look at how Russia's myths about Ukraine seep into Western media coverage.

Meanwhile, in a piece for the Moscow Carnegie Center's website, Kommersant columnist Andrei Arkangelsky deconstructs Russian propaganda.

Kremlin propaganda, he writes, is "the result of a backlog of unresolved ethical and philosophical problems in the post-totalitarian consciousness. Its phobias and fears are now shared with us." Arkangelsky adds that "the propagandists are not telling us about the other -- America and the West -- but about themselves and their own dark cellars."

The Forest Brothers

I just came across this trailer for a new documentary film by Latvian filmmaker and politician Edvins Snore. The Unknown War: Baltic Resistance looks at the "Forest Brothers," who carried out a partisan campaign against the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states after World War II.

Putin and the Impotence of Omnipotence

In an interview with Online.ua, LIlia Shevtsova says Putin is suffering from the "impotence of omnipotence."

"The Russian elite has become European at the level of consumption, but in order to preserve their incomes and consequently their power. They must isolate ordinary Russians from Europe and from European values," Shevtsova says. "The Kremlin will thus struggle with Western values inside Russia even as it tries to achieve compromises with European business and elites."

The Death of Russia's Civil Society

Jens Siegert has an essay in Intersection magazine asking: Does a Civil Society exist in Russia?

"Independent civil society in Russia scarcely even exists any more. Small and weak fragments remain, but they do not have any significant support from Russian society. They are marginalized, and their values seems not to be shared by the vast majority of the Russian people.

Must we though assume this attempt to ingrain democratic values into Russian society in the last 25 years a failure? Are we back at point zero or even below of it? Or is there something left, maybe even under the surface, which may give us hope?"

The New Russian Empire

Robert Legvold reviews Agnia Grigas' book, Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire, in Foreign Affairs.

Run Silent, Run Deep

The Wilson Center's MIchael Kofman has a piece on CNN's website looking at Russia's revived submarine program. How big of a military threat does it really pose?

Russia, China, and TTIP

On Carnegie Europe's website, Judy Dempsey looks at U.S. President Barack Obama's push for a new transatlantic relationship. Dempsey argues that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is vital to thwart Russia and China's efforts to undermine the existing global order.

"TTIP is not only about establishing a trade deal that would set crucial standards for how business is conducted. It is also about underpinning if not reviving the Wests liberal economic order, which is coming under massive pressure from Russia and particularly China," Dempsey writes.

Calling Things By Their Correct Names

Daniel Baer, the U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, responds to Russian objections to the use of the term "Russia-backed separatists."

"The other element I wanted to comment on was the question about wording, in terms of use of the word 'separatists'. I'd just like to clarify, we use 'Russia-backed separatists' to indicate the accurate relationship -- or sometimes we use the term 'Russian-led separatist fighters' to, again, express accurately the connection between Russia and the fighters on the ground. And that is not a political term; it is meant to be a statement, an accurate statement, reflecting the situation and why we are so deeply engaged with the Russian Federation, as are Ukraine and others, to try to find a peaceful solution to this. Because we have to acknowledge that the Russian Federation is the key driver of the conflict, and has been the key driver of the conflict from the outset."

Ukraine's Prospects

Steven Pifer, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, has a couple pieces up on the Brookings Institution's website. One looks at what Ukraine's new government is (and isn't) likely to achieve. And another asks whether Kyiv will squander its Western support.

Atlantic Council Event On Russo-Turkish Relations

In Washington today, the Atlantic Council will hold an event, "The Future of the Russo-Turkish Relationship with Congressman Gerry Connolly," at 12:00 EDT
A U.S. general says the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq and Syria has plummeted in the past year.

Major General Peter Gersten said at the Pentagon on April 26 that when he arrived in Baghdad last year, some 1,500 to 2,000 foreign fighters were joining the Islamic State group every month but now it is only about 200 per month.

The general said that along with the decrease in foreign fighters joining IS, the desertion rate is also on the rise.

Gersten said the drop in new recruits from abroad and fighters leaving the group is due in part to the U.S.-led coalition's continued attacks on the IS group's cash facilities.

He said the coalition has carried out about 20 such air strikes that have destroyed as much as $800 million.

Gersten said that has led to an inability by IS officials to pay fighters and that has resulted in "a fracturing in their morale...[and] we are seeing the inability to fight."

Gersten would not give an estimate on the overall size of the IS force in Syria and Iraq.

The U.S.-led coalition has been bombing IS forces and strategic sites in Iraq and Syria since August 2014.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters


In the spring of 2015, the Ukrainian government passed so-called "decommunization" laws, which effectively outlawed Soviet-era symbols. Under legislation adopted in May 2015, the communist government that ruled between 1917 and 1991 is condemned as a criminal regime.Across Ukraine, monuments to the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, were dismantled and scattered around the country, often in pieces. Photographer Niels Ackermann and journalist Sebastien Gobert researched and tracked down the locations of these "pieces of Lenin." Their search brought them to museums, art galleries, and overgrown yards.(A version of this gallery first appeared on.)
A Richmond startup is heading to Tennessee for a shot at $50,000.

Nutriati Inc., an agri-food technology company based in the Virginia Biotechnology Research Park in downtown Richmond, recently won a spot in Launch Tennessees 36|86 conference in Nashville, Tenn., where it will have a chance to win $50,000 while being exposed to at least 45 capital firms.

The company won its spot after competing in Launch Tennessees 36|86 Southern Series event in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., last week. The conference will take place in June.

We felt very fortunate to win because I would say the majority of the emphasis was IT-oriented, said Richard Kelly, the companys co-founder and CEO. To be picked as a scientific ag-tech food company, that really felt good.

Founded in November 2013 by Kelly and chief technology officer Michael Spinelli, Nutriati works with chickpeas to develop powders and flours that can be added to foods to boost the protein level or create gluten-free products.

Theres a shortage of protein in the world, Kelly pointed out, and the demand for a high-quality, sustainable plant protein is growing.

Chickpea is a sustainable crop, he said. When you grow chickpea, it actually puts nitrogen into the soil. A lot of crops are nitrogen depleting.

Diseases caused by poor diets such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease are growing around the world at an alarming rate as well, he pointed out, as are allergies to soy, dairy, gluten and eggs. Chickpeas offer a healthy alternative to most high-calorie foods.

Nutriati has developed gluten-free chickpea flour as well as chickpea powder.

Spinelli can make a chickpea brownie that has twice the protein and half the sugar of a typical brownie, Kelly said. Its really good. Our investors really like it, and I think the judges (in Raleigh-Durham) liked it as well.

The chance to present to several investors in Nashville comes just a few weeks after Nutriati launched a $5 million B-round capital raise, which will be used to jump-start production.

Nutriati chickpea powder is being testing with Next Foods GoodBelly, a probiotic shake seeking an additional burst of protein, Kelly said. Canyon Bakehouse in Colorado, which is using the chickpea flour to make gluten-free bread, is in the product development stage.

Kelly said he and Spinelli also are in talks with Clif Bar & Co. and Barilla pasta.

The co-founders plan to begin production by the end of this year. Nutriati will sell its products only to other companies to use in their products rather than making standalone items.

The startup has raised about $2.5 million, with $1.5 million coming from New Richmond Ventures, a local venture capital fund that invests in startups.

We have investors from North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, and theyve been very supportive of the mission to improve the food supply, Kelly said.
Police have arrested one suspect and are searching for two others in a shooting near Colonial Heights High School.

Lavert Cox of Petersburg has been charged with shooting into an occupied building, discharging a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, said Colonial Heights police Sgt. Robert L. Ruxer III.

Police were called at 4:46 p.m. April 19 about shots fired in the vicinity of the 100 block of Clearfield Circle near the high school.

On arrival, it was discovered that an altercation had occurred in the parking lot between several subjects, Ruxer wrote in a news release. During this altercation, shots were fired. All suspects fled the scene prior to the arrival of police.

Cox was apprehended shortly after the shooting. Police are searching for Wesley Cox, 23, and Darias Leake, 19, both of Petersburg.
More than 100 people marched from Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School to Richmond City Hall on Monday evening, chanting support our schools and our future, our children.

The march came one day after supporters of Richmond Public Schools put up billboards calling for increased school funding. The march concluded with a rally outside City Hall just as City Council began its 6 p.m. meeting.

City school officials are asking $18 million in additional school funding from what Mayor Dwight C. Jones had proposed in his budget. City Council members have submitted various proposals that would add $5 million to $18 million in added schools spending, but Jones has warned that cuts to other city departments would hamper Richmonds ability to provide basic services.

We have to show our students to stand up for a good cause, which is education, said one of the marchers, Margi Roseberry, a teacher for J. B. Fisher Elementary School, adding that the schools could get more funding without the city raising taxes.

The $18 million is there. We just need to rearrange it, said Roseberry, who has been a teacher for 18 years.

Many marchers wore shirts and held signs that included the hashtag #SupportRPS, which has become popular on social media.

We are out here because we are part of the solution, said Charles Willis, the executive director of United Communities Against Crime.

Education is the way up and the way out, Willis said on a megaphone during the rally, adding that education is a tool for people to escape from poverty and lives of crime.

Rosa Allen, a 14-year teacher for Fairfield Court Elementary School, said the rally Monday sent a message to city officials.

Were here to show that were going to stand for whats right. Were all going to stand together, Allen said.

Roseberry said Richmond schools have been neglected in recent decades, leaving school buildings deteriorating and a host of other problems. She said that prior administrations have created a culture of fear, in which teachers were afraid theyd be reprimanded for speaking out. However, she said the current School Board and Superintendent Dana T. Bedden have established a different culture.

Now we have a School Board and a superintendent who care, so we need to make the most of it, Roseberry said.

The energy from the march spilled into the City Councils formal meeting, when a half dozen schools supporters approached the podium after the scheduled public comment session had concluded.

City Council President Michelle R. Mosby allowed them to speak despite the fact no schools-related items were on the agenda.

One woman began crying as she pleaded with council members to come up with funds.

Mosby and a number of other council members then addressed the supporters in the audience.

She said that while the council is working to find additional funding for the district, there are trust issues between the two bodies. She didnt elaborate other than to say the district did not always spend money the way it said it would, a point several other council members went on to make.

There are some inconsistencies in the information that youre given, she said.

Councilman Chris A. Hilbert made a similar point.

I want everybody to know that this body spent hours and hours and hours last year and found $9 million, he said, noting that increase has stood this year. But we need the cooperation that when the money is sent over for x that its spent for x.

Asked for comment, Bedden said he did not know what the council members were referring to, citing a variety of transparency measures.
Police from multiple agencies say they have busted cocaine and heroin operations in Caroline County homes during the past two weeks.

The most recent arrests happened Friday when police raided a home in the Campbells Creek neighborhood in Ruther Glen, according to a release from the Caroline County Sheriffs Office.

In that raid, at the home at 2602 Meadow Lane, police seized cocaine worth $500, plastic storage bags containing suspected cocaine residue, digital weight scales, nearly $3,000 in cash and a Chevrolet van.

John Frye, 40, was arrested and charged with possessing cocaine with intent to distribute. He was incarcerated at Pamunkey Regional Jail.

The other raid happened in the Bridlewood neighborhood in Ladysmith on April 16, according to the Caroline Sheriffs Office.

Police say they raided a house at 18130 Bridlewood Lane and seized heroin with a street value of $3,100, plastic baggies containing suspected heroin residue, digital scales, suspected marijuana, an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle, an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, a 12-guage shotgun and $3,500 in cash.

Joshua Renner, 27, was arrested. He faces charges of possessing heroin with the intent to distribute and possession of a firearm while possessing heroin and marijuana.

Renner was incarcerated without bond at Pamunkey Regional Jail.
A defense attorney for Steven Vander Briel told a judge Monday he intends to pursue an insanity defense when his client goes on trial next week on a murder charge in the death of a fellow University of Mary Washington student.

The unique approach will be the first insanity defense of his 35-year career, attorney Mark Gardner said as Briel sat quietly nearby in his tan jail jumpsuit.

Judge Gordon Willis denied the attorneys request to tell potential jurors the fate of a defendant found not guilty by reason of insanity, which would depend on whether he responds to mental-health treatment.

The three-day trial is set to begin Monday.

Briel, a 31-year-old New Jersey native, is accused of tying up, strangling and killing Grace Mann on April 17, 2015, just a few months after moving into an off-campus house with her and two other women who were UMW students.

Briel attended Mary Washington from 200207, when he dropped out. He re-enrolled in the spring of 2015. The political science major and one-time member of the university rugby team was set to graduate the month after Manns killing.

Mann was a history and American studies major who was active in the Feminists United on Campus and People for the Rights of Individuals of Sexual Minorities.

On the afternoon of the killing, Mann attended a PRISM-sponsored Day of Silence vigil, then went to the Washington Avenue house she shared with Briel to fix her hair before another campus activity, according to court records.

Her roommates returned to the home a short time later to find Briel leaving one of their rooms.

According to court records, he made odd statements to the roommates and said he and Mann had gotten into a fight.

The other roommates went into the room and discovered Mann bound with a belt and a sweater, a plastic bag over her head and plastic bags stuffed in her mouth, according to court records. Authorities determined that she died by asphyxiation.
The search party was looking for a boy, about 6 years old, last seen wearing an orange jacket.

The boy reportedly enjoyed playing in the water, members of the Search and Rescue Albemarle County Sheriffs Office Reserve were told, which made the search seem more urgent  the team worried he could be in danger of drowning.

After sending out a search team on foot, incident command deployed a drone  flown by Virginia National Guard pilot Darren Goodbar  with a mounted camera to search the area surrounding a nearby lake.

The drone picked up on bright-orange clothing less than 10 minutes later. The child in this training exercise had been hiding behind a boat near the water, in an area the search team hadnt yet covered.

A ground crew probably wouldve taken 13 minutes to get there, said Lt. Tom Payne, of the reserve division. At the end of the exercise  the third run-through of the morning this past Saturday at King Family Vineyard in Crozet  Payne said he feels confident in the new technology.

Im excited to use this, he said.

The department is one of many Central Virginia emergency response agencies benefitting from a new partnership with Piedmont Virginia Community College. PVCC has been authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration to conduct research on the use of unmanned drones for public safety.

Next month, PVCC will offer its first drone operation course, taught by Goodbar and geared toward emergency responders.

Search and rescue will be the main focus of PVCCs research and training efforts. Local authorities have taken special interest in the use of drones for search and rescue since the 2014 search for missing University of Virginia student Hannah Graham.

Drones lent by Virginia Tech proved useful during the search, said Charles Werner, former Charlottesville fire chief and a member of the sheriffs volunteer office.

They provide a tremendous increase in awareness because we can get a birds-eye view of the terrain  literally, Werner said. We can cover much more ground in a shorter amount of time.

Werner said the drones will be used for emergency response, not surveillance.

The drones being tested have a battery life of just 20 minutes, but even with this restriction, they can still be used in several ways. First, they can fly out ahead of time and give searchers a good idea of the terrain and points of interest.

We can get out in front of the ground crew and see things they may not be able to see based on the terrain, said Goodbar, who also is director of aerial services at Draper Arden Associates, an engineering firm.

Maps dont always offer a complete or up-to-date picture of what searchers are dealing with, Payne said.

The aircraft also allow the search to stretch over a wider area. Drones could be used to cover open or grassy areas, allowing ground crews to focus completely on areas obscured by canopy cover.

Unlike helicopters, drones do not need a special takeoff or landing spot, allowing them to be deployed in places where helicopter flight may be difficult. Drones also can fly lower and fit tighter spaces than a helicopter could.

PVCC will be working with local agencies to test many different types of equipment on the drones  infrared cameras, for example, and airborne spotlights could be tested in the future, Goodbar said.
The Republican Party of Virginia says presidential candidate Donald Trump will not attend the state convention this weekend on the James Madison University campus in Harrisonburg.

The announcement contradicts media reports that Trump was planning to attend the event to woo delegates to the Republican National Convention.

Thirteen of the states 49 delegates will be elected at the state convention Saturday. Supporters of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas are expected to compete with Trump supporters for the delegate slots.
What: The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday on former Gov. Bob McDonnells appeal of his 11 corruption convictions. This is the former Virginia governor's last chance to avoid prison.

Where: U.S. Supreme Court, 1 First St., N.E. Washington, D.C. near the U.S. Capitol

When: Arguments set to begin at 10 a.m. and last one hour.

When will court rule: The justices are expected to rule no later than the end of June.
ASHBURN - The Washington Redskins have asked the Supreme Court to hear a lawsuit involving their trademark as a combined hearing along with a similar case, according to court documents.

The Redskins case, which centers around whether the team is entitled to register variations of their name and logo as a trademark or whether the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office can reject it for being offensive, is set to be heard by the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Lawyers for the team are requesting that the case be heard alongside an existing case centering around a rock band with the name "The Slants."

After their application for a trademark was rejected, they sued, and a U.S. appeals court recently ruled in their favor.

The government has asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of that case. The Supreme Court is not obligated to take the case, but the Redskins attorneys are arguing that the two cases are similar enough that they should be heard together in the interest of providing clarity.

The 42-page document states that many of the teams arguments were used in the other case, providing cause to skip the appeals court in favor of a ruling from the Supreme Court.
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COVID-19 drove a dramatic increase in the number of women who died from pregnancy or childbirth complications in the U.S. last year, a crisis that has disproportionately claimed Black and Hispanic women as victims. A government report released Wednesday lays out grim trends across the country for expectant mothers and their newborn babies. It finds that pregnancy-related deaths have spiked nearly 80 percent since 2018, with COVID-19 being a factor in a quarter of the 1,178 deaths reported last year. The percentage of preterm and low birthweight babies also went up last year, after holding steady for years. And more pregnant or postpartum women are reporting symptoms of depression.
Tanglewood Mall will host the fourth annual Rally for Road Safety event Saturday, May 14, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the front parking lot of Tanglewood Mall. This free community event will educate young and old alike on road safety laws and protect users of the road. Roanoke County Parks, Recreation and Tourism, RIDE Solutions, VDOT, Carilion Trauma Services, local law enforcement, other members of the Blue Ridge Transportation Safety Board and media sponsor WFXR have partnered together to invite the community to come out for a day filled with informational fun.

For the first time at Rally for Road Safety, Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital Trauma Service, will set up a distracted tricycles obstacle, which will demonstrate to guests the dangers of distracted driving. The Roanoke County Sheriffs Department will be offering ID fingerprinting for children.

Representatives from the Street Survival program will be available to answer questions about its program, which is a hands-on driving experience for teens that teaches them how to handle real-world driving situations. Returning again this year is AT&T with a texting and driving simulator, Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Controls state of the art mobile command vehicle will be on hand, and DMV2Go, the wireless office on wheels with the latest technology will also be on site. They will be offering services right on site that are normally only available for citizens at the local DMV office! Make sure to visit The Virginia Department of Transportations booth where they will be testing guests knowledge of roadway signs and road rules and children will be able to try on roadwork personal protective equipment. Additionally, VDOT Human Resources will be providing information regarding employment at VDOT.

Roanoke County Police will have the DUI simulator available, a crash vehicle and the K-9 officers will make a special appearance. Roanoke County Parks, Recreation and Tourism will offer prizes for guests who complete a Road Safety Passport, Temporary Tattoos and photo ops.

RIDE Solutions will once again host a bicycle rodeo, conduct bicycle safety training for kids and adults, offer bicycle helmet giveaways and fittings, games and prizes! The Bicycle Rodeo is an exciting experience for children of any age and participants are strongly encouraged to bring their own bicycle and helmet to the event.

With experts on hand to educate the community as well as kid-friendly attractions including magician David Castree, caricature artist Kyle Edgell, and Skyway Animal Farm Alpacas, Roanoke Countys Rally for Road Safety event is a fun opportunity for all citizens throughout the community to become more aware of road safety. Join Roanoke County Parks, Recreation and Tourism, RIDE Solutions, VDOT, local law enforcement and other members of the Blue Ridge Transportation Safety Board for a day filled with fun and informative activities.

For more information, call Wendi Schultz at 777-6326 or visit www.roanokecountyparks.com.

Submitted by Wendy Schultz
Tom Brewster is stepping down as Pulaski County's schools superintendent, the school system announced Tuesday.

He is becoming an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Bluefield College and director of external affairs for Communities in Schools of Virginia, a news release from the school system said.

Brewster was named as Pulaski County's superintendent in 2012, capping a decade-long career in the county that included stints as coordinator of student services and assistant superintendent. Before that, he was a teacher and administrator in Tazewell County, and administrator and assistant professor at Concord College.

In Pulaski County, "Ive had the pleasure of working with a dedicated group of leaders and colleagues who continue to amaze me with their knowledge and problem solving skills. Our teachers and support staff have provided a caring and nurturing environment within our schools and classrooms, building relationships that have bettered the lives of thousands of Pulaski County students. Brewster said in the county news release. I am especially proud of our students who continue to achieve success both inside and outside the classroom, and the Pulaski County School Board for their progressive and student-centered leadership.

In one of his new roles, Brewster is returning to his alma mater. He received a bachelor's degree in social studies education at Bluefield College before going on to earn a master's in educational leadership from Radford University and a doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies from Virginia Tech.

Brewster's other new role is with Communities in Schools of Virginia, a non-profit organization that works to prevent dropouts and help students who are not succeeding. The organization has a New River Valley affiliate based in Pulaski.

School board Chairman Mike Barbour thanked Brewster in the county news release, saying "Tom's tenure as Superintendent has been highlighted by improved student test scores, higher graduation rates, and our school system receiving statewide and national recognition for having designated Distinguished Title I and Blue Ribbon schools. He also focused efforts on improving access to workforce development programs and dual enrollment opportunities for students seeking technical training for high-demand, market ready careers."

Brewster is to finish out his current contract, which ends June 30, the news release said.
RICHMOND  Gov. Terry McAuliffe rejected Republican leaders call Tuesday for a special legislative session on the governors order restoring voting rights for 206,000 felons, saying the legislature has no specific role in the matter.

The back-and-forth escalated a constitutional clash that could ultimately land in court as Republicans continue to seek ways to mount a legal challenge to Fridays sweeping executive action.

In a letter to the governor, House of Delegates Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford, and Senate Majority Leader Thomas Norment , R-James City, said McAuliffe, a Democrat, had shown a flagrant disregard for the state constitution. They also called on the governor to release a list of names of all people whose voting and civil rights were restored by Fridays order, including details about their crimes.

This is a matter of great consequence to the people of the commonwealth of Virginia, Howell and Norment wrote. The people, through their elected representatives, deserve the opportunity to have their voices heard on this matter.

In response, McAuliffes office said the governor alone has constitutional authority to restore felons rights.

It is worth noting that todays letter does not make any specific constitutional or legal argument but rather is a generic and unsubstantiated political attack, said McAuliffe spokesman Brian Coy.

The state constitution gives the governor power to call a special session, but the legislature can convene itself with two-thirds support of both chambers. With Republicans holding a narrow 21-18 advantage in the Senate, a special session is unlikely without the governors consent.

The Republicans also requested a list of ex-offenders covered by the order, including names, offenses, sentencing details and information about any outstanding fines or restitution payments to victims.

McAuliffes office rejected that demand as well.

The constitution plainly excludes restoration of rights orders from any reporting requirement to the General Assembly, and providing such information would no doubt be used to fuel the demonization and demagoguery that has characterized much of the response from certain quarters to this act of executive clemency so far, Coy said.

Republicans have said the order  which applies to both those convicted of nonviolent and of violent crimes  will give murderers and rapists the ability to vote, hold public office, serve on juries and notarize documents. Theyve also accused the governor of playing politics by adding thousands of likely Democratic supporters to the voting rolls as a boost to longtime McAuliffe friend Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

McAuliffe has said ex-offenders who have completed their sentences and finished probation or parole should have the right to fully rejoin society. The McAuliffe administration has particularly emphasized the disproportionate impact on African-Americans, saying lifetime disenfranchisement for felons has roots in post-Civil War attempts to suppress black votes.

Republican and Democratic governors have sought to reduce voting barriers for ex-offenders on a case-by-case basis. Then-Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, made the process nearly automatic for nonviolent offenders.

McAuliffes order breaks new ground by restoring rights on a categorical basis for all felons who had completed their sentence and any probation or parole as of Friday. The order, which does not restore firearm rights, applies regardless of whether an ex-offender has applied to get their rights back.

The governor has said hes on solid legal ground. His reasoning is backed by A.E. Dick Howard, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who is widely considered the top expert on the Virginia Constitution.

The legal issue that could possibly fuel a Republican challenge is the question of whether the governor has the authority to restore rights en masse for those who have not made an individual request.

Were still exploring all of our available legal options, said Howell spokesman Matt Moran. Our goal is to do good legal work, and that takes a little bit of time.

I think theyre smart to be very careful about it, said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law. Because I think its a very difficult and unclear question. I think its very delicate as well.

Republicans have pointed to a letter written by an attorney for then-Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, that said blanket orders on voting rights would be a rewrite of the law rather than a contemplated use of the executive clemency powers.

This week, a spokeswoman for Kaine, now a U.S. senator, said Kaine considered the issue in the last weeks of his term as governor.

In reviewing the last-minute request, Kaines legal counsel was unable to conclude that such an order, not specifically identifying the individuals receiving a restoration, could be defended, said Kaine spokeswoman Sarah Peck.

McAuliffe has had more than two years to consider the question, Peck said, and has arrived at a carefully drafted order.

Senator Kaine supports the governors actions, which were undertaken in a careful manner and structured to resolve the legal questions raised when the idea was first suggested many years ago, Peck said.
Calvin Cobbs Hudson of Rocky Mount passed away quietly at his home on Sunday, April 24, 2016. He was born to Albert and Audrey Hudson on August 24, 1926.Mr. Hudson was a veteran of World War II, serving in Greenland with the Army Air Force. He epitomized the qualities of the Greatest Generation: honor, service, devotion and selflessness. Following his discharge from the military, Mr. Hudson married Violet Francis Harrison in 1949. They remained married until her passing in 2003.Mr. Hudson worked briefly as a mechanic for Hub Motors and Richardson Pontiac before joining his father, brother and sister in operating the Exchange Milling Company in Rocky Mount. The Exchange Milling Company became a fixture in Rocky Mount where it operated continuously for 75 years. Mr. Hudson also designed and built houses, including his own for which he drew detailed plans on the back of envelopes and oversaw construction from memory. He enjoyed spending time on his farm located south of Rocky Mount where for a time he also raised Black Angus cattle. Following his wife's passing, Mr. Hudson was introduced to the joy of dancing by his special friend, Nellie Wright.Mr. Hudson was preceded in death by his parents, his wife of 54 years, and his brother Carlton "Lee" Hudson.He is survived by his sister, Hazel Lovell of Rocky Mount; a son, Tracy, and his wife, Alissa, of Manassas, Virginia; a granddaughter, Carly, of New York, N.Y.; a grandson, Parker, of Manassas; six nieces and six nephews.The family will receive friends from 6 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, April 26, 2016, at Flora Funeral Home in Rocky Mount. A graveside service will be held at noon on Wednesday, April 27, 2016, at Roselawn Memorial Park in Martinsville.Expressions of sympathy may take the form of contributions to Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, 824 Starling Avenue, Martinsville, VA 24112.
Meredith Cooper Via, 90, of Roanoke, a former resident of Princeton, W.Va., died Saturday, April 23, 2016, at Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Born August 25, 1925. in Athens, W.Va., he was the son of the late Edgar S. Via and Beulah Cooper Via. Meredith was a graduate of Athens High School and was a United States Army Air Corp veteran serving in World War II in New Guinea. He was a retired postal carrier with the U.S. Postal Service with 40 years of service. Meredith was a member of the Concord United Methodist Church in Athens and attended the Mt. Jackson Baptist Church in Athens. After moving to Roanoke in 2013, Meredith attended the Grace Baptist Church in Roanoke. For many years he was President of the Senior Friends of the Order of St. Luke's and taught exercise classes at the Princeton Senior Center. Meredith was a member of the National Organization of Retired Postman.In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by one brother, Gilford Via. Survivors include his wife of 67 years, Rebecca Jennings "Becky" Via of Roanoke; several nieces, nephews, and cousins including special nephew, Buddy Jennings of Marshall, Va.; and many friends and church family in the Princeton, Athens and Roanoke areas.Funeral services will be conducted 1 p.m. Wednesday, April 27, 2016, at the George W. Seaver Chapel of Seaver Funeral Home in Princeton with Pastor Sam Vance officiating. Burial will follow at the Athens Cemetery. Friends and family will serve as pallbearers. Friends may call at the funeral home from 11 a.m. until the service hour Wednesday. Memorial contributions may be made to The Gideons International, P.O. Box 5103, Princeton, WV 24740; or any of his church affiliations Mission Fund. Online condolences may be made by visiting www.seaverfuneralservice.com.
THE world premiere of a new ballet production will be coming to Doncasters Cast Theatre in May.

Northern Ballets Jane Eyre will be in the town from May 19 to May 21.

Based on the novel by Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre is choreographed by internationally acclaimed British dance maker Cathy Marston who previously created the Dickens classic A Tale of Two Cities for Northern Ballet in 2008.

Composer Philip Feeney has created a score for the production made up of original compositions and existing work.

Northern Ballets artistic director David Nixon said: Having already adapted Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights it seems appropriate that Northern Ballet should also immortalise her sisters Jane Eyre through dance and doing so in the bicentennial anniversary of Charlotte Brontes birth makes it all the more special.

Northern Ballet will also perform its new childrens ballet Tortoise and the Hare in Doncaster on May 21 at 12.30pm and 2.30pm.

Jane Eyre is already sold out at Cast but tickets are still available for Tortoise and the Hare costing 8.50 for adults and 5.50 for children. They are available by calling 01302 303959 or visiting castindoncaster.com.
ECO-friendly four-year-old Charlotte Temple helped spruce up the streets with a two-day litter pick  but was shown little gratitude by council bosses.



Charlottes grandmother Anne Goode kitted herself and little Charlotte out with gloves, bin bags and litter-picking equipment and the pair spent six hours clearly the roadside in Harlington of rubbish.



But Anne said she was stunned when she rang Doncaster Council to ask them to collected the ten full bags and was told she would have to pay for the litter to be taken away.



Eight days later  having taking four to the tip  she rang the Advertiser to say she was still waiting for the remaining bags to be collected.



Its disgraceful, said Anne, of Adwick Road, Harlington. I have spent up to half an hour on hold waiting for someone to deal with it.



No-one is taking responsibility for this rubbish.



Weve been doing their job for them but whats the point when this is the response you get?



Its also disappointing for Charlotte, who has given up her time during her school holidays to help me.



Anne said she and Charlotte, of Arnold Crescent, Mexborough, had found a range of discarded items by the roadside, including watering cans, bicycle helmets, shoes, socks and dog waste.



She added that she had offered to leave rubbish bags out with her black bin but was told this would not be acceptable.

Doncaster Council finally picked up the rubbish 12 days after Anne first got in touch with them.



Gill Gillies, the councils assistant director of environment, said: We have contacted Mrs Goode to apologise for the delay in this collection and to pass on our thanks for her community work.



The rubbish has now been taken away.
Diamond giant, De Beers is moving from its historic premises at 17 Charterhouse Street in London as part of a broader restructuring by Anglo American, which is raising $4 billion in asset sales to cut its debt.

The group had been using the building since the 1930s and would start a process to sell it in the coming months.

Anglo American had announced last December its plans to co-locate with De Beers next year and was considering Charterhouse as its new headquarters.

Rapaport quoted De Beers head of midstream communications David Johnson as saying that the staff would instead relocate to Anglo Americans Carlton House Terrace office.

The decision comes amid a cost cutting Anglo American announced last year that will reduce its employee base from 135,000 to less than 50,000 worldwide, Rapaport reports.

The group is consolidating its portfolio of businesses from six to three, comprising the De Beers diamond unit, industrial metals and bulk commodities.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that 17 Charterhouse Street was the center of the diamond world for much of the 20th century with the vast majority of the worlds gems sorted and sold there during the firms diamond monopoly that ended around the turn of this century.

De Beers currently employs about 300 people in London, after moving much of its sales team to Botswana in 2013 as part of a 10-year deal inked with the southern African country, which is the second largest diamond producer after Russia.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




The diamond trade around the world is under duress. Antwerp, the most important international diamond trade center, did not escape the year unscathed, but was the best performer. This past year, 48.3 billion USD worth of diamonds were imported to and exported from Antwerp, AWDC reported.

While this represents a decline of nearly 18%, competitors such as India and Israel endured much steeper declines.

As the diamond industry rises and falls on the waves of the global economy, the economic slowdown in the BRIC countries  particularly in China, the second largest market for polished diamonds after the United States  had a huge impact on the diamond trade.

While the dramatic downturn in the diamond industry resulted in a slight decline in prices for rough diamonds for the first time in decades, soft prices for polished diamonds made it increasingly difficult for diamond traders to turn a profit. As a result, the average profit margins for wholesalers were between 0.11% and 0.37%, the same as in 2014.

Additionally, the banking and sovereign debt crises led to drastic changes in the availability of bank lending to businesses. As a result, many industries found it difficult to obtain financing. For diamantaires, this means that they had fewer resources available for purchasing rough diamonds, which has an impact on the global trade.

It was a difficult year for the diamond industry worldwide. But Antwerp held its own and managed to secure its world-leading position thanks to its heritage, knowledge and courage to adjust and adopt new technologies. And that is exactly how it will face these challenges again, AWDC notes.



Alex Shishlo, Editor of the Rough&Polished European Bureau in Brussels




Surat Diamond Association (SDA) has appealed to diamond unit owners, especially small and medium units, to refrain from stocking rough diamonds and close the units for summer vacation to reduce over-production and bring about recovery in the market, according to a report in Times of India.

During 2015-16 had shown a 15 per cent decline in exports, as a critical slowdown had occurred in key markets like the United States and China.

Last year before Diwali vacation, the diamond unit owners had cut down on polished diamond production by almost 50 per cent to reduce high inventories. The working hours in the diamond units were reduced drastically to less than six hours to cope up with higher rough diamond prices and slack demand of polished diamonds.

Recently, a delegation led by GJEPC chairman Pravin Shanker Pandya had met Union commerce minister to seek solution of issues faced by the diamond industry. The specific predicament highlighted was challenge of extremely high inventory levels. The GJEPC also suggested that the government undertake certain initiatives to lighten its burden. These included a level playing field with regard to China and allowing the industry to include gems and jewellery industry in Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) as well as allowing goods to enter the country on a consignment basis for manufacturing.

Dinesh Navadiya, regional chairman of GJEPC said, "It is a humble advice and appeal to the diamond unit owners to refrain from re-stocking rough diamonds and reduce polished diamond production. For this, the units must observe 15 to 20 day summer vacation by keeping their units closed. Rising inventory levels will destabilize the industry in the long run."



Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in- Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough&Polished




Indian diamantaires in Hong Kong have threatened to move out their diamond business to safer countries due to increase in the number of robbery attacks on diamond community members there over the last few years, according to a report in Times of India.

On March 18, 2016, diamond trader Arvind Nasit of Sarjan Group was targeted by robbers at Hunghom. Around eight robbers brutally beat up the victim and fled with polished diamonds valued at over Rs1.5 crore. Nasit, according to a Sarjan group member, had filed a police complaint, but the robbers are still at large. More than half a dozen such cases have been reported since 2007.

Sarjan Group has sought the help of Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) to provide adequate security to diamantaires and nab robbers attacking and looting diamond traders.

"Diamond business is contributing heavily to Hong Kong's economy, but it is useless if our businesses and traders are not protected. We suspect South Asian asylum seekers are behind these attacks. If the Hong Kong government fails to provide us security, we may be forced to leave the country," said a senior member of Sarjan group Vijay Sheth.



Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in- Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough&Polished




ALROSA increased profit 2.4 times in Q1 2016

26 april 2016 News

(FINMARKET.RU) - ALROSA boosted its net profit calculated in line with the Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) in the first three months of 2016 2.4 times driving it to 43.229 billion rubles against 17.706 billion rubles one year ago. This follows from the documents published by the company.

ALROSAs revenue went up by 31% reaching 80.698 billion rubles.

Its cost of sales rose by 6.2% to 24.115 billion rubles.

The miners gross profit amounted to 56.583 billion rubles, which is almost 2 times as much or by 49% higher than in 2014.

ALROSA increased its sales profit by 51.8% to 48.509 billion rubles.

The companys pre-tax profit reached 26.188 billion rubles, having increased 2.4 times.

ALROSAs statement under RAS is unconsolidated and does not take into account the results posted by its subsidiaries, the largest of which is ALROSA-Nyurba, Almazy Anabara, Nizhne-Lenskoye and Severalmaz; ALROSAs 33% stake in Angola's Catoca is not included in its statements under RAS and IFRS.

ALROSA Group produced 8.2 million carats in the first quarter of 2016, which is by 2% less than in the same period last year. The miners proceeds from diamond sales in the first quarter of 2016 reached not less than $ 1.3 billion (vs. $ 1.1 billion one year ago).






On April 23 the Ministry of Finance, Government of India formally announced the constitution of the sub-committee of the high level committee to look into issues related to the imposition of Central Excise duty on jewellery. It simultaneously also deferred the date for completion of registration of jewellers with the Central Excise department till July 1, 2016, reports gjepc.org.

The circular from the ministry announced that Dr. Ashok Lahiri, Chairman, Gautam Ray, Member, Rohan Shah, Legal expert, Manoj Kumar Dwivedi, Joint Secretary [Department of Commerce] and Alok Shukla, Joint Secretary, Department of Revenue will be members of the committee.

The circular added that the names of the trade representatives in the Sub-Committee would be decided in consultation with Dr. Ashok Lahiri.

The government reiterated that the terms of reference of the Sub-Committee will include issues related to compliance procedure for the excise duty, including records to be maintained, operating procedures and any other issues that may be relevant. All associations will be given an opportunity to submit representation before the Sub-Committee in writing and the all-India associations to state their case in person.

The Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), in a letter circulated to all its members along with the official circular, has said that it is preparing its representation to be submitted to the High Level Committee for the simplification of the Excise procedures and has requested them to send in suggestions to the Council.

Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished




The Miami-Dade Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) adopted a resolution on April 21, 2016 endorsing the Strategic Miami Area Rapid Transit (SMART) plan, which envisages the construction of six new urban rail lines in Miami-Dade County.

SMART proposes constructing five of the six lines as light rail. The Beach Corridor (formerly Bay Link) would connect the city center with Miami Beach via the MacArthur Causeway, while the South Dade Transit Way would replace bus lanes along U.S. Highway 1 south of the city with a light rail line.

The East-West Corridor would relieve the congested Dolphin Expressway between the city center and the western suburbs, while to the south a second east-west line, the Kendall Corridor, would run west along Kendall Drive from Dadeland Metrorail station. The fifth line would run north from North West 79th Street along 27th Avenue.

In addition to these light rail projects, SMART also includes the Tri-Rail Coastal Link, which would introduce commuter rail services on a 22.4-mile section of the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) north from Miami to Boca Raton and Jupiter.

The MPO says it will now carry out further studies to determine costs and potential sources of funding for project development and environmental studies on the six corridors.

All six of the projects listed by SMART were endorsed by voters in a 2002 ballot which authorized a 0.5% sales tax to fund expansion of the urban rail network. However, much of the revenue generated by this tax has been used to maintain the current system, adding only a 2.4-mile extension of the Metrorail network to Miami International Airport.
NS

In keeping with the important railroad tradition of safety, Norfolk Southern rolled out a new educational train and website to help first responders across its network respond to potential rail-related incidents.

The train and website are part of Norfolk Southerns Operation Awareness & Response (OAR) program. OAR was launched in 2015 to cultivate and strengthen relationships with local first responders by providing classroom, web-based and field training on hazardous materials transportation, as well as information about rail operations.

The NS hazmat safety train is comprised of: A 2,000-horsepower, 273-ton locomotive painted in honor of emergency responders with insignia recognizing police, fire and emergency services; two boxcars converted into classrooms, each capable of holding 30 people; four styles of tank cars, including DOT-105, DOT-111, DOT-112 and DOT-117, to illustrate a variety of car valves and fittings and two, 89-foot flatcars designed to transport intermodal containers.

The NS hazmat safety train is like a rolling classroom, delivering hands-on training directly to emergency responders in communities along our rail lines, said John Irwin, Norfolk Southern assistant vice president safety and environmental. We are committed to moving these materials as safely and efficiently as possible and building partnerships with emergency first responders across our network is a vital part of operating a safe rail network.

Norfolk Southern also launched its new JoinNSOAR.com website to provide the public with information about transporting hazardous materials and the economic benefits of moving hazardous materials by rail.

The NS hazmat safety train will travel to 14 states across the railroads network.

Last year, Norfolk Southern provided training for 4,792 emergency responders, government officials, members of the media and others in 18 states. The training included classroom seminars, hands-on sessions with rolling stock, table-top simulations, full-scale drills and exercises at training centers operated by NS and the Association of American Railroads. Norfolk Southern also was involved in developing the AskRail mobile app, which provides real time rail information to first responders.
Canadian low-cost gold producer Eldorado Gold Corp. (ELD.TO,EGO) announced Tuesday that it has reached an agreement to sell its 82 percent interest in the Company's Jinfeng mine to a unit of China National Gold Group for $300 million in cash, subject to certain closing adjustments.

The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter 2016, subject to regulatory and other approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Eldorado has been evaluating the merits of potentially monetizing its Chinese assets. The company said it continues to advance this process and has been in discussions with various parties and will update shareholders as appropriate.

Paul Wright, President and Chief Executive Officer of Eldorado Gold, said, "China National Gold has been our minority partner at Jinfeng for over fourteen years and is the logical buyer as the operation transitions fully into the underground. Since commencement of production in 2007, Jinfeng has consistently delivered solid operating results and has been a strong contributor in Eldorado's global portfolio."

In the deal, BMO Capital Markets and Cutfield Freeman & Co. are acting as financial advisors and Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, Herbert Smith Freehills LLP, Morrison & Foerster LLP and JunHe LLP are acting as legal counsel to Eldorado.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Sweden's producer prices continued to decline in March, but at a slower pace than in the previous month, figures from Statistics Sweden showed Tuesday.

The producer price index fell 3.7 percent year-over-year in March, following a 4.2 percent decrease in February, which was the biggest drop since June 2013. It was the ninth consecutive monthly fall.

Export market prices dipped 5.5 percent annually in March and those in the import market went down by 6.1 percent. Prices in the domestic market also dropped 1.8 percent.

On a monthly basis, producer prices rose 0.8 percent in March, reversing a 0.1 percent slight decrease in the preceding month. It was the first increase in seven months.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.
Ally Financial Inc. (ALLY) today reported first-quarter net income of $250 million or $0.49 per share, down from $576 million or $1.06 per share in the year-ago period, which included a one-time gain of $397 million from discontinued operations resulting from the completed sale of the Chinese auto finance joint venture.

Adjusted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.52, the same as in the prior-year period. On average, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report earnings of $0.54 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

In early April, Ally announced it has signed an agreement to acquire TradeKing Group, Inc., a digital wealth management company, for $275 million, subject to certain adjustments.

The transaction is expected to close during the second or third quarter of 2016. The is expected to contribute an annual pre-tax earnings run-rate of over $80 million by year-end 2018, through commission revenue, asset management fees and funding efficiencies.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Amid concerns about food wastage, Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) has announced a new plan to donate 100 percent of its unsold food to charity.

The world's largest specialty coffee retailer has launched FoodShare - a program to donate ready-to-eat meals to food banks - from its 7,600 company-operated stores in the U.S.

Starbucks hopes that its new plan will feed people who struggle with hunger and also divert food surplus from landfills, thus minimizing the company's environmental footprint. The company expects to inspire other companies to do the same.

Initially, Starbucks will conduct the food donation program through an existing collaboration with Food Donation Connection and a new partnership with Feeding America.

With an estimated 70 billion pounds of food waste in America each year, according to Feeding America, Starbucks hopes to encourage other businesses to put a focus on food rescue.

In the first year alone, Starbucks FoodShare plans to be able to provide nearly 5 million meals to individuals and families in need of nourishing food.

The company intends to expand the program over the next five years and rescue 100 percent of its food available for donation from participating company-operated U.S. stores. That will amount to almost 50 million meals by 2021.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an estimated 15 million children live in households where adequate, nutritious food is limited. They are among the nearly 50 million Americans who are struggling to avoid hunger today.

Since 2010, Starbucks stores have donated pastries through the support of Food Donation Connection or FDC, a service provider that collects pastries at the company's stores after these can no longer be sold to customers.

For its new plan, Starbucks has partnered with FDC to develop a safe process to add perishable food to the pick-up. This will be implemented in participating company-operated stores in the U.S. by this time next year.

Starbucks noted that the new program could be potentially expanded with refrigerated vans making additional stops at other restaurants that join in the effort, increasing the impact exponentially.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Germany's government is planning to provide attractive subsidy for electric car buyers to usher in a revolution in the plug-in automotive market. The government's cash incentive project will be supported by the car industry.

Initial plan is to provided 1.2 billion euros or $1.35 billion as incentive. Once this amount is exhausted, the government will provide additional money, reported the Wall Street Journal.

For buying battery-powered electric car, one can avail subsidy of up to 5000 euros, while for hybrid cars, the incentive is up to 3000 euros for the period 2016 to 2018. Thereafter, the incentive pattern will change to 3000 euros for battery cars and 2000 euros for hybrids. The subsidy will be issued on a first come first served basis.

Premium electric cars worth more than 60,000 euros will not get any incentive.

According to the report, German government is planning to install charging stations across the country to promote green vehicles. Government offices will be prompted to use electric vehicles.

Germany has been experiencing a slower pace in developing electric cars. The country's target was to increase electric vehicles to one million in 2020 from a meager 2500 vehicles in 2011. By 2030, it targets five million cars.

Germany has been aiming to develop lighter batteries that would support electric cars. The country has plans to create electricity from primary energy sources and thus get rid of the burden of imported fuels.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Canadian stocks were mixed Tuesday, as gains in the oil and mining sectors offset weaker industrials.

Investors sifted through a pile of corporate earnings while keeping a close eye on rising crude oil prices.

The S&P/TSX Composite Index rose 13.45 points, or 0.10 percent, to 13,089.44, as traders were cautious ahead of tomorrow's U.S. Federal Reserve decision.

Economists expect no change to monetary policy, but the accompanying statement will be scrutinized for whether a rate hike is coming in June.

In cororate news, Barrick Gold Corp (ABX) reported earnings for its first quarter that rose sharply from last year. Shares were up 1.5 percent.

Teck Resources Ltd. (TCK_A.TO) reported a lower profit for first quarter. Shares rose 4.8 percent.

Canadian National Railway Company (CNI, CNR.TO) announced first quarter earnings were up 12 percent. However, disappointing guidance sparked a 5 percent decline in shares today.

Brookfield Canada Office Properties (BOXC) reported earnings for its first quarter that advanced 11 percent from last year. Shares were up fractionally.

Bombardier Inc. (BBD_B.TO, BBD_A.TO) said that a subsidiary of Chorus Aviation Inc. (CHR_B.TO, CHR_A.TO) will buy five CRJ900 aircraft, with purchase rights for an additional five planes. Bombardier shares jumped 10.5 percent.

Eldorado Gold Corp. (ELD.TO, EGO) sold its 82 percent interest in the Jinfeng mine to a unit of China National Gold Group for $300 million in cash, subject to certain closing adjustments. The stock rose 1.9 percent.

Husky Energy (HSE.TO) said it is selling 65 percent of its ownership interest in some midstream assets in Lloydminster region for $1.7 billion in cash. The company also reported a significant net loss in the first quarter. Shares fell 8.8 percent.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
Millennial Moms Review: 2022 Acura MDX is pretty close to the perfect family car

I dont know if perfect is attainable, especially considering weve got the world of options when it comes to modern vehicles. Were spoiled and, as such, we have very specific needs and wants. Driving-wise, the 2022 Acura MDX is one of my favourite ...
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Here's what the new Docking State Office Building could look like
Despite banana patches being ruined and some trees being uprooted, the people of Samoa are mighty grateful. They know they have been spared one more time as Cyclone Amos passed on Saturday night.

No lives were taken and apart from some roads destroyed by heavy flooding, the country remains relatively unscathed.

A mother of four from the village of Leauvaa, Foketi Matini, echoed how many Samoans felt on Sunday.

Im just thankful, she said.

What would we have said if we were to wake up today and our families and loved ones are all gone?

It was scary; I couldnt sleep properly because my mind was with my children and thinking of where we would go if the storm took our home. Im sure we wouldnt have survived.

But amidst the howling winds on Saturday night, there was a sign of relief.

When I heard the loud thunderstorms and lightning, I knew right then and there that God is still with us and that the cyclone will be gone by the morning and I was right, she said.

When we woke up this morning, I prepared my children for church, I just whispered a prayer to say thank you God.

There were only banana trees beside our house that have fallen and that was it. Our home is still standing and everything else so today is the day of thanksgiving.

A father of four from Faleula, Fatu Afele, agrees.

What can I say except thanking God for watching over us, he said.

What happened is a miracle. No matter what anyone says, I will just say that God has done a miracle in Samoa because He has chased away the cyclone from Samoa.

On social media, newsfeeds have been filled with people expressing gratitude that Samoa has been spared.

Peone Fuimaono wrote: A miracle is when the impossible happens and it happened to Samoa early this morning. Joining in Hemis favorite song now God gave me a song; I will sing for the rest of my life; Jesus is the light, the Light of the world!

The post has received many likes.

Another prominent Samoan, Vaimasenuu Zita Martel, expressed her delight with a post on Sunday.

Today dawned with the sound of birds singing, and absolutely no wind, she wrote.

I never cease to be amazed with the power of nature and how she lets us know that she does exist.

The shopping frenzy was evident everywhere yesterday as we all stocked up with food supplies, candles, buckets for water, plywood, sheeting iron, and whatever materials available to board up windows and lock-down our homes. Diesel and petrol generators were selling like crazy down at SMI Ltd and Bluebird Lumber and tarpaulins went like hot banana pancakes.

Then we came home and secured our homes. The sound of hammers banging rang throughout the neighbourhood yesterday all day and early night.

Our children played hide and seek in the rain as it was an exciting adventure while we worried and planned and worried some more.

The sound of hammers was soon replaced by the howling winds and then we wait and pray that well be spared the full force of Amos and the winds started to die down around 2am.

My fuafua forest that surrounds my home is intact with some broken branches but no uprooted trees as theyre close to each other.

The forest acts as a really good wind breaker for our open home and weve lived through several cyclones together. And like my forest as a protector, I would also like to Thank You all - my dear family and friends - for your prayers of love and protection for all of us in Samoa.

The feeling was certainly shared by thousands of Samoans around the country, filling up church services on Sunday morning to say thank you.
The U.N Women and U.N.D.P, in partnership with the National University of Samoas Media and Journalism School, will be hosting an event to name the winners of the I.P.P.W.S Media Awards for Excellence in Gender-Sensitive Election Reporting in Samoa.

The awards were launched last February to promote and celebrate examples of balanced media coverage, promoting gender equality and womens leadership in decision-making.

The competition was composed of entrants who submitted their pieces for consideration in the broadcast and print categories, both from individual and media outlets, published from 1 November 2015 to 20 March 2016.

Winners for the three categories will receive a gift certificate from Samoa Stationery and Books (SSAB) worth $500.

The aim of the I.P.P.W.S Media Awards is to acknowledge and celebrate the efforts made by reporters during the General Elections, said the U.N Resident Coordinator, Lizbeth Cullity.

Media played a critical role in challenging stereotypes, shaping public perceptions and improving the publics understanding of womens political participation. The initiative also promotes best journalism practices in the long-term.

The celebration will be held at the S.T.A Fale and is expected to start at 6:00pm.

Professor Fui Leapai Tuua Ilaoa Asofou Soo, N.U.S Vice-Chancellor, will be delivering the keynote address followed by Aleta Miller, Regional Representative of U.N Women in the Pacific. Afterwards the winners and the guests are all invited to a reception.

Increasing Political Participation of Women in Samoa (I.P.P.W.S) is a joint programme between U.N Women and U.N.D.P, in partnership with the government of Samoa and the Australian government.
Saudi Arabia unveiled a bold reform plan on Monday aimed at weaning the country off its "addiction" to oil in a bid to prepare the next generation of Saudi leaders for the domestic pressures of youth unemployment and revenues eroded by lower oil prices.

The project, which includes plans to float a stake in the world's largest oil company, Aramco, and set up one of the world's biggest government investment funds, is meant to provide a blueprint for sweeping reforms to steer the OPEC kingdom away from its decades-long reliance on cheap-to-produce oil.

King Salman said in a televised announcement that the Cabinet approved the plan, known as Vision 2030, and called on Saudis to work together to ensure its success.

But it was left to the king's powerful son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to spell out details in an interview aired shortly after the announcement on Saudi-owned broadcaster Al-Arabiya.

The 30-year-old second-in-line to the throne also serves as the country's defense minister and chairs a committee to oversee economic policymaking. That committee, the Council on Economic and Development Affairs, has been focused on reorienting the kingdom away from its heavy reliance on fossil fuels, creating jobs and boosting foreign investment.

The plan is ambitious. Beyond selling state assets, it includes trimming government perks, like the estimated $61 billion spent annually on energy subsidies that Saudi citizens have become accustomed to and which have helped secure political patronage for the Al Saud ruling family. Just this week, the king sacked the country's water and electricity minister after complaints by citizens online over how increases in water tariffs had been implemented. The Internet is one of the few spaces where people can discuss sensitive issues since there are no political parties and protests are banned.

Though the plan stresses the importance of Saudi women in the economy and expanding their job opportunities, it contained little to suggest the kingdom would accelerate its cautious pace of social reforms. Women were granted the right to vote and run in local council elections for the first time last year, but are still banned from driving and need the approval of a male relative  usually a husband or father to travel abroad.

Lower oil prices pushed Saudi Arabia into a budget deficit of nearly $100 billion last year and a projected deficit this year of $87 billion. Despite efforts to limit reliance on its main export, oil accounted for more than 70 percent of the state's revenue in 2015.

Masood Ahmed, International Monetary Fund director for the Middle East and Central Asia, said the plan's objective of diversifying the economy away from oil is "exactly the kind of transformation that an economy like Saudi Arabia needs."

"I think the real issue is going to be how to make sure that these very sensible and ambitious objectives can be translated into real changes," he said.

In Monday's wide-ranging interview, the deputy crown prince described the kingdom as having an "addiction to oil" that had hurt development in other sectors and said a planned partial initial public offering of the state-owned oil giant Aramco was part of the reform program.

"The vision is a road map of our development and economic goals," he said. "Without a doubt, Aramco is one of the main keys of this vision and the kingdom's economic renaissance."

He put the estimated value of Aramco at more than $2 trillion and said less than 5 percent would be offered to public shareholders. Subsidiaries of the company would also be part of the share sale, he said.

The Aramco shares would be listed on the Saudi stock exchange, the Tadawul, and on an international exchange, possibly in the United States.

Aramco boasts the world's largest oil reserves and produces some 10 million barrels of crude a day, giving it outsized influence over world energy markets. It traces its history to a 1933 agreement between the kingdom and the Standard Oil Company of California to develop the country's oil reserves, and has been known as Aramco  an acronym for the Arabian American Oil Company since 1944. The Saudi government took full control of the company in a series of buyouts that ended in 1980.

The prince also outlined plans to develop Saudi Arabia's $160 billion public investment fund and turn it into a $2 trillion sovereign fund that would go into developing the kingdom's cities. It would include cash generated from the Aramco IPO, an existing $600 billion in reserves, and state-owned real estate and industrial areas estimated to be worth $1 trillion, he said.

Jason Turvey, Middle East economist for Capital Economics, said that because plans for the fund reflect a shift of balance sheets rather than any new assets, it will not reduce the government's dependence on oil revenues.

"We don't buy into Mohammed bin Salman's assertion that Saudi Arabia will no longer be dependent on oil by 2020," he wrote.

A Bank of America Merrill Lynch report said the changes under King Salman may herald a much more assertive role for royals in energy policy and cautioned that the concentration of power with the deputy crown prince "could raise a succession risk going forward."

Another major obstacle facing the Saudi monarchy is unemployment, currently at 11.7 percent. The kingdom said it plans to reduce that to 7 percent by 2030 and to boost the private sector to alleviate pressures on the government to absorb its growing workforce.

More than half of Saudis are under the age of 25, and in coming years millions will be looking for work and affordable housing. Currently, 70 percent of Saudis work in the public sector, where the government spends heavily on wages.

The deputy crown prince said another way to drive up non-oil revenue is by boosting the kingdom's own military production. Saudi Arabia was the world's third-largest arms buyer last year, with purchases of more than $87 billion, yet only 2 percent was for locally-produced weaponry.

Vision 2030 sets out a goal of localizing more than half of Saudi Arabia's military spending and creating a military industries holding company that would be initially fully owned by the government.

-AP
A woman holds up a photograph of a missing student with a caption reading 'We are missing 43' (Photo: AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

A woman holds up a photograph of a missing student with a caption reading 'We are missing 43' (Photo: AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

The parents of 43 missing students who disappeared in September 2014 accused Mexico's government on Monday of lying to them, planting evidence and not adequately investigating the case.

The parents' comments came a day after a group of international experts issued a report criticizing the investigation, saying suspects appear to have been tortured and key pieces of evidence related to the supposed burning of the students' bodies were not correctly investigated.

The 43 students at the radical teachers' college of Ayotzinapa have not been heard from since they were taken by local police in late 2014 in the city of Iguala in southern Guerrero state. The government says corrupt police turned them over to a drug gang, which killed them and burned their remains. Parents reject that conclusion and experts say there is no proof of it.

Parent Mario Cesar Gonzalez said Monday that prosecutors had lied and planted a bag of charred bone fragments in a river near the garbage dump where the students were allegedly burned. Tests have linked the fragments to only one of the students, with a possible link to another.

The group of experts said the bags of bone fragments were found at a different spot and time than authorities had said, and that outside experts weren't immediately allowed access to the site.

"They were the ones who planted the evidence in the San Juan river," said Gonzalez, the father of missing student Cesar Manuel Gonzalez.

Cristina Bautista, whose son Benjamin Ascencio is among the missing students, said the "government started lying to us from the start."

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expert group says that a study of 17 of the approximately 123 suspects arrested in the case showed signs of beatings, including, in some cases, dozens of bruises, cuts and scrapes.

Human rights activist Mario Patron of the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez center said the torture allegations "endanger efforts to find the truth."

The Mexican government recently released documents suggesting investigations had been opened against police and military personnel, but authorities have not answered requests about whether anyone has been arrested or charged.

Mexico's deputy attorney general for human rights, Eber Betanzos, said authorities were investigating complaints filed by 31 people who said they had been tortured; he said six criminal cases had been opened, and had that three involved employees of the attorney general's office.

Betanzos called the case "the most exhaustive investigation in the history of Mexican law enforcement."

The group of experts also complained that the government was slow to deliver some of the evidence it had asked for; it criticized government prosecutor's investigations as flawed and incomplete.

For example, the report said, the roadblocks set up on local highways around the city of Iguala on the night of the disappearances were far more extensive than previously thought. The roadblocks were apparently coordinated by the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel to trap rivals; the gang may have thought the students were part of a rival cartel.

The report criticized the forensics investigations of human remains and evidence of fire at the garbage dump in the town of Cocula, Guerrero, saying that prosecutors had provided little evidence there ever could have been a fire a big enough at the site.

President Enrique Pena Nieto wrote in his Twitter account Sunday that the federal attorney general's office "will analyze the whole report, to aid in its investigations."

-AP
The warning from the Central Bank of Samoa and the ANZ Bank about fraudulent activities in relation to money-making internet scams yesterday is timely. We should all take note.

Although it is nothing new, its important nonetheless to be aware about them given the frequency in which its happening and the variety of ways scammers are using to lure unsuspecting victims.

The truth is that some of them are pretty convincing and you will be surprised to know how many people  including some very smart people  who are gullible and end up being fooled. It happens in Samoa, believe it or not!

This is why the banks must be commended for taking immediate action to warn their customers  and all members of the public for that matter  because we are all potential victims for these heartless preys.

These scams have been around for a long time.

Remember the Nigerian scam and a few other types back in the days?

Well despite a big international movement to eliminate the work of these criminals, they havent been able to put a stop to it.

Just as technological advances have taken a huge transformation over the years, the scams have only evolved into new forms, taking on far more sophisticated ways to con you of your hard earned money.

In Samoa this week, the Central Bank and the ANZ Bank have alerted members of the public to be increasingly diligent as incidences of money transfer scams and other such fraudulent activities are on the rise in Samoa.

According to the warning, one of the new ways of scamming people is a money transfer type scam. How does it work? From what we are told, innocent victims are apparently tricked into receiving money into their accounts from fraudsters anywhere in the world. The receiver of the money is then encouraged to withdraw the money, keep a percentage of this as their so-called payment, and transfer the rest of the cash back using other means.

While customers may be none-the-wiser, they are in effect taking part in sophisticated money laundering scams orchestrated by criminals, the Bank says.

This is a serious criminal offence and the Central Bank in collaboration with ANZ Bank and other commercial banks will not hesitate in disseminating these types of activities to the law enforcement agencies for further investigation and possibly prosecution.

Scary isnt it? Say you have no money in your account at all and suddenly you find that there are a few hundreds of thousands of tala sitting in there, itd be pretty hard to resist, wouldnt it? Even if you were to earn a couple of thousands from it, youd think its not all that bad. But it is. By merely facilitating the request, you in fact are party to the act of money laundering which is illegal.

The worry about this part of the world is that many people are very vulnerable given their low incomes and the likelihood that they would be easily swayed by the promise of quick riches.

The good news is that while fraudulent activities and scams are becoming more sophisticated by the day, the Banks have given us some simple steps to protect ourselves from being conned and ending up on the wrong side of the law.

The best line of defence is to be diligent about safeguarding personal bank account details. Internet banking usernames and passwords, credit and debit card Personal Identification Numbers [PINs] and any information related to customers personal bank accounts should never be shared, the Bank says.

We would also urge customers to regularly change their Internet banking passwords and card PINs, starting today.

Monitor your account. Keep an eye on your transactions and if you see anything you havent authorised, contact your bank immediately.

Protect access to your computer and mobile devices. If youre not careful, criminals may be able to get hold of your personal information and bank accounts.

Lastly, if you receive an email from anyone you do not recognise or do not know, do not open it.

Emails can be disguised to look legitimate. If you have any suspicions, contact the person or organisation it appears to have come from to check its authenticity.

Well those are just some of the ways to protect yourself.

But as this column often and always advocates when it comes to this issue, if it seems too good to be true, it always is. Nothing beats the rewards of hard work.

So be alert, protect your account and yourself and have an awesome Wednesday, God bless!
Dear Editor,

I have contemplated writing this letter many times but opted not to but then I realize it is better to let it be known as consequences far outweigh any positiveness if I were not to.

Ambulance service is one of the lifelines that gives hope to people in the darkest of times.

The basic needs and procedures are of top priority when it comes to these services. My sad encounter with our Ambulance Service was one that couldve saved my loved ones life and above all, the dependence on it was great as I understood (supposedly) the needs and procedures it could provide.

The ambulance arrived approximately 2 minutes after my loved ones heart stopped, and my hope was still there as I understand the paramedics will be there to try and resuscitate them at least and so I clung to that hope.

The two Hospital personnels jumped out and then I told them the situation and asked if they could try and get my loved one back. The look of dismay, confusion and blankness showed on their faces followed by Oh, we were just told to come and pick up the body, Im just a driver and my other colleague here is a security guard, no paramedics.

In this instance my feelings came crashing down, a mixture of hatred, disappointment, sadness and above all, loss of hope.

Now of course I do not blame these employees as they were only there doing their job (supposedly); but the question that boggled my mind was; Who should be looking out for these kinds of things?, Who deals with these services and procedural undertakings?, Who, What and Why is this?

It took me awhile to comprehend this situation as up until now, I am thinking maybe us the family are to blame for not looking ahead; for not taking better care of our loved one; but one thing for sure stands in my mind is Why and where are these basic services?

My research on New Zealand and Australia told me that in Ambulance services, paramedics and skills and knowledge to be attained by those carrying out these services may or may not save a life, but the hope is there.

Before I would make any final decision, I tried looking on the Hospitals website but it was down, so I decided to call the hospitals Corporate Service to ask if they have any Procedural Manual outlining their services such as the Clinical Procedures and Guidelines from St. John hospital in New Zealand which was on the internet, readily available.

Upon asking I was met with Who is this?, Where are you calling from?, Is this an organization?, What for?.

After getting transferred, the same set of questions were asked and from the background I could hear Do we have a Manual?. I opted to not call again after they referred me to another personnel.

We understand our great belief that If its Gods time to call His children, then we cannot stop it. But I believe that God also gave us a chance to make right what needs to be done to help another life on this earth.

This letter is not intended to bring back the past as I know our loved one has been called, but a call to those that have the power on making these services a hope for our people to see what NEEDS to be done. I commend some of the work the hospital has put in, services and facilities, but these basic, basic needs should not be overlooked as it could definitely save or have saved a life.

Forgive me if I have crossed any line here or if I may have missed doing something at least and know that I am not blaming anyone for our loss, but I only write to convey what is happening especially with these very critical services.

More can be said about other situations pertaining to the Hospital services but for now, I will leave it at this.

I only voice this as an opinion of my own and if ever any other person/people have experienced it then perhaps they can relate or beg to differ.

But other than that, Who, What and Why is this?

Ia manuia lava lenei aso. Lord bless.

Tagi Fatu Nutimomoia

Concerned Individual who only wants what is best for Samoa
The Samoa Observer won three of seven awards at the inaugural Increased Political Participation of Women in Samoa (I.P.P.W.S) Media Awards for Excellence in Gender-Sensitive Election Reporting last night.

Reporters, Lanuola Tusani Tupufia and Sarafina Sanerivi won awards in the print category of the competition with the Samoa Observer recognised by the United Nations Development Programme and UN Women for the Most outstanding News Outlet in terms of gender sensitive reporting.

The awards were presented by UN Resident Coordinator, Lizbeth Cullity. The Editor of the Samoa Observer, Mataafa Keni Lesa, accepted the award on behalf of the Samoa Observer.

The awards ceremony was held at the S.T.A Fale. It was attended by Deputy Prime Minister, Fiame Naomi Mataafa and Members of Parliament, Faimalotoa Kika Stowers and Gatoloaifaana Amataga Gidlow.

Two awards for broadcasting and interviews with women election candidates went to Talamua Media and its journalist Lagi Keresoma. Veteran broadcaster, Vaasiliega Iupati was also recognised for his work on Radio 2AP with a series of talk back programmes with women candidates.

The awards recognize journalists and media outlets for coverage that is not only balanced, but also challenges gender stereotypes and raises awareness about the importance of womens political participation and representation.

Vice Chancellor of the National University of Samoa, Professor Fui Asofou So'o, congratulated all the award winners.

First of all I must congratulate the winning journalists whose hard work will be recognized tonight through the first I.P.P.W.S media awards for excellence in gender sensitive election coverage in Samoa, he said.

Such initiative aims to promote best in journalism practices and sets professional standards for others to follow.

In an effort to ensure future journalists and current media professionals are best prepared and equipped to impart the learned knowledge through their reporting on gender equality in politics.

The vice chancellor then touched on some stereotypes that Samoa faces.

Stereotypes are prevalent in every day media; women are often portrayed solely as homemakers and carers of the families and dependent on men or as objects of male attention, he said.

As such there is a link of participation of women in media and improvements in their representation; One could argue that men are also subjected to stereotyping in the media; they are typically characterized as powerful and dominant.

There is little room for alternative visions of masculinity; the media tends to demean men in caring or domestic roles and those who oppose violence.

Such portrayals can influence perceptions in terms of what society can expect from men and women but also what they can expect from themselves, they promote imbalanced visions of the roles of women and men in society. According to the vice Chancellor, Media plays a vital role on the topic of gender equity.

Media practitioners have to understand this in order to be able to play and effective role in gender equality, he said.

The evening was hosted by UN Womens Country Programme Coordinator, Suisala Mele Maualaivao.

Some 26 entries were submitted from the local media.
A candidate for Gagaemauga No. 1, Tuala Iosefo Ponifasio, has pleaded not guilty to nine charges of bribery and treating against him in relation to the General Election.

In the District Court yesterday, he also asked for the charges to be quashed.

The charges were brought by the constituencys voters, namely Faatauuu Malautea, Felagolagomai Tino, Ituao Enele, Taulamago Simone, Tevaga Samilolo and Va Vea. They are represented by lawyer, Ruby Drake.

In taking the stand yesterday, Tuala pleaded not guilty to all the charges. He represented himself and informed the Court that his lawyer will appear once the hearing begins.

I seek leave to make an application to quash all the charges, said Tuala.

District Court Judge, Leiataualesa Daryl Clarke granted the application.

He adjourned the matter until 3 May 2016 for Tuala to file his application. The first charge against the defendant was filed by Faatauuu Malautea.

He alleges that in February this year Tuala promised to arrange a loan to complete a church building at Leauvaa as well as arranging for a group of fruit pickers from the church to travel to New Zealand for the purpose of inducing members of the church to vote for him and therefore commits the offense of treating and bribery.

In a separate incident in late February at Samalaeulu, the candidate is accused of giving $500 to Vaifale Faasalafa to distribute to all the people in attendance with the purpose to induce the informant to vote for him.

Also in March the defendant through his agent committed the offense of treating and bribery by providing accommodation, food and transport to electors of Gagaemauga no1.

Around February at Leauvaa, Tuala is also accused of giving $100 for the purpose of inducing Ituao Enele to vote for him.

Taulamago Simone claimed that in February at Malifa about ten electors were given a sum of $200 and others $100 each.

Another incident took place at Vailele around March with the presence of about 80 electors where Tuala is accused of handing money to his committee members from which varies from $100, $50, $40 and $30tala and to be handed to the electors.

Tevaga Samilolo also claims that in March at Samalaeulu at a gathering of the village called by the defendant, he promised and announced first will provide school resources to improve all school.

According to the charge, the defendants also promised to ensure that compensation will be paid to landowners whose land would be taken for construction of bridge in the village.

Thirdly will pay for airfares of 20people listed to go to New Zealand to pick apples and lastly, he will launch a lawn mowing contractors in Samalaeulu and therefore provide employment for young people of the village

The last charges brought by Va Vea relates to an alleged incident at Samalaeulu in February where through Tualas agent did give $50tala.

Va Vea also alleged that in another occasion at Samalaeulu he was given another $50tala by an agent of the candidate.

Tuala pleaded not guilty to all charges and he is remanded by liberty until the 3rd May.
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My hands are gripped around Jamies waist as I ride behind him on the back of a brand-new BMW motorcycle we rented in Munich. For the next five nights we will drive Bavarias Romantic Road, a 220-mile scenic route considered a German favorite that very few Americans have heard of, much less seen. Our first stop is the extraordinary Neuschwanstein Castle, on which Disney modeled Sleeping Beauty Castle.

I feel exactly like Sleeping Beauty with Jamie Anthony as my Prince Charming. Two years ago, we met unexpectedly at a blues club in New York City. I was wearing my T-shirt from the Blues Festival in Clarksdale, Mississippi, a festival that Jamie had also attended, so he introduced himself. I was smitten with his Southern accent (hes from Atlanta) plus he was charming, smart, and attractive. Like me, hed been divorced twice, thought Internet dating was a waste of time, and loved the blues.

Then he told me he loved riding his motorcycle, and I imagined black leather, silver studs, and tattoos, even though I saw none on his arms. On our third date, he invited me to join him on a motorcycle ride promising that if I didnt like it, wed turn around. Outfitted in protective helmets, ballistic jackets, and leather gloves, we left Manhattan bound for Bear Mountain State Park, a lovely wooded outpost just north of the northern New York City suburbs. I expected to hate riding on a motorcycle and was sure Id want him to turn around after a couple of blocks, but it was exhilarating looking up at the skyscrapers from an entirely new perspective and, further north, watching the boats sail along the Hudson. It was also very sensual being tucked in against his body.

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Since then, weve done some day trips by motorcycle, but never a weeklong trip in which everything were taking has to fit into three small cases attached to the bike. Whats even crazier is that this trip, traveling by motorcycle in a foreign country, was my idea. When I first mentioned the idea of this scenic drive by motorcycle, Jamie broke into a smile as wide as a four-lane highway, and that was it.

The Romantic Road route was partially based on an old trade route and on the Roman Via Claudia Augusta. During World War II it was called Germany Travel Path No. 1 and used to transport troops and supplies. In 1950, hoping to attract tourists and change its evil reputation, some clever marketing folks considered changing the name to the Romantic Road for Couples Who Fall in Love, then shortened it to the Romantic Road. And thats exactly what it is, a region of Germany that has existed unchanged for centuries.

On the first day of our ride, a short trip from Fussen to Schwangau, we pass golden hayfields with round bales of hay glittering in the sun and pillowy hillsides laid out like patchwork quilts in every shade of green from emerald to lime. Wildflowers line the roadside, sunlight streams through groves of trees, and we pass herds of sheep and cows and dairies where we inhale the pungent smell of manure  in this context, a fresh and pure odor.

Schwangau is home to King Ludwig IIs 19th-century castle Neuschwanstein, one of the most photographed castles in the world. Ludwig, who was crowned king when he was just 18, was in love with Richard Wagner and created the castle and every room in it to depict the composers operas. Unfortunately, Ludwigs love not only went unrequited, but Wagner married the wife of a famous music conductor, breaking poor Ludwigs heart.

Our love is anything but unrequited, whether were walking hand in hand down crooked cobblestone lanes beneath the Alps in 12th-century Fussen, or sharing steaming plates of sausages, which seem to be the primary local fare. Theres bratwurst (pork sausage), weisswurst (white steamed veal or pork sausage), blutwurst (blood sausage), wiener (hotdog), and short and plump Regensburger wurst (boiled sausage with a pork filling). Every dish in Bavaria is served with potatoes or egg noodles and, always, sauerkraut. At one meal, I request a vegetable substitute for the potatoes and the waitress seems puzzled as she says, But you have vegetable: sauerkraut! Jamie and I squeeze each others knees under the table and try not to burst out laughing.

As we ride along each day, one of my favorite things is the sight of an onion-domed church in the distance, meaning were about to arrive in a medieval village where well spend the night. It also means we didnt get lost, which happens occasionally. Because voices cant be heard above the sound of the engine, when I see a sign for the correct destination ahead, I stroke Jamies shoulder as if to say, Nice job, sweetie, we made it. Mostly I communicate by pointing as if to say, look over there to that beautiful field full of sunflowers or fir tree forest or field polka-dotted with sheep, just in case he didnt see it. Weve also made up our own signs. When I make a closed fist it means stop (usually for a photo), and when I make two closed fists, it means stop, take off your helmet, and kiss me.

The hotels we have chosen are not posh, but they are comfortable and each offers something special. (For suggested lodgings and restaurants along the route, see

saturdayeveningpost.com/romantic-road.) In Fussen, we sit on our private balcony overlooking the lapis-lazuli-colored lake and watch the sun sink behind the Alps; in Augsburg, our room has a heart-shaped bathtub; and in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, we squeeze into the tiny elevator and remain locked in an embrace all the way up to our floor.

Each morning begins with a huge breakfast buffet of eggs, pancakes, bacon, sausages, cold cuts, cereals, yogurts, fresh fruits, rolls, muffins, and  my favorite  pretzel bread. Afterward, we wander the town, following cobblestoned alleyways past medieval walls and houses, into museums as beautiful as the art within, and inside Gothic churches with dazzling frescoes.

By midday we are loading our stuff into the bikes cases and setting off toward our next destination, none more than 50 miles away. Before this trip, I always thought of driving as simply a way of getting from point A to point B, but here the drives are like a reset button. I dont have a care in the world, and can think about nothing except enjoying the magnificent scenery with my man.

Its also fascinating to learn the love stories of Germanys most romantic cities such as Augsburg, the birthplace of Bertholt Brecht, Hans Holbein, and Mozarts father, Leopold. It was in Augsburg that Leopolds son Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart fell in love with his first cousin, but he lost interest. The young Mozart next fell in love with Aloysia Weber from Mannheim, but she rejected him. Mozart wrote to his father, I can only weep. I have far too sensitive a heart, and then courted Aloysias sister, Constanze, whom he married. At their wedding, the bride, the groom, the priest, and the entire congregation wept.

That evening, Jamie calls to me from the shower. I figure hes left the shampoo on the sink, but no, he wants me to join him. I dont think Ive taken a shower with a guy since I was 30, but I eagerly step in, and we embrace under the running water, giggling like kids. For a brief moment I wonder what would happen if we slipped on the tub floor and one of us broke a hip. Later, we lie contentedly on the bed, listening to the church bells toll the hour.

In Germany, love is so often associated with music, especially along the Romantic Road. When Beethoven was 20, he played viola in the concert hall at Bad Mergentheim, a 14th-century village with a medieval castle. One legend has it that he was supposed to leave for Vienna to meet Mozart, but Beethoven missed the opportunity because he fell in love with a local girl. Beethoven was nearly always in love; one was a 16-year-old countess, a pupil of his, to whom he dedicated the Moonlight Sonata.

Sharing the moonlight with Jamie on the Main Bridge in Wurzburg feels as romantic as any Beethoven sonata. In the middle of the bridge is a small bar where visitors can buy a glass of wine and stand overlooking the river. There, we meet a historian who tells us about Walther von der Vogelweide, a famous 12th- and 13th-century love poet who wandered from court to court, reciting poems in exchange for food and lodging. In 1230 when Von der Vogelweide died, he was buried in Wurzburg, leaving instructions that the birds were to be fed daily at his tomb. But instead of birdfeed, lovesick visitors arrive with fresh flowers to leave on his grave. It is said that when the flowers wilt, lovesick hearts will heal, the historian tells us and then adds, In the winter, they bring flowers that last longer.

Jamie and I look at each other and smile. He squeezes my hand. How lucky I am that I dont need to leave flowers at the love poets grave. And neither does Jamie.

Editors Note: Margie and Jamie were engaged in November in Bali and married December 13, 2014.





Margie Goldsmiths Bavaria for Lovers won a 2015 North American Travel Journalists Association Silver Prize.


Nobleboro, ME -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/26/2016 -- With technology taking the forefront in the 21st century, many have neglected the beauty of natural resources. Sleek, modern displays are taking over offices and homes, losing the warmth of organic beauty. Fortunately many companies and individuals still appreciate the simple designs embodied by wood and other materials. One business in particular, Coastal Woodworks & Display, has worked tirelessly over the years to create gorgeous functional displays out of beautiful rich wood with expert craftsmanship. This year marks their 25th anniversary since the establishment of the company. Within that quarter century they have thrived, successfully creating enticing displays that set them apart.



The main focus of Coastal Woodworks' business is providing in-store displays for products and creating a high-quality shopping experience. They believe that products made of wood are beautiful, long-lasting, and can enhance the brand and sales of products. Custom orders are the bread and butter of Coastal Woodworks, with just 5% of orders being "off the shelf" displays. This leaves a whopping 95% of their orders to custom-made jobs. They have made a name for themselves by working collaboratively with each customer to get the exact display desired for the right price. Numerous repeat customers can attest to their commitment to quality, a commitment which ensures long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationships with their clientele.



"We continuously refine and evolve our manufacturing process to produce quality displays at competitive prices," said owner Charlie Agnew, when asked what contributed to his success over these past 25 years. "Our displays are proudly manufactured in our Maine facility using locally obtained material whenever possible," he continued, "we then inspect every piece before it is shipped to ensure it meets our quality standards and agreed upon specifications. Nothing leaves our building unless we are sure our customers would be proud to have their name on it!"



About Coastal Woodworks & Display

Coastal Woodworks & Display has been creating wooden product packaging, retail store displays and point of purchase displays from their Maine factory for over 25 years. They offer several display options as ready-to-ship units which can be shipped and delivered in a matter of days, ensuring maximum brand exposure. In addition to their American-made displays, Coastal Woodworks is recognized for their comprehensive services: everything is achieved from start to finish, from designing a product to ensuring exact specifications, all the way down to packaging and shipment to the final destination.



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Frankfort, KY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/26/2016 -- Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.



As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of back-links, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.



Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all webmasters needed to do was to submit the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a "spider" to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed. The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words, and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.



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Deerfield Beach, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/26/2016 -- Global and China Vidarabine Monphosphate Market 2016-2021 Market Research Report



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Samsung Galaxy Note 6 reportedly has two versions. The Galaxy S6 edge+, on the other hand, will not have a 2016 successor; hence, the Samsung Galaxy Note 6 will become the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ successors.

Samsung Galaxy Note 6 remained a big mystery, despite all the rumors pertaining to the device. Although some appear to oppose each other on some points, a few details emerge in other places showing signs of some possible truth. At any rate, the success of Samsung's previous releases made a strong impact, considering the people's excitement on the likelihood that the upcoming device will also have some of the predecessor's features.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 6, according to Mobile Choice, comes with a 6GB of RAM and Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. However, some are questioning this, saying that it does not make sense to settle for that much RAM, although Android has been a highly used operating system.

Also, Samsung Galaxy Note 6 is packed with a 400 mAh battery, which is quite a big one for a smartphone, though a large capacity of battery such as this have already been seen in a more affordable device like Lenovo. If Samsung can bring something that provides a longer usage time, since battery life is a major issue among smartphone users, this rumored offering may certainly attract a lot of people.

Samsung Galaxy Note 6 discussions also pointed out to a 4K display. In a report by the News Everyday, some people view it as a good indication of progress in the new trends. But for the others, this is not a necessary move for a phone resolution that has already provided the much needed comfort of an average user. Nonetheless, a larger resolution will definitely have an effect on the battery life.

Samsung Galaxy Note 6 will reportedly become more appealing if it will come with a enough battery life and a considerable amount of memory expansion. Nowadays, it is very important to offer an opportunity for the users to upgrade their smartphone's storage capacity. Having said that, the Note 6 has certainly what it takes to impress a lot of users.
April 25 is World Penguin Day - but penguins are not those who can celebrate because they are now facing possible extinction. People do not seem to appreciate them enough, so to know just what humans are missing, here are some penguin trivia to add to your knowledge about these animals that we may lose sooner rather than later:

Emperor Penguins

There are 16 species of penguins, but according to CNN, the Emperor Penguins are the largest - they can weigh up to 100 pounds and grow up to 4 feet tall. Emperor Penguins usually along the coast of Anarctica, but other penguin species can be found in South Africa, Chile, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand.

While Emperor Penguins look awkward on land - they waddle adorably - they are fierce and graceful underwater. These massive, non-flying birds can dive more than 1,800 feet, and can stay underwater for up to 20 minutes.

Adelie Penguins

One of the smallest species of their kind, Adelies are less than half the size of Emperor Penguins, but they are the most abundant species. They live in large colonies in the Antactic area, and every October, they build nests of rocks near open water.

African Penguins

They may be called jackasses, but they're not jerks. African penguins, which are sometimes also called Jackass penguins, live in Boulders Beach near Cape town in South Africa. In fact, the place is a popular destination for penguin-spotting. Unlike their Antarctica cousins, however, African penguins are homebodies - they breed, nest, and feed in the same area instead of traveling hundreds of miles. They too are on the endangered species list, as their population has been threatened by their loss of nesting grounds and decreasing food supply.

Little Penguins

The fairy or blue penguins, which can be found in New Zealand and Australia are the smallest of the lot, weighing a meager kilo or two, and just a little over a foot tall. According to treehugger.com, they have pretty long lifespans, too, at 6.5 years. For those in captivity, they get to live very old - up to 25 years!

Around the globe, penguin populations are steadily declining due to man-made changes that affect their environment, like overfishing. Like other animals in polar regions, they too, are feeling victims of the effects of climate change, and are fast losing their homes and their food sources.
iPhone 7 reportedly will look more like the existing Apple devices in the market, the iPhone 6 and 6s. Also, its release is said to be followed directly by the next-in-line device iPhone 8, a Barclays analyst reported.

Mark Moskowitz,the analyst, predicted that releasing an iPhone 8 right after the upcoming iPhone 7 will make a history in Apple Inc. history. Usually, an Apple major update is followed by a device that looks the same but bears internal feature improvements. Also, the brand "S" goes with the successor's device name.

iPhone 7 previously received a concept design from designer Marek Weidlich from the Czech Republic. While the 4-inch iPhone SE has already been launched by the company, it does not seem to reduce the excitement of the iPhone users over the upcoming smartphone.

The iPhone 7 was featured in a well-run video by Weidlich which shows his concept design for this forthcoming device from Apple. According to the designer, he had spent much time working hard to visualizing what the next Apple smartphone may look like.

An impressive iPhone 7 3D render was created by the student designer Weidlich, which he named "The Vision Next". In an interview with Mirror Online, Weidlich said that he has been working on his project for the past few months regarding the evolution of the iPhone, including the future of Apple as a whole, as well as how he envisions its future.

In the said video, Weidlich creates what appears to be like an iPhone, yet with a huge difference. The screen covers the overall front of the phone, which leaves no bezels on either side. The well-known Apple home button also included in the screen, but disappears while a game or video is being played, Techno Buffalo reported.

In contrast to a persistent iPhone 7 rumor, Weidlich opted to keep on his own version of the upcoming smartphone the handset's 3.55mm headphone jack. But, on the other hand, he decided to transfer the camera lens to the center portion of the back panel from the original top left-hand corner position.

The video imitates the signature brand videos of Apple with its soft music and white background. In the said video, Weidlich said that his idea will stay with the current iPhone 6s' 4.7-inch screen size, yet will come with a couple of choices for the storage: 128GB or 64GB.

iPhone 7 has not revealed many details yet in terms of the release date, and gadget aficionados may still have to wait for long to finally have the new iPhone, as there are indications that its official launch is not happening soon. If Apple sticks to its current form, then there is no chance that the new smartphone will be seen before September, PC Advisor reported.
A global warming research team has confirmed that 97 percent of climate scientists have agreed that humans are causing climate change and global warming. Sarah Green, part of the group and a chemistry professor at Michigan Technological University, claims that the research is not just one study but a consensus of multiple studies.

In the paper, the team discusses consensus on consensus, which gets information from seven independent studies by the co-authors. Through their collaboration, researchers and their gathered data lead to the same conclusion about global warming.

There are many surveys done about global warming. However, some of these surveys are biased towards populations that have predetermined points of view, Green pointed out. Also, respondents of other surveys do not have the right knowledge in climate science.

Only about 12 percent of the United States population is aware of the strong scientific agreement in this area. Those who think that debates among scientists are still ongoing do not perceive the urgency of the problem. Hence, they are unlikely to give support to presented solutions.

The new paper published is a rebuttal to criticisms on the 2013 paper, EcoWatch reported. A website called skepticalscience.com, which Green contributes to, aimed to refute doubters of climate change. The lead author of the new study John Cook, who is from the University of Queensland, Australia, runs the website.

"The progress made at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris late last year indicates that countries are now well and truly behind the scientific consensus, too," says Cook.

Co-author Naomi Oreskes also provided a comment by saying, "By compiling and analyzing all of this research... essentially a meta-study of meta-studies... we've established a consistent picture with high levels of scientific agreement among climate experts."

Global warming leaves climate scientists little doubt, especially that there's a consensus on consensus paper. The findings was published by Environmental Research Letters.
Researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center discovered that an electrical stimulation can enhance creativity. The researchers applied Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) to accelerate an area of the brain, which is known to be linked with creativity. This is combined with test subjects' verbal cues to think more artistically.

Science Daily reports that the study was led by Adam Green, a professor of psychology at Georgetown, Dr. Peter Turkeltaub of Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) and a team of colleagues. The findings were issued online in Cerebral Cortex.

Professor Green explained that they found out that the individuals who were most able to ramp in activity in a region at the far front of the brain, which is called the frontopolar cortex, were the ones most able to ramp up the creativity of the connections they formed. He further said that since ramping up activity in frontopolar cortex appeared to support a natural boost in creative thinking, they predicted that stimulating activity in this brain region would facilitate this boost, allowing people to reach higher creative heights.

The results of the study show that there is novel evidence that tDCS enrich the sensible expansion of creativity stimulated by cognitive intervention and lengthens the known boundaries of tDCS to analogical reasoning. Turkeltaub, a GUMC cognitive neurologist is hoping that doctors may recuperate creative analogical reasoning through the use of tDCS and cue to aid people with brain disorders.

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation or tDCS is a type of neurostimulation, which is a therapeutic activation of the part of the nervous system that uses microelectrodes. It applies an even, low current that is delivered to a designated area of the brain through electrodes on the scalp. TDCS is the effective treatment for people who have depression and brain injuries.
Not every Christian celebrated Easter on March 27. Beginning Sunday, more than 300 million Orthodox Christians (about 400 live in the Florence area) will begin Holy Week, which commemorates the last days of Jesus Christ on earth and culminates in the celebration of his death, burial and resurrection. In the West, the celebration is known as Easter, but in the Orthodox Christian East, it is known as Pascha. Pascha is the Greek translation for the Hebrew word "Pesach," or "Passover," and highlights the relationship of God to his people.

In Christian tradition, Christ is known (among other names) as our Passover, as Saint Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 5, Verse 7. One hymn refers to Christ in this way, Christ is the new Pascha, the sacrificial Victim, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Another hymn sung during the Resurrection Service says, O peoples, let us brilliantly shine! Pascha, the Lord's Pascha! For Christ our God has out of death passed us over into life, and likewise from earth to heaven, as we now sing unto Him a triumphal hymn.

Both of these ancient hymns reflect what Christians are celebrating. It isnt just a celebration of Jesus Christ coming back to life, but a new Passover. Just as the Jewish Passover commemorates being set free from slavery in Egypt, the Christian Passover commemorates being set free from the slavery of sin and death. Just as the blood of the Passover Lamb on Jewish doorpost indicated they belonged to God, the blood of the new Passover Lamb, Christ, received now through what the church calls Holy Communion, indicates that Christians belong to God. In the Jewish Passover the angel of death passed over their homes; in the Christian Passover the angel of death passes over our souls.

So why are Orthodox Christians celebrating Pascha (Easter) on May 1 and not March 27 with the rest of the Christian world? In the earliest days of Christianity, there was not total agreement on when to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus since the Scriptures are not clear on the events of Jesus Passion. Since there was no real consensus, different churches celebrated the Resurrection on different days, sometimes leading to more than one celebration in the same city, and not always on Sunday.

In the fourth century, with Christianity being mainstreamed within the empire, the Emperor Constantine the Great desired unity among all the churches, so he called for a council. Today we refer to that meeting as the First Ecumenical Council, because it included bishops from throughout the Christian world. It was agreed at that council that the Resurrection would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. That also explains why the date is not the same every year. And that is the formula used to this very day to determine the date for Christians to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But why March 27 in the West, and May 1 in the East this year? That part is simpler to explain. The Orthodox East uses a different calendar to determine the equinox. Two calendars equal two dates. Every few years (next year is one of them) the calendars coincide and all Christians celebrate together. So if you drive by the Greek Orthodox Church this week and find a parking lot filled with cars, you know its time for the Christian Passover. Feel free to stop inside and join us. Being set free from the slavery of sin and death is worth a few minutes of your time.

Athanasios C. Haros, the pastor of Transfiguration of Our Savior Greek Orthodox Church, is a member of the Morning News Faith & Values Advisory Board. Contact him and other board members at fvboard@florencenews.com.
DARLINGTON, S.C.  Darlington County School Districts summer reading camp for students reading below grade level will expand significantly this year, thanks to a $70,000 Summer Reading Camp Community Partnership Grant from the S.C. Department of Education.

As the grants name suggests, the district will partner with the YMCA of the Upper Pee Dee and Coker College to provide more instructional time and extracurricular activities for students, as well as professional development for educators.

The summer reading camp, this year following the Darlington County Library Systems theme of Ready, Set, Read, will be hosted at Thornwell School for the Arts and provide substantial instructional time for young students reading below grade level at the end of the school year.

I am very excited about the increased literacy opportunities this grant will create, said Molly Spearman, State Superintendent of Education. This is one way were working to stop summer reading loss and provide much-needed help to students. It will be a great way to assist them over the summer with their reading and ensure they hit the ground running when school starts in August.

Darlington County School Districts (DCSD) Title I/Federal Programs in the Office of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment applied for the grant. The office expects approximately 120 students to attend the summer reading camp.

This is year three of the summer reading camp, and we have seen all of our kindergarten students exit this program reading on grade level in the past two years, said Matthew Ferguson, DCSDs ELA and Social Studies coordinator. We have seen as much as two years of growth during the summer reading camp with many of our students. Research has continuously shown that kids on reading level by the end of third grade are twice as likely to graduate on time as kids who are not reading on grade level.

During the summer reading camp, faculty from Coker Colleges Wiggins School of Education will provide professional development to educators and staff members with Darlington County School District and the YMCA.

We are thrilled that the Darlington County School District has been awarded the Summer Reading Camp Community Partnership Grant, said Dr. Susan Henderson, dean of the Wiggins School of Education. The element of collaboration is always welcomed in the educational community, and faculty members in the Wiggins School of Education are excited to discuss literacy and summer camp ideas with teachers and staff in the school district and the YMCA. How delightful that Darlington County students will be able to benefit in so many ways from this community partnership.

Transportation will be provided to and from the camp, which will run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.  marking a three-hour extension in the camp day due to the additional funding. Students will spend those extra hours each day at the YMCA. Students will be rewarded for good attendance with special field trips coordinated by the YMCA, and there is the potential for students to earn scholarships to the YMCAs other summer camps for good attendance.

Along with the state funding, appropriated by the General Assembly, the TEACH Foundation provides significant funding for the summer reading camp.
Widodo met with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and expressed his appreciation for the support of his maritime axis vision, while inviting Dutch companies to take part in the development. "I invite Dutch companies to be involved in the construction of deep sea ports in eastern Indonesia," Widodo said in a statement.

Widodo noted that several Dutch companies had previously invested in maritime infrastructure projects, such as the seaport projects in Kuala Tanjung and Tanjung Priok.

"I invite the Netherlands to participate in maritime infrastructure projects in Indonesia, namely Sorong deep sea port and Makassar deep seaport," he added.
Today is the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, the worst nuclear disaster in history, reports the BBC. 30 years later, the Exclusion Zone still poses threats of radiation, and the remaining infrastructure stands as an eerie reminder of the Soviet communities that once thrived here.

On April 26, 1986, an uncontrolled reaction blew the roof off the Chernobyl nuclear plant, pouring out radioactive material that covered not only the disaster site, but parts of Russia and Belarus, and parts of northern Europe as well.

During the initial explosion and clean-up, 31 people died, but in the days, months and years after, thousands more lost their lives.

People close to the disaster site suffered radiation exposure that resulted in rare forms of cancer and babies born with severe deformities. In the most extreme cases, some children have been born with missing limbs, and one was even born with two heads.

The exact number of deaths caused by the disaster is still disputed. In 2005, at a forum on Chernobyl, the U.N. concluded that while fewer than 50 people died during the initial explosion and clean-up, up to 9,000 people could eventually die from radiation exposure. Greenpeace claims that number is closer to 93,000.

RELATED: Exploring the Creepy Ruins of Chernobyl

Today, the exclusion zone, and Pripyat as a whole, remain mostly abandoned. But while much focus has been centered on the eeriness of Pripyat and its ghost-like amusement park, according to Atlas Obscura, there's an even creepier part of the Exclusion Zone that not many people know about, deep in the irradiated forest surrounding Chernobyl.

In 1976, during the Cold War, a strange sound began to be picked up by Ham radios around the world. It was a continuous tapping sound that was pinpointed to a location somewhere behind the Iron Curtain. Shortwave radio enthusiasts decided to name it the "Russian Woodpecker."

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was discovered that the Russian Woodpecker was actually radar designed to provide early warning of an intercontinental ballistic missile attack. It was coming from Duga-3 radar in the forest outside of Chernobyl that was constructed to watch for potential U.S. missiles launching at the Soviet Union.

RELATED: Chernobyl - Countdown to Meltdown

When the Duga radar base was operating at full force, it had 1,500 military personnel, scientists and technicians working and living there.

They had apartment buildings and even a kindergarten on the base. There was a control center that once operated the radar and was full of electronics, computers, switches and wires.

The instruments are now rusted over and lie in disarray around the lawn. On the walls of the base still hang various anti-American propaganda artworks, including a mural that depicts a U.S. marine terrorizing a Russian woman and her child.

After the disaster at Chernobyl, Duga was forced to be evacuated like the rest of the Exclusion Zone, although the exact date it was fully abandoned is not known. The remaining facility hasn't been touched in years, continuing to exist in the middle of the forest as a ghost town, symbolic of the once powerful influence of Soviet Communism.
Press Release

April 26, 2016 Alan: A Duterte-Cayetano government will protect women, eradicate poverty "Contrary to the black propaganda pervading as of late, women will not be oppressed under a Duterte-Cayetano administration. Instead, you will be heard, taken care of, and protected." This was the promise made by vice presidential candidate and Senate Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano to the women's groups he met with in Lapu-Lapu, Cebu on April 26 (Tuesday), as part of the Duterte-Cayetano "Ronda-Serye" listening tour. "Davao and Taguig are our Exhibits A and B when it comes to women's rights and welfare," said Cayetano. The senator cited the progressive gender programs in both Taguig and Davao City, where the former has an established Women and Juvenile Crisis Center that aids women and children who are victims of violence, while the latter is the first city in the country to implement a Gender Development Code. He said that he and his running mate, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo "Rody" Duterte, will elevate these policies to the national level in order to protect and advance the interests of women. Cayetano also had an informal dialogue with the urban poor of the area to personally listen to their woes. To address poverty, with the aim of eradicating it, Cayetano proposed an expanded and improved Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) which, aside from a health grant of P500 monthly and an education grant of P300, will offer a livelihood grant, zero billing in public hospitals, and one sack of rice every month. "Through our bold solutions and swift action, we will end the daily struggles of the people, whichever form these struggles may take," said Cayetano. "Where others can only offer promises, Mayor Duterte and I will just do it. We will make things happen for the people."
Press Release

April 26, 2016 PH NEEDS TO FORGE TREATY WITH MORE COUNTRIES TO ALLOW TRANSFER OF JAILED OFWS--CHIZ With the plight of thousands of Filipinos languishing in jails abroad in mind, Sen. Francis "Chiz" Escudero wants the Philippines to forge prisoner transfer treaties with more countries to allow its citizens serving jail time in a foreign land to serve the remainder of their sentence back home and closer to their families. At present, the independent vice-presidential candidate noted that the Philippines only has three bilateral prisoner transfer treaties in force in Spain, Thailand and Hong Kong, considering that there are around 10 million Filipinos scattered in more than 190 countries in the world. Escudero said that if the "Gobyernong may Puso" wins, he and his presidential running mate, Sen. Grace Poe, plans to work out transfer of sentenced persons agreement (TSPA) with more countries, particularly Malaysia and the Middle East where several overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are imprisoned. "Dapat isulong ng bansa natin ang pagpasa ng mga [kasunduang] ito para sinumang Pilipino na maparusahan ng pagkabilanggo ay may option na dito nya i-serve 'yung sentence malapit sa kanyang pamilya at mahal sa buhay,"Escudero said during the "ParaPoSaBayan: The GMA-Facebook Jeepney Interview" over the weekend. Data from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) show that around 3,800 Filipinos are imprisoned in different countries for various offenses. The DFA also reported that there are 79 Filipinos on death row, 41 of them are in Malaysia and their charges are mostly murder or related to illegal drugs. Escudero earlier revealed that the "Gobyernong may Puso" plans to set up a P100-billion fund for the millions of Filipino migrant workers to finance a wide-ranging services to them, including the establishment of a separate department to cater to the needs of OFWs. The Poe-Escudero tandem has been proposing reduced fees and greater government assistance for OFWs, which number around 2.3 million. The total migrant population, however, is estimated to around 10 million or 10 percent of the country's entire population.
Press Release

April 26, 2016 CHIZ SENDS SYMPATHIES, DEPLORES BRUTAL BEHEADING OF CANADIAN CITIZEN Sen. Francis "Chiz Escudero" sent his sympathies to the local Canadian community, while at the same time deplored the brutal beheading of Canadian national John Ridsdel. "We condole with the local Canadian community and send our deepest prayers to all Canadians, especially to the family and friends of Mr. John Ridsdel. This act of a terrorist group has no place in a civilized Philippines. We condemn each and all acts of terrorism and violence," Escudero said. "The Philippines is and will continue to be a welcoming and hospitable destination to all of those who would want to visit us despite the tragedy that fell on Mr. Ridsdel. We understand that agencies of the Philippine government are doing their best to bring to justice all those responsible for this abominable act," said the independent vice-presidential candidate. Ridsdel was abducted with three others by the Abu Sayyaf last September while on vacation on Samal Island. His head was left inside a plastic bag along a street in Jolo, Sulu by two unidentified men on board a motorcycle on Monday. The terror group has demanded a P300-million ransom for each captive or four of them will be executed. "Terrorism and violence are always unacceptable. We are one and supporting all government efforts in ensuring that these terrorists and lawless elements face the bar of justice. Senseless crimes must not happen at all cost," Escudero said.
Press Release

April 26, 2016 Legarda on Warming Limit of 1.5C: It's a Matter of Survival Senator Loren Legarda called on nations to immediately ratify the Paris Agreement on climate change and stressed on the need to target the more ambitious but safer 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit. Legarda, Global Champion for Resilience of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), made the statement during the press conference with Ministers of the High Ambition Coalition (HAC), following the signing of the Paris Agreement at the UN Headquarters in New York on April 22. Legarda was joined by US Special Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing, Costa Rica Minister for Foreign Affairs Manuel Gonzalez Sanz, EU Commissioner for Climate Action & Energy Miguel Arias Canete, and Marshall Islands Ambassador for Climate Change Tony de Brum, who served as the moderator for the press briefing. "In the Agreement, our commitment is to keep global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius and that 1.5 degrees is an aspiration. But the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit should not just be an aspiration; we must do everything not to go beyond that, because the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal is a matter of survival. We have already breached the 1 degree Celsius mark and look at what has happened to vulnerable nations like the Philippines," she said. The Senator explained how the Philippines, one of the most climate-vulnerable countries, has been affected by extreme weather events caused by the warming climate. Typhoon Ketsana in 2009 ate up 2.7 percent of the country's GDP; while the country has yet to fully recover from the damage and effects of the November 2013 Supertyphoon Haiyan. Moreover, at present, farmers and farming communities have been suffering from the drought caused by the extended El Nino affecting the Philippines. Legarda also explained the importance of urgent climate action in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and added that the mobilization of the US$100 Billion Fund is necessary to support vulnerable nations who happen to be low-emitting, developing economies. "The US$100 Billion Fund is just a fraction of actual resources needed to deliver current and more ambitious programs consistent with the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal," she said, stressing that additional funding in the form of independent official development assistance (ODA) commitments is also vital. Legarda added that it is important to maintain a balance in adaptation and mitigation in climate finance. "A 50:50 balance in international climate finance between adaptation and mitigation needs to be achieved by 2020 as a humanitarian priority. We must all do our share to ensure that our governments keep the promises they delivered in Paris," Legarda concluded.
Press Release

April 26, 2016 Keynote Speech of Senator Loren Legarda

2nd National Protected Area Conference

Sustaining Ecosystem Services and Benefits from Protected Areas

26 April 2016 | Holiday Inn Manila Galleria, Pasig City A few days ago, on Earth Day, the Philippines and 174 other nations signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The Philippine delegation was headed by no less than our Environment Secretary, Ramon Paje, who signed the Agreement and delivered the Philippine Statement on behalf of the President; and I, as co-head of delegation, expressed the Philippines' commitment to ensuring the early entry into force of the Agreement by aiming for Philippine ratification within the year. I am pleased to be here today with the frontliners in the management of our protected areas because you have an important role in keeping our commitments in this Agreement. In his encyclical, Laudato Si', Pope Francis said, "a sober look at our world shows that the degree of human intervention, often in the service of business interests and consumerism, is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey, even as technological advances and consumer goods continue to abound limitlessly. We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves."[1] If we look around us, we see truth in the Pope's words. Filipinos are very fortunate to be living in a country that is considered a mega-biodiversity country. But development activities, land degradation, overgrazing and deforestation, pollution, overfishing, hunting, infrastructure development, land-use change, and the overuse of freshwater, have pushed ecosystems to the limit and our country has become one of the world's top biodiversity hotspots, with a large number of species threatened with extinction. Further endangering the precarious situation of our country's biodiversity is the challenge of climate change. Among the projected impacts of climate change is the loss of thousands of species as well as changes in the natural ecosystem. The rise in average global temperatures will render many species unable to adapt quickly enough to these new conditions or to move to regions more suitable for their survival. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that with a 1.5 to 2.5-degree Celsius rise in temperature in a span of 50-100 years, 30% of species would be at risk of extinction. Moreover, the decline of our ecosystems has been found as one of the underlying drivers of disaster risks and poverty, in the context of climate change, thereby affecting humans as well. Humans have been given the vital role as stewards of the Earth. Most of you here are those who have been faithful to this responsibility, being the managers of our protected areas. But we all know that in order to keep our planet healthy, livable and sustainable, all of us must work together, otherwise, our children will be left with nothing. Statistics collated by the UN show that:[2] Around 1.6 billion people, including 70 million indigenous people, depend on forests for their livelihood

2.6 billion people depend directly on agriculture, but 52 percent of the land used for agriculture is moderately or severely affected by soil degradation

As of 2008, land degradation affected 1.5 billion people globally

Due to drought and desertification each year 12 million hectares are lost or 23 hectares per minute. Around 20 million tons of grain could have been grown on this land.

74 percent of the poor are directly affected by land degradation globally

Fish provide 20 percent of animal protein to about 3 billion people

Over 80 percent of the human diet is provided by plants These facts only show that we cannot afford to go business as usual because environmental degradation and biodiversity loss are threats to our own survival. In 2015, nations adopted three important interlocking agreements--the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement, and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction--that would save our planet and all species from destruction and death, depending on the level of action we take today. The protection of our ecosystems and biodiversity is one of the 17 SDGs. Nations are called to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity and, by 2020, protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species. In order to achieve this goal, as well as the 16 other SDGs, we must also take urgent climate action and build the resilience of our communities from natural hazards. A single typhoon or earthquake can undo years of development if we do not prepare and reduce disaster risks. The Sendai Framework for DRR calls for ecosystem-based approaches to reducing disaster risk. Studies show that every dollar invested in ecosystem-based disaster and climate change adaptation means saving up to 20 dollars from mitigating and even avoiding the consequences of disasters.[3] Protected areas can help protect vulnerable communities and reduce the impact of natural hazards. Mangrove forests serve as buffer against storm surge and tsunami. For climate change mitigation, terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems serve as major carbon stores and sinks as they reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from energy production and land use change. The United Nations Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Center (UNEP-WCMC) estimates that 312 gigatonnes of carbon or 15% of the world's terrestrial carbon stock are stored in protected areas. This means that urgent climate action is needed in achieving the SDGs. As a long-time environmental advocate, I know how hard it is to convince people to protect our environment and natural resources. People do not completely understand the importance of these resources unless they are directly affected by the effects of its degradation or realize what they will lose if they remain indifferent. On this note, I am glad that we are launching today the Guidebook to Protected Areas in the Philippines. This guidebook by the Biodiversity Management Bureau of the DENR is a showcase of our country's natural wealth. Not only does this remind us of the natural blessings that our country is endowed with, but it also urges us to veer away from the path of apathy, to act responsibly now before it is too late. In closing, I wish to encourage all of you to never get tired of doing what is good for our planet. We are confronted with the task of protecting our country's unique, and at the same time endangered, biodiversity. Pursuing a kind of development that has genuine regard for the state of our natural wealth has never become more crucial than today. There will be many more challenges that will come and many people who will disregard our advocacy, but as Pope Francis said, "Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home." But we need to start the work now because if we do not act today, tomorrow may be too late. Let us use this conference as a venue not only to gain knowledge from one another, but also to transform that knowledge into concrete actions. Thank you.*** ________________________________________ [1] Encyclical Letter, Laudato Si', of The Holy Father Francis On Care For Our Common Home [2] Facts and figures: Goal 15 - Sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, halt biodiversity loss [3] Analysis by Swiss Re. Sendai's role in ecosystems underlined at COP21 https://www.unisdr.org/archive/47047
Press Release

April 26, 2016 BONGBONG MARCOS TO COMELEC: SEPARATE VOTE RECEIPTS WITH DISCREPANCIES Vice Presidential candidate Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos, Jr. today urged the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to separate vote receipts with discrepancy complaints for reference in case the voter decides to file a case before the poll body. Marcos made the statement in the light of the continuing silence of the poll body on the issues raised with respect to the reported discrepancies in vote receipts in the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV). "We have raised this issue a week ago and this was reported in the news and widely discussed in social media but until now the Comelec has not issued any definitive statement on this serious allegation that could put a cloud of doubt on the results of the May 9 elections," Marcos asserted. Marcos pointed out that the Comelec should now issue guidelines on the vote receipts to address possible issues that could arise as shown in the ongoing OAV. He suggested that the Comelec should separate vote receipts with reported discrepancies and if possible let the voter sign the receipt for proper marking. He said separating the vote receipts with supposed discrepancies would properly guide the poll body and the voter in case complaints will be pursued on the matter. "The continuing silence of Comelec on these issues is alarming. Why is it that until now we have not heard anything from the Chairman or their spokesperson on what they are doing about these allegations? There should be proper guidelines on this as I have already been repeatedly telling the Comelec to address possible complaints or concerns because they cannot just say "noted" to all complaints. That is unfair to all our voters," Marcos stressed. As early as April 20, Marcos had issued a statement asking the poll body to probe alleged discrepancies in the OAV, noting a complaint of an OFW in Hong Kong who claimed to have voted for him but the receipt indicated the vote was credited for Sen. Gregorio Honasan. Marcos noted that he also received reports of similar incidents in Kuwait, Dubai and Japan. He added that Vice President Jejomar Binay, standard bearer of the United Nationalist Alliance, also complained of similar incidents. He warned that unless the poll body can show the Filipino people that they are doing everything to avert any possible scheme to tamper with the election process, the credibility of the results of the May 9 elections could suffer. "Taken together all these factors paint a worrisome scenario of possible cheating in the May 9 elections. The Comelec must do something about this immediately to allay any suspicions of a coordinated scheme to undermine the will of the Filipino people," Marcos concluded.
Press Release

April 26, 2016 POE WANTS SEED MONEY, SCHOLARSHIPS FOR 'AGRI-PRENEURS' With the country's breed of farmers reaching retirement age, Sen. Grace Poe is looking into providing seed money to young farmers and new graduates to encourage the youth to go into modern farming. The average age of farmers and fishermen in the Philippines is 57--a cause for alarm as the country struggles to achieve food security. It is time for youth-led agri-business models, Poe said. "The lack of a younger workforce poses a serious challenge to the country's food security. Children of farmers saw their parents struggle throughout their lives and therefore have this notion that only poor people go into agriculture. That perspective should change," the independent presidential candidate said. Poe and running mate Sen. Francis Escudero are bringing the platform of their "Gobyenong may Puso" to Isabela today, along with their senatorial bets. Isabela is the country's top corn producer, hosting Asia's largest post-harvest corn processing facility. It is also the second biggest rice producer, with a rice sufficiency rate of 224 percent; the surplus supplies the rice requirements of the rest of Luzon. Poe said the government should raise a new generation not just of farmers but of agri-preneurs who are able to employ modern technology and develop new agriculture models that could boost yields and productivity in the face of extreme weather events. In order to encourage this, Poe said she will push for the enactment of the Senate Bill 1282 or the Tulong Kabataan sa Agrikultura at Kabuhayan Act of 2013, which she authored. The bill will institutionalize a scholarship program for high school graduates who are interested to pursue careers in agriculture management and agri-entrepreneurships. "This is one way to entice the youth to transition from 'job seekers to job providers' while boosting the rural economy and ensuring food sufficiency," Poe said. The agriculture sector employs an estimated 12 million people, making up 33 percent of the country's labor force, according to the 2012 Bureau of Agricultural Statistics. However, 60 percent of the country's 26-million poor also come from the agriculture sector. Poe's "Gobyernong may Puso" has committed to allocate P300 billion to the agriculture industry to provide free irrigation, build more farm-to-market roads, create more climate-resilient harvest facilities, and fund research and development.
Wiping out Abu Sayyaf is Artikulo Uno of next president's things to do

The next president should hit the ground running after this notorious group.

If he or she is drawing up a list of criminals who must be neutralized, then without doubt Abu Sayyaf occupies the number one spot.

Hindi na n'ya kailangang maghanap pa ng sindikatong sasampolan. Matagal nang nagpiprisinta ang mga Abu Sadong ito.

They are the most violent criminal syndicate in the country today. Their barbarity actually lands them among Asia's most brutal. We have a regional obligation to stamp them out and wipe clean this blot on our national image.

Abu Sayyaf's victims are not just counted by the number of body bags, which are already in the hundreds since it began its bloody business a quarter-of-a-century ago.

What must be tallied too are losses they have inflicted on our economy. Lands are idled by farmers too afraid to till, vacation plans are cancelled by tourists who are discouraged by bad publicity, investments are aborted.

Wiping out Abu Sayyaf is the Artikulo Uno of the next president's urgent things to do.
Press Release

April 26, 2016 Recto says gov't must tap Cebu's world-class shipbuilders for Navy, Coast Guard boats Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto today said the next government should consider Cebu's shipbuilding industry as the main source of new naval ships to be procured under the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Modernization Program. The province of Cebu, according to Recto, can also help the Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) develop "affordable but cutting edge technology" for building patrol boats of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG). "If we are also looking for boats that will be used by the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) for their research and conservation programs, these can also be built in Cebu," Recto said. "We have a world-class shipbuilding industry in Cebu, but our government agencies have yet to harness its potential as a major source of military and civilian boats," said Recto, who is one of the authors of the AFP Modernization ACT (RA 10349) and the principal sponsor of the Domestic Shipping Act (RA 9295). Recto said the government has a deficit of floating vessels which Cebu and other areas where shipbuilders operate, like Navotas and Bataan, can help wipe out. "For example, we need a hospital ship or two. Kahit maliit lang. You know we are an archipelago. And when there's a typhoon, and the roads are destroyed, the only way to reach the victims is by sea," he said. "If we're buying boats either for naval defense or for coastal or river patrol, then let our shipyards in Cebu make them," he said. "If other nations find them exceptional, then we should too." Recto noted that the Philippines has been recognized as the fourth largest shipbuilder in the world, having shipyards with facilities that produce container ships, passenger ships, and ferries. In particular, Cebu hosts shipbuilding companies which have been churning out vessels of world-class quality. Recto said that by buying local, government will be supporting local firms, creating local jobs and giving manufacturing - which it trumpets must be resurrected - a much-needed boost. "Buy local, create jobs. This should be the new mantra of the DND, DOTC and other government agencies for their procurement programs," the senator added. "What we can manufacture here, we don't have to import from abroad. One good example are the car plates. A small piece of tin we chose to source from the Netherlands. Yet here we are building megaton ships," he said. Recto described government as a huge supplies and equipment buyer, with a budget in the hundreds of billions annually. "From soap to cars, from paper to guns, government buys these in bulk." For 2016, national government alone will be buying P73.5 billion worth of supplies and materials, not only for many "common-use" items for offices but also medicine for hospitals and parts for its vehicle fleet. To the extent allowed by law, government must prefer local products or those with high local content in shopping for these, Recto said. But in buying locally-made, "price points should not be the sole consideration," Recto said. "We should not be buying a lemon just because it is wrapped in a Philippine flag. Quality should not be sacrificed." Recto said a provision in previous national budgets--which has been scrapped in the General Appropriations Act (GAA) for 2016--provides the guidelines in government purchases of Philippine-made products. "It's a great mystery on why this provision, which was present in budget laws signed by presidents from Ferdinand Marcos to Benigno Aquino III, has been deleted in this year's budget," Recto said. Recto said if Cebu will be allowed to build patrol boats, then the first line of defense against foreign incursion will be there. Recto said the Philippines will be losing P200 million a day in fisheries receipts, and a major source of the country's protein supply, if China's newly-redrawn map, whose boundaries now closely hug the country's coast will not be repudiated by world law and opinion.
Press Release

April 26, 2016 MIRIAM: PH OBLIGED TO BRING ABU SAYYAF TO JUSTICE Presidential candidate Miriam Defensor Santiago on Tuesday condemned the recent beheading of a Canadian hostage in Jolo, as she warned that the Philippines is reneging on its obligations under the Rome Statute by failing to bring to justice the Abu Sayyaf Group for war crimes. Santiago, an elected judge of the International Criminal Court, said the Philippines, as state party to the Rome Statute, affirmed that "the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished and that their effective prosecution must be ensured." "I denounce the killing of John Ridsdel, one of the four hostages taken by the Abu Sayyaf Group in September 2015. This reprehensible act is considered a 'war crime' under international criminal law, and we are obliged to exert the full force of the law to bring the perpetrators to justice," the senator said. She explained that the conflict between the government and the Abu Sayyaf is a 'non-international armed conflict,' as it is between the Philippines and a non-state actor, particularly a terrorist group. Punitive laws against war crimes apply in cases of non-international armed conflict. Santiago said the Rome Statute Article 8, para. 2,m subpara. (f) provides that provisions on war crimes apply "to armed conflicts that take place in the territory of a state when there is protracted armed conflict by the governmental authorities and organized armed groups." In cases of non-international armed conflict, "war crimes" are "acts committed against persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who has laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention or any other cause." Under this definition, the Abu Sayyaf Group has committed several war crimes, including: Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

Committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;

Taking of hostages; and

The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all judicial guarantees which are generally recognized as indispensable. Santiago, a widely recognized expert in international law, said that the Philippines' failure to punish terrorist groups such as Abu Sayyaf contributes to the culture of impunity. "By allowing these terrorist acts to go unpunished, we embolden unlawful elements to commit more of these crimes," she said.
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Most of the candidates running for Californias up-for-grabs U.S. Senate seat were swaying so far to the left during Mondays televised debate that even the Republicans were talking about raising the minimum wage, the problem of income inequality and how bad George W. Bushs foreign policy was.

I think we have to crack down on Wall Street, just like Bernie Sanders is saying, said Republican Ron Unz, who lamented the oligarchy of the financial elite while complimenting a position of a Democratic candidate for president.

That was just one of the unexpected left turns Monday when, in an unusual moment in California politics, two Democrats and three Republicans shared a debate stage. Co-sponsored by The Chronicle, KCRA-TV of Sacramento and the University of the Pacific, the debate on the Stockton campus was one of only two multiparty primary debates scheduled before Californias June 7 primary and the only one to be televised live across the state and streamed digitally. The top two vote-getters in the primary, regardless of party affiliation, will face off in November.

Despite the bipartisan lineup, there were few clashes among the candidates and no sound bite zingers that will go viral. Instead of battling over partisan issues, the candidates, with the frequent exception of conservative former California Republican Party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro, frequently agreed on topics that would appeal to most voters in left-leaning California, where all statewide officeholders are Democrats and the Legislature is under Democratic control.

This probably was one of few chances for some of the candidates  particularly the underfunded ones who cant afford TV ads  to stand out and reach a large statewide audience. Compared with the Democrats, the Republicans at Mondays debate are cash-poor, particularly Del Beccaro, who had $77,946 cash on hand at the end of March, and Duf Sundheim, with $57,222 cash on hand.

The third Republican in the race, Silicon Valley businessman and writer Unz, barely acknowledged his party status Monday. He bragged about how a 12,000-word essay he wrote urging an increase in the minimum wage led to many states  including California  boosting theirs.

I think I played a major role in moving the issue to center stage, said Unz, who noted that he also talked up his idea to national labor unions  an act of blasphemy to many Republicans.

The Republicans needed to do something at the debate to play catch-up.

Democratic state Attorney General Kamala Harris, with 27 percent support in a Field Poll released this month, is far ahead of the pack and has almost $5 million cash on hand. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana, has 14 percent support and $2.3 million cash on hand.

If the two Democrats advance to the general election, as is likely, it will be highly embarrassing for the GOP.

Yet despite its importance, the presidential primary has so overshadowed the Senate race that a Field Poll of likely primary voters this month found that 48 percent were undecided. Roughly 3 in every 4 respondents had no opinion of the three top Republicans, and none of the GOP candidates polled more than 5 percent support. And thats not even all of them. There are 34 candidates on the ballot to replace Barbara Boxer  12 Republicans, seven Democrats and 15 third-party candidates.

Heres where the candidates stood on some of the nights key issues:

Immigration: Harris and Sanchez, whose parents emigrated from Mexico, support a pathway to citizenship for people in the country illegally. Sundheim outlined a middle course, calling for a pathway to legal status. And instead of building a wall, he suggested tapping into Silicon Valley for more tech solutions, like drones, to curb illegal immigration.

Then, in one of the most pointed attacks of the debate, he criticized Sanchez for missing most of the meetings of a House Committee on Homeland Security she serves on.

It would be great if she went to the meetings, Sundheim said.

Unz managed to connect immigration to raising the minimum wage. He would discourage illegal immigration, as the vast majority of illegal immigrants come here for jobs, he said. If the wage floor is lifted, the magnetic pull of those jobs will disappear because citizens will compete for those positions.

Minimum wage: Sundheim said he often works with low-income people near his South Bay home, but he disagreed with raising the wage.

I am deeply concerned that the minimum wage will lead us down the wrong road. Instead, he called for boosting the federal earned income tax credit.

Echoing a theme he repeated all night, Del Beccaro said government mandating a raise for low-income earners isnt the answer. Instead, eliminating government regulations would free business to hire more people, and the ensuing economic growth would lift all people more than a hiking the base wage.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The Democrats and Unz supported raising the minimum wage, although Unz said California shouldnt have boosted its wage to $15 an hour  $13 or $14 would have been more digestible for the Central Valley, he said.

National security: Asked whether President Obama has done enough on national security issues in the Middle East, Harris twice tried to dodge the question  Obama is a friend of hers and someone she supported before he ran for president. Finally, she said that Obama has done some good work, but more work needs to be done.

Sanchez, who voted against authorizing the Iraq War, said that too often Washington leaders consider the military option too soon.

Unz said that while Obamas national security record was bad, the Bush administrations was even worse, saying it destabilized the entire Middle East, which gave rise to terrorism in the region.

Education: Harris and Sanchez supported making community college free. When pressed how they would pay for that, Harris said students  armed with more education  would be able to land better jobs and pay more taxes.

Unz called for cutting tuition at the UC system and paying for it by trimming administrative jobs. Sundheim took a more conservative tack here, saying, If you want to see something get real expensive, make it free.

Chronicle staff writer Steve Rubenstein contributed to this report.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli
A proposition that would bridge some differences between city and state policies on paid sick leave is heading to Junes ballot virtually unopposed.

Proposition E, which the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to place on the ballot, would amend a measure passed by San Francisco voters in November 2006 that established paid sick leave for all employees.

The amendments would largely mesh San Franciscos policy with new state law, clearing up confusion between the two for both employees and employers.

The ease of following the law and not diminishing any rights that workers currently have were guiding principles, said Jason Elliott, deputy chief of staff for Mayor Ed Lee, who introduced the proposed amendments in January. The way we made this work was to look at the two laws and say, What will be the easiest for businesses to comply with and for workers to understand? The ballot measure was a way to square some of the differences between the two policies.

In addition to the mayor and Board of Supervisors, Prop. E has backing from the Chamber of Commerce and labor organizations. If passed, the changes would go into effect Jan. 1.

California passed a mandatory paid sick leave law in 2014, becoming the second state in the nation to do so, after Connecticut, and the law went into effect in July 2015. But the state regulations came after San Franciscos 2006 legislation, and discrepancies have emerged. Differences included opposing definitions of how employees accrue paid leave and when they can use it.

Under Prop. E, employees in San Francisco would begin to accrue paid sick leave on the first day of employment, rather than the 90th day as state law requires. It also would expand the permissible uses for paid leave to include issues related to stalking, sexual assault, domestic violence and bone marrow or organ donation. While state law maintains that only 24 hours or three days of sick leave can be claimed each year, San Francisco has no cap, which would be maintained under Prop. E.

Making good law better

Accrual caps for employees in San Francisco would remain at 40 hours for small businesses and 72 hours for other businesses  more than state law, under which employees can accrue up to 48 hours. Employees would earn one hour of leave for every 30 hours worked, paralleling state law.

San Francisco has some of the strongest sick-day language in the state, said Tim Paulson, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council. He called the amendments a bureaucratic reconciliation between the two laws.

This is making a good San Francisco law even better, he said. It will also make it easier for businesses to figure out how their employees accrue sick days.

The financial impact of paid sick leave legislation was felt by businesses when the San Francisco ordinance initially passed in 2006, but the new measure would not saddle employers with any additional costs.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Business, labor support

It simplifies nuances between the differing laws, said Jim Lazarus, senior vice president of public policy for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

We realized we needed to go to the ballot to clean the ordinance up, Lazarus said. We are making sure that if anyone looks at the city ordinance, its not going to be in conflict with state law. Its legally required and a confusing situation because the laws werent exactly the same.

And, in a city so often divided on social issues, the measure seems to be one everyone can get behind, Elliott said. Employers need guidance about what paid sick leave rights their employees have, he said, and workers shouldnt be confused by the rules.

This is important, both for the business community and labor community, he said. This is not a typical San Francisco us-versus-them kind of issue. This is everybody in the labor universe coming together to say that this is the right thing to do. Clarity is a benefit for everyone.

Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ljohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LizzieJohnsonnn
The sun is out and the spring air is crisp, yet it seems the people of San Francisco have never been crankier. Frankly, they have their reasons. The city seems dirtier, more crime-ridden and less functional than ever.

The calls and emails flood in, and theyre not just angry. People love this place, and when they see it in its current state, theyre more frustrated than exasperated. Put simply, we expect better of a world-class city.

For example:

Smash and grab: Several readers sent over a New York Times story that says San Francisco has the highest per-capita property crime rate of the nations top 50 cities. About half of the cases here are thefts from vehicles, smash-and-grabs that scatter glittering broken glass onto the sidewalks.

Taking a report from the Central Police Station as an example, in six days from April 13 to 18, there were 22 theft from locked vehicle reports. Over at Park Station, there were only 13 smash-and-grabs in four days  and for one of the crime victims, This is the third time in the last three weeks that their vehicle has been broken into.

A look at the FBI numbers shows how far off the charts San Francisco is. San Diego, with a population of 1,368,690, had 13,759 property crimes in 2014 and 13,776 in 2015. San Francisco, population 850,294, had 21,330 in 2014 and 27,001 in 2015 by comparison.

Tent cities: Reader Ian Birchall, who has been actively trying to clean up the area near his office, writes that although the campers have been removed from Division, It seems the city ... does not care one iota about the 20+ camps less than a block away. Birchall even included photos.

Trent Rhorer, executive director of the Human Services Agency, says the street campgrounds are a new issue.

A year ago, we didnt have the tents on the street, Rhorer said. Tents allow people to stay in one place longer  to the persons detriment.

At least some of the tents are being provided by misguided do-gooders like local resident Shaun Osburn, whose Tents for San Francisco Go Fund Me account continues to raise money to buy tents and hand them out. Forgive the neighbors impacted by the tent cities if they dont thank Osburn for his efforts.

And things dont look like theyll improve soon. Rhorer says the Pier 80 shelter, housing 180 people, will be closing this summer. The structure belongs to the Port of San Francisco, which has rented the space. Rhorer says the new Navigation Center near the Civic Center should open in six to eight weeks.

But, as he says, We dont have places for all 3,000 people on the street.

The Fellini Express: Thats what one reader calls one of those Muni rides when the bizarre behavior of some of the passengers seems right out of a Federico Fellini film.

Reader Jane Weil had a memorable experience riding the 14-Mission back from a movie Friday night.

Coming back at 11:30, the bus was like a rolling asylum, she said.

There was a shaking man, swigging from a whiskey bottle ... a wild-eyed guy, asking everyone for a dollar because he needed a beer ... but the worst was a young man, leaning against the rail, bloody injection site still visible, who began to pass out and drool and fall over onto my husband.

In a separate email, she added: In case anyone labels me as a hater or unsympathetic, I had a brother who died from his addictions and actually lived on the street for a brief time, and our family did all it could to help him.  It breaks my heart to watch the suffering on our streets every day.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Judging judges: From the Richmond Police Station, Capt. Paul Yep tells the story of officers who arrested a subject for eight auto burglaries in the city. They obtained a search warrant and were able to find both evidence and stolen property.

Kristen Jason Bell, 31, was charged with nine counts of auto burglary, four counts of possession of stolen property and five counts of burglary tools. He was arraigned and bail was set at $360,000, although the assistant D.A. strenuously argued that Bell should be kept in custody in the interest of public safety. Instead, Judge Ross Moody released him with conditions. Sigh.

Park problems: Adam Mesnick, the owner of the popular craft sandwich shop Deli Board on Folsom, has been complaining about the drug use and drinking at Victoria Manalo Draves Park, across the street, for years.

It is obvious that people find this a cool place to chill, shoot up in the bathroom, or hang out and drink beer, and nobody is going to bother you, Mesnick said.

Mesnick notes that it isnt just his business thats affected, Bessie Carmichael Elementary School is next door to the park. So Wednesday, when a man was stabbed in the chest at Manalo Draves Park, Mesnick was upset but not surprised.

It is baffling that there is not a security guard there, he said. Its cleaning up garbage. Its people being exposed to drugs. Shame on the city.

C.W. Nevius is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His columns appear Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: cwnevius@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @cwnevius
Is it time for peace talks in the fight between Silicon Valley and Washington over encryption?

After months in which it seemed like the two sides were talking past each other, there now might be room for discussion, according to little-noticed remarks made in recent days by top officials at Apple and the FBI. The tech company and the government have been sparring for months, mostly in tartly worded court filings, over the lengths the tech giant should go to help law enforcement unlock iPhones involved in high-profile cases.

Last week, the government dropped a bid to force Apple to bypass a convicted Brooklyn drug dealers pass code so it could read data on his phone. That follows its abandonment last month of another order in a much-discussed case involving an iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook.

On Tuesday, representatives for the Department of Justice and the FBI said that there is no active case in which those agencies are seeking similar orders against Apple.

In a congressional hearing last week, just days before govenment lawyers filed a request to drop the Brooklyn case, Bruce Sewell, Apples general counsel, said his company wanted to sit down with the FBI once the legal decks were cleared  as they now are.

If we can get out of the lawsuit world, lets start cooperating, Sewell told Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., who serves on the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which held the hearing.

In remarks at an Aspen Institute event in London on Thursday, FBI Director James Comey struck a conciliatory tone, calling Apple a fine organization and said he was not questioning its motivations in its fight against the order in the San Bernardino case.

In fact, Sewell said in the Tuesday hearing, around the time the government first sought an order in the San Bernardino case to compel Apple to unlock Farooks iPhone, Apple and the FBI had been working on brokering a meeting.

Smart people

Heres how Sewell described his proposal to the subcommittee: Well send some smart people to Washington, or you send some smart people to Cupertino, and what well do for that day is that well talk to you about what the world looks like from our perspective. What is this explosion of data that we can see? Why do we think its so important?

And you talk to us about the world that confronts their investigators from the moment they wake up in the morning. How do they think about technology? How do they think about the problems that theyre trying to solve?

That offer still exists. Thats the way were going to solve these problems.

"We want that to be facilitated, said Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., the subcommittees chairman. We have too many lives at stake and the concerns of many families and Americans. This is central. This is core.

In both cases, law enforcement agents ended up finding ways to unlock the iPhones without Apples help. In New York, an unnamed individual came forward with the devices pass code, which yielded the data the government sought.

In the California case, the FBI paid a security researcher more than $1 million to craft a tool to crack the iPhone.

In court filings in both the New York and California cases, Apple has argued that law enforcement should exhaust such avenues before seeking court orders to compel it to create custom hardware or software.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

But a key question  which Apple and the government surely would have to sort out in the kind of meeting Sewell proposed  is whether such efforts can possibly scale, in Silicon Valley parlance, or prove feasible in the face of a growing number of cases that involve locked smartphones.

Seeking a solution

I'm hoping that we can somehow get to a place where we have a sensible solution or set of solutions that doesn't involve hacking and doesn't involve spending tons of money in a way that's unscalable, Comey said at the London event Thursday.

Senators Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Richard Burr, R.-N.C., recently proposed a bill that would require technology companies to build their products in such a way that they could decrypt data stored on devices when presented with a court order. The language of the draft bill suggests that companies  like Apple  that build devices that only users, not the companies themselves, can unlock are placing themselves above the law.

At last weeks congressional hearing on encryption, Matt Blaze, an associate professor in the computer and information science department at the University of Pennsylvania, who has been involved in the encryption debate for decades, expressed doubts that such proposals would work technically, even if they were desirable from a public policy perspective.

Its not clear whether the meeting Sewell proposed will happen. An Apple spokesman declined to expand on Sewells remarks. But if it does, both sides will have plenty to talk about.

Sean Sposito is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ssposito@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @seansposito
A one-day labor strike by faculty at City College of San Francisco is set for Wednesday, the first day disabled students, veterans, and other high-risk students are supposed to register for fall classes and discuss special service options with counselors.

But the 50 or so counselors needed to help those students at 15 sites around the city will instead be on the picket line  or unwilling to cross it. So the priority, in-person registration for those students is canceled.

We dont take this lightly. But its gotten to the point where (the colleges) bad-faith bargaining has gotten so bad that you need to take action, said Tim Killikelly, president of the union of 1,500 instructors, librarians and counselors who are demanding higher wages.

Its the faculty who are negotiating in bad faith, said interim Chancellor Susan Lamb. Were trying to build enrollment back, and here we have a strike on the first day of registration, she said, noting that faculty are walking off the job before a neutral fact-finding team has had a chance to evaluate the situation and make recommendations  a process just getting under way.

The dispute is over salary: Faculty and administrators agree that full-time instructors at City College earn less than those at most other community colleges. A 2015 salary survey shows that its most experienced faculty without a doctorate earn just under $92,000 a year  less than similar instructors earn at 67 of Californias 72 college districts. The least-experienced full-time faculty at City College earn $56,498 a year  less than those at 60 districts.

The faculty want a raise of 4 percent a year for three years, on top of cost-of-living increases and restoration of earlier cuts. They say the college is offering only short-term bonuses, not ongoing increases.

College administrators say they are offering a 9 percent raise over two years, which would cost $25 million. They say the facultys plan would cost $35 million.

Their proposal bankrupts the college in three years, Lamb said.

Accreditation troubles

Thats flatly not true, Killikelly countered, and suggested the college is hoarding money it could use for raises  18.5 percent of City Colleges budgeted expenses are being held in a reserve fund for emergencies, says a fiscal review released this month by the states independent Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team.

Yet the fiscal team reports that City College needs the hefty reserve because its long-term financial status is precarious. Four years ago, City College learned that its accreditation was in jeopardy over problems with fiscal management, governance and student services. Although the college has repaired many of its fiscal practices, the team says, the persistent threat to its accreditation has, ironically, led to financial troubles of a different kind.

Students have fled City College by the thousands. The school has hemorrhaged at least 10,000 full-time students since 2012, costing $4,700 each. Although California has given City College millions of dollars in stabilization funding, the law authorizing that cash sunsets in 2017 and is not expected to be renewed. This year, City College got an extra $44 million. Next year it will get $25 million. Then nothing.

Nobody wants a strike

COVID Resources Coronavirus Map Tracking COVID-19 cases across the Bay Area and California.

The college remains accredited, but the final determination is due in February. Without accreditation, City College would be forced to shut down. If it survives, college officials say it could take a decade to win back students to previous levels.

College officials cite these dangers as reasons for not offering higher raises. And theyve been cutting about 400 classes a year  5 percent  while trying to add popular police and fire training to attract more students.

Union President Killikelly calls the approach doom and gloom and said administrators need to stop it. None of us completely knows what will happen, he said.

Rafael Mandelman, president of the colleges Board of Trustees, said hes torn on the issue.

Nobody wants a strike, he said. But I support the right of labor to strike. Sometimes its the only way they say they can be heard. But if we do something that raises our faculty salaries more aggressively than what our administration is recommending, then Id have to be confident that we can pay the bills going forward.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov
Its all the Bay Areas fault. Journalist Nick Bilton, a new VF.com columnist, is blaming Silicon Valley for creating Donald Trump.

Although Trumps ideas  cutting off H-1B visas and getting Apple to make its products in the U.S.A.  would harm Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and although they have generally expressed fierce opposition to his candidacy, if you want to truly comprehend why Trump is so popular, you have to behold what people are saying in 140 characters or less. Its social media that has spread Trumps messages, writes Bilton, comparing the candidate to Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. If were talking about them, theyre winning the war for attention.

The only way to stop him, writes Bilton, is to pull the plug on social media until this election cycle is over. Outlandish idea? Sure. But so is the idea that the people in Silicon Valley are wondering how to stop Trump instead of realizing that they were the ones who created him in the first place.

P.S. Iconic lawyer Tony Serra wrote last week that hed had a great epiphany. I registered to vote for the first time in my life. I finally found an honest candidate, Bernie Sanders.

But given that Serra was convicted and imprisoned for failure to comply with U.S. tax laws, doesnt that make him ineligible to vote? I asked. Research revealed that those were misdemeanors. But heres Serras official response: My convictions are the same as Bernies. American democracy is compromised by our form of capitalism.

The Boys Who Said No!, a documentary produced by Christopher Jones, has received a contribution of art for its fundraising campaign. Its an acrylic, North Vietnamese Orphan Boy Monk, painted by Joan Baez, to be sold to benefit the filmmakers. Baez was married to David Harris when he was indicted, convicted and imprisoned for saying no to the draft during the Vietnam War.

Staying at the hotel formerly known as the Ahwahnee, David Landis heard a man saying, John Muir. Isnt he the guy who built these woods?

When a panhandler asked for money outside her grocery store in Mendocino, Nanook of the North Bay told him she didnt have any cash. He would be welcome, however, to the loaf of French bread she had in her bag. I dont do grains, he said.

Entering the Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia exhibition at the Legion of Honor, Linda Kuhli asked the ticket taker what Arcadia refers to. The ticket taker said she didnt know and advised her to Google it. (OK, here you go: A mountainous district in the Peloponnese of southern Greece. In poetic fantasy it represents a pastoral paradise and in Greek mythology it is the home of Pan.)

Rereading Frances FitzGeralds 30-year-old series on gay rights in the New Yorker magazine, Ken Maley came across a 30-year-old cartoon picturing a secretary on the phone to her boss, saying, Its Donald Trump on lines one through six. In last weeks New Yorker, every cartoon focused on Trump.

To mark Queen Elizabeths 90th birthday on Thursday, April 21, Randy Alfred consulted his calendar and his calculator and determined that as of that day, Prince Charles had been heir apparent for 64 years, 75 days. At 67, he is older than anyone who ever ascended the throne.

Following up on the Rev. Billy (Talen) of the Church of Stop Shoppings April 20 attempt to levitate the de Young Museum to protest the use of chemical weed killers on the grounds: The Rev. gathered supporters on the sidewalk and led them through the courtyard, citing B of A, Dede Wilsey, Oscar de la Renta and Monsanto, and asking everyone to laugh. When the building didnt move, he urged them to put their hands against the glass windows of the building and attempt to lift it. Jim Hannah, who was there, says the levitation attempt was interrupted by palace guards (who) came out to declare the Andy Goldsworthy Court was not (!) a public space. The Rev. Billy went on with the rite, but eventually had to leave when the majordomo came out, says Hannah. As of this writing, the building is still on its foundation.

Open for business in San Francisco, (415) 777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @leahgarchik

PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING

Hasnt the top

1 percent gotten bigger around here the last few years?
Sometimes, you find an amazing story amid the horror of war.

The Chronicles front page from April 26, 1917, covers a number of battles during World War I.

This post was going to cover all the major headlines on the page and offer insight into the historical context and the newspapers judgment and layout, but one story was too good not to share. Here is First Gun of War From S.S. Mongolia Shatters Submarines Periscope, edited for length:

London, April 25  How the first shell fired by an American gun in the present war instantly sank a German submarine is a story that future books of history may well recall.

It happened at 5:24 a.m. April 19  the one hundred and forty-second anniversary of the Battle of Lexington. It has become another shot heard round the world.

The American steamship Mongolia was approaching the southeastern coast of England. It was a hazy morning. Captain Rice, who had not taken off his clothes for five days, had just stepped out of the chart room with the lieutenant in command of the United States Navy gunners on board the Mongolia.

This is the way Captain Rice tells what followed:

We suddenly heard an exclamation from the chief officer, Theres a submarine off the port bow! Immediately we rushed for the bridge, where we had practically passed most of the voyage, and simultaneously we saw a submarine periscope on the port side, only 200 yards away.

Only about three feet of the periscope showed, but I realized instantly she had only to fire once to blow us sky high, with our 600 feet of target exposed. Automatically I swung the helm right around and bore down upon her starboardwise. This seemed our only chance of not being hit amidships. I thought the torpedo might pass alongside.

She realized my intention instantly. She dived and also swung around, whether to avoid our attack or to maneuver into a better position for torpedoing, I cant say. At any rate, we followed her around, watching the swirling wave caused by her motion as the periscope disappeared.

Then she came up, expecting to be able to attack us on the port side. But we were going full speed ahead, and in the two minutes before she emerged we had put her a thousand yards back of us. The stern gun was trained full on her, and almost the instant she reappeared the lieutenant gave the range order and then  Fire!

Watching the six-inch shell through the air, we saw it land clean and fair against the periscope. Shell and submarine disappeared. There was an explosion, of course, and for some minutes the surrounding area was covered with smoke. We didnt fire again.

Naturally, there isnt any actual legal proof that we got the U-boat, as we didnt recover any wreckage or bodies, but there was the telltale oil on the waters. I believe we either hit the periscope directly or hit the hull at the water level.

I cant praise highly enough the cool, easy way the lieutenant handled his gun crews. It was about the best exhibition of efficiency I have ever seen. There was no guesswork about the shot, just a case of applied mathematics.

More from the Archive The Vault Home of the San Francisco Chronicle's archive and more than 150 years of journalism covering the Bay Area and beyond.

See more front pages: Go to SFChronicle.com/covers to search a database of hundreds of Chronicle Covers articles that showcase the newspaper's history.

Chronicle Covers is a yearlong project highlighting one classic Chronicle newspaper page from our archive every day for 366 days. Library director Bill Van Niekerken, art director Danielle Mollette-Parks, producer Michelle Devera and editorial assistant Jillian Sullivan contributed to the project. Tim ORourke is the executive producer and editor of SFChronicle.com. Email: torourke@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TimothyORourke

(Click to enlarge)




Republican and Democratic U.S. Senate candidates are taking the same stage at the same time at 6 p.m.

Two Democratic and three Republican Senate candidates will meet for a 90-minute debate at the University of the Pacific in Stockton.
In his remaining months, President Obama is trying to breathe life into one of his biggest goals: treaties that broaden trade and harmonize the rules. But his timing couldnt be worse, as hes frankly acknowledging on a bumpy tour of isolationist-minded Europe.

His prized plan is a pair of treaties covering Asia and Europe that hold the potential to both widen and regulate global trade, an unstoppable force that needs updated rules. But Congress isnt sold on the good sense of this idea, nor are the leading presidential candidates of both major parties, who compete daily in denouncing the deals.

As a major exporter, California has a special seat at the table, with goods including Hollywood movies, wine and prescription pills all at issue. Missing a chance for better terms on exports, environmental protections and labor protections will be a loss on both sides of the Pacific.

The problem has an isolationist echo in Europe. In London, Obama walked into a firestorm of criticism for urging British voters to reject a plan to exit the European Union. He made a similar pitch in Germany, where crowds filled the streets to denounce a pending trade treaty similar to the one wrapping in 12 Pacific Rim countries.

With Europe, the problems spill beyond economics. Germany, like other neighboring countries, is worried about immigration, terrorism and slowing business. A more protective outlook that minimizes foreign corporations and toughens border controls has rising appeal.

For Obama, its a hard sell to counter this political reality both here and abroad. Adding to the problem is a presidential clock thats ticking down on his final term. Time is not on our side, he said, noting both the brewing opposition in Europe and his dwindling days in office that run out Jan. 20.

It may be now or never on trade treaties, he said. The looming June vote in Britain, strongly flavored with anti-immigration feelings and economic worries, will be a major test. But even in export-driven Germany, issues of foreign influence and surging migration are at odds with wider trade rules.

Obamas answer is both optimistic and forlorn. His team argues for signing the trade deals now, or perhaps in a lame-duck session after the U.S. presidential vote in November, when campaign rhetoric may cool. But in his German visit, he acknowledged the odds. Long-term trade agreements have a distant, academic appeal, while a closed factory gate or wave of layoffs comes with a heavy punch.

In a presidential campaign, people naturally are going to worry more about whats lost than whats gained with respect to trade agreements, he noted.

Obamas message of wider trade with modernized rules is the right one, a plan that has the potential to raise living standards both here and in the rest of the world. That potential shouldnt be lost in isolationist-tinged worries.
Just 24 percent. Yes, 24 percent of California voters are registered as no party preference (sometimes referred to as independent voters or decline-to-state voters) but cant vote in our Republican presidential primary. The California GOP has shut them out. The solution: Have these voters register as Republican before May 24. Why? To prevent a predictable national disaster if Donald Trump were nominated and then elected president. It could happen if something untoward affected the Democratic nominee before November. So please, register Republican and cast your vote in the primary for John Kasich or even Ted Cruz on June 7.

Importantly, as a new Republican, you can vote for any state party primary candidate on the California ballot. Election laws adopted in 2010 give independents and all others a voice in all state party primaries. For those among the 24 percent who lean Republican, there is a major motivation to register Republican: You can help save the nation from Trump and preserve a balance of political power in California.
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When Greg MacKellan moved to San Francisco, he told himself hed be here for a few months. Instead, he stayed 23 years.

I thought Id move up here and see what I could get cooking, MacKellan says. I didnt know anybody in the theater community.

What he got cooking, with a friend named Stephanie Rhoads, was a theater company called 42nd Street Moon, where hes stepping down at the end of next month.

The company MacKellan and Rhoads founded 23 years ago is one of the few, if not the only, company in the country focused on unearthing old musicals  from Cole Porter to Jerome Kern and more  that are otherwise lost to history and the passage of time.

Thats the beautiful thing about Moon  (Greg) has educated an entire audience in the Bay Area, says Dyan McBride, an actress and director for Moon as well as its longtime education director.

MacKellan and McBride met in 1994, when McBride spotted MacKellan leafing through a set of head shots at Maxs Opera Cafe. McBride was waiting tables. She wanted to know: Was he casting for a show? Turns out, he was, for a Jerome Kern show called Very Warm for May, and the show needed a female lead with a mezzo voice. McBride fit the bill and got the gig; to this day, the two remain friends and partners in business.

Courtesy photo

In those early days, MacKellan sought to mirror the historical accuracy of the shows he resurrected by borrowing their style of performance. Sets and props were largely left to the audiences imagination, while the performers held their scripts as they sang.

Tourists would come and say, Why are they holding their scripts? MacKellan says.

Its hard work, digging up forgotten musicals. Sometimes, MacKellan would phone the relatives of these old composers, asking for the rights to their estates. Other times, it meant asking the Library of Congress to scan the scores. And on occasion, it required Rhoads to shuffle through unsorted papers to find the music, the way they did for a Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart show called Too Many Girls.

Its obvious even in a brief conversation that MacKellan is enamored with the work. Within 30 seconds, hell rattle off eight composer names. McBride calls his knowledge of old musicals encyclopedic, and says he is capable of giving off-the-cuff speeches on composers like Kern and Rodgers if prompted.

Joe Mader, the managing director of Moon, concurs.

He knows who was in the opening cast; he knows if keys were changed when replacements came in, Mader says. Its amazing what he knows.

It was a Rodgers musical that spurred one of MacKellans fondest memories from his time at Moon. One day, after a showing of Rodgers A Connecticut Yankee, an older man approached him and said hed seen one of the first shows. In London. In 1928.

Throughout the 1990s, a regular joy for MacKellan was folks informing him of the original shows they saw from the 1930s and 1940s performed on the Moon stage. Helena Bliss, an operetta star from the 1950s, came to see Kerns Very Warm For May at Moon, and told MacKellan thats the show where she got her start, back in 1939.

Eventually, Moon moved to the Eureka Theatre, and financial demands prompted a shift in its approach. The stages became less minimal, and the costumes became more elaborate. In 2007, the actors finally dropped the scripts.

I did one of our shows, and I hated holding the script, MacKellan says. For Act II, the director got rid of it. It mightve even been my suggestion.

What is it thats so appealing about these shows? Why is he drawn to these relics of a time gone by?

I think its profound to me, the beauty of these shows and the beauty of the music, MacKellan says. Musical theater has changed and evolved  and is constantly evolving  but all of it owes a debt to what came before.

One of the most successful plays is Lin-Manuel Mirandas Hamilton, and he very much acknowledges what came before him, and the influence of those musicals.

I guess Im the champion of what came before.

Michael Rosen is a freelance writer based in the Bay Area.

The Most Happy Fella: April 27-May 15. Written by Frank Loesser, directed by Cindy Goldfield. Eureka Theatre. 215 Jackson St., S.F.. $22-$75. (415) 255-8207. www.42ndstmoon.org .
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In a year when the acrimonious Democratic presidential primary battle is likely to continue all the way to the July convention, being a party superdelegate sounds like way more fun than it is.

Just ask Shawn Bagley.

It was 2 a.m. when the insistent ring of his cell phone woke the Salinas man from a sound sleep. Fearing the worst, he staggered through the house and picked up the phone, only to find a nasty message from a supporter of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, angered that the Democratic National Committee member was supporting Hillary Clinton for the nomination.

Now I know what it feels like to be targeted, Bagley said. Since December, Ive probably had more than 300 calls, Facebook messages, tweets and emails  almost all of them from Bernies people.

The messages arent often pleasant. Has your vote been bought? one asked. Keep in mind youre currently pledged to a criminal, said another. Do you not respect democracy? asked a third.

Bagleys story can be repeated throughout California and the nation, as Sanders supporters, few if any of them officially connected to the campaign, push hard to persuade the officially unpledged superdelegates to pull back from supporting Clinton  or shame them or even threaten them.

For Sanders backers and other progressives, the fight is as much philosophical as political.

Superdelegates  more formally known as unpledged delegates  are Democratic Party leaders who can vote for any candidate at the national convention, regardless of whom their states voters backed. Nationally, there are more than 700 superdelegates, or about 15 percent of those who will pick the party nominee in Philadelphia.

Progressive groups like MoveOn.org and Demand Progress argue that the superdelegate system allows Democratic Party leaders to put their collective thumb on the election scale, pushing the nomination toward their favored candidate.

Superdelegates should not be allowed to overrule the will of the voters, David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress, said in an email last week. Too much is at stake in our country to have our voices overruled by a minority of party elites.

Defending the process

Party leaders brush aside the complaints, arguing that providing automatic convention seats for Democratic senators, members of Congress, governors and national committee members clears the way for more grassroots delegates to go to the convention.

All the superdelegates have been elected in some way and have the consent of the governed, said Eric Walker, deputy communications director for the Democratic National Committee. Its a way to make sure we have a diverse mix of voices and has produced incredibly diverse conventions.

But theres a political element as well. While the superdelegates are officially unpledged, that doesnt mean theyre neutral. Of the 555 who have expressed a preference for a candidate, 516 are backing Clinton, with only 39 supporting Sanders.

That makes a huge difference in the race toward the 2,383 delegates needed to ensure the Democratic nomination. Counting only pledged delegates won in the months-long grind of state primary elections, Clinton has a 1,428-to-1,153 delegate lead over Sanders.

With the superdelegates added, though, Clinton has a much more daunting 752-delegate margin, and her 1,944 total leaves her just 439 delegates short of a guaranteed first-ballot nomination. Her lead over Sanders is likely to grow after the results of Tuesdays primaries in five states are tallied.

For Sanders backers, the overwhelming support for Clinton among party leaders is just another sign of how worried the Democratic elite is about the surprisingly strong response voters  especially young voters  have had to the 74-year-old Vermont senators call for a revolution that will profoundly change the countrys political and economic systems.

Supporters reasons

But theres a much simpler explanation, said Bob Mulholland, a DNC member and superdelegate from Chico and longtime adviser to the California Democratic Party.

Many of Californias superdelegates are party activists in their 50s, 60s and 70s who have a long history with both Hillary and Bill Clinton, said Mulholland, a Clinton supporter. The Clintons are family.

Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

By contrast, Sanders was first elected to Congress in 1990 as an independent who identified himself as a socialist. While he has caucused with the Democrats during his time in office and registered as a Democrat last year, hes still identified on the Senate website as I-Vermont.

Clinton has used that history to boost her standing with lifelong Democrats and party leaders.

Sanders is a relatively new Democrat, and in fact, Im not even sure he is one, Clinton said in an interview with Politico this month.

Over the years, the Clintons have raised millions for party causes and candidates, showing up at fundraisers and rallies and backing efforts to elect Democrats across the country, efforts not forgotten by the party faithful who become superdelegates, Mulholland said.

For many California superdelegates, that history is too strong to be broken by any outside attacks.

If Hillary walked into the room, she wouldnt know who I am, said Bagley, the Salinas superdelegate. Im not anything fancy ... but Ive got a choice of who I get to support.

Sanders has disavowed efforts to harass superdelegates backing Clinton, including one supporters online Superdelegate Hit List, a website providing names, addresses and phone numbers for Clintons superdelegates.

Superdelegates are barely on the Sanders campaigns radar right now.

Our campaign is focused on winning pledged delegates, said Vivek Kembaiyan, a campaign spokesman. California is fertile ground for Bernie Sanders because it is leading the way on many of the progressive policies that are a core part of his platform.

Our focus is building on Bernies strong support in the state so he leads in pledged delegates after the California primary on June 7.

Superdelegates in play

But if Sanders is still short of a majority after the final primary, Clintons superdelegates can become fair game.

Asked in an MSNBC interview last week whether the Sanders campaign would be willing to spend the weeks before the July convention trying to flip Clintons superdelegates, Jeff Weaver, Sanders campaign manager, said, At this point, yes, absolutely.

He argued that Sanders has a better chance of being elected in November than Clinton, and that Democratic superdelegates, eager for victory, would recognize that and move to the senator.

Thats not going to happen, said Mulholland.

Theyve already reached out and tried that and just made (superdelegates) mad, he said. Sanders people will fail miserably if they try to put out a welcome mat.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth

Democratic delegates

California will send 546 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July. Heres how they break down:

There will be 70 superdelegates, officially unpledged to any candidate. Appointed automatically, they include the governor, the Democratic senators, every Democratic member of Congress and the states Democratic National Committee members.

Party leaders and elected officials make up an additional 53 delegates. These include big-city mayors and statewide elected officials, state legislators, local elected officials and state party leaders. Each must pledge to support a candidate by June 9 and is confirmed June 19.

The largest number of delegates, 317, is selected May 1 by caucuses in each of the states 53 congressional districts. Each is committed to a candidate. About 4,600 Democrats across the state applied for the seats. In Rep. Nancy Pelosis San Francisco district, there are 113 Clinton delegates and more than 100 for Sanders, all seeking nine available seats.

An additional 106 delegates, each pledged to a candidate, are selected at large from a statewide pool and confirmed June 19.

 John Wildermuth
I dont throw around superlatives lightly, so I expect the following statement to have some gravitas: I believe Ippuku has the best shochu program in the Bay Area. Heck, in California. In the United States. Could we even say North America?

Ippuku, a perennial Chronicle Top 100 restaurant, is a Berkeley yakitori spot known for its succulent skewers of grilled chicken parts  knee cartilage, gizzards, hearts  and various raw preparations of the bird. Yes, you may order sake (or beer, or whiskey; wine is not available), but if you do, youll be missing out on the Western Hemispheres finest shochu selection, notable for the access it provides not only to rare bottles but also to the expertise of Ippukus shochu experts, including one sommelier-style certified shochu adviser.

Unlike sake, which is fermented, shochu is a Japanese clear liquor distilled from any number of grains or starches, most commonly sweet potato, rice, barley or brown sugar. Shochu is more complex than vodka, more subtle than gin and, usually at around 25 percent alcohol by volume, typically lower in alcohol than either.

Scotland has Scotch, Mexico has Tequila and Japan has shochu, explains Washi Washino, Ippukus resident shochu adviser.

Shochu has been produced in Japan for a long time  like 1,000 years  and for much of modern history, it was something your grandpa drank, says Ippuku co-owner Christian Geidemann. In the post-World War II era, it became popular to mix shochu with Hoppy, a nonalcoholic beer, to make drinking large quantities of the swill more palatable. That was the cheapest way to get drunk when everyone was poor after the war, Geidemann says.

As you might imagine, the quality wasnt superb. But then, in the 1990s and early aughts, shochu suddenly happened. It became trendy with younger people, coinciding with a larger izakaya boom, Geidemann explains. And Washino points out that shochus salubrious virtues added to its appeal: Shochus kind of healthy. Because its distilled, it has less calories, less chance of a hangover.

Premium shochu proliferated; shochu bars emerged. Attention darted to traditional production methods, higher-quality ingredients and region-specific styles, especially the prestigious, single-distilled honkaku shochu.

Ippuku is indebted to that shochu boom in Japan, born from a stage that Geidemann did at Nagomi, a Tokyo yakitori restaurant. At Nagomi, it became apparent to me that this is definitely the drink for yakitori, he says.

The logic of the pairing holds that the liquor has a cleansing, lightening effect. The richness and greasiness of grilled meat, especially chicken that has the skin on it  shochu is the perfect counterbalance. Its not cloyingly sweet like sake. Its got a little flavor, the weight is light, its something you can drink throughout your meal.

John Storey/Special to the Chronicle

That is, if you like shochu. Which you might not.

Dont expect to get it right away. At first it may feel like youre drinking straight vodka. Perceiving the individual nuances requires focus.

A shochus flavors are largely determined by the grain of origin and the type of koji, which is the mold that performs the pre-distillation fermentation. Black koji are intense; they make a strong flavor, Washino explains. White koji is more of a light, delicate flavor. Yellow koji, less common, makes fruity flavors.

If you want to see for yourself what difference a mold can make, compare two shochus that differ only by mold type: Ippuku offers the Tsukushi shiro (white mold; $10/glass) and Tsukushi kuro (black; $8).

Imo, derived from sweet potato, is generally the most potent type of shochu, and often the favorite of connoisseurs. My first experience with imo was that its way too intense, Washino recalls, but once he acquired the taste for the nutty, complex liquor, he never looked back.

Kome, rice shochu, is often the mildest and most delicate; on a recent visit to Ippuku, my server warned me away from it: Some of the lighter ones really just taste like alcohol. Shochu made from mugi, or barley, can often have characteristics of whiskey, and is sometimes even aged in oak barrels.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Going by recommendations from our server, we started with the jinkoo (imo; $12), which smelled like caramel and gave the impression of sweetness on the palate, with crisp acidity; and then the nuttier, smoother shima senryou (imo; $12).

We tried the towari (distilled from soba; $9) oyuwari-style, served in a ceramic mug with a proportion of 60 percent shochu and 40 percent hot water: It had a hot sake-like quality, with a slightly funky, toasty finish. We loved the enma (mugi; $11), which tasted like the diluted ending of a glass of scotch on the rocks, but the mugon (kome; $9), not so much, likely because our server suggested we drink it neat. I recoiled instinctively upon smelling the mugon, suddenly transported back to my collegiate encounters with Everclear.

Will Americans ever jump on the shochu badwagon?

Washino and Geidemann say that their customers are catching on to shochu, though its a slow adoption. They and their staff are admirably thorough in walking newbies through the list, which they have determined to be the largest in the United States. The scarcity of sought-after Japanese whiskeys like Yamazaki 18  of which Geidemann can procure only one bottle per month, and he sells out of it in two days  allows them to turn some guests attention to shochu, especially the barrel-aged, whiskey-reminiscent mugi varieties. But, they note with resignation, most people still just order sake.

Dont be one of those people. If youre at Ippuku, youve already willingly transported yourself from downtown Berkeley to a different world: Youve removed your shoes to climb into a tatami room; youve ordered raw chicken (and if you didnt, shame on you; march back immediately and order the sashimi-like pickled version with wasabi). As the saying goes, go big or go home. Just drink some shochu, already.

Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicles wine, beer and spirits writer. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob

To order: Chicken skewers ($7-$9), shochu by recommendation ($6-$19/glass)

Where: Ippuku, 2130 Center St., Berkeley. (510) 665-1969. www.ippukuberkeley.com

When: 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday to Thursday, 5 to 11 p.m. Friday to Saturday
In 1906, shortly after the San Francisco earthquake and fire, when the dust had literally settled, Roebling Construction Company sent its fireproofing expert, Abraham Lincoln Artman Himmelwright, to assess the damage of a city that lay in ruins for miles. The Roebling Construction Company had a long, successful history, which included building the Brooklyn Bridge and making the cables for the Golden Gate Bridge.

I purchased a rare book called "The San Francisco Earthquake and Fire 1906" by The Roebling Construction Company, published the year of the catastrophe. Himmelwright's area of expertise was fireproofing. His focus when he came from the East Coast to San Francisco was to examine the buildings considered to be fireproof. He did study some buildings that were not considered to be fireproof. He examined many structures to determine why they did, or did not, survive. A common causation of structural failure appears to be from inadequately protecting steel support beams.

Back in the day, support beams were often clad in hollow tile, similar to today's cinder block. If a structure failed, due to either tremors or fire, Himmelwright attributed it to inadequate or missing hollow tiles.

Himmelwright took many photos of the existing framework, and the stone facade, when that survived. He'd then venture into these buildings, taking photos from the basement to the roof, when possible. Some of the buildings, despite the supposed quality construction, were no match against the force of the earth or intensity of the fire.

Here are case studies of famous San Francisco buildings, per the Roebling book.

The (old) San Francisco Chronicle, tons of machinery plummet to the basement:

The old Chronicle building, on Market Street in the burned district, was a nine story structure, completed in 1888. It was the oldest of high buildings in the city in 1906. It was built to the highest of fire resistance standards of the time. The facades were made of brown sandstone on the first floor, and red brick with ornamentation above. The metal frame was made of cast iron columns with steel beams and girders. The walls were self supporting.

The floors were made of hard burned, hollow, single cell blocks. Part of the beams were protected by slabs of tile. The cast-iron columns were protected by 3" hollow tile blocks. The flooring was wood, as was the roof, supported by steel beams.

The building was subjected to normal fire only (not part of the man-made fire break). The sandstone was badly spalled (chipped and splintered). Except for the first floor, the red brick sustained little damage. The front of the building had no earthquake cracks. The north face remained level, but the south side was leaning 4". An area on the Kearny Street side, about 30 feet by 40 feet, had collapsed from the roof to the basement, completely filling it with the fallen debris.

The collapse of the Kearny Street side was probably caused by 19 Linotype machines (used for printing the paper and weighing thousands of pounds) on the upper level, which fell when the floor gave way due to falling debris from the burning wood roof. Except for one wall that was out of plumb, and the area that collapsed, the building was able to be repaired.

City Hall, a victim of dishonesty and graft:

Per the Report of California No. 3 by the National Association of Stationary Engineers on the San Francisco Calamity April 18, 1906 (published shortly after the event):

The destruction of City Hall was attributed directly to the earthquake. The structure occupied a triangular piece of land in the center of town. Its construction covered a period of 20 years and cost millions of dollars. The earlier parts of the construction did not use steel framing, and the stripped down dome, which was the last part to be built, was supposed to have been designed with up-to-date methods.

It involved many different architects and builders and methods of construction. While it was being built, there were rumors of dishonesty and graft. But the full extent of the impact wasn't realized until the earthquake made it possibly the most spectacular ruin in the world.

The broken columns were built with a cast iron shell enclosing pillars of brick. The roof collapsed completely. The tower was a steel octagon, encased in a circular brick wall. The design was as bad as could be, because the steel framing was entirely independent of the brick walls, except for a few frail tie rods, and as the vibrations of the earth increased from the shake, the heavy tower became a virtual battering ram, and the demolished brick work is the obvious result.

This was a sad commentary on the efficiency obtained by the municipality in in an attempt to supply itself with public buildings as compared with like efforts in private business life. It was said that the condition of the building was uncalled for and avoidable, because had it been built in compliance with even ordinary business methods of the day, it would have undoubtedly been able to withstand the terrible shaking without visible injury.

Sensational writers attempted to create the impression that a similar result was likely to happen to every building in San Francisco. But the engineers reiterated that dishonesty alone was responsible for the total ruination, and that there was no more danger to properly constructed buildings in San Francisco than in any other city in the United States.

The Fairmont Hotel:

Per the Report of California No. 3 by the National Association of Stationary Engineers on the San Francisco Calamity April 18, 1906 (published shortly after the event):

The Fairmont Hotel was considered by many to be the crowning glory of Nob Hill. The views of the city and bay from the interior, were expansive. It was built by Mrs. Herman Oelrich of New York, and was intended to be a monument to her father to the family of her father, one of the original Big Four Bonanza kings of California mining industry.

A few weeks before the fire, the hotel changed hands. The new owner intended to make it one of the greatest hotels in the world. And were in the process of making that happen when the fire occurred. From outward appearances, the building appeared to have sustained little damage. But, the careful investigator of the interior cannot but marvel at the results of the flames in the now unoccupied building. While the lower floors on the east side had little damage, the west side damage was severe. At least seventy-nine columns out of about one hundred thirty had buckled and dropped the floors from one to six feet. A prominent firm of structural steel contrators were hired to jack up the sunken floors and insert new columns where needed. Had these columns been protected by any first class system of fireproofing, the noble structure would probably have been intact and saved the owner thousands of dollars (millions today).

Roebling report on buildings considered to be not fireproof:

The general failure of the walls of the non-fireproof buildings filled a large portion of the burned district with brick and mortar debris to an average depth of four feet, completely obliterating street and property lines, making roads impassable to vehicles.

A few non-fireproof buildings escaped destruction in the burned district by fortuitous circumstances. The California Electrical Company's building was built in accordance with rules of the Massachusetts Mutual Fire Insurance Companies, and was equipped with a sprinkler system and fire-resisting barriers at the openings, and thoroughly demonstrated the value of these safeguards.

Of course, these are a few citations from 1906, with the technology, or lack of, of the day. Had today's technology been in place back then, the damage in all likelihood would have been considerably less. Will the buildings that survived the 1906 earthquake survive another 7.9 temblor, even with modern day retrofits? Will the new glass towers that arise from the ground, built on rollers, survive a 1906-style earthquake? I hope the answers are yes, or I hope we never find out.

The slideshow, like the reports, shows the exterior damage of the buildings, then a shot of two of the interior, with some details on what went wrong.

Bob Bragman is a producer for SFGATE. His writing reflects his love of the Bay Area, in addition to his passion for vintage pop culture, ephemera and vernacular photographs. To see more of his content, please click here.
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On their sixth day without food, hunger strikers outside the Mission District police station said Tuesday their bodies were weak but that no bites would be taken until San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee steps down or fires Police Chief Greg Suhr.

Armed with multivitamins, coconut water and reading material, the band of five demonstrators  rapper Equipto, his mother and three friends  has largely remained seated in camping chairs, conserving energy and receiving massages from acupuncturists who believe in the cause.

We dont want to die, said Cristina Gutierrez, Equiptos mother and the one who came up with the hunger-strike idea. But were prepared to go all the way.

In addition to supplements and coconut water, the protesters said they drink chicken broth and electrolyte-infused water, and choose how to spend their limited strength. They stood up when a Mission High School class came to visit.

They and other activists have called for Suhrs job with each fatal officer-involved shooting: Alex Nieto in 2014 on Bernal Hill, Amilcar Perez-Lopez last year in the Mission, Mario Woods in the Bayview district in December and, most recently, Luis Gongora at a homeless encampment this month.

Another wave of racist and homophobic text messages sent by police that came to light Tuesday further infuriated the group.

There were huge events that coalesced in this, said Sellassie Blackwell, a political hip-hop artist and one of the five. Just an avalanche of social issues.

Growing up poor in the city, Blackwell added, made not eating easier. He said the demonstration has given him a new perspective on how the homeless are treated.

Equipto, whose real name is Ilyich Sato, said his hunger pales in comparison with what relatives of police shooting victims must be feeling.

This is not suffering, he said. This is not pain. This is nothing compared to what families are going through.

The monthly Mission police station community meeting was canceled Tuesday night when several protesters demanded entry. A protester said only about 50 seats were available inside but more than a hundred people showed up, energized by the hunger strike.

Edwin Lindo, one of the strike organizers and a candidate for District Nine supervisor, said he asked authorities to host the meeting outside so everyone could participate. He said the meeting was ultimately canceled with dozens stuck outside.

I think its very clear they are rigid, unwilling to have a conversation with the community even though its a community meeting, Lindo said.

Instead of attending the meeting, protesters gathered outside the station chanting, Fire Chief Suhr. Yayne Abeba, a lead organizer, said the new slew of racist texts was just another a reason to distrust the department.

Everyone needs to call Ed Lee and tell him Chief Suhr needs to go, Abeba told the crowd Tuesday night.

Hes created and fostered a culture of racism. Its time for them to listen to the will of the people. Stand up and dont back the racist police officers.

Shortly after 7 p.m. protesters formed a circle at 17th and Valencia streets, blocking the intersection while chanting, Whose streets? Our streets!

Some have joined the hunger strikers for one or two days at a time, drivers periodically honk in solidarity and passersby offer juice and supplies  including three tents pitched on the sidewalk. Nearly everyone on the street is supportive, the demonstrators said, and they have had few run-ins with officers inside the station, whose restroom theyve been using.

The Police Department has no plans to tell them to leave, said Officer Albie Esparza, a police spokesman.

Its a First Amendment protest. Its not illegal lodging, he said. The sit-lie (ordinance) doesnt apply.

Still, Esparza said, Suhr has made it clear he has no intention of stepping down.

Were facilitating the demonstration as we have facilitated many demonstrations, Suhr said late Tuesday. We had the fire department go by on Friday to check on them and make sure everyone is doing OK.

Should the situation deteriorate to where its a health situation, the officers will take action as appropriate. But right now, its purely a facilitation of a demonstration.

Christine Falvey, a spokeswoman for the mayors office, said Lee supports their right to protest and is glad city health workers are monitoring protesters well-being.

Kimberly Veklerov and Jenna Lyons are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com, jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov, @jennajourno
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A UC Berkeley professor who once served as president of Smith College, a liberal arts womens school in Massachusetts, has been named interim provost at UC Berkeley  a position that is key to the way the campus handles sex harassment problems.

The appointment of Carol Christ follows the resignation two weeks ago of Provost Claude Steele amid accusations that the campus has mishandled sexual harassment cases.

Christ previously served as UC Berkeleys provost and executive vice chancellor from 1994 until 2000. She was Smiths president from 2002 to 2013, when she returned to UC Berkeley to teach English.

During her six years as Berkeleys top academic officer, she sharpened the institutions intellectual focus and helped build many of our top-rated departments in the humanities and sciences, Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said in a message to the campus community.

In January 2015, Christ was named director of the universitys Center for Studies in Higher Education.

I am honored to serve the campus again in the capacity of executive vice chancellor and provost. I love Berkeley, and am ready to do whatever I can at this crucial moment in the universitys life, Christ said in a statement.

Christ first joined UC Berkeleys English department in 1970.

Steele announced his resignation on April 15 amid criticism from students and faculty for his allegedly light-handed approach to disciplining university employees who violated the sexual harassment policy.

In his message of resignation, Steele did not mention the sexual-harassment scandal and cited his wifes health condition as the reason for his departure.

Steele will join the psychology department in the fall.

Criticism against Steele mounted recently after investigators found the dean of the Berkeley Law School, Sujit Choudhry, had hugged, kissed and touched his executive assistant in 2014 and 2015. Steeles disciplinary action was to reduce Choudhrys salary by 10 percent and ask him to apologize.

Choudhry resigned his post after the case became public when the assistant sued UC Berkeley and Choudhry in March. Although Choudhry remains on UCs payroll due to his position as a tenured professor, UC President Janet Napolitano barred him from campus and ordered disciplinary proceedings to be taken.

Choudhrys case was one of several that drew criticism over the light discipline of faculty found in violation of the harassment policy.

Marcos Martinez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email mmartinez@sfchronicle.com
Its coming down to the wire for a pair of homeless-helping nuns to complete the purchase of their envisioned new soup kitchen in San Franciscos Mission District, courtesy of funding by multimillionaire self-improvement guru Tony Robbins  but theyve got some hurdles to clear before the deal can go through.

Foremost among those are concerns by some in the buildings homeowners association that the soup kitchen could draw more street people to an area already teeming with the homeless and that a venting system for the kitchens oven could be intrusive, according to those close to the situation. Others in the association are open to the soup kitchen plan, however, and neighbors queried by The Chronicle were more in favor than against it.

The deadline for the close of escrow on the property near 16th and Mission streets is Monday. Both sides said they are hopeful that the concerns can be ironed out fully one way or the other by the time the $750,000 sale is supposed to go through, and city officials say they share that hope.

Notorious area

The soup kitchen space is on the first floor of a four-story building at 1930 Mission St., in a retail spot approved for restaurant use. There are 17 condominiums above it, and the other half of the first floor is occupied by the City 420 Doctor medical marijuana office.

On one side of the building is the citys first Navigation Center homeless-aid complex, and on the other is the Silicon Valley Matrix high-tech incubator business. The block has long been notorious for homelessness and drug dealing, with small businesses and residences constituting an odd city mix of downscale living and gentrification.

There are already people smoking crack on the sidewalk, and theres crazy people that just come into our shop and are creepy, said Viola Wong, a receptionist at the medical marijuana outfit. Thats great that someone wants to feed the poor, but would it draw more people and make things worse? I dont know. I just wish it would all go away.

Bhrigu Jhabua, who co-owns Silicon Valley Matrix, said he does know  and he is sure the nuns would be be a great addition to the neighborhood.

I think them coming here would add a good cultural element, he said. There are those who would want to wave a magic wand and change the atmosphere, but then theres reality.

Help with negotiations

Sam Dodge, Mayor Ed Lees point person on homeless issues, and Supervisor David Campos offered this week to help with negotiations, and attorneys for the homeowners and the nuns said they welcome the assistance. Dodge and Campos, along with Dodges predecessor, Bevan Dufty, held community meetings for months before the Navigation Center opened last spring.

I think the nuns and their soup kitchen can be a real help, and they do have a special way with the homeless, Dodge said. They are very loving. The scene at 16th and Mission has been pretty grim for at least 20 years, and they could help.

The nuns of the Fraternite Notre Dame Mary of Nazareth soup kitchen must leave their Tenderloin location on Turk Street in about a year under an agreement that Robbins brokered to stave off an eviction order. Robbins put up the money for the soup kitchen in late March, and last week also ponied up cash with a friend to buy the nuns a $675,000 house in the Bayview.

The new soup kitchen place is a perfect location, said Sister Mary Benedicte, who with Sister Mary of the Angels serves meals to hundreds of homeless people a week. We dont make any noise, the people we serve are very nice and quiet. It would be a shame for it not to happen.

Jeff Belote, who represents the condo owners, declined to comment other than to say negotiations are proceeding. He advised the condo owners to decline to comment as well, and several of them did not respond to requests to talk. The law firm Reuben, Junius and Rose, representing the nuns, also declined to comment other than to express optimism.

Opposition elsewhere

The Fraternite of Notre Dame order, based in Chicago, has faced opposition before to relocating operations. Neighbors in Illinois objected last year when the order tried to build a convent, bakery and brewery on rural land it had bought with about $2 million that accrued from a house purchased decades earlier in New York with donated money. The order eventually dropped its plans.

James Geoly of Chicago, an attorney who represents the order, said the nuns eke out a living selling baked goods and by the kindness of strangers, and it was sad they ran into opposition.

The order does not report to the Roman Catholic Church, but San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has been helping with its relocation troubles here, said a spokesman for the archbishop.

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron
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Even if you're making $100,000 at Google, you might not want to pay the California Bay Area's notoriously high rent prices.

How are you ever supposed to save when you're spending nearly half your take-home on a one-bedroom in a crummy apartment complex in the suburbs of Mountain View?

Robert Allen of Daly City is offering a solution. Through his site Go-Tel.net, the 68-year-old retiree, who likes to keep himself busy with entrepreneurial projects, is renting fully customized vans to anyone who can find a place to park one.

The vehicles, equipped with a bed and kitchenette, rent for $30 a day, and Allen will drive it to your parking spot. The price goes up to $90 to $120 a day if you plan to drive the van yourself due to the cost of insurance.

The primary customers are road-trippers, say a couple looking for something to bunk in while visiting Yosemite, but in an ad posted on CraigsList last week, Allen targeted Silicon Valley tech workers and specifically makes a call-out to Googlers.

"Eat Google food, use their gym, and sleep in the van (CHEAP)," the ad reads.

Allen said that the idea is a Google, Facebook or Apple employee could sleep in the van parked in their company's lot and use the office amenities such as showers, laundry service, and the cafeteria.

Allen purchased five new and gently used vans, gutted the interiors and hired a metal worker to install platform beds. He then created a comfortable sleeping space for up to two people with foam and memory foam.

While one van dweller complained of a sore back in a review on Go-Tel.net, Allen said, "The bed is more comfortable than the Mark Hopkins. It's like sleeping on heaven."

Open the back hatch and you'll find a kitchenette with a two-burner camper stove, shelving for dishes, a cooler for storing food and a pull-down table. Allen also provides two chairs.

Allen's uncertain of the square footage but says he buys Dodge Caravans because the interior is roomier.

Does Google even allow its employees to live in vans? Google didn't return messages requesting comment on their company policy, but the online world is full of stories of Googlers living on campus. A 23-year-old who called himself Brandon S. famously lived in a truck at Google for many months.

Programmer Ben Discoe revealed in a Quora thread that he paid $1,800 for a 1990 GMC Vandura custom conversion van and lived in it on campus for 13 months between October 2011 and November 2012.

"Google Security came by very early on, but once they determined that the guy in the mysteriously parked white van was just an eccentric Googler and not the Unabomber, they never came by again," Driscoe wrote.

The programmer also revealed that the internal Google Wiki used to have a page with tips on living at Google. "Unfortunately [it] can't be shared, but it's really funny," he said.

More proof that Google turns a blind eye to parking-lot dwellers? Allen told SFGate that he heard of an underground contest at Google to see who can sleep in their car for the most days.
Stanford Universitys board of trustees says it will not fully divest from the fossil fuel industry following a nearly four-year battle with a student organization campaigning against the practice.

The schools board of trustees said Monday that after evaluating a divestment proposal from Fossil Free Stanford, an anti-investment campus group, it had concluded the companies the university endowment invests in inflict no social injury, so there was no reason to dispose of the holdings.
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Apple reported Tuesday that its revenue fell 13 percent to $50.6 billion in its second fiscal quarter, ending the Cupertino tech giants streak of year-over-year sales growth that dated back to 2003.

Apple also predicted that the revenue decline would linger into the third quarter, with sales expected at $41 billion to $43 billion.

The weaker results came as iPhone sales slowed down compared with the second quarter of 2015, months after Apple unleashed its larger-screen iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices in China.

Speaking to Wall Street analysts Tuesday, Apple executives pointed to a tough global economic environment. Sales of several Apple products  including the iPhone, the iPad and Mac computers  fell, causing analysts to wonder how long the revenue slump will continue.

The bigger picture here is, where will Apples growth come from? said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy.

Apple reported a profit of $10.5 billion ($1.90 per share), missing analysts estimates of $2 per share, according to Thomson Reuters. Revenue also fell short of Wall Streets expectations.

The last time Apple reported a revenue decline from the prior years period was the second quarter of 2003.

The number of iPhones sold declined 16 percent to 51.2 million in the second quarter, compared with a year ago, while Mac sales also dropped 12 percent to around 4 million. Apple saw a 19 percent decrease in iPad sales, to about 10.3 million.

Services  which include Apple Pay, AppleCare, music and app sales  rose 20 percent to nearly $6 billion. That category was boosted by App Store sales, which rose 35 percent during the quarter. Other products  including the Apple Watch, Apple TV and Beats headphones  rose 30 percent to $2.2 billion.

Despite the overall sales slump, executives said they remain confident in future growth. CEO Tim Cook cited the high loyalty rates of iPhone users. And during the last six months, the company saw more people switching from Android or other phones to iPhones than in any prior six-month period.

We see a business that is healthy and strong, Cook said.

Over its 40 year history, Apple has evolved from its roots in personal computers to become known largely for its phones. In its last fiscal year, iPhones represented 66 percent of the companys sales.

But as the smartphone market matures, Apple has been looking into other areas of growth, including wearables, augmented or virtual reality, and a rumored electric car. On Tuesday, Cook did not directly address any of those projects.

The future of Apple is very bright, Cook said in a call with investors. Our product pipeline has amazing innovations in store.

Last year, it released the Apple Watch, its first major product since the iPad. The watch was Apples first move into wearables, and already, it has captured 13.4 percent of the wearable tech market, according to research firm Parks Associates.

Were really excited about the first year of the Apple Watch, Cook said. We learned a lot, and we believe it has an exciting future ahead.

Apple hasnt reported how many watches it sold in the products first year. But on Tuesday, the company said that Watch sales topped first-year sales of the iPhone. Analyst Neil Cybart with Above Avalon estimates that Apple has sold 13 million watches at an average price of $450 each. While its rapid growth is impressive, Apple Watch represents just a tiny percentage of Apples overall sales.

People thought this is going to be the next iPhone, right out of the gate. Its clearly not, Cybart said. This is a different type of product.

Cybart, who wears an Apple Watch Sport, believes that the product has been a success, but others have been more critical. Abhey Lamba, an analyst with Mizuho Securities USA Inc., said Apple Watches havent delivered. The company needs to create more reasons for people to buy the product, Lamba said.

Its just an extension of your phone, Lamba said. Theres not a whole lot that you can do with your watch that you cant do with your phone already.

Despite missing Wall Street estimates, Apple results would make executives at other companies jealous, analysts said.

Apples one of the most profitable companies in the history of modern business, Moorhead said. People would kill to have their customer dynamics and (ability) to bring out winning products.

Wendy Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: wlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thewendylee
In a confrontation between the hopes of desperate patients and clinical trial data, advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted on Monday not to recommend approval of what would become the first drug for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

The negative votes came despite impassioned pleas from patients, parents and doctors who insisted that the drug, called eteplirsen, was prolonging the ability of boys with the disease to walk well beyond when they would normally be in wheelchairs.

The problem was that the drugs manufacturer, Sarepta Therapeutics, was trying to win approval based on a study involving only 12 patients without an adequate placebo control.

The advisory panel voted 7-3, with three abstentions, that the clinical data did not meet the FDA requirements for well-controlled studies necessary for approval. However, some of the panel members had trouble reconciling the often compelling patient testimony with the FDA legal requirements.

I was just basically torn between my mind and my heart, said Richard Hoffmann, a pharmacist who was the consumer representative on the committee and who abstained.

Dr. Bruce Ovbiagele, chairman of neurology at the Medical University of South Carolina, voted against approval but said, Based on all I heard, the drug definitely works, but the question was framed differently.

On another question of whether the drug could qualify for accelerated approval, a lower hurdle, the panel voted 7-6 against the drug.

The FDA, which does not have to follow the advice of its advisory panels, is scheduled to decide whether to approve eteplirsen by May 26.

The controversy over eteplirsen is perhaps the most vivid example of how patients and patient advocates are playing a growing role in the FDAs evaluation of drugs. This can result in intense pressure on the agency to approve drugs.

The muscular dystrophy community is particularly well organized and has lobbied the agency for years to approve the drug, including getting members of Congress to write letters to the agency.

Hundreds of patients and family members showed up for the meeting, including more than 40 parents who came from Britain and said they would move their families to the United States if eteplirsen was approved.

So many people were expected that the FDA had to change to a larger location, a hotel ballroom in Hyattsville, Md. Even that room was filled to capacity, including with some boys in wheelchairs.
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When it comes time for the San Francisco Film Society to pick its annual honorees, its all about the stars aligning  literally. The cinematic heavy hitters considered for the societys four big awards need to have a truly impressive body of work, have at least one foot still planted firmly in the world of filmmaking, and be available to show up in person during the San Francisco International Film Festival. Said SFFS Executive Director Noah Cowan, Were always looking for the right person at the right time.

The spring of 2016 was apparently the right time for the SFFS to recognize Oscar-winning actress Ellen Burstyn with the Peter J. Owens Award for Acting, one of four awards presented at the annual Film Society Awards Night on Monday. Burstyn arrived at the Herbst Pavilion at Fort Mason in a beaded tie-dyed kimono, comfortable shoes and palpable grace. When I asked the 83-year-old her secret to longevity, Burstyn replied, Eat well and exercise, follow your dreams and your passions, and dont drink too much.

Actress Marcia Gay Harden was thrilled when she was told that Burstyn had requested her to introduce the award. She is a goddess, swooned Harden. No less, no more. A goddess.

The two actresses posed for photos on the red carpet while word spread among the press that Beyonces sister had canceled her planned appearance at the last minute. Why she planned to show up in the first place is anyones guess, but Burstyn didnt seem too bent out of shape at the absence of Solange Knowles.

Comedian Stephen Fry was tasked with the honor of kicking off the evenings ceremony and dinner, announcing, What a pleasure to address the worst acoustical space in (unintelligible).

Over chilled pea soup and short ribs, attendees were treated to a well-produced and swiftly paced awards presentation. Newly ordained Zen priest Peter Coyote was presented with the George Gund III Award for the Craft of Cinema by his good friend writer Rebecca Solnit. I think there are many more worthy people than me, confessed Coyote of his award, but Im very flattered and very honored because this is my hometown.

Coyote, a writer and actor who now lives in Sebastopol, counts the San Francisco International Film Festival as one of his favorites. Its not as snooty as any of the festivals in L.A., he said. But its a little snootier than Mill Valley.

Talking to Coyote in person is very different than one might expect based on his movie roles or PBS narration work. The actor is surprisingly tall in an industry full of the surprisingly short. He wears a shiny gold earring, and he seamlessly transitions between his thoughts on tectonic plates and on kicking heroin.

Tom McCarthy, the writer-director of the Oscar-winning movie Spotlight, received the Societys Kanbar Award for Storytelling, having just arrived in the Bay Area on Sunday night, April 24, to begin preproduction on a Netflix series hes filming in Marin. I didnt realize I was giving a speech until the car ride over, he said.

When it came time to accept his award, McCarthy winged it by inviting everyone to his temporary Bay Area home for an after-party.

The Irving M. Levin Award for Directing was given to Mira Nair, who is in the midst of planning a temporary move to Berkeley to direct the musical version of her film Monsoon Wedding at Berkeley Rep. Im going to bring myself, my mom and my cook, Nair said of her upcoming move. Do you know of a good house?

Earlier in the week, Nair screened a portion of her soon-to-be-released film, Queen of Katwe, for festivalgoers  a group the director is particularly fond of. You can always count on the most passionate audience here, Nair gushed of San Francisco.

As the evening wound down, Awards Night attendees left Fort Mason noticeably inspired. Each of the nights four recipients paired joy with work ethic, passion with endurance. The contagious optimism was apparent in the Uber line. And if it wasnt contagious optimism, maybe it was the nights send-off from Coyote.

I wish you all peace, absolute enlightenment and a long life, said the actor, clutching his award. Thank you very much.

Beth Spotswood is a Bay Area freelance writer.
Former Citigroup head Sanford Sandy Weill and his wife, Joan, have given $185 million to UCSF  the single largest gift the university has received  to create an institute to accelerate research and the development of new therapies in neuroscience, including brain disorders from neurodegenerative diseases to psychiatric conditions.

The gift, formally announced late Monday, will create the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences and fund the construction of a 270,000-square-foot building at UCSFs Mission Bay campus that will serve as its headquarters. More immediately, it will allow UCSF to hire additional researchers and encourage collaboration across disciplines that study and treat conditions ranging from Alzheimers and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, to autism, schizophrenia and depression.

We have a chance here to break down the silos between all the different departments and really look holistically at the brain, said Weill, referring to the traditional separations in medicine between mental health and other neurological diseases. Our gift unites psychiatry with all the other neurosciences departments.

The donation, one of the largest in the country for the scientific field, helped raise the amount UCSF has received from philanthropy for neuroscience alone to more than $500 million since last April. About half of all donations UCSF has received during the period have been devoted to neuroscience, including a $177 million donation in November from billionaire Charles F. Chuck Feeney.

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UCSF has historically had very strong foundational building blocks across the breadth of neuroscience  neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry, and basic neuroscience, UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood said in a statement. The Weill Family Foundation and the Weills gift to establish the Weill Institute will enable us to fully integrate our program and allow us to think in a seamless way across the continuum of neuroscience.

Weill, 83, who splits his time between the East Coast and a home on 360 acres in Sonoma County since retiring from a 50-year career in banking, has long been involved in philanthropy with a strong focus on health. He and his wife were among the first to sign up in 2010 for the Giving Pledge, a campaign led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage the wealthiest individuals to dedicate the majority of their net worth to charitable giving.

Weill has given more than $1 billion to educational, medical, cultural and arts institutions over the past 40 years. Cornell University, Weills alma mater, renamed its medical school Weill Cornell Medical College after generous donations. Weill also serves as chairman of the executive council of UCSF Health, the universitys network of providers.

Philanthropy is not just about giving money, he said. Its about contributing your passion, your knowledge, the knowledge you have in managing something thats different than what a researcher or professor would have and blending those things together.

Search for treatments

Weill, whose mother died of Alzheimers disease and father suffered from depression, said he has long been interested in diseases that affect the brain and hopes to accelerate the path to new treatments.

In medical science over the last two decades, weve made tremendous progress in research in childrens diseases, great progress in cardiovascular diseases as well as cancer, Weill said. Yet it wasnt until recently that the brain was very, very hard to analyze because the only time people got to look at the brain was after people were dead. Now with new technologies and types of surgery, we really get to see a lot of whats happening in the brain.

Weill said he hopes UCSF will break ground on the new building in the second quarter of 2017, but it may take a couple of years to complete. The building is expected to cost about $316 million.

Labs and programs

The institute will house basic science labs, clinical programs and the new Global Brain Health Institute, a joint program between UCSF and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, that was established with Feeneys donation.

The clinical programs will focus on treating neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers and Huntingtons, using deep-brain stimulation to help movement disorders including Parkinsons and helping to restore and repair neurological function from stroke, epilepsy and injuries such as concussions. Clinics to treat sleep disorders, which are strongly associated with neurological and psychiatric conditions, as well as chronic pain and migraines, are also part of the plan.

Multiple stakeholders

Dr. Stephen Hauser, chairman of UCSFs neurology department and director of the new Weill Institute, said the institute will be a place where patients, treating physicians and basic science researchers all interact.

We now have the potential to understand with resolution we couldnt have imagined just a few years ago how these cells function and connect with one another to determine our behaviors, our traits as well as our diseases, Hauser said.

Hauser said activities such as universitywide initiatives to advance solutions in neuroscience and hiring wont wait for the new building.

The building is a home, but it by no means defines this institute or what we hope will happen, he said. The institute will connect with every part of every campus at UCSF, and it will begin immediately.

Victoria Colliver is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vcolliver@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @vcolliver

UCSFs philanthropic haul

Donors like Sanford Sandy Weill, Marc Benioff and Charles F. Chuck Feeney have given hundreds of millions of dollars to UCSF in the past decade. Neuroscience has been a special interest of donors, with $500 million contributed in the past 12 months. (Some donations are anonymous, and not all have been publicly disclosed.)

$185 million

Sanford and Joan Weill, 2016

For: neuroscience research

$177 million

Charles F. Feeney, 2015

For: Global Brain Health Institute

$150 million

Anonymous, 2007

For: cancer research and treatment

$100 million

Marc R. and Lynne Benioff, 2010

For: UCSF Childrens Hospital

$100 million

Marc R. and Lynne Benioff, 2014

For: UCSF Childrens Hospital and Childrens Hospital Oakland

$100 million

Charles F. Feeney, 2015

For: neuroscience

$50 million

Gordon and Betty Moore, 2014

For: UCSF Betty Irene Moore Womens Hospital

$50 million

Anonymous, 2015

For: mental health center

$48 million

Estate of Nina Ireland,

2011

For: pulmonary medicine research and care

$40 million

Ron and Gayle Conway,

2015

For: outpatient medical building

$30 million

Harriet Heyman and Michael Moritz, 2013

For: endowment for doctoral students in basic science

Sources: Chronicle of Philanthropy, UCSF, Chronicle research
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Frameline may be the worlds oldest LGBTQ film festival, but for its 40th anniversary, the hallowed San Francisco event is going with a decidedly youthful lineup for its opening-night, closing-night and centerpiece films.

When Frameline first began, the festival was considered an act of political and artistic courage, and that hasnt changed. The films we are showcasing this year are just as bold, says Frameline senior programmer Peter Stein, but the subject matter and the images reflect contemporary concerns.

On June 16, the festival gets under way with Kiki, an energetic look at LGBTQ youths of color who redefine their identities with their vibrant performances in the New York ballroom scene. Its a modern update of the seminal film Paris Is Burning.

The youth movement continues with the international centerpiece, Being 17, from renowned French director Andre Techine (Wild Reeds). The film delicately explores the animosity  and hidden passion  between two 17-year-old boys who live in the Pyrenees.

The festival closes June 26 with a film about gay men in their 30s: the world premiere of HBOs highly anticipated Looking, a full-length feature that will wrap up the cable series. In the film finale, a weekend wedding prompts Patrick (Jonathan Groff) to confront his habit of avoiding the hard work of making relationships succeed.

The U.S. centerpiece will be AWOL, about a tomboyish young woman and married mother who fall in love in rural Pennsylvania. Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four, about four lesbians who were unjustly accused of gang-raping a young girl, will serve as the documentary centerpiece.

Framelines 40th anniversary festival is actually a great time to look forward and not just back, Stein said. These five films alone cover a tremendous range of LGBTQ stories that show how far our narratives have come.

For more information, go to www.frameline.org.

David Lewis is a Bay Area freelance writer.

To view a trailer of Kiki, go to http://trailer.chanels.top/kiki-2016-movie-hd-trailer

To view photos from the Looking set, go to www.advocate.com/film/2015/10/27/11-pics-set-looking-movie
RALEIGH, N.C.  A federal judge on Monday upheld North Carolinas voter identification law, delivering a clear victory to Republican leaders in this state who defended it as a safeguard against fraud.

The judge, Thomas Schroeder of U.S. District Court in Winston-Salem, wrote near the end of his 485-page opinion that North Carolina has provided legitimate state interests for its voter ID requirement and electoral system.

North Carolinas voter identification law requires people to display one of six credentials, such as a drivers license or passport, before casting a ballot. Those who cannot may complete a reasonable impediment declaration and cast a provisional ballot.

Although critics said the voter identification standard was a cloaked effort to disenfranchise black and Hispanic voters, Schroeder dismissed such arguments. The U.S. Justice Department, the NAACP chapter in North Carolina and voters had challenged the law.

Plaintiffs contention that North Carolinas requirement is one of the strictest in the country ignores the reasonable impediment exception, Schroeder, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote. If North Carolina is an outlier, it is because it is one of only two states in the nation to accommodate voters who wish to vote in person but for whatever reason face an impediment to acquiring qualifying ID.

Critics of the law said that they would appeal the ruling.

The Legislature sought to disturb the levers of power in North Carolina, ensuring only a select few could participate in the democratic process, Penda Hair of the Advancement Project said in a statement. This fight is not over.
WASHINGTON  Twenty years after being busted for cocaine trafficking, Daryl Atkinson is the public face of the Justice Departments efforts to help convicted felons re-enter society.

Atkinson finished college and earned a law degree after spending 31/2 years behind bars for his drug crimes. Now, hes joined the Justice Department as its first Second Chance Fellow, helping develop a re-entry policy that the Obama administration sees as a vital component of its broader effort to reshape the criminal justice system and the handling of nonviolent drug offenders.

Atkinson, 45, is responsible for advising a federal re-entry council that represents more than 20 federal agencies and develops strategies for helping ex-convicts restart their lives. In working to remove common hurdles faced by felons, he says hes committed to identifying people who, like him, found success after prison.

The department, which is pushing for more reasonable sentences for nonviolent drug crimes, sees the work as especially important given that roughly 600,000 citizens leave state and federal prisons each year and often struggle to find education, housing and jobs.

Atkinson was caught selling cocaine, pleaded guilty to a state crime and was sentenced to 10 years, later cut short for good behavior.

Though he was determined to return to college, his criminal background barred him from receiving federal financial student aid, and his family pooled resources to help him afford his education. And when it came time to apply to law school, his criminal record kept him from being accepted at all but one  the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis.

Atkinson graduated in 2007 in the top third of his class and was the commencement speaker.

He said its important that the public pays attention to the issue to prevent hundreds of thousands of ex-convicts from sitting on the sidelines of society.

This isnt a blue-or-red problem, Atkinson said. This is an American problem that we need to wrap our head around and figure out.
The founding members of the VLCAC at the inauguration ceremony. (Photo: TH)





Lawyer Nguyen Van Hau, Chairman of the VLCAC and also Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Lawyers Association, said that the establishment of the center is to build a reliable and effective institution which aims to deal with disputes through convenient and prompt arbitration and guaranteeing lawful interests of disputing parties.

The VLCAC includes 58 arbitrators who are lawyers and specialists having professional qualifications and experience in dispute settlement.

In his speech, Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh highly hailed the establishment of the center. He stressed in the circumstance of international integration in depth and width, the inauguration of VLCAC plays a significant role in settling disputes among parties in equitable, transparent, convenient and effective ways, especially when Vietnam joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

The center is expected to create motive power for Vietnamese lawyers to participate into the field which is not new but poses numerous challenges./.
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The three GOP presidential candidates hoping to woo Bay Area and state Republicans this weekend should brace for local pushback  especially against one particular feisty candidate.

Donald Trump, along with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, will be at the California Republican Convention starting Friday. Trump's Friday lunchtime speech at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport in Burlingame is drawing the most controversy.

Thousands of protesters are jumping on the chance to demonstrate against the GOP frontrunner who wants to "Make America Great Again!" An anti-Trump Facebook event has attracted interest from over 10,000 people. Another Facebook event, "Turn Up on Trump," has attracted interest from more than 2,000.

Despite the online traction, no organization has stepped up in leading the demonstration outside the convention that runs Friday through the weekend.

A post from BlackOUT Collective, who set up the "Turn Up" event, said they would be part of a contingent with the Anti-Police Terrorism Project, Black Lives Matter Bay Area, and Black Youth Project 100. They said they support other groups protesting Trump, but "because there is a large mass of folks ready to hit the streets (on this page and on other pages) we do not approach this mass protest with the idea that one group will lead the direction or tone."

The California GOP posted on their website that the Trump kickoff lunch and a Cruz lunch banquet on Saturday are sold out. But a Friday night dinner with Kasich is still available.

Tickets for the Trump lunch were listed at $100 before selling out earlier this month.
According to the Vietnamese Ministry, the countrys agro-forestry-fisheries exports to the US still face a number of difficulties and unfair treatment. The procedures to grant an export licence for Vietnamese fruit to the market are complicated, costly and time-consuming. So far, only four kinds of Vietnamese fruit, namely dragon fruit, rambutan, longan, and lychee are licensed to enter the US, but with high export costs.

Participants at the talks. (Photo: CPV)

Vietnam has sent a draft report on the probable risk assessment (PRA) of mango and star apple to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and proposed APHIS hand over the inspection of fruit irradiation to the Vietnamese ministrys Plant Protection Department. Vietnam has effectively coordinated with the US in this field since 2008.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are imposing the zero maximum residue limits (MRL) on some unregistered drugs in the US but are allowed to be used in other countries. This has caused difficulties for Vietnamese exporters. On the other hand, Vietnamese farm produce has to follow regulations on food safety from separate US states.

Regarding seafood, Vietnamese shrimp and tra fish exported to the US last year received unfair treatment and continuously experienced anti-dumping and anti-subsidy lawsuits, which significantly affected the two countries trade ties as well as the jobs and incomes of millions of Vietnamese farmers and businesses.

The USDA has ruled the establishment of an inspection program for Siluriformes fish, including Vietnamese tra and basa fish, which came into effect from March 1st, 2016. Accordingly, the export countries have a transitional period of 18 months (until August 31st, 2017) to adjust their production systems in line with the new regulations of the US.

The implementation of the program within 18 months is difficult for Vietnam due to the countrys significant difference in production conditions and level of development from the US. This might interrupt trade activities and affect millions of Vietnamese farmers and exporters. Therefore, Vietnam proposed the US extend the time limit for the country to meet the programs regulations.

The Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development hopes to strengthen cooperation with the US in smart agriculture to cope with climate change, Minister Phat said, adding that the US is expected to help the Southeast Asian country enhance capacity in the fields of biological and hi-tech agriculture, food hygiene and safety, and flora and fauna inspection.

He asked the US to support Vietnam in evaluating aquatic resources and realising commitments in the environment program under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement - to which both nations are members.

Currently, the US is the second most important farm produce market of Vietnam, after China, with an export turnover of USD5.69 billion and imports of USD1.4 billion in 2015.

In the first quarter of 2016, Vietnam earned over USD1.3 billion from selling agro-forestry-fisheries products to the US, mainly wood and timber products, seafood, cashew nuts, coffee and pepper. Vietnam also imported nearly USD298 million worth of goods from the market.

Vietnams agro-forestry-fisheries exports to the US recorded an annual growth of almost 20 percent over the past three years, with wood and timber products and seafood being key staples./.
A man and woman behind a 14-year East Bay sex trafficking ring that spanned from California to Miami, Cleveland and New York were indicted last week, authorities announced Monday.

James Vernon Joseph Jr. and Avisa Babaei Lavassani were indicted April 18 on multiple counts of human trafficking, kidnap for rape, kidnap for extortion, and rape. Their operation was centered in San Ramon and Danville, but authorities said it spanned several states and brought in tens of thousands of dollars a week.
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A sailor stuck in a damaged boat 30 miles off of a San Mateo County state park was rescued by San Francisco Coast Guard crews Monday morning, officials said.

A distress alert came in around 7 a.m., and an aircrew at the San Francisco station lifted off about half an hour later. It took 40 minutes to find the boat, which officials said was 30 miles off Ano Nuevo State Park.
Shamima and Golam Rabbi found prosperity when they settled in San Jose more than 30 years ago after emigrating from Bangladesh, and they sought to help others follow in their success  even allowing relatives to stay with them as a first step in the journey to the United States.

This week, many of those family members were horrified to learn that the couple had been found slain inside their Evergreen neighborhood home Sunday afternoon.

Its the most shocking news in my life, the couples 37-year-old nephew, Golam Mustakim, said Tuesday. I was very close to them with all my heart. I have no words to explain how I am feeling. I want to believe they are still alive.

Police have released few details about the killings of 57-year-old Shamima Rabbi and her 59-year-old husband, including a possible motive. But they did say Tuesday night that they believe the double slaying was was not a random act of violence and that the killer or killers were familiar to the family.

Investigators have talked to the couples 16-year-old son, but have not been able to find the Rabbis 22-year-old son, police said in a statement. Detectives are attempting to locate him for questioning, the statement said. At this time he is not considered a suspect but may have information regarding this incident.

Police did not name the older son.

The couple had been shot at least one time in their home at 3006 Lucas Court before family members found their bodies around 1:45 p.m. Sunday, said Sgt. Enrique Garcia, a San Jose police spokesman. It was not clear how long they had been dead.

I want the killer to be found, Mustakim said. I want to know why it was necessary to kill them like that.

Golam Rabbi worked as a project manager with an electronics company in Milpitas before retiring two years ago and had recently been working as a manager at a public storage company. Shamima Rabbi was an accountant who did contract work.

Mustakim and his family emigrated from Bangladesh in 2000. Upon arriving in the United States, they stayed with the Rabbis in their four-bedroom home.

They not only brought us here, they also brought us food and shelter  at least until we found our means to survive, Mustakim said. The Rabbis, he said, displayed this same kindness to other families in the United States.

Mustakim has since moved to Southern California. He said several of his aunts, uncles and cousins had moved to the U.S. with support and guidance from the Rabbis.

He said he last saw the couple over the summer when he stayed at the Lucas Court home for about a week around the time of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday and feast marking the end of Ramadan.

The Rabbis were active members of the Evergreen Islamic Center less than 2 miles from their home, where they prayed, celebrated holidays and were pitching in on an addition to the mosque, said a family friend, Hasan Rahim.

I cannot imagine anyone more gentle and humble, he said. Im still trying to understand the tragic and violent end to the kind of life he led.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
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Bad news dog lovers: science is here again, ready to ruin to your day.

You know all those doting hugs and cuddles you give to your dog every day? Apparently, your pup hates that. A lot.

In an article published earlier this month in Psychology Today, Dr. Stanley Coren, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia who frequently writes about canine behaviors, argues that dogs almost always exhibit cues of discomfort or stress when they are being hugged or embraced by humans.

Coren examined 250 random photographs of people (both adults and children) hugging dogs, taking note of the animal's appearance and expression in each picture. As he says, in a large majority of the photos, the animals' body language doesn't lie: they do not like being hugged. In most pictures, the dogs show signs like eye contact avoidance or lowered ears, generally suggesting they are feeling stressed out by the affection. He writes:

In all, 81.6% of the photographs researchers scored showed dogs who were giving off at least one sign of discomfort, stress, or anxiety. Only 7.6% of the photographs could rate as showing dogs that were comfortable with being hugged. The remaining 10.8% of the dogs either were showing neutral or ambiguous responses to this form of physical contact.

Now, it is possible that your dog is one of the exceptions to this rule, but generally speaking, Coren advises that rather than smothering your pup in hugs and kisses, you show your appreciation with a little playtime or a treat.

Alyssa Pereira is a pop culture writer for SFGATE. Follow her here on Twitter.




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A group of Democratic state lawmakers want to tackle the California housing crisis using money from this year's state budget surplus.

Bay Area Assembly Democrats David Chiu of San Francisco and Tony Thurmond of Richmond unveiled the $1.3 billion plan at a news conference in Sacramento on Monday.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/Associated Press

 Purely as an act of political mischief, this Republican has toyed with the idea of voting in June for Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana, in the race to fill U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxers seat. Under Californias top two primary rules, two Democrats could face each other in November. Attorney General Kamala Harris, the Democratic front-runner, leans way too far left. Given Harris ties to national party biggies, Id rather see the gaffe-prone Sanchez win the seat, as a Sanchez win would deprive Harris of a spot on a not-too-distant national ticket. Bonus points: Sanchez would be easier than Harris to take out in six years.

After watching Mondays Senate debate at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, I no longer feel so frisky. On the issues, Harris and Sanchez are too alike. Both support free community college tuition. Both denounce Washington for deporting undocumented immigrants. They are different, however, when it comes to style. Sanchez too frequently speaks about herself, too frequently makes issues about herself  by citing her work on the House Homeland Security Committee, with scant mention of the many hearings she skipped  and too infrequently gets to the point. In landing this Democratic opponent, once again Harris is the most lucky politician in California.
SACRAMENTO  Saying the state cant ignore its affordable housing crisis, Democratic lawmakers on Monday announced a statewide proposal to spend more than $1.3 billion to build more units, help low-income residents buy homes and address homelessness.

The money would come from unanticipated revenue the state has collected this fiscal year that Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed putting toward paying down debt and building reserves.

The effort is being led by Bay Area Assembly Democrats David Chiu of San Francisco and Tony Thurmond of Richmond, who held a news conference at the Capitol on Monday along with other lawmakers who support the measure. A dozen Assembly members signed a letter urging support for the proposal, which will be taken up during budget negotiations ahead of a June 15 deadline to pass a budget.

San Francisco, the Bay Area and California are in the midst of the worst affordability crisis that weve seen, Chiu said. Since the great recession, weve cut close to $2 billion a year the state used to invest in affordable housing when redevelopment agencies were eliminated and housing bond monies dried up.

Browns office declined to comment on the proposal.

The plan calls for:

$500 million in tax credits for companies that build, buy or fix multifamily rental housing that serves low-income families.

$200 million for the CalHome Program, which awards money to local governments and nonprofits that help low-income people become or remain homeowners.

$200 million for local governments to help people buy or rent homes near their workplace in high-cost cities.

$75 million to help farmworkers and their families with affordable housing.

$60 million in tax credits for homeowners to pay for seismic retrofits.

$260 million to build or buy rental housing for homeless people and provide rental assistance.

$40 million for shelters and housing assistance programs for homeless people.

Priced out

Weve known for some time that we would need 150,000 new homes to keep pace with our population growth in California. Clearly, that hasnt happened, Thurmond said. Market forces have expanded at such a high rate that people literally cannot afford to live where they work, and some folks cant afford to live in any community at all.

Lawmakers said the median rent in California has increased by more than 20 percent since 2008 at a time when median incomes dropped 8 percent. The rate of homeownership in the state has dropped to 54 percent, a record low, which lawmakers said is the result of skyrocketing housing prices.

Home prices in the Bay Area are now higher than before the recession, according to data by the State Board of Equalization. San Francisco had the states highest median price for a single-family detached home: $1.25 million in 2015. The state median price was $473,995.

Renting is no easier in some parts of the state, particularly in the Bay Area, where prices have also soared.

What we have found is that people cant rent and they cant own, Thurmond said. This proposal balances the needs of renters programs and some ownership.

Competing interests

The proposal, however, is likely to have competition from other Democratic plans that call for funding for the states transportation needs and funds to expand subsidized child care.

The housing proposal was criticized by some Republicans, who said the state should be making it easier for people to create housing by eliminating complex requirements that delay new building.

Assemblyman Marc Steinorth, R-Rancho Cucamonga (San Bernardino County), said that government should be involved in helping solve homelessness in the state by providing shelter and funding transitional housing, but that the Democratic proposal goes too far by assuming one-time money is the answer to the states lack of affordable housing.

The $1.3 billion as proposed is putting together a whole series of government programs as opposed to eliminating government red tape and bureaucracy, Steinorth said. Communities I represent want to build homes. They have many challenges and hurdles and impediments in front of them. We need to roll back Sacramentos impact on them, not say come to Sacramento for us to give you more money.

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez
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Wildlife advocates scored a major victory Tuesday when Mendocino County agreed to terminate its contract with the federal agency that helps ranchers kill predators such as mountain lions and coyotes that feast on livestock.

Environmental groups have long crusaded against what they characterize as indiscriminate killing of wildlife by an agency whose philosophy amounts to the only good predator is a dead predator. The decision by Mendocino County supervisors to sever ties with the division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture marks a rare instance of a California county opting to consider nonlethal methods of carnivore control.

Environmentalists had accused the county of violating the California Environmental Quality Act by hiring the Agriculture Department division known as Wildlife Services. Six environmental and animal protection groups claimed in a lawsuit that the county failed to consider nonlethal methods of animal control and should have done an environmental study on the effect that killing predators would have on the ecosystem before signing a contract with Wildlife Services.

Were thrilled, said Jessica Blome, senior staff attorney for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, one of the plaintiffs in the case. This is the first lawsuit in the country that attacks Wildlife Services based on its relationships with local governments.

Todd Smith of Oaklands Thomas Law Group, which represented Mendocino County, said the Board of Supervisors had agreed to set aside the contract while conducting an environmental study.

The county is happy to undertake this analysis so the members of this community can understand the benefits and the impacts associated with the wildlife management program, Smith said. The program has been effective for almost 30 years, so the county was a little surprised (by the lawsuit). That said, the county wants to comply with the law. In the end, the analysis will drive what the program looks like in the future.

The issue has exacerbated tensions between ranchers and conservationists. Livestock owners in the far northern part of the state have threatened to use the three Ss  shoot, shovel and shut up  when confronted with environmentalists efforts to protect wolves, coyotes and other vermin.

Ranchers concerns

There are as many as 700,000 coyotes in the state, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Mountain lions are also abundant, and both predators kill a lot of livestock, which are commodities that contribute to the state and local economy, said the California Cattlemens Association.

The recent discovery of a wolf pack in Siskiyou County has turned the issue of predator control into a major area of concern among ranchers.

The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which oversees the wildlife management program, told The Chronicle last year that agency trappers use nonlethal techniques when appropriate.

Some 47,000 animals were nevertheless killed by Wildlife Services trappers in California in 2014, while 2.7 million animals were done away with nationwide, including wolves, coyotes, bears, mountain lions, beavers, foxes and other animals deemed pests, federal records show.

In Mendocino County, federal wildlife specialists working under a $144,000 contract used traps, snares, poison and other devices to kill hundreds of coyotes, mountain lions, bears, bobcats and other wildlife last year, according to the plaintiffs in the case.

Paul Trouette, president of the nonprofit Mendocino County Blacktail Deer Association and a former county Fish and Game commissioner, said guardian dogs, fencing and other nonlethal methods arent always appropriate in the county because of the rugged terrain. Many predators climb fences, he said, and coyotes and cougars have been known to run sheep and other prey into them for easy kills.

I think we have a perfect program right now. These guys who make a living cant be out there shaking noisemakers all night to scare away predators, Trouette said.

He argued that Wildlife Services trappers are the best available experts on predation, the spread of wildlife diseases and protection of livestock.

Who is going to handle all the sick animals and the rabies or other diseases and provide technical assistance to ranchers if they get rid of the professionals? he asked. The county doesnt have any programs set up for that. Its going to be a nightmare.

Environmentalists skeptical

Wildlife advocates say the current system is both immoral and unnecessary.

What were really talking about is the legitimacy of our federal government using American tax dollars to kill wildlife and ecologically valuable predators in huge numbers every year to benefit a tiny minority of ranchers and the agricultural industry, said Camilla Fox, executive director of Project Coyote, a wildlife advocacy organization that was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Thats the crux of this case.

The county must now complete an environmental report that evaluates nonlethal predator control methods before it can enter into a contract with Wildlife Services in the future. Blome said the settlement could serve as a precedent for wildlife management programs in California and around the country.

Its a monumental achievement that we plan to use as a model, she said. Well go county by county if we have to, to force these counties to evaluate whether lethal control is necessary.

Wildlife advocates are pushing for government support for a variety of nonlethal management techniques, including the use of guardian dogs, fencing, hazing of carnivores using lighting and flag techniques, night corrals and the placing of sheep in lambing sheds at night.

Fox cited research suggesting ways in which the killing of native predators harms the ecosystem. Coyotes, for instance, provide poison-free rodent control, while mountain lions can keep populations of other carnivores down.

In addition, wildlife advocates said, killing predators can make things worse  such as when trappers kill an alpha pair of coyotes. That ruins the pack structure, leaving coyote pups and young adults on their own. The result is a lot of coyotes that dont have hunting skills going after the easiest prey they can find, which is livestock.

There is an example in the Bay Area of how a kill-as-a-last-resort predator control program can work. In Marin County, a nonlethal control program was adopted in 2000. It essentially used the money once paid to federal trappers to help ranchers build fences, night corrals and lambing sheds and purchase guardian dogs.

Financial assistance key

At the time, coyotes were killing hundreds of lambs and ewes every year in Marin County. Most sheep ranchers in Marin purchased guardian dogs, which naturally bond with sheep and goats and aggressively protect them. Ranchers credit the dogs with reducing predation.

County financial assistance was crucial, according to many ranchers, given that a guard dog can cost $1,000 or more. The program also helped pay for fences, electrification, noisemakers, lights and motion sensors  all at one-third the cost of predator control under the Wildlife Services program, according to county agricultural officials.

Its very easy to convince people that nonlethal predator control works when you look at the research that has been done, Blome said. Without exception, every rancher that has converted to nonlethal predator control is an advocate of it.

Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimrite
PROVO, Utah  Before she could move into the dorms at Brigham Young University or sign up for freshman classes, Brooke first had to sign the colleges honor code.

Part moral compass and part contract, the honor code is a cornerstone of life for the nearly 30,000 students at the Mormon-run university. It points students, faculty and staff members toward moral virtues encompassed in the gospel of Jesus Christ, prizing honesty, chastity and virtue. It requires modest dress on campus and prohibits drinking, drug use, same-sex intimacy, indecency and sexual misconduct.
DHAKA, Bangladesh  An al Qaeda affiliate claimed responsibility Tuesday for the killings of a gay-rights activist and his friend in the Bangladeshi capital.

Ansar al-Islam, a banned militant group and the Bangladeshi branch of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, posted Twitter messages claiming responsibility, saying the men were working day and night to promote homosexuality ... with the help of their masters, the U.S. crusaders and its Indian allies.
1 Refugee crisis: Austria reimposed controls Monday on its border with Hungary, with police checking vehicles at the main crossings and soldiers patrolling other stretches of the border. Police say the controls are meant to ensure that no one crosses illegally and to prevent the smuggling of migrants into Austria and other EU nations. They have reported more such smuggling attempts into Austria since countries along the Balkan migration route closed their borders to migrants earlier this year.

2 Poland politics: Three former Polish presidents and other prominent former leaders accused the right-wing government Monday of harming the countrys democracy and its international standing. They also urged lawmakers and other politicians to disregard what they call the draconian new legislation the government is proposing. The appeal on the front page of the Gazeta Wyborcza daily added to the current political conflict in Poland. It was signed by former Presidents Lech Walesa, Aleksander Kwasniewski and Bronislaw Komorowski. Prime Minister Beata Szydlo reacted by saying that victorious fall elections have given her government the mandate to introduce sweeping reforms.
JUBA, South Sudan  South Sudans rebel leader Riek Machar returned to the capital Juba Tuesday to become vice president and try to end the civil war that in 21/2 years has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 2 million from their homes.

After landing at Juba International Airport, where doves were released and a welcoming crowd ululated, Machar briefly addressed the press before driving to the presidential palace to be sworn in as first vice president to President Salva Kiir, according to a peace deal signed eight months ago under intense international pressure. Machar flew from Gambella, Ethiopia, just across the border from his rebel headquarters in South Sudan.
Parental Incarcerations Devastate Kids

A new report from the Annie E Casey Foundation states more than 5 million children in the United States have had a parent incarcerated at some point in their lives,

That's 10 percent of New Mexico's child population, higher than the national average of 7 percent. The report outlines some possible steps that states can take to

on children.

Smooth Re-Entry

Attorney General Loretta Lynch is urging the nation's governors to make it easier for convicted felons to

, part of a broader plan to help smooth the path for state and federal inmates who are preparing to re-enter society.

Inmate Voting Rights Reinstated

Meanwhile, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has signed an executive order that

, parole or probation. He said the order would help undo Virginia's long history of trying to prevent African-Americans from fully participating in democracy.

New Mexico Helps Vets with PTSD

Several states, including New Mexico, are stepping in to

brought on by their military service.

Pumping Up

It looks like Chevron Corp. plans to invest more into its drilling operations in New Mexico and

in the Permian Basin by 2020.

Intel Benefitted from Subsidies in New Mexico

Journalist Joey Peters did a little digging and found that Intel has enjoyed at least

for its facility in Rio Rancho over the years, but that hasnt stopped the company from reducing staff in New Mexico.

Temp Jobs on the Line

Daniel J Chacon at the New Mexican reports that

still dont know if their jobs will be cut from the City of Santa Fes budget.

Furloughs and Layoffs Possible in Bernalillo County

Bernalillo County is also facing

, and now Dan McKay reports that "commissioners will confront an unappealing menu of potential tax increases, service cuts" and employee furloughs and layoffs.

OKeeffe Painting Expected to Draw Big Bucks

If youre not facing job displacement and are a big fan of

, youll want to be in New York in mid-May. Her

Lake George Reflection

is going to auction. Starting bids are expected to be close to $12 million.

Santa Fe Reporter
The government is pledging roading projects to ease congestion and improve freight links for Tauranga worth $520 million over the next decade.

The largest project, starting construction in 2018, will be the $286 million Tauranga Northern Link, which will create a four-lane 6.8 kilometre shortcut between State Highway 2 to the Highway 29 toll road linking approaches to Tauranga with the main route from the coastal port city to Hamilton. Another $85 million of safety improvements will also commence between Te Puna and Waihi.

Still 10 years away, but earmarked for up to $150 million of spending in the New Zealand Transport Agency's budget, is a project to extend the northern link between Te Puna and Omokoroa.

"A business case for extending the TNL from Te Puna to Omokoroa is expected to be completed toward the middle of next decade," said Transport Minister Simon Bridges in a statement.

Once complete, the first stage of the TNL would reduce traffic through the busy townships of Bethlehem and Te Puna, provide a better commute into the city, and support the Western Bays many industries."

We know that transport is an enabler of economic activity so we need to continue unlocking key congestion points to get people and freight moving efficiently around the country, Bridges said.

The safety improvement work, which will start this year, will target high-risk areas on SH2 between Waihi and Te Puna, including median and side barriers, and intersection improvements.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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Oaktree Capital, the US hedge fund that owns MediaWorks Investments, has imposed restrictions on spending or liabilities the media company's executives can incur without recourse to the board.

The MediaWorks constitution sets a $2 million annual limit on any new investment, liabilities, or litigation by chief executive Mark Weldon and his team that hasn't been approved by directors.

The constitution, prepared with the help of law firm MinterEllisonRuddWatts, replaces the version from 2013 when the media company's lenders seized control and pushed out former owner Ironbridge Capital.

Tokyo Opportunities BV, the Oaktree vehicle used to house its MediaWorks stake, bought out minority shareholdings from Westpac New Zealand, Royal Bank of Scotland, TPG Capital and Bain Capital last year. Oaktree became a creditor of the free-to-air broadcaster in 2012 after buying $125 million of the group's outstanding loans at a reported discount of 50 percent.

Oaktree appears to be drip feeding MediaWorks to ensure it can meet debt payments, based on Companies Office filings which show it was issued with 17.08 million shares on Dec. 24, the same number as the $17.08 million of debt it had listed as a current liability in its financial statements for the September 2014 year, the last accounts it has filed. That was part of a fully-drawn $90 million debt facility that runs until 2018. It also had a $20 million working capital facility.

More recently Oaktree appears to have pumped in a further $10 million, via the issue of 10 million shares on March 4.

The new constitution has a section on reserved matters, a reference to activities that must be ratified by the board. They include any material change in the nature or scope of the business; any acquisition or asset sale other than in the ordinary course of business; any new business plan or departure from current business involving non-budgeted or re-allocated spending in a 12 month period exceeding $2 million.

Also a reserved matter is litigation or other proceedings that might involve in excess of $2 million including costs.

The company appointed former NZX boss Mark Weldon as chief executive in 2014 and among his changes has been the merger of the company's TV, radio and digital operations into a single entity, Newshub, which launched on Feb. 1 "with a strong emphasis on digital, servicing web, mobile devices and social media."

BusinessDesk has approached Mediaworks but were advised Chairman Rod McGeoch wouldn't be immediately available for comment.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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Trade Minister Todd McClay says he sees no reason why big pharmaceutical firms would stop supplying new medicines in New Zealand as they have always done, despite threats from lobby group Medicines New Zealand over the governments stance on intellectual property protections under the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

Medicines New Zealand chair Heather Roy, a former consumer affairs minister, has indicated drug companies may not bother to register drugs here unless the government makes more concessions on the TPP.

The threat comes ahead of a one-man delegation from the US Trade Representatives Office arriving in New Zealand reportedly to talk about implementation of the agreement which requires the US to sign to go ahead.

Some drug companies were already not making products available in New Zealand if they didnt get Pharmac funding because the private market was so small, though Roy couldnt say how many had done so.

The governments stance on TPP IP protection would mean that more companies would consider doing that, which is not helpful for clinicians wanting to prescribe those medicines or for patients who would have no access to them in New Zealand and would have to seek alternatives offshore, she said.

Medicines NZs recent submission to Parliaments Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee on the TPP medicines clauses said dialogue with government officials indicated New Zealand is taking a narrow interpretation on IP matters and medicines procurement.

The governments proposed two-year maximum limit for pharmaceutical patent term extension, including an unwillingness to take into account delays experienced by the patentee in carrying out necessary studies and clinical trials, is unacceptable and not in line with other TPP signatory countries perspectives or positions, the submission said.

The other key issue is an increase from five to eight years in the data exclusivity period for biologics, which include many new and expensive medicines such as the cancer drug Keytruda. Data exclusivity refers to protecting clinical trial data submitted to regulatory agencies from use by competitors and is a different type of monopoly protection to patents.

It was a key battle in the TPP negotiations with the US wanting 12 years and New Zealand wanting to maintain five years. The final wording of the TPP text is fairly ambiguous as it contains two options around biologics, one stating at least eight years' protection of clinical trial data and another saying at least five years' protection along with other measures to deliver a comparable outcome in-market.

Medicines NZ claims the government is taking an extremely liberal interpretation that effectively would mean for biologics it doesnt represent an eight-year marketing protection period, only five-year withother measures and market circumstances being proposed to reach an eight-year point."

This is an extremely liberal interpretation of what actually constitutes robust data protection, Medicines NZ said, and would effectively mean the status quo in New Zealand.

McClay reiterated in an emailed statement that TPP is not up for renegotiation.

He said all parties had agreed to keep in touch during their ratification processes, so it was not unusual that the US would send someone to New Zealand.

It is normal for countries to take an interest in how other countries bring treaty obligations into effect. Any meetings would be at official level, not ministerial, he said. "I see no reason drug companies would not continue to register their medicines in New Zealand as they've always done."

He said discussion with the US, led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, is likely to focus on information about process and timelines for both countries ratification.

New Zealand has been clear how it will meet the obligations under TPP, including in the National Interest Analysis,  he said. We are equally interested in how the US is implementing the obligations in TPP that will assist New Zealand exporters.

McClay would also hold ratification discussions with a number of TPP countries while in Peru for APEC next month.

TPP critic Jane Kelsey said last week that the visiting representative from the US Trade Representatives Office is trying to fix problems that mean the deal doesnt have support in Congress.

US Trade Representative Michael Froman this month said intellectual property was a major point of discussion with other governments, making particular mention of New Zealands proposed legislation on patent term extensions.

Kelsey said she was more concerned about pressure to change the protection for biologics, given the Republican chair of the Senate Finance Committee Orin Hatch, who decides if and when the TPP implementing legislation proceeds, has hardened his stance saying eight years is not enough and he now wants 12 years. Froman has said the Obama administration was still developing ideas for how to resolve the Republicans complaints that the TPPs required market exclusivity period for biologic drugs was too short.

Kelsey said she strongly suspects any required fixes from the US would involve administrative measures in New Zealand rather than being included in TPP legislation.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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New Zealand would need data on the activity and influence of foreign property investors before committing to the risks and costs associated with a selective land tax, says Bob Buckle, the dean of commerce at Victoria Business School who chaired the Tax Working Group.

He was commenting on Prime Minister John Key's suggestion that he would consider a land tax if data due in the next few weeks shows foreign buyers are distorting or inflaming the property market. The government will have accumulated almost seven months of figures under changes to property tax rules last September that included a requirement for overseas investors to furnish a New Zealand tax number.

The Tax Working Group's January 2010 report, A Tax System for New Zealand's Future, considered a land tax and a capital gains tax among options to broaden the tax base, rather than a measure targeting one group of investors, and found there were risks with either option.

"History has shown that with a land tax various groups were awarded exemptions and the tax base was gradually eroded," Buckle said. "There's always challenges in applying a tax selectively." They include identifying those that the tax is intended to influence and administration costs.

There was also the question, as yet unanswered, about "the materiality of foreign buyers - what influence are they having and does it warrant setting up the infrastructure," he said.

The central bank introduced Auckland-specific lending restrictions covering loan-to-value ratios in November last year while the government's more stringent enforcement of taxing speculators' capital gains began in October, moves aimed at countering the impact of record inbound migration and a supply shortage of housing in the city that's driven up prices. The Auckland market has shown signs that it is heating up again, based on the latest Real Estate Institute data, which showed the median house price in the city reached $820,00 in March, up 14 percent from a year earlier and the first time it had broken above $800,000.

As a measure to broaden the tax base, a land tax had some merits, the working group's 2010 paper said. It would be an efficient tax in not imposing distortions of economic behaviour, provided it was applied at a single rate, and would generate a large amount of revenue off a low rate, given the nation's $450 billion to $480 billion of property assets at the time. Inland Revenue could also access existing land and property value data used by local authorities to levy rates.

But such a tax would also be expected to cause "an initial fall in the value of land", could push indebted investors into negative net equity, and could result in more than one outcome in terms of rental properties, the report said. Fallout from the Auckland market was increasingly driving up demand in other regions, the data showed.

"The one area which we as a group were uncertain on as a base-broadening measure was a capital gains tax or land tax," Buckle said. "There are good reasons to be cautious."

Andrew King, executive director of the New Zealand Property Investors Federation, said he agreed with Buckle that more concrete information was needed on the influence of foreign buyers.

"There's a lot of anecdotal evidence and people in the media saying that foreign buyers are a problem in pushing up house prices," King said. "But the housing market is very complicated and it's so important you don't make decisions on what you think is happening."

"Of course if there's money being laundered and things like that happening then we need to deal with it" but more broadly the government needed to take care it didn't attempt a policy response to temporary factors in the market. For example, he said, commentators point to record net migration, of which Kiwis returning home was a part, but that situation in itself could turn very quickly.

There were also race-based assumptions being made, such as property auctions in Auckland being dominated by Chinese investors, when such people could be New Zealand citizens.

"There's an awful lot of Chinese people moving to Auckland - if you allow them to come to this country, it's fair enough they can buy a home here," King said.

Investors as a group also drove demand for rental properties, where New Zealand faced "a real shortage" and it was important any tax targeted at foreigners didn't have the effect of choking the supply of such properties, he said.

Some market analysts tended to liken the property market to the stock market, driven by speculative investors, but housing was much less volatile as an asset class, he said.

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SeaDragon missed its annual earnings guidance as a downturn in sales pushed down prices of Omega-2 oil and says the final cost of its Omega-3 refinery will be more than previously expected.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation in the 12 months ended March 31 were "lower than previously indicated to the market," the Nelson-based fish oil refiner said in a statement. SeaDragon, which had previously forecast annual earnings of $144,000, will publish its audited results next month.

"The Omega-2 market has proved to be challenging in the last few months of the financial year, with SeaDragon experiencing an extension in the sales cycle due to what we believe is a short-term softening in demand which has resulted in downward pressure on prices," the company said. "As a result, Omega-2 inventory levels are higher than usual at year end, resulting in reduced cash reserves."

At the same time, SeaDragon said it will finalise the cost of its Omega-3 refinery when it announces its annual earnings. The company increased the likely cost to $10.6 million from a previous estimate of $9.15 million to $9.55 million, subject to negotiation with suppliers and the capitalisation some expense items.

The ballooning cost of SeaDragon's refinery prompted the company to raise $10 million after the project was delayed and went over budget. That capital raise introduced NZX-listed health products firm Comvita as a cornerstone investor in SeaDragon.

The company said it's still searching for a new chief executive after Ross Keeley's departure last year, and interim boss Rich Alderton will continue in that role.

The shares were unchanged at 1.4 cents, the same level they started the year at.

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First Steps - A Sharemarket Guide for New Zealand Investors

Two of the basic goals of the ShareChat website are to inform and educate. This means giving timely information to seasoned share traders as well as helping those who have never owned a share before.

Our First Steps educational series takes would-be investors on a sharemarket journey, explaining in simple terms such things as the difference between private and public companies, why the sharemarket exists, and how people can begin to invest in shares.

The knowledge that is gained through reading the First Steps series will give you a strong overview of financial markets and will also point you in the right direction to learn even more.

By taking the time to read each of the First Steps articles you will help build a solid foundation to begin making informed investment decisions.

'First Steps' Articles:

Step One - From Private to Public

Understanding how the market works from the ground up is essential knowledge for all types of investors. This article looks at the process involved in taking a private company, and listing it on the stock exchange. It also explains how shares are offered.



Step Two - History of the Modern Day Stock Market

The world's stock markets have an interesting history. This article outlines the origins of the modern day markets, and discusses the differences between how each market works.



Step Three - The Local Markets

This article takes a look at the practical workings of the New Zealand and Australian stock exchanges and explains some of the opportunities available to the individual investor.



Step Four - Planning an Investment Strategy

Have you ever wondered why some people appear to be good investors while others seem to always lose money in the market? It's a question asked by many investors - both those who are new to buying shares and those who have been investing for some time.



Step Five - Short-term Trading for Profit

The most important characteristic of short-term trading is that you are buying a share with the exclusive intention to profit almost immediately. Short-term trading requires discipline and ongoing analysis to know when to buy and when to sell.



Step Six - In for the Long-term?

Long-term investment is the most widely accepted and practised method of share investment for New Zealanders and Australians. Unfortunately, the same long-term investment strategies are also deeply misunderstood and often incorrectly applied.



Step Seven - Looking for a Bargain

Buying shares because they are cheap can be a dangerous investment strategy. People love a bargain and too often this can lead novice investors to buy a share they consider cheap, only to see the price drop even further.



Step Eight - Hands-off Investing

Giving responsibility for your share investments to someone else can seem like a good idea. Hands-off investing through funds can be less labour intensive, but is it possible to make good returns in the market without having to make any effort?



Step Nine -Trading the Plan

After becoming familiar with the investment plans, it's time to move onto the next step - trading that plan. This article shows how to apply some of the concepts discussed in previous steps for a short-term trade.

Step Ten - Settling in for the Long-term

Fundamental analysts tend to separate companies into two distinct groups. To be considered as a potential investment, companies must be either showing potential for growth or currently undervalue

Go Learn Shares CD-ROM
South Carolina Air Force Association hosts annual awards luncheon

The South Carolina Air Force Association recognized the states annual award winners at a luncheon April 23, at the Carolina Skies Club and Conference Center, here.



The competition was held between units and individuals from South Carolina Air Force Bases as well as individuals from the states Civil Air Patrol, Air Force ROTC and Junior ROTC units.



The luncheon gave members and non-members alike the opportunity to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the AFA, which predates the U.S. Air Force and is partially responsible for the branchs separation from the U.S. Army in 1947.



Our AFA exists to advocate, educate and support, said Linda Sturgeon, South Carolina AFA state president. Today, as when our association was formed, it is very important for every one of us to inform the public and generate public support for our Air Force, a strong national defense, and the worlds best-equipped and most well-trained Airmen.



The following individuals assigned to Shaw were recognized at the luncheon:



Exceptional Service Award: Lawrence PZ Przybyla, U.S. Air Forces Central Command



Shaw AFB Outstanding Air Force Person: Tech. Sgt. Daniel Huffstickler, 20th Component Maintenance Squadron



Outstanding Aircraft Technician: Tech. Sgt. Daniel Huffstickler, 20th CMS


BENGALURU: It has been a while since the word personal has had any real meaning. Advancements in technology and communication and the advent of new gadgets hasnt been all for the good. Data is the really currency these days and its security or rather the lack of it is a worrying factor.

Realizing that humans are the real commodities and targets after his phone was hacked, prominent Kazakh entrepreneur Kenges Rakishev decided to invest in building a secure phone and the Sirin labs was born. The Israeli-British set up, co-founded by Moshe Hogeg with the backing of Rakishev, Israeli venture capital fund Singulari team and Chinese social networking company Renren, is all set to release their first product  the Solarin smartphone- in May this year. Sirin Labs continued to add that it had successfully raised $72 million in private funds to launch the device, which would be aimed at executives.

The smart device, which is expected to be sold at a whopping $20,000 per piece, will incorporate the most advanced technology available with military grade security. It will be based on the Android operating system and will run on unspecified technology two to three years in advance of the mass market.

People say, if you dont spend on quality product, then you yourself become the product. Although the phone is expensive, it is worth the kind of money since it offers the highest level of security possible. It helps keep your data, and in the process your life, safer. This new device will trigger off a public consciousness, leading to more commercially viable and affordable security solutions in the near future.

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NEW DELHI: After a period of uncertainty, India and Pakistan are to hold talks again when their foreign secretaries meet here on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia conference.

Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry is arriving here to attend the conference and he will meet his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar.

He will also have meetings with delegations from other countries, informed sources said.

Chaudhry will take part in the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process Senior Officials meeting convened by India on Tuesday.

The two foreign secretaries will draw up the modalities to resume their Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue.

The January 2 terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot that was blamed on Pakistani terrorists stalled the peace talks.

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WASHINGTON: A nationwide grassroot body of Indian-Americans has been launched by Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton's campaign to support the former secretary of state, hinting that an Indian-American could also be appointed under her presidency.



The organisation named 'Indian-Americans for Hillary Clinton' (IAHC) was launched yesterday in a Maryland suburb of Washington by Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta.



Podesta, who personally came down from the campaign headquarters of New York, told a gathering of Indian-Americans that relationship between India and the US would reach a new level after Clinton is elected as the president in the November elections.



"One of the things that she is committed to having a broad diverse cabinet than any administration. And I think, as Senator and as Secretary she showed that commitment by appointing Indian-Americans to positions of responsibilities and I think you should expect that as president of the United States," Podesta said.



Podesta was speaking to a group of Indian reporters after formally launching Indian-Americans forHillary Clinton in a Maryland suburb of Washington wherein he was asked if a Clinton Administration could see the first Indian-American Cabinet appointment.



"I could think of at least one person, who you have already spokes with, who I would like to see in a future Democratic administration," Podesta said, referring to Indian-American Neera Tanden, head of the Center for American Progress, a top American think-tank who worked with Clinton for around 14 years.



Tanden was one of the key note speakers at the launch of 'Indian-Americans for Hillary Clinton'.



Given her past work and experience, Podesta told Indian- Americans that he has no doubt that the bilateral ties would reach a new height under Clinton administration.



"As Secretary of State, she tried to develop a strong relationship between US and India. She actually helped begin to lay the foundation, which I had the ability to work on when I was in the White House for President Barack Obama, to deepen the relationship with Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi to try to get an outcome in the Paris negotiations," he said.



Thrilled at the launch of Indian-Americans for Hillary Clinton, Tanden said that the small but influential ethnic community could play a significant role in several key states like Maryland, New York, Ohio and California.



"In every position that Hillary has ever held as First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State, she has always had Indian Americans. I am sure, she will recognise the talents of the Indian-American community because she has already done that in the past," said Tanden.



Referring to the divisive campaign from the opposition Republican party, Tanden said by doing so they are questioning "whether we are going to embrace the diversity" or whether racial and religious minority are being seen as part of the country.

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Source: PTI
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A fourth NYPD cop from Staten Island has been disciplined amid the FBI corruption probe.

Detective Michael Milici of Bay Terrace was suspended Monday, an NYPD spokesman confirmed.

The action was taken after Micili put in his retirement papers, according to the Daily News. The 26-year veteran, who was assigned to the 66th Precinct in Brooklyn, had previously been stripped of his gun and badge after refusing to answer federal grand jury questions, the News reported.

The cop and his lawyer, Patrick Parrotta, could not be immediately reached.

The detective is the fourth cop from the borough, along with Deputy Chief Eric Rodriguez, Deputy Inspector James Grant and Deputy Chief Michael Harrington, to get swept up in connection with the FBI probe into police corruption.

Rodriguez, second in command of Patrol Borough Brooklyn South, was transferred to desk duty, police said. According to a Daily News source, Rodriguez, who public records indicate lives in New Dorp, was transferred to the Support Services Division.

Grant, who lives on Staten Island, and Harrington, of Westerleigh, were stripped of their badges and guns and reassigned, police said.

Grant was the boss at the 19th Precinct on the Upper East Side and Harrington was the deputy chief of the Housing Bureau and was the former deputy chief of Manhattan North, Advance records show.

Harrington was transferred to the Transit Bureau and Grant to the Medical Division, the Daily News reported.

Harrington comes from a long line of police officers, with 11 family members having served or currently serving in the NYPD throughout the city.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- If you are a homeowner living in low-lying areas on the borough's East and North Shores and meet certain qualifications, you may be eligible to have your house elevated, with 100 percent of the cost covered under a new program offered by New York State.

The Governor's Office of Storm Recovery has created a $7.5 million home-elevation pilot program -- Project UPLIFT -- that will elevate homes above the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Base Flood Elevation in two pilot areas: parts of Staten Island, and the Gerritsen Beach and Sheepshead Bay sections of Brooklyn.

Homeowners residing in these areas with homes in the high-risk zone (100-year flood plain) may apply for funding.

The deadline for filing the required pre-application was just extended from April 30 to May 15, 2016.

The program will be implemented by the nonprofit St. Bernard Project, Inc., in partnership with N.Y. State, funded through the state's Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

St. Bernard Project, through Project UPLIFT, will provide direct assistance to low- and moderate-income homeowners to cover 100 percent of the cost (less any benefits already received) to elevate their homes above the minimum base flood elevation.

All single-family homeowners within that experienced Hurricane Sandy damage -- and have not been provided funds for elevation services through any other program -- are encouraged to apply.

Qualifying applicants will receive a full application within 45 days upon submission of the pre-application due no later than April 30.

Financial assistance is available for qualifying homeowners with low to moderate incomes.

To qualify, your home must have been damaged in Hurricane Sandy but is now repaired and habitable.

If you are an interested interested homeowner, you can access the pre-application

GET MORE INFO AT MAY 4 MEETING IN NEW DORP

On Wednesday evening, May 4, state representatives will attend a meeting at New Dorp Moravian Church -- from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. -- hosted by the Staten Island Interfaith and Long Term Recovery Organization (LTRO).

They and other experts in resiliency and recovery will explain Project UPLIFT, what it takes to qualify, and the application process, and help homeowners decided if the pilot program may be right for them.

The meeting is open to all members of the public, and free dinner will be served.

LTRO is a coalition of over 90 recovery volunteer groups, not-for-profits, houses of worship and relief organizations. It hosts monthly meetings to educate the public about disaster recovery and preparedness.

WHAT AREAS ARE ELIGIBLE?

The boundaries of the eligible Staten Island neighborhoods are delineated in black in the map below.

The 100-year flood plain areas are colored in blue.

TIMETABLE

Project UPLIFT has provided this timetable for implemention:

It is expected that the initial pre-application process will take approximately 45 days and the full application process will take up to 30 days.

After full applications have been received, properties of eligible applications will be assessed by the St. Bernard Project (SBP).

If an applicant's property qualifies for home elevation services, SBP will work with the homeowner and elevation contractors prior to and during elevation.

Elevation services are expected to start in the summer of 2016 and all applicants will be served through the pilot project by the end of 2017.

For additional information or assistance, call 718-318-2176 or email: projectuplift@stbernardproject.org

You can also contact Cassandra Missall, Staten Island LTRO director at 917-808-0061.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - The 39th annual TD Five Boro Bike Tour -- a day cyclists take over the roads of New York City -- is Sunday, May 1. To accommodate the event, a portion of the Verrazano Bridge and some North Shore streets will be closed.

The Staten Island-bound lower level of the Verrazano Bridge will be closed from 2 a.m. to 6 p.m. The upper level of the bridge will remain open in both directions.

The roads listed below will be closed to car traffic from 7:45 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, according to the bike tour's website:

Bay Street, between New York Avenue and Hylan Boulevard

Hylan Boulevard, between Bay Street and Edgewater Street

Edgewater Street, after it becomes Front Street

Hannah Street, between Front Street and Bay Street

Bay Street, between Hannah Street and Richmond Terrace

The 40-mile tour route begins in Lower Manhattan, heads north through Central Park, and continues to Harlem and the Bronx before returning south along the East River on the FDR Drive. Cyclists then cross into Queens, and from there into Brooklyn, riding over the Verrazano Bridge and onto Staten Island. The event ends with a festival at Fort Wadsworth.

The Five Boro Bike Tour website has more information, including full city street closures. Bike New York, the nonprofit behind the event, estimates that 32,000 riders will participate.
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An independent review into the effectiveness of the ACT's Extended Throughcare post-prison support program is expected to report before the middle of the year.

Corrections Minister, Shane Rattenbury, said the review, by the University of NSW, was likely to confirm significant reductions in repeat offending by former detainees that have already been tracked by other means.

Corrections minister Shane Rattenbury. Credit:Rohan Thomson

He said the 97 to 98 per cent take-up rate of the voluntary ET program, which assists detainees to reconnect with society, was a phenomenal result.

"This is huge given the resistance a lot of the detainees have to engaging with government services post release," he said. "They are often quite service weary."
Playing the depressed lead character of Vanya, Sam Hannan-Morrow said the darkness is where the humour lies.

But the cast of the upcoming Canberra Rep production, directed by Geoffrey Borney, would like Canberrans to know that above all else, it's actually very funny.

Uncle Vanya at the Canberra Rep Theatre. Yanina Clifton as Sonya, Alice Ferguson as Maria, Lainie Hart as Yeliena, Sam Hannan-Morrow as Vanya, Antonia Kitzel as Mariya and Jerry Hearn as Professor Serebryakov. Credit:Elesa Kurtz

Themes of endurance, jealousy, frustration and unrequited love heavily feature in this Anton Chekhov play.

Uncle Vanya could easily be mistaken for a gloomy piece of theatre.

"A lot of the comedy with Vanya comes from his attempts to deal with his depression," he said.

His character manages the country estate of Professor Serebryakov played by Jerry Hearn, alongside the professor's daughter Sofya, performed by Yanina Clifton.

A visit made by the professor and his wife Helene, played by Lainie Hart proves disruptive to their way of life, also affecting Telegin (Neil McLeod), the nurse Marina (Alice Ferguson), the watchman (Jonathan Pearson) and Vanya's mother Voynizky (Antonia Kitzel).

Passions run high and characters clash in true theatrical style, all while maintaining the dual sense of comedy and tragedy.

Despite the first performance being more than 100 years ago, Hannan-Morrow said the Russian play remained current and identifiable today.
The co-ordinator of a Canberra shelter seeking to accommodate more homeless men for more nights this winter says their need for extra volunteers is dire.

As Safe Shelter prepares to open its doors on Tuesday night, co-ordinator Richard Griffiths said their mission this year was to see at least one emergency shelter open for homeless men in inner Canberra every night in winter.

Volunteers Geoff Wellington of Pearce, and Naomi Cole of Lyneham, make up a bed at the Safe Shelter for homeless men at the St Columba's Uniting Church hall in Braddon Credit:Graham Tidy

But without extra bodies to staff the shelter, many of the homeless people who flock to the city's heart will be left out in the cold.

"Civic is the place where they can get their evening meal at the Red Cross roadhouse in the Griffin Centre and they can get breakfast at the Early Morning Centre," Mr Griffiths said.
Readers, have you ever thought of the resemblance of the foul, muddy trenches of the Great War to the mucus-lined "trenches" of our guts, our intestines?

No, and neither had your columnist until Tuesday's conversation with Dr Gregory Crocetti, creator/publisher of the Scale Free Network. His small Melbourne publishing business has just digitally published (publication was on Anzac Day for reasons that will become obvious) the very graphic comic book The Invisible War.

WW1 nurse in Anzac Day re-enactment. Credit:Jamila Toderas.

It is the touching, harrowing story of Annie, a literally gutsy Australian WWI nurse, and her battle against death, dysentery and disease on the Western Front of World War I. Then, in a parallel saga, it is the story of the battle of the microbes inside our heroine's gut (this is the "invisible war" going on) after she catches dysentery from one of the sick boys she so selflessly cares for.

And to digress a smidgin, there was (pictured) an actual 2016 Annie in Monday's Anzac Day Parade. Dressed as an Australian nurse of WWI she was with other ghost-like representatives of the National Military Re-enactment Group.
An animal activist who blew a whistle near the site of the territory's kangaroo cull will serve a six-month good behaviour order after a court found him guilty of hindering the shooting operation.

But a second charge against Christiaan Klootwijk, 71, was dropped on a legal technicality after the incident in Canberra's south in July last year.

Christiaan Klootwijk pleaded not guilty to two charges he hindered a public official. Credit:Graham Tidy

Activists who gathered at the ACT Magistrates Court called out "the cull is the crime, the cull is the crime" as Klootwijk was sentenced on Tuesday after a drawn-out hearing process.

He was arrested after cull workers heard a whistle and yelling soon after they began an after-dark shoot in the Wanniassa Hills Nature Reserve.
Canberra's new tourist visitor centre at Regatta Point will be styled on the Apple store and include interactive technology and social media content showcasing the city.

Work is under way to co-locate the National Capital Exhibition and the new Canberra Region Visitors Centre, with the current facility on Northbourne Avenue expected to close by the end of June as the government continues redevelopment of the corridor and the Gungahlin tram line.

National Capital Authority boss Malcolm Snow and Visit Canberra's Ian Hill at Regatta Point on Tuesday. Credit:Rohan Thomson

A new intersection will be added to Commonwealth Avenue at Regatta Point to allow improved access from both directions. The site was chosen for the visitor centre to capitalise on views across Lake Burley Griffin and for proximity to major attractions including Parliament House, the national institutions and Commonwealth Park.

The design will see a renewed entrance and walkway to the building, a new foyer and administration offices.
Former detective Roger Rogerson will argue he walked into a southern Sydney storage shed and upon seeing a body on the floor he said to his friend Glen McNamara, "thanks very much Glen, I'm too old for this".

Mr Rogerson's barrister George Thomas previewed his client's story in series of questions before the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday.

He did this during the cross examination of Glen McNamara, who is Mr Rogerson's co-accused in the murder of university student Jamie Gao.

Mr McNamara and Mr Rogerson are blaming the murder of the 20-year-old on each other.
Police are investigating a handful of fires believed to be deliberately lit across Canberra on Tuesday, while a large number of hazard-reduction burns added to the smoke in the air.

Firefighters were quick to extinguish a small grass fire at Kambah Pool Road in Tuggeranong after responding to reports of the blaze about 1pm.

Fire in grass and bushland near Ginninderra Drive on Tuesday afternoon. Credit:Rohan Thomson

The fire was about the length of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
The union representing ACT public school cleaners has welcomed a failed bid by two cleaning companies to scrap agreements covering pay and conditions with vulnerable workers it claims were pressured into signing documents they didn't understand.

United Voice last year called on the ACT government to terminate the contracts of two companies which it accused of underpaying workers more than $500,000 over several years  a claim the companies have strenuously denied.

ACT school cleaner Htoo Ywai was among non-English-speaking workers who claimed they were being underpaid. Credit:Rohan Thomson

It also launched legal action against the companies  Phillips Cleaning Services and Rose Cleaning Service  in the federal court in an ongoing stoush over standards for Canberra's school cleaning contractors.

The two companies applied to the Fair Work Commission in June last year to scrap three rolling "clean start" enterprise agreements, which had promised higher pay rates and better conditions for the city's government-contracted cleaners.
"I'd like to think that I've got good values," Rance said. "I'm really frustrated at myself at succumbing to that emotion and frustration of the moment.

"It's hard to put [a finger on] exactly when and why you snap at different occasions. "It's definitely on no one but myself. I do put a lot of pressure on myself to perform at a high standard.

"I probably should have done better in that contest [against Watts] and I let myself down."

Rance said his strike on Watts came at a poor time given the recent spate of one-punch attacks in the wider community and he hopes he isn't viewed as a "thug".

"It's hard when one action can almost define you and I'm really at [the media's] mercy, the way you guys want to portray me," he said. "I really want to get that message across that it's so not me and it does hurt that I've put that perception out there."
Catherine Brenner is emerging as a leading internal candidate to replace outgoing chair Simon McKeon, who surprised the sharemarket on Tuesday with a decision to exit the role after less than two years due to "a change in my circumstances".

Mr McKeon, a former Australian of the Year who has been a vocal advocate for multiple sclerosis since being diagnosed more than a decade ago, will stay as chair until AMP's annual meeting on May 12 in Melbourne.

'I am disappointed to leave the board following a change in my circumstances,' outgoing AMP chairman Simon McKeon said. Credit:Louise Kennerley

After the meeting, John Palmer, who was due to retire at the May meeting alongside fellow director Brian Clark, will stand in as chair until a successor is found.

Investors and analysts said the focus of finding a new chairman would be on maintaining stability and an internal candidate would be preferable.
UniSuper chief executive Kevin O'Sullivan is under pressure from one of the $52 billion superannuation fund's union overseers, which wants him to recant his opposition to a royal commission into banks.

The National Tertiary Education Union, one of the unions represented on the UniSuper board, asked Mr O'Sullivan on Tuesday to withdraw his public statement opposing a royal commission into the banks.

The union's members, from workplaces where UniSuper is the default superannuation fund, were urged to sign a petition, contact the fund directly and use social media to turn up the heat.

In a little-reported statement issued last week, on the same day the government announced new funding for the corporate regulator, Mr O'Sullivan said UniSuper had "confidence in the oversight of the financial services sector" and rejected Labor's calls for a royal commission.
Former AFL boss, Andrew Demetriou, has had a few ailments causing him trouble since retiring from the big game in 2014  like the radiology group he has chaired for the last 18 months, Capitol Health.

It has not been a happy tenure. The company's share price has cratered as the government prepares to cut bulk-billing rebates for radiology services as of July this year.

Over the past year, the company has gone from a share price high of $1.11, to a low of 11c last month. Its current market cap of $99 million is only just above the debt it owes its bank  NAB  a key sponsor of Demetriou's previous employer, the AFL.

As Capitol Health reported in its profit-challenged half year result, NAB "approved" a revised banking facility for the group of $140 million, which reduces to $115 million by December 2019, with Capitol's financial covenants getting a significant squeeze along the way. How fortuitous for NAB.
Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said he expects the value of Saudi Arabian Oil Co to exceed $US2 trillion ($2.6 trillion) as the kingdom prepares to sell part of the company in what could be the world's largest initial public offering.

The valuation of the oil producer known as Saudi Aramco hadn't been completed, Prince Mohammed said in an interview with Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television. The government planned to turn Aramco into a holding company and would sell less than 5 per cent of that entity, he said. Aramco units might be offered for sale at a second stage, he said.

"In 2020, I think we will be able to live without oil," Prince Mohammed said. "We will need it, but we can live without it." Credit:Getty

"Only the oil reserves could be worth about $US2.5 trillion at $US10 oil price, so a valuation of $US2 trillion for all of Saudi Aramco is quite cheap," Danilo Onorino, an energy-focused portfolio manager at Dogma Capital, said from Switzerland. Aramco also had the world's lowest operating costs and access to "very cheap" financing, he said.

Prince Mohammed is leading the biggest economic shake-up since the founding of Saudi Arabia in 1932, with measures that represent a radical shift for a country built on petrodollars.
Institutions are expected to continue their dominance of Melbourne's industrial market, the biggest in Australia, compressing yields as they chase assets.

Research from Savills shows funds and trusts have returned to industrial investment after fleeing the class during the global financial crisis and the private investors who mopped up in 2008-09 are now net sellers.

Traders in action early in the morning at Melbourne Market, the new wholesale fruit and vegetable market in Epping. Credit:Paul Jeffers

A record $1.89 billion worth of industrial property changed hands in the 12 months to March 2016, more than half of all the major commercial property deals. Funds and trusts together purchased 47 per cent of the total value. Foreign investors accounted for 18 per cent.

Savills director David Norman said: "We are not expecting any fundamental changes this year. There's still a weight of money continuing to flow into the country and compete with domestic buyers."
The Australian Tax Office is issuing please explain notices and threatening to take companies to court as part of its crackdown on profit shifting.

The agency said it had begun "compliance activity" in relation to a number of cases involving large multinational corporations.

The action relates to cases involving related-party financing and thin capitalisation rules.

Deputy Commissioner Mark Konza said the ATO was focusing its efforts on companies that used "artificial and contrived arrangements" to avoid attributing profits to Australia.
Politicians do it. Businessmen do it. Secret societies do it. Even a well-trained dog does it. When it comes to handshakes, you've probably heard all the tired advice: shake it like you mean it. Grip firmly, stand up straight, look them in the eyes.

But here's a more interesting question: Why exactly do we feel the compulsion to shake hands when we're saying hello, making a deal, or burying hatchets? Here's what the research says about this most common of rituals - and how the act can change the way people perceive us.

1. Why we shake it

As anybody who owns a rear-sniffing dog knows, animals use ritualised physical contact when they meet somebody new. Handshake-like interactions are likely ancient.
Jakarta: Thirty-two Indonesian companies that import live cattle from Australia and operate feedlots have been fined a total of 107 billion rupiah ($10.5 million) for price-fixing by withholding beef from the market.

On July 14 last year the Indonesian government savagely cut its quota for cattle imports from Australia to 50,000 for the July to September quarter, in line with President Joko Widodo's push for food self-sufficiency.

The dramatic cut - down from 250,000 in the previous quarter - led to beef prices soaring to 140,000 rupiah ($14) a kilogram in Jakarta wet markets.

On April 22 the Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU) fined the 32 companies - including the Indonesian arm of Australian agribusiness giant Elders - for forming a beef cartel.
Tokyo: Mitsubishi Motors Corp has admitted it improperly tested the fuel economy of its cars for the past quarter century, deepening a crisis that's already wiped out half its market value.

The automaker formed a panel of three former prosecutors to investigate improper testing that goes back as far back as 1991, including the falsification of fuel efficiency data, according to a statement on Tuesday. The company said last week it hadn't been complying with Japanese testing standards since 2002.

"Customers bought our cars based on incorrect fuel-economy data," President Tetsuro Aikawa told reporters during a press conference on Tuesday. "I can't help but apologise."
If sugar is the new smoking, then the makers of fizzy drinks and fattening cakes need to learn some lessons from big tobacco.

Big food companies have achieved pariah status, with sugar taxes already implemented in Mexico and France and a levy planned for the UK in two years' time. Last week, sugar producer Associated British Foods accused the government of trying to demonise the product and questioned whether that strategy would help reduce obesity rates.

But it is just that outsider status that has helped lift tobacco companies' performance.

Over the past five years, big tobacco has handed investors a 101 per cent total return, according to Bloomberg Intelligence's Global Tobacco Product Manufacturing index, well ahead of the MSCI World Index's 42 per cent. That is a phenomenal performance for a class of securities shunned by some investors on ethical grounds.
"Just when did poppies come to symbolise Anzac Day?" asks John Rand, of Belrose. "They were everywhere! What do people have against using rosemary?" Column 8 has always associated poppies with Armistice Day, November 11. Have they become a generic WWI flower for all occasions?

Several readers have informed us that they are struggling to transform Bob Smith's analysis of the Friday Cryptic ("DA should see a shrink", Column 8, Monday) into a crossword clue. At 18 letters, it's too long to be an anagram. Suggestions?

More on neighbours' nicknames (Column 8, since Monday), this time from Ivor Jones, of Baulkham Hills. "My late mother-in-law had a neighbour called 'Havachat'. Both my mother-in-law and her neighbour suffered from a speech defect  they both had to stop talking to take a breath every so often."

"I hope that Ken Taylor didn't open the attachment to print out the documentation that Australia Post allegedly sent him," writes Gerry Fletcher, of Tamworth (6am advice of a failed 8am parcel delivery, Column 8, Tuesday). "This is a known email scam. Details can be found on the Australia Post website or at SCAMwatch."

Scam or no scam, many readers are unimpressed. "Australia Post have been doing this for years now," hurrumphs Dennis Roy, of Bella Vista, among many others. "So now when I expect a parcel, I know that there will be no attempt at delivery. I will receive the 'Come to the PO to pick-up your parcel' card, and when I get back home there is an email advising that 'Your parcel has been delivered'."
It is both very human and very Australian to have a treasure before us and not know what to do with it, or not even know it's a treasure. That's the situation I have been in until lately, when idly having visited arid Lake Mungo a few times, I got involved in the question of who is this Mungo Man?

It is more than 40 years since, on an afternoon following rainfall, a geologist named Jim Bowler saw a glinting forehead emerging from the crescent shaped sand dunes of the ancient sediments of Lake Mungo, northwest of Balranald, in NSW. It was the skull of Mungo Man, who lived 42,000 years ago on that shoreline.

Illustration: Andrew Dyson

Four years earlier, in 1969, and only 400 metres away, Bowler had found the part-cremated bones of a young woman, Mungo Lady. She would turn out to be the oldest part cremation/burial of homo sapiens ever found to that time, and she immediately blew out the estimate of how long humans had occupied Australia.

It may be that the death of the young woman came before that of Mungo Man by up to 2000 years. But both had been buried with ritual, and the different rituals of their burials were utterly unexpected  at that time the earliest evidence of human burial rites on earth.
The National Library's Trove project is remarkable. And, due to budget cuts, it is dying.

If you're reading this online, you can access Trove. There are no paywalls or passwords.

It is a fundamentally and purely democratic home to 90 million pictures, unpublished manuscripts, books, oral histories, music, videos, research papers, diaries, letters, maps, archived websites and Australian newspapers, from more than 1000 libraries around the country.

And 70,000 people pay that home a visit, every day.

Some people think that it's OK for Trove to wind up. To them, Trove is a dustbin: a place to keep the old bits of paper and tape we don't know where else to put.
"I did a bit of rapping with friends on campus but it never really took off," Ferrington says. "Then I started getting involved with theatre and the Commerce Revue and I let the rap thing slide."

Ferrington, 26, studied commerce and arts at the University of Sydney. It's not exactly South Central Los Angeles.

Young writers of the new musical The Detective's Handbook Olga Solar and Ian Ferrington at The Hayes Theatre. Credit:Steven Siewert

When Ian Ferrington was a teenager  not so very long ago  he wanted to be a rapper. "I didn't fall in with the right crowd to really pursue it," he says.

But he never completely gave it away. Ferrington's first full-length musical, The Detective's Handbook, a hard-boiled cop comedy set in early 1950s America, has put the young lyricist back in touch with his rap roots.

"A lot of the lyrics are rapped over a jazz score that fits the 1950s setting," Ferrington says. "There haven't been a lot of other shows trying to do that."

A pair of Dragnet-style detectives rapping their lyrics isn't meant to be funny in itself, Ferrington says.

"When I was writing it, I felt that rap was a very natural way for these people to express themselves. In a way it's not dissimilar to [Bertolt Brecht's] The Threepenny Opera in that you have songs that are spoken rather than sung. And in Gilbert and Sullivan you have those very repetitive patter songs with a similar intricacy in the words. It's a different approach but the intention isn't to make comedy purely from the fact that characters are rapping and not singing."

It falls to composer Olga Solar, 22, a just-graduated Sydney Conservatorium student, to make those lyrics swing.
This image shown by the Nine Network shows men allegedly attempting to abduct Sally Faulkner's children from a Beirut street. The woman is understood to have become involved with 60 Minutes when she moved to leave Turkey with the child. She then travelled to Australia. Fairfax Media understands reporter Liz Hayes and a crew from 60 Minutes were documenting the case as it unfolded in Turkey and in Greece. The father immediately returned to Australia and launched court action alleging his child had been kidnapped and should be returned to Turkey. Contacted in Australia on Monday, the father confirmed the case was ongoing and that he believed his son had been abducted.

He said he did not have any knowledge of 60 Minutes' involvement. However, he said he was very surprised that his wife had everything planned and seemed to have plenty of money to finance the child's removal to Australia and a boat with which to escape to Greece. He said the child's nanny had tipped him off that his wife was planning to go to Australia. "They were packing up the house and sending everything to Australia, the pictures and things," he said. He said he knew when they went on holiday that they were going to try to leave.

He said he travelled down to Bodrum, the coastal region, and reported the matter to the police. But the police said they couldn't do anything, he said. "They [my wife] had a boat. They got stopped a couple of times by the navy. I was ringing her and then her phone was shut down like it was in another country," he said. The father said he immediately got on a boat to travel to the nearby Greek Island of Kos and went to the local police. "They told me: 'Yes they were here.' "

The child had an emergency travel document and the child had blond hair to make him look like a typical Western child. "I said I'm going to follow them. But the police said wait and they typed their names into the computer and found out they had just left on a flight out of Athens to Australia four hours before." The father said he came to Australia within three days and then, within five days, they had a hearing in the Family Court. "The judge seemed to be ready for the case and was very angry but after [seeing] my [good] behaviour and my lawyer's behaviour ... I was allowed contact," he said. The father said the case was continuing but, in the meantime, he had access to see the children four days a week.

He said he had been falsely represented as being a violent person. He said the case had now dragged on for more than a year. "We don't understand it. Normally these cases involving the Hague Convention get done within four to five weeks," he said. Despite spending time documenting the mother's case, the father says he has never been contacted to give his side of the events. A Nine spokeswoman said it could not comment because the matter is before the court.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced all 12 of Australia's next fleet of submarines will be built in Adelaide from local steel, with France winning the hard-fought global race for the $50 billion contract.

Mr Turnbull said in Adelaide on Tuesday morning that the decades-long program would create about 2800 direct jobs and help Australia transition to a 21st century economy.

The new fleet, the first of which will hit the water in the early 2030s, will be built using Australian steel, he said, declaring the pledge "part of our plan for the jobs and growth of the 21st century".
Liberal Party figures have snubbed a Senate inquiry into the controversial Free Enterprise Foundation and similar federal fundraising bodies, while star witness Arthur Sinodinos has yet to confirm his attendance.

It is understood former Liberal fundraiser Paul Nicolaou, former NSW party director Mark Neeham, former federal director Brian Loughnane and NSW finance director Simon McInnes were invited to give evidence, but declined.

Senator Sinodinos, who is cabinet secretary, has been specifically directed by the Senate to appear to answer questions, but was listed as unconfirmed on a program posted by the committee on Tuesday.

The inquiry was prompted by a NSW Electoral Commission statement last month that the Liberals used the Free Enterprise Foundation  an "associated entity" linked to the party  to "channel and disguise" donations, including from banned donors, before the 2011 NSW election.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull offered no modelling, only "common sense" to justify his negative gearing policy, telling the ABC's 7.30 host Leigh Sales that figures showing top earners had the most to gain were "beside the point".

Sales asked what modelling the Prime Minister had to support his claim that Labor's negative gearing reforms would "take a sledgehammer" to property prices.

"This is a matter of common sense," Mr Turnbull answered.
Paris: Australia's governor-general has been one of the first to benefit from the country's submarine deal with France, touring some of Paris' finest palaces to a universally rapturous welcome.

The timing was (allegedly) pure coincidence, but on a day meeting two ministers and the president, Sir Peter Cosgrove can thank Canberra for choosing his hosts over Japan and Germany  and ensuring a much more genuine reception.

French media have hailed the $50 billion contract as the "deal of the century"  it is projected to lead to the creation of thousands of jobs in France, mainly on sites in Cherbourg, Nantes and Lorient.

And the French government gets a nice boost to its budget  the state is a 62 per cent shareholder in DCNS.
1. Labor reveals carbon target

And we're still not even in the campaign proper - a brave new world indeed! Labor once again takes a risk and decides to release its climate policy well ahead of election day, which we are in the rare position of knowing to be July 2.

In a nutshell: Labor would slash carbon emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 compared to the government's pledge of 26-28 per cent.

How? You guessed it, an emissions trading scheme - combined with other elements, including an already announced higher renewable energy goal, smart meters and preventing the states from land clearing.
Australia's cultural institutions will not survive another funding cut without reputational damage as staff raise concerns about slipping standards and low morale, a new report has found.

The report, published by the Community and Public Sector Union on Tuesday after Treasurer Scott Morrison warned of further cuts to the public sector, revealed angst and unrest at galleries, archives and libraries.

Staff at Australian cultural institutions have raised concerns about morale, quality, commercial funding and job losses. Credit:Katherine Griffiths

Staff have warned further cuts are likely to risk the quality of exhibitions with many concerned about increasing workloads, job losses, conflicts of interest and "exorbitant parking".

The government's efficiency dividend has forced cultural institutions to find nearly $40 million of savings within four years in addition to budgets cuts, prompting fears of further job losses and program cuts.
"Every government at every level always has to be looking at ways for it to live within its means ... that means you are always looking for better ways to do things," Mr Morrison said.

"Out there in the economy today, businesses are being told they need to produce the same quality of product to be competitive in the market, and they need to do it for less.

"Now, government should not be given a leave pass from having to drive the sort of innovation in its own operations to deliver the same sorts of things that businesses and employees around the country are being asked to do, and it has been a key driving thought and principle - a practical principle that is driving our thoughts and our preparation of this budget."

Former Finance Deputy Secretary Stephen Bartos said the nation's budgetary position meant cuts needed to be made, and he agreed that efficiency dividends provided real savings.

But the Canberra consultant said both Liberal and Labor governments needed to have the courage to decide what areas and programs to cut, rather than take the broad brush and lazy path of efficiency dividends.
A 16-year-old boy arrested over an alleged Anzac Day terrorism plot had been in a government-run deradicalisation program for about a year.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, chose not to appear in Parramatta Children's Court on Tuesday for a brief mention two days after his arrest.

His lawyer, Zemarai Khatiz, entered a not guilty plea to one charge of doing an act in preparation or planning for a terrorist act, an offence that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Mr Khatiz said a psychologist with more than 38 years' experience would assess the boy in prison this week to support an application for bail on Friday.
The government has fundamentally misunderstood deradicalisation and is taking an approach that has no previous evidence of success, according to a key adviser on intervention programs.

Clarke Jones, founder of the Australian Intervention Support Hub, has made stinging assessment of the approach to dealing with young extremists like the 16-year-old boy arrested on Sunday over an alleged Anzac Day plot.

Messages from the Auburn teenager were intercepted over the weekend as he chatted online to a male overseas, allegedly saying he was trying to source a gun to use for an Anzac Day massacre.
The troubles of Auburn's colourful deputy mayor have extended to the home front, as police investigate an allegation of domestic violence between Salim Mehajer and his wife, Aysha.

Speculation about the couple has swirled since A Current Affair reported this month that Mrs Mehajer had quit the marital home in Lidcombe and returned to live with family in Wollongong, where she worked as a beautician named April Learmonth before her transformation into the glamorous wife of Sydney's most controversial councillor.

Mr Mehajer dismissed the report as an April Fool's joke.

But police have confirmed that an investigation is under way following a "domestic violence incident" involving a 29-year-old man in Horsley, a suburb of Wollongong, on Monday night and officers have interviewed several witnesses.
Should Brisbane look to its Asia Pacific neighbours to develop further or should it take a more internal approach?

Brisbane Marketing CEO John Aitken and UMR Research founder and director John Utting debated this topic as part of a Future Cities event on Tuesday.

Should Brisbane look the Asia Pacific to market itself or should its focus be on creating a unique experience? Credit:Glenn Hunt

Cities are considered the "engine rooms" of progress Mr Aitken said, with focus on how to develop Brisbane's brand effectively needed.

"Brisbane is the only city and only community that is valuing the notion of what an Asia Pacific means, whereas Japan thinks what Japan means ... the same with China," he said.
"Baron" Hyland of the Brothers in Arms Military Motorcycle Club with Lieutenant Glenn Tannock. Credit:Mia Armitage Former event organiser Col Ambrose, who read The Ode from Laurence Binyon's poem For the Fallen in the ceremony as per custom, said Acland had hosted Anzac Day at the memorial for at least 18 years. "It's become quite an iconic little Anzac Day ceremony," said Mr Scholefield, who considered himself new to the area despite having "run cows" on a nearby farm for the past 12 years. Margaret Klaassen came from Brisbane to attend the ceremony with Geralyn McCarron.

"The people who come to this service are in some way or another connected to Acland and this is a community gathering," she said at the post-ceremony morning tea, where attendees shared homemade scones, cakes, cookies and campfire billy tea made with tank water. "We're interested and concerned about the health of people in this region and the effect of mining on people's health in this area. "On the card on the flowers that I put on the base of the war memorial is a tribute to the four women who made that war memorial possible. "They conceived the idea, raised the money and set in place all the actions to have it there.

"Thelma Beutel, her daughter Carol and Doris and Dulcie [Mason]  it wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for them. "They wouldn't have called themselves feminists  they would have called it justice for those who served and those who died." She said she would like to see their names and memories honoured in Acland. Members of environmental group The Knitting Nannas said they had come in support of Acland's "last remaining Anzac", Mr Beutel. Brothers in Arms Military Motorcycle Club Western Downs chapter president "Baron" Hyland spoke on behalf of almost a dozen members in uniform who had ridden to the park the previous day and camped overnight.

"[Three of us] came here last year because of the memorial which [New Hope] wanted to pull down and relocate," he said. "This year we decided  we're going to come here as a group, even with nominees and other riders that are not military, to support this to make sure it stays and doesn't go away." Mr Beutel said he was concerned about Acland's prospects for Anzac Day ceremonies if New Hope's proposal for mining expansion in the area was approved. "If the three roads close to the east, north and west [that will] tend to strangle the town with difficulties for people to pass through this way and pay their respects at any time of the year," he said. New Hope's representatives were also at the ceremony and participated in wreath laying.

Mr Beutel, Mr Scholefield, and Dr McCarron as well as several others at the ceremony were all fighting in Queensland's land court against New Hope's proposed expansion to the mine. "I've objected to every coal mining application for the area, not that that's ever done me any good," Mr Scholefield said. Farmer Tanya Plant, who introduced wreath layers during the ceremony and whose children had participated as Kulpi State School students, was also a legal objector to New Hope's proposed expansion. "Look, I think this community's been through a lot and there's certainly been some divisive issues going on but we certainly all try to put that aside for Anzac Day and remember the sacrifices and the big things that make our country great," she said. Ninety-two year-old Leslie Voll moved to Acland in 1949 and bought a farm alongside his brother.

"I've spent most of my life here," said Mr Voll. At the time, he worked in Acland's now-historical underground coal mine for five years. He said his farm was eventually bought by New Hope and he moved to town but New Hope later bought his town house too. There were no longer houses visible in Acland, except for on Mr Beutel's property. The only other buildings besides the public amenities at Tom Doherty Park were a locked memorial hall now owned by New Hope and the abandoned Acland State School, where prominent radio host Alan Jones was once a student.
A transgender Mandurah woman says she has been refused a job from at least two different employers because of her decision to transition to a woman.

Greenfields resident Natalie Carroll-Smith, formerly known as Nathan, said she had faced ridicule and prejudice ever since she openly voiced her desire to become a woman last year and has spoken out about her difficulty finding work and social acceptance.

Natalie Carroll-Smith has faced prejudice since making the transition to becoming a woman. Credit:Richard Polden

"I lost swarms of friends and family," she said.

"Social acceptance has become a hurdle and you don't have the opportunities other people have."
South Sudan's rebel leader has returned to the capital after weeks of delays, marking a major step towards peace and the formation of a transitional government.

Riek Machar's arrival in Juba is the first time the former Vice-President has returned since fleeing at the beginning of the country's civil war, two and a half years ago.

Former Vice-President Reik Machar is greeted by officials after touching down in Juba. Credit:Kate Geraghty

Doves were released at the airport when Machar, dressed in a casual shirt, disembarked a UN flight that had left from Gambella in Ethiopia.

Addressing the media at the airport, Machar said he hopes his return would "make sure that peace breaks out all over the country."
Juba: South Sudan's fraught peace process lurched forward Monday with the return of the rebel army's top soldier to the war-torn country's capital.

Chief of General Staff Simon Gatwech Dual's presence in Juba is a final prerequisite for the return of opposition leader and vice-president-designate Riek Machar.

SPLA/IO Chief of General Staff Simon Gatwech Dual (second from right) arrives at Juba Airport. Credit:Kate Geraghty

Soon after arriving, Machar was sworn in as the country's First Vice-President as per a peace agreement signed between the warring parties in August last year. Securing peace, stabilising the economy and addressing the country's humanitarian needs were his top priorities, he said.
Washington: When the US media manages to drag its gaze from the guerrilla-war-meets-children's-sand-pit that is the contest for the Republican presidential nomination, questions will immediately surface about who presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton might pick as her running mate.

Despite his loose lips, Joe Biden proved to be a useful vice-presidential partner for US President Barack Obama  a seeming lifetime spent in the Senate, so he knows how a fractious Congress works and can schmooze with the movers and shakers on both sides of the aisle; and a command of unwieldy issues like the Iraq War, so that he could do much of the president's gophering in Baghdad and other capitals.

Big shoes to fill; doubly so, because Clinton will not be the popular nominee that Obama was in 2008. He was cheered on as the first African-American presidential candidate; Clinton will be cheered on as the first woman who might be president, but she has not been able to generate excitement or to chip away at a general belief among Americans that she can't be trusted.
Systema Software and ICW Group Successfully Complete Implementation of SIMS Claims

LARKSPUR, CA  (Marketwired)  04/25/16  , LLC, a leading provider of , and , a group of property casualty insurers specializing in , have successfully completed the implementation of . ICW Group now has SIMS in production, helping to manage its workers compensation claims. The two companies used an innovative, hybrid approach that combined facets of agile and waterfall project management methodologies in order to drive implementation success.

, COO of , commented: This was a very sophisticated project. has a complex IT environment, various interfaces and wanted to facilitate significant automation in its claims workflow. Their team members were incredible to work with and committed to the projects success. Several members, including the project manager and business analyst, were dedicated full time to the project, which drove progress and ensured we met key milestones over the projects six iterations.

Amanda Granger, vice president of claims at , added: For a project of this size and complexity, we were very pleased at how smoothly everything went. On the day we went live, wearing my claims-examiner hat, I thought everything about felt right and made sense. Our claims examiners arrived that day, logged into the new system, and honestly, no one missed a beat. The transition was that simple and straightforward, which speaks to the success of our partnership, this project and our selection of the right system in SIMS.

Pam Boutsaboualoy, business implementation manager at , noted: We spent extensive time understanding our objectives, gathering requirements and mapping them to . We also used an 80/20 rule to limit the scope of our project to the capabilities absolutely necessary to go-live. We leaned heavily on Systemas expertise, as their team members knew SIMS best and had implemented it many times before for other clients. They helped keep the project on track and ensured that our goals were attainable. We used a very detail-oriented process, but in the end, it was necessary and valuable to ensure the project went so well. Selecting was the most important piece. We knew the system would fit our needs, not only today, but also as we continued to grow and expand our business.

According to , ICW Groups chief operating officer, during our first week using SIMS, I received an email from a relatively new claims examiner, who essentially thanked me for investing in the new claims system. This examiner came on board at the tail end of the old system and struggled to ramp up. When we switched over to SIMS, he said he found the new system much easier to use. It was confirmation that would be able to deliver the ease-of-use and efficiency gains we anticipated for our examiners, and we hope to drive even greater benefits in the next phase of our SIMS enhancement project.

Based in San Diego, Insurance Companies is the largest group of privately held insurance companies domiciled in California. Quoting more than $3 billion annually, ICW Group represents a group of Property, Auto and insurance carriers, including Insurance Company of the West, Explorer Insurance Company and VerTerra.

, LLC, provides flexible, comprehensive solutions and services to the insurance industry. is an innovative, award-winning , which is highly praised by clients and well recognized by industry experts as a leading . Together, our team of Big 4 consulting and industry veterans, experienced software developers, and project managers deliver an architecturally strong enterprise platform, designed for superior speed, scalability, and performance. With advanced technology and focused customer service, has experienced phenomenal growth and success, earning high rankings on the national and local Fast 100 lists of fastest-growing private companies. For more information, visit us online at .

Cynthia Chow

Systema Software

800-272-9102 x.712
Ohios MakerGear CEO Talks With President Obama and Chancellor Merkel About Additive Manufacturing

Posted by Publisher Hardware

HANNOVER, GERMANY  (Marketwired)  04/25/16  Rick Pollack, Founder and CEO of , had the unique opportunity to discuss additive manufacturing with two of the worlds most influential leaders, President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Ohio Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor invited Pollack to meet President Obama and Chancellor Merkel at the opening ceremonies of Hannover Messe, the worlds foremost trade fair for industrial technology. The United States is the fairs Partner Country with Germany for the first time in Hannover Messes history, which has attracted more than 390 businesses and organizations into the U.S. delegation.

A visit to the MakerGear booth (Hall 3, Stand F06, 30, 31 and 32) will provide viewers with a window into the world of applied 3D printing, including the M2, a high-quality, precision, reliable, open-source desktop 3D printer by MakerGear. M2 owners produced many of the exhibition items on display. Product packaging, dental models, prosthetic limbs made by high school students, a heart printed for pediatric research, architectural models, costumes and props are some of the items being exhibited.

 has done outstanding work supporting and retaining companies like MakerGear, and we are honored to be part of Hannover Messe, Pollack said. To be able to share our story with President Obama and Chancellor Merkel is such a rare opportunity. President Obama has taken additive manufacturing seriously, and he sees the positive effect it is having on so many different industries.

Thanks to our partners, such as JobsOhio and , weve created a diverse economy where advanced manufacturing companies like MakerGear can grow and excel, said Lt. Governor Mary Taylor. MakerGear is leading the industry in additive manufacturing, and Im glad they are able to showcase their successes here in Ohio to the rest of the world.

Hannover Messe typically hosts more than 200,000 attendees from more than 70 countries, including global investors, buyers, distributors, resellers and government officials. More information can be found on the .

Founded in 2009 in Beachwood, Ohio, MakerGear focuses on providing quality products and support to its customers. MakerGear is sold in all 50 states and over 75 countries globally. Customers include thousands of organizations, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses, medical researchers, government agencies and educators.

More information on the company is available at

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Media Contact:

Paul Stupay

Email:

Cell: 216-225-7955
Advanced Automated Phone Payment System Enhances Customer Engagement and Cuts Costs

BALTIMORE, MD  (Marketwired)  04/25/16  For all the talk of how tech-savvy U.S. consumers have become, along with their preference for social media and other forms of digital communication, the telephone remains the most preferred brand engagement method.

According to a study by , 63 percent of consumers said that the phone still provides the highest level of customer service. With a finding like this, its also not surprising that the customers working with many small and medium-sized companies still prefer to call in for support, payments, and solutions.

While increased call volume could be a positive sign (especially if customers are calling to pay their invoices) the drawback is also obvious. Call volume overload could undermine brand performance. The best way to mitigate this risk is increasingly found to be an automated phone payment system with interactive voice recognition. Thats why , a leading payment solutions provider, is pleased to offer advanced IVR payment processing.

Designed to handle both inbound and outbound IVR credit card processing, the IVR payment system includes two service packages: DirectPay and EnterAct. DirectPay provides hassle-free fully customized inbound answering services that can process credit card and ACH transactions over the phone with a simple transfer from your phone system. Operating 24/7, DirectPays advanced computer processing and voice rendering system is able to capture the sound and feel of your company.

EnterAct, the outbound system, offers advanced message and payment functionality. The automated phone payment system places phones calls of any sort with any content your company requires. And like DirectPay, the system captures the sound and feel of your company. Whether broadcasting a generic message or use for collection of payments, both systems work in concert to reduce costs, cut overhead, and increase profit through enhanced customer satisfaction.

Increased call volume, much of it via mobile, is an important reminder of just how important telephone technology remains for the average consumer, said Stephen Price, E-Complishs CEO. But an automated phone payment system, capable of IVR payment processing is a customer engagement tool that empowers brands with the tools they need to succeed in highly competitive markets. By efficiently handling an assortment of payment-related calls, sales staff can focus on the critically important need to grow their business.

Getting your automated payment system and IVR technology right isnt just about good customer service. Its about the future viability of the brand itself. Studies confirm what should be obvious: customers who report positive IVR experiences were more likely to use the service again versus those who struggled. Encouragingly, of those respondents, according to a study by Customer Contact Council division of the Corporate Executive Board, said they would consider spending more money on future IVR usage.

By systematically identifying problems with the way payments are processed and developing tools to fix them, E-Complish has grown to offer a full suite of solutions that streamline payment processes down to the last detail, Price added. Today your typical consumer not only expects and demands multi-channel engagement, they require these channels to work coherently together in a seamless fashion. As the primary gateway millions of customers have to interacting with their brand of choice, automated payment systems with IVR credit card capability, must literally answer the call of service.

Founded in 1998, E-Complishs mission is to deliver a wide selection of secure and dependable services, making it easy for its customers to process and report on all types of transactions. For more information about E-Complish and its suite of online business solutions including its automated phone payment system visit or call 888-847-7744.
AppSenses Approach to Endpoint Security Validated as Best Practice in SANS Institute Report

SUNNYVALE, CA  (Marketwired)  04/25/16  , the leading provider of user virtualization solutions for the secure endpoint, today announced that its approach to delivering trusted endpoint security solutions was recently validated in a white paper published by the SANS Institute. The paper, Updates to the CSCs: More Effective Threat Protection with Privilege Management and Application Control, examines the Center for Internet Securitys latest version of Critical Security Controls (CSCs)(1). CSCs are a prioritized list of 20 security controls that, when implemented well, have proved effective in blocking most advanced target threats and supporting faster detection and resolution of those that do get through initial defenses.

Application control and privilege management, two hallmarks of AppSenses Application manager endpoint security solution, were identified as quick wins with immediate risk reduction against advanced target threats.

The security benefits of application control and privilege management are well known  they are often considered to be just Security 101. Nonetheless, the majority of breach reports have determined that attacks succeeded because of either missing or ineffective controls and processes in these areas, according to the SANS paper authored by John Pescatore, SANS Insitute director of emerging technologies. Conversely, enterprises and government agencies that avoid breaches or minimize the damage of advanced targeted attacks almost invariably have implemented controls such as Application Control and Privilege Management and have mature processes that both respond to changes in threat and meet business needs for flexibility and adaptability.

AppSenses innovative Trusted Ownership approach to whitelisting prevents ransomware and malware incidents before they can start, while requiring minimal configuration by IT and without reducing user productivity. Powered by this philosophy, AppSense secures over 9 million endpoints today, said Jon Rolls, Vice President of Product Management for AppSense. AppSense provides a range of endpoint security features that enable delivery of productive, least-privilege desktop together with tools that enable easy ongoing self-service and maintenance by the IT and Security Team. This SANS whitepaper underlines the critical role AppSense plays in reducing the most common security threats.

In addition to application control through Trusted Ownership, AppSense provides a wide range of endpoint security functions including:

Granular Windows privilege management for a practical approach to least privilege practice

Network access control to minimize damage through compartmentalization

Desktop software license compliance and enforcement

Granular visibility into security and privilege activities in a live environment

The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. Its programs now reach more than 165,000 security professionals around the world. A range of individuals from auditors and network administrators, to chief information security officers are sharing the lessons they learn and are jointly finding solutions to the challenges they face. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners in varied global organizations from corporations to universities working together to help the entire information security community.

For a complete copy of the SANS Institute report, Updates to the CSCs: More Effective Threat Protection with Privilege Management and Application Control, visit .

SANS Institutes Pescatore will be a featured speaker tomorrow for the webinar, Overcome Privilege Management Obstacles with CSC v.6. The live webinar on Tuesday, April 26 will cover the changes in controls that can help streamline privilege management and make it less visible  and annoying  to users. .

AppSense is the leading provider of user virtualization solutions for the secure endpoint. The technology allows IT to secure and simplify workspace control at scale across physical, virtual and cloud-delivered desktops. AppSense solutions have been deployed by 3,600 enterprises worldwide to 9 million endpoints. AppSense is now a part of the family with offices around the world. For more information please visit .

(1) The CIS Controls for Effective Cyber Defense Version 6.0,

Erin Jones

Avista Public Relations for AppSense

704-664-2170
Knorr-Bremse posts sales of almost EUR 6 billion and pre-tax earnings of almost EUR 1 billion in 2015

.

 Sales up 12% against the previous year at EUR 5.83 billion

 Pre-tax earnings and net income rise 20% and 15% year-on-year respectively

 All operational indicators at record levels

 Total investment of over EUR 2.8 billion since 2010 in expansion of development and production facilities (EUR 1.3 billion) and development of new systems and products (EUR 1.5 billion)

 Trailblazing Test and Development Center completed in Munich to extend technology leadership

In its 110th year, Knorr-Bremse again posted record sales and earnings. In fiscal 2015 the world?s leading manufacturer of braking systems for rail and commercial vehicles saw sales increase 12% to EUR 5.83 billion (2014: EUR 5.21 billion). Pre-tax earnings totaled EUR 977 million (2014: EUR 847 million). Net income for the year rose 15% to reach EUR 645 million (2014: EUR 560 million), generating a net return on sales of 11.1% (2014: 10.8%). Incoming orders were valued at EUR 5.67 billion, 3% up on the previous year (EUR 5.51 billion).

According to Klaus Deller, Chairman of the Executive Board of Knorr-Bremse AG: Thanks to our innovative capabilities and a clear focus on creating genuine added value for vehicle manufacturers and operators, we have again extended our lead in the worldwide rail and commercial vehicle industries, attaining new record levels in all the relevant indicators, including quality, on-time delivery, and customer satisfaction. As a result, last year we posted double-digit growth in both sales and earnings.

2015 marked not only the Company?s 110th anniversary but also the 30th anniversary of the takeover by Heinz Hermann Thiele. As Deller put it: Thiele?s acquisition of Knorr-Bremse in 1985 must have been the most successful management buy-out in the recent history of German business. He focused the Company on its core business and over the past 30 years multiplied sales by more than thirty times. He transformed a failing company into what is now a global market leader by a wide margin in its fields of activity, ideally placed to achieve further above-average growth.

Investing in the future

To safeguard its future, since 2010 the Group has invested more than EUR 1.3 billion in the construction and expansion of production and development facilities. In the past financial year, capital expenditure totaled EUR 210 million (2014: EUR 161 million). The new Test and Development Center at the Munich site, which represents the largest single investment in the Company?s history, was completed at the end of 2015. In all, Knorr-Bremse invested EUR 90 million in the building and its equipment, including more than 100 test rigs. The aim is to develop the next generation of braking systems for rail and commercial vehicles; systems that take account of future requirements. In this context, the new Test and Development Center offers the Company?s development engineers globally unparalleled infrastructure. More than 300 engineers and technicians from both corporate divisions will leverage synergies as they work here at interdisciplinary level on connected products and systems.

By making above-average investments in research and development, over recent years Knorr-Bremse has been able to greatly expand its global technology leadership, extending its lead over the competition. In the past financial year the Company further increased its total expenditure on research and development to EUR 347 million (2014: EUR 296 million), which equates to 6.0% (2014: 5.7%) of consolidated sales. This means that since 2010 Knorr-Bremse has invested more than EUR 1.5 billion in the development of new products and systems. In fiscal 2015, 3,348 employees worked in research and development, which equates to 13.8% of the workforce (2014: 13.0%).

At year-end 2015, the Knorr-Bremse Group employed 24,275 persons (21,783 excluding HR leasing). This equates to a year-on-year increase of 1.5% (4.3% excluding HR leasing). Across the Group, at year-end 2015 the region Europe (Western and Eastern Europe)/Africa/Middle East accounted for 53.0% of the workforce, North and South America for 19.7%, and Asia/Australia for 27.3%. The six German plants in Aldersbach, Berlin, Dresden, Holzkirchen, Munich, and Schwieberdingen employed a total of 4,742 persons at year-end (2014: 4,846), which represents 19.5% of the total workforce.

Responsibility for sustainable success

For Knorr-Bremse as a family firm, far-sighted and responsible behavior has always formed a fundamental part of the Company?s business model. In 2015, Knorr-Bremse was able to achieve further progress in respect of environmental and climate protection and reduced not only its energy and water consumption but also emissions.

The Knorr-Bremse Global Care association, which supports people who, through no fault of their own, are victims of environmental catastrophes, accidents, armed conflict, poverty or illness, last year celebrated its tenth anniversary. The work of Global Care helps document the social responsibility of Knorr-Bremse, said Klaus Deller. Since Global Care was founded, in 190 projects it has provided some EUR 14 million to help over 625,000 people in need. In addition, together with our employees, who volunteer their help, as part of our Local Care initiative we also support social and charitable institutions in the vicinity of our plants around the world, Deller added.

Business development in 2015 by division

In a stable global market environment for rail vehicles, the Rail Vehicle Systems division achieved 12% growth in the past financial year as sales reached EUR 3.34 billion (2014: EUR 2.98 billion). The primary drivers of this dynamic development were exponential growth in the U.S. rail freight sector, as well as the very positive development of the division?s worldwide aftermarket activities. In the past financial year, Knorr-Bremse RailServices was again able to conclude numerous maintenance and modernization agreements, some of them with a term of over 15 years. One recent example is a major order from RUMO/ALL in Brazil: Knorr-Bremse is not only to upgrade the brake equipment on some 8,500 freight cars belonging to South America?s largest railroad logistics operator but will also have exclusive responsibility for maintaining the brakes over the next 15 years. With the acquisition of train control specialist Selectron Systems AG in early 2015, Knorr-Bremse expanded its portfolio to include components and solutions for the automation of rail vehicles.

Despite shrinking worldwide truck output, the Commercial Vehicle Systems division was able to increase its sales by 12% to a total of EUR 2.49 billion (2014: EUR 2.23 billion). In the past financial year, Knorr-Bremse benefited in particular from the positive development of the commercial vehicle markets in Europe and North America. In Europe, the Company was able to increase its market share in key segments and overcome the competition to win business from major OEMs. For example, Knorr-Bremse acquired new orders for electronic

brake control systems, the electronic parking brake, and compressors with smart control systems. In addition, the Company concluded long-term agreements with leading manufacturers to supply the new ST7 trailer disc brake, thereby winning substantial market shares in this segment.

In the past financial year Knorr-Bremse?s U.S. subsidiary Bendix sold its 1 millionth air disc brake and posted robust sales growth with its ESP electronic stability program, which has now surpassed the 400,000 delivery threshold. With the presentation of its new driver assistance system, Wingman Fusion, in 2015, Bendix responded to the growing demand for innovative safety equipment for commercial vehicles in North America. Wingman Fusion is the most advanced collision mitigation system on the market. In the USA, Bendix is the market leader for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS).

2015 also saw the start of production of brake components and control systems at Knorr-Bremse?s joint venture with the largest Chinese truck manufacturer, Dongfeng. In the future, the product spectrum will also embrace air supply, transmission control, and exhaust brake components for medium and heavy-duty trucks.

Business development in 2015 by region

The global economy showed moderate growth in the year under review. The economic recovery in the industrialized nations contrasted with falling growth rates in the developing and emerging economies. The worldwide market environment for rail vehicles remained stable compared to the previous year. The global commercial vehicle market showed a further downturn in 2015. Increasing truck output in Western Europe, North America, and Japan contrasted with declining production in China and Brazil.

Knorr-Bremse?s business showed positive development in the Europe/Africa/Middle East region. Sales were up 6.7% at EUR 2.62 billion (2014: EUR 2.45 billion). The rail vehicle market remained at its prior-year level. While the market volume was largely unchanged year-on-year in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, in Russia project-related call-offs under existing framework agreements were postponed to future years. Knorr-Bremse was able to maintain its leading market position by securing important orders. By way of example, the Company is supplying the braking and entrance systems for regional trains from the AT200 series being built by Hitachi Rail, as well as for Twindexx double-deck cars from Bombardier Transportation, which, from the end of this year, will be on regional service between Munich and Nuremberg. In addition, mining company VALE, which operates a stretch of railroad between Mozambique and Malawi in southern Africa, is having new braking systems from Knorr-Bremse installed in almost 300 of its freight cars.

Truck output in Europe rose 5.5% in 2015 after falling 9.5% in 2014. The recovery was led by positive developments in Germany, Spain, Italy, and the UK. The Commercial Vehicle Systems division was able to grow its market share not least by concluding a multi-year agreement with a major European commercial vehicle builder governing the supply of electronic braking systems and screw-type compressors. As in past years, the disc brake and electronic braking system (EBS, ABS, and ESP) product segments were the key sales drivers.

In North and South America, the Company posted sales of EUR 1.43 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 23.1% (2014: EUR 1.16 billion). Demand for rail vehicles in North America remained stable at a high level in 2015. Thanks to the launch of new products such as the VV-1000T oil-free compressor, Knorr-Bremse was again able to build on its market position.



Truck production in North America benefited from the positive development of the U.S. economy and posted substantial 7.7% growth (2014: +18.8%). Knorr-Bremse subsidiary Bendix was not only able to further reinforce its position in the OEM business but in 2015 also successfully expanded its portfolio of remanufactured components for the after-sales sector. In the South American rail vehicle sector, demand stagnated at the prior-year level. Against the backdrop of the marked political and economic crisis in Brazil, which also impacted on neighboring countries, no positive impetus was forthcoming. As in the previous year, 2015 brought a further recession-led downturn in truck production in South America. In all, the market showed a 46.6% fall-off from 2015 to 2014, after a 28.4% decline in 2013.

In the Asia/Australia region, sales rose 12.1% in 2015 to EUR 1.78 billion (2014: EUR 1.59 billion). The rail vehicle markets in Asia/Australia were dominated by demand from the high-speed sector in China. Knorr-Bremse supplied braking equipment for 521 high-speed trains in 2015, as well as a proportion of the entrance and HVAC systems, to a total value of more than EUR 500 million. Knorr-Bremse also benefited from the expansion of local mass transit infrastructures, where the Company was able to secure new orders to supply equipment for metro cars and light rail vehicles. To further reinforce its strong market position in China and participate in expansion in the intercity segment, last year Knorr-Bremse expanded its plant in Suzhou and concluded a joint venture agreement with partner company GuoTong.

The commercial vehicle markets in Asia/Australia were in poor shape in 2015. Truck production was a significant 11.8% down on the prior year (2014: -2.7%). In India truck production increased (+44.5%), but in Japan (-5.2%) and China (-24.1%) output fell.

Outlook for 2016

For fiscal 2016, Knorr-Bremse is anticipating a highly volatile market environment, with the regional markets being impacted by great uncertainties. These include geopolitical risks, economic crises in emerging countries, and the development of the Chinese economy. Irrespective of these challenging background conditions, we consider ourselves outstandingly well positioned to again maintain our leading position on the world?s markets in 2016, said Klaus Deller. The systematic expansion of our product and service portfolio and the smart connectivity of our systems make Knorr-Bremse the first-choice partner for vehicle manufacturers and operators alike.

In the Rail Vehicle Systems sector, at the premier international InnoTrans trade fair in Berlin in September, Knorr-Bremse will be showcasing innovative system solutions that make the operation of passenger and freight trains safer, more comfortable, and more efficient. With the takeover of the rail transport activities of brake pad specialist TMD Friction early in 2016, Knorr-Bremse will in the future be able to offer low-noise organic brake pads in the original equipment sector too. Just recently, the German Federal Government and Deutsche Bahn announced plans to have only low-noise freight cars on the tracks by 2020. Through its joint venture ICER Rail, Knorr-Bremse already manufactures low-noise organic LL pads designed for retrofitting to existing freight car fleets. In this segment Knorr-Bremse recently doubled its production capacity to cope with growing demand.

In the Commercial Vehicle Systems sector, among other things Knorr-Bremse is working on the development of a modular, scalable brake control system and a new generation of disc brakes that will enable a reduction in the total cost of ownership (TCO) for vehicle operators. At the IAA International Commercial Vehicle Show in Hanover in September, Knorr-Bremse will be displaying new system solutions that support automated driving. Moreover, at the forthcoming Automechanika B2B fair in Frankfurt, Knorr-Bremse will be presenting the new after-sales brand TruckServices, offering economical solutions for the trade, workshops, fleets, and drivers over the full vehicle life cycle.

Knorr-Bremse is the worlds leading manufacturer of braking systems for rail and commercial vehicles, with sales totaling almost ?6 billion in 2015. In 30 countries, some 25,000 employees develop, manufacture, and service braking, entrance, control, and energy supply systems, HVAC and driver assistance systems, as well as powertrain and transmission control solutions. As a technology leader, for more than 110 years now, through its products the company has been making a decisive contribution to greater safety by road and rail. Every day, more than one billion people around the world put their trust in systems made by Knorr-Bremse.
Environment  April 26, 2016  Trish Kahle

Last December members of the International Trade Union Confederation joined other civil society activists in a mass sit-in at the COP21 talks in Paris. Unionists and their allies, some 400 strong, filled the social space adjacent to the negotiating rooms for several hours, in defiance of a French ban on protests that remained in effect in the wake of the November 13 terrorist attacks. The ITUC delegation demanded the negotiators go back to the table and make a serious effort to incorporate labours demands for a just transition  which, at its heart, is concerned with making sure workers in environmentally unsustainable industries are retrained and put to work building a new, sustainable economy.

The action, even as it generated energy and media buzz, failed to convince the negotiators. The just transition clause of the Paris agreement remained stuck in the preamble (not in the body of the agreement itself, as the ITUC members had demanded), more of a hat tip than grounds for international action. But at least it got a mention  unlike the fossil fuels largely responsible for the climate crisis in the first place. Nowhere in the Paris agreement or its preamble do the words fossil fuel, coal, oil, gas, or pollution appear.

As the talks wrapped up and world leaders hailed a historic turning point in the worlds relationship to ongoing climate disruption, environmental activist Chris Williams pointed out that twenty-one years of treaties and negotiations have all been stepping around the main problem, which is the production of fossil fuels. For all the pomp and circumstance, this agreement was no different. Meanwhile, the consequences of two decades of inaction become clearer each day. A few weeks after the Paris agreement was signed, scientists confirmed that 2015 was the warmest year on record, with global temperatures approaching 1C above the twentieth-century average. And those already feeling the worst effects of this climate disruption, predominantly poor people of color, continued to have the least say in how to combat it.

What About Workers?

Just as they have been dismissed in international climate negotiations, workers have largely been excluded from the fragile global recovery since 2008. Some 197 million people around the world are jobless, with young people making up over a third of this number. Unemployment in southern and eastern Europe remains particularly high, still hovering at 24.6 per cent in austerity-ravaged Greece, as well as in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East.

The picture in the OECD economies is not much prettier. In the United States, economic recovery has meant the swapping out of middle-wage jobs, earning between $14 and $21 an hour, for part-time, on-call, low-wage employment with few benefits. Energy-sector jobs, often hailed as the lifeblood of the American economic recovery, have taken a dive as oil prices plunge below $30 a barrel. In 2015 the industry slashed 104,514 jobs, compared to 4,137 the year before. Fracking boom state North Dakota went from ranking first in U.S. job growth to dead last.

All this takes place in the context of a weakened labour movement that has failed to maintain workers expected standard of living in the face of ongoing restructuring in the world economy and, particularly in the United States, political backsliding. The degradation of work and the destruction of the environment have proceeded hand in hand. Good jobs keep going away, but fossil fuels havent gone anywhere. And yet the industry-propagated myth of jobs versus the environment persists. From the moment Congress debated anti-pollution legislation in the early 1970s, fossil fuel industry leaders promised such regulation would destroy the heavily unionized employment in the industry. In 1971 the Chamber of Commerce warned that the passage of the Clean Air Act could lead to the collapse of entire industries, while auto industry lobbyists prophesied business catastrophe. Four decades later, the talking points remain the same: the Heritage Foundation claims that Obamas Clean Power Plan will cost 1 million U.S. jobs, while West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito says that new coal rules threaten to regulate out of existence her states key industry.

The problem with this story is that environmental regulation never got the chance to destroy whole sectors of good jobs, as opponents of pollution regulation promised it would; the fossil fuel companies themselves, with the winds of free-market fundamentalism at their backs, destroyed them instead. A decade after the passage of the Clean Air Act, the United States was producing more cars and fossil fuels than ever, and employing a record number of workers to do so. Another decade later, as the Cold War was ending, U.S. fossil fuel production was still going strong, but the jobs were evaporating.

It wasnt just fossil fuels, of course. The decline in manufacturing jobs, union density, and real wages wrought by neoliberal restructuring hollowed out the prospects of the entire American working class. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the resulting misery has only been exacerbated by government austerity and anti-union measures, as manufactured scarcity is marshaled to frighten workers into concessions.

In cities like Flint, Michigan, built around the auto industry, the consequences of this restructuring are all too vivid. Globalization and the rise of lean production have turned the city, once an industrial powerhouse, into a waking nightmare for the people who remain: forty years of stagnant wages, reduction in public welfare and services, and then a recession that gutted the few middle-wage jobs left. In todays Flint, the generalized decline of American working-class living standards has turned into a life-or-death crisis. In 2014 emergency city manager Darnell Earley, appointed by Governor Rick Snyder with no democratic accountability to the residents of Flint, funneled untreated corrosive water into residents homes in order to cut the city budget. The result? The corrosive water leached lead and other contaminants from pipes. The amount of lead in the blood of Flints children doubled in the space of a year. At least eighty-seven people contracted Legionnaires disease  nine of whom died  and the residents of Flint, who are overwhelmingly black and low-income, will now face the consequences of irreversible lead poisoning. The situation was so dire that the Daily Shows Trevor Noah appealed to African nations to save an American village. In effect, the governors emergency management team poisoned a black working-class city to save a mere $100 a day. Earley could have paid the difference out of his own salary and still taken home $143,500 a year  $102,000 more than Flints median income. And yet Flint residents still somehow pay among the highest prices for tap water in the nation.

About seventy miles southeast of Flint, a story different only in the particulars is unfolding in Detroit, where teachers lead a fight against toxic and dangerous school buildings. Its another story where industrial disinvestment has played out as sheer environmental racism. In photographs posted on social media, teachers showed schools where mushrooms grew from the walls and rats roamed the hallways. The showdown over school safety and budget cuts has also become a labour dispute: teachers have organized at least four sick-outs since the beginning of the school year. On January 20, the largest sick-out to date shut down almost the entire Detroit public school system. By withdrawing their labour to demand safe working conditions (and healthier learning conditions for their students), the teachers of Detroit stand in a long tradition of union activists organizing outside of their contracts and developing a broader vision for society. The sick-outs have built unity among educators and students, between workers and communities, but the state still shows no sign of relenting, instead moving to punish the teachers involved and rule the sick-outs an illegal work action. For Republican governor Rick Snyder and his administration, poisoned water and moldy schools are apparently acceptable side effects of realigning the state budget in the service of private-sector growth.

Austerity and Ecological Degradation

What the struggles in Detroit and Flint have made clear is that neither neoliberalism nor austerity is only a social or political project  they are ecological projects, remaking our relationships with our (built) environments. Whether through contaminated water or infested schools, ecological degradation goes hand in hand with economic and labour restructuring. And this broad-based assault on the working class has direct implications for the climate. The same aggressive cost cutting, privatization, and deregulation that have resulted in the poisoning of Flint, the charterization of public schools, and new health crises like Indianas rural HIV outbreak have also given us the BP oil spill, the deadly explosion at a fertilizer factory in West, Texas, and the recent methane leak in Southern California. Moreover, the state leadership and investment, not to mention global cooperation, that would be required to wean the world energy system off fossil fuels cannot emerge as long as social and fiscal austerity remains the order of the day. Austerity and sustainability are antithetical concepts.

The cases of Flint and Detroit point to a deeper link between neoliberalism and the climate crisis. The same forces that devastated both cities, gutting U.S. manufacturing alongside organized labour and the welfare state, have left workers nationwide desperate for even the dirtiest jobs. In this way, they have heightened longer-standing contradictions in the working-class relationship with fossil fuels.

From the mid-eighteenth century on, the industrial-scale use of fossil fuels that accompanied the growth of capitalism increased the standard of living and life expectancy for a vast swath of people around the world. These gains and improvements were far from evenly distributed, and came with their share of previously unknown ills. Nevertheless, they helped the burgeoning working class secure real social power, and the consolidation of the fossil fuel economy fostered cornucopian visions. Demands for a decent standard of living, rooted in much higher energy consumption than had ever before been possible, translated into working-class mobility and leisure time. In a world where energy was already cheap  and where atomic scientists promised it could be cheaper still, even free  workers visions for themselves included not only a greater share of the fruits of their labour in terms of wages, but in terms of the social distribution of energy.

In the 1960s things began to change, as rapidly growing energy use forced a reorganization of production. With energy consumption doubling in the span of two decades, the industry struggled to keep up with demand. Scheduled nuclear plants were slow to come into public use and hadnt lived up to their initial promise, and anyway, the public remained skeptical of the atom, which, especially during the Cold War, raised the specter of mutual annihilation and nuclear meltdown. The future of energy looked incredibly frightening and uncertain, and the companies took action to protect the energy regime that had made them so fabulously wealthy. Although they would continue to be identified primarily with that sticky black substance, the oil companies bought up coal and gas at a rapid rate, skewing the balance of power between the companies and workers, who remained in unions organized along increasingly blurred industrial lines. Coal miners and oil-rig workers both extracted energy for the same companies but remained organized in different unions without a shared strategy for labour action across the industry.

The destruction of workers power went hand in hand with energy-industry efforts to protect profits from other potential threats, including regulation of pollution and greenhouse gases. By 1979 nearly every major American oil company joined in an American Petroleum Institute initiative to share research about the potential impact of climate change. Realizing the gravity of the problem, they buried their data and turned to extensive propaganda campaigns to shape public opinion about emerging climate science. If the planet had to burn to protect the bottom line, so be it.

With energy companies steeling themselves for an uncertain future, the outlook for their workers was decidedly grim. Companies often cited new pollution regulations as the cause of layoffs, and leveraged fears about the future to extract concessions from workers. But the real forces driving down employment were mechanization and strip mining. Over the course of the 1950s, mine mechanization had put nearly two-thirds of the nations miners out of work. Employment continued to sink in the 1960s, even as production climbed and profits soared. Since the 1970s another two-thirds of the remaining mining workforce have lost their jobs. As Paul Krugman has noted, the real war on coal, or at least on coal workers, took place a generation ago, waged not by liberal environmentalists but by the coal industry itself. And coal workers lost.

Miners for Democracy

Caught in a period of transition, and rightly convinced the energy companies had neither workers nor the environments interests in mind, some miners took it upon themselves to formulate their own solution to the energy crisis. Known as Miners for Democracy, they were a rank-and-file-caucus of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), and their vision (true to their name) tied labour, environmental, and social demands to the need to democratize their union.

The Miners for Democracy emerged from a crucible of tragedy. In 1968, seventy-eight miners were killed by an explosion at the Consol No. 9 Mine in Farmington, West Virginia. The disaster brought long-running grievances over workplace safety to a head, leading one UMWA activist, Jock Yablonski, to mount the first opposition campaign against the unions autocratic president, Tony Boyle. As deaths racked up from mine explosions and black lung disease, Yablonski charged Boyle with failing to secure a safe workplace for the nations miners. But he signaled a problem that extended far beyond the mines. Announcing his campaign platform to end environmental mayhem, he argued:

Every union should have a vision of the future Unions represent men and women who are part of communities, are citizens of states and a nation. The public environment affects the well-being of miners and their families. What good is a union that reduces coal dust in the mines only to have miners and their families breathe pollutants in the air, drink pollutants in the water, and eat contaminated commodities?

Yablonski did not have long to put his vision of labour environmentalism into practice. On December 31, 1969, three weeks after losing to Boyle in an election that was widely seen as rigged, he was murdered in his sleep, along with his wife and daughter, by three hitmen. Boyle struggled to maintain control of the union as its members revolted against the sacrifice of their lives, land, and labour to an economy that did little for them in return, and five years later, he was convicted of the Yablonski murders.

In the meantime, the Miners for Democracy built on Yablonskis legacy to challenge Boyle once again in 1972. Lives, land, and labour remained at the heart of their vision. They also embraced Yablonskis broader goal of environmental protection, particularly in relation to two increasingly prevalent practices: strip mining, which had ravaged the Appalachian hillsides, and coal gasification, a major focus of energy industry research and development. Energy companies presented gasification projects as a way to wean the American economy off of imported fossil fuels. The MFD opposed them  even though they would have created jobs for miners put out of work by mechanization and the rise of strip mining  because the process was environmentally destructive and threatened to contaminate soil and water supplies. Most gasification plants were proposed for the American West, where they would have overwhelmingly impacted poor people and Native Americans who faced massive political barriers to fighting the plants on their own.

In addition, some miners went as far as to call for a national ban on strip mining. In place of expanding their dirty industry, MFD proposed adding jobs to the economy by enforcing anti-pollution laws: reclaiming land that had been destroyed by coal companies and repairing the damage done by strip mining, they argued, could create thousands of new union jobs. Tough reclamation laws are essential, and we must insist that they are enforced, Arnold Miller proclaimed as he campaigned for union president on the MFD ticket, If the state wont do it, the union will.

The MFDs platform carried them to victory in the 1972 election. Their environmentalism, however, faded quickly, as did that espoused by other industrial unions in the 1970s, notably the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) and the United Auto Workers (UAW). Today, the UMWA leads the charge on pro-coal politics, and parrots the industry line that EPA rules necessarily lead to job loss and impoverishment. Its hard to blame the workers who have accepted this narrative, and continue to stand with employers and politicians against environmental regulation  especially since, at the moment, there are no large-scale jobs programs on the table to replace their current dirty jobs. But history shows that the Faustian bargain offered by their employers is a false one.

The situation in Appalachia today is desperate. In Harlan County, Kentucky, median household income is $18,665, unemployment stands at almost 12 per cent (twice the national average), and a third of the population lives below the poverty line. Residents need jobs, and the energy companies (along with affiliated machinery and chemical industries), the largest economic forces in the area, shape the public narrative of how to bring jobs back. Workers must sacrifice to keep the industry profitable, the story goes, or the jobs will go away for good. Private-sector unions, desperate for a boost in membership after a fifty-year decline, do whatever it takes to defend the few jobs that remain. And not just in coal: whether its the AFL-CIO announcing its support for the Keystone XL pipeline or unions standing with the American Petroleum Institute to support fracking development, unimaginative union leaders in a hostile environment have chosen to tie the fortunes of workers to those of the energy companies.

This strategy hasnt exactly paid off for organized labour. Thanks largely to the fracking boom, U.S. fossil fuel production and employment grew steadily over the last decade, and weathered the recession well; altogether, from 2004 to 2014, oil, gas, and mining jobs grew by 60 per cent. Over that same period, union membership rates in the industry fell by almost the same proportion, dropping from 11.4 to 4.8 per cent. (In 2015 jobs took a dive again along with oil prices, while union density got a slight bump.) This puts union density in the fossil fuel industry even lower than in the private sector overall (6.7 per cent).

A Different Approach?

Clinging to the fossil fuel industry can only lead to a dead end for workers. It is time for a different approach. Already in recent years, several unions have hinted at such a method, echoing the all too short-lived efforts of Miners for Democracy. In February 2015 more than 6,500 oil workers joined in a strike at fourteen refineries and a chemical plant spanning from Ohio to California. The strike, led by the United Steelworkers, was primarily a conflict over workplace safety: USW Vice President Gary Beevers pointed out that workers were being put at risk by onerous overtime; unsafe staffing levels; dangerous conditions the industry continues to ignore; the daily occurrence of fires, emissions, leaks and explosions. But it went far beyond that, with the workers positioning themselves as the first line of defense against spills and pollution in surrounding communities. Steve Garey, president of a USW local in Washington, explained that by outsourcing maintenance work to less experienced, non-union contractors who lacked the training and work protections provided by the USW, the industry was also putting communities and the environment at risk.

The workers who took part in the strike would know. Some of them had witnessed a 2005 explosion at BPs Texas City refinery, which killed fifteen workers and injured 180 others after management bypassed safety procedures during hasty repairs. Others had witnessed the 2014 oil spill at BPs Whiting refinery, which dumped as much as 1,600 gallons of oil into Lake Michigan, Chicago residents source of drinking water.

In a critical step forward for U.S. environmentalism, several key green groups expressed support for the strike, including the Sierra Club, 350.org, and Oil Change International, as well as smaller grassroots organizations like Rising Tide. In Martinez, California, members of Communities for a Better Environment as well as of the local nurses union joined refinery workers on the picket line. At the end of the six-week strike, the USW claimed victory, citing vast improvements in safety and staffing. There were signs that the strike could also lead to a more enduring militancy within the union. The USWs threat of a nationwide strike, if unrealized, was itself notable at a time when this tactic has all but disappeared from unions arsenal. During the strike, Beevers said, Our members are speaking loud and clear If it takes a global fight to win safe workplaces, so be it.

In the wake of the strikes success, an article posted on the USW website called for unions to help steer the economy away from profits and toward a system based not on selfishness, greed, and contempt, but on ethics, on giving people the justice they deserve. This, at its core, is what a just transition is all about: reframing the economy entirely, placing workers at the center instead of profits. The successful strike by the oil refinery workers, the article continued, is on behalf of that justice and shows that unions still have power.

Indeed, behind workers apparent vulnerability lurks enormous potential. As they extract fossil fuels, load them onto railway cars and into tankers, transport them thousands of miles, refine and process them, package and sell them, workers have a unique ability to bring the industry to a halt. And, thanks to the deep integration of fossil fuel products into the modern economy, if the fossil fuels stop moving, so does the rest of the world.

From teachers to nurses to rig operators, the array of workers confronting the nexus of social and ecological destruction is rapidly growing. But much remains to be done. Environmental politics must become generalized in the labour movement, and vice versa. The language of climate justice has already begun to infuse a sense of class politics into environmentalism, and green groups support for recent labour struggles is a promising step forward. Initiatives like the Labor Network for Sustainability, Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, and the BlueGreen Alliance are helping to connect the dots. But environmentalists must go further, acknowledging that there can be no real solution to the energy crisis without the input and leadership of the people who already do the work. Understanding the climate crisis as part of neoliberalisms larger attack on public welfare and democracy (with the impacts, like all social failings in the United States, experienced more acutely by people of color and particularly by African Americans) can help expand the terrain on which both unions and climate activists struggle.

Ultimately, we live in the world we build. That world is both social and ecological, constantly made and remade through what sociologist Jason Moore has described as the web of life. If organized labour  and the climate  are to have a fighting chance, unions must offer real alternatives to the world of shared sacrifice and dead zones, of poisoning by austerity, of cheap fuels and cheap lives. What would it take for todays coal-belt communities, channeling the Miners for Democracy, to fight not against EPA regulations but for jobs restoring lands destroyed by mountaintop removal mining? What would it take for union activists to have a meaningful say at the next international climate talks?

This work is just beginning. But with a shared vision to guide it, labour environmentalism can take us far. Its core demand is simple: to build a world that all of us, not just the rich or white, can actually live in. 
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Letters: My teachers mean a lot to me. Why are they paid so little?
Canada will issue $3.6 million to support international efforts for the safe storage of radioactive materials at Chornobyl nuclear power plant (NPP), Foreign Minister of Canada Stephane Dion has said.

According to the official website of the Canadian Foreign Ministry, Canada's contribution of $3.6 million is aimed at supporting the completion of Chornobyl's Interim Spent Fuel Storage Facility 2 (ISF-2). This is part of an overall contribution of EUR 45 million (approximately $65 million) by the G7 and the European Union to this effort.

"Nuclear safety requires the global community to work together. As we renew our efforts to strengthen nuclear safety worldwide we are reminded of the consequences should we fail. On the 30th anniversary of the tragic accident at Chornobyl nuclear power plant, Canada remains committed to ensuring that the site is contained, stable and environmentally safe," Dion stated.

According to the report, international donors will meet in Kyiv to discuss how to store spent nuclear fuel safely and securely.
Ukraine is prepared for trilateral gas talks with Russia with the European Commission's involvement, Director of the Ukrainian Energy and Coal Industry Ministry's Planning and European Integration Department Mykhailo Bno-Airiian said on Facebook.

Bno-Airiian said Ihor Nasalyk, the new energy and coal minister, had written to the EC about this on Monday.

"In his letter to European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic, the minister underlined the key role of the EC in the de-politicization of gas relations between Ukraine and Russia and noted the continuation of the ministry's previous policy in the issue of mutual relations in the gas sphere in a trilateral format," he said.

"In connection with this, we are awaiting a new date for consultations [both bilateral and trilateral]," he said.

Energy and Coal Industry Minister Ihor Nasalyk said a few days after taking up office that Ukraine would not hold negotiations on gas with Russia until the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce finishes considering the case.
Marquette springs upset, Slinger survives in football playoffs

The nine Milwaukee-area top-seeded football teams all won Friday night. The results across Level 1 set up some interesting games for the week ahead.
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David Cameron has vowed to go the extra mile to secure the future of the steelworks in Port Talbot  and insisted it is only open today because of his governments actions.

The Prime Minister visited the Tata site on Tuesday, meeting management and unions to discuss what his administration could do to help ensure the threatened plant is sold.

Business secretary Sajid Javid indicated in the House of Commons last week the UK Government would be willing to take a stake of up to 25% in Tatas British operations in a bid to help the process.

And Mr Cameron made his first visit to the steelworks since last months announcement by Tata that it would be selling off the works.

Read more:

Mr Cameron said: The reason Port Talbot isnt closing is because we intervened.

Tata were going to close Port Talbot and ... the Conservative Government that I lead said Actually no, we need to do everything we can to at least get a sales process going, so we did intervene and thats why theres a sales process.

I was pleased to go there today to talk about how that sales process is going.

We have said that we can help on things like power, on procurement, we can help on energy, we can help on the port facilities and so we are looking at all the different ways that we can help but obviously we want to make sure that everything we do is most effective in getting a long-term settlement for the plant.

It was very interesting today to hear directly from them about the things that they thought would make a difference.

I want to see some steel capacity remaining in the UK, which is why we should go the extra mile to do everything we can to try and secure the future of Port Talbot just as we secured the future of Scunthorpe.

There can be no guarantees of success - its a very difficult global market - but I had good meetings with the management and the unions and we will continue to do everything we can.

The Community union said it welcomed the PM reiterating the commitment to taking a 25% stake in the business.

Roy Rickhuss, general secretary of Community, the steelworkers union, met the PM at Port Talbot.

He said: We welcome the Prime Ministers visit to Port Talbot today. As soon as I returned from the Tata board meeting in Mumbai, I asked him to meet and I am pleased he has now taken the time to do so.

Steelworkers will now be watching and waiting for the Prime Minister to match his words with real action. We need immediate action to save the industry but also a long term plan to give UK steel making a fair chance to compete.

The Prime Minister has now seen first-hand the great blast furnaces of Port Talbot, both of which will be vital to any future success of the business.

He looked proud steelworkers in the eye and promised to do all he could to protect their jobs. Our Save Our Steel campaign will continue as we hold him to his word.

Aberavon MP Stephen Kinnock said: I had a constructive telephone conversation with the Prime Minister this morning.

I reiterated the view that the Save Our Steel campaign has articulated repeatedly, which is that the integrated nature of the Tata Steel UK Strip Products business must be retained, regardless of ownership.

"This means that the Port Talbot hub, including its two mighty blast furnaces, must continue to be intrinsically linked to the downstream plants across the UK, from Llanwern, to Trostre, Shotton, Corby and Hartlepool.

I trust that the Prime Minister will be impressed by the awesome steel-making that takes place in Port Talbot, and by the passion, commitment and professionalism of the workforce, who make the best steel that money can buy, and who have once again broken all production records. And I hope that his visit will strengthen his resolve to Save Our Steel."

But First Minister Carwyn Jones was said to have been surprised and disappointed only to have heard about the PMs visit via Twitter.

A spokesman for Mr Jones said: We had invited him to Port Talbot previously, and indeed after various discussions and meetings the First Minister had undertaken on steel yesterday had asked for a meeting with the Prime Minister today.

However, his office said he was unavailable. Weve said throughout that we are willing to put our political differences aside in the interests of our steel industry, but it does require respect from all parties to make this work.

Mr Cameron also visited car parts provider Toyoda Gosei in Gorseinon alongside Welsh secretary Alun Cairns and Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies during a flying trip to South Wales nine days before the Assembly election.

And he played down poll findings this week which suggested his personal unpopularity in Wales had been a key factor in relegating the Tory vote share to third behind Labour and Plaid Cymru.

A YouGov poll this week showed Plaid was closing the gap on Labour but the Conservatives had slipped back.

Read more:

Referring to surveys which suggested last years general election would be neck-and-neck, Mr Cameron said: I have got some experience now of not necessarily listening to opinion polls. But the people standing in Wales at this Welsh Assembly election are Andrew RT Davies and his team.

Labour are only one seat away from losing control, so to people who think theres no alternative to Labour in Wales and they always win in Wales, its worth remembering if Labour lose just one seat we can get change in Wales and thats what people should vote for.

Asked if it was Plaid rather than his own party which people now saw as the main challenge to Labour, he added: The Conservatives have been the opposition in the Welsh Assembly and were confident well go on being the leading party.

The Tory supremo also attempted to rubbish claims the junior doctors strike in England showed the Conservatives could not be trusted on the NHS, insisting: We are putting more money into the NHS in England and increasing spending whereas its been cut in Wales because of the decisions by the Welsh Government.

But in England we want to go further and not just put more money in. We also want to have a seven-day NHS because thats what patients overwhelmingly want, and that means we do need to change some of the contracts in the NHS.
Original photo by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showing Europe's Beagle 2 lander on the Red Planet (left), compared with a new "super-resolution restoration" image of the same site (right).

New supersharp photos of Mars show Europe's long-lost Beagle 2 lander, ancient Red Planet lake beds and snaking rover tracks in unprecedented detail.

Scientists "stacked and matched" photos captured over the years by NASA's eagle-eyed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) using new machine-vision methods, creating images in which features just 2 inches (5 centimeters) wide can be seen.

Zoom-up of the Beagle 2 lander location on Mars, with a cartoon sketch of the lander superimposed at the same scale. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona/Yu Tao et al/University College London/University of Leicester)

This resolution is five times greater than MRO or any other instrument orbiting Earth or Mars had been able to achieve, researchers said. Further use of this technique could help space agencies select safe landing sites for future Mars missions, search for pieces of other lost Red Planet hardware and perform a variety of other science work, they added. [Mars: The Spacecraft Graveyard]

"We now have the equivalent of drone-eye vision anywhere on the surface of Mars where there are enough clear repeat pictures," study co-author Jan-Peter Muller, of University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory, said in a statement. "It allows us to see objects in much sharper focus from orbit than ever before, and the picture quality is comparable to that obtained from landers."

"As more pictures are collected, we will see increasing evidence of the kind we have only seen from the three successful rover missions to date," Muller added, referring to NASA's Pathfinder, Spirit/Opportunity and Curiosity missions. "This will be a game changer and the start of a new era in planetary exploration."

The team applied the new technique to a variety of regions imaged by MRO, including the ancient, potentially habitable lake beds explored by Curiosity; the "Home Plate" region traversed by Spirit; and the site where Europe's first Mars lander, Beagle 2, touched down in December 2003. [The Search for Beagle 2 on Mars in Photos]

The United Kingdom-led Beagle 2 was part of the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission, which launched in June 2003 and arrived at the Red Planet six months later. The lander detached from its mother ship, the Mars Express orbiter, on Dec. 19, 2003, and was supposed to touch down on Christmas Day.

Beagle 2 never called its handlers from the Martian surface, and many experts assumed the craft had crashed. But last year, officials with the UK Space Agency announced that they had spotted the lander in MRO photos. These images appeared to show partially deployed solar arrays, suggesting that Beagle 2 had succeeded in touching down softly.

The newly released photos give the best looks yet at Beagle 2, which measures just 7 feet (2 meters) wide, scientists said.

Original photos by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (top row) of a rock field (left) and tracks left by the Spirit rover (right), both in the "Home Plate" region of Mars. The bottom row shows the new "super-resolution restoration" views of these images. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona/Yu Tao et al/University College London)

The research team, led by Yu Tao of University College London, described the new "Super-Resolution Restoration" technique in a study that was published in the journal Planetary and Space Science in February. But team members have only recently begun using the method to zero in on specific locations on Mars.

The Mars Express orbiter continues to operate to this day.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Advanced solar electric propulsion will be needed for future human expeditions into deep space, including to Mars. Shown here is a 13-kilowatt Hall thruster being evaluated at NASAs Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Hall thrusters trap electrons in a magnetic field and use them to ionize the onboard propellant. It uses 10 times less propellant than equivalent chemical rockets.

The next-generation engines that NASA is counting on to power missions to an asteroid and Mars will begin taking shape soon.

The space agency has awarded California-based company Aerojet Rocketdyne a $67 million, 36-month contract to design, build and test an advanced, superefficient solar electric propulsion (SEP) system. These new engines should have a profound impact on the future of spaceflight, NASA officials said.

"We basically are building a new drive train that enables whole new platforms for deep-space exploration," Bryan Smith, director of the Space Flight Systems Directorate at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Ohio, said during a news briefing Thursday (April 21). [Electric Vehicles to Explore Deep Space (Photo Gallery)]

SEP systems convert solar power to electricity, then use this electricity to accelerate ions out of a nozzle, generating thrust. Engineers have been developing SEP technology for more than half a century, and such ion thrusters have been used on multiple spacecraft over the years, including NASA's Dawn probe, which is currently orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres.

SEP engines are much more efficient than traditional chemical rockets, requiring less fuel to travel a given distance. However, ion engines generate less thrust than standard rockets do, so it generally takes SEP-powered craft quite a bit longer to get from Point A to Point B in space.

NASA said it wants Aerojet Rocketdyne to give ion engines more oomph, up to twice the thrust capacity of currently available SEP systems. The agency plans to use the advanced ion engines on a variety of missions, including its project to pluck a boulder off a near-Earth asteroid and drag the piece into orbit around the moon. There, astronauts will visit the rock.

The more powerful SEP system should also aid NASA's plan to put boots on Mars by the end of the 2030s, agency officials said. Such engines would still be too slow for crewed Red Planet missions (which would likely employ traditional, chemical propulsion), but they would allow cheaper and more efficient transport of the large amounts of cargo and infrastructure required to support astronauts, Smith said.

SEP systems "allow you to either step down in launch-vehicle class, or increase cargo," he said.

NASA aims to launch the robotic asteroid-capture probe by 2020 or 2021. The new SEP system should be ready to go by then, if all goes according to plan, agency officials have said. (The astronaut visit to the redirected boulder, using NASA's Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket, will occur in 2025 or 2026.)

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
The Mars Curiosity rover took a selfie from the surface of the Red Planet. The next Mars rover, Mars 2020, might carry a microphone to pick up sounds on the planet's surface.

If a rover falls on Mars and there's no one around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Yes. But no one will know unless that probe carries a microphone, so that the sound can be detected back on Earth.

When NASA sends its Mars 2020 rover to the Red Planet, the bot may include an instrument to detect sound waves. The main scientific purpose of the instrument would be to study the composition of Martian rocks, but scientists with the mission said listening to the sounds of Mars could garner great interest from the public.

"There's a lot of good science that can be done by having a microphone on Mars," Sylvestre Maurice, a planetary scientist at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in France, told Space.com. He and his colleagues investigated the possibility of pairing a microphone with a laser that will be used to vaporize rocks on the Martian surface. Maurice presented the results last month at the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. [NASA's Mars Rover 2020 Mission in Pictures (Gallery)]

In addition to gathering science, a microphone would represent a public relations coup, Maurice said.

"It will be the first time we can listen to a sound on Mars," he said.

NASA's Mars 2020 mission will send a car-size rover to the Red Planet to collect samples. See how the Mars 2020 rover will work in this Space.com infographic (Image credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics Artist)

Cool science

This wouldn't, however, be the first time humans have put a microphone on Mars. NASA's Mars Polar Lander carried a microphone when it unsuccessfully crashed into the planet in 1999. The robotic Phoenix Lander successfully set down with a microphone at the Martian northern pole in 2008, but a glitch kept controllers from turning the mic on due to concern over shorting out the lander's system. The European Space Agency's ExoMars mission, which launched earlier this year (2016), also carried a microphone.

The new probe will aim to break that poor track record, and will listen for wind on the Red Planet, Maurice said.

"We know there's noise [on Mars]," he said. "There's a lot of wind on the planet."

In addition to the fast-moving winds of Mars, there will be the sounds that any rover traveling across the surface produces on its own, Maurice said.

The microphone could do even more science with the help of a laser that is scheduled to go aboard the Mars 2020 rover. Maurice serves as deputy principle investigator for the mission's SuperCam instrument, which contains a laser similar to the one used by NASA's Curiosity rover, which is currently exploring Mars. When the laser fires at a rock, it vaporizes some of the material, and that vapor can then be examined from a distance by the rover's instruments.

When the laser heats the material, that action produces a shock wave in the surrounding air, much like an airplane breaking the sound barrier. By studying the shock wave, scientists can discover even more insights into the vaporized material, Maurice said.

Although the sound made by the vaporizing rock is brief  lasting about 5 nanoseconds  it is easily detectable. Tests of the laser create a boom that can be heard across the lab, Maurice said. On Earth, the brief sound would be about as loud as a power saw or an incredibly brief rock concert. The atmosphere of Mars is thinner than Earth's, so sound travels slower, about 530 mph (240 meters/second) compared to 760 mph (340 m/s) on Earth.

So, under Martian conditions, the noise of the vaporization is reduced by about 10 percent, roughly the level of a lawn mower or jackhammer.

"It's a very powerful system. That's why it creates a very noisy sound," Maurice said.

The sound wave produced by the experiment is related to the amount of material vaporized by the laser, a property related to the material's composition.

And of course, in addition to those scientific results, the mission presents the awesome opportunity to hear Martian sounds back on Earth.

"It's science, but it's a little bit different," Maurice said. "It's cool, not obscure."

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us at @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is mulling the possibility of providing funds to four or five Ukrainian pharmaceutical companies, Senior Banker at EBRD Iryna Marchenko has said.

"The bank would like to finance more the pharmaceutical sector. We are working with four or five companies now, studying them to provide with funds," she said at a meeting of pharmaceutical companies with EBRD in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Marchenko said that the bank seeks to finance local pharmaceutical companies that are looking to borrowing to implement their investment plans.

"A company should have a clear investment program and it is to suit a long-term strategy of the company," the banker said.

She also said that EBRD seeks to cooperate with international companies that bought a company in Ukraine.

"They have funds, but from the point of covering political risks, for example, to protect investment, they would like to have such a reliable partner as EBRD," she said.

EBRD is also interested in supporting state-run enterprises being privatized.

"We could provide a pre-privatization support," she said.

Marchenko said that among successful projects to finance companies in the Ukrainian pharmaceutical sector is cooperation with Farmak (the bank implemented three projects with the company), Sperco's project to create industrial facilities meeting GMP standard and cooperation with Venta pharmaceutical distributor with EBRD entered the company's share capital.

Marchenko also said that EBRD has unsuccessful experience of cooperation with pharmaceutical distributor Alba Ukraine.
NASAs last surviving flight-qualified space shuttle external tank is seen at the Panama Canal on April 25.

A giant space shuttle fuel tank made for an unusual sight Monday (April 25) at the Panama Canal.

The 154-foot-long (47 meter) external tank, riding atop an uncovered flatbed barge, entered the famous waterway on its journey to the California Science Center in Los Angeles, where it will be displayed with NASA's retired space shuttle Endeavour.

"We're anticipating making the first part of the canal transit, Gatun Locks, on the [afternoon] of the 25th, overnighting in Gatun Lake and then proceeding through the Pedro Miguel Locks and Miraflores Locks on the afternoon of the 26th," Dennis Jenkins, project director for Endeavour's exhibit at the California Science Center, wrote in an email. [Photo Gallery: Shuttle External Tank at Panama Canal]

According to the documentary team filming the transit, the orange-brown external tank entered Gatun Locks at about 12:45 p.m. EDT (1645 GMT; 11:45 a.m. local time).

NASA's last existing flight-qualified example, External Tank 94 (ET-94) began its ocean voyage to the Panama Canal on April 12  by coincidence, on the 35th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch in 1981. Leaving the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans where it was built some 15 years ago, ET-94 traveled for two weeks to arrive at the canal.

"[The tank has] survived the first part of her historic sea voyage with no issues," Jenkins wrote.

ET-94's next leg will be longer. After transiting the canal's six locks  a water staircase that will lift its barge 85 feet (25 m) to the height of Gatun Lake and then back down to sea level on the Pacific side  the tugboat Shannon Dann will pull the barge, the Gulfmaster I, for the next 17 to 20 days to San Diego.

There, ET-94 will clear customs before its expected arrival at Fisherman's Village in Marina del Rey on May 18.

Webcam view showing the shuttle external tank ET-94 entering the Gatun Locks at the Panama Canal, April 25, 2016. (Image credit: pancanal.com)

Two days later, the California Science Center will throw its annual Discovery Ball fundraiser at the marina to celebrate ET-94's arrival and send it on its way on an overnight road trip to its new home. Leaving on a similar but shorter trek than the one Endeavour took in 2012, the external tank will be driven through the streets of Los Angeles to Exposition Park, where the science center is located.

The tank will be parked outside the Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Pavilion, where Endeavour is on display today, so that workers can make repairs, restore its flight hardware and prepare it to be mated with the orbiter. Together with a pair of solid rocket boosters, ET-94 and Endeavour will be exhibited in a launch pad-like configuration in the Science Center's future Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center, slated to open in 2019.

The vertical display will be the world's only exhibit of a fully authentic space shuttle stack. Guests will be able to rise to the top of the vehicle by way of a gantry-like tower.

ET-94 is the fifth external tank to cross the Panama Canal and the first to do so on an open-air barge. Four previous external tanks, ETs 23, 27, 33 and 34, traveled by covered barge to California in the early 1980s, when plans existed for a shuttle launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

ET-23 was mated with the orbiter prototype Enterprise for a fit check test at Vandenberg's Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) before the west coast launches were canceled in the wake of the Challenger accident in January 1986.

The four external tanks were subsequently shipped back to the east coast  again by way of the Panama Canal  to launch shuttle missions from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

View a photo gallery of external tank ET-94 crossing the Panama Canal at collectSPACE.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2016 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.
This photo by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope reveals the first moon ever discovered around the dwarf planet Makemake. The 100-mile-wide (160 kilometers) satellite is barely visible just above Makemake, almost lost in the glare of the bright dwarf planet.

The dwarf planet Makemake has some company out in the cold, dark depths of the outer solar system.

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a moon orbiting Makemake, which is the second-brightest object in the distant Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune. (Pluto is the brightest of these bodies.)

The newfound satellite  the first ever spotted around Makemake  is 1,300 times fainter than the dwarf planet and is thought to be about 100 miles (160 kilometers) in diameter, researchers said. The moon was spotted 13,000 miles (20,900 km) from the surface of Makemake, which itself is 870 miles (1,400 km) wide. [See images of the dwarf planet Makemake]

"Makemake is in the class of rare Pluto-like objects, so finding a companion is important," Alex Parker of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, who led the image analysis for the Hubble observations, said in a statement today (April 26).

"The discovery of this moon has given us an opportunity to study Makemake in far greater detail than we ever would have been able to without the companion," Parker added.

This photo by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope reveals the first moon ever discovered around the dwarf planet Makemake. The 100-mile-wide (160 kilometers) satellite is barely visible just above Makemake, almost lost in the glare of the bright dwarf planet. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Parker and M. Buie (SwRI))

For example, further observations of the moon  which has been provisionally named S/2015 (136472) 1, and nicknamed MK 2  should allow astronomers to calculate the density of Makemake, which should tell them if the dwarf planet and Pluto are made of similar stuff.

"This new discovery opens a new chapter in comparative planetology in the outer solar system," said team leader Marc Buie, also of SwRI.

Additional Hubble observations should also reveal the shape of MK 2's orbit around Makemake. If the orbit is tightly circular, the moon was probably created by a long-ago giant impact, just like the five satellites in the Pluto system were, researchers said. A looping, elliptical orbit, on the other hand, would suggest that MK 2 was once a free-flying Kuiper Belt object that Makemake captured.

Artist's concept of the dwarf planet Makemake and its newfound moon, which has been nicknamed MK 2. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Parker (Southwest Research Institute))

The Hubble discovery images suggest that MK 2 is as dark as charcoal, which seems surprising given that Makemake is so bright. One possible explanation is that the moon's gravity is too weak to hold onto reflective ices, which sublimate off MK 2's surface into space, researchers said.

Makemake orbits the sun at an average distance of 45.7 astronomical units (AU) and completes one lap around the star every 309 Earth years. (One AU is the Earth-sun distance  about 93 million miles, or 150 million km.) The dwarf planet is even farther away than Pluto, which lies 39.5 AU from the sun on average and orbits once every 248 Earth years.

Makemake is one of five objects officially recognized as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The others are the Kuiper Belt denizens Pluto, Eris and Haumea, and Ceres, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Ceres is the only one of these five that doesn't have at least one moon.

The IAU defines a dwarf planet as an object that orbits the sun and is massive enough to have been forced into a spherical shape by its own gravity but has not "cleared its neighborhood" of other orbiting material. (Pluto falls short on this last count, according to IAU officials, which is why the former ninth planet was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006.)

MK 2 was spotted in observations made by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in April 2015, after several previous Makemake observation campaigns had failed to turn up any satellites.

"Our preliminary estimates show that the moon's orbit seems to be edge-on, and that means that often when you look at the system you are going to miss the moon because it gets lost in the bright glare of Makemake," Parker said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
The new IMAX film "A Beautiful Planet" depicts Earth from an astronaut's-eye view, and it also painstakingly recreates the entire Milky Way in a realistic visualization. And you can learn how the filmmakers tapped supercomputers to create the stunning scene in this exclusive clip.

In the video, Donna Cox, the director of the Advanced Visualization Lab at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at University of Illinois, describes working with scientists to visualize their data and telescopic images cataloguing the universe. She is joined by the center's visualization designer Robert Patterson.

"Her team works with real astronomical data  this is not CGI, this is not made-up stuff," Toni Myers, director of "A Beautiful Planet," says in the video.

In "A Beautiful Planet", the visuals "take the audience where cameras can't go," as Patterson puts it  audience members are immersed as the view zooms out and through the Milky Way, showing an Earth-like exoplanet and other features. Every known Milky Way star is taken into account in the realistic view and the simulation that created it.

"Today, more than ever before, we're seeing a kind of renaissance of artists and scientists working together to bring the visual to people and the accuracy of science to be embedded in that visual," Cox said.

"A Beautiful Planet" opens in IMAX theaters on Friday, April 29.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Arianespaces third flight of 2016 has demonstrated the versatility of its medium-lift Soyuz launcher, which deployed five European satellites of varying sizes into three different low Earth orbits during a mission lasting four hours.

PARISA Europeanized Russian Soyuz rocket on April 25 successfully placed a European radar Earth observation satellite, a French fundamental-physics experiment and three European university-built cubesats into low-Earth orbit.

The operators of all five satellites confirmed that their spacecraft were in the correct orbit and sending signals of good health.

Operating its 14th mission from Europe's Guiana Space Center spaceport, on the northeast coast of South America, the four-stage Soyuz's Fregat restartable upper stage conducted four burns to distribute its payloads into three separate orbits over a four-hour period.

The launch, originally scheduled for April 22, was delayed by three days  two successive scrubs due to high upper-atmospheric winds, and a third to change out a defective inertial measurement unit.

The first to be deployed was the principal payload, the Sentinel-1A satellite radar Earth observation satellite. It is part of the European Commission-owned Copernicus environment-monitoring program, which includes multiple Sentinel spacecraft carrying different sensors.

The 22-nation European Space Agency is a co-investor with the European Commission in the multibillion-dollar Copernicus program and manages the satellite construction contracts.

The Sentinel-1B radar Earth observation satellite, successfully launched April 25, will join its twin Sentinel-1A at 686 kilometers in low Earth orbit. Adding a second satellite will cut in half the system's revisit time over a given area as part of Europe's Copernicus program. (Image credit: Thales Alenia Space)

Sentinel-1B is a twin of the Sentinel-1A satellite launched in April 2014. The two satellites, operating in tandem at 686 kilometers in altitude, will reduce the time between revisits over a given point at the equator from 12 days now to six days with the two spacecraft spaced 180 degrees apart.

Imaging frequency over Europe will also be cut in half, from four days to two days, substantially improving the system's value to European maritime and coastal authorities. Copernicus officials say that if satellite data one data wipes out the practice of ships illegally emptying their bilge tanks, often with oil, in the open ocean, it is the Sentinel-1 system that will do it.

The 2,164-kilogram Sentinel-1B is designed to operate for at least seven years but carries sufficient fuel for 12 years. To guarantee continuity to Copernicus users, ESA and the European Commission have financed "C" and "D" units for the three main Sentinel families.

These satellites plus individual Sentinel payloads will assure an unbroken Copernicus data flow well beyond 2030, said Volker Liebig, ESA's director of Earth observation.

Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy is prime contractor for all four Sentinel-1 satellites. The two remain spacecraft, also designed to operate in tandem, will be launched in 2021 or later, depending on the health of the first pair now in orbit.

Liebig said the Sentinel-1C and 1D satellites are substantially identical to the first two, with the exception of an Automatic Identification terminal on each one. The two in orbit now do not have AIS payloads, which track maritime traffic by capturing signals sent from shipboard transmitters.

Coupling an AIS terminal to a radar imager will allow maritime authorities to more quickly identify the ships captured in the radar images.

With the Sentinel satellites now entering service and more on the way, ESA and the European Commission are focusing on the Big Data challenge posed by the Copernicus system.

Copernicus data is distributed freely and openly to users who registered at the Sentinel Scientific Data Hub. In a taste of what may be to come when the entire Sentinel fleet is in service, the hub has already registered nearly 30,000 users, Liebig said.

In the two years since Sentinel-1A was launched, the Copernicus data-processing center has catalogued and made available for download some 482,000 Sentinel-1 products and registered about 4 million downloads  a transmission of 4.71 petabytes of data from just one spacecraft.

"For those of you not used to working with radar data, I can tell you: You don't download a radar image if you don't need it," Liebig said in a prelaunch briefing. "Its not like an optical image, which is easier to understand."

The scale of the Copernicus endeavor has begun to attract governments outside of Europe. The U.S. State Department and the European Commission recently concluded an agreement under which U.S. government agencies would receive Copernicus data free of charge.

"We have imported data from the United States for many years," Liebig said, referring to U.S. Landsat and other satellite imagery. "Now we can pay that back."

(Image credit: CNES  Jullet 2012 /Illust. D. Ducros)

The main secondary passenger launched with Sentinel-1A was the 303-kilogram Microscope satellite, an ambitious test of Einstein's general theory of relatively, and specifically the equivalence principle.

Developed by the French space agency, CNES, Microscope will test the behavior in free fall of two objects  one titanium, one platinum  of the same mass but of different composition.

The goal: Test, to limits beyond what can be done on Earth, whether the equivalence principle is violated when tested to a precision of 10 to power of minus 15  100 times more precise than ground-based tests. The results will come from measuring the slightest difference in acceleration between the two masses.

The mission, budgeted at 130 million euros ($147 million), has taken more than 15 years to produce at CNES. The French aerospace research institute, ONERA, developed the instrument payload, called T-SAGE, or Twin Space Accelerometer for Space Gravity Experiment.

To get as close to possible to true free-fall, the satellite is equipped with eight high-pressure-nitrogen micro-thrusters that will compensate for the slight atmospheric drag the satellite will encounter at its 700-kilometer altitude.

The mission is designed to last two years.

Originally published on Space News.
Ukraine's Finance Ministry seeks to agree the date of a visit of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission to Ukraine in coming weeks, Deputy Finance Minister Artem Shevalev told reporters on the sidelines of a roundtable on developing the national exports strategy.

"We expect that in next coming weeks we will have the concrete date of their arrival and be on the home straight in signing the memorandum," he said.

Shevalev said that at present the more active implementation of the draft memorandum of late 2015 is discussed, taking into account a suspension in cooperation with the IMF due to political crisis in Ukraine.
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The Crimean Tatar Mejlis, which is not registered in Russia, is engaged in anti-Russian activity in favor of the West, Crimean Prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya has said.

"The Mejlis' entire activity and ideology is built on just one thing: fighting against Russia," she said on Tuesday, at the Crimean Supreme Court, which is hearing the regional prosecutor's lawsuit seeking a ban on Mejlis as an extremist organization.

Mejlis leaders and members are "puppets in the hands of big Western puppeteers," she said.

"They only need the Mejlis to incite discord, hatred and animosity," Poklonskaya said.

The Mejlis uses the Crimean Tatar people as a "bargaining chip," she said.

She urged the court to declare the Mejlis as an extremist organization and ban its activity.

Meanwhile, lawyer Jemil Temishev, who represents the defendant, said that a court ruling in favor of the plaintiff will hurt Russian interests, and give its opponents a reason to speak of human rights abuse in the country.

"A satisfaction granted to this administrative lawsuit will definitely strengthen the positions of anti-Russian politicians, public figures and statesmen. This lawsuit in these phrasings will not only fail to protect the interests of certain citizens, the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, its economic security  the decision to ban the Mejlis will be aimed against Russia itself," Temishev told the court.

The prosecutors' grievances are aimed at specific politicians, in particular, the head of the Mejlis Refat Chubarov, who is also a member of Ukrainian parliament, and the president of the World Congress of Crimean Tatars, and has resided in Kyiv for several years now, the defense lawyer said.

Chubarov will make a number of statements on his behalf, without a decision by the collegial body that is Mejlis, the lawyer said.

"This is an attempt to neutralize some political figures," Temishev said of the lawsuit.

Nariman Jelyalov, the first deputy chairman of Mejlis, continued to insist in court that the Mejlis is a representative body of the Crimean Tatar people, not a public organization as prosecutors claim.

He also said that the Mejlis has international operations and has representative offices beyond Crimea, which is why the lawsuit must be heard by the Russian Supreme Court, not Crimean.

Jelyalov dismissed the extremism charges against the Mejlis.

Both the defendant and the lawyer urged the court to reject the lawsuit, recalling that a potential ban has already caused a negative reaction from the international community.

The Mejlis is a non-registered Russian organization, which claims to be a representative body of Crimean Tatars. It consists of 33 members.

Its current and former leaders  Chubarov and Mustafa Jemilev  currently live in Kyiv. Crimean prosecutors consider them to be involved in the energy blockade of Crimea, and have opened a number of inquiries against them.

Crimea has a population of 1.9 million, of which 10-13% are Crimean Tatars.
Some researchers believe that even the fundamental assumptions behind the calculations are wrong. One of them is Reinhard Wetzker. He leads the Institute of Molecular Cell Biology at the University of Jena. "The traditional risk model cannot be upheld," he says. "It doesn't take into account that the cells can deal very well with low dosages of radiation."

The scariest consequence is damage to the genome. But for the body, even that kind of damage is not necessarily a dramatic event in the near term. Every single cell experiences it thousands of times every day. Often enough, the attack comes from inside: Cell metabolism creates aggressive molecules, so-called oxygen radicals, that continuously impair DNA.

For this reason, there are tiny maintenance machines in operation around the clock: Special proteins correct defective portions of the genome, while others mend strand breaks. When nothing will do the trick, molecular guards initiate programmed cell death.

Misplaced Fears?

It has been widely proven how well these repair mechanisms function, as long as the radiation does not become too strong. Furthermore, cells that have been repaired once appear to be better equipped for later attacks. So are the fears misplaced?

Darmstadt biologist Fournier believes the question is misguided. "Something that strengthens the cells doesn't necessarily help a person," she says. "If it mutates, this cell can later be the source of cancer."

It is widely accepted, though, that the grim victim scenarios of the nuclear age have not been fulfilled. Indeed, its biggest catastrophes have caused surprisingly few victims.

Those who travel to Chernobyl today will feel like they are entering a nature paradise. In the area surrounding the reactor that was the epicenter of the disaster, there are once again wolves and Przewalski horses -- and even European bison and lynx have now infiltrated the uninhabited forests. There are probably more animals living in the area than before the disaster. The still-elevated radiation seems to be less damaging to nature than humans are.

The catastrophe began with the explosion of Unit 4 on April 26, 1986. Firefighters tried to extinguish the flames and to cover the open reactor core. Many of the helpers were exposed to extremely high doses of radiation and, by 1998, 39 of them had died as a result.

Whether there was an increase in cancer cases in the area after the accident is an open question, however. The statistics have not proven such a thing: Higher cancer rates in the population have thus far not been determined. That's the conclusion drawn by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) in 2011. There is however one exception: Over 6,000 children contracted thyroid cancer after the accident and 15 of them died. A large number of the cases can be tied to the radioactive iodine that the wind carried into the region in the first days. This tumor is, if identified early enough, easily treated.

An increase in thyroid cancer has also been observed in the area surrounding Fukushima's destroyed nuclear reactor. Last year around 300,000 people who were 18 or younger at the time of the disaster were examined. Researchers found 137 cases. Yet no one knows how many of these tumors were detected because this was the first time a thorough screening had been undertaken.

Was the Fukushima Evacuation a Mistake?

Otherwise, the reactor catastrophe in Fukushima has had relatively mild consequences. Almost 19,000 people in the region lost their lives, but they were victims of the earthquake on March 11 and the subsequent tsunami. So far, no one seems to have died as a result of radiation from the damaged nuclear power station. Two workers came into contact with radioactive water because they were wearing low-cut shoes and were hospitalized with minor burns, but they were promptly discharged. In contrast, many people died as a consequence of the widespread evacuation. Almost 100,000 inhabitants of the area surrounding the power plant had to leave their homes: The ill were removed from intensive care units, the elderly taken out of care homes and families were split up. Some had to be resettled several times. Many of those in the makeshift shelters complained of depression. There were suicides.

The most conservative assessments assume there were at least 150 fatalities. A study conducted by the University of Stanford concluded that there were 600 victims of the evacuation, compared to the maybe 30 that would have died of radiation poisoning had they not been rescued.

The radioactivity in the region of Fukushima remained relatively low. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), no more than 50 millisieverts were to be expected in the first year, even in the worst hit localities, and up to 10 millisieverts in the other surrounding areas.

So was the complete evacuation a mistake? Should people have simply been left at home? Or perhaps only infants, who are especially vulnerable, should have been evacuated?

These questions are easy to ask in hindsight. But for one querulous group of researchers, there are no doubts. They believe that weak radiation doesn't hurt the body, but in fact helps. They say the minor radioactive bombardment can be beneficial: Cells power up their repair systems and enter a state of increased vigilance and vitality.

This theory is called hormesis (the word comes from ancient Greek and means "stimulate") by its proponents. The scientists who adhere to this approach meet at special conferences and even have their own journal. Their leading authority is the American toxicologist Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Skeptical Majority

The proponents of hormesis, or "hormeticians," find the prevailing risk model to be too pessimistic. There are places, they say, where the natural background radiation emanating from the planet is far higher than normal doses, including the Guarapari resort in Brazil and the radioactive thermal springs in Ramsar, Iran. Yet in these places, there are no indications of an increased risk of cancer.

Still, the skeptical majority of researchers is not convinced. They point out that cancer statistics are notoriously unreliable at low doses of radiation. Some cases in such places, they argue, might indeed be caused by radiation, but they cannot be identified due to the numerous cases resulting from other causes.

The Bavarian radioactivity researcher Ruhm fears that the debate will never be settled with statistics alone. "We need additional biological experiments in order to understand what the effects are of radiation in small doses," he says.

The research project on radon therapy in Darmstadt shows how this might work. The researchers are not only examining spa guests, but have also placed mice in a specially constructed radon chamber and are monitoring the cell cultures in an artificial blood stream.

It has already become clear that, under radiation exposure, specific cells emerge that reduce the immune system's overzealousness, preventing the body from becoming its own enemy.

Is this then evidence in favor of hormesis? "This theory about positive radiation is too general for me," says project leader Fournier. "The damaging effects are still there." As such, she would not recommend radon therapy to a healthy person. "But in the case of the ill, the benefits seem to clearly outweigh the negatives."

The Benefits of Poison

The hormeticians are still in the minority. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the US is currently looking to answer the question of whether their risk model should incorporate hormetics in the future. Last year, the commission invited experts to share their views and the process is still ongoing. A subcommittee has already expressed its view, however: It believes the commission should stick to its current model for the moment. Hormesis is still too unproven, they say, even if it does appear increasingly plausible.

It is the same plausibility of an old piece of folk wisdom put forward in the 16th century by the healer Paracelsus, namely that the dose makes the poison. It is true that many things are good for the body in moderation. Salt for example, or the stimulant caffeine -- substances that are deadly in higher doses.

The Greifswald pharmacist Hugo Schulz observed in 1888 that yeast thrives after being treated with a significantly diluted disinfectant. Schulz saw his findings confirmed after tests with other poisons. Under a certain threshold, the usual effects are reversed and toxins become useful.

Schulz was a pioneer of the hormesis theory. Later on he tried to use his discoveries to explain homeopathy, as it also calls for poison to be taken, albeit in vanishingly small amounts. Today's hormeticians find the field's founding father's confusion to be embarrassing.

In Jena, the biochemist Wetzker is unfazed. He and his team of two dozen researchers are investigating how the body's cells react to stress. He is looking at heat, cold, hunger, poisons and radioactive materials. "In small doses, these are completely normal challenges for the body," says Wetzker.

The cells respond in the same way to all forms of stress. First they amp up their powerhouses, the mitochondria, and mobilize their energy reserves. Invariably this process produces oxygen radicals. "Previously these were thought of as a bad thing," Wetzker says. "Today we know better. Their attacks stimulate the cell's repair processes."

Caution Is Required

This molecular skirmish appears to invigorate the organism. Various findings point towards the conclusion that moderate stress of any kind is advantageous. Roundworms fed small amount of arsenic live longer. People who indulge in moderate levels of alcohol have reduced risks of heart attacks, diabetes and Alzheimer's according to epidemiological studies.

Yet these blessings do seem to be coupled with notable damage to genomes. But this is as true of exercise as it is for other sources of stress. "Even when you jog," says Wetzker, "the genomes in your cells come under attack." In this instance, the impact leads to muscles being strengthened.

Wetzker hypothesizes that there is a universal principle when it comes to stress response, namely that the body can acclimatize to -- or even requires -- any kind of moderate challenge. "After a few weeks in a cast, your muscles are withered." The body needs to be regularly pushed, even with radioactivity.

Wetzker, of course, admits that caution is required when it comes to nuclear radiation. It is too difficult to calculate doses and effects. Experiments on people to gain better insights are out of the question. The researcher believes, however, that there are ill people who would be willing to accept a small amount of risk.

Every year, around 56,000 people in Germany die as a result of septicemia. This usually devastating blood poisoning is most often contracted in hospitals -- already weakened patients are especially susceptible. Strangely though, death usually comes long after the pathogens have been removed from the bloodstream with antibiotics. Even without the harmful microbes, the patient gets worse and worse. Usually their illness comes to a close as multiple organs fail. As such, it has long been suspected that the immune system itself is to blame. It could be overreacting to the original infection.

A New Debate

Wetzker hopes he can use mild radiation to calm the out of control defense mechanisms. The idea first occurred to his colleague Luis Moita at the University of Lisbon. Moita had already proven in several tests on mice that he was on the right track. The majority of the animals subjected to radiation survived the septicemia.

"For us, this is a sensational discovery", said Wetzker. "Maybe we can save humans this way too." Moira had previously infected several mice with a cytotoxin, which damages the genome and simulates exposure to radiation to some extent. This method has already been approved and is used to fight blood cancer by attacking leukemia cells.

A study has already been requested. Septicemia patients who, according to medical estimates, do not have long to live are being considered as the subject group. The plan is to offer these terminally ill patients the radiation simulant. It would be their last hope.

If they survive, then researchers will be facing a new debate -- about the curing power of destroyed genomes.
El Aaiun (occupied territories), April 24, 2016. (SPS) - Four human rights activists were arrested on Friday by Moroccan police at the entrance of the city of Guelemin, and forced to return to the occupied city of El Aaiun.

Activists are Sidi Mohamed Dadach, president of CODAPSO, Hmad Hamad, vice president of the same association, Bomba Lefkir and Feku Ibaihim, were detained to prevent from visiting the family of Brahim Saika, the young unionist and Saharawi activist who died on April 15 under police custody.

According to sources from the Ministry of the Occupied Territories and Community Abroad, the four were detained for half an hour and then were put in a van back to El Aaiun SPS

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Banjul (Gambia), April 24, 2016 (SPS) - The African Commission on Human Rights and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) called on the UN to set a date for holding the referendum on self-determination for the people of Western Sahara and to find an appropriate response to issues related to respect for human rights and the illegal exploitation of natural resources of the territory, in accordance with the decision of the AU conference of June 2014.

In a resolution adopted at its 58th Ordinary Session held from April 6 to 20, 2016, in Banjul, the ACHPR urged the UN Security Council to strengthen the mandate of the UN Mission for the Referendum in the Sahara Western (MINURSO), which expires on April 30 to include a human rights component.

It urges international organizations including the United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank and the African Development Bank and other members of the international community not to support or recognize trade agreements or otherwise the investment contrary to the rights of the people of Western Sahara, on their natural resources of Western Sahara.

AU human right organization called the Peace and Security Council of the AU and the Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union to continue the monitoring process, documentation and presentation of a report on the situation of human rights Western Sahara.SPS
Algeria, April 25, 2016 (SPS)  the Speaker of the Council of the Nation (Upper House of Parliament), Mr. Abdelkader Bensalah reiterated on Sunday his country unconditional support to Saharawi people, during his meeting with Sahrawi delegation headed by Speaker of the Sahrawi National Council Khatri Addouh accompanied with Sahrawi ambassador to Algeria, Mr. Bacharaya Hamudi Bayun.

From his part, Khatri Addouh hailed the Algerian firm position towards the just issue of the Sahrawi people.

It should be recalled that the visit of the Saharawi delegation came at the invitation of Mr. Abdelkader Bensalah, Speaker of the Nation Council, which lasts three days and is expected to meet several Algerian parliamentarians and government officials.SPS

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Algeria, April 25, 2016 (SPS)  the Collective of Algerian journalists in Solidarity with the Saharawi people condemned "strongly" Moroccan colonial practices in Western Sahara, denouncing Morocco Media attempts aimed at obstructing the process of the settlement of the conflict, according to a statement, a copy of which obtained by SPS.

The collective condemned the Moroccan recent attempts not only to block the continuation of the process of the settlement of the dispute in accordance with international law, but also to distort the UN's reputation and its Secretary General, the Security Council, the General Assembly and its Fourth Committee in charge of decolonization," the statement adds.

The members of the said collective launched urgent appeal to the members of the Security Council to shoulder its responsibilities, and be strict with the Moroccan occupation "through a request for clarification about its serious and punish him its repudiation of its obligations towards the international community and the people of Western Sahara," the statement says.SPS

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Bir Lehlou, 25 April 2016, the President of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, Secretary General of the POLISARIO Front, Mr. Mohamed Abdelaziz sent Tuesday a letter of congratulation to the President of the United Republic of Tanzania, H.E. Dr. John Pombe Josehp Magufuli on The happy occasion of the 52nd Anniversary of the United Republic of Tanzania.

The happy occasion of the 52nd Anniversary of the United Republic of Tanzania gives me the opportunity to extend to your Excellency and to the brotherly people of Tanzania our warmest congratulations and most sincere and best wishes for success and prosperity on behalf of the Saharawi people, the government of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic and on my own behalf. The president of republic said

He also went on saying in his letter that We are convinced that the United Republic of Tanzania will continue, under your wise leadership, its steady march towards the attainment of more progress, development and prosperity. Tanzania represents a model of stability in and constitutes a remarkable landmark in the history of our continent for its important contribution to the liberation struggle against colonialism and apartheid, becoming the shrine and the safe haven of all the freedom fighters in Africa.

He renewed to his Excellency the Sahrawi people strong resolve to further consolidate the bonds of solidarity, friendship and cooperation already existing between our two peoples and nations.SPS

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Washington, April 26, 2016 (SPS) - The United Nations Security Council will receive the Special Envoy of the African Union Commission's Chairperson for Western Sahara, Joakim Alberto Chissano, to discuss the recent developments in the occupied Sahrawi territories.

The meeting, which will be held at the request of the AU Peace and Security Council, will be devoted to the examination of the status quo prevailing in Western Sahara.

It will be an opportunity for Alberto Chissano, former president of Mozambique, to inform the members of the Security Council of his efforts as AU envoy for the resolution of the Western Sahara conflict.

The meeting aims at promoting transparency in the discussion on the Sahrawi conflict and deepening debate on the maintenance of peace and security in Africa, especially in Western Sahara.

The briefing will be held Tuesday afternoon despite the pressures exerted by France, Egypt and Senegal on Angola to make it refuse the request of the AU Peace and Security Council, Polisario Front's representative to the UN Ahmed Boukhari told APS.

Boukhari said to be satisfied with AU's commitment for the Sahrawi issue and its consistent position on the decolonization of Western Sahara.SPS

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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has made changes in the composition of the National Reforms Council.

Corresponding decree No. 173/2016 has been published on the president's official website.

According to the decree, first deputy head of presidential administration Vitaliy Kovalchuk was made a member of the National Reforms Council, who will "participate in its work on all matters."

Slovak minister of finance in 2002-2006 and in 2010-2012 Ivan Miklos and advisor to the President of Ukraine, his representative in the Cabinet of Ministers, former deputy premier of Poland Leszek Balcerowicz  appointed members of the National Reform Council, who are invited to consider certain issues.

As reported, on April 22 Balcerowicz was appointed an adviser to the Ukrainian president, his representative in the Cabinet of Ministers, and a co-chairman of a group of strategic advisers on reform.
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America is full of beauty hidden in corners, small streets and neighborhoods.

Last year, Thrillist named its picks for the most beautiful neighborhoods in the country and Beacon Hill in Boston with its brick sidewalks and gaslight lamps got the top honor. Travel and Leisure also put together a similar roundup and Montrose in Houston was their top pick.

In neighboring New York City, two neighborhoods were picked form the bunch. Thrillist fawned over Central Park West and Travel and Leisure is smitten with Brooklyn Heights.

Both lists included neighborhoods from east to west, but neither included any Connecticut spots.

Southwestern Connecticut is full of beautiful streets, hidden corners and neighborhoods, so help us round up the most beautiful streets in the area by telling us your favorite in the comments.

We started the list off with some of our favorites including historic Washington Street in South Norwalk, home to Donovan's, the oldest bar in the neighborhood. In Westport, the homes along Soundview Drive are a lovely suburban backdrop to Compo Beach.




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STAMFORD  Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump took the lead for their respective parties in Stamford, as city residents showed up at polling stations in very healthy fashion for Tuesdays presidential primary vote.

With all but one of 22 precincts reporting, the former secretary of state won 6,710 votes from registered Democrats, besting Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who won 3,557. For the Republicans, Trump took 3,013 votes with just two precincts not reporting at press time; Ohio Gov. John Kasich won 1,578 and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz took 543.

Over 17,000 ballots were cast, representing a turnout of 41 percent of eligible registered-party voters in Stamford.

I would say thats a very healthy number, said Ron Malloy, registrar of voters in Stamford and the brother of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

Clintons supporters were out all day long in Stamford.

Leyla Dam, a 30-year-old owner of Lorca cafe on Bedford Street, said she thinks Clinton will unite both parties if shes elected.

And as a female business owner, Id like to see a female president, Dam said after she cast her vote.

Fitz Lambert, who stopped to vote at Dolan Middle School on his way to work Tuesday morning, also supported Clinton.

I like the things she stands for, Lambert said. And I think her husband was a good president and I assume he would help her.

But Sanders remained a popular vote among young voters. At the University of Connecticut campus in Stamford, many young people voiced their support for Sanders, whose campaign promises include reducing student debt and making college tuition free.

Hes bold, said 19-year-old Anthony Villeda, who also voted for the first time Tuesday at Westover Magnet Elementary School. I dont think he can do half of the things he says he will, but I dont think he backs down on what he thinks is right.

As results started to come in Tuesday evening, as many as 50 Bernie Sanders supporters gathered at Seaside Tavern, many wincing and cheering as each update was projected on a television screen showing the former secretary of state and the Vermont senator neck in neck for the Democratic nod.

Its exciting, said Nina Sherwood, head Stamford volunteer coordinator for Sanders. When you see a difference of 200-some votes, you know you made a difference. Everyone in this room made a difference."

Volunteers made calls and canvassed Stamford neighborhoods throughout the day.

We canvassed really hard today," said volunteer Jess Esposito, who said she got a voter who was unsure of the primary date to their polling place at Stamford High School two minutes before the polls closed.

Meanwhile, Republicans  the minority of registered voters in Stamford  cast a majority of votes for Trump over Cruz, and Kasich.

I changed my vote at the last minute, said George Essenfeld, who filled out his ballot for Trump at the First Presbyterian Church. I didnt like the coordination (between) Cruz and Kasich. I didnt like them getting together to try to take down Trump.

Registered voters who are party affiliated cast ballots at 22 sites throughout the city, during what officials said was a mostly problem-free day at the polls.

When the polls opened Tuesday, Stamford had 24,756 registered Democrats and 12,902 Republicans. These numbers had risen from February, when there were 22,854 Democrats and 12,157 Republicans. An equally large number of registered voters are unaffiliated and unable to vote in a primary in Connecticut.

More than 500 people who were unaffiliated or registered with the Independent Party were turned away from the polls, according to officials. Others had tried to change their party affiliations online and found they didnt go through, leaving them unable to vote.

I wanted to register as a Democrat just so I could vote against Hillary, said Nicole Edmonds, a bartender at Tigin Irish Pub on Bedford Street. Edmonds recently moved from Bridgeport to Stamford and wanted to vote in her new home.

Residents who changed their parties within the last 90 days were not allowed to vote on Tuesday either, while unaffiliated voters had until Monday to join a party.

Im more than annoyed given all the other issues theyve had today, she said. People are showing up to polling places and being told theyre not registered to vote.

eskalka@scni.com
There are more than a half million working people who have no access to workplace-based retirement savings in Connecticut  and this number has been growing steadily over time.

Like the rest of the country, Connecticut is about to welcome an entire generation of employees, many of them lifelong hard-working middle class people, who are headed to retirement financially unequipped, in part due to the lack of access to a workplace-based retirement savings option.

In many cases, these individuals may be forced to delay retirement indefinitely  or turn to the state for assistance with health care, nursing care, food, housing, energy or other costly services. This will deprive people of the retirement they deserve following a lifetime of hard work supporting their families, and it will consume state resources that could be spent on economic development, public transportation and other priorities.

This national retirement security crisis disproportionately affects women, and it disproportionately affects the black and Latino communities.

As state comptroller and co-chair of the Connecticut Retirement Security Board (CRSB), Im calling on the legislature to establish a state-run retirement savings program for private-sector employees in Connecticut.

This program  a self-sustaining, not taxpayer-sustained, program - follows more than a year of market research, public hearings and meetings, as well as broad input from employers, potential participants, representatives of the financial industry and other stakeholders.

There is a great deal of misinformation about this concept, so I must set the record straight - starting with what the program is NOT.

The program would NOT be mandatory for businesses that currently already offer a 401K plan or other workplace-based retirement savings options to employees; it would NOT apply to businesses with fewer than five employees; it would NOT require that participating employers contribute to the program (only that they provide a payroll deduction mechanism for employees to contribute); and employee participation in the savings would be strictly voluntary (employees would be automatically enrolled, but can opt out if they prefer).

The legislation would create a new quasi-public entity responsible for implementing the program through contracts with private-sector companies. The program now proposed would be self-sustaining within only two to five years. The quasi-public entity that would oversee its implementation would be subject to significant transparency provisions, including requirements that it provide the Office of the State Comptroller with checkbook-level financial data to be included on the states OpenCheckbook website.

And finally, there would be additional safeguards in place to, among other things, ensure that contributions to the program are transmitted timely and safely.

Some say that any employee without a workplace-based savings mechanism can simply walk into any financial institution and establish an independent retirement account on their own. That would be true in an ideal world  but in the real world its simply not happening for a variety of reasons, including cost and perhaps mistrust or misunderstanding of the financial industry. It is a plain fact that savings rates vastly increase when available through payroll deduction.

A private-sector solution should be the first answer to this challenge  but the private market has had sole opportunity to deliver its products to the workforce for a long time. The private providers have done good work and theyve introduced innovative models and products, but these products are just simply currently failing to reach nearly half of our workforce and that number is growing.

The implementation of this program will actually encourage and drive businesses to the private market, fueling our states financial industry. In fact, the Boston College Center for Retirement Research survey of Connecticut employers found that, if the program is implemented, approximately half of the employers said they would go out into the private market. This program provides a solid and simple framework to address Connecticuts growing retirement gap for those businesses that would rather not establish a plan through the private sector. The goal is not to compete with or replace the private market (thats the last thing it seeks to achieve), but to fulfill a significant unmet need in the market that must be answered for the sake of those families and our entire state economy.

An AARP survey of business owners or decision makers with five to 50 employees found that most support a state retirement savings program and most agree that Connecticut should do more to encourage residents to save for retirement.

Several states are also researching and developing these types of programs because, like Connecticut, they recognize the urgency. The retirement savings crisis is real, and it is a problem not simply for those individuals without access to retirement savings  but for the stability and future of our entire state and national economy.

For more information about the state program - including the market feasibility study and legislation  visit http://www.osc.ct.gov/crsb.

Kevin Lembo is state comptroller of Connecticut.
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DARIEN  Police have captured a fanged fugitive and are now looking for its owner.

Police tweeted from their @darienPD account that a boa constrictor, approximately 5 feet long, was found Saturday in the area of Lakeside Avenue.

The reptile was being housed at the Darien Nature Center. Executive Director Elizabeth Hearle told Hearst Connecticut Media that the slithering serpent is boa constrictor.

Its very docile, she said, holding the snake staffers have been calling Crictor, for the character in the childrens book, Crictor the Constrictor.

It was not dehydrated, its not aggressive, its very easy to handle she said. This was obviously someones pet. They just let it go.

Hearle pointed out that the Nature Center is not an animal rehabilitation center, and was just a temporary home for the reptile.

Its not easy to tell if the snake is full grown, or whether its male of female, staffers said. It had its weekly meal of a frozen mouse on Saturday.

A reptile rescuer from Norwalk was to pick the creature up sometime Tuesday. But in the meantime, it made things kind of exciting at the Nature Center. A television news crew came by in the morning, and a group of seniors from the Waveny HealthCare Network got to the see the snake up close.

Anyone with information is asked to call Darien Animal Control at 203-662-5345.

justin.papp@scni.com; dariennewsonline.com
Lawyer Mark Feygin, plans together with his British colleague, Ben Emmerson, to lodge a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over the case of Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko.

"I also want to say that I am holding talks with my British colleague, Ben Emmerson, to jointly file a complaint with the ECHR over the Savchenko case," the lawyer wrote on his Twitter microblog.

Savchenko has been held in Russian custody since July 2014 after being kidnapped by Russia-backed separatists and illegally taken across the Ukrainian border.

On March 22, 2016, the Donetsk Court of the Rostov region found Savchenko guilty of killing Russian journalists Igor Kornelyuk, and Anton Voloshin, by a group of people by a previous concert on hatred and enmity motives, and sentenced her to 22 years in a penal colony. The court also found her guilty of attempted murder and illegally crossing the Russian border.

The sentence went into effect on April 5. The next day, Savchenko began a dry hunger strike, demanding an immediate return to her homeland.

Savchenko decided to stop her hunger strike after a phone conversation with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
As voters head to the polls today to cast their ballots on who should be their partys nominee for president, the weather forecast is primarily rain.

The National Weather Service says we will have showers most of the day with the chance that some could be heavy.

The precipitation is caused by a frontal system that is passing through southwest Connecticut. A weak area of low pressure will ride along this frontal boundary, setting the stage for some rain and possible thunderstorms.

Rainfall is expected between a quarter to a half-inch before the rain ends early tonight.

Tuesday: Periods of rain and possibly a thunderstorm. High near 52. East wind 7 to 13 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.

Tuesday night: Periods of rain, mainly before 7 p.m. Low around 39. Northeast wind 6 to 14 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible.

Wednesday: Sunny, with a high near 58. North wind around 7 mph becoming southwest in the afternoon.

Wednesday night: Mostly clear, with a low around 41. South wind 8 to 10 mph becoming north after midnight.

Thursday: A slight chance of rain after noon. Mostly sunny, with a high near 56. Chance of precipitation is 20%.

Thursday Night: A chance of rain. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 41. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

Friday: Partly sunny, with a high near 56.
Militants have conducted 42 attacks on Ukrainian army positions over the past day, the anti-terrorist operation staff's press center wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.

"The enemy opened fire on Ukrainian positions 42 times in the past 24 hours, or 13 times more than the day before," the report said.

According to it, militants fired 82mm mortars near Avdiyivka, Vodiane, Taramchuk, Novotoshkivske, Krasnohorivka and Novomykhailivka, and used 120mm mortars near Novotroitske.

Most shelling instances by use of various types of grenade launchers, machineguns and small arms were observed in Maryinka, the press center said.

The Ukrainian army returned fire 13 times, it said.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Suma Chakrabarti at a meeting in Kyiv have discussed the prospects and directions of bilateral cooperation.

"I would like us to synchronize our watches to make our interaction more qualitative," Groysman said.

He thanked the EBRD for support in overcoming the consequences of the Chornobyl disaster.

"You know how tragic this event was for our country. I hope we'll manage to work together to complete what is necessary to stabilize the situation in this area in particular and in the whole country," he said.

Chakrabarti, in turn, assured the EBRD is ready to support Ukraine on the path of reforms.

At the same time, the press service of the Cabinet said the EBRD representatives pointed to the need to remove bureaucratic and regulatory barriers to the use of funds issued by the bank for various projects in Ukraine and urged the prime minister to promote carrying out reforms in the country.
F or 53 years, I have been a proud observer and tiny contributor to the evolution of the City of London.

The capital has grown in stature to become the worlds leading financial centre. It started with a wave of initial public offerings in the Sixties, then the Eurodollar market in the Seventies, the abolition of exchange controls in 1980, Big Bang and the rise of fund management in the late Eighties and culminated in derivative trading and the expansion of hedge funds in the Nineties.

Yes, London, as a financial centre, temporarily fell from grace in 2008-09 as a result of the banking crisis. But the capitals economy still contributes around 21.9% of the UKs Gross Value Added (a measure of the value of goods and services), and the City contributes about 4% of GDP.

If the UK were to leave the EU, do the Treasury, the Bank of England and a few influential banks such as JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs really think the rest of the financial sector will follow these banks up the aircrafts gangways and head for Paris or Frankfurt? Some misguided banks may well do, but their absence from London will be temporary.

London is at the centre of the time zone and English the international trading language. London is also the legal and accounting centre of the world. The infrastructure here to raise capital and finance foreign trade is tried and tested and people from international backgrounds love working here. There are more than 300,000 French people alone working across London.

Without wishing to cause offence, by comparison, Frankfurt and Paris are financial villages. To build the necessary infrastructure and outsourcing support, would be a 20-year project. One must respect HM Treasury mandarins intellect and Bank Governor Mark Carneys veiled endorsement, but the validity of the formers forecasts, 14 years in advance, must be called into question. All we hear from the Remain campaign is doom and gloom  no talk of the long-term benefits of being part of that club; just we cannot afford to be out. In the event of Brexit, Article 50  relating to trade agreements  wont come into play for two years. Nothing will change enabling the UK to negotiate mutually agreeable trade deals across the world.

The EU has been in economic decline for the best part of 15 years. The EU dream has turned into a nightmare. Why would international banks want to leave London and head to the mainland when the EUs banking sector is hanging in rags, with the sector conceivably requiring a capital injection of 300 billion (233 billion)? Unshackled from Banking Commissioner Michel Barniers labyrinth of EU regulation  some of it irrelevant and guided by quality regulation from the Bank of England, the Prudential Regulation Authority under its skilful chief executive Sam Woods and the Financial Conduct Authority under the excellent Andrew Bailey  the City will be able to increase its international presence.

Brexit should be a celebration for the City, not a funeral  the start of a brave new world.

David Buik is a market commentator at Panmure Gordon
O n dreary Vauxhall Bridge Road, a small coffee shop opened in 1977 with an authentic Italian espresso machine.

Many of the famous Soho coffee bars of the Fifties had closed by then, and brothers Bruno and Sergio Costa were amazed at its almost overnight success. Not only did the cafe do well, but sales of the coffee beans they roasted upstairs exploded across the UK. So much so that they had to move the roastery to new premises underneath the arches in Lambeth.

Successful though it was, they never imagined that tiny shop would go on to become the second-biggest coffee chain in the world.

Whitbread, then a giant mess of brands from ales to fitness clubs, bought the brothers out in 1995, and expanded Costa by the hundreds of branches pretty much every year since.

The Noughties saw Whitbreads Pizza Hut, David Lloyd Leisure, TGI Fridays and other brands sold under Alan Parkers turnaround. But Costa remained and grew, as Brits woke up to the joys of a cappuccino. Profits leaped by double digits, year in, year out.

Two chief executives on, despite repeated calls over the years to split Costa off as a standalone business, new boss Alison Brittain has rightly decided to keep it.

Although Costas cashflow isnt stripped out in the accounts, it clearly throws off the folding stuff at an extraordinary rate, safeguarding Whitbreads dividend. And it churns out returns on capital of 49.9% (compared with 12.9% at the hotels and restaurants). Its profit last year was up 16%. Tell that to BP.

Meanwhile, theres huge potential for new openings, both of cafes and Costa Express machines. Last year saw nearly 200 new shops and 930 machines installed, and the pace shows no sign of slacking.

The other side of Whitbread  hotels and restaurants  is trading well, although takings have cooled recently. Being at the budget end of the market, these are less cyclical than most in the industry, but having the dependable Costa cash cow means shareholders never have to worry about leaner times ahead. Thats why Brittain is right to stick with the plan thats served shareholders so well and not flog it to the highest bidder.

Her strategy may not be caffeine-fuelled excitement, but it is wise.
C arpetright bosses today branded Britains business rates system a broken model that creates an uneven playing field.

Retailers have long campaigned for a reform of business rates  an annual tax that businesses have to pay on their property  saying they unfairly punish the sector.

Chancellor George Osborne last year decided to allow local councils more control over the levy and, in his March Budget, revealed changes such as more frequent revaluations due to kick in by 2020. But Carpetright chief Wilf Walsh said more needs to be done. Its an unsustainable model and kicking the can down the road to local authorities is not the answer, he said. Its not a level playing field.

The Evening Standard is calling for a reform of the business rates system.

The comments came as Carpetright revealed a 0.7% rise in same-store sales in the three months to April 23 against tough comparatives, increased competition and volatile consumer confidence  partly because of the looming European Union referendum.

The company stuck by its full-year profit expectations  underlying profit before tax is forecast at 17.3 million.
S cottish Power was today slapped with an 18 million fine for treating customers unfairly, following a million complaints in two years.

After a probe by energy regulator Ofgem, up to 15 million will be paid to the poorest Scottish Power users to be mistreated, with the remainder going to charity. Ofgem said Scottish Powers crimes included unacceptably long waiting times for customers calling the company, up to 300,000 users receiving late bills and mishandling customer complaints.

The 18 million payment sends a strong message to all energy companies about the importance of treating consumers well at all times, Dermot Nolan, chief executive at Ofgem, said. Ofgem said Scottish Power had improved its customer service.The company apologised for the failings.
O ne interesting feature of the mayoral campaign is the very different relationship that each of the main candidates has with his party leader. Each is a party man; but in the case of the Labour candidate, Sadiq Khan, he has been conspicious for the extent to which he has not included Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader and fellow London MP, in his campaign, though he did nominate Mr Corbyn to stand as leader. There are good reasons for this. Mr Corbyn is perceived as hostile to business; Mr Khan is anxious to clarify his willingness to promote the interests of London business and make friends in the City.

By contrast, the Prime Minister could hardly be more supportive of Zac Goldsmith, notwithstanding their differences over Brexit; he declared today that if Londoners sleepwalk into electing Mr Khan, the Labour leader would use London as a testing ground for his policies and the country would pay the price. We can take this claim with a pinch of salt. It is unlikely that Mr Khan, were he elected, would act at the behest of Mr Corbyn. Yet he does represent his party; at present, that is less of an asset than it once was, even given that London is more Labour-friendly than the rest of the country.

The question is whether it is necessary or even desirable for the Mayor to represent the party of government, given Ken Livingstone managed well as an independent even before his nomination by Labour. It undoubtedly helps. Boris Johnson was able to use his political leverage to negotiate excellent deals for London. Mr Goldsmith, were he mayor, would be able to use his political position to his advantage; he did indeed join with Mr Johnson to lobby successfully against cuts to the Met. The goodwill he enjoys from government would certainly be useful.

The last thing London needs is a mayor who is a party political apparatchik; Zac Goldsmith, in particular, has been independent in practice. We have been lucky with our first two mayors, who were idiosyncratic and willing to part company with their own parties when necessary. The two frontrunners now are less colourful; but they must, if elected, be willing to put London before party.

Duties of doctors

The decision of junior hospital doctors to extend their strike today and tomorrow to emergency services risks losing whatever public support they enjoy. It is simply wrong for doctors to endanger patients lives: even though senior doctors will take up the slack there is a risk to the public from their action. The strike is essentially about pay and whether the Government pays premium rates for daytime Saturday working. This is not an issue of high principle. The Government deal includes a generous offer of an average pay rise of 13.5 per cent in addition to the enormous sums spent by the state on training the doctors. On the issues at stake, the Health Secretary has a point.

Another bad strike

Commuters face a miserable time today and tomorrow. Thanks to a strike by the RMT union affecting rail firm Southern, thousands will be forced to make alternative travel arrangements. The dispute centres on proposed changes to the role of Southerns conductors, who will no longer be responsible for closing train doors  drivers will carry out the task instead. This is already the case on many services and makes sense in an age of advanced technology. It means conductors can spend more time interacting with passengers. No job cuts are proposed; no pay cuts are on the table. A mass walkout seems at best an over-reaction. Conductors need to get on board the next train to the 21st century.
S adiq Khan is the only candidate with the experience to deliver real benefits for all Londoners. London is the greatest city in the world but it faces big challenges. The increasing cost of doing business and the looming EU referendum are major threats to the capitals economic growth and stability, while more and more Londoners are being priced out of their own city because they cant afford to buy or rent a home.

The terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels were a reminder that London remains a target for international and domestic terrorism  at the same time as the Tories are cutting police numbers. Low pay, meanwhile, remains a major barrier to social justice. And, on average, women in London are paid around 19 per cent less than men for doing the same job.

These are serious issues that require a serious person to deal with them  this is no time for a novice. Now, more than ever, London needs a mayor with the experience, values and vision to make our city better for all Londoners. It is clear that Sadiq is that person.

I was Commons Leader, and deputy Labour Party leader, when Sadiq was appointed by Gordon Brown to his Cabinet. Appointed because of his talent and commitment, he was the first person of Islamic faith ever to do so. He served with distinction as a minister, for both communities and transport.

I know he has the right experience because I have seen him at the Cabinet table making decisions of the highest national importance, and have seen him take part in security briefings and Cobra meetings to decide how to keep our country safe.

Even the Tories know Sadiq is the best candidate for the job. Thats why they have fought the desperate and divisive campaign that has rightly attracted so much criticism.

Instead of seeking to convince Londoners of Zac Goldsmiths qualities, they have reverted to a negative and nasty campaign that damages Londons diversity and community cohesion. They know Sadiq will win on any analysis of their merits.,

Sadiqs heavyweight experience is reflected in his plans for London. On policing, housing and transport, he is the only candidate offering ambitious but deliverable solutions to the challenges Londoners face every day.

He will restore real community policing with officers on streets in your neighbourhood. He will act to tackle extremism and radicalisation. He will build the genuinely affordable homes that Londoners need and he will build a modern but affordable transport system, with fares frozen for four years.

London Mayor Election 2016: Sadiq Khan

Sadiq will also be a proud feminist in City Hall. He has committed to publishing the first gender pay audit and will insist that any large contractors do the same, and his business advisory board will be gender-balanced. He will prioritise a greater police presence on public transport to clamp down on sexual assault, and stop TfL using posters of unhealthily thin models. Also, his Skills for Londoners team will focus on creating opportunities for girls to develop skills such as computer coding. In contrast, Goldsmith has said he would never describe himself as a feminist.

So my message to Londoners is clear: choose the only candidate with the values, vision and experience to deliver for all Londoners.

Harriet Harman is Labour MP for Camberwell and Peckham and former deputy Labour leader.
I was born in London, I live in London, I run a business in London. So the mayoral election next week matters to me. Decisions made by the next mayor will have a direct bearing on whether I can recruit and retain the most talented employees, get them into work on time and develop my business.

Sadiq Khan caught my eye early on in the race. I liked his story  the son of a bus driver who became a lawyer, and then a minister in the last Labour government. I know what its like to have to fight your way to the top, so this tale of hard work and upward mobility struck a real chord. Best of all, he said he had run a successful business, putting clear water between him and the mad, unreconstructed socialists now running his party.

But in business you dont take anything at face value; its always the best-spun CVs that fall apart at interview and the sad truth is that Khans self-promotion just doesnt stand up.

Khans company wasnt your typical private-sector business. In fact, he worked for a law firm that specialised in using legal aid to sue the police  the very police he would be in charge of as Mayor.

Far from an inspiring story of a struggling entrepreneur, our would-be Mayor fell out with his former business partner, attempted to sue her and then was threatened with a counter-claim. Its a worrying sign that hes not on speaking terms with a person who has worked so closely with him.

But frankly, its what came next  the political career  that really worries me. The Gordon Brown government Khan worked in bankrupted our country. It failed to regulate banks, spent money like there was no tomorrow and left Britain exposed when the downturn hit. Like most of his colleagues, Khan has never admitted that borrowing was too high in the boom years.

When Labour lost power in 2010, Khan went on to run Ed Milibands leadership campaign. He now claims he would be the most pro-business mayor ever but under Miliband he voted gainst cuts to corporation tax that the Coalition brought before Parliament.

Khan led the calls for Labours mansion tax, effectively a London tax because we have the highest house prices in the country. If Labour had won the general election last year this would have seen 40,000 families hit with a 35,000 bill, simply because they happened to live in London.

The British public made it clear what they thought of that agenda by voting for competence over chaos, and common sense over ideological dogma. Yet amazingly Khan seems to have thought Labour lost because it wasnt Left-wing enough. So his next move was to nominate Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader. As a result, a once proud party is led by a man who described business as the enemy and who says hed be unhappy with a police policy of shoot-to-kill if London gets attacked. In return, Corbyn and unions gave Khan their backing.

I am far from convinced by Khans pro-business rhetoric. It looks less a sincere hand of friendship to Londons wealth-creators and more a cynical tactic to win over moderate voters, so Labour can take back City Hall. Nor, given Khans history, do I see how he can command the confidence of the Mets 32,000 police officers.

London Votes int with Zac Goldsmith on housing on LL

One last thing voters need to bear in mind is Khans record as a local MP. He inherited the safe Labour seat of Tooting in 2005 but since then his majority has dropped significantly. That tells us a lot about his record in office.

Compare that with his Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith, who took a Liberal Democrat stronghold, Richmond Park and North Kingston, and turned it into one of the safest seats in the country. I dont believe you get a result like that unless you do the right thing for your voters.

Rather than undermine the police, Zac has backed them. When the Met was threatened with cuts, Zac took a stand. He worked with Boris Johnson to get a deal from the Government to protect the police budget. Now hes committed to 500 extra officers on the Tube, funded by scrapping union perks.

Just like a business, London needs a Mayor with an action plan. Zacs is clear and practicable: it means developing the transport network so we can get at the land we need to build new homes, boosting our high streets with a fund for free parking, and creating more pocket parks where Londoners can relax.

Most of all, Londoners need secure economic foundations. To most people that means stable taxation and people keeping more of the money they earn. That is why Zacs commitment to a council tax freeze is so important, and Khans threat of tax rises is so troubling.

Boris Johnson has left London with a fantastic legacy: a tech sector that is challenging the worlds best, record transport investment including Crossrail 1, more people in work than at any other time in Londons history. Zac will take that success and make it work for everyone in our city.

I know Zac, and if hes mayor I can tell you he will set up camp outside the Treasury until hes landed the deal for the new infrastructure London needs. He will treat his manifesto like a binding contract, rather than a wish list that can be binned at the first opportunity.

And while we may not see eye to eye on Europe, we agree that a Khan mayoralty and the boost it would give to the Corbyn project is by far the biggest risk to Londons economy.

So when Londoners go the polls next week, I hope they look past Khans CV and choose the candidate with the serious plan for Londons future.
P resident Obamas visit to Britain was for one reason only  to help David Cameron keep us in the EU. He claimed that this is in the UKs best interest, but what the President really means is that the UK remaining in the EU is also in the United States best interest.

American politicians have always sought to control Britain, so this should come as no surprise. Since the end of the Second World War they have dragged us through every dreadful war, with the exception being Vietnam. So much for the special relationship between the two nations.

The Americans fear that if we leave the EU, other nations might follow, and this would inevitably harm growing US exports to Europe. They also expect to exert political and economic control via compliant British Prime Ministers. The Governments recent veto on the EU raising steel-import tariffs is a good example of this.

In my view, it would be a disaster if we voted to leave  a disaster for America.

David Appleby

Quite apart from the hysterical nonsense being peddled by the usual suspects within the pro-EU brigade, we now have both the President of the United States and the managing director of the Barbican Centre warning us of the catastrophe that awaits us if we withdraw from the EU [April 21].

Sir Nicholas Kenyon should comfort himself with the fact that we had a thriving arts scene with foreign performers and conductors before joining the EU and there is no reason at all to conclude that this would change if we were to withdraw.

Also, if President Obama is concerned about a possible Brexit, he should be reminded that the relationship between our two countries has nothing to do with the EU, whose leading members generally resent the close relations between the UK and the US anyway.

Howard Ricklow

Barack Obama, while very charming, does have a large interest in the UK remaining in the EU. There is a well known trade agreement with the US that will be very beneficial to America should we remain in the EU. What isnt so readily clear is the damage this agreement may cause us and the EU in its far-reaching implications on how we carry out business today.

Peter Moore

Armed forces minister Penny Mordaunt [April 21] has criticised eight US treasury secretaries for saying it would be risky for the UK to leave the EU, adding that America would never give up control of its money and borders. Perhaps she doesnt realise that the US was formed from a group of independent territories that did just that and are now part of the most powerful nation on Earth.

Kevin May

Princes strengths as person and artist

After Princes death on Thursday, reports had suggested he had overdosed just days before he died. However, I dont believe he had a drug addiction. It is no secret that he needed a double hip replacement in order to carry on putting on his amazing shows. He was a star and, if anything, he could have been taking medication to help him get through that. This is a great example of Princes strength, given that he was probably in agony. Personally, Im just thankful I got to hear his beautiful music.

Emma Webster

I remember fondly my first date with my husband, when we went to see Purple Rain. Ever since then, Prince was our favourite performer and every time we saw him we felt the same way about him. He will be truly missed.

Debra Pizzolo

It is good to know that we dont just mourn the loss of our British music stars but also the international ones too. Prince was a true legend and deserves acknowledgement for the talent that he was.

Elizabeth Evans

Equality will ensure Londons success

London is one of the greatest cities in the world  it is dynamic, resilient and bursting with diversity. It is a true land of opportunity for people to succeed regardless of their background. There are also, however, major challenges that need urgent attention such as housing, employment and the environment. There is a need to provide improved pathways to accelerate social mobility so that all people can be given the best education, healthcare and employment opportunities to contribute fully to the future success of London.

These challenges also extend to ensuring the police and authorities are better resourced to deal with current threats or to unite communities and eliminate the creeping threat of extremism. We want a London where all are free to practise their faith without harassment or discrimination, where communities work together for the common good.

Whoever wins the mayoral election can count on our support in working with all Londoners with fairness and justice to secure a prosperous and peaceful future for London.

Basharat Nazir, Ahmadiyya Muslim Association UK

Tories are planning own mansion tax

It is a sign of the Conservatives desperation to suggest that a Labour mayor would introduce a mansion tax when no mayor has the power to do so. Yet at the same time they are consulting on introducing their own mansion tax.

In a little publicised announcement on February 18, the Conservative Governments Ministry of Justice began consulting on a whopping increase in probate fees, paid on the value of estates of the deceased  and not just real estate but everything to be passed on, through a stealth-tax increase designed to raise an extra 250 million a year. In addition to any inheritance tax liability, widows, sons and daughters will see their inheritance dramatically reduced as a result.

Under this scheme, estates worth more 500,000 will be taxed  a huge increase on the current fee of just 155. If this isnt a Conservative mansion tax then what is?

Andrew Dismore AM, London Assembly member for Barnet and Camden (Lab)
A couple leaning in for a kiss in Piccadilly in 1953, British sailors in Gibraltar in 1954 and a vicar comforting a girl in an East End bomb site in 1940 are a few of the images iconic Picture Post photographer Bert Hardy thought good enough to take home.

The same prints kept by Hardy, who died in 1995 aged 82, go on display  and on sale, from 2,500  at the Photographers Gallery from May 13 to July 3.

Hardy became famous for his work published in liberal photojournalistic magazine Picture Post from 1941 until the magazine's closer in 1957. A self-taught photographer, Hardy became the Post's chief photographer quickly, after his first work was published. It was a study of firefighters during the Blitz.

After the Post closed, Hardy worked successfully in advertising, before he retired in 1964, aged 51. He bought a small farm in Oxted, Surrey, and spent the reminder of his life there with wife Sheila.

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This month, a spectacular stone arch was unveiled in Trafalgar Square by Boris Johnson. For two days only Londoners were able to see a replica of the Triumphal Arch from Palmyra, one of the monuments Islamic State (IS) deliberately destroyed while it held the Syrian world heritage site.

As a symbolic statement of resistance to those who wish to pulverise the collective heritage of humanity it sends a strong message  we will rebuild.

Except rebuilding monuments after violent destruction is not as easy as that. It raises profound questions not just about authenticity and copies but of the use we make of architectural history.

The arch was built by Oxfords Institute of Digital Archaeology (IDA). It has deployed advanced photographic techniques to create a 3D digital model of the monument and then build it out of Egyptian sandstone that has been laser-cut in a Tuscan quarry. It will be re-erected in Dubai and New York before, says the IDA, heading home to Palmyra this September.

For Roger Michel, the IDAs executive director: By rebuilding these structures, we rebuild not only our own national histories but our connections to each other as well. Some archaeologists are wary about the expensive publicity stunt, others, led by a former employee of the Syrian antiquities directorate who fled the country, have organised an online petition condemning the original destruction but also calling on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) not to rebuild Palmyra hastily, as its director general announced immediately in the wake of the shifting front line.

These critics of Unesco have called the pledge inopportune and unrealistic in the midst of an ongoing war and warn of rewarding President Assad and Russias President Vladimir Putin and ignoring their own human rights abuses. One prominent conservationist has privately praised the Russians for avoiding the bombing of Palmyras archaeological site.

This forgets their killing of civilians in the modern city nearby and the damage caused to historic sites by indiscriminate Russian bombing elsewhere in Syria. Separating the fate of people and places never helps protect culture in the long run. Unescos support for rebuilding marks a change of approach for an organisation charged with safeguarding world culture.

When the Bamiyan Buddhas were dynamited by the Taliban in 2001, Unesco was clear that rebuilding the statues from the pulverised rubble was not an option  the reconstruction would be a fake even if it used fragments of the original material reconstituted with silicon. Better that the Buddhas empty niches stand as a memorial to the horrors of wanton destruction, it was argued.

This perspective reflects longestablished conservation practice about the need for authenticity in the restoration of historic buildings, as set out in the Charter of Venice since 1964 and reaffirmed vigorously in the 1994 Nara Document on Authenticity at an international gathering of conservation experts held during the Bosnian conflict.

The copy of Palmyras Arch of Triumph is assembled in Trafalgar Square / Leon Neal/AFP/Getty

Yet Unesco has since funded the rebuilding of a facsimile shrine in Timbuktu destroyed by Islamist terrorists and is now proposing a similar response at Palmyra.

It matters that our history is real. Even if well intentioned, erecting Italiancut Egyptian stone in the middle of Syria is about as far from authentic as you can get. The arch will not be heading home as the IDA claims.

There are now myriad digital projects internationally to scan threatened monuments with the idea of enabling the reconstruction of those that have been lost.

Many of these ventures are overlapping and unco-ordinated, wasting limited heritage resources. Some are sympathetic and useful; others appear more about building institutional reputations.

These complicated issues will be touched upon in an upcoming installation at the Venice Architecture Biennale by the Victoria & Albert Museum called A World of Fragile Parts. Its curator Brendan Cormier points out that this concern with authenticity has, however, changed over time.

In 1867 the museums first director, Henry Cole, formulated the International Convention of Promoting Universally Reproductions of Works of Art for several nations to swap fine copies of important works. Copies were seen as about spreading knowledge. That attitude changed in the following century, with museums and Western societies later deriding even academic facsimiles.

Palmyra after Isis

The V&A is asking if in 2017  150 years after the original  the convention should be rewritten for the 21st century in the wake of attitudes to replicas changing once more. I n the 20th century there were many rebuilding efforts following wartime destruction  including the heroic recreation of central Warsaw, deliberately flattened by the Nazis in their genocidal campaign against Slavic culture.

The meticulous copies of Warsaws streets and squares have been decried in some quarters as Disneyfication but were an attempt by the Poles to rescue their history and identity from oblivion. Whats not much remembered is that some of the material for rebuilding Warsaw came from the Silesian town of Breslau (now Polish Wrocaw) which, after Poland was liberated, was ethnically cleansed of its long-standing German population and had many of its Germanic monuments taken down.

Equally, distinguished author WG Sebald was highly critical of post-war Germanys reconstruction programme in which cities such as Munich were largely rebuilt as if nothing had ever happened. He called it: a reconstruction tantamount to a second liquidation of the nations own past history [that] prohibited any looking backwards.

Blaming Hitlers war for the destruction of Munich and in so doing casting themselves as victims, Munichs citizens distanced themselves from the recent past. Nazi buildings could be condemned and historic buildings restored in toto. Likewise, Mostars bridge  symbolically destroyed to divide Bosnian communities in the city during fighting  may have been just as symbolically rebuilt but the citys neighbourhoods and schools remain worryingly divided along ethnic lines today.

Rebuilding  whether by perpetrators or their victims  can then serve to mask the genuine, if unpalatable, past; erasing the gaps, the voids, the ruination that bears witness to traumatic events. It can conceal the reality of the present.

But, as in Warsaw, and perhaps in Syria and Iraq where cultural destruction is ineluctably linked to ISs attempts to erase other ethnic and religious traditions, to argue against rebuilding at all would be a counsel of despair and a victory for the destroyers. There are no easy answers but where possible, critical reconstruction remains the most honest course of action.

Selfie zone: tourists have been drawn to Trafalgar Square by the replica Palmyra arch / Lauren Hurley/PA Wire

This is where the cracks and fissures and layers of experience are incorporated as memories into the rebuilt fabric of a monument. An exemplar of this approach is the Neues Museum in Berlin by David Chipperfield Architects, where layers of wartime damage have been incorporated into a contemporary rebuilding of its shell.

It is too early to say if critical reconstruction is an appropriate approach at Palmyra but shipping an Italian/Egyptian copy of an arch to Syria that does not incorporate either original material or reveal in its design something of the trauma of the attack upon it simply cannot be right.

Restoring architecture can, of course, never in itself lay to rest conflicts but the danger of erecting pre-conflict perfect copies is that the recognition of guilt or the expiation upon which reconciliation depends can be hindered if there is no visible, material memory of the original crimes.

Ultimately, if we fake our history how can we learn from it?

The Destruction of Memory, a featurelength documentary based on Robert Bevans book of the same name will be previewed in London in June. A second edition of the book has just been published.

A previous version of the article reported that the unveiling date of the arch was announced on the same day that President Bashar al-Assads Syrian government drove IS out of Palmyra in March. We have been informed by the Institute of Digital Archaeology that it had in fact announced the unveiling date two months earlier, in January.
The U.S. insists on the implementation of the Minsk agreements for the settlement of the conflict in Donbas, U.S. President Barack Obama said after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the so-called G5 summit in Hannover.

"We then, last but not least, also talked about an issue where we are also interested in and where the United States also participates in the Normandy format, namely the solution of the crisis in Ukraine. We stand by the Minsk agreements," Obama said.

In his words, the U.S. attaches the greatest possible importance to the Minsk agreement being implemented as quickly as possible.

"We will put a lot of effort into making this possible in our talks with Ukraine, but also in our talks with Russia. Unfortunately, we still don't have a stable cease-fire. We need to bring the political process forward. And the next few steps we've also discussed very thoroughly," the U.S. president said.

Also, according to a communique issued by the White House on Monday, leaders of the UK, Germany, Italy, the U.S. and France at their informal meeting in Hannover reiterated their rejection of Russia's occupation and attempted annexation of the Crimea.

"There was agreement that full implementation of the Minsk agreements remained crucial. The leaders reiterated that sanctions against Russia would be lifted if the Minsk agreements were fully implemented," the communique reads.
I f youre trying to slim down before bikini season, but you still enjoy going out with friends at the weekend, you may be undoing all of your hard work by having a few drinks.

But there's no need to go cold turkey on booze ahead of the summer. Prosecco-lovers will be pleased to know that a new low-calorie bottle has arrived on the market.

Thomson & Scott has launched Skinny: a low-calorie, low-sugar version of prosecco in response to health-conscious Millennials demand for healthier alternatives.

It may not be as fattening as a pint of beer, but the average bottle of prosecco contains between 12 and 17 grams of sugar per litre, with some extra-guilty varieties containing as much as 32 grams per litre.

Skinny prosecco: for a guilt-free hangover?

The Skinny organic prosecco, which hails from Soligo in Italys Treviso province, claims to contain just seven grams of sugar per litre and 67 calories per glass.

The launch comes as latest figures show sales of champagne have fallen flat, and drinkers are more likely to opt for a bottle of prosecco than a premium fizz. The milder taste and cheaper price of Italian prosecco is tempting drinkers away from French champagne, and sales of the former have soared in the UK.

Thomson & Scott CEO Amanda Scott says she created the wine as a reaction to the amount of sugar in alcohol.

She says: I was raised sugar free by a health-conscious mother who taught me that sugar was the devil. It turns out - she was right.

When I grew up, I fell in love with champagne and was compelled to create a Skinny Wines portfolio for those who want to drink something beautifully crafted but with the benefit of no/low added sugar. 

Best bars for a date in London 1 /34 Best bars for a date in London Beaufort Bar at The Savoy Not one if you're hoping to keep things relaxed: the Beaufort is overwhelmingly, but marvellously, romantic. The room itself, with its palatial lavishings of gold on black, sets the tone. The bar sits, mirrors glimmering, on the old cabaret stage where Gershwin once performed. Naturally, theres live entertainment every evening now, too, so you can sit back quietly in your finery and avoid any conversation about who's paying for what. Drinks are as pricey as you'd expect, but if you're looking for something special, it's hard to beat. Piano Works All you really need to know about this bar is that it's a damned good laugh. It's not a quiet, intimate romantic joint at all: it's loud, brash, drinks go down quickly and everyone ends up getting silly and dancing until doors close. One for those dates that spiral gloriously out of control. It stays open late, it's tons of fun and you can quite happily get away with requesting your musical guilty pleasure. We love it, and so does the rest of London: booking is essential. Buddha Bar Buddha is a place of opulence and extravagance, and also a place of money, so be prepared to dig deep for this one. You drink Champagne here, not Processo. Cocktails here are first rate and, without exception, use top shelf ingredients, mixed carefully. Be sure to eat, too: sushi and sashimi are the menu's strong points, but if you're looking for something a little more substantial, the smoked duck and foie gras gyoza is a must, small delicious bites of brilliance, while the beef short rib with wasabi mash and veal teriyaki sauce is ideal for something more substantial. Though the wine list on the bar menu is short, ask for the sommelier, who's friendly, easy-going and knowledgeable: he'll make sure you drink well without imposing on the night. Buddha is in many ways a place of excess, but if you're in the mood for that, don't miss it. Bounce Shoreditch Fine cocktails and dressing up? Why so serious? Come and play ping pong instead. Bounce is filled with table tennis tables, walls are artfully covered in graffiti and drinks are decent enough. If youre not near Old Street, head to the Holborn branch: its a little more upmarket, and a little pricier, but the same excellent fun. Just make sure to book: both get extremely busy. Scarfes Bar at Rosewood London Settle in by the fire and Scarfes bar will do the romancing for you. It's like an oversize library in a grand old house, but thankfully easily gets busy enough to keep a buzz up. You come here to impress: the place is all art deco details, beautiful old books and live music throughout the week. The gentlemen's club vibe fortunately isn't taken too far, and the cocktail list is surprisingly fresh, and doesn't rely on straight classics. Beautifully luxurious, tremendous atmosphere and the live music is always first rate. The Gibson Date night favourite: The Gibson 69 Colebrooke Row Otherwise known as The Bar With No Name, this Islington favourite comes from the well regarded Tony Conigliaro. It has a terrific atmosphere, in the most part because its mostly always busy, but theres also a piano in one corner that often gets a hammering. Its a stylish place, with stylish drinks, but be warned it's small  cosy?  so you might not be able to squeeze in, or stay for ages. Mayor of Scaredy Cat Town Sometimes a date deserves nothing less than some East End quirkiness. The Mayor of Scaredy Cat Town has been delivering this in spades for years: wander into the Breakfast Club, ask to see the Mayor and youll be led through a Smeg fridge  we kid you not  to a kitsch British riff on a speakeasy. Its a laugh here, they have a decent playlist, and the drinks slip down well enough. Still, you come for all the talking points: itll stop your date being awkward. Les Compagnie Des Vins Surnaturels If your date is big on wine, don't pass this place up. It's rightly popular within the industry for the choice available, which includes some rarities among the French-heavy list. They've upped their food game considerably, too. Would it matter if you were stood up? Mr Foggs Gin Parlour Both Mr Fogg's are worth a visit, but the Theatreland Gin Parlour nudges it for a more intimate setting, and because it gets less crowded than its Mayfair cousin. Hidden upstairs from the tavern below, this hideaway bar is dressed in curiosities of the late 19th century, with chaise longues and dark corners, the smell of cocktails lingering like perfume and operatic fare playing throughout. You won't be short of conversation starters and if you know a gin lover, they'll be heaven. All Star Lanes, Holborn A bowling alley has no right having a bar this good, but there we go, theyve done it. It has a strange Vegas vibe to it: low-lighting and pink all around, but the drinks are good and priced fairly. Just because bowling was your go-to date at 13 doesnt mean its not any good these days too, and now you can add plenty of tasty, tasty alcohol  maybe enough to get you in the karaoke booth? Ladies and Gentlemen Ladies and Gents has the novelty factor of having once been a public loo  romantic, eh?  but it's far from a novelty bar. The drinks are expertly mixed, the place makes its own gin, about 12 bottles a day. They've usually got some terrific music on, often with live acts too. Oh, and when you've run out of things to say, grab a book from the shelves and read to your beloved. Callooh Callay The best dates are fun and what better fun than heading to Narnia? Not really, of course, but there are plenty of hidden spots behind wardrobe doors at Callooh Callay. CC loves its gimmicks  the madcap interior gives this away  but they know how to mix a decent drink, and with the DJs dialled up, everyone has a good time. Midweek its a little quieter, which actually works in its favour if you fancy  the horror!  talking to your date. Jose Tapas Bar This tiny, tiny corner tapas bar is, for us, the highlight of everything Spanish chef Jose Pizarro has done in London. It's fantastically simple: you go for tapas and sherry, because that's pretty much all you'll get. Food changes daily, and is reliably gorgeous. It's very cosy here, but have a back-up plan because there's every chance you won't get a seat. Cahoots Chances are, you won't have been a bar quite like it: Cahoots is set in 1946, and the whole thing is underground themed. Yup: you can drink on the tube once again. Themed bars can be a bore but Cahoots charms and impresses from the off. Even heading down the stairs to find the place is fun  and should set the right tone for the evening from the off. Drinks  honestly, they're a mixed bag, so choose wisely  start at 8, so you needn't break the bank to treat a date. Booking essential. Radio Rooftop Bar The views do it all here  all you need to do is avoid messing it up. Ten floors up, the rooftop bar offers views of Tower Bridge, the Shard, the Tate Modern, Somerset House and the Houses of Parliament. There's usually a live DJ too. With the white sofas, the bar has a smart Ibiza vibe, which is a little fun and a little sexy. Cocktails are good, and have some tapas to go with. The K Bar K bar feels majestic  and there is no other word for it  because drinking here is a little like being in the captains quarters of the Titanic, albeit without the sinking feeling. The oak, the velvet, the brass, the marble tops: there is glamour here, luxury whiffs of Penhaligons perfume and the rest. It ticks over nicely, but you'll likely not get a table, so it's built for a last minute, upmarket date. 5CC Granted, its odd not to specify a particular bar, but the 5CC gang (found in Bethnal Green/Hoxton/the city) all have their charms. All are fond of classic cocktails, and offer very drinkable riffs on them. But why are they suited to a date? Besides the low lighting, quirky neon signs and sizeable spirits collection (something for everyone), theyre big on oysters, so lay yourself across their leather seats and indulge. They all offer champagne very reasonably, too. Perfect match, non? The Vaults at Milroy's The Vaults at Milroy's wins from the off, because to get to it, you enter through an bookcase, and that's the best way to get to anywhere. They play decent music, the drinks are reasonably priced and they make an excellent Old Fashioned. It's full of small tables which quickly fill up: come here for a relaxed, chatty, laughing date. The owner's adorable dog sometimes makes an appearance, too. Gordon's Wine Bar Gordon's will not fail: the terrace gets a little crowded when the weather is fine, but it's still a marvellous place to knock back some wine and talk. However, it's the caves indoors which are the real temptation: dark, intimate, it's a place to forget the rest of the world for a while. Wine is king here, but if you're eating, a paired cheese board always goes down well. They also serve some hot plates, but we prefer the cold bites. Bar Termini This tiny little spot in Soho seats barely a handful of people, which automatically gives it a sense of romantic intimacy. There's no standing room, either, so it never gets sweaty, horrible or crowded: finish an evening here either with a coffee or, better yet, a Negroni (make it two, they're small serves here). It'll add a little gentle Italian glamour to any date, just don't expect to spend the entire night here. OXO Tower Close by Blackfriars bridge, the Oxo is another spot with terrific views, including St Paul's and the Gherkin. Head out to the terrace, which is a showstopper: you won't really care what you're drinking, but the wine list is solid and the cocktails excellent. When it's cold, cosy up behind huge views: you'll get all of breathtaking beauty of London without giving in to frostbite. WC Wine and Charcuterie It's like they custom built this place for dates: the whole premise is  surely the name was a tip off  wine and charcuterie.Once inside, you'll be sat in candlelit surroundings. It's romantic, but not showy, and the wine is fairly priced, too. Head down on a Sunday and a Monday and you'll catch some live music. The sort of place that becomes "our place". Cork & Bottle This underground favourite couldn't be more central, living in Leicester Square, and despite having sat there since 1972, most Londoners wander past without realising it exists. The 300-long wine list covers just about everything, but doesn't go too heavy on the tasting notes: you're encouraged to find your own thing. You could never call the Cork & Bottle grand, but it charms immediately, and you'll want to find your own corner to come back to time over. Slim Jim's Liquor Store Dates are not about behaving appropriately, as Slim Jims well knows. This rock n roll dive bar has become all the more of a dive in recent years, but it still offers a damned good time. You come here for beer, bourbon and classic rock. The decor's main feature is bras on the ceiling, which makes sense, given they exchange drinks for them. Just make sure to dress down: suits and ties are turned away at the door. Party on. The Commercial Tavern Ok, ok: granted, this wonderful spot isnt technically a bar, although they do serve cocktails upstairs (sadly, not especially good ones...) The glory of the Commercial Tavern is its quirky decor, and the beautiful light upstairs that filters in through the windows. You come for a relaxed time, to chat, to laugh and sink a few drinks. It has its own feeling: nothing screams glamour, but something is quietly compelling about the place. Youll be back.

Even better? You wont have to trek to a specialist wine shop to pick it up, as its available at Selfridges for 17.99 a bottle.

Just make sure you dont undo all of your good work by sleeping through your gym session the morning after.

Follow us on Twitter: @eslifeandstyle
T he first voice you hear on Beyonces mega HBO visual album Lemonade is obviously Queen Bey herself. But the words are not hers. I tried to make a home outta you, but doors lead to trapdoors. A stairway leads to nothing. Unknown women wander the halls at night. Where do you go when you go quiet? are the words of 27-year-old British-Somali poet Warsan Shire. If you havent spent much time on Tumblr she might not be familiar but anointment by Beyonce means world domination is almost inevitable.

1. Born in Kenya to Somalian parents, Shire immigrated to London aged one and grew up in Brent. She was appointed the first Young Poet Laureate for London in 2014 and won the inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize in 2013.

2. Her debut full-length collection is due out at the end of the year. Up until now she has published two shorter pamphlets called Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth and Her Blue Body. In 2012 she released a spoken-word album called warsan versus melancholy (the seven stages of being lonely).

3. On Lemonade, quotes from her poems are featured as interludes between tracks on Lemonade: For Women Who Are Difficult to Love; Nail Technician As Palm Reader; How to Wear Your Mothers Lipstick; and The Unbearable Weight of Staying (the End of the Relationship). Shire is credited as a collaborator in film adaptation and poetry.

Beyonce's surprise album release has thrilled her fans / HBO/YouTube

4. Shire writes primarily about identity, migration, womanhood and nationality, drawing on the experiences of her family and friends as first- and second-generation immigrants  although she doesnt use their real names. Her words about love and loss, black identity and displacement chime perfectly with Beyonces political focus in her most recent output.

5. Shire always writes to music, is a self-proclaimed hip hop fan and the Music I write to section of her website includes Kano, Laura Marling, Jay Electronica, Toro y Moi and Kwabs.

Beyonce for Elle 1 /5 Beyonce for Elle Beyonce in Elle Wearing Ivy Park Paola Kudacki for ELLE Beyonce in Elle Wearing Ivy Park Paola Kudacki for ELLE Beyonce in Elle Wearing Ivy Park Paola Kudacki for ELLE Beyonce in Elle Wearing Ivy Park Paola Kudacki for ELLE

6. She calls Grace Jones her patron saint on her Instagram account.

7. While she might be an unknown to many, Beyonce is actually a little late to the Warsan Shire party. Shire is a poet for the Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr generations with legions of fans online and in October 2015 she was profiled in the New Yorker.

8. She tweets economically; either lines of her own work or quotes from a diverse selection of voices: Margaret Atwood, Lisa Left Eye Lopez, Pusha T, Anais Nin, Satre and FKA twigs.

9. Film inspires her and she often writes while watching her favourites. Shes a bit of a film buff; her speciality is horror, and intelligent, preferably female-created genre movies like The Babadook, It Follows and The Witch.

10. dream hampton is a friend. The writer, activist and film-maker has collaborated with Jay Z: and she ghostwrote Jay Zs best-selling book Decoded.

Follow Rachael Sigee on Twitter: @littlewondering
A woman who stabbed a teenager through the heart during a pointless row over stolen pasta is facing life in prison after being found guilty of his murder.

Maxine Benson, 32, knifed 18-year-old Alfie Stone in the street as he desperately tried to use a chip shop advertising board to protect himself.

The violent outburst came after an argument over pasta swiped from her kitchen spilled out into the streets of Ickenham, west London.

Benson believed Alfie or his brother Jake had eaten the food while visiting their bedsit two days earlier, and she lashed out with a knife to inflict a serious chest wound and pierce Alfies heart.

The teenager, from Hillingdon, bled heavily from the wound and died a short time later in hospital.

Benson had already pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and an Old Bailey jury today found her guilty of murder. Co-defendants Corine Cripps, 29 and Steve Hawgood, 28, were cleared of murder, but the jury is continuing to deliberate over an alternative charge of manslaughter.

It was alleged they chanted stab 'im, stab 'im while Benson wielded the knife.

Prosecutor Tony Badenoch QC said the Stone brothers visited the bedsit in Ickenham High Street on November 7 last year and are said to have tucked into the bowl of pasta.

When they returned to the block two days later, the pointless argument over the stolen food blew up again.

There was then an argument, apparently about pasta during which Corine Cripps accused Jake and Alfie of having eaten food which didnt belong to them when they stayed previously a couple of night ago, he said.

The argument continued with Maxine Benson, remaining at the top of the stairs and shouting at Jake about the pasta.

The row escalated outside Tesco Express in the main road, as commuters returned home from work at nearby West Ruislip Tube station.

"Maxine Benson wielded the knife. She was witnessed to do so by members of the public and CCTV in part, on the day she knifed him in the chest and then left the scene leaving him laying dying, said Mr Badenoch.

Benson dumped the knife shortly after the stabbing and lay low with a friend until handing herself in to police.

She now faces life in prison when she is sentenced later this week. The jury continues to deliberate on Cripps and Hawgood.

A second charge of attempted grievous bodily harm against Jake Stone was removed from the jury midway through the trial.
A serial sex attacker is facing jail over a nine-day spree of assaults on women in Brixton Hill and Clapham that sparked a major police manhunt.

Predator Mehdi Midani, 28, struck a total of eight times across a small area of south London, carrying out seven sex attacks.

He began his attacks on October 22 at 9.05pm when he followed a 32-year-old woman along Trent Road, Brixton, and put his hand up her dress.

Four days later, he attacked two women on the same night, grabbing a 35-year-old from behind in Arodene Road, Clapham.

Predator: Mehdi Midani / Met Police

His second assault an hour later was captured on CCTV, with video showing him approaching his victim from behind as she reached her front door.

On October 28, he struck again, this time targeting four different victims around the Brixton area over a four-hour period.

In one instance, a 31-year-old woman was pushed towards a block of flats on Sudbourne Road and sexually assaulted.

The following day, police announced they were linking the assaults, releasing the footage of Midani from October 26 and warning women to be on their guard.

A still from one of the assaults, which was captured by CCTV

Despite the net closing in, Midani managed to strike for a final time in Edithna Street on October 31, where he grabbed a woman's bottom before she cried out for help.

He was finally arrested on November 2 in the Brixton Hill area.

Today at Inner London Crown Court, Midani was convicted of six sexual assaults and a common assault. He also admitted a seventh sex attack.

Speaking after the hearing, investigating officer Detective Constable Tony Carr said: "Midani caused enormous fear and distress to the local community as he carried out his spate of attacks, with four recorded in just one day.

"A public appeal was crucial to our investigation and led to information being provided that quickly led to Midani's arrest.

"I would like to thank the local community for their support and help during our inquiry and hope they are reassured by the news that Midani has now been convicted and faces imprisonment."

Midani, of no fixed address, will be sentenced on May 26.
A hero delivery driver today told how he caught and disarmed a gunman holding up his boss at a family restaurant.

Josef Gunar, 42, was praised by a judge as a brave and vallant gentleman for apprehending Mahmoud Mohebbi as he held up Rainbow City in Enfield, north London.

Mohebbi, 37, was jailed yesterday for five years for the attempted robbery of the Chinese restaurant with an imitation firearm.

Mr Gunar said he had no thought for his safety when he rushed across the street to protect his boss of three years Nanshang Chen being held at gunpoint.

The armed man attempts to hold up the restaurant at gunpoint

He grabbed the man from behind before pinning him to the ground outside.

He took the gun and turned it on the robber before police arrived.

His brave actions on September 9 last year were caught on CCTV.

The Czech Republic national told the Standard: I didnt call the police, I just ran in quickly and grabbed him from behind and then grabbed his hands for the gun. I didnt think if it was real or not.

I didnt think about money, money is nothing.

I only thought about my bosss life, the staff and his wife and kids.

After I got the gun I pointed it to his head. Everyone was scared.

He was begging me when we were holding him for the police, saying, please let me go, I have a family to feed please, my hands are hurting.

But I thought what if I let him go and he does this to someone else or hurts them. I couldnt live with that.

I have never been in a fight so I was very scared. It was the second most terrifying moment of my life - after waiting for my hip operation.

Of course I would do it again, if I see someone getting attacked I will help- Ill probably lose my life eventually,

Police arrived and arrested Mohebbi. The gun, loaded with blanks, was tested and found to be an Italian-made BBM Olympic 6 blank-firing.22 calibre revolver painted black to make it look real.

Mohebbi, of Enfield, was jailed for five years for attempted robbery and given two years concurrent for possessing an imitation firearm after pleading guilty to both offences.

Chinese take-away owner Mr Chen condemned the lenient sentence for the robber who threatened his life and business.

He said: I dont understand English law, in China if you pull a gun on somebody that is ten years minimum.

The guy put the gun down on the table, I thought it was real. He just shouted give me all your money.

I could see Josef outside watching, so I just said to the robber sorry I am very scared I will count your money for you to buy some time.

Then Josef was in there and pulled him out and we put him on the floor and held him outside.

Josef is a hero I always tell him you saved my life.

At the sentencing yesterday at Snaresbrook Crown Court, Judge John Lafferty said: Mr Gunar did not simply call the police as he might have been expected to do.

He got out of his car and he entered the takeaway because his employer was in there being threatened by Mr Mohebbi with what he thought was a real firearm.

Mr Gunar is a very brave and gallant gentleman.

He could easily have sat on the other side of the street and discharged his civic duty by calling the police.
D etectives have launched an investigation after a man was stabbed during a row over a taxi outside a party in east London.

The victim, a 39-year-old man, was knifed in the leg and assaulted outside an apartment block in Woodford Green at 3.25am on Saturday, April 16.

A group of male and female partygoers allegedly attacked the victim outside the Eton Heights development in Whitehall Road during an argument over a taxi that he was trying to use.

He was taken to an east London hospital for treatment for stab wounds and assault injuries.

The victim recovered and was discharged from hospital.

Detectives believe the suspects attended a party at Eton Heights and are trying to identify a dark coloured pick-up truck - thought to be a Mitsubishi L200 - that was seen leaving the scene shortly after the attack.

Officers are keen to hear from anyone who saw the vehicle or attended the party.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Redbridge CID on 020 8345 2751 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111 or crimestoppers-uk.org.
T he investigation into Madeleine McCann's disappearance could finish in the next few months.

Scotland Yard boss Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said investigators are following one remaining line of inquiry and unless any new evidence comes to light, the British probe will end.

Despite a high-profile hunt for Madeleine, who vanished aged three while on holiday with her parents in Portugal in 2007, no trace has ever been found.

Speaking on LBC, Sir Bernard said: "There's been a lot of investigation time spent on this terrible case. It's a child who went missing, everybody wants to know if she is alive and if she is where is she, and sadly if she's dead then we need to give some comfort to the family.

"It's needed us to carry out an investigation together with the Portuguese and other countries have been involved.

"There is a line of inquiry that remains to be concluded and it's expected that in the coming months that will happen."

The Home Office has granted 95,000 in funding to keep the investigation - which now only has a handful of officers working on it - going for another few months.

Sir Bernard said the size of the investigating team has been radically reduced from 30 officers to just two or three.

When asked when the probe, called Operation Grange, will end, the Met chief added: "At the moment it would be at the conclusion of this line of inquiry unless something else comes up.

Hopes were high when the UK investigation into the little girl's disappearance was launched in 2011, with Scotland Yard detectives later highlighting a sex offender who had targeted British families with young children staying in villas in the same area where Madeleine was last seen.

Last week Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Duthie, who is head of the force's murder squad, remained optimistic.

He said: There is ongoing work. There is always a possibility that we will find Madeleine and we hope that we will find her alive."
A traditional Chinese medicine expert sexually assaulted a woman during a massage and reflexology treatment at a South Kensington clinic, a court heard.

Dr Hui Li, 54, had taken over the 40-an-hour sessions at the Natural Health Centre, Old Brompton Road, where the woman, in her thirties, sought help for a protruding disc.

As usual she had stripped down to her knickers and was using a full-length towel to cover her body when the defendant suggested an abdominal massage to relieve tension.

I said yes and he snatched the towel off, she told the jury at Isleworth crown court. He was staring at me. I covered my breasts with my hands and he said: Relax, Im a doctor and held my wrists and moved my hands down. He is then said to have grabbed her breasts.

She added: There was some force and he was staring like he wanted to touch me. He then stroked my back as I sat up and then stroked my cheek and said: Youre beautiful. I was so shocked and covered myself with the towel and he kept staring at me until I left the room. I trusted him as a doctor.

The woman continued her course of treatment with a female practitioner and only reported Hui when she bumped into him at the clinic four months later. He was sneering at me and waved in a patronising way as if to say: I know what I did and got away with it.

I did not have the courage to speak up about it, but when he waved at me I got the anger and the courage.

Hui says she made up the claims after an acupressure massage between the breasts and a head massage.

The clinics manager told the jury Hui also administers acupuncture. He said the defendant has little command of English and UK customs and does tell women they are beautiful in an attempt to develop rapport.

Hui, of Docklands, has pleaded not guilty to one count of sexual assault on April 11, 2014. The trial continues.
H ospital bosses fear being hit by a deluge of patients when the first of two all-out strikes by junior doctors ends.

Concerns are mounting that sick people will head for A&E this evening in the mistaken belief that hospitals will quickly return to normal service after 5pm, when the walkout is due to end. Hospital sources said the reallocation of consultants was likely to cause delays in discharging patients previously admitted to wards. This would create a shortage of beds for new admissions. We are concerned that people will arrive at 5pm when its over and we get the whole days demand in one hour, one London hospital manager told the Standard.

Todays strike, the fifth by the British Medical Association, saw junior doctors refuse to work in emergency, maternity and critical care departments for the first time in NHS history. A similar walkout will resume at 8am tomorrow.

Emergency cover was being provided across the NHS by consultants as juniors protesting over new contracts took to picket lines.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told BBC radio it was a very, very bleak day for the NHS but junior doctors on the picket line at St Thomas Hospital warned the dispute could escalate.

Dr Sarah Hallett, 26, who works in paediatrics, said further strikes or an indefinite walkout cannot be ruled out. And Dr Michael Mclaughlin, 32, a specialist A&E registrar, said: This is about the future of the NHS so there could be further action taken with a heavy heart.

More than 100 senior medics at Barts Health, the UKs biggest NHS trust, posted photo and video selfies to show support for junior doctors.

Both NHS England and London Ambulance Service said they were unaware of additional pressures during the first hours of the strike. Anne Rainsberry from NHS England said she was concerned at the impact on patients but refused to suggest that lives were at risk, saying only: Withdrawal of emergency care will put additional risk into the system.

Hospital bosses appealed for people with minor ailments to seek help via the NHS 111 helpline, GPs, pharmacists, and minor injuries units rather than A&E.

Meanwhile, a BBC poll found 57 per cent public support for the junior doctors, slightly lower than in January when emergency care was still provided during strikes.@RossLydall
J unior doctors cheered as Jeremy Corbyn joined them on a march through Whitehall following a day of strikes.

The Labour leader led a procession from St Thomas Hospital and urged the Government to settle the dispute over a new contract.

Flanked by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, he said: "The Government has an opportunity to settle this, they should get on and do so."

Thousands of junior doctors were joined by teachers unions as they marched on the Department of Health, chanting: "Where are you Jeremy [Hunt]?"

All out: striking junior doctors on the picket line outside St Thomas Hospital on Monday / Lucy Young

Mr Corbyn was roundly cheered as he took to a stage to address the protesters.

He told them the NHS was not safe in the hands of a Government more interested in attacking the junior doctors at its core than supporting it, selling off its assets and destroying its "very principles".

Mr Corbyn said it was "utterly contemptible" that Mr Hunt had failed to reach an agreement with junior doctors, despite having "every conceivable opportunity".

He said: "They are the ones who have behaved in the responsible manner of saying they are there to defend the NHS. His response is to try and impose a contract and impose something on them.

"That is no way for a secretary of state to behave towards one of the most crucial elements of the NHS workforce."

Amid a chorus of boos - that quickly turned to cheers and laughter - he added: "Don't worry, not all Jeremys are bad."

Todays strike, the fifth by the British Medical Association, saw junior doctors refuse to work in emergency, maternity and critical care departments for the first time in NHS history. A similar walkout will resume at 8am on Wednesday.

Mr Hunt told BBC radio on Monday it was a very, very bleak day for the NHS.

The Government believes imposition of the new contract is necessary for the introduction of a seven-day NHS.

A BBC poll found 57 per cent public support for the junior doctors, slightly lower than in January when emergency care was still provided during strikes.
Ukrtransgaz: Ukraine on May 16 will suspend gas imports from Poland for two months for repairs

Ukraine will suspend natural gas imports from Poland for two months for carrying out planned repairs, the chief of the PR department at Ukrtransgaz, Maksym Beliavsky, has said.

"The work is to be started on May 16, 2016 to ensure the stable functioning of the gas transportation corridor during the heating season, in particular to accumulate enough natural gas in Ukraine's storage facilities," he wrote on his Facebook page.

During repairs Slovak and Hungarian gas supply routes from Europe to Ukraine will be available.

According to him, today gas imports from Europe amount to 8.3 million cubic meters per day, in particular from Slovakia 3.6 million cubic meters, Hungary 1.4 million cubic meters, Poland 3.3 million cubic meters.

As reported, Ukraine in January-March 2016 imported 2.645 billion cubic meters of gas, which is 2.2 times less than in the three months in 2015 (5.771 billion cubic meters).
A n advert on the Tube which depicts a giant young banker squatting over the City is being ridiculed by commuters.

The poster, which has appeared across the underground network, is aimed at promoting a contest for hot shot young bankers.

The ad, for the Chartered Banker Institute's Young Banker of the Year contest, shows an artificially enlarged banker with the City's skyline behind him, and encourages people to tweet using the hashtag #CBRiseAboveTheRest.

But the advert was mocked online after it was spotted around London - with some observers suggesting the man appears to be "doing something unthinkable to the City".

However, others speculated it could be the result of a "brilliantly strategised campaign."

Thomas Dyson tweeted: Wow talk about a #designfail #cbriseabovetherest #bankerdumpsoncity @charteredbanker."

George Brown posted: Pretty unfortunate pose, looks as if he's about to do something unthinkable to the City... #CBRiseAboveTheRest."

Gemma Perkins added: #cbriseabovetherest either a brilliantly strategised campaign or the CD, designers & client were horrifically inebriated on signing this off.

Liam Brennan tweeted: Whoever wins Young Banker of the Year gets to take a massive dump on London #cbriseabovetherest."

While Dave Cottrell wrote: #cbriseabovetherest and take a 'virtual' dump on your competitors!?...."

The Chartered Banker Institute, which represents bankers working for their professional qualifications, said nominations for the competition close on Friday and is aimed at unearthing tomorrows leaders in the UK banking industry.

Its website reads: The most challenging and rewarding event of the banking year is here again, as the Chartered Banker Institute, supported by the Banking Standards Board, seek young bankers with innovative ideas that will help shape the future of UK banking.

The Chartered Banker Institute has been contacted for a comment.
L ondoners having a bad day were today urged to put their problems in perspective as a campaign to help the worlds most disadvantaged people was launched.

Mariella Frostrup spoke out to support Save the Childrens new three-year campaign which aims to help young people who are doubly disadvantaged: as well as being poor, they are discriminated against because they are disabled, refugees, girls or the wrong ethnicity or religion.

The TV presenter and journalist said that no matter what problems we have in our lives, they pale in comparison to those of vulnerable children in the poorest countries. The charity said they were the worlds most forgotten children and the hardest to help.

Ms Frostrup, Save the Childrens gender ambassador, has visited Liberia where tens of thousands of women and girls were sexually assaulted in the civil war. She said Londoners could help them by recognising that even when their lives seemed difficult and harsh their problems were nothing compared to such children and called on people to donate and think of the victims.

Have these people in your conscience. Remember that even on a very bad day yours is a very privileged existence, she said. If all of us did a tiny bit more to recognise what is happening, we could change the world.

Ms Frostrup, 53, added that it was impossible to draw a comparison between sexual violence in Britain and Liberia: Of course there are girls and boys suffering similar experiences here. The difference is we do have an infrastructure. It doesnt work all the time, but at least its there.

When you travel to Liberia, you realise how alone you are as a victim there. There is nobody to fall back on. And you are often in a community where the fact you have been the victim of a sexual crime ostracises you even further. There is a lack of justice on every level. There are the vulnerable and then there are the extremely vulnerable. Save the Children is zooming in on these people who really desperately need help.

She also praised the war rape summit held by William Hague and Angelina Jolie in 2014, which the Evening Standard supported.

She said: Everything you can do to draw attention is a good thing. It put the subject in the front of peoples minds. Human beings need emotional support as well as practical. When things that are unspoken in your society are recognised and publicised beyond your borders it changes the debate.

A poll released today to mark the campaigns launch found that almost 40 per cent of adults across the world were discriminated against as children. Save the Children warned that children from discriminated groups were consistently overlooked despite being most at risk.@_annadavis
A man who jumped from the roof of a City restaurant had written a flurry of text messages including one that read I have cracked, an inquest heard today.

Mike Halligan, 29, died after plunging 80ft from the Coq DArgent at One Poultry in the Square Mile at 4pm on Sunday, January 17.

The Irishman had been working as a sales representative for Vodafone in Stuttgart, Germany.

Sergeant Fiona Doll told the inquest at City of London Coroners Court that CCTV evidence showed Mr Halligan get a lift up to the restaurant.

He was carrying a red bag which he put under a table and ordered a meal, before jumping.

She read out a string of harrowing text messages found in drafts on his mobile phone. The messages were in a mixture of French and English.

One read: I am bored with life. Its nobodys fault, nothing can be done to change it.

Another said: I have cracked.

The court heard that the Irishman died from multiple injuries. He had arrived in London the day before his death.

Coroner Dr Roy Palmer accepted that the restaurant had taken all the safety measures reasonable to try to stop someone jumping.

In reaching his conclusion of suicide, he said he was in no doubt that Mr Halligan had intended to jump to his death.

He was the sixth person to die after falling from the restaurant.

Four people fell to their deaths there between 2007 and 2012, when owners D&D London installed 6ft barriers. Restaurant critic Wilkes McDermid, 39, jumped to his death in February last year.

For confidential support on mental health call the Samaritans on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org or attend a Samaritans branch.
T his is the moment a Prince fan burst into dance on a Tube train in a unique tribute to the late superstar.

Student Jackson Flowers, 21, chose to celebrate the legendary musician with a flamboyant dance routine on the Circle line.

Several passengers jumped out of their seats to join in after apparently becoming swept up by his enthusiastic moves and the music - the 1979 hit I Wanna Be Your Lover.

Others pulled out their phones to film the performance on Sunday evening, which Mr Flowers has shared on his YouTube channel.

The Stoke Newington resident told the Standard: I felt a lot of love and emotion and empathy towards Prince.

"Without Prince, what's happening in music now would not be happening. Thats why I wanted to pay tribute."

Prince died aged 57 on Thursday after collapsing in a lift at his home near Minneapolis.

Mr Flowers - who says he has taken some beginner hip hop dance classes - said he was inspired by Prince's "freedom of expression".

He added: Its been an idea for a while to want to dance on the Tube, I think people are always a bit bored and not very friendly.

I wanted to support a free-spirited vibe on the train to honour Prince. He was such a legend.
Move over, tired and tiring men in suits: the cool kids are taking over the Remain campaign. First, theres Wolfgang Tillmans, the German-born artist and photographer who has been living in the UK since 1995. The official Remain campaign feels lame and is lacking in passion, he explained on his website. I want to work towards maximising turnout among younger voters. Everyones grannies registered their vote long ago but students no longer get automatically registered by their unis, the Turner Prize-winner continued.

So what is his solution? A series of artfully designed posters, created by him and his studio assistants, to be downloaded and printed by anyone wishing to display them.

Slogans range from No man is an island, no country by itself to Its also a question of where one belongs. We are the European family. A favourite of The Londoner, however, is: My fathers Polish, my mums from Spain, I studied in Berlin, now I live in the UK. Its never been a hassle to do so. And I dont want it to be. Count me in.

Tillmans is not alone. Last night marked the launch of We Are Europe, a grassroots Remain campaign based in trendy Hoxton, of all places. The group has the nifty hashtag #InFor ... , a healthy dose of optimism, and big names piling in to help spread the word, including model and entrepreneur Lily Cole, actor Jude Law and rapper Jamal Edwards.

And in what may be a sign of the times, the Government has started spreading its Remain message across Instagram. Will it be the millennials wot won it?

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With the news of BHS going into administration, former owner and current chairman of Arcadia Sir Philip Green has once again hit the headlines. Though he is mostly known for his work with Topshop, his short temper has also become the stuff of legend. Editorial Intelligences Julia Hobsbawm recalls: Philip Green arrived at a glitzy newspaper party. The name-ticker said Philip Green. Its SIR Philip, thank you, he stormed.

A Panamanian pact with the Devil

The Londoner was at the Duke of Yorks Theatre last night for Dr Faustus, starring Kit Harington, with a script updated by Colin Teevan. Updated rather pertinently, it turns out. Midway through the play, during a scene in which the characters discuss selling their souls, one pipes up: Hello, Im David Cameron and my daddy will make sure to put that money into an entirely different account in Panama. See  it wasnt really mine to give away.

The audience guffawed. The Londoner wishes it had gone to the Friday preview of the show to watch how one audience member reacted: Chancellor George Osborne was in that night.

Ma and sis go to see Boris spoofed

He aint heavy, hes my brother. Boris Johnson has taken a bashing over the weekend, prompting his sister Rachel, pictured with him, to use her Mail on Sunday column to tell his critics to leave off badgering her.

How fantastic, then, to see her accompanying her mother, Charlotte Johnson Wahl, to last nights production of Boris: World King at Trafalgar Studios in Whitehall. In the play, which aims to not-so-lightly poke fun at the Mayor, Boris seduces the most beautiful debutante at Oxford, scoops a sultry French journalist in Brussels and gets fired by an oddly sexy Conrad Black. All three female parts were played by Alice McCarthy, who received Ms Johnsons congratulations at the end, although Rachel missed her co-star David Benson, who plays Boris, as he was holed up in the green room dealing with a bushy blonde wig.

What did the fair-headed clan make of the play, though? My mother enjoyed it, I think, after a stiff double vodka anyway, Rachel told The Londoner, it was surprisingly sympathetic. Poor David Benson sweated buckets under the synthetic wig.

Theatregoers were wondering if the real Boris might make an appearance. Anna Wintour, owner of an equally famous mop, turned up to The Devil Wears Prada premiere head-to-toe in the label. Will Britains most famous Brexiteer exhibit similar sang froid?

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Last night The Londoner heard Dame Stephanie Shirley talk to Sue MacGregor at the Royal Institute. Described as a refugee, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, she rivals Disney princesses as a role model, especially as the name of her autobiography is Let it Go. Did the title come before Frozen? After, laughed Dame Stephanie. I had no idea [about the movie]. To get the title was hard.

Birds of a political feather

The Tower of London may be known for its ravens but how many of us are aware of the falcons in the Houses of Parliament? The birds of prey moved in in 2008, when a pair of peregrine falcons were first spotted there. Eight years later the birds now clearly feel so at home that theyve started having babies, as an internal message seen by The Londoner shows.

Peregrine falcons are currently fledging on the parliamentary estate, it said. If you see a grounded juvenile peregrine falcon within the parliamentary estate, please....

Instructions include not to touch the birds and calling the two people in charge of the falcons.

However, The Londoner cant help but think of how wonderfully sinister some Lords could look with a falcon over their ermine.

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Facepalm of the day: in this mornings Shakespeare and the American Dream on Radio 4, the Bard was described as an incredible content provider.
A s Zac Goldsmith arrives at Waterloo station, an orchestra on the concourse strikes up music from Game Of Thrones.

It is a fitting soundtrack to a mayoral campaign which has, at times, resembled a dynastic struggle for control of London. The row over Sadiq Khans alleged extremist links  and the backlash against the Tories for their attacks  has threatened to overshadow the contest.

But today Goldsmith insists he is trying very hard not to talk about his Labour rival and is here to promote his own plans for London instead.

He is at Britains busiest station to meet commuters and see first-hand what Network Rail is doing to address chronic overcrowding.

The Tories feel Khans fares freeze pledge is a weak spot as Transport for London claims it could take huge sums away from much-needed investment. Theyve taken a gamble that Londoners would be prepared to pay more and have a transport network they can rely on.

Goldsmith, in the end, doesnt meet any commuters, spending an age inspecting the rebuilding of the old Eurostar platforms instead.

A financial analyst commuter called James tells the Standard later: Im pretty fed up with having my nose stuck in somebody elses armpit on my way to work so I wouldnt mind paying a bit more if they increase capacity. Others are less keen. Natalia, a shop assistant, is worried her daily commute will become too expensive. I already struggle to afford to live in London. The last thing I want is for the cost of my travel to go up too.

Goldsmith spends so long on the platform that he misses his own campaign bus to his next event and has to go by Tube.

He gets a few curious glances, but no approaches. Neither he, nor his Labour rival, are household names like Boris Johnson. The Tories are pushing the vote Zac, get Boris strategy and today Mr Johnson joins Goldsmith leafleting in Marylebone High Street. The candidate races on ahead, gingerly handing out leaflets, while the Mayor stops to chat and pose for selfies. One aide introduces Mr Goldsmith to a passerby, who says: OK ... wheres Boris?

Johnson says he is confident Goldsmith will win and aides point out that polls  which put Khan way ahead  were miles out ahead of the general election.

The politicians enter a cafe, where one customer, Anmol, says: Ill be voting based on policy rather than what theyre saying about each other. Naomi, a student, says she is not sure yet who will get her vote, but adds: Im just fed up with all this tit-for-tat. I wish it would stop.
B oris Johnsons successor was today urged to cut back on vanity posters of the Mayor on the Tube  and instead use ad revenue to attract more wealthy Chinese tourists to London.

In a hard-hitting report, business group London First accused the Greater London Authority of failing to promote the city properly abroad, particularly to Eastern economies.

It criticised Londons modest promotional budget  which it put at 19 million a year  saying it was dwarfed by those of city states such as Singapore (201 million) and Hong Kong (253 million), and was less than spending for Paris (34 million) and Berlin (22 million).

London First chief executive Jo Valentine said: We cant rely just on attracting traditional markets such as American tourists, welcome as they are. We also need to build our brand in the emerging economies, too. Paris is just doing a much better job of attracting the Chinese  and every year we fail to market ourselves, we fall further behind.

Outgoing mayor: Boris Johnson was on the campaign trail with Zac Goldsmith today in Marylebone High Street / Jeremy Selwyn

Proposing ways to boost spending on tourism, she said: There are excessive numbers of vanity posters on the Tube promoting the Mayor and City Hall. If we sold all or most of these poster sites, wed have more money to promote London abroad.

Baroness Valentine added: With a new Mayor due in City Hall in less than one month, London First will be looking to them to take bold steps to invest in Londons international promotion.

The report also suggests diverting one per cent of the money City Hall charges on council tax bills to boost funding for London & Partners, the capitals promotional company, by 8 million.

Tourism: the new mayor has been urged to use poster sites to boost visitor numbers to London / Alamy

The business groups analysis said that Paris is estimated to receive up to 50 per cent more Chinese tourists. It called for London to market itself not just with Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen but also to the 50 second-tier Chinese cities with a per capita GDP over $10,000 (6,895).

City Hall said London & Partners works tirelessly to market the city across the world and is leveraging more money each year from private sector partners.

A spokesman for the Mayor added: More than 17 million tourists visit London annually and the capital has seen a 22 per cent increase in the number of international trips to the city over the last five years.

By 2020, forecasts suggest the Chinese market will grow over 50 per cent with the capital welcoming over 150,000 Chinese visitors each year.

According to sources, TfL sells as many of its Underground poster sites for advertising as possible, and the small number that are not sold are used to make Londoners aware of key events and initiatives  therefore no revenue is lost.

VOTERS' VIEW

Transport costs: Helen Bradshaw / Alex Lentati

Helen Bradshaw, 22, media agency worker, Brockley: "The biggest issue for me is the cost of travel, by a long way.

"Its so expensive and lots more could be done to reinvest the money that comes into TfL, which would reduce the cost, not just for young people but for everyone. There needs to be an overall reduction in the cost, not just having fares frozen.

"Some people pay more than their rent just to get to work."

Cost of live: Ryan Harper / Alex Lentati

Ryan Harper, 24, property agent, Fulham: "The cost of living is the biggest issue. I work in property and the house prices just rise up and up.

"Compared to two years ago, weve seen landlords reduce rental prices because people cant afford it.

"Then you have investors buying cheap property from overseas, which could be used by young people who want to buy somewhere but cant."

Mental health services: Christina Cameron / Alex Lentati

Christina Cameron, 24, currently unemployed, west London: "There should be better mental health services.

"Young people are under so much pressure growing up, more could be done about mental health at school.

"The mayoral candidates should look at making the services more accessible, with shorter waiting lists and more incentives for nurses to train."

Planning: Sara Brennan / Alex Lentati

Sara Brennan, 27, owns London Nursery School, Kensington: "The biggest issue is planning. To get a change of use for the school, there was little support from anywhere.

"The process should be streamlined. Everyone focuses on housing and transport but no one mentions education: in Kensington and Chelsea theres a massive shortage of schools, nurseries are oversubscribed.

"We need more common sense in the planning process."
A legal battle is about to break out over controversial plans to let cruise ships run their engines day and night in the heart of London.

Residents raising cash to mount a High Court challenge to insist on clean air at the capitals first proposed cruise liner terminal at Enderby Wharf, near Greenwich peninsula, are set to hit their 16,000 target within days.

The company behind the terminal says it would be uneconomic to lay mains power lines out to ships at the terminal, close to the O2 and thousands of homes. Instead, the liners would generate electricity from their engines while moored on the Thames.

But nearby residents fear toxic fumes will gather over streets near the site. We are 90 per cent towards the crowd-funding target, said Ian Blore of the East Greenwich Residents Association. I have had pensioners press 2 coins into my hand for the fund, while other donations have been in four figures. It shows how worried people are about the pollution this development could bring.

From 2017 up to 50 liners a year will dock at Enderby Wharf at the start and finish of cruises, bringing a tourism bonanza.

But Greenwich and Woolwich MP Matthew Pennycook said local people were worried about diesel emissions from the ships, and mayoral candidates Zac Goldsmith, Sadiq Khan, Caroline Pidgeon and Sian Berry have all backed the residents. Mr Khan said: Too many lives in London are blighted by filthy, polluted air.

A Greenwich council spokesman said it will robustly defend any legal challenge to the terminal.
R elatives of the Hillsborough victims broke into song after an inquest jury found the 96 fans were unlawfully killed.

Dozens of tearful family members sang the Liverpool anthem, You'll Never Walk Alone, in emotional scenes outside the courtroom.

Relatives in the courtroom had leapt to their feet and cheered when the unlawful killing finding was read out, with one shouting "Hallelujah!"

The jury also decided that police errors "probably caused or contributed" to the dangerous situation that led to their deaths and the actions of fans did not contribute.

What happened at Hillsborough?

The familes of the victims have campaigned for decades over the stadium tragedy 27 years ago.

The 96 were crushed to death on April 15, 1989, during Liverpool's FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest at the Sheffield Wednesday stadium.

Tracey Church, who lost her brother 19-year-old Gary in the disaster, said she was overcome with emotion following the jury's conclusion.

After holding up a red flag that read "We climbed the hill in our own way", she said they had campaigned for "years and years" to get justice.

She added: "It's surreal. (I feel) emotional, shaken, happy, sad - all mixed emotions."

TODO: define component type brightcove

Leading Hillsborough campaigner Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James died in the disaster, said: "I think we have changed a part of history now - I think that's the legacy the 96 have left."
The Russian Federation is breaching its obligations as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), planning the deployment of nuclear weapons on the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Vadym Prystaiko has said.

According to the official Facebook page of the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine, Prystaiko said this, when speaking at the International Forum "Chornobyl's legacy for the nuclear safety of the world" in Kyiv.

The official also noted environmental threat due to the continued aggression of Russia against Ukraine and said it has already led to the contamination of the territory.

The official during his speech also expressed gratitude to the G7 states and the donor countries of the Chornobyl Shelter Fund, as well as the Nuclear Safety Account for constant attention and efforts aimed at eliminating the consequences of the Chornobyl disaster.
P olice in Thailand may be reported to an international regulator over the investigation of two Burmese men convicted of murdering British backpackers Hannah Witheridge and David Miller.

International legal and DNA forensic scientists have advised the defence team of the two Burmese, who were sentenced to death, to make a formal complaint and demand a retrial.

The bodies of Ms Witheridge, 23, and Mr Miller, 24, were found on the island of Koh Tao in September 2014.

The experts say at best the DNA investigation by the Thai Police Forensics Laboratory was incompetent with no chain of evidence or proper disclosure to the defence. The worst scenario is Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo were framed.

One of the team said: I have spoken to the Australian Asia Pacific Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation which is willing to intervene. My feeling is the two young Burmese rather than being executed would be suing the authorities in a western country  and their lawyers should do that in Thailand.

The body is able to suspend accreditation for all Thai laboratories until the matter is resolved.

The team has advised the defence lawyers to demand that the Thai Ministry of Public Healths Bureau of Laboratory Quality Standards investigate.
C ampaigners are calling for a ban on elephant rides after an animal collapsed and died of exhaustion while ferrying tourists around Cambodias famous Angkor Wat temples.

More than 25,000 people have backed a petition calling for the rides to be stopped after the death of a female elephant, known as Sambo, at the vast world heritage site.

Sambo, believed to be aged between 40 and 45, suffered a fatal heart attack after carrying two tourists for a 40 minute ride in searing heat at the sprawling temple complex close to Siem Reap.

A vet said she died after suffering heat exhaustion due to her exertion in extreme temperatures of about 40C.

The petition on change.org states: A cruel tourist attraction that is proven to be harmful to elephants, and can only damage the tourism industry of Cambodia, must finally come to an end.

The recent death of an elephant, used for tourist rides, at the Angkor temples should be the final wake-up call for the community and tourism industry to take the steps needed to end this horrific practice.

There is no such thing as cruelty-free elephant rides."

The death has strengthened calls from animal welfare organisations for a global end to the practice.

Groups including the Born Free Foundation, Peta and World Animal Protection are piling pressure on tour operators to stop offering the rides.

Chris Draper, from the Born Free Foundation, told the Huffington Post: "Elephants used for rides are generally trained using harsh and abusive methods, they may be kept isolated from social companions, and made to walk miles on hot roads.
G erman planners have come up with an ingenious way to stop people walking into busy roads while looking at their smartphones and texting.

The city of Augsburg has introduced a traffic light-style system on the floor, so people can see they need to stop without looking up from their screen.

Red flashing LED lights, embedded in pavements at a pedestrian crossing last week, are used to signal when a tram is approaching and people need to wait.

According to German media, the lights have been installed in an area particularly popular with young people and commuters.

The pilot scheme has been introduced after a tragedy in Munich last month when a 15-year-old girl was killed by a tram while wearing earphones and looking at her phone.

A city spokesman Stephanie Lermen told website N-TV: "It creates a whole new level of attention."
N ew York's mayor is facing a possible criminal prosecution for allegedly running an illegal fundraising scheme to get Democrats elected.

Bill de Blasio and his senior aides committed wilful and flagrant violations of the law in 2014, according to a memo from the lead investigator at the state board of elections.

If a criminal prosecution is brought forward it could mean the end of Mr de Blasios hopes of running for re-election next year.

In what is the ugliest period of his time in office, Mr de Blasio faces two separate scandals and growing suspicion over his closeness to donors.

The New York Post, which has long disliked the mayor, alleged in an editorial that he was a liar who has put City Hall up for sale. Even the New York Daily News, which has staunchly backed Mr de Blasio, said he had done too many favours for too many donors. He denies any wrongdoing.

The scandal over the fundraising for Democrats was made public by a leaked eight-page report written by New York state enforcement chief Risa Sugarman. She was looking into how money was raised to get Democrats elected to the New York state senate in 2014.

The memo states: I have determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a violation warranting criminal prosecution has taken place.

There is considerable evidence in this case that New York City mayor William de Blasio organised a team dedicated to getting a sufficient number of Democratic New York State senators elected in 2014 to achieve a Democratic majority in the senate. The evidence indicates that de Blasio established a structure, both within and outside City Hall, and entered into an agreement with powerful unions and political consultants to raise and spend money to influence senate races.

Mr de Blasio and some of his closest allies are accused of soliciting nearly $1 million from major unions and wealthy donors that were used for elections in Putnam and Ulster counties. Miss Sugarman accused the Mayor of using straw donors to get around the $10,300 limit per person you can donate to a senatorial candidate.

Despite the extra money, all three candidates who supposedly benefited lost their elections. The story has dominated the New York media and comes after a federal investigation was begun into Mr de Blasios links to two businessmen who are accused of bribing senior police officials. Community activist Tony Herbert, a former member of Al Sharptons National Action Network, said that Mr de Blasio should be impeached because he was compromised. He said: If he cares about this city the way he says he does, he needs to step down immediately and save us the continued national embarrassment.

Speaking on radio station WNYC, Mr de Blasio said: I believe everything we did was legal and appropriate and careful, and look, we said from the beginning if there is any kind of investigation going on, we will happily participate.

In addition to the fundraising row, Mr de Blasio has been accused of running a slush fund over a $1.6 million loan to a non-profit group running four pre-kindergarten schools.

His administration is also accused of trying to pay $16 million at the last minute to stop a private developer from buying a nursing home and turning it into luxury apartments. The deal goes against the mayors signature campaign pledge of ending inequality by building more affordable housing.

Mr de Blasio came to power in 2014 with a landslide victory as the Left-wing candidate who promised a change from his predecessor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire technocrat who kept a steady ship for three terms by pandering to Wall Street. The new mayor vowed to stop New York being a tale of two cities but two years on things have been rocky, as he put it himself.

His most testing time until now was in late 2014 when relations with police sunk to a historic low over the fatal shooting of two officers. Dozens of officers turned their back on him in protest at his failure to back them while supporting black protesters.
T he cast from the eagerly-anticipated Captain America: Civil War walked the red carpet at the European premiere in London.

A-listers including Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr, Elisabeth Olsen and Paul Rudd brought a spot of glamour to Westfield as the film opened with a bang on Tuesday night.

Following a few days of promo and press conferences, the impressive cast gathered to officially open the film to UK audiences.

Having visited sick children at Great Ormond Street Hospital on Monday afternoon, Downey Jr seemed in good spirits as he posed for pictures on the enormous red carpet.

Ian West/PA Wire

Olsen, who plays Wanda Maximoff in the Marvel sequel and third film in the Captain America franchise, spent time chatting to fans who had gone all out with their costumes.

Chris Evans, who plays Captain America himself, was also on hand to welcome the large crowd who had gathered at the shopping centre.

Jeremy Renner, who plays Clint Barton and Paul Rudd, who takes on the role of Ant-Man also put in an appearance.

Up-and-coming British actor Tom Holland, who has been cast as the new Spider-Man and makes his first outing as the character in this film, proved to be a hit with the fans.

Praising the Brit in a press conference on Monday, Downey Jr said: Hes something else. He came on with a bang. Theres a lot of excitement about seeing whatll happen.

Captain America: Civil War European Premiere - London 1 /18 Captain America: Civil War European Premiere - London Chris Evans, Robert Downey arrive at the London premiere Ian West/PA Wire Elisabeth Olsen brings a touch of glamour to Westfield Dave Benett Tom Holland meets his fans Dave Benett Jeremy Renner arrives on the red carpet Ian West/PA Wire Chris Evans, who plays Captain America Ian West/PA Wire Elisabeth Olsen on the red carpet Dave Benett Paul Rudd who plays Ant-Man Ian West/PA Wire Anthony Mackie at the London premire Ian West/PA Wire Daniel Bruhl is suited and booted Dave Benett Elisabeth Olsen and Jeremy Renner chat to fans Ian West/PA Wire Emily VanCamp ahead of the screening Dave Benett Robert Downey Jr and Samuel L Jackson Ian West/PA Wire Robert Downey Jr chats to his younger fans Ian West/PA Wire Mark Hamill and Marilou York arrive to see the film Ian West/PA Wire

Captain America: Civil War will be released in cinemas on April 29.
K id Rock has been left beyond devastated by the news of the death of his personal assistant.

Mike Sacha, 30, was found dead at Rock's Nashville property following an apparent ATV accident, according to reports.

Metro Nashville Police Department informed The Tennessean that the incident occurred after Sacha drove guests to an Uber following a cookout on Rocks Whites Creek estate.

Police said Sacha lost control of his vehicle and crashed on his way back to the rappers home.

In a statement on his website, Rock  real name Robert James Ritchie  wrote: I am beyond devastated to report that my personal assistant Mike Sacha passed away today in an ATV accident here in Nashville. He was a member of our family and one of the greatest young men I have ever had the pleasure to not only work with, but also to become friends with.

I know I speak for us all in sharing my deepest condolences to his family. I cannot imagine how they must feel. Myself, the band, our family, friends and co-workers are devastated over this loss.

Im asking everyone to please respect our and his families' privacy in this difficult time. RIP Mike. We will never forget you, my friend.

Rock and a friend found Sacha at 11.30am on Monday morning and called for help, according to TMZ.

Rock said he has supposed to travel to Michigan but said he will remain in Tennessee to stay with Sacha so he can "bring him home to his family".

Follow @StandardShowbiz for more news.
L ondon Votes, London Lives daily politics show airing every week night in the run up to the mayoral elections, continues with another candidate entering the studio.

While yesterdays episode saw Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith get a grilling from Daisy McAndrew over the housing crisis, now its the turn of Sian Berry from the Green Party.

After a strong showing in the 2012 election, the Greens could be set to make another splash this year.

McAndrew will be asking Berry about how she would aim to change London if she were to be elected  as well as how shell hope to improve the number of Green voters.

Tying into the interview, the other key topic set to be discussed will be Londons transport system. With the number of Londoners always increasing, transport options are having to adapt  but what are the various candidates offering?

London's Mayoral hopefuls - in pictures 1 /16 London's Mayoral hopefuls - in pictures Zac Goldsmith (Con) Eton-educated Zac Goldsmith entered the race for City Hall after balloting his Richmond Park constituents. The son of late billionair Sir James Goldsmith, the Tory hopeful is an environmentalist who has campaigned against Heathrow airport expansion. He also campaigned for the right for voters to kick out failing MPs and is now backing a British exit from the EU. Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images Sadiq Khan (Lab) Sadiq Khan is the son of a London bus driver who grew up on a south London estate. He trained as a lawyer and worked as a human right solicitor before being elected MP for Tooting in 2005. Mr Khan was one of the first British Muslims to sit on the front bench of the Cabinet and ran Ed Miliband's campaign to become Labour leader. He backs Britain's membership of the EU and has warned Brexit could have catastrophic consequences for London. Sian Berry (Green) Sian Berry, Green party Mayoral candidate Chris Ratcliffe/Getty Images Caroline Pidgeon (Lib Dem) Caroline Pidgeon, Liberal Democrat candidate for the London Mayoral election Glenn Copus Peter Whittle (Ukip) Peter Whittle, the UKIP London Mayoral candidate canvassing in Romford market Glenn Copus George Galloway (Respect) Respect party leader George Galloway AFP/Getty Images Paul Golding (Britain First) Paul Golding, Britain First Rex Sophie Walker (Women's Equality Party) Mayoral candidate for the Women's Equality Party, Sophie Walker, outside City Hall Matt Writtle Lee Harris (Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol) Cannabis advocate Lee Harris hopes to become mayor John Zynlinski (Independent) Polish prince John Zynlinski is counting on London's migrant population to back him Jeremy Selwyn David Furness (BNP) David Furness BNP Mayoral Candidate BNP Ankit Love (One Love Party) Ankit Love. One Love Party

Will it be possible to expand and update the network and make the service as green as possible?

Tune in to hear what the parties have in mind.

London Live, 6pm
Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv has extended until June 24 the arrest of head of Azov-Crimea Civil Corps Stanislav Krasnov who is suspected of treason and terrorism.

This decision was announced by Judge Vitaly Tsiktych at the court sitting on Tuesday, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported.

Krasnov was present at the sitting despite having been hospitalized the day before. He made no statements.

On Monday, April 25, the head of Azov-Crimea Civil Corps announced that he was going on a hunger strike demanding a fair trial.

However, Krasnov's lawyer Leonid Sivakov told Interfax-Ukraine the court did not confirm his client's indictment of treason.

"There is no mention of these suspicions in the court ruling. Which means that we are essentially left with two charges  illegal possession of weapons and preparation of a terrorist attack," the lawyer said.

Sivakov also announced his intention to appeal against Tuesday's ruling of the court, since, in his opinion, it was passed with violations of the procedure.

As reported, on February 28, the SBU detained Krasnov and his girlfriend, activist Oksana Shelest, in Kyiv region. The Azov-Crimea chief was placed in custody for 72 hours. He was charged with illegal possession of weapons.

The SBU said Krasnov had been collaborating with Russia since 2014 and that he handed over to his Russian supervisor lists of members of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's Azov regiment. In addition, the SBU said that it found a cache of weapons in Kyiv region, presumably placed there by Krasnov.

Meanwhile the activist's defense team said that security services officers beat Krasnov up. During the court sessions to elect a preventive measure for him, the activist was hospitalized at a request of doctors, who said he was suffering from a hypertensive crisis, concussion and closed head injury.

On March 2 Krasnov was released from prison because the 72-hour detention period expired.

On March 3, the SBU said that Krasnov is suspected of involvement in terrorism and treason.

In late March, Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv changed the conditions of pre-trial confinement for Krasnov from house arrest to custody.
The Ukrainian army suffered casualties, including fatalities, in the hostilities in Donbas on April 25, Ukrainian Presidential Administration spokesman Oleksandr Motuzianyk has said.

"One Ukrainian serviceman was killed and another five Ukrainian servicemen suffered injuries in the hostilities over the past day," Motuzianyk said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday.
LINCOLN  Gov. Pete Ricketts had more in mind than the Cattlemens Day barbecue last year when he made the trip to Grand Island for the Nebraska State Fair.

Sometime after unveiling the sesquicentennial license plate, the governor broke away for a private meeting with two state lawmakers: Sen. Mike Gloor of Grand Island and Sen. Kate Sullivan of Cedar Rapids. Sullivan is chairwoman of the Education Committee and Gloor heads the Revenue Committee.

The three talked property taxes.

Months later, Gloor and Sullivan would introduce property tax bills on the governors behalf. Although the final results were considerably more modest than Ricketts had wanted, the governor said a team effort gave rural landowners property tax relief rather than a promise to wait until next year.

They believed in those bills as I believed in those bills, Ricketts said last week. Thats why we were able to work together.

When asked to rate the governors performance at the end of his second legislative session, key state senators and State Capitol observers agreed Ricketts made significant improvement. They gave the Republican governor high marks for setting clear objectives, working with lawmakers to achieve his goals and being willing to compromise to get something done.

His top priorities were all enacted into law, said Sen. John Murante of Gretna. He had a very successful year.

Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln said she thought the governor and his staff did better in communicating and working with lawmakers this year. She listed the property tax bills as examples of his success.

While the bills were changed from introduction to final passage, he sees them and I see them as a win, Pansing Brooks said.

The governor said his team was four for four on priorities laid out in his State of the State address: property tax relief, holding growth in the state budget close to 3 percent, creating a transportation infrastructure bank and defeating Medicaid expansion.

Lobbyist Don Wesely praised the governors work on the infrastructure bank, which will provide $450 million over 17 years for highway construction, bridge repair and transportation-related economic development.

That achievement alone is massive, said Wesely, a former state senator who lobbied in support of the measure. Thats a great victory for him and the Legislature.

Last year Ricketts left the campaign trail and entered elected office for the first time. And the former business executive and investor ran smack into a steep learning curve.

On several high-profile issues, the first-year governor found himself in conflict with senators, including some who shared his political affiliation. The Legislature overrode vetoes on bills that repealed the death penalty, raised the gas tax and provided drivers licenses to young adults brought to the country illegally as children.

This year the governor vetoed three bills, but lawmakers took only one to an override vote. Ricketts lost that showdown when senators passed a bill that allows the state to issue professional and commercial licenses to the same group of immigrants who got drivers licenses last year.

The governor also threw his support behind a bill that would have given Nebraska a winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes in presidential elections. The bill came up short when supporters could not muster the supermajority vote needed to stop a filibuster on final reading.

The major things he wanted, we got done, said Speaker of the Legislature Galen Hadley. He had a few bumps, but I think those are the normal give and take between the Legislature and the governor.

In addition to fighting Medicaid expansion, Ricketts and his staff also lobbied hard to defeat bills that would have legalized medical cannabis and given food stamp benefits to certain drug felons. The bills did not advance.

I would also say in many ways the Legislature did a better job this year, Ricketts said.

Having a full year for him and his staff to grow into their roles was important, the governor said. By the time the 2016 session had started, the members of his administrative team and his agency directors were in place.

He also gave credit to former U.S. Sen. Mike Johanns, a fellow Republican who occupied the Governors Office from 1999 to 2005. One way to improve his success with the Legislature, Johanns advised, was to build relationships with key committee chairmen.

So the governor met with Gloor and Sullivan at the State Fair. And Sen. Heath Mello of Omaha said he and the governor generally enjoyed a good working relationship, although they butted heads over the measure related to occupational licenses for immigrants.

Thats one of the things well want to continue to do in the future is work with the Legislature to develop those legislative agendas and find those areas of common ground, Ricketts said.

The property tax bill Gloor introduced for the governor would have capped statewide increases to ag land valuations at 3 percent while tightening budgets and levy limits on local governments. By the time Legislative Bill 958 passed, the initial provisions were gone and the bill instead provided $20 million worth of property tax credits for ag land owners.

He was looking for something that would make a difference, something that would get passed, Gloor said.

Veteran lobbyist Walt Radcliffe said the property tax bills would not have passed without the governors backing. He credited Ricketts for doing much better this year, for being more active in the process and working with lawmakers in a way that was not off-putting.

The governor frequently touted his administrations role in a two-year budget that dropped the growth in state spending from about 6.5 percent before he took office to an average of 3.7 percent. He said he wants to see future spending growth kept closer to 3 percent.

The Legislatures fiscal staff is projecting the budget to grow by 4.5 percent in the next fiscal year with a $234 million revenue shortfall for the next biennium. The governor said his agency directors are applying the best practices of the private sector to state government with the goal of improving services, using technology to improve efficiency and cutting costs.

Its a lot of blocking and tackling on a lot of different levels, he said. Its not about picking a particular program and slashing it.

The governor brushed off those who say government cant be run more like a business. Perhaps as an indication that he wants to prove it, Ricketts also said he intends to seek a second term, in 2018.

* * *

Additional information on the Legislature
Due to Russian aggression Ukraine has tightened security measures at its nuclear power plants, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said.

"The Kremlin's refusal to recognize Ukraine's independence and the lack of effective security guarantees for a nuclear-weapon-free Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum, in turn, triggered Russia's attack on our independent state. The Russian aggression firstly undermined the confidence of non-nuclear states in the regime of non-proliferation of these weapons and secondly created a threat of recurrence of the nuclear disaster on the territory of our state," Poroshenko said during a visit to Chornobyl on Tuesday.

He noted that the intense fighting took place just a few hundred kilometers from the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant. "Russia was preparing a full-scale war against Ukraine and planned military operations and unrest in most parts of our country, including in the places where a lot of dangerous facilities are located," the president said.

Poroshenko said Ukraine tightened security measures at its nuclear power plants and protects them from possible attacks by terrorist sabotage groups.

"The fight against possible nuclear terrorism should be coordinated at the international level, and the State Security Service of Ukraine has been actively involved in this cooperation," the Ukrainian president said recalling that he had discussed the matters of physical protection of radioactive materials and nuclear facilities from possible sabotage at the recent Nuclear Security Summit in Washington.

"I stressed this at the summit and today I repeat that at the moment the Kremlin is deploying elements of its nuclear potential in the Russian-occupied Crimea. We and our partners have to decide how to improve the security guarantees from the nuclear powers to those countries that do not possess weapons of mass destruction," Poroshenko said.
LINCOLN  Nebraska prison officials have reported another assault of a staffer, this time at the Diagnostic and Evaluation Center in Lincoln.

A staff member was treated at a Lincoln medical facility, and later released, following the attack at 8:40 a.m. Sunday, the Nebraska Department of Corrections said in a press release.

The inmate involved, who was not identified, was a county inmate. Such inmates can be moved to a state prison if a local county jail cannot meet the inmates needs. The evaluation center is the state prison systems intake facility, where the needs and custody level of an inmate are determined.

Prison officials said they will investigate the incident and forward it to the Lancaster County Attorneys Office, which will determine whether criminal charges will be filed.

Last week, Corrections reported that there were 61 incidents of assault or objects thrown at prison staff through the first three months of 2016. Thats the most in that time period for at least the past seven years. Officials said they are working to reduce such incidents.
The memory of the first time I used a unisex bathroom came floating to the front of my mind on Tuesday after I saw more bigoted and homophobic rants and memes float through my Facebook feed about North Carolinas passing of an anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) law which forces people to use the restroom of the gender on their birth certificates and not the one they identify with.

The first time I visited France, I used public facilities on a regular basis. On one occasion, upon entering I saw a row of urinals. Most were in use. I thought I stepped into the wrong restroom. I was still learning French, but I was sure I had followed the symbol with a woman on it. I stepped back out and looked at the door. It had a lady, with Madame written below it. While I was more Mademoiselle, I was definitely in the right place. I walked through the door again, as if anything was going to change. I walked back out and thought, maybe the signs were wrong, so I walked through the right door that said Monsieur. I entered the same bathroom, but from the other side.

I saw an open stall and used it. I really needed to go. So did the other men and women there. After exiting the stall, I washed my hands in a sink next to an older gentleman, dried my hands and left. I was 14 and never feared for my safety.

Since North Carolina passed its law, there has been a public backlash. The state has lost millions of dollars in revenue. According to Mother Jones, the bill strikes down all existing LGBT nondiscrimination statutes across the state, on top of banning transgender people from using some public restrooms. The bill was a rushed response to a Charlotte anti-discrimination ordinance. Its now legal to discriminate against LGBT people in North Carolina, but everyone has zeroed in on bathrooms.

The most common meme Ive seen online is a photo of the character Klinger from the TV series M*A*S*H, which says, Even Klinger knew he belonged in the mens room and he was bat **** crazy. Klinger was not crazy, nor was he transgender. He wore dresses to get a discharge from the Army because he didnt want to be in the Army. The meme shows a lack of understanding of transgender people. They dont choose to be transgender any more than I choose to be heterosexual.

The American Family Association (AFA) is boycotting Target because Target said individuals could use bathrooms and fitting rooms corresponding to their gender. Target responded, We believe that everyoneevery team member, every guest, and every communitydeserves to be protected from discrimination, and treated equally. Consistent with this belief, Target supports the federal Equality Act, which provides protections to LGBT individuals, and opposes action that enables discrimination.

Among AFAs complaints are that sexual abuse will happen against minors. This means a man can simply say he feels like a woman today and enter the womens restroom...even if young girls or women are already in there, the AFA said. Except this isnt how being transgender works. You dont feel anything. You just are.

The vitriol is disturbing. According to the Dallas Observer, Tracy Murphree, the GOP candidate for Denton County sheriff, posted on Facebook he would beat up any transgender person who tried to urinate in a bathroom where Murphrees daughter was peeing. His post said, All I can say is this: If my little girl is in a public womens restroom and a man, regardless of how he may identify, goes into the bathroom, he will then identify as a John Doe until he wakes up in whatever hospital he may be taken to. Your identity does not trump my little girls safety.

What Murphree fails to realize is that he is the actual threat. His little girls safety is not at risk. Transgenders are not trying to sexually abuse children.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), 69 percent of the teen sexual assaults reported to law enforcement occurred in the residence of the victim, the offender, or another individual. An estimated 60 percent of perpetrators of sexual abuse are known to the child but are not family members, e.g., family friends, babysitters, child care providers, neighbors.

You dont need to worry about transgender people attacking others in restrooms. Its more likely to happen in your own home.

I dont fear people in the bathroom. I understand people are uncomfortable because they havent been exposed to transgender people, but they also shouldnt be vilified and labeled as sexual predators.

The reality is, youve been using public restrooms for decades with transgender people and never knew. Why does it bother you now?
This page is archived. Data published after 5 April 2022 can be found on the renewed website. Go to the new statistics page

Published: 26 April 2016

Finlands preliminary population figure 5,488,543 at the end of March

According to Statistics Finland's preliminary data, Finland's population at the end of March was 5,488,543. During January-March Finland's population increased by 1,235 persons, which is 1,001 persons less than in the preliminary data the year before. The reason for the population increase was migration gain from abroad: the number of immigrants was 2,647 higher than that of emigrants. There was no natural population growth, since deaths exceeded births by 1,412 persons.

Population increase by month 20122016*

According to the preliminary statistics for January-March 2016, a total of 12,985 children were born, which is 386 fewer than in the corresponding period 2015. The number of deaths was 14,397, which is 443 lower than one year earlier.

Altogether 6,167 persons immigrated to Finland from abroad and 3,520 persons emigrated from Finland during January-March period. The number of immigrants was 277 higher and the number of emigrants 449 higher than in the previous year. 1,482 of the immigrants and 2,449 of the emigrants were Finnish citizens.

According to the preliminary data, the number of inter-municipal migrations totalled 53,870 by the end of March. Compared with the previous year, the increase was 302 migrations according to the municipal division of 2016.

According to preliminary data by region, the population grew only in Uusimaa, Pirkanmaa, North Ostrobothnia and Aland in the beginning of 2016.

The population grew most in absolute numbers in Uusimaa, where it grew by 3,598 persons. The next largest increase in population was seen in Pirkanmaa, 242 persons. Relative to the population, population increase was highest in Uusimaa, 2.2 per mil, in Aland, 1.2 per, mil and in Pirkanmaa, 0.5 per mil. Population loss was highest in absolute numbers in the region of Satakunta that lost 389 persons of its population. The population of Etela-Savo decreased by 334 persons. Relative to the population, the biggest population loss was also found in Etela-Savo, 2.2 per mil.

Most migration gain from intramunicipal and international migration was collected by Uusimaa, 2,511 persons, and Pirkanmaa, 246 persons. Most migration gain in relative terms was attained by Varsinais-Suomi, 5.3 per mil, and by Uusimaa, 1.5 per mil.

In absolute numbers, migration loss from total net migration was biggest in the region of North Ostrobothnia, 151 persons. In the region of Ostrobothnia the loss was 140 persons. In relative terms, the biggest migration loss from total net migration was found in the region of Aland, 3.3 per mil of the population.

During the first quarter of 2016, migration between regions numbered 23,170. The highest gain from migration between regions was seen in Uusimaa, Paijat-Hame, Pirkanmaa and Aland. In absolute numbers, the highest gain from migration between regions was received by Uusimaa, 1,400 persons. Relative to the population, population increase was also highest in Uusimaa, 0.9 per mill.

Migration loss from migration between regions was biggest in the region of North Ostrobothnia, 286 persons. In relative terms, migration loss from migration between regions was biggest in the region of Ostrobothnia, 1.5 per mil of the population.

Source: Preliminary population statistics, Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Eevi Lappalainen 029 551 3367, Miina Keski-Petaja 029 551 3240, info@stat.fi

Director in charge: Jari Tarkoma

Publication in pdf-format (288.8 kB)

Updated 26.4.2016

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Preliminary population statistics [e-publication].

ISSN=2243-3627. March 2016. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 24.10.2022].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/vamuu/2016/03/vamuu_2016_03_2016-04-26_tie_001_en.html
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The Crimean Tatar Mejlis is planning to appeal against a decision to ban the organization at the Russian Supreme Court, defense lawyer Jemil Temishev told Interfax.

"The decision is illegal and unsubstantiated. It is based less on the norms of the law and more on the principles of political expediency. Of course, an appellate complaint will be filed. The case will subsequently be heard at the Russian Supreme Court," the lawyer said.
In the first two months of 2016, Colombia exported 18,336 mt of ferronickel, up 11.8 percent, with a value of $39.07 million, decreasing by 45 percent, both year on year, as announced by the Colombian National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE). In February this year, the country's ferronickel exports amounted to 8,086 mt, rising by 118.7 percent, while the revenue from these exports was $17.7 million, up 11.4 percent, both compared to February last year.
Tuesday, 26 April 2016 14:16:35 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

In February this year, Turkey's cold rolled coil (CRC) imports increased by 6.3 percent month on month to 50,872 metric tons and were up by 2.2 percent compared to the same month of 2015, according to the data provided by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK). The value of these imports was $20.77 million, rising by 6.3 percent compared to January and down by 33.8 percent year on year.





During the January-February period this year, Turkey's CRC imports decreased by eight percent to 98,750 mt, while the value of these imports amounted to $40.3 million, falling 41.6 percent, both year on year.



In the first two months of the current year, Russia ranked first among Turkey's CRC import sources, supplying 33,737 metric tons, down 20.71 percent year on year. Meanwhile, in the given month, Turkey's CRC imports from Ukraine totaled 26,211 metric tons, up 80.77 percent compared to the same period of 2015.



Turkey's main CRC import sources in the January-February period this year are as follows:

Country Amount (mt) January- February 2016 January- February 2015 Y-o-y change (%) February 2016 February 2015 Y-o-y change (%) Russia 33,737 42,548 -20.71 12,941 11,759 10.05 Ukraine 26,211 14,500 80.77 16,841 7,032 139.49 Romania 11,207 14,266 -21.44 6,134 9,822 -37.55 Belgium 8,988 11,268 -20.23 6,412 5,000 28.24 South Korea 4,581 3,807 20.33 3,164 1,408 124.72 Germany 2,545 3,131 -18.72 1,296 1,856 -30.17 Netherlands 2,464 2,383 3.40 1,267 1,155 9.70 Italy 2,354 1,306 80.25 167 819 -79.61

Turkey's CRC import sources in the January-February period this year can be seen in the graph below:
Tuesday, 26 April 2016 23:22:18 (GMT+3) | San Diego

Today United States Steel Corporation filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) to initiate an investigation under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, against the largest Chinese steel producers and their distributors. The 337 complaint alleges illegal unfair methods of competition and seeks the exclusion of all unfairly traded Chinese steel products from the US market.





The complaint alleges three causes of action: the illegal conspiracy to fix prices, the theft of trade secrets and the circumvention of trade duties by false labeling.



"We have said that we will use every tool available to fight for fair trade," said President and Chief Executive Officer Mario Longhi. "With today's filing, we continue the work we have pursued through countervailing and antidumping cases and pushing for increased enforcement of existing laws."





Section 337 provides relief in light of specific actions, the threat or effect of which is to destroy or substantially injure a domestic industry, prevent the establishment of such an industry, or restrain or monopolize trade and commerce in the US . The actions covered under Section 337 include the infringement of intellectual property rights (patents and copyrights) as well as unfair methods of competition and unfair acts in the importation and sale of products in the US . The ITC remedy is the exclusion of the unfairly traded products from the US market.





The International Trade Commission has up to 30 days to evaluate the petition for relief and decide whether to initiate the case. If the matter proceeds, an administrative law judge is then assigned to the case. During the evidentiary discovery process, the parties may seek the issuance of nationwide subpoenas and orders for the production of relevant documents.


Tuesday, 26 April 2016 16:46:35 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

Two weeks ago, S235JR grade hot rolled plate (HRP) offers from a Bulgarian steel producer to Turkey were at 420/mt ($475/mt) CFR. No new HRP offer has been heard from the Bulgarian producer since then.

1 = $1.13
Tuesday, 26 April 2016 10:11:12 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

According to markets sources, Japanese offers to Vietnam for HMS I/II 80:20 grade scrap are in the range of $285-295/mt CFR.
NATO does not seek a confrontation with Russia, but cannot ignore its aggressive actions, Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow stated on Tuesday in a public conference in Bucharest.

He asserted that NATO's message is very clear: the Alliance is defensive. A new cold war would not be beneficial to anybody, but merely ignoring Russia's actions would be a betrayal of NATO's principles and would encourage Moscow to continue aggressions against its neighbours, setting future relations on an unstable basis; security in the 21st century cannot relay on spheres of influence where great powers dictate the choices of their neighbours and change borders by force, he said. In his opinion, the best response to Russia's attitude is a combination of force and dialogue; thus, NATO will consolidate its defence and deterrence capability, so that Russia - or any potential enemy - never even considers attacking a NATO member.

Relations with Russia improved after the Cold War, until 2013, he recalled; the two sides cooperated in stabilizing the Western Balkans and Afghanistan, in the fight against piracy and terrorism. NATO's ambitions of a mutually beneficial partnership vanished, however, when Russia launched its aggression against Ukraine, illegally annexed Crimea and fostering separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine's Donbass region. The Kremlin thus breached international rules; it used propaganda, subversion and cyber attacks to destabilize Ukraine and undermine its security - and also to test NATO, according to Vershbow.

Agerpres
A Chornobyl radiation-ecological biosphere reserve will be created on an area of 227,000 hectares in the Ivankivsky and Polisky districts of the Kyiv region, within the limits of the zone of exclusion and mandatory evacuation polluted by the Chornobyl nuclear accident.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed an order to this effect on Tuesday.

The order will take effect simultaneously with the law regulating the allotment of lands in the exclusion and evacuation zones, and the nature conservancy regime for lands and reserve sites created in such areas, and repeals the demand for establishing biosphere reserves exclusively in nature reserves and national parks.

According to the order, the government will elaborate the nature reserve regulations within six months and will approve within two years the allotment of 226,965 hectares of land for the project. It will also provide a land management plan and will approve a project of the nature reserve's territorial organization. In addition, the government will assign funds for the reserve in state budget laws.
The scientific diaspora represents not just one of Romania's most important development engines, but it also has the "incredible" ability to provide a new direction to the country, said Minister-Delegate for Relations with Romanians Abroad Dan Stoenescu according to a Foreign Ministry release to Agerpres.

According to the cited source, Stoenescu attends the Scientific Diaspora conference organized on April 25 and 26 at the Timisoara West University. The minister-delegate stressed there is need for a continuous and very close cooperation between the Romanian scientific researchers and the diaspora, but also between the researchers and the government institutions in the country. The official said that there should be a strategic partnership between Romania and the diaspora, so as to contribute to achieving the goal of generating more prosperity for all Romanians, whether they live in the country or abroad, the Foreign Ministry said.

"We no longer think of what the diaspora can do for Romania, but of what we can accomplish together: be united, become a Romanian community that is increasingly effective globally. (...) We understand partnership as a two-way relationship wherein the Romanian State and diaspora Romanians support each other," Stoenescu said. According to the Foreign Ministry, the minister-delegate announced that the Department for Policies on Relations with Romanians Abroad and the Ministry of National Education and Scientific Research will launch a fellowship program on the "Contemporary Migration of Romanians", addressing Romanian researchers in the country or abroad with an academic interest in the field of migration. "The results of these studies will contribute to the development of government policies and programs based on concrete data about contemporary migration of Romanians or intended for the Romanian communities outside country borders over the period 2016 - 2020," the Foreign Ministry official explained.
President Klaus Iohannis underwent surgery to his right shoulder on Tuesday, at the 'Dr. Carol Davila' Central Military University Emergency Hospital in Bucharest, the Presidential Administration informed in a release. "The President's health condition is excellent; he is medically fit for carrying out the duties of his position," the release reads; it also mentions that surgery was carried out in optimal conditions, in accordance with all the relevant procedures.

The hospital also issued a release mentioning that arthroscopic surgery was used for subacromial impingement at the right shoulder, subacromial bursitis and a lesion of the supraspinatus tendon. The President's condition is very good, the document adds. A message on the President's Facebook page states, "Today I have underwent surgery to the right shoulder. The intervention has been successful, I feel all right and tomorrow I will resume my work at the Cotroceni Palace [seat of the Presidential Administration - editor's note]. I appreciate the work of the medical team and I thank the whole staff of the 'Dr. Carol Davila' Central Military University Emergency Hospital.

Agerpres
Crimean Tatar Mejlis designated as terrorist entity, its activity in Russia banned  court ruling

Crimea's Supreme Court on Tuesday designated the Crimean Tatar Mejlis as an extremist entity and banned its activity in Russia, ruling in favor of a lawsuit filed by Crimean Prosecutor Natalia Poklonskaya, an Interfax correspondent has reported.

Crimean Supreme Court Judge Natalia Terentyeva ruled that "the entity called the 'Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People' be designated an extremist organization and its activity be banned."

The court's ruling can be appealed within a month.

Crimean Prosecutor Poklonskaya has described the decision as justified.

"The decision is aimed at maintaining stability, peace and order in the Russian Federation," she told reporters.

The court proceedings as part of this case began in early March. There were four volumes of case files.

The Mejlis, which claims the status of the Crimean Tatars' legislature, has no registration in Russia.

The current and former leaders of the Mejlis  Ukrainian MPs Refat Chubarov and Mustafa Jemilev, currently reside in Kyiv. The Crimean Prosecutor's Office has accused them of being involved in the peninsula's power blockade. Several criminal cases have been opened against them.
First Mid-Illinois Bancshares Inc. of Mattoon, Ill., plans to buy First Clover Leaf Financial Corp. of Edwardsville in a deal valued at about $90 million.

First Mid-Illinois Bancshares will offer First Clover Leaf's shareholders a choice of $12.87 in cash per share, or 0.495 shares of First Mid-Illinois stock for each First Clover Leaf Financial Corp. share, the banks announced Tuesday. First Clover Leaf's stock closed Monday at $9.60.

The deal will give First Mid-Illinois a deeper reach into Metro East. The bank has more than 40 offices, most in central and southern Illinois, including two branches in Highland. First Clover Leaf has six offices in Metro East and one in Clayton.

First Clover Leaf has assets of $655 million and First Mid-Illinois has assets of $2.1 billion. Both banks are profitable.

The sale needs approval from bank regulators and is expected to close in the second half of this year. First Mid-Illinois intends to place its own name on First Clover Leaf branches.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The estimated value of the deal was updated at 6:20 p.m.
MADISON COUNTY  A man from East Alton charged earlier this month in Illinois for making bomb threats at the Alton Home Depot now faces federal charges.

Jeremy R. Colwell, 33, of the 200 block of Lincoln Avenue, was facing three counts of disorderly conduct in Madison County Circuit Court. On Monday, he was charged in federal court with three counts of conveying a false threat.

On Feb. 16, a man later identified as Colwell reported to Alton police that a bomb was hidden in the store and would detonate at a certain time that morning. He faxed a note to Alton police and another one directly to the store, federal court documents say. The store was closed and evacuated and it was determined to be a false alarm.

Police said that on April 2, he e-mailed a message to Alton police and KTVI (Channel 2) and the wording was very similar to the previous message. A very large bomb will be set off, the note said in part. I want all employees sent home, and the store blocked off. Police quickly determined the threat was false and the store did not have to be closed.

Two days later, Colwell faxed another similar threat to the FBI office in Springfield, Ill., and the Home Depot. Police responded, closed and evacuated the store, and called in the Secretary of State Bomb Squad.

Police traced one of the e-mails to Colwell and went and interviewed him. Colwell admitted to sending the threats.
A motorist was shot in the face while driving in St. Louis on Monday afternoon, police say.

The male victim, 20, was shot at about 3:20 p.m. Monday in the 2700 block of Utah Street, about three blocks west of Jefferson Avenue.

Police say he was in critical but stable condition at a hospital.

The victim told police he was driving east on Utah, approaching the intersection with Iowa Avenue, when a silver, four-door vehicle pulled alongside his car. Someone in the car opened fire, hitting the victim in the face.

Police had no description of a suspect.
The board of directors of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum is asking a judge to intervene in an internal power struggle that has divided both Schlafly's family and the conservative activist organization she founded 44 years ago.

In a lawsuit filed Friday in Madison County, Ill., Circuit Court, six members of Eagle Forum's board of directors  including Anne Cori, Schlafly's daughter  seek injunctions against Phyllis Schlafly's son, John F. Schlafly, and Ed Martin, who has been the group's director and Phyllis Schlafly's right-hand man since January 2015.

Among the allegations in the suit is that Martin has refused to acknowledge the board's firing of him earlier this month; that he and John Schlafly have prevented board members from accessing Eagle Forum property, documents and financial accounts; and that Martin has engaged in "an expansive campaign to maliciously attack and disseminate misinformation about the board via social media and email, sometimes using accounts in Schlafly's name.

Schlafly, 91, is the iconic Alton, Ill.-based political activist who rallied conservatives nationwide to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment in the early 1970s. She has publicly accused the board, and her daughter, of a hostile takeover of her organization. Schlafly isn't named in the suit.

Martin is a long-time fixture in conservative Missouri politics and a some-time political candidate. He has previously been at the center of controversies in the administration of former Gov. Matt Blunt, where he was chief of staff, and at the Missouri Republican Party, which he formerly chaired.

The new suit alleges that Martin fostered unprecedented chaos and division at Eagle Forum with a draconian approach to leadership, and that he "used his position to proceed with his own personal agendas.

Schlafly and Martin have alleged that their fallout with the board started in part because of Schlafly's public endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Several board members, including Schlafly's daughter, have endorsed Trump's chief GOP rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Martin, in an emailed response, alleged that the six plaintiffs "acted outside the law and all their conduct is not legal."

He added, "They want to take over Eagle Forum and its $4 million."
Following the outcome of the third sitting of the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Association Committee in Brussels, MEPs expressed Ukrainian colleagues a consistent support, Rada First Deputy Chairperson Iryna Gerashchenko said.

She said soon a profile committee on freedom and justice is to determine a co-rapporteur, who will speak at the debates at European Parliament.

"Our colleagues assured us that they hope for quick and effective consideration of the visa-free travel issue in the EP. The procedure could last for three months, but in their opinion, the debates will be held earlier," she wrote on Facebook account on Tuesday.

Gerashchenko denied earlier reports in some media. She said no such decision had been taken because no rapporteur has been appointed.

She added that the EP welcomed the fact that Ukrainian pro-European political forces managed to overcome political crisis through the formation of the new government.

"The EP hopes for speed reforms, namely, in combating corruption, decentralization, justice and reforms of the court system," she wrote.

The Rada leader said the sides agreed Russia sanctions should remain by full implementation of Minsk Agreements.

Special attention should be drawn to violation of human rights in Crimea and ban of Mejlis, she said.

The committee urged its European colleagues to back 'Savchenko list'.
ST. LOUIS  An alderman will file legislation on Friday that would start a prescription painkiller monitoring program in the city.

The bill, sponsored by Alderman Lyda Krewson, would track the distribution of prescription drugs. The proposal would be tied to a similar program now in force in St. Louis County.

"The county executive has expressed support for consolidating and coordinating prescription drug monitoring services with the city of St. Louis to have a combined prescription drug monitoring program," Krewson said.

The city's health department would work with the county's health department to have "one program for monitoring the prescribing and dispensing of all Schedule II, III, and IV controlled substances."

The program is essentially a database where pharmacies and other drug providers report prescriptions on a daily basis. It helps authorities and providers track patients who might be getting multiple prescriptions.

The issue is an example of local governments taking on a national issue. Missouri is the only state that lacks a drug tracking program to keep tabs on opioid users and dealers who "doctor shop" to build up OxyContin and other prescription painkillers. Various bills filed in the state legislature have failed to gain traction.

"I thought it was important to do it now to encourage the state legislature to do it," Krewson said. "It would certainly be better if it were done statewide, but I'm not optimistic that will happen."

The county has said it wants to expand the program across the region.

Painkillers have been shown to be a gateway to heroin.

Krewson said "there is an epidemic of dangerous addictions to drugs, including prescription drugs, particularly opioids, in our metropolitan area."

Across the river, Illinois has a statewide program that has been in place since last year.
ST. LOUIS  A heavy thunderstorm that formed in central Missouri moved into the metro area Tuesday afternoon with drenching rain, scattered hail, high wind and even a glancing blow from a weak tornado.

The National Weather Service reported Tuesday night that an EF0 tornado touched down briefly in western St. Charles County, causing minor tree and roof damage. It touched down at 1:22 p.m. at Missouri Highways D and T. An EF0 is the weakest on the Enhanced Fujita scale, signifying winds from 65 to 85 mph.

The Weather Service also reported hail, some as large as one inch in diameter, on both sides of the Mississippi River. Winds as strong as 60 mph were reported in Union, Eureka and Hazelwood. Limbs six inches in diameter were torn from trees in Weldon Spring and Wood River.

The Weather Service recorded 1.1 inches of rain at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. About 27,000 customers of Ameren lost power during the storms, with heaviest concentrations of outages were in eastern St. Charles and north St. Louis counties.

The storm caused Sperreng Middle School in the Lindbergh district to lose power and phone service, according to an alert sent to parents at 2:10 p.m. Backup lights were in use, with communications handled through the district's main offices.

The Weather Service expects another round of storms to hit about 3 a.m. Wednesday and stick around for much of the day. The chance for rain Wednesday is 70 percent.

By midnight, the thunderstorms should be moving out.

The Weather Service meteorologists at the Weldon Spring office say the severe weather can include a chance of a tornado, more so on Wednesday than Tuesday.

The high Tuesday was 83 degrees in the morning, falling to 63 by late afternoon. Wednesday's high will be about 78, forecasters say.

Friday should be partly sunny with a high near 72. On Friday night, there is a 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. The weekend has a similar forecast.
LADUE  The Ladue City Council is set to cast a final vote next month on allowing bow hunting for deer on properties of three or more acres.

On Monday night, the council gave initial approval of the hunting, meant to control the deer population.

But officials agreed to delay final approval to allow for some technical changes, including some suggested by Erin Shank, an urban wildlife biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation.

A January count of deer in the city showed high numbers  especially south of Clayton Road  and Shank, in a recent presentation to the city, had said that archery hunting would be the most appropriate way to cull the herd.

The proposed legislation would mandate that, among other things, hunting:

 Could only take place during the states archery deer season (this year, Sept. 15-Nov. 11).

 Property owners would have to notify the city and neighbors of plans to hunt there.

 Hunters would have to carry written permission from property owners and have a current state hunting permit.

 No arrows could be shot across a street, sidewalk or playground, within 30 yards of a building or vehicle (without the owners permission), or within 200 yards of a church, school or playground.

 All hunting would have to be conducted from a stand at least 10 feet high and facing the interior of the property.

While there would be a three-acre minimum requirement for hunting, the law would allow adjacent property owners to combine their tracts to satisfy the minimum.

Mayor Nancy Spewak said some possible changes to the legislation could include city police  rather than the Department of Conservation  being notified first if an injured deer is on the loose as well as the city defining archery devices as the state defines them.
Dear white people:

As you no doubt know, the water crisis in Flint, Mich., returned to the headlines last week with news that the state attorney general is charging three government officials for their alleged roles in the debacle. It makes this a convenient moment to deal with something that has irked me about the way this disaster is framed.

Namely, the fact that people who look like you often get left out of it.

Consider some of the headlines:

The Racist Roots of Flints Water Crisis  Huffington Post

How A Racist System Has Poisoned The Water in Flint  The Root

A Question of Environmental Racism  The New York Times

As has been reported repeatedly, Flint is a majority black city with a 41 percent poverty rate, so critics ask if the water would have been so blithely poisoned, and if it would have taken media so long to notice, had the victims been mostly white.

Its a sensible question, but whenever I hear it, I engage in a little thought experiment. I try to imagine what happened in Flint happening in Bowie, a city in Maryland where blacks outnumber whites, but the median household income is more than $100,000 a year and the poverty rate is about 3 percent. I cant.

Then I try to imagine it happening in Morgantown, W.Va., where whites outnumber blacks, the median household income is about $32,000 a year, and the poverty rate approaches 40 percent  and I find that I easily can. It helps that Bowie is a few minutes from Washington, D.C., while Morgantown is more than an hour from the nearest city of any size.

My point is neither that race carries no weight nor that it had no impact on what happened in Flint. No, my point is only that sometimes, race is more distraction than explanation. Indeed, thats the story of our lives.

To be white in America is to have been sold a bill of goods that there exists between you and people of color a gap of morality, behavior, intelligence and fundamental humanity. Forces of money and power have often used that perceived gap to con people like you into acting against their own self-interest.

In the Civil War, white men too poor to own slaves died in grotesque numbers to protect the right of a few plutocrats to continue that despicable practice. In the Industrial Revolution, white workers agitating for a living wage were kept in line by the threat that their jobs would be given to Negroes. In the Depression, white families mired in poverty were mollified by signs reading Whites Only.

You have to wonder what would happen if white people  particularly, those of modest means  ever saw that gap for the fiction it is? What if they ever realized you dont need common color to reach common ground? What if all of us were less reflexive in using race as our prism, just because its handy?

You see, for as much as Flint is a story about how we treat people of color, it is also  I would say more so  a story about how we treat the poor, the way we render them invisible. That was also the story of Hurricane Katrina. Remember news medias shock at discovering there were Americans too poor to escape a killer storm?

Granted, there is a discussion to be had about how poverty is constructed in this country; the black poverty rate is higher than any other with the exception of Native Americans, and thats no coincidence. But its equally true that, once you are poor, the array of slights and indignities to which you are subjected is remarkably consistent across that racial gap.

That fact should induce you  and all of us  to reconsider the de facto primacy we assign this arbitrary marker of identity. After all, 37 percent of the people in Flint are white.

But thats done nothing to make their water clean.

Leonard Pitts Jr.

Copyright The Miami Herald

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC
Among the Republican-sponsored bills awaiting passage before the May 13 close of the Missouri Legislatures session are two that would cut taxes for about 500,000 working-poor families.

Yes, you read that correctly. Instead of passing, as they did in 2014, a tax-cut bill that primarily benefits affluent taxpayers, Republicans are advancing legislation that would create an earned income tax credit. Most of its benefits would go to families with incomes ranging from $20,000 to $37,000 a year. And thats a good thing.

Both Senate Bill 1018, sponsored by Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Glendale, and House Bill 1605, sponsored by Rep. Mike Kelley, R-Lamar, have cleared committees. Kellys bill has been passed by the full House but is now being reviewed for its impact on the state budget  which is where things get sticky.

Tax credits have a dollar-for-dollar impact on state revenues. The fiscal note attached to HB 1605 estimates it will cost the state between $56 million and $62 million when fully implemented in fiscal 2018.

By then the state budget will be severely strained by the impact of the income tax cuts passed in 2014. Gov. Jay Nixon, in a veto of the tax-cut bill that was later overridden, estimated its cost when fully implemented in 2022 at $620 million a year, and possibly higher. Fifty-two percent of its benefits will go to the top 7 percent of earners, Nixon said.

Both the House and Senate bills would give taxpayers who qualify for the federal earned income tax credit a state credit equal to 20 percent of whatever federal EITC they get. Depending on family size and income, low-income taxpayers could see their state tax bills reduced from $54 to $289 a year, according to an estimate by the Missouri Budget Project, a left-leaning advocacy group.

Some 26 states already have state-level EITCs tied to the federal program that began in 1975. The $60 billion program is a particular favorite of Republican lawmakers because, rather than sending cash payments to the poor and unemployed, it rewards work.

When the federal program was renewed and expanded as part a larger tax reform bill in 1986, no less a Republican icon than President Ronald Reagan called the bill the best anti-poverty bill, the best pro-family measure, and the best job-creation program ever to come out of the Congress of the United States.

Missouris tax structure is badly regressive. The Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy reports that low-income Missourians pay 9.5 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes. The top 1 percent pay 5.5 percent.

The working poor deserve a break. It will be a sad day if legislators decide they cant afford to give them that break because theyve already given away the candy store to the affluent.
A file photo of heavy-lift Long March-5 carrier rocket. [Photo: weibo.com]

China has started to assemble a new generation of the heavy-lift Long March-5 rocket, which is scheduled for launch later this year.

Using non-toxic and pollution-free propellant, the 60-meter-long rocket with a liftoff weight of over 800 tons will be equipped with 4 thrusters.

Yang Hujun, vice chief engineer, has spoken about the next steps for the Long March-5 project.

"After the assembly is finished in the first half of this year, it will take a little more than a month to test it to ensure that the product is in good shape. The first launch will be made after it is out of the plant in the latter half of the year. "

The new generation of rockets will come in 6 slightly different models - for manned space travel, as well as for the lunar and Martian exploration programs.

Among planned missions, is the Chang'e-5 lunar probe, which will be launched by the high-thrust carrier rocket to collect samples of moon soil by the end of 2017.

China also plans to launch a medium-sized rocket Long March-7 into low Earth orbit this year, in a bid to transport cargo for the planned space station.

The announcement coincided with China's first "Space Day" on April 24th, which marks the date in 1970 when China's first satellite, the "Dongfanghong-1" was put into orbit.

It also comes hard on the heels of China releasing details of a series of ambitious plans for space exploration in the coming years.

They include the country's Mars mission probe set to be launched around 2020, as well as the completion of China's space station in 2022.

For more on this, CRI's Liu Kun earlier spoke with Morris Jones, an Australian space analyst and writer.

0426callinwithMorrisJones

Morris Jones, Australian space analyst and writer, speaking with CRI's Liu Kun.
All of the furor over Missouris proposed religious liberty amendment could be for naught. Some of the states top legal minds, in two separate opinions, have parsed its language and concluded that it could be held unconstitutional in a dozen different ways.

Senate Joint Resolution 39 would give companies and individuals who oppose same-sex marriage out of sincere religious belief the right to withhold services related to those weddings. The law shields not only clergy, but caterers, florists or anyone who provides goods or services of expressional or artistic creation.

SJR 39 has passed the state Senate but faces votes in two House committees before the full House can consider it. One of those committee votes was postponed last week after the legal memos outlining the constitutional problems began circulating in the Legislature.

One memo was written by Harvey Tettlebaum of Jefferson City, a Republican and a partner with the Husch Blackwell law firm. The second memo was signed by 15 law professors and assistant professors at Washington and St. Louis universities, the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Columbia University in New York.

Tettlebaum said the repercussions of SJR 39 go far beyond the narrow scope envisioned by its backers. Among the problems he found:

 The legislations definition of individual is overly broad. The ramifications of this include the following: judges refusing to marry same-sex couples; county employees refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples; and Department of Revenue officials refusing to accept joint tax returns of same-sex couples, with the agency employing the individual powerless to take any employment action against the employee.

 SJR 39 explicitly forbids judges from using certain powers granted them by the state Constitution.

 It grants preference for people with certain religious beliefs and denies equal treatment to those with different beliefs.

 SJR 39 conflates marriage with wedding and ceremony, failing the lowest level of rational basis scrutiny under the U.S. Constitution.

 The law recognizes part religious organizations, resulting in a potentially limitless universe of entities covered under the definition of a religious organization.

The law professors memo describes in great detail how SJR 39 violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment. SJR 39s overly broad solicitude toward religiously motivated disagreement with laws of general application essentially creates an immunity from liability and a license to discriminate in the name of religion, the professors write.

Of course, lawyers argue only one side. Opposing arguments could be mounted, and if SJR 39 passes, they no doubt will be. Judges may have to decide before voters do.

But these memos raise substantive questions, not only about the legislation, but about the Legislatures motivation. SJR 39 increasingly appears to be a cynical and haphazard attempt to exploit fear and prejudice for political reasons.
This is still in the proposal phase and has not been debated yet. I think this is the first step in a process that should occur.
LONDON MARKET CLOSE: FTSE 100 ends higher; Mordaunt makes UK PM tilt

Friday, October 21, 2022 - 17:22

The pound regained some poise on Friday afternoon but remained in precarious territory, after falling below the $1.11 mark in afternoon trade.

The pound was quoted at $1.1203 at the close on Friday, down versus $1.1294 at the London equities close on Thursday. It hit an intraday low of $1.1063 not long after midday.

Sterling was hurt by continued political uncertainty. Speculation about who will join Penny Mordaunt in throwing their hats in the ring in the race for Number 10 continues. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, one-time neighbours at Number 10 and 11 Downing Street - but now bitter rivals - have pockets of support from Tory MPs.

Adding to the pressure on sterling, disappointing UK retail sales data showed a bigger-than-expected decline in September, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.

Retail sales fell 6.9% annually in September, with the decline accelerating from a 5.6% fall in August. It also was worse than FXStreet-cited market consensus, which had expected a fall of just 5%.

The pound had initially found some support on Thursday after Liz Truss called an end to her disastrous tenure as prime minister - poking above $1.13 - but has since been dragged lower.

The FTSE 100 index closed up 25.82 points, or 0.4%, at 6,969.73 - closing out the week up 1.6%.

The FTSE 250 lost 182.38 points, or 1.1%, at 17,206.55, but still managed to gain 1.0% this week, and the AIM All-Share ended down 1.04 points, or 0.1% at 785.40 - but advanced 0.8% over the past five days.

The Cboe UK 100 closed up 0.4% at 696.31, the Cboe UK 250 ended down 1.0% at 14,694.15, and the Cboe Small Companies lost 0.3% at 12,240.46.

In European equities on Friday, the CAC 40 in Paris lost 0.9%, while the DAX 40 in Frankfurt gave back 0.3%.

The Tories have begun to declare their allegiances in the party's second leadership contest of the year as speculation mounts over who will seek to replace Truss at the helm of the party.

Supporters of Johnson are backing the former prime minister to make an extraordinary political comeback, while ex-chancellor Sunak and Commons Leader Mordaunt also have the public support of several MPs.

Mordaunt become the first to declare her candidacy, with a pledge to re-unite the bitterly divided party.

The leader of the House  who finished third in the last leadership election  said she had been encouraged by the support she had received from fellow Conservative MPs.

There has also been no declaration yet from Sunak, who did not answer questions from reporters as he left his home on Friday morning.

Whoever does win will face an immediate test, choosing whether to go ahead with the planned Halloween statement setting out how the government intends to get the public finances back on track, Downing Street has said.

Work is continuing in Whitehall, led by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, in preparation for the medium-term fiscal plan to be announced on October 31 along with an updated set of economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.

However, a Number 10 spokeswoman said it would be up to Liz Truss's successor to decide whether to proceed with that approach and with the same timetable.

In London, blue chip miners helped push FTSE 100 higher. Glencore gained 3.6%, Anglo American 3.1%, Antofagasta 2.7%, and Rio Tinto added 1.6%.

Retailers, however, were showing weakness after the disappointing UK retail sales data. A profit warning from Adidas did nothing to help the mood either.

JD Sports closed down 6.1%, Frasers 4.0%, Burberry 2.2%, and Next shed 2.9%.

On Thursday, Adidas lowered annual guidance as it struggles with "deteriorating traffic" in China and high inventory levels.

The sports apparel maker said it has needed to turn to "higher clearance activity" to try and shift stock.

It lost 9.0% in Frankfurt.

Deliveroo gained 3.6%.

The London-based online food delivery service said gross transaction values rose 8.3% annually in the third quarter to 1.70 billion from 1.57 billion, though orders fell by 1.1% to 72.8 million from 73.6 million.

Deliveroo said the decline in orders was due to a difficult consumer environment. With economic data on Friday showing that UK consumer confidence remains near record lows, this seems unlikely to change anytime soon.

InterContinental Hotels gave back 2.2% but reported strong revenue growth in the third quarter to September 30, saying that high global employment levels are boosting occupancy levels.

Revenue per available room, or RevPAR, rose 28% year-on-year and now exceeds its pre-pandemic level, being up 2.7% on the third quarter of 2019.

In the third quarter of 2022, the average daily rate increased by 13% compared to a year ago and was up 11% on 2019.

Chief Financial Officer & Head of Strategy Paul Edgecliffe-Johnson will leave the company in six months time to become CFO of Flutter Entertainment in the first half of 2023.

IHG has started the process of finding a new CFO.

The euro stood at $0.9802 Friday evening, down against $0.9822 at the close on Thursday.

Against the yen, the dollar was trading at JP148.03, compared to JP149.77 late Thursday. The yen was staging a fightback after the open on Wall Street, after nearly hitting JP152 during the Asia session.

Stocks in New York opened higher on Friday, with the DJIA up 1.1%, the S&P 500 index up 0.9%, and the Nasdaq Composite was 0.6% higher.

Brent oil was quoted at $92.84 a barrel late Friday, down from $93.29 late Thursday. Gold was quoted at $1,643.70 an ounce Friday, up against $1,641.90 from Thursday.

In the international economics events calendar next week, Monday will be dominated by a slew of composite PMIs, with Japan overnight followed by Germany, eurozone and the UK in the morning then the US in the afternoon. A quiet Tuesday will be headlined by a US house price index.

On Wednesday, there is Chinese GDP, retail sales and industrial production overnight, then on Thursday attention will be on the European Central Bank interest rate decision at 1315 BST. Friday will be headlined by a Bank of Japan rate decision.

In the local corporate calendar on Monday, there are half-year results from Dr Martens, while education publishing firm Pearson will issue a third quarter update.

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Ever wondered what life is like in one of the most remote places in Europe? Photographer Kevin Faingnaert travelled to the Faroe Islands to provide a glimpse into the lives of people living on the archipelago, one of the remotest places in Europe. There, he found solitary houses surrounded by beautiful snow-capped mountains and villages with as few as nine people. (Photo/IC)
China to launch first satellite built by students in 2017

China plans to launch its first satellite completely designed and built by middle school students in 2017.

With a cubic structure and a weight of 10 kilograms, the low-orbit satellite will be able to facilitate two-way communication with the ground and help students carry out experiments.

Middle school students from several schools, including the Beijing Bayi School, participated in the design, construction and testing of the satellite under the guidance of space scientists.

"The next step is to invite more middle school students to design and build rockets, said Zhou Xiubin, Deputy Director of the China Aerospace Talent Development Center.

The country marked its first National Space Day on Sunday, an occasion meant to celebrate Chinas achievements in space. The day saw a range of events across the country, including tours of launch facilities, research institutes, flight control centers and even tracking ships. There were also a number of space-related lectures.
German artist Hendrick Beikirch aka ECB recently returned to Marrakech to continue his mural series Tracing Morroco where he illustrates across the globe large portraits of Moroccan characters he met during his residency at Jardin Rouge in collaboration with the Montresso Fondation.

This series of portraits depicted in the book Tracing Morocco (covered here) is the result of encounters between a man, a country and his people. Hendrick ECB Beikirch is paying tribute to those anonymous Moroccans he met, emphasising these fascinating emotions through portraiture.

This large scale mural is an homage to Aziz, a local Marrakchi builder working at Jardin Rouge, who coincidentally worked to repair this exact wall previously. The mural can be seen across the Marrakech train station.

See some work in progress shots below.

Photos credit: Butterfly, Paul Etard/Jardin Rouge
A general view of a crude oil importing port in Qingdao, Shandong province, in this November 9, 2008 file photo. REUTERS/Stringer/Files

By Barani Krishnan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Crude oil prices hit 2016 highs on Tuesday on the back of a rally in the gasoline market and after an industry group reported a surprise draw in U.S. crude stockpiles.

Brent and U.S. crude's West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures finished regular trading about 3 percent higher, riding on the coattails of a gasoline rally that hit August highs after a series of refinery hikes.

In post-settlement trade, both benchmarks rose more than 4 percent after the American Petroleum Institute reported a drawdown of nearly 1.1 million barrels in U.S. crude inventories last week versus a 2.4 million-barrel build expected by analysts in a Reuters poll.

The API report is a precursor to official inventory data due on Wednesday from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

"There's a possibility we could see newer highs from here, notwithstanding the EIA data, as the market is really fired up on the idea of tightening supplies," said John Kilduff, partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital.

Brent crude futures finished up $1.26 at $45.74 a barrel. In post-settlement trade, it rose as much as $2.01 to a 2016 high of $46.49.

U.S. crude futures settled up $1.40 at $44.04. It gained $2.19 in after-hours trade to reach a year-to-date peak of $44.83.

Crude markets got off to a rousing start in the New York session as gasoline futures and gasoline refinery margins both surged from refinery outages, Venezuela buying and a reported drop in New York inventories.

"I think the market has become more optimistic on oil products," said Scott Shelton, broker and commodities specialist with ICAP in Durham, North California. "If refining margins stay strong, crude runs will be quite high and that will make the odds of a crude stock draws increase significantly."

Oil prices are headed for a fourth straight week of gains, with Brent on track to finish April 17 percent higher for its best monthly gain in a year, despite aborted plans by major producers to agree on an output freeze at a meeting in Qatar earlier this month.

Tuesday's oil rally was also underpinned by a weaker dollar, which fell on expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will keep interest rates at existing levels. The dollar rallied earlier this year, weighing on oil, as investors braced for higher rates.

"For now, the line of least price resistance remains to the upside, and we will be reassessing this view in light of tomorrow's FOMC statement," said Jim Ritterbusch of Chicago-based oil market consultancy Ritterbusch & Associates.

(Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in LONDON and Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE; Editing by David Gregorio, Marguerita Choy and Jonathan Oatis)
The Hershey Company (NYSE: HSY) announced that it has purchased Ripple Brand Collective, LLC, a privately held company based in Congers, New York, that owns the barkTHINS snacking chocolate brand.

This acquisition is a great addition to our Hershey chocolate portfolio and enables us to expand our mass premium offerings into this growing and on-trend category, said Michele G. Buck, President, North America, The Hershey Company. Since its launch in 2013, barkTHINS has quickly become a favorite snack brand due to its commitment to using simple ingredients, fair trade cocoa, non-GMO certification, and no artificial flavors or preservatives. barkTHINS is a very attractive and uniquely crafted brand that essentially created a new form of chocolate snacking. Made with high-quality dark chocolate, nuts and other ingredients, barkTHINS addresses key consumer trends, such as premium, high quality ingredients and snacking. We look forward to building barkTHINS by leveraging Hersheys scale at retail.

Were proud of the rapid development of the brand since our launch in 2013 and look forward to the next phase of accelerated growth that Hershey can provide, said Scott Semel, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Ripple Brand Collective, LLC. Our unique proposition, brand equity, and outstanding team give us confidence that there is tremendous upside for barkTHINS with a confectionery leader like Hershey.

The barkTHINS brand is largely sold in the United States in take-home resealable packages and is available in the club channel as well as select natural and conventional grocers. Annual net sales of the business in 2016 are expected to be in the $65 million to $75 million range. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The world-class ICRH antenna, manufactured by ASIPP, was delivered to a French institute in Anhui province on Monday. (Xinhua/Liu Junxi)

The development of a world-class ion cyclotron resonant heating (ICRH) antenna, a key part of a French nuclear fusion facility, was completed by the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP) on April 25.

The antenna will be used to heat plasma for the Wolfram Environment in Steady-state Tokamak (WEST). A tokamak is a device that uses magnetic fields to manipulate and shape plasma. This is the first time that China has exported nuclear fusion technology to France, and also the first time China has exported key components for a facility that requires the highest international industry standard.

The antenna started development in July of 2014. French experts believe that all key parts of the antenna meet technical specifications and fulfill the overall performance requirements. The successful completion of the antenna represents an important upgrade of the entire WEST system.

Founded in 1978 in Hefei, ASIPP focuses on the research of controlled thermonuclear fusion energy. The institute has mastered advanced technology for high-temperature plasma experiments and nuclear fusion projects. Nuclear fusion is considered a clean and safe source of energy and is currently a popular topic for researchers around the world.

The world-class ICRH antenna, manufactured by ASIPP, was delivered to a French institute in Anhui province on Monday. (Xinhua/Liu Junxi)

Before this new development, China independently designed and built EAST, an artificial sun that realized UHT long pulse plasma discharge at temperatures of more than 50 million degrees. China continues to lead the world in research on steady state magnetic confinement fusion.
The Laclede Group, Inc. (NYSE: LG) announced an agreement with Sempra U.S. Gas & Power, a unit of Sempra Energy (NYSE: SRE), to acquire the parent company of Mobile Gas, serving 85,000 natural gas utility customers in Alabama, and Willmut Gas, with 19,000 customers in Mississippi.

Laclede is acquiring 100 percent of the outstanding equity of EnergySouth, Inc., the parent of Mobile Gas and Willmut Gas, for $344 million. All non-utility businesses in EnergySouth will be retained by Sempra. After the inclusion of working capital adjustments and the assumption of $67 million in debt, the transaction is expected to result in total cash proceeds of $323 million. Closing on the transaction is expected to occur in 2016.

"Welcoming Mobile and Willmut supports our strategy to provide customer benefits and deliver long-term earnings growth and shareholder value," said Suzanne Sitherwood, president and chief executive officer. "These additions allow us to build on our significant presence in Alabama, where we are the largest natural gas distribution company in the state, and expands our geographic reach into Mississippi."

STRATEGIC RATIONALE

Aligns with our growth strategy. This transaction is strategically aligned with our focus on growth through acquiring and organically growing gas utilities to deliver customer benefits and long-term shareholder value. It also builds on our proven process and success in integrating, financing and operating our companies.

This transaction is strategically aligned with our focus on growth through acquiring and organically growing gas utilities to deliver customer benefits and long-term shareholder value. It also builds on our proven process and success in integrating, financing and operating our companies. Expands our southern footprint. The addition of Mobile Gas builds upon our significant footprint and working relationships in Alabama. Willmut Gas expands our reach into Mississippi and provides further regulatory diversity, adding another state with a highly rated regulatory environment.

The addition of Mobile Gas builds upon our significant footprint and working relationships in Alabama. Willmut Gas expands our reach into Mississippi and provides further regulatory diversity, adding another state with a highly rated regulatory environment. Adds to our earnings and cash flow. The transaction is expected to be neutral to net economic earnings per share in 2017 and accretive in 2018, and is expected to support our long-term annual earnings growth target of four percent to six percent. Further, cash flows from Mobile Gas and Willmut Gas will support investment in the business, increased shareholder value and growing dividends.

TRANSACTION DETAILS

The purchase consideration will include assumption of $67 million of existing debt at the two utilities. We expect the financing to include a balanced mix of common stock and new long-term debt, cash on hand and available credit facilities. This transaction is expected to close in 2016, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Moelis & Company LLC acted as exclusive financial advisor. Morgan Stanley will act as the lead for equity and debt offerings. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP acted as legal counsel.

CONFERENCE CALL AND WEBCAST

To access our conference call and webcast today, please dial the number below 5-10 minutes prior to the start.

Date and Time: Today  Tuesday, April 26 9 a.m. CDT (10 a.m. EDT) Phone Numbers: U.S./Canada: 1-866-652-5200 International: 1-412-317-6060

The call will also be webcast in a listen-only format for the media and general public. The webcast can be accessed at www.TheLacledeGroup.com under the Investor Relations tab. A replay of the call will be available beginning at 11 a.m. CDT (12 p.m. EDT) today and continuing until May 26, by dialing 1-877-344-7529 (U.S.), 1-855-669-9658 (Canada), or 1-412-317-0088 (International). The Replay Access Code is 10085349. A webcast replay will also be available starting later today and will be accessible on our website.
Tyler Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: TYL) has signed a three-year software-as-a-service (SaaS) agreement with Portage, Indiana, for Tylers EnerGov planning, regulatory and maintenance solution. The agreement includes hosting, training and related professional services.

Portage needed a fully integrated planning solution that could automate economic development functions and create efficiencies to help streamline workflows and improve customer service. City leaders also sought a solution with building permit application, asset management tracking, robust reporting, and mobile capabilities.

The city conducted a competitive review and ultimately chose EnerGov, valuing Tylers public sector experience and track record of successfully implementing the solution in similar-sized cities. As an enterprisewide system, EnerGov will help increase interdepartmental collaboration with the overall goal of delivering the best possible customer service and transparency to residents.

Having EnerGov delivered via a SaaS model will save city IT staff time, allowing them to focus on other projects. EnerGovs mobile capabilities will provide staff real-time data access while in the field, and its online self-service component will expand government access for residents and businesses.

The city of Portage has approximately 37,000 residents and is about 30 miles southeast of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Today United States Steel Corporation (NYSE: X) filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to initiate an investigation under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, against the largest Chinese steel producers and their distributors. The 337 complaint alleges illegal unfair methods of competition and seeks the exclusion of all unfairly traded Chinese steel products from the U.S. market.

The complaint alleges three causes of action: the illegal conspiracy to fix prices, the theft of trade secrets and the circumvention of trade duties by false labeling.

"We have said that we will use every tool available to fight for fair trade," said President and Chief Executive Officer Mario Longhi. "With today's filing, we continue the work we have pursued through countervailing and antidumping cases and pushing for increased enforcement of existing laws."

Section 337 provides relief in light of specific actions, the threat or effect of which is to destroy or substantially injure a domestic industry, prevent the establishment of such an industry, or restrain or monopolize trade and commerce in the U.S. The actions covered under Section 337 include the infringement of intellectual property rights (patents and copyrights) as well as unfair methods of competition and unfair acts in the importation and sale of products in the U. S. The ITC remedy is the exclusion of the unfairly traded products from the U.S. market.

The International Trade Commission has up to 30 days to evaluate the petition for relief and decide whether to initiate the case. If the matter proceeds, an administrative law judge is then assigned to the case. During the evidentiary discovery process, the parties may seek the issuance of nationwide subpoenas and orders for the production of relevant documents.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- The Cloud Native Computing Foundation, a Linux Foundation project and organization dedicated to advancing the development of cloud native applications and services, today announced it will host and organize KubeCon, a CNCF event co-located with its own inaugural CloudNativeCon, this November in Seattle, as well as all subsequent KubeCon events. Additionally, the CNCF community will host a CloudNativeDay on August 25, 2016 in Toronto and participate in a number of other conferences in 2016, like CoreOS Fest, OSCON and ContainerCon Japan, dedicated to cloud native, container and open source education.

KubeCon, originally organized by Kismatic as a community-driven event focused on the education of developers and the promotion of Kubernetes, has been donated to the Foundation as part of the Kubernetes project transfer. As part of CNCF, KubeCon will not only be a gathering place for Kubernetes community contributors, users and developers, but additionally will bring together leading technologists from multiple cloud native communities to further the education of cloud native architectures.

"KubeCon San Francisco and EU were wonderfully successful events that showcased a variety of expert technical talks, sparked creativity and encouraged Kubernetes education," said Joseph Jacks, vice president of technology strategy at Kismatic. "The events represent the best of the best in the open source cloud native community and attract developers of infrastructure, systems engineers at the middleware layer, operation engineers, and enterprises using Kubernetes technology in production. With the CNCF hosting these community events going forward, the most important cloud native technologies can be accelerated through cross-company and cross-industry collaboration."

KubeCon, a CNCF event co-located with CloudNativeCon, is a multi-day, multi-track event taking place this November in Seattle. The event will feature highly technical talks covering major production users, leading expert contributor insights, and a full range of technologies that support the cloud native ecosystem. The event will retain the same program committee and talks will still range from introductory to advanced use. The program committee is encouraging KubeCon submissions that address cloud native projects.

CloudNativeCon - web site and CFP coming soon

KubeCon, a CNCF event

Date: November 2016

Location: Seattle

Submit a CFP

Website: Coming Soon!

Register to Attend: Coming Soon!

Description: Hosted by the CNCF community and co-located with CloudNativeCon, this event will feature a multi-track, multi-day event dedicated to cloud native education.

"We are looking forward to furthering cloud native education by hosting our own CloudNativeDay in August and CloudNativeCon this fall, which will enable face-to-face collaboration with some of the world's top technologies advancing and accelerating cloud native computing," said Chris Aniszczyk, interim executive director of Cloud Native Computing Foundation at The Linux Foundation. "The Cloud Native Computing Foundation is also thrilled to host KubeCon as a CNCF event; co-located with CloudNativeCon. As a commons for cloud native projects, we are looking forward to expanding the CNCF community with our own events and go beyond Kubernetes to bring multiple cloud native communities together in one venue."

CloudNativeDay, a CNCF event

Date: Thursday, August 25, 2016

Location: Toronto, Canada

Website: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/cloudnativeday

Submit a CFP

Description: Hosted by the CNCF community and co-located with ContainerCon North America, this event will feature a single-track, one-day event dedicated to cloud native education.

Additionally, CNCF will have a presence at a number of cloud native, container and open source events in 2016 to help further the adoption of cloud native computing; with particular focus on central orchestration processing, cloud native applications, container packaging, and microservices.

CoreOS Fest

Date: May 9-10, 2016

Location: Berlin, Germany

Website: https://coreos.com/fest/

Description: CNCF is a sponsor of CoreOS Fest.

OSCON

Date: May 16-19, 2016

Location: Austin, Texas

Website: http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/open-source-us

Description: CNCF and Kubernetes to sponsor OSCON Contribute hack-a-thon. Kubernetes will be a featured project in the Google booth hosting office hours to speak with developers.

ContainerCon Japan 2016

Date: July 13-15, 2016

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Website: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/containercon-japan

Description: CNCF member Fujitsu and Interim Executive Director of Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Chris Aniszczyk, will speak at ContainerCon Japan.

Member Event Activity

CNCF member companies will participate in the following events over the next several weeks.

Openstack Summit; April 25-26, 2016; Austin, Texas Kubernetes to host office hours.

Container Summit; May 3, 2016; Las Vegas

Goto; Stockholm; May 9-11, 2016; Stockholm, Sweden

GlueCon; May 25-26, 2016; Denver, Colo.

About Cloud Native Computing Foundation

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is a nonprofit organization committed to advancing the development of cloud native applications and services by creating a new set of common container technologies informed by technical merit and end user value, and inspired by Internet-scale computing. As a shared industry effort, CNCF members represent container and cloud technologies, online services, IT services and end user organizations focused on promoting and advancing the state of cloud native computing for the enterprise. For more information about CNCF, please visit: https://cncf.io/.

Media ContactNatasha WoodsThe Linux [email protected]

Source: The Linux Foundation
TSX: ELD NYSE: EGO

VANCOUVER, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Eldorado Gold Corporation (the "Company" or "Eldorado") is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement to sell its 82 percent interest in the Company's Jinfeng mine to a wholly-owned subsidiary of China National Gold Group ("China National Gold") for US$300 million in cash, subject to certain closing adjustments.

"We are pleased to have reached an agreement which we believe mutually benefits both companies. China National Gold has been our minority partner at Jinfeng for over fourteen years and is the logical buyer as the operation transitions fully into the underground," said Paul Wright, President and Chief Executive Officer of Eldorado Gold. "Since commencement of production in 2007, Jinfeng has consistently delivered solid operating results and has been a strong contributor in Eldorado's global portfolio."

The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter 2016 and is subject to obtaining various regulatory and other approvals and other customary closing conditions.

As previously disclosed, Eldorado has been evaluating the merits of potentially monetizing its Chinese assets. The Company continues to advance this process and has been in discussions with various parties and will update shareholders as appropriate.

BMO Capital Markets and Cutfield Freeman & Co. are acting as financial advisors and Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, Herbert Smith Freehills LLP, Morrison & Foerster LLP and JunHe LLP are acting as legal counsel to Eldorado. GMP Securities L.P. is acting as financial advisor and Borden Ladner Gervais LLP is acting as legal counsel to Eldorado's Board of Directors.

About Eldorado Gold

Eldorado is a leading low cost gold producer with mining, development and exploration operations in Turkey, China, Greece, Romania and Brazil. The Company's success to date is based on a low cost strategy, a highly skilled and dedicated workforce, safe and responsible operations, and long-term partnerships with the communities where it operates. Eldorado's common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: ELD) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: EGO).

About China National Gold

China National Gold is the leading gold company in China and the only central state-owned enterprise in China's gold industry under the direct supervision of State-owned Assets Supervision Administration Commission of the State Council. China National Gold's operations are exclusively located in the core area of China's main mineralization zones including Inner Mongolia, Henan, Jiangxi and Shaanxi provinces. China National Gold also plays an integral role in the advancement of China's gold mining technologies and capabilities as the operator of the national-level enterprise technology center and the only national-level gold research institute and design institute for the gold industry in China. China National Gold has two listed subsidiaries, China A-share listed Zhongjin Gold Company Limited (600489.SH) and China Gold International Resources Corporation Limited, which is dual-listed the on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (2099.HK) and Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: CGG.CN).

Certain of the statements made herein may contain forward-looking statements or information within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements and forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or the negatives thereof or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements or information herein include, but are not limited to the Company's announcement of its Agreement to Sell Jinfeng Mine and the Chinese monetization process.

Forward-looking statements and forward-looking information by their nature are based on assumptions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information. We have made certain assumptions about the forward-looking statements and information, including assumptions about the ability to and timing of obtaining required approvals and meeting the conditions of closing the Jinfeng sale, the political and economic environment that we operate in, the future price of commodities, anticipated costs and expenses and our ability to advance the Chinese monetization process. Even though our management believes that the assumptions made and the expectations represented by such statements or information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking statement or information will prove to be accurate. Furthermore, should one or more of the risks, uncertainties or other factors materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements or information. These risks, uncertainties and other factors include, among others, the following: required approvals not being obtained and closing of the Jinfeng sale not occurring or being delayed; political and economic environment, gold price volatility; discrepancies between actual and estimated production, mineral reserves and resources and metallurgical recoveries; mining operational and development risk; litigation risks; regulatory environment and restrictions, including environmental regulatory restrictions and liability; risks of sovereign investment; risks related to advancing the Chinese monetization process; currency fluctuations; speculative nature of gold exploration; global economic climate; dilution; share price volatility; competition; loss of key employees; additional funding requirements; and defective title to mineral claims or property, as well as those factors discussed in the sections entitled "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Information Form & Form 40-F dated March 30, 2016.

There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements or information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements or information contained herein. Except as required by law, we do not expect to update forward-looking statements and information continually as conditions change and you are referred to the full discussion of the Company's business contained in the Company's reports filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada and the U.S.

SOURCE Eldorado Gold Corporation
CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- With significant growth in the industry, energy storage professionals traveled to Charlotte, NC today to attend the Energy Storage Association (ESA) 26th Annual Conference and Expo. As the industry's fastest growing event, the ESA conference - #ESACon16 - is bringing together senior leadership from utilities, suppliers, project developers, financiers, and customers for three days of world-class speakers and workshops covering energy storage technology, policy, trends and market growth.

"Much like the energy storage industry as a whole, our annual conference has also continued to grow year after year, and 2016 is no different. We've seen more than 50 percent increase in attendance over our successful 2015 show," said Matt Roberts, Executive Director of ESA. "With expanding value for multiple grid applications, larger utility procurements and plummeting system costs, the global market for energy storage is set to nearly double in the year ahead."

The ESA Annual Conference and Expo began today with a keynote panel featuring executives from across the energy storage industry. Moderated by Forbes contributor Peter Kelly Detwiler, the panel consisted of Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of AES Energy Storage, Chris Shelton; Chief Technology Officer of Renewable Energy Systems Americas, Dr. Andrew Oliver; President of Alevo Energy, Chris Christiansen; and Chief Platforms and Operating Officer of GE Current, Eric Gebhardt.

Panelists covered growth in the industry, advances in technology, partnering with local communities to conserve energy and use energy storage to improve the generation and distribution of energy throughout markets across the United States.

"Energy storage has caught everyone's attention from investors to utility executives. Now we must seize the opportunity, including making our voices heard in the regulatory changes occurring, so that we can be part of accelerating the grid to its inevitable renewable future," said Dr. Andrew Oliver, Chief Technology Officer, Renewable Energy Systems.

"Storage is a wonderful and flexible tool. As policies are put in place to let the market compete and eliminate barriers, we'll see an increase of storage deployments," said Chris Christiansen, President, Alevo Energy.

Video from the event will be available at www.worldenergytv.org/ESA2016.

The ESA Conference and Expo is being held in Charlotte, NC from April 25-27, 2016.

To learn more about the Energy Storage Association 26th Annual Conference and Expo, visit www.energystorage.org/conference.

About Energy Storage Association

The Energy Storage Association (ESA), the national trade association for the energy storage industry, is the leading voice for companies that develop and deploy the energy storage technologies we rely on every day. ESA's mission is to promote, develop and commercialize competitive and reliable energy storage delivery systems for use by electricity suppliers and their customers. With more than 200 member organizations, ESA members represent a diverse group of entities, including electric utilities, energy service companies, independent power producers, technology developers deploying advanced batteries, flywheels, compressed air energy storage, thermal storage, pumped hydropower, supercapacitors, and component suppliers, such as power conversion systems.

The ESA Annual Conference and Expo is the industry's largest and fastest growing conference. To learn more about ESA or to register for the 2016 Conference in Charlotte, NC, from April 25-27 visit www.energystorage.org. Stay connected with ESA on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

CONTACT: Samantha Nevels, Makovsky(707) 486-5344 / [email protected]

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fastest-growing-energy-storage-conference-begins-with-unparalleled-executive-insights-300257236.html

SOURCE Energy Storage Association
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Al Shabaab insurgents attacked a Somali military base on Tuesday and killed five soldiers in two hours of fierce fighting near the northwestern town of Baidoa, a military officer said.

"Al Shabaab militants attacked early in the morning. Five soldiers died and 12 others were wounded," captain Aden Nur told Reuters from Baidoa. Six al Shabaab fighters were killed, he added.

Abdiasis Abu Musab, the group's military operations spokesman, said it had ambushed a truck carrying troops to reinforce the base, killed 11 soldiers and seized seven guns. "We exploded the truck using a planted bomb and then ambushed," he told Reuters.

It was not possible to verify the death toll independently. Al Shabaab has inflated casualty figures in the past.

The Islamist group, which wants to topple Somalia's Western-backed government, carries out frequent attacks on military targets and civilian facilities like hotels and restaurants, mostly in the capital Mogadishu.

Al Shabaab, which has links to al Qaeda was behind an attack in January on a base for Kenyan troops working with an African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia. The group said it killed more than 100 soldiers, but Kenyan officials have not yet revealed the death toll.

(Reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar; Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by George Obulutsa and Mark Trevelyan)
BOSTON (Reuters) - Boston Mayor Martin Walsh, a former labor leader, said on Monday that federal agents had not contacted him in connection with what local media has described as a wide-ranging investigation into whether the city's building unions used strong-arm tactics.

The Boston Globe reported over the weekend, citing unnamed sources, that Walsh had been implicated in a federal investigation into whether city union officials threatened developers who hired nonunion workers on projects in and around the city.

"I haven't been contacted myself," Walsh told reporters on Monday. A Democrat, Walsh is a former construction worker who led the city's Building and Construction Trades Council, a union grouping, for two years before his 2013 mayoral election victory.

Walsh, who served as a state representative from 1997 through 2013, went on to say that even if there were an investigation into his former union, he was not concerned.

"If there is an investigation, I'm assuming at some point there'll be indictments coming down. If that's the case, I will not be getting one of those," Walsh said. "Because I did nothing wrong."

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston could not be reached for immediate comment.

(Reporting by Scott Malone Editing by W Simon)
The Dupont logo is displayed on a board above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York, December 22, 2015. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

(Reuters) - DuPont's (NYSE: DD) first-quarter results beat Wall Street estimates and the chemicals and seed producer raised its full-year guidance as it sees lower currency impact than expected.

The company said its global cost savings and restructuring plan is on track and that it still expects savings of $730 million this year.

"Solid execution, local price and product mix gains, and higher corn area led to a strong start to the year for our Ag business," Chief Executive Ed Breen said.

The company, which plans to merge with Dow Chemical Co (NYSE: DOW), now expects operating earnings of $3.05-$3.20 per share, up from $2.95-$3.10 per share it estimated earlier.

DuPont now expects the negative currency impact for the year to be about $0.20 per share, 10 cents lower than estimated earlier.

Net income attributable to the company rose nearly 19 percent to $1.23 billion, or $1.39 per share, in the first quarter.

On an operating basis, the company earned $1.26 per share.

Net sales fell 5.5 percent to $7.41 billion, but was above average analysts estimate of $7.19 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

DuPont and Dow Chemical agreed in December last year for a $130 billion all-stock merger, in a first step towards breaking up into three separate businesses.

Analysts have speculated that the deal will face intense regulatory scrutiny, especially over combining the two companies' agricultural businesses, though both Dow and DuPont executives have said that any asset sales required would likely be minor.

DuPont said last month that U.S. regulators needed more time to review materials related to its merger with Dow Chemical Co (NYSE: DOW).

The company said it will hold a conference call at 0800 ET Tuesday to discuss the results, which were released earlier than expected.

(Reporting by Subrat Pantnaik, Amrutha Gayathri and Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler and Gopakumar Warrier)
Northwestern motorway drivers won't be able to use the east bound, loop road on-ramp at Great North Rd.

One of Auckland's busiest motorway on-ramps will be closed from Friday night to Monday morning for roadworks.

Starting 10pm Friday, eastbound northwestern motorway drivers won't be able to join the motorway at the Great North Rd on-ramp.

The New Zealand Transport Agency said safety improvements realigning the ramp with the motorway were needed to give users a smoother entry onto the motorway.

The on-ramp will reopen at 5am on Monday.

Motorists should plan ahead and avoid delays, the agency said.

NZTA Auckland highway manager Brett Gliddon said the closure was likely to affect traffic from Rosebank Rd through to Western Springs.

"We are carrying out this work during the weekend when traffic volumes are lower to reduce the disruption, however this is a very busy motorway on-ramp with more than 1200 vehicles using it every hour during an average Saturday."

Alternative routes include Rosebank Rd or Western Springs/St Lukes interchanges or entering the motorway on the Great North Rd westbound on-ramp and doubling back at Rosebank Rd.

Click here for more Auckland motorway travel information.
MEXICO CITY, April 25 -- Chinese and Mexican authorities met on Monday to discuss the renewal of a memorandum of understanding, signed in 2011, to strengthen cooperation on the management of water resources, a Mexican commission announced Monday.

The agreement covers the exchange and cooperation on irrigation technology, water supply in rural regions, the sustainable exploitation of aquifers, the reuse of residual water, and the prevention and mitigation of disasters, such as floods and droughts.

The Mexican National Water Commission said the Chinese side is interested in learning from the Mexican experience in administering water resources, especially concerning the aquifers of Mexico City.

"One of their goals is to understand Mexico's irrigation systems and to reach a cooperation agreement on how to develop the administration of subterranean water resources," the commission said.

The Chinese side is also interested in the commission's strategy on water management, especially on how to prevent flooding while maximizing the reuse of residual waters, it said.

The commission hailed the cooperation between China and Mexico on water issues, and said that the "sharing of successful experiences between both nations has strengthened Mexico's water policy, allowing the government to focus on improving water conditions for the well-being of the public and the social and economic development."
A young boy joins the protest at Okiwi Bay in the Marlborough Sounds.

A Marlborough Sounds community protest against a fish feed research facility has received political backing.

New Zealand First has joined the Okiwi Bay community to oppose a proposal to build a tank-based fin fish research facility which would discharge up to 70,000 litres of contaminated sea water each day into the bay.

New Zealand First MP, and primary industries spokesman, Richard Prosser said the proposal "had everything going against it".

Dutch-based multi-national Skretting is behind the proposal and has applied for resource consent to Marlborough District Council for the go-ahead.

READ MORE:

*Okiwi Bay residents protest fish farm plans

*Okiwi Bay residents ready to fight fish factory in Marlborough Sounds

The facility would be used for research and development to improve feed efficiency in chinook salmon, and reduce the use of marine raw materials in the salmon diet.

The hearing in June has already attracted more than 200 submissions against the proposal.

It has attracted widespread opposition from more than 200 residents who live, or holiday, in the isolated area, 90 kilometres west of Blenheim.

In a letter to the protest group, Prosser said the party supported increased investment in aquaculture in New Zealand, but Okiwi Bay was the wrong place for the facility to be built.

Aquaculture was the way of the future and the New Zealand seafood industry must be prepared to be at the cutting edge, and become a dominant player, Prosser said.

"However it is of paramount importance to preserve and protect certain other things ... quintessential to our values and way of life."

New Zealanders expected to live, work and play in a outdoor paradise that was open, uncluttered and unpolluted, and the commercial fishing industry must share the resource and the environment with the public, he said.

The proposal at Okiwi Bay had potential to bring in jobs, produce wealth, and grow food "but it also had everything going against it".

"The bay was being used for boating, swimming, fishing, recreation and enjoyment.

"It is peaceful and beautiful, sheltered, just close enough to civilisation and yet just far enough away.

"The proposal would affect all those things."

The resource consent would allow a large volume of warm nutrient-rich waste water pumped into a shallow bay with little chance of it being fully flushed out to sea.

The effluent would be discharged near a boat ramp, fishing and shellfish gathering, and swimming areas, Prosser said.

"This proposal might serve its proponents very well but it would almost certainly come at the expense of every other user in Okiwi Bay.

"The facility cannot co-exist alongside everything else that is happening here, and for that reason New Zealand First is opposed to its inception."

Prosser said the party would support Skretting to establish its business in New Zealand to help the economy, but not in Okiwi Bay.

If the proposal went ahead Skretting would install up to a dozen 7000-litre experimental tanks, and two 15,000-litre holding tanks to initially grow chinook salmon.

In later years, rainbow trout, snapper and hapuka would be bred.

The consent also included building two 30,000-litre water storage tanks, with water treatment equipment to take in and discharge up to 70 cubic metres of seawater, or 70,000 litres, into the bay each day to re-circulate the tank system.

Up to 20 kilograms a day, or 7300kg a year, of fish feed, containing nitrogen, phosphorous and suspended solids, would also be discharged.

A spokesman for the Okiwi Bay protest group 'Hands Off Okiwi' said interest in the proposal was huge and a large venue would be needed to hear the submissions.
Police have accused a Wellington bar owner of taunting them as they carried out routine compliance checks, including once telling the whole bar that the officers were strippers.

Now police are trying to strip Ruby Rabbit's licence to sell booze, and cancel three of its bar managers' licences, saying the Courtenay Place bar, formerly called Famous, is an irresponsible host.

At a Liquor Licensing Authority hearing on Tuesday, police alcohol harm prevention officer Sergeant Damian Rapira-Davies brought forward more than half a dozen witnesses to speak in favour of a booze ban.

PETE McDONALD/FAIRFAX NZ Andrews at the opening of Amie and Cory Jane's gym in Upper Hutt.

Multiple police officers testified that, when they entered Ruby Rabbit to check it was complying with its liquor licence, owner Neil Andrews, who is also a DJ, mocked them over the bar's speaker system.

READ MORE:

* Countdown Grey Lynn gets liquor licence ban for serving under-age customer

* Police oppose Countdown liquor licence on students' 'Chunder Lane'

* Vic Uni boss strongly opposed to Countdown Cable Car Lane liquor licence

* Wellington grocery store stoush plays out over Aro Valley liquor licences

Sergeant Cameron Browne told the authority that, when he entered the bar with police last month, Andrews was at the DJ booth.

"He used the PA system to tell patrons that the police officers were not real, they were in fact strippers," Browne said.

"He encouraged patrons to pay police $20 to strip, and continued to encourage patrons to taunt police until the compliance was complete."

Constable Simon Coffey said he had a similar experience in January. "The comments were: 'Why don't you go and be real policeman, go and earn some real money and collect some glasses for me'."

Senior Sergeant Nicholas Thom said the behaviour made the bar's patrons unco-operative.

The officers also testified to often finding intoxicated people in the bar. Some reported seeing drunk people leaving through an upstairs window.

Thom said he assessed two drunk women, barely able to stand, in the bar who "were among the worse I have seen in some time".

Coffey said he was outside the bar once when three women were turfed out for fighting, some with facial injuries, supposedly after one jumped the queue for the bathroom.

However, Andrews, who was defending himself, said police were unfairly targeting Ruby Rabbit.

He said he was frustrated by feeling there were too many police in his bar for too long, and was releasing his frustration over the loudspeaker, as "my right to free speech".

He launched into a passionate cross-examination of the officers.

"Are we being targeted because of what we say on the microphone?" he asked. "Are you intimidated by our bar?"

At times he was cautioned by authority member Judith Moorhead to stop "getting carried away". "Mr Andrews, you're overstepping the mark again," she warned at one point.

The hearing will continue on Wednesday.
After a series of dog attacks around the country, the Marlborough District Council's animal control department wants to educate people about dog safety and looking after dogs.

Maataa Waka dog education facilitator Carol Schofield said the course, called "Being a responsible dog owner", would be held on April 27 and was targeted at all dog owners and potential dog owners.

The talk would cover legal obligations for dog owners such as micro chipping and registering dogs, as well as advice about giving their dogs sufficient food, water and shelter, and advice on what to do if an aggressive dog approached you.

There would also be training and socialisation information available to owners, Schofield said.

READ MORE:

* Marlborough District Council reviews dog control policy following attacks

* Pitbull euthanised after attacking young boy on Saturday

* Council to discuss dog control solutions after brutal mauling of seven-year-old

Owners would be given a list of places where dogs could go off-leash and on-leash.

Some people did not realise dogs were not allowed in Blenheim's town centre, she said.

"It is sign-posted on the footpath, there's a picture of a dog with a line through," Schofield said.

Council animal control manager Shelley Lines said last week there had been 119 dog attacks, or "rushes", reported to animal control since June 30 last year, and 155 in the previous 12 months.

The figures equated to nearly three attacks or "rushes" a week.

Marlborough Mayor Alistair Sowman said last week he would be reviewing the council's dog control policies, after a 7-year-old boy was mauled by a pitbull in Auckland .

Lines would not say what percentage of the dogs involved in the Marlborough attacks were pitbulls.

Schofield said she believed the media tended to focus on attacks by some breeds more than others.

People were also more likely to report attacks by certain breeds, she said.

However in her experience all breeds could bite.

She had been delivering classes on dog safety to schools for about a year.

The most important thing to do when a dangerous dog attacked was to stand still, because if you ran, they would chase you.

"That is really hard for an adult, let alone a child," she said.

She told children they should pretend to be a tree, standing still and not looking directly at the dog but being aware of where it was.

Her course for children focused on the 5-year-old to 10-year-old age group who were most prone to bites, because of their size, she said.

Animal control also delivered talks to adults who were likely to come into regular contact with dogs, such as property managers and meter readers.

Behaviour such as looking a dog in the eye or even smiling, baring your teeth, could provoke a dog, Schofield said.

Before entering a property you should call out or whistle, and look for signs of dogs, she said.

These could be obvious things such as dog toys or a kennel.

Six people had expressed interest in the course, Schofield said. Further courses could possibly be held in the future.

* Anyone wanting to attend the "Being a responsible dog owner" course on April 27 at 6.30pm at the Animal Control Office at 56 Main St should ring 03 577 9256 or email carol@maataawaka.co.nz
Former Waimea College student and now Royal New Zealand Navy Commander Brendon Oakley speaks with his daughter Brooklyn Oakley during the Richmond Anzac Day service at the Richmond War Memorial.

Royal New Zealand Navy Commander Brendon Oakley leaned down to his nine-year-old daughter Brooklyn and told her that everything was going to be all right.

For the past three years Oakley had been based in Singapore with his family overseeing all New Zealand's military presence in South East Asia. For those three years, on each Anzac Day, Brooklyn had taken a single red poppy and placed it on the grave of one of the few Kiwis buried in Singapore's Kranji War Cemetery.

He was an army soldier from Richmond. His name was Denis Scrimgeour. He died in 1942 during the fall of Singapore. He was 21-years-old. Brooklyn was looking after him.

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So when the roll of honour was read out with all the names of those from the area who had lost their lives in overseas wars, Brooklyn was expecting to hear that name. But she didn't.

"It's OK," her father said. "It's OK, he is still being looked after."

Oakley has been in the military for the past 23 years and remembered, as a Waimea College student, attending that same Anzac service in Richmond. Yesterday was the first time he had been home to attend a service in all those years. But now the family was back from overseas and home for the holidays.

"Being in the military the kids often ask 'what is home to mum and dad?' I still say Richmond. It's very special for us."

The three Oakley children know all about Anzac day - particularly when their family friends go away on missions.

"They are quite aware of it."

But they all love going to the dawn services.

"They think it's very special," Oakley said. "They do respect and appreciate what people have done previously for this country."

It"s why Oakley joined the military all those years ago. And it's why he will try to find out why Scrimgeour's name was left off the roll of honour.
Shanghai is canceling its agricultural hukou to establish a unified permanent residence system for urban and rural areas, said the city government on Monday. In doing so, Shanghai will become the first provincial region on the Chinese mainland to do so.

The government said the reform is expected to keep the citys registered population within 25 million by 2020, while simultaneously attracting new talent.

Another change to the policy is that those in Shanghai without a proper hukou will be given permanent residence permits based on a credit system that takes into account the length of their stay and contributions to the social security fund, according to the official document released on the governments website yesterday.

There have been efforts made toward urban-rural integration for some years already. Currently, urban and rural residents enjoy the same pension, unemployment and medical benefits. The next step will be education, health and family planning, employment, social security, land, housing and demographic census.

The way the system works now, residents of Shanghai who do not possess a local hukou are generally eligible to apply for one after working in the city, contributing to the social security fund and paying income tax for seven years. This is provided they have middle-level professional posts and no criminal record.

Under the new system, credit will be given to temporary residence permit holders based on various indicators, such as age, education background, professional title, chosen industry and taxes.
(Global Times) 09:45, April 26, 2016

Illustration: Peter C. Espina/GT

US President Barack Obama said Sunday that the US has "cultivated cooperation" with China to put more pressure on North Korea. He criticized Pyongyang is engaging in continuous provocative behavior.

Pyongyang fired ballistic missile from a submarine off its east coast on Saturday. Seoul said the missile flew for about 30 kilometers, far below the minimum 300-kilometer range of missile of this kind, but Pyongyang called the firing "another great success." The test has shocked many, and a slew of recent tests by North Korea show that the country has been enhancing its strategic attack capabilities.

Later, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong said in a rare interview with The Associated Press that his country would halt nuclear tests after the US and South Korea stop their annual military exercises.

This is not the first time that Pyongyang makes such offer and it is immediately rejected and denounced by Seoul. But North Korea's suspension offer is taken by many as a softened gesture that is better than its normal threats of wiping out Seoul from the map and waging a nuclear war with the US.

North Korea apparently adopts a double-dealing approach to deal with pressure from the US and South Korea, but its nuclear activities have steered the Korean Peninsula into a stalemate unseen since the truce in 1953. It's hard to discern whether the US pressure led to North Korea's nuclear activities or the other way around. But the reality is that the vicious cycle is gaining speed and momentum, and real danger is looming.

The peninsula urgently needs opportunities to stop the situation from exacerbating, and threatening and intimidating may turn into reality upon mutual stimulus. If parties involved don't want to see the worst scenario happening, they shouldn't waste any possibility that can restore stability and avoid escalating tensions.

Pyongyang intends to push Washington and Seoul hard so that the latter will surrender, which is however unrealistic. Actually North Korea's four nuclear tests have given rise to the harshest ever sanctions and largest joint exercises of US and South Korean army. A fifth nuclear test, if any, is unlikely to make the US and South Korea back off. Pyongyang has to be aware that China can hardly give it any help if the UN Security Council mulls harsher sanctions on it.

From another perspective, Washington and Seoul have already prompted Pyongyang to turn inward by imposing sanctions and wielding the baton of military exercise. If they just want to bluff instead of real actions, what other measures are there in their hands to deal with Pyongyang?

The US and South Korea appear to be willing to set China and North Korea against each other so that China will be entirely accountable for addressing the nuclear issue, which has really been the result of the US policy on North Korea. Washington and Seoul need to be aware that Beijing will only impose sanctions on curbing Pyongyang's research and development of nuclear weapons and not join any party to strangle the North Korea country or regime.

Chinese are deeply concerned about tensions flaring up in the peninsula and worried that no underlying solution can be found to the issue while the wiggle room is running out. This is a sound mentality of a responsible power.

That said, China won't be among the countries that are hit first and hardest if the situation in the peninsula goes out of control. If Washington, Seoul and Pyongyang insist on acting as they are now, Beijing is unlikely to come up with any countermeasures or take responsibility for any of their irresponsible behaviors.

Tensions in the peninsula have led to some strategic trends that may jeopardize China's national interests, such as the possible deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system by the US in South Korea. However, China's capabilities and determination to take countermeasures can never be underestimated. The relevant parties have to take into account the interests of others rather than only their selfish gains. Otherwise, they may end up paying heavy costs.

The article is an editorial of the Chinese edition of the Global Times on Monday. [email protected]
A Shanghai Disney-themed airplane has made its debut in Shanghai on April 25, 2016. The plane, operated by China Eastern Airlines, is painted blue across the body with two giant Mickey and Minnie Mouse figures. More Disney-themed planes will meet visitors in the near future. The Shanghai Disneyland opens on June 16. [Photo: Chinanews.com]
Weather Eye

with John Maunder

What causes the climate to change as well as understanding the methods for detecting changes in the climate are on-going research activities.

The following is a brief summary of the methods scientists and others, such as historians, employ in inferring and detecting changes in climate during a variety of time scales. I am indebted to a NIWA web site for much of this summary.

Instrumental measurements

Data from instruments and written or oral records provide quantitative records of temperature and other meteorological records for the last 150 years in New Zealand  and up to 350 years in a few other countries, such as summer, winter, and annual temperature charts for central England from 1659-2015 shown in the graph.

Such records must be analysed carefully, to identify the influence of any non-climate factors, such as changes in observing site or method, or encroaching urban development. Records of sea level and land movements are also important for assessing sea level change.

Source of graph: https://www.climate4you.com/

Proxy data

Beyond the scope of instrumental measurements, information about past climate can be obtained from natural proxy archives, as well as historical records of events, such as harvests etc.

Changes observed in these archives often identify so closely to climate variations they can be used as a substitute for climate records prior to the instrumental record after a careful calibration process has been undertaken.

Piecing evidence together from various natural proxy data sources includes:

Ice cores

Ice cores drilled in Greenland, the Antarctic ice sheets, the Himalayas, and in other alpine regions of the world comprise very important archives because they provide extensive detailed information about past climate variability and atmospheric composition

The ratio of oxygen isotopes in ice can indicate the temperature at the time ice was deposited as snow. Air bubbles can be analysed to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane concentrations at the time the bubbles were trapped in the ice.

Dust trapped in the ice may indicate windy, arid conditions. Geochemistry, including trace elements and salts, can tell a story about regional atmospheric circulation. The core from the Russian Rostock station in Antarctica provides information back to at least 160,000 years ago, and when drilling is completed a climate record of the last 500,000 years is probable.

Fossil pollen and phytoliths

Different classes of plants produce pollen grains and phytoliths (siliceous formations precipitated by plants) that have distinctive shapes. Pollen grains and phytoliths are often found preserved in sediment cores from ponds, lakes and marine environments.

Lake sediments

Composition and sedimentation rates in lakes change in response to variations in environmental conditions during periods of wet and dry climate. Pollen in the sediments can indicate the type of vegetation present, and plankton biota indicates physical and chemical conditions in the lake water. In some cases, stark seasonal changes in lake inflows and sedimentation can cause annual layers to form in lake sediments.

Annual layers, or varves, commonly form in lakes fed by glacial meltwater, and can be used to infer the amount of melted ice and what past warm season temperatures were like. Within the sediment layers, microfossils like diatoms, bugs, and plant material are preserved. These fossils can also reveal information about what past environmental conditions were like, sometimes with incredible precision.

Ocean sediment cores

These cores contain primitive shelled animals (foraminifera) whose abundance in the surface layers of the ocean depends on surface water temperature and other conditions. Off New Zealand the rate and type of sediment deposition depends on factors such as the amount of glacial activity and on other climate-driven erosion processes.

Pollen types and the isotopic composition of material in the sediments provide further information on past climates. Cores obtained off New Zealand from the international deep sea drilling project provide information as far back as 6.3 million years, and drilling of more cores is planned.

New Zealand is coordinating an interesting international drilling project near Cape Roberts in Antarctica, to establish more information about past Antarctic climate and ice extent.

Loess

Loess are fine-grained wind-blown dust deposits on land. They typically accumulate during periods characterised by dry and windy conditions. In New Zealand, they are associated with cool and cold intervals that coincide with glacial advances. Numerous loess sections can be found on the South Island, particularly in eastern regions.

Glaciers

Variations in the past size of glaciers can be inferred from the location of moraines (rocks and debris deposited by glaciers that mark a former ice margin position), outwash fans, buried soils, and by the presence of glacial features in the landscape. In New Zealand, cool summer temperatures are only one factor in promoting ice accumulation on glaciers, and snow accumulation rates also respond to changes in the strength and direction of the westerly wind flow and sea level pressure in summer.

Speleothems

Speleothems are used to describe a stalactite, stalagmite or flowstone cave deposit of crystalline nature. These deposits occur within karst terranes in subterranean caverns mainly as calcite precipitated from groundwater that percolated through overlying limestone or marble rock.

Tree rings

Tree rings are some of the best resolved records of past climate in the world. This is because, in many cases, one tree ring is grown each year, allowing tree rings to be dated with great precision and with annual resolution.

Tree growth is dependent on many factors. However, common growth patterns often emerge at the regional scale between trees, suggesting there is a common growth response to climate changes. Correlations of tree ring data with soil moisture, temperature, and precipitation often enable tree ring records to be substituted for instrumental climate data into the distant past.

In the case of NZ, which has many long lived tree species suitable for dendrochronology, long climate reconstructions of droughts, storms, and even El Nino events are possible.

Boreholes

It is sometimes possible to deduce past surface temperatures going back several hundred years by measuring the way temperature varies with depth in a borehole several hundred metres deep (at a suitable site not disturbed by groundwater flow). This is because fluctuations in ground surface temperatures propagate slowly downwards into the earth as a temperature wave.

For further information on a range of weather/climate matters see: https://sites.google.com/site/theuncertaintybusinessclimate/
Proposed changes to driver licensing will improve the system while maintaining high safety standards, says Associate Transport Minister Craig Foss.

The Ministry of Transports Driver Licensing Review discussion document proposes moving license renewal process online and streamlining heavy vehicle and specialist driving endorsements.

Craig says a lot has changed since the current licensing system was introduced in 1999.

While fundamental elements of the system such as the photo driver licence and minimum licensing age are not part of this review, there are a number of opportunities to modernise processes and improve efficiency.

New Zealanders expect government services to be available online. A digital licence renewals process will save drivers, businesses and government time and money.

In 2015 there were some 238,000 licence applications and 294,000 renewals.

The ministry has also proposed changes to heavy vehicle licences, with the aim of improving availability of properly trained heavy vehicle drivers without compromising safety.

This proposal is about balancing the heavy vehicle industrys need for more drivers with government and road users high safety expectations. I urge anyone in the heavy vehicle sector to consider the options and make a submission.

The discussion document also looks at reducing the frequency of eyesight testing. This option will also make it easier for New Zealanders to complete licensing transactions online, says Craig.

The release of the Governments discussion paper this week has been welcomed by Ken Shirley, chie executive of national body The Road Transport Forum which represents the commercial road freight industry.

Ken says the review of the driver licensing system has been long overdue.

For 15 years the Road Transport Forum has pushed the Ministry of Transport to review the current driver licence system for heavy vehicles, explains Ken.

The current system is a major impediment to attracting new drivers; it takes too long and is far too expensive. Im glad to see both the Associate Minister and the Ministry acknowledge that fact.

Of the proposed changes to heavy vehicle licensing, the discussion paper present four options but he says two are only variations on the status quo.

But options three and four  the removal of some licensing stages and the direct progression from a Class 2 full licence to a Class 5 full licence for drivers 25 years and over  address a number of the industrys concerns and show considerable promise.

The Road Transport Forum looks forward to constructively engaging in this process on behalf of our members associations and the broader industry, says Ken.

Public Submissions close June 2. For more information, to view the discussion document or to download submission forms visit: www.transport.govt.nz/dlr



Associate Transport Minister Craig Foss. Photo: File
John Key must tell New Zealanders that he will not bow to pressure from wealthy drug companies or their US negotiators and put Kiwi lives at risk, Labours Health spokesperson Annette King says.

News reports today have the drug lobbyists Medicines New Zealand openly threatening New Zealand, with Kiwis not being able to access drugs unless concessions are made on the TPP.

Chair Heather Roy said drug companies will just not bother to register drugs here unless the Government gave way so even if people wanted them and could afford them they wouldnt have access to them.

That is a threat, and it comes on the eve of a delegation from the US Trade Representatives Office arriving in New Zealand reportedly to talk about implementation of the TPP.

The Government promised New Zealanders that Pharmac would be protected under the TPP and there were constant assurances that we would not pay more for medicines. There is already doubt the Government can guarantee this.

John Key must tell us whether Pharmac is on the agenda with the US delegation and there must be complete transparency over what is being discussed.

Kiwis are already missing out on accessing the medicines they need due to Pharmacs underfunding. Last year Pharmac received less funding for new medicines than it asked for.

The Government must rule out any further changes that would threaten Kiwis access to life-saving medicines, Annette King says.

Source: Office of Annette King.
Thousands of people gathered throughout the Western Bay of Plenty to mark Anzac Day yesterday.

The day commemorates all New Zealanders killed in war and also honours returned servicemen and women.



The dawn service in Maketu. Photo: Neisha Connor.



The date itself marks the anniversary of the landing of New Zealand and Australian soldiers  the Anzacs  on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915.

The aim was to capture the Dardanelles, the gateway to the Bosphorus and the Black Sea. At the end of the campaign, Gallipoli was still held by its Turkish defenders.

SunLive readers were out and about taking snaps of the memorial services.

Here are just a handful of photos send in.



The cenotaph in Mount Maunganui. Photo: Brooke McGregor.


BEIJING, April 25 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping has called for the comprehensive detection of Internet risks to ensure online security.

Xi made the remarks at a symposium on cybersecurity and informatization on April 19, during which he called for enhanced cybersecurity and told officials to use the Internet to understand public opinion. The full text of his speech was made public on Monday.

In his speech, Xi stressed the "correct outlook on cybersecurity" and called for the establishment of a system to protect information infrastructure in industries including finance, energy, telecommunications and transportation.

He urged authorities to establish unified and effective mechanisms to report risks and share information.

Internet defense capabilities should be enhanced and the roles of governments and market forces should be clearly defined, the president said.

"The competition between major countries on Internet security not only depends on technology but also on concepts and public opinions," Xi said, adding that China's proposals on cyber-sovereignty and a community of common destiny in cyberspace have won the support of the majority of countries.

To safeguard cybersecurity, Xi called on the industry to undertake more research into core Internet technology, which he identified as being the "key to China's Internet development" and warned that, "having other countries holding the key is our biggest threat."

Blocking Internet access is not the right way to manage the Internet, he said, stressing that, "China can not and will not shut its door to the world."

"We welcome foreign Internet enterprises as long as they abide by Chinese laws and regulations," said the president.

During the symposium, Xi said R&D investment should target technology that the country needs the most, and the industrialization of the technology should be improved.

"Unlike Microsoft, Intel, Google and Apple, Chinese Internet enterprises do not cooperate well with each other on research, which is one of the reasons why there is a huge gap between China and other countries," Xi added.

He suggested establishing alliances between academic and research institutions and enterprises to enhance coordination.

The president also stressed the role of the Internet in directing and representing public opinion.

Xi ordered officials to use the Internet to engage with the people, learning about their concerns and wishes and engaging with them online.

"Internet users come from many places, each with their own experiences, and opinions. Therefore, it is too much to ask them to be right on every topic," said Xi.

There should be greater tolerance and patience to Internet users, Xi said, adding officials need to draw sincere suggestions and feedback from the Internet, help clarify public misconception or their fuzzy ideas about certain matters, dissolve public grudges and grievances, and correct their wrong perceptions.

A clean and healthy cyberspace is in the interests of the people, while a foul and unhealthy one serves no one, said Xi.

No country will allow cyberspace to be used to go against the regime, incite religious extremism, national separatism and violence, or to be filled with pornography and hate, Xi noted.

China must improve the management of cyberspace and work to ensure high quality content, he said, with positive voices creating a healthy, positive culture that is a force for good.

The president suggested that the cyberspace be imbued with positive energy and mainstream values, in the hope of creating a clean and righteous environment.

However, rather than all people holding the same opinion, a positive public opinion environment in cyberspace means no slanders, rumors, crimes and other violations of the Constitution and laws, said Xi.

For well-meant criticism raised on the Internet, be it at the overall work of the Party and the state, or at individual officials, be it gentle or harsh-sounding, Xi said, "we will not only welcome it, but also study it for future reference."

In his speech, the president stressed the responsibility of Internet firms, saying that only by accepting their social responsibility can they be competitive and enjoy better development.

"Web entrepreneurs should not regard clicks as their only goal. Online shop owners should not sell counterfeit or substandard products. Social media organizers should not spread rumors. Search engines should not decide the position of websites in results just based on how much they pay," said Xi.

Concerned by online fraud, the president urged authorities to speed up legislation on the Internet and enhance supervision over cyberspace to deal with cyber risks.

Moreover, Xi called for enhanced management of big data. Internet enterprises must attach great importance to the security of data, as they may involve national interests and security, said Xi.

He also stressed the importance of talents in developing the Internet, calling on authorities at all levels to attract and keep skilled employees.

The flow of talents among governments, enterprises and think tanks should be encouraged, he added.

A talent system with global competitiveness should be established, said Xi, adding all talents are welcome to China, no matter where they are from.

The Chinese people should be provided with information services that are accessible, affordable and of a high standard, Xi told the symposium.

China, although a latecomer to the Internet, has made remarkable achievements in the development of Internet networks and services, Xi said, adding that 700 million Chinese netizens use the Internet to study, work, and access public services.

The president stressed that the development of the Internet in China should meet the people's expectations and demands. He called for more investment in Internet infrastructure, especially in rural areas, saying online tools and services should be used to support poverty alleviation campaigns.

"More people in poverty should have access to the Internet. They can use it to sell their agricultural products and their children can receive a high-quality education," Xi said.

Moreover, the Internet should serve as a new growth driver for the Chinese economy, he said.

The "Internet Plus" strategy has boosted innovation and entrepreneurship in China, and the information-based economy accounts for an increasingly larger share of China's GDP.

"In the process of informatization, no progress, or even slower progress, means regression. China must improve its information infrastructure and the integration of information resources," Xi said.
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Paul Goldsmith today acknowledged World Intellectual Property Day, an international initiative celebrating the role intellectual property plays in fostering human innovation and creativity.

In our increasingly knowledge-driven economy, intellectual property is of growing importance to New Zealand businesses, says Mr Goldsmith.

Every year around 30,000 trade mark, patent, design and plant variety rights applications are made by individuals and businesses to the Intellectual Property Office (IPONZ).

I want to ensure New Zealanders continue to benefit from their creativity and innovation with a robust intellectual property regime that supports the development of new and forward thinking products and services.

The Creative Sector Study, led by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, is currently underway to gain a better understanding of how the creative sector interacts with the copyright and designs regimes in the context of a rapidly changing technological landscape.

The study is part of a broader government work programme to ensure that different regulatory systems, such as intellectual property and communications regulation, work together to promote economic growth in our constantly evolving digital economy, says Mr Goldsmith.

To find out more or to get involved in the Creative Sector Study visit: www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/business/intellectual-property/copyright/creative-sector-study.

b
Cyclists and walkers in Katikati will be able to cross the Uretara Stream via a new $160,000 suspension bridge to be built to extend the growing network of cycle trails around the town.

Western Bay of Plenty District Council has selected the new suspension bridge, designed by Abseil Access Limited, from 11 concept designs submitted by five bridge building companies.
Prime Minister John Key welcomes the upcoming visit to New Zealand of the President of the Republic of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee.

New Zealand is looking forward to hosting the President on this historic visit, the first by an Indian President to New Zealand, says Mr Key.

It will be an opportunity to highlight our warm relationship, based on a shared Commonwealth heritage, commitment to democracy and the over 160,000 New Zealanders of Indian-origin, who make an important contribution to business, cultural and sporting life in New Zealand.

President Mukherjee and his delegation arrive on Saturday 30 April for a series of events in Auckland, including an official welcome at Government House Auckland, a State dinner hosted by the Governor General, and talks with the Governor General and the Prime Minister.

While in Auckland, President Mukherjee will also address students at AUT Business School, and meet with Indian business and community leaders.

India is an increasingly important trade and economic partner for New Zealand. Our total trade in goods and services with India topped $2 billion last year, and more than 23,000 Indian students studied in New Zealand last year alone.

President Mukherjee leaves New Zealand on Monday 2 May.

SOURCE: Office of John Key
A $520 million funding injection into State Highway 2s northern corridor is being welcomed with open arms by the Bay of Plenty Regional Transport Committee.

The committee views the funding as being critical to improving safety and meeting the long term capacity needs of the Tauranga to Waihi corridor.
School holidays are usually a time for relaxation, but one group of teenagers spent their holidays in the company of young engineers and a few carefully crafted robots.

The annual VEX World Robotics Competition was held in the Kentucky Exposition Centre in Louisville USA and House of Science, shone through.
When it comes to planning a vacation, there's no shortage of places to visit. Some spots offer beautiful beaches and relaxation, while others have no shortage of landmarks and other historical sites to take in. For any seniors interested in taking a trip, here's a short list of a few places on the map that are particularly exciting.

5. Niagara Falls

As Insider Monkey pointed out, Niagara Falls is really a great vacation spot for people of all ages, and has accommodations for couples, families or even the lone visitor. In Canada, Niagara Falls is a quaint city that sits on the Western side of the massive waterfall. Just a short drive away over the Rainbow Bridge, seniors can head into the United States to see a different angle of the falls, as well as visit Buffalo, New York and other American cities. Hop on the Maid in the Mist - a boat that takes you right up to the falls and get up close and personal with this amazing feat of nature.

According to the Niagara Falls State Park website, 3,160 tons of water flow over the site every second, accounting for the landmark's impressive stature. In fact, water from four of the five Great Lakes flows through the Niagara River and into Lake Ontario on the other side of the falls. Collectively, these lakes make up almost 20 percent of the world's fresh water.

4. San Francisco

One of the most cultural cities the U.S. has to offer, San Francisco has no shortage of places to see, as well as a rich culinary landscape. Sites like the Golden Gate Bridge and Lombard Street are famous the world over, and certainly worth a visit.

Elsewhere in San Francisco, seniors can grab a bite to eat at Pier 39. Located on the city's beautiful waterfront, there are many options for catching live music or eating some fantastic seafood, all set to the scenery of San Francisco Bay. Sea Lions are frequent visitors to this area of the city, while just a 30 minute ferry ride off shore sits Alcatraz, the old prison island.

3. Quebec City

One of Canada's most enchanting places to visit, Quebec City has a rich history and modern flair. During the winter, snow-capped buildings and the icy St. Lawrence River make the city a sight to behold, while warmer summer weather allow visitors an opportunity to stroll old Quebec and visit other historic sites, Trip Advisor reported

The Aquarium du Quebec is just one of many family-friendly places to visit in the city, along with many parks and museums. Although it is located right here in Canada, the French influence makes it feel as if you are exploring an old European city like Paris or Rome more than a Canadian location like Ottawa or Vancouver.

2. The Bahamas

For seniors looking to take in some fun in the sun, the Bahamas are a fantastic choice because there are so many options for where to stay. There are hundreds of individual islands and dozens of accommodations, from famous resorts like the Atlantis to private bungalows or villas.

Located just off the coast of Florida, the Bahamas are perfect for a trip in the spring or early summer because the weather hasn't gotten too warm, but really these islands are great year-round.

1. Yellowstone National Park

There are many different wild areas in Canada to see plants and animals, but Yellowstone National Park is one of the best places to take in the natural beauty of North America. The oldest National Park in the U.S., there are also historic points of interest, on top of the opportunity to see a pack of wolves or a herd of bison.
After 9400 miles in the water from Australia, through to Tahiti and Panama to Florida - at a total of 42 days at sea - Serenity arrived at the 2016 Palm Beach International Boat Show where she was sold after just one week.

Heesen is one of the most respected yacht builders in the world, and Serenity is a perfect example of high-quality Dutch craftsmanship. She had been maintained to immaculate level to the point of sale and, having now taken delivery, her new owner is looking forward to the full superyacht cruising experience.

IYC brokers Frank Grzeszczak and Katya Jaimes acted as central agents, while Kevin Callahan of Moran Yacht & Ship represented the buyer of this incredible superyacht. For more information on Serenity, click here.
Some Captive-bred Animals May be Removed from State Protection

A file photo of visitors taking pictures of a monkey in a wildlife park in southwest China's Yunnan. [Photo: Chinanews.com]

Certain animals bred under controlled conditions could be removed from the special state protection list of China's wildlife protection law.

The first draft of the revised law received its first reading last December, and a second reading on Monday.

The latest draft takes into account suggestions presented to a committee of China's National People's Congress.

The draft says carrying out captive breeding programs for species removed from the state protection list would require obtaining permits from the authorities, and that the sale and use of such animals would require special tags issued by the authorities to ensure traceability.

The NPC Law Committee has noted that regulating captive-bred animals differently from wild ones is consistent with internationally accepted practice.

The newest version also specifies that the central government retains the power to approve hunting of wild animals under first-class state protection, for the purpose of scientific research, population regulation and the monitoring of disease.
US accused of 'hyping up' military flights in South China Sea

China accused the US on Monday of "hyping up" recent military flights around a Chinese island in the South China Sea.

It said Washington's motivation was questionable and urged countries concerned to show "restraint" over the territorial issue.

Observers said the US is apparently using the timing to expand military deployment in the area.

Washington's comments came ahead of a ruling by an international arbitration body in a process launched unilaterally by the Philippines against China's territorial claim in the South China Sea.

Asked about a South China Morning Post report on Monday that said China will start constructing an outpost on Huangyan Island this year, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had not heard of the case.

"However, I saw media reports that military planes from the US and the Philippines flew over the sea around Huangyan Island," Hua said.

She said China has always respected the right to normal and legal flights.

"But such high-profile hyping (of the flights concerned) is abnormal, and the motivation questionable."

She also said that Huangyan Island is China's inherent territory, and Beijing will "take necessary measures to protect its sovereignty and justified rights and interests".

Hua said China does not want to see further provocation by the countries concerned and hopes they will show restraint.

The Defense Ministry on Monday also voiced objection to the flights, saying they were being staged under the guise of navigation and flight freedom, but they were actually pushing forward militarization in the South China Sea.

The Philippines claims Huangyan Island, which belongs to and is controlled by China.

The Japan Times reported on Saturday that six US military aircraft left Clark Air Base in the Philippines on Tuesday last week and conducted "air and maritime situational awareness flights" near Huangyan Island.

The aircraft remained in the Philippines after a recent exercise by the two countries that included island-taking scenarios that were apparently targeted at China.

The US Pacific Command said in a statement on Friday that six military planes flew last Tuesday through international airspace near Huangyan Island.

US warships have stepped up operations around Chinese islands in the South China Sea, including one in October and another in January.

Teng Jianqun, a researcher at the China Institute of International Studies, said: "The US military wants to use the Philippine bases to monitor and threaten Chinese islands, including Huangyan Island. This shows that the US is updating its military deployment in the South China Sea."

Tao Wenzhao, a researcher of US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the US hyping of the flights is "definitely related to the ruling by the arbitration body", which is expected within weeks.

During a Southeast Asian tour by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, which ended on Sunday, China agreed with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos that the South China Sea territorial dispute should not affect relations between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The countries also called on nations outside the region to play a constructive role in the area.
About 25 Chinese provinces recently held their annual civil service exams, but it came out afterward that the exam questions may have been leaked. Officials are now investigating.

A total of more than 4 million candidates nationwide sat for the exam, setting a record high for recent years.

Netizens from Jiangxi province disclosed that some people were selling answers for about 2000 yuan ($307) before the test started. Pictures of the tests were also posted online.

On April 24, the Human Resources and Social Security Department of Jiangxi province said on its official Weibo account that the department takes this information very seriously, and an investigation has already begun.

The department also published a phone number and e-mail address for people to call or write in with complaints or other information.

A candidate from eastern Anhui province disclosed on Weibo that test papers in his city of Chuzhou had been sealed before the test was administered. He hoped the investigation would be successful so that all the exam candidates would be on equal footing.

Liu Jianjun, an official from the Chuzhou Human Resource and Social Security Bureau of Anhui province, guessed that the test paper packages probably wore open during transportation, which would explain why some were not properly sealed. It is not possible that the test was leaked, he added.

An official with the State Administration of Civil Service said that concerned departments will intensify their efforts to fight against cheating in these exams. Cheating on national exams, including the examination for admission to the civil service, has been listed as a criminal offence in the newly amended Criminal Law of China, the official added.
Duan Xiangqing. (Photo/China Youth News)

Duan Xiangqing, born in 1986, spent several years as a civil servant in the Quality and Technology Supervision Bureau in a city in eastern China's Shandong province. In 2015, Duan gave up her "gold rice bowl" of a government job and came instead to Rizhao, a seaside city in Shandong. She started her own business and has achieved great success by selling fried melon seeds online. Now, she is a star WeChat shop owner.

On the topic of her resignation, Duan says, "I firmly believed in the great potential of e-commerce and I wanted to run my own business. My WeChat online shop made a good profit by selling fried melon seeds, which gave me a great deal of confidence. So I decided to resign and focus all my energy on my shop."

Duan's online shop, named "Miss Qing," has indeed achieved an excellent sales performance since it started one year ago. Duan herself has become famous for being a WeChat shop owner with sales revenue of 50 million yuan in just four month.

Duan sees her online shop as a new kind online business, which emphasizes a very personal, individual buying experience. Making a friend after each deal is Duan's goal.
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Carlton Hall, 29, 6200 block of Southeast Lake Circle Drive, Stuart; out-of-county warrant, Holmes County, violation of probation, DUI.

Nicholas Hunter, 30, West Palm Beach; possession of marijuana with intent to sell.

Todd Carbone, 53, 1100 block of Northeast Tuxedo Terrace, Jensen Beach; battery on a pregnant woman  domestic violence.

Sean Brewer, 22, 1700 block of Southeast Madison Street, Stuart; warrant for violation of probation, sale, manufacture, delivery or possession with intent to sell, manufacture or deliver dronabino within 1,000 feet of a park, possession of dronabino.

Keith Baker, 21, 1100 block of Southeast Asterwood Place, Stuart; uttering a forged instrument; forgery; resisting arrest without violence.

Kevin Arce, 24, 2200 block of Southeast Glover Street, Port St. Lucie; possession of marijuana over 20 grams.

David Fleming, 27, 1100 block of Southwest 31st Street, Palm City; possession of heroin; fugitive from justice, Ohio, possession of heroin, possession of drug abuse equipment.

Guillermo Reyes, 21, 300 block of Southeast Cortez Street, Stuart; possession of cocaine with intent to sell; possession of a concealed weapon or firearm.

Johnny Jackson, 20, 1200 block of Southeast Palm Beach Road, Stuart; possession of a firearm by a convicted felon; possession of cocaine with intent to sell; possession of ammunition.

Caleb Gierer, 23, Warrenton, Mo.; fugitive from justice, Missouri, theft, stealing, receiving stolen property and possession of a controlled substance.
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By Paul Ivice, Special to Treasure Coast Newspapers

Editor's Note: This story was changed to reflect the correct number of years a juvenile who kills must serve in prison if he or she is not sentenced to life in prison. It is at least 40 years.

---------------------

FORT PIERCE  Victor Brancaccio, the St. Lucie West man twice convicted of first-degree murder in the 1993 beating death of an 81-year-old widow, has been moved to the St. Lucie County Jail while he awaits a new sentencing hearing.

Now 39, Brancaccio had been at the Florida State Prison in Raiford for most of the past 22 years, serving two life sentences for the slaying of Mollie Mae Frazier when he was 16.

Frazier was taking an after-dinner walk when she chastised Brancaccio for singing along with a vulgar rap song.

Evidence presented at trial showed the Port St. Lucie High School dropout hid the woman's body and spray-painted and burned the corpse later in an effort to hide his actions and erase fingerprints.

A Florida Supreme Court ruling in March 2015 said those serving life sentences for crimes committed as juveniles should be resentenced under guidelines that went into effect last year.

Brancaccio's attorney, Richard Kibbey of Stuart, is seeking new sentencings for his client on both the first-degree murder and kidnapping convictions.

Two decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014 found that life sentences for juveniles violate Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Last year, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in four cases on whether those U.S. Supreme Court decisions should apply retroactively after lower courts were divided.

Brancaccio's previous request for a resentencing hearing, which was denied, had come before those U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

A Florida law passed in 2014 said a juvenile convicted of capital murder could be sentenced to life in prison after a hearing to determine whether such a sentence is appropriate. If a judge finds that a life sentence is not appropriate, the juvenile would be sentenced to at least 40 years. Also, juveniles convicted in such cases would be entitled to reviews after 25 years.

While Brancaccio was sentenced for first-degree murder to life with eligibility for parole after 25 years, the life sentence on his kidnapping conviction allows no parole.

Assistant State Attorney Ryan Butler, who handles capital post-conviction cases in the 19th Juduicial Circuit, said the state has agreed Brancaccio is eligible for a new sentencing hearing on the kidnaping conviction.

Circuit Judge Robert Belanger, who denied Kibbey's motion last fall to remove him from the case, has not yet scheduled that new sentencing hearing because the question of whether Brancaccio will also get a new sentencing hearing on the first-degree murder conviction has not been settled.

That will be determined by the Florida Supreme Court's ruling on a similar appeal in the case of Angelo Atwell from West Palm Beach.

Butler said the state high court's decision could be forthcoming any week now.

Meanwhile, Kibbey has filed a motion asking Belanger to appoint a forensic psychologist who would re-examine Brancaccio and his record both before the current life sentences were imposed and his behavior in prison since, which Kibbey described as "relatively clean."

Kibbey also wants Belanger to appoint investigators to assist the psychologist in obtaining medical and psychological records from Brancaccio's childhood.

Butler said he doesn't oppose those motions, but it will be up to the state's Justice Administration Commission to decide how much it is willing to pay for Brancaccio's defense.
Circuit Judge Dan Vaughn (background) addresses Chief Assistant State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl on Oct. 7, 2015 during the penalty phase for Eriese Tisdale at the St. Lucie County Courthouse in Fort Pierce. When court convenes Friday, Vaughn could be the first trial judge to sentence a defendant convicted of capital murder before the sentencing system was struck down in January and after a new law was enacted last month. (FILE PHOTO)

By Melissa E. Holsman of TCPalm

FORT PIERCE  When Circuit Judge Dan Vaughn convenes court Friday, the man who brutally gunned down St. Lucie County Sheriff's Sgt. Gary Morales during a 2013 traffic stop may learn if he will be executed for his crimes.

Or, maybe not.

Vaughn hasn't declared what he will do Friday, but he's expected to be the first trial judge to sentence a defendant convicted of capital murder before the sentencing system was struck down in January and after a new law was enacted last month. His actions likely will be watched statewide by courts, prosecutors and defense lawyers mired in capital murder trials when circumstances changed.

That's because a lot has changed since Vaughn in January put off sentencing Eriese Tisdale, 28, who faces life in prison or the death penalty  the punishment preferred 9 to 3 by a jury that convicted him of first-degree murder of a police officer during an October trial. The delay followed the U.S. Supreme Court opinion that found Florida's death penalty system to be unconstitutional.

Ruling 8-1 in the case of Timothy Hurst, who was convicted of the 1998 murder of a Pensacola restaurant manager, the Supreme Court found Florida gave too much power to judges to make the final decision to sentence someone to death. That decision shucked death penalty sentencing rules out the window  including ones guiding Tisdale's trial  temporarily halted executions and prompted legislators to overhaul the law.

One legal expert suggested Vaughn may not sentence Tisdale and instead order the state to conduct a do-over penalty phase using a new jury and the new rules.

Ambiguity aside, Gary Morales's extended family  a wife, two young daughters and dozens of local relatives  want the protracted prosecution to end, his brother Ken Morales said.

"The trial has been going on since October," he said. "We are just ready to get these court proceedings done and over with."

Old law, new rules

When Tisdale's jury voted 9-3 for execution, it satisfied a mandate that a majority of jurors agree to advise a death sentence. The new law requires at least 10 out of 12 jurors vote in favor of execution. And prosecutors must first spell out the reasons, or aggravating factors, why a death sentence should be imposed. It also requires the jury, during the initial guilt phase of a death penalty trial, to decide unanimously if there is at least one reason that justifies it.

That didn't happen during Tisdale's trial, but the jury's verdict  which found him guilty of four additional violent felonies  didn't require it.

Still, his lawyers have told Vaughn because the death penalty law changed during Tisdale's prosecution, the only remedy is to order he serve life in prison without parole.

Assistant Public Defender Stanley Glenn said via email he has no clue what Vaughn will do in court and he's getting no hints.

"I also have had zero input from the prosecution regarding how they intend to proceed," he added.

Chief Assistant State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl said he has no reason to believe Vaughn won't follow the jury's death penalty recommendation. And if the ruling turns out to be wrong per the old or new rules, he said it'll be sorted out during an appeal filed directly to the Florida Supreme Court.

"If the judge  sentences him to death, they are certainly not going to execute him before he has an opportunity to appeal that decision," Bakkedahl said. "That seems to be the most reasonable, logical way to approach it."

Ken Morales agreed.

"The punishment should fit the crime and he (Tisdale) killed my brother; he deserves the death penalty," he said. "But if he gets the death penalty, or it's life in prison because of this new thing that's going on, either way he's spending his life in prison and he's not getting out."

Legal options

A review of capital murder prosecutions shows Vaughn has few places to seek guidance on imposing Tisdale's sentence, a murder case in the trial pipeline when the state's death penalty sentencing system was struck down.

University of Florida law professor George "Bob" Dekle said Vaughn faces a dilemma with options.

"Either go ahead and sentence him (Tisdale) to death on the 9-3 recommendation or say (the U.S. Supreme Court) has (made a mess of) everything and we've got to sentence him to life," noted Dekle. "A third option is to say  we will have to have another penalty phase here, before another jury."

Dekle, a retired state prosecutor who saw to the conviction of serial killer Ted Bundy, said if he were Tisdale's judge, he'd order a new penalty phase be conducted before a new jury.

That's what the state asked Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Nushin G. Sayfie to do in January in an effort to finish the death penalty sentencing of Charles Johnson, which, like Tisdale's, was delayed.

In November, Johnson was convicted of first-degree murder and his jury too, voted 9-3 in favor of execution. Prosecutors filed papers in January asking Sayfie to hold off sentencing him until after the Legislature provided new sentencing rules. The case has been delayed since January and records show Johnson's next court date is May 5.

Retroactive

The state Supreme Court meanwhile, is deciding whether the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling and, with it Florida's new law, should apply retroactively to the nearly 390 death row inmates. Some legal experts say condemned inmates whose jury's voted less than 10-2 should have their sentences reduced to life in prison. Others counter they should all be granted new sentencing hearings, which could result in a new death sentence.

Justices heard oral arguments in February and a ruling is expected soon.

Regarding Tisdale, retired Circuit Judge O.H. Eaton Jr., of Sanford, a renowned death penalty expert, said the retroactivity issue should be resolved before any sentencings are held in death penalty trials. And he believes ordering a new penalty phase is premature.

"Why spend the time, energy and effort on something like that when it's all up in the air?" Eaton said.

Dekle suggested Vaughn has another option.

"You look at the defendant and say, 'You've got a choice: we proceed to sentencing right now as is, or we hold a new penalty phase, it's up to you'," he said. "That's an option."

More on Tisdale case

Eriese Tisdale

Sgt. Gary Morales

New death penalty law blurs sentencing for St. Lucie deputy-killer Tisdale

U.S. Supreme Courts ruling on Floridas death sentencing could delay punishment for St. Lucie cop killer

High court: Florida death penalty system is unconstitutional

Witnesses describe scene of St. Lucie County sergeant shooting

Tisdale's arrest history

St. Lucie prosecutors will seek death penalty against Tisdale in sheriff Sgt. Morales' death

Tisdale officially charged with first-degree murder of St. Lucie sheriff's Sgt. Morales

Tisdale's mother recalls son's demeanor before police say he killed deputy

Court documents reveal more details in slaying of St. Lucie sheriff's sergeant Morales

One year later: Shooting death of St. Lucie County sheriff's Sgt. Gary Morales

Video timeline of Sgt. Gary Morales slaying case

Murder suspect in St. Lucie County Sgt. Morales' death loses motion
A recent study conducted by Chinese scientists suggests that the origin of dogs can be traced to southern China, and that canine domestication started there around 33,000 years ago.

Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) recently proposed the idea in an article published in American academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Previous research done by Laura Shannon and other scholars from Cornell University indicated that dogs were first domesticated in Central Asia  a conclusion drawn from extensive DNA analysis. However, the research team from the CAS Kunming Institute of Zoology found Shannons conclusion questionable, as the studys definition of Central Asia, which includes Nepal and Mongolia, did not represent the typical geographical division of the region. They also failed to collect samples from southern China.

Wang Guodong, lead author of the new paper and a researcher at the institute, explained that the southern Chinese origin explanation has the smallest linkage disequilibrium. In addition, the theory of phylogenetic trees also supports that conclusion.

Phylogenetic trees are like a subjects evolutionary family tree; the most ancient species of dog is the root of the tree. In our research, canine samples from southeast Asia were all located at the bottom of the phylogenetic tree, Wang explained.

As for a more accurate, specific origin of domesticated dogs, Wang says further research is required. So far, two preliminary field studies have been conducted and over 1,000 samples collected from along the Yangtze and Pearl River valleys.

The humid climate in Chinas southern regions is unsuitable for fossil preservation. Therefore, archeological evidence is another obstacle faced by Wangs team. Nevertheless, few archeological studies support the European-origin theory, according to Wang.

The CAS team previously published a report in Cell Research, another scientific journal, suggesting that dogs were first domesticated about 33,000 years ago in southern East Asia before migrating across the globe. Wang believes the migratory path possibly follows either the maritime or terrestrial Silk Road.

Domestic dogs cannot travel alone, as their survival ability decreases after domestication. Therefore, they must have moved with humans, said Wang, adding that research on migration and the evolution of dogs can shed light on human studies as well.

From a hereditary perspective, an origin study on dogs can also advance the analysis of human diseases, as man and dog have been living together for a long time, Wang explained.

Breast cancer, a common disease in dogs, has a high rate of occurrence in humans as well, he added.
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By News Release

STUART

Free immunization clinic offered May 14

The Florida Department of Health in Martin County will host a free vaccination clinic from 9 a.m.-noon May 14 at 3441 S.E. Willoughby Blvd., Stuart. The Tdap vaccine, which provides protection against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis and is required for seventh grade entry, will be provided.

Vaccines to protect against meningitis and human papillomavirus will also be available. The HPV vaccine, recommended for adolescents, is provided in a series of three shots over six months and protects against cervical and throat cancers.

No appointment is needed. Vaccine supply is limited and will be provided on a first come, first served basis. A parent or legal guardian must be present for the child to receive a vaccination.

Florida statute requires students who are entering the seventh grade to show proof of the Tdap booster vaccination on the #680 form. If the student already received the Tdap booster, parents should deliver the form to the child's school before Aug. 15.

More information on immunizations is available at www.MartinCountyHealth.com.
Fire destroyed a Palm City home early Sunday. (MARTIN COUNTY FIRE DISTRICT)

By Laurie K. Blandford of TCPalm

MARTIN COUNTY  The cause of the Sunday morning house fire in Palm City remains under investigation, state officials said.

An unoccupied two-story waterfront house in the 600 block of Southwest Pine Tree Lane in the Rustic Hills neighborhood was destroyed by a fire at 6 a.m. Sunday, said Martin County Fire Rescue officials. Firefighters had the fire under control by 6:45 a.m.

No one was injured in the fire, said state spokesman Jon Moore.

"The house received a substantial amount of damage and is looking to be a near total loss, if not a complete total loss," Moore said.
One step forward, two back. That's how it seems to go in Fort Pierce.

It's an impression reinforced by Saturday night's shooting of Demarcus Semer, 21, by Fort Pierce police officers during a traffic stop. Depending on how it all shakes out, this tragic incident could undo much of the hard work that's been going on behind the scenes for the past two years in Lincoln Park.

As state Rep. Larry Lee Jr. noted Monday, "sometimes it's very discouraging. So many people are working so hard to change things and then something like this happens."

The little we know about the Saturday night incident is what a tight-lipped Sheriff Ken Mascara has revealed. We don't yet know the names or ethnicity of the Fort Pierce officers involved, nor have we heard their side of the story. How the community reacts to what happened, and whether this could turn into another "Black Lives Matter" cause celebre, will hinge on more details.

In the meantime, there are plenty of unanswered questions.

Impartial investigating agency?

The St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office was asked by Fort Pierce Police Chief Diane Hobley-Burney to handle the investigation. Yet, is there sufficient distance between the two agencies for the probe to be truly impartial?

Sheriff's deputies frequently patrol the same streets as Fort Pierce officers. They routinely work shoulder to shoulder on gang activity, weapons and drug cases.

While Hobley-Burney wisely chose to let someone else head up the investigation, perhaps she should have looked further afield. Many Florida law enforcement agencies have arrangements with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Perhaps that agency would have been a better choice.

It should also be noted that two of the three officer-involved shootings in the city since March of last year have been at the hands of sheriff's office personnel.

No dash cam?

According to Mascara at Monday's news conference, there is no video evidence of the traffic stop and its violent aftermath.

Local law enforcement agencies currently have very few cameras installed in their vehicles.

In other cities where officer-involved shootings have occurred, video has often made the difference between sweeping matters under the rug and being able to see more clearly what happened.

Area sheriffs and police chiefs recently spoke with Treasure Coast Newspapers' Editorial Board about how new technology might help. Most chiefs said the eventual use of body cameras is inevitable.

Automatic activation of such devices when an officer goes down might have given us more information in this incident. Area law enforcement leaders, it seems, are wary of spending too much on expensive equipment.

Calm before the storm?

So far, community leaders' pleas for calm in the wake of Semer's death have been heeded in Lincoln Park. That could quickly change once the results of the autopsy become known later this week.

To date, the Black Lives Matter movement and its ilk haven't shown their faces in Fort Pierce. That could change in a heartbeat. It's ironic that on Monday the city of Cleveland revealed it paid $6 million in a settlement with the family of 12-year-old Tamir Rice after the teen was shot dead by an officer.

Other cities have paid a high price for officer-involved deaths: Baltimore paid $6.4 million to the family of Freddie Gray, who died while in police custody; Chicago paid $4.95 million to the family of a man experiencing a mental health crisis who died after being shocked repeatedly with a stun gun; New York paid $5.9 million to the family of Eric Garner, who died after video of him being put in a chokehold became public.

There have been great efforts in Fort Pierce to stem the tide of violence and deaths.

More than 140 people  many of them Lincoln Park residents  are working in the trenches on a federal anti-gang strategy that would get to the root of the problem, according to Shaniek Maynard of the Round Table of St. Lucie County that is coordinating the strategy.

Separately, the Restoring the Village initiative is about to unveil details of a 16-block cleanup, repainting and landscaping project in June for a corridor in Lincoln Park often plagued by violence.

Yes, it does seem as if Fort Pierce can never shake that one step forward, two back mantra. We need to break the mold and move forward. Let's make it soon.
The Martin County Sheriff's Office SWAT team deploys its Lenco BearCat G3 military-style armored vehicle during a standoff in April in Stuart. (MARTIN COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE/CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

When a man barricaded himself in a Stuart condo earlier this month and threatened to shoot sheriff's deputies, Martin County's battle wagon rolled into action.

The sheriff's SWAT team deployed in its Lenco BearCat G3, a military-style armored vehicle that can stop a .50 caliber slug.

Ultimately no shots were fired and no one was hurt. Still, Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said the incident illustrates the value of the BearCat: It keeps his deputies safe  and maybe strikes fear into the heart of "bad guys."

Few doubt the usefulness of the BearCat  although Snyder's political opponents have raised questions about how he's paying for it.

Both Robert Pryor and Dennis Root, who are running against the incumbent Snyder this fall, have criticized Snyder's decision to lease the BearCat rather than buy it outright  and wonder if his office has stepped up civil asset forfeitures to foot the bill.

Forfeiture is the method law enforcement uses to seize cash and other assets from criminals, using some of the money to fight crime. Snyder said the entire cost of the BearCat is being paid by forfeiture funds. That included an initial down payment of more than $98,000, which came from federal forfeiture money via the Department of Justice's Equitable Sharing program.

The rest  more than $239,000, broken into 36 monthly payments of $6,649.31 that run through December 2017  comes from local forfeiture revenue, money generated by the Martin County Sheriff's Office itself.

Under Snyder, forfeitures have soared. According to data provided by his office, from fiscal year 2010 to 2012  before Snyder took office  the sheriff's office averaged just under $48,000 in net forfeiture revenue annually. That rose to just under $115,000 in fiscal year 2013, jumped again to more than $150,000 in 2014 and fell slightly to just over $141,000 in 2015.

In other words, forfeitures have nearly tripled under Snyder.

So one might think there would have been plenty of money to buy the BearCat outright. Indeed, Snyder said there was.

"We had the money at the time, but we made a business choice to lease it," he said. "It was a matter of pay me now or pay me later."

But the "pay me later" agreement obligated the county to remit more than $9,500 in interest over the three-year life of the lease. That, said Root, a former cop and Martin County deputy, makes no fiscal sense  unless the sheriff's office really didn't have the money to buy it outright and needed to depend on future forfeiture revenues to pay it off.

"That's a huge concern," Root said. "If the money is not in the account, and (county commissioners) approve expenditures that aren't there, it means we have to go out and earn it to pay the bill. The ultimate goal becomes funding the payment."

Pryor, a retired Martin County Sheriff's Office major who served as the office's law enforcement director, noted that Florida's forfeiture law specifically prohibits law enforcement agencies from buying anything "with the intent of paying for it with future forfeitures"  although allocating forfeiture funds isn't really part of the normal budget process.

Nationwide, the "buy it now, pay for it with forfeiture funds later" approach has been an issue. In its landmark 2014 "Stop and Seize" series on forfeiture, The Washington Post documented how D.C. police "have made plans for millions of dollars in anticipated proceeds from future civil seizures of cash and property"  in other words, they spent it before they had it. Many other agencies have done the same, despite guidelines that prohibit it.

I don't know if that's what happened in Martin County. I'll take Snyder's word that when he signed the lease agreement, his office really did have the money and could have bought the BearCat outright, but chose to lease it because they didn't want to empty the accounts.

Still, we do know that forfeitures have risen under Snyder. The key question is why?

Is it that Snyder's predecessor, Robert Crowder, didn't pursue forfeitures? Did Snyder simply see an opportunity to generate more revenue to help fight crime?

Everyone agrees the "bad guys" should be stripped of their ill-gotten gains. But civil libertarians will tell you the problem with forfeiture is that law enforcement needs more stuff to fight crime  so they might simply seize more stuff to pay for it.

After all, the pot of money would seem to be almost endless  and so, then, is the temptation.
International Space Station (ISS) crew member Scott Kelly of the U.S. reacts after landing near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on March 2. The Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft landed with Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly of NASA and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov of Roscosmos. Kelly and Kornienko are completing an International Space Station record year-long mission to collect valuable data on the effect of long duration weightlessness on the human body that will be used to formulate a human mission to Mars. (Krill Kudryavtsev/Pool photo via AP)

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By Robert Weiner, Lile Fu And Ben Lasky

Last week, China announced that it plans to land a rover on Mars by 2020. The Russian Federal Space Agency is working with the European Space Agency.

Every major power in the world has some form of interest in Mars. Like 1961, when Russia first rocketed Yuri Gagarin into orbit and the U.S. was afraid that Russians would beat us with the first actual man on the Moon, the race is on.

The U.S. should again set its priorities to one day be able to claim that it first stepped foot on the Red Planet. Unfortunately, we're not doing this.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, Americans dreamed of the possibilities in spaceflight. We were certain that in the not-too-distant future, an astronaut would land on Mars. However, 47 years after the moon landing, the U.S. is no closer to that goal.

The U.S. still has its eyes on Mars  at least that's what the government leads us to believe. Astronaut Scott Kelly was back on Earth after spending 340 days in space on March 2. His year in space was part of a NASA study involving both him and his twin brother, Mark, a former astronaut, on space travel and the human body in space versus on Earth. This was in preparation for a theoretical Mars mission.

The problem is, there has been no mission to Mars. For nearly 50 years and counting since we landed on the moon, there has been a manned mission-to-orbit circling 200 to 300 miles above us, and an unmanned mission to other planets.

Mark Kelly and Col. Terry Virts, a former Air Force pilot, attended a "breakfast from space" presentation in person on the mission to Mars at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 15. Mark's brother, Scott, also spoke at the event, live from the International Space Station.

There is a "lack of political will" to generate public support for funding, according to Kelly and Virts. We have spent countless trillions of dollars on failed wars with wasted results, but we have spent nowhere near what we need to accomplish manned science in other parts of our universe. This could have amazing givebacks in resources and knowledge.

"Space is just a blip on the political radar," writes Keith Cowing, a former NASA employee and the editor of NASA Watch. NASA's budget is less than half a percent of total federal spending, which hit $3.7 trillion in the 2015 budget year. NASA's budget has stayed at less than 1 percent of the federal budget for more than 30 years after reaching its peak of almost 4 percent under President Richard Nixon, when we stepped on the moon.

NASA advocates have tried. However, the Constellation human-spaceflight program was first removed from the 2010 NASA budget request, and has disappeared since, even though President Barack Obama predicted a U.S.-crewed orbital Mars mission by the mid-2030s, preceded by an asteroid mission by 2025. Liberals typically block space programs to better spend money "at home."

According to Virts, technology has a lot of promise in a journey to Mars. He also said that based on the progress between 1961 and 1969, from Earth orbit to manned lunar landing on Mars is not far-fetched. But it can be done only with a green light from Congress and the White House.

"We must think of (space activities) as part of a continuing process and not a series of separate leaps," Nixon stated on March 7, 1970.

Subsequent presidents put Mars exploration into their presidential calendars  and then ignored the funding.

The central question inspiring Earthbound humans is this: Is there, or was there ever, life elsewhere in the solar system? Earth is the only planet that possesses life that we know. But that does not pass our common-sense test. Whether life is possible on another planet attracts scientists and everyone else.

And then there is commercialization. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich ran for president and called for space colonization. Maybe that's not the best reason to go there.

Neil Armstrong famously declared that his landing was, "One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."

That joy of pure science and exploration is a great hope. However, since those first steps, the U.S. has barely crawled toward anywhere else.

Robert Weiner is a former spokesman for the Clinton White House and House Government Operations Committee. Lile Fu of Beijing, China, is policy analyst at Solutions for Change. Ben Lasky is senior policy analyst at Solutions for Change. They wrote this for the Orlando Sentinel.
The Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner has called for the government to help the refugeees, expressing his support for a bill that would have allowed 3000 unaccompanied refugee children to enter Britain and end detention centres for pregnant mothers. However, last night, the bill was rejected in the House of Commons, by a vote of 294 to 276.

Already an estimated 10,000 unaccompanied children have gone missing since entering Europe, out of a total of 26,000 who have entered. Additionally, 69 pregnant women were detained in 2015 alone.

Government ministers voting against the bill warned that it risked incentivising child trafficking. They also announced that the UK would take up to 3,000 refugees, mostly vulnerable children, from the Syria region by 2020.

Alongside supporting the failed bill, Zeichner praised the Cambridge people for their actions, saying that "Cambridge welcomes refugees. That was the message from the fantastic Cambridge Refugee Resettlement Campaign event. Cambridge people are coordinating offers of help from individuals and organisations across Cambridgeshire, and providing vital support and aid to refugees in the camps at Calais."

He is also involved with the Cambridge Refugee Resettlement Campaign which is coordinates people and organisations from across Cambridgeshire who wish to help refugees. This campaign aims to provide accommodation for refugees, and help support and integrate refugees once they arrive.
A BBC survey suggests that over two-thirds of UK students support the NUS no-platform policy. Of the 1001 students surveyed, 64% believe the NUS is right to maintain the policy. 54% of those surveyed believe the policy should be enforced against individuals who are considered intimidating.

The no-platforming policy has been in place since the 1970s. It was set up to prevent fascist and racist groups from using universities as a platform from which to spout offensive or discriminatory opinions. Groups such as the BNP and extremist Islamic groups are banned from speaking at British universities. Universities can also use the policy to take independent decisions on the appearance of individuals considered intimidating.

Last year, Germaine Greer was prevented from speaking at the Union, because of her controversial views on trans-women. More recently, Kings College London withdrew an invitation to Boris Johnson, after the Mayor of Londons remarks on Barack Obamas ancestry.

The survey is a confirmation of continued student support for no-platforming. The Vice-President of the NUS, Richard Brooks, appearing on a Radio Derbyshire programme, stated his pride in the policy. "Its all about making sure that students stay safe on campus and dont feel marginalised when they are debating. Some people have more equal rights than others and we want to make sure that marginalised groups get their voices heard."

According to Brooks, the policy is "democratically decided", having been voted on in NUS meetings. It is designed to create a safe space, which promotes healthy debate in a comfortable atmosphere.

However, non-platforming has caused controversy in the past. Last year, an NUS representative refused to share a platform with the prominent gay rights activist, Peter Tatchell. In response, Tatchell questioned the validity for her claims that he was racist and transphobic. He describes the policy as a means of "people making false, baseless allegations to try and discredit their opponents."

News of the BBC survey and the programme also prompted lively debate on Twitter. One student stated: "If we could beat racism and fascism with rational debate wed have done it by now." Others claimed it was a means of limiting free speech, "with no real positives." In Cambridge, opinions are equally divided. In the recent Union debate: 'This house believes in Political Debate, not Political Correctness, 49% voted in favour of the proposition, with 22% against. The results suggest Union members believe the extensive use of the NUS policy to be stifling debate, rather than improving it.
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According to a recent survey, 66.1 percent of Chinese migrant workers want to go back to their hometowns by the time they reach a certain age. Given that such a high ratio of migrant workers are reluctant to become urban residents, many people are curious about the reasons behind this preference.

Data from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) reveals the top five motives behind migrant workers returning home: growing older, being unable to take care of kids and aging parents while far away, lacking skills necessary for advancement, being unable to help farm work while far away, and being unfamiliar with cities and towns.

Not all migrant workers in big cities want to become urban residents, and the same goes for migrant workers in smaller counties, said Li Yang, Deputy President of CASS in an interview. Li said that a lot of migrant workers do not want to give up their rural residency status because it entitles them to contracted land, rural house sites and an allocation of collective earnings.

Chinese farmers worry about what benefits they will get if their statuses are changed. Thus, the key to persuading more farmers to change their status would be making farmers eligible for benefits as urban residents, said Li Guoxiang, a research fellow at CASS, in an interview with People's Daily.

Li Guoxiang believes that China should improve its social security system so that Chinese farmers will not have to rely on family members as their major source of financial support in the future. In addition, Li says migrant workers should have access to affordable housing programs and urban public services.

The Chinese government attaches great importance to the careful development of urbanization. Premier Li Keqiang pointed out that China must make progress in both urbanization and agricultural modernization, but the country has to balance development between urban and rural areas.

Premier Li also mentioned Chinas goal of granting urban residency to around 100 million people with rural household registration living in urban areas and other permanent urban residents, completing the rebuilding of both rundown areas and villages in cities involving about 100 million people, and enabling around 100 million rural residents to live in local towns and cities in the central and western regions.

This survey was included in Industrialization, Urbanization and Agricultural Modernization in China's Midwest: Situation and Countermeasures, a book recently published by CASS.
Stephen Hawking and billionaire Yuri Milner on Tuesday unveiled Breakthrough Starship, an ambitious US$100 million effort to send miniature spacecraft to another solar system, but the program might not be quite ready to fly.

It calls for a team of engineering and astrophysics experts to develop nanocrafts with sails propelled by a light beam that would allow the devices to zoom to the Alpha Centauri star system at 20 percent the speed of light.

The Alpha Centauri star system is 4.37 light years, or 25 trillion miles, from Earth. It would take 30,000 years to get there using current space travel technology. However, Breakthrough Starship would be able to scale up laser beams to a level that could propel a nanocraft to historic speeds that would allow it to complete the journey in only 20 years.

Hello, Neighbor

The limit that confronts us now is the great void between us and the stars, Hawking said at a press conference announcing the project, but now we can transcend it. With light beams, light sails and the lightest spacecraft ever built, we can launch a mission to Alpha Centauri within a generation.

Pete Worden, former director of the Ames Research Center at NASA, will lead the project. A team of experts on engineering, science and space exploration will advise its board, which includes Hawking, Milner and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg.

Avi Loeb, chair of the Harvard University Astronomy Department, will chair the group of advisors, which includes a stellar list of veteran astronauts, scientists and others. Among them are Mason Peck, former chief technologist at NASA; former astronaut Mae Jemison; and Lou Friedman, an author and engineer who cofounded the Planetary Society with Carl Sagan.

The ultimate cost of the plan would be in the billions of dollars, lining up with some of the most expensive space exploration projects ever developed.

The reason for targeting Alpha Centauri is evidence that a number of potentially Earth-like planets exist in the habitable zone of the three-star system.

A Dash of Cold Water

Based on current technology, we may be about 50 years away from pulling off a mission this ambitious, suggested Haym Benaroya, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Rutgers University.

There has been progress on many of the technologies, but some are still difficult from an engineering perspective  for example the laser system, he told TechNewsWorld.

Also, it would take many years to send the information the nanocraft might find back to Earth, Benaroya pointed out.

I think it may not be as fulfilling a space adventure as some would wish, he said.

The Nanocraft Concept

The idea of a nanocraft is based on Moores Law, which predicts steady progress in placing larger and more sophisticated devices on microelectronic components. The nanocraft would be gram-scale wafer sized chips, and they would include a number of sophisticated devices, such as cameras, photon thrusters, power supplies, navigation and communication equipment.

A lightsail measuring no more than a few atoms thick would rest on each nanocraft and be accelerated by an array of laser beams to thrust it toward the Alpha Centauri system.

The use of nanotechnology in space exploration is not entirely new.

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program selected a study on directed energy propulsion by Philip Lubin, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which later was approved for external funding, confirmed Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for NASAs Space Technology Mission Directorate.

The study examined directed energy propulsion for exploring other worlds by using space probes to explore deep space in a way that supplements the long-range remote sensing of current orbital telescopes.
Facebooks WhatsApp last week announced it would roll out end-to-end encryption for its users to better protect their privacy, but the move could make the service more attractive to spammers, too.

While encryption can safeguard information from data thieves, it also can block data protectors from detecting malicious activity on their networks.

WhatsApps encryption policy is a win for privacy advocates, but it will not stop the growth of spam on the platform and could make the problem worse, said Simeon Coney, chief strategy officer for AdaptiveMobile.

WhatsApp has always had limited spam control in place, he told TechNewsWorld, and encryption will make detecting spam and malicious links with malware that much more difficult.

Spam Magnet

Over the last three to four years, mobile carriers have made it harder for spammers to deliver their junk messages, Coney noted. Thats prodded them to look for greener pastures.

Weve seen spammers move from services like SMS, MMS and RCS to services like WhatsApp, he said.

Not only does it cost spammers less to spew their rubbish on WhatsApp, but its easier to find targets there.

WhatsApp is a very friendly service to spammers because it allows them to validate phone numbers to see if they have a WhatsApp account, Coney explained, so they can upload large number ranges to test who has a WhatsApp account and just send bulk messages to them.

Because end-to-end encryption prevents protection systems from seeing whats in a spam message, they cant guard against malicious activity like phishing, account hijacking, spam and malware.

Its simple economics, Coney said. As certain channels get closed off to these spammers, theyre finding other ways to reach their targets. They only make money if they get their messages through and they get a reasonable conversion rate.

Making Sense of Mossack Fonseca Data

If youre a journalist and someone drops 2.6 TB of hot data in your lap, where do you begin to make sense of it?

For the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the answer was Nuix.

Nuix provides services for turning large pots of data into searchable pools of information.

With its software, which the company donated to the ICIJ and the German newspaper Sddeutsche Zeitung, the investigative journalists were able to process, index and analyze the Panama Papers, 11.5 million documents taken from the Panama offices of Mossack Fonseca, an international law firm and a major player in the offshore asset industry.

Much of the data in the dump was scanned documents, which were turned into searchable information with Nuixs optical character recognition software. Other Nuix analytical tools helped identify and cross-reference Mossack Fonseca clients throughout the document cache.

1,500 Data Types

Nuixs search technology was developed in 2000 at the request of the Australian government. They had a huge cache of Lotus Notes emails, and they didnt have a way to tag them, format them and make them easily searchable, said Keith Lowry, Nuixs senior vice president of threat intelligence and a former chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Defense.

Over the years, we have been able to absorb a lot more types of information, he told TechNewsWorld. It has grown to the point where we can natively ingest over 1,500 different file types and flatten the data and make it presentable to whomever is analyzing the data.

Although 2.6 TB of data is immense by journalistic standards, its only a medium-sized data set compared to some Nuix has been enlisted to massage in its e-discovery and regulatory investigative work. On any given day, our software is sorting through petabytes of data, Lowry said.

Nuix gave the ICIJ and Sddeutsche Zeitung technical assistance in processing the data stolen from Mossack Fonseca, but no employees ever handled the data, the company said.

We didnt participate in the collection of the data, Lowry said. We just processed it for them.

iPhones Secure Enclave

Maybe the FBI just wanted to impress legislators of the urgency for action on the Going Dark issue or maybe it just wanted to thumb its nose at Apple, but last week it began demonstrating to lawmakers how it cracked the security on the iPhone 5c of San Bernardino, California, gunman Syed Rizwan Farook.

The first legislator on the agencys demo list was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who, with colleague Richard Burr, R-N.C., is drafting legislation to compel companies like Apple to extract data from their products or provide technical assistance to government authorities to extract the data when ordered to do so by a judge.

Feinstein and Burrs bill is a response to a recent tussle between the FBI and Apple. The FBI wanted Apple to write code that the agency could use to brute force the lock code on Farooks phone. Apple refused to do so, saying such code could be used to undermine the security of all iPhones.

Eventually the FBI found a way to access the data on the phone, but its believed the method wont work with newer model iPhones. Thats because Apple added another chip  called the Secure Enclave  to the latest models of its mobiles.

What it does is lock up all the encryption keys, said Matthew Green, a professor specializing in cryptography at Johns Hopkins University.

Even if you can hack the phone itself  which is what the FBI did  the encryption keys will still be locked up, he told TechNewsWorld.

Panic Room in a Phone

The secure enclave  where high security functions, including login, are handled  is a separate environment from the iPhone as a whole, noted Georgia Weidman, founder and CTO of Shevirah.

If someone, be it a security researcher, the FBI or a malicious attacker, discovers an exploitable vulnerability that allows them to attack the latest iOS release, they will need another, likely more sophisticated exploit to take that access to the next level to also exploit the secure enclave, she told TechNewsWorld.

Think of it like a panic room at a celebritys home, Weidman continued. There are walls, security guards, and all other manner of industry standards of home security on the house. A very skilled burglar may bypass them, but they will have to work even harder, basically starting again, to get into the panic room.

It was bad form for the FBI to show legislators how it compromised Farooks iPhone while keeping Apple in the dark about it, she added.

As security researchers, when we find security issues we practice something called responsible disclosure. We inform the vendor of the issue we found so it can be fixed, Weidman said.

By refusing to share the technique they used with Apple so it can be fixed, she continued, the FBI is moving into the territory of black hat hackers, or hackers for evil, keeping the vulnerability open so they can use it again as it suits them in other cases as they arise.

Breach Diary

April 3. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists publishes first article in series on the Panama Papers, a trove of 11 million files stolen in a data breach of Mossack Fonseca, an international law firm headquartered in Panama and a major player in the offshore industry, which is used by some of the worlds rich to hide assets and facilitate a number of unsavory and illegal activities.

April 4. Ponemon Institute releases a survey that finds 37 percent of businesses do not believe their third-party vendors would notify them of a data breach; 73 percent doubted that a fourth-party vendor would alert them of such a breach.

April 4. Security blogger Brian Krebs reports banking sources are telling him that for the second time in less than a year, fraudsters have compromised the Trump Hotel Collection payment card system.

April 4. Hackers post to the Internet personal information of nearly 50 million Turkish citizens, exposing them to possible identity theft and fraud.

April 5. KSN-TV in Wichita, Kansas, reports tax information of 1,357 employees at Hutchinson Community College is at risk after their W-2 data was emailed to an unauthorized third party.

April 6. Trend Micro reports that a data breach at the Philippines Commission on Elections has exposed on the Internet personal information, including passport and fingerprint data, of 55 million voters.

April 6. U.S. District Court Judge R. Gary Klausner approves a multimillion-dollar settlement of a lawsuit against Sony Pictures Entertainment that will give some 437,000 people identity theft protection from the time a data breach was discovered in 2014 through 2017. An exact figure for the settlement cant be determined yet because the deadline hasnt passed for workers to sign up for the protection services.

April 6. Whiting-Turner, a Baltimore construction company, files breach notification letters with California and Vermont stating that tax information of its employees and their children is at risk because of a security incident at a vendor hired to provide tax services for the builder.

April 7. The National Childbirth Trust, a charity in the UK, alerts 15,085 new and expectant parents that their email addresses, usernames and passwords have been compromised by a data breach.

April 7. U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins rejects a motion by health insurer Anthem to inspect the computers of former customers in connection with a lawsuit resulting from a data breach in February that compromised the records of as many as 80 million customers.

April 7. Einstein Healthcare Network in Pennsylvania alerts some 3,000 patients their personal information is at risk because a database at the providers website inadvertently was exposed to the Internet.

April 7. The Hill publishes a discussion draft of a bill by U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., to force companies to provide information or data to the government in an intelligible format when served with a court order.

Upcoming Security Events
While hobbyists, inventors and innovators alike have been experimenting and producing a variety of do-it-yourself projects, their world is expected to undergo a hard shift as DIY moves to the next level.

3D printing is the cornerstone of the coming shift, and its effect on our daily lives will be multiplied by several converging forces: the collaborative economy, the jobless economy and the age of personalization.

As these three very different economic forces bear down on DIYers and their tools  especially 3D printing and related tools  the market will shudder hard and eventually reboot. Heres how that will work.

Its the Economy, Stupid

Its the economy, stupid, Bill Clinton famously said in his first presidential campaign. Its true: Economic forces are fueling and forging the next level of DIY.

A hard and long worldwide recession helped create the collaborative economy. Some know it as the sharing economy, but sharing is just part of the overall collaborative economy.

Whats the difference? The sharing economy subset is about sharing or renting goods rather than buying them. Examples of that are ride-sharing company Uber and home-sharing company Airbnb. The overall collaborative economy encompasses the sharing economy plus other collaborative, peer-to-peer activities such as crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, and task-sharing, such as TaskRabbit and Instacart.

So, yes, technology made these companies possible, but it was the recession and its aftermath of uncertainty that made the new business models attractive. Its common for such services tosave users 25 percent or more over the total cost of ownership of traditional services.

Another recession likely would spur developments in the collaborative economy.

A similar dismal economic force afoot could add to both overall economic uncertainty and the rising rolls of the poverty-stricken: the new jobless economy. While its true that the U.S. has beenadding jobs steadily since the recession, it is also true that job growth is slowing as increased use of automation replaces human workers.

Eventually, job growth could stall and fall in the wake of mass automation. Machine learning and eventually artificial intelligence would see a dramatic erosion of even more jobs.

Already,an algorithm is serving as a board director. No job is safe from automation  hence the term jobless economy.

The Economic DIY Big Bang

As more people have trouble finding work that pays enough to survive on now, many of their needs remain unmet. Further, government has yet to address what comes next: what to do in the face of mass unemployment brought about by a jobless, fully automated economy.

There would be a lag before government could reform the economic structure to meet basic human needs, most likely through the establishment of auniversal paycheck. Meanwhile, more people would struggle and more needs, even the basics, could go unmet.

The next level of DIY likely will take the form of meeting the new market demand for essentials.

The biggest impact will come when digital DIY is allowed or pushed to move down the pyramid of needs, from gadgets for first-world problems to agriculture and mass customization of low-tech objects that everybody already needs and use, said Marco Fioretti, leader of Work Package 8: dissemination, future road map and sustainability atDigital Do It Yourself. He spoke on his own and not in his capacity at DiDIY.

The DiDIY Project is a European initiative partially funded by the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and consisting ofseven partners, all European universities and research institutions.

Fioretti has spent his career in Silicon Valley and Italy and is both an engineer and a tech writer.

Hence, well see the expansion of DIY to include the production of goods and parts for everyday needs.

From Virtual Store to Personal Factory

DIY 3D printing is part of a growing trend towards the personal factory, saidLykle Schepers, co-owner of Zesty Technology.

This is shown not only in 3D printing, but also in the proliferation of small CNC machines, or computer-controlled machining tools, desktop laser cutters, and there are now even small injection-molding machines. The 3D printer fits perfectly into this trend, he told TechNewsWorld.

Schepers has his own personal factory at home. Previous to the startup, he was an engineer designer and worked in the CAD sales department at IBM. Hes been designing and modeling all his life, he said. 3D printing is just a natural extension of his skills.

I use my printer to print shapes that I use as molds for aluminum casting I do in the backyard. I use the aluminum parts for a custom bike I am building, he said.

Thats the gist of a personal factory  home manufacturing tools that enable you to create and produce whatever you desire or need. Necessity is the mother of invention, so invention will spring forth from areas that are suffering the most.

The most relevant applications of 3D printing and other digital DIY in general may very well come not from Silicon Valley, but from places in dire straits, like Greece, Fioretti told TechNewsWorld.

Where Personal Factories Fit

Personal factories will exist for reasons of survival and artistic expressions, and they might become income generators and micro or small businesses.

Digital DIY does not necessarily create more economic activity  not of the kind that increases GDP at least  but for people who live paycheck to paycheck or off their pensions, it can be a big help, Fioretti said.

In other words, digital DIY can increase resiliency, both at the personal and community level, from DIY Internet access network in rural areas to increasing local food production through hydroponics, crop and cattle monitoring, and other things such as telemedicine, etc., he added.

Social makerspaces  that is, places that 3D print, CNC mill, etc., on-demand  would also create service jobs that cannot be outsourced and are cool, Fioretti said. They would give youngsters both help to stay in the local area and not migrate to find a job, and skills they may reuse later on in other jobs.

From Personal Factory to Community Factory

Given the economic forces at work here, personal factories also may be out of reach for the people who need them most.

To make sure that it is accessible to everyone, even and especially senior citizens, disabled people, working single mothers with children  who for a lot of valid reasons could never afford to spend time in a fab lab or could never realistically do it because they dont have the right skills, nor can they realistically acquire them  makerspaces and fab labs instead should help these people too and make things as needed for the community, Fioretti said.

The shift from DIY as we know it to creating things to help neighbors, family and friends is what he called digitally do it for others.

A 3D printer in every home would be a terrible waste of resources! But an on-demand making space on every block that everybody could use to make copies of objects, much like we already do today at any copy shop,  would be a game-changer, Fioretti said.

The Age of Personalization

However, DIYs next level will be not just about survival in a jobless economy or another recession, because something else is afoot. The third economic force affecting DIY is the age of personalization, wherein consumers prefer unique items over mass-produced, identical products. The trend is much of the reason for success in the DIY space for artisans.

Even wealthy patrons areshunning logos and brand names on merchandise, in part because they dont wish to appear gauche when so many are struggling financially, but also because they too want to express individuality rather than conformity.

Commercial companies are trying to capitalize on the trend by allowing customers to add their personal touches to otherwise mass-produced goods, such asNike has done with its NIKEiD line of products.

However, commercial interests will find it much tougher to compete with personal factories.

Outsourcing too is slated for a tough challenge ahead.

There are new specialty 3D printing filaments that enable printing metal at home and also magnetic, UV-sensitive, temperature-sensitive, color-changing, flexible and even electrically conductive filaments, said Nathan Ostrout, quality control engineer atM3D.

Imagine the potential for those DIY robotics individuals who can now print simple circuitry with conductive filaments. With this wide range of filaments available at affordable prices, were going to see a lot of new innovation in personal workshops without having to waste precious time outsourcing parts to manufacturing companies, he told TechNewsWorld.

As a result, DIYers soon may profit as much in the brick-and-mortar space as in virtual marketplaces.

3D printing is going to get faster, cheaper, will increase the size of the output and be able to print in full color with various materials, said Tim Lynch, CEO atPsychsoftpc.

This will lead to a much more diverse use for 3D printing. Products will be customizable and made on demand. There will be shops or mall carts springing up offering individualized, on-demand, highly customized 3D printed items, he told TechNewsWorld.

The next level for DIY is distributed manufacturing at scale and the birth of an entirely new market force. Indeed, it already looks to be a hard reboot of the economy.
Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May are hard at work filming a new motoring show for Amazon. The program, which doesn't yet have a name, isn't the only project the trio is working on.

Along with Andy Wilman, the Top Gear producer that left the series to work with Clarkson, Hammond and May at Amazon, they've been quietly working on a project called DriveTribe since December.

The idea behind DriveTribe is to create a one-stop shop for automotive enthusiasts. Company representatives recently told The Verge that they envision DriveTribe being what Twitch is for video games or what TripAdvisor is to those who travel. Or in other words, they want to become the single, massive online destination for motoring enthusiasts.

DriveTribe is initially being funded by Clarkson, Hammond, May and Wilman through a Series A round. Funding amounts weren't disclosed although CEO Ernesto Schmitt told the publication that it was on par with what you'd expect from a typical Series A (likely in the millions of dollars).

The format of the community will mirror the destination's overall theme, offering up "tribes" that'll be led by individual content creators. Each of the three presenters will have their own tribe but you can also expect several additional tribes to emerge.

Tribes sound a lot like today's individual enthusiast sites. For example, there will almost certainly be tribes for Camaro fans as well as those who prefer Mustangs. Other potential tribes could include those for turbo, supercharger and naturally aspirated enthusiasts. Jeep lovers could have their own tribe, as could individuals that prefer Italian exotics. The possibilities truly are limitless.

Trying to bring together so many niche factions seems like an impossibly daunting task (there's a reason it hasn't happened yet) but if anyone can do it, it's the former Top Gear crew - a trio that's admired by motoring enthusiasts from all walks of life.

The Verge says DriveTribe already has around 20 employees with plans to expand to around 60 by the end of the year, many of which are working to build the site's backend. In addition to the three presenters, DriveTribe aims to hire up to 30 full-time staffers. Also key to its success will be its ability to attract bloggers, writers and videographers which DriveTribe would like to have create content for their service rather than Facebook or YouTube.

DriveTribe is expected to launch this fall.
Sarepta muscle wasting drug, eteplirsen, is subject for approval by an advisory panel after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reviewed the drug's effectiveness.

Sarepta Therapeutics manufactures the eteplirsen drug, which has yet to be approved by the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee. After its review on April 21, the FDA asked the panelists to answer a series of voting questions which are mainly focused on the drug's effectivity.

The voting questions aim to guide the panel in giving its recommendations based on significant evidence of eteplirsen's effectivity on trial data.

On April 22, Sarepta's shares went down to 44 percent just when the FDA released the voting questions for the advisory panel's meeting on April 25.

The advisory panel will meet to include the FDA's review on Sarepta's eteplirsen drug. The meeting will also take into consideration public commentary and Sarepta's drug analysis. The public commentary will allot two hours and 30 minutes for doctors, patients and drug advocates.

The FDA's head of pharmaceutical division will be attending the meeting on Monday and is expected to thoroughly scrutinize Sarepta's drug vis-a-vis the disease.

Sarepta is pushing for the approval of eteplirsen in treating DMD or Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Patients of this disease typically die at the age of 30.

DMD is a disease caused by defective dystrophin, or the protein present in the muscles. The genetically passed disease commonly occurs in 1 out of 3,600 male infants.

There is much pressure on the FDA to approve the drug because there is no current FDA-approved treatment for DMD, and steroidal drugs could slow the loss of muscle strength among DMD patients.

The effects of steroidal medicines such as albuterol, amino acids, creatine, fish oil, and others that are said to help in muscle treatment have not yet been proven.

A drug previously developed by BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. for the disease was dismissed last January.

Photo : The U.S. Army | Flickr

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North Korea lauded on April 24 the great success of a submarine-launched ballistic missile test it deployed under the watch of its lead Kim Jong-un, touted as another step toward powerful nuclear attack.

This launch is the most recent in the countrys show of its military ability, beginning in January this year with its fourth nuclear test and involving a long-range rocket launch in May. More than demonstrating North Korean might, the tests can also help boost Kims position in the run-up to a May ruling party congress, according to analysts.

The successful test-fire would help remarkably bolster the underwater operational capability of the KPA navy, [Kim] said, adding that it is now capable of hitting the heads of the South Korean puppet forces and the U.S. imperialists any time as it pleases, Reuters quoted KCNA, the countrys official news agency.

With an undisclosed place and date, the launch was made from the North Korean east coast submarine on April 23, flying for around 18 miles, according to an official from the South Korean Defense Military.

KCNA added that behind the latest fired missile was a solid fuel engine, which could signify a notable advance in their technology.

Amid greater tension in the region, new U.N. sanctions, and a slighted ally in the form of China, North Korean will reportedly conduct another nuclear test.

The U.S. Strategic Command said that based on its assessment, a North Korean submarine missile was launched from the Sea of Japan, but dismissed it as a non-threat to North America. American military forces remain vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and fully commit to working with Korean and Japanese allies for security, its statement said.

In line with the missile launch, the U.S. State Department announced it was limiting the travel of North Korean foreign minister Ri Su Yong and his team to U.N. functions in New York, where they will attend a sustainable development meeting. Launches of that kind were emphasized as a clear violation of multiple U.N. resolutions.

The U.N. Security Council strongly condemned the firing and called on North Korea to half all actions related to its ballistic missile project.

Said to be a preparation for an invasion of their nation and a show of anger over harsher global sanctions, North Korea also recently sent missiles and artillery shells into sea despite ongoing yearly military drills between the U.S. and South Korea.

The forthcoming ruling Workers Party congress, on the other hand, is the first since 1980. Military achievements will potentially be showcased to further establish Kims hold on power while overshadowing a lack of economic accomplishments.

North Koreas repeated nuclear tests are feared to trigger the eruption of Mount Paektu, its highest peak and an active volcano, given its close proximity to the detonation site, according to South Korean experts.

Photo: La Real Noticia | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Originally, wristbands were made as fashion accessories for athletes but now they have been developed into trendy wearable devices that can track chemical exposure.

Researchers from the Oregon State University have developed a silicone wristband that could track a person's exposure to chemicals. Traces of chemicals would be analyzed although the researchers could only detect the presence of chemicals but not the amount present.

Headed by Kim Anderson, an environmental chemist, the researchers provided 92 preschoolers with the colorful silicone wristbands. After a week of continuous use, the parents returned the silicone bands to the researchers.

The researchers analyzed the wristbands to find out whether the children have been exposed to harmful chemical retardants. Surprisingly, they found that the children had been exposed to polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), which are no longer manufactured in the United States, as well as organophosphate flame retardants.

The Trendy Silicone Wearables

The lightweight trendy silicone wristbands used to track chemical exposure are a better option as compared with any bulky machine. The silicone wristbands would only be worn for a specific time - days, weeks or months - and then submitted for chemical analysis.

The silicone wristband absorbs the organic chemicals from the person's surroundings and traps them in the silicone polymer matrix, which works just like the human skin. The silicon polymers imitate the biological polymers of human cell membranes because they have a long chain-like structure with spaces similar to the size of human pores, which are about 1 nanomillimeter.

The wristband should be worn all throughout the tracking period even if the wearer needs to take a shower, sleep, swim, jog, work, or cook. It should never be taken off the wrist until submitted for analysis.

Using solvents and thermal desorption methods, the chemicals absorbed by the wristband will be extracted.

Chemical Analysis

Anderson's team developed an analytical method to identify the chemicals present in the silicone wristband, particularly the gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) method.

The GC/MS could screen 1,400 organic chemicals on the wristbands, which include pesticides, fragrances, bisphenol A, nonylphenol, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), phthalates, and polychlorinated biphenyls.

The wristbands are currently promoted by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to encourage more volunteers to sign up for the test.

The team is currently working on developing quantitative methods in analyzing chemical exposure on the silicone wristbands.

The study is published online via the journal Environmental Research, May issue.

Photo: David Lofink | Flickr

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Drinking alcohol may change the way you look but a newly launched alcoholic drink claims to help prevent your skin from getting wrinkles and help you stay young as you drink.

Anti-aGin, launched in the UK by Warner Leisure Hotels, claims to make you look younger because it comes with collagen and other "age-defying" botanicals.

"The spirit has been distilled with pure collagen as well as a mix of anti-aging botanicals to help people look younger while having fun," the Warner Leisure Hotels blog described the product. "The ingredients were specifically chosen due to their revitalizing qualities, including healing sun damage, being rich in minerals, inhibiting scar formation and to help smooth cellulite."

Collagen is considered as an essential protein that protects the health and appearance of the skin. The beauty industry promotes collagen products for their anti-aging properties because the protein is known as a building block for elasticity and is capable of reducing the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines on the skin.

People tend to lose collagen in their skin as they get older so some have been turning to ingestible collagen in a bid to retain their youthful appearance.

In Japan, for instance, people go to so-called beauty restaurants that serve food with chunks of collagen to look young.

Although there are collagen products such as beauty creams and serums that are applied on the skin, the protein's molecules are too large to be easily absorbed by the skin and this makes ingestible collagen the best option for increasing the body's collagen count.

Infusing food and drinks with collagen has become the latest craze but Anti-aGin's claims have raised eyebrows because when it comes to fighting aging, dermatologists have long advised against too much alcohol intake.

Some scientists are also skeptical about the anti-aging benefits of eating collagen, claiming that this has no discernible benefits.

In her book Tabemono Joho Uso Honto (Truth and Falsehood of Food Information), nutrition scientist Kuniko Takahashi from the Gunma University in Japan said that eating collagen to prevent aging is no better than consuming other protein-rich food.

"Good protein contains sufficient amounts of all kinds of essential amino acids, and most animal protein falls into this category," Takahashi wrote. "Collagen is no better than average as a protein."

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Xi: East Chinas Hefei is a Hub for Talent and a Place for Innovation

Chinese President Xi Jinping on April 26, 2016, visited the Institute of Advanced Technology in University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, east Chinas Anhui province, where he was introduced to all the innovative technologies.

President Xi communicated with staff from research centers and companies in sectors ranging from intelligent voice, robots, equipment manufacturing industry, new materials, biomedicine, as well as smart energy.

In the center for quantum communication between Beijing and Shanghai, President Xi listened to the introduction, and fully confirmed the work as very promising and very important.

Hefei is a hub for talent, Xi said, and is also a place for innovation. I wish you work harder and make advancement, and wish everyone happy innovating!
Windows 10 Mobile users can now find and download the Instagram Beta app from the Windows Store even without prior knowledge of its URL.

In the past, users could only install the app only after knowing the URL address and then allowing the browser on their Windows Phone device to take them to the official page in the Windows Store.

That hassle can now be forgotten, as Instagram Beta page can now be easily discovered in the Windows Store, whether or not the users know what the URL is.

With Instagram Beta for Windows 10 Mobile, users can enjoy a number of newly added features. These include capturing, editing and posting videos; browsing posts and searching for new accounts that they can follow using Explore; and sending photos, videos and messages to friends through the Instagram Direct feature.

"See the world through somebody else's eyes by following not only the people you know, but inspirational Instagrammers, photographers, athletes, celebrities and fashion icons," states the app's description at the Windows Store. "Every time you open Instagram, you'll see new photos and videos from your closest friends, plus breathtaking moments shared by creative people across the globe."

Back in March, we reported on how Instagram Beta first rolled out to Windows 10 Mobile devices. Early users faced some issues that went with the app, which made the move to place it on a beta testing phase a sensible way to resolve future issues. Some of the issues that the users complained about include the inability to log in to the app using their Facebook accounts and the inability to use the "share to" function.

As a result, Instagram promised not only to resolve the issues but also to offer new features that will cater to users who want to show off their creative side. According to the company, the app will have 10 creative tools that will allow users to modify shadows, highlights and perspective of images, as well as manipulate the image's brightness, contrast and saturation.

The Instagram Beta app for Windows 10 Mobile has an approximate size of 50.93 MB and currently supports more than 20 languages. These include English, Italian, Spanish, French and Chinese.

Instagram now has more than 400 million users.

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NASA successfully flew 22 drones during a simultaneous testing at FAA test sites across the country.

The demonstration, which is the first and largest ever launched, is meant to assess NASA's Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) research platform used in rural operations.

"After so much preparation and practice, it was very rewarding to see all test sites have success with weather, platforms and connectivity," said Director of Operations at NUAIR Tony Basile and manager at New York test site."

The three-hour test involved a total of 24 drones, of which 22 were flying simultaneously at one point. NASA's UTM research platform checked for conflicts during the flight, gave approval or rejections to flight plans and delivered notifications on constraints to the users. Likewise, engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center were tasked with operations and system load monitoring as well as qualitative feedback gathering in order to identify capability gaps to further refine the UTM research.

The test also required hours of coordination and logistics to become successful. Weather conditions, such as strong winds and rain forecasts, also became a challenge since drones are not designed to fly in rain or high winds.

Additionally, NASA Ames launched dozens of virtual aircraft within the same airspace, allowing an interesting mix of live flights and virtual flights that can provide more insight to future demonstrations.

"We enjoyed working with the NASA UTM team to explore UAS air traffic management concepts through the UTM research platform," said Richard C. Kelley, chief engineer at the Nevada Advance Autonomous Systems Innovation Center.

Kelley also lauded how the software's performance provided much-needed data and generated open questions that address creating a safe integration of unmanned aircraft into the National Airspace System.

UTM research is still at a nascent stage. The recent testing involved its Technical Capability on the first level, which addressed UAS operations within line-of-site in the rural areas. This includes potentially using the operations for fire fighting, agriculture and power line monitoring.

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A lawsuit alleges that customers have to pay money if they cancel a T-Mobile no contract plan.

T-Mobile has attracted many customers with its unlimited streaming features such as Music Freedom and Binge On. However, not all T-Mobile customers are happy with the carrier's policies.

Moshe Farhi, a T-Mobile customer, has filed a lawsuit on April 15 and is seeking a class-action status. The plaintiff alleges that the company's no-contract plans are deceptive.

The carrier advertises that its plans do not have any hidden fees; however, the lawsuit says that there is an early termination charge.

According to the lawsuit, customers purchasing mobile phones and no-contract plans via T-Mobile get into two separate agreements: one for the phone and the other for a service plan. If a customer cancels a service plan agreement, T-Mobile wants the customers to pay the balance of the full price of the handset they purchased along with the service plan.

Farhi claims that T-Mobile did not make this fact clear to him when he purchased four handsets and signed for a monthly service plan from the carrier in June 2015. Farhi says that the cost of all the four phones was $2,600, which he had agreed to pay via 24 monthly installments.

In October 2015, the customer canceled the service plan and he was presented with a $2,270 bill as the balance amount for the four handsets.

"When T-Mobile attempts to recover the entire accelerated amount, it knows it has no right to seek this amount. Thus, T-Mobile has a practice of illegally accelerating contracts and attempting to collect illegal charges from consumers that are not owed," the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit alleges that the carrier has violated Florida consumer-collection laws and the state's deceptive and unfair trade act by demanding the entire payment of the devices before the due date. Farhi is calling upon other T-Mobile customers in the state who have or are facing the same problem with the carrier.

According to the lawsuit, Farhi is still paying the monthly installments for the four devices purchased in June 2015.

T-Mobile has filed a motion highlighting at the fine prints of the device agreement fine print, which clearly states that loans for handsets will be in default if customers do not keep up with the service plan with the carrier.

This is not the first time that T-Mobile has come under the scanner for its ads. In December 2015, Eric Schneider - the Attorney General of New York - also started looking at T-Mobile's advertisements regarding no-contract system after receiving complaints from a customer advocacy group.

Photo: Mike Mozart | Flickr

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QHD was made for VR.

Under normal applications on a normal-use smartphone, QHD is overkill.

But if a smartphone was also to serve as the display to a mobile VR headset, then VR requires no less than QHD.

In the past, Huawei's CEO of Consumer Business Group Richard Yu espoused the same belief. He didn't believe putting a QHD display on a smartphone made any sense.

Not only can we not distinguish between the resolutions of a typical HD (1,080 x 1,920) display versus a QHD (1,440 x 2,560) screen with our own eyeballs, but battery life would suffer as a result on our smartphones, too.

Yu held that opinion almost two years ago, but that was before the release of Facebook's Oculus Rift and HTC's Vive, and the mass distribution of Samsung's Gear VR and Google Cardboard headsets around the world.

Now, Yu is saying QHD on a smartphone makes both sense and cents.

"Last year I would certainly not buy a 2K device as the power consumption was high and the difference to my eyes non-existent. But now I have changed my mind and my next phone will be 2K as I like VR!" Yu said.

That being said, it would be safe to assume that sometime in the future Huawei will indeed manufacture a device equipped with a QHD display, if not for virtual reality alone. If Yu likes virtual reality, then Huawei's next flagship will certainly be packing a QHD screen.

Beyond his exclamations, however, Huawei's CEO revealed no further information regarding when a QHD Huawei device is coming, or what device it will be.

What we do know right now, at least, is that there are no standalone Huawei devices that pack a QHD screen. They all top out at a 1,080 x 1,920 resolution. The Huawei-built Nexus 6P for Google does, however, ship with a QHD 1,440 x 2,560 resolution display.

Unfortunately, neither Huawei nor Google have shipped a VR-ready headset to pair with the device that would allow for a VR-like experience just like Samsung's Gear VR (which works with its latest lineup of flagship smartphones).

The good news though is that Huawei did say it is planning on creating a VR headset of its own. Huawei VR is going to be in the style of Samsung's Gear VR, where Huawei would require the use of its own smartphones.

Photo : Karlis Dambrans | Flickr

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Google is working to get Android apps on Chrome OS, which means users may soon be able to run them on Chromebook.

The latest discovery comes courtesy of a Reddit user, who spotted a Chrome OS setting that said "Enable Android Apps to run on your Chromebook." The Redditor says that the feature appeared in version 51 of Chrome OS, which is currently in the Developer Channel.

Enabling this setting allowed users to open some Google Play Store apps along with a tutorial on how to get started. The option quickly disappeared, but reports suggest that the source code of Chrome OS version 51 hints that the option may be available for Chromebooks sooner than later.

Another Redditor spotted a user-facing dialog box, which describes the feature.

"Choose from over a million apps and Games on Google Play to install and use on your Chromebook," the dialog box states.

In 2015, Google released the App Runtime for Chrome (ARC) tool, which helps developers to port Android apps to Chrome OS.

The ARC tool includes a basic version of Play Services, which allows limited features such as Google sign-in, Cloud Messaging and more.

Full access to the Google Play Store means that Chrome OS will have access to millions of apps. However, this means that the company will have to develop a bigger and better ARC module or have to offer Play Services built into Chrome.

Google's move should be welcomed by Chrome OS users throughout the world as they will have access to a much bigger app store. Even though Google is planning to get Android apps to Chrome OS, Google announced in 2015 that the two operating systems will still remain as standalone.

Microsoft is said to be working to merge its desktop and mobile platforms, but Apple's CEO Tim Cook, said that the company has no plans to merge OS X and iOS.

Google's annual developer's conference called Google I/O starts mid-May. Normally, Google shares a lot of software related information during the conference.

Until now, Google has not revealed any details about Android apps for Chrome OS. It remains to be seen if Google will release more information about new features of Chrome OS and its version 51 during the conference.

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Plastic surgeons have joined a growing trend of advertising their craft in reality show style.

They are turning to Snapchat, an app launched in 2011 for photo-sharing and video-messaging with snaps lasting only for a few seconds before they disappear from the screen. They can be viewed within a 24-hour period but screenshots of snaps can be taken and saved in picture form.

A Tale Of Two Surgeons

Snapchat is becoming a popular marketing tool in plastic surgery where photos and videos of surgical procedures can be shared. For doctors Matthew Schulman and Michael Salzhauer, the app forms part of a larger social media strategy and the approach has proven to be working for their businesses and for hypercritical patients.

Dr Schulman, a plastic surgeon practicing in New York City, started using Snapchat for his profession about a year ago, reported FoxNews. He works on about 35 to 40 surgeries per month. It indeed can be a stressful job working on people's bodies every day and making sure they are happy after. There has got to be a fun way of doing it and for Dr. Schulman, Snapchat is thay way.

"I was always looking for a way to broadcast my surgeries and get it out there, and interact with patients and future patients," Dr. Schulman told FoxNews.com. He said he now has several hundred thousand followers and about 450,000 views daily. He added that about 80 to 85 percent of the patients who visit him for consultation are active Snapchat users.

One such patient is Jessica Wilson who made a final decision to go under the knife after watching Dr. Schulman's Snapchat. She told FoxNews that the plastic surgeon's Snapchat is not just entertaining but educational from a medical standpoint for people planning to try plastic surgery for either aesthetic or medical purposes.

Dr. Schulman traditionally works on breast and body surgeries and non-surgical procedures such as Botox fillers, chemical peels and facials. 90 percent of his patients allow him to post snaps of their surgeries on Snapchat and are made to sign a consent as to how he may use their surgery footages, including "before" and "after" photos.

Business Insider reported on another plastic surgeon, Dr. Michael Salzhauer, whose name is synonymous with the Brazilian butt lift or BBL. More popularly known as Dr. Miami, he tucks bellies and pops bottoms live in an operating room filled with hip hop soundtrack and a funny supporting cast of nurses and assistants, but obviously assuming the starring role in his own Snapchat show.

Dr. Miami told VICE that his Snapchat broadcasts have given him the most fun since medical school.

"The social media allows me to express my creativity, to reach out to patients, to connect to them on a human level, and not so much the buttoned-up, white-coat, I'm the doctor sort of thing," he confessed.

Live plastic surgery may not be for every plastic surgeon because it does take some effort and talent. But for doctors Schulman and Salzhauer, Snapchat is a fun way of connecting with their patients and luring potential patients while becoming celebrities in their own right.

Photo: Tomas Obsivac | Flickr

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All hail the secretaries, receptionists, personal assistants and others who work in the corporate trenches at companies all over the world.

Wednesday, April 27 is Administrative Professionals Day, which is not just an unofficial holiday in the United States, but also a holiday celebrated across the world (although it doesn't often happen on the same day).

The holiday got its start in World War II with the founding of the National Secretaries Association, which recognized the importance of administrative workers. The first National Secretaries Week was held in 1952 with June 4 designated as National Secretaries Day. In 1955, the holiday was moved to the last week of April, and eventually got a name change.

Television has given viewers a lot of administrative professionals to admire, laugh at and look up to. We picked five of the best from television series that are on now to honor the holiday in the way it deserves.

Kara Zor-El (Supergirl)

Supergirl isn't just a superhero, she's also an administrative assistant to Cat Grant, a boss who is certainly not easy to get along with. Kara puts up with a lot of "Go get this" and "Go get that," while being called Kira, and she does it all with a smile even when struggling with multiple cups of coffee. Kara's job is not an easy one, but she manages a good balance between her work at Catco and keeping National City safe.

Pam Poovey (Archer)

Probably the best H.R. director in the history of H.R. directors, Pam Poovey keeps her spy co-workers in line by not only learning their secrets, but exposing them on her blog. She also uses some unorthodox techniques to encourage communication during sessions with those co-workers, which involves the use of a dolphin hand puppet. Yes, Pam eventually became a field agent, but her heart is still that of an administrative assistant. Pam's current position is at the Figgis Agency where she spends a lot of time spinning around in her chair.

Rose Roberts (Agent Carter)

Although Rose turned up as a secretary in season one of Agent Carter, in season 2, viewers learned that she doesn't just know how to answer phones and field questions about the S.S.R's faux talent agency: Rose can also kick butt as well as any of her fellow agents. She's the gatekeeper to the Los Angeles bureau of the S.S.R. and getting past her isn't easy. Watch out, HYDRA.

Karen Page (Daredevil)

Let's forget the fact that Karen Page has zero legal expertise, because this is television and things like experience just don't matter. But what Karen lacks in experience, she makes up for with gusto as legal secretary at Nelson and Murdock. It's just a good thing that she seems to have a talent for research, something she finally realizes in season two of Daredevil. She also never gives up and will uncover the truth, no matter what it might cost her personally.

Kimmy Schmidt (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt)

Kimmy Schmidt is so over being a "Mole Woman" and is ready to start her life, but to do that, she needs a job. Fortunately, she lands herself a position as an assistant to the wealthy and demanding Jacqueline. Even after Jacqueline's divorce and subsequent destitution, Kimmy stays on to help Jacqueline navigate the world of being "not quite poor." Sure, Kimmy isn't getting paid, so it's a good thing that she got a second job working retail at a Christmas store.

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Goodness is really innate in humans, and recently netizens just witnessed another kind act of a man. A waiter in a Mexican restaurant in Georgia helped a man with no hands to eat lunch, and this moment was posted on Facebook.

Alex Ruiz, 22 years old, a waiter from Cinco De Mayo Mexican Grill at Douglasville, Georgia assisted the man, when he asked if someone could help him eat his meal. Ruiz got him a table, took his order, delivered the food to the man and fed him.

"I said I would help ... and from the bottom of my heart I really wanted to help him," said Ruiz in Spanish.

After eating, Ruiz took the man's money, paid the meal at the counter and returned his change.

This kind act by the waiter was seen by many of the diners and this kindness was caught on camera by Reginald Widener, one of the restaurant's regular customers.

Widener, was seated at the bar near the table of the pair, when he turned and saw the man with no hands being fed by Ruiz. He captured the moment and posted it on his Facebook, which so far has received hundreds of Likes and has been shared more than a thousand times.

"That just made me feel good inside," said Widener. "He didn't complain about it; it looked like he really cared."

Crystal Figueroa, Ruiz's co-worker, also witnessed the kindness, that was also shared on the restaurant's Facebook page.

"He's always so nice, and the fact that he just came out of nowhere and helped a man he doesn't even know have a meal says everything. That just shows the person that he is," Figueroa said.

Widener said that there are people who are dealing with worst situation every day and the world needs more people to be positive.

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Spanking children predisposes them to develop psychological problems, a research has concluded.

Experts from the University of Texas at Austin and University of Michigan conducted a meta-analysis of studies spanning 50 years of research involving 160,000 children and found that children who experienced more spanking have a higher risk of developing aggression, anti-social behavior, mental health problems and cognitive challenges.

For years, health practitioners along with child activists have decried the use of spanking as a form of child discipline. In 2006, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) released (PDF) a directive classifying physical punishment, such as spanking, as a form of "legalized violence against children." The directive was supported by 192 countries, but not the U.S.

With the analysis supporting the side of those against spanking, a new debate about discipline will surely ensue.

Jared Pingleton, a clinical psychologist and director for Focus on the Family's Counseling department said that spanking, in proper context, can be an appropriate form of child discipline. Pingleton explained that parents can resort to spanking to steer the children away from negative behaviors, but it should not be done to infants and very young children.

University of Texas associate professor of human development and family sciences Elizabeth Gershoff said their analysis zeroed in on what the majority of Americans interprets as spanking and not abusive behaviors.

"We found that spanking was associated with unintended detrimental outcomes and was not associated with more immediate or long-term compliance, which are parents' intended outcomes when they discipline their children," said Gershoff. In fact, the turnout of spanking is the opposite of what parents want to achieve.

The finding correlates with a past study that revealed stress, including physical abuse, experienced during childhood significantly affects brain development.

Gershoff and University of Michigan associate professor Andrew Grogan-Kaylor revealed that 13 out of 17 outcomes they analyzed showed psychologically damaging results. The findings point that spanking and physical abuse both result to similar negative outcomes.

Additionally, those who were spanked were more likely to use corporal punishment for their children. The attitude towards physical punishment can be passed on from one generation to another.

The researchers recommend parents to instead practice non-punitive and positive disciplinary actions to foster healthy well-being of children.

The study was published in Journal of Family Psychology on April 7.

Photo: Emran Kassim | Flickr

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Nicolly Pereira, a 2-year-old from Brazil, who was unfortunately born deaf and blind can now hear and see!

The toddler had been diagnosed with pediatric glaucoma, an eye disease that affects one in 25,000 babies. Glaucoma often occurs when the eye pressure is too high and the optic nerve gets damaged, leading to vision loss.

In glaucoma, the eye is able to make the required fluid but is unable to efficiently drain it out, causing unwanted pressure, according to the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (AAPOS).

Post the miraculous surgical procedures carried out in Miami, Florida, the little girl's eyesight and hearing have been restored.

"She was blind, and now she sees," said Dr. Alana Grajewski, of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute's pediatric center, part of UHealth-University of Miami Health System. "She could not see light at all in one eye, and she could barely see light in the other eye."

In an ardent bid to restore her sight and hearing, several surgeries have been performed on Nicolly previously in her hometown, Brazil, but to no avail. Finally, the little girl traveled all the way from Brazil to Miami for this life-altering surgery, and the results have been nothing short of a miracle.

Diana Pereira, the toddler's 26-year-old mother, raised about $20,000 for the corrective surgeries via Facebook and the International Kid's Fund. International Kid's Fund is an organization that offers funding for life-changing medical care focusing on children who need it.

"This all happened thanks to social media," said Carolina Diago of the International Kid's Fund.

Pereira's joy knows no bounds over this amazing outcome.

"The only word that can be used to describe the feeling is 'God,'" remarked the mother.

Her little girl can now see and hear her!

"My daughter is free now. She now shines more than before. She has now become a reference for people who didn't believe in miracles," added Pereira.

Photo: Bernardo Chaves | Flickr

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Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday visited the Institute of Advanced Technology, University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, East Chinas Anhui, and was greeted by two robots created by the Institute.

The pair of robots, named Xiao Man and Jia Jia, greeted the President when he approached them, saying, Hello Mr. President. I am Xiao Man. We have been looking forward to your visit. I am very glad to be participated in the process of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

President Xi emphasized that Chinas development of emerging industries is attracting all attention, and hoped that the sector is flourishing.
The Justice Department just filed a lawsuit to block Charter Communications' expected acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. But it also proposed a settlement for the suit, and that offers a way forward for the deal.



It's a green light of sorts. But the Department of Justice wants to ensure that the road rules are understood by New Charter, the new company that would combine Charter with Time Warner Cable and Bright House.



New Charter would become the second largest cable company in the U.S. and the country's third biggest distributor of multi-channel video programming (MVPD).



Unchecked, New Charter has incentive to harm competition by creating new restrictions or broadening existing ones on online video distributors, reasoned the Justice Department. So the lawsuit was filed in case Charter doesn't agree to the settlement and the oversight it grants the Justice Department.



Online video distributors broaden video choices for consumers, stated Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Renata Hesse, head of the department's Antitrust Division. Without the suit and settlement path, New Charter would have more leverage against programmers and could demand that they limit licensing to online video distributors.



"Together with our counterparts at the FCC, we have secured comprehensive relief and we will work together to closely monitor compliance to ensure that New Charter will not have the power to choke off this important source of disruptive competition and deny consumers the benefits of innovation and new services," said Hesse.



To support its suit and settlement, the Justice Department asserted that Time Warner Cable has become the industry's "most aggressive MVPD" in ensuring Alternative Distribution Means (ADM) in contracts with programmers. The ADMs prohibit programmers from distributing certain content or prevent them from offering it to online video distributors.



"We are pleased to reach this critical step in the regulatory review of our merger with Charter and remain optimistic that the transaction will be finalized soon," said Rob Marcus, CEO of Time Warner Cable.



From here, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on its own set of recommendations to tender New Charter. The FCC's recommendations would run for seven years and would guarantee that New Charter expand its reach to about 2 million more consumers who live in rural areas.

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Xiaomi may just unveil the Mi Band 2 anytime now. At a conference in China, CEO Lei Jun was spotted wearing the device, and the gadget is equipped with an LCD display and a circular physical button.

Last fall, Xiaomi upgraded the Mi Band wearable with an optical heart rate monitor, but still retained a pocket-friendly price tag. Currently, the Mi Band activity tracker retails at an unbelievable basic price of $15.

Xiaomi's Mi Band and the Mi Band Pulse somehow catapulted the company's success in China's wearable market. Sold respectively at $15 and $16, there is no doubt that the Mi Bands are one of the company's most pocket-friendly wearable devices that were released to date.

Based on the photo released by MyDrivers, it seems like the upcoming Mi Band 2 will be a major upgrade from its older siblings. The purported LCD display should allow Mi users to view their heart rate and activity levels, as well as check on the current time. The circular physical button will most likely allow users to manipulate what information would show up on the panel and when they want to see such information.

The image also shows that the upcoming Mi Band 2 will feature a rubber strap, which is also found on one of its older siblings.

The new Mi Band 2 is expected to launch at the same or similarly competitive price that was seen on its predecessor and is highly likely to become publicly available before the launch of the MIUI 8.

In a tweet, Xiaomi said that the MIUI 8 is launching soon, on May 10. The company also included a YouTube link that would give users a sneak preview of the new notification shade.

#MIUI8 is coming soon on 10 May. Here's a sneak preview of the new notification shade. Like it? https://t.co/kZyIAEw5gC  Mi (@xiaomi) April 25, 2016

The soon-to-be-launched MIUI 8 is expected to come equipped with the latest Android Marshmallow, as well as a number of revamped UI features.

Likewise, the MIUI 8 will most likely be featured first on the Mi Max, a device with a 6.4-inch display, which qualifies it to be Xiaomi's largest phablet to launch. The device will also be launching on May 10.

It remains to be seen if the upcoming Mi Band 2 will also be retailed at the same competitive price point of $15. Knowing the success of the previous activity tracker model, it can be safe to assume that the Mi Band 2 is geared once more to satisfy users' needs at a price that will never disappoint.

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Swiss jeweler de Grisogono and Samsung are teaming up again to release the limited edition Super Luxury Gear S3 smartwatch, according to an exclusive report by the Korea Herald. The two companies have collaborated before, transforming the Gear S2 into a fashionable, diamond-studded smartwatch.

According to the report, a de Grisogono official confirmed at the Conde Nast Luxury Conference that the company is working with Samsung to develop its next-generation smartwatch. Back in March, the two companies unveiled the blinged-up Gear S2 smartwatch, which flaunts more than 100 black and white diamonds, a sleek rose gold bezel and de Grisogono's signature galuchat black bracelet.

The limited edition Samsung Gear S2 by de Grisogono, which is priced at a whopping $15,000, has been received positively worldwide, and is especially popular among the rich. A de Grisogono official told Korea Herald that more than 100 units are being carefully handcrafted each month to satisfy the demand.

Samsung's expertise in developing high-end technology, combined with de Grisogono's luxury craftsmanship and glamorous branding, has created a special Gear S2 edition that is both functional and elegant.

Younghee Lee, executive vice president of global marketing at Samsung Electronics' mobile communications business, said that their partnership with de Grisogono aims to mix technology and style in creating a smartwatch that is as unique as the wearer.

Fawaz Gruosi, de Grisogono founder and creative director, also expressed his excitement about the project.

"The resulting Samsung Gear S2 by de Grisogono clearly embodies all of our boldness in watch design and our jewelry savoir-faire, while maintaining all of Samsung's technological capabilities and intuitive usage," Gruosi said.

There is no official release date yet, but industry watchers say it is likely that the Super Luxury limited edition Samsung Gear S3 will debut at Baselworld 2017 in March next year. This is in line with the September release of the standard Gear S3 at IFA 2016 in Germany.

Samsung is not the first company to partner with prestigious brands in creating luxurious wearables. Apple has earlier teamed up with Hermes, releasing the Apple Watch Hermes collection with prices that start at $1,100. Other companies such as Intel, Sony, Google and LG Electronics have also released their own luxury smartwatch versions and made them available to consumers everywhere.

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Michigan police have started monitoring social media to track posts pertaining to the Flint water crisis, according to emails from Governor Rick Snyder's office. The online surveillance initiative is geared toward honing in on individuals who are making threats based on their frustration with the tainted water problem.

In one instance, criminal proceedings have already been initiated against a man who made threatening comments on Facebook about the local government. A state police email states that the individual had called for "civil unrest" and the burning of the governor's mansion.

Thus far, the police have not issued further comment on the matter or any other investigations that may come from their findings on social media. Michigan State Police Spokesperson Shanon Banner told MLive  The Flint Journal that the ultimate goal is to protect residents.

Although the state police are monitoring the situation on social media, there is already unrest offline to be found throughout Michigan. Snyder has been criticized heavily since the discovery of lead-tainted water in Flint, and protesters went as far as to publicly heckle the governor at dinner in Ann Arbor in February.

In an effort to relate to his citizens, Snyder promised to drink and cook with lead-tainted water from Flint for one full month on April 18.

"Flint residents made it clear that they would like to see me personally drink the water, so today I am fulfilling that request," the governor stated. "And I will continue drinking Flint water at work and at home for at least 30 days."

Following his announcement, critics took to social media networks such as Twitter to mock the governor's move. Some individuals called for the arrest of Snyder, while others simply asked him to resign. Many people stated that they distrusted the governor, and some residents claimed that they were "embarrassed" by his promise.

Snyder's office claims that state, federal and independent water quality experts believe that Flint's water quality is "improving." Furthermore, it is supposedly "safe to drink as long as a filter is in place." A protective coating is being added to Flint's pipes to provide better quality water for the local residents.

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While HBO aired the Game of Thrones season 6 premiere over the weekend, Showtime quietly released the first episode of the third season of its original series Penny Dreadful.

For those who have grown tired of Game of Thrones' endless violence (particularly against women), incest, rape culture and excessive female nudity, Penny Dreadful is a breath of intellectual fresh air, although that air is beautifully tainted with the kind of horror that only Victorian England can bring.

What's beautiful about the first episode of Penny Dreadful's new season is that it still has its own way of shocking viewers without demeaning them: not only does it have strong female characters, but the show's writing makes it creepy even when no monsters appear on the screen. Even the big bad revealed at the end of the episode is never seen, but his presence is greatly felt nonetheless.

Please note that the following contains minor spoilers for the first episode of Penny Dreadful.

However, fear not: because the first episode is available online for free on Showtime's website.

In "The Day That Tennyson Died," Vanessa Ives has become a shell of herself and is now a shut-in, thanks to events that happened last season. All seems lost until an old friend convinces Vanessa to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Seward, whose name suggests that she's probably more of an expert on vampires than humans.

Meanwhile, Ethan Chandler is a prisoner in America after admitting to committing multiple murders (even though he has a good excuse: he's a werewolf). Sir Malcolm is in Africa, a place he once loved that has now become tainted by white men and slavery. However, a Native American approaches Sir Malcolm there and tells him that Ethan needs him. It seems that the great man once more has a purpose.

There are also new versions of darkness coming to London. One of those is an old friend of Dr. Frankenstein's, Dr. Jekyll, and it's obvious that he will soon create more mayhem now that he's returned to London. Meanwhile, Frankenstein's Creature finds himself trapped on a boat where starving men discuss cannibalism. Faced with the despicable nature of humanity, the creature decides that he must return to London, too.

It's the final few minutes of the episode, though, that will leave viewers haunted long after they watch it: a man stumbles into a dark alley and meets a new evil that's stalking the streets of the city. What's beautiful about this scene is that it slowly pulls back a curtain on who the new monster in London is, and once that evil speaks its name, viewers will cheer and then fear for the citizens of London. That's all without the monster actually appearing onscreen.

Penny Dreadful doesn't need the shock and awe that shows such as Game of Thrones often rely on. Instead, it's a smart and frightening tale told slowly by candlelight that holds a light up to the monster that lives within all of us.

Season three of Penny Dreadful premieres on Showtime on May 1.

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When Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice released in theaters, the fact that Batman killed people rubbed some fans the wrong way.

After all, Batman's supposed to be the hero. Plus, he has that whole "no kill" rule in most of his comics.

Batman probably kills a handful of people in Batman v Superman. Captain America, on the other hand? He's killed thousands over the course of his Marvel cinematic universe films ... sort of.

That's the claim this latest kill count video from Mr Sunday makes, but some fans aren't exactly buying it. For starters, Captain America is, at least in his first film, a U.S. Army soldier fighting in World War II. The fact that he kills people isn't exactly shocking. He is a "super soldier," after all.

It's also worth noting what the video counts as a "kill." Anybody hit in the head or neck with Captain America's shield is considered dead, which seems fair enough, given how, in real life, Cap's shield would probably cut people in half when thrown. However, the video also includes the numerous robots defeated by Captain America in Avengers: Age of Ultron as "kills." Hmmmmmm.

The vast majority of the kills, around 14,000 of them, come from the two S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarriers Captain America brings down during the events of The Winter Soldier. Here's what the uploader of the video says about the Helicarrier deaths:

"The numbers from the Helicarriers that are brought down in TWS are based on average 'next generation' U.S. aircraft carriers' statistics seeings [sic] as the actual number of Hydra deaths weren't made available."

We don't have any way of knowing exactly how many people were on each of the Helicarriers. An in-film kill counter shows 23 casualties, which is obviously a much, much smaller number than the one Mr Sunday is using.

If we take out all the robots and the Helicarriers, Captain America's actual kill count approaches 100, which seems more in line with the character's good guy vibe. Plus, almost half of those were Nazis, and those hardly count as people, right?

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Flo Ridas Mobile App To Be Launched At Samsung Developer Conference | TechTree.com

International multi-platinum Hip-Hop artist, Flo Rida, will introduce his new mobile app 'SPEED GODS', a joint venture between Flo Rida, IM3 Gaming and in conjunction with D3M Licensing Group at the Samsung Developer Conference.

The conference will be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on April 27th and 28th. In addition to talking about his new Android app, Flo Rida, will be taking questions

from the audience in an 'Ask Me Anything' session.

"I'm honored that Samsung has invited me to their annual conference," said the artist. 'SPEED GODS' was a labor of passion, and I'm excited to be able to introduce it at such a prestigious event."

"Obviously, Flo Rida has international appeal but it was his understanding of the mobile gaming space that made this partnership make sense", said Chris McMillian, CEO of IM3 Gaming. Flo Rida and Chris McMillian were put in contact with Samsung from licensing partner D3M Licensing Group, LLC, whose CEO, Marlo Gold, echoed similar enthusiasm about the artists' presence at SDC.

'SPEED GODS' transports players into a world of fast cars and even faster cities. The app offers players a glimpse of Flo Rida's love for cars with his passion for art. The cars in this title are underscored with highly creative paint jobs, race through eccentric cities and feature Flo's chart topping tunes - all set against the backdrop of an exciting game that takes over your senses. This fast paced game is set to be the artist's largest scale release to date.

The 2016 Samsung Developer Conference will provide a glimpse into the future product innovations from Samsung and its partners. It is designed for developers, creators and builders who can gain access to industry experts and technical workshops in a wide variety of categories.

Flo Rida has sold over 95 million digital singles worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists. His catalog includes the international hit singles "Right Round", "Club Can't Handle Me", "Good Feeling", "Wild Ones", "Whistle", "I Cry", "G.D.F.R." and "My House", and has just released "Hello Friday", which is already climbing the charts.

TAGS: Samsung, Flo Rida, Gaming Apps, Mobile App
Breaking# A malware causes German Nuclear Power Plant shutdown on Chernobyls 30th Anniversary

A computer virus was discovered at the Gundremmingen nuclear power plant in Bavaria, according to the German BR24 News Agency. The malware was discovered at the nuclear power plants Block B IT network that handles the fuel handling system. RWE, who is in charge of the plant shut down the power plant for precaution.

Based on the initial assessment conducted by the experts, the virus has not affected any important parts of the power plant and wouldnt pose any major threat. The malware affected only the computer IT systems and not the ICS/SCADA equipment that interacts with the nuclear fuel.

The audit revealed that, unlike Stuxnet, the virus wasnt created to target power plants but was a more commonly seen variant.

After the discovery of malicious software on a computer in Gundremmingen emphasizes the operator, the control of sensitive areas was not affected. A computerized expert hand warns of belittling: viruses could jeopardize the data security of the NPP, states a post published by BR24.

Gundremmingen officials said the IT system was not connected to the Internet and that the virus may have been carried into the network on a USB an employee used on his office or home computer, which would be the real source of the contamination.

The virus that was discovered in the system at the Gundremmingen nuclear plant was used to load and unload nuclear fuel from the power plants Block B and then transfer old fuel to the warehouse.

Tobias Schmidt, spokesman for the Gundremmingen nuclear plant, said, Systems that control the nuclear process are analog thus isolated from cyber threats. These systems are designed with security features that protect them against manipulation.

While the officials did not disclose the name of the malware strain but said it was nothing serious, classifying the whole incident as N (normal category).

The malware infection was discovered on Sunday April 24, 2016, but two days later, the power plant is still offline. Today, April 26, 2016, marks 30 years since the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.

Currently, the nuclear plant is going through all the security procedures involved with such events, with its staff scanning all other computer systems and going through all the regular checks and motions before putting the plant back into production.

Cyber attacks against nuclear power plants and industrial control systems are likely at the top of a long list of possible disasters that can be caused by hackers.

In December 2014, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) reported an attack targeting a steel mill in Germany, which resulted in physical damage to the furnace.

While the name of the steel mill wasnt revealed, the incident clearly indicated that attacks targeting industrial controls could have important results.

The Gundremmingen nuclear power plant is regarded as one of Germanys most outdated nuclear power plants. Gundremmingen is set to permanently shut down in 2021, but over 750 people protested over the weekend in the hope of convincing authorities to shut down the two reactors left working before the final deadline.

Putting the situation in perspective for Softpedia, Eugene Kaspersky, founder and CEO of Kaspersky Lab, one of the worlds leading security firms, said:

An industrial control system used for loading nuclear fuel elements at Germanys Gundremmingen nuclear power plant has been infected with malware. Yes, alarm bells are probably ringing in everyones head whos just read that. Thing is, its not surprising. What is rather surprising is that we dont hear such worrying news more frequently.

From what we know, it was not a targeted attack on the power plants system; it was just a regular infection, contracted most likely by someone connecting a storage device to the system. Thats what we hear from German media.

What it shows is the main, basic issue of todays connected systems: critical infrastructure is as vulnerable as all other systems connected to the Internet. We saw the example of the blast furnace being destroyed by a malware attack (disclosed by Germanys Federal Office for Information Security); there was Stuxnet  malware allegedly designed to physically destroy nuclear enrichment facilities in Iran.

Operators and regulators have to understand that in an age when we see more than 310,000 new samples of malware a day, some of those samples might damage systems they were never intended to be aimed at. For such cases  of course in addition to intentional direct attacks  we have to be prepared.

Just a week ago, Kaspersky became the first big antivirus company to offer a cyber-security solution for ICS/SCADA equipment.
Have you ever thought what really happens when you delete data on the Internet?

Many a times we post something on our Facebook or Twitter wall only to realise the post is dumb enough to be deleted. If you thought that after your deleting the data, it is done and dusted, you are wrong. Anything that one posts on social media is not private. What about the awkward Facebook statuses or tweets that you may have posted years ago but have deleted since? Can you ever actually remove something from the Internet?

The answer to this question is largely a grey area as no one can be absolutely sure about it.

Behnam Dayanim, Esq., a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who specializes in privacy and cyber security, says, Whether or not something is deleted isnt within the users control.

For instance, take a regular email. When you delete it from your inbox, it goes to a Deleted Items folder. You permanently kill that message from your end by emptying that folder.

However, Dayanim says that even a double-deleted item could remain on your email providers servers for an unspecified amount of time.

He further adds that there also chances that your details could wind up in the hands of hackers in the event of a security breach. This implies for all social media posts, emails, and text messages, too.

Since you have given clear permission to these companies to hold on to your data at the time of agreeing to their ambiguous privacy policies, you cannot do much about this.

Heres a sample of what basically do those policies say:

Facebook

The worlds largest social network website saves your data for as long as necessary to provide products and services to you and others. This in reality means your deleted data is never really deleted from Facebook servers.

Gmail

Googles Gmail also follows a similar polity to Facebook. Gmail may not immediately delete residual copies from our active servers, after you delete an email.

Twitter

Twitter doesnt have a forthright answer to this question. It doesnt state on what it does when you delete a Tweet, but says that search engines and other third parties may still retain copies of your public information, like your user profile information and public Tweets, even after you have deleted the information from the Twitter Services or deactivated your account.

Snapchat

When you view a snap, its automatically deleted from the companys serversin most cases. It doesnt however stipulate exactly in which cases the images are saved. Snapchat cant guarantee that the messages will be deleted within a specific timeframe and says your snap may remain in backup for a limited period of time.

Instagram

Instagram owned by Facebook is as ambiguous as its parent about the content deletion policy. The photo sharing site says it may hold information for a commercially reasonable time for backup, archival, and/or audit purposes.

As mentioned earlier, it is very ambiguous. Dayanim says that the common link is that companies can recover your data based on particular circumstances, like requests from law enforcement or a subpoena.

Are you freaked out by this? Dont worry, Cyberdust will ease some of your fear. This Mark Cuban-backed app, which is free for iOS, Android, and Windows platforms asserts to permanently wipe every message you send within 100 seconds of recipients reading it, which also includes the company servers.

Hopefully, you have not posted anything that could land you in trouble or in jail. Its more realistic to make a social media blunder that risks your joblike the people behind these recent scandals. Warningdont follow their footsteps.

 In 2013, PR consultant Justine Sacco Tweeted a cheap joke: Going to Africa. Hope I dont get AIDS. Just kidding. Im white! Thousands of angry people had replied to the Tweet by the time she got off her 11-hour flight, and the hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet was trending globally.

Sacco lost her job soon after the blunder. Shes the subject of Jon Ronsons recent book, So Youve Been Publicly Shamed.

 Earlier this year, Rory Cullinan, former chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was sacked from his position after his daughter posted screenshots of their private Snapchat messages to her Instagram account. Cullinan sent snaps from his office, with captions like Another friggin meeting. While it appeared innocent, Cullinan was, however, fired weeks later.

 In 2011, the British Ministry had dismissed a Buckingham Palace guard of his duties of guarding the Royal Wedding after he posted comments about Kate Middleton on his Facebook page, calling her a posh bitch and stupid stuck-up cow.

 In 2014, James Franco messaged a 17-year-old on Instagram, asking if she was single and wanted to meet up. When the girl asked him to prove that it was Franco, which the actor providedthen posted screenshots of the exchange on Imgur.

Franco copped to the exchange, but got a shabby reputation for chatting up teens.

 Recently, Amy Pascal, one of Hollywoods most powerful executives, resigned from her role as head of Sonys movie division after hackers leaked private emails between her and other producers late last year. Pascal in her messages had made racially insensitive comments about Barack Obama and disrespected celebrities like Angelina Jolie.

In the end, every time you are about to send something out, you need to ask yourself a few important questions: Will this get me fired? Will it hurt my chances of getting in the future? Will it offend someone?

If your status, photo, or text cannot pass the above set of questions, then it is most likely not worth posting it.

Source: MensHealth
ISIS hackers form a mega hacking group called United Cyber Caliphate (UCC)

Different ISIS hackers and their affliates who have been actively hacking websites and defacing them with ISIS propaganda are merging together. Telegram, which is the preferred medium for ISIS hackers is being used to merge these different hacking groups into one formidable hacking command center.

Messages posted on the official ISIS social media accounts and Telegram reveal that the new mega hacking unit will be called the United Cyber Caliphate (UCC).

The UCC comprises of Cyber Caliphate Army (CCA), ISISs main hacking unit, and other pro-ISIS groups like Sons Caliphate Army (SCA) and Kalacnikov.TN (KTN).

The formation of the new hacking unit comes on back of another such merger in January 2016 when AnonGhost and CCA merged forces to take on western cyber interests. The pro-Palestinian hacking group AnonGhost which was Anonymous affiliate distanced itself from them after Anonymous had announced #OpISIS after ISIS had killed 11 bystanders at Charlie Hebdo headquarters in Paris.

Now the mega merger of ISIS hackers is a special worry for United States which is their premier enemy. After the mega merger, UCC hackers claimed theyve hacked the US State Department and leaked info on 50 staff members, ran a mass defacement campaign against Australian websites, defaced the Russian Federal Customs Service, and leaked information on 18,000 employees of the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation.

The group also ran a second mass defacement campaign using the #KillCrusaders tag and continued its anti-Christians campaign when it defaced the website of a Michigan church last week, leaving an ISIS propaganda message behind.

The biggest data breach since UCC formed also happened last week when the group posted the names and addresses of 3,602 of the most important citizens of #NewYork and #Brooklyn, asking ISIS sympathizers to use the information and carry out lone wolf attacks.
U.S. Military dropping Cyber Bombs On ISIS For The First Time

What is seen as a new tactic in its war against the Islamic State, the National Security Agencys (NSA) Cyber Command unit is looking to increase cyberattacks against the terrorist organization, reported the New York Times on Sunday.

The militarys six-year-old Cyber Command unit is working to disturb the Islamic States ability to communicate with one another, potential recruits online and circulate orders online. The militant branch of the NSA has previously been focused on China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

We are dropping cyber bombs, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work told the NY Times. We have never done that before. The campaign has been conducted by a small number of national mission teams, newly created cyber-units loosely based on Special Operations forces.

Defence Secretary Ashton Carter has also spoken of the new cyber warfare initiative saying it is designed to overload their network so that they cant function and interrupt their ability to command and control forces there, control the population and the economy.

While the US officials refused to discuss the details of their operations, interviews done by the NY Times with more than a half-dozen senior and midlevel officials indicate that the effort has begun with a series of implants within the militants networks in order to study the behavior of members, with the eventual aim of mimicking them to alter their messages and redirect militants in a way that will leave them exposed to U.S. ground or drone operations. The report also suggested American operations could help officials disrupt electronic money transfers.

ISIS is undoubtedly one of the most sophisticated militant groups in the world, using a wide array of digital technologies to not only run its operation but also attract new recruits. The militant groups activities have caught the ire of hacking collective Anonymous. Last year, Anonymous declared a cyber war on ISIS and continues to attack the militant group.

In a video posted on YouTube in November, Anonymous member said, Expect massive cyberattacks. War is declared. Get prepared. Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down. You should know that we will find you and we will not let you go.

Since then, Anonymous members claimed to have exposed or taken down numerous accounts allegedly connected to the ISIS. The hacking collective has also exposed some e-mail addresses and other information. On the other hand, ISIS has called Anonymous idiots, arguing that its activities would do nothing to stop its activities.

During a news conference in February the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, stressed the need for the element of surprise in such attacks.

Were trying to limit their ability to conduct, command and control, limit their ability to communicate with each other, limit their ability to conduct operations, he said.

Ill be one of the first ones arguing that thats about all we should talk about  We want them to be surprised when we conduct cyber operations.

Neither there is clarity as to how effective the attacks have been until now, nor is the U.S. saying how well its activities are disrupting ISIS efforts. However, one thing that is very clear is that the cyber war with the ISIS is on.

The Department of Defense did not immediately reply to request for comment on the NY Times report.
A 40 anos de Malvinas

"Revisar el pasado es pensar el futuro". La frase de la presidenta de Telam, Bernarda Llorente, resume el espiritu del documental coproducido entre la agencia de noticias y el canal publico de TV sobre la cobertura que los medios de comunicacion hicieron del conflicto, plagada de censura y mentiras. Una autocritica necesaria para mirar hacia adelante en un (ya viejo) contexto de fake news y negocio informativo.
Those who think that pop art is purely an American or British preserve are being asked to think again with the opening of Italian Pop, an exhibition featuring works from the 1960s onwards by eight artists from Rome and Milan at the recently opened Tornabuoni gallery in Mayfair.

Surprisingly, it seems that this is the first exhibition anywhere, apart from Tornabuonis gallery in Paris, to take a look at what distinguishes Italian pop from any other countrys pop. At the recent Tate exhibition, The World Goes Pop, which looked at the globalisation of pop art, Italy was represented by just two artists.

The reasons why Italian pop has been sidelined go back to the 1960s when the respected American art critic Lucy Lippard gave it scant attention in her seminal book on Pop Art, describing it as an imported trend, lagging behind America and Great Britain. Another issue is more deep rooted. Italian pop resists definition because it overlaps with other European art movements of the time described as nouveau realisme, and then arte povera. Artists also resisted being subject to a branch of American cultural imperialism and developed their own distinctive classical references to It alian art historical landmarks and the tourism it generates, and to specifically Italian cinema (la Dolce Vita).
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded an unprecedented number of apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border in a fiscal year. | Read More
Michel Blanchard, the former AFP bureau chief in Hanoi speaks before the opening of his photo exhibition at the French Institute in Hanoi (LEspace) April 8, 2016. Photo: Thuy Linh

For a Hanoian born in 1983 like me who has become a bit jaded about everything, the former Agence France-Presse (AFP) bureau chief in Hanoi Michel Blanchards photos and career provide much-needed moments of inspiration.

Blanchards pictures, which are being showcased until April 30 at the French Institute in Hanoi (L Espace) arent masterpieces by any means, but it is precisely this that is their virtue.

They are simple images about simple topics, showing the daily life and sceneries of Hanoi and other places in Vietnam in the 1980s.

Hanoi in Blanchards photos seems quieter and more beautiful, a relief to look at for one who has become tired of the terrible traffic jams and pollution, rampant billboards, ugly street decorations, utility poles with too many wires and countless other unsightly things of the fast, busily developing Hanoi of today.

My favorite pick is a photo shot in the year I was born, 1983, featuring the beautiful red flamboyant trees around Thien Quang Lake. There arent too many red flamboyant trees around this lake now and the lake doesnt look as idyllic as in the old photo.

Blanchard said he didnt see himself as an artist. Nor could his photos be compared to works by many professional photographers today in technical terms because photography was only a hobby. Again, this is all for good.

Our life in the 21st century is so saturated with information, news, images, photography, media and technology of all sorts that it feels good some time to just shut down everything, leave all complicated technicality behind to get back to simple, un-mediated reality.

Yet, taken two decades ago in a special period of time, Blanchards photography retains some fresh legitimacy as a good tool to capture reality for honest purposes.

From 1981 to 1983, those transitional years between the American War and the Open Door Policy, Blanchard was the only Western journalist allowed to work in Vietnam besides journalists from other socialist countries and communist parties.

He said at that time, readers back in France and other countries were very eager for information from Vietnam.

He sent back stories in French from his office on Phung Khac Khoan Street in Hanoi. AFP would then translate them into English, Spanish and other languages. One time, he missed covering how Hanoians celebrated Christmas because he wanted to spend the holiday privately with his girlfriend rather than work.

This decision later caused much remonstrance from others, so Blanchard never did the same thing again.

On his free times during weekends and holidays, Blanchard would ride bicycles around the city and take photos. He said human contact seemed easier to create then. People were cheerful, friendly, warm and easy when he offered to take photos of them.

But it was a difficult time. Vietnam was under the US sanction, there was a war going on with Cambodia, and life was poor. Bicycles were the chief means of transport, there was little to watch on TV, goods were scare and electricity blacked out all the time.

Blanchard said he could never forget a scene here: one day under the faint light of the street-lamp at a crossroads he saw some children studying. This scene isnt featured at the exhibition, but there are other classical sights of Hanoi during the time of government subsidies such as the Hanoi tram.

Nguyen Thuy Linh, a Hanoian growing up in the early 80s, said she liked images of the Hanoi tram and the cherry blossoms during Tet, but other photos didnt ring many bells for her. She didnt find the stuff of her childhood such as fire-crackers and familiar childrens games.

Do Xuan Cuong, a 68-year-old native who saw Blanchards photos, said he wasnt as much interested in individual images of old Hanoi which looked familiar to him who had lived through all those years.

What Cuong found noteworthy instead was the quantity of Blanchards photos, a varied, solid body of work that showed a systematic, consistent pursuit of an interest, an important attitude Cuong often finds lacking in the way many Vietnamese approach worthwhile things.

In a talk delivered before the opening of his exhibition, Blanchard mentioned two great Vietnamese leaders who are particularly inspiring in this age of cynicism about Vietnamese politicians and perhaps of shortage of great minds.

They are the former Prime Minister Pham Van Dong who Blanchard said was an outstanding diplomat. The journalist said Pham Van Dong really loved France despite the history of French colonization of Vietnam. The other capable figure was the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Co Thach who could speak English and French fluently.

One of the photos taken by former AFP bureau chief in Hanoi Michel Blanchard shows red flamboyant trees by Thien Quang Lake in Hanoi in 1983

Being a journalist in those days when life was slow was different. Digital technology has changed journalism, Blanchard said. In the 1980s, journalists had more time to work with their stories than today. Then, if he went to Cambodia for two weeks (the AFP bureau chief in Hanoi had to cover Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), he would have the whole quiet time for himself and nobody would bother him with phone calls. AFP stories sent from Vietnam also had to go through some final cross-checking and censorship from the Vietnamese government. AFP stories sent from Vietnam also had to go through some final cross-checking and censorship from the Vietnamese government.

Blanchard said sometimes the accounts he sent from Vietnam were different from the inaccurate accounts of other Western journalists who wrote about Vietnam from some neighboring countries.

Those were lonely moments when he had to defend himself against doubts even from his own AFP colleagues in Paris.

Today, AFP doesnt have a separate chief in charge of Vietnam but reports from neighboring countries. And stories arent written in French, but English and sent back to Paris to be translated back to French.

Blanchard said in an email that running news agencies was very expensive. News agencies need journalists and also depend a great deal on technology which can become quickly obsolete. Today, AFP like other news agencies have to adapt to the difficulties of the print press.

It also has to adapt to new means of communication such as the Internet and video. Its trying to keep a middle way with all these different needs, Blanchard wrote. AFP for example has been forced to reduce the number of journalists all over the world, to offer video products, to be on Twitter, etc.

Another Michel Blanchard's photo shows cyclos and incense being dried on a street in Hanoi's Old Quarter in 1984
The "Vietnam Pieta" statue in a photo released by the Korean-Vietnamese Peace Foundation

The Korean-Vietnamese Peace Foundation will organize a press conference in Seoul Wednesday to officially unveil a bronze statue made to memorialize Vietnamese civilian victims killed in massacres involving South Korean during the Vietnam War, Tuoi Tre reported.

Vietnam Pieta is made by sculptors Kim Seo Kyung and Kim Eun Sung  a married couple known for their creation of a famous statue of a young girl which represents "comfort women" during World War II.

I have been to Vietnam three times in the past two years and met with civilian victims. I learned there are many infants who died without being given names because they died before turning one year old," Kim Seo Kyung said in an interview with Korea Joongang Daily in January.

The statue is 70cm wide, 150cm high and weighs 150kg. The South Korean sculptors announced the project on January 12, Vietnam Pieta (named The Last Lullaby in Vietnamese).

It takes the form of a mother embracing a slaughtered child above an earth goddess.

It is planned that a copy of the statue will be installed first in Jeju Island and other places.

The Korean-Vietnamese Peace Foundation said in January that memorial services are being held this year on the 50th anniversary of South Korean troops massacres in several villages in central Vietnam.

We are in contact with the Vietnamese government and each village in an attempt to send them Vietnam Pieta to coincide with these services as a gesture of apology and consolation, the foundation said.

The foundation, set up last year with 64 members from all walks of life, is working to raise awareness of South Koreas historical responsibility in the Vietnam War.

South Korea reportedly sent more than 300,000 troops to Vietnam during the war.
Park Hyatt Saigon is pleased to announce that Frederic Boulin has been appointed General Manager of the hotel effective February 2016.

Mr. Boulin, a French native, brings to the newly renovated Park Hyatt Saigon more than 20 years of hotel management experience in the luxury segment across five continents in flagship properties.

A graduate of Hotel and Business Administration from the Switzerland - Glion Institute of Higher Education, Mr. Frederic Boulin was selected as a Corporate Trainee by Hyatt International in 1990 and later joined Hyatt Regency Acapulco. Mr. Boulin held Food and Beverage positions in Venezuela, Argentina, Cambodia, Guatemala and Greece.

In 2002, Mr. Boulin held the Executive Assistant Manager at Grand Hyatt Seoul and the Resident Manager position at Grand Hyatt Sao Paulo before holding his first position as General Manager at Hyatt Regency La Manga in Spain, followed by Grand Hyatt Cairo in Egypt.

Prior to joining Park Hyatt Saigon, Mr. Frederic Boulin was General Manager of Park Hyatt Seoul since 2011. Under his leadership, Park Hyatt Seoul won a number of prestigious recognitions, including Conde Nast Travelers Gold List in 2012, Top 10 Hotels in Japan and South Korea by Conde Nast Travelers Readers Choice Awards in 2013 and Top 500 Worlds Best List by Travel + Leisure in 2013.

I am thrilled to settle down in the vibrant and dynamic Ho Chi Minh City and explore the opportunities the city presents today. Together with an amazing team, we will continue to create unique handcrafted guest experiences, build an extraordinary reputation and position Park Hyatt Saigon at the top of the Southeast Asian market, said Frederic Boulin.
Germany's Rocket Internet has closed a deal to sell its online fashion marketplace Zalora in Thailand and Vietnam for around US$10 million each to Thailand's retail giant Central Group, news website TechCrunch reported Monday.

The website said multiple sources had confirmed the deal.

Previously TechCrunch quoted an unnamed source as saying that Rocket planned to sell off Zalora's businesses in the countries to reduce costs, so it can focus on other markets where Zalora has a better chance to make profits.

With a presence in 11 countries across the Asia Pacific, including Australia and Indonesia, Zaloras revenues rose 78 percent last year to around $234 million, but its net loss increased 36 percent to $105 million, according to the website.

The selloff of Zalora businesses in Vietnam and Thailand is the latest sign that Rocket has been struggling to cash on the Southeast Asia market, which has been recently considered as a new frontier for commerce.

This month the German company sold more than half of its stake in Lazada, which it founded in 2012 to target the regional e-commerce market, to China's Alibaba for $137 million. Rocket now holds an 8.8 percent stake.

Alibaba has also acquired another 12.4 percent from other investors and $500 million worth of newly-issued shares, which has increased Lazada's value to $1.5 billion, according to TechCrunch.

In December Rocket also sold off food ordering website Food Panda to local competitor Vietnammm after three years of operations, citing financial issues. The deal value has not been revealed.
The crtically endangered Royal Turtle walks on the sand in Koh Kong province of Cambodia on Febraury 3, 2015

Efforts to save Cambodia's Royal Turtle, one of the world's most critically endangered species, are being hampered by dredging and illegal forest clearances, a wildlife conservation group warned Monday.

The Wildlife Conservation Society and the Cambodian government have been desperately trying to protect the tiny remaining pocket of batagur affinis turtles for more than a decade after their numbers plummeted.

But in a grim statement released Monday WCS said there were believed to be "fewer than ten" remaining in the wild and that the minute population was under threat from increased human activity in the small section of Sre Ambel river, where they still breed.

In Hul, the local project coordinator, said his team had observed a decline in nesting, blaming "increased sand dredging, wood transportation along the nesting habitat, and illegal clearance of flooded forest disturbing the females during the breeding season".

"Only one nest has been located this year, compared to four nests last year. This is very worrying and if it continues it will be potentially putting the species at high risk of extinction," he said.

The critically endangered animal acquired its name because only Cambodia's royal family was historically allowed to consume its eggs.

The Royal Turtle was initially believed extinct in Cambodia until 2000, when a small population was re-discovered in the Sre Ambel river.

In 2001, WCS and Cambodia's Fisheries Administration began a community-based protection program, hiring former nest collectors to search for and protect nests, instead of harvesting the eggs.

Since then, 39 nests with a total of 564 eggs have been protected with 382 hatchlings.

Hatchlings are then taken into captivity where they are raised until several years old and released. But WCS said ongoing habitat loss reduced survival chances.

Deforestation and poaching have devastated many species in Cambodia, one of Asia's poorest and most corrupt nations.

Earlier this month tigers were declared "functionally extinct" in the country, with the last big cat seen on a camera trap in 2007.

In its haste to develop, the government has been criticised for allowing firms to clear hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest land -- including in protected zones -- for everything from rubber and sugar cane plantations to hydropower dams.

The illegal logging trade, lubricated by violence and bribery of forestry officials and border guards, has eviscerated one quarter of the country's forests in a generation.
Another man died in the central province of Quang Nam after eating insects with two others for breakfast last week.

Quang Nam General Hospital late Monday confirmed the death of Pham Phu Nhan earlier on the same day, saying the cause was poisoning.

Earlier on April 20, Nhan invited two of his neighbors over for breakfast at his home in the provinces mountainous district of Tien Phuoc.

They reportedly had rice with tomato soup and fried insects. It has not been confirmed which species they were.

Before the meal was over, they suffered severe abdominal pain and vomited blood.

They were rushed to a district clinic but one of the neighbors, 45-year-old Vo Dinh Lam, had died.

Nhan was transferred to the Quang Nam General Hospital on the following day in critical condition, including kidney failure and low blood pressure. He died on Monday.

The other victim, 22, was discharged on April 23. The hospital has admitted him to monitor his health following the two deaths.
Nguyen Van Nhat (L) and Ngo Quang Phuoc have been jailed in Singapore for stealing $350,000 from a fruit shop. Photo credit: Straitstimes.com

Two Vietnamese were sentenced to four and a half years in jail each in Singapore Thursday for breaking into a wholesale center and stealing 500,000 Singapore dollars, or nearly US$350,000, last January.

Nguyen Van Nhat, 23, and Ngo Quang Phuoc, 35, were arrested at a hotel on January 5, just hours after a fruit shop owner discovered the break-in and found his safe had been cut open.

The indictment said the duo had gambled away thousands of dollars at a casino after arriving in Singapore on January 1 and did not have enough left to buy flight tickets to Hanoi, Channel News Asia reported.

They decided to steal money from Nhats former workplace, where he knew his boss usually kept large sums of money to pay employees in cash.

They spent around $220 on buying a grinder, crowbar, hammer drill, a cutter, screwdrivers, and an extension plug.

On the night of January 4 Nhat kept watch while Phuoc, who worked in construction, climbed into the shop through the roof by removing a ventilator, cut a hole in the safe and packed money in four bags.

The bags were so heavy that he left behind one in a box on the rooftop. The police later found it containing $20,700.

They used the money to check into a hotel and buy luxury items the next day.

Police tracked them down using DNA tests and questioning taxi drivers in the area.

Most of the money, meant to pay the companys employees their salary and bonuses ahead of the Chinese New Year in early February, has been recovered following the arrest.

Burglary is punishable by up to 14 years' imprisonment in Singapore.
Hanoi police have arrested three people linked to a suspected human smuggling ring that sent at least 30 Vietnamese to South Korea to work illegally in January.

Nguyen Thi Thanh Tam, 38, Nguyen Trong Tuong, 34, and Le Thi Tuyet Hanh, 35, are being investigated for allegedly running the ring and helping the workers enter and stay in South Korea. The crime can be punished by jail terms of up to 12 years.

According to investigators, a total of 163 Vietnamese people visited Jeju Island in South Korea on January 12 as tourists.

Soon later, 59 of them reportedly disappeared from their hotel in Jeju. Many of them then managed to find jobs with the help of other Vietnamese.

South Korean police have deported 34 so far.

Most of these deported workers confessed they had hired some Vietnamese people to arrange for them to enter South Korea under tourist visas and work illegally there.

Investigators found the trio charged each person between US$5,000 and $12,000 in the case.

According to Korea Tourism Organization, around 170,000 Vietnamese tourists visited the country last year, up 20 percent from 2014.

There were 4,353 tourists reportedly left their tour and illegally stayed on the island last year. In 2011, there were only 282 cases.
Police in Japan have arrested four Vietnamese men for allegedly snatching a bag of a Vietnamese woman and stabbing a man who tried to stop the crime.

Nippon TV reported that they robbed the bag containing 500,000 yen (US$4,434) on a street in a small town north of Tokyo on Tuesday.

A Vietnamese man tried to chase after them, only to be stabbed several times and severely injured.

Police caught three of them the next day.

One of the suspects, 21, has admitted to robbing the bag while the other two, 22 and 23, said they did nothing.

Another Vietnamese, 26, gave himself up on Thursday, saying he was the one stabbing the man.

They are all under investigation for robbery and attempted murder, the report said.
Public buses in Hanoi have to compete with more individual vehicles. Photo credit: VnExpress

Public buses services in Hanoi, once very popular, have been losing around 150,000 passengers every day this year as many people have become unhappy with traffic jams.

A new report from Hanoi Transport Service Corporation said bus passengers in the first quarter dropped 14 percent from a year ago to 82 million.

Buses were a common means of transport in Hanoi in the 2000s. But it has continued losing popularity, after reaching its peak in 2012 with 416 million travelers.

The number last year was down 7.5 percent from 2014, according to the companys figures.

Regular surveys from the company found most of the passengers happy with its service, but complaints are also aplenty.

Leaders from the company said the goal was to promote the use of public transport and restrict individual vehicles. But in Hanoi, the existence of bus services is now threatened by the rapid surge in cars and motorbikes.

Officials said at a meeting last December that the crowded city has 18,000-20,000 new motorbikes and 6,000-8,000 new cars registered every month, not to mention vehicles brought in by migrants.

The numbers are expected to rise further from 2018 when several taxes on vehicles are cut, possibly reaching one million cars and seven million motorbikes by 2020.

Public buses in Vietnam now have to share the same lanes with other vehicles and constant traffic jams may make them a much less appealing choice than motorbikes.

Major construction projects in 2015 also affected bus routes in the capital.

Low fuel prices also make cheap public bus tickets no longer attractive compared to taxis or motorbike taxis (xe om), according to the transport company.

Despite low passengers, Hanoi bus revenue still increased in recent years thanks to higher fares, which now cost less than half a dollar for a journey longer than 30 kilometers.
An embankment at a port of Formosa in Ha Tinh Province, from which a diver has come back dead. Photo credit: VietNamNet

A diver from central Vietnam died a day after working at a port of a Taiwanese steel firm which has been accused of polluting waters and causing mass fish deaths in recent weeks.

Le Van Ngay, 46, died on the way to hospital on Sunday after suffering chest pains and breathing difficulties, local media reported.

Medical examiners have performed an autopsy. The body has been returned to the family but local media said the results have not been announced.

His coworkers at the International Manpower and Construction JSC (Nibelc), a contractor of the steel firm Formosa in Ha Tinh Province, said he dived down a port of the company on Saturday for construction work at an embankment project.

There has been serious concern about the sea water in Ha Tinh after a large number of fish have washed ashore over the last two weeks, apparently killed by industrial effluents. The same situation has been going on in nearby provinces Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue.

Suspicion has centered on Formosa, a major company in the Vung Ang Economic Zone. The firm, officially known as Hung Nghiep Formosa Steel Company (FHS), admitted that it has a large sewage pipe going straight into the sea, but claimed repeatedly that the discharged wastewater has been treated.

Ngays colleagues, who have been working for years, said they have not felt well after swimming in the sea recently.

Nguyen Thieu, 36, told Tuoi Tre newsaper he has been working for three years but only noticed unusual health conditions in recent week.

I have been unusually tired, with chest pain and dizzy after every swim.

Thieu said the tone of his skin has also changed.

He said his colleagues told him they have had the same experience.

A representative from Nibelc told news website VietNamNet that a lot of workers at the company are worried about water pollution affecting their health.

But any feeling about health impacts might just be a psychological thing. We do not know the cause for sure yet.
The sewage pipe from Hung Nghiep Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Company going to the sea. Photo: Nguyen Dung/Thanh Nien

A Taiwanese steel company on Monday refused to take responsibility for an environmental disaster in central Vietnam that has resulted in mass fish deaths and raised questions about the country's capacities to detect and handle large scale pollution.

Chou Chun Fan, chief of the Hung Nghiep Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Company (FHS)s representative office in Hanoi, even made shocking statements after fielding questions from reporters.

The reporters asked him if Formosa had installed a sewage pipe under the sea to discharge wastewater directly into the sea near the Vung Ang Economic Zone in Ha Tinh Province, where a huge number of fish have died recently.

Chou said: I admit that the discharge of wastewater will affect the environment to some extent, and it is obvious that the sea will have less fish.

But before we built the plant, we had got the permission from the Vietnamese government.

To be honest, we must lose some to win some. You want the fish, or the steel plant? You have to choose.

If you want both, I will tell you that you cant, even if you are the prime minister.

Over the last two weeks a large number of fish have washed ashore in Ha Tinh and several neighboring provinces like Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue, apparently killed by industrial effluents.

Suspicion has centered on Formosa, a major firm in the Vung Ang Economic Zone. The company admitted that it has a large sewage pipe going straight into the sea, but claimed repeatedly that the discharged wastewater has been treated.

On Monday, the agriculture ministry said initial tests showed the fish had not died from diseases. The substance killing them could be biological, chemical or toxic substances like cyanide. Further tests are being conducted.

It also said no more unusual fish deaths were reported on Monday.

The Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST) also denied claims that some earthquakes that hit Japans Kumamoto City on April 14 and 16 had affected the Vietnamese coast, causing the fish deaths.

Analysis results of images taken by VNRED Sat-1 satellite and other satellites also showed no major oil spills in the affected area over the last month, it said.

Seismic stations located in Nghe An, Quang Binh and Thua Thien-Hue provinces managed by VAST did not record any earthquake that registers more than 5.0 on the Richter scale offshore the central coast.

It means the possibility that fish deaths were caused by thermal shock was also ruled out, according to VAST.

'Formosa and authorities ignored us'

Residents in Ha Tinh Provinces Ky Anh District, where the Formosa plant is based in, told Thanh Nien they were not consulted when Formosa installed the sewage pipe as well as during the process of environmental impact assessment.

Meanwhile, Formosa said it had collected the opinions of local people affected by the project and local authorities before submitting the environmental impact report.

Chu Van Thanh, a 46-year-old resident, said his family and other households were relocated for the construction in 2011. Many of them now live near the project, but they were never informed of any environmental impacts.

Chou Chun Fan (R), chief of the FHS's rep office in Hanoi, at a meeting with Thanh Nien newspaper on April 25, 2016. Photo: Nguyen Dung

Nguyen Van Hau, 55, said he was shocked to know that Formosa has a secret sewage pipe under the sea near where he lived.

If they asked for our opinions, we would have said no. Formosa and authorities ignored us, he said.

Around 1,000 hectares of land were claimed and 1,500 households were relocated for the Formosa plant project.

On April 4, a Ha Tinh fisherman reported to local authorities that he saw a large sewage pipe discharging wastewater into the sea in Vung Ang. The pipe was lying around 13 meters under the surface and around 1.5 kilometers from the Vung Ang Economic Zone, he said.

A spokesperson from Formosa later admitted that the pipe belongs to the company, and that it discharges 12,000 liters of wastewater a day through the pipe. He said the wastewater had already been treated before being discharged.

On Monday, Hoang Dat Thuyen, director of Formosas environment safety department, admitted that the company had for several years imported a large amount of chemicals to clean the pipe, but the diluted and treated substances were then discharged into the sea without the Vietnamese authorities permission.

We did not see any regulation saying that we must seek authorities permission when cleaning the pipe, he said.

He said Formosa had invested up to US$45 million to build the wastewater treatment system.
Four members of a drug smuggling ring receive death sentences in Hanoi on April 25, 2016. Photo credit: Cong An Nhan Dan

A court in Hanoi sentenced three Vietnamese and a Thai woman to death on Monday for drug trafficking.

Investigation found Nguyen Thi Thuy Trang, 53, from Ho Chi Minh City, learned about the illegal trade in late 2011 and started hiring several people to help her transport drugs across regional borders. Police in Hanoi, Quang Ninh Province and HCMC busted the ring in October 2012, seizing 24 kilograms of heroin and more than two kilograms of methamphetamine. They arrested Trang and three of her smugglers Le Xuan Phu, Phan Thi Lien, and Pornpirom Upapong from Thailand, local media reported.

The members told police Trang was the mastermind and hired them to transport drugs across regional countries including China, Cambodia, Nigeria, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.

Police said the gang also hired some Africans who used money to lure poor Vietnamese women, who had little knowledge about drug laws, into the illegal business.

They are still looking for these suspects.

Vietnam has some of the worlds toughest drug laws. The production or sale of 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal narcotics is punishable by death.

Those convicted of possessing or smuggling more than 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kilograms of methamphetamine also face the death penalty.
Vietnamese and Laotian border police have busted three transnational drug rings, seizing more than 46 kilograms of illicit drugs this month, Thanh Hoa Provinces border guard said.

Colonel Le Kha Cong, deputy commander of Thanh Hoa Border Guard, said Tuesday the gangs were busted following joint operation of Vietnam and Laos between February 29 and March 12.

He said the gangs were led by Vietnamese ethnic men living in mountainous districts of Thanh Hoa near the border with Laos.

They usually bought heroin and other drugs from the Golden Triangle and processed in the districts before selling the drugs to local dealers.

Most of gang members are Vietnamese ethnic minority people, police said.

The Golden Triangle is an area of around 950,000 square kilometers that overlaps the mountains of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand. It is one of Asia's two main opium-producing areas.

As part of the joint operation, Vietnamese and Lao police March 11 arrested three Laotian men while they were smuggling large quantities of drugs into Vietnam.

Xipasot Anuvong, 24, Keoma Latsi, 36, and Khamphet Khambut Xaba, 44, were caught carrying around four kilograms of heroin and 42,000 pills of a synthetic drug in a car in Savannakhet Province.

The trio admitted that they bought the drugs in Savannakhet and planned to bring them to Vietnams Quang Tri Province for sale.
Police in Thailand on Monday arrested a Vietnamese man after surveillance camera caught him stealing a bag at a Bangkok airport.

Bangkok Post cited security officials at Suvarnabhumi Airport as saying that camera footage showed Tran Nho Tien, 60, taking a bag from an airport cart last week.

He arrived on a flight on the afternoon of April 20.

Luggage from his flight was delivered to baggage belt number 16, but he instead hung around another belt and took a shoulder bag from a baggage cart next to it.

The bag belonged to a 35-year-old woman in Bangkok and contained money worth US$1,200, two credit cards and her personal papers.

The woman said she put the bag on the cart while waiting for her luggage.
Afghan president Ashraf Ghani (C) offers prayers during a joint meeting of the National Assembly at the Parliament compound in Kabul on April 25, 2016. Photo: AFP/ Wakil Kohsar

An Afghan Taliban delegation has arrived in Pakistan to meet officials in a bid to restart a stuttering peace process with Kabul, Afghan officials and Taliban leaders said on Tuesday, although it was unclear who the delegation was meeting.

There was no immediate confirmation from authorities in Pakistan but just a week after a massive bomb blast in Kabul killed at least 64 people and wounded hundreds, the Afghan government refused to take part.

Last month, the Taliban ruled out participating in what it called "futile" talks sponsored by the four-power group of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the United States and China as long as foreign forces remain in the country.

In Kabul, the Afghan government has been frustrated by what it sees as Islamabad's refusal to honor a pledge to force Taliban leaders based in Pakistan to join the talks, or face military action.

"We are aware that Taliban delegations are in Pakistan, but we will not go there until Pakistan fulfils the promises that they made," said Dawa Khan Mina Pal, a spokesman for Afghan president Ashraf Ghani.

On Monday, Ghani said the opportunity for peace talks "will not be there forever" and urged Pakistan to fight Taliban groups on its soil that rejected peace.

Afghanistan has long accused Pakistan of actively harboring the Afghan Taliban leadership on its soil, a charge Islamabad denies, saying it only has "limited influence".

A senior Taliban member based in Pakistan confirmed that a delegation of leaders was in the southern port city of Karachi, holding talks with Pakistani officials.

"They arrived on Monday," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity, because the Taliban leadership has not authorized him to discuss the talks with the media. "They left for an unknown location later in the day and returned late at night."

Two members of the Taliban's political office in the Gulf state of Qatar, which has played a role in previous attempted peace talks, confirmed the delegation's presence in Pakistan, but indicated meetings were being held in the capital, Islamabad.

"Our people held a meeting with Pakistani officials and I am sure they may meet the Chinese on Tuesday," said one of the Qatar-based leaders, speaking on condition of anonymity, also because he is not authorized to discuss the talks.

"We don't care if Kabul participates in the meeting, as we already launched our spring offensive and are getting successes against them," he said.

The Pakistani Foreign Office and the Afghan embassy in Islamabad did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said he was not authorized to comment on the activities of the movement's Qatar political office.
According to final results, Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPOe) came a clear first with 35 percent in Sunday's first round of an election for the largely -- but not entirely -- ceremonial post of Austrian head of state

Austrian commentators declared the end of an era Monday after the anti-immigration far-right triumphed in presidential elections, ending 70 years of domination by a political elite criticised as out of touch and ineffectual.

According to final results released Monday, Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPOe) came a clear first with 35 percent in Sunday's first round of an election for the largely -- but not entirely -- ceremonial post of Austrian head of state.

Hofer, 45, an engineer who walks with a cane since a paraglider accident, will now face Alexander van der Bellen, 72, an economics professor backed by the Greens who was second on 21 percent, in a runoff on May 22.

Candidates from the centrist parties, which have effectively run Austria since the end of World War II, failed to even make it into the runoff on May 22, languishing in fourth and fifth place with just 11 percent each.

The only candidate who fared worse was Richard Lugner, a widely ridiculed 83-year-old construction magnate and socialite married to a former Playboy model 57 years his junior, who won just over two percent.

It means that for the first time since 1945, the Habsburg dynasty's Hofburg palace will not be occupied by a president backed by Chancellor Werner Faymann's Social Democrats (SPOe) or his centre-right coalition partners the People's Party (OeVP).

FPOe leader Heinz-Christian Strache, who has railed against the arrival in 2015 of 90,000 asylum seekers in Europe's migrant crisis and who hopes to become chancellor in 2018, heralded "the beginning of a new political age".

The Oesterreich tabloid called it a "tsunami that has turned our political landscape upside down". A map of Austria's voting districts showed a vast sea of blue representing area won by Hofer, with only a few isolated specks of other colours.

"The truth for the SPOe and the OeVP is simply this: your time is over," the Die Presse daily said in an editorial. "In a way this is the end of the Second Republic as we know it," political analyst Thomas Hofer told AFP.

Faymann said the result a "clear warning to the government that we have to work together more strongly". Ahead of a meeting of party chiefs on Monday evening, he scotched talk however that he would resign.

Regional heads of his SPOe said in a statement that after the "very disappointing election result, a substantial discussion and the right consequences must take place... What definitely won't help is discussions about personnel."

Populists

The result was a further sign that the appeal of mainstream politicians in Europe -- and in the United States with Donald Trump -- is waning as populist figures tap into anger about immigration and growing inequality.

Congratulations poured in from other far-right leaders in Europe. France's Marine Le Pen called Hofer's victory a "magnificent result".

Dutch far-right MP Geert Wilders said it was "fantastic", while Alternative for Germany head Frauke Petry hailed the "terrific outcome".

Faymann's recent tougher line on immigration -- imposing a quota, erecting fences -- has not stopped the FPOe surging. Polls put it in first place with more than 30 percent.

Hofer, the political analyst, said however that immigration is not the only issue, with the weak economy and the government's failure to implement reforms also taking their toll. But most of all, this was "an anti-system election," he told AFP.

Support for the two main parties has been sliding for years and in the last general election in 2013 -- when, unlike now, the far-right vote was split -- they only just garnered enough support to re-form their "grand coalition".

"The FPOe is now clear favourite to emerge as the strongest party in the next general election, and can count on forming a coalition with the SPOe or the OeVP," Anton Pelinka, another analyst, told AFP.
A still image taken from an older video released by Abu Sayyaf militant kidnappers shows Canadians Robert Hall (left) and John Ridsdel (centre). The third male hostage is Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad. (Reuters/YouTube )

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned on Monday the execution of a Canadian hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines, calling it "an act of cold-blooded murder."

John Ridsdel, 68, a former mining executive, was captured by Islamist militants along with three other people in September 2015 while on vacation on a Philippine island.

The Philippine army said a severed head was found on a remote island on Monday, five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by militants who had threatened to execute one of four captives.

"Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers and this unnecessary death. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting.

"The government of Canada is committed to working with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act."

Trudeau declined to respond when asked whether the Canadian government had tried to negotiate with the captors or pay a ransom, or whether it was trying to secure the release of the other Canadian being held, Robert Hall.

"Obviously there was talk of money involved, but not by the government of Canada or by the government of Norway, but certainly by the families attempting to do what they could to free the four," said Bob Rae, a former federal politician and longtime Ridsdel friend.

"But its been an awful process, just horrendous," he told Canadian television.

In a statement, Ridsdel's family said they were devastated his life had been "cut tragically short by this senseless act of violence despite us doing everything within our power to bring him home."

Ridsdel, Hall and the other captives, a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman, had appealed in a March video for their families and governments to secure their release.

Residents found the head in the center of Jolo town. An army spokesman said two men on a motorcycle were seen dropping a plastic bag containing the severed head.

A Philippine army spokesman said al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of four captives on Monday if the 300 million pesos ($6.4 million) ransom for each of them was not paid by 3 p.m. local time.

The initial demand was one billion pesos each for the detainees, who were taken hostage at an upscale resort on Samal Island on Sept. 21.

Ridsdel's former employer described him as gregarious, adventurous and warm.

"We are in profound shock, disbelief and sorrow to have lost our former colleague and close friend," Calgary-based mining company TVI Pacific (TVI.TO) said in an emailed statement.

Abu Sayyaf is a small but brutal militant group known for beheading, kidnapping, bombing and extortion in the south of the mainly Catholic country.

It decapitated a hostage from Malaysia in November last year on the same day that country's prime minister arrived in Manila for an international summit. Philippine President Benigno Aquino ordered troops to intensify action against the militants.

Security is precarious in the southern Philippines, despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest Muslim rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict.

Abu Sayyaf is also holding other foreigners, including one from the Netherlands, one from Japan, four Malaysians and 14 Indonesian tugboat crew.
Manuel Santos from Spain gestures as he leaves the Central Juvenile and Family Court, in Bangkok, Thailand April 26, 2016. Photo: Reuters/Chaiwat Subprasom

A gay couple from the United States won an appeal on Tuesday for parental rights over a baby born through a Thai surrogate mother in a high-profile case that came to light before Thailand banned commercial surrogacy last year.

The law came into effect in July in a bid to end "rent-a-womb" tourism in Thailand following a series of high-profile surrogacy cases involving foreigners, including accusations in 2014 that an Australian couple had abandoned their Down syndrome baby with his Thai birth mother.

Thailand had been a popular destination for foreigners seeking surrogacy services, in part because of lower prices but also because of the country's lax legislation.

American Gordon Lake and his Spanish husband, Manuel Santos, had a baby called Carmen through a Thai mother before the Thai ban on commercial surrogacy came into effect.

A bitter battled ensued when surrogate mother Patidta Kusolsand refused to cede parental rights to the couple leaving them trapped in Thailand with Carmen.

Manuel, speaking to reporters outside a Bangkok family court after the verdict, said the couple would take Carmen to Spain first to meet her family there.

"This nightmare is going to end soon," Santos said through tears. "Carmen will be with us in our home."

Patidta had said she did not know the couple were gay and was unsure about their abilities as parents.

The pair have another child, son Alvaro, who was born through surrogacy in India three years ago, and have said they chose Thailand because regulations in India had changed.

Santos said he could not confirm when the pair would leave Thailand with their two children.
Nyi Nyi Lwin, better known as Gambira, leader of the All-Burmese Monks Alliance who was recently released, talks to supporters while attending the court hearing of Pyi Nyar Thiha in Yangon. Photo: Reuters

A Myanmar court on Tuesday jailed a former monk and leader of the 2007 anti-junta uprising for six months with hard labour on immigration charges, a member of his defence team said, but he was likely to be released soon because of time already served.

The sentence came amid widespread excitement that has followed the release and dropping of charges against more than 100 political prisoners since Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy took power earlier this month.

Nyi Nyi Lwin, better known as Gambira, was arrested in January for illegally entering Myanmar from neighboring Thailand. He has been held without bail since his arrest at a prison in Mandalay, Myanmar's second largest city.

Myo Min Zaw, Gambira's assistant defense lawyer, said the Mandalay court sentenced Gambira to six months in jail with hard labor, but that the sentence would be reduced because of time served.

"Since my client has already served several months in jail during the trial, he has only a month or two to serve. So we're not going to appeal against the verdict," Myo Min Zaw said.

Gambira was freed from prison during a 2012 general amnesty, a year after the junta handed power to a semi-civilian government, following 49 years of direct rule of the Southeast Asian nation.

Since his release, Gambira has divided his time between Myanmar and Thailand, but Myanmar authorities have re-arrested him several times, in what his family and rights groups have described as continued harassment for his criticism of the government.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a rights groups that supports and monitors political prisoners in Myanmar, called the charges "trumped-up" in a post on Twitter following the sentencing.

"U Gambira's case reeks of the ugly political prosecutions of discarded military juntas," Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

In 2007, Gambira emerged as a leading figure in a mass protest over living conditions and the oppressive rule of then-dictator Than Shwe that was dubbed the Saffron Revolution.

The government cracked down harshly in response, opening fire on protesters and sweeping up those who took part. A report from the United Nations found that at least 31 people were killed by security forces and thousands arrested.

Gambira's prison term of 63 years for his role in the protest turned him into one of Myanmar's most prominent political prisoners. Members of his family were also arrested.

While in detention, Gambira was repeatedly beaten and tortured, he and rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have said.
Syrian army soldiers inspect the site of a car bomb on the outskirts of the Sayeda Zeinab district south of Damascus, Syria. Photo: Reuters/SANA/Handout via Reuters

President Barack Obama announced on Monday the biggest expansion of U.S. ground troops in Syria since its civil war began, but the move was unlikely to mollify Arab allies angry over Washington's cautious approach to the conflict.

The deployment of up to 250 Special Forces soldiers increases U.S. forces in Syria roughly six-fold and is aimed at helping militia fighters who have clawed back territory from Islamic State in a string of victories.

Defense experts said giving more fighters on the ground access to U.S. close air support could shift the momentum in Syria. But a senior member of the Saudi royal family who asked not to be identified dismissed the decision as "window dressing."

In announcing the deployment, Obama emphasized the importance of sustaining the gains made in the fight against Islamic State, although he cautioned that the U.S. forces would not be spearheading the battle.

"They're not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces as they continue to drive ISIL back," he said in a speech in the German city of Hanover, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh.

Obama was speaking on the last stop of a foreign tour that has taken him to Saudi Arabia and Britain.

The U.S. military has led an air campaign against Islamic State since 2014 in both Iraq and Syria, but its effectiveness in Syria has been limited by a lack of allies on the ground in a country where a complex, multi-sided civil war has raged for five years.

A Russian air campaign launched in Syria last year has been more effective because it is closely coordinated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is Moscow's ally but a foe of the United States.

Rising tensions with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab monarchies, which have privately criticized the Obama administration's security policy toward the region, also have complicated the U.S. effort in Syria.

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign praised the deployment. "These Special Forces will continue to provide critical support to local forces on the ground who ultimately must be the ones to win this fight," it said in a statement.

In a speech in November, the Democratic front-runner and former secretary of state had called for a tougher approach to fighting Islamic State, arguing for more air strikes and Special Forces.

Senator John McCain said the move was overdue but ultimately insufficient. "Another reluctant step down the dangerous road of gradual escalation will not undo the damage in Syria to which this administration has borne passive witness," said McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump did not mention the deployment during a campaign rally in Rhode Island. He plans to address foreign policy in a speech on Wednesday in Washington.

Close air support

Washington's main allies on the ground have been a Kurdish force known as the YPG, which wrested control of much of the Turkish-Syrian border from Islamic State. However, the alliance has been constrained because U.S. ally Turkey is deeply hostile to the YPG.

"Presumably these (extra U.S. forces) are going to assist our Kurdish YPG friends to widen and deepen their offensive against IS in northeastern Syria, said Tim Ripley, defense analyst and writer for IHS Jane's Defence Weekly magazine.

The deployment will include medical and logistics support personnel, officials said, and U.S. support for the American forces in Syria will be staged out of northern Iraq.

Their goal will be to help screen and equip Arab fighters seeking to join up with the majority Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. U.S. officials say Arab fighters will be crucial to future operations against Islamic State in traditionally Arab parts of Syria.

But Washington would still have to take a political decision to help the Kurds despite Turkish objections. Kurdish advances have largely stopped since February, with Turkey opposed to the Kurds taking more territory.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed coalition set up in October to unite the Kurdish YPG and some Arab allies, welcomed Obama's announcement but said it still wanted more help.

"Any support they offer is positive but we hope there will be greater support," SDF spokesman Talal Silo said. "So far we have been supplied only with ammunition, and we were hoping to be supplied with military hardware."

The HNC umbrella opposition, which represents groups opposed to Assad but not the Kurds, also welcomed U.S. forces helping rid Syria of the Islamic State "scourge", but said Washington should do more to fight Assad.

If the Kurds are given the green light to advance with American air support, the main short-term objective could be sealing off the last stretch of the border that is not held by the Kurds or the government, west of the Euphrates river.

That would deny Islamic State access to the outside world, but would infuriate Turkey, which regards the border as the main access route for other Sunni Muslim rebel groups it supports against Assad, and for aid to civilians in rebel areas.

The race for Raqqa

U.S. Special Forces teams providing close air support could ultimately help the Kurds advance on Raqqa, Islamic State's main Syrian stronghold and de facto capital.

With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting in the audience in Hanover, Obama also urged Europe and NATO allies to do more in the fight against Islamic State. The group controls Mosul in Iraq in addition to Raqqa and a swathe of territory in between, and has proven a potent threat abroad, claiming responsibility for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March.

A picture of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad is seen inside a checkpoint at the site of a car bomb on the outskirts of the Sayeda Zeinab district south of Damascus, Syria, April 25, 2016. Photo: Reuters/Omar Sanadiki

"Even as European countries make important contributions against ISIL, Europe, including NATO, can still do more," Obama said.

European countries have mostly contributed only small numbers of aircraft to the U.S.-led mission.

Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency he has found it necessary to keep troops in Afghanistan, return them to Iraq and send them to Syria, where at least 250,000 people have been killed in the civil war.

In Iraq, Islamic State has been forced back since December when it lost Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar. In Syria, jihadist fighters have been pushed from the city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces.

Talks in meltdown, truce in tatters

But Washington's lack of allies on the ground has meant its role in Syria has been circumscribed. The entry of Moscow into the conflict last year tipped the balance of power in favor of Assad against a range of rebel groups supported by Turkey, other Arab states and the West, including the United States.

Washington and Moscow have sponsored a ceasefire between most of the main warring parties since February, which allowed the first peace talks involving Assad's government and many of his foes to begin last month.

However, those talks appear close to collapse, with the main opposition delegation having suspended its participation last week, and the ceasefire is largely in tatters. Islamic State is excluded from the ceasefire.

Obama, Merkel and the leaders of Italy, Britain and France on Monday called on the parties in the Syrian war to respect the agreement to cease hostilities and make peace talks work, the White House said in a statement after the Western leaders met.

Fighting has increased in recent days near Aleppo, once Syria's largest city, now split between rebel and government zones. A monitoring group said 60 people had been killed there in three days of intense fighting, including civilians killed by rebel shelling and government air strikes.

The Syrian government's negotiator at the Geneva talks said a bomb hit a hospital near a Shi'ite shrine near Damascus, killing many innocent people and proving the government's enemies were terrorists.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino has been in power since 2010

Philippine President Benigno Aquino on Monday said he would do his best to prevent the family of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos from returning to power.

Aquino, whose father and namesake Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino was detained and then killed by Marcos forces, made the remark as the dictator's son is vying for the vice presidency.

While Aquino is stepping down after his single six-year term this year, Marcos's son, Ferdinand Marcos Jnr., is leading in the race for the vice presidency in the May 9 elections.

Marcos's flamboyant widow, Imelda, has openly said she wants her son to become president and at a recent rally she reportedly said Filipinos should unite behind her son, "so that our nation will be great again."

Aquino told supporters he realised it echoed the campaign slogan of Marcos Snr.: "I will make this country great again."

"Their slogans are the same. Maybe their plans are the same and if there is anything I can do, that will not come to pass," the president said.

"I don't want a repeat of the problems we went through especially from 1972 to 1986," Aquino added.

Marcos Snr. declared martial law in 1972, imposing virtual one-man rule and throwing many people, including Aquino's father, then-opposition leader Ninoy Aquino into detention.

Ninoy Aquino was later assassinated by Marcos soldiers in 1983, helping spark a popular revolt in 1986 that toppled Marcos from power and installed Ninoy Aquino's widow, Corazon, as president.

Despite the massive corruption and rights abuses during the Marcos rule, his family has made a surprising political comeback with Marcos Jnr. getting elected to the powerful Senate and now making a run for vice president.

In the Philippines, the vice president is elected separately from the president and the post has often served as a launching pad for a presidential campaign.

Aquino's own handpicked vice-presidential candidate, Congresswoman Leni Robredo, is tied with the dictator's son in the latest surveys.
Syria's war has destroyed agricultural infrastructure and fractured the state system that provides farmers with seeds and buys their crops, deepening a humanitarian crisis in a country struggling to produce enough grain to feed its people.

The country's shortage of its main staple wheat is worsening. The area of land sown with the cereal - used to make bread - and with barley has fallen again this year, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) told Reuters.

The northeast province of Hasaka, which accounts for almost half the country's wheat production has seen heavy fighting between the Kurdish YPG militia, backed by the U.S.-led air strikes, and Islamic State militants.

Farming infrastructure, including irrigation canals and grain depots, has been destroyed, according to the FAO. It said the storage facilities of the state seeds body across the country had also been damaged, so it had distributed just a tenth of the 450,000 tonnes of seeds that farmers needed to cultivate their land this season.

Farmers are also struggling to get their produce to market so it can be sold and distributed to the population.

The conflict has led to the number of state collection centers falling to 22 in 2015, from 31 the year before and about 140 before civil war broke out between government forces and rebels five years ago, according to the General Organization for Cereal Processing and Trade (Hoboob), the state agency that runs them. Many of those lost have been damaged or destroyed.

The breakdown of the agricultural system means Syria could struggle to feed itself for many years after any end to the fighting, and need a significant level of international aid, the FAO says.

It has had a major impact on plantings; the area of land sown with wheat and barley for the 2015-2016 season stood at 2.16 million hectares, down from 2.38 million hectares the previous season and 3.125 million in 2010 before the war, and only around two-thirds of the area targeted by the government, said the FAO.

The U.N. organization said its planting information came from the Syrian government. The government itself has not made public the figures for 2015/16 plantings.

The agriculture ministry could not be reached for comment. A government source told Reuters that information on the 2015/16 crop area was still not ready for publication.

"What concerns us is not the fluctuations from one year to the other, it is the worrying overall downward trend," said Eriko Hibi, the FAO's main representative for Syria.

Depending on rain

The worsening wheat shortage is another hammer blow to a country where the population numbered around 22 million before the civil war but more than 250,000 have been killed in the fighting and millions have become refugees.

Last year, farmers sold just over 450,000 tonnes of wheat, a fraction of the 1-1.5 million tonnes that is needed to provide enough bread to government-held areas of the country alone, government sources and traders said.

Before the conflict, by contrast, Syria could produce 4 million tonnes of wheat in a good year, with around 2.5 million tonnes going to the state and the surplus exported.

The United Nations said in January that some Syrians were starving in besieged areas under the control of rebel forces or Islamic State, which it said were home to at least 400,000 people.

Faisal Hejji, a farmer in Ras al-Ain in Hasaka, said he had devoted 200 donnams (20 hectares) of land to wheat this season, down from 300 donnams before the conflict.

"War has made us lose a lot of the necessary inputs we need and when we do find them they are pricey," Hejji said. "We used to support one donnam of wheat with 50 kg of fertiliser but now this is missing," he added.

"Also, we are now depending more on rain rather than other irrigation methods."

No security

His plight is typical of farmers across the country, according to the FAO, which estimated last year that Syria's wheat deficit for 2015 stood at around 800,000 tonnes. That deficit could widen every year should farmers continue to lack access to agricultural inputs and markets, it said.

Syrian farmers work in a wheat field in Maarshamsha, Idlib countryside, Syria, May 31, 2015. Photo: Reuters/Khalil Ashawi/File Photo

"Many farmers don't want to be displaced or give up their land, they want to stay as long as they can and in order to do that they have to be able to produce their food and make ends meet," Hibi said.

She said it was still too early to tell what this year's wheat crop would be, as it depended on the weather. "So far it has been a bit drier but that may change," she said.

Syrian farmers benefited from the best rainfall in a decade last year and harvested around 2.4 million tonnes of wheat, significantly better than the drought-stricken year before but still around 40 percent lower than the pre-war average.

Hejji's land is located in a part of Syria where Kurdish groups declared their own government two years ago known as the self-administration. Yet he still sells his wheat to the state-run Hoboob, which he says is the only group capable of buying it at suitable prices.

"I go to the Hoboob agency in Hasaka or Qamishli to sell my wheat and I store small quantities for me and my family. Some farmers sell their wheat to middlemen but these traders also sell them ultimately to Hoboob," he said.

It is difficult to transfer wheat and other food from one province to another because of lack of security, Hibi said.

"I've seen a lot of fresh fruit wasted in some areas where just nearby people haven't seen fresh fruit for years."
An aerial view of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine with an arrow pointing to the location of the explosion. On the morning of April 26, 1986, no one could yet tell that a meltdown in reactor 4 of the nuclear plant in then-Soviet Ukraine was poisoning the air with so much deadly radioactivity that it would become the world's worst nuclear accident.

A helicopter sprays a decontaminating substance over the region surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The accident killed 31 right away and forced tens of thousands to flee. The final death toll of those killed by radiation-related illnesses such as cancer is subject to debate.

A traffic policeman checks vehicles entering the restricted zone surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear station. Mikhail Gorbachev has since said he considered Chernobyl one of the main nails in the coffin of the Soviet Union which eventually collapsed in 1991.

A child drinks an anti-radiation iodine solution in a Warsaw clinic following the Chernobyl disaster. A Greenpeace report ahead of the 30th anniversary cites a Belarusian study estimating the total cancer deaths from the disaster at 115,000, in contrast to the World Health Organisation's estimate of 9,000.

An aerial view of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant still smoking shortly after the explosion of its fourth reactor. In particular, "the 30 km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl reactor remains highly contaminated and unsuitable to live in," it said.

A Ukrainian policeman decontaminates a bus used to carry workers who built a sarcophagus around the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear station.

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the explosion of its fourth reactor.

An aerial view of the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after its explosion.

A helicopter drops concrete onto the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power after its explosion.

A wedding party crosses a street weeks after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the settlement of Polesskoe, near Chernobyl.

Major Leonid Telyatnikov, one of the first firefighters at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster and head of the Chernobyl fire brigade, hugs his wife Larisa in the hospital grounds where he is being treated for exposure to radiation.

Representatives measure the level of radioactivity on the Koenigsplatz in Munich to combat radiation fears following the Chernobyl disaster.

A worker at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant checks the radiation level in the engine room of the first and second power units.

The building of the sarcophagus around the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after its explosion.

The number four reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant after completion of the work to entomb it in concrete.

Workers enter the Chernobyl nuclear power plant weeks after the 1986 explosion in its fourth reactor. The sign reads: 'Comrades, we guarantee the launch of the first and second bloc by October 1986', referring to the first and second reactor that were switched off after the accident.

A technician monitors nuclear reactor number 3 in a control room of the Chernobyl power plant.

Evacuees from the Chernobyl region's collective farms walk through the streets of a newly built village in Makarovsky district near Kiev.

Alexander Kovalenko, the former Information Chief of the Chernobyl clean up, holds a radiation meter showing a level of 2.3 milliRoentgens (hundreds of thousands of times less than in the first days after the accident). In the background are the third and the adjoining damaged fourth reactor now entombed in concrete. Photo is undated.
ACT police are warning motorists to pay attention and slow down as students across the territory return to school for second term.

At least six crashes clogged Canberra's roads on Tuesday morning as people returned to school and work following the Anzac Day long weekend.

Police have warned people to be cautious as students return to ACT schools on Tuesday. Credit:Jeffrey Chan

A two-car smash on Gundaroo Drive in Gungahlin shortly before 8am began a chaotic morning on the ACT's road network.

The crash affected southbound traffic before the road was cleared about 9am.
A late-onset concussion could rule Port Adelaide sensation Chad Wingard out of Saturday's MCG date against fellow AFL strugglers Richmond.

Last weekend, the 22-year-old played out the entire game against Geelong despite wearing a huge hit in the third quarter.

Port Adelaide's fitness boss Darren Burgess said inspections on the night "showed no signs of concussion".

"We checked him again after the match as a precaution and he was showing signs of a delayed concussion," he told the club's website.
Three years ago Chinese supermarket chain Winha had no customers. Now it has 800,000. By the end of the year it hopes to have one million, and it has Australian farmers in its sights.

Winha says it is one of the first companies in China to use the country's historic free trade agreement with Australia to help grow its business.

Its chairman Jackie Chung was in Australia last week with a small delegation to negotiate directly with farmers to supply its boutique supermarkets in Guangdong, China's most populous province.

Despite Australian farmers heaping praise on the China Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA), which took effect in December, Mr Chung said the deal had a relative low profile in China.
Saudi Arabia has launched a radical "Thatcherite" shake-up to avert an economic crisis and prepare the kingdom for the post-carbon world, stunning analysts with claims that it could break reliance on oil within just four years.

Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the country's de facto ruler, vowed to build a $US3 trillion ($3.9 trillion) wealth fund and break onto the world stage as an investment superpower, the spearhead of an historic package of measures intended to bring the deformed economy kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.

Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, meeting here with US Secretary of State John Kerry, has amassed immense power over the economy and defence. Credit:US Government

"We have an addiction to oil. This is dangerous. I think that by 2020 we can live without it," he told Al Arabiya television.

It is an extraordinary claim for a government that has historically relied on oil exports for 90 per cent of its income and has yet to achieve much success in building alternative industries. Gulf veterans say his words should be understood as poetic licence.
Global investors are expected to pull $US538 billion ($697 billion) out of China's slowing economy in 2016, the Institute of International Finance estimated on Monday, although the pace of outflows has dropped.

That number would be down a fifth from the $US674 billion pulled out last year, the industry association said, but could accelerate again if fears re-emerge of a "disorderly" drop in the yuan, or the renminbi, as the currency is also known.

Capital outflows in 2016 look like being lower than 2015 but could accelerate again if fears re-emerge of a "disorderly" drop in the yuan, the IIF says. Credit:Bloomberg

Capital exodus from China is crucial for emerging markets more generally, partly because of its sheer size and partly because sustained outflows can trigger more exchange rate volatility, which would then feed a fresh wave outflows.

"A sharp drop in the renminbi would likely spark a renewed sell-off of global risk assets and trigger a flight of portfolio capital from emerging markets," the IIF said in a new report.
Bob Jane's Calder Park Raceway, famed among aspiring petrol heads for its high-octane American-style NASCAR battles, is having a different, more cerebral, fight.

The racetrack is ringed by giant sloping mounds topped with garish advertising hoardings among bare paddocks on Melbourne's northern outskirts beside the Calder Freeway, a setting reminiscent of a scene from a Mad Max movie.

The valuers had very different ideas about what price to put on the Thunderdome and its dragstrip: Is it worth zero or a hefty $22.82 million? Credit:Allsport

These bulging mounds, monuments to V8 nirvana, are at the centre of a stoush that has pitted pointy-headed valuers from controversial racing legend Mr Jane's corporation against similarly salient experts at Brimbank City Council.

The valuers had very different ideas about what price to put on the Thunderdome and its dragstrip: Is it worth zero or a hefty $22.82 million?
The historic Terminus Hotel in Pyrmont, Sydney has been sold for $5 million to a private developer, who plans to breathe life back into the property, which has been dormant for the past 30 years.

It was sold by another private developer, Auswin TWT, which bought it only a year ago from the private Wakil Family, which has an extensive property portfolio around Sydney.

Under the mixed-use zoning, the hotel provides an opportunity for multiple bars, dining and accommodation options.

Auswin TWT will retain the car park on the south-western side of the hotel, where it plans to develop luxury terraces.
Australians appeared to dig deeper for others in the past year, with solid jobs growth and a resilient economy contributing to a significant jump in charitable donations.

However, the data, from National Australia Bank, shows some suburbs were more generous than others

Australians appeared less anxious about their own situation and more willing to help others in need in the past year, NAB reports. Credit:Tanya Lake

While people in affluent suburbs of Middle Park in Melbourne and Mosman in Sydney made the biggest average donations in dollar terms, it's a different story when suburbs are ranked by charitable giving as a share of income.

By this measure, Castlemaine in Victoria, parts of the Blue Mountains in NSW, and Melbourne's Brunswick and Fitzroy were among the most generous areas.
Noel Beddoe Kiama It doesn't matter who does or doesn't use it. Negative gearing is a severe market distortion with wide-ranging consequences and an unfair means of reducing tax. Get rid of it.



Maureen Boller Pyangle The Great Barrier Reef is dying before our eyes. Temperature records are broken every month. All the available evidence points more and more to an end-of-days scenario for life as we know it on the planet. But here in Australia, what is the main issue for the election? Negative gearing. Do we, as a species, deserve to survive?

Michael Hinchey New Lambton Scott Morrison, negative gearing is an unfair tax burden on all those taxpayers who can't afford an investment property. Why should the many be disadvantaged and subsidise the few so that they may gain?



Chris Hinkley Dawes Point Well Malcolm Turnbull we brought to the table all the ideas we could on tax reform and we are going to be fed a few scraps ("Political reality hits budget reform and voters lose", April 26). Meanwhile, the top end will continue to feast on the excesses of those delicious tax concessions. Pass the sauce please. Ken Pares Forster Your editorial is right. Malcolm Turnbull's accession to Prime Minister was greeted with enormous enthusiasm by a majority of the electorate because it was felt the government would undertake much-needed reform, particularly on the economy.

To date our expectations have not been met. Those of us old enough will remember the euphoria when Malcolm Fraser swept to power in 1975 and the disappointment that our hopes were not fulfilled over the next eight years. If the Coalition wins the forthcoming election I hope Malcolm the Younger will learn the lessons of the past and have the courage to introduce the hard reforms necessary for the good of the nation. Don't leave it to Labor again as I don't think Bill Shorten and Chris Bowen measure up to Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. John Duff Lavender Bay Underground car park at Bondi a wipeout for surfers Adrian Newstead is spot on ("Real Bondi doesn't want another flashy makeover", April 26). While his views emphasise the effects upon the community and artistic users of the Bondi Pavilion they also reflect those expressed by the users of the beach.

Included in the proposed redevelopment of the area is a plan to close Queen Elizabeth Drive and make beach users park in an underground car park behind the pavilion. Insufficient parking space already exists at the beach yet this extravagant plan would result in 138 fewer car spaces. What an absurd result after spending millions. Those juggling surf boards, skis, umbrellas and, of course, children will no longer be able to park close to the section of the beach they prefer, they will be required to navigate the bowels of the carpark, its stairs and lifts. The hundreds who shoehorn in an early surf at the south end before school or work will have an extra 20 minutes taken from their available surfing time. Those who change into and out of swim gear at their cars, many of them women, will do so in a cold and unfriendly environment. Then there is the inevitable southerly buster hitting the beach on a hot sunny weekend. Thousands stampede from the beach within minutes. The thought of them trying to navigate the narrow entrances, lifts and stairs at a central location behind the pavilion with their kids, boards and umbrellas and then politely queuing at the pay stations is farcical. Greg Maidment Bronte

Randwick artefacts worth preserving It is a sad reflection on Australian society that the call to pause development work on the light rail site at Randwick has been rejected by both the state and federal governments ("Hunt rejects call for halt to light rail project to protect Aboriginal artefacts", April 26). Any half-decent society would be falling all over itself to retain any vestige of a 50,000-year-old civilisation. In Lebanon, still rebuilding after a ruinous civil war, and swamped by a million war refugees, any trace of artefacts at a construction site leads to an immediate halt for investigation. In wealthy Australia, on the other hand ... Michael Maguire Emu Plains I see Greg Hunt has given little thought to investigating and possibly conserving an area of singular significance to our Indigenous past. Why am I not surprised?



Genevieve Milton Newtown

Greg Hunt obviously subscribes to the view of "terra nullius".



Margaret Grove Abbotsford Men a terror threat And on and on it goes ("Pursuit as village mourns", April 26). The latest, a bright and loving Bundeena woman. Right now there are thousands upon thousands of women in this country who are treading on eggshells, trying to do the right thing and say the right thing to keep the peace and make their partner happy. But whatever they do is not enough. And often children are in the middle of it all

Until men start controlling themselves, they will be this countries' biggest terrorist threat. Julie Robinson Cardiff Sophie Mirabella's pork barrel of $10 million to Wangaratta Hospital seems like chicken feed compared with the "pork submarines" dangled before South Australian voters ("France wins $50b contract to help build Australia's new submarines", smh.com.au, April 26). This from a government that previously failed to support steel and car manufacturing industries in the state.



Lynette Beacham Caringbah South

Will our first new submarine be named the HMAS Threat of Xenophon? Craig McKinnon Frenchs Forest All right. Apart from building the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, Mirage, Concorde, F1 cars, nuclear power plants, submarines, aircraft carriers, Exocet, TGV, Queen Mary 2 and Airbus aircraft, what have the French ever done for engineering?



Robin McConville Sandringham The pyramids in Egypt, the cathedrals in the Middle Ages are still with us. Twelve submarines, $50 billion, gone after 60 years. Bob Holland North Ryde

If you wanted to buy a very, very reliable car, would you want one Made in Japan, Made in Germany or Made in France? Ian Watson Watsons Bay Cheats accounted for Brenton White (Letters, April 26) states that by far the biggest number of cheats at university are in the studies of business, followed by accounting, management and marketing but he quotes no evidence for this statement. Perhaps he simply assumes that because enrolments in business subjects are high everywhere that the number of cheats must be similarly high. This is just not true. In accounting in particular, the professional accounting bodies have always required that a significant part, usually at least 50 per cent, of the assessment in their key subjects must be by way of supervised formal examinations. This has consistently also had the support of accounting academics generally.

It is also a usual requirement that to pass a subject a student must pass the supervised formal exam portion of the assessment process, regardless of their results in other forms of assessment. Together with other ways of detecting and deterring cheating, this means that accounting students, and I believe other business students generally, are less likely to be successful cheats than in other areas of study.



David Fraser Emeritus Professor of Accounting, Ballina Taking undue credit We have all heard Peter Reith's anti-union rhetoric before but on Tuesday he went even further by implying that gains in productivity were due to his extreme industrial relations policies. The Howard government was the beneficiary of increased productivity brought about by the microeconomic reforms of the Hawke-Keating governments. These reforms were achieved by open consensus, co-operation and reasoned argument with Australians, not by covert operations involving army and ex-army personnel trained in Dubai to take the wharves using dogs and balaclavas.



Andrew Morgan Gerringong We owe the Diggers

Warren Tindall (Letters, April 26) reminds me of workers who refuse to go on strike "on principle" then stick out their hand for the wage increases subsequently gained. I get it, "war bad, peace good", the futility of war etc. Well, tell that to the Jews released from Nazi death camps. The decision to go to war should take long, sober and intelligent assessment, something lacking from some recent decisions, but it must remain an option. Meantime, let's make sure the lives given to ensure Tindall can express himself as he wishes never go unmarked. I'll be at the next dawn service, not preserving a myth, just saying "thanks diggers". John Glennon Balmain Sophie's wise choice Further to Colin Booth's brilliant suggestion for the name of Sophie Mirabella's post-retirement memoirs, may I offer another suggestion (Letters, April 26)? Considering the name Sophie means "wisdom", an alternative title for Mirabella's introspective tome could be "The Wisdom of Wangaratta: why they voted me out".



Ross Pulbrook Wyong

Abbott and Turnbull arrive at the same conclusion Listening to the Prime Minister on Sunday I concluded the only difference between him and his predecessor was that one rides a train and the other a bike. Whatever the difference - they both seem to get to the same old place.

Peter Rosier Annandale Pillar of support I have struggled to find a decent real-world example to fit the punchline to the joke "If I wanted to get there, I wouldn't start from here". Now, thanks to the creation of Barnaby Joyce's "support unit" my problem is solved ("'Big picture' expansion for Joyce support crew", April 26).



Bob Liddelow Avalon Letter of longevity

Yes, the Queen is remarkable for her 90 years and another decade looks possible (Letters, April 26).

However, being a realist, at my recent 75th birthday I said I would like to live another 25 years and receive my letter from the king.



Lance Dover Pretty Beach One train of thought I would bring my own sledgehammer if it meant a train line to avoid sitting in peak-hour traffic every day ("Real Bondi doesn't want another flashy makeover", April 26).

David Grunstein North Bondi Make no mistake (about) it Michael Usher says Channel Nine has a lot of soul searching to do ("'We made mistakes': 60 Minutes admits failings in child custody saga", April 25). The chance of them making a find is zero.
Princes Harry and William will reportedly appear as stormtroopers in the next chapter in the Star Wars series.

It has been revealed that during the Princes' recent set visit, at Pinewood Studios, a scene was filmed for the blockbuster with Harry and William in full stormtrooper costume.

The scene will also feature new Star Wars addition Benicio del Toro (set to appear as the latest baddie, Lord Vikram), Daisy Ridley (Rey) and John Boyega (Fin), as reported by several UK outlets.
In an ideal world, the announcement by CSIRO that it would carve out a separate unit to host long-term research into climate science would be one to celebrate.

It shouldn't take another burst of late-autumn heat - and another is on the way for many parts of Australia - to be reminded that the world is facing what amounts to a climate emergency.

Global temperatures are off the charts so far in 2016, and we should welcome any commitment to back climate research that is protected from the whims of short-term fiscal pressures and acts from the political right which remains in denial over global warming.

However, the plan cooked up by CSIRO doesn't hide the fact that saving 40 staff within a division that holds 140 climate researchers doesn't amount to much of a salvage operation.
A Shorten Labor government would slash carbon emissions by significantly more than the Turnbull-led Coalition by 2030, introduce a broad-based emissions trading scheme, and block states like NSW and Queensland from expanding land clearing.

Signalling that the ALP is prepared to make climate change a central point of difference from the incumbents, leader Bill Shorten said "the consequences of refusing to take meaningful action on climate change will be devastating for Australia and our economy".

Australia's carbon emissions are among the highest on a per capita basis. Credit:AP

"While senior ministers in the Liberal government are still disputing whether the 'science is settled' on climate change, Labor knows it is," Mr Shorten said.

Labor's plan contains six key elements, including a target of reducing Australia's 2005 levels of emissions by 45 per cent by 2030, compared with 26-28 per cent committed by the Turnbull government at the Paris climate summit.
It was an unexpected birth that took everyone at the Prague Zoo by surprise.

Nobody noticed that 24-year-old gorilla Shinda - who is a bit overweight - was pregnant.

Shinda holds her newborn baby at the zoo in Prague on Sunday. Credit:AP

After several miscarriages, she was expected to remain childless.

"It seems that a miracle happens from time to time," zoo director Miroslav Bobek said.
An emergency contraceptive that works up to five days after unprotected sex has been launched by Australia's sole supplier of medical abortion drug RU486.

The EllaOne pill, from non-profit pharmaceutical group MS Health, is available from Wednesday.

MS Health began importing the controversial RU486 medical abortion drug in 2012. Credit:James Alcock

While the group recommends that women using the drug take it "as soon as possible" after unprotected sex, it said it was effective for up to five days, the maximum time sperm can survive in a body after intercourse. This is in contrast to commonly used emergency contraceptive pills, which are recommended to be taken within three days of unprotected sex.

The new drug is available by prescription only, unlike the morning-after pill, which is sold over the counter at chemists. MS Health said this was because EllaOne was "a new chemical entity".
Bob Katter once said he would walk backwards from Bourke if there was a homosexual in his electorate.

Well, there is at least one, and he is going to run against him for the LNP in the federal election.

Jonathan Pavetto is running in the federal seat of Kennedy.

Jonathan Pavetto comes from a fifth generation sugar farming family near Ingham and went to primary and high school in the area before studying at the Australian National University in Canberra.

He has worked for the agriculture lobby group Canegrowers and as an economist for the Alliance of Electricity Consumers.
Papua New Guinea court finds Australia's detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island is illegal

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Two things stand out about Tuesday's announcement that France will help Australia build the new fleet of submarines.

First, Malcolm Turnbull has committed to all 12 boats being built in Adelaide. This is striking because the French firm DCNS openly favoured building the first boat or two in France under a so-called "hybrid model".

DCNS said a hybrid approach would create the same number of jobs as building all 12 boats in Australia but would make the process faster and more efficient.
Australia will need to launch a diplomatic effort to repair damaged relations with Japan after it was overlooked in favour of France's DCNS for the $50 billion submarine contract, defence experts say.

It is widely known that Japan entered the submarine race with the tacit approval of the former Abbott government.

Japan's leader, Shinzo Abe, personally expended significant political capital pushing the bid, which was a leap of faith for a country that since the end of World War II has followed a pacifist constitution, including a curb on defence exports.
The PNG Supreme Court has given Malcolm Turnbull cover to do the right thing and, not a moment too soon, end the inhumanity of indefinite detention of vulnerable and damaged people on Manus Island.

His administration was not part of these proceedings but, with the PNG government, it has been found guilty of a flagrant violation of the most fundamental right enshrined in the PNG constitution  the right to liberty.

Both governments have been ordered to "take all steps necessary to cease and prevent the continued unconstitutional and illegal detention of the asylum seekers" and the ongoing breach of their human rights.
Cayleb Hough was last seen on December 20 in Highett. That still leaves currently about 150 people around Australia whose whereabouts are unknown, many of them aged under 18. The figures add up to two young people every hour going missing. We know most leave voluntarily, but are there warning signs or triggers parents and loved ones should be watching out for, and how can we prevent so many children and teens getting the point where they are desperate enough to walk out the door? The police advice is clear: do not wait 24 hours to decide a child is missing; if you are worried for their safety and you don't know where they are, report it to your local police.

Marina Simoncini, co-ordinator of victim-based crimes for the Australian Federal Police, says the first 24 hours are crucial. "If there is genuine concern for someone's welfare, file a missing persons report," she says. "Police can check have they used their bank account, have they logged into social media, are there any signs that they didn't take that bus to school? "We can look at CCTV. The first 24 hours is quite critical."

New technology There are new tools too, in the battle to track down missing children and teens. Ms Simoncini says three recently developed apps are proving very helpful both in finding missing children and in preventing some of the scenarios that lead to young people losing touch with families and loved ones. The Police Child ID App allows families to quickly upload key details such as height, appearance and closest friends to a secure police report. The Daniel Morecombe Foundation Help Me App makes getting help and sending alerts easier and includes a GPS tracker.

And the Thread app, developed in memory of Carly Ryan, the Melbourne teenager who in 2007 was groomed online and then killed, includes check-ins with trusted contacts. This year's national missing persons week in August will have the theme of "staying connected". Ms Simoncini says that when family disputes or difficulties among peers lead to young people going missing, most will still have a connection with a trusted teacher or friend who can help keep them safe. One of the biggest challenges for police working in the field of missing young people is that there is no specific profile of someone most likely to leave home, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. Family conflict

Talking Works, an AFP website aimed at teenagers, puts it this way: "Mum and dad fighting, drug or alcohol problems, relationship breakdowns, mental health, violence, sexuality issues or just not fitting in. "You might not be a missing person but you might know friends or schoolmates that are in this situation - maybe they already left home or maybe they are just thinking about it." Police are also keen to debunk the myth that it's a crime to go missing. Again, Talking Works gives a clear message to teens and children that you won't get into trouble for going missing and you won't be forced to go back home if you don't feel it's safe. "Going missing is something young people might do when they feel there is no other way out. " The website includes links to Kids Helpline, Reach Out and other resources.

Detective Inspector Jill Dyson from Victoria Police's Missing Persons Squad says common reasons young people go missing include, "mental health issues, problems at school, with their peers and family conflict". Custody disputes can also be a factor in children going missing from home, and the AFP's National Missing Persons Coordination Centre works with the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children as part of a global Missing Children's Network. The most recent research into missing young people in Australia, a 2008 paper by the Institute of Criminology, argues that the best way to reach those likely to go missing is to build on resources and interventions already offered to at-risk groups. For example, adding to programs aimed at preventing child abuse and neglect and preventing youth suicide, as well as programs working with young people involved in drug use and offending. The research also argues that because risk factors for running away from home include domestic violence, family conflict, child abuse and neglect, and school problems such as bullying, young people living in residential care are particularly at risk of going missing.
A man has been charged after handing himself in to police over the alleged attack of a navy officer who was punched in the face on a train in Sydney's south-west while travelling home from Anzac Day commemorations.

The 27-year-old man was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm, common assault, behaving in an offensive manner in a public passenger vehicle and drinking alcohol on a train.

The charges came after the navy officer's girlfriend spoke of how her partner had been standing up to a group who were disrespecting decorated veterans when he was allegedly attacked.

Emma Novotny said her partner took a blow to the face after he swivelled to face his alleged attacker, who came up behind him as he tried to leave the train.
A toddler has died after being hit by a car in Sydney's west.

A Toyota Tarago ploughed into a father pushing his three-year-old son in a stroller along the footpath on Lumley Street in Granville about 5.30pm on Tuesday, according to emergency services.

The car hit the stroller, crushing the boy against the red brick fence of an apartment building.

The boy sustained critical injuries and was treated at the scene for more than an hour.
A native bird is lucky to be alive after rescuers found it with an arrow sticking through its body for two days after it was shot.

But police believe the injury is the result of a freak accident rather than another sickening attack on wildlife.

The bush stone-curlew was thought to have been walking around the Airlie Beach area since Friday before it was rescued near the Whitsunday Airport on Sunday.

Fauna Rescue Whitsundays volunteer Dianne Jessop and her husband, Col Foster, found the bird with the arrow sticking through its wing and chest after a call from a local cafe worker.
Four separate suspicious fires in southern Queensland overnight Monday have significantly damaged a Gold Coast school, destroyed a country pub and a Logan house, and prompted the evacuation of an apartment block in Brisbane's north.

Police and fire investigators are probing the causes of all four fires, with all being treated as suspicious.

None are believed to be related.

On the Gold Coast, a crime scene has been established at St Andrews Lutheran College at Tullebudgera, after fire caused significant damage to the school building.
Queenslanders needs an education shake-up because they work longer hours "less productively" than workers in other states, respected economist Saul Eslake told the Queensland Jobs Growth Summit in Brisbane on Tuesday.

The Jobs Growth Summit, sponsored by the University of Queensland and independent thinktank the Australia Institute, is trying to identify trends in Queensland's future jobs creation.

Queensland's per capita income is below the national average because Queensland's productivity rate is $6.10 an hour. Credit:Paul Jones

The Australia Institute research showed two in three new jobs would come in the healthcare, professional and technical services, education and training, accommodation and food services and construction areas.

Mr Eslake said Queenslanders overall worked longer hours for less output, compared with other states, producing "$385 per head" less in productivity.
Boosting tourism jobs in Queensland will be a key feature of the next Queensland budget, Treasurer Curtis Pitt said at a Queensland Jobs Summit on Tuesday.

Tourism jobs would boost regional Queensland where unemployment remains steepest, the Queensland Tourism Industry Council said.

Treasurer Curtis Pitt tips moves to boost Queensland tourism in Queensland budget. Credit:Tourism and Events Queensland

It comes one month after national tourism figures showed Queensland was again luring international and interstate tourists to Queensland's beaches and national parks.

Industries linked to tourism  accommodation, food preparation, international education and construction  are emerging industry sectors expected to provide 25,000 new jobs in the future.
A 48-year-old woman has been charged with arson, after a luxury convertible was allegedly torched in the basement car park of an apartment block in Brisbane's inner north on Tuesday morning.

The fire, allegedly lit by the woman about 4am, destroyed the Saab convertible and prompted the evacuation of residents of the Nundah unit block.

Three people were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation by paramedics.

They did not require hospital treatment.
What if you didn't have to keep remembering passwords  and instead they were literally inside your head?

That's the gist behind new cutting-edge research that explores doing things such as watching how your brain responds to celebrity pictures or listening to sounds echoing around your skull to prove your identity.

Could the way sound bounces around inside your head be the new biometric password?

Researchers at Binghamton University in New York conducted a study in which some 50 participants were monitored via headgear fitted with 30 brain sensors while 500 images of things, such as celebrities, food and unusual words, flashed in front of them on a screen for less than a second each.

The sensors captured how their brains automatically reacted to the pictures  and from that data, the researchers were able to figure out how to identify a person with 100 percent accuracy while using just 27 image responses collected from a handful of sensors.
Pauline and Bill Thomas died in April 2013. Credit:Border Mail "He moved forward and cocked the weapon at point-blank range." Mr Thomas said the shotgun was pointed just centimetres from his chest when he grabbed the barrel and "reefed" it out of his father's grasp. He said he turned the shotgun on his father, moved backwards and pulled the trigger. "It hit him. He went down."

Asked by Justice Lex Lasry if he had fired the shotgun deliberately, Mr Thomas said, "Yes, I did your honour." Mr Thomas said after shooting his father, all he could think about was his mother lying dead in the shed and he went "insane", repeatedly hitting his dead father with the pickaxe handle. He said he then walked up and down the house trying to process what had happened before washing the blood from his hands. Mr Thomas told the jury he then went out to the shed to carry his mother back to the house. "Just couldn't leave her down in the shed, on the shed floor," he said.

He could not remember why he placed his mother face down next to his father or why they were positioned head to toe. Mr Thomas removed the cable tie from around his mother's neck because it "looked ghastly". Mr Thomas has pleaded not guilty to murdering his parents, William, 65, and Pauline, 63, who had been married for 40 years and had five children, at their Great Alpine Road home between Wangaratta and Tarrawingee, on April 21, 2013. The Crown case against Mr Thomas is that he strangled his mother before laying in wait for his father, shooting him in the chest and beating him around the head with the pickaxe handle. Mr Thomas' married lover, Jacinta Emselle, has told the jury he confessed when they met at the Cremorne Hotel in Geelong the day after the alleged murders.

She said Mr Thomas was drinking a beer and reading the paper when he told her, with a strange smirk on his face, "Let's just say my parents are no longer with us". The couple had known each other since 2010 after meeting at a rehabilitation clinic in Queensland when seeking help for alcohol dependency. Ms Emselle said Mr Thomas told her his mother had been annoying him, nagging him and driving him crazy when she came out to the shed and they argued over how he was using her hairdryer to remove stickers from his van. Ms Emselle said Mr Thomas claimed he put his hands around his mother's neck and just squeezed until she fell to the floor. Mr Thomas then allegedly went back to the main house to prepare himself for his father's return in order to murder him as well.

Mr Thomas told the court on Tuesday it never crossed his mind to call police after finding his mother dead in the shed. He also decided not to contact police the day after the alleged murders because he thought "they were going to blame me for everything". Asked about his meeting with Ms Emselle at the Cremorne Hotel, Mr Thomas said he told her, "My life is over." He claimed he went on to tell Ms Emselle how his elderly father had strangled his mother and then tried to shoot him. Mr Thomas denied ever describing to Ms Emselle how he had strangled his mother with his hands.
They call them "tech schools", but they're not schools and they're moving away from trades.

Less than a year before the state government's new tech schools are set to open at the cost of $116 million, questions have emerged about the likelihood that the model will connect students to a "hands-on profession" and reverse youth unemployment.

Education Minister James Merlino says Tech Schools will reflect the needs of a modern workforce. Credit:Wayne Taylor

In another major pre-budget education announcement, Education Minister James Merlino revealed the locations of the new schools, which will be run out of TAFEs and universities across Victoria.

They are not separate schools. Rather, they offer supplementary classes for secondary students at government and non-government schools, and the curriculum would be set by schools, TAFEs and local industry.
A young man accused of trying to rape a heavily pregnant woman on a popular inner city bike path in Melbourne allegedly tackled her to the ground before assaulting her.

Casey Tennent, 20, was apprehended by Good Samaritans who came to the alleged victim's aid.

Three men from the apartment pictured to the right ran to the aid of a woman Credit:Darrian Traynor

He faced the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday charged with seven offences, including attempted rape and sexual assault.

In documents released by the court, police allege Mr Tennent, of Coburg, dragged the 31-year-old victim off her bike while she was riding along the Upfield bike path near Anstey train station in Brunswick at 10.50pm on Sunday.
Construction giant Lendlease will hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars to Chinese plasterers who worked for weeks on a large Victorian government building project without receiving any pay.

It was revealed last month in The Age that dozens of low-paid Chinese tradesmen had not received pay and superannuation for up to nine weeks while working for Lendlease's fit-out subcontractor on the $630 million Bendigo Hospital site.

Some of the Chinese workers and their families outside Lendlease's Melbourne offices in Docklands last month. Credit:Simon O'Dwyer

The underpayments occurred in the months before the subcontractor  East Malvern-based Asset Interiors  collapsed and entered administration, leaving more than 60 of the workers battling severe financial hardship and struggling to provide for their families.

Lendlease became the target of a fierce public campaign from hundreds of construction union members, who rallied alongside the Chinese workers at the company's Melbourne office building, claiming it had a "moral responsibility" to ensure people were not exploited on its sites.
A teenager accused of driving around three alleged Apex gang members who robbed, threatened and assaulted several bystanders has been denied bail.

Kual Ashweel, 18, of Cranbourne North, faced the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday charged with 63 offences over the two-and-a-half hour spree on the night of Sunday, April 10, on the streets of Southbank, Richmond and Hawthorn.

The so-called Apex gang came to public attention after a large-scale brawl in Melbourne's city centre last year. Credit:twitter.com/@russmulry

The electrical engineering student is accused of driving a stolen car with three other teenagers, two who are underage and can't be named, who allegedly robbed, threatened and assaulted innocent bystanders.

Some of those bystanders, court documents claim, were approached by the teenagers under the guise of needing help before they were set upon.
It's pretty hard to sound like Nelson Mandela when you are delivering the budget speech to Parliament.

Scope for soaring oratory, Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas concedes, can be limited by the fact that budgets tend to come across as long lists of initiatives. This is difficult to avoid.

Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas will deliver the state budget on Wednesday, but don't expect any soaring oratory. Credit:Louise Kennerley

Budgets are as much about politics as they are about financial management. They set the tone for a government, provide voters with tangible initiatives for the future, and provide information on the likely direction for the state economy.

The objective is to deliver things people will like without infuriating any one group too much. Big numbers, preferably with the word "billion", tend to help.
Police first arrived at the home about 4pm Tuesday. An Ambulance Victoria spokeswoman confirmed ambulance officers had also attended the scene.

A Victoria Police spokeswoman confirmed detectives were at the London Street address in Melbourne's south-east after the body of a deceased woman was found.

Police are investigating the discovery of woman's body at a home in Bentleigh.

The woman is yet to be formally identified.

Channel Nine has reported the woman may have been in her 70s and suffered severe lacerations suggesting she may have been stabbed.

The Homicide squad and forensics were no longer at the scene on Wednesday morning, however two police officers were still stationed outside the taped-off house.

The front door of house remained open and the verandah light was still switched on.

Detectives could be seen scouring the front room of the house for clues as part of the investigation.
Police are hunting for a man with possible gang connections they believe was behind a triple shooting in Perth's northern suburbs on Tuesday.

The Major Crime Squad is investigating the incident, in which one man died and a father and son were wounded, on the driveway and street outside a home in Cassia Link, Banksia Grove.

Shots were fired about 10.30pm and police and paramedics responded to several calls from people in the house and neighbours, Detective Inspector Mark Fyfe told media on Wednesday.

An ambulance took a 23-year-old, a 24-year-old and a 53-year-old man to Royal Perth Hospital.
A man accused of luring two children away from a holiday care program and sexually abusing them has had his name and image suppressed by a Perth magistrate on Tuesday morning.

The man, known as Mr X, made his first court appearance via video link from Hakea Prison.

The Barnett government is planning to investigate how staff at the holiday care centre allowed the children to be abducted and sexually abused. Credit:Peter Braig

A four-year-old girl and a five-year boy were allegedly sexual assaulted after being enticed from a school holiday day care centre in North Perth.

It is alleged the man then dumped them in nearby Hyde Park.
A Perth artist who has spent the past year living the nomadic life will this week trade his yurt for a raft on the Swan River.

Steven Finch lives in a home-crafted yurt affectionately nicknamed Mr Universe.

Steven Finch will trade his yurt for a raft this week. Credit:Facebook

Never in more than one place for two months, the round tent-like structure provides Finch with shelter everywhere from a backyard to an artist's residency, with a homemade pull-cart bringing it and all of his possessions along for each move - on foot.

Nearly five metres in diameter and able to seat 16, it hosts storytelling nights and Open Kitchen Dinners, where guests come to eat, 'paying it forward' by bringing ingredients for the next dinner.
With several companies looking to expand to WA from the eastern states and beyond in the coming year, WAtoday's Aleisha Orr takes a glimpse from Melbourne of what is in store for Perth.

Doughnut Time is coming to Perth. Credit:Aleisha Orr

Is Perth ready for $6 doughnuts? With multiple outlets set to open in coming months, I would say yes.

The hole-in-the-wall stores may not be big, but the doughnuts are. It reminded me of the lengths us West Australians used to go to for a fancy doughnut. It wasn't so long ago you'd see large boxes of specialty doughnuts being awkwardly lugged on flights from over east. A practice which has petered out after Krispy Kreme finally opened its Perth doors in 2014.
After a school board in the city of Austin, Texas, decided to change the name of a primary school from a Confederate hero, it asked the public to make suggestions.

The name of the controversial Republican front runner, Donald Trump, was the most popular suggestion.

Robert E. Lee Elementary School in Austin, Texas.

But Trump was not the most controversial.
Nevers: A French court has found a Dutch dentist accused of causing "mutilations" to many patients guilty of assault and fraud, sentencing him to eight years in prison and a life ban on practising dentistry.

Jacobus Van Nierop showed no signs of emotion when the court in the central town of Nevers returned its verdict on Tuesday.

About 100 plaintiffs filed complaints against Van Nierop, ranging from having multiple healthy teeth removed, drill bits left in their gums and teeth, abscesses, recurrent infections and misshapen mouths after he did work on patients.

Van Nierop, dubbed the "horror dentist", was accused of causing "mutilations" or "permanent disabilities" to scores of patients from 2009 to 2012, of overcharging patients and billing them for imaginary procedures and of illegally practising dentistry in France.
ATLANTA, April 25, 2016 -- Genuine Parts Company announced today that its Board of Directors elected Paul D. Donahue to the position of President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, effective May 1, 2016. Mr. Donahue, 59, has served as President of the Company since 2012 and was also President of the U.S. Automotive Parts Group from 2009 to 2015. Previously, he served as Executive Vice President of Genuine Parts Company from 2007 to 2009 and President and Chief Operating Officer of S. P. Richards Company from 2003 to 2007. Prior to joining the Company in 2003, Mr. Donahue was President of Newell Rubbermaid's Sanford North American division.

Tom Gallagher, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, will continue in his position as Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Mr. Gallagher stated, "We are extremely pleased to name Paul as only the fifth CEO in the 88 year history of Genuine Parts Company. Paul is a proven executive and has demonstrated exceptional leadership capabilities in his 13 years with us. His deep knowledge and understanding of the Company as well as his vast industry experience make him the right person to successfully lead our Company into the future."

About Genuine Parts Company

Genuine Parts Company is a distributor of automotive replacement parts in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Australasia. The Company also distributes industrial replacement parts in the U.S., Canada and Mexico through its Motion Industries subsidiary. S. P. Richards Company, the Office Products Group, distributes business products in the U.S. and Canada. The Electrical/Electronic Group, EIS, Inc., distributes electrical and electronic components throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Genuine Parts Company had 2015 revenues of $15.3 billion.
Websites Seized For Selling Trademark Infringing Auto Parts

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Florida-based websites seized for selling trademark-infringing auto parts

DETROIT  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Detroit announced Thursday the seizure of two Florida-based websites allegedly selling trademark-infringing automotive parts.

"Seizing these websites that allegedly sell trademark-infringing auto parts helps to stem the flow of faulty products being introduced into the economy," said Marlon Miller, special agent in charge of HSI Detroit. "Homeland Security Investigations will continue to aggressively target and dismantle operations that blatantly disregard intellectual property rights."

The seizures follow an investigation and several undercover buys from the websites. Late last year, HSI special agents bought multiple brand-infringing auto parts from the online retailers and subsequently confirmed with trademark holders that the items were fraudulent. The websites listed dozens of different automotive parts available for sale, including several after-market and custom parts bearing Chrysler trademarks including: radiator covers, power steering covers, and valve covers.

The shuttered websites are: Billettechnology.com Custombilletstore.com

The HSI-led National IPR Center is one of the U.S. Government's key weapons in the fight against criminal counterfeiting and piracy. Working in close coordination with the Department of Justice Task Force on Intellectual Property, the National IPR Center uses the expertise of its 23-member agencies to share information, develop initiatives, coordinate enforcement actions and conduct investigations related to intellectual property theft. Through this strategic interagency partnership, the National IPR Center protects the public's health and safety and the U.S. economy.
Fireball Tim's Malibu VLOG - 2016 Jeep Wrangler, Volvo XC90, Amazing Classics from 1960-70 and Murphy Auto Museum +VIDEO







HOLLYWOOD USA - April 26, 2016: Top episodes this week includes Fireball driving the 2016 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon & Volvo XC90, amazing classic cars from 1960-70 at The Automobile Driving Museum also inlcudes a drive in a 1969 Thunderbird, Japanese Classics inside the TOP SECRET Honda Museum, Million Dollar Cars in Montecito & a Volkswagen Show at The Murphy Auto Museum. All in a day's work! a Watch the Show!

FIREBALL MALIBU VLOG is an Automotive Hollywood Video Blog starring Filmmaker, Hollywood Car Designer and Host Fireball Tim. He takes us on a weekly automotive journey through his show from the beaches of Malibu and Southern California, featuring amazing CAR CULTURE, CELEBRITY Interviews and Automotive DESTINATIONS. Fireball is a legend in the Car Design world, having conceived vehicles for over 400 of Hollywood's biggest films, Author and Award Winning Filmmaker and has been a Host for Speed, TLC, Discovery and Velocity. He's also the Host of THE MALIBU CARS & COFFEE Event showcasing some of the best cars and celebs in the world. Subscribe to his Vlog on Youtube ( http://www.youtube.com/fireballtim) hit his Automotive Blog ( http://www.fireballtim.com) & be sure to check out the VLOG STORE https://shop.spreadshirt.com/fireballmalibuvlog
NEW DELHI, April 26, 2016 --

- The Award Felicitates Innovators That are Set to Bring in a Revolutionary Change in the Asia Pacific Travel Industry

- Achieving This milestone Within a Short Span of Time, Myles Embarks on its Next Phase of Growth in India

Cementing its position amongst industry stalwarts, Myles, a robust and cost-effective car sharing and self-driving solution, bags the runner's up position at the popular Asia Pacific Travel Innovator of the Year Award, organized by Phocuswright. Myles uses state-of-the-art sophisticated telematics technology to enable all cars to be available on a single web and mobile platform. Achieving the feat of being logged as one of the premium travel innovators of the year, Myles embarks on its next phase of growth.

Fostering smart strategic planning, tactical decision-making and organizational effectiveness, the leading travel industry research authority, Phocuswright, announced the award winners of the Asia Pacific Travel Innovation Summit during Phocuswright India, which concluded in Gurgaon, India. The awards had three categories under which, QuadLabs Technologies, Travog was announced as the Asia Pacific Travel Innovator of Year followed by AudioCompass felicitated with the 2016 People's Choice Award and Amadeus Next Award.

Commenting on the feat, spokesperson, Myles commented, "It is an absolute delight to be amongst and competing with the top players in the industry within a mere three years of commencing operations. This is the platform in which industry behemoths like MakeMyTrip, Rakuten, IBS, QYER, Trip Hobo, Guiddoo and Booking Boss were a part of, in the past."

The Asia Pacific region is a hotbed of innovation and is also very active with respect to acquisitions, mergers and IPOs. There is a proud history of APAC-based companies taking the stage at Phocuswright's Travel Innovation Summit. This year's presenting companies are a great representation of the region's innovations that promises to make an impact on APAC's growing travel landscape.

About Myles:

Myles is India's leading self-drive service car rental company. Started in November 2013 with 14 cars and 3 locations has now grown to over 1000 cars and 200 locations with presence in 21 cities. Myles gives an option to its customers to choose from 34 car models depending upon their needs; be it hourly, weekly, monthly or yearly. All Myles cars are centrally tracked through GPS technologies and enable the consumers to find a car within walking distance of their location through a simple mobile application, web or calling 08882222222.

In the next 4 years we would like to bring together a fleet of 50000 cars in 50 cities spread across over 5000 locations. We want to provide a Myles car every 300 meters in a city. Myles can effectively solve the congestion problems in urban cities caused due to the growing number of owned cars leading to more parking space needed. We aim at providing a responsible product, which delivers financial benefits along with achieving an over-all infrastructure benefit to cities.
SEATTLE, April 26, 2016 -- Boeing and Xiamen Airlines, China's only all-Boeing carrier, have finalized an order for 10 Next-Generation 737-800s.

The order, valued at $960 million at list prices, will be posted on Boeing's Orders & Deliveries website once all contingencies are cleared.

"The 737-800 is the best-selling version of the highly successful Next-Generation 737 family," said Ihssane Mounir, senior vice president, Northeast Asia Sales, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. "We are pleased to see the 737-800 continues to play an important role in Xiamen Airlines' fleet expansion."

Formed in 1984 as China's first joint venture between the Civil Aviation Administration of China and a municipal government, Xiamen Airlines began flying passengers in 1985 with two 737-200s serving three cities.

Mirroring the rapid growth of China's air travel industry, the carrier now has expanded its fleet in service to 135 airplanes  17 737-700s, 108 737-800s, 4 757-200s and 6 787-8 Dreamliners.
Asbury Automotive Group Announces Record 2016 First Quarter Financial Results







DULUTH, GA - April 26, 2016: Asbury Automotive Group, Inc., one of the largest automotive retail and service companies in the U.S., today reported adjusted income from continuing operations for the first quarter 2016 of $33.2 million, or $1.36 per diluted share, versus income from continuing operations in the first quarter 2015 of $35.9 million, or $1.30 per diluted share, a 5% increase per diluted share. Income from continuing operations for the first quarter 2016 was adjusted for $3.4 million in pre-tax real estate related charges, or $0.09 per diluted share. There were no adjustments to income from continuing operations for the first quarter 2015. Net income for the first quarter 2016 was $31.0 million, or $1.27 per diluted share, compared to $35.9 million, or $1.30 per diluted share in the prior year period. See attached reconciliation for reported adjustments related to both of these periods.

First Quarter 2016 Operational Summary (compared to the prior year period):

Total revenues increased 1% to $1.6 billion

New vehicle revenue up 1%; gross profit down 10%

Used vehicle retail revenue down 1%; gross profit down 2%

Finance and insurance revenue up 2%

Parts and service revenue up 7%; gross profit up 7%

Same store parts and service customer pay gross profit up 11%

Total gross profit increased 2%

SG&A as a percentage of gross profit was up 100 basis points to 69.5%

Adjusted operating margin as a percentage of revenue was at 4.7%

Strategic Highlights:

Repurchased $102 million of common stock in Q1 2016

of common stock in Q1 2016 Repurchased $60 million of common stock in Q2 2016 through April 22nd

of common stock in Q2 2016 through Announced plans to open two new Q auto stores in the greater Tampa, FL area in 2016

"Despite continued margin pressure and flat unit sales, our strong parts and service performance and share repurchases enabled us to deliver 5% EPS growth," said Craig Monaghan, Asbury's President and Chief Executive Officer.

"Even with soft March sales, we were able to grow our front end yield, which is up approximately $100 per vehicle from the low in the second quarter of 2015," said Asbury's Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, David Hult. "This was a direct result of our team's strong performance increasing used vehicle margins and continuing gains in F&I. Likewise, we were able to deliver strong performance in our parts and service business, led by 11% growth in our customer pay business."

The conference call will be today at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time and will also be simulcast live on the Internet. The simulcast can be accessed by logging onto www.asburyauto.com or www.ccbn.com. A replay will be available at these sites for 30 days. In addition, a live audio of the call will be accessible to the public by calling (800) 533-7619 (domestic), or (785) 830-1923 (international); passcode - 7545687. Callers should dial in approximately 5 to 10 minutes before the call begins. A conference call replay will be available two hours following the call for seven days, and can be accessed by calling (888) 203-1112 (domestic), or (719) 457-0820 (international); passcode - 7545687.

About Asbury Automotive Group, Inc.

Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. ("Asbury"), a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Duluth, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, is one of the largest automotive retailers in the U.S. Built through a combination of organic growth and a series of strategic acquisitions, Asbury operated 82 dealership locations, encompassing 99 franchises for the sale and servicing of 28 domestic and foreign brands of new vehicles as of March 31, 2016. We also operated 25 collision repair centers and 2 stand-alone used vehicle stores as of March 31, 2016. Asbury offers customers an extensive range of automotive products and services, including new and used vehicle sales and related financing and insurance, vehicle maintenance and repair services, replacement parts and service contracts.

ASBURY AUTOMOTIVE GROUP, INC.

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME

(In millions, except per share data)

(Unaudited)













For the Three Months Ended

March 31,

Increase

(Decrease)

%

Change

2016

2015



REVENUE:













New vehicle $ 838.4



$ 830.5



$ 7.9



1 % Used vehicle:













Retail 413.1



419.2



(6.1)



(1) % Wholesale 47.8



54.2



(6.4)



(12) % Total used vehicle 460.9



473.4



(12.5)



(3) % Parts and service 189.2



176.7



12.5



7 % Finance and insurance, net 62.3



61.2



1.1



2 % TOTAL REVENUE 1,550.8



1,541.8



9.0



1 % GROSS PROFIT:













New vehicle 44.7



49.6



(4.9)



(10) % Used vehicle:













Retail 34.7



35.4



(0.7)



(2) % Wholesale 1.1



(0.1)



1.2



NM Total used vehicle 35.8



35.3



0.5



1 % Parts and service 118.0



110.3



7.7



7 % Finance and insurance, net 62.3



61.2



1.1



2 % TOTAL GROSS PROFIT 260.8



256.4



4.4



2 % OPERATING EXPENSES:













Selling, general and administrative 181.2



175.7



5.5



3 % Depreciation and amortization 7.5



7.3



0.2



3 % Other operating expense, net 3.2



0.3



2.9



NM INCOME FROM OPERATIONS 68.9



73.1



(4.2)



(6) % OTHER EXPENSES:













Floor plan interest expense 4.4



3.9



0.5



13 % Other interest expense, net 13.4



10.3



3.1



30 % Swap interest expense 0.8



0.5



0.3



60 % Total other expenses, net 18.6



14.7



3.9



27 % INCOME FROM CONTINUING OPERATIONS

BEFORE INCOME TAXES 50.3



58.4



(8.1)



(14) % Income tax expense 19.2



22.5



(3.3)



(15) % INCOME FROM CONTINUING OPERATIONS 31.1



35.9



(4.8)



(13) % Discontinued operations, net of tax (0.1)







(0.1)



 % NET INCOME $ 31.0



$ 35.9



$ (4.9)



(14) % EARNINGS PER COMMON SHARE:













Basic













Continuing operations $ 1.28



$ 1.31



$ (0.03)



(2) % Discontinued operations 











 % Net income $ 1.28



$ 1.31



$ (0.03)



(2) % Diluted













Continuing operations $ 1.27



$ 1.30



$ (0.03)



(2) % Discontinued operations 











 % Net income $ 1.27



$ 1.30



$ (0.03)



(2) % WEIGHTED AVERAGE COMMON SHARES OUTSTANDING:













Basic 24.3



27.5



(3.2)



(12) % Restricted stock 



0.1



(0.1)



(100) % Performance share units 0.1



0.1







 % Diluted 24.4



27.7



(3.3)



(12) %

______________________________ NMNot Meaningful

ASBURY AUTOMOTIVE GROUP, INC.

KEY OPERATING HIGHLIGHTS (In millions, except per unit data)

(Unaudited)













For the Three Months Ended

March 31,

Increase

(Decrease)

%

Change

2016

2015



Unit sales













New vehicle:













Luxury 5,626



5,885



(259)



(4) % Import 13,484



13,977



(493)



(4) % Domestic 4,919



4,196



723



17 % Total new vehicle 24,029



24,058



(29)



 % Used vehicle retail 19,736



20,467



(731)



(4) % Used to new ratio 82.1 %

85.1 %

(300) bps



Average selling price













New vehicle $ 34,891



$ 34,521



$ 370



1 % Used vehicle retail 20,931



20,482



449



2 % Average gross profit per unit













New vehicle:













Luxury $ 3,519



$ 3,721



$ (202)



(5) % Import 1,253



1,309



(56)



(4) % Domestic 1,626



2,240



(614)



(27) % Total new vehicle 1,860



2,062



(202)



(10) % Used vehicle 1,758



1,730



28



2 % Finance and insurance, net 1,424



1,375



49



4 % Front end yield (1) 3,238



3,284



(46)



(1) % Gross margin













New vehicle:













Luxury 6.8 %

7.2 %

(40) bps



Import 4.5 %

4.9 %

(40) bps



Domestic 4.6 %

6.3 %

(170) bps



Total new vehicle 5.3 %

6.0 %

(70) bps



Used vehicle retail 8.4 %

8.4 %

 bps



Parts and service 62.4 %

62.4 %

 bps



Gross profit margin 16.8 %

16.6 %

20 bps



SG&A metrics













Rent expense $ 7.8



$ 7.7



$ 0.1



1 % SG&A, excluding rent expense as a percent of gross profit 66.5 %

65.5 %

100 bps



Total SG&A as a percentage of gross profit 69.5 %

68.5 %

100 bps



Operating metrics













Adjusted income from operations as a percentage of revenue 4.7 %

4.7 %

 bps



Adjusted income from operations as a percentage of gross profit 27.7 %

28.5 %

(80) bps



Revenue mix













New vehicle 54.1 %

53.9 %







Used vehicle retail 26.6 %

27.1 %







Used vehicle wholesale 3.1 %

3.5 %







Parts and service 12.2 %

11.5 %







Finance and insurance 4.0 %

4.0 %







Total revenue 100.0 %

100.0 %







Gross profit mix













New vehicle 17.1 %

19.3 %







Used vehicle retail 13.4 %

13.8 %







Used vehicle wholesale 0.4 %

 %







Parts and service 45.2 %

43.0 %







Finance and insurance 23.9 %

23.9 %







Total gross profit 100.0 %

100.0 %



























_____________________________

















(1) Front end yield is calculated as gross profit from new vehicles, used retail vehicles and finance and insurance (net),

divided by combined new and used retail unit sales.

ASBURY AUTOMOTIVE GROUP, INC.

SAME STORE OPERATING HIGHLIGHTS (In millions)

(Unaudited)













For the Three Months

Ended March 31,

Increase

(Decrease)

%

Change

2016

2015



Revenue













New vehicle:













Luxury $ 290.6



$ 293.5



$ (2.9)



(1) % Import 362.6



359.4



3.2



1 % Domestic 159.4



149.9



9.5



6 % Total new vehicle 812.6



802.8



9.8



1 % Used Vehicle:













Retail 404.1



402.8



1.3



 % Wholesale 47.0



52.4



(5.4)



(10) % Total used vehicle 451.1



455.2



(4.1)



(1) % Parts and service 184.5



169.5



15.0



9 % Finance and insurance 60.4



59.2



1.2



2 % Total revenue $ 1,508.6



$ 1,486.7



$ 21.9



1 %















Gross profit













New vehicle:













Luxury $ 19.8



$ 21.3



$ (1.5)



(7) % Import 16.5



17.7



(1.2)



(7) % Domestic 6.9



9.4



(2.5)



(27) % Total new vehicle 43.2



48.4



(5.2)



(11) % Used Vehicle:













Retail 33.8



34.2



(0.4)



(1) % Wholesale 1.1



0.1



1.0



NM Total used vehicle 34.9



34.3



0.6



2 % Parts and service:













Customer pay 65.0



58.4



6.6



11 % Warranty 16.5



15.4



1.1



7 % Wholesale parts 5.2



4.9



0.3



6 % Parts and service, excluding reconditioning and preparation 86.7



78.7



8.0



10 % Reconditioning and preparation 28.4



27.4



1.0



4 % Total parts and service 115.1



106.1



9.0



8 % Finance and insurance 60.4



59.2



1.2



2 % Total gross profit $ 253.6



$ 248.0



$ 5.6



2 %















SG&A expense $ 176.9



$ 169.1



$ 7.8



5 % SG&A expense as a percentage of gross profit 69.8 %

68.2 %

160 bps

























_____________________________



















NMNot Meaningful









































Same store amounts consist of information from dealerships for identical months in each comparative period, commencing with the first month we owned the dealership. Additionally, amounts related to divested dealerships are excluded from each comparative period.

ASBURY AUTOMOTIVE GROUP, INC.

SAME STORE OPERATING HIGHLIGHTS (Continued)

(Unaudited)













For the Three Months Ended

March 31,

Increase

(Decrease)

%

Change

2016

2015



Unit sales













New vehicle:













Luxury 5,626



5,704



(78)



(1) % Import 13,144



13,315



(171)



(1) % Domestic 4,419



4,196



223



5 % Total new vehicle 23,189



23,215



(26)



 % Used vehicle retail 19,195



19,633



(438)



(2) % Used to new ratio 82.8 %

84.6 %

(180) bps



















Average selling price













New vehicle $ 35,042



$ 34,581



$ 461



1 % Used vehicle retail 21,052



20,516



536



3 %















Average gross profit per unit













New vehicle:













Luxury $ 3,519



$ 3,734



$ (215)



(6) % Import 1,255



1,329



(74)



(6) % Domestic 1,561



2,240



(679)



(30) % Total new vehicle 1,863



2,085



(222)



(11) % Used vehicle 1,761



1,742



19



1 % Finance and insurance, net 1,425



1,382



43



3 % Front end yield (1) 3,242



3,309



(67)



(2) %















Gross margin













New vehicle:













Luxury 6.8 %

7.3 %

(50) bps



Import 4.6 %

4.9 %

(30) bps



Domestic 4.3 %

6.3 %

(200) bps



Total new vehicle 5.3 %

6.0 %

(70) bps



Used vehicle retail 8.4 %

8.5 %

(10) bps



Parts and service:













Parts and service, excluding reconditioning and preparation 47.0 %

46.4 %

60 bps



Parts and service, including reconditioning and preparation 62.4 %

62.6 %

(20) bps



Gross profit margin 16.8 %

16.7 %

10 bps

























_____________________________



















Same store amounts consist of information from dealerships for identical months in each comparative period, commencing with

the first month we owned the dealership. Additionally, amounts related to divested dealerships are excluded from each

comparative period.





















(1) Front end yield is calculated as gross profit from new vehicles, used retail vehicles and finance and insurance (net),

divided by combined new and used retail unit sales.

ASBURY AUTOMOTIVE GROUP, INC.

Additional Disclosures (In millions)

(Unaudited)

















March 31,

2016

December 31,

2015

Increase (Decrease)

% Change SELECTED BALANCE SHEET DATA













Cash and cash equivalents $ 4.4



$ 2.8



$ 1.6



57 % New vehicle inventory 808.3



739.2



69.1



9 % Used vehicle inventory 146.3



134.1



12.2



9 % Parts inventory 43.3



43.9



(0.6)



(1) % Total current assets 1,369.3



1,343.0



26.3



2 % Floor plan notes payable 813.7



712.2



101.5



14 % Total current liabilities 1,114.4



1,007.8



106.6



11 %















CAPITALIZATION:













Long-term debt (including current portion) $ 946.2



$ 954.3



$ (8.1)



(1) % Shareholders' equity 241.8



314.5



(72.7)



(23) % Total $ 1,188.0



$ 1,268.8



$ (80.8)



(6) %



March 31,

2016

December 31,

2015 DAYS SUPPLY





New vehicle inventory 81



62

Used vehicle inventory 33



30













_____________________________ Days supply of inventory is calculated based on new and used inventory levels at the end of each reporting period and a 30-day historical cost of sales





Brand Mix - New Vehicle Revenue by Brand-



For the Three Months

Ended March 31,

2016

2015 Luxury:





BMW 7 %

8 % Mercedes-Benz 7 %

7 % Lexus 7 %

7 % Acura 4 %

5 % Infiniti 4 %

4 % Other luxury 6 %

6 % Total luxury 35 %

37 % Imports:





Honda 16 %

16 % Nissan 11 %

12 % Toyota 12 %

12 % Other imports 5 %

5 % Total imports 44 %

45 % Domestic:





Ford 14 %

10 % Dodge 3 %

3 % Chevrolet 2 %

2 % Other domestics 2 %

3 % Total domestic 21 %

18 % Total New Vehicle Revenue 100 %

100 %

ASBURY AUTOMOTIVE GROUP INC.

Supplemental Disclosures

(Unaudited)

Non-GAAP Financial Disclosure and Reconciliation

In addition to evaluating the financial condition and results of our operations in accordance with GAAP, from time to time management evaluates and analyzes results and any impact on the Company of strategic decisions and actions relating to, among other things, cost reduction, growth, and profitability improvement initiatives, and other events outside of normal, or "core," business and operations, by considering certain alternative financial measures not prepared in accordance with GAAP. These measures include "Adjusted leverage ratio," "Adjusted income from operations," "Adjusted income from continuing operations," and "Adjusted diluted earnings per share ("EPS") from continuing operations." Non-GAAP measures do not have definitions under GAAP and may be defined differently by and not be comparable to similarly titled measures used by other companies. As a result, any non-GAAP financial measures considered and evaluated by management are reviewed in conjunction with a review of the most directly comparable measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. Management cautions investors not to place undue reliance on such non-GAAP measures, but also to consider them with the most directly comparable GAAP measures. In their evaluation of results from time to time, management excludes items that do not arise directly from core operations, or are otherwise of an unusual or non-recurring nature. Because these non-core, unusual or non-recurring charges and gains materially affect Asbury's financial condition or results in the specific period in which they are recognized, management also evaluates, and makes resource allocation and performance evaluation decisions based on, the related non-GAAP measures excluding such items. In addition to using such non-GAAP measures to evaluate results in a specific period, management believes that such measures may provide more complete and consistent comparisons of operational performance on a period-over-period historical basis and a better indication of expected future trends. Management discloses these non-GAAP measures, and the related reconciliations, because it believes investors use these metrics in evaluating longer-term period-over-period performance, and to allow investors to better understand and evaluate the information used by management to assess operating performance.

The following tables provide reconciliations for our non-GAAP metrics:



For the Twelve Months Ended

March 31, 2016

December 31, 2015

(Dollars in millions) Adjusted leverage ratio:





Long-term debt (including current portion) $ 951.5



$ 959.7









Calculation of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA"):





Income from continuing operations $ 164.6



$ 169.4









Add:





Depreciation and amortization 29.7



29.5

Income tax expense 100.6



104.0

Swap and other interest expense 50.5



47.0

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA") $ 345.4



$ 349.9









Non-core items - (income) expense:





Real estate-related charges $ 3.4



$ 

Gain on divestitures (34.9)



(34.9)

Total non-core items (31.5)



(34.9)









Adjusted EBITDA $ 313.9



$ 315.0









Adjusted leverage ratio 3.0



3.0


84% of staff have not heard this word from their boss in over six months

84% of staff have not heard the word thank you from their boss in more than six months, according to a study by Podium designs.

The survey found that only 32% of British employees feel appreciated in their workplace.

Podium designs conducted research using 750 UK workers to find out about workplace satisfaction. Only 16% of those said they had heard a thank you from their boss within the last six months.

Whilst the concept of creating a better workplace is on the rise, it seems that not many employers are following through with their promise. Most of the people surveyed didnt feel appreciated in the office, which is thought to be a leading factor in job dissatisfaction.

With many people putting workplace happiness before salary, are companies doing enough to maintain a happy working environment and therefore retain their staff?

Director of Podium Designs Richard Mckie was surprised to how few UK workers actually felt appreciated in their workplace.

He says Employee engagement seems to be at an all-time low and if employers want to keep hold of staff, theyre going to have to do more to show their appreciation.

The idea of a job for life seems to have been forgotten as more and more employees hop from one business to the next seeking satisfaction.

Richard added: Employers and managers need to nurture their team to fully integrate new talent and get the best from their staff.

Since conducting the research, Podium have suggested a few tips which could turn your employees frowns upside down. Finding the time to say thank you, whether verbally or written, helps to maintain a happy workplace.

Often frustration can arise from a lack of trust. Give your employees freedom and trust that they know what to do when it comes to their job.

Everyone should have their say and be rewarded regularly for hard work and success.

A happy workplace is a much healthier environment for both management and employees alike. Investing in your co-workers happiness is not only beneficial for them, but for the quality of their work.

For more articles like this, check out our Business Bytes section.
Mysterious metal street signs popped up yesterday in major cities across the country, aiming to make America great againby banning Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.

Parking signs designating No Trump Anytime zones reportedly materialized over the weekend in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Miami, installed in high-trafficked and iconic sites like the Capitol Building, Hollywood Boulevard, and yes, Trump Tower.

They appeared simultaneously, blending in so well with legal street signs that passersby slowly started noticing them Monday, posting them online with the hashtag #NoTrumpAnytime.

If they look familiar, theres a reason: The signs are the handiwork of L.A.-based street artist Plastic Jesus, who erected similar anti-Kardashian signs around Los Angeles in 2015 and went viral with his life-sized Oscar statuettes snorting cocaine and overdosing on the red carpet in recent years.

The Banksy of L.A. has taken aim at celebrity culture, the destructiveness of Tinseltown, Wall Street greed, the food industry, and the War on Drugs in his previous works. This time, he tells The Daily Beast, he found himself increasingly alarmed by the incendiary GOP candidateand it was time to take his message to some of Americas biggest cities.

I considered the effect Trump will have on the whole of the nation, he told me by phone from Los Angeles on Monday, a day after a cadre of volunteers synchronized their efforts to install the No Trump Anytime signs across the country. I think it will be a unilateral disaster.

Ive been thinking as an artist and a street artist of what I can do in terms of a piece that focuses on Trump, he said. I didnt want to be frivolous with it. I wanted to find something that would have perhaps a deeper meaning.

I hope it makes people think about what Trump would mean in their city and their state, across the U.S.

He didnt specify where the signs should be posted, instead letting his Plastic Jesus Army choose their own inspired and fitting locales.

I left it up to a group of very able volunteers who were keen to help me, explained Plastic Jesus, whose inbox has since been blowing up with demand for No Trump Anytime signs in other metropolitan areas. In hindsight, I could have done a hundred in a thousand more cities.

Tomorrow, he plans to post downloadable PDF files of the image so that people can print out their own and post them in their own neighborhoods. His hope, he emphasizes, is to get Americans mindful of the potential that looms in the very near future should Trump make his way into the White House.

Ive been a photojournalist for over 20 years and Ive traveled to a lot of countries. Ive seen the effect that politics and policies can have within a nation, which sometimes can be quite devastating, he said. Look at Haiti and how some African nations with terrible leadership year after year have an effect on culture, society, and poverty. I think Trump will have a devastating effect on the U.S., which has done so much in the last few decades for equality and culture and fairness. I think hell set us back a few decades.
Supporters of Bernie Sanders took to Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter late Monday night after five of their Facebook community pageswith tens of thousands of memberswent dark the night before five Democratic party primaries.

Theories on Sanderss primary subreddit and Facebook pages quickly popped up, accusing Hillary Clinton supporters of a coordinated effort with a SuperPAC to report the Sanders pages for threats of violence and child pornography until the pages went down.

Some news organizations appeared to back some of the theories. Paste Magazine headlined one story, Clintons Internet Supporters, Allegedly Using Pornography, Shut Down Bernie Sanders Largest Facebook Groups in Coordinated Attack. Salon joined in, too, pointing to a mystery over booted Bernie Sanders Facebook groups.

At least some of the attacks originated from a rival Facebook group of Clinton supporters, reports say, the Salon story reads.

But Facebookand now even the affected pro-Sanders groups themselvessay that the real problem was merely a database error that affected more pages than just Sanders-leaning community pages.

A number of groups were inaccessible for a brief period after one of our automated policies was applied incorrectly, a Facebook spokesperson wrote. We corrected the problem within hours and are working to improve our tools.

All seven of the Sanders pagesfive of which had more than 10,000 memberswere restored a few hours after they went down.

The news reports and Reddit comments pointed to two specific instances where users claimed to have reported Sanders fan pages for threats of violence and pornography. (Paste Magazine, citing some users, suggested that comments sections on some of the groups had been riddled with porn and spam before the attacks.)

One poster named Casey Champagne, whose account has since been deleted, bragged about reporting the groups on a fan page called Bros 4 Hillary, which many took as proof of a coordinated attack.

Bros 4 Hillary, however, is an open Facebook group. Anyone with a Facebook account can join, and non-members can view and post in it at any time.

The communitys creator, Alex Mohajer, called Champagnes actions harassing behavior which was not promoted or supported by the group, and said he removed the posts as soon as possible.

I dont even know the person in question. We have like 7,000 members. He posted without our consent or our knowledge. He didnt act on behalf of Bros 4 Hllary, Mohajer told The Daily Beast. And from what I understand, that wasnt the reason the pages went down. It was because of a database error on Facebooks end. With that said, that does not to excuse his behavior.

Reddit commenters and Paste Magazine both quickly drew the connection to news released last week about the Hillary Clinton-supporting PAC Correct the Records $1 million commitment to spend on correcting commenters on Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter. The Daily Beast originally reported on Correct the Record's project last week.

The organization firmly denied the accusation that the group was behind the shutdowns.

"Correct the Record's Barrier Breakers 2016 had nothing to do with this. In fact, we strongly condemn this type of behavior. Currently, Barrier Breakers is exclusively engaged in positive messaging supporting Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Shappell, Correct the Records communications director, told The Daily Beast.

Shappell also noted that the organization does not employ paid trolls.

Correct the Record and Bros 4 Hillary have no affiliation, both groups say. Bros4Hillary creator Alex Mohajer said that the group has never reached out to him.

Its entirely preposterous that a link would even be drawn, said Mohajer. Were literally a group of people on Facebook supporting a presidential candidate. We have no connection with Correct the Record. We do phone banking. We do get-out-the-vote drives. We had a happy hour event last week. We dont work with any organization or PAC.

Facebook sources told The Daily Beast that thousands of groups went down due to the database error on Monday night and said Sanderss groups were part of a much broader selection of affected groups. A source couldn't say if reporting users had anything to do with the outages, but said the bans were so widespread that Sanders-focused groups were a drop in the bucket.

The largest Facebook group affected, the verified The People for Bernie Sanders account, put out this statement early on Tuesday:

Were aware many of the pro Bernie groups were removed from Facebook. Theyre back. It was a Facebook database error, not a conspiracy or an attack. Stay calm, phonebank, or get to a field office to win Tuesday, the group wrote.

Still, some conspiracies pervaded. One Reddit post, titled Proof of Hillary Brigading on Social Media, shows a screenshotted post by a Facebook user named Jeremiah Watson next to Champagnes post.

Hey keep up the good work, the screenshot says. Keep reporting any Bernie Sanders groups you see.

In the past three weeks, however, Watson posted from the same Facebook account declaring himself a Trump supporter in the group Trump Strong and a Sanders supporter in a separate post.

On April 9, Watson created a GoFundMe account called California for bernie sanders [sic].

Hey everyone, I started a fundraising campaign for California for bernie sanders, he wrote. Please tap to donate.

At press time, the page had received no donations.
LONDON  There really is no other way to put this. Free thinkers in Bangladesh are being serially hacked to death in their homes. An infamous hit list appeared in 2013 naming 84 atheist bloggers. By the end of 2015 there had been seven such murders across the country, and, tragically, this past week alone claimed three more victims.

Rezaul Karim Siddique, a professor of English at Rajshahi University in the countrys northwest, was set upon outside his house as he left for work. Siddique founded a literary magazine called Kamolgandhar and wanted to start a music school in his village as a way to involve his students in extra-curricular activities. But instead he died where he fell, succumbing to severe wounds after he was hacked in the back of the neck by cowards on a passing motorbike.

Only two days later, U.S. embassy employee Xulhaz Mannan, who was one of Bangladeshs top gay-rights activists and editor of the countrys only LGBT magazine, Roopbaan, was murdered by machete in his home. His friend, another gay rights activist Tanay Mojumdar was also killed. Xulhaz and Tanay were behind the annual Rainbow Rally, held April 14 on the Bengali New Year.

The so-called Islamic State in Bangladesh has claimed responsibility for the killing of Professor Siddique. Its media mouthpiece, called Amaq, stated ISIS fighters assassinated a university professor for calling to atheism in the city of Rajshahi in Bangladesh.

And despite the Bangladeshi governments rejection of this claim, ISIS English-language magazine Dabiq carried an interview earlier this month with their purported leader in Bangladesh, Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif, who claimed that the country had become its base of operations in South Asia.

Whether or not ISIS was behind this attack is secondary. The effect is the same. Jihadist terrorists are systematically hunting down leading free thinkers in Bangladeshone by oneand hacking them to death.

It is open season on atheists in Bangladesh.

And though Professor Siddiques daughter, Rizwana Hasin, has said that her father was not in fact an atheist, among jihadists that definition is incredibly broad.

Anyone who advocates liberal secularism, free inquiry, arts, and culture, is considered an atheist or apostate. Anyone who supports or sides with atheists, supports freedom of religion as well as from religion, and anyone who maintains the primacy of free speech, including and especially the human right to blaspheme, is deemed an atheist, whether they declare themselves to be or not.

Atheists are among the most discriminated-against groups in the world at present, and the most persecuted minority-within-a-minority among Muslims.

Imagine what it must be like for atheists living in Muslim-majority countries where such a belief is a criminal offense.

So beleaguered is this minority that you can be put to death for atheism in no less than 13 countries around the world. In 39 countries the law mandates a prison sentence for blasphemy, and six of these are Western countries.

Saudi Arabia has even declared being an atheist a terrorist offense. Nobel Prize Nominee and Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience Raif Badawi still languishes in jail there accused of atheism.

Meanwhile Bangladeshs best-known blogger, Imran Sarkerwho led major secular protests in Dhaka against Islamist leaders in 2013said that he had received a death threat on Sunday from a U.K. number saying he would be killed very soon.

If a society is to be judged by how it treats its weakest, its voiceless, and most downtrodden, then let that lens focus truly on these minorities-within-minorites who risk everything to question the prevailing conservative dogma within their own communities. For if liberalism is to mean anything at all, it is duty bound to support without hesitation the dissenting individual over the group, the heretic over the orthodox, innovation over stagnation, and free speech over offense.

Charb, the murdered editor of Charlie Hebdo magazine, wrote in his posthumously published manifesto: God is a super-surveillance camera to which no one seriously objects. Yet, it was put in place without any elected official or citizen having been consulted.

By visibly killing off dissenters in such a public way, extremists seek to scare us all into silence. The targeting starts with atheists and blasphemers, but almost always moves on to the sexually diverse, liberals, secularists, and minority sectsMuslim or otherwisethat rely on such pluralism to flourish.

The killers aim is to elicit our fearful compliance, like Charbs super-surveillance camera. Those who murder in the name of the Master of the Universe lay claim to what came before life, what comes during life and what is to come after life.

They lay claim to our innermost thoughts, and our outer behavior. No totalitarianism can be more total than that claimed in Gods name. This is why no resistance is more urgent than that waged to protect the right to our own individual conscience. For ISIS, we are all atheists.
ROME  Matteo Salvini, Italys most openly racist politician and leader of the far-right Northern League party, loves Donald Trump. And The Donald apparently loves him back.

Salvini, who has called German Chancellor Angela Merkels policy to accept Syrian refugees a disaster, and who has been pictured with a bulldozer on the edge of Roma camps, tweeted a selection of pictures of himself at a Trump rally in Philadelphia. In one, he poses with the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in what appears to be a somewhat awkward thumbs up moment with the caption, Go, Donald, Go!

Salvini, who is in the United States to promote Italian culture (as opposed to any other culture), then met with Trump for around 20 minutes after the rally, which was held on April 25the day Italy celebrates its liberation from fascism and a holiday Salvini does not celebrate. Matteo, I hope you will soon become the prime minister of Italy, Trump said, according to ANSA news service. Salvini then returned the sentiment, saying he hoped the Republican hopeful would be elected to the White House on November 8.

The Italian politician is widely known in Italy and throughout Europe for his radical right-wing rallies, during which it is common for him to slip on a black shirt to pay homage to the Fascist era. His rallies have often included people waving photos of Benito Mussolini, who he has praised for his efficiency and dedication to the country.

It must be noted that Salvini and Trump also share a common anti-immigration attitude, and after the meeting said they were in total agreement on closed borders. Salvini, who also idolizes Vladimir Putin and has often railed against Europe as a whole, has previously argued that migrant and refugee boats should not be allowed to disembark in Italy, and called upon local governments to refuse to open refugee centers.

He counts among his friends some of the most xenophobic politicians in Europe. He has repeatedly invited French right-wing politician Marine Le Pen to speak at Northern League rallies and she has had him speak at at least one National Front rally in which she said, He sends me into ecstasy when she introduced him.

The openly racist politician is also critical of Pope Francis for accepting refugees. With all due respect, the pope is wrong, Salvini wrote on his Facebook page last week. The pope wants to invite thousands of immigrants in Italy? It is one thing is to accommodate the few who escaped from the war, it is another to encourage and fund an unprecedented invasion. Dear Holy Father, the catastrophe is around the corner from the Vatican, is in Italy.

He has also criticized Italian President Sergio Mattarella as a sellout and accomplice to illegal immigration.

It seems unlikely that Salvinis extremist policies will ever win him the top seat in Italian government, but many have said that about his new best friend Donald Trump, too.
LONDON  A Scientologist in Ireland has been ordered to pay damages for her vitriolic and personalized attack on the reputation of a man who dared to speak out against the religion.

When a former Scientologist gave a talk to boys at a school in Dublin about the dangers of joining the church, he might have guessed there would be blowback.

What Peter Griffiths wasnt expecting was a series of highly personal emails to the schools principal that accused him of criminal activity, hate-mongering and having links to porn movies featuring teenage boys. One of the emails included a picture of Griffiths totally naked apart from a mask held over his genitals.

The emails were sent by Zabrina Collins, whom the court heard was an Ethics Officer and Director of Special Affairs in the Church of Scientology. She claimed that she had targeted Griffiths because he was an avid hate campaigner.

The judge in a civil lawsuit ruled Monday that the emails were largely untrue and grossly defamatory, according to The Irish Independent. He ordered her to pay $5,600 in damages for the vile attack.

Judge ODonohoe ruled against a further claim by Griffiths, who is gay, that Collins was also implying that he was a pedophile who might endanger the students if he were allowed to speak to the boys at the St. Davids Catholic school in the future.

The Irish Times reported that the judge said an email describing Griffiths as not being a fit person to engage with students was particularly distasteful, but had not gone far enough to brand him a pedophile either directly or by innuendo.

Griffiths said there was not a grain of truth in any of the allegations made in the emails against him.

He did, however, admit that the naked photo was genuine. He explained that his boyfriend had taken it as he posed in solidarity with Prince Harry, who was caught on camera wearing no clothes during a lascivious vacation in Las Vegas in 2012.

In the weeks after TMZ published pictures of the royal behind, tens of thousands of social media show-offsmany of whom were also in the militaryposted pictures supporting Harry with a naked salute.

Griffiths told the Dublin Circuit Civil Court that Collins had obtained one such image of him. His right arm is raised in salute, while the left holds a Guy Fawkes mask of the type popular with street demonstrators and the hacking group Anonymous.

Collins, a chiropractor, also alleged to the school that Griffiths was a member of the Irish branch of the hacking collective.

Griffith said all of these allegations had lowered his reputation in the minds of right thinking people while holding him up to hatred, ridicule and contempt.

On Monday, the judge agreed that the screeds had been malicious in the extreme.

Collinss rage stemmed from the school lecture, which Griffiths had later posted online. During the court case, he admitted that he had used foul languageincluding the words bullshit and crapin describing Scientology.

He told the boys that it was not a real religion; that they should not get involved with any kind of cult; and warned them that there were real dangers out there which could destroy their lives.

Collins sent the emails after hearing the recording, which was posted on YouTube. She admitted in court that she had overreacted.

I could have dealt with it in a more temperate way, she said.
Prince's sister said Tyka Nelson said in a court filing on Tuesday that he had no known will and asked Minnesota to appoint a special administrator to oversee his estate, according to the Associated Press. The news opens up the possibility of a drawn-out battle over his fortune, estimated at anything from $150 million to $800 million.

Prince, who reportedly worked 154 hours straight in the days leading up to his death, had eight brothers and sisters, and under Minnesota law, the six of them who are still alive, as his closest living relatives, would automatically share equally in his estate.

Only sister Tyka was a full sibling, and it had been assumed that she would take control of the empire; however, half-siblings have equal rights to the estate.

Prince had no living children, although he had a son who died a week after his birth. The infant died of natural causes, according to his death certificate, which named him as Boy Gregory. He suffered from a rare genetic disorder called Pfeiffer syndrome, according to Inquisitr.

TMZ sources say various professionals raised the issue of a will with Prince but he never had an interest in drafting one.

Prince kept in his possession a treasure trove of unpublished musicapproximately 26 albums worth of materialthat he kept hidden in a vault in the basement of his Paisley Park mansion. Ive vaulted so much stuff, going way back to the 80s, because I didnt want people to hear itit wasnt ready, he told the New York Post back in 2015.

The question of how much Princes estate will actually be valued at will be a fascinating case study for tax professionals, as his estate must now place a value both on his catalog of work and his right of publicitywhich is to say the future estimated earning power of his name and image.

Tax geeks will be impatient to see how the Internal Revenue Service reacts to that valuation.

Writing on Forbes.com this morning, tax expert David J. Herzig of Valparaiso University Law School draws a parallel between the Prince and Michael Jackson estates on this matter.

In its federal estate tax return, he writes, Jacksons estate valued the right of publicity at just $2,105, arguing that because Jacksons image was so tarnished by allegations of child molestation his reputation was basically worthless.

The IRS asserted in response that the right of Jacksons likeness was worth $434 million.

Herzig says: The IRS will likely be primed for a fight over the value of Princes catalog. Currently, conservative estimates place the value of his music catalog at $300 million. But these estimates may be way off since Prince actually owned both his recording and publishing copyrights. According to the LA Times, music industry insiders say they cant imagine a catalog that would have a higher value.

As it has signaled in the Michael Jackson estate, the IRS may attempt to establish precedent that valuation of these assets should include a greater multiplier of future earnings.
Wall Street is buying Main Street one foreclosed home at a time.

The housesmore than 200,000 of themare then rented to folks who continue to struggle in the aftermath of a near financial collapse in 2008.

And one of the leading figures in Wall Streets scavenging of the wreckage created by Wall Street is also a big-time backer of Hillary Clinton.

His name is Donald Mullen, and he was once the global head of credit at Goldman Sachs. He was credited with devising the infamous big short, by which the firm bet bigger than big that the housing market would collapse even as it was urging customers to invest in it.

Sounds like we will make some serious money, he famously emailed colleagues in 2007, at early signs of the impending implosion.

Mullen left Goldman Sachs in 2012 and made some more serious money by becoming one of a number of Wall Streeters who are acquiring and leasing thousands of foreclosed homes.

Mullen embarked on this new endeavor with Curt Schade, formerly a managing director at Bear Stearns, which failed at the start of the financial crisis. Mullen and Schade received a $400 million credit line from Deutsche Bank, which survived thanks to billions of dollars in direct and indirect financial support from the government.

The new firm came to be called Progress Residential. The name takes on an added resonance when you visit the website of the major pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA Action, to which Mullen contributed $100,000 in June. You are welcomed by a picture of a smiling, waving Hillary Clinton and a message:

The story of America is one of hard-fought, hard-won progress. And it continues today.

The $100,000 to the pro-Clinton super PAC was noted by OpenSecrets.org and reported by various news outlets. The Washington Post has further reported that Mullen is one of 146 people who have contributed to all six of the federal races entered by either Hillary or Bill Clinton.

What has not been reported are some supreme ironies arising not so much from the money Mullen hands out but in the money he rakes in. Consider the Rental Qualification Criteria that a prospective tenant must pass before being granted a lease to one of the foreclosed homes that Progress Residential has acquired.

Applicants must document monthly household income of at least three times the monthly rent. Income and credit worthiness (PDF) are then entered into an application scoring model to determine rental eligibility.

But that is not all. You must also attest that you have never been convicted of any one of various felonies, including these:

Financial crimes.

The ban in this category applies for 10 years for those convicted of a felony, three years for a misdemeanor.

A guy who has been caught passing a bad check can forget renting one of Mullens houses for a decade.

That by the onetime credit chief at Goldman Sachs, which this month reached a $5.06 billion settlement with the government arising from allegations that the bank knowingly sold iffy mortgages to unsuspecting customers even as it was betting against them via Mullens big short.

In announcing the deal, the head of the Justice Departments Civil Division, Benjamin Mizer, said, Todays settlement is another example of the departments resolve to hold accountable those whose illegal conduct resulted in the financial crisis of 2008.

Sure.

If there was illegal conduct, how come nobody was arrested?

In truth, the settlement was another example of the departments failure to hold any individuals accountable for breaking the law.

Too big to jail.

To be completely fair to Mullen, the Goldman emails show that he at one point worried about the representations we may be making to clients.

But that does not seem to have stopped him from playing a major role in what followed, which is to say upending the lives of millions of people.

And he refuses to rent not only to those who have committed financial crimes but also to those who have been evicted within the past seven years.

In other words, a family could be evicted when its home is foreclosed, watch Mullen buy the house, and then find itself barred from renting any of his thousands of properties because they had been evicted.

Also barred from renting are those who have been incarcerated for a felony of any kind within the past five years; those jailed for a misdemeanor have to wait three years.

Those who survived the financial collapse without being evicted or going bankrupt or committing a crime for which Main Street if not Wall Street folks are jailed might then actually get a lease.

The fee just to apply for a lease is $45, followed by a $500 holding fee when the application is submitted.

By submitting the holding fee, you acknowledge and agree in good faith that if your lease application is approved, you intend to rent the home by the proposed lease start date, whether or not you have been able to visit the home for a walk through, the site states.

For rented homes where the utilities are in Progress Residentials name, tenants are automatically enrolled in our utilities payment plan, which entails an added $25 enrollment fee and $9.99 monthly service fee.

In addition, tenants who fail to obtain renters insurance for at least $100,000 are hit with an unspecified monthly exemption fee.

Tenants are limited to three acceptable pets, these including dogs, cats, caged birds, and fish, but not potbellied pigs. Renters also can have no more than three cars.

Boats or trailers are not allowed unless approved in writing by the landlord, the site says.

In those houses that have a pool, tenants cannot expect Mullens company to have complied with municipal codes requiring a safety fence. An Arizona family renting a Mullen house repeatedly requested a fence but only got it three months after their 2-year-old child drowned.

As Mullen and the other foreclosure barons were acquiring houses by the thousands, they did not seem greatly worried about getting a bargain on particular purchases. They appeared to be looking not for deals but for inventory.

They cant get their hands on enough homes, one former banker told Bloomberg News.

And the reason became apparent when the Wall Streeters began offering securities secured by the rents paid by the tenants in foreclosed houses, just as the same Wall Streeters previously offered securities secured by mortgages.

No doubt, a fair number of houses have figured in the bonds leading up to the crash as well as the bonds that are now being assembled amid the wreckage.

The result is seriously serious money, some of which Mullen has used to subsidize the arts. He has been a big-time backer of the elevated High Line park in New York City. He once got into a bidding war with actor Alec Baldwin at a Hamptons art auction.

Mullen has also reportedly given considerable sums to the Republican Committee in Easthampton, apparently to fight a move by the local Democrats to curtail helicopter traffic by the ultra rich to their summer homes. He is said to be fond of such unfettered travel and to own a piece of a helicopter company.

Mullen did not respond to a request for comment about helicopters, or about the big short or about the foreclosed housesor about his contribution to the pro-Clinton PAC in the name of what both he and she call Progress.

Lost your house?

Cant get a mortgage?

Rent a Mullen house!

And vote Hillary!

Vote for Progress!
A 47-year-old man accused of firing a gun as he pressed it against his girlfriends face remained jailed late Monday after authorities tracked him down hiding in a bathroom.

The incident, which was reported at 3:47 p.m. Sunday in the 3600 block of High Country Drive, prompted Brazos County sheriffs deputies to shut down the road for a few hours as they searched for Alvin P. Gent.

Bleeding from the head, his girlfriend ran to a neighbors mobile home where authorities were called and told the woman had been shot in the head.

It turned out that was not the case; rather, the 27-year-old womans eardrum burst as a bullet soared past her head, court documents state.

The couple, who moved in together about a month ago, were arguing much of the day when Gent left a room in their home and returned with a gun, saying he was going to kill her, the documents state. Just after she told him he didnt want to do that, he fired the gun  which was touching her face  toward a wall, the documents state, adding that he said he was going to kill himself and left.

The girlfriend believed he was going to the shed in the backyard, so she fled to safety at the neighbors house, the documents state.

Chief Deputy Jim Stewart said authorities believed the man to be armed and dangerous when they arrived. The woman was taken to CHI St. Joseph hospital, where she was treated for her injury and released within hours.

Meanwhile, deputies used a robot from the College Station Police Department to search the shed and the home, but there was no sign of Gent, Stewart said.

We hate to shut down roadways, but in situations like this we have to assume the suspect is still around, armed and dangerous, he said. Our concern was for the safety of the neighbors.

The family that called authorities was evacuated from the area as authorities searched for Gent. A Bryan police officer came across Gents car parked on Old Hearne Road, and deputies were able to link him to a friend who lived nearby, Stewart said. They went to the friends house and discovered Gent hiding in the bathroom, he said.

Gent was charged with aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury, which is a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He was being held without bail at the Brazos County Jail.
The baby tiger, who weighs just over a hundred pounds, doesnt belong to Cody Tibbitts.

It also doesnt belong roaming the streets of Conroe  which is precisely what it did after Tibbitts left it, unsecured, at a friends house amid last week's floods.

Its not mine, legally  it's someone else's, legally, Tibbitts told KHOU-TV on Saturday. We just dont know who has the paperwork.

When Tibbitts, worried about rising waters, decided to leave the Houston area on Thursday, he claims he arranged for a transporter to take the tiger back to her original owner, to see if he could house her, for, you know, X amount of days, until I could get her back. But no one showed up, and the tiger named Nahla quickly took to the streets, still wearing her collar and leash.

I think a gate was opened, or  I dont really know, said Tibbitts, who could not be reached for comment for this story.

The Humane Society of the United States has offered to take Nahla to an animal sanctuary, but Katie Jarl, the Texas state director, says she hasnt heard back from Conroe police. Its unclear who currently has custody of the tiger  that same police department did not return multiple calls from The Texas Tribune on Monday. Eventually, a judge will decide where the tiger belongs.

In the meantime, its not even clear whether a crime was committed. Keeping a tiger as a pet is illegal in Conroe, according to city ordinances, but perfectly fine in Montgomery County, which surrounds the city. If the tigers true owner lives outside the city limits, the Conroe regulations may not have teeth.

The whole debacle has unearthed a unique complication: There are few statewide regulations regarding dangerous wild animals. That category, according to the Texas Health and Safety Code, includes lions, tigers and bears, as well as cheetahs, hyenas and gorillas. For the most part, its up to individual counties and municipalities to decide whether to ban such animals. State law simply requires that owners alert their local animal control offices so that they can be prepared if the animals escape.

Skip Trimble, who sits on the board of directors for the Texas Humane Legislation Network, which advocates for the humane treatment of animals, said most of his organizations efforts are focused on making sure even that basic requirement isn't overturned.

Weve been more or less fighting bad bills rather than creating anything new, Trimble said, adding that the one existing regulation about notifying local animal control has not been very well enforced."

In the last few legislative sessions, some lawmakers have sought to tighten regulations  something Trimble's group would welcome. State Rep. Ryan Guillen, D-Rio Grande City, authored one bill in 2015 requiring dangerous animals be registered with the state, and another in 2013 banning individuals from owning or selling dangerous animals in counties or municipalities with populations greater than 75,000 people. Neither bill made it out of committee.

Jarl, the state director of the Humane Society of the United States, said the patchwork nature of laws regulating ownership leaves the door open for accidents  especially in heavily populated areas where an animal who is properly registered with one animal control office might get loose and catch another areas officers unaware.

We have no database. We do not know where these animals are kept, Jarl said. "... The truth is, we have absolutely no way to prove the scope of this problem because we do not know where these tigers are."

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at http://www.texastribune.org/2016/04/26/across-texas-dangerous-animal-arent-widely-tracked/.
The accident contaminated over 40% of Europe as shown in the map of Cs-137 concentrations below. This included the UK: indeed food restriction orders were finally repealed in Wales only in 2012. Restrictions still exist in several other countries, especially on wild foods.

The problem with nuclear power is that it can be supremely unforgiving: when things go wrong - as at Chernobyl (and Fukushima in 2011) - they can go very, very wrong indeed. Contaminating over 40% of Europe plus an estimated 40,000 deaths are pretty disastrous effects.

It is vital that governments learn from the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. Many governments are phasing out their nuclear plants, but regrettably, a few governments - including the UK Government and even that of Belarus, which suffered the brunt of Chernobyl's fallout - have decided to ignore the lessons of Chernobyl and Fukushima and are planning or constructing more nuclear power stations.

A question of trust

In 2005, the IAEA/WHO stated "What the Chernobyl disaster has clearly demonstrated is the central role of information and how it is communicated in the aftermath of radiation or toxicological incidents. Nuclear activities in Western countries have also tended to be shrouded in secrecy.

"The Chernobyl experience has raised the awareness among disaster planners and health authorities that the dissemination of timely and accurate information by trusted leaders is of the greatest importance." While this is undoubtedly correct, it raises the vexed question of trust in governments which, for many people, has been eroded or does not exist after Chernobyl and Fukushima.

To re-establish that trust will be difficult. At a minimum, it will require the following steps. First, governments to make clear to their citizens that they will consider safer energy options that do not have the potential for another Chernobyl or Fukushima. Many such options exist.

Second, a dialogue to be set up between agencies such as IAEA, WHO and national governments on the one hand and various NGOs and health charities on the other for exchanges of views on radiation risks. Transparency is essential.

Third, WHO should no longer be required to have its reports on radiation matters vetted by the IAEA, as presently required under the 1959 agreement between the two UN agencies.

Fourth, UN agencies WHO, UNSCEAR, IAEA should be required to have independent scientists from NGOs and health charities as members of their main Committees. These agencies should also be required to consult on their draft reports, including the convening of meetings with environment NGOs and independent health charities.

Dr Ian Fairlie is an independent consultant on radiation in the environment with degrees in chemistry and radiation biology and author of TORCH-2016. His doctoral studies at the Imperial College UK and at Princeton University US examined the health effects of nuclear waste technologies. Dr Fairlie has been a consultant to the UK Government and was Scientific Secretary to the UK Government's Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters.

The TORCH reports:
The staying power of old energy structures should not be underestimated. Ukraine's electricity market is a political battlefield, and not only due to interference of oligarchs and dependency on Russia for coal, nuclear fuel and technology. The market is virtually completely regulated, and regulation has become a political tool.

Consumer prices are set by the powerful state energy regulator (NERC), which enables low tariffs for consumers and even lower ones for consumers using less than 150 kWh/month. Special groups, like recognised victims of Chernobyl, receive other rebates.

While there have been several minor rate hikes since 2014 (with a further increased planned for September 2016), cost realistic increases in electricity prices would be politically risky for any government in power. Low tariffs for private consumers are cross-financed by higher industrial tariffs, but in comparison with, for instance, EU markets, these are still low.

Needless to say, this means that providers don't receive much in the way of income in comparison with costs.

Oligarchic control of Ukraine's energy sector



Ukraine's energy oligarchs have a strong voice in the country's day-to-day politics. Take the concentration of the thermal coal power market, for instance: thermal is largely steered by the DTEK conglomerate, which is Ukraine's largest energy company, and is controlled by Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest man.

In the past, DTEK was able to negotiate a strong position (and higher tariffs) for coal generation, which, in turn, had to be cross-financed by lower prices for nuclear power.

The gas sector of Ukraine's electricity generation market is highly dependent on the Russian-Ukrainian company RusUkrEnergo, which is under control of Gazprom and another Ukrainian oligarch, Dmytro Firtash, who has strong ties to the current Poroshenko government.

Ukraine's renewable energy market initially also grew along the lines of large-scale developments driven by oligarchs. For example, Activ Solar, which is owned by Andriy and Serhiy Klyuyev, two powerful figures within the Yanukovych clan, developed large-scale solar power stations in 2011-2013 mainly in the sunny regions of Odessa and Crimea.

This was done while blocking other players from entering the market and securing inflated guaranteed feed-in prices for their projects - in the process undermining the popularity of solar energy in Ukraine.

Donbas war triggered coal crisis in Ukraine's power market

In 2014, the crisis in the Donbas saw the Ukrainian state lose control of two thirds of its coal mines - and with that of most of its coal resources for the country's thermal power stations.

This situation led to the coal sector's financial position deteriorating, which was then exacerbated by the termination of 400m of direct subsidies to state coal mines in 2015. The remaining coal power plants within the country are now dependent on coal trickling in from the Donbas and imports from Russia and South Africa - and that comes at a price.

DTEK's position has also been hit heavily: a significant part of its assets are situated in the Donbas. This loss of control and income seems to have driven the conglomerate over the edge into bankruptcy.

All this pressure on Ukraine's energy sector means that Energoatom, the state enterprise that currently generates 55% of Ukraine's electricity, has to balance the books

Although Ukraine's gas sector, which covered only 6% of the country's electricity generation in 2014, recently saw some inflow from the European Union, it remains largely dependent on gas deliveries from Russia. The bulk of gas-fired capacities are large combined heat and power plants, which provide district heating in winter and constitute critical infrastructure for a number of major Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv.

Further south, the annexation of Crimea put an end to the dreams of Activ Solar. The bankrupted company now seeks to sell its leftover assets to a Chinese investor.

All this pressure on Ukraine's energy sector means that Energoatom, the state enterprise that currently generates 55% of Ukraine's electricity, has to balance the books. This share needs to be covered by four nuclear power plants with 15 nuclear reactors. Twelve of these reactors were built in the 1980s, and are now in need for large safety upgrades if they are to be operated with a lifetime extension beyond 30 years.

Risky business: ageing nuclear plants starved of investment



And this is where the investment side comes in. Low consumer prices for electricity have combined with heavy pressure to compensate powerful political allies from the coal, gas and (tiny) renewable sectors to reduce Energoatom's returns. As a result, Ukraine's nuclear giant has to make adaptations on the cost side.

Every nuclear operator has to put aside money to later decommission its nuclear power plant(s) and manage its high level nuclear waste for the next 100,000 years. In order to do so, reserves are built up during the operation time of a nuclear power station, normally in the form of a fixed amount per kWh sold.

Ukraine decided to lower this amount, slowing down the build-up of these reserves. This has created a shortage in these reserves, which is now used as an argument to continue operating ageing reactors to create at least some income for another 20 years.

The necessary safety upgrades (for life-time extension, but also in reaction to the Fukushima catastrophe - Ukraine participated in the EU post-Fukushima nuclear stress tests) are thus weakened or postponed, and there are even indications that there is a lack of money for operational costs.

At the same time, Ukraine's nuclear fleet faces an increased security risk due to political instability. The risks for terrorist or insurgent attack on nuclear infrastructure are currently higher than in peace time, meaning further upgrades are necessary.

In addition, most of the upgrading work is dependent on Russian technological input. Delays in the implementation of upgrades are not only caused by lack of finance, but also by unforeseen technical complications and problems with tender procedures. On top of that, Energoatom is bleeding funds on an unrealistic nuclear new build programme in Khmelnytksy, western Ukraine.

The political position of Ukraine's increasingly risky nuclear sector is strengthened by the rhetoric that only lifetime extension of the 'independent' ageing nuclear fleet can fill the gap left by lost coal resources in the east.

The nuclear sector's dependency on Russia has been masked by swapping the tenders for upgrading and new builds from Russian companies to a Czech-based company Skoda JS (a deal that is part of anti-corruption investigations in Switzerland), which is actually Russian-owned, and by tests at the Yuzhnoukrainsk nuclear power station with the use of Westinghouse nuclear fuel (produced in Sweden), partly in reaction to delivery problems with Russian fuel in the last few years.

The fact that economic control over technology and a large proportion of fuel will always come from Russia remains off the table.

The reliability risks associated with the fact that over 50% of Ukraine's electricity production comes from an ageing nuclear fleet hardly gets attention. A December 2014 incident in Zaporizhzhya's nuclear power station (see photos) resulted in heavy blackouts across the region. And the experiences in Japan have shown that a severe accident in any of the reactors could lead to a long suspension of power production across the nuclear fleet.

This poses the question: why then, with 30 years experience of the Chernobyl aftermath, has Ukraine still not kick-started an energy revolution that could shore up its energy independence and, in the long run, lead to important reductions in cost?

Planning without comparison of alternatives

One of the reasons for the Ukrainian elite's reluctance to engage with renewal energy is that comparative studies on alternative energy policy pathways play no role in major energy decisions. These decisions are taken on political grounds.

There are signs that this inertia is beginning to change. For instance, EcoClub Rivne, a Ukrainian NGO, won a landmark case in 2014 under the Espoo Convention. In principle, the convention and the ruling oblige the Ukrainian government to carry out an environmental impact assessment, in which such a comparison with alternatives would need to be made for decisions on lifetime extensions of nuclear power stations.

However, the Ukrainian authorities have so far done everything to undermine implementation of these international standards.

Another chance would have been for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the EU to have forced comparative studies for the lifetime extension of the Ukrainian nuclear fleet to be carried out. Instead they chose to flatly deny that their 600m investment programme in nuclear upgrades has anything to do with life-time extension, probably because their donors would see life-time extension very critically.

This is in spite of the fact that it was clear from the start that Ukraine intends to add 10 to 20 years more of operation time for the ageing reactors on the basis of these upgrades - if only to recuperate its own investments and prevent problems with the lack of sufficient decommissioning and waste funds.

Systematic obstructions to energy sector reform



In central and eastern Europe, several strong myths about renewable energy remain a barrier to its growth. In Ukraine's energy strategy, these myths result in a meagre target of only 11% renewables in the electricity sector for 2020, and that includes 8% hydropower.

In comparison, Germany generated a third of its electricity with non-hydro renewable energy sources in 2015, and intends to increase that to 40% or more in 2020.

The most important of these myths is that renewable energy is expensive. And indeed, recent investigations from Greenpeace and NECU showed that it still is virtually impossible to turn Ukrainian houses or public buildings into efficient renewables-powered units in a financially sustainable way.

The regulated consumer price system and lack of accounting (metering) of energy used by consumers makes changes difficult. Relaxation of price regulation could cause severe energy poverty in a country that already is facing sluggish economic growth and high unemployment rates. This means that as long as energy prices remain under what they would be in a healthy market, the combination of energy efficiency and renewable energy sources will need some kind of support.

A first and crucial step to motivate energy efficiency in Ukraine would be to introduce metering of electricity, gas and/or heat used by households. Heating is the highest burden for private consumers and is, for a large part, provided by imported gas. But less than half of the buildings with centralised heating systems have metering in place.

It is estimated that non-metered consumers, who cannot influence their energy bill with efficiency measures, pay over 30% more for their heating than in buildings with individual metering. A law on metering in accordance with EU standards has been prepared, but is stuck in the legislative procedure.

There is a lot of verbal support for the development of energy efficiency and renewable energy sources in Ukraine by western institutions and investors, including rhetoric about how decentralisation of the energy market by the introduction of efficiency and renewables could reduce corruption and increase sustainability.

However the reality is that only 15% of EU total support for energy projects in Ukraine and less than about 16% of EBRD and EIB loans goes to energy efficiency and renewable energy sources.

Neither the EU, nor the EBRD have a sufficiently pro-active policy to turn Ukraine's energy system onto a sustainable pathway. This is, among others, illustrated by their support for the development of new electricity corridors, which are basically oriented on enabling export of Ukraine's nuclear power to the EU instead of developing an electricity network that could support the uptake of large amounts of variable renewable sources.

Change is in the air - finally!

What is changing, however, is public perception of clean energy technology. The collapse of Activ Solar and the fact that feed-in tariffs for solar PV are now in the same order of magnitude as those for wind power have changed the idea that renewables are expensive play toys for the enrichment of a few and indeed can deliver an affordable alternative.

Also the awareness that a lot of the corruption in Ukraine is related to the centralised nature of the old energy carriers is growing, and we see an increasing amount of courageous small and medium investors seeing efficiency and renewables as chances for job and income creation.

Ukraine's 2014 legislative framework for prosumers (people that produce their own electricity and sell the surplus to the grid) enables home generators of solar PV power to sell their surplus for grid-price. This is motivating a growing group of homeowners to investments. Meanwhile, a group of environmental NGOs and a coalition for energy efficient cities are pushing for further steps to decrease Ukraine's energy wastage and at the same time promote the uptake of renewable energy sources.

But what is really needed is a shift in gear from small, localised projects to efficiency and renewable energy development becoming the backbone of energy policy. It needs projects like the 140 MW Kherson wind project from Windkraft. It would need initiatives from global corporations like those united in the RE100 Climate Group to secure a 100% renewable supply chain in Ukraine.

And it would need the political elite in Ukraine to break with the energy oligarchs, looking instead for support for

local municipal initiatives and structures that motivate small and middle large enterprises;

the development of a grid structure based on decentralised electricity generation and optimising the regional advantages in the country; and

international cooperation partners like the EU, the EBRD and the World Bank to be consistent in their support for an Ukrainian energy [r]evolution.

Given the dilapidated state of Ukraine's energy industry at this moment, these steps are not only possible - they are inevitable. The question is not whether they will be taken, but how many opportunities and funds will be wasted before they are taken.

The sooner Ukraine moves towards a clean energy future, the better for all involved. After all, it could become a positive model for Belarus and Russia to find - at last - a way off the path set by Chernobyl.

Jan Haverkamp is an expert consultant on nuclear energy and energy policy for Greenpeace in Central and Eastern Europe. He has an academic engineering degree in environmental sciences.

Iryna Holovko is energy analyst for the CEE Bankwatch Network and the National Ecological Centre of Ukraine(NECU) since 2007.

This article was originally published by openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
Deaths from PTSD and other disaster-related traumas should be counted

But Fairlie insists that these are not the only numbers that matter. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima, he says, will contribute to many deaths from PTSD, stress and trauma directly related to the nuclear tragedies - which should not be dismissed or discounted.

These troubling statistics, and the prospect of another Chernobyl or Fukushima, says Gorbachev, remind us that "the questions raised by Chernobyl and reiterated by Fukushima are more relevant today than ever before, and they are still unanswered."

Nor, asserts Gorbachev, are the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters the only serious accidents we should be tallying: "Contrary to the statements of nuclear energy advocates that there were only two major accidents, if one refines an accident to include incidents that either resulted in the loss of human life or significant loss in property damage, a very different picture emerges."

That picture, said Gorbachev, should in fact include a total of 99 nuclear accidents "totaling more than $20.5 billion in damages" which occurred worldwide between 1953 and 2000 averaging "more than one incident and $300 million in damage every year."

Cost-free conservation and renewables

Such a frightening, not to mention costly, pace can be reduced, Gorbachev said, by simple actions that lie in our individual and collective hands: "Supporting new, more efficient technologies has a huge role in reducing waste, but massive improvements can be achieved just by changing behaviors and choices - which costs nothing to do."

On the international political scale, Gorbachev urges that "it is imperative that members of the international community work together to develop and distribute clean and renewable sources of energy." He favors a gradual, rather than rapid, phase-out of nuclear energy, but notes that nuclear power should not be viewed through a narrow lens:

"It is vital that any discussions about nuclear energy address the issue comprehensively and in all its complexity. Nuclear power systems are not just a security issue, an environmental issue, or an energy issue. They are all of those at once."

Most important to Gorbachev is the lesson of transparency that he himself pioneered through "the process of Perestroika and the policy of Glasnost." Governmental openness is taken for granted in many countries and is being fought for in many others.

"Today, people want to have a say in what direction their countries' economies take. They want to know how it affects the air they breathe, the water they drink, the food they eat, and the future they leave to their children. Governments have a responsibility to respond to those concerns."

US regulators claim a major nuclear disaster is too unlikely to be worth preparing for

In the nuclear sector such responsibility is invariably shirked if not suppressed. In highly nuclearized countries such as the US, France and Russia, access to information about nuclear safety is convoluted and opaque, or not available at all.

In the US we have frequently been told by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission that a major nuclear disaster is effectively too unlikely to be worth preparing for. But these flawed Probabilistic Risk Assessments are designed to protect the nuclear industry from additional expense - not the public from another Chernobyl or Fukushima.

Such a policy is dangerously divorced from reality, as researchers recently found; reseachers that Gorbachev cited when he warned that "the chances are 50:50 that a major nuclear disaster will occur somewhere in the world before 2050."

These are not good odds. Thirty years on, the octogenarian Gorbachev is still haunted by that dawn phone call when he instantly realized "something horrific was happening."

And yet our governments persist in leading us toward the same abyss.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear, a Takoma Park, MD environmental advocacy group.
Kentucky Governor-elect Matt Bevin answers a question during a press conference in the Kentucky State Capitol Rotunda, Friday, Nov. 6, 2015, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley)

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By Adam Beam

FRANKFORT, Ky.  Kentucky's Democratic attorney general has asked for an ethics investigation of the state's Republican governor, the latest salvo in a growing feud between two of the state's most powerful elected officials.

Attorney General Andy Beshear sent a letter to the executive director of the Executive Branch Ethics Commission last week asking her to find out if Gov. Matt Bevin fired some politically appointed state workers because they donated money to his political rivals, and whether such actions violated the state ethics code.

Beshear did not specify what candidates or when those contributions might have been made. Bevin took office in December when he replaced Beshear's father, two-term Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear.

Just last week, Bevin accused Steve Beshear of coercing state employees to donate to Democratic candidates, including Andy Beshear's 2015 campaign for attorney general. Bevin called for Andy Beshear to return any questionable contributions and announced he would use public money to hire a private law firm to assist with his own investigation of Steve Beshear, including whether he violated state procurement laws.

Andy Beshear's letter, which was first reported by The Courier-Journal, says Bevin is within his rights to investigate financial mismanagement. But he said Bevin cannot investigate ethics code violations. He says that responsibility falls to the Executive Branch Ethics Commission, made up of five people who were all appointed by Steve Beshear.

Andy Beshear asked the ethics commission to take over Bevin's investigation and to tell Bevin he does not have jurisdiction. Commission Executive Director Katie Gabhart said she will respond to the letter in the next few days. But she declined to comment on whether Andy Beshear's allegations, if true, would violate the state ethics code.

When Bevin announced his investigation of Steve Beshear last week, he said many state workers had come forward to say Beshear's administration had coerced them to make campaign contributions. But Andy Beshear questioned this claim, noting that all state workers know Bevin "greatly dislikes the previous governor, his opponent in the last election, and even the Attorney General."

"As such, non-merit employees who willingly made contributions may feel they have to claim coercion to keep their jobs and support their families," Andy Beshear wrote in the letter. He added: "Pressuring a non-merit employee to sign an untrue statement in order to keep a job would certainly constitute a violation, as would any pressure to contribute to paying off the current Governor's campaign debt."

Bevin spokeswoman Jessica Ditto said the administration follows the law. She said the administration is "glad that the Attorney General agrees there is a need for an investigation into his father's administration." But she said the administration hoped Andy Beshear's request is not an attempt to "stand in the way of transparency and justice."

"After the Governor announced the investigation more employees have come forward saying that they were coerced into donating to Democratic causes," Ditto said. "While we welcome the Executive Branch Ethics Commission to conduct a parallel investigation, the allegations of corruption and coercion require an independent inquiry because they expand far beyond the scope of the Ethics Commission's jurisdiction and capacity."

Beshear spokesman Terry Sebastian declined to comment further, saying the letter "speaks for itself."

Bevin and the Beshears have been hostile toward each other since Bevin took office. When Bevin ordered the dismantling of the health insurance exchange Steve Beshear started, the former governor responded by launching an online advocacy campaign backed by a newly formed nonprofit group to oppose Bevin's policies. And while both men have been in office less than five months, Andy Beshear has already taken Bevin to court twice. The first was a failed attempt to defend a state life insurance law. The second is a challenge to Bevin's 2 percent midyear budget cuts to most state colleges and universities. That case is pending.
Photo provided Kentucky Labor Cabinet Deputy Secretary Mike Nemes, right, shakes hands with Bob Berry, president and CEO, Big Rivers Electric Corp., on Monday after presenting Big Rivers with the Governor's Safety and Health Award.

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By Gleaner Staff

Big Rivers Electric Corp. has been awarded the Governor's Safety and Health Award.

Kentucky Labor Cabinet Deputy Secretary Mike Nemes visited the Henderson office Monday to present the award for Big Rivers' commitment to protecting the safety of its workers on the job, according to a news release.

"Working over one million hours without a lost time injury or illness is an amazing accomplishment," said Nemes. "This is the third Big Rivers facility to receive a Governor's Safety and Health Award for this year alone, which speaks volumes to the emphasis that this company places on workplace safety. On behalf of Governor Bevin and the Kentucky Labor Cabinet, I want to congratulate all 117 employees on earning this achievement."

Big Rivers Electric Corp. was created in 1961 and is owned by three distribution cooperatives  Meade County RECC, Kenergy Corp. and Jackson Purchase Energy Corp. Together they serve more than 115,000 members in 22 counties.

"Safety is paramount in everything we do at Big Rivers," said Bob Berry, president and CEO of Big Rivers. "For employees at our headquarters to work one million man-hours without a lost time injury shows a true dedication to safety. I'm very proud of the work-safe culture our employees have created. They have truly embraced the task of taking care of themselves while also looking out for the well-being of their colleagues."

"This award is a testament to the dedicated men and women who work so hard to ensure the job is done right," said Rep. Suzanne Miles, R-Owensboro. "I commend those individuals on this achievement, which totals 1,002,727 hours of work without a lost time injury. This coal-fired facility is a model for our region and a testament to the importance of coal for Kentuckians, as it has generated huge amounts of uninterrupted megawatt-hours for families and businesses across the Commonwealth."

The Kentucky Labor Cabinet presents the Governor's Safety and Health Award to highlight outstanding safety and health performance in Kentucky's workplaces. A business may qualify for the award if its employees achieve a required number of hours worked without experiencing a lost time injury or illness. The required number of hours is dependent upon the number of employees.
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The following information is based on public records from local and area law enforcement agencies and/or court systems:

HENDERSON CIRCUIT COURT

Robert S. Jenkins, 46, Spottsville, pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree promoting contraband, first-degree possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia. A charge of being a first-degree persistent felony offender was dismissed. Sentencing has been scheduled for May 23.

Leica Moore, 46, 1100 block of Pringle Street, pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia. Moore was given probation for five years.

Tara N. Wright, 35, 100 block of Burdette Street, pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree trafficking in a controlled substance, third-degree possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia. She was sentenced to a total of 10 years.

Malcolm Billings, 38, 900 block of Washington Street, pleaded guilty Monday to theft of identity and being a second-degree persistent felony offender, first-degree possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, failure to maintain insurance, driving on a revoked license, possession of marijuana, driving under the influence and operating on more than one license. He was sentenced to a total of eight years.

Juan J. Gamboa, 36, Uniontown, pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree trafficking in a controlled substance, third-degree possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia. Charges of complicity and being a persistent felony offender were dismissed. He was sentenced to a total of 10 years.

Dustin W. McLean, 27, address unavailable, was sentenced Monday to 15 years total for two counts of theft over $10,000 and being a second-degree persistent felony offender, three counts of third-degree burglary and being a second-degree persistent felony offender, one count of receiving stolen property under $10,000 and being a second-degree persistent felony offender, theft by deception under $500 and being a second-degree persistent felony offender, first-degree burglary and being a second-degree persistent felony offender and being a felon in possession of a firearm and being a second-degree persistent felony offender.

Joshua D. Downey, 38, 400 block of Meadow Street, was sentenced Monday to 12 months total for first-degree criminal trespass, tampering with physical evidence, second-degree fleeing/evading police, resisting arrest, possession of drug paraphernalia, theft under $500 and public intoxication.

Elijah J. Roberts, 17, 600 block of Third Street, was sentenced Monday to a total of two years for first-degree wanton endangerment and possession of a handgun by a minor.

Richard W. Brown, 33, 600 block of Sixth Street, pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, second-degree fleeing/evading police, third-degree criminal mischief and possession of marijuana. He was sentenced to a total of three years.

Jason O. Gibson, 40, Morganfield, pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and giving officers a false name. He was sentenced to a total of one year.

William W. Bean, 35, address unavailable, pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and theft under $500. He was given five years probation.

Shelly McCormick, 41, 800 block of Meadow Street, was sentenced Monday to five years for theft under $10,000.

Marcus E. Ivy, 42, 10000 section of Kentucky 136-East, was sentenced Monday to 10 years for second-degree burglary.

Jamie Haines, 27, 1100 block of Woodland, was sentenced Monday to a total of five years for three counts of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, one count of receiving stolen property under $10,000 and theft by deception under $500.

Leza M. Schoettlin, 42, Elberfeld, Ind., pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and public intoxication. She was granted pretrial diversion, supervised, for three years. She must serve 30 days at the Henderson County Detention Center and be assessed for possible substance abuse treatment and follow any recommendations.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Those charged with crimes are considered innocent until they are found guilty in a court of law. Every effort is made by this newspaper to report the final disposition of each case. In the event we fail to do so, a call to our newsroom, 827-2000, will prompt a background check on those cases and, if necessary, a published report on the final disposition.
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By Adam Beam

FRANKFORT  State regulators have approved maximum tuition increases of about $500 a year for students at Kentucky's colleges and universities.

The increases come after an intense legislative session during which lawmakers approved Republican Gov. Matt Bevin's spending cuts on colleges and universities by more than $40 million. Much of the debate in the state legislature focused on how the cuts would impact tuition for the upcoming school year.

But the council only attributed a portion of the increases to Bevin's budget cuts. In addition to the $40 million in cuts, the council says colleges and universities will have to pay an extra $85 million in retirement benefits, student financial aid and increased expenses such as health insurance and maintenance.

The tuition increases will make up about $61 million of that deficit, leaving a nearly $65 million shortfall. Even if the legislature had not approved Bevin's cuts, council President Bob King said colleges and universities still would likely have had to raise tuition.

"It's not just the cuts. It's all these other things that the campuses have to pay for," King said. "These places are expensive to run."

The increases are not mandatory. Each institution's board of trustees must decide whether to raise tuition for the upcoming school year. But they cannot raise tuition beyond the limits the council set on Tuesday.

For the state's two research universities, the limit is 5 percent. That's an increase of $547 per student per year at the University of Kentucky and $527 per student per year for the University of Louisville. The limit is $432 per student per year for the state's comprehensive universities: Western Kentucky, Northern Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky, Morehead State, Murray State and Kentucky State.

The 16 institutions in the Kentucky Community and Technical College system each earned increases of up to $7 per credit hour.

Bevin was in Germany on Tuesday attending an industrial technology convention. His spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. State lawmakers urged college and university presidents to not raise tuition to the full amount. Democratic House Speaker Greg Stumbo noted the House tried to pass a budget "that didn't cut higher education at all" but eventually agreed to a compromise that included smaller cuts than Bevin had originally proposed.

"My hope is that the college and university leaders avoid tuition increases as much as possible and find other ways to absorb some of these costs," Stumbo said.

Mike Wilson, the Republican chairman of the state Senate Education Committee, noted colleges and universities raise tuition every year, even when the legislature increases their funding.

"I believe universities should be sensitive to their clientele. Three percent, to me, would seem like a moderate increase," he said.

More cuts could be coming. Bevin cut spending for most colleges and universities by nearly $18 million for the final three months of the fiscal year. Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear sued Bevin, arguing he does not have the authority to cut spending without the approval of the state legislature. The case is pending.
Trick-or-treat, walk Ed Stone's Haunted Halls and more this week in SE Iowa

Your guide to getting off the couch and out the door this week in Southeast Iowa.
Darn you, Mel Gibson. For seemingly being a woman-beating anti-Semite? Yes, of course. But also for then appearing on The Late 
NORWALK  A Norwalk man is facing charges after he allegedly threatened the staff and patrons of a South Norwalk eatery Monday night.

Police were dispatched to Local Kitchen and Beer Bar at 68 Washington St. at around 8:30 p.m. on a complaint that a customer there, who had just been ejected for attempting to fight with the staff and customers, was now attempting to re-enter the restaurant.

Upon arrival, police say they found 48-year-old Jonathan Orcutt banging on the restaurant windows. Orcutt allegedly had a fresh cut to his leg, police said.

The restaurant manager told police that Orcutt had been alternately making unwanted advances to women, saying rude things to customers, and was refusing to leave when asked to do so.

Orcutt had allegedly approached a couple and was hitting on the mans girlfriend, police said. When he was told by the man to leave them alone, Orcutt reportedly pulled out a closed utility knife and allegedly said, Youll need this to protect your girlfriend.

According to police, the suspect allegedly told bar staff that he was going to come back every day with his army and make it a bad day for everyone.

Orcutt was finally escorted outside by customers and the door was locked to prevent his re-entry.

The suspect allegedly denied causing a disturbance and told police he wanted to press charges against the people who had thrown him out.

When Orcutt was informed that he was going to be issued a summons for breach of peace, he allegedly refused to sign the summons and began cursing at officers.

Orcutt was placed in handcuffs after a brief struggle with police and reportedly continued to be combative when he was brought to police headquarters.

Police said that the suspect berated officers and was banging on the cell doors and throwing himself on the floor. He was brought to Norwalk Hospital by ambulance for evaluation before being returned to police headquarters.

Orcutt, of 6 Magnolia Ave., was charged with second-degree breach of peace. He was issued a $5,000 bond and given a court date of May 6.
April 25

Jonathan Orcutt, 46, of 6 Magnolia Ave., Norwalk, was charged with second-degree breach of peace. He was issued a $5,000 bond and given a court date of May 6.

Lincoln Yetman, 48, of 60 Connecticut Ave., Norwalk, was charged with criminal violation of a protective order. He was issued a $5,000 bond and given a court date of April 26.

Sidney Jackson, 46, of 72 Revere St., Bridgeport, was charged with two counts of sixth-degree larceny. He was given a court date of May 5.

William Scott, 45, of 49 Day St., Norwalk, was charged with third-degree burglary and criminal mischief. He was issued a $15,000 bond and given a court date of May 5.
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NORWALK  Local residents are eager to cast ballots in Connecticut's presidential primary elections Tuesday, based upon foot traffic through the Norwalk Registrar of Voters Office on Monday morning.

"There were people in here pretty much all morning," said Democratic Registrar Stuart W. Wells. "The phone started ringing before I had my coffee."

Monday at noon was the deadline for unregistered voters, or voters registered as unaffiliated, to sign themselves up as either Democrats or Republicans and cast ballots in their respective primary elections Tuesday.

Between 8 a.m. and noon, the office processed 45 additions, 41 changes and 21 removals from the voter rolls. The changes mostly entailed unaffiliated voters registering with a party. The removals involved residents who moved out of Norwalk and registered themselves elsewhere, Wells said.

Over the last five days, the city's number of registered Democrats has grown from 17,419 to 17,694. The number of registered Republicans grew from 9,113 to 9,230, according to the Registrar of Voters Office.

Expecting turnout of up to 50 percent, Wells and Republican Registrar of Voters Karen Doyle Lyons each ordered additional ballots for Tuesday.

"They'll be delivered by FedEx (Tuesday) morning," Doyle Lyons said. "Better to be safe than sorry."

Doyle Lyons expects to have 6,000 ballots on hand for Republican voters. Wells plans to have 12,000 ballots available for Democratic voters. Those numbers would accommodate Republican and Democratic turnouts of 65 percent and 68 percent, respectively.

Polling places will open at 6 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Those with questions about where they vote should call the Registrar of Voters Office at 203-854-7996.
NORWALK  The Norwalk Community Colleges Trio Club has its roots in the 36th president of the United States and is now working toward the election of our 45th.

Were providing a community service by offering a voter registration drive and leadership opportunities because they get to participate and help us facilitate the drive, said Elva Edwards, director of the Student Support Services program at Norwalk Community College.

The Trio Club, a subset of the program, consists of about 15 active student members that engage in peer mentorship and community service around the college. The name comes from the three programs that emerged under Lyndon B. Johnsons administration: Upward Bound, Student Support Services and Talent Search.

Those original three programs now fund about seven federal programs, including NCCs Student Support Services program.

The club members will be hosting a voter registration drive for the upcoming presidential election from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on April 27 at the West Campus cafeteria. Only students who are more than 18 years old are eligible to vote.

That program has a mission to increase retention services among the colleges students that are most at risk of dropping out. The 247 students currently enrolled are either first-generation, low-income or students with disabilities.

The whole idea is to make sure they have an environment or community that assists them toward their success here at NCC because data shows when students have or feel a sense of belonging in an institution, theyre more likely to remain and get degrees, said Edwards.

She said about 80 students registered to vote last year and she hopes for at least that number this year.

The student volunteers are also being helped by volunteers from the Fairfield County alumnae chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, which Edwards is a part of.

We want as many people to vote as possible because otherwise how is your voice known? How do legislators know? Its about becoming a part of the process, said Edwards. Its a right to be able to vote in this country so we think students should know that and engage in the process.

Sfoster-Frau@ctpost.com; @SilviaElenaFF
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NORWALK -- She was 6 years old.

She waved good-bye to her mother through the school bus window as it pulled up the hill, and 45 minutes later, she was gone.

Jessica Rekos was one of 20 children fatally shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012.

"Her life was ended so soon and so abruptly, and I think a lot of people who remember will remember the tragedy, but I don't know if they'll remember all the kids' names," said Montana Calloway, a 26-year-old Norwalk resident. "It's so important, to her parents especially, that people remember their special little girl."

Calloway is co-host with her mother, Heidi Calloway, of "Pony Rides for Jessica," an event in Newtown that honors Jessica's life by raising funds for The Jessica Rekos Foundation, a nonprofit started by her family.

The family fundraiser of pony rides and crafts stations will be held from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on May 1, at Second Company Governor's Horse Guard in Newtown. It's free for adults and $10 for children. All proceeds go toward the foundation, which in turn goes toward safer schools advocacy work or organizations that help Jessica's favorite animals: horses and whales.

Calloway was 23 and had been teaching Jessica horseback riding lessons for 14 months at King's Bridge Farm in Newtown before the tragedy. When it happened, she took time off from work to grieve. But not for long.

That January, Calloway and her mother Heidi Calloway collaborated with the Rekos family to hold the fundraiser, now in its fourth year. Their first one attracted about 800 people and raised $15,000. Last year attracted about the same amount, said Calloway, and raised about $12,000.

In addition to school security and animal rescue organizations, the foundation also offers scholarships for families who can't afford horse riding lessons at King's Bridge Farm, where Calloway taught Jessica.

"It's just a nice way for people to remember Jessica," said Calloway. "We really want people to see a horse there and think of Jessica and her love of horses."

Students involved in the Echoes program at Norwalk's Columbus Magnet School are also pitching in for the cause, led by their teacher Katy Ghadiyali. She said they've created almost 200 bracelets and key chains that will be sold for $2 each at the fundraiser.

"I have heard them say 'How can we help to make sure it doesn't happen again? And how can we show empathy?'" said Ghadiyali of her students. "Empathy was a big theme this year: How can we show empathy to the families who lost children in Sandy Hook?"

She said in the past, her students have raised about $250 at the fundraisers.

"Aside from the fact that everyone in America was hit hard after Sandy Hook happened, as an educator and a parent, it was really important for me to, if possible, bring some goodness through the tragedy that happened," said Ghadiyali.

She had also been close friends with the Calloways. Ghadiyali and Montana Calloway met as students at Columbus.

In addition to pony rides and bracelet purchases, the fundraiser will have horseshoe painting, face painting and bake sales. There will be a silent auction that includes an eight-ticket package, valued at more than $2,000 according to Heidi Calloway, to an MVP suite box at Yankee Stadium for the June 25 game.

The Norwalk musical duo Johnny Mac and Steve Sasloe will be performing from noon to 3 p.m.

Ghadiyali said it's her favorite event of the year.

"You think you'd look around and see such sadness, but people are really happy to be together that day,' she said. "It's a true illustration of what we can do in the face of tragedy, how we can bring lightness to people's lives."

SFoster-Frau@ctpost.com; @SilviaElenaFF
NORWALK -- While a public hearing on The SoNo Collection likely will be a two-act performance, the chairman of the Norwalk Zoning Commission is advising residents not to wait until closing night to weigh in.

"Any member of the public that wants to have input on the (development) should submit written materials to the commission in advance of Wednesday's meeting or attend the meeting on Wednesday night," said Chairman Adam J. Blank. "It is my expectation that there will be some time on Wednesday for the public to participate. If there is a lot of public participation (Wednesday evening), the meeting will be carried over to early May, which is what I anticipate."
CANTON, Conn. (AP)  A 13-year-old girl in Connecticut has been hit by a falling tree and killed.

School Superintendent Kevin D. Case sent a letter to parents Monday confirming that Allison Doyle had died from her injuries. Allison was in seventh grade at Canton Middle School.

A call reporting an injured child came in to police Sunday evening. Allison was taken to the hospital.

Her death remains under investigation.

Case says grief counselors were on hand Monday at all of Canton's schools.
A bit of history: Lincoln portrait at the library

For many years, a large oil-painting portrait of Abraham Lincoln has been on prominent display in the East Norwalk Association Library. It was recently discovered that the painting was presented to the East Norwalk Association by the artist Karl E. Johnson in memory of Mrs. H.J. Hipson  who was elected as a Director of the East Norwalk Improvement Association at its founding on Sept. 30, 1910.

The painting had originally been hung in the Lincoln Building of the New York Worlds Fair.

Further research has uncovered some interesting details about the artist who died, at the age of 86, on Dec. 5, 1970. Johnson, born in Stockholm, Sweden, lived in East Norwalk at Seaside Place. Early on he attended the Boston Normal Art School then worked in New York as an illustrator and composed paintings for the Palmolive Company doing the art work for the ad the skin you love to touch. And, for Camel cigarettes  Id walk a mile for a Camel.

Later on in his career he painted portraits of former Governor and Mrs. Raymond E. Baldwin; Judge John A. Light, of Norwalk; Margaret Bourke-White, Life Magazine photographer; and Everett Cartwright, president emeritus of the University of Bridgeport, among others.

Johnson was a member of the Westport Artists Club and the Silvermine Guild of Artists.

What else happened on the day you were born?

Of course the day on which you were born was a most important date to you and your family  but what else happened on that day?

The East Norwalk Association Library is collecting brief stories about what happened on the day YOU were born.

On July 10, in the year I was born, the Brooklyn Eagle posted the following story:

Nikola Tesla states: I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device. Cosmic ray investigation is a subject that is very close to me. I was the first to discover these rays and I naturally feel toward them as I would toward my own flesh and blood. I have advanced a theory of the cosmic rays and at every step of my investigations I have found it completely justified. I never knew that.

Bring a snippet of what happened on the day you were born to the East Norwalk Association Library or email it to: stan@eastnorwalklibrary.org. These bits and pieces of history will be compiled into an On This Day display with additional submissions added as they are received.

From time to time, your submission (with your approval) will be added to an On This Day paragraph in subsequent editions of Inside East Norwalk.

United Church of Christ May fair, May 7

Just in time for Mothers Day, Christ Episcopal Church in East Norwalk will hold a May Fair on May 7 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event will feature a special $1 per item clothing sale, a huge tag sale, great raffles, food, and the Petal and Pipe plant stand. There will be face painting and games for the kids, and the Charlie Williams Jazz ensemble will perform.

Located at the corner of Gregory Boulevard and (2 Emerson for GPS) Emerson Street, on the way to Calf Pasture Beach, the clothing sale, tag sale, and raffles will be inside the event hall and the food, games, plants, and antique organ pipes will be outside.

In addition, the front lawn of the church will serve a community gathering place for East Norwalk organizations, including the US Coast Guard Auxiliary, Old Well St. Johns Masonic Lodge, and more. The East Norwalk Association Library will have a table at the fair  come and meet its board members, learn about various library programs, and pick up free books for both children and adults.

Christ Church East Norwalk is a small, inviting and faithful community of active Episcopalians who enjoy being together for worship, mission, education, and community events; and who are sincere and serious about continuing to deepen our relationships with God and others. Annually, Christ Church sponsors a Living Nativity on the front lawn of the church, on the same night as the East Norwalk Christmas Tree Lighting.

Worship times on Sunday are at 8 a.m. (a quiet service of Holy Eucharist, Rite II without music) and 10 a.m. (Holy Eucharist, Rite II, with choirs, nursery care, and church school  yet children and youth are always welcome and encouraged to be part of worship). The Christ Church Bell Choir has recently expanded to include a Childrens Bell Choir and a Couples Bell Choir. On many Sundays there is an Adult Forum at 9 a.m.

More information can be found by visiting www.christchurcheastnorwalk.org.

Marvin School 2nd student Walkathon

On Friday, April 29, Marvin Elementary School will be holding its 1st Annual Walkathon  the proceeds of which will directly support programs that enrich the students education, such as technology, classroom supplies, and other enrichment opportunities.

Marvin Elementary is a Title I school with 55 percent of its students living at or below the poverty level, therefore, the need for public support is critical.

Various private, public, and business sponsors have come forth supporting individual students  all of whom are participating in the Walkathon on the school grounds. Their donations support the Marvin students Healthy Habits Healthy Minds ethic.

Student classes with the highest sponsorship goals will be awarded special prizes  all students will receive a goody bag and a souvenir Marvin Walkathon T-Shirt.

Those classes with 100 percent participation will receive a Pajama Movie Day and the Top Earner will win three passes to Adventure Park in Bridgeport.

New public use computer carrels at the library

Thanks to the Woodbury Public Library, the eight adult public use computers are now housed in more comfortable and private carrels. Each of the eight carrels now have carpeted private screening and a larger work surface. Each carrel has its separate power line connection made possible through the effort of the Third Taxing District crew who wired the units to the main electric junction box.

The East Norwalk Association Library also offers four childrens and two young adult computers for public use. Additionally, the library is a hotspot offering free public Wi-Fi connectivity.

Like East Norwalk Library on Facebook

The East Norwalk Library now has a Facebook presence. Log onto Facebook and search for East Norwalk Library  like the Library and youll be privy to happenings, and other bits of information regarding the East Norwalk Library and the community it serves. See us on the web at www.eastnorwalklibrary.org.

East Norwalk Association Library hours

Monday through Friday, 12:30 to 5:30 p.m., Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., closed Sunday and holidays.

If theres some East Norwalk happening or other East Norwalk news or features you would like to share with the readers, email: stan@eastnorwalklibrary.org or call 203-249-6293.
The social media hoax involving Pennys Diner III is disturbing on many levels.

Foremost, the Twitter messages falsely attributed to the East Norwalk diner are blatantly racist and repugnant. At least two messages surfaced Wednesday evening in response to the news that anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman was chosen by the U.S. Treasury to replace President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. There is a modicum of justice in the slave-owning Jackson moving to the back of the bill for the first African-American woman to occupy a place of honor on the front.

We are reluctant to repeat the racist messages, but the public should know the details. One of the Tweets, bearing a picture of Tubman, said We wont be accepting 20s anymore  and its not because #HarrietTubman is a woman.

That Tweet did not come from Pennys Diner nor did any others, owner David Koskerides insisted as soon he heard about the false postings. The diner does not even have social media accounts.

It is disturbing that someone would knowingly disparage a long-established business by posting racist comments as though they were made by the diner. A well-meaning Darien woman saw the Tweets, thought they were real, and alerted friends on Facebook to find another diner as this was their response to the new $20.

The undeserved backlash against Pennys was swift and heated. Angry residents flooded the diner with calls; indignant posts on Facebook called for boycotts. As it turns out, the posts were put on what seemed to be a Pennys Facebook page  but it wasnt. A closer examination at the top of the page shows it is unofficial.

And that explains the appeal  and need for caution  in todays social media landscape. News and information can be shared instantaneously and broadly  the racist messages went viral  but authenticity and accuracy may be sacrificed. What seems to be coming from a community diner with roots going back to 1968 could be a hoax.

Koskerides turned to the police, who will investigate and determine any criminal intentions.

People need to be wary of outrageous online commentary. One day the diners owners are smeared as villains. The next, they appear to be victims.

The distastefulness of this episode has demonstrated one crystal-clear truth, however  the best antidote to hate speech is more speech.

Let it be known that bigotry of any kind will not be tolerated in our community.
WILTON  With warm weather fast approaching and water activity season right around the corner, Wilton safety officials are making a point of emphasizing water safety practices.

The Wilton police department, fire department and the Wilton Dive Rescue Team are teaming together with the YMCA and the Wilton school system to launch April Pools Day on April 30  a day dedicated to reinforcing recommended practices that could prevent water-related deaths and injuries.

Drowning is not limited to the pool, pond, lake or the ocean, wrote Wilton Fire Chief Ronald E. Kanterman.

Kanterman added home pool drowning is a leading cause of death for children younger than five years old. This is especially relevant in Wilton, where there are approximately 940 in-ground privately owned pools.

To reduce the number of drowning deaths in town, Wilton officials are advocating a three-step prevention program  block, watch and learn.

Residents should erect physical barriers around a body of water in order to block the unauthorized use of any source of water near a home. This ranges anywhere from keeping hot tubs covered and locked when not in use, locking bathroom doors and keeping toilet seats down to prevent infants from causing self-harm or installing fences around pools.

Water-users are also being urged to watch any children in or around water, because tragedy can strike any time.

Finally, Wilton officials are also pushing parents to educate themselves, and their children, about the dangers associated with water. In order to prevent drowning, it is paramount that parents continue learn as much as possiblewhether it is learning that people can drown in as little as three inches of water or simply teaching your children how to swim properly.

To learn more about water safety or drowning prevention, go to: http://www.redcross.org/get-help/prepare-for-emergencies/types-of-emergencies/water-safety and http://www.preventdrownings.org/drowning/.
Weston held their annual town meeting this past week, and two motions were made from the floor to reduce school spending: One motion would have cut their school budget by $850,000, which is the amount their town will lose if its state education cost sharing (ECS) grant is eliminated. The other motion called for a $500,000 reduction. Both motions were defeated.

I raise this because I am concerned that similar floor motions will be made during Wiltons town meeting on Tuesday, May 3, at 7:30pm in the Clune Center. We need members of the community who support our schools to turn out en masse to reject attempts to reduce our budget, and to protect our investment in our schools.

By now everyone has heard that Governor Malloy proposed completely eliminating the ECS grants for the states 28 wealthiest districts as a way to help address the states budget deficit. For Wilton, if this happens, it would mean the loss of roughly $1.5 million in state funding which would need to be made up via cuts or higher taxes.

And you may have seen that a small but vocal contingent in our town has been quick to call for the schools to bear the entirety of the proposed $1.5 million hit.

This is a knee jerk reaction that does little to look at the bigger picture. Instead, I implore our fellow elected officials and town residents to recognize this situation as a Wilton problem that we need to address as a community and to understand that the Board of Education is ALREADY working on ways to do its part while minimizing the effect on existing programming.

First, let me explain the ECS grant. Connecticut - unlike most states - relies on property owners in each town to pay the majority of costs of operating a local school system. For many years, the state provided a flat per pupil grant, which paid for roughly 20 percent of a localitys education budget.

This all changed in the late 1970s when the State Supreme Court found the funding process to be unconstitutional, in that students in less affluent, property-poor towns were denied the same educational opportunities as students in wealthier towns.

The state was directed to develop a more equitable funding solution, which resulted in the ECS grant initiative we know today. Essentially, the State relies on an ECS formula to divvy up its annual school funding allotment, as determined by the state legislature in Hartford. According to the state Legislative Research Office, the formula is intended to equalize state education funding by taking into account a towns wealth and ability to raise property taxes to pay for education. Poor towns receive more aid per student; affluent towns receive less aid per student.

Although widely criticized and chronically under-funded, the ECS remains the primary venue through which the state extends education funding to cities and towns.

In Wilton, ECS funds are delivered directly to the Town and NOT to the Board of Education. This money goes directly into the Towns General Fund, and is used to fund various town activities and services and at times to reduce the tax burden in the following year.

The Board of Education never sees this money. We are never informed when ECS funds arrive, what the magnitude of these funds is, or consulted with regard to how they should be spent. They are simply received into Wiltons General Fund as income. As such the Board of Education does not factor ECS funds into its budget. (We do though, pay close attention to the excess cost grant [ECG], which reimburses a portion of our special education costs, but to be clear, the ECG is entirely separate from the ECS and the similarity in names adds to the confusion.)

First Selectman Lynne Vanderslice and Board of Finance Chairman Jeff Rutishauser have spent a considerable amount of time talking with elected officials in neighboring towns that are also slated to have their ECS funds eliminated. Of those towns that have addressed the issue, some are taking a wait and see approach, while others are relying on a combination of town reserves along with school and town spending reductions to address what they think might happen.

I believe our towns most prudent choice is a combination of the two. Lets wait and see what the Governor approves before guessing at the outcome and then make informed decisions as a collective Town team, not as individual boards. I am well aware that further cuts to the education budget - beyond the $400,000 in cuts already mandated by the Board of Finance - will probably be required. The Board of Education began working on the most prudent way to address further cuts even before the Board of Finance learned of the Governors proposal. But asking the schools to absorb the entirety of a possible shortfall - before we even know the outcome -- seems illogical and irresponsible to me. We must not put our schools in danger when our collective thinking can come up with a better alternative.

The May 3rd town meeting in the Clune Center at 7:30pm will certainly be lively. I truly hope to see you there.

Bruce Likly is chairman of the Wilton Board of Education.
For the Intelligencer

Edwardsville Township Supervisor Frank Miles today announced that a computer station is now available for residents to use to apply for benefits from the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Illinois Department of Employment Security. The computer station is located in the Township office at 300 W Park Street in Edwardsville.

This computer station will give our clients the ability to apply for unemployment, food stamps, and other benefits they may be eligible for while they are seeking help from our assistance programs - General Assistance and Emergency Assistance, said Supervisor Miles. They often do not know these programs are available or do not have the resources available to visit these state offices.
Five artists, all of whom have obtained their MFA degrees in studio art from regional universities, will be exhibiting their artwork during the Edwardsville Arts Centers International Exhibit. The exhibit opens April 29 and runs through May 20.

This International Exhibit will feature the art of Norleen Nosri, ceramics, with an MFA from the University of Missouri; Albert Kuo and Bo Kim, both with MFAs from Fontbonne in painting; and Chih-yu (Kevin) Lin, with an MFA from SIUE in metals. Kimia Emami, whose participation in the show is doubling as her MFA exhibit, is completing her MFA in photography through SIUE.

The artists bring their own unique, creative respective and vision to their art because they lived both in countries overseas and in the U.S. Four of the artists - Nosri, Emami, Lin, and Kim - were born in other countries while Kuo summered in Taiwan during his formative years.

Kuo studied both the European tradition of the Bauhaus as well as traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy before getting his MFA degree from Fontbonne University. He wrote in his artists statement how his parents separated after immigrating to the U.S. which resulted in splitting time between Taiwan and the U.S. During the school year, I grew up in the U.S. with my mother, informing her of the customs and traditions I was learning about American culture. Mostly this came from lessons at school and experiencing home life through my American friends, Kuo wrote. Each summer I would live with my father in Taiwan traveling between his childhood mountain village and his office in the big city, Taipei. In those summers I attended the Taiwanese Academy for Students taking courses in drawing, traditional Chinese painting, calligraphy, and even abacus. When I wasnt in class I drew from books on a desk in his studio. I learned of the Bauhaus and the International Style in modern architecture and my father claiming Mies Van Der Rohe as his master.

His upbringing of summering in Taiwan and spending his school years in the U.S. has shaped his worldview and broadened his identity as both a citizen and an artist, explained Brigham Dimick, the exhibits curator who is also an EAC Board Member as well as an SIUE Associate Professor of the Art and Design department. To my eye, his accomplished oil paintings employ traditionally western systems of illusion and technique to create an eastern feeling of non-duality: elegant tensions arise between gravity and weightlessness, materialism and emptiness.

Norleen Nosri was born and raised in Malaysia, but came to the U.S. in 1997 for higher education and obtained her MFA in ceramics in 2013. At the EAC we have the opportunity to see works that span a number of series that Nosri has made, revealing her ingenuity, elegance, and very high standard of craft. Evident through her stylistic evolution is a deep engagement around the rituals of tea. Since tea for her involves community, each work is made of multiple vessels that invite groups to share in the ritual, Dimick said. Like the other artists in this exhibition, Nosri navigates the cultural treasure trove of her origins with a rigorous education in the West.

Emami, whose work is doubling as her thesis exhibition, is from Tehran, Iran. She moved to the U.S. in 2013 and immediately felt cultural shock. I started to shape my ideas around my personal concerns over the cultural shock I had faced, she wrote in her artists statement. Moving to a new nation and facing new people who think, act, behave, and talk differently altogether have all made me feel like a stranger. At that time I started to concentrate on issues revolving around the oppression of women throughout history by portraying my ideas through photos of human figures that later transformed into symbolic objects. At that phase, aesthetics of organic forms of Persian handwriting brought meanings into my abstraction.

Following my first year of graduate school I made a trip back to Iran during the summer of 2014, Emami added. It dawned on me that the memories of my past versus the days of my present had generated a duality that transformed into an identity issue. This realization made me aware that I was becoming a totally different person while studying abroad. This transition led me to move from representing my inner feelings, and develop my language toward redefining my perception of time and space. This phase of my work was a melange of photo and text presenting memory, culture, and history, and it formed the work in the thesis exhibition.

Dimick spoke about Emamis pieces that artfully conjoin Iran and St. Louis sites that unify these disparate sources from different parts of the world into one continuous picture. By using large-scale prints of multiple photographs that are transferred onto rice paper, Emami makes large scrolls that have a silvery and diaphanous quality, Dimick said. The unexpected unions between the two countries cultural iconographies raise provocative questions that help dispel mythologies and promote understanding. These cultural juxtapositions become an elegant embodiment of the overall theme of this exhibition.

Lins work draws from his history of having lived in Taiwan until the age of 12 before his parents sent him to South Africa to finish his education. The isolation he experienced from being in an unfamiliar surrounding and not being able to communicate in English to his peers has made him even more aware of his current surroundings, which he notes in his artists statement strongly influence my decisions concerning the forms of my work.

Lins work is both functional and sculptural. I explore the idea of containment by using images that surround us in everyday life: architecture, nature and the figure. I expressed these ideas through the use of precious metals, textures, stones and found objects, Lins artists statement states.

Kim explained that his more recent body of work grew from an attraction to glass. Glass possesses unique properties; it is fragile, has a capacity to deflect light and distort forms, and can be re-molded many times after breaking, Kim wrote in his artists statement. I see these traits akin to human nature, and my paintings explore the way we interact with our circumstances in which we unceasingly redefine and reshape our thoughts and behaviors. This observation also leads me to examine my own psychological and emotional make-up.

Each of these artists are quite advanced in their craft and it promises to be a beautiful show, from ceramics, to painting, to metals, to large-scale photographic transfer prints, Dimick said.

The "International Exhibit" opens with a reception from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on April 29. The EAC is located at 6165 Center Grove Rd. in Edwardsville.

The art of EHS and SIUE Graduate Casey Corkery will be on display concurrently in the DeToye Student Gallery.
A global celebration of jazz will reach Alton when international jazz vocalist Feyza Eren releases her new CD, Imagination, at Jacoby at 7:00 p.m., Saturday, April 30. International Jazz Day is observed each April 30 in more than 190 countries.

Eren will be accompanied by Steve Davis on drums, Ryan Marquez on piano/keyboards and Ric Vice on bass. The Feyza Eren Quartet will play jazz standards and pop classics with unique arrangements from their new CD. Eren wrote original lyrics for two of the 11 tunes - Playground and John Coltranes Naima. Signed copies of Imagination will be available for sale.
The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville 2016 Kimmel Leadership Awards Ceremony, held Monday, April 25 in the Morris University Center Meridian Ballroom, recognized students, faculty, staff and community members for their outstanding contributions in leadership and service.

More than 150 individuals and organizations were honored with such accolades as outstanding student leader and emerging student leader, rotary student leader of the month and organization, program and advisor of the year, among others.

Students who are involved in co-curricular experiences reap many benefits, Stephen Hansen, PhD, interim chancellor of SIUE, told the audience. Volunteer service and involvement in student organizations enhance academic development and complement classroom learning. Additionally, they help build leadership potential and foster growth and development.

The students, faculty and staff being recognized at this ceremony truly live the SIUE values of citizenship, integrity, inclusion, excellence and wisdom, he added.

Jaelen Deters, a native of Teutopolis, received the 2016 Kimmel Scholarship in recognition of her more than 600 hours of volunteer service and extensive involvement on campus. Deters is a senior majoring in social work in the SIUE College of Arts and Sciences.

Her volunteer activities include two alternative spring break trips to Jamaica with SIUE. Deters is also a member of the AmeriCorps program where she is volunteering with the Good Samaritan House, a shelter for homeless women and children in Granite City.

The different roles I have experienced have been incredibly valuable, and have opened not only my mind, but also my eyes and heart, Deters said. I have watched myself grow into a stronger, more intelligent advocate and leader. I take none of these experiences for granted.

SIUE alumni Chad and Kathie Opel received this years Kimmel Community Service Awards for their impactful service and dedication to the community. The Opels organized the first Taste of Edwardsville in 2009, benefiting the Greg Seibert Foundation. In 2010, the two also established Neighbors in Need, a charitable organization that helps meet the immediate needs of local families facing medical crises.
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Linkedin Volodymyr Pakhil (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

On April 22 the world celebrates Earth Day. A day for ecological awareness, discussions about the environment, lessons learned, plans for the future of our green planet.



Just days away is another environment-related occasion. 30 years ago, on April 26, 1986, a disastrous fire broke out at the Chornobyl nuclear energy plant in north Ukraine and led to one of the most prominent nuclear catastrophes of the atomic age.



The disaster and the inadequate handling of the situation by the former Soviet authorities have taken a heavy toll on Ukraine. Currently around two million Ukrainians have the official status of citizens affected by the Chornobyl disaster. Around 35,000 families receive welfare benefits from the state due to the loss of the provider.



The nuclear accident also affected the economy, especially the agrarian and industrial sectors, forestry and fisheries.



The President of Ukraine declared 2016 a year to honor the rescue workers who participated in the Chornobyl disaster mitigation efforts, and to remember the accidents victims. This illustrates just how much of a priority the Chornobyl issue is for Ukraine today.



In line with the Memorandum of Understanding Between the Government of Ukraine and the Governments of the G7 Countries and the Commission of the European Communities, the power plant has fully stopped operating.



The number one task right now is to create an environmentally safe system in the area and to complete the new confinement over the energy bloc where the fatal fire took place. The international community is participating in the facilitation of the project, and we are infinitely grateful for the support. Also, for thirty years now numerous countries have been opening their doors to victims of Chornobyl in need of rehabilitation. But thats not the only contribution of the international community to the environmental situation in the region.



The UN, the OSCE, the EU and various partner-countries are consistently supporting Ukraine in its effort to contain Russias military aggression. The danger of another ecological catastrophe is looming due to the ongoing violence. Mineral mines and hazardous industrial sites have become the object of pillaging and shelling.



The challenges on Ukraines agenda are many. They are precisely what made Ukraine stronger.



When faced with an ecological disaster, Ukraine continued to raise its technical and scientific potential.



Today Ukraine is an international forerunner in science and technology with a 99.7 percent literacy rate, 130,000 engineering graduates annually. Ukraine is the 4th most educated nation in the world, number one in software engineering in Central-Eastern Europe, and the owner of the fourth aerospace industry in the world.



We have a wealth of all-around experience that we can share with international partners looking to expand their own technological and scientific capacities. Despite the challenges facing Ukraine and thanks to them, our country remains an advantageous international partner.

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We are looking for information, opinions, and in-depth analysis from experts or scholars in a variety of fields. We choose articles based on facts or opinions about general news, as well as quality analysis and commentary about Indonesia or international events. Send your piece to community@jakpost.com.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin Handry Satriago and Sacha Winzenried (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

Indonesia is targeting a 7 percent annual gross domestic product ( GDP ) growth in 2019, in order to raise its profile as a high-income country by 2019. To achieve this target, the country needs to boost the growth of the industrial sector, which accounted for 21 percent of GDP in 2014. The development of industrial estates will be critical to help build the countrys manufacturing sector and achieve this target.



Manufacturing provides long-term income and jobs and underpins a well-trodden path of economic development in many other Asian countries  first in Japan, then Korea and Taiwan and more recently in China. Indonesias wealth of natural resources gives it a decided advantage over some of these economies in building its manufacturing base.



The government recognizes this. President Joko Jokowi Widodo has announced plans to build 15 Industrial estates and 11 special economic zones. Most of these ( all but three ) are outside the traditionally more-industrialized island of Java as Jokowi aims to bring jobs and poverty alleviation to the rest of the country.



The governments recently released economic policy packages support this objective by providing greater fiscal incentives and shortening the permitting timeline for new investors in Indonesian special economic zones to three hours.



This is a good start, but when making an investment decision, what does a manufacturing company really look for? In our experience, there are some consistent key factors;  availability and preparedness; skilled and cost-effective workforce; availability of transportation infrastructure ( ports, road and/or rail ) to get goods to market and receive supplies; consistent and transparent regulations; proximity to customers and suppliers; reliable and affordable energy.



To its credit, the government has focused hard in recent years on providing sites, accelerating infrastructure, simplifying regulations and providing incentives. Yet, power is still frequently cited as a barrier to industrial estate success.



General Electric and Pricewater Coopers have recently completed a study, Private Power Utilities: Economic Benefits of Captive Power in Industrial Estates, addressing the challenges of secure, stable and affordable energy for the Indonesian manufacturing sector.



As the study notes, the state electricity company PLN has made tremendous progress signing power purchase agreements and other contracting documents in the past six months, but the 35 gigawatt ( GW ) program is an enormous endeavor and keeping pace with power demand growth in a country the size of Indonesia is no mean feat. In 2014, there were 5.8 blackouts a year of around 5.6 hours each.



This is higher than in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, with whom Indonesia is fiercely competing for inbound investment.



Based on projections by PLN and the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, the study estimates that in the event of a two-year delay in the 35 GW program, reserve margins ( or spare capacity ) could fall below 15 percent in many areas.



In addition, there are some industrial estates that the power grid may not reach anyway based on the current planned transmission and this is where private power utilities ( PPUs ) come in. PPUs ( also sometimes referred to as captive power for industrial estates ), are medium- to large-scale power plants that generate power for use by nearby companies, such as industrial estate tenants.



They may or may not make use of PLN infrastructure as well. Some industrial estates have already invested in PPUs to provide a very reliable supply of power to their tenants. In total, around 25-30 PPU concessions have been granted by the above ministry.



The findings of our study were perhaps not surprising to anyone in the manufacturing sector in Indonesia, although the size of the prize perhaps is. The costs of blackouts to seven manufacturing sectors accounting for 19 percent of Indonesias GDP could be around US$415 million/year, including avoided diesel, overtime costs and forfeited revenue opportunities during blackouts and restart periods.



Further, these estimates ignore material/inventory losses and equipment damage. This equates to around 0.9 cents per kilowatt-hour ( c/kWh ) spread over their entire power bill.



Costs are highest for the chemicals, food and beverage, and pulp and paper sectors. Given the governments push to develop industrial estates and supporting infrastructure ( ports, roads, etc. ), we believe the time is ripe for private power investment. There is potentially around 8-10 GW of new power demand in industrial estates needing to be met in the next few years.



If we were to speculate, we would guess that the PPU market will boom in the next few years. Key drivers include increased power demand and a more streamlined regulatory environment and increased ease of permit acquisition.



We believe that we will see an increased number of strategic ventures between real estate and power plant developers, between developers and PLN, and increased appetite for green field projects outside Java.



All of this will be of huge benefit in achieving the governments objective of stimulating the manufacturing sector and growing the economy for the benefit of all Indonesians.

***

Handry Satriago is the CEO of General Electric Indonesia and Sacha Winzenried is lead adviser for energy, utilities and wmining at Pricewater Coopers Indonesia. The views expressed are their own.

---------------

We are looking for information, opinions, and in-depth analysis from experts or scholars in a variety of fields. We choose articles based on facts or opinions about general news, as well as quality analysis and commentary about Indonesia or international events. Send your piece to community@jakpost.com.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin (China Daily/Asia News Network)  Tue, April 26, 2016

Meet DC Comics' first-ever Chinese superhero -- 17-year-old Kenan Kong, a teenager from Shanghai who inherits the powers of Superman.

DC Comics, known for its numerous superheroes including Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, announced a new edition to the Superman lineup at WonderCon. New Super-Man, written by Chinese-American Gene Luen Yang and illustrated by artist Victor Bogdanovic, will feature a Chinese character for the first time.

"Everybody in the world recognizes Superman," said Yang during an interview. "The reason he transcends culture is that he embodies these ideals that are international, that are cross-cultural. We wanted to tell a story that was about the Superman ideal but tell it in a different culture. Regardless of where you grow up, you know what he stands for."

Details on how the 17-year-old Kong will attain his Superman-like abilities and impact the DC universe of superheroes were not released, but the comic-book publisher did say the process of inheriting powers (and the mantle) will be a struggle.

"Getting those powers, it changes his body obviously, but it also changes his heart," Yang said. "When he starts off, he's kind of a jerk. Once he gets this piece of Superman in him, it will change who he is."

Yang has dealt with the stereotyping of Asian Americans in his previous works, including American Born Chinese and The Shadow Hero. When DC co-publisher Jim Lee and chief creative officer Geoff Johns approached Yang with the idea of an Asian Superman, Yang, the son of Chinese immigrant parents, says it gave him an opportunity to dig into his immigrant experiences and link them with "secret identities" of superheroes.

If you think about it, there are many parallels between superheroes and the immigrant experience.

Kong will join a growing group of superheroes of color and different ethnicities. Marvel's current Hulk is Korean American Amadeus Cho; African American Sam Wilson is one of the two Captain Americas; Miles Morales is an Afro-Latino Spider-Man; and the teenage Pakistani American Kamala Kahn is the current Ms. Marvel.(DC Comics/-)

The original Superman had two different names -- an American name Clark Kent, and a foreign name Kal-El. His birth parents aren't English speakers and sent him to America to have a better life. The scenario indeed parallels the upbringings of many Chinese immigrants who live abroad.

The name Kenan Kong was deliberately chosen as well. The surname was selected to match the surname of Clark Kent, as they both start with the letter k. The ke (in Kenan can mean conquer in Chinese, and nan (means South, as the teenager is from Shanghai, a southern city in China.

Kong will join a growing group of superheroes of color and different ethnicities. Marvel's current Hulk is Korean American Amadeus Cho; African American Sam Wilson is one of the two Captain Americas; Miles Morales is an Afro-Latino Spider-Man; and the teenage Pakistani American Kamala Kahn is the current Ms. Marvel.

However, according to cultural critic Keith Chow, founder of cultural criticism site The Nerds of Color, only the latter two are strongly associated with their superhero mantles.

In an interview with NBC News, Chow said his hopes for Kong is that he will be "not just a character that shows up for a couple of issues and disappear. Having a talent like Gene gives me hope that that's the case."

Yang is hoping for the same. "I'm hoping he finds a place in the DC universe, I'm hoping he finds a place in the hearts of DC comics fans."

How things will turn out are in the hands of fans.
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Linkedin (Associated Press) Sydney  Tue, April 26, 2016

A teenager pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to plotting a terrorist attack on an Australian Veteran's Day ceremony.

The 16-year-old's lawyer, Zemarai Khatiz, entered the plea on his client's behalf. The teen, who did not appear at the hearing in Parramatta Children's Court in western Sydney, could face a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.

The teenager was arrested and charged with one count of planning a terrorist attack on Sunday, one day before hundreds of thousands of Australians gathered at ceremonies across the country to mark ANZAC Day. The annual holiday commemorates the April 25, 1915, Gallipoli landings in Turkey  the first major military action fought by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps during World War I.

In court documents, police accuse the teen of trying to get a gun as part of the alleged plot. New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said officials believe the teen was acting alone and said he had previously been on authorities' radar. Police have declined to reveal any other details.

This is the second year in a row that police say they have thwarted an attack on an ANZAC Day ceremony. Last year, police in Melbourne arrested five teenagers on suspicion of plotting an Islamic State group-inspired attack intended to coincide with the city's ANZAC service.
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Linkedin (Associated Press) Beijing  Tue, April 26, 2016

China's national legislature is poised to vote this week on a draft law criticized by overseas governments for tightening controls over foreign non-governmental groups by bringing them under direct police supervision.

The proposed law requires that such groups accept police supervision and state the sources of their funding and how their budgets are spent, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday.

Police would also be permitted to interview administrators and force Chinese partner organizations to terminate any program considered a threat to state security, Xinhua said. Groups seeking to "subvert the state and split the nation" would be banned, it said.

The proposed legislation has drawn criticism from U.S. and European officials and business and academic organizations concerned it would severely restrict the operations of a wide range of groups.

Several hundred NGOs founded, run or financed by foreigners are now operating in China in fields ranging from animal protection to human rights law.

Most are registered with the government as branches of formal Chinese academic or social organizations, while others operate in a legal gray area that leaves them vulnerable to crackdowns by the security forces.

In one recent example, China in January released and immediately deported a Swedish man it accused of training and funding unlicensed lawyers in the country.

The third and final draft of the foreign NGO law is expected to be voted on by the National People's Congress Standing Committee at its bi-monthly meeting this week. The committee handles the bulk of the congress' legislative work outside of the full body's annual two-week session.

Cooperative agreements between Chinese and overseas colleges, hospitals and science and engineering research institutes will continue to be handled under separate regulations.

While it would allow foreign NGOs to operate one-time or occasional programs in China, the new law would require their Chinese partners to obtain official approval and forbid them from hiring additional Chinese staff.

Of greatest concern to foreign groups and governments has been the naming of the Public Security Ministry as the overall body to govern foreign NGOs, something seen as casting those groups under undo suspicion. Those critics have suggested that the Civil Affairs Ministry would be a more logical oversight body.

Critics fear the law may lead to an onerous degree of scrutiny over administrators, with Xinhua saying police could bring investigations at will and demand the termination of any cooperation program "considered to undermine state security."

"Overseas NGOs, which engage in illegal activities including those to subvert the state and split the nation, will be banned from operating on the mainland," Xinhua said.
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

The government should enhance vocational education as part of efforts to bolster Indonesias standing in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), experts said on Monday.

University of Indonesia economics expert Mari Elka Pangestu lauded the government's program to develop vocational schools to create a more competitive workforce in response to the increased movement of workers in the region as a result of the AEC.

"Vocational schools are cheaper and can also produce skilled workers faster than universities, she said on the sidelines of The Jakarta Post's 33rd birthday celebration seminar on regional issues on Monday.

The government needs to focus on vocational schools that train people in the skills that are relevant to the several sectors that have a large potential to support Indonesia's economy, said Mika, who served as the tourism and creative economy minister under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The sectors include information technology, engineering, hospitality and retail, considering the fast growth they have experienced in recent years, Mari added.

However, another economist from the University of Indonesia, Faisal Basri, said the government had not yet taken full advantage of the potential of vocational schools. Of all tertiary graduates in the nation, those from vocational schools had the highest level of unemployment, Faisal said, citing data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS).

From the 7.56 million unemployment figure in August 2015, vocational school graduates contributed the most with 12.56 percent, followed by high school graduates with 10.32 percent, according to data from the BPS in 2015.

Kicked off on Dec. 31, 2015, the AEC increases workforce mobility within ASEAN member nations. Marking a critical milestone for the region, the AEC also increases economic integration as well as competition among member countries. (rin)
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Linkedin Elly Burhaini Faizal (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

A would-be candidate to be Golkar Party chairman, Priyo Budi Santoso, has expressed his willingness to abolish brokerage practices that have long tainted political parties in Indonesia, including his own.

If Im elected to be Golkar Party chairman, I will abolish all kinds of political dowries, he said as quoted by kompas.com in Jakarta on Monday.

Priyo said he was sad to see excessive news about Indonesias political parties, which had turned into political brokerage vehicles. He said there was an ongoing effort to depoliticize political parties in the country.

This depoliticization should become a medicine for political parties to be more willing to respond to criticisms. As a democratic country, in which the implementation of democracy has even been stronger than in the US, we should not have suspicions against political parties, said Priyo.

The senior Golkar member added that the current distrust against political parties would lead to their fall while all this time political parties were the pillars of democracy. He wanted activists to come forward to lead Indonesias political parties.

I want to ensure our activists dare to lead a political party. If political parties can serve only as bunkers for problematic figures, this is a sign of the destruction of political parties in the country, said Priyo.

Earlier, Priyo said he had seven important steps he called Sapta Krida that he would take if he was elected to be the party chairman.

In the first step, Priyo said he would rebuild the close collaboration that once existed between Golkar and what was then the Indonesian Armed Forces (now the Indonesian Military and National Police) and bureaucrats. He said the relationship must be set up to resemble a family atmosphere.

There will be retired police and military officials as well as teachers and civil servants I will involve to develop this party. We have been a bit careless, not involving them [in developing the party], said Priyo on Monday.

The politician added that he would also involve activists in developing the party. Activists who have revolted against the government have been long absent from Golkar. We have to involve them to jointly build the party. Golkar and NGO leaders must work together, said Priyo.

In his second step, Priyo said he would highlight the importance of a personal branding for a figure in Golkar. He said a Golkar chairman must have positive values that he or she would uphold when communicating with society. A Golkar chairman must be populist, he said.

How can a Golkar Party chairman show him or herself as bourgeois? It will bring loss upon us. If elected, I will call all Golkar members not to show lavish lifestyles, said Priyo.

Third, Priyo said he would give a greater chance to young people to lead the party. Allowing a youth to lead a party would minimize risks to the party, he said.

Building a party headquarters that would serve not only as a command center but also as a center for people to convey their aspirations is the fourth step. As the fifth step, Priyo said, Golkar must take over leadership positions in the regions. The 2017 regional election was a crucial test case for Golkar, he added.

Priyo further said that the developing of party members was another critical step he would take to ensure the continuity of Golkar.

As the last step, Priyo said he wanted to promote a dignified form of politics in the party. He said Golkar should not only pursue power, but also must push forward ethics in Indonesian politics.

These seven steps are not just a concept, but have been embodied in me, said Priyo.
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Linkedin thejakartapost.com (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

The Golkar Party should begin grooming its members and prepare the next generation of politicians or it could be at risk of being left behind amid growing concerns about the reduced influence of political parties in elections, a political analyst said on Monday.

The electorates faith in political parties has shown a marked decline following recent cases of vote buying and corruption committed by political party members, Siti Zuhro, a senior political analyst with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) said.

The fractious situation faced by Golkar might also contribute to the party's declining popularity.

As a big party, Golkar should build a network and recruit potential figures that are believed by the public to be going to be promoted in the next regional and presidential elections. Otherwise, Golkar will be left behind," she said in a discussion event on Monday.

Golkar senior politician and chairman candidate Priyo Budi Santoso agreed with the suggestion and said he would push for the party to have a membership school to reform its internal structure and performance.

If I win the chairmanship election, I plan to establish a school with a proper curriculum to groom our members so they will be ready to be promoted as a regent, mayor, governor, minister or even as a company executive, he said.

The decline of Golkar, strongly affiliated with late dictator Soeharto and his New Order regime, began with the fall of that president in May 1998.

During Soeharto's 32-year presidential tenure, Golkar enjoyed the luxury of being the single-biggest party in the country, and consecutively swept all six general elections from 1971 until 1997 garnering an average vote of over 60 percent.

However, the party suffered defeat for the first time in the 1999 general elections after it came in second with 22.44 percent of the vote trailing the Megawati Soekarnoputri-led Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which claimed victory in the elections.

Golkar's performance in the recent simultaneous regional elections in December showed an even greater decline. The party came in ninth position of 12 political parties in the elections, far below the PDI-P, which topped the poll, according to data compiled by the NGO the People's Voters Education Network (JPPR).

Golkar is engaged in an internal conflict between two factions, one led by Aburizal Bakrie, who was elected party chairman at a national congress in Bali in November 2014; and a splinter faction led by Agung Laksono, who was elected at a national congress in December 2015 in Ancol.

The government, through Justice and Human Rights Miniser Yasona Laoly, issued a decree in January extending Aburizal's leadership based on a national congress in 2014 for six months.

The party will hold a National Meeting in Bali on May 7 in a bid to unify its membership. (vps/rin)
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Linkedin Syamsul Huda M.Suhari (The Jakarta Post) Gorontalo  Mon, April 25, 2016

Botubarani, a village in the Bone Bolango regency, Gorontalo, has been getting more popular as a tourist destination in the province. Every day, the fishing village on Gorontalo's southern coast is crowded with domestic and foreign tourists come to watch the whale sharks in its waters.

Seven whale sharks have appeared in Botubarani waters in the last two years, generating economic benefits for locals. Housewives are selling cakes and snacks to visitors while house owners turn their yards into parking lots. At least 50 boats belonging to Botubarani villagers are ready to bring visitors around the waters to watch the whale sharks.

Hopefully, the whale sharks can continue to be a blessing for all of us here, Botubarani villager Risno Ismail told thejakartapost.com.

Risno, who is also a fisherman, has also rented his boat to visitors. The boat rental fee is only Rp 15,000 (US$1.14) per person.

The Bone Bolango administration is now handling the management of the shark-watching tourism in Botubarani village. Earlier, the tourist attraction was left unmanaged. Many visitors used motorboats to go around the waters while others fed the tame whale sharks with whatever they had. Some visitors reportedly rode on the protected, endangered species in disregard of the the consequences. Recently, a male whale shark reportedly suffered 14 slash wounds. It was suspected it was struck by a boat propeller.

The Bone Bolango administration closed the tourist attraction for one week but it has re-opened for the public since April 17. All visitors are required to adhere to shark-watching rules.

Wildlife tourism  This picture shows the parking lot for whale watching visitors in Botubarani village in Bole Bolango regency, Gorontalo. (thejakartapost.com/Syamsul Huda M.Suhari)

Bone Bolango Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Agency head Sutrisno said the composing of the shark watching rules involved several involved parties, such as the Tourism Agency, researchers, diving organizations and residents.

He said the administration had determined a 10,000-square-meter area in the Botubarani waters to be the playing ground of the whale sharks.

Both visitors and local fishermen are not allowed to enter the whale sharks playing ground, which is located close to the shoreline and the fishing village. Only officers responsible for feeding the whale sharks are permitted to enter the zone. They feed the sharks with fresh shrimps and prawn heads three times a day  morning, noon and night.

The use of motorboats is also prohibited. Each diver must pay a diving fee of Rp 50,000, from which part of the fee will be put into the village fund. The Bone Bolango Police deploy a number of tourism police to safeguard the tourist attraction. Garbage bins have been placed in several locations to ensure the area stays clean.

Whaleshark Indonesia project leader Mahardhika Rizqi Himawan said the shark-watching tourism in Botubarani village should be regulated by one agency while at the same time, the wild side of the protected, endangered species must also be paid close attention to. (ebf)
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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

Activists from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have urged the government to immediately respond to reports of the existence of state officials in the Panama Papers.

An immediate response is important to prevent unnecessary commotion and public distrust toward the Cabinet of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, said Setara Institute chairman Hendardi.

At least two high profile figures, head of the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) Harry Azhar Aziz and Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan, are among 800 Indonesians listed in the Panama papers.

"His inclusion [in the Panama Papers] has the potential to degrade the credibility of Jokowi's administration," Hendardi said in reference to Luhut in a statement retrieved by thejakartapost.com on Monday.

The Panama Papers leaked information about more than 214,000 offshore companies associated with Panamanian law firm and corporate services provider Mossack Fonseca.

Jokowi summoned both Harry and Luhut to the Presidential Palace to clarify their positions.

According to investigative reports from Tempo, Harry is recorded as the owner of Sheng Yue International Limited, a company established in the British Virgin Islands, a known tax haven.

He signed up as the sole director of Sheng Yue in early 2010 with the help of Mossack Fonseca. He held the position as chairman of the House of Representative's budgetary board at the time.

Meanwhile, Luhut's name is recorded as a director of Mayfair International Ltd, registered in the island country of Seychelles. The offshore company was established on June 29, 2006, with two companies, namely PT Persada Inti Energi and PT Buana Inti Energi, a subsidiary of the energy and plantation firm PT Toba Sejahtera, which was established by Luhut in 2004.

While Harry has acknowledged that his name is listed in the documents and has directly reported to the President and the director general of taxation, Luhut has denied his involvement in Mayfair, saying that he has never heard of it.

According to Hendardi, Harry should resign from his position as chairman to save the audit agency, and Jokowi should probe the details of Luhut's alleged involvement in offshore companies.

Separately, Wahyu Dhaytmika, a senior journalist from Tempo, the only Indonesian media outlet involved in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), said public officials should be open and transparent about the assets that they own.

"This complex financial structure makes it possible to do anything in secrecy and this has happened for years," Wahyu added.

The ICIJ investigation discovered that nearly 215,000 companies and 14,153 clients are tied to Mossack Fonseca, including politicians and business people who have kept their wealth offshore for years.

Even though the practice is generally legal, such financial arrangements can be misused for committing illegal practices such as evading tax or money laundering. (bbn)
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Linkedin Erika Anindita Dewi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

House of Representatives Speaker Ade Komarudin has said he aims to finish the discussion of the tax amnesty draft bill during the recess period so that it can be passed into law when the House resumes its sitting in May.

The Golkar Party politician said he initially hoped the bill could be passed into law during the current sitting, which ends on Friday.

However, if House Commission XI, which oversees banking and finance, was not able to meet that target, it could use the time it had during the recess to deliberate the bill, he said.

We still have time to discuss the bill during the two-week recess period. So, the work meeting between the House and the government [to discuss the passing of the bill into law] hopefully can be held at the opening of the upcoming sitting," Ade told reporters at the House complex in Senayan, Central Jakarta, on Monday.

The draft bill was not overly long, however, it would not be easy to deliberate, Ade claimed. The draft bill had at least three crucial points, the House speaker said without elaborating further.

"I don't want the tax amnesty discussion hampering the discussion of the revised state budget [APBN-P], Ade said.

Ade's optimism was in contrast to fellow Golkar politician, Ahmadi Noor Supit, who chairs Commission XI.

"The bill cannot be completed during the current sitting. It can be completed in the next session," Ahmadi said separately. He further said that if House lawmakers aimed to finish it during the recess, it would be better to complete the draft law discussion before the submission of the APBN-P bill.

Ahmadi said that despite its tough discussion process, which led to many deliberation postponements, it was important to pass the tax amnesty bill into law before the compliance by government branches with financial accountability rules was required.

The idea of deliberating the bill during the recess itself was not welcomed by a number of lawmakers.

Andreas Eddy Susetyo, a Commission XI lawmaker from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), was certain the deliberation of the tax amnesty draft bill would not be finished during the current sitting. Its deliberation would have to be continued after the recess.

"We should take a look at the purposes of the recess. In this period, lawmakers should explore the aspirations of their constituents during that time. If we don't do that, it means we violate the Legislative Institutions [MD3] Law," Andreas said on Monday.

The PDI-P lawmaker further said his party faction was still studying input provided by experts, after which they would discuss a problem inventory list [DIM].

In the tax amnesty bill, the government will offer tax discounts to individuals and companies who declare their untaxed wealth.

Separately, the government plans to revise the state budget to a more realistic figure, including its tax revenue target. For the 2016 state budget, the total tax revenue target is currently set at Rp 1.36 quadrillion (US$102.64 billion), or 28.2 percent higher than the Rp 1.06 quadrillion achieved in 2015. (ebf)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

Official negotiations on the Indonesia-European Union comprehensive economic partnership agreement (IE-CEPA) will commence within the next 4 to 6 months, with completion targeted for 2019.

Following the completion of the initial phase of IE-CEPA, known as scoping papers, during President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's visit to Belgium last week, a technical committee of the EU is currently holding internal discussions, according to Trade Minister Thomas Lembong.

"We are now taking a step forward toward formal negotiations. Formal negotiations are expected to take two to two and a half years," Thomas said in Jakarta on Tuesday, adding that the formal negotiations would start after internal discussions ended in the next three to six weeks.

He added that scoping papers for CEPA had been started in 2010 but had been halted for four years. At the end of last year, both sides decided to continue discussions on scoping papers, which were eventually completed in just four months.

"It is a big surprise, a positive surprise that scoping papers were completed during the President's visit to Brussels, on his visit to Europe last week," the minister said.

The scoping papers cover several issues that will determine the free trade agreement including trade in goods, customs and trade, technical regulations, trade in services and investment, public procurement, intellectual property rights, competition policy, transparency of regulations, dispute settlements and trade and sustainable development.

Previously, Jokowi said Indonesia was ready to immediately negotiate the CEPA, in line with the commitment to making the nation's economy more open and competitive. (ags)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

The government wants the 14 Indonesians held hostage by Philippine militant group Abu Sayyaf to be freed as soon as possible without paying a ransom, but instead via intense communication with the local authorities, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said on Tuesday.

Both Indonesia and the Philippine government have reportedly intensified communication with each other as well as with the rebel group regarding the hostages. The Indonesian government has been forced to take a back seat in efforts to free the hostages as it may not enter the Philippines territory without permission.

"We want the hostages to be released soon but we must realize that they are in another country. We need permission to enter if we want to deploy our troops," Jokowi told journalists at the State Palace on Tuesday.

Based on the latest information received by the government, the hostages are all in a healthy condition, Jokowi said. He reiterated the governments rejection of any possibility of paying the requested ransom to the militant group.

"We don't have any business paying the ransom," he said in response to the US$1 million ransom requested to guarantee the release of the Indonesian crew members.

No timeline has been set by the government as the situation on the ground remains difficult, hampering any rescue efforts. The group has reportedly moved the hostages between several locations amid intensifying rescue operations by Philippine security personnel.

The government will invite Military chiefs and the foreign ministers of the Philippines and Malaysia to meet in Jakarta this week to discuss a joint-patrol plan to prevent such incidents from taking place again in the future.

"We will conduct joint patrols to ensure the travel in the region is truly safe," the president said.

The 14 Indonesian captive comprise 10 taken from tugboat Brahma 12 and barge Anand 12 hijacked in late March, and four taken from the Henry tugboat and Christy barge when the vessels sailed through Malaysian and Philippine waters in mid-April.

Six crew members managed to evade the kidnapping attempt and five have since returned to Jakarta while one crew member was still being treated in a Malaysian hospital from a gunshot wound inflicted during the hijacking attempt. (rin)
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

Indosat Oredoo Tbk hopes to win the east-section of Palapa Ring project tender. This is the second time the tender has been offered; the previous tender failed to attract submissions due to its unrealistic project value and data.

According to Indosat president director Alexander Rusli, the east-section project requires a 6,300 km fiber optic to connect East Nusa Tenggara, Maluku, West Papua and Papua. The submarine communications cable will also have landing points on several islands.

It was the kind of unrealistic tender where nobody wanted to put in a bid. With revised data, the results of the second tender will be announced around June. We have put forward our bid, hopefully we will win, he said during The Jakarta Post 33rd anniversary event on Monday in Jakarta.

The Palapa Ring will be the infrastructure backbone of the internet connection in Indonesia. The focus is to get those islands connected. We will get the money from the service that will be built through the backbone, Rusli told thejakartapost.com. (ags)
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Linkedin Bambang Muryanto (The Jakarta Post) Yogyakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

It seems the proverb that insists poor people arent allowed to get sick no longer applies in Kulon Progo regency, Yogyakarta.

To give its people better access to healthcare, the Kulon Progo administration has specially designed a health-care program allowing all poor patients access to in-patient care at any treatment room at Kulon Progo Regional General Hospital (RSUD). The hospital also provides health-care services for residents who are not members of the Health Care and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan), with all medical expenses covered by the Kulon Progo administration using local Jamkesda health coverage funds.

We have a program called a hospital without classes. If the Class 3 facilities are full, patients can use Class 1, Class 2 and even VIP rooms, Kulon Progo Regent Hasto Wardoyo told thejakartapost.com on Monday.

Hasto further explained that the classless policy was valid not only for BPJS card holders but also all poor people, as long as they could show Kulon Progo resident ID, whether personal ID cards (KTP) or family cards (KK).

A newborn baby who falls sick can receive medical treatment under this hospital without classes program. As long as he or she has been registered on a KK, we can cover him or her with Jamkesda funds, said Hasto.

The Kulon Progo administrations health policy is apparently a tacit criticism of the long and complicated mechanism widely complained of by users of the BPJS Kesehatan program.

For many people, it is more beneficial to get an easier [health-care] procedure instead of free health-care services but with a complicated process, said Hasto.

Thanks to its health policy, the Kulon Progo administration has progressed to the second phase of the United Nations Public Service Award (UNPSA) 2015 selection process.

The achievement was one of the factors in the governments decision to appoint Kulon Progo regency host of the 20th Regional Autonomy Day celebrations held on Monday, the first time the celebrations had been held outside the State Palace in Jakarta.

RSUD Kulon Progo director Lies Indriyati said the hospital without classes policy was part of the governments commitment, in place since 2102, to provide universal health-care coverage. The policy is part of the hospitals efforts to provide health-care services for all people, including the poor, freeing the hospital from discrimination based on wealth.

If previously poor people were not allowed to get sick [because of medical expenses], they are now allowed to get sick because their expenses are covered by the local administration, Lies said.

The costs of all medical treatment, such as surgery, laboratory tests, radiology and many more, are the same for all patients, she said, from Class 3 to VIP patients. In fact, uniforming medical expenses for patients in all classes does not make the hospital incur losses.

Natural care: A soothing illustration hangs on the wall of the hospital.(thejakartapost.com/Bambang Muryanto)

Currently, Kulon Progo hospital has 232 beds. There is also a Class D hospital with 30 beds in Sentolo district.

The service has occasioned long queues of patients wanting in-patient treatments at the hospital. To better accommodate the patients, the RSUD is currently developing additional facilities on a four-hectare plot behind the hospital.

One of the innovations in the health sector developed by the hospital is awareness for low birth-weight newborn babies (less than 2,500 grams), with a program aiming to reduce the maternal and infant mortality rate in the regency.

We call this program screenless health-care services. Under the program, we carry out home visits once the babies are taken home by their families, said Lies.

She added that hospital health workers also brought village midwives on the visits, so that they could monitor the treatment of the underweight babies in subsequent days.

With this method, we hope we can push down our infant mortality rate, as one of the indicators in the Millennium Development Goals [MDGs]  now Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs]. In 2013, the number of infant mortality deaths reached around 70-80 cases per year and we hope that through this intervention, it can be reduced to only 45-50 cases, said Lies.

In 2015, Kulon Progos screenless health-care program was among 99 public service innovations selected in a competition held by the Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Ministry.

According to Lies, the hospital was also selected the fourth runner-up in a green hospital competition in 2015.

We have placed natural scenery pictures in each room in the hope they will stop patients becoming depressed. Theyre all pictures of natural tourist destinations in Kulon Progo, said Lies.

During break hours, the hospital management plays classical and traditional music to create a relaxed and comfortable ambience.

Accompanying her husband who was undergoing treatment at the hospital, Widarti said she was using the Jamkesda facility, and that it had not taken long for her husband to get a room at the hospital.

I waited for two hours to get a room at this hospital. Its service delivery is pretty fast, said Widarti. (ebf)
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Linkedin thejakartapost.com (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama has said the resignation of North Jakarta Mayor Rustam Effendi was not solely down to his comments criticizing Rustam for his policies on eviction.

"I think [the decision to resign] was a long process. It wasn't just because of the joke I made, Ahok said at City Hall on Tuesday as reported by kompas.com.

Rustam submitted his resignation letter on Monday. In it, he offered no definitive reasons for his resignation, but had previously spoken of his "hurt" at Ahok's comments criticizing his policies on eviction.

He was referring to Ahok's statement during a flood evaluation meeting last Friday regarding the earlier flooding on Jl. Gunung Sahari in North Jakarta. The governor criticized Rustams efforts to mitigate the floods, including his failure to relocate people whose occupation of certain areas was considered to have exacerbated the flooding.

If I want to expel people, I don't expect to meet resistance. Perhaps the mayor [Rustam] is on Yusril's side, Ahok remarked, referring to political rival Yusril Izha Mahendra. The governor later insisted he had been joking, adding that Rustam's performance was "good" and that he had no intention of replacing him.

However, on Tuesday, Ahok admitted that the Gunung Sahari incident was not the first time the North Jakarta mayor had been reluctant to carry out orders, including the eviction of people living under the Ancol toll road.

The governor also revealed that at the time of the clearing of the Kalijodo area in North Jakarta, he had rejected Rustam's proposal to allow a stay of eviction to a mechanic's workshop owned by a Chinese Indonesian. "It's a long story. It doesn't matter. I appreciate what he's done," Ahok said.

Ahok has accepted Rustam's resignation and appointed North Jakarta Deputy Mayor Wahyu Haryadi as his acting replacement. (bbn)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

Representatives of media companies from several ASEAN member countries have agreed to establish a forum to support the ASEAN Community and to strengthen relationships among ASEAN member countries, not only in economic terms but also people-to-people relations.

They met with the government during a lunch meeting hosted by President Joko Jokowi Widodo at the State Palace in Jakarta on Tuesday. Media representatives from nine ASEAN countries, namely Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam, attended the meeting.

Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara said that during the meeting, President Jokowi had explained his economic reforms, which were focused on deregulation.

"I noticed the President mentioned the word 'competition' seven times and 'deregulation' four times. Thus, he wanted to underline that Indonesia was in the process of repositioning and deregulating its economic policies to make it more competitive," the minister said.

Commenting on the media's plan to contribute to the building of the ASEAN Community using a bottom up approach, Rudiantara said that in general, Jokowi supported the plan.

"In the context of facilitating their contribution and providing strategies, we will certainly give support," Rudiantara said. The type of contribution media was expected to make to the building of the ESEAN Community was not elaborated on in the meeting.

The Jakarta Post editor-in-chief Endy Bayuni said that as the ASEAN community was only launched on 31 December last year, its effects remained invisible. Among the three pillars of the ASEAN Community, namely economic, political and security, and socio-cultural, the ASEAN Economic Community seems to be the most advanced pillar while the two remaining pillars have seemingly been left behind.

"We then came up with an idea: Why dont the media take the initiative? So we set up a meeting to discuss the development of the ASEAN Community," Endy said, adding that in the long term, all media companies attending the meeting would initiate a collaboration network.

Endy further said that media could play a role in the development of the community using a bottom-up approach. "We don't have to wait for the command from our governments. We will start to vocalize that we have established the ASEAN Community and it is important for us to continuously develop it together," he explained.

The Jakarta Post itself has already initiated ASEAN pages which consist of news from the region. The Posts online version has a Southeast Asia section.

"Some of them also have it [a Southeast Asia section], but this is not enough," he said.

The senior journalist went on to say that to that end, it was important to carry out journalist exchanges. "The purpose is that the 10 ASEAN nations get to know each other," he added.

Jakarta Post Digital editor-in-chief Nezar Patria added that in its development, the ASEAN Community involved only government-to-government relations without making attempts to foster aspects such as people-to-people relations. Hence, the media in the region agreed to establish a media forum to further develop the ASEAN Community.

"The Jakarta Post is the vocal point to the media forum for ASEAN Community building. We will establish a preparatory committee and set up the structure and the activities," he said.

The media forum will meet in Laos, coinciding with the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of ASEAN on Aug. 8, 2017. (ebf)
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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

North Jakarta mayor Rustam Effendi resigned from his position on Monday after Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama openly rebuked him over flood and eviction plans in North Jakarta last week.

Rustam handed in his resignation letter to the Jakarta Employment Agency (BKD) on Monday, BKD head Agus Suradika said, adding that Rustam did not provide a specific reason for his decision.

Ahok slammed Rustam last week over his alleged negligence in supervising water pumps in North Jakarta leading to severe flooding in several areas such as Ancol in North Jakarta and Gunung Sahari in Central Jakarta. Ahok also slammed Rustam for not carrying out eviction programs in the Pasar Ikan area as planned by the city administration.

The outspoken governor even accused Rustam of conspiring with former legal and human rights minister and potential candidate for governor Yusril Ihza Mahendra to block the city administration's programs.

The accusation was a joke and it was not meant as an attack on Rustam, Ahok said on Monday, claiming that during the meeting all other officials laughed understanding that it was only a joke.

Prior to the resignation, Rustam wrote in his personal Facebook account that he felt pained by the accusation. Not only he did not know Yusril, he wanted Ahok to give him clearer directions instead of falsely accusing him.

Upon hearing of Rustam's resignation, Ahok thanked him for his work, which according to him was "not too bad".

"He just told me that he wants to resign. I don't want to dismiss him, but if he wants to resign, we can do nothing," Ahok told reporters at City Hall on Tuesday.

The deputy mayor Wahyu Hariadi will be acting mayor until the governor appoints another mayor.

Separately, executive director of Charta Politika Indonesia Yunarto Wijaya questioned Ahok's communicative approach especially to his subordinates, which might cost him a second term in the capital's top post.

Some people might see him as a firm leader, but others might raise their eyebrows over his outspoken attitude, Yunarto said.

Rustam's resignation could also impact on other civil servants. Some of them might be motivated to work better while others may be disheartened by this incident.

"If Ahok can improve his communication skills it will have a positive snowball effect, which may benefit himself in next years election," he told thejakartapost.com on Monday.

Ahok has an advantage as an incumbent in next year's gubernatorial race. However, if he acted as a "one man show" and did not create a harmonious relationship with his subordinates, it could have a negative impact on his own performance, Yunarto said. (rin)
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Linkedin Kathleen Hennessey (Associated Press) Hannover, Germany  Tue, April 26, 2016

Evoking history and appealing for solidarity, President Barack Obama on Monday cast his decision to send 250 more troops to Syria as a bid to keep up "momentum" in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State extremists. He pressed European allies to match the US with new contributions of their own.

Obama's announcement of the American troops, which capped a six-day tour to the Middle East and Europe, reflected a steady deepening of US military engagement, despite the president's professed reluctance to dive further into another Middle East conflict. As Obama gave notice of the move, he said he wanted the US to share the increasing burden.

Obama discussed the IS fight with British Prime Minster David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minster Matteo Renzi.

The president formally announced the new troop deployment in a speech about European unity and trans-Atlantic cooperation  a running theme of his trip. Speaking in Germany, he evoked the continent's history of banding together to defeat prejudice and emerge from the "ruins of the Second World War."

"Make no mistake," Obama said. "These terrorists will learn the same lessons as others before them have, which is, your hatred is no match for our nations united in the defense of our way of life."

The rhetoric belied an underlying frustration in his administration about allies' contributions to the U.S.-led fight in Syria and neighboring Iraq. Although the coalition includes some 66 nations, the U.S. has conducted the vast majority of the air strikes, and there has been little appetite by other nations to send in ground troops of their own.

The president recently rattled leaders in Europe and the Middle East by describing allies as "free riders." He made a passing reference to that complaint on Monday, as he noted that not all European allies contribute their expected share to NATO: "I'll be honest: Sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense."

On stops in Riyadh, London and Hannover this week, Obama repeatedly pushed allies for more firepower, training for local forces and economic aid to help reconstruct regions in Iraq that have been retaken from Islamic State control but are still vulnerable. Obama appeared to come up short in Riyadh, when he met with Arab allies.

He made the pitch again in Hannover, where he attended a massive industrial technology trade show on what was likely his last presidential visit to Germany.

"These terrorists are doing everything in their power to strike our cities and kill our citizens, so we need to do everything in our power to stop them," Obama said.

The new deployment brings the number of US military personnel in Syria from roughly 50 to roughly 300. It follows a similar ramp-up in Iraq, announced last week. The new Syria forces will include special operation troops assisting local forces, as well as maintenance and logistics personnel.

Obama, in an interview with CBS News, declined to say whether the forces might be dispatched on search-and-kill missions.

He did say, "As a general rule, the rule is not to engage directly with the enemy but rather to work with local forces."

Obama's troop announcement was called "a good step" by Salem Al Meslet, spokesman of the High Negotiations Committee, the main Syrian opposition group.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said it was "a welcome development, but one that is long overdue and ultimately insufficient."

Obama's call for European solidarity extended beyond the anti-Islamic State campaign.

Amid what he described as "unsettling times," Obama revived the argument he made in London days earlier that Britain and the European Union are strongest if Briton votes in an upcoming referendum to remain in the 28-member nation block. And Obama mounted a forceful defense of his host in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is facing criticism for her willingness to take in refugees from Syria.

"Chancellor Merkel and others have eloquently reminded us that we cannot turn our backs on our fellow human beings who are here now and need our help now," Obama said. "We have to uphold our values, not just when it's easy but when it's hard."

The migrant crisis was a central focus as Obama met with European leaders just before returning to Washington. Merkel said the leaders had discussed ways to expand military efforts to stop human smuggling across the Mediterranean from Libya.

"With the NATO mission in the Aegean, the United States of America have shown their readiness to take part in the fight against illegal migration," Merkel said. A senior U.S. official said the U.S. was indeed ready to help with that effort but had no new mission to announce.

Obama, in the CBS interview, said he told European leaders that the migration problem was putting a strain on European politics, advancing "far-right nationalism" and encouraging the breakup of European unity. He added that the situation "in some cases is being exploited by somebody like Mr. Putin," the Russian leader.

Obama, who used one of his final foreign trips to start trying to shape his legacy, said in his speech he saw Europe facing a "defining moment." He urged the continent's leaders to pay attention to income inequality, education for young people and equal pay for women.

"If we do not solve these problems, we start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way," Obama said.

Superville reported from Aerzen, Germany. Associated Press writers Frank Jordans in Hannover and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.
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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

Regional stability in ASEAN is one of the most important factors in encouraging economic growth in the private sector, observers said during a discussion on regional issues.

Deddy Saleh, an international trade expert who is also an independent commissioner at Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas, underlined the factors that impeded private sector growth, including geopolitical uncertainty and instability.

"Resolve the issues together, go forward in a more consolidated manner," he said during a seminar entitled Global Challenges and Regional Solutions: Engaging Stakeholders, held to commemorate the 33rd anniversary of The Jakarta Post on Monday in Jakarta.

Citing concerns such as disputes over the South China Sea and government intervention in the market, Deddy said such matters could potentially disrupt economic growth.

To illustrate the importance of peace and security, Deddy cited the example of the recent Abu Sayyaf hijacking in reference to the larger problem of terrorism in the region.

Meanwhile, South Korean ambassador to ASEAN Suh Jeoung-In urged ASEAN countries to forge themselves into a new engine of growth through intra-economic partnerships and in so doing, become less dependent on China.

The formation of the ASEAN Economic Community is important. ASEAN countries, including us, must work together to find other sources of growth, In told thejakartapost.com.

Other factors such as dumping, barriers to entry to foreign markets, and tariff regulations, especially those influenced by national interest, could all challenge international trade, Deddy added.

Sinar Mas is suspected of contributing to the forest fire and haze crisis engulfing Indonesia. Rising environmental concerns prompted restrictions in European countries on palm oil and pulp and papers products from Indonesia. (ags)
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Linkedin thejakartapost.com (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

A political analyst has urged all political parties with internal conflicts to resolve the disputes and better prepare for the upcoming regional and general elections.

Indonesia will see another set of simultaneous regional elections next year and legislative and presidential elections in 2019. Therefore, parties with internal divisions must agree a settlement if they want to win votes in the elections, Siti Zuhro, a senior political analyst from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) said on Monday.

With the simultaneous elections system, political parties must form a coalition long before the election. So if parties have yet to resolve their internal conflicts, it is impossible for them to form a coalition and promote a candidate for the election," Siti added.

The Constitutional Court ruled in January 2014 that Indonesia would hold the presidential and legislative elections concurrently in 2019, as different dates for the elections had previously led to rampant horse-trading and inefficiency.

However, several political parties have been struggling with internal conflicts, such as having dual leaderships leading to a reduced influence in elections.

If they have not resolved the conflicts, the simultaneous elections will only be a procedural event, Siti said.

The Golkar Party has been split into two factions for the past year. One faction led by Aburizal Bakrie, who was elected in a congress in Bali in November 2014, and a splinter faction led by Agung Laksono, was chosen in a congress in Ancol, Jakarta, in December 2015.

The party will hold a national meeting on May 7 in Bali in the hope of unifying the two factions.

Meanwhile, the United Development Party (PPP) has also split into two leaderships, one led by Djan Faridz from the muktamar (national congress) in Jakarta in November 2014 and another faction led by Muhammad Romahurmuziy from the Surabaya muktamar in October 2014.

The party, aiming to resolve the conflict by holding a national congress of reconciliation, or islah, at the beginning of this month, named Romahurmuzy as party chairman. (vps/rin)
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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

The Jakarta Prosecutors Office is examining the case dossier of Jessica Kumala Wongso, the sole suspect in the premeditated murder of Wayan Mirna Salihin, after the revised document was submitted by police on Friday.

Mirna died soon after drinking iced coffee at a cafe in Jakarta on Jan. 6. Prosecutors are examining the dossier now. We have 14 days to examine this dossier, Waluyo, a spokesman from the Jakarta Prosecutors Office, told thejakartpost.com on Tuesday.

Jessica faces a period of imprisonment that exceeds nine years. Based on the law, she can be detained for a maximum of 120 days. The detention period will end in May.

If police cannot provide valid evidence in the dossier, the police should release Jessica, Waluyo said.

Separately, Jessicas lawyer, Yudi Sukinto, believes that the police do not have strong evidence to prove that Jessica murdered Mirna.

From Circuit Closed Television (CCTV) records, Jessica does not appear to put the cyanide in Mirnas coffee. Jessica is only busy with her mobile phone, Yudi said.

Yudi also expressed regret that the police did not investigate Jessica transparently. For example, the police did not allow Jessicas lawyers to see the interrogation report even though the lawyers requested it.

Jessica has suffered pains in her chest because of depression, Yudi said. If the police cant prove Jessica guilty, we will report this whole process as a violation of human rights. We will report it to an international human rights body. Jessicas liberty has been taken away and the police have detained her without a strong legal basis, Yudi said. (bbn)
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Linkedin Abdullah Al-Shihri & Aya Batrawy (Associated Press) Riyadh, Saudi Arabia  Tue, April 26, 2016

Saudi Arabia unveiled a bold reform plan on Monday aimed at weaning the country off its "addiction" to oil in a bid to prepare the next generation of Saudi leaders for the domestic pressures of youth unemployment and revenues eroded by lower oil prices.

The project, which includes plans to float a stake in the world's largest oil company, Aramco, and set up one of the world's biggest government investment funds, is meant to provide a blueprint for sweeping reforms to steer the OPEC kingdom away from its decades-long reliance on cheap-to-produce oil.

King Salman said in a televised announcement that the Cabinet approved the plan, known as Vision 2030, and called on Saudis to work together to ensure its success.

But it was left to the king's powerful son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to spell out details in an interview aired shortly after the announcement on Saudi-owned broadcaster Al-Arabiya.

The 30-year-old second-in-line to the throne also serves as the country's defense minister and chairs a committee to oversee economic policymaking. That committee, the Council on Economic and Development Affairs, has been focused on reorienting the kingdom away from its heavy reliance on fossil fuels, creating jobs and boosting foreign investment.

The plan is ambitious. Beyond selling state assets, it includes trimming government perks, like the estimated $61 billion spent annually on energy subsidies that Saudi citizens have become accustomed to and which have helped secure political patronage for the Al Saud ruling family. Just this week, the king sacked the country's water and electricity minister after complaints by citizens online over how increases in water tariffs had been implemented. The Internet is one of the few spaces where people can discuss sensitive issues since there are no political parties and protests are banned.

Though the plan stresses the importance of Saudi women in the economy and expanding their job opportunities, it contained little to suggest the kingdom would accelerate its cautious pace of social reforms. Women were granted the right to vote and run in local council elections for the first time last year, but are still banned from driving and need the approval of a male relative  usually a husband or father to travel abroad.

Lower oil prices pushed Saudi Arabia into a budget deficit of nearly $100 billion last year and a projected deficit this year of $87 billion. Despite efforts to limit reliance on its main export, oil accounted for more than 70 percent of the state's revenue in 2015.

Masood Ahmed, International Monetary Fund director for the Middle East and Central Asia, said the plan's objective of diversifying the economy away from oil is "exactly the kind of transformation that an economy like Saudi Arabia needs."

"I think the real issue is going to be how to make sure that these very sensible and ambitious objectives can be translated into real changes," he said.

In Monday's wide-ranging interview, the deputy crown prince described the kingdom as having an "addiction to oil" that had hurt development in other sectors and said a planned partial initial public offering of the state-owned oil giant Aramco was part of the reform program.

"The vision is a road map of our development and economic goals," he said. "Without a doubt, Aramco is one of the main keys of this vision and the kingdom's economic renaissance."

He put the estimated value of Aramco at more than $2 trillion and said less than 5 percent would be offered to public shareholders. Subsidiaries of the company would also be part of the share sale, he said.

The Aramco shares would be listed on the Saudi stock exchange, the Tadawul, and on an international exchange, possibly in the United States.

Aramco boasts the world's largest oil reserves and produces some 10 million barrels of crude a day, giving it outsized influence over world energy markets. It traces its history to a 1933 agreement between the kingdom and the Standard Oil Company of California to develop the country's oil reserves, and has been known as Aramco  an acronym for the Arabian American Oil Company since 1944. The Saudi government took full control of the company in a series of buyouts that ended in 1980.

The prince also outlined plans to develop Saudi Arabia's $160 billion public investment fund and turn it into a $2 trillion sovereign fund that would go into developing the kingdom's cities. It would include cash generated from the Aramco IPO, an existing $600 billion in reserves, and state-owned real estate and industrial areas estimated to be worth $1 trillion, he said.

Jason Turvey, Middle East economist for Capital Economics, said that because plans for the fund reflect a shift of balance sheets rather than any new assets, it will not reduce the government's dependence on oil revenues.

"We don't buy into Mohammed bin Salman's assertion that Saudi Arabia will no longer be dependent on oil by 2020," he wrote.

A Bank of America Merrill Lynch report said the changes under King Salman may herald a much more assertive role for royals in energy policy and cautioned that the concentration of power with the deputy crown prince "could raise a succession risk going forward."

Another major obstacle facing the Saudi monarchy is unemployment, currently at 11.7 percent. The kingdom said it plans to reduce that to 7 percent by 2030 and to boost the private sector to alleviate pressures on the government to absorb its growing workforce.

More than half of Saudis are under the age of 25, and in coming years millions will be looking for work and affordable housing. Currently, 70 percent of Saudis work in the public sector, where the government spends heavily on wages.

The deputy crown prince said another way to drive up non-oil revenue is by boosting the kingdom's own military production. Saudi Arabia was the world's third-largest arms buyer last year, with purchases of more than $87 billion, yet only 2 percent was for locally-produced weaponry.

Vision 2030 sets out a goal of localizing more than half of Saudi Arabia's military spending and creating a military industries holding company that would be initially fully owned by the government.

Batrawy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Adam Schreck in Dubai contributed to this report.
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Linkedin Matthew Pennington (Associated Press) Washington  Tue, April 26, 2016

The United States pressed Vietnam Monday over a recent spate of detentions of government critics and pushed for other progress on human rights ahead of a visit next month by President Barack Obama.

Senior officials of the two governments held an annual dialogue on human rights in Washington. It's an issue which remains a drag on improving relations between the former enemies.

Tom Malinowski, US assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor, said last year saw a sharp decline in arrests and prosecutions for peaceful dissent in Vietnam.

But he told The Associated Press there has been an increase in detentions of activists and bloggers this year, which was raised during Monday's "open and candid" discussions. He said the US side "expressed our hope that this would be addressed and that some of the longstanding cases of concern would be resolved."

Vietnam's delegation was led by Vu Anh Quang, director general of the Department of International Organizations at the Foreign Ministry. The Vietnamese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Obama will visit Vietnam in May, becoming the third consecutive US president to do so, four decades after the end of the Vietnam War.

The US and Vietnam have deepened ties in recent years as Washington looks to widen its circle of friends in Southeast Asia and finds common cause with Hanoi in countering a rising China. Vietnam is also a member of the US-backed regional trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that was signed in February.

Vietnam recently adopted some laws to improve legal protections for citizens and has agreed to allow independent labor unions, currently forbidden, under a labor agreement that takes effect once TPP is ratified by both nations.

But the ruling Communist Party still brooks no dissent.

According to a recent State Department report, Vietnam held about 95 political prisoners at the end of 2015. Human Rights Watch says that during the last week of March, Vietnam convicted seven bloggers and rights activists and sentenced them to prison.

Among the individual cases of detainees raised by the US on Monday was Nguyen Van Dai, a prominent human rights lawyer who was arrested in December on charges of spreading anti-state propaganda. In 2007, Dai was sentenced to four years on a similar charge.

Malinowski said the US was also closely watching Vietnam's progress on legal reforms.

Laws on demonstrations, non-government groups and religion that Vietnam's National Assembly is due to take up this year could have an important impact on respect for human rights, he said.
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Linkedin (Associated Press)  Tue, April 26, 2016

The beheading of a Canadian hostage by the Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines turned the spotlight back on the small band of Muslim militants whose brutal reputation precedes that of the Islamic State group, which they now idolize.

Abu Sayyaf emerged as an extremist offshoot of the decades-long Muslim secessionist conflict in the south and has carved its name in blood, carrying out mass kidnappings, beheadings and bombings.

Washington turned the southern Philippines into a key plank of its global war against terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to contain the Abu Sayyaf's atrocities including the abductions of three American tourists from a resort that year, including one who was beheaded.

A look at the major attacks by the Abu Sayyaf:

 April 1995: Abu Sayyaf fighters storm the mostly Christian town of Ipil in the south, killing more than 50 people after robbing banks and stores and burning the town center.

 April 2000: Twenty one people, including European tourists, are seized from Malaysia's Sipadan diving resort and hauled across the sea border by speedboats to jungle camps in the southern Philippines. All the hostages were freed in batches in exchange for millions of dollars in ransom reportedly paid by Libya.

 May 2001: Twenty tourists, including three Americans, are kidnapped from the Dos Palmas resort in southwestern Palawan province, starting a yearlong hostage saga that leaves a number of captives dead, including US nationals Martin Burnham and Guillermo Sobero, who was beheaded.

 October 2002: A nail-laden bomb detonates in Zamboanga city, killing four, including an American Green Beret.

 February 2004: A bomb on a passenger ferry in Manila Bay kills 116 in the country's worst terrorist attack.

 February 2005: Nearly simultaneous bombings in Manila and two southern cities kill eight and wound more than 100.

 November 2015: Militants in Sulu behead a Malaysian man while the APEC summit is underway in Manila, attended by President Obama and Malaysian premier Najib Razak.

 April 2016: Canadian John Ridsdel, 68, is beheaded in Sulu. Twenty-two other foreign hostages remain in Abu Sayyaf custody.
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Linkedin (Associated Press) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

Indonesia's president said Tuesday that his government will host talks with Malaysia and the Philippines this week to boost maritime security following the kidnappings at sea of Indonesians by suspected Abu Sayyaf militants.

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said the meeting of foreign ministers and military chiefs will discuss joint patrols to protect shipping in the waters between the three countries. He said the meeting would be held this week, but did not give a specific date.

Fourteen Indonesians are among more than 20 people being held hostage in the southern Philippines. They were crew members of two Indonesian tug boats hijacked in separate incidents in March and this month.

The company that owns the tug boat involved in the March incident has received telephone calls, purportedly from Abu Sayyaf, demanding a ransom.

But Jokowi ruled out an exchange of money for the hostages by the government. "We will never compromise on such a thing," he said.

Abu Sayyaf militants beheaded a Canadian hostage Monday and dumped his head on a roadside in a plastic bag in the southern Philippine province of Sulu.

The militants had threatened to behead one of two Canadians and a Norwegian they kidnapped last September from a marina on southern Samal Island if a large ransom was not paid by Monday afternoon.

Jokowi said the government's information is that the Indonesian hostages are in good health.
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Linkedin (Associated Press) Yangon, Myanmar  Tue, April 26, 2016

A military helicopter crashed into a reservoir in Myanmar during a training exercise Tuesday and both pilots were rescued by fishermen, the armed forces newspaper reported.

The Myawaddy newspaper said on its Facebook page that the Bell helicopter crashed into the reservoir after taking off from Meiktila airport in central Myanmar.

Meiktila is about 510 kilometers (315 miles) north of Yangon, the country's main city. Myawaddy said both pilots received minor injuries.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.
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Linkedin Kristen Gelineau (Associated Press) Sydney, Australia  Tue, April 26, 2016

Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Australia's detention of asylum seekers at a facility on the Pacific nation's Manus Island is unconstitutional.

The ruling could jeopardize Australia's divisive policy of refusing to accept any asylum seekers who try to reach its shores by boat. Australia pays Papua New Guinea and the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru to hold them in detention camps instead.

The court dubbed the detention of the asylum seekers a violation of their constitutional right to personal liberty. The court ordered both countries' governments to take immediate steps toward ending the detention of the 900 men being held at the facility.

"...Treating those required to remain in the relocation center as prisoners irrespective of their circumstances or their status save only as asylum seekers, is to offend against their rights and freedoms as guaranteed by the various conventions on human rights," the court wrote in its ruling.

Attorney Loani Henao, who lodged the court action on behalf of Papua New Guinea's former opposition leader Belden Namah, said the decision means the center must be shut down immediately and the asylum seekers set free.

"They were in jail against their own will for no reason," Henao said by telephone. "The government of Papua New Guinea and Australia, for that matter, were not allowed to do that under our constitution."

Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said the ruling had done nothing to change Australia's stance on asylum seekers who arrive by boat.

"No one who attempts to travel to Australia illegally by boat will settle in Australia," Dutton said in a statement. "Those in the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre found to be refugees are able to resettle in Papua New Guinea. Those found not to be refugees should return to their country of origin."

Human rights groups and refugee advocates have been fiercely critical of Australia's tough asylum seeker policies, which the government enacted in a bid to stop migrants from boarding rickety boats and attempting the dangerous ocean crossing from Indonesia to Australia. Australia also was criticized in 2014 after signing a four-year, 55 million Australian dollar (US$42 million) deal that offered refugees stuck on Nauru the option of being resettled in Cambodia. Only five refugees opted to go to Cambodia and several of them subsequently chose to return to their home countries, prompting critics to dub the deal a pricey flop.
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Linkedin (Associated Press) Phnom Penh  Tue, April 26, 2016

Cambodia's prime minister says society must mobilize to help deal with the worst drought in at least four decades, which has left about two-thirds of the country's 25 provinces short of water for drinking and other necessities.

Hun Sen said Tuesday in a speech in the northwestern province of Banteay Meanchey that the armed forces, civil servants, the Red Cross and political parties must all pitch in to ensure that adequate water supplies reach people.

He said he has ordered all provincial governors to stay in their home areas to help people instead of attending meetings in the capital.

Cambodia's bigger neighbors to the east and west, Vietnam and Thailand, also are suffering from droughts described as the worst in decades.
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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

Southeast Asian countries need to implement the mechanisms stipulated in the Paris Agreement to mitigate the impact of disasters caused by climate change, as the region is one of the most vulnerable to such impacts, experts said on Monday.

ASEAN must participate in realizing the global goals in avoiding the worst climate impact as the Asia Pacific region, which includes ASEAN, is "one of the most vulnerable regions, in a vulnerable world", Ross Garnaut, professional research fellow in economics at the University of Melbourne, said.

Speaking of the impact of climate change, Garnaut cited the example of a 1-meter rise in sea levels, which would most affect the region since its cities are built so close to current sea levels, including Jakarta.

On this, the professor underlined the extreme vulnerability of the cities in the region.

"It would not take much to destabilize," he said during the conference marking the 33rd anniversary of The Jakarta Post, in which the pressing challenges faced by ASEAN, including climate change, were discussed.

Garnaut called for ASEAN countries to implement the Paris Agreement, which he commended as a "huge political achievement".

"There's a general goal and each country is free to develop its own program of progress towards that goal. There will be peer review opportunities to compare progress across countries and also to apply pressure on countries," Garnaut said.

The set of agreements, which came as a result of the Paris Climate Conference (COP21) in December last year, aims to limit warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

The use of environmentally friendly technologies would also be beneficial especially as the costs had gone down significantly in recent years to encourage the process of change, Garnaut added.

Also included in the Paris agreement is a net-zero emissions goal, which is aimed to be reached in the second half of the century.

In tackling this, Soogil Young, former chair of the presidential committee on green growth of the Republic of Korea, recommended that APEC participate in the pricing of carbons.

The countries in the region could also follow the nationally determined contributions (NDC) to achieve green growth at home, he added.

Indonesia, as one of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters, pledged an ambitious new target last year for reducing carbon emissions and slashing greenhouse gas output by 29 percent by 2030.

In the submission to the UN climate conference in Paris, the government set aside 12.7 million hectares of forest for conservation to help realize its target. The government also hoped to derive nearly a quarter of its vast energy needs from renewable sources within a decade.

Indonesia is among the world's biggest CO2 polluters because of severe deforestation and especially because of huge forest and peatland fires last year in some parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan. (rin)
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Linkedin Thejakartapost.com (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, April 26, 2016

Fans of Disney's recent release The Jungle Book, and Maleficent, will have something to look forward to as the studio has announced sequels for both films.

Jon Favreau reportedly will make a comeback as director for Jungle Book 2 while Angelina Jolie is set to reprise her role as Maleficent.

According to a report by AFP, Disney also confirmed a Mary Poppins sequel starring Emily Blunt and 101 Dalmatians spin-off, dubbed Cruella, with Emma Stone as member of the cast.

The live-action fairy tales, slated to be premiered between December next year and 2019, will also include a remake of Peter Pan, titled Tinker Bell, starring Reese Witherspoon, and Tim Burton's Dumbo.

The obviously very busy company also announced plans to release several live-action movies in 2018.
University students can win 3,000 and a paid internship in the heart of Europe with international start-up company Travelbird.

Scholarship Award and Work Experience in Amsterdam

Travelbird have announced that this year they will be offering students worldwide the opportunity to win a prize of 3,000 based on a creative project. Not only this, but the winning student will also have the chance to complete a 3 to 6 month internship at their HQ in the heart of Amsterdam.

This is the first year that the online travel agency have decided to hold a scholarship programme for students. So far, many students and universities across the world have been getting involved.

Inspire them with your Best Travel Experience

Their goal is to encourage the international passion for travelling and learning, which many students can definitely relate to. This opportunity is for those who are still in university, who have a creative side as well as a passion for travel.

Students are being asked to answer the question What has been your most inspiring travel experience?. Although this is a scholarship progamme, its no ordinary academic or sport based opportunity. Travelbird are encouraging students to get creative with their entries and to think outside of the box. Some of the submission examples that they have suggested are a GoPro video, Youtube clip, Vimeo project, blog, essay, graphic, infographic, drawings, pictures, photos or an audio clip. However, if students do choose to submit an essay piece it must be at least 1,000 words and they are looking for interesting and inspiring content.

An International Opportunity

Being an international company who operate in 12 different countries, Travelbird have decided to offer this opportunity to students from around the globe. However, in order to enter students must be 18 years old or over and enrolled in one of the participating universities. With 52 universities in the UK and Ireland already signed up, thousands of students nationwide are already eligible to enter. The official list of institutions that have signed up can be found on the Scholarship Programmes website.

And there is more good news for international students, as this programme is accepting entries in a wide range of languages. Entries in the following languages will be accepted, so students have a great advantage to create a project to the best of their ability: English, German, Dutch, French, Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Norwegian.

How to Get Involved

The deadline is fast approaching, so students are encouraged to start planning and creating their submissions as soon as possible. All entries must be emailed (along with proof of enrollment at their university) on or before May 31st, 2016 (23:59 CET). Entries will not be accepted after this time. For full details and to learn more about how to apply, please visit the website.
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Philip Morris denies tax dodge

BANGKOK: Tobacco giant Philip Morris yesterday (Apr 25) pleaded not guilty to dodging more than B20 billion in import taxes, a crime carrying a fine of up to B80 billion.

crime

By Bangkok Post

Tuesday 26 April 2016, 08:58AM

Alejandro Paschalides, managing director and Philip Morris (Thailand) branch manager, leaves the court after the company denied charges it dodged more than B20 billion in import taxes. Mr Paschalides was recently appointed the branch manger. Photo: Thanarak Khunton

The Office of the Attorney-General (OAG) charged Philip Morris (Thailand) Limited (PMTL), the Thai unit of the company, of evading taxes by under-declaring the value of cigarettes it imported from the Philippines between 2003 and 2006.

The value of the imported products and avoided tax was estimated at more than B20 billion.

The company and seven employees denied the charges and pleaded not guilty, according to a written statement read out by a judge at a pre-trial hearing at the Criminal Court yesterday.

If convicted, prosecutors say, the company could be fined up to four times of the sum of unpaid tax, while the employees face a maximum of 10 years in jail.

Four foreign executives have also been charged but have fled the country in a case that has dragged on for a decade.

The statute of limitations for the suspects who fled will expire between July 2018 and June 2021.

Troy Modlin, PMTLs former branch manager, said the allegations against the company were baseless and meant to ruin its reputation. He insisted on the companys innocence, saying he will fight the case.

PMTL insists its import valuations complied with World Trade Organisation agreements and were cleared by local customs officials.

In 2006, the Department of Special Investigation launched a probe when the Excise Department filed a complaint accusing the firm of under-declaring the value of Marlboro and L&M cigarettes imported into Thailand, resulting in huge tax losses.

In 2011, the attorney-general at the time recommended against charging the tobacco giant, but the prosecution restarted two years later.

Prosecutors yesterday asked the court to postpone the examination of documents and lists of witnesses due to the complicated nature of the paperwork. The eight defendants also requested that a hearing of plaintiff witnesses be held in their absence as they would be too busy to appear in court.

The defendants lawyer requested that examination of prosecution documents take no more than three months.

The court granted their requests and scheduled the first witness hearing for Oct 10.

Read original story here.
How to watch and what to know about South Dakota State at North Dakota
Ontario is on track to post one of the strongest export performances in Canada as higher U.S. demand and a lower dollar boost cross-border sales of autos and other goods, a report says.

The province is expected to see 7 per cent higher exports this year even as the national outlook fell on continuing weakness in Canadas energy industry, Export Development Canada said in its twice-yearly forecast.

Its coming up roses for Ontario at the moment. The national rate of growth might be down in the 2 per cent level. But Ontario can brag about being on top of the heap at 7 per cent, EDC chief economist Peter Hall said in a telephone interview.

EDC lowered it export growth forecast for Canada to 2 per cent this year. Thats down from a 7 per cent prediction last fall.

The crown corporation lowered its national outlook after the price of crude oil remained lower for longer. EDC now expects the North American benchmark for crude oil will average $40 (U.S.) a barrel this year. Thats down from its fall forecast for $56 (U.S.) a barrel for 2016.

As an export-oriented country, trade is an important ingredient in Canadas overall economic performance, more so now that consumers are carrying record high debt loads and could rein in their spending.

Weaker oil prices will continue to weigh on the energy-dependent provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, Alberta, and to a lesser extent Saskatchewan, the report notes. While the impact will not be as dramatic as in 2015, when oil and gas companies slashed future production and jobs, more cuts are planned, Hall noted.

The good news is we have a two-speed economy. We have industries that are growing at a double-digit pace. They are (more than offsetting the negatives). Thats why you have a positive on the bottom line, Hall said.

Ontario automotive exports, which account for 40 per cent of the provinces exports, are expected to rise 10 per cent this year, mainly on higher U.S. demand, the report noted.

Only tiny Prince Edward Island will match Ontarios growth rate on rising demand for aerospace parts and seafood.

At a separate event in New York, Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz warned the world may never again see the type of high-growth exports recorded in the 1990s and 2000s.

However, investors shouldnt fret about the recent slump since 2010, he also said.

The weakness in trade weve seen is not a warning of an impending recession, Poloz said in remarks prepared for a speech to Canadian and U.S. securities industry associations.

Poloz said hes confident most of the trade slump will be reversed as the global economy recovers, even if its at a slow pace.

Global trade could also benefit from future efficiencies in international supply chains, the signing of additional trade agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the creation of new companies, he said.

Its unlikely global trade will return to the heady 7 per cent average annual growth rate seen in the 1990s and 2000s, Poloz said, noting much of that was driven by new trade agreements that paved the way for the creation of global supply chains.

This process of integration simply could not continue at the same pace forever, Poloz said.

Trade collapsed in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, rebounded sharply in 2010, and then slowed again dramatically, he said.

Weak business investment in the advanced countries and slowing growth in China have both contributed to the recent slump in international trade, he said.

In Canada, exports are expected to rebound in 2017, rising 6 per cent on strengthening prices of crude oil and natural gas, EDC predicted in its report.

Ontario will continue to be a major driver of the gains, the Crown corporation said.

High income growth, high employment, rock-bottom gas prices and considerable pent-up demand caused by post-recession thrift are all combining south of the border to create the perfect recipe for demand, Hall said.

This is having a considerable impact on Ontarios exports, and we expect that demand to continue going forward, not just in the auto industry but most sectors of Ontarios economy.

EDC provides financing to help Canadian companies invest in international business opportunities.

With files from Star wire services

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Did you ever pay more than youd expected when a retailer failed to disclose important information?

Here are stories of customers who didnt get the facts they needed, and paid too much for purchases of appliances, clothing and concert tickets.

Rage against the Machine tickets

Andrew Paxton bought tickets for Florence and the Machine, with Monsters and Men, for a June 10 concert at the Molson Amphitheatre. It was a treat for his daughter, who loved both bands.

Two lawn seats cost $130 at the website he visited. When he clicked buy, he ended up at Online City Tickets, which added a service charge and download fee that boosted the price to $176.50.

Then I got my credit card statement showing a total of $245.46, and saw there was an exchange rate. Why is a Canadian, buying tickets for a concert in Canada, paying U.S. dollars?

Since Ticketmaster is the authorized seller for the concert, I asked spokeswoman Patti-Anne Tarlton to review Paxtons complaint.

After recreating his online search, she suspected he had been captured by a third-party, unofficial site.

We agree with Andrew that tickets sold to events in Canadian venues should be in Canadian dollars, she said, while noting that technically there is nothing illegal that these sites are doing, given recent changes in the resale law in Ontario.

Tarlton recommended that customers download the free Live Nation or Ticketmaster mobile app to get a verified ticket purchase experience.

A simmering issue

Suzie Wang bought a $1,250 Frigidaire induction cooktop for her newly renovated condo kitchen. But the burners worked only twice out of 50 times she tried to use them.

Canadian Appliance Source (the retailer) told her to contact Electrolux (the manufacturer), which sent a technician to her 15-year-old building. It turned out that the product was working properly, but her wiring was not adequate. Wangs condo has a voltage of 205. The minimum voltage needed for the Frigidaire induction cooktop is 208.

That small variance makes a difference, because the cooktop she chose heats pots and pans by magnetic induction (instead of thermal induction from a flame or electrical element). Very rapid increases in temperature can be expected.

While the electricity in Ms. Wangs condo is within code at 205 volts, her condos wiring does not reach the required 208 volts for the cooktop that she purchased, said Eloise Hale, a spokeswoman for the Swedish-based manufacturer.

Unfortunately, this means the cooktop should not have been installed. And though we did not install it, we are offering Ms. Wang a discount to purchase a different model or exchange it for one that meets the condos current wiring.

Wang plans to exchange it for an electric cooktop, but shell lose the extra amount she paid for magnetic induction. She wants to see prominent warnings that induction requires a higher voltage than electric cooktops.

Trouble at the border

Margaret Kipp bought a dress from Talbots, a womens wear store in Toronto, and signed up for a free loyalty card. She decided to order five items online for $394.28, plus a $25 shipping and handling fee.

I believed I was ordering from Talbots in Canada, she said. But then, I realized the products were being shipped from the United States. An email from FedEx tracking my order showed my delivery was pending because of a clearance delay.

When the first item was delivered, she had to pay $34.47 at the door  including $13.02 for customs duties, $10.15 in HST, a $10 fee to FedEx for clearing a shipment through customs and $1.30 HST on top of it.

Kipp plans to refuse delivery of the remaining items when they are delivered. It appears there is no Canadian website. My order was processed through an American site and I am paying in U.S. dollars, plus duties, fees and taxes, she said.

I tried placing my own online order to see what happened. The total was not expressed in Canadian or U.S. dollars on the website or in emails. Customs duty and fees were not shown, either.

When I called Talbots in Knoxville, Tenn., a customer representative said Canadians often complained about extra customs duty and fees. Some cited U.S. retailer LL Beans policy of including them in the price.

When I asked to cancel my order, placed 30 minutes earlier, she did so without objection.

Ellen Heisler, a spokeswoman for The Talbots Inc., based in Hingham, Mass., and listed on the New York Stock Exchange, promised to help Kipp with returning her products.

Our website is a U.S. website and all prices are in U.S. currency, she said. We have retail stores in Canada, but Canada is considered to be an international delivery for us.

Ellens advice

Always ask about electrical specifications when ordering a big-ticket appliance. And ask about the currency used for payment when dealing with a U.S.-owned retailer or online ticket seller.

Asking the right questions can save money and will eliminate the hassles of returning items later on.

Ellen Rosemans column appears each Tuesday in Smart Money. You can reach her at eroseman@thestar.ca or send a message at her website, www.ellenroseman.com

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Flashing wide smiles and toothy grins, Grade 3 students regaled Health Minister Eric Hoskins with tips about good dental hygiene at Lord Dufferin Public School in Torontos Regent Park neighbourhood Tuesday.

Floss is boss, said one student. Think before you drink, said another, referring to the dental perils of sugar-laden pop and other sweet beverages.

The visit was part of the provinces re-launch of Healthy Smiles Ontario, a free dental care program for children and youth under age 18 in low-income families.

The $100-million-a-year initiative is expected to offer free dental checkups, cleanings, fillings, X-rays and urgent oral health services for about 460,000 children.

First launched in 2010 as one of six separate programs, the new integrated service, introduced Jan. 1, will be easier for parents to understand and access, Hoskins told reporters.

Its a program that puts patients first, he said. Parents no longer have to spend time understanding which program their child needs, for which treatment ... a barrier that can often become confusing for families.

Children receiving services under the old programs will be enrolled automatically and will get a Healthy Smiles dental card in the mail to present to participating dentists and dental hygienists, he said.

Others can visit a new one-stop website at www.ontario.ca/healthysmiles to find out if their children are eligible and sign up. They can also enroll through their local public health office.

New income eligibility, first announced in December 2013, means 70,000 more children from low-income families will have access, he added.

According to the Healthy Smiles website, families with one child under age 18 and net incomes of up to $22,070 are eligible, with the income cap rising by $1,670 for each additional child.

To date, more than 323,000 children from low-income families are enrolled, but Hoskins hopes a new public awareness campaign will encourage more families to sign up.

Good oral health can have a positive impact not just on a childs health, but also on that childs self-esteem and their ability to learn, he said. Left untreated, it can affect a childs ability to eat, sleep and concentrate in school, impacting their growth and development.

Dentists were concerned about the confusion and inefficiency of six separate dental programs and are pleased the ministry has taken their advice to merge them, said Jerry Smith, past-president of the Ontario Dental Association.

Ontario dentists are a willing partner in this important and imperative work, the Thunder Bay dentist told reporters. However, there is more work that needs to be done.

Dentists receive an average of just 44 cents for every dollar of dental care they provide through publicly funded programs, Smith said in an interview, adding more funding is needed.

Dental health advocates welcomed the programs new simplicity.

But we need to do a lot more outreach to community organizations that are working with low-income families and to schools and doctors offices and child care centres to make sure this program is adequately promoted, said Jacquie Maund, of the Association of Ontario Health Centres.

Queens Park should also move faster on its 2014 promise to extend free dental care to low-income adults and seniors by 2025, Maund said.

Its a gaping hole in our health-care system, she said. People cant wait nine more years to get their teeth fixed.

Healthy Smiles by the Numbers

2010 Year Healthy Smiles was first announced, to serve 130,000 children and youth with no other dental coverage and whose parents earn less than $20,000.

2013 Year Healthy Smiles was expanded to cover up to 70,000 more low-income children and youth.

2016 Six publicly funded dental programs for low-income children were merged into a single program under the Healthy Smiles Ontario logo.

323,000 Low-income children and youth currently enrolled in the streamlined program

460,000 Low-income children and youth eligible

$100 million Annual cost

Source: Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care

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If all goes well the Constance Lake First Nation will lift its state of emergency this summer  six years after it was first declared.

In a Star investigation into how governments respond to states of emergency on First Nations reserves, this northern Ontario community is an extreme example of the time it can take to quell crises in indigenous communities.

The troubling wait for clean drinking water indicates help is slower to arrive when emergencies are declared on some reserves in the remote north than those in more populated areas, according to indigenous leaders.

I think it comes down to them being out of sight, out of mind, said Gilles Bisson, the MPP for Timmins-James Bay, whose riding includes the Constance Lake First Nation. Many of these communities  especially the hard-pressed ones  are in areas that most people will never get to in their lifetime.

When a blue-green algae bloom contaminated the lake for which the Constance Lake band is named, the 35-year-old water system failed, leading to an emergency declaration call on July 28, 2010.

The problem should not have been a surprise: the water plant was identified as high risk in a 2001 assessment by the Ontario Clean Water Agency, according to documents published in 2006 by the CBC.

The band received costly shipments of bottled water. The federal governments initial daily water ration of six-litres-per-person was later cut to 1.5-litres-per-person, according to a 2011 report by the Matawa Tribal Council.

The governments fix for the emergency involved the drilling of three wells to tap into uncontaminated groundwater. That was sufficient for Health Canada, but not for then-chief Roger Wesley.

In the spring of 2012, he wrote in a community newsletter that Health Canada testing showed that the water was free of bacteria and chemicals and, therefore, safe to drink.

A boil-water advisory was lifted in July 2012 even though the well water produced tea that was black in colour and left behind a stain on the pots and kettles.

I am still not satisfied with these conditions so I am still pushing INAC (Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada) for a new water treatment plant, Wesley wrote.

It took until July 2014  four years into the state of emergency  before the Ontario government asked companies to submit bids on a contract for the new water plant, according to public-tendering documents.

It wasnt until we started barking and barking and barking . . . , said Constance Lake First Nation Chief Rick Allen.

Even then, the band was forced to pay $1 million toward the $6-million water plant  money that would otherwise have gone to other pressing needs like education, housing and health. Allen is now seeking reimbursement from Ottawa.

The plan is for the state of emergency declaration to be lifted this summer, once the old water pipes are properly cleaned. But the lake remains polluted, closed to swimmers and fishing.

Compared to some First Nations that have declared emergencies because of health emergencies like suicide epidemics, the people of Constance Lake are lucky. They are still under a boil-water advisory, but their ordeal is almost over.

Reserves that are located near populated towns appear get more prompt responses when crisis hits their communities, native leaders said.

The Chippewas of Nawash First Nation, a community of about 700 people located north of Owen Sound, prides itself on staying on top of issues, especially those concerning infrastructure, said Chief Gregory Nadjiwon.

But the band was forced to declare a state of emergency in June 2014 when the UV generators at its aging water plant reached the end of their lifespan and replacements were no longer available. It priced out a new system and forwarded a plan to the federal government, which agreed to the funding application. One year later, in August 2015, the state of emergency was lifted.

We have the advantage of being relatively close to large urban centres, so our availability to travel and voice our concern is easier than when youre in the near north or the far north and have issues around transportation, said Nadjiwon. Its all those costs that are associated with getting the ear of the people you want to bring your concerns to.

Ontarios aboriginal affairs minister, David Zimmer, said in a statement that the province is committed to ensuring access to clean drinking water on reserves like Constance Lake First Nation, along with the federal government and First Nations, which have shared responsibility for water. He said the Ontario government is developing targets to track the progress of that effort.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada did not respond to a request for comment on this article.

When the Couchiching First Nation, near Fort Frances, Ont., called a state of emergency in June 2014 in response to flooding, the community of 700 people received minimal government support, instead relying on volunteer help, said the bands executive director, Joanne Bruyere.

Though the waters have receded, the band is running a deficit of about $1 million and has outstanding government claims for property damage and other repairs. Until the claims are resolved the state of emergency remains in place, Bruyere said.

She added that there is a lingering feeling that the threat posed to the reserve by the rising waters two years ago was taken more seriously because of the communitys proximity to Fort Frances, which also declared an emergency and is also refusing to lift it until its outstanding damage claims are resolved.

I dont think ours is a common experience given that were not isolated  were pretty close to a municipality, Bruyere said. Had it been one of the other communities in the area Im sure it would have been totally different for them.

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HALIFAXThey are images of dormitory drug use, drunken debauchery and naked selfies  captured by self-destructing photo apps such as Snapchat.

But social media images intended to be fleeting, and for a limited group of friends, are taking on a longer life and a much larger audience through unsanctioned accounts that collect posts from what look like students and reposts them to anyone who subscribes.

The accounts raise questions about child pornography, revenge porn and invasions of privacy, because people in the background of photos and videos featured in these rogue accounts may not have consented to the post being shown to a wider audience. These accounts have cropped up at 26 universities and colleges across the country, according to an analysis by The Canadian Press.

This is likely promoting all kinds of serious invasions of privacy, said Wayne MacKay, a law professor at Dalhousie University and a cyberbullying expert. Unless they themselves are submitting it, and thats probably not normally the case.

Heres how the accounts work:

Users send photos and videos to a Snapchat account that appears to chronicle life at a particular school. The account then re-posts the information for all its followers to see  without identifying the users who submitted images.

When using Snapchat, the peer-to-peer messages are automatically deleted after 10 seconds. But by using unauthorized third-party applications the images are re-uploaded to Snapchat and compiled into stories, or short vignettes that can be viewed by thousands of followers and have a 24-hour lifespan.

Each story cycles through crowd-sourced clips, such as study-break selfies, keg parties, bongs, public slut-shaming and young people in various stages of undress.

MacKay voiced concerns about whether all the naked subjects of these photos were of age and had consented to their distribution.

The law and policy has not kept pace with the development of technology and social media, said MacKay, who chaired Nova Scotias cyberbullying task force.

These accounts often feature risque content.

Look how big our mouths are, one photo reads in pink letters, punctuated by a winky face. Two girls smile wide for the camera, jaws agape.

Where are the (breasts)? a user asks, and a few clips later, there is an answer.

Snapchats community guidelines dictate that the app is not to be used for any illegal shenanigans including pornography, nudity involving minors, invasions of privacy, threats, harassment or impersonation.

Snapchat is about sharing moments and having fun, the companys community guidelines read. We will do our best to enforce (the rules) consistently and fairly, and ultimately well try to do what we think is best in each situation, at our discretion.

Snapchat has 100 million daily users with 8 billion videos viewed on the app per day.

A Snapchat spokesperson said Monday the company has taken action against accounts violating its terms of service agreement.

The spokesperson said Snapchat has a trust and safety team that reviews reports of abuse and responds to violations.

The company said it co-operates with investigations from law enforcement and details these requests in a bi-annual transparency report.

Proprietors of these accounts set up multiple usernames, presumably to elude detection.

This account WILL get banned, an account featuring clips from University of Toronto students warns, suggesting followers add another account as backup for when it does.

This whack-a-mole approach has given rise to Snapchat knock-off mobile apps that offer many of the same services as Snapchat, with even less oversight.

Mojo - College Stories, formerly known as Fleek, is an iPhone app that lets users upload photos and videos to campus-wide accounts, based on their location. Submissions are anonymous, and anyone who downloads the app can see them.

Your Unofficial Campus Story that WONT GET BANNED, the iTunes description reads. You have all the power, not Snapchat.

Unlike Snapchat, which is approved for children 12 and older, Mojo - College Stories recommends that its users be at least 17.

The apps terms of service prohibits unauthorized activities including submissions that incite illegal activity, exploit minors or violate the legal rights of others, but the app also states that it does not necessarily police posts

Neither Mojo - College Stories nor its developer, Squids Inc., could be reached for comment.

On Mojo - College Stories, The Canadian Press found channels for about 26 universities and colleges, with a following of more than 25,000 total users.

The app is most popular in Halifax with nearly 6,000 users, and Dalhousie University topped the list of schools with more than 3,000 online.

Universities in Winnipeg took second place, followed by Toronto.

Dalhousie spokesperson Brian Leadbetter said the university contacted Snapchat to request that the institutions name be removed from the dalhousie.snap account, but he says Snapchat declined to take action. The Canadian Press contacted the owner of dalhousie.snap but did not receive a response.

Leadbetter said the university has not received any complaints about the account.

MacKay said that despite Snapchats self-destructing-posts feature, everyone knows a screen capture can make it permanent -- and once something is on the Internet, it may never disappear.

It is always surprising and challenging how quickly technology changes to allow people to do things without detection and without consequences for them, but with a lot of consequences for the victims, MacKay said.

Nova Scotia is drafting legislation to replace its far reaching cyberbullying law inspired by the death of Rehtaeh Parsons. The original law was passed in May 2013, weeks after the 17-year-old was taken off life-support.

Parsons attempted suicide after a digital photo of what her family says was a sexual assault was circulated among students at her school.

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A cardiologist at the centre of a disciplinary hearing has been described alternately as a rushed doctor who harmed patients by cutting corners and as one who went beyond the call of duty to serve his community.

Contrasting pictures of Dr. Bill Hughes were painted by prosecution and defence lawyers Monday as they summed up their final arguments at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

Hughes has been charged with professional misconduct, incompetence and disgraceful, dishonourable or unprofessional conduct. The former president of the Ontario Association of Cardiologists founded the Kawartha Cardiology Clinic in Peterborough.

The college launched an investigation into his practice in 2012, following the death of a 35-year-old patient who suffered a lethal heart arrhythmia after Hughes misdiagnosed her, something he attributed to a charting error.

Expert witness Dr. Dave Massel, a cardiologist from Victoria, was asked by the college to review 24 of Hughes patient charts. Massel found that patients had been harmed in nine cases.

In some cases, conditions were not picked up when they should have been because Hughes did not do physical examinations, Massel said. Instead, he devoted his practice to conducting diagnostic tests on an excessive number of patients, even in many cases where patients were asymptomatic.

If there was any expert cardiologist who thought that cardiologists could see 80 patents a day and do so competently, you can bet we would have heard from them, and we didnt, prosecutor Louis Sokolov told a four-member panel, adding that Hughes sees four times as many patients as the average cardiologist.

Hughes cuts corners to see so many patients and doesnt give them the time they need, Sokolov said, charging that Hughes has fallen below the standard of care expected of a cardiologist.

Hughes lawyer, Anne Spafford, said there is no doubt her client sees many patients, but frankly there is no rule about how many patients you can see in a day as long as you provide reasonable and competent care.

She said Hughes works long hours, often into the evening and on weekends. As well, he has a large staff who help him.

Sokolov called Hughes a serial, routine diagnostic tester and said the excessive tests exposed patients to unnecessary discomfort, possible false positives and radiation.

Spafford said that the frequency of testing was in keeping with Ontario guidelines accepted by the health ministry. She said Massels rigid adherence to U.S. guidelines, which call for less testing, is very troubling.

Sokolov suggested that Hughes is motivated by money, noting the cardiologist and his wife have ownership stakes in the testing equipment. Under a controversial practice known as self referral, OHIP gets billed for every patient referred for a test by Hughes and his colleagues.

Self referral  has the subtle and pernicious effect that conflict of interest can have over clinical judgment, Sokolov said, adding that more tests mean more revenue.

But Spafford said she couldnt disagree more on that point. Hughes doesnt have a lot of choice on where to get cardiac testing done, since there are not many alternatives in the Peterborough area.

Dr. Hughes stated during the course of his evidence, unequivocally, that he is not motivated by money and his evidence was not challenged, Spafford said, adding that he has not been profiting from the testing equipment in recent years.

Early on in his investigation, Massel told a college representative that Hughes practice was outrageous and that he should be in jail.

While the language is colourful, its an understandable conclusion to come to, Sokolov said.

But Spafford said the language shows that Massel did not approach his task with an open mind.

His evidence should be rejected because he is biased, Spafford said of the prosecutions sole witness.

She argued that Massel, who comes from an academic practice, didnt have a good grasp of the needs in a community practice like the one Hughes works in.

Hughes is no ordinary doctor, Spafford said, calling him the epitome of dedication to his patients and community.

Hughes brought much-needed cardiology services to the Peterborough area, which is deemed underserviced by the province, she said. He travelled to malls and community fairs in a trailer where he took peoples blood pressure and educated them on heart health, at his own expense.

He also unburdened the Peterborough Regional Health Centre by caring for patients who would otherwise clog the hospitals ER and occupy beds needed by other patients, Spafford said.

Four patients who testified in Hughes defence noted that they never felt rushed, Spafford pointed out.

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After leaving Quebec two days too early, a Canadian mother has found herself stuck in a bureaucratic no-mans land with thousands of dollars worth of maternity benefits on the line.

Genevieve Skelton received notice from Quebec late last month that her maternity benefits were cancelled due to misrepresentation. She was instructed to repay an amount of $41,466.

Skelton admits she made a mistake by leaving Quebec a couple of days prior to her first benefit payment in October 2014 but insists the misstep wasnt done with malice. Quebec maintains its own maternity benefit program separate from the federal government, which oversees the other provinces.

Falsely thinking she could remedy the situation, Skelton filed a backdated claim for federal maternity benefits with a plan to direct the funds to Quebec as a method of paying the province back, she told the Star. She also offered to personally cover the remaining balance resulting from the two programs differing payouts  a whopping $13,000  to further make the logistical nightmare go away.

Skelton said federal employees told her she was no longer eligible for federal maternity benefits either. The reason? She already received benefits from Quebec.

Every working woman who has a child in Canada deserves these benefits and why am I any different for leaving Quebec two days early? And to not get anything? Its insane, she said. Yes, I left Quebec two days early as an 8 1/2-month-pregnant, scared woman and now I owe them over $41,000.

My intention was to return to Quebec but once my son was born, my recovery was more difficult than expected, my partner and I got married . . . life changed.

According to Quebecs rules, a maternity benefits recipient must be a resident of Quebec at the beginning of the benefits period.

In Skeltons case, she received her first payment on Oct. 5, 2014 but left the province by car two days earlier. The then 31-year-old had left Montreal to be closer to her partner in Saskatoon for her sons birth. I was nervous and alone and just wanted to be close to the father of my child, she said.

By that time, she had lived and filed taxes in Quebec for roughly 18 months while working as a television producer.

Late Monday a spokesperson for Families, Children and Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said the minister was made aware of the situation on Friday and asked department officials to re-examine the facts related to Skeltons case.

Meanwhile, the provincial department that oversees maternity benefits confirmed investigators found Skelton was not a resident on the day of her first benefit payment, Oct. 5, 2014.

Spokesperson Antoine Lavoie pointed to inconsistencies related to Skeltons address change from Montreal to Saskatoon in March 2015 tipped investigators off, and her benefits were terminated in September 2015.

Lavoie said Skelton has 90 days to apply for an appeal of the decision.

Skelton has hired a lawyer to pursue the appeal but believes her case should have never escalated to this point.

Nora Spinks, CEO of Vanier Institute of the Family, said Skeltons experience illustrates an unfortunate side-effect of government policies designed with an outdated family model in mind.

Right now the assumption is you are going to live in the same place and be together all the time, she said. In reality that is not the case.

Spinks explained more families are living apart together than ever before. This emerging class of distanced relationships occurs when couples live in different places due to factors such as work.

As a result, she argued there should be some grey around the fringes of government policies to accommodate modern families. She expects data collected from this years long-form census will build a better case for more flexibility going forward.

According to Spinks, if the two provinces Skelton was travelling to and from didnt include Quebec, there wouldnt have been an issue.

Quebec introduced its own maternity benefits plan called the Quebec Parental Insurance Program (QPIP) in 2006. Considered more generous than maternity leaves in the rest of Canada, Spinks said firm lines were drawn to prevent recipients from double-dipping across both Quebec and federal governments.

Spinks acknowledged Skeltons situation falls outside those lines, leaving the mother in a horrible spot.

I think whats sad about this is that the family was trying to do everything right and the reality is maternity parental benefits are very complicated, she said. When youre expecting a baby, all you know is that you get a year off. The details? You dont have a clue. But it is important to know the details.

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KANANASKIS, ALTA.Justin Trudeau is taking an uncompromising stance against terrorist kidnappers, vowing that Canada will never pay ransom for the release of hostages.

Moreover, hes promising to press other countries to adopt the same unyielding approach.

The prime minister took the hard line Tuesday as he wrapped up a three-day cabinet retreat that was overshadowed by the death of Canadian John Ridsdel, who was beheaded Monday by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines after seven months of captivity.

Amid speculation about whether the government might pay ransom to release two others still being held captive  Canadian citizen Robert Hall and Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad, whom a government official confirmed is a permanent resident of Canada  Trudeau said he wanted to make one thing perfectly, crystal clear.

Canada does not and will not pay ransom to terrorists, directly or indirectly, he told a news conference at the conclusion of the retreat in this luxury mountain resort.

Paying ransom is a significant source of funds for terrorist organizations that then allow them to continue to perpetrate deadly acts of violence against innocents around the world, Trudeau said.

But more importantly, he said it would encourage terrorists to kidnap more Canadians.

Paying ransom for Canadians would endanger the lives of every single one of the millions of Canadians who live work and travel around the world every single year.

Ridsdel, 68, of Calgary, was one of four tourists  including Hall, Sekkingstad and a Filipino woman  who were kidnapped last Sept. 21 by Abu Sayyaf militants from a marina on southern Samal Island.

Asked whether and to what extent the Canadian government was involved in high-level negotiations to effect Ridsdels release, Trudeau said hed seen a number of those media reports, which he then dismissed as wrong and false.

Some of Canadas allies, notably France and Italy, have been willing to pay ransom for release of their citizens. Trudeau said he spoke Tuesday with British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose country adheres to the same no-ransom policy as Canada, and they agreed to press others to do the same.

We need to make sure that terrorists understand that they cannot continue to fund their crimes and their violence from taking innocents hostage, Trudeau said.

Abu Sayyaf  the name means bearer of the sword in Arabic  sprang up in the early 1990s as an offshoot of another, larger Islamic insurgent group. The federal government considers Abu Sayyaf to be a terrorist organization with links to Al Qaeda.

Trudeau reiterated that Canada will work with the Philippines and other allies to bring these terrorist criminals to justice.

The issue of whether governments acquiesce to the demands of terror groups has long been murky, and is likely to remain an open question regardless of what Trudeau and his fellow leaders decide.

An Al Qaeda letter obtained by The Associated Press three years ago suggests about $1 million was paid for the release of Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler in Niger in 2009. It was unclear who paid the ransom.

A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable from February 2010 lent credence to the notion Canada makes payments, quoting Washingtons then-ambassador to Mali as saying it is difficult to level criticism on countries like Mali and Burkina Faso for facilitating negotiations when the countries that pay ransom, like Austria and Canada, are given a pass.

The issue dominated the wrap-up of the retreat, which Trudeau said focused on global economic forces and taking stock of the governments progress after six months in power.

He called the retreat an important exercise in getting out of the Ottawa bubble and familiarizing ministers with the economic challenges facing Alberta, which is reeling from the collapse in oil prices.

But Trudeau had nothing new to offer the hard-hit province by way of federal assistance.

He gave no hint as to whether his government would relax restrictions on state-owned companies investing in the oilpatch. And he seemed to douse speculation that hed reconsider the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to carry oilsands crude to tidewater, if the route was changed to avoid the ecologically sensitive northern British Columbia coast.

Im not going to speculate on hypothetical routes, Trudeau said.

I will say that the Great Bear rainforest is no place for a pipeline, for a crude pipeline.

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NEVERS, FRANCEA French court has found a man dubbed the horror dentist guilty of assault and fraud and sentenced him to eight years in prison.

Dutch dentist Jacobus Van Nierop had fled to Canada in late 2013. He was arrested in New Brunswick in 2014 and then ordered extradited.

Van Nierop, 51, showed no signs of emotion when the court in the central town of Nevers returned its verdict.

The court barred him from practising dentistry for life.

About 100 plaintiffs had filed complaints against Van Nierop, ranging from having multiple healthy teeth removed, drill bits left in their gums and teeth, abscesses, recurrent infections and misshapen mouths after he did work on patients.

Van Nierop, who French media dubbed the horror dentist, was accused of causing mutilations or permanent disabilities to scores of patients from 2009 to 2012, of overcharging patients and billing them for imaginary procedures and of illegally practicing dentistry in France.

In their 130-page ruling, the judges convicted the Dutchman of 85 counts of assault, including 45 counts of mutilation, and of 61 counts of fraud against patients, their health insurance companies and the local social security agency. They fined him 10,500 euros ($12,000) and said they will decide the amount of damages due to 62 plaintiffs in June.

The court acquitted the defendant of six counts of assault and some counts of fraud. Van Nierop has 10 days to file an appeal. He has been detained in a French prison since January 2015.

Van Nierop came to Canada in December 2013 and remained beyond the time he was permitted. He entered the country despite being under conditions not to leave France.

A statement of facts in his Canadian extradition case said the RCMP went looking for Van Nierop after receiving a complaint and determining he was the subject of an Interpol notice.

He was located on Labour Day 2014 in an apartment in Nackawic, west of Fredericton.

He was later ordered extradited to the Netherlands and then deported to France.

Marie-Jo Lemoine, a victim of Van Nierop, celebrated the verdict of the French court.

Its silly to say that but I say it: It feels good. He will have time to think about us. But, as for the rest, nothing has changed regarding what well be given in terms of compensation. It wont be enough to repair the harm he caused. 

In her closing speech last month, prosecutor Lucile Jaillon-Bru said that in Van Nierop there was only greed, indifference to another, even some enjoyment in making others suffer and that for the victims the price of pain is enormous. The dentists goal was to always make more money, she said.

Delphine Morin-Meneghel, the lawyer for Van Nierop, acknowledged her client was responsible for some bad procedures but she insisted he committed no intentional or premeditated violence toward any of his patients.

One patient, Sylviane Boulesteix, 65, testified she was unexpectedly summoned to the Dutchmans dental office in May 2012. Without warning, the dentist pulled eight of her teeth out and immediately fixed dentures on her raw gums. For hours, the woman said she sat gushing blood.

In the following days, she said Van Nierop refused to relieve her pain. A judicial expert described the dentist as a cruel and perverse man whose incompetence made Boulesteix lose several healthy teeth, go through a trauma and suffer irreversible damage to her mouth.

When the dentist opened his office in late 2008, he was first welcomed by residents in Chateau-Chinon, a small town located in a rural and remote part of Frances Burgundy region known as a medical desert because of a lack of medical professionals.

Van Nierop provided false documents to practise dentistry in France and concealed that he was the subject of disciplinary proceedings in his own country.

While living in an imposing home with a swimming pool, driving expensive cars and visiting luxurious hotels, the Dutchman had debts of nearly one million euros, according to court documents. He may be insolvent, which worries the plaintiffs who had claimed more than three million euros overall in damages.

Psychiatric experts said Van Nierop shows a narcissistic pervert personality with an absence of all moral sense and that he doesnt feel any compassion.

During the trial, the lawyer for one patient told the dentist his client was just waiting for apologies.

Van Nierop replied: I have no feelings anymore. So, if I was offering my apologies today, I would be lying.

With files from The Canadian Press

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OTTAWAStephen Harpers lawyer says Sen. Mike Duffys acquittal should be a wake-up call to public institutions and authorities that can hold politicians to live up to their duty and punish actions that are questionable, even if theyre not criminal.

But both the auditor general and the Senate say theres nothing more for them to do in Duffys case.

The office of federal auditor general Michael Ferguson says it wont audit Duffys spending or other senators expenses unless the Senate makes a specific request.

As for the Senate, it has already punished Duffy. He faced an audit, his expenses were repaid and then he was suspended without pay for two years, forfeiting more than $250,000.

In a statement, Conservative Sen. Leo Housakos and Liberal Sen. Jane Cordy, the chair and vice-chair of the Senate committee that oversees spending, said Duffy, senators Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau were audited by Deloitte and were dealt with accordingly, including reimbursement of funds and suspension.

In an op-ed written for Postmedia newspapers, Harpers lawyer Robert Staley wrote that Harper stood to account for the ethical behaviour in his office and government, adding it is hard to imagine how this responsibility could have been borne more acutely.

He argued that other authorities that can hold individuals to account must live up to their duty and define the consequence of behaviour that falls short of criminal.

Staley wrote that the former prime minister played no role in the decision by the RCMP and Crown attorneys to charge and prosecute Duffy.

He said its impossible to believe Harpers interests were well-served by a raft of criminal charges that culminated in a politically charged, high-profile trial during an election year.

The trial peeled away the veil of secrecy around the Prime Ministers Office and revealed how much power and influence the officials of Harpers PMO wielded in the halls of Parliament.

Hundreds of emails presented as evidence detailed how much energy the PMO invested in dealing with Duffys politically problematic expense claims.

Justice Charles Vaillancourt said the PMO forced the Prince Edward Island senator to go along with their repayment scheme, even though Duffy maintained he had done nothing wrong.

Staley said Harper never asserted that Duffy had been engaged in criminal wrongdoing  only that his spending habits were politically unacceptable.

It was, and is, my clients view that public office demands a higher standard than conduct that falls short of criminality, Staley wrote.

The public has a reasonable expectation and indeed a right, to the responsible stewardship of its purse by public institutions and actors.

Justice Vaillancourt last week acquitted Duffy of all 31 fraud, breach of trust and bribery charges, saying the Crown failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Vaillancourt said Duffys actions werent criminal, even if they raised eyebrows, including a consulting contract provided to Duffys one-time personal trainer.

After the acquittal, the Senate restored Duffy to full standing, giving him access to all the resources of his office.

Staley said he didnt expect the Crown to win a conviction on the bribery charge, which stemmed from a controversial $90,000 payment on Duffys behalf from Harpers former chief of staff Nigel Wright. Staley wrote that his private views on the matter were shared only with my client.

In an email to The Canadian Press, Staley declined to comment further, saying he wanted the op-ed to stand as his only comments.

The Conservatives fell to official Opposition status in the October election after almost a decade in power, with Harper stepping down as leader but not as an MP.

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PORTLAND, ORE.When Barbara Robertss husband first told her he planned to introduce a bill in the Oregon legislature for medical aid in dying, she tried to talk him out of it.

It was 1989, and Frank Roberts had endured treatment for prostate cancer that had permanently damaged his spine and left him in a wheelchair. The state senator explained the bill wasnt for him, but for terminally ill patients who deserved the right to choose when to die.

Barbara Roberts warned her husband the bill was too controversial, but he persisted, introducing it unsuccessfully three times before his death in 1993. By then, she was governor and threw her support behind a citizens initiative that placed the legislation on the Oregon ballot in 1994.

Once it passed on the ballot, I felt a huge sense of the legacy that Frank had left, she said in a recent interview in her Portland home. It really was a legacy  not just a legacy for Oregon but a legacy for the nation.

With residents voting 51 per cent in favour, Oregon became the first U.S. state to legalize medical aid in dying in 1994. The bill languished amid court challenges until 1997 when legislators asked residents to vote on a measure to repeal the law. That time, 60 per cent voted to keep the act.

Now nearly 20 years later, aid in dying is an accepted, if quietly used, option in Oregon. While the number of people who use the law remains low, advocates say it enjoys wide public support, rare complications and no documented instances of abuse. A small but vocal minority continues to fight the law, arguing its eroded the publics trust in doctors.

Under Oregons Death with Dignity Act, terminally-ill adult residents can request prescriptions for lethal doses of medication. The patient must be diagnosed by two doctors with an illness that will lead to death within six months and must be able to self-administer and ingest the pills.

The patient must make two oral requests 15 days apart and a written request. If a doctor suspects the patients judgment is impaired, such as by mental illness or depression, they must refer the individual for a psychiatric assessment.

Once the patient obtains the prescription, its illegal for anyone else to administer. This stands in contrast with Canadas Bill 16, which would allow doctors to give lethal substances.

In the United States, we feel the best way to help the most people is to push for this option, explained Dr. Peter Reagan, a retired family doctor and spokesman for advocacy organization Compassion and Choices.

That does not just mean that we think its less feasible politically to push for an active-euthanasia-type situation. Thats part of it. And the other part of it is that its a whole lot easier for doctors to write a prescription than it is for them to (administer) the medication.

This requirement inevitably means some people cant access the law  those in the late stages of ALS who cannot swallow, for example. Cancer patients outnumber ALS patients who use the law in Oregon by nearly 10 to one, but ALS patients are still the second-most common users.

The push now in the United States is not to expand the kind of aid in dying offered by doctors in Oregon, but to bring access to other states. Washington and Vermont have adopted similar legislation and Californias new law is set to come into effect June 9.

Some in Canada have complained the legislation introduced by the Liberals requiring a foreseeable death means that people with chronic illnesses, such as multiple sclerosis, would be left out. But Oregons law is even more restrictive, requiring the patient to have less than six months to live.

I really applaud the guts that your country is showing, said Reagan. I think this is territory that needs to be explored, but I think it needs to be explored carefully.

Since the law was passed, 1,545 people have had prescriptions written under the Death With Dignity Act and 991 people have died. The figures are very low when considering the total number of deaths in the state  35,598 in 2015 alone.

Much has been made of the fact that one-third of people who obtain prescriptions dont use them. Critics point to the statistic as proof that patients are changing their minds, while supporters say that, sadly, some are dying or becoming incapacitated before theyre able to take the pills.

Another explanation is that some patients are not seeking death, but control.

Just getting that piece of paper or the bottle of medication makes people feel more in control and its a relief for them, said Dr. David Grube, a retired physician and spokesman for Compassion and Choices.

Oregons medical board has never disciplined a doctor for misuse and advocates often say there have been no documented cases of coercion or abuse. Opponents, however, say the process is shrouded in secrecy and there are many holes in the system that allow for misconduct.

Dr. William Toffler, national director of Physicians for Compassionate Care, a group that formed to oppose aid in dying, said doctors cannot always accurately predict how long a patient has to live.

We have no crystal ball-reading courses in medical school, he said.

The medication used in the state is usually Seconal or secobarbital, a barbiturate that was originally conceived as a sleeping pill. Patients who take 10 grams of Seconal  10 times the dose for sleeping  are expected to fall asleep within minutes and die within hours.

They came up with this Hollywood notion that if you just take a pill and slip off gently into the night, no big deal, which of course is specious, said Toffler.

There have been six recorded instances of people regaining consciousness after taking the medication and 24 instances of vomiting, although due to a change in the reporting process in 2010 nearly half the assisted deaths in the state have not required the reporting of complications at all.

Grube said vomiting is uncommon and typically happens when the patient has a type of cancer that makes it difficult for them to absorb food. Though a doctor is not required to attend, Grube said he has witnessed some deaths under the law and all were gentle and merciful.

The person took the medicine, fell asleep and were with their loved ones, in their bed, listening to music, he said. Its a very peaceful, kind dying.

Critics, including Toffler, argue the law has corrupted the medical profession. Patients fear death doctors who push assisted death, while doctors have lost touch with their roles as healers and seekers of medical advances, he said.

Former Oregon Hospice Association director Ann Jackson said the state had high-quality hospice care prior to the law and continues to rank highly among U.S. states. Ninety per cent of people who use aid in dying are enrolled in hospice and only 25 per cent report inadequate pain control.

Reagan said the law has led to tremendous advances in communication, enabling patients to talk openly with family and doctors about all end-of-life options, including hospice.

It made people more able to talk about what they were really feeling. To say that patients who are dying arent thinking about (assisted death) is a misunderstanding, he said. Having their friends in on it, their family in on it, their providers in on it, really helps.

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OTTAWAPrime Minister Justin Trudeaus Liberals have been put on the spot by an e-petition, spearheaded by a former New Democrat MP, which demands the federal government call an inquiry into unresolved questions surrounding the treatment of prisoners during the Afghan war.

Craig Scott, who represented the riding of Toronto-Danforth until the Oct. 19 election, has gathered 750 names for the digital solicitation  well over the threshold of 500 individuals that compels a reply.

The Liberals have until May 30 to respond in writing, and unlike the old paper petitions tabled in the House of Commons, the federal government is obliged to post its answer online.

The system of e-petitions is new and came into effect only last December.

Scott, in an interview with The Canadian Press, said he expects Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion, who battled the former Conservative government for answers on the issue while in opposition, to take seriously the call for an inquiry.

I believe a commission of inquiry is absolutely needed, he said. We have fragmented and poor knowledge about everything that transpired around the question of Afghan detainees. Despite multiple episodes and processes we are no further ahead in knowing the extent of what went on.

In addition, Scott said he believes hes uncovered new evidence that suggests the Canadian Armed Forces followed the lead of the U.S. by using a system called Person Under Control (PUC). It is a little known sub-category of prisoners, criticized in 2005 by groups such as Human Rights Watch, whereby detainees perceived to have a higher intelligence value were kept off-books and sometimes interrogated by Other Government Agencies.

There are references to PUCs in a Canadian military board of inquiry report and a recent book published by a retired colonel and self-style historian, said Scott.

He described it as a parallel system separate from the one that caused the Conservative government so much trouble during the war.

At that time, it was alleged that suspected Taliban prisoners, captured by Canadian troops during the routine course of operations, were handed over to possible torture by Afghan intelligence and law enforcement. Each of those detainees was duly registered and notice of their existence provided to the International Red Cross.

The notion that there might have been a separate category of unregistered detainees adds a new, potentially troubling, wrinkle to the long-dormant controversy that has consumed a lot of political oxygen.

At the onset of the Kandahar combat mission, Paul Martins Liberal government signed an agreement with Kabul that required prisoners to be transferred into Afghan custody, but unlike Britain and the Netherlands, Canada had no right to check on their condition afterwards.

Any state that knowingly hands over a prisoner to torture is guilty of a war crime under international law.

Stephen Harpers government grudgingly moved to fix the flaw after published reports revealed abuse might have taken place, but it also installed a rigorous system of monitoring that lasted well after the combat mission ended in 2011.

Concurrently, the Conservatives fought multiple legal battles with Amnesty International Canada and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which tried to have the system of transfers halted.

It also faced a public hearing into the conduct of military police, who were in charge of the transfer system. The refusal by Harpers government to hand over related documentation almost cost the Conservatives power in 2009 when the Liberals were prepared to move a motion of contempt.

The Liberals have staked their reputation on openness and transparency, and were prepared to bring down a government over this particular question of principle, Scott said.

If they are not prepared to act, he said, some in the legal community are willing to petition the International Criminal Court at the Hague to investigate.

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OTTAWAThe Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ordered the federal government to immediately enact a policy that would provide services to First Nations children to ensure their health and welfare doesnt get caught up in red tape.

In its decision, the tribunal also called on the federal Department of Indigenous Affairs to report back within two weeks to confirm the policy  based on an established doctrine known as Jordans Principle  has been implemented.

There is already a workable definition of Jordans Principle that has been adopted by the House of Commons, the panel said Tuesday, referring to a 2007 NDP motion that unanimously passed in the Commons.

While review of this definition and the federal governments framework for implementing it may benefit from further long-term review, the panel sees no reason why the current definition cannot be implemented now.

It is the season for change and the time is now, the tribunal said.

Jordans Principle is named after Jordan River Anderson, a five-year-old boy with complex needs who died in hospital in 2005 after a protracted two-year battle between the federal and Manitoba governments over his home-care costs.

Tuesdays decision helps to ease the disappointment of the recent federal budget, said Cindy Blackstock, the executive director of the First Nations Family and Caring Society, whose nine-year dispute with Ottawa over child welfare services culminated in a landmark tribunal ruling in January.

The panel acknowledges the suffering of those First Nations children and families who are or have been denied an equitable opportunity to remain together or to be reunited in a timely manner, the ruling said.

Following the decision, Blackstock said she was deeply disappointed in a federal budget that earmarked only $71 million for child welfare in the first year  a fraction of what she said was needed to restore fairness.

(The tribunals) order that the federal government immediately implement Jordans Principle across all children and across all government services and report back to the tribunal within two weeks is especially encouraging, Blackstock said.

That will immediately impact, for the better, the lives of literally hundreds and thousands of kids.

The decision means the government will have to spend more money in order to provide a level of services to First Nations children comparable to those offered by the provincial system, she added.

My hope has always been that the federal government will move to do the right thing completely for these children while theyre still little kids, she said. Then we dont have to have future court orders.

New Democrat MP and indigenous affairs critic Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay) also praised the tribunals findings, and noted it as a humiliating moment for a new government that has boasted about change, particularly when it comes to First Nations.

Obviously, the tribunal doesnt believe this government can be trusted on this issue and nowhere do you see that more than on the issue of Jordans Principle, he said.

It is, I think, a real indictment of an attitude that the lives of these children can be put on hold until it is convenient for government.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett did not immediately respond to the tribunals findings Tuesday.

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Toronto Mayor John Tory will not call Ubers chief executive a dick, as Calgarys mayor did on video, even though he doesnt like the way the ride-hailing service barged into the market.

I would never use those words, Tory said Monday to a reporter who asked if he shared the views of Calgarys Naheed Nenshi, who has since apologized for his off-colour description of Travis Kalanick.

Calgarys mayor also said of Uber staff, in remarks livestreamed by a Boston cabbie during Nenshis recent trip there: They are honestly the worst people in the world. I have never dealt with people like this before.

Tory, a former Rogers chief executive, said: I have expressed some regret about the fact that (Uber) entered the marketplace in a way that is not the best.

If the California-based company had worked with the city, rather than just setting up shop connecting private vehicle owners to passengers, changes would still be happening, minus a lot of the very difficult and acrimonious chapters, Tory said.

But its history, and Mayor Nenshi has his way of articulating his concerns about that and I have mine, Tory said, adding the citys job with Uber now is to accommodate their continued presence here in a regulated framework that ensures public safety while treating the taxi industry fairly.

Its unclear, though, if a majority of Toronto councillors agree with Torys diplomatic approach or assessment.

The mayors office is intensely lobbying them to next week approve city staff-proposed regulations that would legalize ride-hailing services with a set of rules, and rights, different than those for taxis.

Several councillors have told the Star that Tory aides are signalling a willingness to make multiple changes but do not, a week before the debate, appear to have a convincing majority pledging to vote for the new rules.

Calgarys council, meanwhile, referred Nenshis comments to that citys integrity commissioner for review.

That was me being a bit of a jerk and I am sorry for that, Nenshi told reporters. I never swear and that's probably the rudest word I've ever said ... It wasn't nice and it wasn't civil.

With files from The Canadian Press

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The family of two people found dead last week in a Richmond Hill home has spoken out about their loss.

In a written statement, Sam Costa said his wife, Karen, and son Jeffrey had a strong and undeniable bond, and belonged to a loving family.

This unspeakable tragedy that occurred in our family home last week was the result of a loving and protective mother trying to save her son from harming himself, Costa wrote.

Karen and Jeffrey Costa were found dead in their home on Dunvegan Dr. on Thursday, in an apparent murder-suicide.

In his statement, released via the York Regional Police, Sam Costa acknowledged that his son had been struggling with mental health issues, adding that, We, as a family, never wavered in our unconditional support for Jeffrey.

York police have not released the cause of death for either of the Costas.

Jeffrey, 22, was an upper-year student at Western University in London, Ont., and worked as a soph, a student mentor and leader, at the schools Medway-Sydenham Hall residence.

Jeffrey is the third student connected with Medway-Sydenham Hall to die suddenly this academic year.

On Oct. 11, 2015, Western student and Medway-Sydenham resident Andrea Christidis, 18, died after being hit by an impaired driver on the universitys campus.

Then, on Nov. 15, Western student and former Medway-Sydenham mentor Daniel Craig Sandre, 21, died at his home in London, Ont., in what university officials and family members have called a suicide.

Two days later, Jeff Costa posted a photo of Sandre and others on Facebook, writing in the caption that it was taken a few days after the first time Craig Sandre ever opened up to me and shared a huge piece of his life with me. Ive grown so much from knowing Craig and I wont ever forget the countless ways he helped me.

Susan Grindrod, Westerns associate vice-president of Housing & Ancillary Services, said it had been a pretty sad year for many members of the schools community.

Unfortunately, these things happen and we have to work through them, she said. But its certainly, for our [students], difficult to deal with death, as it is for any of us.

Since Jeffreys death, Western has made support services available to students, including grief counselling and quick referrals to the schools psychological and health services if students feel they need more help.

And we bring in therapy dogs, we have food and just a place where people can come together and talk to each other and be amongst friends, said Grindrod.

Weve  gone through so much this year, Samuel Ghitis, a residence advisor at Medway-Sydenham, said in reference to Christidis death in particular.

Ghitis said students are trying to focus on exams, which began last week. As hard as it can be, everyones just trying to deal with it in their own way, he added.

The VP added that Western always has services available to students who may be having mental health issues. Psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers are all accessible through various offices on campus, and there are peer counselors and off-campus resources as well, Grindrod said.

Karen Costa, 52, worked as a nurse at the Hospital for Sick Children from 1985 to 2015.

Comments on her Facebook page indicated she had retired.

In an email to the Star, Richmond Hill Curling Club president Michael Tambosso said Karen had been a club member for several years, and was both a player and a member of league committees.

She had good humour and was well liked and loved by our members, Tambosso said. We will all miss her.

With files from Evelyn Kwong

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Peel Police have identified the man killed in Saturdays fatal shooting at a townhouse complex at in Mississauga as 29-year-old Mustafa Omar, from Toronto.

Around 5:30 a.m., officers found Omar suffering from obvious signs of trauma at a residence at 7475 Goreway Dr. He was pronounced dead after being rushed to hospital.

Three other men were transported to hospital in non-life-threatening condition. One man has since been released.

Omar was known to police, Const. Bally Saini told the Star.

Const. Rachel Gibbs said officers have received multiple calls from this address in the past. The various incidents are unclear, but there seems to have been illegal after-hour activity in the residence, Gibbs said.

Gibbs also told reporters on scene that investigators are also looking to see if the incident was gang-related.

Omar is Peel Regions fifth homicide of 2016.

With files from Fahika Baig.

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A Toronto familys vacation plans were temporarily grounded last week when they clashed with Cathay Pacific Airways over a special seat used by a child who has a disability.

Kara Sharp said her family faced disability discrimination twice after the Hong Kong-based airline barred her from using a specially designed seat for her 7-year-old son, Sebastian, who has cerebral palsy.

Sharp, along with her husband and two other children, had been planning to depart from Torontos Pearson Airport for Melbourne, Australia, on Wednesday afternoon, when they were turned away from the gate.

We were going to see his grandparents, she said last Thursday. Sebastian is upset, stressed  he doesnt want to do anything but go on the plane.

The family has routinely used the seat for international flights before, she explained, adding Sebastian cannot sit upright without it.

Sharp refused the airlines offer to use Cathays in-house five-point harness instead. She argued it was designed for children much larger than her son and wouldnt be as secure.

Their solution was to use their own five-point harness and a pillow to prop him up while we have a $4,000 special-needs seat they had pre-approved in the first place, she said. In an effort to avoid any last-minute issues, Sharp added she called Cathay four months prior to the trip and staff approved the seat, an orange-red seat called the Carrot 3.

In an emailed statement, the airline expressed how sorry it was to learn of the difficulties the Sharp family faced, but emphasized that Sebastians safety and comfort was their top priority.

Spokesperson Jennifer Pearson said reservation staff failed to provide Sharp with the correct information on car safety seats and posture support equipment.

Cathay Pacific prides itself in providing our customers with a positive travel experience and clearly we failed in this particular case, said Pearson, adding staff provided the family with hotel accommodation, meals and vouchers.

The Sharps struggle has sparked the ire of disability lawyer and accessibility advocate David Lepofksy, who said the clash with Cathay illustrates the need for a national transportation accessibility standard.

Air travel in this country is not pretty for people with disabilities, he said. The laws on the books right now are not working. We need federal legislation with teeth to ensure barriers like these do not happen again.

A spokesperson for Canadas aeronautical watchdog said airlines are responsible for their own seating policies. However, the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) also requires them to provide accommodation that considers disabled passengers unique needs.

But while the CTA lays out the expectations for aircraft accessibility, whether or not a seat is safe and sound is actually up to Transport Canada.

Further, it isnt clear if foreign carriers are required to abide by Canadas accessibility standards or stick to those of their native country.

Canada should have a clear rule: If you want to land your plane on our property, you play by our rules, said Lepofksy.

Lepofskys comments were echoed by the Ontario Federation for Cerebral Palsy, a non-profit that advocates for those living with the illness.

The groups president, Victor Gascon, said the situation was unacceptable and blasted Cathay for failing to be flexible.

Cerebral palsy is one of those disabilities where one or two cases are not alike, he said. Airlines should consult with disability groups before drafting their accessibility policies, he said, so situations like these dont occur in the future.

By late Thursday evening, the Sharp family finally departed Toronto to Sydney via Vancouver, albeit via Air Canada and arranged for by Cathay.

Just got cozy for our flight, Sharp wrote above a photo caption of Sebastian tucked into his orange-red seat. Australia here we come!

The family has since touched down safely in Oz, landing on the beach shortly after their arrival. As for how they will eventually make it home, Sharp said those travel plans are still up in the air depending on whether Cathay eventually decides to clear the seat for take-off.

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Central Technical Schools new artificial field has been at the heart of a turf war between Annex residents, a contractor and the countrys largest school board.

The Toronto District School Board insisted this month on using crumb rubber as the material for the new field, as the original agreement with the contractor called for. A few of the schools neighbours had offered to pitch in $150,000 for a natural cork field instead because they worried about possible health risks associated with exposure to chemicals in the rubber.

The TDSB  citing a study by Toronto Public Health  said these concerns are unsubstantiated. The use of third generation artificial turf is not expected to result in exposure to contaminants at levels that pose a significant risk to human health, a TPH study said.

The TDSB opted against the cork out of concern that it would delay the project beyond the start of the next school year.

Even if experts say crumb rubber is safe, a few of Central Techs neighbours argue its better to be extra cautious.

To me, if we have any opportunity to make it less bad  and theres so much compelling evidence that tire crumb is bad for us  why wouldnt we err on the safe side, when kids are playing on it? said Rochelle Rubinstein, an artist who lives near the school and one of the potential donors.

Matthew Raizenne, of Razor Management, the company leading the restoration of Central Techs field, says the cork field could have been installed on time.

There would not have been any delay and all funds were coming from 1-2 donors and were 100 per cent raised and secured in full, he wrote in an email to the Star.

The TDSB didnt bother to ask anyone if it was possible to build a cork field and stay on schedule, he added.

The deal at Central Tech is a licence agreement between the Toronto District School Board and Razor Management. Razor would build and manage the schools field and dome at Bathurst and Harbord Sts.

The original 1960s-era playing field has been closed for more than two years for reconstruction. Disagreements about the size of a seasonal dome to be built over the field and tax exemptions for the private contractor have plagued the project.

The debate about rubber versus natural fields is nothing new.

In the United States, the tiny granules of rubber that get stuck in athletes shoes have sparked a national conversation about their potential health risks. A few American jurisdictions, including Montgomery County, Md., a suburb of Washington, D.C., have banned this type of synthetic turf.

The county worried about toxic and carcinogenic elements in the rubber infill, and was concerned that it may increase the likelihood of concussions, said Roger Berliner, a Montgomery County council member and chair of its environment committee.

Although the county found evidence of the potential dangers was inconclusive, it banned the construction of any new crumb rubber fields in the county of one million people, he said.

Once a substitute came on the market that actually addressed all those concerns, why would you stay with what you know causes concern? he said.

It was a very easy step for us to take, he added, even if cork infill is more expensive.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says limited studies havent shown any dangers associated with crumb rubber fields, but the existing studies do not comprehensively evaluate the concerns about health risks from exposure.

After a cursory review of research on crumb rubber fields, Denis Grant, a professor in the University of Torontos toxicology and pharmacology department, says there are some toxic and carcinogenic compounds in the rubber turf, but they pose little risk. For instance, a recent risk analysis from Italy concludes that the cancer risk from the field material itself is about 10 times lower than the cancer risk associated with the field simply being close to vehicular traffic, he wrote in an email to the Star.

Whether the crumb rubber is dangerous or not, Neil Stephenson, the head of a civic group called the Friends and Neighbours of Central Tech, says he doesnt understand why the school board passed up a chance at a free upgrade to the field.

It seems there may have been an opportunity here that was missed, he said.

With files from Dan Taekema and Kris Rushowy

Correction - April 26, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version that misspelled Neil Stephenson's given anme.



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Downtown Toronto is going to be a hot mess of road closures and detours in a summer that will also see an unusually high number of subway shutdowns.

Its going to be a tough summer, especially downtown, Councillor Jaye Robinson, the public works chair, told reporters Tuesday near a lane closure at Church St. and Gerrard St. E.

Repaving, pipe replacements and other work postponed last summer because of the Pan Am Games have boosted the number of major road closures for the rest of the year to an unusually high 22.

Add to that 30 subway closures  half of them before the end of summer  as the TTC uses extra budget funding to tackle desperately needed repairs and replacements, a full roster of summer events that trigger road closures, plus the usual condo construction and film shoots that close lanes, and you have the makings of a virtual parking lot.

There are a lot of busy weekends coming up this summer, Robinson said. Were asking you to take some time to plan your trip in advance. Consider alternative routes and use public transit whenever you can.

Canada Day weekend is expected to be the toughest time to get around, between closures, special events and the huge annual Pride parade on July 3.

As well as work delayed by the Pan Am Games, the schedule is busier because Mayor John Tory and council have made it a priority to spend money to replace aging infrastructure, including century-old pipes.

Robinson assured drivers that city departments are working together to co-ordinate, and in some cases piggyback on, road closures to get as much done as quickly as possible and avoid repeated digging at the same spot.

The city is spending extra money to get some projects finished quicker, paying contractors to hire extra crews and work extended shifts, in some cases around the clock.

Robinson said she knows noise and vibrations can aggravate people outside business hours  she got an earful from her residents over work done on Eglinton Ave. last year  but said the same people who complain are often later happy when the work is finished ahead of schedule.

Summer road closures in Toronto

Its short-term pain for long-term gain, she said.

Some 122 kilometres of roadway will be resurfaced. The city also needs do work on 238 kilometres of sewer and water mains.

Have your say

Road closures include:

Lane closures on Gardiner Expressway from Jameson Ave. to Spadina Ave. until the end of July.

Bayview Ave. between Truman Rd. and Steeles Ave. E. between July and October.

Gerrard St. E. between Yonge St. and Sherbourne St. between June 2016 to July 2017.

Yonge St. between Wilson Ave. and Highway 401 from June to September.

Don Mills Rd. between Lawrence Ave. E. and York Mills Rd. from June to September.

Burnhamthorpe Rd. between Windust Gate and Etobicoke Creek from June to July.

Richmond St. between Church and York Sts. from September to December.

Queen St. between Bathurst St. and Spadina Ave. from May to September.

Ellesmere Rd. between Markham Rd. and McCowan Rd. from May to October.

Other events that will trigger road closures include the Sunday May 1 Goodlife Fitness Toronto Marathon, the June 5 ; and the Oct. 16 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon.

The good news is there are fewer potholes than usual. The mild winter, city staff say, created about half as many as the previous year. Still, crews have filled about 64,000 of them this year and ask residents to report any they see.

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Chewing gum too loudly. Using too many emoji. Not liking Beyonce.

The scientific term for them is deal-breakers  the traits that make the Liz Lemon voice in your head cry out, Shut it down.

They are characteristics that, in one persons eyes, makes someone undateable. And a series of studies in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggest that they really do outweigh good qualities in a potential mate.

So if you cant stand stinky feet, and you gag when your date removes their shoes, it doesnt matter if he has Ryan Goslings abs, or if she has J-Laws smile  its a non-starter.

In one anonymous online survey of 193 people, the researchers found that deal-breakers created a greater decrease in interest than dealmakers, such as being funny or good looking, increased interest, suggesting that losses loom larger than gains, and people weigh negative mate-relative information more.

The researchers also discovered that women usually have more deal-breakers than men do, and that they have a lower tolerance for dates who dont meet their standards. In another survey, this time focusing on 285 undergrads, they found that women rated deal-breakers more highly, especially when looking for a short-term relationship.

One theory holds that women are pickier because they bear children and must therefore invest more effort into offspring.

But the most common deal-breakers were similar for both sexes, according to another study in the same paper.

The top non-starter across the board was dishevelled or unclean appearance. Women were likelier to say lacks a sense of humour and bad sex are important. For men, low sex drive was a particularly big no-no.

Too picky? Torontonians often are, says matchmaker and dating consultant Shannon Tebb. If youre going around with this criteria list of all the things you want, I tell people throw that list out, because youre looking for this perfect specimen who doesnt exist, she said.

If hes not tall enough, maybe start wearing flats.

Having deal-breakers isnt necessarily a bad thing, according to Samantha Joel, a post-doc fellow at the University of Texas at Austin who completed a Ph.D in social psychology at the University of Toronto.

I would argue that emphasizing the negative is not a picky strategy at all, she said. Its basically saying this is the standard below which I wont go.

And deal-breakers arent always firm, she added. People are less objective and judgmental the longer they get to know a potential partner. In a University of Toronto and Yale study, she and her co-authors found that people typically exaggerated their willingness to reject potential partners with undesirable traits.

Fewer than half of the studys participants agreed to go on a date with someone with three deal-breaker qualities when they were told that person was from a former session and the situation was hypothetical. But when they were told their potential date was waiting in the lab, 74 per cent agreed to exchange phone numbers.

Usually, the participants agreed to a date because they were afraid of hurting the other persons feelings.

But the modern dating world is more ruthless than that, says Peter Jonason of Western Sydney University, a co-author of the paper in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

When using things like Tinder, there are no chances to get to know that person, he said in an email. If he is not tall enough, rejected. If she has short hair, rejected. No chance for empathy.

The lesson for daters is simple: Identify your own deal-breakers and then avoid people with those traits, he said. Then we can be more forgiving of the other minutia that might irk us but we are just being too picky.

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NEW DELHIThe Bangladeshi branch of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility Tuesday for the killing of a gay rights activist and his friend, undermining the prime ministers insistence just hours earlier that her political opponents were to blame for the attack and for a rising tide of violence against secular activists and writers.

The claim by Ansar-al-islam  which said it targeted the two men on Monday night because they were pioneers of practising and promoting homosexuality  raised doubts about Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas repeated assurances that authorities have the security situation under control.

The victims of the attack were identified as Xulhaz Mannan, an activist who also worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, and his friend, theatre actor Tanay Majumder. Mannan, a cousin of former Foreign Minister Dipu Moni of the governing party, was also an editor of Bangladeshs first gay rights magazine, Roopbaan. Majumder sometimes helped with the publishing, local media said.

At the White House, Press Secretary Josh Earnest took note of Mannans advocacy for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender causes and said there were reports that indicate that he was targeted because of his advocacy for these human rights and that makes his death even more tragic than it seems. He said the U.S. government had been in touch with the government of Bangladesh to make clear that a thorough criminal investigation should be a priority.

At a funeral for Mannan on Tuesday, his brother said free speech was something Islam should protect.

A true Muslim will always consider that he has freedom of expression, Minhaz Mannan Emon said. We should respect that opinion. We hope ... particularly I, on behalf of the family, hope that no other family loses their child or brother like us in the future.

Mannan had written openly about the frustration of living in the closet as a gay man in Bangladesh, where homosexual relations are considered a crime. In a May 2014 blog, he said gays and lesbians in Bangladesh experience A country where the predominant religions say you are a sinner, the law of the land says you are a criminal, the social norms say you are a pervert, the culture considers you as imported.

He launched the magazine in 2014, giving the countrys small and secretive LGBT community its first open platform. Earlier this month, he tried to organize a Rainbow Rally in the capital, but was foiled when police briefly detained him and three others.

Ansar-al Islam, the Bangladeshi branch of Al Qaeda on the Indian subcontinent, or AQIS, claimed responsibility in a Twitter message on Tuesday for what it called a blessed attack on Mannan and Majumder.

It said the two were killed because they were pioneers of practising and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh and were working day and night to promote homosexuality ... with the help of their masters, the U.S. crusaders and its Indian allies.

Just hours before the claim of responsibility, the prime minister had pointed the finger at her political opponents, the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami group and its ally, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

Everybody knows who are behind these killings, Hasina told policy-makers in her secular Awami League party Monday night, repeating her governments allegation that the opposition was orchestrating the attacks. The BNP-Jamaat clique has been involved in such secret and heinous murders to destabilize the country.

The opposition denies the allegations, saying they are being scapegoated for Hasinas failure to maintain security and placate the countrys desire for Islamic rule.

Police said no arrests have yet been made in connection with Mondays attack, which involved at least five young men who posed as courier service employees to gain access to Mannans apartment building.

A security guard working at the building said he was injured when one of the attackers hit him with a knife while fleeing.

Crime scene investigators recovered a mobile phone and bag apparently left by the attackers. The national police chief, A.K.M. Shahidul Hoque, expressed confidence the attackers would be caught and acknowledged there were similarities in how the killings were being carried out. He said authorities were making progress in cracking down on radicals hideouts and weapons caches.

We are investigating all the cases very seriously, Hoque said. Many arrests have been made involving previous killings, we have busted their dens for making bombs.

Security analysts warned that the government could lose the peoples trust if it does not act quickly to curb the attacks.

It is high time to set up special tribunals to handle these cases, suggested retired Maj. Gen. Abdur Rashid. It has to be dealt with more seriously and with a clearer and quicker process. ... There has been a lack of confidence among people about the investigation and justice system. We must fix these issues immediately.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the barbaric murders in a statement. Earlier this month, the U.S. said it was considering granting refuge to a select number of secular bloggers in Bangladesh facing imminent danger.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said Monday that remained an option. He described Mannan as a beloved member of our embassy family and a courageous advocate for gay rights, and pledged U.S. support to Bangladeshi authorities to ensure that the cowards who did this are held accountable.

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Few nations in the world take red traffic lights more seriously than Germany.

Foreign visitors frequently wonder why crowds of Germans wait for traffic lights to turn green when there are no cars in sight.

That is why officials in the city of Augsburg became concerned when they noticed a new phenomenon: Pedestrians were so busy looking at their smartphones that they were ignoring traffic lights.

The city has attempted to solve that problem by installing new traffic lights embedded in the pavement  so that pedestrians constantly looking down at their phones wont miss them.

It creates a whole new level of attention, city spokeswoman Stephanie Lermen was quoted as saying. Lermen thinks the money is wisely spent: A recent survey conducted in several European cities, including Berlin, found that almost 20 per cent of pedestrians were distracted by their smartphones. Younger people are most likely to risk their safety for a quick look at their Facebook profiles or WhatsApp messages, the survey found.

That problem may be even more widespread in the United States: A survey by the University of Washington found that one in three Americans is busy texting or working on a smartphone at dangerous road crossings. The U.S. Department of Transportation has established a clear connection between such habits and an increase in pedestrian deaths.

According to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, not everyone thinks the new lights are a good idea. Some commentators have complained that the project was a waste of taxpayers money.

Until now, I didnt even notice them, one young pedestrian told the local Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper after reporters made him aware of the lights.

But city officials say their work is justified: The idea to install such traffic lights came after a 15-year-old girl was killed by a tram. According to police reports, she was distracted by her smartphone as she crossed the tracks.

Augsburg is not the only city that has been forced to react to an increasing number of smartphone-obsessed pedestrians.

In 2014, the Chinese city of Chongqing made headlines when it experimented with a 50-metre stretch of pavement where pedestrians had to choose between walking on a normal lane and one reserved for smombies  a portmanteau of smartphone and zombies used to describe people walking and staring at their devices.

There are lots of elderly people and children in our street, and walking with your cellphone may cause unnecessary collisions here, marketing official Nong Cheng told The Associated Press at that time.

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MANILA, PHILIPPINES  The Philippine military came under increased pressure Tuesday to rescue more than 20 foreign hostages after their Muslim extremist captors beheaded a Canadian man, but troops face a dilemma in how to succeed without endangering the remaining captives.

Abu Sayyaf gunmen beheaded John Ridsdel on Monday in the southern province of Sulu, sparking condemnations and prompting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to pledge to help the Philippines pursue the extremists behind the heinous act.

Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage takers and this unnecessary death, Trudeau told reporters. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage.

Ridsdels head, which was placed in a plastic bag, was dumped by motorcycle-riding militants Monday night in Jolo town in impoverished Sulu, a densely forested province about 950 kilometres south of Manila, where the Abu Sayyaf and allied gunmen are believed to be holding 22 foreign hostages from six Western and Asian countries.

Its a politically sensitive time for troops to carry out major offensives, at the height of campaigning in a closely fought race among four contenders in the May 9 presidential election. President Benigno Aquino III and opposition politicians have had differences over the handling of the Muslim insurgency and the social ills that foster it.

The pressure on the armed forces is really immense, said Julkipli Wadi, who has conducted extensive studies on the Muslim secessionist conflict in the south.

The underfunded military has to contend with escalating territorial disputes in the South China Sea while dealing with Muslim and Marxist rebellions that have endured through several presidencies, fueled by the poverty, neglect and desperation that have not been tamed by political leaders, Wadi said.

A large-scale offensive could displace many villagers and draw attention to the longstanding security and social issues in the vote-rich south, homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation.

That could play to the advantage of Rodrigo Duterte, the tough-talking city mayor from the south who has emerged as the front-runner in the presidential race by a lofty promise to end crime in six months and restore law and order. Aquino has endorsed another candidate, Mar Roxas, whose platform focuses on continuing the presidents anti-corruption drive and economic reforms. All the presidential candidates condemned the beheading.

The Philippine military and police said there will be no letup in the effort to combat the militants and find the hostages, even though they have had little success in safely securing their freedom. Many hostages were believed to have been released due to huge ransom payments.

About 2,000 military personnel, backed by Huey and MG520 rocket-firing helicopters and artillery, are involved in the manhunt for the militants, who are believed to be massing in Sulus mountainous Patikul town, military officials said.

While under pressure to produce results, government troops have been ordered to carry out assaults without endangering the remaining hostages, including in the use of airstrikes and artillery fire, a combat officer told The Associated Press by cellphone from Sulu. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

Amid the offensive, Brig. Gen. Alan Arrojado resigned Tuesday in Sulu as commander of an army brigade due to conflict of approach in addressing the Abu Sayyaf threats in the province. Arrojado did not elaborate.

In past militant videos posted online, Ridsdel and fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipino Marites Flor were shown sitting in a clearing with heavily armed militants standing behind them. In some of the videos, a militant aimed a long knife at Ridsdels neck as he pleaded for his life. Two black flags with Islamic State group-like markings hung in the backdrop of lush foliage.

The four were seized from a marina on southern Samal Island and taken by boat to Sulu, where Abu Sayyaf gunmen continue to hold several captives, including a Dutch bird watcher who was kidnapped more than three years ago, and Indonesian and Malaysian crewmen who were snatched recently from three tugboats.

Ridsdel was killed after the militants failed to receive a huge ransom demand by a Monday deadline. A police official said the killing of five and wounding of about 16 Abu Sayyaf gunmen in a military assault three days before the beheading may have angered the extremists and helped lead them to decide to kill him in revenge.

In Canada, Ridsdel was remembered as a brilliant, compassionate man with a talent for friendship.

He could bridge many communities, many people, many situations and circumstances and environments in a very gentle way, said Gerald Thurston, a lifelong friend of the former mining executive and journalist who grew up with him in Yorkton, Saskatchewan.

The Abu Sayyaf began a series of large-scale abductions after it emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a separatist rebellion by minority Muslims in the southern Philippines.

It has been weakened by more than a decade of government offensives, but has endured largely as a result of large ransom and extortion earnings. The United States and the Philippines have both listed the group as a terrorist organization.

A look at the major attacks by Abu Sayyaf:

 April 1995: Abu Sayyaf fighters storm the mostly Christian town of Ipil in the south, killing more than 50 people after robbing banks and stores and burning the town centre.

 April 2000: Twenty one people, including European tourists, are seized from Malaysias Sipadan diving resort and hauled across the sea border by speedboats to jungle camps in the southern Philippines. All the hostages were freed in batches in exchange for millions of dollars in ransom reportedly paid by Libya.

 May 2001: Twenty tourists, including three Americans, are kidnapped from the Dos Palmas resort in southwestern Palawan province, starting a yearlong hostage saga that leaves a number of captives dead, including U.S. nationals Martin Burnham and Guillermo Sobero, who was beheaded.

 October 2002: A nail-laden bomb detonates in Zamboanga city, killing four, including an American Green Beret.

 February 2004: A bomb on a passenger ferry in Manila Bay kills 116 in the countrys worst militant attack.

 February 2005: Nearly simultaneous bombings in Manila and two southern cities kill eight and wound more than 100.

 November 2015: Militants in Sulu behead a Malaysian man while the APEC summit is underway in Manila, attended by President Obama and Malaysian premier Najib Razak.

 April 2016: Canadian John Ridsdel, 68, is beheaded in Sulu. Twenty-two other foreign hostages remain in Abu Sayyaf custody.

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KYIV, UKRAINEWith flowers, candles, anger and tears, Ukraine on Tuesday marked the 30th anniversary of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the worlds worst nuclear accident. Some survivors said the chaos of that time is etched in their minds forever.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko led a ceremony in Chernobyl, where work is underway to complete a 2 billion euro ($2.85 billion) long-term shelter over the building containing Chernobyls exploded reactor. Once the structure is in place, work will begin to remove the reactor and its lava-like radioactive waste.

The disaster shone a spotlight on lax safety standards and government secrecy in the former Soviet Union. The explosion on April 26, 1986, was not reported by Soviet authorities for two days, and then only after winds had carried the fallout across Europe and Swedish experts had gone public with their concerns.

We honour those who lost their health and require a special attention from the government and society, Poroshenko said. Its with an everlasting pain in our hearts that we remember those who lost their lives to fight nuclear death.

About 600,000 people, often referred to as Chernobyls liquidators, were sent in to fight the fire at the nuclear plant and clean up the worst of its contamination. Thirty workers died either from the explosion or from acute radiation sickness within several months. The accident exposed millions in the region to dangerous levels of radiation and forced a wide-scale, permanent evacuation of hundreds of towns and villages in Ukraine and Belarus.

The final death toll from Chernobyl is subject to speculation, due to the long-term effects of radiation, but ranges from an estimate of 9,000 by the World Health Organization to one of a possible 90,000 by the environmental group Greenpeace.

The Ukrainian government, however, has since scaled back benefits for Chernobyl survivors, making many feel betrayed by their own country.

I went in there when everyone was fleeing, we were going right into the heat, said Mykola Bludchiy, who arrived in the Chernobyl exclusion zone on May 5, just days after the explosion. And today everything is forgotten. Its a disgrace.

He spoke Tuesday after a ceremony in Kyiv, where top officials were laying wreaths to a Chernobyl memorial.

In neighbouring Belarus, where over 470 towns and villages had to be permanently evacuated due to radiation from Chernobyl, opposition activists were holding street protests later Tuesday in the capital of Minsk to urge the government to take more vigorous action to tackle the aftermath of the disaster.

At midnight on Monday, a Chernobyl vigil was held in the Ukrainian town of Slavutych, where many former Chernobyl workers were relocated.

Thirty years later, many could not hold back the tears as they brought flowers and candles to a memorial for the workers killed in the explosion. Some of the former liquidators dressed in white robes and caps for the memorial, just like the ones they had worn so many years ago.

Andriy Veprev, who had worked at the Chernobyl nuclear plant for 14 years before the explosion and helped to clean up the contamination, said memories of the mayhem in 1986 were still vivid in his mind.

Im proud of those guys who were with me and who are not with us now, he said.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin, in a message to the liquidators, called the Chernobyl disaster a grave lesson for all of mankind.

More on thestar.com:

The Ukrainian children eating food tainted by Chernobyl radiation

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LONDONThousands of junior doctors posted picket lines outside hospitals around England on Tuesday in the first all-out strike in the history of Britains National Health Service (NHS).

The two-day strike marks the first time that vital NHS emergency services have been affected by an industrial action.

The strike reflects the impasse between the government and the junior doctors  physicians with up to 10 years experience  over the governments pledge to greatly expand NHS care on weekends.

The financial dispute centres on whether day shifts on Saturday should be treated as a normal working day. The government proposal calls for extra pay for shifts on Saturday night and Sunday.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted the government would not be blackmailed into scrapping its election pledge to bolster weekend services. He said that promise was a centrepiece of the Conservative Partys platform in the 2015 election.

I dont think any union has the right to blackmail the government, to force the government to abandon a manifesto promise that the British people have voted on, he said.

More than 125,000 appointments and operations have been cancelled and will need to be rearranged due to the strike, a result of the long-running dispute between the government and the British Medical Association.

Hunt warned the walkout would cause particular risks for patients needing emergency room treatment and those in maternity wards and intensive care units.

Mark Porter, head of the medical association, told the BBC that senior consulting physicians would provide emergency care while the junior doctors are on strike. He said the government was misleading the public by claiming the job action put lives at risk.

The Health Secretary is trying to find some way to throw mud at the junior doctors of this country who have been providing weekend and night emergency cover since the NHS started, he said.

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Public safety is paramount to living in a functioning democracy. Its why governments around the world are committed to ensuring their citizens are protected from those who would do them harm.

However, in the frightening days following 9/11 and in the years since then western governments have struggled, and at times failed, at both safeguarding public safety and protecting the freedoms they are ostensibly fighting for.

With Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale currently embarking on a sweeping review of national security policy in Canada, and promising to consult with communities and civil society, now is an opportune moment to raise critical issues that have been neglected or bungled for too long.

First, the federal government must review the lessons of the past and implement the required fixes. Its hard to fathom but there is no guarantee that the mistakes that led to the detention and torture of Canadian citizen Maher Arar couldnt happen again. The recommendations put forward by the Arar Commission more than 10 years ago after a protracted public inquiry have yet to be fully implemented. The recommendations included a range of measures that would ensure proper oversight and review of security agencies, clear limits on information-sharing and adequate mechanisms to respond to the detention and potential torture of Canadians abroad (currently, there are at least two Canadians unjustly held in China and Ethiopia who have very likely been tortured).

Second, the government must accept the findings of an internal inquiry into the handling of a case involving three other men who were also tortured abroad. Back in 2008, Justice Frank Iacobucci found that the actions of Canadian officials indirectly led to the overseas detention and torture of Canadians citizens Ahmad El Maati, Muayyed Nureddin and Abdullah Almalki. When in opposition, the Liberals supported the call for apologies and compensation to the three men. Today, the government is stepping up a legal battle to fight their claims for justice.

Moreover, the government has not yet taken a firm position on the use of torture-tainted evidence, or the sharing of information with states that are known human rights abusers.

These are critical issues that should be top of mind for the ministers office and would be best addressed by eliminating any possible Canadian complicity in torture, avoiding the risk of other human rights abuses and ensuring accountability, as stated by the Arar Commission report.

Third, the government has committed to creating a new Office of the Community Outreach and Counter-radicalization Coordinator. Were told details are forthcoming, but what communities will no doubt be watching for is whether this office will operate on the false premise that Canadian Muslims are the problem or will it turn the page on a lost decade of policy-making and truly address the various factors leading to radicalization, the role of community stigmatization, as well as security threats from far-right extremists (who have been identified by Canadas security agencies as a leading security concern).

Additionally, the governments approach cannot only be about hard security measures such as surveillance, arrest and incarceration, as a recent brief by the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society points out. Comparatively little time, effort and funding have been earmarked for softer security approaches, which aim to deter individuals from radicalizing to violence in the first instance, or to disengage those who have adopted violent behaviours, wrote the briefs authors, including a retired CSIS senior official.

Finally, perhaps the most important test for the government will be how it implements the recommended changes and amendments to the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015.

It makes sense that Goodale has been looking overseas to see how other democracies are addressing these complex issues, but he should be careful not to repeat their mistakes either. For instance, the British governments counterterrorism program, Prevent, has been widely criticized. The government can be confident in knowing that we have our own legal and security experts, as well as robust civil society actors and engaged community partners, who are ready and willing to help craft made-in-Canada solutions.

In these difficult times, what the world needs now is a country that demonstrates how to balance rights and security to ensure everyones well-being. Will it be Canada?

Amira Elghawaby is the communications director at the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM).

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What do you want from me, my blood? Well yes, now that you mention it. If youre feeling a bit flush with the stuff, do spill us some. Heres $25 for your trouble.

And this is how it might be, although I profoundly hope it wont. Canadian Blood Services, the national agency that oversees blood and blood products, wont rule out allowing the paying of donors, the CBCs Kelly Crowe reports. The practice has already begun in Saskatoon. A private company called Canadian Plasma Resources is placing ads in University of Saskatchewan bathrooms (where one has time to stand and stare, presumably) and its bleak clinic is near places where the poor are offered services, she writes.

The CBC reports that the company tried to open clinics in Toronto in 2014, and when Ontario legally banned paying donors, it headed to Saskatchewan, where it was welcomed. It has hired lobbyists to try to persuade other provinces to let it in.

Plasma, the company explains, is the straw-coloured liquid portion of blood. Hey, its mostly water. No big deal. The ads are deliberately drab, with jugs of the urineish-looking fluid and packs of cheerful people in white coats awaiting things watery. If the place looked like the blood garage it actually is, you might be alarmed, but no.

What I object to is the intrusion of corporations into the body, and worse, the expectation that people shouldnt mind. Blood is slippery. The logical extension of selling blood is selling everything else. We will slide into this.

As Crowe points out, Canadians already donate sperm, embryos, eggs and blood. After death, our bits are up for grabs if we volunteer as we should. Outside Canada, living people sell their organs (Can we have your liver then? But Im using it.  Monty Python) and rent their uteruses to the infertile rich. This is a frontier smoking with danger. There is a point beyond which capitalism is not helpful, does not apply.

In an era of economic inequality, we are told to share, to Uberize our cars and Airbnb our homes while we move in with mom, check out our own groceries, take out cash, sort garbage, print out store receipts and bank statements, pick up our own mail, pump gas, print out luggage tags and loop them on, and assemble cheap furniture in a slapdash manner. At this point, do we distantly realize that if other people did this work, our economy might function better, with better pay and more taxes paid? Yet we volunteer.

Fine, go do the donkey work of scanning and bagging cheese lumps and diapers, doing the very job you did for pay in high school summers before you left town, desperate to escape the tedium. Well, look at you now, in the big city eyeing a bag of beets with a wild surmise, did it beep or not?

But now you are being asked to regard your own body as a passive income stream. Our governments are civilized; they wont permit the commodification or privatization of the body unless you agree, and you can make a noise about this. Tell Health Minister Jane Philpott you dont like it. Tell your provincial government.

It starts with your blood being extracted because you need $25. Do it twice a week and thats $2,600 a year to help pay for baby formula and school supplies, for whatever are the necessaries of life. Id quite like that money. Its hard to turn it down; the government should be turning it down for you.

And again, the problem is not blood but principle. There will be blood, then there will be other less voluntary things. I am suspicious of any corporate intrusion that is literally internal, possibly abnormally so. Perhaps I overstate  I wont even get flu shots at work  but I watch in awe as Americans consent to urine tests for office jobs without complaint.

What are we willing to do for money? In an era of inequality, more and more. Those who recall the tainted blood scandal adamantly oppose plasma sales, Crowe reports, and in one province at least, they have lost. For them, clean blood is the only ideal. Once inside the veins, money poisons and clogs.

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Canadians are appalled by the murder of John Ridsdel in the Philippines by ransom-seeking criminals, and grieve for his family. A surge of anger, frustration and disgust has swept the land.

As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confronts this terrorist outrage, his mettle is being tested. Criticism is pouring in from every quarter, much of it from the Liberal governments conservative adversaries, and much of it conflicting. Send in the CF-18 fighter-bombers and commandos, some urge. Give the kidnappers what they want, others say. Stop pretending that Daesh, the self-proclaimed Islamic State, isnt at war with us. Get serious about terror.

This torrent of unsolicited advice is, for the most part, unhelpful. Outrage may be cathartic but it is not a policy.

The Abu Sayyaf terrorists who are still holding more than 20 captives from a half-dozen nations  including another Canadian  are not waging a jihadist war on this country and the federal government would look foolish to react as if they were. They are criminal extortionists, and secessionists. Their professed allegiance to Daesh is largely for shock value. Some experts hesitate even to describe them as jihadists.

Moreover, deploying Canadian warplanes and commandos would accomplish nothing more than the Philippine military can. Some 2,000 troops are searching for the captives, backed by combat helicopters and artillery. Blasting away at the bush would put the captives in worse jeopardy.

And Canada cant readily acquiesce to the $8 million ransom the captors have demanded, a stance Trudeau rightly reiterated on Tuesday.

Canada does not and will not pay ransom to terrorists directly or indirectly, he said. We need to make sure that terrorists understand that they cannot continue to fund their crimes and their violence taking innocents hostage.

If Canada did telegraph a readiness to pay up, breaking ranks with our American, British and other allies, it would send the worst of signals. It would hand the captors a propaganda coup, provide them with more funds to commit mayhem, encourage them to seize more hostages, and drive up the price.

That said, Trudeaus assertion should be taken with a grain of salt. Canadian diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, kidnapped by Al Qaeda in 2009, were reportedly ransomed for $1 million by parties unknown.

The harsh reality is there are few good options for any government whose nationals are held for ransom. Extricating them is invariably a tricky, unsavory process of working through intermediaries to try to strike dirty deals that are never meant to see the light of day, while all the time denying it.

Given his narrow options, Trudeau could only denounce the hostage-takers cold-blooded brutality and promise to work with Manila to bring them to justice. That threat neednt be an idle one. The RCMP managed to arrest a Somali national in connection with the 2008 kidnapping of Amanda Lindhout. And Abu Sayyaf may have overplayed its hand. Indonesia and Malaysia are joining the Philippines in an effort to thwart further attacks.

And despite Trudeaus denial of any government involvement, diplomats and officials appear to have been trying to be of assistance. Former Ontario premier Bob Rae, a friend of Ridsdel, credits federal officials with being very directly involved trying to help the family extricate him. Bitter though the outcome was, they seemingly did what they could.

As the Fowler, Guay and Lindhout cases confirm, Canada has had some success in rescuing captives. But that success did not come from bombing bad actors, bowing to their demands in public, or confusing criminals with religious zealots.

Public bluster is not an effective strategy. And the uncomfortable reality is that clandestine negotiations are the norm, not the exception, in these situations. Even then, as John Ridsdels callous murder shows, there are no certain outcomes when killers have the upper hand.

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Re: The Dirty truth about nuclear terrorism, Insight April 23

The Dirty truth about nuclear terrorism, Insight April 23

The worlds people face two huge threats of extinction, from climate change and from nuclear fallout, and both threats require a fully informed public and comprehensive reporting.

Olivia Wards article on nuclear terrorism focuses on terrorism from below, not state terrorism or state neglect and state misinformation. There is certainly a huge gap in awareness.

The International Atomic Energy Agency withholds information about the health effects of internal radiation exposure. Elaine Scarry, a Harvard professor, recently noted that some of her students had never heard of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In 2015, the month-long Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review conference was not reported in the media, nor were other declarations and international meetings held at that time of aggravated nuclear threats around the Ukraine situation.

The Star article lists a number of security failures outside the U.S., but not the hundreds of accidents and mishaps within the U.S. nuclear weapons industry that are documented by Eric Schlosser in his masterful study Command and Control.

The insert on Nuclear Numbers notes the most ominous threat: The $1 trillion allocated by President Barack Obama for nuclear defenses  i.e., weapons.

Judith Deutsch, Toronto

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High school teachers in Northwestern Ontario will strike one day a week as they ramp up their job action against the Rainy River District School Board.

We expected that this was a possibility, but we really, really hoped this was not the direction they chose to take, said chair Dianne McCormack, adding that the Fort Frances-area board expects to receive 24 hours notice.

Kent Kowalski, president of District 5B of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation, told the Star the decision to walk off the job comes after sanctions have steadily increased since December, and upped each time local talks have broken down.

The strikes come as two other Ontario branches of the OSSTF are also without local contracts. Toronto and Trillium Lakelands  which covers Kawartha Lakes, Haliburton and Muskoka  are also engaged in job action, though no strikes are planned.

In Toronto, high school teachers are refusing to do some administrative work and have also stopped writing report-card comments.

On Monday, Toronto student Trustee Hamima Fattah received her third bare-bones report card this year, and said teens are confused about why its happening.

For high school students, I know myself I would prefer comments than just a mark, because they give suggestions for improvement, said the Grade 12 student.

Students have also lost their weekly late starts  scheduled to give teachers time to attend staff meetings, which they are boycotting under the job action. Local OSSTF president Doug Jolliffe said no further job action is planned, even though there are no meetings scheduled with the Toronto board.

In Trillium-Lakelands, the board has filed a case with the Ontario Labour Relations board over the unions demands. Teachers there arent taking part in planning or attending graduation ceremonies. On report cards, theyre giving all students an S in the learning skills area, regardless of achievement.

Kowalski said that in Rainy River, teachers who have been laid off are not being called back to work based on seniority, and that is the major sticking point.

As you know, this is not about money  the financial issues were all dealt with at the provincial level of the Liberals new two-tier bargaining process. This is all about working conditions.

He also said the board is looking for full reimbursement for his salary while he is seconded to run the union local, a difference of about $10,000.

The issue is the same in Toronto, though the difference is about $500,000.

Paul Elliott, whose home board is Rainy River, said it has been a difficult employer for a number of years and that the number of grievances filed there is 18 times the provincial average.

McCormack said the board has offered to send the issues to arbitration, but the union refused. We always have been willing to sit down and work through this, but if they are choosing to strike rather than come back to the table, Im not really sure what we can do.

A spokesperson for Education Minister Liz Sandals said, We know how difficult job action can be for parents and students. While the government has no formal involvement in local negotiations, ministry officials are available to support local discussions when the parties request assistance, said Nicole McInerney.

She noted the government is consulting with unions and school boards to improve the two-tier bargaining process, and said 280 of 473 local deals have been reached.

High school teachers were the only union to walk off the job amid turmoil last spring, with strikes hitting Durham, Peel and Sudbury for weeks.

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The province needs to step in and investigate the York Region District School Board, says a local MPP who has joined a number of parents and staff calling on the education ministry to look into allegations of trustee interference, the directors unusual 10-year contract as well as low morale in a board once lauded as a model in Ontario.

There are too many problems here, said Thornhill Progressive Conservative Gila Martow, who is also urging any elected officials involved to step down should the ministry intervene.

On Sunday, the Star detailed allegations from sources that trustee Linda Aversa sought a higher mark for her daughter to get into a competitive university business program. After being rebuffed by the school, she allegedly approached the superintendent, who in turn received pressure from above to look into it, a source told the Star. While multiple requests were made each day during a two-week period, in the end no changes were made.

Both Aversa and superintendent Becky Green have told the Star the allegations are untrue. Aversa said as any parent would, I did have appropriate dialogue with my daughters school about her education, but I have never asked anyone to boost her marks.

A spokesperson for Education Minister Liz Sandals did not comment on a possible probe into the concerns raised about the board. However, we take all allegations of this nature (regarding board governance) seriously and will continue to monitor issues to ensure good governance of school boards and that they continue to support the success and well-being of all members of all its school communities, said Nicole McInerney.

Rukshan Para, who ran for trustee in 2014, has written to the ministry about his concerns and wants the province to review the boards governance practices.

Trustees jobs are not to interfere with the day-to-day operation of the school and its staff, he said.

The head of the Ontario Public School Boards Association has said it is inappropriate for trustees to discuss their childrens marks with staff  better to send another adult to handle anything that could give rise to a conflict.

Martow agreed.

I really question why the trustee had any conversation about her daughters marks at all  I really question that if so many people knew, and there were concerns, why didnt it go up the proper channels? Is it because they didnt feel comfortable for it to go up the channels, or that it wasnt addressed when the concern was brought forward?

That has to be part of the investigation.

Meanwhile, ongoing friction indicates that there is a much bigger problem than we originally thought, said a group calling itself A Coalition for Good Governance in the YRDSB.

As parents, taxpayers and the larger community, we are wondering what more needs to happen before the Ministry of Education intervenes. A failure to address these serious concerns and the culture of fear that exist within the board, would indicate that no lessons have been learned from the TDSB saga, they said in a letter to the ministry, referring to well-publicized troubles in the Toronto District School Board.

Charles Pascal, of the University of Torontos education faculty and a former deputy minister, said the troubles in York are a connection to the larger problem of governance of school boards where trustees inappropriately feel they have the power to run and supervise schools in their ward.

Its endemic in governance of school boards in Ontario, said Pascal, adding that nonetheless there is something unusual going on at that board, he said in response to the Star stories.

This is taking place in a context where one wonders about the leadership generally, at a board that gave a 10-year contract to an inexperienced director, he also said.

Earlier this year, trustees raised eyebrows across the province after it was revealed they voted an unprecedented, decade-long contract for J. Philip Parappally, who, compared to other directors in large urban boards, has less experience.

In Ontario, education directors typically sign on for four to five years at a time. He was only a year and a half into a typical four-year term when they approved the new contract, and amid growing discontent at the board.

School board chair Anna DeBartolo, who was involved in his hiring and has known Parappally for 16 years, said the lengthy contract was to help bring needed stability and consistency to the board as it implements a multi-year plan.

Noor Javed, the Stars York Region reporter, can be reached at njaved@thestar.ca or 416-869-4753.

Kristin Rushowy, who covers education, can be reached at krushowy@thestar.ca or 416-869-4828.

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Details added (first version posted on 19:39)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

Trend:

Azerbaijan's Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev invited Spanish companies to become residents of agro-parks, which are being created in the country.

He made the proposal Apr. 26 at the Azerbaijani-Spanish business forum in Baku.

Mustafayev said that Spain has a rich experience in the field of agriculture.

He added that Azerbaijan has recently taken important steps to improve the business environment, and now all necessary conditions for Spanish companies have been created in the country.

At the same time, Spain and Azerbaijan could cooperate in the field of light industry, particularly in the textile industry, he said.

"Spanish companies have extensive experience in this field, and Azerbaijan has all conditions for the development of light industry," said the minister.

The head of the economy ministry added that both countries have great potential for cooperation in the field of tourism.

The direct flights between Baku and Barcelona may also contribute to this, according to Mustafayev

"Considering direct air service, we could work to attract Spanish tourists to Azerbaijan," the minister added.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

By Azad Hasanli - Trend:

Spanish companies are interested to work in Azerbaijan in the spheres of infrastructure, petrochemistry and industry, Foreign Minister of Spain Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo y Marfil told reporters Apr. 26.

He made the remarks within the framework of the Azerbaijani-Spanish business forum in Baku.

"Economic relations with Azerbaijan are very important for us, because Azerbaijan is an access to the Central Asian and Asian countries," the minister said. "At the same time, Spain for Azerbaijan is a bridge to countries of Latin America and North Africa."

He said that the regular Azerbaijani-Spanish business forum will be held in Spain in May.

"This is already the second business forum between the two countries, in which I participate as foreign minister," he said. "The first such forum was held in 2013, and the next forum will be held in Spain in May 2016."

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations will last until Apr.27.

The Youth Forum was held on the first day of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum on Apr.25.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum.

The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the forum.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on July 24, 2015 to create an organizing committee for holding the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.26

Trend:

Armenian armed forces have shelled Azerbaijan's Terter district, including its Gapanli village on Apr.26 from 01:05 to 04:25 (UTC/GMT +4 hours), by using 82-mm and 120-mm mortars, 122-mm howitzers D-30 and D-21 multiple rocket launchers, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said Apr.26.

In response, Azerbaijani armed forces inflicted strikes only on Armenian military facilities.

Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said that the criminal military and political leadership of Armenia bears responsibility for any incident that can occur on the line of contact between Armenian and Azerbaijani armies.

On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements.

Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.26

Trend:

It is necessary to put an end to the military occupation of Azerbaijani territories, said Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov during the meeting with his Spanish counterpart Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo y Marfil Apr.26.

In order to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenia should withdraw its armed forces from Azerbaijani lands and start a comprehensive political process, said Azerbaijan's foreign minister.

Mammadyarov also briefed his Spanish counterpart about the recent developments on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies, as well as the provocations staged by Armenian armed forces and the shelling of civilians.

Spain's foreign minister, for his part, noted that his country supports Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and sovereignty.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
But the tribe has a long way to go
A 10-year-old boy was stabbed to death in Kochi, Kerala on Tuesday morning. The fifth standard student was stabbed 17 times around his neck by his neighbour.

While on the way back from buying milk, Risti John was attacked by Ajo Devassy, 40. Police have arrested Devassy and are of the opinion that he is mentally unsound.

Though Risti was taken to the hospital immediately after the incident, he was beyond help. Police informed that Devassy was being questioned. They are investigating whether Devassy is a drug addict and whether he was facing any problems at home. Devassy was earlier admitted to mental health centre by the police.
"Butchers cannot be preachers", Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu on Monday said, mounting a counteroffensive against Congress, which has accused the Modi government of "murdering democracy" by imposing President's rule in Uttarakhand.

"Butchers cannot be Preachers". Congress which dismissed more than 100 non-congress governments. right from E.M.S.Namboodiripad, under article 356, is now criticising BJP. Ridiculous!," Naidu said on twitter on a day Congress disrupted proceedings in Parliament over bringing Uttarakhand under central rule.

Naidu had earlier targeted Congress calling it "mother of defections".

"The Congress government at the Centre dismissed E. M. S. Namboodiripad's first democratically-elected Left government in Kerala, despite its majority in the Legislative Assembly in 1959," Naidu had said against the backdrop of Left joining hands with Congress in targeting the Centre over the political developments in Uttarkhand.

Facing opposition onslaught over the Uttarakhand issue, the Modi government has decided to take rivals head-on, citing instances of states being placed under central rule when Congress, Janata Party and United Front were in power.

An internal document circulated in the government notes that out of 111 times President's rule has been imposed since 1951, "Congress governments and those propped by it imposed it 91 times" including "45 times during the 16-year tenure of Indira Gandhi" and "10 times during the 10-year rule of Manmohan Singh".

Parliament session began on Monday with a face-off between the ruling and opposition benches as the Modi government was slammed over imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh.

Amid opposition demand for a discussion on the issue, Congress members created a ruckus in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, accusing the BJP-led dispensation of toppling democratically-elected governments of opposition parties, a charge rejected by Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
In their first formal bilateral meeting after Pathankot attack, Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan on Tuesday held talks focusing on a range of sticky issues including probe into the strike and Kashmir, which Pakistani side asserted was the "core issue".

Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry, here to attend the Heart of Asia conference, met after which the Pakistani side said its Foreign Secretary "emphasised that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution in accordance with UNSC resolutions and wishes of Kashmiri people."

There was no immediate formal word from the Indian side on the meeting.

Ahead of the meeting, the Indian officials had maintained that Pathankot attack and a possible visit by the NIA to Pakistan will be raised during the FS-level talks, which were deferred in January in the wake of the strike at the strategic air base at Pathankot.

"In line with our PM's vision of peaceful neighborhood, FS underscored Pakistan's commitment to have friendly relations with all its neighbors/India. All outstanding issues including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute were discussed," the Pakistan High Commission here said.

India has been pressing for action against terrorists responsible for the audacious attack on the IAF base, to take the talks forward.

This is also the first time the two foreign secretaries are meeting after the announcement of Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue(CBD) by the Foreign Ministers in Islamabad last December. The two secretaries had a informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March this year.

The efforts to resume CBD at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the Pathankot attack that India said was carried out by militants from Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM)terror group.

Jaishankar was scheduled to travel to Islamabad to hold talks with Chaudhary on January 15 but both the countries had announced deferment of the talks with "mutual consent" in the wake of the Pathankot attack.

Todays's meeting came in the backdrop of Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit's recent comments that the bilateral peace process was suspended, evoking a sharp reaction by Indian side.

India has been maintaining that communication channels were on at various levels but also made it clear it wants to see action on terror and Pathankot first before the dialogue could be resumed.

Earlier, Jaishankar met Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Karzai and discussed issues of mutual interests.

After the talks which lasted for nearly 90-minutes, the Pakistan High Commission said in a statement that Chaudhry also took up the matter of capture of RAW officer, Kulbushan Jadev and expressed serious concern over RAW's alleged involvement in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi.

"He said such acts undermine efforts to normalise relations between the two countries. He also conveyed concern over efforts by Indian authorities for the release of the prime suspects of the Samjhauta Express blasts," it added.

He expressed confidence that building on the goodwill generated by the recent high level contacts, the two countries should remain committed to a sustained, meaningful and comprehensive dialogue process.

In this spirit, the Foreign Secretary underscored the need for early commencement of comprehensive dialogue for which the Indian Foreign Secretary's visit to Pakistan is due.
Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar on Tuesday called the panel that fined him in connection with a controversial event on campus as castiest.

He said he would burn the report that recommended action against him and 16 other students, including Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya. The duo and Kanhaiya had been arrested on charges of sedition following the February 9 JNU event, in which they were alleged to have raised anti-national slogans. They have been out on bail since last month.

The high-level inquiry committee (by the JNU administration) is casteist. We dont believe the committee nor the penalties imposed, which is why we will burn the report, Kumar was quoted as saying in a report.

The people targeted arent being given a chance to express their stand.

Since this is subjudice, what is the hurry? Also the committee report said outsiders raised slogans, then why punish the insiders? (JNU) VC (vice-chancellor Jagadesh Kumar) was on leave and on his return, the first thing he did was this. He is not addressing hostel issues, OBC reservation, deprivation point. This administration is running from phone calls coming from outside.

JNU on Monday fined Kumar Rs 10,000 and rusticated Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya for a semester. The action against the students came after the high-level inquiry committee found merit in the allegations that they raised anti-national slogans during the February 29 event.

According to a report, JNUSU vice-president Shehla Rashid Shora said: We have decided that none of the students will pay the fine or vacate their hostels. We demand that the university administration withdraw these orders as we have maintained right from the beginning that we do not have faith in this inquiry panel and it should be reconstituted.

We will begin an indefinite hunger strike from tomorrow (Wednesday) after staging a protest march from the universitys Ganga dhaba to administration block. The decision has been well-timed by the university officials to avoid any protests as summer break is about to begin but we will not bow down and continue our fight.

On Monday, Khalid and Bhattacharya dismissed the panel's report to rusticate them as unacceptable and termed it a farce.

JNUSU rejects the punishment handed down by the administration on the basis of a farcical committee! Kanhaiya had tweeted.
Suspected Islamist militants hacked to death a leading Bangladeshi gay rights activist employed by the US embassy and a friend in an apartment in Bangladesh's capital on Monday, police said.

The killings took place two days after a university professor was slain in similar fashion on Saturday in an attack claimed by Islamic State.

Five or six assailants went to the apartment of Xulhaz Mannan, 35, an editor of Rupban, Bangladesh's first magazine for gay, bisexual and transgender people, and attacked him and a friend with sharp weapons, Dhaka city police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sordar said.

They entered the apartment disguised as couriers, he said, quoting witnesses.

The assailants also wounded a security guard. Witnesses said the attackers shouted "Allahu Akbar (God is greatest)" as they fled the scene.

Mannan was employed by the US embassy, working for the US Agency for International Development, the State Department in Washington said.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the United States was "outraged" by the "barbaric attack." He called Mannan, "a beloved member of our embassy family and a courageous advocate for LGBTI rightshuman rights, actually."

"LGBTI" stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and intersex.

A spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, Ned Price, said the United States strongly urged the Bangladeshi government to ensure the perpetrators were brought to justice.

Other attacks took place in the country on Monday, but it was not immediately clear whether those assaults were carried out by Islamist militants.

Two men on a motorcycle shot dead a former prison guard in front of Kashimpur jail, on the outskirts of Dhaka, said Khandakar Rezaul Hasan, chief of the local police station.

A teacher was hacked to death in the southwestern district of Kustia, police said.

The Muslim-majority nation of 160 million people has seen a surge in violent attacks over the past few months in which liberal activists, members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups have been targeted.

Five secular bloggers and a publisher have been hacked to death in Bangladesh since February 2015.

A group affiliated with al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the killing of a liberal Bangladeshi blogger this month.

Islamic State has also claimed responsibility for the killings of two foreigners and attacks on mosques and Christian priests in Bangladesh since September.

The government has denied that Islamic State or al Qaeda groups have a presence in the country and said homegrown Islamist radicals are behind the attacks.

At least five militants have been killed in shootouts since November as security forces have stepped up a crackdown on Islamist militants looking to establish a Muslim state based on sharia, or Islamic religious law.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.26

Trend:

The situation in Terter direction of the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies is currently stable, Vagif Dergahli, spokesperson for Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry told Trend Apr.26.

Twenty houses were damaged on the night of Apr.26 as Azerbaijan's Terter city was subjected to fire by Armenian armed forces, he said.

No casualties have been reported.

In response, Azerbaijani armed forces inflicted strikes only on the military facilities of Armenia, said Dergahli.

Armenian armed forces shelled Azerbaijan's Terter district, including its Gapanli village on Apr.26 from 01:05 to 04:25 (UTC/GMT +4 hours), by using 82-mm and 120-mm mortars, the 122-mm howitzers D-30 and D-21 multiple rocket launchers, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said Apr.26.

On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements.

Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
The Arab male in the photo was taken into custody by border police on Monday morning the second day of Chol Hamoed Pesach in Yerushalayim after going wild in the Old City of Jerusalem.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo: Media Resource Group)
MK Moshe Gafne rejects the position of those who view visiting Har Habayis as a mitzvah, adding at times, the actions of those visiting the holy site has led to harm to the lives of Jews.

Gafne gave an interview to NRG News, in which he declined to label himself left-wing or right-wing. I am not left or right-wing but I wish to advance the diplomatic process and not to permit the continuation of the current situation, the status quo of the sword and to continue fighting to survive. We must maintain a cautious process. Do not hand over parts of Eretz Yisrael without calculating but the process must take place.

Gafne feels the largest damage caused by the right-wing is visiting Har Habayis, damage which he views as halachic and diplomatic that at times results in harm to Jewish lives.

Its a terrible thing Gafne explains as he continues to attack those who visit Har Habayis. There it is the Kodesh Kedoshim and we see that religious people have made this into a mitzvah. It boils our blood. This is in addition to the immediate damage. Degel Hatorah and the mainstream of chareidi Jewry is politically moderate ant opposes provoking other nations. We live in a small global village. There are those that are strong and those less so and have to assist the other. We must behave normally. People are megalomaniacal.

It must be noted: According to the Poskei Hador one is absolutely forbidden to visit Har Habayis, and there is an Isur Karess for one that goes there.

A number of years ago on Sukkos, President Shimon Peres paid a visit to the Sukkah of Maran HaGaon Rav Elyashiv ZATZAL, where Rav Elyashiv called on the President to prevent Jews from visiting Har Habayis, stating it is an act that that is viewed as extremely provocative by the goyim. Maran stated everything possible must be done to avoid a religious war, and the provocateurs are playing with fire.

Maran is quoted as explaining to the president that Halacha forbids going onto Har Habayis but today, it is more than this, it is an act that may lead to a religious war and bloodshed.

This is and remains the view of poskei hador. This is also the view of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Among the rabbonim who share this view are HaGaon HaRav Chaim Kanievsky Shlita, HaGaon HaRav Shmuel Halevy Wosner ZATZAL, HaGaon HaRav Gershon Edelstein Shlita, Maran HaGaon HaRav Aaron Yehuda Leib Shteinman Shlita, Maran HaGaon HaRav Ovadia Yosef ZTL, Maran HaGaon HaRav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv ZTL and many others.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Once again a rumor posted to WhatsApp has gone viral, creating a stir in certain circles. This particular rumor earlier this week reported that Gilad Shalit was killed in a vehicular accident. Shalit was held in Hamas captivity for over five years before being released in an exchange deal in October 2011 that resulted in Israel setting free over 1,000 terrorists.

The rumor stated that Shalit was killed in a vehicle accident in northern Israel and his father, Mr. Noam Shalit, had been seriously injured. The report added that there was a gag order on the accident and details.

When the Shalit family heard of the rumor it was quick to release a statement that Gilad and Noam are BH alive and well and they were not involved in an accident or injured in any way.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Evoking history and appealing for solidarity, President Barack Obama on Monday cast his decision to send 250 more troops to Syria as a bid to keep up momentum in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State extremists. He pressed European allies to match the U.S. with new contributions of their own.

Obamas announcement of the American troops, which capped a six-day tour to the Middle East and Europe, reflected a steady deepening of U.S. military engagement, despite the presidents professed reluctance to dive further into another Middle East conflict. As Obama gave notice of the move, he said he wanted the U.S. to share the increasing burden.

Obama discussed the IS fight with British Prime Minster David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minster Matteo Renzi.

The president formally announced the new troop deployment in a speech about European unity and trans-Atlantic cooperation  a running theme of his trip. Speaking in Germany, he evoked the continents history of banding together to defeat prejudice and emerge from the ruins of the Second World War.

Make no mistake, Obama said. These terrorists will learn the same lessons as others before them have, which is, your hatred is no match for our nations united in the defense of our way of life.

The rhetoric belied an underlying frustration in his administration about allies contributions to the U.S.-led fight in Syria and neighboring Iraq. Although the coalition includes some 66 nations, the U.S. has conducted the vast majority of the air strikes, and there has been little appetite by other nations to send in ground troops of their own.

The president recently rattled leaders in Europe and the Middle East by describing allies as free riders. He made a passing reference to that complaint on Monday, as he noted that not all European allies contribute their expected share to NATO: Ill be honest: Sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense.

On stops in Riyadh, London and Hannover this week, Obama repeatedly pushed allies for more firepower, training for local forces and economic aid to help reconstruct regions in Iraq that have been retaken from Islamic State control but are still vulnerable. Obama appeared to come up short in Riyadh, when he met with Arab allies.

He made the pitch again in Hannover, where he attended a massive industrial technology trade show on what was likely his last presidential visit to Germany.

These terrorists are doing everything in their power to strike our cities and kill our citizens, so we need to do everything in our power to stop them, Obama said.

The new deployment brings the number of U.S. military personnel in Syria from roughly 50 to roughly 300. It follows a similar ramp-up in Iraq, announced last week. The new Syria forces will include special operation troops assisting local forces, as well as maintenance and logistics personnel.

Like the forces already on the ground, they will not be directly engaged in combat, officials said.

Obamas call for European solidarity extended beyond the anti-Islamic State campaign.

Amid what he described as unsettling times, Obama revived the argument he made in London days earlier that Britain and the European Union are strongest if Briton votes in an upcoming referendum to remain in the 28-member nation block. And Obama mounted a forceful defense of his host in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is facing criticism for her willingness to take in refugees from Syria.

Chancellor Merkel and others have eloquently reminded us that we cannot turn our backs on our fellow human beings who are here now and need our help now, Obama said. We have to uphold our values, not just when its easy but when its hard.

Obama, who used one of his final foreign trips to start trying to shape his legacy, said he saw Europe facing a defining moment.

He urged the continents leaders to pay attention to income inequality, which he said creates wedges among populations, and other issues like education for young people and equal pay for women.

If we do not solve these problems, we start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way, Obama said.

(AP)
details added (first version posted at 18:43)

Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

Trend:

The Armenian leadership's statements are illogical, said Elmar Mammadyarov, Azerbaijani foreign minister.

"On the one hand, the Armenian leadership says that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be resolved only peacefully," the minister said. "On the other hand, the Armenian leadership states about leaving the negotiation process."

"Does Armenia choose the military way of the conflict settlement? Mammadyarov said. "It is impossible to understand the logic of the Armenian leadership."

"Azerbaijan has repeatedly stated that the main threat to the region and the negotiation process is the presence of the Armenian armed forces in the occupied Azerbaijani territories," the minister said. "The military must return to barracks, otherwise, a military confrontation may occur at any time."

The minister said that it is necessary to exclude the military element from the conflict settlement process.

"First of all, the Armenian armed forces must be withdrawn from the occupied Azerbaijani territories," the minister said. "Afterwards, peacekeepers can be deployed in the area of the conflict."

"The communications can be opened," the minister said. "The refugees and displaced people can return to their native lands. The confidence-building measures will be taken."

"The negotiations must be continued on the basis of the updated Madrid principles declared by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs on the level of heads of state at the summits in L'Aquila (Italy) and Muskoka (Canada)," the minister said.

"The first paragraph of the updated Madrid principles envisages the withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories," the minister said. "If Armenia is truly interested in resolving the conflict, it should withdraw its troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories and comprehensive negotiations on the conflict settlement must be initiated."

"The meetings are not planned to be held at the level of foreign ministers," the minister said. "The meetings will be held with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen."

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Donald Trump and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions would seem to have little in common.

Sessions is a polite Southerner from small-town Alabama, while Trump is a brash New Yorker and creature of the big-city spotlight. Sessions likes to spend weekends out of cellphone range in a rural corner of his home state. Trump retreats to his lavish Mar-a-Lago compound where hes easily accessible on social media or for a television appearance.

Yet the two have become kindred political spirits in the 2016 election, drawn together by a shared belief that some of their Republican Party leaders are selling out their own voters on immigration, as well as on trade. Its an argument Sessions has made for years in relative obscurity and one Trump has ridden to the top of the Republican presidential primary field.

I do think the Republican Party needs to recognize that it is in danger of promoting an agenda thats contrary to the wishes of its own voters, Sessions said. This can be a death blow.

As the first  and to this point, only  senator to endorse Trump, Sessions has taken on the role as Washington gatekeeper for the GOP front-runner. Hes assembled the candidates foreign policy leadership team and sends other experts Trumps way. When Trump name-drops Sessions on the campaign trail, it elicits cheers from crowds who have come to see his endorsement as affirmation of their candidates hard line on immigration.

When it came to immigration, which is a very big issue for me, and trade, which is an enormous issue for me, I felt hes the most respected person in Washington, Trump said of Sessions during an interview with The Associated Press.

Its an unlikely turn in the political spotlight for the 69-year-old Sessions, who has hardly been viewed as a man of significant political influence during his nearly 20 years representing Alabama in the Senate. Hes the longest-serving Republican in the Senate without a committee chairmanship or leadership post. And hes increasingly been out of step with his partys leaders on major issues, including his staunch opposition to the sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

If Sessions has been known for anything outside of his home state in recent years, its been as the target of immigration advocates, who have branded him a nativist for his support of tough enforcement policies and limiting legal immigration. He was instrumental in derailing President George W. Bushs attempts at immigration overhauls and was a leading opponent of the 2013 Gang of Eight bill that passed in the Senate but was blocked in the House.

Hes the most ardent, anti-immigrant restrictionist that you can find, said Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-immigration group Americas Voice. He comes from the kick-them-out-and-keep-them-out camp.

Sessions sees Trumps rise as validation of his belief that Republicans political success depends not on expanding its appeal with the fast-growing Hispanic voting bloc, but on siding with working-class voters who view job competition from immigrants and trade agreements as a threat to their own economic security.

The senator dismisses the notion that he and Trumps views are geared only toward white voters, saying hes morally confident that hes aligned with Hispanics and African-Americans as much as anyone else.

You bring in more labor, youre competing directly with them, Sessions said of minorities.

Despite their shared political philosophy, the senators endorsement didnt come easy for Trump.

Sessions had met the billionaire only once, when the real estate mogul testified at a 2005 Senate hearing on funding for a United Nations renovation project. But shortly after announcing his candidacy, Trump began courting Sessions support and seeking policy guidance from the senators staff.

The two men also began speaking by phone. In September, they held a 90-minute meeting at Sessions hideaway office on Capitol Hill, where Trump told the senator flatly that he was in the race to win it. In January, trusted Sessions aide Stephen Miller left Capitol Hill to serve as a senior policy adviser to Trump.

Sessions grew fond of Trump but resisted endorsing him. Sessions had never publicly backed a candidate in a GOP primary before and preferred to make the case for his views through data-driven policy papers. Its not unusual for his aides to distribute lengthy documents to Senate offices, or for Sessions himself to push materials into a colleagues hand.

A turning point came in January, when the senator joined other lawmakers and prominent conservatives at a private retreat in Sea Island, Georgia. The exclusive gathering was held just a few weeks before primary voting began, as the reality that Trumps candidacy wasnt fading began to set in with many Republicans.

Sessions became incensed as one high-profile speaker in particular railed against Trump, warning that he would be destructive for the party. Though Sessions wasnt scheduled to speak, he stood up unexpectedly and berated his colleagues for being the ones putting the partys future at risk by failing to fully understand their voters economic concerns.

I just felt like, weve got to battle for the heart and soul for the Republican Party, Sessions said. Are we going to reattach with the middle class, working Americans or are we going to continue to kowtow to the donor class?

About a month later, Sessions joined Trump on stage at a rally in Madison, Alabama, and announced his endorsement. Two days later, Trump won Sessions home state by more than 20 points.

Sessions endorsement stunned some conservatives, who assumed that if he did back a candidate, it would be Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. But Sessions suggested he didnt see his Senate colleague as a viable nominee, noting that his endorsement came after Trump defeated Cruz in the South Carolina primary.

Trump often brags that legions of lawmakers and Washington powerbrokers are constantly reaching out to him. But he conceded that Sessions made him work for his support and needed to be sure the first-time politician was a true-believer on immigration and trade.

It wasnt easy, Trump said. I put in a lot of work. Not so much for the endorsement  I put in a lot of work on the subjects. And then the endorsement came much more naturally. I put in a lot of work on the subject matter.

If Trump does become the Republican nominee  hes on a narrow path to getting the delegates he needs, but could still face the unpredictability of a contested convention  some see Sessions has a natural fit in the administration if the businessman goes on to be president.

This certainly raises his stature, said Alabama Democrat Roger Bedford, who lost narrowly to Sessions in a 1996 Senate race. If he wants to be anything more than a U.S. senator, if that is indeed his motive, he made the right move by endorsing early and enthusiastically.

Sessions has publicly played down the notion that hes angling for a high-ranking post in a potential Trump administration. And those close to him  including Trump  say he seems to harbor little ambition beyond representing the people of Alabama.

I hope they understand how committed he is to them, Trump said.

(AP)
On Saturday night, the campaigns of Ted Cruz and John Kasich announced a major strategic alliance. Kasich would stop campaigning in  and trying to win  Indianas primary May 3. Cruz would do the same in Oregon on May 17 and New Mexico on June 7.

The goal is simple: To keep Donald Trump from winning the 1,237 delegates he needs to be the GOPs presidential nominee this fall. We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaigns resources West and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana, Kasich chief campaign strategist John Weaver said Sunday night.

Achieving the goal is WAY harder for me to see happening  for a bunch of a reasons, which Ill get to in a minute. But before all that, its worth making this point: This is a massive gamble born entirely of desperation. What probably became clear to the Cruz campaign and, to a lesser extent, the Kasich campaign, is that they werent going to beat Trump in Indianas winner-take-most primary and, by losing, would put the real estate billionaire on a reasonable path to the GOP nomination.

And so they acted. Which they deserve credit for  since most of the time politicians in unwinnable/untenable situations continue to cling to the idea that everyone else is wrong and they are right, right up until they lose.

But action doesnt always produce the desired results. And I think thats what is going to happen here. Lets list the reasons why:

1. Candidates and campaigns are strategic. Voters arent. The theory behind this alliance is the same thinking that motivates candidates and campaigns to believe that endorsements are a critical moment in a campaign. They almost never are. Why? Because the average voter doesnt care who some other politician thinks would be the best choice in a different race. And they definitely dont want a politician they sort of like telling them to be for someone else who they likely dont like at all. The idea that a Kasich voter would be for Cruz for the broader good of the Republican Party is the sort of stuff that makes sense on a phone call where this deal was cut between two longtime political operatives. In the real world of voters, its a much harder sell. Voters dont tend to look at the big picture. They vote for who they like or who they think understands them. Or in this election, the candidate who matches their anger and alienation. Not the candidate that some other candidate told them to be for.

2. The overlap between Kasich and Cruz voters is almost nonexistent. Ted Cruz is a Southern senator whose entire campaign is premised on two ideas: a) People who are part of the Washington cartel are corrupt and dumb and b) he is the one true conservative willing to stand up to President Obama on, among other things, the Affordable Care Act. John Kasich is someone who spent two decades in Washington  he was the chairman of the Budget Committee!  and who, among other things, participated in the Medicaid Expansion program as part of Obamacare. Cruz is the no retreat, no surrender candidate. Kasich is the cant we all get along candidate.

So if you are an Indiana Republican who was for Kasich, its hard to imagine that you agree with Cruz on almost anything. Ditto a Cruz voter in Oregon or New Mexico. These candidates were on the opposite ends of the GOP spectrum even when there were 17 candidates running! The only reason you would be a Kasich voter for Cruz in Indiana is because Kasich told you to be. (And there is some doubt about how Kasich feels about that matter.) No way.

3. The alliance perfectly fits Trumps rigged narrative. If Donald Trump could have engineered a scenario that would fire up his anti-establishment base any more than it already is, the public announcement of a Cruz-Kasich alliance would be how he would have done it. Now its not just hard-to-understand delegate math where the GOP establishment is plotting against Trump but a high-profile handshake agreement between a sitting senator and governor. (Given the negative consequences of going public with the Cruz-Kasich deal, why did the two campaigns do it? They needed to signal their voters and, as importantly, their aligned super PACs to stand down.)

Collusion is often illegal in many other industries, and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive, Trump said in a statement on the deal. It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for ten months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination.

Trump tweeted:

Kasich just announced that he wants the people of Indiana to vote for him. Typical politician  cant make a deal work.

That is directly in the Trump message wheelhouse. And, if he needed a way to energize his supporters in Indiana and beyond, he now has a perfect lever to do just that. THEY are trying to take it from you! THEY are colluding! THEY think you dont matter! The way to get back at them? To vote for Trump, of course.

Gambles sometimes pay off  even one with as long odds as this one. And the time to gamble is when you are on the verge of losing it all. (Remember that freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose.)

Thats where Cruz and Kasich find themselves. And its why they made this deal. But none of that makes it more likely that the deal will work. It almost certainly wont.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post  Chris Cillizza
A top Ted Cruz aide says the campaign has identified a short list of possible vice presidential candidates. A spokeswoman for Carly Fiorina swiftly confirmed that the former business executive is among those being considered for the running mate slot.

Campaign manager Jeff Roe says on Twitter that Cruzs team is going through the normal processes for picking a running mate. He did not identify others on the short list.

Fiorina dropped out of the Republican primary earlier this year and endorsed Cruz. The Weekly Standard first reported that she was being vetted as a possible vice president.

Cruz mathematically has no chance of getting the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination. Instead, hes trying to block front-runner Donald Trump from crossing the delegate threshold and push the Republican race to a contested convention.

(AP)
A Nachal Chareidi soldier serving in the 97th Battalion of the Kfir Brigade was sent to military jail for 17 days after he chambered a bullet and pointed his automatic weapon at an Arab.

According to the 0404 News report, the soldier was walking around last Shabbos with two friends near Shar Shechem in the capital when a group of Arabs passed them. According to the soldiers friends, the Arabs cursed at the soldier which prompted him to chamber the bullet and point his weapon in a threatening fashion. Police were quick to arrive on the scene and they instructed the soldier to stand at the side. An Israel Police officer then arrived and placed the soldier in handcuffs and took him to a station. The Arab looked on in delight as this took place.

The friends report the soldier did not understand why he was being arrested and detained, especially at Shar Shechem when seconds can make a difference between life and death as was seen in many Arab terror attacks at that location during recent months. The soldier was angered that police compelled him to be Mechalel Shabbos by taking him to the station. He was handed over to military police and then brought before his brigade commander, who sentenced him to 17 days in lockup.

The soldiers friends decried the actions of police, all while the Arabs smiled and looked on, questioning why police are quick to accuse an IDF soldier rather than treating him respectfully.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Three 15-year-old males were taken into custody by French police after allegedly beating a man who they believed to be Jewish. According to the La Figaro report, they ordered the man, a locksmith, to come to them because his name sounded Jewish. When he arrived in the Paris suburb he was beaten and assaulted with pepper spray under the threat of a knife. The report stated the victim is not Jewish.

Police report the attack occurred in the Bussy Saint Georges area of eastern Paris. The victim was able to positively identify one of the three suspects in custody.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
House Speaker Paul Ryan concedes the five-point Republican legislative agenda hes pursuing in Congress could be construed as competing with policy points the GOP presidential candidates are pushing in the primary season. But he argues that the party shouldnt wait until its nominating convention in July to tell the public its priorities, including lowering the national debt, strengthening the military and easing government regulation of business.

In an interview on CBS This Morning Tuesday, Ryan says that if the party waits until its nominating convention to state its primary policy objectives, its too late. He says he doesnt intend to handicap the GOP presidential race or discuss the candidates since hes the party convention chairman. But Ryan adds that the GOP needs a transition from being an opposition party to being a proposition party.

He says hes spoken to Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich  the three candidates still in the race  but doesnt elaborate. Speaking of congressional Republicans, Ryan says, Were not worrying about something thats out of our control, which is who is the nominee.

(AP)
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

Trend:

Due to answer of the French Secretary of State on the question regarding the cooperation between the French cities and different settlements in Nagorno-Karabakh, Trend reached out to Azerbaijani ambassador to France Elchin Amirbekov for comments.

"Assuming that the answer of the French minister is not the result of translation error, I consider it necessary to clarify the issue in order to avoid further misunderstanding," said Amirbekov.

"The position of France is clear: the country respects Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and does not recognize the illegal separatist regime in Azerbaijan's occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region," said the diplomat.

Amirbekov went on to add that according to the French laws, agreements concluded between French cities and regions with representatives of the territorial entities unrecognized by France, including the separatist regime of Nagorno-Karabakh are illegal, contrary to international obligations of France and have no legal force.

"This official French government's position is reflected in the circular, signed July 2, 2015 by the ministers of Foreign and Internal Affairs of France and sent to all regions in order to familiarize with the prescription to mayors of the French cities," Amirbekov said.

"Despite that, several leaders of the French cities that are in the electoral depending on Armenian voters declared their intention to continue this illegal cooperation. In relation to these persons, the Azerbaijani side decided to transfer the resolution of this issue in the legal state and obtain the cancellation of these agreements, as well as prevent any future similar documents," said the ambassador.
Who would have thought it. After all the dire warnings from the International Monetary Fund, Bank of England and others over the havoc to be visited on Britains economy by the uncertainty over the European Union referendum, the pro-Europe CBI has delivered a shard of light for the Leave campaign.

In the three months to April, just as the referendum debate was gathering momentum, the CBIs gauge of output from Britains factories moved up from minus two to plus one, its best reading since July.

In other words, the turbulence and uncertainty caused by the collapse of commodity prices and Chinas economic slow down looks to have been a bigger cause of concern for industrialists than the fear engendered by the prospect of leaving the EU.

Indeed, the fall in the sterling exchange rate looks to have been helpful to manufacturers who report that investment intentions are strong. The CBI report goes on to argue that given the expected pick-up in exports it is likely that firms will be seeking to increase capacity.

No solution: Riot police clash with anti-establishment demonstrators in front of parliament in Athens, Greece last year. The country's ongoing debt crisis is one of several serious problems faced by the EU

Relying on any one survey is a mistake, but coming as it does from a pro-EU group par excellence it must be given credence.

One of the great untold stories of the referendum campaign is the appalling state of the euroland economy. It was an underlying theme at this months IMF meetings in Washington.

The Funds financial stability report drew attention to the 900billion (700billion) of non-performing (a posh name for rotten) loans on the books of Europes banks.

The problems are not confined to Italy, although they are worst there. Many of Germanys regional savings banks also are stuffed with bad loans.

Moreover, Germany, the IMF and Greece are limbering up for the annual dust up over Greeces debt overhang.

At the core of the problem is the unwillingness of Germany to accept that the only way Athens will ever have the headroom to return to health is if Berlin recognises that the time has come for a debt relief that pushes repayment obligations so far into the future that they no longer impact on recovery.

Stagnation in the eurozone, forecast to grow by just 1.5 per cent this year, which is barely enough to deal with shocking unemployment levels, is one of the principle causes of the precarious state of the global economy.

And this has been going on since the euro crisis of 2009-10  long before anyone started to worry about Brexit.

Hopefully the underlying fissures in the eurozone, which encompasses 19 of Europes 28 members and the larger part of its gross domestic product, will become more embedded in the referendum debate.

A soon to be published book called Europe Isnt Working, under the Yale imprint, written by my former colleagues Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson, clinically examines the fault-lines in the eurozone and how lone voices of the Left who disapproved at the time have been proven correct.

The jobless rate in the UK is 5.1 per cent, in the United States it is 4.9 per cent and in Japan it is 3.3 per cent. In the eurozone countries it is 10.3 per cent. Project fear doesnt say much about that.

Safari Bob

We know from the financial crisis how effective Bob Diamond can be at marshalling capital when it is needed.

Some of the Middle East sources of funds are the subject of a long-running Serious Fraud Office inquiry which Barclays has failed to shut down.

None of this has dented Safari Bobs ambitions in Africa. His Atlas Mara group already has swallowed Nigerias biggest bank and is considered respectable enough to receive a $25million (17million) grant from Americas foreign aid arm, US Aid, for loans for young entrepreneurs, financial training and leadership development.

Diamond is reported to be working through his American vehicle Atlas Merchant Capital and private equity giants Carlyle Group on a bid for Barclays Africa, which operates in ten countries including South Africa.

A potential problem for Diamond and his partners is the insistence, up until now, that the government in Pretoria maintains a substantial stake in the South African bank Absa. That is among the main reasons that Barclays latest chief executive Jes Staley decided to sell. Tying up so much capital in a bank in which you can only extract a proportion of the profits does not make great economic sense.

Perhaps African bank supervisors will take a more lenient view of Atlas Merchant and Carlyle as they seek to pull off one of the biggest takeovers in the continents history.

Front page

Is tribune Publishing, owner of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times as well as big city newspapers in Baltimore and Orlando, finally going to find a safe harbour?

It has been in nowhere land since the company was bought for a whopping $13billion (9billion) by real estate mogul Sam Zell almost a decade ago before going into Chapter 11.

Now it is being bid for by US Today publisher Gannett, which already owns 100 titles across the US, for a relatively modest $815million (563million) including debt.
Jupiter Fund Managements affable, vice-chairman Ed Bonham Carter resents the so-called star manager culture within his industry.

He says: People who are exceptionally talented are often not normal people.

Their make-up is quite often different. So managing egos can be difficult.

Does Ed, 56, have anyone in mind? His prickly ex-boss, Jupiters buccaneering founder John Duffield, 76, (right) has certainly never been accused of hiding his light under a bushel.

Raffish Italian tycoon Flavio Briatore is bringing his Monaco restaurant-cum-nightclub Twiga to London.

Im told medallion man Flavio, 66, who for a time boldly squired model Naomi Campbell, has just dried the ink on a deal for a prime spot on Sloane Street near his clothing emporium Billionaire Couture.

What can we expect inside? Lots of flashy Russians hosing down half-naked young women with champagne, sighs my weary catering source. Still, Id better pop in when it opens, just to check.

Sainsburys chief finance officer John Rogers is as vigilant with his own finances as he is manning the purse strings at the embattled grocer.

Perusing Sainsburys company report, I notice the beancounter, 46, takes advantage of the firms Share Purchase Plan, which allows employees to squirrel 115 of their pre-tax salary towards company stock.

Rogers pre-tax monthly take-home is a princely 56,000 (675,000 a year) Still, every little helps, as Sainsburys wouldnt say.

Management consultant-turned-shirt maker Nick Wheeler has paid himself 16million after his firm Charles Tyrwhitt reported bumper profits.

Whats his secret? Perhaps its the silver-maned Old Etonians dogged commitment to customer relations.

Each shirt comes with his email address printed on the label. Surely it cant be his private address, I ask, pushing the send key. Moments later, Wheeler, 51, pings back curtly: Depends what your emails about!

City law firms Allen & Overy and Freshfields  part of the Square Miles so-called magic circle of elite legal outfits  are scoffing humble pie.
For sale? Thomas Cook is believed to have held talks with rivals about selling its fleet of aircraft

Thomas Cook is believed to have held talks with rival airlines about selling its fleet of 91 aircraft.

Chief executive Peter Fankhauser is keen to either offload the entire airline division or form a joint venture with another operator.

He has reportedly met with Lufthansa, which owns the budget Eurowings carrier, about merging it with Thomas Cooks Condor brand.

The firm has recently placed an order for 25 Airbus A321s and said it would invest 100million revamping the inside of existing planes.

Investment fund Greybull Capital, which bought Monarch Airlines in 2014, is also thought to be interested in snapping up a rival and has looked at Thomas Cooks airline business.
CPP directors last night abandoned a courtroom bid to stop Hamish Ogston seizing power

The founder of scandal-hit credit card firm CPP appears to have won a battle to sack its board and regain control.

Directors last night dramatically abandoned a courtroom bid to stop Hamish Ogston seizing power after it became clear the odds were against them.

Ogston set up the firm in 1980 and made 120million when it floated on the London Stock Exchange six years ago.

CPP was fined 10.5million in 2012 for misleading customers into buying worthless insurance for debit, credit and store cards. Ogston failed to take the company private and stepped down as a director in 2013.

He has since sought to use his 42 per cent stake to get rid of chairman Roger Canham, chief executive, Stephen Callaghan, and two non-executive directors.

Schroders, with a 10 per cent stake, proposed Cable & Wireless Communications chairman Sir Richard Lapthorne, deputy chairman Mark Hamlin and former executive Nick Hooper to replace them. But the board said they didnt have the experience or qualifications.

They said Ogston was backed by Schroders due to his investments with one of its affiliates. The board applied for an injunction to stop Ogston voting.

But yesterday they abandoned the move after investor Phoenix Asset Management decided to abstain in the vote.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.26

Trend:

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations is being held in Baku Apr.26.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and his spouse Mehriban Aliyeva are attending the opening of the forum.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Malta's President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, Chairman of the Council of the Republic of Belarusian National Assembly Mikhail Myasnikovich, Chairman of the Senate of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and other high-ranking officials are also participating in the event.

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations will last untill Apr.27.

The Youth Forum was held on the first day of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum on Apr.25.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum. The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the forum.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on July 24, 2015 to create an organizing committee for holding the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.
In the money: CRH boss Albert Manifold has received a rise in his basic salary and a bonus boost

Building materials giant CRH is the latest blue-chip company to anger shareholders over high levels of boardroom pay.

The company has awarded its chief executive, Albert Manifold, an 8.5 per cent rise in his basic salary and a big increase in potential bonus payments.

But investor group Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has recommended that shareholders vote against the plan at the firms annual general meeting on Thursday.

Manifold saw his total pay packet at CRH rise from 3.3million in 2014 to 4.3million last year.

He has been handed an 8.5 per cent rise in his basic pay to 1.1million for 2016.

CRH has said he could get a bonus worth 225 per cent of his basic salary this year, up from a potential maximum of 150 per cent last year.

Manifold could also get 365 per cent of his basic pay through the companys performance share plan, up from a maximum of 250 per cent previously.

It means that the maximum he could earn through these three aspects of his pay has jumped 50 per cent to 7.5million.

This is a considerable year- on-year increase, said ISS. In addition, the short and long-term performance targets have not been made significantly more challenging than what applied previously to reflect the higher awards.

'As a consequence, a vote against the remuneration policy is considered warranted.

A handful of companies are expected to be given bloody noses this week over fat-cat pay including Schroders, Shire, Barclays and Weir on Thursday and AstraZeneca on Friday.

Smith & Nephew and Anglo American are among the blue-chip firms to have already suffered at the hands of an investor backlash so far this year.

But the most dramatic rebellion was at BP where just over 59 per cent of shareholders rejected a pay package of almost 14million for chief executive Bob Dudley.

Figures from ISS show an average of 5.8 per cent of votes have been cast against remuneration reports and policies so far this year  up from 3.9 per cent last season.
Tata Steels UK operations are on the brink of being broken up and sold separately as fears grow that no buyer will take on the business as a whole.

Indian owner Tata decided earlier this month to pull out of Britain after rejecting a 100million rescue plan because it was unaffordable. It said its main plan was to sell the business as one.

But sources say it is running a dual process which could see its operations split up. It has 14 separate UK operations, involving steel production, distribution and research.

Split-up: Tata Steel is reportedly talking to investors with a view to selling off individual parts of its UK operations

A number of buyers are thought to be interested in hiving off some of the more profitable elements.

But a break up would potentially be a disaster for thousands of workers because less attractive parts of the business could be left on the shelf.

A source said: The starting point and the strong preference is for the business to be sold as a whole, but Tata is also talking to individual investors about selling parts, as well.

It is understood that a group of specialist metals producers calling themselves Albion Steel is interested in parts of the business.

Last week Tata issued a sales memorandum that was distributed to 190 potential buyers. Investment bank Standard Chartered was appointed to run the sale process and a handful of interested parties have publicly stepped forward.

Senior managers at Port Talbot, led by boss Stuart Wilkie and backed by billionaire Sir Terry Matthews, want to stage a management buyout.

Metals tycoon Sanjeev Gupta, whose Liberty House recently bought two Scottish steel mills from Tata, said he is interested in other Tata assets. But Gupta said attempts to buy the whole of Tata Steel UK would fail.

I dont understand why someone thinks they can do what Tata couldnt, he has said. Tata is one of the best companies in the world with all their financial firepower, and they couldnt make it work.

The third interested party is Greybull Capital, which recently bought Tatas Scunthorpe plant.

It is running its slide rule over Tatas speciality steel arm, which coats steel with chemicals to stop it corroding, and employs 2,000 workers.

Standard Chartered spent last week trying to galvanise interest from Asian buyers.

The next stage is for interested parties to sign a confidentiality agreement. They will then be sent confidential information to help them calculate a value for the business. A spokesman for the firm said: Tata Steel continues to be open to interest from credible investors for its UK business.

Britains steel industry has been devastated by a flood of cheap imported steel which has mainly come from China due to a slow down in its economy.
Sir Philip pocketed 400million from the 164-store chain before presiding over its decline and selling it for just 1

City fat cats have carved fortunes out of failed retailer BHS while leaving its workers in the lurch, it emerged last night.

Sir Philip Green pocketed 400million from the 164-store chain before presiding over its decline and selling it for just 1.

Another 25million has gone to the new owners, led by a twice-bankrupt former racing driver. He is said to have splashed out on a yacht, ski holiday and a luxury car as BHS headed for disaster.

MPs have pledged to investigate, saying they will go after anyone guilty of impropriety. Richard Fuller, a Tory, said the collapse showed the 'unacceptable face of capitalism'.

Labour accused Sir Philip of extracting hundreds of millions of pounds and making off 'to his favourite tax haven'. He and his associates have taken as much as 1billion out of BHS if property deals and other transactions are included, according to the Financial Times.

A high street fixture for 88 years, BHS has gone into administration with debts of 1.3billion. A 571million deficit in the pension fund leaves 20,000 past and present staff facing 10 per cent cuts to retirement payouts. The meltdown means:

11,000 staff face the dole and a hard-up old age, some telling of betrayal by 'thieving b******s';

Pensions watchdogs are probing the situation and are examining Sir Philip's role;

The owners are facing questions over where the 25million went.

Sir Philip, who has just bought a 100million megayacht, has offered 80million  half in loan form  to help bail out the pension fund.

But the Pensions Regulator is expected to push for more, perhaps several hundred million pounds.

Dominic Chappell, who bought BHS for 1 from Sir Philip, under the umbrella of a consortium called Retail Acquisitions, insists 'no one is to blame' for the collapse.

The 48-year-old has been made personally insolvent three times and there are serious questions as to why Sir Philip decided he was fit to buy such a major institution.

Scroll down for video

City fat cats have carved fortunes out of failed retailer BHS while leaving its workers in the lurch

Another 25million has gone to the new owners, led by a twice-bankrupt former racing driver. He is said to have splashed out on a yacht, ski holiday and a luxury car as BHS headed for disaster

The former racing driver has been through an individual voluntary arrangement and two bankruptcies. He was probed by the Department for Business over the collapse of a holiday home development on the Isle of Wight that left business partners with losses running into the millions.

On the failure of BHS, he said: 'No one is to blame. It was a combination of bad trading and not being able to raise enough money from the property portfolio.'

However, his team took more than 25million out of the business in the 13 months they ran it. Sources said the payments included 2.8million in management fees, 2.1million in salaries and wages, 11million in legal and professional fees and 10million in interest payments.

POTENTIAL PROBLEMS FOR BHS CUSTOMERS AND WORKERS What will happen to my BHS gift vouchers? Shoppers who have BHS vouchers or gift cards will still be able to use them at BHS shops, despite the firm falling into administration. Although they are still valid they may only be used for 50 per cent of the value of a purchase. For example, to use a 10 voucher, a customer would need to buy at least 20 worth of products in a shop. Consumer group Which? advised customers to spend the vouchers as 'quickly as possible'. I want to exchange an item Items purchased from BHS in the 35 days prior to April 22 can be exchanged for goods to the same value or less. Refunds are only accepted on faulty items. Refunds and exchanges for items that are not faulty will no longer be possible on goods purchased after April 22. What about the company's pension scheme? The pension scheme, which has a shortfall of up to 571million, will eventually be taken on by the Pension Protection Fund  which is funded by a statutory levy on all of Britain's final-salary pension schemes. Around 8,000 or so former employees who are already drawing a pension will continue to get their promised benefits, but their annual rises will be capped at 2.5 per cent. Around 13,000 who are yet to retire will lose 10 per cent of their pension payments. Advertisement

Former associates of Mr Chappell have described him as a 'great bull*******' and questioned his ability to run a national chain.

Angela Eagle, Labour's business spokesman, said Sir Philip had left others to plug a 571million pensions black hole.

She said: 'If the worst happens the liability will be covered by the pensions protection scheme and BHS staff will get only 90 per cent of the pension they've worked so hard for and saved for.

'But Philip Green seems to have got much more out of BHS for himself and his family than that.

'BHS staff and the public will understandably want to know whether the former owner who took so many millions of pounds out of the business will have to pay his fair share of the liabilities which accrued during his stewardship.'

Business minister Anna Soubry told MPs: 'If there is any suggestion of impropriety, we will come after people.'

The Pensions Regulator has announced it will use all its powers to ensure Sir Philip, who is said to be worth 3.5billion, does not dodge his responsibilities to BHS staff.

A spokesman said: 'We can confirm that we are undertaking an investigation into the BHS pensions scheme to determine whether it would be appropriate to use our anti-avoidance powers.'

The responsibility for paying BHS pensions goes to the Pension Protection Fund, which raises cash through levies on other company schemes.

Staff at the company's flagship store in Oxford Street believe that both Sir Philip and Mr Chappell were at fault. One unnamed woman sales floor manager said she had cried herself sick at the prospect of losing her job. 'Most people are blaming Philip Green for this  for the downfall of the business. We had one thieving b****** and now we've got another,' she said.

Sir Philip bought BHS for 200million in 2000 and in subsequent years paid dividends to himself and colleagues estimated at more than 400million. BHS largely funded this windfall by taking out huge loans and by selling assets. Business recovery expert, Nick Hood of the Opus Group, said: 'This is a business that has been seriously underinvested in over a long period of time. It lost 416million in the six and a half years up to the point where it was sold.

'Retail these days is all about heavy investment in staying up with the trend, online offerings, mobile offerings. None of this happened at BHS. This is another retail business that hasn't stayed up with the times. You have got 11,000 jobs at risk here and the pensions of 20,000 people. It is a disaster.'

He said Sir Philip, 64, would not be able to walk away unscathed.

'Officials will be looking very closely at the situation and it is in a position to issue contribution notices to people who have been connected to that fund,' he added.

A firm of administrators, Duff & Phelps, has been appointed to take over and the stores will remain open for now.

It is believed the chain will be broken up with some stores sold off piecemeal. Mr Chappell insists that he had a successful track record as an entrepreneur.

Gin palace: Sir Philip Green has just bought this 100million megayacht, and has offered 80million  half in loan form  to help bail out the BHS pension fund

Bankrupt twice... but he still took home 25million

By Ruth Sunderland

On the deck of the tall ship Lord Nelson in Southampton Harbour six months ago, BHS owner Dominic Chappell looked as though he did not have a care in the world.

His chubby face was split by a huge grin as he pledged to hand over 25,000 to charity on behalf of the High Street chain  though, even as he beamed with self-satisfaction, it was hurtling towards ruin.

'He seemed like a lovely chap, and yes, we did get our money shortly afterwards,' said Duncan Souster, chief executive of the Jubilee Sailing Trust, which helps disabled people take to the sea.

Mr Souster is one of the lucky ones: not everyone who has done business with Chappell would share the view that he is 'a lovely chap'. Nor, for that matter, has the BHS owner always honoured his financial obligations.

However worthy the cause, his 11,000 employees at BHS may baulk at their employer handing over cheques to charity as they are left facing uncertainty over their jobs and their pensions.

But just who is Dominic Chappell? When Sir Philip Green, the former owner of BHS, sold out to him last year for a token 1, the City was utterly baffled.

Dominic Chappell, who bought BHS for 1 from Sir Philip, under the umbrella of a consortium called Retail Acquisitions, insists 'no one is to blame' for the collapse

A firm of administrators, Duff & Phelps, has been appointed to take over and the stores will remain open for now

Few had heard of the 49-year-old former public schoolboy with a taste for racing cars, ski slopes and yachts, or of his investment company, Retail Acquisitions.

But it soon became clear that Chappell had arrived at BHS with a trail of creditors behind him  not to mention a secret investment company set up in Panama shortly after he took over the retailer.

He has been insolvent no fewer than three times: once through an Individual Voluntary Arrangement that allows debtors to avoid going bust by reaching agreements over their borrowings, and twice through bankruptcy.

He has also had three County Court Judgments against him for personal debts.

It emerged last night that under his stewardship more than 25million has been transferred out of BHS and into his Retail Acquisitions company over the past year.

This sum includes nearly 5million for management fees and salaries to Chappell and his associates. It also includes an 8.4million loan made by BHS to Retail Acquisitions, around 1.5million of which went to Chappell. These revelations will incense BHS staff and suppliers who are owed money. Former business associates, however, say the latest disaster is all too predictable.

'I am not at all surprised at what has happened at BHS. When I heard he had taken over, I gave him about a year,' says one man, whose business lost heavily in a marina development on the Isle of Wight that resulted in Chappell's second bankruptcy in 2009. The Island Harbour Marina development went under owing 24million to Anglo Irish Bank.

'He would arrive in his helicopter and we would have to chauffeur him to our office. He did me a lot of damage  fortunately my business was strong enough.' His chequered finances have not, however, prevented Chappell from enjoying all the trappings of a tycoon. Shortly after taking over BHS, he bought a yacht, Maverick 5, as well as taking delivery of a Range Rover and having a ski-ing holiday with wife Rebecca in the upmarket Austrian resort of Kitzbuhel. He is understood to live in a substantial rented house in Dorset and to have put in several offers to buy lavish local properties.

Chappell was brought up in Sunbury-on-Thames in Surrey and went to the 11,550-a-term Millfield school in Somerset. He claims to have been a racing driver and to have driven in the Le Mans 24-hour race.

His chequered finances have not, however, prevented Chappell (pictured standing under the blue flag) from enjoying all the trappings of a tycoon. Shortly after taking over BHS, he bought a yacht, Maverick 5

His financial misfortunes started early. He became insolvent for the first time at just 29 in 1996, when he entered an Individual Voluntary Arrangement. He claimed this happened because he gave a personal guarantee to a Formula One team that failed.

In late 2005, he was bankrupted by estate agent Foxtons over an unpaid fee related to the sale of a 1.2million flat in Fulham, south-west London. He was discharged a year later.

Yet another business failure came when his father Joe's property company went into administration in 2008. Dominic is listed as a director between 1993 to 2005 and the firm was finally dissolved in 2013 owing 230,000 to taxpayer-backed Lloyds Bank.

His fellow directors at the time of the BHS takeover include 77-year-old Keith Smith, who is remembered in City circles for his time as a director of broker Nabarro Wells, where he acted as an adviser to a firm called Langbar, one of the most notorious frauds in the Square Mile in recent years.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.26

Trend:

Division and exclusion only play into the hands of the extremists, but what they really want to destroy is our common ground, said the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in his video message to the participants of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.

"I appreciate the hospitality of President Ilham Aliyev, government of Azerbaijan and the city of Baku," he said.

"We live at a time of great crises. Record numbers of people have forced to flee their homes. Many escaped violence, extremism and prosecution," Ban Ki-moon added.

"We are walking around the world to resolve disputes, conflicts and consolidate peace," said the UN secretary general. "We are focusing on prevention by tackling the root causes of conflicts."

Further, Ban Ki-moon noted that the General Assembly has welcomed the UN plan of action to prevent violence and extremism.

This phenomenon is not rooted in any single religion, or nationality, he said, adding that stereotyping is dangerous and destabilizing.
Details added, first version posted at 10:31

Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

By Seymur Aliyev- Trend:

The UNAOC 7th Global Forum official ceremony took place today in Baku, where the country's President Ilham Aliyev made the opening speech.

He welcomed the participants of the forum.

"It is a big honor for us to host the 7th UNAOC Global Forum. We consider it a sign of appreciation of our activity and promotion of values of intercultural dialogue, multiculturalism," said the president in his opening speech.

"I'd like to express my gratitude to the founding fathers of the alliance - Turkey and Spain, President Erdogan and former Prime Minister Zapatero, for this extremely important initiative, which now lives for more than 10 years," Ilham Aliyev said.

The president went on to add that the idea of creation of the alliance was the sign of wisdom of the politicians, President Erdogan and former Prime Minister Zapatero, supported by international community.

"I'd also like to express my gratitude to the UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations Mr. Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser for his leadership, contribution and promotion of the values of peace, solidarity and friendship," said president Aliyev.

The president went on to say that Azerbaijan is proud to have the representatives of more than 140 countries gather in Baku to address the important issues of the alliance of civilizations.

He said that Azerbaijan, for centuries, was a place where religions, cultures and civilizations met.

"We're not only a geographic bridge between East and West, but also a cultural bridge. For centuries, representatives of religions, cultures lived in peace and dignity in Azerbaijan," he said.

"Religious tolerance, multiculturalism - were always present here. There was no word - multiculturalism, but the ideas were always present," said the president.

Ilham Aliyev added that as a result of that, Azerbaijan today is a multiethnic, multiconfessional country, where representatives of all religions and ethnic groups live in dignity and peace.

"This is one of our biggest assets," he said. "And we're proud of our history. We are proud of our historical monuments, which reflect the creation of representatives of different cultures."

President reminded that one of the oldest mosques in the world, which was built in 743, is situated in Azerbaijani city of Shemakha.

"Also, one of the oldest churches in the Caucasus, the ancient church of ancient state Caucasian Albania is also situated in Azerbaijan, close to another ancient city of Sheki," he said.

The president said the Azerbaijani government invests in construction and renovation of mosques, orthodox and catholic churches, synagogues.

"This is our policy and this is our lifestyle," said the president. "For centuries, Azerbaijan is preserving this asset, regardless of political or social situation in the country."

Ilham Aliyev went on to add that Azerbaijan is relatively young as an independent country, only 25 years old, but it is ancient, with deep historical and cultural roots.

"Multiculturalism for us is a state policy," said the president. "We organize different events, addressing this important issue."

The president added that every two years, Intercultural dialogue forum takes place in Azerbaijan, and Baku International Humanitarian Forum is hosted regularly as well.

"The main idea is to bring the representatives of different religions together and how to establish more understanding between us," he said.

The president also reminded that Azerbaijan hosted the world summit of religious leaders, addressing important issues of interreligious dialogue.

"I think today this is one of the most important topics on global agenda," he said.
Details added, first version posted at 10:57

Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

Trend:

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's initiative to proclaim 2016 the year of multiculturalism is widely acclaimed as an important step aimed at strengthening relations among the peoples of the world, said the UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser.

He was addressing the opening session of the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), being held in Baku on Apr. 26 under the topic "Living Together In Inclusive Societies: A Challenge and A Goal".

Al-Nasser further expressed deep appreciation and gratitude to President Ilham Aliyev and the government of Azerbaijan for hosting the event.

"We could not dream of a better venue than the city of Baku to hold this Forum," he said.

Elsewhere, in his speech Al-Nasser said the UNAOC is a soft power tool established to contribute to more peaceful world by countering radicalization and polarization.

He said the event's theme this year - "Living Together In Inclusive Societies: A Challenge and A Goal" - converges with the UN's four pillars, that is, peace and security, human rights, rule of law and development.
Details added (first version posted on 11:22)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.26

Trend:

Division and exclusion only play into the hands of the extremists, but what they really want to destroy is our common ground, said the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in his video message to the participants of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.

"I appreciate the hospitality of President Ilham Aliyev, government of Azerbaijan and the city of Baku," he said. "I applaud the team of this forum."

"We live at a time of great crises. Record numbers of people have forced to flee their homes. Many escaped violence, extremism and prosecution," Ban Ki-moon added.

"We are walking around the world to resolve disputes, conflicts and consolidate peace," said the UN secretary general. "We are focusing on prevention by tackling the root causes of conflicts."

Further, Ban Ki-moon noted that the General Assembly has welcomed the UN plan of action to prevent violence and extremism.

This phenomenon is not rooted in any single religion, vision or nationality, he said, adding that stereotyping is dangerous and destabilizing.
Airport development adding to economy, jobs in the region

Pittsburgh may always be known as the Steel City, but a wave of new industries are popping up near its airport to redefine business in the region.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.26

By Anakhanum Khidayatova, Elmira Tariverdiyeva - Trend:

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations in Baku is a very important forum, because many cultures, many civilizations, many countries are meeting together, Jean-Luc Reitzer, member of French National Assembly, told Trend Apr.26.

It demonstrates once again that tolerance is the symbol of Azerbaijan, he said on the sidelines of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum.

Reitzer said he is always very happy to be in Azerbaijan, adding that people who have never been here, don't know the real situation, that Azerbaijan is a place of stability.

Touching upon the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, he said that it is injustice that Armenia has occupied Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia has to respect the decisions of the UN, said Reitzer, adding that the OSCE Minsk Group has to work further to bring peace.

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations is being held in Baku Apr.26.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and his spouse Mehriban Aliyeva are attending the opening of the forum.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Malta's President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, Chairman of the Council of the Republic of Belarusian National Assembly Mikhail Myasnikovich, Chairman of the Senate of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and other high-ranking officials are also participating in the event.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum. The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the forum.
photos by Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune/TNS Bacon and butternut squash hash isn't just for the morning.

SHARE Mix toasted Brazil nuts, garlic croutons, roughly chopped green onion tops, grated lemon rind and salt to make a topping for your hash. Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune/TNS Pair breakfast-for-dinner with a maple syrup cocktail.

By Jeanmarie Brownson, Chicago Tribune (TNS)

Breakfast for dinner: pancakes sweet and savory, waffles with or without chicken, omelets, frittatas and just about any egg dish. Yum. My household continues the tradition even though we no longer have young children.

These days, we even enjoy a cocktail with our breakfast. The good news when the repast is served in the evening: Cocktails happily move beyond the bloody mary. Yes, bourbon, scotch, amaros and dark bitters prove more than welcome.

A requirement: Breakfast for dinner satisfies best when embracing savory elements. Bacon and other smoked meats and fish suffice, even in small quantities. For example, I cook multigrain pancakes in bacon fat when serving them late in the day. I add chopped ham to my scrambled eggs or top omelets with slivers of smoked salmon.

Likewise, vegetables make a welcome appearance: sauteed spinach on a fried egg sandwich and caramelized onions in the frittata. Fresh herbs added to butter transform an evening waffle topped with crispy chicken.

After a day of biking in Austria, we ordered grostl, a hash made with crispy fried potatoes, sweet onions and chopped pork sausages. Topped with a fried egg, this homey, satisfying skillet of goodness made us glad we'd exercised all day. It also made me recall some excellent breakfast hash adventures.

At home, we venture beyond the standard canned corned beef hash  especially when there is leftover meat in the house. Hash comes from the French verb hacher, literally to chop, which is the only requirement for hash  that it be chopped. Hash on the menu provides an opportunity to rekindle your food processor romance. It makes quick work of chopping the vegetables. However, I prefer a super-sharp knife and a cutting board to dice any meats, so I have pretty, little chunks to add to the hash.

I'm a huge fan of ready-cut vegetables sold in the produce section, particularly ones difficult to manage such as butternut squash. Chopped and browned to crisp goodness with bacon fat, butternut makes a fine hash. Sweet potatoes work in the recipe that follows, as do small new potatoes. Use dark purple varieties for a dramatic flair.

Add onions, garlic and spices to hashed veggies for maximum flavor and texture. I also pair smoked meats, such as ham or smoked pork chops, with the slightly sweet butternut. Use the best bacon and smoked meats you can afford; I seek out uncured varieties, so they are free of nitrates and other additives. Boar's Head, Applegate Farms and other brands are now readily available at supermarkets and on Amazon.

I've never had a hash that wasn't improved by the addition of a fried egg. Ditto for a crunchy nut topping. Here, I toast Brazil nuts (find them shelled at Trader Joe's) and chop them with garlicky croutons, fresh lemon and green onions.

Since virtually all hash, like our Austrian grostl, is quite rich, you can easily stretch the recipe that follows to 6 servings. Simply increase the eggs to an even dozen and cook them in batches.

I serve a baby kale salad dressed with a warm vinaigrette to counter the richness. In season, sliced ripe tomatoes serve the same purpose. Offering a super-chilled maple and rye cocktail makes this quite the meal to end (or start) the day.

BACON BUTTERNUT HASH WITH HAM AND EGGS

Prep: 30 minutes

Cook: 30 minutes

Makes: 4 to 6 servings

To save time, I use pre-cut butternut squash from the supermarket. Lean smoked boneless pork chops, Canadian bacon or fully cooked corned beef can stand in for the ham.

Ingredients

2-3 strips thick bacon, diced

- about 6 cups (24 ounces) peeled, seeded, cubed butternut squash

3 cloves garlic

1 small red onion, quartered

1/2 small green bell or poblano pepper, stemmed, seeded, quartered

1/2 medium-size red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, quartered

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon each: freshly ground pepper, dried thyme, dried rosemary

- about 2 tablespoons vegetable oil for high-heat cooking, such as safflower or sunflower

10 to 12 ounces fully cooked smoked ham, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces (about 3 cups)

8 to 12 large eggs

1/2 cup shredded cheese, such as fontina or brick

- Brazil nut and lemon picada, optional, see recipe

Directions

1 Cook bacon in a large (10-inch) well-seasoned cast-iron skillet over medium heat until crisp, about 5 minutes. Remove crisp bits and reserve. Leave about 1 tablespoon bacon fat in the pan, and reserve the rest of the fat for later.

2 Put cubed butternut into a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Process with on/off turns just until butternut is chopped into rough 1/4-inch pieces. (Alternatively, roughly chop butternut into 1/4-inch pieces with a knife and a cutting board.) Transfer to a bowl; you will have about 6 cups.

3 With food processor running (no need to wash it), drop garlic into it to chop. Add red onion and peppers. Roughly chop with on/off turns. (Or chop everything by hand.) Add to butternut along with salt, pepper, thyme and rosemary. Mix well.

4 Add 1 tablespoon of the oil to the bacon fat in the skillet. Add half of the butternut mixture. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring often, until tender and golden, about 10 minutes or until squash is fork-tender. Remove to a plate. Repeat with another tablespoon of bacon fat and remaining butternut mixture. Transfer to the plate.

5 Add 1 more tablespoon bacon fat to pan along with ham. Cook until golden, about 3 minutes. Stir in butternut mixture. (Recipe can be made ahead up to this point; refrigerate if it will be longer than 1 hour.)

6 Reheat butternut mixture if necessary over medium heat. Cook over medium-low heat to crisp the bottom, about 5 minutes.

7 Meanwhile, spray 1 large or 2 medium-size nonstick skillet(s) with oil. Heat over medium-high. Carefully crack eggs into skillet. Reduce heat to low; fry eggs sunny side up until whites are set and yolks somewhat set, 3 to 4 minutes.

8 Sprinkle cheese over hash and let it melt over medium heat, about 1 minute. To serve, top each portion of the hash with two fried eggs. Sprinkle with reserved crispy bacon and Brazil nut picada.

Brazil nut and lemon picada:

Put 1/2 cup (3 ounces) Brazil nuts (or whole almonds) into a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Cook until golden, about 2 minutes. Do not leave the nuts, or they will burn. Remove from heat; cool. In food processor, coarsely chop nuts with on/off turns. Add 1 cup (2 ounces) garlic croutons, 1/2 cup roughly chopped green onion tops, grated rind of 1/2 lemon and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Process to mix to coarse crumbs. Refrigerate, covered, up to 1 week.

MAPLE AND RYE COCKTAIL

Prep: 5 minutes

Makes: 1 serving

You can multiply this recipe times your number of guests and put the whiskey, amaro, syrup and bitters into a pitcher. Refrigerate up to several hours. Shake cocktails one serving at a time using a scant  cup of the mix per drink.

Ingredients

- ice cubes

1/4 cup rye whiskey, such as Templeton Rye

2 tablespoons amaro liqueur, such as Amaro Averna or Amaro Lucano

1 tablespoon pure maple syrup

4-6 dashes Angostura bitters

1 thin piece grapefruit peel (yellow part only, no white pith)

Directions

1 Fill a cocktail shaker full of ice. Pour rye, amaro, maple syrup and bitters over the ice. Cover tightly and shake vigorously for 30 seconds.

2 Strain into a stemmed cocktail glass. Add the grapefruit peel to the glass. Serve immediately.
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WASHINGTON  In the days following the 2001 terrorist attack on America, plenty of things were done that probably should not have been. One of these was called 'rendition,' the act of kidnapping suspected terrorists and those thought to be connected with them from foreign cities, spiriting them to a secret location and subjecting them to interrogation that often included torture.

The practice was carried out by the CIA despite the fact that it violated every tenant of this nation's founding charter and was morally and legally reprehensible. In the beginning, it generally found a sympathetic audience among millions of Americans clearly in shock from the tragedy of 9/11.

"Whatever it takes," became the mantra of the people and their government.

As things cooled down, however, more opposition developed here and abroad and even our allies became alarmed. So much so that the agents involved in carrying out the actual events and even those at the fringes of this policy became vulnerable to prosecution from nations where the action took place. One of these  Italy  has gone as far as to indict and convict in absentia 26 Americans that its courts say were involved in the 2003 rendition of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, a cleric in Milan.

None of the convicted were expected to suffer any real prison time or other consequences because they were in the United States before the trials took place and some have been pardoned. But it now seems that one CIA employee who appears to have had little or nothing to do with the kidnapping is facing the possibility of four years in an Italian jail. Her crime, she told The Washington Post, was to have served as an interpreter a year before the kidnapping between U.S., and Italian intelligence strategists about the possibility of rendition. She said Abu Omar wasn't even mentioned. A year later when he was a victim of rendition, she was chaperoning her son's high school ski trip.

Sabrina De Sousa left the agency and moved to Portugal to be near relatives, knowing the risk. She was arrested at the Lisbon airport and is now facing the probability of extradition to Italy while so far her own government is stonewalling her pleas for intervention. Hillary Clinton, when she was Secretary of State, it seems, never answered her pleas.

Let's get one thing straight: Rendition was the policy of the highest levels of the American government, from the White House to Congress to the director of the CIA  none of whom face any responsibility for their actions. Those who actually carry out these assignments at the operational level are left holding the bag if things go wrong. Even those whose participation is less than tangential are unprotected.

Under those circumstances, it is a wonder that anyone would accept such an assignment  one that carries a disavowal by those who dreamed up the entire mess.

The De Sousa matter has become a concern for the cloak-and-dagger manipulators. Morale of undercover CIA operatives is endangered by the government's refusal so far to provide immunity and other protections for her. As I have said, what person wants to toil under those conditions? Failing to extend diplomatic cover for those you have enlisted is inexcusable. Good faith and patriotism is a two-way street.

Italy is an ally, a member of NATO. The Italian Government, which obviously had knowledge and participation through its own intelligence operations, has an obligation to advise its courts of this. But justice in a country where the Mafia is still a major factor doesn't seem to be all that important. The Washington Post was told by the prosecutor in the case that the Italian court doesn't need a smoking gun to convict.

Swell. In other words, if they just think she is guilty, complete lack of evidence makes no difference. And what about Abu Omar? He was interrogated, tortured and ultimately released.

Meanwhile, a 60-year- old American woman who apparently had nothing to do with his kidnapping is likely to be incarcerated because she wanted to be near relatives.

Dan Thomasson is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service and a former vice president of Scripps Howard Newspapers. Readers may send him email at: thomassondan@aol.com.
Details added, first version posted at 10:31

Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

By Seymur Aliyev- Trend:

The UNAOC 7th Global Forum official ceremony took place today in Baku, where the country's President Ilham Aliyev made the opening speech.

The president welcomed the participants of the forum, in particular expressing gratitude to the founding fathers of the alliance,

He welcomed the participants of the forum.

"It is a big honor for us to host the 7th UNAOC Global Forum. We consider it a sign of appreciation of our activity and promotion of values of intercultural dialogue, multiculturalism," said the president in his opening speech.

"I'd like to express my gratitude to the founding fathers of the alliance - Turkey and Spain, President Erdogan and former Prime Minister Zapatero, for this extremely important initiative, which now lives for more than 10 years," Ilham Aliyev said.

The president went on to add that the idea of creation of the alliance was the sign of wisdom of the politicians, President Erdogan and former Prime Minister Zapatero, supported by international community.

"I'd also like to express my gratitude to the high representative UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations Mr. Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser for his leadership, contribution and promotion of the values of peace, solidarity and friendship," said president Aliyev.

The president went on to say that Azerbaijan is proud to have the representatives of more than 140 countries gather in Baku to address the important issues of the alliance of civilizations.

He said that Azerbaijan, for centuries, was a place where religions, cultures and civilizations met.

"We're not only a geographic breach between East and West, but also a cultural breach. For centuries, representatives of religions, cultures lived in peace and dignity in Azerbaijan," he said. "Religious tolerance, multiculturalism - were always present here. There was no word - multiculturalism, but the ideas were always present."

Ilham Aliyev added that as a result of that, Azerbaijan today is a multiethnic, multiconfessional country, where representatives of all religions and ethnic groups live in dignity and peace.

"This is one of our biggest assets," he said. "And we're proud of our history. We are proud of our historical monuments, which reflect the creation of representatives of different cultures."

President reminded that one of the oldest mosques in the world, which was built in 743, is situated in Azerbaijani city of Shemakha.

"Also, one of the oldest churches in the Caucasus, the ancient church of ancient state Caucasian Albania is also situated in Azerbaijan, close to another ancient city of Sheki," he said.

The president said the Azerbaijani government invests in construction and renovation of mosques, orthodox and catholic churches, synagogues.

"This is our policy and this is our lifestyle," said the president. "For centuries, Azerbaijan is preserving this asset, regardless of political or social situation in the country."

Ilham Aliyev went on to add that Azerbaijan is relatively young as an independent country, only 25 years old, but it is ancient, with deep historical and cultural roots.

"Multiculturalism for us is a state policy," said the president. "We organize different events, addressing this important issue."

The president added that every two years, Intercultural dialogue forum takes place in Azerbaijan, and Baku International Humanitarian Forum is hosted regularly as well.

"The main idea is to bring the representatives of different religions together and how to establish more understanding between us," he said.

The president also reminded that Azerbaijan hosted the world summit of religious leaders, addressing important issues of interreligious dialogue.

"I think today this is one of the most important topics on global agenda," he said. "And the role of the alliance of civilizations is growing. Unfortunately, we see some very concerning trends in our region, in Europe, in the Middle East, on the area of former Soviet Union. We see clashes, confrontations, based on ethnic and religious grounds."

Azerbaijan's president said this is a very dangerous tendency.

"I think that gathering in Baku, at the UNAOC 7th Global Forum will address these issues and will contribute to the cause of solidarity, peace, mutual understanding and partnership."

"In 2008 we initiated the Baku Process, which already became the broad platform for international dialogue. Azerbaijan is one of the few countries, which is the member of the Islamic Cooperation Organization and the Council of Europe. So at the meeting of the ministers of culture of Council of Europe which took place in Baku, in 2008, we invited the ministers of cultures of the Islamic Cooperation Organization," said the president.

"For the first time, the ministers of cultures from more than 100 countries from these two organizations gathered in Baku," Ilham Aliyev said. "Next year, in 2009, we hosted the ministerial meeting of the ministers of cultures of the Islamic Cooperation Organization in Baku and invited the ministers of culture of Council of Europe."

"So this was named the Baku Process and we are very proud that the name of our ancient city is now also associated with a positive initiative," the president said.

He went on to add that this process is growing, getting more and more supporters.

"It is becoming a global initiative, which contributes to the cause of solidarity, mutual understanding and intercultural dialogue," the president said.

"Azerbaijan's geographic location is known, but at the same time our initiatives are aimed at strengthening the position of our country as a bridge between cultures, between civilizations, as a country which can and should contribute more to the cause of mutual understanding," President Aliyev said.

He reminded that last year Baku was very proud to host the First inaugural European Games in Baku, and next year Baku will host the Fourth Islamic Solidarity Games in Baku.

"So, in one city in two years time, European and Islamic athletes will perform. This is not only sport and achievement of medals. This is friendship, mutual understanding, solidarity, partnership," he said.

"There is nothing to divide between us," he continued. "We are all living on the same planet, all the people want to live in dignity, peace, security, to raise children, to protect their families. All religions advocate for the same values - humanity, mercy, solidarity, peace. Uniting our efforts is what the world needs to do."

The president went on to say that today's gathering, today's forum is a clear indicator that the ideas of multiculturalism are strongly supported by international community.

"As I said, more than 140 countries are present here. Multiculturalism has no alternative. We all know that there are different ideas about different views of multiculturalism - failed, or some that did not work, but there are positive examples. For us, multiculturalism is a state policy, and is our lifestyle. And looking at the alternatives, what are the alternatives of multiculturalism? Very dangerous alternatives - xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, racism, discrimination, hatred," Ilham Aliyev said.

He went on to add that strengthening the values of multiculturalism will be a very positive trend, and all the responsible politicians should contribute to this positive dynamics.

"As I said, Azerbaijan is a relatively young country as an independent state. This year we will celebrate the 25th anniversary of restoration of our independence. These were the years of transformation of political, economic system, these were the years of creation of the state," the president said.

"I think that we've met all our major targets. Azerbaijan became the respected member of the international community. It is the member of the United Nations, OSCE, Islamic Cooperation Organization, the Council of Europe, Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and many other international bodies," Ilham Aliyev said.

He went on to remind that Azerbaijan has strong international support, which was reflected in 2011, when with the support of 155 countries, Azerbaijan for the first time, was elected as a non-permanent member of the Uinted Nations Security Council.

"That was a big victory for our country, and sign of great respect to Azerbaijan," said the president. "Within the short period if 25 years, we managed to present ourselves as a reliable international partner, as a country with independent foreign policy, country which contributes to regional development, regional security, stability and multiculturalism."
Albany

After last week's state rejection of the proposed Constitution natural gas pipeline, the Houston-based developers are likely headed to court, vowing Monday to use "all available options to challenge the legality and appropriateness" of the ruling.

In a statement, Constitution Pipeline Co. LLC blasted the state Department of Environmental Conservation for justifying its rejection of the 120-mile project through "flagrant misstatements and inaccurate allegations ...(that) appear to be driven more by New York state politics than by environmental science."

The planned $750 million Constitution pipeline was intended to carry hydrofracked natural gas from Pennsylvania into New York, crossing more than 250 streams and creeks through Broome, Chenango, Delaware and Schoharie counties

State water quality permits were the final approval needed for Constitution's developers, which got approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in December 2014. But DEC rejected those permits, saying the energy company refused to provide enough environmental information on how the pipeline would cross those water bodies.

Hours after DEC's ruling, Constitution spokesman Chris Stockton said the company will consider appealing the decision to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Any decision will be made once Constitution finishes its review of the 14-page DEC decision.

On Monday, Constitution challenged the state's version of events. "Contrary to DEC statements, the company was not informed of any outstanding issues that it had not agreed to address as a condition of the permit," according to a company statement.

All stream crossings were "fully vetted with DEC ... We are appalled with the comments that Constitution failed to provide sufficient data ... In fact, during the past nine months, weekly inquiries were made to the department to ensure no additional data was needed."

Constitution said its questions to DEC were "either ignored or responded to in the negative. It is obvious that DEC deliberately chose to remain silent to bolster the political campaign of the state."

DEC spokesman Sean Mahar said the DEC ruling "outlined a number of failures of the applicant to present adequate information for the state to determine (state) water quality standards would be met, including lack of information on site specific project plans for all 251 stream crossings, and other information requested of DEC to ensure compliance with those standards.''

An anti-pipeline group vowed to stand with the state in any legal battle. "The company's press release assumes the public is irrelevant, but that's just not true," said Anne Marie Garti, a founding member of the group Stop the Pipeline (STP) and an attorney volunteering with the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic.

"STP expects to intervene in any appeal and will vigorously defend our collective resources based on the facts and the law," she added.

The surprise rejection also drew the attention of the American Petroleum Institute, which represents the fossil fuel industry.

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"The Cuomo administration's decision to reject permits for the Constitution Pipeline is another example of politics at its worst," said Marty Durbin, executive director for market development, in a statement issued over the weekend. "This decision will cost the state thousands of jobs and is an assault on families and businesses."

Constitution is a partnership of Cabot Oil and Gas Corp.; Williams, an Oklahoma-based energy company; Piedmont Natural Gas; and WGL Holdings.

Developers have maintained the pipeline is needed to meet state energy needs, is environmentally beneficial and will not ultimately be used to ship natural gas overseas.

The proposed pipeline would connect Pennsylvania fracked gas to the Iroquois pipeline in Schoharie, where owners are considering whether to reverse the flow of gas so it would flow north toward Canada. From there, gas could move in other pipes, potentially flowing toward potential export facilities planned on the Atlantic coast.

bnearing@timesunion.com  518-454-5094  @Bnearing10
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Albany

For the second time in a week, a major natural gas pipeline project in the state appears to have hit the rocks.

Late Friday, the state Department of Environmental Conservation denied critical water quality permits for the planned $750 million Constitution pipeline, which was envisioned to carry hydrofracked natural gas from Pennsylvania into New York, crossing through Broome, Chenango, Delaware and Schoharie counties.

The state permits were the final approval needed for Constitution's developers, which already had approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

On Wednesday, backers of the $3.1 billion Northeast Energy Direct pipeline announced they were shelving their project, which would follow Constitution's route to Schoharie County before continuing through southern Albany and Rensselaer counties en route to metropolitan Boston.

Anti-pipeline advocates praised Gov. Andrew Cuomo, noting that Friday was Earth Day, while a state industry lobbying group decried the Constitution decision as anti-business. First proposed in August 2013, the project drew 15,000 public comments to DEC.

On its route in New York, the pipeline would cross 250 bodies of water and clear 1,000 acres of forest containing 700,000 trees. More than 700 parcels of land are affected by the proposed pipeline, and 120 landowners face losing property to the gas company under eminent domain.

According to DEC, the agency had "repeatedly requested that Constitution provide a comprehensive and site-specific analysis of depth for pipeline burial to mitigate the project's environmental impact  but the company refused, providing only a limited analysis of burial depth for 21 of the 250 New York streams."

"Many of those streams are unique and sensitive ecological areas, including trout-spawning streams, old-growth forest, and undisturbed springs, which provide vital habitat and are key to the local ecosystems," according to the DEC statement. "Additionally, DEC received reports that landowners, possibly with Constitution's knowledge, clear cut old-growth trees along the right-of-way for the pipeline, including trees near streams and water bodies, even after FERC ruled that Constitution could not cut trees in the right-of-way."

In a letter to the Houston-based company, DEC permit administrator John Ferguson said the project application "fails in a meaningful way to address the significant water resource impacts that could occur from this project and has failed to provide sufficient information to demonstrate compliance with (state) water quality standards."

"We, the people, won through a mix of strategic planning, focused organizing, and sheer determination  against all odds," said Anne Marie Garti, a founding member of the group Stop the Pipeline and an attorney volunteering with the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic. The group is "extremely grateful to Gov. Cuomo, the DEC, and those who believed in our goals, and worked to make this happen."

Environmental Advocates of New York Executive Director Pete Iwanowicz called Constitution "an environmental disaster waiting to happen. For years, through a campaign of scare tactics and misinformation, the oil and gas industry has made expanding fossil fuel infrastructure seem like the only choice. And industry's economic gain has come at the cost of our water, air, and health."

Actor Mark Ruffalo, a member of New Yorkers Against Fracking, said the state had put "protection of our precious water and the public health and safety of New Yorkers ahead of the special interests of the oil and gas industry. This is what real climate leadership looks like."

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The Business Council of New York attacked the decision, while Houston-based Constitution had no immediate reaction.

"We are incredibly disappointed that the administration allowed fear-mongering to once again lead the way," said council President and CEO Heather Briccetti. "The decision to deny the approvals necessary for the construction of the Constitution Pipeline will have a direct and immediate negative impact on our state's economy. Today's decision also places numerous jobs in jeopardy and puts further strain on our already overworked energy grid."

Constitution is a partnership of Cabot Oil and Gas Corp.; Williams, an Oklahoma-based energy company; Piedmont Natural Gas; and WGL Holdings.

Developers have maintained the pipeline is needed to meet state energy needs, is environmentally beneficial and will not ultimately be used to ship natural gas overseas.

The proposed pipeline would connect to the Iroquois pipeline in Schoharie, where owners are considering whether to reverse the flow of gas so it would flow north toward Canada. From there, gas could move in other pipes, potentially flowing toward potential export facilities on the Atlantic coast.

bnearing@timesunion.com  518-454-5094  @Bnearing10
Albany

After he became the first U.S. governor to set foot in Cuba since the former Cold War foes began to normalize relations, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his mission was not about making new friends.

"We have had a friendship that went on for decades," Cuomo said last April as he readied to board the plane home. "It is about rekindling a friendship."

A year later, measuring what the renewed friendship has meant for New York requires several sets of measurements. Some point to a lack of exports from New York companies that made the trip to the Caribbean as proof of a small return on such a highly anticipated initial investment. Others say one 24-hour trip isn't about bringing home spoils for New York, but should be seen as the beginning of what needs to be a long-term relationship.

To hear state officials tell it, the trip was exactly what it needed to be.

"We knew going in that Cuba did business in a very different way from the United States," said Howard Zemsky, president and CEO of the Empire State Development Corp. and an attendee of the Cuba trip, which unceremoniously celebrated a one-year anniversary last week. "We also knew going in that there is a trade embargo that is still in place. But in fairness, if you wait until all of those things are removed and the Cuban economy changes, then you will have waited too long because you will have proven to be too risk-averse and you would have missed the opportunity."

John Kavulich takes a different approach. The president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council points to the data he has been able to cobble together that show no exports from the New York companies Chobani, Regeneron, Pfizer and Cayuga Milk Ingredients. An analysis released last week showed that Infor, an information technology company, reported three information technology agreements to sell health care-related software to a Cuban company. MasterCard was waiting for legal clarifications and operational changes from federal officials in both countries, as JetBlue awaited a decision on new routes from the U.S. Department of Transportation before they moved ahead with flights.

"What we attempted to do was not criticize the fact that the companies have not achieved anything," Kavulich said of the report. "It's just to recognize that they haven't achieved anything. The fact that nothing's happened isn't the fault of Gov. Cuomo."

The administration has pointed to nominal benefits from the Cuba trip, however. The Buffalo News reported in January that Cuomo's 2016-17 state budget proposal was the first in years that did not cut aid to the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo. There seemed to be a correlation, the News reported, between Roswell Park's CEO having taken the trip with Cuomo and the staving off of further cuts. Roswell Park signed an agreement on the trip with Cuba's Center for Molecular Immunology to develop a lung cancer vaccine with clinical trials in the United States.

SUNY also entered into a memorandum of understanding with the University of Havana to, among other things, increase study-abroad opportunities.

While some companies have been able to export their products despite the embargo on many goods that remains in place for both countries  agricultural commodities, for example, have been eligible for export since 2000  there is a recognition that robust trade takes far more than a year to foster.

"The Cubans are the ones that are deciding who they are going to be doing business with, so the governor's trip can only go so far," said Antonio C. Martinez II, a New York-based attorney and chief operating officer of Cuban Strategic Partnerships Inc. "Doing business in Cuba is all about the follow-through and requires a medium- to long-term basis."

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ESDC said it has continued to meet and talk with Cuban officials regularly. ESDC said the trip also generated activity for other New York companies, though it declined to elaborate, citing the right to privacy for those companies "not to conduct their business in public."

Cuomo and Zemsky met privately with Cuban President Raul Castro at the United Nations last September.

Since last April, New York and New York-based companies haven't been alone in seeking to enter the Cuban marketplace. The governors of Arkansas, Texas and Virginia have embarked on trade missions of their own. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon's wife, Georganne, also visited the island nation a month before the New York trip in January, according to the Washington Post. "It's now incumbent upon us in America to make sure we're opening that door wide enough." Gov. Terry McAuliffe said.

At least one elected official in Washington is looking to assist the states: President Barack Obama made his own trip in March after a year in which Cuba had been removed from the State Department's terrorism list, embassies had reopened in the nations' capitals, and an agreement was signed to allow commercial flights between the countries.

"Through the governor's office and representatives in Washington, they have made the governor's position clear (that the embargo should be lifted)," Zemsky said. "What the will of Congress is is not going to be determined by New York state alone."

mhamilton@timesunion.com  518-454-5449  @matt_hamilton10
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:

Azerbaijan is a place, where East and West, North and South can meet, said Mike Hardy, Professor at UK's Coventry University.

"I think this is an ideal choice for holding the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku," Hardy told Trend April 26.

"Azerbaijan is an ideal place for international discussions, including those on conflict resolution," he said. "My expectation of the forum is very high."

He added that Baku is a beautiful, ever changing city.

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations will last until Apr.27.

The Youth Forum was held on the first day of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum on Apr.25.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum.

The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the forum.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on July 24, 2015 to create an organizing committee for holding the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.
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[April 26, 2016] BioTalent Canada Announces Winner of the 2016 'Catalyst' Award for New Biotechnology Graduates

BioTalent Canada today announced the winner for its first 'Catalyst' Award, for the young employee who contributed most significantly to their Canadian biotechnology employer in the past year. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005232/en/ Mathieu-Marc Poulin, winner of the 2016 'Catalyst' Award for New Biotechnology Graduates (Photo: Business Wire) Mathieu-Marc Poulin of Delivra in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island was announced today as the winner of the 2016 Catalyst Award. Mr. Poulin will be awarded a cash prize of $1,000. Mr. Poulin's employer, Delivra, is a biotechnology company developer of transdermal technologies that introduce pharmaceutical and natural molecules into the body through the skin, rather than via pills. As part of a multi-disciplinary research team, Poulin's input as Research and Development Technician helped Delivra secure funding from Canada's National Research Council's Industrial Research Assistance Program. His research was also instrumental in Delivra's development of new transdermal products. "BioTalent Canada's wage subsidy program allowed Delivra to expedite a new research endeavor and meet its target milestones on time and within budget, which would not have been possible otherwise," said Dr. David C. Baranowski, Director of Research at Delivra. "Importantly, the program allowed us to mold a new graduate into a grea fit within the research team and we've been impressed at how far Mathieu-Marc has come in such a short period of time. There is no doubt he's an essential member of our research department and we look forward to translating his research into the marketplace," he said.



Catalyst Award applicants were evaluated along four criteria: Their contribution to their employer's company culture and sense of innovation, their contribution to achieving of a team's or company's business objective and the degree to which they assisted their employer in overcoming a business challenge. A five-person panel of judges consisting of biotechnology-industry professionals and youth-employment project professionals selected the finalists and the winner.

The other finalists announced earlier this month were Travis Cranmer, a Plant Pathology Biocontrol Technician from Vineland Research and Innovation Centre in Vineland Station, Ontario, and Hannah Sadeghi, an Environmental Scientist from ERA Environmental Management Solutions in Montreal, Quebec. "Skilled and talented people fuel the innovation and growth of Canada's bio-economy," said Rob Henderson, President and CEO of BioTalent Canada. "Young professionals are making a significant contribution to Canada's biotechnology industry. It's a pleasure to highlight their achievements." In 2015, BioTalent Canada placed 165 new graduates in 67 biotechnology companies across Canada, with funding from the national and provincial Career Focus wage subsidy programs. Employer feedback on the contribution of these young workers has been overwhelmingly positive, prompting BioTalent Canada to launch the Catalyst Award in recognition of these talented young people. BioTalent Canada has a long track record of successful implementation of wage-subsidy programs, helping new talent find employment in the biotechnology industry and assisting companies in offsetting the costs of hiring. Since 2005, BioTalent Canada has helped over 400 new biotechnology graduates find a job in the bio-economy. Wage subsidies are a great way to jumpstart careers within biotechnology. According to BioTalent Canada's labour market report on recent graduates, Opening the Door, 90% of Career Focus wage subsidy program participants remain employed after completing the program. About BioTalent Canada

BioTalent Canada is the HR partner of Canada's bio-economy. As an HR expert and national non-profit organization, BioTalent Canada focuses on building partnerships and skills for Canada's bio-economy to ensure the industry has access to job-ready people. Through projects, research and product development BioTalent Canada connects employers with job seekers, delivers human resource information and skills development tools so the industry can focus on strengthening Canada's biotech business. For more information, please visit biotalent.ca. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005232/en/

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[April 26, 2016] Compass Datacenters Wins Datacenter Dynamics' Award For US & Canadian Service Providers

DALLAS, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Compass Datacenters has once again been recognized as a leader in the data center industry by winning the 2016 Datacenter Dynamics US & Canada Award for outstanding Service Provider Data center. The award specifically recognizes Compass Datacenters' development of a dedicated data center for American Electric Power (AEP) in the Columbus, Ohio area that enhances the reliability and resiliency of AEP's IT infrastructure and allows the company to deliver a superior level of service to its customers. The Datacenter Dynamics US & Canada Awards honor the achievements of companies and individuals across the data center industry and were announced at a gala dinner in New York's Marriott Marquis Hoel.



"This is a great honor, especially considering how impressive each of the other projects were in this category. I see this not only as a recognition of the success of this specific project for AEP, but also for the groundbreaking work that Compass has done over the past couple of years to create a new model for dedicated data centers that meets clients' technical needs while also making these facilities cost-equivalent with multi-tenant wholesale space for the first time," said Chris Crosby, CEO of Compass Datacenters. "This turns the traditional economics for data centers upside down, allowing companies to move away from the negatives and compromises of multi-tenant environments to dedicated facilities that can be located exactly where they need them. Thank you to the awards committee for recognizing our work and this major trend." For more information about the awards, visit http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/awards/.

About Compass Datacenters

Compass delivers high-end, certified, dedicated data centers faster, with more features and personalization options at a lower cost than competing alternatives anywhere our customers want them. For more information, visit www.compassdatacenters.com. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/compass-datacenters-wins-datacenter-dynamics-award-for-us--canadian-service-providers-300256990.html SOURCE Compass Datacenters

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[April 26, 2016] Copyright Clearance Center Celebrates World Intellectual Property Day

Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), a global licensing and content solutions organization and the leading commercial document delivery provider, celebrates World Intellectual Property Day on April 26 with a series of interviews posted to its Beyond the Book podcast. As organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), World Intellectual Property Day explores the issues of our collective, global cultural future. CCC has recorded three podcasts, one in English and two in Spanish, which discuss the changing IP landscape in today's digital media world. CCC's Christopher Kenneally speaks with Ann Chaitovitz, Intellectual Property attache to the US Embassy in Lima, Peru, who provides IP advice to representatives of the US and South American governments throughout the area an coordinates the US Patent and Trademark Office's activities in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.



And, in separate podcasts, CCC's Victoriano Colodron talks with Alejandra Matus Acuna, Chilean journalist and author, and president of Sociedad de Derechos de las Letras (SADEL), the collective management organization of copyright for text-based works in Chile, and with publisher Alvaro Carvajal from ECOE ediciones publishing house, and Chair of the Board of Centro Colombiano de Derechos Reprograficos (CDR), the collective management organization of copyright in text-based works in Colombia. Both of Colodron's podcasts are recorded in Spanish. "World Intellectual Property Day is an occasion to reflect on the centrality of intellectual property in our lives every day," said Colodron, Senior Director, International Relations, CCC. "With the low cost of digital publishing and anytime, anywhere access to online content through mobile devices and smartphones, nearly anyone can become a global creator and global communicator, making Intellectual Property Day an important occasion for every global citizen."

"Access to culture has been reimagined by new technologies that have changed the distribution of creative materials," said Chaitovitz. "Copyright is working - many new content delivery models have emerged to satisfy consumer needs. But, we must always remember that if we fail to compensate creators, we may no longer have the works we love." About Copyright Clearance Center Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) and its subsidiary RightsDirect are global leaders in content workflow and rights licensing technology. CCC solutions provide anytime, anywhere content access, usage rights and information management while promoting and protecting the interests of copyright holders. We serve more than 35,000 customers and 15,000 copyright holders worldwide, and manage more than 950 million rights from the world's most sought-after journals, books, blogs, movies and more. Since 2008, CCC has been named one of the top 100 companies that matter most in the digital content industry by EContent Magazine. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426006350/en/

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[April 26, 2016] Majesco Announces Schedule for May 11 Investor Day in New York

Majesco, a global provider of software, consulting and services for insurance business transformation, today announces the schedule for its inaugural Investor Day on May 11, 2016 at the Waldorf Astoria New York. The Investor Day will begin at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, May 11, 2016 at the Waldorf Astoria, New York and will include management presentations, product demonstrations, and customer panels. The event will conclude at 5:00 p.m. and will be immediately followed by a cocktail reception allowing investors to engage with Majesco's management team. "The market opportunity for our technology solutions continues to grow and we are experiencing strengthening demand from P&C and L&A carriers for our diverse product and service offerings," stated Ketan Mehta, Majesco's Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder. "We are planning an Investor Day with presentations that highlight the insurance market opportunity and detail how Majesco is positioning for significant growth. In addition, product demonstrations, as well as management and customer access will provide investors with insight into Majesco's competitive position. The P&C and L&A insurance industries are undergoing a significant disruption and technology evolution. Majesco's end-to-end core operating systems, cloud business platform and emerging technology solutions are well positioned to help carriers with their transformation journey, and we are looking forward to sharing our insight with the investment community," continued Mr. Mehta. Those interested in attending Majesco's May 11, 2016 Investor Day should email Majesco's investor relations department at [email protected]. About Majesco Majesco enables insurance business transformation for approximately 140 insurance customers by providing solutions which include softwar, consulting and services.



Our customers are insurers, MGA's and other risk providers from the Property and Casualty, Life, Annuity and Group insurance segments worldwide. Majesco delivers proven software solutions, consulting and services in the core insurance areas such as policy, billing, claims, distribution management, BI/ analytics, digital, application management, cloud and more. For more details on Majesco, please visit www.majesco.com. Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are made on the basis of the current beliefs, expectations and assumptions of management, are not guarantees of performance and are subject to significant risks and uncertainty. These forward-looking statements should, therefore, be considered in light of various important factors, including those set forth in Majesco's reports that it files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission and which you should review, including those statements under "Item 1A - Risk Factors" in Majesco's Annual Report on Form 10-K. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements contained in this press release include, but are not limited to: integration risks; changes in economic conditions, political conditions, trade protection measures, licensing requirements and tax matters; technology development risks; intellectual property rights risks; competition risks; additional scrutiny and increased expenses as a result of being a public company; the financial condition, financing requirements, prospects and cash flow of Majesco; loss of strategic relationships; changes in laws or regulations affecting the insurance industry in particular; restrictions on immigration; the ability and cost of retaining and recruiting key personnel; the ability to attract new clients and retain them and the risk of loss of large customers; continued compliance with evolving laws; customer data and cybersecurity risk; and Majesco's ability to raise capital to fund future growth. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as predictions of future events and Majesco cannot assure you that the events or circumstances discussed or reflected in these statements will be achieved or will occur. If such forward-looking statements prove to be inaccurate, the inaccuracy may be material. You should not regard these statements as a representation or warranty by Majesco or any other person that we will achieve our objectives and plans in any specified timeframe, or at all. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this presentation. Majesco disclaims any obligation to publicly update or release any revisions to these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date of this press release or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005627/en/

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details added (first version posted at 13:28)

Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

Trend:

Unresolved conflicts tend to provide fertile ground for extremism, said Elmar Mammadyarov, Azerbaijani foreign minister.

Mammadyarov was addressing the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku April 26.

The minister stressed that Azerbaijan suffered from the metamorphosis and symbiosis of ethnic separatism, foreign intervention, violent extremism and terrorism.

"Prolonged and unresolved conflicts tend to provide fertile ground for violent extremism, not only because of the suffering and lack of governance resulting from the conflict itself but also because such conflicts allow violent extremist groups to exploit deep-rooted grievances in order to garner support and seize territory and resources and control populations," the minister said.

"Had the international community been listening to us then, sticking to universal norms and principles, and taking bold steps to stop violent extremism and all of its manifestations and consequences, we could have been in a much better place today to stumble a domino effect and tackle this phenomenon," the minister said.

"Still, it is never too late and I have some ideas to share for our common strategy," the minister added.

"UN should be in a lead as the only universal organization," the minister said. "This is the way for other international organizations and formats to act and interact with each other."

"The sustainable development should become our priority," the minister said.

The minister added that Azerbaijan, as a country suffering from terrorism more than twenty years, is actively combating it.
[April 26, 2016] Mexican Consulate Helps Triple Number of Spanish-Speaking Children in Utah's UPSTART Program

The Mexican Consulate's endorsement of UPSTART helped triple the number of Spanish-speakers in Utah's state-wide school readiness program for four-year-olds, according to Waterford Institute, a nonprofit research center that runs the program. Isaac Troyo, director of training and outreach for UPSTART, recently thanked Consul Eduardo Arnal Palomera, former Consul of the Consulate of Mexico in Salt Lake City, for his public endorsement. Arnal, who served in the post from 2013 until March of this year, was instrumental in spreading awareness of UPSTART among Spanish-speaking families in Utah, Troyo said. Arnal appeared on Univison and Telemundo news last year supporting the UPSTART program and asked families to take full advantage of the resource. He also supported UPSTART radio spots, and allowed UPSTART representatives to present to families in the consulate family waiting areas. Troyo thanked Arnal for his efforts durin a recent visit.



"Your advocacy is helping hundreds of children throughout the state get a strong start in school and set them on a path to a successful academic career," Troyo said. "We value your relationship and we thank you for supporting early education throughout Utah." Arnal pledged to continue supporting UPSTART, saying, "Let's do even more next year!"

Troyo said new projects are in the works with Arnal's replacement, the current Consul of the Consulate of Mexico in Salt Lake City, Luis Enrique Franco. UPSTART is an in-home, technology-delivered program that includes over 7,000 engaging educational activities in reading, math and science. Waterford Institute is the maker of Waterford Early Learning, which is the curriculum for UPSTART. Participants use UPSTART for 15 minutes per day, five days per week. The adaptive program teaches essential early literacy skills at the pace and level of each individual child to prepare children for kindergarten. UPSTART is open to everyone, but prioritizes English language learners (ELL) as well as low-income families. Last year, approximately 58 percent of participating families were low-income. Qualifying families receive use of a free computer and free Internet during the program if they do not have access to these resources at home. Families can pre-register now for UPSTART at www.utahupstart.org or by phone at 800-669-4533. About Waterford Institute Celebrating its 40th anniversary, the Waterford Institute is a nonprofit research center that creates personalized cloud-based instruction through award-winning curriculum, content and assessment for children aged pre-K to 2nd grade. As a nonprofit, Waterford is uniquely focused on providing accessibility, equity and excellence for our youngest learners to position them for a lifetime of learning and success. For more information, visit www.waterford.org or call 801-349-2200. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005524/en/

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[April 26, 2016] Peak Veterinary Referral Center Joins Ethos Veterinary Health

Ethos Veterinary Health (Ethos) reached a milestone in early April by adding Peak Veterinary Referral Center in Williston, Vermont, to its network of hospitals. Peak is the first practice to join Ethos, only months after the company was formed. "We are excited that Peak Veterinary Referral Center has joined Ethos," said G. Ames Prentiss, CEO of Ethos. "Drs. Schulz and Goossens' track record of providing high-quality medicine and excellent customer service to referring veterinarians and clients make Peak a great addition to our network of hospitals. We are committed to the team at Peak and look forward to playing a role in their growth and continued development." Ethos was formed in December 2015, the result of a merger between IVG Hospitals New England), Premier Veterinary Group (Chicago), Wheat Ridge Animal Hospital (Denver) and Veterinary Specialty Hospital of San Diego. With the addition of Peak Veterinary Referral Center, Ethos provides specialty and emergency care for pets through 14 hospital locations across the U.S.



"Our organizations share similar goals and values, which was a big part of our decision to join Ethos," said Dr. Marielle Goossens, co-owner of Peak. "We look forward to being part of the Ethos network while continuing to serve the needs of our community." Peak Veterinary Referral Center's board-certified veterinary specialists provide a complete range of care in diagnostic imaging, surgery, ophthalmology, oncology, cardiology, physical rehabilitation and pain management, internal medicine, dermatology, neurology and behavior. About Ethos Veterinary Health

Ethos Veterinary Health is based in Woburn, Mass., and is the result of a merger of four specialty hospital groups: IVG Hospitals (New England), Premier Veterinary Group (Chicago), Wheat Ridge Animal Hospital (Denver) and Veterinary Specialty Hospital of San Diego. The company provides specialty and emergency care for pets through its 14 hospital locations across the U.S. For more information, visit ethosvet.com. About Peak Veterinary Referral Center Peak is a specialty practice in Williston, Vermont, providing referral services in the specialties of diagnostic imaging, surgery, ophthalmology, oncology, cardiology, physical rehabilitation and pain management, internal medicine, dermatology, neurology and behavior. For more information, visit www.peakveterinaryreferral.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005348/en/

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[April 26, 2016] Remitly Secures $38.5 Million in Series C Funding

Remitly, the largest independent digital money transmitter in the United States, today announced that it closed a $38.5 million Series C funding round. Stripes Group led this round and was joined by Vulcan Capital, both new investors in Remitly. Existing Remitly investors also contributed to the round including DFJ, DN Capital, Bezos Expeditions and Trilogy Equity Partners, among others. Stripes Group partner Ron Shah will join Remitly's board of directors as part of the financing. The new capital will be used to grow Remitly's team and continue the company's global expansion. As an important step in expanding Remitly's global footprint, the company announced today that Remitly is now available to customers in Canada. Canada is home to more than 7.4 million immigrants, many of whom still have family overseas. Residents of Canada transfer more than $23 billion annually, with $2.9 billion going to India and $2.1 billion to the Philippines. "Since day one our strategy has been to bring our service to the largest addressable remittance markets in the world," said Remitly CEO Matt Oppenheimer. "With this new financing, we are able to continue executing against that strategy by building a global footprint in the largest remittance corridors." Instead of relying on third-party aggregators, Remitly has built a proprietary network of banks and cash pickup locations to deliver funds quicklyand securely overseas. It also has created a scalable core remittance platform that offers the unique ability to reliably deliver on promises to customers residing in the largest remittance markets. Around the world, people send more than $588 billion in remittances every year. According to the World Bank, remittance companies charge an average of nearly 8 percent in fees, while Remitly's best-in-class digital product enables it to charge a small fraction of that while delivering a fundamentally better customer experience than legacy operators.



Remitly's efforts to date have proven successful. Its customers are now transferring more than $1 billion annually and the company grew over 400 percent in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the previous year. As Remitly accelerates its global expansion, the company is also introducing a new logo emblematic of its continued focus and commitment toward customers. "Remitly's rapid growth in a large and well-defined hundred-year-old market is a great example of how a new generation of companies is using technology and leveraging mobile adoption to deliver better, faster, and more secure solutions to increasingly discerning consumers - all at lower costs," said Stripes Group partner Ron Shah. "By doing this, Remitly is impacting people's lives in a significant way and we're excited to join the team as they continue to expand their global footprint."

About Remitly Remitly is a mobile payments service that enables consumers to conveniently make person-to-person international money transfers from the United States and Canada. Its online service uses the latest technology and mobile devices to eliminate the forms, codes, agents, extra time, and fees tied to the traditional money transfer process. Remitly is a licensed money transmitter currently operating in 49 states and Washington, D.C., and sending millions of dollars to thousands of customers each month. A Techstars company, Remitly is backed by Stripes Group, DFJ, Vulcan Capital, QED, Trilogy Equity Partners, DN Capital, Founders Co-Op, Bezos Expeditions and TomorrowVentures. Remitly is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with additional offices in the Philippines. For more information on Remitly, please visit www.remitly.com. About Stripes Group Based in New York City, Stripes Group is a leading growth equity firm that invests in Internet, Digital Media, Software and Branded Consumer Products businesses around the world. For over a decade, Stripes Group has been partnering with market-leading companies with proven business models that are generating exceptional growth. For more information on Stripes Group, please visit www.stripesgroup.com. About FT Partners Financial Technology Partners served as exclusive strategic and financial advisor to Remitly on this transaction. FT Partners is the only investment banking firm focused exclusively on providing strategic and financial advisory services to clients and CEOs in the dynamic global financial services and technology sector. For additional information, please visit www.ftpartners.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005300/en/

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[April 26, 2016] RiskSense VP to Discuss Cyber Risk Management for K-12 Education Market at ACPE Transform IT Conference

RiskSense, Inc.:







WHO: Torsten George is Vice President of Global Marketing and Products at pro-active cyber risk management software vendor RiskSense. He has more than 20 years of global information security experience and has held executive level positions with Agiliance (now RiskVision), ActivIdentity (News - Alert) (now part of HID Global, an ASSA ABLOY Group brand), Digital Link, and Everdream Corporation (now part of Dell). He is a frequent speaker on cyber security and risk management strategies worldwide and regularly provides commentary and byline articles for media outlets, covering topics such as data breaches, incident response best practices, and cyber security strategies. WHAT: K-12 educational institutions can greatly benefit from taking a pro-active stance against cyber threats. As the Horry County school district in South Carolina found out, being reactive is costly. The district was forced to pay $8,500 to attackers in a crypto-ransomware attack. In this presentation, cyber risk expert Torsten George will explain the top cyber threats facing K-12 institutions and districts, as well as the challenges associated with addressing them. This session will also provide best practices for transforming cyber security risk management from a reactive to a pro-active discipline that can enable educational institutions to get ahead of nearly 95% of all threats. WHERE: 2016 ACPE (Association for Computer Professionals in Education) Conference - Transform IT at The Resort at the Mountain, 68010 East Fairway, Welches, Oregon. To register, visit: http://www.acpenw.org/. WHEN: Wednesday, May 4th, 2016, 1:30 - 2:30 pm PDT HOW: To schedule a conversation with Torsten George, contact Marc Gendron at [email protected] or 781-237-0341.

About ACPE The Association of Computer Professionals in Education (ACPE), actively seeks out and shares relevant information designed and targeted for its members to promote general recognition of the role of IT professionals in educational institutions; improve network and computer services; integrate emerging technologies; encourage appropriate use of information technology for the improvement of education and support standards whereby common interchanges of electronic information can be accomplished efficiently and effectively. Through annual conferences for its members and other outreach efforts, ACPE, has served the Pacific Northwest's educational community since 1965. For over 45 years, ACPE has provided IT professionals in pre-kindergarten through post-secondary education unique opportunities to share ideas, techniques, practices in environments that builds long lasting relationships amongst its members. ACPE serves educational IT professionals in the states of Oregon and Washington. ACPE is an affiliate of ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education and CoSN, the Consortium of School Networking. About Transform IT Transform IT is an interactive and engaging forum for educational IT professionals to share knowledge and skills on best practices, emerging trends and technologies pertinent to serving and supporting the K-12 environment. ACPE's annual conferences are designed to help build long lasting relationships and partnerships for educational technologies that support the sharing of knowledge, skills and best practices in IT leadership to serve educational organizations. ACPE's uniqueness is rooted in networking, relationships and collaboration. We bring you the very best among us to lead our sessions in a way that keeps it both practical and visionary. The ACPE Board is committed to bringing the very best innovative IT strategies, practices and pragmatic solutions to our membership at every event. About RiskSense RiskSense, Inc., is the pioneer and market leader in pro-active cyber risk management. The company enables enterprises and governments to unify and contextualize internal security intelligence and external threat data across the entire computing stack, then correlate the findings with business criticality to identify imminent cyber risks and prioritize remediation actions. The company's Software-as-a-Service (SaaS (News - Alert)) Platform transforms cyber risk management into a more pro-active, collaborative, and real-time discipline. The RiskSense Platform embodies the expertise and intimate knowledge gained from real world experience in defending critical networks from the world's most dangerous cyber adversaries. As former advisors to the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Intelligence Community, RiskSense founders developed Computational Analysis of Cyber Terrorism against the U.S. (CACTUS), Support Vectors Intrusion (News - Alert) Detection, Behavior Risk Analysis of Vicious Executables (BRAVE), and the Strike Team Program. By leveraging RiskSense cyber risk management solutions, organizations can significantly shorten time-to-remediation, increase operational efficiency, strengthen their security posture, improve cyber hygiene, heighten response readiness, reduce costs, and ultimately minimize cyber risks. For more information, please visit www.risksense.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005480/en/

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SCRA Accepts New Companies

As part of its ongoing mission to foster high-tech economic growth in South Carolina, SCRA's SC Launch program today announced the acceptance of Upstate companies Fatsack Outdoors and SAI (News - Alert) Global Technologies, Inc. into the program as client companies. Lowcountry company CodeLynx was accepted into the Resource Partner Network.

Client companies are accepted into the SC Launch economic development program to receive mentoring and other support services. Accepted companies may also be eligible to receive matching grant funds or investments. Resource Partners provide business support services to SC Launch Client Companies.

Fatsack Outdoors is a South Carolina-based technology company, committed to improving the experience of fishing enthusiasts and fostering growth within the fishing industry. In 2015, their first mobile application was released and in under a year, it had acquired more than 10,000 users. In the same year, Fatsack signed four professional anglers to their staff andaligned partnerships with companies such as Booyah (News - Alert) Bait, Rat-L-Trap and Connect Scale. Presently, Fatsack sponsors several high school and college fishing teams, including Tennessee Tech, who won the 2016 Carhartt Bassmaster College Series Classic.







SAI Global Technologies, Inc. is an Upstate company that offers technology for production, processing and application of nanomaterials and nanotechnology products. The company's diversified technology portfolio includes nanomaterials solutions for defense, manufacturing, medical, aerospace, water treatment and energy applications.

CodeLynx specializes in software development for web-based applications, mobile applications and hardware software integration projects. Serving clients as either a complementary component to existing development efforts or as a turnkey project, CodeLynx is able to scale to the appropriate level of need for each specific client.

About SCRA

Chartered in 1983 by the state of South Carolina, SCRA enriches South Carolina's technology economy. SCRA improves the development and growth of South Carolina's innovation ecosystem by supporting entrepreneurs, enabling university research commercialization and connecting industry to innovators. For further information, visit http://www.scra.org/.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426006491/en/
[April 26, 2016] Sky Global One Power Plant in Texas Opens, Featuring First of GE's 60-Hertz J920 FleXtra Gas Engines in the US

GE (NYSE:GE) today announced the opening of Sky Global Partners, LLC's "Sky Global Power One" power plant, which features six of GE's Jenbacher J920 FleXtra gas engines-representing the first six 60-hertz, 8.6-megawatt (MW) units to be in commercial operation in the United States. The plant is located in Colorado County, Texas, and will supply peaking power to meet the power demands of the 18,000 members of San Bernard Electric Cooperative (SBEC) in an eight-county region of south Central Texas. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005171/en/ Six of GE's 60-hertz, Jenbacher J920 FleXtra gas engines are powering the new Sky Global Power One power plant in Colorado County, Texas. (Photo: Business Wire) GE provided six of its 60-hertz, Ecomagination qualified, 8.6-megawatt (MW) J920 FleXtra ultra-fast response, natural gas-fired engine generator sets for the 51-MW Sky Global Power One project, including a multiyear service agreement to increase asset availability. The plant will use no more water than a single residence. Sky Global Partners will sell peaking power generation to the San Bernard Electric Cooperative, Inc. (SBEC), which supplies electricity to more than 18,000 members. This partnership between Sky Global Partners and SBEC allows SBEC to participate in the value of the project through its investment in the purchased power over time. "This project is a testament to our strong relationship with Sky Global Partners. The plant will not only serve the electrical needs of our membership when needed, but it also will be a merchant plant for others when not serving our needs," said Billy Marricle, president and general manager of San Bernard. "This is a significant part of our power strategy going forward and provides us with protection from electricity exchange price spikes and the opportunity to increase the value of our cooperative." Due to the increasing installed base of renewable power generation in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) region and the intermittent nature of these energy sources, the power plant must be able to provide a very high degree of flexibility within a short period to offset the volatility of the wind and solar resources, thus ensuring grid stability. While GE supplied the core equipment consisting of six engines and the exhaust emission reduction systems, Sky Global Partners contracted with Haskell to design and construct the overall power plant. Sky Global Partners is the managing partner. SBEC's participation in the project includes not only purchasing power, but also active participation in the management of the power plant. The financial collaboators for the plant are Sky Global Partners, Prudential Capital Group and The Lincoln National Life Insurance Company.



"For over a decade, Sky Global had been seeking a means to improve the value of power supply for the public power sector in Texas. This project is the first to achieve that vision, which is largely due to the combined efforts of GE's technology, Haskell's execution, Prudential Capital Group's unique financing structure and the strategy of SBEC's leadership," said Frank Rotondi, president and CEO of Sky Global Partners. Texas produces and consumes more electricity than any other state, accounting for more than one-tenth of total U.S. energy use. Contributing factors include its large and growing population, extreme summer temperatures and extensive industrial/manufacturing sector. When compared to the rest of the country, Texas has a higher concentration of energy-intensive industries such as aluminum, chemicals, forest products, glass and petroleum refining.

"Currently, more than one in six people in the world lack access to electricity, and one in three can't depend on the sources they have1. Countries like the U.S. that have reliable access face big challenges as they look to upgrade aging infrastructure while making economic, environmental and efficiency improvements. Reliable and flexible power is key to economic success," said Heiner Markhoff, president & CEO for GE Water & Distributed Power at GE Power. "As Texas continues to grow, it must invest in more power generation to ensure a reliable and affordable supply during peak power, and the Sky Global Power One project is one solution to help solve Texas' energy needs. The best-in-class electrical efficiency of GE's Jenbacher J920 FleXtra gas engines adds up to big savings in fuel over the life cycle of a plant." About San Bernard Electric Cooperative, Inc. San Bernard Electric Cooperative, Inc. began in 1939, when several leaders from Austin and Colorado Counties became interested in securing service for their farms. As a result of their efforts, the cooperative was incorporated in November of 1939. The cooperative derived its name from the San Bernard River, which is the common boundary between Austin and Colorado Counties. The first 89 miles of power lines were built in 1940 and energized on December 31st, 1940. They served 141 members in the rural areas of Colorado and Austin Counties. Currently the Cooperative has approximately 3,900 miles of line serving approximately 25,000 meters in eight Texas counties - Austin, Colorado, Fayette, Grimes, Harris, Lavaca, Montgomery and Waller. About Sky Global Partners, LLC Sky Global Partners, LLC (Sky Global) is an independent power producer founded in 2007 with a fresh approach to serve evolving energy markets today. As leaders in the power generation industry, our mission is to design, build, finance, own and operate customized special purpose electric generation for Municipal Utilities, Rural Electric Cooperatives, Oil & Gas Producers, and Large Industry throughout the United States. Sky Global Partners, LLC was founded in 2007 by a group of individuals with over 4,000 MW of completed independent power development, financing and operational experience. The members of the management team have built and operated power plants and other energy supply sources, managed all aspects of electric generation development and presided over multibillion-dollar energy commodities trading and marketing businesses. About GE's Distributed Power business GE's Distributed Power business is a leading provider of engines, power equipment and services focused on power generation and gas compression at or near the point of use. Distributed Power offers a diverse product portfolio that includes highly efficient, fuel-flexible, industrial gas engines generating 200 kW to 10 MW each of power for numerous industries globally. In addition, the business provides life cycle support for more than 36,000 gas engines worldwide to help you meet your business challenges and success metrics-anywhere and anytime. Backed by our authorized service providers in more than 170 countries, GE's global service network connects with you locally for rapid response to your service needs. GE's Distributed Power business is headquartered in Jenbach, Austria. About GE Power GE Power is a world leader in power generation with deep domain expertise to help customers deliver electricity from a wide spectrum of fuel sources. We are transforming the electricity industry with the digital power plant, the world's largest and most efficient gas turbine, full balance of plant, upgrade and service solutions as well as our data-leveraging software. Our innovative technologies and digital offerings help make power more affordable, reliable, accessible and sustainable. For more information, visit the company's website at www.gepower.com. Follow GE Power on Twitter (News - Alert) @GE_Power and on LinkedIn at GE Power. About GE GE (NYSE: GE) is the world's Digital Industrial Company, transforming industry with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive and predictive. GE is organized around a global exchange of knowledge, the "GE Store," through which each business shares and accesses the same technology, markets, structure and intellect. Each invention further fuels innovation and application across our industrial sectors. With people, services, technology and scale, GE delivers better outcomes for customers by speaking the language of industry. www.ge.com 1 Source (News - Alert): http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/resources/energydevelopment/ View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005171/en/

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[April 26, 2016] Zumasys Ranked #1 by Fortune Magazine and Great Place to Work for Best Workplaces for Giving Back

Zumasys, a leading provider of cloud computing solutions for business critical applications and customized ERP systems, is thrilled to announce that consulting firm Great Place to Work and Fortune magazine have named the company #1 on the country's 50 Best Workplaces for Giving Back. In 2012 Zumasys launched Happyness is a Choice, a unique program which was designed to encourage team members to find the true meaning in their work. What started with a simple goal of donating 1% of revenues to non-profits has evolved into a culture firmly rooted in both volunteering and giving to those in need. Building on the company's International Travel Incentive, team members have recently volunteered in Romania, Zambia and Panama and formed deep personal connections along the way. To date, Zumasys has donated more than $750,000 and has helped nearly 300 non-profits and individuals in need. "Our goal is to put smiles on the faces of our employees, our customers and partners as well as people in our communities who could use a lift," says Zumasys President Paul Giobbi. "By setting aside a portion of every customer dollar spent on our cloud, infrastructure and software solutions, our Happyness is a Choice team is literally changing lives and connecting people in new and meaningful ways."



In addition to granting 20 hours a year of paid time-off for volunteering, Happyness is a Choice actively encourages departmental volunteering and challenging each other to learn how they can use their strengths to serve. To learn more about Zumasys' Happyness is a Choice program visit https://youtu.be/6tM3mOPKSVA "The Best Workplaces for Giving Back demonstrate more than just a commitment to charity," said Kim Peters, executive vice president at Great Place to Work. "These organizations have earned employees' admiration by involving staffers in their community service efforts and contributing resources in ways that genuinely reflect their unique cultures."

Zumasys and the other winning companies were selected based on responses to the Trust Index, Great Place to Work's employee assessment survey. Employees rated their sense that they make a difference in their jobs, the meaningfulness of their work, and the impact they feel their organizations make in the community. The list also took into account company programs and an analysis of anonymous employee comments about their workplaces. About Zumasys: Zumasys helps businesses of every size Conquer the Cloud. Their personalized approach to cloud computing means they take the time to listen to its customers, understand their business objectives, and develop a customized solution that accommodates any application. Zumasys is passionate about providing a unique and exceptional service experience for every customer. From its beginnings in 2000, Zumasys has grown to encompass three divisions-cloud computing, infrastructure technologies and software development-with offices throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. About Great Place to Work Great Place to Work is the global authority on high-trust, high-performance workplace cultures. Through proprietary assessment tools, advisory services, and certification programs, including Best Workplaces lists and workplace reviews, Great Place to Work provides the benchmarks, framework, and expertise needed to create, sustain, and recognize outstanding workplace cultures. In the United States, Great Place to Work produces the annual Fortune "100 Best Companies to Work For" and a series of Great Place to Work Best Workplaces lists, including lists for Millennials, Women, Diversity, Small and Medium Companies and over a half dozen different industries. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426006627/en/

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[April 25, 2016] Soha Hassoun to Receive Marie R. Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award

Soha Hassoun, Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Tufts University and a past general chair of the Design Automation Conference (DAC), has been selected as the recipient of the Marie R. Pistilli Women in Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Achievement Award for 2016. An accomplished academic and researcher, Dr. Hassoun also has held executive and leadership positions in conferences and workshops for computer-aided design, design automation, logic synthesis, timing issues in the specification and synthesis of digital systems, and bio-design automation. In addition to providing a role model for female students in graduate and undergraduate engineering, Dr. Hassoun has given back to her professional community by acting as a mentor and advisor; working with students transitioning to graduate school; and speaking on improving the graduate school environment for female students, working the 80/20 rule for success, and helping women understand what defines future leaders and ideal hires. Professor Hassoun created impactful and enduring educational and research programs for the EDA community including: the PhD Forum at DAC, now in its 19th year; the Design Automation Summer School, now in its 6th iteration; the CADathlon at ICCAD, now in its 16th year; the Designer Track at DAC, now in its 8th year; and the Work in Progress session at DAC, now in its 4th year. These programs have reconfigured the international educational landscape in EDA and significantly enhanced the creation of a coherent and connected research community. Dr. Hassoun was a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, and several awards from ACM/SIGDA for her service, including the Distinguished Service Award in 2000 and 2007 as well as the 2002 Technical Leadership Award. She has held leadership positions for such conferences and workshops as DAC, ICCAD, IWLS, and TAU. Dr. Hassoun was ICCAD Technical Program Chair in 2005, ICCAD Vice Chair in 2006, ICCAD Chair in 2007, DAC Technical Program Co-Chair in 2011 and 2012, DAC Vice Chair in 2013, and DAC Chair in 2014. Dr. Hassoun co-founded the International Workshop on Bio-Design Automation in 2009. She was an associate editor of the IEEE (News - Alert) Transactions on Computer-Aided Design and of the IEEE Design and Test magazine. She was nominated to the Defense Science Study Group, affiliated with DARPA's Institute for Defense Analyses. Dr. Hassoun served on the IEEE Council on Design Automation and was director of educational activities for ACM's Special Interest Group on Design Automation for several years. She is a fellow of Tau Beta Pi, a senior member of IEEE and ACM, and a member of Eta Kappa Nu. "Members of the DAC Executive Committee [EC] have had the pleasure of working with Dr. Hassoun as she served on the EC in various capacities since 2011," said Ann Steffra Mutscher, Editor, Semiconductor Engineering and chairperson of Women in Electronic Design. "In 2013, she was recognized by the Electronic Design Automation Consortium as one of 33 luminaries in the field of electronic design automation. It is a pleasure to present her with the Marie Pistilli award in recognition of her service to DAC and the other communities of which she is a member, and for her contribution to research, technology, and the education of engineers in such a wide variety of fields."



About Soha Hassoun Dr. Hassoun is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Tufts University. Dr. Hassoun holds secondary appointments in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and also in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Tufts. She received her BSEE degree from South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD; her Master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA; and her Ph.D. degree from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

Dr. Hassoun was an integrated circuit designer with the Microprocessor Design Group, Digital Equipment Corporation, Hudson, MA, from 1988 until 1991, and worked as a consultant at IBM Research Labs in Austin, and to several EDA companies, including IKOS Systems (now with Mentor Graphics (News - Alert)) and Carbon Design Systems (now with ARM). Her current research interests include developing algorithmic solutions to facilitate designing integrated circuits, and understanding the impact of new technologies such as double-gate devices, carbon nanotubes, and 3-D integration on design. Additional research includes computational methods for systems biology and metabolic engineering, including pathway analysis, modularity, pathway synthesis, and predictive modeling of biochemical networks. About the Marie R. Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award Women have made important contributions and strides in the EDA industry for over 20 years. To recognize those who have dedicated time and effort toward these achievements, the DAC Executive Committee presents an annual award to honor an individual who has made significant contributions to help women advance in the field of EDA technology. The award is named for DAC's former organizer Marie Pistilli, who worked hard to further the advancement of women in engineering and who passed away in November 2015. The Marie R. Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award will be presented to Dr. Hassoun during the 53rd Design Automation Conference (DAC) General Session Awards presentation, Monday, June 6, 2016 at the Austin Convention Center, Austin, TX. For a list of previous recipients of the Award visit https://dac.com/content/women-electronic-design. About DAC The Design Automation Conference (DAC) is recognized as the premier event for the design of electronic circuits and systems and for electronic design automation (EDA). Members of a diverse worldwide community from more than 1,000 organizations attend each year, represented by system designers and architects, logic and circuit designers, validation engineers, CAD managers, senior managers and executives, and researchers and academicians from leading universities. Close to 60 technical sessions selected by a committee of electronic design experts offer information on recent developments and trends, management practices and new products, methodologies and technologies. A highlight of DAC is its exhibition and suite area, with approximately 200 of the leading and emerging EDA, silicon, intellectual property (IP) and design services providers. The conference is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (EDA Consortium), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and is supported by ACM's Special Interest Group on Design. Design Automation Conference acknowledges trademarks or registered trademarks of other organizations for their respective products and services. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425006477/en/

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[April 25, 2016] Industrial Robotics Market Analysis: By Type (Cartesian, 6-axis, Scara, Others); By Application (Welding, Palletizing, Packaging, Material Handling, Others); By Industry (Food and Beverages, Automotive, Electronics, Others) - Forecast 2020

NEW YORK, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Industrial Robots are a remarkable invention in the industrial sector that has changed the industrial automation processes. They are mainly used for material handling, welding, dispensing, processing, and assembly purposes. The key industrial robot which are applied across several industries are Cartesian, Scara, Articulated, Cylindrical, 6-axis and Linear. Production and processing are the major applications of the industrial robotics. Moreover, the increasing investments in the automotive industry are a significant growth factor. During 2010-2013, the investments in the automotive industry grew 22% on an average per year. Apart from that the metal and machinery industry is also contributing to the industrial robotics consumption. Industrial robotics market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.4% with total revenue of $12.74 billion by 2020.



Industrial Robotics Market Report is a comprehensive study of the demand and supply trends of Industrial Robotics across four geographies: Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and RoW (Rest of the world). The market study is also presented by segmenting based on type, application, and end use industry.



APAC is the prominent marketfor industrial robotics and has recorded ~40% robotics sales in 2013. End use industries in APAC region are significantly investing in robotics to speed-up the production process and enhance productivity. The Japanese and Chinese markets are the major countries in terms of sales, owing to the increasing robot installations and have the highest number of robots in operation. Besides these, Germany, South Korea, Unites States also showcased good demand in 2014. Increasing robot manufacturing in China is estimated to boost the market value in the overall APAC market till 2020.







Competitive landscape for industry and market players are profiled with attributes of company overview, financial overview, business strategies, product portfolio and recent developments.



SRIs market is dominated by major companies, namely are :

ABB Ltd,

Fanuc Corporation,

KUKA AG , and many more.

Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03493344-summary/view-report.html





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ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



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Intl: +1 339-368-6001 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/industrial-robotics-market-analysis-by-type-cartesian-6-axis-scara-others-by-application-welding-palletizing-packaging-material-handling-others-by-industry-food-and-beverages-automotive-electronics-others---fore-300257185.html SOURCE Reportlinker

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[April 25, 2016] VLC (Visible Light Communications) Market-by Components (Visible Light LED's, Diodes); By Applications (Smart Lighting, Indoor, Outdoor);By End-user industry (Vehicle & transportation, Hospitals & Healthcare)-Forecast to 2021

LONDON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Visible Light Communications (VLC), a subset of optical wireless communications technologies, is an emerging area of broadband transmission technology which uses light in the visible region (780-375nm) to transfer data. Through rapid flickering of advanced LED's, streams of data can be encoded and transmitted. VLC has a lot of advantages over other forms of wireless communications in the way that it does not interfere with radio frequency (RF) electronics and has no associated health concerns, thereby making it suitable for use in hospitals and aircrafts. The potential for VLC is huge and researches are working on it to overcome many of the technical challenges that the VLC market is facing. They are even confident that further researches on this technology can lead to VLC being eventually accepted as an integral part of our infrastructure. The report study includes the detailed demand analysis of VLC market on a global and regional scale for a five-year period of 2016-2021, both in terms of production volume (Units) and revenue ($billion).



The market is evaluated based on the key attributes such as the power in the hands of producers and consumers, analysis on the degree of competition, and threats from substitutes and new entrants.



The report also includes segmentation based on components used in this technology, the various applications where this technology is put to use and the various end user industries which are benefitted from using this technology. The technology uses fluorescent lights, visible light LED's, diodes, image sensors, IR emitters and opto couplers. The major applications of this technology include various indoor and outdoor applications, location-based services, underwater communications, and applications in hazardous environments, Wi-Fi spectrum relief and smart lighting applications. Many prominent end user industries such as Vehicle and Transportation, Defense and security, Hospitals and Healthcare, Aviation and mining are showing significant improvements in this field.



Competitive landscape for each o the product types is highlighted and market players are profiled with attributes of company overview, financial overview, business strategies, product portfolio and recent developments. Market shares of the key players for 2015, market drivers, challenges and constraints which control the profitability of an industry are also analyzed in the report.







Among a wide range of manufacturers, major players that contribute to the VLC market are

The Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc.,

Outstanding Technologies Ltd.

Rise Corporation,

NEC Corporation,

Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd.,

Nakagawa Laboratories, Inc.

The Nippon Signal Co., Ltd.

We provide profound data about the industry overview, financial overview, business strategies and recent developments.



The VLC market has also been segmented based on geographical region: Americas, Europe , Asia-pacific and Middle-East & Africa . These geographies are further classified into countries holding prominent share in the VLC market for the forecast period. Japan was reported to be the largest market in the Asia Pacific region.





Japan has shown a pioneering improvement in VLC technology. Even the U.S has invested a huge amount in this market and presently, the Chinese Government has thought of investing a large sum to integrate this technology into aircrafts. APAC region is expected to be the market leader in the VLC market owing to the recent technological developments and increased R&D activities.



Scientists are showing an interest in the development of VLC technology, with their prime focus being on creating ultra-high-speed, high security, biologically friendly communications networks, thereby allowing the creation and expansion of seamless computing applications using very large bandwidth high-frequency pulsed light instead of radio waves and microwaves. VLC systems can improve the existing telecommunications technology, as well as may help in the development of hybrid systems such as combined long distance light and radio frequency/microwave communication systems which could use VLC technology during good weather and clear visibility, and be supplemented with more conventional (though less secure) technology where required, such as during poor weather conditions and poor visibility. Properly developed VLC could also be used to help create more equipment-friendly and biologically-friendly electromagnetic environments helping to create truly sustainable communications technology.



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3759023/



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Website: www.reportbuyer.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vlc-visible-light-communications-market-by-components-visible-light-leds-diodes-by-applications-smart-lighting-indoor-outdoorby-end-user-industry-vehicle--transportation-hospitals--healthcare-forecast-to-2021-300257189.html SOURCE ReportBuyer

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Details added, first version posted at 10:31

Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

By Seymur Aliyev- Trend:

The UNAOC 7th Global Forum official ceremony took place today in Baku, where the country's President Ilham Aliyev made the opening speech.

The president welcomed the participants of the forum, in particular expressing gratitude to the founding fathers of the alliance,

He welcomed the participants of the forum.

"It is a big honor for us to host the 7th UNAOC Global Forum. We consider it a sign of appreciation of our activity and promotion of values of intercultural dialogue, multiculturalism," said the president in his opening speech.

"I'd like to express my gratitude to the founding fathers of the alliance - Turkey and Spain, President Erdogan and former Prime Minister Zapatero, for this extremely important initiative, which now lives for more than 10 years," Ilham Aliyev said.

The president went on to add that the idea of creation of the alliance was the sign of wisdom of the politicians, President Erdogan and former Prime Minister Zapatero, supported by international community.

"I'd also like to express my gratitude to the high representative UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations Mr. Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser for his leadership, contribution and promotion of the values of peace, solidarity and friendship," said president Aliyev.

The president went on to say that Azerbaijan is proud to have the representatives of more than 140 countries gather in Baku to address the important issues of the alliance of civilizations.

He said that Azerbaijan, for centuries, was a place where religions, cultures and civilizations met.

"We're not only a geographic breach between East and West, but also a cultural breach. For centuries, representatives of religions, cultures lived in peace and dignity in Azerbaijan," he said. "Religious tolerance, multiculturalism - were always present here. There was no word - multiculturalism, but the ideas were always present."

Ilham Aliyev added that as a result of that, Azerbaijan today is a multiethnic, multiconfessional country, where representatives of all religions and ethnic groups live in dignity and peace.

"This is one of our biggest assets," he said. "And we're proud of our history. We are proud of our historical monuments, which reflect the creation of representatives of different cultures."

President reminded that one of the oldest mosques in the world, which was built in 743, is situated in Azerbaijani city of Shemakha.

"Also, one of the oldest churches in the Caucasus, the ancient church of ancient state Caucasian Albania is also situated in Azerbaijan, close to another ancient city of Sheki," he said.

The president said the Azerbaijani government invests in construction and renovation of mosques, orthodox and catholic churches, synagogues.

"This is our policy and this is our lifestyle," said the president. "For centuries, Azerbaijan is preserving this asset, regardless of political or social situation in the country."

Ilham Aliyev went on to add that Azerbaijan is relatively young as an independent country, only 25 years old, but it is ancient, with deep historical and cultural roots.

"Multiculturalism for us is a state policy," said the president. "We organize different events, addressing this important issue."

The president added that every two years, Intercultural dialogue forum takes place in Azerbaijan, and Baku International Humanitarian Forum is hosted regularly as well.

"The main idea is to bring the representatives of different religions together and how to establish more understanding between us," he said.

The president also reminded that Azerbaijan hosted the world summit of religious leaders, addressing important issues of interreligious dialogue.

"I think today this is one of the most important topics on global agenda," he said. "And the role of the alliance of civilizations is growing. Unfortunately, we see some very concerning trends in our region, in Europe, in the Middle East, on the area of former Soviet Union. We see clashes, confrontations, based on ethnic and religious grounds."

Azerbaijan's president said this is a very dangerous tendency.

"I think that gathering in Baku, at the UNAOC 7th Global Forum will address these issues and will contribute to the cause of solidarity, peace, mutual understanding and partnership."

"In 2008 we initiated the Baku Process, which already became the broad platform for international dialogue. Azerbaijan is one of the few countries, which is the member of the Islamic Cooperation Organization and the Council of Europe. So at the meeting of the ministers of culture of Council of Europe which took place in Baku, in 2008, we invited the ministers of cultures of the Islamic Cooperation Organization," said the president.

"For the first time, the ministers of cultures from more than 100 countries from these two organizations gathered in Baku," Ilham Aliyev said. "Next year, in 2009, we hosted the ministerial meeting of the ministers of cultures of the Islamic Cooperation Organization in Baku and invited the ministers of culture of Council of Europe."

"So this was named the Baku Process and we are very proud that the name of our ancient city is now also associated with a positive initiative," the president said.

He went on to add that this process is growing, getting more and more supporters.

"It is becoming a global initiative, which contributes to the cause of solidarity, mutual understanding and intercultural dialogue," the president said.

"Azerbaijan's geographic location is known, but at the same time our initiatives are aimed at strengthening the position of our country as a bridge between cultures, between civilizations, as a country which can and should contribute more to the cause of mutual understanding," President Aliyev said.

He reminded that last year Baku was very proud to host the First inaugural European Games in Baku, and next year Baku will host the Fourth Islamic Solidarity Games in Baku.

"So, in one city in two years time, European and Islamic athletes will perform. This is not only sport and achievement of medals. This is friendship, mutual understanding, solidarity, partnership," he said.

"There is nothing to divide between us," he continued. "We are all living on the same planet, all the people want to live in dignity, peace, security, to raise children, to protect their families. All religions advocate for the same values - humanity, mercy, solidarity, peace. Uniting our efforts is what the world needs to do."

The president went on to say that today's gathering, today's forum is a clear indicator that the ideas of multiculturalism are strongly supported by international community.

"As I said, more than 140 countries are present here. Multiculturalism has no alternative. We all know that there are different ideas about different views of multiculturalism - failed, or some that did not work, but there are positive examples. For us, multiculturalism is a state policy, and is our lifestyle. And looking at the alternatives, what are the alternatives of multiculturalism? Very dangerous alternatives - xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, racism, discrimination, hatred," Ilham Aliyev said.

He went on to add that strengthening the values of multiculturalism will be a very positive trend, and all the responsible politicians should contribute to this positive dynamics.

"As I said, Azerbaijan is a relatively young country as an independent state. This year we will celebrate the 25th anniversary of restoration of our independence. These were the years of transformation of political, economic system, these were the years of creation of the state," the president said.

"I think that we've met all our major targets. Azerbaijan became the respected member of the international community. It is the member of the United Nations, OSCE, Islamic Cooperation Organization, the Council of Europe, Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and many other international bodies," Ilham Aliyev said.

He went on to remind that Azerbaijan has strong international support, which was reflected in 2011, when with the support of 155 countries, Azerbaijan for the first time, was elected as a non-permanent member of the Uinted Nations Security Council.

"That was a big victory for our country, and sign of great respect to Azerbaijan," said the president. "Within the short period of 25 years, we managed to present ourselves as a reliable international partner, as a country with independent foreign policy, country which contributes to regional development, regional security, stability and multiculturalism."

President Aliyev went on to say that the years of independence were the years of transformation of Azerbaijan's political system, creation of democratic institutions.

"We succeeded in that," said the president. "All the freedoms are provided in Azerbaijan, freedom of media, free internet. More than 70 percent of our population are internet users. Freedom of assembly, religious freedom, all freedoms are provided and this is a good foundation for rapid economic development."

He further said that economic reforms implemented in Azerbaijan were implemented in parallel with political reforms.

"Unfortunately, the creation of our state was dominated by military aggression by neighboring Armenia against Azerbaijan. The aggression that ended in occupation of internationally recognized territory of our country. Nagorno Karabakh is a historic, legal part of Azerbaijan. When Azerbaijan became the member of the United Nations, it got adopted with Nagorno Karabakh as an integral part of our country. But as a result of this aggression, Nagorno-Karabakh is totally occupied by Armenia, and not only Karabakh, but also seven other districts of Azerbaijan, beyond the administrative borders of Nagorno Karabakh are under occupation," said the president.

Ilham Aliyev noted that as a result of the occupation, Azerbaijan has more than one million refugees and internally displaced persons.

"So, we were subject of ethnic cleansing by Armenia and almost 20 percent of our territory is under occupation for more than 20 years," the president said.

"Everything on the occupied territories is destroyed. The OSCE sent fact-finding missions twice to observe the situation there, and their reports are terrifying. Everything is destroyed - all our buildings, historic monuments, mosques, graves," said Ilham Aliyev.

"Here in Baku in the center of the city, you can see how we preserve the religious heritage of Armenian people. The Armenian church was restored, and it is situated where it was built. But all our mosques on the occupied territories lie in ruins," he said.

The president reminded that the international community adopted resolutions and decisions in order to put an end to Armenian occupation.

"The United Nations Security Council, the highest international body, adopted four resolutions, demanding immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Armenian troops from occupied territories," he said. "Unfortunately, Armenia simply ignores these resolutions and doesn't implement them."

"And here we come to a very important mechanism of implementation of decisions and resolutions of international organizations," said President Aliyev. "In some cases, resolutions of the Security Council are implemented within days, if not hours. But in our case, it is more than 20 years, and still no result."

The president said that the OSCE, Islamic Cooperation Organization, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, NAM, all of them adopted similar resolutions demanding the withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijan's territories.

"Armenia simply ignores them, and there is no international pressure to force the aggressor to comply with international norms," Ilham Aliyev said.

"Our people were subject of genocide. Khodjaly genocide is now recognized by 10 countries. As as result of that genocide, hundreds of Azerbaijanis were killed, civilians. Almost 200 of them were women and children," he said. "This is a crime against humanity, and this once again shows what a danger we are facing."

President Aliyev said the resolution of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan must be based on international law norms, the UN Charter, the UN Security resolutions, Helsinki Final Act.

"Our territories must be liberated, our people must have a chance to go back to their homes."
[April 26, 2016] Launch of Juzpayroll.com by AYP Group Targets SMEs

SINGAPORE, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- From April 1 onwards, under the Ministry of Manpower's (MOM) Employment Act, all employers are required to issue itemised payslips to employees. In accordance with this new rule, AYP Group, a leading HR firm in Asia, has developed Juzpayroll, a new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) payroll system targeted at small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Juzpayroll targets SMEs with limited resources and helps them generate payroll easily at low cost. It allows companies to streamline payroll, allowances and expense management all in one productivity boosting system, managing and automating payroll tasks in minutes. In addition, Juzpayroll is also meant to help SMEs who do not have computerized payslips and who can not afford an enterprise solution to produce MOM-compliant payslips. Juzpayroll protects SME employees from employment disputes and assures them of their income and entitled benefits. Besides being cost-efficient, Juzpayroll includes all of the features that SEs need to run monthly payroll easily.



Juzpayroll features: Time saving Comprehensive payroll report Employee management Auto reimbursement

Flexible Customized pay-items templates Compliant payslip

User-friendly No installation Mobile friendly Committed support

SMEs may be able to get funding support from the government for the usage of Juzpayroll. Juzpayroll is eligible for the Productivity and Innovation Credit Scheme (PIC). The recent 2016 budget includes a range of measures to support SMEs to help them through the downturn in Singapore's economy. It was announced that there will be an SME Working Capital Loan scheme for loans. With these schemes in place, SMEs can invest in software that allows them to increase their productivity.

Annie Yap, CEO of AYP Group mentioned that, "SMEs can effectively tap into the new LED scheme to grow the Singaporean core workforce." One of the important aspects of SMEs is manpower. Many SMEs streamline their manpower to be cost effective. Hence, productivity is key with a lean team. With time saved every month on processing payrolls for employees, manpower can be used to do more productive tasks. Juzpayroll was founded by Annie Yap and HR experts in Asia. Annie's team consists of payroll and finance experts with more than 20 years of payroll and HR experience, as well as talented solution architects and engineers. They care deeply about building a great product with a purpose to make payroll administration a breeze for SMEs. Juzpayroll offers a one month free trial for all interested employers. Go to www.juzpayroll.com to find out more. For more information, please contact: Leon at [email protected] or call 6384 3808

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[April 26, 2016] Mumbai Convergence Hub Recognized as a Top Digital Innovator at 2016 Digital India Summit

MUMBAI, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mumbai Convergence Hub was Among the Top Three Organizations Recognized for Outstanding Contribution in Digital Innovation in the Digital Start-up Innovators Category at the Digital India Summit & Awards 2016 Mumbai CH announced that it has been honored as a Top Digital Innovator at the 2016 Digital India Summit organized by Economic Times, ET NOW and Times Now in the Good for Organization category for the Peering Exchange Hub project, held in New Delhi, 22nd March 2016. The Digital India Summit and Awards, recognize the achievements of leading Indian organizations which felicitate for digital initiative in the social and corporate world that are harnessing the power of ICT and digital tools to transform business processes, improve delivery of public services and create a positive impact on society. Mumbai Convergence Hub is India's only open peering exchange hub which allows content players and ISP's to peer with others at a common point to improve network latency and save bandwidth. Nikhil Rathi, Chief Contributor and Innovator, Mumbai Convergence Hub, said, "I'm roud of our Mumbai CH team, being recognized as one of the Top Digital Innovators is a great achievement and is a true honor and I'm thrilled that the company is being recognized in this way. We look forward to developing more innovative solutions for our country and our people; it's all about making Internet affordable and accessible for billions in our country and improve the ecosystem."



"This award not only recognizes our effort for improving the Indian digital ecosystem but is also evidence that India is innovating and improving on every front, be it through 'Make in India' or 'Digital India' initiative," said Vivin Varghese Meleadan, Chief Strategist, Mumbai CH. "We are fortunate for Hosting Mumbai CH (MCH) at our Tier IV designed DC at Rabale and working with the team in bringing all major DNS root servers to India. Looking at the progress they have made, we believe our Internet costs will be decreased by over 40% in the coming years while the speeds will be substantially increased by 500%. We wish the team all success and hope they will bring innovation to our country and Internet community," said Nishant Rathi, President, Web Werks Data Centers.

About Mumbai Convergence Hub Mumbai CH is a non-profit, high-performance, high-availability and carrier-neutral meeting point for Indian and international content. The Peering participants include CDN Players, DNS Root Servers, Content Providers, Video Streaming Services, Social Media, Internet Service Providers etc. About Web Werks India Pvt. Ltd. Web Werks is an India-based Tier IV data center service provider with 5 carrier-neutral data centers in India and USA. Started in 1996, Web Werks has served several Fortune 500 companies with successful projects in the areas of Web Hosting, VPS Hosting, Colocation Services, Dedicated Servers, Cloud Platform and Disaster Recovery Services. For more information, visit: http://www.webwerks.in Media Contact:

Bhavana T

[email protected]

+91-7045794438

Corporate Communications

Mumbai Convergence Hub



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[April 26, 2016] Dalmia Cement Resonates Commitment to Sustainability

NEW DELHI, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Keeping the promise of last December when nearly 200 nations unanimously agreed at COP21 Summit in Paris, to keep the world well below 2C of global warming, the United Nations hosted a signing ceremony for the Paris Agreement at United Nations Headquarters in New York. The event stressed on the impact the agreement will have on private sector operations and investments, demonstrating how climate action can improve performance, leverage new market opportunities and act as a gateway to growth and innovation. World leaders like India, China, the United States of America and the European Union were part of the event. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130812/633936 )

Dalmia Cement was part of the pledge taking among other global industry representatives last year, and was invited by United Nations Secretary, General Ban Ki-Moon to attend the ceremony. Group CEO, Dalmia Cement Bharat, Mr. Mahendra Singhi was invited for a high-level interactive dialogue with other world leaders to action tackling climate change, share learnings from the Paris Agreement and talk about Dalmia Cement Bharat's vision for creating a new, ow carbon economy.



Mr. Singhi said, "We have taken several steps to be water positive by conserving more water than what we consume. At the same time we aim to achieve the lowest carbon footprint in cement manufacturing. To conserve mineral resources, we have adopted the strategy of converting waste to wealth. At Dalmia Cement, currently 7% of the power is being generated using renewable energy and this is likely to go up to 20% by 2019. The Indian Government has been supportive of initiatives that are in alignment with various policies on sustainability development goals and climate change." Mr. Singhi, also the co-chair of Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) in India added, "We are committed to sustainability and have partnered with Cement Sustainability Initiative of World Business Council for Sustainable Development through which we are able to share the best practices for sustainability." CSI facilitates low carbon technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create a pollution free environment, aiding sustainability.

Dalmia Cement has incrementally and consistently adopted an approach to business which is inclusive and nurturing towards the people and community that it operates in. The company believes in the philosophy 'Green is Profitable', which encourages it to take actions which benefit the environment and also improve its profitability. Dalmia Cement and Mr. Singhi have been at the forefront of effecting changes by taking voluntary initiatives towards climate change mitigation and adopting low carbon technology to transform the energy landscape of India. About Dalmia Cement (Bharat) Ltd. Dalmia Cement (Bharat) Limited (DCBL), a subsidiary of Dalmia Bharat Limited (BSE Code: 533309|NSE Symbol: DALMIABHA and listed in MSE), part of the Dalmia Bharat Group, is a pioneer in cement manufacturing since 1939. With an expanding India footprint, the company is a category leader in super-specialty cements used for oil well, railway sleepers and air strips and is the country's largest producer of slag cement with a national presence. With a growing capacity, currently pegged at 25 MTPA, Dalmia Cement is a top quartile player in India. Visit us at: http://www.dalmiacement.com Media Contact:

Pooja Bharadwaj

[email protected]

+91-9560166999

Senior Manager

Dalmia Bharat Group



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[April 26, 2016] Lead Market Clocks Revenue Run Rate of Rs 12 Crore

BANGALORE, April 26,2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Lead Market, India's largest market place of prequalified leads for financial services, has reported a revenue run rate of Rs 12 crore as on March 2016. Lead Market has on boarded over 16,000 financial and real estate intermediaries on its platform within 6 months since its launch. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/10144787 )

With the launch of Lead Market, Suvision Holdings Pvt. Ltd. (parent company of Lead Market) is building India's largest financial intermediaries aggregation platform. While IndianMoney.com (financial education arm of Suvision Holdings Pvt. Ltd.) continues to provide free financial education to ensure that people make wise financial decisions, Lead Market is empowering intermediaries with pre-qualified leads, professional training and advanced technology. The spin-off of financial education and intermediaries aggregation business through two separate brands is in line with the long-term strategy of Suvision Holdings Pvt. Ltd. to be the leader in this segment. IndianMoney.com is currently educating over 14,000 people every day on phone and it aims to educate a lakh people a day by March 2018. Though the on-call advising is growing exponentially, IndianMoney.com is building an advanced tech platform using its proprietary ROBO advising algorithms to automate a significant portion of its fnancial advising business.



IndianMoney.com's financial education platform has been used by couple of PSU banks to educate their customers and this has proven the potential of its technology platform. This has been further endorsed by 'The Center for Financial Inclusion' at Accion's recent research journal on 'Innovative Products and Services Drive Financial 'Capability' Through Behavioural Change' funded by J.P. Morgan. Although Lead Market was initially launched as an app only platform, to cater to enterprise lead buyers www.LeadMarket.in was launched in March 2016, which is a replica of Lead Market mobile app. Lead Market enterprise version has the capability to be integrated with any CRM platform with all the convenience of Lead Market app. Enterprise buyers are able to browse the leads available on Lead Market directly from their CRMs.

About Suvision India Pvt. Ltd: Started in 2008 by Mr. C S Sudheer, the vision of Suvision India Pvt. Ltd. (parent company of Indianmoney.com and Lead Market) is to create a financially literate India by providing free financial advice/consultation to anyone looking for an expert opinion on matters related to finance. In the process, IndianMoney.com also educates the consumers on how not to get cheated by unscrupulous agents while buying financial products. IndianMoney.com is backed by well-known Angel Investors: Mr. Ravindra Krishnappa (founder of VertExperts Consulting LLP)

(founder of VertExperts Consulting LLP) Mr. Shekhar Kirani (Partner at Accel Partners)

(Partner at Accel Partners) Mr. Pradeep Mittal (Founder of Magna Infotech)

(Founder of Magna Infotech) Mr. Srini Koppolu (Former MD at Microsoft Development Center, India ) It also has financial and technology industry veterans Mr. Ramanand Baliga (Former Director of IBM), Mr. G Narayanan (Chairman of Vijaya Bank) and Mr. T V Rao (Former Director of EXIM Bank) on its advisory board. For further details: - Leave a missed call on 022-61816111 or visit www.IndianMoney.com for free financial education - Download Lead Market app here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jjbytes.indianmoney.mainactivity - Visit www.leadmarket.in Media Contact:

Narasimha Bidarahalli

[email protected]

+91-8095476355

VP - Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

Suvision Holdings Pvt. Ltd.





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[April 26, 2016] JETCO Pay P2P Inter-bank Platform Starts Operations

HONG KONG, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Joint Electronic Teller Services Limited ("JETCO") today announced the official commencement of its JETCO Pay P2P inter-bank platform. China CITIC Bank International, Shanghai Commercial Bank and Wing Lung Bank are the first three of the 12 participating banks who will launch their respective JETCO Pay P2P services to customers via the platform between now and end of May 2016. Operating on JETCO's existing inter-bank network, JETCO Pay P2P boasts a high level of security and offers the most comprehensive inter-bank service in town, allowing customers of participating banks to transfer funds directly to accounts at over 30 banks, including participating and non-participating banks, as well as those not in JETCO's network. A key feature of the JETCO Pay P2P service is that it is directly linked to the consumer's bank account, meaning that no top-up is required. Customers of the three banks can transfer funds anytime and anywhere to practically anybody in Hong Kong with a bank account with just the recipient's mobile number. Recipients holding accounts at one of the three banks will receive their money immediately via their bank's JETCO Pay P2P app. Recipients holding accounts with other JETCO or non-JETCO banks can receive money by downloading the JETCO Pay P2P Collect app. JETCO Pay P2P works on both Android and IOS-based smartphones. Its bank-grade security measures, end-to-end encryption, a dynamic PIN pad and device verification also provide multiple layersof protection to users.



JETCO Chief Executive Officer Angus Choi said: "JETCO Pay P2P is a quick, convenient, easy and safe way for consumers to transfer funds across banks using just mobile phone numbers. The pioneering launches by China CITIC Bank International, Shanghai Commercial Bank and Wing Lung Bank exemplify our member banks' commitment to innovation in mobile banking services." "JETCO's objective is to provide a mobile P2P transfer platform that can be shared by our member banks. By leveraging our state-of-the-art toolkits and technology standards, our members can accelerate the time to market," Mr. Choi added.

Both China CITIC Bank International and Shanghai Commercial Bank will launch their JETCO Pay P2P services on 26 April 2016 while Wing Lung Bank will launch in May. Mr. Choi expects the other nine participating banks to roll out their JETCO Pay P2P service in succession. Please visit www.jetcopay.com.hk for more details on the service and supporting apps. For media enquiries: Vianne Fung

Golin

Tel: (852) 2501 7908

E-mail: [email protected] About Joint Electronic Teller Services Limited Joint Electronic Teller Services Limited ("JETCO") was established in 1982 by five banks, namely, Bank of China (Hong Kong) Limited; The Bank of East Asia, Limited; OCBC Wing Hang Bank Limited (formerly Chekiang First Bank Limited); Shanghai Commercial Bank Limited and Wing Lung Bank Limited. Today, JETCO has over 30 member banks in Hong Kong and Macau and supports a range of banking services to these member banks covering both regions. JETCO currently operates more than 3,000 ATMs in Hong Kong, Macau and over 20 cities across mainland China. Bank customers can use JETCO ATMs to withdraw cash, transfer funds, check account balances, pay merchant and credit card bills, donate to charities and perform overseas transaction setting. In addition to ATM switching services, JETCO also provides other value-added services, including payment gateway services for e-Commerce and mobile payment solutions, to help member banks provide innovative and high-quality services to their customers. For more details, please visit www.jetco.com.hk. Please download photos of the press conference starting from 6 pm today from the following weblink: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qwcfdymryq2z3tv/AADxENvE_D9EnrXgtw4_1MSoa?dl=0

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[April 26, 2016]

Pivotal Periods in Art History Reflected in Heffel's 2016 Spring Live Auction Collection

Canada's art market leader will offer 144 masterworks at a live auction in Vancouver

on May 25, expected to achieve $9M to $12M

art market leader will offer at a live auction in on May 25, expected to achieve Three masterpieces by Group of Seven founder Lawren Harris , including a major canvas estimated to achieve $1.2M to $1.6M

including a major canvas estimated to achieve Five works by renowned artist Emily Carr , including a significant canvas and an extremely rare watercolour

including a significant canvas and an extremely rare watercolour Historically significant 1949 post-war canvas by official Canadian war artist, E.J. Hughes

TORONTO, April 26, 2016 /CNW/ - Heffel Fine Art Auction House, enduring leader and mainstay in Canada's thriving art market, is thrilled to celebrate a diverse new collection of masterpieces set to hit the auction block this spring. The two-session live auction will take place on May 25 at the Vancouver Convention Centre and is expected to achieve between $9 million and $12 million (all prices are in Canadian dollars and according to conservative estimates).

With the help of its dedicated collectors, Heffel has amassed a historically significant assortment of rare-to-the-market works of art, many of which have spent lifetimes in private hands. The auction features 144 lots by more than 60 globally renowned artists. Heffel is the first and only auction house in Canada to split works into two separate sessions: Post-War & Contemporary Art and Fine Canadian Art. This year's sale is highlighted by works that reflect many of the artists' most inspiring epochs, uncovering stories of their personal lives that signify their places in history.

"The last year was exhilarating for both Heffel and Canadian art as a whole, as we hit some major milestones, shattered sales records and saw collector interest surge across the globe," said David Heffel, President of Heffel Fine Art Auction House. "With this inspiring spring offering, we look forward to building on the momentum of last year, and fueling the success of Canada's art market through continued international attention."

Riding an uninterrupted wave of global praise, Lawren Harris remains at the forefront of the art market. Heffel offers this season three major works by the Group of Seven founder, including the historically important canvas Laurentian Landscape, a painting considered to be a foundation work for the establishment of the Group of Seven, which is expected to achieve between $1.2 million and $1.6 million.

Harris is the subject of an exhibition co-curated by actor and art enthusiast Steve Martin, currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston before making its final stop at Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario, proudly supported by Heffel. The hugely successful initial showing of The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles was just one of the pivotal moments for the artist last year. Three of his works broke the million-dollar mark at Heffel's fall auction in Toronto, led by the record-breaking $4.6-million sale of Mountain and Glacier.

Indicative of the rich history present in the spring auction is the noteworthy Post-War & Contemporary Art cover lot by Canada's first official war artist of World War II, E.J. Hughes. The Post Office at Courtenay, BC (est. $600,000  800,000) is a post-war masterpiece from a period in Hughes's career when he produced very few works. It was nt uncommon for Hughes to take more than a year to complete paintings during this period, and the spring sale offers buyers a rare opportunity to own one of the few pieces in private hands today.







Heffel's Fine Canadian Art highlights:

Lawren Harris's Laurentian Landscape is a unique work from a pivotal point in history, when seeds were being planted to form what would soon after be known as the Group of Seven. The impressionistic painting was acquired by the current owner in 1966 for a mere $8,400 and has never before been offered at auction (est. $1,200 ,000  1,600,000).

is a unique work from a pivotal point in history, when seeds were being planted to form what would soon after be known as the Group of Seven. The impressionistic painting was acquired by the current owner in 1966 for a mere and has never before been offered at auction (est. ,000  1,600,000). Two highly collectible Lawren Harris oil on boards from the Group of Seven period are also featured. Both stunning works, Coldwell, Lake Superior , Lake Superior Sketch XXII (est. $450 ,000  550,000) and Mount Sampson, Maligne Lake (est. $250 ,000  300,000) explore the measureless Canadian landscapes that Harris encountered during his painting expeditions.

oil on boards from the Group of Seven period are also featured. Both stunning works, (est. ,000  550,000) and (est. ,000  300,000) explore the measureless Canadian landscapes that Harris encountered during his painting expeditions. Emily Carr's deep-rooted belief in the spirituality of the woods is present in the five works on offer, including the dynamic masterwork canvas Shoreline (est. $600 ,000  800,000). Also featured is the extraordinary watercolour Gitwangak , displaying the strong First Nations motifs typical of Carr's most notable works (est. $200 ,000  300,000).

deep-rooted belief in the spirituality of the woods is present in the five works on offer, including the dynamic masterwork canvas (est. ,000  800,000). Also featured is the extraordinary watercolour , displaying the strong First Nations motifs typical of Carr's most notable works (est. ,000  300,000). The spring auction features noteworthy works by all original members of the Group of Seven, including A.Y. Jackson's quintessential snow scene oil on canvas Farm at St. Tite des Caps (est. $300 ,000  500,000).

quintessential snow scene oil on canvas (est. ,000  500,000). Heffel is honoured to be entrusted with the sale of La vieille eglise de Sherbrooke Est par temps de neige by Marc-Aurele de Foy Suzor-Cote, consigned by the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Church in Sherbrooke . Proceeds from the sale will benefit the fundraising campaign for the restoration and renovation of the church (est. $100 ,000  150,000).

Heffel's Post-War & Contemporary Art highlights:

Leading the session by estimate is The Post Office at Courtenay, BC , an exceptional work painted by E.J. Hughes upon his honourable discharge as an official war artist. Using supplies remaining from his serviceunusual for a young artist at the timehe painted this impressive work over three years, according to his inscriptions found on the back of the painting (est. $600 ,000  800,000).

, an exceptional work painted by upon his honourable discharge as an official war artist. Using supplies remaining from his serviceunusual for a young artist at the timehe painted this impressive work over three years, according to his inscriptions found on the back of the painting (est. ,000  800,000). Like many works by realist painter Alex Colville , the two paintings on offer in this season's live auction reflect the artist's personal life. Racer , Colville's first round work from his prolific mid-'50s period, is a portrait of a race car driver inspired by a photograph of his father-in-law (est. $500 ,000  600,000). Swimming Dog and Canoe , peaceful and balanced yet perfectly rendered, shows the artist along with his wife and their dog on a typical canoeing outing (est. $300 ,000  500,000).

, the two paintings on offer in this season's live auction reflect the artist's personal life. , Colville's first round work from his prolific mid-'50s period, is a portrait of a race car driver inspired by a photograph of his father-in-law (est. ,000  600,000). , peaceful and balanced yet perfectly rendered, shows the artist along with his wife and their dog on a typical canoeing outing (est. ,000  500,000). A leader in contemporary Indian art, Sayed Haider Raza is featured with Costapoglia II , a highly coloured yet dreamlike canvas that is both mysterious and evocative. Raza is a truly global artist, and his work has been seen and admired in many corners of the globe (est. $200 ,000  300,000).

is featured with , a highly coloured yet dreamlike canvas that is both mysterious and evocative. Raza is a truly global artist, and his work has been seen and admired in many corners of the globe (est. ,000  300,000). Jean Paul Riopelle's 1955 Composition is an impressive selection from his most celebrated decade. The dynamic canvas was exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada and circulated to 10 American museums by the Smithsonian Institution (est. $400 ,000  600,000).

1955 is an impressive selection from his most celebrated decade. The dynamic canvas was exhibited at the National Gallery of and circulated to 10 American museums by the Smithsonian Institution (est. ,000  600,000). West Coast art enthusiasts will be pleased with the representation of work from the region, including paintings by Gordon Smith , Jack Shadbolt , Takao Tanabe and W.P. Weston , among others.

, , and , among others. Many of Quebec's most important post-war and contemporary artists are featured prominently. Guido Molinari stands out with two works on offer, including the bold Sans titre (est. $100 ,000  150,000), alongside three works by Jean Paul Lemieux , led by the beautiful night sky canvas, L'enigme (est. $300 ,000  400,000).

Heffel's Spring 2016 Live Auction Schedule

To give interested buyers from across Canada an opportunity to view these works, the collection will be previewed in three cities leading up to the live auction:

Montreal : Thursday, May 5 to Saturday, May 7, 11 a.m.  6 p.m., Galerie Heffel Montreal, 1840 Sherbrooke Street West

Thursday, May 5 to Saturday, May 7, 11 a.m.  6 p.m., Galerie Heffel Montreal, 1840 Sherbrooke Street West Toronto : Thursday, May 12 to Saturday, May 14, 11 a.m.  6 p.m., Heffel Gallery Toronto, 13 & 15 Hazelton Avenue

Thursday, May 12 to Saturday, May 14, 11 a.m.  6 p.m., Heffel Gallery Toronto, 13 & 15 Hazelton Avenue Vancouver : Saturday, May 21 to Tuesday, May 24, 11 a.m.  6 p.m. and Wednesday, May 25, 10 a.m.  noon, Heffel Gallery Vancouver, 2247 Granville Street

The two-session live auction will take place on Wednesday, May 25 at the Vancouver Convention Centre West (Burrard Entrance, Room 211, 1055 Canada Place, Vancouver):

4 p.m. PTPost-War & Contemporary Art

7 p.m. PTFine Canadian Art

For details on the previews and live auction, and to access the online catalogues, please visit www.heffel.com.

About Heffel

Heffel has sold more Canadian art than any other auctioneer worldwide, approaching half a billion dollars in art sales since 1978. With offices in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa and Calgary, Heffel has the most experienced team of fine art specialists in Canada and provides superior client service to both sellers and buyers internationally.

SOURCE Heffel Gallery Limited
[April 26, 2016] Innovapptive Receives 2016 SAP Pinnacle Award: Platform Co-Innovation Partner of the Year

HOUSTON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Innovapptive Inc. today announced that it has received a 2016 SAP Pinnacle Award as the Platform Co-Innovation Partner of the Year, which recognizes its outstanding contributions as an SAP partner. SAP presents these awards annually to the top partners that have excelled in developing and growing their partnership with SAP and helping customers run better. Winners and finalists in 19 categories were chosen based on recommendations from the SAP field, customer feedback and performance indicators in the following umbrella categories: Build, Service, and Sell with each category including a Customers' Choice award, which recognizes a customer-nominated SAP partner. "Winning the SAP Pinnacle Award is a tremendous accomplishment," said Rodolpho Cardenuto, president of SAP Global Channels & General Business. "Only 16 companies in our ecosystem of 13,000 partners received this recognition. Innovapptive should be very proud of their success." Kevin Ichhpurani, executive vice president of SAP Strategic Business Development & Global Ecosystem added, "The SAP Pinnacle Award winners represent the very best in our partner community, and we congratulate Innovapptive for a well-deserved 2016 SAP Pinnacle Award." Innovapptive has received the SAP Pinnacle Award two years in a row, with the award for Application Development Partner of the Year in 2015, and was a finalist in the same category in 2014. Innovapptive has made significant investments globally towards innovating on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform and the SAP Mobile Platform to accelerate our mutual customers' time to market and value and maximizing their investments in SAP by unlocking business content on mobile devices. SAP Pinnacle Awards shine a spotlight on SAP's partners' remarkable contributions, acknowledging their dedcation to teamwork, innovative approach and capacity to challenge what is possible to help customers achieve their goals. Award winners will be formally recognized at the SAP Global Partner Summit being held on May 16, in conjunction with SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP's international customer conference being held in Orlando, Fla., May 1719.



About Innovapptive Innovapptive, is the fastest growing enterprise mobile and user experience (UX) solution company and is an industry leader among rapid mobile application development (RMAD) solution providers. Innovapptive's Rapid App Configurator Engine (RACE) technology redefines traditional approaches to digitize the enterprise and is empowering organizations to rapidly deliver ready to run mobile apps across lines of business and industry verticals. Innovapptive's portfolio of over 100 mobile solutions run across a wide array of devices and systems and is creating a connected enterprise across employees, customers and suppliers. Innovapptive was named a 2016 SAP Pinnacle Award Winner and has won this recognition three years in a row. Most recently, CIOReview also named Innovapptive as the "Top 20 most promising SAP Solution Providers". Today, some of the world's largest brands run Innovapptive technology and software.

SAP, SAPPHIRE and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE (or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries. See http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx for additional trademark information and notices. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. SAP Forward-looking Statement Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "should" and "will" and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP's future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including SAP's most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates. For more information,

Sri Karthik

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +1 713 275 1806 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/innovapptive-receives-2016-sap-pinnacle-award-platform-co-innovation-partner-of-the-year-300257141.html SOURCE Innovapptive Inc.

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[April 26, 2016] Smart Home Vendor tado Raises $23 Million to Fuel US Expansion, Bringing Funding Total to $57 Million to Date

SAN FRANCISCO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- tado (www.tado.com), a global leader in smart climate control, today announced it has closed a $23 million round of funding, bringing the company's total to $57 million in funding overall. The financing comes from international investor INVEN CAPITAL, a venture capital arm of the CEZ GROUP, a multinational energy conglomerate. tado will use the capital to drive continued global expansion  especially in the US market, where the company recently listed its product range at Amazon, Best Buy and Home Depot, and secured a number of connected home partnerships, including AT&T Digital Life. tado fills a major hole in the market where Nest and other whole home thermostat solutions fall short, offering smart climate control for the millions of people with remote-controlled heating and cooling units. The tado Smart Thermostat and Smart AC Control products bring these heating and AC systems online, turning any smartphone into a geo-aware remote control. tado automatically detects a user's proximity to their residence and adjusts the temperature accordingly  so it's comfortable when you get there, but conserves energy by 30-40 percent when you're away. Integration with local weather forecasts and adapting algorithms can add to the saings and convenience. Users can also adjust the temperature using their phone from any location inside or outside the home.



"It's expected that a whopping 32 million smart thermostats will have been installed worldwide by 2020, and there's no reason why those without central heating or AC should be left out in the cold. The fact is, millions of window, portable, and wall units use infrared remote controls that just don't work with Nest and others like it," said Christian Deilmann, Co-Founder and CEO of tado. The new round of financing will be instrumental in fueling tado's rapid expansion in the US market." "tado has impressed us with their proven historical growth as well as their service oriented strategy and INVEN CAPITAL will support their further international expansion," said Petr Mikovec, Managing Director of INVEN CAPITAL.

tado is carried by a number of retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy and Home Depot. In addition to growing its retail sales channel, tado is building up additional resources to integrate with all major connected home platforms such as AT&T Digital Life, and many more. The clear goal is to lead the intelligent climate control sector across the globe and to be an integral part of any connected home. Images

High-resolution images are available here: https://www.tado.com/us/press https://www.tado.com/gb/press About tado Inc:

tado, a market leader in intelligent home climate control solutions, was founded in 2011. With its Smart AC Control and Smart Thermostat, tado revolutionizes the way energy is consumed at home. Through the use of a geo-aware app, tado automatically adjusts the temperature based on the residents' locations, enabling households to save significantly on energy costs while reaching a higher level of comfort. tado operates in 12 European countries, in the U.S. and in Singapore. www.tado.com Sources: http://www.navigantresearch.com/newsroom/installed-base-of-smart-thermostats-will-reach-nearly-32-million-by-2020 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359463 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/smart-home-vendor-tado-raises-23-million-to-fuel-us-expansion-bringing-funding-total-to-57-million-to-date-300257127.html SOURCE tado

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[April 26, 2016] Benchmark Mails Letter to Shareholders

ANGLETON, Texas, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Benchmark Electronics, Inc. (NYSE: BHE) today announced that it has mailed a letter to shareholders in connection with its upcoming 2016 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The full text of the letter follows: ** THE BENCHMARK ANNUAL MEETING OF SHAREHOLDERS WILL BE HELD ON MAY 11, 2016 ** PROTECT YOUR INVESTMENT IN THE COMPANY VOTE THE ENCLOSED WHITE PROXY CARD TODAY FOR THE DIRECTOR NOMINEES NOMINATED BY YOUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ABOUT ENGAGED CAPITAL'S MISINFORMED AND SELF-SERVING CLAIMS  READ THE TRUTH FROM YOUR BOARD AND MANAGEMENT TEAM April 26, 2016 Fellow Benchmark Shareholder: At Benchmark's 2016 Annual Meeting of Shareholders you have a clear choice that will affect the future of the Company and the value of your investment. Your Board of Directors urges you to vote FOR Benchmark's eight highly qualified nominees by telephone, by internet, or by signing and dating the enclosed WHITE proxy card today. Benchmark Electronics, Inc. ("Benchmark" or the "Company") is led by an experienced, independent and highly qualified Board that is actively supervising the execution of the Company's strategy to enhance shareholder value. Challenges with traditional markets have driven the electronic manufacturing services ("EMS") industry towards higher-value markets to generate better returns. This is a strategy that Benchmark and all of its EMS peers are pursuing. Consequently, Benchmark's principal focus is to increase sales and shift its revenue mix toward higher-value markets that are characterized by higher operating margins, longer product lifecycles and customers with more complex outsourcing needs that require higher value-added and engineering-led solutions. Benchmark's Board nominees possess the specific skills and expertise necessary to support this ongoing transition; the Board's nominees stand in stark contrast to the director nominees proposed by dissident shareholder Engaged Capital, who do not have the skills, industry background, operational expertise, or executive experience needed to contribute to this critical effort, and who, consequently, will inhibit the Company's progress. In its desperate campaign to seek election of its unqualified director candidates to the Board, Engaged Capital continues to put forth false claims about Benchmark and misrepresents the way your Board and management operate the Company. This troubling trend continues with Engaged Capital's recent presentations where it continues to obfuscate the facts and mislead investors. As we have maintained from the outset of this process, Engaged Capital's comments are based on a flawed analysis that clearly demonstrates its fundamental lack of understanding of Benchmark and the EMS industry. We are writing once again about the TRUTH and to set the record straight regarding Engaged Capital's misguided and self-serving claims. YOUR BOARD HAS A DISCIPLINED AND BALANCED APPROACH TO CAPITAL ALLOCATION Dissident's False Claim : Benchmark is undisciplined in its capital allocation and has an overcapitalized balance sheet. The TRUTH: Benchmark has prioritized a shareholder-friendly capital allocation strategy. From 2011 to 2015, Benchmark allocated over 70% of its free cash flow to share repurchases. The Company continued this trend in the first quarter of 2016, returning $14 million to shareholders through repurchases, for a total of $67 million over the past 12 months. Benchmark is the only company among its peers that has consistently repurchased shares in every quarter over the last 35 quarters, including during the depths of the great recession. The Company has $120 million remaining under its current authorization, and intends to continue buying back shares as part of its ongoing target to return 50% of free cash flow to shareholders. This track record is even more impressive in light of the fact that 91% of Benchmark's cash is held offshore, which reduces the Company's capital flexibility. In its latest presentation, Engaged Capital finally acknowledges this challenge, which affects U.S.-domiciled multinational corporations, noting that it "adds intricacies to Benchmark's capital deployment strategy." However, Engaged Capital still fails to appreciate the balanced capital allocation plan that the Board has executed to maximize long-term value for all shareholders. Engaged Capital's simplistic analysis claiming Benchmark is overcapitalized is misleading. Dissident's False Claim : Benchmark overpaid for Secure Technology. The TRUTH: Engaged Capital's analysis of the Secure transaction is significantly flawed, and we believe its arguments are purposefully misleading. Benchmark paid 8.5x Enterprise Value/2016E EBITDA (below the then-prevailing trading multiples of Secure's two closest peers). This attractive valuation further supports the Board's carefully considered determination that the Secure transaction was the best use of capital among all alternatives reviewed at the time  more accretive to growth, margin and long-term return on invested capital ("ROIC") than alternate uses of capital considered, including a share repurchase. Engaged Capital was provided with this information months ago. Now, in order to distract shareholders from this fact, it misleadingly claims that it "believes" the multiple was based on the seller's forecasts for Secure, and not those diligenced and validated by Benchmark's management and advisors. We are impressed by Engaged Capital's ability to distance itself from the facts by citing what it "believes" but its assertions are patently untrue. The Company is already generating additional cross-selling opportunities and new business wins from the Secure business, including some that were not included in management's initial forecast at the time of the acquisition, providing financial support for the strategic rationale. Having attempted to mislead investors with specious arguments comparing the multiple paid for Secure to Benchmark's trading multiple, Engaged Capital finally conceded this point in its recent presentation where it correctly highlights that Secure is "not a traditional EMS company" and "has a very different financial profile  and valuation  compared to Benchmark." We are disappointed that Engaged Capital is so impatient and focused on the short-term that it would seek to prevent the Company from making logical, financially beneficial investments that are consistent with its strategy to create long-term shareholder value. To believe Engaged Capital's story, you would also have to believe that Benchmark's shareholders would be better off today if the Company had NOT made organic investments and acquisitions over the last several years to accelerate the shift in its revenue mix to higher-value markets. YOUR BOARD IS EXECUTING INITIATIVES TO FURTHER IMPROVE WORKING CAPITAL EFFICIENCY Dissident's False Claim : Benchmark has inefficient working capital management. The TRUTH: Benchmark has continually focused on its working capital efficiency. Engaged Capital's critique of our working capital lacks a clear understanding of the facts and the actions we have taken. The strongest evidence of this point is that an independent working capital consultant, referred to Benchmark by Engaged Capital, reinforced our assessment of our existing, ongoing initiatives on working capital. Engaged Capital's spreadsheet-level work suggesting it will free up over $300 million is flawed. Working capital is not directly comparable across Benchmark's peer group, despite Engaged Capital's claims to the contrary. The cash conversion cycle ("CCC") is heavily impacted by end market exposure. Other than Plexus, Benchmark has the highest revenue mix of customers from higher-margin sectors amongst its peers as a result of its successful efforts to increase sales in these markets rather than its traditional markets. The lower volume, higher-complexity products that Benchmark's higher-value customers demand typically deliver lower CCC velocity because the complexity of their products involves a much larger number of parts and suppliers. Many of Benchmark's customers operate in these higher-margin markets and have different shipping terms from the customers of Benchmark's peers. Accordingly, in any comparison of Benchmark and its peers, it is important to look at combined A/R and Inventory Days for an "apples-to apples" comparison, which neutralizes the impact of shipping terms. It is not surprising that Engaged Capital chooses to gloss over this fact since, when reviewed holistically on this basis, Benchmark outperforms Plexus, and Engaged Capital's simplistic claim of a $114 million opportunity from A/R related opportunities is debunked. Benchmark has demonstrated that our historical approach of taking supplier discounts drives more shareholder value than Engaged Capital's approach of seeking to equalize A/P days with peers while forfeiting these discounts. Our approach is further validated when you consider that even if Benchmark chose to ignore the costs to our shareholders of refusing supplier discounts and adopted Engaged Capital's approach, the majority of the cash accrued would accumulate offshore, which means repatriating it could cause further value destruction due to tax consequences. Finally, Engaged Capital's spreadsheet-level work ignores operational realities. The duration of supplier and customer contracts means that working capital improvements are a continual work-in-progress versus a one-time, turn-key change, as validated by our independent working capital consultant. Benchmark continues to be acutely focused on working capital optimization. The Company has publicly announced a 75-day CCC target it expects to achieve by the end of 2016. A significant driver of gains towards this target will involve moving suppliers and customers in higher-value markets to Benchmark's best practices. YOUR BOARD'S INCENTIVE COMPENSATION PLAN FOR EXECUTIVES IS ALIGNED WITH THE INTERESTS OF ALL BENCHMARK SHAREHOLDERS Dissident's False Claim : Benchmark has flawed incentive compensation policies and practices. The TRUTH: Under the direction of the Board's Compensation Committee, Benchmark has designed a compensation framework to create a "pay-for-performance" culture that rewards the Company's leadership for delivering results and creating sustainable, long-term shareholder value. In 2015, the level of compensation considered "at risk" was 70% for Benchmark's Chief Executive Officer, and 58% for other named executive officers. Importantly, the vast majority of Benchmark shareholders have consistently voted in support of our compensation policies  from 2011-2015, more than 90% of shareholders' votes have been cast FOR say-on-pay. Your Board's Compensation Committee regularly evaluates compensation policy and responds to shareholder input. In 2015, the Company instituted an executive compensation clawback policy in the event of a restatement of earnings due to SEC reporting requirements. In addition, the Company has replaced the inventory turns metric with more holistic CCC targets matching the Company's publicly stated CCC goals, demonstrating the Board's focus on targeting working capital improvements. Additionally, in setting compensation policy, the Board's Compensation Committee reviews Benchmark's peer group annually and has updated the peers, at least biennially over the past decade, consistent with the recommendations of the independent consultant engaged by the Compensation Committee. The Compensation Committee consists of experienced and independent directors who take their responsibilities to shareholders seriously. In 2015, the Compensation Committee included five of the six independent directors, including the current Chairman of the Board, who was appointed to that role in 2016. We find Engaged Capital's assertions that sitting CEOs are somehow ineligible to serve on Benchmark's Board and Compensation Committee entirely absurd. On the contrary, we believe the fact that a company of Benchmark's size in the EMS industry has attracted such high caliber executives to serve on its Board should be praised. Benchmark has benefitted from these strong individuals' active oversight of the Company. Their involvement with the Company has been invaluable. Dissident's False Claim : Targets used in Benchmark's incentive compensation are flawed. Benchmark's compensation policies have been carefully constructed to align management's incentives with the goal of generating sustainable long-term value for shareholders. Benchmark's shareholders should be aware that the Board added CCC targets to the short-term incentive compensation structure for 2016, replacing inventory turns as a more holistic measurement of working capital, and not as a result of pressure from Engaged Capital, contrary to what it would like you to believe. While Benchmark's reported ROIC excludes cash to facilitate comparisons with peers, our long-term incentive compensation ROIC target, which the Board raised in 2016, includes cash to properly incentivize management. As we have outlined previously, ROIC is a poor short-term incentive metric since (a) it is difficult to meaningfully impact ROIC in the short-term and (b) including it as a short-term metric can discourage management from making smart long-term investment decisions that enhance shareholder value. Furthermore, while Benchmark considers ROIC an important long-term compensation metric, it is not the only basis on which the Company makes its decisions. In fact, the Board believes that revenue growth and margin enhancement are also critical long-term performance metrics. Long-term EMS shareholders recognize the critical importance of a strategic shift towards higher-value markets. In addition, they understand that ROIC skews in favor of certain of Benchmark's competitors who have accumulated deficits in excess of $10 billion. As a result, in the EMS sector, premium valuation multiples are highly correlated to business mix, revenue growth and margin enhancement, and poorly correlated to ROIC. To suggest otherwise, as Engaged Capital does, is misleading and demonstrates its ignorance of the EMS industry. YOUR BOARD IS COMMITTED TO BEST-IN-CLASS CORPORATE GOVERNANCE Dissident's False Claim : Benchmark has poor corporate governance practices and has been entirely reactive to Engaged Capital's campaign. The TRUTH: The Company's corporate governance profile is in the top decile of companies covered by Institutional Shareholder Services ("ISS"), and Benchmark has continually and proactively improved its corporate governance well before Engaged Capital's involvement. To ensure that shareholders have the ability to act outside of the normal annual meeting cycle, the Company's bylaws allow holders of just 10% of Benchmark's outstanding shares to call a special meeting at which any matter that would have been the subject of a written consent can be acted on, including the removal of directors with or without cause by a majority of shareholder votes. We have no shareholder rights plan, all directors are elected annually and we have amended the majority vote standard to allow for plurality voting standard in a contested election, subject to your approval at the Annual Meeting. These changes reflect your Board's commitment to maintaining and strengthening our best-in-class corporate governance practices. In our outreach with shareholders, we have received overwhelming endorsement of our corporate governance. We added three new independent directors within the last five years, including Paul Tufano, who was appointed in 2016, and the average tenure of our current directors is only 6.3 years (well below the peer[1] average of approximately 10 years). Engaged Capital was not a catalyst for any of these recent changes, and any insinuation to the contrary is a complete fabrication to craft a story that suits its self-serving interests. Benchmark has sought to work in good faith with Engaged Capital over the past year, as it would with any shareholder. Your Board actively communicated with Engaged Capital, and we were surprised that Engaged Capital did not consider our offer to interview Mr. Tufano. In addition, for reasons only Engaged Capital can explain, Engaged Capital refused to allow its candidates to be vetted by our independent consultant (as part of Benchmark's standard process) without having a settlement in place in advance, which Engaged Capital insisted had to include the addition of Engaged Capital employee Brendan Springstubb, its least experienced nominee, to our Board. This perplexing insistence also calls into question Engaged Capital's confidence in its other nominees. ENGAGED CAPITAL'S "PLAN" TO ENHANCE SHAREHOLDER VALUE IS NOT CREDIBLE Not only does Engaged Capital continue to promote its flawed working capital analysis as the cornerstone of its "plan," but the "value creation" analysis it recently presented demonstrates a troubling lack of understanding of basic corporate finance principles and takes credit for potential benefits from the Company's existing operational plan and working capital initiatives. Dissident's False Claim : Slide from Engaged Capital April 25 presentation. The TRUTH: (1) Benchmark has outlined clearly and repeatedly the flaws inherent in Engaged Capital's "analysis", highlighting that (i) Benchmark outperforms Plexus when A/R and Inventory Days are reviewed holistically, and (ii) taking supplier discounts drives more shareholder value than Engaged Capital's approach where Benchmark would forfeit these discounts. An outside working capital consultant, referred by Engaged Capital, reinforced our assessment of our existing, ongoing initiatives on working capital. (2) For Engaged Capital's benefit, Benchmark will repeat the most basic principle of Corporate Finance  the current stock price already includes the present value of all expected future cash flows. To suggest otherwise is simply incorrect. Does Engaged Capital really not grasp this simple concept? (3) Benchmark already trades at a premium relative to our peer group on the metrics recognized by investors and sector analysts. Engaged Capital continues to tout Benchmark's supposed weak multiple on its "Adjusted P/E" basis, a significantly flawed metric. Based on Engaged Capital's questionable approach, "Adjusted P/E" multiples are manipulated to increase a company's stock price by its net debt. This approach is disingenuous as it inflates multiples for Benchmark's EMS peers with significant debt loads, and artificially depresses Benchmark, which has a large, offshore cash balance. (4) Engaged Capital acknowledges the risk to shareholder value from its approach where Benchmark refuses supplier discounts. YOUR BOARD IS COMMITTED TO SERVING THE BEST INTERESTS OF ALL BENCHMARK SHAREHOLDERS Our top priority remains increasing sales and shifting our revenue mix toward our target higher-value markets. These markets are characterized by longer life cycle products and customers who have more complex outsourcing needs and require higher value-added and engineering-led solutions. What this means in practice is a significant opportunity for Benchmark to drive higher-margin and sustainable growth. We are pleased with the significant progress we have made on our portfolio shift towards higher-value markets. We know there is more work to do, but we strongly believe that we have the right Board and leadership in place to achieve our goals and are committed to creating long-term sustainable value for all Benchmark shareholders. VOTE THE WHITE PROXY CARD TODAY We strongly encourage you to vote "FOR" Benchmark's eight highly qualified director nominees on the enclosed WHITE proxy card today. Whether or not you plan to attend the Annual Meeting, you have an opportunity to protect your investment in Benchmark by voting the WHITE proxy card. We urge you to vote today by telephone, by internet, or by signing and dating the enclosed WHITE proxy card and returning it in the postage-paid envelope provided. Please do not return or otherwise vote any blue proxy card sent to you by Engaged Capital. If you have already sent back the blue card, you can still change your vote using the enclosed WHITE proxy card to support your Board's highly qualified director nominees. On behalf of your Board of Directors, we thank you for your continued support. Sincerely,







David W. Scheible Gayla J. Delly Chairman of the Board of Directors President and Chief Executive Officer

If you have questions or need assistance voting your shares please contact:

MacKenzie Partners, Inc.

105 Madison Avenue New York, New York 10016 [email protected] Call Collect: (212) 929-5500 or Toll-Free (800) 322-2885

About Benchmark Electronics, Inc.

Benchmark provides integrated manufacturing, design and engineering services to original equipment manufacturers of industrial equipment (including equipment for the aerospace and defense industries), telecommunication equipment, computers and related products for business enterprises, medical devices, and test and instrumentation products. Benchmark's global operations include facilities in seven countries, and its common shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol BHE. Forward-Looking Statements

This letter contains forward-looking statements within the scope of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The words "expect," "estimate," "anticipate," "predict" and similar expressions, and the negatives thereof, often identify forward-looking statements, which are not limited to historical facts. Our forward-looking statements include, among other things: guidance for 2016; statements, express or implied, concerning future operating results or margins; the ability to generate sales, income or cash flow; the benefits of the Secure acquisition and our ability to continue share repurchases; and Benchmark's business and growth strategies and expected growth and performance. Although Benchmark believes these statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, they involve risks and uncertainties relating to our operations, markets and business environment generally. If one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual outcomes may vary materially from those indicated. All forward-looking statements included in this letter are based upon information available to Benchmark as of the date of this document, and the Company assumes no obligation to update them. Readers are advised to consult further disclosures on related subjects, particularly in Item 1A, "Risk Factors" of the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, in its other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and in its press releases. Additional Information and Where to Find It

Benchmark has filed a definitive proxy statement with the SEC with respect to the 2016 Annual Meeting and has mailed the definitive proxy statement and accompanying white proxy card to its shareholders. Benchmark shareholders are strongly encouraged to read the definitive proxy statement, the accompanying white proxy card and other documents filed with the SEC carefully in their entirety when they become available because they contain (or will contain) important information. Benchmark, its directors, executive officers and other employees may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from Benchmark shareholders in connection with the matters to be considered at Benchmark's 2016 Annual Meeting. Information about Benchmark's directors and executive officers is available in Benchmark's definitive proxy statement for its 2016 Annual Meeting. Shareholders may obtain a free copy of the definitive proxy statement and any other documents filed by Benchmark with the SEC free of charge at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Copies also are available free of charge on Benchmark's website at www.bench.com under "Investor Relations  Annual Reports" or by contacting Benchmark Investor Relations at (979) 849-6550. [1] Peer group consists of Celestica, Flextronics, Jabil, Plexus and Sanmina. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/359872 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/benchmark-mails-letter-to-shareholders-300257418.html SOURCE Benchmark Electronics, Inc.

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[April 26, 2016] Avionos' New Website for Bear Naked Custom Granola Powered by Chef Watson and CloudCraze, Allows Consumers to Highly Individualize and Share Custom Blends

CHICAGO, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Avionos, a digital solution company, has helped Bear Naked Granola marry the best of the old world and the new world with their development of a new consumer facing website: BearNakedCustom.com. The site utilizes IBM's Chef Watson to guide consumers in developing a personalized granola recipe, made with hand-packed, local-sourced ingredients, and CloudCraze to power the eCommerce engine. The website launched on April 18, 2016. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359724 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359725LOGO Avionos was challenged with the mission of providing consumers with a highly customizable granola product that would not impact Bear Naked's existing retail channel business, and would draw new customers. The site's intuitive GUI provides users with the option to create their own granola blend utilizing 50 different ingredients, collectively yielding 1000 combinations. Users pick a name and label art, save their mix, share it through social channels, and invite others to enjoy it. They're provided with a complete nutrition label. The eCommerce-enabled website will yield invaluable data on consumers, and popular combinations will be reviewed for inclusion in the company's etail line. The combination of consumer taste input, coupled with suggestions from IBM's Chef Watson, represents the next level of informed, crowd sourced data.



Avionos implemented CloudCraze, an eCommerce solution built natively on the Salesforce platform, to execute on the vision of BearNakedCustom.com. The website was constructed in just four months, at a fraction of the cost of traditional commerce solutions. "CloudCraze is pleased to be the foundation of Bear Naked's launch of their direct-to-consumer online business," says Ray Grady, EVP at CloudCraze. "BearNakedCustom.com is proof that with CloudCraze, agile cloud commerce built on Salesforce, major brands can launch a new online channel at lightning speed."

"Bear Naked provided Avionos with a great opportunity to demonstrate our ability to assemble the right suite of cloud based technologies and bring their product to market in a short period of time. We anticipate they'll be receiving a return on their investment within months," says Dan Neiweem, Principal at Avionos. About Avionos

Avionos is the digital services and solutions firm that delivers connected customer engagement and extends the brand promise beyond traditional expectations. Avionos brings together marketing, sales, and customer care to drive unparalleled business outcomes via connected and cloud technologies, working with clients such as the American Medical Association, Kellogg's, Plantronics, and Sears. Avionos was recently named 2016 partner of the year for Acquia. www.avionos.com About CloudCraze CloudCraze delivers robust B2B and B2C eCommerce native on Salesforce. CloudCraze allows businesses to deploy mobile storefronts quickly, generate online revenue in weeks, and easily scale for growth. In a single Salesforce instance, CloudCraze shares data and processes with existing Salesforce CRM deployments for a 360-degree view of the customer. And, it's all easily managed through the point-and-click Salesforce interface. CloudCraze powers eCommerce for Coca-Cola, Avid, ABInBev, Barry-Callebaut, Ecolab, GE, L'Oreal, Kellogg's and more. www.cloudcraze.com. BIGfrontier for Avionos Wendy Glavin

917-680-8517

Email To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/avionos-new-website-for-bear-naked-custom-granola-powered-by-chef-watson-and-cloudcraze-allows-consumers-to-highly-individualize-and-share-custom-blends-300257270.html SOURCE Avionos

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Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

Trend:

Unresolved conflicts tend to provide fertile ground for extremism, said Elmar Mammadyarov, Azerbaijani foreign minister.

Mammadyarov was addressing the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku April 26.

The minister stressed that Azerbaijan suffered from the metamorphosis and symbiosis of ethnic separatism, foreign intervention, violent extremism and terrorism.

"Prolonged and unresolved conflicts tend to provide fertile ground for violent extremism, not only because of the suffering and lack of governance resulting from the conflict itself but also because such conflicts allow violent extremist groups to exploit deep-rooted grievances in order to garner support and seize territory and resources and control populations," the minister said.

"Had the international community been listening to us then, sticking to universal norms and principles, and taking bold steps to stop violent extremism and all of its manifestations and consequences, we could have been in a much better place today to stumble a domino effect and tackle this phenomenon," the minister said.

"Still, it is never too late and I have some ideas to share for our common strategy," the minister added.

"UN should be in a lead as the only universal organization," the minister said. "This is the way for other international organizations and formats to act and interact with each other."

"The sustainable development should become our priority," the minister said.

The minister added that Azerbaijan, as a country suffering from terrorism more than twenty years, is actively combating it.\

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations will last until Apr.27.

The Youth Forum was held on the first day of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum on Apr.25.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum.

The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the forum.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on July 24, 2015 to create an organizing committee for holding the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.
[April 26, 2016] Vidyo Selected by Alibaba DingTalk for Video Conferencing in DingTalk Enterprise UC Cloud Platform

Alibaba DingTalk, a subsidiary of the Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA), the world's largest online and mobile marketplace, selected Vidyo, Inc., a leader in video communication and collaboration, to bring embedded HD quality, click-to-connect multiparty video conferencing capabilities to DingTalk, Alibaba's free, cloud-based enterprise unified communication platform. Now generally available, DingTalk with Vidyo (News - Alert) enables 100+ endpoints to join a conference in a user-friendly interface with HD content sharing and flexible display layouts. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426006056/en/ Alibaba DingTalk uses technology from Vidyo to connect 1.5 million businesses in China (Photo: Business Wire) First unveiled in January 2015 DingTalk is a powerful cloud-based UC platform that simplifies enterprise collaboration and communication for Chinese enterprises and teams. With more than 1.5 million enterprise companies using DingTalk on desktop and mobile today, Alibaba DingTalk needed tremendous scalability to address the platform's large and growing installed base of Chinese enterprises requesting face-to-face collaboration. "Alibaba DingTalk's enterprise customers required the highest quality video experience be integrated with DingTalk voice and messaging capabilities and we selected Vidyo, the market leader and pioneer of Scalable Video Coding (SVC) as our video conferencing partner," said Mr. Chen Hang, Founder of DingTalk. "We areglad that Vidyo could address Alibaba DingTalk's requirements for a high quality, extremely scalable, customized integration and a flawless experience over mobile and desktop devices with infrastructure that can grow as our business continues to expand."



"A true innovator, Alibaba transformed every aspect of commerce in China and Vidyo is honored to partner with Alibaba DingTalk as it launches its own customized video-enabled UC service to Chinese enterprises," said Eran Westman, CEO, Vidyo. "By leveraging Vidyo's market-leading video conferencing technology, Alibaba DingTalk is redefining high quality, reliable video communications and we look forward to supporting their extraordinary growth." The seamless integration of Vidyo into the DingTalk platform ensures that enterprises can easily connect and collaborate anytime, anywhere over any device with the click of a button. Vidyo's technology enables DingTalk to interconnect with legacy voice/SIP and video conferencing/H.323-based systems, extending the life of existing conference equipment. Alibaba DingTalk's cloud-based collaboration platform paired with Vidyo's software-based technology is designed to scale quickly and efficiently to support growing user bases and large conferences.

Flexible and scalable, Vidyo's software-based platform brings face-to-face multiparty communication to virtually any device and can leverage the newest innovations as they become available to the market. Vidyo demonstrated the world's first HD multipoint videoconference on a smartphone in 2010, setting the standard for mobile visual communications. In 2014 Vidyo was the first to demonstrate 4K and 5K Ultra HD conferencing and the first to enable QHD resolution video conferencing on a mobile device in 2015. Vidyo delivers enterprise-grade multipoint video communication to smart glasses, drones and other emerging form factors to bring millions of new applications, services, and workflows to life. Vidyo offers a wide breadth of deployment options - cloud-based, including hybrid, and on-premises - to meet the needs of any business. DingTalk is an innovative cross-platform app newly developed for communication and collaboration between team members and enterprises of various sizes. With enhanced security and mobile technologies, DingTalk is easy to use and manage, and can be accessed from almost anywhere. DingTalk provides unified communication and people-oriented collaboration. With the built-in enterprise directory, users can easily initiate chats or conference calls with team members, as well as secured group chats and burn-after-read chats. Powerful features including read/unread status, important message notification and response via automated phone calls, integrated email, cloud disk, and OA software to enhance work-relevant collaboration. DingTalk aims at assisting Chinese enterprises in progressing from an IT to the DT era that centers around cloud and mobile computing. According to the latest disclosure, DingTalk had attracted over 1.5 million enterprises and teams, with 200,000+ new enterprises and teams joining every month. DingTalk is becoming an efficient and secure way of working among Chinese enterprises. About Vidyo, Inc. Millions of users around the world visually connect every day with Vidyo's secure, scalable technology and cloud-based services. Vidyo offers video collaboration solutions for companies that require the highest quality video interaction available. Recognized with over 120 patents, the company's software platform and APIs are used by enterprise customers, service providers, and ecosystem partners to create innovative HD quality video-enabled applications embedded into workflows and emerging IoT devices. Learn more at www.vidyo.com, on the blog, or follow Vidyo on Twitter (News - Alert) @vidyo and on Facebook. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426006056/en/

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[April 26, 2016] IndustryBuilt Software Recognized Among 50 Best Workplaces in Canada

TORONTO, April 26, 2016 /CNW/ - IndustryBuilt Software, provider of JustFoodERP (http://www.justfooderp.com) and EquipSoft (http://www.equipsoft.com) ERP solutions today announced its selection as one of the 50 Best Workplaces in Canada by the Great Place to Work Institute Canada. IndustryBuilt rose two spots this year, ranking 39 in the 2016 Best Workplaces in Canada: Medium category, and this is its third consecutive year making the list. This year's list first appeared in the Friday April 22, 2016 edition of The Globe and Mail. As a software company with employees across North America, IndustryBuilt understands the importance of investing in and empowering employees. IndustryBuilt values work-life balance and cultivates a flexible and accommodating workplace. "Keeping our employees engaged is a top priority of the leadership team. We're delighted to be recognized," says David Pilz, Cief Executive Officer at IndustryBuilt. "We do our best to provide our employees with a flexible work environment and being recognized by Great Place to Work really shows how happy our employees are."



IndustryBuilt was founded in 1999 and employs more than 100 people with approximately 60% working remotely. Tenured employees  with IndustryBuilt five or more years  make up almost half of the entire workforce. About Great Place to Work:

Great Place to Work is the global authority on high-trust, high-performance workplace cultures. In Canada, Great Place to Work produces the annual 100 Best Workplaces list, released in a national feature in the Globe and Mail. This is part of the world's largest annual workplace study, which culminates in a series of national lists in almost 50 countries, including the study's flagship list of 100 Best companies published annually in Fortune magazine. Globally, this survey represents the voices of 11 million employees, including approximately 300,000 from Canada alone. It's what makes this study so credible: the primary determinant used in selecting winners is an employee survey. There's only one way to get on this list  and that's if your employees put you there.

About IndustryBuilt Software:

Headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, IndustryBuilt Software's ambition is straightforward: to improve customers' ability to make, distribute, and service their offerings. The company aims to take the complexity out of the equation for their customer base relating to ERP, Cloud and more, ultimately equipping their customers with a competitive edge. IndustryBuilt builds and delivers software products based on Microsoft platforms including Dynamics, Office365, Visual Studio, and Windows Azure. They have a track record of delivering successful results for hundreds of customers across North America, and are known best for JustFoodERP, which is focused on the needs of the food industry, and EquipSoft, which is for equipment providers. Visit at www.industrybuilt.com. SOURCE IndustryBuilt Software

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[April 26, 2016] LTE M2M Cellular Modules to Exceed 50% of Total Module Shipments by 2021

OYSTER BAY, N.Y., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ABI Research, the leader in transformative technology innovation market intelligence, forecasts LTE M2M cellular modules will grow to over 50% of total module shipments by 2021. The company's detailed cellular M2M module market tracker monitors LTE forecasts across seven categories, covering both single mode and multimode variants across Cat 1, Cat 0, Cat M1 and Cat M2 (NB-IoT) technologies. In total, ABI Research tracks 14 cellular technology categories across 2G, 3G, and 4G markets. "The train has left the station," says Dan Shey, Managing Director and Vice President at ABI Research. "With the recent ratification of the Cat M1 standard and later Cat M2, it is pretty clear that LTE will rapidly replace 2G and 3G connections in some of the major M2M markets." North America is one region where rapidly expanding network coverage and a very competitive operator environment will drive LTE's connection dominance in IoT. Verizon is the most aggressive with LTE as they are more reliant on LTE for competitive advantage than are the GSM operators of AT&T and T-Mobile. Of the developed world markets, Europe's LTE M2M module shipment share will be the lowest. 2G modules are still preferred due to high network overage and some operators are looking to extend 2G with the EC-GSM standard.



LTE shipment growth rates rapidly accelerate later in the forecast period as Cat M1 and Cat M2 modules gain a foothold in a myriad of application segments. However module revenue growth will not be nearly as robust as shipment growth since M1 and M2 modules are far less expensive than 3G and the higher speed and capacity 4G modules. "There are lots of expectations for LTE Cat M1 and M2 technologies, and there are certainly tremendous opportunities particularly for creating new IoT application segments," concludes Shey. "But the hyper growth expected for these technologies has many uncertainties, including the appeal and attractiveness of various LPWA business models, operator connection pricing, and competition from other connectivity architectures and technologies. Cooperation among many IoT suppliers is required if the potential of these technologies is to be realized."

These findings are part of ABI Research's M2M and IoT Modules and Devices Service (https://www.abiresearch.com/market-research/service/m2m-modules/), which includes research reports, market data, insights, and competitive assessments. About ABI Research For more than 25 years, ABI Research has stood at the forefront of technology market intelligence, partnering with innovative business leaders to implement informed, transformative technology decisions. The company employs a global team of senior analysts to provide comprehensive research and consulting services through deep quantitative forecasts, qualitative analyses and teardown services. An industry pioneer, ABI Research is proactive in its approach, frequently uncovering ground-breaking business cycles ahead of the curve and publishing research 18 to 36 months in advance of other organizations. In all, the company covers more than 60 services, spanning 11 technology sectors. For more information, visit www.abiresearch.com. Contact Info: Mackenzie Gavel

Tel: +1.516.624.2542

[email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151014/276887LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lte-m2m-cellular-modules-to-exceed-50-of-total-module-shipments-by-2021-300257551.html SOURCE ABI Research

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[April 26, 2016] Research Now Unveils Refreshed Identity and New Website

PLANO, Texas, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research Now, the global leader in digital data collection, has introduced a new website with updated brand identity at www.researchnow.com. The company's updated look maintains the brand equity of the existing name and logo, but freshens the look to make it more versatile and dynamic, while maintaining a modern and universal feel. The most outward facing manifestation of the new look is the company's website. Researchnow.com is entirely reworked both visually and functionally. The site's visual design speaks more effectively to Research Now's growing number of core audiences, and the website's functionality is designed to be more helpful to customers. The new site is more comprehensive with dedicated sections covering Research Now products, services and primary vertical markets. Research Now's new site design improves the overall clarity of the products and services offered by the company. The menu and homepage are structured to guide visitors toward two main offering grops: solutions for professional market researchers and solutions for decision makers who depend on market research but who may not be expert in the details of market research itself.



"Part of our corporate strategy is to be a comprehensive research supplier," said Research Now President & COO John Rothwell. "To accomplish that, we must evolve and reach existing and new buyers of our market research capabilities." The updated identity includes a modified logo design, color palette, and design style all of which are visible throughout researchnow.com. The site is designed for all classes of desktop and mobile devices to ensure content is easy to read and interact with on the visitor's favorite platform. It features more calls to action, as well as engaging, educational content items like white papers, videos, blogs and live demos. The new design also enables Research Now to demonstrate the company's extensive capabilities in data collection and templated research.

"Our new identity captures a more modern, dynamic and global Research Now," said Research Now Senior Vice President, Global Marketing, Joe Andrulis. "Through the new look and the website we are improving our ability to communicate the Research Now value proposition to prospects and customers." To see Research Now's new look and site, visit www.researchnow.com. About Research Now Research Now Group, Inc., is the global leader in digital data collection to power analytics and insights. It enables data-driven decision making for its 3,000 market research, consulting, media, and corporate clients through its permission-based access to millions of deeply-profiled consumers using online, mobile, social media and behavioral data collection technology platforms. The company operates in more than 35 countries, from 23 offices around the globe, and is recognized as the quality, scale and customer satisfaction leader in its industry. For more information go to www.researchnow.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150723/240761LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/research-now-unveils-refreshed-identity-and-new-website-300256796.html SOURCE Research Now

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[April 26, 2016] Satuit Technologies Expanding Salt Lake City Team

Satuit Technologies, Inc., a global leader in software solutions for the professional investment market is pleased to announce that Michael Melis will be returning to Satuit as Director of the Salt Lake City office. Prior to Satuit, Mike held a series of progressively more responsible positions with ChartLogic, McKesson Corp and Prosper Marketplace. Mike has both a management and technology background and has held key positions in Healthcare and Financial software companies, including software development, client service, sales and strategic partnerships. Mike is a graduate of the University of Utah, with a degree in marketing. Some Satuit clients know Mike already, as he was previously an employee of Satuit for several years. Mike started his Satuit career as the first employee in Salt Lake. When Satuit purchased Lync.net in 2010, Mike joined the Lync team to orm the Salt Lake office.



Mike will be focusing on sales and client retention for the Western region. Satuit's intention is to expand the Salt Lake office to provide both sales and support for all products, including SatuitCRM, SatuitCRA Client Reporting and the SatuitCRA Investor Portal. The Team will be moving to a new office in Salt Lake in June. "Mike's career with Satuit and other companies has made him is a perfect fit to understand customers' needs and fit them to the best solutions. We are pleased to have him return to our team," said Karen Maguire, CEO of Satuit Technologies.

ABOUT SATUIT TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

Satuit Technologies, Inc. is the premier provider of cloud-based and On-Premise CRM software solutions for the asset management, hedge fund, wealth management, private equity, and real estate markets. Satuit has offices in the United States and the United Kingdom, and serves clients in more than thirty-five countries. For additional information, visit www.satuit.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426006157/en/

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[April 26, 2016] Government of Canada Supports Broadband Internet Connection in Eight First Nations Communities in British Columbia

VANCOUVER, April 26, 2016 /CNW/ - The Government of Canada today announced a commitment of $2.2 million in support of the Pathways to Technology project in British Columbia. Pathways to Technology is a First Nations-led initiative managed by the All Nations Trust Company to bring broadband connectivity to unserved or underserved First Nations communities. Funding was secured by Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada through the Building Canada Fund. All communities, including remote First Nations require high-speed Internet to access social connectivity, educational resources, economic development opportunities, emergency services and efficient healthcare delivery. The eight communities that benefitted from this investment are: Takla Lake First Nation, Ucluelet First Nation, Shackan, Nooaitch, Seton Lake, Nuxalk Nation, Homalco, and Upper Nicola First Nation. Budget 2016 will invest an additional $255 million over two years starting in 201617 through the First Nations Infrastructure Fund to support investments in a range of community infrastructure, including roads and bridges, energy systems, broadband connectivity, physical infrastructure to mitigte the effects of natural disasters and fire protection.



Quotes "Regardless of where you live, being able to access broadband internet is an absolute necessity for all Canadians. This is why I am are proud to support the Pathways to Technology project as it enables First Nation in all corners of British Columbia to connect with the resources the internet provides, supporting better health, education and economic outcomes."

The Honourable Carolyn Bennett, M.D., P.C., M.P.,

Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs "By ensuring that reliable, high-speed internet is available to the First Nation communities in B.C., the Pathways to Technology Project is having a positive impact in education, health care, culture and economic development. The success of the Project is largely based upon the partnership approach taken to involve the First Nation communities and the provincial and federal governments." Paul Donald,

CEO, All Nations Trust Company Quick Facts Since 2011, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada has invested over $16 .4 million to help connect First Nations in British Columbia to broadband Internet through the Pathways to Technology project.

.4 million to help connect First Nations in to broadband Internet through the Pathways to Technology project. 95 percent of British Columbia First Nations now receive broadband internet service. Related products Building Canada Fund

Pathways to Technology

First Nations Infrastructure Fund

Aboriginal Connectivity Profiles in British Columbia You can subscribe to receive our news releases and speeches via RSS feeds or e-mail. For more information or to subscribe, visit www.aandc.gc.ca/subscriptions. SOURCE Government of Canada

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[April 26, 2016] Drybar Produces New Dry It Yourself Video Series Launching on YouTube

IRVINE, Calif., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Drybar is excited to announce the launch of its video series, Dry It Yourself, with 8 brand new videos now on YouTube. Founder Alli Webb shows viewers how to create the brand's signature styles at home as well as solve common hair styling issues. The series is produced, written and directed by Drybar Creative Director, Cameron Webb, and the Drybar Creative Team. The Dry It Yourself series is a fun, simple way to help guide and teach viewers at their own convenience. Alli engages her audience by walking step-by-step through the products, tools and tricks needed to achieve various signature Drybar styles including a basic bouncy blowout (The Straight Up) or messy, beachy waves (The Mai Tai). Alli also shares her signature tips & tricks for blow-drying bangs, using a flat iron and achieving the perfect url with a curling iron.



"Doing your own hair isn't easy, trust me, I get it. That's the reason I actually became a hair stylist some 20 years ago was so I could figure out how to blow out my own naturally curly (and super unruly) hair," says Drybar founder Alli Webb. "After all these years of accumulating hair tips & tricks, I am so excited to share them via our new Dry-It-Yourself video series. Whether it's in one of our 58 shops or in the comfort of your own home, our goal is to help you achieve the perfect blowout every time." The series is slated to expand throughout the year, with an estimated 10 additional videos launching in late Summer & Fall. Stay tuned!

Drybar is excited to give women everywhere an opportunity to experience the power of a Drybar blowout even if they don't have access to a Drybar shop in their country, state and/or city. View the videos on YouTube here: www.bit.ly/DRYBARDIY ABOUT DRYBAR:

Drybar is based on a simple philosophy: Focus on one thing and be the best at it. For Drybar, that's blowouts. The idea was a natural one for curly-haired founder Alli Webb, a longtime professional stylist, who grew tired of overpaying for blowouts at traditional salons. Named one of the top "100 Brilliant Ideas" by Entrepreneur Magazine and one of New York Magazine's Boom Brands, Drybar is on track to have over 70 retail locations by the end of 2016. The brand will continue adding to its popular line of hair styling products & tools sold both online and in its own shops, as well as at Sephora and Nordstrom in the U.S. and Canada, and select Ulta Beauty doors nationwide. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/360062LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/drybar-produces-new-dry-it-yourself-video-series-launching-on-youtube-300257658.html SOURCE Drybar

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[April 26, 2016] Nordic countries lead in regulations to encourage power grid modernization

WASHINGTON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- European countries  led by Nordic countries and also Italy and the Netherlands  are at the top of a new index ranking regulatory frameworks that enable power grid modernization. Countries were scored based on ten indicators including smart meter targets, pilot projects, financing mechanisms, distributed generation incentives and other policy measures that encourage grid modernization. Other OECD countries such as New Zealand, South Korea, and Canada joined the European countries among the leaders, according to a new study published today by Northeast Group, LLC. "Globally, OECD countries are by and large the leaders for their smart grid regulatory frameworks," according to Ben Gardner, president of Northeast Group. "But there are also non-OECD countries that have progressive regulations in place, including Romania, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. At the same time, surprisingly some developed countries are lagging behind. For example, Germany and Belgium have yet to agre to meet European Union smart meter targets."



Regulations have been critical for driving smart grid infrastructure investment across the world. In the European Union, regulations such as the mandate for 80% smart meter penetration by 2020, are laying the groundwork for major grid modernizations. In the United States, several years ago the Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) program was a key catalyst for the smart grid market. Northeast Group's study also includes indicators highlighting the benefits of smart grid investment in each country. These include demand response benefits and non-technical loss reduction benefits. For example, wealthy OECD countries are notable for their high electricity demand rates and can therefore achieve significant benefits through demand response programs enabled by smart grid infrastructure. Also, lower income countries can still benefit by using smart meters to reduce high non-technical loss rates. In some low-income countries, such as Nigeria, smart grid deployments are still progressing for this reason even without well-developed regulations. Northeast Group analyzed these leading drivers for all 52 countries.

The Global Smart Grid Regulatory Index study is 73-pages long and includes scoring for 10 regulatory metrics and a risk score for each of the 52 countries covered. To order a copy of the study, please visit: www.northeast-group.com ABOUT: Northeast Group, LLC is a Washington, DC-based smart infrastructure market intelligence firm. www.northeast-group.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nordic-countries-lead-in-regulations-to-encourage-power-grid-modernization-300257803.html SOURCE Northeast Group, LLC

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[April 26, 2016] Machine Vision Camera Market - by Types (Vision Sensors, Smart Cameras); by Products (Area Scan, Line Scan); by Applications (Inspection, Location Analysis, Others); by End-User Industry (Automotive, Medical, Others)-Forecast to 2021

LONDON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Machine Vision (MV) cameras are basically industrial cameras which are designed for high performance and challenging applications such as locating applications, measurement applications, inspection and identification applications. These cameras are basically built up on two varied types of technologies  Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) and Charge-Coupled Device (CCD); CMOS cameras taking the industrial toll in the near future. These cameras capture high quality images which are again analyzed to automate the tasks of production, increase their speed and yield and also to improve their quality. The report study includes the detailed demand analysis of machine vision market on a global and regional scale for a five-year period of 2016-2021, both in terms of volume (Units) and revenue ($billion).



The market is evaluated based on the key attributes such as the power in the hands of producers and consumers, analysis on the degree of competition, and threats from substitutes and new entrants.



The report also includes segmentation based on types, products, applications and end user industries. Types of Machine Vision Cameras include Vision Sensors, Smart Cameras and PC based systems. The overall market can be segmented based on products into Area Scan Cameras, Line Scan Cameras, Infrared Cameras, 3D cameras and others. The major applications of these cameras include inspection applications, location analysis applications and pattern recognition applications such as character recognition, part recognition and 2D symbol reading and so on. The market can be fragmented based on end user industries into Electronics and Semiconductors, Medicine, Automotive, Packaging and Printing Industry and many others.



Competitive landscape for each of the product types is highlighted nd market players are profiled with attributes of company overview, financial overview, business strategies, product portfolio and recent developments. Market shares of the key players for 2015 are provided. Drivers, challenges and constraints which control the profitability of an industry are also analyzed in the report.







The Machine Vision Camera market has also been segmented based on geographical region into Americas, Europe , Asia-pacific and Middle-East and Africa . These geographies are further classified into countries holding prominent share in this market for the forecast period. Major market revenue share is contributed by the United States .



Americas emerged as the leading region for Machine Vision Cameras market with The U.S. and Canada leading the net sales. The wide range of applications of these cameras, especially the smart cameras in the automotive and industrial sector has propelled the growth of this market in these regions. . However, European manufacturers have formulated strategies to invest in Machine Vision System market in the coming years.





Among a wide range of manufacturers, major players that contribute to the Machine Vision Cameras market are

Allied Vision Technologies GmbH,

ASENTICS GmbH & Co. KG,

Balluff GmbH,

Basler AG

Baumer GmbH  Baumer Inspection GmbH.



We provide profound data about the industry overview, financial overview, business strategies and recent developments.



Progress in technology and increasing need of the smart cameras in many real-world applications will continue to drive the growth of these machine vision cameras. The growing needs of these smart cameras in the industry automation and control systems as well as in non-manufacturing applications such as in video surveillance, traffic surveillance and in automobiles will contribute to the increase in market share of these machine vision cameras in the forecast time frame.

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3759035/



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/machine-vision-camera-market---by-types-vision-sensors-smart-cameras-by-products-area-scan-line-scan-by-applications-inspection-location-analysis-others-by-end-user-industry-automotive-medical-others-forecast-to-2-300257869.html SOURCE ReportBuyer

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[April 26, 2016] CollabNet to Host TeamForge User Conference for Federal Agencies and Agile/DevOps in Washington D.C.

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CollabNet (www.collabnet.com), a global leader in enterprise software development and delivery solutions that help customers create high-quality applications at speed, today announced it will host a gathering of Federal agencies and software delivery industry experts in Washington D.C. on April 28. The 2016 Federal User Group Conference will provide attendees with insights into the latest trends around Agile and DevOps success within regulated environments, and feature keynote Jeanne Morain, principal researcher and consulting strategist at iSpeak Cloud. The event will also feature a keynote by CollabNet CEO Flint Brenton, who will present the company's vision and industry trends. "The role of software within all forms of government and military services continues to increase, as does the need to use the latest tools and processes to deliver value quickly," said Brenton. "We are pleased to bring together both Federal IT professionals and domain experts for a day of idea sharing and collaboration around the scaling of Agile practices and moving toward DevOps approaches." CollabNet has extensive experience helping public and defense institutions, including the Department of Defense's Forge.mil development community, better manage increasingly complex and vital software delivery initiatives while maintaining regulatory compliance and governance. Its TeamForge ALM platform enables government agencies to accelerate application delivery while leveraging the tools, version control systems and development methodologies that best fit their needs. Leading government agencies leverage TeamForge to accelerate application delivery with Agile, C/CD and DevOps  and reduce costs through a governed adoption of open source tools, streamlined compliance, and the reuse of existing assets, resources, and processes in new projects.



The CollabNet Federal User Group Conference is an opportunity for attendees to meet and mingle with members of the CollabNet team, CollabNet TeamForge users and other industry experts. Attendees also will learn what's on the horizon for the company in 2016 and beyond. This complimentary event will take place at the Washington Marriot at Metro Center in Washington D.C. from 8:15 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Use this link to see a detailed agenda or to register for the event, http://visit.collab.net/Federal-User-Group-DC_Registration.html?lsrc=Live%20Event&LSD=16Q2-Federal%20User%20Group%20Conference-DC%20(4%2F28)-Website Share This: @CollabNet brings together customers and experts at the 2016 Federal User Group Conference http://www.collab.net/news/press/2016-federal-user-group-conference-washington-dc #governance #compliance About Jeanne Morain

Jeanne Morain is the principal researcher and consulting strategist at iSpeak Cloud. She has held various executive roles in strategy and product management with the Apollo Group, Flexera Software, VMware (Thinstall) and BMC Software (Marimba). Ms. Morain currently advises startups and large enterprises on implementing new products and strategies to embrace the Digital Native Era. For more information, please visit www.ispeakcloud.com. About Flint Brenton

Flint Brenton has extensive experience leading innovative software companies and has an exceptional track record of accelerating growth through product innovation and sales execution. Currently CEO of CollabNet, a Vector Capital-owned leader in open Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). Mr. Brenton is an Operating Partner at Vector, advancing its position as a transformational partner to technology businesses. He also serves as a member of the Software & Services Division (SSD) Board of Directors for the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). About CollabNet

CollabNet helps enterprises and government organizations develop and deliver high-quality software at speed. Recognized for 12 consecutive years as SD Times 100 "Best in Show" winner in the ALM and Development Tools category, CollabNet offers innovative solutions, provides consulting and Agile training services, and proudly supports more than 10,000 customers with 6 million users in 100 countries. For more information, please visit www.collabnet.com. CONTACT: Laura Balboni, [email protected], 303-581-7760 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150505/213850LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/collabnet-to-host-teamforge-user-conference-for-federal-agencies-and-agiledevops-in-washington-dc-300257872.html SOURCE CollabNet

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Baku, Azerbaijan Apr.26

Trend:

If the presidential elections were held in Azerbaijan next Sunday, the vast majority of respondents in Baku would have gone to polls (86.2 percent), according to "Rey" Monitoring Center.

Some 68.1 percent of the respondents said they would have cast their ballots, while 18.1 percent said they would have probably voted.

The poll was conducted by the center on April 18-19, involving 800 respondents.

According to the results of the poll, the vast majority of the respondents - 92.8 percent - would have voted for Ilham Aliyev. Some 97 percent of the respondents said they fully trust Ilham Aliyev, with around 89 percent saying Ilham Aliyev meets their interests.

The poll also revealed that 78.8 percent of the respondents saw no alternatives to Ilham Aliyev as president of Azerbaijan.

The survey also revealed that the high rating of and confidence in the president stemmed from the successful foreign policy, economic development measures, the army's success and other factors.

The majority of the respondents supported President Aliyev's foreign policy: 87.3 percent rated this policy as "very good" or "mainly good". Only five percent voiced their disapproval of the country's foreign policy, with 3.6 percent of them rating it as "bad", and 2.1 percent as "very bad".

Offered several options, the respondents also chose the recent most successful foreign policy event. Some 65.5 percent said it was President Aliyev's attending the 4th Nuclear Security Summit on the invitation of Barack Obama.

Around 63.8 percent said the president's Ankara visit was the most successful event in Azerbaijan's foreign policy, with the majority of the respondents describing this as support for Turkey and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who twice postponed his visit to Baku because of terrorist attacks in Turkey.

Some 38 percent believe that the most successful foreign policy event was the president's visit to Iran, while 19 percent said it was the Baku meeting of the Azerbaijani, Russian and Iranian foreign ministers.

According to the poll, support for Ilham Aliyev as Supreme Commander-in-Chief had climbed amid the growing tension in the Nagorno-Karabakh, with 97 percent of the respondents voicing their confidence in him as supreme commander-in-chief.

Baku residents also approved of the economic measures taken by the president and the government. Some 28 percent of the respondents rated the economic situation in Azerbaijan as "good", 44 percent as "middling", and only 18 percent as "bad". Ten percent remained undecided.

The majority of Baku residents believe that President Ilham Aliyev`s executive orders and instructions have dramatically changed the situation and helped the country avoid negative impact of the falling global oil prices and global economic crisis.

Some 62 percent of the respondents believe that President Ilham Aliyev's executive order suspending inspections of entrepreneurs and easing licensing for them will boost the development of small and medium-sized entrepreneurship in the country. Some 17.7 percent believe these measures are unlikely to be helpful, while 8.2 percent are completely sure these measures will not work.

Some 68.2 percent of Baku residents believe that these measures will help put an end to unnecessary inspections of small and medium-sized businesses. Some 16 percent of the respondents do not share this optimism, as they believe these measures will be temporary and not tackle the root causes of the problem. Some 15.8 percent were undecided.

The respondents also approved of the president's measures to ease customs registration procedures, ensure transparency and eliminate monopoly. Some 61 percent believe that these measures will stimulate the development of small and medium-sized entrepreneurship (25.3 percent are sure, while 35.7 percent believe they will likely help).

Some 18.7 percent are pessimistic about the effectiveness of these measures (8.5 percent said they "will not help", 10.2 percent chose "are unlikely to help" option). Some 20 percent of the respondents remained undecided.

The poll also revealed that the temporary pessimism caused by devaluation of the national currency is already disappearing. Some 63 percent of Baku residents believe that state measures pave the way for the stabilization of the national currency exchange rate. Some 15 percent were pessimistic, while 20 percent were undecided.

The survey showed that population of Baku approve of the country's foreign policy and economic measures.

The report is based on the results of 'omnibus' type of public opinion survey, which was held in Baku on April 18-19. Conducted among nearly 800 people aged between 18 and over, the poll featured a "face-to-face" interviewing method. Its inaccuracy is 3.5 percent.
[April 26, 2016] Baylin Technologies Announces Appointment of Regional Sales Directors and Worldwide Regional Sales Representatives for Wireless Infrastructure Division

TORONTO, April 26, 2016 /CNW/ - Baylin Technologies Inc. ("Baylin") (TSX: BYL), a global provider of innovative antenna solutions for the mobile, networking and wireless infrastructure markets, today announced the expansion of its subsidiary, Galtronics', Infrastructure Sales Team through the addition of four Regional Sales Directors and six Manufacturing Sales Representative firms. "We are delighted to announce that we have completed our global sales structure for our wireless infrastructure division," said Randy Dewey, Vice Chairman, President and CEO, Baylin. "By signing strong partners to our sales team we anticipate increasing sales volumes in the coming months and years." Regional Sales Directors

In North America, Patrick McCabe will be the Regional Sales Director, West, joining Terry Pugh, Regional Sales Director, South. Jeremie Chiu, a Regional Sales Director located in Belgium, who has been supporting Galtronics networking antennas will now additionally represent wireless infrastructure antennas throughout Europe. Kelly Joyce who currently sells Galtronics Networking antennas will represent infrastructure products n Latin America, the Caribbean and South Florida.



USA

Mark Harnen, Principal of Enterprise Wireless, LLC has signed a Manufacturing Representative Agreement to represent Galtronics' in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio to all VARS, OEMs, Neutral Host and Carrier regional offices. James Knutson of K-C Marketers Inc. will represent Galtronics in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Mike Branch of Symetric Marketing will represent Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and the Memphis area of Tennessee. Ed Alvardo of Premier Marketing will represent Northern California and Northern Nevada. CANADA

Trispec Communications Inc. and Silvestro Galluccio Director of Business Development, Wireless have renewed their relationship with Galtronics as the preferred Canadian Distributor and Manufacturing Sales Representative. They will cover the Canadian market.

EUROPE

Mark ter Laak of Regoort B.V. will act as our Manufacturing Sales Representative as well as warehouse and distributor for Galtronics in The Netherlands and Belgium. "We are seeing increasing demand for our premium antenna solutions for infrastructure projects and with these sales agreements in place Galtronics is poised to address the growing worldwide demand for our products." explained Mr. Dewey. About Baylin

Baylin (TSX: BYL) is a leading global technology company with 40 years of experience in designing, producing and supplying innovative antennas for the mobile, broadband and wireless infrastructure industries. We meet our customers' needs by being their trusted partner from initial design to production with an extensive portfolio of custom engineered solutions and leading edge off-the-shelf antenna products. SOURCE Baylin Technologies Inc.

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[April 26, 2016] Video Games Market Trends in China

LONDON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- This study focuses on China's Video Games market trends. In the two past decades, the market has been growing at a fast pace. The dramatic expansions of the manufacturing capabilities and rising consumer consumptions in China have transformed China's society and economy. China is one of the world's major producers for industrial and consumer products. Far outpacing other economies in the world, China is the world's fastest growing market for the consumptions of goods and services. The Chinese economy maintains a high speed growth which has been stimulated by the consecutive increases of industrial output, imports & exports, consumer consumption and capital investment for over two decades. Rapid consolidation between medium and large players is anticipated since the Chinese government has been encouraging industry consolidation with an effort to regulate the industry and to improve competitiveness in the world market.



Although China has enjoyed the benefits of a expanding market for production and distribution, the industry is suffering from minimal innovation and investment in R&D and new product development. The sector's economies of scale have yet to be achieved. Most domestic manufacturers lack the autonomic intellectual property and financial resources to develop their own brand name products.







This new study focuses on market trends and forecasts with historical data (2005, 2010 and 2015) and long-term forecasts through 2020 and 2025 are presented.

The primary and secondary research is done in China in order to access up-to-date government regulations, market information and industry data. Data were collected from the Chinese government publications, Chinese language newspapers and magazines, industry associations, local governments' industry bureaus, industry publications, and our in-house databases.





Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3772069/





About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/video-games-market-trends-in-china-300257956.html SOURCE ReportBuyer

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In March of this year, AMD revealed the Radeon Pro Duo, a dual Fiji GPU graphics card with 8GB of HBM memory and capable of delivering up to 16 teraflops of compute performance. The company had said that the card would be released in Q2 2016, and today it is available for purchase.

AMD said the Radeon Pro Duo is meant for VR content creation of all varieties, including game development, VR journalism and medical research and more. The company said the card was designed for heavy workloads that come with VR content creation and that the Radeon Pro Duos compute performance will help bring tomorrows VR content to market in record time.

With the Radeon Pro Duo, its our objective to solve major problems developers face, by reducing latency and accelerating the VR pipeline through close collaboration with the content development community and with AMD LiquidVR technology, said AMD in its press materials.

AMD is pushing the Radeon Pro Duo as a solution for VR content creation, but theres nothing stopping you (except maybe the price) from using it as a top-end graphics solution for gaming. The card features two liquid-cooled Fiji GPUs, each paired with 4GB of HBM memory, and AMD said it has support for DX12. (We would love to show you performance numbers, but we haven't received a sample to test. An AMD representative told Tom's Hardware that the company has decided not to send samples to enthusiast sites for independent testing.)

The Radeon Pro Duo will sell for the not-insignificant sum of $1,499. AMD said it is available today worldwide, from select partners. Every Radeon Pro Duo graphics card comes bundled with the Liquid VR SDK to help developers and content creators to coax the most performance out of their creations.

Follow Kevin Carbotte @pumcypuhoy. Follow us on Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

Trend:

A regular meeting of the Association of foreign military attaches accredited in Azerbaijan has been held at the Department of International Military Cooperation of the Defense Ministry.

The meeting discussed internal issues of the Association, and adopted a number of decisions.

The military attaches were also informed about the current situation on the line of contact of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops. They were presented with the materials providing evidence of continuous violations of ceasefire by the Armenian armed forces, and reflecting the Azerbaijani government's official stance on this issue.

On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements.

Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Today we have the pleasure of premiering the band new EP from Melbourne folk talent Anna Smyrk. Hailing from central Victoria, Smyrks delicately crafted contemporary folk tunes have made her a local name to watch.

Drawing inspiration from Gillian Welchs story-telling songwriting, Laura Marlings pure and elastic vocals and Sias unflinchingly exposed lyrics, Smyrks new EP (A follow on from her 2012 effort Belly of Winter) Song of the Silver-tongued Magpie is a stunning effort from the thoughtful songwriter.

Recorded back in February 2015, this EP was put on ice after Anna was offered a job in Cambodia, working for a non-profit organization that uses music and the arts to engage disadvantaged young people. It was too good an opportunity to turn down; Anna packed her bags and left two weeks later.

A truly intimate affair, the recording was made in the old farmhouse in northern Victoria where Anna grew up. Performing on the record are Dan Musil (dobro guitar) and Jimmy Power (banjo), two of Annas oldest friends. All three of them have jammed and played together in different formations since childhood.

Now back in town for just two months, shes determined to get this music out into the world before embarking on her next adventure in the Solomon Islands. To celebrate the release of the EP, Anna will be playing a very special launch show on Thursday May 19th The Toff in Town. For more info on the forthcoming show and EP release pop by Annas Facebook page.
A 15-year-old girl was one of two Groovin The Moo punters rushed to hospital after suffering a suspected drug overdose over the weekend. As The Daily Telegraph reports, the ANZAC Day long weekend saw a total of four separate overdoses at music festivals.

Whilst the Maitland leg of Groovin The Moo, which kicked off its annual run of regional stops over the weekend, was relatively incident-free and garnered rave reviews from critics and punters, paramedics performed CPR on a 15-year-old girl after she collapsed and stopped breathing.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the girl, reported to be from Sydney, collapsed on Saturday at about 2.30pm after ingesting an unidentified substance. She was subsequently rushed to John Hunter Hospital where detectives were looking to question her in relation to a substance found on her clothing.

Another punter was also rushed to hospital following an adverse reaction to drugs. The Telegraph reports that police, who were conducting a sniffer dog operation at the festival, found a total of 36 people carrying illegal substances, including MDMA.

Meanwhile, in Sydney, a 19-year-old man and a woman were taken to hospital suffering from suspected drug overdoses after attending the Midnight Mafia Dance Party in Homebush. Police reportedly arrested a total of 18 people on drug-related offences, including 16 for possession.

A total of seven people have died from drug-related causes at music festivals around Australia in the past 12 months, including the highly publicised deaths of Stereosonic punters Sylvia Choi, 25, and 19-year-old Stefan Woodward.

Tone Deaf have reached out to Groovin The Moo organisers for comment.
Formed in 2014, Boston-based indie rock outfit Oh Malo have been winning fans world-wide thanks to their uncanny ability to craft melodic shape-shifting emotive rock and their latest effort As We Were is no exception.

Written and recorded in a basement along the Massachusetts coast, this LP, the bands self-released debut embodies ternary emotional personalities following a breakup and translates them into three emotions. As We Were sees the band explore themes of anger, frustration, and aggression.

Kicking off the record with soaring opening track, Burn, this LP is a proper sonic journey from the talented alt rockers. Check out the LP below and if you like what youre hearing be sure to visit the bands Facebook page for more info.
Loving live music isnt just about attending music festivals and seeing an international artists massive arena show. Even the biggest of big-name headliners started in the trenches, on the sticky carpets and bandrooms of your local bars and pubs  which is exactly where you should be if you want to discover your new favourite band or venue. Heres our picks for this weeks best local gigs from Aussie talent  from Perth to the East Coast  and all for the price of a good meal.

Fortunes

Where? The Evelyn Hotel 351 Brunswick Street Fitzroy, Melbourne

When? 9pm, Saturday 30th April

Why? After kicking off 2016 in a big way with a performance at Let Them Eat Cake and the release of their new Jacket EP, Melbournes Fortunes are primed and ready to break the stratosphere. Thick soundscapes give this gritty R&B collaboration a distinctly chill vibe, and with support from the equally chill groves of Leisure Suite, Couture and SAL the fresh energy will be palpable. Plus this could be your last chance to heckle Fortunes from the front row before they hit the big time.

Tickets & Info: $15, Facebook

The Villenettes

Where? Crown and Anchor 196 Grenfell Street, Adelaide

When? 8pm, Saturday 30th April

Why? Playing their first show local show in almost a year, Adelaide Psychobillys The Villenettes are ready to rip the ears off willing victims this Saturday with the release of their new 7 I Love YouBut Rum Is Better. If youre already having an average four day week drown your sorrows, dance with the devil and party like its 1956 with this Elvis loving riff-driven gang of surfer-punks.

Tickets & Info: $10, Facebook

Dallas Crane

Where? Cherry Bar AD/DC Lane, Melbourne

When? 8pm, Friday 29th April

Why? Since their debut in the mid 90s Dallas Crane have become a formidable staple of the Aussie rock scene. Last year after a long deserved break from our stages they returned with the triumphant LP Scoundrels proving once and for all that they belong among the greatest rock bands in Australian history. Now for a measly 13 bucks Dallas Crane take the stage at Cherry this Friday with Indonesian guests S.I.G.I.T. and Tame the Sun for an unmissable celebration of rock and roll.

Tickets & Info: $13, Facebook

Ears Have Ears w/ Half High

Where?FBi Radio 44-54 Botany Rd, Alexandria, Sydney

When? 9pm, Thursday 28th April

Why? As part of a new series of live experimental music shows on Sydneys FBi Radio, Ears Have Ears opens the studio doors to new music fans to indulge in the sounds of High High. The otherworldly drone duo from Melbourne improvise constantly, crafting a unique series of soundscapes specifically for the event. Analogue and digital collide before RIP Society founder Nic Warnock leads an in-depth discussion with the group, exploring everything from composition to the industrial music scene.

Tickets & Info: FREE, Facebook

Sasha March

Where?Grace Emily Hotel 232 Waymouth Street, Adelaide

When? 8pm, Saturday 30th April

Why? Melancholic folk takes on new meaning with the release of debut album Dont Go Falling from Adelaide local Sasha March and her talented four-piece. The emotional 9 track already has fans in her home town heartbroken and critics in awe of her comforting indie charm. Support from talented friends Cosmo Thundercat and Nikai is sure to keep the night in breathtaking form, but none can compare to the soulful crooning of this distinctive folk talent.

Tickets & Info: $11.44, Facebook

Foreign/National

Where?Boney 68 Little Collins St, Melbourne

When? 8pm, Thursday 28th April

Why? Breathe a bit of summer sunshine into a cold autumn night this Thursday with Foreign/Nationals sparkly guitar pop. Celebrating the release of single Tristesse from their upcoming album the five Melbourne gents infuse pop-nostalgia with classic jazz and disco to create a perfect cocktail of downbeat escapism to get you amped for the weekend.

Tickets & Info: $8+bf, Facebook

Nicole Millar

Where?The Foundry 228 Wickham Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane

When? 7:30pm, Saturday 30th April

Why? Frequent Aussie guest vocalist Nicole Millar is set to take the stage in Brisbane this Saturday to cap off her first national solo tour. Gaining attention as the voice of Peking Duks 2014 anthem High Nicole has launched a stelar career as a solo artist. Wearing the release of her recent single Tremble as a marker of her independent success Nicole has had a proud and powerful tour but still retains a few tricks up her sleeve for the final show.

Tickets & Info: $14.50, Facebook

Winterplan

Where? Grace Darling Hotel 114 Smith Street, Collingwood, Melbourne

When? 8pm, Saturday 30th April

Why? If a night of dense synth-pop and more than a hint of 80s nostalgia appeals to you then you are in for a treat. Modern dancefloor bangers meets Ladytron in electric Melbourne producers Winterplan, celebrating their latest single Ragamortis as it stomps its way on to the Grace Darling D-floor. Featuring non-stop electronic groves from HT Spit, Honor Eastly and Astral Skulls its hard not to get up and dance.

Tickets & Info: $10, Facebook

The Vanns

Where? The Milk Factory 48 Montague Rd, South Brisbane

When? 8pm, Thursday 28th April

Why? Stoked to announce the release of their single Im Not The One The VANNS Hit the road once again for a massive national tour, kicking off in Brisbane before a stack of rural shows and stops in Sydney and Melbourne next month. Dripping with hard partying blues rock swagger these three country boys sit comfortably next to Aussie greats Sticky Fingers and The Delta Riggs and with the support of locals PLTS and Mitch King this Brisbane bash will be dangerously loose.

Tickets & Info: $10, Facebook

Benjamin Witt

Where?The Bird 181 William Street, Northbridge, Perth

When? 8pm, Friday 29th April

Why? After a long month of support tours with Aussie greats Koi Child, Methyl Ethel and The Drones the Benjamin Witt Quartet headline a killer friday night at The Bird. Jamming out the launch of 2 new tracks, Dead Fish and TV Dinner, this lo-fi guitar-pop-gasm inspires serious party vibes even without the help of supports and local mates HamJam and DumKarl. With their powers combines this eclectic trifecta will have you jumping up and down faster than you can say five dollars entry.

Tickets & Info: $5, Facebook
The Bennies only just wrapped up their Wisdom Machine Australian Tour, but theyve already announced their most extensive national tour to dates, with a huge list of stops including a pilgrimage to the one and only town of Nimbin.

The Bennies boys work as hard as they party and with their eagerly anticipated new album, Wisdom Machine, now well and truly out there, they have plenty of reasons to celebrate and theyre doing it the only way they know how.

The past 12 months have been some of the biggest in the bands career, having reached number 88 on the triple j Hottest 100 with the raucous Party Machine, before touring the country and selling out shows everywhere they went.

Now, the band will be hitting the road with their Poison City label mates Clowns, also fresh from a string of European tour dates, and Perth power pop outfit Axe Girl, featuring Ness from Jebediah. Check below for all dates and details.

The Bennies National Tour Dates

Tickets on sale 9am Wednesday, 27th April

Wednesday June 22nd

Club 54  Launceston, TAS

Thursday June 23rd

Brisbane Hotel  Hobart, TAS

Friday June 24th

Max Watts  Melbourne, VIC

Saturday June 25th

Pelly Bar  Frankston, VIC

Sunday June 26th

Karova Lounge  Ballarat, VIC

Wednesday June 29th

Mynt  Werribee, VIC

Thursday June 30th

Barwon Club  Geelong, VIC

Friday July 1st

The Gov  Adelaide, VIC

Saturday July 2nd

Village Green  Mulgrave, VIC

Sunday July 3rd

Music Man  Bendigo, VIC

Wednesday July 6th

Mairners  Batemans Bay, NSW

Thursday July 7th

The Basement  Canberra, ACT

Friday July 8th

University Of Wollongong  Wollongong, NSW

Saturday July 9th

Factory Theatre  Sydney, NSW

Sunday July 10th

Small Ballroom  Newcastle, NSW

Wednesday July 13th

Nimbin Bush Theatre  Nimbin, NSW

Thursday July 14th

Miami Tarven  Gold Coast, QLD

Friday July 15th

Spotted Cow  Toowoomba, QLD

Saturday July 16th

The Triffid  Brisbane, QLD

Sunday July 17th

Sol Bar  Maroocydore, QLD

Thursday July 21st

Flinders Social  Townsville, QLD #

Friday July 22nd

The Grand  Cairns, QLD #

Saturday July 23rd

Railway Club  Darwin, NT #

Thursday July 28th

Tambrey Tavern  Karratha, WA #

Friday July 29th

Rosemount  Perth, WA *

Saturday July 30th

Studio 146  Albany, WA *

Sunday July 31st

Prince of Wales  Bunbury, WA *

# The Bennies Only

* The Bennies & Axe Girl only
Though scientific opinion is largely divided on the matter, experts are very much in agreement that its easier to get munted in the sky. Alcohol has a different effect on the human body when were in the air, were just not sure exactly why.

According to a report from the BBC, the UKs flight regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), reckon low air pressure when flying effectively thins the blood, so the effects of alcohol can be stronger for certain individuals.

But this theory doesnt have all experts convinced. Meanwhile, other experts are of the opinion that you feel drunk quicker than when on the ground because the conditions inside an aeroplane cabin mean less oxygen gets into your brain.

Either way, Australian punk rockers Clowns got to experience the potentially disastrous effects of in-flight inebriation first hand during their recent trip over to Europe, where theyre set to play a bunch of dates, including at the famous Groezrock Festival.

Apparently, after drinking heartily on the plane (as they have been known to do when on land and, say, touring with Frenzal Rhomb), guitarist Goon had a bit of a spell and had to be taken care of by the planes flight attendants.

We drank heaps of beers on the plane and then Goon fainted in the aisle. Off to a good start! the band wrote on their official Facebook page, accompanied by a photo of Goon reclining on the aeroplane floor breathing in oxygen from a tank.

Heres hoping the rest of the tour doesnt require oxygen tanks. Tone Deaf have reached out to Clowns but did not hear back in time for publication.
A woman has slammed security working Groovin The Moo Canberra, describing their attitude as patronising and inadequate after she was reportedly urinated on by a male punter as she attended the festival with her 15-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter.

As ABC News reports, Joana Perkins was at the regional touring festivals Canberra leg to chaperone her son Sam and brought along her young daughter Ema. Ms Perkins told the ABC that she was enjoying the event when she noticed a man urinating on her leg.

We were enjoying ourselves when I noticed a man come up behind me and I thought I sensed something that he was fiddling with his penis and unfortunately I started feeling urine running down my leg, Ms Perkins told the outlet.

I turned around and he had his penis out and was weeing on me, at which point I grabbed him by the arm and said youre coming with me and moved him away from where we were. Ms Perkins daughter was distraught and crying after the incident.

Two guards came over and asked me what happened and I said this guys just peed on me and you could see the pee marks and they took the guy away, she recounted. The mother of two then made for the exit but had to stop when she saw what security were doing.

Now obviously I had wee down my leg and a crying nine-year-old and I wasnt going to hang around so I headed out to the exit with my son and carrying my daughter, she told ABC News.

I wasnt heading out to check on what the security guards were doing, but what I noticed is that they were laughing, patted the guy [who] was absolutely over-the-top inebriated or high and let him go off on his merry way.

Naturally irked, Ms Perkins approached the guards, one of whom insisted theyd kicked the man out of the festival. At which point one of the security guards looked at me extremely aggressively and said if you dont shut up youll be chucked out, she said.

Ms Perkins also claims that a female member of the ISEC security company, whod been contracted to work the event, told her that she was at fault for bringing her children to the event. Ms Perkins now intends to file a formal complaint with ISEC.

[include_post id=476790]

She was assaulted and its their job to keep an eye on her, Ms Perkins son told ABC. Id expect the security company, even if someone was just being aggressive and drunk, to warn them or get them to leave. I definitely didnt feel like I could rely on any of [the security guards].

Groovin The Moo Canberra was otherwise without incident, with police praising the conduct of most punters. Organisers entrust the safety of their punters to their security contractors and its always disheartening to hear about contractors taking that trust for granted.

Tone Deaf have reached out to Groovin The Moo for comment.
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES AND SOME OTHER STRAGGLERS MIGHT SOON CLAIM THAT THEY'RE GOING TO COVER THE COST OF THE NEW SINGLE-TERMINAL AIRPORT!!!

SMARTER KANSAS CITY INSIDERS ARE WAITING FOR THE FINE PRINT AND REALIZE THAT ALL COSTS ARE PASSED ON TO CONSUMERS AND CITY HALL STILL HAS TO BACK THE BONDS ON THIS PROPOSED DEAL!!!

EITHER WAY, THE RHETORIC IS CLEAR: THE SINGLE-TERMINAL WILL BE SOLD TO KANSAS CITY RESIDENTS AS A PROJECT THAT WON'T COST A DIME!!!

"There WILL be a vote on this . . ."

THE SOUTHWEST COLLABO WITH KANSAS CITY STARTED AFTER A COUNCIL COUP PRECEDED THE EARLY DEPARTURE OF AVIATION DUDE VANLOH!!!

City Hall Insiders reveal that just about all the members of the Airport Committee told Southwest on their recent journey to Dallas that they didn't want to work with VanLoh.

Amid long term and justified grudges, most of the Airport committee claimed that they couldn't move ahead with any plan that involved the Kansas City airline honcho . . . Call it coincidence but the guy was gone a week later.

Here's the unique selling proposition that City Hall hopes will fly with Kansas City voters . . .Reality check . . .One more . . .Nevertheless . . . "Free" sounds good to most people and local newsies won't be able to ask many question about this plan until the ballot language is finalized but rhetoric about KC avoiding airport payments is already floating around in much the same way so many residentsthis town doesn't pay for the Sprint Center.Thankfully, the effort to move this past the voters seems to be doomed and dedicated City Hall Insiders tell us . . .And while we hate to combine stories . . . Here's a bit of a double tap for Tuesday . . .Check the deets . . .Combine that interesting tidbit behind the scenes of a "retirement" announcement with talk of upcoming partnership deets and the single-terminal flight plan seems like its starting to take shape.This story just gets better and we hope to have more later in the day . . . But for now, word of the "freebie" deal is flying far and wide but landedthanks out ourwho wants voters involved in the discussion and the process unlike the current Mayoral Administration which seemingly would like every bit of public policy to fly under the radar.You decide . . .
SLEAZE SUMMIT COUNCIL DUDE CHRIS MORENO WRITES AN EXTENSIVE POLEMIC REGARDING HIS TAKE ON THE TRANSGENDER TOILET POLITICAL ISSUE AMID CONSTITUENT CONCERN!!!

Lee's Summit Councilman Chris Moreno: "As a Christian, topics like this are so unfortunate. On one hand, I truly believe everyone deserves respect, and God's amazing love. On the other hand, it is absolutely vital that we protect the safety of all in our community. And we are certainly obligated to go to extra measures to ensure the safety of our children.





"For me, and those that reached out to me, the concern is not necessarily Transgender individuals, but sexual predators that are most certainly taking advantage of policies similar to this. From what I learned today, I say rightfully so.





"Here is what was relayed to me. Target is headquartered in Minneapolis which has gender identity laws on the books, so they are making corporate policy nationwide to mirror their locally required policy. Neither Missouri, nor Lee's Summit has such a policy.





"They will not stop or question anyone from entering any restroom due to this policy. They will continue to use security cameras to monitor the store as normal protocol. As of now, they have no intention of putting staff inside or outside of the restroom at all times to ensure the safety of customers. They also do not have plans to build gender neutral restrooms in front of the store for those that may be transgender.





"Their policy is essentially reactive. If something happens inside the restroom, the store will react if someone notifies them or they notice something odd on security cameras. I informed them that this is very troubling, and that we in Kansas City need not look any further than the Kelsey Smith Case, as to how effective such a reactive policy can be . . . "

In his first noteworthy action as newbie, delves into the culture war fray over the divisive issue of transgender toilet rights and widespread fear regarding public accommodation.Background, Target's policy on transgender restroom rights is a hot topic around the nation and among locals living quiet lives of desperation on this horrible enclave . . .To wit . . .Turns out Councilman Moreno talked with Target top brass regarding the issue and here's what seems to be the money line of his thoughts . . .. . . Either way,but a new councilman engaging in a Missouri culture war is notable given widespread Missouri debate over the merits of a "religious exemption bill" and the topic of toilet rights overtaking most of the political conversation that doesn't already belong to GOP presidential candidate Trump.Developing . . .
The Chronicle Of Higher Education: Being Melissa Click

Under pressure from state legislators, she says, Missouris Board of Curators fired her to send a message that the university and the state wouldnt tolerate black people standing up to white people. "This is all about racial politics," she says. "Im a white lady. Im an easy target."

















She has appealed this, setting up a GoFundMe page to pay for the fees. She has so far raised $13,457 of $38,000. Ms Click remains adamant that though her behavior was regrettable, she did not deserve to lose her job. She added: 'I'm not a superhero. I wasn't in charge. '[But] when it got out of control. I was the one held accountable.'

Let's finish the daylight hours with a teachable moment that speaks to a recent Missouri controversy which resonated across the nation.Remember Mel Click . . . The Mizzou prof participating over hunger strike protest over racially charged complains in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement.Here's a sympathetic article from a well-respected education journal which notes her plight . . .Check the offending passage:This statement set off a fire storm and it's doubtful if many of her fellow protesters support her latest tirade.Take a look:You decide . . .
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.26

By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:

Baku Declaration was adopted during a ministerial meeting held as part of the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations Apr.26.

The support of Azerbaijani government suggests that the 7th UNAOC Global Forum will bring successful results, the UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser said during the ministerial meeting.

The purpose of holding the UNAOC Global Forum is to counteract global problems, he added.

Addressing the event, Azerbaijan's Minister of Culture and Tourism Abulfas Garayev said that Azerbaijan is committed to promotion of the international dialogue.

"We make every effort to create an intercultural dialogue and an inclusive society," said the minister.

Further, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Azerbaijan is the best example of tolerance.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo y Marfil, for his part, said that currently, all countries should work on resolving the conflicts.

It is necessary to intensify the dialogue between Muslims and Christians, he said, adding that the youth, as well as media outlets should be involved in fighting extremism and xenophobia.

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations kicked off in Baku Apr.25.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum which will last till Apr.27.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Informal summit meeting in Hannover on US Pres. last world tour as head of state. Five agreed for need of closer cooperation with Turkey to stem refugee flows

The Greek debt crisis issue was conspicuously absent from the agenda of talks at the informal summit meeting under way in Hannover, Germany, according to protothema.gr.

The five nations of USA, France, Germany, Italy and the UK are talking about the current matters of globe importance in an informal setting, and the hopes of the Greek government that its issue would be included in the agenda of talks were swiftly dispelled after the five released the matters to be covered during the meeting.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had already made it clear in previous statements that the Greek matter would not be discussed at the gathering.

The agenda included the Syrian crisis, the Libyan matter, terrorism, ISIS and the EU-US transatlantic TTIP agreement.

The five issued a joint statement stressing that dealing with the refugee crisis needed an integrated and viable solution, while sources say that a closer collaboration wit Turkey in the matter is necessary.

US President Barack Obama congratulated German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the German people on welcoming large numbers of refugees.

Obama public support "not enough"

US President Barack Obama also expressed the public view that Greece should receive debt relief, during his visit to Germany.

Obama is on his last world tour as US President, as his term ends at the end of the year.

The US President said growth should return to Greece, repeating the stated US position on the matter that an alleviation of the Greek debt was necessary for this to be achieved. It is a show of public support for the Greek government, but clearly not as strong as some would have hoped for.

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Visa restrictions on Turkey are only going to be lifted if the 72 preconditions including the obligations it has to Cyprus are met, the European Commission said on Tuesday

Visa restrictions on Turkey are only going to be lifted if the 72 preconditions including the obligations it has to Cyprus are met, the European Commission said on Tuesday.

Commission spokesperson Margaritis Schoinas announced that they have no intention to allow Turkey to not fulfil the requirements.

A source of the Commission told CNA that there is no way to lift the visa restrictions unless Turkey meets its obligation to Cyprus.

The same source said that it was also made clear in an announcement that was made on Monday, about an essay they would publish on the visa-restriction on May 4.

Another Commission spokesperson Maja Kocijancic said that EU Commissioner Pierre Moscovicis upcoming visit to Turkey has nothing to do with opening chapter 33 of Ankaras accession to the EU.

She added that the plan is to open the chapter in June at a meeting of the Dutch Presidency of the EU.

The Commission also announced that on Wednesday after his return from a visit to Gaziantep, EU Commission Vice president Frans Timmermans will inform the rest of the commissioners on the situation there.

Source: CNA

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A German newspaper says a Greek photographer who was working for them has been turned back by Turkish authorities at Istanbul's main airport

A German newspaper says a Greek photographer who was working for them has been turned back by Turkish authorities at Istanbul's main airport.

The Bild daily reported that Giorgos Moutafis was prevented from continuing to Libya on Saturday evening. He was forced by Turkish authorities to take the next plane back to the Greek capital, Athens, on Sunday morning.

It quoted the photographer as saying he had been told at passport control that his name was on a list of people who weren't allowed to enter Turkey, but wasn't given a reason why.

He added that he entered Turkey six months ago with no problems, and that he cannot explain why he could have been banned since then.

The focus of his work is on the perils of asylum seekers travelling to Europe from the Middle East, but he also reported on the battle for the Kurdish city of Kobani in Syria, which may explain the Turkish authorities attitude.

The reported incident comes days after a journalist with a German public broadcaster was prevented from entering Turkey. Chancellor Angela Merkel says she discussed that case during a visit to Turkey on Saturday.

Turkish police also detained a Dutch columnist over a critical tweet she posted about Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, her newspaper said.

Turkeys crackdown on the media is a hot topic in Germany after Merkel failed to oppose the prosecution of a comedian who recited a crude poem criticizing Erdogan. Ankara had complained that the poem was insulting.

Some 2,000 libel cases have been filed in Turkey against people accused of insulting the president.

Source: AP, RT

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Global investors gave Argentina's return to the sovereign debt market a warm welcome with demand for its first bond offer in 15 years vastly outstripping supply

Global investors gave Argentina's return to the sovereign debt market a warm welcome with demand for its first bond offer in 15 years vastly outstripping supply, a source close to the matter said Tuesday.

Argentina aims to raise at least $12.5 billion from the bond sale, with the operation expected to be completed by the end of the day.

Demand for the bonds is "close to $70 billion" (62 billion euros), the source told AFP, which would make the issue nearly five times over-subscribed.

Latin America's third-biggest economy is seeking to end its financial isolation by borrowing cash on world credit markets for the first time since a 2001 default.

Argentine newspaper La Nacion cited sources involved in organizing the debt auction as saying that the government had received offers worth $67 billion.

Struggling economy

The country is looking to boost its struggling economy and settle a 15-year lawsuit by US investment funds that its ex-president Cristina Kirchner branded as "vultures."

Some reports said the government planned to issue as much as $15 billion in medium- and long-term bonds, after a US court cleared the way for Argentina to start borrowing again. This would give the government some financial leeway even after the international funds, known as "hold-outs," have been paid off.

"Argentina is back," said Finance Minister Alfonso Prat-Gay in Washington ahead of the sale.

Maturities on the various bond tranches are for 3, 5, 10 and 30 years.

The issue is the biggest Argentinian cash call on markets in two decades.

Major step forward

Argentina's new conservative president Mauricio Macri has claimed the return to the international financial fold as a victory.

His opponents said poor families would bear the cost of his borrowing since public spending cuts would be imposed to pay off the debts eventually.

Macri has been scrapping Kirchner's protectionist policies and opening up Argentina's diplomatic and financial ties.

He has removed currency controls and raised utility prices, triggering angry protests from Argentines who say their spending power is declining.

The bond sale "is a major step forward," Agustin Carstens, head of the IMF world lender's Monetary and Financial Committee, said Saturday.

"It is very good to have a country as important as Argentina putting the house in order."

Economic cutbacks

He warned, however, that Argentines would have to endure tough economic cutbacks to stabilize the economy and public finances.

"Needless to say in the short term some measures may be difficult to digest," Carstens said in Washington.

The IMF forecasts that Argentina's economy will contract by one percent this year and grow 2.8 percent in 2017.

Prat-Gay has given a stronger forecast of around zero growth this year and growth of up to four percent next year.

High credit risk

South American countries generally borrow at 3 to 4 percent interest.

Citing Argentina's credit history, analysts forecast the country would have to offer a higher rate of up to 9 percent in its new bond issue.

But given the strong demand, yields are now expected to range from 6 to 8 percent across the maturities on offer.

After the 2001 crisis, some Argentines object to taking on new debt -- not least Kirchner and her allies.

"Once again history is repeating itself and catching the Argentines out. Debt, devaluation, layoffs, political persecution, price rises," Kirchner said in a speech last week.

"These are just a few of the calamities that the new government has caused in barely four months."

Social welfare measures

Macri on Saturday announced a series of social welfare measures that he said would help the poor cope with the cuts.

The finance ministry said it has enlisted Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan, Santander, BBVA, Citigroup and UBS to organize the bond sale.

It has included a clause to prevent a small number of shareholders from blocking the restructuring of the debt.

That is a measure to avoid a repeat of Argentina's fight with the "holdouts," international investment funds that sued it in the US courts for full repayment after its 2001 default.

Credit rater Moody's raised Argentina's sovereign rating on Friday ahead of the bond sale.

It still ranks as a speculative investment with a "high credit risk," but less high-risk than before.

Source: AFP

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Austria is braced for political turmoil with fears that the landslide victory for a rightwing populist and gun-carrying candidate in Sundays first-round presidential vote could trigger snap elections, theguardian.com reports

Norbert Hofer, of the rightwing Freedom party (FPO), defied pollsters predictions to beat the Green partys Alexander Van der Bellen into second place, gaining 36% of the vote. The two candidates will go head to head in a run-off ballot on 22 May.

While the presidential post is mainly a ceremonial role, Hofer has threatened to make use of a right to dissolve parliament before the 2018 elections, warning other candidates in a TV debate that you will be surprised by what can be done [by a president].

Hofer, a youthful 45-year-old who is partially paralysed after a paragliding accident, has campaigned for disability rights and is seen as having lent a friendly face to a party that balances virulently anti-immigration and Eurosceptic messages with leftist stances on welfare issues, led by firebrand Heinz-Christian Strache.

Hofer, who claims to protect himself in the uncertain times of the refugee crisis by carrying a Glock gun, scored overwhelming victories in all of Austrias states apart from Vienna. In Styria, Burgenland and Carinthia  border states most affected by the refugee trail from the Mediterranean to central Europe  Hofer managed to gain 40% or more.

Some constitutional experts question whether Austrias president would be able to dissolve parliament without the orders of the government, though since the presidential role has previously only ever been filled by politicians from the two main centrist parties, the situation is without precedent.

Rendezvous with history

On Sunday night, while describing the result as a rendezvous with history, Hofer made clear that he regarded the result as an intermediary step on the way to a wider challenge to Austrias political system.

The FPO is also leading polls for the parliamentary elections, with about 30% of the vote.

Should the FPO manage to return to government, it would ring alarm bells across the continent, with Austria joining a growing bloc of countries led by authoritarian and Eurosceptic governments , which includes Hungary and Poland. Hofer has signalled he would refuse to sign the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement with the US even if it was passed by his government.

Sundays result was welcomed by far-right politicians across Europe, including Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Frances Marine Le Pen, as well as politicians from Italys Lega Nord and Germanys National Democratic party. Italys prime minister, Matteo Renzi, warned that the result could have consequences for the border region between Austria and Italy. It would be a problem for Europe if the Brenner pass would be closed, he said.

Whatever the outcome on 22 May, it will be the first time since 1945 that the countrys president has not come from the two centrist parties, the Social Democrats (SPO) and the Peoples party (OVP), who barely managed to scramble together a quarter of the vote.

Outsider candidate

Second-placed Van der Bellen is an outsider candidate in his own right who ran for office without the official endorsement of the Green party and has criticised the Austrian governments cap on asylum seekers. The 72-year-old veteran will now hope for endorsements from the mainstream parties to block Hofers rise to power.

Johannes Pollak, a political scientist at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Vienna, said Van der Bellen was a marginal favourite to win. The established parties will do their best to stop a rightwing populist from coming to power. But after this political earthquake, it is hard to make a certain prognosis.

Reinhard Heinisch, professor of political science at Salzburg University, said the momentum was on the side of the rightwing candidate. Especially if the FPO manages to frame the next round of the election around a polarising issues  for or against refugees, for example  the establishment parties face an uphill battle, he said.

On the surface, the situation may look similar to that in the US, but in America even the leftwing candidate Bernie Sanders has embraced a reformist agenda. In Austria, only the right has spelled this out.

Columnist Gerfried Sperl in Der Standard wrote: A weakening of the parliament, an end to the division of powers, opposition to Brussels and a curtailing of the freedom of press: Vienna would not only be geographically located east of Prague, but politically too.

Deeply troubling

Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, described the Freedom partys rise as deeply troubling. That a country at the heart of Europe can show such support to the far right barely 70 years on from the Holocaust shows that our collective memories are failing, he said.

Austrias Social Democrat prime minister, Werner Faymann, who faced calls to resign after the vote, said the result was a clear signal to the government that we have to cooperate more strongly.

But many commentators say the crisis of the political establishment in Austria has much to do with the fact that the two centrist parties have governed the country in a grand coalition for the past 10 years.

The message for SPO and OVP is simple: your time is up, Viennese daily Die Presse commented. After this Sunday we know for good: voting patterns in this country have radically changed. At least half of all votes are up for grabs and have nothing to do with factions and alliances. The candidates or groups that win are the ones who offer solutions, or at least pretend to offer them, or at least provide the right characters at the right time.

Some critics say the Austrian government lost its credibility during the refugee crisis. After initially supporting the German chancellor, Angela Merkels open-border stance last October, the coalition government and in particular the conservative foreign minister, Sebastian Kurz, emerged as key drivers behind the closure of the Balkan route earlier this year.

Read more here.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

By Seba Aghayeva - Trend:

It is necessary to adhere to the norms and principles of international law in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict's settlement, said French Secretary of State for European Affairs Harlem Desir at a press conference in Baku Apr. 26.

Desir said that during his current visit to the region he conveyed the message to the sides about the need for a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

"France, together with Russia and the US, will make every effort for a peaceful resolution of the conflict," he added. "There is no military solution to the conflict."

"The stance of Paris is unchangeable," he said, adding that France advocates for the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Desir also said the status quo in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is unacceptable, as it contributes to the increase in tensions and the threat of a renewed conflict.

"France's approach is that the settlement of the conflict may be reached only through negotiations," he added.

He went on to say that in recent years everyone has witnessed numerous casualties and a lot of suffering, adding that the conflict's continuation will cause new victims and suffering.

"France stands for adherence to ceasefire and prolonging negotiations based on the Madrid principles," he added.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Asebaa
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Azerbaijan has agreed to open a $500 million credit line to finance the Rasht-Astara railway project in Iran, said a report.



The Rasht-Astara railway is a section of the Qazvin-Rasht-Astara railway, which is currently under construction, reported Iran Daily citing the Minister of Communications and Information Technology Mahmoud Vaezi.



A groundbreaking ceremony was held recently for the construction of a railway bridge over the Astara River on the Azerbaijani-Iranian border.



Vaezi said the Qazvin-Rasht-Astara railway will link Iran's railway network to that of Azerbaijan. "Iran's section of the railway line is 92 per cent complete and the remaining portion is expected to be laid in the near future," he stated.



The Qazvin-Rasht project is expected to be completed by late 2016, the report said.



The Rasht-Astara railway project is likely to cost $900 million to $1 billion, of which $500 million will be financed through the Azerbaijani loan, it added.


South Korea's Hyundai Engineering Company (HEC) will sign a contract to establish a 500-megawatt (MW) power plant in Iran, said a report.



A panel of executives and experts from Hyundai's energy sector are in Iran on the threshold of South Korean president's visit, added the Iran Daily News report, citing Mehr News Agency reported.



The South Korean delegation travelled to the north-western city of Zanjan to assess facilities and infrastructure required for the construction of the power plant, high-voltage power transmission lines as well as a gas injection station, it said.



Based on an agreement reached between a subsidiary of Iran Power Generation and Transmission Company (Tavanir) and Hyundai Engineering Company of South Korea, a 500 MW power station will be constructed 25 km from Zanjan on an area of 42 hectares within the framework of a build-own-operate (BOO) contract, added the report.
Oman Oil Marketing Company (omanoil) and Salalah Port Services have signed a long-term land lease agreement, aimed to develop a new marine bunkering and product trading terminal in the countrys southernmost governorate.



The medium-size terminal will help expand omanoils bunker and trading capabilities, providing ships calling at the Port of Salalah with fuelling services by end of 2016, added the Times of Oman report.



Omanoils chief executive officer Omar Ahmed Qatan, said that the agreement is a major step forward, one that reflects the companys ambition of expanding its presence throughout the sultanate and enhances its ability to serve the shipping industry.



He said that the partnership with Salalah Port Services will help establish a footprint inside the port and efficiently serve the companys bunker customers.



Qatan further noted that the terminal will also open the door to explore new trading opportunities.



He added that following completion the new facility will further strengthening the governorate of Dhofars position as a key logistics hub and centre of maritime trade.



The terminal project by omanoil forms part of its business diversification drive and will further contribute to the national economic agenda, added the report.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

By Seymur Aliyev- Trend:

The UNAOC 7th Global Forum official ceremony took place today in Baku, where the country's President Ilham Aliyev made the opening speech.

He welcomed the participants of the forum.

"It is a big honor for us to host the 7th UNAOC Global Forum. We consider it a sign of appreciation of our activity and promotion of values of intercultural dialogue, multiculturalism," said the president in his opening speech.

"I'd like to express my gratitude to the founding fathers of the alliance - Turkey and Spain, President Erdogan and former Prime Minister Zapatero for this extremely important initiative, which now lives for more than 10 years," Ilham Aliyev said.

The president went on to add that the idea of creation of the alliance was the sign of wisdom of the politicians, President Erdogan and former Prime Minister Zapatero, supported by international community.

"I'd also like to express my gratitude to the high representative UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations Mr. Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser for his leadership, contribution and promotion of the values of peace, solidarity and friendship," said president Aliyev.

The president went on to say that Azerbaijan is proud to have the representatives of more than 140 countries gather in Baku to address the important issues of the alliance of civilizations.

He said that Azerbaijan for centuries was a place where religions, cultures and civilizations met.

"We're not only a geographic bridge between East and West, but also a cultural bridge. For centuries, representatives of religions, cultures lived in peace and dignity in Azerbaijan," he said. "Religious tolerance, multiculturalism - were always present here. There was no word - multiculturalism, but the ideas were always present."

Ilham Aliyev added that as a result of that, Azerbaijan today is a multiethnic, multiconfessional country, where representatives of all religions and ethnic groups live in dignity and peace.

"This is one of our biggest assets," he said. "And we're proud of our history. We are proud of our historical monuments, which reflect the creation of representatives of different cultures."

President reminded that one of the oldest mosques in the world, which was built in 743, is situated in Azerbaijani city of Shemakha.

"Also, one of the oldest churches in the Caucasus, the ancient church of ancient state Caucasian Albania is also situated in Azerbaijan, close to another ancient city of Sheki," he said.

The president said Azerbaijani government invests in construction and renovation of mosques, orthodox and catholic churches, synagogues.

"This is our policy and this is our lifestyle," said the president. "For centuries, Azerbaijan is preserving this asset, regardless of political or social situation in the country."

Ilham Aliyev went on to add that Azerbaijan is relatively young as an independent country, only 25 years old, but it is ancient, with deep historical and cultural roots.

"Multiculturalism for us is a state policy," said the president. "We organize different events, addressing this important issue."

The president added that every two years, Intercultural dialogue forum takes place in Azerbaijan, and Baku International Humanitarian Forum is hosted regularly as well.

"The main idea is to bring the representatives of different religions together and establish more understanding between us," he said.

The president also reminded that Azerbaijan hosted the world summit of religious leaders, addressing important issues of interreligious dialogue.

"I think today this is one of the most important topics on global agenda," he said. "And the role of the alliance of civilizations is growing. Unfortunately, we see some very concerning trends in our region, in Europe, in the Middle East, on the area of former Soviet Union. We see clashes, confrontations, based on ethnic and religious grounds."

Azerbaijan's president said this is a very dangerous tendency.

"I think that gathering in Baku, at the UNAOC 7th Global Forum will address these issues and will contribute to the cause of solidarity, peace, mutual understanding and partnership."

"In 2008 we initiated the Baku Process, which already became the broad platform for international dialogue. Azerbaijan is one of the few countries, which is the member of the Islamic Cooperation Organization and the Council of Europe. So at the meeting of the ministers of culture of Council of Europe which took place in Baku, in 2008, we invited the ministers of cultures of the Islamic Cooperation Organization," said the president.

"For the first time, the ministers of cultures from more than 100 countries from these two organizations gathered in Baku," Ilham Aliyev said. "Next year, in 2009, we hosted the ministerial meeting of the ministers of cultures of the Islamic Cooperation Organization in Baku and invited the ministers of culture of Council of Europe."

"So this was named the Baku Process and we are very proud that the name of our ancient city is now also associated with a positive initiative," the president said.

He went on to add that this process is growing, getting more and more supporters.

"It is becoming a global initiative, which contributes to the cause of solidarity, mutual understanding and intercultural dialogue," the president said.

"Azerbaijan's geographic location is known, but at the same time our initiatives are aimed at strengthening the position of our country as a bridge between cultures, between civilizations, as a country which can and should contribute more to the cause of mutual understanding," President Aliyev said.

He reminded that last year Baku was very proud to host the First inaugural European Games in Baku, and next year Baku will host the Fourth Islamic Solidarity Games in Baku.

"So, in one city in two years time, European and Islamic athletes will perform. This is not only sport and achievement of medals. This is friendship, mutual understanding, solidarity, partnership," he said.

"There is nothing to divide between us," he continued. "We are all living on the same planet, all the people want to live in dignity, peace, security, to raise children, to protect their families. All religions advocate for the same values - humanity, mercy, solidarity, peace. Uniting our efforts is what the world needs to do."

The president went on to say that today's gathering, today's forum is a clear indicator that the ideas of multiculturalism are strongly supported by international community.

"As I said, more than 140 countries are present here. Multiculturalism has no alternative. We all know that there are different ideas about different views of multiculturalism - failed, or some that did not work, but there are positive examples. For us, multiculturalism is a state policy, and is our lifestyle. And looking at the alternatives, what are the alternatives of multiculturalism? Very dangerous alternatives - xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, racism, discrimination, hatred," Ilham Aliyev said.

He went on to add that strengthening the values of multiculturalism will be a very positive trend, and all the responsible politicians should contribute to this positive dynamics.

"As I said, Azerbaijan is a relatively young country as an independent state. This year we will celebrate the 25th anniversary of restoration of our independence. These were the years of transformation of political, economic system, these were the years of creation of the state," the president said.

"I think that we've met all our major targets. Azerbaijan became the respected member of the international community. It is the member of the United Nations, OSCE, Islamic Cooperation Organization, the Council of Europe, Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and many other international bodies," Ilham Aliyev said.

He went on to remind that Azerbaijan has strong international support, which was reflected in 2011, when with the support of 155 countries, Azerbaijan for the first time, was elected as a non-permanent member of the Uinted Nations Security Council.

"That was a big victory for our country, and sign of great respect to Azerbaijan," said the president. "Within the short period of 25 years, we managed to present ourselves as a reliable international partner, as a country with independent foreign policy, country which contributes to regional development, regional security, stability and multiculturalism."

President Aliyev went on to say that the years of independence were the years of transformation of Azerbaijan's political system, creation of democratic institutions.

"We succeeded in that," said the president. "All the freedoms are provided in Azerbaijan, freedom of media, free internet. More than 70 percent of our population are internet users. Freedom of assembly, religious freedom, all freedoms are provided and this is a good foundation for rapid economic development."

He further said that economic reforms implemented in Azerbaijan were implemented in parallel with political reforms.

"Unfortunately, the creation of our state was dominated by military aggression by neighboring Armenia against Azerbaijan. The aggression that ended in occupation of internationally recognized territory of our country. Nagorno Karabakh is a historic, legal part of Azerbaijan. When Azerbaijan became the member of the United Nations, it got adopted with Nagorno Karabakh as an integral part of our country. But as a result of this aggression, Nagorno-Karabakh is totally occupied by Armenia, and not only Karabakh, but also seven other districts of Azerbaijan, beyond the administrative borders of Nagorno Karabakh are under occupation," said the president.

Ilham Aliyev noted that as a result of the occupation, Azerbaijan has more than one million refugees and internally displaced persons.

"So, we were subject of ethnic cleansing by Armenia and almost 20 percent of our territory is under occupation for more than 20 years," the president said.

"Everything on the occupied territories is destroyed. The OSCE sent fact-finding missions twice to observe the situation there, and their reports are terrifying. Everything is destroyed - all our buildings, historic monuments, mosques, graves," said Ilham Aliyev.

"Here in Baku, in the center of the city, you can see how we preserve the religious heritage of Armenian people. The Armenian church was restored, and it is situated where it was built. But all our mosques on the occupied territories lie in ruins," he said.

The president reminded that the international community adopted resolutions and decisions in order to put an end to Armenian occupation.

"The United Nations Security Council, the highest international body, adopted four resolutions, demanding immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Armenian troops from occupied territories," he said. "Unfortunately, Armenia simply ignores these resolutions and doesn't implement them."

"And here we come to a very important mechanism of implementation of decisions and resolutions of international organizations," said President Aliyev. "In some cases, resolutions of the Security Council are implemented within days, if not hours. But in our case, it is more than 20 years, and still no result."

The president said that the OSCE, Islamic Cooperation Organization, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, NAM, all of them adopted similar resolutions demanding the withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijan's territories.

"Armenia simply ignores them, and there is no international pressure to force the aggressor to comply with international norms," Ilham Aliyev said.

"Our people were subject of genocide. Khodjaly genocide is now recognized by 10 countries. As as result of that genocide, hundreds of Azerbaijanis were killed, civilians. Almost 200 of them were women and children," he said. "This is a crime against humanity, and this once again shows what a danger we are facing."

President Aliyev said the resolution of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan must be based on international law norms, the UN Charter, the UN Security resolutions, Helsinki Final Act.

"Our territories must be liberated, our people must have a chance to go back to their homes," he said.

The president reminded that in the beginning of the 1990s, Azerbaijan faced a major humanitarian catastrophe, because it had 250,000 refugees - Azerbaijanis from Armenia and more than 700,000 internally displaced persons from Nagorno Karabakh and other areas.

"At that time, population of Azerbaijan was less than 8 million, so we had probably one of the highest per capita number of refugees and IDPs," said the president. "And we know how difficult it is to accommodate them, to provide decent conditions for them, especially at that time, when we were completely without any resources. We were, at that time, one of the poorest countries in the world."

"Of course we got some international support, but mainly we coped with this ourselves. Still, despite that, we built 90 settlements and every year were resettle more than 20,000 refugees and IDPs, some of them live in difficult conditions, in dormitories, schools and kindergartens. We are trying our best to improve their living standards, but it takes a lot of time. So we clearly understand the situation the countries now face, with respect to the refugees," Ilham Aliyev said.

He said that the international community should take part in the resolution of these issues.

"The countries which receive most of the refugees now, should be supported not only by words, but by very serious financial contributions," said the president. "As a country that suffered from occupation and continues to suffer from that, we know how difficult it is from all points of view - political, moral, economic and social."

President Aliyev went on to say that despite occupation, Azerbaijan continues to develop.

"We had one of the fastest economic growths of in the world, in a decade from 2004 to 2014. We dramatically reduced the poverty rate, from almost 50 percent to 5 percent. The unemployment is also around 5 percent," he said.

"We invest in education, the level of literacy in Azerbaijan is close to 100 percent. More than 3,000 schools were built and renovated in the recent years. More than 500 hospitals were constructed all around Azerbaijan, and it allowed us to significantly reduce child mortality. Gender equality is fully protected in Azerbaijan. Actually, women have had the right to vote in Azerbaijan for almost 100 years, since the creation of first democratic republic of Azerbaijan in 1918. By the way, that was the first democratic republic in the Muslim world," noted the president.

Ilham Aliyev said Azerbaijan invests in environmental protection, especially on the Absheron peninsula, which had a lot of polluted areas, due to oil exploration and development. He said Azerbaijan had to clean all the areas and create parks and public places there.

"In other words, we are making very important progress with respect to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and we are on the right track."

Further on, the president touched upon the economic crisis, which has touched all oil-producing countries.

"Taking into account the reduction of the oil price, the crisis did not seriously affect our economy. I am sure we will be able to achieve all our major goals in 2016," said the president.

"Azerbaijan is known as a country with rich energy resources, but our main objective is to transform black gold - as we call oil - to human capital. Therefore investment in education, social protection, reforms, bring to the result that our economy is now diversified and dependence on oil and gas is going down," Ilham Aliyev said.

He then spoke about Azerbaijan's energy projects. The president said that Azerbaijan initiated a large-scale energy project - the Southern Gas Corridor project - which is the project of energy cooperation and energy security. He said Azerbaijan is also an active member of the group of countries that promote transportation corridors, taking into geographical location.

The president then said that looking at the number of countries it becomes clear what kind of regional cooperation is taking place. He further said that these energy and transportation corridors are not only for energy and cargoes, but also partnership.

President Aliyev named the members of the Southern Gas Corridor - Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Italy, and also Balkan countries that may join in at a later stage.

"East-West corridor, the Silk Route - the project was initiated by 3 countries, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, and now it expands to Central Asia, China and from Turkey to Europe. And the North-South corridor, where Azerbaijan is also an active participant. It is the countries of northern Europe, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Pakistan and India. This is the project of partnership because all these countries become interrelated. And if you are interrelated, interdependant on each other, then you have more predictability, stability, security and cooperation," he said.

The president said that creation of this format of international cooperation is based on economic interests, energy security, transportation. He added that this cooperation format is based on sharing the same values on how to overcome the difficulties, how to create better conditions for people.

President Ilham Aliyev said that common values of religious tolerance, mutual understanding, multiculturalism should make the lives of the people of the region better.
Details added (first version posted on 16:32)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

By Seba Aghayeva - Trend:

It is necessary to adhere to the norms and principles of international law in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict's settlement, said French Secretary of State for European Affairs Harlem Desir at a press conference in Baku Apr. 26.

Desir said that during his current visit to the region he conveyed the message to the sides about the need for a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

"France, together with Russia and the US, will make every effort for a peaceful resolution of the conflict," he added. "There is no military solution to the conflict."

"The stance of Paris is unchangeable," he said, adding that France advocates for the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Desir also said the status quo in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is unacceptable, as it contributes to the increase in tensions and the threat of a renewed conflict.

"France's approach is that the settlement of the conflict may be reached only through negotiations," he added.

He went on to say that in recent years everyone has witnessed numerous casualties and a lot of suffering, adding that the conflict's continuation will cause new victims and suffering.

"France stands for adherence to ceasefire and prolonging negotiations based on the Madrid principles," he added.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Asebaa
Summer Flash Sale Starts As Tax Filing Deadline Ends

(TRAVPR.COM) April 25, 2016, Alhambra, CA - The day of tax filing deadline signifies the end of the cumbersome annual routine to gather the best possible tax refund each year. For the early birds whom have promptly filed their taxes since January and with tax refunds already in the bank, there are even more timely reasons to take advantage of this limited-time Summer Flash Sale from Ritz Tours that has just started.

The Summer Flash Sale ending on May 31, 2016 will feature as much as $200 savings per person on select land tours with the generous no-advance booking requirement. This mean that travelers can now book for any early available select land portions of the scheduled tour departures from Ritz before the end of this sale.

$200 Savings

You can now visit European destinations like Spain, Greece, France, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Hungary and more for $200 less when you buy the land-only portion of the tours. These include the highly regarded Gems of Europe, Greece Turkey and Aegean Islands Cruise, Best of Eastern Europe, Greece and Aegean Islands Cruise, and Classic Spain and Portugal programs of 8 or 10 nights. And priced after discounts are from $1,600 per person depending on departures and tours selected.

$150 Savings

The Summer Flash Sale will also include $150 per person savings for land-only purchases of other incredible tour programs for the same limited time basis. All other exciting European tours not mentioned in the above will fall into this $150-off offer category with the 7-night Highlights of Italy program being the most tempting at $1,350 per person after savings.

The $150-off flash sale offer shall also be valid for three other select 8-night global destination programs at land-only purchases: the Incredible India and Dubai, the South Africa Highlights and Safari Experience, and the Magical Kenya Safari tour. These 8-night land only tours starts from $1,800 per person after promotional savings.

This will be the excellent opportunity to take advantage of your tax refunds for a memorable vacation of your lifetime. The Summer Flash Sale till end of May will make all decisions to travel a lot easier. And none is better than Ritz Tours that can deliver the best quality tour program at the best value possible.

Call 1-888-345-7489 now or before 5/31/2016 to speak with any Ritz Tours' vacation specialist for booking advice and recommendations to help plan your trip this year, or browse the company's web site www.RitzTours.com for complete tour details.

***

About Ritz Tours:

Ritz Tours enters 36th year of providing best quality and value in travel to all guests at 1-888-345-7489 and that can be previewed at the web site: www.RitzTours.com. With offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, London, Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, Ritz Tours quality, value and tour content are well-praised by clients. Whether traveling in opulence or with selective travel options within any budget, all guests will be assured of the most attentive service in ground handling, and the best comforts and diversity in travel styles that are without compromise. Ritz Tours is an active member of United States Tour Operators Association since 2001, and members of American Society of Travel Agents and Outside Sales Support Network among other industry associations. It is also registered as a California Seller of Travel number 1014510.

For more information, please contact:

Ritz Tours @ 1-888-345-7489

Email: info@ritztours.com

###
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A heat pump is basically like a fridge, moving heat from one place to another. Ground source heat pumps move it from the ground to the inside; Air source pumps suck the heat out of the air. All heat pumps work the same way, with a refrigerant absorbing heat by evaporating and releasing it when compressed and liquified. The SunPump is one of those "why didn't anyone think of this" ideas where the refrigerant is pumped into solar panels on the roof where the heat of the sun acts directly on the refrigerant, making it really efficient. At the other end, the heat is extracted and used to heat water in a "thermal battery" or hot water tank, which can then be piped to radiators, radiant floors or heat exchangers for forced air.

This solves a lot of problems. A few years back we wondered whether solar thermal systems made sense in a world of cheaper photovoltaics; they were complex and not all that dependable in climates where there was not pretty much constant sunshine. The SunPump relies on a refrigerant with a boiling point of -50C so it will work (albeit not as efficiently) in the dark of night. It has a COP (coefficient of performance) of 7 in the sunshine and 2.7 at night.

I have also often wondered whether ground source heat pumps really make sense, given the cost of the drilling and the piping, when air source heat pumps cost so much less; the geothermal supporters call me a misinformed idiot and tell me that they are really using a renewable resource, the heat of the sun that's stored in the ground. The sun pump does away with the ground and the drilling and the piping and uses the sun directly.

 Sunpump

As an extra bonus, Sunpump is now bonding their thermal panel to a photovoltaic panel; as the refrigerant evaporates and absorbs heat it will keep the PV panel cool, significantly increasing its efficiency. And like any heat pump, it can cool as well; instead of sending the refrigerant to the roof it loops it to a coil, making it a very efficient air conditioner that moves the heat from the inside air into the domestic hot water tank.

The rationale for solar thermal being dead came from research by Martin Holladay of Green Building Advisor, who noted that in most northern installations they delivered an average of only 63 percent of hot water used, and needed a backup electric system for the balance. The SunPump is a solar thermal system that can run all the time and deliver 100 percent of hot water needs for both domestic and space heating (although it does have an internal electric element just in case). Back in 2014 Holladay was skeptical about how dependable it was or how "easy it is to run refrigerant in leak-free tubing from a heat pump to collectors on your roof."

But SunPump has now done quite a few installations across Canada, has solid financial backing, a new name and a new website (with too much Lorem ipsum still showing). They claim it is pretty reliable:

It is an elegantly simple appliance, with just one moving mechanical part, a DC scroll compressor, common in refrigeration and heat pumps that can run for decades. The refrigeration technology has been maturing for more than 100 years. It is the size of a mini-bar fridge and works about the same.

In a Passive House or other highly insulated home where one doesn't need much heat, the smallest SunPump could easily handle all the heat and hot water; they even have a special coil to stick on the Heat Recovery Ventilator.

So perhaps solar thermal really isn't dead at all; it was just pining for an upgrade to heat pump tech. More at Sunpump. And here is a video of an installation:
Climate science is complicated business, and understanding the extent to which climate change is man-made also requires an understanding of Earth's powerful natural cycles. One of those natural cycles involves Earth's orbit and its complicated dance with the sun.

The first thing you need to know about Earth's orbit and its effect on climate change is that orbital phases occur over tens of thousands of years, so the only climate trends that orbital patterns might help explain are long-term ones.

Even so, looking at Earth's orbital cycles can still offer some invaluable perspective on what is happening in the short term. Most notably, you might be surprised to learn that Earth's current warming trend is happening in spite of a relatively cool orbital phase. It's therefore possible to better appreciate the high degree that anthropogenic warming must be taking place in contrast.

Not as simple as you might think

Many people might be surprised to learn that Earth's orbit around the sun is much more complicated than the simple diagrams studied in childhood science classrooms. For instance, there are at least three major ways that Earth's orbit varies over the course of millennia: its eccentricity, its obliquity and its precession. Where the Earth is within each of these cycles has a significant effect on the amount of solar radiation  and thus, warmth  that the planet gets exposed to.

Check out this must-see educational video for a visual presentation on Earth's complicated orbit:

Earth's orbital eccentricity

Unlike what is portrayed in many diagrams of the solar system, Earth's orbit around the sun is elliptical, not perfectly circular. The degree of a planet's orbital ellipse is referred to as its eccentricity. What this means is that there are times of the year when the planet is closer to the sun than at other times. Obviously, when the planet is closer to the sun, it receives more solar radiation.

Earth's orbit around the sun is more of an oval instead of a circle. The degree of a planet's orbital ellipse is referred to as its eccentricity. This image shows an orbit with an eccentricity of 0.5. NASA

The point at which the Earth passes closest to the sun is called perihelion, and the point furthest from the sun is called aphelion.

It turns out that the shape of the Earth's orbital eccentricity varies over time from being nearly circular (low eccentricity of 0.0034) and mildly elliptical (high eccentricity of 0.058). It takes roughly 100,000 years for Earth to undergo a full cycle. In periods of high eccentricity, radiation exposure on Earth can accordingly fluctuate more wildly between periods of perihelion and aphelion. Those fluctuations are likewise far milder in times of low eccentricity. Currently, the Earth's orbital eccentricity is at about 0.0167, which means its orbit is closer to being at its most circular.

Earth's axial obliquity

The angle at which the Earth tilts varies. These axial variations are referred to as a planet's obliquity. NASA

Most people know that the planet's seasons are caused by the tilt of the Earth's axis. For instance, when it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere and winter in the Southern Hemisphere, the Earth's North Pole is tilted toward the sun. The seasons are likewise reversed when the South Pole is tilted more toward the sun.

What many people don't realize, however, is that the angle at which the Earth tilts varies according to a 40,000 year cycle. These axial variations are referred to as a planet's obliquity.

For Earth, the tilt of the axis varies between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees. When the tilt is at a higher degree, the seasons can likewise be more severe. Currently the Earth's axial obliquity is at about 23.5 degrees  roughly in the middle of the cycle  and is in a decreasing phase.

Earth's precession

Perhaps the most complicated of Earth's orbital variations is that of precession. Basically, because Earth wobbles on its axis, the particular season that occurs when Earth is at perihelion or aphelion varies over time. This can create a profound difference in the severity of the seasons, depending on whether you live in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere. For instance, if it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere when Earth is in perihelion, then that summer is likely to be more extreme. By comparison, when the Northern Hemisphere instead experiences summer in aphelion, the seasonal contrast will be less severe. The following image may help to visualize how this works:

GregBenson / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

This cycle fluctuates on roughly a 21- to 26,000-year basis. Currently, summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere happens near aphelion, so the Southern Hemisphere should experience more extreme seasonal contrasts than the Northern Hemisphere, all other factors being equal.

What's climate change got to do with it?

Quite simply, the more solar radiation bombarding Earth at any given time, the warmer the planet should get. So Earth's place in each of these cycles should have a measurable effect on long term climate trends  and it does. But that's not all. Another factor has to do with which hemisphere happens to be receiving the heaviest bombardment. This is because land warms faster than oceans do, and the Northern Hemisphere is covered by more land and less ocean than the Southern Hemisphere is.

It has also been shown that shifts between glacial and interglacial periods on Earth are most related to the severity of summers in the Northern Hemisphere. When summers are mild, enough snow and ice remains throughout the season, maintaining a glacial layer. When summers are too hot, however, more ice melts in the summer than can be replenished in the winter.

Given all of this, we might imagine a "perfect orbital storm" for global warming: when Earth's orbit is at its highest eccentricity, Earth's axial obliquity is at its highest degree, and the Northern Hemisphere is in perihelion at summer solstice.

But that's not what we see today. Instead, Earth's Northern Hemisphere currently experiences its summer in aphelion, the planet's obliquity is currently in the decreasing phase of its cycle, and Earth's orbit is fairly near its lowest phase of eccentricity. In other words, the current position of the Earth's orbit should result in cooler temperatures, but instead the average temperature of the planet is on the rise.

Conclusion

The immediate lesson in all of this is that there must be more to Earth's average temperature than can be explained through orbital phases. But a secondary lesson also lurks: Anthropogenic global warming, which climate scientists overwhelmingly believe is the prime culprit in our current warming trend, is at least powerful enough in the short term to counteract a relatively cool orbital phase. It's a fact that should at least give us pause to consider the profound effect that humans can have on the climate even against a backdrop of Earth's natural cycles.
Walking upright on two legs is a defining feature of being human. And way back when, like really way back, getting up on two feet helped early humans survive by allowing us to cover expansive landscapes quickly and efficiently.

We owe a lot to walking, a fact not lost on the many who have famously (and privately) walked long and far. In Victorian times, the wildly popular sport of pedestrianism gave rise to one the eras biggest celebrities; Edward Payson Westons 4,100-mile walk, at the age of 71, from New York to San Francisco attracted such throngs of fans along the way that security was required to protect him. Walking was hot!

Edward Payson Weston, the Father of Modern Pedestrianism, 1909. (Wikimedia Commons)/Public Domain

Modern America's Design Discourages Walking

Now, mostly, we seem to celebrate the art of driving. If I wanted to head out of New York City for a long walk, where would I even start? A highway? We dont live in a time and place where you can just go out and walk wherever you want. In the first place, the country has become decidedly designed around cars, and secondly, walking on someones private property involves the illegal act of trespassing. We have very defined routes we are allowed to walk without much room for roaming off the path.

In setting out to hike the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline, writer Ken Ilgunas discovered that rather than walking or hiking across the country, he would really have to qualify it as trespassing across America. In an op-ed for The New York Times, he writes about the legality of walking and that while here we are forbidden from entering most private land, in much of Europe walking wherever you want is not only normal, but perfectly fine to do:

In Sweden, they call it allemansratt. In Finland, its jokamiehenoikeus. In Scotland, its the right to roam. Germany allows walking through privately owned forests, unused meadows and fallow fields. In 2000, England and Wales passed the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, which gave people access to mountain, moor, heath or down.

Nordic and Scottish laws are even more generous. The 2003 Scottish Land Reform Act opened up the whole country for a number of pastimes, including mountain biking, horseback riding, canoeing, swimming, sledding, camping and most any activity that does not involve a motorized vehicle, so long as its carried out responsibly. In Sweden, landowners may be prohibited from putting up fences for the sole purpose of keeping people out. Walkers in many of these places do not have to pay money, ask for permission or obtain permits.

The Struggle to Walk in Today's America

In 1968 Congress passed the National Trails System Act which has designated over 51,00 miles of legitimate walking space around the country. Which is great, but how did it come to this? How did this huge once-open expanse, a roamer's paradise, become a place where we are only allowed to walk along certain lines on a map? And as Ilgunas asks, wouldnt we be better off if we could legally amble over our rolling fields and through our shady woods, rather than have to walk alongside unscenic, noisy and dangerous roads? Yes! There are numerous studies attesting to the benefits of spending time in nature; and walking is one of the best ways to combat the sedentary lifestyle that is helping to smother this country in ill health.

Moveover, for those who decide to walk anyway, between 2003 to 2012 over 47,000 pedestrians were killed and around 676,000 were hurt walking along roads.

Blame America's Obsession With Private Property

The right to roam freely was ingrained in early America, but that freedom began to slip away in the late 19th century. The South passed trespassing laws for racial reasons, Ilgunas explains, and elsewhere wealthy landowners became increasingly protective over game, which gave rise to trespassing and hunting laws. While in the 1920s a Supreme Court ruling determined that the public was allowed to travel on unenclosed private land, that freedom was rendered null in the presence of a simple no trespassing sign. The Supreme Court has given landowners more and more control of the right to exclude over the years. We have become vigilantly proprietary over the pieces of land for which we hold titles.

The idea of private property is so ingrained in our culture at this point backtracking on it, so to speak, may prove challenging if not impossible. And that's such a shame, especially for people who live in areas dominated by a lack of public lands on which to take a walk. And while landowners may scoff at the idea of allowing strangers, gasp, to walk across their woods, in Europe there are restrictions that seem to keep everyone happy. In Sweden, Ilgunas notes, walkers must stay at least 65 yards from residences and could be sent to jail for up to four years for destroying property; in other places there are laws restricting hunting or fishing.

These laws are often friendly to landowners because, under many circumstances, landowners are given immunity from suit if the walker has an accident resulting from natural features of the landscape on the landowners property, he adds.

Fighting to Keep America Walker-Friendly

In the meantime, there are not a whole lot of people advocating for roaming rights in the States and Ilgunas is calling for more dialog about opening the country back up to everyone.

Something as innocent and wholesome as a walk in the woods shouldnt be considered illegal or intrusive, he concludes. Walking across the so-called freest country on earth should be every persons right.

Until then, at least we do have the National Trails System. It may not offer leisurely saunters through privately owned forests, unused meadows and fallow fields ... and a 4,100 mile walk across the country might prove prohibitive, but it may be the best walkabout workaround we have for now.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:

Armenia continues violating the ceasefire with Azerbaijan, the country's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said, the press service of the country's foreign ministry reported Apr. 26.

Mammadyarov made the remarks at a meeting with French Secretary of State for European Affairs Harlem Desir held within the VII Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations in Baku.

The sides exchanged views on development of bilateral relations in various spheres and noted the importance of the VII Global Forum held in Baku.

Having informed about the latest tensions on the contact line between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops starting from April 2, Mammadyarov said that Armenia continues to violate the ceasefire and carries out shelling using heavy artillery, which in the result causes serious damage to civilian facilities in Azerbaijan's Terter district.

On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements.

Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

Having noted the importance of intensification of efforts by the OSCE Minsk Group to resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, Mammadyarov said that Azerbaijan is ready for productive negotiations to resolve the conflict.

The sides also exchanged views regarding regional and global issues of mutual interest at the meeting.

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations will last until Apr.27.

The Youth Forum was held on the first day of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum on Apr.25.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum.

The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the forum.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on July 24, 2015 to create an organizing committee for holding the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

By Seba Aghayeva - Trend:

France is interested in further development of cooperation with Azerbaijan in all spheres, French Secretary of State for European Affairs Harlem Desir said Apr. 26 in Baku at a press conference.

Desir highlighted the two countries' cooperation in the field of education.

It is planned to create Azerbaijani-French University in Azerbaijan in the near future, he said.

Azerbaijan State University of Oil and Industry and the University of Strasbourg on Apr. 26 signed a memorandum of cooperation on the creation of this university.

"Our relations, including economic ones, are successfully developing in the spheres of energy, transport, education," he said. "We intend to direct the main effort to the development of relations in the sphere of education."

He said that France is also ready to contribute to the intensification of cooperation between Azerbaijan and the EU.

French Lyceum of Baku is a good example of the development of relations between the two countries, Desir said, adding that this project was implemented with the support of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and the company SOCAR.

"During the meeting with the minister of education, I presented him a project on creation of the Azerbaijani-French University, which will issue bachelor's and master's diplomas to students," he said.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Asebaa
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

Trend:

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen are working to organize a meeting of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, Pierre Andrieu, OSCE Minsk Group's French co-chairman, told reporters April 26.

"We met with President Aliyev and President Sargsyan some time ago," Andrieu said. "I think in the very near future we will try to organize a meeting of the presidents."

Andrieu said that the co-chairmen do not have any concrete plans about a visit to the region.

"The ceasefire should not be violated," Andrieu said. "The negotiations should start as soon as possible."

On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements.



Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire.



The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Amritsar, April 26

An eight-member team from Czech Republic met mayor Bakshi Ram Arora and MC commissioner Sonali Giri at MK Hotel for a special interaction. The team, headed by Karel Schwarzenberg, chairman, Foreign Affairs Committee, Czech republic, also met various officials of the MC working on development projects in the city.

Giri gave a detailed presentation on several ongoing projects including HRIDAY, BRTS and restoration projects under Punjab Tourism and Heritage Promotion Board. The team members were very impressed and appreciative towards the BRTS project and expressed their interest in joint collaborations. They also interacted with the mayor, seeking details on scope for joint ventures in specific technical fields, said Joint Commissioner Surinder Singh.

Karel Schwarzenberg said that they were looking towards healthy possibilities of working together with the MC. The team would be touring the city for a few days.  TNS
Sandeep Dikshit

India's timely cancellation of an Uyghur leader's visa might have been in deference to the warm words spoken during last week's visits to Beijing by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar.

It might also have been triggered by a sober appraisal of the ongoing joint Sino-India cooperation in international negotiations, such as avoid getting browbeaten in climate change talks and correcting the West-leaning architecture of World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The strategists would also have factored that possibility of India cutting a sorry figure at the forthcoming Goa summit of BRICS countries, where all the talk will be about the most ambitious and concrete venture since its inception, the New Development Bank. They would also have included the possibility of China singlehanded nixing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dream of grabbing prestigious memberships to the Nuclear Suppliers' Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).

Apart from these factors, whoever in South Block dreamt up the Uyghur card to pay back China for not playing India's tune on Masood Azhar missed quite a few indicators on why it was such a bad idea on several other counts as well. Pakistan nurtures the likes of Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar, Jalaluddin Haqqani or Gulbudin Hekmatyar because it believes in their skills to rouse the population of the target country (Pakistan and Afghanistan) to disobey their rulers to the extent of forcing them to negotiate. What did India think it would do with the Uyghur Dolkun Isa once he had said his piece, predictably about suppression of human rights in Xinxiang?

For men like Dolkun Isa, the Indian government's about-face must be a familiar feeling. They are citizens of nowhere, banished by the mother country for daring to contradict its rulers' often-contrived narratives about the route to the present. Their host country never fails to extract the rental by using them to rile their mother country, provided both countries remain at odds with each other.

The problem is Isa belongs to a region so sparsely populated that at the height of its powers in the 1960s, the KGB was unable to foment militancy. In the past, the Indian media was overgenerous in lending its columns to analysts making much of the rare expressions of extreme frustration expressed by Uyghurs living in a vast area called Xinxiang. At a newspaper, a columnist, now blacklisted, tried passing off an article animatedly talking of China's slipping hold of Xinxiang. The article had been lifted, word for word, from a piece published four years back. To a lay observer, it just read fine. If the mind is willing, it will believe anything, however dated or out of context. But as any anti-terrorism portal will inform, violent incidents in Xinjiang or by its denizens, are laughably small and spasmodic. The Chinese state had marked this region out for special attention for at least half a century. It is not in its nature to have relaxed this vigil.

Isa's involvement in a conference had all the hallmarks of a multi-agency intelligence operation. Consider this: A man with a red Interpol notice against him living freely in Germany gets an electronic visa for an American-funded conference in India; the Dalai Lama's media arm was not involved with an event to be graced by their boss and staged at their home-turf Dharamshala.

The Uyghur card was a grave miscalculation not just from the point of view of fomenting discontent in Xinjiang. KGB defector Alexander Mitrokhyin's graphic account of the KGB's attempts to recruit agents in Xinxiang would have appeared semi-comical but for the violent death of every agent uncovered by the Chinese intelligence.

It was a major error to try to play this card against China from another perspective. Neighbouring Central Asian countries also have Uyghurs in their ethnic mix and have always been extremely wary of any attempt to mobilise them on grounds of ethnicity or adherence to Islamic tenets. Citizens of these countries, thankfully very few, have often participated in extremely bloody encounters with security forces all around the region. These Central Asian countries are also founding members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Till recently not many were well disposed, some allegedly at China's goading, to admitting India into their club. It may be Indian diplomacy's failure not to heed these signals in those parts but the fact is not many of them are convinced about India's bona fides as an honest broker. The deal for India's entry into SCO is almost through but they are bound to reappraise India's credentials after this aborted courting of the exiled Chinese Uyghur in light of the paranoia about national security.

Neither Astana nor Tashkent will take kindly to India's attempt to poke the Chinese in the eye. Both these countries are endowed with minerals ranging from uranium to gold, besides plentiful deposits of oil and gas. China has a large footprint in both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. India has been wooing the strongmen of both countries, now in the evening of their lives, for all four of these scarcely available resources. A dark thought about India's motives would have passed through their durbars as they ready for an unopposed transition of power to their political heirs.

Indian diplomats will now have to do damage control and give reassurance not just to China. Mercifully, it has been spared the exercise of keeping a wary eye on the fate of tens of thousands of small and medium Indian businessmen who visit China every week on the back of a generous visa regime. In the coming days we will get to know if China turns a blind eye to the nipped-in-the-bud caper that might have spawned a few trans-border sit-ins around the Aksai Chin region or resumption of stapled visas to people from Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.

sandeep4731@gmail.com
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 25

Expressing concern over the rising rape incidents in the national Capital, the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) has issued a 'notice' to the Union Home Secretary seeking reasons for the postponement of the Special Task Forces (STF) meeting on womens safety along with details of the deliberations at the Home Ministry level to tackle child rape in the city.

Swati Maliwal, DCW Chairperson, also sought information on the progress of the Delhi Polices initiative to understand the psychology and motivations of a rape accused (created in light of the Usha Mehra Commission report) along with a report of the findings so far and the current status of the revised Delhi Victim Compensation Scheme 2015 proposed by the city government.

As you are aware, Delhi is recording an increasing number of rape cases, especially of children. In the past one and a half months, there have been over 130 cases of rape. Out of this, over 50 are of children, two of whom were barely one year old, said Maliwal.

In the light of mounting and unabated incidence of rapes of women and children in Delhi, the DCW takes strong note of a communication from the Home Ministry regarding the postponement of the 12th meeting of the Special Task Force (STF) on Women's Safety. The 12th STF meeting has been postponed several times and the previous meeting was held more than four months ago on December 2, 2015, she said.

She further said the commission had taken a strong note of the fact that the 11th STF meeting and the 10th STF meeting were both chaired by the Additional Secretary (CS) and not by the Home Secretary.

The last meeting that was chaired by the Home Secretary was the 9th STF, on May 14, 2015, she said.

Maliwal said the commission also recognised that the aforesaid STF was currently the only body in operation which involved representatives of both the Centre and the state in tackling issues of women's safety in Delhi.

In light of the above, the commission directs you to provide detailed response about the reasons for the continuous postponement of the 12th meeting of the STF on womens safety, she said.

Maliwal today met a four-year-old rape victim at AIIMS. She has cuts and bruises all over. She has been brutalised in most heinous manner. Rapes continue unabated, she added.
Jalandhar, April 25

The body of the Shahkot-based youth, who was shot dead in the Philippines on April 17, was cremated yesterday by his family.

Vijay Kumar, who was into money-lending business, was said to be going on his motorbike on the morning of April 17 for the recovery of some money when he was shot dead by three unidentified motorcyclists.

His body was brought to his home at Dhurkot Mohala in Shahkot on Sunday morning. Vijay had migrated to the Philippines 11 years ago. He had settled in Bayawan city for long after getting married to a Philippines girl. Notably, many Punjabi youths have been killed in the Philippines in the past couple of years. Sources say handsome profits in the money-lending business push many Punjabi youths into this business, which puts their lives to risk.TNS
Simran Sodhi

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 26

India and Pakistan foreign secretaries met finally on Tuesday, their first interaction since the Pathankot terror attacks, and both countries put forward their concerns: India raised the issue of terrorism and Pathankot, while Pakistan harped on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir being the core issue between the two countries.

Pakistan also raised the issue of the arrest of Kulbhushan Yadav, a man it accuses of working for the RAW. India flatly refuted these allegations and, according to sources, Indias Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar even told his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry that no spy agency would put their agent in the field with his own passport and without a visa.

India also pressed for immediate access to Yadav, something that India has been asking of Pakistan since Yadavs arrest. What raised eyebrows was the fact that Pakistan released a statement on the talks even while the meeting was in progress.

In a meeting that lasted 90 minutes, Jaishankar told Chaudhry, Terrorist groups based in Pakistan targeting India must not be allowed to operate with impunity.

India also rebutted all allegations of its involvement in Baluchistan. Dismissing allegations of Yadav being a spy, India pointed that he was an abducted naval officer.

India also demanded early and visible progress on both Pathankot and 26/11 attacks.

The statement released by the Pakistan High Commission said that Chaudhry had taken up the issue of Yadav and expressed serious concern over the RAWs alleged involvement in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi.

He said such acts undermine efforts to normalise relations between the two countries. He also conveyed concern over efforts by the Indian authorities for the release of the prime suspects of the Samjhauta Express blasts, the Pakistan statement said.
Washington, April 26

The US military conducted freedom of navigation operations against 13 countries last year, including India and China, according to an annual Pentagon report.

In the report for the period October 1, 2014 to September 30, 2015, the Pentagon said it exercised its right of freedom of navigation multiple times against China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Oman, the Philippines and Vietnam. However, it did not give any further details in its two-page report.

The US military carried out single operations against Argentina, Nicaragua and Taiwan, the report said.

Prior consent required for military exercises or maneuvers in the EEZ (exclusive economic zone), the Pentagon report said on India.

In 2014, the US had challenged territorial claims of 18 countries, including India, China and Brazil.

SCS row:Japanese warship enters Philippines port

A Japanese warship sailed into a Philippine port near disputed South China Sea waters on Tuesday in another sign of deepening security ties between the World War II foes to counter Beijing.  Agencies
Chandigarh, April 26

The Congress in Punjab has decided to go ahead with its prescheduled programmes in Canada, which were to be addressed by PCC president Amarinder Singh.

Amarinder will address some of these programmes, slated to be held in different cities, including Toronto and Vancouver, through Skype.

The party has also hired a battery of lawyers here to legally fight the complaint filed by Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), an anti-India splinter group, against Amarinder. We are confident that the complaint will be dismissed as it had no merit at all," Kapurthala MLA Rana Gurjit Singh said.

Singh, who was in charge for the programmes in Canada, said all the programmes will go on according to the schedule and Amarinder will address through Skype.

He said the party may also organise a function in the US near the Canadian border so that people can meet Amarinder personally.

He has already addressed one such public meeting through Skype.

On why Amarinder cancelled his Canada visit, the Congress leaders said that he had only rescheduled it and will be visiting the country sooner rather than later.

Rana Gurjit also alleged that since some legal impediments were created by the "vested interests and anti-India forces, apparently to help and support Aam Aadmi Party, Amarinder decided to get the issue resolved before going there to avoid any untoward situation".

"It is a tragic irony that the leader who put his political career at stake, not once but several times to safeguard the rights of Punjabis, was being accused of violating their rights," Rana Gurjeet said.  PTI
Kathmandu

Scientists have confirmed the presence of the critically endangered Himalayan wolf - the most ancient wolf lineage known  in Nepal's largest protected area.

Although the Himalayan wolf is visibly distinct from its European cousin, its current distribution has mostly been a matter of assumption, rather than evident truth, researchers said.

The most ancient wolf lineage known to science has been listed as critically endangered in Nepal's National Red List, they said.

Now, an international research team, led by Madhu Chetri, graduate student at the Hedmark University of Applied Sciences, Norway, report the wolf from Nepal's largest protected area, thus confirming its existence in the country.

When compared to the European wolf, this one stands out with its smaller size, unusually longer muzzle and stumpy legs.

Another clearly distinctive feature is the white colouration around the throat, chest, belly and inner part of the limbs. On the other hand, its characteristic woolly body fur has given the subspecies the common name 'woolly wolf'.

However, the distinctiveness of the Himalayan wolf is far more than skin-deep.

Researchers note that recent studies have already showed that these wolves have split as a separate branch within the 'tree of life' so long ago that they are divergent from the whole globally distributed wolf-dog clade.

Having undergone such an isolated evolution, the Himalayan wolf is considered of particular conservation concern, researchers said.

However, the populations are still suffering heavy mortality. As a part of the research, the researchers conducted both formal and informal interviews with about four hundred local herders, livestock owners, nomads and village elite to find out more about the status of the human-wolf conflict, as well as their attitudes and perceptions.

As a result, they found out that the wolves are considered to pose a threat for the local livelihoods. They were persecuted and killed as a means of depredation.

"These genetically distinct Himalayan wolves deserve special conservation attention, at the same time that the conservation of this species in a context of human-wildlife conflict is challenging," the scientists said.

"A species action plan needs be formulated that develops mechanisms to minimise conflict, and strategies for motivating local communities towards wolf conservation," they said.

The findings were published in the journal ZooKeys.  PTI
Dhaka, April 25

Suspected Islamist militants hacked to death a leading Bangladeshi gay rights activist employed by the US embassy and a friend in an apartment in Bangladesh's capital on Monday, police said.

The killings took place two days after a university professor was slain in similar fashion on Saturday in an attack claimed by Islamic State.

Five or six assailants went to the apartment of Xulhaz Mannan, 35, an editor of Rupban, Bangladesh's first magazine for gay, bisexual and transgender people, and attacked him and a friend with sharp weapons, Dhaka city police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sordar said.

They entered the apartment disguised as couriers, he said, quoting witnesses.

The assailants also wounded a security guard. Witnesses said the attackers shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest)" as they fled the scene.

Mannan was employed by the US embassy, working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Depertment in Washington said.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the United States was "outraged" by the "barbaric attack." He called Mannan, "a beloved member of our embassy family and a courageous advocate for LGBTI rights - human rights, actually." "LGBTI" stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and intersex.

A spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, Ned Price, said the United States strongly urged the Bangladeshi government to ensure the perpetrators were brought to justice.

Other attacks took place in the country on Monday, but it was not immediately clear whether those assaults were carried out by Islamist militants.

Two men on a motorcycle shot dead a former prison guard in front of Kashimpur jail, on the outskirts of Dhaka, said Khandakar Rezaul Hasan, chief of the local police station.

A teacher was hacked to death in the southwestern district of Kustia, police said.

The Muslim-majority nation of 160 million people has seen a surge in violent attacks over the past few months in which liberal activists, members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups have been targeted.

Five secular bloggers and a publisher have been hacked to death in Bangladesh since February 2015.

A group affiliated with al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the killing of a liberal Bangladeshi blogger this month.

Islamic State has also claimed responsibility for the killings of two foreigners and attacks on mosques and Christian priests in Bangladesh since September.

The government has denied that Islamic State or al Qaeda groups have a presence in the country and said homegrown Islamist radicals are behind the attacks.

At least five militants have been killed in shootouts since November as security forces have stepped up a crackdown on Islamist militants looking to establish a Muslim state based on sharia, or Islamic religious law. Reuters
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

Trend:

Azerbaijan`s first lady Mehriban Aliyeva has met with Chairman of the Senate of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev who is attending the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations.

The first lady stressed the importance of the Global Forum. Aliyeva hailed the holding of such an important event in Baku as a sign of respect for Azerbaijan and recognition of its contribution to the development and promotion of dialogue among civilizations.

They praised relations between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, particularly inter-parliamentary cooperation.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev met with President of the Republic of Malta Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca April 26.

President Aliyev thanked the Maltese counterpart for her participation in the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in Baku. The president also described this visit as a good opportunity for discussing the bilateral relations, adding the ties between the two countries were developing.

President Aliyev noted that areas of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Malta were based on mutual interest. Noting that Azerbaijan successfully hosts such prestigious international events, the president expressed hope that the visit of President Coleiro Preca to Baku would be fruitful.

Expressing gratitude for the warm reception and hospitality, President Coleiro Preca highlighted the importance and the high-level organization of the Forum, and hailed President Aliyev`s speech at the opening ceremony.

Stressing the importance of reciprocal visits in terms of developing the bilateral ties, the Maltese president also touched upon prospects for fruitful cooperation between the two countries in political, economic, trade, tourism and other areas.

They exchanged views over the relations between Azerbaijan and the European Union.
Denise Rondini

Uptime seems to be the latest trucking industry buzzword, with manufacturers and service providers putting a lot of effort into programs designed to get trucks in and out of the shop more quickly. While theres a lot of emphasis on rapid diagnosis and better communication, another big piece of improving repair times is parts availability.

It doesnt matter how quickly a technician in your own shop or at an outside service providers shop can diagnose a problem; the repair will be put on hold without the right parts.

Several truck manufacturers are taking action in this area. Daimler Trucks North America recently opened a new parts distribution center in Dallas. The company says the PDC is a major step in a multifaceted plan to improve parts availability and meet customer expectations of uptime. With the addition of the Dallas location, the company now has eight PDCs.

The speed with which we receive parts has improved front counter customer satisfaction due to improved fill rates, says Dan Stevens, chief operations officer and partner of Lonestar Truck Group, a Freightliner dealership with 12 locations in Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana and Arkansas.

Hino Trucks recently celebrated the grand opening of its California PDC and training center. The companys second U.S. parts location will improve the availability and the parts distribution process to Hinos growing number of western dealers and the fleets they serve.

But the OEMs are not the only ones who realize that parts need to be closer to the customers. Stone Truck Parts, a parts distributor headquartered in Garner, N.C., and a member of HDA Truck Pride, recently moved into a nearly 75,000-square-foot facility. Andrew Purcell, sales and marketing manager, says the newly expanded space allows for us to have the right parts in stock for [our customers] and allows our branches to have access to more inventory.

And some dealers are taking action to improve parts availability. Dennis Thompson, chairman and CEO of Thompson Truck & Trailer, an International dealer headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, says, We constantly monitor our parts inventory. We are always looking at what is on the shelf. Do we have the right part on the shelf at the right time?

To make sure parts are available, Thompson (who is the 2016 ATD/Heavy Duty Trucking/Procede Truck Dealer of the Year finalist, see page 78), set up a central warehouse to house parts for all six of his locations. He also has invested in two delivery trucks that deliver parts to the locations on a regular basis. This means the dealership locations get parts the same day or the next day, instead of having to order parts and wait two to three days to have them delivered. This means customers get the parts needed for repairs more quickly.

Ron Meyering, president of M&K Truck Centers headquartered in Byron Center, Mich., and a 2016 Truck Dealer of the Year nominee, says his dealership uses a managed inventory system that helps make sure the right parts are on the shelf when needed.

If you (or your service partners) are going to have the right parts on the shelf, you need to know what parts you use in the repairs you typically perform. This is where VMRS (Vehicle Maintenance Report Standards) can help.

Speaking at a Decisiv VMRS webinar, Paul Moszak, vice president and general manager for the Truck Group at Motor Information Systems and chairman of the Technology & Maintenance Councils VMRS Codes Committee, said, By adding VMRS codes it validates parts information to assist with future ordering and inventory managementBy VMRS coding parts, you get reporting capabilities based on the part type regardless of the actual part number.

He adds, Streamlining parts management with VMRS saves as much as 15% in transaction time and saves 20% of total inventory costs.

Saving time and money: A good combination.
We drove all the trucks except the Volvo. The ProStar had the Fuel Efficient version of the new X15, and the Peterbilt had the Performance version. The Kenworth has a current engine for comparison. Photos: Jim Park

As engine platforms go, Cummins ISX has to be considered slightly remarkable. It was introduced in 1998, although the program that brought the engine to life began in 1994. It survived the transition to exhaust gas reduction (EGR) and then to selective catalytic reduction (SCR) aftertreatment (while several other engines did not) and its still very much alive and kicking today. We spent a day test driving a couple of production-intent versions of the 2017 X15 (as its now known) and a current ISX15 for comparison.

Coming in 2017 are two distinct versions of the engine, one tuned for fuel economy, the other for performance. Most of the changes are electronic, but Cummins has made some physical changes to the air handling system and reduced internal parasitic drag on both models. In the case of the performance version, Cummins has optimized the combustion hardware and improved what it calls the combustion recipe.

The impact of the enhancements is subtle but noticeable. In plain English, the 2017 models felt peppier, a little quicker and smoother to respond and generally had a firmer feeling to them. The engine brake performance at very low rpm was quite a surprise, and even more so in the performance version, which boasts a new and improved version of the venerable Cummins Variable Geometry Turbocharger.

With trends in engine speed drifting lower with each passing year, drivers were becoming dissatisfied with the engine brake performance, apparently not realizing or forgetting that a simple downshift would restore the massive retarding power available from a 15-liter engine. That downshift is no longer required, but be prepared for a treat if you decide to drop it down a gear.

Electronically speaking, its pretty clear that Cummins and Eaton have been spending a lot of time together in the lab and on the track. The 2017 version of the SmartAdvantage powertrain is as smooth and perfectly integrated as any of the vertically integrated powertrains it competes against. Clutch engagement on the Eaton side is dramatically improved over earlier versions, and slipping between the top two small-step gears was barely noticeable on Indianas modest Interstate grades.

The close ratio-step between 9th and 10th is meant to keep the engine close to its fuel efficiency sweet spot for as much time as possible. Interestingly, the 2016 engine would lug  if we can still use that term (it hardly applies anymore)  down to 1,070 rpm before making a downshift on a grade, whereas the 2017 dipped down to 1,040 before giving up a gear, starting from a cruise rpm of between 1,100 and 1,125. If for some reason you arent using cruise control, the 2017 version will deliver peak torque all the way down to 975 rpm.

Both of the fuel-efficient versions of the engines I drove had the ADEPT suite (Advanced Dynamic Efficient Powertrain Technology) featuring SmartCoast and SmartTorque2 (ST2). The 2017 version also had Cummins own predictive cruise control (PCC) feature, currently available only on Paccar products. Cummins will have its own PCC package for 2017 and it will be available across all OEs.

SmartTorque has been around for a few years, but the latest evolution, ST2, provides additional torque when sensors in the transmission detect the vehicle is on an uphill grade.

SmartCoast was new in 2016. It disengages the engine from the transmission on modest downgrades for almost drag-free coasting with the engine at idle. Coupled with SmartCruise, customers can set their own droop settings (between 3 mph below and 6 mph above cruise set speed) for reengagement and engine brake activation on grades so they can harvest the maximum amount of momentum from a hill.

Previous versions of SmartCoast dropped the engine to a 600-rpm idle, but for 2017 Cummins is so confident in faster transient response from the new air handling system that its comfortable letting the engine drop to 500 rpm with no worries about rapid re-engagement.

The performance version of the engine I drove did not have ADEPT because it had a manual transmission. ADEPT is designed to work with the SmartAdvantage powertrain only, featuring an Eaton AMT.

On the road

One of the few external changes to the ISX for 2017, the crankcase breather is much smaller and now maintenance-free.

For each truck, we ran about 40 miles south of Cummins hometown of Columbus, Ind., on I-65. There were a few modest 2-3% grades en route to get a sense of how it all worked.

The PCC feature was interesting. It has GPS maps loaded into the computer, and with the aid of terrain mapping and inclinometers built into the engine and transmission, PCC looks about 2 miles ahead to get a picture of whats coming. PCC manages throttle and gearing based on the terrain, and does a really good job of it. It would begin to roll on a bit of power just ahead of a grade to build up momentum before climbing, and it would throttle back just as we began to crest the hill to take advantage of gravity on the downside.

Its nothing more than a real pro driver would do, but even the best of us have lapses in attention. We might miss an opportunity or six along the way to conserve a little more fuel. Not PCC. Its as alert to changing terrain at the end of an 11-hour day as it is early in the morning.

Before leaving the plant in Columbus, Mario Sanchez-Lara, director of on-highway marketing communications and my tour guide for the day, reset the fuel economy display for a fresh start. Granted, it was a short run, but we saw the average fuel economy trending upward throughout the run, from 6.6 mpg at the beginning to 7.7 with the 2017 engine and from 6.1 to 7.2 with the 2016 engine when we got back to the plant.

In real world reporting on a round trip from the Cummins Engine Plant in Columbus to the Jamestown, N.Y., plant, the 2017 engine logged an average of 8.4 mpg with an average road speed of 54 mph pulling a trailer loaded to 66,000 lbs. gross vehicle weight. It also had 213 SmartCoast events on the trip where the engine was disengaged from the transmission and the truck was coasting for free.

My feeling, after a day out with the two generations of engine, is that Cummins has made a good thing better. Even with the automated transmission and a lack of direct involvement in operating the engine and transmission, that peppy and tight feeling was obvious. Its simply a nicer running version of the ISX15.

I have always been inclined to let an engine drift into the lower end of the rpm range to take advantage of the torque down there, but various older Cummins and Eaton products didnt always cooperate. They are now completely over their aversion to low-rpm operation, and the two (really one now under the SmartAdvantage banner) handle it very well.

Ill save my report on the performance engine for a future Quick Spin feature, but I would say that engine had all the performance attributes of the fuel-efficient version, but with 605 horsepower and 1,850 lb-ft of torque to play with. Sweet!

The rating of the 2016 ISX15 engine and the 2017 X15 engine were the same: 450 hp with ST2 1,550/1,750 lb-ft. The 2017 engine goes into limited production in October of this year, with full production slated to begin in January.
On the NPTC show floor in Cincinnati. Photo: David Cullen

CINCINNATI -- It took him all of an hour and a half, but Rick Schweitzer, general counsel for the National Private Truck Council, gamely managed to get across the key elements of the sweep of regulatory changes coming down the pike for trucking.

Speaking to a standing-room-only audience attending NPTCs annual meeting at the Duke Energy Center here on April 25, Schweitzer first sorted out the complicated tale of the yet-to-be-determined fate of the 34-hour restart provisions of the Hour of Service rule.

The previous THUD bill [that includes 2016 fiscal-year appropriations for the Department of Transportation] stated that before DOT could reinstate the [suspended] restart provisions, it had to complete a study to show they improved safety and operator fatigue and driver health and longevity and work schedules, and [the results] had to be certified by the DOT Inspector General.

But that law removed the statement that the 34-hour restart would remain in place, just without once every 168 hours and the 1 a.m.-5 a.m. [rest-break] requirements, he continued. The FMCSA report to Congress is expected in 2Q 2016; once submitted, FMCSA would remove the 34-hour restart entirely  revert back to 2003 HOS rules  and all drivers would need to do a rolling restart every 7 or 8 days to determine available on-duty time.

Noting that the American Trucking Associations has been leading a coalition to attain a legislative fix so there will be no reversion to the 2003 rule, he said that a political sticking point had been the view held by Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) that drivers could end up being allowed to work too many hours.

They did not like the hypothetical maximum number of hours [that would exist for drivers], Schweitzer explained. But now a deal has been struck [in the Senate] to get that fixed with a cap on on-duty driving after a total of 73 hours weekly in exchange for a 34-hour restart without it being once every 168 hours and without the 1 a.m.-5 a.m. requirements.

That solution was approved last week by the Senate Appropriations Committee for its 2017 THUD bill. Schweitzer said the legislative repair must also be addressed by the House Appropriations Committee, where he said approval is expected.

Schweitzer advised that, separately, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance petitioned the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in late October to eliminate the 30-minute break provision of the HOS rule. CVSA said the break rule is difficult to enforce, as an inspector does not know if driver is off duty or performing other tasks. In addition, FMCSA has already granted nine exemptions and there is no evidence that the break rule improves operational safety by reducing fatigue.

Schweitzer reviewed all the measures within the FAST Act highway bill with an eye to reforming certain existing FMCSA rules, as well as how the agency formulates all future rulemakings:

FAST Acts CSA Provisions

The National Academies of Science is to conduct an 18-month study of CSA and SMS to analyze the accuracy of BASICs in identifying high-risk carriers and predicting future crash risk and crash severity

The study will review methodology used to calculate BASIC percentiles, weights assigned to violations, ties between crash risk and specific violations, and use of non-fault crashes

A Corrective Action Plan is to be submitted to Congress 120 days after the report. The plan must tell how FMCSA will address deficiencies identified in the study

DOT IG is to assess whether the plan complies with the February 2014 IG Report on CSA.

FAST Act on CSA Data Reform

FMCSA may not make publicly available information on analysis of violations, non-fault crashes, or BASIC percentiles until IG concerns are addressed

Also, the agency may not use CSA data on alerts or relative percentiles for safety fitness determinations until IG concerns are addressed and report to Congress completed. However, FMCSA may still use data to identify carriers for enforcement actions

As of Dec. 4, 2015, BASIC data for property carriers was taken off CSA website; the agency restored absolute scores on March 7, 2016

FAST Act impact on Beyond Compliance initiative

On April 19, FMCSA announced it is seeking input on implementation of the FAST Act requirement that FMCSA must offer a credit or improved SMS score for any carrier that: installs advanced safety equipment, uses enhanced driver fitness measures, adopts fleet safety management tools technologies, and programs, or satisfies other standards determined to be appropriate by the agency

FAST Act and Regulatory Reform

All regulatory impact analyses for proposed and final rules must consider the effect of rule on different segments of the motor carrier industry; use best available science to formulate estimates and findings; use data representative of CMV operators or carriers, and consider effects on various sizes and types of carriers

All major rules (more than $100 million in costs) must begin with an Advance Notice of Proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) or as a negotiated rulemaking (with affected stakeholders) before FMCSA issues a proposed rule

All guidance documents (including regulatory interpretations and statements of enforcement policy) issued by FMCSA must be dated and include the name and contact information of a person who can respond to questions on the guidance. In addition, the guidance must be posted on the FMCSA website for public view

FMCSA must post a summary of all petitions for rulemaking, regulatory interpretation or clarification, on the agencys website and decide within 180 days of receipt whether to accept, deny or further review the petition. It must also prioritize petitions based on their potential to reduce crashes, improve enforcement, and reduce unnecessary burdens

Exemptions from the motor carrier safety regulations may be granted for up to five years and may be subject to renewal (the current limit is two years).

Also due to the FAST Act, FMCSA must exempt the voluntary mounting on a windshield of vehicle safety technology likely to achieve a level of safety that is equivalent to or greater than the level of safety that would be achieved absent the exemption. This final rule is required by June 2016.

And the FAST Act mandates that FMCSA must allow carriers to conduct pre-employment tests for alcohol and to use hair-testing as an alternative to urine-testing for pre-employment and random testing for controlled substances.

Safety Fitness Determination

Schweitzer also reported on progress on the Safety Fitness Determination rule that was published in January. It provides for only one rating  Unfit  with all others considered to be fit operators. It calls for monthly carrier assessments using absolute standards, rather than percentile ratings against peers.

Other aspects of the SFD proposal he outlined were:

Uses a revised list of critical and acute regulations; violations would result in failing a BASIC

Will use all investigation results (including roadside), not just compliance reviews, to rate carriers

The proposed rule has different standards for failing a specific BASIC, based on correlation to crash risk

Crash, Drug/Alcohol BASICs will only use investigation data

He added that there will be three ways to be declared unfit: Fail two or more BASICs using roadside data (must have 11 or more inspections with violations over 24 months to fail a BASIC); fail two or more BASICs due to critical or acute violations identified during an investigation; or fail two or more BASICs based on combination of data from roadside and investigations.

Schweitzer noted that the SFD comment deadline has been extended to May 23. In addition, there is an effort under way to include a provision in the House version of the THUD bill to withhold funding for the SFD rulemaking until the CSA study is done and the DOT IG has certified that remedial steps in the mandated Corrective Action Plan have been taken.

ELD Details

He hit the highlights of the Electronic Logging Device final rule:

It mandates adoption of ELDs by all carriers in interstate commerce

Phase-in within two years (December 2017), but carriers already using electronic logs will have another two years to equip trucks with ELDs compliant with this rule

Short-haul drivers (not subject to log books) will be exempt from the ELD rule. They may use paper logs up to 8 days in any 30-day period if they exceed short-haul limits

Supporting documents required to verify on-duty not driving time and carriers must retain up to eight documents for each duty period

Drivers must submit supporting documents to carriers within 13 days

Documents must contain driver name or ID number, date, location and time

Prohibition of Coercion

Schweitzer also noted the main points of the final rule on Prohibition of Coercion. Issued last November, it prohibits carriers, brokers, receivers or others from coercing drivers to violate FMCSRs or HMRs. It went into effect Jan. 29. For coercion to exist, a party must make a threat or take action against a drivers employment or work opportunities.

Speed Limiters

As for the proposed rule on truck speed-limiters, Schweitzer said this regulation will affect all Class 7 and 8 trucks  both new and existing vehicles. In response to petition by ATA and carriers, Schweitzer said, it is expected the rule will set limiters no higher than 65 mph.

Entry-Level Driver Training

The long-awaited  its been around since the 1980s  entry-level driver training proposal was published in March. Schweitzer said FMCSA issued its NPRM having completed a negotiated rulemaking with stakeholders on driver training curriculum, hours of instruction, and self-certification standards.
HANNOVER, Germany  Evoking history and appealing for solidarity, President Barack Obama on Monday cast his decision to send 250 more troops to Syria as a bid to keep up momentum in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State extremists. He pressed European allies to match the U.S. with new contributions of their own.

Obamas announcement of the American troops, which capped a six-day tour to the Middle East and Europe, reflected a steady deepening of U.S. military engagement, despite the presidents professed reluctance to dive further into another Middle East conflict. As Obama gave notice of the move, he said he wanted the U.S. to share the increasing burden.

Obama discussed the IS fight with British Prime Minster David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minster Matteo Renzi.

The president formally announced the new troop deployment in a speech about European unity and trans-Atlantic cooperation  a running theme of his trip. Speaking in Germany, he evoked the continents history of banding together to defeat prejudice and emerge from the ruins of the Second World War.

Make no mistake, Obama said. These terrorists will learn the same lessons as others before them have, which is, your hatred is no match for our nations united in the defense of our way of life.

The rhetoric belied an underlying frustration in his administration about allies contributions to the U.S.-led fight in Syria and neighboring Iraq. Although the coalition includes some 66 nations, the U.S. has conducted the vast majority of the air strikes, and there has been little appetite by other nations to send in ground troops of their own.

The president recently rattled leaders in Europe and the Middle East by describing allies as free riders. He made a passing reference to that complaint on Monday, as he noted that not all European allies contribute their expected share to NATO: Ill be honest: Sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense.

On stops in Riyadh, London and Hannover, Obama repeatedly pushed allies for more firepower, training for local forces and economic aid to help reconstruct regions in Iraq that have been retaken from Islamic State control but are still vulnerable. Obama appeared to come up short in Riyadh, when he met with Arab allies.

He made the pitch again in Hannover, where he attended a massive industrial technology trade show on what was likely his last presidential visit to Germany.

These terrorists are doing everything in their power to strike our cities and kill our citizens, so we need to do everything in our power to stop them, Obama said.

The new deployment brings the number of U.S. military personnel in Syria from roughly 50 to roughly 300. It follows a similar ramp-up in Iraq, announced last week. The new Syria forces will include special operation troops assisting local forces, as well as maintenance and logistics personnel.

Obama, in an interview with CBS News, declined to say whether the forces might be dispatched on search-and-kill missions. He did say, As a general rule, the rule is not to engage directly with the enemy but rather to work with local forces.

Obamas call for European solidarity extended beyond the anti-Islamic State campaign.

Amid what he described as unsettling times, Obama revived the argument he made in London days earlier that Britain and the European Union are strongest if Briton votes in an upcoming referendum to remain in the 28-member nation bloc. And Obama mounted a forceful defense of his host in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is facing criticism for her willingness to take in refugees from Syria.

Chancellor Merkel and others have eloquently reminded us that we cannot turn our backs on our fellow human beings who are here now and need our help now, Obama said. We have to uphold our values, not just when its easy but when its hard.

The migrant crisis was a central focus as Obama met with European leaders just before returning to Washington. Merkel said the leaders had discussed ways to expand military efforts to stop human smuggling across the Mediterranean from Libya.

With the NATO mission in the Aegean, the United States of America have shown their readiness to take part in the fight against illegal migration, Merkel said. A senior U.S. official said the U.S. was indeed ready to help with that effort but had no new mission to announce.

Obama, who used one of his final foreign trips to start trying to shape his legacy, said he saw Europe facing a defining moment. He urged the continents leaders to pay attention to income inequality, education for young people and equal pay for women.

If we do not solve these problems, we start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way, Obama said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

Trend:

The statements Armenian side has been recently making are illogical and contradictory, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend Apr. 26.

Hajiyev made the remarks commenting on the statements of the Armenian leadership, which jeopardize the negotiating process.

"On the one hand, Armenia declares its interest in the peaceful settlement of the conflict, on the other hand, it declares its refusal to negotiate," Hajiyev said. "These contradictory statements show that Armenia's regime is in panic and confusion. Such behavior also shows that the purpose of the Armenian leadership is to prevent the conflict's resolution through deception of the international community and keep the status quo based on occupation."

Hajiyev went on to add that the updated Madrid principles play a role of a "road map" in the process of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict's settlement.

The main directions of the updated Madrid principles were declared by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs on the level of heads of state at the summits in L'Aquila (Italy) and Muskoka (Canada), Hajiyev said.

"The first paragraph of the updated Madrid principles provides for withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories," Hajiyev said. "If Armenia is truly interested in resolving the conflict, it should withdraw its troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories and comprehensive negotiations to resolve the conflict must be initiated."

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
COLUMBUS, Ohio  Four days after the calculated killings of eight people in rural Ohio, a prosecutor said Monday that marijuana was found at some of the crime scenes, including a grow-house sheltering hundreds of plants.

It wasnt just somebody sitting pots in the window, Pike County Prosecutor Rob Junk told The Columbus Dispatch.

The victims  all members of an extended family  were fatally shot in the head, including a young mother whose newborn was sleeping beside her Friday morning. That baby, another infant and a toddler were spared.

The victims were remembered Monday as loyal and caring people. More than a dozen counselors, clergy and psychologists arrived at the local high school to help friends and neighbors handle their grief.

Dana Rhoden, who was killed along with her three children, her ex-husband, and three relatives, always wanted what was best for her kids, Scioto Valley Local School District Superintendent Todd Burkitt said.

The youngest victim, Christopher Rhoden Jr., was a 16-year-old freshman at Piketon High School, which has just 530 students.

He was the first one that if he thought that someone wasnt being treated fairly or felt like someone wasnt being treated appropriately, he would speak up about it, Burkitt said.

The teens siblings  19-year-old Hanna Rhoden and 20-year-old Clarence Frankie Rhoden  also had attended the school.

All eight autopsies have been completed, and while authorities have released no details about a motive, the Attorney Generals office did confirm Monday that one of the victims had received a threat via Facebook. Junk, the prosecutor, did not immediately respond to multiple requests from The Associated Press for comment.

At a news conference on Sunday, Attorney General Mike DeWine called the killings a sophisticated operation, and Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said citizens should assume that those responsible are armed and dangerous.

Extensive marijuana-growing operations are not uncommon in sparsely populated rural southern Ohio, an economically distressed corner of Appalachia. Two of the four homes that became crime scenes Friday are within walking distance of each other along a remote, winding road leading into wooded hills from a rural highway. The others are nearby.

Piketon  about 60 miles south of Columbus and 90 miles east of Cincinnati  is in Pike County, which is home to just 28,000 people and has an unemployment rate of 8.6 percent, considerably higher than Ohios rate of 5.1. A main employer is a shuttered Cold War-era uranium plant whose cleanup provides hundreds of local jobs.

More than 22,000 marijuana plants were seized in Pike County in 2010, and while authorities made no arrests, they said they found two abandoned camps where Mexican nationals apparently stayed. In 2012, another 1,200 plants were seized in Pike County in an operation connected to a Mexican drug cartel, the Attorney Generals office said. Seizures continued in 2013 and 2014 in the county.

The victims have been identified as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his ex-wife, 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; their three children; Christopher Rhoden Sr.s brother, 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; their cousin, 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; and 20-year-old Hannah Gilley, whose 6-month old son with Frankie was unharmed.

DeWine said the states crime lab was looking at 18 pieces of evidence from a DNA and ballistic standpoint, and that five search warrants have been executed. More than 100 tips have been given to investigators, and a Cincinnati-area businessman offered a $25,000 reward for details leading to those responsible.
U.S. Sen. James Lankford attacked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday for authorizing new label instructions for a drug commonly used to induce early term abortions.

The relabeling could affect an Oklahoma law intended to restrict access to mifepristone, also known as RU-486. The law was declared unconstitutional by an Oklahoma County district judge last August, but that decision is under review by the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

Oklahoma is among several states that have sought to limit use of the so-called abortion pill by requiring it to be administered strictly according to a protocol approved in 1990, but which many doctors and researchers say is unnecessarily restrictive.

The labeling approved recently by the FDA allows the drug to be taken with fewer visits to the doctor, and in lower doses over a longer period of time.

A letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, written by Lankford and Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey and signed by 73 lawmakers, refers to mifepristone as a baby-killing drug that has been associated with serious adverse events including hemorrhaging, severe infections and even deaths of mothers who have taken it.

The letter asks for documents related to the FDA decision.

Generally administered in the first seven to 10 weeks of pregnancy, mifepristone is taken with the drug misoprostol to block the hormone progesterone, inducing miscarriage.

The treatments are generally painful and often cause bleeding, but rarely produce serious side affects, according to a 2011 FDA report based on an analysis of non-clinical trial information. Of the estimated 1.52 million women to use the drug, the report says, 14 associated deaths were confirmed.

Of those, the report said, all involved complicating factors that could have contributed to death.

Proponents of the drug say it is nevertheless safer than surgical abortion or childbirth.

Opponents, especially those who believe life begins at conception, say using the drug even as an emergency contraceptive in the hours or days following fertilization amounts to murder.
Representing the citizens of Oklahoma is an enormous privilege. Having served Oklahoma in Congress for 16 years, I know that addressing the wide variety of concerns and interests of Oklahomans can also be a tough job.

But to be more than an ordinary legislator  to be a true statesman  requires something extraordinary. It requires a type of selfless courage and commitment to principle that is exceedingly rare.

There is almost always pushback when a public official takes a stand on principle, but a statesman must be able to discern when to listen to the critics, and when to stand against them.

I was labeled Dr. No because I stood on the principle of fiscal responsibility, refusing to support spending measures that our federal government simply could not afford. The pushback often came from those who either didnt have all the facts about our dire financial situation or didnt share my moral conviction that it is wrong to spend money for our own benefit at the expense of future generations.

In the same way, pushback against an Article V convention to propose constitutional amendments that will restrain Washington, D.C., generally comes from folks who either dont know the facts about Article V or dont share my moral conviction that the states must take their stand against a federal government that is continually expanding its own power.

The fact is, Article V of our Constitution is the most powerful and effective tool available to the states when D.C. systematically oversteps its bounds. Our Founding Fathers gave us this tool because they knew, firsthand, the tendency of those in power to seek more power, and they knew that with more power comes more opportunity for corruption. They foresaw a day when power would become too centralized at the national level, and the states would need a recourse in order to maintain a truly federal system.

So in Article V, our Founding Fathers bequeathed to the states the convention for proposing amendments, giving them a power no greater or less than Congress has under Article V to propose amendments for the good of the nation. In either case, proposed amendments must be ratified by three-fourths of the states  today, thats 38 states.

Congress has used its amendment-proposing power repeatedly, resulting in our current total of 27 amendments  some good, some not-so-good. But to date, the states have never taken advantage of their power to propose amendments. And I believe this failure of the states to band together and use this power to resist federal overreach has enabled the feds to push our nation into a downward spiral of debt, overregulation, and illegitimate lawmaking by unelected, unaccountable judges and bureaucrats.

Its time we emboldened our state legislatures to use their power to save the nation.

Right now, your state senators are preparing to vote on Senate Joint Resolution 4, a resolution to join Oklahoma with her sister states in calling for an Article V convention to propose amendments that will impose fiscal restraints on Washington, D.C., limit its power and jurisdiction, and consider term limits for federal officials, including federal judges.

I commend the Oklahoma House of Representatives for passing this measure, and I ask you to join me in urging the Senate to do the same.

Fortunately for Oklahoma, I believe many of our state legislators possess the rare qualities of courage and commitment to principle that are the hallmarks of true statesmen. Lets encourage them to be champions of our Constitutions principles and processes, come what may.
OKLAHOMA CITY  Sen. Kevin Matthews, D-Tulsa, lost his bid to get Democrat Darrell Knox of Tulsa off the ballot in the race for Senate District 11.

Matthews had alleged that Knox registered to vote before he was eligible due to a criminal record and thus committed an additional crime.

However, Knox was never convicted of the allegation.

The state Election Board on Monday heard challenges to candidacies.

Knoxs attorney, Mike Manning, said that even if the allegations were true, it was not grounds for disqualification from seeking office.

Matthews will face Knox in the race, which will be decided in the primary.

The incumbent will not be able to walk into office unopposed, Knox said. The voters get to decide.

The state Election Board on Monday removed Republican Whitney Cole of Tulsa from the ballot in the race for House District 72.

Democrat Monroe Nichols of Tulsa challenged her candidacy for the race, alleging she had not been registered to vote in the district for the appropriate time to qualify as a candidate.

Candidates must live in the district for six months before the first day of the filing period.

Nichols will face Democrat Maria Barnes of Tulsa in the race that will be decided in a primary.

Rep. Seneca Scott, D-Tulsa, did not file for another term, leaving the post open.

Rep. James Leewright, R-Bristow, was successful in challenging the candidacy of Ben Scroggs, an independent from Bristow, in the race for Senate District 12.

Leewright alleged Scroggs was not a registered independent within the required six months before the filing date.

Senate President Pro Tem Brian Bingman, R-Sapulpa, is term limited and cannot run again for the Senate seat.

Republican Patrick Kennedy of Oilton and Democrat B.C. Jones of Sapulpa have also filed for the post.

The board denied a request by Democrat Matt Meredith of Hulbert to remove the name of Republican Bob Ed Culver Jr. of Tahlequah in the race for House District 4. Meredith challenged Culvers candidacy alleging he had not met the residency requirements.

Republican Mike Pope of Tahlequah is also seeking the post.
OKLAHOMA CITY  Childrens advocates on Monday released a report recommending how to improve the lives of kids who have parents behind bars.

About 96,000 or 10 percent of kids in Oklahoma between 2011 and 2012 had a parent incarcerated, according to the report, released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and called A shared sentence: the devastating toll of parental incarceration on kids, families and communities.

The report recommends ensuring children are supported while parents are incarcerated and after they return.

The Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth, the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy, the Education and Employment Ministry and others held a Capitol news conference to talk about the report, the states high incarceration rate and its impact on children.

Preserving a childs relationship with a parent during incarceration benefits both, the report says.

Prisons and jails also should develop visitation policies that allow children to maintain their parental relationships, such as providing transportation and family-friendly visiting centers in their facilities or offering other means of communication, including videoconferencing, the report states.

The report recommends connecting parents who have returned to the community with pathways to employment.

Finally, it recommends strengthening communities, particularly those disproportionately affected by incarceration and re-entry, to promote family stability and opportunity.

Terry Smith, president and CEO of the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy, said children are sharing their parents sentences.

Former House Speaker Kris Steele said the issues are incredibly important. Steele, executive director of the Education and Employment Ministry, said state prisons are operating at 122 percent of capacity.

The state leads the nation in grandparents raising grandchildren, Steele said, adding that foster care rolls are swelling.

Children of those who are incarcerated are seven times more likely to be incarcerated, creating a generational cycle, Steele said.

The state needs to enhance alternatives to incarceration for low-level offenders, Steele said.
JAY  A plan to return green trash dumpsters to Zena residents inched forward on Monday.

Delaware County Commissioner Tom Sanders missed a regular county commissioners meeting to present a resolution to the county Solid Waste Authority calling for the return of the dumpsters on a temporary basis while the authority goes back to the drawing board to create a comprehensive solid waste plan.

Kenny Crowder, an authority trustee, said it may take up to four months to come up with a plan.

Anger levied at the authority started in March, when the dumpsters were removed and in their place sites were set up for people to dispose of trash and debris. Zena residents say the lack of dumpsters means they have to drive as far as 50 miles round trip to dispose of their trash.

This is just a reset, Sanders said. It will give everybody a relief. Lets put back the dumpsters until we have a plan.

The plan is designed to be a sincere honest effort on what are we going to do with the taxpayers money, he said.

The Solid Waste Authority has provided free collection and disposal of solid waste for all county residents, excluding those living in Grove, Jay, Bernice and Colcord, for years. Delaware County residents approved a half-cent sales tax in 1988 to help with solid waste services.

The sales tax generated about $100,000 to $150,000 per month, officials said.

The authority recently placed a 40-foot dumpster at the Zena Community Center as a reference point to see whether the location could be used as a convenient site for collecting waste and debris.

The eight-point resolution addresses several bookkeeping and financial issues and policies for complying with the states Open Meetings and Open Records Act and a policy handbook.

The three-member Solid Waste Authority accepted the resolution but the members added they wanted to hold a special meeting with their attorney to address concerns they have with the document. Sanders requested from the authority to have a written response to the resolution by May 4.
I realize I am running the risk of jinxing us with severe weather, but at this point that would mean rain, something we can definitely use, so I decided to take my chances, says Tulsa World's meteorologist Kirsten Lang.
Congratulations to Imam John Ederer on his recent guest column (Stop quoting the Quran out of context, April 9). There are truly many fine Muslim people who dont take the Quran out of context. But some do and some non-Muslims do too.

Those who really ought to be admonished not to take the Quran out of context are ISIS, the Taliban, al-Qaida, Boko Haram, Hamas, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Abu Nidal, the Al Nusra Front, Al Shabaab, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the GITMO prisoners, and some others Im probably leaving out.

It also ought to be required reading for all prospective suicide bombers, airline hijackers, beheaders, and more who Im probably also leaving out.

And its too bad the article came out too late for Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 hijackers, and some of those others who already have gone on to their martyrs rewards.

John Young, Sapulpa
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev met with Minister of State for European Affairs of France Harlem Desir April 26.

Desir conveyed French President Francois Hollande`s greetings and good memories about Azerbaijan to the president.

President Aliyev thanked for the greetings of President Hollande, and asked Desir to extend his greetings to the French president.

Recalling that President Hollande visited Azerbaijan twice, President Aliyev said this demonstrates the high-level of relations between the two countries.

President Aliyev thanked Desir for his participation in the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in Baku, adding the visit was a good opportunity for discussing the bilateral and regional issues.

Expressing gratitude for the warm reception, Desir congratulated President Aliyev on the excellent organization of the Forum.

They had a broad exchange of views over the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the latest processes.
The opposition is calling for public disclosure of the legal advice given to former Attorney General Faris Al Rawi relating to the indemnity agreement with Vincent Nelson.

Speaking at the UNCs weekly Sunday media conference this morning, MP Saddam Hosein also criticized what he sees as the law associations delayed and weak response to the entire matter.
1:18 p.m., April 26, 2016--Marina Brownlee of Princeton University will present a public lecture, The Afterlives of Cervantes on the English Stage, at 7 p.m., Thursday, May 5, in the Trabant University Center Theatre on the University of Delawares Newark campus.

The talk, part of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures Spring Distinguished Lecturer Series, is free and open to the public.

Brownlee, who is Robert Schirmer Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures and Comparative Literature at Princeton, will explore Cervantes Don Quixote and the ways in which its publication fascinated not only Spain but also all of Europe, resulting in numerous translations and adaptations. In 17th century England, for example, a number of diverse plays based on Quixote were produced.

In her lecture, Brownlee will look at three English theatrical adaptations of one especially provocative Cervantine episode.
9:29 a.m., April 26, 2016--The National Science Foundation has named two University of Delaware undergraduate students and one alumnus to its list of 2016 Graduate Research Fellows, providing financial support for their continuing studies.

The new fellowships go to Bretta Fylstra of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who will study biomedical engineering in a joint program at the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University; Thomas Keane of Warwick, New York, who will study physical chemistry at Harvard University; and Daniel Reyes of West Milford, New Jersey, who will study urban and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania.

The NSF fellowships recognize outstanding students in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). UD's winners were among almost 17,000 applicants for 2,000 awards. The NSF also recognized 2,997 honorable mentions, including 19 UD students or alumni.

"These awards are provided to individuals who have demonstrated their potential for significant research achievements, and they are investments that will help propel this country's future innovations and economic growth," said Joan Ferrini-Mundy, NSF assistant director for education and human resources, in the foundations announcement.

Fylstra, an Honors Program student, said she has known since eighth grade that she wanted to study biomedical engineering  possibly because her mother is a nurse and her father a chemical engineer. She will continue her study of prosthetics and orthotics and work toward a doctorate, and hopes to use her knowledge to lead research and development at the industry level.

Her research at UD has focused on customizing the design of footplates for ankle/foot orthotics made on a 3-D printer under the guidance of Elisa Arch, assistant professor of kinesiology and applied physiology in the College of Health Sciences.

Fylstra was one of the founders of UD's Prosthetics and Orthotics Club, which unites students interested in that research and/or clinical work. Among their projects was an effort to develop a prosthetic device for a dog that had lost a leg. The device is in revision now, she said.

Earlier this month her team, Rehab to Go, won the Innovation Award in the First Step Grand Challenges competition to further its tests of a device that provides biofeedback to amputees, helping them optimize their gait and walking patterns as they transition to prosthetic devices.

Keane will work toward a doctorate in physical chemistry at Harvard, focusing on sustainable chemistry and building on research he has done in the lab of UD's Joel Rosenthal, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

He is still exploring lab opportunities at Harvard, with interest in energy storage and efficiency, especially developing energy-efficient catalysts for industrial applications.

Keane, also an Honors Program student, he said he was drawn to research after participating in an introductory program during high school. After enrolling at UD, he found Rosenthal's focus on converting carbon dioxide into liquid fuels most interesting.

"The more research I did and the more I got involved in the science, the more it struck that this was not only something scientifically very interesting, but at the same time the problems that type of research and sustainable chemistry addresses are problems that are very important and need to be answered, hopefully in the near future," he said.

Reyes, an Honors Program student who graduated from UD with a degree in anthropology in 2012, will study urban and regional planning at Penn.

His interest lies in food systems, local infrastructures that support farmers and what kinds of foods are available to people. Since his graduation from UD, he has worked with the Food Bank of Delaware, has worked on food assistance policy in the United States, and has worked with subsistence farmers in Central America and small farms in the northeast U.S.

Now he is working as an apprentice on a Bordentown, New Jersey, farm, growing more than 50 varieties of vegetables and building his knowledge of what it takes to make farming work.

"One common thread I've found is that local resource governance can play a huge role in determining what food systems look like in terms of land use and what sort of foods are available to people of all socio-economic statuses," he said. "I hope to look at ownership alternatives for productive land in the northeast United States and Central America."

Many farming options are determined by such things as zoning, runoff management, land titling, he said, and that makes such technical studies valuable.

The NSF fellowship provides three years of financial support for study that leads to a research-based master's or doctoral degree within a five-year period ($34,000 annual stipend and $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to the graduate institution).

Article by Beth Miller

Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson and courtesy of Daniel Reyes
Ivano-Frankivsk City Court has begun hearings in the case of two Jordan nationals charged with raping a local 14-year-old schoolgirl.

The judges questioned both the suspects and the victim, the press service of Ivano-Frankivsk City Court told Ukrinform.

The court has extended the detention of the foreign students in custody for another 60 days.

The trial in the case of the minor rape is being held behind closed doors. The students of a medical university from Jordan have been in custody since 14 January, 2016. They face up to 15 years in prison.

Foreign students were accused of seducing minors in December of last year. At that time, the leader of the Arab community in Ivano-Frankivsk, Fuad Alivi, apologized for his countrymen for their involvement in the scandal. There was a hunt for the schoolgirl after she repeatedly ran away from home and had sexual intercourse with foreigners, the Police said.
One Ukrainian serviceman was killed and five soldiers were wounded in the ATO area in eastern Ukraine over the past day.

Spokesman for the Presidential Administration on the anti-terrorist operation, Colonel Oleksandr Motuzianyk, said at a briefing in Kyiv, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. "One Ukrainian serviceman was killed and five our soldiers were wounded as a result of the armed hostilities over the past day," Motuzianyk confirmed. ol
Ukraine's foreign trade turnover in 2015 dropped by 28.5% or by more than USD 35 billion compared to 2014.

Ukrainian First Vice Prime Minister - Economic Development and Trade Minister Stepan Kubiv said this at the roundtable meeting on elaboration of the National Export Strategy of Ukraine, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The foreign trade turnover in 2015 decreased by 28.5% compared to 2014, i.e. it dropped by more than USD 35 billion. Now it equals USD 89.2 billion," the Minister said.

Stepan Kubiv stressed that Ukraine needed a real effective system of state support for exports and favorable climate to attract investments.

ol
Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman met with the heads of foreign affairs committees of the parliaments of the Weimar Triangle countries.

This is reported by the Cabinets press service.

"Our position remains unchanged - continuation of the European integration, conduct of reforms, implementation of the action plan with the International Monetary Fund. We have much work to do and this requires joint concentration of efforts of the President, the Parliament and the Government," Volodymyr Groysman said, commenting on further activities of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.

Among the Governments priorities he named the reforms in field of judiciary, public administration, setting economically reasonable gas tariffs. Deregulation, privatization of state enterprises and decentralization are also important, the Prime Minister noted.

Groysman stressed that Ukraine was committed to implementation of the Minsk agreements and informed about specific decisions that had been made in this regard.

The heads of foreign affairs committees of the parliaments of the Weimar Triangle countries praised the formation of a new Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the end of the political crisis in Ukraine. They expressed hope that the Government would reach the set goals and pledged the readiness of their countries to continue to support Ukraine.

ol
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev met with Minister for Foreign Affairs of Spain Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo April 26.

Garcia-Margallo recalled his previous visits to Azerbaijan.

President Aliyev stressed the successful activity of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, which was established on the joint initiative of Turkey and Spain, and hailed Spain`s support for the Alliance. The president described the Spanish foreign minister`s participation in the Baku forum as an example of this support.

They noted the importance of the Forum in discussing outstanding tasks in complicated international situation and against the background of international relations. The sides expressed confidence that this important event would give a strong positive message to the international community.

During the conversation, the parties exchanged views over Azerbaijan-European Union cooperation, and the ways of settling the Armenian-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko laid flowers to the Heroes of Chornobyl memorial.

Ukrinform reports that the wreath-laying ceremony was also attended by Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, Rada Speaker Andriy Parubiy, mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko and others.

At present, the number of victims of the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine amounts to over 1.9 million people or 4.4 percent of the population, of which 210,000 received the status of liquidators of the accident, 1.751 million persons have the status of victims of the accident.

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The Ukrainian MPs have called on the European Parliament to support the introduction of sanctions in the European Union against the persons involved in kidnapping and illegal conviction of Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, and a range of other Ukrainian citizens.

First Deputy Chairman of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada Iryna Heraschenko said this following the third sitting of the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Association Committee in Brussels, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We have called on our European partners to support Savchenko's list. In fact, it is very important that today Ukraine can feel the support of the whole civilized world in our aspirations to free Nadiya Savchenko from the Russian prison, as well as 11 other political prisoners, who are in jails of the Russian Federation , Heraschenko said.

In addition, according to her, the Russia-backed militants still hold 115 Ukrainian citizens in captivity in the occupied territories.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

Trend:

Azerbaijan`s first lady Mehriban Aliyeva met with a French delegation led by member of the National Assembly, President of the Association of Friends of Azerbaijan in France Jean-Francois Mancel.

Mehriban Aliyeva, who also heads the Working Group on Azerbaijani-French Inter-Parliamentary ties, said discussions at the UNAOC Global Forum in Baku focused on the themes that are of "global importance".

Aliyeva said that cooperation between Azerbaijan and France is based on friendship and mutual respect.

The first lady expressed confidence that the Forum would provide a crucial platform for addressing the issues that concern the international community and finding mechanisms of solving the existing problems.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

Trend:

Vice-president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, Goodwill Ambassador of UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Leyla Aliyeva has met with acting Chief of the Cabinet at FAO Mario Lubetkin and head of FAO's new Partnership and Liaison Office in Azerbaijan Melek Cakmak.

They hailed the goals and ideas of the Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations, which is being held in Baku. They also stressed the importance of the issues discussed at the Youth Forum of the event.

They exchanged views over the fight against hunger, ways of increasing the sturgeon population in the Caspian Sea and ensuring proper nutrition in schools.
Its been more than a decade since the students at the Harry C Primary school in Masorie, Sierra Leone, were able to drink from the well on school grounds. Now a UNICEF-supported rehabilitation project is bringing clean water back to schoolchildren and villagers in the community.



MASORIE, Sierra Leone, 25 April 2016  As Rosemarie Yema Blake pushed down on the water pump, a government technician held a plastic bottle under the spout to collect a sample from the gushing stream. Ms. Blake is an engineer from UNICEFs NGO partner Living Water, and her most recent project brought her to an abandoned well at the Harry C Primary school in Sierra Leones Western Rural district. Students waited in anticipation to learn if, for the first time in more than a decade, the well would produce clean water.

The water was not good to drink before  it was corrosive and had metallic content, said Earnest Joko Henry, head teacher at the school. The well had lots of debris in it. And the people here said that rebels had been killed and thrown in the water during the war, so they refused to drink it.

The well had remained unused by the school and the villagers since Sierra Leones Civil War, which lasted from 1991-2002. Instead, students ventured to another well outside the school compound  a journey that cut into their class time.

When the children came to school, they had to go and fetch water to fill all the buckets for hand washing, which meant they only started their school day at about ten, said Mr. Henry.



Clean water returns

With support from UNICEF, the well and pump at the school were recently rehabilitated. The final step in the rehabilitation process is testing the water, and the technicians confirmed that it was safe for the community to use, including for drinking. With one final chlorination, the well got the all-clear.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

Trend:

Baku is a route through which many new people, many ideas and cultures meet again, says Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo y Marfil.

He made the remarks addressing the opening ceremony of the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Apr. 26, under the theme "Living Together In Inclusive Societies: A Challenge and A Goal."

"For centuries the karvansarays of Baku offered help to those who traveled along the Silk Road from Rome to Istanbul all the way to Asia," said the Spanish FM. "The Silk Road was a sort of initial internet of prehistoric times and Baku was one of its main bases."

"I think it is very appropriate that Baku is today the holder of this Alliance of Civilizations, and that Baku and this country [Azerbaijan] are once again the bases of this alliance," he added.

"Baku is once again the route through which many new people, many ideas and cultures meet again," said Garcia-Margallo.

"We are today in Baku to renew our energies, to tell each other how it has been going, to look into and face the challenges and threats that surround us," he added. "We must face all the threats and help each other to resolve all the issues that take place in multicultural societies."
The Cuba best-known academic and economist fired for sharing information with the United States without authorization.

Omar Everleny Perez is dismissed from the University of Havana for allegedly violating the rules. Perez, an economic reform advocate in Cuba, has said to share critical information with the United States without permission.

According to an article in the US News, the Associated Press reached Perez for comment and the economy expert admitted his dismissal. University director, Humberto Blanco, who sent a letter of dismissal mentioned about Perez having a conversation with American institutions without authorization. Perez informed the representatives about internal issues in the university.

The allegations described Perez as 'irresponsible'. The 56-year-old government consultant was said to receive funds to analyze South Korean economy. According to Perez himself, he believes that the Cuban authorities do not like his critical thinking - which is a strong reason of his dismissal.

Perez career as a consultant highlighted some of significant decisions made by the government, including legalizing new private businesses, and limiting regulations for foreign investment. He also opened opportunities for small farmers by letting them handle unused lands for agricultural industry. According to the Guardian, Perez often visits the state on behalf of his university.

Cuba has been growing its room for debate since Raul Castro ruling the country. However, many of intellectuals who offend the government and political systems have been reportedly dismissed from their jobs.

Before the dismissal occurred, Bruno Rodriguez, Cuba Foreign Minister, voiced his disagreement towards Obama's visit to the country. He said that the US is an enemy that attacks the country culture and political ideas.

The firing of Cuban economist may be a resemblance of not-so-chill relations between the US and Cuba, as reported by MiamiHerald. Castro doubted the fact that albeit the improvement, the US won't apply any political change in the future.

As for the world, people are stunned by how Fidel Castro predicts his own death, saying that it would be one of the last times he spoke at the Communist Party Congress. The president's brother turns 90 this year and his statement became a trending topic alongside the Perez's firing.
Union Pacific Foundation Grants $91,000 to 16 New Mexico Nonprofit Organizations

The Union Pacific Foundation is granting $91,000 in 2016 to 16 New Mexico nonprofit organizations.

"These organizations provide meaningful services that positively impact lives," said Scott Moore, Union Pacific senior vice president of Corporate Relations and Union Pacific Foundation president. "An integral part of Union Pacifics success is the work we do to enhance quality of life in the communities where our employees live and work."

Union Pacific assists nonprofits in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

For more than 55 years, the Union Pacific Foundation has upheld the tradition of helping nonprofits build their capacity by supporting new or existing community, cultural, and health and human services initiatives.

2016 Grants City Recipient Alamogordo City of Alamogordo Parks Department Alamogordo Toy Train Depot Inc Alamogordo United Way of Otero County Carrizozo Carrizozo Heritage Museum Carrizozo Carrizozo Works Deming Deming Crime Stoppers Program Deming Deming Luna County Main Street Program Incorporated Las Cruces Casa De Peregrinos Inc Las Cruces New Mexico State University Foundation Inc Las Cruces Safe Haven Animal Sanctuary Lordsburg Spirit Of Hidalgo Santa Teresa Santa Teresa Charitable Foundation Tucumcari Eastern New Mexico Bluegrass And Old Tyme Music Association Tucumcari Tucumcari Main Street Corporation Tucumcari Tucumcari Railroad Museum Corporation Tucumcari United Way Of Quay County

ABOUT THE UNION PACIFIC FOUNDATION

The Union Pacific Foundation is the primary philanthropic arm of Union Pacific Corporation. The Foundation has distributed funds since 1959 to qualified organizations in communities served by Union Pacific. The Foundation is not endowed, but is funded each year from the operating profits of Union Pacific Corporation.

ABOUT UNION PACIFIC

Union Pacific Railroad is the principal operating company of Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE: UNP). One of America's most recognized companies, Union Pacific Railroad connects 23 states in the western two-thirds of the country by rail, providing a critical link in the global supply chain. From 2006-2015, Union Pacific invested approximately $33 billion in its network and operations to support America's transportation infrastructure. The railroad's diversified business mix includes Agricultural Products, Automotive, Chemicals, Coal, Industrial Products and Intermodal. Union Pacific serves many of the fastest-growing U.S. population centers, operates from all major West Coast and Gulf Coast ports to eastern gateways, connects with Canada's rail systems and is the only railroad serving all six major Mexico gateways. Union Pacific provides value to its roughly 10,000 customers by delivering products in a safe, reliable, fuel-efficient and environmentally responsible manner.

The statements and information contained in the news releases provided by Union Pacific speak only as of the date issued. Such information by its nature may become outdated, and investors should not assume that the statements and information contained in Union Pacific's news releases remain current after the date issued. Union Pacific makes no commitment, and disclaims any duty, to update any of this information.
Talk About Teaching and Learning Print Issue April 26, 2016, Volume 62, No. 32 The Magic of the Encounter: Teaching and Learning in the Penn Museum Anne Tiballi Objects have the power to engage students because they make the abstract concrete, and the impersonal personal. This power can be an important tool for all kinds of teaching, not just for those disciplines that study the ancient world. The Penn Museum is the largest academic museum in the United States, and while its impact on the University has been deep, its reach has often appeared to focus only on disciplines directly related to its collectionshistory of art, anthropology, classics and the area studies of East Asia and the Near East. For the past three years, we at the Museum have been working hard to expand the museums reach to as many Penn classes as possible, transforming the Museum from an academic resource for content specialists into a laboratory for all types of learning. Id like to take this opportunity to showcase three classes that have experienced the Museums galleries, laboratories and collections in ways that move beyond our traditional content and show how objects are particularly powerful tools for teaching students. Objects engage students because they are real What happens when you use the real thing instead of a photo? Seeing the value of exposing his students to the deep history of human technology, Etienne Benson, assistant professor of history and sociology of science, assigned an object-based exercise that sent his Technology and Society students into six of the Museums galleries. They were asked to choose one object from each gallery that pointed to connections between technology, social structure and cultural practice, and then choose one from their list to explore more fully in a written assignment. This short essay encouraged the students to consider the agency of the artifact, the way that it played a part in ancient social hierarchies and power relationships, and to identify how this agency was rooted in the materiality of the artifacts manufacture and use. Now, you might argue that the same ends could have been achieved by presenting the students with a link to the objects on our online database, but there are important elements of the student experience that would be missed. First, contextual information provided in the object label and in the association of the object with others in the same case and gallery directly affected the students understanding of how that particular object connects with its larger culture. Second, seeing the object in person allows the student to have a deeper comprehension of the haptic dimensions of the object, the size, the shape and the way that the technology would have literally fit to hand. Objects inspire students to make new connections Sally Willig asked the students in her Environmental Studies graduate course on Wetlands to choose from a list of Museum objects from wetland contexts all over the world, including fragments of a 6,000 year old textile preserved in the anaerobic environment of a Swiss lake, a Lenape rattle made from the shell of a box turtle and the abstracted forms of a line of flamingoes dancing across an ancient Egyptian jar. The students researched their object before the class meeting, and presented their object in person during their meeting in the Collections Study Room. Though they were not prompted to do so, it became clear through the presentations that students had selected an object that spoke to them because of a connection with their own research interests, whether in resource exploitation or river deltas. During their presentations, students used the object to create connections between themselves and the scientific content of their coursework, their classmates and peoples living in wetland areas in the past. Objects represent shared experience and provide students with a common ground to practice communication My final example of a class using the Museum for non-traditional learning comes from the Penn Language Center. Though we have enjoyed visits from a handful of language classes in the pastSpanish, Arabic and Turkish in particularthis semester we began a targeted outreach program to encourage all language faculty to bring their classes to the Museum. Because our collections are focused on non-European peoples, we can easily pull together a selection of Filipino cooking pots or Yoruba figurines that help students of those languages develop their speaking skills while immersing them in the material culture of the original speakers. Beyond the direct cultural parallels, gathering around an object or set of objects makes abstract vocabulary and concepts concrete in a way that is not often experienced in the intensely textual or aural language classroom. The very materiality of the object provides opportunities for description, questions and collaborative discovery in the new language that greatly enhance the learning experience. But what about the languages that arent represented in the collectionSwedish, Ladino, German, etc.? Could an Italian class effectively utilize the Chinese gallery to develop its facility with color words? This challenge was put to the test earlier this semester when students of American Sign Language came to the Museum galleries. In pairs, the students filmed their conversation about a particular artifact. After a brief presentation of the cultural and physical characteristics of their artifact, each student answered questions posed by their partner, and made sure to employ Descriptive Classifiers (signs that describe a person or object) and Instrument Classifiers (signs that employ the hands or other body parts to manipulate an object, such as motioning hammering a nail). Objects teach students new ways of thinking and seeing In each of these examples, Penn students used the Museum as a laboratory for learning, not because they were directly studying ancient artifacts, but because those artifacts were put to use in making abstract conceptsthe relationship between technology and social power, resource extratcion in a wetland environment, and that most abstract of concepts, languageconcrete. It is also important to note that each of these learning experiences began as a connection between an individual student and an object that sparked the students desire to learn more, the magic of the encounter (1) that is a museums purview. The task of choosing an object from the galleries or a collections list becomes an active learning experience, where students make connections between the object and their own knowledge, construct new interpretations, and analyze information in light of the reactions and questions of their classmates. Active learning has been shown to result in deeper, longer-lasting memories so that perhaps in 50 years, these students will look back on their visit to the Museum and easily recall the sign for paint, the name of a Swiss lake village or the glint of a Chinese bronze mirror. ____________ (1) Fortney, Kim, and Beverly Sheppard, eds. An Alliance of Spirit: Museum and School Partnerships, p. 1. Washington: American Association of Museums, 2010. Anne Tiballi is the Andrew W. Mellon Curricular Facilitator at the Penn Museum. This essay continues the series that began in the fall of 1994 as the joint creation of the

College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching.

See www.upenn.edu/almanac/teach/teachall.html for the previous essays.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.26

By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:

Baku is an ideal place for holding the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations, Spain's former prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, said during the forum Apr.26.

Zapatero said that on behalf of Spain, he proposed to create this alliance in 2005.

The alliance was created jointly with Turkey and the goal is to develop the dialogue and ensure mutual understanding, according to the former prime minister.

No culture, religion, race, flag stands above others, Zapatero said, adding that joint work is needed to create this alliance of civilizations.

The UN is one of the leading institutions which can assist in resolving these problems, he added.

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations is being held in Baku Apr.26.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum which will last till Apr.27. The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the forum.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Throughout the month of April, the 10th Air Base Wing has been very active in our efforts to observe Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month. This year's theme is "Eliminate Sexual Assault: Know your part, Do your part." Sexual assault is a critical issue across the country, on college campuses and in our Air Force. Every Airman plays an important role in creating the right culture that will eliminate sexual assault and sexual harassment from our ranks. I am counting on all of us to display the moral courage and personal commitment to step forward and intervene when we recognize a situation of inappropriate behavior, sexual harassment or sexual misconduct.

What makes our Air Force family so special is that we look out for each other and we support one another, to include victims of sexual assault. To maintain this high level of trust in leadership, we all must ensure our work areas are safe environments of dignity, respect, trust and support. Together we will send a clear message to those who have been convicted of this heinous crime that they do not have a place in our Air Force family.

The following guidelines are helpful reminders for all of us:

Eliminate Sexual Assault: Every Service member, at every level in our military, must know, understand, and adhere to our Air Force Core Values and standards of behavior in order to eliminate sexual assault and other inappropriate behavior.

Know Your Part: Each member of our Defense Department community has a unique role in preventing and responding to sexual assault. We must recognize our part in stopping this crime, starting with our own awareness and knowing when and where to intervene.

Do Your Part: We have to act. If we see a crime or inappropriate behavior unfolding, we need to step in to prevent it. We each need to add our voice to the call to end this crime.

I am proud of you all in the 10th ABW. You inspire me every day in the manner by which you support the Air Force core values and model the Wingman Concept. I admire those who had the courage, and will have the courage, to come forward. Know that the healing process for any victim of sexual assault is not easy, but you have your Air Force family to support you every step of the way. Thank you for trusting us to be your wingman.
(Editor's note: The exact text contained on pages 52-59 of this year's edition of The Contrails is seen here.)Notable GraduatesThe Air Force Academy serves as a rallying point for the diversity of American culture; many walks of life, different ethnic backgrounds, and a variety of religions. From these backgrounds will come the leaders of tomorrow for the Air Force and the nation. The tradition of excellence from the Air Force Academy is exemplified by the records of our distinguished graduates. Think about where each of these people came from; they came from the same place where you are now.Retired, Class of 1959, was the number one cadet in the General Order of Merit and first graduate of the Air Force Academy. He went to Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, then became an air liaison officer with the First Cavalry Division in Vietnam. He was also one of the first four graduates promoted to Colonel. When he retired, Lieutenant General Hosmer was serving as the Superintendent of the Air Force Academy, the first graduate to come back as Superintendent, from 1991-1994.The first Academy graduate promoted to the rank of fourstar general was also a 1959 graduate,. General Johnsons distinguished career included 423 combat missions as a forward air controller in Southeast Asia. General Johnson retired as the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Transportation Command and Military Airlift Command.Retired, Class of 1959, was the first graduate to enter the space program. After completing training at the Air Forces Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards AFB, he was assigned to the Manned Orbiting Laboratory Program in August 1969. He commanded Space Shuttle Challenger on STS-6. In 1983, Colonel Bobko received the Jabara Award for Airmanship. The Jabara Award is given each year to the Academy graduate whose accomplishments demonstrate superior performance in fields directly associated with aerospace vehicles.Retired, Class of 1959, distinguished himself on active duty and as a cadet.He is the only person to have served as Cadet Wing Commander twice. After pilot training, he flew F-100 and F-105 aircraft, completing 280 combat missions in Southeast Asia. He also served a tour with the Air Force Thunderbirds aerial demonstration team. General Beckel served as Commandant of Cadets from 1981-1982, the first graduate to hold that position.The first graduate to become the Chief of Staff of the Air Force is, Class of 1963.General Fogleman flew F-100s in Vietnam and after his tour came back to the Academy to teach history. Some of his decorations include the Silver Star, Distinguished Flying Cross with one cluster, Purple Heart, and the Air Medal with 17 clusters.The Air Force Academy has produced several graduates who have performed exemplary acts that led to making the ultimate sacrifice for their country. One hundred and fortyone graduates gave their lives in Vietnam, the costliest conflict ever for Academy graduates.The first graduate to die in combat was(then First Lieutenant), Class of 1960. He was killed in action while flying as a C-123 aircraft commander on a combat mission northeast of Saigon. Notably, he was also the first cadet to take the Oath of Allegiance in the first entering class., Class of 1964, became the youngest Air Force pilot to down a MiG in combat. Flying the F-105D, Lieutenant Richter completed his first tour of 100 missions and then signed up for an additional tour. On his 198th mission, Lieutenant Richters plane was hit by ground fire, and he was forced to eject. Due to injuries sustained from the ejection, Richter died en route to the hospital. For his gallantry, First Lieutenant Karl W. Richter received the Air Force Cross and a Purple Heart in addition to 22 Air Medals, Vietnamese Government decorations, and the Jabara Award.

One of the most striking examples of courage and love of freedom can be seen in Captain Lance P. Sijan, Class of 1965. On 9 November 1967, Captain (then 1st Lieutenant) Sijan was flying in the back seat of an F-4 on a bombing pass over North Vietnam, when his aircraft was hit and exploded. Captain Sijan suffered a skull fracture, a mangled right hand, and a compound fracture of his left leg. The next day after regaining consciousness, he heard friendly aircraft flying overhead. Using his radio, he made contact with the pilot, and a rescue operation began. Despite his serious wounds, Captain Sijan remained conscious andcalm while directing rescue aircraft to his position during an unsuccessful rescue mission. After 45 days of crawling on his back over sharp limestone karsts, the North Vietnamese found Sijan and took him prisoner. Sijan managed one escape by overcoming his guard, but was recaptured within hours. During his 3 months of captivity, he endured severe torture by interrogators and constant beatings from guards for his relentless efforts to escape. On 22 January 1968, Lance Sijan succumbed to his injuries as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. He never gave up his quest for freedom, the freedom for which he fought and ultimately died. On 4 March 1976, President Gerald R. Ford awarded the Medal of Honor to Captain Sijan posthumously for his Extraordinary heroism and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty at the cost of his life ... Three other former prisoners of war, all living, also received Medals of Honor from President Ford on that same day. Two of the men were Rear Admiral James B. Stockdale and Colonel George E. Bud Day.

Colonel Day wrote to Airman Magazine: Lance was the epitome of dedication, right to death! When people ask about what kind of kids we should start with, the answer is straight, honest kids like him. They will not all stay that way, but by God, thats the minimum to start with.There were many other Academy graduates whose courage, skill, and leadership made them heroes as well as examples for all of us. The first graduate to down a MiG was a 1959 graduate by the name of(now retired Colonel)(now Retired Brigadier General), Class of 1964, was the first Air Force ace of the Vietnam War. A distinguished fighter pilot, he earned the Air Force Cross, the Silver Star with three clusters, the Distinguished Flying Cross with nine clusters, and twentyfive Air Medals. In 1972, he won the McKay Trophy for the most meritorious flight of the year and the Jabara Award for Airmanship.

Captain (now Retired Colonel) Donald D. Stevens, Class of 1960, is another Jabara Award Winner. Captain Stevens distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism while directing the successful rescue mission of a wounded soldier in an unarmed 0-2A. While making dive passes directly into heavy enemy fire, Captain Stevens fired marking rockets between the soldier and the advancing enemy. He then gave careful and precise instructions to attacking fighter aircraft on the location of the soldier and the advancing enemy. His highly courageous acts resulted in the successful helicopter rescue of the wounded soldier without any friendly casualties.

(now Retired Brigadier General), Class of 1967, led a formation of two HH-53 rescue helicopters deep into North Vietnam to pick up a downed Airman. Captain Stovall braved heavy ground fire and MiG interceptors in an unsuccessful attempt to locate the downed Airman. Despite being advised against returning for a second rescue attempt, Captain Stovall insisted on making another effort in finding him. On the second mission, Stovall spotted the Airmans signal mirror and rescued him while receiving heavy ground fire. During the course of the mission, Captain Stovall and his crew braved MiGs, SAMs, anti-aircraft artillery, and small arms fire to successfully accomplish their mission. Captain Stovall received the Air Force Cross and the Jabara Award for his heroic actions., Class of 1973, gave his life to rescue the 53 Americans being held hostage in Iran. Captain McMillan volunteered for this mission, risking his life for his fellow Americans and for the honor of our country.During Operation DESERT SHIELD/STORM, graduates were once again called upon to distinguish themselves in service to their country. Five graduates were killed in action and four were captured and held as POWs. Then, Class of 1984, earned an air-to-air kill against an Iraqi Mirage F-1 in the first minutes of Operation DESERT STORM when during an engagement that involved aggressive, low-altitude maneuvering, the F-1 impacted the ground. This feat is the only time an F-111 or its unarmed EF-111 variant, which Captain Brandon was in) ever achieved an aerial victory over another aircraft.Graduates have also made significant accomplishments as civilians., Class of 1984 was the firstofficer on United Airlines Flight 93, which was the fourth aircraft hijacked on September 11, 2001. It was the only flight to not make its intended target when the passengers and crew overpowered the hijackers and crashed the plane outside of Shanksville, PA., Class of 1973, successfully made a water landing on the Hudson River in New York. On takeoff, his aircraft was rendered powerless after a flock of geese struck and destroyed the engines. His actions saved all 155 people aboard the aircraft.As time passes, graduates of all ethnicities and genders have accomplished many things., Class of 1980, became the first Hispanic woman to graduate from any service academy as a member of the first class of women to graduate from the United States Air Force Academy.Retired, Class of 1964, became the first African American to command any space vehicle. In 1995,(now Retired Colonel), Class of 1988, became the first female to fly in combat and would also become first female to be the squadron commander of a combat aviation squadron., Class of 1997,

graduated as number one in the Order of Merit, but is more

notable for returning her severely damaged A-10 from over

Baghdad, Iraq on 7 April 2003. After being hit by Iraqi

ground fire, she flew the aircraft which had sustained





damage to one engine and the redundant hydraulic systems, disabling the flight controls, landing gear and horizontal stabilizer, as well as hundreds of holes in the airframe and large sections of the stabilizer for over an hour and landed safely back at her base.

, Class of 1961, became the first Hispanic graduate to be named the Dean of the Faculty. In 2004,, Class of 1983, became the first woman to become Dean of the Faculty at the Air Force Academy. In 2005,, Class of 1996, became the first female pilot of the US Air Force Thunderbirds aerial demonstration team., Class of 1982, was the first woman veteran in American history to serve in Congress. A distinguished graduate, she was also a Rhodes Scholar with masters and doctoral degrees in international relations from Oxford University in England. As an officer, she worked with our NATO allies and in the United Kingdom., Class of 1986, was the first woman to graduate first in the Order of Merit for her class.In January 1993,, Class of 1980, was the first woman graduate of the Air Force Academy to go into space as a mission specialist aboard the Shuttle Endeavor., Class of 2006, became the first female graduate killed by enemy action. Breaking a glass ceiling in 2012, the Senate confirmed, Class of 1980, as the United States Air Forces first female four star general. A career acquisition officer, she currently leads Air Force Material Command at Wright-Patterson AFB, OH., Class of 1981,

served as the first female Cadet Wing commander. After

graduation, she went on to be the first female Rhodes Scholar from the Air Force Academy. In 2013 she returned to her roots, becoming the first female Superintendent of

the Air Force Academy, and the first at one of the three

brakes, and

the first at one of the three

major service academies.





These former cadets have distinguished themselves in their various fields of endeavor, both as cadets and in many cases after graduation. They developed the necessary qualities of leadership and character as cadets and later employed them in the Air Force and in service to our nation.
Published: April 26, 2016

UT to Hold Spring Commencement Saturday, May 7

The University of Tampa will honor more than 1,400 graduates at its 142nd commencement on Saturday, May 7. The ceremony will take place at Amalie Arena at 9:30 a.m. The 1,486 degree candidates include 1,208 bachelors degree candidates and 278 masters degree candidates. The ceremony is free and open to the public.



The speaker for commencement is James MacLeod 70, chairman and CEO of CoastalSouth Bancshares Inc., a bank holding company that through its subsidiary, CoastalStates Bank, offers personal and business banking services in five states. MacLeod helped found CoastalStates Bank in 2004, which is now the largest local bank in Beaufort County, SC.



Griffin Guinta 16, a writing major from Bradenton, FL, will introduce the speaker. A magna cum laude graduate, Guinta served as editor-in-chief of UTs student newspaper, The Minaret, co-founded UTs first improvisational comedy group, Gluten-Free Improv, and was an active member of the Presidents Leadership Fellows.



Matthew Hartford 16, a criminology major from Georgetown, MA, will deliver the challenge to the graduating class. A cum laude graduate, Hartford served as the 2015-2016 Student Government vice president and has completed three internships with the Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Marshals Service and Massachusetts State Parole.



The Alumni Association will present two awards during the ceremony. MacLeod will receive the Esse Quam Videri Award, which is the highest award given by the association to a graduate of UT.



Jesse Klaucke 11, M.S. 13 will receive the Young Alumnus Award. Klaucke is a senior financial analyst at Mezrah Consulting. He has been a member of the UT Board of Counselors since 2013, and has used his knowledge and experience as a CPA to guest lecture undergraduate accounting classes and during UTs Financial Literacy Week.



In the days leading up to the ceremony, several departments will hold hooding ceremonies for their masters degree candidates:

Thursday, May 5: Department of Education hooding ceremony, 6 p.m., Plant Hall Fletcher Lounge

Friday, May 6: Department of Health Sciences and Human Performance hooding ceremony, 1 p.m., Martinez Athletics Center Department of Nursing hooding and pinning ceremony, 5 p.m., Falk Theater (by invitation only) Sykes College of Business hooding and awards ceremony, 6 p.m., Bob Martinez Athletics Center



UT Graduates by the Numbers

For more information on commencement, go to www.ut.edu/commencement . To view a webcast of the commencement ceremony, go to www.ut.edu/commencementlive . Tweet about commencement using #utampa.Total graduates = 1,486Countries represented = 68% of graduates from Florida = 40Total bachelors degree candidates = 1,208Summa cum laude (GPA 4.0) = 6Magna cum laude (GPA 3.75 or higher, but less than 4.0) = 80Cum laude (GPA 3.5 or higher, but less than 3.75) = 173Top 3 most popular undergraduate majors in this class = marketing, finance, advertising and public relationsTotal masters candidates = 278With honors (GPA 3.9 or higher, but less than 4.0) = 8With highest honors (GPA 4.0) = 8MBAs awarded = 122
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

Trend:

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations was organized in Baku at a high level, Abdurrahman Mohammad Fachir, Indonesian vice foreign minister, said.

Fachir made this statement at a meeting with Elmar Mammadyarov, Azerbaijani foreign minister, as part of the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations in Baku, the Azerbaijani foreign ministry said.

According to the ministry, the sides are pleased with the development of a political dialogue between Azerbaijan and Indonesia.

"The sides stressed the importance of further strengthening the consultations," the ministry said. "The successful continuation of the energy cooperation was also emphasized."

"The sides exchanged the views on establishing the relations between the diplomatic academies of the two countries, as well as on student exchange and tourism development," the ministry said.

According to the ministry, the sides also discussed issues of cooperation within international organizations.

Mammadyarov informed the guest about the recent aggravation on the line of contact of troops due to Armenia's diversion and the process of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict settlement.

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations will last until Apr.27.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

By Azad Hasanli - Trend:

Fitch Ratings international rating agency has assigned Russia-based IBA-Moscow Bank's (IBAM) three billion roubles' issue of fixed-rate rouble-denominated bonds a final long-term rating of 'BB', the message of the agency said.



The bonds have a tenor of three years with a put option in one year. The coupon for the first year has been set at 11.5 percent.

The proceeds from the issue are being used solely for IBAM's corporate purposes, according to the agency. Should IBAM fail to make a coupon or principal payment under the terms of the bonds, bondholders will benefit from a public irrevocable offer (PIO) that would allow them to sell the bonds to the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA).



The issue's rating is equalized with IBA's long-term foreign-currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR), reflecting Fitch's view that default risk on the bonds and on IBA's other senior unsecured obligations is essentially the same.

IBA's long-term IDR in turn reflects Fitch's view of a moderate probability of support for the bank, if needed, from the Azerbaijan sovereign (BB+/Negative).

This view factors in IBA's high systemic importance, stemming from the bank's dominant market shares and substantial funding from state-owned entities; the bank's majority state ownership; IBA's moderate size relative to the sovereign's available resources; the potentially significant reputational damage for the authorities in case of IBA's default; and the recently improved track record of support.



IBA-MOSCOW bank (a general license No 3395 of the Bank of Russia) was founded in 2002. It is a subsidiary of OJSC International Bank of Azerbaijan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

Trend:

The State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) sold $4.9 million to five banks through the auction held by the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA), SOFAZ's message said Apr. 26.

Meanwhile, the CBA, which obtained $30 million, has become for the first time one of the buyers of SOFAZ's currency resources.

SOFAZ offered $50 million for sale through the auction, according to the message.

SOFAZ will continue selling foreign currency through auctions in 2016.

The foreign currency is sold as part of SOFAZ's transfers to the Azerbaijani state budget, which are envisaged to stand at 7.615 billion Azerbaijani manats in 2016.

SOFAZ was established in 1999 with assets of $271 million.

As of January 1, 2016, SOFAZ assets reduced by 9.5 percent compared to 2014 ($37.1 billion) and were estimated at $33.57 billion.
As of every year, the talks of the internet ask, "Is the Undertaker finished after the biggest show of the year, Wrestlemania?" This year, the rumors going into the show, was it was supposed to be the Deadman's send off match by using the face of the company John Cena. It would be a perfect storybook ending to have John Cena, the face of the company, the most successful Superstar ever in wrestling - the man who has lived it all from the bottom of the card, to the top and one of the most loved superstars in the history of the sport.

But that wasn't meant to be due to a shoulder injury that sidelined the franchise John. Bringing back Shane McMahon was a last minute deal that worked in the favor of everybody since it's very clear that Undertaker isn't the same performer as he once was so keeping a match with Cena may have been a much slower show. Vince McMahon then put a stipulation on the match with the Hell in a Cell and if Taker lost, it would be his last Wrestlemania ever. It was never said that he would have to retire. The internet, being the machine that it is, made it out that this would in fact be Undertaker's last match. The rumor coming out of the Wrestlemania after party is that Undertaker was telling people that him - Shane was his last match. But let's face it, the door is open for him to come back.

Pena with an Attitude Adjustment on Undertaker www.b4indian.com

European Tour

When the European Wrestlemania revenge tour was announced, Undertaker was supposed to be in five shows which would have shut the retirement thing down for all of about five minutes. When it was headlined that Undertaker had been pulled from all European shows, which then sky rocketed the retirement rumors into an all-time high, it took the IWC by storm despite not knowing anything. The rumors were quickly shut down by Jim Ross, which he said that Taker will retire after either Wrestlemania 33 or 34, but the blog of Jim Ross mainly went unnoticed until Taker was put back into two out of the five shows but before most relished he was once again removed.

Reasons?

It was reported that Undertaker didn't go over seas because of the recent terrorist attacks in Belgium and France and that was the final reason we were given. Not many people believe that though. Many are still speculating that this is a sign that the Undertaker is finished. But if this is so, it isn't the first time that the Undertaker said he was finished even at 51 he is still able go.


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By Yazmin Cruz of the Ventura County Star

Ventura County is accepting applications for workers to help run polling places during the presidential primary election June 7.

People are needed for paid positions to staff and manage more than 360 polling places throughout the county. The positions include clerk, inspector and roving inspector.

Bilingual volunteers who can speak Spanish, Tagalog, Chinese and Hindi are especially needed, officials said.

All workers must be at least 18, be a U.S.citizen or legal permanent resident, and be able to read and speak English. Workers also must complete training and be available to work from 6 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Election Day.

Duties vary for each position but can include setting up and administering a polling place, helping voters sign in, verifying signatures, operating electronic voting machines, answering voter's procedural questions and closing polls.

A $20 stipend will be provided after completing the required training. Clerk workers will receive a $90 stipend, inspectors a $125 stipend and roving inspectors a $160 stipend plus mileage. Previous experience is required to be a roving inspector.

There is no deadline, but potential workers are encouraged to apply as soon as possible.

The poll worker application can be completed online at http://venturavote.org on the Poll Workers menu. To request a paper application, contact the Ventura County Elections Division at 654-2784 or apply in person at the Elections Division in the Hall of Administration, Lower Plaza, 800 S. Victoria Ave., Ventura.
STAR FILE PHOTO Gold Coast Health Plan.

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By Tom Kisken of the Ventura County Star

Citing concerns including potential conflict of interest, members of a Medi-Cal commission said they would scrap current bids and restart the process of finding a company to run a pharmacy benefits program.

After a closed-door meeting Monday night, the Ventura County Medi-Cal Managed Care Commission announced a special meeting would be scheduled to formally reject bids. The commission governs the Gold Coast Health Plan, which administers government-funded Medi-Cal health care for more than 200,000 Ventura County residents.

The health plan is seeking a company to coordinate its pharmacy program. A Script Care official said the company will be paid an administrative fee of $4.35 million over the current fiscal year. Gold Coast staff said Script Care will receive another $96 million for the cost of medications. The company's five-year contract is expiring.

Script Care officials made a proposal for keeping the job, and the company was one of three finalists chosen out of 10 firms. Other finalists were Magellan Rx Management and OptumRx.

Magellan and Script Care received the highest scores in an evaluation process.

In a news release after the closed meeting, commissioners expressed concern that Gold Coast CEO Dale Villani sat in on interviews held with two of the finalists, noting that he at one point owned shares in Magellan. He did not sit in the Magellan interview.

Officials said in the statement there was no evidence Villani's presence at interviews affected the way firms were evaluated.

"However, in an abundance of caution, the commissioners felt it was in the plan's best interest to reject all bids and restart the process," they said.

Commissioner Shawn Atin echoed those words Tuesday, saying the commission wanted to be careful.

"In the event that it would have had any influence whatsoever, the decision was to restart" the process, he said.

A Gold Coast spokesman confirmed Villani no longer owns the shares in Magellan.

Commissioners also said they want to be more involved in the selection process. They asked for more details on how the benefit manager would work with local pharmacies on issues including a government drug discount pricing program.

A date has not been set for the special meeting.

Clarification: Script Care will be paid $4.35 million in an administrative fee over this current fiscal year for coordinating the pharmacy benefits program, a Script Care official said Wednesday. In the original story posted Tuesday, Gold Coast staff said that fee is about $5 million.
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By Gretchen Wenner of the Ventura County Star

Rep. Steve Knight, whose 25th congressional district includes Simi Valley, will face three challengers in the June 7 primary.

Knight, a Republican from Lancaster, was elected to the House of Representatives in November 2014 after serving in the state Assembly and state Senate.

The district expands northeast of Simi Valley to include Santa Clarita, Palmdale, Lancaster and other parts of northern Los Angeles County.

California's top-two primary rules mean the two candidates with the most votes will go on to November's general election. In the June primary, voters will be able to choose from any of the four contenders regardless of party preference.

The 25th district primary ballot includes two Republicans and two Democrats. The candidates, with their ballot designations, are:

 Bryan Caforio, a consumer rights attorney. Caforio, a Democrat, lives in Valencia.

 Lou Vince, a Los Angeles Police Department lieutenant and member of the town council in Agua Dulce, an unincorporated community northeast of Santa Clarita. Vince is a Democrat.

 Knight, the incumbent.

 Jeffrey Moffatt, a federal law attorney. Moffatt, who lives in Lancaster, is a Republican.

The race has attracted attention on several fronts.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted the seat, calling Knight a vulnerable incumbent.

"Steve Knight is only keeping his weak operation afloat by putting his special interest donors before the safety of his constituents," committee spokeswoman Barb Solish said in a recent statement criticizing Knight for taking donations from gun, oil and gas interests.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, meanwhile, is focused on Caforio.

"Beverly Hills trial lawyer Bryan Caforio is so obviously carpetbagging into the 25th District that his only connection is a distant in-law who left Antelope Valley in 1925," committee spokesman Zach Hunter said in a recent release.

Vince, who has been endorsed by the California Democratic Party and others, has highlighted a rift between local-level activists and the national party, according to media accounts.

The district is about evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, with roughly 37 percent registered for each party. Nearly 21 percent state no party preference, according to the figures from the California Secretary of State's office.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

By Azad Hasanli - Trend:

Azerbaijan's economy is being rapidly developed, Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo y Marfil, Spanish foreign minister, told reporters April 26.

"I have been in Azerbaijan several times and every time I see the rapid development of the country's economy," the minister said.

The minister said that significant changes and progress were achieved in the areas of regulation and legislation.

During the business forum, Shahin Mustafayev, Azerbaijani economy minister, informed the Spanish delegation on the country's ongoing reforms to improve the business and investment spheres and expand the entrepreneurship.

Mustafayev stressed the broad opportunities for expanding the cooperation in a number of areas of the non-oil sector.

"Azerbaijan-Spain relations are being successfully developed in various spheres," Mustafayev said. "The sides have great potential for developing the cooperation in the fields of agriculture, export of agricultural products, food, tourism and others."

Baku hosted the Azerbaijani-Spanish business forum April 26. Some 120 businessmen, representing various sectors of the economy, including the construction sector, industry, agriculture, transport, energy, aircraft manufacturing, consulting services, etc. attended the event.

According to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee, the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Spain amounted to 37.85 million manat in the first quarter of 2016. Some 26.13 million manat accounted for the export of Azerbaijani goods.
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By Yazmin Cruz of the Ventura County Star

Crews extinguished a fully involved structure fire in Ventura on Monday evening, officials said.

The Ventura City Fire department responded to a report of smoke coming from behind a business at 7:24 p.m. in the 2400 block of Channel Drive, officials said.

When crews arrived firefighters found a mobile construction office fully engulfed in fire, officials said. Firefighters worked to protect a boat and surrounding area that was impacted by the fire.

Southern California Edison was called to shut off power lines above the fire that were damaged, authorities said.

The blaze was knocked down eight minutes after firefighters arrived, officials said.

No injuries were reported and the cause of the fire was undetermined, authorities said.
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By Arlene Martinez, amartinez@vcstar.com

Whether a City Council member should be limited to 12 straight years in office and if they should get a raise will be decided by Ventura voters in November.

Residents will also decide if the council should determine the best way to run city elections.

The council on Monday voted 5-2 to put changes to the city's charter before voters, despite voicing concerns that the ballot is expected to be fairly lengthy and could include a city sales tax question.

The proposed changes will appear as three separate measures. Each measure must be approved by a simple majority.

Mayor Erik Nasarenko and Council member Neal Andrews voted against the proposal.

If the term limits measure passes, council members could serve no more than three consecutive four-year terms before taking a four-year break. The clock would start on those who are elected after the change.

Councilman Neal Andrews said term limits don't work and serve as a "disadvantage to abandon that expertise."

The electorate, he said, sets term limits with its vote.

A separate measure would ask voters to raise monthly salaries from $600 to $1,200 for the council and from $700 to $1,500 for mayor. The salaries have not increased since 1986.

Though staff members proposed pushing salary increases to a future election, several members of the council agreed now was as good a time as any.

"I feel like it's never a good time," Council member Christy Weir said.

On the third measure, voters will decide whether to line up the mayor and deputy mayor terms with those of the council. Currently, the two-year positions change in odd years, but the council terms expire in even years. The schedule got off after voters approved moving elections from odd to even years.

As part of the same measure, voters will decide whether to remove the Ventura Unified School District from the city charter. That would protect Ventura from a lawsuit in the event the district were sued for its election process, City Attorney Gregory Diaz said.

Like Ventura, the district has at-large elections, meaning residents vote on every elected official. That puts the city and district at risk for a challenge under the California Voting Rights Act. That possibility is largely why the city's charter review committee recommended the process be changed.

Rather than put the changes to a vote  be it a move to geographic districts, a hybrid of at-large and geographic districts or something else  voters will decide whether the council can make the changes via an ordinance.

Committee member Cheryl Collart said residents should have more of a say. Giving the council the authority does not give the process the "transparency or clarity that you're looking for," she said.

Andrews said allowing an ordinance to dictate the change opened up the city to "political mischief."

Nasarenko said he preferred the charter changes be limited only to the ones that exposed the city to potential litigation.

"I would want the thrust of this to be a litigation prevention strategy," he said.

Resident Mark Abbe urged the council to put the measures on the ballot. He called the committee's work "very thorough and very thoughtful."

The "only reason to put off term limits is if you oppose it yourself," he said.

He called council's pay "ridiculously low."


On Wednesday, Feb. 24, Minus5 Ice Bar at The Shoppes at Mandalay Place, Americas first ice bar which opened in 2008, debuted its all-new ice display and ice lounge. Guests experienced the revamped space featuring a 1,300 square-foot ice bar made of 120 tons of 100% pure Canadian ice and a newly expanded 3,000 square-foot ice lounge (Pictured: FANTASY Cast Members).

Celebrity appearances for the evening included cast members from the Australian Bee Gees, Defending the Caveman, FANTASY, Raiding the Rock Vault, and many more.

Minus5 Ice Bar showcased its museum-quality carvings, designed by a team of award-winning ice carvers. Guests mixed and mingled while enjoying the eclectic mix of replica-inspired sculptures such as the Las Vegas Skyline, Las Vegas Welcome Sign, the Iron Throne from HBOs Game of Thrones, and much more.

In addition, guests enjoyed passed hors doeuvres and warmed up with cocktails in the Ice Lounge, adjacent to Minus5 Ice Bar. The ice lounge features seating for up to 500 guests on a flow, including a 20-seat bar and two private rooms that can accommodate up to 80 guests each, making it a great destination for private events.


UFC fighters, Anthony and Sergio Pettis, partied the night away after UFC 197 on Saturday night at Chateau Nightclub & Rooftop at Paris Las Vegas (Photo Courtesy of Chateau Nightclub & Rooftop).

The Wisconsin natives arrived at the club with a group of friends after their UFC bouts, both sporting simple black t-shirts with gold chains; Anthony completed his look with dark sunglasses while Sergio flaunted a grey sport coat. The brothers mingled with the crowd and took photos with fans before making their way to a lavish VIP booth where they partied with close friends for the rest of the night under the iconic Eiffel Tower.

Sergio emerged from UFC 197 a winner, defeating Chris Kelades in the Flyweight division bout, while former Lightweight Champion, Anthony, battled in a fight to defend his title against Edson Barboza.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

By Aygun Badalova - Trend:

OPEC oil production will further rise reaching 32.9 million barrels per day in 2016 and 33 million barrels per day in 2017, according to the forecasts of the US JP Morgan bank.

Saudi Arabia's oil output is expected by JP Morgan analysts at 10.3 million barrels per day in 2016 and 2017.

"Saudi Arabian output is increased marginally from previous estimates, following the collapse of the Doha talks, which were the only adjustments made prior to the meeting, analysts said in their monthly Oil Market report, obtained by Trend. Additional gas supplies this year are expected from the Wasit gas processing facility following the start of the Hasbah and Arabiyah offshore gas fields."

The meeting of oil producers in Doha last week ended without reaching any agreement. The talks on oil output freeze collapsed after Saudi Arabia surprised the group by reasserting a demand that Iran also agrees to cap its oil production.

"While we remain cautious on the speed of the recovery in Iran, Saudi Arabia's last minute insistence on all OPEC members' participation in the agreement to cap production at January levels in our mind reveals a dysfunctional approach to the producer negotiations that may have damaged other nations' willingness to participate in further initiatives," JP Morgan's analysts said.

OPEC's total oil output was 32.25 million barrels a day in March 2016, which is by 15,000 barrels more than in February, according to OPEC's recent report. The official quota for the OPEC oil output is 30 million barrels per day.
Located in Long Xuyen city, Smart City will supply accommodation for around 12,000 people when finished in 2018.

Smart City An Giang occupies an ideal venue since it is located at the backbone transport system of the Mekong River Delta, neighboured by the major roads of Thoai Ngoc Hau, Trieu Quang Phuc, and Dien Bien Phu.

The project consists of different types of residential estates, such as semi-detached houses, high-rise building apartments, and villas, offering close-at-hand facilities, such as schools, hospitals, parks, shop houses, and a trading centre. More than 40 per cent of the total land area was reserved for green and public space, as well as a convenient infrastructure system.

According to Tran Thi Diu Hoa, general director of N.H.O, Smart City An Giang is one of the companys major projects in 2016.

This project will not only create more accommodation, but increase the living standard of local residents of the Mekong River Delta, as well as attract more investors to develop other projects the area, Hoa said.

N.H.O is a joint venture between TAG Investment Joint Stock Company and NIBC Investment Limited. With a range of brands, like First Home, First Home Premium, First Residence, Nobilis, and Smart City, N.H.O expects to build around 25,000 units of accommodation in Vietnam.
Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton celebrates victory in the New York state primary on Apr 19, 2016 in New York City. (AFP/Timothy A. Clary)

WASHINGTON: Five US states vote Tuesday at a critical juncture in the presidential race, with Hillary Clinton seeking a knockout against Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump confident of extending his lead despite rivals joining forces against him.

A very strong showing in primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island would put former secretary of state Clinton on the cusp of Democratic victory, a monumental step in her quest to become the nation's first female commander in chief.

"I don't have the nomination yet," she said in an MSNBC town hall event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's largest city.

"We're going to work really hard until the polls close tomorrow."

Trump too was traveling the primary landscape in an intensifying effort to surpass the threshold of 1,237 delegates needed to lock down the role of 2016 Republican flag bearer.

But his rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich controversially have joined forces to thwart the frontrunner, unveiling a late ploy that allows them to essentially go one on one against Trump in key upcoming states.

According to the surprise deal, Kasich will forego campaigning in Indiana, which votes May 3, and Cruz will return the favor later in New Mexico and Oregon to try to deprive Trump of victories there.

Cruz told potential voters in Indiana Monday that the deal would give them "a straight and direct choice between our campaign and Donald Trump."

Indiana is a winner-take-all state where a Trump loss would make it much harder for him to reach the winning delegate threshold.

'PATHETIC PLAN'

Trump erupted at news of the deal, assailing the pair as engaging in a desperate strategy that he described as collusion.

"You know if you collude in business, or you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail," Trump boomed in Warwick, Rhode Island.

"But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude."

The partnership "shows how weak they are," Trump said. "It shows how pathetic they are."

Kasich's campaign said the aim was to open the July nominating convention in Cleveland so that a unifying figure other than Trump can emerge as the candidate.

The Ohioan insists he is the only one who could beat Clinton. But his remarks suggested the alliance with Cruz was already fraying.

"I've never told them not to vote for me" in Indiana, he told reporters at a Philadelphia diner. "They ought to vote for me."

"What's the big deal?" he added.

According to a recent CBS poll, Trump leads Indiana with 40 percent of likely Republican voters, compared to 35 percent for Cruz and 20 percent for Kasich.

The newfound allies acknowledge their only hope of success lies in blocking Trump from reaching 1,237 delegates before the convention.

If he falls short, Trump runs the risk that his delegates, who are bound to vote for him in only the first round of balloting, will desert him in subsequent rounds.

Cruz in particular has been successfully maneuvering in state party conventions to have individuals named to delegate slots who, though bound to Trump on the first ballot, would be sympathetic to Cruz in subsequent rounds when they are free to vote for whomever they choose.

Party heavyweights, alarmed by the prospect of a Trump nomination, have long pressed for a united effort around a single candidate against him.

But Cruz is almost as unpopular with the party's establishment as Trump, and Kasich has refused to bow out even though he has only won his home state of Ohio.

"Folks, they ought to both drop out of the race so we ought to unify the Republican Party," Trump told supporters in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

'TERRIBLE ROLE MODELS'

Cruz, perhaps emboldened by the prospect of stopping Trump, has already begun searching for possible vice presidential options.

His campaign chairman Chad Sweet confirmed to CNN that Cruz was vetting several potential vice presidential candidates, and that businesswoman Carly Fiorina, herself a former White House hopeful, "absolutely" was among them.

In an election year that has highlighted voter disaffection with politics as usual, a chaotic convention fight would almost surely damage Republican prospects in November.

The bruising battle is already straining the party and its supporters.

Billionaire Charles Koch, a mega-funder for conservative causes, said in an interview Sunday with ABC's "This Week" that the Republican candidates were "terrible role models" and did not see how he could support them.

Raising eyebrows among Republicans, Koch added it was "possible" Clinton would be a better president.

Trump is favored to win all five states Tuesday, while Sanders, whose grass-roots campaign has done well against the Clinton juggernaut, is seen as mounting a last-gasp effort.

"We are running as hard as we can to win this thing," Sanders said Monday.


The entry of overseas companies into the local fuel industry will heighten competition

Photo: Le Toan

Japanese company Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd and Kuwait Petroleum International Ltd (KPI) have recently applied to register a joint-venture company to distribute petroleum products in Vietnam.

The joint venture, named Idemitsu Q8 Petroleum Limited Liability Company, will operate in the import, wholesale, and retail of petroleum products, mainly through the construction and management of service stations across Vietnam.

This will be the first foreign-invested partnership to participate in fuel distribution and retailing in Vietnam.

Idemitsu stated that through the establishment of this petroleum product distribution company, the two companies will supply the growing Vietnamese market, where demand for petroleum products is expected to follow a steady upward trend.

KPI and Idemitsu currently hold 35.1 per cent each in the project to set up Nghi Son Petrochemical Complex in Thanh Hoa province. The remainder is held by state-owned PetroVietnam.

The products distributed by the joint venture will come from the Nghi Son complex, which is currently under construction and will be put into operation in 2017.

Last week, JX Nippon Oil and Energy Corporation (JX Nippon), another oil and gas giant from Japan, announced that it had officially agreed to purchase an eight per cent stake from the state-run Petrolimex, which holds 55 per cent of the local petroleum retail market share.

This move will help JX Nippon secure business opportunities in Vietnam, where the current demand for petroleum products is approximately 350,000 barrels per day and is rising steadily.

The acquisition shifts JX Nippon one step closer to building its first overseas oil refinery in Vietnam, and may even position it in the nationwide petrol distribution market. As part of our co-operation strategy, JX Nippon and Petrolimex have signed a memorandum of understanding to start a joint study for the construction of a refinery in Van Phong Economic Zone, said JX Nippon president Tsutomu Sugimori.

According to economic expert Ngo Tri Long, the participation of foreigners in petrol distribution will increase the competitiveness of the market and ultimately benefit end-users by expanding the petrol retail sector.

With an increased profile in the oil and gas industry, foreign investors would not merely bring greater financial resources to the domestic sector, they would also offer experience in management and distribution, Long said.

However, under current regulations, foreigners can only become distributors if they are investing in oil and gas refineries in Vietnam.

The $8-billion Nam Van Phong oil refinery project, which is expected to come online by mid-2020 at the earliest, will produce approximately five million tonnes of crude oil per year.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Vietnam currently has 24 fuel wholesalers, which import fuel, or buy it from the countrys sole operating refinery Dung Quat, and then sell it on the domestic market.

Currently, Petrolimex, PetroVietnams PV Oil, and Saigon Petro are dominating nationwide petrol distribution with a combined market share of around 75 per cent.
Located in Mang Thit district in the Mekong Delta province of Vinh Long and costing over $30 million, the new factory is the Dutch firm's second facility of this kind in the area.



The new facility, called Vinh Long 2, will produce feed for cattle, pigs, and poultry at a capacity of 250,000 tonnes a year in the first phase, thus helping increase De Heus Vietnam's total output to one million tonnes a year.

Vinh Long 2 is the first plant with a river port. Utilising the water ways, the logistics of incoming raw materials and outgoing finished products can be organized in a more efficient way between Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Mekong Delta region.

"The new facility is an important step in our ambition to contribute to the agricultural development of Vietnam, said Gabor Fluit, De Heus Asias business group director.

Coinciding with the operation of its seventh plant, De Heus Vietnam announced that Vietnam had been selected as the official headquarters of of its Asia branch.

Operating in Vietnam for eight years now, De Heus has continued expanding its operations in the country to become one of the five biggest animal feed producers in the country.

The Vietnamese animal feed market has developed rapidly, with an average growth rate of 10-13 per cent a year. The animal feed market is expected to reach $10.55 billion by 2022.

According to a recent report released by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, foreign companies account for a smaller quantity but hold 60-65 per cent of the domestic market. Thai CP Vietnam Livestock Corporation and the US Cargill Vietnam Co., Ltd. hold the largest market share, with a combined 30 per cent.

Industry insiders said that, together with the increasing involvement of Vietnamese firms, the expansion of foreign players would make competition in the local animal feed market fiercer in the months to come.
According to the Party Central Committees Commission for External Relations (CER), Bounnhang Vorachith, newly-elected General Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party and Laos State President, will pay an official friendship visit to Vietnam during April 25-27, 2016. Made at the invitation of Vietnams Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, this will be Vorachiths first visit abroad as Laos Party General Secretary and State President during his 2016-2020 tenure.

The visit helps affirm the two countries consistent foreign policies in attaching special importance to continuing to keep and develop their great friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive co-operation, said a CER document on the visit.

This visit is also aimed to further strengthening the political trust between the leaders of the two parties and two states in their new tenures [2016-2020], the document said.

According to the CER, the visit will also be a chance for Vietnam to continue strongly and comprehensively supporting Laos national development, and contributing to supporting Laos to successfully implement its 10th Party Resolution made recently, and its eighth five-year socio-economic development plan, and successfully acting as Chair of ASEAN in 2016 as well.

During this visit, Vorachith will hold bilateral talks with Trong, and met with Vietnams newly-elected leaders including State President Tran Dai Quang, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan. The two sides will discuss solutions to boost the bilateral investment co-operation and well implement high-level agreements earlier made by the two parties and two governments for 2016 and beyond.

During the visit, the two sides will release a joint statement, said the CER document.

Vorachith and Trong will also visit and make speeches at Vietnams Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics in Hanoi. This event will be notably televised live. The Lao leader will also visit Ho Chi Minh City and make a tour to some economic establishments there.

The two countries investment co-operation is flourishing. Vietnams Laos-based biggest investment project, which is to exploit and process potassium salt, begun construction last September. The $522.46 million project will use potassium salt as material to produce potassium fertiliser. Last May, Vietnams Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group inaugurated the $36 million Attapeu International Airport in Laos southernmost province of Attapeu. The airport was invested under the form of build-transfer within two years, from May 2013 to May 2015.

According to Vietnams Ministry of Planning and Investment, Vietnamese investors have invested almost $5 billion into Laos to date.
Long said that after receiving the customers complaint, Lazada immediately carried out an inspection at its distributor, The Gioi Online 360 store, where the customer bought the refurbished product. In addition, Lazada Vietnam requested the store to suspend its operation.

At the end of the investigation, Lazada Vietnam detected that the store traded used and refurbished electronics products, which are banned on Lazada.

Lazada sent an apology and committed to refunding the customers money.

After the unwelcome incident, Lazada will increase control over its distributors to prevent it from happening again, Long said.

On April 5, Nguyen Duc Long registered to buy a new Iphone 5 worth VND5 million ($224.38) on Lazada.vn. After receiving the product, Long brought it to a thegioididong store to insert a SIM card, where a technical staff detected that Longs Iphone 5 had been refurbished.

Long suspected deliberate foul play on Lazada Vietnams part and called the hotline to inform the company about the problem.

A representative of Lazada Vietnam promised to carry on an inspection and committed to notifying him of the results within seven to nine days.

Established in 2012, Lazada, which operates the number one online shopping website in Southeast Asia, currently operates ecommerce platforms in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Lazada Vietnam has built up a strong and interconnected ecosystem of three elements-marketing, operations, and a commercial arm that has so far attracted 3,000 retailers providing 500,000 products across 13 different categories.

Chinas Alibaba Group Holding Limited recently announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire a controlling stake in ecommerce company Lazada.

In 2015, Lazada reported a four-fold increase in revenue in Vietnam. Dardy, in a recent interview with VIR, said Vietnam was one of the most promising markets among the six countries in Lazadas network, with a high level of internet penetration and smartphone ownership. However, the challenges in doing ecommerce in Vietnam, compared to in other countries, are the underdeveloped payment methods, the smaller basket size due to the low trust between customers and sellers, and merchants lacking in professionalism.


photo source: AFP

The stake accounts for 6 per cent of the overall shares and one third of the voting shares. According to the paper, Novartis wants to take bids from select investors to make sure that the buyers would be acceptable to Roche.

Novartis first-quarter core net income fell by 13 per cent. The result is attributed to expired patents, a decrease in the sales of eye-care subsidiary Alcon and the unsuccessful launch of its new heart medicine Entresto.

Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche operates in biotech, cancer drugs, and personalised healthcare. Roche Pharma established its presence in Vietnam with the opening of its representative office in Ho Chi Minh City in 1994 and in Hanoi in 1995. It sells pharmaceuticals to treat a range of diseases, including cancer, hepatitis, anaemia, and rheumatoid arthritis. The companys sales of pharmaceutical products are restricted, as is the case with all foreign companies operating in the sector in Vietnam. They are not allowed to directly distribute their products, instead having to sell through Vietnamese distributors.

In 2012, Roche Diagnostics received the investment certificate to become a 100 per cent foreign-owned limited company in Vietnam. The license enabled the company to increase cooperation with government agencies and partners as well as to import and distribute equipment and chemicals used in diagnosis.

In the first quarter of 2016, the AsiaPacific recorded the second highest growth in sales among regions where Roches diagnostics division operates, with 16 per cent, wading only behind Latin Americas 21 per cent, and running rings around the whole divisions growth of 5 per cent. The region also drove growth in the sale of Avastin, a drug for advanced colorectal, breast, lung, kidney, cervical, and ovarian cancer and glioblastoma (a type of brain tumour), with 29 per cent, compared to the drugs overall sales growth of 4 per cent.

Novartis has two representative offices in Vietnam, one in Hanoi, one in Ho Chi Minh City. The Novartis portfolio in Vietnam includes innovative pharmaceuticals, high-quality generics from Sandoz, and cutting-edge eye care solutions from Alcon. In August 2015 its generics division Sandoz signed a distribution agreement with Vietnamese drug company Traphaco.

Vietnam is considered a market harbouring great potential for pharmaceutical companies due to the underdeveloped state of the public health sector characterised by overcrowded hospitals and patients with limited access to advanced medical treatment. Fast Market Research said the countrys spending of pharmaceuticals nearly touched the $4.2 billion mark in 2015, up from $3.8 billion in 2014, with overall healthcare spending at $11.7 billion in 2015.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Apr. 26

By Huseyn Hasanov- Trend:

Turkmenistan and Germany discussed the issues of expanding the two countries' trade and economic relations in various fields at the intergovernmental level in Berlin, said the message issued Apr. 26 by the Turkmen embassy in Germany.

From the Turkmen side the country's Economy and Development Minister Batyr Bazarov took part in the meeting of the joint intergovernmental working group on trade and economic cooperation.

The parties discussed prospective directions of the two countries' cooperation in the spheres of economy, energy, finance, health, agriculture and environmental protection, infrastructure and tourism.

Representatives of the two countries' relevant ministries held meetings, during which they discussed the training of specialists in the areas of management.

The trade turnover between Turkmenistan and Germany has increased by 11 percent over the recent years. More than 60 business entities with the German capital opened their branches and representative offices in Turkmenistan.

Turkmenistan is interested in attracting Germany's big capital and advanced technologies.

The sides regularly hold joint business forums, which bring together representatives of companies specialized in trade, energy, chemical industry, banking sphere, transport, communications, construction, industry and the agricultural sector. RWE, Bosch, KNAUF International Gmbh, STRABAG AG, CLAAS Global Sales GmbH, Siemens AG Healthcare Sector, Goetzpartners Management Consultants GmbH and others are among those companies.
Oil prices fell on Monday amid concerns about elevated US inventories and Saudi Arabia's reported imminent completion of a key oilfield expansion project, potentially adding to abundant global supplies. (Photo: AFP/Amer Hilabi)

NEW YORK: Oil prices fell on Monday (Apr 25) amid concerns about elevated US inventories and Saudi Arabia's reported imminent completion of a key oilfield expansion project, potentially adding to abundant global supplies.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in June fell US$1.09 (2.5 per cent) to US$42.64 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

In London, Brent North Sea crude for June, the European benchmark, closed at US$44.48 a barrel, down 63 cents (1.4 per cent) from Friday's settlement.

Both contracts had clocked weekly gains in the past three weeks.

Phil Flynn of Price Futures Group noted that prices chopped between gains and losses on Monday in light volume. "They turned lower when Genscape, the private forecaster, showed an increase in crude supplies in Cushing, Oklahoma," Flynn said.

US commercial crude supplies are currently near historic highs and traders keep a close eye on the levels at the Cushing oil terminal, where the supplies serve as the price basis for WTI contract. The Department of Energy reports on stockpiles report on Wednesday.

Bloomberg News meanwhile reported that the Saudi state oil company Aramco will complete an expansion of its Shaybah oilfield by the end of May, allowing the world's largest exporter to maintain total capacity at 12 million barrels a day. The move will see Shaybah's capacity rise from 750,000 barrels to 1.0 million barrels a day.

The report caused "market jitters", said Bernard Aw, an analyst with IG Markets in Singapore.

"If the Saudis ramp production up by a substantial amount, the US$40 mark should be easily broken. That creates a problem that we're not even going to see the oil market rebalance, not even by the first half of next year," he told AFP.

Separately Saudi Arabia unveiled a sweeping reform plan to wean its economy away from oil dependence. The measures include the possible public offering of less than five percent of Aramco, which a top prince said is worth in total US$2-2.5 trillion.
One corner of Thuy Chau tourist site in Di An town (Photo: baogiaothong.vn)

Guides pick up passengers at 7:30 am every Saturday and Sunday at the Sai Gon Railway Station to catch train SE6, which departs at 8:00 and arrives in Di An town at 8:45.

The return leg uses train SPT1 that leaves Di An town at 17:35, arriving in Ho Chi Minh City at 18:35.

Earlier, Sai Gon Railways JSC also launched new routes to connect the citys outskirts with Bien Hoa city, the neighbouring province of Dong Nai. The new routes are expected to meet the demand for shorter routes, reducing pressure on overcrowded roads.

There are ten trains running each day, including two trains connecting Song Than and Bien Hoa, four connecting Bien Hoa and Go Vap and four connecting Bien Hoa and Sai Gon.
Can you describe how 500 Startups works, and how Vietnam fits into your overall investment strategy?

500 Startups is an early-stage venture fund headquartered in California in the US. So far, weve invested $250 million in 1,600 companies in 50 countries via a series of micro-funds focusing on specific markets or industries. One of our earliest investees in Southeast Asia is GrabTaxi, a popular taxi-hailing app from Malaysia.

In March, we launched a $10-million fund for Vietnamese startups, with each investment ranging from $100,000 to $250,000. This new fund will be managed by our Vietnam-based venture partners. As the most active Silicon Valley seed-stage venture capital firm in Vietnam, we hope to build on pioneering efforts by IDG Ventures and DFJ VinaCapital.

500 Startups is excited about Vietnam because we can see great growth potential in the country, with a tech-savvy young population and a range of promising startups. To be honest, a few years ago American investors used to be a bit sceptical about Vietnam as a startup market. However, things have changed drastically as Vietnam becomes more open to the world, and American investors understand that if they hesitate to join this dynamic scene, theyll be missing out.



US-based 500 Startups is seeking early seed investment prospects in local enterprises

Photo: Le Toan

What are some criteria that 500 Startups apply when looking for Vietnamese firms?

We see opportunities everywhere, in all shapes and forms, as diversity is what were striving for. However, we do have some criteria in mind when choosing startups. Firstly, we like firms that have a potential for fast growth. For example, the number of a startups customers should grow from 10 to 100 in two-to-three years. Obviously, it may differ from case to case, but overall were looking for aggressive startups with quick actions in mind.

Secondly, the startup must be able to attract and retain customers. It shouldnt be a once-off purchase and this requires commitment and perseverance from the startup owners. Thirdly, the firms current valuation should be cheap, as were an early-stage investor and dont want to pour capital into an expensive startup. Generally, we look for at least a three-fold growth potential from the time we invest.

Overall, my advice is that when approaching early-seed investors like us, Vietnamese startups should put their best foot forward. What is the best aspect of their firm? If its a brilliant team with loads of experience, contacts, and skills, flaunt it. If its a ground-breaking idea or new technology, please tell us right away. Likewise, if your startup is growing at breakneck speed, that is a major advantage.

Will 500 Startups Vietnam fund focus only on the trendy sectors of e-commerce and financial technology?

Its indeed true that many Vietnamese startups nowadays are in e-commerce or financial technology, such as online stores, payment platforms, or personal finance. At 500 Startups, weve always paid a lot of attention to startups in these areas, and many Vietnamese firms have proven to be promising.

However, its notable that technology is a very broad term, covering various smaller areas. Wed also like to see more unique startups that use technology as a basis for their service. One sector that were eager to know more about is food  not just the usual restaurants and cafes, but alternative ways to eat and drink that are enabled by technology.

The traditional business community often thinks of startups as threats. What is your opinion on this matter?

I believe that rather than competing against more established firms, Vietnamese startups should collaborate with traditional businesses. This is a win-win situation, as startups can gain support and network while businesses get access to new ideas and talents.

Im actually quite excited about all the trade agreements that Vietnam has signed, most notably the Trans-Pacific Partnership, because increased trade and lower taxes will benefit both big companies and startups. With this in mind, 500 Startups will continue to keep a close eye on Vietnam.


photo source: enternews.vn

General director of Taekwang Power Holdings Sang Yuon Yoo, in a meeting with Quang Tri authorities, expressed the firms interest in the Quang Tri 2 thermal power project in the Quang Tri Southeast Economic Zone.

Vice Chairman of Quang Tris provincial Peoples Committee Nguyen Quan Chinh said the local province was seeking investors to finance the project, which will be carried out under build-operate-transfer (BOT) or build-own-operate (BOO) methods, with an estimated total investment of $1.5 billion.

The thermal power project is one of 17 incentivised projects for which the province is actively seeking investment over the 2016-2020 period.

A consortium of Taekwang Power Holdings and ACWA Power is the investor of the $2 billion Nam Dinh 1 power project. Nam Dinh 1 is an independent greenfield project that will be developed on a BOT basis. It is part of the 2,400MW Nam Dinh thermal power complex in northern Nam Dinh province.

According to a source from the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), after negotiations on the BOT contract, the consortium and the MoIT reached an agreement on most of the contracts content. The investment licence for this project is anticipated to be granted this year.

The Nam Dinh coal-fired power plant is the largest foreign-invested project in the province. When the plant begins operating, it will create more than 1,000 jobs for Nam Dinh, contributing to the provinces economic shift towards industrialisation.

Also in Quang Tri province, Thailands EGATi is to develop the $2.26 billion Quang Tri thermal power plant. The investor is negotiating with the MoIT. The project will be built under the BOT model over a 25-year period, and use imported coal as feed material.

The Vietnamese energy sector is expected to be the next big driver for foreign direct investment growth in the country this year. Foreign direct investment in this sector will likely reach a record high of about $4 - 5 billion in 2016, while other BOO and independent power producers are speeding up the construction of their projects.


The majority of iron inputs for steel manufacturing in Vietnam is produced domestically

Photo: Le Toan

Under Vietnams WTO commitments, the ceiling import duty for such goods is 5 per cent.

According to the General Department of Customs (GDC), 73 per cent of total pig iron imports currently enjoy the 0 per cent tax rate. In monetary terms, this amounts to $12.7 million of the $17.3 million total.

The tax hike was proposed by Korean-invested iron manufacturer Dongbu Vietnam. The firm, which accounts for over 40 per cent of locally produced pig iron, complained that its competitiveness had been undermined by cheap imported pig iron.

According to the company, the average market price of pig iron fell from VND6 million ($275) per tonne in 2015 to the current level of VND4.4 million ($202) per tonne. This dip in market price has resulted in losses for Dongbu, and has even caused the closure of other firms factories.

The GDC calculated that the import price has decreased by 25 per cent, down from $392 per tonne in 2014 to $292 per tonne in 2015.

Dongbu said that the company and other iron producers were filing a petition to call for safeguard measures against iron imports. However, since the administrative procedures would take time, producers asked for an immediate intervention in the form of tax policies.

However, due to concerns that the new policy would harm some steel manufacturers that import iron as an input material, the MoF decided to raise the duty to just 3 per cent as opposed to the proposed 5 per cent hike.

Nguyen Van Sua, Deputy Chairman of the Vietnam Steel Manufacturers Association endorsed the tax hike, saying The policy will protect the local iron industry without harming steel production.

Sua explained that the majority of iron inputs for steel manufacturing had been produced domestically. However, he also suggested that high-quality iron, which is currently used for foundry, should not be taxed due to the shortage of supply locally.

This is not the first time that the MoF has intervened through tax policy with regard to imports. For instance, in January of this year, before an anti-dumping investigation was initiated, the ministry raised the import duty levied on billet and long steel by ten per cent, as cheaply imported products were threatening the local steel sector. Currently, billet and long steel imports are subject to temporary safeguard duties of 23.3 per cent and 14.2 per cent, respectively. This toll comes after Hoa Phat Steel JSC, Southern Steel Co. Ltd, Thai Nguyen Iron and Steel JSC, and Vietnam-Italy Steel JSC called for safeguard measures to be taken against imported products.

The MoF, working in close collaboration with the GDC, has vowed to carefully control customs clearance of the imports.
Opponents of a proposed transatlantic trade deal (TTIP) hold inflatebale letters during a prostest rally on the eve of President Obama's vist to Hannover, Germany. (AFP/John MacDougall)

WASHINGTON: US and European Union negotiators began meeting in New York on Monday (Apr 25) for a new round of talks on an ambitious transatlantic trade pact.

But the discussions on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which both sides want completed by year-end, come amid rising anti-free trade talk in the US presidential election race and the threat that Britain could move to pull out of the 28-nation EU this year.

The week-long talks are the 13th round of negotiations on the TTIP pact since they began in July 2013. They have run well past the original target deadline of last October.

TTIP is billed as a free-trade and investment deal for the 21st century, focused heavily on harmonizing regulations and standards, lowering barriers on investment, opening access to government contracts and addressing new areas like data trade and consumer protections.

But they face rising resistance and protectionist sentiment on both sides, as critics question the benefits of more open trade.

In the United States, politicians of both major parties battling to replace President Barack Obama in the November elections have taken to battering the TTIP's sister pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, already negotiated under Obama's lead and now awaiting ratification by 12 Pacific Rim nations.

And in Europe, there is deep public suspicion that TTIP will erode a wide range of social and consumer protections to the advantage of companies.

Obama said on Sunday in Hanover, Germany, that the two sides need to keep pressing forward to complete an agreement by year-end.

"Then it will be presented to our various legislatures, but at that point we will have the negotiations completed and people will be able to see why this would be good for our two countries," he said.

The day before, tens of thousands of people marched through Hanover against TTIP.

German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned Sunday that the deal would fail if the United States refused to make concessions, notably on issues of European access to US public procurement contracts.

"They don't want to open their public tenders to European companies. For me, that goes against free trade," Gabriel told business newspaper Handelsblatt.

The public is wary on both sides of the Atlantic as well because the details of the talks are secret and a deal, once completed, it is to be presented to respective legislatures on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, with no changes to be allowed on any details.
FETP in Vietnam is a two-year program led by the Ministry of Health's General Department of Preventive Medicine aimed at building trained epidemiologists who can rapidly respond to epidemics and other public health events, the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi said in a press release.

The program, supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S. CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), Training Programs in Epidemiology and Public Health Interventions Network, and South Asia Field Epidemiology and Technology Network.

There are currently 22 field epidemiologists who have completed the program since FETP was established in Vietnam in 2009.

FETP fellows have contributed to public health in Vietnam through their involvement in outbreak responses such as cholera, avian and pandemic influenza, and hand foot and mouth disease.

During the program, fellows conduct independent research studies which are then used to inform timely and effective disease outbreak responses.

Research topics include zoonotic diseases transmitted from animals to humans, food-borne diseases, vaccine preventable diseases and immunization, HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases.

FETP fellows are at the frontline of any strong public health system, said Dr. Anthony Mounts, country director of the U.S. CDC in Vietnam. When an outbreak occurs, such as in the recent Zika virus cases in Vietnam, they are the disease detectives that go into the field and investigate the outbreak.

Through the program, they receive hands-on training and mentoring in the use of scientific approaches to identify causes and trends of public health issues, Dr. Mounts said.

An induction of the seventh class of FETP fellows and the launch of an alumni network to strengthen information sharing and training of FETP alumni also took place alongside the graduation ceremony.

Organized by the Vietnamese Ministry of Health's General Department of Preventive Medicine, the three-day scientific conference starting on April 22 gathered over 100 public health leaders in Vietnam, including international participants from the U.S. CDC, WHO, and FETP fellows from Australia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

It also showcased over 35 public health research projects from national, regional, and provincial public health institutes in Vietnam.
Specifically, the company has bought from MP&Silva the right to broadcast all three seasons, with 380 games each. Its payTV package K+ is going to exclusively broadcast some games during the weekends and one game on weekdays, on both SD and HD. Other payTV operators, such as VTVCab, MyTV, Viettel, FPT, and Hanoicab, can buy the right from VSTV.

In March, K+ decreased its subscriber fee from VND230,000 ($10.3) to VND125,000 ($5.6).

Some estimated that VSTV spent $46 million on the rights, but the company has declined to comment for now. Three years ago, it spent $40 million to buy the exclusive broadcasting rights over games on Sunday and non-exclusive rights to broadcast games on other days in the week.

Earlier ten payTV companies, including VSTV, signed the agreement not to negotiate alone and buy if the price exceeds by more than 20 per cent that of the last three seasons, as well as to create a negotiation committee represented by Vietnam Pay Television Association (VNPayTV). The collective negotiation went nowhere, and VSTV announced its breaking away from the agreement in March, saying that it would have to incur severe losses without broadcasting the EPL.

Besides local and international channels, K+ offers four exclusive K+ channels (K+1, K+NS, K+PM, K+PC) produced by Canal+ Group. K+ has more than 2,800 points of sale and 13 proprietary K+ STORE boutiques. As of December 31, 2015, K+ had 804,000 subscribers.

In 2015, K+s revenue was 51 million ($57.5 million), up 29.3 per cent on-year. The accumulated loss at the end of 2015 was VND1.98 trillion ($88.8 million). In 2015, for the first time, K+ co-produced five Vietnamese films.
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 26

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Iran has summoned the Swiss ambassador to Tehran as the head of the US Interests Section over the confiscation of the Islamic Republic's assets by a US court.

Iranian Foreign Ministry's Director for American Affairs Mohamad Keshavarz Zadeh submitted two letters to the Swiss ambassador in a meeting Apr. 26, IRIB news agency reported.

The Iranian official objected to the US court ruling as a blatant violation of bilateral commitments, including the 1955 agreement, as well as the violation of international legal commitments and the immunity of the Iranian government's assets.

He also criticized the court for accusing Iran of supporting terrorist acts, dismissing the accusations as baseless.

The Swiss official for his part vowed to convey the message to the US State Department as soon as possible.

The US court has recently ruled the transfer of nearly $2 billion of Iranian assets to the American victims of terrorist attacks, including the 1983 truck bombing of a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. Investigators of the court concluded that Iran was responsible for that attack, which Tehran has denied.
Obama warns Europe of the dangers of withdrawing from the world in a challenging age


remaining of

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Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

By Fatih Karimov - Trend:

Iran's crude oil export will reach 1.81 million barrels per day during the current year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasted.

The country's crude oil export was 1.24 mb/d in 2015, meanwhile it is forecasted that the figure will hit 2.13 mb/d by 2017, the IMF said Apr. 25.

Following the removal of international sanctions in January, Iran's oil output is expected to increase by 520,000 barrels per day to 3.03 mb/d in 2016 and 3.32 mb/d in 2017.

The IMF estimates that the country's oil production was 2.55 mb/d in 2015.

The Islamic Republic's gas production will reach 3.01 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2016, which is only 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent more year on year.

The IMF foresees 3.05 million barrels of oil equivalent daily gas production for the country in 2017.

The international organization says that Iran's gas export will remain unchanged during 2016 and 2017 compared to 2015 which was 150,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Iran's oil output plunged by more than one million barrels to 2.8 mb/d during a 3-year sanctions, imposed by western countries in 2012. Iran had to shut down some fields, but resumed the output to around 3.3 mb/d in March, three months after lifting sanctions.

Tehran says it would increase this figure to the pre-sanctions level, but most of

international organization, including the Energy Information Administration believe that the country can add only around 0.5 mb/d to its output in 2016 due to the delays in developing new fields and technical problems for resuming output from old fields.

Meanwhile, about 80 percent of Iran's active fields are in their second half-life and their production decrease by 8-13 percent annually.
It has been four years since a courageous forest activist Chut Wutty was gunned down by a military police officer in Koh Kong province, but his legacy lives on in the new film, I Am Chut Wutty.

The 50-minute documentary from producer Fran Lambrick depicts Wuttys life as an advocate for the vast Prey Lang forest, leading patrols and groups of activists seeking to protect the landscape from the threat of illegal logging.

Lambrick this week told VOA Khmer that the film, which the government has banned from public screenings, portrayed the reality of Wuttys dedication and sacrifice he made to protect Cambodias fast-shrinking forests.

So the film is about forest activistspeople who defend the forests in Cambodia. Especially, it follows the life of Chut Wutty, whom I met, whom I knew. I filmed with him in 2011, Lambrick said.

We met when I was going to film with Prey Lang Network who had a patrol. They went to investigate illegal logging at a particular site where the forests were being cut down in huge areas for a rubber plantation.

The British producer said the importance of the film was not only to show the heroism of Wutty, but also the rising importance of forest people and activists who attempt to continue Wuttys work protecting Prey Lang  one of the largest remaining evergreen forests in Southeast Asia.

"I think the film is important because it has a very inspiring person at the heart of the story. So Chut Wutty was a very courageous man, and he was very inspiring to a lot of people, hundreds of people around Cambodia who knew about him, who followed him and who wanted him to help them, especially when they had problems of land grabbing or deforestation in their community, Lambrick said.

This film inspires a lot of people because Chut Wutty was such a hero and because he was killed so brutally.

I Am Chut Wutty was shot since late 2011, when Wutty and hundreds of members from the Prey Lang Community Network in the four provinces the forest coveres started their campaign to patrol the forest to stop land concession companies from cutting down trees illegally.

Five months after the campaign, Chut Wutty was killed while on a trip to Koh Kong province with two reporters.

His killing drew strong condemnation from international and local human rights observers who criticised the government for not providing a thorough investigation and explanation for his death.

Lambrick thinks that Wutty's heroism was an inspiration for forest activists, who are now following in his footsteps, and hopes people watching the documentary can also draw inspiration from his story.

A lot of people, who saw it, told me that they found it inspiring, she said. For some people, this story, maybe they find it tragic and also a little bit scary because the threat that Chut Wutty faced was so severe and the attack was so violent; me too, having been close to the story, I find it something that makes you feel afraid, but it is also so inspiring that, I think, people would move through that fear. So, I think people respond differently.

In a memorable scene from the film, Wutty tells Lambrick that he drew strength from the activists he worked with in Prey Lang, who were happy and gave me blessings.

It is a trait that makes it hard for me to abandon the job. If I dont do it, there wont be many who want to do it because they are afraid, he says.

The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts banned Lambricks film, which was due to be publicly screened at Phnom Penhs Meta House on Wednesday, saying the screening was illegal because permission had not been sought.

Ministry spokesman Thai Norak Satya said that the government had asked Meta House to abide by the law in future, adding that the authorities would take tough legal measures  [if it] still violated the law by screening the film without approval.

Lambrick said the film team had contacted the government to seek permission for a future screening.

I think they should waive this and give this film a license to be shown because the film is very important to a lot of Cambodian people. This is important for the role of the department and of culture: it is not to suppress the stories of Cambodias heroes but to elevate them and to share them with the world, she said, adding that the film would be posted online on April 26 to commemorate Wuttys death.
South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar returned to the capital Tuesday and took the oath as the country's top vice president.

Machar's arrival raises hopes the government and rebels can move ahead with a peace deal signed last year to end the country's 30-month civil war.

After the swearing-in, President Salva Kiir said he and Machar "will immediately proceed to form the Transitional Government of National Unity" called for in the peace accord.

He said this is the "only choice" to return South Sudan to the path of unity and prosperity.

Cooperation promise



Machar, in his comments, promised to cooperate with President Kiir.

Machar was Kiir's vice president once before. It was his firing in July 2013 that set off the war in December of that year. Since then, fighting has killed tens of thousands of South Sudanese and displaced more than 2 million from their homes.

Machar's plane landed at Juba International Airport on Tuesday, after more than a week of delays as the government and rebels argued over the size and weaponry of the rebel force deployed to protect him in the capital.

In New York, South Sudanese Ambassador Joseph Malok said that despite the delays, South Sudan's government remains committed to fully implementing the peace deal. He said the new transitional government would be formed "in a day or two, after consultations with the different parties in the country."

The United Nations had pressured both the government and rebels to ensure that Machar returned. Monday, a U.N. spokesman said, "We'd like to see him back as soon as possible; it's an integral part of hopefully returning some peace to South Sudan."

On Monday, one of Machars top officials arrived in Juba from Gambela, Ethiopia, along with nearly 200 military personnel.

Like Machar, General Simon Gatwech was expected to arrive last week, but officials said his chartered plane was not granted permission to land by South Sudan's government until Sunday evening.

Dressed in a green military uniform, Getwech disembarked at Juba International Airport along with 195 SPLM-in-Opposition military officers, 20 rocket-propelled grenades and 20 machine guns, per an agreement reached between government and SPLM-IO officials.
Al-Shabab militants in Somalia killed at least eight government soldiers in an ambush near the town of Baidoa, officials said.

A Somali military commander told VOA Somali that Shabab fighters, using rocket propelled grenades and machine guns, ambushed a military convoy sent to reinforce government forces at a base being attacked early Tuesday by the militants.

Thirteen government soldiers were wounded.

Officials said the militants attacked Daynunay military base, 18 kilometers east of Baidoa. Witnesses and government officials said Somali soldiers in the base repulsed the militants after heavy gunfire.

Regional Minister Hassan Abdi Mohamed, who visited Daynunay base on Tuesday, told VOA that the soldiers had received a tip-off about the attack.

Al-Shabab said its fighters overran the base, killing number of soldiers, destroying a military vehicle and seizing another. Government officials denied they lost control of the base.

Mohamed said the attack might have been in retaliation for a raid by government forces on Sunday, in which four militants blew themselves up after government troops surrounded their hideout outside Baidoa.

Meanwhile, Islamic State militants have claimed responsibility for attack against African Union troops in Somalia that took place Monday outside Mogadishu.

IS media said the group planted an explosive device that destroyed an AMISOM military vehicle in the village of Tredici.

AMISOM military spokesman Joseph Kibet told VOA that a bomb exploded just after an AU convoy passed a junction, but cast doubt on the IS claim of responsibility.

For us, we dont believe its ISIS. It could be one of those local Al-Shabab cells, Kibet said.
An insurgency group-turned-kidnap for ransom gang has been highly active in the southern Philippines in recent weeks, with several abductions of foreign nationals and now the beheading of a Canadian hostage.

In a joint statement released Tuesday, Philippine military and police vowed no let-up in their pursuit of members of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). The group, which started in 1991 with funding from al-Qaida, has mostly abandoned its ideological leanings in favor of lucrative kidnappings. It is believed to be holding more than 20 foreign nationals, in addition to Filipinos, for ransom.

Renewed travel warnings

The latest abductions prompted the United States and the United Kingdom to reissue travel warnings urging their citizens to avoid Mindanao island, which is where groups like the Abu Sayyaf are most active.

Philippine military Public Affairs head Colonel Noel Detoyato pointed to stepped up operations against the ASG since the fall of 2014. But he said the military is now contending with challenging factors that have prevented it from completing the mission.

Money not ideology drives this group

They are making money out of kidnap for ransom, so it is very easy for them to entice people to join them, said Detoyato. And right now on our operations, we rely on the information that we can get- [which is] no longer from the community because we cannot get reliable information from the community because [ASG is] supporting them.

The head of communications for President Benigno Aquino said in a statement Tuesday the president ordered security forces to apply the full force of the law to bring these criminals to justice.

Presidential Communications Secretary Sonny Coloma said Monday Aquino had directed the military and police to rescue the ASG hostages hours before a 3:00pm deadline set by the kidnappers.

Matt Williams, who heads Pacific Strategies and Assessments, a Manila-based risk analysis consultancy to potential Philippine investors, said the military is capable of taking care of the kidnap for ransom problem.

But he said the problem is a lack of political will and that Aquinos call Monday to rescue the hostages was too little too late.

Williams said, Hes had six years to do this and launching massive military campaigns while theres 20 hostages held, is perhaps not the right time to do that.

Kidnappings in area that has seen conflict for years

ASG and other sources of conflict continue to operate in a restive part of the country where the largest Muslim rebel group is working out a peace deal with the government.

Peace negotiators from both the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the countrys largest Muslim rebel group, have long contended that supporting efforts for the Muslim rebels to realize their goal of self-determination would put an end to criminal elements in the conflict-riddled south.

Islamic groups say lack of peace deal hampers their control over kidnappings

The MILF, which is working out terms of a recent peace deal with the government, is keeping watch over developments with the ASG. The peace process with the MILF came to a halt in February when lawmakers failed to pass a proposed measure that would create a self-governing region.

The ASG, which is an offshoot of another rebel faction the Moro National Liberation Front, that made a peace pact with the government in 1996, was not part of the peace talks with the MILF.

Mohagher Iqbal, peace panel chair of the MILF said government had to act because without the self-governing ability the MILF would not be able to keep groups like the Abu Sayyaf in check.

But now we dont have that legal authority So what can we do? All the efforts that we are capable of doing is very limited, said Iqbal.

Big time profits rule

Analysts say most efforts against the Abu Sayyaf are no match for the massive profits that kidnap-for-ransom activities bring in. In late 2014 ,the Abu Sayyaf set free two German hostages and claimed it had received more than $4 million for their release. The Philippines, which has a no ransom policy, did not confirm whether the amount was paid.

Philippine Institute of Peace Violence and Terrorism Research executive director Rommel Banlaoi said even with military operations against it, the ASG is able to replenish its membership, which he loosely estimates is around 500.



ASG through the years has proven its capability to deliver money to new recruits and this money largely is coming from kidnap for ransom activities, he said. And right now Abu Sayyaf Group has already received the image of being macho in the area, so all violent groups want to be associated with the Abu Sayyaf Group now.

One of the leaders of the ASG recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, but analysts and the military do not see much weight behind the declaration.

But Williams said, "This is not ISIS, in any way. They're not making political statements here. They want the money."
The World Health Organization is urging travelers to Angola to get a yellow fever vaccination. An outbreak of the disease in the African country has killed at least 258 people.

WHO director-general Margaret Chan said large urban areas are at particular risk, and is strongly urging all travelers to Angola to ensure they are vaccinated against yellow fever.

The outbreak began in December in Angola's capital, Luanda, and has since spread to most of the country's provinces, with more than 1,975 suspected cases.

Outbreak spreading



Chan also said, "Cases of yellow fever linked to this outbreak have been detected in other countries of Africa and Asia.

The WHO Africa office noted yellow fever from Angola has been reported in China (11 cases), Democratic Republic of the Congo (10 cases with one in Kinshasa) and Kenya (two cases.)

Other cases were reported in Uganda, but WHO officials said travelers had no history of travelling to Angola.

The disease is transmitted by the same mosquito that spreads Zika and dengue viruses, but death rates are higher and 75 percent of the cases require admission to the hospital.

Yellow fever expert Jack Woodall, who formerly worked for the WHO and the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, said he is worried the outbreak could spread rapidly along a major trucking route from DRC to Uganda's capital Kampala.

He called for intensified surveillance of this trade route and said vaccination of people living along it should be top priority.

The WHO launched a vaccination campaign in February targeting seven million people to try to prevent further spread of the disease. It has already become the worst outbreak in decades, officials said.
Commuters poured out of the newly reopened Brussels Maelbeek metro station Monday, in a fresh sign the city was returning to normal a month after the terrorist attacks  despite a struggling tourism industry and simmering criticism over the governments fractured response to the crisis.

Commuters drew pictures and jotted a few lines on a newly erected memory wall, reflecting their views and testimony regarding the March 22 suicide bombings at the Brussels airport and metro that killed 32 people, including 16 at Maelbeek.

That morning in the metro I witnessed and saw indescribable horror, one person wrote in words carried by Belgian news agencies. And despite that dramatic situation, I have experienced the solidarity of those most affected.

All together! another commuter wrote.

As of Monday, the citys subway schedules were back to normal, after weeks of shortened service. Brussels Zaventem airport, where suicide bombers struck about an hour before the Maelbeek morning rush hour bombing, had also partially reopened, with plans for it to be fully operational in July.

Financial costs

Yet few dispute the city, especially its tourism sector, has taken a hit. Hotel and restaurant business in central Brussels plummeted by up to 40 percent, and 10,000 jobs risk being lost, according to the Brussels Chamber of Commerce, citing a mix of factors beyond the attacks that also include closed tunnels and a new pedestrian section limiting traffic access.

But the chambers CEO Olivier Willcocx dismissed a report the Belgian capital was suffering its worst financial crisis in decades.

September 11 was even harder, I would say, in terms of the travel impact, he said of the 2011 attacks on the United States. The question today is only how long this is going to last. It depends on whenever we can tackle the situation, promote Brussels again and take adequate security measures.

Its going to be dramatic for some businesses, but in terms of overall impact its peanuts that will represent about one percent of the citys overall annual income, he adds.

The Brussels airport will also see losses of about one billion euros this year ($1.13), Willcocx predicts, but will eventually rebound.

Criticism of government

More lastingly, Belgiums fractured government has earned sharp criticism not only for security and intelligence lapses before and after the March attacks, but over mistakes in putting the city back on its feet today.

Nothing is happening, says Karel Lannoo, CEO of the Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels think tank that specializes in European Union issues. Its just a cacophony of people saying different things. If you want to get things in order, you have to have a decent administration, but not nepotism, not corruption, not bad governance as we have today.

Like many critics, Lannoo partly blames the current disarray on the countrys fragmented administration that includes not only the federal government but also the Flemish and Walloon regional governments, along with the 19 municipal governments representing greater Brussels that all go in 19 different directions.

Perhaps tellingly, Belgium went for 535 days without a federal government a few years ago, a situation some citizens ultimately deemed was not so bad.

Lannoo describes growing up in Flanders 30 years ago, when many considered Brussels a disfunctional no-go zone.

People would say, Can you adopt, can you get used to it? Lannoo recalls people asking of those wanting to work in Brussels. That mentality still exists today, certainly in Flemish areas. Basically people have given up.

Political bickering hasnt helped matters. Belgiums transportation minister Jacqueline Galant resigned earlier this month amid fingerprinting over who was responsible for the apparent security lapses at Zaventem airport. Last month, Prime Minister Charles Michel rejected resignations tendered by the countrys security and justice ministers as criticism rocketed over the governments failure to prevent the attacks.

More recently, the Interior Minister Jan Jambon of the nationalist New Flemish Alliance party sparked fresh uproar by reportedly suggesting a significant part of the countrys Muslim population danced after the attacks.

Monsieur Jambon, please, it takes so little to divide us, Belgiums Le Soir newspaper titled a recent editorial.

Moving ahead

Prime Minister Michel is trying to shift gears, calling for national unity and announcing a campaign to restore the countrys battered image.

Willcocx, of the Brussels Chamber of Commerce, says the private sector will also be launching its own promotional campaign to lure visitors back to the capital.

Were quite confident of the future, we just need to take the right measures, he says, adding he believed Belgian authorities fully understand and support the economy of Brussels.

Its not a problem of the number of governments, he added. Its a problem of responsibility.
Members of the Burundian diaspora and exiled civil society leaders demonstrated Tuesday in front of the United Nations, urging the international community to send a robust U.N. police force to help protect civilians as their country enters a second year of post-election violence.

"We hope that the U.N. won't do the same as what they did back in 1994 in Rwanda," said Sandra Barancira, a Burundian activist who traveled from Ottawa, Canada, for Tuesday's demonstration.

She was referring to one of the U.N.'s greatest failures in not preventing the genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda by members of the Hutu-majority government.

"There is a genocide going on today. We need more radical measures from the U.N.," Barancira stressed.

She criticized U.N. recommendations for a force ranging from a few dozen to up to 3,000 police as being woefully insufficient.

"Today, the entire population lives in fear," said prominent Burundian human rights activist Pierre Claver Mbonimpa.

He has witnessed the violence firsthand, surviving an assassination attempt last year that left him seriously injured. Both his son and son-in-law were murdered since the post-election violence began.

Protection of civilians

The bloodshed started last April, when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced he would seek a third term. Many objected, saying it violated the national constitution. The president prevailed and won re-election in July.

Post-election violence has claimed some 700 people. A quarter of a million have fled the country, seeking safety in neighboring countries. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned of a sharp increase in the use of torture, and several mass graves have been reported.

"We are urgently calling for the protection of civilians as Burundi is still on the brink," said Agnes Kiromera Muvira of the Burundi Women and Girls' Movement for Peace and Security during a news conference at the United Nations.

"We would want the U.N. Security Council to urgently send an independent U.N. police force to Burundi to protect the civilians and also to deter both government, but also opposition forces, from committing further human rights violations," she said.

UN recommendations

The U.N. Security Council asked Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to come up with a plan for a police force for Burundi. Last week, he sent the council his recommendations.

They include three options: a force of 3,000 police who would patrol some of the capital's most troubled areas; a 228-strong deployment with an early warning capacity; or a smaller deployment of 20 to 50 police that would focus on strategic engagement with Burundi's national police.

Ban says in his recommendations that only the first option of 3,000 police "could provide some degree of physical protection to the population against increased threats."

But it is highly unlikely that Nkurunziza's government will accept that option. In a letter from his U.N. ambassador to Ban earlier this month, it was stated that if a large, armed police presence is deployed, it would be "without the agreement of the government of Burundi and its people; it constitutes our red line."

The government prefers only a small contingent of unarmed experts and human rights observers.

Outside the United Nations, the small group of Burundian protesters sang their national anthem and carried signs calling for an end to the violence.

"This can easily turn into a regional war. The U.N. must wake up," activist Barancira warned.
Maryland's voters headed to the polls Tuesday to take part in a ballot that usually in years past has played no role in deciding which Republican and Democrat get their party's nomination. That's because the nominee has already been chosen by the time Maryland voters go to the polls.

Not so this year, with candidates in both parties still vying to win the nomination.

Though some might think voters in these states would be excited to play a substantive role in this abnormal election year, many voters seem unenthusiastic, if not fatigued, after more than a year of campaigning.

Im a little exhausted. Ill be honest, Im physically exhausted with it all," Maryland voter Jamie Mahone told VOA. "There used to be a time where I was really excited when there was a debate on TV, and now I just turn it off which doesnt make me sound like a very informed voter. But at this point I feel like Ive heard all I can hear.

Adam Fugal agreed, said he was disappointed with how the candidates have attacked one another on the campaign trail.

"Its been very negative, very disheartening. There have been a lot of good ideas but a lot of negative campaigningIm not very happy," he said. "I think there are a lot of countries looking at America and thinking were crazy, and I kind of agree."

Fugal, like a few other voters VOA spoke with, voted for Republican John Kasich. Though Kasich is trailing significantly behind both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, many Republican voters are turning to him as a more moderate nominee.

Kasich has not won enough delegates to receive the nomination, but votes for him mean fewer votes for the frontrunner Trump, which would potentially prevent him from gaining the nomination before the convention in July.

Not all Maryland voters are able to participate in this process of picking a nominee. In the state's primary, only registered Democrats or Republicans can vote in their respective party's primary. Those registered as Independents are shut out and can only vote for president in the general election in November.

"I'm a registered Independent, so I'm not allowed to vote in the primary, which makes me very sad and I hope we can change that," kindergarten teacher Carrie Lund said.

But Lund says she is less than excited about the candidates who are running for the next U.S. president.

"I still dont know who I will vote for, and thats concerning to me," she said. "I dont feel a strong pull towards anyone that I feel like really stands a chance."

Donald Trump currently has 845 delegates and needs 1,237 to win the nomination. In the five primaries 172 delegates are at stake.

In the northeast states voting on Tuesday 384 Democratic delegates are up for grabs. Clinton currently has 1,946 and needs 2,383 to win. if she wins by a large enough margin in these northeast primaries, it may become impossible for Sanders to get the nomination.
Tehran, Iran, April 26

By Mehdi Sepahvand -- Trend:

Iran's Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan has left for Moscow to attend the Moscow Conference on International Security.

Dehghan was invited to the event by his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoigu, IRIB news agency reported April 26.

Dehghan and his delegation will also hold bilateral meetings during the visit.

The annual event will focus on terrorism and the phenomenon of global convergence.

Moreover, security issues in the Asian-Pacific region, as well as global stability and military interaction will be discussed during the conference.
Tuesday marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, when an explosion at the power plant near the town contaminated a wide area and sent radiation clouds across the globe.

During the catastrophe, two people died immediately, while 29 more died within weeks. It is estimated thousands more have died from cancers and other illnesses in the ensuing years.

More than 200 tons of uranium are still inside the reactor site, fueling fears that new radiation leaks could occur in the area, which is already considered to be unsafe for at least the next century.



International donors on Monday pledged an additional $99 million in aid toward completing a newer, safer fuel storage facility for Chernobyl.

The reactor is now a huge construction site, with cranes towering over the remains of the power station. The radiation levels still set off danger warnings, three decades after the explosion.

Around 7,000 workers are still decommissioning the site. The staff is large so that the workers can limit their radiation exposure.

They are not in danger, says Volodymyr Yegerov, a nuclear safety expert with Ukraines National Academy of Sciences, who also acted as VOAs guide on a tour of the site.

If you comply with the rules of radiation safety, it is absolutely safe, he said. The dose of radiation one gets here is a little bit higher than in Kyiv, for instance.

Human error and poor reactor design have been blamed for the accident in what was then the Soviet Union. During a shutdown test in the early hours of April 26, 1986, a steam explosion blew the roof off reactor 4. Blocks of super-heated graphite rained down on the site and huge amounts of radioactive particles were released into the air.

Then, as now, the firefighters and so-called "liquidators" who first tackled the blaze are lauded as heroes. At least 28 of them died from acute radiation sickness.

Archbishop Theodore Bubnyuk of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church conducted a religious ceremony this week to honor the victims.

It is undoubtedly a great tragedy, by which many individuals were affected, he told VOA. We are still losing many people because of it. It is a great pain, a massive wound for our country and our nation.



WATCH: Chernobyl: World's Most Exotic Tourist Destination?

The 30th anniversary is significant as the so-called concrete "sarcophagus" that was hastily built over the reactor has a three-decade life span.

A giant arch is designed to replace it and is nearing completion. Officially called the "New Safe Confinement," it has taken six years and around $2 billion to build. Sometime in 2017, the structure -- which is tall enough to contain the cathedrals of St. Paul in London or Notre Dame in Paris -- will be moved on rails over the reactor.

It will not only serve as a shield from radiation, but will also allow dismantling of the old radioactive structures. First of all, the old concrete sarcophagus, which is not in good condition. As a result of these works, in 100 years there is to be a green lawn here, said Yegerov.

It is an optimistic vision, but the area wont be habitable for tens of thousands of years.

The 2,600 square-kilometer exclusion zone is an under-used resource, said environmental consultant Roman Zinchenko, who has visions of turning the area into a vast green energy site.

This is the site where both we humans, and nature, heal the wounds. And the revival of this place can be a very important lesson for not just Ukraine, but all humanity.

Since 2011, tourists have been allowed to visit Chernobyl. Among the most popular sites is the so-called "Russian Woodpecker," a vast radar system designed to protect then-Soviet-controlled Kyiv from attack.

Much of the Chernobyl exclusion zone provides a snapshot of Cold War tensions, frozen in time in 1986.

The world has changed much in the intervening three decades. Some argue it is time to seek a new future for Chernobyl.
Chinese and Indonesian officials pledged to boost security ties, marine cooperation and infrastructure investment, state media reported on Tuesday, after a diplomatic spat over what Indonesia called a breach of its sovereignty by the Chinese coast guard.

The report came after a meeting between Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi, who outranks the foreign minister, and Indonesia's chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan. Pandjaitan is visiting China this week.

The two countries will strengthen defense ties including in anti-terrorism, law enforcement, curbing narcotics, as well as "marine cooperation," according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Jakarta and Beijing will also work together in the fields of railway, electric power, mining, aerospace, agriculture and fisheries, Xinhua added.

Indonesia attempted to detain a Chinese trawler it accused of fishing in its exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, prompting the Chinese coast guard to intervene last month.

China has said its vessels were operating in "traditional fishing grounds."

Indonesia is not embroiled in the rival claims with China over the South China Sea and has instead seen itself as an "honest broker" in disputes between China and the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

Pandjaitan has previously said Indonesia would maintain good relations with China but "without sacrificing Indonesia's sovereignty," and had urged Chinese ships not to enter Indonesia's maritime territory near the northern Natuna Islands, where Indonesia said the incident took place.

China's increasingly assertive military posture in the South China Sea, a strategic shipping corridor that is also rich in fish and natural gas, has rattled the United States and its allies in Southeast Asia.
Despite its tight controls over religion, and ongoing crackdowns in predominantly Muslim Xinjiang and on Christians in the eastern province of Zhejiang, Chinas staunchly atheist Communist Party appears to be struggling to find ways to strengthen its grip on religion as the number of believers grows.

At a rare, high-level meeting on religion late last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping talked about the special importance of religious affairs and how authorities should guide believers to love their country, people and support the Communist Party leadership.



Overseas infiltration



Xi also warned the party to guard against overseas infiltrations of religion and what he called the ideological infringement by extremists.



According to the state-run Xinhua news agency Xi also said, in no way should religions interfere with government administration, judiciary or education.



Six of the countrys seven Politburo Standing Committee members, a powerful political decision making body, attended the meeting, which also stressed the importance of religious freedom and rule of law. But given the partys tight restrictions in Xinjiang, where authorities have banned overt religious displays such as beards and veils, and Zhejiang, where authorities have been removing crosses from churches, the speech was more a source of concern than assurance for some.

Empty talk

Chinas constitution has long guaranteed freedom of religion, but that is something that has been difficult to realize, true religious freedom, said Su Tianfu, pastor and leader of the Huoshi Church. While [officials] talked about religious freedom at the meeting, it is something that we still find hard to be optimistic about.

What some are looking for is more clarity and less ambiguous talk about ideology.

There are too few specifics in what was said... there are so many house churches across the country, can you at least answer one simple question: can the churches register? Everything else, all this talk about Marxism and religion and socialism is just empty talk, said lawyer Li Guisheng.



A few years ago there was a draft law for religion that I had seen a copy of and it included registration for house churches. If something like that was able to move on to the National Peoples Congress for review that would be something that is more concrete, Li said.

Religious law



Analysts said that without a law for religion, authorities lack a legal foundation to handle religious affairs, including the registration of house churches. In addition, there are a slew of rules announced by more than 30 provincial and city government offices that govern religious affairs, as well as regulations put forward by the State Council in 2004. But all of the rules, analysts said, only justify the rule of the party, not rule of law, a principle that Xi Jinping has advocated since coming to office.

Chinas first draft religious law was put forward by Liu Peng, a researcher with the government research body, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and it is seen by some as a possible blueprint for the National Peoples Congress, the countrys top law-making body.



While some argue a religious law could be used by authorities to legitimize the tight control of religious groups, Yang Fenggang, a sociology professor at Purdue University said without a law, Chinese authorities are freer to exert their own personal will in handling religious issues.

Out of touch

The comments at the conference were not entirely new, analysts said. Some remarks such as the warning about foreign infiltration have been around for decades. Much of the language was more from the Cultural Revolution era, highlighting how out of touch the party is, Yang said.



Now, he said, people have more social space for religion and there is increasingly more demand for religion.



Society, the market economy, the current status of society makes it very difficult to have total control over religion, Yang said.



Estimates for the Christian population range from around 60 to 100 million and that number is said to be growing each year. Some even predict it could eventually overtake the number of Christians in the United States. Followers of Buddhism are around 200 million and China is said to be home to more than 20 million Muslims.

Small victory?

Chinas Communist Party has long seen religion as a possible threat to its leadership, and it is likely concern is growing as the number of Chinese believers grows. The Communist Party only has a little more than 80 million members.

And while there are still glaring problems, such as the governments crackdown on church crosses in Zhejiang, which authorities have said violate building codes, it is significant the province was not mentioned in the speech or during the meeting, Yang said.

The conference highlighted four provinces for their good management of religious affairs. And those four provinces did not include Zhejiang province, he said.

In essence, the conference did not affirm Zhejiang authorities approach during the meeting. He said that is significant, because going into the meeting there was concern authorities might adopt the approach as a national policy.
Stone-throwing migrants clashed with police Tuesday at the Moria detention center on the Greek island of Lesbos shortly after the Dutch and Greek migration ministers toured the former army camp.

Plumes of smoke billowed from the compound that Pope Francis visited only 10 days ago. A police spokesman said garbage bins in a wing for young migrants had been set on fire and the unrest spread from there.

Aid workers said tensions had been building in the camp for days but it was unclear what triggered the unrest, which came soon after a visit by the Dutch and Greek migration ministers, Klaas Dijkhoff and Yiannis Mouzalas.

Refugees and migrants have been held at the hillside detention center under terms of a March 20 deal between the European Union and Turkey to stem the migrant flow into Europe.

It stipulates that migrants who do not qualify for political asylum must be returned to Turkey.

"Riot police are conducting an operation in and out of the camp at the moment," the police spokesman said.

Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the Istanbul-based leader of the world's Eastern Orthodox Christians, met migrants begging for help as they toured the Moria camp April 16.

The Roman Catholic pontiff took 12 Syrian refugees, who were living at another open-air camp on Lesbos, back to Rome on his airplane.

Official data showed there were 4,313 refugees and migrants on Lesbos on Tuesday. The vast majority of them are held at Moria.
Yazidi advocates and rights activists say that, as Iraqi forces gear up to retake the northern city of Mosul, they are concerned about the safety of hundreds of women held by the Islamic State group as hostages, prisoners and sex slaves.

"Some women need urgent help, some women are traumatized, some women have been violated  punished many times," said activist Khidher Domle.

He said rescued Yazidis have reported that women who have tried to run away from the militants and are recaptured are punished and thrown into IS-run prisons. They include foreigners.

Its important before starting the liberation process of any area to find out from activists where victims are and how to deal with them, Domle told VOA on the sidelines of a conference at a Yazidi temple in this northern Iraqi village.

Domle is among at least several independent activists tracking Yazidi women and children through a network of informants. He said they, as well as foreign captives, would be at risk if military forces did not coordinate with activists.

"There should be an international campaign starting now on this subject before liberating big cities like Fallujah and Mosul," Domle said.

IS extremists took thousands of Yazidi men, women and children hostage when they stormed through northern Iraq in 2014. Most of the men are believed to have been killed.

Although several thousand women have been rescued or ransomed since then, more than 2,000 Yazidi women and their children are believed to still be in IS hands, many bought and sold as slaves. Those who have managed to escape have spoken of horrific levels of violence, including beatings, torture and repeated rape.

Training needed

Military forces should be prepared, said Gregory Stanton, president of the group Genocide Watch and a professor at George Mason University in northern Virginia.

"Military advisers for the Iraqi military and peshmerga  that would include American military advisers  need to stress some training is needed," he told VOA. "It is a key part of the training and must be done before they start."

Trainers "must make it clear that they are not to engage in any activities that might be damaging to the women involved, and also that they be particularly sensitive to the trauma these women have been through."

The IS group is made up mainly of Sunni Arabs, joined by a large contingent of foreign fighters.

The collective military forces aiming to liberate Mosul include not only Kurdish peshmerga, but also local Sunni Arab tribespeople working with the Iraqi army and Iraqi government-sanctioned Shiite militia.

Confusions arise in conflict

There are concerns that as these forces attack Mosul, women of the ethnic and religious minority Yazidi sect could fall victim to another wave of violence or face new trauma if they cant differentiate between their Arab-speaking captors and Arab-speaking liberators.

"Arabs are going to take part in liberating Mosul, and Arabs had a part in what happened in Mosul. That is why there is this fear," said Parez Omer of Zhinan, the Womens Union of Kurdistan.

Many believe locals in the predominantly Sunni Arab city supported the Islamic State.

Omer alluded to the fact that, in violent conflicts, women sometimes have been victimized by various fighting forces  even their alleged rescuers. " It has happened that when a girl is freed by other people, she has been raped, and the violence against her is repeated," she said. So, like Stanton, she called for "instruction to the peshmerga and other people."

The operation to free Mosul started in March but stalled out after fierce battles in villages southeast of the city. Residents fleeing the fighting reported stiff resistance from IS militants in the face of punishing airstrikes and Iraqi ground forces.

Iraqi forces surround Fallujah, where a state of siege has brought civilians trapped in the city to the brink of starvation.
Marc Scaringi wants Pennsylvania voters to know that a vote for him is a vote for Donald Trump.

The Harrisburg lawyer, political talk show host and Trump supporter is running for the important position of Republican party delegate.

Pennsylvania has the chance to be a deal-maker, Scaringi tells his audience as he tapes his political talk show on the Sunday before Primary Day. Hes broadcasting from a sound booth in a storefront radio station in the small city of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The sense of anticipation statewide is clear as callers phone in rally reports and delegate campaign pitches during the hour-long show.

Pennsylvania has 71 Republican delegates, 17 of which are dedicated to the winner of the state contest, but the remaining 54 are not legally bound to choose the presidential candidate voters in their districts selected. These unbound delegates will head to the Republican Party convention in Cleveland this July completely free to support the candidate they  not the voters - choose.

Scaringi reminds his audience that contests this late in a close primary season dont leave room for error. The 54 unbound Pennsylvania delegates could be the crucial votes sealing a bid for Donald Trump or holding him short of the 1,237 (needed for the nomination) and keeping open the possibility of a stalemate convention where anything can happen, Scaringi says. So, Pennsylvania is just about the most critical state in this election cycle.

Mini-campaign



The Pennsylvania system has one more twist. The ballot does not list how delegate candidates have pledged to vote at the convention. Voters may cast their votes for Donald Trump, but theres nothing to guide them farther down the ballot when they choose delegates who could help Trump win the nomination.

Some of the delegate candidates  like Scaringi  announce their affiliations ahead of Primary Day, while other candidates believe it is their duty to vote according to the popular vote in their district.

The Trump and (Texas Senator Ted) Cruz campaigns are pushing hard to make sure the delegates already confirmed for their camps are elected, creating websites listing endorsed delegate candidates and printing cards to hand out to voters as they walk into polling locations.

Scaringi says he has done television and radio ads, Facebook and email blasts to educate voters on his preference.

Theyre little mini presidential campaigns, he says.

During a commercial break in his talk show, an advertisement with a familiar name plays. Scaringi smiles behind the microphone as the advertisement encourages Pennsylvania 4th District voters to Vote for Trump Delegate Marc Scaringi on Primary Day.

A democratic process?

Its a quirky process; its unique in some ways to Pennsylvania, said University of Georgia professor Josh Putnam, an expert in the delegate process.

Donald Trump often criticizes what he calls a rigged voting process. The Pennsylvania unbound delegate rule may appear to be one more way obscure party rules are obstructing the democratic process. But Trump supporter Scaringi says it makes sense.

We elect congressmen. We elect senators. They go to Washington, DC. They vote whichever way they want to vote, he says. The same thing goes with our political parties.

Even if the delegate candidates announce their preferences, there are no legal or electoral rules that keep them from changing their minds. Putnam says the state set up the unbound delegate system to favor local party officials.

Many voters take the time to educate themselves about the delegates. But if they dont, they often end up picking a familiar political name when all else fails inside the voting booth.

A good contested convention?

One of those familiar names is Charlie Gerow.

His office - only a few blocks away from the state capitol - is filled with decades of political memorabilia: signed photographs from U.S. presidents, newspapers dating from the days of Americas Founding Fathers and souvenirs from 40 years of involvement in Republican conventions.

Gerow is competing on the same ballot with Marc Scaringi for a delegate spot in Cleveland. While Scaringi says he will vote for Trump on every round at the convention, Gerow says he will follow the will of the voters on the first ballot and then use his judgment, integrity and experience to make a choice on subsequent ballots. He will choose a candidate who can defeat (Democratic frontrunner) Hillary Clinton and carry on the legacy of his old boss, Republican President Ronald Reagan. He began his political career working on the Reagan campaign.

Gerow has been at every Republican convention since 1976, the last time the party held a convention without a clear nominee, but he thinks his experience might not be attractive to voters in an election year that has favored outsider candidates.

Gerow also says unbound delegates are a fair part of the primary process. Conventions are parties choosing their nominees, says Gerow. Its not an open democracy or even a representative democracy.

Even after attending 10 conventions, Gerow says that if he is elected as a delegate, 2016 will be the most exciting convention of his lifetime.

Youve got a tremendous mix of candidates, interests, people of good faith that really want a united party, he said. For the first time, in my political lifetime, we  the Republicans - are not simply nominating the next guy in line and thats a very positive thing. Conventions are supposed to work like this.
Crimea's supreme court banned Crimean Tatars' highest ruling body Tuesday, declaring it an "extremist" organization in a move one exiled leader said was part of a Kremlin drive to crush the minority ethnic group on the Russia-annexed peninsula.

Most Crimean Tatars, a Muslim people indigenous to the Black Sea region, opposed Russia's seizure of the territory from Ukraine in March 2014. Representatives say they have since faced discrimination and hardship as they come under pressure to align themselves with the Russia-backed authorities.

Regional Prosecutor General Natalia Poklonskaya said the court had banned the Tatars' assembly, or Mejlis, because its leaders had sought to destabilize Crimea since the takeover.

The Mejlis leadership use "propaganda of aggression and hatred towards Russia, inciting ethnic nationalism and extremism in society," Poklonskaya said in a Facebook post.

The court decision followed the silencing of a Tatar-language TV station in Crimea in April 2015 and recent reports of police intimidation and brutality towards opponents of annexation.

The 1944 Soviet-era deportation of some 200,000 Tatars to Siberia and Central Asia killed many thousands and is a reason for Tatars' deep mistrust of Russian authorities. Though the Tatars have been allowed to return to Crimea, many still associate Russian rule with exile, oppression and suffering.

Council of Europe Commissioner Nils Muiznieks urged the court to reverse the ban.

"Equating [the assembly] with extremism paves the way for stigmatization and discrimination of a significant part of the Crimean Tatar community and sends a negative message to that community as a whole," he said in a statement.

Since the annexation, while clamping down on Tatars openly loyal to Ukraine, Russia has sought to defuse opposition from the community as a whole with gestures such as granting legal rehabilitation to Tatars for their suffering under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and official status to their language.

Crimean Tatar leader Refat Chubarov, who now lives on the Ukrainian mainland, said the court's decision was unjustifiable.

"The occupiers in Crimea are doing everything to crush Crimean Tatars and force everyone to be silent," he told journalists in Kyiv.
President Barack Obamas swift rejection of a North Korean proposal to suspend further nuclear tests was a bit surprising for a growing number of advocates who believe that international sanctions alone will not persuade the Kim Jong Un government to unilaterally disarm.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Saturday, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong said his country is ready to halt its nuclear tests if the United States suspends its annual military exercises with South Korea.

Obamas response on Sunday saying that Pyongyang would "have to do better than that," seemed to some critics as a missed opportunity to balance pressure tactics with dialogue and diplomacy.

This proposal was an opening gambit from the North Koreans and we should have teased it out and instead we just shot it down, said North Korea analyst John Delury with Yonsei University in Seoul.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry also said in a statement Sunday that the North's proposal was "not worth considering."

The United Nations imposed tough new sanctions in March against North Korea for its last nuclear test in January followed by a long-range rocket launch.

North Korea has accelerated its nuclear development program in defiance of U.N. restrictions. Pyongyang has recently attempted both land and submarine based ballistic missiles tests and there are reports that the North is preparing to conduct its fifth nuclear test any day now.

The case for talking

Advocates for more dialogue contend that compromise and negotiations are ultimately the only ways to resolve this nuclear standoff.

We have to find a way to get back on diplomatic track with the North Koreans and thats going to be giving up little things here that we dont want to, in order to get important things from them, said Delury.

Expressing an interest in discussing the North Korean proposal, they point out, would put immediate pressure on North Korea to delay its fifth nuclear test, which it seems poised to conduct prior to the ruling party congress in early May. The American allies would then have time to gauge Pyongyangs compliance before making any major concessions because this years U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises have for the most part ended.

The South Korean newspaper the Korea Times in an editorial on Monday called for Washington and Seoul to make some sort of counter offer without committing themselves to the Norths proposal.

This approach can serve two purposes, feeling out the North on its current situation and moving on to start the long absent dialogue, albeit with realistic low expectations, said the Korea Times editorial.

Proposal shortcomings

Last week the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken urged North Korea to choose peaceful negotiations over confrontation.

"If a country, even one with which we've had the most profound differences, is prepared to engage seriously and credibly in answering the demands of the international community, we are also prepared to engage," he said.

However, supporters of the hard line U.S.-led policy against North Korea say this proposal is essentially blackmail in that North Korea is trying to set conditions under which it will conform to existing U.N. resolutions banning its nuclear program.

North Koreas offer to suspend nuclear tests is too vague, they also argue, and does not explicitly include long-range missile launches, nuclear development activities and did not open the door to future international talks to dismantle the Norths nuclear weapons in exchange for economic assistance and security guarantees.

The proposal is seen by many as a transparent attempt to weaken support for sanctions just as their economic impact is beginning to be felt.

Concerns over sanctions

Dialogue proponents argue that maintaining a harsh punitive only approach to North Korea is not sustainable.

While China, as the Norths most important economic partner, supports sanctions, enforcement at the border has so far been lax. Officials in Beijing have said they want to pressure Pyongyang back to international talks but do not want to spark regional instability that would increase a flow refugees at the border, or lead to the collapse of government in Pyongyang.

And South Koreas recent election could weaken the close alliance between Washington and Seoul in support of sanctions. President Park Guen-hyes conservative Saenuri party lost its legislative majority in the National Assembly.

The election was more about jobs and economic policy than inter-Korean relations, but the new majority opposition Minjoo Party also supports opening up new channels of communication with the North and resuming the operation of the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex, which Park closed in retaliation for Pyongyangs fourth nuclear test in January.
Less than two weeks after Chinese authorities placed wheelchair-bound rights lawyer Ni Yulan under house arrest, they began preventing foreign diplomats from visiting her, she said Monday.

Known for defending people evicted from their homes to make way for development, Ni was barred from traveling to the United States last month to receive the State Department's International Women of Courage Award, which the department says is given to female advocates of human rights, justice and gender equality.

A business lawyer who has advocated civil rights for the past 15 years, Ni has been imprisoned twice, sentenced to hard labor and beaten so severely she lost use of both legs. She continues to file lawsuits against public security officials on behalf of fellow citizens, and she was placed under house arrest April 13.

Five foreign diplomats, including those from the European Union, Germany, Canada, France and Switzerland, had sought to see Ni at her home and deliver food over the weekend, but were prevented from entering, she told VOA.

According to Reuters, diplomats with knowledge of the situation also confirmed the group was turned away.

"Because of my health, and our terrible living conditions, some diplomats from five countries came to see me last Saturday," she told VOA's Mandarin Service. "They brought me food, greetings and blessings, but they were stopped by six plainclothes [police officers] outside the courtyard ... [who] hurled insulting remarks at them. When my husband heard the diplomats were here, he went out to meet them. He was also insulted by the plainclothes."

After more than 20 minutes of deadlocked confrontation, she said, the diplomats gave the food to her husband and left, quickly phoning Ni directly to make sure that her husband made it back to their rented unit safely.

Both uniformed and plainclothes police officers are stationed outside her apartment daily, Ni added.

"They are both inside and outside the courtyard. They watch us, will not allow people who don't live there to come into the courtyard, and that includes my friends and relatives who bring me food, even doctors," she said. "Doctor Xu, who once treated me, came to visit. He was dragged out of the courtyard."

Forced relocations

On Monday, China's state-run Global Times published a commentary about the diplomats' attempted visit, saying China's relocation compensation has been increasing, and that Ni's fair-compensation campaign is just a platform to criticize the government that is encouraged by Western nations.

"The diplomats came to see me out of humanitarian spirit. They came to our help and rescue. That is what the Chinese government should be doing," Ni told VOA. "We are homeless. After the forced relocation, our property disappeared. We have been living in rented places, often forced to move by police. We are at the bottom of society. Nobody cares about us, cares about how we are living. And [Global Times] even makes irresponsible and sarcastic remarks."

The U.S. embassy did not immediately offer a comment about the case, but on April 13 tweeted a photo of Ni with U.S. ambassador Max Baucus and Judith Heumann, special adviser for international disability rights, at the State Department in commemoration of the award.

Ni, who was left wheelchair-bound by a police beating in 2002 after filming the forced demolition of a client's home, added that she is likely to be evicted from her current home, but plainclothes police would not allow her to leave to search for a new apartment.

China's leadership has detained or imprisoned dozens of rights lawyers since President Xi Jinping took power in a widespread crackdown on dissent.

Ni was first jailed by Chinese authorities in 2002 and then again in 2008 after she defended the rights of residents evicted from their homes to make way for facilities for Beijing's 2008 Summer Olympics.
The FBI could reveal how it was able to gain access to the iPhone used by one of the shooters in last Decembers terror attack in San Bernardino, California.

We are in the midst of trying to sort that out, FBI Director James Comey said Tuesday at a conference on cyber engagement at Georgetown University. I think were close to a resolution."

The Obama administration sometimes will share such information under the so-called Vulnerabilities Equities Process, if companies can use the information to work on a patch to protect information or systems.

At other times, the government will seek to keep the vulnerabilities secret if a case can be made that by releasing them, access to vital intelligence will be compromised.

Comeys admission the FBI is close to deciding what to do about the vulnerability comes barely a week after the FBI admitted it had paid a private firm more than $1.3 million to gain access to the iPhone 5c that belonged to San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook.

FBI officials said previously the technique used to access the data would not work on other so-called smart phones. iPhone maker Apple had been fighting a court order that required it to write new software to disable passcode protection.

Comey said Tuesday he was very glad the litigation with Apple regarding the iPhone encryption was over, though he cautioned, it would be bad if the conversation this started ended.

He added, Because we live our lives on these devices, as I do, the notion that they will be immune to judicial process takes us to a place weve never lived before. There has never been a time in the 240 years of our country that privacy was absolute.

The FBI director also sought to reassure private companies that the government and law enforcement are looking for what he described as a constructive relationship, similar to what many companies have with local fire departments, which understand the layout of their buildings in case of an emergency.

We have to get to a place where it becomes routine for there to be an exchange, an appropriate lawful exchange of information, said Comey.

Even in the midst of an attack we dont want to read your memos, we dont want to read your emails, he said. We need to understand how we can quickly get the indicators of attack so we can change the actors behaviors.
Head and members of the Turkish side of Iran-Turkey Trade Council on Tuesday met and conferred with Iran's new ambassador to Turkey Mohammad-Ebrahim Taherian, discussing lifting impediments on the way of cooperation of Iranian and Turkish private sectors, IRNA reported.

The Turkish side included members of Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey (DEIK).

The two sides exchanged views on ways and means of expanding bilateral cooperation in a new atmosphere created after recent visit of Iranian president to Turkey.

Taherian said Iranian and Turkish senior officials have always been emphasizing importance of expansion of commercial and economic relations to achieve the 30 billion dollar target with promotion of cooperation between their private sectors having the priority.

Taherian said Iran is ready to benefit from Turkey's experience in various economic sectors and support relations between Iranian and Turkish private sectors in a comprehensive manner.
It has been four years since Cambodian forest activist Chut Wutty was gunned down by a military police officer in the country's Koh Kong province, but his legacy lives on in a new film that Phnom Penh officials recently banned from public screenings.

The 50-minute documentary from British producer Fran Lambrick depicts Wuttys life as an advocate for the vast Prey Lang forest, leading patrols and groups of activists seeking to protect the landscape from the threat of illegal logging.

I Am Chut Wutty not only shows Wutty's heroism, Lambrick says, but emphasizes the rising importance of forest people and activists who attempt to continue Wuttys work protecting Prey Lang, one of Southeast Asia's largest remaining evergreen forests.

So the film is about forest activists  people who defend the forests in Cambodia," Lambrick told VOA. "Especially, it follows the life of Chut Wutty, whom I met ... when I was going to film with Prey Lang Network, which had a patrol. They went to investigate illegal logging at a particular site where the forests were being cut down in huge areas for a rubber plantation.

Beginning in late 2011, the film documents members of Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN) as they launch a campaign to patrol fast-shrinking forests and stop land-concession companies from cutting down trees illegally.

In one scene, Wutty tells Lambrick that he drew strength from the activists  PLCN members alone numbered in the hundreds  who were happy and gave me blessings.

It is a trait that makes it hard for me to abandon the job," he says. "If I dont do it, there wont be many who want to do it because they are afraid.

Months later, Wutty was killed while on a trip to Koh Kong province with two reporters. While his killing drew strong condemnation from international and local human rights observers, the government has been criticized for not providing a thorough investigation and explanation for his death.

Film banned

The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts barred Lambricks film from a public screening at Phnom Penhs Meta House on April 20, saying permissions for screening had not been sought.

Meta House, a ministry spokesman told VOA, has been asked to abide by the law in future, explaining that authorities would take tough legal measures  [if it] still violated the law by screening the film without approval.

On Monday, The Cambodia Daily reported that a ministry official reaffirmed the ban, saying any public screenings will be considered a violation of national law.

Lambrick said the film crew has contacted the government to seek permission for a future screening.

I think they should waive this and give this film a license to be shown, because the film is very important to a lot of Cambodian people," she said. "This is important for the role of the [ministry] and of culture: it is not to suppress the stories of Cambodias heroes but to elevate them and to share them with the world."

A digital version of the documentary is expected to be posted online in Cambodia on April 26 to commemorate Wuttys death.
A Thai court has granted a same-sex couple legal custody of a baby born through a surrogate mother who refused to hand the child over after giving birth.

Tuesday's ruling ends a 15-month old legal battle that began when the surrogate, Patidta Kusolsand, declined to sign the paperwork giving custody of the baby girl to American Gordon Lake and his partner, Spaniard Manuel Santos Valero, when she learned they were gay. Lake and Valero were barred from returning to their home in Spain with the baby, whom they named Carmen.

Valero emerged from the courtroom in tears after the verdict was read, declaring that he and Lake are "really happy that this nightmare is going to end soon."

"We have been here 15 months, trapped in Thailand, and we missed our family and I think it's time to go home," Valero said. " We also miss Alvaro and we miss our family. Carmen will know family, her room, her everything. We are very happy."

Couple also has son



The couple have a toddler son who was born to a surrogate mother in India.

The custody fight was complicated by two factors: Thailand does not legally recognize same-sex marriage, and a new law banning commercial surrogacy, which took effect shortly after baby Carmen was born.

The ban was imposed after a string of high-profile scandals involving foreign parents of surrogate-born babies, including one case in 2014 where an Australian couple was accused of abandoning a baby with his Thai birth mother after he was born with the genetic disorder Down's syndrome.
Indias top diplomat pressed his Pakistani counterpart on Tuesday to acknowledge and combat terrorism aimed at the Indian state, and to make "visible progress" on investigating violence.

"Terrorist groups based in Pakistan must not be allowed to operate with impunity," Indian Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in a statement, following a meeting Tuesday with Pakistans Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry.

The two men met here, on the sidelines of a regional conference on Afghanistan, to discuss terrorism, the disputed area of Kashmir and other issues troubling their respective countries relationship.

The high-level meeting, originally scheduled for mid-January, was delayed after an armed militant attack on an Indian air base earlier that month left seven Indian security dead.

New Delhi has blamed the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group for the strike on the Pathankot air base. It also has accused Islamabad of doing too little to bring to justice perpetrators of the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai in which 166 people died.

Jaishankar "emphasized the need for early and visible progress on the Pathankot terrorist attack investigation as well as the Mumbai case trial in Pakistan," according to a statement.

Pakistan's anti-terrorism courts produce extremely low conviction rates and need reform, according to a new report from the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent, nonpartisan, federally funded organization.

A statement from the Pakistani High Commission in Delhi said Chaudhry had emphasized Kashmir remains the core issue requiring a just solution. The divided Himalayan territory has been a source of contention  and the trigger for two of the nuclear-armed rivals three wars  for decades.

Suspected spy case

The issue of a suspected Indian spy in Pakistani custody also figured in the discussions, with New Delhi demanding consular access to a man captured by Pakistani authorities in Baluchistan.

New Delhi said Kulbhushan Jadhav, a former naval officer, was abducted and taken to Pakistan. Islamabad expressed concern over Indias intelligence agency in what it called subversive activities in Baluchistan and Karachi.

Efforts to resume talks between the two countries failed in the past year. In August, high-level discussions were called off after both sides exchanged barbs over the agenda.

A surprise stopover by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Pakistan in December led to a thaw in relations and the countries put the process of dialogue back on track, but that, too, was derailed by the Pathankot air base attack.

A South Asia expert at New Delhis Institute for Defense and Analysis, Sukh Deo Muni, said Tuesdays meeting signified that the two sides remain committed to holding talks. The analyst said he was uncertain whether the dialogue represented a meaningful step.

Its all right, they will continue to talk, but without any meaning, he said of Pakistani and Indian officials. The direction is clear, the destination is not clear.
The bank executive, the book publisher and the social worker had one thing in common: Their hectic lives in the crowded Indian capital had become so chaotic and stressful, they've turned to chanting Buddhist mantras in search of calm.



The practice is catching on among India's well-off urban professionals, growing by word of mouth as a way to relieve stress. Most of those picking up the practice are Hindu, but they say they see no conflict between their religious beliefs and the chanting. Some say it is soothing, others invigorating.



"I feel it just makes me a better human being, more humane,'' says Gaurav Saboo, 34, a devout Hindu working at an international bank in New Delhi. "It enables me to understand the suffering of others and reach out to others.''



Buddhism, he says, "is a philosophy, a way of life,'' and the chanting has brought a positive energy into his life.



While Buddhism began on the Indian subcontinent around the 5th century BC, it has waned in both India and Nepal while flourishing in different forms in Japan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and other countries. With its easy rituals and lack of dogma, Buddhism has long drawn supporters from afar. Hollywood celebrities, agnostics, Christians and Jews alike attend Buddhist spiritual retreats.



Archi Sharma, a housewife who took up chanting a year ago, says she was "searching for some meaning'' in her life when she heard about Buddhist chanting from friends.



"I felt there was a vacuum in my life,'' Sharma said. "The chanting has helped. It stops you thinking about me, myself. It makes one think of others first.''



Sharma, who chants twice a day between household chores and taking care of an ailing relative, said she saw no conflict between her family's traditional Hindu beliefs and her chanting.



"The chanting is not invasive and runs parallel to what we practice as Hindus,'' she said. "It opens a doorway to another stream of happiness into one's life.''



The practice of repeating a mantra is not exclusive to Buddhism. Many across Hindu-dominated India also include chanting as part of their yoga, and some Christian groups repeat chants.



While Hindu chanting is often associated with religious rituals, Buddhist chanting is seen as less dogmatic, aimed at calming the nerves or feeling a sense of well being, said New Delhi-based sociologist Abhilasha Kumari.



"Hindu chanting is linked to religious ritual,'' she said. "Buddhist chanting is a free space where you chant and are not tied down to other aspects of religiosity.''



Many Indians who have picked up chanting have been drawn to sessions organized by Soka Gakkai International, the lay organization of a major Nichiren Buddhist sect whose stronghold is in Japan. The group traces its roots to the chants and teachings of a 13th century Japanese monk named Nichiren.



The group has not been engaged in an active campaign to promote chanting in India, although it claims to have introduced the practice to around 100,000 Indians since setting up in the country in 1986, according to the group's office in New Delhi.



Practitioners chant individually but many meet monthly. Many say that that apart from easing their own stress, the chanting also makes them understand people around them and working for the happiness of others.



At a recent gathering in a middle class New Delhi neighborhood, participants shucked off their shoes and quietly sat down on thin mattresses in the basement of an apartment building. They faced an ornate wooden altar holding a scroll on which the words they will chant for the next hour are written: "Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo,'' which refers to the law of cause and effect.



Latecomers seamlessly joined in, blending their chant with the ongoing rhythm. Soon the incantation picked up speed, building to a crescendo and then slowing again while the chanters recovered their breath. Faintly, there was the clicking of wooden beads that the chanters used to help focus their thoughts on the mantra. Every now and then, one of them struck a gong.



"You feel invigorated. It's a great feeling,'' said Ruma Roka, 54, at the end of the chanting session as she and the others moved to another room for discussions over tea. Roka started chanting about 10 years ago as a housewife, and has found it helps her cope with the stress of her job teaching the hearing impaired at the special clinic she runs.



"If I did not chant, if I went back home with all the heaviness of this very challenging work ... I would not be able to survive,'' Roka said. "I would have a compassion deficit.''



Getting numbers on the recent growth of chanters is difficult, but Indian media has reported on the trend. Many individuals hear about the chanting sessions by word of mouth, and are often simply looking for new ways of stress-busting after trying other traditional methods.



Namrta Bangia, a 32-year-old publishing executive, said she had tried Pranayama, an ancient Indian breathing practice, and the silent Hindu meditation of Vipassana before settling on Buddhist chants. Her family and friends tell her they have noted a change in her.



"I've become more positive, more confident, more cheerful,'' she said after a recent group session. "I'm a different person. I am not going to get defeated.''
Indonesia's president said Tuesday that his government will host talks with Malaysia and the Philippines this week to boost maritime security following the kidnappings at sea of Indonesians by suspected Abu Sayyaf militants.



President Joko "Jokowi'' Widodo said the meeting of foreign ministers and military chiefs will discuss joint patrols to protect shipping in the waters between the three countries. He said the meeting would be held this week, but did not give a specific date.



Fourteen Indonesians are among more than 20 people being held hostage in the southern Philippines. They were crew members of two Indonesian tug boats hijacked in separate incidents in March and this month.



The company that owns the tug boat involved in the March incident has received telephone calls, purportedly from Abu Sayyaf, demanding a ransom.



But Jokowi ruled out an exchange of money for the hostages by the government. "We will never compromise on such a thing,'' he said.



Abu Sayyaf militants beheaded a Canadian hostage Monday and dumped his head on a roadside in a plastic bag in the southern Philippine province of Sulu.



The militants had threatened to behead one of two Canadians and a Norwegian they kidnapped last September from a marina on southern Samal Island if a large ransom was not paid by Monday afternoon.



Jokowi said the government's information is that the Indonesian hostages are in good health.
Four Iranian journalists were sentenced to jail on charges of acting against national security, their lawyers said on Tuesday.

The verdicts, ranging from five to 10 years, can be appealed, according to state-run media.

Officials said a woman and four men taken into custody were working in the countrys media and social networks.

Afarine Chitsaz, the woman journalist, received a five-year term. Davoud Assadi was given a 10-year sentence. Ehsan Mazandarani was ordered to seven years and Ehsan Safarzayi received five. The fate of the fifth journalist, Issa Saharkhiz, is unclear.

Saharkhiz served three years in prison but was released in 2013. At the time, he was convicted for insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and publishing anti-regime propaganda. In the months before his latest arrest, he allegedly criticized Khamenei and other senior figures, his lawyer said.

The four sentenced journalists have worked for newspapers, including pro-reform Farhikhtegan daily.

They were arrested in November as part of an ongoing crackdown by hard-liners  a move criticized by moderate President Hassan Rouhani. Defense attorneys said their clients would appeal the sentences.

Journalists in Iran are frequently the subject of judicial action. Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian was arrested in July 2014. Rezaian holds dual Iranian-American citizenship. He was convicted last year of espionage and other charges but was freed in January as part of a prisoner swap between Iran and United states.
Some Iraqi lawmakers interrupted a parliamentary session on Tuesday impeding a planned vote to decide on a new technocratic cabinet, one made up of policy experts.

The protesters, many allied with former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, threw water bottles towards his successor Haider al-Abadi, chanting demands for his removal.

They also demanded the removal of President Fuad Masum and Speaker Salim al-Jabouri.

Abadi has called for the government to be run by experts, rather than politically affiliated ministers, but political parties have pushed back on the proposed changes in an apparent effort to maintain the patronage system they rely on to stay in power.

Abadi also attended the session on Tuesday but members of parliament prevented him from speaking.

A new session was later held at another hall which the protesting lawmakers were prohibited to enter. As a result, the legitimacy of the session will most likely be challenged.

Last week, Abadi called for parliament to put aside its differences and do its job. Of the original list of 14 cabinet appointees, named at the beginning of the month, just four remain on a new list released Tuesday.

The nominees for water resources, health and transportation stayed the same, while a fourth nominee from the original list became a candidate for the planning ministry.

In February, Abadi called for fundamental change to the government and called for the inclusion of academic and professional figures in the cabinet. Since then he has proposed several reform measures that have been delayed or otherwise undermined by parties and politicians with vested interests in keeping the current system running.

The political crisis comes as Iraqi forces are fighting to regain more ground from the Islamic State group. Both the United Nations and the U.S. have warned the political crisis could undermine the fight against the jihadists.
Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors said the company has been using an improper method to determine the fuel efficiency of its vehicles for 25 years.

Tuesday's admission by President Tetsuro Aikawa in Tokyo follows last week's revelation that Mitsubishi had falsified fuel-efficiency data on 625,000 vehicles.

Aikawa said the company's latest troubles occurred because it failed to update its testing system to conform to domestic standards.

The issue was revealed as part of an investigation into scandal over false fuel-efficiency data.

The first false data reports dated back to 2013, involving Mitsubishi's domestic eK Wagon and eK Space Custom light passenger cars, as well as the Dayz Roox vehicles it produces for rival carmaker Nissan.

Data inconsistencies

The problem was uncovered after Nissan noticed inconsistencies in its data.

Mitsubishi has stopped selling the vehicles while it conducts the probe.

The world's sixth-largest automaker has lost more than half of its market value since news of the fuel-rigging scandal broke.

The company is no stranger to scandal. It nearly went out of business after admitting back in 2000 that it covered up major safety defects for several decades.

Mitsubishi is the second carmaker accused of falsifying environmental data in the past 12 months.

Germany's Volkswagen admitted late last year that it installed software on millions of its vehicles that activated bogus emissions controls to deceive testing officials.
A Myanmar court on Tuesday jailed a former monk and leader of the 2007 anti-junta uprising for six months with hard labor on immigration charges, a member of his defense team said, but he was likely to be released soon

because of time already served.

The sentence came amid widespread excitement that has followed the release and dropping of charges against more than 100 political prisoners since Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy took power earlier this month.

Nyi Nyi Lwin, better known as Gambira, was arrested in January for illegally entering Myanmar from neighboring Thailand. He has been held without bail since his arrest at a prison in Mandalay, Myanmar's second largest city.



Myo Min Zaw, Gambira's assistant defense lawyer, said the Mandalay court sentenced Gambira to six months in jail with hard labor, but that the sentence would be reduced because of time served.

"Since my client has already served several months in jail during the trial, he has only a month or two to serve. So we're not going to appeal against the verdict," Myo Min Zaw said. Gambira was freed from prison during a 2012 general amnesty, a year after the junta handed power to a semi-civilian

government, following 49 years of direct rule of the Southeast Asian nation.



Since his release, Gambira has divided his time between Myanmar and Thailand, but Myanmar authorities have re-arrested him several times, in what his family and rights groups have described as continued harassment for his criticism of the government.



The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a rights groups that supports and monitors political prisoners in Myanmar, called the charges "trumped-up" in a post on Twitter following the sentencing.



"U Gambira's case reeks of the ugly political prosecutions of discarded military juntas," Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. In 2007, Gambira emerged as a leading figure in a mass protest over living conditions and the oppressive rule of then-dictator Than Shwe that was dubbed the Saffron Revolution.



The government cracked down harshly in response, opening fire on protesters and sweeping up those who took part. A report from the United Nations found that at least 31 people were killed by security forces and thousands arrested.



Gambira's prison term of 63 years for his role in the protest turned him into one of Myanmar's most prominent political prisoners. Members of his family were also arrested.



While in detention, Gambira was repeatedly beaten and tortured, he and rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have said.
U.S. forces in Afghanistan Tuesday warned of fresh militant attacks in several provinces, including Kabul.

A public announcement issued in the capital named eight would-be attackers and released an Afghan cell phone number ((0702210396)), encouraging anyone with information on the individuals to call.

"Insurgents from the Haqqani and Taliban networks are known to be planning attacks on the Afghan people" in the northeast provinces of Parwan, Khost, Kabul and Logar, the statement said, without giving more details.

The eastern Khost province borders Pakistan and traditionally has been a stronghold of the Haqqani network.

The Taliban launched its annual spring offensive in Afghanistan on April 12 and vowed to carry out suicide bombings and other attacks against Afghan security forces.

Recent Kabul attack

The public warning comes a week after a Taliban bomb-and-gun attack in the heart of Kabul that killed nearly 70 people and wounded 347 more. The Islamist insurgency claimed responsibility.

Officials said the Haqqani network plotted the coordinated assault on a facility linked to the Afghan intelligence agency, alleging the militant group is operating from Pakistan and has links to that countrys intelligence agency. Pakistan has rejected allegations it is aiding insurgent attacks in Afghanistan.

"Pakistan condemns all forms and manifestation of terrorism and it is committed in the fight against this menace," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Nafees Zakaria. He was responding to remarks that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani delivered Monday in a speech to the parliament in Kabul.

Ghani accused Islamabad of not helping in the Afghan peace efforts and of not stopping Taliban insurgents from using Pakistani soil for plotting attacks in Afghanistan.

Spokesman Zakaria insisted Pakistan is making "serious efforts" to promote Afghan peace and reconciliation but said Pakistan alone is not responsible for bringing the Taliban back to the table. Zakaria said all members in the so-called Quadrilateral Coordination Group shared the responsibility to do so.

The group, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China, has been trying to arrange peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26



By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:



Four Iranian journalists have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from five to 10 years over alleged crimes against national security.



Afarin Chitsaz was sentenced to 10 years in prison, Ehsan Mazandarani was sentenced to seven years in prison, while Davoud Asadi and Ehsan Safarzai were given five-year terms.



The journalists were arrested in November prior to elections for parliament and clerical body of the Assembly of Experts in the country.



The move was later criticized by moderate President Hassan Rouhani.
Norway is appealing a court verdict about the human rights of Anders Breivik, sentenced for terrorism and mass murder.

Norwegian Justice Minister Anders Anundsen said in a statement Tuesday he asked the attorney general to appeal the verdict after the Oslo district court ruled that the state had violated Breivik's rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

The court said on April 20 that Norway violated Breivik's rights by keeping him in solitary confinement after he was sentenced for killing 77 people in a bomb-and-gun massacre in 2011. The court, however, also said that his right to a private life had not been violated.



Breivik, 37, sued the government last month and argued during a four-day hearing that solitary confinement, as well as frequent strip searches and the fact that he was often handcuffed while being moved between cells, violated his human rights.



Breivik is held in solitary confinement in a three-cell complex at the Skien prison, 130 kilometers from Oslo, where he can play video games, watch TV and exercise. In principle he is allowed visits from family and friends, but has not received any apart from his mother before she died.

Breivik was sentenced in August 2012 to a maximum 21 years in prison, which can be extended if he is still considered a danger.

Breivik killed eight people in a bomb attack outside a government building in Norways capital, then shot dead another 69 people, most of them teenagers, on the island of Utoya on July 22, 2011.
The number of foreign fighters entering Iraq and Syria to join Islamic State has plunged to a tiny fraction of those entering a year ago, a U.S. general said Tuesday.

Maj. Gen. Peter Gersten, Deputy Commander for Operations and Intelligence for the U.S.-led coalition fighting IS, told reporters via teleconference from Baghdad that there were between 1,500 and 2,000 foreign fighters entering Iraq and Syria each month when he deployed to Baghdad in mid-2015.

Now that weve been fighting this enemy for a year, our estimates are down to around 200 [per month],said Gersten.

The coalition also has seen an increase in desertion rates by Islamic State fighters, along with a failure by the militant group to pay its fighters, according to the general.

Were seeing the inability to fight. Were watching them try to leave Daesh (Islamic State), and in every single way their morale is being broken, he said, using a term reflecting the Arab acronym for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Richard Check labored for 43 years, five months and 15 days as a rigger in eastern Pennsylvanias Bethlehem Steel, formerly the second largest steel corporation in the United States.

In his final 4 years on the job, he was working 12 hours a day, every day, as the company tried to keep his division going. By 1994, the work had taken a toll on his body.

All I was doing was eating, sleeping, going to work, and going to the toilet, said Check.

Check retired from Bethlehem Steel shortly before it filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors for good, nearly 150 years after its founding.

The experience honed Check's political views, turning him into a strong union supporter, even though he had some grievances with the United Steelworkers union that negotiated on his behalf.

If you didnt have a union today  you wouldnt even get minimum wage, like my father. When he started in 1910  12 cents per hour, said Check.

Outsider appeal

Labor union rights remain a top priority for former steel and manufacturing workers across the nation. In Bethlehem, its an issue that transcends party lines among former steelworkers.

When I worked in the plants, Republicans would come right out in the open and say, I vote Republican. But the first thing out of their mouth after they would say that [was], I would never work here at Bethlehem Steel if there wasnt a union, said Frank Behum, a fourth-and-last-generation employee of Bethlehem Steel, where he worked for 32 years.

They were Republicans that were smart enough to know, because of safety reasons, you couldnt afford to follow the [anti-union] edicts of the Republican Party. You had to look to the Democrats to save your butt, he added.

But this years election may be different.

Lester Clore, a 33-year veteran of the Bethlehem plant, says Republican Donald Trumps talk of bringing back jobs from overseas and Democrat Bernie Sanders platform to ensure fair wages for its workers are both attractive to many of his friends.

We like some of the things that Trump is saying, [and] some of the things that Bernie Sanders is saying, Clore said. But were smart enough to know that we can be being played, too.

Preying on fear

The problem, Clore adds, is he doesnt believe either candidate has the nuts and bolts to follow up on their campaign promises  one of the reasons he is likely going to vote for former secretary of state Hillary Clinton this election.

"Heres a guy [Trump] who advocates that hes pro-union, yet he cant deal with his own workers down at the casino," said Clore. "Theyre on strike, and he cant seem to sit down and negotiate a fair agreement with them."

Behum, who supports Sanders for president, says he, too, encounters folks who plan to vote for Trump, but feels his ideas prey upon peoples fears that politicians ultimately help themselves -- not their constituents. They know the politicians dont listen to the electorate, they only listen to the banks."

Ted Morgan, professor of political science at Bethlehem's Lehigh University, senses that part of Trump's and Sanders appeal with ex-steelworkers has arisen out of frustration with past administrations inability to improve their lives.

They do feel like outsiders, understandably, said Morgan. Just as past candidates  from [former president Ronald] Reagan on  ran against government and pulled some of their loyalties, contemporary outsider sounding candidates still pull their support.

Steelworker community

Post-bankruptcy, part of the ex-Bethlehem steelworker community went on to find jobs at other steel plants, but others werent so lucky  a factor, Morgan says, that plays into their dissatisfaction.

My guess is that those with a strong pro-union feeling would be inclined to be in Bernie's camp, while those perhaps more widely alienated might go to Trump, said Morgan.

Similar to union rights, many ex-steel and manufacturing workers in Bethlehem take a firm stance on free trade agreements.

They were largely opposed to NAFTA  The North American Free Trade Agreement  when it was signed into law by former president Bill Clinton in 1994, and are opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) today.

Manufacturing workers and union members  theyre very aware of the role that these free trade agreements have played in moving manufacturing and unionized jobs overseas, said Jill Schennum, a cultural anthropologist and board member of Steelworkers Archives, a nonprofit organization that collects oral histories and provides educational outreach regarding the Bethlehem Steel plant.

Skill set

Unlike other areas of the country, Schennum said, the economy of Bethlehem has seen a revival. But its now prominent warehousing and service sectors require a separate set of skills, which she says do not provide many of the same benefits as manufacturing.

Those warehouse jobs arent the same as steel jobs. They average about $13 an hour; they are mostly non-union jobs, she said. Many warehouses in this area employ people on temporary contracts and dont even hire them directly.

Despite past disappointments and the uncertainty that lies ahead for future generations  for residents Richard Check, Frank Behum and Lester Clore  Bethlehem will always remain home.

"Bethlehem was a great place. It still is a great place, said Clore. It would be an even better place if they had the manufacturing jobs back.
Thirty years ago, the world's worst nuclear accident unfolded after an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 26, 1986.

A look at the scope of the disaster:

What happened: During a shutdown test a steam explosion blew the roof off reactor 4. Blocks of super-heated graphite rained down on the site and huge amounts of radioactive particles were released into the air. Human error and poor reactor design have been blamed.

Where: The nuclear plant is located about 130 kilometers (81 miles) north of Kyiv, Ukraine, and about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of the border with Belarus.

Deaths: Two workers died immediately after the explosion from non-radiological causes, 29 other workers and firemen died within months from acute radiation sickness. It is estimated thousands more have died from cancers and other illnesses in the ensuing years.

Eventual death toll: Subject to speculation and dispute, the World Health Organization's cancer research arm predicted 9,000 people will die due to Chernobyl-related cancer and leukemia. The Greenpeace environmental group said the eventual Chernobyl death toll could be 90,000.

Accident acknowledged: It took two days before the world knew anything of the blast. Workers at a Swedish nuclear plant first detected fallout. The state-controlled Soviet news media waited three days to acknowledge the accident, and then downplayed its severity.

Emergency actions: Those responding to the accident used helicopters to pour on the reactor debris sand -- to stop the fire -- and boron -- to prevent additional nuclear reactions. The Soviet government also cut down and buried about a square kilometer of pine forest near the plant to reduce radioactive contamination.

"Liquidators": Nearly 600,000 civilian and military personnel from across the former Soviet Union who were sent in to fight the fire and clean up the worst of the nuclear contamination. All were exposed to elevated radiation levels, WHO said.

Zone of Alienation: A 4,762-square-kilometer (1,838-square-mile) tract around the plant where no one is supposed to live. The area is considered unsafe for at least the next century.

Resettlement: As many as 350,000 people from around the plant.

Pripyat: Included in the resettlement figure, more than 45,000 residents of this town, which was built 4 kilometers away from the plant for nuclear workers and their families. Opened in 1970, it was a model of the Soviet ideal -- orderly blocks of soaring apartment towers with a large plaza as its focal point. Today, it sits desolate except for occasional tour groups.

Iconic image: A rusting Ferris wheel in Pripyat that was to start taking paying customers a few days after the blast.

Uranium: More than 200 tons of uranium remain inside the reactor site, fueling fears new radiation leaks could occur.

"Sarcophagus": The concrete-and-steel covering that was hastily built over the reactor to keep radioactive waste from escaping into the atmosphere. Concerns are rising as the sarcophagus nears the end of its three-decade life span.

New Safe Confinement: The internationally funded $2.3 billion project that will build a long-term shelter over the building containing the plant's reactor. The shelter, which resembles a 30-story tall Quonset hut, is a replacement for the "sarcophagus."

Robotics: After long-term shelter is built, robotic machinery inside the structure will begin dismantling the sarcophagus and the destroyed reactor. This stage is expected to begin in 2017.

Present-day workers: 7,000, working on decommissioning the site. The large workforce helps to limit each worker's individual exposure to radiation.

Ukraine nuclear power: The four reactors at the nuclear plant were designed and built during the 1970s and 1980s. Chernobyl's three other reactors were restarted after the explosion and fire, but all eventually were shut down for good, with the last reactor closing in 1999.
Senators from both major U.S. political parties have tentatively agreed to remediate the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

The agreement would authorize $170 million in grants and loans to replace the city's lead-contaminated water pipes and other infrastructure and allocate $50 million for lead-prevention programs nationwide.

Democratic Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters of Michigan and Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma agreed to the measure, which will be included in legislation known as the Water Resources Development Act. The bill is typically approved by Congress every few years to fund U.S. environmental development and maintenance projects.

This is the second time the senators have reached agreement on the Flint water crisis. They negotiated a nearly identical deal in February, but a larger water resources bill that included the measure was derailed.

The water crisis in the Midwestern city began in April 2014 when city officials switched Flint's water source in a money-saving move. Shortly thereafter, residents began to complain about the quality of the water, which was later determined to be tainted with lead.

Dangerously high levels of lead had been found in the blood of some residents, including children. They are particularly susceptible to lead exposure, which can cause lower IQs and behavioral problems.

The lead discovery prompted Governor Rick Snyder to announce in October 2015 that Flint would again get its water from its earlier source, the Detroit municipal system.

Since January 5, 2016, Genesee County, which includes Flint, has been under a state of emergency while residents use filters and bottled water.
A group of 83 U.S. senators called on President Barack Obama to complete a new security agreement with Israel that would include increasing the $3.1 billion the United States now provides in annual military aid.

That money is allocated through a 10-year agreement that expires in 2018. Negotiations on a new pact are ongoing, with Israel believed to be seeking an increase to at least $4 billion a year.

The senators, in a letter dated Monday, did not specify how much they think Israel should receive, but said they "stand ready to support a substantially enhanced new long-term agreement."

Militant threats

The letter cited a number of militant threats facing the U.S. ally, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, al-Qaida and Islamic State in Syria, and militant Islamic groups in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

It also highlighted Iran's support for many of those groups and its recent ballistic missile tests as immediate threats to Israel's security.

"Given the extraordinary levels of weapons pouring into the Middle East, Israel could quickly find itself on the wrong end of the regional military balance," the letter said.

The bipartisan group of senators makes up most of the 100-member body.

Senator Chris Coons, who is leading the effort along with Senator Lindsey Graham, urged the Obama administration to act "swiftly."

"During a time of increased instability in the Middle East, it is important the United States and Israeli governments reaffirm their historic and unshakeable security partnership," Coons said.

The U.S. has allocated more than $17 billion in foreign military and police aid this year, according to data compiled by Security Assistance Monitor, including the $3.1 billion for Israel.

Afghanistan, with $3.8 billion, is the only country to get more. Egypt ranks third on the list with $1.3 billion.

Department of Defense spending

In addition to those funds, Congress often allocates more money within the lines of the Defense Department's budget for certain countries.

For 2016, that extra spending includes up to $206 million to Israel for three missile defense systems -- $40 million for the Iron Dome, $150 million for David's Sling and $15 million for Arrow 3.

Iron Dome is used to intercept short- and medium-range rockets fired from just beyond Israel's borders, while Arrow 3 interceptors fly beyond the earth's atmosphere and are meant to destroy incoming nuclear, biological or chemical missiles.

The David's Sling Weapons System (DSWS) is a joint U.S.-Israeli project that is meant to fill the gap between the two defenses. It defends against arsenal such as Syria's 302mm rockets and Scud B-class ballistic missiles.

The senators said in their letter to the president they are currently considering increasing that Israeli missile defense funding in 2017.

The Senate version of the Pentagon funding bill has not yet been made public, with the Senate Armed Services Committee due to work on it next month.

But on Monday, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee released the summary of its version of the legislation.

It called for a substantial increase in Israeli missile defense funding, to up to $332 million, with $62 million for the Iron Dome, $150 million for David's Sling and $120 million for Arrow 3.
For decades, Afghanistans Abdul Rashid Dostum has been a powerful player in the remote north of the restive country.



As an army general and warlord, he aligned himself with Americas CIA when the Taliban was in power and helped the U.S. oust the militant group in 2001.



But now as Afghan vice president, Dostum is trying to show he remains a power broker. Last fall, he visited Chechnya and reportedly solicited arms for the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group in Afghanistan. He stopped in Moscow to renew ties with the Kremlin.



And he told Voice of America that he also wants to visit the U.S. to discuss the Afghan governments continuing struggle against the Taliban, IS, drug trafficking, and political uncertainty.



I am well acquainted with our Pentagon friends and congressmen and American generals who had been in Iraq and Afghanistan, he told VOAs Afghan service. I want to discuss the situation with them. They have to take this issue seriously. Otherwise, it might get out of control.



But the Obama administration is apparently having no part of Dostum.

According to a report in The New York Times on Tuesday, the U.S. quietly passed along the word that if Dostum attempted a visit to the U.S., his visa application would be denied because of the alleged atrocities committed under his command against the Taliban.



The Afghan government reportedly cancelled Dostums plans for a U.S. trip after the word from the U.S. State Department, The Times reported.



Dostum had planned to participate in a special session of the United Nations Assembly this month on the worlds drug problems. Instead, the Afghan minister for counter-narcotics, Salamat Azimi - a Dostum appointee - represented Dostum and delivered his speech.



When asked by VOA about the trip cancellation, Dostum said the unrest in Afghanistan forced him to remain home.



America is our friend and we thank her for supporting our national army and police, he said. I personally intend to visit as soon as the situation here allows.



Dostums spokesperson, Shahbaz Eraj, called The New York Times report baseless. He said Dostum postponed his scheduled visit to the U.S. because he preferred to lead the ongoing operations against insurgents in the north.

Dostum met with the U.S. Ambassador in Kabul, the spokesman said, refusing to discuss details of the meeting.

Dostum has spent much of his time during the past few months in his native northern Jouzjan province where Taliban insurgents have stepped up militant activities. He has been leading clean-up operations in Jouzjan and neighboring provinces.

Since assuming the vice presidency in September 2014, Dostum has reportedly been at odds with the National Unity Government headed by President Ashraf Ghani. His chair at cabinet and national security council meetings has often remained unoccupied as Dostum refuses to participate.

But relations may be thawing, analysts say.

Ghanis participation in a gathering of ethnic Uzbeks hosted by Dostum last month in Kabul was seen as a reconciliatory effort by the two leaders. Recently, two of Dostum confidants were awarded high government positions, including the post of the deputy national security advisor.

Last fall Dostum visited Russias turbulent republic of Chechnya where he enjoyed a warm welcome by the Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov, who called Dostum a brother.



Winning the fight against terrorism was the agenda of Dostums visit, according to Kadyrov.



The Afghan vice president asked for a military assistance in fighting IS whose increasing presence in Afghanistan has become a growing security concern for the government, Kadyrovs statement said.



The Afghan government did not comment on Dostums visit to Chechnya and Russia.



Russia has upped its military and economic aid to the Afghan government, which is battling the Taliban in several areas of the country.



That aid includes 10,000 Kalashnikov rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition that the government will use to fight both IS and the Taliban insurgency, analysts said.
The African Union mission in Somalia, AMISOM, says its troops, along with Somali forces, have fended off an attack by al Shabab militants.

The mission said Tuesday that the militants attempted to attack them and government institutions in the town of Janale, in Lower Shabelle region.

AMISOM said al Shabab sustained heavy casualties. There was no immediate word on AMISOM casualties.
Spanish political leaders meet King Felipe on Tuesday for a final round of talks to resolve a four-month-old political stalemate, but with a successful outcome unlikely, the stage could be set for a new election.

Political parties have been unable to form a new government since an inconclusive election last December, and with less than a week until a deadline to agree on a prime minister, Tuesday's talks are the last chance to broker some form of coalition.

After consultations with smaller forces Monday, King Felipe will meet with leaders of the four main parties in his third attempt to unblock the situation, culminating in a session with caretaker Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of the center-right People's Party (PP).

Most leaders have already recognized they lack the support from rivals to secure a parliamentary majority, making it unlikely a last-minute candidate will emerge to try and lead a viable pact between parties.

"The feeling everyone has is that there will be no surprises," Alberto Garzon, leader of the former communist party Izquierda Unida ("United Left") told a news conference Monday after meeting the king.

Felipe was keen to see the process through and try to seek a consensus, politicians involved in Monday's talks said, though they added that the monarch had already asked parties to keep the costs of campaigns down.

The rise of new forces such as anti-austerity Podemos ("We Can") and centrist Ciudadanos ("Citizens") after a deep economic crisis meant all parties fell short of a parliamentary majority in December, in the most fragmented result for decades.

The PP won the most votes and 123 seats in the 350-seat lower house of parliament, while the Socialists took 90, Podemos 69 and Ciudadanos 40.

The parties' failure to anoint a prime minister by May 2  after a Socialist pact with Ciudadanos was rejected in parliament in early March  will automatically trigger a repeat election, likely to be held June 26.

But beyond Tuesday, parties will be running out of time to even hold the necessary parliamentary votes, bringing the process to a head.

Opinion polls have so far shown a new election would do little to resolve the deadlock, while politicians such as Garzon said they were concerned about a rise in abstention among frustrated voters.

Many leaders have already entered a pre-campaign mode, blaming each other for the impasse which could start taking its toll on the economy more noticeably if Spain remains without a government for many more months, according to analysts.

"I'm ready to fight for Spain once again," Rajoy told PP supporters at a rally Sunday.
A disputed election and charges the ruling party is censoring the news have had a chilling effect on what should be a time for celebration in the southern African nation of Tanzania.

Tuesday is the 52nd Union Day - the anniversary of the day in 1964 on which Tanganyika merged with the island of Zanzibar to form Tanzania.

No celebrations

But reform-minded President John Magufuli has canceled this years Union Day celebrations in what he said was a cost-saving measure. Instead the president has recommended that the money for the celebrations be used for road construction.

Freeman Mbowe, national chairman of the opposition CHADEMA party, said the state of the union is not well because tensions remain high following last Octobers presidential election in Zanzibar which the opposition believes it won.

Opposition decries clamp down

Mbowe said canceling the Union Day celebrations is a mockery of how best to deal with the political situation in Zanzibar.

In this years celebration, the main opposition party in Zanzibar, thats CUF (Civic United Front), had said it would not participate in any way whatsoever in the Union Day celebrations, and also the main opposition party in the mainland, that is our party CHADEMA had said it would not participate in any way in the celebrations, he said.

Zanzibar held presidential elections in October last year and the opposition said it won the election. But the Zanzibar electoral commission annulled the results on grounds they were marred by several irregularities.

The commission called for fresh elections on March 20th this year, but the opposition boycotted because it believed its candidate won the original October 25th election last year.

New election was boycotted

The ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party candidate Ali Mohamed Shein won the re-run Zanzibar polls with 91% of the votes cast. But still the tension persists because the opposition believes its candidate already had won the presidency.

"We have a problem that needs to be taken care of in Zanzibar. The party that won the election in Zanzibar has to be recognized. Canceling the celebrations doesnt make any sense at the end of the day because in the first place, the opposition decided to boycott these celebrations. But two, we have a primary crisis to take care of, and the primary crisis that has to be taken care is the government in Zanzibar? Who has formed the government and why have they formed the government? Are we really in acceptance of this? Certainly no, Mbowe said.

Mbowe said the best option of resolving the political impasse in Zanzibar is to form a government of national unity. Meanwhile the Tanzania Editors Forum has called on the national parliament to allow private television stations to broadcast "live" the proceedings of parliament.

Ruling party restricting media

According to the Daily News of Tanzania, Editors Forum chairman Theophil Makunga said under the current system, news on parliamentary proceedings is heavily censored, denying the public the right to access proper information.

Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa announced earlier this year that the government was reducing the Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation (TBC) coverage of the national Assembly to save money. The TBC has been airing House proceedings since 2015.

Mbowe said the opposition joins the Tanzania Editors Forum in denouncing the governments decision to censor the media.

This is a mockery to the whole thing. We know the government is control of the TBC, but again the private media decided and volunteered to air the live coverage of the parliament. But now they are denying all the private media to air the proceedings in parliament. So the question of cost-cutting exercise is a mere excuse to try and hide their face on protecting the general public in knowing what is exactly going in parliament, Mbowe said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

By Elmira Tariverdiyeva - Trend:

Arrests of Armenians who have crossed into neighboring Georgia to try to sell nuclear materials have increased the past two years, with the latest coming just two weeks ago, reports The Huffington Post.

Nuclear non-proliferation experts in the US and elsewhere are alarmed about smuggling attempts in other countries in the former Soviet Union as well, according to the edition.

The arrests of most of the Armenians have been in sting operations in Georgia, where undercover officers posed as buyers from Islamic extremist groups, said the edition.

Armenians have been particularly active in nuclear-materials smuggling efforts in the region, according to The Huffington Post.

"The US, which has been a driver of efforts to keep nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union from falling into the hands of rogue states or terrorists, gave Georgia $50 million a few years ago to help thwart smugglers," said the edition.

"Part of the money was used to install radiation detectors at Georgian border crossings, and that proved to be the undoing of Armenian smuggler Garik Dadayan the first time," said the edition adding that he was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison, but served only a few months before being released.

"The question of why the original sentence was so light, and why he was freed so quickly after being confined, has never been answered satisfactorily. The suspicion is that bribes were at play," explained the edition.

The light sentence apparently emboldened Dadayan to try again, said the edition. "In 2010, he was arrested in another smuggling effort, this time in cahoots with two other Armenians."

Given Armenia's distinction as one of the poorest countries in the former Soviet Union, it is obvious that the issue of nuclear-materials smuggling from the country will become increasingly relevant, according to Huffingtonpost.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @EmmaTariver
On the day he is expected to win all five states holding Republican presidential primaries, Donald Trump reached 50 percent support nationally from Republican or Republican-leaning voters, said NBC News/Survey Monkey.

It is the first time Trump has reached that mark since NBC News/Survey Monkey began its weekly election tracking poll in December.

Trump's challengers -- Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich -- lost ground in the survey, finishing double digits behind him.

Trump's overall support in the poll has remained consistent, hovering at well over 40 percent since mid-March. What's significant is that his support among Republicans saw an increase of six percentage points in the latest poll, conducted online, from April 18-24, of 10,707 adults aged 18 and over, including 9,405 registered voters.

Trump needs to win a majority of the delegates Tuesday to help in his quest to clinch the Republican Party's nomination.

The voting in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island also follows an announcement by Trump's remaining rivals that they are strategically campaigning in a bid to block him from earning a delegate majority.

Trump called the effort by Cruz and Kasich "pathetic" and used his appearances Monday to reiterate his criticisms of the nomination process.

He has accused the Republican Party of treating him unfairly, and said Monday the system is "rigged."

The plan by Cruz and Kasich to stop Trump is aimed primarily at voting a week from Tuesday in the state of Indiana, where Kasich is supposed to avoid campaigning in order to give Cruz a better shot at defeating Trump.

Some voters appeared turned off by the pact as well.

In Indiana, Kathy Hiel said she hadn't made up her mind to vote for Trump until late Sunday's announcement by his rivals. "I'll have to support him now," she said of the front-runner.

In Oregon City, Oregon, Craig Herman said the agreement "doesn't bother me at all," adding, "it's all theater. ... I think they all do this for drama and put out press releases."

But despite their announcement, the plan may be easier in theory than in practice, and Kasich said later Monday that even though he will back off campaigning in Indiana, he still wants his supporters to vote for him.

Trump came into Tuesday with 845 delegates, followed by Cruz with 559. Kasich had 148, trailing even Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who dropped out of the race in mid-March but has 171 delegates.

As has been the case throughout the nominating process, the margin of Tuesday's voting will be important because the more delegates Trump earns the better his chance of reaching the 1,237 he needs. If he fails to hit that threshold, Cruz and Kasich could have a shot at the nomination at the party's convention in July.

Democratic race

In the Democratic race, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led polls in four of the five states voting Tuesday, with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders ahead only in Rhode Island.

A strong showing Tuesday for Clinton would move her to within striking distance of the Democratic nomination. She entered the day with 1,944 delegates, including hundreds of super delegates who have pledged to support her.

The five states voting Tuesday have 463 delegates at stake, and another 285 are available during the next month, meaning Clinton needs to win just over half of them to reach a majority 2,383.

Despite the tough math he faces, Sanders, who has 1,192 delegates, has repeatedly vowed to remain in the race through the July convention.

The self-described democratic socialist has campaigned for higher wages, eliminating special interest money in politics, breaking up big banks and expanding access to healthcare, and has developed a big following among young people.

Sanders told supporters Monday that his campaign is the only one asking Americans to "think outside of the status quo."

Clinton, whose background also includes time as a senator and first lady, gave a speech Monday targeting Trump as out of touch with regular people.

"You got to spend time with Americans of all sorts and backgrounds in every part of our country," she said. "Don't just fly that big jet in and land it and go make a big speech and insult everybody you can think of and then go back, get on that big jet and go back to your country club house in Florida or your penthouse in New York."
Pressure on journalists in Turkey appears to be spreading to the foreign media. This week, four reporters were denied entry into the country.

The most recent was U.S. reporter David Lepeska, who tweeted Monday, Was just hurried onto a flight to Chicago after being denied entry at Istanbul Ataturk.

Dutch journalist Ebru Umar was detained by police Sunday at her home in the Turkish Aegean town of Kusadasi. She tweeted, Police at the door, no joke. Umar, who is of Turkish origin, is a well-known feminist reporter. She was detained for a series of tweets quoting her recent article about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Umar was released later Sunday, but told not to leave the country.

Erdogan has enforced a rarely used law criminalizing insults against the president. Since his election in 2014, nearly 2,000 people have been prosecuted, many of them journalists.

Most of the people to avoid lawsuits, they simply say, 'the Palace,' according to Turkish journalist Sevgi Akarcesme, I have been sued not only for tweets, but for a comment left under my tweet, which I had no idea about. I received a suspended prison sentence for that.

Akarcesme was the editor of the English language Todays Zaman, until it was seized by the courts last month, along with its Turkish sister paper Zaman, one of biggest selling papers in the country, on suspicion of supporting terrorism.

Political difference or conspiracy?

The publications were critical of the government and president, and are linked to Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen. He lives in self-imposed exile in the United States and was once a close ally of Erdogan, but they became bitter rivals.

Turkish prosecutors accuses Gulen of heading a terrorist organization.

All authoritarian governments use the same tactics and tools.In order to silence criticism and media, they refer to terrorism charges, said Akarcesme. Following the seizure of Zaman and Today's Zaman, Akarcesme said most columnists were dismissed and the editorial line was altered from critical to sympathetic coverage of the president and government.

Erdogan insists he and his ruling AKP are facing a conspiracy to overthrow them, which started back in 2013 with the revelation of corruption allegations implicating family members of the president and senior ministers.They argue Gulen is using the media as part of the conspiracy.

Turkeys broadly written anti-terror laws are also being used against two of the countrys most prominent journalists, Can Dundar, editor in chief of Cumhuriyet newspaper, and his Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gul. The men are facing double life sentences and 30 years in jail with aggravated punishment, meaning solitary confinement. They are charged with publishing a story accusing the Turkish state of arms smuggling to Syrian rebels.

This is politically motivated by the president," argued senior Turkey researcher Emma Sinclair Webb of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.

He [Erdogan] accused them of an attempted coup, aiding a terrorist organization, spying, and all these were charges that were then written down in the indictment; it's a completely politically motivated trial coming from pressure above. They did not want these journalists reporting on this issue, of trucks and weapons to Syria," Sinclair Webb said.

The journalists were held for nearly three months in pre-trial solitary confinement.Dundar says prison has always been an occupational hazard for Turkish journalists, "So it's a normal step for a journalist in Turkey if you are seeking the truth.

Dundar and Gul were released after the intervention of the countrys Constitution Court, which ruled their detentions breached their personal and press freedom.Despite the ruling, the case against them continues.

Chilling effect on truth



The severity of the sentences they are facing is being widely seen as a warning.

This aims to set up an example, to intimidate other journalists, said Erol Onderoglu, a Turkey representative of Reporters Without Borders

The government argues the country is facing unprecedented threats from the Kurdish rebel group the PKK and Islamic State.

The collapse in the cease-fire with the PKK last year is seen as a factor behind the growing crackdown.

Certainly the situation has gotten markedly worse recently," said Turkey researcher Andrew Gardner of Amnesty international.

"Now there is unprecedented pressure on the media.Not just criminal prosecutions but also targeting the business interests behind the media companies," he added.

Dogan Media Group, the largest media organization not under direct or tacit control of the government, last year was subject to violent protests led by supporters of the ruling AKP; but, the real problems facing the group are financial investigations.In2009, the group was fined an unprecedented $3.2 billion, following a Hurriyet paper report of a German judge's accusations of corruption by senior Turkish officials.

Dogan media group is the only remaining big media group independent of the government remaining in the country.Although they are busily self-censoring themselves, they are still on the hit list of the executive, warns political scientist Cengiz Aktar of Istanbuls Suleyman Sah University.

Concern about media freedom continues to grow among Turkeys Western allies.This month, the U.S. State Department, the European Parliament, and Council of Europe voiced concern about growing pressure on media freedom.
The speaker of the Turkish parliament has spoken out in favor of a new constitution based on religious principles, in direct contrast to the secular basis on which modern Turkey was founded.

Ismail Kahraman of the ruling AK party said in a speech late Monday that the text of a new constitution should not contain wording about secularism. He said as a majority Muslim nation, Turkey should not be "in a retreat from religion."

The AK party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been pushing for a new constitution and increased powers for the president, a move that critics say could concentrate too much power in the hands of an authoritarian government.

Turkey's current constitution is inherited from a military government that followed a coup in 1980.
The United States deployed F-22 fighter jets to Romania as a sign of military support for NATO's eastern European allies who say they face aggression from Russia.

The fighter jets landed on Monday at the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base in the country's southeast.

"The United States and Romania enjoy a very strong partnership," said Hans Klemm, the U.S. ambassador to Romania. The two countries are "seeking to make our joint contribution to the improvement of the defense of Europe, the defense of the transatlantic alliance, to improve the security in southeastern Europe, Romania - as a result of the aggression by Russia that has brought so much instability to this part of the world over the past two to three years."

A U.S. statement says F-22s possess sophisticated sensors allowing the pilot to track, identify, shoot and kill air-to-air threats before being detected. They also have significant capability to attack surface targets.

The aircraft are officially part of a NATO training exercise and will head to another NATO ally later in the week.

The United States has pledged to bolster the defenses of NATO's eastern members following Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and the Kremlin's fomenting and supporting a pro-Russian armed insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
A NATO-led mission aimed at stemming the flow of migrants from Libya to Europe could be up and running by July, according to the Italian government. There are fears the numbers of migrants could soar as the route through Greece and the Balkans remains blocked.

Libyan security forces detained more than 200 migrants from across Africa, and an alleged smuggler, following a raid on a safe house last week in Tripoli.

This type of enforcement is Europes long-term hope for stemming the flow of migrants. More than 16,000 people made the crossing from North Africa to Italy in the first three months of 2016, almost double the rate last year.

The United States has offered its backing for a proposed NATO naval operation off Libya. It is not clear, however, what the patrol ships would do with the intercepted migrants, says policy analyst Riccardo Fabiani of the Eurasia Group.

Some people are talking about flying them back to their respective countries in Africa, but it is clear that the African governments are not enthusiastic about this idea, said Fabiani. "And obviously sending them back to Libya is not really an option at the moment because the Libyan government does not have the capabilities.

The West hopes to boost those capabilities by supporting Libyas unity government, known as the Government of National Accord, which aims to bring together rival administrations in the east and west.

They are taking over ministries and taking over departments and taking over government buildings, and there is backing at most levels for it; however, the situation in the east is very different. And that is where I think we are facing a stalemate, said Fabiani.

The Government of National Accord welcomed British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond to Tripoli last week, giving him a tour of its fledgling naval patrol force at the dockside.

Hammond said British troops could be sent to train Libyan security forces, and refused to rule out strikes against Islamic State militants. Speaking Friday during a visit to London, U.S. President Barack Obama ruled out sending American troops.

I do not think it would be welcomed by this new government," said Obama. "It would send the wrong signal; this is a matter that Libyans come together on."



Tensions between the rival groups rose Tuesday, after the Tobruk-based eastern administration tried to make its first shipment of oil, reportedly to a company based in the United Arab Emirates, via Malta. Authorities in Tripoli said the shipment was illegal, and Malta has barred the vessel from its waters.
A former Cuban reporter who worked for the communist government's official newspaper was featured Tuesday as the first of six journalists in the U.S. government's weeklong press freedom campaign leading up to the May 3 World Press Freedom Day.

Jose Antonio Torres was a journalist for Cuba's state newspaper Granma. He was arrested in February 2011 after Granma published his report on the mismanagement of a public works project in Santiago de Cuba, and subsequently was sentenced to 14 years in prison for allegedly spying.

"This is the kind of reporting that promotes transparency and makes a government accountable to its people," said State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner on Tuesday, while calling on Cuban authorities to release Torres.

The State Department launched its fifth annual "Free the Press" campaign as part of its efforts to mark the importance of a free and independent media, as well as to highlight troubling trends in the persecution of journalists worldwide.

Differences in human rights practices remain a thorny issue between Washington and Havana, as the two countries continue to work on improving ties.

Days before U.S. President Barack Obama made his historic visit to the island nation in March, Granma published an editorial criticizing U.S. support for the rights of Cuban's political dissidents. It also warned against any meddling in Cuba's internal affairs, saying Washington "should abandon the pretense of fabricating an internal political opposition."

The U.S. government estimated Cuban authorities made 2,000 short-term detentions in the first three months of this year, although most long-term political prisoners have been released.

Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Tom Malinowski, said such detentions reflect the highly repressive tendencies of the Cuban government, as well as its nervousness about changes in relations with the U.S.

"The only argument these guys had for the last few years is the myth of American hostility toward Cuba, and we have completely destroyed that myth in the eyes of the Cuban people, and they got nothing else. And I think they're extremely nervous and insecure as a result of that," said Malinowski at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
U.S. President Barack Obama returned Monday night to Washington from a weeklong trip that took him to Saudi Arabia, Britain and Germany.

During his journey, Obama sought to shore up U.S. alliances that he views as key to growing trade, defeating Islamic State militants, and offsetting Russian aggression in Ukraine and Syria.

The U.S. leader, who used one of his final foreign trips to start trying to shape his legacy, said in a speech Monday in Germany that he sees Europe facing a "defining moment.'' He urged the continent's leaders to pay attention to income inequality, education for young people and equal pay for women.

"If we do not solve these problems, we start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way,'' Obama said.
Amid a protracted political stalemate over a Supreme Court vacancy, the Senates most senior Democrat and Republican disagreed sharply on the way forward and what is required under the U.S. Constitution.

We need to do our job, said Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the chambers longest-serving current member.

The Senate does not play a rubber stamp, said Orrin Hatch, the Senates most senior Republican and a Judiciary Committee member.



At issue is the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, put forward by President Barack Obama to succeed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February.



Republicans say the seat should remain vacant until a new president is sworn in next year.



Conducting a heated, divisive confirmation fight in the middle of an ugly presidential election  and that certainly describes our presidential election season that is well under way  would do more harm than good, Hatch said Tuesday at a forum on Capitol Hill.



Of course, weve had numerous, numerous Supreme Court nominees confirmed in an election year, Leahy countered moments later.



The partisan tug-of-war over the Garland nomination has sparked fierce debate over precisely what is  and is not  required under the Constitution.



Americas founding document states that the president shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appointJudges of the Supreme Court.



The Constitution gives the Senate the power of advice and consent, but does not specify how the Senate ought to exercise that power, Hatch said. Claims that the Constitution dictates when and how the confirmation process must occur  immediate committee hearings or timely floor votes  are false.



What would be historic is to deny Judge Garland a public hearing and a vote, Leahy responded. The Senate has considered controversial nominees. But in every one of those instances, the nominee received a public hearing and a vote, Leahy added.



Republicans argue that the timing of Scalias death, when the 2016 presidential primary season had begun, makes this a special case.



As a simple matter of precedent, the Senate has never confirmed a Supreme Court nominee to a vacancy occurring this late in a presidents tenure, Hatch said.



Legal scholars at the forum also offered differing views.



The Senate has a duty to consider a nominee, but how it exercises that duty is a matter of dispute, said Martin Gold, who served as legal counsel to several former Republican senators. In a sense, [Senate] inaction is also action.



Jeffrey Blattner, who served as legal counsel to former Democratic senator Edward Kennedy, recalled a similar situation in 1988 when the Senate, then controlled by Democrats, confirmed Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court during Ronald Reagans last year as president.



It did not occur to us [Democrats], Well, its an election year. [1988 Democratic presidential nominee] Michael Dukakis could win, and we dont have to go forward [with the nomination], Blattner said.



No one at the forum disputed that Republicans have the power to hold a Supreme Court seat vacant for an extended period of time if they so choose. The Constitution sets no time limits for filling posts.



Even so, the question boils down to doing ones duty and acting in the nations best interest, according to Democrat Leahy.



We are elected to vote yes or no, not maybe, Leahy said. You should demand your senators do their job by providing this nominee a public hearing. We are called to fulfill our constitutional duties. We are called to lead.



The Constitution does not mandate a one size fits all confirmation process, but leaves these judgment calls for the Senate to make, Republican Hatch countered.



The issue is when and how, not whether, the Senate should consider a nominee for the Scalia vacancy, he added. The Constitution leaves the judgment to us.

A recent survey found less than half of Americans understand the Senates role in confirming presidential nominees. Even so, public opinion polls have consistently shown that clear majorities believe Merrick Garland, a federal appellate court judge, should at least be considered for the high court.
Some Venezuelans were surprised Monday by rolling four-hour blackouts that the government says will last 40 days, in response to a drought that has rendered hydroelectric power plants nearly useless.

President Nicolas Maduro's government announced power rationing on Monday in 18 of Venezuela's 24 states. The capital, Caracas, has been spared.

But residents complained to news media that they were not warned of the cutoffs, leaving homes with refrigerators full of spoiled food and businesses with no way to complete electronic transactions.

Maduro's government says the El Nino weather phenomenon has caused the power shortages, but his critics blame economic mismanagement and the currently low price of oil on which the Venezuelan economy depends.

Maduro has put in place some power-saving measures such as shorter work weeks and a time zone shift to make more use of daylight. He has also encouraged people to stop blow-drying their hair and ironing clothing, until the power shortage is over.
Yemeni government forces and their Emirati allies took back control of the country's largest oil export terminal from al-Qaida on Monday, security officials said, a day after routing the militants from their nearby stronghold.

The lightning advance is a shift in strategy for the Saudi-led coalition forces, which for over a year have focused their firepower on the Iran-allied Houthis who had seized the capital Sanaa and driven the government into exile.

The civil war has killed more than 6,200 people, displaced more than 2.5 million people and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the world's poorest countries.

A fragile ceasefire, part of a U.N.-sponsored push for peace talks between the Houthis and President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government in Kuwait, has been in force since April 10.

The U.N. Security Council ask Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday to submit a plan within 30 days detailing how his Yemen envoy can help the move toward peace.

In 48 hours, the Saudi-led coalition has deprived the Islamist militants of a lucrative mini-state they had built up over the course of a year, based around the southwestern port city of Mukalla.

About 80 percent of Yemen's modest oil reserves were exported in peacetime from the Ash Shihr terminal, 68 km (42 miles) eastwards along the coast from Mukalla, which has been shut since the war began and al-Qaida seized the area.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - seeking official recognition as a quasi-state as well as trying to get rich - tried last year to export the 2 million barrels of oil stored there with the approval of Yemen's government, which refused.

In a separate incident, residents said that an unidentified warplane believed to belong to the Saudi-led coalition fired missiles at a car in the city of Azzan in Shabwa province killing at least eight suspected al Qaeda militants.

Azzan is part of a string of southern Yemen towns seized by al-Qaida since last year as Hadi supporters and their Houthi enemies fought each other.

Deaths

A statement by the mostly Gulf Arab coalition said on Monday its offensive had killed 800 al-Qaida fighters and several leaders, though Mukalla residents said the number appeared unlikely and the group withdrew largely without a fight.

"It's highly exaggerated. There was only very little combat," resident Mubarak al-Hameli said by telephone.

A Yemeni military source put Sunday's death toll at 18 and said 30 al-Qaida fighters had been killed.

Residents said clerics and tribesmen had tried to persuade the al-Qaida fighters to leave quietly and that they had withdrawn westward to the neighboring province of Shabwa.

Local Yemeni officials said on Sunday that some 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern city.

AQAP, which has planned several foiled bombing attempts on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the 2015 attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine's offices in Paris, was taking about $2 million a day in tax from the port.

The coalition offensive is now seeking to advance westwards on AQAP-held towns along a 600-km (370-mile) stretch of Arabian Sea coastline between Mukalla and the government's base in Aden, where militants appeared to be mounting fiercer resistance.

Local security officials said a senior Yemeni officer escaped an AQAP car bombing that killed four of his bodyguards outside the city of al-Koud in Abyan province on Sunday night.

The two-week ceasefire, which has reduced fighting along most frontlines between coalition and Houthi fighters, has helped launch peace talks in Kuwait last week.

The talks had been bogged by disputes over Arab coalition flights over Yemen, prompting the U.N. Security Council's request to Ban to inform it within 30 days of his plan for the next phase of the move toward peace.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.26

Trend:

Armenia's President Serzh Sargsyan has signed a decree to dismiss the country's Deputy Defense Minister Alik Mirzabekyan from his post, lragir.am reported.

Moreover, Chief of Intelligence Department of Armenian Armed Forces' General Staff Arshak Karapetyan, as well as Chief of Signal Troops, head of the Department of Automated Control Systems of Armenia's Armed Forces Komitas Muradyan were relieved of duties.
Security officials in Yemen said they have retaken the southern city of Mukalla, a day after reports that Yemeni fighters killed more than 800 al-Qaida militants in a single offensive.

Yemeni forces entered Mukalla late Monday after two days of heavy airstrikes on the coastal town that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has controlled for the past year.

On Monday, Saudi-led coalition forces in Yemen said they killed more than 800 al-Qaida fighters in a single attack Sunday in the southeastern town held by the militant group for the past year.

Attack claims

The death toll claimed by the coalition could not be independently verified.

The coalition command said in a statement that several al-Qaida leaders were among the dead. It also said all militants who were not killed in the attack fled.

The military action was part of an international effort to support the Yemeni government and to exert influence over the Yemeni cities that are under the control of al-Qaida, the statement said.

The coalition also said it hopes to allow intensifying humanitarian relief efforts in those cities and alleviate suffering of the brotherly people of Yemen.

It is not known whether any civilians were killed during the fighting.
U.S. President Barack Obama says the U.S. is taking defensive measures to counter "low-level" threats from North Korea.

"As we try to resolve the underlying problem of nuclear development inside of North Korea, we're also setting up a shield that can at least block the relatively low-level threats that they're posing now," Obama said in a CBS television interview that aired on Tuesday.

He said the issue of North Korea is "not something that lends itself to an easy solution." "We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals. But aside from the humanitarian costs of that, they are right next door to our vital ally, Republic of Korea [South Korea]," Obama said.

Earlier Tuesday, South Korea's news agency reported North Korea is preparing a second launch of a new, powerful mid-range missile capable of reaching U.S. military installations in the Pacific. The Yonhap News Agency said it learned from an unidentified government official that South Korea's military "is picking up signs" that its northern neighbor will launch the missile "in the near future."

But a spokesman for South Korea's Defense Ministry said it could not confirm Yonhap's report.

North Korea's Musudan missile is a mobile land-based missile that was converted from an old Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missile. It has a range of anywhere between 3,000-4,000 kilometers, which puts the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam within reach.

North Korea test-launched the missile on April 15, the birthday of Kim Il Sung, the countrys first president and grandfather of current leader Kim Jong Un. South Korean and U.S. officials say the launch was a failure.

The North has been conducting a series of missile launches in recent weeks, in defiance of a new, stronger set of sanctions imposed by the United Nations over its fourth nuclear test in January. And South Korean President Park Geun-hye said recently there are indications North Korea is preparing to conduct a fifth nuclear test.

Analysts believe Kim Jong Un will try to use the test to cement his hold on power and enhance his image within the country as it prepares for a rare congress of the ruling Workers Party next month.
The legendary Congolese musician Papa Wembas sudden death, following a performance in Ivory Coast early Sunday morning, has left many of his fans around the world, aghast and in disbelief.

But, host of VOAs RM Show, Roger Muntu, a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who knew Papa Wemba personally, said the musician, who collapsed while performing on stage and died en-route to the hospital, would not have wanted his life to end any other way, based on interviews hed given on this issue.

He said 'I want to die on stage, I want my last day to be on stage and they asked him why and he said because every time when I am on stage, when I am singing, I feel as if I am flying', said Muntu, concluding, his wish came true pretty much.

Asked how he acquired the title of the King of Rumba Rock, Muntu said Papa Wemba learned from the best of Congolese musicians.

He followed the steps of big rumba artists like Rochereau, Tabu Ley, who left us a few years ago, he followed the steps of other artists like Dr. Nico Grand Kalle, all of those people who were huge, they were big, in rumba.

But Muntu, said what gave Papa Wemba the edge over other musicians his unique personal style.

He added his own style to it, and by his style I want to add that he  he created (his) own style, the way you could dress, the way you walk, the way you talk to people so he added to it than just the music.

Despite his fame and fortune, Muntu said another plus for Papa Wemba was his humble ways.

As big as he was, he was a very, very humble man, said Muntu. As popular as he was, he was accessible to everybody, and I am talking about everybody, journalists, people on the streets, pretty much everybody.

He was really an awesome person, Muntu added.

Muntu said Papa Wembas exit from the music scene, while a huge loss for the industry, does not mean the death of rumba, as many artists are continuing to carry the torch, thanks to Papa Wemba and other great artists, whos passed on the tradition.

He had trained so many  Kofi Olomide was one of his friends, one of his buddies, one of the younger brothers who also does great rumba, he trained so many other new artists like Fally Ipupa, Ferre Gola, all those people are pretty much, I can say it, students of this, disciples of this man Papa Wemba so rumba its going to continue to evolve, its not going to die, thats for sure, said Muntu.

He also left his own band Viva La Musica, wholl also continue on the same route.

Muntu, however, said one thing that won't be easily replaced, is Papa Wembas style.

So rumba is still there, but the style, that lifestyle of an artist that we dont know whos going to continue that.

Papa Wemba had many great hits during his career, that kept many on their feet at various clubs and venues. But of all the songs that Papa Wemba sang, Muntu said the one that resonates with many of his fans, is his song, Mama.

One of the best rumba is the song he called mama, he wanted to thank his mother, said Muntu. He said mom if I am this very popular man that the world is listening and watching and wanting to see its because of you, I wish I could just give up everything just to hug you, just to tell you thank you!
United States ambassador to Zimbabwe Harry Thomas Jnr. held a meeting Tuesday with Movement for Democratic Change founding president Morgan Tsvangirai at the partys Harvest House headquarters in Harare.

Ambassador Thomas Jnr. told Studio 7 that the meeting is part of his efforts to engage the countrys political and civil society leaders.

Tsvangirais spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka confirmed that the meeting took place and said the MDC-T president was accompanied by party secretary general Douglas Mwonzora and secretary for foreign affairs, Theressa Makone.

Thomas Jnr. said in an exclusive interview that he is keen to engage Zimbabweans across the board.

The United States and other nations imposed targeted sanctions on President Robert Mugabe and his inner circle following claims of election rigging and human rights violations.

President Mugabe has over the years claimed that the restrictive measures were meant to punish Zimbabwe for implementing a land reform program that pushed over 3,500 white commercial farmers from prime land.

Critics say the program only benefited people closely-linked to the Zanu PF party.
Zimbabwe has a cash crisis and banks are limiting the amount of cash that people can withdraw.

Thats making it difficult for locals and business owners to pay for products imported from neighboring countries or the salaries of their employees.

This has been devastating for workers, including teachers, who got paid Tuesday but could not access cash as banks were limiting withdrawals to $50 per client.

Takavafira Zhou of the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe said the shortage affected teachers plans because they wanted to pay for their childrens school fees.

The government should engage even the opposition to try and find a lasting solution on the cash crisis, Zhou said.

Central bank governor John Mangudya recently told parliament that the financial services sector imported $216 million between January and April this year in a bid to ease cash shortages. But this seems to have failed to improve the situation.

Indications are that the situation could have been worsened if teachers were paid promised bonuses Tuesday. They are now set to get the delayed bonuses at the end of this month.

Some bankers said the cash crisis was due to lack of confidence in the banking sector, which has forced local people to keep money at home.

Zhou said they wont return to work on May 3 when schools open if they dont get bonuses.
The US Embassy in Armenia has offered its assistance to the Armenian authorities in investigating the bus explosion in capital city Yerevan, News.am website reported.

The blast had occurred on Apr. 25 night, in a public transport bus.

There are two casualties and eight injured.

A criminal case has opened, and several examinations have been commissioned into this incident.
On the 6th April, the long legal journey of the proposition for a law to reinforce the fight against the system of prostitution [1] finally reached its terminus. Introduced in October 2013, it was subjected to three debates and three votes in both Parliamentary assemblies. It was finally adopted by the National Assembly, which has the last word in case of a disagreement with the Senate. The law thus concludes a political desire expressed in 2011 by the French Socialist Party [2]. The disagreement between the Chamber and the Senate concerned the question of the penalisation of clients  the majority of deputies were in favour of the measure, while the majority of senators were not. Buying the sexual act [3] is sanctioned by a maximum fine of 1,500 Euros. In the case of repeat offences, the fine may rise to 3,750 Euros.

Introducing doublethink into law

By abrogating the offence of soliciting, and not just the offence of passive soliciting established by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2003, the law recognises that the activity of prostitution is legal. However, at the same time, it treats the buying of sexual acts as a legal offence, in other words an activity which is systematically illegal. Thus, the act of prostitution, an activity which has been recognised as legal, generates an act which is legally punishable, that of using the services of a prostitute.

The denial of the opposition of these two elements creates a cleavage in the law, by forcing the co-existence of two contradictory affirmations which are juxtaposed, but which cancel one another out. This procedure was demonstrated by Orwell in his definition of doublethink. It consists of simultaneously holding two opinions which are mutually contradictory, and believing both. The absurdity of the lack of a connection between two contradictory statements is an attack on the logical foundations of language. The operation fragments the subject, and renders her incapable of reacting to the nonsensical nature of what is said compared with what is shown.

In this way, the law produces two incompatible propositions in parallel, two statements which logically exclude one another, but which are held together by the will of the government, which considers that a prostitute is by definition a victim. The prostitute thus becomes a person who is bereft of speech, and to whom the power lends its voice. She becomes the object of the morality of power.

The procedure of doublethink annihilates the function of the law, which is to establish clear and applicable rules in order to limit the random aspects of power. It therefore accepts that the government possesses absolute knowledge, and institutes a moral law which is an expression of the superego, based not on reason, but on values, that of the love owed to the victim.

Thus the status of natural victim - the infans - used to define the prostitute in fact serves the government. It allows the government to speak in her place, by affirming that it knows better than she does where her real interests lie. The status of victim excludes these women from the world of language. It does not allow them to oppose their own individual interests to the universal image of women, of which power is the representative.

It allows the government, in the name of the defence of prostitutes, to promote legislation which is rejected by those it is supposed to protect. However, their opposition to the penalisation of clients is also assumed by their organisations, including the collective Droits et Prostitution (Rights and Prostitution) the main French organisation created by and representing sex workers, both male and female.

A law to teach about love and gender relations

The text, inspired by the Swedish experiment which has been penalising clients since 1999, also creates a complementary penalty in the form of a training course for the awareness of the conditions of prostitution.

This last point is absolutely in phase with the motivations already expressed during the deposition of an early proposition for the law at the end of 2011. The parliamentarians had at that time insisted on the educational character of their approach, complementing the fine with an obligatory term in a clients school, in order to educate them, in the name of the defence of prostitutes, about health and gender relations. So the deputies, called upon by all the group presidents, from both the left and the right, officially affirmed the abolitionist position of France. They considered that prostitution is exercised mainly by women, and that their clients are almost exclusively men, which contravenes the principle of equality between the sexes.

This position is also the foundation of the present law. It refers to the Swedish model by making prostitution a gender issue, stating that there is no equality possible between men and women as long as a man can rent or buy a womans body. Thus, Inger Segestrom, deputy and president of the Federation of Swedish Social-Democrat Women at the time, declared on the site MyEurope.info - It is our aim to declare that society does not admit that a man may buy a woman for his own pleasure. This has little to do with sexuality. It is a question of power and equality.

The transfer

The declaration by Inger Segestrom, which takes the form of a denial, is particularly interesting. It raises the problem by denying it. It is clearly the will of our governments to control sexuality and produce other models of pleasure, under cover of the aim of promoting the equality of the sexes.

What can be the meaning of a law which claims to combat street prostitution, yet allows the subsistence and even the development of other less visible forms of prostitution, such as escort girls or Internet prostitution? Street prostitution is targeted because it makes visible a reality opposed to the image of women represented and promoted by political power. The law therefore takes its place in the current of post-modernism, in a process of the erasure of the body in order to ensure the reign of the icon and the dematerialisation of reality.

Pretending to eradicate prostitution by punishing the client, this law claims to be abolitionist. By attacking its most visible manifestation, street prostitution, it reveals itself as being, in fact, prohibitionist. Prohibition, contrary to abolition, does not exclude its object, but denies it. It transfers prostitution from the visible to the invisible. By the same token, this law will suppress any limit to the exploitation of these women. Prostitutes will be herded into a zone sheltered from visibility, where violence will be able to express itself without hindrance.

A moral law

For the citizenry, the result of this legislation will be to allow the suspension of reality. If we decide not to see it, prostitution will no longer exist.

The object of the text is to eliminate a place, and not prostitution itself. This will have a double consequence. First of all, the law will no longer function in order to organise the exterior, but to re-model the interior. The law will exist not to be respected, but to be constantly violated in fear and guilt. Instead of regulating physical pleasure, this law imposes an order to take pleasure in the image of human dignity. It is above all the institution of a super-ego, a producer of values.

Secondly, since it no longer occupies a well-defined site, prostitution will spread to all of the public space. The Swedish model, which the abolitionist deputies use as the foundation for their proposition to penalise clients, is enlightening. In Sweden, street prostitution has indeed diminished by half, but other hidden sites for priced sex, like massage parlours and various other clubs, are still in activity.

Above all, a major part of the prostitution market is now present on the Internet. This recent support enables an extension of prostitution to all of society, no longer limited to a part of the body itself, but to its image. Potential clients can now make contact with young people through chat forums.

This law, with its feminist accents, but which stifles the voices of real women, is in fact in service of the post-modern form of power, an attractive machine incarnated by the figure of the Symbolic Mother, which is neither male nor female, but the totalitarian whole which lacks nothing. This figure of the cruel mother, transmitted by the fairy tales of the oral tradition, is particularly opposed to the feminine, since the masculine has already been destroyed by early modernity. In her relationship with the client, the independent prostitute, on the contrary, occupies a position which allows her to avoid being entirely subjected to this order, and enjoying a genuine control over her own reality. It is this feminine subversion which is under attack.
First published April 12, 2012

A radical structural reform: this is how Minister Di Paola defines the revision of the military instrument that the Monti government presented on his proposal. There is no doubt that it is radical. For more than 20 years, bipartisan moles are ferretting out Art. 11 of the Constitution (outlawing war as a tool of attacking the freedoms of other peoples and as a means of resolving international disputes).

Works in the galleries began in 1991, after the Italian Republic waged its first war, the one the US launched in Iraq. Under the Pentagons dictatorship, the Andreotti government drafts a new model of defence that establishes, the mission of the armed forces as not only defending the homeland (art. 52), but protecting the national interests wherever necessary.

In 1993  whilst Italy participates in military operations led by the US in Somalia, and the Amato government succeeds to the Ciampi government  it is declared that it is necessary to be ready to launch ourselves in the long range in order to guarantee the national well-being by maintaining the availability of the sources and ways of replenishing our supplies of energy and strategic products.

In 1995, during the term of the Dini Government, it is declared that the function of the armed forces transcends the strictly military sphere in order to raise the status of the country in the international context .

In 1996, during the Prodi government, it is argued that the military must be an instrument of foreign policy. In 1999  after the DAlema government brought Italy into the US-led war against Yugoslavia, it declares the need to transform the military instrument from a static configuration to a more dynamic model, that projects itself abroad, a task for which an entirely voluntary model is suitable - that is, an army of the war professionals.

The foregoing is valuable for military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq under the Berlusconi government. At this juncture is introduced the Pentagons strategic concept articulated by Di Paola, the chief of staff in 2005. Faced with the global threat of terrorism, it is necessary to develop a capacity for effective, timely intervention even at great distances from the homeland. The Italian armed forces must operate in zones of strategic interests that include the Balkans, East Europe, the Caucasus, Northern Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Near and Middle-East and the Persian Gulf.

The war against Libya of which Di Paola was one of the architects in 2011 as President of the NATO Military Committee, confirms the need for Italy to build a projectable instrument, with extreme expeditionary capacity, through systematic planning. This is what Di Paola now wants to institutionalize through a legislative decree, in order to create smaller but more efficient armed forces, with more advanced technological means (including the F-35) and more resources for its efficiency.

This is not due to the need to contain costs due to financial crisis, but as per Art. 18, to ensure economic and financial oligarchs, the architects of the crisis, strengthen their tools of domination. With the aggravating factor that it needs to dismantle, together with one of the cardinal principles of the Statute of Workers, one of the fundamental principles of the Constitution.
The Turkish army announced on Monday that it destroyed a missile launching pad inside Syria, just six kilometers from the Turkish border, Anadolu reported.

A statement from the Turkish General Staff said the ready-to-fire missile launching pad was spotted by drones and destroyed by howitzers inside Turkey, and eight Daesh terrorists killed.

The launching pad was also only 21 kilometers from Turkey's southeastern province of Kilis, which has been repeatedly hit by cross-border attacks in recent months.

The statement said the missile launching pad was completely destroyed with massive fire by "Storm" howitzers.

Kilis, whose local population is outnumbered by Syrians, has suffered 46 rocket attacks since mid-January. A total of 17 people - including 10 Turks - have been killed and 61 wounded.
Meryl Streep. Photo: Evening Standard/Getty Images

Every legend needs an origin story, and Michael Schulman attempts to provide one for the legendary screen actress Meryl Streep with his biography, Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep, available for purchase today. Schulman sketches out Streeps early years, from her time as a high-school student in New Jersey where she was voted homecoming queen, through her hellish years at Yale, ending with her first Oscar win for Kramer vs. Kramer in 1980. The Streep that emerges in the book is the consummate professional: indefatigable, preternaturally talented, and always gracious. Despite extensive research and interviews, Streep herself is curiously absent from the biography. (The author did not conduct any interviews with Streep.) Instead, we see Streep through the eyes of her collaborators and colleagues, former boyfriends and suitors: Men who admired her. There are faint glimmers of Streep, but she is elusive, and perhaps, awaiting another book.

She played her first role was when she was 6.

Even Meryl Streep was a baby! Streep remembers feeling the power of acting when she was just 6 years old, in her first role, playing the Virgin Mary and cradling her Betsy Wetsy doll. I felt quieted, holy, actually, and my transfigured face and very changed demeanor captured on Super-8 by my dad pulled my little brothers  into a trance, said Streep. They were actually pulled into this little nativity scene by the intensity of my focus, in a way that my usual technique for getting them to do what I want, yelling at them, never ever would have achieved.

She performed an abortion on herself for a death scene exercise at Yale.

Unsurprisingly, Meryl Streep was the star student in her class at Yale, where she went to get an MFA after graduating from Vassar. In her first year, Streep had to take an acting class with Tom Haas, who, according to then-dean Robert Brustein, was the bane of her existence. One of the exercises for first-year students was acting out a death scene. Whereas other students went the conventional route of setting themselves on fire or shooting themselves, Streep decided to perform an abortion on herself. One of her classmates said she was incredibly intense and said that her last name became a verb: to Streep it up meant to step up your game.

Jane Fonda taught her how to hit her mark.

Her first film acting gig was in Julia, starring Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave, in which she played a gossipy friend named Anne Marie. Her scenes were all with Fonda, and Streep remembered her as having a feral alertness. They rehearsed the scene, and afterward Fonda told her, Look down. Then she pointed down at the ground. That green tape on the floor. Thats you. Thats your mark. And if you land on it, you will be in the light, and you will be in the movie.

John Cazale died in her arms, but returned briefly.

Streep married Don Gummer in 1978, and the pair went on to have four children. But before that, she was in love John Cazale, who she met when they both performed in Measure for Measure for Shakespeare in the Park. Their romance would be brief, interrupted by Cazales diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. Indeed, it was because of Cazales health that Streep decided to take the role of Linda in The Deer Hunter (for which she would receive her first Oscar nomination) so that she could be with him on set. (Streep has repeatedly stated that the role of Linda goes against her own instincts as to how a woman should be.)

Streep remained by his side as an unconditional caregiver during the last years of his life. According to Schulman, this is what his deathbed was like:

Around three in the morning on March 12, 1978, John closed his eyes. Hes gone, the doctor said. But Meryl wasnt ready to hear it, much less believe it. What happened next, by some accounts, was the culmination of all the tenacious hope Meryl had kept alive for the past ten months. She pounded on his chest, sobbing, and for a brief, alarming moment, John opened his eyes. Its all right, Meryl, he said weakly. Its all right 

And with that, he passed away.

She didnt care about her first Emmy win.

Soon after the death of Cazale, Streep won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series for Holocaust, in which she played Inga Helms Weiss, a German citizen with a conscience. She had taken the job because, according to Schulman, she needed the money to help pay for Cazales medical expenses. The shoot itself was desperately long for Streep, who simply wanted to be by Cazales side. As for the ceremony itself, she didnt go to the Emmys to collect her prize; instead it arrived in a box, and she placed it with the rest of her things. At the time she said, I wish I could assign some great importance to it, but that it had no lasting power.

Dustin Hoffman was hell to work with on Kramer vs. Kramer.

Hoffman apparently drove the entire cast and crew crazy during the shooting of Kramer vs. Kramer. For instance, he would manipulate the young actor Justin Henry (who plays the couples child) in order to get the right reaction out of him on camera. He would also try to do this to Streep. In an advance excerpt, we learn that Hoffman taunted Streep about Cazales death throughout the shoot, whispering his name during emotional courtroom scenes to provoke her. Once, he shattered a wineglass next to her, and shards of glass got into Streeps hair. She coolly said, Next time you do that, Id appreciate you letting me know.

Streep rewrote her own characters testimony.

Viewers will remember that Streeps character, Joanna, doesnt appear again in Kramer vs. Kramer until the third act, when she returns to ask for custody of her son. She appears on the witness stand and has to make a case for why she should have custody. The original script makes her out to be selfish and narcissistic. Director Robert Benton told Streep, I dont think its a womans speech. I think its a man trying to write a womans speech. He asked her if she would rewrite it. She did, and thats what was used in the film.
Sure, this chat about going to the beach is more of a collaboration than The Tonight Shows normal lip-sync bouts, but things still get kind of fierce. Using snippets from Frank Sinatra, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, and Sia songs, Jimmy Fallon also snaps at Ariana Grande, apologizes, and then threatens to swing from Home Depots chandeliers. For the sake of the sandcastles, please send him light and pray for no injuries.
Kelly Ripa.

After spending several days away from her rightful coffee-stained throne, queen of the morning Kelly Ripa returned to Live! this morning. Did she launch into a Network-style tirade against the media industry? No. Did she address her absence with remarkable composure and a few wry jokes? Yes, of course. Our long national nightmare is over, Ripa said, walking on stage with her soon-to-be former co-star Michael Strahan, who allegedly made plans to leave the show without telling her. Im going to be completely honest. Im fairly certain that there are trained professional snipers with tranquilizer darts in case I drift too far off message, Ripa said. I needed a couple of days to gather my thoughts after spending 26 years with ABC, adding, I earned the right.

One of Ripas primary concerns, according to reporting from the New York Times, was that ABC had started to prioritize Good Morning America, which Strahan is joining, over Live! Ripa said that her extended absence was part of a much greater conversation about respect in the workplace, and noted that apologies have been made, and the best thing to come out of all of this, you guys, is that our parent company has assured me that Live! is a priority. She threw in some congratulations for Strahan before starting the show, pausing briefly to note, My dad, who was a bus driver for 30 years, thinks were all crazy, and I think hes right.

Strahan, for his part, called Ripa the queen of morning television and promised if you need me, Im coming back to help out. But it seems Kelly Ripa needs no help at all.
Nice Celtic outfit, Tilda.

Marvel has decided to attempt to escape allegations of whitewashing by simply eliminating an Asian character altogether. In Doctor Strange, Tilda Swinton plays the Ancient One, a Tibetan man who gives Doctor Strange lessons in the supernatural. Its already a difficult stereotype, and its made worse by the fact that Swinton, a European woman, is continuing an uncomfortable tradition of white actors claiming Asian roles. Swinton, however, has claimed that her character isnt Asian, and Marvel has backed her up with a statement to Mashable:

Marvel has a very strong record of diversity in its casting of films and regularly departs from stereotypes and source material to bring its MCU to life. The Ancient One is a title that is not exclusively held by any one character, but rather a moniker passed down through time, and in this particular film the embodiment is Celtic. We are very proud to have the enormously talented Tilda Swinton portray this unique and complex character alongside our richly diverse cast.

Marvels statement tracks with comments from Swinton, and from Doctor Strange co-writer C. Robert Cargill, who explained the studios political reasons for not casting an East Asian actor in an interview with the Double Toasted podcast over the weekend. The Ancient One originates from Tibet in the comics, he said, but if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that hes Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people who think that thats bullshit and risk the Chinese government going, Hey, you know one of the biggest film-watching countries in the world? Were not going to show your movie because you decided to get political.

One the other hand, its not accurate to replace just any East Asian actor with the character: If we decide to go the other way and cater to China in particular and have him be in Tibet  if you think its a good idea to cast a Chinese actress as a Tibetan character, you are out of your damn fool mind and have no idea what the fuck youre talking about.

Cargill compared the casting decision to the Star Treks Kobayashi Maru, a test that everyone in the Starfleet Academy is forced to lose. In Doctor Strange, people would be angry about the casting decision regardless of who they cast, he claimed, so they decided to just give the role to a good actress and be done with it. Sure, but who will explain why Swintons Celtic Ancient One has decided to take up residence in Tibet? Or why shes dressed exactly like a white woman pretending to be an East Asian man in the first place?
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.26

Trend:

Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus has commented on the tension in Ankara-Moscow relations, the Anadolu Agency reported Apr.26.

He expressed hope that the relations between Russia and Turkey will normalize both in political and economic spheres.

The visit of a Turkish delegation to Russia to hold talks in the sphere of agriculture is a step towards this purpose, according to Kurtulmus.

"Hopefully, it will bring positive results," he added.
A growing exercise chain called Orangetheory Fitness has chosen to expand into Waco, locating in Lake Air Court at 1428 Wooded Acres Drive.

We feel Wacoans are ready for a premium, class-based fitness studio to help them efficiently achieve their fitness goals, said Matt Moyer, co-owner of Orangetheory Fitness Waco. We also hope they take advantage of the Founders rates we will be offering as part of our opening in late July.

These rates give potential members an opportunity to sample the facilities before committing to membership.

Moyer, who saw first-hand the potential of Orangetheory Fitness by losing 110 pounds on the system between 2014 and 2015, is partnering with a franchisee in the Dallas area to open the Waco location. One of the franchising partners, Kim Mason, is the daughter of Waco businessman Paul Skretny and the late Margaret Skretny.

Orangetheory Fitness offers a personal training workout that includes segments devoted to endurance, strength and power. It is designed to keep heart rates in a target zone that increases metabolic rate and energy, according to publicity material released by Liz Anderson, with E.H. Andersen PR.

A pre-sale office is located at 1428 Wooded Acres Drive.

For more information, call 265-7222 or visit www.orangetheoryfitness.com.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

More than 140 countries support the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Apr. 26 in Baku.

He was addressing the opening session of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.

Holding the UNAOC Global Forum in Baku is of great importance, since Azerbaijan is the historical center of civilizations, said Erdogan.

Unfortunately, despite all efforts, the world is still unable to confront the growing radicalism and terrorism, he noted.

"Terror and terrorism have nothing in common with Islam," said the president adding that terrorists don't have religious affiliation and national identity.

Erdogan went on to add that Islam is the religion of peace, which calls for brotherhood.

None of the world's countries is insured from terrorism, and therefore, states should work together to fight terrorism, according to him.

Turkey is fighting terrorism for 35 years, said the Turkish president adding that currently, the number of cases of terrorism is also growing in neighboring Syria.

The main reason of terrorism's growth in Syria is the country's authorities that support terrorism, said Erdogan.

Civilians lose their lives in Syria every day, noted the president adding that currently, there are more than three million refugees from Syria and Iraq in Turkey's territory and the country has spent $15-20 billion.

Erdogan added that Turkey didn't close its border for refugees from Syria and Iraq, as a number of European countries did.

Turkey's president believes that considering the situation in the world, it is important to hold the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations in Baku.

"Today the whole world is following the Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations that is being held in Baku," added Erdogan.

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations will last until Apr.27.

The Youth Forum was held on the first day of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum on Apr.25.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum.

The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the forum.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on July 24, 2015 to create an organizing committee for holding the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Allergan, the Dublin, Ireland-based pharmaceutical giant, announced Monday it will spend $200 million to expand its Waco plant over four years, a move that will more than double its capacity to produce eye care and dermatological products and will create 250 jobs in the near future.

State and local elected officials, and even a representative of Republican presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, joined Allergan executives at a wind-swept groundbreaking ceremony about noon at the Waco facility, 8301 Mars Drive, to announce details of the undertaking.

The expansion will give what Allergan considers its flagship manufacturing facility the capacity to formulate more than 40 different products for distribution to 110 countries.

Baylor University economist Tom Kelly, who has prepared two reports at the companys request, said completing the expansion will have a $380 million impact on the local economy, counting the multiplier effect of money being spent more than once, while continuing operations will have a $460 million annual impact.

This is a big day for Waco, Mayor Malcom Duncan Jr. said.

He said the community received indications Allergan had big plans for the Waco plant and accepted the challenge to create a talented workforce that could fill the need for chemists, microbiologists, process engineers, and production and maintenance technicians.

Duncan said he has no doubt Waco and Central Texas have the resources, including the institutions of higher learning, to meet Allergans growing manpower needs.

Todays groundbreaking marks an important milestone for Allergan, strengthening our commitment to our people, operations and the partnership we have built with Waco and the Central Texas community for 27 years, Allergan President and CEO Brent Saunders said in a prepared statement.

Speaking at the ceremony and during an interview afterward, Saunders said the expansion reflects the companys boldness in producing more medicine for a needy world, especially those vital to the treatment of glaucoma and dry-eye disease, which is the specialty of Wacos operations.

This is an exciting time for Allergan in that we have more than a dozen potential products in the late stages of research and development, and with their approval by the Food and Drug Administration, they could be produced at this world-class facility here in Waco, Saunders said.

He said the company considered a handful of Allergan sites for the expansion, including at least one overseas that joined Waco in making the final cut.

We always evaluate multiple options, especially when were talking about a commitment of this size, but Waco was the clear winner, he said.

The expansion will add a new raw material dispensary, automated bulk formulation suite and 10 new production lines, as well as warehousing space.

I applaud Allergan for their continued commitment to Waco and to this expansion, which will create important new jobs for highly skilled Texas workers in our growing life-sciences industry, said Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who took a private plane from Austin to the ceremony, though he arrived a few minutes late.

I apologize, but I would not have missed this, said Patrick, who has two daughters attending Baylor. This is a big deal, something significant for Waco and for Texas. This is an example of why Texas has become the America that America used to be, and why a thousand people a day move to the state.

He said Allergans fondness for Central Texas, its people and their work ethic will have an impact on other employers looking for a place to locate or expand.

Major manufacturers will follow their lead; they will say to themselves, Why did Allergan pick this place to grow their business? 

Kris Collins, senior vice president for economic development at the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce, said the local Allergan plant, led by Dermot Manton, routinely performs well in lobbying on behalf of the facility when major decisions hang in the balance, and the chambers expansion and retention team regularly visits with Allergan officials.

Collins said Allergans decision to favor Waco instead of other locales looks especially impressive considering Actavis PLC in March of last year completed a $70.5 billion buyout of Allergan, making Actavis one of the worlds largest drugmakers by sales, offering a range of eye, skin and stomach drugs.

The company this year is expected to have $23 billion in sales, more than 30,000 employees and market capitalization of $128 billion.

The deal, Collins said, greatly increased Allergans footprint, and meant Wacos task of distinguishing itself from others became more challenging.

Collins said Allergan will receive incentive money from the Waco-McLennan County Economic Development Corp. fund, but the exact amount remains under negotiation. Waco City Council and the McLennan County Commissioners Court each must vote to approve allocations to prospects.

Wacos Allergan facility opened 27 years ago with 60 employees, having been lured here by Curtis Cleveland, longtime industry recruiter for the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce and now an executive at Central Texas Iron Works, and Bland Cromwell, an industrial sales specialist at Coldwell Banker Jim Stewart Realtors.

At the time, Allergans corporate base was located in Irvine, California, which Cleveland and Cromwell visited on several occasions.

In response to Mondays announcement, Cromwell released a statement saying, I cant believe it has been 30 years since we were working to recruit Allergan to Waco. The building was actually purchased in 1988. I have great pride in having been involved with this company on the original acquisition and several other projects since.

Now operating in a 400,000-square-foot complex, Allergan will see its home grow by 322,000 square feet. The company at Mondays groundbreaking ceremony had poster boards on display showing the expansions proximity to the existing plant and the task planned in each area of the added space.

During the first year of construction, Kelly said, Allergans impact on the Central Texas economy will total $522 million. That figure includes the cost of operating the plant with 650 full-time and about 100 part-time employees, as well as expenses associated with launching the first phase of development.

Upon completion of the capital expansion, Allergans annual economic impact on the local economy will be $461.3 million, Kelly said.

Kellys studies show Allergan has a well-earned reputation for paying well, with last years annual compensation averaging $78,965 per person, including benefits.

Im impressed with this company, Kelly said. The employees seem to enjoy their mission of sending products all over the world, and the morale is good. Leadership literally opened their books to me in my preparation of this report. They wanted a true picture of this plants economic impact.

Several speakers said the numbers being tossed around Monday were impressive, but more important is what the expansion means to Allergans consumers. Already, it makes such brand names as Restasis, Lumigan, Combigan, Refresh Plus, Refresh Tears and Latisse, but already new formulas are in the works.

Said U.S. Rep. Michael C. Burgess, R-Lewisville, As a country, we must maintain our commitment to creating a positive business environment that attracts the best and brightest to invest in innovation. This requires providing a competitive corporate tax policy, transparent and consistent regulation and a strong and skilled workforce able to help produce complex medical products. If we are successful in doing these things, we can strengthen our economy and improve the lives of all Americans.

I am pleased that Allergan has decided to invest its best and brightest to advance innovation in Texas.

Cruz said in a statement, The state of Texas continues to be a leader in entrepreneurial freedom and economic growth, and this serves as a great example of the job creation and exceptional business environment that shapes our great state.

Allergan officials announced Monday they will underwrite the cost of 100 eye examinations with a donation to the Waco Founder Lions Club.
The success of the Greater Waco Advanced Manufacturing Academy has attracted industry leaders in McLennan County construction fields hoping to raise the number of qualified workers on their sites.

Scott Bland, the president of the Heart of Texas Builders Association, said key positions on construction sites  such as plumbers, air-conditioner technicians and electricians  are grossly understaffed because of the qualifications now needed to work in the industry.

Companies are having to hire people with no background and train them. Its just a nightmare. Youre starting from zero, he said.

Bland is working with Waco Independent School District to install a general construction curriculum at GWAMA for the 2017-18 school year in an attempt to give students a leg up in the industry. Students would be eligible for apprenticeships upon graduation as they work on further certifications, Bland said.

Brandon Cope, director of Greater Waco Academies, said the district is doing a feasibility study to see if the construction addition would benefit the area.

The study is looking at local job opportunities for students after graduation, potential salaries and costs for running the program, he said.

Were determining, first of all, what is the program going to look like? What would be required from the district to get the program running? What kind of interest is there from the student perspective? Cope said.

Cope said if the program is approved, the district would like to begin the construction track with 100 students, which would give incoming students more flexibility since GWAMAs welding track is nearly at capacity.

GWAMAs enrollment is at 150 students, and also includes robotics and machinist students.

GWAMA isnt the only industry academy gaining attention. Students are flocking to the new Greater Waco Advanced Health Care Academy, with at least 400 applications submitted for its second year.

Enrollment sits at 75 students, but Cope said he isnt sure what the upcoming enrollment will be until districts finalize whether they can send their students.

Waco ISD Superintendent Bonny Cain said she is thrilled with the student interest and how industries are coming to the district as a way to meet employment needs.

Its been a dream come true, she said. Not just for Waco ISD (or) for the community, but for the idea that the community and the district are working so closely and so successfully together.

Bland said he would like the construction curriculum to be a basic overview of what is required in all building sites, so students can specialize in what they enjoy after graduation.

Bland said he plans to present it to the board of trustees in August and, if the new branch is approved, he will spend the next year promoting the new track.

Families have been conditioned to think that four-year degrees are the only way someone can become successful and they dont look at the potential the construction industry provides, Bland said.

Any profession that doesnt involve getting a college degree, I think parents have a natural inclination to frown upon because we were taught when we were going to school that you had to go to college, he said.

Students and parents need to understand that with the correct certifications, students can earn between $35,000 and $50,000 annually, he said.

I havent seen anything where these kids coming out with certifications are making less than $35,000 to $38,000 a year, Bland said. To get somebody with those advanced certifications, theyre just not there. Were desperate for them.
The State Bar of Texas has accused a Waco attorney of violating its rules by failing to properly inform opposing counsel in a pending lawsuit that he represented the judge presiding over the case.

In a letter to attorney Ty Clevenger dated April 20, Rebecca Stevens, assistant disciplinary counsel for the State Bar of Texas, said that the bars disciplinary proceeding against Waco attorney Greg White will be heard by an evidentiary panel of the state bar district grievance committee.

The letter says the matter will be pursued by the Commission for Lawyer Discipline through the Chief Disciplinary Counsels Office.

White, who also joined the Baylor Law Schools faculty in February as a legal writing lecturer after serving as an adjunct since 1995, did not return phone messages left for him Monday and Tuesday at his law office and at the law school.

Clevenger, a former Dallas attorney who now lives in New York, filed the State Bar grievance against White and also filed a sexual misconduct complaint against U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith Jr., of Waco, in 2014 that led to Smiths reprimand by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

White represented Smith against Clevengers complaint to the 5th Circuit, which led to Clevengers bar grievance against White. Clevenger alleged White failed to disclose his attorney-client relationship with the judge to lawyers on the other side of the case from White in Smiths court.

Clevenger also has since filed a new complaint that claims Smith may have received free legal services from White while White had cases pending in Smiths court.

Smith and White both have declined comment on the allegations in the past.

White responded to the State Bar charges leveled by Clevenger, and Clevenger made Whites responses public.

Whites answer acknowledged that an attorney from Florida who was unhappy with Smiths rulings in the case questioned White about his relationship with the judge. White told him he was representing the judge, and the attorney immediately filed a motion to recuse Smith from the case, which Smith granted.

Frankly, I had assumed three things, White wrote in his answer. First, I thought my role was so limited that my representation made no difference to anyone. Second, I though that Tammy (Hooks, Smiths career law clerk) was calling people in my cases (to inform opposing parties of White and Smiths attorney-client relationship). Third, I knew that I was bound by confidentiality  both by rule, and by my clients instruction  not to volunteer that Judge Smith was the subject of a judicial conduct complaint or that I was his lawyer.

In its reprimand of Smith, the Judicial Council of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the judge did not follow appropriate procedures regarding his recusal from the case involving White.

The judicial council reprimanded Smith in December, finding he made inappropriate and unwanted physical and nonphysical advances toward a female courthouse staff member in his court chambers in 1998.

Clevenger included with his complaint a sworn deposition from the woman, who no longer lives in Waco, in which she detailed her unnerving experience with the judge and how it forced her to leave a good job at the federal courthouse.

Smith, 75, has been a federal judge since 1984 and is a former chief judge of the Western District of Texas.

Smiths suspension

The council also suspended Smith for one year from hearing any new criminal or civil cases filed after Dec. 3, ruling that his conduct was in contravention of existing standards of behavior for federal judges.

Smiths suspension from hearing new cases has forced a judge from Austin to fill in for him by hearing new cases in Waco. The suspension has also required magistrates, including one who came out of retirement, to perform additional duties and has created the need to hire two new law clerks at a total of $104,000 a year, officials have said.

The Judicial Council also said Smith does not understand the gravity of such inappropriate behavior and the serious effect that it has on the operations of the courts.

The Judicial Council also finds that Judge Smith allowed false factual assertions to be made in response to the complaint, which, together with the lateness of his admissions, contributed greatly to the duration and cost of the investigation, the order, signed by 5th Circuit Chief Judge Carl E. Stewart, said.

While the council said Smiths actions do not warrant a recommendation of impeachment, Clevenger has appealed that decision to the Administrative Office of United States Courts in Washington, D.C., and is seeking impeachment.

In response to Clevengers accusation that White represented Smith for free, Smith recently has shown lawyers a copy of a canceled check that he says is proof he paid White $10,000 to represent him on the 5th Circuit complaints.

The judge showed me the check because he knows that one of the accusations is that Greg White was doing something for him and wasnt getting paid for it to curry favor of the court, and he wanted to show me that not only it wasnt true, he had a copy of the canceled check, Waco attorney Russ Hunt said. So I dont have any doubt that Walter is telling the truth when he says, Hey, I paid him $10,000, and I do not doubt Gregs word. Greg is a man of his word.

In a letter dated Jan. 27 from White to his attorney and submitted as an exhibit in Whites response to the State Bar, White said an attorney who formerly served as Smiths law clerk called him and said the judge wanted to speak to him about Clevengers federal complaint.

White wrote that Smith was concerned about the accusations being made public and asked White to file a motion to dismiss the complaint.

I must say that I was not sure whether I was writing as Judge Smiths lawyer, or whether I was ghost-writing for Judge Smith, White wrote in his memo. I am sure I had an attorney-client relationship, but unsure how formal my representation would be.

White prepared a draft and said the judge asked him to sign the motion as his attorney.

One statement in the motion to dismiss bears mention, Whites memo says. After talking to Judge Smith, I was under the impression that he believed that the young lady involved might have acted in a way to suggest her willingness to participate in a personal relationship  that she was the aggressor.

I wrote that in the motion to dismiss  characterizing it as Judge Smiths memory. His memory came from a lawyer-friend of Judge Smiths while Judge Smiths divorce was pending. During the divorce, there were apparently threats to make this womans complaint a public matter, Whites memo says.

The lawyer, whom White does not identify, suggested that they could respond to the threatened publicity by suggesting that the woman approached the judge romantically in an attempt to gain favorable treatment for her husband, who was part of a group considering litigation in Smiths court.

That suggestion to Judge Smith (from his lawyer-friend) stuck with him, and he suggested it to me, White wrote.

After the motion to dismiss was filed, a more careful examination of the docket revealed the suggestion that the woman approached the judge in such a manner to help her husband was not true, since the lawsuit involving her husband was not filed until long after the incident in Smiths chambers.

During the council probe, the investigator told White that the investigator knew that version was not true.

I acknowledged to the investigator that we had misstated that, and wished to correct it, Whites memo says.

Clevenger has become infamous as more than just a thorn in judges sides. Over the years, he has filed numerous complaints against judges and attorneys. Most recently, he filed a complaint against Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, President Barack Obamas choice to succeed Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

Clevenger sanctioned

Clevengers blog, LawFlog, and his website, DirtyRottenJudges.com, bash the judiciary and highlight misconduct by judges. Clevenger currently is under fire from a Washington, D.C., judge, who sanctioned Clevenger $120,000 in December, sparking other pending disciplinary actions.

About seven years ago, Smith sanctioned Clevenger and fined him $25,000 for filing what the Waco federal judge deemed a frivolous lawsuit in his court.

Clevenger has been in touch with U.S Rep. Bill Flores office since the Republican from Bryan told the Tribune-Herald in January that he thinks the judicial council did not go far enough in sanctioning Smith. Flores said then that he would explore procedures to impeach the judge by talking to U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, about those procedures.

But Flores said recently that he is aware that Clevenger is appealing the councils decision and he thinks that process should be allowed to play out. He also said he has had difficulty getting in touch with Goodlatte.

Congressman Flores talked a good game before the Republican primary, but after the election, he lost all his interest in impeaching Judge Smith, Clevenger said. It looks like it was the kind of say-anything-to-get-elected stunt that makes people cynical about politicians.
May 7 joint general election  Waco, Bellmead, Lorena, Lorena ISD

Early voting runs 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. April 30, May 2 and May 3.

Early voting locations include:

 McLennan County Records Building, 214 N. Fourth St., Suite 300

 Bellmead City Hall, 3015 Bellmead Drive

 First Assembly of God Church, 6701 Bosque Blvd.

On Election Day, registered voters can cast their ballot at any of the vote centers around the cities and school districts. For more information, go to: http://bit.ly/1Sxf03n

Election Day voting centers

 Bellmead Civic Center, 3900 Parrish St.

 First Assembly of God Church, 6701 Bosque Blvd.

 G. W. Carver Middle School, 1601 J.J. Flewellen Road

 Lorena City Hall, 107-A S. Interstate 35 Frontage Road

 McLennan Community College Conference Center, 4601 N. 19th St.

 MHMR Center for Developmental Services, 3420 W. Waco Drive

 Peace Lutheran Church, 9301 Panther Way

 Tennyson Middle School, 6100 Tennyson Drive

 Waco Convention Center, 100 Washington Ave.

 Waco Multi Purpose Community Center, 1020 Elm St.

Contested races on the ballot

Waco City Council

District 1: Wilbert Austin, Mark Stephen Shaw

District 3: Dustin Weins, John Kinnaird

Bellmead City Council

At large: Vincent Hendrix Sr., Gary Moore

Precinct 3: Mathew Jordon, Mark Pace

Precinct 4: Jose R. Arrollo Jr., Ernest Butch Anz

Bellmead referendum

Reducing the tax rate for the current year from $0.318608 per $100 of property value to $0.303761.

Lorena City Council

At large (pick 3): Jeff Linnstaedter, Robert Braswell, Kelly Yarbrough, J. Fagner

Lorena ISD

At large (pick 2): Denny Kramer, Philip Jander, Wade Durbin

Sample ballots

Download ballot PDFs below. Numbers refer to McLennan County voting precincts.

Precinct 51 (partial)  for Lorena ISD voters

Precincts 75 (partial), 76 (partial)  for Lorena and Lorena ISD voters

Precinct 76 (partial)  for Lorena voters not in Lorena ISD

Precincts 86 (partial), 87 (partial), 88 (partial), 89  for Bellmead District 3 voters

Precincts 87 (partial), 88 (partial)  for Bellmead District 4 voters

City of Woodway

Early voting runs 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday; 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday; 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday; 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday; 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday; and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 2 and May 3.

Polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day.

Residents can vote at Woodway City Hall, 922 Estates Drive.

Woodway City Council

Ward 2, Place 2: Steve Sorrells, Scott A. Giddings

City of Beverly Hills

Early voting runs 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, May 2 and May 3. Hours are extended to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. April 28.

Polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day.

Residents can cast their ballot at Beverly Hills City Hall, 3418 Memorial Drive.

Beverly Hills City Council

At large (pick 3): Rita Ms. Z Zolecki, Michael Thompson, Tony Garcia, Joe Frank Holder

China Spring ISD

Early voting runs 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through May 3. Hours are extended Thursday and May 2 to 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day.

Residents can vote at China Spring Intermediate School Library, 4001 Flat Rock Road.

Place 6: Keith Click, Chris Gerik

Connally ISD

Early voting runs 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through May 3 on each weekday.

Residents can vote early at the Connally ISD Administration Office, 200 Cadet Way.

Polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day.

On Election Day, residents can vote at the Lacy Lakeview Civic Center, 505 E. Craven Ave.

Place 1: Aaron Mitzel, E.Z. Padron

Place 2: Danny Raines, Jason Hancock

Midway ISD

Early voting runs from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through May 3 on each weekday.

Polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day.

Residents can vote at Hewitt City Hall, 200 Patriot Court; Woodway City Hall, 922 Estates Drive; or the MISD Administration Building, 13885 Woodway Drive.

Place 5: Pamela Watts, Debra Jones Tumlin

Uncontested races

Waco City Council: Mayor  Kyle Deaver

Waco ISD: Place 4  Angela Tekell; Place 5  Allen Sykes

Bosqueville ISD: Debbie Wright-Hood, Russell Devorsky

China Spring ISD: Place 7  Dod Moore

Hewitt City Council: Ward 1  Wilbert "Walky" Wachtendorf; Ward 2  Bill Fuller; Ward 3  Steve Fortenberry

La Vega ISD: District 2  Henry Jennings; District 4  Raymond Koon; District 5  Randall Devorsky

Mart ISD: Frank "Pete" Rowe, Tracy Adler, Richard Green, Sara Deike

Midway ISD: Place 6  Ivan Green; Place 7  Rick Tullis

Woodway City Council: Ward 1, Place 2  Donald J. Baker; Ward 3, Place 2  Jane Kittner
As the Economic Opportunity Advancement Corp. celebrates 50 years of serving the area, officials say education and employment providing a living wage are among McLennan Countys biggest challenges.

The EOAC spends about $18 million in Waco each year attempting to eliminate poverty, and serves 4,000 people a month across McLennan, Bosque, Freestone, Limestone, Hill and Falls counties.

Executive Director John Key said the EOAC is now one of the oldest nonprofit groups with ongoing services in Central Texas.

Chartered by the state on April 25, 1966, the EOAC was made possible by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which recognized that the nation can achieve its economic and social potential when everyone has the opportunity to contribute to the full extent of their capabilities.

A 15-member board oversees the agency, which focuses on six major programs  Head Start, Early Head Start, Community Action Services, Child Care Services, Weatherization, Tenant Rental Assistance  and the EOACs Waco Charter School.

Key said the biggest need for McLennan County is to work toward providing education to help residents get livable employment. He said the agency doesnt struggle with getting residents a minimum wage job in the area, but added that minimum wage is not enough for someone to survive.

Key said the EOAC applies for grant funding to provide programs to help give residents the boost they need to reach another level of advancement.

Were just people helping people, he said.

Key, who has been the executive director for four years, said the EOAC is largely funded by the state and federal governments. He said it receives about $25,000 a year in private donations.

The thing about private donations that are so good is they dont have federal and state regulations on them, he said. If we were to go into someones house and their stove had burned up, we could probably replace the stove, but we couldnt replace the pipe that connects to the stove. Theres a lot of (grants) like that.

Darlene Cates, president of the EOACs board of directors, said the nonprofit groups biggest struggle is funding.

The constant demand for services is always there, Cates said. Our numbers seem to go up every year and funding goes down every year.

Cates, who has been with the organization close to 20 years, said she believes in what the EOAC does. She said if it wasnt for the Head Start program, many of those children wouldnt receive the extra hand they need. Many youth are being raised by their grandparents, who often need the extra help, she said.

The Weatherization program finished 20 homes and is now working on five more as it serves the elderly and veterans using Department of Energy funding to make their homes more efficient in Texas weather. Key said the Child Care Services program is one of the more unique programs EOAC provides.

He said the program allows parents to return to school or receive training while the EOAC pays a portion of the day-care costs for that persons children. Key said the EOAC has served more than 50,000 children in the past 50 years through Head Start. The EOACs Waco Charter School has educated pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade students for 20 years, serving more than 3,500 students. Utility Assistance provides funds for those who qualify, and there is a Tenant Based Rental Assistance program that offers temporary emergency aid.

Susan Copeland, vice president of the EOACs board, said she has seen countless examples of the nonprofit group helping people better their lives.

I love, and I sincerely mean this, I love that this agency breaks the cycle of poverty, she said. It changes lives, but it does it with case management. It reaches the whole family. Its a really holistic way of treating the devastation of poverty, and it works. Ive seen it work over and over.

Copeland, who has been with the EOAC more than 20 years, said the group has the same challenges as any federal and state programs. Stretching its dollars to help as many as possible is a challenge, but one the EOAC has succeeded at overcoming for the past 50 years, she said.

Were seeing more clients. We have more children that need help, she said.

Key said that when he retired from education he wanted to continue to help people, which is when he landed with the EOAC.

Its a lot different being middle class and walking into people that are inherently in poverty, Key said. The majority of people want to get out (of poverty). Its not like you hear politically.
A Central Texas man was arrested Monday after police say he sexually assaulted a young girl in a Waco hotel in 2014, court documents state.

Jesse Severn Rodgers, 24, was arrested in Lufkin on a charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child.

The alleged victim told a parent about a medical concern, and the parent took the girl to a doctor in their hometown east of Waco. After an examination of the girl, who was under the age of 14 at the time, the doctor determined she may have been sexually assaulted, Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said.

The girl told police in her hometown she was assaulted by an acquaintance while her family was on a trip to Waco in September 2014, according to court documents. She said Rodgers sexually assaulted her twice in the Waco hotel room.

According to the arrest affidavit, Rodgers told victim if anyone found out, she would get in big trouble. Waco police officers interviewed Rodgers during the investigation and said he gave conflicting statements, including claiming he was not in Waco during the time period of the assault.

Former employers and Rodgers mother all claimed Rodgers was in Waco at the time of the incident, court documents state.

Rodgers was arrested in Lufkin on Monday and remained in the McLennan County Jail on Tuesday in lieu of a $50,000 surety bond.
Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown is a relatively accessible fellow, but when he was sought recently for an interview on the subject of schisms in his Democratic Party, his schedule was full. Instead, he sent along a banal statement that the Hillary Clinton-Bernie Sanders presidential primary battle was strengthening the party in contrast with the divisive Republican fight.

Hes right about the Republicans. The personal invective and policy splits threaten to tear the party apart and produce electoral cataclysm in November.

Yet that is camouflaging serious problems on the Democratic side: deep divisions on policy and an almost certain nominee, Clinton, who if not for Donald Trump would be the most unpopular leading presidential candidate in recent times.

The differences between Clinton and Sanders are more pronounced than those between Barack Obama and Clinton in 2008. Then, there were modest divergences on health care and national security, highlighted by her support five years earlier for George W. Bushs decision to invade Iraq. Mainly it was a difference of style and persona, a new voice in a change environment running against a candidate focused on recapturing the salad days of the last Democratic administration.

This time  on major economic issues, taxes, health care and regulating Wall Street  the gaps are much wider. On national security, too, as Clinton hasnt much moderated her interventionist bent: She was a leading advocate for the 2011 military action in Libya. The aftermath turned out disastrously and Obama has expressed regrets. She hasnt.

Party platforms are window dressing but can be politically symbolic. Its hard to see how the Clinton forces can accommodate Sanders demands for breaking up the big banks, free college tuition and staying out of Syria.

Yet if she is the Democratic nominee, shell need the Sanders followers in the autumn. She would be making a mistake to take them for granted and rely on Trumps unpopularity. In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll voters view him unfavorably, 65 percent to 24 percent, the highest negatives for a national political figure that the pollster Peter Hart has ever seen.

If it werent for Trump, however, the story would be about Clintons negatives. In the same survey she was viewed unfavorably, 56 percent to 32 percent. She does poorly among some of Sanderss core supporters, young people and independents.

If Sen. Ted Cruz becomes the Republican nominee, therell be a fierce ideological battle, with both sides working to energize the base. Trump or Cruz can be counted on to raise sensitive issues, ignored by Sanders, such as potential problems involving the Clinton Foundation, which has accepted huge donations from wealthy donors as well as big contributions from foreign interests. Clinton says the Clinton Foundation would continue to operate if shes elected president.

Clintons backers say she has more cards than her opponents. If, for instance, there is a foreign policy crisis during the fall campaign, many voters give her good marks for knowledge and experience. She can send a message with a vice-presidential choice.

Several people who talk with Clinton think she would be comfortable with Sen. Tim Kaine, a mature moderate who was a successful governor of Virginia, a swing state. She has been intrigued, they say, with the notion of picking another woman; Sen. Elizabeth Warren would excite the base. There is little chemistry between them, however, and if she still wanted to play to the Sanders folk, a more palatable alternative might be the liberal Sen. Brown, which may help explain why he didnt want to talk last week.

Albert Hunt is a Bloomberg View columnist.
Sign the petition

I agree with the most recent letter by Alan Northcutt [April 14]. We wont change the minds of science deniers so its time to show the big oil companies that all of us who believe in man-caused climate change are serious and will boycott oil and sign a petition that we will no longer buy, sell, use or do business with any company that uses oil or its products. This would greatly exceed President Obamas proposed reduction in ozone levels.

Yes, this will cause a few inconveniences, but what are inconveniences in our lives compared to saving Earth from man-caused climate change? Among inconveniences besides not driving gasoline-fueled cars: no more artificial limbs, artificial hearts, operations with sedation  and no computers and cellphones, as many of their components are made from petroleum. Surely Mr. Northcutt will quit using products made from fossil fuels that are destroying the Earth!

Jim Cantrell, Axtell

EDITORS NOTE: Just to keep things balanced between Mr. Cantrell and Mr. Northcutt, the latter reminds us Houston just experienced its heaviest one-day rainfall in recorded history and that the heavy rainfalls across the United States  which have increased 167 percent since the 1950s were predicted by climate science. A warmer atmosphere holds more water, hence heavier rains.

Hiring men

According to the front-page article Girl Scouts explore STEM fest (April 17), Raegan King, program coordinator of the Waco Mammoth National Monument, told a group of girls that Girls rule the world and we protect each other but also that boys act like boys by fighting. The message was clearly sexist  especially when she added that she hopes a future full-time paleontologist at the monument is a girl.

What if a public employee made the same preferential comments about boys and denigrated the behavior of girls? There would be an outcry of protest. But apparently its OK for a public employee to denigrate boys and express preference, including in hiring, for girls.

Roger Olson, Waco

Hiring women

I am all for Esther Garciapina reaching her dreams  so much so I donate $500 toward her education at TSTC! I believe we ladies can always reach for our goals and I, for one, applaud this young lady and pray she has a long and fruitful life doing what she wants because she loves it. It is her calling!

If you dont want to cut hair, thats OK! If you want to chase your dream of welding art, thats super! Chase your dreams and know you did what you wanted. I do have $500 toward your education. Please let me know where to send it at TSTC.

Cheryl Shaw, Dawson

EDITORS NOTE: Judging from her obvious success as a welder, you can reach her six days a week at Reckless Iron Works, 321 S. Fifth St. in Waco.
EAGLE  A positive meeting between the Nebraska Department of Roads and Eagles board of trustees last week saw both entities make the first concrete steps down the path toward the future of Highway 34.

The April 18 board meeting saw NDOR representatives providing the village with a more tangible idea of how possible development south of the highway can align with the departments plan for the future.

It benefits us both if we can sort of plan this together, said NDOR Planning and Project Developer Michael Owen.

The department still has plans for the highway, Owen said, but those plans may not come to fruition for at least another 15 years. As traffic along Highway 34 increases, NDOR would like to expand the currently two-lane highway to four lanes. In order to make that expansion a worthwhile investment of the states time, 10,000 drivers would need to travel the road every day. Recent traffic studies cap out at about 5,000 per day.

That means any work on the highway is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

We know were pretty far off in the future, Owen said.

That being said, NDOR does not want to tie up any current plans for the Village.

The debate over the highway began last winter, after a Kansas City-based developer came to the village with plans to construct a Dollar General store south of Highway 34 across Fourth Street. That project was going more-or-less swimmingly until the village went after an access permit for the highway. Thats when NDOR held up a figurative stop sign, bringing the plans to a temporary halt.

With plans to expand Highway 34 on the books for at least two decades, the department told the village that any construction along the highway could be in jeopardy whenever the highway work eventually went underway. Citing corridor protection, which allows NDOR to put land on hold in order to prepare for future projects, the department effectively put the brakes on Eagles plans.

Pieces of land between the city of Lincoln and the village had already been acquired in anticipation of the project, an NDOR spokesperson said earlier this year.

After that revelation, the villages outlook for a Dollar General looked less than optimistic.

But the message from NDOR last week was pretty simple, basically allowing construction of the store so long as it aligned with the projected design of the highways eventual widening.

The highway will likely shift southward as it widens, according to plans presented at the meeting. That means the proposed store will need to move about 50 to 100 feet south.

Overall, the meeting was pretty positive, leaving those invested on the villages side feeling a little rejuvenated.

It sounds like were close, said Joe Carr, the owner of the land where the store would be built. We just need to get you guys with Dollar General.

Residents should not expect to see any vibrant yellow buildings popping up anytime too soon, trustees said. There are a lot of letters, permits and plats to approve before all is said and done. The village needs to work with NDOR to make any plans official, and the villages planning process for the store needs to basically start from scratch.

In other business, the trustees voted to approve raising lifeguards pay to minimum wage, which is now $9 in Nebraska. The decision to raise the wage came after most board members agreed the village needed to stay competitive with other employers in the area.

I think we have to stay with it, said Trustee Perry Gillaspie. If thats what it takes.

Trustee John Surman voted against the raise, saying it was too much of an increase.
Details added (first version posted on 11:35)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 26

Trend:

More than 140 countries support the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Apr. 26 in Baku.

He was addressing the opening session of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.

Holding the UNAOC Global Forum in Baku is of great importance, since Azerbaijan is the historical center of civilizations, said Erdogan.

Unfortunately, despite all efforts, the world is still unable to confront the growing radicalism and terrorism, he noted.

"Terror and terrorism have nothing in common with Islam," said the president adding that terrorists don't have religious affiliation and national identity.

Erdogan went on to add that Islam is the religion of peace, which calls for brotherhood.

None of the world's countries is insured from terrorism, and therefore, states should work together to fight terrorism, according to him.

Turkey is fighting terrorism for 35 years, said the Turkish president adding that currently, the number of cases of terrorism is also growing in neighboring Syria.

The main reason of terrorism's growth in Syria is the country's authorities that support terrorism, said Erdogan.

Civilians lose their lives in Syria every day, noted the president adding that currently, there are more than three million refugees from Syria and Iraq in Turkey's territory and the country has spent $15-20 billion.

Erdogan added that Turkey didn't close its border for refugees from Syria and Iraq, as a number of European countries did.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26

By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:

Turkey fully supports Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkish foreign minister, told reporters in Baku April 26.

Cavusoglu said that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict must be resolved by diplomatic means as part of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity.

The Turkish minister stressed that the co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group are greatly responsible for resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

"If the co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk group want, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be resolved in the near future," Cavusoglu said.

The Turkish minister said that Armenia does not want the conflict to be resolved through political means.

Cavusoglu added that therefore, Armenia aggravates the situation on the line of contact of the troops.

"While announcing the ceasefire regime unilaterally, Azerbaijan once again proved to the world that the country stands for peaceful settlement of the conflict," Cavusoglu said.

On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements.



Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire.



The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Turkey's ambassador to France has called for more help in dealing with the refugee situation in his country.

Hakki Akil said the international community, the UN and other international institutions "have to help Turkey more".

Speaking at a dinner at the French Senate, Akil added: "Turkey has seen the refugee crisis as a humanitarian problem, not a threat, since the very beginning and the country [has] stated that the refugees should be helped."

Since civil war broke out in Syria in March 2011, Turkey has received more than 2.7 million refugees, the largest refugee population in the world. More than 1 million others have sought refuge in Lebanon and Jordan.

Akil said Turkey has spent more than $10 billion on refugees.

The crisis saw more than 850,000 refugees cross from Turkey to the EU last year, prompting a deal for Turkey to accept returned migrants in a one-for-one exchange for Syrian refugees to be resettled in the EU.

The agreement included EU pledges to donate 6 billion euros ($6.8 billion) to aid refugees in Turkey, speed up the country's EU accession and introduce visa-free travel for Turkish nationals.

Akil, who spoke late Monday, said the latter two clauses had already been promised to Ankara. "Visa exemption and opening new chapters for Turkey's accession to the EU are among the steps that the EU had already promised," he said. "The EU has not offered anything new to Turkey."

Hailing the agreement, he said there had been a decline in the number of deaths among refugees crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece since it came into effect at the start of April.

More than 154,000 refugees have crossed the Aegean since the start of the year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which reported that 376 had drowned over the same period.

The IOM said an average of 1,500 refugees arrived daily in Greece at the start of the year, a figure that has dropped to 100 a day since the agreement came into force.
In what is most likely the last flight of her entire type, the Museum of Flights ultra-rare Boeing 247D flew one last time today. The short hop from the museums restoration and storage facility at Paine Field in Everett, Washington to the main museum site at Boeing Field in Seattle took place at roughly 11:30am local time today, with 787 Dreamliner test pilots Mike Carriker and Chad Lundy at the controls. The soft growl of the airliners two 550hp Pratt&Whitney Wasp engines sat in stark contrast to the more normal howl of the 100,000lb+ thrust jet engines commonly found on Boeings more modern products, rolling off the production line just a few hundred yards from the runway at Paine Field. Hundreds of people gathered to witness the historic moment as the Boeings oldest airworthy airliner made her final flight.

Here is some video of the engine and fast-taxi tests conducted a couple of days ago

There are just four extant Boeing 247s of the seventy five built. The Museum of Flights example rolled out of the Boeing factory as construction number 1729 in 1933, and is currently registered as N13347. The other three survivors are on display in static condition at museums around the world: c/n 1699 at the Canada Aviation & Space Museum in Ottawa, Canada, c/n 1722 at the Science Museums reserve collection in Wroughton, England and c/n 1953 at the Smithsonians National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC.

The Boeing 247D made a safe landing at Boeing Field, and will now take her place in the Aviation Pavillion. It is an exciting day for the museum, and all involved are to be heartily congratulated!

With many thanks to Joe A. Kunzler our man on the ground in Seattle for the shots of the Boeing 247Ds final take off!
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used a two-day visit to Croatia to call for more help in dealing with millions of refugees in Turkey.

"The West should provide a different kind of assistance to Turkey as a humanitarian and conscientious duty," he said at a news conference with Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic in capital Zagreb.

"Turkey will never close its doors to refugees from Syria."

Turkey currently hosts 2.7 million Syrian refugees, as well as hundreds of thousands from troubled states such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Erdogan is visiting Croatia to boost economic ties in the Balkans. "I want to emphasize the fact that our economic relations need to increase and improve," he said. "Our goal is to reach a billion dollar trade volume."

The Turkish president also highlighted links between Turkey, Croatia and Bosnia. "Common policy in the Balkans is very important and today we talked about it," he told reporters. "It is very important for the future peace and stability of the Balkans and in this context Turkey, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina can create a strong trilateral mechanism".

After welcoming Erdogan and the group of government ministers and business leaders accompanying him, Grabar-Kitarovic said there was "huge space" for further cooperation with Turkey, particularly in the area of Croatian exports to Turkey and energy.

She indicated Croatia would use its experience of joining the EU to help speed up Turkey's integration. The former Yugoslav republic joined the EU in 2013.

On Wednesday, a delegation from the Turkish government, which includes Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, EU Minister Volkan Bozkir, Economy Minister Mustafa Elitas and Culture and Tourism Minister Mahir Unal, will attend a Turkey-Croatia business forum.
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The following companies are subsidiares of Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft: ABFS I Incorporated, ABS MB Ltd., Alex. Brown Financial Services Incorporated, Alex. Brown Investments Incorporated, Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft mbH, Ambidexter GmbH i.L., Argent Incorporated, BHW - Gesellschaft fur Wohnungswirtschaft mbH, BHW Bausparkasse Aktiengesellschaft, BHW Holding GmbH, BT Globenet Nominees Limited, Bainpro Nominees Pty Ltd, Baldur Mortgages Limited, Bankers Trust Investments Limited, Bayan Delinquent Loan Recovery 1 (SPV-AMC) Inc., Berkshire Mortgage Finance, Betriebs-Center fur Banken AG, Better Financial Services GmbH, Better Payment Germany GmbH, Borfield Sociedad Anonima, Breaking Wave DB Limited, Cardales UK Limited, Cardea Real Estate S.r.l., Cathay Advisory (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cathay Asset Management Company Limited, Cathay Capital Company (No 2) Limited, Cedar (Luxembourg) S.a. r.l., Chapel Funding, China Recovery Fund LLC, Consumo Srl in Liquidazione, D B Investments (GB) Limited, D&M Turnaround Partners Godo Kaisha, DB (Barbados) SRL, DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Asing) Sdn. Bhd., DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Tempatan) Sendirian Berhad, DB Alex. Brown Holdings Incorporated, DB Aotearoa Investments Limited, DB Beteiligungs-Holding GmbH, DB Boracay LLC, DB Capital Markets (Deutschland) GmbH, DB Cartera de lnmuebles 1 S.A.U., DB Chestnut Holdings Limited, DB Corporate Advisory (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., DB Delaware Holdings (Europe) Limited, DB Direkt GmbH, DB Elara LLC, DB Energy Trading LLC, DB Equipment Leasing Inc., DB Equity Limited, DB Finance (Delaware) LLC, DB Global Technology Inc., DB Global Technology SRL, DB Group Services (UK) Limited, DB HR Solutions GmbH, DB Holdings (New York) Inc., DB IROC Leasing Corp., DB Impact Investment Fund I. 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Limited, DBRE Global Real Estate Management 18 Ltd., DBRMS4, DBRMSGP1, DBUK PCAM Limited, DBUSBZ1 LLC, DBUSBZ2 S.a. r.l., DBX Advisers LLC, DEBEKO lmmobilien GmbH & Co Grundbesitz OHG, DEE Deutsche Erneuerbare Energien GmbH, DEUKONA Versicherungs-Vermittlungs-GmbH, DEUTSCHE BANK AS., DI Deutsche lmmobilien Treuhandgesellschaft mbH, DISCA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, DWS Alternatives France, DWS Alternatives Global Limited, DWS Alternatives GmbH, DWS Asset Management (Korea) Company Limited, DWS Beteiligungs GmbH, DWS CH AG, DWS Distributors Inc., DWS Far Eastern Investments Limited, DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA, DWS Group Services UK Limited, DWS Grundbesitz GmbH, DWS International GmbH, DWS Investment GmbH, DWS Investment Management Americas Inc., DWS Investment S.A., DWS Investments Australia Limited, DWS Investments Hong Kong Limited, DWS Investments Japan Limited, DWS Investments Shanghai Limited, DWS Investments Singapore Limited, DWS Investments UK Limited, DWS Management GmbH, DWS Real Estate GmbH, DWS Service Company, DWS Shanghai Private Equity Fund Management Limited, DWS Trust Company, DWS USA Corporation, Deposit Solutions, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Capital Holdings New Zealand, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Foreign Investments New Zealand, Deutsche (New Munster) Holdings New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Access Investments Limited, Deutsche Aeolia Power Production Societe Anonyme, Deutsche Alternative Asset Management (UK) Limited, Deutsche Asia Pacific Holdings Pte Ltd, Deutsche Asset Management (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Australia Limited, Deutsche Bank (Cayman) Limited, Deutsche Bank (China) Co. Ltd., Deutsche Bank (Malaysia) Berhad, Deutsche Bank (Suisse) SA, Deutsche Bank (Uruguay) Sociedad Anenima lnstitucien Financiera Externa, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft, Deutsche Bank Americas Holding Corp., Deutsche Bank Europe GmbH, Deutsche Bank Financial Company, Deutsche Bank Holdings Inc., Deutsche Bank Insurance Agency Incorporated, Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A., Deutsche Bank Mutui S.p.A., Deutsche Bank Mexico. S.A., Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, Deutsche Bank Polska Spelka Akcyjna, Deutsche Bank Representative Office Nigeria Limited, Deutsche Bank S.A, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Deutsche Bank Securities Limited, Deutsche Bank Societe per Azioni, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Delaware, Deutsche Bank Trust Company National Association, Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation, Deutsche Bank. Sociedad Anenima Espanola, Deutsche CIB Centre Private Limited, Deutsche Capital Finance (2000) Limited, Deutsche Capital Hong Kong Limited, Deutsche Capital Markets Australia Limited, Deutsche Capital Partners China Limited, Deutsche Cayman Ltd., Deutsche Custody N.V., Deutsche Domus New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Equities India Private Limited, Deutsche Finance No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Foras New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur lmmobilien-Leasing mit beschrenkter Haftung, Deutsche Global Markets Limited, Deutsche Group Holdings (SA) Proprietary Limited, Deutsche Group Services Pty Limited, Deutsche Grundbesitz Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., Deutsche Grundbesitz-Anlagegesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Deutsche Holdings (BTI) Limited, Deutsche Holdings (Grand Duchy), Deutsche Holdings (Luxembourg) S.El r.l., Deutsche Holdings Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 3 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 4 Limited, Deutsche India Holdings Private Limited, Deutsche India Private Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services (Ireland) Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services Limited, Deutsche International Custodial Services Limited, Deutsche Investments (Netherlands) N.V., Deutsche Investments India Private Limited, Deutsche Investor Services Private Limited, Deutsche Knowledge Services Pte. Ltd., Deutsche Leasing New York Corp., Deutsche Mexico Holdings S.a. r.|., Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Group Limited, Deutsche Mortgage & Asset Receiving Corporation, Deutsche Nederland N.V., Deutsche New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Nominees Limited, Deutsche Oppenheim Family Office AG, Deutsche Overseas Issuance New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Postbank, Deutsche Postbank Finance Center Objekt GmbH, Deutsche Private Asset Management Limited, Deutsche Securities (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Securities (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities (SA) (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities Asia Limited, Deutsche Securities Australia Limited, Deutsche Securities Inc., Deutsche Securities Israel Ltd., Deutsche Securities Korea Co., Deutsche Securities Mauritius Limited, Deutsche Securities SA. de C.V.. Casla de Bolsa, Deutsche Securities Saudi Arabia, Deutsche Services (Cl) Limited, Deutsche Services Polska Sp. z o.o., Deutsche StiftungsTrust GmbH, Deutsche Strategic Investment Holdings Yugen Kaisha, Deutsche Trustee Company Limited, Deutsche Trustee Services (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Trustees Malaysia Berhad, Deutsche Wealth Management S.G.I.I.C. SA., Deutsche lmmobilien Leasing GmbH, Deutsches lnstitut fur Altersvorsorge GmbH, Durian (Luxembourg) S.a. r.l., EC EUROPA IMMOBILIEN FONDS NR. 3 GmbH & CO. KG i.l., Elizabethan Holdings Limited, Elizabethan Management Limited, European Value Added I (Alternate GP.) LLP, Fiduciaria Sant Andrea S.r.l., Finanzberatungsgesellschaft mbH der Deutschen Bank, Funfte SAB Treuhand und Verwaltung GmbH & Co. Suhl "Rimbachzentrum" KG, G Finance Holding Corp., German American Capital Corporation, Grundstucksgesellschaft Frankfurt Bockenheimer LandstraBe GbR, Grundstucksgesellschaft Miesbaden LuisenstraBe/Kirchgasse GbR, Hollandsche Bank-Unie, ISTRON Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungs-GmbH, IVAF l Manager S.a.r.l., Immobilienfonds Buro-Center Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben I GbR, J R Nominees (Pty) Ltd, Joint Stock Company Deutsche Bank DBU, Jyogashima Godo Kaisha, KEBA Gesellschaft fur interne Services mbH, Kidson Pte Ltd, Konsul lnkasso GmbH, LA Water Holdings Limited, LAWL Pte. Ltd., Leasing Verwaltungsgesellschaft Waltersdorf mbH, Leonardo lll Initial GP Limited, MEF I Manager. S. a r.|., MIT Holdings Inc., Maher Terminals Holdings (Toronto) Limited, Morgan Grenfell & Company, MortgageIT, MortgagelT Inc., MortgagelT Securities Corp., OOO "Deutsche Bank TechCentIe", OOO "Deutsche Bank", OPB Verwaltungs- und Treuhand GmbH, OPB-Oktava GmbH, OPB-Quarta GmbH, OPPENHEIM Capital Advisory GmbH, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Manager GmbH, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, PADUS Grundstcks-VermietungsgeseIlschaft mbH, PB Factoring GmbH, PB Spezial-lnvestmentaktiengesellschatt mit Teilgesellschaftsvermogen, PCC Services GmbH der Deutschen Bank, PT Deutsche Sekuritas Indonesia, Pan Australian Nominees Pty Ltd, Plantation Bay. Inc., Postbank Akademie und Service GmbH, Postbank Beteiligungen GmbH, Postbank Direkt GmbH, Postbank Filialvertrieb AG, Postbank Finanzberatung AG, Postbank Leasing GmbH, Postbank lmmobilien GmbH, Quantiguous, R.B.M. Nominees Pty Ltd, RREEF, RREEF America LLC., RREEF China REIT Management Limited, RREEF European Value Added I (G.P.) Limited, RREEF Fund Holding Co., RREEF India Advisers Private Limited, RREEF Management LLC., RoPro U.S. Holding Inc., Route 28 Receivables. LLC, SAB Real Estate Verwaltungs GmbH, SAGITA Grundstucks-Vermielungsgesellschaft mbH, SAPIO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, Sal. Oppenheim, Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie. Beteiligungs GmbH, Sharps SP l LLC, Stelvio lmmobiliare S.r.l., Suddeutsche Vermeigensvewvaitung Gesellschaft mit beschrenkter Haftung, TELO Beleiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Tempurrite Leasing Limited, Thai Asset Enforcement and Recovery Asset Management Company Limited, Treuinvest Service GmbH, Triplereason Umited, VOB-ZVD Processing GmbH, WEPLA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Wealthspur Investment Ltd., World Trading (Delaware) Inc., lmmobilienfonds BuroCenter Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben II GbR, lmmobilienfonds Wohn- und Gescheftshaus Koln-Blumenberg V GbR, and norisbank GmbH.

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Telefonica, S.A., together with its subsidiaries, provides telecommunications services in Europe and Latin America. The company's mobile and related services and products comprise mobile voice, value added, mobile data and Internet, wholesale, corporate, roaming, fixed wireless, and trunking and paging services. Its fixed telecommunication services include PSTN lines; ISDN accesses; public telephone services; local, domestic, and international long-distance and fixed-to-mobile communications; corporate communications; supplementary value-added services; video telephony; intelligent network; and telephony information services, as well as leases and sells handset equipment. The company also provides Internet and broadband multimedia services comprising Internet service provider, portal and network, retail and wholesale broadband access, narrowband switched access, high-speed Internet through fibre to the home, and voice over Internet protocol services. In addition, it offers leased line, virtual private network, fibre optics, web hosting and application, outsourcing and consultancy, desktop, and system integration and professional services. Further, the company offers wholesale services for telecommunication operators, including domestic interconnection and international wholesale services; leased lines for other operators; and local loop leasing services, as well as bit stream services, wholesale line rental accesses, and leased ducts for other operators' fiber deployment. Additionally, it provides video/TV services; smart connectivity and services, and consumer IoT products; financial and other payment, security, cloud computing, advertising, big data, and digital telco experience services; virtual assistants; digital home platforms; and Movistar Home devices. It also offers online telemedicine, home insurance, music streaming, and consumer loan services. The company was incorporated in 1924 and is headquartered in Madrid, Spain.
President Xi Jinping warns against foreign infiltration coursed through religion. (Photo : Getty Images)

Chinese President Xi Jinping urged vigilance against foreign infiltration via religion and called for adherence to communist ruling during a high-level meeting on religion conducted on Saturday.



According to the Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese president made the statement while promising full implementation of the Communist Party of China's (CPC) policies on religious freedom.



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Resisting Infiltration



"We must resolutely resist overseas infiltration through religious means and guard against ideological infringement by extremists," Xi told the attendees of the religious convention that concluded on Saturday.



According to the president, authorities in China should use the Internet to focus on religious issues and disseminate information on the CPC's religious theories and policies.



Reuters noted that while the Communist Party does uphold freedom among Chinese citizens in choosing their own religion, their leadership maintains a "tight reign" on regulating the religious institutions' activities and operations.



The outlet said that China is concerned of the emergence of Islamists, whom Xi referred to as "extremists," that have been causing havoc in the far western region of Xinjiang.



Over the past years, violence caused by the conflict between the Han Chinese that compose the majority and the Muslim Uyghur minorities has resulted in hundreds of deaths.



In response, officials opted to increase efforts in banning traditional Islamic religious observances like growing beards and wearing veils.



Religion's Role in Maintaining Harmony



According to China Highlights, China is a multi-religious country that is home to numerous religious beliefs such as Taoism, Buddhism, Protestantism, lslam and Catholicism.



Because the Chinese constitution and government policy protect freedom of belief, the Chinese are able to choose freely which religious group they would join in.



However, Xi's talk about religion over the weekend revealed that not all Chinese are free to choose a religion.



In fact, he specified that all members of the Communist Party should act as "unyielding Marxist atheists, consolidate their faith, and bear in mind the Party's tenets."



According to Xi, CPC members "must not seek their own values and beliefs from religions," and make an effort in ensuring that the youth of China see the world with a science-backed outlook and "guide them to believe in science, study science and promote science."



However, Yu Zhengsheng, a senior political advisor, called on authorities to bear in mind the effects of religions in China.



"The positive role of religions should be maximized, and their negative impacts minimized," Yu explained, adding that conflicts involving religious domains should be addressed properly and in accordance to law.






Northrop Grumman Corporation operates as an aerospace and defense company worldwide. The company's Aeronautics Systems segment designs, develops, manufactures, integrates, and sustains aircraft systems. This segment also offers unmanned autonomous aircraft systems, including high-altitude long-endurance strategic ISR systems and vertical take-off and landing tactical ISR systems; and strategic long-range strike aircraft, tactical fighter and air dominance aircraft, and airborne battle management and command and control systems. Its Defense Systems segment designs, develops, and produces weapons and mission systems. It offers products and services, such as integrated battle management systems, weapons systems and aircraft, and mission systems. This segment also provides command and control and weapons systems, including munitions and missiles; precision strike weapons; propulsion, such as air-breathing and hypersonic systems; gun systems and precision munitions; life cycle service and support for software, weapons systems, and aircraft; and logistics support, sustainment, operation, and modernization for air, sea, and ground systems. The company's Mission Systems segment offers cyber, command, control, communications and computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems; radar, electro-optical/infrared and acoustic sensors; electronic warfare systems; advanced communications and network systems; cyber solutions; intelligence processing systems; navigation; and maritime power, propulsion, and payload launch systems. This segment also provides airborne multifunction sensors; maritime/land systems and sensors; navigation, targeting, and survivability solutions; and networked information solutions. Its Space Systems segment offers satellites and payloads; ground systems; missile defense systems and interceptors; launch vehicles and related propulsion systems; and strategic missiles. The company was founded in 1939 and is based in Falls Church, Virginia.
The Grattan Institute report, lobbed into the start of the election campaign, showed high income earners such as financial managers, surgeons and anaesthetists drew the biggest tax benefits from negative gearing. It also found that negative gearing and the CGT discount distorted the housing market and cost the budget $11 billion a year. Mr Turnbull's wife Lucy, a businesswoman and former lord mayor of Sydney, sits on the Grattan Institute's board, as does Howard government minister David Kemp. "They have it wrong": Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Credit:Michele Mossop Despite their criticisms of the report, both Mr Turnbull and Mr Morrison said it supported their claim that Labor's policies would discourage investors and lower residential property prices. While Labor leaped on the report as "a compelling argument for reform", Mr Morrison said he did not accept its analysis, because it looked at the value of people's tax deductions rather than the number of people in each occupation who used negative gearing.

"I know that's the popular consensus among some ... that this is some big rort for big high income earners. That's a complete and utter myth," he told ABC Radio National on Tuesday. "The sheer numbers are this: two thirds of those who actually use it, by the number of people who actually engage in negative gearing, are mum and dad investors. They're nurses, they're teachers, they're police officers." Mr Morrison cited Australian Tax Office data showing there were 57,000 teachers who used negative gearing, 39,500 nurses and midwives and 17,500 electricians - in contrast to just 7500 finance managers. "These are the people who are doing it," he said. "The only thing that Labor's policy will do is further lock them out." The Treasurer also rejected the characterisation of those measures as tax concessions, insisting it was only fair for investors to deduct their losses against income.

"They're not concessions, they're a simple application of tax principles that have been around for hundreds of years," he said. It came as reports indicated the country's highest earners will pay less tax following next week's federal budget, with the government set to grant them two separate tax cuts. Those earning more than $180,001 a year will no longer pay the 2 per cent "deficit levy", which was introduced under Tony Abbott in the 2014 to aid budget repair, and is now due to lapse. And the government wil address bracket creep by lifting the $80,001 income tax threshold, above which each dollar of income is taxed at 37 cents, the Australian Financial Review reported. The increase was "likely to be modest", according to the report. Speaking outside Treasury headquarters in Canberra on Tuesday, Mr Morrison said the budget's key objectives would be reducing the deficit, stimulating growth and "ensuring we don't penalise Australians for doing better in this economy".

"We need to ensure that our tax system is sustainable and we make sustainable changes to the tax system ... that are well-targeted, that deals with the loopholes, that deals with those who seek to take a lend of the system," Mr Morrison said. Grattan Institute responds Grattan Institute chief and the report's principal author, John Daley, welcomed the Prime Minister's contribution but mostly disagreed with his analysis. He conceded it had long been a principle of Australian tax law that people could deduct investment losses from personal income, but said that was an Australian anachronism. "It's a principle that has long disappeared from pretty much anywhere else," he said. "Australia is the only country we have been able to find, apart from New Zealand, where you can deduct interest costs on investment from your wage and salary income." Mr Daley accused the PM of cherry-picking the bits he liked from the report - the impact on home values - while still arguing the paper was riddled with mistakes and contradictions. He said negative gearing was "not going to make a massive change" to property values - probably about 2 per cent - but the bigger impact would be on who does the buying.

"We will see a shift from investors in housing toward owner occupiers," Mr Daley said. "We don't estimate how much, but it will by definition be more than 2 per cent." He estimated the after-tax impact of both changes on investors' returns would be about 7 per cent. But he rejected the PM's assertion investors would be deterred from entering the market, outlining several reasons: Prices would still go up

Investors would still be able to deduct their losses against the capital gains they made when they eventually sell the property

They could accept lower returns

They could buy property at a lower price Despite the disagreements, he welcomed the Prime Minister's engagement with the substance of the issue. Loading
Airly, the start-up offering an all you can fly service between Sydney and Melbourne for $2550 a month, says it has signed up nearly enough potential members to launch.

However, the start date has been delayed beyond this quarter because Airly has yet to complete a capital raising of a few million dollars or secure an aircraft operator for the flights.

"We are probably aiming for the third quarter of the calendar year for the first flight," co-founder Luke Hampshire said. "We are about to cap off our launch number which is a great sign. Sales isn't an issue. It is just a long process getting the required funding."

Airly is in talks with domestic and overseas investors about taking a minority stake in the company. Mr Hampshire said term sheets were being worked on, with hopes of finalising funding within the next month.
The costs of this tax regime are large. For every taxpayer that negatively gears, nine others do not, and they pay more tax to subsidise the minority of negatively geared investors. We estimate that the Commonwealth would raise an additional $5 billion a year in tax if investment losses could not be deducted from labour income, and if tax was paid on 75 per cent of capital gains rather than the current 50 per cent.

The additional taxes required to make up this $5 billion a year subtract far more from the economy than is added by the current negative gearing and capital gains tax arrangements. Evidence from around the world shows that tax incentives don't do much to increase how much people actually save.

However, they do impose other costs on society. They alter where people save. They encourage investment in assets that are expected to have high capital returns, even if their annual returns are lower. In Australia for the last 15 years, that meant residential property. As a result, people have disproportionately invested in property rather than in more productive assets.

The tax arrangements also encourage investors to borrow more than they would otherwise. As a result, almost all of the net additional 700,000 investors in property over the past 15 years are negatively geared. As the Reserve Bank and Murray financial system Inquiry cautioned, the overall effect of these tax concessions is to make property prices more volatile, and make the economy more vulnerable to external shocks.

Finally, our tax regime contributes to falling home ownership rates for all households under the age of 55. The current tax arrangements encourage investors to pay a little more, giving them an advantage at auctions over would-be home-owners.
The world's two greatest powers are competing for military dominance of the western Pacific Ocean and the contest is about to intensify. The US and China are each jockeying for advantage as they anticipate a quickening in a struggle that "has the potential to escalate into one of the deadliest conflicts of our time, if not history", according to Malaysia's Defence Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein.

An important ruling from the International Court of Justice in the Hague is expected in the weeks ahead. It will rule on a claim by a US ally, the Philippines, to sovereignty over reefs that are also claimed by China. Most experts expect the ruling, due by the end of June, will favour the Philippines. Beijing has warned it will not recognise the court's jurisdiction.

The South China Morning Post reported on Monday that, if the court ruled against it, Beijing would accelerate plans to build an artificial island around one of the reefs at the heart of the dispute, Scarborough Shoal. The shoal is 230kilometres from the Philippines coast and 1020kilometres from China's.

China recently put fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles on another island a few hundred kilometres away, Woody Island. The President of China Xi Jinping is reported to be planning to travel there soon.
China Might Be Held Up in Middle-income Trap

China's economic growth decreased in 2015 compared to 2010. (Photo : Getty Images)

Economists see China in a possible middle-income trap after the country posted a gradual decline in its economic growth from the double-digit GDP growth recorded in 2010 down to 2015s 6.9 percent.



According to China Daily's analysis, China is facing a possible middle-income trap, the term referring to the situation when a country is shackled by "high wages and the loss of its competitive edge" that it no longer surpasses the "middle-income range."



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In fact, the outlet pointed out that some pessimists are already assuming that a middle-income trap is inevitable considering the country's slow-but-consistent decline in GDP growth.



Middle-income Trap



According to the Straits Times, the middle-income trap is a concept that has been widely discussed but also increasingly misunderstood by many over the years.



"It is simply about how a less developed economy (LDC) loses growth momentum after its initial easy phases of growth and stagnates, and is unable to graduate to become a developed economy," the outlet explained. "This LDC fails to make the critical transition from middle income to high income."



Basically, this concept refers to a country being "trapped" in the middle-income range after being boosted from a low-income nation, according to the International Monetary Fund.



"Once they achieve middle-income status, wind up stagnating there, unable to move to high-income status. This is usually because the very factors that fostered the country's rapid growth start to evaporate as its income levels increase," Investopedia explained.



Based on a 2012 report from The Economist, some countries that have already "escaped" this trap include South Korea, Taiwan, Israel and Greece.



The outlet's chart shows China still caught in the middle-income trap after its 10.6-percent growth in 2010 already decreased in 2012 to only 7.7 percent.



China Will Not Be Trapped



According to Investopedia, the Chinese economy's growth pace was at 10 percent per year for about 30 years.



This growth, which the website deemed to be unprecedented, lifted more than 600 million Chinese from poverty and pushed it from being a low-income to a middle-income nation.



Unfortunately, many economists used this "low-level equilibrium trap" concept to tag nations like China that are not able to maintain their "growth spurt."



However, Straits Times explained that China would not be held captive in this concept simply because its growth rate had been grossly misinterpreted.



"China's so-called 'slowdown' has actually been quite moderate--'slow' only in China's own historical growth context," the outlet explained.



Furthermore, China's sudden growth had been largely caused by the technological progress, which the site deemed as the "easy sources."



"China today has already exhausted such easy sources of technological progress, and is no longer picking low-hanging fruit. Its future productivity gains will have to come from its own technological development," the outlet added.






In an email to staff in February, Dr Marshall indicated the CSIRO would move away from climate change measurement because the problem had already been "proven". The organisation would become an "innovation catalyst", focusing on work that had paying customers. Stocking 40 years of gas samples from Cape Grim, at CSIRO's Aspendale centre. Scientists said the cuts to climate measurement and modelling would undermine Australia's commitment to the Paris climate deal reached last year. More than 3000 across the globe signed a letter in protest. On Tuesday, Dr Marshall said after receiving feedback from staff and stakeholders the organisation had reduced the job cuts from 350 to 275 across six divisions: minerals (35), land and water (70), agriculture (30), manufacturing (45), food and nutrition (20), and oceans and atmosphere (75). The Cape Grim greenhouse gas station in Tasmania, run in partnership by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.

CSIRO would also create a new Climate Science Centre, focused on modelling and projections and guaranteed funding for a decade. "This new centre is a reflection of the strong collaboration and support right across our system and the global community," Dr Marshall said. He said the centre would work closely with other agencies and universities, including the British Meteorology Office. Its priorities will be shaped by a new National Climate Science Advisory Committee reporting to Science Minister Christopher Pyne. But Dr Craig said it was unclear how the centre would work. "With 40 people we can't do anything like the science we used to do," he said. Several scientists said it was unclear what would happen to the smaller group of climate researchers who survived the cuts but were not part of the Hobart centre.

Asked about the future of Aspendale, CSIRO spokesman Huw Morgan said it had already been the plan to consolidate its work to the Clayton site. He said CSIRO would now have to "reassess the capabilities at Aspendale, and that may alter the timeframe". Mr Morgan said Hobart's selection as the base for the national centre reflected the city's existing science capability. He said the centre would collaborate with other groups in CSIRO. "Any decisions on Aspendale will be a decision made on its own merit," he said. CSIRO honorary fellow Paul Fraser, a former head of the greenhouse gas team at Aspendale, said it was likely there would be a 40 per cent cut in staff working on measuring greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and ice cores. Work at Aspendale includes the analysis and storage of air samples from Cape Grim in north-west Tasmania, site of the only major southern hemisphere greenhouse gas recording station. "Aspendale was always destined to be closed [but] my understanding was that was a few years away yet," Dr Fraser said. "I think the logical conclusion is this will shorten that."

Dr Marshall said all of CSIRO's "critical measurement infrastructure", including archives of ice and air samples, would be maintained. CSIRO's decision to keep some climate science in-house follows Fairfax Media revealing the Bureau of Meteorology had offered to save some long-term research programs and dozens of jobs that the organisation planned to axe. The proposal was discussed at a meeting in March convened by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel. It is understood it was rejected in part because it would require CSIRO to pass funding to the bureau to do the work. Environment Minister Greg Hunt said the government and Dr Finkel had intervened "to help broker" a resolution over the future of climate science. "From what was frankly a difficult situation, we worked to engage with the organisation and  to get the longest, deepest national climate program that Australia has ever had," he told ABC Radio. Dr Finkel said the creation of a national climate research centre was "the right move".
The next Australian start-up could be born in Berlin with a new "landing pad" for entrepeneurs trying to access Europe's well-established innovation network of investors, incubators and accelerators.

Trade Minister Steve Ciobo unveiled the landing pad, saying it would give Australian entrepreneurs unprecedented access to Berlin's well-established innovation market which has strong links between potential funders of start-up companies.

"The Berlin landing pad will provide Aussie tech companies access to not only the dynamic venture capital market in Germany, but through it to the wider European market," he told Fairfax Media.

On his recent first official visit to China, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull unveiled a similar facility in Shanghai. The government has also announced landing pads in Israel's start-up centre Tel Aviv and in San Francisco's Silicon Valley. A final city is to be unveiled soon.

Connecting start-ups with venture capital is considered to be one of the Australian innovation sector's weakest aspects.
Driven by fast-changing definitions of what is healthy to eat, people are turning to foods they shunned just a couple of years ago. Studies now suggest that not all fat, for example, necessarily contributes to weight gain or heart problems. That has left companies scrambling to push some foods that they thought had long passed their popularity peak - and health advocates wondering what went wrong.

Under the new thinking, not all fat is bad, and neither are all salty foods. A stigma among the public remains for sugar substitutes, but less so for cane sugar, at least in moderation. And all of those attributes are weighed against qualities like simplicity and taste.

Full-fat, real sugar? Sure.

"I think the risk-reward equation has changed," said Steve French, a managing partner at the Natural Marketing Institute, a research firm, said.

American brand Edy's ice cream is a case in point. Edy's sold 10.8 per cent more of its Edy's Grand Ice Cream, a full-fat ice cream, in the 52 weeks that ended February 21 compared with the year before, according to IRI, a data and research firm. Other full-fat ice creams also had sales gains.
A woman has told Jetstar to "retrain its staff" after she was allegedly asked to cover up while pumping breast milk on a flight to Townsville.

Natalie Jane Sawyer said she was on a Jetstar flight from Brisbane to Townsville at 6am on Monday morning and had been pumping breast milk when she said a Jetstar flight crew member politely asked her to "cover up".

"i (sic) was asked by one of your flight crew if i had a cover to cover myself up because people would be coming down the aisle to go to the bathroom," Ms Sawyer said on Jetstar's Facebook page.

"I had a pumping bra on so no part of my boobs could be seen and a shirt covering my pumps.
Police want to speak to a local hero who cycled after an alleged burglar and retrieved a backpack with some $7000 worth of stolen property at Eden Hill on Monday.

The man, about 40-years-of-age in a tee shirt, boardies and no shoes - along with his kelpie or German Shepherd - came to the aid of a female homeowner who had been chasing the alleged offender on foot.

Police arrested a man after a cyclist and his dog chased him down.

Kiara police said the cyclist caught up with the man who was carrying a backpack and - after a "conversation" - the alleged offender handed the bag to the man who returned it to the homeowner.

The drama began when the 30-year-old female returned to her Bassendean home around 12.30pm to find a man allegedly ransacking the residence.
Banshang Villagers Believe Well Water is Reason Why the Town has 16 Sets of Twins from 50 Families

Jiangsu Provincial Twins Talent Contest (Photo : Getty Images)

Experts say that having fraternal twin children is possibly hereditary, but not identical twins which involves splitting of a fertilized egg which happens randomly.



But because of the high number of twins in the Chinese village of Banshang in Hubei Province, residents explain the phenomenon to their source of water. According to the Chutian Metropolis Daily, the village has 16 pairs of twins from 50 families, making twin birthrate in the area 12 times the global average.



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For this, the village earned the name twin town as Banshang residents witnessed the number of twin babies being born from one pair in 1964 to 15 more sets. At present, the area has 16 sets, broken down into nine female twins, four male twins and three male-female sets.



By age, the eldest pair is 51 and the youngest five, but more of them are identical that even the parents admit having them confused which is which. This resulted in one baby bathed twice by mistake, admitted Chen Mingyuan, father of twin daughters and party secretary of Banshang.



Now that his daughters are grown up, the confusion continues among their children who could not distinguish if it is their mother they are talking to on the phone or their aunt, added Chen.



Since the bulk of the twins were born in the 1980s, which was when village residents sourced their drinking water from a well, they attribute having twins to their water because in the last 10 years when there was already tap water, only two sets of twins were born in Banshang. However, since many of the twins were born to the Jiang, Shen and Chen clans, some believe it is a genetic thing.



But Baby Center explained that it could only be genetic if the newborns are fraternal twins who are developed from two different eggs. It is the tendency to release more than one egg in a single cycle that is a genetic trait that could be passed from mother to child, stated the website.



Banshangs equivalent in India is the town of Mohammedur Umri.






Perth Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi wants the City of Perth to sign-off on a ratepayer-funded trip worth $7500 to speak for just 30 minutes at a two-day conference at a 5-star Sydney hotel.

Council is expected to approve the trip on Tuesday night, as well as another ratepayer-funded stay at a swanky Bunker Bay resort in Eagle Bay for a private property council event.

WAtoday understands Ms Scaffidi has already accepted the invitation to the Sydney conference, which comes off the back of another trip in May for a World Energy Cities Partnership event in Houston, Texas.

Ms Scaffidi, under the cloud of a state government probe into her travel and acceptance of gifts from the mining and development sectors, continues to push for interstate and overseas trips despite the ongoing investigation and adverse findings from the Corruption and Crime Commission last October.
On Monday Cruz was screaming from the rafters - "John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana to give us a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump." Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz in Columbus, Indiana, a state John Kasich won't campaign in. Credit:Michael Conroy Not bloody likely, was the Kasich response. They "ought to vote for me", he said of the Indiana voters, causing a lot of head shaking as he muttered: "I don't see this as any big deal." Will he feel the squeeze? Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump . Credit:AP

And there are other caveats. For starters, these two desperados might have left their run too late. It sure made sense when the Kasich camp and party luminaries like 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney suggested such collusion a month ago  close to a dozen primaries have been conducted since, but Cruz wouldn't have a bar of it. Ohio Governor John Kasich is well behind Trump and Cruz in the delegate count and is playing for a contested convention. Credit:AP More importantly, coming out of a staggering win in his home state New York last week, Trump has renewed momentum and is expected to emerge from Tuesday's five primaries with his frontrunner's credentials further enhanced. By contrast, Cruz was a wipeout in New York and his predicted poor showing in Tuesday's votes is further casting him as a loser and causing GOP moneymen and strategists to wonder if he has the staying power and broad appeal for a presidential contest.

Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz in Columbus, Indiana. Credit:AP Also, are the voters listening? As The Washington Post's Philip Bump puts it: "as the Republican Party has learned repeatedly [through the primaries], voters are impressively immune to the whims of party poobahs. [This Cruz-Kasich deal] could be another few strands of spaghetti, clinging tenuously to the wall for a brief instant; but then, like so many strands before them, dropping to the ground  impotent." And then there was the Trump reaction  a mix of his typical bombast with a cunning line that is playing well among GOP voters.

Here's a taste  "Senator Cruz has done very poorly and after his New York performance, which was a total disaster, he is in free fall approximately 80 per cent of the Republican Party is against himKasich has won only one state out of 41 [that have voted to date]. "Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive. They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are. "Because of me, everyone now sees that the Republican primary system is totally rigged." Indiana has been on the minds of most analysts, as the make-or-break state that would become Cruz's last stand. If the Texas senator does well there on May 3, he might stall Trump's momentum before the convention. A problem in Indiana is that, for a whole lot of reasons, it's a poorly polled state. A Fox News poll on Friday gave Trump an eight point lead over Cruz  41-33; but the number-crunching site FiveThirtyEight calculates that Cruz has a slight advantage.

Winning by just a single point would give Trump all of Indiana's winner-takes-all 57 delegates and, in the view of some analysts, might firewall the nomination for him. But with Kasich effectively asking his supporters in Indiana, 19 per cent in one poll and 16 in another, to vote for Cruz, the Texas senator could come out on top  and be 57 delegates richer. But on Monday, analyst Ron Faucheux went another week down the track  to Nebraska, which votes on May 10. Allowing for all the tea-leaf reading by which pollsters allocate likely delegate wins in other contests, Faucheux writes in The Hill: "Nebraska is critical because it's winner-takes all [delegates]. Should Trump lose Nebraska, he'd need to make up that 36-delegate shortfall  which he technically could dobut that wouldn't be easy to accomplish. "If Trump loses Nebraska he'd have a total of 1201, [which would be] 36 short of what he needs for a first-ballot nomination [at the convention] He doesn't have a lot of room for error." In the various Democratic races on Tuesday, presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton is a few points or a country mile ahead of her dogged rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
The file photo shows the Shanghai Tower, China's tallest skyscraper, in Lujiazui, the financial and trade zone in Shanghai. (Photo : IC)

After being constructed for more than seven years, the Shanghai Tower is set to break records in China and the rest of the world when it opens officially.



The megatall skyscraper, built by San Francisco, California-based Gensler, boasts elevators that can "shoot 119 floors in under a minute," told the South China Morning Post.



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Located in Pudong, Shanghai, the 2,073-foot building is China's tallest skyscraper. It is also the world's second next to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.



At present, there are three lifts that visitors can use to explore some parts of the building. They travel at 18 meters per second, which means visitors can reach the 119th floor in just 55 seconds.



The record surpasses the Taipei 101 building, which has the fastest elevators that travel at 16.83 meters per second.



Additionally, the Shanghai Tower will "generate 1.2 gigawatt-hours of power from 270 wind turbines mounted about 580 metres above ground," said the SCMP.



The building's floor plan includes a hotel, a sky lobby, retail shops and parking spaces. There will also be offices on the 35th to 57th and 61st to 80th floors.



According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the completion of the skyscraper has pushed the Willis Tower in Chicago out of the world's 10 tallest buildings list.



The CTBUH also said that the building represents a new type of skyscrapers in China's financial hub.



"The new tower rises high above the skyline, its curved facade and spiralling form symbolizing the dynamic emergence of modern China," CTBUH mentioned in an article.



"[I]ts twisting form goes beyond just creating a unique appearance," CTBUH added. "Wind tunnel tests confirm a 24 percent savings in structural wind loading when compared to a rectangular building of the same height. The tower's program is unique for being organized into nine vertical zones."


Suspension of Beijing Anti-dope Lab Suspected to Be Linked to Chinese Swimmers Testing Positive of Drugs

A Chinese anti-doping lab has been suspended for up to four months by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). (Photo : Getty Images)

The suspension of Beijings National Anti-Doping Laboratory is caused by a technical oversight and had nothing to do with Chinese swimmers positive drug test, said Chinas anti-doping authority.



The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) revealed the suspension of the National Anti-Doping Laboratory on their official website on Thursday after finding out that the lab failed to adhere to the International Standard for Laboratories' (ISL) requirements.



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The suspension comes nearly one month after two Chinese swimmers tested positive of performance-enhancing drugs after they were cleared by the Beijing lab as dope-free, as reported by the South China Morning Post.



National Anti-Doping Laboratory Suspension



Citing Article 13.7 of the World Anti-Doping Code, WADA suspended the accreditation of the Beijing lab for a maximum of four months until the establishment is able to accomplish the requirements specified by the Disciplinary Committee.



The suspension, which prohibits the lab from conducting any WADA-related anti-doping activities such as urine and blood testing, took place immediately after it was made public.



During the duration of the suspension, analyses of blood and urine samples should be transported to another accredited laboratory.



According to WADA's official website, the Beijing lab "may appeal the suspension to the Court of Arbitration for Sport within 21 days of receipt of notice."



Suspension Linked to Doping Swimmers



The announcement did not specify the reason behind the suspension, stating only that "whenever a laboratory does not meet ISL requirements, WADA may suspend the laboratory's accreditation."



Because of this, some wondered if China's National Anti-Doping Laboratory was involved in some sort of cover-up linked to last month's discovery that some swimmers had been using performance-enhancing drugs while participating in tournaments.



Beijing immediately denied any connection between the two incidents.



According to Xu Youxuan, the Beijing laboratory's head, the suspension was a result of "technical mistakes."



"The problem took place because we failed to follow WADA's latest technique requirements and there were oversights in reviewing the analysis," Xu explained, adding that the lab reported two false negative results in a technical test conducted by WADA last year.



"WADA will suspend the accreditation of a lab for up to six months if it reports two false negative results in tests," the Xinhua News Agency quoted Xu saying on Friday.



However, WADA neither confirmed nor denied this, telling The Guardian: "It is crucial that all accredited laboratories uphold the highest standards expected of them, so that clean athletes and the sporting community at large can have full confidence in the system."






Drones could be used to smuggle banned items into prison, officials said. (Photo : Getty Images)

Police authorities have launched an investigation after unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had been spotted hovering above prisons in southeast China, told the South China Morning Post.



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"The devices were seen hovering or maneuvering above the jails' dormitories, teaching blocks, administrative buildings and residential quarters of armed prison police forces in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian Province," said the SCMP, quoting a report by the Strait Metropolis Daily.



The presence of drones at restricted areas has raised alarms over the likelihood of in-prison smuggling.



"The drone operators might intend to deliver dangerous goods to inmates or to take videos of correctional officers and facilities, which poses a grave security threat," the prosecutor's office of Gushan District was quoted as saying.



The authorities did not divulge specific details about the number and type of drones spotted.



Officials have advised involved prisons "to report sightings to local police and disrupt the drones' operational frequencies," said the Global Times, citing a Strait News report.



If drones were indeed used to smuggle goods, it would not be the first time.



In February, the BBC reported that the use of UAVs to smuggle contrabands into jails has been rampant.



Citing figures from the Press Association Freedom of Information, the BBC said that 35 sightings of drones "in or around prisons in England and Wales" have been recorded from 2014 to 2015.



"Across the 35 incidents, drugs were discovered at least six times, mobile phones more than eight times and a drone itself recovered in 19 instances," the BBC wrote.



"One of the biggest finds listed a drone, drugs, mobile phone, a charger and USB cards at HMP Oakwood in the West Midlands in December last year," the news agency added.



The issue of privacy and security of drones is not exclusive to China, which is now deemed as one of the biggest makers of UAVs.



The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, for example, has received complaints against drones being too obtrusive, prompting the agency to require UAVs to remain under 500 feet and within sight of their operator.


Fiat Chrysler to recall cars and SUVs to prevent drivers from forgetting to put the vehicles in park mode

Fiat Chrysler will recall vehicles including the 2014-2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee, to enhance park mode. (Photo : YouTube/WIAT42)

Fiat Chrysler aka FCA recently announced it will voluntarily recall over 1.1 million vehicles worldwide. The coverage of the recall includes the 2012-2014 Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300 sedans, as well as the 2014-2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee sport-utility. The recall has something to do with injuries that happened when drivers mistakenly believed they had put the vehicles in "park" prior to exit.



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The gearshift design makes it easy for drivers to forget to put the vehicle in park mode before getting out of it. There are about 52,144 vehicles in Canada to be recalled, 811,586 in the U.S., 16,805 in Mexico and about 248,667 outside North America, according to Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' press release on April 22, Friday.



FCA U.S. will improve transmission shift strategy and warnings to reduce the effect of a possible driver error. The automaker and the National Traffic Safety found some driver exited their vehicles without selecting "Park," which posed a safety risk if the engine is still running.



There were 41 injuries that involved FCA vehicles, which were inspected but no proof of equipment failure was found. The cars to be recalled are equipped with electronic shift levers that go back to the same position after each manipulation. There are lights that indicate the driver's gear selection but not the position of the gear-selector.



It can be confusing and so it is understandable that people, especially those who are not particularly familiar with the car, are having trouble, according to The Verge. Without due care, the drivers may mistakenly conclude the status of their car.



While vehicles give alert messages and warning signs if the driver-side door is open, the engine is running and the vehicle is not in "park" mode, investigations found these are not enough to stop the drivers from leaving their vehicle. The Italian-American automaker will combine warnings with a strategy for transmission-shift to automatically stop the vehicle from moving under some scenarios, even if the driver failed to activate "park."



Those who are affected by the recall will be informed when the service is already available. Meanwhile, FCA U.S. encourages customers to follow the instructions in the manual.



The video below discusses Fiat Chrysler's recall.






Are robo-advisors collecting enough information from their consumers?That was the question posed by Jane Jarcho, deputy director of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), speaking at the regulators annual outreach seminar.A report in Financial Advisor magazine suggests that Jarcho is concerned that automated investment platforms arent meeting with clients in the way a human advisor would  although she did state that the regulator does not view robos as good or bad.So are robo-advisors making the same effort as their human equivalents? Wealth Professional spoke to representatives of some of the leading robos in Canada to gauge their reaction.There is no question that Nest Wealth and other digital advisors can act as fiduciaries to their clients, said Randy Cass , founder and president of Nest Wealth. Its a lot easier to build an algorithm that ends up with a solution in the clients best interest than it is to make certain that no potential conflicts of interest are leaving clients in less than optimal positions.All Wealthsimple clients complete a risk survey, complete a KYC application and have the opportunity to speak to a human advisor before we invest their funds, continued Mallory Greene, marketing manager of WealthSimple. We do the same amount of due diligence that a traditional advisor would do.Robo-advisors were not the only ones to come under question from Jarcho, however, She also announced that the SEC plans to give extra scrutiny to the branch offices of both broker dealers and investment advisors with attention being paid as to whether baby boomers are being moved into fee-IRAs and out of employer sponsored plans which have lower fees.
Ride for Hope announced today that it is going back to its roots for their 10th anniversary charity bike-athon. Scheduled for Saturday, 18 February, the 2017 event will be hosted, once again, in Eleuthera.

Were excited to be returning to Eleuthera, said co-chairman Susan Larson. Its where the Ride began in 2006, and the charm and beauty of the island is an integral part of the spirit of the event. Larson explained that many riders appreciate the hills in Eleuthera as they provide a more challenging course. The roads are also much quieter, given that there is far less traffic, said Larson, which is an important factor for all riders. On top of that, she said, we felt it appropriate to celebrate our tenth ride in Eleuthera, where it all started.

We will be announcing more details on the event in the coming months, said Larson,  including special festivities and surprises to celebrate our tenth anniversary. In the meantime, though, mark your calendars, Larson said, for Ride for Hope on February 18, 2017, in Eleuthera.

Larson explained that Nassau hosted the last Ride for Hope bike-athon, and that it had been exciting to hold the event in the capital. The enthusiasm of the riders, sponsors and volunteers was tremendous, she said, and the support from the Royal Bahamas Police Force was absolutely fantastic.

Considered one of the most successful fund raising events in The Bahamas, The Ride for Hope has raised close to $3,000,000 since its inception. Every dollar raised by participants goes to fund programmes created and supported by Ride for Hope to assist Bahamians in the fight against cancer, through education, testing, early-screening, research and direct financial assistance.

We are blessed with tremendous corporate support that has completely underwritten the cost of the Ride each year, said Stephen Holowesko, co-chairman. This has allowed us to ensure that every single dollar raised by our riders goes directly to the programmes created and supported by the Ride for Hope.

Our goals for the Ride are simple, said Holowesko. We wish to have a safe, quality event, one that inspires the respect and loyalty of our riders and corporate sponsors, and we seek to deploy those funds raised by our riders in the most direct, cost-effective way possible to benefit Bahamians in their fight against cancer.

In this respect, the growth of the Ride for Hope from 98 riders in 2006 to over 620 riders is a testament that we continue to achieve our goals. One of our founding sponsors has credited Ride for Hope with doing what we say were going to do and following up transparently. We work hard to ensure the quality of the event and the integrity of the funds raised, said Holowesko.

Ride for Hope has used those funds to assist the Cancer Society in paying off the mortgage incurred building the acclaimed Cancer Care Centre on Collins Avenue, and complete their headquarters in Eleuthera, and to create the Treatment Assistance Fund, the first of its kind in the country, which supports cancer patients with their treatment costs through financial grants. Ride for Hope has funded the Cancer Societys nationwide Cancer Education Program, a grassroots outreach that sends a trained nurse to rural communities throughout The Bahamas to educate, raise awareness, and teach self-screening and good health choices. In its first 3 years, this programme has directly connected with an estimated 13,000 students and over 3,000 adults. The charity has also used funds to create the innovative Family Island Mammogram Screening Initiative (FIMS) programme, which brings at-risk Family Island women to Nassau for mammograms and any needed follow-up. To date, FIMS has helped over 1,100 underserved Bahamian women. Additional funds have been spent through a $150,000 grant to fund genetic testing into the prevalence of the cancer-causing BRCA1 gene mutation in Bahamian women. This study led to the discovery that Bahamian women have the highest known incident in the world of the gene mutation that causes breast cancer. It has been one of the driving forces for the creation of programmes like FIMS. To date, 673 Bahamian women have been genetically tested for the BRACA1 gene, as part of the Bahamas Breast Cancer Initiative program seeded by the Ride for Hope. The charity event has also contributed $130,000 to the purchase of a digital mammography machine at Princess Margaret Hospital.

A registered charity in The Bahamas, Ride for Hope is also registered in the U.S. as a 501 (c) (3) charity under the name of Bahamas Hope Foundation, which means U.S. contributions receive U.S. Tax credit.

Visit the RFH web site here
The Pirate Bay blockade in Sweden coming soon? Swedish Police want to remove TPB from internet (Photo : Facebook/TPB)

After the massive raid at a data center in Nacka in 2014 that compromised a Pirate Bay server, Bayimg, an image hosting service of TPB, was shut down. Now, The Pirate Bay has revived Bayimg but only for a short time.



In 2014, a server of The Pirate Bay was raided and due to the raid numerous websites related to TPB went offline including Bayimg, noted TorrentFreak.



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After being offline, The Pirate Bay came back online on Feb. 1, 2015, but Bayimg continued to remain offline all this while.



However, Bayimg bounced back online after one and a half years. However, when the website reached out to The Pirate Bay team and they mentioned that the image hosting website's return is temporary.



Users of Bayimg can access their files, however, it is not advised to upload new images as the website will shut down soon.



Bayimg will remain operational only for a few days and then The Pirate Bay will pull the plug. The team at TPB told the website that their focus is on Pirate Bay torrent website.



Meanwhile, in other Pirate Bay news, Peter Sunde, TPB founder talked to FutureZone about how streaming websites could be the reason for major online piracy.



"I stopped using Spotify when suddenly overnight several titles disappeared from my playlist because the licenses for them were revoked. Someone else had decided which music I could listen to and which I could not. I had no backup, so I lost the music. I do not want that," Sunde said (via TorrentFreak).



Sunde compared Netflix with Spotify and stated that these streaming services have centralized "the ownership of culture."



"Maybe in five years time we'll have a new file-sharing fight because anyone who uses these services will consider that while having access to the content is good, it is not so great having no control and actually owning none of it," Sunde mentioned.



The Pirate Bay founder suggested that a better way to deal with it is good streaming piracy.



Stay tuned for more The Pirate Bay news and updates. Share the thoughts in the section below.


"One Punch Man" season 2 will be released at the end of 2016. (Photo : One Punch Man Org)

It cannot be denied that one of the most anticipated anime today is non-other than "One Punch Man" season 2, but it seems that information about this long awaited anime has been very limited. Recent rumors stimulated the interest of the fans as it leads to details exposing the release date of the second installment.



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It has been reported that "One Punch Man" season 2 will be released at the end of 2016. This rumor sparked when a Twitter user, named One Punch Man (@_OnePunchMan) tweeted that the series will come to Toonami later this year.



One Punch Man no doubt will come to Toonami. Probably by the end of the year

 One Punch Man  (@_OnePunchMan) April 16, 2016







For those who are not aware, Toonami is a well-known animated programming block focusing on action-related programming that caters American animation and Japanese anime. Accordifn to Breathecast, the said anime-based -company was revived by Adult Swim way back in 2012, and has the expertise of providing animes with English dub.



Although Toonami is basically doing a dubbed version of popular Japanese animes, there is still a high probability that "One Punch Man" season 2 will be subbed rather than dubbed. It is because Toonami is not reluctant to use the main language of the anime, which is Japanese, and would just provide an English subtitle for those who cannot understand the Japanese language. Among the well-known anime that remained in the Japanese dialect are "Naruto," "Bleach" and "Attack on Titan"; however, these anime were provided with English subbed though.



Nevertheless, even if the plot of "One Punch Man" is no doubt exaggerated, fans do still love the show. It is due to the action-packed humorous approach of the series to the audience. The plot of the series centers on Saitama, who has trained hard until he went bald. His training paid off by having an overwhelming power that he can defeat an enemy with a single punch. The downside is that, Saitama is becoming frustrated and unsatisfied with his battles, given the fact that he can destroy a villain with one punch only.



Perhaps, in the coming weeks, there would be available information about "One Punch Man" season 2, and it would not be surprising if that information would lead to a plot relating to a more vicious and powerful enemy that might defeat the class S hero Saitama.



Watch "One Punch Man" Saitama vs Boros:




Bridge deck work at two different locations in Graves County start this week
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A car bomb on the outskirts of the Sayeda Zeinab district south of Damascus killed at least six people on Monday, a monitoring group said, the third bombing attack in the area this year.

Lebanese group Hezbollah's Al Manar television reported the blast had occurred at a Syrian army checkpoint.

The death toll was expected to rise because of the number of people with serious injuries, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Multiple explosions in February killed scores of people in the Sayeda Zeinab area, home to Syria's holiest Shi'ite Muslim shrine, in one of the bloodiest attacks there in Syria's five-year conflict.

A suicide attack there less than a month earlier claimed by the Islamic State group killed 70 people.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online

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By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 25, 2016 | 06:23 PM | MAYFIELD, KY

A registered sex offender has been arrested in Mayfield for communicating with a girl on social media.

According to the Mayfield Police Department, 31-year-old Jeffrey Marshall was arrested Monday after an investigation showed that he had been communicating with a 12-year-old girl through social media and was allegedly having explicit conversations with her. As a registered sex offender, Marshall is prohibited from using social media.

Mayfield police officers and Graves County sheriff's deputies executed a search warrant at Marshall's home on 121 North and seized cell phones and computers. Marshall was charged with prohibited use of an electronic communication system to procure a minor for sex acts or prohibited behavior, use of social network by a sex offender and probation violation.

He was lodged in the Graves County Jail.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 26, 2016 | 11:08 AM | PADUCAH, KY





Sharpe Elementary fifth grader Cody Peterson was recognized as the winner of the recent Challenger Learning Center at Paducahs Name the Nose Cone contest during a dedication ceremony at the center yesterday.From more than 40 entries, Petersons nose cone name Silver Phoenix was announced as the winning entry of the March 2016 contest, which was open to area kindergarten  eighth grade students. Peterson, a Marshall County resident, had an interesting way of coming up with the name.I was riding home down the road with my mom, and she asked if I had come up with a name yet. I thought it would be something with the word phoenix in it; I love them, said Peterson, who admits he didnt know the exact meaning of the word.My mom looked up the word when we got home, he said. A phoenix is a mythological bird, which lived a long time and is reborn. Thats how I knew Silver Phoenix was it.The nose cone is a historical piece of space history that has been around a long time and has been reborn as a beautiful display outside the center, said CLC Director Mellisa Duncan. Codys name is a perfect fit.The nose cone traveled into space sub-orbitally on an Atlas rocket in the mid 60s - the same type of rocket that John Glenn piloted in his historic three-orbit cycle around the Earth in 1962. Although this nose cone did not orbit the Earth, it was a test for the U.S. Air Forces Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Program. The nose cone did not carry a missile, but instead was used to test for reentry and the best time for missile detonation.The cone arrived in Paducah around 1967 thanks to Colonel Harry Hester, former commander of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP). The nose cone, which sat outside the former CAP building for many years disappeared until it was found and set to be sold at auction last fall. However before the auction, the Paducah Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol regained control of the cone and donated it to the CLC in October 2015.Hester passed away in 2008, but his nephews, Rick and Mike Brewer and David Gholson, along with nearly 40 other attendees, were part of Mondays dedication in their uncles memory.Also in attendance was Major Greg Siener of the Paducah Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol who said keeping the nose cone in Paducah at the Challenger Center is a way to keep Colonel Hesters memory alive.For more information about CLC programming and upcoming summer camps, visit clcpaducah.org.
By The Associated Press Apr. 26, 2016 | 05:04 AM | FRANKFORT, KY

Gov. Matt Bevin is traveling to Germany, France and Belgium this week as part of his first overseas trip as governor.

Bevin is scheduled to arrive in Hannover, Germany, on Tuesday to attend the Hannover Messe Fair, a trade show of industrial technology. A news release from the governor's office says Bevin will meet with prospective businesses and companies that already have Kentucky facilities.

He will spend the rest of the week meeting with executives in Germany, France and Belgium. Bevin says the trip is an "incredible opportunity" to sell the benefits of Kentucky to manufacturers.

Bevin spokeswoman Jessica Ditto said the governor's trip will not prevent him from issuing vetoes of the state's two-year operating budget. State lawmakers approved the budget on April 15. Bevin has until Wednesday to issue vetoes, if any.
Cairo's central metro station Sadat reopened on Tuesday after being closed the day before, a day that saw anti-government protests against a recent deal to acknowledge Saudi Arabian sovereignty over two Red Sea islands.

The metro station in Tahrir Square was closed to passengers throughout Monday, when police were out in force to confront protests.

The spokesman for the metro's operating company, Ahmed Abdel-Hady, said the station was open to passengers early on Tuesday.

A number of small demonstrations were held on Monday to protest against Egypt's decision to acknowledge the islands of Tiran and Sanafir as Saudi. Police dispersed the protests with teargas and arrested scores of people.

Sadat metro station is one of two stops that link the metro's two main lines.

Authorities have repeatedly shut the station down over the past few years to thwart attempts by protesters to use the fast and cheap underground transport system to mobilise large rallies in the city centre.

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Rita Redmond was a true lady who felt that every pupil had something to gift to the world
THE NAACP SAYS THEY PLAN A FURTHER APPEAL

Federal Court Upholds Voter ID, Stops Obama Justice Department Overreach

Raleigh, N.C.  A federal court has upheld North Carolinas hugely popular photo voter ID requirement, dismissing all claims in a lawsuit filed by political opponents of the law. The order in North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP et al v. McCrory is attached.

In a 485-page ruling, the federal court agreed that the changes were based on legitimate and substantial concerns of election integrity and fairness and leave an electoral system that provides generous, fair, and equal opportunity for voters of all races and ages.

Joint Legislative Elections Oversight Committee Co-Chairmen Rep. David Lewis (R-Harnett) and Sen. Bob Rucho (R-Mecklenburg) issued the following joint statement:

Despite the small but shrill opposition who continue to abuse the courts in an attempt to overturn the will of the voters, another reasonable, commonsense law supported by a majority of North Carolinians has been upheld. We are glad the court recognized the law provides all voters an equal opportunity to vote and stopped this politically-motivated overreach from the Obama Justice Department.

THE NAACP HAS ANNOUNCED THEY PLAN TO

In spite of more than 30 other states having voter ID requirements and a similar law being upheld by the United States Supreme Court in 2008, far-left special interest groups have spent years filing duplicative lawsuits in multiple courts attempting to block the commonsense policy in North Carolina.

Polls  including those commissioned by groups challenging the law  consistently show the overwhelming majority of North Carolinians support voter ID. And while opponents made misleading claims and presented flawed and erroneous data from a professor hired by the Obama Justice department, they were unable to offer a single witness who would be unable to vote under the law.

The voter ID law continues to ensure any North Carolina citizen who wants to vote will have that opportunity. The law establishes a list of valid government-issued photo IDs that voters can present at their polling places, and allows anyone without a photo ID to obtain one at no cost through the Department of Motor Vehicles. It also brings North Carolina into the mainstream of other states on matters of same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting.
No official number of those arrested has yet been provided by the country's interior ministry

An Egyptian activist group tracking protester arrests said that 239 people were arrested around Egypt on Monday, a day that saw anti-government protests in the capital and several other cities.

Freedom for the Brave, a group of human rights lawyers who document political detentions and provide detainees with legal assistance, published a list of the names of the detainees on its Facebook page on Tuesday.

It said in an earlier post that some of those arrested have been released, some remain in detention, and the whereabouts of others are unknown.

No official number of those arrested has yet been provided by Egypt's interior ministry,

Rights lawyer Moktar Mounir, of the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, said several lawyers acting on behalf of those arrested were barred from three police stations in central Cairo and Giza on Monday where the detainees were being questioned by State Security investigators.

Khaled El-Balshy, an elected press syndicate official, told Ahram Online that 43 journalists had been arrested on Monday. Most have subsequently been released.

The press syndicate in a separate statement said that three journalists had been assaulted during the days events; it also condemned attempts to storm the syndicate's headquarters by what it said were security "thugs."

A number of demonstrations were held on Monday to protest a recent decision by Egypt to acknowledge Saudi Arabia's sovereignty over the two Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir. Police fired teargas to disperse the protests.

It was the second wave of demonstrations against the controversial deal after several thousands, including activists and politicians, rallied earlier this month in what some described as the largest protests since President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi came to office in 2014.

Egypt's interior ministry had warned ahead of Monday's protests that it would show no tolerance for attempts to undermine the country's security, urging people not to respond to "calls inciting chaos," and El-Sisi urged citizens a day earlier to defend the state and its institutions from the "forces of evil," and protect the country's stability.

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The board of Egypt's press syndicate will hold an urgent meeting on Tuesday to discuss what they say are violations committed against journalists during Monday's protests

Seven journalists remain in detention on Tuesday after being arrested the previous day while covering anti-government protests, according to the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate.

"As far as we know seven journalists are still being detained by security forces," Khaled El-Balshy, the head of the syndicates freedoms committee told Ahram Online Tuesday morning.

Over 200 people were arrested across the country at demonstrations against the decision to acknowledge Saudi Arabian sovereignty over two Red Sea islands, according to rights campaigners. Security forces dispersed the demonstrations, including a rally in the Cairo district of Dokki, with teargas.

El-Balshy said that 43 journalists had been arrested in total on Monday during the 25 April protests against the Egyptian-Saudi deal to redraw maritime borders; most had been released by the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Five of those detained by security forces were foreign. Among them were French freelance journalist Jenna Le Bras, Danish freelance journalist Stefan Weichert, and Norwegian freelance journalist Harald Christian Hoff.

All detained foreign journalists had been released by Tuesday morning.

Among the local journalists detained on Monday during the protests were producer Mohamed El-Sawy and journalist Basma Mostafa from Dot Masr news website, reporters Ahmed El-Bardini and Mohamed Magdi of Al-Shorouk newspaper, correspondent Omar Abdel Nasser of ONA news agency, and reporters Hadi El-Desouki and Yahia Morsi of Al-Akhbar newspaper.

Syndicate attacked

According to a statement issued by the syndicate on Monday, Sisi supporters attempted to storm the syndicate building in central Cairo several times.

Members of the syndicate reported that they were barred from entering the syndicate building, a planned focal point for protests, as security forces had sealed off the surrounding streets to protesters.

Pro-Sisi demonstrators were however allowed to gather and celebrate Sinai Liberation Day, which fell on Monday, outside the syndicate building.

The syndicate board will hold an urgent meeting on Tuesday to discuss the violations committed against journalists as well the reported attacks on the syndicate's headquarters.

The syndicate also called on the prosecution to investigate all violations committed against journalists and photographers on Monday.

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement on Monday criticising the detention of journalists and photographers during the protests and calling on the Egyptian government to release them all immediately.

CPJ has repeatedly criticised the detention and jailing of journalists in Egypt, describing the country as one of the worst jailers of journalists.

Egyptian authorities have repeatedly stated that no journalists have been targeted for their work, and that those in jail have been convicted of crimes under Egyptian law.



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The Egyptian forces arrived at Ahmed Al-Jaber air force base in Kuwait on 10 April to begin the manoeuvres

The Egyptian air force concluded Monday a joint training exercise with Kuwaiti forces, state news agency MENA reported.

The exercise, Al-Yarmouk 2, began on 10 April at Ahmed Al-Jaber air force base in Kuwait.

Training included a number of practical and theoretical lectures, as well as practice targeting hostile targets in a quick and precise manner.

The two air forces also undertook a number of exercises using Egyptian F16 and Kuwaiti F18 planes.

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This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce is putting a big emphasis on small  and in the process, helping reinvent its image  with Wednesdays launch of the Chamber Office for Business Support.

This is going to redefine and launch a whole new approach to small business support, said Loren Remillard, the chambers executive vice-president. He said the office, nicknamed COBS for its acronym, emerged from strategic discussions held in October.

What emerged from those discussions is that there is a need to enhance the focus on the needs of the small business community. It will be a new level of support that has not existed in Winnipeg.

Remillard said the chamber knows the importance of small businesses in creating jobs and fostering innovation and how important it is to build capacity among businesses with less than 50 employees.

A large event Wednesday morning at the Canad Inns Polo Park  with more than 300 people expected to attend  will be the inaugural quarterly meeting of a newly formed Small Business Council, which is one element of the COBS.

The council will be co-chaired by Joelle Foster of Futurpreneur Canada and Ibrahim Obby Khan, owner of Shawarma Khan and Green Carrot.

Foster said there have been discussions for some time about creating a vehicle that is a little different than the traditional image of the chamber.

The chamber needs to become more relevant, Foster said. The council will appeal to the startsups and others. We almost have to move away a little from the chambers stuffy image.

The idea is to not just appeal to the startup scene, but also to growing small businesses and ones that have been around for a long time, some of which need help bridging the technology gap, and also the generation gap, that together are imposing new dynamics on the marketplace.

We want to make sure we are listening to everyone, said Foster.

The thinking is there are small businesses out there that are missing out on services and technology that would make their businesses run more smoothly.

A big part of the COBS rollout will be the introduction of a business 311 support line that will be operated by the Business InfoCentre (BIC) already being run by the World Trade Centre as a third-party service supplier funded by the federal government

Mariette Mulaire, the CEO of the World Trade Centre, said the idea was to utilize capacity that already exists to deliver services the community needs.

Instead of having two entities trying to do the same thing, we can provide a service for small business right away, Mulaire said. We have business-support specialists who can give advice and referrals.

Remillard said when the COBS idea was being designed it was not so much about what businesses said they wanted, but a realization of what was needed.

We needed to do a deep dive to come up with this, Remillard said. 

The business-support line wont be just answering calls but will also be doing outbound calling.

A business owner may have an issue and through conversation we can get a deeper understanding and the business-support specialist may realize the need is something else, said Remillard.

The COBS operation has five elements to it:

 business-support specialists who will provide personalized service to deliver customized information in partnership with Business InfoCentre (BIC);

 advocacy for business  providing support for specic issues targeted specifically for the specific business;

 opportunities for business  aid will be provided to keep COBS members in the loop when it comes to local, national and international procurement opportunities;

 advisory for business  provide advice accessed by leveraging expertise that already exists from within the membership;

 the Small Business Council will hold quarterly forums to help business owners network, learn and grow.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO  Formed in 1994, Sino-Forest grew to become the most valuable forestry company on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It was also the first and biggest foreign-owned forestry firm in China and conducted most of its business there, even though it was based in Ontario. That was before its collapse in 2012.

Here is a timeline of the Sino-Forest case before the Ontario Securities Commission:

June 2, 2011: Muddy Waters Research releases a report that accuses Sino-Forest of exaggerating its assets and fabricating sales transactions. Shares in the company are halted from trading.

June 3, 2011: Sino-Forest shares lose nearly two-thirds of their value, or about $2.3 billion. Company executives say the allegations in the Muddy Waters Research report are unfounded and theyre confident an independent investigation will conclude as much.

June 8, 2011: The Ontario Securities Commission says it is investigating Sino-Forest.

Aug. 26, 2011: The OSC accuses Sino-Forest Corp. of fraud and stops trading of the companys shares on the TSX.

Aug. 28, 2011: CEO Allen Chan resigns.

Nov. 10, 2011: The OSC refers Sino-Forest fraud allegations to the RCMP.

Nov. 15, 2011: Sino-Forest says an interim report from an independent investigation refutes allegations that it is fraudulent. But the report also raises concerns about the challenges of verifying timberland holdings in China.

Jan. 31, 2012: Final report from independent investigation is released. It leaves several key questions unanswered, including the value of Sino-Forests forestry assets.

March 30, 2012: Sino-Forest files for bankruptcy protection and puts itself up for sale.

May 9, 2012: Sino-Forest shares are delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange.

May 22, 2012: The OSC formally accuses Sino-Forest and five executives including Chan of lying to investors and attempting to mislead investigators.

July 21, 2014: David Horsley, former chief financial officer of Sino-Forest, agrees to pay $6.3 million to the OSC and to settle class-action lawsuits. In exchange, he agrees to testify against other former company executives.

Sept. 2, 2014: The OSC Sino-Forest case begins. OSC lawyer Hugh Craig says even though its main operations were based in China, the company should be judged by Canadian standards. Chans lawyer says while some of Sino-Forests business practices may seem peculiar to North Americans, they were workarounds that the firm had to employ because they were operating in a country where they were prevented from registering businesses, opening bank accounts and exchanging money freely.

April 18, 2016: Closing arguments begin. Craig says Chan was the controlling mind behind alleged frauds that robbed shareholders of value.

April 26, 2016: Chans lawyer tells the hearing that it cant be assumed the former CEO knew everything that was going on within the company.
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This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL  Canadian National Railway is calling on Ottawa to refrain from imposing or extending service regulations on the countrys railways that it fears will stifle innovation and discourage investment.

Chief executive Claude Mongeau says railway managers, not government agencies, are the best ones to decide on the trade-offs needed to ensure an efficient service.

The request of having every dimension of service regulated and arbitrated by the Canadian Transportation Agency is a slippery slope, Mongeau said in an interview after the companys annual meeting.

CN chief executive Claude Mongeau gets set to start the company's annual meeting Tuesday, April 26, 2016 in Montreal. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

Requiring the agency to become involved in the minutiae of railway operations would be a recipe for ending commercial solutions and natural rivalries between carriers that drive the best service, he said.

He criticized customer proposals that would extend interswitching rights to 160 kilometres, saying it would allow U.S. railways to take traffic away from Canadian companies without any compensation or reciprocity.

All customers would like to have the system designed for their particular benefit, but only railways can make the decisions about whats needed for the entire network, he said.

We should not listen to those who advocate without facts  those who are looking to swing the agenda their way to get regulatory leverage, he told shareholders.

Mongeau also rejected those who claim railways are monopolies that dictate service levels.

He says CN Rail (TSX:CNR) faces growing competition from its Calgary-based rival Canadian Pacific, along with U.S. carriers, trucks and ships. However, he added that customer safeguards and proper regulations are legitimate in places with no customer choices.

Meanwhile, Mongeau said he was confident the new Liberal government would ultimately take a fact-based approach in responding to changes to the Canada Transportation Act proposed in a report by former cabinet minister David Emerson that was tabled in February.

Mongeau said he broadly agrees with Emersons findings and said he is willing to partner with CP Rail (TSX:CP) or other industry participants to press for changes that would help Canadas transportation infrastructure.

But he criticized the previous governments intervention a couple of years ago that forced Canadian railways to move a bumper grain crop by imposing minimum volume requirements.

Very late in the game they introduced a number of regulatory changes that were not well thought out frankly and not supported by the facts and will undermine innovation and investment in the rail industry if they are not repealed in due course.

Mongeau said he was disappointed that the Trudeau government had postponed for one year the repeal of those provisions while it reviews the Emerson report.

Failure to rescind the regulations will discourage railway investment, the Montreal-based railway said.

Canadas largest railway transported record volumes of Western Canadian grain in the 2014-2015 crop year, some five per cent more than during the record 100-year crop a year earlier.

Transport Minister Marc Garneaus office didnt immediately return requests for comment.

David Montpetit, chairman of the Western Canadian Shippers Coalition, declined to comment on Mongeaus assertions, saying the group is polling members by June before responding to the Emerson report.

However, he said the coalition favours making interswitching changes permanent.
Egypt's foreign minister Sameh Shoukry said that Egypt and Bahrain are bolstering intelligence cooperation to combat terrorism, while urging international collaboration to confront the phenomenon.

Shoukry made the comments during a press conference with his Bahraini counterpart Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa, who is currently in Cairo as part of a delegation accompanying visiting Bahraini King Hamad bin Issa Al-Khalifa.

The senior diplomat said the two Arab states have reinforced "intelligence cooperation as well as exchanges of information" as part of efforts to fight terrorism, which he said has taken a toll on both countries.

The Bahraini minister was quoted by Egypt's state news agency MENA as saying that terrorism has spread as a result of weakening nationalism, adding that "the stronger and more coherent the state becomes, the weaker the sphere is for terrorism."

Cairo and Manama are set to sign a number of deals and memorandums of understanding during the king's two-day visit in a myriad of fields including maritime trade, taxes, education and health.

Bahrain's BNA news agency said the visit was aimed at boosting "strong historical ties" between both countries and addressing recent regional and internal developments.

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Conversion of the Osborne Village Motor Inn to a boutique hotel is well underway, and its neighbours cant wait to see the final result.

John Coward, owner of Buccacinos Italian restaurant across the street from the hotel, is looking forward to the impact the new hotel will have on the area.

Its certainly going to bring a new look to the village. Coupled with new money for streetscaping, its really going to give the neighbourhood a boost, he said.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The Osborne Village Inn

Stephanie Meilleur, executive director of the Osborne Village BIZ (Business Improvement Zone), said shes looking forward to the increased street activity that will ensue once the hotel welcomes its first guests.

I cant wait for them to open. We like our businesses to be in full swing in the village, she said.

Construction at the hotel, a mainstay in Winnipegs trendiest neighbourhood for a half-century until it closed late last year, has been going on inside for several months and is expected to move outside after Canada Day.

Sources say it is being converted into a boutique hotel with between 20 to 30 rooms, along with retail and commercial office space.

Longtime River Heights eatery Pizzeria Gusto will expand to the hotels main floor with its second location, and a stand-alone bar concept will open up in the basement. A third hospitality concept will also operate out of the main floor.

The stand-alone vendor is reportedly slated to be torn down and run out of the main building.

Fusion Capital Corp. is overseeing the development. Its principal, Ross Ransby, did not respond to an interview request but Fusion employees have been having open conversations about its plans with local stakeholders for some time.

Meilleur said construction wont begin on the hotels exterior until after Canada Day to preserve street and sidewalk space for the villages Canada Day street festival, which will run over two days and end July 2, a Saturday.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The inn opened in the 1960s and became a late-night mainstay with bars Ozzys and the Zoo.

I need all the real estate I can get. (The hotel) will have a patio set up on Canada Day. I expect 50,000 to 60,000 people over the two days, she said.

While the after-dark pedestrian traffic has dropped off since the hotels longtime nightclubs, Ozzys and The Zoo, shut down, the closure of the hotels restaurant has sapped a little bit of life during the day.

A lot of business owners and community folk ate in that restaurant, Meilleur said.

The Osborne Village Inn opened in the 1960s as the Champs Motor Inn.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two more Winnipeg Safeway gas bars are being renamed Shell gas stations this week as part of a new pilot project involving the grocery store chain and the petroleum company.

A spokesperson for Sobeys Inc., which owns the Safeway chain in Canada, said Monday a total of 10 Safeway gas bars  nine in Winnipeg and one in Moose Jaw, Sask.  will be renamed as part of the project.

The other seven Winnipeg gas bars, or kiosks, have already switched over. The Moose Jaw outlet will be converted next week.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Madison Square Safeways gas bar is temporarily closed as it changes over to Shell.

Under the pilot project, Safeway will continue to own and manage the gas bars, and Shell will supply the gas and set the pump prices.

Monday, Sobeys spokeswoman Keri Scobie said Safeway customers will benefit from the new arrangement because not only will they be getting a premium-branded fuel, they can also earn Air Miles on their fuel purchases.

This is an exciting opportunity for us, and we look forward to hearing what our customers think. In todays market, collaboration is more important than ever. By combining the resources of our two premium brands, Safeway and Shell plan to deliver outstanding value to our customers, Scobie said.

We also see this as an opportunity to drive traffic by cross-promoting fuel and food purchases and looking for more compelling offers for our customers.

Scobie said that for now, the pilot project will involve just 10 stations.

No decisions have been made on extending the pilot to other markets in the West, she said.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca
At least 43 journalists were arrested while covering protests on Monday, with seven still in jail

Egypts press syndicate decided on Tuesday to file an urgent complaint to the prosecutor-general against interior minister Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar over "police violations" against journalists covering protests on Monday, a syndicate statement read.

Syndicate secretary Gamal Abdel-Raheem said the syndicate would also file a complaint against the head of Cairo's security directorate, with a reliance on testimonies of journalists who were assaulted during their work, not allowed to enter the syndicate headquarters or who were inside the headquarters and were subjected to the assault by thugs.

The syndicate said that dozens of its members were barred from entering the syndicate building, a planned focal point for the protests, even after showing their press IDs in a "precedent that has not taken place in years," as security forces had sealed off the surrounding streets over protests.

Forty-three journalists were arrested on Monday while covering protests against a recent decision by Egypt to acknowledge Saudi Arabia's sovereignty over the two Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir. Most of the journalists were subsequently released.

Khaled El-Balshy, the head of the syndicates freedoms committee, told Ahram Online that seven journalists remain in detention on Tuesday.

An urgent meeting was held at the syndicate to discuss the matter and denounce supporters of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi whom the syndicate said attempted to storm its building in central Cairo on Monday.

The syndicate condemned "storming attempts by thugs under the eye of security forces who were present and surrounded the headquarters without interfering to secure the building to stop [those thugs from] storming the building and clashing with the journalists inside."

"The syndicate will not stand idly in the face of these shameful practices, whether from security forces or thugs who gathered and moved freely under clear security sponsorship in front of the syndicate," the statement read, adding that the scene harkened back to former security practices and [Mubaraks now-dissolved] National Democratic Partys use of outlaws to counter popular protests.

A press conference will be held on Thursday at 12pm where testimonies of journalists who were detained by police during the protests will be heard.

Following the press conference, the syndicate's board and the journalists will head to the prosecutor's office to file complaints.

Freedom for the Brave, an Egyptian activist group tracking protester arrests, said that 239 people were arrested at demonstrations on Monday nationwide.

Dozens of journalists organised a stand on the staircases of the syndicate on Tuesday to protest the police violations against reporters during their coverage of Monday's protests.

The journalists chanted "write on the walls of the prison cell that the jailing of journalists is a shame."

They also held up banners of jailed colleagues Mahmoud Abu-Zeid Shawkan, Ahmed Sebei, and Ibrahim El-Darawy.

Syndicate board members El-Balshy and Gamal Abdel-Raheem participated in the stand.

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The owner of a partially-completed apartment building destroyed by fire on the weekend hopes to start rebuilding within a month or so.

Its so sad. Seven months of work just flushed down the toilet, said a spokesman for Ranjjan Developments, the Winnipeg company that was building the three-storey,11-unit apartment complex on the southwest corner of Maryland Street and Westminister Avenue.

But theres no choice. Youve got to keep moving forward, right? So were going to rebuild.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Charred remains are all that is left of the building that burnt down under suspicious circumstances.

The spokesman, who did not want his name published, said the building was insured and Ranjjan is in discussions with the insurance company about what the insurance payout will be and whether anything can be salvaged.

Maybe the foundation, he added. Well take a look into that. But it doesnt look like anything else. It seems like its going to be a total loss and a total rebuild.

The spokesman said he assumes from media reports police believe the blaze, which was discovered at about 3:45 a.m. Saturday, was deliberately set. The fire also destroyed two neighbouring homes and sent four firefighters and two sisters who lived in one of the destroyed houses to hospital. All but one of the sisters was later released

However, a Winnipeg Police spokesman said Monday investigators havent yet determined a cause, although the fire is viewed as suspicious.

He said they are seeking two individuals who were seen leaving the construction site shortly before the fire was discovered, but no arrests have been made.

Police said Saturday they suspect the same people also may be responsible for two garage fires around the same time on nearby Chestnut Street. They estimated the damage from the Maryland Street fire at $4.5 million and damage from the two garage fires at $80,000.

However, the Ranjjan official said hed be surprised if the damage estimate from the Maryland Street fire was more than two million dollars altogether.

He said the project was on track to be completed by August.

We were virtually finished the framing and we were going to get started on the exterior finishes as well as the interior. So it was fairly far along.

Ranjjan is also co-developer of a four-storey condo complex under construction one block to the south, at the corner of Maryland Street and Wolseley Avenue. The spokesman said its considering installing security cameras at that site.

You can only do so much with security cameras but still, it might be a deterrent.

He said it would be too costly to have a security guard posted on site while the building is under construction.

If you have a larger development it might make sense. But not with these small sites.

Manitoba Home Builders Association president Mike Moore and Winnipeg Construction Association president Ron Hambley agreed.

It would be cost prohibitive, Hambley said. It would probably be two full months where it (the building under construction) would be more exposed  from the time framing started until the time its fully closed in.

He and Moore said even if a security guard was on site, it still might not be enough.

Unfortunately, if somebody is intent on causing damage, whether its a fire, theft or vandalism, theyre going to find a way to do it, Moore added.

The Maryland Street building was one of two multi-family residential buildings damaged by fire over the weekend. Police also arrested a 16-year-old Winnipeg youth in connection with a fire at about 5 p.m. Sunday at a condominium complex under construction in the 100 block of Sinawik Bay. The suspect, who has since been released on a promise to appear, is facing two charges of mischief under $5,000 and one charge each of break and enter, arson and possessing incendiary material.

Despite two incidents on the same weekend, Moore and Hambley maintained fires at construction sites are a fairly rare occurrence in Winnipeg.

Theft (from a construction site) is certainly a bigger problem than arson, Moore added.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO  Sirius XM Canada Holdings Inc. (TSX:XSR) says it will seek binding arbitration to settle a dispute with Sirius XM Radio Inc. over US$33.9 million in activation fees.

The satellite radio companies disagree on the fees owed under the XM license agreement.

The U.S. company has demanded the Canadian firm pay the money it says it is owed under the deal from 2005 to the end of January 2016.

Sirius XM US also wants its methodology to be used for calculating activation fees from February onwards.

However, Sirius XM Canada said it believes its interpretation of the agreement and calculation of activation fees is correct.
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This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER  The former Conservative governments tough-on-crime agenda has suffered another blow as British Columbias highest court strikes down two more mandatory-minimum sentencing laws, ruling them unconstitutional.

On Monday, the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned compulsory two-year minimum sentences for drug trafficking convictions that involve someone under the age of 18 or that occur in a public place frequented by youth.

A unanimous decision from the three-person panel says a minimum sentence of two years in such instances may be at times grossly disproportionate to the crime committed, and therefore amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

Outgoing Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrives at his Langevin office in Ottawa, Wednesday Oct. 21, 2015. Former prime minister Harper's tough-on-crime agenda has been dealt another blow in court. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

This weeks ruling is the latest in several cases where courts have overturned mandatory-minimum sentences that are the legacy of the former Conservative government.

A Supreme Court of Canada decision earlier this month put an end to minimum sentences for specific drug crime convictions and limits on pre-trial credit in certain conditions where bail is denied.

Last year, the high court upheld a decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal, which ruled that minimum sentences for some gun crimes constitute cruel and unusual punishment because they risk ensnaring people with little or no moral fault and who pose little or no danger to the public.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded after the most recent high court decision saying that his government was reviewing the laws around such sentences.

The Justice Department did not provide a comment about the latest decision. The public prosecution service has 60 days to file leave to appeal.

The federal government must now step up and reform the laws around mandatory-minimum sentences, said Darcie Bennett, interim executive director for Pivot Legal Society.

The legal advocacy organization was an intervener in two of the three cases referenced in this weeks B.C. Court of Appeal ruling.

Legislative reform would be the cheapest, fastest, most effective way to deal with this issue, and to deal with the issue not on simply a provision-by-provision basis, she said.

Reforming the system isnt about being soft on crime, but about allowing judges the discretion to craft sentences depending on the circumstances, she added.

David Fai, a defence lawyer in one of the three cases, said he believes the court is sending a clear message.

His client, Chad Dickey, was arrested in 2013 while selling cocaine to an undercover police officer near a gymnastics club in Quesnel, B.C.

Noting his considerable rehabilitation following his arrest, the B.C. Supreme Court judge sentenced Dickey to 20 months probation.

The other cases addressed in the decision stemmed from so-called dial-a-dope cocaine arrests in 2013.

Police arrested Marco Trasolini in Burnaby and Cody Bradley-Luscombe in Duncan on Vancouver Island. Both were sentenced to eight months in jail.

The Crown appealed all three decisions, calling them unfit, but the argument was rejected by the appeal court.

It would be nice to put an end to these things, said Fai, who successfully argued for the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn two other mandatory-minimum laws.

The public expense in taking these cases to appellate courts, its not cheap.

Parliament could pass a law rescinding the previous governments legislation around mandatory minimum sentences, said Fai, though he noted the dilemma of a government not wanting to appear soft on crime.

When appointed attorney general, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould was given a mandate letter directing her to quickly intervene in court cases where the former governments position is contrary to the Liberal platform.

They may just prefer to have the courts rule on these things so they can stand on the sidelines, Fai said.

 Follow @gwomand on Twitter

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said the court overturned the sentences.
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This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PORTLAND, Ore.  When Barbara Robertss husband first told her he planned to introduce a bill in the Oregon legislature for medical aid in dying, she tried to talk him out of it.

It was 1989, and Frank Roberts had endured treatment for prostate cancer that had permanently damaged his spine and left him in a wheelchair. The state senator explained the bill wasnt for him, but for terminally ill patients who deserved the right to choose when to die.

Barbara Roberts warned her husband the bill was too controversial, but he persisted, introducing it unsuccessfully three times before his death in 1993. By then, she was governor and threw her support behind a citizens initiative that placed the legislation on the Oregon ballot in 1994.

Governor Barbara Roberts speaks during an interview at her home in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, April 13, 2016. When Roberts's husband first told her he planned to introduce a bill in the Oregon legislature for medical aid in dying, she tried to talk him out of it. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/Steve Dykes

Once it passed on the ballot, I felt a huge sense of the legacy that Frank had left, she said in a recent interview in her Portland home. It really was a legacy  not just a legacy for Oregon but a legacy for the nation.

With residents voting 51 per cent in favour, Oregon became the first U.S. state to legalize medical aid in dying in 1994. The bill languished amid court challenges until 1997 when legislators asked residents to vote on a measure to repeal the law. That time, 60 per cent voted to keep the act.

Now nearly 20 years later, aid in dying is an accepted, if quietly used, option in Oregon. While the number of people who use the law remains low, advocates say it enjoys wide public support, rare complications and no documented instances of abuse. A small but vocal minority continues to fight the law, arguing its eroded the publics trust in doctors.

Under Oregons Death with Dignity Act, terminally-ill adult residents can request prescriptions for lethal doses of medication. The patient must be diagnosed by two doctors with an illness that will lead to death within six months and must be able to self-administer and ingest the pills.

The patient must make two oral requests 15 days apart and a written request. If a doctor suspects the patients judgment is impaired, such as by mental illness or depression, they must refer the individual for a psychiatric assessment.

Once the patient obtains the prescription, its illegal for anyone else to administer.

In the United States, we feel the best way to help the most people is to push for this option, explained Dr. Peter Reagan, a retired family doctor and spokesman for advocacy organization Compassion and Choices.

That does not just mean that we think its less feasible politically to push for an active-euthanasia-type situation. Thats part of it. And the other part of it is that its a whole lot easier for doctors to write a prescription than it is for them to (administer) the medication.

This requirement inevitably means some people cant access the law  those in the late stages of ALS who cannot swallow, for example. Cancer patients outnumber ALS patients who use the law in Oregon by nearly 10 to one, but ALS patients are still the second-most common users.

Canadas Bill C-14 would allow doctors to give lethal substances.

The push now in the United States is not to expand the kind of aid in dying offered by doctors in Oregon, but to bring access to other states. Washington and Vermont have adopted similar legislation and Californias new law is set to come into effect June 9.

Some in Canada have complained the legislation introduced by the Liberals requiring a foreseeable death means that people with chronic illnesses, such as multiple sclerosis, would be left out. But Oregons law is even more restrictive, requiring the patient to have less than six months to live.

I really applaud the guts that your country is showing, said Reagan. I think this is territory that needs to be explored, but I think it needs to be explored carefully.

Since the law was passed, 1,545 people have had prescriptions written under the Death With Dignity Act and 991 people have died. The figures are very low when considering the total number of deaths in the state  35,598 in 2015 alone.

Much has been made of the fact that one-third of people who obtain prescriptions dont use them. Critics point to the statistic as proof that patients are changing their minds, while supporters say that, sadly, some are dying or becoming incapacitated before theyre able to take the pills.

Another explanation is that some patients are not seeking death, but control.

Just getting that piece of paper or the bottle of medication makes people feel more in control and its a relief for them, said Dr. David Grube, a retired physician and spokesman for Compassion and Choices.

Oregons medical board has never disciplined a doctor for misuse and advocates often say there have been no documented cases of coercion or abuse. Opponents, however, say the process is shrouded in secrecy and there are many holes in the system that allow for misconduct.

Dr. William Toffler, national director of Physicians for Compassionate Care, a group that formed to oppose aid in dying, said doctors cannot always accurately predict how long a patient has to live.

We have no crystal ball-reading courses in medical school, he said.

The medication used in the state is usually Seconal or secobarbital, a barbiturate that was originally conceived as a sleeping pill. Patients who take 10 grams of Seconal  10 times the dose for sleeping  are expected to fall asleep within minutes and die within hours.

They came up with this Hollywood notion that if you just take a pill and slip off gently into the night, no big deal, which of course is specious, said Toffler.

There have been six recorded instances of people regaining consciousness after taking the medication and 24 instances of vomiting, although due to a change in the reporting process in 2010 nearly half the assisted deaths in the state have not required the reporting of complications at all.

Grube said vomiting is uncommon and typically happens when the patient has a type of cancer that makes it difficult for them to absorb food. Though a doctor is not required to attend, Grube said he has witnessed some deaths under the law and all were gentle and merciful.

The person took the medicine, fell asleep and were with their loved ones, in their bed, listening to music, he said. Its a very peaceful, kind dying.

Critics, including Toffler, argue the law has corrupted the medical profession. Patients fear death doctors who push assisted death, while doctors have lost touch with their roles as healers and seekers of medical advances, he said.

Former Oregon Hospice Association director Ann Jackson said the state had high-quality hospice care prior to the law and continues to rank highly among U.S. states. Ninety per cent of people who use aid in dying are enrolled in hospice and only 25 per cent report inadequate pain control.

Reagan said the law has led to tremendous advances in communication, enabling patients to talk openly with family and doctors about all end-of-life options, including hospice.

It made people more able to talk about what they were really feeling. To say that patients who are dying arent thinking about (assisted death) is a misunderstanding, he said. Having their friends in on it, their family in on it, their providers in on it, really helps.

 Follow @ellekane on Twitter.

Note to readers: This story was revised to make the meaning of Peter Reagans initial quote immediately clear.
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The City of Winnipeg has launched a search for somebody with deep pockets  and a high security clearance  to take over the mostly vacant office tower attached to its new headquarters.

In 2009, the city paid Canada Post $29.25 million to buy the Crown corporations 11-storey office tower and six-storey warehouse building south of Graham Avenue. It spent the next six years  and another $185 million  renovating the warehouse component into a new headquarters.

The tower, however, sits mostly empty and is in dire need of repairs. According to one city estimate, it requires $20-million worth of renovations.

KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The city is looking for a buyer for a vacant office tower attached to the new Winnipeg Police Service headquarters building on Graham Avenue at Smith Street.

Following a council directive, on Friday the citys planning, property and development department issued an invitation for private firms interested in the exclusive right to a due diligence period and preparation of a proposal to redevelop the building, which only has tenants on its first three floors.

The invitation asks prospective partners to come up with a plan to develop, buy or lease the building  and back that up with financing of its own. After six months, the city reserves the right to buy any studies conducted on contract by firms that respond to the invitation.

The building is being offered in an as is condition, according to the invitation. Canada Post occupies the first and third floors, commercial tenants occupy the second-floor skywalk level and the Winnipeg Police Service also uses space on several floors.

If a proponent is selected, the developer will be responsible to remove any mould, asbestos and any other hazardous materials found in the tower, according to the invitation.

Proponents must also pass a security screening, because the tower remains connected to the police headquarters and houses electrical and other systems used by the entire complex.

The public service will carefully assess any proposal it receives for the tower at 266 Graham Ave., and will do so in collaboration with the Winnipeg Police Service as a long-term tenant and shared user of the space with key security requirements, city spokeswoman Alissa Clark said in a statement.

Last week, Metro Winnipeg reported police are concerned about the potential for espionage conducted from the tower, citing a report obtained via freedom-of-information legislation.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca
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Three young Winnipeg children who were left without a father have let his attackers know what they stole from them.

I know hes up in heaven, but why did he go so fast? I cry lots because I cant see him, Jamie Cooks seven-year-old daughter said in a victim impact statement read aloud by the Crown on Monday. My mommy says he lives in my heart. I just want him here.

Hes an angel now. I cry for him all the time, Cooks eight-year-old daughter said in her statement.

Cooks six-year-old son described how they loved watching the Winnipeg Jets together. I want him here. I try not to cry because Im the man of the house now, the boy wrote.

Cook, 23, was beaten to death in October 2013 by three men hed just met for the first time earlier that evening. The trio invited him to join them in a KIng Street apartment block to have a few drinks  then turned on him when they felt he wasnt being friendly enough.

He was sitting quietly in the corner. They became offended that he wasnt becoming socially engaged, said Crown attorney Sheila Leinburd. Cook was kicked and punched, thrown down a flight of stairs and then had a large television smashed over his head. He was also hit with a freezer door.

Clearly this man was beaten to death for no apparent reason, she said.

An autopsy showed he suffered dozens of separate injuries to his head and body which caused massive, fatal trauma. He was then tossed out on the street, where a passer-by found his body.

The police, when they came into the residence, basically viewed a bloodbath, Leinburd said Monday.

Three men were originally charged with second-degree murder.

Kelvin Orvis, 29, pleaded guilty Monday to a reduced charge of manslaughter. His lawyer requested a 24-month sentence on top of the equivalent of 45 months of time already spent in custody. That would be an effective sentence of five years, nine months. The Crown asked for a total sentence between seven and nine years.

Leinburd told court that Orvis has an unabated criminal record spanning more than a decade that includes 27 prior convictions. He was on probation, out on bail and wanted on an arrest warrant at the time he killed Cook.

Orvis said Monday he has little memory of the incident because of the drugs and alcohol he was on at the time. He apologized to Cooks family members in court for what he did.

Never did I imagine Id be responsible for the death of another human being, he said. Unfortunately, someone else has paid the consequences for my actions.

Provincial court Judge Dale Harvey said hes hoping for the best for Cooks children, that they are raised properly by their mother and grandparents to honour their father.

Aaron Meekis, 29, previously admitted to a charge of aggravated assault and was given 34-and-a-half months behind bars. He was involved in the initial kicking and punching but then passed out before the fatal damage was done, court heard.

Lyle Letandre, 21, remains before the courts on the original murder charge and is set for trial later this year. He is presumed innocent.

www.mikeoncrime.com
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This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  Winnipeg Centre Liberal MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette says Canada needs to take off the kid gloves it uses on white collar criminals.

He is asking his government to launch a comprehensive review of anti-corruption measures, including better whistle-blower protections for public and private-sector employees and tougher justice for crimes such as tax evasion, noting the country seems to have no problem putting indigenous people behind bars but when its a richer persons crime, we are much more gentle.

We say their reputation has been tarnished which is punishment enough, said Ouellette.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES MP Friday afternoon. Winnipeg Centre MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette.

Ouellette said the not-guilty verdicts against Sen. Mike Duffy for fraud, bribery and breach of trust, coupled with the fact nobody else was ever charged in the case, is proof positive that Canada needs to get tougher with white collar crime.

There were no rules broken because there were no rules, said Ouellette.

The judge who heard the Duffy case delivered an unusual and scathing indictment of the actions of staff in prime minister Stephen Harpers office around the Duffy matter. Observers had long been scratching their heads at the fact Duffy was charged for accepting a bribe of $90,000 to repay his Senate expenses but nobody was ever charged with bribing him.

Ouellette is also outraged that the Canada Revenue Agency appears to have struck a deal with clients of KPMG who participated in an offshore tax scheme. CRA has agreed not to prosecute the clients if they pay their back taxes with interest.

Ouellette is on the finance committee of the House of Commons, which has summoned Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier to answer questions about the scheme. The committee is also looking at a deeper study of the issue of CRAs efforts to combat tax evasion.

Ouellette is hopeful that work will expand to include making recommendations to address white collar crimes. He has not yet spoken with anyone in cabinet about the issue, he said.

A spokeswoman for Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould did not respond to a request for a response to Ouellettes comments.

The rookie MP acknowledges he is making it a bit of a habit to speak his mind and isnt afraid to rock the boat, even when his own party is the one he is pushing.

This is what I believe my job is, said Ouellette. Im not going to simply toe Trudeaus line. If they need a push I will give it.

That said, Ouellette added he doesnt think pushing for stronger laws for things like tax evasion and bribery go against his party.

I dont think theyre coming out in favour of tax evasion, he said.

Nevertheless Ouellettes penchant for speaking his mind is raising a few eyebrows within his own party. Some are chalking it up to inexperience, others to Ouellette simply being himself. They said typically an MP in the governing party would raise issues more quietly with cabinet first, noting a press release is more an opposition tactic.

Ouellette recently acknowledged he will vote against the Liberals assisted dying legislation and has also pushed the government to implement a guaranteed income pilot project. Last fall he got into some hot water when he suggested the speaker of the House of Commons has extra influence over the prime minister. Ouellette withdrew his bid for the speakers job shortly after those comments.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With fire blocking the front and rear exits and her Maryland Avenue home filling up with smoke Saturday, wheelchair user Helen Procner wasnt sure shed get out alive.

We couldnt breathe, the 58-year-old said from her room in St. Boniface General Hospital Monday.

She was treated for burns and is there waiting for a wheelchair and an accessible place to stay. Procner calmly recalled how vulnerable she felt and how grateful she is to the firefighters who carried her out of the burning house.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS A cyclist pauses Monday morning to look at the damage from the weekend fire that destroyed a new housing construction site (foreground) and severely damaged two other houses in the Wolseley neighbourhood at the intersection of Westminster Avenue and Maryland Street.

All the windows upstairs were exploding and glass was flying down the stairs, she said.

Procner, who has had rheumatoid arthritis since 1989, lived in the home she owns with her sister Neda for 21 years.

Helen was asleep in her bedroom on the main floor at the back of the house when she was awakened by a transformer on a utility pole that was sparking. It sounded like firecrackers. I thought it was hit by lightning.

She looked out and saw an orange light and realized the condo under construction next door was on fire.

Thank God for the noise. If it was just a fire we might not have gotten out alive, Helen said.

By then, flames had spread to the deck and wheelchair ramp at the back of the house. Her sister came down from the third floor.

Things were flaming up We couldnt get to the back door. We had to go to the front but the porch was on fire, Helen said. We could see the firefighters and my sister was yelling and waving but they couldnt hear her She thought we were going to die. It was starting to seem that way.

Neda was on the phone calling 911 while Helen got out of her wheelchair and stood with a cane but was unable to take more than a few steps. Before the sisters were overcome by the smoke, firefighters hosed down the front porch and rescued them, Helen said.

The firefighters carried me out of the house  one grabbed under my arms and one grabbed my legs and they carried me out the door, Helen said.

Wearing just a nightshirt, she burned her elbow as it brushed against hot metal on the way out, but she said shes OK, with just a few small and minor burns. Shes thankful to the firefighters who saved her and to caring neighbours, one of whom got her a blanket and slippers to wear.

The blaze ripped though Westminster Avenue and Maryland Street, destroying an 11-unit development, Flats on Westminster, and some older multi-storey houses. The fire is estimated to have caused $4.5 million in damages.

Helen has nothing good to say about the condo where the fire began. From the get go she has been opposed to the monstrosity being built on the site where a single-family dwelling once stood, she said. It attracted trouble before the fire, she said. Two Fridays ago she called police when she heard someone banging around late at night inside the building under construction.

JASON HALSTEAD / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Helen Procner's sister Neda Procner (left) and Linda Walker look at Procners house on Maryland Street in Wolseley that was destroyed by fire on April 23, 2016.

Shes not sure if they will rebuild their razed home in the shadow of the condo or go somewhere else.

Its awful. I loved the house, Helen said.

It was a great old place. Ive lived there over 21 years. The neighbourhood is great and the neighbours are great.

Meanwhile, the four firefighters injured while saving the two sisters have been released from hospital, Capt. Robert Labossiere said Monday.

The firefighters were held overnight in hospital and released Sunday morning, Labossiere said. Their injuries included second-degree burns to their heads and necks.

They are doing pretty good in their recovery but they will be off (work) for a little while yet, Labossiere said. They are being monitored to ensure there are no complications or infections, as well as their mental well-being.

Labossiere said the four firefighters have been with the Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic Service for between 10 and 20 years.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

 with files from Erin DeBooy
Opinion

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This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The job of journalists often comes with rare access that offers almost as rare opportunity.

Including a look behind the scenes of partisan politics, where they can get to know the players more as people than posturing politicians. Of course there are some politicians they admire personally more than others, no matter what the political stripe. Steven Fletcher and Dave Chomiak are two at the top of my list, and when one won and the other lost in last weeks provincial election, I felt compelled to call both of them. I left a consoling voice-mail message for Chomiak, the veteran NDP cabinet minister. And Sunday night I phoned Fletcher to congratulate the former Harper cabinet minister and right-to-die advocate who made a political comeback from his defeat in last falls federal election and won a seat as a Progressive Conservative MLA in Assiniboia.

Maybe it was the late hour, but I sensed Fletcher was surprised to hear from me, which he shouldnt have been given the post-election column I wrote last fall suggesting the then-42-year-old had more to give in public life and perhaps he should be nominated and appointed to the Senate. Given my political views compared with Fletchers  hes a self-described compassionate, small-c conservative with a libertarian lean  he may have been surprised by what was basically an endorsement of Steven the person. But Sunday night over the phone, Fletcher had some surprises for me, including when I asked if he had received congratulatory messages from anyone in his political past.

Steven Fletcher

I did, he said. And it wasnt anyone who you would think.

The congrats came from federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

She was really sweet.

He went on to share just how devastated  my word not his  he was after being rejected in the federal election. It was, I told him, not a rejection of him personally, but of then-prime minister Stephen Harper. Just as Chomiaks defeat wasnt a repudiation of him, but of Premier Greg Selinger.

It was early on in our conversation when Fletcher referred to how much the column I wrote about him last fall helped him  gave him a lift  when he was feeling so down after being rejected in the federal election.

I really appreciated that article, he said.

Fletcher went on to say that wasnt the first time he had felt the positive power of a Free Press story at a critical juncture in his life. The first time was the story reporter Bill Redekop wrote in 1996, about the collision with a moose that resulted in Fletcher being paralyzed from the neck down. He was only 23. Fletcher recalled being in intensive care, unable to speak, with Redekops sensitively written newspaper story by his bed, and the nurses all reading it as they came on shift. Redekop, who was an avid canoeist, had known Fletcher before the accident as a legend among Manitoba paddlers . And Fletcher has told Redekop, as he told me, he believes the story helped humanize the mute and motionless young man they were tasked with caring for.

I wasnt just a number.

Again, later, it was another Redekop story  about Fletcher running for president of the University of Manitoba Students Union  he credits with helping him win and launch his path to purpose as a politician. And thats what he went on to do federally for more than 11 years. Still, his decision to run provincially was far from a certainty. He consulted a friend he said he doesnt always agree with  interim federal Conservative leader Rona Ambrose.

And her advice was, Steven, the best thing you could do for Conservatives now in Canada is to help Brian Pallister win a Conservative government.

Eventually, our chat turned to other politicians, past and present, whom Fletcher admires as people. One was the socialist, Sidney Green, who represented him pro bono and on principle during a lengthy court case involving Manitoba Public Insurance.

He is an example of a model human being. If I could be half the MLA or citizen that he has been Ill consider myself a success.

Then there is MP Rob Oliphant, the chair of the joint parliamentary committee on the assisted-dying bill in front of whom Fletcher testified. Later, he heard from Oliphant.

He wrote me one of the nicest cards, in the most beautiful handwriting, I will keep forever. And, Fletcher added with emphasis, hes a Liberal.

Fletcher went on to describe him another way.

Hes a great guy. Like, if I was in his riding, I would have to move out.

Thats how I feel about Steven Fletcher too, with one difference.

I think hes a great guy. And, if I could have, I would have moved into his riding.

Just to support him.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON  Family and friends are grieving for a 25-year-old man they described as a wonderful father, brother and friend.

Matthew Jackson died after being struck by a truck in the eastbound lane of the Trans-Canada Highway and the junction of PR 110 just before midnight Saturday.

Jacksons sisters Penny Jackson and Lauren Bohpa reminisced about their brother Monday, sharing stories about a man they described as outgoing and sincere.

SUPPLIED Friends and family described Matthew Jackson, 25, as outgoing and happy. He was struck by a truck while walking and was killed.

He loved his daughter, Jackson said about her brother and his four-year-old girl.

He was always happy and he always looked out for his family. He cared for everybody and had so many friends.

One of seven siblings, Jackson said her brother, who is a band member at Sioux Valley Dakota Nation, grew up in Brandon. He was living with her in the city while waiting to head back out west where he was a construction worker building grain bins.

Jackson, who said she has always been overprotective of her little brother, saw him just hours before the collision.

He told me he wouldnt be back until later that night and told me he loved me, she said while her voice cracked with emotion. He went too soon.

Jackson and Bohpa didnt want to talk about the specifics, only to say they werent sure why their brother was walking on the Trans-Canada Highway at that time of night.

However, his friend Chelsea Aube said Jackson and another friend were drinking at Campbells Court, a trailer park about 10 kilometres east of Brandon, when they decided to walk back to the city.

Aube said its been a difficult few days for Jacksons friends, including Brayden Farquhar, who was with her at the time of the interview.

Shes also heard a lot of conjecture about what might have happened and wanted to set the record straight.

He was always happy and he always looked out for his family. He cared for everybody and had so many friends

None of us believe Matt would take his own life, she said. A lot of people are saying some nasty things about how they dont feel sad for somebody who killed themselves. This definitely wasnt the case.

RCMP reports corroborate Aubes assertion.

Police said alcohol is believed to be a factor in the collision. The driver of the truck was not at fault and was sober, according to RCMP spokesman Bert Paquet.

A GoFundMe page called Matthew Jackson Funeral/Cremation has been set up to help cover Jacksons funeral costs.

 Brandon Sun
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This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Police Service is at a loss to explain the brief presence of rats at its West Kildonan station  and no, not the human variety.

Earlier this month, staff at the District 3 station on Hartford Avenue caught three or four white laboratory rats, said Const. Rob Carver, a spokesman for the police service.

They thought they had seen some mice a few days ago, Carver said in an interview. It turns out in the station, they ended up catching a few rats. But they werent rat rats. They were lab rats.

WIKIMEDIA White lab rat

Its unbelievably unusual. Theyre small, so people had them confused with mice. Theyre white lab rats, so they look like mice.

The source of the lab rats remains a mystery. The Winnipeg Police Service does not conduct scientific tests on rodents of any size, Carver said.

We dont have cages of rats. We dont own our own rats, he said. We dont have an infestation. We had some for a short while, but theyre gone. How they got in, we have no idea.

Carver said the laboratory rats resemble pet mice more than they do serious pests such as Norway rats. He also stated the police put out mouse traps at most of their facilities, including the new headquarters on Graham Avenue.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

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This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The new legislation concerning medical assistance in dying, Bill C-14, is not without its critics. Prohibitionists against euthanasia remain adamant that the Liberal proposal leads to an anything goes mentality. They insist that once assisted suicide has been transformed from a crime into a public service, grounds to limit that right to some sufferers and not to others disappear. According to this logic, if the grievously ill are permitted an early exit, the next step will be physician-assisted death for broken arms, bad breath and hangnails.

Fortunately, the courts possess an uncanny ability to distinguish between constitutional rights and frivolous claims. Bill C-14 may not be perfectly consistent in its outcomes, but it does hug the constitution. In other words, it is both legally defensible and politically pragmatic. What it does not represent is the relativist nightmare dreamed up by slippery slope crusaders.

The governments initiative addresses previous gaps in end-of-life care options. One of the most important of these involves erasing the moral distinction between omissions and acts. Previous to the Carter v. Canada case, omissions were considered a viable option for the terminally ill. Once treatment was withdrawn or withheld, the patients death was attributed to some underlying condition, such as a disease or trauma. However, in the case of euthanasia and assisted suicide, the patient dies as a result of the actions of a third party, the one who provides or administers a fatal drug. Omissions were considered part of standard medical practice, whereas positive acts were considered criminal.

This moral distinction between omissions and acts has now evaporated. Since passive measures have the effect of hastening death, it is only rational to allow dying patients access to prescribed overdoses or lethal injections. To summarize, medical practitioners are causal agents in the deaths of their patients for both acts and omissions, a fact recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada. Bill C-14 simply removes the stigma previously associated with active methods of death-hastening.

However, naysayers suggest that medical assistance in dying will lead to a fundamental shift in societal values by normalizing suicide for dying children. What they fail to mention is that childrens deaths are already hastened via non-treatment decisions, so euthanasia would, in many instances, be judged as more compassionate. Irrespective of the means chosen  acts or omissions  human agents are implicated in the death of a minor. Therefore, medical aid in dying for grievously ill children would not undermine the core values of medicine. On the contrary, medical practitioners are only finding more effective, humane ways of ending lives that had previously been terminated using slow euthanasia.

Bill C-14 is also condemned because it may open the door to euthanizing incompetent patients. This too is a red herring. When patients lapse into a coma or permanent vegetative state, the next-of-kin have to make difficult end-of-life decisions, even when they are unclear about their loved ones final wishes. We have long been able to negotiate ethico-legal boundaries for cases involving treatment withdrawal for brain-dead patients, so euthanizing those in states of permanent unconsciousness would represent a viable alternative to watching loved ones dehydrate to death over a period of days.

And what about advanced directives for future mental illnesses, such as dementia or Alzheimers? Ironically, those who have made prior requests to be euthanized in these specific instances may consider their condition another form of brain death. In any event, they are certainly providing a more accurate assessment of their intentions than individuals who become non-sentient, leave no living will behind, but still require some kind of end-of-life decision.

To reiterate: Bill C-14 will not lead to death on demand. That said, the Liberal approach does offer choices that now include active methods of death-hastening. Since society has previously navigated its way around nightmarish scenarios involving non-treatment decisions, we should be just as confident in our abilities to establish ethical boundaries for cases involving medical assistance in dying.

Stuart Chambers teaches a fourth-year class on death and dying in the Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa.

schamber@uottawa.ca.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

My late friend Harry Daniels has again succeeded in advancing the constitutional evolution of Canada in what must be the most misunderstood case in history. What should happen now?

Harry and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) argued all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada that the federal government must acknowledge its authority to include Metis and non-status Indians in legislation to guide aboriginal policy. In mid-April, the Supreme Court agreed.

This legal journey began in 1999 when Harry was instrumental in getting Metis people included in section 35 of the Constitution Act, that guarantees the rights of all the aboriginal peoples including Indians and Inuit peoples.

THE CANADIAN PRESS / SEAN KILPATRICK Gabriel Daniels, son of the late Harry Daniels, reacts as he leaves the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa on Thursday, April 14, 2016, following their unanimously ruling that Metis and non-status are Indians under the Constitution.

Federal policy has always had three main objects: to get rid of aboriginal people by assimilation into the general population, to cut expenditures, and to move responsibility to the provinces for social services. The legislation to do that was the Indian Act of 1876 and its numerous amendments to reach these goals. With the inclusion of aboriginal rights in the Constitution, those old policy objectives were now indefensible. The Constitution requires government action to make aboriginal rights effective.

The Daniels decision invites governments to recognize all the aboriginal peoples in Canada, to make their rights effective, and to legislate for other policy purposes as well. The provincial governments must also be engaged because recent court cases have established that provinces have duties to respect the rights of aboriginal peoples when making laws within their sphere of authority (such as natural resources).

None of this is easy in practice. That is one reason governments, who only act on political imperatives, have avoided the issue of official recognition. The current federal government has promised a new policy approach which has been described as a nation-to-nation relationship, along with the adoption of the standards in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples. Time will tell if this will truly mean the replacement of the historic policies of cultural genocide with new legislation that abides by the UNDRIP and recognizes all the indigenous peoples.

In the Daniels decision, the Supreme Court left open the issue of identifying the Indians and Metis now included in the federal law-making power. But some observations by the Supreme Court may have important implications for future cases or for negotiations. All the legislation which has historically responded to the Metis people has dealt with the Metis in Western Canada.

Now, this decision may also provide some assurance to the many people in the rest of Canada that non-status Indians are included in the federal power. If an aboriginal community has historic aboriginal rights, such as hunting or fishing, it may identify itself by any name  Metis or Indian or other names  without concern about fitting into this or that constitutional category.

Many persons call themselves Metis based on the popular misconception that being of mixed-blood has constitutional or legal meaning. Both the federal and provincial governments already have the constitutional power under the equity clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to create programs or services for the Charter Metis, those persons who suffer disadvantage on account of their so-called race. There is also a constitutional spending power available to both levels of government which allows governments to spend money on matters outside their legislative authority. The Daniels decision does not change the law but may influence how it is used.

How should governments respond to the duty to negotiate the implementation of the aboriginal rights of the Metis and non-status communities?

At the moment, Indians not included in the Indian Act and self-described Metis individuals have organized themselves as corporations governed by general corporations law. The modern legislated agreements with Inuit people, who are not in the Indian Act, are the model for a new policy of recognition.

In 1996, the federal Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples recommended new courts or tribunals be created. Their purpose would be to recommend to the federal government who would be the legitimate and accountable representatives of aboriginal communities that have rights. These bodies must have representation from the aboriginal peoples concerned. The first step for consideration for official recognition must be a referendum in a community.

The alternative is the steadfast pre-Daniels decision talk and delay policy, described by Canadas first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, in 1884: I think the true policy is rather to encourage them to specify their grievances in memorials and send them with or without delegations to Ottawa. This will allow time for the present effervescence to subside, and on the approach of winter, the climate will keep things quiet until next spring.

Keeping things quiet should no longer be an option.

Paul Chartrand, a Metis from St. Laurent, is a former professor of law now in legal practice with Boudreau Law in Winnipeg. He has advised the federal and provincial governments on aboriginal policies as a member of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and Manitobas Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last weeks provincial election brought Manitobas first change in the governing party in almost two decades. The province is in for some changes. Throughout the campaign, Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallister provided an idea of what to expect in some areas: rolling back the provincial sales tax, lowering ambulance fees, spending on targeted infrastructure projects and focusing on literacy in school-aged children.

One area Pallister and the PCs did not discuss in detail was the partys position on climate change. In fact, climate change only made headlines when a protestor crashed a series of PC events calling the party out for not being clear on the issue.

Under the NDP, Manitoba committed to developing a cap-and-trade system along with Quebec, Ontario and California. The question is will the new government make good on this commitment, adopt a different approach, such as a carbon tax, or abandon carbon pricing altogether? The last of these options would align Manitoba with Saskatchewan and Premier Brad Wall, who was reluctant to support a carbon price when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with the premiers last month in Vancouver. However in looking to conservative colleagues for guidance, Pallister may want to turn east, to Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown in Ontario.

After years of opposing any form of carbon pricing, the Ontario PCs, under Browns leadership, decided to engage in a more constructive debate about how carbon should be priced. Brown has argued a revenue-neutral tax, where money is returned to taxpayers in the form of cuts to personal and business taxes, is preferable to the governments plan to use the proceeds of cap and trade to fund green projects and other priorities. The same debate about how revenue from carbon pricing should be used is occurring in Alberta, after the NDP announced its carbon tax in 2015. Including BC and Quebec, the four largest provinces in Canada, and the federal government, now support some form of carbon pricing. The writing is on the wall  the debate in Canada has shifted from whether carbon pricing is necessary, to a discussion of the most efficient and appropriate instrument to reflect the true cost of carbon in the economy.

For right-leaning parties in Canada, supporting a carbon tax is not just good policy, it is good politics. Leading up to the BC provincial election in 2009, Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell placed the opposition NDP in a difficult position by adopting a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The NDP ended up opposing the policy by running a controversial axe the tax campaign. Its position placed the party offside with environmental groups and much of the NDPs traditional voting base. Campbells gambit proved successful as the Liberals were elected to a third straight majority government.

If Pallister decided in government to introduce a revenue-neutral carbon tax in Manitoba, he would insulate himself from criticism on the left. The NDP would gain very little traction in opposing the policy, because it failed to put a price on carbon during its 17 years in government. There would likely be pushback from the business community and the PCs voting base. However, with a strong mandate and a weakened opposition, the Tories are in the rare and enviable position of being able to think long term on policy issues. This does not mean the party should take their constituents support for granted  far from it. But it does mean there is room for the party to stretch its intellectual horizons and broaden its appeal to the provincial electorate, while bringing along its traditional base of support. If the PCs are looking at their recent win as the beginning of a long run in government, as opposed to a message from voters to the NDP, this is the type of policy idea they should be entertaining.

The new government may already have thought of this. While climate change and carbon pricing were not defining issues in the campaign, the PC platform does commit to pursing carbon pricing that fosters emissions reduction and keeps capital in the province. If it is surprising a right-leaning party would support carbon pricing, remember, the most unlikely agents of change are often the most powerful. After all, only Nixon could go to China.

Brendan Boyd is a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Calgary, school of public policy.
Winona

Saturday

12:21 a.m.  Joshua Adam Lueck, 20; John Michael Schmitz, 20; and Tristan Alexander Hassen, 20, all of Winona, were each cited for a loud party and violation of the city social host ordinance by police responding to a complaint at a residence on the 200 block of West Fourth Street.

6:39 a.m.  Hien Thi Cao, 45, Winona, was cited for shoplifting at Rochester Wholesale Fruit.

8:05 a.m.  A stop sign and post was recovered fro the backyard of a residence on the 600 block of Wilson Street.

1:23 p.m.  Two tires on a vehicle parked on the Saint Marys University campus were punctured.

6:49 p.m.  A razor scooter was reported missing from a residence on the 1400 block of West Fourth Street.

7:56 p.m.  Charges of fifth degree domestic assault (causing fear, causing harm) were referred against Scott Aaron Kostner, 33, Winona following an incident at a residence on the 600 block of West Howard Street.

Sunday

12:55 a.m.  Charles Gene Hilger, 19, White Bear Lake, Minn., was cited for possession of a small amount of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia; and Nicholas James Wilgenbusch, 19, Durango, Iowa, was cited for possession of drug paraphernalia following a traffic stop near West Wabasha and Center streets.

6:34 a.m.  A 3 by 5 double pane window at Midtown Foods was broken by a thrown rock.

9:50 a.m.  Three windows on the Exchange Building, 50 East Fourth Street, were broken by thrown rocks.

12:14 p.m.  A fence was damaged at a residence on the 200 block of West Wabasha Street.

3:27 p.m.  A vehicle parked on the Saint Marys University campus was damaged and tail light broken.

10:32 p.m.  Charges of fifth degree domestic assault 9causing fear, causing harm) were referred against Tracey Lynn Volkman, 43, Winona, following an incident at a residence on the 1050 blcok of East Wabasha Street.

Monday

5:56 a.m.  Charges of fifth degree domestic assault (causing fear, causing harm0 were referred against Shawn Lamont Chandler, 47, Winona following an incident at a residence on the 1750 block of West Wabasha Street.

Winona County

Friday

4:22 p.m.  A 15-year-old Rollingstone boy was injured when the ATV he was riding left a train near Hwy. 248 and Co. Rd. 25 and crashed. He was able to crawl to the highway and flag down a passer-by who called 911.

Sunday

1:34 a.m.  Caleb Charles Kasten, 20, La Crescent, Minn., was cited for fourth degree drunken driving, underage drinking and driving, and speeding following a traffic stop on Hwy. 61 just north of the Houston County line.

Monday

12:23 a.m.  Charges of fifth degree possession of a controlled substance (methamphetamine), and possession of drug paraphernalia were referred by St. Charles Police against Tanner Jon Woodburn, 18, Rochester, Minn., following a traffic stop on Hwy. 61.
If you walked past the produce area at Midtown Foods Monday afternoon, you would have had the unusual option of speaking to a member of Congress as you picked up your veggies.

He calls it Congress on Your Corner, and U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., was holding court almost within arms reach of the apples, but, he said, thats how it should be.

When legislators can get by with huge majorities in their district, they no longer need to stand in the tomato aisle, Walz said. The problem with gerrymandering Congressional districts, Walz said, is that it creates a lack of competition.

Walz, who is running for his sixth term, said that the Congress on Your Corner meetings were an opportunity for him to meet with people and get the general pulse of the district.

People are frustrated, Walz said. People express their concerns.

The meetings were started at grocery stores specifically in 2007, Walz said, because its a good place to get a number of people who arent expecting the opportunity to voice their opinions to someone.

The line got up to about eight people at its longest, but those who spoke to him talked at length on a number of issues.

Veterans came with their concerns about the Veterans Administration, seniors with concerns about Social Security, others were there to talk about the oil industry or how the two major political parties finance themselves.

Laurie Sell, who was there to speak to Walz about the oil industry among other things, said she wanted to express her opinion but the event itself seemed part of a standard procedure for election years.

Sell said she had seen Walz in St. Charles at another grocery store in the past.

This is typical, Sell said. The average person really has little impact on the government.

Still, there were a several people waiting for most of the hour-and-a-half Walz was in the store.

Sara Severs, Walzs deputy chief of staff, said the stop was Walzs last before going back to Washington D.C. to resume work, but they would be scheduling more as soon as possible.

Severs said they havent had any topics that dominate what people wanted to talk about, and the questions and concerns range from very individual to very broad.

Severs said they are trying to get into as many grocery stores as possible throughout the year and be where its accessible to folks.

I think were always trying to figure out how to maximize our time with things like this, Severs said.

Walz is up for election in November, and running against previous opponent Jim Hagedorn for the 1st Congressional District seat.

In 2014 Walz won 54 percent of the vote to Hagedorns 46 percent, and raised significantly more funds in his campaign.
No matter what you think of President Barack Obamas time in the White House, his courageous decision to invest billions in the fight against climate change should guarantee him a place in the Pantheon of Earths Greatest Heroes.

While old, 20th-century businesses complain about the effects of the Environmental Protection Agencys Clean Power Plan, the new business boomers of this century  solar energy, wind power, vegetarian agriculture and mass transit  will profit handsomely.

The 2016 proposed budget Obama delivered to Congress earlier this year pretty much guarantees that, if Congress signs on. If it doesnt, an election victory that puts Hillary Clinton in the White House and Democrats in control of Capitol Hill means Obamas stringent new environmental policies will move forward and, perhaps, actually be strengthened.

If a sharply divided Congress remains after Novembers elections it will, according to The New York Times, raise serious doubts about Americas ability to deliver on Obamas pledge at Decembers Paris climate summit to sharply reduce carbon emissions and thus put pressure on China and India, the worlds two other largest polluters of carbon dioxide, to follow suit.

Theres no doubt that the EPAs Clean Power Plan will drastically transform and hopefully improve life for every American. Here are a few of the largest changes looming on the horizon:

 Over the next two decades or so, the gas-guzzling cars and SUVs so ubiquitous on U.S. roads and highways today will be phased out and replaced by driverless cars mostly powered by electricity and perhaps solar and natural gas as well.

 The livestock industry, especially red meat, will began to fade away  replaced by large farms producing more vegetables and fruits. The expected large surplus can be shipped to the malnourished and sometimes starving masses of India and Africa  helping restore our currently tarnished image abroad and, perhaps ushering in a new era of global peace and prosperity.

 Americans in the third decade of this century will find themselves living in smaller, but more convenient homes with air conditioning and heating powered by solar, nuclear and wind energy. Manicured lawns of green grasses will be replaced by artificial green polymer substitutes or, as is done in many places in the desert Southwest, with statuary surrounded carefully by sculpted patterns of sand and pebbles.

These changes, dramatic as they may seem, will be gradually phased in over the next 24 years.

The changes may sound draconian, but they will become popular in a very short time. Most Americans will find themselves living healthier, longer and more enjoyable lives with greater links to their fellow Americans and the rest of the global community.

As they celebrate Earth Day, Americans should think back about all the many environmental gains that have occurred since the original celebration in 1970.

The improvements in air and water quality in the last 46 years have been truly phenomenal. Yet much remains to be done around the world.

Challenges to the global environment remain, especially in the Middle East and Africa, where Islamic terrorists have become entrenched and pose a coiled and deadly threat to America and the free world.

By embracing global leadership on todays environmental issues the United States can truly become, as our second president, John Adams, once advised, a nation that leads by example and not coercion.
According to the Baseera poll, 16 percent of Egyptians have not heard about the disputed islands

A survey carried out by Egypts Baseera polling centre revealed that 30 percent of Egyptians polled believe that the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir are rightfully Egyptian, whereas 23 percent believe they are Saudi.

The independent polling centre added in a Tuesday statement that 31 percent of Egyptians polled did not know whether the islands were Egyptian or Saudi, while 16 percent said they had not heard about the two disputed islands.

The Egyptian government announced two weeks ago that it was signing a deal with Saudi Arabia to redraw maritime borders to put the two islands within Saudi regional waters.

The announcement has caused uproar among many Egyptians, with several political opposition parties and movements as well as public figures denouncing the deal.

According to the results of the Baseera survey, 38 percent of participants under 30 years of age believe the islands are Egyptian, while 30 percent of those over 50 believe they are Saudi.

The poll, which was conducted by phone between 18 and 20 April, had a sample of 1,541 citizens over the age of 18 across all Egyptian governorates.

According to Baseera, the surveys margin of error was less than 3 percent.

Over the past two weeks, the government has presented documents which it says prove the islands are indeed Saudi, which opponents have rejected.

The agreement is yet to be put before Egypt's House of Representatives.

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WBBM (780 AM) reported on a April 15 rally in Chicago, in which protesters were calling for the citys minimum wage to be raised to $15 an hour. The reporter interviewed a passing motorist, who said that if the protesters wanted $15 an hour, they should go to college.

The response was blunt  and not entirely accurate, since $15-an-hour jobs that dont require a college education do exist  but the sentiment was fundamentally correct.

News earlier this month that California and New York will gradually raise the state minimum wage there to $15 an hour was greeted with joy by those working for the minimum  and apprehension for those of us with an eye for unintended consequences.

It is reasonable to suggest that raising the minimum wage will stimulate local economies at the retail level, as minimum-wage workers who get a raise are more likely to spend the additional money than to save it.

But take in consideration the long-range implications of the plans of the owners of DogHaus, a chain of about 20 franchise restaurants in the West, which in response to the increased California minimum wage may have customers pick up their meals at the counters in two company-owned stores instead of using servers to carry food to tables, the Associated Press reported April 13. The Pasadena, California.-based company is also looking at hiring more experienced workers who can shoulder more responsibilities than entry-level staffers who earn minimum wage. For example, a cashier might now take on some administrative tasks. That way, DogHaus could hire fewer people, co-owner Andre Vener said.

If a business owner such as Vener is planning to hire fewer people, doesnt it stand to reason that those who arent capable of taking on additional responsibilities  whose skills are only worth the present $10-an-hour minimum wage in California  will be out of a job? And that an increased minimum wage could make it that much harder for the newly jobless to find another job?

We arent given more than minimum wage in low-skilled jobs because most of us start those jobs with no job skills at all. Any of us who worked at a fast-food restaurant in high school  or any other job we were capable of landing at age 16  can attest to how little we knew on the first day on the job.

This is how capitalism works. You are paid according to what the market has determined is the value of your labor. Those with more skills make more money.

The teenager working the grill at a fast-food place in Wisconsin is only getting $7.25 an hour, but she can raise her hourly wage considerably if she trains under a chef and develops the skill to prepare food worthy of a restaurant with servers and linen tablecloths.

States should proceed with caution with regard to raising the minimum wage. The cost of living is considerably higher in California and New York than, say, Milwaukee or Racine. And the cost of living in Racine is higher than that of living in Rochester or Waterford.

Raising the minimum wage will cause employers to expect more from the individual employee, not merely pay more money for the same skills. Raise it too fast, and youll have low-skilled workers unable to find work.

If you want $15 an hour, you have to have the ability to do a job that pays $15 an hour.
Students in Beaver Dam Middle School got a chance to glimpse the future of education Tuesday when a representative from Google brought a product to see the reaction from students.

It is something that Google has that is brand new, BDMS social studies teacher Paul Friedemann said.

Friedemann will be the coordinator of technology for the Beaver Dam Unified School District next year.

Two of the social studies classrooms at the school were able to use the virtual reality product. The representative from Google went between the two classrooms but was unable to talk about the product or the students using it.

Currently, it is a small cardboard device with glasses and a cell phone in it, Friedemann said.

You just hold it up to your face and look through it, Friedemann told the students. You dont need to move forward or back.

Each student was given the glasses and was able to see various national monuments such as Mount Rushmore and the Statute of Liberty. The teachers were provided a tablet in order to choose the location the students visited as well as to point out objects at the monuments.

Friedemann said they visited the U.S. monuments because of the civics lessons they were learning at the time of the testing.

Google travels around the country testing these, and we were lucky enough to be picked, Friedemann said.

Friedemann filled out a form online and was chosen three weeks later to put together a schedule for classes for the day.

I think they are really cool, seventh grader Maddy Sostre said. Its like you are almost really there.

When the product is ready for schools to purchase, it will be made of plastic and will be sturdy, Friedemann said. It will provide a nice opportunity for students to see areas they are studying but would not be able to visit such as Egypt or a coral reef.
Accident  Friday at 10:25 a.m., a semi truck collided with a building in the 1200 block of Green Valley Road. The 41-year-old man driving the truck was cited with disorderly conduct and obstruction.

Disorderly conduct  Friday at 1:30 p.m., a woman in the 900 block of South Lincoln Avenue reported that a man assaulted her.

Accident  Friday at 1:53 p.m., a vehicle hit a gas pump in the 800 block of Park Avenue. No gas was spilled.

Misc.  Friday at 1:58 p.m., someone in the 200 block of East Third Street told police that children were running through yards with a gun and a dead rabbit.

Battery  Friday at 4:20 p.m., a father reported that his son was assaulted at Beaver Dam Middle School, 108 Fourth St.

Vandalism  Friday at 6:34 p.m., someone at Coyote Gas and Liquor, 1300 N. Spring St. reported that three children were kicking doors and throwing rocks at windows in the area. Police met with the children and warned them for trespassing.

Traffic  Friday at 7:44 p.m., a man told police that a driver intentionally tried to run him over near Caseys General Store, 906 N. University St.

Intoxicated person  Saturday at 3:18 a.m., a man reported that two men were intoxicated and verbally fighting in the 1000 block of West Burnett Street.

Suspicious  Saturday at 9:45 a.m., a woman in the 100 block of Knaup Drive reported that a neighbor was staring at her sister.

Accident  Saturday at 12:50 p.m., a man and a woman were involved in a vehicle accident near Chase Bank, 124 N. Spring St. Both vehicles were driven away.

Intoxicated person  Saturday at 6:45 p.m., someone told police that a 46-year-old man was stumbling near the North Center Street and Fourth Street intersection.

Animal  Saturday at 7:49 p.m., someone in the Beaver Dam Community Hospital, 707 S. University Ave., told police that a dog in the 100 block Winn Terrace bit a man.

Misc.  Sunday at 3:58 a.m., someone in the 100 block at Lake Crest Drive told police he/she could smell gasoline. Police found that a vehicle was leaking gasoline. The owner was advised to move his vehicle.

Accident  Sunday at 6:32 a.m., a vehicle driven by a 52-year-old man struck a parked vehicle near the West Burnett Street and North Center Street intersection.

Hit and run  Sunday at 1:15 p.m., a 50-year-old woman reported a hit and run near Thirsty Beaver, 500 Madison St.

Accident  Sunday at 1:54 p.m., a 29-year-old man and 61-year-old woman were involved in a vehicle accident near McDonalds, 840 Park Ave.

Drugs  Sunday at 2:52 p.m., someone in the 900 block of South Lincoln Avenue told police that he/she found a marijuana pipe in the yard.

Animal  Sunday at 3:09 p.m., a man reported that he was bit by a dog in the 500 block of Grove Street.

Retail theft  Sunday at 3:48 p.m., someone at Sally Beauty, 100 Frances Lane, told police that a woman attempted to steal hair extensions.

Theft  Sunday at 4:40 p.m., a man reported that someone stole money from his mother in the 200 block of Industrial Drive.

Traffic  Sunday at 9:25 p.m., a man reported that a water bottle was thrown at his car in the 1600 block of North Spring Street.

Traffic  Sunday at 9:28 p.m., someone reported that drivers were drag racing in the 1200 block of Green Valley Road.

Disorderly conduct  Monday at 2:27 a.m., a 56-year-old man was involved in a verbal fight with a 34-year-old woman and a 39-year-old man near Walmart Supercenter, 120 Frances Lane. Police advised that everyone cease contact.

Animal  Monday at 12:34 p.m., a dog bit a 34-year-old man in the 100 block of Lake Crest Drive.

Theft  Monday at 1:49 p.m., a man reported the theft of medication in the 100 block of Lake Crest Drive.

Accident  Monday at 3:21 p.m., a woman and a man were involved in an accident near Walgreens, 607 Park Ave.

Vandalism  Monday at 3:23 p.m., a man reported vandalism to his vehicle in the 100 block of Lake Crest Drive.

Disorderly conduct  Monday at 3:54 p.m., a mother told police that her 13-year-old son was bullied at Beaver Dam Middle School, 108 Fourth St.
The head of parliament's Human Rights Committee said he was against street protests organised on 25 April because they lead to 'fueling political divisions and congestion'

Egyptian MPs were highly divided on street protests organised yesterday over the ceding of the two Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia, with MP Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat telling reporters Tuesday that he is against all forms of protests.

"I stand against protests, whether they are in favour or against the new agreement between Egypt and Saudi Arabia on Tiran and Sanafir," El-Sadat said, arguing that "protests do nothing but fuel political escalation, divisions and congestion."

El-Sadat, nephew of late president Anwar El-Sadat, is the newly-elected chairman of parliament's Human Rights Committee.

"The new deal between Egypt and Saudi Arabia on Tiran and Sanafir is a very thorny issue, and I think the final say on this agreement should not be left to parliament alone," he said, adding that "I think there should be a political dialogue on this national issue."

"All political forces and civil society organisations, including opponents and proponents, should take part in this dialogue, which should be aired live on television," he said.

"After this dialogue, which should lead to creating some kind of national consensus, the deal can come to parliament so it can give its final say in an objective and transparent way."

"If the government made a grave mistake by discussing this agreement in closed-door meetings, parliament should not repeat this mistake," he said.

El-Sadat also indicated that he, in his capacity as chairman of parliament's Human Rights Committee, talked with a number of senior interior ministry officials, urging them to release all those who were detained before or during protests on 25 April.

"I told them to release those who were not involved in any violent acts, but interior ministry officials insisted that they have the right to take preventative measures against protesters," said El-Sadat.

"Interior ministry officials said they had obtained information that some activists were planning to exploit the 25 April protests to spread violence and chaos, and for this reason they moved early within their constitutional and legal rights to thwart these attempts."

As for those detained during protests, El-Sadat assured that "interior ministry officials said those who were not involved in any violent acts or affiliated with any unlawful groups would be released."

On the other hand, El-Sadat condemned protests that were organised in support of the Tiran and Sanafir deal.

"It was disgusting and provocative for me to see that some of those who were celebrating Sinai Liberation Day at Tahrir Square on 25 April were brandishing Saudi flags," said El-Sadat, insisting that "with all respect to Saudi Arabia and its pro-Egypt positions, the 25 April celebrations should have remained 100 percent Egyptian."

Kamal Amer, a former chief of military intelligence and the newly-elected chairman of parliament's Defence and National Security Committee, condemned the protests, describing them as part of a conspiracy aimed at destabilising Egypt.

"All available documents show that this is a done deal; that the two islands of Tiran and Sanafir are part of Saudi Arabia's maritime territory, so why should protests be organised?" said Amer.

Amer is a member of the Protectors of a Nation Party, which organised demonstrations in support of the Egyptian-Saudi deal at the Tahrir and Abdin squares in Cairo on 25 April.

"We decided to organise these demonstrations to raise the awareness of citizens on the facts about this deal, and that it should not be a matter of political conflict or street protests," said Amer, adding that "Tiran and Sanafir were in Egypt's possession for military reasons, and now it is the time they go back into Saudi hands."

Amer also indicated that the Defence and National Security Committee will be one of several parliamentary committees that will be entrusted with discussing the deal.

"We could all merge into one committee to take charge of reviewing the deal, with all documents and maps attached," said Amer.

El-Sadat said the first priority of his human rights committee will be focused on reviewing the performance of the interior ministry.

"Policemen should know that their performance will face parliamentary scrutiny in the coming period," said El-Sadat.

El-Sadat disclosed that he plans to open a dialogue with interior ministry officials on two important issues that have recently received international criticism; forced disappearance and crowded prisons in Egypt.

El-Sadat also indicated that he and other MPs, including Mohamed El-Orabi, a former foreign minister and the newly-elected chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee, plan to hold talks with the Italian parliament.

"We hope we will be able to pay a visit to the Italian parliament very soon to discuss the issue of Giulio Regeni  an Italian student who was murdered under mysterious circumstances in Cairo last January," said El-Sadat, arguing that "we feel that some Italian parliamentarians do not want the issue of Regenis murder to be politicised, and do not want friendly relations between Egypt and Italy to be disrupted due to this case."

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Wabash National Corporation announced it has been honored with 2015 Plant Safety Awards from the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association (TTMA) for tank trailer manufacturing operations in Wisconsin and Oregon.

Wabash Nationals operation in New Lisbon, which manufactures Walker brand tank trailers, received the 2015 Plant Safety Award for tank manufacturing. Awards are given to tank and trailer manufacturers based on the number of man-hours worked. The companys New Lisbon Operations won in Category B, for plants that reported between 300,000 and 750,000 man-hours.

In addition, the companys operation in Portland, Oregon, which manufactures Beall brand tank trailers, was selected for the Most Improved Tank Plant Award.

Being recognized by TTMA for exemplary safety performance is a testament to the operational excellence our associates deliver every day, said Dave Hodorff, vice president of operations, Tank Trailer business. This achievement is the result of our entire companys commitment to safety for all of our associates, which has now been awarded to our tank trailer business for the 10th year. We congratulate our entire team for a job well done.

Award determinations are based on direct comparison of injury data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administrations (OSHA) Annual Summary Form 300A, the same data used by the National Safety Council and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The awards were presented to Mark Weber, group president, Diversified Products, on April 7, during TTMAs 74th Annual Convention in La Quinta, California.

This year marks the 45th presentation of TTMAs Plant Safety Awards. TTMA is a member-based organization established to build confidence between manufacturers of truck trailers, cargo tanks, intermodal containers and their suppliers to bring about a mutual understanding of the problems confronting all manufacturers.
The New Lisbon Common Council approved a number of resolutions April 18, clearing the way for progress on a new municipal well and upgrades on a waste water treatment plant and lift station.

With state officials having notified the city of the need for an additional well two years ago, plans have been proceeding on time for the citys seventh well to come online in June of next year.

To fund the newest well, New Lisbon obtained a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant and on Monday night the council approved resolutions to seek loans for safe drinking water and clean water regulation commitments.

The whole purpose for this well is  we have enough capacity now  if a well breaks down, they still want to have enough capacity for the city, Mayor Lloyd Chase said, noting that the well is considered a necessary back up.

In addition to the resolutions pertaining to Well #7, the council also moved to approve applications for financial assistance from the State of Wisconsin Environmental Improvement Fund in an effort to make upgrades to its waste water treatment plant and the prison lift station.

Hydrant flushing

The city will be flushing fire hydrants April 25  May 6. The flushing should not inconvenience residents, though residential water may become temporarily discolored.

The citys website states, Although the water may not be visually appealing, it is safe to drink and continues to meet all federal and state drinking water standards. There is no health hazard associated with the discolored water. For answers to further concerns related to the flushing, visit http://www.newlisbon.net/events.htm.
Spring flooding in the Necedah area has been a reoccurring problem for several years, but its gotten worse with little signs of slowing down.

On Monday, officials from both Juneau and Wood counties met for a public forum and a roundtable discussion to address the issue and try to find solutions at village/town hall in Necedah.

The Yellow River watershed area in northeastern Juneau County typically experiences seasonal flooding, but the problem hit a tipping point in mid-March. Unseasonably warm temperatures melted snow at a faster rate, causing ditches and roadways to flood. According to a report prepared by Juneau County officials, flood water that historically flowed south and east of the Necedah area is beginning to move north and east, causing damage to culverts that cant handle the access water.

The report was informative and bold, stating clearly how large the flooding issue has become in recent years. Congressional and public officials at all levels need to be put on notice that if a fatality occurs due to neglect to take action on this pressing issue, responsible parties will and should be held accountable.

The report went on to state that no present Yellow River watershed plan exists today as well as no coordinated effort to communicate or regulate water discharge and no governing official or private individual overseeing any water manipulation within the Yellow River watershed.

Mondays meeting featured a strong turnout of area residents and public officials, including State Representative Ed Brooks (R-Reedsburg), who represents all of Juneau County in the 50th Assembly District. While Brooks didnt have any clear solutions to the flooding problem, he took notes, listened and offered his opinion, especially during the roundtable discussion.

Several residents expressed concern that water from large cranberry farms in southwestern Wood and northern Juneau counties could be contributing to the spring flooding. Necedah Town Chairman Terry Taft said local cranberry farmers were invited to Mondays meeting, but failed to show. Taft would like to schedule another meeting, hoping growers attend, along with a representative from the Wisconsin Cranberry Growers Association.

Large ice dams built up between Lake Dexter and Necedah along the watershed may also be a factor. Necedah has a large dam along the Yellow River in the northern end of the village, but Village Administrator Roger Herried said the dam isnt designed to prevent a flood event.

Ultimately, what we do here, it does end up going south and could affect the Mauston area, Herried said.

Dredging in local ponds could help alleviate flooding somewhat, but its likely it wont make much of an impact. Juneau County Highway Commissioner Dennis Weiss said a hydrology study to gauge the movement patterns of the water could be the best initial step to addressing the issue.

During the public session, it was suggested that the county lacks proper drainage and retention ponds to handle water runoff, especially with large cranberry bogs in the area. Agriculture production north of Highway 21 has increased a great deal in the last 25 years, according to one resident.

We have floods like this every year and people need to sit down and talk about it, one resident said.

Chad Schooley, Wood County Director of Parks and Forestry was also present at the meeting and Taft talked to Schooley about working with Wood County Emergency Management to handle spring flooding.
Air strikes and rocket attacks by Syrian government forces west of Aleppo killed five rescue workers overnight, a monitoring group and volunteers working nearby said.

The raids hit a centre for the Syrian Civil Defence, also known as the "White Helmets", who work as first responders in opposition-held territory where medical infrastructure has broken down.

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USDA announces $1 billion debt relief for 36,000 farmers

The USDA announced a program to provide $1.3B in debt relief for about 36,000 farmers who have fallen behind on loan payments or face foreclosure.
Turkey has struck a deal with the United States to deploy American light multiple rocket launchers on its border with Syria to combat the Islamic State group (IS), according to the foreign ministry.

The High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) "will be deployed on the Turkish border in May as part of an agreement" with Washington, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview published Tuesday.

The system is being brought in "so we will be able to hit Daesh targets more effectively," he told the Haberturk newspaper, using an acronym for IS group.

Turkey, a member of US-led coalition against the IS group, has increased its strikes in Syria after a series of deadly attacks on its soil blamed on the militants.

Ankara also allows US jets to use its air base in southern Turkey for air bombardments on the extremist group.

In recent weeks, the Turkish border town of Kilis has come under frequent rocket attack from Syria, prompting the army to respond with howitzer fire.

The rockets fired from IS group-held territory into Turkey have killed 17 people and wounded 61 since January 18, sparking protests in a town already under pressure as the only place where Syrian refugees now outnumber Turkish locals.

Cavusoglu said HIMARS would allow Turkey to hit IS group positions within a 90-kilometre (56 mile) range, while Turkish artillery has a more limited range of 40 kilometres.

The aim is to gain control of the so-called Manbij Gap, a backdoor border route favoured by IS group for smuggling militants into and out of Syria.

Turkey wants to establish a safe zone in the 98 kilometre stretch between Manbij and the border in which to shelter Syrian refugees, the foreign minister said.

Ankara has long pressed for the creation of safe zones in the war-torn country. German Chancellor Angela Merkel this weekend said the zones were "of the utmost immediate importance also in our negotiations for a ceasefire" in Syria.

But Washington is set against the idea, saying it would require a no-fly zone, something that could lead to conflicts with Russian planes flying over Syria.

"As a practical matter, sadly, it is very difficult to see how it would operate short of us essentially being willing to militarily take over a big chunk of that country," US President Barack Obama said during a visit to Germany at the weekend.

Turkey's cabinet on Monday discussed additional measures to protect the border town of Kilis from rocket fire, with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu saying Ankara would increase its military presence there and bring in extra drones.

"With additional drones, the border will be monitored and attacks will be known beforehand and stopped," he told parliament on Tuesday.

"We will repond immediately to those who launch attacks against Turkey," he said. "Every step will be taken."

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Saudi Arabia executed a Syrian murder convict on Tuesday, bringing to 87 the number of people put to death in the conservative kingdom this year.

Ahmed al-Ramadan was found guilty of stabbing and strangling to death a Saudi as the victim was leaving his home for dawn prayers, the interior ministry said, without specifying their relationship.

Authorities carried out the death sentence in the Qassim region, northwest of Riyadh.

Most people put to death in Saudi Arabia are beheaded with a sword.

The executions so far this year include 47 for "terrorism" carried out in a single day on January 2.

Murder and drug trafficking cases account for the majority of Saudi executions.

Amnesty International said Saudi Arabia had the third highest number of people put to death last year, at least 158.

That was far behind Pakistan, which put to death 326 people, and Saudi Arabia's regional rival Iran, which executed at least 977, said Amnesty, whose figures exclude secretive China.

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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a new unity government to be quickly set up after rebel leader Riek Machar returned to Juba on Tuesday and was sworn in as vice president.

Ban said Machar's return "marks a new phase in the implementation of the peace agreement" and called "for the immediate formation of the transitional government of national unity," said a statement from his spokesman.

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W&M faculty in the media this month

Timothy Zick is the Mills E. Goodwin, Jr. professor of law. He was recently quoted in U.S. News & World Report about the First Amendment's establishment clause. Photo by Stephen Salpukas

Rom Lipcius (left)is a professor of marine sciences at William & Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS). He was recently quoted in the Daily Press about the resurgence of the Chesapeake blue crab. Courtesy Photo

Laurie Sanderson is a professor of biology at William & Mary. She was recently quoted in the Associated Press about creating a clog-resistant filter. Courtesy Photo

Mark Hinders is a professor of applied science at William & Mary. He was recently quoted in Forbes magazine about creating acoustic "scarecrows" to help prevent mid-flight accidents between birds and aircraft. Photo by Stephen Salpukas Photo - of - Hide Caption

Following are selected examples of William & Mary faculty and staff members in the media. - Ed.

Acoustic scarecrows: A humane, non-lethal way to reduce bird strikes?

In an April 18 Forbes article, Mark Hinders, professor of applied science at William & Mary, discussed the way acoustic scarecrows will help prevent midflight accidents for aircraft.

According to the article, an estimate of nearly $1 billion in damages to both civilian and military aircraft is due to bird strikes. In addition, the strikes have caused the deaths of 250 people since the late 90s.

Since this is such a serious matter, airport operations managers have tried to use a variety of approaches. These methods include pyrotechnics, firearms and falconry. But authorities have found that these techniques do not work for very long.

You set out propane cannons, theyll habituate. You broadcast predator calls, theyll learn to ignore them, said Hinders. About the only things that work to exclude birds are nets, guns and poison but those are expensive and/or bad manners.

This puzzle inspired Hinders and John Swaddle a professor of biology at W&M to develop an effective non-lethal deterrent.

Since birds are sensitive to some noises and particular sound frequencies, Hinders and Swaddle designed a Sonic Net to disrupt bird conversations.

With the use of colored noise they found that birds are annoyed by it and disperse.

Its like the cocktail party problem, said Hinders. Youre in a room and a lot of people are talking and it can be difficult to follow an individual conversation. It doesnt even have to be especially loud. Its just that all those other peoples words fill in the empty spaces. And so you go to a quiet room so that you can hear.

Fish mouth inspires William & Mary biologist to design clog-resistant filter

In an April 16 Associated Press article, Laurie Sanderson, professor of biology at the William & Mary, discussed a way to create a clog-resistant filter.

According to the article, Sanderson looked at aquatic life such as the paddle fish and basking shark to see how and why they managed to filter particles so efficiently.

"When we looked inside the mouth, what we thought we would see is spaghetti caught on a strainer," said Sanderson. "But what we found in the species studied was particles dashed along at high speed toward the back of the throat toward the esophagus, and they didn't get stuck. They very rarely interacted with all those complex beautiful structures inside the fish mouth  the particles tended to go straight toward the back of the mouth."

Using what they noticed in fish, Sanderson and her students improved a commonly-used process called cross-flow filtration which clogs up very easily.

"We are able to stop the structure from clogging immediately with all the particulates that are entering the mouth," Sanderson said. "And we're able to concentrate particles in specific regions of the mouth that a standard filter is unable to do."

Clawing back

In an April 15 Daily Press article, Rom Lipcius, professor of marine sciences at William & Marys Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), talked about the resurgence of the Chesapeake blue crab.

According to the article, the blue crab population has been recovering over the past two years due to fishing regulations set by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC).

The result of the annual bay-wide winter dredge survey stated that the crab population has improved 35 percent from last year.

Because crab numbers can fluctuate naturally for numerous reasons including habitat changes, storms and the populations of the aquatic species that prey on them, two years do not make a trend so the numbers are looked at with caution.

This news hasnt deterred the optimism of Lipcius. He believes the regulations and management methods set forth by VRMC have been successful and that improvement in the blue crab population will continue to increase years to come.

The management measures put in place in 2008 triggered the recovery of the population since 2009, Lipcius said, and provided resilience in the population to recover from natural disturbances.

Bible wouldn't stay Tennessee's state book for long, some experts say

In an April 6 article in U.S. News & World Report, W&M Mills E. Goodwin, Jr. Professor of Law Timothy Zick spoke about a bill in Tennessee that would make the Holy Bible its official state book.

According to U.S. News, the state legislature gave the bill final approval in early April. However, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery stated that the proposal was against the First Amendments Establishment Clause and the states constitution.

Legal experts from around the country including William & Mary were in agreement with Slaterys opinion.

Singling out the Holy Bible for special recognition raises serious Establishment Clause and state constitutional concerns, said Zick. The adoption of the Holy Bible would signal the states official approval of the good book  in the same way that adopting the Latin cross as the states official symbol would endorse religion.
The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday voiced alarm over Israeli occupation authorities' statements about the Golan Heights on Syria's border with Israel, adding that its status remains unchanged.

Earlier this month Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the Israeli occupation authorities would never relinquish the Golan Heights, in a signal to Russia and the United States that the strategic plateau should be excluded from any deal on Syria's future.

"Council members expressed their deep concern over recent Israeli statements about the Golan, and stressed that the status of the Golan remains unchanged," China's UN Ambassador Liu Jieyi, president of the 15-nation Security Council this month, told reporters after a closed-door meeting.

He added that council resolution 497 of 1981 made clear that Israel's decision at the time to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the Golan was "null and void and without international legal effect."

Netanyahu's April 17 declaration came on the occasion of the first Israeli cabinet session on the Golan since the area was captured from Syria in a 1967 war and annexed in 1981.

Israeli occupation authorities' annexation of the Golan has not won international recognition.

Past US-backed Israeli-Syrian peace efforts were predicated on a return of the Golan, where some 23,000 Israelis now live alongside roughly the same number of Druse Arabs loyal to Damascus.

Liu said the council supported a negotiated arrangement to settle the issue of the Golan.

There is a UN peacekeeping force deployed in the Golan called UNDOF. Established in 1974, UNDOF monitors a ceasefire line that has separated Israelis from Syrians in the Golan Heights since a 1973 war.

The force has had to pull back from a number of positions on the Golan due to fighting between militants and Syrian government forces in the five-year-old Syrian civil war. Its peacekeepers have been fired upon and captured by militants on several occasions.

* This story was edited by Ahram Online.

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A explosion on a bus killed three passengers and wounded six in the Armenian capital Yerevan on Monday evening, the ex-Soviet nation's emergencies ministry said.

"Three people died in a passenger bus explosion on Monday evening in (Yerevan's) Halabyan street," the spokesman of the emergency situations ministry, Nikolai Grigorian, told AFP.

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Islamic militants in the Philippines have beheaded a Canadian hostage, raising fears for more than 20 other foreigners held captive on remote islands, with troops and police vowing Tuesday to hunt down the extremists.

The man's head was found Monday dumped outside city hall on Jolo, a mountainous and jungle-clad island in the far south of the Philippines that is a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf Islamist group.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Filipino authorities identified the victim as John Ridsdel, a retiree in his late 60s who was kidnapped seven months ago from aboard a yacht, along with another Canadian man, a Norwegian and a Filipina woman.

"This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau said in Ottawa.

The four were abducted at a marina near the major city of Davao, more than 500 kilometres (300 miles) from Jolo, as part of a wave of abductions by the Abu Sayyaf -- a loose network of militants who for more than two decades have run a lucrative kidnapping-for-ransom business.

The other three were fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Hall's girlfriend Marites Flor and Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad.

Six weeks after the abduction, gunmen released a video of their hostages held in a jungle setting, demanding the equivalent of $21 million each for the safe release of the three foreigners.

The men were forced to beg for their lives on camera, and similar videos posted over several months showed the hostages looking increasingly frail.

In the most recent video, Ridsdel said his captors would kill him on April 25 if a ransom of $6.4 million was not paid.

Hours after the deadline passed, police in the Philippines said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, which is about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from Manila.

Ridsdel, a former journalist, oil executive and sailing enthusiast, had moved to the Philippines to manage a gold mine before retiring.

Trudeau said Canada was working with the Philippines to pursue and prosecute the killers, and that efforts were under way to obtain the release of the other hostages.

In the Philippines, security forces said they were setting up checkpoints across Jolo to try to block the movements of the gunmen.

"There will be no let-up in the determined efforts of the joint task group's intensive military and law enforcement operations to neutralise these lawless elements," said a statement released Tuesday by the national police and military.

Philippine security forces have made similar statements many times against the Abu Sayyaf and often failed to achieve their objectives.

On April 9, 18 Filipino soldiers were killed as they waged a day-long battle against Abu Sayyaf gunmen on Basilan, an island next to Jolo that is also one of the group's strongholds.

The Abu Sayyaf is a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since the 1970s.

Authorities say the group is currently holding more than 20 foreigners after a recent wave of abductions.

These include 18 Indonesian and Malaysian sailors who were abducted from tugboats near the southern Philippines over the past month.

The Abu Sayyaf is also believed to be holding a Dutch bird-watcher kidnapped in 2012, while it recently released a retired Italian priest after six months in captivity.

One of the Abu Sayyaf's biggest recent windfalls is believed to have come in 2014 when it claimed to have been paid more than $5 million for the release of a German couple abducted from aboard their yacht in the southwest Philippines.

The Abu Sayyaf's leaders have recently declared allegiance to the Islamic State group. However, analysts say it is mainly focused on ransom money.

"I don't see the Abu Sayyaf as an ideological threat," Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asian security expert based at the National War College in the United States, told AFP.

"But they use the threat of terror and the threat of being part of Islamic State group to very effectively raise the psychological stakes."

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French and Russian nuclear utilities extend collaboration

26 April 2016

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French utility EDF has signed an agreement to extend its cooperation with Rosenergoatom, the operator of Russia's civil nuclear power plants. The companies will cooperate in reactor operations, decommissioning and waste management.

The signing of the agreement (Image: Rosatom)

The agreement was signed by EDF's executive director for nuclear power plant operations, Dominique Miniere, and Rosenergoatom's first deputy general director, Alexander Shutikov, in Saint Petersburg on 21 April during a meeting of the board of governors of the World Association of Nuclear Operators.

Through the agreement, EDF and Rosenergoatom intend to develop cooperation in areas such as the maintenance, modernization and operating period extension of nuclear power plants, as well as decommissioning and radioactive waste management. They will also conduct research and development into operating issues.

Shutikov said, "The signing of this agreement is a continuation of more than 20 years of successful and mutually beneficial cooperation between the two largest energy companies in the nuclear field, who see great potential in terms of use of the experience gained during the implementation of joint projects." He said the aim of the cooperation is to ensure the safety and efficiency of nuclear power plant operation.

"Our collaboration with Rosenergoatom - which began in 1994 - has blossomed wonderfully," said Miniere. "On certain issues of nuclear safety, we have moved to the operation, maintenance and repair, and the construction of new units."

Rosenergoatom is a subsidiary of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom. It is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the country's ten nuclear power plants. EDF operates France's 58 nuclear power reactors.

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US producers call for suspension of federal inventory transfers

26 April 2016

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An organization representing US uranium producers has called on the Department of Energy (DOE) to cease transfers of excess uranium from federal inventory until the uranium market recovers from its current oversupplied state.

The Uranium Producers of America said in a statement that the sale by the DOE of inventory into a market that is oversupplied and with persistent low uranium prices has a negative impact on the uranium market and the domestic uranium industry.

The DOE sells more than 5 million pounds U3O8 (1923 tU) per year - more than double expected uranium production this year - the UPA said. Proceeds from the sale of federal inventory are used to fund the cleanup of legacy federal government nuclear facilities, such as the former Paducah and Portsmouth uranium enrichment plants.

"We can stomach the ups and downs of a commodity market, but it's harder to take when a great deal of the pressure we are facing comes from the federal government selling uranium in an already oversupplied market," UPA president Harry Anthony said. "While we recognize these cleanup projects are important, they should be funded in the regular appropriations process, and the Department of Energy should cease further uranium transfers until the market recovers."

The UPA's plea follows Cameco's recent announcement of its plans to scale back uranium production at operations in Canada and the USA in response to market conditions. The uranium producer is deferring the development of new wellfields at its in-situ leach operations at Crow Butte in Nebraska and Smith Ranch-Highland in Wyoming, with the loss of 85 jobs. The combined output of the two operations had made Cameco the largest uranium producer in the USA. The company now expects 2016 production from its US operations to be 1.1 million pounds U3O8 (423 tU), down from a previously expected 1.4 million pounds (539 tU).

The DOE's uranium inventory includes surplus highly enriched uranium, natural uranium and low-enriched uranium, but it is dominated by depleted uranium tails from historic uranium enrichment activities which can be re-enriched for use in nuclear fuel. The DOE's 2008 excess uranium inventory management plan undertakes to dispose of the material through sales or transfers of uranium based on a combined annual quantity of no more than 10% of annual US nuclear fuel requirements. According to the UPA, the country currently imports almost 95% of the uranium it needs to fuel its reactors.

The UPA said that, with Cameco's announcement following similar announcements from other domestic uranium producers, the USA's 2016 uranium production is likely to fall to the lowest levels seen in more than a decade.

The UPA was formed in 1985 to promote a "sustainable and strong domestic uranium mining and conversion industry by fostering free and fair competition while being environmentally sensitive to the communities in which we live and work". Its eight member companies are AUC, Cameco Resources, ConverDyn, Energy Fuels, Uranium Energy Corporation, Uranium One, Ur Energy and General Atomics' Rio Grande Resources.

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Explosion (illustration)

By: Feng Qian

A group of ten terrorists died while building a bomb in a mosque, police in Afghanistan said.

Ghazni police confirmed that the ten terrorists, who were not identified, were making their own explosives to use them to attack police and soldiers.

On Sunday, the terrorists were busy making an IED inside a mosque when one of them exploded prematurely. As a result, all ten terrorists have died.

The mosque was seriously damaged by the explosion.

In April, the ISIS chief of Pakistan, blew himself up as he was planting a bomb on a busy road, police said.

Peshawar Police said that 42-year-old Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, was killed when the bomb he was planting accidentally exploded.

Saeed along with two of his accomplices were killed when the bomb they were planting exploded.
Voters cast ballots in five northeastern states Tuesday, with frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both looking to overwhelm their respective Democratic and Republican rivals in the race for the White House.

A very strong showing in primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island would Clinton on the cusp of Democratic victory, a monumental step in her quest to become the nation's first female commander in chief.

"I don't have the nomination yet," the former secretary of state said in a town hall event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's largest city, on the eve of the vote.

"We're going to work really hard until the polls close tomorrow."

Trump also was expected to extend his formidable lead in the bruising race for the Republican nomination, even as rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich mounted a hasty, and already fraying tag team effort to try to block him.

Kasich agreed to forego campaigning in Indiana, a winner-take-all state that votes May 3, and Cruz will return the favor later in New Mexico and Oregon.

But within hours of the surprise deal, the Ohio governor was already playing it down, saying he was not telling his supporters in Indiana not to vote for him. "What's the big deal?" he said.

Tuesday's voting began at 6 am (1000 GMT) in Connecticut and one hour later in the other states. Polls across all five states close at 8 pm (0000 GMT Wednesday).

Voting was brisk in Maryland. "So far it looks good," said Lucy Freeman, 79, a Democratic precinct chair at a voting station in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

New US citizen Imalka Senahidra, a 53-year-old born in Sri Lanka, was voting for the first time and nervous about "which way the country might go."

"I've always believed in experience and wisdom, so I'll go along with that," she said.

Clinton was favored to win all five state Democratic contests, with polls giving her a double-digit lead over rival Bernie Sanders in Pennsylvania, the biggest state of the bunch with 189 delegates.

Big wins on Tuesday night would put her within striking distance of the Democratic nomination, piling up pressure on Sanders, who has vowed to fight on until the California primary June 7.

"I don't accept there is no path forward. Let's not count our chickens before they're hatched," Sanders said Tuesday in an interview with MSNBC.

"There are five contests today. The state of California -- last I heard the largest state in the United States of America -- has not yet cast a ballot," he said.

Sanders has deflected questions about whether he would actively support a Clinton candidacy if she is the nominee, suggesting it was up to her to win over his passionate young followers.

Trump, meanwhile, was in full attack mode, pouring scorn on the Cruz-Kasich deal as an act of a political desperation.

"You know if you collude in business, or you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail," Trump boomed in Warwick, Rhode Island.

"But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude."

The partnership "shows how weak they are," Trump said. "It shows how pathetic they are."

Cruz told potential voters in Indiana Monday that the deal would give them "a straight and direct choice between our campaign and Donald Trump."

According to a recent CBS poll, Trump leads Indiana with 40 percent of likely Republican voters, compared to 35 percent for Cruz and 20 percent for Kasich.

A Trump loss in Indiana would make it much harder for him to gain the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination in the first round of balloting at the party's convention in Cleveland July 18-21.

If he falls short, Trump runs the risk that his delegates, most of whom are bound to vote for him in only the first round of balloting, will desert him in subsequent rounds.

Cruz in particular has been successfully maneuvering in state party conventions to have individuals named to delegate slots who, though initially bound to Trump, would be sympathetic to Cruz in later rounds once free to vote for whomever they choose.

Party heavyweights, alarmed by the prospect of a Trump nomination, have long pressed for a united effort around a single candidate against him.

But Cruz is almost as unpopular with the party's establishment as Trump, and Kasich has refused to bow out even though he has only won his home state of Ohio.

The Texas senator, meanwhile, has put out word that he has begun weighing possible running mates, including former White House hopeful Carly Fiorina.

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Drunk man (illustration)

By: Mahesh Sarin

A man was arrested on a charge of disorderly conducted after being accused of urinating in front of shoppers and calling himself Adolf Hitler, police in the United Kingdom said.

Now, 40-year-old Eugeniusz Niedziolko of Yeovil, has been sentenced to one year of probation after pleading guilty to being drunk in public, disorderly conduct and theft.

According to the police investigation, Niedziolko stole alcoholic beverages from the One Stop shop and drank them on the street.

After getting drunk, Niedziolko pulled down his pants and urinated in front of shoppers. When police arrived at the scene, Niedziolko told them to f*** off.

When he was asked to identify himself, Niedziolko began screaming that he is Adolf Hitler. Niedziolko had slurred speech and he was unable to walk on his own.

Niedziolko admitted to stealing two bottles of sparkling wine and four cans of soup from the One Stop shop. He also admitted to stealing a hat from Primark, and a bottle of whiskey from Tesco.
Jesse Ferrell

By: Mahesh Sarin

(Scroll down for video) A police officer was arrested on a charge of larceny after allegedly stealing coupons from newspapers, police in Rhode Island said.

Providence police arrested Officer Jesse Ferrell, 49, after being accused of breaking into a newspaper distribution company and stealing coupons and flyers.

Ferrell was charged with breaking and entering and larceny.

He was booked into jail, and his bail was set at $10,000.

According to the police, the Distribution Services of Rhode Island filed a complaint about two weeks ago, saying that someone was stealing coupons.

The company said that the suspect had been stealing coupons for the past six weeks. Investigators set up hidden surveillance cameras on Harris Avenue, and they caught Ferrell breaking into the building.

Ferrell, who has been a police officer for 19 years, did not say what he did with all the stolen coupons.
A young man wanted to make a point about racism in the United States, but his plan backfired when he was exposed for a liar by police. 20-year-old Khalil Cavil of Texas was working at the Saltgrass Steak House in Odessa when he claimed he was discriminated against because of his Muslim name. Cavil took
Homeowners Urged to Remain Vigilant Following Rogue Traders Roofing Work

This article is old - Published: Tuesday, Apr 26th, 2016

Householders across Wrexham are being urged to be on their guard following a number of incidents concerning roofing work.

Wrexham Councils Trading Standards team are advising homeowners to be cautious if someone is telling them their roof requires replacement.

It is easy for a trader to condemn an existing roof by claiming, for example, that battens are rotten and felt damaged, but its almost impossible for the homeowner to check whether any of these kinds of claim are true.

The following advice has been issued by Trading Standards:

 Dont do business with anyone who knocks on your door and offers to carry out work. You may end up paying more than you thought you had agreed, the work may never have been necessary in the first place and the quality could be poor. Professional looking leaflets are not a guarantee of quality or value.

 Traders who call uninvited are nearly always untraceable after they have been paid and the work is often unnecessary, overpriced and poor quality. Some traders can be very persuasive and will target the most vulnerable members of the community who can easily be frightened into believing immediate work is necessary when in fact there may be no work required at all.

 Whenever you are considering having any work done on your house always seek quotes from more than one trader. Make sure the trader is reputable and that you can contact them afterwards if anything should go wrong. Recommendations are a good idea but are probably not that useful if they come from a neighbour who has only just had the work done themselves.

Should you engage with a trader at your home, you should be given in writing the right to cancel the contract within 14 days. This is generally referred to as a cooling off period.

Cllr David Kelly, Lead Member for Public Protection, said: Please be cautious as cowboy traders will exploit any incidents of recent bad weather to sell roofing and guttering work and other property repairs.

Look out for your friends, family and neighbours, particularly those who you think may be vulnerable, and report anything suspicious.

Members of the public can report incidents to Contact Citizens Advice Consumer Service on 08454 040506 or to Police on 101.

Members of the public may also contact Wrexham Councils Houseproud scheme.

Under the scheme, homeowners are allocated their own Houseproud officer, who can discuss potential repairs and adaptations with them and see whether or not they are eligible for any funding or help.

The officer may then put out a tender for work on the home, to be priced by reputable, council-approved building firms.

For further advice, contact Citizens Advice Consumer Service on 08454 040506 If you need to report an incident as an emergency please contact the Police by dialing 999.

For more information on Wrexham Councils Houseproud scheme, contact the Housing Renewal department on 01978 315300.
An extensive collection of late cartoonist Alexander Saroukhan's work is displayed at Al-Masar gallery, seeking to honour and encourage widespread attention for the prolific artist

For the coming month, art lovers in Egypt will have the opportunity to experience the work of Egyptian political cartoon pioneer Alexander Saroukhan.

A selection of Armenian-Egyptian Saroukhans political cartoons are showcased for the first time at Al-Masar gallerys exhibition titled Political Comedy, which runs until the third week of May.

Saroukhans son-in-law Garrow Jakoub, said on a TV programme that the Saroukhans family would like to donate most of his works to the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. Jakoub hopes the ministry will establish a museum for the prominent cartoonist instead leaving his art to be forgotten or locked away in private collections.

His pleas have so far gone unanswered, and Saroukhan's family is still waiting for galleries to express their interest in showcasing the cartoonist's work. Jakoub revealed to Ahram Online that the opportunity to present the art relies on a few connections within the culture world that family members have managed to develop. As such, the exhibition held in Al-Masar's halls is one of the few attempts to remind Egyptian viewers of the wealth of political cartoons produced in their country.

In fact, over the past years Saroukhans works have only been exhibited on a handful of occasions. Most notable were an exhibition at Bibliotheca Alexandrina six years ago, a 1989 book about his life and works published by the Armenian Association in Cairo on the occasion of what would have been the artists 100th birthday, in addition to a few smaller exhibitions in some press coverage.

Undeniably this was very little of what could -- or even should -- be done, not only to honour Saroukhan's role in the Egyptian artistic movement, but also to enable the generations of art scholars to study his style.

Al-Masars Political Comedy exhibition, which consists of dozens of Saroukhans works published in the Egyptian press between the 1930s and the 1970s, seeks to revive the memory of the Egyptian Caricaturist Artists Associations founder.

Saroukhan established political cartoons as a consistent feature of the Egyptian press, and more than 20 thousand of his art pieces are kept in his familys private collections awaiting an opportunity to be taken care of by state organisations, private art galleries, artistic agents, or academic art institutions.

When speaking to Ahram Online, renowned Egyptian cartoonist Samir Abdul Ghani describes Saroukhan as the godfather of political cartoons in Egypt, pointing also to his students that prominent Egyptian cartoonists Mohammed Rakha, Ahmed Hegazy, Mustafa Hussien and others have continued on the path that Saroukhan paved.

Anyone who wants to learn how to be a cartoonist should study Saroukhan, Abdul Ghani said.

The problem is the art scholars find few chances to see his work, since there are neither academic publications nor a museum to showcase it. By all means, Saroukhan is not properly presented. We lose the legacy of our modern civilisation and we waste the opportunity for future generations to learn about his work and to be proud of this legacy, he added.

In a 1998 memorial article about Saroukhan, the late Egyptian artist Hussein Bikar, who worked with Saroukhan at the newspaper Akhbar Al-Youm, wrote, Though he was honoured and received several medals from foreign countries including USA, Saroukhan was not comfortable with the idea that he was not well known in Egypt, where he spent most of his life and served its press until his last breath.

Saroukhan moved to Egypt in 1924, and passed away on 1 January 1977. From 1952 until the time of his death, Saroukhan was chief political cartoonist at Akhbar Al-Youm. Before his employment at Akhbar Al-Youm, the artist contributed to newspapers and magazines including Rose El-Yousef and Akher Saa.

Jakoub, who still lives in Saroukhans Heliopolis home, is surrounded by thousands of his works and recalls the artists last days.

He suffered from heart disease but he never gave up. I remember the night of 31 December 1976, when he was not able to join the family celebrations of New Years Eve. Instead, he stayed in his room drawing a cartoon for Akhbar Al-Youm, and he asked me to deliver it to the editor just a few hours before he passed away. He worked until his last breath, Jakoub says.

In the archives of weekly magazine Akher Saa, where Saroukhan worked for a few decades, a news piece was published on 16 February 1955 stated that, "Saroukhan, the caricaturist who lived for 31 years in Egypt, has finally obtained Egyptian citizenship. He is now the happiest man on earth, and it is expected that his cartoons will reflect his happiness."

Though he did not have Egyptian citizenship until then, Saroukhans political cartoons published in the Egyptian press were full of nationalist spirit and loyalty to Egypt from the moment his first piece was published in Rose El-Yousef in 1927.

According to Armenian art critic and historian Herant Kashashian, Saroukhans political cartoons perfectly captured the political atmosphere leading up to Egyptian independence in 1952. Conflict among political parties, and the way they were colluding with British colonisers in corruption, was sharply criticised throughout his work.

In Kashashians 1998 book about Saroukhan, he writes, The only positive hero in his caricatures was Egypt, portrayed as a beautiful lady. Afterwards he created the character of El-Masri Effendi to represent the struggle of Egyptian people for their rights, freedom, and independence. Thus, after Nassers revolution, he moved from the opposition camp to become a supporter and defender of the states achievements, and he was a fierce opponent of Egypts enemies.

Saroukhan was considered an Egyptian long before he obtained citizenship, although when he began working for Rose El-Youssef in the 20s he was not fluent in Arabic and knew little about Egyptians.

Despite the fact that most of his caricatures published in Egyptian papers were a result of the respective publications editorial boards, Saroukhan believed in the message of his cartoons.

Gomaa Farahat, a renowned Egyptian cartoonist, wrote of Saroukhan in a 1998 article: "Saroukhan was not only a mirror of the editorial board, but his book entitled This War, about the Second World War, was considered to be one of the his masterpieces, and proved that he was a man of a clear vision, strong principles, and a free mind."

However, his political attitudes and principles are not only what made him a pioneer. More important was his style, refined over years of experience and continuous practice.

The artist published his first satirical magazine in primary school, collaborating with his brother, and then went on to study art in Vienna. His long experience and extensive practice helped him develop his own unique style that Kashashian calls Saroukhanism, defined by strong and simple lines, balanced compositions, and motion.

He was one of the most prolific cartoonists in terms of both quantity and quality, producing many kinds of cartoons dealing with political, social, and cultural subjects.

Apart from his work published in established Egyptian daily and weekly publications, Saroukhan published thousands of cartoons in up to 20 different periodicals in Egypt and abroad.

According to a 1934 issue of Akher Saa magazine, Saroukhan produced 53 cartoons in one week.

Though his works used to have many details, Saroukhan was drawing fast. A coloured cartoon such as The Cane Dance that contained more than 80 figures could take him only couple of hours, Jakoub said.

According to cartoonist Samir Abdul Ghani, Saroukhan adopted many elements of visual art in his caricatures, including the use of colours, shadow and light, as well as mass and void.

You never feel that his paintings are overcrowded or disturbing, even when they are so full, Abdul Ghani says.

According to Egyptian visual artist Mohammed Abla, founder of the Abla Museum of Caricature, the way Saroukhan was able to capture the most important aspect in the personality of a figure he draws was one of his strong points,

One of the most influential works of Saroukhan in this museum is a cartoon which consists of several self-portraits for Saroukhan that he drew using different styles of great international artists, Abla told Ahram Online.

Rawya Sadik, the visual artist who is translating Saroukhans book This War, agrees with Abla.

Going through his cartoons in this book, you can see how he was able to represent the personality of international political leaders and their sides in the war. He was able to spot where there was no chance for a better future. Saroukhan is an intellectual artist who combined his European study of art with his involvement in Egyptian society to create his own unique style, she said.

Many artists and critics have called for Saroukhans art to be widely distributed among arts schools and students, to be shown publicly and privately, for a museum to be established to showcase his work, for a street to be named after him. Said critics, scholars and artists appreciate Saroukhan and grant him his deserved position as one of the pioneers of the modern Egyptian art movement.

Al-Masars exhibition is an opportunity to honor the artist and encourage state and private cultural institutions to value this legacy and bridge generations so that future artists can build on what has been achieved by past masters.

The exhibition continues until third week of May

Al-Masar Gallery, 157 B, 26th of July Street, Ground floor, Zamalek, Cairo

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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New Research Focusing on Dementia at Wrexham Glyndwr University

This article is old - Published: Tuesday, Apr 26th, 2016

A new study aims to produce an over-arching decision-making healthcare model in North Wales by focusing on patients with dementia  a disease that costs the UK 26.3 billion a year.

The research, undertaken by Paul Brownbill for his PhD at Wrexham Glyndwr University, will explore and describe community hospital healthcare workers everyday decision-making in relation to people with dementia.

Paul picked three community hospitals across North Wales to observe and then report back his findings to Betsi Cadwaldr University Health Board (BCUHB) with the hope of influencing and developing policy.

Paul, a former social worker who specialised in people living with dementia on hospital wards, said: I am observing hospital staff decision-making processes, Im not saying if they are the right or wrong decision, its more about how they came to that decision.

This can be any decision made, including decisions where you dont even realise the decision-making process carried out or the actual decision that youve made.

The research observes healthcare staff, social workers and unqualified health staff on the wards.

Across the UK an estimated 850,000 people are living with dementia  with this number expected to rise to more than two million by 2051.

Paul, a post-grad researcher, is working with Wrexham Glyndwr University and University of South Wales, said: Ive always been interested in the dementia side of social work which I guess helped me decide to focus on people living with dementia admitted to community hospitals.

By producing an account of practice in a community hospital, apparent influences on decision-making can be revealed. As the care of people with dementia often involves workers from various disciplinary backgrounds, this study intends to gather a wide range of perspectives with a view of developing a shared model of decision-making.

The research involves conducting interviews with those who have direct impact on this vulnerable group of people.

Dr Nikki Lloyd-Jones, senior lecturer in Glyndwrs School of Social and Life Sciences and Pauls PhD supervisor, said: PhD studies like Pauls are essential not only because, as in the case of his topic of dementia care in the community, the findings of his research will be of relevant interest to a wide range of people and service providers; by undertaking the project according to the exacting academic standards expected of a doctoral level study, the final report will be able to make a credible contribution to wider debate about future services.

The study is funded by Health and Care Research Wales (formerly known as the National Institute for Social Care and Health Research, NISCHR) and aims to make explicit, social and professional paradigms of influence on decision-making by exploring the context of normal everyday activity and the use of language.
A temporary exhibit on early alphabetic inscriptions in Egypt was inaugurated last night in celebration of Sinai Liberation Day

Egypts Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany and the head of a Bonn University delegation, Lodwing Morin, inaugurated a six-month-long exhibition at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo entitled Sinai: The Origin of the Alphabet on Egypts early alphabetic inscriptions.

The exhibition, organised in collaboration with Bonn University, relates the history and development of the alphabet in southern Sinai.

Sabah Abdel-Razek, undersecretary of the Egyptian Museum for archaeological affairs, told Ahram Online that the exhibition displays early inscriptions that show the development of alphabetic writing in southwestern Sinai during the early second millennium BC, as well as a collection of 40 statues of deities and stelae in direct connection with Sinai.

During the inauguration ceremony, El-Enany told reporters that he was keen to open such an exhibition during Sinai Liberation Day, which coincides with the 100th anniversary of Sir Alain Gardiners brilliant deciphering of the Sinai scripts, which at first glance look like mere hieroglyphs.

El-Enany said that the scripts were of global importance and continue to have a direct impact on our modern languages; from Arabic to Latin and English scripts.

Morin described the exhibition as a great challenge, saying that it was meant to open in September, but El-Enany, the supervisor-general of the museum at the time, insisted on opening it during Egypts celebration of Sinai Liberation Day, which reflects the tremendous efforts exerted by the team working on the project.

Among the attendees were former minister of antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty, former Fayoum governor Hazem Ateya, as well as top officials from the Ministry of Antiquities.

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Norbert Hofer, the candidate of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), has clearly won the first round of the Austrian presidential election. With 36 percent of the vote, he is far ahead of the candidate of the Greens, Alexander Van der Bellen, who received around 20 percent. Both men face off on May 22 in the second round.

The candidates of the Social Democratic Party (SPO) and the conservative People's Party (OVP), which together form the government in Vienna, trailed far behind with 11 and 10 percent of the vote, respectively. This is the first time since the end of World War II that representatives of Austrias so-called Peoples parties have failed to assume the post of president.

On Sunday, 6.4 million Austrians aged 16 and over were called upon to vote. The federal president is elected for six years and cannot run again after two terms. The incumbent Heinz Fischer retires in July after 12 years in office. The head of state has largely ceremonial duties, but according to the constitution is supreme commander of the armed forces and can dissolve parliament in certain cases.

It is expected that the disastrous result for their candidates will lead to bitter inner-party conflicts in the SPO and the OVP. The presidential candidate of the OVP, Andreas Khol, who has played a leading role in the party for decades, resigned from all his political posts on election night.

The result is the best ever for the far-right at a federal level. In recent months, polls have also indicated that the FPO could emerge as the strongest party in parliamentary elections due in two years time. The FPO had already notched up significant gains in recent state elections, at the expense of the SPO and OVP.

The FPO has benefited mainly from the massive rejection of the governing parties. The Neue Zurcher Zeitung commented: The next House of Representatives election may still be two years away, but given the inability of the government to solve the urgent problems in terms of unemployment, economic growth and education, discontent will only increase; on Sunday three-quarters of the electorate stated they were either disappointed or angry with the government.

The grand coalition has responded to rising unemployment and the increasing difficulties of the Austrian economy in recent years with attacks on the population and a marked shift to the right.

According to the Sora Institute, Hofer won the support of workers and clerical employees in every age group. A total of 72 percent of workers voted for Hofer compared to just 5 percent for the SPO candidate Rudolf Hundstorfer and Green candidate Van der Bellen. Just 2 percent voted for Khol. Van der Bellen was only able to win more votes than Hofer from self-employed and better-off public employees.

The politics and the election campaign of the two government parties have played into the hands of the FPO. Initially the Austrian government under SPO Chancellor Werner Faymann supported the refugee policy of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, which rejected the closing of internal European borders. But then, in the space of a few weeks, it carried out a sharp U-turn and placed itself at the head of those Eastern European countries demanding the closure of borders and the so-called Balkan route.

Faymanns government has since announced it will fast-track the deportation of refugees to the Austrian border. The aim of the grand coalition is to permanently reduce the influx of immigrants, as the news agency dpa reported.

The FPO based itself on this policy and propagated the slogan Austria First against refugees in the election. In the election campaign, Hofer proclaimed that Islam has no place in Austria, and he called for better protection of Austrian borders. He railed against the EU debt and liability Union and declared that he would take action against economic refugees who destroy the social system. He also promised to build up the army to defend the country.

The nominee of the Greens, Van der Bellen, ran his campaign under the patriotic slogan Homeland. The former leader of the Greens is considered to be a supporter of the policy of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and backs the sealing off of the EUs external borders and the EUs foul refugee deal struck with Turkey.

The moderate performance of the 72-year-old economics professor was well below expectations and makes clear that the Greens are not perceived as an alternative to the ruling parties by broad layers.

In third place, ahead of the candidate of the SPO and OVP, is Irmgard Griss, who entered the presidential race as an independent candidate. Griss is regarded as ultra-conservative. The former Supreme Court president was supported by the right wing of the OVP and by business circles. Griss has long been subject to criticism because of statements in which she has trivialized Nazism.

On the refugee issue Griss attacked the government from the right. She called the passage of refugees through Austria a clear breach of the law and demanded faster asylum procedures aimed at deterrence.

There are currently no reliable predictions about the outcome of the runoff. Hofer has announced that as president he would make use of his right to dissolve parliament and call new elections. The 45-year-old son of a local OVP politician began his political career in the Freedom Party in 1994 in Burgenland, where he held several offices up to vice chairman of the party.

The election on Sunday has tossed the countrys political system into turmoil. In particular, the Social Democrats face disaster. The conservative press remarked: The truth for the SPO and OVP reads simply: Your time is up. Zeit Online sees the dissolution of the Austrian post-war order within reach.

In the SPO there are already calls for the replacement of Chancellor Faymann. Werner Faymann cannot pretend that this has nothing to do with him because he was not even standing for election. This defeat has a lot to do with government policy, declared the former SPO leadership politician and Siemens manager Brigitte Ederer.

The Vienna SPO councillor Tanja Wehsely demanded immediate consequences after the debacle and the resignation of the chancellor. The Burgenland governor Hans Niessl (SPO), who governs in a coalition with the far-right Freedom Party, proposed a survey of members on the future of the party, in order to move it even further to the right.

The election in Austria has confirmed that the result of the policies of the social democratic and other supposed leftist bourgeois parties is a strengthening of far-right forces and increased national conflicts within the European Union.
Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art at the National Gallery of London, with the cooperation of the Minneapolis Institute of Art until May 22, 2016.

The stated intention of the organisers of Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art at the National Gallery in London is to give visitors the opportunity to (re)discover the revolutionary artist Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863).

Their claim that he embodied the idea of the great art rebel and defied the stifling authority and convention of the art establishment is borne out by his assured 1837 self-portrait.

Delacroix is presented as one of the first modern masters, an idea often argued in the art world, and an inspiration to the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements. Henri Fantin-Latours Homage to Delacroix painted in 1864, one year after his death, is the first picture in the exhibition and shows the next generation gathered together to pay Delacroix the honour that had eluded him for so longincluding Edouard Manet, James Whistler and Delacroixs greatest admirer, the poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire.

The exhibition consists of six themed rooms including landscapes, still lifes, religious images and Orientalism, in which Delacroixs paintings, about a third of the total, are compared with other artists. Although his murals and large paintings are absent, the smaller ones present give a flavour of Delacroixs trailblazing portrayal of human emotions and his use of colour and hazy imagery. He insisted that a painting should be a feast for the eyes that allows the viewer to finish it themselves in their own imagination. He detested the petty details and cold exactitude of some of his contemporaries which he said resulted in boring art.

The exhibition shows how some of Delacroixs contemporaries idolised (Redon), studied (Van Gogh), copied (Manet and Renoir) or painted pictures about him (Cezanne). However, by concentrating on style and technique the National Gallery show downplays the significance of his art and the social and political context of the period. Unfortunately, visitors will leave the exhibition without a real sense of the tumultuous times he lived inthe aftermath of the French Revolution (1789-1799), the explosive growth of capitalism and the working class and the emergence of the Romantic movement of which he was the greatest exponent in painting.

Eugene was born in 1798, the youngest son of Charles Delacroix, an active participant in the French Revolution, a signatory to King Louis XVIs death warrant and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the revolutionary government. There is strong evidence that Maurice Talleyrand, Napoleons chief diplomat, was Eugenes biological father and looked out for him when he was orphaned at the age of 16.

Delacroix was trained in the Neoclassical style of Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), the artist most closely identified with the revolution. After the revolution, when the goal of state power had been reached, the French bourgeoisie lost its enthusiasm for the depiction of the republican heroes of ancient Greece and Rome.

As the Russian Marxist Plekhanov explained, When the bourgeoisie assumed the predominant position in society, and when its life was no longer warmed by the fire of the struggle for liberty, nothing was left for the new art but to idealise negation of the bourgeois mode of life. Romantic art was indeed such an idealisation. The romanticists strove to express their negation of bourgeois moderation and conformity not only in their artistic works, but even in their own external appearance.

For this bohemian milieu, art for arts sake became the watchword rather than art for utilitarian purposes. Reason and science gave way to passion and a longing for the lost unity of man and nature. Baudelaire called for the absolute autonomy of art and recognised in Delacroix a poet in painting who could capture the atmosphere of the human drama and the state of the creators soul.

Romanticism was a complex development. Marx and Engels were careful to distinguish between revolutionary romanticism, which rejected the misery, vulgarity and corruption of bourgeois existence and looked to the future, and those reactionary romanticists who desired a return to a pre-capitalist social system and idealized the Middle Ages.

The contradictory nature of Romanticism is expressed in Marxs words as reported by his daughter Eleanor: The true difference between [poets Lord] Byron and [Percy] Shelley consists in this, that those who understand and love them consider it fortunate that Byron died in his thirty-sixth year, for he would have become a reactionary bourgeois had he lived longer; conversely, they regret Shelleys death at the age of twenty-nine, because he was a revolutionary through and through and would consistently have stood with the vanguard of socialism.

Delacroixs earliest work (not in the exhibition) consists of political cartoons parodying press censorship under the Bourbon monarchy, which was restored in 1814 following Napoleons downfall. Crayfish at Longchamps, published in 1822 in the The Mirror magazine before it was forced to shut down, shows members of the ruling elite perched on a crayfish, symbolising reaction because of the way the animal swims backward, protected by the chief censor and his flag showing the censors scissors. In the background, crowds stream towards an unfinished Arc de Triomphe, a memorial to those who had died in the Revolution and Napoleonic wars.

Delacroix produced no further cartoons after 1822the year he submitted his first painting, the controversial Barque of Dante, to the Paris Salon. Manets exact copy from 1854 appears in the exhibition. The action and poses of Dante and his companion, Virgil, as they attempt the terrifying crossing from Hell represents a transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism.

During the 1820s Delacroix turned to painting, but retained his liberal sentiments as shown in his pictures supporting the Greek war of independence from Turkey including Massacre at Chios (1824) and Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi (1826). The subject matterthe struggle against tyrannical ruleand the graphic depiction of suffering was condemned as inappropriate by critics.

In 1827 Delacroixs submission to the Salon, The Death of Sardanapalus, was more controversial than the Barque of Dante. The painting, of which a smaller later replica is displayed, was inspired by Byrons 1821 play telling the tale of Assyrian king, Sardanapalus, who was deposed by courtiers opposed to his pursuit of peace and merciful rule. Rather than let the rebels succeed, he orders the destruction of all his possessions including his concubines. Though the painting uses a neoclassical storyline, Delacroix exploits composition and colour in an entirely innovative way.

Liberty Leading the People was produced in 1830. There is virtually no mention of it at the National Gallery, although it is probably his most famous paintings. Its depiction of an actual event, the 1830 revolution against Charles X, and glorification of the struggle for liberty was so inflammatory that it was removed from public view until after the 1848 revolution.

In 1832, Delacroix travelled to Spain and North Africa as part of a diplomatic mission to Morocco shortly after the French conquest of Algeria. There he believed he had found a living antiquity in the culture of the Arab and Jewish communities, remarking, The heroes of David and Co, with their rose pink limbs, would cut a sorry figure beside these children of the sun, who wear the dress of classical antiquity with a nobler air.

In many ways they are closer to nature than wetheir clothes, for instance, and the shape of their shoes. Hence there is beauty in everything they do. But we, with our corsets, narrow shoes and tubular clothing, are lamentable objects. We have gained science at the cost of grace, he noted in his journal.

The exhibition displays some of the many powerful Orientalist images he painted over succeeding years based on his African experiences, including an ecstatic religious procession, horses and their riders (A Moroccan Mounts his Horse) and domestic life. Renoir, in 1875, was to paint an almost exact copy of The Jewish Wedding in Morocco and decades later Picasso produced 15 variants of Women of Algiers in their Apartment.

After 1833, Delacroix was commissioned to decorate several public buildings and churches in Paris, which are described in a video screening at the exhibition. The ceilings of the Bourbon Palace (seat of the French National Assembly) depict the rise and fall of civilisation from Orpheus teaching the arts to the ancient Greeks to their destruction by Attila the Hun.

The wave of revolutions in 1848 did not provoke an artistic response from Delacroix along the lines of Liberty leading the People. His journal entry of April 23, 1849 records an essentially demoralised view about progress:

Leaving the well-trodden path inevitably means a return to the infancy of society, and after a succession of reforms, a state of savagery must necessarily be the result of the changes.

Instead Delacroix set about painting the last religious murals in Western art at Saint Sulpice church, including Jacob Wrestling the Angelan allegory for Delacroixs own artistic struggles and agnostic beliefs.

It was not until 1857 that Delacroix, after nine unsuccessful attempts, was finally elected to the French Academy. By then the spirit of protest and rebellion had passed to others. The Realist movement had responded to the 1848 events and the emergence of a new social forcethe working classby rejecting Romanticism and its art for arts sake approach and producing bold social statements.

After visiting an exhibition of the work of Gustave Courbet in 1853, Delacroix observed, I was astonished by the vigour and the relief of his vast picture; but what a painting! What a subject! The commonness of the forms would not matter; it is the commonness and uselessness of the thought which are abominable
The unprecedented decision by 55,000 junior doctors to not provide emergency cover during the 48-hour strike that begins today is a measure of their determination to beat the attack being mounted against them and the National Health Service by the Conservative government.

The strike will have a major impact, with at least 12,711 non-urgent operations and 112,856 outpatient appointments cancelled ahead. In their four previous strikes since January, the British Medical Association (BMA) ensured emergency cover was in place, as has been the case since the NHS was founded in 1948.

The BMA has repeatedly sought a face-saving compromise in order to allow them to call off the dispute. BMA leader Dr Mark Porter said to the government yesterday, If you agree to lift imposition while talks resume, we will immediately call off the industrial action.

But the Tories have rebuffed all offers made to them. They are not only determined to impose contracts that endanger patient safety, their aim is to inflict a decisive defeat on the junior doctors in order to intimidate anyone seeking to oppose the reorganisation of the National Health Service in line with full privatisation.

The professions regulator, the General Medical Council, has warned that medics who go on strike could face disciplinary action or even be struck off if their actions caused patients serious harm. For its part, the right-wing media is seeking to whip up hostility to the strike.

Junior doctors have refused to back down in the face of all these threats and workers overwhelmingly continue to support the action. But the danger of a defeat grows with each day that the BMA, other health unions and the Labour Party are allowed to isolate the strike.

From the very beginning, the BMA has insisted that this is not a political dispute, while unions such as Unison, with nearly half a million members, have not organised a single action in support of the junior doctors.

Last week, BMA junior doctors committee chairman Johann Malawana wrote to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt offering to call off the strike if the government agreed to halt its plans to impose the new contract. Malawana said, With a week to go to the start of the first full walkout of doctors in this country, I am writing to make a clear offer in a bid to avert industrial action. Simply put, if the Government will lift the imposition, junior doctors will call off next weeks strike action. ... He called on the government to get back around the table for talks at any time between now and the start of next weeks industrial action.

Hunt replied curtly that it was not possible to change or delay the introduction of the contract.

While new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell make vaguely supportive noises, the Labour Party acts as an implacable enemy of the junior doctors. Earlier this month, Shadow Health Secretary Heidi Alexander told a meeting in parliament that she had not been on a junior doctors picket line and had no intention of ever doing so. She is now playing a leading role in seeking to get the dispute called off.

On Sunday, a cross-party group of MPs, led by Alexander, wrote to Hunt proposing that if he piloted the new junior doctors contract before introducing it across England, the BMA would call off its strikes. The letter stated, If it remains your intention to introduce this new contract, we believe it should be piloted in a number of trusts/across a number of deaneries and for its impact on patients, staff and the weekend effect to be independently evaluated.

This proposal would bring opposition to the contract to an end and only delay its implementation nationally. It was presented by Alexander alongside Conservative MP Dr Dan Poulter, Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb and the Scottish National Partys Dr Philippa Whitford. The letter assured Hunt that a pilot scheme could not only end the strike, but would allow genuine progress towards your manifesto commitment of high quality emergency care across seven days a week.

Doctors and nurses will be justifiably sickened by such a statement being made about a government that has imposed tens of billions of pounds in cuts and efficiency savings, leading to the loss or reduction of many emergency services over the past six years. No wonder that one of Britains most right-wing newspapers, the Daily Mail, said the government should consider accepting it.

The offer was once again rejected, with Hunt tweeting, Any further delay just means we will take longer to eliminate weekend effect.

According to the Guardian, Prime Minister David Cameron told Hunt to maintain his firm stance in the bitter dispute in two separate conversations late last week. The prime minister was adamant that there should be no climbdown from the tough rhetoric and combative tactics Hunt has employed since the row first flared in September.

On Monday, a government source told the BBC that the two all-out strikes this week were aimed at toppling the government and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. He said there could be no compromise as BMA leaders had radicalised a generation of junior doctors and any retreat would mean the government facing similar industrial action by other unions, which were watching this dispute like a hawk.

In reality, the other unions are watching the junior doctors only in the hope of seeing them brought to heel. The junior doctors can only win by waging an implacable political struggle to bring down the government. And to do that requires a completely different strategy and orientation.

Junior doctors must build their own rank-and-file committees to take the strike out of the hands of the BMA. They must call for a rebellion against the other health unions by the more than 1.3 million workers employed in the NHS and for united industrial and political action against the government. Above all they must appeal for solidarity action to be taken by the millions of workers and young people throughout the UK who want to see the NHS defended and who face similar attacks on their jobs, wages and conditions.

The Socialist Equality Partys NHS Fightback provides junior doctors and other health workers with the means through which to organise such a counteroffensive and the socialist programme and leadership required to lead it.

For further information visit: nhsfightback.org

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UK Junior doctors dispute at a crossroads

[29 March 2016]
An extremely ominous development is concealed behind all of the mutual flattery and declarations of friendship between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama over recent days.

Obamas fifth trip to Germany was not simply a visit to the 2016 Hanover Fair, or a farewell tour by a departing American president, but rather was aimed at escalating both imperialist aggression in the Middle East and NATOs military build-up against Russia. At the same time, it initiated a new stage in the return of German militarism.

Already at the joint press conference in Hanover on Saturday, Obama and Merkel spoke very openly about their plans. Merkel stated early on, We have used the opportunity to discuss the various challenges of the international agenda. These were of course Syria, Libya and Afghanistan, but also Africa and the crisis between Russia and Ukraine.

They had been in agreement that the issues of security in the area around Europe could only be resolved through joint Transatlantic efforts for which European engagement and also German engagement on many issues [was] necessary. Merkel noted that Germany had shown in recent months that it [had] undertaken additional efforts in many places, such as in Iraq, the struggle against terrorism in Syria and Mali or other regions where we are now active.

In addition, Berlin was prepared to further engage militarily and strengthen its armed forces. Merkel said reassuringly, Germany is in it for the very long term in several areas, in which we will continue. Weapons had been sent to the Peshmerga and thereby supplied to a tense region, which in light of our historical development [was] a completely new step. Assuming responsibility in Africa was apart from the Congo mission, which we had for a short time previously, a new area.

On Germanys prior decision to increase the defence budget Merkel stated: I know that we obviously have to make additional efforts as regards our possibilities to defend ourselves. We have to put in more equipment, more personnel. She recognised the targets set for us by NATO and said she believes that the overall deployment of the German army now fully reflects our sense that we need to shoulder this international responsibility.

Obama, who repeatedly praised Merkel in the highest tones, hailed Germanys new war policy. Germany is a vital member of the coalition to destroy ISIL. German aircraft support the air campaign, and German personnel in Iraq are training local forces. German assistance is helping to stabilise Iraq and rebuild the areas it liberates from ISIL, he stated.

At the same time, Obama warned of the need to retain the strength of our NATO alliance and to strengthen it against Russia. With a threatening undertone, which was certainly aimed at those sections of the German ruling elite who prefer a closer strategic orientation to Russia, he declared, We continue to augment, on a rotational basis, NATO forces in Eastern Europe, including the Baltic states. As Ive said from the very beginning of my presidency, we have a treaty obligation to defend every NATO allyand we will.

These are not empty words. According to a news report by Der Spiegel, Obama called on Merkel at a so-called G5 meeting on Monday involving the prime ministers of Britain and Italy and the French President, to participate significantly in the planned stationing of permanently rotating NATO units on the eastern border of the alliance. Berlin had thus far taken a back seat in the planning and pointed to the German armys significant participation in NATOs new rapid reaction force.

It now appears increasingly likely that the government is ready to further strengthen its forces in Eastern Europe. Already at a 20 April press conference in Berlin with visiting Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, Merkel reaffirmed that the decisions from Wales would be further developed at the coming NATO summit in Warsaw, and we will do our part in accordance with this.

Journalist Thomas Wiegold, who has close connections to the military and security establishment, commented on his blog Eyes front!: The question is therefore not now whether the German army is to be present with troops on the eastern flank of NATO (and that means in part: practically on the Russian border). They have been for a long time. The question is much more if this presence is to be significantly strengthened. And if the German army will operate in continuous rotation with other troops at battalion strength, not company strength or less.

Since the federal government announced that Germany would again play a role in world politics corresponding to the importance of our country, (Federal President Gauck on October 3, 2013), it has used Washingtons aggressive foreign policy to build up its own military and advance its own imperialist interests.

Significantly, it was announced on Monday that Germany would establish its own military base for Tornado fighter planes in Turkey. According to information from Spiegel Online the German government reckons with a very long German intervention against the Islamic State and is therefore planning a long term deployment at the Turkish Air Force Base in Incirlik. According to internal documents, a total of around 65 million is to be made available for a separate airstrip, accommodations for German soldiers and a fully equipped command post. In addition, the Bundeswehr is negotiating a long-term agreement with the Turkish government for the long-term stationing of German soldiers.

The much-vaunted close economic relations between the US and Germany are also increasingly marked by rivalry when it comes to profits and markets. At the industrial fair in Hanover, both Obama and Merkel made remarks with critical undertones. When they mounted the podium in Hall 3, Obama declared, Now is another opportunity for me to say, Come to us and buy American goods. Merkel had already stated at the opening of the fair on Sunday evening: Buy German would also be very good and added: We love competition. But we also like to win.

In a commentary titled Obama and Merkel in Hanover: Each with their separate view, Spiegel Online wrote, The Worlds Largest Industry Fair with host country USA is more than ever a test of strength between the largest and the fourth largest economy in the world.

It is against this background that one can understand the ongoing tensions around the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreements (TTIP) that the EU is currently negotiating with the United States. Despite all the claims that the US wanted to hurry (Merkel), all the nations involved are seeking to negotiate the best conditions for their own interests and thereby make as few concessions as possible. Die Zeit wrote succinctly that TTIP will not happen so fast because each side is worried they will not be able to rewrite the rules for other markets to benefit their own business lobby.

What lies behind the German-American axis, which appears to take the form of close military and economic cooperation but where explosive tensions are developing ?

One indication is the interview given by the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) in the weekend edition of the Handelsblatt. Under the heading The situation is more dangerous than in Cold War, he stated, The old order has not yet been replaced by a new one, and he continued This struggle for influence and hegemony is not taking place in a peaceful seminar environment, but is exploding violently.

In other words, just as was the case prior to the First and Second World Wars, a new race for influence and hegemony is taking place between the imperialist powers that will once again explode violently if the working class does not intervene on the basis of an international and socialist program.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof departed Sunday from his usual beat, providing human rights justifications for Washingtons wars and military provocations around the world, to publish a thoroughly cynical and dishonest defense of Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton under the headline, Debunking the Crooked Hillary Myth.

Kristof exudes moral self-righteousness when he is denouncing governments and leaders targeted by the United States for invasion and regime-change. He has enthusiastically backed the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria as well as Washingtons aggressive moves against Russia and China. He is part of the faction of liberal war-mongers who criticize the Obama administration for failing to sufficiently escalate the war to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

But when it comes to Hillary Clintons notoriously corrupt relations with Wall Street, the arch-hypocrite Kristof drops his sanctimonious facade and employs sophistries and lies to dismiss as a myth what millions perceive to be bribery on a grand scale.

In his column, Kristof lays out the problem Clinton, the Democratic Party establishment and their media mouthpieces in the Times confront. After her solid win in last weeks New York primary, Clinton has all but defeated Bernie Sanders and secured the Democratic nomination.

But, he writes, Clintons challenge is the trust issue: The share of voters who have negative feelings toward her has soared only a bit more than one-third of American voters regard Clinton as honest and trustworthy.

Indeed, when Gallup asks Americans to say the first word that comes to mind when they hear Hillary Clinton, the most common response can be summed up as dishonest/liar/dont trust her/poor character. Another common category is criminal/crooked/thief/belongs in jail.

He continues, All this is, I think, a mistaken narrative.

Kristof then offers the following extraordinary argument: Even false narratives can take on a life of their own because there is always information arriving that can confirm the narrative. [Emphasis added]

In other words, Dont be misled by the facts!

He goes on to cite a report from a fact-checking web site that, of Clintons campaign stump statements it has checked, 95 percent are either true or mostly true, supposedly making Clinton far more honest and trustworthy than her peers.

Kristof acknowledges that Clinton can be infuriatingly evasive, but thats because shes more hawkish than some Democrats, and she realizes shes likely to face general election voters in November and is preserving wiggle room so she can veer back to the center then.

This is not meant as a criticism. Kristof is entirely sympathetic to Clintons need to conceal from Democratic primary voters her militaristic intentions, which could quickly lead in a Hillary Clinton administration to war with nuclear-armed Russia or China and a nuclear world war. Nor is he in the least disturbed that Clinton is preparing to drop her populist facade and run in the general election as the candidate of the financial aristocracy, the CIA and the Pentagon.

There is nothing dishonest, in Kristofs book, about lying to the population to get elected. Thats what presidents do, he writes, thereby acknowledging in his cynical fashion the corrupt and anti-democratic character of the entire political system.

Further on, he cites as an authority on Clintons character Jill Abramson, who told the Guardian that Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy. He neglects to mention that Abramson is a former executive editor of the Times.

When he comes to Clintons obscene speaking fees from Wall Street financial firms, Kristof gives no facts, brushing quickly over her raking in of hundreds of thousands of dollars from speeches to Goldman Sachs and other companies.

Theres no sign, he declares, of any quid pro quo, and adds, In a broader sense, companies write checks to buy access and influence, but if thats corrupt then so is our entire campaign finance system. Precisely! And Kristof, a staunch defender of American capitalism, earns his ample paycheck by providing apologetics for this cesspool of fraud and bribery.

Kristof belittles the information arriving that can confirm the narrative for good reason. The evidence of corrupt relations between Hillary and Bill Clinton and the financial oligarchy is massive and damning. Never before in American history have a president and first lady so shamelessly and brazenly cashed in on their stint in the White House to make themselves filthy rich. American politics has been corrupt for a very long time, but there is no precedent for this level of venality.

Sanders, who has made an issue of Clintons Wall Street speaking fees, has barely scratched the surface in his campaign statements on the issue.

The pattern was already set during their Arkansas years, when the Clintons established close ties to Walmart (the Walton family) and Frank Perdue of the chicken empire. But this was small potatoes compared to what followed their departure from the White House.

According to CNN, Hillary and Bill Clinton combined to take in more than $153 million in paid speeches from 2001 until Hillary Clinton launched her presidential campaign in May of 2015. Between February 2001 and May 2015, the two gave 729 speeches and received an average fee of $210,795 per speech. Of that sum, at least $7.7 million came from major banks.

While Hillary Clinton was Obamas secretary of state, her former president husband delivered 215 paid speeches around the world and took in $48 million for the Clinton Foundation and other family interests. Of that, $17 million came from talks to banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, real estate businesses and other financial firms.

In the two years between her 2013 exit from the State Department and the launch of her current presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton gave 12 speeches to Wall Street banks, private equity firms and other financial corporations, receiving a total of $2,935,000. The firms include Bank of America, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS.

Her best year on the bank circuit was 2013, right after she left the State Department. That year she received $2.3 million for three speeches to Goldman Sachs and individual speeches to seven other major Wall Street firms.

Then there is the Clinton Foundation. In 2014 its assets totaled $439 million. Through that year, the foundation, which does not reveal its donors, had raised almost $2 billion from US corporations, especially Wall Street firms, as well as foreign governments and corporations, political donors, and other moneyed interests.

The one year the foundation did release a list of its donors, 2008, the roll call included the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Blackwater Worldwide.

As for Kristofs claim that there is no sign of any quid pro quo, one need only mention the bills President Bill Clinton backed and signed into law abolishing virtually all that remained of 1930s bank regulations and blocking any regulation of hedge funds or derivatives. For her part, Hillary Clinton voted for the October 2008 bill establishing the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to bail out the big banks.

The Clintons corruption is significant not solely for what is says about them personally, but for what it says about the political system in general and the Democratic Party in particular. This party, which the so-called socialist Sanders claims can be reformed, is an instrument of Wall Street, the military and the CIA. Beyond the financial aristocracy, its main social base is the privileged and complacent upper-middle class for whom the Times and its pro-imperialist, pro-war liberals such as Kristof speak.
Hundreds of workers and young people from more than 40 countries have registered for the May 1 rally organized by the International Committee of the Fourth International. The rally is being held at 1:00 PM US Eastern Daylight Time and broadcast simultaneously throughout the world at internationalmayday.org.

Many of those registering for the rally responded to the ICFIs call for the building of a new movement of the working class and youth against imperialist war, based on a socialist program.

Christian, from Guelph, Ontario in Canada, writes that he is attending because I think this political organization is serious about ending war, and I want to hear them out. Karen, from the US state of Tennessee says, I oppose all war and want to rally for peace and justice for all people.

Ronald from Wyoming in the US, writes, simply that it is time to end endless war, while Bri, from Michigan, said the she wants to surround myself with like-minded individuals in hopes to unify in solidarity against war!

Angela, from Australia, said that she and her friends were joining the rally to support and participate in the struggle to rid the world of capitalist exploitation and the threat of nuclear holocaust.

Others pointed to the connection between the war and the social crisis facing millions of workers internationally. Lee, from Toronto, Canada, writes, It is vital that workers, youth and intellectuals the world over make common cause to build the revolutionary socialist alternative against poverty, war and the growth of fascist barbarism now in preparation by the ruling class everywhere.

Bradford, from Ghana explains that he is for another world of freedom from exploitation, while Sotirios from Greece writes that it is necessary to stand against the new rise of fascism, which is driven by the imperialist forces.

Many of those registering are from South Asia, including India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Thous from Kegalle, Sri Lanka, states, I want to change this corrupted system. Suneth, from the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, writes, Im a part of the working class. The unity of working class is the best thing that I should be involved in.

Kalyana, also from Colombo, writes, In the current world situation of rapid sliding to a world war, the unity of the working class internationally is a must for the survival of the mankind. Only the IC and the WSWS are devoted to this task, and this rally is a one but massive step towards this task. So everybody has a duty to attend this rally and bring more and more like minded people for this event.

Hamza, from Islamabad, Pakistan writes that he is attending the rally because I am very much interested in socialism. Shibadatt, from Bangalore, India, explains that it is necessary to end corruption in the country and terrorism in the world.

From the Americas, Marcelo, from Montevideo, Uruguay, wrote to the WSWS that he is attending the rally to continue the struggle of the international working class for socialism. Josue, from Costa Rica, said that he hopes to join the discussion on how to build a workers revolutionary movement directed to the destruction of capitalism and building of a free and equal society.

Alex, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, said that it was necessary to honor at least the will of the citizens to work and live in a state of dignity.

Registrants have signed up from most of the states in the US. Jessica, from New York, writes that she wants to learn more about how I can help end world oppression by oligarchies and capitalism. William, from Colorado, explains that this is my first official foray into the world of socialism, and I need the knowledge this rally gives so I can assume my place in the historical revolution of the working class.

Tonelle, from Florida, writes, My understanding of world events has been greatly improved since subscribing to the World Socialist Web Site newsletter.

Justine, from Washington, states that she is attending the rally because the international working class is the only social force that can stop imperialist war and end social inequality, and the WSWS is the only publication fighting for the international unity and mobilization of the working class. The previous May Day rallies by the WSWS have been highly educational.

The WSWS urges all workers and youth to make plans to attend today and to register at internationalmayday.org!
US health insurance companies are preparing to seek substantial increases in Obamacare premiums, the Hill reported Monday. Citing big losses on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, many insurers will ask state insurance commissioners to approve double-digit hikes in ACA premiums and some may pull out of the market if they are not approved.

The planned premium hikes are a further exposure of the pro-corporate character of Barack Obamas signature domestic legislation. Both candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have embraced the ACA as a supposedly progressive health care reform.

In reality, the ACA is designed to funnel increased profits to the private insurance companies. Under the laws individual mandate, those without insurance through a government program or employer must obtain coverage offered by private insurers or pay a penalty. The insurers are demanding a hefty profit as the condition for their participation in the ACA marketplaces.

Many insurers say they have been losing money on Obamacare plans, in part due to setting their premiums too low when they started in 2014. There are absolutely some carriers that are going to have to come in with some pretty significant price hikes to make up for the underpricing that they did before, Sabrina Corlette of Georgetown Universitys Center on Health Insurance Reforms told the Hill.

Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) under Obamacare must offer coverage regardless of any persons preexisting health conditions, but are restricted from charging higher premiums based on health status and age. As a result, QHPs are more attractive to older, less healthy people and less attractive to younger, healthier people. With fewer young and healthy people enrolling in the ACA plans, the pool of clients is more costly to insure.

A study released Friday by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University found that insurance company losses from QHPs on the individual market were in excess of $2.2 billion. These losses came despite insurers receiving net reinsurance payments of $6.7 billion from the ACAs reinsurance program, a program set up under the law to compensate insurers for large claims incurred by high-risk individuals in the individual market. That program is set to expire at the end of 2016.

A report from McKinsey & Company found that in the individual insurance market, which includes the ACA marketplaces, insurers were profitable in only nine states and lost money in 41. Larry Levitt, an expert on the ACA at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told the Hill, Either insurers will drop out or insurers will raise premiums.

Insurance analysts have warned that if more young, healthy people do not sign up for Obamacare coverage, the individual marketplace may collapse, with insurers pulling out in droves and sending the market into what is known in the insurance industry as a death spiral.

UnitedHealthcare, the largest single health carrier in the US, said in November that it was considering leaving Obamacare by 2017 due to financial losses. UnitedHealthcares definition of losses was the possibility of not seeing the same $1.6 billion in profits that it pocketed in the third quarter of 2015. Last week, the company announced it was dropping its ACA plans in Arkansas and Georgia and that more states could follow.

Blue Cross Blue Shield dropped its ACA plans in New Mexico last year after it lost money and state regulators rejected a proposed 51.6 percent premium increase. Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina now says it may drop out of the ACA marketplace in that state due to losses.

News of the planned premium hikes follows a poll earlier this year showing widespread public dissatisfaction with the Affordable Care Act. Polling by National Public Radio and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that more than a quarter of US adults say they have been personally harmed by the health care law since its passage.

Twenty-six percent of the polls 1,002 respondents said that the cost of health care has been a serious strain on their finances over the last two years. About 40 percent of those facing these financial struggles said they have spent all or most of their savings accounts on large bills, while 20 percent said they hadnt filled prescriptions because they could not afford them.

Insurers seeking the premium hikes claim that the blow will be softened by the tax credit available to some low-income individuals and families who qualify under Obamacare. However, about 15 percent of Obamacare enrollees do not receive these subsidies, so they would bear the full burden of any premium increases.

Even with the subsidies, the overwhelming majority of the least expensive bronze Obamacare plans come with deductibles in excess of $5,000. This means that payment for all but certain essential services must be made out of pocket before any coverage kicks in. These costs are forcing many people to self-ration and go without needed medical care for themselves and family members.

Many of the bronze plans also offer extremely narrow networks, restricting access to doctors, hospitals and other providers. In an effort to boost their profits, insurers are expected to further restrict their provider networks in addition to raising premiums. The Mercatus Center study cited above found that QHPs in 2014 with narrow provider networks performed better financially than those with broader networks.
The bankruptcy filing of Peabody Energy is another in a string of Chapter 11 filings by major coal producers and has serious implications for workers, retirees and mining communities.

In a highly anticipated move, Peabody Energythe worlds largest coal producerfiled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in St. Louis, Missouri on April 13. It was the most prominent to date of a series of bankruptcies in the coal mining industry spurred by the deepening global economic crisis and the recent plunge in commodity prices.

According to Bloomberg, the bankruptcy of the 133-year-old Peabody is the biggest this year and the most powerful convulsion yet in an industry still waiting for the coal market to bottom out.

Peabodys filing came at the end of a 30-day grace period it utilized last month in relation to a $71.1 million interest payment owed on its debt. In its 2015 annual report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Peabody claimed to have lost nearly $2 billion last year on top of losses of $787 million in 2014. In bankruptcy, the company claims $11 billion in assets and $10.1 billion in liabilities.

In an indication of the threat the bankruptcy poses to Peabodys 7,100 employees globally, the company has hired the notorious Jones Day law firm, which is currently helping the bankrupt Alpha Natural Resources scrap its collective bargaining agreements with the United Mine workers of America (UMWA). Over the past five years, Jones Day has also had a hand in the bankruptcies of American Apparel in October 2015, Radio Shack in February 2015, the city of Detroit in 2013, and Hostess in 2011.

In addition to its 26 coal mines in the United States and Australia, the energy giant owns a five percent stake in Illinois Prairie State coal-fired power plant and a 37.5 percent share of the Dominion Terminal Associates coal export terminal at Newport News, Virginia. Its US mines in Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, New Mexico, and Wyoming mine thermal coal primarily for domestic electricity generation.

The companys North Antelope Rochelle mine in Wyomings Powder River Basin (PRB) is the worlds largest and most productive coal mine. Operating on two 12-hour shifts, 365 days per year, the mines 1,150 workers produced approximately 110 million tons of coal in 2015more than the entire state of West Virginia.

In Australia, the company mines thermal and metallurgical coal for steelmaking, primarily for the global market; however, these operations are not part of the US bankruptcy restructuring.

In its filing Peabody complained, Over the past several years, American coal producers have encountered reduced demand and lower coal prices created by sluggish economic growth, an abundance of extremely low priced natural gas and increased regulatory hurdles. This convergenceof marked reductions in volume and pricingsubstantially impacts the companys revenues and cash flows.

Buoyed briefly in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis by slowing, but still strong growth in the emerging economies, particularly China, global coal prices peaked in 2011. Since then, Chinas growth has slowed to lowest level in 25 years and coals share domestic energy production has continued to erode.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, US coal production in 2015 reached its lowest level since 1986. The administration also forecast last month that, 2016 will be the first year that natural gas-fired generation exceeds coal generation in the United States on an annual basis.

The first expressions of the downturn in the US coal industry occurred in the Central Appalachian coal basinsouthern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and western Virginiawhere the coal seams are thin, having been depleted by nearly a century of mining activity, and consequently productivity is half that of the Illinois basin and one-fifteenth that of the more recently opened massive strip mines of the PRB.

The Appalachian coalfields are also the historic stronghold of the UMWA where decades of militant struggles waged by miners in the early and mid-20th century resulted in limited gains in living standards and working conditions. While decades of anticommunism, nationalism, and corporatist collaboration on the part of the UMWA bureaucracy, coupled with the impacts of globalization, have reduced the union to a hollow shell of its former self, operators remaining in the region have been forced to reckon with the legacy liabilities of those previous gains, largely absent in the strip mines of the west.

Recognizing the mounting problems of the Appalachian basin, over the last decade the largest coal companies began to divest themselves of their holdings in the region. In 2006, Arch Coal spun off its union operations in Appalachia into Magnum Coal, a move which allowed Arch to write off approximately $530 million in liabilities, including retiree health care, workers compensation, and environmental reclamation.

In a similar move, Peabody created Patriot Coal in 2007 as a spin-off of its union operations in Appalachia. At the time, then-Peabody CEO Rick Navarre boasted of the move, In total, our legacy liabilities, expenses and cash flows will be nearly cut in half. The criminal character of the scheme could be seen in the new companys first quarterly report claiming $1.2 billion in assets and $1.1 billion in liabilities. In 2008, Patriot acquired Magnum Coal, increasing its debt burden and leaving the company responsible for benefits to retirees, which outnumbered active miners by three to one.

It came as no surprise then when Patriot was the first of the major coal companies to file for bankruptcy in July 2012 as coal prices began their historic slide. As the World Socialist Web Site explained at the time, the Patriot bankruptcy is not merely the product of blind economic forces, but also the result of deliberate policies in the coal industry, first to increase profits margins at the expense of workers, and second, to shift the weight of the economic crisis onto their backs.

As the WSWS also warned during the Patriot bankruptcy, The outcome of the case will serve as a precedent for the gutting of wages and working conditions in the mining industry and is no doubt being followed closely by the other operators.

Since that time, Patriot has been followed into the bankruptcy courts by Edison Mission Energy in 2012, James River Coal in 2014; Alpha Natural Resources, Walter Energy, Xinergy, and Patriot for a second time in 2015; and Arch Coal in January 2016. Bankruptcies at beleaguered coal producers Foresight Energy and Cloud Peak Energy are expected soon with similar indications also coming from Murray Energy.

Peabodys Patriot Coal scheme was part of more than a decade of acquisitions, restructuring, and cost cutting. In 2011, at the height of the coal boom, Peabody acquired the Australian metallurgical mines of Macarthur Coal Limited for $4 billion. A year later, the company spent $1.2 billion on coal leases from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in the PRB. Meanwhile, as Peabody notes in its bankruptcy filing, the company has created over the past few years a leaner organizational structure by reducing hundreds of positions and reducing selling, and general and administrative expenses to the lowest levels in nearly a decade.

The inevitable logic is that Peabody has followed these companies into bankruptcy restructuring despite having shed its costly Appalachian operations and operating some of the most productive mines in the US.

As analyst Jeremy Sussman explained to Bloomberg, Peabodys bankruptcy is much more of a balance sheet restructuring than anything else. He claimed that unlike many of the other bankrupt coal companies, most of Peabodys mines still make money. Peabody admitted as much in its filing claiming that the relief provided by chapter 11 will enable [the company] to continue to restructure [its] debt and operations while riding out the storm that has beset the coal industry.

The author also recommends:

Walter Energy threatens thousands of retirees

[11 January 2016]

Second largest coal producer files for bankruptcy

[5 August 2015]

Thousands of miners to lose healthcare, pensions, in Patriot Coal bankruptcy

[21 November 2012]
An Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) report, Causes of Death Australia, 2014, released last month, revealed a sharply rising suicide rate over the past decade, with steep increases among children and young women.

The media barely mentioned the report, and it was quickly buried by the parties of the political establishmentLiberal-National, Labor and Greens. That is because the trend points to a worsening human toll, above all among young people, from the mounting social crisis and declining prospects for youth.

Nationally, there were 2,864 deaths from intentional self-harm in 20142,160 men and 704 women. The total was up from about 2,100 in 2005, making suicide the 13th leading cause of all deaths. Suicides occurred at a rate of 12 per 100,000 people in 2014up by 20 percent from about 10 per 100,000 in 2005.

According to the ABS data, the impact of these deaths is even greater when measured in terms of years of potential life lost, precisely because of the young age of many of the victims. Intentional self-harm deaths accounted for 97,066 years of potential life lost, the highest of all leading causes of death in 2014.

While heart disease, dementia, stroke, lung cancer and chronic lower respiratory diseases were the top five biggest causes of death overall, among people 1544 years of age, suicide was the greatest killer. This is a damning indictment of an economic and social system based on corporate profit, which offers no future for many young people.

Most of the suicide victims75 percentwere male. Tragically, among male teenagers and men aged between 15 and 34, about a third of all deaths were due to intentional self-harm. For those aged 1519, nearly 36 percent of all deaths resulted from suicide.

The sharpest rises, however, have occurred among girls and women. In recent years the rate of suicide among young females, aged between 10 and 29, has risen to almost the same levels as among males. More than a quarter of the female deaths between those ages were attributed to intentional self-harm. According to Suicide Prevention Australia, the suicide rate among young women has increased by 10 percent per year over the past three years.

That so many young men and women, in what should be the primes of their lives, feel there is little to look forward to indicates deteriorating social conditions in Australia, despite the myth of an exceptional lucky country leading to rising social tensions and problems.

Disturbingly, increasing numbers of children are also killing themselves. In 2013, the ABS reported that suicide was the leading cause of death of children between 5 and 17 years of age. In 2009, 9.9 percent of all deaths of children this age were due to suicide. By 2013, this proportion had almost doubled to 19.3 percent.

The rates of suicide per 100,000 children remained low2.5compared to the overall population rate of 10.9 in 2013, but the rise was stark.

Between 2010 and 2014, the Northern Territory (NT) reported the worst rate of child deaths due to suicide, with 12.7 deaths per 100,000. Because the NT has the highest proportion of indigenous people among Australias states and territories, this indicates a terrible impact on Aboriginal people, who are among the most oppressed layers of the working class (see: Australia: Eleven-year-old Aboriginal boy commits suicide).

While the interaction between suicide, mental health problems and economic and social stresses, such as worsening job prospects, is complex, there is mounting evidence of a link between suicide and unemployment.

After compiling a series of reports and research documents, the Australian Institute of Male Health Studies found that unemployed males were around 4.6 times more likely to take their own lives than employed males.

A global study last year concluded that one-fifth of all suicides were linked to unemploymentabout 45,000 people each year took their own lives because they became unemployed. This study, published on the Lancet medical journals psychiatry web site, suggested an association between the 2008 economic crisis, rising jobless rates and increased rates of suicide.

Young jobseekers in Australia are under intensifying pressure in looking for work. As at August 2015, nearly 290,000 young people were officially unemployedover 50 percent, or 100,000 people, more than at the start of the global financial breakdown in 2008.

There is growing job insecurity. Mass layoffs in mines, steelworks, car factories and other basic industries have left more than 1.5 million workers unemployed or underemployedwanting more hourseven according to the understated official figures. As a result, young people and working-class households are under acute stress, competing for jobs, trying to obtain educational qualifications and pay bills.

In response to the economic crisis, successive federal and state governments, Liberal-National and Labor, have imposed austerity measures. These have included cuts to mental health programs and welfare benefitsespecially for sole parents, disabled workers and the unemployed.

Decades of under-funding have left mental health services unable to assist many people suffering distress. In a recent report, titled Mental health services reach the tipping point in Australian acute hospitals, the Medical Journal of Australia noted that Australia ranked 26th of the 34 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for hospital psychiatric beds per 100,000 population. In 2013, Australia had 29 fewer beds per 100,000 than the OECD average.

Funding for community-based care, allocated to non-government service providers through competitive tender processes, has been slashed also over the past decade, with long periods of uncertainty between funding rounds.

One result is that in 2011, Australia had the third highest readmission rate among the OECD countries for patients diagnosed with schizophreniaover 15 percent were readmitted to hospital within 30 daysand the fourth highest unplanned readmission rate (15 percent) for patients with bipolar disorder.

The underlying link between suicide and periods of economic breakdown was illustrated by an earlier report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Suicide and hospitalised self-harm in Australia, Trends and analysis. It found that the highest rates of suicide for men recorded in Australia30 deaths per 100,000were in 1930 and 1931, during the Great Depression. Unemployment and mental ill health were cited as the two major contributing factors.

It is not surprising that the young and working class people are the most affected again today. Parents in jobs are having to work longer hours, cut back on recreational activities and spend less time with their children. Household debt levels are the highest in the world and young people are also burdened with large debts from university or college fees.
Hundreds of Verizon workers held a protest Monday outside the New Jersey state capitol in Trenton as the strike by 39,000 telecommunications workers heads into its second week. The same day, scores of Verizon workers rallied in Binghamton, New York and several hundred rallied in lower Manhattan.

Verizon strikers walked out over management demands for significant cuts to health care and pensions, as well as changes to contract language regarding outsourcing that would lead to the loss of thousands of jobs. The walkout has been met with strikebreaking by management, which is continuing operations with managers and replacement workers.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) called rallies Monday as part of their effort to channel worker anger behind the Democrats. At the Trenton event, the platform was turned over to Democratic politicians, including New Jersey Assembly Speaker Vince Prieto, who demagogically pledged support to strikers. Meanwhile, New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney said in a statement that we are standing in solidarity with them in their fight for fairness.

The fact is that Democratic and Republican politicians in New Jersey are joining together to attack public workers. In face of a budgetary crisis in Atlantic City, Sweeney is sponsoring a bill that could lead to unilaterally reopening the contracts of public workers by allowing the state to take over the citys finances.

In Binghamton, strikers protested Monday outside company headquarters on Henry Street. The platform was also opened to local Democratic politicians. Speaking to reporters at the rally, CWA Local 1111 President Jay Lake noted that management has threatened to cut off health insurance benefits for all striking workers effective May 1, but offered no strategy to oppose this attack.

Another rally in lower Manhattan drew a reported attendance of 250. New York Democratic Mayor Bill De Blasio has used the citys police department as a strikebreaking force, keeping picketing workers behind barricades while replacement workers maintain company operations.

A Verizon worker told the World Socialist Web Site Verizon Strike Newsletter that he had learned from an informed source that a major sticking point in the negotiations revolved around a company plan to offer a monetary incentive to older workers to retire. The company is advancing a plan to waive the penalty for older workers who may be just short of qualifying for full retirement benefits based on their age and years of service.

While the offer would be attractive to older workers, the unions are opposed to the proposal on the grounds that they would lose too many dues-paying members if the deal were implemented.

Since calling the walkout, the CWA and IBEW have blocked any broader mobilization of the working class behind the Verizon strikers. For example, thousands of workers at US West are being told by the CWA to continue working without a contract.

At Verizon, the CWA and IBEW kept workers on the job without a contract for months, while management prepared its strikebreaking operation. The strike was called with little or no preparation, timed to coincide with the New York Democratic primary.

The unions are refusing to offer any strike pay to pickets, leaving workers to rely on their own financial resources. Workers indicated to the Newsletter that they are becoming increasingly frustrated and angry over the lack of information from the unions and the absence of any strategy to win the strike.

Verizon, meanwhile, is continuing to divest of its landline operations as it focuses on its predominantly non-union wireless operations. On April 1, just prior to the strike, Verizon sold local landline operations in Florida, California and Texas to Frontier communications for $10.5 billion. The business included some 3.3 million voice connections and 2.1 million broadband connections.

A striking Verizon worker in Northern Virginia told the Newsletter, The union is deciding things behind closed doors, which is BS. I dont know what they are doing. Most guys are not getting any strike pay. If their local union doesnt take up a fund collection, they will get nothing.

Some guys have been forced to get a second job because they have bills to pay and there is no money being on strike.

The demands of management appear aimed at driving out older workers in order to replace them with lower paid new hires. The company is seeking contract language changes that would allow it to reassign workers up to 100 miles away from their current work locations. It is also demanding the right to force workers to report anywhere for up to two months at a time.

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Joe, a worker with eighteen years, explained what is at stake in the strike: Our benefits, healthcare, outsourcing. They want to cut our tuition benefits. Right now we get $8,000 a year toward our tuition. Basically, anything good they want to take away.

Speaking of the 2011 strike Joe noted, We gave up things maybe if we had waited for a couple of storms, the company would have given in, instead of the union. I think the union gave up a lot.

Verizon has a lot of connections with the media. All of the media reports have been basically portraying the workers as greedy, and the company as realistic. Theyre saying we get a 6.5 percent raise, but they dont say that its over three years. Thats just about a cost-of-living increase.

Another worker said, We dont see any need to make concessions for a company making this much money.
In the first stop of the Socialist Equality Partys 2016 US presidential campaign, candidate Jerry White visited the picket lines in New York City, where thousands of Verizon communications workers are striking to oppose intolerable working conditions, stagnating wages, and attacks on pensions.

Workers spoke out against social inequality and discussed the fact that they and their class brothers and sisters all over the world face similar conditions.
(Beijing)  Doctors estimate that more than 400,000 babies will be born in the capital this year  about twice as many as in any of the past five years  and Shanghai is also seeing a rise in the number of newborns, a trend that comes after the government eased its one-child policy.

Doctors speaking at a meeting hosted by the non-profit Beijing Medical Association on April 9 also said the number of pregnant women registered at community hospitals in Beijing reached more than 38,000 in March  the highest monthly figure since the city started requiring expecting mothers to register at the facilities in 2014.

Official data show that about 200,000 infants were born in each of the past five years in Beijing. Some 220,000 were born in 2012  a dragon year on the Chinese calendar, which is traditionally believed to yield stronger and smarter youngsters  and 208,000 more arrived in 2014. The lowest figure was 172,000 last year.

The ruling Communist Party eased the one-child policy in late 2013, saying couples in which either parent was an only child could have two babies. The party then dropped the one-baby rule last year, allowing all couples to have a second child. The changes were made because of concerns that China's population is rapidly aging, a trend that could hurt the economy down the road.

Shanghai has also experienced a surge in the number of newborns this year. The number born at two top hospitals in the eastern metropolis rose by half in the first three months compared to the same period last year, a recent report by Sinolink Securities Co. Ltd. said.

The surge in newborns is likely to cause headaches for hospitals, the 21st Century Business Herald newspaper reported. Liu Kaibo, a doctor at Beijing Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, said at the Beijing Medical Association meeting that the baby boom will put pressure on the facilities, which already face a shortage of staff and beds.

"Hospitals in Beijing can only deliver 275,000 babies now," she said. "The current situation in obstetrics departments is worrisome."

Liu added that some departments are already adding extra beds.

The increase in births has prompted the government to raise the prices of medicines for infants, doctors said at the same meeting. An executive of a pharmaceutical company told Caixin this was being done in a bid to pay for research and development of pediatric medicines, which are likely to be in great demand in future years. In the past, manufacturers lacked incentives to develop the drugs for children because of commercial worries, he said.

(Rewritten by Chen Na)
Edwin H. Moore, Ph.D., has been the President of the Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida, a Tallahassee based association of 31 private, not for profit colleges and universities since 2003. He also serves as the Executive Director of the Higher Education Facilities Finance Authority in Florida and as Chief Executive Officer of the Florida Independent College Fund, a non-profit organization.

Ed has a unique portfolio, having served during his career in challenging roles in government, the private sector and in the not for profit association sector. Prior to his current roles at ICUF he served as Staff Director for the Florida House of Representatives Policy Committee while concurrently serving as Staff Director of the Select Committee on Medical Liability Insurance, the Select Committee on Workers Compensation and the House Public Security Coordinating Committee. He also served as the House point staff person for disaster preparedness, continuing operations planning (COOP) and continuity of government (COG) planning.

He began his professional career working for the Florida House of Representatives as a legislative assistant and as a committee staff analyst, after which he worked for the Comptroller of Florida, as Executive Director of the Broward County Community Mental Health Board and then was a partner in national consulting firm in Illinois, focusing on large project developments and electric, water and gas utility consulting for over two decades, before returning back to Florida in 1999, where he served as President and CEO of the James Madison Institute. He then returned to the Florida House of Representatives staff in 2002 to serve as Policy Staff Director prior to being chosen as President of ICUF.

He has been married to Kathleen for 41 years and has four children, Cason, Allison, Ashley and Brady, one granddaughter, Arlington and a grandson Hunter.

While in Illinois he also served that state in various capacities, serving as a member of the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the Governors Privatization Council and the Illinois K-20 Joint Education Board.

He is knowledgeable in the operations of not for profit, member driven organizations, having served as both CEO and President of several organizations as well as a member and chairman of many others. He has a Ph.D. in Public Administration and Policy with an emphasis on creating learning organizations in policy making settings. He is the author of numerous tracts on higher education, K-20 education, economic development, insurance, healthcare, and other public policy issues and has served in a consulting role for the International Republican Institute, the British Government and the US Department of State. Ed is a Fulbright Program Scholar and was awarded a Fulbright grant by the Department of State for study in the Republic of China, Taiwan. He was the keynote speaker for the Taiwan-Florida Higher Education Conferences held in Taipei, Taiwan in both 2010 and 2012. He wrote The Speakers Volume II, a history of the Speakers of the Florida House of Representatives. He was editor and co-author of a book for the Department of State for use in the Balkans titled The Power of Ideas for use by NGO and political party organizations.

He is a member of the CareerSource Florida Inc. board of directors and a member of the Enterprise Florida Stakeholder Advisory Council. He is an ex officio member of The Florida Council of 100 and a member of the Florida Higher Education Coordinating Council. He served as a member of Governor Rick Scotts Transition team for education. Ed has also guested on multiple Florida and national radio and television news, including locally regular appearances on The Usual Suspects and on WFLAFM in Tallahassee.

He has received many awards and recognitions but is most proud of being named a Distinguished Alumni from Broward College as well as being named to the Broward Education Foundations Hall of Fame for graduates of Broward County schools. He was also named one of the 100 Irish-Americans in Education by the Irish government in 2012 and as a Distinguished Alumni of the Florida State University College of Social Sciences and Public Policy.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.  Tuesday, during a meeting of the Florida Cabinet, Governor Rick Scott awarded five Florida State University Police Department Officers with the Medal of Heroism.

Sergeant Roy Wiley, Officer Daniel Cutchins, Officer Orenthya Sloan, Officer Oma Nations, and Officer Parise Adams of the Florida State University Police Department recieved the Medal of Heroism for their quick reaction in a hostile situation.

On November 20, 2014, the Florida State University Police Department responded to a call of an active shooter on campus at Strozier Library. The gunman entered the library with 400 students and opened fire at three students, injuring two. Sergeant Roy Wiley, Officer Daniel Cutchins, Officer Orenthya Sloan, Officer Oma Nations, and Officer Parise Adams confronted the gunman on the outside steps of the library. The gunman refused the officers request to drop his weapon and opened fire. The officers returned fire, taking down the gunman.

Governor Scott said, Every student deserves to feel safe on their campus and I am thankful that FSU Police Sergeant Roy Wiley, Officer Daniel Cutchins, Officer Orenthya Sloan, Officer Oma Nations, and Officer Parise Adams did not hesitate to respond to a dangerous situation in order to protect the students at Florida State University. Their brave actions helped save lives of FSU students and faculty members, and I am proud to recognize their courage and service today.
MIDWAY, Fla. (WTXL) -- Two names used for significant Atlantic tropical cyclones from 2015, Erika and Joaquin, are being retired from future use.

Though 2015 was the tenth consecutive season without a hurricane striking the United States mainland, other countries in the Atlantic basin were not as fortunate.

Tropical Storm Erika produced flooding rains in the Caribbean nation of Dominica and mudslides in Haiti. The storm's effect resulted in 31 total deaths in the two locations.

Hurricane Joaquin reached Category 4 strength, lashing out at the central and southeast Bahamas islands. The strongest October hurricane to affect the Bahamas since 1866 also contributed to the sinking of the El Faro cargo ship northeast of Crooked Island, which killed 33 crewmembers.

The hurricane committee of the World Meteorological Organization also retired the name Patricia for the Pacific tropical cyclone name list.

The WMO naming system for the Atlantic uses six lists of names in rotation. The names Elsa and Julian will replace Erika and Joaquin when the list is used again in 2021.
Given the changes to its economy and financial market, China's monetary policy will maintain a certain degree of looseness in the coming months, but "prudence" will feature more prominently than last year.
The inquest into the fatal Pasco police shooting of a Mexican man throwing rocks while fleeing faces another setback.
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GRANGER, Wash. -- A Catholic priest in the Yakima Diocese has been permanently removed from public ministry by Bishop Joseph Tyson.
YAKIMA, Wash. -- Locally produced content is back on PBS in Yakima, at least in small chunks.
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The IDF raided a currency exchange store in Ramallah on the night between Wednesday and Thursday, apparently in order to confiscate funds used for terrorist purposes. Palestinian sources told Ynet that IDF soldiers attempted to blow a safe in the store open with explosives. The explosion apparently caused a fire to break out in the building. No one was hurt, and Palestinian firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze after the IDF left the area.

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The explosion at the money changing company

X

This is not the first time this exchange company has been raided by the IDF. This raid was executed based on intelligence provided by the Israel Police. The stores owner refused to open the safe, leading the IDF soldiers to try and crack it with explosives. The attempt reportedly failed.

The fire. No one was reportedly harmed.

In March, IDF forces raided the offices of Palestinian television channel Falasteen Al-Yom in the Ramallah-adjacent town of al-Bireh, confiscating equipment. At the same time, the IDF arrested the channels West Bank director, Farouk Alian. Despite the raid, the Islamic Jihad-affiliated channel  considered one of the most popular among Palestinians  has gone on broadcasting out of Gaza.
A straight line connects the intifada of knife-wielding terrorists, Hamas's attack tunnels, the countless Hamas attacks foiled by the Shin Bet in the West Bank recently, and the suicide bombing on a bus in Jerusalem last week. Israel is losing its deterrence, and its government cant seem to find any direction to navigate itself and the people it is responsible for.

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The lone-wolf stabbers came out by the dozens to kill Israelis. They did so because of hatred and incitement, as the Israeli government tries to claim, but also because of a deep despair of a reality that, to them, is only getting worse. And unlike the governments claims, their actions and the reasons behind these actions are not the same as ISISs.

The fear of Israel's military might and its intelligence apparatus, Netanyahu's thunderous declarations, home demolitions, the threat to deport terrorists' families, and the calls by ministers and other right wingers to the public to ensure these terrorists die in every attack  meaning that they are lynched after being neutralized (a call that has been heeded many times) - all these did not deter them. The threat of enacting some magic new technology that would detect them in advance, before they pulled out a knife, also proved to be empty words.





Firefighters battling the flames after bomb goes off on Jerusalem bus.

While these lone wolves were acting without organizational affiliation, Hamas continued (in fact, it never stopped) building tunnels they plan to use to kill and abduct both civilians and soldiers from Israeli territory. The Netanyahu government justified the necessity of Operation Protective Edge by citing the need to destroy the tunnels and resume deterrence. At the end of the operation, the government vowed that the IDF had destroyed all the "attack tunnels." This claim, like the management of the entire operation, requires investigation.

A very senior security official said in a closed forum recently, "In his book The Courage to Win, MK Ofer Shelah, a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, recounts the history of the terrible management of Operation Protective Edge within the secrecy limits he is required to adhere to. The full and detailed truth is far more frightening."

If Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in 2014 to destroy the tunnels, why didn't it launch it sooner? After all, the existence of the tunnels has been known for a long time before that. And if Israel then claimed that all of the tunnels were destroyed, then why did the IDF just recently find another tunnel that, according to intelligence officials, was already at an advanced stage during the operation?

Furthermore, if Israel had really rehabilitated its deterrence following Operation Protective Edge, how is it possible that Hamas kept on digging the tunnel, as if nothing had happened? Theres a high chance there are several other tunnels that have yet to be discovered.

Hamas also hasn't been deterred from continuing its widespread efforts to commit attacks against Israel or from undermining the rule of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Most of this activity failed to bear fruit, thanks to the Shin Bet (and also thanks to the security cooperation with the PA), but that doesn't change the fact that in reality, there is no deterrence between Israel and Hamas.

The recently-discovered Hamas tunnel (Photo: IDF Spokesman)

Hamas has managed to shape the terms of the ceasefire with Israel to its liking: Israel doesn't carry out targeted killings in Gaza, Hamas continues digging tunnels, Israel is unable to completely stop rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, and Hamas continues trying to carry out attacks from the West Bank, all while Israel isn't retaliating.

Government and defense officials have recently announced that there has been a decline in terror attacks. The Jerusalem bombing last week served as a wakeup call for them. Netanyahu declared, "We will find those who made this explosive device; we will reach those who sent the terrorist." He might be right. Unlike the lone-wolf stabbers, the Jerusalem suicide bomber was affiliated with Hamas, and the Shin Bet (Israeli domestic General Security Agency, which is in charge of counter-terrorism) is likely to find those who sent him.

Netanyahu's concluding words, "we will reach those who send the terrorists," are full of vigor and masculinity, but what exactly is he saying? To whom is he referring? To Iran, which supports Hamas and Islamic Jihad? Does Netanyahu intend to attack Iran? In any case, it is clear that those who sent the terrorist aren't afraid as well.

Since it was a suicide bomber, the failure of deterrence is even worse. Twelve years ago, Israel managed to win what was considered an unachievable victory: a combination of precise intelligence, targeted assassinations campaign and Ariel Sharon's leadership of led Hamas to beg for a ceasefire and cease using suicide bombers. The cost to the organization was just too high, even for the jihadist Hamas. The return of suicide bombers indicate that even this achievement has slipped from Israel's hands.

The bottom line is clear, when there is no clear way to fight terrorism, and there's no reasonable political alternative presented to the Palestinians, we are left with bombastic declarations. The strong support for Netanyahu shows that large parts of the Israeli public are buying these empty phrases. The adversary on other side, it turns out, is less gullible.
Grammy-winning guitarist Lee Ritenour will perform a concert in Israel on May 31 at the Reading 3 Club in Tel Aviv, with tickets ranging from NIS 279 to 299.

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Ritenour will arrive as part of a tour to promote his new album "A Twist Of Rit," released in 2015.

Ritenour began playing guitar at age of 16 and has recorded more than 40 albums during his four-decades-long career. He was among the founders of Fourplay, one of the most successful modern jazz combos, and is considered a virtuoso in his field because of his ability to combine musical genres such as jazz, funk and fusion.

Lee Ritenour (Photo: gettyimages)

Ritenour won a Grammy for his "Harlequin" project and was nominated for the prestigious music award 18 other times. Additionally, two of his music videos were played on MTV's first day of broadcasting.

During his career, Ritenour has collaborated with many musical legends, including Frank Sinatra, B.B. King, Simon and Garfunkel, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Barbra Streisand and Pink Floyd. His songs also feautured Herbie Hancock, Phil Collins, Chick Corea, Chaka Khan and Slash.

This will be Ritenour's first visit to Israel.
It has recently come out that the Directorate for the Fight against BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) will move its offices from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.

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Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Ofer Berkowitz said, "(Minister of Public Security) Gilad Erdan purports to deal with de-legitimization and with the global BDS movement, but is actually supporting de-legitimization of Jerusalem. This is absurd. We will fight to change this decision."

Erdan also serves as the minister of strategic affairs and the war against de-legitimization. He was promised a budget of NIS 100 million and 10 staff members dedicated to the fight against the BDS movement, and there have been efforts to fill the senior positions over the past several weeks. The job description says that the job will be in Jerusalem but will soon move to offices in the Tel Aviv area.

BDS (Photo: Reuters)

This comes in opposition to a government decision not not move the offices from Jerusalem until 2018.

The office will join several other governmental offices in moving to Tel Aviv, such as the Office of the Chief Scientist, the Israeli Digital Headquarters (which is connected to the Prime Minister's Office), and the Emergency Directorate of the Ministry of Communications.

The Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem added, "The government of Israel is continuing to make a separation between what it says about Jerusalem and its actions towards Jerusalem. Instead of strengthening Jerusalem and its economy, the government is taking offices out of Jerusalem, such as this office and the Office of the Chief Scientist."

Minister Gilad Erdan (Photo: Amit Shabi)

Erdan responded, "The Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the War against De-Legitimization consists of less than 10 employees and is in the process of hiring more people to fight against BDS. By the end of the process, we expect to have 30 employees in the office. Some of the employees will continue to work in Jerusalem at the Prime Minister's Office, and others will be situated in offices in a building in the center of the country, according to decisions in the Security Cabinet, due to the ministry's work and the need to be in close proximity to other security agencies located in the Israel's center."

The BDS movement has already succeeded in forcing companies such as SodaStream and Ahava to move their operations out of the West Bank and to areas within the Green Line.
The first stage of revolutionizing Israel's bus lanes has begun in Gush Dan (the Tel Aviv metropolitan area) and the Sharon plain (located north of Gush Dan). Under the scheme, called "Mahir ba'ir" ("fast in the city"), hundreds of kilometers of dedicated bus lanes will be created in 20 cities located in Gush Dan and around it. Inside the cities, shared lanes and street parking will be converted to bus lanes, and outside of the cities, new lanes for public transit will be constructed.

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The scheme is intended to create a new metropolitan network that grants priority to public transportation, bicycles and scooters and also preserves the continuity of bus lanes between the cities.

An agreement was signed over the weekend with the first 6 cities who have met the criteria set by the Ministry of Transport: Bat Yam, Hod Hasharon, Holon, Lod, Kiryat Ono, and Ramla,. More than 50 kilometers total of bus lanes will be added in those cities at a cost of approximately one billion shekels.





Transport Minister Yisrael Katz (left) riding a bus (Photo: Shaul Golan)

In the next two months, the Ministry of Transport is expected to sign similar agreements with Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Givatayim, and Bnei Brak. Further in the future, agreements are expected with Petah Tikva, Ramat Hasharon, Herzliya, Ra'anana, Kfar Saba, Givat Shmuel, Yehud, Or Yehuda, Modi'in and Rishon Lezion.

The scheme is funded in its entirety by the Ministry of Transport. In addition, the ministry is promoting the project with a series of incentives and benefits to local authorities. The incentives are to be allocated in accordance with the authority's level of cooperation and the depth and quality of the preference that it grants to the public transit network.

All these authorities are supposed to receive benefits and incentives valued as some 15% of the entire project's cost. This money may be used to upgrade components of the project, such as street furniture and lighting, and also for transportation projects in the city.

The scheme includes granting priority to buses, both in infrastructure and at traffic lights, automatic ticketing and passenger boarding at all bus doors, improved information provided at bus stops, improved infrastructure and accessibility for pedestrians surrounding the stops, and establishing bicycle lanes alongside the majority of the planned priority lanes.

Dan bus in Tel Aviv (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

In all the bus lanes to be established, enforcement cameras will be installed to be run by municipal inspectors, who will be authorized to write tickets for drivers who park or drive in the bus lanes. A law initiated by Minister of Transport Yisrael Katz authorizes municipal inspectors to carry out enforcement in bus lanes.

The Ayalon Highways Company, which was transferred last week from the Tel Aviv Municipality to the Ministry of Transport, is carrying out the project. The intercity bus lanes will be made and promoted by the National Transport Infrastructure Company.

Regarding the scheme, Katz said, "The goal that I laid out for the ministry and the public transportation companies is to incrementally bring bus service in Israel to a European level by the end of 2018. In this framework, the government, in conjunction with the municipalities, will complete the establishment of all the bus lanes in Gush Dan and their electronic enforcement by the municipalities in accordance with the law that we passed, and, therefore, this project is a priority, and all necessary resources and efforts will be invested in it."

The minister further stated, "Completing the bus lanes and the municipal enforcement, alongside improving the activities of the public transit companies, will lead to a breakthrough and a large revolution and will place Israel in the first rung of advanced countries as regards bus services and public transport, even before the completion of the subway and light rails in Gush Dan, which will bump us up another level after the backwardness of the past decades."

Katz added that the revolutionary initiative is intended to create a significant improvement in the level of public transit service in all matters related to the speed, regularity, reliability, comfort, and accessibility of travel and to bring about a growth in the number of passengers on public transportation.

The ministry set a goal for signing agreements with local authorities to establish the project, and the sooner an authority signs the agreement, the larger its incentives and benefits package will be. The first target date set was April 30. The routes selected were chosen because of their high number of public transit passengers and traffic delays. The Ayalon Highways Company will begin planning the bus lanes in the six cities in the coming days, and immediately thereafter, their construction will begin.

Alongside the benefits of promoting and preferring public transport is the concern that reducing road space for private cars may lead to increased traffic jams.

Givatayim Mayor Ran Kunik said regarding the scheme, "Our position, as has been explained to the minister and his top officials, is that in the case of Givatayim, this is nearly impossible. We have narrow roads with only one lane in each direction for nearly their entire length. At the same time, there's also a plan to create bike lanes on these roads."

Contrary to his Givatayim counterpart, the mayor of Kiryat Ono, Israel Gal, supports the scheme: "The plan is to relieve traffic congestion in the city and to enable drivers faster entering and exiting."

Katz has emphasized that the new bus lane network will be integrated with two additional, multibillion shekel schemes promoted by the Ministry of Transport: the fast lanes project, including a network of fast lanes to enter Tel Aviv, and the establishment of metropolitan bicycle expressways in Gush Dan.
The chancellors of leading US universities, including MIT, the University of Chicago, and all ten campuses of the University of California, have clarified that they are opposed to any academic boycott, in particular to one against Israel. Their comments followed an appeal from the Association of University Heads of Israel (VERA), which was intended to prevent the final adoption of the American Anthropological Association's (AAA) resolution to boycott Israel.

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Last November, the AAA approved a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. There were some 1,300 voting members, of which approximately 30 are Israeli.

Currently, the resolution is being voted on by the AAA's more than 12,000 members (anthropologists from across the globe), and a final decision is to be taken at the end of the month. If the resolution is adopted, this will be the largest academic organization to boycott Israel. This would be considered a substantial accomplishment for the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement and other organizations working to promote an academic boycott of Israeli institutions.

BDS demonstration

VERA has not been silent since this resolution was initially accepted five months ago. They put together a forum to fight threats of an academic boycott, intended to prevent the resolution's final adoption. Recently, VERA's chairman, Prof. Peretz Lavie, sent a letter to the chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr. Gene Block, seeking to prevent the boycott.

Lavie wrote that as the AAA is a large organization, the committee is concerned that a final adoption of the boycott would lead to other organizations following suit. He asked Block to publish a statement saying that a boycott on Israeli academic institutions is an insult to academic values. According to Lavie, such a public statement released before the vote could lead the AAA to reconsider.

Following Lavie's request, Block went to the University of California's president, Janet Napolitano. As a result thereof, all ten chancellors of the University of California system signed a letter dated April 19 expressing their concern for the AAA's proposed boycott. The letter's signatories "urge(d) Association members to consider the boycott's potentially harmful impacts and oppose this resolution." They explained their logic: "The University of California believes that an academic boycott is an inappropriate response to a foreign policy issue and one that threatens academic freedom and sets a damaging precedent for academia."

Prof. Peretz Lavie (Photo: Yoav Bachar)

The Association of American Universities (AAU) had previously released a statement opposing any academic boycott. Its outgoing president, Dr. Hunter Rawlings, recently reminded the university heads of his organization of this stance. MIT President Dr. Rafael Reif wrote a reply to the AAA debate in which he noted Rawlings's statement. Reif added that, as a member of the AAU's leadership, he supported that and opposed the current boycott resolution. The AAU has 60 American member research universities, including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Princeton, Stanford, and two Canadian universities, McGill and the University of Toronto.

A similar letter to Lavie's was sent by the president of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Prof. Rivka Carmi, to the president of the University of Chicago, Dr. Robert Zimmer. In reply, Zimmer released a statement: "The University of Chicago will not divest from companies for doing business in Israel and opposes academic boycotts aimed at specific nations, including Israel. The University is restating its policy to address questions regarding its institutional position."

Prof. Rivka Carmi (Photo: Yair Sagi)

The statement continued, "The University has from its founding held as its highest value the free and open pursuit of knowledge. Faculty and students must be free to pursue their research and education around the world, and to form collaborations both inside and outside the academy, encouraging engagement with the widest spectrum of views. For this reason, the University continues to strongly oppose boycotts of academic institutions or scholars in any region of the world, including recent actions to boycott Israeli institutions."

Lavie explained, "We will not enter an 'academic ghetto' as the BDS movement hopes. I hope that the declarations of the American university presidents will affect the stances of the members of the American Anthropological Association."

Meanwhile, noted Harvard professor, Steven Pinker, released a statement entitled "Against Selective Demonization," in which he also opposed the AAA resolution. He wrote, "The current Israeli government does things that many of us deplore. But are their policies really so atrocious, so beyond the pale of acceptable behavior of nation-states, that they call for a unique symbolic statement that abrogates personal fairness and academic freedom? It helps to put the Israel-Palestine conflict in global and historical perspectivesomething that anthropologists, of all people, might be expected to do."
Muhammad Salah, a suburban Chicago man who fought off charges he supported Hamas, has died. He was 62.

Salah died Sunday of complications from cancer, Dr. Zaher Sahloul, a member of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, told the Chicago Tribune. Services were held later that day.

A Palestinian native and U.S. citizen since 1979, Salah was classified as a "specially designated terrorist" by the U.S. Treasury Department in the 1990s. He was imprisoned in Israel for 4 1/2 years after $95,000 was found in his East Jerusalem hotel room that police said was to bankroll terrorism.
Police received reports on Tuesday morning of rock throwing on route 431 south of the Tel Aviv Metropolitan area. In one of the incidents, a female driver was lightly injured and damage was caused to a number of other vehicles including an ambulance.

On Monday a 44-year-old resident of Rishon LeZion was arrested and brought in for questioning. The extension of his arrest will be discussed in court today (Tuesday).
Joint List MK Haneen Zoabi has called for a change in the Palestinian Authority leadership and an end to its security coordination with Israel, the al-Quds al-Arabi website reported.

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During a Balad party panel in Nazareth discussing Palestinian unity, Zoabi reportedly accused the Palestinian Authority's officials of behaving like thugs and hooligans. The panel was held under the auspicies of the Musarat center based in Ramallah and was attended by members of the Mada el-Carmel center based in Haifa, along with various academics and politicians from the West Bank.

Mahmoud Abbas and Haneen Zoabi (Photo: Reuters, EPA)

Zoabi praised the Palestinians for ridding themselves of the delusion that an Israeli peace partner exists, and called for self-reliance. She also called on Palestinians in general and the Palestinian youth movmement in particular to redirected their efforts to the fight for national liberation.

She argued that the Palestinian Authority is happy with, and benefits from, the current status quo, and therefore is against the youth movements' efforts towards national liberation.

The PA, she said, is oppressing the Palestinian people and preventing them of protesting against it, even on Facebook. How can we reduce the power of the PA, and how can we circumvent it or even change it if it's impossible to protest? These are questions which are not answered in the document. Zoabi said.

Zoabi went on to say that the PA constitutes an obstacle to change, change which needs to come from the street and grassroots movements.

Unlike some other Arab parties, Zoabi emphasized that her party Balad still sees the "Palestinians of 1948" (Israeli-Arabs) as part of the overall Palestinian nation, and that Balad views itself as part of the Palestinian national cause - not part of the Israeli left - and that it was at the forefront of the national Palestinian liberation project.

Arab Knesset members meet with the families of terrorists in Ramallah (Photo: Screenshot from Arabic Media)

The MK told the people at the conference that the Balad party had promoted a plan to counter what she described as the Zionist colonial project.

Zoabi also said that she sees the Palestinian reconciliation agreement as a gamble, and claimed that outside pressure is being applied to both Fatah and Hamas by outside forces that have an interest in keeping the Palestinians from unifying.

The Balad MK had no response to her comments when reached by Ynet.

The firebrand MK has been at the center of multiple political controversies and has consequently come under attack by many Knesset members. Indeed, she came under scrutiny when she refused to call the group who kidnapped and murdered three Israelis in 2014 terrorists . Last year she equated the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews with Israels treatment of the Palestinians. More recently, she found herself under the spotlight once again when she and three other Joint List MKs visited the families of terrorists
A Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre poll found a plurality of West Bank youth oppose the knife attacks against Israelis, while an absolute majority of Gaza youth supports them.

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In particular, the poll revealed that 47.4 percent of West Bank youth and 21.1 percent of Gaza youth oppose the knife attacks, whereas 46.4 percent of West Bank youth and 78.6 percent of Gaza youth support them. These results come on the heels of a Palestinian Center for Research and Survey Policy poll in March, which surveyed the general Palestinian population and also found a plurality oppose the knife attacks in the West Bank and a majority back them in Gaza.

Palestinian youth throwing stones at IDF (Photo: AFP)

Meanwhile, the poll indicated that 40.9 percent of West Bank youth and 66.6 percent of Gaza youth believe that the recent terror attacks serve the Palestinian cause.

Moreover, a plurality of 42.8 percent of Palestinian of Palestinian youth said they support the two-state solution, while 19.1 percent expressed a preference for a bi-national state. However, an overwhelming majority of 67 percent believe that negotiations will not succeed and 64.3 percent oppose cooperating with "like-minded" youth to resolve the conflict.

The poll also revealed that 60.3 percent of Palestinian youth approved of the Palestinian Authority's performance, saying it was "good or very good." Despite the high approval rating, the PA has recently faced major protests against its education, social security, and other policies.

Regarding presidential elections, Palestinian youth favor President Mahmoud Abbas over Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. 37.9 percent of Palestinian youth said they would vote for Abbas, whereas 23.9% said they would cast ballot for Hamas leader Haniyeh. Nonetheless, few Palestinian youth said they trust any of their political leaders. Specifically, 16 percent and 13 percent said they trust Abbas and Haniyeh, respectively, and 32.7 percent said they do not trust any leader.

The poll surveyed 635 West Bank youth and 365 Gaza youth from almost every province in the Palestinian Territories and yielded 3 percent margin for error.
The United States plans to offer Israel the largest military assistance package in US history, according to an Obama administration official.

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"We are prepared to sign an MOU (memorandum of understanding) with Israel that would constitute the largest single pledge of military assistance to any country in US history," a White House official told Reuters.

Obama and Netanyahu, Photo: AFP

The statement came hours after 83 US senators sent a letter to President Obama, urging him to reach a military assistance deal with Israel.

"In light of Israel's dramatically rising defense challenges, we stand ready to support a substantially enhanced new long-term agreement to help provide Israel the resources it requires to defend itself and preserve its qualitative military edge," said the letter.

The US and Israel have been engaged in intense negotiations in recent months to outline US military aid to Israel for the next 10 years.

In February, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he will wait for the next US president to take office, if the military package offered by the Obama administration does not sufficiently address Israeli security concerns, according to Israeli media.

However, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Tuesday that Netanyahu would like to reach a military deal with Obama, fearing the uncertainty of the next US president's positions.
A protest erupted on Tuesday morning on the Temple Mount after several Jews visiting the site began prostrating themselves and began reciting Jewish prayers which are strictly forbidden under current agreements between Israel and the Waqf.

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The prayer provoked Muslims nearby to gather around the Jewish visitors and begin chanting Allahu akbar and with our blood we will redeem Al-Aqsa. The Jewish Temple Mount activists claim that they were assaulted by Waqf officials and the Muslim worshippers. While police said that they were not aware of any violent behaviour and that the exchanges were purely verbal, video footage from the incident proved that physical altercations did indeed occur.

Temple Mount clashes

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The protesters calmed down after the police ejected the praying Jewish people from the area. Eight Jewish visitors, whom the police claim violated the rules, were ejected from the Temple Mount area. About 250 Jewish visitors have come to the Temple Mount so far, and the police presence on the mount and in the surrounding area has been high, aimed at keeping the sensitive zone's routine intact.

The police issued a response: "During visits to the Temple Mount this morning, 527 visitors including 400 tourists entered (the complex). Eight Jewish visitors who violated visitation rules were removed from Temple Mount's grounds. After the final Jewish visitor group left Temple Mount, Muslims began shouting at the same Jews, who had been removed from the Temple Mount for violating the site's rules. Police officers and Border Police distanced the Jews and took action to prevent disruptions and return order to the site. The police is prepared, as it has been throughout the holiday, to allow all visitors of all religions and ethnicities to practice (their) religion and rituals freely. The police will act decisively against everyone who tries to violate the status quo."

On Monday, the Jordan warned that serious consequences could arise from what it described as "the invasion of settler groups and Israeli occupying forces in the Al-Aqsa mosque." Jordanian Minister for Media Affairs and government spokesperson Mohammad al-Momani said that what Israel and the Jewish visitors ascending Temple Mount are doing is acting against Muslim worshippers in the mosque and is a breach of law and international trust.

Al-Momani further demanded that the Israeli authorities immediately stop the visits and prevent the entry of Jews and Israeli security forces to the compound. Moreover, he demanded that Israel allow Palestinian worshippers to enter the mosque and perform their ritual practices.
ISTANBUL - Turkey's foreign minister says the United States will deploy a rocket launcher system in southeastern Turkey across the border with Syria.

In interview with the Haberturk newspaper published Tuesday, Mevlut Cavusoglu said US HIMARS missiles would arrive in May as part of a joint effort to combat the Islamic State group.

Turkey regularly shells IS targets in northern Syria in response to cross-border rockets which have hit the Turkish town of Kilis.

Turkish shells have a range of approximately 40 kilometers (25 miles) whereas HIMARS missiles can reach targets 90 kilometers away. HIMARS stands for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.
MOSCOW - Russia is supplying its S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran ahead of schedule and is now in talks with the Islamic Republic on deliveries of other military equipment, the head of Russia's federal arms exports service, FSVTS, said on Tuesday.

"The talk is about only permitted items which are not on the UN list of banned (weapons)," Alexander Fomin told reporters. He did not elaborate.
YEREVAN - The Armenian-backed breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh said two of its soldiers were killed by gunfire from Azerbaijan early on Tuesday, as tensions simmered weeks after an eruption of clashes.

Both sides said they exchanged fire overnight and blamed each other for starting the fighting.

A Moscow-brokered ceasefire halted four days of violence in the South Caucasus region on April 5, but sporadic shooting is still frequent at night.
A Labour Party MP is being accused of anti-Israel sentiments after it was revealed that she had expressed support for a proposal to relocate the State of Israel to US territory, thus supposedly solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Naz Shah, an MP representing Bradford West, wrote the post on social network Facebook in 2014, before she became an MP.

MP Naz Shah. Apologized for the Facebook post.

The offending post shows Israel cut into a map of the United States. It purports to give a number of reasons for why the move would be a positive step for Israel, the Palestinians, the US, and the world at large.

MP Shah posted the photo along with the comment "Problem solved."

Shah's offending post.

After the post was revealed, Shah publically apologized, stating that it was written two years ago and does not represent her current views.

The Labour Party has been suffering from repeated scandals lately, as just last month it suspended party member and former MP candidate Vicki Kirby after seemingly-anti-Semitic tweets she posted in 2014 were uncovered. Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, considered a strong critic of Israel, recently said that there is no place in the Labour party for anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, or xenophobia of any kind.
Haifa resident Feodor Bejenari, 26, is suspected of committing at least four acts of murders, numerous sex offenses all over Israel and arson, police cleared for publication on Tuesday.

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The Moldova-born man immigrated to Israel several years ago and married an Israeli woman.

After 46 days in custody, the Israel Police decided to made his arrest public and release his photo after gathering information about multiple assaults he allegedly committed. Police is hoping reports of the arrest would lead members of the public to come forward with any additional information they made have.

Feodor Bejenari

The investigation, led by a special team of the police's Central Unit and conducted by three different police units, is under gag order.

Attorney Lior Ronen who represents Bejenari, said: "The suspect denies the suspicions attributed to him. The investigation is moving at a very slow pace, in our opinion. He has been under arrest for over 40 days and has yet to learn all of the suspicions attributed to him. The suspect also made claims about the police's treatment of him, and these things will be raised in court."
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday voiced alarm over Israeli cities and towns about the Golan Heights on Syria's border with Israel, adding that its status remains unchanged.

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Earlier this month Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel would never relinquish the Golan Heights, in a signal to Russia and the United States that the strategic plateau should be excluded from any deal on Syria's future. The declaration was condemned by the European Union, the United States, the Arab League and Syria.

"Council members expressed their deep concern over recent Israeli statements about the Golan, and stressed that the status of the Golan remains unchanged," China's UN Ambassador Liu Jieyi, president of the 15-nation Security Council this month, told reporters after a closed-door meeting.

The UN Security Council (Photo: AP)

He added that council resolution 497 of 1981 made clear that Israel's decision at the time to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the Golan was "null and void and without international legal effect."

Despite the council's objections, the Israeli foreign ministry reponded in kind saying that "The Security Council's announcement ignores the reality in Syria."

"Who is Israel supposed to negotiate with about the future of the Golan? Islamic State? Al-Qaeda? Hezbollah? The Iranian and Syrian forces which have slaughtered thousands of people? In view of the war raging in Syria and the stability and security of the Golan Heights that Israel has established over nearly 50 years, the suggestion that Israel will leave the Golan Heights unreasonable," the letter continued.

Netanyahu's April 17 declaration came on the occasion of the first Israeli cabinet session on the Golan since the area was captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed in 1981. But Israel's annexation of the Golan has not won international recognition.

Past US-backed Israeli-Syrian peace efforts were predicated on a return of the Golan, where some 23,000 Israelis now live alongside roughly the same number of Druze Arabs loyal to Damascus.

Liu said the council supported a negotiated arrangement to settle the issue of the Golan.

There is a UN peacekeeping force deployed in the Golan called UNDOF. Established in 1974, UNDOF monitors a ceasefire line that has separated Israelis from Syrians in the Golan Heights since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

The force has had to pull back from a number of positions on the Golan due to fighting between militants and Syrian government forces in the five-year-old Syrian civil war. Its peacekeepers have been fired upon and captured by militants on several occasions.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday ordered an investigation after a Palestinian school in East Jerusalem invited the father of a Palestinian who killed civilians to speak to students.

Netanyahu asked asked the attorney general to look into whether the visit constituted incitement.

The father, Mohammed Allyan said the school invited him to speak and that he told the children to read books. He denied inciting violence.

His son shot and stabbed passengers on a bus in October, killing three Israelis before being shot dead.
WASHINGTON - The number of foreign fighters joining the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria has decreased sharply in the past year to about 200 a month, a US military official said on Tuesday.

That is a drastic decline from about a year ago when between 1,500 and 2,000 foreign fighters were joining the group in Iraq and Syria each month, said Air Force Major General Peter Gersten, deputy commander for operations and intelligence for the US-led coalition, during a news briefing.

Gersten added that the number of fighters defecting from Islamic State was increasing as well, but he did not give a specific number.

"We're seeing a fracture in their morale, we're seeing their inability to pay, we're seeing the inability to fight, we're watching them try to leave Daesh in every single way," Gersten said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
JUBA - South Sudan's rebel leader Riek Machar returned to the capital Juba on Tuesday afternoon, to become vice president and to try to end the civil war that in two and a half years has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 2 million from their homes.

After landing at Juba International Airport, where doves were released and a welcoming crowd ululated, Machar briefly addressed the press before driving to the presidential palace to be sworn in as First Vice President to President Salva Kiir, according to a peace deal signed eight months ago under intense international pressure.

Machar flew from Gambella, Ethiopia, just across the border from his rebel headquarters in South Sudan, on a UN plane.
BUCHAREST - Romania is to fast-track claims from Holocaust survivors under an amended law on property restitution which is expected to be passed by parliament next week, legislators said on Tuesday.

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Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany during World War Two until it changed sides in August 1944, and much of the property seized during the war was later nationalized under communist rule which followed.

After the collapse of communist rule, Romania passed laws for returning property to the original owners in the 1990s but red tape prevented legislation from having any real effect.

Refugee camps in Germany following WWII (Photo: Shutterstock)

The country used to have a pre-war Jewish population of about 800,000 but now only up to 11,000 Jews live in Romania.

An international commission, in a 2004 report, put the total number of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews who perished in territories under Romanian administration at 280,000 to 380,000 people.

A draft law, published on parliament's website, said that in processing applications for the return of property priority would be given to "requests by people certified as Holocaust survivors by entities designated by the Romanian state or other European Union states ..."

The draft easily cleared the upper house of parliament last week and will go to a final vote next Wednesday in the lower house, legislators said. Politicians expected it to win overwhelming support in the lower house.
ISTANBUL - The United States warned US citizens in Turkey on Tuesday about "credible" terrorist threats to tourist areas in the country.

"The US government continues to receive credible indications that terrorist groups are seeking opportunities to attack popular tourist destinations throughout Turkey," the embassy in Ankara said in a statement emailed to US citizens.

"Foreign tourists in Turkey have been explicitly targeted by terrorist organizations," the US embassy said in what it described as an "emergency message."
WASHINGTON - The United States borrowed an Israeli military tactic known as "roof knocking" to try to warn civilians before it dropped a bomb targeting Islamic State fighters in Iraq this month, but a woman was killed in the attack, a US military official said on Tuesday.

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The controversial tactic consists of firing a warning missile above or near an intended target, to give residents time to flee before the real strike.

The Israeli military used such "roof knocks" in the 2014 Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, but a United Nations commission found in 2015 that the tactic was not effective, because it often caused confusion and did not give residents enough time to escape.

The United States used the tactic in an April 5 operation in the Iraqi city of Mosul. One woman who initially did leave the targeted building but then ran back inside was killed, a US defense official said.

'Roof knocking' in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge

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Air Force Major General Peter Gersten, deputy commander for operations and intelligence for the US-led coalition, said the airstrike targeted a building that housed a member of Islamic State in charge of distributing money to fighters, as well as being a cash storage site.

US intelligence and reconnaissance aircraft tracked the site and observed that a woman and children also frequented the house, which the United States believed to contain about $150 million.

Looking to ensure they and any other non-combatants were clear of the building, the military turned to a tactic used by the IDF in some of its operations against Hamas militants, Gersten said.

The plan consisted of firing a Hellfire missile above the building "so it wouldn't destroy the building, simply knock on the roof to ensure that she and the children were out of the building," he said.

"We've certainly watched and observed their procedure," Gersten said of the Israelis, while noting that the military did not coordinate with the Israelis on the strike. "As we formulated the way to get the civilians out of the house, this (technique) was brought forward from one of our experts."

But the woman ran back into the building after the US warplane had fired its weapon, Gersten said, adding that it was "very difficult for us to watch and it was within the final seconds of the actual impact."

The US-led coalition could employ the roof knock technique again in the future, he said.

The air campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria has been a key part of the US plan to eventually destroy the hardline Sunni militant group.

But Islamic State's presence in major Iraqi and Syrian cities has made it difficult to destroy its most important headquarters, because of concerns about killing scores of innocents in the process.

The US military acknowledges killing 41 civilians so far in the air campaign, which began in 2014.
KEARNEY  The York News-Times returned home from Saturday evenings Nebraska Press Association annual awards banquet with two firsts, four seconds and three thirds.

The YNT competes in the newspaper division that includes every daily in the state except the Omaha World-Herald and Lincoln Journal Star. York is home to Nebraskas smallest daily newspaper.

Kerri Pankratz was a double-winner in the category Use of Computer Graphics  Produced In House.

Her design elements and color in the annual Sports Year in Review special section earned the top prize and these comments from the Arkansas judge: This sprawling year-in-review section is notable for the ambitiousness of the undertaking and the quality of the design.

Second place went to Pankratz, too, for the front page she designed using graphics to organize and explain at a glance the City of Yorks annual budget.

Third place went to the Norfolk Daily News.

Managing Editor Melanie Wilkinson, the other first-place winner for York, was lauded by the judge for her reporting of a local standoff in the Breaking News Writing category.

The judge remarked: These types of stories define breaking news, and this one was the clear winner among the entries in this category. The writer did an excellent job of laying out the entire story, which benefitted greatly from some excellent accompanying photos (by YNT Digital Director Eric Eckert). This was likely the best-read story of the week, maybe even the month. Good team effort!

Second went to the Kearney Hub with the Norfolk Daily News judged third.

Second place for Single Retail Advertising Idea  Color was awarded to Caleb Groves for his design of a Green Realty advertisement.

The North Platte Telegraph won the category with the Beatrice Daily Sun in third.

Eckerts online video, A Ride in the Wienermobile was placed second. The video was taken during a ride-along during which York native Matt Heng talked about his nationwide appearances that summer as over-the-road pilot of the distinctive Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

The Kearney Hub and Grand Island Independent videos were place first and third, respectively.

The Breaking News Photography certificates for second and third were awarded, in order, to Steve Moseley for an image of McCool Junction residents battling a flood and to Eckert for his photos of a spectacular and fiery crash on Hwy 34.

First for breaking news photo was the Scottsbluff Star-Herald.

The News-Times team of Cheri Knoell, Jason Vogt and Caleb Groves was third in Advertising Campaign for their Difference Makers project.

The Hastings Tribune was first and the Norfolk Daily News second.

York took the prize for third-best Editorial Page in a Nebraska daily during 2015.

First and second were the Norfolk Daily News and Grand Island Independent, respectively.

The Arkansas Press Association judged all the categories for ads, photos, websites and writing generated in 2015 by NPA member publications. Staff members from Nebraska Press Association newspapers are returning the favor by judging the APA contest.
Members from the 701st Airlift Squadron played a vital role bringing humanitarian aid to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, April 21, during ongoing Denton Program efforts.

Two C-17 Globemaster IIIs were filled with 32 combined pallets and delivered more than 170,000 pounds of humanitarian aid to Haiti.

Our role in the Denton mission is supporting the delivery of the cargo and supplies, said Capt. Ed Sutton, 701st AS pilot. Its a rewarding experience to be a part of relief efforts to areas like Haiti or anywhere else in the world that may need it.The Denton Program creates an opportunity for private organizations to utilize space available on U.S. Military cargo aircraft to transport goods to countries in need.The cargo moved under the Denton Program generally includes medical supplies, education supplies, furniture, vehicles, agricultural supplies, machinery, and clothing to support ongoing relief efforts and development projects. The supplies delivered by the 701st AS will be used by nongovernmental organizations throughout Haiti.Although Haiti is a developing country, it has experienced its share of disasters. Currently, 1.5 million Haitians are threatened with malnutrition, double the estimated number last year, due to a three-year drought in the Caribbean region.Crops are being lost, rivers have dried, and children from villages in the mountains are being left unattended in Port-au-Prince, because their parents believe the childrens survival is greater in the city alone than with them in dry rural areas, said Pacius Gueston, Haiti Christian Developmental Project director. This aid will save many lives.Orphaned as a child, Gueston was raised by a nun in Haiti and taught the importance of education and work ethic. After attending college in the United States, he returned to Haiti to give back to the people that needed support.Today, 70 percent of the estimated crops on the Caribbean island have been lost due to an ongoing drought, creating food instability for more than 3.6 million individuals. With farming being the primary source of income for the Haitians, the drought has created more financial instability.Kathy Cadden, president and founder of Operation Ukraine, is another face on the ground in Haiti welcoming service members, like the 701st AS, during the offload of humanitarian supplies. She has been active in humanitarian efforts in the country. Half of this Denton cargo delivery was for her charity.Well make great use of the donated food and supplies, said Cadden, who estimates shell oversee more than 8,500 dry meals and 3,500 cooked meals to be made for children. Were very thankful for everything the donors and the military has done.Since 1998, The Denton Program has overseen more than 5 million pounds of humanitarian supplies sent to more than 50 countries across the globe.
Reserve units lead Patriot Hook joint exercise

Four Air Force Reserve Airlift Control Flights, federal, state and several municipal emergency response agencies convened April 20-25 in three Southern California locations to participate in Exercise Patriot Hook.



Patriot Hook is an annual joint-service exercise coordinated by the Air Force Reserve, designed to integrate the military and first responders of federal, state and local agencies by providing training to mobilize quickly and deploy in military aircraft in the event of a regional emergency or natural disaster.



The objective of the Air Force Reserve Command and its partners is to exercise their capability to move rapidly to a location that has a natural disaster or some type of crisis. We practice crisis response to support and service the local community, state and government agencies as required, said Lt. Col. Gordon J. Griggs, A3OM/Branch Chief, Readiness and Programs, AFRC, Robins Air Force Base, Georgia. Our goal is to ensure they receive supplies and resources so that they can continue to function.



The 433rd Airlift Control Flight at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, staged at Joint Forces Training Base, Los Alamitos, served as the lead agency during the exercise.



Other ALCFs participating in the exercise included the 452nd Air Mobility Wing from March Air Reserve Base, California, the 512th Airlift Wing from MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, and the 439th Airlift Wing at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. The other exercise locations were at the Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego Bay and the Naval Auxiliary Landing Field on San Clemente Island.



AFRC has five airlift control flights, consisting of experienced airlift personnel that manages, coordinates and controls air mobility assets.



All ALCF personnel train in the oversight of the air mobility process which includes: Command, Control, and Communications Systems and reporting, Tactical Airlift Command Center Mission Coordination, Air Operations Planning and Execution, Load Planning and Equipment Preparation and Aerial Port Operations.



ALCFs, when deployed, become Airlift Control Elements. Once on the ground in an austere location, their mission is to open an airfield and simulate a forward operating base.



The scenarios ran during the exercise focused on airbase defense, combat skills refresher, the Quick Response checklist/OPREP submission, medical response, Operational Readiness Inspection preparation and other areas of importance.



During this exercise, the three ALCFs supported more than 300 military, federal and state personnel. Some of the agencies participating in the exercise were California Air National Guard, the Coast Guard, Los Angeles' FBI Rapid Deployment Team, Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency California Task Forces, and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.



The Air Force Reserve Patriot Hook exercise program is critical for the Contingency Response members to continually practice and sharpen perishable skills, said Maj. Robert M. Acosta, 433rd ALCF, Contingency Response Element commander.



The fluid dynamics of the exercise offer a true sense of realism with a limited support infrastructure, changing aircraft schedules, unpredictable weather conditions, airfield/airspace limitations, and the constant coordination required with support agencies and our joint and interagency exercise participants. All of which push the team to use their comprehensive capabilities to safely execute the tasked mission, said Acosta.



One of the highpoints of this exercise was a visit from state and city officials, that included Kevin Chang, Field Representative for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA); Irving Pacheco, a Senior Field Representative in the office of Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA 33); Mayor Richard Murphy, City of Los Alamitos and Dr. Fadi Essmaeel from Homeland Security were invited by CA National Guard Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Reddicks, JFTB Los Alamitos, commander to Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base. Guests got to observe parts of the exercise and get a better understanding of the interaction between civil and military entities working together during the exercise. They also received a tour the C-5M Super Galaxy aircraft.



JFTB Los Alamitos, which is located in Southern California-Orange County, is a prime location for this type of training due to its strategic capability and the multitude of various governmental agencies on the base, including the Southern California Governor's Office of Emergency Services.

Its about the runways; it really is," said Reddicks. You are not going to be able to respond to an area in Southern California without a platform similar to this. There is so much stuff they can bring into here, and youre smacked in the middle of where the problem is going to be.



One of the keys behind this exercise is to learn about each others capabilities. All the agencies get to work through the problems of interactive response and go from there. Thats what it's all is about, said Reddicks.


This has been a long time in the making, but in our continuing pursuit to bring only the best of firearms, 2nd Amendment and defence related news to our readers, we are very excited to announce the next step in our evolution as a company.

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Stiri pe aceeasi tema

- Finnish soloist Tarja Turunen returns to Romania for two concerts that will take place on Tuesday, at the Arenele Romane/Roman Arenas in the capital, and on Wednesday, at Form Space in central-western Cluj-Napoca, told Agerpres. Fii la curent cu cele mai noi stiri. Urmareste stiripesurse.ro

- Save Romania Union (USR) MPs Stelian Ion and Silviu Dehelean and MEP Vlad Gheorghe announce that they met on Wednesday, in Brussels, with the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, and that his message to the authorities in Bucharest is to wait for the opinion of the Venice Commission

- The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, participated, on Tuesday, in New York, in a meeting in the Bucharest 9 format, organized on the sidelines of participating in the high-level segment of the UN General Assembly, the discussions aimed, among other things, at the recent developments in

- Studies conducted by the World Bank on the decoupling of electricity prices from gas prices would be useful in making decisions in this regard, President Klaus Iohannis said Tuesday, at a bilateral meeting with the president of the World Bank Group, David R. Malpass, a press release from the Presidential

- President Klaus Iohannis will lead the Romanian delegation that will participate in the high-level segment of the 77th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, on Tuesday and Wednesday, in New York, the Presidential Administration informs. Fii la curent cu cele mai noi stiri.

- President Klaus Iohannis signed, on Tuesday, the Condolence Book opened in memory of Queen Elizabeth II at the residence of the ambassador of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Romania, the Presidential Administration announced. Fii la curent cu cele mai noi stiri.

- President Klaus Iohannis on Tuesday will sign the condolence book opened in memory of Queen Elizabeth II at the residence of the ambassador of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to Romania, the Presidential Administration announced. Fii la curent cu cele mai noi stiri.

- The Bookfest Fair in Chisinau is an expression of the common cultural and linguistic space, a materialization of the European aspirations of the Romanians on both sides of the Prut River, President Klaus Iohannis said on Wednesday in the message sent on the occasion of the opening of the 5th edition
Patna: The complete ban on liquor in Bihar is showing positive results -- crimes as well as road accidents have come down in the last 20 days, officials said on Tuesday.

"Crime rates have dropped by 27 percent and road accidents by 33 percent after the liquor ban came into effect on April 5. This official data was presented before Chief Minister Nitish Kumar during a review meeting here," said an official from the Chief Minister`s Office.

According to official figures, compared to 3,178 incidents of crime reported from Patna division during April 1-23 last year, after the ban on liquor, the crime graph registered a decline with 2,528 incidents in the corresponding period this year.

Riots during religious events have also come down.

"The chief minister has directed officials to ensure a complete ban on liquor and monitor its implementation and warned of action against officials found responsible for negligence," the official said.

Banning liquor was one of the main poll promises of the Grand Alliance in the Bihar Assembly elections. Experts say the ban would cost the state government a whopping Rs 4,000 crore in revenue annually.
Patna: It appears that the Nitish Kumar government's decision to ban sale of liquor in Bihar has failed to deter people from buying alcohol even if it comes at an inflated cost.

According to India Today, dealers in Bihar are openly selling bottles of alcohol for as much as Rs 600 in the JD(U)-ruled state.

A wine dealer, during a sting operation, boasted that one can get what ever brand of alcohol he wants and it would take as little as 10 minutes for it to be delivered.

This is despite the ban on sale of any type of liquor announced by the Bihar government recently.

During the sting operation, Vinay Verma, Narkatiaganj Congress MLA, was also caught on camera offering drinks.

The Congress MLA was seen boasting about how his liquor reserve is fully stocked and constantly being supplied afresh.

"I will offer you liquor. If you want drinks, I can offer at my house. What we already have, how do we throw it? We have to use it," the Congress MLA was quoted as saying.

Howver, the Congress party has issued a notice to its MLA and sough his clarification over the same.

Bihar: Congress issues showcause notice to MLA Vinay Verma who was caught on camera drinking alcohol  ANI (@ANI_news) April 26, 2016

For others who still want to drink alcohol, the easy option is to buy it from Nepal.
Raipur: A CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action) jawan was on Tuesday injured in an exchange of fire with naxals in the dense forests of Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Bijapur district, police said.

The skirmish took place early this morning when a team of CRPF's elite unit - CoBRA 204th battalion was conducting an anti-naxal operation in the interiors of Basaguda police station limits - a naxal hotbed, Bijapur Additional Superintendent of Police Indira Kalyan Elesela told PTI.

While cordoning off the region, located around 450 kms away from the state capital, when security forces reached Puvarti village forests, naxal opened indiscriminate firing on them leaving a constable Deepu Das injured, he said.

However, Maoists soon fled from the spot as jawans launched retaliatory attack on them, he said.

"Das, a constable belonging to CoBRA 204th battalion sustained bullet injuries on his back," Elesela said.

Reinforcement was rushed to the spot and the injured jawan was evacuated from the forests, he said adding that he has been airlifted to Raipur for treatment.
New Delhi: A class 12 student who is accused of killing a person while driving his father's Mercedes at high speed in Delhi recently, was granted bail by the Juvenile Justice Board on Tuesday.

The accused, who was a juvenile at the time of the accident, was allegedly driving at a speed of 80 km-ph when his car hit Siddharth Sharma in Delhi's Civil Lines area on April 4.

He surrendered on April 10 and was sent to a Juvenile Justice Home. His father was also taken into judicial custody but granted bail later.

The boy's father was arrested under section 304 (abetting the crime of culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of IPC for letting his minor son to drive even after knowing that he had caused an accident earlier.

Police had apprehended the minor accused on April 5, a day after he killed Sidhharth Sharma by hitting him with his Mercedes car the previous night when the victim was crossing a road after buying eatables.

He was then freed on bail as he was only booked under section 304A (causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code.

Police had earlier told the court that CCTV footage showed that the minor offender was driving the car way above the permissible speed limit in a residential area.
New Delhi: A massive fire broke out at FICCI auditorium building in Mandi House in New Delhi on the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday.

Two fire officials were seriously injured while trying to contain the blaze which broke out at around 1.45 am, and were rushed to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in Central Delhi where they are said to be in a critical state, an official told new agency said.

As many as 35 fire tenders were pressed into service and the operation to contain the flames is underway.

The fire was reported on the top floor of the FICCI auditorium building in Mandi House which was being renovated, and later spread to other floors, the fire official said.

There were not too many people in the building, which was evacuated by the time fire officials reached there.

"The operation is on. The cause of the fire could not be known yet," an official said, adding that senior police officials of the district and the fire department chief have rushed to the spot to take note of the situation.
New Delhi: Only about 50 percent of crimes and about 12 percent of sexual harassment cases are reported to police in Delhi and Mumbai, a survey said on Tuesday.

According to a report by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), only 46.8 percent of crimes get reported to police in Delhi, while in Mumbai the percentage stood at 41.8 percent.

Even the rate of lodging a sexual harassment case was very low in both the cities -- only 7.5 percent cases were registered in Delhi, while in Mumbai, the rate was a bit higher with 11.1 percent.

The report said that most of the sexual harassment cases registered were related to passing of lewd and sexual comments.

The CHRI along with the Indian Statistical Institute and Nielsen India Pvt. Ltd. released its report on "Crime Victimisation and Safety Perception" here.

The report was based on a year-long survey carried out between July 2014 and June 2015 in Delhi and Mumbai.

On not reporting the crimes, CHRI director Maja Daruwala said: "One reason which came out in our survey was that the victims didn't wanted to be caught up in police or court matters.

"The second reason which came into light was that the victims didn't feel there was enough evidence to take the case forward," she added.

The maximum cases registered with police were related to theft, which was followed by sexual harassment and assault cases.

Cases of mobile phones being stolen were highest among all in both the cities.

The report also said that about 36 percent of complainants in Delhi and 51 percent in Mumbai were satisfied with the police response.

It said the residents of Mumbai generally perceive police in a more positive light and felt safer than those residing in Delhi.

It also stated that non-Marathi speakers in Mumbai and non-Hindi speakers in Delhi were comparatively more vulnerable to crime.
New Delhi: The Delhi government on Tuesday told the Delhi High Court that it will consider exempting lawyers from the odd-even car restriction if the scheme comes into force again.

Delhi government counsel Rahul Mehra conveyed this to a division bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath.

The Delhi government said that since the ongoing odd-even scheme is about to expire on April 30, the petitioners contentions will be considered in case the scheme is implemented again, the bench said today.

On Monday, the bench had asked the Delhi government to see if there was any possibility of exempting lawyers from the odd-even car restriction.

The petition filed by Delhi High Court Bar Association president Rajiv Khosla alleged that the April 11 government notification on the fortnight-long odd-even scheme was arbitrary, illegal, unreasonable and against the spirit of the constitution.

The petition filed by him said the notification issued by the Delhi government was hampering the legal fraternity in carrying out its professional responsibilities in the various courts and tribunals in the national capital.

It is evident that the said policy has been passed in haste without carrying out studies/research in relation to the work schedule of professionals, Khosla said.

(With agency inputs)
New Delhi: It's a major eye-opener in controversial AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal!

The 225-page judgement by the Milan Court of Appeals (an Italian court) says that there was "reasonable belief that corruption took place" in the 2010 VVIP helicopter deal and the former Indian Air Force chief SP Tyagi was involved.

The judgement by the Italian court has a separate 17-page chapter on SP Tyagi explaining the grounds on which it came to the conclusion on the corruption of the former IAF chief, according to a report by The Economic Times.

Moreover, the court said it was "validly proven" that a part of $10-15 million in illicit funds made their way to Indian officials.

SP Tyagi was IAF chief from 2005-07 when VVIP choped deal was processed. However, he has denied involvement in any wrongdoings.

Earlier, on Monday, BJP raked up the VVIP chopper scandal in Lok Sabha following the Italian court's reported observation that the UPA government showed "substantial disregard" in arriving at the full truth behind the multi-crore scam.

Raising the issue during Zero Hour, BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi said that the observations of the Italian court that found corruption in the Rs 3,565-crore AgustaWestland deal, were serious.

Seeking a statement from the Defence Ministry, she said Italy had requested India in April 2013 to get full documentation in the case but was provided only three documents and that too in 2014.

She wanted a thorough probe in the matter as also a discussion in the House.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu assured the member that he would bring the matter to the notice of the Defence Minister.
Delhi: With reports of Dawood Ibrahim, Indias most wanted terrorist and said to be the mastermind of 1993 Mumbai serial blasts suffering from gangrene which could be life-threatening, a former police officer has said that the mafia don's trusted lieutenant Chhota Shakeel is likely to be his successor.

Former Assistant Commissioner of Police Shamsher Khan Pathan, who investigated Mumbai's underworld for many years, was quoted by NDTV as saying, "Chhota Shakeel is likely to be Dawood's successor since he is very aggressive."

However, Pathan added that he was "doubtful" about the health of the underworld don.

"I don't think Pakistani officials are foolish enough to aid Dawood openly. If it is then the (Indian) government should act in haste, since they have been saying that Dawood does not live there," Pathan added.

CNN-News18 had reported that as per the doctors gangrene was at such an advanced stage that it had left Dawood immobile.

At the same time, his gangrene is reportedly life-threatening.

The report had added that gangrene was caused by loss of effective local blood supply due to high BP blood sugar and doctors treating Dawood had said that may have to amputate his legs.

The mafia don is said to be at his Clifton neighbourhood residence and is being treated at Liaquat National Hospital and Combined Military Hospital, both in Karachi.

Meanwhile, media reports today quoted Chhota Shakeel denying that Dawood was seriously ill.

Shakeel reportedly said his boss was"perfectly fit."

Despite India giving many dossier to Pakistan on the mafia don, it has been maintaining that Dawood is not in their country.

There is also an Interpol red corner notice against Dawood for his role in the 1993 blasts.

And, in 2003, US designated him as a global terrorist with links to terror groups.
New high-rise apartments taller than 35 floors will be banned along the Han River in Seoul.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced the height limit in a management plan for the river area on Thursday. This plan targets an area within a 0.5-1 km radius from the river banks and covers 82 sq.km or 13.5 percent of the city.

The height limit will not apply to Yeouido, Yongsan, and Jamsil, where super high-risers can shoot up 51 floors or more.
New Delhi: Yoga guru Baba Ramdev on Tuesday did a U-turn on his recent remarks that if law did not stop him, he would have "beheaded" people if they refused to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'.

Backtracking from his controversial remark, Ramdev said he was only responding to AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi's statement that he would not chant the slogan even if a knife is put to his throat.

Ramdev told a press briefing that speaking insults against religions like Islam or Christianity would be as "idiotic" as Owaisi's remark.

"I believe in non-violence, coexistence and oneness. It would be wrong to say that behead me but I won't respect the Quran or the Bible. I take pride in my religion but that does not give me the licence to insult other faiths. That would be as idiotic as Owaisi.

"He says at the drop of a hat that behead me but I won't say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. So I responded in rustic language that I would have done so but I believe in the Constitution. No one needs to be scared of me...'Woh toh baat ki baat thi'. If someone wants to say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' then let him, what's the point in protesting against it," Ramdev said.
New Delhi: A massive fire completely gutted the iconic National Museum of Natural History early on Tuesday.

Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar described the development as unfortunate and a real loss.

"This is a real loss. This loss cannot be counted in rupees, he said.

Here's a short list of what all was lost in the fire at the museum:

Thousands of exhibits

Some very old and rare specimens of flora and fauna

Exhibits of herpetological specimens

Exhibits of taxidermied (stuffed) animals

Specimens of butterflies

Specimens of frogs

Specimens of snakes

Specimens of lizards

Mounted specimens of tigers

Mounted specimens of leopards

Established in 1972 and inaugurated in 1978, the National Museum of Natural History in New Delhi, under the Ministry of Environment and Forests, was one of the two museums focusing on nature in India.
New Delhi: Fireworks are expected in the Parliament as the main opposition party Congress is likely to raise the issue of imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand and the Srinagar NIT crisis in both Houses on Tuesday.

According to ANI, Congress party has given notice in Lok Sabha on the Srinagar NIT issue.

The Uttarakhand issue dominated both the houses of Parliament on Monday with the Congress raising the matter in the Lok Sabha and creating ruckus in Rajya Sabha, where no meaningful business could be conducted amid uproar.

The Congress members created almost identical scenes in both houses over the issue as they raised slogans against the central government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for imposing President's rule in Uttarakhand.

Minutes before Parliament met on the first day of the second half of the budget session, Prime Minister Modi expressed the hope that parliament would be able to transact business smoothly during the session.

The Congress members did exactly the opposite as they trooped near the speaker's podium in the Lok Sabha shouting slogans like "Stop killing democracy" and "Murder of democracy will not be accepted".

The leader of the Congress party in the house, Mallikarjun Kharge, had even given notice of adjournment of Question Hour to discuss the issue.

Aam Aadmi Party's Bhangwant Mann had also given notice of adjournment on the issue of farmers' suicides in Punjab and the drought situation in Maharashtra.

The Rajya Sabha was also disrupted thrice before being adjourned for the day without it being able to conduct any business.

The Congress party yesterday warned that it will not compromise on the Uttarakhand issue and will not let Parliament function till the issue was settled.
Gandhinagar: The election to Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation (GMC) has resulted in a tie as both the BJP and Congress won 16 seats each out of the total 32 in the counting held on Tuesday.

A lottery system will now decide which party will rule over the GMC.

"The poll result ended in a tie as both the parties won 16 seats each. Congress was ahead with 15 seats after the counting on 28 seats while BJP had 13 seats. In the last lap of counting for eighth and final ward, BJP won on three seats while Congress won one seat, creating a tie," Gandhinagar Collector Ravi Shankar said.

"In case of a tie, mayor and other office bearers will be chosen through a lottery system by pulling out chits from a box," he said.

As the counting progressed during morning, both the parties were neck and neck. The picture became clear only after the declaration of results for ward number 8.

The tie comes as a relief to BJP and Chief Minister Anandiben Patel who is facing many odds in the state in the form of Patel quota agitation, water scarcity and allegations of corruption.

However, Congress is upbeat as after sweeping the rural local body polls last year, it is claiming that urban voters are also warming up to the party, in the run-up to the 2017 state Assembly elections.

"We welcome the verdict given by the people of Gandhinagar. Our support is intact in the GMC as in the last elections Congress had won 18 seats but we have managed to contain them on 16 seats despite the adverse situation," state BJP unit president Vijay Rupani said.

The Congress also said it accepts people's verdict.

"We accept the verdict of people of Gandhinagar," Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi said, adding that a tie was recorded in the urban area, which is generally considered to be the stronghold of BJP.

This is the second election of GMC after it was declared a municipal corporation in 2011. In the first poll, Congress had won with 18 seats out of 33, while 15 seats went to BJP.

However, in 2012, BJP snatched power from Congress after three of the latter's councillors switched over to the saffron party. Since then, the BJP was ruling over the GMC.

Gandhinagar has a large number of government employees as voters.

After the recent delimitation, the number of wards have decreased from 10 to 8, while the number of seats have gone down to 32 (4 each in ward) from the previous 33.

Polling was held on Sunday when 52 per cent voters out of total 1.5 lakh registered electorate of the capital city exercised their franchise.

In 2011, the voting percentage was around 59 per cent.

Earlier in December last year, BJP had won the elections of six municipal corporations and gained majority in municipalities, while the Congress had swept taluka panchayat and district panchayat elections.

The state Assembly polls are slated to be held at the end of 2017.
Mumbai: Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray was on Tuesday under fire from the Bharatiya Janata Party for taking on the Centre for branding Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Kanhaiya Kumar as "anti-national".

BJP Mumbai unit chief Ashish Shelar asked: "How can Shiv Sena support Kanhaiya Kumar, who is being prosecuted for holding a programme to mourn on death anniversary of terrorist Afzal Guru?"

Thackeray had recently said, "It is wrong to brand Kanhaiya as anti-national and slapping sedition case against him. He is not anti-national. Who gave birth to Kanhaiya, Hardik Patel and Rohith Vemula? The government should ponder over it."

Responding to Thackeray's statement, Shelar stressed that sedition charges against Kanhaiya are not for his criticism of the Centre, but for the alleged anti-national sloganeering in JNU at a programme organised on the death anniversary of Afzal Guru.

"Afzal was hanged for his involvement in the attack on the Parliament. How can Shiv Sena support someone who hails Afzal? What has caused this 360 degree ideological shift in the Shiv Sena's stand?" the BJP leader asked.

Meanwhile, in what is being seen as the beginning of a campaign for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections next year, the city BJP has planned to celebrate Maharashtra Day, on May 1, on a bigger scale this year.

"We have planned 2-3 programmes each in all the 227 municipal wards. The programmes include health camps, blood donation camps, road shows, and cultural programmes. The programmes would start early morning and would go on till late in night on May 1.

"Party workers would be decorating over 200 traffic squares across the city and would convey (to people) the important decisions made by the Union and state government," Shelar said.

"BJP as a party has been celebrating statehood day for a long time. This year it is on a bit bigger scale," he said.

He said party workers would reach out to the people of the city with a slogan 'Our Aim Developed Mumbai'.

"All the MPs, MLAs and state-level leaders would participate in these ward level programmes," Shelar said.

The programmes on May 1 would be followed by a door-to-door communication drive where the party workers would try to reach out to every household across the city between May 3 and 9, he added.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: India and Pakistan Foreign Secretaries on Tuesday will meet at the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process conference aimed at bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan.

Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry, who is going to lead his country's delegation to the Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process, is expected to meet his Indian counterpart Subramaniam J Shankar, in the national capital.

New Delhi is expected to raise the Pathankot probe issue with Islamabad on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia senior officials' meeting on Afghanistan.

National Investigating Agency (NIA), during its interaction with the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of Pakistan, had sought details about the place of residence of the terrorists (involved in Pathankot attack) whose names had been shared with the visiting probe team. However, there was no response from Pakistan on the India's request.

The five-member JIT also comprising an ISI officer had visited India from March 27 to April one during which they visited the air base and recorded statements of 16 witnesses.

Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists had carried out a terror attack on the intervening night of January one and two on the strategic IAF base in Pathankot. Seven security personnel were killed, while bodies of four terrorists were also recovered.

The Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process is a platform to discuss regional issues, including security, economic cooperation and connectivity among Afghanistan, its neighbours and regional countries with a view to promote lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Apart from India, the Heart of Asia initiative involves 13 other countries - Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates.
New Delhi: India has cancelled the tourist visa issued to a dissident Chinese Uyghur activist based in Germany to attend the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) in Dharamsala.

According to DNA, the government's decision aims at ensuring President Pranab Mukherjee's visit to Beijing next month does not get rattled.

Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa has voiced disappointment at the cancellation.

President Mukherjee's visit to China in May is seen as a signal continuing high-level engagement with Beijing after meeting between two foreign ministers and trips by defence minister and NSA amid Delhi's growing ties with the US that would get further momentum with the PM's trip to Washington in June. Therefore, at the highest level, it was decided to keep Beijing engaged rather rattling it, reported the daily.

The Union Home Ministry cancelled the tourist visa as is not a valid travel document to attend a conference, sources said.

"We have cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa," a Home Ministry spokesperson confirmed on Monday.

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is scheduled from April 28 to May 1 in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh.

It is being organised by the US-based Initiatives for China.

Voicing his disappointment at cancellation, Isa said that Indian authorities had granted him a tourist e-visa, "but it was cancelled after my visit was widely reported in the Indian press".

He said the Indian authorities cancelled the tourist visa on April 23.

The invite to the dissident Uyghur activist was bound to have rankled China.

Last week, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met with her Chinese counterpart Wang Li in Moscow on the sidelines of the Russia, India, China trilateral, while National Security Advisor Ajit Doval was in Beijing to meet with State Councillor Yang Jiechi, special representative on the Chinese side for the 19th Special Representatives' Meeting on the China-India Boundary Question.

India has raised with China its disappointment over Beijing blocking the move in the UN to ban Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar, the mastermind of the Pathankot attack.

China, a close friend of Pakistan, had said there were not enough grounds to ban Azhar.

The move to give Isa a visa to attend the Uyghur conference was seen as a tit-for-tat move by India.
New Delhi: In a fresh development, which will probably not go down well with the Indian security agencies, the Lok Sabha was informed on Tuesday that according to an investigation by independent group - Conflict Armament Research (CAR) - some of the crucial equipments used by the Islamic State militants to assemble deadly Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were manufactured by seven Indian companies.

According to India Today, responding to a question, Minister of State for Home Affairs Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said, "All such components documented by CAR were legally exported from India to business entities in Lebanon and Turkey."

However, the minister, later clarified that as per CAR reports, there is no evidence to suggest any direct transfer of goods to the Islamic State forces by the countries and companies mentioned in the report.

Chaudhary said the Conflict Armament Research, claiming to be an independent organisation mandated by the European Union to investigate the supply of weapons into the areas of armed conflicts, released an online document titled "tracing the supply of component used in Islamic State (IS) IED".

"The CAR examined nearly 700 components used by IS to manufacture IEDs between 2014 to February 2016. The report indicates that some of the components procured by the IS operatives included detonators, detonating cards and safety fuses, which, in addition to other countries, were also supplied by seven Indian companies," he said, as per the report.

The Islamic State controls vast areas in Iraq and Syria and is accused of orchestrating a series of terror attacks in Europe and Asia.

Notably, according to The Times of India, senior ISIS handlers have asked their Indian contacts to suspend their activities for some time as the National Investigation Agency has stepped up its crackdown against people suspected to be having links with the terror group.

Meanwhile, PTI had quoted official sources as saying yesterday that the Islamic State`s chief recruiter in India has been killed in a US airstrike in Syria last week, ending a large hunt of security agencies for a man considered "extremely crucial" in setting up the terror network`s fledgling bases in the country.
New Delhi: Reacting to Jawaharlal Nehru University administration's decision to impose fine on Kanhaiya Kumar for his involvement in pro-Afzal Guru event at the campus, the student union president said that decision is unacceptable and termed the inquiry by a high-level committee as farce.

Kanhaiya, who has been fined Rs 10,000 by the university administration said that the student union rejects the punitive action handed down by the farcical committee.

Anirban Bhattacharya and Umar Khalid, who have been rusticated by the university administration, called the decision unacceptable and alleged that the authority's action amounted to witch-hunt under the diktats of RSS.

"The JNU administration declares its allegiance to RSS, once again! After allowing police to enter campus to unleash the worst repression...now the JNU admin has come down with its own list of punishments.

"A farce is what this inquiry has been from day one, made to witch-hunt and punish students by hook or crook. Do we need to remind you, Mr Jagdish Kumar (JNU VC) that unlike you the students and teachers of this campus are not pliant stooges of the RSS," Umar Khalid posted on Facebook.

JNU on Monday slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar and rusticated Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya till one semester and till July 15 respectively.
New Delhi: Dreaded terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) is recruiting vulnerable young men in Pakistan as part of a larger conspiracy to wage war against India, the government said on Tuesday.

There are inputs that LeT is recruiting vulnerable Pakistani youths for carrying out terrorist acts in India, Haribhai Parthibhai Chaudhary, MoS Home, said in a written reply to Parliament.

The Minister further informed the lawmakers that there were credible intelligence inputs to believe that several terrorist camps are functioning in PoK.

These camps belong to terror outfits like LeT, JeM and the Hizbul Mujahideen, he added.

The warning from the government came months after the National Investigating Agency (NIA) said LeT is hiring Pakistani youths to execute its anti-India plans.

The NIA, in a chargesheet filed in connection with the Pathankot attack case, had said the LeT recruited these impressionable young men and put them through various training regimes with the twin objectives of radicalising their world view and providing them with military skills and they were then illegally pushed into India to join their colleagues and commit terrorist acts.

The outfit had recruited guides to help trained terrorists infiltrate into India through Helen Det  a launch pad being operated by the outfit in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) near the Line of Control (LoC), the NIA said in the chargesheet.
Results showed the Freedom Party's Norbert Hofer taking a clear lead, leaving the two mainstream parties, that have dominated for years, with insufficient votes to run in a runoff election next month. Hofer will face off with an independent candidate, Alexander Van der Bellen, formerly with the Austrian Green Party and seen as pro-migrant.

In western Europe, analysts saw the prospects of a right-wing accession to power as more unlikely since, until now, most had been third-party forces that challenged but failed to supplant establishment parties.

The pattern became evident in eastern Europe last year, when images of tens of thousands of migrants transiting through Hungary helped right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban consolidate his support. In October, promises of a more assertive approach to the European Union and its calls for each member state to absorb thousands of migrants helped catapult the nationalist Law and Justice Party's Beata Szydlo to victory in Poland.

Polls showing a clear victory for Austria's anti-immigrant Freedom Party after a first round of elections Sunday could mean Europe's migrant issue is driving voters across the continent to support less liberal politicians, according to analysts.

The election results in Austria could be a first indication of what analysts like Dana Allin recently described as a swing away from the international liberal order in Europe.

"I'm not sure how far the swing is going to go but there are worrying signs," said Allin, a foreign policy expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London research institution. "I don't know if I believe that we're moving in the direction of illiberalism, but the liberal order is fragile," he said.

The campaigning in Austria has been dominated by economic issues like taxes and pension reform, but the influx of tens of thousands of migrants last year has been a big factor for voters who see the establishment parties as not handling the migrant crisis effectively.

When trains loaded with Syrian refugees pulled into Vienna's main train station last year, scores of Austrians welcomed them with coffee, snacks and applause.

Sentiments gradually changed, as people saw the numbers swell and negative reports about how some of the migrants behaved.

"People have seen the absolute numbers that have exceeded initial expectations," Alan Mendoza, head of the Henry Jackson Society, a London research organization, told VOA. "People's goodwill has evaporated," he said.

Those sentiments were fueled by scenes of men, including some migrants, groping women during New Year's Eve festivities in neighboring Germany. In Vienna, police chief Gerhard Pursti caused outrage among Austrian women's advocates when he warned, "Women should in general not go out on the streets at night alone" to protect themselves from sexual assault.

Critics accused authorities of failing to protect citizens.

Now, at the polls, "people have had to turn to extreme solutions to vent their frustrations," said Mendoza, who sees the vote not necessarily as a turning point but a warning sign to establishment parties across Europe.

The migration issue already has sparked challenges against the established political order in places like France, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Austria's case is of special concern, Mendoza notes, because of its history. "Austrians often say they were the first victims of the Nazis, but they were also the first collaborators."
New Delhi: The National Museum of Natural History was completely destroyed in a major fire in central Delhi early on Tuesday.

The fire started at the museum, housed in the FICCI complex at Mandi House near Connaught Place, at around 1.45 am on the top floor of the six-storey building and quickly engulfed other floors.

The FICCI complex also housed the FICCI Auditorium and FICCI Headquarters but they were reported to be safe.

As many as 35 fire engines were pressed into service to douse the fire which was brought under control at around 5 am.

As per news agency ANI, the blaze has still not been completely doused and flames could be seen on the top floor.

Six fire brigade personnel were injured and were admitted to the nearby Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. Two of them are reported to be critical.

Since the fire broke out late in the night, not too many people were inside the building which was under renovation.

Reports quoted fire brigade officials as saying that fire safety mechanisms inside the building were not functioning, which led to the spread of the blaze.

The building's fire safety mechanisms were not working, still we controlled it within two hours, Rajesh Panwar, a fire officer, told ANI news agency.

JC Mishra, director, Delhi Fire Service, later said the fire most likely started from some electrical equipment in the premises.

Meanwhile, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar visited the FICCI complex to take stock of the situation.

This is tragic, the Natural History Museum is a national treasure. Firemen are still at the spot, Javadekar said after reviewing the situation.

The minister announced that he has ordered a fire safety audit of all museums across the country.

We have 34 museums across the country, have ordered a fire audit of all establishments, he stated.
New Delhi: Naxals have been maintaining close ties with Maoist organisations in the Philippines and Turkey, the government said in Parliament on Tuesday.

Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said in the Lok Sabha while replying to a written question that the Naxals receive support from several organisations in Europe as well.

"The CPI(Maoist) has close links with foreign Maoist organisations in Philippines, Turkey etc. The outfit is also a member of the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia," Rijiju said, as per PTI.

"The so-called 'People's War' being waged by the CPI(Maoist) against the Indian state has also drawn support from several Maoist fringe organisations located in Germany, France, Turkey, Italy etc," he added.

The minister said arms and ammunition of foreign origin have been recovered from the possession of left-wing extremists which shows that they have been procuring weapons from different sources.

"Inputs indicate that some senior cadres of the Communist Party of Philippines imparted training to the cadres of CPI (Maoist) in 2005 and 2011," he said.
New Delhi: Months after Narendra Modi government's decision to declassify hundreds of secret files related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose , Japan will also release two of the five secret files with them.

Speaking in the Parliament on Tuesday, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju said that Japan has 5 files related to Netaji and will release two files by the end of the year.

As many as hundred secret files were made public by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Netaji's 119th birth anniversary on January 23 this year.

The files, released in January, comprised over 16,600 pages of historic documents, ranging from those from the British Raj to as late as 2007.

In October last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met the family members of Netaji and announced that the government would declassify the files relating to the leader whose disappearance 70 years ago remains a mystery.

While two commissions of inquiry had concluded that Netaji had died in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945, a third probe panel, headed by Justice MK Mukherjee, had contested it and suggested that Bose was alive.
Bijnore: The Uttar Pradesh Police, after obtaining a non-bailable arrest warrant against Muneer - the main accused in NIA officer Tanjil Ahmed's murder case - has started the process to attach the accused's house.

This comes a week after a Bijnor local court issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Munir, who has also been declared an absconder by the UP Police.

So far, all efforts to nab Muneer have gone in vain, though top police sources said the cops are on the verge of arresting the murder accused.

The UP Police had earlier announced a reward of Rs 50,000 to those providing information leading to the arrest of Muneer.

According to Uttar Pradesh Police, the murder was committed out of domestic dispute, family matters and share in a property deal.

Tanzil Ahmed, probing terror cases related to Indian Mujahideen, was shot dead on April 3 by two unidentified motorcycle-borne assailants who also wounded his wife when they were returning home from a wedding near UP's Bijnor town.

NIA officer was shot at 24 times, and he received 21 bullet injuries - 12 were found in his body and nine had gone through his body.

His wife Farzana was hit by three bullets. She later died at AIIMS, Delhi.
New Delhi: Pakistan on Tuesday raked up the Kashmir issue again during the Foreign Secretary-level talks here.

Visiting Pakistani Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry brought up the Kashmir issue during talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar at the South Block.

Chaudhry is in New Delhi to attend the Heart of Asia (Istanbul Process) conference on Afghanistan and he met the Indian Foreign Secretary ahead of the event.

The Pakistani High Commission here said after the meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry that all outstanding issues including Kashmir were discussed during the talks.

The Pakistani Foreign Secretary emphasised that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution in accordance with UNSC resolutions and wishes of Kashmiri people, the High Commission stated, as per PTI.

Chaudhry, meanwhile, also underscored the need for early commencement of the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue.

Today's were the first formal talks between the two neighbours after the January 2 attack on Pathankot air base in Punjab.

It was not clear whether the Pathankot terror attack came up for discussion at the meet.

It was reported ahead of the talks that the two sides will strive to put the bilateral dialogue process back on track during today's meet.

The bilateral talks had got stalled following the attack on the Pathankot air base in which seven security personnel were killed by militants of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed.

The attack derailed the dialogue process which had kick-started with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's visit to Islamabad last October for a Heart of Asia ministerial meeting jointly hosted by Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Both the sides had agreed on resumption of the bilateral dialogue, naming it Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's December 25 stopover to Lahore during which he met his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif had also given a fillip to the dialogue process.
New Delhi: Two specific files, including one from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose are missing, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

He also informed the house that Japan has agreed to declassify two files related to Netaji by end of the year.

"Despite attempts being made, one file is missing from the ministry of home affairs also," Rijiju said during question hour.

The file that's missing from the PMO relates to the "proposal" to bring back the ashes of Netaji from Tokyo and on building a national memorial in his honour at the Red Fort, he said.

Replying to supplementary questions from members, including Bhrutihari Mahtab of Biju Janata Dal, the minister said efforts have been made by the Narendra Modi government to procure records, files and documents from various countries, including Russia and Japan.

"Japan has agreed to declassify two files out of five by the end of this year," he said.

Rijiju said that Japan has not given any assurance about the other three files.

He said the government has decided to declassify 25 files every month.
New Delhi: Pandemonium prevailed in Parliament as the main opposition party Congress continued to disrupt proceedings over the Srinagar NIT crisis and the Uttarakhand issue in both Houses on Tuesday.

Key legislation such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST) bill await clearance from the lawmakers in the Upper House, where Congress-led Opposition has a majority.

The Communist Party of India (CPI) earlier this morning gave a motion of suspension seeking suspension of Zero Hour to discuss the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) issue in the Rajya Sabha.

Uproar in Rajya Sabha on CPI motion of suspension of business to discuss #JNU issue  ANI (@ANI_news) April 26, 2016

The Bharatiya Janata Party also issued a three-line whip to all its MPs in Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, asking them to be present in the Parliament till Friday.

The Congress Party, on the other hand, raised the Uttarakhand issue in the Rajya Sabha once again following which the House was adjourned till 12.

Uproar by Congress in Rajya Sabha over #Uttarakhand issue, members protest at well of the house pic.twitter.com/6mKpPS2Hzz  ANI (@ANI_news) April 26, 2016

Meanwhile, the Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi also met with some students of the NIT Srinagar and assured them that the party will raise their concerns over campus safety with the government.

"Met students and parents from National Institute of Technology (NIT), Srinagar who expressed concern over the safety and security of students on (the) campus. I assured them that the Congress would raise their concerns and put pressure on the government to resolve the matter," Rahul tweeted after the meeting.

On Monday, around 20 Congress Members of Parliament, including Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and senior leader K.C. Venugopal, observed a sit-in protest near the well of the Lower House as the Uttarakhand issue dominated proceedings.

The leaders also raised slogans denouncing the NDA government over their actions in the hill state. Slogans such as 'Manmani nahi chalegi' and 'Loktantra ki Hatya' could be heard from the group of MPs sitting on the floor.
Beijing: A day after India cancelled the visa of Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa, China said on Tuesday that it had approached the Indian side through diplomatic channels against his visit to Dharamsala for a global Uyghur meet.

Chinese foreign office spokesperson Hua Chunying, answering a query at a press briefing, said that India and China "should respect each other`s concerns and properly handle relevant issues".

Isa had voiced disappointment after the Indian home ministry cancelled his tourist visa saying it is not a valid travel document to attend a conference.

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is scheduled from April 28 to May 1 in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, as a closed door event. It is being organised by the US-based Initiatives for China.

Asked about her comments on the cancellation, Hua said: "We have noted the relevant report. Upon learning that the Indian government would grant a visa for Dolkun, the Chinese side has immediately expressed its concerns with the Indian side through the diplomatic channel.

"What I would like to stress is that Dolkun is a terrorist on the red notice of the Interpol and the Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is the due obligation of relevant countries. Sino-Indian relationship enjoys a sound momentum of development. The two sides should respect each other`s concerns and properly handle relevant issues," she said.
New Delhi: Defiant JNU students who have been punished in connection with a controversial event on campus on Tuesday asserted they will not pay fine and vacate hostels as ordered by the university and will go on an indefinite hunger strike from tomorrow demanding withdrawal of orders.

"We have rejected the so called high-level enquiry committee right from the day it was set up as an undemocratic and biased one so there is no point accepting the punishment meted out to us on basis of its findings," JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar told reporters here.

Kanhaiya, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya were arrested on charges of sedition in February in connection with an event against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. They are now out on bail.

The university yesterday rusticated Umar for one semester, Kashmiri student Mujeeb Gattoo for two semesters and Anirban till July 15. As per decision, Bhattacharya has been barred from pursuing any course in JNU for next 5 years. Kanhaiya has been penalised with Rs 10,000.

13 other students have been let off with varied fines. The campus has been made out of bounds for two former students -- Banojyotsana Lahiri and Draupadi -- while hostel facilities of Ashutosh Kumar and Komal Mohite have been withdrawn for a year and till July 21 respectively.

"We have decided that none of the students will pay the fine or vacate their hostels. We demand that the university administration withdraws these orders as we have maintained right from the beginning that we do not have faith in this enquiry panel and it should be reconstituted," JNUSU Vice President Shehla Rashid Shora said.

"We will begin an indefinite hunger strike from tomorrow after staging a protest march from varsity's Ganga dhaba to administration block. The decision has been well-timed by the university officials to avoid any protests as summer break is about to begin but we will not bow down and continue our fight," she added.

Anirban, who has been given a window of a week (July 15-23) to submit his thesis and has been debarred from university for five years beginning July 24 said, "I am not going to vacate my hostel and follow any of the punishment orders but as a student I am going to stick to the deadline for my thesis submission. I am a bit scared about my future but we will fight against the administration".

The university officials, however, maintained that the students have an option of filing an appeal before the Chief Proctor if they are not satisfied with the decision.

"If they want to file an appeal, we will give them an option to be heard. However, if they are not filing an appeal, they are supposed to vacate hostels immediately and pay fine by May 17," a senior university official said.

He, however, did not comment on what will be the university's course of action if the students don't vacate the hostels.

Meanwhile, a delegation of the JNU Teachers Association (JNUTA) met Vice Chancellor Jagadesh Kumar today and raised concerns over the punishment orders.

"It was an unfruitful meeting. We have decided to call an emergent general body meeting on Thursday to decide on future course of action," a JNUTA member said.
Jammu: Non-local students of National Institute of Technology (NIT), Srinagar held a protest in Jammu for the second consecutive day on Tuesday.

They were joined by students of Jammu University.

The NIT students have been demanding action against police officials involved in baton charging non-local students and permanent deployment of CRPF on the campus.

The NIT students, supported by the National Students Union of India (NSUI), held a protest rally in Jammu and raised slogans criticising Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani.

The protest rally started from the central library of Jammu University and ended at Bikram Chowk.

A group of non-local students also boycotted classes which started on Tuesday, saying they will continue their protest till their demands are met.

"We will accept nothing less than action against the police officials involved in baton charging the non local students for raising the national tricolour. The police resorted to baton charging on non-local students who were raising slogans like Bharat Mata Ki Jai," said an agitating student.

Another student claimed police failed to act when the non local students were threatened to death by the locals.

On Saturday, over 300 students including NIT students had carried out a protest march from Press Club to Science College here in support of their demands.

The students had held a similar protest yesterday.
"Just three years ago, most of the applicants were university students taking time off or graduates looking for jobs, but now more than 30 percent are young workers who quit their jobs," a staffer said. "If you include those who didn't sign up for our program but organized their gap year on their own, the total number probably rises to the thousands."

According to Korea Gap Year, which offers gap year programs for young adults, more than 500 office workers quit their jobs or took sabbaticals and signed up last year.

They often see it as an opportunity to reflect on the rat race and their future in it, and do some general soul searching.

A growing number of young office workers are quitting their jobs to take a year out because they missed the gap year that high-school graduates in the West often take before university to see the world or do good.

Lee Ban-hee (31) has a degree in art but worked for a major electronics company. She quit her job in October 2014 and traveled to Italy, where she learned metalworking for three months. She returned to Korea and found work as a freelance jewelry designer.

"I make half of what I used to make, and this makes me nervous at times, but I have no regrets since I'm doing what I really want to do," she said.

Jeon So-ra (32) quit her government job in 2012 and spent the next year and a half doing volunteer work in the Third World. She later found a job as a consultant on doing business in developing countries.

"Since high school I never had time to look back on my life," Jeon said. "My annual salary has dropped by around 10 percent, but my work satisfaction has increased tremendously."

Jeon quit her job again recently and headed to Brazil, where she plans to get married to her Brazilian boyfriend whom she met during her gap year.

But the way home can be difficult. One 28-year-old woman who quit her job in PR for a cosmetics company in 2014, is still looking for a new job. "I thought I'd find another job quite easily after traveling through Europe for two months, but I've been out of work for a year and a half now," she said. "I think corporate employers have a negative view of people who quit their previous jobs for some recharging."

Ham In-hee at Ewha Womans University said, "Young Koreans who grew up trying to live up to the expectations of others increasingly take charge of their own lives and begin to take on new challenges when they turn 30."
Srinagar: Hardline Hurriyat Conference, led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, on Tuesday appealed to Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan to take bold steps to resolve the Kashmir issue for peace, prosperity and development in the sub-continent.

"We appeal to the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan to shun the traditional and ceremonial ways and take bold steps to resolve long standing Kashmir dispute," Hurriyat said in a statement here.

It said Hurriyat is neither against the dialogue nor against the cordial relations between India and Pakistan but "our stand is that Kashmir is the core issue between the two countries and no headway is possible without its resolution in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of the people of the state".

"The peace, prosperity and development in the sub-continent is linked to the resolution of Kashmir which in the primary cause for political uncertainty in the region," the Hurriyat said.
Thiruvananthapuram: Electoral authorities have seized cash to a tune of Rs 17.28 crores so far in raids conducted to unearth flow of unaccounted money in the run up to May 16 polls in Kerala.

This was the highest seizure of cash during assembly poll period in the state, Chief Electoral Officer E K Majhi said in a release here today.

Besides Indian currency, 78500 Saudi Riyal and 665 US Dollars were also seized in the raids.

The raids were conducted jointly by officials drawn from Revenue, Excise, Income Tax, Police and Sales Tax Departments.

They also seized 11.19 kg of gold and 700 kg of explosive materials, it said.

Steps would be taken to strengthen monitoring at the check-posts in the coming days, it said.

Ahead of the May 16 elections, a strict vigil is being maintained by the Election Commission against transportation of unaccounted money, gold and illegal money transactions.
Mumbai: A minor fire broke out at the Maharashtra secretariat 'Mantralaya' here on Tuesday due to a short circuit.

The fire broke out in a corridor of revenue department on the first floor, caused by a short circuit, a fire brigade official said.

Two fire tenders and as many water tankers were pressed into service and the fire was extinguished quickly, he said, adding there was no damage.

However, unlike the 2002 Mantralaya fire tragedy, this was a minor incident and did not cause any loss to life or property.

On June 21, 2012, a devastating fire engulfed the Maharashtra Mantralaya that claimed at least 5 lives and left several people with burn injuries. The fire also destroyed 63,349 files in the state secretariat.

According to a report, the Maharashtra Mantralaya has 2,500 to 3,000 employees and on any given day about 3,000 visitors.
Mumbai: Eight Muslim men accused of carrying out bomb blasts in Maharashtra's Malegaon in 2006 were made scapegoats by the Anti-Terrorist Squad, a Mumbai court has said.

NDTV quoted special Judge VV Patil as saying in his order, "It appears to me that as the accused had criminal antecedents, they became scapegoats at the hands of the ATS."

The judge had added that ATS officers "merely on suspicion" had projected the accused as the authors of the blast.

However, special Judge Patil also said that "the officers had no animosity towards the accused persons, therefore, in my view as they discharged their public duty but in a wrong way".

But, at the same time, the judge went on to say, that it was "highly impossible" that the accused would have "decided to kill their own people to create disharmony between two communities that too on a holy day, Shab-e-Baarat".

Ten years after a series of bombs exploded in Malegaon killing 37 people, a special court yesterday had dropped charges against eight Muslim youths due to lack of evidence against them.

The accused, including two doctors, were discharged by VV Patil, Designated Judge trying cases under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).

The serial bomb blasts outside a cemetry near Hamidia Mosque at Malegaon, near Nashik, on September 8, 2006, had also left over 100 persons injured.

Bombs were planted on bicycles parked near the cemetry and they went off after Friday prayers at the Mosque on the occasion of Shab-e-Baraat.

Nine accused, suspected to have links with Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), were initially arrested in the case and chargesheeted by the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS).

One of them died while the case was pending.

Four others, including a Pakistan national, are absconding.

Later, CBI, which took over investigations, also confirmed the charges against them.

Subsequently, in 2011, NIA was asked to probe the case and the agency arrested another set of people belonging to the majority community, who continue to be accused in the case.

However, the case took a turn when Swami Assemanand, an accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjis bombing case, allegedly revealed to the probe agency about the role of a Hindu right wing outfit in the 2006 Malagaon blasts case.

Thereafter, NIA told the court that it had no evidence against the nine accused in the case.

(With PTI inputs)
Mumbai: In a new development, Letter Rogatory has been issued to USA, Singapore and Hong Kong in the Sheena Bora murder case.

The Letter Rogatory has been issued by special CBI court to trace fund trail, as per ANI.

CBI is investigating money as possible motive behind killing of 24-year-old Bora.

Earlier, the agency had told the court that prime accused Indrani Mukerjea and her husband Peter had allegedly siphoned off funds to the tune of Rs 900 crore from their company 9X Media through a layer of nine companies.

The CBI had made the submission while telling the court that it has sought Interpol's help for access to overseas bank accounts of the Mukerjeas.

It had claimed that investments of crores of rupees were allegedly made by the Mukerjea couple and that "Indrani and Peter had formed various companies during 2006-07 and invested Rs 900 crore in them", as per PTI.

The agency had alleged that the "money siphoned off from INX (in which Peter and Indrani were partners) dealings was routed to Sheena's HSBC account in Singapore".

CBI had also told the court that a woman working in DBS Bank Singapore allegedly helped Indrani open an account in HSBC Singapore in the name of Sheena.

During investigations, Peter had allegedly told CBI that accounts might have been opened in the name of Sheena (by Indrani) in HSBC and other banks in Hongkong and Singapore.

According to CBI, the couple's company 9X Media Pvt Ltd allegedly carried out its internal audit in which nine companies having shareholding as on March 2009 were found to have instances of alleged misallocation and siphoning off substantial amounts of funds by Peter and Indrani.

Indrani, former media baron Peter Mukerjea, her former husband Sanjeev Khanna and her former driver Shyamvar Rai are the accused in the case.

24-year-old Sheena, Indrani's daughter from an earlier relationship, was allegedly strangled to death in a car and her body was burnt and dumped in a forest in Raigad, 84 km from Mumbai, in May 2012.

(With PTI inputs)
Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: Barely 3 days after the two tech giants Google and Microsoft decided to burry the hatchet and dropped all the regulatory complaints against each other, the search engine giant Google updated its Gmail app for Android which also featured improved support for Microsoft Exchange users.

The newly added Exchange support is of great help for those who want to mix work and personal information in the same space.

Google made the announcement of its well-rounded email option with a beautiful tweet.

The new feature adds Gmail with calendar and contact data from Exchange.

Check the tweet here!
Itanagar: Altogether 80 families in Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh have lost their dwellings and lands while more than 100 were affected by the pre-monsoon flood caused by the Noa Dihing River.

Sixty-four families were in Dumpani and 16 families in Jyotipur villages under Diyun circle, an official report from the district administration said today.

Local MLA Nikh Kamin took stock of the situation yesterday along with the ADC, EAC, Indian Army and Police, the report said.

Kamin visited all the areas vulnerable to floods and the areas badly affected at Jyotipur and Dumpani villages.

The MLA has assured the victims of every possible help, saying that he would appeal to the government for a permanent solution for the menace of Noa Dihing which takes away a chunk of fertile land of the state every year.

He gave the victims an amount of Rs 1.2 lakh each as immediate relief while the administration has distributed several quintals of food items.

Kamin lauded the Indian Army, Dumba Camp for their active role in the rescue operation and for their donation of rations and other items.

Additional Deputy Commissioner (ADC) S Miji and Extra Assistant Commissioner (EAC) Tagam Mibang have advised people not to go back and stay along the river until the monsoon is over because the water level could rise anytime and could be dangerous, the report added.
Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: In order to speed up their driverless initiative, Alphabet's Google unit , Ford Motor Co, Volvo cars, Uber technologies and Lyft formed a coalition to build self-driving cars.

The joint effort called the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets 'will work with law makers, regulators and public to realize the safety and societal benefits of self-driving vehicles', according to Reuters.

The coalition named David Strickland, the former top official of US national Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as counsel and spokesperson.

"The best path for this innovation is to have one clear set of federal standards, and the coalition will work with policymakers to find the right solutions that will facilitate the deployment of self-driving vehicles," Strickland said in a statement.

From the past few months Google was urging policymakers in US to come up with nation wide-regulation for these vehicles so as to the development of the technology doesn't get stalled.

NHTSA is planning to release the self-driving car guidelines to policy-makers and companies in July.

(With agencies inputs)
Dhaka: A court in southern Bangladesh sentenced two Hindu school teachers to six months in jail for making "abusive" remarks about Islam that led a mob to attack their school, a magistrate said Tuesday.

The head teacher and another staff member at the Hijla High School in the town of Chitalmari were found guilty of "hurting the religious sentiments" of Muslim students and their parents.

The comments sparked protests by students, most of whom are Muslim, and angry villagers descended on the school seeking to beat up the teachers before being stopped by police.

"They have made abusive comments about Islam and the Prophet Mohammed during a class session," said magistrate Anwar Parvez, who handed down the verdict Monday after the teachers pleaded guilty.

"Local people attacked the school. They wanted to beat the two Hindu teachers," Parvez told AFP.

Criticism of Islam is taboo in the majority-Sunni Muslim nation.

The convictions come as concern mounts over Islamist extremism in conservative Bangladesh, which is reeling after a spate of murders of minorities and secular activists.

In recent years, suspected homegrown militants have targeted secular activists and writers who have criticised Islam and radical Islamists.

On Monday two gay rights activists were hacked to death in attacks by suspected Islamist militants.

Two days earlier a liberal professor was murdered in a northwestern city, a killing claimed by Islamic State jihadists.

A long-running political crisis in Bangladesh has radicalised opponents of the government and analysts say Islamist extremists pose a growing danger.
Washington: The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group wants to expand its operations in Bangladesh to boost its image among local radicals, US-based intelligence assessment company Stratfor said in a report on Tuesday.

"The Islamic State will attempt more sensational attacks in Bangladesh to gain the support of extremists in the country," the report stated, according to Sputnik News.

The IS militants have published their goals for expansion in the latest edition of their magazine Dabiq, according to Stratfor.

IS head of operations in Bangladesh Sheikh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif said the group wants to target Christian missionaries and foreigners, along with Hindu and Shiite figures.

Al-Hanif also noted that Bangladesh is strategically important due to its proximity to eastern India and Myanmar, as well as its involvement with the UN peacekeeping missions in Muslim-majority countries.

"Bangladeshi nationals and foreign extremists of Bangladeshi descent fighting in Iraq and Syria will provide the Islamic State with skilled bombmakers and operational planners in Bangladesh," the report added.

The Islamic State, also known as Daesh, has been designated as a terrorist group and is outlawed in the United States, Russia and numerous other countries. The infamous group has seized large areas in Iraq and Syria, and declared a caliphate on territories under its control.
U.S. President Barack Obama on Sunday dismissed North Korea's proposal to stop nuclear tests if the U.S. suspends annual military exercises with South Korea.

Speaking in Hannover, Germany, Obama said, "If North Korea shows seriousness in denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, then we will be prepared to enter into some serious conversations with them about reducing tensions and our approach to protecting our allies in the region."

"But that's not something that happens based on a press release in the wake of a series of provocative behaviors. They're going to have to do better than that," he added.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong made the proposal in an interview with AP on Saturday.

"And until they do, we're going to continue to emphasize our work with [South] Korea and Japan, and our missile defense mechanisms, to assure that we're keeping the American people safe and we're keeping our allies safe."

Ri's proposal came after a period of weekly missile firings amid signs that the North is preparing for yet another nuclear test.

"We're still analyzing and assessing with precision the activities that North Korea engaged in over the last several days," Obama said. "What is clear is that North Korea continues to engage in continuous, provocative behavior.

"And although more often than not they fail in many of these tests, they gain knowledge each time they engage in these tests. And we take it very seriously. And so do our allies, and so does the entire world."

Obama also called on China to do more to bring the North to heel.

"We've cultivated cooperation with the Chinese to put more pressure on North Korea," he said. "And although it is not where we would completely like it to be, I will say that we've seen the Chinese be more alarmed and take more seriously what North Korea is doing, and they have been willing to be more forward-leaning in exacting a price on North Korea's destructive behavior."

If the North conducts a fifth nuclear test, Washington is expected to pursue a secondary boycott by punishing individuals, firms or banks in third countries that continue to deal with Pyongyang and ask Beijing to halt oil supplies to Pyongyang.
New Delhi: Our solar system, which consists of planets  that orbit our Sun - minor planets, moons, comets, asteroids, dust and gas, is an exciting place.

Here are some amazing things you must know about our solar system this week-

The bright and the beautiful - Haulani crater on Ceres:

NASA's Dawn spacecraft, in its lowest-altitude mapping orbit and at a distance of 240 miles (385 kilometers) from Ceres, provided scientists with spectacular views of the dwarf planet, especially of its bright, young, hexagonal craters like Haulani.

New Mars orbiter:

Ahead of manned missions to Mars, NASA has announced a solicitation of ideas for a new Mars orbiter for potential launch in the 2020s. The satellite would provide advanced communications and imaging, as well as robotic science exploration, in support of NASAs Journey to Mars.

Seeing double:

NASA measured a solar flare from two different spots in space. During a December 2013 solar flare, three sun-observing spacecraft captured the most comprehensive observations ever of an electromagnetic phenomenon called a current sheet.

Mission to Europa:

NASA plans to visit Europa  an icy moon of Jupiter - in the late 2020s, with a flyby mission informally called the Europa Clipper. The planned mission will conduct detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter's moon Europa and investigate whether the icy moon could harbor conditions suitable for life.

Go deep:

The Juno mission arrives at Jupiter in July 2016. Launched on August 5, 2011, the mission will help improve our understanding of the solar system's beginnings by revealing the origin and evolution of Jupiter, which is huge, powerful and spectacular.

(Source: nasa.tumblr.com)
Kourou, French Guiana: The European Space Agency (ESA) on Monday launched its second Sentinel-1 satellite  Sentinel-1B  to provide more radar vision for Europes environmental Copernicus programme.

According to ESA, Sentinel-1B lifted off on a Soyuz rocket, flight VS14, from Europes Spaceport in Korou, French Guiana on 25 April 2016 at 21:02 GMT (23:02 CEST).

In case you missed the launch, here's a replay of the launch of VS14 with Europe's Sentinel1 B, three CubeSats and a Microscope satellite.

Video credit: ESA/YouTube

Sentinel-1B joins its identical twin, Sentinel-1A, which was launched two years ago from Kourou, in orbit to deliver information for numerous services, from monitoring ice in polar seas to tracking land subsidence, and for responding to disasters such as floods.

The launch of Sentinel-1B marks another important milestone as this is the first constellation we have realised for Copernicus, said ESAs Director General Jan Woerner.

Orbiting 180 apart, the two satellites optimise coverage and data delivery for services that are making a step change in the way our environment is managed.

Both satellites carry an advanced radar that images Earths surface through cloud and rain regardless of whether it is day or night.

The three CubeSats, each measuring just 01011 cm, piggybacked a ride on Soyuz are: OUFTI-1 from the University of Liege, Belgium, e-st@r-II from the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, and AAUSat-4 from Aalborg University, Denmark. The other passenger is the Microscope satellite from Frances CNES space agency.

(Source: ESA)
Chennai: AIADMK supremo and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Tuesday reeled out statistics to show how her announcements in the Tamil Nadu Assembly over new projects have progressed in several departments.

She gave information on the status of announcements related to revenue, information technology and labour departments in an AIADMK release here.

Her response comes in the wake continuous attacks by DMK chief Karunanidhi and treasurer MK Stalin that the announcements made in Assembly under Rule 110 (suo motu announcements) by Jayalalithaa were allegedly non-starters.

Stating that steps were being taken to procure hardware and software to provide Internet Protocol Television-IPTV, she said 70.52 lakh households have been provided cable TV connections at a cost of Rs 70 per month.

The connections were provided through TN Arasu Cable TV Corporation and each household was getting 90-100 television channels, she said.

Under the Farmers Protection Scheme, in the past five years, 37.68 lakh farmers have benefited and 58,719 farm ponds were set up. About 45 per cent of work has been completed at a cost of Rs 695 crore in the Rs 1,481 crore Coastal Disaster Risk Reduction Project (CDRRP).

As many as 34 new revenue taluks were created to cater to local needs in several districts, she added.

Students were being given certificates like community certificates right in their schools and 42.10 lakh students have benefited.

New government industrial training centres have been set up in five districts including Villupuram and 744 students were benefited, she said.
Hyderabad: In an another shocking incident, a senior citizen on Tuesday cut his tongue outside Telangana Secretariat in protest over not being heard on old age pension issue.

As per the ANI report, the elderly man accused the MLAs of refusing to come his assistance and alleged that the netas in the past refused to listen to his grievances.

The man cut his tongue with a blade. He was immediately rushed to a nearby hospital where he is being treated.
Lucknow: A day after the Central Administrative Tribunal quashed the suspension of Indian Police Service officer Amitabh Thakur and ordered his immediate reinstatement, the Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday challenged the order in the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court.

The bench of Justice Devendra Kumar Arora and Justice Vijay Laxmi directed the central government and Thakur to file their counter replies within two weeks.

In its interim order, the high court bench permitted the state government to proceed with the departmental inquiry, making it clear that it shall not take any final decision till the disposal of the writ petition.

The state government's chief standing counsel, Sanjay Bhasin said that under the All-India Services Discipline and Appeal Rules, the state government was empowered to appoint an inquiry officer immediately after handing over the charge sheet.

Central government counsel Ashok Verma opposed it by saying that the rule cannot be read in isolation but needs to be read along with other provisions.

Having heard all the parties, the high court fixed May 11 as the next date of hearing.


New Delhi: The Rajya Sabha on Tuesday again witnessed disruptions over the Uttarakhand issue, and the chair finally adjourned the upper house for the day.

Soon after the newly nominated members were administered oath, the Congress and other opposition parties started raising slogans against the Narendra Modi government and demanded a debate on the Uttarakhand issue.

As the house met at 2 pm, the Congress demanded the Centre's apology for, what it termed as, destabilising the duly-elected Harish Rawat government in Uttarakhand.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the Congress and other opposition parties were actually not interested in what the government had to say on the issue.

"You want to discuss the Uttarakhand issue, but you don't want to listen," he said amid noisy scenes.

Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad raised a point against Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, saying Jaitley was trying to set a wrong precedent by accusing Uttarakhand assembly Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal of "turning a minority government into a majority government".

"It's a wrong precedent that the central government is trying to set," Azad said, adding it was not in the interest of the country's democracy to interfere in the internal matters of the state assemblies.

Jaitley defended the Modi government's decision by saying that once President's Rule is imposed in a state, the said proclamation is to be laid in both houses of parliament.

"But the Congress is not interested (in letting the proclamation to be placed before parliament)," he alleged, and said that once it was done, the government would explain why it was done.

In response, the entire opposition opposed him vociferously.

Congress leaders and others assembled in the well of the house, shouting slogans like "Modi teri tanashahi nahi chalegi (Prime Minister Narendra Modi, your dictatorship will not be tolerated)".

Earlier in the day also, similar scenes were witnessed in the Rajya Sabha.

The upper house witnessed four adjournments till 3 pm. When the house reassembled at 3 pm, the chair adjourned it for the day as its plea to let the house discuss and pass important bills went unheeded.

The Rajya Sabha was disrupted thrice on the Uttarakhand issue on Monday as well, before it was adjourned for the day without conducting any business.

The BJP-led government is in minority in the upper house.
Kolkata: As many as 349 candidates are in the fray in the fifth phase of the West Bengal Assembly elections, of whom 67 have criminal cases pending against them while 43 are crorepatis.

Fifty-three constituencies spread across the districts of South 24 Parganas, Kolkata and Hooghly will go to the polls in the fifth phase on Saturday.

According to a report released by the West Bengal Election Watch on Tuesday, 52 of the 67 candidates with criminal cases face serious charges including that of murder and crimes against women.

The ruling Trinamool Congress with 17 nominees leads the list of candidates with criminal charges, followed by the Communist Party of India-Marxist with 14.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has fielded 10 such candidates while the Congress has fielded seven.

Five constituencies -- Kolkata Port, Jangipara, Kasba, Raidighi and Singur -- have been declared as "red alert constituencies", where there are three or more candidates with criminal charges.

The average assets of all the 349 candidates is Rs 70.78 lakh.

The Trinamool leads the crorepati list with 23 candidates followed by 9 from the BJP and 6 from CPI-M and 3 from the Congress.

Khalid Ebadullah of the Congress from Magrahat West in South 24 Parganas is the wealthiest candidate with assets in excess of Rs 19 crore.

One the flip side, Indian Union Muslim League nominee WH Khan contesting from Ballygunge in the city and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha candidate Kashinath Murmu from Saptagram in Hooghly have declared zero assets.

Of the 47 candidates who won in 2011 and are re-contesting the polls this time, 42 are from Trinamool, two from the CPI-M and one each from the Forward Bloc, SUCI and the Revolutionary Socialist Party.

The average assets of the 42 re-contesting candidates from Trinamool have grown by 119.80 percent in the last five years.

State minister and Trinamool candidate Javed Ahmed Khan from Kasba has seen his assets surge by a whopping 3,467.45 percent in the last five years to reach in excess of Rs 17 crore. His properties as per his affidavit in 2011 were valued at Rs 48 lakh.
Canning Paschim: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday dubbed PM Narendra Modi and CM Mamata Banerjee's combo as a "threat to Indian democracy" claiming that if any of these parties come to power in the state, it would be the "dangerous for West Bengal".

Addressing a rally here, Sonia said, Modi aur Mamata ki yeh milibhagat loktantra aur WB kay liye khatarnaak hai (Modi-Mamata collusion is a grave danger to West Bengal as well as democracy).

Pradhan Mantri Modi aapki machliyon ko bacha nahii saktay. Jab Modiji machliyon ko nahii bacha saktay voh desh kii seemaon ko kya bachayenge, she added, as per ANI.

Further hitting out at the Prime Minister, the Congress president said, The way Modi governmnet is working, it is dangerous for democratic values, secularism and democracy as whole.

She further said, Modi ji ne bhi aapko sunehre sapne dikhaye thhe lekin ab aapko unse saavdhaan rehne ki zaroorat hai.

Gandhi ridiculed Trinamool Congress supremo Banerjee's "tall claims of development", saying the only development was in the form of unemployment, farmer suicides and absence of law and order.

"The Trinamool which forgot all the promises it made before the polls, is now harping on development. But the reality is in front of you. If there is any real development, then why is industry closing, why are farmers committing suicide, why is there unemployment?"

"The industries are closing, there is no sign of law and order, there is rampant crime against women and there is so much of corruption that even new bridges are collapsing," she said.

Gandhi used the example of Hilsa, the exquisite gourmet fish of Bengal, to launch a scathing attack on both Banerjee and Modi.

"You must have heard how one fish can dirty the entire pond. The Trinamool in the last five years has dirtied so much that even your Hilsa have fled.

"Once Bengal's pride, such is the condition that now Hilsa has to be imported. And this is all because of Modi and Mamata.

"The BJP and Trinamool collectively have put prohibition on Indian fishing trawlers but trawlers from our neighbouring countries are being allowed to catch our fish," she alleged.

"Modi who talks big about border security, when he couldn't save the fish, how will he secure our borders? The Pathankot attack is a big example of that," said Gandhi, referring to the January terror attack at the Pathankot air force station in Punjab.

"Much like Modi says Congress did nothing in 60 years and all the development work has been done by the BJP government, Mamata too says there was nothing in Bengal before she came to power.

"This Mamata-Modi collusion is a big danger for Bengal. These twin arrogant forces are a danger to democracy.

"The way the Modi government is functioning, it is endangering our country's basic structure, our secular values, endangering democracy and our age-old tradition and values," she said.

Urging people not to fall into the trap of the BJP and Trinamool's fake promises, Gandhi called upon people to vote for the Congress and the CPI-M led Left Front which have entered into an alliance.

"Five years back, the Trinamool fooled you with its tall promises and two years back Modi did the same. This time don't get entrapped by the BJP and Trinamool's tall promises, but vote for the Congress and Left Front nominees," she said.

CPI-M central committee member Sujan Chakrabarty shared the platform with Gandhi, as the Congress president appealed to the people to vote for her party and the Left.

(With Agency inputs)
Kolkata: West Bengal minister and Saradha chit fund accused Madan Mitra was on Tuesday admitted to a hospital in Kolkata.

According to Navbharat Times, Mitra complaint of chest pain and difficulty in breathing following which he was rushed to the hospital.

Madan Mitra was arrested by CBI in December 2014 in the multi-crore rupee Saradha chit fund scam and is currently lodged in Alipore jail.

Interestingly, despite being behind the bars, he is among the high-profile candidates contesting the fourth phase of assembly polls in West Bengal. Mitra will be contesting from Kamarhati seat in North 24 Parganas district.

This is the first time that a high-profile candidate is fighting elections in West Bengal from jail.

Mitra's name had also figured in Narada sting operation, an issue which has been haunting Trinamool ever since the video was released.
Saana: Air strikes on rebel-held areas of Syria`s second city Aleppo and a town to its west killed at least 19 people on Tuesday, emergency workers said.

The strikes came after rebel shelling killed at least 19 civilians in government-held districts of Aleppo on Monday and are the latest in a surge of violence in and around the city that has severely tested a February 27 ceasefire.

Fourteen civilians were killed in the strikes on rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo city, the civil defence -- known as White Helmets  said.

Five of their own rescue workers were killed when their headquarters in the town of Al-Atarib, controlled by Islamist rebels, was hit by an air strike, the group said on Twitter.

It was not immediately clear whether the strike on Al-Atarib, 35 kilometres (20 miles) from Aleppo, was carried out by the Syrian air force or its Russian ally.

Fighting has surged on several fronts in Aleppo province, which is criss-crossed with supply routes that are strategic for practically all of Syria`s warring sides.

Once Syria`s commercial hub, Aleppo has been divided between rebel control in the east and government forces in the west since 2012.

In the rebel-held Fardos neighbourhood, an AFP correspondent saw a youth being helped down a rubble-strewn street with blood streaming from his head and leg.

Violence has rocked the divided city since Friday, with at least 97 civilians killed by artillery or rocket fire and air strikes.

The fighting severely threatens the February ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia and comes as UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva stall.

More than 270,000 people have been killed in Syria and millions been forced from their homes since the conflict erupted in 2011.
A K-55 self-propelled gun vehicle of the Marine Corps fell off a 5-m cliff by the roadside in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province while traveling to a field drill on Monday morning.

A gunner corporal and a chief gunner sergeant were killed in the accident and five crewmembers were injured.

Alongside the K-9, the K-55 is a Korean-made self-propelled gun. About 1,000 K-55s have been produced since 1986.
La Paz: Bolivian President Evo Morales underwent a paternity test Monday to settle a dispute with an ex-girlfriend whose child he denies fathering, his lawyer said.

In a case that has plunged the 56-year-old leader into scandal, Morales had claimed he fathered a child with her which later died, before changing his story to say the child never existed.

A court ordered the leftist president to undergo a test to answer claims by his ex-partner Gabriela Zapata that he is indeed the father of her child.

"President Evo Morales, like any citizen and in compliance with the law, showed up and has taken the test that the judge arranged," his lawyer Gaston Velasquez said on television channel ATB.

Morales took Zapata to court in March to make her prove the boy is alive.

Compounding the scandal, Zapata has also been implicated in an alleged corruption case.

Zapata is currently in jail pending trial on charges of money laundering, embezzlement and influence-peddling.

A former manager at Chinese engineering group CAMC, she is accused of using her ties to the president to land $560 million in government contracts for the company.

The case exploded just as Bolivia prepared to hold a referendum on whether to change the constitution to allow Morales to run for a fourth term.

Morales, Bolivia`s first indigenous president, went on to lose the February 21 vote -- his first electoral defeat in a decade in power.
Washington: Voters went to the polls Tuesday in five northeastern US states, where strong showings by presidential frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could propel them closer to clinching the Democratic and Republican nominations.

Should Clinton sweep the primaries in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware, it would put her on the cusp of Democratic victory against her rival Senator Bernie Sanders, a monumental step in her quest to become the nation`s first female commander-in-chief.

"I don`t have the nomination yet," the former secretary of state said in a town hall event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania`s largest city, on the eve of the vote.

"We`re going to work really hard until the polls close."

Trump also was expected to extend his formidable lead in the bruising Republican race, even as rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich mounted a hasty -- and already fraying -- tag team effort to block him.

Kasich agreed to forego campaigning in Indiana, a winner-take-all state that votes May 3, and Cruz will return the favor later in New Mexico and Oregon.

But within hours of the surprise deal, Kasich -- the governor of Ohio -- was already playing it down, saying he was not telling his supporters in Indiana not to vote for him.

"This joke of a deal is falling apart, not being honored and almost dead," Trump mocked on Twitter. "Very dumb!"Tuesday`s voting began at 6:00 am (1000 GMT) in Connecticut and one hour later in the other states. Polls close at 8:00 pm (0000 GMT Wednesday).

Voting was brisk in Maryland. "So far it looks good," said Lucy Freeman, 79, the Democratic precinct chair at a voting station in Chevy Chase, a Washington suburb.

New US citizen Imalka Senadhira, a 53-year-old born in Sri Lanka, was voting for the first time and said she was nervous about "which way the country might go."

"I`ve always believed in experience and wisdom, so I`ll go along with that," she told AFP.

Clinton was favored to win all five state Democratic contests, with polls giving her a double-digit lead over Sanders in Pennsylvania, the biggest state of the bunch with 189 delegates.

Should she run the board, it would heap pressure on Sanders, who has vowed to fight on until the California primary on June 7.

"I don`t accept there is no path forward. Let`s not count our chickens before they`re hatched," Sanders told MSNBC Tuesday.

Sanders has deflected recent questions about whether he would actively support a Clinton candidacy if she is the nominee, suggesting it was up to her to win over his passionate young followers.Trump was riding high going into the latest "Super Tuesday" contests.

"We feel very good about our position tonight," campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said Tuesday on CNN.

Trump himself had been in full attack mode a day earlier, pouring scorn on the Cruz-Kasich deal and describing it as "collusion."

The partnership "shows how weak they are," Trump said. "It shows how pathetic they are."

Cruz, a US senator from Texas, told potential voters in Indiana Monday that the deal would give them "a straight and direct choice between our campaign and Donald Trump."

According to a recent CBS poll, Trump leads Indiana with 40 percent of likely Republican voters, compared to 35 percent for Cruz and 20 percent for Kasich.

Losing Indiana would make it much harder for Trump to gain the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination in the first round of balloting at the party`s convention in Cleveland on July 18-21.

If he falls short, Trump runs the risk that his delegates, most of whom are bound to vote for him in only the first round, will desert him in subsequent rounds.

Lewandowski said that after Tuesday, Cruz and Kasich will both be mathematically eliminated from reaching the 1,237 threshold before the convention, and that they should both drop out and unite behind Trump.

But Cruz and Kasich have openly said they are now counting on a contested convention, where they have a shot at wooing enough delegates to snatch the nomination.

Cruz in particular has been successfully maneuvering in state party conventions to have individuals named to delegate slots who, though initially bound to Trump, would be sympathetic to Cruz in later rounds once free to vote for whomever they choose.

Party heavyweights, alarmed by the prospect of a Trump nomination, have long pressed for a united effort around a single candidate against him.

But Cruz is almost as unpopular with the party`s establishment as Trump, and Kasich has refused to bow out even though he has only won his home state of Ohio.
Taipei: Japan has released a Taiwanese fishing boat whose seizure prompted a protest from Taipei after its owner paid more than $50,000 Tuesday, the government said.

The 50-tonne "Tung Sheng Chi 16" was chased for hours by a Japanese boat and finally seized Monday 150 nautical miles off Okinotori-shima, an atoll administered by Japan.

The seizure led to a protest from Taipei, which said Japan had no authority in the area and demanded the release of the ship and 10 crew.

But they were freed only after the ship`s owner paid a "lawsuit deposit" of 6.0 million yen ($54,000) as required by the Japanese authorities, Taiwan`s foreign ministry said in a statement.

"We respect the family`s decision intended to have the people and ship released as soon as possible," it said.

But the ministry said "this by no means indicates Taiwan recognises the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) Japan has claimed across the water surrounding the atoll".

Okinotori-shima is an uninhabited atoll in the Philippine Sea which is mostly submerged at low tide.

The Japanese EEZ claim has also been rejected by China and South Korea, although neither country has made its own claim.

The Taiwanese fishing boat and the crew -- the Taiwanese skipper, one Chinese and eight Indonesian sailors -- are scheduled to sail back to Taiwan early Wednesday, the ministry said.
Seoul: North Korea has completed preparations for a fifth nuclear test, South Korean President Park Geun-Hye said today, amid reports that Pyongyang has also readied a powerful, new mid-range missile for an imminent flight test.

Concern has been growing for weeks that the North is building up to a fifth nuclear test ahead of a rare, ruling party congress to be held early next month.

"We assess that they have completed preparations for a fifth nuclear test and can conduct it whenever they decide to," Park said during a meeting with editors of domestic media organisations.

If North Korea does go ahead, it would constitute a dramatic act of defiance in the face of tough UN sanctions imposed after its most recent nuclear test in January.

Some analysts have suggested that, by carrying out a fifth test so soon after the fourth, the North might hope to avoid a heavy package of additional sanctions -- but Park insisted that the international community's response would be swift and severe.

"North Korea's miscalculation is that by ignoring warnings from the international community and continuing to launch provocations, it will not defend its security but only speed up its own collapse," she added.

In recent months, the North has claimed a series of breakthroughs in developing what it sees as the ultimate goal of its nuclear weapons programme -- an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets across the continental United States.

These have included success in miniaturising a nuclear warhead to fit on a missile, developing a warhead that can withstand atmospheric re-entry and building a solid-fuel missile engine.

Earlier this month, leader Kim Jong-Un monitored the test of an engine specifically designed for an ICBM that he said would "guarantee" an eventual strike on the US mainland.

The South's Yonhap news agency today quoted unidentified government sources as saying the North had readied a medium-range Musudan missile for an imminent test launch.

Existing UN resolutions forbid North Korea from the use of any ballistic missile-related technology.

The Musudan is believed to have an estimated range of anywhere between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometres (1,550 to 2,500 miles). The lower range covers the whole of South Korea and Japan, while the upper range would include US military bases on Guam.

The missile has never been successfully flight-tested. An earlier test firing on April 15 ended in what the Pentagon described as "fiery, catastrophic" failure -- apparently exploding seconds after launch.
New Delhi: These advices by a Saudi family therapist will surely shock you!

Khaled Al-Saqaby, a family therapist from Saudi Arabia, has advised men on how to discipline their wives.

"Beat your wife with a toothpick or handkerchief" and "forsake them in bed," says Khaled Al-Saqaby.

The 4:09-min long video by Khaled Al-Saqaby deals with wife beating.

"Unfortunately, some wives want to live a life of equality with their husband; this is a very grave problem," says the Saudi therapist.

WATCH the video:-
Aleppo: Air strikes and shelling on Syria`s second city Aleppo and a town to its west left 25 civilians reported dead Tuesday, as a surge in violence tests a troubled ceasefire.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he was "deeply concerned" by the fighting and urged both sides to stick to the two-month-old truce and troubled peace talks in Geneva.

"The cessation of hostilities should go on, otherwise it will be very difficult for humanitarian workers to deliver," Ban told reporters in Vienna.

The fighting severely threatens the February ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia and comes as UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva stall.

Syria`s main opposition group, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), halted its formal participation this week in the latest round of talks that began on April 13.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura is due to give a progress report to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, when the talks are scheduled to go into recess.

A Syrian opposition group tolerated by President Bashar al-Assad`s regime said Tuesday it had asked the United Nations to merge all opposition factions into one delegation at the next round of peace talks.

The comments came from Syria`s former deputy premier Qadri Jamil, who was sacked by Assad in 2013 and now heads the so-called Moscow Group, an opposition faction close to the Kremlin which has met repeatedly with De Mistura at negotiations in Geneva.On the ground, at least two male civilians died in rebel rocket fire on government-controlled areas in the west of Aleppo city on Tuesday afternoon, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In the rebel-held east, the air strikes and shelling came down "like rain", one resident told AFP.

Fifteen civilians were killed in air strikes on several rebel-held districts, according to civil defence volunteers known as White Helmets.

Another three civilians -- two women and a child -- were killed in government artillery shelling on another eastern neighbourhood, they said.

"The planes are bombing markets, residential areas... We`re exhausted, we can`t keep up," one civil defence worker said.

Five of their own were killed when the White Helmets headquarters in the town of Al-Atarib, controlled by Islamist rebels, was hit by an overnight air strike, the group said on Twitter.

It was not immediately clear whether the strike on Al-Atarib, 35 kilometres (20 miles) from Aleppo, was carried out by Assad`s air force or his ally Russia.

An ambulance and a fire truck, both damaged, were parked in the bombed-out headquarters, surrounded by rubble and twisted metal frames.

A civil defence worker in Aleppo city said he and his colleagues were afraid their local headquarters would also be targeted.Fighting has surged on several fronts in Aleppo province, which is criss-crossed with supply routes that are strategic for practically all of Syria`s warring sides.

Once Syria`s commercial hub, Aleppo has been divided between rebel control in the east and government forces in the west since 2012.

In the rebel-held Fardos neighbourhood, an AFP correspondent saw a youth being helped down a rubble-strewn street with blood streaming from his head and leg.

Violence has rocked the city since Friday, with at least 100 civilians killed by artillery or rocket fire and air strikes.

On Monday, rebel shelling killed at least 19 civilians in government-held districts, according to the Observatory, a British-based monitor which relies on a network of sources on the ground.

A leading opposition group, the National Coalition, condemned the strike on Al-Atarib and hailed the "remarkable efforts and bravery of Civil Defence workers".

"Favourable conditions for the political process cannot be created whilst the Assad regime`s killing machine continues to wreak death across Syria," the Coalition said in an online statement.

More than 270,000 people have been killed in Syria and millions forced from their homes since the conflict erupted in 2011.
District of Columbia: US President Barack Obama said Monday that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin is trying to undermine European unity, which he sees as a threat.

Speaking to CBS News in an interview set to air Tuesday morning, Obama said Europe`s migrant crisis is also a problem for the United States.

"But more importantly, more strategically, is the strain it`s putting on Europe`s politics, the way that it advances far-right nationalism, the degree to which it is encouraging a break-up of European unity, that in some cases, is being exploited by somebody like Putin," he said.

Putin sees NATO, the European Union and transatlantic unity as a threat, Obama added.

"Now, I think he`s mistaken about that," he said. "I`ve indicated to him that, in fact, a strong, unified Europe working with a strong, outward-looking Russia, that`s the right recipe."

"So far, he has not been entirely persuaded."

Obama was speaking at the end of a trip to the Middle East and Europe, where he urged European leaders to show greater unity in the face of lingering economic crisis, an Islamist terror threat and the huge flow of migrants from the Middle East and elsewhere.

He also urged Britain not to vote to leave the European Union in a referendum in June.
Oxy Reckitt Benckiser of the U.K., under fire in Korea for selling antibacterial agents linked to more than 200 deaths, has also been caught overcharging Australian customers for painkillers, it emerged on Monday.

Oxy was nabbed by Australian authorities for selling its NeuroPen painkillers at double the price there simply by changing the name, and a federal court ordered the company to recall all products sold.

The British company in a statement on April 14 admitted wrongdoing and caved into the court's decision.

In Korea, Oxy insists that the fatalities are a matter for the local office only and have nothing to do with headquarters.

But prosecutors here believe that the company knew that humidifier disinfectants it sold were hazardous to humans, ignored complaints from customers and manipulated test results to its advantage.

Oxy in an e-mailed statement to reporters claimed last Thursday that it does not allow products with questionable effects to be sold.

Meanwhile, activists and groups representing the families of people who died of lung problems after inhaling the antibacterials, vowed at a press conference in Seoul on Monday to boycott all of the British company's products.
YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Defense Ministry informs that the Azerbaijani side violated ceasefire 38 times, Armenpress was informed about this by the Department of Information and Public Relations of the Armenian Defense Ministry.

The Armenian Defense Ministry statement reads: On April 24 and throughout the morning of April 25 38 ceasefire violations were recorded in the southeastern direction of Armenia-Azerbaijan state border. The Azerbaijani side opened irregular fire at Armenian positions by using various caliber weapons and sniper rifles. The adversary also fired RPG-7 grenade launcher.

The Armenian Armed forces continue monitoring the situation in borders and conducted countermeasures only in case of strict necessity.

According to the information provided by the NKR Defense Army during the night of April 24-25 Azerbaijan violated the ceasefire agreement more than 120 times by firing various caliber weapons fired 60mm (3 shells), 82mm mortars (4 shells), 17 grenade launchers (57 shells) and ZU-23-2 antiaircraft weapon (11 shots) along the entire contact line. The adversary also effectively used SPIKE anti-tank guided missile (1 unit) in the northeastern (Martakert) direction of the contact line.

As a result of punitive actions of NKR Defense Army forces the actions of the adversary were repressed.
YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. National Assembly MPs want to have a private meeting with the Defense and Foreign Ministers of Armenia in order to get answers about the ongoing steps for strengthening the security system between Armenia and Artsakh.

Armenpress reports, the proposal of holding a meeting with Ministers was offered by the head of ANC faction Levon Zurabyan, head of Prosperous Armenia faction Naira Zohrabyan, OEK faction MPs Hovhannes Margayan and Mher Shahgeldyan, independent MP Khachatur Kokobelyan, head of Heritage faction Zaruhi Postanjyan.

Vice-President of the National Assembly Eduard Sharmazanov recalled that during the four-day war a private meeting was held in the Parliament with the participation of First Deputy Minister of Defense Davit Tonoyan and Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan who gave comprehensive answers to all questions of MPs. In response to this, the head of Prosperous Armenia faction Naira Zohrabyan noted that if MPs need a private meeting with the Ministers, this means that they did not receive comprehensive answers during that meeting. Therefore, we join the proposal of holding a private meeting in the National Assembly. Yes, there are issus that cannot be publicized, however, the explanation of those issues is very important for us, said Zohrabyan.

Head of the RPA faction Vahram Baghdasaryan informed that from the very start of the April four-day war a decision was made to establish a commission during the meeting with the participation of the heads of all factions in the National Assembly. The commission will involve the heads of all factions and the presidents of Parliamentary standing committees.

This commission should discuss the current situation and the issues related with it. In case of necessity, we will apply to the National Assembly leadership to hold a private meeting with Prime Minister, Foreign and Defense Ministers and ask them the questions of our concern, said Baghdasaryan.
YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. The representatives of the Armenian community of Greece held a protest in front of Turkish and Azerbaijani consulates to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide.

By the initiative of the Youth Union of Greece hundreds of Armenians demanded to move the struggle for the Armenian Question and the reaffirmation of the right and justice on April 23 and 24 on the occasion of the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and the military operations and hostilities unleashed by the Azerbaijani side. Armenpress reports, Athens Free day newspaper informs that except from Armenian young people, the representatives of Greece-Pontus organizations and Assyrians also participated in the protest.

Protest participants with Armenian and Greece flags, special T-shirts, posters, loudspeakers and different slogans firstly moved to the Embassy of Turkey, however, the police stooped them. As Free day newspaper reports, the police did not fulfill its promise to let the the Armenian National Committee to held the protest. The protesters, as a sign of complaint against the police, burned the Turkish flag.

The participants decided to continue the protest in other square and on their way back they stopped in front of the Embassy of Azerbaijan.
YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia Edward Nalbandian received French Secretary of State for European Affairs Harlem Desir on April 25. Harlem Desir informed Nalbandian that after participating in events in Paris dedicated to the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on the eve, he left for Yerevan to pay tribute to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide at Tsitsernakaberd memorial complex, Armenpress was informed from the Department of Press, Information and Public Relations of MFA Armenia.

Edward Nalbandian stated that Armenia highly appreciates the firm stance of France on the Armenian Genocide and the fact that France legally recognized the Armenian Genocide back in 2001. He added that Armenian recall with gratitude French President Hollandes participation in events dedicated to the centennial of the Armenian Genocide.

Edward Nalbandian introduced the results of the large-scale military operations unleashed by Azerbaijan against Nagorno Karabakh to his interlocutor and in that context highlighted the international efforts to overcome those results, to exclude similar developments in the future and to create favorable conditions for negotiations aimed at exclusively peaceful settlement of the conflict.

The sides stated that the conflict can have no military solution. The interlocutors agreed that the creation of mechanisms investigating incidents has become a priority.

Harlem Desir assured that France, as an OSCE Minsk Group Co-chair, will continue to actively engage in the peace process of Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

Edward Nalbandian and Harlem Desir discussed issues on the agenda of Armenian-French relations.
YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. It is necessary to install the monitoring mechanisms proposed by the OSCE on Karabakh-Azerbaijan contact line. MEP, head of EU-Artsakh friendship group Frank Engel told about this in a press conference at Armenpress media hall.

It is necessary to take measures for the installation of those mechanisms. It is known that Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh support the creation of those mechanisms, but Azerbaijan denies. Therefore, the European institutions must do everything to derive the consent of Azerbaijan for the installation of the monitoring mechanisms. And if Azerbaijan continues to deny, it will mean that our cooperation with Azerbaijan can have no future, be it in the sidelines of Eastern Partnership or some other projects or initiatives. It means that Azerbaijan takes aggressive measures and declines the idea of monitoring on the contact line, Frank Engel said.

Despite the existing evidences that Azerbaijan is the aggressor and it was the one that attacked, a sign of parity was put in the announcements of different countries and Azerbaijan was not targeted. To the question what can the Armenian side do so that the announcements be addressed and the aggressor is pointed out, the MEP answered that Armenia does everything possible.

I do not think Armenia can do more than it does today. The fact is that Armenia does not demonstrate aggression and does not attack; instead, it takes deterrence actions. More attention should be paid to a number of issues, for example, the OSCE proposals over monitoring mechanisms I just mentioned. Armenia agrees, Azerbaijan denies. It is obvious which side is afraid of those mechanisms, Frank Engel said.
YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. An event dedicated to the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide took place near the monument Our victims in the Republic Square, Strasbourg on April 24. Armenpress was informed about this from the Department of Press, Information and Public Relations of MFA Armenia. Armenia 's Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe Armen Papikyan, Deputy Mayor of Strasbourg, other officials, representatives of NGOs and the Armenian community were present at the event, who paid tribute to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide.

In his speech Armen Papikyan particularly referred to Armenias century-old struggle against denialism, stating that in the 21st century Armenia has assumed an important role in fighting against genocides and crimes against humanity. The Permanent representative of Armenia to CoE also touched upon the recent aggression of Azerbaijan against Nagorno Karabakh and in that context stated that the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire in 1915 is now repeated in the Middle East by militant groups and the Azerbaijani forces against the civilians and servicemen of Artsakh. Armen Papikyan expressed deep sorrow for the fact that the international community does not fully realize the seriousness of the general threat stemming from the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem, considering the state policy of anti-Armenianism and denialism in those countries, and the gradually growing violation of human rights, freedom of speech, European values and other democratic principles.

In his speech Deputy Mayor of Strasbourg Rafik-Elmrini reconfirmed the unconditioned faithfulness to Armenia and the Armenian people, putting a strong emphasis on inadmissibility of the denial of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey, as denialism impedes reconciliation opportunities, engendering new crimes against humanity in different corners of the world.
YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan had a phone conversation with the US Secretary of State John Kerry. The conversation took place upon the initiative of the American side. The interlocutors discussed the situation in Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone after the gross ceasefire violation by Azerbaijan. President Sargsyan stated that the unreasonable steps of Baku have greatly damaged the peace process.

As Armenpress was informed from the Department of Public Relations and Mass Media of Republic of Armenia Presidents Staff, the US Secretary of State reconfirmed the full support of the USA for the peaceful settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict. The sides stated that the peaceful settlement of the conflict has no alternative and it is necessary to find mechanisms for mutually acceptable solution based on the fundamental principles. The role pf the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs was highlighted since it is the only internationally authorized format.
YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. An alarm call was received at 21:51, April 25 that an explosion occurred in a bus N63 on Halabyan Street in Yerevan, nearby building N11. According to preliminary data, there are 6 injured and 1 victim.

Minister of Emergency Situations (MES)of Armenia Armen Yeritsyan, acting director of Rescue Service Major general Vrej Gabrielyan, deputy director of Rescue Service Colonel Tsolakyan, and other high ranking MES official have arrived at the scene.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the MES, a rescue team and two fire brigades have also arrived at the scene.

Extra information will provided.
President Park Geun-hye will be accompanied by some 240 business executives when she visits Iran soon, Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told reporters Monday.

The government hopes the visit will yield US$10 billion worth of business projects. That is by far the biggest onslaught of Korean executives during any state visit.

Yun said Iranians have a sentimental attachment to Korea because many Korean businesses remained in Iran during the decade-long sanctions imposed by the West.

Iran boasts the world's fourth-largest oil deposits and largest natural gas deposits. It has a population of 82 million, making it the biggest market in the Middle East, but had been relatively isolated until July last year due to the sanctions and Washington's tight alliance with archrival Saudi Arabia.

Chinese President Xi Jinping was the first foreign leader to visit Tehran after the sanctions were lifted, and others have followed suit.
The tax time struggle is real

With only days left until the tax filing deadline, its time for all those last-minute filers to start frantically searching online for answers to some of their burning questions.

While some answers shouldnt be found online (please, if you have to look up a medical condition, just go to your doctor), there is plenty of information out there on some of your most pressing tax questions. Lucky for you, last-minute filers, weve rounded up some of the top questions answers to help you get your tax situation in order.

BMO Wealth Management surveyed 1,516 Canadians in late March on what their biggest questions were this tax season. Heres what they said:

1. Should I contribute to my RRSP or TFSA?

46 per cent of Canadians surveyed were stumped on which savings vehicle is ideal for getting the best bang for their tax dollar. John Waters, Vice President and Head of Tax & Estate Planning for BMO Wealth Management says that to know the answer, you need to figure out what your marginal tax rate is today and what you expect it to be in retirement.

Generally, if you expect your marginal tax rate to be lower when you retire, an RRSP is more beneficial, but if you expect your tax rate to be higher in retirement, then a TFSA may be a better option, says Waters.

That advice is corroborated by social policy consultant John Stapleton, who previously told Yahoo Canada Finance that while it may see backwards, TFSAs are often the right savings vehicle for low-income earners to maximize tax benefits.

For the normal well-to-do person, youd always maximize your RRSP first. Then youd possibly top it up with a TFSA, says Stapleton.

If youre low income, youre in an alternative universe where you would always buy a TFSA first.

Its recommended you speak with a financial professional, regardless of which income bracket youre in, to figure out what financial vehicle is best for you.

2. When is interest deductible for tax purposes?

When borrowing money, there are very specific circumstances in which you can actually deduct the interest incurred on that loan. 45 per cent of Canadians surveyed were scratching their head about this one.



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The purpose of the loan determines if the interest you pay on it is tax deductible or not. For example, if you borrow money to buy investments to generate taxable income such as interest or dividends, you can generally claim the interest you pay on the loan, says Waters.

This can include money you borrowed to pay for business expenses, to buy investments, or even your mortgage. Again, you need advice from a professional for your specific situation to know for sure.

3. How is my TFSA contribution limit calculated?

The TFSA program was established in 2009, and for every year the program has been in effect, all Canadians have the same per-year contribution limit ($5,500 for 2016, for example). Your personal contribution limit is set by how much of the limit you have used previously. If you were to have never contributed to your TFSA, at the end of the 2015 tax year, your contribution limit would be $41,000 ($5,000 limit for 2009 through 2012, $5,500 limit for both 2013 and 2014, and $10,000 limit for 2015). The contribution limit of $5,500 in 2016 means your total available contribution room for the life of the program would be $46,500.

If you had contributed $1,000 in 2010, $2,000 in 2013 and $3,000 in 2015, then your contribution limit for this year would be $40,500.

4. What should I do with my tax refund?

While the 38 per cent of Canadians surveyed probably hoped for a different answer like blow it on a trip to Mexico, the reality is that this is the perfect opportunity to boost your savings.

Using the money to make a 2016 RRSP contribution now instead of waiting until the deadline will give you almost an extra year of tax-deferred growth, says Waters.

Other options could include making a TFSA contribution, paying off credit card debt, topping up savings, making a mortgage payment or saving for education.

If you do decide to treat yourself to a little something, do so responsibly.

I know it sucks, but maybe do an 80/20, Dennis Tew, Head of Business Strategy at Franklin Templeton Investments previously told Yahoo Canada Finance. You save 80 per cent of it and spend 20 per cent of it. But the younger you are its only going to be to your benefit for the rest of your life. People that start saving in those last 10 years of retirement are a lot worse off than those who saved a good chunk of everything they earned all the way through.

5. How does making a contribution to a registered charity benefit me from a tax perspective?

Its common knowledge that you can get a tax break if you make a donation to charity  heck, if its your first time, you can even get a bonus credit  but exactly how it impacts your taxes is more of a mystery to at least 36 per cent of people surveyed.

For starters, you wont get money back for your charitable donation.

Youll receive a non-refundable tax credit if you make a charitable donation, says Waters. This can only be used to reduce tax owed. However, its important to remember that, if you arent subject to tax, you wont get a refund.

At the federal level, the first $200 of donations you make in a year qualifies for a 15 per cent tax credit under most circumstances, according to The Globe and Mail. Whatever amount after that you are claiming for donations that year qualifies for a 29 per cent credit on your federal taxes.

If youre a first-time donor, you can claim the First-Time Donor Super Credit, which allows you to increase the federal credit on your donations by an additional 25 per cent, up to $1,000.

Theres an additional provincial tax credit for donations, too, which varies depending on your province.

If you dont want to claim a donation made in your current tax year, say if you wanted to maximize the tax credit on your charitable donations, you have the option not to claim it for up to five years.

Did we miss anything? What are your most pressing tax-related questions?
Four former Marines who served in Vietnam and later lost touch with one another reunited 50 years later to re-live a touching moment none of them have ever forgotten.



The marines had posed for a beach side photo on one of their days off while they were stationed at Camp Pendleton in San Diego, reports the Naples Daily News. They reunited five decades later to recreate the image.

We cemented a relationship then, and I cant say it was all fun and games, Tom Hanks, 69, said.



[While it was on a different beach, the moment was just as special / Ultrafunnypitctures]



Although the men spent nearly two years training together before being deployed to fight in Vietnam, once their tours were over, the four lost contact.

We just broke up, 70-year-old Bob DeVenezia told Naples Daily News. Life is funny like that. I didnt keep in touch with any of them. There was something about the Vietnam War and the negativity we kept hearing.

The men never thought about reuniting, but after Hanks created a memorial online for a mutual friend and comrade, the men were put back in touch with one another.

The new photo is a near perfect recreation. Sure, the original features the Pacific Ocean as the backdrop while the newest version was taken on a beach in Florida, but its the details that make the picture outstanding.

Bob Falk, 71, brought a striped blue shirt almost identical to the one he sported as a young marine.

Dennis Puleo, 69, wore a pair of patterned trunks and assumed his pose, one arm on the surfboard and an expression of sheer joy.

DeVenezia and Hanks both took their positions front and centre, with DeVenezia crouching down.

The men are all thankful to have the opportunity to reunite five decades later, knowing that many of the young men deployed didnt make it back home.

We all know that weve been given a gift of 50 years, Puleo said.
By Ben Blanchard BEIJING (Reuters) - China will launch a "core module" for its first space station some time around 2018, a senior official told the state-run Xinhua news agency on Thursday, part of a plan to have a permanent manned space station in service around 2022. Advancing China's space program is a priority for Beijing, with President Xi Jinping calling for the country to establish itself as a space power, and apart from its civilian ambitions Beijing has tested anti-satellite missiles. China insists its space program is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. Defense Department has highlighted its increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing activities aimed to prevent adversaries from using space-based assets in a crisis. The "core module" for the space station would be called the "Tianhe-1", the Chinese word for galaxy or Milky Way, Wang Zhongyang, spokesman for the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, told Xinhua. "Two space labs will be launched later and dock with the core module, Tianhe-1," he said. "The construction of the space station is expected to finish in 2022." It gave no details of what the "core module" would consist. "If the International Space Station, which has extended its service, is retired by 2024, China's new space station will be the only operational one in outer space," Wang added. In a manned space mission in 2013, three Chinese astronauts spent 15 days in orbit and docked with an experimental space laboratory, the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) 1. This year, China will launch the Tiangong 2 and Shenzhou 11 spacecraft, which will carry two astronauts and dock with Tiangong 2, Xinhua added. Next year, China's first cargo ship, Tianzhou 1, will attempt to dock with Tiangong 2, it said. China also plans a space telescope similar to the Hubble Space Telescope, which will "be on a separate space unit and share orbit alongside the space station", Wang added. Xinhua, in a separate report, said China was also working on its own reusable rocket technologies and has already built a prototype model. "The experiment has laid solid foundation for the realization of reusable rockets in the country," an unnamed source told Xinhua. China has been moving to develop its space program for military, commercial and scientific purposes, but is still playing catch-up to established space powers the United States and Russia. China's Jade Rabbit moon rover landed on the moon in late 2013 to great national fanfare, but soon began experiencing severe technical difficulties. The Jade Rabbit and the Chang'e 3 probe that carried it there marked the first "soft landing" on the moon since 1976. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had accomplished the feat earlier. (Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Nick Macfie)
G-Dragon of boy band Big Bang attended the Beijing International Auto Show on Monday to promote a new version of Hyundai's Verna subcompact.

Over 10,000 fans flocked to the venue to see the star in person.
By Roberta Rampton LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama is set to visit Hanover, Germany on Sunday to hold talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of his closest allies in dealing with a shaky global economy and security crises in the Middle East and Ukraine. It will be the last stop on a six-day foreign journey where Obama has sought to shore up U.S. alliances he views as key to grow trade, defeat Islamic State militants, and offset Russian aggression in Ukraine and Syria. Obama, who is in the last nine months of his presidential term, spent three days in London where he urged Britons to remain part of the European Union in a June referendum, a vote that could send shockwaves through the economy. Earlier in the week, he met with Gulf leaders in Riyadh to try to allay fears that Washington had become less committed to their security. In Hanover, he will tour and speak at a massive industrial trade fair with Merkel. The leaders want to breathe life into a U.S.-European free trade agreement which supporters say could boost each economy by some $100 billion. Their push comes at a time when many Europeans and Americans alike are deeply suspicious the deal could cost jobs and affect standards. But time is not on anyones side at the moment, said Heather Conley, a former State Department official in the George W. Bush administration, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington. Leaders are trying to wrap up complex talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) before Obama, a Democrat, leaves office on Jan. 20. Getting a sign-off from the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress in the heat of an election campaign will be a tall order. Obama has yet to secure approval for the sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, which is at a much more advanced stage. "Getting trade deals done is tough, because each country has its own parochial interests and factions. And in order to get a trade deal done, each country has to give something up," Obama said at a London event on Saturday. In Hanover, thousands of protesters holding placards with slogans like "Stop TTIP" marched on Saturday to express their opposition to the deal. Before Obama returns to Washington late Monday, he and Merkel will get together with Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to talk about beefing up intelligence sharing after recent attacks in France and Belgium. The leaders are set to talk about how best to find a political settlement in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the war-torn region for Europe, where countries have grappled with the flood of refugees. (Additional reporting by Joseph Nasr in Berlin; Editing by David Gregorio)
PEDERNALES/PORTOVIEJO (Reuters) - The death toll from Ecuador's devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake rose to 602 people on Friday, as dozens of aftershocks shook cities and towns around the country, spooking residents but causing no further damage. Saturday's quake, the worst in nearly seven decades, injured 12,492 people and left 130 missing, emergency management authorities said in a bulletin. Survivors were shaken again late on Thursday night when a powerful 6.0 magnitude quake struck off Ecuador's coast about 100 km (62 miles) north-northwest of Portoviejo and at a depth of 10 km (six miles). "When it started to shake last night we started to pray," said Alex Bachon, 43, a construction worker repairing damage from Saturday's quake at a hotel in Guayaquil. "I have never seen anything like this, it's been so bad." There were more than 70 aftershocks throughout Thursday night and Friday, the country's geology institute reported. There have been a total of 700 aftershocks since Saturday's quake. The tremors will continue for several weeks, emergency management official Ricardo Penaherrera warned on Friday, and he called on Ecuadoreans to stay calm. Survivors in the quake zone were receiving food, water and medicine from the government and scores of foreign aid workers, though President Rafael Correa has acknowledged that bad roads had delayed aid to some communities. With close to 7,000 buildings destroyed, more than 26,000 people were living in shelters. Some 14,000 security personnel were keeping order in quake-hit area, with only sporadic looting reported. THE COST OF REBUILDING Correa's leftist government, facing a mammoth rebuilding task at a time of greatly reduced oil revenues in the OPEC country, has said it would temporarily increase some taxes, offer assets for sale and possibly issue bonds abroad to fund reconstruction. Correa has estimated damage at $2 billion to $3 billion. A raft of temporary tax increases should raise between $650 million and $1 billion, the government said, stressing those in quake areas would be exempt. The 487 megawatt hydroelectric dam Sopladora, which is still in an experimental phase, could be one of the assets put on sale. Lower oil revenue has already left the country of 16 million people facing near-zero growth and lower investment. The government appealed for travelers to continue to fuel the $1.7 billion tourism industry, but visitors may be put off by warnings from health experts about the threat of mosquito-borne viruses in the quake area. (Reporting by Guillermo Granja in Pedernales, Henry Romero in Portoviejo, Ana Isabel Martinez in Guayaquil and Julia Symmes Cobb and Diego Ore in Quito; Editing by Alexandra Ulmer, Toni Reinhold)
The US Air Force has flown two F-22 Raptor fighter jets to Romania to deter further Russian intervention in Ukraine.

The jets landed at Mihail Kogalniceanu air base, close to the Black Sea port of Constanta in southeast Romania, on Monday.

A US statement said the aircraft possess sophisticated sensors which would allow pilots to track, identify, shoot and kill air-to-air threats without being detected.

They can also attack surface targets.

Russian-backed separatists have been fighting government troops in Ukraine since April 2014, with at least 9,100 people killed.

The conflict has left neighbouring countries in eastern Europe concerned over future Russian aggression in the region.

US Ambassador Hans G Klemm said the US and Romania - which has been a NATO member since 2004 - were seeking to improve "the defence of Europe, the defence of the North Atlantic Alliance, to improve the security in south eastern Europe... as a result of the aggression by Russia that has brought so much instability to this part of the world over the past two to three years".

Major General Laurian Anastasof, Romania Air Force chief, has voiced concerns about Russia's intentions in the region.

He said that if an unidentified aircraft comes within 20 miles of Romanian airspace, NATO's procedure "obliges us to scramble planes up in the air, a scenario that has already happened four times this year".

The F-22 Raptors, which arrived from the UK, are part of the Operation Atlantic Resolve, a US commitment to NATO's collective security and regional stability.

In 2014, President Obama promised to bolster defences of NATO's members in eastern Europe following Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula.

The US has deployed 12 F-22s at an air base in Lakenheath, eastern England. US Congress has banned makers Lockheed Martin from selling them abroad because they are almost impossible to detect on radar.

The two sent to Romania were expected to fly back to the UK on Monday night.

It comes after two Russian aircraft flew simulated attack passes near a US guided missile destroyer in the Baltic Sea earlier this month.
Junior doctors have a "good deal" on the table and are "wrong" to stage the first all-out strike in NHS history, David Cameron has said.

Backing his Health Secretary, the Prime Minister said it was "not right" to withdraw emergency care from patients after thousands of junior doctors walked out for the first of two days of strike action.

He said three-quarters of doctors would be "better off" under the new contract Jeremy Hunt has said he will impose on medics from August.

Mr Cameron said: "There is a good contract on the table with a 13.5% increase in basic pay - 75% of doctors will be better off with this contract.

"It's the wrong thing to do to go ahead with this strike, and particularly to go ahead with the withdrawal of emergency care - that is not right."

:: Why Are The Junior Doctors Striking?

Mr Hunt said the action was not "proportionate" and insisted that junior doctors would be "responsible" if patients died because of the industrial action.

When asked on Sky News if would have to take some responsibility if a patient died because of industrial action he said: "The people who are responsible for what is happening are the people who chose to strike."

Mr Hunt said he had no regrets in taking on the junior doctors as part of the Government's manifesto pledge to deliver a seven-day NHS, but admitted on Radio 4's Today Programme that Health Secretary would likely be his "last big job" in politics.

Medics withdrew emergency care from 8am until 5pm on Tuesday and are doing the same on Wednesday, despite a last-minute plea from Mr Hunt.

Junior doctors have been told by union leaders that NHS trusts and hospitals will be responsible for what happens to patients and not individual medics.

:: What Does Strike Mean For Hunt?

The NHS cancelled 125,000 operations and appointments in preparation for the strike and consultants have been called in to fill the gaps left by the strike.

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Junior doctors have accused Mr Hunt of being "afraid to debate in public" the issues raised by a new contract, which they say he is seeking to "force down their throats".

Medics are unhappy with Government proposals to impose the contract, which the Government says is designed to gear the NHS up for seven-day care.

Junior doctors say the Government is stretching resources too thinly and should invest in more staff - although the Government has pledged to train 11,000 more doctors by 2020.

Doctors are concerned they will be under pressure to work longer hours, although the contract reduces the working week, risking patient safety.

:: Public Support Slips For Junior Doctors: Sky Data

Mr Hunt said that no "trade union has the right to veto a manifesto promise (seven-day NHS) voted for by the British people".

The BMA has defended the walkout, arguing that it would have called off the strike if Mr Hunt agreed to lift his threat to impose the contract.

Mr Hunt's counterpart in the shadow cabinet, Heidi Alexander, accused him of "looking for a fight" and claimed the way the Government had handled the dispute was the political equivalent of "pouring oil on to a blazing fire".
By Andrew Torchia DUBAI (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund said it was encouraged by the efforts of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab oil exporters to repair damage to their state finances as low crude prices slash export revenues. "I do see in a number of countries action to address the budget deficit," Masood Ahmed, director of the IMFs Middle East and central Asia department, said in an interview. "That gives us encouragement and comfort." He was speaking hours before Saudi Arabia's government was due to announce on Monday a sweeping plan to ensure its economy could survive an era of cheap oil, including spending cuts, tax rises and policies to expand the private sector. Ahmed said that judging from details of the Saudi plan revealed so far, it appeared "ambitious and comprehensive". The scale of the plan "measures up to the challenge facing the economy", he said. Six months ago the IMF warned that budget reforms being considered by most of the Middle East's oil exporters were likely to be inadequate, and that countries risked running through their financial reserves. "Apart from Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, under current policies, countries would run out of buffers in less than five years because of large fiscal deficits," the IMF said in a report at that time. Its latest report on the region, published on Monday, did not repeat that warning, though it said countries still needed to do more to cut budget deficits, rebuild their financial reserves and save enough money for future generations. Ahmed said Gulf states would still face difficult decisions in carrying out budget reform plans on a sustained basis, and in trying to create millions of jobs for growing populations while reducing the dependence of their economies on oil. The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is heading for a protracted economic slowdown because of the austerity policies needed to curb budget deficits, the IMF report said. The non-oil part of the GCC economy is projected to grow an average 3-1/4 percent annually over the next five years, well below a rate of 7-3/4 percent between 2006 and 2015, it said. Assuming oil prices stay low in coming years, the fiscal deficits of the GCC and Algeria will total almost $900 billion between 2016 and 2021, the IMF calculated. "Algeria, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia will become significant debtors over this period as their financing needs are expected to exceed their current liquid financial buffers," it said. (Reporting by Andrew Torchia; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
By Naomi Tajitsu and Chang-Ran Kim TOKYO (Reuters) - Mitsubishi Motors Corp's <7211.T> fuel economy scandal broadened on Friday as U.S. auto safety authorities said they were seeking information, and media reported that the automaker had submitted misleading data on at least one more model than disclosed and likely several others. Japan's sixth-largest automaker admitted this week it had overstated the fuel efficiency of 625,000 cars, wiping off around 40 percent of its market value, or $3.2 billion in three days. The revelations have also prompted Japanese authorities to raid one of its research and development facilities while Standard & Poor's warned its rating could be lowered further into speculative grade territory. Adding to fears that the scandal will lead to ballooning compensation costs and fines, top Japanese government officials said Mitsubishi may have to reimburse consumers and the government if investigations find the vehicles were not as fuel-efficient as claimed. "This is a serious problem that could lead to the loss of trust in our country's auto industry," Transport Minister Keiichi Ishii told a news conference on Friday. He said he wanted Mitsubishi to look at the possibility of buying back the cars in question, while another minister was quoted by media as saying the government could ask it to pay for any electric car subsidies granted to consumers. Domestic media reported that Mitsubishi had submitted misleading mileage data on its i-MiEV electric car, which is also sold overseas. Previously disclosed models are marketed specifically for the Japanese market and Mitsubishi has admitted to manipulating their fuel economy readings. The Sankei newspaper also said the automaker is also suspected of using non-Japanese test methodology on its RVR, Outlander, Pajero and Minicab MiEV models. Mitsubishi has said there may be models other than those disclosed that violate Japanese regulations. A spokesman said on Friday the company was still looking into those models. "A lot of the potential impact on Mitsubishi is pending whether they find out that something was wrong in cars sold in the U.S.," said Christopher Richter, an analyst at CLSA. A PLETHORA OF SCANDALS An official at the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Reuters the regulator had asked Mitsubishi for information on vehicles sold in the United States. He declined to comment on which models it had requested information on, or whether it had requested data from other automakers. The misconduct has revived memories of a scandal more than 15 years ago in which Mitsubishi admitted to systematically covering up customer complaints for more than 20 years, bringing the company close to collapse. The industry is also facing an ongoing massive recall of air bag inflators made by Japan's Takata Corp <7312.T>, which have been linked to 11 deaths and more than 100 injuries, mainly in the United States. Emissions cheating scandals have also erupted. Volkswagen AG announced a sweeping U.S. deal on Thursday to buy back or potentially fix about a half million cars and set up environmental and consumer compensation funds after it used software to conceal the level of toxic emissions. This week alone, PSA Peugeot Citroen was raided by France's anti-fraud investigators as part of ongoing probes on pollutants in the industry. Peugeot says its vehicles are compliant. Daimler AG also said it opened an internal emissions probe at the request of the U.S. Justice Department. Japan's Transport Ministry has ordered Mitsubishi to submit a full report on its test data within a week, and for other domestic automakers to submit fuel economy test data by May 18. Mitsubishi, which sells over 1 million cars annually, has said it expects to post operating income of 125 billion yen ($1.1 billion) for the year just ended. It reports earnings next Wednesday. (Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu and Chang-Ran Kim; Additional reporting by Ami Miyazaki; Writing by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Ryan Woo and Edwina Gibbs)
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian police have arrested and charged a teenager with a terrorism offense related to planning an attack at Monday's commemorations of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli during World War One. The 16-year-old boy was arrested near his Sydney home on Sunday and will appear before a children's court on Monday, police said. The offense carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. ANZAC Day, April 25, is a major annual holiday in Australia and New Zealand marking the date of the first Gallipoli landings in 1915, in which large numbers of Australian and New Zealand troops fought and died. Dawn services and military parades are held around the country, with the largest drawing crowds of tens of thousands in Sydney and Melbourne. "We have taken swift action to ensure community safety on the eve of a sacred day on the Australian calendar," New South Wales state Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said in a statement. "The age of the individual is obviously a concern for us, and it remains a measure of the ongoing task facing law enforcement and the community." Scipione later told a press conference police believed the boy was acting alone. "The risk from this particular threat has been thwarted," he said. Several teenagers have been arrested in Australia in recent years and charged with terrorism offences, including five young men who police alleged were planning an attack at last year's centenary ANZAC day celebrations. Police said those planning the attack last year clearly took inspiration from the Islamic State movement, also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. (Reporting By Jane Wardell; Editing by Alan Crosby)
LIVE COVERAGE: CBCNews.ca will be liveblogging Tuesday night's U.S. presidential primary results and will livestream all the candidates' speeches from the five state contests.

It's a calculated plan with some calculated risk.

Working against delegate math and the primary calendar, Ted Cruz and John Kasich have formed an unusual alliance, a last-gasp ceasefire so they can double up efforts to sink Donald Trump's presidential ambitions.

But could it backfire?

Political observers warn the partnership threatens to weaken Cruz's anti-establishment image and Kasich's positive "happy warrior" narrative, just days before a crucial Indiana primary.

The collaboration to peel away delegates before Trump can amass the 1,237 he needs to clinch the nomination also risks fuelling resentment toward the prickly processes and legal manoeuvres used to manipulate the Republican nomination process.

"This reminds people about everything they hate about politics," Roger Stone, Trump's former senior campaign adviser, said Monday in Washington.

The Cruz-Kasich partnership "puts the lie to the idea that Ted Cruz isn't an insider," he said.

Asked how the development reflects on the current state of the Republican Party, Stone said uncommitted conservatives were becoming convinced the nomination system is "rigged" to favour conventional politicians.

"This just identifies Cruz as what he is, the establishment candidate. And he's teaming up with the most liberal candidate in the race," Stone added, referring to Kasich, the Ohio governor, who has better traction among moderate Republicans.

Kasich and Cruz, a Texas senator, released co-ordinated statements Sunday night committing to clear each other's paths to states in which either opponent stands a better chance at taking on Trump.

The objective is to stop Trump from accruing any more delegates toward the 1,237 he needs ahead of the Republican convention in Cleveland in July.

Story continues

For Kasich, that means staying out of Indiana, where a strong base of working-class white evangelicals might identify on a deeper level with Cruz's views when they vote in next Tuesday's primary.

#NeverTrump movement 'very encouraged'

For Cruz, that means holding off on campaigning in New Mexico for the June 7 primary and Oregon on May 17, western states that are friendlier to Kasich.

Both candidates have economic cases for focusing on states they have better chances in.

Trump wasted little time punching back, with a tweet on Sunday night slamming the pact as "desperate" and telling supporters at a rally in Rhode Island, "It shows how weak they are, it shows how pathetic they are."

Rory Cooper, a Republican strategist and senior adviser to the #NeverTrump movement, begs to differ.

"This is a sign of using your campaign resources strategically to get yourself to a position to win," he said.

"We're very encouraged by this. People who buy into the idea [that the plan would backfire] are already firmly in a camp that's not going to be persuadable."

'Too little too late'?

Although the Cruz-Kasich plan might work, "it's certainly the last possible opportunity for those concerned about a Donald Trump presidency," said Elizabeth Bennion, a political science professor at Indiana University South Bend.

"The question of whether this is all too little, too late remains an open question."

Trump, long seen as the ultimate Republican bully, now finds himself in the middle of a game of political keep-away.

"But if voters get that message that these candidates don't care about the will of the voters but want to protect the party above all else, it could backfire," Bennion said. "A weak Trump supporter could become a stronger Trump supporter."

The billionaire real-estate magnate has racked up 845 delegates so far, followed by 559 for Cruz and 148 delegates pledged to Kasich, according to an Associated Press tally.

Indiana's haul of 57 delegates makes it potentially the last bastion before California. If Trump wins there, Bennion said, it's practically game over.

"Both Mr. Cruz's and Mr. Kasich's campaigns have finally realized that this is the case, and they absolutely need to divide and conquer," Bennion said.

Whether voters will understand what's being asked of them is another matter. The Ohio governor didn't make things much clearer on Monday morning.

At a diner in Philadelphia, Kasich stopped short of encouraging his supporters to direct their votes toward Cruz.

"I've never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me," Kasich said.

That kind of statement, Bennion believes, only muddies the message.

"It becomes difficult to convince voters they should not vote for their preferred candidate," she said, adding that SuperPACs would be depended upon to play along and halt their anti-Cruz or anti-Kasich attack ads, without direct instruction from the campaigns they support.

'Happy warrior' image compromised

Political writer Sasha Issenberg, author of The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns, questioned whether the way that Cruz and Kasich have sought to define their candidacies as special might lose some impact.

Cruz, for example, has declared himself the only viable alternative to Trump, while Kasich has repeatedly referred to national polls suggesting he is the Republican candidate with the best chance of defeating Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in a general election.

"Suddenly, they've sacrificed their claims about their unique viability in this race by partnering with someone else," Issenberg said.

He said Kasich, who has cast himself as the "happy warrior" who steers clear of viciously attacking Trump, might also see that image get compromised.

California will be the next big test if Indiana doesn't work out. The 53 congressional districts are awarded proportionally based on a statewide vote, and splitting the state map for another divide-and-conquer strategy would be an ambitious undertaking.

"They could come up with 53 non-aggression pacts," Issenberg suggested.

That kind of planning may sound desperate to a Trump supporter, but not to Bobbi Shawfner, a Kasich supporter in Philadelphia.

"I think it's great. Anything that's going to get rid of Trump," Shawfner said. She and her husband, Henry, brushed off Trump's suggestion the tactic was an act of desperation.

"No, no, I think it's realistic," she said. "And we hope it works."
LIVE COVERAGE: CBCNews.ca will be liveblogging Tuesday night's U.S. presidential primary results and will livestream all the candidates' speeches from the five state contests.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are counting on voters in five states today to give them enough delegates to make it almost impossible for their rivals to catch up.

In what is dubbed the "Acela primary" because of the Amtrak train that runs along the U.S. northeast corridor, Republicans and Democrats will vote in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland.

A total of 172 Republican delegates are at stake for Trump, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Clinton and Bernie Sanders are competing for 385 delegates. Big victories for Clinton and Trump will allow them to pad their delegate counts and break away from their competitors. If they don't meet expectations, it will prolong their respective nomination fights and prevent them from focusing on the general election this fall.

The states are favourable territory for Trump and Clinton, who are heading into the contests in strong positions in polls. All of the candidates packed their final day of campaigning with multiple events in the five states, except for Cruz.

He is already looking ahead to Indiana and spent the day courting voters in that state, which holds its primary next week. It emerged late Sunday that he and Kasich have agreed to a pact whereby Cruz will concentrate on Indiana while Kasich puts his resources into Oregon and New Mexico.

Their deal is an attempt to deny Trump the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the nomination in advance of the party's convention.

Trump blasted the Cruz-Kasich partnership as a desperate move. Kasich shrugged that off while campaigning in Philadelphia on Monday and said it just makes sense to use resources effectively.

"What's the big deal?" he asked reporters as he shovelled eggs into his mouth at a diner.

Story continues

Wild card delegates could be key

Cruz said it's Trump who's desperate. "It is abundantly clear that nobody is getting 1,237. We are heading to a contested convention."

Tuesday's jackpot of delegates for Republicans is in Pennsylvania, where 71 are at stake, but there's a twist in that primary that could prove crucial for Trump if the race results in a contested convention.

Trump has a double-digit lead in the polls, and if he wins the statewide vote, he is guaranteed 17 delegates.

But the rest of them, 54, are unbound delegates and can vote for whoever they want at the convention. If he doesn't nab the nomination in advance, the unbound delegates could push Trump past the threshold to win on the first ballot, or not.

Kasich's chances in the state are helped by the fact that he grew up there, in a small town called McKees Rocks, and that he's the governor of a neighbouring state. Pennsylvania also has more moderate Republicans than other states, and that works in Kasich's favour in certain parts of the state.

Jeff Brauer, a political science professor at Keystone College in La Plume, Pa., said Trump is finding his support in southwestern Pennsylvania, where the once strong steel and manufacturing industries have been decimated.

His promises to bring back jobs and fix trade deals that he blames for unemployment are resonating. "Pennsylvania is a good state for Donald Trump because there is a large population of disaffected voters, especially economically," Brauer said. "They feel like they have been left behind in the economy and they feel like Donald Trump is speaking to them and for them."

On the Democratic side, Clinton and Sanders are fighting for 210 delegates in Pennsylvania, which will be assigned proportionally. Clinton had a double-digit lead over Sanders in the latest poll.

Bad timing for Sanders with youth vote

"This is basically a Clinton state," said Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. "She has deep roots here."

Clinton's father was from Scranton, she grew up visiting the area and she and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, cultivated longstanding relationships there. Their daughter is also married to the son of a former Pennsylvania congresswoman.

A local pizzeria near Scranton is such a huge supporter of Clinton it invented a special "Madam President" pizza in her honour. It's in the shape of Clinton's campaign logo and features hot sauce, her favourite condiment.

Sanders has an uphill battle there and winning Pennsylvania would be "a stunning upset" on his part, Madonna said.

Sanders is enormously popular with younger voters and Pennsylvania has a high student population that would normally work in Sanders's favour. Unfortunately for him, the primary comes as classes are wrapping up, assignments are due and exams are looming.

The Vermont senator always says that when turnout is high, he does better, and in these primaries it could hurt him if students stay home.

Sanders looks to narrow gap

Another challenge for him in the states voting Tuesday is that four out of five of them are closed primaries, meaning only registered Democrats, not independents, can vote. Sanders has done better in states where he's been able to draw on support from independents.

Maryland has the second-most delegates at stake, and there, too, Clinton has a solid lead. Polling indicates they are in tighter races in Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Ben Jealous, an aide on the Sanders Maryland campaign, said in an interview that Clinton's popularity is due in part to the state's proximity to Washington, D.C.

"We've always known Maryland would be a big challenge," Jealous said. "Our job in Maryland is to narrow the gap as much as possible."

If Clinton does as well as expected Tuesday, it will make it even harder for Sanders to catch up in the delegate count ahead of the party's convention in July. His campaign insists he's not dropping out before then and his supporters are encouraging him to stay in the race.

At a rally in Baltimore over the weekend, one of them waved a sign: "Keep Going Bernie. Don't Stop."
By Idrees Ali WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twenty civilians were likely killed and 11 others injured in nine U.S. air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria between Sept. 10, 2015, and Feb. 2, 2016, the U.S. military said on Friday. The deaths brought the number of civilians killed since the U.S. air campaign against the Islamic militants began in 2014 to 41, said Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command. He added that 28 civilians had been injured during that time. "We deeply regret the unintentional loss of life and injuries resulting from those strikes and express our deepest sympathies to the victims' families and those affected." Ryder said. Eight civilians were killed during an Oct. 5 strike on a mortar firing position near Al Huwayjah, Iraq, Central Command said in a statement. Separately, it said five civilians were killed on Dec. 12 in Ramadi, Iraq after they "unexpectedly moved into the target location after weapons were already in flight." "In all of the cases released today, assessments determined that although the strikes complied with the law of armed conflict and all appropriate precautions were taken, civilian casualties unfortunately did occur," the statement said. The U.S.-led coalition has carried out 11,539 air strikes against Islamic State as of April 12, with 7,794 in Iraq and 3,745 in Syria, according to U.S. military data. "It is also important to highlight again Daesh's culpability due to their continued, cowardly tactic of hiding and operating among civilian populations," Ryder said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. Ryder added that 162 allegations of civilian casualties had been received, 112 of which were deemed not credible, since the beginning of the campaign. (Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Paul Simao)
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's Supreme Court shot down on Monday one of the opposition's main tactics to oust socialist leader Nicolas Maduro with a ruling that any constitutional amendment to reduce the presidential term could not be retroactive. Having won control of the legislature last year due to public ire over an economic crisis, the opposition coalition is seeking to remove Maduro via popular pressure, constitutional reform or a recall referendum. However, government-leaning institutions are thwarting it at every turn: the National Election Council is dragging its feet on the referendum, and the Supreme Court is striking down measures passed by the opposition in parliament. In its latest judgment, the court said that while modification of the six-year presidential term was viable in principle if approved in a referendum, "it cannot take effect retroactively or be applied immediately." That decision, which came even before parliament had formally proposed an amendment, will add to opposition frustration at government stalling tactics and accusations that institutions are in the pocket of Maduro. The 53-year-old former bus driver and long-serving foreign minister narrowly won election in 2013 to replace his mentor Hugo Chavez but his popularity has tumbled amid a recession. Opposition leaders have called for a march to the election board on Wednesday to demand paperwork in the first step toward seeking the nearly 4 million signatures needed to trigger a recall referendum. Venezuela's constitution allows elected officials to be recalled through such a vote halfway through their term. Should Maduro lose a referendum and leave office this year, there would be a new presidential election, opening the door for the opposition. Were he to depart in the last two years of his term, the vice president, currently Socialist Party stalwart Aristobulo Isturiz, would take over. "The recall referendum has to be this year. If it's not this year, there's no point," said opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who narrowly lost to Maduro in 2013, outlining plans for Wednesday's rally. "It's incredible that with so many problems in this country, we have to march to get a form ... We've been asking for two months." (Reporting by Eyanir Chinea and Corina Pons; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Indonesia's governor to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said on Monday that oil at $45 a barrel was "not bad" and that there would be no urgency to freeze output if crude remained at that price.

Despite failure to reach a deal to curb oil output and support prices at an April 17 meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC producers, crude prices have maintained a general upward trend since hitting a 12-year trough in mid-January.

Front-month Brent crude was trading at $44.75 (31 pounds) per barrel at 0752 GMT, down 36 cents, or 0.8 percent, from its last settlement as traders took profits after three weeks of gains.

"The price is $45, which is not so bad," Widhyawan Prawiraatmadja told Reuters on the sidelines of an energy event in Abu Dhabi.

"If it stays that way, there's no need to freeze output. There's no urgency."

Prawiraatmadja said an oil price of $50 to $60 was "probably ideal, but still relatively cheap". The Southeast Asian nation, which rejoined OPEC as its 13th member in December last year, needs $50 crude to sustain its oil and gas industry.

"Perhaps the more ideal situation is if OPEC can actually engage non-OPEC to come into some kind of agreement while also pushing (the global) economy to grow," he said.

IRAN

Prawiraatmadja said nothing had yet been signed on a deal for Indonesia to import liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from Iran, noting that some impediments remained such as being able to pay for the products.

While sanctions imposed on Iran due to its nuclear programme were lifted in January, separate sanctions imposed by the United States on financial transactions remain in place, hampering attempts to do business with the Islamic Republic.

"It's not quite a deal yet - the understanding is you can make it happen once you are able to execute it.

"The difficulty is the transaction, as it's not always easy to get the banks to do it."

Prawiraatmadja declined to comment on the quantities of LPG Indonesia would import, except to say the country would take "whatever they have, provided that it is at better terms than with other sources".

Indonesia's OPEC governor said on March 7 that a deal was imminent for importing Iranian condensate and LPG, but not for crude as Iran's sour oil grades were not compatible with its refineries' need for sweet crude.

(Reporting by Stanley Carvalho and Maha El Dahan; Writing by David French; Editing by Dale Hudson and Louise Heavens)
Espoo, Finland, 2016-04-26 09:00 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SRV GROUP PLC STOCK EXCHANGE RELEASE 26.04.2016, KLO 10.00

SRV has been chosen to further develop the historical, valued at about EUR 300 million, new central hospital project in Central Finland



SRV has been chosen to be a futher developer for Central Finlands Central Hospital. SRV can also be chosen to be a management contractor for a EUR 300 million new hospital project, if the final target price set by Central Finland Health Care District is achieved. In that case, the project will be largest in companys history, which do not include the companys own equity.



On 26 April, the Central Finland Health Care District selected SRV as the further developer of the entirely new hospital, which will be built in the vicinity of the current central hospital. The final target price of the project management contractor agreement will be confirmed at a meeting of the Administrative Council of the Central Finland Health Care District on 3 June. If SRV meets the target price by 31 July 2016, the agreement will be recognised in SRVs order backlog and the construction of the new hospital in Jyvaskyla can begin in August- September 2016.



This is the largest contract in SRVs history to which we are not committing our own equity. The agreement further consolidates our position in carrying out large spearhead construction projects. Our order backlog was at a record high during all of 2015; thanks to the preliminary agreement we have now signed, we firmly believe that we will maintain our momentum in 2016, says Juha Toimela, SVP, Operations in Finland.



The construction of the new central hospital will begin in early autumn 2016 and it will be completed in phases by 2020. It will be located in Kukkumaki, Jyvaskyla, in the vicinity of the current Central Finland Central Hospital. Most of the premises in the new hospital will be used for specialised healthcare. Part will be reserved for the City of Jyvaskylas primary healthcare services.

SRV has strong experience in building healthcare and demanding specialist premises. In recent years, for instance, SRV has built an additional emergency room for the Jorvi Hospital in Espoo as well as the HUSLAB laboratory building in Meilahti, Helsinki.



The hospital projects weve carried out in recent years have been highly successful  and this, naturally enough, bears fruit. For example, we completed the HUSLAB laboratory building significantly ahead of schedule and with no defects at handover. We are currently also building three new hospital buildings for the Tampere University Hospital, the New Childrens Hospital in Helsinki, and a health and wellbeing centre in Kalasatama, Helsinki, as well as renovating and expanding the HUCS Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, says Juha Toimela, SRVs SVP, Operations in Finland.



The final project management contractor agreement will be signed on by mid-August at which time the value of the contract will be specified and it will be recognised in SRVs order backlog. The agreement is subject to the Central Finlands Central Hospital agreement becoming legally valid.



Our investment decision in Central Finland is a historical one in local terms as well  the construction of the new hospital is the largest public investment ever carried out in the region, says Juha Kinnunen, Director, Central Finland Health Care District.

More information

Juha Toimela, SVP Operations in Finland ,+ 358 40 594 5473, juha.toimela@srv.fi

Kimmo Kurki, procuction manager, + 358 40 705 7266, kimmo.kurki@srv.fi

Timo Kauppi, regional manager, + 358 40 592 3008, timo.kauppi@srv.fi

Paivi Kauhanen, SVP communications, + 358 50 598 9560, paivi.kauhanen@srv.fi

www.srv.fi

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SRV - Building for life
BELGRADE, Mont., April 26, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Xtant Medical Holdings, Inc. (NYSE MKT:XTNT), a leader in the development of regenerative medicine products and medical devices, today announced the awarding of two grants from the Montana Department of Commerce totaling $155,000 to aid Bacterin International, Inc., or Bacterin, in the expansion of its orthobiologic processing facility. Bacterin is a wholly owned subsidiary of Xtant Medical Holdings, Inc.



The Big Sky Economic Development Trust Fund (BSTF) presented the city of Belgrade, Montana, with up to $90,000 to assist Bacterin with the purchase of additional processing equipment and to create 12 net new jobs within one year. The Primary Workforce Training Grant (WTG) awarded $65,000 directly to Bacterin and will be applied to the training of these positions.

"We are very pleased to have received these grants," said Darrel Holmes, COO of Bacterin. "The monies will be utilized in support of both our physical and personnel expansion efforts. The increased production capacity will allow Bacterin to continue to increase its share of the growing orthobiologic market. We would like to thank Governor Bullock and all those involved in helping Bacterin further solidify its relationship with the city of Belgrade and the great state of Montana."

About Xtant Medical Holdings

Xtant Medical Holdings, Inc. (NSYE MKT:XTNT) develops, manufactures and markets regenerative medicine products and medical devices for domestic and international markets. Xtant products serve the specialized needs of orthopedic and neurological surgeons, including orthobiologics for the promotion of bone healing, implants and instrumentation for the treatment of spinal disease, tissue grafts for the treatment of orthopedic disorders, and biologics to promote healing following cranial, and foot and ankle surgeries. With core competencies in both biologic and non-biologic surgical technologies, Xtant can leverage its resources to successfully compete in global neurological and orthopedic surgery markets. For further information, please visit www.xtantmedical.com.

Important Cautions Regarding Forward-looking Statements

This press release contains certain disclosures that may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements include statements that are predictive in nature, that depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, or that include words such as "continue," "efforts," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," "projects," "forecasts," "strategy," "will," "goal," "target," "prospects," "potential," "optimistic," "confident," "likely," "probable" or similar expressions or the negative thereof. Statements of historical fact also may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. We caution that these statements by their nature involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially depending on a variety of important factors, including, among others: our ability to integrate the acquisition of X-spine Systems, Inc. and any other business combinations or acquisitions successfully; our ability to remain listed on the NYSE MKT; our ability to obtain financing on reasonable terms; our ability to increase revenue; our ability to comply with the covenants in our credit facility; our ability to maintain sufficient liquidity to fund our operations; the ability of our sales force to achieve expected results; our ability to remain competitive; government regulations; our ability to innovate and develop new products; our ability to obtain donor cadavers for our products; our ability to engage and retain qualified technical personnel and members of our management team; the availability of our facilities; government and third-party coverage and reimbursement for our products; our ability to obtain regulatory approvals; our ability to successfully integrate recent and future business combinations or acquisitions; our ability to use our net operating loss carry-forwards to offset future taxable income; our ability to deduct all or a portion of the interest payments on the notes for U.S. federal income tax purposes; our ability to service our debt; product liability claims and other litigation to which we may be subjected; product recalls and defects; timing and results of clinical studies; our ability to obtain and protect our intellectual property and proprietary rights; infringement and ownership of intellectual property; our ability to remain accredited with the American Association of Tissue Banks; influence by our management; our ability to pay dividends; our ability to issue preferred stock; and other factors.

Additional risk factors are listed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q under the heading "Risk Factors." You should carefully consider the trends, risks and uncertainties described in this document, the Form 10-K and other reports filed with or furnished to the SEC before making any investment decision with respect to our securities. If any of these trends, risks or uncertainties actually occurs or continues, our business, financial condition or operating results could be materially adversely affected, the trading prices of our securities could decline, and you could lose all or part of your investment. The Company undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law. All forward-looking statements attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement.
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Good afternoon, chatters!

We're a little tuckered out from jumping up and down at the news that WaPoFood critic and colleague Tom Sietsema picked up a James Beard award last night in NYC for his year-long America's Best Food Cities project. (Congrats to DC's Todd Kliman, too.) But we have a full hour ahead to kvell and answer just about any food questions you have, with guests Maureen Quinn, winner in Becky's fun story about our sous-chef challenge; Tamar Haspel, whose Unearthed column gives a thoughtful followup to crop subsidies; and M. Carrie Allan, whose Spirits column catches us up on a Detroit cocktail with legs; plus all the WaPoFood regulars except Editor Joe and Tim Carman.

We'll give away a Washington Post Cookbook (great Mother's Day gift, just sayin') and a copy of "Lean In 15," source of today's #DinnerInMinutes recipe, to a couple of especially helpful chatters; winners announced at the end of the session.

Oops, almost forgot: The Post Points code for today is FR8526. Record and enter it into the PostPoints site under Claim My Points to earn points. The code expires at midnight, so be sure to enter the code by 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday to get credit for participating.

Let's do it....
Why is the media focused on reporting the optics/theatrics of the Trump campaign instead of the substance? Why is Trump getting a pass on the tough substantive questions. For instance, what is the realistic cost of the wall and how long will it take to build. Is it realistic or even feasible. How many people cross the US/Mexican border? Is the number going up or down? What is the cost benefit of a wall? What about the 40% of illegal immigrants who overstay their visa? In re tariffs, what will be the cost to American consumers? How does the President in a free society force companies to open US plants and presumably close foreign ones. How do US companies compete in a global economy with exclusionary US trade policies. I go could on and on but you get the point.
Early Voting Begins on Austin's Ride-Hailing Security Ordinances

Austin's mayor announced April 25 that he opposes the ordinance from Uber and Lyft that would repeal the city's current requirement to have drivers fingerprinted as part of a national criminal background check.

Early voting began April 25 in Austin, Texas, ahead of the May 7 election to decide whether drivers for Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft, Inc., as well as any other company using a ride-hailing app that enters the Austin market, must be fingerprinted as part of a national criminal background check. The city's current ordinance requires fingerprinting, but Uber and Lyft have proposed their own ordinance that would prohibit fingerprinting, and they have contributed more than $2 million in cash and in-kind contributions to a local political action committee named Ridesharing Works for Austin that is supporting their ordinance.

Voters are being asked in Proposition 1 on the city ballot whether they support the Uber/Lyft ordinance or not; a no vote would preserve the city's current ordinance.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler announced April 25 that he opposes Proposition 1. The mayor had not previously announced a position on it, the Austin American-Statesman reported.

Ride-hailing companies are called Transportation Network Companies in the two ordinances.

Uber and Lyft favor name-based background checks and have threatened to leave the Austin market if their ordinance fails. Early voting continues through May 3.

The newspaper has reported that fingerprint-based background checks are currently required of Austin's taxi, limousine, and pedicab drivers.
Oregon OSHA Offering On-Site Consultation During National Stand-Down

Last year's national stand-down reached more than 2.5 million workers and federal OSHA's goal is to reach 5 million workers this year.

We can mark down Oregon OSHA as a strong supporter of the May 2-6 National Safety Stand-Down event from federal OSHA, NIOSH, and several other partners. OR-OSHA announced that its Consultation Services will bring expertise on fall prevention to work sites across the state during the stand-down, which is a voluntary event aiming to help millions of construction workers prevent falls.

"The National Safety Stand-Down offers employers the opportunity to focus on fall hazards and build a working relationship with Oregon OSHA," said Roy Kroker, consultation and public education manager for Oregon OSHA. The state agency believes the week of the national stand-down affords a special opportunity to establish a relationship with employers and workers to reinforce the importance of occupational safety.

Last year's national stand-down reached more than 2.5 million workers and federal OSHA's goal is to reach 5 million workers this year. Oregon OSHA's consultants will participate in activities chosen by employers to help protect workers. Employers are encouraged to request a visit from a consultant during the National Safety Stand-Down by calling Oregon OSHA's central office in Salem, 503-378-3272, or a field office in their area:

Bend: 541-388-6068

Eugene: 541-686-7913

Medford: 541-776-6016

Pendleton: 541-276-2353

Portland: 503-229-6193

Salem: 503-373-7819

Falls from elevation are a leading cause of death for construction workers and accounted for 337 of the 874 construction deaths recorded in 2014, according to federal data. OSHA reports that from 2003 to 2010, 2,210 construction workers died because of a traumatic brain injury.

OSHA's partners in the event include NIOSH and its National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA), state plans, state consultation programs, the Center for Construction Research and Training, the American Society of Safety Engineers, the National Safety Council, the National Construction Safety Executives, the U.S. Air Force, and the OSHA Training Institute Education Centers.
Wisconsin Paper Mill Cited after Fatality

The company was previously cited in 2012 for machine hazards, according to OSHA.

After a machine operator suffered fatal injuries while servicing a high-speed conveyor belt in a paper mill, an OSHA investigation has led to citations for one willful, one repeat, and two serious safety violations.

OSHA previously cited the company, Cellu Tissue-City Forest LLC, for inadequate machine safety procedures at the same facility in Ladysmith, Wis.

"Workers at the Clearwater Paper mill were exposed to dangerous machine hazards on a daily basis because their employer failed to properly prevent contact with operating machinery," said Mark Hysell, OSHA's area director in Eau Claire. "This man's death is tragic and was preventable." He said "machine hazards continue to be one of the most frequently cited federal worker safety violations. It takes just minutes to stop and put safety first."

According to the agency's news release, the investigation found employees at the mill routinely work under high-speed conveyor and sheet-fork sections of the wet-lap machine during production mode.
In-Depth

SharePoint Hybrid Search Requirements

Tapping hybrid SharePoint capabilities involves making some configuration changes and meeting certain software requirements, according to an expert.

Both the emerging SharePoint Server 2016 and the current flagship SharePoint Server 2013 product are capable of enabling capabilities such as "hybrid search," which promises a more unified search experience for end users. Another hybrid capability of note is the use of Office 365 Delve, which surfaces organizational content for end users.

Organizations won't get those hybrid capabilities if they just stick with the on-premises server products. However, it takes just a few configuration changes to take advantage of Microsoft's cloud-first innovations in a hybrid setup, contended Thomas Vochten, an Office Server and Services Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). He's also an architect at Xylos, a consultancy based in Antwerp, Belgium. Vochten explained how to set up SharePoint hybrid search in this Microsoft Channel 9 video, which was published earlier this month.

Vochten said that Office 365 Delve currently doesn't work 100 percent with hybrid setups and the costs aren't clear yet. People searches by default will send queries to the local index and that won't work, he added. User pictures won't render with SharePoint Online so to get them a PowerShell script has to be run with CrossDomainPhotosEnabled = true.

The most important prerequisite for hybrid setups is to have identity management in place to synchronize between on-premises server farms and online services. Organizations can't tap cloud services without it, Vochten said. Organizations will need:

Synchronized or federated identities

Internet-routable Active Directory domains

SSL certificates and secured communication channels

Good bandwidth and Internet connectivity

An Office 365 Enterprise subscription

Vochten recommended using Microsoft's Azure Active Directory Connect tool for identity synchronization, which supports multiforest scenarios.

One-Way Outbound Search

There are two types of hybrid search topologies for SharePoint Server. There's "one-way outbound search," which is the current method used with SharePoint Server 2013, and there's "one-way inbound search," which represents Microsoft's improved method.

With one-way outbound search, the search happens both online and on premises. However, the on-premises search query gets sent to SharePoint Online, which is called "query federation." The problem with this query federation is that it is complex to set up. You get separate result blocks. There's no ranking and relevance integration, and no refiners. End users get two search results. The separate results come from SharePoint Online and from SharePoint Server on premises. This approach is OK, but you can't do fancy stuff with it, Vochten explained.

The requirements for one-way outbound search include having Enterprise Edition products in place, plus setting up synchronization with Azure Active Directory. IT pros need to be a search admin for an on-premises farm in order to set it up. Organizations will need:

Active Directory

An Internet public domain

Office 365 Enterprise Edition

SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise Edition on premises

Synchronization of Active Directory to Azure Active Directory

Trust between on-premises and online SharePoint, as established using PowerShell scripts

Additionally, IT pros will have to install some software, including the Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant, the Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell and the SharePoint Online Management Shell, Vochten said.

Organizations using SharePoint Server on premises need to tap some required services, such as the User Profile Service, App Management Service and the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service, he added.

One-Way Inbound Search

The new and improved search approach, known as "one-way inbound search," is also a query federation approach, except that it flows from SharePoint Online to SharePoint Server on premises.

The requirements for one-way inbound search are exactly the same as one-way outbound search, Vochten said. IT pros setting it up need to be a global admin for an Office 365 tenant. They'll need to configure a secure storage service in SharePoint Online.

For more information about using SharePoint Online storage for hybrid search, see this discussion by Microsoft MVP Vlad Catrinescu. He pointed out that SharePoint Online's 1TB of pooled storage is sufficient for about one million search index items. Organizations likely will have to calculate their costs if their indices exceed that number. Also, see Catrinescu's Q&A at this page.

To use one-way inbound search, organizations will need a reverse-proxy setup and they'll need to use SSL certificates. For the reverse proxy, Windows Server 2012 R2 can be used or Forefront Threat Management Gateway. Other reverse-proxy options include F5's BIG-IP or Citrix NetScaler, Vochten indicated.

Another requirement for one-way inbound search is the use of Microsoft's Cloud Search Service Application. It's still at the preview stage and pricing isn't known, Vochten said. The Cloud Search Service Application delivers a unified search index, which is only online. You don't get separate result blocks. Services such as Office 365 Delve will just work, he explained. It supports file shares, too. It's possible to index file shares and send them to SharePoint Online. It also supports "security trimming," so end users never see search results they weren't supposed to see.

With the Cloud Search Service Application, there's a normal search crawl on premises but the results get uploaded to Azure Blob Storage. The online index gets fed back to the SharePoint farm. It's possible to use SharePoint Server 2013 with the Cloud Search Service Application, but organizations have to have SharePoint Server 2013 with the August 2015 Cumulative Update or higher installed, Vochten said.

Adding the Cloud Hybrid Search Service Application requires the use of "straightforward PowerShell" as an onboarding script, but a new parameter, CloudIndex = $true, needs to be added. Vochten said that this installation should be tried in a test environment first because it could break provider apps if they are used. This issue with the onboarding script is something Microsoft is working on. Vochten advised caution in the meantime.

The rest of the presentation included demos. Microsoft, for its part, describes the requirements for setting up hybrid search for SharePoint Server 2013 at this page. For a walkthrough on setting up accounts to use hybrid search, see this Redmond-published guide authored by Microsoft MVP Brien Posey.
This article was originally on GET.com at: 10 Tax Havens In The World - What They Are And Who Goes There

Almost every country in the world, including Singapore, subjects its residents to taxes. The question has always been how high or how low the tax rates are for the particular year. If youve been following the news on the Panama Papers, then you would know that some of the wealthiest people in the world are being suspected of not paying these taxes, all in the name of preserving their wealth.

On one hand there are countries with the highest personal income tax rates in the world and then there are countries with the lowest personal income tax rates. But tax havens are a whole new ball game altogether. We at GET.com are going to try our best to shed some light on this topic.

What Is A Tax Haven?

A tax haven is basically a country with a very low tax rate which sometimes even reaches 0%.

Remember that scene in The Wolf of Wall Street where they stashed a few hundred million dollars in cash in Switzerland? That was no coincidence.

Nations like Switzerland and Luxembourg, were once considered tax havens.

For Switzerland, this changed in 2014 when they were forced to close their tax loopholes.

Currently, these 10 countries are considered to be tax havens - and it's not so easy to become a resident in any of them!

1. Brunei Darussalam

To be considered as a resident in Brunei Darussalam, you have to reside there for 183 days or more within the tax year.

2. Anguilla

To be considered as a resident in Anguilla, you must have been legally residing in Anguilla for 7 or more years.

3. British Virgin Islands

To be entitled to no tax at the British Virgin Islands, you have to apply for rights to reside long term because of either local employment or self-employment, or if you are starting a business.

4. The Bahamas

There are many criteria which enable you to apply for residency in The Bahamas. One common way is for financially independent individuals or investors to be legitimate owners of a residence in The Bahamas. According to their Ministry of Finance website, those who purchase a residence for BS$1.5 million or more will get speedy consideration!

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5. Panama

In Panama, you have to obtain a Temporary Permit before obtaining a Permanent Residency Permit. Once you have the residency permit, you have to reside in Panama for at least 5 years before you can apply for Panama Citizenship.

6. United Arab Emirates

To be a resident of the United Arab Emirates, you have to apply for a residency visa, which has a 2 year validity period. During the 2 years, you must enter the country once every 6 months.

7. Cayman Islands

To be a resident in Cayman Islands, you have to have been living there legally for at least 8 years.

8. Bermuda

Before applying to be a resident in Bermuda, you have to have been living there for at least 10 years, among other requirements.

9. Island Of Sark

To be a resident on the Island of Sark, you must live with a an existing Island of Sark resident.

10. Monaco

In Monaco, you have to go through certain processes that will take about 12 years before you can apply for a privileged residence card, which is valid for 10 years. Upon obtaining this privileged card, you have to spend at least 6 months and one day in Monaco every year.

Who Goes To Tax Havens?

Most of the time, those who are interested in these countries are people or businesses with large amounts of money who want to escape the high tax rates back at home. Wealthy people mostly find themselves stowing away their cash in these countries.

For example, British Formula One drivers, Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton both reside in Monaco. Instead of having to pay the usual United Kingdom income tax rate of 45%, because they are domiciled in Monaco, they are not required to pay taxes.

However, to move your money to these tax havens, is no simple feat. You have to be able to legally set up a corporate structure within the tax haven country, or be domiciled in that particular country.

These processes though, are not that simple. There is a lot more that goes into setting up a corporate company in these tax havens than meets the eye.

Is Singapore A Tax Haven?

The answer to that is, somewhat. Look at it this way, a tax haven is defined as a country with a low or no tax rate.

In Singapore, those who earn within the highest tax income bracket, or above S$320,000 per year are only taxed 20%, which is significantly lower that most other developing countries like the U.S. (income tax rate of 55.9%) or the United Kingdom (income tax rate of 45%).

Singapore also has a low corporate tax rate and doesnt put a levy on capital gains. So when you take this combination and put it together, its easy for the people earning above S$320,000 per year, to think of Singapore as a tax haven.

However, since the UBS tax evasion case which occurred last month, the U.S. has been paying close attention to Singapores bank secrecy laws.

But while the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is clamping down on countries that remotely resemble a tax haven, they seem to have forgotten a haven of their own - the state of Delaware, which is home to no less than 285,000 businesses that are looking for a place to hide from tax rates.

Now that is another article altogether.

What do you think? Share your comments with us below!

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A court in Cameroon has jailed for life the former head of the defunct national carrier Camair, Yves Michel Fotso, on conviction of embezzling almost $56 million, legal sources said Tuesday.

Fotso, already sentenced to 25 years behind bars in a separate graft case, "took the rap for life," said a source close to the Special Criminal Tribunal, set up in the central African country to try major corruption cases.

The judges "found Mr Fotso guilty of embezzling 32.4 billion CFA francs" ($55.7 million, 49.4 million euros) when he was chief executive of the airline, whose full name was Cameroon Airlines, from 2000 to 2003, said another source close to the case.

Fotso created three front companies to rent aircraft to the airline when the planes had already been purchased outright with public funds, the source explained.

The judges also found Fotso guilty of making fraudulent withdrawals of funds from a Camair account at the Commercial Bank of Cameroon (CBC).

The tycoon consistently protested his innocence. In February, his lawyers decided to boycott hearings at the special tribunal, denouncing procedural irregularities.

President Paul Biya, who has ruled since 1982 over a state rated highly corrupt by Transparency International, had called on Fotso to save the foundering airline in 2000.

Instead, the businessman used his position to increase his already considerable wealth and became embroiled in several scandals concerning his management of Camair.

Imprisoned since December 2010, Fotso was given a 25-year jail sentence in September 2012, together with a former top aide to Biya, Marafa Hamidou Yaya. The pair were found guilty of embezzling $29 million that Cameroon paid in 2001 for a presidential plane in a deal that fell through.

Fotso became a target of the "Sparrowhawk" anti-corruption campaign launched in 2006 under strong pressure from Cameroon's foreign donor partners. A large number of people, including other heads of state-owned firms and former government ministers, have been arrested.

The Cameroonian government put Camair into liquidation in 2005, before launching Camair-Co, which is also confronted with serious financial great difficulties.
AFP News

Ukraine on Sunday denounced as dangerous lies suggestions from Russia that it was preparing to use a "dirty bomb". Its western allies also dismissed the allegations from Moscow, just hours after Russia went public with the claims. In conversations with his British, French and Turkish counterparts, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu conveyed "concerns about possible provocations by Ukraine with the use of a 'dirty bomb'", Moscow said. Russia did not mention the alleged "dirty bomb" allegation in its statement following Shoigu's call with Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin. "If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it means one thing: Russia has already prepared all this," President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on social media. "I believe that now the world should react as harshly as possible." Earlier Sunday, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denounced Moscow's claims as "absurd" and "dangerous". "Russians often accuse others of what they plan themselves," he added. A British defence ministry statement said Defence Secretary Ben Wallace had "refuted these claims and cautioned that such allegations should not be used as a pretext for greater escalation". And in Washington, National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson dismissed Moscow's "transparently false" claim. "The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation," she added. - 'Vile strikes' - Russia also announced Sunday that it had destroyed a depot in central Ukraine storing over 100,000 tonnes of aviation fuel. Kyiv's energy operator meanwhile said scheduled power cuts had been introduced in the Ukrainian capital due to Russia's repeated strikes on the nation's power network. The blackouts started from 11:13 am (0813 GMT) with consumers in Kyiv divided into three groups "disconnected for a certain period of time", energy company DTEK said. DTEK reiterated calls for residents to use electricity "sparingly" and for businesses to limit their use of external lighting. More than one million Ukrainian households have lost electricity following recent Russian strikes, according to the Ukrainian presidency, at least a third of the country's power stations having been destroyed ahead of winter. Zelensky condemned the "vile strikes" in comments late Saturday, after Russian attacks caused power cuts across the country. - 'Save your strength' - In the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rig, deputy mayor Sergiy Miliutin was dealing with emergencies and power outages from his underground bunker, used as a venue for a children's martial arts competition. "I've reached a point where I just survive on my drive. You have to stay level-headed and save your strength. No one knows how long this will all last," he told AFP. The intensification of Russian strikes on Ukraine, particularly energy facilities, came after the bridge linking the annexed Crimea peninsula to mainland Russia was partially destroyed by an explosion earlier this month. It was another major setback for Moscow's forces, battling to contain a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the south and east of the country. French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday that it was for Ukrainians to decide when "peace is possible", in comments made in Rome at the start of a peace summit. Ukraine reported three deaths in an overnight Russian artillery strike in the Toretsk area, a governor of the eastern Donetsk region said. Inside Russia, two lines of defence have been built in the border region of Kursk to deal with any possible attack, a local governor said on Sunday. On Saturday Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor in the neighbouring Russian border region of Belgorod, said the construction of defence structures had begun. Gladkov said two civilians had been killed in strikes there Saturday, and that 15,000 people had been left without electricity. - Kherson evacuations - Meanwhile Ukraine's SBU intelligence service said it had detained two officials of Ukrainian aircraft engine maker Motor Sich on suspicion of working with Russia. The SBU said management at the company's plant in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region -- partly controlled by Russian forces -- had colluded with Russian state-owned defence conglomerate Rostec. The suspects had supplied Russia with Ukrainian aircraft engines that were used to make and repair attack helicopters, the SBU said. In the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, which Russia claims to have annexed, pro-Moscow officials on Saturday urged residents to leave "immediately" amid a "tense situation" at the front. Kherson, the region's main city, was the first to fall to Moscow's troops and retaking it would be a major prize in Ukraine's counter-offensive. A Moscow-installed official in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, told Russian news agency Interfax on Saturday that around 25,000 people had left Kherson city to the left bank of the Dnipro River. Ukraine has denounced the removal of residents from Kherson, describing them as "deportations". bur-imm/raz/jj/lcm
By Jane Qui CHAKHAM, Nepal (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - It is the first time Nawang Tsultrim has harboured any sense of hope in a year. "They will begin to build my house tomorrow," she says cheerfully, picking through a pile of rubble that was once her home: a modest one-room building in the Bakhang Buddhist Nunnery in northeastern Nepal, near the border with Tibet. A devastating Nepal earthquake a year ago levelled much of the place. Only a prayer hall, where Buddhist rituals and communal meditation take place, still stands, criss-crossed with cracks. The nunnery, perching on a mountainside at 3,000 metres above sea level, is home to 212 Tibetan nuns who crossed the Himalayan border to live away from Chinese rule. Many Tibetan refugees also use it as a temporary resting place before heading to India. For weeks after the quake, all the surviving nuns were crammed into one shelter. "It was an extremely difficult situation," said Tsechu Dolma, founder and director of the nonprofit Mountain Resiliency Project in Kathmandu. She came to Bakhang just a few days after the earthquake. "Everybody was crying. They were mourning a nun who was killed by the quake. And they had no idea how to get their life back again," she said. As the nuns do not have residency rights or identity cards in Nepal  like many other Tibetan migrants in the country  they are effectively illegal immigrants. "They are stateless and invisible," said Dolma. Tibetan migrants have few employment prospects beyond low-pay jobs like waitressing and manual labour, she said. "They are the poorest of the poor," she said. FENDING FOR THEMSELVES The earthquake has made the nuns' position even more precarious, with little aid reaching them, they said. "We are left to fend for ourselves," said Nawang Dechen, head of the nunnery. "And few people know about our plight." But with financial help from the American Jewish World Service  a New York-based nonprofit development and human rights group - and private donations from Tibetan communities, Dolma and her colleagues have been able to help the nuns rebuild, and with better and stronger houses that can protect them from future disasters. "The top priority now is to build the dormitories for the nuns," each leading a solitary life in a small house, Dechen said. She hopes this can be completed before the monsoon starts in July. "The temporary shelters have many leaks. It's a miserable place when it rains," she said. She is also seeking donations to rebuild the clinic, library, and food storage room, which helps the residents get through the monsoon period, when the only road connecting the nunnery to the outside world can be impassable. Rebuilding in remote mountain regions is not easy, said Tapas Upadhyay, an architect at the Hunnarshala Foundation, a nonprofit organisation in Bhuj, India. He is part of a team that has helped design new homes for the nuns. Most quake-proof buildings rely on concrete and steel. But "they are too expensive for most rural communities in Nepal," Upadhyaya said. "And it's difficult to bring them all the way up here." REINFORCING MESH STRENGTHENS WALLS The houses the team is building in Bakhang use local materials such as stone and clay. To reinforce the structures, the walls are laced with galvanised iron wire mesh, tied together to form so-called ring beams. "They're all woven together, just like your clothes," said Upadhyay. "That's where its strength lies." During an earthquake, the mesh would hold the building together, but it is elastic enough to sustain the shaking, according to Upadhyay. In a test, a two-storey house was put on a shaking table and subjected to quakes of various magnitudes. "The building rocked back and forward as a solid unit," said Tanvi Choudhair, also a Hunnarshala architect. "It survived up to magnitude 11 earthquakes." In addition to resisting shaking, the new houses will incorporate aspects of Tibetan culture and tradition - and a personal touch. "We believe in owner-driven reconstruction," said Upadhyay. "We are not interested in having a sort of model house and replicating it everywhere." Each house will be slightly different, depending on the location and the individual, and comes with a small garden where nuns can grow vegetables. The nuns have been involved from the start. "We had many meetings and made sure that they understand the importance of their voices and leadership," Dolma said. REBUILDING HELPS HEALING PROCESS The nuns are also essentially part of the construction team, digging up clay and salvaging wood and stones from collapsed buildings, often while singing traditional construction songs that date back centuries. They also put small religious ornaments in the foundation and walls of the new homes, a Tibetan practice to bless the house. When tragedies like last year's earthquake happen, "people lose their trust in the buildings and the materials," said Choudhair. "They worry that the same will happen again." But when they construct their own homes  and understand what makes them stronger  they regain their trust, she said. Rebuilding is not just about the physical structure, but also "part of the healing process", she said. Other communities benefit too, said Phurita Sherpa, a contractor on the project who lives in Kathmandu but has family in nearby Chakam vilage. The project hires only local masons and carpenters, giving them an income that helps them rebuild their own homes. They can also apply what they've learned from rebuilding the nunnery to other construction projects. "This will help to boost earthquake resilience in mountain communities," Sherpa said. (Reporting by Jane Qui, editing by Laurie Goering and Tim Pearce. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, women's rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)
Although it's already a popular destination in Asia, Thailand looks set to gain even more visitors in the coming years. By 2020, numbers could rise to 47.5 million, compared with 29.9 million in 2015. Here's a look at some of the best ways to experience the country and its culture before mass tourism takes hold.

Get up close to elephants in the Chiang Mai jungle

There are plenty of better ways to get up close to elephants than the typically touristy elephant rides, which don't offer much in the way of authentic experience and can raise animal welfare issues. While some travelers opt for elephant retreats at the sanctuary in Kanchanaburi, northern Thailand is also a choice destination for elephant experiences, with the Chiang Mai jungle leading the way. Here, many former mahouts have become guides for tourists looking to spend time with elephants in ways that respect the animals' well-being. Visitors can learn how to mount and ride elephants like the former mahouts (bareback) and go trekking in the jungle. They can even give the animals a bath and feed them bananas. Chiang Mai city makes an ideal base for a day in the nearby jungle.

Make friends with the monkeys of Lopburi

A few hours' drive to the north of Bangkok, Lopburi is home to hundreds of monkeys. While taking in the Khmer temples, visitors can experience the antics of the many monkeys that inhabit this so-called Monkey City. Visitors are advised to take care with food and keep anything edible shut away in a bag (or arrange to eat later in the day) to avoid becoming a target for the cheeky simians. In any case, meeting the monkeys is sure to be memorable, with hilarious holiday snaps guaranteed.

Step back in time in Sukhothai, then hop on a bike

Sukhothai was the capital of the first kingdom of Siam, which went on to become Thailand. Located 4.5 hours' drive from Chiang Mai, the town is home to the remains of 21 temples and their surrounding fortifications. These historical relics are an impressive sight, setting the scene for some spectacular photos starring an impressive lineup of Buddha statues. As well as its historical sights, the Sukhothai Historical Park is an especially nice place to visit on two wheels. Bikes can be hired for a few bahts (1 THB = approx. 0.03 USD) and visitors are free to come, go and explore as they please.

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Relive history on the bridge on the River Kwai, Kanchanaburi

Situated 130km (81 miles) to the west of Bangkok, Kanchanaburi is a must for anyone with an interest in history. Visitors flock to the area to snap a picture of the bridge over the river Kwai, which saw several thousand workers killed during its construction. In the Second World War, the Japanese, who occupied the region, decided to build a railway line linking Kanchanaburi to Burma, a route stretching 410km (255 miles). Work on the line, soon nicknamed the "Death Railway," was scheduled to take five years, but was completed in just 18 months after the occupying Japanese put to work many of their Australian, Dutch and British prisoners of war alongside Asian laborers. The story was immortalized in the Pierre Boulle novel and its famous movie adaptation "The Bridge on the River Kwai."

Experience Loy Krathong, the festival of lanterns

Like a moment suspended in time, Loy Krathong sees Thailand celebrate the end of the rainy season and pay respect to the goddess of water. It's held each year on the eve of the full moon in the 12th month of the Thai lunar calendar. People traditionally make little boats from banana leaves which float out onto the water holding candles. Lanterns are also released into the sky. This is a popular, family-focused event where visitors can join in with the rituals and festivities without raising eyebrows among local Thai people. Loy Krathong is celebrated across Thailand, with traditional events often accompanied by shows, festivities and meals. Sukhothai is a particularly popular destination for the festival, with a light and sound show organized in the Historical Park.

Kick back and relax on Koh Tao

No trip to Thailand would be complete without visiting one of its paradise islands. And there are islands to suit all kinds of visitors with very different interests. But, if there's only time to fit in one, then Koh Tao could be just the ticket. Situated in the Gulf of Thailand, this "Turtle Island" is a true haven of calm and relaxation, far from the crowds of tourists heading to the likes of Koh Phi Phi and Koh Pha Ngan for Full Moon Parties. Koh Tao is a paradise for divers and snorkelers.
Following the signing of the historic Paris deal on climate change on Friday, Climate Change Commission Secretary Emmanuel de Guzman said it is now time for the signatories to walk the talk and work toward the goals of the agreement.

We cannot afford any more delays in carrying out concerted action to combat climate change and its impacts, he said in a statement after 175 countries signed the agreement.

The 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature cap is not simply a number or goal. It is a matter of survival for billions of people; it is a matter of survival for highly vulnerable nations like the Philippines, he added.

The climate deal was the first legally binding global agreement on climate change.

The signing paved way for the country-signatories to ratify the deal in their respective countries and integrate environment and climate change programs in their specific national development policies in order to deliver commitments.

To limit global temperature rise to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius is crucial to reducing disaster risk and achieving our sustainable development goals, he said.

Our country will face greater difficulty to address poverty incidence, hunger and food security, health issues, security issues, among many other societal and economic concerns, if we go business as usual about dealing with climate change. Everyone must participate and work together because all of us are in danger, all of us will be affected, he added.

De Guzman and Environment Secretary Ramon Paje led the Philippine delegation to the signing ceremony of the Paris Agreement at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

De Guzman earlier urged Filipinos to help the government in its efforts to deal with climate change and its impact.

Climate change affects people, natural resources, livelihood and lives. We are all part of the ecosystem. Everything and everybody in its path is affected. Ecosystems, infrastructure, economies and cities are all in danger, he said.

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The CCC earlier rolled out the Communities for Resilience initiative, which involves partnerships with grassroots communities within the 18 major river basins in the country.

Through the project, the CCC said it intends to promote deeper understanding of climate and disaster risk especially in communities identified to be more vulnerable to disasters caused by climate change.

It also seeks to strengthen the technical knowledge and capacity of local government units in developing the Local Climate Change Action Plan through a series of convergence consultations and training.
The human gut is a complex and amazing system, and the more we learn about it, the more amazed we are. It turns out
Funding, Grants & Awards

CEOs, Governors Ask Congress To Commit $250 Million for K-12 Computer Science

A coalition of business leaders, governors and educators has called on the United States Congress to provide funding that will give every student in America the opportunity to learn computer science.

U.S. corporate CEOs are backing up their commitment by offering nearly $50 million in private contributions in order to increase access to computer science.

Google has promised to provide $10 million in new funding to be spent by the end of next year and Microsoft has committed $10 million to broaden access to K-12 computer science. Infosys Foundation USA has committed to $5 million in grants to nonprofits that advance computer science education.

In addition, BlackRock, AT&T, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Jeff Bezos, Omidyar Network and others have pledged $23 million in contributions to Code.org, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access and increasing participation among women and students of color in coding.

On April 26, CEOs of Fortune 100 companies and 27 governors from both parties, along with K12 education leaders, sent Congress a letter noting that computer science is increasingly foundational to 21st-century careers.

"Ninety percent of parents want their children to have access to computer science education at school, and teachers agree," the letter read in part. "Despite this groundswell, three-quarters of U.S. schools do not offer meaningful computer science courses. This bipartisan issue cannot be addressed without growing the federal budget."

In the letter organized by the Computer Science Education Coalition in partnership with Code.org, the coalition urged Congress to provide school districts with $250 million to enhance computer science education in schools.
Green bus plan remains a priority

From:Shanghai Daily | 2016-04-26 01:11

THE Shanghai Transportation Trade Association yesterday reiterated the governments aim of having half the citys public buses running on clean energy by the end of the year.

The target was set several years ago as part of a long-term plan to tackle air pollution.

The association added yesterday that a revised target seeks to boost the proportion of green buses on Shanghais streets to 70 percent by 2018, though no timeframe or specific details were provided.

About 1,500 new-energy buses will be in operation by the end of the year, the association said, without saying how many are currently in service.

A further 16 bus depots will be fitted with electric charging stations, it said.

Most of the new buses will be electric, though some will be hybrids, said Cai Xiaying, deputy chief engineer with the Shanghai Bashi Public Transportation Group.

In the future, the company hopes to operate about 70 electric buses on the planned medium-capacity traffic system along Yanan Road, Cai told Shanghai Daily.

If developed, the system, which was proposed by the city government earlier in the year, will see 68 electric buses running on a 14km-long stretch of the road through Huangpu, Jingan and Changning districts.

The system is scheduled to go into operation in early 2017, Cai said.

If it proves a success, similar systems might be introduced in other parts of the city, like on Xujiahui Road in Xuhui District, she said.

The 16 depots in which the charging systems are to be built will be in Huangpu, Jingan, Putuo, Baoshan and Pudong New Area as well as Jinshan District and Chongming Island, the association said.

The work is expected to be completed by the end of the year. At that time, the city will have 23 depots with electric charging stations, it said.

Vehicle and factory emissions account for about 50 percent of Shanghais air pollution.
SINGAPORE, April 26 (Reuters) - Swiss bank BSI said Raj Sriram, the interim CEO of its Singapore unit, would leave the bank and Renato Cohn, member of BSI's group executive board, would become acting CEO.

"Raj will guarantee a smooth handover to Renato in the upcoming weeks and will leave the bank accordingly," BSI said in a statement received by Reuters on Tuesday. It said Sriram will take a break from his professional career.

BSI was recently sold by Brazil's Grupo BTG Pactual SA to EFG International AG. Sriram's exit follows a March announcement that the head of BSI's Asia business, Hanspeter Brunner, would retire from the bank. Sriram was then given responsibility of the Singapore business.

BSI's Singapore unit has been in the spotlight in recent months after one of its bankers came under a criminal probe related to a money laundering investigation linked to Malaysian state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). (Reporting by Anshuman Daga; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
donald trump

Donald Trump is not pleased with the new alliance between Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio to deny Trump the Republican nomination.

In a lengthy statement sent out early Monday morning, the Republican presidential frontrunner slammed his fellow candidates over their plan to divvy up the remaining nominating states to try to keep Trump from picking up the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the Republican presidential nomination.

"It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for 10 months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination," Trump said in his statement.

Labeling the pact a "horrible act of desperation," Trump attempted to undermine the two candidates' electoral legitimacy, painting both as political insiders attempting to subvert the popular vote.

Trump noted that he had won millions more votes than both Cruz and Kasich. The Ohio governor has won only his home state and has secured fewer delegates than Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who dropped out of the presidential race in March.

"Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive," Trump said. "They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are."

He continued: "When two candidates who have no path to victory get together to stop a candidate who is expanding the party by millions of voters (all of whom will drop out if I am not in the race), it is yet another example of everything that is wrong in Washington and our political system."

On Sunday, Kasich and Cruz announced the agreement to cede ground to each other in certain states to consolidate anti-Trump support.

Ted Cruz John Kasich

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In a release Sunday, Kasich's campaign said it would effectively stop campaigning in Indiana and focus on winning New Mexico and Oregon. The Cruz campaign scheduled numerous events in Indiana this week and said it would attempt to "clear the path" for Kasich to perform well in New Mexico and Oregon.

Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans," Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe said in a statement Sunday evening. "To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead."

An overwhelming victory in the New York primary last week helped Trump move closer to winning the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination on the first ballot during the Republican national convention in July. While Kasich has been openly positioning himself for a contested convention, Cruz has only recently begun publicly acknowledging that he will not be able to secure the delegates needed to clinch the nomination outright.

The New York Times reports that talks have been in the works for some time, though the Cruz campaign was initially hesitant to agree to a pact.

Trump's full statement is below:

It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for ten months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination.

Senator Cruz has done very poorly and after his New York performance, which was a total disaster, he is in free fall and as everyone has seen, he does not react well under pressure. Also, approximately 80% of the Republican Party is against him. Governor Kasich, who has only won 1 state out of 41, in other words, he is 1 for 41 and he is not even doing as well as other candidates who could have stubbornly stayed in the race like him but chose not to do so. Marco Rubio, as an example, has more delegates than Kasich and yet suspended his campaign one month ago. Others, likewise, have done much better than Kasich, who would get slaughtered by Hillary Clinton once the negative ads against him begin. 85% of Republican voters are against Kasich.

Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive. They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are. I have brought millions of voters into the Republican primary system and have received many millions of votes more than Cruz or Kasich. Additionally, I am far ahead of both candidates with delegates and would be receiving in excess of 60% of the vote except for the fact that there were so many candidates running against me.

Because of me, everyone now sees that the Republican primary system is totally rigged. When two candidates who have no path to victory get together to stop a candidate who is expanding the party by millions of voters, (all of whom will drop out if I am not in the race) it is yet another example of everything that is wrong in Washington and our political system. This horrible act of desperation, from two campaigns who have totally failed, makes me even more determined, for the good of the Republican Party and our country, to prevail!

NOW WATCH: Ted Cruz and John Kasich are officially teaming up to stop Donald Trump





More From Business Insider


A saleswoman displays a gold bracelet as she poses for pictures at a jewellery shop in Lin'an, China, in this July 29, 2015. REUTERS/China Daily/Files

By Jan Harvey

LONDON (Reuters) - Gold prices that hit a 13-month high last month are likely to fall back in the short term because of a slump in demand from key Asian consumers, GFMS analysts at Thomson Reuters said in a report on Tuesday.

Global gold demand tumbled by 24 percent year on year to 781 tonnes in the first three months of the year, its weakest quarter in seven years, as buying from leading consumers India and China plummeted, GFMS said in the first-quarter update to its Gold Survey 2016.

That coincided with a sharp rally in prices, which posted their biggest quarterly increase in nearly 30 years. Prices peaked last month at their highest since February 2015.

"The rally so far in 2016 developed too rapidly in our view, and with poor demand from Asia we expect the gold price to ease sooner rather than later, particularly if fears about the global economy continue to abate," GFMS said in the report.

Demand for the metal will improve later in the year, however, as lower prices attract Asian buyers back to the market, it said.

"This correction to comfortably below $1,200 will aid a recovery in demand from the east, and this will ensure that prices stay well above cyclical lows," it said. "Thereafter, gold prices are set to resume their bull run (to) around $1,300 an ounce towards year-end."

Indian jewellery consumption fell 56 percent to an eight-year low in the first quarter, GFMS said, negatively affected by surging prices and a jewellers' strike that persisted through March.

Chinese jewellery demand slid 28 percent year on year, its weakest start to a year since the GFMS data series began in 2000. Chinese gold demand is expected to decline in 2016 overall as jewellery fabricators remains pessimistic towards consumption volumes, GFMS said.

GLOBAL GOLD SUPPLY AND DEMAND (T)

Q1 Q4 Q1 Pct change

2015 2015 2016 y-o-y

DEMAND

Jewellery consumption 525 581 373 -29.0

Jewellery fabrication 558 560 385 -31.1

Industrial fabrication 94 87 84 -10.4

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Net official sector demand 124 136 92 -26.2

Retail investment 249 315 221 -11.0

Physical demand 1025 1097 781 -23.8

SUPPLY

Mine production 736 805 733 -0.4

Scrap 313 293 342 9.3

Net hedging supply -2 18 16 -908.8

Total 1047 1116 1091 4.2

Source: GFMS Gold Survey 2016, Q1 Update and Outlook

(Editing by David Goodman)
DUBLIN, April 26 (Reuters) - Ireland (Other OTC: IRLD - news) increased its growth forecasts for the next three years on Tuesday, predicting the economy will expand by 4.9 percent this year, but warning that heightened international uncertainty could generate significant headwinds.

The growth projections would likely see Ireland outperform the rest of the euro zone for a third straight year after its economy grew by 7.8 percent in 2015, just two years after it completed an international bailout.

"While the central scenario for economic activity in Ireland over the next eighteen months or so is a reasonably benign one, internationally the level of uncertainty is higher than at any stage since the height of the financial crisis," Ireland's Finance Ministry said in its bi-annual update. (Reporting by Padraic Halpin, editing by G Crosse)
Japans Mitsubishi Motors said Tuesday it has been using dodgy fuel-efficiency testing for 25 years and admitted it has no idea of the scale of the cheating that has plunged it into crisis.

The latest twist will likely drive speculation that its misconduct stretched to vehicles sold overseas, and send the number of affected vehicles soaring from the more than 600,000 already known about.

The embarrassing revelations have raised questions about Mitsubishi (LSE: 7035.L - news) s future  its Tokyo-listed shares have plummeted by about half since the story broke on Wednesday with billions of dollars wiped off the companys market value.

It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) has also pointed to a broader problem in the global car industry as Volkswagen (LSE: 0P6N.L - news) struggles with a huge emissions scandal and regulators probe other automakers pollution and fuel-efficiency standards.

For the domestic market, we have been using that method since 1991, Mitsubishi vice president Ryugo Nakao told a Tokyo news briefing on Tuesday.

But we dont know the number of models affected in total, he added.

The company, which said Tuesday it was appointing an outside panel of experts to investigate the problems, previously said its flawed testing dated back to 2002.

Mitsubishi officials said the automaker did not change its fuel-efficiency testing method when the Japanese government ordered an updated system years ago.

Last week, Mitsubishi also admitted unnamed employees manipulated testing figures to make some of its cars seem more fuel-efficient than they were in reality.

Tetsuro Aikawa, the companys president, has acknowledged that the crisis would damage firm finances and told Tuesdays briefing: I can only apologise.

So far, the scandal has affected vehicles sold in Japan involving four mini-car models, including cars made for rival Nissan, which discovered the faulty figures.

Japans number-two automaker has said it would halt sales of the affected mini-cars, but added that it had no immediate plans to change its business relationship with Mitsubishi.

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Mini-cars, or kei-cars, are small vehicles with 660cc gasoline engines that are hugely popular in the Japanese market, although they have found little success abroad.

- Past problems -

Japans leading Nikkei business daily said Tuesday Mitsubishi had been supplying false results on more models than previously reported.

Transport ministry authorities raided the companys office last week, about a decade after the automaker was pulled back from the brink of bankruptcy when it was found to have covered up a series of vehicle defects.

Bailouts by the Mitsubishi group companies saved the automaker, which had hidden flawed axles that could lead to wheels coming off vehicles.

It was unclear if some of the automakers top shareholders, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (Other OTC: MHVYF - news) (MHI), would come to its rescue again as it faces the likelihood of huge fines and lawsuits.

Mitsubishi Motors has come a long way since past problems, so this is very disappointing, MHI president Shunichi Miyanaga told reporters in Tokyo Monday.

We need to think about the brand image of the Mitsubishi Group, its social responsibility and accountability for performance.

Analysts have previously said that a key driver in the cheating may have been Mitsubishis corporate culture, which prizes unwavering loyalty to the company even more than many Japanese firms.

Mitsubishi reportedly plans to compensate customers in a bid to limit the fallout from the scandal.

On Friday, German carmaker Volkswagen said its emissions-rigging crisis pushed it into its first annual loss for more than 20 years, and the final total costs are still not calculable.

Also Friday, Germanys transport minister Alexander Dobrindt said a probe sparked by Volkswagens emissions-rigging scandal found irregularities at 16 car brands, including Mercedes (Xetra: 710000 - news) , Frances Renault (LSE: 0NQF.L - news) , Alfa Romeo, Chevrolet, Hyundai, Jaguar, and Nissan.

South Korean automakers Hyundai and Kia in 2014 agreed to pay $100 million to settle a US government investigation into exaggerated fuel efficiency on 2012 and 2013 car models sold in the United States.
A worker prepares to transport oil pipelines to be laid for the Pengerang Gas Pipeline Project at an area 40km (24 miles) away from the Pengerang Integrated Petroleum Complex in Pengerang, Johor, February 4, 2015. REUTERS/Edgar Su/Files

By Barani Krishnan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Crude oil prices hit 2016 highs on Tuesday on the back of a rally in the gasoline market and after an industry group reported a surprise draw in U.S. crude stockpiles.

Brent and U.S. crude's West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures finished regular trading about 3 percent higher, riding on the coattails of a gasoline rally that hit August highs after a series of refinery hikes.

In post-settlement trade, both benchmarks rose more than 4 percent after the American Petroleum Institute reported a drawdown of nearly 1.1 million barrels in U.S. crude inventories last week versus a 2.4 million-barrel build expected by analysts in a Reuters poll. [API/S] [EIA/S]

The API report is a precursor to official inventory data due on Wednesday from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

"There's a possibility we could see newer highs from here, notwithstanding the EIA data, as the market is really fired up on the idea of tightening supplies," said John Kilduff, partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital.

Brent crude futures (LCOc1) finished up $1.26 at $45.74 a barrel. In post-settlement trade, it rose as much as $2.01 to a 2016 high of $46.49.

U.S. crude futures (CLc1) settled up $1.40 at $44.04. It gained $2.19 in after-hours trade to reach a year-to-date peak of $44.83.

Crude markets got off to a rousing start in the New York session as gasoline futures and gasoline refinery margins both surged from refinery outages, Venezuela buying and a reported drop in New York inventories.

"I think the market has become more optimistic on oil products," said Scott Shelton, broker and commodities specialist with ICAP in Durham, North California. "If refining margins stay strong, crude runs will be quite high and that will make the odds of a crude stock draws increase significantly."

Oil prices are headed for a fourth straight week of gains, with Brent on track to finish April 17 percent higher for its best monthly gain in a year, despite aborted plans by major producers to agree on an output freeze at a meeting in Qatar earlier this month.

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Tuesday's oil rally was also underpinned by a weaker dollar, which fell on expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will keep interest rates at existing levels. The dollar rallied earlier this year, weighing on oil, as investors braced for higher rates. [FRX/]

"For now, the line of least price resistance remains to the upside, and we will be reassessing this view in light of tomorrow's FOMC statement," said Jim Ritterbusch of Chicago-based oil market consultancy Ritterbusch & Associates.

(Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in LONDON and Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE; Editing by David Gregorio, Marguerita Choy and Jonathan Oatis)
BHS is facing an investigation by the Pensions Regulator after it collapsed into administration - amid strong criticism of the role of former owner Sir Philip Green.

The failure of the business  with debts of more than 1.3bn including a pension fund deficit of 571m  leaves 11,000 jobs at risk and threatens the closure of the high street retailer's 164 stores.

BHS is continuing to trade, with no plans for immediate redundancies, amid reports that about 30 companies have expressed an interest in all or part of the business.

But tough questions are being asked about the background to the biggest retail failure since 2008, when Woolworths went under with the loss of almost 30,000 jobs.

Sir Philip was accused in the Commons of taking hundreds of millions of pounds from the high street chain and branded the "unacceptable face of capitalism" by Conservative MP Richard Fuller.

BHS was sold last year by Sir Philip's Arcadia group for 1 to little-known consortium Retail Acquisitions (RA). The 88-year-old department store chain went under after last-ditch talks to find a new buyer for the firm over the weekend failed, administrator Duff & Phelps said.

The collapse came after property sales failed to materialise meaning BHS was unable to meet contractual payments.

RA's owner Dominic Chappell said no one was to blame saying it was caused by a "combination of bad trading and not being able to raise enough money from the property portfolio".

He said: "In the end, we just couldn't reach an agreement with Arcadia over pensions."

Shadow business minister Angela Eagle accused Sir Philip of leaving others to plug the pensions black hole.

She (Munich: SOQ.MU - news) told MPs: "If the worst happens the liability will be covered by the pensions protection scheme and BHS staff will get only 90% of the pension they've worked so hard for and saved for. But Philip Green seems to have got much more out of BHS for himself and his family than that."

Business minister Anna Soubry said the Pensions Regulator was investigating a "number of concerns and indeed allegations".

She added: "The Pensions Regulator is looking at these various matters and the Insolvency Service, which will now oversee the administration, will take very seriously any allegations of any misconduct by any of the directors of the business (Other OTC: UBGXF - news) ."
White paper details IPR violations

From:Shanghai Daily | 2016-04-26 01:11

A TOTAL of 2,405 intellectual property infringement cases were accepted in Shanghai between 2011 and 2015, according to a white paper issued yesterday.

The majority  93 percent  of the cases were related to trademarks infringements, according to the document released by the Shanghai Peoples Procuratorate.

The number of cases accepted last year was 67 percent lower than in 2012, the white paper said.

The document cited the example of a British man was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined 500,000 yuan (US$77,000) for buying fake goods in China and selling them overseas.

His accomplice was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for one year, and fined 20,000 yuan.
TONGON, Ivory Coast (Reuters) - Power cuts in Ivory Coast have hurt output and equipment at Randgold Resources' Tongon gold mine in the first three months of this year, Chief Executive Mark Bristow said. Ivory Coast, French-speaking West Africa's largest economy, is struggling to meet a surge in demand for electricity to power its expanding postwar economy. Power shortages are a widespread problem in Africa. "The cuts and the instability of the current impact not only the production but also the equipment," Bristow told journalists late on Sunday. He added that production had been low in the first quarter but did not give details. Randgold CEO said its mine was Ivory Coast's biggest power consumer, paying 8 billion CFA francs ($14 million) per year for power. The mining sector is in talks with the government to cut power prices. Despite the cuts, Randgold forecasts the mine's output to rise this year to 290,000 oz, from 242,948 oz last year, Bristow said. The mine will also increase its own power capacity to 25 megawatts by acquiring six power generators for $4 million. Bristow said Randgold, which owns an 89-percent stake in the mine, still had high hopes that its exploration permits for Boundiali region in the north would reveal new resources. "I'm convinced we can have a mine in Boundiali but we have to continue the research to see if it can be economically profitable," he said. ($1 = 582.845) (Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly; Writing by Marine Pennetier; Editing by Makini Brice and)
Reuters

BUDAPEST (Reuters) -Hungary will include variable-rate loans to small- and medium-sized businesses in a scheme designed to cap loan rates and avoid a recession, Minister for Economic Development Marton Nagy said, adding banks could "easily" bear the cost of the measure. With inflation above 20% and still rising, and the economy slowing, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government faces the challenge of curbing price growth while trying to stave off a recession. It has already capped the price of fuel and basic foodstuffs as well as mortgage rates.
(Adds details from IPIC statement)

DUBAI/KUALA LUMPUR, April 25 (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi's state-owned International Petroleum Investment Co (IPIC) said it would make a $50.3 million interest payment to holders of notes issued by Malaysian state fund 1MDB, but only after 1MDB defaults on its payments.

A default by 1MDB will occur if the troubled Malaysian sovereign fund fails to make a payment on the 1MDB Energy (Langat) Limited bond before Monday, April 25, IPIC said in a filing to the London Stock Exchange on Monday.

IPIC guarantees the bond.

The coupon on the $1.75 billion bond was due on April 18, but terms of the bond gave a five-day period of grace for the payment, which ends Monday.

The Abu Dhabi fund said neither 1MDB Energy (Langat) Limited nor 1MDB have made the payment so far. It said the guarantee has not been called upon yet.

"As at the time of this announcement, IPIC is not aware of the Guarantee being called upon. IPIC has always honoured its obligations arising from any agreements it has entered in to and will continue to do so," it said in the statement.

It was not clear whether a default had already occurred. 1MDB did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

IPIC said a 1MDB default would not mean a cross-default by IPIC on its own debts.

While the interest on the bond was widely expected to be paid, the stand-off between the two state firms, who are locked in a wider dispute, has worried markets and left bondholders waiting on the payment that was due on Monday.

The Malaysian state investor said the interest was owed by International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) following an agreement struck on June 4, 2015.

But IPIC called off the deal earlier this month, saying 1MDB and its sole shareholder, Malaysia's Ministry of Finance, had failed to meet their obligations, including the full payment of $1.1 billion plus interest and that they were now in default.

1MDB's 4.4 percent $3bn 2023 < MY090717251=> was still trading steady in the low 90s. The 5.99 percent $1.75bn 2022 is at 99.5/100.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak heads the advisory board of 1MDB, which is at the centre of a multi-billion dollar corruption scandal. Money-laundering investigations concerning the fund are now underway in at least six countries including the United States, Switzerland and Singapore. (Reporting by Tom Arnold, Umesh Desai and Rozanna Latiff.; Writing by Praveen Menon; Editing by Andrew Torchia and Bill Tarrant.)
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza has condemned the killing of a senior army officer who was shot along with his wife and bodyguard in an attack that also wounded their child in an expanding wave of violence in the central African nation. Brigadier General Athanase Kararuza, who was a military adviser in the office of the vice president, was dropping his child off at a school in the capital Bujumbura on Monday when his car was attacked by rocket and gun fire, army spokesman Gaspard Baratuza told reporters. Kararuza had previously worked as a deputy commander of an international peace force in the Central African Republic (CAR). "He energetically fought against the coup plotters last year and exceptionally contributed in strengthening peace and security during and after elections," Nkurunziza said in a statement late on Monday. "We humbly pray that, with the help of God, perpetrators of the shameful acts are arrested and quickly punished according to the law." Tit-for-tat attacks between Nkurunziza's security forces and his opponents have escalated since April 2015 when he announced a disputed bid for a third term as president. He won re-election in July. The United Nations says more than 400 people have been killed and more than 250,000 have fled the country. Burundi and neighbouring Rwanda, which both have an ethnic Hutu majority and Tutsi minority, have been torn apart by ethnic conflict in the past. Experts fear the recent violence during the political crisis in Burundi may reopen old ethnic wounds and risk causing civil war. TALKS PLANNED As a step to defuse the crisis, former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa - heading a mediating team under the East African Community trade bloc to which Burundi belongs - said on Sunday he would convene talks among all the parties in the dispute between May 2-6 in the Tanzanian city of Arusha. Willy Nyamitwe, a spokesman in the president's office, said they were yet to receive a formal invitation to the talks. "The government of Burundi has to be consulted, we have to agree upon persons to invite, the date and the venue," he said. Charles Nditije, a member of opposition coalition CNARED, said they would attend the talks when they get an invitation. "We are ready to go to talks without preconditions and to discuss every topic. It is not for the government to determine who goes to the negotiating table while it is a party to the conflict," he said. Previous talks held last year faltered when the government refused to meet with people it said were supporting violence. On Monday the international war crimes court said it would investigate the rising violence in Burundi. Three armed groups, including one led by officers that attempted a coup in May 2015, have launched armed rebellions against Nkurunziza's government. (Writing by Elias Biryabarema and George Obulutsa, editing by Gareth Jones)
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese and Indonesian officials pledged to boost security ties, marine cooperation and infrastructure investment, state media reported on Tuesday, after a diplomatic spat over what Indonesia called a breach of its sovereignty by the Chinese coastguard. The report came after a meeting between Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi, who outranks the foreign minister, and Indonesia's chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan. Pandjaitan is visiting China this week. The two countries will strengthen defence ties including in anti-terrorism, law enforcement, curbing narcotics, as well as "marine cooperation", according to the official Xinhua news agency. Jakarta and Beijing will also work together in the fields of railway, electric power, mining, aerospace, agriculture and fisheries, Xinhua added. Indonesia attempted to detain a Chinese trawler it accused of fishing in its exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, prompting the Chinese coastguard to intervene last month. China has said its vessels were operating in "traditional fishing grounds". Indonesia is not embroiled in the rival claims with China over the South China Sea and has instead seen itself as an "honest broker" in disputes between China and the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. Pandjaitan has previously said Indonesia would maintain good relations with China but "without sacrificing Indonesia's sovereignty", and had urged Chinese ships not to enter Indonesia's maritime territory near the northern Natuna Islands, where Indonesia said the incident took place. China's increasingly assertive military posture in the South China Sea, a strategic shipping corridor that is also rich in fish and natural gas, has rattled the United States and its allies in Southeast Asia. (Reporting by Megha Rajagopalan; Editing by Alison Williams)
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark will deploy soldiers of its volunteer Home Guard at its border with Germany to ease the burden on police in coping with an influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa, justice minister Soren Pind said on Tuesday. Denmark, a member of the border-free Schengen agreement, reinstated temporary border controls at the German border on Jan. 4. A force of 140 Home Guard is expected to replace 165 police officers in June. "We can see that the police is under heavy pressure," Pind said in a statement. "So we've taken this step now...so that 165 police officers can be moved from the border and back to their districts." In 2015, the number of asylum seekers in Denmark rose to 21,000 from 14,815 in 2014. (Reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard; editing by Ralph Boulton)
Australia's detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea is unconstitutional and illegal, a court has ruled.

Canberra has been criticised internationally for sending those who try to enter Australia by boat to seek asylum to processing centres on Manus or the small Pacific island of Nauru.

It refused to change its policy and Papua New Guinea's then opposition leader, Belden Namah, challenged the arrangement in court.

Now Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court has found that detaining asylum seekers on the island was "contrary to their constitutional right of personal liberty".

"The detention of the asylum seekers on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea ... is unconstitutional and illegal," it said in a 34-page ruling.

The court ordered the Australian and Papua New Guinean governments to "take all steps necessary to cease and prevent" the continued detention of the asylum seekers and transferees on Manus.

Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said the court's decision "does not alter Australia's border protection policies - they remain unchanged".

"No one who attempts to travel to Australia illegally by boat will settle in Australia," he said in a statement.

Mr Dutton added: "Those in the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre found to be refugees are able to resettle in Papua New Guinea.

"Those found not to be refugees should return to their country of origin."

There are currently around 850 men held at the Manus detention centre.

Under a policy accepted by both sides of politics in Canberra, asylum seekers found to be genuine refugees are refused resettlement in Australia and are urged to return home or be resettled in PNG or Cambodia.

Australia argues it is saving migrants' lives in the long-term by not allowing entry and therefore preventing illegal people smuggling.

Human rights campaigners say the Manus detention centre should be shut.

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"PNG's Supreme Court has recognised that detaining people who have committed no crime is wrong," said Elaine Pearson, director of Human Rights Watch in Australia.

"For these men, their only 'mistake' was to try to seek sanctuary in Australia - that doesn't deserve years in limbo locked up in a remote island prison.

"It's time for the Manus detention centre to be closed once and for all."
dutch

Getty Images

Something odd is happening in Holland.

Government documents recently obtained by Dutch newspaper The Telegraaf reveal five prisons are closing down in the Netherlands just three years after the government announced 19 others were closing.

Crime has been going down each year since 2004, and nobody can figure out exactly why.

In the Netherlands, the incarceration rate is just 69 per 100,000 people. This stands in stark contrast to the US, where the rate is 716 per 100,000  the highest in the world. The US recidivism rate  that is, how often people who've been to prison end up going back  is 52%, according to 2013 data. The Netherlands' is closer to 40% and has been declining for over a decade.

The success of the Dutch model may lead one to the conclusion that the country's success results from measured steps toward prisoner rehabilitation. But there's little evidence suggesting prisons are rehabilitating criminals. Nor are any federal policies necessarily responsible for keeping people out of trouble.

Frank Weerman, a Dutch sociologist at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, says the decrease in heroin addiction rates through the 1990s might contribute to the low crime rates. He also credits the increased safety measures to secure stores and homes.

However, Weerman still hedges.

"I am not sure what exactly is the contribution of all this to the decline in prisoners in the Netherlands, but it probably has played a role," he says.

In reaching out to half a dozen Dutch experts, in fact, each of them forwarded me to someone else who they were certain could answer the question. The response was mostly head-scratching.

"Nobody really knows why crime rates are high or low, go up or down, but we do know that this has nothing to do with prisons!" says Arjen Boin, professor of institutions and governance at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

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To be sure, crime rates in the Netherlands are going down. That's why the prisons are closing in the first place: It's become too expensive to keep them in operation when they're only running at partial capacity.

A 2010 study of one major Dutch prison found that offering basic rights, like healthcare and personal space, kept the prison running safely and smoothly. Guards also had electronic devices that monitored prisoner activity via ankle bracelets.

Better prisoner monitoring after the fact may help explain some of the success in reducing crime.

A 2008 study, for example, found that cutting short Dutch prisoners' sentences to let them reenter the workforce with ankle monitors reduced the recidivism rate by up to half compared to traditional incarceration. Instead of wasting away in a jail cell, eating up federal dollars, criminals were given the opportunity to contribute to society.

So it's possible that the Dutch prison system might succeed, in other words, precisely because people don't spend much time locked up. It may also be the programs offered to prisoners after they've been let go that give them the real leg up on the American system. In the US, many people who fall into the cycle of crime end up absorbing that behavior as part of their identity, so they eventually lose the drive to escape the cycle altogether.

"The problem in the US is the length of sentences and the ease with which people (especially minorities) are put behind bars," Boin says. "If the US wants to learn from the Netherlands (or any other European country), it should study the way we punish criminals. No jury trials, no plea bargaining, no politically charged [district attorneys]. There you will find the solution."

NOW WATCH: A Dutch artist has created a haunting laser show using wind turbines
Peking Opera master Mei Baojiu dies at 82

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-04-26 04:33

Mei Baojiu performs in Farewell My Concubine in 2010. ZHANG WEI / FOR CHINA DAILY

Peking Opera master Mei Baojiu died in Beijing on Monday at age 82. He had been hospitalized from March 31 after falling into a coma following a bronchial spasm.

Mei Baojiu was the ninth son of Mei Lanfang (1894-1961), who is considered the most outstanding Peking Opera artist of all time and is credited with bringing Peking Opera to the United States and Europe in the 1930s.

Like his father, Mei Baojiu performed as a nan dan (a man playing a female role)  a Peking Opera practice forged at a time when women were forbidden to take to the stage.

Nan dan's heyday was in the first half of the 20th century, when Mei Lanfang, Shang Xiaoyun (1900-76), Cheng Yanqiu (1904-58) and Xun Huisheng (1900-68)  dubbed the Four Great Dan  established the four Dan styles of Mei, Shang, Cheng and Xun.

With his rendition of classic Peking Opera pieces, such as Farewell My Concubine, The Drunken Beauty and Mu Guiying in Command, Mei Baojiu was also Mei Lanfang's only child who performed as a nan dan.

Born in Shanghai in 1934, Mei Baojiu started learning Peking Opera at 10 with Wang Youqing. He also learned Kunqu Opera with Zhu Chuanming, one of the best-known performers of the art. Mei Lanfang taught his son himself when he took a break from his tour.

When he was 13, Mei Baojiu made his stage debut in Shanghai before starting to tour with his father's Mei Lanfang Peking Opera Troupe when he was 16. Mei Baojiu became head of the troupe after his father died in 1961.

Mei in Paris in 2005. CHINA NEWS SERVICE

Hu Wenge, 48, the only nan dan apprentice of Mei Baojiu, was with his master on Monday. "He told me that his grandfather had passed on his knowledge and the acting techniques of Peking Opera to Mei Lanfang, who then taught him. He hoped I could ... pass on this legacy," Hu told Beijing News. "It's a great responsibility for me."

Sun Ping, 55, a veteran Peking Opera performer, said, "Mei Baojiu's death is not just a big loss to Peking Opera but also to Chinese culture."

Sun wrote a 10-volume series, The English Translation Series of 100 Peking Opera Classics, published by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

"Mei Baojiu was very supportive of my projects. Like his father, he made great efforts to promote and pass on his knowledge of Peking Opera to the younger generation," Sun said.

In 2009, Mei Baojiu, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, put forward a proposal to introduce Peking Opera into elementary schools.

In March 2012, he submitted a proposal to introduce an animated form of Peking Opera to get more teenagers interested in the art.

During this year's CPPCC session, he said young students should learn traditional culture, such as Peking Opera and calligraphy.
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece resumed talks with its creditors in Athens on Monday over reforms it must make to conclude a drawn-out review of its bailout progress and unlock more than 5 billion euros of financial aid. The reforms under discussion include changes to pensions and taxes, plus additional measures that Athens would have to put in place for use in case it misses the budget targets set out in a multi-billion euro bailout it signed up to in August. Those 'contingent measures' would kick in only if the regular measures are not enough to generate a primary budget surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP by 2018. The measures, which are supposed to produce budget savings of 2 percent of GDP, have not yet been identified and Athens says Greek law does not allow such policies to be legislated in advance. "You cannot legislate 'x' if 'z' happens in 2018 or 2019," Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said after meeting his euro zone colleagues in Amsterdam on Friday, adding that Athens was working with its lenders on a solution. Greece needs the funds that would be unlocked by a deal to pay off IMF loans, ECB bonds maturing by July, and state arrears, but finding additional budget cuts - even 'contingent' ones - will be hard for the left-led government. It was re-elected in September on promises to mitigate the impact of austerity and has a fragile parliamentary majority. EU institutions and the International Monetary Fund differ on whether regular reforms are enough to hit the target, hence the decision to seek contingent measures. The 2 percent of GDP figure is the difference between their forecasts for the primary surplus Greece can achieve in 2018. Due to their different fiscal assumptions, the lenders also disagree on whether Athens needs debt relief now. Talks have started and are expected to continue after an agreement is reached on the contingency package. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras initially hoped for a deal before Orthodox Easter, on May 1. But chances for a deal this week are slim. If there was a deal on both the regular and the contingency package, euro zone finance ministers could meet as early as Thursday to assess the progress made. (Reporting by Renee Maltezou and Lefteris Papadimas; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
By Fiona Ortiz (Reuters) - Kansas is withdrawing from plans to resettle Syrian refugees in the state after the federal government failed to provide security information on them, Republican Governor Sam Brownback said on Tuesday. Brownback said in a statement that he repeatedly asked the administration of President Barack Obama for documentation on the screening of refugees who would be relocated from Syria to Kansas. "Because the federal government has failed to provide adequate assurances regarding refugees it is settling in Kansas, we have no option but to end our cooperation with and participation in the federal refugee resettlement program," Brownback said. Kansas has received a trickle of Syrian refugees. A family of three and two men have been resettled there in the past 15 months, a spokeswoman for Brownback said by email. Obama pledged last year that the United States would take in 10,000 people fleeing war-torn Syria, under pressure from European leaders who have been inundated with refugees. But the promise came under fire from Republicans concerned that violent militants could come into the United States posing as refugees. Despite opposition from some states, the United States remains committed to admitting the promised number of Syrian refugees in the current fiscal year, which ends in September, said a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said state governments can consult on the resettlement of refugees, but the program is administered by the federal government. "Decisions regarding the admissibility of refugees to the United States are made by the Department of Homeland Security after stringent security checks," the official said, noting that some refugee records are confidential. Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for the federal Health and Human Services Department, said that "refugee resettlement will continue in Kansas, coordinated by non-profit organizations. More than 30 governors attempted to block refugees from their states, but courts and attorneys general have said that it is up to the federal government to screen refugees and settle them. U.S. officials told a congressional panel in February that the country has tightened vetting of immigrants and refugees after attacks in California and Paris, and put on hold hundreds of applications from Syrian refugees. More than four million Syrians have fled their war-torn country, according to the United Nations, which calls it the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation. Almost 2 million Syrian refugees are in Turkey and hundreds of thousands live in camps in Jordan, while others have flooded Greece, according to the U.N. (Reporting by Fiona Ortiz in Chicago; Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; editing by Cynthia Osterman and Andrew Hay)
Road to fusion

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-04-26 09:49

Art Beijing drew more than 80,000 visitors last year, not just from the art world but also ordinary citizens.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Since its launch a decade ago, Art Beijing has strived to be both a dynamic platform for fine art and a holiday destination where families can have fun. Lin Qi reports.

The founder of one of China's long-standing and leading art fairs, Dong Mengyang compares Art Beijing to a superstore where people from different walks of life can find things they like and make discoveries that will broaden their vision of fine art.

Since the launch of Art Beijing in 2006, the Beijinger in his mid-40s, has wanted the event not to be a typical contemporary art fair that is too fancy or upscale and scares people away. Rather, he wanted it to become a dynamic platform for art and a holiday destination where families can have fun.

The fair is held annually from April 30 to May 3 at the National Agriculture Exhibition Center, coinciding with the May Day holiday.

His plan of "serving the people" has proved to be a successful strategy.

Statistics from the Beijing-based Art Market Research Center show last year's fair drew more than 80,000 visitors. There, 98 percent of the 140 galleries and art institutions that participated sold works with 60 percent of the deals done at prices ranging from 100,000 yuan ($15,385) to 200,000 yuan.

Art Beijing drew more than 80,000 visitors last year, not just from the art world but also ordinary citizens.[Photo provided to China Daily]

The original stock of tickets for last year's show sold out within the first two days, and Dong says they had to print more after more people wanted to visit the show after seeing photos of eye-catching artworks on social media services Weibo and WeChat.

"At first, I felt that the ticket price at 100 yuan was quite expensive, and I worried whether people would buy them," Dong tells China Daily.

But he says the people's enthusiasm showed that they had realized that Art Beijing was not only for professionalsartists, dealers and collectorsbut it was a place where people could see artworks that are different from those displayed in public museums.

At this year's fair, there will be more than 160 galleries and institutions from home and abroad displaying contemporary works, classic pieces, designs and public sculptures. The exhibits will be placed around the exhibition center's former Soviet-style building, its latest exposition venues and also its public spaces.

A graduate of printing art from the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts, Dong did not become a full-time artist like many of his famed teachers and schoolmates such as Xu Bing and Fang Lijun.

Art Beijing drew more than 80,000 visitors last year, not just from the art world but also ordinary citizens.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Realizing the difficulties of surviving as a professional artist in the 1990s, he landed jobs at companies that organized cultural events, including performances and art exhibitions, as he also wanted to learn about how to educate people to appreciate art.

He worked for three years with China International Gallery Exposition, a leading art fair in China, before he left it to establish Art Beijing.

About 60 galleries attended the first fair, far less than the 100 booths that had been offered by the organizing committee.

This year the fair received more than 300 applications.

Speaking of the scrutiny process, he says: "The standards have never changed. We want to present quality galleries, quality works and quality artists that can show people that China is producing good art and up-and-coming artists."

Dong Mengyang,founder,Art Beijing.

Before the onset of the global financial crisis, art fairs and exhibitions were often flooded with works by star artists.

But Dong says it is now time that the market gets diversifiedwith new talent and galleries that can offer something more experimental but not so commercially oriented, so they can cultivate new collectors.

"People's desire for art has grown along with improvement in the standard of living, and this is what is supporting Art Beijing and the Chinese art market," he says.

"But if one spends 100 million yuan on a painting only because you can resell it for 200 million, it has nothing to do with art. When you spend 100,000 yuan on a painting so that you can hang it in your living room, that is meaningful (to the market)," he adds.

Now, as the Chinese art market begins to occupy more space on the global stage, there is speculation as to how long it will be before China has its version of Art Basel, a top world art fair, with shows in Basel, New York, Miami and Hong Kong.

Dong says: "Different soil and environments lead to different things. What we need is not another Art Basel, but something that suits China, something people here can accept and digest."
BEIRUT (Reuters) - At least 60 people have been killed in three days of fighting in Syria's northern city of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as violence continues to escalate. Seven children and 10 women were among those killed in a series of air strikes by the government side and shelling attacks by insurgents since Friday, the monitoring group said. Fighting has intensified in Syria in recent weeks, all but destroying a partial ceasefire that took effect at the end of February. Last week, the main opposition walked out of formal talks in Geneva. Beginning early on Friday, government warplanes bombed a number of rebel-held parts of Aleppo, control of which is split between the warring sides. The government air raids killed 45 people, the monitoring group said. Insurgent bombardments, including the use of home-made rockets and gas canisters fired as shells, meanwhile killed 15 people on the government-held western side. The city was calmer on Monday but shells were still being fired onto government-held areas, said the British-based Observatory, which tracks the war using sources on the ground. Syria's foreign ministry said it sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council to protest what it called terrorist attacks on populated areas in Aleppo and Damascus on Saturday, the state news agency SANA reported. It said the shellings violated the cessation of hostilities agreement brokered by the United States and Russia, which took effect in western parts of the country in February. The United Nations is anxious to salvage the Geneva negotiations, which are the most serious attempt to end the five-year-old civil war. The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has vowed to continue the fragile peace talks despite the walkout by the opposition and signs that both sides are gearing up to escalate the war, which has killed more than 250,000 people. (Reporting by John Davison, editing by Larry King)
By Karolina Tagaris and Lefteris Papadimas ATHENS (Reuters) - Migrants in a Greek detention camp threw stones in clashes with police on Tuesday hours after two ferries shipped refugees back to Turkey under a disputed deal intended to stem the human influx into Europe. Plumes of smoke billowed from the Moria compound on Lesbos island that Pope Francis visited on April 16. Tensions simmering for days boiled over just after the Dutch and the Greek ministers responsible for migration toured the camp. Garbage bins were set on fire, a police spokesman said, and migrants "were throwing stones and pieces of metal at police". Earlier about 200 youths broke through a partition in the camp. They were "reacting to their detention conditions and the returns to Turkey," the spokesman said. Rights organisations have expressed misgivings about detention conditions on Moria, which holds about 3,000 people. "Events at Moria highlight the level of frustration there," said the International Rescue Committee's director for Greece, Panos Navrozidis. "Many of these refugees have been held at Moria for well over a month with inadequate services available to them and very few answers. They deserve much better." Police said eight minors were taken slightly hurt to a local hospital after scuffles between groups of Pakistanis and Afghans. Just over 340 people have so far been returned to Turkey since April 4 under the accord agreed with the European Union in March after more than 1 million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond reached the continent last year. On Tuesday, 13 people were deported from the island of Lesbos to the Turkish town of Dikili, five were ferried back from Chios to Cesme, and 31 from Kos, police said. Most were Afghans and none had requested asylum in Greece, a government official said. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and human rights groups have questioned whether the deal is legal or moral. They are also concerned about whether Turkey is a "safe" country for returnees. UNHCR does not currently have access to the Kirklareli camp returnees are sent to. The European Commission said on Tuesday it had been formally reassured by Turkey that it would grant access to asylum procedures to all asylum-seekers sent back from the bloc, a key outstanding element in the deal. Turkey applies the Geneva Convention on refugees only to Europeans, offers limited protection to Syrians and no legal guarantees for other nationalities. International law bans refoulement, or sending people back to a country where their lives or safety are at risk. REQUESTS PILING UP Under the deal, those arriving in Greece from Turkey after March 20 face being sent back if they do not apply for asylum in Greece or if their application is rejected. In return, the EU will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward Ankara with more money, early visa-free travel for its citizens and progress in negotiations to join the bloc. Turkey Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on last week that Turkey would no longer need to honour the accord if the EU failed to ease visa requirements by June. Brussels has said that Turkey fully meets only 19 out of 72 criteria for visa liberalisation. On Tuesday, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said Ankara will meet criteria for visa liberalisation by the beginning of May. In Greece, the government has said authorities would start ruling on asylum applications in late April, but requests have been piling up and it has been criticised for being too slow to process them. Giorgos Kyritsis, government spokesman for the migration crisis, said Athens was "not cutting corners (and) ... not delaying." About 8,000 refugees and migrants are currently on Greek islands, having arrived after the deal was implemented. So far under the deal, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has facilitated the resettlement of 350 Syrians from Turkey to European countries including in Austria, Denmark, and Germany, it said on Tuesday. It expects to resettle another 300 this week, mostly in France. (Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Dasha Afanasieva, Nevzat Devranoglu and Seda Sezer in Ankara and Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels; Editing by Ralph Boulton)
By Elida Moreno PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - The National Bank of Panama (Banconal) said on Monday it will consider a proposal to open a correspondent bank in New York, a move that could help the country's financial sector, which has come under close scrutiny due to the Panama Papers scandal. Rolando de Leon de Alba, general manager of Banconal, told Reuters he had received the request from Panamanian banker Moises Cohen. "The matter will be considered," he said, without giving details of when a decision could be made. Cohen told Reuters the idea was to create a Banconal branch in New York to act as correspondent for Panamanian banks. The New York Department of Financial Services will review an application from Banconal if it receives one, a spokesman said. Panama's financial sector has been under pressure to improve transparency since the massive data leak known as the Panama Papers embarrassed several world leaders this month and focussed attention on the operations of offshore financial centres. France in April threatened to put Panama on its tax haven blacklist, just two months after the isthmus nation was removed from the "grey list" of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international anti-money laundering body. Since Panama came onto the FATF list in 2014, at least 21 correspondent accounts for Panamanian banks have been cancelled, according to the Panamanian finance ministry. The Panama Papers revelations have increased risks for U.S.-based banks providing services to Panamanian counterparts needing to transact in dollars, said Alma Angotti, a director at Navigant Consulting and anti-money laundering expert. Risk factors on the minds of U.S. banks could include exposure to money laundering and corruption, Angotti said. Federal law requires U.S.-based correspondent banks to know what kind of customers the foreign bank is servicing. (Reporting by Elida Moreno; Additional reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Kim Coghill)
By Ross Adkin KATHMANDU (Reuters) - For survivors and relatives of victims of a landslide that struck with the force of half an atom bomb it is a time to grieve. For witnesses to a fatal avalanche at the Mount Everest base camp, it is time to climb again. A year after the worst earthquake in Nepal's history struck at four minutes to midday on April 25 last year, the Himalayan nation is remembering the 9,000 victims of the 7.8 magnitude quake and a second tremor 17 days later. Among those returning to Nepal are adventurers like Australian photographer Athena Zelandonii, who is trekking again to attend a ceremony of remembrance on Monday in Langtang village, obliterated by a huge rockfall that took the lives of 285 locals and foreigners. They will be remembered at the memorial event where, starting at 11:56 a.m., the name of each victim will be read out. "There was no question of not coming back," Zelandonii, 26, told Reuters in the capital Kathmandu. Part of a group of people who searched for loved ones or themselves lived through the disaster, Zelandonii survived an avalanche on the mountain slopes above Langtang, but was stranded for days by the rockfall. Still missing in the Langtang area is American Dawn Habash, a 57-year-old yoga instructor from Augusta, Maine, who was trekking in Nepal for the fourth time. Son Khaled and daughter Yasmine worked shifts to try and find out about their mother after the earthquake - all they could find out was that she was last seen walking downhill toward Langtang just before the earthquake. Both of them and Dawn's brother Randy are in Nepal for the anniversary, and hope that at least her body can be found. "Because we need that closure," said Khaled. "Sometimes I still get these lightning-bolt thoughts  what if? And thats not healthy." Of 181 foreigners who died in the earthquake or are still missing, 63 were in Langtang. Villager Kartok Lama, 30, said locals had already marked the anniversary of the quake by the Tibetan calendar that they follow. They said prayers in a hut because Langtang's two gompas, or Buddhist temples, had been destroyed. "Almost everyone from the village is back; people are rebuilding homes and hotels, and there is work going on in the fields," she told Reuters. "We want the tourists to come back." Monday's Langtang memorial will be preceded by national commemorations on Sunday - the quake anniversary by the Nepali calendar - at the site of Kathmandu's historic Dharahara Tower that collapsed. There will be a candlelit vigil that night and three days of national mourning. But the commemoration will be low-key in a country where one in seven people still live in makeshift homes, mostly tin shelters that dot the countryside by the rubble of buildings devastated by the quake. For many Nepalis it's been a lost year of political bickering over a new constitution, a blockade of the Indian border by its opponents and the failure to spend $4.1 billion in aid to rebuild, pledged by foreign donors. Tourism, which accounts for 9 percent of the economy, is down. A RETURN TO EVEREST Climbers have been slow to return. The number getting permission to scale the world's tallest peak, Mount Everest, in the spring fair-weather window is down to 289 from last year's 357. No one reached the 8,850 metre (29,035 ft) summit last year after an avalanche set off by the earthquake tore through Base Camp, killing at least 18 and abruptly ending the 2015 climbing season. The disaster, and a fatal avalanche the year before on the Khumbu Icefall approach from the Nepali side of the mountain, has led some climbing firms to reconsider whether the risks are worth fees of $50,000 or more that clients pay to summit Everest. One climber at Base Camp a year ago, Adrian Ballinger, is leading a small party to attempt Everest's northern route from Chinese Tibet. He says it is less dangerous. "It's a beautiful place, but a terrifying place," the American said of Nepal. A dry winter and global warming has made the icefall more treacherous than ever, added Ballinger, whose expedition company Alpenglow has suffered no Everest fatalities. Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, disagreed, saying that an elite team called the Icefall Doctors had already secured the route. "The condition of the icefall now is like it was before the earthquake," he said. IN THE MOUNTAIN'S SHADOW Shaheed and Anjali Kulkarni have returned to the Everest region a year after they watched from a nearby slope as the avalanche engulfed Base Camp. They helped carry the injured to a makeshift rescue centre down the mountain. The return of the mountaineering couple from Mumbai, India, is an exception. Numbers of trekkers have plummeted - and on less-travelled routes are still down by half  guides and lodge operators say. One is Sunita Rai, who is struggling to rebuild her Khumbila Lodge in Dhole, a hamlet perched on a ridge 4,200 metres (13,800 ft) above sea level that is part of the Gokyo Valley trail. "Renting this lodge was my chance to break with the past and earn a decent living," she said. Rai has rebuilt the dining room of her lodge after the earthquake, but much of the two-storey stone building is still covered in plastic sheeting. Now the 31-year-old worries how she will pay her yearly rent of $4,700 - seven times Nepal's annual per capita income - and works as a porter at times. "The trekkers haven't returned so to pay it I have to carry heavy loads up the mountain off-season," she said. (Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu; Antoni Slodkowski in Dhole, Nepal and Douglas Busvine in New Delhi; Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
By Jack Kim and Lesley Wroughton SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States warned on Tuesday it would consider "other" options, which could include new sanctions or security steps, if North Korea continued nuclear and ballistic missile testing. South Korea's Yonhap news agency earlier said North Korea appeared to be preparing a test-launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile, after what the United States described as the "fiery, catastrophic" failure of a launch attempt this month. It is widely expected to conduct a fifth nuclear test soon, perhaps ahead of a congress of the ruling Workers Party congress in early May. President Barack Obama said the United States was working on defending itself and its allies against potential threats from North Korea, which he called an "erratic" country with an "irresponsible" leader. In a CBS interview that aired on Tuesday, Obama said the United States was spending a lot more time positioning its missile development systems to set up a shield "that can at least block the relatively low-level threats," posed by North Korea. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner urged North Korea to refrain from actions that destabilize the region and said Washington would consider "other" options if Pyongyang continued nuclear and missile testing. Toner noted that past steps had included sanctions and security measures, but declined to elaborate. "I think it's pretty clear that as North Korea continues to make decisions that we believe are counterproductive, that we've got to also continually look at what our options are in terms of response," he told a daily briefing. Asked what those options were, Toner added: "We don't want to announce anything before it's been fully formed and fully vetted." North Korea tested its fourth nuclear bomb on Jan. 6 and launched a long-range rocket on Feb. 7, prompting a significant tightening in United Nations and U.S. sanctions. It has conducted several missile tests since, including what it said was a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Saturday. On April 15, North Korea failed to launch what was likely a Musudan, a missile with a range of more than 3,000 km (1,800 miles), meaning that it could, if launched successfully, hit Japan and also, theoretically, the U.S. territory of Guam. Yonhap quoted an unnamed South Korean government official as saying there were indications North Korea might try to launch another of the missiles, which is not known to have been successfully flight-tested. South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun declined to confirm the Yonhap report but said North Korea's military would likely spend some time trying to fix the problem following the failed launch. North Korea's Foreign Ministry was quoted on Tuesday as saying that the country needed a "powerful nuclear deterrence" to counter U.S. hostility and threats. It said "nuclear threat and blackmail" would only prompt it to make "drastic progress in bolstering nuclear attack capabilities," state media said. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said he could not confirm reports that North Korea appeared to be preparing for another nuclear test. However, he said Washington would continue to "ramp up the pressure," including working with China, to persuade Pyongyang to curb its nuclear activities. North Korea, whose lone ally is China, routinely threatens to destroy South Korea and its major ally, the United States. The two Koreas remain technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, rather than a peace treaty. Obama said there "was no easy solution" to the North Korean threat. He said that while the United States "could destroy North Korea with our arsenals," there would not only be humanitarian costs, but also a potential impact on South Korea. Experts see North Korea's Musudan test as part of an effort to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the mainland United States. Obama said it was important to guard against such attacks. "They are erratic enough, their leader is personally irresponsible enough that we don't want them getting close" to obtaining such weapons, he said. The April 15 failure was seen as an embarrassing blow for its leader, Kim Jong Un, who has claimed several advances in weapons technology in recent months. North Korea said its submarine-launched ballistic missile test on Saturday was a "great success" that provided "one more means for powerful nuclear attack". South Korea on Tuesday described the test, which sent a missile travelling about 30 km (18 miles), as a partial success. Washington and Seoul began talks on possible deployment of a new missile-defence system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), after the latest North Korea nuclear and rocket tests. (Reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul; Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton, Susan Heavey, Alana Wise and David Brunnstrom in Washington and Dominic Evans in London; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and James Dalgleish)
By Roberta Rampton HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - President Barack Obama announced on Monday the biggest expansion of U.S. ground troops in Syria since its civil war began, but the move was unlikely to mollify Arab allies angry over Washington's cautious approach to the conflict. The deployment of up to 250 Special Forces soldiers increases U.S. forces in Syria roughly six-fold and is aimed at helping militia fighters who have clawed back territory from Islamic State in a string of victories. Defence experts said giving more fighters on the ground access to U.S. close air support could shift the momentum in Syria. But a senior member of the Saudi royal family who asked not to be identified dismissed the decision as "window dressing." In announcing the deployment, Obama emphasized the importance of sustaining the gains made in the fight against Islamic State, although he cautioned that the U.S. forces would not be spearheading the battle. "They're not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces as they continue to drive ISIL back," he said in a speech in the German city of Hanover, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh. Obama was speaking on the last stop of a foreign tour that has taken him to Saudi Arabia and Britain. The U.S. military has led an air campaign against Islamic State since 2014 in both Iraq and Syria, but its effectiveness in Syria has been limited by a lack of allies on the ground in a country where a complex, multi-sided civil war has raged for five years. A Russian air campaign launched in Syria last year has been more effective because it is closely coordinated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is Moscow's ally but a foe of the United States. Rising tensions with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab monarchies, which have privately criticized the Obama administration's security policy towards the region, also have complicated the U.S. effort in Syria. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign praised the deployment. "These Special Forces will continue to provide critical support to local forces on the ground who ultimately must be the ones to win this fight," it said in a statement. In a speech in November, the Democratic front-runner and former secretary of state had called for a tougher approach to fighting Islamic State, arguing for more air strikes and Special Forces. Senator John McCain said the move was overdue but ultimately insufficient. "Another reluctant step down the dangerous road of gradual escalation will not undo the damage in Syria to which this administration has borne passive witness," said McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump did not mention the deployment during a campaign rally in Rhode Island. He plans to address foreign policy in a speech on Wednesday in Washington. CLOSE AIR SUPPORT Washington's main allies on the ground have been a Kurdish force known as the YPG, which wrested control of much of the Turkish-Syrian border from Islamic State. However, the alliance has been constrained because U.S. ally Turkey is deeply hostile to the YPG. "Presumably these (extra U.S. forces) are going to assist our Kurdish YPG friends to widen and deepen their offensive against IS in northeastern Syria, said Tim Ripley, defence analyst and writer for IHS Jane's Defence Weekly magazine. The deployment will include medical and logistics support personnel, officials said, and U.S. support for the American forces in Syria will be staged out of northern Iraq. Their goal will be to help screen and equip Arab fighters seeking to join up with the majority Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. U.S. officials say Arab fighters will be crucial to future operations against Islamic State in traditionally Arab parts of Syria. But Washington would still have to take a political decision to help the Kurds despite Turkish objections. Kurdish advances have largely stopped since February, with Turkey opposed to the Kurds taking more territory. The Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed coalition set up in October to unite the Kurdish YPG and some Arab allies, welcomed Obama's announcement but said it still wanted more help. "Any support they offer is positive but we hope there will be greater support," SDF spokesman Talal Silo said. "So far we have been supplied only with ammunition, and we were hoping to be supplied with military hardware." The HNC umbrella opposition, which represents groups opposed to Assad but not the Kurds, also welcomed U.S. forces helping rid Syria of the Islamic State "scourge", but said Washington should do more to fight Assad. If the Kurds are given the green light to advance with American air support, the main short-term objective could be sealing off the last stretch of the border that is not held by the Kurds or the government, west of the Euphrates river. That would deny Islamic State access to the outside world, but would infuriate Turkey, which regards the border as the main access route for other Sunni Muslim rebel groups it supports against Assad, and for aid to civilians in rebel areas. THE RACE FOR RAQQA U.S. Special Forces teams providing close air support could ultimately help the Kurds advance on Raqqa, Islamic State's main Syrian stronghold and de facto capital. With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting in the audience in Hanover, Obama also urged Europe and NATO allies to do more in the fight against Islamic State. The group controls Mosul in Iraq in addition to Raqqa and a swathe of territory in between, and has proven a potent threat abroad, claiming responsibility for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March. "Even as European countries make important contributions against ISIL, Europe, including NATO, can still do more," Obama said. European countries have mostly contributed only small numbers of aircraft to the U.S.-led mission. Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency he has found it necessary to keep troops in Afghanistan, return them to Iraq and send them to Syria, where at least 250,000 people have been killed in the civil war. In Iraq, Islamic State has been forced back since December when it lost Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar. In Syria, jihadist fighters have been pushed from the city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces. TALKS IN MELTDOWN, TRUCE IN TATTERS But Washington's lack of allies on the ground has meant its role in Syria has been circumscribed. The entry of Moscow into the conflict last year tipped the balance of power in favour of Assad against a range of rebel groups supported by Turkey, other Arab states and the West, including the United States. Washington and Moscow have sponsored a ceasefire between most of the main warring parties since February, which allowed the first peace talks involving Assad's government and many of his foes to begin last month. However, those talks appear close to collapse, with the main opposition delegation having suspended its participation last week, and the ceasefire is largely in tatters. Islamic State is excluded from the ceasefire. Obama, Merkel and the leaders of Italy, Britain and France on Monday called on the parties in the Syrian war to respect the agreement to cease hostilities and make peace talks work, the White House said in a statement after the Western leaders met. Fighting has increased in recent days near Aleppo, once Syria's largest city, now split between rebel and government zones. A monitoring group said 60 people had been killed there in three days of intense fighting, including civilians killed by rebel shelling and government air strikes. The Syrian government's negotiator at the Geneva talks said a bomb hit a hospital near a Shi'ite shrine near Damascus, killing many innocent people and proving the government's enemies were terrorists. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Andreas Rinke in Hanover, Jeff Mason, Kevin Drawbaugh, John Walcott, Phil Stewart, Emily Stephenson and Patricia Zengerle in Washington, Michelle Martin in Berlin and Peter Graff in London; Writing by Noah Barkin and Peter Graff; Editing by Peter Millership, Giles Elgood and Paul Simao)
Young and old alike turning up for Iron Maiden China shows

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-04-26 09:55

The UK heavy metal band Iron Maiden plays in Beijing and Shanghai as part of its The Book of Souls tour.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Iron Maiden debuted on the Chinese mainland on Sunday, four decades after it was founded.

Having performed the show in Beijing, the British heavy-metal band now prepares to hit Shanghai on Tuesday.

As part of their ongoing The Book of Souls global tour that started in February, the band's musicians flew into the Chinese capital on Ed Force One, a customized Boeing jumbo jet piloted by lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson.

The Sunday concert was held at LeTV Sport, a large indoor space in Beijing, where fans in the thousands turned up, including young children and the elderly. Many wore the band's T-shirts and screamed in excitement as they heard some of their favorite songs being played live for nearly two hours.

"We are very excited about this tour because we play in 35 countries across six continents, especially places like China, where we have never performed before," band guitarist Adrian Smith, 59, told China Daily in an interview ahead of the Beijing gig.

Founded in Leyton, east of London, in December 1975, the band has so far sold more than 90 million albums worldwide, with hits such as Two Minutes to Midnight and The Trooper, landing their first Grammy in 2011 for the song El Dorado.

The ongoing tour is in support of the band's 16th album, The Book of Souls, which was released in September. It is the band's first double CD album and comes five years after its previous album, The Final Frontier. The latest album also climbed to the top of the charts both in Britain and the United States.

"We didn't have much material before going to the studio. You never know where you are going once you start working," says Smith, who co-wrote Speed of Light and Death of Glory, among other songs in the latest album. "We love to work on spontaneity."

The UK heavy metal band Iron Maiden plays in Beijing and Shanghai as part of its The Book of Souls tour.[Photo provided to China Daily]

The Book of Souls was recorded in Paris in 2014 after Dickinson's recovery from cancer. For the album, the frontman also wrote the band's longest ever song, Empire of the Clouds, which runs for 18 minutes and was inspired by a plane crash in France in 1930.

Calling Iron Maiden "old-school", Smith, who grew up listening to Deep Purple and the '70s music, says the way they make music is not affected by new technology or the internet, which brings them young fans.

"Nowadays music is made by computer. The vocals are computerized, not very organic anymore. With the drum machine, computers and programed music, they are not actually playing. Then what's the magic in that? When kids come to see us, they think we are different," he says.

"When we make the sound, we try to make a statement, something substantial. Fans buy the album, read the lyrics and they don't just download and skip it soon," he adds.

Guitarist Janick Gers agrees.

"I didn't really have a goal to win a Grammy. That's just a present people give you. It's nice to get them (the awards) but I am not in the business to get a Grammy, or to become somebody in the Rock and Roll Hall (of Fame). It doesn't interest me at all. But I do want to play good music and I do believe (in) it. I am pretty sure the rest of the guys want the same thing," says Gers, 59, who joined the band in 1989.

Though the band is not nostalgic, the musicians sometimes look back in wonder about their own success.

"We started with little cars and little vans, and now here we are traveling around in this big plane with 15 crew (members) and all the equipment. It's important to remember where you come from," says Smith.
By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has recommended extending the mandate of a peacekeeping mission in the disputed territory of Western Sahara for a year, warning that the conflict there was in danger of reigniting, according to a new report. "The risk of a rupture of the ceasefire and a resumption of hostilities, with its attendant danger of escalation into full-scale war, will grow significantly in the event that MINURSO is forced to depart or finds itself unable to execute the mandate that the Security Council has set," Ban said in the report, which was seen by Reuters on Tuesday. Morocco expelled dozens of U.N. staff from the mission in Western Sahara, known as MINURSO, after Ban last month referred to the North African nation's 1975 annexation of the region from Spain as an "occupation." Morocco has said its decisions were irreversible but that it was still committed to peace. In his annual report to the U.N. Security Council, Ban urged the 15-nation body to ensure the resumption of full operations of MINURSO, which has been crippled by the staff reduction and closure of a military liaison office. He said the resulting vacuum "can be expected to be exploited by terrorist and radical elements." "I call on the Security Council to restore and support the mandated role of MINURSO, uphold peacekeeping standards and the impartiality of the United Nations, and, most importantly, avoid setting a precedent for United Nations peacekeeping operations around the world," he said. The Security Council is scheduled to vote next week on whether to renew MINURSO's mandate. The controversy over Ban's "occupation" comment, made during a visit to refugee camps for Sahrawi people, is the worst dispute between the U.N. and Morocco since 1991, when the international body brokered a ceasefire to end a war between Rabat and rebels fighting for independence in Western Sahara. MINURSO was established at that time. The Sahrawis' Polisario Front separatist movement wants a referendum on independence, but Morocco says it will only grant autonomy. The U.N. mission had nearly 500 military and civilian personnel before the recent staff reduction. Morocco also has canceled some $3 million in support for the mission. "The military component will struggle to maintain its monitoring of the ceasefire given its reliance on civilian capabilities and technical functions for sustainability," Ban said. "Other key tasks and standard peacekeeping functions, such as assessments of and reporting on local conditions that may affect the mission's operations and the political process, have been discontinued," he added. (Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Paul Simao)
By Aleksandar Vasovic and Ivana Sekularac BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia's newly re-elected Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic must take urgent action to tackle loss-making state-run companies, cut up to 35,000 government jobs and keep a tight grip on public spending, the country's fiscal watchdog said on Monday. Vucic, a former hardline nationalist who now wants to take Serbia into the European Union, won four more years in power on Sunday, securing another absolute majority in parliament. The government-appointed Fiscal Council cautioned that there must be no let-up in the austerity policies that Vucic's government followed over the last two years to reduce a big budget deficit. "There should be no slackening on ... public sector wages and pensions," council chief Pavle Petrovic told a news conference. The number of government employees must be cut, he added. "We are talking about 30,000 or 35,000 people." Vucic, who called Sunday's election two years early to seek a mandate for negotiations to join the EU, won 48 percent of the vote, the same as in 2014, according to nearly complete results from the Electoral Commission. His conservative Progressive Party will retain its absolute majority in the 250-seat parliament, although its strength will fall to 131 from 158 seats because more parties reached the five percent threshold needed to get in to parliament. Bojan Pajtic, head of the opposition Democratic Party, told Reuters his party had complained to the Election Commission over the government's tight grip on the media during the campaign and of numerous irregularities including vote-buying and non-existent voters. International observers, including the Council of Europe and the OSCE, said fundamental freedoms were respected, although there was biased media coverage, undue advantage for incumbents and a blurring of state and party activities. PAINFUL REFORMS Serbia, which has 18 percent unemployment, will have to undertake painful economic reforms both to qualify for EU membership and to meet the terms of a 1.2 billion euro ($1.35 billion) standby loan agreement with the IMF. Petrovic reminded Vucic of the government's promise not to extend protection from creditors for a group of big state-owned companies, including the RTB Bor copper mine and coal mine operator Resavica, beyond May 31. "By then, the remaining 11 companies will lose protection from creditors. That means either privatization or bankruptcy," Petrovic said. Analysts think Vucic will probably continue to govern in coalition with the Socialists, who came second with 11 percent of votes, to broaden his support. If so, the splintered opposition will be led by ultra-nationalist Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj, acquitted by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague last month of war crimes during the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia. The Radicals, who won 8 percent of the vote, oppose Vucic's pro-EU policies and instead demand an alliance with Russia. Zoran Stojiljkovic, political science professor at Belgrade University, said the elections were called to cement Vucic's power before more unpopular austerity measures. The EU was not an issue for most voters, he said. "The main issues for most are poverty, unemployment and corruption." (Additional reporting by Adrian Croft, editing by Ed Osmond)
By Ivana Sekularac and Aleksandar Vasovic BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia's pro-western Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic won a resounding endorsement in Sunday's general election for his policy of pursuing European Union membership, securing four more years in power with a parliamentary majority. But he will have to contend with a resurgent ultra-nationalist opposition which rejects integration with the EU and demands closer ties with Russia. Vucic went to the polls two years early, saying he wanted a clear mandate from Serbia's 6.7 million voters for reforms to keep EU membership talks launched in December on track for completion by 2019. Even though Vucic presided over a period of austerity, partly forced on him by the terms of a 1.2 billion euro ($1.35 billion) loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund, voters again strongly backed the 46-year-old, himself a former hardline nationalist. His conservative Progressive Party was set to win just under 50 percent of the vote, up from 48 percent two years ago, a projection by pollsters Cesid, the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy, said. "This is an historic result, getting more votes in absolute numbers and in percentages than two years ago when we started difficult reforms," Vucic said. "Today's result strongly supports our democracy, diplomatic efforts and European integration," he said. Vucic must now decide whether he will rule alone or seek to broaden his support further by continuing to govern in coalition with the Socialists, who came second with around 11.6 percent of the vote, or another party. The election marked a resurgence by the ultra-nationalist Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj, acquitted by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague last month of war crimes during the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia. The Radicals were set to win around 7.8 percent of the vote, turning them into the third-biggest party in parliament after a four-year absence from the assembly. They could turn into a thorn in Vucic's side, resisting his pro-EU policies and calling instead for an alliance with Russia. Seselj voiced disappointment with the result but said "in future debates we will show we are superior to our opponents." The pro-EU Democratic Party, which won around 6 percent of the vote, complained of scattered irregularities that favoured the Progressive Party, saying some voters had been given ballots that were already filled in. Exactly how many seats in the 250-member parliament the Progressives end up with depends on how many other parties exceed the five percent threshold needed to get into the assembly. Three parties are hovering around the five percent threshold, according to Cesid. If they all get into parliament, it would reduce the Progressives' majority. But analysts said the Progressives were still likely to get an absolute majority of between 137 and 156 seats, compared with 158 in the old parliament. The EU Commissioner in charge of relations with would-be member states, Johannes Hahn, said on Twitter he was confident Vucic "will use citizens' strong support in a responsible way and that it (the election) will strengthen Serbia's EU perspective." Milan Jovanovic, a political science lecturer at Belgrade University, said the Radicals would not be able to significantly influence the government's behaviour. "Quite to the contrary, they could make the government even more determined," he told Reuters. (Additional reporting by Adrian Croft; Editing by Mary Milliken)
By Ayla Jean Yackley and Ercan Gurses ISTANBUL/ANKARA (Reuters) - A call by Turkey's parliament speaker for a new constitution to drop references to secularism provoked opposition condemnation and a brief street protest on Tuesday, potentially undermining government efforts to forge agreement on a new charter. Speaker Ismail Kahraman said late on Monday that overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey needed a religious constitution, a proposal which contradicts the modern republic's founding principles. He later said his comments were "personal views" and that the new constitution should guarantee religious freedoms. His comments and the reaction highlight a schism in Turkish society reaching back to the 1920s when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk forged a secular republic from the ruins of an Ottoman theocracy. He banished Islam from public life, replaced Arabic with Latin script and promoted Western dress and women's rights. President Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party he founded, their roots in political Islam, have tried to restore the role of religion in public life. They have expanded religious education and allowed the head scarf, once banned from state offices, to be worn in colleges and parliament. The AKP is pushing to replace the existing constitution, which dates back to the period after a 1980 military coup. As speaker, Kahraman is overseeing efforts to draft a new text. "For one thing, the new constitution should not have secularism," Kahraman said, according to videos of his speech published by Turkish media. "It needs to discuss religion ... It should not be irreligious, this new constitution, it should be a religious constitution." On Tuesday, he sought to clarify his remarks. The notion of secularism had been used in Turkey to limit freedoms, Kahraman said in a statement, and a clearer definition "that does not bring the state and the people against each other" should be included in the new constitution. In his first public reaction to Kahraman's comments, Erdogan said on Tuesday that the speaker had been expressing his own views and the president defended Turkey's secular order. "My views are known on this ... The reality is that the state should have an equal distance from all religious faiths ... This is laicism," Erdogan said in televised comments during a visit to the Croatian capital Zagreb. FEARS Critics fear a new charter could concentrate too much power in the hands of Erdogan, who wants an executive presidency to replace the current parliamentary system. The government has promised that European standards on human rights will form the basis of the new text. Mustafa Sentop, a senior AKP member who heads a parliamentary commission on constitutional reform, said a draft text retained the precept of secularism and his party had not even discussed removing it. But Kahraman's comments drew criticism from government opponents suspicious of the ruling party's Islamist ideals. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the main opposition and secularist Republican People's Party (CHP), tweeted: "Secularism is the primary principle of social peace ... Secularism is there to ensure that everyone has religious freedom, Ismail Kahraman!" Ankara police used pepper spray to disperse about 50 demonstrators, including some CHP lawmakers, who gathered outside parliament. Dozens of people were detained. NATO member Turkey, which aspires to join the European Union, has long been touted by its Western partners as a model secular, democratic nation with a majority Muslim population. Erdogan's fervent supporters see him as a champion of the pious working class, resetting the balance of power in a country dominated by a secular elite for much of the last century. Erdogan, Turkey's most influential leader since Ataturk, won almost 52 percent of the vote in an August 2014 presidential election. The AKP holds 317 of the 550 seats in parliament and would need 330 votes to submit its draft constitution to a referendum. This means it must win over lawmakers from other parties, a campaign which Kahraman's comments could risk undermining. "These statements are going to complicate efforts towards a new constitution," a senior AKP official told Reuters. "We will have to convey very clearly to the public that such an approach is not being considered. But frankly, after yesterday's statement, it is not going to be easy." Kahraman said the current charter was already religious because it declared Islamic holidays as public holidays, even if fails to cite "Allah" once. Turkey amended its original 1924 constitution four years later to drop Islam as the official religion of the state. Historians consider that measure the basis of the modern, democratic and secular Turkish Republic. The current constitution does not promote any official religion. Turkey is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, but a fifth of its 78 million people is estimated to be Alevi, which draws from Shi'a, Sufi and Anatolian folk traditions. Turkey is also home to about 100,000 Christians and 17,000 Jews. A Pew survey from 2013 showed 12 percent of Turks want Sharia, a legal framework regulated by the tenets of Islam, to be official law. (Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Igor Ilic in Zagreb and Seda Sezer in Istanbul; Editing by Nick Tattersall, John Stonestreet and David Stamp)
Sound of hoofs

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-04-26 09:55

Cavalia is a multimedia spectacle which combines equestrian arts, dramatic visual effects, live music, dance and acrobatics.[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

Cavalia, which combines horses, riders, acrobats and musicians in a multimedia spectacle, is set to unveil in Beijing this week. Chen Nan reports.

On a recent afternoon in downtown Beijing's Chaoyang Park, Canadian choreographer Alain Gauthier finishes a preview performance of Cavalia and takes a break.

He says he has been doing shows since the age of 15, and is "approaching" 45 now.

"Cavalia is special to me. I feel grateful to have it in my life," says the artist, looking at two Spanish horses near him.

At a distance from them, a stage is covered in sand and has a giant digital screen behind it.

With dozens of horses, riders, acrobats, dancers and musicians, Gauthier is here with his multimedia spectacle, Cavalia, which will debut in Beijing on Thursday.

At the outdoor venue, a white tent known as the "big top", covering more than 2,000 square meters is pitched at a height of 35 meters. It is part of the show.

Created by one of the co-founders of Canadian company Cirque du Soleil, Normand Latourelle, Cavalia, which combines equestrian arts, dramatic visual effects, live music, dance and acrobatics, debuted in Quebec in 2003, touring the world since. It has been watched by an estimated 6 million people, according to Latourelle.

In 2003, Latourelle floated a new company, Cavalia Inc, to host the show worldwide.

Cavalia follows a storyline about the evolution of the horse and its important place in human history.

Gauthier says the process of training horses also reflects the relationship between horses and people.

Cavalia is a multimedia spectacle which combines equestrian arts, dramatic visual effects, live music, dance and acrobatics.[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

With 46 years of experience in creating and staging such live spectacles, Montreal-based Latourelle was inspired to produce Cavalia by the audiences' focus on animals during a performance. He wanted to do something different from a circus show that usually has the trainers controlling animals.

Gauthier has been the show's chief choreographer since its inception. He says when Latourelle told him about the idea, he thought it was pure "genius".

Audiences in Beijing can expect a show that is full of beautiful, romantic and poetic surprises, he says.

"Normand (Latourelle) is spontaneous and he is good at making impossible things happen," says Gauthier. "Some people doubted our idea but we were patient."

Audience response is rewarding, he adds.

When they first started, they just wanted to get people's reaction about a new show and they didn't expect it would grow into such a big event, according to Gauthier, who joined Cirque du Soleil in 1986 as a stage artist and has since worked on some 2,000 live performances with the troupe.

"What defines Cavalia is the trust between horses and human beings. We don't force the animals to do anything. We spent lots of time building trust," he says.

It took a long time to train a horse to stand still when actors were "flying" over its head, he cites as an example.

Horses were used in the military in the past and in the modern world they are largely used in competitions, he says.

With Cavalia, they wanted to show the world how respect and trust works between animals and human beings.

Copyright for the show in China has been bought by an investment company Sinocap. The show will have its first round of performances in Beijing through May.

Under an agreement between Sinocap and Cavalia Inc, the production is expected to stay in China for a while, jointly managed by the two companies, with Latourelle as the show's artistic director.

"The partnership will help Cavalia Inc expand and consolidate its position in China, a key market for touring shows," says Latourelle.

Chen Zesheng, CEO of Sinocap, first watched the show while on vacation in Singapore in 2014.

"Watching Cavalia is like entering a dream, and at the end of it you don't want to wake up," he says.

If you go

Thursday-May 22. 7:30 pm, Wednesday-Friday. 2:30 pm and 7:30 pm, Saturday. 2 pm and 7 pm, Sunday.

Chaoyang Park, 1 Chaoyang Park South Street, Chaoyang district, Beijing.

400-030-1651.
By William James MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania (Reuters) - Two highly advanced U.S. fighters flew to the Black Sea on Monday for the first time since Washington beefed up military support for NATO's eastern European allies who say they face aggression from Russia. President Barack Obama promised in 2014 to bolster the defences of NATO's eastern members, unnerved by Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea and the Kremlin's backing for pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. A U.S. KC-135 refuelling plane flew with the two F-22 Raptor fighters from Britain to Romania's Mihail Kogalniceanu air base on the Black Sea. "We're here today to demonstrate our capability to take the F-22 anywhere needed in NATO or across Europe," said Squadron commander Daniel Lehoski. "We want to ... actually fly the aircraft and train with our NATO allies," he told a travelling Reuters reporter. The F-22s are almost impossible to detect on radar and so advanced that the U.S. Congress has banned Lockheed Martin from selling them abroad. The U.S. has deployed 12 of them at a British base in eastern England. "The increased size of the 2016 deployment ... allows U.S. Forces to assert their presence more widely across the eastern frontier," said U.S. Air Force spokeswoman Major Sheryll Klinkel. "We want to be able to operate out of multiple locations. We want to be able to keep our adversary guessing on where we're going to go next." The West is seeking to strengthen the defences of its eastern flank and reassure eastern European NATO members - such as Poland, the Baltic states and Czech republic which spent decades under Soviet dominance - without provoking the Kremlin by stationing large forces permanently. But tensions are rising and Russia says the NATO build-up is stoking a dangerous situation. FACING THE BEAR Two Russian warplanes flew simulated attack passes near a U.S. guided missile destroyer in the Baltic Sea in early April, said U.S. officials, who said the vessel was on routine business near Poland. A Russian helicopter also made passes around the ship, the USS Donald Cook, taking pictures. The nearest Russian territory was about 70 nautical miles away in its enclave of Kaliningrad, which sits between Lithuania and Poland. Obama's European Reassurance Initiative includes greater U.S. participation in training and exercises, deploying U.S. military planners, and more persistent naval deployments on Russia's doorstep. The Black Sea is of particular focus as NATO is seeking to counter Russia's military build-up in Crimea, home to Russia's Black Sea fleet. Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014 after street protests forced a prom-Moscow president to flee. Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania may expand NATO maritime presence in the Black Sea as part of a broader strategy to deter Russia, NATO's deputy chief said on Friday. Russia has threatened to retaliate against any such moves and some NATO members, including Germany, are sceptical of the idea for fear of antagonizing Moscow. "We are facing NATO military build-up which is completely unjustified. NATO is deploying military assets near Russian borders," Russias ambassador to NATO, Alexander Grushko, told Reuters earlier this month. "We are in a very dangerous situation that could lead us to worsened security," Grushko said. (Reporting by William James, writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Richard Balmforth)
By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the assassination on Monday of a Burundian brigadier general who had served with the African Union and U.N. peacekeeping missions in Central African Republic. Brigadier General Athanase Kararuza and his wife and daughter were killed in the country's capital Bujumbura, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement. Kararuza was a military adviser in the office of Burundi's vice president. Dujarric said Kararuza's death followed several instances of politically motivated assassination attempts in Burundi in recent weeks, including an attack on Sunday on Martin Nivyabandi, Minister of Human Rights, Social Affairs and Gender and attacks on prominent members of the security forces. "All such acts of violence serve no purpose other than to worsen the already volatile situation in Burundi. The Secretary-General urges that a rigorous and prompt investigation of these events is undertaken," Dujarric said. "(Ban) calls on all political leaders, including those in exile, to firmly renounce the use of violence in pursuit of political agendas and commit to an inclusive and genuine dialogue," he said. Tit-for-tat attacks between President Pierre Nkurunziza's security forces and his opponents have escalated since April 2015 when he announced a disputed bid for a third term as president and won re-election in July. The U.N. says more than 400 people have been killed and over 250,000 have fled. The international war crimes court will investigate the outbreaks of violence in Burundi, prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said on Monday. More than two decades after the 1994 genocide of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus by the Hutu majority in neighboring Rwanda, the United Nations is under growing pressure to show it can halt the bloodshed in Burundi. Rwanda and Burundi have a similar ethnic makeup. The U.N. Security Council is considering options for deploying between 20 and 3,000 police to Burundi to help quell simmering political violence, though the government has signaled it would only accept 20 unarmed experts. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by David Gregorio)
Using an old medium to create new effects

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-04-26 09:55

Abstract ink artist Zheng Chongbin at work.[Photo provided to China Daily]

When accessing ink artist Zheng Chongbin's website, you see an animated front page on which ink is poured over a sheet of white paper, achieving the three-dimensional effect of Chinese ink-and-wash painting.

For four decades, the Chinese-American artist, 55, who divides his time between his native Shanghai and California, has used ink as his main object to create art. But he was not satisfied with limiting his vision to ink merely as a painting material.

His current solo exhibition, Zheng Chongbin: Structures, at a Sotheby's space in Hong Kong shows how he has gone beyond classical Chinese ink art, pushing its boundaries.

In his abstract ink paintings, Zheng uses white acrylic paint and creates an uneven surface on a piece of paper, engaging ink in a play of light and space.

Zheng was trained in a traditional way: He learned calligraphy in childhood and was imparted the discipline of classical Chinese painting in his college, China Academy of Art, in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province.

"It is a process in which one gets to understand how to control oneself and then how to let go," he says.

"When one is able to achieve that state, the inner feelings and the external embodiment of consciousness finally fuse together," he adds.

After graduation he joined the teaching staff of his alma mater and began experimenting with ink art. He first got rid of the traditionally delicate, detailed lines he had perfected for years, looking instead for an abstract presentation that emphasized how the texture and the structure of ink could vary.

Looking for more breakthroughs, Zheng then went to San Francisco Art Institute in the late 1980s, when he began studying performance art, installations and video.

The Californian sunlight and the "light and space" movement of the 1970s both influenced him greatly, enabling him to introduce the exploration of light and space in his ink creations.

A visitor looks at Chimeric Landscape, an installation by Zheng, during the ongoing Hong Kong show.[Photo provided to China Daily]

"I found a different world, a different relationship, an energy and a form of language," he says.

The transition let him connect the two cultures.

"It is just like connecting the positive and negative poles of an electrode. The power it generates can light up everything so that people can feel and see the meaning of culture."

He then returned to ink art. And he has extended the power of ink from paper to video and installations.

Chimeric Landscape, a video installation at the Hong Kong show executed over 2014-15, explores the "whole cycle of living, entropy and regeneration" of ink.

He says for him, ink is not just a material but also a living body.

"It represents energy, light, space and movement. It is time. It has so many possibilities that it makes me think about the phenomenon and our perception."

As ink art evolves, Zheng believes it requires artists to devote their lives to exploring it further. And, he says people should no longer perceive ink art in the context of historical traditions because only by doing so "will we not get lost in the mist of certain doctrines or mannerisms".

If you go

10 am-6 pm, Monday to Friday; 11 am-5 pm on Saturday; through May 3.

Sotheby's Hong Kong Gallery, 5/F One Pacific Place, 88 Queensway.

852-2822-5566.
Chinese company Ant Financial has raised whopping $4.5bn in what is said to be the largest financing round for a techno
KKR has agreed to buy into seeds provider Advanta Enterprises in a deal which values the business at about $2.25bn.
Credit union board members, most often operating as volunteers, are tasked with providing input and guidance on a wide range of issues, including the all-important area of compliance. But with so many requirements to keep track of, which ones should they focus on?

Were here to help.

Cybersecurity

Cyber threats represent significant potential operational risks to credit unions and are likely to increase in frequency as cybercriminals develop more sophisticated hacking methods. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) developed the Cybersecurity Assessment Tool to help institutions identify their risks and determine their cybersecurity maturity. Boards should familiarize themselves with the assessment tool as the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) will begin incorporating the tool into the agencys exams in the second half of 2016.

However, boards should not solely focus on prevention. Credit unions also need an action plan for recognizing and responding to cyberattacks. Credit unions must be ready to respond when a data breach occurs, which requires agility and strong crisis management preparedness on the part of communications, technology and security teams. Board members should refer to NCUA Rules and Regulations Part 748  Guidance on Response Programs for Unauthorized Access to Member Information  to educate themselves on the steps federally insured credit unions must take to respond to a data breach.

Bank Secrecy Act

The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) requires credit unions to perform due diligence in detecting fraud, money laundering and other types of financial crime. This is one of the most important regulations in the credit union movement and failure to comply can result in significant penalties. In todays NCUA exams, a BSA evaluation is all but assured.

While board members dont need to immerse themselves in the gritty details of the BSA, they are ultimately responsible for BSA compliance, so some knowledge is necessary. Board members should know the general procedures and ask questions regularly so they can play a role in ensuring their operations meet BSA standards. Volunteers are also required to complete annual BSA training, which we offer here at CUNA.

Flood Disaster Protection Act

Board members should ensure that their mortgage lending operations are compliant with the Flood Disaster Protection Act (FDPA), which mandates the purchase of flood insurance on home loans secured by property in special flood hazard areas. The NCUA and federal banking agencies amended their flood insurance regulations last year to implement several statutory changes to the FDPA. Boards should make sure that their credit unions are complying with the amended rules, particularly the flood insurance force-placement provisions and the escrow requirements (unless exempt) for flood insurance payments.

Risk Areas

Along with their compliance responsibilities, board members must also do their part to mitigate risk at their credit unions. Credit unions should have in place a risk management program with the implementing policies, procedures, and internal controls necessary to manage the risks inherent in their operations. The NCUA places emphasis on the careful consideration of internal controls, which board members help shape and refine. Internal controls include informed board members, well-trained staff, and sound policies and procedures that address all of the credit unions products and services.

In particular, indirect lending is an area where risk should be evaluated. Loan approval authority should not be delegated to a third party. It is the credit unions responsibility to have a comprehensive due diligence program and establish effective controls and monitoring systems to mitigate any uncertainty to the credit unions earnings and net worth.

These issues and many others were highlighted by NCUA speakers during sessions at CUNAs 2016 Governmental Affairs Conference. Be sure to attend next years GAC to learn more from CUNA, agency staff and other compliance experts. In the meantime, see below for more compliance resources and information from CUNA.

Where to Turn for Compliance Tools

As your national trade association, CUNA offers a series of training and information resources on compliance issues:

CUNAs e-Guide to Federal Laws and Regulations is CUNAs comprehensive online compliance manual that is available to affiliated credit unions and leagues at cuna.org/compliance;

Featuring a variety of compliance-themed selections, the Volunteer Achievement Program (VAP) is a catalog of easy-to-use self-study books, vetted by experts and written for volunteers. VAP courses are a fast, easy, efficient way to build a working knowledge of specific regulations and their requirements. To browse our full course library, visit cuna.org/vap;

By completing VAP courses, board members are that much closer to earning the Certified Credit Union Volunteer (CCUV) designation, an official volunteer certification offered exclusively through the CUNA Volunteer Certification Program. By earning the designation, volunteers demonstrate their breadth and depth of credit union knowledge, including regulatory, compliance and oversight issues. Learn more at cuna.org/vcp;

For a deeper dive into credit union compliance, sign up for the CUNA Compliance Community, an online network exclusively dedicated to compliance issues. From a single hub, users can check out CUNAs compliance blog (CompBlog), network, ask questions, share experiences and work together on strategies for the pressing regulatory challenges our movement faces. CUNAs compliance blog registration is free for member credit unions. Learn more at cuna.org.

Additionally, the NCUA website has a variety of free resources that volunteers can use to help their credit unions stay in compliance. The agency offers questionnaires, a handbook on board guidance and a fair lending assessment, and plans to upgrade its Automated Integrated Regulatory Examination System (AIRES) software program and completely overhaul its examiners guide, which hasnt been updated in many years.
NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger, Executive Vice President of Government Affairs and General Counsel Carrie Hunt and Director of Regulatory Affairs Alexander Monterrubio on Monday met with CFPB Director Richard Cordray to discuss the bureaus exemption authority, its upcoming payday lending rule, and its continued study of overdraft.

NAFCU has urged CFPB to more effectively use its exemption authority under Section 1022(b)(3)(A) of the Dodd-Frank Act to exempt credit unions from the bureaus rulemakings. In particular, NAFCU is seeking an exemption that would protect credit unions that make short-term, small-dollar loans in accordance with current state and federal laws, such as the payday alternative loan (PAL) program.
Pacific Avenue Santa Cruz: The Joff Jones and Alex Skelton Report on Freedom in the USA by Joff Jones and Alex Skelton

2 videos (11 minutes and 6 minutes) of Joff Jones and Alex Skeltons attempts to gather information from Santa Cruz Police regarding Municipal Ordinance 5.43.020, the "blue box" ordinance. Joff Jones and Alex Skelton were arrested Saturday April 16, 2016 on Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz, CA for displaying their art and protest outside of a blue box and declining to participate in the citation program. The video is a compendium of footage taken on Pacific Avenue between April 20 and April 24, with two clips from April 16th, and one from April 5, 2016.





Copy the code below to embed this movie into a web page: <video style="width: 740px;" data-aspect-ratio="1.7804154302671" preload="none" poster="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2016/04/25/relay_for_freedom-_the_joff_jones_and_alex_skelton_report_vol.1.mov_600_.png" controls><source src="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2016/04/25/relay_for_freedom-_the_joff_jones_and_alex_skelton_report_vol.1.mov_preview_.mp4" type="video/mp4" /><a class="video" href="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2016/04/25/relay_for_freedom-_the_joff_jones_and_alex_skelton_report_vol.1.mov" title="download video: relay_for_freedom-_the_jo..."><br /><span class="video-thumbnail"><img src="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2016/04/25/relay_for_freedom-_the_joff_jones_and_alex_skelton_report_vol.1.mov_600_.png" border="0" /></span><br /></a></video>

Artists Joff Jones and Alex Skelton were arrested Saturday April 16, 2016 on Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz, CA for displaying their art and protest outside of a blue box and declining to participate in the citation program. They were told by their arresting Officers that the next offense would result in misdemeanor charges, and their belongings would be taken and held for evidence until after the court date. Joff and Alex returned to Pacific Avenue to cover their further interactions with the Police in what they say is a violation of their Constitutionally protected right to express themselves in the public forum and to peaceably assemble in protest of Municipal infringements on these Rights.
Responding to the ruling, Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), said, Its not surprising  its what we expected. The hearing process is delayed, but will go on.



Photo of State Water Resources Control Board Members. From left to right: Dorene D'Adamo; Vice Chair Frances Spivy-Weber; Chair Felicia Marcus; Steven Moore, and Tam Doduc. Photo courtesy of SWRCB.

State Water Board denies dismissal request for Delta Tunnels petitionby Dan BacherThe California State Water Resources Control Board today denied the request by a coalition of environmental, fishing and family farming groups to dismiss the joint water right change petition from the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the U.S. Department of Interior for the California WaterFix Project, the new name for Governor Jerry Browns Delta Tunnels Plan.The Board granted the 60 day extension requested by DWR and the Bureau of Reclamation for their permit needed to divert water from the Sacramento River under the plan to build two massive tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.The request to dismiss the petition is denied, wrote Felicia Marcus and Tam M. Doduc, State Water Board Members and California WaterFix Co-Hearing Officers. Parties raised similar concerns about petition completeness during the pre-hearing conference, and this issue was addressed in our February 11, 2016 ruling. Rather than supplement the petition, the petitioners are expected to provide more information concerning project operations and potential effects on legal users of water during the petitioners case in chief.Responding to the ruling, Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), said, Its not surprising  its what we expected. The hearing process is delayed, but will go on.The ruling on our our request to dismiss the petition doesnt surprise me, confirmed Mike Jackson, Northern California activist and water lawyer and Secretary of the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN). I thought the ruling was incorrect, but we will take that up after the hearing in court.The groups filing the request to dismiss are the Planning and Conservation League, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Restore the Delta, California Water Impact Network, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Environmental Water Caucus, Sierra Club California, Friends of the River, and Local Agencies of the North Delta.The complete ruling letter is available here: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/bay_delta/california_waterfix/docs/20160425_cwf_ruling.pdf Marcus and Doduc also denied the motion by the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority to disqualify both of them as hearing officers and to appoint new hearing officers because we have demonstrated bias by predetermining an issue concerning the appropriate Delta flow criteria that must be included as a condition of any approval of the water right change petition for the WaterFix project pursuant to the Delta Reform Act.In summary, the facts presented by SLDMWA and SJTA are not grounds for disqualification, the hearing officers wrote. We are confident that we can evaluate the factual and legal arguments in this proceeding impartially, and reach a fair and reasonable decision based on the evidence in the record,The hearing officers also denied the Metropolitan Water District of Southern Californias Request to participate as a party in the hearing.MWDs argument that it could be significantly impacted by the outcome of this proceeding may have merit, but it does not excuse the failure to file an NOI indicating MWDs intent to participate as a party by the January 5, 2016 deadline. In addition, MWDs interests will be represented to some extent by DWR and the State Water Contractors, said Marcus and Doduc.Mike Jackson said he thought the rulings denying the SLDMWAs motion to disqualify Marcus and Doduc and denying MWDs request to participate in the proceeding were correct.In addition to ruling on requests and motions submitted recently by multiple parties regarding the Boards hearing, the letter also addresses the revised Notices of Intent to Appear received by the State Water Board on or before March 16, 2016, as required in their February 11, 2016 ruling letter.The ruling was issued at a time when the Governor Browns Delta Tunnels Plan is in a state of complete chaos. The Department of Interiors Inspector General has opened an investigation into the possible illegal use of millions of dollars by the California Department of Water Resources in preparing the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Delta Tunnels Plan. ( http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/12/feds-to-probe-misuse-of-state-funds-for-jerry-browns-delta-tunnels/
The Economic Argument Against the California Driftnet Fishery outlines how the California driftnet fishery costs more to operate than the wealth that is created by the fishery.

Olema, Calif. (April 26, 2016)  Turtle Island Restoration Networks new report 'The California Driftnet Fishery: The True Costs of a 20th Century Fishery in the 21st Century  The Economic Argument Against the California Driftnet Fishery' outlines how the California driftnet fishery costs more to operate than the wealth that is created by the fishery. The just-released-report examines new data that shows the cost of regulating this dirty fishery would substantially decrease if the California swordfish fishery used more sustainable gear instead of mile-long driftnets.

"Californias driftnet fishery not only kills more whales and dolphins than any other on the West Coast, but is a bad investment for U.S. tax payers, who shoulder the costly burden of regulating an outdated method of fishing, said Peter Fugguzzato, strategic director of Turtle Island Restoration Network (SeaTurtles.Org), which has worked for over a decade to reduce wildlife deaths in this and other fisheries.

The driftnet fishery in California consists of roughly 20 fishing vessels. The vessels set out nets the size of the Golden Gate Bridge to float overnight and indiscriminately catch whatever swims into their nets. The California driftnet fishery kills or injures approximately seven times more whales and dolphins than all other observed fisheries in California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska combined, and 13 times more than any other single observed fishery on the West Coast.

For a fishery that is responsible for less than .3 percent of Californias fishing revenue, the environmental impacts, and associated management costs are disproportionately high when compared to other California fisheries. One of those costs is that of animals killed as "bycatch" (a fisheries term for unwanted marine wildlife caught alongside target species of fish). The driftnet fishery catches whales as bycatch. These same whales that are considered without value and bycatch by the driftnet fishery are the basis for Californias whale watching industry, with revenues of $20 million a year (nearly 40 times the value of the driftnet fishery).

"The California driftnet fishery has run out of excuses. We have better technology available today that causes less harm to Californias whales, dolphins and sea turtles, and costs less to tax payers. The time to phase out driftnets is now," said Doug Karpa, report author and legal program director for Turtle Island Restoration Network.

Turtle Islands new report shows that it is time for California to phase out this costly, outdated, and ineffective method of fishing. Turtle Island has proposed a clear path forward by sponsoring an innovative new bill  Senate Bill 1114 authored by Senator Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica). This smart bill lays out a transition plan to phase out the use of these mile-long nets to a new, more environmentally and economically responsible fishing method using deep-set buoy gear.

"This economic report provides critical information on the high cost of continuing to allow outdated fishing technology to operate off our California coast, and gives lawmakers the information they need to act by supporting Senate Bill 1114," said Cassie Burdyshaw, policy director at Turtle Island Restoration Network.

SB 1114 passed on a 7-2 vote through the California Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water, and will next move to the Senate appropriations committee, and then to the senate floor for consideration, before moving to the Assembly should it be passed by the full Senate.

Read our Economic Report here: http://bit.ly/econargumentvsdriftnets

More information about the proposed legislation can be found here: http://sd26.senate.ca.gov/sites/sd26.senate.ca.gov/files/SB1114.pdf

Read our report on the California driftnet here: https://seaturtles.org/resources/driftnet-overview/?parent=sharks

Read our report on the California driftnet fisheries impacts on sea turtles here: https://seaturtles.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/sea-turtle-report-v5-web.pdf
Should someone you love die in Hillary's illegal immoral bankrupting wars



Hillary Clinton has spread poverty in the US by promoting the diversion of money from schools, hospitals, bridges, firefighting planes, etc. to endless war in 7 illegal war zones

HILLARY'S GUNSHillary Clinton wants fewer gunsin the US.... and many times moreweapons in the 7 illegal war zonesshe has promoted.HILLARY'S INTENDED CONSEQUENCESA friend wrote that Hillary Clintonhas more knowledge than othersof the laws of unintended consequences.What we who work for her defeat knowis that she is well aware of thelaw of intended consequences....that when she is part of the planto murder people in seven war zones,people die.Note: Margaret Thatcher's fellow hawkI Issues Re Human Beings1. Clinton voted for the Iraq War, an immoral fiasco which has cost countless US lives and many more lives of civilians, soldiers etc. Its only effect besides costing trillions of dollars has been to multiply anger at the US around the world and to create ISIL.2. Clinton helped prosecute 7 illegal immoral wars of the Obama administration (a man who sold out his electorate almost immediately upon entering office). The 7 are Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria and Libya. All of them have been total failures except for rightwing religious haters and war profiteers.3. Clinton is in favor of government murder, called execution, something opposed by over 3/4 of the world's countries and at least 42 states. The Obama nominee she supports, Merrick Garland, is an executioner as well.4. Clinton twice voted for the unconstitutional Patriot Act, a massive tome of several thousand pages which was prepared before the WTC bombing. The Patriot Act allows government agencies to ride roughshod over individuals.5. In at least 3 false flag operations of the CIA and government, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the World Trade Center bombing, and the alleged murder of Osama Bin Laden, Clinton has supported the official lies.6.. The three candidates most favored by the billionaire bankers and hedge fund owners of Wall St. are Hillary Clinton, John Kasich, and Ted Cruz, all of whom have connections to Goldman Sachs. (Kasich lost hundreds of millions of dollars for Ohio pension funds when he was in charge of Ohio investments as Lehman Brothers of which he was an executive went bankrupt.7. Took an active role in the coup d'etat in Honduras which iremoved the democratically elected Manuel Zelaya and replaced him with a pawn of loanshark capitalism.8. voted for NAFTA which outsourced many American jobs9. Clinton has never had the requisite lack of bias on Mideast topics to be president. She considers herself aligned with Israel against any rights of the Palestinian people. Her paid remarks to Goldman Sachs and videos of her speech to AIPAC are hard to access.10. She never supported unions when on the board of unionbusting WalMart.11. Hillary Clinton attempted to interfere with the reelection of Venezuela's socialist president Venezuelas Nicolas Maduro after the Bush and Obama administrations destabilized the country. She has helped to plunge millions in Venezuela into poverty as she helped to destroy CITGO, the Venezuelan oil company owned by the people of Venezuela, a company which gave hundreds of millions in fuel oil to the poor of New England. Joseph Kennedy was one of many who praised Venezuela's generosity.12a. In New York, Clinton and her machine disenfranchised 3 million Latino, black, young and other voters who tried to register as Democrats and failed. In this she was helped by warmonger media such as CBS which failed to warn New Yorkers of impending registration deadlines.12b. Clinton, McCain and other vote fraud in Arizona: Latinos and blacks found their voting sites closed. There were thousands waiting to vote as the corporate media called the victory for Clinton. (see links)12c, In Nevada she tried to strongarm caucus rule changes to benefit her campaign.12d She has helped to create the class of unelected and undemocratic super delegatesClinton, McCain and other vote fraud in Arizona: Latinos and blacks found their voting sites closed. There were thousands waiting to vote as the corporate media called the victory for Clinton. (see links)13 Snowden said Clinton's charge that he could have had whistleblower protection was false, given that the Obama administration of which she is a part has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other.14. Clinton supported the job outsourcing, labor and environment weakening Trans Pacific Partnership 45 times... now she says she's against it.15. Clinton has taken 4.5 million from 58 registered oil and gas lobbyists.16. Clinton supported the Keystone Pipeline until pressured by political reality into opposing it.17. In Libya, Clinton went above the heads of Pentagon generals "Libya has been destroyed. It became a haven for ISIS. The Libyan national armory was looted and hundreds of tons of weapons were transferred to jihadists in Syria. see link18. Privatizer prison profiteers are raising money for Clinton. Because we have many privatized prisons whose profit motive is enhanced each time they jail another person, the US has the highest per capita rate of prisoners in the world.See lnk19. Clinton operatives have been hacking into sites of her opponents.20. Clinton supported fracking projects around the world21. Clinton has been evasive about the unconstitutional spying of the NSA as well as about all NSA raw data going to the government of Israel.22. Some want Clinton to be the first woman president in the US. However she has helped bomb millions of women and girls, and billions of women animals.23. Hillary Clinton voted for legislation which made it easier to hide assets in offshore accounts.24. Clinton claims to have the support of African Americans, though once again more black Americans per capita than whites are dying in antisecurity immoral foreign wars.25. In April of 2016, 100 civilians in Yemen (women, men, children, their pets etc) were murdered by Saudi jet fighters dropping bombs given the polygamous sheiks by the Obama administration with the approval of Hillary Clinton.26. Clinton took 15 million dollars from Wall Street operatives.27. In his prosecution of Timothy McVeigh, Merrick Garland worked for McVeigh's execution. McVeigh after washing out of the Rangers was recruited by the CIA and given 2 million dollars cash. After he followed CIA instructions, the agency told authorities his whereabouts and stole back the 2 million dollars. Hillary Clinton and Merrick Garland share their support of government murder (the death penalty) despite the fact that over 3/4 of the world and 42 states have no executions.28. The Clinton emails have never been an issue for this poster, but it is interesting to note that the hacker who exposed the situation has been extradited to the U.S.29. Clinton's role in diverting money to war has destroyed health care for hundreds of millions of Americans who have the highest costs in the world and only middling care.30. Clinton's role in diverting money to war has destroyed the college dreams of a whole generation of Americans.31. Clinton's role in diverting money to war has destroyed bridge infrastructures in the US, harming the safety of all Americans.32. Clinton's role in diverting firefighters to war has caused fires at home.33. Clinton's role in diverting money to war has killed millions overseas, tens of thousands of American soldiers, and wounded millions more American soldiers. She has helped create American veterans shoddy health care at home.34. Clinton has helped turn American airwaves into warmonger media.35. Hillary Clinton wants the map of empire to continue. American soldiers are sitting ducks in the Mideast, The head of the Joint Chiefs wants them brought home. The map is of places in which soldiers stationed in many places around the globe, hemorrhaging money. while poverty grows at home.36. It is said that Clinton exaggerated her role in the Irish peace process.37. Hillary Clinton is lying about the US government role in the WTC bombing.38. Over half of Americans have an unfavorable view of both Clinton and Trump39. Clinton switched her position on same sex marriage. She has often. when realizing a position she took was becoming a nonmajority position. switched her position.Note: Why are there eartags painfully stapled onto calves' ears? Because they are objects, numbers, not feeling animals to those who profiteer from them. They are also branded with blazing hot irons and if male, castrated.II Issues Re Animals1. James Blair of Tyson Foods (one of the nation's biggest animal slaughter operations) and insider trading helped H Clinton turn $ 1000 into $100,000. She invested in cattle futures. Those cows had no future.2. Hillary and Bill Clinton have had a special relationship until his death in 2011 with Don Tyson, whose company has killed tens of billions of cows and pigs and trillions of chickens after a life of suffering in hideous factory farms. The Clintons have a longstanding relationship with John Tyson, Chairman of Tyson Foods.3. Hillary Clinton was for a time on the WalMart board, one of the world's biggest killers of mammals, birds, fishes.4. Hillary Clinton voted for the immoral Iraq war the prosecution of which has murdered hundreds of billions of birds and mammals, burned to death by bombs, crushed by tanks, seized and killed for food etc and which has added trillions to the US debt.5. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promoted the 7 illegal wars, bombing campaigns and drone assassinations of the Obama administration in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, with untold billions of animal deaths.6. Hillary Clinton voted for NAFTA, which gave countries with less humane legislation easier access to the US market.7. Until Bernie Sanders' critical mass of opposition, Clinton was in favor of the Keystone Pipeline which like nearly all oil pipelines destroys fragile animal habitats, kills animals with oil spills, crushes them under heavy vehicle8. Clinton has hired a Monsanto person for her campaign. Monsanto has killed mammals, birds, bees and other insects in a variety of ways9. Clinton is tied to Goldman Sachs through her son in law's hedge fund. Sanders wants her to release the text of her remarks to Goldman Sachs, which paid her $225,000 for her speaking engagement. Politico article: "She sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director." Goldman Sachs is invested in animal slaughter, environmental destruction, war profiteering etc and was a major factor in plunging Greece, Spain and other countries into massive debt through pricegouging interest. She, Ted Cruz whose wife has a 6 figure salary with Goldman Sachs, and John Kasich, who lost hundreds of billions for Ohio pension funds when he was an executive with Lehman Brothers, are the 3 candidates of the duopoly most tied to Wall Street.***************************Hillalry Clinton's role in the coup d'etat removing democractically elected Manuel ZelayaPrivatized prison profiteers raising money for ClintonManuel ZelayaNote: The Goldman Sachs CEOinvested a lot of money with Hillary'sson in law's hedge fund.James Blair of Tyson Foods helped Hillary Clinton net 100,000 dollars from one thousand. Tyson's is one of the biggest slaughter operations in the USThe documentary The Noble Lie provides more information on the CIA false flag operation, the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.Cattle futures controversyThis writer is voting for a third party candidate.What Hillary Clinton has said in her paid speechesHillary Clinton speech to AIPAC America Israel Political Action Comm.Quote about Clinton is from Julian Assange http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/julian_assange_voting_hillary_clinton_spread_terrorism_20160224 Clinton's ties to Don Tyson, one of biggest slaughterhouse operators in USFrom http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news is the following quoteDonald J Tyson, billionaire, dies at 80a vote for Hillary is a vote for Monsantopic source: thefederalistpapers.comRemaining primaries:Snowden disputes Clinton allegationClinton on TPPClinton evasive about NSAHacker who exposed Clinton emails has been extradited to USWar profiteering contractors return to Iraq in droves
IS is US...4-26-16 Mouse Report by DJ Mouse

Reading from Thierry Meyssan's 'Turkish Supremacy'...and sampling his World Crisis Radio interview...plus Ray McGovern on Erdogan's ejection of journalists and threats to opposition polititions for exposing our Turkish hand behind 2013 Sarin attacks...but not befor a trip in the WayBackMachine to 9-11-01 to see the laying of the pretext for AUMF...as the MSM repeatedly turn deaf ears and blind eyes to the 'series of explosions' after air defense stand down...both pointed out that day.,..10 points down the dial from 104.1 FM

Listen now: Copy the code below to embed this audio into a web page: <audio preload="none" src="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2016/04/26/is_is_us.mp3" controls="controls"></audio>

Loud and Clear programs anchor Brian Becker interviewed Ray on April 20 about the abrupt ouster of a Sputnik journalist from Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has clamped down so hard on the media that he has effectively forfeited any claim to democratic governance...Several leading Turkish journalists are either in prison or awaiting trial for disclosing the support that Turkish intelligence has been providing  including precursors to make chemical weapons  to armed rebels in Syria. Erdogan has also accused Turkish parliamentarian Eren Erdem of treason for disclosing documentary evidence of Turkish government complicity in this...Turkish intelligence almost certainly facilitated the (in)famous sarin attack outside Damascus on August 21, 2013. John Kerry and the neocons blamed that attack on Bashar al-Assads government and came within inches from mouse-trapping President Obama into doing shock and awe against Syria..

The Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has repeatedly brought up the option of depriving a tenth of the population of their Turkish nationality. These are far from declarations issued by a court. We have here the application of the supremacist theory of Milli Gorus, an Islamic organization, of which he was one of the directors and which he claims to have left. If such an option were to be implemented, it would open a new regional war Under international law, everyone has the right to protection from a state. However, there are around 10 million stateless persons in the world. These include 4.5 million Palestinians, 1 million Burmese Muslims, 700 000 Burkinabe refugees in Ivory Coast, 500 000 Thai and 270 000 Russians in Lithuania. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres,  Statelessness can mean a life without education, without health care or a formal job, a life without freedom of movement, without any hope or prospects for the future ...However, by espousing a supremacist ideology, Recep Tayyip Erdogan opens the door to extinguishing the nationality of any Turkish national who is not ethnically Turkish and for Turks that support them. Last July, he has deliberately relaunched the civil war, challenging his promise of equality for everyone. He has launched military operations, ordered the cease-fire in different Kurdish localities, seized Christian churches, and finally  neutralised 5 000 terrorists  (sic)....Need we recall that while a number of Kurds are well-integrated in big towns in the West of the country, the majority are relegated to poor regions and their culture is again being trampled on? Must we recall that while several Christian patriarchs are living in Turkey, the law forbids them building churches there?...Westerners who, blinded by their hatred of Syria, support the Turkish expansion and finance the war against the Syrian people, hardly reacted when on 5 April, he evoked the possibility of stripping those voting for HDP of their nationality. According to them, Mr. Erdogan, who made his case before the Bar Council, is prepared to threaten jurists that challenge his policy. Furthermore, his Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, on his trip to Europe, has assured that it only an avenue....However on 7 April, on receiving officers of the National Police, M. Erdogan was threatening this time the followers of his former ally, Fethullah Gulen, whom he accuses of being  terrorists  because they refuse to condemn the Kurdish resistance....Questioned by journalists on leaving Friday Prayer on 8 April, he clarified his thinking: .. I meant that all those that are involved in terrorist acts or who support terrorism must be sanctioned () they are not fit to be Turkish citizens. They are already in search of another citizenship or of the status of statelessness. It is unacceptable for a citizen of the Turkish Republic to betray Turkey, the Turkish homeland, or the Republic of Turkey. I do not think it right for those who betray the Turkish Republic to retain their citizenship, he responded....Thus President Erdogan envisages stripping of their nationality the 5 million voting for HDP, most of whom are from minority descent, and 1 million who are Sunnis of Hizmet, the movement of Mr. Gulen. If such a disaster had to happen, it would have an effect comparable to the Nakba and would necessarily set off a long armed conflict in the region....Thierry Meyssan
Class of 2016 Take a look at the accomplishments and aspirations of just a few of our outstanding seniors Applying what she learns in one class to another, Julia Savich 16 embodies the liberal arts.

Julia Savich 16 Pursues Her Passions Across Disciplines

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. If you could look up poster child for the liberal arts in the dictionary, Julia Savich 16 would surely be listed there.

A physics major applying what she learns in one class to her other courses, Savich is also a prize-winning poet, a hobbyist painter, a rock climber, and all-around young woman interested in just about everything. She says IWU has stimulated her natural curiosity in ways she never imagined as a first-year student.

Illinois Wesleyans small size encourages students to branch out to others outside of their majors, she said. Meeting people from different educational backgrounds sparked her own interest in various subjects. Savich said working with others from non-physics backgrounds affirms the value of collaboration.

I have worked with art, biology, history and environmental studies professors during my time here on non-class related projects, each of which were willing to take time out of their busy days to meet with me one-on-one and develop a cross-disciplinary idea, she said.

One such example is this semesters technical drawing theatre class. Ive been using what I learn in the theatre class to hand draft diagrams for my directed study physics course on renewable energy systems. This happens all the time in my classes, and I wouldnt want it any other way.

Another example of Savichs thirst for learning occurred during Professor Given Harpers May Term travel course to Costa Rica. Tropical Ecology was my favorite class because Dr. Harpers knowledge of birds and his excitement about seeing uncommon species were infectious, and we were in a perfect place to experience this. On multiple occasions, we came to a quick halt driving down the bumpy, unpaved road because Dr. Harper spotted a bird high up in the tree canopy.

Her interest in the natural world stretches back to high school; in fact, Savich entered IWU as an environmental studies major with a physics minor. At that time, I didnt know what you could do with a physics degree, and I didnt think I liked math and science that much, she recalls. As it turns out, I do like math and science that much.

So much so, Savich will enter the masters program in Engineering Design Innovation (EDI) at Northwestern University this fall. EDI is the practice of seeing a project from an initial concept through developed prototype to the finished product or service.

After talking with people from many different backgrounds, I finally found the specific label of EDI for what I had been describing as my dream job for years, she said. EDI is a new field. I wanted a program tailored toward students with technical backgrounds looking to develop the design skills necessary to become a product design engineer with a focus on making everyday products more energy efficient.

And in yet another example of the influence of diverse ideas exemplified by the liberal arts, Savich said working with Habitat through Humanity has shown her the value of hands-on problem solving and developed her desire to improve the quality of life for others.

Finding your passion takes hard work and a lot of exploration, said Savich. You want to find that thing that makes you jump out of bed at six in the morning and keeps you going until someone else tells you its time to stop. Finding that passion takes time, and the time I spent here at IWU allowed me to do that.
St. Paul, MN There is little doubt that There is little doubt that off the clock work keeps occurring as employers continue in their quest to squeeze as much work and as many hours out of their employees as possible without necessarily having to pay for it. The practice often results in a battle between employers continually trying to push the limits versus employees having drawn a line in the sand with a position that suggests, in sum, if its a requirement of the job, youre going to pay for it.

To that end, an unpaid wages claim is generally successful for the plaintiff, but not always. Thats because in some cases, an unpaid wages claim within a donning and doffing lawsuit can be hard to prove.Case in point is an Unpaid Wages lawsuit against Clear Wireless LLC that was put forward as a proposed class action by employees who sold mobile phones and related accessories from kiosks in shopping malls.According to(4/21/16) and court documents, the plaintiffs claim they were forced to work off the clock without pay - a common refrain amongst plaintiffs in such lawsuits. However, in this case, the plaintiffs were unable to point to any clear circumstance or policy that suggested the employer routinely directed its employees to work off the clock without pay.As an example, previous off-the-clock work lawsuits have pointed to software that prevented an employee from registering overtime hours, or software that automatically clocked the user out at the end of a scheduled shift in spite of the worker, in reality, having to continue working to finish a task.In the absence of such evidence, the Unpaid Wages lawsuit was based on the premise that a strict dollar limit on labor costs coupled with a long list of tasks employees were required to perform and complete amounted to a no policy policy designed to create an environment where unpaid overtime would occur, and to prevent lawsuits.In the end, the court didnt agree with the thrust of the proposed class action, noting that the existence of a labor budget and a demanding model for sales is not a de facto reflection that the employer requires, expects, demands or even implies off-the-clock work.The court did not suggest that plaintiffs claims didnt have merit. However, the court decided that the action did not have a sufficient foundation to merit class-action status and, thus, employees wishing to pursue the matter would have to do so individually on a case-by-case basis.The off-the-clock work lawsuit was brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and isCase No. 13-834, In US District Court, District of Minnesota. The motion to decertify was granted March 10.
PHOENIX, ARIZ. (April 25, 2016) (Press Release) An Arizona federal jury has awarded $27.6 million to a healthcare staffing company founder who claimed his allegation of internal medical billing fraud led to a retaliation plan with a highly unusual method to oust him.

The total awarded on April 20 to Marc A. Wichansky, former president of Zoel Holding Co. Inc. of Phoenix, includes $14.375 million in punitive damages against his former partner, David T. Zowine.Wichansky alleged that Zowine, then the company vice president and a co-owner, breached his fiduciary duty by engaging in or concealing the fraud and leading a campaign to take control of the company after Wichansky began his investigation.Zowine initiated destabilizing and abusive conduct, which included harassment, intimidation, private and public humiliation, a death threat, and physical violence, said Wichansky's lead counsel, Sean R. Callagy, founder and owner of Callagy Law, P.C., of Paramus, N.J.Zowine carried this out by enrolling others in his campaign. We are grateful the jury saw through this behavior, Callagy added.Sean Callagy suffers from a degenerative eye disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP). Notwithstanding this severe impairment, Callagy and his trial team were able to secure this jury verdict after an intense 13-day trial.Wichansky, who eventually was ousted from his ownership of Zoel, which is now called Zoe Holding Company Inc., was chairman and president. He and Zowine were 50 percent shareholders.Before the dispute broke out in early 2011, Zoel had gross revenues of over $40 million, offices in five states and hundreds of hospital clients that hired thousands of workers through the company, according to the complaint.Wichansky alleged that irregular billing practices had led to the submission of false bills to the government and government payors by a Zoel subsidiary, MGA Home Healthcare LLC.Wichansky later claimed that those practices were part of a fraud scheme by Zowine and other employees and that Zowine tried to suppress the internal investigation and oust him.At one point, according to the complaint, Zowine grabbed Wichansky by the neck, threw him across the room and punched him. At other times, Wichansky allegedly was the target of verbal and written abuse, threats and disparagement before employees.Zowine allegedly told employees that Wichansky was engaging in tax fraud, would be going to jail and had a drug problem.In addition, according to the complaint, Zowine and his co-conspirators stole and accessed Zoels server and computers and set up a secret satellite office.Wichansky sought to terminate Zowine but an Arizona state court said he lacked that authority. Later, the state court ruled that Zowine could buy Wichanskys shares. Wichansky claimed that he sustained damages as a result of this sale and that Zowine misrepresented financial information to the court.In addition to breach of officer, director and shareholder fiduciary duty, the jury also found that Wichansky was assaulted and battered by Zowine. Moreover, the jury awarded compensatory and punitive damages against several other defendants who aided and abetted Zowines breach of fiduciary duty, including punitive damages of $1.5 million against Charles Johnson, $750,000 against Patrick Shanahan and $500 against Martha Leon.Michael J. Smikun, a partner of Callagy Law, has worked closely on the case since 2011 and was a critical contributor to this verdict. Supporting attorneys from the firm were Christopher R. Miller, Samuel S. Saltman and Robert J. Solomon. The trial team was also supported by Taylor Gallo and Dally Shala.The Callagy firm has now won two $27-million-plus jury verdicts in less than two years. In 2014, a New Jersey state jury awarded more than $33 million to The Law Funder LLC, which alleged fraud by its in-house counsel and others. The total in that case, Prussin v. Sheldon, included $8 million in punitive damages.The firm, based in Paramus, N.J., and Phoenix, Ariz., concentrates on commercial and business litigation, healthcare law, and family law.
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Professional sexual misconduct (sometimes called professional exploitation, institutional rape, or sexual exploitation by a helping professional) occurs when a person in a professional relationship or position of authority with another is involved in illegal or unethical sexual activity with that person. Many professional associations have rules strictly prohibiting their members from engaging in sexual misconduct with clients; failure to follow those rules may be considered malpractice. Sexual assault, solicitation, sexual advances, or harassment by a professional against a patient or client are forms of misconduct.Helping professionals are in a position of trust with their clients or patients. Most professionals carry out their duties with the utmost professionalism, but some take advantage of that position of trust, exploiting vulnerable patients. Among the activities that could be considered professional exploitation are sexual assault and sexual harassment. Even if the client is considered a consenting participant in the activity, the power imbalance between the helping professional and the victim indicates professional exploitation.Among those considered "helping professionals" areEven if clients or patients consent to the activity, it may still be considered malpractice. This is because the patient may have been convinced the sexual activity has therapeutic benefit, or because the client felt pressured to say yes by the power imbalance. Further, the helping professional is expected to maintain professional boundaries and protect the interests of the client or patient.Some states make it illegal for certain helping professionals to engage in a sexual relationship with former patients within a certain timeframe. For example, in California therapists are prohibited from sexual contact with former patients within two years of the termination of therapy.In cases of professional exploitation, victims can file lawsuits against the accused. Lawsuits can also be filed against the accused's employers if they knowingly or negligently allowed the professional to carry out his or her professional exploitation.In 2016, a jury in Los Angeles awarded $1.5 million to a female patient who alleged she was sexually assaulted by a physical therapy assistant during a physical therapy session at a hospital. The jury found the hospital was liable for the physical therapy assistant's conduct. In a different case, a lawsuit was filed against a surgeon accused of sexually assaulting patients while the patients were under anesthesia. The accused faces 26 felony counts involving eight patients, according to(4/4/16).If you or a loved one has suffered similar damages or injuries, please click the link below and your complaint will be sent to a lawyer who may evaluate your claim at no cost or obligation.
Powerful politicians who have goofed in public since APC takes over from PDP

Since President Muhammadu Buhari's campaign in 2015 till now that there is another campaign for who to take over, several politicians have goofed in public.
Legit.ng is #1 online trusted source of the latest news in Nigeria. We are covering Nigeria news, Niger delta, world updates, and Nigerian newspaper reviews. We guide our readers to the world of politics, business, energy, sports, entertainment, fashion, lifestyle and human interest stories.
On behalf of the owners, Bilfinger Real Estate has concluded new rental contracts over a total area of almost 3,700 square meters in the Panorama 21 and Horizont III commercial properties in Stuttgart. Bilfinger Real Estate was able to secure two new tenants for the hotel and office building Panorama

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The Slovak retail market gained a very positive momentum in 2015 thanks to the improving consumer confidence and overall positive macroeconomic figures. This trend continues in 2016 with slightly improved retailers demand for further expansion.

Regions with lower density of retail stock continue...

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BMW X1 facelift for the 2020 model year has been launched today  It receives a new fascia and added interior comforts

Available in 3 variants  SportX, xLine and M Sport, the new updated version of the 2nd-gen BMW X1 sports a refreshed design, attractive features, and improved driving dynamics and comfort. Manufactured at BMW Group Plant Chennai, the BSVI diesel and petrol variants are now available at dealerships.

Rudratej Singh, President and Chief Executive Officer, BMW Group India said, The BMW X1 has established and owned the dominant position in the premium compact sports activity vehicle (SAV) segment. This is also the trend worldwide  it reflects the global need the X1 serves.

2020 BMW X1 is aimed at young high achievers looking for adventure, and an elevated drive experience. Each variant has is distinct in exterior and interior design features that add individuality to variant type. SportX highlights sporty and X elements. xLine highlights powerful character to its off-road looks. M Sport is elite and masculine. New BMW X1 is available in two BS VI petrol and two BS VI diesel variants.

2020 BMW X1 Facelift Prices

BMW X1 sDrive20i SportX (petrol) : INR 35,90,000

BMW X1 sDrive20i xLine (petrol) : INR 38,70,000

BMW X1 sDrive20d xLine (diesel) : INR 39,90,000

BMW X1 sDrive20d M Sport (diesel) : INR 42,90,000

All prices above are Ex-sh.

BMW X1 is available with a comprehensive 5 years / 60,000 kilometres service and warranty package that includes BMW Service Inclusive and BMW Repair Inclusive. This addresses Condition Based Service (CBS), maintenance work and warranty. Those booking the vehicle in March can benefit from a special price of Rs 15,000 per year for petrol variants, and Rs 20,000 per year for diesel variants. 5 year BMW 360 financial plan is available for those booking the new BMW X1 in March at monthly payments starting Rs 49,999, assured 5 year buy-back value of Rs 15,00,000 and flexible end of term options.

BMW X1 facelift sports a larger grille, new LED headlamps and revised front bumper. Rear tail lamp design but with new LED lighting. New paint options and new alloy wheels make up exterior updates.

Interior updates include a new electronic gear selector, a larger touchscreen infotainment system and seating done up in Dakota leather with contrasting stitching accents. Panorama glass-roof is standard, The 8.8 Central Display has touchscreen functionality and Wireless Apple CarPlay. Comfort suspension enhances ride quality. Engines are tuned to return 99 percent less particulate matter (PM) and 70 percent less nitrogen oxide emissions (NOx) than BSVI limits.

Three new exterior colours include Storm Bay, Misano Blue and Sunset Orange. High seating position and good road visibility improves road presence. The front imposes with a signature BMW grille and large air intakes. A welcome greeting X1 projected onto the ground from the side mirrors when entering the vehicle. Ambient Lighting is a setup pf six dimmable designs.

A micro-activated carbon particulate filter ensures cabin air freshness. Electrical seat adjustment is available for both driver (with memory function) and passenger. M Sport offers Sport Seats for driver and front passenger. Rear seat backrest has recliner function. Boot capacity can be increased from 500 litres to 1,550 litres.

The two-litre four-cylinder petrol engine (X1 sDrive20i) returns 192 hp and maximum torque of 280 Nm at 1,350  4,600 rpm, and goes from 0 -100 km/hr in 7.7 seconds. The two-litre four-cylinder diesel engine (X1 sDrive20d) returns max power output of 190 hp and a maximum torque of 400 Nm at 1,750  2,500 rpm, and goes from 0 -100 km/hr in 7.9 seconds. sDrive20i fuel efficiency is pegged at 14.82 kms/ltr, and for BMW X1 sDrive20d, its 19.62 kms/ltr.

Driving modes include ECO PRO, Comfort, Sport. The vehicles are paired with Steptronic Sport automatic transmission. Steering wheel paddle shifters and cruise control with braking function are standard features. Launch Control is focused on maximum acceleration. X1 continues its rivalry with the Mercedes-Benz GLA, Audi Q3, Volvo XC40.
A long-standing question in biology is why humans have poor regenerative ability compared to other vertebrates? While tissue injury normally causes us to produce scar tissue, why can't we regenerate an entire digit or piece of skin? A group of University of Kentucky researchers is one step closer to answering these questions after studying a unique mammal, and its ears.

The team's new findings come on the heels of UK Assistant Professor of Biology Ashley Seifert's landmark discovery in 2012 that two species of African spiny mice found in Kenya could regenerate damaged skin. The group built on this work to show that a third species of spiny mouse, Acomys cahirinus, could completely close four millimeter ear holes and regenerate the missing tissue. Their recent work examined repair of ear holes across a number of different mammals and revealed that regeneration appears to be a unique trait.

While three species of wild African spiny mice and New Zealand white rabbits were capable of regenerating ear tissue, outbred laboratory mice and inbred strains such as the MRL healer mice failed to do so and instead healed the wounds by scarring.

"First we need to understand how mammalian regeneration works in a natural setting, then comes the potential to create therapeutic treatments for humans," said Thomas Gawriluk, postdoctoral scholar and co-lead author of the study.

This new study suggests that genetic factors underlie variation in regenerative ability. Unlike many previous assumptions that there is a magic bullet for regeneration, like the presence of a specific gene, the group's comprehensive genetic analysis shows that it is a complex trait. Importantly, cellular and molecular analysis by Seifert's group has now demonstrated that spiny mice regenerate ear tissue by forming a blastema. Methodical demonstration of a blastema was important to place spiny mice in the context of regeneration in other vertebrates.

"These findings show that tissue regeneration in African spiny mice is similar to that described for other vertebrate regenerators like salamanders and zebrafish, giving us a powerful framework to understand mammalian regeneration," said Seifert.

Rigorous examination of this mammalian model is the first stage in figuring out molecular mechanisms that govern regenerative processes, which could have a significant impact on regenerative medicine for humans. Many regeneration biologists believe that inducing a blastema in humans would be a major step towards stimulating tissue regeneration.

"The regenerative healing response of the spiny mouse is truly remarkable and Dr. Seifert's new work provides clear evidence that regenerative capabilities have evolved among rodents," said Ken Muneoka, professor at Texas A&M University and a pioneer in the field of regeneration. "The spiny mouse represents one of only a handful of regeneration models in mammals that can be used to uncover basic strategies to enhance the regenerative capacity of humans."
One of the largest and most important groups of dung beetles in the world evolved from a single common ancestor and relationships among the various lineages are now known, according to new research by an entomologist from Western Kentucky University.

The study by Dr T. Keith Philips, recently published in the open access journal Zookeys, provides important insights into the evolution and diversity of these dung beetles, which make up about half of the world's dung beetle fauna.

The two tribes studied, the onthophagines and oniticellines, evolved from a single common ancestor and are found worldwide, except for Antarctica. These dung beetles make up the vast majority of species and dung beetle biomass in many ecosystems, feeding on mammal dung.

Dung beetles are well known to many people because many species are colorful and active in the daytime. Additionally, many taxa have unusual behaviors, such as making and rolling balls of dung away from a dung pile. Often thought of as nature's garbage collectors, the important ecosystem service offered by dung beetle helps recycle nutrients, reduces parasites, and can even help seeds germinate.

While the two tribes studied do not have species that create balls, they instead have evolved many other diverse behaviors. This includes species that do not feed on dung but specialize on fungi, carrion, and dead millipedes. Many species that evolved from the same common ancestor even live in close association with termites and ants, where they might be feeding on nest debris.

"This is one of the most important groups of dung beetles that finally has a hypothesis on how they evolved and diversified on earth," Philips notes. "The evolutionary scenario can now be tested and refined in the future with more data." Although relatively well known, this group still may have as many as 1,000 undiscovered species left for scientists to document.
A five-year study by an international team led from the University of Leicester has found a way of 'reversing' symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's -- using fruit flies as test subjects.

The researchers have demonstrated that genetic and pharmacological approaches can be used to lower levels of toxic metabolites in the nervous system and thereby alleviate several symptoms of neurodegeneration.

The study, led by Dr Carlo Breda who works in the laboratory of Professor Flaviano Giorgini at the University of Leicester, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. The research was performed in close collaboration with the University of Maryland School of Medicine (USA), led by Prof Robert Schwarcz, with Dr Korrapati Sathyasaikumar and Dr Francesca Notarangelo contributing. Other University of Leicester colleagues that contributed are Prof Charalambos Kyriacou, Shama Sograte Idrissi, Jasper Estanero, Gareth Moore, and Dr Edward Green.

Professor Giorgini, of the internationally acclaimed Department of Genetics at Leicester, said: "Our research is focused on better understanding the mechanisms that contribute to onset and progression of disease symptoms in neurodegenerative disorders. These are diseases in which specific populations of nerve cells within the brain die, leading to severe problems in movement and cognitive deficits in patients.

"The two most common neurodegenerative disorders worldwide are Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The treatment options for these diseases are limited, and to date no cures exist. Our hope is that by improving our knowledge of how these nerve cells become sick and die in the brain, we can help devise ways to interfere with these processes, and thereby either delay disease onset or prevent disease altogether."

The newly published research utilized the common laboratory fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster in order to explore the role of specific metabolites in the kynurenine pathway that cause loss of nerve cells in models of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases.

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Past studies by the Leicester team and others have shown some of these metabolites are toxic to nerve cells, and their levels are increased in these diseases. In the past the researchers have found that they can use genetic approaches to inhibit (or "mute") the activity of two critical enzymes in this pathway -- TDO and KMO -- which lowers levels of the toxic metabolites and reduces nerve cell loss in a fruit fly model of Huntington's disease.

In the current study they have uncovered how inhibiting these two enzymes improves "symptoms" in flies because of increased levels of a "protective" kynurenine pathway metabolite known as kynurenic acid which counteracts the effects of the toxic metabolites.

Professor Giorgini said: "There is a fine balance between levels of "good" and "bad" metabolites that occurs in the kynurenine pathway. In disease, it shifts towards the "bad," and by inhibiting TDO or KMO, we shift it back to "good." For example, we find that if we inhibit either TDO or KMO in Huntington's flies we reduce loss of neurons. In Alzheimer's or Parkinson's flies we see extension of the shortened lifespan exhibited by these flies, and we also reverse the defects they have in movement. We have even used a drug-like chemical to inhibit TDO and found that this also alleviates 'symptoms'."

Dr Breda said: "There is considerable interest in developing drugs that 'turn down' these enzymes, so our hope is that our work could lead to drugs to treat these devastating disorders in the future. Neurodegenerative disorders are devastating diseases with limited treatment options. The major risk factor for these diseases is aging -- and as our society is becoming longer lived, we are facing dramatic increases in the number of individuals suffering from these disorders."

Professor Giorgini added: "We are excited by these results, as they suggest that TDO and KMO inhibition could be a general strategy employed to improve symptoms in a myriad of neurodegenerative disorders, not just Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Indeed, five years ago we first showed that these manipulations could improve "symptoms" in Huntington's disease model flies, so our next step is to validate our work in mammalian models and ultimately to see if such drugs could be helpful to patients in clinical trials"

Aspects of this work were supported by CHDI Foundation, NIH, and Parkinson's UK.

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Commenting on the research Claire Bale, Head of Research Communications at Parkinson's UK, says, "Parkinson's is a progressive neurological brain condition, with symptoms emerging when 70% of nerve cells in the brain have been lost.

"Unfortunately current treatments are only able to tackle the symptoms of the condition, but cannot slow or stop the degeneration of these cells.

"This research which focuses on protecting brain cells, such as those lost in Parkinson's, by targeting proteins in the kynurenine pathway, could provide a turning point in the fight against this condition -- which currently has no cure.

"There is a lot of potential in harnessing the power of protective proteins to prevent brain cell loss, and Parkinson's UK is exploring this by investing in a clinical trial of GDNF, a protein which may also support the survival of brain cells.

"Research such as this continues to help open doors to further discoveries into treatments, which one day could tackle the underlying cause of the condition which affects 127,000 people in the UK."
Current medical research and literature may be overemphasizing the role that hospital volume plays in patient outcomes, according to a study by researchers at Rice University.

Hundreds of studies published in medical journals have concluded that hospitals that perform higher numbers of complex operations have lower patient-mortality rates. This volume-outcome relation has been identified for a wide variety of procedures, including open-heart surgery, hip replacement and many cancer operations. In a new study, Rice researchers noted that many previous studies used the simplest statistical models to measure the volume-outcome relationship. The problem with the simpler approach, they said, is that it can't account for other factors that may drive both high volume and better outcomes. For example, some hospitals could have talented administrators who attract more patients, and these administrators may also foster an environment leading to a higher quality of care.

"Measuring the Volume-Outcome Relation for Complex Hospital Surgery" was co-authored by Vivian Ho, the chair in health economics at Rice's Baker Institute for Public Policy and director of the institute's Center for Health and Biosciences; Woohyeon Kim, a doctoral candidate in economics; and Stephen Wolff, a doctoral candidate in mathematics. It will be published in the journal Applied Health Economics and Health Policy.

In their paper, the authors use more advanced statistical modeling to examine the volume-outcome relationship for six complex cancer operations. They analyzed patient-level hospital discharge data from three states with some of the largest populations in the U.S. (Florida, New Jersey and New York) and data from the American Hospital Association Annual Survey of Hospitals from 2000 to 2011. They show that the simplest model, a logistic regression, could give the impression that the volume-outcome relation exists for all six operations. When one applies more advanced modeling that corrects for potential biases, only four operations have a volume-outcome effect.

"If patients are in need one of these operations, they most likely will rely on advice from their physician on which hospital to get treated at," said Ho, who is also a professor of economics at Rice and a professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. "But physicians who consult the medical literature for guidance on where to send their patients may be getting incomplete information. The medical literature may be overemphasizing the role that hospital volume plays in patient outcomes."

This finding is important for patients who don't live near a large hospital, the authors said. "Traveling to a high-volume hospital could be costly and hard on both the patient and family," Ho said. "Even some patients living in a large city may prefer their nearby community hospital to a large medical center 20 or 30 miles away."

The authors conclude that the volume-outcome effect is common, but it is not as common as many medical researchers think. The effect varies by procedure, and more studies should re-evaluate the volume-outcome effect using appropriate statistical modeling, they said.
Thin films of crystalline materials called perovskites provide a promising new way of making inexpensive and efficient solar cells. Now, an international team of researchers has shown a way of flipping a chemical switch that converts one type of perovskite into another -- a type that has better thermal stability and is a better light absorber.

The study, by researchers from Brown University, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, could be one more step toward bringing perovskite solar cells to the mass market.

"We've demonstrated a new procedure for making solar cells that can be more stable at moderate temperatures than the perovskite solar cells that most people are making currently," said Nitin Padture, professor in Brown's School of Engineering, director of Brown's Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation, and the senior co-author of the new paper. "The technique is simple and has the potential to be scaled up, which overcomes a real bottleneck in perovskite research at the moment."

Perovskites have emerged in recent years as a hot topic in the solar energy world. The efficiency with which they convert sunlight into electricity rivals that of traditional silicon solar cells, but perovskites are potentially much cheaper to produce. These new solar cells can also be made partially transparent for use in windows and skylights that can produce electricity, or to boost the efficiency of silicon solar cells by using the two in tandem.

Despite the promise, perovskite technology has several hurdles to clear -- one of which deals with thermal stability. Most of the perovskite solar cells produced today are made with of a type of perovskite called methylammonium lead triiodide (MAPbI3). The problem is that MAPbI3 tends to degrade at moderate temperatures.

"Solar cells need to operate at temperatures up to 85 degrees Celsius," said Yuanyuan Zhou, a graduate student at Brown who led the new research. "MAPbI3 degrades quite easily at those temperatures."

That's not ideal for solar panels that must last for many years. As a result, there's a growing interest in solar cells that use a type of perovskite called formamidinium lead triiodide (FAPbI3) instead. Research suggests that solar cells based on FAPbI3 can be more efficient and more thermally stable than MAPbI3. However, thin films of FAPbI3 perovskites are harder to make than MAPbI3 even at laboratory scale, Padture says, let alone making them large enough for commercial applications.

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Part of the problem is that formamidinium has a different molecular shape than methylammonium. So as FAPbI3 crystals grow, they often lose the perovskite structure that is critical to absorbing light efficiently.

This latest research shows a simple way around that problem. The team started by making high-quality MAPbI3 thin films using techniques they had developed previously. They then exposed those MAPbI3 thin films to formamidine gas at 150 degrees Celsius. The material instantly converted from MAPbI3 to FAPbI3 while preserving the all-important microstructure and morphology of the original thin film.

"It's like flipping a switch," Padture said. "The gas pulls out the methylammonium from the crystal structure and stuffs in the formamidinium, and it does so without changing the morphology. We're taking advantage of a lot of experience in making excellent quality MAPbI3 thin films and simply converting them to FAPbI3 thin films while maintaining that excellent quality."

This latest research builds on the work this international team of researchers has been doing over the past year using gas-based techniques to make perovskites. The gas-based methods have the potential of improving the quality of the solar cells when scaled up to commercial proportions. The ability to switch from MAPbI3 to FAPbI3 marks another potentially useful step toward commercialization, the researchers say.

"The simplicity and the potential scalability of this method was inspired by our previous work on gas-based processing of MAPbI3 thin films, and now we can make high-efficiency FAPbI3-based perovskite solar cells that can be thermally more stable," Zhou said. "That's important for bringing perovskite solar cells to the market."

Laboratory scale perovskite solar cells made using this new method showed efficiency of around 18 percent -- not far off the 20 to 25 percent achieved by silicon solar cells.

"We plan to continue to work with the method in order to further improve the efficiency of the cells," said Kai Zhu, senior scientist at NREL and co-author of the new paper. "But this initial work demonstrates a promising new fabrication route."
Researchers developed a nanogel that enables the growth of new neurons.

Working with animal models, researchers were able to cross the electroencephalic barrier, introduce a nanogel and achieve the growth of neurons within the gel, which shows that it is possible to promote regeneration of brain tissue.

After six years of research with materials engineering and bioengineering, the first nanogel for neuron growth is at the experimental stage and could be applied as a treatment for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson in addition to its use during brain scans, like nuclear magnetic resonance or CAT scans, to improve the visibility of the brain.

Dr. Victor Castano, from the Centre of Applied Physics and Advanced Technology (CFATA) of the National University of Mexico (UNAM) explained that the nanogel is a biocompatible material, functional within the human body that when injected into the brain and through external excitation it allows the spontaneous growth of neurons.

"We wanted to improve and advance the generation of biomaterials for regenerating brain tissue. During the experiments we crossed the electroencephalic barrier that keeps the brain isolated from the body; by crossing it, we were allowed to introduce the nanogel and for it to act without harming the body. We watched how, within the gel, neurons began to grow; this wouldn't have been possible in any other way.

"Also, with the help of lase tweezers we took two light phases and stimulated the neuron as if we were pulling it and putting it to exercise, this gave us favorable results in increased neuronal tissue," explained Dr. Castano, member of the Commission of Biomedical Specialty, from the Engineering Academy of Mexico (AIM).

After laboratory modeling and use of the right materials, the work team composed of researchers from the Institute of Neurobiology at UNAM and the University of Singapore created a small gelatin made with nanoparticles.

"The ability to offer alternatives to diseases that currently don't have a cure and it being with Mexican technology has great impact and is of great value; however, we must work in a transdisciplinary way to allow scientific and technological advances," concluded the Mexican researcher.
A possible cause has been found for the disrupted communication between brain cells exhibited by Parkinson's patients. Bettina Schwab, a researcher at the University of Twente in The Netherlands, discovered that this group of patients have increased concentrations of a certain type of protein. Ms Schwab defended her doctoral dissertation on Friday 22 April.

As their disease progresses, Parkinson's patients experience more and more movement disorders. Scientists have been searching for the cause of this disease for many years, but that mystery has yet to be fully unravelled. It has been established that Parkinson's disease patients have a deficiency of dopamine in the deeper portions of their brain (the basal ganglia). As a result, nerves in this part of the brain can no longer control the signals they transmit to other nerves, to move specific parts of the body. This produces effects such as tremors, slowness of movement, muscle rigidity and balance problems. Patients take medication to compensate for the shortage of dopamine, but this is not always effective and it also produces side effects.

Motor problems

The human brain is composed of grey and white tissue masses, containing millions of nerve cells (neurons). These cells communicate with each other and with the rest of the body by releasing chemical substances known as neurotransmitters. Scientists ascribe the motor problems experienced by Parkinson's patients to the synchronization of neurons. In such cases, nerve cells all start doing the same thing. As a result, the assorted stimuli produced by the brain fail to reach other parts of the body, and motor problems develop.

Connexin 36

Ms Schwab's research has revealed a mechanism that may account for the disturbances seen in Parkinson's patients. She examined brain tissue from 12 deceased individuals, six of whom had Parkinson's disease. In the latter group, she discovered increased levels of the protein Connexin 36. This protein connects neurons together through a synapse or gap junction. That connection probably plays a part in the synchronization of nerve cells that occurs following the development of dopamine deficiency. Bettina Schwab's findings are an important contribution to an improved understanding of Parkinson's disease. They may also be of help in developing better therapies for Parkinson's patients.

Bettina Schwab obtained her Master's degree in Physics from the University of Karlsruhe. She carried out her PhD research at the department of Applied Analysis and the department of Biomedical Signals & Systems, in the University of Twente's Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EWI). A symposium on the theme of her research was held on Friday 22 April, the day of her PhD defence. It was attended by scientists from Pittsburgh, Hamburg, Maastricht and Twente.
Scientists from Tomsk Polytechnic University and Rosatom have developed a technology to reprocess irradiated reactor graphite by evaporation. This technology allows making radioactive waste disposal safer and economically feasible.

According to the polytechnicers the technology itself is not new: previously radioactive waste has been processed in plasma. However, this was low-level metal waste. The evaporation and stepwise deposition of reactor graphite is the know-how of scientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University and Rosatom professionals. They have already patented this development.

The technology implies the heating of reactor graphite in a low-temperature plasma to more than three thousand degrees Celsius (5,432 F). As a result, graphite and radionuclides contained therein sublimate. Further there is a stepwise deposition of substances in a special plasma-chemical reactor. To create such a reactor is a task for the scientists.

"Carbon and radionuclides evaporate together, they are separated one from another in steps in different parts of plasma chemical reactor due to the difference in physicochemical properties. Thus, radioactive nuclei are selectively extracted from graphite. Therefore, carbon black, which is formed by plasma-chemical reactions within the plasma chamber, is getting less active," says Evgeniy Bespala, a PhD student at the Department of Technical Physics.

Evgeniy Bespala has been addressing the issue of nuclear graphite reprocessing for more than five years. Currently, he is an R & D engineer at JSC "Pilot and Demonstration Center for Uranium-Graphite Reactors Decommissioning" (a Rosatom subsidiary, the city of Seversk, Russia). Last year, the polytechnicer became one of the winners of the UMNIK program and received financial support to perform his research. "Within the UMNIK grant I will deal with creating a facility that provides mass graphite processing without human intervention. This will allow automating the entire process and protecting people from hazardous radioactive sources. It is planned, irradiated nuclear graphite will be loading to the facility only and then carbon waste with less activity compared to the original will be removed," says the polytechnicer.

Tomsk scientists and Seversk colleagues already are testing their technology. The Department of technical physics at Tomsk Polytechnic University conducts required experiments for graphite evaporation in low-temperature plasma. All radiation research, in turn, is held in Seversk, as there is an opportunity to follow all the rules of radiation safety. For the present, the technology has been tested on mixtures of carbon stable isotopes. Next year, the scientists plan to test their facility on irradiated reactor graphite.
A study led by researchers at Lund University in Sweden suggests that ravens can be as clever as chimpanzees, despite having much smaller brains, indicating that rather than the size of the brain, the neuronal density and the structure of the birds' brains play an important role in terms of their intelligence.

"Absolute brain size is not the whole story. We found that corvid birds performed as well as great apes, despite having much smaller brains," says Can Kabadayi, doctoral student in Cognitive Science.

Intelligence is difficult to test, but one aspect of being clever is inhibitory control, and the ability to override animal impulses and choose a more rational behaviour. Researchers at Duke University, USA, conducted a large-scale study in 2014, where they compared the inhibitory control of 36 different animal species, mainly primates and apes. The team used the established cylinder test, where food is placed in a transparent tube with openings on both sides. The challenge for the animal is to retrieve the food using the side openings, instead of trying to reach for it directly. To succeed, the animal has to show constraint and choose a more efficient strategy for obtaining the food.

The large-scale study concluded that great apes performed the best, and that absolute brain size appeared to be key when it comes to intelligence. However, they didn't conduct the cylinder test on corvid birds.

Can Kabadayi, together with researchers from the University of Oxford, UK and the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany, therefore had ravens, jackdaws and New Caledonian crows perform the same cylinder test to better understand their inhibitory control.

The team first trained the birds to obtain a treat in an opaque tube with a hole at each end. Then they repeated the test with a transparent tube. The animal impulse would naturally be to go straight for the tube as they saw the food. However, all of the ravens chose to enter the tube from the ends in every try. The performance of the jackdaws and the crows came very close to 100%, comparable to a performance by bonobos and gorillas.

"This shows that bird brains are quite efficient, despite having a smaller absolute brain size. As indicated by the study, there might be other factors apart from absolute brain size that are important for intelligence, such as neuronal density," says Can Kabadayi, and continues:

"There is still so much we need to understand and learn about the relationship between intelligence and brain size, as well as the structure of a bird's brain, but this study clearly shows that bird brains are not simply birdbrains after all!"
Last summer, the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone" spanned more than 6,400 square miles, more than three times the size it should have been, according to the Gulf Hypoxia Task Force. Nitrogen runoff from farms along the Mississippi River winds up in the Gulf, feeding algae but depriving other marine life of oxygen when the algae decomposes. The 12 states that border the Mississippi have been mandated to develop nutrient reduction strategies, but one especially effective strategy has not been adopted widely: bioreactors.

Bioreactors are passive filtration systems that capitalize on a bacterial process known as denitrification to remove from 25 to 45 percent of the nitrate in water draining from farm fields. Research on and installation of bioreactors has accelerated in the past decade, but University of Illinois assistant professor of water quality Laura Christianson and her colleagues are urging a move past proof-of-concept toward large-scale deployment.

"Bioreactors are one of the most effective edge-of-field practices, but until now, they haven't been rolled out on a large scale," Christianson says.

Designs vary, but the typical arrangement for a 40- to 80-acre field is a large (100 x 20 foot) pit situated just ahead of where drainage pipes flow into ditches or streams. The pit is filled with carbon-rich organic material: usually wood chips, but sometimes corn cobs, biochar, or other matter. Denitrifying bacteria make their homes in the organic material and utilize its carbon as an energy source to convert nitrate in the water to the harmless nitrogen gas that makes up 78 percent of our atmosphere.

A benefit of bioreactors as a nitrogen management strategy is their cost-benefit ratio. Bioreactors can cost approximately $10,000 to install, but cost-sharing is available through the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service for approximately half of that. Importantly, bioreactors typically operate for 10 years before wood chips need to be replaced.

"It's a big up-front cost compared to a cover crop, but then you're 'one and done' for 10 years," Christianson notes.

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Christianson put together a special issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality focusing on bioreactors. Fifteen articles in the issue summarize the state-of-the-art of bioreactor technology, confirming that bioreactors could be an effective part of an integrated approach to nitrate management.

A large component to bioreactor efficiency is design.

According to Christianson and other experts contributing to the special issue, flow rates can significantly affect the efficiency of bioreactors. During low-flow periods, water can be held in bioreactors for too long, setting up conditions for different bacteria that create noxious hydrogen sulfide gas. Likewise, in high-flow periods, water may move through too quickly for efficient nitrogen removal.

"Tile drainage systems never flow at a consistent rate," Christianson explains. "Bioreactors have to be designed strategically to optimize retention time and maximize nitrate removal without undesirable byproducts."

Temperature and seasonal changes also affect how well bioreactors work.

"The critical period for nitrate loss is early spring, before plants are growing and taking up nitrogen," Christianson says. "Snowmelt puts a significant amount of water through a bioreactor, depending on where you are. And because snowmelt and early spring drainage water is cooler, the bacteria aren't as efficient."

Christianson and her colleagues are calling for more field-scale research to optimize design for the set of conditions unique to each field.

"That's where my interest is for research: coming up with better designs. But on the other side of that coin, we don't want to become so advanced in the design that it becomes really complicated. There's a beauty in the simplicity of a trench full of woodchips," Christianson says.

The article introducing the special issue, "Moving denitrifying bioreactors beyond proof of concept: Introduction to the special section," appears in the Journal of Environmental Quality along with 14 additional articles on the topic.
Of the hundreds of moons in our solar system, Titan is the only one with a dense atmosphere and large liquid reservoirs on its surface, making it in some ways more like a terrestrial planet.

Both Earth and Titan have nitrogen-dominated atmospheres -- over 95 percent nitrogen in Titan's case. However, unlike Earth, Titan has very little oxygen; the rest of the atmosphere is mostly methane and trace amounts of other gases, including ethane. And at the frigid temperatures found at Saturn's great distance from the sun, the methane and ethane can exist on the surface in liquid form.

For this reason, scientists had long speculated about the possible existence of hydrocarbon lakes and seas on Titan, and data from the NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens mission does not disappoint. Since arriving in the Saturn system in 2004, the Cassini spacecraft has revealed that more than 620,000 square miles (1.6 million square kilometers) of Titan's surface -- almost two percent of the total -- are covered in liquid.

There are three large seas, all located close to the moon's north pole, surrounded by numerous of smaller lakes in the northern hemisphere. Just one large lake has been found in the southern hemisphere.

The exact composition of these liquid reservoirs remained elusive until 2014, when the Cassini radar instrument was first used to show that Ligeia Mare, the second largest sea on Titan and similar in size to Lake Huron and Lake Michigan combined, is methane-rich. A new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, which used the radar instrument in a different mode, independently confirms this result.

"Before Cassini, we expected to find that Ligeia Mare would be mostly made up of ethane, which is produced in abundance in the atmosphere when sunlight breaks methane molecules apart. Instead, this sea is predominantly made of pure methane," said Alice Le Gall, a Cassini radar team associate at the French research laboratory LATMOS, Paris, and lead author of the new study.

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The new study is based on data collected with Cassini's radar instrument during flybys of Titan between 2007 and 2015.

A number of possible explanations could account for the sea's methane composition, according to Le Gall. "Either Ligeia Mare is replenished by fresh methane rainfall, or something is removing ethane from it. It is possible that the ethane ends up in the undersea crust, or that it somehow flows into the adjacent sea, Kraken Mare, but that will require further investigation."

In their research, the scientists combined several radar observations of heat given off by Ligeia Mare. They also used data from a 2013 experiment that bounced radio signals off Ligeia. The results of that experiment were presented in a 2014 paper led by radar team associate Marco Mastrogiuseppe at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, who also contributed to the current study.

During the 2013 experiment, the radar instrument detected echoes from the seafloor and inferred the depth of Ligeia Mare along Cassini's track over Ligeia Mare -- the first-ever detection of the bottom of an extraterrestrial sea. The scientists were surprised to find depths in the sea as great as 525 feet (160 meters) at the deepest point along the radar track.

Le Gall and her colleagues used the depth-sounding information to separate the contributions made to the sea's observed temperature by the liquid sea and the seabed, which provided insights into their respective compositions.

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"We found that the seabed of Ligeia Mare is likely covered by a sludge layer of organic-rich compounds," adds Le Gall.

In the atmosphere of Titan, nitrogen and methane react to produce a wide variety of organic materials. Scientists believe the heaviest materials fall to the surface. Le Gall and colleagues think that when these compounds reach the sea, either by directly falling from the air, via rain or through Titan's rivers, some are dissolved in the liquid methane. The insoluble compounds, such as nitriles and benzene, sink to the sea floor.

The study also found that the shoreline around Ligeia Mare may be porous and flooded with liquid hydrocarbons. The data span a period running from local winter to spring, and the scientists expected that -- like the seaside on Earth -- the surrounding solid terrains would warm more rapidly than the sea.

However, Cassini's measurements did not show any significant difference between the sea's temperature and that of the shore over this period. This suggests that the terrains surrounding the lakes and seas are wet with liquid hydrocarbons, which would make them warm up and cool down much like the sea itself.

"It's a marvelous feat of exploration that we're doing extraterrestrial oceanography on an alien moon," said Steve Wall, deputy lead of the Cassini radar team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Titan just won't stop surprising us."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the US and several European countries.
A giant star that exploded 30 million years ago in a galaxy near Earth had a radius prior to going supernova that was 200 times larger than our sun, according to astrophysicists at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

The sudden blast hurled material outward from the star at a speed of 10,000 kilometers a second. That's equivalent to 36 million kilometers an hour or 22.4 million miles an hour, said SMU physicist Govinda Dhungana, lead author on the new analysis.

The comprehensive analysis of the exploding star's light curve and color spectrum have revealed new information about the existence and sudden death of supernovae in general, many aspects of which have long baffled scientists.

"There are so many characteristics we can derive from the early data," Dhungana said. "This was a big massive star, burning tremendous fuel. When it finally reached a point its core couldn't support the gravitational pull inward, suddenly it collapsed and then exploded."

The massive explosion was one of the closest to Earth in recent years, visible as a point of light in the night sky starting July 24, 2013, said Robert Kehoe, SMU physics professor, who leads SMU's astrophysics team.

The explosion, termed by astronomers Supernova 2013ej, in a galaxy near our Milky Way was equal in energy output to the simultaneous detonation of 100 million of the Earth's suns.

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The star was one of billions in the spiral galaxy M74 in the constellation Pisces.

Considered close by supernova standards, SN 2013ej was in fact so far away that light from the explosion took 30 million years to reach Earth. At that distance, even such a large explosion was only visible by telescopes.

Dhungana and colleagues were able to explore SN 2013ej via a rare collection of extensive data from seven ground-based telescopes and NASA's Swift satellite. The data span a time period prior to appearance of the supernova in July 2013 until more than 450 days after.

The team measured the supernova's evolving temperature, its mass, its radius, the abundance of a variety of chemical elements in its explosion and debris and its distance from Earth. They also estimated the time of the shock breakout, the bright flash from the shockwave of the explosion.

The star's original mass was about 15 times that of our sun, Dhungana said. Its temperature was a hot 12,000 Kelvin (approximately 22,000 degrees Fahrenheit) on the tenth day after the explosion, steadily cooling until it reached 4,500 Kelvin after 50 days. The sun's surface is 5,800 Kelvin, while the Earth's core is estimated to be about 6,000 Kelvin.

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Shedding new light on supernovae, mysterious objects of our universe

Supernovae occur throughout the universe, but they are not fully understood. Scientists don't directly observe the explosions but instead detect changes in emerging light as material is hurled from the exploding star in the seconds and days after the blast.

Telescopes such as SMU's robotic ROTSE-IIIb telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas, watch our sky and pick up the light as a point of brightening light. Others, such as the Hobby Eberly telescope, also at McDonald, observe a spectrum.

SN 2013ej is M74's third supernova in just 10 years. That is quite frequent compared to our Milky Way, which has had a scant one supernova observed over the past 400 years. NASA estimates that the M74 galaxy consists of 100 billion stars.

M74 is one of only a few dozen galaxies first cataloged by the astronomer Charles Messier in the late 1700s. It has a spiral structure -- also the Milky Way's apparent shape -- indicating it is still undergoing star formation, as opposed to being an elliptical galaxy in which new stars no longer form.

It's possible that planets were orbiting SN 2013ej's progenitor star prior to it going supernova, in which case those objects would have been obliterated by the blast, Kehoe said.

"If you were nearby, you wouldn't know there was a problem beforehand, because at the surface you can't see the core heating up and collapsing," Kehoe said. "Then suddenly it explodes -- and you're toast."

Distances to nearby galaxies help determine cosmic distance ladder

Scientists remain unsure whether supernovae leave behind a black hole or a neutron star like a giant atomic nucleus the size of a city.

"The core collapse and how it produces the explosion is particularly tricky," Kehoe said. "Part of what makes SN 2013ej so interesting is that astronomers are able to compare a variety of models to better understand what is happening. Using some of this information, we are also able to calculate the distance to this object. This allows us a new type of object with which to study the larger universe, and maybe someday dark energy."

Being 30 million light years away, SN 2013ej was a relatively nearby extragalactic event, according to Jozsef Vinko, astrophysicist at Konkoly Observatory and University of Szeged in Hungary.

"Distances to nearby galaxies play a significant role in establishing the so-called cosmic distance ladder, where each rung is a galaxy at a known distance."

Vinko provided important data from telescopes at Konkoly Observatory and Hungary's Baja Observatory and carried out distance measurement analysis on SN 2013ej.

"Nearby supernovae are especially important," Vinko said. "Paradoxically, we know the distances to the nearest galaxies less certainly than to the more distant ones. In this particular case we were able to combine the extensive datasets of SN 2013ej with those of another supernova, SN 2002ap, both of which occurred in M74, to suppress the uncertainty of their common distance derived from those data."

Supernova spectrum analysis is like taking a core sample

While stars appear to be static objects that exist indefinitely, in reality they are primarily a burning ball, fueled by the fusion of elements, including hydrogen and helium into heavier elements. As they exhaust lighter elements, they must contract in the core and heat up to burn heavier elements. Over time, they fuse the various chemical elements of the periodic table, proceeding from lightest to heaviest. Initially they fuse helium into carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Those elements then fuel the fusion of progressively heavier elements such as sulfur, argon, chlorine and potassium.

"Studying the spectrum of a supernova over time is like taking a core sample," Kehoe said. "The calcium in our bones, for example, was cooked in a star. A star's nuclear fusion is always forging heavier and heavier elements. At the beginning of the universe there was only hydrogen and helium. The other elements were made in stars and in supernovae. The last product to get created is iron, which is an element that is so heavy it can't be burned as fuel."

Dhungana's spectrum analysis of SN 2013ej revealed many elements, including hydrogen, helium, calcium, titanium, barium, sodium and iron.

"When we have as many spectra as we have for this supernova at different times," Kehoe added, "we are able to look deeper and deeper into the original star, sort of like an X-ray or a CAT scan."

SN 2013ej's short-lived existence was just tens of millions of years

Analysis of SN 2013ej's spectrum from ultraviolet through infrared indicates light from the explosion reached Earth July 23, 2013. It was discovered July 25, 2013 by the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope at California's Lick Observatory. A look back at images captured by SMU's ROTSE-IIIb showed that SMU's robotic telescope detected the supernova several hours earlier, Dhungana said.

"These observations were able to show a rapidly brightening supernova that started just 20 hours beforehand," he said. "The start of the supernova, termed 'shock breakout,' corresponds to the moment when the internal explosion crashes through the star's outer layers."

Like many others, SN 2013ej was a Type II supernova. That is a massive star still undergoing nuclear fusion. Once iron is fused, the fuel runs out, causing the core to collapse. Within a quarter second the star explodes.

Supernovae have death and birth written all over them

Massive stars typically have a shorter life span than smaller ones.

"SN 2013ej probably lived tens of millions of years," Kehoe said. "In universe time, that's the blink of an eye. It's not very long-lived at all compared to our sun, which will live billions of years. Even though these stars are bigger and have a lot more fuel, they burn it really fast, so they just get hotter and hotter until they just gobble up the matter and burn it."

For most of its brief life, SN 2013ej would probably have burned hydrogen, which then fused to helium, burning for a few hundred thousand years, then perhaps carbon and oxygen for a few hundred days, calcium for a few months and silicon for several days.

"Supernovae have death and birth written all over them," Kehoe said. "Not only do they create the elements we are made of, but the shockwave that goes out from the explosion -- that's where our solar system comes from."

Outflowing material slams into clouds of material in interstellar space, causing it to collapse and form a solar system.

"The heavy elements made in the supernova and its parent star are those which comprise the bulk of terrestrial planets, like Earth, and are necessary for life," Kehoe said.
A blind elephant named Jokia is still mourning the loss of Mae Perm, her close companion of 17 years who died earlier this month at Thailand's Elephant Nature Park (ENP), a sanctuary and rescue for elephants. When Mae Perm first passed away, Jokia spent six hours standing over her friend's lifeless body, "touching and nudging and leaning against" her, Lek Chailert, the founder of ENP, wrote at the time.

Dodo Shows Foster Diaries Scared Pittie Gets So Happy When He Meets This Guy And His Pack Of Dogs

Weeks later, Jokia still misses her friend, who died of of old age, and even tries to search for her, as a new video shows. "While Mae Perm was here she was the light behind Jokia's eyes, and the will to live. Since Mae Perm passed away, Jokia spends her time looking for the place, the smells, the memories where they walked together all around where they both used to stay together," an ENP staffer wrote in a recent video showing Jokia searching for Mae Perm. "She sniffs everywhere, and when she finds where Mae Perm has peed, she stops for a long time to observe and then she displays her sorrow and clearly mourns."

Now when Jokia calls out with a low rumble, she waits for a response from Mae Perm, but hears no reply. Previously, Mae Perm would be there to comfort and play with her. "I can feel her emptiness," the ENP staffer continued. "I hope time can help to heal her." Like humans, elephants are extraordinarily social and emotional animals. As this video shows, they can form lasting and meaningful relationships with each other. But ENP is determined to help Jokia cheer up. On Sunday, Chailert posted a set of photos showing Jokia playing with several other elephants at the sanctuary.
<p>Artistry Unleashed</p>

These are the cats' actual sonograms. Kimberly Pow is not just a highly original, really hilarious pet photographer. She's also a veterinary technician, who enjoys concocting - then documenting - oddball scenarios for the cats in her life. (Which, as you'll see, are many.) So when Kimberly's two pregnant foster cats, Ruthie and Bellatrix, got their ultrasounds at the vet clinic where she works, she figured: Why not do human-style maternity shoots? "They were total champs about it," Kimberly tells The Dodo.

Artistry Unleashed

The photos were taken a couple of months ago (before that dog maternity shoot went viral, just for the record, not that anyone's keeping track). Ruthie's kittens - four of them - were born in February. Bellatrix had her five babies just around Easter. Naturally, they've all been documented with their own adorable newborn sessions.

Artistry Unleashed

The secret to these photos - outside of their subjects simply being the cutest animals known to humankind - is that Kimberly bought dozens of Beanie Babies from thrift stores.

Dodo Shows Soulmates Growling Little Kitten Becomes Her Mom's Best Friend

Artistry Unleashed

She removed their accessories, and sometimes the stuffing, and used those to decorate the kittens.

Artistry Unleashed

The kittens liked it, Kimberly says - or at least they made a real good show of pretending to.

Artistry Unleashed

Seriously, we could go on all day like this.

Artistry Unleashed

There are, after all, nine kittens we're talking about here.

Artistry Unleashed

Nine kittens, who will be up for adoption within the next few weeks, through Saving Grace Animal Rescue of Maryland - just as soon as they're all spayed and neutered.

Artistry Unleashed

There's been a wave of amazingly creative dog adoption photos in the few last years. But cat adoption photography hasn't really made these same advances. Until now: The point of these pictures, you see, isn't just to entertain Kimberly (and us) - but to get these cats attention from folks who might want to adopt them.

Artistry Unleashed

The momma cats, whose ultrasounds you admired above, will also be looking for homes. Though one of them, Bellatrix, might have already found one ... ... In Kimberly's household. Which she shares with her cat-loving husband, a Baltimore police officer, and three children who were no doubt genetically predisposed to adore cats. Plus their nine other rescue cats.

Artistry Unleashed

Who also get their own great and funny photo shoots - here's Mechanic's "cake smash," for example.

Artistry Unleashed

Kimberly points out that human children are given cakes to demolish, in front of a camera, on their first birthdays. So why not a kitten version with a can of cat food in the middle of the cake?

Artistry Unleashed

So, yes, that's 20 cats, currently living inside Kimberly's home - until the nine kittens, and two, or possibly just one, of the moms, get snatched up by other kitty-loving families. "If you don't laugh, you'll cry," says Kimberly. "That's what I tell myself every night when I'm spending an hour cleaning litter boxes."

Artistry Unleashed

Interested in adopting one of these babies? Reach out to Saving Grace Animal Rescue of Maryland. And prevent even more unwanted cats and dogs from entering the shelter system by spaying or neutering your pet. See more of Kimberly Pow's work on the Artistry Unleashed Facebook page.
A captive orca was spotted slamming her head into a metal gate, exclusive footage released Tuesday by Ric O'Barry's Dolphin Project shows. The orca is at Loro Parque in Tenerife, Spain. All six of the orcas at Loro Parque are owned by SeaWorld.

"The orca is obviously in huge distress and rams its head forcefully against the metal gate in what seems to be an attempt to escape," Helene Hesselager O'Barry writes in a release about the footage. The video was provided to The Dolphin Project by an anonymous activist, who shot the heartbreaking scene between orca shows. The small pool where the orca is being held is an enclosure used for medical examinations, according to The Dolphin Project.

Dodo Shows Foster Diaries Scared Pittie Gets So Happy When He Meets This Guy And His Pack Of Dogs

The orca behind the gate was confirmed to be Morgan, who was found in the wild, off the coast of the Netherlands, in June of 2010. The orca on the other side is Tekoa. "The video published by The Dolphin Project on its website is a new attempt at manipulation through exaggeration and dramatization of a completely normal situation in which there is no problem for the animals," Loro Parque said in a statement provided to The Dodo. "It is surprising that advocates of ending the breeding of orcas in human care should be offended by these images, precisely because sexual frustration at not being able to access the pool where there are orcas of the opposite sex with which to mate can trigger this type of behavior."

But many remain unconvinced. "This is not an isolated incident," O'Barry told The Dodo in an emailed statement. "Abuse like this is routine. The only hope is that people will stop buying tickets to dolphin and orca shows." Controversy about orca captivity at Loro Parque stretches back at least to 2009, when an orca on loan from SeaWorld, Keto, killed his trainer, Alexis Martinez. Watch the footage below:
Things are finally look up again for this miniature horse named Shine - and he's got the moves to prove it.

CSU College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

A few months back, Shine was nearly killed in a suspected dog attack while at home on his farm in Colorado. Although he did manage to survive initially, his rear leg was so badly injured it wasn't clear at first if he would make it in the long run. "He didn't meet me at the gate like he always does, and he was standing funny," his owner, Jacque Corsentino, said in a statement. "I shined the flashlight on him, and he was covered in blood." Fortunately, a local veterinarian was able to stabilize Shine and bandage him up, allowing him to maintain some mobility - but his road to recovery was far from over.

Dodo Shows Comeback Kids Family Stops At Nothing To Help Their Great Dane Run

This browser does not support the video tag. CSU College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

After weeks passed and the mini horse's leg showed no signs of healing, his owners still refused to give up on him. Instead, they sought help from Colorado State University's veterinary teaching hospital. The experts there agreed he was very much worth saving.

CSU College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

Turns out, Shine's leg was more seriously injured that previously thought, but there was one thing that could still save him - a prosthetic hoof. "It's the first one I've done, but I've always wanted to try," said Laurie Goodrich, a specialist in equine orthopedics. "We had no way of preserving that limb. So we had to take it off, and this was the only option to preserve his life." Though such prosthetics for horses are rare, a local manufacturer, OrthoPets, was able to provide Shine with the perfect fit.

CSU College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

Sure enough, all that effort paid off. Within days of getting his brand-new hoof, Shine wasn't just back on his feet - he was already trotting again.

This browser does not support the video tag. CSU College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
Sometimes the most rewarding romance is the kind that throws the most mundane life into beautiful chaos. This months column features three romance novels about people forced to take risks and trade the ordinary for love.

Lorraine Heath is a master at setting up a romance that cannot possibly end happily  and yet somehow does. In The Earl Takes All (Avon, $7.99), Heath tells the story of Edward Alcott and Albert, Earl of Greyling, identical twins who travel to Africa together. Albert is mauled by a gorilla and, on the brink of death, insists that his twin return to England and assume Alberts identity, at least until the pregnant countess, Julia, safely gives birth. Edward agrees, returning home and convincing the world  including Julia  that he is Albert. In the months before the child is born, Edward falls desperately in love with Julia, while she finds the man she thinks is her husband more compelling than ever. Heath deftly navigates Edwards deception  he is wracked with guilt and vows to resist his new not-quite wife in scenes that are romantic and sexy. The moment when Julia discovers the truth is heartbreakingly honest, full of anger and sadness and irresistible love. And even when Julia is able to look past the truth, the law cannot  it is illegal in the Regency for a man to marry his brothers widow. Heaths skill is on display here  readers wont see the path to Julia and Edwards happily ever after until it is right in front of them.

[Best romance novels of 2015]

Magnate (Zebra, $7.99), the first full-length novel in Joanna Shupes Knickerbocker Club series, is set in an era rarely seen in romance novels  Gilded Age New York City. Emmett Cavanaugh is a steel magnate who grew up in a slum and vowed never to return. He is an immensely powerful and terrifying self-made man, a perfect hero in the rising steel city. Hes also the perfect foil for society darling Elizabeth Sloane, who wants more than the life she is expected to live. Lizzie is brilliant and ambitious, and she has plans to open her own investment firm  if only Emmett will back her. What begins as a battle of wills ends with society scandal and a forced marriage that throws Lizzie and Emmett together in a beautiful romance. Emmett is haunted by his past and certain that hell never be enough for Lizzie; Lizzie has gotten everything shes wanted in life and is determined to make sure that Emmetts heart is not the first thing she is denied. Shupe delivers a tremendously entertaining romance  sexy and clever  set in an era the genre has been waiting for.

Mia Sosas One Night With the CEO (Forever, e-book, $3.99) is a fun, contemporary romance that reminds us that any attempt to predict or manage love is destined only to enhance its chaos. Karen Ramirez is about to start medical school and is entirely uninterested in a relationship. Shes not only too busy but also scarred by previous bad relationships. Shes unconcerned by the idea of a lifetime as a single woman. But love waits for no woman, and Karen is soon tempted by billionaire executive Mark Lansing, the best man at her sisters wedding. The two agree to a weekend fling but what starts out as sexual attraction ends up as something much more, and the pair find it difficult to stick to their original no-commitment plan. Sosa captures the fireworks of Karen and Marks love in paradise as well as she does the ordinariness of their relationship when they return home. This is a lovely tale that shows one couples struggle to find a balance between what they think they want and what they actually desire.

Sarah MacLean reviews romance monthly for The Washington Post and is the author, most recently, of The Rogue Not Taken.
Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems (Copper Canyon, $23) brings together 21 previously unpublished works by the Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda. The book also features photographs of handwritten drafts  including one that was scribbled on a menu  and detailed notes about how the pieces, discovered by archivists cataloguing Nerudas papers, relate to the poets established work. These documents, along with the poems (some of them fragments), translated by Forrest Gander, provide insights into the writing and its familiar themes  love, poetry and the strength and beauty of the people and landscape of Nerudas native Chile. The book  made possible in part by a Kickstarter campaign by its nonprofit publisher  provides new glimpses of the poet, who died in 1973. In one poem, Neruda addresses his younger self and urges, all right, young man, now/ listen:/ hang on/ keep your silence/ until the words/ ripen/ in you. In another, he sounds delightfully cranky as he acquiesces to life with a telephone and its impositions: I prostrated myself whenever the ringing/ of that horrid despot demanded/ my attention. Perhaps the most fascinating writing focuses on early space flight, positing that the venture . . . conquered an inanimate heaven,/ depositing in those altitudes/the seed/ of our kind. This brief visit with Neruda ends all too soon, yet reminds one why his work still matters .

[Ten Poems in Motion]

Seamus Heaneys Book VI of the Aeneid (FSG, $23) is so fresh and compelling that those who have never enjoyed this classic may want to give it another try. Heaney nearly completed his translation of the book, a key portion of Virgils epic poem, just before his death in 2013. Heaney deftly highlights the dramatic tension of the opening passages, where the warrior Aeneas travels to the cave of the Sibyl to beseech her for one face-to-face meeting in the underworld with his dead father, Anchises. She warns him that he must find a golden bough and complete two other tasks before he can descend with any hope of returning. The language Heaney employs  a skillful mix of poetic phrasing and plainspokenness  gives the narrative a wonderful immediacy as Aeneas is ferried across the river Styx into the afterlife, where he passes tortured souls, the guilty being scourged, those who lived virtuously and those who dwell in joy. Finally, Aeneas meets his delighted father, who says, I always trusted that your sense of right/ Would prevail and keep you going to the end./ And am I now allowed to see your face,/ My son, and hear you talk, and talk to you myself? Other translations peak at this point and quickly lose momentum as the father recounts a long list of souls who will be reborn as Aeneass descendants and glorify the warriors name. But Heaney shifts the emphasis here, making the prophecies  Aeneass reason to keep fighting  feel as important as the reunion. The result is an interpretation that shows why the ancient text is both timely and timeless.

Through more than a dozen collections, C.D. Wright pushed the bounds of imagination as she explored desire, loss and physical sensation. Her posthumously published book, ShallCross (Copper Canyon, $23) features seven poem sequences that show her tremendous range in style and approach. As she considers, among other topics, some dark intuitions about human nature, she also nudges readers to question who is telling the story and where ones thought can lead. Wright, who died in January, believed it is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so. She explores parts of the psyche that may be disconcerting to some readers, but those who persist will be rewarded by the final lines of the books closing piece: From a Tree of Tomorrows/ Dont shut it I said We lack for nothing/ Indissoluably connected/ Across the lines of our lives/ The once the new the then and again. Its no wonder Wright, who won a National Book Critics Circle Award for her 2011 collection One With Others, has been praised for the singularity of her voice.

Elizabeth Lund writes about poetry every month for The Washington Post.
Madeleine Sherwood, a distinguished Canadian-born character actress who played saints and sinners on Broadway and TV  and who endured blacklisting in the 1950s and a prison term in the 1960s for her civil rights activism, died April 23 at her home in Saint-Hippolyte, Quebec. She was 93.

A family spokeswoman, Melissa Fitch, confirmed the death but did not disclose the cause.

While not a household name, Ms. Sherwood became a familiar pug-nosed face over a six-decade show-business career that included roles in landmark plays by Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams and a singing part in a Stephen Sondheim-Richard Rodgers musical. She also portrayed the stern Mother Superior on the ABC sitcom The Flying Nun (1967-70), opposite Sally Fields young and airborne novice.

Fields was ambitious to move beyond lightweight gamine roles, and she credited Ms. Sherwood, long affiliated with the Actors Studio theater workshop in New York, with getting her the training required for her transition into Oscar-winning dramatic parts in Norma Rae and Places in the Heart.

Ms. Sherwoods own entry into acting had been tumultuous. An unhappy early marriage and postpartum depression landed her in an asylum, and she said her husband wanted her lobotomized. She told a friendly doctor that she simply wanted to be an actress, and he recommended she make an escape out the unlocked back door.

She set about reinventing herself, fueled by a raw talent for playing scheming and overbearing parts. She dazzled audiences and reviewers in Arthur Millers The Crucible (1953) as Abigail Williams, a spurned teenage hussy who spreads malicious accusations of witchcraft in 1692 Salem, Mass.

New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson praised her fire and skill in the powerful Miller morality play that many have read as an allegory against the McCarthyite anti-communist witch hunts of the day. (Ms. Sherwood said she was blacklisted for a period when she stood up for actress Lee Grant, who had been targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee.)

In 1955, Ms. Sherwood had a notable supporting role on Broadway in Williamss Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, about greedy relatives of a dying Mississippi plantation owner known as Big Daddy.

Playing a character often called Sister Woman, Ms. Sherwood tries to ingratiate herself by bearing a litter of Big Daddys grandchildren  a bunch of spoiled holy terrors memorably excoriated as no-neck monsters. Sister Woman is ultimately outfoxed by another daughter-in-law, Maggie the Cat, portrayed by Barbara Bel Geddes on stage and by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1958 movie version; Ms. Sherwood reprised her role for the film.

Ms. Sherwood played a key role in the 1959 Broadway and 1962 film adaptations of Williamss Sweet Bird of Youth  as mistress of the malevolent Gulf Coast power broker Boss Finley. She suffers a cruel punishment for belittling her lovers sexual impotence.

Ms. Sherwood continued her run of Southern-fried connivers in Invitation to a March (1960), a Broadway comedy written and directed by Arthur Laurents and featuring incidental music by Sondheim. It was a connection that led to her featured role on Broadway in Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965), the Sondheim-Rodgers musical in which she originated the part of Mrs. McIlhenny, an obnoxious American tourist.

Her other Broadway credits included the Alan Jay Lerner-Frederick Loewe musical Camelot, in which she replaced Mel Dowd as Morgan Le Fey in 1962. That same year, she briefly succeeded Bette Davis in Williamss The Night of the Iguana. Her final Broadway appearance was in Edward Albees bleak and short-lived All Over (1971), directed by John Gielgud.

Ms. Sherwood won a 1963 Obie Award for distinguished performance in Hey You, Light Man!, Oliver Haileys wistful comedy about an actor in a play and his relationship with a member of the audience.

There is simplicity and decency in this woman, who has always accepted the unadorned and unexciting realities of her ordinary life, New York Times theater critic Howard Taubman wrote of Ms. Sherwoods character. Her transformation under the guidance of the actor into a person who can transcend reality is managed with admirable lightness and flexibility.

Madeleine Louise Helene Thornton was born in Montreal on Nov. 13, 1922. She won small roles with the Montreal Repertory Theatre but put aside her acting ambitions to marry Robert Sherwood (not the playwright of the same name), a union that ended in divorce. Survivors include a daughter, Chloe Fox, of Ontario; two grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Ms. Sherwood was the longtime companion of the late Hylan Johnson, an actor known as Dots or Dotts and best remembered as a black American soldier in Roberto Rossellinis 1946 film Paisan. She grew involved in civil rights causes and in May 1963 was arrested during a Freedom Walk in Etowah County, Ala. She was sentenced to six months of hard labor, but her lawyer, Fred D. Gray, said in an interview that the decision was ultimately reversed on appeal.

Later in life, Ms. Sherwood led acting workshops in which she passed on methods learned from mentors such as director Elia Kazan. Her teaching was the focus of a 2010 short film, Madeleines Method.

In the documentary, she also spoke of her thwarted ambitions for stardom and of the fleeting moments of triumph when she was center stage. When it was first announced that she would take over for Davis in The Night of the Iguana, she recalled, the audience began shifting in their seats, deciding whether to ask for a refund or stay.

Adopting the tough tone of her earthy and boozy character, she said, she walked from the stage into the audience and shouted at two restless ticket buyers:  You make up your mind. Either sit down or get out. . . . That broke the ice because the rest of the audience laughed. . . . From there on in, I sailed through.
On FX's "The Americans," a distraught Martha (Alison Wright) goes on the run, leaving the KGB and the FBI scrambling to find her. (Patrick Harbron/FX)

(All times Eastern).

On Survivor (CBS at 8 p.m.), the castaways test their mental stamina in a challenge that could lead to a guaranteed shot at the final six.

On The Middle (ABC at 8), Frankie looks forward to using her new patio as an outdoor sanctuary, but her peace is interrupted by the Hecks noisy new neighbors. At college, Sue and Lexie win big in the dorm lottery, but they have trouble getting rid of the occupants of their new room.

Lucious hosts a fundraiser in hopes of convincing the board that he should resume his position as CEO on Empire (Fox at 9). Hakeem struggles to decide what to do about Anika and their child.

On Blackish (ABC at 9:30), the Johnsons worry that Dre will lose his job when rumors spread that his advertising agency is planning layoffs. Meanwhile, Bows plans for the school auction go awry after she refuses to ask the other moms for help.

The Americans (FX at 10) finds Martha on the run, with the FBI (plus Philip and Elizabeth) scrambling to track her down.

On Nashville (ABC at 10), Rayna and Deacon work to reunite with Maddie, even enlisting Teddys help from jail. Juliette tries to rekindle her relationship with Avery, but her efforts and success on tour increase Laylas jealousy.

On Underground (WGN America at 10), Rosalee and Cato enact a clever but dangerous plan in Kentucky as August Pullman and a gang of slave catchers search for the Macon 7.

Actor Timothy Olyphant and comedian Jerrod Carmichael visit Conan (TBS at 11).

Actors Susan Sarandon and David Tennant are on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (ABC at 11:35), which features a performance by Catfish and the Bottlemen.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! (ABC at 11:35) hosts actor-comedian Johnny Knoxville and musician John Mellencamp.

Today host Matt Lauer, model Gisele Bundchen and musical guest Fitz and the Tantrums visit The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (NBC at 11:35).


David Umeh, 25, says that his company, HighSpeed, is a juice delivery service. But customers who order from the Web site and choose options for love or lots of love also get a little gift from Umeh: cannabis. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post)

David Umehs rented SUV yanked to a halt in front of the glass-and-steel facade of CityCenterDC, glitzy home to Gucci and Dior and Hermes and the next customer of the marijuana revolution.

A young woman slid out the passenger side and strode up to a man still dressed in the sharp gray suit of a Washington nine-to-fiver waiting outside the centers tony apartment building. He grinned as she handed him a bottle of apple juice with lemon and mint, for which he had shelled out upwards of $55. Fresh-pressed, she told him, sticking to the script that Umeh had taught her.

And then she slipped him the green paper sack that held what the man had probably really wanted all along: a few pungent grams of District-grown bud, a gift from Umehs company, HighSpeed, for his patronage.

You know, thanks for being a loyal customer and paying $55 for apple juice and whatnot.

Since January, HighSpeed has been hawking, according to its Web site, the finest cannabis (and cold pressed juice) delivered in record time  its explicit sales pitch just part of the new world order under the citys Initiative 71.

That tepid, neither-here-nor-there measure, implemented in February 2015, made it legal for anyone 21 or older to possess up to two ounces of marijuana. You can grow as many as six plants. And you can transfer  without payment  up to an ounce of weed to another adult.

But heres the rub: Unless you have a medical marijuana card, you cant buy it.

As of Feb. 26, 2015, marijuana became legal in the District  sort of. Here are the ins and outs of the complex pot law. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

And that creates a strange gray area that has lit a fire under entrepreneurs like Umeh, who sees dollar signs in the loophole 71 left behind. Which is: If residents cant buy or sell pot, and have no inclination to grow marijuana in their already slightly funky Columbia Heights apartments, how can they get it?

Why, through that transfer clause, say HighSpeed and others.

HighSpeed customers pay for jalapeno or charcoal lemonade, or just plain OJ, then decide whether they want love for $55, or lots of love for $150. What exactly that buys you is deliberately left unclear. (If you want just juice, well, you can get that, too: Itll set you back $11.)

We are a juice-delivery service, Umeh insists. Every day, he says, at least 40 orders come in, proof that the stigma around marijuana is rapidly going up in smoke.

[Is it time to revise our federal drug laws?]

On April 20, or 4/20, the national holiday of stoners everywhere, at least eight drivers carrying precisely the amount of love they are allowed to legally possess made the rounds, dropping off bottles and little green sacks bearing indica and sativa  the two primary cannabis strains  homegrown in the capital city.

Shad B. Ewart teaches a class on entrepreneurship in the emerging cannabis economy at Anne Arundel Community College. The challenge for the companies hoping to cash in, the business professor likes to tell his students, is finding islands of legality in a sea of illegality.

Go on, search for Washington on the marijuana-locating Web site Weedmaps. It will pull up a handful of services, from dispensaries to doctors to delivery companies, convinced that theyve found their island.

***

You know when you get thrown in the 12-foot pool, and youre in third grade? asks Umeh.

Thats what its like to be David Umeh right now. A man in over his head. And a man determined not to drown.

Were settled at a conference table in the Penn Quarter co-working space Impact Hub, which, like other such spaces, is one-part office, one-part social gathering ground for millennial go-getters and start-up employees. Umeh, a 25-year-old Californian, tends to wear ballcaps, eat Chipotle and haul his MacBook around in a hipster-endorsed Herschel backpack. He fits in perfectly.

They love me here, he says. (Yeah, of course they do.)



Business has been so good that Umeh has been hiring new employees. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post)

Outside Impact Hubs sandbox, the city has quickly proved to be the deep end for Umeh.

Since a publicist contacted local media outlets earlier this month, the demand has been so great that it has drained HighSpeed of its inventory nearly every day. Umeh has had to shut down orders simply to catch up on deliveries. Customers are tweeting at the company, wondering where their weed  oops, juice  is.

And some of the local pressed-juice brands that he has been delivering as demand has surged are unamused to see their bottles on Instagram next to marijuana. Ann Yang, co-owner of Misfit Juicery, which Umeh was buying retail and delivering to his customers last week, said that she explicitly told Umeh that her company didnt want to partner with HighSpeed because of the fuzzy legality of its business model. Umeh says he doesnt believe that he is doing anything untoward, but said that hes already making preparations to press his own HighSpeed-branded juices.

The District is a far cry from Oakland, where Umeh launched HighSpeed last summer and where what is and isnt legal is far clearer. HighSpeed was just one in a sea of medical marijuana delivery services there. My first customer, he says with a touch of pride, was a guy in a wheelchair.

But Umeh also found California, where medical cannabis has been legal since 1996, saturated, all the nuggets of the marijuana gold rush already snapped up.

Friends from Virginias Hampton University, which he attended for a few years as an economics major, told him that Washingtons law could open up another sort of opportunity.

It would, however, require a pivot, Umeh recalls. He couldnt deliver medical marijuana. But he could sell juice.

And maybe he could gift cannabis.



Inside one of the green sacks that are gifted with HighSpeeds juice delivery: a few grams of District-grown pot. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)

***

There are others like Umeh, of course, trying to fly clear of the D.C. law, flout it, or something in-between.

This month, CakeLove founder Warren Brown, a former Food Network celebrity chef, teamed up with two food truck entrepreneurs to announce their entry into the marijuana edibles market. Theyve said that their market will be the citys highly regulated medical dispensaries, which serve a few thousand customers doctor-approved to use pot for pain management and other reasons.

Last year, Kush Gods rolled luxury cars emblazoned with cannabis leaves into busy neighborhoods such as U Street NW, offering gifts in exchange for donations. It was ultimately targeted by D.C. Police, which said Kush Gods was basically just selling marijuana. (Company founder Nicholas Cunningham pleaded guilty to that charge last month.)

[The most controversial marijuana champion in the nations capital is a fugitive named Kushgod]

That exchange of money for drugs seemed like a clear quid pro quo, says Ewart. What HighSpeed does isnt quite the same, but Ewart isnt convinced of its long-term viability.

A few weeks ago, Ewart ordered a jalapeno lemonade with a side of love from HighSpeed. When Umeh himself turned up at his door days later, the professor invited him to suburban Annapolis to talk to his class.

Asked what he thinks of HighSpeeds business model, Ewart sighs. Umeh has had to find sources for the marijuana he gifts, and then he must cut deals that cant involve any exchange of money. How, Ewart wondered, can he maintain that as his customer base blooms?

Umeh, he says, is kind of pushing the envelope here, but hes pushing the envelope because the District of Columbia has left this a mess. There is a gray area here, and so youre having these entrepreneurs attempt these things.

But $55 juice?

I think theyre on the edge of whats legal, says Ewart. Wheres the limit?


Ray Gaesser farms 6,000 acres of corn and soy in Iowa and has been practicing no-till farming, an environmentally beneficial practice, for decades. In recent rainy years he has also started planting cover crops, which reduce runoff but create extra expense. (Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press)

This month, I set out to discover whether what we think of as Big Ag is cleaning up its act.

Whats to clean up? Theres widespread agreement that, as industrial agriculture has intensified over the past 75 years, concentrating on relatively few crops and dramatically increasing yields, it has also polluted waterways and degraded soil. But weve also seen increased focus on such practices as no-till farming and cover cropping, which mitigate or even reverse that damage. How widespread are those practices? Are they having an impact?

[The surprising truth about the food movement]

I found out. I wrote a column about it. It was boring.

So I scrapped that draft, and I decided to write a different column. Because whats interesting about these conservation practices is that they raise the possibility of constructive change in one of the most contentious issues in agriculture: government subsidies.

First, though, you should know that, yes, Big Ag is at least beginning to clean up, but adoption of conservation practices still has a long way to go. No-till (growing crops without plowing up the soil) is used on about 38 percent of the acreage of Americas four biggest crops but doesnt seem to be increasing. (Corn is holding steady; soy has ticked down.) Fertilizer use remains stubbornly high. Cover cropping (growing crops over the winter or at fallow times so the soil isnt bare) inspires enthusiasm and wins converts  its the Bernie Sanders of conservation practices  but as of 2012, the first year the USDA tracked it, it was used on less than 5 percent of crop acreage.

Not all practices are appropriate for all farms, of course, and many of the practices being implemented are too new to be reflected in USDA data. But I found general agreement that farmers are increasingly focused on these issues and that conservation, particularly in the face of climate change, is important to them.

There. Arent you glad I spared you the 1,200 words?

Lets talk, instead, about money. If conservation practices are to be implemented more broadly, somebody has to pay.

For those of us who dont wake up in the morning worrying whether 6,000 acres of corn and soy will pay the bills, something like cover cropping is a no-brainer. For Ray Gaesser, who does wake up worrying about those 6,000 acres  the ones he farms in Iowa  its a harder calculation.

Gaesser is a believer in the importance of conservation. He first tested no-till in the 1970s, and he was at virtually 100 percent by 1993. Between that and his other water-management strategies (terracing, for example), he kept his farm essentially erosion-free. But then, sometime around 2010, it started to rain. Weve had four inches of rain in an hour, he said. Those are 500-year rains, and now we have them every year.

He started cover cropping. But planting cover crops on 6,000 acres is a huge expense. At $37 per acre (the average cost, according to Rob Myers, a University of Missouri agronomist who is regional director of SARE, a USDA-affiliated program devoted to sustainable agriculture), it would add up to $222,000. (Gaesser now cover crops about 40 percent of his acres.)

But wait! Cover cropping, besides reducing nutrient runoff  by about 40 percent, according to Myers  pays farmers back because more, better soil increases yields. So farmers should be able to recoup that expense, right?

In some places, for some crops, in some years, yes. In a dry year, when water retention matters more, yield increases can be 11 to 14 percent, according to Wayne Honeycutt, head of the Soil Health Institute. But in non-drought years, those increases are smaller. In the first few years, there may be no increase at all because soil improvement is just beginning. The average, according to SARE, is 4 percent for corn and 6 percent for soy.

Do the math.

At todays prices, the yield increase doesnt cover the cost; each crop falls about $10 per acre short. Now, 10 bucks may not sound like a lot, but you have to remember to keep multiplying by 6,000.

A $10-per-acre loss is hard to swallow. And it could be more. According to Myers, yield increases in the first couple of years could be as low as 1 percent or 2 percent. Or they could be zero. There are no guarantees in farming.

But wait! There are long-term benefits to building soil back up. It could cut fertilizer, pesticide and irrigation costs, and that would save money, too.

It would. Or at least it might.

But the fact remains that farmers who opt for cover cropping are going to have to pay real money right now (and you could do a similar analysis for other practices). Long-term yield gains and cost savings are excellent, but farm expenses and mortgages and kids educations may not be able to wait for them.

The calculation becomes particularly difficult if you dont own your land. Myers points out that 39 percent of farmland is rented. Most farmers are conservation-minded, he says, but its hard to spend money on land theyre not going to have in a few years. Gaesser puts cover crops on acreage he rents, but he has farmed most of his rented land for a couple of decades. There are a few farms that arent so certain for us, he says, and they would be the last ones wed invest in.



Ray Gaesser climbs onto a sprayer on his farm. He supports governmental incentives for environmentally beneficial practices but says that we need to stay away from a bureaucrat making decisions for individual farmers. (Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press)

So what do we do about that? The environmental benefits of these conservation practices accrue to all of us. Is it fair to ask farmers to foot the bill alone?

The fact that taxpayers subsidize farmers to the tune of something north of $10 billion a year (depending on how you count, and crop yields, and prices) has been a contentious issue. Farming constituencies maintain that subsidies are appropriate for the people who feed us, while other groups, such as those with environmental or public health agendas, question why were paying so much money to grow crops that (mostly) become biofuel, animal feed and the processed foods were supposed to eat less of.

[Why dont taxpayers subsidize the foods that are better for us?]

With environmental protection, perhaps we have a way to bridge that gap, because  and this is big  everyone agrees! Everyone agrees that conservation is important, that is. It wont be so easy to find agreement on how to rejigger subsidies to provide incentives for environmentally sustainable farming.

But at least were starting from a little patch of common ground. When I asked (via Twitter) Scott Faber, vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, what the next important topic was (after GMOs), he said, How do we get more enviro benefits in return for farm subsidies? Then I asked Mary Kay Thatcher, senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation, about conservation incentives, she was cautious but not dismissive. Naturally, farmers will be happier if the government adds funding specifically for conservation programs than if it ties existing subsidies to conservation (which already happens, but only on a small portion of acreage the USDA considers most vulnerable).

[If GMOs arent the problem with our food system, then what is?]

Gaesser, likewise, warns that every farm is different and that legislating specific practices is tough. We need to stay away from a bureaucrat making decisions for individual farmers, he says. Its very acceptable to have in the farm bill incentives for those who implement practices that are good for the soil, good for the water, good for the environment.

Farmers dont want to be hamstrung or coerced, but theyre interested  and motivated  to work toward the same environmental improvements that taxpayers are entitled to ask for. Surely thats a starting point.
Thirty years ago Tuesday, a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, spewing a massive plume of radioactive poison across much of Europe. Days later, The Washington Posts Warsaw correspondent, Jackson Diehl, drove north to Mikolajki, Poland, a small farming town that officials announced was registering the highest radiation readings in the country.

He described an eerie scene: the sun was shining, children were playing outside. But locals were complaining of nausea and headaches, and the town was gripped by fear that something was actually very wrong.

Diehls dispatch from Mikolajki is republished here.

* * *

We Know It Was Bad Here Even If No One Said So

By Jackson Diehl

Washington Post Foreign Service

May 2, 1986

MIKOLAJKI, POLAND  The people of this small lakeside town, placed squarely in the path of radioactive winds from the Chernobyl nuclear plant, are slowly discovering the fright they never knew when the crisis struck here last Monday.

By scientific standards, a storm of lethal radioactive iodine blew in here Monday morning, wreaking unknown and perhaps incalculable damage on Mikolajkis 3,500 people. Yet as they anxiously think back on that day, all residents can remember is that the weather was beautiful, with brilliant sunshine and crisp spring breezes. Though there were rumors of trouble, nothing unusual happened in the town.



The front page of May 3, 1986 was dominated by Chernobyl stories. (The Washington Post)

Polish government experts have since told western reporters that the radiation here was 500 times greater than normal Monday and as much as six times above the accepted international daily safety standard. But Polish media available here censored the news, and shops, schools and even ice cream vendors have been working normally. Children were encouraged to turn out for yesterdays local May Day parade.

[Chernobyl disaster survivors skeptical of plans to contain nuclear radiation]

Only the military helicopters that have been shuttling equipment and experts to a nearby weather station  and the unsettling sense of nausea that many say they are feeling  have hinted at the blow suffered by the town, which lies about 400 miles northwest of the Soviet reactor site. And it is precisely that sinister calm, say some residents, that has made the last days so difficult to bear.

Everyone is worried, but no one knows what to do, said a 23-year-old woman who operates a small vegetable stand in the center of Mikolajki (pronounced mee-koh-wai-kee). We know it was bad here even if no one said so. We can feel it.

Several persons here said in interviews that headaches and feelings of nausea have been widespread among the population in the last two days. School officials said many children had been absent from classes, and others had visited nurses complaining of headaches and stomachaches.

[This is how scientists are keeping Chernobyls radiation contained]

Government officials, while saying the symptoms cannot be linked to radiation, have distributed doses of sodium iodide to children and some adults and have banned the sale of milk from grass-fed cows. Radiation experts working at the local meteorological institute have conveyed another potent warning by withdrawing their own children from school and sending them out of town.

Yet the practical difficulties of battling an invisible threat have pushed many uneasily back to old routines. In the rolling, grassy hills around Mikolajki, farmers were grazing their cows again today despite government orders to use dry fodder.

My wife and daughter told me to keep the cows in, but what can I do  I dont have enough feed in storage, said farmer Jozef Tyminski as he grazed his cows by a roadside today. Certainly Im worried about the radiation, but theres only so much I can do.



An aerial photo of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant taken two or three days after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion. (Volodymir Repik/AP)

The surreal mixture of fear and seeming normality has been common around Poland this week. On Wednesday afternoon, there were scenes of panic in Warsaw as families lined up at health clinics to obtain the iodine doses belatedly made available by authorities to the countrys 11 million children under age 16. Yet the next morning, tens of thousands turned out for an official May Day parade and opposition counterdemonstrations.

[30 years after Chernobyl disaster, camera study captures a wildlife wonderland]

Polish experts appointed to a special government commission told western reporters at a press conference yesterday that they expected an increase in cancer rates as a result of the radiation. The news was censored from the national media, however, and a communique today from the same commission said no danger existed to the health of the population.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Charles Redman said women of childbearing age and children should not travel to Poland until the situation is clarified. The Polish government had recommended such an action, he said.



A meteorologist takes samples of the air in Warsaw to test for radiation in April 1986, after a radioactive cloud from Chernobyl passed over the region. (Associated Press)

German firefighters wear protective gear to wash a car that arrived from Poland bearing radioactive fallout in May 1986. (Udo Weitz/AP)

In Mikolajki, which the government commission said recorded the highest radiation readings in Poland, official accounts appear equally ambiguous. Two government radiation experts, including commission member Zbigniew Jaworowski, confirmed today that the radiation level of 2.5 milliroentgen per hour recorded here Monday would have been six times above the normal safety standard, which is based on a period of 24 hours.

Jaworowski said in a telephone interview, however, that the radiation level was well below an international standard for danger levels in emergency situations, which is based on a period of 10 days of radiation absorption. He said the symptoms reported by residents could have been induced by anxiety.

Though uninformed of the figures, residents said rumors of extremely high radiation levels spread quickly from the state meteorological compound here Monday. Yet because no official announcement of the Chernobyl accident and its dangers had been made either in Poland or the Soviet Union, few took the stories seriously.

[Travel through the ghost town of Pripyat 30 years after Chernobyl]

At first people thought the equipment had broken down, said Maria, an office worker who heard early Monday of the high radiation readings. Then no one wanted to believe it. It was like a big joke until Tuesday, when they announced about the radiation in Warsaw and the military came here in their helicopter. By then, it was already too late for us.

The Army helicopters are still coming, setting down at least once a day on a grassy field near the meteorology compound. Technicians quickly take samples of soil and earth from the field and measure air radiation with small gauges, then board the helicopters and depart.

Today, one of the technicians could be seen hurriedly scooping up soil with special protective gloves as children who had been playing nearby crowded around to watch.

Those people, the scientists who have sent their own children out of here, are obviously the best informed, a resident said. But we, the simple people of Mikolajki, were stuck here, for better or for worse. Theres no way to escape your shadow. Theres no way we can escape what happened here.

* * *

It was a beautiful spring day, Diehl recalled this week of his reporting trip, and it was hard to imagine that something terrible or dangerous had actually happened there.

Now the deputy editor of the Posts editorial page, Diehl recalls that he wore no protective gear while reporting this story; when he returned to Warsaw, he said, a U.S. embassy worker checked his shoes with a radiation detector and found no cause for alarm.

In 2006, the World Health Organization released a report on Chernobyls health legacy, noting that the long-term impact wasnt as severe beyond the immediate disaster area as once feared. Researchers did find a higher-than-usual rate of thyroid cancer, particularly in children who were exposed to the radioactive iodine. The study also noted serious and widespread psychological trauma: Many people reported feelings of helplessness and lack of control over their future, driving some to drink, smoke, and behave recklessly.


Former U.S senator Harris Wofford, right, with his fiance, Matthew Charlton, in Nantucket, Mass. Wofford and Charlton are to marry on Saturday. (Courtesy of Harris Wofford via Civic Documentaries)

Harris Wofford, a former Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, John F. Kennedys presidential assistant on civil rights and an intimate of Martin Luther King Jr., will wed at his Foggy Bottom apartment Saturday before a gathering of family and friends. Dinner is to follow at a neighborhood Italian restaurant.

The groom is 90.

The other groom, Matthew Charlton, is 40.

Wofford went public with his impending marriage in the essay Finding Love Again, With a Man published in Sundays New York Times.

Most of my life has been with a great woman, a great love, and a great family, says Wofford at his Washington home in his first interview since the article appeared. Now, Im with a great love late in my life.

Wofford is well aware that it is the age difference, more than his fiances gender, that has caused jaws to plop and unleashed a fusillade of social media blasts.

Everyone has a certain kind of amusement when theres a big age difference, he says, seated in a rattan chair in the apartment that the couple, who have been together for 15 years, have shared for the past six. But thats a part of the magic of love. It really can bring people across a bridge, or build a bridge that you can cross.

The age difference is sort of funny sounding, he says, funny with a emphasis on fun.

Tall and courtly, Wofford has been an idealist for social justice his entire life. In many ways, his public declaration of marriage at age 90 to another man can be seen as one of his last and most deeply personal acts in furthering the cause of equal rights.

Wofford attended Howard Law School in the 1950s, becoming, he believes, the programs first white graduate. (He has law degrees from both Howard and Yale.) He helped establish the Peace Corps. In the Senate in the 1990s, he championed universal health care and later worked with several nonprofit organizations on national service and volunteering. In Philadelphia, he introduced then-Sen. Barack Obama before his 2008 A More Perfect Union speech on race.

Wofford worked for weeks on the essay. He wanted to share his love with the public, he says. He appears to have devoted less time to finalizing details of the wedding, which will be attended by about 30 friends and relatives, including all three of his grown children and four of his six grandsons. The couple will honeymoon and host another party at the family home on Nantucket this summer.

Remnants of Woffords April 9 birthday party  confetti, a banner and boxes  clutter the dining area. Quite frankly, the apartment is nowhere near ready for nuptials this weekend.

On Monday, Wofford and Charlton were still debating the readings for the ceremony. Charlton, an interior designer, was in New York working on a major assignment, although he hoped to buy the rings. Wofford plans to wear a suit.

Its always been a commitment since we first met, says Charlton by phone the next day. For almost the first 10 years, despite the distance  he was in Washington and I was in Florida  we traveled to see each other every month. Love prevailed. Weve stayed committed to each other since we first met.

Like Wofford, he disregards the age difference between them.

Regardless of age, of differences, getting married is a testament of love, he says. Its been an amazing time these past 15 years, pretty remarkable. Marriage is another step. Its a confirmation. Why wouldnt you want to marry the person you have fallen in love with?

The grooms are keeping their own names, though Charlton would be very nice, says Wofford.

The former senator dismisses the assigning of labels, or pinning, as he calls it.

Did I ever consider myself gay? No. Its what I think should not be asked of people, he says. An Old World-style romantic, he discusses the relationship in terms of love rather than sexuality.

I think this is an example of the most private matter. Most of us are intrigued with the sexuality of friends or others. Perhaps with some close friends you want to talk about this, he says. When people want to talk about their sexuality, either go to confession or be happy about it. I dont measure myself or my friends by their sexuality.



Wofford in the Foggy Bottom apartment he shares with Charlton. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

When he first got married  in 1948, at 22  to Clare Lindgren, the local St. Paul, Minn., newspaper observed, The young couple are active in the movement to save the world.

In their first year of marriage, the Woffords traveled to India on a fellowship to study the work of Gandhi: It shaped my life, says Wofford. They both returned with amoebic dysentery. The cure was arsenic injections for two to three months. The doctor told Clare, This is marvelous medicine: An ounce will cure you, but 10 ounces will kill you. Clare responded, Thats just about what I think about civil disobedience.

Clare, Woffords best friend and my best critic, died in 1996 of acute leukemia. She remains a constant in Woffords conversation, as though she were busy in the next room. After her death, I was sure I would never again feel the kind of love Clare and I shared, he says.

Five years later, there was Charlton on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Wofford was 75 and Charlton 25. At dusk, gazing east toward the Atlantic, Wofford recalls, We had a wonderful talk, very stirring, a beautiful sky and a beautiful ocean.

Later, he found himself thinking, I would really like to go back to the beach and swim with Matthew Charlton again.

It took him all of a week, possibly two, to know that this was love.

I was surprised in the sense that I didnt think it was likely that there would be someone that really struck me with a spark, that moved me, because of my age, he says.

Initially, their professional interests differed, though we shared a love of adventure and travel, and being outdoors. Charlton, a native of South Carolina, first studied industrial design before pursuing interior design, and he created a three-legged Charlton chair fashioned of metal and wood.

Hes now got a lot of interest in politics, says Wofford. And Ive come to respect and be intrigued by the design field, not that I have anything to contribute.



Wofford and Clare Lindgren at their 1948 wedding. (Courtesy of Harris Wofford via Civic Documentaries)

Wofford possesses an unforced elegance  in the 1930s, he joined his grandmother on a six-month world tour  and is genial and generous, opening his home to a stranger days before the wedding.

He asks to be addressed as Harris. I havent been Senator for ages, he scoffs. A former president of Bryn Mawr College and chairman of Pennsylvanias Democratic party, he has stuffed his apartment with books and photos of Kennedy and King, Clinton and Obama, and George H.W. Bush (I really grew to admire him). An oversize bust of Socrates dominates the library that Charlton designed and that serves as their office.

Often on the premises is 20-something Jacob Finkel, who has been working on a documentary about Wofford for eight years. Entirely his idea, says Wofford. Finkel has assumed the role of assistant and gatekeeper. When Woffords stories take an engaging peregrination, he often turns to Finkel to prompt his memory.

For three years, Wofford didnt share his romance with his children, who are all older than Charlton.

If Id been wiser, I would have gotten them to know each other a little sooner, says Wofford, the only time he grows wistful. When they did get to know him, they all liked him.

I think its wonderful, says Susanne Wofford, a Shakespeare scholar and a dean at New York University, who will serve as master of ceremonies (her fathers phrase) at Saturdays nuptials. My father is a very lucky man to find someone who cares about him. Theyre both very lucky.

There was no need to get married, to make an honest man of them both, but Junes Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges moved the couple to make their union legal. Wofford is particularly taken with Justice Anthony M. Kennedys majority decision and Obamas reference to the dignity of marriage.

For a long time, I didnt think it would be politically possible. And I was wrong, he says. And it was wrong that I was wrong.

A few months ago, in the living room where they are to be wed, Wofford asked Charlton to be his husband.

Charlton was so taken aback that I asked him to repeat what he had asked, and I said yes, absolutely, he says.

We will find out how long Im around and how it strengthens our great relationship, says Wofford. Im very lucky to have the privilege of having had two great loves in one life.

For the second and final time, he is thrilled to be a groom.
Booking around the world travel doesn't have to be hard. Learn how to maximize the value of your next trip by making multiple stops while circling the globe. (McKenna Ewen,Osman Malik/The Washington Post)

Booking around the world travel doesn't have to be hard. Learn how to maximize the value of your next trip by making multiple stops while circling the globe. (McKenna Ewen,Osman Malik/The Washington Post)

Maybe it starts slowly. You are planning a trip to one country and decide to tack on a few others in the neighborhood. Then you notice a continent over there, just across the ocean. And then another. So, you end up leapfrogging from lily pad to lily pad.

Or perhaps you rush into the adventure as if you were training for The Amazing Race. Cram together as many destinations as possible before CBS decides to cancel the show.

Or what if you have a bounty of frequent-flier miles, vacation days or empty passport pages? Or you want empirical proof that the world is, indeed, round?

Regardless of the pace or purpose, anyone can take a spin around the globe. No circumnavigation skills required.

[Ever dream about visiting seven countries in one trip? Join us on our 21,623-mile adventure.]

Going around the world isnt that hard, said Sean Keener, who co-founded BootsnAll, an independent travel guide, and runs AirTreks, an airfare booking site for multi-stop trips. There are an infinite number of ways to do it.

Trippin around the globe is more doable and affordable than one might imagine. You dont need to hire an army of travel agents or sell your Facebook stock. But you will need to nail the first and more crucial step: booking the ticket.

There are three main ways to organize an odyssey of this nature. The strategies require varying levels of effort and expertise, but they all share the same end result: rocketing travelers up, down and around planet Earth.

Book it yourself, leg by leg by leg by leg by leg

The major online booking sites, such as Kayak and Orbitz, offer multi-city tools that allow you to plug in more complicated itineraries than Point A to B and back to A. However, the search engines typically limit the number of flights that can be plugged in. Orbitz allots for five one-way flights; Kayak has room for six. BootsnAlls Indie airfare engine is the most ambitious, with space for 25 flights. To circumvent the roadblock, you can make several separate bookings for the same trip, like individual charms on a bracelet.

When planning, you will need to know the exact dates of each segment. But you must also be flexible, in case the carrier does not offer a flight to a specific destination on your preferred day. Airlines typically list flight times and prices 11 months in advance. If you are mapping an extended itinerary, you might need to book the second half of your trip mid-journey.

Of course, you have alternatives. For example, you can bridge destinations with low-fare or regional airlines, or buses, boats or trains (known as surface sectors). To save money, consider flying into hub cities such as Frankfurt, Germany; London; Istanbul, Doha, Qatar; Seoul, Tokyo, etc., and rely on overland modes of transportation to explore more remote or less touristed areas.

[Tips on how to travel light without sacrificing comfort and style]

Experienced travelers like Lee Abbamonte, the youngest American to visit every country in the world, excel as captains of their own RTW destinies. During his first trip in 1999, he visited 20 countries.

I pieced it all together with one-way tickets, he said. I thought it was fun figuring it out.

To stretch his budget, Abbamonte tapped into the student discounts offered through STA Travel, an agency that caters to the under-26 set. But now that he is older and wise to frequent-flier miles, he has retained a new booking assistant: the airline alliances.

Airline alliances

The three global consortiums  SkyTeam, Star Alliance and Oneworld  arrange round-the-world tickets based on the flight routes and schedules of their partner carriers and affiliates. At Star Alliance, the family includes 28 members. For SkyTeam, its 20 and Oneworld has 15.

Using the alliances involves more rules and calculations than the book-it-yourself way. For example, you must circle the globe in one direction, east or west. With SkyTeam, your itinerary must feature one trans-Pacific flight, one trans-Atlantic leg and one transcontinental flight between Areas 2 (Europe, Middle East, Africa) and 3 (Asia, Far East Oceanic). Voyages with Oneworld must include at least three continents and cant exceed 15 segments, or legs. Star Alliances regulations require a minimum of five stopovers (on-the-ground time of 24 hours or more) and a maximum of 15.

You can pay for your trip in mileage, money or a mix. The price in dollars or redeemed miles is calculated by the cabin class, mileage and/or number of zones or regions visited or transited through.

Abbamonte has circumnavigated via the alliances three times. On his last voyage, in 2007-2008, he stitched together five continents and tooled around India for a month. He spent 150,000 to 200,000 miles per sojourn. However, over the years, rewards programs have significantly lost their value. Today, a RTW ticket would likely gobble up twice as many miles, if not more.

Round-the-world special agents

Several agencies specialize in globe-hugging trips, such as World Travellers Club, Ticketsroundtheworld and AirTreks. The experts are a hybrid of fairy godparent, counselor and soothsayer. They can turn overly ambitious ideas (me to agent: I want to visit seven countries in 2 1 /2 weeks) and vague plans (me to agent: I am not sure which ones or when) into a golden ticket (see evidence below). They offer advice on travel times (avoid monsoon and hurricane seasons), tips on saving money (skip holidays and school vacation periods) and even pull out some unexpected surprises (free stopovers in Hong Kong and the Seychelles). The companies often forge relationships with the airlines, resulting in lower fares. Once the reservation is complete, the agent may handle any future flight changes and reassemble the puzzle pieces if the airlines shakes them up.

[Italys overlooked heel has a wealth of food, wine and unique architecture]

For my own RTW ticket  I couldnt follow the rainbow and not claim the pot of gold, now could I?  I reached out to AirTreks. I initially used the sites planning tool and hatched a route that resembled a Jackson Pollock painting. Defeated, I called and spoke with a specialist. Glenn and I worked together on a few itinerations, adding and subtracting destinations. Vancouver, out; Madagascar, in. A few days later, we finalized the route: Washington-Reykjavik-Stockholm-Madagascar-Seychelles-Mumbai-Singapore-Hong Kong. I paid $3,786 and depart on Tuesday.

This is an involved itinerary, but its interesting, he said during our October session. You are going up and down the equator. It has a good flow to it. And price-wise, its actually pretty good.

Before hanging up, the veteran RTW planner said to me, I want to do something like that.

I took his comment as a high compliment.

Using an around-the-world ticket, Andrea Sachs and photographer Jabin Botsford will drop into seven countries over the next 20 days. On Friday, check washingtonpost.com/travel for the first around-the-world installment from Reykjavik.

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THE DISTRICT

Man, 27, is fatally

stabbed in Northwest

A man was stabbed to death in Northwest Washington on Tuesday, police said.

D.C. police responded to a report of a stabbing in the 1200 block of North Capitol Street about 1:15 a.m., the department said in a statement. There, officers found 27-year-old Kenneth E. Jackson of Northwest suffering from an apparent stab wound. He was taken to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

 Justin Wm. Moyer

Official: Fence jumper

is robbery suspect

A robbery suspect was injured Tuesday afternoon after he jumped a fence near the White House to flee the scene of a crime, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service said.

The man was taken into custody shortly after he jumped the west fence of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building about 3:55 p.m., said Robert K. Hoback, an agency spokesman.

The incident caused the White House to go into a brief lockdown.

Hoback said in a news release that an initial investigation indicated that the man was running from a robbery near the White House, in the area of 17th and G streets NW. He is scheduled to appear in Superior Court on Wednesday, Hoback added. He declined to give further details.

It was not immediately clear precisely where the jumper got over the fence. The man, whose name was not released, was taken to a hospital after he apparently injured his hand.

 Peter Hermann

and Victoria St. Martin

Baby eagles named;

36,000 votes cast

The two bald eagles who were born this spring at the U.S. National Arboretum just got new names: Freedom and Liberty.

After a nearly week-long contest, eagle experts with several private groups and government agencies picked the names, which were announced Tuesday. The eaglets had been referred to as DC2 and DC3 after they were born in March to Mr. President and The First Lady.

The top five name suggestions that people voted on (in no particular order) were, Freedom and Liberty; Stars and Stripes; Anacostia and Potomac; Honor and Glory; and Cherry and Blossom. Officials said more than 36,000 votes were cast.

 Dana Hedgpeth

MARYLAND

1 dead, 4 wounded in Forestville shooting

A quintuple shooting Tuesday morning left four people wounded and one woman dead in Prince Georges County, police said.

The incident happened about 1:30 a.m. in the 6500 block of Hil-Mar Drive in Forestville when a group of people standing outside were shot by someone in a car, police said.

The car sped off, and when officers arrived, they found Joanne Woods, 49, suffering from gunshot wounds, police said. Woods, of District Heights, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Four men were also shot during the attack, according to police. One of them was in critical condition and taken to a hospital.

 Dana Hedgpeth

VIRGINIA

Woman charged in

slaying at her home

A Fairfax County woman who walked into a government center on Monday to report that a dead man was in her apartment is charged with killing him, police said Tuesday.

Jessica R. Deneal-Whalen, 27, faces a second-degree murder charge on suspicion of strangling Raymond A. White, 51, of no fixed address, in her home in the Alexandria area of Fairfax County.

 Justin Jouvenal
Derris Taylor, a graduate student at the University of the District of Columbia, instructs Antonne Richardson, 12, while using a 3-D modeling program. (Perry Stein/The Washington Post)

A new technology education program at the University of the District of Columbia will help 100 minority middle school boys learn 3-D modeling and app development and will expose them to future career opportunities in the tech sector.

The Verizon Minority Male Makers Program will bring a free, four-week summer boot camp to Washington, aiming to give rising sixth- through eighth-graders in the Districts schools a chance to get a boost in areas in which they are widely underrepresented. And because technology jobs are increasingly abundant  and the skilled workforce in the United States isnt keeping pace  it could encourage students into a field in which they have an increased chance to excel.

The program is open to students in the D.C. Public Schools as well as charters and private schools and will mirror similar programs in other parts of the country, having launched in 2015 at four historically black colleges and universities throughout the nation. It has now expanded to 12 cities.

[Top business leaders, 27 governors, urge Congress to boost computer science education]

D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced last year that the D.C. school system would invest $20 million in a variety of programs to boost academic achievements among minority males. Black and Latino boys made up about 43 percent of the students enrolled in D.C. public schools last year.

We know that our males of color face significant hurdles, Henderson said. Our goal is to give children in D.C. opportunities that inspire greatness.

UDC will provide facilities, three faculty members, and more than a dozen minority college and graduate students to serve as mentors to the middle-schoolers during a two-year span. The middle school students will be scheduled to attend two four-week summer camps and will experience programming throughout two academic years.

The mentors will be in regular contact with the middle school students, and UDC faculty members will be available for tutoring when necessary. There also will be monthly workshops for the students to keep their programming skills fresh and meet professionals in the industry.

The success is built on the pipelines, said Anthony Lewis, the vice president of Verizons Mid-Atlantic region. If you are going to invest in a particular university, you want to make sure they already have the existing relationships with their communities.

Lewis announced the D.C. chapter of the program, which will launch this summer, at a Tuesday morning news conference program at UDCs student center alongside Henderson and UDC President Ronald Mason Jr. Verizon delivered an oversize check for $395,000 to fund the program.

[D.C. schools invests $20 million in efforts to help black and Latino male students]

Henderson said she would alert principals to recruit students, specifically targeting schools that focus on science and technology, such as Kelly Miller Middle School in Northeast Washington.

All students, regardless of their academic record, can participate in the program. If more than 100 students apply, UDC will try to accommodate them.

The application deadline is June 15, and the summer program will run from June 27 to July 22.

Nearly 70 percent of the programs participants last year had an increased interest in STEM  science, technology, engineering and mathematics  careers, according to Verizon data.

Antonne Richardson, 12, participates in the Minority Male Makers in Baltimore and said he created a Web program with his mentor that allows users to input a recipe and get a healthier version in return.

I think what we landed on is very cool, he said. It felt really awesome for something you had an idea for to come to life.
A D.H. Conley High School student participates in an Hour of Code in Greenville, N.C. Students used free tutorials from the website Code.org. (Rhett Butler/AP)

Leaders of dozens of the nations top businesses  from Apple and Facebook to Target, Walmart and AT&T  are calling on Congress to help provide computer science education in all K-12 schools, arguing that the United States needs far more students who are literate in the technologies that are transforming nearly every industry.

They worry that the United States could lose its competitive edge without significant efforts to boost computer science among the nations youth. A bipartisan coalition of 27 governors has joined the effort, saying they see teaching coding and programming as a way to draw middle-class jobs to their states, and dozens of school system superintendents and nonprofit leaders say they see computer science courses as essential for giving children the skills theyll need to be successful in the modern economy.

Our schools should give all students the opportunity to understand how this technology works, to learn how to be creators, coders, and makers  not just consumers, they wrote Tuesday in an open letter to lawmakers. Instead, what is increasingly a basic skill is only available to the lucky few, leaving most students behind, particularly students of color and girls.

An estimated 500,000 unfilled U.S. jobs require some level of computer-science understanding, yet three-quarters of the nations public schools do not offer any computer science courses, often sending companies turning to foreign workers for specialized skills. The federal government isnt doing much to help: Virtually no federal funding is dedicated to enhancing computer science offerings in K-12 schools.

Computer science education has long been treated as an elective in K-12 schools, a nice-to-have option for the few students who are naturally inclined to seek it out. But there is a growing movement to treat computer science instead as a core subject, such as algebra or biology, to which every student is exposed.

Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in May 2014. (Denis Balibouse /Reuters)

It just seems so ridiculously obvious that our education policy has to include computer science as a basic. The fact that youd even discuss it seems absurd, said Barry Diller, chairman of the online travel company Expedia and of IAC, which owns websites including the Daily Beast, Dictionary.com and the dating site Match.com.

Hadi Partovi, the chief executive of Code.org  a nonprofit that has helped more than 100 school districts train teachers and expand computer science offerings  was a driving force behind Tuesdays letter to Congress. He said that the range of industries represented  including retail, tech, finance, airlines, media and even the tractor company John Deere  shows that every business sector has an interest in ensuring that children are learning not just to use software, but to create it.

[Powering up: The campaign to teach computer science to a digital nation]

It used to be that computer science and technology were about tech companies in California, Partovi said. At this point, theres not a single industry or a single state you can look at where the field and the market isnt being changed by technology.

The movement to push computer science has been focused within states and school districts, aided by many millions of dollars in donations from private companies. But advocates say federal funding is key to giving every student access to computer science courses; such courses have been more available in affluent communities than in poor ones and have enrolled students who as a group skew whiter and more male than the general student population.

Business leaders say democratizing access to computer science will give students a leg up in the burgeoning tech fields but also in almost any job.

Computer science is not just about becoming an engineer, but teaching people how to think in a different way, in a critical way, said Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chief executive of Twitter. That can be helpful in any field,

Reid Hoffman, chairman and co-founder of LinkedIn Corp., in June 2014. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)

Reid Hoffman, the co-founder and chief executive of LinkedIn, said he took a little programming in high school and messed around with an Apple IIe as a teenager.

Im a perfect example of someone who is not an engineer, but my path was greatly improved by understanding how software is growing, how it works, how it is transforming the world and what are the kinds of things I could do with my life and career, said Hoffman, who has a net worth of $2.8 billion, according to Forbes.

Private-sector donations tend to fund camps and weekend classes, and thats not enough, said Melinda Gates, who has invested billions of dollars in U.S. education reform through the foundation she heads with husband Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft.

Learning computer science in short bursts is not nearly as effective as having computer science as part of students continuous curriculum, said Melinda Gates, who signed the letter. Public schools are the only place we can ensure that all students, from all walks of life, have the chance to learn computer science.

Among other signers of the letter were Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Googles parent company, Alphabet, Inc.; Larry Fink, chief executive of the investment management firm BlackRock; James Murdoch, chief executive of 21st Century Fox; and Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon. (Bezos owns The Washington Post and, through a spokesman, declined to comment.)

College Board data show that more than 160,000 females in the high school Class of 2015 were academically ready to succeed in advanced computer science, according to their scores on standardized tests such as the PSAT. But only 10,142 of those girls  6 percent  went on to take the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam, said College Board chief executive David Coleman.

Similar statistics show that black and Latino students who show academic readiness for AP computer science also are not taking the course, Coleman said. That is a great waste of talent for this country, he said.

President Obama in January asked lawmakers to make a $4 billion investment in providing computer science to all students, calling it a basic skill, right along with the three Rs.

[Obama outlines $4 billion Computer Science for All spending plan]

Many observers say that while its unlikely that the GOP-led Congress will agree to new spending at that level, there is a general consensus among politicians about the importance of teaching computer science to more students.

The Computer Science Education Coalition  whose members include many of the companies whose executives signed Tuesdays letter  is asking Congress for a more modest investment: $250 million, an amount that the coalition says would help reach more than 3.5 million students in 52,000 classrooms nationwide.

Tuesdays letter does not request a specific dollar figure and describes funding for computer-science education as a bipartisan issue can be addressed without growing the federal budget.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R), who led the push to make his state one of the first to put comprehensive computer science requirements into law, said the goal is to allocate existing education dollars with a new emphasis on coding and programming.

The budget debate on Capitol Hill wont be about whether to invest in computer science education, Hutchinson predicted, but on how much: This should be a real easy way to bring people in Washington together, he said.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who is slated to become chair of the National Governors Association in July, said he will use that perch to advocate for federal support for computer science. Virginia has about 30,000 unfilled computing jobs, McAuliffe said, which means an estimated $3 billion in unrealized wages and $165 million in lost income tax. This spring the state legislature passed a bill that requires computer science to be woven into the K-12 curriculum.

I want us to be the cyber capital of the United States, McAuliffe said. The only way were going to do it is lean in on building those digital skills.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate education committee, said that Congress already passed a new federal education law that explicitly allows states and districts to use federal funds for computer-science programs and teacher-training.

Its such encouragement  not mandates  that is the way to unleash real innovation and student achievement in our nations 100,000 public schools, Alexander said.

Besides asking Congress to contribute, many of those who signed the letter announced private donations totaling $48 million to boost computer science education nationwide, $23 million of which will go to Code.org.

Among the most generous donors is Microsoft. Chief executive Brad Smith said theres a need for the same kind of urgency and bipartisan spirit that characterized the push for stronger science education in the late 1950s, after the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik, the first satellite.

I think every company in our industry, and increasingly many other companies across the country, are confronting challenges in finding people with the right skills, Smith said. Thats one of the reasons . . . why we turn to people from other countries, and one of the reasons we increasingly face the specter of putting jobs in other countries. If we cant fill the jobs here, we need to fill them somewhere else.

Here is the text of the open letter to Congress, followed by the full list of signers:

Dear Members of Congress and fellow Americans,

As business leaders, elected officials, and educators, we join forces to deliver a bipartisan message about opportunity and the American Dream. Technology is transforming society at an unprecedented rate. Whether its smartphones or social networks, self-driving cars or personalized medicine, nothing embodies the American Dream so much as the opportunity to change or even reinvent the world with technology. And participating in this world requires access to computer science in our schools. We ask you to provide funding for every student in every school to have an opportunity to learn computer science.

Support for this idea is sweeping our nation. Ninety percent of parents want their children to have access to computer science education at school, and teachers agree. They know that technology opens doors. A hundred thousand teachers have taken matters into their own hands and already begun teaching computer science. Over 100 school districts are rolling out courses, from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles, from Miami to Las Vegas. Twenty states have passed policies and are now looking to support professional training for new computer science teachers. Private donors have collectively committed tens of millions of dollars to solving this problem, including $48 million of new commitments announced today by many of the undersigned.

Despite this groundswell, three-quarters of U.S. schools do not offer meaningful computer science courses. At a time when every industry in every state is impacted by advances in computer technology, our schools should give all students the opportunity to understand how this technology works, to learn how to be creators, coders, and makers  not just consumers. Instead, what is increasingly a basic skill is only available to the lucky few, leaving most students behind, particularly students of color and girls.

How is this acceptable? America leads the world in technology. We invented the personal computer, the Internet, e-commerce, social networking, and the smartphone. This is our chance to position the next generation to participate in the new American Dream.

Not only does computer science provide every student foundational knowledge, it also leads to the highest-paying, fastest-growing jobs in the U.S. economy. There are currently over 500,000 open computing jobs, in every sector, from manufacturing to banking, from agriculture to healthcare, but only 50,000 computer science graduates a year. Whether a student aspires to be a software engineer, or if she just wants a well-rounded education in todays changing world, access to computer science in school is an economic imperative for our nation to remain competitive. And with the growing threat of cyber warfare, this is even a critical matter of national security. Despite this growing need, targeted federal funding to carry out these efforts in classrooms is virtually non-existent. This bipartisan issue can be addressed without growing the federal budget.

We urge you to amplify and accelerate the local efforts in classrooms, unlock opportunity in every state, and give an answer to all the parents and teachers who believe that every student, in every school, should have a chance to learn computer science.

Business Leaders

Arne Sorenson, CEO, Marriott

Barry Diller, Chairman, IAC and Expedia

Bill and Melinda Gates

Bobby Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard

Brad Smith, President, Microsoft

Brian Chesky, CEO, Airbnb

Brian Cornell, Chairman and CEO, Target

Doug McMillon, CEO, Walmart

Daniel Schulman, CEO, Paypal. Chairman, Symantec

Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO, Expedia

Devin Wenig, CEO, eBay

Doug Parker, Chairman and CEO, American Airlines

Edward Breen, Chairman and CEO, DuPont

Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Alphabet, Inc.

Ginni Rometty, Chairman and CEO, IBM

Grant Verstandig, CEO, Rally Health

Herb Allen, President, Allen & Company

Jack Dorsey, CEO, Twitter and Square

James Murdoch, CEO, 21st Century Fox

James P. Gorman, Chairman and CEO, Morgan Stanley

Jeff Bezos, Chairman and CEO, Amazon

Jessica Alba, CEO, The Honest Company

Joe Lonsdale, Partner, 8VC. Founder, Palantir

John Donahoe, Chairman, Paypal

Julie Sweet, Chief Executive, Accenture North America

Larry Ellison

Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO, BlackRock

Lowell McAdam, Chairman and CEO, Verizon

Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, Salesforce

Mark Cuban, Owner, Dallas Mavericks, Magnolia Pictures, Landmark Theatres

Mark Zuckerberg, Chairman and CEO, Facebook

Rami Rahim, CEO, Juniper Networks

Randall Stephenson, Chairman and CEO, AT&T

Reid Hoffman, Chairman, LinkedIn

Rich Barton, Chairman, Zillow

Richard Anderson, CEO, Delta Airlines

Robert A. Iger, Chairman and CEO, The Walt Disney Company

Sam Altman, President, Y Combinator

Samuel Allen, Chairman and CEO, John Deere

Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft

Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook

Terry J. Lundgren, Chairman and CEO, Macys, Inc

Tim Cook, CEO, Apple

Vishal Sikka, CEO, Infosys

Governors

Asa Hutchinson, Governor, Arkansas (R)

Brian Sandoval, Governor, Nevada (R)

C.L. Butch Otter, Governor, Idaho (R)

Charlie Baker, Governor, Massachusetts (R)

Dannell P. Malloy, Governor, Connecticut (D)

David Y. Ige, Governor, Hawaii (D)

Earl Ray Tomblin, Governor, West Virginia (D)

Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Governor, California (D)

Gina M. Raimondo, Governor, Rhode Island (D)

Jack Dalrymple, Governor, North Dakota (R)

Jack Markell, Governor, Delaware (D)

Jay Inslee, Governor, Washington (D)

John Hickenlooper, Governor, Colorado (D)

Kate Brown, Governor, Oregon (D)

Maggie Hassan, Governor, New Hampshire (D)

Mark Dayton, Governor, Minnesota (D)

Mary Fallin, Governor, Oklahoma (R)

Matt Bevin, Governor, Kentucky (R)

Matt Mead, Governor, Wyoming (R)

Mike Pence, Governor, Indiana (R)

Peter Shumlin, Governor, Vermont (D)

Phil Bryant, Governor, Mississippi (R)

Rick Snyder, Governor, Michigan (R)

Steve Bullock, Governor, Montana (D)

Susana Martinez, Governor, New Mexico (R)

Terry Branstad, Governor, Iowa (R)

Terry McAuliffe, Governor, Virginia (D)

K-12 Leaders

Antwan Wilson, Superintendent, Oakland

Bob Runcie, Superintendent, Broward County Public Schools

Carmen Farina, Chancellor, NYC Department of Education

Forrest Claypool, CEO, Chicago Public Schools

Kimberly Hill, Superintendent, Charles County Public Schools

Michelle King, Superintendent, Los Angeles Unified School District

Pat Skorkowsky, Superintendent, Clark County School District

Richard Carranza, Superintendent, San Francisco Unified School District

Susan Enfield, Superintendent, Highline Public Schools

Tom Torlakson, State Superintendent, California

Education / Nonprofit

Bobby Schnabel, CEO, Association for Computing Machinery

Cornell Brooks, President and CEO, NAACP

Daniel A. Domenech, Executive Director, AASA, The School

Superintendents Association

David Coleman, CEO, College Board

Elisa Villanueva Beard, CEO, Teach For America

Gail Connelly, ED, National Association of Elementary School Principals

Hadi Partovi, CEO, Code.org

Lee Hood, MD, PhD, President, Institute for Systems Biology. Co-founder, Amgen

Linda D. Hallman, CEO, American Association of University Women

Lucy Sanders, CEO, National Center for Women and IT

Mark Nelson, Executive Director, CS Teachers Association

Matthew Randazzo, CEO, National Math & Science Initiative

Peggy Brookins, CEO, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards

Telle Whitney, CEO, Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology

Thomas J. Gentzel, Executive Director, National School Boards Association
MARYLAND

Police probe killing in Montgomery park

A man is dead after an assault Sunday at a Gaithersburg-area park, according to Montgomery County police.

Oscar Vidal Benitez, 18, of Gaithersburg died about 10 p.m. Sunday at a hospital after being transported from the parking area of Centerway Park at 9551 Centerway Road in Montgomery Village, police said. Two others were injured in the incident.

Police did not offer additional information about the assault or the motive.

 Dana Hedgpeth

Fatal stabbing in Charles County

Authorities in Charles County said a man fatally stabbed his father-in-law and forced his 12-year-old daughter at knife point into his car in a failed escape attempt.

Deangleo Hemsley, 39, of Waldorf was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and other crimes in the death of John Edward Yates, 71.

The incident began about 8 p.m. Saturday, according to the Charles County Sheriffs Office. Officers went to a home in the 12800 block of Yates Place in LaPlata after a report of a stabbing and found a man inside who was pronounced dead at the scene.

Hemsley had been separated from his wife, who was living with her father, according to the sheriffs office.

Hemsley showed up unannounced at the home looking for his daughter, authorities said. Yates confronted Hemsley, and Hemsley stabbed him several times before trying to flee with the girl.

 Dana Hedgpeth

A meteorite in

Bowie? Not so fast.

A fire in Prince Georges County that officials said might have been caused by a meteorite turns out not to have been caused by a meteorite.

Late Sunday night, the Bowie Volunteer Fire Department reported that its Station 39 had responded to a massive brush fire near Scarlett Oak Terrace. The department tweeted: 39 runs an odd one and Possible meteorite strike. The tweet was accompanied by the photograph of a crater and a small, rocklike object.

After local media began following the story, however, the volunteer fire departments captain apologized. He said that the two-acre fire took 15 firefighters four hours to extinguish but that it was not caused by a meteorite.

In a statement, a spokesman for the Prince Georges County Fire Department said that the cause of the fire was undetermined.

U.S. Naval Observatory astronomer Geoff Chester said meteorites are cold when they strike the Earth and do not cause fires, unless they strike a flammable object such as a gas line.

VIRGINIA

Dead Centreville man had been stabbed

A 21-year-old man who was found dead Sunday in a Centreville home died of a stab wound to the chest, a Virginia medical examiner said Monday.

Fairfax County police said Hosung Lee was found unresponsive in a townhouse in the 5600 block of Gresham Lane after a relative summoned officers shortly before 4:30 p.m. Sunday. Lee was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police had called the death suspicious but upgraded it Monday to a homicide. Police released no other details about the circumstances of Lees death, and family members could not immediately be reached for comment.

Anyone with information is asked to call police at 703-691-2131.

 Justin Jouvenal
In this April 14, 2016 photo, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, Rep. Donna Edwards, M-Md., visits with voters at Leisure World in Silver Spring, Md. (Brian Witte/AP)

Four polling places in Baltimore are staying open an extra hour, until 9 p.m., due to delays in opening, a judge ruled Tuesday evening.

The Senate campaign of Rep. Donna Edwards filed an emergency complaint against the Board of Elections in the city of Baltimore, asking for a two-hour extension of voting across the city. Instead, Circuit Court Judge Althea Handy extended voting in four precincts where opening delays exceeded 45 minutes.

Voting in Maryland is scheduled to take place from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday. But according to Edwardss campaign, six polling places in heavily African American West Baltimore opened 30 to 45 minutes late. At Beth Am Synagogue, her campaign says, malfunctioning polling places caused an hour-long delay.

Edwards, facing Rep. Chris Van Hollen in a competitive Democratic primary for the seat held by retiring Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D), is counting on heavy support in Baltimore.

Lawyers for her campaign write that Edwards is threatened with irreparable injury... since many voters will lose their right to vote.

The complaint includes declarations from two voters  one of them state Del. Jill Carter  who say they saw voters leave polling places because of the delays.

The polling sites are John Eager Howard Eelemtary School, Beth-Am Synagogue, Oliver multi-purpose center and Pimlico Elementary School.

Among the lawyers filing the complaint on behalf of the campaign are Billy Murphy, who represents the family of Freddie Gray, whose death in police custody led to protests and unrest, and Aisha Braveboy, a state delegate.
Marine Maj. Mark Thompson, left, was convicted of having sex with two female midshipmen while he taught at the U.S. Naval Academy. His friend, Marine Maj. Michael Pretus, right, is now being removed from his academy teaching position. (Left: Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post; Right: The Washington Post)

A second U.S. Naval Academy instructor has been implicated in a sexual misconduct scandal reverberating across a military still struggling to hold service members accountable when allegations are made against them.

The instructor, Marine Maj. Michael Pretus, is being removed from his position by Naval Academy leaders who said they werent aware of a former students sexual accusation against him.

The reassignment comes after a new investigation of a fellow Marine, Maj. Mark Thompson, who was convicted in 2013 of having sex with two female midshipmen while he was a teacher at the academy. In a stunning reversal, Pretus  a key defense witness at Thompsons court-martial  has now agreed to testify against his longtime friend.

Im going to be a witness for the prosecution, Pretus told The Washington Post in an interview Sunday.

Pretus, a decorated combat veteran, said that military authorities approached him after The Posts revelations about Thompsons case last month.

In 2005, Michael Pretus gets a tattoo from Brad Bellante at Spark Plug Tattoo in Fredericksburg, Va. The body art is in memory of several Marines who died while fighting with him in Fallujah. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

[A Marine fights to prove hes innocent of sexual misconduct. Then a lost cellphone is found.]

During Thompsons 2013 trial at the Washington Navy Yard, Pretus challenged testimony given by Thompsons accusers, Sarah Stadler and a younger classmate. Then, after being spotted by Stadler during the trial, Pretus himself was investigated for allegedly taking part in a threesome with her and Thompson in 2011. Under military law, an officer having sex with a midshipman is a crime, as is having a threesome.

The investigation, according to military records, ended after Pretus refused to cooperate. One year later, in 2014, the Marine Corps assigned him to teach history to midshipmen in Annapolis, where he has also served as a mentor to students who aspire to become Marines.

Officials at the Naval Academy, the Marine Corps, the Judge Advocate General of the Navy, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and Pretuss former command in New Orleans have been unable to explain how he taught at the academy for two years after being accused of having sex with a student.

Amid the embarrassing fallout, Cmdr. John Schofield, a Naval Academy spokesman, said that Pretus would no longer be allowed to remain in the classroom. The school, Schofield maintained, had no knowledge of the accusation against Pretus before The Posts stories about Thompson.

Under no circumstances would the Naval Academy have allowed for assignment on staff and faculty had there been disclosure of the circumstances and details of his involvement in that event, Schofield said. The Naval Academy immediately initiated administrative actions to reassign Major Pretus upon discovery of his past involvement with Major Thompson and Ms. Stadler.

An NCIS spokesman said he didnt know whether investigators had informed the academy of the investigation into Pretus but called it the responsibility of Pretuss then-command, the Marine Corps Forces Reserve in New Orleans.

After a flawed sexual assault investigation, a Naval Academy instructor tries to prove he has done nothing wrong. But did he? (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)

A spokesman there acknowledged that the command knew about the investigation into Pretus but denied that it was the commands job to inform the school of it.

We wouldnt have ever informed them because we didnt have anything to do with the Naval Academy, said spokesman Adam Bashaw. We dont select the next jobs.

The new assignment, Bashaw said, would have been the duty of officials at Marine Corps Manpower and Reserve Affairs. That department said Pretus was eligible for the assignment but did not say whether officials there knew about the accusation against him.

A JAG spokeswoman declined to answer questions, referring them back to the Naval Academy. A spokesman for the Marine Corps, which is considering whether to bring new charges against Thompson, said officials there are working to determine the circumstances that led to Pretuss assignment at the academy.

Stadler first learned that Pretus had become a teacher at the school when she was contacted by The Post in January.

I was incredibly disgusted and discouraged, she said this week, because I just couldnt believe someone who already broke laws and rules knowingly . . . was now working at an institution where he was supposed to interact and influence young midshipmen.

[Military launches a new investigation into Marines sexual misconduct case]

The new investigation into Thompson  who was acquitted of rape but convicted of five other charges related to sexual misconduct three years ago  was launched after The Post reported on the contents of Stadlers long-missing cellphone. Many of the more than 650 messages she and Thompson exchanged appear to contradict what he said under oath in 2014 to an administrative board that was deciding whether he should be expelled from the Marines. (Thompson, who has long denied any wrongdoing, did not respond to requests for comment for this report.)

A number of the texts also refer to a Mike, who Stadler says is Pretus. One exchange indicates that she went to Thompsons home on a day when Pretus, according to his own statements to investigators, was staying with Thompson in Annapolis.

Asked by a reporter whether hed ever had sex with Stadler, Pretus wouldnt answer.

Im not going to comment on that, said the 18-year veteran.

On Sunday, Pretus, who was scheduled to remain in the classroom one more year, said he was still teaching but did not know how his role in the investigation would affect his future there.

Its up in the air, he said.

As of Monday evening, he was still listed on the Naval Academys website as one of the Marine Company Mentors to the schools second battalion. On campus this weekend, his wood-framed photograph remained on display along with those of other members of the history department faculty. His office was packed with papers, photos and Marine Corps memorabilia.

On one poster, above the image of a Marine standing at attention, was a single word: SERVE.

Reconnecting after Iraq duty

The bond between Pretus and Thompson formed more than a decade ago as both men prepared for war after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

They were assigned platoons on the same day: Thompson to sniper, Pretus to infantry. But when Thompson mentioned that he had extensive experience with that type of infantry platoon, a colonel switched their assignments.

It ended up changing both of our lives, Thompson testified at his administrative hearing.

Pretus fought in the Second Battle of Fallujah, where he lost two men during one of the militarys fiercest firefights since the Vietnam War.

The men reconnected at Quantico around 2005 and stayed close in the years after, a time when Pretuss harrowing combat experiences defined much of his public life. At the time, The Post featured him in a story about service members getting tattoos to honor their slain comrades.

[Indelible memories for veterans of Iraq]

He gave gripping speeches about his experience, too. On Facebook, the officer frequently referred to the Marines hed fought alongside and the burden he carried because of those who would never come home.

In April 2011, Pretus traveled to Annapolis to give a presentation on battlefield leadership to Thompsons students.

It was during that trip, Stadler said in an interview, that she had sex with both men.

At 11:54 p.m. on April 26, 2011, she texted Thompson: Thanks c u tomorrow for our run.

Schedule is good for 1600 run tomorrow, he wrote back, using the military time for 4 p.m.

Sounds good, she responded.

They frequently used references to exercise, Stadler said, as a code for sex.

A few minutes later, Thompson continued: Guest speaker tomorrow 4th 5th and 6th if you can stop by.

Where?

1st floor Sampson 115, he wrote, referring to a classroom in the building that houses the history department. Ill be in the hallway.

Is it Mike? she wrote. Is that a smart idea?

Sure, there will be other guest. You wont feel out of place.

I might stop by, she responded at 12:31 a.m.

That Mike, Stadler said, was Pretus, who later testified at Thompsons trial that he spoke to Thompsons students the following day. She said that Thompson wanted her to see him.

It was for me to get a look at him for the first time, she said, and give my thumbs up or thumbs down.

Stadler approved, she said, and at 3:48 p.m. she texted Thompson.

Still running at 1600?

Yes, he wrote. You?

Yeah about to leave my room.

Meet u at front or back? she messaged him, referring to the two entrances at Thompsons house.

Front, he told her.

On my way, she wrote at 4:01 that afternoon.

Two hours later, she sent him another message: Best run ever! Thanks.

Pretus refused to say whether he had seen Stadler that day.

Stadler and Pretus became friends on Facebook in 2011, The Post found, though its unclear how long they remained friends (they no longer are). Despite their former connection, Stadler maintains that she had forgotten his name by the time investigators contacted her in 2012.

A familiar face at trial

Stadler didnt see Pretus again until she came to testify at Thompsons 2013 court-martial in Washington, where she spotted him in the lobby of a hotel being used by several witnesses. When she looked into Pretuss eyes, Stadler later told investigators, she felt the blood rush from her face. She knew immediately who he was.

She reported him to Naval authorities, but the accusation against Pretus was discussed only during a private session that was closed to the jury and was withheld from the proceedings transcript. NCIS launched an investigation, which was obtained by The Post. Authorities interviewed Stadler, inspected his service record and unsuccessfully attempted to retrieve video footage from the District hotel where Stadler said she saw him.

The investigation ended, however, when agents confronted Pretus. He refused to cooperate, according to military records, and invoked his right to remain silent.

Not until Thompsons administrative hearing did the government try to use Pretuss alleged involvement with Stadler, who was later kicked out of the Navy for lying about her relationship with an enlisted sailor. Known as a board of inquiry, three Marine officers voted 2 to 1 that Thompson should not have been found guilty of sexual misconduct. All three agreed that he should be allowed to stay in the service.

Pretus didnt testify at that hearing, but much of what he told jurors at the trial focused on an incident alleged to have occurred just a few days after he had come to Annapolis.

On the night of April 30, 2011, Stadler and a female friend  both of whom knew Thompson through the schools rifle team  attended the boozy annual croquet match between the academy and St. Johns College. Afterward, they stopped by Thompsons house, just two blocks off campus.

The women claimed that Thompson served them shots of tequila before they played strip poker and staggered to his bedroom, where he had sex with both of them. Stadler said the sex was consensual and part of an ongoing relationship, but her friend later told authorities that she was too drunk to give him consent and alleged that hed raped her. (The Post generally does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault.)

Pretuss testimony was essential to rebutting their version of events.

He told the court that after returning from Annapolis to his home in North Carolina, he and his then-wife had gotten into an intense fight. Pretus said that the episode prompted him to talk by phone with Thompson several times on the same night the women later alleged that he had sex with them.

On the stand, Pretus was asked whether during their conversations, Thompson had talked about a pair of students coming to his home.

He had mentioned that two female midshipmen  midshipmen from the rifle team  had stopped by his house inebriated and used the bathroom and left, Pretus said, noting that Thompson had referred to them during a call at 8:12 p.m.

That statement was important for two reasons: It corroborated the story that Thompson has long insisted is the real truth, and it established a timeline that helped his defense team argue that the women had not stayed at his house as long as theyd alleged.

Pretus was then asked in court how he felt about Thompson allowing the women in his home.

I was taken aback a little bit, he said. Im sure I said something along the lines like Wow, thats not a good idea. 

Pretus went on to testify that he had attended an academy event with Thompson in late 2011. There, he said, they ran into Stadlers friend.

She testified that it was the first time that shed seen Thompson since the alleged rape, saying that she felt very awkward during the conversation. A friend who was with her at the time told jurors she turned bright red and wasnt as outgoing as she normally is.

But Pretus gave a different account of the meeting, asserting that the woman was very girlish, very bubbly and not at all awkward during the encounter.

Thompson, Pretus said in court, mentioned her again later that night.

Thats one of those midshipmen that came over to my house that time. Do you remember when I told you that last spring? Pretus testified that Thompson said to him.

Oh, yeah, Pretus told jurors he responded.

The two men remained close in the years following the trial, continuing to talk after Thompson served two months in a military prison and throughout his effort to clear his name. Pretus, meanwhile, remarried.

On the day the administrative board ruled in Thompsons favor  just months before Pretus began teaching at the academy  the two men texted each other.

Retained!!! Thompson wrote, according to an exchange he later provided to The Post.

F--- yeah, Pretus responded, adding 21 exclamation points.

He kept texting: Cigar time. Congrats. Call me when you can.

Then another: The nightmare is over!

Thompson responded with a smiley face and, the next day, texted his friend once more.

I beat them.

Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this story.
A canvas cover obscures the new headstone of Navy sailor Joseph B. Noil, who died in 1882. His name was misspelled on the previous headstone, and the stone didnt note his Medal of Honor. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)

When Joseph Benjamin Noil started to lose his mind, it was agreed that the best place for him was the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C. Thats where the Navy sailor went on June 3, 1881.

Paralysis was the vague diagnosis. Today we might call it post-traumatic stress disorder. Noil did little more than stare into the distance.

Living in New York City and working to support their two daughters, Noils wife, Sarah Jane, was too poor to visit him, but she wrote the hospital regularly to check on his condition.

Doctor will you please let me know all about my husband, she wrote on July 5, 1881.

Doctor I am glad to think he has had good care, she wrote four months later.

Noil was on the USS Powhatan in 1872 when a crewmate went overboard. Noil received the Medal of Honor for saving the man. (Edward H. Hart/Library of Congress)

Doctor I am very sorry to think that my poor husband is afflicted in that way, she wrote on Feb. 11, 1882.

And then the last letter, written on March 22, 1882, the day after Noil died.

My friends assure me that time will reconcile me to my great bereavement, Sarah Jane wrote. Yet time, and the great consolation that I have in meeting in a better world where parting will be no more, will I trust enable me to bear my sorrow. May god bless you for your thought of me in the dark hours and kind words of consolation knowing my husband was not neglected.

He may not have been neglected in life, but in death Joseph Noil seemed to vanish. He was buried at the hospital  now known as St. Elizabeths  under a tombstone with a misspelled name, one of his greatest achievements forgotten.

Joseph Noil was a hero. He joined the Navy in 1864, possibly earlier. On the day after Christmas in 1872, he was aboard the USS Powhatan, a side-wheel steam frigate, off Norfolk. A boatswain named Walton fell from the forecastle into the ice-cold water and was swept under the bow.

Upon hearing the cry, Man overboard! Noil bolted from below deck, took the end of a rope and leapt into the sea. He caught Walton and held him until a boat came to their rescue.

For this gallant conduct, Noil was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Noil was unusual for many reasons. He was Canadian. And he was black.

Noil is so fascinating to me, said Maureen Jais-Mick, who does community outreach for St. Elizabeths. Hes a free black man from Nova Scotia. He comes to the United States and serves in the Civil War. He saw so much going on in this new country. . . . Theres all this churn and turmoil, and hes here. He makes it his lifetime pursuit to be part of it and be part of the U.S. Navy. I just find it quite amazing.

There are 2,000 veterans buried at St. Elizabeths. Noils name on his original headstone was misspelled as NOEL. It bore no mention of his Medal of Honor, contrary to what is customary for recipients.

Noils achievement  his very name  might have been lost were it not for the efforts of a group of amateur historians devoted to collecting detailed information on the more than 3,500 Medal of Honor recipients, including photos of each of their graves. Don Morfe, Gayle Alvarez, Bart Armstrong and Will Carpenter painstakingly pieced together Noils story  and matched the story to his grave  with help from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, the Medal of Honor Historical Society of the United States and the Chicora Foundation, a preservation organization.

We all calculated, Yes, this is the guy,  said Bart, a retired security consultant from British Columbia who blogs about Canadian Medal of Honor recipients. (Amazingly, there are 109.)

That wasnt all they found. Another veteran, Thomas Burke, had been mistakenly buried at St. Elizabeths under a Medal of Honor tombstone. It turned out the Thomas Burke who was the actual medal recipient is buried in Florida.

For all these years, the wrong guy is acknowledged and the right guy isnt, Bart said.

Thats been rectified, and on Friday, Noil will be honored in a public ceremony at his grave. I visited the cemetery this week. Maureen had sewn a temporary cover for the new tombstone to protect it before Fridays unveiling.

I made it out of canvas because Noil was in the Navy, she said. It was like a piece of sailcloth among the bobbing buttercups.

Later, I called Bernadette Ricks, Joseph Noils great-great granddaughter , who lives in Delanco, N.J. She knew of Joseph Noil, but didnt know of his honor. Shed had a chance to read the letters Sarah Jane sent to the St. Elizabeths doctors.

I must confess I have cried for a week and a half, Bernadette said. It broke my heart.

Sarah Jane couldnt afford to go to Josephs funeral, but on Friday, Bernadette said, hes going to realize he does have family. Theres people who love him and people who are very proud of him.

Twitter: @johnkelly

The ceremony  Friday at 11  is open to the public. From Alabama Avenue SE, turn north onto 15th Place SE (across from IHOP). Turn left onto Bruce Place SE. The road curves to the right, and the cemetery is on the left behind a chain-link fence. There is ample on-street parking. Pedestrian access is also available through the hospital gate at the Congress Heights Metro. A picture ID is required at this gate.

For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAullife stands outside the Hylton Chapel as an honor guard places a casket carrying Officer Ashley Guindon into a hearse. (Reza A. Marvashti /For The Washington Post)

A former Pentagon information-technology specialist accused of fatally shooting his wife and then a police officer who responded to a 911 call at his Northern Virginia home asked an investigator to kill him soon after hed been handcuffed.

Shortly after authorities say Army Staff Sgt. Ronald Ronnie Hamilton killed his wife, Crystal Hamilton, 29, and police officer Ashley Guindon, 28, on Feb. 27, he was placed in the back seat of a police cruiser. He waived his Miranda rights and agreed to answer questions from a Prince William police sergeant.

He said, I ruined my life. Take your gun out and shoot me now,  Sgt. Joey Medawar recalled of his conversation with Hamilton. I said, Im not going to shoot you. Help me understand what happened. 

Medawar recounted the conversation as he testified Tuesday in Prince William County General District Court. A judge ruled that there was enough evidence for a grand jury to consider whether to indict Hamilton on charges including capital murder in the killing of the police officer and first-degree murder in the death of Hamiltons wife.

In an interview after the hearing, County Commonwealths Attorney Paul Ebert said he was likely to pursue the death penalty against Hamilton, 32.

Ronald W. Hamilton is charged with killing his wife, Crystal Hamilton, and Prince William County Police Officer Ashley Guindon on Feb. 27. (Prince William County Police)

In a candid discussion with Medawar shortly after being arrested, Hamilton admitted to the killings, according to the sergeants testimony. He said he shot his wife because they were arguing, although Medawar had not pressed Hamilton on why the couple were fighting. Hamilton told the sergeant that he opened fire on Guindon, along with two other officers, because they were storming Hamiltons Woodbridge home, Medawar said.

Medawar asked him why he shot the officers.

He thinks he may have snapped and that he has PTSD, the officer testified, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder, and noted that Hamilton had said he had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Hamiltons official military record shows that he served only in Iraq.) Medawar said that he asked Hamilton whether a doctor diagnosed PTSD and that Hamilton said no, but he thinks he has it.

The shootings prompted an outpouring of anguish across the Washington region, particularly because Guindon had just become an officer and was killed on her first day on the street. Guindons death marked the first killing of a Prince William police officer since 1990. The two other officers were wounded.

Thousands of people, including law enforcement officers and others who didnt even know Guindon, paid their respects at a memorial ceremony in early March at the Hylton Memorial Chapel in Woodbridge. Two weeks later, a vigil was held for Crystal Hamilton at the Marine Memorial Chapel in Quantico. Many people spoke about the care she had given their sick or wounded relatives as part of her job at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda.

During Tuesdays hearing, Medawar also testified that Hamilton expressed surprise that he hadnt been killed by the officers who arrived at his home that evening. He thought the officers were going to shoot him. He said, The officers showed a lot of restraint,  Medawar said. The sergeant asked him, Were you trying to commit suicide by cops? Hamilton said no, according to Medawar.

Its not clear what precisely prompted Hamilton to allegedly open fire on his wife. The couples 11-year-old son, Tyriq, was in the house. Hamiltons father, a retired major from the police department in Charleston, S.C., who also is named Ronald W. Hamilton, has said his son was depressed after two tours of duty in Iraq, in 2003 and 2005.

[Hes a retired cop. Now his son has been charged with murder.]

Crystal Hamiltons sister, Wendy Howard, told The Washington Post this month that Ronald Hamilton never served in a combat role because he was an IT specialist.

A family member close to the couple  who met while growing up in South Carolina  told The Post that Hamilton admitted to his wife around Christmas that he had had an affair with another woman and that she had decided to leave him and seek full custody of their son. The relative also told The Post that Hamilton was jealous of his wifes friendships with men she worked with at Walter Reed and worried that she was having an affair.

On the night of her killing, Crystal Hamilton was supposed to go out for a girls night with friends. Her husband insisted that she stay home, but she refused, relatives said. Howard told The Post that the couples son saw his father throw Crystal Hamilton up against a wall with such force that a television fell down. After Crystal Hamilton told Tyriq to flee the house, he heard two loud gunshots on his way down the stairs, Howard said, followed by his mothers silence.

During Tuesdays hearing, Medawar said Hamilton seemed remorseful sitting in the police cruiser. He asked the sergeant one question that stuck out:

Are the officers okay?

Medawar said he did not respond.
An unattended grill caused a fire that displaced six people and caused up to $200,000 in damage in Montgomery County, fire officials said.

Seventy-five firefighters responded to a single-family home in Germantown, Md., at around 4:20 a.m. Tuesday after a smoke alarm went off, causing a family of six to flee and call 911 from a neighbors house, a spokesman for the Montgomery County Fire Department said. Officials said they determined the fire was caused by a charcoal grill cooker burning on the back deck unattended and speculated that it had burned for some time before the smoke alarm went off.

There were no significant injuries, but the family cannot return home, fire department spokesman Pete Piringer said. He noted that the fire was the latest early-morning blaze that had caused significant damage in the region.

Theres been in excess of $2 million worth of damage just in the last week, Piringer said. . . . Its a little extraordinary.
A Fairfax County woman who walked into a government center on Monday to report that there was a dead man in her apartment has been charged with killing him, police said Tuesday.

Jessica R. Deneal-Whalen, 27, is facing a second-degree murder charge on suspicion of strangling Raymond A. White, 51, of no fixed address, to death in her apartment in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County.

Fairfax County police responded to the South County Government Center around 3:20 p.m. Monday after being alerted by staff there that Deneal-Whalen had walked into the center to report the death.

Police declined to discuss the exact conversation the woman had with the staff or why she felt compelled to report Whites death but said they went to her apartment, which is in the 5300 block of Bedford Terrace, about two miles away.

Police said that officers found Whites body inside the apartment and that there were signs of trauma around the neck. Police spokesman Roger Henriquez said that it was unclear when White was killed but that it was probably some time over the weekend.

Henriquez said that Deneal-Whalen and White were friends and that he had come to visit her. During the visit, Deneal-Whalen became upset and assaulted White. Police declined to discuss what sparked the attack but said it was not a major fight.

There was no apparent argument prior to the assault, Henriquez said.
Sheriff officials in Yorktown, Va., were looking for this man who allegedly stole a donations jar from a convenience store. The money was meant for the family of a slain Virginia State trooper who died in the line of duty in Richmond. (Courtesy of York-Poquoson Sheriff's Office)

Gotcha!

Police say surveillance photos pretty much showed the thiefs fingers on the cookie jar, so to speak.

And now authorities said theyve arrested a 25-year-old man who allegedly stole a donation jar filled with about $50 in small bills from the counter of a convenience store in Yorktown, Va. It was meant for the widow and two children of a Virginia State Police trooper who was shot last month as he responded to a call at a bus station.

[Man steals jar with donations for family of slain trooper from store in Virginia]

On Monday, the York-Poquoson Sheriffs Office said they had arrested Tyree Burrell of York County.

Sheriff officials in Yorktown, Va., were looking for this man who allegedly stole a donations jar with $50 from a convenience store. The money was intended for the family of a slain Virginia State trooper. (Courtesy of York-Poquoson Sheriff's Office)

The incident happened April 19 about 1 p.m. at a 7-Eleven store in the Edgehill area, authorities said.

The suspect was charged with one count of petty larceny. Sheriffs officials said they caught him after receiving an anonymous tip from someone in the public who had seen the surveillance photos. It was not known what happened to the money but sheriff officials said they expected that he would be ordered to repay it.

The money was intended to go the family of Virginia State Trooper Chad P. Dermyer, 37, who was killed in the line of duty at a Greyhound bus station March 31 in Richmond.

Police say James Brown III, 34, attacked Dermyer from inches away with a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun. Brown was fatally shot by two troopers after he shot Dermyer.

[Gunman who shot Virginia state trooper had 143 rounds of ammo in his luggage]

The theft of the donations jar generated plenty of comments on social media.

Shawn Newsome wrote on Facebook of the arrest Give to the poor . . . not to take from needy. Eames Coleman wrote, Stealing from a dead cops family . . . Now thats just wrong. Throw the book at em boys!

Tyree Burrell, 25, was arrested in connection with the theft of a donations jar meant for the family of a slain Virginia State trooper. (Courtesy of York-Poquoson Sheriff's Office)

Another post from C. Kaye Zens said, Unbelievable that someone would steal from a widow and her kids, great job catching him. And another Facebook user, Michael Gardner, said, Justice is sweet!
The FBI says Tyrone Edward Wright robbed three banks a block apart over two days in the NoMa neighborhood of Northeast Washington.

Authorities say he hit the same bank branch twice on consecutive days and that he had been a regular customer there a few years ago. New details from court documents say the man robbed the same teller at the branch on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon.

Bank robbery sprees are common  police linked nine Maryland holdups to the Bandage Bank Robber earlier this month and six to Virginias Forever Loyal Bandit.

But police say the man who robbed the NoMa banks last week was particularly brazen  allegedly robbing a bank even as police were still at a bank a block away investigating another robbery to which he would also be linked. Wright, 45, of no fixed address has been charged in U.S. District Court with three counts of bank robbery.

[FBI says one man robs two banks in 30 minutes one block apart]

Some details of the robberies in the 1100 and 1200 blocks of First Street NE, near a Harris Teeter store, emerged last week in the immediate aftermath of the holdups. But additional details are in a federal court document filed Friday after Wrights appearance in court. He was ordered detained.

The FBI said that about 3:20 p.m. Wednesday, Wright walked into the Premier Bank in the 1100 block of First Street NE and handed a teller a note written on cardboard that instructed her to keep calm and give him money and that nobody would get hurt. He left the bank with $3,000.

The FBI said in the court document that the teller recognized the man as a previous customer.

[Spate of bank robberies hit D.C. region]

The FBI said the same man went into the TD Bank in the 1200 block of First Street NE about 12:25 p.m. Thursday and again handed a teller a note written on cardboard. He left with $875 and a red dye pack, authorities said, which exploded a few minutes later, covering the mans hands and money with red dye. The court papers say dye-stained bills littered the road across the street from the bank.

At 12:50 p.m., the FBI said Wright went back to the Premier Bank and confronted once again the same teller from the day before, according to the court documents. Authorities said he handed her a note written on cardboard and walked out with $2,997.

About a half-hour later, police said in the court document, Wright was arrested at the Northwest One Library in the 100 block of L Street NW, about five blocks from the banks. Authorities said he was wearing the same clothes from the holdups, including a shirt depicting Bob Marley, and had red ink on his hands. Police said they found $2,997 stuffed in his pants pockets and shoes.

Wrights attorney could not immediately be reached Tuesday. The court document says Wright told the FBI and D.C. police that he needed the money to pay off a $5,000 loan from an acquaintance who was charging him 30 percent interest.
Virginia McLaurin met President Obama and the first lady on Thursday to celebrate Black History Month. After the White House released footage of McLaurins visit, the video immediately went viral. (McKenna Ewen/The Washington Post)

Virginia McLaurin met President Obama and the first lady on Thursday to celebrate Black History Month. After the White House released footage of McLaurins visit, the video immediately went viral. (McKenna Ewen/The Washington Post)

Virginia McLaurin, the 107-year-old dynamo who danced with President Obama but couldnt obtain a District photo ID, can get one now, thanks to a new regulation announced Tuesday by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser.

The regulation, effective immediately, is designed to help people 70 and older who lack necessary documentation for a District-issued Real ID, which is required for air travel and other business requiring identification.

The new rule, which complies with federal requirements, allows the Districts Department of Motor Vehicles director to expand the list of acceptable documents for residents 70 and older, whose birth certificates and other identifying information may be harder to dig up.

McLaurin, a longtime District resident who was born to Southern sharecroppers in 1909, made headlines this year when she was invited to the White House as part of a Black History Month celebration.

[Dancing 106-year-old describes the day she charmed the Obamas]

A video of her dancing with the president went viral, and she was showered afterward with attention and financial help, including her first smartphone, a better apartment, an offer to meet the Harlem Globetrotters, and invitations to visit New York and Los Angeles.

But she couldnt fly. She had lost her government-issued ID several years ago in a purse-snatching. To obtain a new one, she was told she would need a birth certificate from South Carolina  but to get the birth certificate, she needed a photo ID.

She despaired of ever getting a new one.

I was birthed by a midwife and the birthday put in a Bible somewhere, she recently told The Washington Posts Courtland Milloy. I dont know if they even had birth certificates back then.

[Obamas dance partner is persona non grata in D.C. government]

But on Tuesday, Bowser (D), Deputy Mayor Kevin Donahue and DMV Director Lucinda M. Babers met with McLaurin to complete her paperwork. McLaurin received a temporary ID, valid until she receives a permanent one in the mail.

The Districts DMV had been working since June on the exception process, in coordination with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Bowser called the new regulation a common-sense fix for older people who are asked to provide documentation that might not have existed when they were born.

Our seniors deserve easy access to a government photo ID so they can take advantage of the many benefits, activities and services that other residents enjoy, she said.

McLaurin, who volunteers as a foster grandmother 40 hours a week at a local school, was jubilant.

I thank the Lord, Mayor Bowser, and everyone who helped me get my photo ID renewed, she said. I am especially happy to know that now all seniors in D.C. will be able to get an ID more easily.
Virginia has temporarily suspended the license of a Fairfax abortion clinic whose owner has a decades-long record of violations and criminal charges stemming from substandard care in multiple states.

The state Department of Health found 26 deficiencies at the Virginia Health Group on Arlington Boulevard during a two-day inspection this month and immediately suspended the clinics operating license.

Inspectors observed dirty equipment, expired medication in unlocked cabinets, lax storage of medical records and a failure of staff to sterilize and maintain medical equipment and follow hand-washing protocols, according to a 52-page report.

In one case, a patient had to be rushed to a local emergency room for prolonged bleeding after sutures were not available at the clinic, the report says. In another, a nurse used a plunger to unstop a toilet and then held a patients hand during a surgical procedure without changing scrubs, according to the report.

The clinic is registered to Steven Chase Brigham, according to state records. It is one of 14 facilities in Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey listed on the website of corporate parent American Womens Services. Attempts to reach Brigham were unsuccessful.

Brigham has had his medical license temporarily suspended, relinquished or revoked or has faced criminal charges in several states, including New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida and California, according to public records.

The Fairfax clinic appealed the license suspension, and an administrative hearing is set for next month. As of April 8, the clinic had canceled all abortion appointments but continued to see patients for follow-up visits, administrator Ebony Fobbs wrote to the state.

About two weeks later, another clinic official wrote to the state requesting an informal fact-finding conference, in part to show that some of the deficiencies had been corrected.

Despite the 52 pages of deficiencies that we were dismayed to receive, director of operations Kirsy Japs wrote, we believe that we are not fundamentally irredeemable health care providers who should not be afforded the opportunity to correct these problems and return to providing health care.

Advocates on both sides of the abortion debate have called for the permanent closure of Brighams facilities in Virginia. He also has a clinic in Virginia Beach, which passed inspection earlier this month with minor citations.

Evidence of wrongdoing at Brighams American Womens Services facility in Fairfax is part of a clear pattern of repeated and serious misconduct that poses a significant threat to patient safety, and which cannot be allowed to go unchecked in Virginia, Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, said in a statement.

Antiabortion advocates say the clinic report on the Fairfax clinic confirms the need for licensing and routine inspections put in place in 2012. Those requirements includestrict hospital-style building rules that have come under assault in Virginia and elsewhere.

[This is South Texass last abortion clinic and it might be forced to close. ]

It is absolutely appalling that it took this long for the state to shut him down, but its more appalling that he may still be allowed to operate, Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia, said in a statement. Virginians need to understand the very health and safety standards that are intended to protect women from the likes of Steven Brigham are the same standards [Gov.] Terry McAuliffe is trying to water down and eliminate.

Abortion rights advocates, including Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia, and Anna Scholl, executive director of Progress Virginia, said one rogue providers failure to follow standards of medical care should not draw increased political scrutiny on providers who follow the rules.

Proponents of these politically motivated restrictions will attempt to use this deplorable incident as part of their coordinated campaign to close clinics and restrict access to reproductive health care. We strenuously urge you to reject their propaganda, they wrote in a letter to the state.

[Va. bill to restrict abortion fizzled. Heres why abortion foes are oddly upbeat.]

McAuliffe (D), who has promised to be a brick wall against limits on abortion access, scored a victory last fall when the Virginia Board of Health said existing abortion clinics should no longer have to have transfer agreements with hospitals or face strict construction and design standards.

Rules put in place under former governor Robert F. McDonnell (R) required the inspection and licensing of clinics that perform five or more first trimester abortions a month. That will continue.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) holds up the order he signed to restore rights to felons in Virginia at the Capitol in Richmond on April 22, 2016. (Mark Gormus/AP)

Virginias legislature should have a say in whether more than 200,000 ex-convicts get their voting rights restored ahead of the fall presidential election, Republican leaders said Tuesday as they called on Gov. Terry McAuliffe to convene a special General Assembly session.

The GOP leaders were reacting to an executive order that McAuliffe (D) announced Friday, which instantly restored the voting rights of felons who have completed their sentences and been released from supervised probation or parole.

McAuliffe and supporters said the move would advance civil rights and help reintegrate former convicts.

Republican critics saw it as a political favor to one of McAuliffes closest friends and allies, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, who could benefit from higher numbers of minority voters. One in four African Americans in the swing state had been banned from voting because of laws restricting the rights of those with convictions.

In a letter, House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) and Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City) said the sweeping voting change was too important for a governor to impose on his own.

This is a matter of great consequence, the legislative leaders said in their letter. The people, through their elected representatives, deserve the opportunity to have their voices heard on this matter.

The governor, who has the power to call special sessions, is free to ignore their request, and McAuliffes spokesman, Brian Coy, said he would ignore it.

Given that they have no specific role to play in this particular matter, Governor McAuliffe does not see a valid need to reconvene the General Assembly to discuss an issue that does not relate to their constitutional duties, Coy said in an email.

The House and Senate can call themselves into session if a super-majority of legislators agrees  something that is unlikely to happen in the closely divided Senate.

Republicans also could turn to the courts to try to undo McAuliffes action. Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) said Tuesday that Republicans continue to weigh all options.

The letter from Howell and Norment seems intended to keep a spotlight on the issue  and to highlight that McAuliffes order, which also enables felons to serve on juries and run for public office, covers people convicted of rape, murder and other violent crimes.

They ask for a full and detailed report of all 206,000 convicted felons whose rights have been restored, including but not limited to names, offense or offenses committed, and length of any sentence, probation or parole. The letter also seeks details on fines, court costs and restitution to victims.

The governor will not indulge that request either, Coy said.

The Constitution plainly excludes restoration of rights orders from any reporting requirement to the General Assembly, and the information sought would no doubt be used to fuel the demonization and demagoguery that has characterized much of the response from certain quarters, Coy said in his email.

Virginia is one of 11 states that bar ex-offenders from voting unless they receive individual exemptions, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School.

McAuliffes Republican predecessor, Robert F. McDonnell, made sweeping changes to simplify and speed the application process for nonviolent offenders. McAuliffe continued that effort, further simplifying the application, reclassifying some serious drug crimes and lifting the requirement that ex-offenders pay outstanding court costs and fees before being allowed to vote.
Frederick Mayer, at right, with Franz Weber, left, and Hans Wynberg. A German-born Jew, he fled his home in the Black Forest in 1938 and made a new life in the United States, then ventured back into Nazi Europe as a U.S. spy. (Frederick Mayer/Courtesy of Patrick K. ODonnell )

Frederick Mayer was a person, a friend once observed, whose fear nerve is dead. A German-born Jew, he fled his home in the Black Forest in 1938 and made a new life in the United States, then ventured back into Nazi Europe as a U.S. spy.

His exploits  parachuting onto an Alpine glacier, infiltrating enemy lines, posing as a German officer to gather vital intelligence, and enduring lengthy torture sessions before essentially negotiating the surrender of the city of Innsbruck, Austria  seemed in hindsight the stuff of movies. Inglourious Basterds (2009), director Quentin Tarantinos historical fiction about justice-seeking Jewish American soldiers during World War II, could have been modeled after Mayer and his comrades.

Mr. Mayer, who was described at times as a real inglorious bastard, died April 15 at his home in Charles Town, W.Va. He was 94 and had been diagnosed with pancytopenia, a blood deficiency, said a daughter, Claudette Mayer.

Mr. Mayer once told an interviewer that he had a good combination of hatred and love  a hatred of the Nazis and a love for America. The son of a decorated World War I veteran, he had seen his family pushed from its homeland by a regime that would slaughter 6 million European Jews in the Holocaust.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Mayer enlisted in the U.S. Army. It felt like I had my chance to do what I set out to do  kill Nazis, he said in the TV film The Real Inglorious Bastards (2012). Thats why all the Jewish boys joined.

Frederick Mayer, a German Jew who returned to Nazi Europe as a U.S. spy, speaks about his experiences. Mayer died April 15 at his home in Charles Town, W.Va. (West Virginia Secretary of State)

Impressed by his skill and pluck, and intrigued by his native fluency in German, Mr. Mayers superiors recommended him for the Office of Strategic Services, a wartime precursor to the CIA. He was attached to the German Operational Group before shipping out.

A more eclectic group of desperados could not be found: former Luftwaffe pilots, Jewish escapees from German death camps, Polish deserters, world-class athletes, and even a former convict, historian Patrick K. ODonnell wrote in the volume They Dared Return: The True Story of Jewish Spies Behind the Lines in Nazi Germany.

One recruit described the group as the craziest people I have ever met in my entire life.

By late 1944, Mr. Mayer had arrived in Europe, where, dissatisfied by what he considered the slow pace of his work, he talked his way into the Secret Intelligence division of the OSS. He became the leader of Operation Greenup, a mission to gather intelligence in the area of Innsbruck, where the Allies suspected the Germans might mount a final stand in the war.

The night of Feb. 25, 1945, Mr. Mayer flew from his base in Italy to the Austrian mountains, parachuting onto a frozen lake in the treacherous terrain.

He didnt seem to have any fear of the fact that he was going back into Nazi Germany, John Billings, the command pilot of that mission, said in an interview Tuesday. What he did just the first night would cause a very immediate laundry emergency for me.

Working alongside Mr. Mayer were Hans Wynberg, a Dutch-born Jew whose family had been deported to Auschwitz, and Franz Weber, an Austrian officer whose patriotism had led him to defect from the German army. The three fashioned a pair of skis into a sled and made their way down a mountain, at times navigating snow as deep as their shoulders.

Mr. Mayer, disguised in a German uniform. (Frederick Mayer/Courtesy Patrick K. ODonnell )

When they reached a village, they masqueraded as German Alpine servicemen separated from their units. Evading detection by the Gestapo, they arrived March 3, 1945, in Oberperfuss, a Tyrolean village near Innsbruck where they would make their base until the end of the war.

With assistance from Webers sister, a nurse, Mr. Mayer disguised himself as a German officer, complete with a uniform and bandages for a feigned head wound. Later, he posed as a French electrician to infiltrate a Messerschmitt factory.

He was credited with gathering intelligence and building a network of informants that helped determine the location and dimensions of Hitlers Fuhrerbunker in Berlin, the condition of Nazi war plants and the movement of enemy freight and troops, particularly through the Brenner Pass.

In time, Mr. Mayer was betrayed by a member of his spy network, imprisoned and tortured. According to ODonnells account, his captors broke his teeth with a pistol. He was whipped, doused with water and suspended from a rifle like game on a spit.

By that time, Allied troops were closing in on Innsbruck. Mr. Mayer capitalized on an impression among the Germans, concerned for their fate in the event of defeat, that he was a high-ranking American officer. He was credited with persuading the regional Nazi authority to declare Innsbruck an open city.

The Germany Army in that area had in effect surrendered to an OSS Jewish Sergeant, according to the book This Grim and Savage Game: OSS and the Beginning of U.S. Covert Operations in World War II by Tom Moon.

Friedrich Mayer was born in Freiburg on Oct. 28, 1921. After Hitler became German chancellor in 1933, the familys hardware store was boycotted because they were Jewish.

Mr. Mayers father resisted leaving Germany, thinking that his past military service would shield the family from persecution, while his mother insisted that the family go to the United States. Young Fritz, as he was known, did not oppose the idea because he had grown enchanted with cowboy stories of the American West.

He changed his name to Frederick after the family arrived in New York. For a time, he was his familys breadwinner, working as a mechanic at companies including Ford and General Motors before joining the Army. After the war, he worked for Voice of America as a power plant engineer supervisor in the Philippines, Morocco, West Germany, Liberia and Thailand. He retired in 1977.

His marriage to Sylvia Stieber ended in divorce. Survivors include his companion of nearly two decades, Virginia Nash of Bolivar, W.Va.; two daughters from his marriage, Claudette Mayer of New York City and Irene Mayer-Feldberg of San Francisco; a sister; a grandson; and a great-grandson.

In 1945, a superior officer recommended Mr. Mayer for the Medal of Honor, writing that in constant danger of his life, he had exhibited almost unbelievable courage, resourcefulness and enterprise, according to a copy of the nomination provided by Charles Pinck, president of the OSS Society. Mr. Mayer ultimately received the Legion of Merit.

ODonnell, who described Mr. Mayer in an interview as one of the greatest heroes of World War II, recounted in his book Mr. Mayers meeting at the end of the war with a member of the Gestapo who had tortured him during his imprisonment.

Mr. Mayer was taken to see him in a cell, where he found the man beaten and quaking in fear. Do anything you want with me, he begged, but dont hurt my family.

Who do you think we are? Mr. Mayer replied. Nazis?
SOUTH CAROLINA

Friend of Dylann Roof will plead guilty

Joey Meek, a friend of the man accused of killing nine parishioners in Charleston last year, intends to plead guilty to two charges related to the massacre, according to a court document filed Monday.

Meek was indicted in September on counts of making false statements to the FBI and misprision of a felony, which meant that he allegedly concealed his knowledge of the crimes. He had pleaded not guilty to these counts, which carry up to eight years in prison.

According to a plea agreement dated last week and filed Monday in federal court, federal prosecutors and Meeks attorney agreed that he will instead plead guilty to both counts. The agreement also states that Meek will be fully truthful and forthright with law enforcement groups and that, if Meek cooperates and his help is deemed substantial, authorities will seek to have his sentence reduced.

Dylann Roof, who is accused of fatally shooting nine black church members at the Emanuel AME Church in June, had stayed with Meek and his relatives in the weeks before the rampage.

 Mark Berman

HEALTH

New regulations for Medicaid and CHIP

Federal health officials have completed the first overhaul in a decade of regulations governing managed-care plans in Medicaid and the Childrens Health Insurance Program  the way that tens of millions of low-income Americans get medical care.

The Department of Health and Human Services issued a final rule Monday for Medicaid and CHIP managed care that officials said is intended to foster delivery-system reform in states, improve beneficiaries experience with coverage, ensure enough doctors and other providers for key services, and promote accountability and transparency.

The specifics are part of a broad effort by HHS to shift government payments from the quantity of services to an emphasis on the quality of care and to encourage alternative payment models. Consumer protections written into the regulations address long-term care and, among other changes, make it easier for patients to lodge complaints and get help in enrolling or appealing denials of coverage.

Managed care has become the most common form of Medicaid, covering nearly 48 million low-income children and families, pregnant women, seniors and Americans with disabilities. The rule will be phased in over three years starting July 2017.

 Susan Levine

U.S. asks court to appoint third party to run New Orleans jail: The Justice Department asked a federal court to appoint a third party to operate the long-troubled New Orleans jail, saying new leadership is essential because the citys sheriff has for years failed to improve conditions that endanger inmates. The government, which was joined in the filing Monday by lawyers for inmates, also sought to place Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman in contempt over what it called his noncompliance with overhauls mandated in a settlement agreement involving the jail, the Justice Department and inmates. Gusman has repeatedly said he is making progress and faulted the city for not providing enough money.

Colo. court rebuffs baker in gay-wedding case: The Colorado Supreme Court refused Monday to take up the case of a suburban Denver baker who would not make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, letting stand a lower courts ruling that the Masterpiece Cakeshop owner cannot cite his Christian beliefs in refusing service. The American Civil Liberties Union, which argued the case on behalf of Charlie Craig and David Mullins, applauded the development. The attorney for baker Jack Phillips said they had not yet decided whether to accept the ruling, ask the court to reconsider or approach the U.S. Supreme Court.

 From news services
Khan is acting on the behest of BJP and the RSS to create a constitutional crisis in the state," the chief minister said.
BANGLADESH

Gay rights activist, friend fatally stabbed

Unidentified assailants fatally stabbed two men in Bangladeshs capital on Monday, including a gay rights activist who also worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, police said. It was the latest attack targeting atheists, moderates and foreigners in the country.

Police suspect Islamist radicals in the attack, which occurred two days after a university professor was hacked to death. There was no claim of responsibility.

The victims were USAID employee Xulhaz Mannan and his friend Tanay Majumder, according to police. Mannan was also an editor of Bangladeshs first gay rights magazine, Roopbaan.

The U.S. ambassador decried the killings, just weeks after the Obama administration and rights groups urged the government of the Muslim-majority country to better protect its citizens and secure free speech.

A man who told a local broadcaster that he had witnessed the attack said that at least five young men took part. He said they chanted Allahu akbar, or God is great, as they left the scene.

Bangladesh has been riven by a wave of deadly attacks on foreigners, religious minorities and secular bloggers, raising fears that religious extremists are gaining a foothold in the country, despite its traditions of secularism and tolerance.

 Associated Press

EGYPT

Police quell protests over transfer of islands

Thousands of Egyptian riot police officers on Monday stifled plans for demonstrations against President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, using tear gas and birdshot and beating up young activists to quickly disperse flash protests by hundreds across Cairo.

Police took over locations designated by organizers as gathering points, checking IDs and turning potential protesters away under the threat of arrest. At least 100 protesters had been arrested by nightfall, according

to activists and rights lawyers. The Press Syndicate said that 11 journalists were arrested over the course of the day and that all but one were released hours later.

The arrests followed the detention in recent days of scores of activists as authorities sought to derail plans for the protests.

The most serious violence on Monday occurred at a square in the Dokki district, where about 500 protesters gathered. Chants of Leave, leave, directed at Sissi, echoed across the square. Masked police officers atop armored vehicles and in full riot gear arrived 10 minutes later and immediately fired tear gas and birdshot. The protesters fled.

The central issue in the protests was Egypts recent decision to surrender to Saudi Arabia control of two strategic Red Sea islands in a surprise deal. Egypt says the islands of Tiran and Sanafir, off the coast of Sinai, belong to Saudi Arabia, which placed them under Cairos protection in 1950 because it feared Israel might attack them.

Already, the issue has sparked the largest protests since Sissi assumed power in June 2014. On April 15, about 2,000 protesters gathered in Cairo to call on him to step down.

 Associated Press

28 killed in Syria violence: Violence in Syria continued for the fourth straight day to chip away at a cease-fire that has effectively collapsed, with at least 28 people killed in shellings between government forces and opposition fighters in the countrys largest city and a bombing in a Damascus suburb that is home to one of the holiest Shiite shrines in Syria. At least 20 people were reported killed in the shelling in Aleppo. Eight died when a suicide bomber struck at a military checkpoint in the Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab. The Islamic State militant group, which is not a party to the cease-fire, asserted responsibility for the suicide attack.

Pakistan arrests key al-Qaeda financier: Pakistani authorities have arrested an al-Qaeda financier who has been on a United Nations sanctions list since 2012, police said. Abdur Rehman Sindhi was detained in the southern port city of Karachi last week, said police officer Muqaddas Haider. He said police and intelligence agents were questioning the suspect on what role he might have played in militant attacks in Pakistan in recent years.

Israel charges 7 Jews in crimes against Palestinians: Israel charged seven young Israeli Jews over crimes committed against Palestinians. The seven included two minors and a soldier. The indictment said the suspects torched cars and residences of Arabs in Israel and the West Bank. The group is accused of being behind many price tag attacks, referred to as such because they are meant to exact a cost for Palestinian attacks or for Israeli steps seen as favoring the Palestinians.

 From news services
SPAIN

Political impasse sets stage for new vote

Spains King Felipe VI announced Tuesday that none of the countrys political parties has enough support to form a government, setting the stage for an unprecedented repeat election in June, six months after voters ended the nations traditional two-party system.

Felipe made the statement after spending two days meeting with party leaders  including those in charge of the conservative Popular Party, the center-left Socialists, the far-left Podemos party and the business-friendly Ciudadanos party.

Spain has been politically paralyzed since its national election on Dec. 20, which saw the entry of Podemos and Ciudadanos as strong No. 3 and No. 4 parties after decades of alternating rule between the Popular Party and the Socialists.

The upstarts were voted in by Spaniards angry about years of high unemployment, political corruption and austerity cuts.

Polls suggest that a repeat election is unlikely to break the stalemate and could mean a political impasse stretching into the summer, possibly ending with yet another election.

 Associated Press

BANGLADESH

Al-Qaeda says it killed gay activist, his friend

The Bangladeshi branch of al-Qaeda asserted responsibility Tuesday for the killing of a gay rights activist and his friend, undermining the prime ministers insistence just hours earlier that her political opponents were to blame for the attack and for a rising tide of violence against secular activists and writers.

The claim by Ansar al-Islam raised doubts about Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas repeated assurances that authorities have the security situation under control.

The victims of the Monday attack were identified as Xulhaz Mannan, an activist who also worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, and his friend, theater actor Tanay Majumder. Mannan was also an editor at Bangladeshs first gay rights magazine.

Ansar al-Islam asserted responsibility in a Twitter message, saying it targeted the men because they were pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality. Hasina had pointed the finger at her political foes, the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami group and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

Police said no arrests have been made in the attack.

 Associated Press

KOREAN PENINSULA

South: North prepped for 5th nuclear test

South Koreas president said Tuesday that North Korea has almost completed preparations for a fifth nuclear test, and the country has reportedly placed a new mid-range missile on standby for an impending launch.

North Korea said two days ago that it had successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine in a continuation of its weapons tests during ongoing South Korea-U.S. military drills.

Meeting with senior South Korean journalists, President Park Geun-hye said South Korea believes that North Korea can conduct a nuclear test anytime

it decides to do so. She did not elaborate on why South Korea made such an assessment.

Speculation about a fifth nuclear test increased last month when the Norths state media cited leader Kim Jong Un as ordering a test of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying warheads.

Analysts say North Korea could conduct a fifth nuclear test before it holds its Workers Party congress in early May.

 Associated Press

Iran sentences 4 journalists to prison: An Iranian court sentenced four pro-reform journalists to prison terms ranging from five to 10 years after convicting them on charges of acting against national security. The four were arrested in November as part of an ongoing crackdown by hard-liners and have worked for various newspapers, including the pro-reform Farhikhtegan daily.

Spain sends Paris attack suspect to France: A Frenchman arrested in Spain on suspicion of supplying the arms used by Islamist militant Amedy Coulibaly to kill four people at a kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015 has been extradited to France, Spanish police said. Antoine Denevi was arrested April 12 in the Spanish beach town of Rincon de la Victoria.

Norway appeals ruling on killers rights: Norways government filed an appeal against the Oslo district courts ruling that officials had violated the rights of mass killer Anders Behring Breivik. The court ruled April 20 that the prison isolation of Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bomb-and-gun massacre in 2011, breaches the European Convention on Human Rights. Breivik, 37, is held in solitary confinement in a three-cell complex where he can play video games, watch TV and exercise.

 From news services
BEFORE HIS recent visit to the United States, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan pardoned some 148 inmates, among them some journalists and political prisoners. Leyla and Arif Yunus, human rights stalwarts who were both wrongly imprisoned by the regime, were permitted at last to leave Azerbaijan. In Washington, Mr. Aliyev met with Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Vice President Biden. But no one should conclude that this brutish leader has changed his ways.

On April 21, after Mr. Aliyev returned home, Meydan TV, an independent digital news platform that has brought straightforward and revelatory accounts to a growing audience inside Azerbaijan, announced that prosecutors there opened a criminal investigation for alleged illegal business activities, abuse of power and tax evasion. These are the standard charges used to harass and silence Mr. Aliyevs critics. Meydan TV reported on its website that the investigation has named 15 of its journalists. None is yet formally charged, but some have been told they cannot leave the country, and they are subject to home searches and equipment confiscations without a warrant. We consider this as a declaration of war against independent journalism in Azerbaijan, Emin Milli, Meydan TVs founder, who had served 16 months in prison on trumped-up charges, told EurasiaNet.org.

Mr. Aliyev is always jittery in the face of criticism. He jailed the journalist Khadija Ismayilova, who first exposed the ownership of lucrative gold mines by Mr. Aliyevs daughters, later revealed in the Panama Papers to be even larger than thought. Ten other journalists, bloggers and activists also remain imprisoned. Ms. Ismayilovas plight and that of others have been thoroughly documented by Meydan TV, which does not shy from stories that unsettle the regime. Most recently it challenged the official count of casualties suffered by Azerbaijan in a four-day conflict with Armenia. Using citizen journalists and interviews with the families of servicemen, Meydan TV calculated that the government had underreported the casualties by a factor of three. Meydan TV closed its newsroom in Baku in 2014 and moved the operation to Berlin after Mr. Milli was repeatedly harassed. Using reporters and contributors in Azerbaijan, Meydan TV reaches its audience by Facebook , YouTube and a website.

The experience of Meydan TV teaches that the digital byways can enable free information to reach closed societies and bypass tyrants. Mr. Aliyev seems to think he can fight back with secret police and prosecutors. Perhaps Mr. Aliyev inherited these inclinations from his father, Heydar, a career KGB man who was appointed to the Soviet Politburo. While KGB methods can be painful for those targeted, they cant seal out the truth, nor stop criticism, as Meydan TV and Ms. Ismayilova have courageously demonstrated. Mr. Aliyev should free all political prisoners, drop the prosecution of Meydan TV and sit down to watch the channel himself. He might learn something about the values a nation needs to succeed in the modern age.
Harriet Tubman is in; President Andrew Jackson is out.

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lews decision to replace Jackson on the front of the $20 bill with abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor Tubman has been widely praised. It honors womens role in U.S. history and, indirectly, disparages slave-owner Jackson, who moves to the back of the $20 bill. But there is another irony to Jacksons traditional place on the $20 bill: He was an ardent critic of paper money.

To illuminate this oft-forgotten part of the story, we put some questions to historian Jessica Lepler of the University of New Hampshire, who is author of The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis. Here are her edited and condensed answers.

Q. What was the paper currency of Andrew Jacksons era?

A. In Jacksons time, gold and silver coin (commonly called specie) were the only federally sanctioned currencies. But coin was scarce, and to supplement the money supply, banks issued paper notes that were, in theory, redeemable for coin. In practice, banks printed more notes than they could ever redeem in coin at one time. (Indeed, part of the point of paper money was to promote economic growth by expanding the currency.) The value of any banks paper notes depended on the banks ability to fulfill its promise to trade the paper for coin. When Jackson was elected in 1828, there were more than 300 U.S. banks, and the number doubled during his administration. People had to evaluate whether to accept many varieties of paper money as payment for goods. If they miscalculated, they could suffer significant harm.

Q. Why was Jackson so opposed to paper currency and their bank creators?

A. His hostility stemmed partly from personal experience. At a young age, he speculated in land and paper. But his opposition was also political and focused on the Second Bank of the United States (BUS), which was the closest thing America had to a central bank. The BUS was the only bank chartered by the federal government. It was entitled to hold government funds and, unlike state-chartered banks, it could operate in many states. In practice, the BUS collected bank notes from one part of the country and returned them to banks in other parts of the country, demanding specie in exchange. This checked banks ability to create too much paper money, but it also conferred huge powers on the BUS  powers that Jackson considered undemocratic.

Q. Who else opposed paper currency?

A. Jackson was elected by a coalition within the Democratic Party. Some of his supporters detested paper money, banks and the economic change they fostered. But other allies simply wanted to limit the power of the BUS and transfer the government deposits to their own local banks. The BUSs main supporters were the other major party, the Whigs, who saw the national bank as a tool for economic development.

Q. What was the bank war?

A. It consisted of a series of battles. Most important, Jackson vetoed the renewal of the BUSs charter, which forced the BUS to reorganize as a state-chartered bank. Jackson also ended the BUSs monopoly over government deposits. The Treasury was being flooded with money from a combination of the sale of confiscated Indian lands and tariffs on imported goods purchased largely with money from the sale of slave-grown cotton. So great was the inflow of revenues that the government actually paid off the national debt. Jackson diverted all the Treasurys revenues into so-called pet banks  the state-chartered banks of his supporters. The BUS responded by tightening credit for merchants and demanding that banks honor their promises to convert paper currency to specie.

Q. What was the Specie Circular, and why did Jackson issue it?

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has announced major changes to three U.S. currency notes in the coming years after long and controversial process. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

A. Jacksons redistribution of government funds to pet banks pleased one faction of his supporters but infuriated the other. The anti-bank faction demanded an end to the explosion of paper money and the multiplication of banks. The Specie Circular was an executive order requiring all purchases of federal lands be made in specie. With the Specie Circular and other policies, Jackson aimed to attract gold coin to the U.S. and to eliminate the need for banks and bank paper.

Q. What was the Panic of 1837, and did Jacksons policies cause it?

A. On March 4, 1837, even as Jacksons successor  Martin Van Buren  was being sworn in, the financial system was falling apart. In New York, New Orleans and London, there were commercial and financial failures. By May, banks suspended specie payments. To this day, economists and historians argue whether Jacksons policies caused the panic or whether other forces were involved.

Read more from Robert Samuelsons archive.
The April 25 front-page article Metro at 40: A mess of its own making documented several problems dating to Metros birth: cutting corners on construction to reduce initial costs, a complex management structure making accountability difficult and politicians focused on new tracks and stations but not interested in spending for maintenance.

The Federal Transit Administration is considering a full funding agreement for the Purple Line, which will link to Metro. We should learn the lessons of past expansions and first make some of the 200 critical repairs that have been deemed necessary to fix Metro.

Twenty years from now, I want to read a success story, not about more financial, management and environmental problems.

Robyn Lieberman, Chevy Chase

Metro at 40: A mess of its own making underscored a problem in this country: the cowardice of members of Congress, primarily Republicans, regarding tax increases out of fear of alienating Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform. This person, who has never been elected to public office, has intimidated politicians into signing a pledge to never raise taxes. Thus, instead of doing whats best  funding Metro, repairing more than 58,000 bridges desperately in need and fixing our deplorable roads  politicians happily ignore the general good to ensure their own continued political, parasitic existence.

This is precisely why voters give such appallingly low approval ratings to Congress and why this country will continue its downhill slide.

Joe Mistrett, Chevy Chase
In his April 24 op-ed, The scientific silencers take aim, George F. Will claimed that debatable questions still include the extent to which humans are contributing to climate change. William Collins, director of climate and ecosystem sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has succinctly made the case that humans are responsible. He states that the current astronomical and geological factors, such as changes in the sun, changes in Earths orbit and volcanic activity, simply cant explain the increase in temperature in the lower atmosphere while the upper atmosphere is cooling.

Mr. Collins also explains that carbon isotopes come in different flavors. (Plants like the lighter isotopes of carbon.) Each mixture of carbon isotopes has a signature that can be measured and traced to its source. In the lower atmosphere, the carbon isotopes that are rapidly accumulating and trapping heat have been measured and can come from only one source: burning of fossil fuels. Case closed.

Michael Dominick, Arlington

Climate change is simply shorthand for a whole range of its concomitants, including environmental degradation, deforestation, desertification, atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane buildup, soil erosion and nutrient loss, toxic waste accumulation, sea-level rise, fossil fuel and other resource overuse, shortages of fresh water, fishery and coral reef decline, biodiversity shrinkage and increasing sociopolitical instability and violence. (What is fueling all of this? Human population, which has tripled since World War II.)

The U.S. governments 1974 National Security Study Memorandum 200, adopted in 1975 by President Gerald Ford (R), discussed much of this and recommended universal access to contraception and abortion. The NSSM 200, however, was mysteriously classified and buried for nearly 20 years and then ignored.

Edd Doerr, Silver Spring

George F. Will relied on a 15-year-old National Academy of Sciences report to challenge the need for meaningful action to address the realities of climate change. Scientific knowledge relating to climate change has increased considerably since 2001. The National Academy of Sciences and the United Kingdoms Royal Society concluded in 2014, Scientists know that recent climate change is largely caused by human activities.

Ironically, the April 24 news article As ice melts, polar bears forced to swim for days on end reported that the polar bear population in the waters off northern Alaska has dropped between 25 and 50 percent from 2001 to 2010 as the loss of sea ice continues its accelerating decline. Melting sea ice in the northern and southern polar regions is the direct consequence of atmospheric warming. Distinguished oceanographer Don Walsh assessed this effect of climate change on the worlds oceans in a recent issue of the U.S. Naval Institutes Proceedings magazine. Change is a reality, he wrote, and it is observable.

The worlds population is projected to grow from todays roughly 7 billion to 9 billion by 2050. It is irresponsible in the extreme to fail to address the continued fouling of our environment with unchecked carbon emissions. Just ask a polar bear.

Gordon I. Peterson, Springfield

I would like to make a deal with George F. Will: I will not presume that conservative thinking is inherently racist when some conservative makes a racist remark if he will stop presuming that progressive thinking is inherently against the First Amendment when some progressive proposes some nonsense to restrict freedom of speech.

Jim Parker, North Potomac

I was both outraged and amused by Sam Kazman and Ken Lassmans petulant rant in their April 23 op-ed, Attacking free speech on climate change, regarding how the deep-pocketed, fossil-fuel-supported, pro-oil Competitive Enterprise Institute is being undermined by seven state attorneys general and former vice president Al Gore because of the latter groups initiative and advocacy for clean power generation. Would the CEI ignore all the information out there regarding the damaging effects of the fossil-fuel industry spewing carbon into the atmosphere and warming the planet at an alarming rate?

World governments have every right to petition for access to information from various entities that could benefit from a solution to the most serious problem facing the existence of life on this planet: global warming. We are already experiencing tragic results with floods, droughts, fracking-generated earthquakes and poisoned drinking water.

I have no sympathy at all for Mr . Kazman and Mr. Lassman!

Dee Foscherari, Washington
Dont call it strategy, call it strategery: Ted Cruz and John Kasich are going to cooperate to deny Donald Trump the Republican nomination. Also, I dont know, maybe a hurricane will dishevel Trumps comb-over and reveal his bald pate, causing such mortification that he quits the race. Or maybe there will be an earthquake next week in Indiana, affecting only precincts where Trump has a lead.

The Cruz-Kasich pact comes at the 13th hour. Its announcement Sunday seemed orchestrated to distract attention from the fact that Trump is expected to sweep five more primaries Tuesday  in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island  making a contested GOP convention even less likely.

That Cruz and Kasich have joined forces merely illustrates what a paper tiger the Never Trump movement has been. Trump is right  I hate when I have to write those words  to call the arrangement an act of desperation by two candidates who are mathematically dead in the quest for a majority of delegates.

For weeks, Cruz has portrayed Kasich as nothing but a spoiler who has kept Republicans from rallying around the single candidate  Cruz himself, in his view  who can unite the party against Trump. Kasich, meanwhile, has scoffed at Cruzs electability and portrayed himself as the only contender who can beat the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.

In truth, the only way either man could become the nominee is at a contested convention. I remain deeply skeptical that delegates will seek to deny Trump if he arrives in Cleveland with, say, 1,100 of the 1,237 pledged first-ballot votes he needs. But following his landslide victory in New York last week, it became increasingly likely that Trump will secure his majority before the convention.

The Fix's Chris Cillizza explains why the strategic alliance between Ted Cruz and John Kasich seems destined to fail. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Cruz and Kasich would like everyone to look past the five Acela corridor states that vote Tuesday. But a total of 172 delegates are at stake in those contests; for comparison, thats the same number that will be up for grabs in California on June 7. If Trump performs as well this week as polls suggest, his path to the nomination begins to look more like a cruise than a scramble.

Not so fast, the Cruz camp claims. It all supposedly comes down to Indiana, which votes May 3 and will award 57 delegates. If Cruz can win all or most of them, he says, Trump will no longer be able to reach 1,237. The nomination would be decided on the convention floor, where Cruzs superior inside game would win the day.

To that end, Kasich has agreed to not compete in Indiana. In return, Cruz will not compete in Oregon and New Mexico, states where Kasich is the leading anti-Trump alternative.

But this scenario is full of holes. For one thing, the RealClearPolitics poll average gives Trump a solid lead over Cruz in Indiana, 39 percent to 33 percent. And a Fox News poll last week showed that even with Kasich out of the race, Trump would still have a narrow lead, 44 percent to 42 percent.

That can hardly be called great news for Cruz, who needs to win blowouts, not squeakers. And even if he managed to come away with almost all of Indianas delegates, Cruz still would not have a realistic path to a majority. Trump, by contrast, would.

Oh, and in other states yet to hold primaries, such as California and New Jersey, Cruz and Kasich would still be campaigning independently and presumably splitting the anti-Trump vote. This could change, I suppose  Cruz and Kasich could theoretically agree to target different congressional districts in California, for example. But come on. Both candidates have trouble getting across the message Vote for me. I seriously doubt theyll do better with You over here, vote for me. You over there, vote for this other guy, even if you dont want him to win.

The whole Never Trump thing is more like Pretty Please Not Trump. Establishment Republicans wring their hands, beat their breasts and wail about how awful Trump is, how uncouth, how unacceptable as the presidential candidate of the party of Lincoln  and then, when pressed, meekly say theyll support him if hes the nominee.

What are voters to think? Perhaps that career politicians speak out of both sides of their mouths. Perhaps that Trump is right when he claims an effort is underway to steal a nomination he is winning fair and square.

Lets be honest: So far, Trump has run circles around his more experienced rivals. Why does anyone think this will suddenly change?

Read more from Eugene Robinsons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.
John Kasich, at a campaign stop in Rockville on Monday, explained why Republican voters arent buying what hes selling.

Im trying to peddle hope, said the Ohio governor. Hope in the short term doesnt get you a lot of attention, because hopes too positive. Negative is what works.

As if on cue, a man in the back row, enraged that a Fox Business correspondents live stand-up was distracting him from the candidates positive words about hope, turned around and bellowed at the press risers: Shut up!

If self-righteousness were a state and not just a state of mind, John Kasich would win its primary handily. But there is no such commonwealth. And here in the United States of Anger in 2016, Mr. Nice Guy has struggled to lift off.

Ive got a new plan, Kasich told the few hundred supporters seated in a gymnasium in the Washington suburb. Im going to go down to the Kennedy Space Center. Im going to get in the rocket, have a short flight, land in water, be fetched out of the ocean by a big Navy ship and have a press conference. The only reason I might not do it is they might not pick me up.

The Fix's Chris Cillizza explains why the strategic alliance between Ted Cruz and John Kasich seems destined to fail. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

If naval rescuers are anything like this years Republican voters, they might not even notice he splashed down.

Yet hope-filled Kasich somehow remains optimistic about his candidacy, which is why he entered Sunday night into an unorthodox alliance with Ted Cruz to try to force Donald Trump into a contested convention. Under their agreement, Kasich wont contest Indiana, to boost Cruzs chances there, and Cruz wont campaign in New Mexico and Oregon, to assist Kasich.

Kasich seems to think it isnt too late. He gamely declared Monday that of the 10 times Republicans have had open conventions, the front-runner has been rejected seven times. He embraced the label Governor Lincoln by a supporter comparing him to the winner of a previous contested convention.

What Kasich didnt note: This hasnt happened in 76 years.

An hour before Kasich took the stage in Rockville, Trump was doing what he does best: insulting people. He called Cruz a pain in the ass and Kasich a stubborn child who has disgusting eating habits. He accused the two of them of colluding  and said thats illegal in business.

But in politics, alliances arent illegal  theyre essential. The only outrage about the anti-Trump alliance is that one didnt happen sooner, when it could have done some good. Had the candidates ganged up on Trump months ago, they surely could have beaten the bully. Even a month or two ago it was still plausible.

Now the Kasich-Cruz alliance looks to be a few months late and a few million votes short, even as more Republicans come to terms with the horror of Trump as the nominee. The conservative billionaire Charles Koch, who was largely silent during the primaries, just said, I dont know how we could support Trump. In an interview with ABCs Jon Karl, Koch called Trumps call to register all Muslims reminiscent of Nazi Germany, and he called it frightening that Cruzs talk of carpet-bombing the Middle East would appeal to Americans. Koch even said its possible he would support Clinton over the Republican nominee.

Kasich at times already seems to be talking about his candidacy as if it were in the past  a reasonable tense to use for a man who would need 158 percent of remaining delegates to secure the nomination. I am a fundamental believer in ideas, he told The Posts editorial board last week. And frankly, my Republican Party doesnt like ideas.

In the Rockville gym, one of Kasichs fans carried a hand-lettered sign: Dont be so angry. You cant think straight. Vote Kasich. That message may make sense in the wealthy Washington suburbs, where many work for the federal government. Connie Morella, a moderate Republican who once represented the area in Congress, introduced Kasich with a lengthy treatment of his legislative bona fides, and Kasich spoke about doubling medical research spending, fighting man-made climate change and opposing the absurd idea of deporting 11 million illegal immigrants.

Everything you say  it resonates, a woman told Kasich during the Q&A. So why, she asked, is the rest of the U.S. not picking up on that?

At the end of the day, Kasich replied, people dont want to live . . . in tension, negativity, conflict. As evidence, he pointed to a new poll in New Hampshire showing that Republicans who voted in that states primary would now favor Kasich over Trump at a contested convention, 26 percent to 22 percent.

Alas, Trump already won the New Hampshire primary. And buyers remorse isnt going to get Kasich the nomination.

Twitter: @Milbank

Read more from Dana Milbanks archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday for an officer with the Paterson, N.J., Police Department who was demoted because his bosses thought  mistakenly, as it turned out  that he was campaigning for a challenger to the mayor.

The court ruled 6 to 2 that the actions of then-Police Chief James Wittig in disciplining Officer Jeffrey Heffernan violated the officers First Amendment rights.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer acknowledged that it was an unusual case because Heffernan was not actually exercising his free-speech rights  Heffernan claims he was picking up a campaign sign for mayoral candidate Lawrence Spagnola on behalf of his bedridden mother.

[Justices divided over N.J. police officers First Amendment case]

Lower courts had thrown out Heffernans lawsuit against his superiors because he was not actually campaigning for Spagnola.

But Breyer said the key to the case was not Heffernans actions but the motivation of the police chief, whose loyalty was to the incumbent mayor, Jose Torres.

The governments reason for demoting Heffernan is what counts here, Breyer wrote. When an employer demotes an employee out of a desire to prevent the employee from engaging in political activity that the First Amendment protects, the employee is entitled to challenge that unlawful action.

With a few exceptions, such as neutral laws prohibiting public employees from engaging in partisan activities, the Constitution protects an employees freedom to participate in political activity.

[Read the courts opinion]

Ruling for Heffernan sends a message to other employees, Breyer wrote.

The constitutional harm at issue in the ordinary case consists in large part of discouraging employees  both the employee discharged (or demoted) and his or her colleagues  from engaging in protected activities, Breyer wrote. The discharge of one tells the others that they engage in protected activity at their peril.

Breyer was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented.

Federal law does not provide a cause of action to plaintiffs whose constitutional rights have not been violated, Thomas wrote.

He said it was not enough for the city to have attempted to infringe his First Amendment rights. To prevail on his claim, he must establish that the city actually did so.

At oral argument, the case was described as something like a law-school hypothetical.

Heffernan was a detective in the police department, assigned to a division headed by the police chief. One day, on his own time, he went to Spagnolas headquarters to pick up the sign for his mother before the 2006 election.

Heffernan was a close friend of Spagnola, who also was a former police chief, and other police officers observed the interaction.

The next morning, Heffernan was called into Wittigs office and demoted to patrol officer. He was told it was because of his overt involvement in a political campaign.

The case bounced around lower courts for years; Heffernan won once, only to have the judgment overturned. Finally, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled that Heffernan could not receive damages for a First Amendment violation when he had not actually exercised First Amendment rights.

The legal battle is not over. Breyer noted that there were suggestions that Heffernan violated a different, neutral policy preventing officers from overt involvement in any political campaign. That is a matter for the lower court to figure out, Breyer said.

The case is Heffernan v. City of Paterson .
Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton sparred over the "woman card" and Sen. Bernie Sanders, after Trump won presidential primaries in five states and Clinton won four on April 26. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton sparred over the "woman card" and Sen. Bernie Sanders, after Trump won presidential primaries in five states and Clinton won four on April 26. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Donald Trump won in all five Republican presidential primaries held on Tuesday  a clean sweep that illustrated his dominance along the Eastern Seaboard and prompted the real estate mogul to declare himself the presumptive nominee.

In the Democratic race, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton won four of the five states in play on Tuesday: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) won the primary in Rhode Island.

[Winners and losers from the I-95 primaries]

In both parties, those results extended the front-runners advantage in convention delegates.

Clinton appeared to have added 170 delegates to her lead over Sanders: By the Associated Presss count, Clinton now has 88 percent of the delegates she needs to clinch the Democratic nomination.

In the GOP, Trump exceeded the already-high expectations for Tuesday. As of 10:55 p.m., the AP projected that Trump won at least 105 delegates, compared with just five for Ohio Gov. John Kasich and one for Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.).

But the importance of Tuesdays wins went beyond those numbers. For both Clinton and Trump, they showed that a long, drawn-out primary fight might be close to an end, and that stubborn adversaries seemed to be running out of time.

Clinton, speaking to supporters in Philadelphia, was not-very-subtly looking beyond the primary  attacking Trump, and making a pitch to Democrats to unite behind her.

Whether you support Sen. Sanders or you support me, theres much more that unites us than divides us, Clinton said. She later talked about creating an America where love trumps hate. The crowd cheered at the pun, and a bumper sticker with the slogan was already on sale for $5 at Clintons website.

[April 26 primary results]

In the Republican race, Trump appeared to be trouncing his rivals by huge margins, winning by 30 percentage points or more in the first returns. Wins on that scale will make it harder for Cruz and Kasich to argue that Trump is a weak and divisive front-runner.

Neither of Trumps rivals can possibly clinch the nomination before the GOP convention in Cleveland this summer. Both men are now relying on long-shot strategies, which imagine that Trump can also be stopped from reaching a majority of Republican delegates, and that the partys convention will bypass the leader and choose one them instead.

1 of 45 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Trump captures the nations attention on the campaign trail View Photos The Republican candidate continues to dominate the presidential contest. Caption Businessman Donald Trump officially became the Republican nominee at the partys convention in Cleveland. Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami. Carlo Allegri/Reuters Wait 1 second to continue.

This is a lot bigger win than we would have expected. All five. And not only is it all five, Trump said at a news conference at Trump Tower in New York. He noted that he had passed 60 percent in results from several states. When you crack 60, with three people, thats very hard to do. . . . Thats called a massive landslide.

I consider myself the presumptive nominee, absolutely. If you look. Honestly, Sen. Cruz and Gov. Kasich should really get out of the race. They have no path to victory at all. . . . We should heal the Republican Party, bring the Republican Party together. And Im a unifier.

Trump said he will be going to Indiana on Wednesday, where the May 3 primary is shaping up as the last best chance for Trumps rivals to stop him. To help derail Trump, Kasich agreed this week to not campaign in Indiana, allowing Cruz to focus on the front-runner.

[Indiana looms large for Cruzs slender hopes]

Trump had spent several weeks complaining that the GOPs delegate system was rigged against him. On Tuesday, however, Trump was more ebullient.

The best way to beat the system is to have evenings like this, Trump said. He likened himself to a boxer, winning by knockout: When the boxer knocks out the other boxer, you dont have to wait around for a decision.

Trump also tried to pivot toward a general election, although his attack on Clinton seemed more improvised that Clintons bumper-sticker-ready attack on him.

If Hillary Clinton were a man, I dont think she would get 5 percent of the vote, he said.

Even before the polls closed Tuesday night, Cruz was conceding the expected losses, however, he showed no indication of withdrawing from the race.

Tonight, Donald Trump is expected to have a good night, he said, speaking to supporters in Knightstown, Ind., in the gym where the movie Hoosiers was filmed. (Cruz undercut his hoops credibility, however, by incorrectly forgetting the name of the hoop: He referred to it as a basketball ring.)

But then Cruz said that the race would turn his way, in states such as Indiana: Tonight this campaign moves back to more favorable terrain.

Kasich was running second in several of Tuesdays primaries, but it was a distant second: hardly an affirmation of the theory that the governor would compete well with Trump among the more moderate Republicans of the East. It seemed likely that, even after Tuesdays results were tallied, Kasich would still not have as many delegates as Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.). Rubio dropped out of the presidential race more than a month ago.

In campaign parlance, Kasich was down on Tuesday night; he was back in Ohio and did not make a public statement or speech.

For Clinton, Tuesdays victories in large, urban states reinforced her case against Sanders: that he has not broadened his coalition much beyond white liberals, and that he struggles to win urban areas and populous states.

Sanders, however, showed no signs of giving up.

The senator from Vermont appeared shortly after 8 p.m. to boisterous cheers in an arena in Huntington, W.Va., choosing to hold an election-night rally in a state that holds its primary in two weeks.

This campaign is not just about electing a president. It is about transforming our nation, Sanders said at the outset of his remarks to a crowd of about 6,400. It is about having the courage to demand a political revolution, and you are the revolutionaries.

Jose A. DelReal in Philadelphia, Katie Zezima in Washington, Abby Phillip in Hammond, Ind., David Weigel in McKees Rocks, Pa., Arelis R. Hernandez in Fort Washington, Md., Sean Sullivan in Indianapolis, Katherine Shaver in Bethesda, Md., Josh Hicks in Annapolis, John Wagner in West Virginia, and Rachel Weiner and Ed OKeefe in Washington contributed to this report.


Raymond Farm is a new 65-acre community not far from Warrenton, Va. (Benjamin C Tankersley/For The Washington Post)

The phrase multi-generational living is commonly tossed around among builders, architects and marketing folks, yet for the most part, its parents and children who move into single-family houses.

But in Raymond Farm, a new 65-acre community not far from Warrenton, Va., and about 50 miles west of Washington, at least one three-generation family is ensconced in a spacious home.

Laura Benn and her younger sister recently purchased a property there together, and the sisters daughter and her 7-year-old son have moved in, too. Its truly multi-generational for us, Benn said. We looked for a home with a configuration that would make it suitable for each person to have their own private space, plus have space we can share together. The kitchen and family room are one big open area, and thats perfect for us.

The sister uses the main-floor master bedroom suite. Benn is on the second level, which has its own living room with a couch outside the bedroom, and her niece and little boy are in the spacious lower level. Besides bedrooms, theres a wet bar with a refrigerator, sink and many cupboards in an area larger than the kitchen I had in my previous home, Benn said.

[Four-story Anne Arundel townhouses rise near a bounty of shopping options]

Barry and Dina Barlow and their youngest daughter, Sarah, 16, were the first people to move into Raymond Farm right after Thanksgiving.

Now four houses are occupied. Three were delivered this month, and one more will be ready in May. When complete, the community will comprise 66 single-family houses on lot sizes of one-eighth, one-quarter and one-third of an acre. Two collections with 10 floor plans are offered: The Manor Collection is 40 feet wide, and the Executive Collection is 50 feet wide. Theres no difference in standard features between the two. The property was once a horse farm, and there are still people who stop by and say, Oh I remember riding a pony here as a child, said Claire Chinn, sales consultant.

1 of 15 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Buying New | Raymond Farm in Warrenton, Va. View Photos Spacious floor plans are designed for multiple-generation families. Caption Spacious floor plans are designed for multiple-generation families. Raymond Farm is a new 65-acre community not far from Warrenton, Va. The community will comprise 66 single-family houses on lot sizes of one-eighth, one-quarter and one-third of an acre. Benjamin C Tankersley/For The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Junior suite: The Barlows were living in Culpeper County, a 15-minute drive from Warrenton and a half-hour to their church. This location is much better. Everything is closer. Ten minutes to church, 10 minutes for Sarah to get to school and this high school is a better one, five minutes to the grocery store and a shorter commute to my work in Chantilly, said Barry Barlow.

They enlarged Sarahs bathroom and gave her an area on one side of the house thats like a junior suite, he said. They finished the basement, set up an exercise room down there and another bedroom and bathroom. When we had a Super Bowl party here, all the kids went downstairs and had a great time.

[These rooms come with a view of a popular Northwest Washington park]

The multigenerational aspect of the community touches the Barlows, too, albeit outside the house. A playground with swings, slides and monkey bars  fun for children up to around 10 to 12  is behind the white gazebo. We have three grandkids wholl get good use out of it for the next several years, Barlow said.



There are GE appliances, 42-inch birch cabinets and granite counters in the kitchen. (Benjamin C Tankersley/For The Washington Post)

Space for grandmother: David and Joeann White havent moved in yet, but they will be a multi-generational family, too. They intend to bring along Joeanns mother, for whom theyre both caregivers. Their adult sons and two granddaughters live in Maryland and Virginia. They, too, help care for their grandmother and plan to come to the house often.

I enjoyed the layout with a master suite on the first floor, said David White. Itll provide excellent care for my mother-in-law, and well be able to move her easily back and forth from the car.

The family room is next to the grandmothers suite. So we can be nearby and she can relax, listen to the radio and watch television with the door closed if she likes, he said. She can look out the window, see the community trail and watch people go by.

The 3,000-square-foot house is just the right size for the Whites. The basement, an uncommon feature in Georgia, where theyre from, is an attractive addition. My wife sent me in search of an area we could move to. One of my sons told me about Warrenton, and so I drove to see the town. I liked the rolling hills and the walking we could do on the property, he said. Were going to stay active and keep our bodies in good shape.



The dining room has a tray ceiling and elegant trim work. (Benjamin C Tankersley/For The Washington Post)

Shopping: In Warrenton, grocery stores include Food Lion at 613 Frost Ave., Safeway at 189 W. Lee Hwy., Giant at 41 W. Lee Hwy. and Harris Teeter at 530 Fletcher Dr. In Gainesville, Wegmans is at 8297 Shops Sq. Sears is at 141 W. Lee Hwy., Marshalls is at 251 W. Lee Hwy., Walmart is at 700 James Madison Hwy. and Home Depot is at 267 Alwington Blvd.

Schools: P.B. Smith Elementary, Warrenton Middle, Kettle Run High.

Transit: The community is a five- to seven-minute drive from Warrenton. Its about an hour from downtown Washington along Interstate 66 and Virginia Route 29. Dulles International Airport is 25 miles away, Tysons Corner is 38 miles, Arlington is 42 miles, Reagan National Airport is 45 miles and Alexandria is 51 miles away.



The lower level is shown. (Benjamin C Tankersley/For The Washington Post)
People inspect damage at a site hit by Saudi-led air strikes in Mukalla in southern Yemen on April 24. Security forces announced Tuesday that Yemeni forces have taken the southern coastal city back from al-Qaeda. (Reuters)

Forces loyal to Yemens internationally recognized government have retaken the southern coastal city of Mukalla, driving out al-Qaeda militants a year after they captured it, security officials said Tuesday.

The Yemeni forces entered the city late on Monday, after days of heavy airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition fighting on the side of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadis government.

The airstrikes targeted al-Qaeda positions in and around Mukalla, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Al-Qaedas local branch captured the port city last year amid the widening chaos of Yemens civil war, which pits forces loyal to Hadis government against Shiite rebels known as Houthis and their allies.

The offensive to retake the city, which is in Hadhramaut province, started Saturday.

Security officials and witnesses said earlier that many of al-Qaedas fighters in Mukalla left the city to escape heavy airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition and shelling by government forces.

Troops loyal to Hadi also advanced over the weekend in the town of Koud in southern Abyan province, according to the regions governor, killing 25 al-Qaeda militants in heavy clashes. The coalition has carried out airstrikes against al-Qaeda positions in the area.

The pro-Hadi troops had been preparing for the offensive for months, with the coalitions support. Heavy fighting is continuing with al-Qaeda militants in Abyan, near the cities of Zinjibar and Jaar.

Al-Qaedas affiliate in Yemen, viewed by Washington as the terrorist groups most dangerous offshoot, has exploited the conflict between the Houthis and the government forces to expand its footprint, mostly across southern Yemen.

The group, known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is blamed for a number of unsuccessful bomb plots aimed at Americans.

On Tuesday, Yemeni security and tribal officials said a suspected U.S. drone strike killed three prominent al-Qaeda leaders overnight in Zinjibar.

The officials said one of those killed was in charge of the groups finances in Yemen.

They said al-Qaeda militants cordoned off the area after the strike.
Governor of Somalia's Central Bank Abdusalam Omer speaks to a Reuters journalist atop the building housing the bank in Mogadishu on May 16, 2013. (Omar Faruk/Reuters)

Fifteen years ago, he was working for the mayor of Washington, trying to turn around crime-ridden neighborhoods and a failing school system.

Now, Abdusalam Omer is trying to turn around a failed state. The former D.C. bureaucrat known as Dr. O has a new title: foreign minister of Somalia.

Each morning, Omer climbs into a bulletproof SUV for the drive to his office, surrounded by young, armed men in green uniforms. He lives behind layers of blast barriers in a city where al-Qaeda-allied rebels regularly target government officials. Several of his friends have been killed.

He tries to traverse a range of diplomatic interests  the Turks want a port, the Kenyans want a border fence, the United States wants counterterrorism operations. And yet Omers own government is still in its infancy. When the top U.N. official here asked him what his short-term goals were as minister, Omer responded:

I want to have clean bathrooms and I want people to answer their emails.

Dr. Abdusalam Omer in his office in 1999. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

He wasnt kidding.

You have to be realistic, he says.

Its not a position he expected to occupy. He had thrived in Washington, learning to navigate the Districts cutthroat local politics. He could rattle off the names of all its high schools. He knew who mattered in which ward. Diplomatic Washington could seem a world away. He was a man who lived for city hall.

He brought enthusiasm and valor in helping me tackle the mess in D.C., ex-mayor Tony Williams said of his former chief of staff.

Today, Omers home is a modest, heavily guarded hotel he shares with visiting aid workers and journalists. He would be a target if he settled in any of Mogadishus residential neighborhoods. Its too dangerous for his wife, two adult daughters and son to live in the city; he sees them on trips abroad.

I used to say D.C. was like a third-world country. Then I came back here and I realized what a third-world country really was, Omer said on a recent balmy evening at the hotel, sitting on a patio and sharing a plate of watermelon. His only perk is a special cushion that the owner places on his rickety wooden chair before he sits down.

Omer left Somalia when he was 16, eventually migrating to Boston, where he attended Boston College. While he was in graduate school, guerrilla groups began fighting Somalias dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, who was toppled in 1991. Omer felt he couldnt go back.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, left, greets Somalias Bank Governor Abdusalam Omer, right, during a meeting with members of MENA, Middle East and North Africa in Washington, D.C. (Stephen Jaffe/EPA)

By then, he was a U.S. citizen. He studied public administration, earning a PhD from the University of Tennessee. During the 1990s, he held a series of jobs managing finances in the D.C. government, eventually becoming deputy chief financial officer. In 1999, he was appointed Williamss chief of staff.

But he never forgot Somalia.

From his home in Northwest Washington, he watched reports on Somalia flash across the evening news. After Siad Barre fell, the country was consumed by fighting between rebel factions. A flood of Somali refugees escaped to Kenya. The U.S. military lost 18 soldiers in a 1993 mission documented in the book Black Hawk Down. Numerous attempts to create a functional federal government in Somalia have failed.

I did feel like a part of him wanted to be there, Williams said in an interview. He would talk about it all the time. Im like an expert on Somalia after all these years with Dr. O.

In 2001, Omer was fired from the chief of staff job. Williams had found himself under pressure, in part for an unpopular plan Omer had pushed to privatize D.C. General Hospital.

Omer was 47 then. He decided it was time to return to Mogadishu and became a contractor with the U.N. Development Program.

When he saw the destruction of the capital, 100-year-old buildings reduced to rubble, he was racked with guilt.

The problem was us  Somalis who left and didnt come to the rescue of the country, he said.

Another capital

He returned to Washington for one more job with the city government in 2007, becoming the chief business operations officer of the D.C. public schools. But that same year, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) was launched with U.N. support. It was a peacekeeping mission that promised to bring security to Somalia.

Omer wasnt the only member of the huge Somali diaspora to return and try to help it build a functioning government. The former prime minister, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, was once the commissioner for the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority. The former minister of education, Abdinur Sheikh Mohamed, worked for the Ohio Department of Education. Yussur A.F. Abrar, the former governor of Somalias central bank, was once a vice president of Citigroup in New York.

In 2013, Omer accepted an offer from President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, whom he had met when Mohamud was running a university in Mogadishu, to become the head of Somalias central bank. But just months after he took the job, the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea accused Omer and other officials of using the bank as a slush fund. Eighty percent of withdrawals from the bank were made for private purposes, according to the report.

Key to these irregularities has been the current governor of the Central Bank, Abdusalam Omer, the report said.

Omer says he was shocked. In Washington, he had typically been the one calling out financial mismanagement. I dont know if anybody knows the magnitude of problems at D.C. public schools. Its mind-boggling, he told the Post in 2007, after he had been named chief business operations officer.

He denies the U.N. monitoring groups claim that the funds went missing at all, but particularly on his watch.

During the period they claim funds were missing, I was not the governor and I was not part of the government, he said in the interview.

Although Omer resigned under pressure from the central bank, Mohamud has defended him and he was not charged with a crime. Omer was appointed foreign minister just over a year later, in 2015. He decided he would rent out his Mount Pleasant home for a while longer.

Since then, he has welcomed John F. Kerry to Mogadishu, the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Somalia. Omer has watched as Islamist al-Shabab rebels have killed government officials and carried out suicide bombings in restaurants and parks. There have been times when he felt hopeless, even though it was his job to boast in foreign capitals of Somalias successes.

One of those capitals is Washington, which Omer visited this month with the Somali president. He walked through the city he once helped run. Now he was a diplomat from the country the World Bank calls the fifth-poorest on the planet.

He thinks frequently about the way his job in Somalia and his old ones in Washington overlap. Back in the District, he helped oversee a school district that had no accurate list of its roughly 55,000 students. Now, hes working for a government that has no list of its soldiers. There are supposedly 22,000; some say there might be as few as 10,000.

Running a government is tough in both places, Omer said.Between D.C. and Somalia, he said, its just a question of magnitude.

Read more

Somalias president says al-Qaeda-backed rebels are resurgent

2,000 miles from Syria, ISIS is trying to lure recruits in Somalia

How a breakaway region of Somalia hopes to build a new country

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar after arriving in the capital Juba on Tuesday as part of a power-sharing pact seeking to end more than two years of conflict. (Stringer/Reuters)

Rebel leader Riek Machar returned to this struggling five-year-old nation Tuesday under a peace deal and was promptly sworn in as first vice president, boosting hopes for an end to one of Africas deadliest civil conflicts.

A U.N. plane carried Machar from Ethiopia to this South Sudanese capital as part of a power-sharing plan aimed at quelling a war that has raged between Machars followers, mostly ethnic Nuer rebels, and ethnic Dinkas loyal to President Salva Kiir. The fighting has claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced more than 2 million people, driven parts of South Sudan to the edge of famine and spilled over into neighboring countries.

But it remains unclear whether Machars new role will be enough to quiet the unrest fueled by ethnic and tribal rivalries. Another key challenge is rebuilding a shattered economy heavily dependent on oil exports at a time of slumping crude prices.

Under the peace accord reached in August, Kiir and Machar agreed to work together in a unity government and to hold elections within 30 months in the worlds newest nation. South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

[South Sudan leaders sign deal to end civil war]

Smiling and wiping sweat from his brow at the airport, where government and rebel soldiers alike stood guard, Machar called Tuesday for immediate steps to end fighting, stabilize the economy, provide relief to war-affected people and launch a program of national reconciliation.

I wish that the security situation will be stabilized in the shortest possible time now that were just about to form the transitional government of national unity, Machar said later after being sworn in at the presidential palace.

Kiir said at the ceremony that he had no doubt that [Machars] return to Juba today marked the end of the war and the return of peace and stability to the people of South Sudan.

However, fighting continues in parts of the country. Rocket-propelled grenades fell Monday night on a U.N. base where more than 100,000 people have taken shelter from the war in the northern town of Bentiu, the United Nations said.

[Bloodshed crosses border into Ethiopia]

Many South Sudanese are skeptical about the peace deal because few of its provisions have been implemented in the past eight months. The government has not withdrawn its troops from Juba as agreed, and deliveries of humanitarian aid remain restricted in some areas.

In addition, the accord puts back in power the same two men whose falling-out led to the outbreak of violence. Machar was previously Kiirs deputy but was dismissed amid a power struggle in July 2013. He later fled the country and led rebel forces after fighting erupted in December that year.

Both sides have been accused of committing horrific human rights abuses, often along ethnic lines. According to the United Nations and human rights groups, soldiers forced people into starvation, gang-raped women and girls, and shot civilians hiding in mosques and hospitals. Kiir and Machar are accused of having command responsibility for some of the soldiers who committed such crimes.

The war was vicious, Machar told reporters in Juba. We have lost a lot of people in it, and we need to bring our people together so that they can unite, reconcile, heal the wounds, the mental wounds that they have.

[South Sudans child soldiers: scarred for life]

A new government buys some time . . . and that might be a small mercy insofar as at least thousands of people arent being slaughtered, said J. Peter Pham, director of the Atlantic Councils Africa Center. But it certainly doesnt move the country forward.

While Kiir and Machar each spoke of reconciliation, neither mentioned accountability measures agreed to in the peace deal, including an African Union-led hybrid court to try high-level perpetrators for atrocities.

Who is going to court? Who is supposed to be indicted? asked Jacob Chol, dean of Juba Universitys political science department. It will be very hard for sitting leaders to be put on trial, he added.

Kiir and Machar instead spoke at length Tuesday about economic recovery, appealing for international support for the transitional government. South Sudans government is nearly out of money after heavy war spending  $850 million, according to a U.N. estimate  and a steep drop in oil revenue. Economists warn of looming hyperinflation; the South Sudan pound has lost more than 80 percent of its value since the war began.

Finance Minister David Deng Athorbei said in an interview that the International Monetary Fund is prepared to help and that the government, which has been accused of rampant corruption, would be willing to enact financial reforms at the IMFs request. But doubters abound.

You cant let the same people who [mismanaged the economy] implement the reforms, said Peter Biar Ajak, a South Sudanese economist at the London-based International Growth Center.

Murphy reported from Washington. William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Iraqis, answering a call from powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, protested outside an entrance to Baghdads heavily fortified Green Zone, where the government is headquartered. (Haidar Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images)

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi desperately tried to steer his country out of political turmoil on Tuesday, partially reshuffling his cabinet amid stepped-up pressure as thousands of protesters threatened to storm parliament.

The demonstrators, answering a call from the outspoken Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, had gathered at the gates of Baghdads fortified Green Zone, where parliament is located, demanding a new government. Women and children in the crowd were sent home as organizers said they would break through its perimeter if reforms were not enacted.

The political unrest has brought a new level of instability to a country that is facing multiple crises, including the fight against the Islamic State militant group and the struggling economy. The United Nations has warned that the upheaval would further embolden the militants.

[Weve had enough: Baghdad protests challenge Iraqs Abadi]

Abadi has been trying to replace his ministers to appease the street, but he has been hampered for more than a month by chaos in parliament, where sessions have broken down into arguments and scuffles before voting can take place.

Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is shown attending parliament in Baghdad on Tuesday in this still image from Iraqiya TV. (Reuters Tv/Reuters)

Tuesday was no different, as a group of rebel lawmakers who claim to have voted out the speaker in a session earlier this month that others deemed illegal protested his presiding over the proceedings.

Void, void! they shouted as they surrounded Salim al-Jubouri during the session, banging on desks. Jubouri had arrived for the session with a large security detail.

The prime minister, who had come to present his proposed list for the cabinet reshuffle, left the session during the chaos. Some members of parliament said water bottles were thrown at him before he exited.

As the protesters thronged outside parliament, journalists were told to leave for security reasons and were bused out.

Lawmakers then proceeded to hold another session in a separate room. Rebel lawmakers who had disrupted the earlier session  some of whom are affiliated with former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has been accused of working against his successor  claim they were not allowed in.

They locked the doors and didnt allow us to enter, Haitham al-Jabouri said in a video address filmed on a cellphone and posted online. They have a small army outside the room, and this small army didnt allow us to reach this door.

They claimed the session, in which the remaining lawmakers voted to replace five ministers, was illegal.

But the move appeared to give Abadi a temporary reprieve.

[Beyond terrorism, Iraqs leader is struggling to fight corruption]

Kadhim al-Issawi, a military commander for Sadrs Peace Brigades militia, addressed the crowd outside parliament and called the partial reshuffle a positive first step.

You have started this change, he said. Its only a partial change. It doesnt satisfy us. But we accept it as a first step.

Abadi is performing a precarious balancing act: Attempting to clamp down on corruption in response to the struggling economy and the demonstrations risks the wrath of powerful political players with vested interests. Meanwhile, ordinary Iraqis have protested his attempts to trim public workers salaries to cut a bloated wage bill.

We are here to protest against those who stole our rights and our money, said one protester outside parliament who was interviewed on Iraqi television. We will get them out of the Green Zone by force.

It was a childrens soccer game. Of course he knew he was going to kill children.

U.S. military chief pays quiet visit to Iraq post where Marine died

Iraq is broke. Add that to its list of worries.

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Haidar Houri, a Syrian refugee who feels like he missed out on his chance to migrate to Europe, sits in a hotel lounge in Gaziantep, Turkey on April 15. (Hugh Naylor/The Washington Post)

Hussein Taysoun once saw opportunity in the great migration to Europe. Now, the 34-year-old Syrian feels trapped.

An agreement between the European Union and Turkey to halt the extraordinary flow of asylum seekers and economic migrants to the continent has all but slammed shut the Turkey-to-Greece smuggling gateway. For Syrians who made it only as far as southern Turkey, the future looks bleak.

Rights groups and aid workers say Turkish authorities have subjected refugees to arbitrary detentions and deportations. After fleeing hardship in their countries of origin, others here have found it a struggle to scrape by.

Many such as Taysoun  who is one of nearly 3 million Syrians offered refuge in Turkey  now feel they missed their chance.

Its like we have no more options left  except to suffer, said Taysoun, who arrived in Gaziantep, a city near the border with Syria, three years ago and supports his family by working in construction.

Qusay Suleibi fled his home town of Palmyra, Syria, after the Islamic State briefly took over last year. He now works at a cafe in the Turkish city of Gaziantep. (Hugh Naylor/The Washington Post)

Like the vast majority of Syrians in Turkey, Taysoun lacks a formal work permit, increasing his chances of being exploited by employers, rights groups say. Freelance construction pays $15 dollars a day  that is, he said, if he can land a job and if contractors actually pay up. He hasnt found work in weeks, forcing him to consider moving back to his war-torn country.

Syria is cheap, he said.

In his dimly lighted basement apartment of cinder-block walls and hopelessness, Taysoun said he regretted that he did not join the more than 1 million people smuggled on dinghies to Greek islands over the past year and a half.

Europe, he said, would afford his family possibilities. Jobs. Education. Hope.

But he had hesitated, fearing the perilous boat ride that has taken hundreds of lives. He also had trouble raising enough money for smuggling fees.

Now, that journey seems like a non-starter.

Under the E.U.-Turkey deal, which was struck last month, refugees arriving in Greece by smuggling boat are escorted onto ferries and sent back to Turkey.

In exchange, Turkey receives billions of dollars and other incentives, including relaxed visa requirements for its citizens to travel to Europe and a resumption of talks to bring Turkey into the E.U.

Observers say the agreement seems to have had the intended effect. The number of people attempting the journey from Turkeys coast has plummeted, and hundreds of mostly Afghans, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis have been returned to Turkey.

But Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other rights groups have criticized the deal, accusing Turkish authorities of preventing rights workers and the United Nations from visiting facilities that hold refugees and migrants.

Moreover, they say that Turkey has been rounding up refugees and deporting them without granting proper asylum procedures. And they warn that non-Syrian asylum seekers  notably Europe-bound people fleeing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan  lack protections in Turkey because of laws that do not meet international human rights conventions.

All of this, critics say, calls into question a fundamental assumption of the E.U.-Turkey deal: that it is safe to return refugees detained in Greece to Turkey.

Its very easy for this to become all about criticizing Turkey, but its quite clear that this is being driven by the E.U., said Rae McGrath, senior director for migration response at Mercy Corps.

Turkey was already shouldering an incredible burden before the agreement, hosting nearly three times as many Syrian refugees as the number of migrants and asylum seekers who made their way to Europe over the past 15 months.

A senior Turkish official denied the allegations of abuse. He listed Turkish support for Syrians that includes special protections and a long list of humanitarian programs worth $10 billion.

Unfortunately, the international community, including U.N. agencies, contributed less than $500 million for Syrians in Turkey, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he lacked the authorization to discuss the topic publicly.

Still, Qusay Suleibi worries that Turkish patience has run thin. The 25-year-old recalled wanting to go to Europe, but his family back in Syria urged him to stay put in southern Turkey. They would eventually be reunited in Turkey, or so he thought.

In recent months, Turkey started requiring visas for Syrians and blocking most entries, including Suleibis mother and siblings. Im not sure what I can do now, because I cant go back to Palmyra, he said of his home town, which he fled after Islamic State militants stormed it last year. Although the Syrian government has reclaimed the city, he has no desire to return.

In Gaziantep, he makes sandwiches at a Syrian-run restaurant, where he works 12-hour days, sleeps in a crowded employee dormitory upstairs and hardly ever leaves. He fears that police could stop him for lacking a residency permit.

Even as he doubts whether he will ever set foot in Europe, other employees at the restaurant are saving money for the journey.

Ive got $700 saved now! said Mohammed al-Hammad, a 27-year-old also from Palmyra.

He spoke about finding an alternative route via Libya, which aid organizations predict more refugees will take because of the E.U.-Turkey deal.

But Taysoun, the construction worker, seems to have given up on Europe. He wonders whether he can continue to pay his monthly rent of $80. If he cant, he said, he might move his family to camps for internally displaced Syrians back across the border.

Prevented from entering Turkey, tens of thousands of Syrians have crammed into the camps, where they receive support from aid groups but have faced attacks by the Islamic State.

But residents dont pay rent, Taysoun pointed out.

Right now, I have to focus on how to feed my children, he said.

Zakaria Zakaria contributed to this report.

Read more

Survivors recall sea tragedy as worries shift to Mediterranean migrant route

Europe begins sending people back across the sea

NATO ships to combat migrant-smuggling networks in Aegean

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
A federal judge Monday upheld North Carolinas controversial new voting law, dealing a blow to critics who said the states rules will discourage minorities from casting ballots during this falls presidential election.

The voting law, passed by North Carolinas legislature in 2013, is among the strictest in the country. It reduces the number of days of early voting, prohibits people from registering and voting on the same day, stops ballots cast in the wrong precinct from being counted, ends the practice of preregistering teenagers before they turn 18 and requires a photo ID.

Republican legislators say they added the restrictions to combat voter fraud and to preserve the integrity of the voting system.

In his 485-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Thomas D. Schroeder wrote that North Carolina has provided legitimate state interests for its voter ID requirement and electoral system that provides registration all year long up to twenty-five days before an election, absentee voting for up to sixty days before an election, ten days of early voting at extended hours convenient for workers that includes one Sunday and two Saturdays, and Election Day voting.

Leaders of North Carolina civil rights groups said Tuesday morning that they are immediately appealing Schroeders ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Justice Department spokeswoman Dena Iverson said Monday night, Were disappointed in the ruling, reviewing the decision carefully and evaluating our options.

The Rev. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, which sued to block the law, called it an affront to democracy.

Through widespread actions, rallies, marches and protests, we have said all along that we would accept no less than unabridged access to the ballot for all eligible voters, Barber said in a statement Monday night. Just like those who carried on before us, we will continue our movement challenging regressive and discriminatory voter suppression tactics on behalf of African Americans, Latinos, seniors, students and all those for whom democracy has been denied.

Before a 2013 Supreme Court decision, North Carolina would not have been able to enact the voting law without the approval of the Justice Department or a federal court. Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, North Carolina was one of nine mostly Southern states, along with individual jurisdictions in six other states, that because of their history of discrimination were required to receive federal approval, or pre-clearance, before making changes in voting laws.

Within weeks of the Supreme Courts decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which effectively nullified the part of the Voting Rights Act requiring such permissions, North Carolina passed its new law. The Justice Department and several civil rights groups sued.

The law turns back the clock to our nations terrible Jim Crow past, said Penda D. Hair, co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights group. In a democracy, voting should be free, fair and accessible for all eligible voters. By specifically targeting the very measures that were most used by people of color  in addition to imposing a restrictive photo ID requirement  the legislature sought to disturb the levers of power in North Carolina, ensuring only a select few could participate in the democratic process. This fight is not over.

Richard L. Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California at Irvine, said Monday night that the case will almost certainly be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which could well reverse parts of it, and then possibly to the Supreme Court, which could deadlock 4 to 4 and leave a 4th Circuit ruling in place.

Armenta Eaton sued the state of North Carolina over a controversial voter identification law. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

All of those appeals will have to happen in short order, Hasen said, for it to affect how the 2016 elections take place under the Purcell principle, a doctrine from a Supreme Court case, which states that courts should not issue an opinion in an election case too close to Election Day if it will cause voter confusion.

Read more:

The fight over North Carolinas new voter-ID law
Armenta Eaton at her home in Louisburg, N.C., on Jan. 21. Eaton and her mother, Rosanell Eaton, were among the plaintiffs suing the state of North Carolina over a voter identification law. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

Civil rights groups appealed a federal judges ruling in North Carolina upholding what they call a monster voter suppression law, while election experts said Tuesday that the closely watched case will have legal ramifications for voting across the country this presidential election year.

North Carolina, a battleground state, is considered an epicenter for the nationwide battle over voting rights because its controversial 2013 election law is one of the strictest in the nation.

If North Carolina can get away with this kind of rollback, I suspect we will see other rollbacks in other states, said Richard L. Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California at Irvine and the author of The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown.

After two trials, the voting law was upheld late Monday by federal judge Thomas D. Schroeder of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. His decision was praised by North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R), who said in a statement that this ruling further affirms that requiring a photo ID in order to vote is not only common-sense, its constitutional.

Common practices like boarding an airplane and purchasing Sudafed require photo ID and thankfully a federal court has ensured our citizens will have the same protection for their basic right to vote, McCrory said.





But the North Carolina law goes further than requiring a photo ID to vote. It also reduces the number of days of early voting, prohibits people from registering and voting on the same day, stops ballots cast in the wrong precinct from being counted and ends the practice of preregistering teenagers before they turn 18. Although other states have enacted one of these restrictions, such as a voter ID requirement, the North Carolina law is the broadest law that encompasses all the changes.

This is not a photo ID bill, said the Rev. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP, which sued the state. The court ruled on the most sweeping, retrogressive voter suppression bill that we have seen since the 19th century and since Jim Crow and the worst in the nation since the Shelby decision.

The Shelby County v. Holder decision by a divided court effectively nullified the section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that required all or portions of 15 states, because of their history of discrimination, to get the approval of the Justice Department or a federal court before making changes in voting laws. North Carolina was one of those states.

Within weeks of the Supreme Courts decision, North Carolina passed its omnibus election bill, with one legislator exclaiming that the General Assembly was no longer restrained by the legal headache of the Voting Rights Act.

Several civil rights groups sued, and a dramatic legal fight followed with mass protests in Raleigh led by the NAACPs Barber.

One of the plaintiffs is Rosanell Eaton, 94, who said she and her daughter had to make 10 trips to the Division of Motor Vehicles, drive more than 200 miles and spend more than 20 hours to obtain one of the required forms of voter identification because the name on her identifying document, her drivers license, did not exactly match that on her voter registration.

The Justice Department also stepped into the battle and joined the lawsuit in September 2013. Justice Department spokeswoman Dena Iverson said Tuesday that the department is disappointed in the ruling and is still evaluating its options.

In his opinion, Schroeder said he was not convinced by the Justice Departments and civil rights groups argument that large numbers of minority voters would be disenfranchised.

North Carolina has provided legitimate State interests for its voter-ID requirement and electoral system that provides registration all year long up to twenty-five days before an election, absentee voting for up to sixty days before an election, ten days of early voting at extended hours convenient for workers that includes one Sunday and two Saturdays, and Election Day voting, Schroeder wrote.

Depending on what happens at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, voting rights experts predicted that the North Carolina case could go to the Supreme Court.

Dale Ho, the director of the Voting Rights Project for the American Civil Liberties Union, called Schroeders ruling just the first step in the process.

We all expected that this case would be resolved in a higher court, Ho said. The ACLU represents the League of Women Voters of North Carolina in the case.

In addition to North Carolina, the other most closely watched voting case is in Texas, one of 17 states with more restrictive voting laws in place for the first time in a race for the White House. The Justice Department has also sued Texas.

The state of Texas has the most stringent voter-identification law in the nation and could cut into the turnout of minority voters and young people, according to several election experts.

A federal court in Texas found that 608,470 registered voters dont have the voter IDs that the state now requires for voting. For example, residents can vote with their concealed-carry handgun licenses but not their state-issued student university IDs.

Last year, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, in New Orleans, said that the Texas voter ID law violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But Texas officials then asked for the entire 5th Circuit to review the case en banc, which the court agreed to do last month.

North Carolina and Texas are the leading cases, and how they end up will have a big effect on the country as a whole, Hasen said. The stakes are very high. If North Carolina ultimately succeeds, you will see other states with Republican legislatures pass similarly restrictive voting laws.

Read more:

Whats at stake in the North Carolina voting trial

Want to vote in this state? You have to have a passport or dig up a birth certificate
At a Jackson, Michigan, community meeting called to discuss the widespread problems with contaminated water in the state, residents of the Arbor Village Mobile Home Community described deplorable living conditions and expressed frustration at officials lack of concern for their plight.

The residents, whose horrific experiences were recently detailed in a World Socialist Web Site photo essay, vividly described their brutal reality, including living with corrosive and highly contaminated water that runs nearly black out of the faucet; being charged exorbitant rates by the communitys water company, sometimes upwards of $250 monthly for water that is unsafe to drink; and water service outages that leave them without water for days at a time.

Residents recently told the WSWS that they had been living without water for three days.

The meeting was convened by the JXN Community Forum, a joint venture between the Jackson District Library and the Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty, Michigan. The speakers included Todd Knepper, director of the City of Jackson Department of Public Works, and Randy Block, director of the Michigan Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Network.

Knepper described the Jackson water treatment process, which uses the Langelier Saturation Index (LSI) to monitor the waters pH level and prevent pipe corrosion. Despite trying to reassure those in attendance that Jackson water was safe to drink, Kneppers remarks inadvertently revealed that vicious budget cuts have had a deleterious effect on the citys water infrastructure. The water treatment plant, which pumps 24 million gallons of water daily for a city of over 33,000 people, has only nine water technicians on staff.

Knepper said that an estimated 80 percent of the water service lines in the city contained lead, and that only a thin coating of scale in the pipes prevented lead from leaching into the water. Knepper insisted that the LSI form of corrosion control prevented this scale from deteriorating. The failure of a similar method of corrosion control in Washington, D.C., led to that citys disastrous lead-in-water crisis in 2003-2004.

Blocks remarks focused on the political aspects of the water crisis in Flint, as well as the water issues facing residents in Detroit, Highland Park and elsewhere. He referred to the water crisis in Flint as a canary in a coal mine, pointing to the widening scope of water problems facing more and more people around the globe. He denounced the antidemocratic role of unelected emergency managers in Flint and Detroit who facilitated the switch to the Flint River, and he repeatedly proclaimed that water is a human right. However, he made no call for the comprehensive replacement of lead pipes in these cities, instead insisting that those in attendance should lobby members of Congress to pass various forms of piecemeal legislation, which would do little to stem the crisis.

Moreover, Block framed the issue largely in terms of race, making the claim that water problems were driven by institutional racism and were unlikely to affect majority-white areas. This mirrors the reactionary political line of media outlets such as the New York Times, which promote a racialist perspective in order to obscure the fundamental class dynamics of the social attacks on water infrastructure.

In any case, the experiences of the Arbor Village residents shatter the myth that white workers are somehow immune to the social crisis bearing down upon the entire working class.

During the question-and-answer period, Arbor Village residents passionately described the appalling conditions under which they live.

Our water comes from a private company that we get charged monthly for, one resident said. For the last three days, they have had our water off. This does not affect my bill. I pay at least $45 every month whether I use water or not. My bill runs anywhere between $60 and $125. Ive gotten a bill for $250 claiming that I used 34,000 gallons of water in one month. ... If you do not pay your water bill, they will add it onto your rent, and when you cannot pay it, they evict you. They add on court fees, and they evict you.

The water company that this comes from is in Burton, Michigan, right there where the Flint River is, she continued. We have the same company that the Flint water system has, and we live in Jackson County. Im not saying my water comes from them, but its being billed from them. Many of those in attendance agreed that the company, Universal Utilities, is engaged in a scam to squeeze residents for utilities payments.

We havent had water in three days, one resident said. Thats dangerous. Thats very dangerous. ... We cant flush our toilet. That can cause hepatitis, leaving the feces inside of your home like that. If it backs up into your tub, theres nothing we can do about it. Who do we go to? Who do we ask for help? And why is it fair that its happening to us?

Residents said that their children have tested positive for elevated lead levels, and that the unsanitary conditions in the mobile home park have inflicted multiple illnesses on their families.

Its affecting all of us, one resident said of the illnesses. Is it coming from the water? Is it coming from the pollution theyre letting go underneath my house because its easier to let feces water sit there than to dig out the wells, and dig out the drains and have it drain like its supposed to?

Children live there, she said. Are they not supposed to go to school because we cant shower them? ... Something has to be done. We are getting ill.

The residents said they have received no assistance from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to help pay their outrageous water bills, nor have they received any help from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, which is supposed to oversee water quality in any community that serves more than 10 people. Earl Poleski, the member of the Michigan House of Representatives whose district covers the Jackson area, has also done nothing, in spite of attempts by residents to contact him.

This comes out of my faucet, one resident said, holding a jug of nearly black water that made meeting attendees gasp in shock and disgust. Thats what I get. Thats barely enough to flush your toilet. And its not just me, theres more of us. Theres lots of us. And all of us get a different tone, but none of it is clear. None of it. And this is what we bathe in. This is what we cook with. This is what we havent been able to receive for three days. But yet I pay $100 a month when I do receive this quality of water.

The speakers at the front of the room were clearly stunned to see the jugs of turbid water, unaware that a public health emergency of this magnitude existed less than 10 miles away from the library where the meeting was held, cutting across the racialist explanations pushed earlier in the evening. The Arbor Village residents were determined to bring their experiences to light, aware that many other communities across the state and the nation face conditions that are just as dire.

Im not the only one affected by this, a resident said, but people are afraid to speak out, and thats what Im here for.

After the meeting, attendees spoke with a WSWS reporter to share their thoughts on the expanding water crisis.

Jane Volk, a retired teacher, expressed outrage at the levels of social inequality that can lead to such conditions.

CEOs are making more money than they have ever made in the entire history of the United States. This makes it so much worse for the poor people. Theres no one speaking for them. And our legislatures, they dont seem to care. If it doesnt affect them directly, they can ignore it.

When asked about her thoughts on how the drive to war is bankrupting public treasuries and creating conditions like those seen in Arbor Village, she pointed to the hundreds of refugees who had recently died on a capsized boat in the Mediterranean.

Those poor people. 500 people. Thats a disgrace. You know my grandfather came here in 1827, with no money. He came with his brother. He got free land, which made a huge difference in my family. He left Germany because they were starving. And were not doing that anymore. We dont seem to care about these people.

Debbie Hartsuff, a retired registered nurse, expressed shock that such intolerable conditions could exist in her own backyard.

I didnt know it was this close. I would hate to see that coming out of my faucet.

When asked about the drive to war, she added, Its a horrible thing. Theyre not using diplomacy at all. Dropping bombs does not work. We learned that in Iraq. You just are making another generation of people that want to come over here and destroy us, because thats what weve done to their homeland.

Many of those in attendance, including many Arbor Village residents, expressed interest in the upcoming International May Day rally and the prospect of uniting with workers across the world to defend social rights, including the right to clean drinking water, and halt the drive to war.
President Barack Obama ended his six-day trip through Saudi Arabia, Britain and Germany Monday with what amounted to a mini-war summit in the northern German city of Hannover. The meeting was attended by himself, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

Obama used the occasion to announce a significant escalation of the US intervention in the Middle Eastthe dispatch of 250 more special operations troops, a six-fold increase over the current deployment of 50. This follows on the heels of an escalation of troop numbers in Iraq and an authorization of the use of US Apache attack helicopters in combat there.

The Syrian escalation has been ordered under conditions where the White House has reportedly fashioned a Plan B to be put into effect once the shaky cessation of hostilities in the country is deemed to have failed. The plan calls for the CIA, operating in conjunction with Washingtons reactionary allies in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf oil monarchies, to funnel massive quantities of new arms, including surface-to-air missiles, to the Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias that serve as Western proxies in the war for regime-change.

The American presidents message to his European counterparts was that they must stop being complacent and work to build up their own military forces for interventions in the Middle East, North Africa and against Russia to the east.

This appeal appeared to be in line with the policies already being pursued by Washingtons NATO allies. Britain, France and Italy are in the advanced stages of preparing another imperialist incursion into oil-rich Libya, having cobbled together a puppet regime that can formally request foreign intervention in a country already shattered by the US-NATO war begun five years ago.

Obamas host, Chancellor Merkel, proudly declared, We are ready and willing to be militarily engaged, citing the German militarys participation in ongoing interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Mali.

We have to put in more equipment, more personnel, Merkel said at a joint press conference with Obama. We know the targets NATO has submitted to us. We think that the whole positioning of our federal armed forces reflects fully our sense that we need to shoulder this international responsibility.

Seven decades after the fall of the Third Reich, German militarism, recklessly promoted by Washington, is back in business.

There was a certain valedictory quality to Obamas public statements in Germany, with his administration coming to an end in barely nine months. He pretentiously titled a 49-minute speech he delivered Monday An Address to the People of Europe.

Ben Rhodes, Obamas deputy national security adviser, described the Hannover speech to a group of businessmen as a bookend to a speech he delivered in Berlin in the summer of 2008 during his run for presidency. At that time, some 200,000 people poured into Berlins Tiergarten to cheer the Democratic candidate in the naive hope that he would put an end to the eight years of aggressive war, torture and criminality that characterized the Bush presidency.

This represented what was probably the high water mark of the phenomenon known as Obamamania, in which large numbers of people on both sides of the Atlantic were swept up in the cynical marketing of Obama, a junior senator and unknown political quantity, as the champion of hope and change, whose supposed sympathy for the oppressed and hostility to war would be assured by the color of his skin.

Playing a prominent role in this campaign were various elements of the pseudo-left both in the US and Europe, including the International Socialist Organization in the US, which described his election as a transformative event, and Germanys Left Party, which praised his 2008 speech in the Tiergarten. These forces worked to channel anti-war sentiment behind the Democratic candidate, whose election served as a vehicle for their own move to open support for imperialist war.

At the time, the World Socialist Web Site described the speech as a reactionary affirmation of Cold War anti-communism and an attempt to promote the new framework for US imperialist militarism and aggression, the so-called global war on terror.

The speech, the WSWS continued, promised a more collaborative relationship with Europes capitalist powers and offered the prospect that in return for their assistance in salvaging Americas neocolonial ventures in Afghanistan and elsewhere, they could anticipate a larger slice of the spoils. To the American ruling elite, the speech signaled Obamas determination as president to prosecute US imperialisms global hegemonic aims...

Nearly eight years later, Obama addressed the people of Europe as a commander-in-chief who has overseen the continuation of the war in Afghanistan along with new military interventions in both Iraq and Syria. As president, he threw the US military into the war for regime-change that devastated Libya. He has provided military support to the Saudi assault that has driven the people of Yemen to the brink of starvation and personally directed a global campaign of drone murders and massacres that has killed thousands of innocent civilians.

The danger is growing of these various conflicts igniting a new world war, as the Pentagon executes its pivot to Asia with increasingly provocative military challenges to China, and the US and NATO carry out an aggressive buildup on Russias borders.

The election to choose Obamas successor is notable for the virtual blackout by the two major parties, their candidates and the corporate media of the rising danger of world war.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, is the favored candidate of the US military and intelligence complex, described glowingly by the New York Times last week as the last true hawk left in the race. The Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has called for a major increase in military spending and the return of torture.

The democratic socialism and political revolution of Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders include no challenge to American militarism, and he has pledged to back Clinton should she win the nomination.

The Socialist Equality Party has launched its 2016 election campaign. Our candidates, Jerry White for US president and Niles Niemuth for vice president, are breaking through the conspiracy of silence of the capitalist parties and candidates and raising as the most critical issue confronting American working people the danger of war. Their campaign is focused centrally on the building of an international anti-war movement based on the working class and directed against the capitalist system, the source of militarism and war.

The lessons of Obamas presidency are vital. Workers and young people can wage an effective struggle against war only to the extent that they organize their strength independently of and in opposition to the Democratic Party and the capitalist two-party system.

At the same time, this struggle must be international, uniting the working class across national boundaries in a common struggle against imperialism and for socialism.

To that vital end, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding an International May Day Online Rally this coming Sunday, May 1, at 1:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time. We urge all readers and supporters of the World Socialist Web Site to register today to attend this rally and build it among co-workers and friends as well as on social media.

For more information and to register, visit internationalmayday.org
From Popular Mechanics

China has apparently fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the South China Sea, a provocative weapon test that-contrary to official statements-was likely meant to send a message to the United States and its neighbors in the region.

News of the test, which was carried out on April 12th, had been leaked to the Washington Free Beacon. On April 19th, the Beacon reported that two warheads carried by the missile had been tracked by U.S. satellites and regional sensors.

The Dong Feng ("East Wind")-41 missile is China's latest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The DF-41 can carry a single 1-megaton thermonuclear warhead or up to 10 smaller nuclear warheads. A three stage, solid fuel rocket, DF-41 reportedly has a range of 7,400 to 9,300 miles-making it the first Chinese missile with enough range to reach all of the continental United States.

The curious-and provocative-aspect of this test was the aiming point for the missile. Typically, Chinese missiles are launched from central China and sent westward. This time, the missile was aimed south at the South China Sea. This may be the first time China has launched an ICBM into the South China Sea.

China claims that allegations the warheads landed in the South China Sea are "pure conjecture", only saying that the missile was tested near the Sea. However, China also said that it had every right to conduct such tests within Chinese territory-a given unless that territory were in some way contested by others. China claims roughly ninety percent of the South China Sea, but some of that territory is also claimed by other countries.

China's territorial claims in the South China Sea have generated tension with many of its neighbors, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam, and is being actively opposed by the United States, Australia, and Japan. China claimed the test was not aimed at "any specific country or target".
A Wisconsin town remains shaken after an 18-year-old man allegedly began shooting at his former high school's prom Saturday night, wounding two students before police shot and killed him.



At a Monday press conference, Antigo, Wisconsin, Police Chief Eric Roller said the shooter, Jakob Wagner, arrived to the school on a bicycle. At around 11 p.m., he began firing a rifle on the grounds of Antigo High School, where the prom was taking place.



A student and his date who were attending the prom were non-fatally shot as they left the school, say police.



Officers who were patrolling the parking area heard shots fired and acted immediately, according to a statement released Monday. "One of those officers was able to fire upon the shooter, stopping the threat to additional attendees," the statement said.



"We stopped the threat and we think it saved many lives," Roller said at a press conference on Monday, adding that the shooter was stopped in the parking lot before entering the school building, which police believe he intended to do.



In a statement, Roller said, "The prior and ongoing training that our officers receive was truly imperative in preventing additional injury and casualties during this incident. Our departments will continue to provide the utmost security and safety measures to our community."





Police: No Known Motive for Shooter

Based on their initial investigation, which included executing a warrant at his home, police believe Wagner acted alone. Roller said Monday he does not know where he acquired the gun.



While a police source says authorities do not know his motive, a former classmate told the Wassau Daily Herald that Wagner was "bullied a lot."



"Ever since we were younger, he was one of the kids you kind of watched out for," 19-year-old Emily Fisher told the newspaper. "If someone was going to shoot the school, we thought it was going to be him."



Fisher told the paper Wagner was bulled in middle school and high school. She added that he talked about guns and weapons and made models of them in art class.



Childs described Wagner as "a sometime student." Administrators reportedly said he did not graduate with his class in 2015 and was working on earning his high school diploma.



Roller said in a statement that the Antigo Police Department is being assisted by the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation.



Roller also expressed his "deepest sympathy to the attendees who had their prom night memories turn to fear and tragedy. I understand the concern and frustration of the families who were unsure of the situation and worried about their children. Officers and I appreciate the patience that was displayed by students and their families as our staff was able to secure the facility and ensure the safe removal of students."



Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.





Victim Shot in Leg 'Doing Well,' Says Family

Donald Childs, an administrator with the Unified School District of Antigo, tells PEOPLE that the male victim was a student at the school who underwent surgery on his leg Sunday morning for non-life-threatening injuries. According to Roller, students tied a necktie around his leg as a tourniquet.



The female victim was his date, from out of state, and was grazed in the shooting, Child says. She was treated for one gunshot wound and released, according to the statement.



The male victim's family, who asked to remain anonymous, released a statement Monday about the shooting, asking for prayers for the victims and the shooter.



Saying that the victim is "doing well," the statement adds: "He has come through a long surgery and will recover with time and effort, but we have always believe that God is good and has a plan even in the midst of tragedy."



Saying they are grateful to police and to hospital staff, the family added, "We are so thankful for his girlfriend and two friends on the scene who acted so bravely and calmly."



While asking for prayers for their son and his girlfriend, the family also asked people to pray for Wagner, who died at 1:06 a.m. Sunday at a nearby hospital "after lifesaving measures" were performed, said police.



"Please also pray for the family of Jakob Wagner," the statement said. "As much as we are struggling through this event, we cannot imagine the grief they are experiencing at this time."



An autopsy of Wagner's body has been conducted and results are pending," Roller said in his statement Monday. "My sincerest condolences to his family and friends as they mourn the loss of a beloved member of their lives."



The school district provided counseling to students returning to school Monday, according to a statement from the district obtained by PEOPLE.



"The district is following the advice of law enforcement experts in conducting school on Monday and providing structure and routine as best we can and as quickly as we can," the statement said. "Counselors at each school site are prepared to support any students or staff who may be struggling."
The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas. Be sure to explore The Short List: College, The Short List: Grad School and The Short List: Online Programs to find data that matter to you in your college or grad school search.

Few bills compare with the payments often required for student loans. Second only to mortgages for consumer debt, student loan debt is collectively more than $1.2 trillion for the 41 million Americans who owe, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

MBA students often borrow to pay for business school, and for some graduates, how much they owe can reach or exceed six figures.

At Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, the average indebtedness for 2015 MBA graduates who borrowed for business school was $115,048 -- almost $9,000 more than the average for its 2014 borrowers. Cornell alumni had the highest average indebtedness among 93 ranked MBA programs that submitted data to U.S. News in an annual survey.

[Decideif getting an MBA makes financial sense.]

New York University's Stern School of Business previously topped the list of schools where grads had the most debt, on average, but it's now third. The average indebtedness for Stern MBA graduates in 2015 who borrowed was $107,458.

The percentage of students who borrow and tuition for MBA programs can vary greatly between schools.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, 69 percent of MBA students borrowed for their degree. On average, graduates owed $107,172, and annual tuition and fees is $65,446.

[Calculatethe return on investment for an MBA.]

But at Coastal Carolina University, 75 percent of graduates borrowed, which is a higher proportion than any other school. The school's annual tuition and fees for full-time students, however, is relatively low -- $15,990 for in-state students and $29,100 for out-of-state students. The average indebtedness among the 2015 grads was $23,063.

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Alumni from the Missouri University of Science & Technology had the lowest average debt among all schools: $10,141.

[Avoidthree mistakes when building your MBA budget.]

The following MBA programs had the highest average debt for full-time 2015 graduates who borrowed. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report. In the table below, U.S. News did not include schools that accepted fewer than 100 applicants.

School (name) (state) Average MBA program indebtedness Percentage of full-time 2015 graduates with debt U.S. News b-school rank Cornell University (Johnson) (NY) $115,048 N/A 14 Duke University (Fuqua) (NC) $114,498 61% 12 (tie) New York University (Stern) $107,458 N/A 20 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan) $107,172 69% 5 (tie) Pepperdine University (Graziadio) (CA) $103,721 41% 83 (tie) University of Michigan--Ann Arbor (Ross) $100,611 41% 12 (tie) Chapman University (Argyros) (CA) $100,518 21% 81 (tie) University of Virginia (Darden) $100,083 57% 11 University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler) $93,898 61% 16 (tie) Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper) (PA) $93,267 49% 18

Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News Business School Compass to find debt data, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.

U.S. News surveyed 470 colleges and universities for our 2015 survey of graduate business programs. Schools self-reported myriad data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News' data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Engineering Schools rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News' rankings of Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools or Best Online Programs. The debt data above are correct as of April 26, 2016.





More From US News & World Report


Dakar (AFP) - Eleven men including eight soldiers were shot dead on Tuesday at a military telecommunications centre in Cape Verde, officials said, adding that a missing soldier was suspected of carrying out the attack.

The government said in a statement that two Spanish technicians and a local civilian were among those killed in Monte Tchota, north of the capital Praia, at the army-guarded centre.

"Eleven people have lost their lives," the statement said. "The victims were all male, aged between 20 and 51."

It added: "A soldier who worked in the military centre has been reported missing and there are strong indications that he carried out this attack."

Calling for people to remain calm, the government rejected rumours that the shooting had taken place in the capital and that airports had been closed in response.

"The airports are functioning normally," it said.

It also added that there was "no link between these events and drug-trafficking", following media reports that raised the possibility of an attack in retaliation for recent major drug seizures on the archipelago.

"According to preliminary information, the motivations for these events were personal, which excludes the theory of an attack against the state of Cape Verde," the government said.

"The authorities are taking all necessary measures to shed light on this affair", it added, deploring the shooting as a "tragedy".

Nine guns, along with ammunition, were recovered several hours after the shooting in a car parked in a residential area of Praia, according to the statement.

Spain's foreign ministry confirmed the deaths of two Spanish citizens.

Cape Verde, an impoverished archipelago lying 500 kilometres (300 miles) off the coast of Senegal, is a former Portuguese colony that is home to half a million people.
INSIDER

"When you listen to him on the range of issues from foreign policy to the virus to racial injustice, it's clear he did not know what to do," Woodward wrote in the Washington Post.
A Brazilian toddler who suffered from glaucoma can now see and hear after traveling to the U.S. for life-changing surgery.

Read: Photo of Waiter Feeding Man With No Hands Lights Up the Internet

Footage shows the incredible moment 2-year-old Nicolly saw and heard her mom for the first time after the successful procedures in Miami, Florida.

Nicolly and her mother, 26-year-old Diana Periera, traveled from their home in Santa Catarina, Brazil to Miami last month so the toddler could undergo corrective surgeries at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.

Nicolly was born with glaucoma, a disease that usually affects adults. About one in 25,000 babies are born with the disease but younger patients can be cured.

The optic nerve is what's damaged in glaucoma. We could see that there was still nerve tissue so there definitely was hope for vision," Dr. Grajewski told WSVN.

Before traveling to the U.S., Nicolly had received seven surgeries to help her eyesight in Brazil but they were all unsuccessful. So her distraught mother turned to social media for help.

By creating a Facebook page for Nicolly, word spread. With help from the International Kids Fund, almost $20,000 was raised for her eye surgery. Housing and gift cards were provided to the family for their six-week stay.

According to The Miami Herald, a 10-year-old donated prize money he won in a youth racing league to buy airline tickets for Nicolly and Diana.

The strangers' efforts allowed the little girl to finally receive her much-needed surgery.

Read: Sick Boy Is All Smiles After Surprise Hospital Visit From New Jersey State Troopers

Dr. Alana Grajewki told WSVN: "She was blind, and now she sees. She could not see light at all in one eye, and she could barely see light in the other eye."

But that was not all: doctors at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute discovered she could not hear either, due to fluid buildup in her inner ear.

So Dr. Ramzi Younis, a pediatric ear, nose and throat expert at the University of Miami, donated his time to perform the surgery. He drained her ears and restored her hearing on the same day she underwent the procedure on her eyes.

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Nicolly, who now wears glasses, and her mom have returned to Brazil. They will return to Miami next year for a follow-up visit.

Watch: After 87-Year-Old Man Passes Out While Mowing the Lawn, Kind EMT Finishes The Job

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The Ancient Egyptians ruled a significant chunk of the world for almost 3,000 years, and left behind a rich legacy of art, architecture and mythology. But Ancient Egypt also left behind a few mysteries that archeologists and scholars still haven't been able to solve, even thousands of years later. Here are some of the enduring mysteries of Ancient Egypt.

1. What did ancient Egyptians look like?

White actress Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra

Despite the mummies, statues and engravings that the ancient Egyptians left behind, there is still much controversy over just what, exactly, they looked like. One thing's for certain though  despite what you might believe about them given Hollywood's whitewashing of Egyptians, the residents of ancient Egypt weren't white.

According to Slate, they were probably a range of colors, and "neither white nor black" by our contemporary understandings: "Ancient Egypt was a racially diverse place, because the Nile River drew people from all over the region. Egyptian writings do not suggest that the people of that era had a preoccupation with skin color. Those who obeyed the king, spoke the language, and worshipped the proper gods were considered Egyptian."

2. How were the pyramids built?

Source: PATRICK BAZ/Getty Images

Ancient Egypt's massive pyramids are another element of their legacy that has long puzzled the experts. Just how, exactly, did a society with no modern construction equipment manage to transport the giant, heavy stones needed to build the enormous pyramids? According to recent research by physicists at the University of Amsterdam, part of the answer may be wet sand.

"It turns out that wetting Egyptian desert sand can reduce the friction by quite a bit, which implies you need only half of the people to pull a sledge on wet sand, compared to dry sand," study lead author Daniel Bonn told LiveScience. An ancient wall painting also seems to depict Egyptians wetting the sand as they pulled a sledge bearing a giant statue, offering more evidence that water may have been part of the arduous and complicated process of building the ancient pyramids.

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3. How did King Tut die?

Source: Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images

The young King Tutankhamun has fascinated historians since his tomb was discovered in 1922, but the specifics of his life  and death at the age of 19  remain somewhat of a mystery. A longstanding theory that he died in a chariot crash was seemingly debunked when scans of his mummified body revealed that he had a "partially clubbed foot" that would have made it impossible for him to stand on his own, reported the Independent in 2014.

The new research also revealed, through genetic analysis, that Tutankhamun's parents were likely brother and sister, and he may have died "as a result of genetic impairments."

4. What's hidden inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu?

Source: Jon Gambrell/AP

The Khufu pyramid, the largest of the three pyramids at Giza, may actually contain some hidden secrets. A 2015 thermal scan of the Great Pyramid indicated that there were "thermal anomalies" within the structure, reports the Guardian, though it's unclear what, exactly, that might mean.

A statement released about the results of the scans said the anomalies could mean many things: "To explain such anomalies a lot of hypothesis and possibilities could be drawn up: presence of voids behind the surface, internal air currents," reported the Guardian. There could even be an as-yet-undiscovered hidden tomb, but the project, which is expected to last through the end of 2016, hasn't drawn any conclusions yet.
red cherries

FA Insights is a daily newsletter from Business Insider that delivers the top news and commentary for financial advisors.

Financial advisors need to master 4 skill domains if they want to advance their careers (Nerd's Eye View)

In his latest article, Michael Kitces outlined the four skill domains that financial advisors should strive to improve if they want to advance in their careers: competency (technical), empathy (relationships), sales (business development), and management (business execution).

"Progressing through the entire financial advisor career track requires mastery in a number of different skill domains," he explained. "For firms looking to develop talent, they would be well suited to consider how they are helping to develop their employees in each of these domains. And for financial advisors looking to advance their own careers, recognize that if you want to eventually move to the next tier, you will likely have to push your limits by trying to master a 'new' skill domain!"

Signals from the bond market are "mixed and confusing" (Charles Schwab)

"Over the past few months, it has hardly mattered how you were positioned in the fixed income market. Returns have been good across the board," writes Kathy A. Jones. "However, positioning is likely to be important in driving returns going forward. The most vulnerable investors are those who have been chasing yield with a combination of low-credit-quality and/or long-duration bonds."

"We think those who have stuck with core bonds for the majority of their portfolios and limited duration to the intermediate term may experience some volatility, but should be better positioned to ride out a realignment of the trends," she argued.

"If youve done well recently by investing in both high-yield and long-term bonds, take heed: Its unusual for both to outperform at the same time."

Colombia's future could be really bright (Advisor Perspectives)

"Similar to our experiences visiting Brazil and other countries in Latin America, we learned that misguided government regulation was considered one of the biggest risks or concerns expressed by businesses in Colombia, but we also learned how companies were overcoming challenges and finding new areas of growth," wrote Mark Mobius of Franklin Templeton Investments.

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"Over the many years that we have been investing in Colombia, we have seen great improvements. The governments reform path is clear, and if it is able to resolve issues regarding FARC and other groups, we believe conditions for investors will likely further improve. More importantly, if Colombias government is able to resolve its budget issues without resorting to burdensome taxation, while moving privatization forward to fund infrastructure developments, we think the future could be very bright for this beautiful nation," he added.

The 4 types of clients to target if you want more referrals (InvestmentNews)

Clients who are retired or near retirement, business owners, philanthropists, and those involved in many organizations are the best folks to target if advisors want more referrals, reports Liz Skinner.

Rob Martin, a practice management leader with turnkey asset management firm Symmetry Partners, noted that retirees "have the focus and the time. ... They are phasing out of their careers and are looking for more opportunities to be engaged in their communities."

Raymond James scooped up an ex-Deutsche Bank executive (Think Advisor)

Raymond James announced on Monday that the former CEO of Deutsche Bank Americas, Seth Waugh, will be appointed the non-executive chairman of Alex. Brown, reports Janet Levaux.

Raymond James is acquiring Alex. Brown; the deal is expected to close in September.

NOW WATCH: Drones are the next wedding trend





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Geneva (AFP) - Some 60 million people worldwide need assistance due to havoc wreaked by the El Nino climate phenomenon, but a shortage of funding could threaten the delivery of life-saving aid, the UN warned Tuesday.

"The numbers are truly alarming," UN humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien told reporters in Geneva.

The El Nino effect, which comes with warming sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, causes heavy rains in some parts of the world and drought elsewhere.

The 2015-2016 El Nino was one of the most powerful on record, and has caused significant damage across 13 countries across Africa, Asia, Central and South America and the Pacific, sending malnutrition levels spiralling and leading to greater spread of diseases.

In addition to the some 60 million people directly affected by El Nino, "there will be millions more who are at risk," O'Brien said, following a meeting in Geneva with representatives of affected countries and aid organisations.

Floods and failed rains caused by El Nino have sparked a dramatic rise in the number of people going hungry in large parts of Africa, with some 32 million people in the southern part of the continent alone in need of some form of assistance.

Ethiopia, which is experiencing its worst drought in half a century, is considered "ground zero" in the crisis, with some 10 million people in need of aid, Care International Secretary General Wolfgang Jamann said.

But getting aid to all those in need is no easy task.

The UN estimates that at least $3.6 billion is required to meet critical needs for food and agricultural support, as well as health and emergency water and sanitation needs linked to El Nino, and O'Brien warned that figure was likely to rise.

But even if the needs remain stable, less than half of what is required -- only $1.4 billion -- has been provided.

"So far what has been raised is far short of what we need," he said, cautioning that "lifesaving programmes, including the food pipeline in Ethiopia, are at risk of being cut short."

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"We have weeks, not months to get this right."

Making matters worse, the communities still reeling from the impact of El Nino are likely to get slammed again later this year by a return swing of the pendulum with its opposite number, La Nina.

In addition to providing desperately needed aid, the world should now be preparing for La Nina, which is characterised by unusual cool ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific, said the UN's Izumi Nakamitsu.

"If La Nina happens, the local community level coping mechanism is already quite low, because they have been coping with El Nino impact," she told reporters.

"So when that hits, the community will be again devastated, and possibly even much worse," she said.
Tristan Jacobson is in the 3rd grade in Springfield, Missouri and  like what most kids his age do when it gets warmer  set up a lemonade stand at the end of his driveway. But he wasn't hoping to get money to buy a video game or new toy. He was saving every dollar he could so he could be adopted.

Jacobson was just 4 years old when his biological mother left him in the doorway at a Missouri shelter. When he was 5, Donnie Davis and her husband Jimmy took him in and have been raising him ever since.

The Davis family wanted to make Jacobson their son officially on paper, even though they already thought of him as their own.

"This is more for reassurance for him, knowing that he has his forever family and he has our name," Donnie told the Springfield News-Leader.

Despite the desire, they couldn't afford the legal fees to go through with the adoption. That's when this darling 9-year-old stepped in, selling bottles of lemonade for $1 each to help make Donnie and Jimmy his legal mom and dad.

"She will be my parent," Jacobson said. "I'm happy because I have a new mom who loves me."

He set a goal and saved the money to accomplish it  talk about learning a major lesson early on in life. Jacobson said he wanted to raise $5,000 but surpassed that immensely, raising $7,100 from the lemonade stand and a yard sale and almost the same amount from a YouCaring.com fundraiser.

"It means everything," Donnie told the Springfield News-Leader. "He is absolutely our son. He is in our hearts."

Donnie said that any money left over after the legal fees for the adoption will go toward Jacobson's college fund.

If you're considering adoption, there are several methods you can use to be financially prepared. (Read about possible finance options to help pay for your adoption here.) Since adoption can be pricey, many potential parents turn to loans. If you choose to borrow money to fund an adoption, having a good credit score may help. You can see two of your credit scores for free, updated each month, on Credit.com.



More from Credit.com


Three top ABC executives have apologized to Kelly Ripa as she gears up for todays return to Live! With Kelly and Michael following the fallout from last weeks decision to move co-host Michael Strahan to Good Morning America.

Disney-ABC Television Group Ben Sherwood, ABC stations president Rebecca Campbell and ABC News president James Goldston have personally apologized to Ripa, Strahan and their agents.

The executives reportedly expressed regret for the way Kelly was told the news.

Also Read: Michael Strahan Apologized to Kelly Ripa For 'Live' Misfire

Strahan was reportedly happy at Live!  contrary to some recent speculation  and needed to be persuaded to make the full-time switch to GMA.

Ripa is set to return to the daytime talk show on Tuesday after sitting out four episodes as sort of a mini-protest regarding the way she heard the news.

Both fans and ABC execs are curious about what shell have to say on air regarding the situation.

On Friday, staffers received an email from Ripa saying that she would come back to work on Tuesday. She also received an apology from Strahan himself over the weekend.

Related stories from TheWrap:

ESPN's Jon 'Stugotz' Weiner Bashes Kelly Ripa Over Michael Strahan Drama

Kelly Ripa No-Show on 'Live,' Missing Michael Strahan's Departure Announcement

Inside Michael Strahan's Move to 'GMA' and the Hunt to Replace Him
Part of the deal with watching a new music video or a clip from a late-night show on YouTube means sitting through a 30-second ad. Just as advertisers hope looking at shiny new lip colors before watching a movie trailer might influence your next purchase, one German organization hopes its ads of refugees sharing real-life experiences will change locals opinions about asylum seekers.

My home was bombed and completely destroyed, Najlaa, a 23-year-old Syrian refugee living in Germany, says in an advertisement that plays on YouTube. Do you think I care about money? Najlaa goes on to explain that she lost three family members during the Syrian conflict and that all she wants is peace.

Najlaas video is one of nine ads that pop up when Germans search YouTube for videos using keywords such as refugee terrorists, immigrants dont integrate, and asylum seekers out.

The campaign, titled Search Racism. Find Truth, is the brainchild of German-based housing organization Refugees Welcome. The group paid for the ads to be matched with keywords against refugees and Islam, and they currently play before 100 videos, BBC News reports.

We hope this campaign will contribute to greater awareness and a more cosmopolitan outlook in the very place where hatred and incitement against foreigners spread the fastest: online, Jonas Kakoschke, a cofounder of Refugees Welcome, told The Independent.

The 30-second ads cannot be skipped, forcing viewers to hear a direct rebuttal to their desired content. While the users who uploaded the videos can disable ads, they cannot select which ads get paired with their videos.

FULL COVERAGE: The Global Refugee Crisis

More than 1 million asylum seekers entered Germany in 2015, the majority from Iraq and Syria. While Chancellor Angela Merkel has received international praise for her willingness to open the country to those in need, public opinion has become tainted. Attacks in Cologne on New Years Evein which more than 100 women filed criminal complaints alleging sexual and physical assault at the hands of asylum seekersdrew more scrutiny of refugees residing in Germany. Some German citizens fought back. As of April 5, German officials had recorded nearly 300 attacks on refugee shelters in 2016, including instances of arson and violence, Reuters reports.

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Each video from Refugees Welcome is directly connected to its search term to achieve the greatest impact. Before a viewer can watch a woman lamenting that refugees refuse to integrate, a man from Mali delivers the definition of prejudice speech in Germanthe sixth language hes learned. Those trying to watch speeches from Lutz Bachmannthe founder of anti-Islamist group PEGIDAfirst hear from Arif, who details Bachmanns rap sheet and arrest record. Najlaas video comes up when viewers search refugees only want money.

We want to use the targeted placement of ads to get viewers of right-wing extremist videos thinking and ideally to even change their minds, Marieke Geiling, a cofounder of Refugees Welcome, told The Independent. The end of each ad recommends viewers click on an alternative link to learn more about individual stories rather than listen to more prejudice.

Take the Pledge: Protect Refugees Fleeing Violence and Persecution

Related stories on TakePart:





 Syrian Artist Seeks College Education From an Unexpected Place

 Welcome to Germany: TV Show Teaches Refugees to Adapt to Life in Europe

 7 Heartbreaking Photos of Refugees Being Deported From Greece

Original article from TakePart
By Jibran Ahmed and Mirwais Harooni PESHAWAR, Pakistan/KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan Taliban delegation has arrived in Pakistan to meet officials in a bid to restart a stuttering peace process with Kabul, Afghan officials and Taliban leaders said on Tuesday, although it was unclear who the delegation was meeting. There was no immediate confirmation from authorities in Pakistan but just a week after a massive bomb blast in Kabul killed at least 64 people and wounded hundreds, the Afghan government refused to take part. Last month, the Taliban ruled out participating in what it called "futile" talks sponsored by the four-power group of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the United States and China as long as foreign forces remain in the country. In Kabul, the Afghan government has been frustrated by what it sees as Islamabad's refusal to honor a pledge to force Taliban leaders based in Pakistan to join the talks, or face military action. "We are aware that Taliban delegations are in Pakistan, but we will not go there until Pakistan fulfils the promises that they made," said Dawa Khan Mina Pal, a spokesman for Afghan president Ashraf Ghani. On Monday, Ghani said the opportunity for peace talks "will not be there forever" and urged Pakistan to fight Taliban groups on its soil that rejected peace. Afghanistan has long accused Pakistan of actively harboring the Afghan Taliban leadership on its soil, a charge Islamabad denies, saying it only has "limited influence". A senior Taliban member based in Pakistan confirmed that a delegation of leaders was in the southern port city of Karachi, holding talks with Pakistani officials. "They arrived on Monday," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity, because the Taliban leadership has not authorized him to discuss the talks with the media. "They left for an unknown location later in the day and returned late at night." Two members of the Taliban's political office in the Gulf state of Qatar, which has played a role in previous attempted peace talks, confirmed the delegation's presence in Pakistan, but indicated meetings were being held in the capital, Islamabad. "Our people held a meeting with Pakistani officials and I am sure they may meet the Chinese on Tuesday," said one of the Qatar-based leaders, speaking on condition of anonymity, also because he is not authorized to discuss the talks. "We don't care if Kabul participates in the meeting, as we already launched our spring offensive and are getting successes against them," he said. The Pakistani Foreign Office and the Afghan embassy in Islamabad did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said he was not authorized to comment on the activities of the movement's Qatar political office. (Writing by Asad Hashim; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Activist DeRay Mckesson ran for mayor in Baltimore. (Photo: Andre Chung for the Washington Post via Getty Images)

BALTIMORE  There was one moment during protests in Ferguson, Mo., when DeRay Mckesson says he feared a casual gesture might cost him his life.

According to Mckesson, the incident occurred in the first few days of the demonstrations that engulfed the city following the Aug. 9, 2014, shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a Ferguson cop. Mckesson said the protesters were suddenly rushed by one of the police forces who were aggressively cracking down on the nightly unrest. As the cops surged in, Mckesson said, the crowd dispersed  and his phone cord began to fall from his pocket as he ran.

In the weeks of protests that followed Browns death, the demonstrators frequently ran with their hands up. It was an effort to dramatize the gesture of surrender Brown allegedly made before he was shot. The posture was also a precaution for the protesters who didnt want to join Brown and the other young black men who have died after being perceived as threats by police officers. With his phone cord slipping out of his shorts, Mckesson found himself making a crucial choice  should he lower his hands to secure the charger, or would moving toward his pocket get him shot?

Mckesson told Yahoo News he went for the cord because he wont live in fear. He recounted the moment when he spoke to a room of students at University of Maryland, Baltimore County last Friday and explained why he decided to go from protesting against the system to trying to become part of it.

One of the most high-profile figures in the Black Lives Matter movement, Mckesson, a 30-year-old who was born in Baltimore, spent three months running a long-shot  and ultimately unsuccessful  campaign for mayor of his hometown. His bid ended Tuesday, when he finished in sixth place in the Democratic primary with a little over 3,000 votes, or 2 percent of the total. Maryland State Senate Majority Leader Catherine Pugh won the race with 45,360 votes. In his unlikely effort to bring the movement from the streets to City Hall, Mckesson, wearing his distinctive blue vest, tried to turn the name he made for himself documenting the unrest in Ferguson into a springboard to leading a city facing similar strife.

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Starting last April 18, riots rocked Baltimore after it was revealed Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American man, suffered severe spinal injuries while being taken into police custody. Gray eventually died as a result of his injuries, and the states attorney filed criminal charges against the six officers who were involved in his death. The case is still ongoing, but the initial reaction in the city led to a state of emergency, curfews, and the National Guard being called in. Mckesson, who had previously returned to the city, was on the streets during the upheaval.

A protester faces police who hurled smoke grenades and fired pepper balls at demonstrators to enforce a citywide curfew in Baltimore on April 28, 2015. (Photo: Matt Rourke/AP)

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat, faced intense criticism for her handling of the riots, and last December, she announced she would not seek reelection. Her decision set the stage for the crowded race featuring Mckesson and 12 other candidates in Tuesdays Democratic mayoral primary. And in a city where the electorate is overwhelmingly registered in the party, that primary contest was tantamount to the general election.

At a town hall on Saturday, President Obama praised Black Lives Matter for being really effective in bringing attention to problems of racial injustice. But, he suggested, the group cant just keep on yelling.

The value of social movements and activism is to get you at the table, get you in the room, Obama said.

Mckesson clearly is making an effort to bring Black Lives Matter out of the streets and into the halls of power. With a majority of African-American residents and clear concerns about law enforcement in the community, Baltimore seems like the ideal setting for that effort. However, Mckessons campaign faced a unique set of obstacles due to his prominence in the movement, and his bid seems to have resonated more with rich Baltimoreans than residents of poor black neighborhoods, where many have abandoned electoral politics. Yahoo News spent three days with Mckesson and his team last week and saw firsthand what he aimed to do and why it was ultimately unsuccessful.

Speaking to the students at UMBC last week, Mckesson explained some of his rationale for running for office. He contrasted this perspective with that of others in the movement, whom he described as addicted to protesting rather than working within the system.

We also need to be the people who are on the boards and commissions  in actual power. The status quo that we are resisting is super organized on the inside, and an outside-only strategy, I think, is not a strategy to win. I think its a strategy to fight forever and ever, Mckesson explained. Our goal is not to fight forever and ever, and I do worry that, in the movement space, that there are people more addicted to fighting than winning.

Mckesson defined this dichotomy as a split around reform and revolution that happens in the movement with revolutionaries fighting for 100-year goals, such as establishing new political parties, in lieu of bringing change today and tomorrow.

Mckesson, who regularly described his mayoral campaign platform as being focused on concrete change, has no problem being identified as a reformer rather than a revolutionary. He believes long-term political goals should be pursued in conjunction with realistic programs for criminal justice reform, education, and affordable housing, he told the UMBC students.

If getting more people out of jail makes me a reformer, then like, Im all about it. Right? And if ending cash bail tomorrow is like, Im a reformer, then fine, right? he said.

Mckesson is arrested in Missouri in August 2015. (Photo: Jeff Roberson/AP)

Mckesson burst onto the national scene by documenting the Ferguson protests on social media and in a newsletter. When Brown died, Mckesson was living in Minneapolis, where he worked as the director of human capital with the citys public school system. Mckesson says he decided to drive to Ferguson in an attempt to square the different narratives he was seeing on Twitter and television, and said that being hit with tear gas inspired him to join the protests. He basically never left.

During the first half of last year, Mckesson traveled around the country to cities where young African-Americans died at the hands of the police, and other locations where protests erupted  such as Charleston, S.C., where a white supremacist killed nine people at a black church, and Missouri, where racial issues led to mass demonstrations at the states flagship public university. Along with participating in protests, Mckesson helped found a group that crafted a Black Lives Matter policy agenda. Though he was not part of the organization that originally coined the phrase, Mckessons relentless tweets and trademark blue Patagonia vest eventually made him one of the most recognizable faces of the movement, and drew in more than 340,000 Twitter followers.

Mckessons past as a high-profile protester gave him unusual resources for a first-time candidate. But at the same time, his visibility within Black Lives Matter movement generated a harsh spotlight, including backlash from other activists. And while Mckessons unique brand of political celebrity brought him donations from all 50 states, high-powered allies and intense national press coverage, his sixth place finish showed these things didnt translate into the support necessary to win the race.

While it fueled national interest in his campaign, Black Lives Matter wasnt been the central element of Mckessons pitch to Baltimore voters.

He spent much more of his time talking about his background as a teacher with high-level administrative roles at large public education agencies. In addition to his position with the school system in Minneapolis, Mckesson worked in human capital for Baltimore City Public Schools from August 2011 until the end of 2013. He also helped lead an afterschool program in Baltimore a few years after his 2007 graduation from Bowdoin College.

And police reform is only a small portion of his platform, which is largely focused on a series of what he describes as tangible things that we can do that might not be the most sexy.

Among other things, Mckesson wanted to get mayoral control over city schools and, in the meantime, establish adult and childhood literacy programs. He wanted to employ strategies to fill Baltimores blighted blocks of vacant homes that are tailored to specific neighborhoods and coupled with a plan to address urban food deserts. He called for creating cultural opportunities for the citys young people like movie theaters, arts programs, and dirt bike parks. And yes, Mckesson also talked about plans for crime and policing, including establishing needle exchanges, mandating drug tests for officers involved in shootings and banning chokeholds.

Mckesson chats with campaign volunteers before canvassing in Baltimore in March. (Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)

Mckesson was the last high-profile Democratic candidate to officially enter the race. He filed his candidacy on the evening of Feb. 3, minutes before the deadline on the final day to register. On the campaign trail, Mckesson attributed his late entry to the time he spent putting together his platform and the difficulty of finding an election lawyer who was not already tied to one of the other candidates.

I spent a lot of time on the policy platform because I didnt want to be a personality candidate, Mckesson said to a crowd at a campaign event last Thursday night, adding, Logistically, you know, theres so many people running for office in this city that it actually took some time to find an election lawyer who was not conflicted.

This delay meant Mckesson had just 83 days to campaign, when many of his rivals had been running for months. The time crunch was exacerbated by the fact many Baltimoreans participated in early voting. And this wasnt the last time Mckessons status as a political newcomer cost him.

In his campaign appearances, Mckesson sounded something like a local version of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. He called himself an outsider to the establishment and an insider to the city, and touted the fact he has raised more than $200,000, largely from small donors. In fact, Mckesson used the same firm that helped rope in the online donations that have fueled Sanders insurgency in the presidential race. However, the money Mckesson raised was still far less than the funds raised by his top rivals, some of whom have seven-figure war chests. And his team, which included just three paid staffers, was much smaller than his opponents operations.

While Mckessons activist career earned him meetings with President Obama, Sanders, and a slew of celebrities and Silicon Valley luminaries, he didnt have the endorsement of a single local elected official. His campaign manager, Sharhonda Bossier, told Yahoo News Mckesson hasnt sought political favors from politicians.

Our work has been rooted in connecting with as many voters as possible, Bossier said.

And Mckesson had a lot of work to do on that front. The last Baltimore Sun poll conducted before the election showed he had the support of less than 1 percent of voters.

Mckesson and his team argued the polls understated his following. They cited the unusually high turnout in early voting and the fact the mayoral race is coinciding with a presidential primary as reasons the electorate was fundamentally different than it has been in the past. Though he did outperform his rock bottom poll numbers, the surveys were clearly not too far off.

In a conversation with Yahoo News three days before the election, Dr. Mileah Kromer, who directs the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center at Baltimores Goucher College, which conducts polling in Maryland, rejected the Mckesson campaigns arguments about the polls. Kromer predicted Mckesson would beat the incredibly low expectations, but she said there were not enough unique factors in this years race for Mckesson to come from as far behind as he was. Both of the two frontrunners: former Mayor Sheila Dixon and the eventual winner, Pugh, were leading the pack with over 25 percent support in the polls.

While I do think theres a real possibility for him to outperform the one percent which hes polling at, I dont think it will make up for the 30-point gap, Kromer told Yahoo News.

President Obama speaks at a meeting with civil rights leaders  including Mckesson, right  at the White House on Feb. 18. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Given his trailing position in polls, Mckesson drew few attacks from the top candidates. Neither the Pugh nor the Dixon campaign responded to requests from Yahoo News to comment about Mckesson. He has polled too low to even enter several debates, and Dixon, when initially asked about Mckessons candidacy, said she had never heard of him.

While his actual opponents ignored him, Mckesson was under relentless attack online. He is constantly on his phone, fielding an exhausting stream of Twitter messages, including vicious insults from conservatives.

Along with online sparring, Mckesson believed he took unfair hits in the press that discouraged voters from backing his campaign. His mayoral bid generated substantial coverage, but much of it focused on his poor poll numbers and background as a protester rather than his platform.

Late last month, Mckesson began an effort to reach out to 30,000 voters in the final 30 days of his campaign. He told Yahoo News he far exceeded that goal with mailers, phone calls, events, and by knocking on nearly 2,000 doors per day with a combination of his staff, volunteers and paid canvassers. However, Mckesson didnt believe he was credited for this ground work.

Mckesson lamented the public perceptions surrounding his campaign when he spoke to the class at UMBC last week, saying people did not believe he was out meeting voters unless he documented it.

The social media presence is a good thing and a bad thing sometimes. It does a lot to amplify the message in a way that is powerful. The hard part is that if I dont put it on Twitter, people like literally act like it doesnt exist, Mckesson said, adding, No other candidate has to prove every single thing they do.

Some local activists were reluctant to embrace him, and view him as insufficiently tied to the community. This opposition has also drawn substantial attention in the press.

Dr. Lawrence Brown, a local activist and professor at Baltimores historically black Morgan State University, attributed the critiques Mckesson has faced from other activists to the citys insular nature.

Home grown  you know, born, raised, and what people call doing the work here, you know  it like really, really means a lot. And he was born and raised here, but people havent necessarily seen him doing the work  in terms of maybe activism or protesting, you know  being visible in that regard, Brown told Yahoo News. So I think, like, hes being penalized for Baltimores very unique sense of insularity  not really wanting outsiders to get a lot of credit or to hog the limelight.

As a result of the bad press, Mckesson was guarded in the final days of the race. When Yahoo News asked him about the benefits and disadvantages of his high-profile association with Black Lives Matter, he barely answered the question.

The movement is made up of many people doing incredible work all across the country, Mckesson said. Im proud to stand with them and Im proud to be a part of this community. Thats my whole comment on the record.

In his defensive posture, Mckesson preferred to let his platform and campaign work speak for itself. He stuck to the details of his platform in almost all conversations. The data points tumbled out of him in a rapid-fire patter. His eagerness for people to hear the policies was apparent. Mckesson also wanted the world to know he was out pounding the pavement looking for votes  and to see the reaction hes getting in his travels around the city.

Mckesson and campaign staffer Maria Griffin canvass in the Charles Village neighborhood of Baltimore in March. (Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)

Last Thursday and Friday, Yahoo News tagged along as Mckesson spoke to the UMBC college class, a group at a local senior citizens center, and a forum for young local leaders. Mckesson generally generated an enthusiastic response. On Friday evening, he visited the Federal Hill neighborhood and spent a few hours walking a stretch of more than half a mile that is densely populated with quaint brick homes, and he and his team knocked on hundreds of doors. Several people he encountered were familiar with his activism.

Youre a big deal! Thanks for stopping by! said one man who seemed shocked to find Mckesson on his doorstep. I admire your Twitter awesomeness actually. I really like your platform, and Im a fan.

During the evening, one person shut the door on Mckesson, though they only did so after offering a terse, Thanks!

A Johns Hopkins science professor ran into the street to meet Mckesson after hearing from his wife that the candidate was in the neighborhood.

She said you were out here, so I figured Id come out and meet the celebrity, the professor said.

Like several other enthusiastic supporters, the professor alluded to the poll numbers and expressed hope that Mckesson would remain in the city and stay involved even if he lost the election.

Youre not going to disappear, right? he asked.

Though Mckesson said he had no plans to move, he noted he wanted to be transparent and said he desired an impactful position in local government, and was concerned he might not be able to attain one if he was defeated by certain unnamed rivals.

This is why Im running for mayor, right? Its like the one position that actually allows for you to have maximum impact, Mckesson explained. I think that  there are some people that, if they win, I wont have a place.

The neighborhood where he made the rounds on Friday evening is a relatively well-off, mostly white section of the city. In her conversation with Yahoo News, Bossier, his campaign manager, acknowledged that wealthier Baltimoreans are a key part of Mckessons base.

The places where we didnt have to do as much education around who he was  predominately white, middle-income communities.  People who watch MSNBC or are on Twitter and so know him from that and, like, read the New Yorker and so kind of know who he is from that kind of work, Bossier said. She added, And then middle-income and upper-income black folks know who he is  again, probably mostly because of his social media presence and activism.

Mckesson chats with bicyclists as he canvasses in Charles Village, Baltimore, in March. (Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)

In general, poor and minority voters tend to vote less, and Baltimore has had a recent history of especially low turnout that experts have attributed to pessimism and apathy among residents.

Last Saturday, Yahoo News visited the Gilmor Homes, the public housing project where Freddie Gray lived before his fatal arrest. The development is located in Sandtown-Winchester, a neighborhood where the streets are dotted with vacant homes and the statistics are grim. Last year, the poverty rate in Sandtown-Winchester was over 30 percent, almost a quarter of people were out of work, and the murder rate was almost twice the average for the rest of Baltimore even as the number of homicides in the city hit record highs.

The Gilmor Homes are a series of three-story apartments that open on to common areas. Some of the units are empty and boarded up. On Saturday, music blasted in the courtyard and people sat outside on stoops chatting with each other. Many of the residents we attempted to talk to declined to speak with us. None of the people we spoke to said they were aware of Mckesson, and almost all of them didnt plan to vote.

One man, who declined to give his last name or spell out his first, complained about the condition of his home and a lack of support from the housing authority.

Im about to move out of here because they aint treating these people around here right, man.  Every time the mayor ask to shake your hand, they want to get voted.  They get voted in office  and you dont see them no more, the man said, adding, There aint going to be no change  Im going to change and get away from here.

Shawnrice Kelly sat nearby with her sister. She echoed the mans sentiments.

I did vote. I did before, it aint interesting how it used to be when I was young, when I first started to vote.  Im still going to be f***ed at the end, whatever who wins, Kelly said. Everythings still going to be the same. They say theyre going to help. Of course youre going to say what you say to get your votes, but nobody cares. You got to make it out of this jungle on your own.

Mckesson said he understands the sense of disinvestment among some voters in Baltimores poorer neighborhoods.

For so many people, the government has not proven itself to be a productive force, Mckesson said. In so many ways, the government needs  to prove itself to people so they can be invested again. And Im ready to do that as mayor. I know that that work isnt necessarily quick work. Its the right work, and it doesnt happen overnight.

Another man who spoke to Yahoo News in the Gilmor Houses and declined to give his name had no comment about the mayoral election. However, he did offer an observation on the national political scene.

I just came home from prison. Im going to be honest: If the president of the United States becomes Donald Trump, its going to be hell out here, the man said. Its already hell, but its going to transform into the real version.

If the mans prediction comes true and hell breaks out in Baltimore this November, its safe to say well see Mckesson there in the streets. However, for now, hell be there as a protester rather than a politician.





This story was updated on April 27, 2016, at 2:18 p.m. to include the election results.
Sen. Bernie Sanders at a campaign stop on April 21 in Scranton, Pa. (Photo: Jake Danna Stevens/The Times & Tribune via AP)

Polls suggest that Sen. Bernie Sanders is poised to lose Maryland and Pennsylvania in key races Tuesday, raising questions about whether the progressive candidate  who continues to raise millions of dollars from his passionate supporters  will adopt a more unifying tone as his chances for the Democratic nomination fade.



During last weeks New York primary, Sanders sounded a defiant note as he lost the delegate-rich state, fiercely criticizing rival Hillary Clinton in an hourlong speech at Penn State University. He blasted her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs as his supporters booed heartily. Sanders campaign manager appeared on MSNBC later that night, arguing that the campaign would fight all the way to Julys convention to woo superdelegates away from Clinton.

By Sunday, however, Sanders was already striking a more conciliatory note. On Meet the Press, he acknowledged that his campaigns path to victory was narrow, but said he still hoped to win. Though he stressed he was not writing his campaigns obituary yet, he spoke of his run in the reflective manner of someone who sees that the party could be nearing an end. Sanders said hes proud he brought millions of young people into the political process.

SLIDESHOW  Candidates vie for 5 Northeastern states >>>

But when pressed about whether he would encourage his young supporters to back Clinton, the senator said the primary responsibility will be on Clinton, not him, to convince people that she is the kind of president this country needs to represent working people.

As Sanders shifts his campaign away from a fight for the nomination and toward a fight for his supporters more progressive values to have a louder voice within the Democratic Party, it remains to be seen whether and how quickly his rhetoric against Clinton will soften.

Howard Wolfson, a Democratic strategist who helped run Hillary Clintons campaign in 2008, said that Sanders finds himself in a similar position as Clinton did in the spring of 2008. She had won many states but found it mathematically unlikely that she would clinch the nomination. Still, it was hard to let go.

Story continues

Its a little bit of a head-heart dichotomy. You are able to coldly look at the math and draw conclusions from it, but your heart tells you that you should keep going, Wolfson said. Candidates are also surrounded by their most fervent supporters, even when theyre losing. I remember in 2008 when Hillary Clinton would be on a rope line in the spring, she would have women come up to her and say, Dont you dare drop out.

At some point after the Clinton camps realization that the nomination was unlikely, the tone of the Clinton-Obama primary  which was in many ways more antagonistic than this current contest  cooled off. The detente came from both the Obama and Clinton camps.

Let me tell you, it does take two to tango, Wolfson said. Its important for the front-running campaign, the likely victor, to also recognize that the next real goal is about unity rather than continued acrimony. To their credit, I think the Obama campaign began to ease off the gas a little, as well.

Clinton has already seemed to back off some of her camps attacks on Sanders. At her victory speech in New York, she said that more unites Sanders and Clinton supporters than divides them. But shes going to have to do more than that to bring Sanders supporters into the fold. The contest between the two was at its most acrimonious just a week ago in New York, and the pair spent most of the Democratic debate in Brooklyn earlier this month shouting at each other.



Hillary Clinton at her primary night party last Tuesday in New York City. (Photo: Louise Wateridge/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Its up to Clinton at this point to extend an olive branch, said Matt Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury College.

The Clinton campaign also has to be careful not to be seen as shoving Sanders off the stage, in order to respect the campaign that hes run and the support hes amassed.

She has a self-interest in giving him space, giving him time, letting him make his case, said Bob Shrum, a veteran political consultant and professor at the University of Southern California.

Clinton knows she will be stronger with Sanders and his supporters backing, and can try to win that by meaningfully including the senator in the Democratic convention in July. She faces the daunting task of wooing Sanders without allowing him to hijack her message or drive her too far to the left before the general election.

The two may end up horse-trading. Clinton could offer key Democratic platform positions like a $15 minimum wage or a ban on fracking  as well as a prime speaking slot at the convention  in exchange for his support.

The trick is to do that without ceding control of the partys message to Sanders, Dickinson said.

Shrum said he has no doubt that Sanders will stay in the contest until Californias primary on June 7, and will likely continue to run through Julys convention, even as his chances dim.

Shrum was Ted Kennedys speechwriter during the 1980 convention, when the senator refused to raise his arm in celebration when then-President Jimmy Carter clinched the nomination over him. Shrum says this convention will be nothing like that poisonous atmosphere.

[Sanders] is probably going to go to the convention and hell speak at the convention, but its not going to be antagonistic, Shrum said. Hes run a spectacular campaign that no one predicted. So if its going to end, the other side needs to let it end in a way that gives him respect and recognition and even more so gives that respect and recognition to his supporters.
Why Alaska Air Group's Upbeat 1Q16 Results Left Investors Flat

(Continued from Prior Part)

Revenues grew more than expected

Strong operational performance has helped Alaska Air Group (ALK) record healthy revenue growth, higher than analysts estimates. For 1Q16, Alaska Air Groups passenger revenues grew by 4% year-over-year (or YoY).

ALKs total revenue growth stood at 6.1% YoY in contrast to the industrys revenue decline of 1%. This was made possible due to Alaska Air Groups aggressive capacity growth and corresponding demand.

Unit revenues decline

Unit revenue is a measure of passenger revenue earned by the airline (passenger revenue per available seat mile), known as PRASM. Like other airlines, Alaska Air Groups unit revenues continued to decline in 1Q16. Its PRASM declined by 7.7% to ~10.8 cents for 1Q16 and RASM declined by 6.1% to ~12.9 cents.

Foreign currency fluctuations and lower fuel surcharges in the international market resulted from lower oil prices. Both factors adversely impacted Alaska Air Groups unit revenues.

Outlook

Although Alaska Air Group (ALK) does not give any future unit revenue guidance, the management does expect load factors to remain flat for the second quarter. This could help ease some pressure on its revenues.

Among Alaskas peers, Southwest Airlines (LUV), JetBlue (JBLU), and Spirit Airlines (SAVE) expect unit revenues to flatten or grow toward the second half of 2016.

Alaska Air Group forms ~4.0% of the DWA Consumer Cyclicals Momentum ETFs (PEZ) holdings.

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PARIS (Reuters) - One of two men arrested late last year at a Salzburg refugee camp has said he had been planning to join the group of suicide bombers that struck Paris last November, French media reported on Tuesday. Contacted by Reuters, the Paris prosecutor's office declined to comment. A spokesman for the prosecutors' office in Salzburg stood by a statement issued in February in which it said it was verifying whether there was a connection between the arrests and the attacks. Adel Haddadi, a 29-year old Algerian, was initially part of a commando of non-European suicide bombers targeting the French capital, but his progress through Europe was hampered by authorities along the way, and he has been in custody since his arrest along with a 22-year old Pakistani in Austria last December, French daily Le Monde said. "They told me I was supposed to go to France, to carry out a mission, and that I would receive instructions there," Haddadi told Austrian police on Feb. 12, Le Monde reported. The two men traveled together from Syria to the Greek island of Leros with two Iraqi brothers who eventually blew themselves up near the Stade de France national stadium outside Paris, the paper said. The attacks, claimed by Islamic State and in which coordinated groups of Islamist militants hit cafes and a concert venue, killed 130 people in and around Paris on Nov. 13. Haddadi and the Pakistani, Muhamad Usman, were first arrested in Leros during a passport check on Oct. 3, 2015, as one of them showed poor Arabic language skills and the other one was unable to describe Aleppo, which was his birthplace according to the passport he was carrying, daily Le Parisien said. Both men were released three weeks later and continued their journey to Austria, where they were re-arrested. (Reporting by Michel Rose; additional reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna; Editing by Andrew Callus)
By Paul Carsten

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's biggest e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's affiliate Ant Financial Services Group has closed a $4.5 billion funding round, paving the way for a long-expected initial public offering (IPO).

China Investment Corp Capital and CCB Trust, a subsidiary of China Construction Bank Corp, participated in the Series B fundraising, Ant Financial said in a statement on Tuesday.

Ant Financial did not disclose what its valuation was after the round closed, but a person familiar with the fundraising said it is now valued at close to $60 billion.

The Alibaba affiliate's latest fundraising is the biggest ever for a private Internet company. But the company is also much older than its fundraising peers, and is only now gearing up for an IPO after 12 years and a rebranding in 2014.

Ant Financial is among a series of financial technology companies tapping investors for pre-IPO financing to fund expansion as Chinese consumers move more of their banking, payments and investing online.

The company has confirmed plans for an IPO but has previously said it does not have a timeline for the process. It did not comment on the IPO on Tuesday.

"The capital raised in Series B will allow us to invest in the infrastructure, such as cloud computing and risk control, that will underpin our long-term growth in rural and international markets," said Eric Jing, Ant Financial's president, in Tuesday's statement.

Those risk control measures include biometric verification technologies. This could help Ant Financial's private banking venture, MYbank, overcome blocks set by regulators on taking deposits, with authorities concerned about keeping transactions above-board.

Existing Ant Financial shareholders China Life Insurance Co Ltd, China Post Group, the parent of Postal Savings Bank of China, China Development Bank Capital and Primavera Capital Group also took part in the round, the online finance firm said.

Ant Financial offers services like online payment, wealth management products and insurance. Its core Alipay online payment business was founded in 2004.

The company, though, is now facing strong competition in the form of Alibaba arch-rival Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat Payment, which has quietly become one of the world's largest payments systems.

(Reporting by Paul Carsten and Nicholas Heath; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
As the world observes Alien Day  the 24-hour celebration of all things Xenomorph in accordance with the aliens home planet, LV-426  director Neill Blomkamp has chimed in to reminded the galaxy that hes still attached to direct a fifth Alien feature. That project was officially put on hold last year as Ridley Scott moved forward on continuing the franchises prequel series with Alien: Covenant, the follow-up to 2012s Prometheus. But Blomkamp is still committing his ideas to paper, as evidenced by a sketch that he recently posted on his Instagram page.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEpY8FxqhOG/?taken-by=neillblomkamp

The picture depicts a grown-up, suited-up Newt, the last (and littlest) survivor of a human colony who made the mistake of trying to populate the alien-infested LV-426 in James Camerons action classic, Aliens. Thanks to the timely intervention of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her crack squad of space Marines, Newt (Carrie Henn) made it off-planet, only to perish in the opening sequence of David Finchers 1992 sequel Alien 3.

So how exactly is Newt alive and well in Blomkamps Alien 5 concept art? Well, hes keeping that answer close to the vest for now. In early interviews, the South African director behind District 9 and Chappie suggested that hed be ignoring the events of Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection for his own story. But then he backtracked somewhat, insisting that hes not trying to undo the latter two sequels, but merely wants to make a movie thats more connected to the original films. Bringing a grown-up Newt back to life certainly reinforces that connection.
On Monday, Columbia graduate Emma Sulkowicz's alleged rapist Paul Nungesser filed a 100-page complaint against the university that said he was a victim of gender-based harassment, sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination. In short, reverse sexism.

According to Newsweek, the document is Nungesser's latest effort to revive a lawsuit he filed last April alleging that Columbia president Lee Bollinger, art professor Jon Kessler and the university itself had violated Title IX in permitting Sulkowicz's activist art project "Carry That Weight" to occur on campus. Last month, United States District Court Judge Gregory Woods dismissed the suit, but told Nungesser he could file a new complaint.

Emma Sulkowicz, a senior visual arts student at Columbia University, carries a mattress in protest of the university's lack of action after she reported being raped during her sophomore year on September 5, 2014 in New York City.

T latest complaint alleged that "perpetuate[s] the stereotype of the sex-driven male" and that the university's policies are "largely based on the stereotype of the active, voracious, aggressive male and the passive, restrained, non-aggressive woman."

Nungesser also took issue with the school's sexual assault prevention rhetoric, which he said assumes violence against women and emphasizes a narrative of a person being forcibly penetrated as the victim while ignoring that a person could be "made to penetrate." Nungesser also argues that women are allowed more freedom of speech on campus than men and that the term "rapist" is a gendered slur targeting men.

Sulkowicz began "Carry That Weight," which doubled as her senior thesis, after Columbia found Nungesser not responsible of raping her in 2012.

And given the university's decision, in his complaint, Nungesser argues that his experience "raises fundamental questions that our society deserves answers to."
In a BBC interview Monday night, Amal Clooney slammed Republican frontrunner Donald Trump for his Islamophobic comments made on the campaign trail.

The British-Lebanese human rights lawyer was discussing one of her ongoing cases at the European Court of Human Rights, in which she is representing journalist and Azerbaijan prisoner Khadija Ismayilova, when the conversation turned to the U.S. presidential primary race:

If you actually look at what [Trump] specifically says in that now infamous speech about Muslims, he kept saying, 'They only want jihad; they don't believe in our way of life; they don't respect our system.' And when he says 'they'... And, you know, you watch the media coverage afterwards and people should've been saying, 'Do you mean the 1.5 billion people around the world who fit that description? Do you mean the people who are U.S. citizens, who are members of your military, the vast majority of whom are not extremist or violent in any way?'

Source: Mic/BBC

Clooney and her actor husband, George, have been vocal supporters of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, hosting a series of fundraising dinners for her throughout April.

"If you listen to the loudest voices out there today, you'd think we're a country that hates Mexicans, hates Muslims, and thinks that committing war crimes is the best way to make America great again," George Clooney wrote in an invitation to an April 16 fundraiser, according to CNN.

The actor and longtime political activist has been more explicit in the past, calling Trump "a xenophobic fascist" to the Guardian in March.
America Movil SAB AMX, the undisputed leader in the Mexican telecom market, is slated to release its first-quarter 2016 results on Apr 28, after the closing bell.

In the last reported quarter, America Movils earnings lagged the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 12.50%. The company delivered negative earnings surprises in all the four trailing quarters, with the average miss coming to a whopping 54.37%. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement.

Factors Likely to Influence this Quarter

Competition has intensified in the Mexican wireless market. Apart from America Movils traditional competitor Telefonica SA TEF, the U.S. telecom behemoth AT&T Inc.s T entry into the Mexican telecom industry with the acquisition of Gurpo Iusacell and Nextel de Mexico is a major threat for America Movil.

America Movil follows an aggressive promotional strategy to increase its penetration in the smartphone market. The company is striving to increase its smartphone sales figures through promotional discounts and subsidized offers. However, these efforts may curtail margins and affect the overall profitability of the company. In addition, the expansion of PayTV and TracFone businesses is detrimental to the companys growth as these carry low margin.

For the first time, the companys profit margin in Mexico, its biggest market, fell below the 40% mark (to 36.7%) in fourth-quarter 2015. Stringent regulatory measures and intensifying competition in Mexico were the primary reasons for the poor performance. If this trend continues, it could deal a major blow to America Movil and weaken its market position.

Earnings Whispers

Our proven model does not conclusively show that America Movil is likely to beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. Unfortunately, that is not the case here as elaborated below:

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Zacks ESP: America Movil has an Earnings ESP of 0.00%. This is because, both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate are pegged at 26 cents.

Zacks Rank: America Movil has a Zacks Rank #5. Please note that we caution against Sell-rated stocks (#4 or 5) going into an earnings announcement.

A Stock to Consider

Here is a company you may consider, as our model shows that it has the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:

Telefonica Brasil SA VIV has an Earnings ESP of +11.77% and a Zacks Rank #2.

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This is the bizarre moment a lawyer eats an important piece of evidence in a bid to clear his client.

The strange incident was caught on CCTV cameras in the town of Kyzyl in Russia.

The lawyer, who has not been named, eats a breathalyser report which revealed the level of alcohol in the blood of his client, who was accused of causing an accident while drink driving.

The lawyer had been left alone with the document in the office of a local judge.

In the footage, he picks up the breathalyser report and stashes it in his bag. However, he takes it out again and almost puts it in his pocket.

Finally, he decides to put the paper in his mouth and starts chewing.

It was reported that the lawyer managed to eliminate the most important piece of evidence in the case while the judge and her secretary were out of the office.

When the secretary returned to the office, the lawyer said the report had gone missing, and that, without it, his client was in the clear.

The secretary suspected him of stealing the evidence, and the truth was revealed when CCTV footage was checked.

A police spokesman said: The lawyers guilt cannot be denied when you look at the CCTV film.

The lawyer faces at 2,000 fine or two years in prison.

(Pictures: CEN)
Even after his landslide loss to Hillary Clinton in last week's New York primary, Bernie Sanders insists he's in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination for the long haul, vowing to forge on through the final primaries in June.

But Tuesday may bring a reckoning for the Vermont senator and supporters of his inequality-focused campaign.

One week after Clinton's 16-point romp in the Empire State cemented her frontrunner status, the former secretary of state may well sweep the five Northeastern and mid-Atlantic primaries Tuesday, casting further doubt on Sanders' rationale for continuing a campaign many Democrats fear is stoking intra-party warfare.

With voters heading to the polls in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware and Rhode Island, polls show Clinton poised to move closer to the 2,383 delegates required to secure the Democratic nod. Indeed, if she only wins 28% of the delegates up for grabs Tuesday, she'll still be on track to .

Here's a guide to watching Tuesday's primaries. Polls in each state at 8 p.m. Eastern.

Pennsylvania

Though Sanders hoped his message of economic equality and opposition to free trade agreements would resonate in this economically embattled Rust Belt state, Clinton is positioned for a robust victory in the Keystone State, where she defeated then-Sen. Barack Obama by 10 percentage points in 2008.

The RealClearPolitics polling average gives Clinton a 54% to 38% lead over Sanders, indicating that she'll walk away with a huge chunk of Pennsylvania's 189 pledged delegates.

Connecticut

The Nutmeg State, which will send 55 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention, broke narrowly for Obama over Clinton eight years ago  but Clinton may be the one edging out her rival this go-around.

Clinton leads Sanders 49% to 44%, per RealClearPolitics. Though that margin means a Sanders victory is perfectly plausible, he hasn't led in a single public poll.

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Maryland

With Clinton likely to benefit from overwhelming support from black voters in Prince George's County and the Baltimore area, as well as from well-off professionals in the D.C. suburbs, there's little question that she'll claim the lion's share of Maryland's 95 pledged delegates.

Sanders could be in for a blowout, with RealClearPolitics showing Clinton up 58% to 34%.

Delaware

Polling has been sparse in Delaware, with the only recent survey there giving Clinton a 45% to 38% lead over Sanders.

A boisterous Clinton rally Monday in Wilmington pointed to deep enthusiasm for her candidacy here, and the state's Democratic establishment united behind Clinton after Vice President Joe Biden, the longtime home-state senator, opted not to mount a bid of his own.

Delaware Democrats will send 21 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

Rhode Island

The Ocean State is likely Sanders' best chance for a victory. The problem? It only awards 24 pledged delegates.

Recent polls find the race a toss-up, with the RealClearPolitics average placing Clinton ever-so-slightly ahead, 44% to 42%.
What a difference three weeks make.

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump began April with a crushing loss to Ted Cruz in the Wisconsin primary, seemingly presaging a knock-down, drag-out fight at the GOP convention in July  a contest in which the deck seemed stacked against Trump.

Then came Trump's 35-point landslide in New York on April 19, an outcome that allowed Trump to nearly sweep his home state's 95 delegates and heralded a reboot in his embattled campaign.

One week later, Trump is poised to barrel closer to the 1,237 delegates required to clinch the GOP nod ahead of the party convention, with him likely to sweep primaries in five Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states.

Voters head to the polls Tuesday in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware and Rhode Island, and the question in each state isn't whether Trump will win, but how overwhelmingly he'll defeat Cruz and John Kasich.

Bowing to grim poll numbers, Cruz and Kasich are already looking past Tuesday's primaries to contests in May and June  by which point it may well be too late to derail a steamrolling Trump Train.

Here's a guide to watching Tuesday's contests. Polls close at Eastern in each state.

Pennsylvania

By far the richest delegate prize, the Keystone State will 71 delegates to the GOP convention, although 54 of those delegates aren't actually bound to the results of the primary  an arrangement that's fueled criticism that the process is rigged against insurgents like Trump.

The remaining 17 delegates are allotted to the statewide winner, and polls show Trump poised to win handily. The RealClearPolitics polling average finds him taking 48% of the vote to Cruz's 27%. Kasich, a native of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, only earns 22% support.

Connecticut

The same dynamic that allowed Trump to win nearby Massachusetts and New Hampshire  a low concentration of evangelical voters, and overwhelming support among blue-collar whites  is likely to power him to victory in the Nutmeg State, where 28 delegates are up for grabs.

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Connecticut's five congressional districts will each three delegates to the district winner, while the remaining 13 delegates are apportioned statewide. Should the statewide victory win more than 50% support, he'll claim all 13 of those delegates  and Trump is well-positioned to do so.

The RealClearPolitics average shows Trump leading Kasich 54% to 27%, with Cruz lagging at 14%.

T

Maryland

Popular Republican Gov. Larry Hogan may be an implacable opponent of Trump's candidacy, but Maryland Republicans are poised to flout Hogan's wishes.

With 38 up for grabs  the statewide winner receives 14, while each of Maryland's eight congressional districts awards three to the district winner  Trump is in a dominant position in the polls, boasting 48% support to Kasich's 27% and Cruz's 22%, per RealClearPolitics.

A

Delaware

Republicans in the nation's first state will of their delegates to the statewide winner. There's little suspense as to who that will be: In the only public survey to date, conducted in mid-April, Trump took 55% of the vote to Kasich's 18% and Cruz's 15%.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island's 19 delegates are proportionally in a hybrid district-and-statewide system to candidates receiving at least 10% support  a threshold Cruz barely clears in recent polls.

The RealClearPolitics average finds Trump at 52%, Kasich at 23% and Cruz at 12%.

Looking forward: Heading into Tuesday evening, Trump leads the field with 845 delegates to Cruz's 559 and Kasich's 148.

Securing the GOP nod before the Cleveland convention will require Trump to win roughly 53% of the remaining delegates up for grabs. The strength of his performance on Tuesday will go a long way toward indicating how likely he is to hit that target.
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / April 26, 2016 / AstraZeneca (AZN), a big pharma leader in immuno-oncology has placed its bets on a cancer vaccine technology from TapImmune (TPIV). Amongst a bevy of partnerships, collaborations, and M&A activity between big pharma and innovative biotechs focused on immunotherapies that treat cancer, TapImmune is getting much deserved attention from its bigger brethren looking to fill their pipelines with the most promising cancer cures.

A joint AstraZeneca-TapImmune Phase 2 ovarian cancer trial will start this quarter at the prestigious Sloan Kettering Institute, according to a press release issued a few days ago. The trial will test a combination therapy which includes TapImmune's TPIV 200, a T-cell cancer vaccine, with AstraZeneca's durvalumab an anti-PD-L1 antibody, in 40 women who have high-grade ovarian cancer and have not been responsive to platinum chemotherapy, currently the standard of care for advanced ovarian cancer.

Orphan Drug designation has already been granted by the FDA to TPIV 200 for ovarian cancer. The companies did not state when investors will hear top line data from this trial, however, the primary endpoint will look at efficacy rates 6 months post-treatment, so we may see results within the next three to four quarters.

With a current market cap of $45 million, Tapimmune is an extremely ripe acquisition target, even if acquired at multiple many times its current trading price. This is wholly justifiable given the company's hot immuno-oncology portfolio. TapImmune would be a very easy and very worthwhile acquisition for AstraZeneca, which is worth about $76 billion and is sitting on $6 billion in cash.

TapImmune is likely being sized up AstraZeneca's competitors, all vying for dominance the in the cancer immunotherapy space, including Roche (RHHBY), Merck (MRK), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), AbbVie (ABBV), Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) and others.

Pricing of recent deals shines a spotlight on how undervalued TapImmune is in the space. Merck recently signed a deal to pay $605 million for Israel-based cCAM Biotherapeutics. $95 million was paid upfront, with the balance of $510 million to come based on milestones, for a company whose lead candidate CM-24 is still in Phase 1. Merck is ready to spend after its drug, Keytruda, a PD-1 blocker got FDA approval for melanoma last year. Merck is also paying $375 million to buy OncoEthix for its Phase 1b drug OTX015, a BET inhibitor. $110 million was delivered up front with $265 million coming to OncoEthix upon completion of milestones. J&J just did a deal with Alligator Biosciences worth $700 million, for Alligator's Phase 1 CD40 targeting drug ADC-1013. Abbvie just did a $665 million deal with Argenx for ARGX-115 which is still in preclinicals.

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$33 billion in annual sales by 2022 is projected by Morningstar for immuno-oncology drugs, which are expected to be very-high-margin products. This can hugely impact the profitability of big pharma, making acquisitions of technologies like TapImmune's all the more valuable. Further fueling the fire are the FDA's recent approvals of immuno-oncology drugs Opdivo and Keytruda.

TapImmune has much more to offer than TPIV 200 for ovarian cancer. TPIV 200 is also in a U.S. Department of Defense funded Phase 2 trial for triple negative breast cancer at the world renowned Mayo Clinic. TPIV 100 is headed into Phase 2 for HER2/neu breast cancer. The company's preclinical pipeline also holds promise for some very innovative new vaccines.

Big pharma tapping into TapImmune as an acquisition candidate is likely. Merck Research Laboratories'

Vice President and Therapeutic Area Head of Oncology Early Stage Development, Eric Rubin stated Merck is "scouring the world, looking for immunomodulatory agents." Based on recent M&A activity, Merck is not alone.

RAY DIRKS Research suggests that Readers/Investors place no more than 1% of the funds they devote to common stocks in any one issue. It's best to diversify.

About Ray Dirks

Ray Dirks came to Wall Street with Goldman, Sachs & Co. in 1963 where he was established as the leading insurance stock analyst dealing with institutional investors and high -net worth investors both in the U.S. and internationally.

In 1973 Ray uncovered the biggest Ponzi scheme of the 20th century, the Equity Funding fraud. Over the years Ray has expanded his stock market research to include Healthcare Stocks and Special Situations. Ray has written two books, "The Great Wall Street Scandal" and "Heads You Win, Tails You Win", published by McGraw-Hill and Bantam Books respectively. He continues to provide research to institutions and individuals, and he manages money for some individual investors.

Media Contact:

Jackie Rodriguez

646-430-5783

SOURCE: RAY DIRKS Research
Ninad Ambre

The Audi TT RS has made its global debut at the ongoing Beijing Auto Show. The car was revealed in two body styles - Coupe and Roadster.

The new sportscar from Audi has just got hotter thanks to what the carmaker has done to its appearance. The car gets a sportier body kit, features large vents, a hexagonal single-frame mesh grille, Matrix LED headlights, 20-inch forged rims, a new rear wing and chrome plated wing mirror caps. The Audi TT-RS now features OLED tail lamps, making it the first product in the Audi product range to get this feature. The Coupe as well as the Roadster version can be had in nardo gray and catalunya red exterior colours as seen in the pictures.

Audi TT RS

The cabin boasts of a performance themed Audi Virtual Cockpit display, a new flat-bottomed steering wheel with start-stop button, Audi drive select and gear paddles. The MMI navigation plus with MMI touch and a Bang & Olufsen sound system takes care of your infotainment needs.

Audi TT RS

Powering the Audi TT RS is a 2.5-litre five-cylinder TFSI mill that churns out 400bhp of power and 480Nm of torque. This engine comes mated to a seven-speed S-Tronic transmission and sends the power to all the wheels through the Quattro AWD system. The 0-100kmph sprint is done in 3.7seconds (3.9seconds for the Roadster), before achieving an electronically-limited speed of 250kmph.

Audi TT RS

Audi will put the TT RS on sale in Europe this fall and then introduce it across global markets eventually. For the European market, the Coupe will cost 66,400 (Rs 49,82,724) and the Roadster will be priced at 69,200 (Rs 52,09,271).

Audi TT RS

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SYDNEY (Reuters) - The Australian government is seeking guidance from Papua New Guinea on its response to a Supreme Court ruling that Australia's practice of detaining asylum seekers on PNG's northern Manus Island is illegal, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said on Wednesday. However, Dutton said the 800 men detained on Manus would not be resettled in Australia under any circumstances, maintaining Australia's hardline immigration policies that have been criticized by the United Nations and human rights agencies for harsh conditions. Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the detentions breached the country's constitution and must be stopped. "Before people get ahead of themselves let's see what the PNG government has to say, what their response will be and how it is they propose to deal with the situation," Dutton told Australian Broadcasting Copr radio on Wednesday. Under Australia's controversial immigration laws, anyone intercepted while trying to reach the country by boat is sent for processing to camps in Nauru and Manus Island. They are never eligible to be resettled in Australia and Dutton said that stance would not change. Dutton said the Manus detainees could return home or go to another country willing to accept them. (Reporting By Jane Wardell)
Fdd97a78ab5a4caf9b5bb66f1edd43b3

We still can't believe Prince is gone.

In the days after the sudden death of the artist, the tragic event has inspired a flood of tributes around the world from fans and the music industry alike.

SEE ALSO: Watch Coachella's many, many tributes to Prince

Amid the many tweets and song covers, a "Purple Rain"-inspired mural outside the youth centre Street University in Sydney, Australia stands as a permanent tribute to the artist.

The mural was painted by the artist Graham Hoete on Sunday, according to his Facebook page, Mr G Hoete Art. A black and white portrait of Prince's face covers the wall, surrounded by a purple haze  a colour that's become synonymous with the artist.

purple rain

Image: Mr g hoete art/facebook

It's a fitting and uncontroversial addition in a country where risque Kim Kardashian and Kanye West murals have recently divided public opinion.

Now that the piece of street art is gaining international recognition, Hoete said on Facebook he is also looking to paint a five-storey high mural in Paisley Park in Prince's hometown of Chanhassen, Minnesota.

You can watch the creation of the mural in the time-lapse video below, while curled up listening to "Purple Rain" on repeat.
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that Australia's practice of detaining asylum seekers on PNG's northern Manus Island was illegal and must stop. Papua New Guinea's highest court said the detentions breached the country's constitution. Under Australia's controversial immigration laws, anyone intercepted while trying to reach the country by boat is sent for processing to camps in Nauru and Manus Island. They are never eligible to be resettled in Australia. More than 800 people are detained on Manus Island on behalf of Australia. The detention center on Nauru houses about 500 people and has been widely criticized by the United Nations and human rights agencies for harsh conditions and reports of systemic child abuse. Australian Minister for Immigration Peter Dutton said the ruling would not change its policy of offshore detention. "It does not alter Australias border protection policies  they remain unchanged," said Dutton. "Those in the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre found to be refugees are able to resettle in Papua New Guinea. Those found not to be refugees should return to their country of origin." Australia's asylum seeker policy has attracted international criticism from human rights groups. "People have been detained for over three years in contravention of the laws of Papua New Guinea in abusive conditions," said Elaine Pearson, Australia Director at Human Rights Watch. "It is time to stop the abuse of vulnerable people who only ask for safety and the opportunity to rebuild their lives." (Reporting by Colin Packham; Reporting by Matt Siegel; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Shares of Autohome Inc (ADR) (NYSE: ATHM), a China-based online destination for automobile consumers in China, were trading higher by around 0.5 percent Tuesday morning after the company announced it has formed a committee to evaluate a "going private" proposal.

On April 18, Autohome's CEO James Zhi Qin and a consortium of investors proposed a "going private" offer to acquire all the shares of the stock that they do not already own for $31.50 per ADS.

Autohome said on Tuesday its Board of Directors has formed a special committee consisting of three independent directors to consider the "going private" proposal. The committee will also retain independent legal and financial advisers to asset in evaluating the proposal.

Finally, Autohome noted that there are no assurances that any agreement will be executed. In addition, the company will not provide any updates unless it is required to do so under applicable law.

See more from Benzinga

 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 26, 2016 / Avanti Energy Inc. (AVN.V) ("Avanti" or the "Company") announced today that it has filed an updated Reserve and Economic Evaluation - Gas Property on the Colle Santo Gas Concession in Abruzzo, Italy. Avanti through its wholly-owned subsidiary, CMI Energia S.p.A., is the Operator of the project and has a net 33.3% interest in the concession.

The evaluation has been carried out in accordance with standards set out in the Canadian Oil and Gas Evaluation Handbook, and is compliant with NI 51-101 standards. The report was prepared as of March 31, 2016 and was completed by Chapman Petroleum Engineering Ltd., of Calgary, Alberta.

Highlights of the report include:

- Colle Santo Gross Reserves:

Proved undeveloped (sales): 72,341 MMscf (net 24,118 MMscf)

Probable undeveloped (sales): 12,014 MMscf (net 4,006 MMscf)

Total Proved plus Probable: 84,355 MMscf (net 28,124 MMscf)

- The Company's project extension called Vallecupa, which is on 2,200+ acres immediately adjacent to Colle Santo, has been included in the evaluation as a Prospective Resource with a Gross Resource estimated between 51,170 MMscf and 59,699 MMscf (net 17,060 to 19,904 MMscf) of sales gas.

The complete report together with the Company's annual reserve filings on Forms 1, 2 and 3 of NI 51-101, have now been filed on the Canadian disclosure website www.sedar.ca and are available on the Company's website www.avantienergy.com

For more information regarding the Company please contact Kirk Gamley, corporate communications, at 604-689-7422.

"Karl Kottmeier"

President and Chief Executive Officer

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

SOURCE: Avanti Energy Inc.
Faced with falling sales and the rise of ebooks, bookstores in Barcelona, the Spanish-language world's publishing capital, are remaking themselves as cultural centres that offer concerts, classes and hard to find books to draw customers.

"We had to change. Either we reinvented ourselves or it was really impossible to stay open," said Montserrat Serrano, the lively owner of the +Bernat bookstore located just off the Diagonal, one of the main avenues in Spain's second-largest city.

The bookstore, opened in 1978, moved to this larger location --- a former sex shop -- from a neighbouring store six years ago so it could include a cafeteria lined with bookshelves that offers a daily menu and cooking classes.

The space is also used to hold conferences, debates about cinema, language classes, concerts and even board game tournaments.

"I decided to expand the place to survive. I am crazy, I don't have barriers," said Serrano, who is confined to a wheelchair.

"You end up converting the bookstore into a meeting place, there is a lot of movement and you build customer loyalty," said Serrano, though he concedes staying afloat is still hard.

"We struggle to balance the books. If anything unforeseen happens, everything wobbles," she said.

Spain's publishing sector posted sales of 2.19 billion euros ($2.47 billion) in 2014, down 30 percent from 2008, according to figures from the Spanish Federation of Publishers.

The number of bookstores in Spain fell from 7,074 in 2008 to 5,864 in 2013, according to national statistics institute INE.

- Iconic bookstores close -

In Barcelona, which is home to the biggest Spanish-language publisher, Planeta, as well as a major concentration of medium-sized publishing houses, many iconic bookstores have been forced to close their doors in recent years, including the Catalonia bookstore.

Founded in 1924, the bookstore survived Spain's devastating 1936-39 Civil War which saw Barcelona suffer regular air raids and a serious fire in 1979.

Story continues

It closed in 2013 because the owners could not keep up with rising rent and the space now houses a McDonald's restaurant.

"The crisis has been long, persistent and deep," said Antonio Daura, the head of the Association of Booksellers in Catalonia.

"But there have been entrepreneurs, people who have opened shops with a very specialised focus and small size," he added.

Barcelona has a long literary tradition. The first one-volume edition of "Don Quixote" was published here in 1617.

It was in Barcelona in the 1960s that the late literary agent Carmen Balcells added Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and many other great writers to her client list, placing the city at the centre of a Latin American literary boom.

- Human chain moves books -

"There was an economic crisis, but not a cultural crisis," said Abel Cutillas, who opened Calders, a popular bookstore that sells works from small independent publishers that big bookstore chains never carry.

"Very interesting publishers have emerged, very appealing authors, books are being translated and republished that have lots of quality," he said as he stood in front of his bookstore's worn walls.

"The success of a bookstore is surviving and at the moment we are doing that," he added.

Barcelona book lovers sometimes even chip in to help independent bookstores expand.

Xavier Vidal left his job as a journalist in 2013 to open the No Llegiu bookstore -- which means "Don't Read" in Catalan.

He recently moved to a new, larger location with two floors and a spiral staircase after his clients raised 17,000 euros though crowdfunding and formed a human chain to help move books from the old location to the new one.

On a recent visit Vidal was preparing to host a book club at the store after it closed its doors. The club would discuss the first two chapters of German novelist Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain", which is set in a tuberculosis sanatorium.

"If I sit in the bookstore and wait for people to come, I can die. I have to make them come, spread my passion for reading" he said.
Liam describes himself as a big bloke. In the same breath, the 45-year-old Irishman can recite the assaults he says he suffered at the hands of his soon-to-be ex-wife, from the sting of stab wounds to the crack of a cup catapulted at his skull.

Across the Emerald Isle, a growing number of male domestic-abuse victims are seeking succor and support, according to Amen Support Services, which is dedicated to male survivors of domestic violence. The organization, the only one in Ireland of its kind, received 6,600 contacts in 2014  phone calls, emails, texts, posts, counseling and court accompaniment. That marks a 42 percent increase from 2010. Similar patterns are appearing in Commonwealth countries. Even as the U.K.s overall rate of domestic violence has declined  by 27 percent over the past decade  more men are pointing the finger at their abusers: Convictions of female perpetrators more than quadrupled between 200405 and 201415. Meanwhile, in Australia, the rate of men reporting violence experienced at the hands of their partners since the age of 15 nearly doubled between 2005 and 2012.

Up until very recently, everything around domestic abuse  the narrative around domestic abuse  was that its a crime carried out by men on women, and that narrative has now changed, says Mark Brooks, chairman of the ManKind Initiative, a British charity that supports male victims of domestic violence. Brooks asserts that British police and local authorities are taking male victims more seriously than before.

The conversation surrounding intimate-partner violence is also changing shape. In late 2011, Irelands National Office for the Prevention of Domestic, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (Cosc) partnered with Amen to establish a national committee on violence against men. Amen also contributed to Coscs second national strategy, launched this January. Advocates for abused men strive not only to abolish the binary of male as predator and woman as prey, but also to expand the idea of what a victim looks like  which could be a driver behind the surge in men speaking up. Our line is that domestic abuse can happen to any man, anywhere, from any background, Brooks says. We get calls from builders, from tradesmen, from manual workers as much as we get calls from doctors or bankers, solicitors, even police officers.

I would say the police and the legal shift is far more advanced than it is for society in general. Mark Brooks, chairman, ManKind Initiative

A cursory glance at the history of civil or LGBT rights confirms that legal or policy gains can far outpace large-scale societal acceptance. And in fact, even as male victims are gaining policy support, they face a kind of social skepticism about their claims. Within the walls of advocacy organizations, men are believed, but when they go out into the big, broad world, not always, no, says Niamh Farrell, Amens manager. Which obviously is another barrier thats frustrating.

Take Liam, who is haunted by a 2009 incident in which he alleges his wife, from whom he has since separated, stabbed him 15 times. According to Liam, shes countered that hes injured himself. My children havent wanted to know me, Liam says. They told me, Mommies dont tell lies, only daddies tell lies. Adds Brooks: I would say the police and the legal shift is far more advanced than it is for society in general.

How to support male victims of domestic abuse is another question. Given that the vast majority of domestic-abuse victims are women, some consider the push for gender-neutral domestic violence policies problematic. Domestic abuse is inherently gendered, argued Polly Neate, the head of Womens Aid, a U.K. federation of more than 220 organizations advocating for female and child abuse victims, in a 2014 op-ed. In light of 2015 research indicating that official British crime figures grossly underestimated violent and sexual offenses against women, Neate argued for tailored responses for men  which should not be at the expense of services for women and children, who make up the vast majority of high-risk cases and are the most likely to be killed.

The figures we do have paint a wrenching picture. A 2014 European Unionwide survey revealed that 13 million women experienced physical violence in the year before the survey  equaling 7 percent of European women ages 1874  and 3.7 million experienced sexual violence in that time frame. These sorts of numbers illuminate why most initiatives and resources target women, notes Louise Crowley, a senior lecturer at Irelands University College Cork School of Law who organized a November 2015 domestic violence conference at UCC. The event centered on female victims and explored perpetrator programs  already fixtures in Australia and New Zealand  that help abusive men adjust their attitudes and behaviors. I think its very unfair to say that less men are victims and so its less of an issue, Crowley says. I think we need to recognize the reality of both, but also the fact that women as victims are hugely more prevalent.

That type of numbers-based thinking deeply troubles Liam. He references Irelands social worker booklet, which heavily emphasizes how many more women are victimized than men. This is what the social worker learns from, this is her bible, he says. So what chance has a father got? What chance has a man got?

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A bear led police and fish and wildlife officers on a chase across the Sylmar neighborhood of Los Angeles after it was spotted roaming a college campus on Monday, April 25. The 125 pound male bear was first reported on the Mission College and ran to the Hubbard Street Elementary School before officers used a tranquilizer dart to subdue the animal.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife said it will release the animal into the wild after a checkup. This video shows the bear. Credit: Giselle Rocha
Fast-food chain Chipotle Mexican Grill on Tuesday is expected to report its first quarterly loss as a public company following last year's E. coli outbreaks that exposed the chain's health safety issues. Wall Street analysts are estimating a GAAP earnings loss of $1.04 versus $3.88 last year. I suspect the media will focus on Chipotle's loss and its decline in same-store sales of roughly 30% during the first three months this year. Meanwhile, anyone who is still bullish on Chipotle's stock will likely focus on the pace of its recovery in same-store sales and the improving profitability over the next two years.

I'm bearish and think massive shareholder value will be destroyed over the next few years. Up until the E. coli outbreak, Chipotle's management team has never managed a company crisis. They continue to believe consumer attitudes toward the brand have not changed and that customer traffic will return to pre-crisis levels within the next 12 to 24 months.

That outlook is flawed. The fatal mistake the company is making is all about capital deployment. Chipotle ended 2014 with 1,783 stores and $445 million in net income. By the end of 2018, the company's estimates suggests that they will spend $1.3 billion to add 1,117 new stores, a 62% increase in its store base. The problem is that during the same period between 2014 to 2018, even the most bullish investors of Chipotle estimate that the chain could earn net income of $506 million or incremental net income of $61 million. So if Chipotle invests $1.3 billion in new stores and generate $61 million in incremental new income, that's a 4.7% return on investment. That is what I call the definition of destruction of shareholder value.

On top of this, the company has applied for the trademark "Better Burger" in a move to expand into the burger business. While the restaurant industry is abuzz, the hype is merely a distraction from the real issues of the 2015 E. coli outbreak and other health safety concerns plaguing Chipotle. These problems run much deeper than many investors realize.

What's more, the flurry of media coverage around Better Burger last month missed the fact that Chipotle has already tried to diversify into pizza (via Pizzeria Locale first launched in 2015) and Southeast Asian food (ShopHouse in 2013). Shareholders have yet to be rewarded for these initiatives and the future looks decidedly dim. There's little reason to believe Chipotle will have better luck in the burger space, arguably the most competitive in the 'quick serve' space.

When Chipotle was first spun out of McDonalds in 2006 it was definitely a novel concept with a goal of changing the industry forever. While they were successful in accomplishing this goal of selling burritos, other companies in the restaurant industry are doing just fine selling cheeseburgers.

A closer look at Chipotle reveals that there is nothing proprietary about the company's process that would make it successful in the burger category:

It does not have a trademark on its "food with integrity" slogan. It does not have any intellectual property for running great restaurants. There is nothing proprietary about the food the company serves. What it does have is the Chipotle name.

That last point is important. Following the 2015 food illness disaster, customers are already beginning to realize that Chipotle is just like every other restaurant company. Its food is just as unhealthy as the other companies it routinely criticizes. More importantly, management neglected to remember the first rule of running restaurants: Don't get your customers sick.

It's unclear if Chipotle management can manage this crisis. In fact, in the first 60 days of the recovery process, management has clearly not improved consumer attitudes toward the brand. For the better part of the last two months the management of CMG has been spending millions of dollars on free food trying to get the consumer to come back into the stores. Looking at the CivicScience constantly running brand survey, it would appear those consumers are not responding very favorably. Some of the changes to note over the last few quarters:

The "I don't like it" crowd is up from 18% during the last three months of 2015 to 26% during the second quarter of 2016. Those replying "I like it" is down, but to a lesser extent. From the second quarter of 2015, it is down 400 basis points from 21% to 17% during the same period. And more recently, from the first quarter of 2016 to the second quarter of 2016, it has recovered 100 basis points. The "I don't have a strong opinion" is down 90 basis points from the last three months of 2015 to to current levels, as consumers have become more opinionated on the brand.

As we noted in our Fortune piece "How Hubris Messed With Chipotle," management is in denial of the extent of its own problems.

My takeaway is that simply giving away millions of free burritos is not having the desired outcome. If management is having trouble fixing its core business, how could they possibly start yet another concept? Also, why would Chipotle management enter the most competitive category in the restaurant space which is better burgers? The simple answer is they are not; it's just a distraction.

As we've said before, Chipotle's woes are far from over. With a price target of $275, I see additional 40% downside from here. Look out below.

Howard Penney is a managing director and restaurants analyst for Hedgeye, an independent investment research and financial media firm based in Stamford, Connecticut. Neither Penney nor Hedgeye are investors of Chipotle.

See original article on Fortune.com

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By Will Boggs MD (Reuters Health) - Youre better off getting your flu shot in the morning than in the afternoon, researchers from England say. This is a free (course of action) that could seriously boost older adults vaccination response with no adverse effects, Dr. Anna C. Phillips from University of Birmingham told Reuters Health by email. Vaccines work by getting the immune system to produce infection-fighting antibodies that swing into action upon exposure to the actual disease. Because a persons immune response varies through the course of the day, some researchers have suggested that vaccines might work better if theyre given at some times of the day rather than at other times. Phillips's team randomly assigned 276 older adults to receive an influenza vaccine in the morning (9-11 AM) or in the afternoon (3-5 PM). One month later, they analyzed blood samples from each person to measure antibodies against the flu virus. Antibody levels went up in both groups, but the increases were significantly higher for those who got vaccinations in the morning instead of in the afternoon, the authors reported in the journal Vaccine. Men and women both showed better responses after the morning vaccination. The researchers looked at a variety of immune and hormone factors, but none could explain what they were seeing. We dont yet know exactly how this morning effect is working, Phillips said. The study only looked at antibody levels, not at whether people actually got the flu later on. Still, Phillips advises, Dont wait for the definitive trial to check that the increased levels of antibodies relate to decreased disease risk. We know thats what antibodies do . . . so start this now. But Dr. Bruce Y. Lee, director of operations research for Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's International Vaccine Access Center in Baltimore, Maryland, warned, We should be careful about jumping to conclusions from the study. Many people already struggle to find time to get the flu vaccine, Lee told Reuters Health by email. They find it difficult to miss work or take time out of the day to go to a clinic or somewhere else to get the flu vaccine. The afternoon or the evening may be the only time of day that people can get the vaccine. You dont want people thinking that the vaccine is only effective if given in the morning or that people should wait a long while until they have a morning available. Ultimately, he said, if future studies indeed confirm that time of day may make a difference, then flu vaccination needs to become much more convenient; for example, employers offer them at work. Our previous studies have shown that doing so can save employers costs. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1pCyvgq Vaccine, online April 26, 2016.
Bill Ackman

Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman will testify before the US Senate on Wednesday and answer questions about his relationship with Valeant Pharmaceuticals.

Ackman sits on the board of the embattled company, and is one of its major shareholders. In 2014 he helped Valeant with its failed bid to acquire Allergan Pharmaceuticals.

Valeant's outgoing CEO, Michael Pearson, and its former interim CEO, Howard Schiller, will also testify before the Senate Committee on Aging.

The investigation has been ongoing since since December, when the committee called on Valeant and three other pharmaceutical firms to answer for their drug-pricing practices.

At that point, Valeant had been under government scrutiny, and that, combined with accusations from a short seller, sent the company's stock down about 70%.

The government is most concerned with Valeant's business model. The company pioneered the practice of using tax inversions to lower costs, cutting research and development, and growing through acquisitions.

"This year alone, Americans are expected to spend more than $328 billion on prescription drugs," said the Aging Committee in a statement. "Of this amount, individuals will pay about $50 billion out-of-pocket. The federal government will pick up another $110 billion in payments through Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, and other programs."

The hearing starts at 3:30 p.m. ET.

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On Monday, a Pennsylvania court rejected Bill Cosby's appeal to throw out his criminal case for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting former Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004. Cosby was first charged with felony aggravated indecent assault in December, just narrowly within the window of Pennsylvania's 12-year statute of limitations for rape.

According to the Guardian, the district attorney's office in Montgomery County will soon schedule a preliminary hearing date to present their case against Cosby. However, Cosby has yet to enter a plea and continues to walk free after paying a $1 million bail following his December arraignment.

Cosby at his preliminary hearing in February

The criminal case against Cosby represents just one of at least 46 women who have alleged that the comedian sexually assaulted them. While 35 broke their silence in a July New York magazine cover story, many of them will not be able to press formal charges against Cosby due to expired statutes of limitation in their states.

Cosby could appeal Monday's ruling, bringing it to the state's supreme court.

"He may do that," University of Pennsylvania law professor David Rudovsky told the Guardian, "but the critical question will be whether the supreme court will give him a stay during the review."

If convicted in Pennsylvania, Cosby could face a maximum sentence of 5 to 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine.
Switching gears! Billy Bush is leaving Access Hollywood for a regular role with Today, multiple sources confirm to Us Weekly.



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"Billy Bush is not renewing his contract and is leaving Access Hollywood," a source tells Us about the host, who has served as lead anchor since 2009. Bush, 44, felt his time on the syndicated news magazine had "run its course," according to the insider.



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Another source tells Us that the TV personality will be an addition to the Today team but is not replacing anyone, and that he is likely to appear on the NBC morning show's 9 a.m. hour. Natalie Morales, Al Roker, Willie Geist and Tamron Hall currently appear on the show during that hour.



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Bush, who is George H. W. Bush's nephew and George W. Bush's cousin, joined Access Hollywood as a correspondent in 2001 before moving up to coanchor in 2004. He has previously made numerous appearances on Today. (Both shows are NBCUniversal properties.)



This is a time of transition in the morning-show world. Michael Strahan announced on Tuesday, April 19, that he is leaving Live With Kelly and Michael  where he has cohosted for four years alongside Kelly Ripa  and moving to Good Morning America. His final Live episode will air on Friday, May 13.



Tell Us: Would Billy Bush be a good fit on Today?




The debate over Islams role in Bangladesh has devolved into machete attacks against secularists and religious minorities in homes and on the streets of the overwhelmingly Muslim nation.

On Monday, Xulhaz Mannan, an editor at the countrys first LGBT magazine, was hacked to death in his apartment at the hands of several men who posed as couriers. One other person was killed and another injured in the attack in Dhaka, the capital. Mannan, a leading gay-rights advocate, also worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Although no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, assailants in previous deadly assaultsincluding on journalists, minorities, and secular activistshave claimed links to ISIS. The government has, however, dismissed those links, saying ISIS does not operate in the country of more than 150 million people, more than 90 percent of whom are Muslim.

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On Saturday, Rezaul Karim Siddique, a university English professor, who his attackers said was an atheist, was killed with machetes near his home. Authorities say they believe Siddique was targeted for his cultural activities, which included editing a literary magazine and founding a music school. A fellow university professor told The New York Times, He was a purely academic person, but he was a progressive and secular person. He is the fourth university professor killed by Islamist militants in recent years.

On April 7, a law student who had posted his secular views online was attacked with machetes and shot dead in Dhaka. The 28-year-old wrote, I have no religion, on his Facebook page, along with other secular-themed posts. Late last year, four so-called atheist bloggers, who were on a list circulated by Islamist groups, were killed with machetes, as well. Several other religious leaders and foreign workers have been killed in recent months.

Story continues

Bangladesh is a secular country in principle. After gaining independence from Pakistan in 1971, following a bloody nine-month conflict, the constitution was written to include secularism as one of its main tenets. But Lieutenant General Hussain Muhammad Ershad, the countrys military ruler through the 1980s, approved new constitutional amendments in 1988 that declared Islam the countrys official religion.

While the Bangladesh Supreme Court in 2010 reinstated secular protections in the constitution, Islam remains the countrys official religion. Last month, the Court refused to hear a challenge to that law, effectively enshrining Islams place in the constitution for the near future.

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One of the men who filed the petition to remove Islam as the official religion of Bangladesh said the amendment to the constitution led to more violence. It changed the whole atmosphere of the country, Serajul Islam Choudhury told The New York Times. It gives a kind of impunity to those who act in the name of Islam. People have over the years gotten away with a lot in the name of religion, and it has led us to last years murders.

Bangladeshs attorney general, Mahbubey Alam, maintains theres no connection between the amendment and increased killings. Indeed, some in the country have blamed the increase in violence on Bangladeshs political environment. Islamist parties have enjoyed widethough not universalsupport in the country ever since its birth in 1971. Last November, Bangladesh was on high alert after it executed two leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, the Islamist party, who were convicted of war crimes during the war of independence.

Then there are internal political considerations: Critics blame supporters of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which has promoted Islams official place in government, for the recent spate of attacks. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the ruling Awami League party, said the opposition had created an environment that justified attacks, including on a visiting Japanese farmer and Italian aid worker last year. ISIS claimed responsibility for both incidents, and has boasted of other attacks in Bangladesh through its online English magazine, calling it a revival of jihad. Still, officials in Bangladesh have said on multiple occasions that ISIS is not operating inside the country.

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Although it may be unclear if ISIS is present in Bangladesh, what is clear is that there have been more attacks against religious minorities and secularists in the past several years. As the BBC reports:

Nobody knows how many radical Islamist groups are operating in the country, but one security source estimates there are 10-15 groups in existence. Over the past year, the police have arrested more than 100 people, suspected of being involved with different Islamist groups. They have also arrested around 20 people, including a British citizen of Bangladeshi origin, who were allegedly trying to establish contact with Islamic State.

Political instability may not allow the government to fully go after militants, even as attacks continue. When Bangladeshi officials attempt to tackle religious extremists, they risk possible violent retribution. Indeed more attacks could be on the way. Imran Sarker, a widely known blogger who led secular protests in 2013, told the BBC his life was threatened on Sunday. He received a phone call, he said, from someone who said he would be killed very soon.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Video game franchise "Borderlands" is moving closer to a film adaptation now that "G.I. Joe 3" scriptwriter Aaron Berg is attached to the project. Here's why the "G.I. Joe" association might be a good thing.

With its off-kilter characters, explosive color palette, compulsive equipment collecting and riotous action, the "Borderlands" series has become a breakaway success for its publisher, 2K Games.

2009 hit "Borderlands" jumped out from a decade-long line of serious military shooters, swapping its original, realistic tone for a canvas of raucous exaggeration.

"Borderlands 2" arrived in 2012 and became 2K Games' best-selling release on record; "Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!" followed in 2014, with acclaimed spin-off "Tales from the Borderlands" broadening the experience with a story-driven adventure.

Now, efforts to adapt the "Borderlands" universe for a feature-length film appear to be gathering pace, with Lionsgate naming Aaron Berg as the project's screenwriter.

Relatively unknown outside of the Hollywood system, Berg currently has a single production credit to his name: that of "G.I. Joe 3."

Given the poor reception given to 2009 film "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," Berg's appointment might not seem like a good thing.

But though commercial success "Rise of Cobra" was slated at review, members of its writing team had previously worked on Michael Mann's "Collateral," John Singleton's "Four Brothers" and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise.

Not only that but the writing pair on sequel "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" went on to pen February 2016 smash "Deadpool."

And Berg has already seen his treatment for British spy thriller "Section 6" acquired in a multi-million dollar deal, after it was named one of Hollywood's hottest unproduced screenplays in 2013.

Not such a bad legacy to have.
By Ron Bousso and Karolin Schaps

LONDON (Reuters) - BP (BP.L) said on Tuesday it could cut capital spending further after reporting an 80 percent drop in profits in the first quarter of the year, when oil prices touched a near 13-year low.

The British oil company, the first major to report on one of the weakest quarters, lowered its 2016 spending target to $17 billion (12 billion pounds), from $17-19 billion, and said the marker could fall to $15-$17 billion next year if oil prices remain weak.

These cost reductions have enabled the oil producer to forecast it can balance its books at an oil price of $50-55 a barrel in 2017, it said, down from $60 previously eyed.

BP shares opened 3 percent higher on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday, the second-biggest gainer in the blue-chip FTSE 100 index (.FTSE).

Chief Executive Bob Dudley said he expected crude prices to recover towards the end of the year as producers halt work on fields and fuel demand remains robust.

"Market fundamentals continue to suggest that the combination of robust demand and weak supply growth will move global oil markets closer into balance by the end of the year," Dudley said.

The BP CEO suffered an embarrassing shareholder revolt earlier this month when investors rejected his $20 million remuneration package.

Faced with the worst downturn in the oil sector in at least three decades, BP reduced its capital spending three times in 2015 to $19 billion, slashed nearly 10 percent of its workforce of about 80,000 and sharply lowered costs.

BP slipped to its biggest annual loss last year as a result of lower oil prices, costs related to the settlement of a deadly 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill and huge writedowns.

BP's first-quarter underlying replacement cost profit, its definition of net income, was $532 million, down from $2.6 billion a year earlier but beating forecasts for a loss of $140 million, according to consensus figures provided by BP.

It said 2017 cash costs will be $7 billion lower than for 2014.

Story continues

BP's current total charge for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has risen to $56.4 billion after an additional payment of $917 million in the first quarter outside a settlement reached last year, it added.

BP is the first oil major to reveal the financial impact of record-low oil prices in the first quarter, closely followed by peers Total (TOTF.PA), Statoil (STL.OL) and Eni (ENI.MI) later this week and Shell (RDSa.L) on May 4.

BP's refining and trading segment, known as downstream, once again came to the rescue with a quarterly profit of $1.8 billion, offsetting a $747 million loss in oil and gas production.

BP maintained its dividend at 10 cents per ordinary share.

(Editing by Mark Potter and Dale Hudson)
SAO PAULO, April 26 (Reuters) - Brazil's securities regulator CVM rejected a settlement with the former head of defense for planemaker Embraer SA, citing the severity of corruption allegations related to a $92 million deal with the Dominican Republic.

Orlando Jose Ferreira Neto, who ran the defense unit until 2010, had proposed a settlement of 300,000 reais ($85,000) after a CVM investigation showed he was likely responsible for $3.52 million in alleged bribes to a Dominican official, the regulator said in a Tuesday statement.

The Dominican armed forces eventually signed a deal for eight Super Tucano light attack planes, Embraer's top-selling military aircraft, with deliveries beginning in December 2009.

In 2010 the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission launched a corruption investigation into Embraer's sales practices in three foreign countries.

Embraer opened an internal investigation and tightened its compliance standards, but has declined to discuss specific allegations. In May 2015 the company said it had entered talks with U.S. officials aimed at a resolution that could involve sanctions. Embraer declined to comment on the CVM statement.

Lawyers for the former executive did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ($1 = 3.52 Brazilian reais) (Reporting by Brad Haynes and Cesar Bianconi; editing by Andrew Hay)
BRASILIA, April 26 (Reuters) - Brazilian Vice President Michel Temer said on Tuesday that former central bank chief Henrique Meirelles would be his choice to be finance minister if he were to take over the presidency.

In an interview with Brazilian daily O Globo, Temer said he was "impressed" with Meirelles, an orthodox economist widely respected on Wall Street.

"I have to confess that if I had to assume the presidency today, my pick for finance minister would be him (Meirelles). But none of us know what can happen tomorrow," Temer was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

Temer, 75, would take over the presidency in mid-May if, as expected, Brazil's Senate places President Dilma Rousseff on trial for allegedly breaking budget laws.

(Reporting by Alonso Soto; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Paul Simao)
Washington (AFP) - It's hard enough for the leaders of the United States and the European Union to muster public support for the ambitious TTIP transatlantic trade talks.

Now they have the threat of Brexit.

The British will vote in a referendum on exiting the EU in June, raising a huge question mark over talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

That is placing ever heavier pressure on the TTIP negotiators, who just opened their 13th round of talks in New York on Monday.

As one of the largest trading economies of the European Union, Britain would play a major role in TTIP, which would create the world's largest free-trade zone.

TTIP aims to ease non-trade barriers and harmonize bureaucratic rules that impede commerce and investment between the European Union and the United States.

Speaking in Germany on Sunday, US President Barack Obama urged the two sides to push for a final deal by the end of the year, as his eight years in the White House wrap up.

But Britain's focus has now become its spat with the 28-member EU as the country plunges into a heavily politicized domestic fight over pulling out.

The June 23 vote does not change the goal of the talks, which have been going on for three years.

But for some experts, a British split from the EU could be devastating to TTIP prospects.

"If British people vote to leave the EU, it will put the TTIP talks in shambles," said Gary Hufbauer, a former US Treasury official now with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

"There will be no way of going forward because there will be so many uncertainties."

Edward Alden, a trade expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, says a British exit would throw the whole TTIP project "into the air" as the European Union and Britain struggle to adjust.

"Conclusion of the TTIP would fall down on the agenda," he said. "Everybody would be scrambling to try to figure out what is the new relationship between Great Britain and Europe."

Story continues

- Stimulus for negotiators? -

Paradoxically, the Brexit threat could push negotiators to accelerate. Former senior US diplomat Daniel Hamilton, director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University, said that a solid message from the talks that TTIP is moving ahead could remind the British that they will miss out if they exit the EU.

The two sides' negotiators "will want to go faster to try to influence the public debate in Britain," he said.

Hufbauer agreed.

"It could be used as an argument to help the 'remain' camp to prevail in the Brexit vote," he said.

Obama, a key driver behind the TTIP pact, accented just that point in speeches in Britain and Germany last week.

If Britain quits the European Union, he warned in London Friday, it would be left behind as EU-US trade relations get a boost from the treaty.

Asked what would happen if Britain did vote to leave, Obama said that although "maybe at some point" it could seal a bilateral trade deal with the United States, "it's not going to happen any time soon."

"The UK's going to be at the back of the queue."
From Harper's BAZAAR

This weekend, Pandora Sykes wed her now-husband Ollie Tritton in a ceremony at her parents' home in Essex. "It was a no-brainer that I would get married at home; my parents have lived in that house for all my life and longer. It's a proper family home, red brick... and with all the trinkets of a childhood well lived," Sykes told us exclusively. When it came to choosing the perfect dress for the day, The Sunday Times Style editor could think of no other wedding dress designer than her friend Alice Temperley. Pandora shared, "I had always dreamt that Alice would make my dress. She's this iconic British designer and I love her whimsical, romantic designs but also the fun and irreverence that she [herself] brings to her designs. Plus, I love lace and so does she!" The designer, who describes her bride as "eclectic yet classic with a playful bohemian twist," felt similarly about her collaboration with Sykes: "[Pandora] has great style and knows exactly what she likes and what works for her so she is very easy to work with."

And specific she was. "I presented Alice and her brilliant design team with two moodboardsone of what I love and one of everything bridal that I hate. They were chaotic at best," she recalls. "On one board, there was a picture of Nicole Richie from behind, and also a picture of some Valentino Couture. I presented a check list of things I loved: lace, sheer panels, high [necklines], backless, gathered sleeves. I also presented her with what I thought was the ultimate challenge: could she make me a dress that could turn into a mini dress for the evening?! [Alice] didn't bat an eyelid."

The process, while collaborative, was no less intensive than a typical bespoke bridal gown. "We had several meetings. The first was a brainstorm, then we had two tulle fittings, and then two with the actual dress. The main ethos of the dress never changed, but we did experiment with sleevesI wondered whether a skinny sleeve would be more elegant, but it was made so much more interesting by the blousy sleeve and gathered wristbut we did pull the wrists up higher [in fittings] to see more of the hand and add some elastic, so I could push it up when I ate," Pandora recalled of her gown's process. "We also lessened a lot of volumefrom the hips, the bum, and the sleeves, and added an in-built sort of bustier to keep my bust pert! It was tricky because of the backless detail to add any kind of bra, but I wanted to feel properly secure [in it]. [Alice and her team] also played around with the sheerness of the panels. At first it was a bit too risque, and then a bit too dense. Now, it's perfect."

But how does a fashion girl manage to choose just one look? Sykes cleverly crafted a plan to ensure two looks in one, still with plans to change."The coolest feature is probably the fact that it's two dresses in one. For the dinner and dance, I am wearing the shorter version of the gown. Then, to leave, Alessandra Rich has made me the most beautiful fuchsia velvet mini dressagain, with a high neck! I spotted it in Paris at her Fall 2016 presentation and she very kindly made me one before it came out as a present."

As for styling, Sykes had a clear vision in mind when it came to accessorizing her three (or is it two and a half?) looks. "My shoes are gold strappy sandals from Miu MiuI stared at them for months before making the purchase! I have a veil, [also] from Temperley, and my sapphire drop earrings were made for me by Kirsty Patterson and given to me by my mother as a wedding present. My wedding ring (and engagement ring) are by Darcy Jewels. I am also wearing [my mother's] sapphire and diamond ring on my pinky finger as the 'borrowed and blue' part of the 'something old, something new; something borrowed, something blue.' I also have some earrings from Christie Nicolaides to wear with the Alessandra Rich dressthey are very statement, very fun. No clutchsomeone else can look after my belongings for that day!"

"It's hard when people ask my to describe my gown, because I've genuinely never seen anything like it...it's very romantic, very vintage-inspired, feminine but unique. It has a fitted bodice, a high lace neck, blousy sleeves and a paneled skirt. There's no train; I always want to see shoes! I definitely wanted to be able to move in my dress. I wanted something lightno full skirt, or train, or peplum, or fish tail, or extravagant bustier. I didn't want anything that looked too 'new'. I wanted the dress to be an extension of my own personal stylewhich is why I was so lucky to have my gown bespoke. I think if I bought something off the peg I'd have been tinkering with it for months, trying to make it my own."
London (AFP) - Britain has said it is "disappointed" at the lack of progress in the investigation into the murder of an Italian student studying at Cambridge who was found dead in Egypt in February.

Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old doctoral student who had been researching trade unions, disappeared in Cairo on January 25.

His badly mutilated body was found over a week later by the side of a road on the city's outskirts.

The killing has caused tensions between Italy and Egypt -- earlier this month, Rome recalled its ambassador in protest at the lack of developments in the probe.

The Foreign Office in London issued a statement late Monday on the killing of Regeni, who had reportedly lived in Britain for a decade.

"Three months after Mr Regeni's death, we are disappointed by the limited progress made in the case and are concerned that Italy has not found the cooperation that Egypt has provided to them to be sufficient," it said.

The statement added that, while allegations that Egyptian security forces were behind the killing were "unproven", "we urge the Egyptian authorities to consider every possible scenario as they investigate."

Over 11,000 people have signed a petition urging the British government to ensure that "a credible investigation of this extrajudicial killing is carried out".

Egypt's presentation of a theory that a criminal gang carried out the murder has been received with extreme scepticism in Italy and helped fuel public anger over the case.
LONDON, April 26 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron will visit the steel plant in the Welsh town of Port Talbot on Tuesday to discuss the future of its operations, his spokeswoman said.

"The prime minister ... will shortly be arriving in Wales where he will visit the Port Talbot steel works and will have meetings with the management, staff and the unions there," she told reporters.

"It is an opportunity for the prime minister to hear first-hand their views and discuss the way forward."

The British government is searching for a way to save Port Talbot, the country's largest steel works, after owner, India's Tata Steel, put all its operations up for sale.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; editing by Stephen Addison)
LONDON (Reuters) - Support for the campaign to get Britain out of the European Union has risen in recent days, two opinion polls showed on Tuesday, suggesting U.S. President Barack Obama's call for the UK to stay in the bloc had not yet had the impact he wanted. Forty-six percent of voters were in favour of a so-called Brexit, more than the 44 percent who believed Britain should stay in the EU, ICM said, citing the intentions of people who planned to take part in the June 23 referendum. That was a slightly wider lead for "Out" than in last week's ICM online poll and it took some of the wind out of a recovery in the value of the pound which had hit a 12-week high against the dollar on signs that the "In" campaign was gaining momentum. [GPB/] The poll was conducted between Friday and Sunday, covering the period immediately after Obama made a blunt call for Britain to stay in the EU and warned the country would go to the "back of the queue" in trade talks with Washington if it left. Earlier on Tuesday, a telephone poll by ORB for The Daily Telegraph newspaper showed the "In" campaign remained in the lead by 51-43, based on all voters. But its support had fallen by two percentage points and "Out" was up by the same amount compared with the previous ORB poll. Lynton Crosby, an election strategist who helped Cameron win last May's election, said the Telegraph's poll showed "not much has changed over the past week" despite Obama on Friday urging Britons to remain in the bloc. "The effect of the president's visit may not yet be felt in the numbers as sometimes it takes a while for factors to wash through. Also, people may not take much notice of what an outsider has to say," he wrote in The Telegraph. Crosby said the "In" campaign was at risk of "voter complacency" - almost three-fifths of voters polled said they believed those campaigning to stay in the EU will win and may not feel they have to turn out to vote. "Who is leading at this stage may be indicative of what is yet to come, but the road ahead remains fraught," Crosby said. "I wouldn't be hanging out the victory bunting just yet. The marathon has barely begun." (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Stephen Addison)
Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the star of ABCs Modern Family, takes his shot at Fully Committed, Becky Modes tour-de-force-for-solo-actor about the travails of a booking agent on the reservations desk at a trendy Manhattan restaurant. The 1999 play opened Off Broadway with Mark Setlock, who also collaborated in creating the plays various colorful if unseen characters. Without bringing anything special to the role of the beleaguered reservations clerk, Fergusons performance should remind the industry why this clever trifle is among the ten most-produced plays in the country.

There have been some smart nips and tucks to freshen up the material  although not to the point of acknowledging the existence of the Internet. References to once powerful movers and shakers like Sherry Lansing and Naomi Campbell are out. But Gwyneth Paltrow, who orders a locally-sourced, no-fat, no-salt, no-dairy, no-sugar, no-chicken, no-meat, no-fish, no-soy, no-rice, no-foam, no-corn tasting menu for 15 people  is a great substitute. As is Helen Mirren, whom the chef pronounces hot.

The cuisine at this chic place has also changed from global fusion to molecular gastronomy. Appetizers now include frozen polenta with honey mastic, and main dishes run to crispy deer lichen atop a slowly deflating, scent-filled pillow dusted with edible dirt.

Sam (Ferguson), who shares a basement cranny with the buildings plumbing system, is working the phone bank on his own today. (Theres no clear value to the overdressed set, but those ugly pipes are a nice touch.) Down here, in the bowels of the building, Sam goes mano a mano with all those whining, belligerent, and otherwise insufferable patrons demanding royal treatment. And when the house phones ring, he also has to deal with the narcissistic chef, the prima donna maitre d, and other self-important superiors quick to take advantage of his good nature.

But Sam is more than the doofus in a sitcom. The playwright has taken care to make him a credible character and give him a plausible life as a would-be actor (that is, if the life of any struggling New York actor could be thought plausible). In between the reservation calls, the phone lines also light up with news that Sams best frenemy has a callback for a role at Lincoln Center. To rub it in, his agent tells him he just doesnt have the cojones for the roles hes been going up for. And then theres poor old Dad, recently widowed, who calls from Ohio hoping against hope that Sam will make it to his empty home for Christmas.

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The funny voices and comic poses Ferguson adopts to play all these characters are no more amusing than they need to be. But he shines as one character: Sam. Not only does he bring a sense of true if battered humanity to the role, he also gives Sam all the satisfaction he deserves as the worm who finally turns  and reveals that he has teeth.

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Actor Bryan Cranston and the other co-owners of Flagship's Cinemas Palme d'Or in Palm Desert, Calif., say the upscale theater will go dark June 30 after a decade-long battle with mega-circuit Cinemark.

"We could no longer stay solvent because of Cinemark's constant pressure on studios and distributors to shut us out of major titles. We fought hard, but circuit-dealing has made it impossible to stay in business," said the owners in a letter sent to Hollywood studios this week.

Hours after the letter became public, Tristone Cinema Group revealed it will take over the lease for the theater, located in the Westfield Palm Desert Mall. Once renovations are complete, the cinema will reopen.

Cranston, ESPN radio personality Steve Mason, businessman Andreas Mauritzson and longtime theater executive Brian Tabor opened the 10-screen Cinema Palme d'Or in 2003 with the aim of catering to older audiences, whether that meant art house offerings or midsize studio titles. It was among the first theaters in the country to build out its own kitchen and serve alcohol.

But Mason told THR that Cinemark's nearby theater, Century The River, began demanding clearances from Hollywood studios and other film distributors, meaning if they booked a film with Cinemas Palme d'Or, that movie wouldn't get a berth in certain Cinemark locations. Cinemas d'Or filed a lawsuit that's still being fought.

"I'm devastated. They have tried to take every single movie away from us," Mason said.

Cranston issued a separate statement, saying, "Cinemark finally succeeded in driving the last nail in our coffin. We just couldn't continue the struggle in this unfair business climate."

In their letter, Mason and Cranston applauded Fox for its recent decision to no longer honor clearances. "Unfortunately, this positive move by one studio has come too late for us, but we hope that other studios will follow Fox and that surviving independent theaters will now be given a chance to compete on a level playing field," the letter states.

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Mason said despite the closure, the litigation against Cinemark will continue. The issue of clearances also is the subject of an informal inquiry by the government.

Cinemark fired back in a statement, saying the alleged claims against it "are, and always have been, entirely without merit."

Continuing, the statement said, "Cinemark simply does not engage in 'circuit dealing.' In April 2014, the trial court dismissed Flagship's case against Cinemark in its entirety because the court found that Flagship's principals had unlawfully destroyed vast quantities of evidence during the pendency of the litigation. In addition to having its case dismissed, Flagship also was required to pay Cinemark monetary sanctions. Flagship is currently appealing that decision. Going forward, Cinemark will continue to license motion pictures at each of its theaters on a film-by-film, theater-by-theater basis."

Meanwhile, Tristone said the theater - which will get a new name - will continue catering to art house audiences.

"As a commitment to the community, we will begin renovations shortly, to provide safer access for our older guests, and a much needed update to the facility and amenities that are offered. Our goal is to preserve the art of film in cinemas for wide audiences, at an affordable price. Tristone Cinema Group is not involved with the Flagship Theatres' current lawsuit, nor do they know any details concerning it. Our hope is to make peaceful negotiations with the other studios moving forward," the Tristone statement said.

[readmore:872761]

April 26, 2:15 p.m. Updated with Cinemark statement.

April 26, 6:15 p.m. Updated with Tristone Cinema Group statement.
Would you pay big for a baby name? (Image via Bill Siel /The Kenosha News via AP)

Crib, car seat, baby wipe warmerthere are so many things expectant parents need to buy. Heres something else for the shopping list: a baby-naming consultant. And the ultimate exercise in personal branding, as Quartz puts it, is not cheap.

Related: High School Coach Promises Team: Win 14 Games, Name My Kid

Swiss branding firm Erfolgswelle, for instance, charges more than $29,000 to choose the perfect moniker for a soon-to-arrive bundle of joy, Bloomberg reports. Agency head Marc Hauser says his team spends about 100 hours coming up with the perfect name, which includes verifying theres no trademark on the name and consulting historians to determine whether a potential name has an aggravating past. He uses his own nameMarcas an example, saying his firm wouldnt suggest it because its linked to an ancient Roman god of war.

Related: 12 Most Influential Celeb Baby Names

If youd rather squirrel away that 30 grand, say for a college fund, New York-based My Name for Life will help you name junior starting at several hundred dollars. If a baby namer knows what theyre doing, its worth every penny, Albert Mehrabian, who wrote The Baby Name Report Card, tells Bloombergs Polly Mosendz. (He gave her name a B-, and here he explains why Chad scores a 98 but Bud scores a 2.)

Related: Even Babies Will Make a Deal With the Devil

Quartz quips that instead of paying, you could just turn to your in-laws, who will probably be happy to provide you with loads of advice for free. Or maybe for something sweeter: In October the New York Times reported on cases in which would-be grandparents have given their own kids everything from $10,000 to the promise of a family business in exchange for the right to name their grandchild. (Here are some free suggestions for unusual baby names.)

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By Luke Roney

More From Newser:

Mom Has Gallons of Breast Milk Confiscated at Heathrow

Mom Hears Dead Son Inside 4-Year-Old Girl

This article originally appeared on Newser: Buy Your Kid a Name for $30K
In the middle of the first-quarter earnings season, market consensus of negative earnings growth still persists, albeit in a less pessimistic manner than was initially perceived. With the quarter witnessing the highest number of downward revisions in the recent past, the Zacks Trend report predicts a 9.7% year-over-year drop in earnings of S&P 500 companies.

While our data indicates the fourth consecutive quarter of an earnings decline, we focus on some cable and media conglomerates that are expected to report their quarterly results this week.

Industry Trends

The broadcast TV industry is currently going through a transition. Even as the pay-TV business model continues to hold a major share of the market, it is facing stiff competition from the latest over-the-top (OTT) online video streaming service offerings. Apparently, massive growth of high-speed wireless networks and devices like smartphones and tablets has altered the taste of the millennial population to a great extent.

There are many Cable behemoths who own media companies. While the recent development in the pay-TV industry enabled such companies to generate revenues by selling original contents to OTT video streaming service providers, it has cannibalized their original source of revenues  subscription fees and advertisement fees  due to widespread cord-cutting. However, recently, many such cable companies have been jumping on the video streaming bandwagon in order to stay competitive. Additionally, pay-TV operators are now skinning their packages to counter cord-cutting. For media companies, escalation in production and programming costs for original content remains a concern, going forward.

Earnings in Focus

Here are three companies scheduled to announce Q1 earnings this week.

Comcast Corporation CMCSA, a leading cable MSO (multi-service operator) in the U.S., is scheduled to release first-quarter 2016 results on Apr 27, before the market opens. In spite of facing cord-cutting pressures in the pay-TV segment, Comcast can maximize its growth prospects on the back of its enterprise business division and its newly formed ad targeting division  Audience Studio.

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Comcast has a Zacks Rank#3 (Hold) and a positive Earnings ESP of 1.27%. Initially, our model did not predict better-than-expected earnings for Comcast, but the current combination of its Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and positive ESP indicate a beat in the to-be-reported quarter. Last quarter, Comcast had delivered a negative earnings surprise of 1.27%. (Read More: What's in Store for Comcast This Earnings Season?)

Time Warner Cable Inc. TWC is slated to release its first-quarter 2016 results on Apr 28, before the market opens. Time Warner Cable has been persistently losing video customers in spite of its implementation of several business-oriented strategies. Furthermore, a soft TV advertising environment might dampen Time Warner Cables top-line growth. Moreover, since the company is heavily investing in promotional pricing as well as in services like IPTV, it might experience temporary margin contraction in the near term.

Time Warner Cable has a Zacks Rank#4 (Sell) and an Earnings ESP of +1.16%, indicating that the company is not likely to beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate this quarter. In the last reported quarter, however, the companys earnings had surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 0.56%. (Read More: Time Warner Cable: What Lies Ahead in Q1 Earnings?)

Viacom Inc.VIAB is set to release second-quarter fiscal 2016 results on Apr 28, before the opening bell. Lack of popular movie releases is likely to hurt the companys Film segment. In addition, expanded geographic presence will increase foreign currency exchange risks for Viacom.

Viacom carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) and a negative Earnings ESP of 10.00%, indicating that the company is not likely to beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate this quarter.. In the last quarter, however, the company had posted a 0.85% earnings surprise. (Read More: Viacom Q2 Earnings May Disappoint: Will Stock Suffer?)

Stay tuned! Check later on our full write-up on earnings releases of these stocks.

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LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron told the management of Tata Steel on Tuesday that any sale of its remaining British assets would have to cover the whole of its business and be given sufficient time to take place.

Cameron was visiting a steel works in the Welsh town of Port Talbot, the focus of his government's efforts to make sure Tata's sale of loss-making plants does not leave thousands unemployed just before a referendum on EU membership.

Tata group announced plans to quit its entire British steel operation last month, leaving the government battling to save an industry that has been hurt by cheap Chinese imports, soaring costs and weak demand.

Cameron's spokeswoman said the prime minister wanted to see for himself what the situation was at Port Talbot and toured the site to see the control room of the blast furnace and the finishing lines.

"He then ... had a roundtable discussion with senior management from Tata and the (trade) unions. That was largely focused on the action the government has taken to support the steel sector," the spokeswoman told reporters.

"The prime minister underlined our commitment to working with Tata to support the future of steel-making in Port Talbot, emphasised the need for the Tata sales process to cover the whole business, (and) for there to be sufficient time for that process to run."

Tata said last week it was "committed to seeking all credible options in an urgent manner".

The government has said it is willing to take a 25 percent equity stake in any rescue of Tata Steel's operations and that at least two potential buyers have shown interest.

The government says its efforts to save the business is not linked to the EU referendum on June 23, but those campaigning to leave the bloc have seized on the crisis.

They have accused the EU of not doing enough to stop Chinese imports and have blamed the bloc's rules on state aid for preventing government intervention.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; editing by Stephen Addison)
LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron told the management of India's Tata Steel on Tuesday that any sale of its remaining British assets would have to cover the whole of its business and be given sufficient time to take place.

Cameron was visiting a steel works in the Welsh town of Port Talbot, the focus of his government's efforts to make sure Tata's sale of loss-making plants does not leave thousands unemployed just before a referendum on EU membership.

India's Tata group announced plans to quit its entire British steel operation last month, leaving the government battling to save an industry that has been hurt by cheap Chinese imports, soaring costs and weak demand.

Cameron's spokeswoman said the prime minister wanted to see for himself what the situation was at Port Talbot and toured the site to see the control room of the blast furnace and the finishing lines.

"He then ... had a roundtable discussion with senior management from Tata and the (trade) unions. That was largely focused on the action the government has taken to support the steel sector," the spokeswoman told reporters.

"The prime minister underlined our commitment to working with Tata to support the future of steel-making in Port Talbot, emphasised the need for the Tata sales process to cover the whole business, (and) for there to be sufficient time for that process to run."

Tata said last week it was "committed to seeking all credible options in an urgent manner".

The government has said it is willing to take a 25 percent equity stake in any rescue of Tata Steel's operations and that at least two potential buyers have shown interest.

The government says its efforts to save the business is not linked to the EU referendum on June 23, but those campaigning to leave the bloc have seized on the crisis.

They have accused the EU of not doing enough to stop Chinese imports and have blamed the bloc's rules on state aid for preventing government intervention.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; editing by Stephen Addison)
SEATTLE, WA / ACCESSWIRE / April 26, 2016 / The cannabis industry may have been taboo under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party, but a new government has brought a very different perspective. Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party won a strong majority government in the October 2015 federal election, with legalization of recreational marijuana as a key plank in their campaign platform. The Liberals now have a clear mandate to reform Canada's outdated marijuana laws, and have begun to lay the groundwork for a legal recreational market. On April 20, 2016, the government announced that legislation to legalize cannabis would be introduced in the spring of 2017.

Existing, proven licensed producers under the Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations (MMPR), such as Aurora Cannabis (CSE:ACB) (ACBFF), Organigram Holdings (TSXV:OGI) (OGRMF), Emerald Health Therapeutics (EMH.V) (OTC:TBQBF) and Mettrum Health (MT.V) (OTC:MQTRF), will have significant advantages when it comes to supplying what promises to be a large and lucrative recreational market. The success to date of a burgeoning legal recreational market in Colorado has already demonstrated the tremendous potential for Canada, which has a population that's about seven times larger, at 35 million.

A Natural Low-Cost Producer

Aurora Cannabis was founded on the premise that legal medicinal cannabis should be of the highest quality, affordable, and easy to access. With an $11.5 million 55,200-square-foot production facility located near Calgary, the company combines natural elements like fresh mountain water with state-of-the-art technology to provide among the cleanest, safest products on the market - without using pesticides, and without employing techniques such as irradiation, which can alter certain desirable medicinal properties in the cannabis plant.

The company's vertically integrated business model, use of natural resources, and presence in Alberta have enabled it to beat competitors elsewhere in Canada in terms of production costs. Alberta has some of the lowest tax rates and electricity costs in the country, an abundance of farm credit programs, as well as grants available to innovative companies in the agricultural sector. By leveraging these advantages, the company's strains are offered at just $8 per gram (with $5 per gram compassionate pricing).

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Earlier this year, the company received approval from Health Canada to produce derivative cannabis products, such as oils and other extracts. Of particular importance, ingestible cannabis derivatives are ideal for people who need or prefer a delivery system that does not involve smoking. These products represent new revenue streams, and are expected to increase net margin substantially by the end of 2016.

Powering-up Aurora's Marketing Efforts

Aurora Cannabis is performing well on the important metric of patient acquisition, having surpassed 1,000 active registered patients in its first three months of product sales - believed to be the fastest any licensed producer has reached that milestone. The company recently ramped-up its marketing outreach efforts with the appointment of Mr. Cam Battley as Senior Vice President of Communications and Medical Affairs.

On April 6, 2016, Mr. Battley was elected to the Board of Directors of the Canadian Medical Cannabis Industry Association (CMCIA), the trade association for licensed producers under Health Canada's MMPR program, and he is currently the Chair of the Advocacy Committee for the Association. Previously, he served as the Vice President of Communications and Corporate Development for Bedrocan Canada, another leading licensed producer.

In his new role, Mr. Battley will be responsible for external communications, investor relations, collaboration with the medical community, business development, and patient and other stakeholder initiatives. With a dynamic, high-profile background, Mr. Battley will help the company capitalize on its inherent advantages as high quality, low- cost producer. This could translate into helping Aurora capture greater market share and entrench its position as a recognized best-of-breed industry leader.

Looking Ahead

Aurora Cannabis is well positioned within Canada's fast-growing cannabis industry to continue to capitalize on its emerging role as an industry frontrunner - and benefit from Prime Minister Trudeau's bold move to legalize recreational cannabis. Shareholders should position themselves as well to reap the potential rewards.

For more information, visit the company's website at www.auroramj.com.

About CFN Media

CFN Media (CannabisFN), the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to legal cannabis, helps marijuana companies attract investors, customers (B2B, B2C), capital, and media visibility. Private and public marijuana companies and brands in the US and Canada rely on CFN Media to grow and succeed.

CFN launched in June of 2013 to initially serve the growing universe of publicly traded marijuana companies across the US and Canada. Today, CFN Media is also the emerging digital media choice for the top brands in the space.

To learn how your company can be covered by CFN Media, visit http://www.cannabisfn.com/become-featured-company.

Legal Disclaimer

Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this article contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Important factors that could cause these differences include, but are not limited to, the demand for the company's services, governmental regulation of the cannabis industry, and the company's ability to execute its business plan. Emerging Growth LLC dba TDM Financial, which owns CFN Media, is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority, and does not provide nor claim to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. Emerging Growth LLC dba TDM Financial, which owns CFN Media, may from time to time have a position in the securities mentioned herein and may increase or decrease such positions without notice. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. For full disclosure please visit:http://www.cannabisfn.com/legal-disclaimer/.

SOURCE: CFN Media
TORONTO -- When Canadian radio announcer Rob Calabrese unveiled a website earlier this year that encourages Americans to move to the island in Nova Scotia where he lives before Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump could win this fall's election, he had no idea what was in store. In the site's first 48 hours, he received hundreds of queries from Americans about moving north.

"Trump is taking a swipe at the establishment, which is refreshing," says Calabrese. "But it's easy to see why he scares the hell out of a lot of people."

As the GOP presidential front-runner enters into a period of state primaries this spring where he is expected to do well, Canadians are looking at Trump with a mixture of bemusement and alarm.

Canadians tend to be more moderate than Americans, favoring understatement over bluster and compromise over controversy. With his flamboyant persona and bombastic rhetoric, Trump couldn't be more unlike his neighbors to the north. Many Canadians view him as they would a strange, exotic bird.

Trump's brand of extremism is non-existent in Canada due in part to the country's political system. In Canada, an independent, non-partisan body draws up the electoral map, so to win a given district, a candidate must woo swing voters. Moderation becomes a necessity.

That is not the case south of the border. In most U.S. states, politicians draw up congressional districts. That has given rise to gerrymandering, a practice in which parties redraw district boundaries to give themselves an electoral advantage. As a result, a district could be so heavily Republican that "a chimpanzee would win an election there as long as it was a GOP candidate," says Geoffrey Hale, a political science professor at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. The same logic applies to heavily Democratic districts.

[READ: Canada's problem with indigenous women.]

"This leads to extremism in the U.S. Congress that doesn't exist in Canada's House of Commons," says Stephen Azzi, an associate professor of history at Carleton University in Ottawa. "Canadian political parties tend to cling to the middle."

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"We play our politics between the 30-yard lines," Hale says, adding that Canadian politicians on the left and right are more centrist than their American counterparts.

Unlike Trump, who has said he won't rule out the use of nuclear weapons, even in Europe, Canadian politicians are more measured in their rhetoric about foreign affairs. Canada is middle power and its leaders can't afford to alienate citizens of other states by threatening to build walls to keep them out.

Trump's talk on trade sounds alarm bells

With the Trump campaign gaining momentum in recent months, Canadians have had to confront the possibility that he could win the presidency. Bemusement is now coupled with concern -- and it's easy to understand why.

Canada and the U.S. have the world's largest trading relationship. They trade more than $2 billion in goods and services daily. Trade between the countries has more than doubled since 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement was implemented.

[READ: The role of hair parting in Canada's politics]

But Trump has attacked NAFTA and promised to renegotiate it or break it if elected president. "Every agreement has an end,'' he said in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes." Needless to say, Canadians have found such comments unsettling.

"Canada depends on trade relations with the U.S. that are governed by rules and regulations," says Hale. "If the U.S. doesn't abide by them, Canada is in trouble -- and Trump seems more inclined to ignore existing laws than [Democratic frontrunner Hillary] Clinton."

That means a Trump presidency could also jeopardize trade deals, such as the new Trans-Pacific Partnership, which includes the U.S., Canada and 10 other countries, and the controversial Softwood Lumber agreement, which governs the flow of Canadian lumber to the U.S.

Trump's approach considers U.S. interests only, says Donald Abelson, a political science professor at Western University in London, Ontario, and director of The Canada-U.S. Institute. "I don't think he would abolish these trade agreements altogether if he were president but he would definitely strong-arm the Canadians into agreeing to terms that would benefit the U.S. above all else."

Few were surprised when a national survey conducted earlier this year indicated that 67 percent of Canadians believe an American presidency headed by Trump would be bad for Canada and, of those, 49 percent believe it would be very bad. Earlier this month, a random sample of almost 1,500 Canadian voters indicated that even those who support their own country's right-leaning Conservative Party would rather see Clinton in the White House than Trump.

"Trump is an entertaining alternative to the everyday politician," Toronto-based massage therapist Brian Clelland says, reflecting the view held by many Canadians. "But Trump as the Republican nominee would be no laughing matter. It would paint the U.S. in a bad light."

Rocky relations?

When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Washington, D.C. in March, the world witnessed the warm relations between the young leader and U.S. President Barack Obama. There would be next to no chance of a similar relationship developing between Trudeau and Trump, say analysts.

"Trump and Trudeau were both born into privileged families but that is where the similarity begins and ends," says Abelson. "Trudeau endeavours to bring people together. He emphasizes inclusiveness. Trump is just the opposite."

Trudeau, adds Azzi, has set ambitious goals for admitting Syrian refugees and has said Muslim women should be allowed to wear niqabs -- veils that cover most of the face while taking Canada's oath of citizenship. In contrast, Trump has suggested the U.S. temporarily bar all Muslims from entering the U.S.

[READ: The origins of Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric.]

History has shown that Canada-U.S. relations suffer somewhat when their leaders are at odds. U.S. President John Kennedy and Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker had such a toxic relationship that the president provided Diefenbaker's opponent, Lester B. Pearson, with tactical support in Canada's federal election of 1963. Kennedy persuaded America's leading pollster, Lou Harris, to become an official campaign adviser to Pearson.

Political pundits here agree that a Trump presidency would not bode well for Canada. But they also agree that it's impossible to know where he the GOP front-runner stands on certain issues.

"We can't say with certainty what Trump would be like in the White House, or if he would be different as a president than he is as a candidate," says Azzi. "With most presidential candidates you know what you're getting, but it's different with him. That is the danger of Trump."

Randi Druzin is an author and journalist based in Toronto, Canada. She has worked at a handful of major media outlets. She has also written for The New York Times, Time magazine and dozens of other publications. Her web site is www.druzin.com.
Seasoned international film executive Fabien Westerhoff, a former head of sales and distribution at WestEnd Films and HanWay Films, has teamed with Paris-based sales agent Films Distribution, one of Frances most prominent sales companies, to launch Film Constellation, an international licensing/film finance company.

Unveiled in the run-up to Cannes Festival, deal sees Films Distribution taking an equity investment in Film Constellation, facilitating an up-to 10 million ($11.2 million) credit facility for Film Constellation film investments, said Westerhoff.

London-based, Constellation will reveal its first titles at next months Cannes market. They will range from youth-orientated commercial fare to talent-driven films for mature audiences.

Film Constellation bows as the global launch of Netflix and targeted roll-out of Amazon Prime and HBO are broadening options open to producers as they seek to both finance and license their movies. As overseas markets contract for many arthouse films but the gamut of types of movies made out of international opens up, the needs of many filmmakers, whether in financing or pre-sales festival and brand positioning are at once more-targeted and far-broader than at any moment in recent film industry times.

In this context, Film Constellation will offer producers and financiers targeted, tailor-made international licensing and executive production services.

This is a destination of expression for trusted filmmakers and emerging new talent, embracing new distribution models, globally, Westerhoff commented in a statement Tuesday.

He added: The road to market is tailor-made for each one of our films. We are dedicated to enabling rights-holders to maximize value and ownership of their projects along the value chain.

The Film Constellation deal adds to Films Distributions network of European companies. In addition to its Paris office, in 2008 Films Distribution set up Berlin-based subsidiary Films Boutique, which is focused on special-interest movies and discoveries. In 2014, it launched Be For Film, a Brussels sales agency that handles European foreign-language cross-over movies. Film Constellation and Films Distribution will act independently on the acquisition/sales front.

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A Paris-born graduate from Frances prestigious Femis film school, Westerhoff is one of a select number of executives with extensive experience in both France and the U.K. film industries, experience that also takes in cinemas digital and emerging market revolutions.

He joined Londons HanWay Films, Jeremy Thomas sales, distribution and marketing company in 2008, where he sold Fernando Truebas Chico & Rita and Takashi Miikes 13 Assassins, rising to become its director of sales and distribution. There he also spearheaded the launch of HanWay Select, a classics, speciality and documentary label, which created collections around its distinguished filmmaking figures  Bernardo Bertolucci, Wim Wenders, Thomas himself  firing up VOD sales around the world plus theatrical re-issues via Hollywood Classics.

Westerhoff cut his teeth at Philippe Bobbers Coproduction Office before serving as a consultant to Peter Danners Funny Balloons as it forged its sales relationship with No director Pablo Larrain, acquiring world sales on Tony Manero.

At WestEnd Films, he oversaw the international roll-out of movies by David Gordon Green (Joe, Mangelhorn), Michael Winterbottom (The Face of an Angel), Jeremy Saunier (Green Room).

Having pursued a career in both the U.K. and France, Westerhoff looks to work a two-way street at Film Constellation, offering a fast-track bridge to the European markets funding resources and determinant festival scene for Anglo-Saxon independent filmmakers looking to build up their authorial voice, and a port of call for European filmmakers wanting to expand their career and audience to the English-speaking market.

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The Cannes Film Market will showcase a wide-range of upcoming titles by directors from the Arab world, including prominent Egyptian auteur Yousry Nasrallahs bucolic Brooks, Meadows and Lovely Faces, about a family of cooks who cater for weddings in the Egyptian countryside.

The Marche du Film is set to host a Dubai Film Market presents selection of works-in-progress and also a Liban Cinema presents selection. Both are screening at the mart on Monday, May 16.

The work-in-progress of Nasrallahs Brooks, his followup to post-Arab Spring drama After the Battle, which competed in Cannes in 2012, is in the Dubai section. That section also includes Syrian director Maisa Safadis 4 Seasons, 2 Brothers and a Border, produced by U.S. producer Soloman Goodmans Railroad Films. Pic is about the impact of the 1967 Arab-Isreali Six-Day War on the life of a Syrian village.

The Lebanese selection includes Fallen From The Sky, the feature film debut of Beirut-based documaker Wissam Charaf, who is an alumni of the Sundance Institutes Rawi Screenwriters Lab in Jordan. Its about two brothers, one of whom resurfaces after being presumed dead.

This is shaping up to be a pretty good year for Arab movies in Cannes.

Egyptian director Mohamed Diabs hotly anticipated Islamic fundamentalism-themed Clash has the honor of opening the fests Un Certain Section, marking the first film from turbulent Egypt bowing at Cannes since Nasrallahs Battle.

Clash is set entirely inside an overcrowded police truck packed with pro and anti-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators from all social classes after a massive protest following the events of July 3, 2013, as crowds celebrated the ouster of prexy Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member. Diab is known internationally for bold sex harassment pic Cairo 678.

A Complete list of Arab works-in-progress unspooling at the Cannes Market in the Dubai and Lebanon Goes to Cannes Showcases

Dubai Goes to Cannes:

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4 Seasons, 2 Brothers and a Border, Maisa Safadi

Fish Killed Twice, Fawzi Saleh

Munich: A Palestinian Story, Nasri Hajjaj

Brooks, Meadows and Lovely Faces, Yousry Nasrallah

Lebanon Goes to Cannes

Beirut Terminus, Elie Kamal

Room for a Man, Anthony Chidiac

Feminitude, Soula Saad

One of These Days, Nadim Tabet

Fallen From The Sky, Wissam Charaf

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The third installment of the Captain America saga is set to hit theaters soon, with Civil War positioned as an important turning point in the Marvel universe. But were not going to talk about this massive conflict between superheroes. Instead, were going to look at how many people (and other beings) the Captain killed so far. He might be a good guy, but he's also a shockingly prolific murderer.

DONT MISS: 20 apps that hardcore iPhone fans cant live without

Put together by YouTube channel Mr Sunday Movies, the following clip shows you all of Captain Americas victims, whether theyre direct kills or indirect victims. Some superheroes seem to understand that many henchmen are simply doing their bosses' bidding, but the Captain doesn't seem to care at all.

According to the video, Captain America has killed 14,089 distinct creatures, including humans, robots and whatever else came swinging at him. Its not clear exactly how the number of collateral victims is calculated when it comes to scenes involving mass destruction, so well just have to trust the source.

The body count only covers the films that the Captain has appeared in so far. The list includes four movies: Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldiers, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. While Captain America will be busy fighting off his friends in Civil War, its likely that the body count will still go up from here.

Check out the full video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uI35cmrdzI

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Uruguayan prosecutors are seeking to bring to trial at least five individuals detained on suspicion of laundering money for a powerful Mexican drug cartel, including at least one suspect allegedly linked to a company named in the Panama Papers.

The five were among 11 initially detained in Montevideo on Friday by more than 30 law enforcement officials. The officials were already investigating, but decided to move quickly to preempt any attempt at flight after the weekly online magazine Busqueda reported that Gerardo Gonzalez Valencia had used shell companies incorporated in Panama to buy real estate in Uruguay, including a chalet in Punta del Este.

The story was part of the Panama Papers investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other news organizations that dug through 11.5 million files containing information on decades of operations by Panama law firm and offshore company incorporator Mossack Fonseca and Co.

Gonzalez Valencia is linked to the rapidly expanding New Generation Cartel of Jalisco (CJNG) in Mexico. His brother Abigael Gonzalez Valencia, now imprisoned in Mexico, headed the powerful Los Cuinos cartel. Abigael Gonzalez Valencia has been designated a drug king pin in the United States along with his brother-in-law Nemesis Oseguera Cervantes, who leads CJNG.

The U.S. Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Asset Control said when it named the two kingpins that the two organization have rapidly expanded their criminal empire in recent years through the use of violence and corruption. Acting director of OFAC John E. Smith said then that they now rank among the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in Mexico.

Meanwhile, a story by ICIJ partner the McClatchy Company news chain reported that Ecuadors president Rafael Correa and his brother had been mentioned in a Mossack Fonseca email to a law firm for which it provided shell corporations for its customers.

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Sara Montenegro, a lawyer for Mossack Fonseca, sent an email in May 2012 to a Guayaquil firm to notify you of an investigation being undertaken by the office of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor of Panama, in reference to Misters FABRICIO CORREA and RAFAEL CORREA DELGADO for the crime of embezzlement against the Ecuadoran state, an investigation which involves a Panamanian corporation that was sold to you in 2006 called ORLION GROUP S.A. The email was sent to a lawyer working for the Legalsa & Asociados firm, which had opened the offshore on behalf of an unidentified customer.

The prosecutor wanted shareholder information which we did not give since we dont have it, Montenegro added. She asked Legalsa & Asociados for information on the true owners of the Orlion Group S.A. because an official demand was likely.

This story is part of The Panama Papers. Click here to read more stories in this series.

Don't miss another Accountability investigation: Sign up for the Center for Public Integrity's Watchdog email.

A few days later Mossack Fonsecas head of compliance, Sandra de Cornejo, had recommended that her firm drop services to the Orlion Group S.A. Although we have not found anything that ties the Correas and the entity, she said, I suggest resigning  because of the scant cooperation received from the client, which Mossack Fonseca had asked for know your customer information two years before. Mossack Fonseca resigned as Orlion Group's agent in July 2012.

In an unrelated incident, Panamanian officials seized bags of shredded paperwork during a search of another of the law firms premises late last week.

The search was conducted as part of an ongoing investigation into the law firms activities. Mossack Fonsecas Panama City headquarters was raided by police earlier in April.

Mossack Fonseca said the shredded paperwork seized in the latest search were documents that had been digitized and were to be recycled. The firm said authorities had already obtained copies of these files during their initial search of the firms headquarters.

This story is part of The Panama Papers. Click here to read more stories in this series.

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Copyright 2016 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
MADRID  Brazilian Selton Mellos A Movie Life, starring Vincent Cassel (Black Swan), Attitude Test, from Chilean producer-turned director Augusto Matte, and Colombian Juan Zapatas English-language globetrotting love story Butterflies all feature at the 2016 Guadalajara Goes to Cannes, a Cannes Film Market pix-in-post showcase ranging across Latin America.

Featuring five titles in all, the May 17 work-in-progress sneak peek underscores not only the stylistic breadth of Latin American filmmaking as film-makers attempt to reach broader and new audiences.

Also playing Guadalajara Goes To Cannes is one title which went to Guadalajaras own work-in-progress competition last month, Tomas de Leones El Aprendiz, winning $10,000 worth of counseling on securing a sales agent and festival strategy from Tom Davilas consultancy Cinemaven Media.

Mellos third feature, after The Clown punched exceptional B.O. for an arthouse feature in Brazil, A Movie Life is a rites-of-passage and family drama set in the cosy sierras of Rio Grande do Sul. Set up at Vania Catanis Bananaeira Filmes, A Movie Life is co-produced by MGM Intl., and based on the novel A Distant Father by Antonio Skarmeta whose Ardiente Paciencia, another novel, inspired Michael Radfords Academy Award-winning The Postman.

In a completely different vein, Attitude Test marks the directorial debut of Matte, a producer-partner at Chiles Jirafa Films whose credits include Alejandro Fernandez Almendras Sundance and Berlin-selected Much Ado About Nothing, a Netflix near global acquisition. Signaling the entry into more mainstream comedy of two of Chiles most prestigious production houses, Jirafa and Forastero (The Maid), the high-school comedy yet retains social point in its barbed portrayal of college exams don really tst students intellectual capacity, said co-director and writer, Fabrizio Copano, one of Chiles best-known stand-up comedians-come-actor-and scribe.

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Again markedly different, and a big step-up in scale for Brazil-based Colombian auteur Juan Zapata (Simone), Butterflies, shot in English between Amsterdam, Salzburg, Munich, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles and San Francisco. A five-way international co-production, the romantic drama shows how to believe in love again after intense mourning, Zapata told Variety when shooting.

Set on Argentinas Atlantic Coast, rites-of-passage tale El Aprendiz, from Argentinas Tomas de Leone, turns on an apprentice chef, who comes from a broken home.

A fifth Guadalajara Cannes title, Nombre de Guerra: Alias Yineth, forms part of a multimedia project which ahs already yielded Alias Maria, produced by Colombias Rhayuela Cine, which played at Cannes Un Certain Regard last year.

Directed by Daniela Castro and Nicolas Ordonez, the docu-feature builds an intimate portrait of of a woman who was recruited by Colombias guerrilla at the age of 13 and now, at 28, works in a government reinsertion program for ex-combatants.

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mini fist pump

In a small basement room in Soho, central London, Kate Evans  a casting director with more than 20 years experience  and I sat on a brown sofa, surrounded by camera equipment.

In front of us was a white screen, and a table covered in food.

We were at a casting session for a TV ad for a well-known restaurant chain, which I agreed not to name.

Cameraman Oggi, a filmmaker from Norway, was next to us. He explained that he films advertising auditions to pay the bills, while sending movies to film festivals, where he hopes his own work will get noticed.

The film industry is notoriously difficult to break into for actors and filmmakers alike. Even after years of drama school and promising auditions, many aspiring performers are left with their dreams of fame and riches in tatters.

Fortunately, you don't need well-honed acting skills to get screen time and earn a thick wage packet from commercials, the co-founder of Kate and Lou Casting told Business Insider.

Evans explained that being too well-trained can actually hinder your chances of getting a role in an ad.

"Lots of people are trained in theater and drama schools for years, so they act everything. In commercials, they just need to be themselves," she said.

Actors can earn up to $30,000 from a single commercial

It's a lucrative business. Actors in the UK used to be paid by the "repeat fee system," according to how many times the ad was played. However, that was replaced by a buyout system, where actors and companies agree on a set fee.

Kate Evans.JPG

Starring in just one TV commercial, you can earn anywhere between 2,000 (about $3,000) and 20,000 (about $30,000) from a buyout.

The exact amount "depends on the product, the marketing space, and the media space," Evans said.

Celebrities can earn far more by endorsing products on ads, but, rather than being cast by people like Evans, they are approached directly by ad agencies.

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Before the actresses entered the room we were sat in to audition for the role, Evans explained how the process works.

About 400 people had applied for the part in the ad.

Evans reduced this to the shortlist of 12 that we would meet that day.

Afterwards, the video director re-watches the auditions and then decides who gets the part. "We dont need to re-cast very often," Evans told me.

They were looking for a young woman with a "rock 'n' roll attitude", who was prepared to dye her hair, and get tattoos. For the audition, each woman had to dance to a '70s punk track while putting together an item from the chain's menu.

During each audition, Evans was a ball of energy, jumping out of her seat and dancing to the music to encourage the actresses.

"It's my job to get the best out of every single person who walks through my door," Evans said.

Evans gave everyone three takes, asking them to adjust their performance each time.

Often Evans asked them to look into her eyes and "flirt." Other times she told them to smile more, or dance less.

Understandably, some of the actresses struggled to perfect the balance between dancing and cooking, but the casting director did not utter a single negative word during the auditions. Instead, her enthusiasm could be measured by whether something was "amazing" or simply "good."

"I constantly spend my time chasing people down the road"

In the pause between auditions, Evans kept asking me if I thought the last person was a trained actress, model or a "street person."

Evans is a passionate advocate for giving roles to "street people"  normal people that have not applied for the part.

Evans spots these people in the street or reaches them online, often through Twitter.

dentist chair

"I constantly spend my time chasing people down the road. I jump off trains and I'm like, 'Please talk to me. I'm a casting director and you've got a great look.' I don't stop working," Evans said. "Thats the best part of my job."

She explained that you don't even need to be good looking to star in adverts.

"No, my dads not good looking at all, its characters," Evans said. "I got my dad to do a Pizza Hut advert. They needed an old mans mouth and my Dad is old and craggy."

I left the auditions, half-annoyed my "look" wasn't interesting enough to get scouted.

Then I passed corridors lined with hopefuls with bright blue hair, phenomenal bone structure, and striking clothes, and I understood why.

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From Esquire

"For private-sector bigots, it is now open season," Henry Rollins declared in his LA Weekly column eviscerating North Carolina Republican Governor Patrick McCrory and the state's House Bill 2, a law which prohibits trans individuals from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity.

In addition to being a badass punk rocker and A+ gingerbread house decorator, Rollins is a motivational speaker and commentator. He's also a fan of North Carolina, where he says he spent a few summers as a child.

"Judging from the people of the state I have met over almost 50 years, I can't believe they are pleased with House Bill 2. They probably are wondering how they got to where they are now," he wrote.

Of North Carolina's governor, Rollins said:

He will be dimly remembered as the asshole who signed that fucked-up bill that embarrassed the majority of North Carolinians... Gov. McCrory will no doubt be getting more bad news as money big and small either leaves the state or goes around it... HB2 is now law. There is no 'walking it back.' If McCrory eventually caves and tries to repeal it, everyone will know it's because he values money over his homophobia, which he has poorly disguised as moral rectitude and common sense. Either way he's fucked.

Indeed.
Paris (AFP) - The chances of reaching agreement over an ambitious US-EU free trade deal are "fading", France's minister of state for foreign trade said on Tuesday.

Asked about the likelihood of such a deal being reached before the end of US President Barack Obama's term in January 2017, Matthias Fekl told France's RTL: "No, I don't think so. The likelihood, or risk, of reaching any accord is fading."

His remarks were made a day after US and European negotiators began a 13th round of talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in New York, which are expected to last a week.

Fekl is France's envoy to the talks.

TTIP aims to ease non-trade barriers and harmonise bureaucratic rules that impede commerce and investment between the European Union and the United States.

Should the agreement succeed, it would create the world's largest free-trade zone.

Earlier this week, US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a joint pitch for more transatlantic trade, vowing to complete the US-EU pact in the face of mounting opposition in Europe.

On the eve of his visit, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Germany against the proposed pact which has raised fears it would erode ecological and labour market standards, and in protest over the secrecy shrouding the talks.

TTIP also face a threat in the form of a British referendum on exiting the EU which is to take place in June.

As one of the largest trading economies of the bloc, Britain would play a major role in the pact, but if it votes to leave the EU, it could deal a devastating blow to TTIP's prospects.

It has also invoked growing anti-free trade talk in the US presidential election race and growing suspicions among the American public because details of the talks are secret.
15,580 workers were laid off last year.

Dont look now, but the city-states workers are being laid off at financial crises rates, as business restructurings are aggravated by the soft economy.

According to a report by OCBC, manufacturing (offshore and marine, construction) and services (legal and accounting services, financial and insurance services) sectors most adversely affected.

OCBC added that PMETs who are tertiary educated, in their 30s and 40s are most at risk.

Figures also show that it is becoming more difficult for retrenched workers to re-enter the workforce. 66% of residents made redundant in the first nine months of 2015 secured employment by December 2015, a decline from comparable figure in 2014, OCBC said.

Meanwhile, OCBC said 70% of the laid-off workers found jobs in a different sector, suggesting that they were able to re-enter the workforce. However, the wages they receive is significantly lower.





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KIEV, Ukraine -- Rusty machines from the old abandoned amusement park stand still, as they have for the past 30 years. The squeaky carcass of an observation wheel rests nearby. Grass and trees grow through the asphalt of streets and the windows of nearby houses.

The scene of desolation is from modern-day Pripyat, the town in northern Ukraine near the border with Belarus that was built to serve the people working at the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The town was once home to 50,000 people, but has been abandoned for three decades following what remains the world's worst nuclear accident.

The views from Pripyat appear apocalyptic, but viewers are safe; they are part of an ambitious multimedia and virtual reality video project created by a team of young tech professionals who worked with independent Ukrainian cinematographers, sound designers and coding professionals to mark the 30th anniversary of nuclear disaster. " Chornobyl 360," a traveling vitual exhibition, will consist of an interactive documentary, photographs and a virtual reality exhibition.

The goal, says the producer of the project, is to provide people a safe way to view life inside the exclusion zone, the 1,000-square mile area around Chernobyl where public access is tightly restricted. Western organizations typically refer to the complex using the Anglicized spelling with an "e."

"My idea was to provide an opportunity to explore what is happening in the exclusion zone for everyone who's interested with no risk of radiation," says Kirill Pokutnyy, the author and the producer of the project.

The idea came to Pokutnyy six years ago, as a way to mark the 25th anniversary of the nuclear tragedy, however then it was too expensive to make his dream come true. However, in 2014 the technology became affordable and Pokutnyy decided to revisit his idea with the team of high-tech workers from his company.

Personal ties to disaster

On Saturday, April 26, 1986, a fire and explosion at Chernobyl's reactor No. 4 released radiation into the air, contaminating regions across Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. At least 30 people died from the disaster, and the radioactive plume drifted across parts of Europe. By the end of that first weekend, tens of thousands of people living around the nuclear complex were evacuated from their homes. The three remaining reactors continued to operate following the accident. Two of those reactors shut down in the 1990s and by 2000, all four reactors were shut down.

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Pokutnyy and his crew have ties to the nuclear disaster. Pokutnyy was born in 1986, the year of the accident and his father worked in exclusion zone. All members of his crew have relatives and friends who suffered from the tragedy.

[READ: A Ukrainian describes the disaster and its aftermath.]

Pokutnyy says he visited the exclusion zone in April of 2015, equipped with a camera produced by a 3D printer that can shoot 360-degree videos. The crew spent almost a month in the zone, speaking to residents of nearby villages, as well as firefighters, engineers and construction workers from across the world visiting the zone. Specialists from different countries have been finishing the construction of the New Safe Confinement -- a gigantic steel enclosure that will cover reactor No. 4 that will prevent the leaking of radioactive material into the environment. The structure, roughly 350 feet high and 500 feet long, is expected to be placed over the damaged reactor sometime late next year.

Pokutnyy calls construction of the $3 billion confinement project, which will move the enclosure along a track to cover the reactor and then use robotic arms to destroy the damaged reactor, the project of the century.

The first part of the documentary in "Chornobyl 360" will examine placing the confinement structure over the sarcophagus. Pokutnyy and his crew will provide the public the opportunity to see construction, listen to the professionals' interviews and even fly over the reactor No. 4. "We put a camera on the drone and shoot from the sky," he says.

Although radiation levels inside the exclusion zone have fallen since 1986, the risk of being exposed to the allowed limit, about 30 micro-roentgen per hour, is still possible.

"Some of the staff workers have a 15-minute working day there," says Pokutnyy.

Explore every corner of the exclusion zone

Pokutnyy's company has already spent about $30,000 for the Chornobyl 360 project, with funding partially coming from a private donor. Pokutnyy has launched a fund-raising campaign to collect another $30,000.

On April 8, the first interactive exhibition dedicated to Chernobyl was opened in America House in Kiev.

[FROM THE ARCHIVES: Could a nuclear disaster happen in the U.S.?]

The virtual reality equipment allows the viewer to freely move and turn, providing a realistic feel of being in the evacuated area: Pripyat, the nuclear waste storage facility, the new safe confinement structure and the abandoned village of Paryshev. Enhanced sound and contributions for notable Ukrainian photographer Ivan Chernichkin will enhance the experience, Pokutnyy says.

The photo and virtual exhibition is only the first part of the "Chornobyl 360" project. Future plans include an app for smartphones, to make the project accessible worldwide. Creators plan to make an anthology of Chornobyl stories that show people, nature and other little-seen aspects of life inside the exclusion zone.

On May 25, the Chornobyl 360 exhibition will come to Canada. Organizers also plan to bring it to U.S, as soon as they find partners, interested in it.

Veronika Melkozerova is a journalist based in Kiev, Ukraine, and a staff writer at the Kyiv Post. You can follow her on Twitter here.
From Road & Track

Before "crossovers" were cars, the term was used for a certain kind of music: Inoffensive, watered-down dreck meant to appeal to as many listeners as possible without jostling their sensibilities. To anyone with decent musical taste, it's a pejorative term. Its use to describe steadfastly bland five-door family haulers is glumly accurate.

The Chevy Suburban, then, is the anti-crossover. I don't just mean that it's big and boxy in a sea of midsize two- and three-row blobs. It's a philosophical difference: While so many family trucksters try to be everything at once (sport sedan, station wagon, off-roader), the 2016 Suburban follows the same marching orders as the first one did in 1935, ten truck generations ago.

I took the Suburban you see here on a weekend trip to visit my youngest brother at college, five long-legged members of my immediate family buckled in for a sunny Saturday jaunt to Syracuse, New York. With the optional captain's chair second row, the seven-passenger 'Burban is so roomy, five strangers could ride all day without ever having to strike up a single conversation.

This LTZ-spec model was just about as loaded as a Suburban can get, with leather, 4G Wi-Fi, and a host of driver assistance and safety features. Black-and-polished 22-inch wheels, a dealer-installed option at $3000, gave some pizzaz to the Slate Gray Metallic paint, a shade I would otherwise find a little too "state government fleet vehicle" to be cool.

All this makes for a luxurious workhorse. Loaded down with the family, the Suburban's 5.3-liter, 355-hp V8 sounded exactly like it did in every U-Haul box truck I've ever rented. The oddly-placed manual shift toggle at the end of the column shifter discourages shifting for yourself, which is fine because the six-speed auto box is excellent. A GMC Yukon Denali or Cadillac Escalade with the 420-hp 6.2-liter and the eight-speed auto from the Corvette will no doubt be quicker, but the big Chevy always has adequate acceleration on tap. With the cruise control set to 68 on an uncrowded Route 81, the EPA's 22 mpg rating was easily attained.

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The single most important feature that comes on the LTZ model is GM's excellent Magnetic Ride Control adaptive suspension. It does near-miraculous work of keeping the ride smooth, banishing any of the wallowing see-saw motion that made riding in the third row such a queasy novelty as a kid. It's a shame how quickly you grow accustomed to the pillowy ride-it takes switching to another vehicle altogether to realize just what GM's chassis engineers have accomplished here.

That suspension system is a perfect example of the philosophy I was talking about. Magnetic Ride Control was first developed for GM's wildest performance models, calibrated to soak up a mid-corner bump (or some track curbing) and go back to race car firm nearly instantaneously. No doubt, the system worked just as hard on the hideously unmaintained roads of my northeast rust belt jaunt as a Camaro's would on a race track.

But here's the thing: There's no "Sport" button in the Suburban. No phony-baloney "Performance" mode. And, thank heavens, no paddle shifters. In a world where Land Rover makes an SUV that laps the Nurburgring faster than an E46 BMW M3, that's a welcome relief.

Because there's something insincere about cars that attempt to do it all. Even when they're successful, like Land Rover's 'bahn-stormer, or Germany's small crossovers that are more rally car than CUV, they're compromised. No matter how you drive a genre-blurring car, you're simultaneously missing out on some untapped capability while only getting a portion of that moment's full experience.

Sure, the Suburban is compromised in its own ways. At nearly 19 feet long, it's a bear to park, despite light electric-boosted steering, an admirably tight turning radius, and cameras galore. A deep and mostly hidden front air dam and mom-approved ride height preclude any real off-roading, and even a base model (with three rows of three-person bench seats!) will set you back more than $50,000. The example I drove stickers at nearly $75,000, a number that surely causes sweat stains on the chairs at Chevy dealers nationwide.

But the Suburban of 2016 still follows the formula, if not the exact recipe, of the first Chevrolet that wore that name more than 80 years ago: A roomy, upright rig, built on truck underpinnings, meant to ferry people and cargo in large quantities and with a modicum of backcountry comfort.

If that's not a tune you like, may I suggest something from the crossover catalog.
SANTIAGO, April 26 (Reuters) - A sharp jump in the jobless rate in Chile's capital city Santiago is "certainly not good news", central bank president Rodrigo Vergara said on Tuesday.

The jobless rate in Santiago jumped to a six-year high of 9.4 percent in March, on the back of soft economic growth in the world's top copper exporter, a quarterly poll by the University of Chile showed on Monday.

"It's difficult to jump to conclusions with just one piece of data ... but certainly it is not good news what we saw yesterday in terms of employment data," Vergara told a business forum.

(Reporting by Felipe Iturrieta and Gram Slattery; Writing by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Santiago (AFP) - Chile paid homage to Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda as it prepared to rebury him Tuesday after examining his body to determine whether he was assassinated by the country's former dictatorship.

A court in February ordered that Neruda's remains be returned to his tomb after they were examined by specialists who are expected to release their findings in May.

His coffin, covered with a red, white and blue Chilean flag, lay in state in the Congress in Santiago on Monday after being transferred from the forensic medical service where it was examined.

It was due to be returned on Tuesday to the Isla Negra, a coastal area in central Chile where Neruda was previously buried according to his will, facing the Pacific Ocean.

Neruda died in 1973, just days after General Augusto Pinochet seized power in a coup.

Doubts have surrounded the cause of his death since his former driver claimed the poet was given an injection in his chest at the Santiago clinic where he was being treated for prostate cancer.

"I feel proud that they listened to me once and for all," the driver, Manuel Araya, told AFP.

Neruda had been planning to leave for Mexico to lead the opposition to Pinochet's regime, but died hours after the injection. He was 69.

The cause of death was given as advanced prostate cancer, but in 2013 officials exhumed his body to determine whether he had been poisoned.

The lawyer who brought the case to have the remains examined, Eduardo Contreras, told AFP the results of the analysis were expected in May.

He warned that since so much time had passed since Neruda's death there was a risk the tests would fail to be conclusive.

"Even though all the evidence points to a crime, it will be technically very difficult to prove," he said.

But "anyone who sees the thousands of volumes of evidence" will conclude that Neruda was assassinated, he added.

Pinochet, who ousted Socialist president Salvador Allende in a coup, installed a regime that killed some 3,200 opponents over 17 years.
By Winni Zhou

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will offer 2 billion yuan, or $308 million (212 million pounds), in subsidies to public hospitals in 100 trial cities, the State Council, or cabinet, said in an announcement on 2016 health care reform goals on Tuesday.

It also called for strict control of medical costs, with local governments told to set levels for reasonable increases by the end of June.

It urged an increase to 450 yuan in the average per capita government subsidy for basic health insurance, better medical services in underdeveloped regions and improved medicine supply, pricing and quality controls.

(Reporting by Winni Zhou Writing by Elias Glenn; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has banned drug wholesalers from selling vaccines, state media said on Monday, after a scandal in which about $90 million worth of improperly stored vaccines was suspected of being sold illegally in dozens of provinces. China is pushing ambitious healthcare reforms to improve its home-made medicines, but the vaccine scandal underscores the challenge facing the world's second-largest drug market in regulating its fragmented supply chain. The new rules, signed by Premier Li Keqiang and adopted on Saturday, toughen requirements for distribution of non-compulsory vaccines, the official Xinhua news agency said. They require county health officials to get the vaccines directly from manufacturers before sending them to hospitals, instead of going through wholesalers, it added. Hospitals, clinics and government health authorities must also keep better records of purchases and inventory, with regular monitoring of vaccine temperatures, records of which hospitals must request upon receiving the vaccines. The rules hike fines for improper handling of vaccines, and prescribe the sacking of government officials guilty of violations, Xinhua said. The government plans to set up an electronic vaccine tracking system, it added, but gave no details. Chinese authorities punished hundreds of officials in the aftermath of the vaccine scandal, which involved millions of illegal trades of vaccines through a blackmarket drugs ring, and ignited public anger. The vaccines, including ones against meningitis, rabies and other illnesses, are suspected of being sold around China since 2011. They were all "category 2" vaccines, meaning they were sold on the private market. China's drug regulator said on its website on Monday that it has passed the cases of two firms, Hebei Shanggu Shengwu Technology and Shaanxi Bangxin Shengwu, to the police after suspecting them of illegal behavior. It has also revoked the licenses of two other companies and plans to cancel the licenses of 41 more, the China Food and Drug Administration said, adding that all 45 firms were selling vaccines to non-qualified units and fabricating vaccine sales records. Hebei Shanggu Shengwu Technology and Shaanxi Bangxin Shengwu did not answer Reuters' calls for comment. (Reporting by Megha Rajagopalan; Additional reporting by Brenda Goh in SHANGHAI; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has banned drug wholesalers from selling vaccines, state media said on Monday, after a scandal in which about $90 million worth of improperly stored vaccines was suspected of being sold illegally in dozens of provinces. China is pushing ambitious healthcare reforms to improve its home-made medicines, but the vaccine scandal underscores the challenge facing the world's second-largest drug market in regulating its fragmented supply chain. The new rules, signed by Premier Li Keqiang and adopted on Saturday, toughen requirements for distribution of non-compulsory vaccines, the official Xinhua news agency said. They require county health officials to get the vaccines directly from manufacturers before sending them to hospitals, instead of going through wholesalers, it added. Hospitals, clinics and government health authorities must also keep better records of purchases and inventory, with regular monitoring of vaccine temperatures, records of which hospitals must request upon receiving the vaccines. The rules hike fines for improper handling of vaccines, and prescribe the sacking of government officials guilty of violations, Xinhua said. The government plans to set up an electronic vaccine tracking system, it added, but gave no details. Chinese authorities punished hundreds of officials in the aftermath of the vaccine scandal, which involved millions of illegal trades of vaccines through a blackmarket drugs ring, and ignited public anger. [nL3N16V19Y] [nL3N17G3G0] The vaccines, including ones against meningitis, rabies and other illnesses, are suspected of being sold around China since 2011. They were all "category 2" vaccines, meaning they were sold on the private market. [nL3N17I1WR] China's drug regulator said on its website on Monday that it has passed the cases of two firms, Hebei Shanggu Shengwu Technology and Shaanxi Bangxin Shengwu, to the police after suspecting them of illegal behaviour. It has also revoked the licenses of two other companies and plans to cancel the licenses of 41 more, the China Food and Drug Administration said, adding that all 45 firms were selling vaccines to non-qualified units and fabricating vaccine sales records. Hebei Shanggu Shengwu Technology and Shaanxi Bangxin Shengwu did not answer Reuters' calls for comment. (Reporting by Megha Rajagopalan; Additional reporting by Brenda Goh in SHANGHAI; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
DisneyLife may be coming to an untimely end in China.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and Walt Disney Co. announced a multiyear licensing agreement to bring the over-the-top (OTT) service to Chinese subscribers in December.

But China's media regulators have already demanded that it be shut down, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Alibaba Group says DisneyLife is "down for an upgrade" and that it is issuing refunds to subscribers. But according to the Journal's sources, China's media regulators requested the suspension.

Read More: China's Alibaba Pictures to Remake 'Night at the Museum'

An experiment in cable unbundling, DisneyLife allows users to connect directly to Disney content, including films, cartoon series and games. All the service requires is an internet connection and a special Mickey Mouse-shaped digital device, which Alibaba began selling in China in December for $123 (799 yuan). The service launched in the U.K. around the same time last year.

The first quarter of 2016 has brought a tightening of control to China's digital media sector. In March, Beijing introduced potentially stringent but vaguely worded restrictions on online publishing, particularly by foreign firms.

Last week, regulators required Apple Inc. to shutter the iBooks and iMovies components of the iTunes store in China. Apple says it hopes to get the services reinstated soon.

The sudden closures could be an ominous sign for the technology and entertainment giants, which have both achieved considerably more market access in China than their competitors. Disney is set to unveil its $5.5 billion Shanghai Disney Resort in June, and Apple has reported strong sales for the iPhone in China over the past two years. Both companies have emphasized to shareholders that China is integral to their future growth.

Read More: 'Captain America: Civil War' Director Joe Russo on the Film Industry's Chinese Future (Q&A)
BEIJING (Reuters) - China is set to pass a law governing foreign non-government organizations, after state media said legislators recommended it be put to a vote following adjustments to some provisions criticized by foreign governments and civil society groups. The proposed law is part of a raft of legislation, including China's counterterrorism law and a draft cyber security law, put forward amid a renewed crackdown on dissent by President Xi Jinping's administration. The United States, Canada and the European Union have urged China to revise the draft NGO law, earlier versions of which gave broad latitude to the police to regulate activities and funding of overseas groups operating in China. Critics had argued it was too vague and could severely limit the operations of social and environmental advocacy groups, besides business organizations and academia. In a sign of its likely adoption, the law committee of China's largely rubber stamp National People's Congress (NPC) recommended that the bill be voted on during a regular session of the NPC Standing Committee, which meets from Monday to Thursday, the official Xinhua news agency said. "Exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and overseas colleges, hospitals and research institutes of science and engineering will follow existing regulations," the official Xinhua news agency said. The latest version of the draft also removes a limit of only one office for NGOs in mainland China and "deletes the five-year limit on operations of representative offices in China", Xinhua said. "They will be allowed to open offices according to operational needs, but the number and locations must be approved by the regulatory authority," it added. Tougher rules had been imposed on sources of funds, expenses and revenues, it said. "Overseas NGOs, which engage in illegal activities, including those to subvert the state and split the nation, will be blacklisted and banned from operating in the mainland." The most recent version of the draft law had not yet been released and the status of its controversial provisions was not clear. China has arrested scores of human rights lawyers across the country and tightened control over almost every aspect of civil society since 2012, citing the need to shore up national security and stability. China consistently rejects any criticism of its human rights record, saying it adheres to the rule of law. (The online version of this story was corrected to fix the spelling of Xi Jinping in the second paragraph.) (Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's top steel making province will ban the reopening of steel mills that had been previously ordered to shut down, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Tuesday, as soaring steel prices lure back producers.

Provincial authorities in Hebei also pledged to step up monitoring of steel mills, punish closed mills that reopen and investigate and sack local officials who allow the reopening of mills and approve illegal projects, Xinhua said.

Hebei accounts for just under a quarter of steel production in China, by far the world's top steel producer and consumer.

A jump in steel prices this year has encouraged many producers in China to rekindle their furnaces and ramp up production, potentially exacerbating a global steel glut that has sparked trade friction with other producers including the United States, Britain and Australia.

Some mills in China have been ordered to close as part of the government's efforts to trim overcapacity. Xinhua quoted a notice from the Hebei government as saying officials were not allowed to permit these facilities to restart production "under any circumstances."

Other mills, facing losses, cooling demand and tighter credit conditions, have trimmed output or suspended production for economic reasons. It was not clear if these mills were included in the ban on resuming production.

Australia said on Saturday it would impose duties on certain types of Chinese steel to protect domestic steelmakers, while the United States and seven other countries called earlier this month for urgent action to address global overcapacity.

Chinese steel futures (SRBcv1) have jumped more than 50 percent so far in 2016 after six straight years of losses. Dalian iron ore futures (DCIOcv1) have risen about 55 percent since the beginning of this year, as investors bet the government will take more measures to stimulate the economy.

Despite Beijing's efforts to cut surplus Chinese steel capacity and pressure from other countries to cut exports, China's steel output rose to a record in March while its steel shipments rose 30 percent from a year ago.

Story continues

China has a total crude steel capacity of 1.13 billion tonnes, but produced about 800 million tonnes of crude steel last year, suggesting more than 300 million tonnes of surplus capacity.

The country plans to shed 100-150 million tonnes of domestic crude steel capacity in the next five years, and another 500 million tonnes of surplus coal production, in a bid to tackle huge capacity overhangs that have saddled domestic firms with losses and debts.

(Reporting by Ruby Lian and John Ruwitch; Editing by Richard Pullin)
Vanessa Hicks(MONTEREY, Calif.) -- Professional photographer and U.S. Navy veteran Vanessa Hicks was brainstorming how to mark April as Month of the Military Child in her photography business when her own two daughters provided inspiration.

I looked at my daughters playing dress-up in their rooms and the idea came to me, Hicks, 30, of Monterey, California, told ABC News.

Hicks decided to host Military Tea Time photography sessions in which military moms and dads in their dress uniforms would have a tea party with their sons and daughters while Hicks captured it all on camera.

I thought itd be awesome to have the kids having a tea time with the one person they look up to the most, she said. Military members are our nations heroes, but at the end of the day, to these little kids, thats just their hero, their mom or dad.

Hicks set up the first tea time sessions with her own husband, Lt. Navy Officer Josh Hick, and their daughters, Jasmine, 9, and Tatyana, 7, and a group of friends and photography clients.

The sessions, held in a field in the military-heavy Monterey community, have proven so popular that Hicks has extended the offer. She hopes to photograph her first military mom and son duo soon.

The dads and daughters just talk about their day, pour tea and eat cookies and cupcakes, Hicks said of the 30-minute photo sessions, which feature water in place of tea. And I just document it. I dont pose them.

Hicks described the military dads as being not too sure at first as they sit in too-small chairs with a tea set before them, but they quickly warm up to the idea.

I take pictures behind the dads' shoulders to capture the girls' faces and if the dads are seeing what Im seeing, they see their daughters' face light up, she said.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Shanghai (AFP) - A gigantic robotic arm capable of lifting an entire chassis at a General Motors plant in Shanghai is the US automaker's secret weapon as it seeks to sell "Made in China" cars to America.

The yellow machine -- dubbed "Fanuc" by workers after its maker -- can lift a one-tonne object and is being used to transport large parts in the body shop of the Cadillac plant.

GM hopes its high-tech approach will persuade American consumers to put aside quality concerns and safety worries over Chinese-made products, and other manufacturers hope to follow in its tracks -- including Chinese firms themselves -- as the auto industry globalises further.

GM and its Chinese partner SAIC earlier this year opened the $1.2 billion Cadillac factory to produce luxury vehicles, including the plug-in hybrid version of its CT6 sedan, which will be sold in both China and the United States.

The US automaker has also announced plans to export to its home market a mid-size SUV, the Buick Envision, made in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong -- prompting condemnation from US unions.

GM China's president Matt Tsien said the Shanghai plant is as cutting-edge as any of its facilities in the United States.

"It has, I would say, some of the most advanced manufacturing technologies and capabilities in the auto industry today. The whole purpose of putting all the advanced technology into manufacturing is to build great cars," he said.

Analysts say GM's size and strength might just convince potential customers.

"The 'Made in China' is not that much of a stumbling block. It's who is making it in China," Namrita Chow, principal analyst for IHS Automotive in London, told AFP.

Some major global companies are already manufacturing products or components in China, notably Apple's iPhone and several parts for Boeing's Next Generation 737.

Doing so allows them to take advantage of China's much lower labour costs but even so, Chow said transport costs and import tariffs have to be taken into account before it makes financial sense for companies -- both foreign-invested and domestic -- to manufacture in China and sell elsewhere.

Story continues

GM is looking to Cadillac to challenge German dominance in the Chinese luxury segment, while Beijing is seeking to develop the electric car industry with incentives and other government support, creating potential economies of scale for manufacturers.

"The overall (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) market, the predominant volume is going to be here in China," said GM's Tsien.

"From a standpoint of logic, it would make sense to manufacture in one location and export small quantities into other parts of the world."

- National champion -

GM is not the only company producing in China and hoping to sell into developed markets: Chinese auto makers have long held such dreams themselves.

China built its auto sector with the help of foreign companies, who must enter into joint ventures with domestic firms to produce vehicles in what is now the world's largest auto market.

The government wants its companies to move up the value chain to develop their own brands that can gain traction overseas.

But sales so far have largely been in developing countries, rather than the coveted US market and Europe, where vehicles must both pass government muster and appeal to sophisticated consumers.

Chinese manufacturers going abroad tend to downplay their roots and stress their international credentials instead.

Geely, owner of Swedish carmaker Volvo, sells cars in Russia and Turkey and the company said last month that it was considering producing in western Europe.

Buyers in the Middle East "were not worried that this was a Chinese brand", said spokesman Ash Sutcliffe. "They looked past the Chinese heritage of the company", focusing on "value for the money".

"In China we really push it on the Chinese-ness of the car," he added. "In international markets... it's affordable premium."

State-owned Guangzhou Automobile Group Co. has a sales presence in the Middle East and is also considering setting up production in Russia and Iran, according to state media.

Chery Automobile Co. has just relaunched cars assembled in Egypt with a local partner and is eyeing the African market.

"We see Africa as a market with huge potential," Chery International president He Xiaoqing told state media.

China exported 755,500 vehicles of all types last year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers -- down 20 percent from 2014 and little more than three percent of total domestic production.

But the largely state-owned firms are competing for a bigger prize than just sales, analysts say -- the chance to be picked by Beijing as a future national champion to lead the Chinese fight in a global market.

"Chinese actors are making a point of exporting and have bought some companies to mark themselves out from the pack to the government and show that they deserve to be the consolidator," said Laurent Petizon, automotive expert at consultancy AlixPartners.

"To do that it's important to show you have an impact abroad," he added. "But it's still symbolic for now."
(Adds details on promotions, analyst comment)

By Lisa Baertlein

LOS ANGELES, April 26 (Reuters) - Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc reported its first ever quarterly loss, after food giveaways failed to lure back large numbers of paying customers turned off by a string of food safety lapses last year.

Shares of the Denver-based burrito chain fell almost 5 percent after the first quarter results.

Sales at established Chipotle restaurants fell 29.7 percent during the quarter as the company gave away over 6 million free burritos and bowls of food as well as nearly 1 million free orders of chips and salsa or guacamole, Chief Financial Officer Jack Hartung said on a conference call with analysts.

He said Chipotle plans to move away from freebies and toward buy-one-get-one-free offers. It is also planning deals designed to get its most loyal customers to return as frequently as they did before the food safety crisis, which included outbreaks of E. coli, salmonella and norovirus.

"While Chipotle claims that its sales are on a gradual path to recovery, the results from the first quarter of its new fiscal year suggest otherwise," said Hakon Helgesen, retail analyst at Conlumino.

Shares in Chipotle have lost about one-third of their value since food safety woes surfaced with news it had closed dozens of restaurants in the Pacific Northwest due to an E. coli outbreak. The stock was down 4.8 percent at $424.76 in extended trading on Tuesday.

Sales at established restaurants are down about 26 percent so far in April. They bottomed in January, tumbling 36 percent that month.

The chain reported a net loss of $26.4 million, or 88 cents per share, as weak sales and costs related to food giveaways, safety testing and waste dinged results. The loss was less steep than the 95 cent per-share shortfall analysts had expected, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

"I would not expect a loss in the second quarter," Hartung said, noting that the company expects costs to ease.

Story continues

Chipotle has sent out millions of coupons for free food, promotions potentially valued at more than $62 million.

Bearish analysts have warned that such deals could train diners to hold out for gratis grub, while bulls say they are convincing diners that it is safe to eat at the chain.

Still, executives have conceded that Chipotle may never fully recover. Company founder and co-Chief Executive Steve Ells on March 16 estimated that 5 percent to 7 percent of infrequent customers may never return.

(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; editing by Andrew Hay)
(Adds details on results and Ripple Brand deal)

April 26 (Reuters) - Hershey Co, the maker of Hershey's Kisses and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, reported a steeper-than-expected drop in net sales for the third quarter in a row, hurt by weak demand in North America, the chocolate maker's biggest market.

The company also said it bought barkTHINS chocolate maker Ripple Brand Collective LLC for an undisclosed amount.

BarkTHINS, which has a non-GMO certification and uses no artificial flavors or preservatives, is expected to record sales of about $65 million to $75 million in 2016, Hershey said.

Hershey's net sales in North America, which accounts for about 85 percent of total sales, fell 4.3 percent, in the first quarter ended April 3, notching their first decline in five quarters.

Consumers in the United States are increasingly becoming more calorie-conscious. They have also developed a taste for premium chocolate such as Lindt & Spruengli, partly offseting the extra cost with less frequent purchases.

Hershey's total sales fell 5.6 percent to $1.83 billion, while analysts were expecting $1.90 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net income fell to $229.8 million, or $1.06 per share, from $244.7 million, or $1.10 per share. Excluding items, it earned $1.10 per share.

(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Savio D'Souza)
Chris Martin and Heather Graham enjoyed a fun, barefoot stroll along the beach in Malibu, California on Sunday, and the pair couldn't have looked happier.

The Coldplay frontman and the actress were all smiles as they chatted while walking up and down the sandy shore of Paradise Cove -- with Martin rocking a bright blue sweatshirt and black sweatpants and Graham donning a flowy, low-cut sundress and wide-brimmed hat.

AKM-GSI

WATCH: Gwyneth Paltrow Says Chris Martin Is Now Like Her 'Brother'

It's unclear how the two know each other, but they sure seemed to be enjoying each other's company. According to an eyewitness, the pair left a residence near the beach and walked together for nearly a mile and half before returning to the house.

Martin, 39, is currently in between shows on Coldplay's A Head Full of Dreams World Tour. The band is set to resume its tour on May 24 in Nice, France.

WATCH: Chris Martin and James Corden Take a Road Trip

Martin recently opened up about his spilt from Gwyneth Paltrow in March 2014, explaining how he suffered from a "year of depression" after their divorce. Check out the video below to hear more from the English musician.

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(Adds Breakingviews link)

NEW YORK, April 26 (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc shareholders on Tuesday approved of the company's compensation of executives and also sided with directors in rejecting a call for a special study of breaking up the big bank.

In the so-called "say-on-pay" referendum, 63.6 percent of votes were cast to approve 2015 compensation awards, according to a preliminary count announced by the company at its annual general meeting in Miami.

Proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services Inc and Glass, Lewis & Co had recommended investors vote against approving last year's payouts to executives.

The firms had said it was wrong for CEO Mike Corbat to have received a 27 percent increase in annual compensation, which boosted his total for 2015 to $16.5 million, even though the bank's shareholder returns have lagged competitors.

Directors had said that Corbat delivered more improvements in company financial performance than were shown in the stock price in 2015. They also said Corbat's pay should rebound from having been docked the year before because of past regulatory capital issues and fraud in a business in Mexico.

In another vote, only 3.5 percent of votes cast favored a breakup study of the bank, which is the fourth biggest in the United States by assets.

Chairman Mike O'Neill said at the meeting that the company's strategy for its size and scope is based on extensive analysis, including three major studies over the past seven years. Corbat said Citigroup's scale and business mix contribute to annual "operating efficiencies" of $8 billion to $12 billion.

(Reporting by David Henry in New York Editing by W Simon)
ATHENS (Reuters) - Stone-throwing migrants clashed with police at the Moria detention center on the Greek island of Lesbos on Tuesday shortly after the Dutch and Greek migration ministers toured the former army camp. Plumes of smoke billowed from the compound that Pope Francis visited only 10 days ago. A police spokesman said garbage bins in a wing for young migrants had been set on fire and the unrest spread from there. Aid workers said tensions had been building in the camp for days but it was unclear what triggered the unrest in the center, which came soon after a visit by the Dutch and Greek migration ministers, Klaas Dijkhoff and Yiannis Mouzalas. Refugees and migrants have been held at the hillside detention center under terms of a March 20 deal between the European Union and Turkey to stem the migrant flow into Europe. It stipulates that migrants who do not qualify for political asylum must be returned to Turkey. "Riot police are conducting an operation in and out of the camp at the moment," the police spokesman said. Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the Istanbul-based leader of the world's Eastern Orthodox Christians, met migrants begging for help as they toured the Moria camp on April 16. The Roman Catholic pontiff took 12 Syrian refugees, who were living at another open-air camp on Lesbos back to Rome on his airplane. Official data showed there were 4,313 refugees and migrants on Lesbos on Tuesday. The vast majority of them are held at Moria. (Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas; Writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
tamir rice

Cleveland's police union released a statement on Monday afternoon expressing the hope that a settlement for the fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice would go toward educating youth on the dangers of carrying real or fake guns.

The city announced a $6 million settlement early on Monday over the death of Rice, who was killed by Timothy Loehmann, a white police officer, on November 22, 2014, while holding a plastic airsoft gun that had its orange safety tip removed.

"We can only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms," the statement read. "Something positive must come from this tragic loss. That would be educating youth of the dangers of possessing a real or replica firearm."

The Rice family had alleged in its wrongful-death lawsuit that the police officers and dispatchers were reckless in their confrontation with Tamir. Surveillance footage of the incident showed Loehmann firing twice at Tamir within seconds of opening the door of his police cruiser.

Officers were summoned to the scene after a 911 call reported "a guy" pointing a "probably fake" pistol outside a community-recreation center in Cleveland, according to . The caller repeated twice that the pistol was probably "fake," though that information was not relayed to officers on the scene.

In a report on the shooting death, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty noted that Tamir's replica gun "was functionally identical to a real firearm" and "nearly indistinguishable" from an authentic .45 Colt M1911 semiautomatic pistol.

In a press conference in December, McGinty appeared to place part of the blame on Tamir, noting that the child "looked much older" and "had been warned" that the pellet gun he was holding "might get him into trouble" that day.

A grand jury declined last year to indict Loehmann and the other officer involved  a decision that renewed national debate about law-enforcement accountability and police officers' use of lethal force.

Story continues

The Cleveland police union's statement, addressed merely to "Media," noted Rice's death as a tragedy for the Rice family, "as well as our involved Officers and their families."

The statement prompted swift online backlash, with users taking to Twitter to berate the union for insinuating that the fatal shooting was Rice's fault for carrying a toy gun:

Shorter Cleveland Police Union: "I hope you use this settlement from us shooting your son dead to teach kids how to not get shot dead."  Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) April 25, 2016

uhm, the Cleveland Police union should just STFU...seriously... https://t.co/OevwE0WIR1  jimmy williams (@Jimmyspolitics) April 25, 2016

Piers Morgan: "Watch this fire Beyonce take, I'm going to be most tone deaf internet person today."

Cleveland Police Union: "Not so fast..."  Sarah Kogod (@SarahKogod) April 25, 2016

Maybe the Cleveland Police Union could spend some of their own money to teach cops not to shoot innocent little kids playing in a park.  Lisa (@notmuchelse) April 25, 2016

Here's the full statement:

Loomis statement

NOW WATCH: A police officer who went undercover as a prisoner says the inmates shared this troubling trait





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Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton says that if shes elected president, at least half of her Cabinet will be women.

During a town hall hosted by MSNBC on Monday night, host Rachel Maddow asked Clinton whether she would match a campaign promise Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made good on earlier this year.

He promised when he took office that he would have a Cabinet that was 50 percent women, and then he did it, Maddow said. Would you make that same pledge?

Well, I am going to have a Cabinet that looks like America, the former secretary of state replied. And 50 percent of America is women, right?

President Obamas Cabinet, of which Clinton was once a member, currently comprises seven women and 16 men.

Last week, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said that the former first ladys shortlist of potential running mates will include women, quickly leading to speculation that Clinton will consider Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a popular progressive, for an all-female ticket.

Well start with a broad list and then begin to narrow it, Podesta told the Boston Globe. But there is no question that there will be women on that list.

Hillary Clinton smiles during a campaign stop at City Hall in Philadelphia on Monday. (Photo: Matt Rourke/AP)

The Democratic partys would-be challenger, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, responded on Fox News, accusing Clinton of pandering to female voters.

The only thing shes got is the woman card, Trump said. Id love to see a woman president, but shes the wrong person. Shes a disaster.

Earlier in Mondays town hall, Clinton was asked by a member of the audience what it means to her to be a feminist.

Well, I believe I am a feminist because I believe that women deserve the same rights as men in every aspect of our economy and our society, here at home and around the world, Clinton said to applause. You know, Ive devoted a lot of my public life to advocating for womens rights being human rights, and making the case that we have to do everything we can, through laws, regulations, culture, to change the still-existing stereotypes that hold women back.

She pointed to equal pay, saying its not just a womans issue but something that affects everyone.

If you have a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter who is working and they are not being treated fairly, the whole family suffers, Clinton said.
Hammond (United States) (AFP) - Hillary Clinton took her bid for the White House to the depressed steel belt of Indiana, pledging to revive beleaguered manufacturing and hold China accountable for trade abuses.

The Democratic frontrunner jetted in from Pennsylvania, as it and four other northeastern states voted in the latest round of primaries expected to hand the former secretary of state more big wins over her rival Bernie Sanders.

A very strong showing in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island would put her yet another step closer in her quest to become America's first female commander in chief.

On Tuesday, she had her head down in the Indiana town of Hammond where she was given a guided tour of Munster Steel, a family business founded in 1957 that uses only American steel in production.

She met workers and was given a tutorial on how particular machines were operated. The company specializes in making bascule bridges.

Railing against trade agreements that have cost thousands of American manufacturing jobs have been a cornerstone of Sanders' campaign, and Clinton's Indiana stop was a further sign that she is looking to reach out to his support base and secure their votes in November.

Her visit comes just a week before Indiana votes on May 3, the next nominating contest after Tuesday's five-state primary frenzy.

Clinton has a narrow four-point lead over Sanders among Democrats in the Hoosier state, according to a RealClearPolitics poll average.

"In this campaign, it's important that people not just give speeches and get everybody riled up," she said.

"Give me the specifics, don't just give me the rhetoric and the demagoguery," she added to applause.

She called out Republican frontrunner Donald Trump and his closest rival, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, but stopped short of mentioning Sanders, the 74-year-old self-declared democratic socialist by name.

Clinton, 68, said she is "bewildered" when Trump says wages are too high and called Cruz's anti-union stance "wrong."

Story continues

She addressed hundreds more layoffs expected across Indiana and said the White House must take the lead to challenge business leaders and fend off unfair foreign competition, particularly from China.

- Stand up to China -

The former first lady has promised a $10 billion plan to create more manufacturing jobs if she wins in November.

"I'm going to stand up to both CEOs at home and China abroad," she said. "If they pay their fair share, we'll stand with them, but if they cut and run, they will be made to pay a price."

"As president I will go to bat for all of our trade," she said to applause from company employees and members of their families, vowing to crack down on Chinese companies blamed for dumping steel.

"We're going to use every tool we possibly can against China for their illegal actions."

On a second stop in Mishawaka, Clinton held up AM General, home of the Humvee and the Hummer, an assembly plant for Mercedes Benz that has pioneered a wheelchair accessible car, as an example.

"A German company's vehicles being made here in this great American plant and being exported to China -- so that proves if we are smart and if we are determined, we can outwork and outcompete anybody anywhere."

The decline in US manufacturing resonates particularly strongly in Indiana, a Midwestern state where the Clinton campaign said nearly one in five jobs are in manufacturing.

Hammond and its immediate surrounding area is a blue pocket in a predominantly Republican state, and support for the Clintons here goes back decades.

Fred McCraw, chief union steward at Munster Steel, said he started out backing Sanders and feels more politically aligned to the Vermont senator but will now be voting for Clinton in Indiana's primary.

"I've kind of come around to seeing the practicality of Hillary Clinton being the nominee," the 59-year-old told AFP.

"Not only that, I think she'll make a good president, she'll be able to deal with the Republican Congress better than Bernie would because Bernie would be more starting out green."

McCraw said he still liked Sanders but had been turned off by the senator's determination to become more aggressive and take the gloves off in a campaign that previously revolved around good manners.
Thermal coal producer CNX Coal Resources LPs CNXC first-quarter 2016 adjusted earnings of 11 cents per unit lagged the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 20 cents by a wide 45%.

Revenues

CNX Coals total revenue plunged 38.4% year over year to $47.8 million. Revenues also lagged the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $56 million by 14.6%.

The decline in the top line was primarily due to the depressed commodity price environment and lower realized prices of coal sold from the year-ago quarter.

The quarterly sales volume was 1.1 million tons, down 15.4% y/y, as a milder-than-usual winter and reduced coal generation weighed on the timing of shipments. During the quarter, CNX Coal exported nearly 0.3 million tons of coal, compared to an export of 0.4 million tons a year ago.

Operational Highlights

Average cost of coal sales per ton in the reported quarter was $33.16, down from the year-ago figure of $42.62.The improvement was driven by better productivity, reduced staffing levels, realignment of employee benefits, and idling of one longwall.

The partnerships adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation & amortization (EBITDA) in the quarter were$13.1 million.

Total costs and expenses were $45.3 million, down 24.8% from $60.2 million a year ago, primarily due to lower operating and other costs.

Interest expenses were nearly $2 million, slightly lower than $2.4 million in the prior-year quarter.

Financial Update

As of Mar 31, 2016, CNX Coal had cash of $9.1 million, up from $6.5 million as of Dec 31, 2015.

Total long-term debts as of Mar 31, 2016 were $196.3 million, higher than $181 million as of Dec 31, 2015.

Cash from operating activities for the first quarter was $2.3 million, compared with $27.4 million in the year-ago quarter.

Capital expenditure in the reported quarter was $2.6 million, lower than the year-ago level of $6.5 million.

Cash Distribution Update

CNX Coal announced a first-quarter 2016 cash distribution of 51.25 cents per limited partner unit. The amount will be paid on May 12, 2016 to unitholders of record as of May 5.

Story continues

Guidance



CNX Coal has revealed its guidance for 2016. Coal sales are estimated to be 4.55.1 million tons. While adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $59$69 million, maintenance capital expenditure is projected in the range of $18$20 million.

Upcoming Peer Releases

CONSOL Energy Inc. CNX is scheduled to release first-quarter results on Apr 26, 2016. The Zacks Consensus Estimate stands at a loss of 9 cents.

SunCoke Energy Inc. SXC is scheduled to release first-quarter results on Apr 27. The Zacks Consensus Estimate stands at 4 cents.

Cloud Peak Energy Inc. CLD is scheduled to release first-quarter results on Apr 28. The Zacks Consensus Estimate stands at a loss of 15 cents.

Zacks Rank

CNX Coal Resources currently has a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

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Update, April 27, 8 a.m.: Police say they have found Priester, but for confidentiality reasons, will not disclose her location.

--+--

Worried loved ones are desperately searching for a young Georgia woman who disappeared after she told her mother she was getting in an Uber cab Friday.

Monique Priester, 21, last spoke with her mom about 6:15 p.m. when she said she was leaving the Georgia State University campus in Atlanta in a shared Uber, Jacqueline Vanloo-Alkush told WSB-TV.

Im panicked, the frantic mother told the television station. Im hoping shes safe.

Priester was only wearing a gray tank top and shorts and was carrying a black backpack with her laptop inside when she left her stepfathers home in Dacula around 1:30 p.m. Friday for a study group on campus.

When she checked in with her mother later that day to return a missed phone call, Priester told her she was taking the shared cab to save money.

Read: Woman: Uber Driver Dragged Me from the Car and Broke My Jaw

Since then, Priesters phone goes straight to voicemail, while her bank account showed activity in Nashville, Tennessee, her mother said.

Uber will only hand over ride records if the company is subpoenaed.

"Immediately upon hearing from the family, we contacted local law enforcement to offer any assistance or information that could help them locate Ms. Priester and get her home safely," an Uber spokesperson told InsideEdition.com.

Story continues

Police told IE.com they have no reason to suspect foul play and said Priester had argued with one of her parents the day she vanished.

Read: Judge Denies Bail to Uber Driver Who Allegedly Killed Six in Shooting Spree

But her mother, who said her daughter suffers from depression and anxiety, said the GSU sophomore would not just disappear. She described her as sociable, intelligent and having a great sense of humor.

Dont be dismissive just because of her age. Look at the entire circumstance, Vanloo-Alkush told WSB-TV.

Friends and family have taken to social media to spread the word about the college students disappearance, posting Priesters image on Facebook and Instagram in hopes that the campaign will bring her home.

Please repost! her mother pleaded as she posted a photo and description of her daughter on Facebook.

Police said Tuesday that Priesters disappearance is under investigation.

Watch: Three Children Survive Alone in Car with Dead Mom After Going Missing

Related Articles:
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)

By James Saft

April 26 (Reuters) - The Mitsubishi Motors mileage scandal illustrates a key weakness at the heart of most investment processes: management by measurement and target setting often leads to chicanery.

Shares in the Japanese automaker have tumbled about 45 percent since it admitted last week it falsified fuel economy data on several models as employees tried to meet internal targets that the company itself says may have been impossible.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has asked Mitsubishi for information on cars it sold in the U.S., opening the possibility of wider repercussions.

While you cannot understand without measuring, you are kidding yourself if you think measuring and target setting is the same as control, a point investors have learned to their cost time after time.

"Shareholders might consider again the uses of Goodhart's law, which predicts that measures become moribund as they become targets," Deutsche Bank analyst Sahil Mahtani wrote in a note to clients.

"Just ask the internet advertisers that covet digital ad clicks but lost $7 billion last year paying excess fees for the two-fifths of hits that were faked."

Not to mention the very similar Volkswagen emissions debacle or, for that matter, the way in which the gaming of credit ratings contributed to loss, dislocation and disorder during the last financial crisis. Volkswagen on Friday announced 16.2 billion euro charge to its 2015 earnings to help fund the costs of the Dieselgate affair, centering on the use of software to cheat emissions tests.

Named after the economist and Bank of England policymaker Charles Goodhart, the law has as its central insight that the information you get from data, be it miles-per-gallon figures or bond prices, becomes muddied by manipulation when that data is used as the basis for a target.

Sometimes, as with Mitsubishi, this becomes outright falsification but the effects and pitfalls for investors are more wide-ranging and subtle.

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Agents, like fund managers working on behalf of investors, or employees doing the same for shareholders, have an uncanny ability to produce results in line with the targets they are set, a process which often has little to do with the maximization of profits or a firm's future well being.

Attempts to manage these sorts of conflicts, between what is best for a principal and what lines the pocket of her delegated agent, have been less than fully successful.

CULTURE MORE POWERFUL THAN MEASUREMENT

The last 50 years or so have seen the replacement of a culture in which managers of investments or companies were charged with meeting broad mandates, such as "do what is best for the client", with one involving contractual bells and whistles which, while aiming to align interests, often conflate measurement with management. Humans being human, the results are very often very far from those intended.

Paul Woolley, a veteran IMF official and fund manager, and Dimitri Vayanos, of the London School of Economics have explored the ways in which the measurement of the "success" of fund managers creates perverse incentives and bad outcomes.

Since most fund mangers are charged with beating a market-capitalization index without taking too many huge bets, or beating an index of other fund managers' performance, they end up buying stocks which rise in price not out of conviction but as a means of professional self-preservation. Stray from the herd and you may get fired, so buy what ever is going up lest you be left behind.

The end result, Woolley and Vayanos assert, is lousy allocation of capital, leading to the kind of bubbles and volatile investment returns which have been the hallmark of the last two decades.

They argue for a system built more around mandates for "value investment", a style which requires patience and a leap of faith by investors that their managers will do well over a much longer period.

Mahtani of Deutsche Bank suggests that using a matrix of two or more targets might produce better results.

Discussions about regulation, and by extension, about all agency conflicts, often end with stressing the importance of culture in an organization.

You can set banks and bankers with all of the risk-mitigating targets, rules and regulations that you like, but ultimately in a corrupt organization or industry with corrupt values you will get corrupt results. New targets are just new games to play. So it is with executives or with fund managers.

In the field of medicine, the patient's well-being, broadly defined, is usually set as the highest goal. Perhaps investment and management need a Hippocratic Oath.

(At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund. You can email him at jamessaft@jamessaft.com and find more columns at http://blogs.reuters.com/james-saft) (James Saft)
donald trump

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are poised to take home big wins in several major presidential-primary contests on Tuesday.

Five states are up for grabs: Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware.

Though polling is limited in states like Rhode Island and Delaware, most recent surveys show Clinton and Trump leading in every state  and in some cases by healthy margins.

On the GOP side, Trump has maintained a commanding lead over his Republican rivals. The real-estate magnate leads in delegate-rich Pennsylvania by around 25 points, according to recent polls, while the RealClearPolitics average shows him beating Ohio Gov. John Kasich in Maryland by around 20 points.

On the Democratic side, Sen. Bernie Sanders could walk away with some symbolic state victories, but he seems unlikely to eat into Clinton's massive delegate lead.

Some recent surveys have shown Sanders leading the former secretary of state in Rhode Island, and the latest Public Policy Polling survey of likely Democratic primary voters in Connecticut found Clinton just two points ahead of Sanders.

Still, Clinton will almost certainly walk away with more votes and more delegates if she can win major victories in Maryland and Pennsylvania. The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows that she has around a 15-point advantage over Sanders in Pennsylvania, while the site's average puts her more than 20 points ahead of Sanders in Maryland.

"After her win in New York this week, these numbers in nearby Pennsylvania suggest that the entire northeast is looking pretty good for the Clinton campaign," said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, in a recent statement.

Tuesday's results appear likely to put Trump and Clinton closer to a head-to-head match-up.

With more than 170 delegates up for grabs on the Republican side, a Trump blowout could put him closer to potentially reaching the 1,237-delegate threshold needed to secure the Republican presidential nomination before the July convention.

Story continues

Though the patchwork of delegate-allocation systems means that Kasich and Cruz will likely walk away with some delegates, Trump will almost certainly win the delegates awarded to the winner of contests statewide. He could also pick up more if he comes out on top in Delaware, a winner-take-all state, and if he crosses the 50% support threshold in Connecticut.

On the Democratic side, Clinton's lead in most polls in Tuesday's contests will make Sanders' path to the nomination event steeper.

As FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver pointed out, Sanders needs to win over 58% of remaining pledged delegates to win, requiring massive upsets in diverse primary states like California and New Jersey. Those types of states have typically favored Clinton or broken evenly between the two candidates.

NOW WATCH: NEW POLL: 7 in 10 Americans do not want Trump as their president





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Yahoo Singapore file photo



Singapore is not an agricultural society but there are particular periods when carrots are harvested here and dangled to tempt potential consumers. The harvest season is rather predictable: it is almost always around the time after a writ of election is issued.

With the Bukit Batok by-election on 7 May, it came as no surprise when the Peoples Action Party (PAP) candidate Murali Pillai pulled out a carrot: $1.9 million worth of infrastructure and renewal for the constituency, including covered walkways, ramps for the elderly and people with disabilities, and a new park for all to enjoy.

But you can savour the carrot only if you vote for the PAP, of course.

According to Murali, the $1.9 million upgrading is a plan of the town council (TC), and can only be put into action if the PAP is elected to run the TC in Bukit Batok.

Pritam Singh, a Member of Parliament from the Workers Party, has challenged that assertion, pointing out that the Housing Development Board had told his party that Neighbourhood Renewal Projects could go ahead even if the town council were to change hands from the PAP to an opposition party after an election.

A new town council has the right to make changes to any proposal made by its predecessor. Any new proposal can be put to the residents, and require 75 per cent approval before it is able to proceed. The money for such works, after all, comes from the taxpayers and not a political party.

The wielding of the upgrading carrot by the ruling party has been the norm during election season for many years. There is little that opposition parties can do to counter any such proposal as they lack the wherewithal to make promises. If elected, they are uncertain whether they will be able to deliver the goodies since non-PAP wards are shunted to the back of the upgrading queue.

It is a sad state of affairs. Political carrots degrade the level of public discourse. They turn peoples focus away from major and long-term national issues, and make them think of localised and short-term gains. Elections to choose Singapores lawmakers are reduced to considerations about walkways and ramps  things that any town council worth its salt should provide anyway regardless of political affiliation.

Story continues

The use of the carrot is rather unnecessary when one considers that Murali Pillai is a good candidate: he is a long-serving member of the party, has connections to the constituency, is highly qualified and appears confident in his ability. He also has good proposals such as a healthcare cooperative and a job placement programme. He already has all he needs to put up a good, clean fight against the Singapore Democratic Partys Chee Soon Juan, who had said that he would contest in the by-election.

In a Facebook post on Sunday, Chee addressed the carrot issue in Bukit Batok and said that the PAP will always use these needs (of residents) as an election issue. In response, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam dismissed the criticism, calling it bluster and saying that SDP has had the time to consult the residents and develop its own plans for the constituency.

It is not clear to what extent will the voters in Bukit Batok be swayed by the promise of neighbourhood renewal - or the implicit threat of losing out should they not vote for the ruling party.



Naturally, residents would like to see better facilities and infrastructure in the neighbourhood. But the election is about much more than that, and one can only hope that they keep their eyes on the big picture, and not just the electoral carrot dangling before them.

Kirsten Han is a Singaporean blogger, journalist and filmmaker. She is also involved in the We Believe in Second Chances campaign for the abolishment of the death penalty. A social media junkie, she tweets at @kixes. The views expressed are her own.
chaffetz flint

It has been a trying day for Valeant Pharmaceuticals.

First the US Senate released the names of everyone who will be answering for the company at a hearing on Wednesday, including CEO Michael Pearson, former interim CEO Howard Schiller, and board member and hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman.

And that could be all, but it's not.

There's movement on the US House of Representatives' action against the company as well. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is also investigating Valeant, sent around a memo to members describing a bunch of documents it just got from the company. The memo was obtained by Business Insider.

Earlier this month Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland accused the company of a "pattern of obstruction" after it failed to deliver numerous documents he requested regarding its controversial relationship with Philidor, its defunct in-house pharmacy.

Valeant was forced to shutter Philidor in January after the revelation of its existence in October, combined with government scrutiny and accusations of malfeasance from a short seller, sent Valeant's stock careening down almost 70%.

Now the House has some (though not all) of the documents Valeant left out, and frankly, it's unclear why the company left them out in the first place. The company had said the documents contained attorney-client privilege, but as a journalist I probably have some of them in my inbox.

Wall Street research reports describing Valeant's business model certainly do not qualify as privileged, but they made up the bulk of what Congress just got.

Here's a sampling:

There's a report from TD Securities saying the government foots the bill for 15% of Valeant's revenue.

There are reports from BMO Capital Markets and Canaccord Genuity describing Valeant's practice of buying drugs and jacking up their prices by sometimes triple-digit percentages and how common that is in the drug industry.

There's a report from Barclays describing how Valeant's patient-assistance programs actually make drug costs higher.

Story continues

The House memo said Valeant continued to withhold communications between its executives, including its legal counsel. It also said there continued to be a bipartisan effort to get Valeant to produce those documents.

The company's executives appear before the US Senate on Wednesday afternoon.

NOW WATCH: Be sure to learn the actual meaning of these real estate 'code words' before looking for a new place





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Upstream energy firm ConocoPhillips COP will release first-quarter 2016 financial results on Apr 28, before the opening bell.

The company has a mixed earnings history. ConocoPhillips met/beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three and missed in one of the trailing four quarters. In the last reported quarter, the company delivered a negative earnings surprise of 40.63%.





Why a Likely Positive Surprise?

Our proven model shows that ConocoPhillips is likely to beat earnings because it has the right combination of two key components.

Zacks ESP: Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is +1.84%. This is a meaningful indicator of a likely positive earnings surprise for shares.

Zacks Rank: ConocoPhillips carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Note that stocks with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 have a significantly higher chance of beating earnings. Conversely, the Sell-rated stocks (Zacks Rank #4 and 5) should never be considered going into an earnings announcement, especially when the company is witnessing negative estimate revisions.

The combination of ConocoPhillips Zacks Rank #3 and +1.84% ESP makes us confident of an earnings beat this season.

What's Driving the Better-Than-Expected Earnings?

ConocoPhillips boasts leading positions in both natural gas and heavy crude oil in North America as well as a legacy position in the North Sea. The company also enjoys growing exposure to lucrative international regions. These should help ConocoPhillips to replace reserves and sustain production growth over the long term.

ConocoPhillips expects first-quarter production from continuing operation of 1,5401,580 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (MBOED), higher than the daily average production of 1,525 MBOED in full-year 2015.

Despite cuts in capital spending, ConocoPhillips expects major capital projects to be brought online. This is expected to facilitate production growth of 1% in 2016. The company also anticipates lower operating expenses during this period. Guidance for 2016 operating costs has been reduced from $7.7 billion to $7.0 billion.

Story continues

Other Stocks to Consider

Some other stocks from the energy space which, according to our model, also have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter.

SunCoke Energy Inc. SXC has Earnings ESP of +150.00% and a Zacks Rank #1. The company is expected to release earnings on Apr 27.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. CHK has Earnings ESP of +9.09% and a Zacks Rank #2. The partnership is anticipated to release earnings on May 5.

Cobalt International Energy, Inc. CIE has Earnings ESP of +9.09% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is likely to release earnings on May 3.

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Lyle Denniston, the National Constitution Centers constitutional literacy adviser, looks at the debate over right-to-work laws and a potentially important case in Wisconsin.

2011 Wisconsin Union Protests

THE STATEMENTS AT ISSUE:

Ive asked Judge Foust to stay his order to ensure that the [Wisconsin] right-to-work law remains in effect on appeal. Given that 25 other states have right-to-work laws and none of those have been declared unconstitutional, I am confident Wisconsins law will be upheld. Therefore, it is imperative that Wisconsins right-to-work law remain in effect while on appeal.

 Excerpt from a public statement by Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel on April 18, announcing the states effort to block a state judges ruling ten days earlier against the right-to-work law, based on the Wisconsin state constitution.

We are disappointed our motion for stay in the right-to-work case was denied by Dane County Circuit Court and plan to seek a stay in the court of appeals, where we feel confident this law will be upheld.

 Statement by Attorney General Schimel on April 25, after the state judge refused to put the decision on hold during the states appeal.

WE CHECKED THE CONSTITUTION, AND

For decades, labor unions in America have chafed at what they call the free rider problem, but that very problem has been more aggravating to them with the spreading success of right-to-work laws. Lately, though, their lawyers have fashioned what is potentially an effective answer to that problem: the U.S. Constitution.

The free rider issue, as described by labor unions, grows out of the fact that federal law requires them to provide bargaining and grievance-resolving services to all of the workers in the bargaining unit that the union has been chosen to represent, but when some employees represented by that union choose not to join, they get those services for free, when  in the unions view  they ought to be helping finance at least a fair share of those costs.

Story continues

The problem, unions complain, deepens when a state enacts a right-to-work law, because those laws bar unions from charging non-members any dues or fees for those services.

The right-to-work movement keeps spreading: in February, West Virginia became the 26th state to adopt such a measure; it has not yet gone into effect. Unions in the state failed in an effort to block its passage.

Lawyers for unions have tried out the constitutional answer to their free-rider grievance in a federal court case involving an Indiana right-to-work law, but ultimately failed on a split 5-to-5 vote to get a full hearing on the idea in that appeals court. Frustrated, the unions gave up without taking that test case on to the Supreme Court. (There were some procedural side-issues in the case that might have kept it from being an ideal test case to take to the Justices.)

Now, the same maneuver  but based on a state constitution, not the federal document  is having some success in state court in Wisconsin. That is a first; a similar state constitutional challenge failed in Indiana state courts when that states law drew parallel challenges in the state as well as federal courts. It is clear that the issue will not go away, so it almost certainly will be back in the federal courts, too.

The constitutional idea goes like this: When unions are required by law to provide their services to everyone on a given companys payroll, whether members of the union or not, their property is being taken for a public purpose and the failure of non-members to pay for a share of those services amounts to an unconstitutional seizure (technically, a taking) of their property under either the federal or a state constitution.

The federal Constitution provides, in the Fifth Amendment, that no person may have their private propertytaken for public use without just compensation. While many states have similar clauses in their own constitutions, that is actually not necessary for the protection of private property within those states: The Fifth Amendment takings clause has been absorbed into the Fourteenth Amendment through the analytical doctrine of incorporation, thus requiring states to apply that protection within their own borders. (That incorporation of the takings clause came as long ago as 1897, in a Supreme Court decision: Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad v. Chicago.)

Wisconsin, of course, is now an attractive venue for labor unions to mount a constitutional challenge to that states right-to-work law. Under the leadership of the states Republican governor, Scott Walker, Wisconsin has pursued several efforts to cut down on the power and influence of labor unions. A right-to-work law, so-called Act 1, was enacted last year as part of that effort.

It is a typical right-to-work statute: it bars labor unions from assessing any dues, fees or charges of any kind from non-union members. Thus, all of the costs of a unions collective bargaining efforts, of carrying out a labor contract, and running a grievance process, are covered solely by the dues paid by union members.

The day after Governor Walker signed that measure, two labor unions, Wisconsin branches of the Machinists Union and the Steelworkers Union, along with the state version of the AFL-CIO, sued in state court to challenge the law. Act 1, the lawsuit argued, transfers the unions property  its services  to non-members, and the union gets nothing in return.

On April 8, state Circuit Court Judge C. William Foust of Madison ruled, striking down Act 1 under the state constitution. State officials promptly planned an appeal, and are now in the process of trying to get Judge Fousts ruling delayed while that appeal goes forward. Because the case turns solely on state, not federal, law, it will be resolved only in state courts.

But the reasoning Judge Foust used, paralleling that of five judges on the federal Seventh Circuit Court in the Indiana case, already has gained a prominence beyond the borders of Wisconsin. And, even if the states supreme court ultimately were to uphold Act 1 against the state constitutional challenge, the case of Machinists Union v. Wisconsin already is figuring prominently in the ongoing debate over trade unionism in America.

After a series of setbacks across the nation, generally diminishing the social and political influence of unions, their leaders and members across the nation are suddenly finding reason to be pleased with Wisconsin.

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Podcast: Is President Obamas immigration policy against the law?
By Aastha Agnihotri

(Reuters) - Whitbread Plc (WTB.L), an operator of hotels, restaurants and coffee shops, stood by its expansion plans in the UK and international markets, after posting a near 12 percent rise in full-year profit.

Shares in the FTSE-100 company, which owns Premier Inn hotels and Costa Coffee chains, rose as much as 4 percent in London on Tuesday morning.

Alison Brittain, who took over from previous CEO Andy Harrison in January, voiced her support for Whitbread's previous 2020 milestones of about 85,000 Premier Inn UK rooms and about 2.5 billion pounds systems sales for Costa.

To further capitalise on demand, Whitbread last year increased its expansion targets for both businesses, with greater exposure in London, a key focus for Premier Inn and overseas sales at Costa.

Brittain on Tuesday rejected speculations that the company could sell off Costa Coffee. The chain has grown to have over 3,000 outlets across the world, with around 2,000 in the UK.

"We are all very clear that Whitbread has been a great owner of Costa and given that track record and our future plans, there's no compelling reason to change Costa's ownership structure at this time," Brittain said on a conference call.

Whitbread said total sales at Premier Inn rose 12.9 percent in the 53 weeks to March 3, with group sales rising 12 percent. Total Costa Coffee sales grew 15.9 percent with a 2.9 percent increase in UK like-for-like sales.

The CEO believes that the UK coffee drinking market hasn't reached its peak and that there's still more momentum left.

"From a structural perspective, there is more (coffee) consumption to do," Brittain added.

UK is fast becoming a nation of coffee connoisseurs. Daily visits to coffee shops have increased and 16 percent of coffee shop visitors frequented a coffee shop at least once a day in 2015 compared with 14 percent a year earlier, according to consultancy Allegra Strategies.

By 0923 GMT, Whitbread shares were trading up 1.5 percent at 3923 pence. They touched a high of 4027.28 pence earlier.

(Reporting by Aastha Agnihotri in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)
By Nathan Layne

(Reuters) - Costco Wholesale Corp (COST.O) plans to expand business with chicken supplier Pilgrim's Pride Corp (PPC.O) even after building its own poultry processing plant in Nebraska, a senior executive at the retailer told Reuters.

Shares of Pilgrim's Pride have fallen more than 5 percent since April 14 when a development council in Nebraska unveiled plans for the Costco plant, reflecting investor concerns that it could eat into the supply from a Pilgrim's Pride plant in Alabama.

Jeff Lyons, a senior vice president at Costco, said the retailer expected to expand business with Pilgrim's Pride at the Alabama facility. He said Costco's need for chicken overall should increase markedly in the coming years assuming even a "moderate" annual unit growth rate of 5 to 8 percent.

"Weve got a long-term deal with Pilgrim's that we will continue to extend because they are helping us achieve our goals," he said in an interview on Monday. "It will continue and it will expand. We are working on projects with them right now."

The facility, if built in Nebraska's Dodge County, would create 1,100 jobs and bring $180 million to the region, the Greater Fremont Development Council said in its April 14 release.

Lyons said Nebraska was ideal due to the proximity of grain producers, from which it would procure 300,000 bushels of corn and thousands of tons of soybean meal each week. He said the facility, when fully operational in 2019, would produce 1.6 million birds a week, accounting for a third of its fresh chicken needs.

Costco currently has three conventional suppliers of chicken and four for organic birds, Lyons said. He described Foster Farms, another conventional supplier, as a "good partner" and said Costco was "working on something with them right now for the future but it's not done." He did not name the third supplier.

When asked whether Costco could one day drop a supplier, Lyons said it was possible, but that "it just depends how it plays out." He said in the case one was dropped it could pick up business from Costco in another area.

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Lyons said Costco was building the plant in part because chicken producers were focusing increasingly on larger birds, and it needed to secure supply for middle-sized birds that provide the right level of tenderness and other qualities for its rotisserie chickens and other products. The plant would also give its buyers industry experience that would help in negotiations, he said.

He said he was also looking at a possible deal for "another species," but declined to elaborate on whether it was related to beef, pork or something else.

"Another species, a different animal. Not chickens."

(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Chicago; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
Delegates 2012 convention

It's pretty expensive to represent a state as a delegate to either political party's national convention.

The GOP primary in Pennsylvania has helped to highlight that fact. In the Keystone State, which holds its vote on Tuesday, 54 "unbound" delegates will be elected to vote freely on the first ballot of the party's big July convention in Cleveland.

Those delegates, who are elected three-per the state's 18 congressional districts, only needed 250 signatures to earn a place on the ballot.

More than 160 did so. It has created what Rob Gleason, Pennsylvania's GOP chairman and a nine-time convention veteran, told Business Insider is the deepest ballot he's ever seen.

But it's not as easy as turning over the signatures and winning an election.

Business Insider spoke with 65 of the 162 delegates running across the state. A number of them mentioned the exorbitant costs a delegate must pay out of pocket, calling it extreme.

"I can understand that," Gleason said of their concern.

It starts with getting their name out to voters. The ballot in Pennsylvania will appear with just a list of names. It does not include notice of whether a candidate for delegate supports one of the three remaining GOP presidential hopefuls, will vote along with the congressional district or state, or is uncommitted.

"One of the most difficult things in running in a congressional district is communicating to all of them for a job that only lasts three months and is not paid for and you have to use your own money to participate," Gleason said.

He said the best way to get your platform out to the voters is via a mailing across the district.

That can cost "upwards of $15,000," he added, noting that some candidates running on the same platform will join together and split the cost.

Once elected, a candidate will have to pay for their own travel to Cleveland and for their hotel room.

A letter sent from the Republican Party of Pennsylvania to delegates, provided to Business Insider by one of the delegate candidates on the ballot, outlined the high costs.

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Delegates will have to spend more than $1,250 on hotel accommodations, according to estimates from the letter ($250 per night for at least five nights).

They'll also have to either transport themselves to Cleveland or use transportation provided by the state party. However, the latter option is only available for "dues paying members of the Pennsylvania Delegation," the letter read.

Those dues total $500 per person that the party said is required to "participate in Pennsylvania Delegation activities."

As one candidate for delegate put it, the total costs discourage "less-wealthy delegate candidates from actively campaigning."

NOW WATCH: Trump insinuates a former presidential candidate may be behind the Cruz National Enquirer story





More From Business Insider


Donald Trump is calling it pathetic, corrupt and an act of desperation but a state-by-state alliance between Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich aimed at denying the real estate mogul the Republican presidential nomination highlights the increasing importance of Indiana, a state that could be make-or-break for the #NeverTrump movement.

When Republican voters head to the polls Tuesday in five states  Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut and Rhode Island  Trump is expected to notch significant wins in each. So much so that the campaigns are already looking past Tuesday to May 3, when Indiana Republicans head to the polls in one of the last true battleground states.

Of the 15 states that remain on the GOP primary calendar, Indiana offers more delegates than any other except Pennsylvania and California. Thirty delegates will go to the candidate who wins the statewide vote, while the remaining 27 will be allotted to the winners of the states nine congressional districts.

In a campaign where every single delegate increasingly counts, a win in Indiana would make Trumps quest to reach the magic number of 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination nearly unstoppable. But a Trump loss there would make it harder for him to sew up a first-ballot nomination. Thats why Kasich, in a deal announced late Sunday night, agreed to stop campaigning in the Hoosier State, hoping that a win there by Cruz would improve the chances of a contested nomination at the convention in Cleveland this July. In exchange, Cruz is standing down his operations in Oregon and New Mexico, where Kasich is believed stronger.

But its not clear this maneuver will work.

In theory, Cruz would have a good shot at winning Indiana, a heavily Republican state where social conservatives, led by Gov. Mike Pence, dominate the partys voting electorate. But the few polls conducted in the state have found Trump narrowly leading Cruz ahead of next weeks primary. A CBS News/YouGov survey released last week found Trump leading Cruz by five points, 40 percent to 35 percent, a result that was within the polls six-point margin of error.

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So Cruz has shifted his focus away from the five Northeastern states voting Tuesday to concentrate almost entirely on Indiana, where he has been campaigning since last Thursday. Hes expected to crisscross the state in coming days and is also making a big push to win Pences endorsement.

A former congressman, Pence has seen his approval rating plummet over the past year, in part because of his support of a controversial religious freedom bill that many viewed as discriminatory against gays and lesbians. But the governor still remains wildly popular among Republicans, especially social conservatives  the voters Cruz desperately needs to turn out for him next Tuesday.



But Trump isnt ceding any ground in the state. Last week, in a rare move for a candidate known to brag about Republicans coming to him rather than the other way around, Trump kicked off his first visit to Indiana with a trip to the governors mansion, where he met with Pence and personally asked for his endorsement. The meeting was brokered by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former head of the Republican Governors Association who since dropping out of the race himself and endorsing Trump has been using his party connections to woo support for the GOP frontrunner.

Slideshow: Primary day in 5 Northeastern states >>>



Photo illustration: Yahoo News, photos: AP

At the same time, the Trump campaign has opened three offices around the state, where staff and volunteers have set up phone banks and are going door-to-door looking for votes. A flier handed out at a Trump rally in Indianapolis last Wednesday promised volunteers a free Make America Great Again hat for knocking on 50 doors or making 500 phone calls.

The inducement is apparently working. The following day, Trumps campaign office in Carmel, just north of Indianapolis, was packed in the middle of the day  as volunteers clutching call sheets for prospective voters sat at tables and paced the sidewalk outside making phone calls to get out the vote for Trump.

While a campaign spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment about Trumps organization in Indiana, including how many staff are on the payroll, the campaigns efforts seem more active than in other early states, including Iowa, where Trump invested little money or effort in a ground operation.

On Monday, the Cruz campaign reportedly reserved nearly $1 million of television ad time in Indiana, as the Texas senator goes all in on a state that may be his last chance to stop Trump. And his campaign is hoping that with Kasich out the way, Cruz can top Trump in a head-to-head matchup. But its not likely to be that simple.

Theres no guarantee that Kasichs supporters will automatically turn to Cruz. And although Kasich has said hes not going to campaign in Indiana, he pointedly told reporters during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania on Wednesday that hes not asking his supporters to vote for another candidate.

Ive never told them not to vote for me  they should vote for me, the Ohio governor said, insisting the deal was more about resources and not a big deal.

Meanwhile, Trump, who has spent the past week trashing the nomination process as corrupt and rigged, added the Cruz-Kasich alliance to his list of evidence of how he alleges party insiders are trying to steal the nomination from him  more evidence, he claimed, of his own dominance.

It shows that they are just getting killed, Trump told supporters at a Rhode Island rally on Monday. It shows how weak they are. It shows how pathetic they are.
LONDON (Reuters) - British hotels, restaurants and food processing and construction firms would all struggle if they were no longer allowed to recruit European Union migrants into low-skilled jobs, according to a new study on Wednesday. Curbing migration is a key goal for many Britons who plan to vote to leave the EU in a referendum on June 23, but many firms believe the economic cost would be large, Britain's National Institute of Economic and Social Research said. "From the perspective of employers in low-paid sectors, free movement works pretty well," NIESR researcher Heather Rolfe said. "Restricting their access to this source of labour could have significant and damaging effects on many companies and the jobs of British workers they employ." Some firms have already seen job applications from EU migrants fall in the run-up to the referendum, she said. NIESR's findings were based on interviews with 24 unnamed firms in the hospitality, food and drink and construction sectors, conducted between November and March. The number of staff employed ranged from 28 at a tea shop in southeast England to nearly 10,000 in a budget hotel chain, where around 60 percent of workers were EU migrants. Low pay was only part of the reason why these jobs did not appeal to British workers. Firms said they often involved shift work or seasonal contracts, sometimes in out-of-the-way locations, and promotion chances could be limited. Britain's system of welfare, housing subsidies and tax credits does not deal well with unpredictable flows of income, and Rolfe said a lack of childcare was also often overlooked as a barrier for British workers. Other employers, particularly in the construction sector, said the government should fund more training for British workers. Rolfe said the firms she had spoken to did not see much difference between the quality of British and migrant workers, especially if the migrants had been in Britain for some time, and that they did not aim specifically to recruit migrants. (Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Islamophobic rhetoric has been an undeniable part of the current Presidential election: In December, current Republican frontrunner Donald Trump proposed a ban on Muslims entering the country, and in March, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called for armed patrols of "Muslim neighborhoods."

The fear-mongering language is arguably having an effect on the safety of Muslim communities  in December the New York Times reported on a recent spike in hate crimes against Muslim Americans  but the anti-Muslim sentiment is having an effect on non-Muslim Americans too, something The Daily Show tackled in a segment on Monday night.

Daily Show correspondent Hasan Minhaj, who is Muslim, sat down with Sikh American and artist Waris Ahluwalia, to talk about the discrimination he faces just because he "looks Muslim."

Source: Comedy Central

"Almost every time I fly back to the U.S. I get a secondary screening," Ahluwalia said. "People assume that Sikhs are Muslims and that's primarily an issue because Sikhs are an independent religion."

According to Harvard University's Pluralism Project, "today there are well over 500,000 Sikhs in the United States," but, since 9/11, Sikh Americans have become the "targets of varying degrees of hate crimes" because of their turbans and beards.

In addition to hearing from Ahluwalia, Minhaj also sat down with a panel of Sikhs living in America to hear about their experiences with discrimination. "I've been called ISIS a lot recently," one of the guests told Minhaj. "The turban is what makes us the target," said another.

Source: Comedy Central

But when Minhaj suggests that Sikhs could avoid some of that pesky Islamophobic discrimination simply by telling everyone they're not Muslim, the answer from the group is definitive. "It's just not an option for us to throw another community under the bus," one of Minhaj's guests said. "Even if it means things are harder for us, we believe it's the right thing to do."

"That's not the way I was raised," Ahluwalia tells Minhaj. "That's why I wear this turban. As a reminder to myself to treat humanity with care and kindness. So that's  so I'm not here to point fingers."

The full segment is available on the Comedy Central website.
ABU DHABI, April 26 (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates' Dana Gas has not been able to reach an acceptable deal with Iran on natural gas imports into the UAE, and an arbitration process will continue, chief executive Patrick Allman-Ward said on Tuesday.

However, Dana is still open to further discussions with Iran, which also wants to see the dispute resolved, Allman-Ward told reporters.

National Iranian Oil Co and Dana's affiliate Crescent Petroleum signed a 25-year contract in 2001 for Iran to deliver gas to the UAE, with the price linked to oil. But deliveries were suspended as oil prices rose and some officials and politicians in Iran called for a revision to the gas pricing formula.

(Reporting by Stanley Carvalho; Writing by Andrew Torchia)
The upcoming Elstree 1976, a documentary about the supporting actors and extras who appeared in the original Star Wars, is filled with anecdotes about how the first Jedi blockbuster changed their lives.



One of the stories in the movie, told by David Prowse, aka Darth Vader, may even make you feel some sympathy for the Sith lord. (Watch the clip above.) As Prowse explains, he was concerned during production about whether the audience would be able to understand what Darth Vader was saying.

Related: Elstree 1976 Trailer: Meet 10 Who Were There When 'Star Wars Was Born

I used to say to George [Lucas], What are we going to do about the dialogue, because everything Im doing is coming through the mask and its no good for reproduction purposes, Prowse recalls. And hed say, Dont worry about it. Well go into the sound studios and rerecord all your dialogue at the end of the movie. So I automatically assumed that it was me who was going to go into the sound studio to rerecord all my dialogue.

Of course, as we know now, thats not what happened. Once the shoot in London wrapped, the postproduction team got to work in America and realized it was going to be impossible for the actor to do his own ADR.

It was much cheaper to employ any voice-over artist rather than fly me all the way over from London to Hollywood just to overdub a half a dozen lines or however much I had, Prowse says. But if hes bitter about his voice not being heard in the first Star Wars movie, as well as the ones that followed, he doesnt sound like it.

Fortunately for me, they couldnt have picked a better actor to overdub my lines than James Earl Jones, he says. Still, not getting to utter I find your lack of faith disturbing in one of the most iconic films of all time had to be, well, pretty disturbing. So, even though we never thought wed type these words, we have to say: We feel for you, Vader.



When youre done watching that clip, watch a recent segment below with Carrie Fisher on the Jonathan Ross Show where she reenacted a Star Wars scene with an actor who shared Prowses West Country  and decidedly not intimidating  accent. Elstree 1976 hits select theaters and VOD on May 6.
In this occasional series, OZY takes to streets and neighborhoods across the globe to ask a simple question: How was your day?

Maria

Bangkok, Thailand

It was a good night. He was kind and gentle; more interested in talking than having sex. I think he was lonely, like so many of them are. He tipped well, too. Thank God, because its been a slow business week, which has been worrying me. Im down to my last 200 bahts. I live in a tiny room in Sukhumvit that I share with two other girls, and we have to pay rent on a weekly basis. Its one of the more expensive areas in the city, but my soi [street] is a hot spot for people looking to hire prostitutes.

I woke up at noon today and, after a quick shower, got dressed in my best outfit  a short denim skirt, a lacy push-up bra and a skimpy red top that clings to me like second skin  put on makeup and left for the roadside liquor stall where I usually pick up clients. When Im lucky, someone buys me a drink in exchange for sitting and talking for a while, even if they dont take me back to their room. Some days, it is no effort at all. All I have to do is lean ahead so prospective customers get a good view of my cleavage and grab their hands as theyre walking by. But I was desperate yesterday. I needed someone to hire me, preferably a middle-aged white man from America or Europe. They dont haggle, unlike Indians and Sri Lankans, who are always trying to get more than what theyve paid for.

Besides, Black girls like me dont have a steady flow of money like the other hookers.

Thankfully, on my third try I was successful. He was tall and white, and agreed to my asking price almost immediately. We talked for a while, and then he said he wanted me for the girlfriend package (where you live with the client round the clock, like a girlfriend would) for three days. I was tempted because of the money, but these packages scare me, so I said no. He seemed like a decent guy, but you can never tell, and living together can go horribly wrong. Two months ago, I was raped by a client I was living with because he suddenly decided to play out a violent rape fantasy. I let him, because resisting would have meant even more violence and that would have put me out of business for a long time. It made me contemplate getting a pimp whod beat people like him black and blue, like many of the Thai girls have. But I cant afford to share the little that I make; paying off the police takes away a huge chunk anyway. Besides, Black girls like me dont have a steady flow of money like the other hookers. Were a fetish, like the ladyboys. Either someone specifically wants a Black whore, or they want nothing to do with us.

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I came to Bangkok from Nigeria six months ago to learn to give massages, so I could earn and save some money to travel around Asia. But my friends told me that I could make money faster as a prostitute. At first, I would feel ashamed. But within a week it started feeling normal. No one judges you or looks down upon you for being a whore in this city, even though, officially, it is still illegal. It is just work. One of my friends, Poi, is dropped and picked up by her father every day.

I dont love what I do, and I definitely hate being raped, but I like the feeling of belonging with the other whores. The prostitutes of Bangkok dont judge because theyve seen it all. We know the depths of human depravity, and nothing shocks us anymore. It is like taking an advanced class in psychology. Someday, I will return home to Nigeria, but Bangkok will be the place where I built a family for myself.

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Add Nick Jonas and Demi Lovato to the growing list of entertainers who have canceled their performances in North Carolina in protest of House Bill 2, recently passed legislation that prohibits anyone from using a public restroom that does not fit their biological sex.

The two performers, who are gearing up for their "Future Now" tour have cancelled their Raleigh and Charlotte tour dates in protest, and released a statement on Twitter.

"One of our goals for the tour has always been to create an atmosphere where every single attendee feels equal, included and accepted for who they are," the statement read. "North Carolina's discriminatory HB2 law is extremely disappointing, and it takes away some of the LGBT community's most basic rights and protections."

Jonas and Lovato apologized for disappointing their fan base, but believe that canceling the performances is a step in the right direction. "We know the cancellation of these shows is disappointing to our fans, but we trust that you will stand united with us against this hateful law," they said.

Jonas and Lovato join a h who have also decided to cancel shows in North Carolina, with the first among them being Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Ringo Starr, Pearl Jam more have decided to protest the anti-LGBT bill by pulling out of North Carolina as well.
A Dutch dentist who mutilated the mouths of about 120 patients has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

Jacobus van Nierop, nicknamed the Dentist of Horror, caused terrible injuries to patients in the French town of Chateau-Chinon.

The 51-year-old was banned from practising dentistry and fined 8,000.

He had fled to Canada and fought against extradition to France in 2014.

A court in the French town of Nevers heard that van Nierops patients suffered broken jaws, abscesses and septicaemia at his hands.

He drugged patients then mutilated them as they slept, the court heard.

Prosecutor Lucile Jaillon-Bru said van Nierops procedures had been useless and painful.

He planned to claim money on patients medical insurance and to take pleasure at causing pain.

One patient, a 65-year-old woman, said van Nierop pulled out eight of her teeth in one procedure. She said she was gushing blood for three days and had no teeth for a year and a half.

Van Nierop was arrested in France in June 2013 when the number of victims passed the 100 mark.

But just before his trial he fled the country, and was later tracked down to a small town in Canada and held under an international warrant.

(Pictures: AP)
Abbott Beat 1Q16 Estimates despite Strong Currency Headwinds

(Continued from Prior Part)

Abbotts Medical Devices segment sales

Abbott Laboratories (ABT) reported ~$1.2 billion of revenues from its Medical Devices segment. The segment contributed about 24.5% of the companys total revenues of ~$4.9 billion in 1Q16. These sales figures represent a ~0.5% YoY (year-over-year) increase in 1Q16 on an operational basis. But the negative foreign exchange impact of ~1.9% led to the reported decline in revenues of ~2.4%. The vascular and medical optics divisions of the segment witnessed operational sales growth of ~0.9% and ~5.4%, respectively. The Diabetes Care divisions operational sales saw a decline of ~5.2%.

Key growth drivers

During 1Q16, sales for the Medical Devices segment witnessed marginal operational sales growth. The segment generated approximately 61% of its sales from international markets. Thus, its highly exposed to foreign currency fluctuations.

MitraClip, a minimally invasive mitral valve repair technology for the treatment of heart disorders, continued to generate strong double-digit sales growth in 1Q16. In 2015, Abbotts Endovascular product division reported ~9% operational sales growth, whereas the Coronary products sales increased by a meager 0.9%. Endovascular sales are driven by Supera, a stent system used for the treatment of certain artery diseases of the upper leg, and Abbotts vessel closure product portfolio. Also, during 1Q16, Abbotts glucose monitoring system FreeStyle Libre received approval in Europe for children and teens, thus leading to market expansion across Europe.

Though the growth in the medical device segment lags the strong sales growth witnessed in other segments of the company, the division is poised for growth. The innovative and broad product portfolio that includes market-leading products presents immense potential and opportunities for Abbott and is expected to lead to long-term segment growth.

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Investors looking to gain exposure to Abbott Laboratories can invest in the Guggenheim S&P Equal Weight Health Care ETF (RYH). RYH invests approximately 2.3%, 3.9%, 1.2%, and 2.1% of its holdings in Abbott Laboratories, Medtronic (MDT), Becton Dickinson (BDX), and Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO), respectively.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
As he put 25 years of prison time served for a crime he didn't commit, Monday marked the first day in the rest of Darryl Pinkins' life.

The 63-year-old Indiana father walked out of Lake County jail after spending just a month shy of a quarter-century behind bars after he was convicted in 1991 for what prosecutors said was his participation in a horrific 1989 gang rape.

After years of unflinchingly maintaining his innocence, Pinkins was set free thanks to one of the newest innovations in DNA analysis.

The technology is so new, in fact, that Pinkins is the first inmate ever set free with its help.

Read: City Apologizes After Family of 12-Year-Old Boy Fatally Shot By Cops Is Billed For Ambulance

"It feels like this day was - was meant to be. And I know it was," Pinkins told reporters outside the jail after friends and family greeted him in a tearful reunion. "This is a new beginning."

One of the emotional family members waiting for Pinkins was his son, who hadn't even been born.

Pinkins maintained during his 1991 trial that he'd been in bed with his wife when prosecutors said five men raped a woman for hours after the victim identified him as one of her attackers.

"I stood back as an innocent man watching it fold out before me, and it wasn't right," Pinkins said.

For decades, Pinkins continued to campaign to have his name cleared.

"Until recently, there was no technology that could really do what I call, dissects DNA mixture," Fran Watson, Pinkins' attorney with the Indiana Innocence Project told reporters.

Read: Cleveland to Pay Out $6 Million Over Fatal Shooting of 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice

The new technology is a DNA analysis program called TrueAllele. The process can be used to tease out the DNA of individuals from DNA mixtures.

"Once they explained to us what DNA was, we told them to bring the test on because we know where we were," Pinkins said.

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After the test, Pinkins found himself cleared of the rape conviction and Lake County prosecutors have declined to put him back on trial.

"We were 100 percent certain that we did in fact have the right person," Bernard Carter, Lake County prosecutor said. However, "when you look at the evidence that stands now, it would be an injustice for us to even attempt to try Mr. Pinkins. We would not convict him."

Watch: Officer Fatally Shoots Woman Swinging Large Ax with Skull At Him

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Recently graduated from Harvard with a 4.0 GPA, have a great personality and well-connected parents? Good news: You just bought yourself at least 10 extra minutes because you don't need to read the rest of this blog post. For the rest of the current college students and recent graduates who do not meet that standard, here are some things you need to know about how employers view your GPA.

GPA matters (sometimes). Most professionals who did well in college tend to regard a strong GPA as an indicator that a potential employee can handle pressure, learns quickly and is motivated to succeed. The theory is that college has been the greatest challenge faced by those younger than 22, so success there is the only significant experience that has a correlation to success in the professional world. Additionally, earning a college degree is an exercise in delayed gratification. A student must exert effort for four to six years before receiving a degree. Students with higher GPAs have demonstrated that they can maintain a high level of focus and results over that time before they receive their payoff. This journey mirrors the one most employers hope new hires will experience. Employees who have evidence of prolonged focus, effort and patience while achieving a long-term goal are often good bets when hiring.

[See: 10 Things New Grads Can Do Right Now to Get a Job.]

While the merits of this line of thinking may be debatable, it is more likely that the company or manager who values a high GPA will stick to that philosophy.

Some highly competitive roles or very desirable employers use GPA standards as a way to cut down the list of potential employees to consider. Since the percentage of graduates who complete school with a 3.5 (for example) or higher is quite small, requiring a 3.5 or higher is an effective way to tighten the applicant pool immediately. While there are a few employers or select employment programs that target GPAs of 3.5, most companies that have a GPA requirement target 3.0 or 3.3 and higher. These requirements still limit the applicant pool, but clearly are more inclusive.

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The good news is that for most managers or companies, GPA is not a deal-killer. The majority of hiring authorities are satisfied with your achievement of a college degree. Many successful entrepreneurs didn't complete college and did not enjoy or excel at learning in a classroom environment. Other executives may value the "school of life" more highly than an academically rigorous college experience. If you are interviewing with one of these types of managers, your focus should be on communicating how you have solved problems, been responsible, worked hard and succeeded in the face of life's challenges.

[See: The 8 Stages of a Winning Job Search.]

If you are targeting a job where your GPA is a selection criterion, how do you address a less-than-desirable one? First, look at your transcript to see the story it tells. While numbers are not the whole picture, employers who ask about your GPA may also require a copy of your transcript. It is best to approach any issues head-on. For example, many students really enjoy their first year of college. If you were one of these students who didn't get a clue until mid-sophomore year that you are actually supposed to go inside the classroom if you want better grades, your transcript likely shows an improvement in performance year over year. If this is the case, you can calculate your GPA after you made the "change" and be prepared to share in an interview that while you take ownership of your GPA, the results from your last six semesters are better evidence of your academic potential.

A second issue frequently faced is a lack of interest in required courses versus selected courses or the ones in your chosen field of study. Most people realize that when you are not interested in the subject matter, you often perform worse in recall and testing. If your transcript shows that your general education classes have a C average, but you received all A's and B's in your major, be sure to communicate that.

[See: 8 Ways Millennials Can Build Leadership Skills.]

Also, if you experienced a significant life event or have a learning disability that may have affected your performance in class, that may be helpful to share as well. Enduring those challenges demonstrates that you have the tenacity, drive and persistence to make it to the finish line in school and in life, even when the obstacles are high. Of course, if you just did not do well in school, you will need to be prepared to discuss why results at work will be different. It is helpful to include other activities, involvement or interests you may have had concurrent to taking classes.

Once you graduate, you cannot go back and change your GPA. However, your ability to put the numbers in context will go a long way with those employers who value GPA but do not use it as a deal-breaker when hiring. And be sure to come to your interviews prepared. Thoroughly research the employer and know how you can make a significant impact in the role. Those job seekers who understand and can clearly communicate their value in the workplace do better in the selection process. You are not being hired for your past, so make sure to show that your future is promising.

Robin Reshwan is the founder of Collegial Services, a consulting/staffing firm that connects college students, recent graduates and the organizations that hire them and a certified Women's Business Enterprise (WBE). She has interviewed, placed and hired thousands of people across a broad spectrum of companies and industries. Her career tips and advice are used by universities, national clubs/associations and businesses. A Certified Professional Resume Writer, Robin has been honored as a Professional Business Woman of the Year by the American Business Women's Association. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and as a Regents Scholar from University of California, Davis.





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Fox News Channel is going all in for Donald Trump this week, announcing this morning that On the Record with Greta Van Susteren will host a town hall with the GOP front-runner on Wednesday. Trump will take questions from the FNC host and voters, live from the Hilbert Circle Theatre in Indianapolis ahead of the May 3 Indiana primary.

Greta Van Susteren Donald Trump

The town hall is sure to be a ratings boost for On the Record, which is facing stiffer competition from CNNs Erin Burnett OutFront.

On the Record has been No. 1 in the news demo and total viewers in its timeslot for both categories in its 7pm/ET timeslot for 31 consecutive months?.

In April, Burnetts show narrowed the gap significantly, trailing the FNC show by just 18K viewers in the news demo. Thats the smallest gap between the two since Van Susterens show debuted at 7 PM in October 201. (On the Record, however, hung on to its No. 1 status in the news demo, and total viewers, in April, making it 31 months.)

Meanwhile, this morning Trump was interviewed for 10-plus minutes via phone on Fox & Friends, where he talked about Lena Dunhams vow to move to Canada now being part of his plan to Make America Great Again, among other weighty topics.

RelatedMegyn Kelly To Interview Donald Trump For Her First Primetime Special

One day earlier, Fox News announced Trump had agreed to be Fox News Channel star Megyn Kellys big get for her very first primetime celebrity-interview special, airing May 17 on the Fox broadcast network. Extended portions of the special will air on FNCs The Kelly File the next night.

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Donald Trump's support among Republicans has hit 50% on the eve of the final wave of presidential primaries, a new NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll out Tuesday shows.

The results are good news for the frontrunner: He's long led his rivals in national polls of the GOP field, but still failed to capture the backing of half of Republican voters.

Read more: RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Downplays Fears of Convention Chaos at Spring Meeting

"This milestone is significant as the 2016 primary heads into its final few weeks of contests, as there has been intense speculation that Trump's support has a ceiling," NBC reported.

Source: NBC News

The weekly election tracking poll, run online from April 18-24, marked the first time since late December the billionaire candidate reached this level of support among GOP voters and those who lean that way in his fight against Ted Cruz and John Kasich.

Cruz received 26% support among GOP voters and leaners in the poll. Kasich got 17%.

Five states vote in Republican primaries Tuesday: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

"Overall, this week's six-point swing  Trump up four points, Cruz and Kasich down two points  is the biggest weekly shift in the poll so far," NBC noted.

"Combined with his significant win in New York, Trump's rise nationally could be an early sign of consolidation within the Republican Party."

Source: Wilfredo Lee/AP

Not quite there: As of yet, no GOP candidate has reached the 1,237 delegate threshold needed to claim the nomination. The party is girding itself for a contested convention in July.

Last week in Florida, Republican National Committee leaders debated and voted down a rules change that would have made it easier for establishment insiders to advance a "white knight" candidate as nominee.

Cruz and Kasich subsequently announced what amounted to a "Stop Trump" non-aggression pact. The deal means to clear the way for Cruz to take on Trump in the Indiana primary and let Kasich focus on challenging the frontrunner in Oregon and New Mexico.

In the new poll, 58% of GOP voters agreed with Trump that he should win the nomination if he has the most delegates, even if he fails to reach a majority. That was up from 55% the previous week.
Donald Trump

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump fired back Tuesday at a long list of celebrities who have threatened to leave the country if he is elected president.

Most recently, Lena Dunham, an ardent Hillary Clinton supporter, suggested she would move to Vancouver, British Columbia, if Trump was elected.

"I know a lovely place in Vancouver and I can get my work done from there," Dunham said in an interview, according to The Hill.

Trump was asked about her comments during a Tuesday-morning "Fox & Friends" appearance.

"Well, she's a B-actor and, you know, has no mojo," Trump told the show's host.

Dunham joined a long list of celebrities, such as Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie O'Donnell, who have also mused that they might leave the country in the event of a Trump administration.

Trump quipped Tuesday that he would be doing a "great service" to the US if those celebrities made good on their threats.

"I heard Whoopi Goldberg said that too," Trump said. "That would be a great, great thing for our country. We'll get rid of Rosie  oh I love it. Now I have to get elected, because I'll be doing a great service to our country.

"Now it's much more important," Trump said. "In fact, I'll immediately get off this call and start campaigning."

Trump has his eye set on contests in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Maryland, where voters head to the polls on Tuesday. He appears poised to win all five states.

NOW WATCH: 'It's pure political correctness: Trump on Tubman on the $20 bill





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GOP front-runner Donald Trump this morning reacted enthusiastically to Lena Dunhams vow to move to Canada if he is elected president. Shes a B actor and has no mojo, Trump told Fox News Channels Fox & Friends about the Girls creator-star, who has been a surrogate for Dem front-runner Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail.

Fox and friends logo

I heard Whoopi Goldberg said that too  that would be a great, great thing for our country if she got out, Trump said in the phone interview, warming to the theme. Well get rid of Rosie? Oh, I love it. Now I have to get elected because Ill be doing a great service to our country. I have to. Now its much more important. In fact, Ill immediately get off this call and start campaigning right now, Trump said. [Watch video below, at about the 4-minute mark]

Dunham on Monday had vowed, I know a lot of people have been threatening to do this, but I really will, of plans to move north if Trump wins the White House.

I know a lovely place in Vancouver, and I can get my work done from there. So apparently a Trump victory would kill American jobs by fueling runaway production.

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Is that a promise? Donald Trump has no problem with Lena Dunham and Whoopi Goldbergs plan to leave the country if he becomes commander in chief. The Republican presidential frontrunner responded to the stars comments during Fox & Friends on Tuesday, April 26.

PHOTOS: Celebrities Political Affiliations

Well, [Dunhams] a B-actor and has no mojo, Trump, 69, said, via Politico. I heard Whoopi Goldberg said that too  that would be a great, great thing for our country if she got out.

He boasted: Now I have to get elected because Ill be doing a great service to our country. Now its much more important. In fact, Ill immediately get off this call and start campaigning right now.

PHOTOS: Celebrity Feuds: The Biggest Ever!

Trump also name-dropped Rosie O'Donnell during the conversation. Well get rid of Rosie [O'Donnell too], he said. Oh, I love it. (The former Celebrity Apprentice host previously called O'Donnell, 54, a fat pig during a GOP debate in August 2015.)

Dunham and Goldberg have been vocal about the 2016 presidential election. On separate occasions, both women insisted that they would flee the U.S. if Trump won. Dunham made her relocation plans known while attending the Matrix Awards in NYC on Monday, April 25.



PHOTOS: First Children

I know a lot of people have been threatening to do this, but I really will, the Girls star, 29, said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. I know a lovely place in Vancouver and I can get my work done from there.

Back in January, Goldberg, 60, also talked about possibly changing her home address. At the time, Goldberg was discussing Trumps controversial comments about Mexicans and Muslims with her View cohosts. Maybe its time for me to move. I can afford to go, she said. Ive always been an American, and this has always been my country and weve always been able to have discussions. And suddenly now its turning into not them, not them.






Ted Cruz and John Kasich

Republican operatives have cast doubt on a rather unprecedented pact between Ted Cruz and John Kasich, saying any plan to halt the momentum of GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump should have happened much sooner.

"This should have been done earlier," GOP strategist and commentator Evan Siegfried told Business Insider on Monday, pointing back to mid-March as the time when a deal could have been most helpful.

"It would help in terms of keeping the delegate number down," he added. "Trump's delegate haul would not have been this big."

The pact between the Cruz and Kasich campaigns called for Kasich, the Ohio governor, to pull his resources out of Indiana, the next key battleground state. In return, Cruz, a Texas senator, would recede from campaigning in New Mexico and Oregon.

It all serves as an attempt to stop Trump, the GOP frontrunner, from accumulating 1,237 delegates, the total needed to secure the Republican nomination ahead of the party's July convention.

"Yeah, I think it would've been," GOP strategist and frequent Trump critic Rick Wilson told Business Insider, saying an earlier deal could have had a bigger effect.

"It's woulda, coulda, shoulda."

The deal between the two campaigns had been discussed for more than a month, The New York Times reported. Kasich's camp originally approached Cruz's team, but the Cruz campaign rejected the idea of splitting the remaining states because it would have taken the high-profile primary of New York, as well as other Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states, out of play.

"It's important, and so they're doing it," Wilson said. "They had to do it. There was no other way to survive."

He added that the deal provided a "sliver of hope" to anti-Trump voters within the Republican Party.

Both Wilson and Siegfried said the pact had the potential to most help Kasich and Cruz with resource allocation, allowing them to present much stronger campaigns in the states on which they have agreed to concentrate.

Story continues

But both Kasich and Cruz have yet to directly tell supporters to vote for the other candidate in the three states, as the first day of the candidates' marriage got off to a rough start.

Kasich even said his supporters in Indiana "ought to vote for me" when asked about the deal on Monday at a Philadelphia diner.

"I think that was a verbal slip by Kasich," Siegfried said. "It probably will be walked back soon. I think the genuine answer to that is he had a gaffe and it's not a big deal. I think his supporters in Indiana will know that's their thing, to go vote for Cruz. In Indiana you vote Cruz  in Oregon you vote Kasich."

But Kasich seemed only to add to the confusion during a Tuesday-morning appearance on NBC's "Today" show.

"I have laid out a strategy, and I have not told anybody to not vote for me," Kasich said. "I'm just not there campaigning. You know what? When you don't campaign in certain areas in any kind of a race, guess what? Your turnout goes down. I don't tell people how to vote. I am not in that state right now. I will be in other states."

In recent weeks Trump has railed on the Republican Party's system for selecting delegates, calling it "rigged." Since the deal between Kasich and Cruz was announced, he has only increased the volume of his bellows, lambasting both Kasich and Cruz for being what he calls "pathetic."

And though Siegfried believed Trump's argument to be "totally invalid," he said it did play right into Trump's hand.

"So this helps Trump from the perspective of a 'look, they're trying to do all these things' when in reality it's not rigged," he said. "But from a PR standpoint, [the Cruz-Kasich deal] looks weird."

NOW WATCH: Melania Trump: If you attack my husband 'he will punch back 10 times harder





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There's a Snapchat filter that shows you how fast your phone is moving. This can be fun when you're running or on a train, but dangerous if you're behind the wheel of a car.

A driver trying to attain a high speed on Snapchat is allegedly to blame for a car accident outside of Atlanta, Georgia, that left a victim with "traumatic brain injuries," CNN reported.

The driver, Christal McGee, was driving 107 mph at the time of the collision on September 10, 2015, going over the speed limit "in order to obtain recognition through Snapchat by means of a Snapchat 'trophy'", according to the issued complaint.

According to a statement from the law offices of Michael Lawson Neff, McGee said she was "Just trying to get the car to 100 miles per hour to post it on Snapchat."

According to the complaint, McGee's Mercedes struck a Mitsubishi being driven by Maynard Wentworth, leaving Wentworth with "permanent brain damage."

Maynard and his wife are suing both McGee and Snapchat for medical bills incurred as a result of the accident, CNN reported. Maynard, an Uber driver at the time of the car accident, now relies on a walker or wheelchair.

If you haven't seen Snapchat's speed filter, here's what it looks like in action:

It's okay... if you're a passenger.

This isn't the first time: McGee isn't the only person to face reckless driving charges as a result of Snapchat  a teen in Washington got into a rollover car crash while using FaceTime and Snapchat behind the wheel. New evidence also points to Snapchat as the possible cause of a car crash in Philadelphia that left three young women dead.

The complaint issued against McGee also cites an accident in Brazil in which a woman wrecked her car while documenting herself driving 110 mph on Snapchat. The woman snapped a photo of the speedometer prior to the collision with the caption "180 KM LMAO"  180 kilometers per hour equates to 112 miles per hour, just five miles more than the speed McGee was driving when she hit Wentworth's car. The woman in Brazil continued to snap the accident following the impact, posting bloody selfies with the captions translating to "HELLLLLLLLLPPP" and "we overturned the car".

Story continues

McGee also took a Snapchat following her accident, according to Peagler's statement, snapping a photo of herself in the ambulance with blood on her face with the text, "Lucky to be alive."

You've been warned: It's no wonder injury attorneys are warning parents about the dangers of Snapchat's speed filter and Facebook groups like Mothers Against Snapchatting While Driving are being created. There are also some grim anti-snapchat-while-driving ads, showing users the deadly consequences of snapping behind the wheel.

This issue is just an extension of the existing problem of texting and driving, only with the Snapchat speed filter, there's another thing tempting users to push the pedal to the metal.

Snapchat does remind you to not use its services "in a way that would distract you from obeying traffic or safety laws" and to "never put yourself or others in harm's way just to capture a Snap," but this warning is buried in its . Maybe it should give a trophy for reading that.
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The former spokesman of Geert Wilder, the far-right Dutch politician who wants to ban Muslim immigration in Europe, embezzled nearly 180,000 euros ($203,000)in party funds to finance a luxury lifestyle, prosecutors said on Tuesday. Michael Heemels, who stepped down in February, is alleged to have spent the money on alcohol, drugs, jewelry, electronics, designer furniture and expensive travel including a trip to New York to see Madonna in concert. "The investigation is in the final stages and he will soon be summoned to appear in court," said prosecution spokesman Harry Willems. "It was a lot of money." In a letter to the regional parliament, published on a Dutch news web site, Heemels said he had sought to escape from stress, work pressure and personal conflict "through excessive drug and alcohol use". "At a certain point, I lost my grip on reality and was living in a fantasy world, fooling and cheating everyone around me," he said. Heemels, who led Wilders' Freedom Party in the southern province of Maastricht, used party credit cards and withdrew 90,000 euros ($102,000) in cash to fund his high lifestyle between 2012 and 2016, prosecutors allege. He faces a maximum punishment of three years in prison and a fine of up to 76,000 euros. (Reporting By Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
PARIS (Reuters) - A Dutchman dubbed the 'horror dentist' by French media was sentenced to eight years in jail on Tuesday for mutilating patients' mouths and defrauding social security services. The verdict was delivered by a court in Nevers, in central France, where local media relayed gory tales, some from old-aged pensioners who spoke of having as many as eight teeth pulled out in one sitting, infections and bills of tens of thousands of euros. "This is a massive relief. We must be very careful from now on when we get practitioners from abroad," said Nicole Martin, the head of a group of patients who took legal action against Mark Van Nierop, who had fled to Canada but was extradited back to France. (Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Ingrid Melander)
Most people will never have the experience of flying high over Earth in a spacecraft and seeing the planet's atmosphere, oceans and landmasses unspooling far below.

But now, Earthbound humans can look down on their planet in a way that emulates an astronaut's perspective more closely than anything ever seen before, thanks to "A Beautiful Planet," a new film created in IMAX 3D.

The film uses footage shot by NASA astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS). "A Beautiful Planet" is the first movie to use digital technology in space to capture glimpses of Earth and scenes of daily life inside the ISS at IMAX resolution, for projecting on a large-scale theater screen in 3D. [See Spectacular Photos of Earth from 'A Beautiful Planet']

Even the astronauts who shot the movie agreed that seeing the IMAX footage was the next best thing to living in space and peering out of the ISS windows. Kjell Lindgren, one of the film's astronaut cinematographers, told Live Science during a roundtable discussion that IMAX's immersive environment is very similar to what he saw firsthand.

"Having that scene occupy your entire field of view is the closest you can come to actually experiencing it," Lindgren said.

"Mini film school"

To prepare for shooting, the astronauts worked closely with Toni Myers, the film's director and editor, and cinematographer James Neihouse in "a mini film school," Lindgren said. The production team familiarized the astronauts with the technical requirements for shooting IMAX and showed them how to use visual elements like composition, camera angles and movement to share their unique view of Earth and their daily routines.

The scale of IMAX projection meant the camera-toting astronauts had to be exceptionally careful with their exposure, focus and steadiness, Neihouse told Live Science.

"Small mistakes become huge mistakes on a big screen," he said.

Story continues

Myers provided a list of locations on Earth and of ISS scenes  such as sleeping, performing experiments and celebrating Christmas  that she wanted the astronauts to capture. But the scenes weren't scripted, and the astronauts were encouraged to be on the lookout for interesting moments that might arise unexpectedly.

This is easier said than done, though, said astronaut Terry Virts, who captured stills and footage for the film and who has taken more than 500,000 photos in space (more than any other astronaut). Virts explained that the speed at which the ISS travels  5 miles (8 meters) per second  made capturing some of their Earth scenes especially challenging, leaving the astronauts mere moments to grab shots as the ISS hurtled past.

"If you see it and think about it, it's too late," Virts said.

The film is Myers' fourth IMAX movie shot in space, following "Hubble 3D" (2010), "Space Station 3D" (2002) and "Blue Planet" (1990). Improvements in camera capabilities meant that her shot list for the astronauts could include nighttime scenes that would not have been possible to capture using earlier technology: spectacular auroras, flashes from lightning storms and signs of human activity  the sprawl of city lights and fishing boats. [Earth Pictures: Iconic Images of Earth from Space]

A sobering sight

But when viewed from the ISS, some signs of human activity revealed a devastating impact on the planet.

Across the length of Madagascar a brown expanse stretched where forests once grew. Plumes of smoke emerged from South American rainforests as swatches of trees burned. Parched landscapes in the American Southwest showed scars left by drought and climbing temperatures.

Climatologist and Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Gavin Schmidt is well-acquainted with the evidence of recent and rapid climate change on Earth, but he was still taken aback when he saw the film, he told Live Science. [What a View: Amazing Astronaut Images of Earth]

"I knew it was bad. I didn't know it was that bad," Schmidt said. "That kind of imagery, that's powerful. You see the fingerprint of deforestation, of ice-sheet collapse, pollution from runoff, the bare hillsides of Madagascar."

However, alongside these troubling images, there was still room for optimism, he said.

"The beauty of the system as a whole tells people maybe we can change that, maybe we can have a different fingerprint," Schmidt said.

And perhaps in watching the ways that astronauts interact with the ISS, viewers might learn some lessons about how to treat the Earth, Lindgren suggested.

"We live on the ISS. We spend an inordinate amount of time up there taking care of it, because we recognize that it protects us from the cold, harsh void of space. Look at the Earth from that perspective  it provides us with food, water, protection from radiation. And we don't spend nearly as much time taking care of it as we do on the space station," Lindgren said.

Myers said using the film to help people recognize the similarities between life on the ISS and living on "spaceship Earth" was a goal from the beginning.

"If kids can understand what it takes to keep a crew alive in a closed system like that, and understand that the Earth is exactly the same thing for billions of people  that's the analogy I wanted to pursue," she said.

Awe and wonder

Lindgren told Live Science that seeing the vastness of Earth from space is life-changing. And in fact, many astronauts have described this profoundly transformative effect. In a recent study, a team of psychologists investigated the emotions described by numerous space travelers, to better understand the mechanisms that inspire these "blissful moments" and how similar emotions manifest in people who have never been to space.

Could an immersive IMAX view of Earth allow more people to share that life-changing perspective? The filmmakers said they believe it can.

"When you look down on Earth, you see it's unique  and fragile," Lindgren said.

"I would hope that we inspire our audience of all ages, but particularly young people, about what a beautiful place our planet is," Myers added, "especially when you see it from this unique perspective. And I would like to inspire them to take good care of it and look for solutions to some of the problems we have."

Would-be astronauts can embark on their own "voyage" into near-Earth orbit when "A Beautiful Planet" opens in IMAX theaters on April 29.

Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By Ayman al-Warfalli BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - A government based in eastern Libya has shipped its first cargo of crude in defiance of authorities in the capital Tripoli, a bold move that could deepen the divisions that have brought chaos since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. The Tripoli authorities asked the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to blacklist the India-flagged tanker Distya Ameya, which left the eastern Libyan port of Hariga overnight carrying oil they said could not be lawfully sold. The eastern government has set up its own National Oil Company (NOC) to act in parallel to the Tripoli-based NOC that is recognized internationally as the only legitimate seller of Libyan oil. The tanker departed Hariga carrying 650,000 barrels of crude late on Monday bound for Malta, said Mohamed al-Manfi, a spokesman for the eastern NOC. Maltese national TV said the ship was in international waters near Malta. The island's Port Directorate said the tanker was not authorized to dock there and requests would be refused. The ship last reported its position through the publicly available AIS tracking system earlier on Tuesday as still in Libyan waters. Libya's economy depends almost exclusively on oil export revenue and the fight over who controls those funds has driven chronic instability and civil war since long-serving autocrat Gaddafi was toppled and killed by Western-backed rebels in 2011. Parallel parliaments and governments have operated in Tripoli and the east since 2014. Much of the country is in the hands of dozens of armed groups loyal to one or other government, while small areas are controlled by Islamic State fighters. Political division, labor disputes and security threats have reduced Libya's oil output to less than a quarter of the 1.6 million barrels per day produced before the uprising. A U.N.-backed unity government, which arrived in the capital last month, includes figures from across Libya's divides but has not yet been fully accepted by either of the two loose alliances fighting for power since 2014. UN RESOLUTIONS It was not immediately clear how the eastern NOC could conduct a sale given the international opposition. One possibility might be to attempt a ship-to-ship transfer in international waters. "We are concerned about purchases of Libyan oil outside of legitimate channels," U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday, emphasizing all sales should go through the Tripoli-based National Oil Corporation. The United States has stopped unauthorized sales of Libyan oil in the past, sending special forces in 2014 to board a tanker off Cyprus loaded with crude shipped by a group pressing for more autonomy in eastern Libya. The U.S. troops forced that ship to return. Another senior U.S. official would not be drawn on whether Washington might undertake a similar operation, saying it would "look at all appropriate mechanisms to address the situation." If the shipment went through, it could spark copycat sales that would further shrink the unity government's revenues. "Thats very bad for Libya and very threatening, potentially, to the viability of any Libyan government," said the second U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Among U.S. concerns are that such oil sales could fund arms purchases by those resisting the unity government's authority. The eastern NOC has long been trying to sell its own oil, but until now those efforts have been blocked by the NOC in Tripoli, with the support of Western countries. The NOC in Tripoli says any sale by its eastern rival would breach U.N. Security Council resolutions and put the future of Libya's economy at risk. NOC Tripoli officials said on Tuesday they had notified the United Nations, countries with naval forces in the Mediterranean and a unity government now working in Tripoli that the shipment had not been authorized and should be stopped. "We have done our job and we are waiting for them to do theirs," said spokesman Mohamed al-Harari. The NOC in Tripoli has continued to run oil production throughout the crisis that followed Gaddafi's fall, with the funds paying state salaries across Libya, including many of the rival armed groups, which have generally been granted official status. The Tripoli NOC has retained international backing, and says it is working to plan future oil sales with the new U.N.-backed unity government. News of the eastern NOC's effort to export its first shipment of oil emerged late last week, when the NOC in Tripoli said it had prevented port workers from loading oil onto the Distya Ameya. It said the shipment had been ordered for a company called DSA Consultancy FZC, registered in the United Arab Emirates. (Additional reporting by Ahmad Gaddar and Libby George in London, Chris Scicluna in Valletta and Aidan Lewis in Tunis; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Peter Graff and James Dalgleish)
From ELLE

Standing at the bus stop, I felt a pain I'd never felt before. Nothing in my life experience could describe the feeling that gripped my whole body, especially my hands and feet. After running home, Mummy assured me everything was all right. I was just cold.

Cold? Having recently moved to London, this was my first time experiencing cold, which was a rather traumatizing sensation for a ten-year-old African girl from Freetown, Sierra Leone. How could people live in such a place that required you to wear more than one layer of clothing? I cried and demanded to be sent back to Sierra Leone-that very day if possible. But the indignities of my young life in England didn't stop with the weather.

At my proper little girl's grammar school, my fellow students and teachers simply considered me "African." Which I was, of course, but their perception of an African upbringing brought to mind images of me emerging from a mud hut, half naked swatting at the flies dancing about my head. Despite having come from a former British colony, my new peers could hardly fathom that I spoke English-even more offensive yet, that I spoke the Queen's English better than most of them.

Coming from a country where everyone "looked like me," I was now suddenly the consummate outsider. I had come from a place with a sense of privilege and autonomy. The whole notion of societal and professional limitations due to race was an alien concept to me. Even as a ten year old who often her spent her time day-dreaming in the elephant grass, the sense of a racial glass ceiling just didn't exist. If you dreamt it, you became it. Mine was an educated, middle-class family, awash with doctors (my father and his siblings), lawyers (several uncles), teachers (everyone else), and even a mayor thrown in for good measure (my grandfather). I'd been sent to Freetown at six months old while my parents continued their medical school education, first in the UK, then later Germany for my father. This was my reality.

Even as a ten year old day-dreaming in the elephant grass, the sense of a racial glass ceiling just didn't exist. If you dreamt it, you became it.

Having been sent back to England from Freetown to live with my parents, though, there were many back in Sierra Leonewho projected their dreams on me. Like many immigrants at the time, notions of me growing up to be a doctor or a lawyer, something professional and with standing, were a given. (In comparison, the thought of taking to the stage was as far-fetched as running off to join the circus.) Yet the seeds of my becoming a performer, ironically, were planted in Africa by my grandmother who ran a children's theater group and had me treading the boards the minute I could read.

Fast forward, now fully assimilated and a London teen, my parents pushed hard for me to get good grades with the implied promise of taking my A-levels and then going off to Cambridge to study law. Or journalism. Either would do. The plan took a sharp detour: I auditioned for a dance program at a small local college and got in. My parents decided it was time for a talk. We agreed that I could pursue these side interests so long as the focus was on my academics. That went completely off the rails when I got into London Contemporary Dance School, one of the most prestigious schools in Europe. After spending several years as a modern dancer and eventually ending in New York, I woke up one day and said, "I want to act."

After years of expressing myself through movement, I now had a desperate need to speak.

Unlike my formal dance training, I decided against traditional conservatory actor training and went headlong with on-the-job training, auditioning for everything I could. Capitalizing on my confidence in movement, I was able to land small roles in New York City's Off-Broadway scene. Working alongside actors who'd gone to Julliard, Yale, NYU and the like, it was a perfect lab for me to observe, dissect, and deconstruct what they did and then reassemble it into my own custom method. As long as I knew my lines and didn't bump into furniture, no one would know how little I knew.

As my skills developed, my British accent meant I was offered a lot of roles in "the classics," something that continues to this day. At one point, my entire resume consisted of only three playwrights: Shakespeare, Euripides, and Sophocles. The discipline and focus required of this particular canon reached a high point last year when I was cast as the first black female Hamlet in a major theater production at Philadelphia's Wilma Theatre. After winning Best Actor from the Philadelphia Critics Awards, it made me wonder, What would change a Westerner's opinion of what is to be an African?

It was around that time emerging writers such as Lynn Nottage, Danai Gurira, and Katori Hall began to smash the image of the "single African narrative," a term that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (author of Half of a Yellow Sun) coined to describe the way Westerners categorize Africans in broad stereotypes (primitive savage, starving poor, warlord, despot, etc), bereft of nuance, complexities, in short, humanity. Writers like Nottage, Gurira, and Hall-who I was fortunate to be asked to work with, either in workshops, readings, or full productions-managed to weave together multifaceted perspectives and dramas, from the period to the contemporary, the comic to the profoundly tragic. So demanding and illuminating are the characters in their plays, to do them justice, I've done exhaustive amounts of research and learned far more about the African experience than I'd ever imagined.

Most recently, I've been playing the role of a rebel soldier Maima in Danai Gurira's Eclipsed. It's the story of four "war wives" (among them Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o, Pascale Armand, and Saycon Sengbloh) held captive in an officer's compound in war-torn Liberia. At first glance, my character seems to be nothing more than a manipulative, violent, ruthless product of war. But we later see, under the veneer of AK-47's and RPG's, there is still some vulnerability, fear, and humanity left in her. It begs the question, Who would you be in that situation? Through the examination of a hypothetical, the women become the universal "we."

Still, something that always stands out to me, in each performance, is hearing much of the white audience gasp when one of the war wives cracks wise. Meanwhile, the Africans in the crowd break into full belly laughs. The contrast always reminds me of that ten-year-old African girl, waiting at a bus stop in London, not yet understanding that there could be beauty found in something as savage as a snowflake.
(This version of the April 20 story was corrected to remove the incorrect mention of GDP impact in paragraph four) By Ana Isabel Martinez and Diego Ore PEDERNALES/QUITO, Ecuador (Reuters) - Ecuador will temporarily increase some taxes, sell assets, and may issue new bonds on the international market to fund a multi-billion dollar reconstruction after a devastating 7.8 magnitude quake, a somber President Rafael Correa said on Wednesday. The death toll from Ecuador's weekend earthquake neared 600 and rescue missions ebbed as the traumatized Andean nation braced itself for long and costly rebuilding. "It's hard to imagine the magnitude of the tragedy. Every time we visit a place, there are more problems," Correa said, fresh from touring the disaster zone. The leftist leader estimated the disaster had inflicted $2 billion to $3 billion of damage. Lower oil revenue had already left the poor nation of 16 million people facing near-zero growth and lower investment. In addition to $600 million in credit from multilateral lenders, Correa, an economist, announced a raft of measures to help repair homes, roads, and bridges along the devastated Pacific Coast. "We're looking at the possibility of issuing bonds on the international market," he said on Wednesday afternoon, without providing details. Ecuador had been saying before the quake that current high yields would make it too expensive to issue debt. Yields on its bonds are close to 11 percentage points higher than comparable U.S. Treasury debt, according to JPMorgan data, and creditors are likely to be wary after the quake. Correa's government in 2008 defaulted on debt with a similar yield, calling the value unfair. His government has since returned to Wall Street and Ecuador currently has some $3.5 billion worth of bonds in circulation. In a nationally televised address later on Wednesday, Correa also announced the OPEC nation was poised to shed assets. "The country has many assets thanks to investment over all these years and we will seek to sell some of them to overcome these difficult moments," he said. He also unveiled several short-term tax changes, including a 2-point increase in the Valued Added Tax for a year, as well as a "one-off 3 percent additional contribution on profits," although the fine print was not immediately clear. The VAT tax is currently 12 percent. Additionally, a one-off tax of 0.9 percent will be imposed on people with wealth of over $1 million. Ecuadoreans will also be asked to contribute one day of salary, calculated on a sliding scale based on income. 'FOOD, PLEASE' Briefly pausing talk of reconstruction and hindering rescuers, another quake, of 6.2 magnitude, shook the coast before dawn on Wednesday, terrifying survivors. "You can't imagine what a fright it was. 'Not again!' I thought," said Maria Quinones in Pedernales town, which bore the brunt of Saturday's disaster. That quake, the worst in decades, killed 570 people, injured 7,000 others, damaged close to 2,000 buildings, and forced over 24,000 survivors to seek refuge in shelters, according to government tallies. Four days on, some isolated communities struggled without water, power or transport, as torn-up roads stymied deliveries. Along the coast, stadiums served as morgues and aid distribution centers. "I'm waiting for medicines, diapers for my grandson, we're lacking everything," said Ruth Quiroz, 49, as she waited in an hour-long line in front of a makeshift pharmacy set up at the Pedernales stadium. On a highway outside the town, some children sat holding placards saying: "Food, please." When a truck arrived to deliver water to the small town of San Jacinto, hungry residents surrounded the vehicle and hit it as they yelled: "We want food!" Scores of foreign aid workers and experts have arrived in the aftermath of Saturday's disaster and about 14,000 security personnel have kept order, with only sporadic looting reported. But rescuers were losing hope of finding anyone alive even as relatives of the missing begged them to keep looking. Speaking from the highland capital, Quito, Correa said the death toll would likely rise further, although at a slower rate than in previous days. "May these tears fertilize the soil of the future," he said. (Additional reporting by Alexandra Valencia and Diego Ore in Quito, Brian Ellsworth in Caracas; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Tom Brown, Peter Cooney and Michael Perry)
Eli Lilly and Co (NYSE: LLY) reported 17 percent drop in its net income to $440.1 million from $529.5 million in the previous year quarter. Its earnings also fell 18 percent to $0.41 a share from $0.50 a share in the prior year quarter.

On an adjusted basis also, its net income fell 4 percent to $882.3 million from $923.7 million while earnings dipped 5 percent to $0.83 a share from $0.87 a share in the prior year period. This was lower by $0.02 per share from the analysts' expectations of $0.85 a share.

The company blamed the drop in net income and EPS to the charge related to the impact of the Venezuelan financial crisis. That included the significant deterioration of the bolivar, and higher income taxes, partly offset by higher operating income.

View more earnings on LLY

However, Eli Lilly's revenue advanced 4.75 percent to $4.865 billion from $4.644 billion in the year-ago quarter. This was slightly above the Street predictions of $4.82 billion.

The company's Chairman, President and CEO, John Lechleiter, said "Revenue growth in the first quarter reflects substantial progress in launching new products, including Trulicity, Cyramza, Jardiance, Basaglar and Portrazza. In addition, we recently launched Taltz in the U.S., following its FDA approval last month. Several other potential products are currently under regulatory review, including olaratumab and baricitinib. Clearly, our innovation strategy is paying off, for the benefit of patients as well as shareholders."

Moving ahead, Eli Lilly said it expects earnings to be $2.68-$2.78 a share for the full year. Similarly, the company sees adjusted EPS to be $3.50-$3.60. The mid-point of $3.55 a share is higher than the Street expectations of $3.54 a share.

See more from Benzinga

 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Faced with the possibility of across-the-board defeats on in five states voting on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders has floated an idea that could provide his lagging White House bid a bit of extra mojo near the end of the primary season: naming Elizabeth Warren as his running mate.

Appearing on MSNBCs Morning Joe, Sanders noted that its a little bit early to be speculating on who might be his vice president if he somehow won the Democratic Party nomination, before offering up the Massachusetts senator as a potential candidate.

Related: Super Tuesday No. 4: The End of the Line for Bernie Sanders?

Elizabeth Warren, I think, has been a real champion in standing up for working families, taking on Wall Street, according to Sanders.

I think the women of this country, the people of this country understand that it would be a great idea to have a woman as vice president. Its something I would give serious thought to, he added. There are fantastic women who have been active in all kinds of fights who I think would make great vice presidential candidates.

Its unclear how much of a bounce Sanders would get if he named Warren, a darling of the Left and the focus of numerous efforts to draft her as presidential contender, to his ticket. The duo appeal to almost identical demographics and many of the volunteers and organizers that made up the Draft Warren movement have drifted into the Sanders camp.

Related: Sanders to Clinton: Heres What My Support Will Cost You

However, having Warren, who hasnt endorsed anyone in the Democratic primary, as his potential running mate could help Sanders with female voters, a group Hillary Clinton has consistently won.

Such talk, months before the Democratic National Convention, comes as Sanders faces an increasingly narrow path to the partys nomination  a reality he acknowledged Tuesday.

Whereas earlier in the campaign he would reject questions about what it would take to support Clinton if she gets the 2,383 delegates needed to become the partys standard-bearer, Sanders has started to outline how the former secretary of state could earn his backing.

Story continues

But on Monday, Sanders, who maintains he will continue his campaign until the final primary in California on June 7, would not commit to rallying his supporters for Clinton.

Related: In a Season of Nicknames, Lucky Don Seems Right for Trump

It is incumbent upon Clinton to reach out to the roughly 7 million voters who have backed the Sanders campaign, he said during an MSNBC town hall.

His evasiveness clearly annoyed Clinton, who noted that she didnt wait to endorse Barack Obama in 2008 after she withdrew from the presidential race.

Then-Senator Obama and I ran a really hard race; it was so much closer than the race right now between me and Senator Sanders, Clinton said.

We got to the end in June, and I did not put down conditions. I didnt say, You know what, if Senator Obama does X, Y and Z, maybe Ill support him. I said, I am supporting Senator Obama because no matter what our differences might be, they pale in comparison to the differences between us and the Republicans. Thats what I did.

At stake on Tuesday are 384 delegates in primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Factoring in superdelegates, Clintons lead stands at 1,944 to 1,192 for Sanders, according to an Associated Press count. That puts her at around 81 percent of the delegates needed to win the nomination.

If Sanders is swept in all five states, no strategy, including naming Warren as his running mate, will help him catch, let alone overtake, Clinton.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Ellen DeGeneres paid tribute to Prince on Monday's episode by sharing a few remarks and archival footage.

"You've heard me say it many times before, but the coolest part of having this job is that I get to meet incredible artists and heroes of mine and they perform right here in front of me," she said. "Of all the bands and artists that I've had on the show there was no one like Prince.

Prince's 'Purple Rain' Is the Week's Top-Selling Song, as 6 of His Classics Re-Enter Hot 100

"He was an artist, he was an icon, a genius, and he was kind enough to appear on my show in the very first season, in 2003, which you have to understand is a big deal because most stars wait to see if a talk show is going to be successful," she continued. "They wait to see if it's a cool thing to do before they say yes, so he did it on the first season, and it meant the world to me that he did that."

DeGeneres then shared clips from that 2003 appearance, which saw the host asking the late musician about his fashion sense ("I'm not used to having women buy my shorts for me," he told her) and revealing her personal copy of his first record.

"That's why I'm here -- she's from the old school, she knows what's up," he told the audience of DeGeneres before performing his 1986 song "Kiss."

Watch the video below.

This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter
Warning: Season 6 spoilers abound.

Its the scene the entire Season 6 premiere of Game of Thronesand in some sense the series up to this pointhas been building toward. There stands the Red Woman, Melisandre, the goddess behind so much of the shows deus ex machina, in her bedroom. A fire crackles. A candle flickers. Music, at once sharp and flat, plays. Melisandre, regarding herself in a foggy mirror, unbuttons her dress. It falls away. All that remains is her necklacea choker made of metal, completed with a red stone. The tension builds. The notes swell. She gazes at herself. We gaze along with her.

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And thena gong rumbles into a dramatic crescendoshe is transformed: An old woman, naked, stares back in that mirror. Melisandres glossy red hair has been replaced with sparse, white strands. Her eyes have sunken; her breasts have sagged; her back has hunched. The camera lingers on her naked body; we linger, too. She seems small and shriveled and weak. More than that: She seems sad. Melisandre slowly folds her frail body into her bed. She covers it with a blanket of animal furs. She sleeps.

So: The Red Woman is also an old woman! The scene is, all in all, the most satisfying type of plot twist: the kind that is shocking and also that you kind of anticipated the whole time. George R.R. Martins books, after all, have long suggested Melisandres age; the show based on them, for its part, has teased audiences with her very big secret. Outside of the Winterfellian world, too, there have been hints. As Voxs Andrew Prokop points out, Carice van Houten, the actor who plays Melisandre, has for years given interviews suggesting that the character is much more than 100 years oldand a fellow actor has mentioned, off-handedly, that she is in fact closer to 400.

Through the candlelit cliffhanger, viewers saw something that is almost never depicted on television: the naked body of a very, very old woman.

Story continues

But the shock-not-shock of the big plot twist was only partially due to the revelation that Melisandre is not what she seems (a revelation, as Spencer Kornhaber notes, that is a longstanding trope in fairy tales). The greater surprisethe real, visceral shock of the big revealwas the manner of the revelation: the way the show announced the Red Womans age via its light-flickering, tension-building, music-accompanied strip show. Through Game of Throness candlelit twist-cum-cliffhanger, viewers saw something that is almost never depicted on television, or for that matter in movies or in most other visual media: the starkly naked body of a very, very old woman.

Read Follow-Up Notes

In that, Game of Thrones is tapping into another kind of trope, and a much more pernicious one: the woman who has not only pretended to be something other than she is, but who has pretended to be more desirable than she is. The woman who has appeared to be young and beautiful in a society that treats those things as interchangeableand a women who is in truth, according to that society, neither. A woman who fully embodies the regressive notion of feminine wiles. Melisandre, earlier in Game of Throness TV run, seduced Stannis Baratheon. She tried to seduce Jon Snow. Her character has repeatedly used sex to get her way. And now we learn that she has done all that while being the one thing the culture beyond Game of Throness universe has deemed antithetical to sex: an old woman. Twist!

George R.R. Martin, in the books, has a notably distinctive word for Melisandres particular brand of magic: glamor. Call it what you will, the Red Woman tells Jon Snow in the most recent Song of Ice and Fire book, A Dance With Dragons. Glamor, seeming, illusion. Rhllor is Lord of Light, Jon Snow, and it is given to his servants to weave with it, as others weave with thread. Later on in the same book, Arya Starks mentor offers a similar explanation, this time with glamor as the instrument, rather than the effect, of the magic:

Mummers change their faces with artifice, the kindly man was saying, and sorcerers use glamors, weaving light and shadow and desire to make illusions that trick the eye.

Martin is employing the historical definition of glamouras a brand of magic that specializes in deceptive appearances. Which is also to say: a brand of magic that has long been associated with the feminine. Up until the 19th century, the writer Virginia Postrel notes, glamour suggested a magic spell, an illusion cast by Gypsies and witches. It suggested artifice and duplicity, particularly when it came to sex. When devils, wizards, or jugglers deceive the sight, went a 1721 glossary of poetry, they are said to cast glamour oer the eyes of the spectator.

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In that sense, the thing being revealed in Melisandres big reveal is much more than age, and much more than simple artifice. It is deception in the name of seduction. Melisandres illusion is an extreme form of the kind of practical magic that many mortal women are expected to engage in, every day: to do everything in their power to appear young and beautiful, for as long as they possibly can. But her revealand the schadenfreudic delight the show takes in its pans, in every sense of the word, of her bodyalso suggest the other side of the Melisandrian trap: the judgment women will face for the effort. To attempt to appear youthful is to conform to one social expectation and to violate another. It is to assert and to acquiesce, both at the same time.

So Melisandres revealthe public artifice versus the private realityis also the sort of thing that is called to mind when, say, sitcoms make jokes about the horrors of women being seen (by men) without makeup. Or when Us Weekly gleefully revels in catching stars in the same state. Or when a Redditor responds to a before-and-after picture of a woman wearing makeup with the comment This post shows to not trust ones looks. It is tied to the retrograde assumption that womenvia makeup and hair dye and Spanx and the Bombshell! After Dark Lace Add-2-Cups Push-Up Bra and what have youritually and routinely deceive by way of pretending to be something other than what they are.

George R.R. Martin is employing, in his books, the historical definition of glamouras a brand of magic that specializes in deceptive appearances.

Which is also to say that the discord of that jarring goooong in Melisandres age-reveal is uncomfortably harmonious with the culture beyond Game of Thronesone that is awkwardly negotiating what graceful aging actually entails. Its a culture in which the privileged have access to plastic surgery and Botox and anti-aging serums and potions. A culture in which shows like Younger explore what age actually means when technological advances have made ones actual age less immediately obvious, and in which shows like Cougartown and Hot in Cleveland and their many, many counterparts wrestle with the complicated collisions of women and age and sex.

Its also a culture that found a character on another of last nights HBO season premieres, Veep, firing an employee with the explanation that youre as useless to me as a 40-year-old woman.

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The woman there, coming from the guy it did, was redundant. Because what Melisandres reveal also suggests is how gendered agingthat otherwise extremely universal human activityhas become. If you enter old woman onto thesaurus.com, the dictionary first helpfully suggests, as a synonym, a female marriage partner, or bride; a few clicks away from that, thoughif youre trying to find a word for an older woman on her own terms, rather than a guysyou get bag, battle-ax, biddy, crone, harpy, shrew, and vixen. You get the whiff of the same thing Game of Thrones suggests with its gong-and-fire-laden presentation of Melisandres real, wrinkled body: the suggestion that age is not just a stage of life, but a state of mind. That agefor women, at leastis a personality trait, and a distinctly negative one. That an old woman is only slightly removed from a harpy/shrew/vixen. (Thesaurus.com on old man, on the other hand? Suggested synonyms include head of the house, parent, lord, and patriarch.)

So while the final scene of The Red Woman was subtly orchestrated on a human levelmaybe it was the sad, tired expression on her face or how suddenly vulnerable she looked, my colleague Lenika Cruz points out, but the unexpected pathos I felt for her outweighed any revulsionthe assumptions it made were more revealing than the Big Reveal itself. Shes old! the episode shouted, triumphantly. Shes been lying the whole time! it suggested, teasingly. And, with that, the show that has reveled in all manner of boundary-pushing imagery, from the violent to the sexual, found a new way to shock its viewers: to present them with woman who is at once naked and old.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
When Travis Horton of Louisiana, an engineer at CITGO Petroleum Corporation, decided a few years ago to pursue a master's degree in chemical engineering, he enrolled in an online program at Columbia University. Horton knew that his employers wouldn't view his online degree any differently than they would for one earned in person; in fact, the company covered his tuition.

"I told them, 'It's the same program, there's nothing different about it. You're held to the same standards as the on-campus students,'" says the 38-year-old, who eventually moved to a more specialized role in the company after finishing the program in 2014. "Nobody blinks an eye."

Employers in the field of engineering have generally become accepting of online graduate degrees in the past few years, engineering recruiters say, particularly as well-established universities have built up their programs -- though a few employers would still favor the traditional student.

[Learnfour questions employers ask about job applicants with online degrees.]

"Now that you're seeing more and more people in that hiring chair that have come from perhaps their own online education, you're seeing a lot more acceptance to it," says Jack Cullen, president of Modis, a tech staffing agency with more than 70 branch offices throughout North America.

Online graduate programs in engineering have become more prevalent because, Cullen says, they enable engineers to work and pursue a degree at the same time -- there's no need to take a gap year to return to school. Balancing online learning and a full-time job also illustrates self-discipline and a firm commitment to engineering -- a field requiring skills in high demand, Cullen says.

And in most cases, Cullen says, earning a master's degree will let employees specialize in a particular area of the discipline and then apply this education directly to their work.

It's usually the degree itself -- not the format by which it was earned -- that employers see on a resume and really care about, says Dani McDonald, vice president of national engineering recruitment at the employment agency Kelly Services.

Story continues

"They don't necessarily dig into whether or not that was completed traditionally or via an online or distance learning program," she says.

Many experts agree that accreditation and reputation are key factors when it comes to initially evaluating a grad program. It isn't necessary to state outright on a resume that a degree was earned online, especially because there's a slight chance that somebody who's reviewing candidates is unfamiliar with online learning or simply favors a traditional education, says Dennis Theodorou, vice president of operations for the national engineering executive search firm JMJ Phillip.

[Discoverhow to tell if an online program is accredited.]

Employers are more concerned about whether the name of the institution is one they recognize, for example, and whether the program gave the candidate the same experiences he or she would have gotten in a face-to-face environment, which is many times the case, McDonald says.

"The degree at the end of the day is really just a credibility statement," she says. "They're looking for your experience and what you've contributed and what you will contribute to their organization."

A company also recognizes that master's degree students typically have engineering-related undergrad degrees, Theodorou says. The fact that they already have the foundational education behind them makes the format of the subsequent degree even less relevant.

"Typically what we see is employers are a little more open to online engineering master's simply because of their undergrad requirements," he says.

Still, candidates shouldn't shy away from discussing their online education during job interviews, says Cullen, of Modis, and they shouldn't sound defensive if a potential employer asks them about it. In fact, experts say, explaining why he or she earned an online degree might end up helping the job applicant and illustrate their commitment to the field.

"I think it's a good step, and it's something we recommend in the interview process -- you take that interviewer through why you chose this field, why you chose this particular online degree and how this is going to benefit you and that employer moving forward," Cullen says.

In cases like Horton's, some companies are even willing to finance employees' online graduate studies if the skills they will gain can benefit the company and the employee's role.

"You can be productive, and you can immediately transfer those skills that you learned to what you're doing on the job, and I think they see a big benefit in that," says Horton, who sometimes participates in interviewing job candidates and encounters some with online degrees.

Tresha Lacaux, a structures engineering manager at Boeing based in the Seattle area, completed an online Master of Science in Engineering from the University of California--Los Angeles with a specialization in mechanics of structures. Like Horton, she says her company paid for her online graduate education, and "it wasn't an issue at all."

[Understand how totry convincing an employer to pay for an online degree.]

"It was more recognition that, 'Hey, you got your degree from a great school,'" Lacaux says.

Lacaux, who is sometimes involved in the hiring process at Boeing, says having an online degree as an applicant is generally fine -- so long as it's from an accredited institution.

"There's no issues with that at all," she says.

Trying to fund your online education? Get tips and more in the U.S. News Paying for Online Education center.

Jordan Friedman is an online education editor at U.S. News. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at jfriedman@usnews.com.


When Travis Horton of Louisiana, an engineer at CITGO Petroleum Corporation, decided a few years ago to pursue a master's degree in chemical engineering, he enrolled in an online program at Columbia University. Horton knew that his employers wouldn't view his online degree any differently than they would for one earned in person; in fact, the company covered his tuition.

"I told them, 'It's the same program, there's nothing different about it. You're held to the same standards as the on-campus students,'" says the 38-year-old, who eventually moved to a more specialized role in the company after finishing the program in 2014. "Nobody blinks an eye."

Employers in the field of engineering have generally become accepting of online graduate degrees in the past few years, engineering recruiters say, particularly as well-established universities have built up their programs -- though a few employers would still favor the traditional student.

[Learnfour questions employers ask about job applicants with online degrees.]

"Now that you're seeing more and more people in that hiring chair that have come from perhaps their own online education, you're seeing a lot more acceptance to it," says Jack Cullen, president of Modis, a tech staffing agency with more than 70 branch offices throughout North America.

Online graduate programs in engineering have become more prevalent because, Cullen says, they enable engineers to work and pursue a degree at the same time -- there's no need to take a gap year to return to school. Balancing online learning and a full-time job also illustrates self-discipline and a firm commitment to engineering -- a field requiring skills in high demand, Cullen says.

And in most cases, Cullen says, earning a master's degree will let employees specialize in a particular area of the discipline and then apply this education directly to their work.

It's usually the degree itself -- not the format by which it was earned -- that employers see on a resume and really care about, says Dani McDonald, vice president of national engineering recruitment at the employment agency Kelly Services.

Story continues

"They don't necessarily dig into whether or not that was completed traditionally or via an online or distance learning program," she says.

Many experts agree that accreditation and reputation are key factors when it comes to initially evaluating a grad program. It isn't necessary to state outright on a resume that a degree was earned online, especially because there's a slight chance that somebody who's reviewing candidates is unfamiliar with online learning or simply favors a traditional education, says Dennis Theodorou, vice president of operations for the national engineering executive search firm JMJ Phillip.

[Discoverhow to tell if an online program is accredited.]

Employers are more concerned about whether the name of the institution is one they recognize, for example, and whether the program gave the candidate the same experiences he or she would have gotten in a face-to-face environment, which is many times the case, McDonald says.

"The degree at the end of the day is really just a credibility statement," she says. "They're looking for your experience and what you've contributed and what you will contribute to their organization."

A company also recognizes that master's degree students typically have engineering-related undergrad degrees, Theodorou says. The fact that they already have the foundational education behind them makes the format of the subsequent degree even less relevant.

"Typically what we see is employers are a little more open to online engineering master's simply because of their undergrad requirements," he says.

Still, candidates shouldn't shy away from discussing their online education during job interviews, says Cullen, of Modis, and they shouldn't sound defensive if a potential employer asks them about it. In fact, experts say, explaining why he or she earned an online degree might end up helping the job applicant and illustrate their commitment to the field.

"I think it's a good step, and it's something we recommend in the interview process -- you take that interviewer through why you chose this field, why you chose this particular online degree and how this is going to benefit you and that employer moving forward," Cullen says.

In cases like Horton's, some companies are even willing to finance employees' online graduate studies if the skills they will gain can benefit the company and the employee's role.

"You can be productive, and you can immediately transfer those skills that you learned to what you're doing on the job, and I think they see a big benefit in that," says Horton, who sometimes participates in interviewing job candidates and encounters some with online degrees.

Tresha Lacaux, a structures engineering manager at Boeing based in the Seattle area, completed an online Master of Science in Engineering from the University of California--Los Angeles with a specialization in mechanics of structures. Like Horton, she says her company paid for her online graduate education, and "it wasn't an issue at all."

[Understand how totry convincing an employer to pay for an online degree.]

"It was more recognition that, 'Hey, you got your degree from a great school,'" Lacaux says.

Lacaux, who is sometimes involved in the hiring process at Boeing, says having an online degree as an applicant is generally fine -- so long as it's from an accredited institution.

"There's no issues with that at all," she says.

Trying to fund your online education? Get tips and more in the U.S. News Paying for Online Education center.





More From US News & World Report


Energy companies are offering "unsustainable" dividends for which they are wrongly rewarded by the market, the CEO of an energy-focused hedge fund told CNBC.

Oil companies have largely guarded their dividends, despite the collapse in crude prices since 2014. The industry has a tradition of providing steady dividends and has tended to opt for spending cuts rather than reducing payouts to investors.

For instance, BP (London Stock Exchange: BP.-GB) announce a pretax loss of $865 million for the first quarter of 2016 on Tuesday, but held its dividend unchanged at 10 cents per ordinary share.

Nearly 80 percent of energy companies maintained or increased their dividend payments in 2015, according to a post on the Research Centre for Energy Management website. That was despite companies struggling to generate cash in the face of depressed oil prices.

In March, Chevron (NYSE: CVX) chief executive John Watson reiterated the importance of dividend growth, even as he announced new spending cuts. The company has hiked dividends for 28 consecutive years.





Royal Dutch Shell (London Stock Exchange: RDSA-GB) has not cut its dividend since 1945 and ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) has increased its dividend each year for more than three decades, according to Schroders, an asset management company.



"A lot of companies have adopted dividend policies that are unsustainable and have been rewarded by the financial markets that don't sufficiently question the sustainability," Harald Otterhaug, the head of Oslo Asset Management, told CNBC last week in London.

"A lot of that unsustainable dividend has been financed by easy access to credit markets and equity markets and last year when the credit and equity markets shut down for a lot of these companies, it became pretty quickly evident the dividends were unsustainable and investors realized that a lot of the dividend they were receiving in recent years had been return of capital rather than return on capital and there wasn't much capital left," he added.

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"We believe that longer term, in order for production to be economical, oil prices need to go significantly higher, but it is a big question mark when and how that happens," Otterhaug told CNBC.

Oslo Asset Management's strategy is to exploit "fundamental inefficiencies in publicly traded securities globally within energy and natural resources," according to its website.

"I think that (unsustainable dividends) was a big theme that played out last year; but again it is still in early innings, I think there are plenty of opportunities out there yet," Otterhaug told CNBC.

Both Brent (Intercontinental Exchange Europe: @LCO.1) and WTI (New York Mercantile Exchange: @CL.1) crude futures have rallied by around 37 percent since the start of the year, but remain far off the peaks above $100 per barrel reached in the first half of 2014.

Schroders said oil companies' commitment to paying dividends rested on crude prices recovering.

"A continued drought will place further pressure on energy companies' ability to cover their dividends through earnings from day-to-day operations," it said in a blog post last month on its website.

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London (AFP) - Junior doctors in England staged their first ever all-out strike Tuesday in a bitter row with Prime Minister David Cameron's government over pay and conditions.

The strike forced the state-funded National Health Service to postpone 13,000 operations and 113,000 appointments as thousands of doctors took action.

Protesters marched through the streets holding placards like "Save our NHS" and "Protect Junior Doctors" and were joined by Labour opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Addressing a large crowd of junior doctors massed on the pavement opposite Downing Street, Corbyn described the NHS as the "greatest achievement in this country".

"It's under threat from a government that's more interested in attacking the core of the NHS - namely the junior doctors and all that work with them - than supporting the NHS and people that keep us all alive," Corbyn said.

While there have been several recent walk-outs, this one affected hospital emergency care such as accident and emergency (A&E) and maternity units for the first time, although senior doctors and nurses were to remain on duty.

England has around 50,000 junior doctors, who are graduates with years of experience who have yet to complete their professional qualifications.

The walk-out runs from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm (0700 GMT to 1600 GMT) on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"This is the saddest day of my professional life," said Fiona Martin, 36, at a picket outside St Thomas' Hospital in central London, in the shadow of parliament.

"I never thought as a doctor I would be forced to put down my stethoscope but we have been forced into it by a government that refuses to listen," she told AFP.

- Entrenched dispute -

A key sticking point in the dispute has been how much financial compensation junior doctors should get for working on Saturdays.

The government has proposed treating most of Saturday like a weekday, cutting down on overtime pay.

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The British Medical Association (BMA), the doctors' trade union, has not ruled out an open-ended strike or mass resignations as a way of trying to force the government's hand on the issue.

But Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the new contract was a "very fair deal" that rewarded junior doctors better than paramedics, police officers and fire officers for working unsociable weekend hour and accused the BMA of blackmail.

"We have too many heartbreaking stories, parents who have lost children, people who have lost loved ones, because we are not delivering high-quality care at the weekend," Hunt said.

The taxpayer-funded NHS, established in 1948, is one of Britain's most respected institutions, providing largely free medical care.

While it has been shielded from austerity cuts to public services under Cameron, experts warn it still faces increasing financial strain due to factors like rising treatment costs and an ageing population.

Cameron's government argues that reforms to junior doctors' contracts are necessary to ensure that the quality of care for patients is as high at weekends as it is during the week.

The prime minister has quoted research claiming mortality rates for patients admitted to hospital on a Sunday can be 16 percent higher than on a Wednesday, though doctors question this.

An Ipsos Mori poll for BBC News found that 57 percent of the general public supported the doctors while a quarter opposed their actions.

Hunt announced in February that he intended to impose the new contract on junior doctors after they rejected his "best and final offer".

There are signs the dispute is getting more entrenched.

"Both sides seem to be digging in their heels," warned Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association.
Brussels (AFP) - The EU food safety watchdog said Tuesday it will revisit research on bisphenol A, a year after the bloc said the chemical, mostly used to coat metal packaging, poses no health risk to consumers.

The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) said it was setting up a panel of experts to evaluate new scientific evidence on the effects of bisphenol A (BPA) on the immune system.

The agency is "conducting the review following publication of a report that raises concerns about the effects of BPA on the immune system of foetuses and young children," it said.

The EU agency based its reappraisal on research by the Dutch National Institute for Public Health.

Besides being used for can coatings and plastic tableware, BPA is also commonly used in cashier slips and ATM receipts as well as plastic containers used for microwave cooking or fridge storage.

Some studies have linked it to brain and nervous system problems, reproductive disorders and obesity.

A study in 2013 said it may expose unborn children to breast cancer later in life.

But in 2015, the EU sparked controversy by declaring that BPA carried no health risk as exposure to the chemical was too low to cause harm.

The substance has been banned for use in baby bottles by the European Union, the United States and Canada, and from all food containers in France.

The final scientific opinion by the EU on BPA is scheduled for completion in 2018.
BRUSSELS, April 26 (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers will not meet on Thursday and need more time to discuss two sets of Greek reforms that would unlock new loans, the office of the Eurogroup said on Twitter.

The meeting was a possibility because Greece and its lenders aim to reach an agreement on a package of contingent measures that would be implemented only if needed, to make sure the country reaches agreed fiscal targets in 2018.

"No additional Eurogroup on Greece this Thursday, more time needed," said the spokesman for the chairman of euro zone finance ministers, Jeroen Dijsselbloem. "Meeting on first review, contingency package and debt at later stage," the spokesman, Michel Reijns, said.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott and Jan Strupczewski; editing by Ralph Boulton)
From Cosmopolitan

According to a new poll, most young Americans (64 percent) believe that men have distinct advantages over women in society, and nearly 3 in 5 believe that women still face a glass ceiling at work.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, young women are significantly more likely (68 percent) to believe the glass ceiling exists than men (50 percent). A majority of Democrats (76 percent) believe men "have more advantages than women," while "less than half" (48 percent) of Republicans believe the same, according to a press release announcing the study. Less than a third (27 percent) of young Americans believe that women and men are treated equally, while only 7 percent believe women have more advantages than men in society.

The findings, released Monday in Harvard University Institute of Politics' biannual Survey of Young Americans' Attitudes Towards Politics and Public Service, are based on 3,183 interviews conducted between March 18 and April 3, 2016, with Americans ages 18 to 29. The poll, which has been conducted since 2000, is a bellwether for the political attitudes and leanings of young Americans.

The survey results suggest that gender and women's issues will play a critical role in the upcoming election. "Millennials care deeply about their futures and in this election cycle they are laser-focused on issues like access to educational opportunity, women's equality and the economy," said Harvard Institute of Politics director Maggie Williams in a press release. "This survey reflects their passion, their worries and most importantly, a growing awareness that their voices have power."

While young Americans have strong opinions on gender advantages, however, they appear to reject labels. Only 27 percent of young Americans consider themselves feminists (16 percent of men and 37 percent of women). However, 49 percent of those polled "support" feminism.

As for the presidential candidate who is the most likely to improve the lives of women? Overall, 29 percent of young Americans believe Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders would bring the greatest improvements for women, with 25 percent believing Hillary Clinton would bring the most change. Five percent or less believed that Republican candidates Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (5 percent), Donald Trump (4 percent), and Ohio Gov. John Kasich (2 percent) would bring the most improvement to women's lives.

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Interestingly, men (32 percent) are more likely than women (26 percent) to say that Clinton would most improve women's lives, while women (30 percent) are more likely than men (21 percent) to believe Sanders would improve women's lives the most. Director of Polling John Della Volpe told Cosmpolitan.com via email that the gender divide over Clinton and Sanders supporters is likely "less about specific policy, and more about overall trust."

However, most young Americans - 74 percent - are "confident" that if Hillary Clinton loses the election, they will see another woman president in their lifetime.

To learn more about the findings and Harvard's IOP poll, click here.

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Iceland's biggest name in film and TV is expanding his local production unit.

Baltasar Kormakur, who directed last year's real-life disaster thriller Everest and is behind recent crime series Trapped, the first Icelandic TV drama to be picked up by The Weinstein Co. and the BBC, has hired Petur Sigurdsson, whose credits include Game of Thrones, to head up RVK Studios' production services division.

Alongside his work as production manager on HBO's fantasy series, Sigurdsson has worked on Sky/Pivot Arctic thriller Fortitude - shot in Iceland - and was a line producer on Werner Herzog's upcoming volcano documentary Into the Inferno. Under his lead, RVK will offer full production services for film, television, commercial and photo shoots in both Iceland and Greenland and hopes to expand its filmmaking outreach.

"Petur is a fantastic addition to RVK and brings with him a vast knowledge of filmmaking in Iceland and also a wealth of experience in a variety of genres and budgets," said Kormakur. "With Petur joining RVK, we hope to pave the way for other filmmakers interested in a great Nordic cinematic experience, on and off the screen."

Earlier this year, it was announced that RVK would be producing Film4-backed psychological thriller The Oath, which is set to be Kormakur's first stint in front of the camera in eight years.

Read More: Berlin: 'Everest' Director Baltasar Kormakur to Helm Thriller 'The Oath'
By Letitia Stein

TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - A former Florida college professor who was fired after he suggested the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax has sued the school for violation of his right to free speech, his attorney said on Tuesday.

James Tracy was dismissed in January by Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where he had taught since 2002. His website, MemoryHoleBlog.com, gained notice in 2013 after he claimed the December 2012 massacre by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was staged. The attack killed 26 people, including 20 children.

The civil lawsuit, filed in federal court on Monday, claims that the firing violated his rights, including free speech protections under the U.S. Constitution. Tracy seeks to be reinstated and compensated for economic and other damages, according to a copy of the lawsuit provided by his attorney.

"Tenure, free speech, due process and academic freedom are under attack," his attorney Louis Leo IV said in a news release.

University spokesman Joshua Glanzer declined in an email to comment, saying the case had not been served.

University officials had said Tracy was terminated for failing to submit forms explaining his outside activities for conflict of interest review.

Tracy also said the 2015 San Bernardino attack, in which a militant Muslim couple killed 14 people, was a hoax and raised conspiracy theories about other mass killings nationally.

Tracy, whose work included a course entitled "Culture of Conspiracy," sent a letter in December to the parents of 6-year-old Sandy Hook victim Noah Pozner demanding proof they were his parents.

Tracy's lawsuit also names university officials and faculty union representatives.

(Reporting by Letitia Stein; Editing by Richard Chang)
As Kelly Ripa prepares to return to Live! With Kelly and Michael on Tuesday, Katie Couric weighed in on how she thinks Ripa should handle the controversy surrounding Michael Strahan's exit.

"I hope she'll be transparent," Couric told ET at the New York Women In Communications 2016 Matrix Awards in New York City on Monday.

WATCH: Kelly Ripa Still Hasn't Talked to Michael Strahan Ahead of 'Live!' Return

Previously, a source told ET that Ripa was unhappy about being "blindsided" by Strahan's exit. According to the source, she was unaware of Strahan's deal to join Good Morning America until after shooting Live!'s April 19 episode -- the same day the news became public. Following the announcement, Ripa took time off from the job.

Couric sympathized with Ripa about being left in the dark.

"I don't know all the ins and outs. I only know what I've read, but I think that Kelly should have been included in the process of making a massive decision," Couric told ET. "Your partner on-air is critically important. I like them both and hopefully things will smooth over and they'll both be able to move forward with their incredible careers, because both Michael and Kelly are enormously talented and I really like them both. I think there's drama and the media loves drama so it's getting a lot of attention, but I'm sure they'll work it out."

WATCH: Michael Strahan Says He's 'Excited' for Kelly Ripa's Return to 'Live!'

A source close to Ripa tells ET that, as of Monday morning, the longtime Live! host still hadn't spoken to Strahan.

For his part, Strahan kept things professional on Monday's show, which he co-hosted with Pretty Little Liars star Shay Mitchell.

"Good morning everybody! Everybody is fired up!" he told the crowd. "Kelly had a scheduled day off to celebrate her 20th wedding anniversary with her husband Mark [Consuelos]. She is going to be back tomorrow, which we are all excited about!"

Story continues

WATCH: Michael Strahan Leaving 'Live!' Confuses Kelly Ripa's Pal Andy Cohen: 'It Ended Way Too Prematurely'

See more about the ongoing drama in the video below.

Related Articles
Kelly Ripa is ready to make her return to Live! With Kelly and Michael on Tuesday, but a source close to production tells ET that the daytime co-host is far from happy about it.

A source close to the production tells ET that, as of Monday morning, Ripa still hasn't spoken to co-host Michael Strahan after he "blindsided" her with his exit announcement last week. However, the two will put their drama aside and sit together through sweeps, which run through May, then he'll leave and the search for her new co-host begins, our source says. Ripa has also used the ordeal to renegotiate her Live! contract.

WATCH: Michael Strahan Says He's 'Excited' for Kelly Ripa's Return to 'Live!'

For his part, Strahan kept things professional on Monday's show, which he co-hosted with Pretty Little Liars star Shay Mitchell.

"Good morning everybody! Everybody is fired up!" he told the crowd. "Kelly had a scheduled day off to celebrate her 20th wedding anniversary with her husband Mark [Consuelos]. She is going to be back tomorrow, which we are all excited about!"

ET also confirmed that Ripa sent an email to the Live! staff on Friday night in appreciation of their support.

"(Sorry for this late Friday night email). I wanted to thank you all for giving me the time to process this new information," Ripa's note read. "Your kindness, support and love has overwhelmed me. We are a family and I look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday morning. Love, Kelly."

WATCH: Kelly Ripa Emails Staff, Will Return to 'Live!' Alongside Michael Strahan on Tuesday

Ripa skipped out on last week's Wednesday and Thursday tapings after being "blindsided" by Strahan's announcement that he was leaving the show to go full-time at Good Morning America.

"She put her neck out for Michael to be a part of the show four years ago," another source told ET last week. "She is actually miserable with the show, has been for a while now...They have not [been] getting along that well recently, but this [takes] the cake."

Story continues

See more about the ongoing drama in the video below.

WATCH: Michael Strahan Leaving 'Live!' Confuses Kelly Ripa's Pal Andy Cohen: 'It Ended Way Too Prematurely'

Related Articles
By Jim Finkle

(Reuters) - SWIFT, the global financial network that banks use to transfer billions of dollars every day, warned its customers on Monday that it was aware of "a number of recent cyber incidents" where attackers had sent fraudulent messages over its system.

The disclosure came as law enforcement authorities in Bangladesh and elsewhere investigated the February cyber theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank account at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. SWIFT has acknowledged that the scheme involved altering SWIFT software on Bangladesh Bank's computers to hide evidence of fraudulent transfers.

Monday's statement from SWIFT marked the first acknowledgement that the Bangladesh Bank attack was not an isolated incident but one of several recent criminal schemes that aimed to take advantage of the global messaging platform used by some 11,000 financial institutions.

"SWIFT is aware of a number of recent cyber incidents in which malicious insiders or external attackers have managed to submit SWIFT messages from financial institutions' back-offices, PCs or workstations connected to their local interface to the SWIFT network," the group warned customers on Monday in a notice seen by Reuters.

The warning, which SWIFT issued in a confidential alert sent over its network, did not name any victims or disclose the value of any losses from the previously undisclosed attacks. SWIFT confirmed to Reuters the authenticity of the notice.

SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial

Telecommunication, is a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions.

Also on Monday, SWIFT released a security update to the software that banks use to access its network to thwart malware that security researchers with British defense contractor BAE Systems said was probably used by hackers in the Bangladesh Bank heist.[L2N17S0RG]

BAE's evidence suggested that hackers manipulated SWIFT's Alliance Access server software, which banks use to interface with SWIFT's messaging platform, to cover their tracks.

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BAE said it could not explain how the fraudulent orders were created and pushed through the system.

But SWIFT provided some evidence about how that happened in its note to customers, saying that in most cases the modus operandi was similar.

It said the attackers obtained valid credentials for operators authorized to create and approve SWIFT messages, then submitted fraudulent messages by impersonating those people.

FireEye, the internet security company whose Mandiant unit was hired by Bangladesh Bank to help investigate the heist, said the same group behind that hack had probably attacked other financial targets.

"FireEye has observed activity in other financial services organizations that is likely by the same threat actor behind the cyber attack on the Bank of Bangladesh," Vivek Chudgar, Mandiant's senior director for the Asia Pacific said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

FireEye declined to go into detail.

Rakesh Asthana, the World Informatix Cyber Security CEO, who is overseeing Bangladesh Bank's probe into the hack, declined to discuss the other attacks that SWIFT referred to.

He did, though, urge banks to conduct independent security assessments to make sure their networks are secure and prevent future attacks.

SWIFT builds on security practices established by the customer itself and therefore it is imperative that in the wake of this attack, customers using SWIFT Alliance Access must strengthen their cyber security posture, Asthana said

FOLLOWING THE MONEY

Cyber security experts said more attacks could surface as SWIFT's banking clients look to see if their SWIFT access has been compromised.

Shane Shook, a banking security consultant who investigates large financial crime, said hackers were turning to SWIFT and other private financial messaging platforms because such attacks can generate more revenue than going after consumers or small businesses.

"These hacks specifically target financial institutions because smaller efforts result in much larger thefts," he said. "It's much more efficient than stealing from consumers."

Justin Harvey, chief security officer with Fidelis Cybersecurity, said hackers followed the money and would be drawn into such schemes in hopes of emulating a big heist like the one on Bangladesh Bank.

"After the Bangladesh Bank heist became public, every other attacker out there is looking to see if they can do the same," he said.

SWIFT spokeswoman Natasha Deteran told Reuters that the commonality in these cases was that internal or external attackers compromised the banks own environments to obtain valid operator credentials.

"Customers should do their utmost to protect against this," she said in an email to Reuters.

SWIFT told customers that the security update must be installed by May 12.

"We have made the Alliance interface software update mandatory as it is designed to help banks identify situations in which attackers have attempted to hide their traces - whether these actions have been executed manually or through malware," she said.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston; Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir in Dhaka; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Martin Howell and Peter Cooney)
Extended Stay America, Inc. STAY operates hotels in the United States and Canada. The company operates under the Extended Stay America brand; Extended Stay Canada brand and the Crossland Economy Studios brand.

The transformational initiatives undertaken by Extended Stay have been boosting RevPAR at its properties. These initiatives include better service, improving margins through operational efficiency, increasing brand awareness through targeted marketing efforts and upgrading properties to optimize returns. However, renovation of the companys properties has hurt occupancy rate due to displacement.

Investors should also note the recent earnings estimate revisions for STAY, as the consensus estimate has remained stable. Further, Extended Stay has posted positive earnings surprises in all of the trailing four quarters, making for an average positive earnings surprise of around 9.65%.

Currently, STAY has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) but that could change following Extended Stays earnings report which was just released. We have highlighted some of the key stats from this just-revealed announcement below:

Earnings:STAY beat on earnings. Our consensus earnings estimate called for earnings of 12 cents per share and the company reported EPS of 13 cents per share. Investors should note that these figures take out stock option expenses.

Revenues:STAY reported revenues of $288 million. This missed our consensus estimate of $290 million.

Key Stats to Note: Revenue per available room (RevPAR) improved 8.2% year over year, driven by an improvement in average daily rate (ADR) of 9.5% and offset by decreased occupancy. Hotel operating margin increased 30 basis points (bps) to 50.4%.

The company expects total revenues to range from $1.27 billion to $1.29 billion in 2016.

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By Huw Jones

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's financial watchdog said its keenly-awaited review of alleged mistreatment of business customers by Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L) was in the final stages of completion but it could still not give a publication date.

Customers and investors are waiting to see if the bank will be forced to pay compensation.

After delaying the report from the end of 2015, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) had previously said it would publish the report as soon as possible in 2016.

"We are in the latter stages of the review," FCA acting Chief Executive Tracey McDermott told parliament's Treasury Select Committee.

The FCA was scrutinising the draft final report from independent "skilled persons" into RBS's treatment of business customers in financial difficulty. McDermott said there will be discussions with the skilled persons and RBS before the report is published.

It has not yet been decided if all the findings of the skilled persons would be published alongside the main report, she added.

RBS has been accused of pushing viable firms into its so-called Global Restructuring Group so it could seize their assets and charge higher fees.

Lawmakers also grilled the FCA over how its new chief executive Andrew Bailey, was selected.

A panel interviewed several candidates, with McDermott and Australian securities regulator Greg Medcraft reaching the final stages. Ultimately, the decision was taken by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.

FCA Chairman John Griffith-Jones told lawmakers that after McDermott withdrew her candidacy, the selection panel was hesitant about wanting to put forward just one name.

Osborne then selected Bailey, currently Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, who was not formally interviewed by the panel, Griffith-Jones said.

Griffith-Jones said he did have informal talks with Bailey about the top job. Bailey is on the FCA board and is well known to staff and the selection panel.

"The overwhelming feeling in the building on the announcement of Andrew's appointment is one of excitement and approval," he added.

(Reporting by Huw Jones, editing by David Evans)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of foreign fighters joining the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria has decreased sharply in the past year to about 200 a month, a U.S. military official said on Tuesday. That is a drastic decline from about a year ago when between 1,500 and 2,000 foreign fighters were joining the group in Iraq and Syria each month, said Air Force Major General Peter Gersten, deputy commander for operations and intelligence for the U.S.-led coalition, during a news briefing. Earlier this month, the State Department said the number of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria was lower than at any time in the past two years. Syria has become the main global incubator for a new generation of militants as Islamic State recruited as many 31,000 foreign fighters in the past 18 months, according to a report published by a former British spy chief last year. Gersten added that the number of fighters defecting from Islamic State was increasing as well, but he did not give a specific number. "We're seeing a fracture in their morale, we're seeing their inability to pay, we're seeing the inability to fight, we're watching them try to leave Daesh in every single way," Gersten said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. (Reporting by Idrees Ali and Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (NYSE:FCAU) CEO Sergio Marchionne believes his campaign to seek out a merger partner has been worth the effort, saying one of the companys rivals will likely answer the calleventually.

Marchionne, who has spent more than a year publicly calling for consolidation in the auto industry, told analysts on a Tuesday conference call that hes optimistic other car companies will share Fiat Chryslers views on the future. The architect of the Fiat-Chrysler merger has argued that rising costs connected to regulatory compliance and pricey new technologies makes it critical for automakers to join forces.

I think there has been some dialogue with people who share the view and who are not as concerned about the downside risk of the exercise. I think we need to give it more time, Marchionne said. Im not in a position to say whether this thing is going to yield anything of value going forward or not. The only thing I can tell you is that it has been worth the effort. I would do it again.

Marchionne added, I remain hopeful that over a relatively reasonable period of time, this industry will come to grips with this issue and tackle it intelligently. I think we laid out a roadmap for that to happen. I remain hopeful that somebody will pick it up with us and get it done.

Even without a willing merger partner, Marchionne believes the effort has yielded some benefits inside the offices of the Italian-American automaker. He said the realignment of its North American portfolio was a direct consequence of focusing on the most relevant businesses and abandoning the notion that Fiat Chrysler should hold onto poorly performing segments simply because of the fact that it was due to a higher calling of being an automaker.

I think equally important in addition to lookingfor people who share your view, I think it was important for us to go through that exercise as a means of identifying the issues which I think are endemic to this industry. Certainly on the inside of the house, its made our views relatively clear about what we can and cannot do, he explained.

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Marchionne renewed talk of a merger earlier in April at Fiat Chryslers annual shareholder meeting. He mentioned Toyota (NYSE:TM), Ford (NYSE:F) and Volkswagen as potential merger partners. Ford said it is focused on its own plans. Last year, GM officially turned down the overture after Marchionne sent an email to its CEO, Mary Barra.

Also on Tuesdays conference call, CFO Richard Palmer said Fiat Chrysler will consider partnering with another automaker to make passenger cars, although he declined to discuss details of any negotiations. Passenger cars have struggled to keep up with overall sales gains in the U.S., giving way to crossovers and SUVs.

Fiat Chrysler reported first-quarter earnings of 478 million euros ($539 million), much larger than the companys quarterly profit of 27 million euros. The results from last year exclude Ferrari, which was spun off in the fall. Pre-tax earnings in North America doubled, which Fiat Chryslers bottom line in Europe almost quadrupled.

On an adjusted basis, Fiat Chryslers total operating profit nearly doubled to 1.38 billion euros ($1.56 billion), beating estimates. Revenue, which fell short of expectations, was up 3% at 26.57 billion euros ($30.12 billion). The company also said its net industrial debt at the end of March increased 29% compared to the end of 2015.

Related Articles
Milan (AFP) - Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) Tuesday beat analysts' forecasts with significantly higher first-quarter net profits driven by sales in North America but the Italian-US automaker's debt pile also rose.

The results were FCA's first as a single, unified global group since its January's split from luxury unit Ferrari.

Helped by the sale of Ferrari, FCA said it had reduced net industrial debt "significantly" in 2015 to 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion), down from the 7.7 billion at the end of 2014.

But the automaker said the total was back up to 6.6 billion by the end of March, owing to seasonal and currency factors.

Fiat Chrysler shares fell 3.25 percent to 6.99 euros in the afternoon.

CEO Sergio Marchionne said the group was determined to cut debts to below 5 billion euros this year.

Net profit for the first three months accelerated to 478 million euros compared to 27 million a year earlier, the carmaker said. Analysts had expected profits of around 356 million euros.

Adjusted operating profit for January to March exceeded expectations in almost doubling to 1.379 billion euros -- ahead of analysts' forecasts of 1.07 billion -- while sales jumped three percent to 26.6 billion euros, bolstered by strong demand for jeeps.

The firm confirmed its objectives for 2016, including sales of over 110 billion euros and adjusted net profit of 1.9 billion, up from 1.7 billion in 2015.

Those ambitions remain in place despite the recall announced on April 22 of more than a million vehicles worldwide after dozens of people were injured by cars they thought were locked in "park" mode but kept moving.

The group, which also said it remained open to an alliance with other marques, forecast improved results in the second quarter for its luxury Maserati brand following the recent launch of its first SUV, the Levante.
* Q1 adjusted operating profit 1.38 billion euros

* Analysts' average forecast was 1.17 billion euros

* Net industrial debt climbs to 6.6 billion euros (Adds details, trader comments)

By Agnieszka Flak

MILAN, April 26 (Reuters) - Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) beat first-quarter profit forecasts on Tuesday, helped by a strong performance in North America, but higher debt pushed its shares lower.

FCA, which spun off luxury unit Ferrari at the start of this year, said its net industrial debt rose to 6.6 billion euros ($7.4 billion) at the end of March from 5.1 billion euros three months earlier, boosted by seasonal and currency effects.

Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne has vowed to wipe out debt by 2018 but investors are worried about product delays and headwinds in Brazil, once a key market for the group.

The world's seventh-largest carmaker said adjusted operating profit for January-March nearly doubled to 1.38 billion euros, above analysts' average estimate of 1.17 billion in a Thomson Reuters poll. Sales rose 3 percent to 26.57 billion euros, missing expectations.

"The higher debt seems to be the main negative ... and the question remains whether the profits can be replicated in future," a Milan-based trader said.

At 1205 GMT, FCA shares in Milan were down 0.1 percent at 7.225 euros, having traded as low as 6.95 euros.

North America accounted for nearly 90 percent of FCA's quarterly profit, reflecting robust demand for its Jeep sport- utility vehicles (SUVs) and pickup trucks. The company also returned to profit in Latin America.

FCA is retooling two of its plants in the United States to boost production of the more profitable SUVs and trucks, improve its model line-up and strengthen its finances before the U.S. car market comes off its peak.

The carmaker has already made strides in narrowing the North American margin gap with larger rivals GM and Ford. Profit margins in the region rose to 7.2 percent in the quarter from 3.7 percent last year, compared with 8.7 percent for GM, but investors wonder if that momentum can be sustained.

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A year ago, Marchionne urged deals to reduce the number of players in the global auto sector to sustain the heavy capital investments needed to meet demands for cleaner, hi-tech cars.

But his pitch to tie-up with preferred target GM was repeatedly spurned, and other carmakers have since said they are not interested in a merger.

FCA's shares have lost a quarter of their value since Marchionne made the pitch, weighed down by one of the industry's weakest balance sheets and concerns its U.S. exposure could become a disadvantage once that market turns.

($1 = 0.8864 euros) (Additional reporting by Giulia Segreti; Editing by Mark Potter)
By Bruno Kelly AMAJARI, Brazil (Reuters) - After trekking nearly two hours through dense jungle, Brazilian environmental special forces burst into a clearing where the trees had been sawn and a muddy crater dug: an illegal gold mine on indigenous land in the heart of the Amazon. The miners and gold were already gone, scattered by the whir of helicopter blades, but armed troopers in camouflage burned tents and generators. When there was nothing left, they moved on to the next. The five-day operation last week, led by Brazil's environmental agency Ibama and Indian foundation Funai, located 15 air strips and destroyed 20 barges used to transport equipment and supplies by the estimated 5,000 illegal miners in the vast remote region. Images of the raid can be seen in a Reuters Wider Image photo essay at https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/illegal-gold-mining-in-the-amazon At more than 23.5 million acres (9.5 million hectares), the Yanomami people's territory is twice the size of Switzerland and home to around 27,000 indigenous people. The land has legally belonged to the Yanomami since 1992, but miners continue to exploit the area, sawing down trees and poisoning rivers with mercury in their lust for gold. The mercury has become a growing cause for concern. While miners once killed the Yanomami with guns or disease - nearly 20 percent of the population was wiped out in the 1980s - today the threat is the toxic liquid metal used to separate gold from grit. A study published last month by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a public biomedical research group, found that in some Yanomami villages, 92 percent of residents suffered from mercury poisoning. The results shocked experts, who believe mercury is entering the food chain through fish in polluted rivers. High mercury exposure harms the nervous, digestive and immune systems, can lead to impaired vision and hearing, and can be fatal. Last week's raid was considered a success but Ibama's operation leader Roberto Cabral said the miners will probably be back. "The aim is to destroy their equipment. We're not able to arrest them, there's no space in the helicopter," he said, sweat pouring down his face in the middle of the steamy jungle. When miners were caught, they were grilled for information and released. Beyond the equipment, authorities have been hunting for clues on the illicit business interests behind the miners. The region's remoteness is a constant challenge. From a base in the Tepequem mountains on the frontier with Venezuela, three helicopters flew the 35-person team for an hour and a half to the banks of the majestic Uraricoera river. From there it was another hour or two on foot, cutting aside branches and wading through waist-high mud, to reach the mines. It is expensive and rare for the arm of the law to reach this far. It might become rarer still. With Brazil suffering through its worst recession in a century, Funai's budget for 2016 was cut by 24 percent, while Ibama had its spending reduced by 30 percent. For Fiona Watson, who works for the activist group Survival International and has campaigned for the Yanomami since 1990, any long-term solution must be based on having more people on the ground, graver punishments and a focus on those hiring the miners and supplying equipment. "These miners are like ants," Watson said. "They just keep coming back." (Writing by Stephen Eisenhammer; Editing by Will Dunham)
The final text messages between Perry Cohen, one of two 14-year-old boys lost at sea in July, and his mother were revealed to PEOPLE by an attorney representing the Cohen family.



At 9:49 a.m. on the morning of July 24, 2015, Perry sent a text message to his mother, Pamela Cohen.



Mom, its Perry. My iPad is dead Ill text you in a little. Love you.



OK. I wanted you to sleep home tonight, Pamela responded a minute later. I miss you. We leave Sunday morning for New York. What about your work?



Presumably referring to homework, Perry answered back, Ive been doing it but I was going to sleep at



This mid-sentence end to communication between a mother and her son is an eerie reflection of two young lives cut short and two families forever broken.



Later that day, Perry and his longtime friend, Austin Stephanos, would set out on a boating excursion from Floridas Jupiter Inlet and were never seen again, despite a weeks-long search by the US Coast Guard and dozens of others who combed sea, air and land for clues to the boys disappearance.



Because Perrys own cell phone was broken on that day, he sent those text messages on Stephanos phone. The phone, along with tackle and other personal effects and Stephanos 19-foot Seacraft boat, were discovered in March after drifting for nearly nine months.







The crew of the Norwegian shipper who spotted the boat about 100 miles off the Bermuda shore, airmailed the iPhone to the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission and is having the boat shipped back to the state. Soon after the discovery, state investigators announced that, because the teens disappearance is not considered a criminal case, the items would be returned to the families.



The Cohen family, however, quickly challenged that decision, saying that all items, particularly Austins iPhone, should be held by law enforcement until a full forensics investigation can be completed.



On Monday, Pamela Cohen filed a lawsuit with the Palm Beach County Court, naming Austins father, Blu Stephanos, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission as defendants and seeking to block the return of the iPhone and other items found pending a forensics investigation.



Both boys families took to social media to state their cases. Cohen pleaded with the Stephanos family to give their consent to allow the FFWCC to keep the phone in its custody until all potentially retrievable data including text messages, photos and GPS location information could be extracted and analyzed.



Blu Stephanos posted assurances that his family was working with the phones manufacturer and independent IT specialists to get the phone operational again and would share any relevant information retrieved with the Cohen family and the proper authorities.



Now, it looks as if there may be a quick resolution to the lawsuit.



In the interest of cooperation and to help both families learn more details about what happened to our boys, we accept the offer of Blu Stephanos to share the contents of the iPhone with us and the FWC, Pamela Cohen said in a written statement released Tuesday. Therefore we will be withdrawing our lawsuit as soon as FWC receives the written consents it needs from both families to put the iPhone in the hands of the best impartial iPhone extraction experts available, in a proper legal chain of custody.



Cohen also posted on Facebook a copy of her signed consent, which reads: I hereby consent to the put the iPhone in the hands of the best impartial iPhone extraction experts available, in a proper legal chain of custody, and for the FWC to retain this iPhone and any information retrieved by such experts that may be helpful in determining what happened to my son, and to confidentially share that information with the families of both boys.



They want to drop the case, Cohens attorney, Guy Bennett Rubin, told PEOPLE on Tuesday afternoon. They have signed a consent to the FWC and theyve asked the other family to sign the exact same consent. As soon as we receive those consents, we will drop the case. We have no interest in litigation anything. Our only interest is in getting as much information as there is to find out what happened.



While awaiting a response from the Stephanos family, Rubin filed a motion with the Palm Beach County Court for an emergency hearing on the injunction requested in the lawsuit. Judge Gregory M. Keyser will preside.



One day at a time, one issue at a time, Rubin said when asked how his clients were coping with the loss of their son and the possibility of finally getting answers theyve desperately prayed for. They have a very successful business which is probably a welcome distraction but this is their priority. Mom, Pamela is just an incredibly strong and composed woman that I admire greatly. I dont see clients like this often. Shes very determined to speak for Perry because he cant.
A massive fire gutted a natural history museum in the Indian capital on Tuesday destroying rare specimens of flora and fauna, the Indian environment minister said.

The blaze broke out overnight on the sixth floor of the building that houses the museum in central Delhi and rapidly engulfed the other floors, a fire official said.

Thirty-five fire fighters battled for hours to extinguish the blaze and five of them were taken to hospital suffering smoke inhalation, a fire department official told AFP.

Environment minister Prakash Javadekar said officials had yet to determine the full extent of the damage but old collections had been destroyed.

"This is a real loss. This loss cannot be counted in rupees. Some very old species of flora and fauna were there," Javadekar told reporters outside the museum, adding some were rare.

He also ordered an immediate safety audit of the country's 34 major museums.

The museum, inaugurated in 1978, contained preserved specimens of butterflies, frogs, snakes, lizards as well as mounted specimens of tigers and leopards.

Fire accidents are common in hot summer months across India, with short circuits in dilapidated buildings often triggering blazes.
First lady Michelle Obama took a rare moment to clearly establish where she stands on the anti-LGBT bills being introduced across the nation while delivering the Jackson State University commencement speech in Mississippi on Saturday. , namely LGBT people  legislation people including Ellen Degeneres have called "the definition of discrimination."

" ," Obama told the audience of graduating students. "How easy it is to single out a small group and marginalize them because of who they are or who they love."

"So we've got to stand side by side with all our neighbors  straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender; Muslim, Jew, Christian, Hindu, immigrant, Native American  because the march for civil rights isn't just about African-Americans, it's about all Americans," the first lady continued. "It's about making things more just, more equal, more free for all our kids and grandkids. That's the story you all have the opportunity to write. That's what this historic university has prepared you to do."

There are over 150 anti-LGBT bills flooding state legislatures throughout the United States, as Vocativ reported in February. Meanwhile, more youth than ever before are identifying as other than heterosexual, with a ne ght.

"We pay endless attention to folks who are blocking action, blocking judges, blocking immigration, blocking a raise in the minimum wage. Just blocking," Obama said. "We are consumed with the anger and vitriol that are bubbling up, with folks shouting at each other, using hateful and divisive language."
(The following statement was released by the rating agency) SINGAPORE, April 26 (Fitch) Malayan Banking Berhad's (Maybank, A-/Negative) recently announced US-dollar denominated Basel III subordinated securities are the first offshore Basel III notes issued by a Malaysian bank. Until this point, issuances by banks have been in local currency where costs tend to be lower, aided by the depth of the local market. Fitch expects further offshore issuance to be mainly confined to banks with more sizeable regional balance sheets, while those that are domestically focused would likely continue to target issuance in local currency. Overall capital levels for banks in Malaysia appear adequate, but requirements have risen globally amid greater regulatory scrutiny of banks. This has coincided with the need to replace legacy instruments, which will no longer qualify as capital under Basel III rules. Fitch expects the terms and conditions for Malaysian Tier-2 securities to broadly follow those in this first offshore transaction. The securities carry a write-down clause linked to a non-viability trigger event, and are intended to qualify as Tier 2 capital under Malaysia's Basel III capital rules. Under Fitch's criteria, the notes would be rated two notches below the banks' anchor ratings, which for Malaysian commercial banks would be their Viability Rating (VR). The two notches reflect the instruments' higher loss severity relative to senior unsecured instruments given their subordinated status. It also reflects Fitch's expectation of permanent full principal loss at the non-viability trigger event. Like in many other banking systems, there is no numerical Point of Non-Viability (PONV) trigger in Malaysia. A non-viability event would occur when the relevant authorities - regulator Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), jointly with the Malaysia Deposit Insurance Corporation (MDIC) - decide that a write-off or conversion into ordinary equity is necessary, or when a public capital injection or other equivalent support is to be provided, without which the bank would no longer be viable. The contractual terms of Maybank's notes allow for a write-off to be either partial or in full. However, BNM currently stipulates that the amount written-off at PONV must be the full principal value of the instrument. The regulations also allow for the authorities not to require a write-off of the notes even if the bank is no longer viable, or when capital or other support has been provided. Given BNM's current directives, Fitch believes that if a write-down is required it would be in full rather than in part, which explains the two-notch differential from the anchor ratings. Lastly, the agency would also not factor in support to Basel III Tier-2 securities issued by Malaysian commercial banks. This is Fitch's base case globally - and reflected in the notching from the VR. We believe the authorities still have a supportive attitude towards Malaysian banks, in particular the systemically important banks. However, we see incentives for providing support as stronger for senior creditors, particularly bank depositors, and state support would not extend to banks' Basel III loss-absorbing instruments. Contact: Elaine Koh Director +65 6796 7239 Fitch Ratings Singapore Pte Ltd 6 Temasek Boulevard #35-05 Suntec Tower 4 Singapore 0.8986 Wee Siang Ng Senior Director +65 6796 7230 Media Relations: Leslie Tan, Singapore, Tel: +65 67 96 7234, Email: leslie.tan@fitchratings.com. Additional information is available on www.fitchratings.com Related Research Asia-Pacific Banks Regulatory Compendium https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=878551 ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: HTTP://FITCHRATINGS.COM/UNDERSTANDINGCREDITRATINGS. IN ADDITION, RATING DEFINITIONS AND THE TERMS OF USE OF SUCH RATINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON THE AGENCY'S PUBLIC WEBSITE 'WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM'. PUBLISHED RATINGS, CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM THIS SITE AT ALL TIMES. FITCH'S CODE OF CONDUCT, CONFIDENTIALITY, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, AFFILIATE FIREWALL, COMPLIANCE AND OTHER RELEVANT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE 'CODE OF CONDUCT' SECTION OF THIS SITE. FITCH MAY HAVE PROVIDED ANOTHER PERMISSIBLE SERVICE TO THE RATED ENTITY OR ITS RELATED THIRD PARTIES. DETAILS OF THIS SERVICE FOR RATINGS FOR WHICH THE LEAD ANALYST IS BASED IN AN EU-REGISTERED ENTITY CAN BE FOUND ON THE ENTITY SUMMARY PAGE FOR THIS ISSUER ON THE FITCH WEBSITE.
Temples are an integral part of south India. With some magnificent sculptures, paintings, colors, dravidian architecture has lots to offer to not just the doting religious person but also those looking to explore the ancient culture, heritage and tradition of this part of the country. You will thoroughly be mesmerised by the towering arches, intricate sculptings, and of course the sheer vastness with which they have been built and reared for over a period of time.



Here are five of these magnanimous wonders of dravidian culture that you must visit once:

1- Madurai: This temple town in Tamil Nadu is home to some of the most precious gems of southern India temples. If there is one temple that you must visit in Madurai, it is the Meenakshi Temple. The temple complex covers 15 acres, and has 4,500 pillars and 12 towers. This massive temple has some of the most amazing sculptures. The 12 day Chithirai Festival, featuring a reenacted celestial wedding of the temples god and goddess, is held in Madurai during April each year.

2- Thanjavur: In the 11th century, Chola King Raja Raja I had his ruling power over Thanjavur. During this period, the Cholas constructed about 70 temples, each with impressive architecture. Brihadeswara Temple is a must visit here and has been recognized as one of a UNESCO World Heritage sites. The temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva and has been constructed with granite stone in a dravidian style.

3- Rameshwaram: Ramanathaswamy Temple in Rameshwaram has the longest pillared hallway in India lining its perimeter. The temple is located only 100 meters from the sea and pilgrims take a bath there first, before going inside the temple and bathing in its 22 wells. The water is considered to be sacred, and purifying to mind and body. Rameshwaram, located on a small island at the tip of the Indian Peninsula, holds a special place in Hindu mythology as its where Lord Rama built a bridge across the sea to rescue Sita from the clutches of Ravana, in Sri Lanka.

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4- Trichy: Its location on the Kaveri River was what made Tiruchirappalli (Trichy) the most desirous for all the Dravidian rulers. Pallavas, Cholas, and Pandyas fought with equal fervor to win control over this town. Rock Fort Temple, constructed by the Nayaks of Madurai, is one of the major attractions. It has been constructed on a rocky outcrop, about 237 feet (83 meters) above the city. There are several other temples that you may pay a visit while on your tour.

5- Chidambaram: Tourists head to this place mainly to visit its Nataraj Temple, dedicated to Lord Shiva performing the cosmic dance. This ancient temple unlike other Siva temples in Tamil Nadu follows Vedic rituals, set by the sage Patanjali. The Vedic rituals are centered on fire, and yagna (fire sacrifice) is performed every morning as part of the puja in the Kanaka Sabha (Golden Hall).
CHICAGO, IL / ACCESSWIRE / April 26, 2016 / FlexFridge Inc. (FLXR), The worlds first foldable mini-fridge company will solicit businesses and colleges to enter into a revenue sharing agreements for our commercial version and to sale our consumer version in retail stores. The revenue sharing agreements will share the rental fees for mini-fridges guests or students during their stay. The commercial version of FlexFridge will be more durable than the consumer version.

The consumer version will be sold outright at retail stores or will be leased through the companys website. The Company believes that many users of the mini-fridge would only need the mini-fridge for a short period of time, a few days or a whole school year which is about 9 months. The consumer will rent the mini-fridge through the companys website, provide a deposit for the fridge, the company will ship the mini-fridge to the consumer and at the end of the rental period, the consumer will send back the fridge. The Company will then refund the deposit minus the rental fee. The company has already received some interest from the public.

FlexFridge will offer a series of flexible, mini-fridges that utilize wheels and a handle for transportation and mobility. Businesses, hotels, and individual consumers can make use of this portable mini-fridge for a variety of purposes, including: hotel guest rental, outdoor parties, and dorm rooms.

The FlexFridge is the first device of its kind. Its built-in rechargeable battery allows for up to eight hours of mobile refrigeration, and its gyroscopic compressor means it can be stored in any position and still function perfectly.

Those interested can see the FlexFridge for themselves at www.flexfridge.com and opt into the newsletter to stay up to date with the progress of the worlds first foldable compact fridge.

About FlexFridge, Inc.

FlexFridge is a four-cubic-foot, foldable portable mini-fridge. It was designed to allow students, campers, hotels, and businesses easy access to spacious fridge-space. Customers can utilize the compact fridge in their dorm rooms, RVs, hotel rooms, or offices. FlexFridge has all the convenience of a cooler with all the power of a fridge.

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SAFE HARBOR

A "Safe Harbor" statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Certain statements contained in this press release are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of terms such as "may," "expect," "intend," "estimate," "anticipate," "believe," "continue" (or the negative thereof), or similar terminology. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risk, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from future results implied by such forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. FlexFridge assumes no obligation, does not intend to update these forward-looking statements and takes no obligation to update or correct information prepared by third parties not paid for by FlexFridge. Investors are encouraged to review FlexFridges public filings on SEC.gov, including its unaudited and audited financial statements and its Registration Statement, Form 10-Ks, and Form 10-Qs that contain general business information about the companys operations, results of operations, and risks associated with the company and its operations. Please review all of our filings.

For more information, please contact:

Sales:

investors@flexfridge.com

(312) 614-1222

www.flexfridge.com

SOURCE: FlexFridge, Inc.
Continuing its recent trend of missing earnings estimates, FLIR Systems Inc. FLIR reported first-quarter 2016 adjusted earnings per share of 30 cents, lagging the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 32 cents by 6.3%. Earnings also compared unfavorably year over year, down almost 12%.

Net income for the quarter came in at $1.1 million, compared with $47.9 million in the year-ago quarter. The massive decline was due to a significant tax reserve expense of $40 million. The companys profitability was also hampered by an unfavorable product mix and higher manufacturing costs, which more than offset its robust top-line growth.

Inside the Headlines

The company recorded impressive revenue growth, as the top line grew 10% year over year to $379.5 million, driven by robust performance across five of the companys six segments. Softness in the Instruments segment, along with currency fluctuations limited the revenue growth to some extent.

In constant currency terms, revenues were up 12% year over year. Also, the top line surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $358 million.

As for the segments, Surveillance revenues returned to the growth track with a rise of 10% year over year to $124.2 million, while OEM & Emerging Markets revenues rose a whopping 20% over the prior-year period to $47.8 million.

Security segment revenues continued to impress, as the top line grew 21% year over year to $47.1 million. Also, Detection revenues continued to drive overall top-line growth with robust momentum, increasing 61% year over year to $29.3 million.

However, Maritime revenues witnessed some softness due to the adverse currency translation effect, and were up a meager 1% year over year to $51.7 million. On a constant currency basis, the segment recorded 5% growth.

On the other hand, revenues from the Instruments segment was a dampener, as they declined 5% over the prior-year quarter to $79.4 million due to an unfavorable currency translation impact.

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FLIR's order backlog for the coming 12 months was about $613 million as of Mar 31, 2016, reflecting a solid year-over-year increase of 10%. This backlog level is the companys highest since 2008, largely due to an impressive performance in FLIR Systems government businesses.

Operating income came in at $57.4 million, compared with $65.8 million in the prior-year quarter. Higher production costs led to a decline in operating income.

Liquidity & Cash Flow

As of Mar 31, 2016, the company's cash and cash equivalents were $510.6 million, compared with $472.8 million as of Mar 31, 2015. Long-term debt was $90 million, down from the year-ago figure of $93.8 million.

Cash flow generated from operating activities in the quarter came in at $44.9 million, down significantly from $74.9 million in the prior-year quarter.

Guidance

Incorporating the current market scenario, FLIR reiterated its guidance for 2016. The company expects revenues in the range of $1.6$1.65 billion (representing growth of about 36% over 2015) and net earnings within $1.60$1.70 per share (reflecting growth of roughly 39% over 2015).

In addition, FLIR Systems expects its gross margins to expand in the second half of the year, as it undertakes operating cost control initiatives which will counteract near-term gross margin softness.

To Conclude

FLIR Systems financial performance during the first quarter was largely positive, but high costs and currency fluctuations acted as major headwinds.

The companys strong focus on execution and reduction of operating costs drove its profitability. We believe strong growth in sales booking and record backlog levels signal bright prospects for the firm in the near future.

FLIR Systems currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the broader sector include Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. SPR, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. HII and B/E Aerospace Inc. BEAV. Each of these stocks hold a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

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To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
Image via Alma Har'el

Image via Alma Harel

Last month we learned that we would finally be able to hear new music from Flying Lotus, but it wouldnt exactly be a direct release of his own. Instead, were actually receiving new FlyLo thanks to Shia LaBeouf. After working on the music for Rick Rubins Star Wars-inspired album Star Wars Headspace, Flying Lotus gets more film experience, this time providing the score for LoveTruea film executive-produced by LaBeouf and directed by Alma Harel.

After the film received high praise at the Tribeca Film Festival, LaBeouf was finally willing to discuss the process and how LoveTrue came together. In a recent interview with Complex, LaBeouf opened up about how he connected to the subjects of the documentary, how the making of the film impacted him, and more.

He went on to explain how exactly he and Harel were able to get Flying Lotus to be apart of this film. We know each other through Thundercat, who I went to elementary school with, said LaBeouf. I obviously have a great appreciation for his work. Guy is a fucking genius. Full blown. He blessed our film.

Read the full interview here, and view the trailer for LoveTrue below.

The post Flying Lotus Worked on a Shia LaBeouf Movie Thanks to Thundercat appeared first on Pigeons & Planes.

More from Pigeons & Planes
By Dominique Vidalon

PARIS (Reuters) - French retailer Fnac (FNAC.PA) said on Tuesday it had the backing of a majority of Darty (DRTY.L) shareholders in a battle with South Africa Steinhoff (SNHG.DE) for control of the London-listed electronic goods retailer.

Fnac on Monday raised its offer for Darty to around 900 million pounds, declaring the offer its last..

Steinhoff, which has amassed a 20.4 percent stake in Darty and had urged Darty on Monday to take no further action, declined to comment on Tuesday on the latest development.

Steinhoff's latest offer was 160 pence a share in cash, valuing Darty at about 860 million pounds.

Fnac said in a statement it now controlled 29.73 percent of the capital of Darty (DRTY.L) and had irrevocable undertakings from shareholders representing 22.11 percent of Darty's capital, lifting total backing from Darty shareholders to 51.84 percent.

Last week, the rival bidders entered into a hectic showdown with five new offers in less than 24 hours that lifted Darty shares by more than 23 percent on April 21.

Darty shares have now more than doubled in value from about 81 pence before Fnac first approached Darty in September.

Darty shares closed at 168.75 pence on Tuesday, slightly below the 170 pence offered by Fnac.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; editing by Michel Rose and Susan Thomas)
San Salvador (AFP) - Police and soldiers in El Salvador raided parts of the capital on Tuesday under a new campaign to break the reign of vicious gangs, officials said.

The operation marked another move by the government to squeeze the gangs who have helped make the Central American nation infamous as the world's deadliest country outside of a war zone.

Last week, authorities launched an elite Special Reaction Force of 1,000 police and troops to hunt gang leaders trying to take refuge in remote rural area and mountains.

And last month, a new law was brought in to isolate jailed gang bosses and to block cellphone signals from their prisons to prevent them giving orders to their followers.

Tuesday's raids were carried out by another new taskforce made up of 800 police officers and soldiers focused on urban missions. Its units are known as the Interventional and Territorial Recovery Forces, or FIRT under the Spanish acronym.

"On this day starts the plan to recover territory with the firm conviction to bring back security and calm for the population," said the military commander for the operation in San Salvador's northern La Campanera neighborhood, Colonel David Moreno.

He explained that soldiers set up perimeters to trap gang members while police carried out surprise raids inside it with warrants to catch suspected criminals.

The FIRT were being deployed to 81 districts in the 10 cities and towns with the highest incidence of gang violence, national police chief Howard Cotto said.

El Salvador has homicide rate of 104 per 100,000 inhabitants. There are around 22 murders a day.

Most of the bloodshed is blamed on the vicious gangs, many of whom arrived here are being deported from the United States during the 1990s.
By Nate Raymond

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The former chief digital officer of the Epix cable television network was arrested on Tuesday on charges that he defrauded it of more than $8 million.

Emil Rensing, 42, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at his residence in Manhattan and charged in a criminal complaint with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, authorities said.

He was released on a $500,000 bond following a court hearing later in the day. His lawyer, Henry Mazurek, in a statement said Rensing disputed the allegations and "did not steal any money or identities from anyone."

"He has provided valuable products and services to Epix, all of which the company enjoys and profits from today," Mazurek said.

Epix, a joint venture between Viacom Inc, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc [MGMYR.UL], was not identified by name in the charging documents, but the company confirmed it was the alleged victim.

In a statement, Epix said it is cooperating with the investigation.

The complaint alleged that while working at Epix from April 2010 to August 2015, Rensing caused it to contract with vendor companies he owned to perform digital media services.

Those services were largely never performed and while the contracts listed several of Rensing's former professional associates and business partners as vendor personnel, they had never heard of the vendors, the complaint said.

Rensing hid the scheme by using false and stolen identities to conceal his involvement, the complaint said.

After Epix learned about the scheme, Rensing was questioned by attorneys for the network and made numerous false statements, including denying that he had any interest in one of the vendors at issue, the complaint said.

Epix in its statement said it fired Rensing in August, the same month its lawyers questioned him.

The case is U.S. v. Rensing, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 16-mj-2650.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrew Hay)
The former chief digital officer of Epix was arrested Tuesday at his home in Manhattan on charges that he stole more than $8 million from the premium cabler owned by Viacom, MGM and Lionsgate.

Emil Rensing has been charged with two counts of wire fraud and identity theft. Hes accused of executing an elaborate scheme to bilk Epix out of millions by setting up phantom vendor companies to provide services related to digital media that were never performed. The FBI maintains Rensing committed the fraud from October 2010 until August 2015, when he was confronted by lawyers for Epix. At that time, according to the charging document, Rensing denied that he had any ownership of the vendors in question and he asserted that some of them had employees who are now named as victims of identity theft in connection with the case.

As alleged, Emil Rensing abused the trust of his employer, hiding behind false and stolen identities, and submitting fraudulent invoices for millions of dollars of services never performed, said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Thanks to the hard work of the FBI, Rensings alleged scheme has been uncovered.

According to the federal complaint filed today in New Yorks Southern District Court, Rensing used the names of as many as nine former business associates in his efforts to establish the companies as legitimate. The complaint states that none of those unnamed victims were aware that they had been listed as working for the companies, and that all of the vendors involved in the alleged fraud were controlled by Rensing.

Greed clouds peoples judgment, so much so that in this case Rensing allegedly used his friends names in a scheme to steal money from his employers, said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Diego Rodriguez. This isnt a case of an employee keeping the change after getting coffee for the office. Rensing is accused of stealing $8 million from the company that hired him.

A rep for Epix did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The U.S. Attorneys office and FBI declined further comment.

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After his appearance before Magistrate Judge Frank Maas in Manhattan federal court, Rensing was released on $500,000 bond. Federal prosecutors now have 30 days to decide whether to indict Rensing on the charges.

The complaint details the lengths to which Rensing went to set up the fraudulent companies, providing false names for two vendors and multiple employee contact names to Epix in order to make them appear to be outside entities. In all cases, according to the complaint, Rensing controlled the email accounts and bank accounts for the companies that received Epix funds.

As described in the complaint, Vendor 1 was paid $8.22 million by Epix from 2010 to 2014. In September 2014, Rensing told Epix that Vendor 1 should no longer be used. Vendor 2 received payments of $398,620 from Epix in 2014 and 2015.

According to the complaint, suspicions were raised at Epix in March and April of 2015 when an unnamed executive went to visit the company identified in the complaint as Vendor 2 but found no such business at the address. Per the complaint, Rensing told the executive that the company was undergoing a rebranding. The executive and another Epix financial analyst visited the address again on April 9. This time, they found a sign on the suite purported to house Vendor 2 for an Internet-based video newscast about the automotive industry owned by Rensing.

According to FBI interviews with past and current Epix execs, most of the work attributed to the vendors controlled by Rensing was done in-house by other Epix employees.

Said an Epix spokesperson, Emil Rensing was terminated by Epix in August 2015. Epix is cooperating fully with the U.S. Attorneys office in their investigation.

Rensing could face a maximum of 20 years in prison on the wire fraud charge and two years on the identity theft charge.

Rensings biography states that he was an instrumental player in the early success of AOL and MTV Networks Online and later worked with Herb Scannells Frederator Studios and Next New Networks.

Related stories

Amazon Prime Video Has 4 Times Netflix's Movie Lineup, But Size Isn't Everything

Katie Couric's Sundance Documentary 'Under the Gun' Acquired by Epix

'The 4%' Short Films Highlighting Hollywood's Female Director Gap to Air on Epix
London (AFP) - Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie, who was in charge of the British tabloid when it ran a story blaming Liverpool fans for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, apologised Tuesday after an inquest absolved supporters of any responsibility for Britain's worst stadium disaster.

Just four days after a mass crush on a standing-only terrace at Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough ground in northern England that ultimately killed 96 Liverpool fans, the Sun ran a front-page story proclaiming "The Truth" about what had happened in the club's FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest.

It featured quotes from anonymous police officers that some fans had "urinated on cops", "picked pockets of victims" and even beat up a policeman giving the "kiss of life" to a stricken supporter.

For years the Sun stood by a story it said it had received from White's news agency in Sheffield but which the inquest found to have contained "deliberate misinformation from the South Yorkshire Police".

The Sun's coverage prompted a mass boycott of the newspaper on Merseyside and MacKenzie, who had previously apologised for the story, said in a statement on Tuesday: "Today's verdicts are an important step in obtaining justice for the victims. My heart goes out to those who have waited so long for vindication.

"As I have said before, the headline I published was wrong and I am profoundly sorry for the hurt it caused."

"Clearly, I was wrong to take the police's version of events at face value and it is a mistake I deeply regret."

Meanwhile MacKenzie said police officers responsible for a "cover-up" should face prosecution.

"The Crown Prosecution Service must now ensure that those officers within South Yorkshire Police responsible for the cover-up are brought to trial."

In an interview with British television's ITV News, MacKenzie said he "absolutely" agreed with the inquest jury's verdicts.

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"It's been an absolute disgrace what the police have done in South Yorkshire these last 27 years," he said.

"I feel desperate for the families and the people and I also feel that in some strange way I got caught up in it. I feel terrible for them."

As for his original use of the story, MacKenzie added: "Everybody got sent this agency story. I printed it in that way.

"But honestly, the way it affected those families was a disgrace and I'm delighted for the families."
One of the breakout stars of MTV's Faking It is heading to Freeform.

Transgender actor Elliot Fletcher has booked a multiple-episode guest arc on the upcoming fourth season of The Fosters, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Fletcher will take on the role of Aaron, an attractive and intriguing law student who Callie (Maia Mitchell) meets at a coffee shop. He will make his debut in the July 11 episode.

Read More: 'Faking It' Casts Trans Actor to Play Trans Character for Season 3

Fletcher is currently recurring on MTV comedy Faking It, where he booked the role following a nationwide casting call for trans actors and actresses. He is recurring as Noah, a transgender character who is charismatic, confident and hip and is equal parts charming and vulnerable. Noah is the boy next door with a leather jacket and a rock 'n' roll attitude who plays guitar or bass for a band that competes in a battle of the bands contest.

Fletcher is repped by Gregory David Mayo.

The Fosters returns for its fourth season on June 20 on Freeform.
Sydney, April 26 (Reuters) - France is set to provide 300 million euros ($340 million) in loans to New Caledonia nickel producer Societe Le Nickel (SLN) as it struggles with weak prices for the metal, a French weekly newspaper reported.

Le Journal du Dimanche reported the move on Sunday, citing unidentified sources. It comes as French Prime Minister Manual Valls is due to visit the French territory in the Pacific later this week.

Nickel output accounts for about a fifth of New Caledonia's economy. But a slump in prices is pressuring its three smelters, owned by Glencore, Vale and SLN, a unit of French conglomerate Eramet.

New Caledonia holds around a quarter of the world's reserves of nickel, used in everything from stainless steel to batteries.

New Caledonia had until recently resisted selling ore directly to large consuming countries such as China, hoping to protect its local smelting industry.

But in a change in policy, the government earlier this month said SLN and another company were free to sell a combined amount of up to 700,000 tonnes of low-grade nickel ore, known as laterites, to Chinese buyers over a period of 12 to 18 months.

Eramet has already unveiled plans to sharply reduce production costs at SLN over the next two years to cope with a severe downturn in the global market as appetite for metals falters in top consumer China, with many producers operating at a loss.

The average cash cost of nickel production at SLN had fallen 10 percent compared with the 2015 average, Eramet said last week. ($1 = 0.8872 euros) (Reporting by Cecile LeFort and James Regan; Editing by Joseph Radford)
France on Tuesday beat off competition from Germany and Japan to win a Aus$50 billion (US$39 billion) contract to design and build Australia's next generation of submarines, a decision Tokyo called "deeply regrettable".

The announcement by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull culminates years of planning to replace Australia's ageing diesel and electric-powered Collins Class submarines, which are due to leave service from around 2026.

Turnbull said the 12 new subs to be delivered by French contractor DCNS under Australia's biggest-ever defence contract "will be the most sophisticated naval vessels being built in the world".

"This is a momentous national endeavour," he said at an Adelaide shipyard where the submarines will be constructed.

The deal came as tensions grow between China and Australia's allies Japan and the United States. Beijing is flexing its muscles in the region by developing airstrips and other facilities on reclaimed reefs in the contested South China Sea.

French President Francois Hollande hailed the decision as historic.

"It marks a decisive advance in the strategic partnership between the two countries who will cooperate over 50 years," his office said in a statement.

A Japanese government-backed consortium led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and German group ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, were also in the running. But Canberra said DCNS was considered "best to meet all of our unique capability requirements".

Japan was the early favourite and last November Tokyo said handing it the contract would help bolster regional security. Some senior US officials, including former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, also backed a Japanese build.

For Australia, cooperating with Japan risked angering its biggest trading partner China. There were also reportedly concerns that Tokyo lacked experience in exporting such complex military hardware.

Japanese Defence Minister Gen Nakatani was quoted by a ministry official as telling reporters: "We did our best but the decision was deeply regrettable. We will ask the Australian side to explain."

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Asked if the decision to go with France would upset key ally the United States, Turnbull said the choice of contractor was "a sovereign decision for Australia".

David Brewster, from the ANU Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in Canberra, said the choice of France was about "capability, cost and risk reduction over broader strategic factors which favoured the Japanese bid".

- Technically complex -

"That may give Australia the best submarines, but it also means that we need to give much more active focus to engaging with Japan as our key regional security partner in the Pacific," he added.

"In the long term that is probably of greater importance to us than the submarines."

Australian submarines operate across huge areas, from the cold Southern Ocean to the tropics, and so require range and endurance to cope with wide-ranging geographic and oceanographic conditions.

Besides matching the capabilities of the Collins Class, the new generation needed to offer superior sensor performance and stealth capabilities.

The government's preferred combat system and main armament is the heavyweight torpedo jointly developed by the United States and Australia.

DCNS has said it plans to build a 4,500-tonne conventionally-powered version of its 4,700 tonne Barracuda, to be named Shortfin Barracuda. It is described by the company as "the most technically complex artefact in Australia".

It said on its website that the new vessel would be "the recipient of France's most sensitive and protected submarine technology and will be the most lethal conventional submarine ever contemplated".

"Pump jet propulsion means the Shortfin Barracuda can move more quietly than submarines with obsolete propeller technology," DCNS said.

The tender process was also politically sensitive domestically, with Canberra keen to maximise Australian industry involvement and jobs amid fears an off-the-shelf purchase could kill off the domestic shipbuilding industry.

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian added Tuesday the contract would also create thousands of jobs in his country.
French company DCNS won the contract to build Australias next fleet of submarines, according to an announcement made by Australias prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, on Tuesday, April 26. Bids for the AU$50 billion (US$39 billion) contract also came from Germany and Japan.

Turnbull said the submarines would be built in Australia with Australian steel and will employ locals in the production. He added that the submarines would be serviced in Adelaide and that the contract would generate 2,800 jobs.

This video shows a pre-concept design submitted by DCNS for what they described as the worlds most advanced conventionally-powered submarine, and named the Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A. Credit: YouTube/DCNSgroup
(Recasts with CEO comments from conference call)

By Nicole Mordant

April 26 (Reuters) - Freeport-McMoRan Inc expects to have agreed $3 billion worth of asset sales by mid-year, its chief executive said on Tuesday, as the U.S. miner and oil producer tries to whittle down a nearly $21 billion debt pile he described as "a killer."

Freeport, which is the world's biggest listed copper producer, has already entered into agreements this year to sell $1.4 billion worth of assets, leaving another $1.6 billion's worth to transact by end-June.

Chief Executive Richard Adkerson said Freeport was in "advanced discussions" on a number of its copper assets, but declined to name them. Freeport owns a number of world-class copper assets, including the Grasberg mine in Indonesia and the Cerro Verde mine in Peru.

"The scarcity of quality assets in the copper business is attracting significant interest from potential purchasers who share our longer term positive view of the marketplace," he said on a conference call.

While the Phoenix, Arizona-based company expressed confidence in selling mining assets it also revealed a plan to cut about a quarter of workers in its oil and gas business after failing to sell that unit.

It said it would record a charge of about $40 million in the second quarter related to the job cuts and other restructuring costs.

Shares in Freeport, which were weaker earlier in the day after it reported a deep quarterly loss, were last flat at $11.27.

The company, which is under pressure from activist investor Carl Icahn to cut costs and debt, said its total debt rose to $20.8 billion at the end of March from $20.4 billion on Dec. 31.

"Our company is over-leveraged," Adkerson said. "This kind of debt is a killer."

Freeport said in February that it was open to selling any of its copper assets at the right price to help it slash debt by between $5 billion and $10 billion.

Earlier on Tuesday, Freeport said its net loss nearly doubled to $4.18 billion, or $3.35 per share, compared with a loss of $2.47 billion, or $2.38 per share, a year earlier.

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After adjusting for charges of $4 billion, mainly related to it reducing the value of its oil assets, Freeport reported a loss of $197 million or 16 cents a share - in line with analysts' expectations of 17 cents a share.

Revenue fell 15.1 percent to $3.53 billion.

(Additional reporting by Vishaka George and Kanika Sikka in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silv, Alden Bentley and Marguerita Choy)
Lyon (AFP) - A French court on Tuesday sentenced a Dutch dentist to eight years in jail for deliberately mangling his patients' mouths in a case which saw him dubbed "the dentist of horror".

Jacobus van Nierop, 51, went on trial in March for ripping out healthy teeth and leaving dozens of patients with injuries including broken jaws, recurrent abscesses and septicaemia in the small central town of Chateau-Chinon.

He was found guilty of the charge of "mutilation" as well as premeditation violence and fraud over claims that he tried to rip off patients and insurance companies.

The court in the central town of Nevers also banned him from practising as a dentist and fined him 10,500 euros ($11,900).

"This is a brilliant victory because we weren't sure he would get eight years, even if that will never be enough for those who are handicapped for life," said Nicole Martin, president of a victims' association.

During the trial, prosecutor Lucile Jaillon-Bru said Van Nierop had carried out "useless and painful procedures" on about 100 patients with the aim of having them reimbursed by medical insurance schemes.

She said he took "pleasure at causing pain" to his patients.

Van Nierop, who called himself Mark, was hired by a head-hunter and was initially welcomed by locals into an area which was lacking in medical services.

Giving evidence in court, a neighbour recalled the arrival of a smiley, larger-than-life character, with a "big 4x4, a big dog, a big cigar".

- 'Gushing blood' -

But by 2011, the authorities were starting to question some of his accounting practices, and patients were starting to compare notes on his dentistry.

The court heard nightmarish tales, including one from Sylviane Boulesteix, 65, who saw Van Nierop in March 2012 to have braces fitted.

"He gave me seven or eight injections, and pulled out eight teeth in one go. I was gushing blood for three days," she said.

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Another man had 13 healthy teeth treated and ended up with a growth that deformed his face.

Around 120 former patients joined a victims' group set up in early 2013.

The judgement recognised that 85 patients had been victims of violence, 45 of whom were "mutilated". A total of 61 people were found to be victims of fraud.

During the trial Van Nierop sat stony-faced, replying mostly only "no comment" to any questions.

He was not required to offer a plea under French law, but sought to deflect responsibility, saying he suffers from "psychological problems" including gender identity issues and suicidal tendencies.

The trial heard conflicting expert opinion about Van Nierop's psychological state.

One psychiatrist found he had "narcissistic tendencies" and was therefore incapable of making a moral judgement of his own actions.

But another found he was "perfectly aware of what he was doing".

Van Nierop was arrested in June 2013, but fled France while awaiting trial. He was later tracked down to a small town in Canada, arrested and extradited first to the Netherlands and then to France.
Jonathan found an oil chamber on a mountain in Abercynon in south Wales, UK. He took his friend Tom back with him to try out some singing in the cathedral-like acoustics of the chamber. This video shows Tom doing the Halo theme tune  it sounds almost exactly like the original! Credit: YouTube/Jonny Mason
bush and putin

"In early 2007, I called Dad and asked him if he would invite President Vladimir Putin of Russia to Walker's Point (the Bush family home in Kennebunkport, Maine)," Bush writes in his new book 41: A Portrait Of My Father.

Reflecting on his father's life and leadership, former President George W. Bush describes how the pair hosted Putin for a weekend of boating and discussions about missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.

bush and putin go fishing

Former president George H.W. Bush was thrilled to process the request. "Just let me know what you need, son," he said.

"When Putin arrived on July 1, 2007, Dad met his plane at the airport in New Hampshire and accompanied him on the helicopter ride to Walker's Point. Then he took both of us for a speedboat ride," Bush writes.

putin bush

"Although initially startled by the idea of a eighty-three-year-old former President driving the boat at top speed, Putin loved the ride. (His interpreter looked like he was about to fly out the back of the boat.)

"The next morning, we had a long conversation about missile defense, in which we found some common ground. We then went fishing. Fittingly, Putin was the only one who caught anything," according to the memoir.



(In 2009, the US and Russia announced a "reset" in relations. It hasn't worked out.)

putin goes fishing w/ bush





More From Business Insider


Berlin (AFP) - Germany is declassifying its files on Colonia Dignidad, a sect in Chile run by a Nazi paedophile, Germany's foreign minister said Tuesday, admitting the diplomatic service's failure to stop the abuses.

Colonia Dignidad was a German commune founded in 1961 by convicted paedophile Paul Schaefer and a group of fellow German immigrants in a remote part of Chile, where residents were indoctrinated and kept as virtual slaves over three decades.

Schaefer also collaborated with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, whose secret police used the colony -- which lies some 350 kilometres (215 miles) south of the capital Santiago -- as a place to torture opponents.

"The handling of Colonia Dignidad was not a glorious chapter of the history of the foreign ministry," said Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

"For many years, from the 60s to the 80s, German diplomats looked the other way, and did too little to protect their citizens in this commune," he said as the ministry screened a movie about the case starring Emma Watson and Daniel Bruehl.

"Even later, when Colonia Dignidad was dissolved and the people were no longer subjected to the daily torture, the service lacked the determination and transparency to identify its responsibilities and to draw lessons from it," Steinmeier said.

Although Germany's foreign ministry is not to blame for the "havoc wrecked by Paul Schaefer... in part along with the (Chilean) military and dictator", it had a duty to provide "advice and assistance" to German citizens, Steinmeier added.

"It could have sought earlier to use diplomatic pressure to curtail the scope of Colonia's leadership and to push for legal action," he said, adding that the embassy failed to reach out to residents of the commune.

In a bid to draw lessons from the affair, Steinmeier said diplomats were declassifying files that would have otherwise remained under wraps for another 10 years.

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"We are making documents dating from between 1986 and 1996 available to researchers and the media," he said, adding that older files were already in the public domain.

The scale of the atrocities at the commune came to light only after the end of Pinochet's regime.

In 1997, Schaefer faced a series of lawsuits and fled Chile. He was arrested in Argentina in 2005 and subsequently convicted in Chile for sexual abuse of children, arms possession and human rights violations.

He died in a Chilean jail in 2010 while serving a 20-year sentence.

Former residents of the commune are bringing a lawsuit against the Chilean state for allowing the camp to operate for years, during which they say numerous victims were abused and enslaved.

A separate case is also being filed against Germany for negligently failing to help its nationals who were abused in the colony, lawyer and plaintiff Winfried Hempel told AFP.
What to Expect from Gold Miners in 1Q16: ABX, KGC, GG, and More

(Continued from Prior Part)

Wall Street analysts forecasts

Wall Street analysts forecasts for gold miners (GDX) revenues give a good idea of their views on gold prices for the coming years. In this article, well assess analysts revenue expectations for gold companies in 1Q16 and beyond.

Analysts revenue estimates

Wall Street analysts estimate revenue of $2.0 billion in 1Q16 for Barrick Gold (ABX), lower than the $2.3 billion ABX earned in 4Q15. Analysts forecast a dip in revenue quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year (or YoY) for 1Q16 and 2016.

For 2016, ABXs forecast growth in revenue is -11% YoY. This is mostly due to the lower production guided by the company as it disposed of some assets in 2015. As gold prices are quite strong in 1Q16 compared to 4Q15 (7% higher on average), analysts revenue estimates may have an upside.

Upside for Newmont?

Analysts revenue estimates for Newmont Mining (NEM) are $1.9 billion for 1Q16, implying growth of 3.4% quarter-over-quarter. For 2016, however, NEMs implied revenue growth is -1.6%. This is despite the companys guidance of 5.1 million ounces of gold production in 2016flat YoY compared to 2015.

NEMs average realized prices year-to-date (or YTD) are stronger compared to last year. This means that its revenue in 2016 may surprise on the upside.

Goldcorps (GG) revenue estimates for 1Q16 imply a fall of 8.5% quarter-over-quarter. Its revenue estimates for 2016 also imply a fall of 12.5% YoY. This follows Goldcorps production guidance downgrade in its 4Q15 results. Its mid-point production guidance for 2016 implies 3.0 million ounces, a fall of 14.7% from the production levels it achieved in 2015.

Kinross Golds (KGC) revenue estimates imply quarter-over-quarter growth of 14% and YoY growth of 3% to $806.4 million in 1Q16. This is mainly on the back of Kinrosss expectations of record gold production in 2016.

Investors should note that Kinross acquired Nevada assets from Barrick in 2015 to increase its production base and diversify its geographical risk. These assets are expected to contribute ~350,000 ounces in 2016.

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Agnico Eagle Mines (AEM) revenue estimate for 1Q16 is $480.7 million. The estimate is almost in-line with its 4Q15 revenue of $482.9 million.

Yamana Golds (AUY) 1Q16 production was in-line with market expectations. Its costs also benefited from currency tailwinds. Revenue estimates for AUY imply a potential downside of 5.2% YoY. Given strong production results, Yamanas revenue might surprise on the upside.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Gold and Silver Mining of Nevada, Inc. ("CJTF") ("the Company") (PINK SHEETS: CJTF), a Junior Mining Company in Nevada, Has Conducted a Review of Its First Gold Mining Claims Selected For Mining and Processing, and Updated Its Projections Based On Information Discussed In Earlier News Items to Estimate the Following



LAS VEGAS, NV / ACCESSWIRE / April 26, 2016 / Gold and Silver Mining of Nevada, Inc. ("CJTF") ("the Company"), (PINK SHEETS: CJTF) a junior mining company in Nevada, has conducted a review of its first gold mining claims selected for mining and processing and updated its projections based on information discussed in earlier news items to estimate the following:

The first 80 acres in the loop for processing after the 1,000 bulk sample is completed at a 15 foot depth has approximately 5,227,200 tons of minable placer ore of which we expect to screen in the field and haul only the best 1/3 or approximately 1,750,000 tons of ore.

We have referred to public data from 640 acres of claims adjacent to our 80 acres which show an average of 0.29 ounces per ton of gold from their 3 sets of data collected and assayed at over 5 labs. These results are useful for projections while our own results are being tabulated. We are hopeful and expect that our data will be similar to the data from the adjoining claims.

If we use the 1,750,000 net processable tons x 0.29 ounces per ton of gold, we show an estimated gross value of a very acceptable number of ounces of gold and at today's price a very nice gross market value before the estimated lower production and processing costs (as this ore is near surface placer material) are deducted.

With the first 80 acres completed, it is expected that the next 80 acres times 2 which north and east of these claims will be commenced, so a total estimated net usable tonnage could run as high as 5,250,000 tons of screened material x 0.29 ounces of gold per ton, (again, estimating the same as the adjoining claims) is estimated to produce a large gold revenue before costs at the mill and smelter.

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We view the price of $1,250 an ounce for gold today and acknowledge that prices can change at any time. Net tonnage and minable ore over the 240 acres at 5,520,000 tons using a best 1/3 best ore recover and processed rule from screened placer material is fairly constant through all of our estimates. And the tonnage doesn't go up and down like prices, the tonnage is still there when we get to it.

Company President N. Fred Anderson states that he expects to see the progression over time for the mining operation to include all of the 240 acres discussed in this press release and located in this particular portion of the 840 acres currently owned.

Simple math can give a nice estimate of years of production at the 240 acres and even more years when the rest of the 840 acres is analyzed. We have found gold here and had it viewed by experts. (A processing operation and lab in Arizona and a Mint.)

The data here is estimated and backed by actions still going on and supported by data we have from signed professionals who analyzed the ore in the adjoining claims.

About Gold & Silver Mining of Nevada, Inc.:

The company is in the business of precious metals mining and processing of massive gold and silver ore bodies in Nevada. The gold and silver located in the company owned mining claims in these districts are located adjacent to other known and established mining operators. The company is not looking for ore, but is in the process of developing previously identified ore bodies.

Safe Harbor Statement

This release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E and/or 27E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that are based upon assumptions that in the future may prove not to have been accurate and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including statements as to the future performance of the company and the risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in reports filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Statements contained in this release that are not historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in its forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations or any of its forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Factors that could cause results to differ include, but are not limited to, the company's ability to raise necessary financing, retention of key personnel, timely delivery of inventory from the company's suppliers, timely product development, product acceptance, and the impact of competitive services and products, in addition to general economic risks and uncertainties.

For more information please contact:

Investor Relations at 801-679-3945

Visit the company web site at www.GoldandSilverMining.com

SOURCE: Gold and Silver Mining of Nevada, Inc.
PITTSBURGH -- A strong showing in Tuesday night's series of primaries could put GOP front-runner Donald Trump well on his way to clearing the party's delegate threshold and locking up the Republican presidential nomination.

But while Trump's polling numbers look solid in Pennsylvania, the state's delegate structure, on its face, provides an opening for another candidate to pick up more than three times as much support as the winner of the commonwealth's popular vote.

"'Bizarre' is the best word to describe the whole damn process," says Charlie Kirkwood, a candidate for one of Pennsylvania's 54 unbound delegate positions. "This is going to shape up to be a battle."

The winner of Pennsylvania's Republican primary is guaranteed 17 of the state's delegates. But the commonwealth's primary voters on Tuesday also will elect 54 delegates who will be completely unbound once the party's national convention rolls around in July.

Some have vowed to stick with their respective district's popular vote. Some have said they'd support the state winner. Some have vowed to back one particular candidate. And some haven't pledged their allegiance one way or another.

G. Terry Madonna, a public affairs professor and director of the College Poll at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, says more than 160 people have come forward to potentially serve as state delegates. He says dozens have already pledged their support behind either Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz or Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who was born and raised in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania.

But it could be a completely different ballgame at the convention.

"It doesn't matter what they said. They can do whatever they want," Madonna says. "It looks like more delegates than not have said that 'if elected, I will go and vote for the candidate that wins my congressional district.' And that's honor-bound."

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Kirkwood, for example, has pledged to support what the voters want, going so far as to set up an online poll that will help guide his decision.

"I have received quite a few emails, both from other delegates and from party leaders and the public, very partisan, saying what a great idea it is to open this up to the people," says Kirkwood, who has been a Pennsylvania delegate in two prior election cycles. "I believe the only people who should be trusted in an election are the voters. It's not the polls, it's not the party officials -- it's the voters."

But that sentiment likely won't stop candidates and their supporters from attempting to woo delegates when they travel to Cleveland for the convention later this year. In fact, Madonna says, some forms of bribery could work their way into the fold.

"Imagine the goodies that are going to be bestowed on them getting wooed on all sides," he says, suggesting campaigns could legally "pay for [delegates'] hotels, travel, fly them on an airplane, give them a cruise."

Though Trump has said he would not attempt to game the delegate system -- calling it "corrupt" -- he was quick to point out that he has better "toys" at his disposal than the other two candidates.

"Look, nobody has better toys than I do. I can put [the eventual delegates] in the best planes and bring them to the best resorts anywhere in the world," he said last week. "Doral, Mar-a Lago. I can put them in the best places in the world."

Madonna says a Pennsylvania Republican primary hasn't been this contentious since 1976, when eventual president and former California Gov. Ronald Reagan unsuccessfully challenged President Gerald Ford -- who ultimately lost in the general election to Jimmy Carter.

"When they got to the [Republican] convention, there was no majority. And Ford was about 100 delegates short, and he got the votes by wheeling and dealing with the delegates as they arrived," Madonna says. "But Pennsylvania mattered because they overwhelmingly committed their votes to Ford."

Complicating matters this year is a sizable voter shift seen by both Madonna and Kirkwood -- tens of thousands of registered Democrats have switched their allegiance to the Republican Party. The driving force behind the move, says Madonna, is Trump.

"There isn't any doubt that a good portion of the switchers were to vote for Trump. And many of them were in counties with a lot of blue-collar workers, where Trump has had a lot of support," he says. "We don't know for sure, and we don't know why, but there's been enough interviews that I'm fairly convinced the driving force was to vote for Trump."

Indeed, according to Pennsylvania voter registration data, nearly 92,000 residents this year had changed their political affiliation to Republican, and nearly 62,000 of these people came from the Democratic Party. For comparison's sake, only about 63,000 Pennsylvanians flipped to become Democrats -- and less than 20,000 came from the GOP.

And although Madonna says there are some reports of "sabotage" registration -- in which Democrats register as Republicans to vote for the candidate they think would fare the worst against a Democratic candidate in the general election -- he says he believes the lion's share of switchers are genuine in their desires for a Republican nominee like Trump.

"A lot of western Pennsylvania, particularly around Pittsburgh, is old steel towns -- a lot of blue-collar workers. I imagine the anti-trade deals and anti-China rhetoric resonates pretty well there," Madonna says. "These are people who switched in their own minds even before they switched their registration. These are the Reagan Democrats."

How these individuals will impact Tuesday's vote -- and more broadly shape Pennsylvania's delegate landscape in the event of a contested convention -- remains to be seen. Trump's rhetoric has repeatedly played to this demographic, and, as such, he is widely expected to walk away with the state's popular vote on Tuesday.

But thanks to Pennsylvania's "bizarre" delegate rules, a victory in Tuesday night's primary battle may not be enough to ultimately win the unbound delegate war.

Andrew Soergel is an Economy Reporter at U.S. News. You can connect with him on LinkedIn, follow him on Twitter or email him at asoergel@usnews.com.
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is expanding his empire yet again and has joined forces with All3Media to launch his own independent production company, dubbed Studio Ramsay.

The new entity will aim to create new formats and programming, including developing and producing unscripted and scripted projects, with food-related themes, which also encourage new talent on an international scale.

Ramsay has been in business with All3Media for the past six years, including a collaboration on the reality cooking show "Kitchen Nightmares".

As part of the venture, Layla Smith, CEO of the All3Media banner Objective Media Group, will work closely with Studio Ramsay in the UK, with All3Media America CEO Greg Lipstone working with the company in the US (via Variety).
Veteran host Terry Wogan was recently slammed for shattering the Eurovision contests credibility with his jokey presenting style.



But his replacement Graham Norton has defended Tels inimitable style and revealed he plans to toast the broadcasters memory at next months final.

Norton, below, who took over from Wogan in 2008, said: When I do the commentary I still hear him in my head.

Swedish producer Christer Bjorkman said mickeytaking by Sir Terry, who died aged 77 in January had shattered the shows credibility.

But Norton, 53, told the Daily Mirror about Wogan, below: Sir Terry took a role that wasnt really a role at all and he transformed it into the job it is today.

I think this year will be bittersweet because we will all be thinking of Terry and I will say a few words about him as the night goes on.

But he will wait until song nine before he raises a glass to his fellow Irishman because Sir Terry always warned me not to have anything to drink until that point.

He added: It has all worked out very nicely as the Swedish people in the arena will be cheering their song as everyone back in the UK joins me to cheers his memory.

Pictures Getty Images
Suspected Islamists have hacked to death two gay rights activists in the Bangladeshi capital, the latest in a series of chilling murders in the Muslim-majority country.

With the list of victims growing fast and rights groups warning that the attackers appear to be expanding their range of targets, pressure is mounting on the Bangladesh government to act.

- Who has been targeted? -

Since early last year, at least six secular bloggers, liberal activists and writers have also been killed in Bangladesh -- including Bangladeshi-born US citizen Avijit Roy who was hacked to death on a crowded Dhaka street last February.

Many more bloggers and activists, who have also openly criticised Islam, have received death threats, forcing some to flee the country or go into hiding.

A number of Christians, Hindus and Sufi, Ahmadi and Shiite Muslims have also been killed since last year, heightening fears for religious minorities in the officially secular country that comprises mainly Sunni Muslims.

Two foreigners, a Japanese farmer and a faith-based Italian aid worker, were also shot dead last year.

An English professor was hacked to death on Saturday as he walked to a bus stop. Although he had never knowingly criticised Islam, police suspect he was targeted for leading music and literature groups at his university.

- Who is behind the attacks? -

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for murdering the two foreigners, warning in September that "citizens of the crusader coalition" would not be safe in Muslim nations.

IS later also later claimed to have carried out a bombing at a packed Shiite shrine, and other attacks on minorities. The professor, it said, was killed for "calling to the creed of atheism".

A Bangladeshi branch of Al-Qaeda said Tuesday it carried out the latest murders, because the two men had worked to "promote homosexuality". It has also said it was behind the murders of the secular bloggers and writers.

Story continues

But Bangladesh's government rejects both groups' claims and says homegrown Islamist groups are instead responsible for all the attacks.

- Are the claims credible? -

Bangladesh's top police officers have also repeatedly rejected the claims, saying there is no evidence that either group has any presence in the country. They have echoed the government in blaming local banned Islamist outfits.

Independent security analysts are more cautious, saying it is possible that some homegrown militant groups have established contact with IS or Al-Qaeda or have been inspired by their operations in the Middle East and north Africa.

- What's the government's position? -

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also points the finger at the main opposition and its Islamist ally, accusing them of trying to destabilise the country -- claims rejected by both groups.

Bangladesh has been plagued by political unrest in the last three years, a period which has seen the largest Islamist party banned, while the mainstream opposition boycotted the last elections in January 2014 over vote rigging fears.

Death sentences handed down to several leading Islamists for war crimes over their roles in the 1971 conflict to secede from Pakistan have exacerbated tensions between the secular government and its opponents.

Scores of opposition activists including Islamists have gone missing or been detained since last year's major crackdown by the government on deadly opposition-led street protests.

Experts fear this crackdown has radicalised some of Hasina's opponents.

- How have authorities responded?

Last year a court sentenced two students to death for the 2013 murder of Ahmed Rajib Haider, the first of the attacks targeting secular writers.

Another six people were convicted on lesser charges related to Haider's death.

But no one has been convicted over any of the deaths that have occurred since, although police have made numerous arrests.

Secular activists across the country have demanded greater police protection and justice, fearing a culture of impunity for the attackers.

Their fears have been bolstered by comments of top officials, including Prime Minister Hasina who has criticised the secular bloggers' "dirty" writings on religion.
Photos from the set of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 have revealed the role of director James Gunns good luck charm, actor Nathan Fillion.



The photos have also revealed that part of the film will be set on Earth, indicating that the film may see Chris Pratts Star Lord return to his home planet.

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Gunn is currently shooting the film on location in Cartersville, Georgia, and residents have been keeping an eagle eye on whats going on.

One of the pictures shows a series of film posters starring Nathan Fillion as Simon Williams - a character comic book fans know also goes by the name Wonder Man.

Another poster spotted is a clear riff on Danny Boyles Steve Jobs biopic with Williams playing Iron Man himself Tony Stark. This also indicates that the scenes being shot take place after Star Lord is swiped from Earth in the 80s.

A video uploaded to Facebook also shows an action scene being shot with extras running away from an unseen threat thats tipping over cars. Fans are sure to speculate as to what that means for the film as filming continues.

While Fillions character becomes a superhero in the comics, its entirely possibly well just see him as Simon Williams in the film, and not Wonder Woman. That said, if any Marvel film is going to get weird and introduce D-list characters, then its Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

Chris Pratt returns alongside Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, the voices of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, and newcomers Kurt Russell and Elizabeth Debicki.

The film is set for release on 28 April 2017.

Picture Credits: Marvel Studios
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The chairman of a wealth management firm in China who police suspected had vanished with about 1 billion yuan ($154 million)of investor funds has resurfaced, denying he ran off with the money and saying he was on vacation, state media reported.

Police in the city of Hangzhou had launched a search for Yang Weiguo after the company he leads as chairman, Wangzhou Group, last week said he was missing, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday.

On Tuesday, however, a state-run news website in the western region of Xinjiang reported he told friends via the messaging app WeChat he had been relaxing in Xinjiang since mid-April, pondering the difficulties the company faced, and had turned off all forms of communication.

It quoted a text message it said Yang had sent his friends on Monday saying he was heading to the police station and might be incommunicado for a while.

Other Chinese news outlets quoted a brief video showing Yang saying he'd be "right back".

Calls to the Shanghai headquarters of Wangzhou Fortune did not connect, and calls to the group's main office in Beijing were not answered. It was not possible to contact Yang.

The case is the latest scare to hit China's risk-laden shadow banking sector, which has seen a rise in fraud cases in the past few years as the economy slows and retail investors with limited options are lured into dodgy schemes by promises of high returns.

More than 20,000 people had invested some 2.2 billion yuan in Wangzhou Group subsidiary Wangzhou Fortune, which has dozens of branches around China, the Xinhua report on Sunday quoted police as saying. Investors started reported "problems with the company's cash flow" last week, it reported.

($1 = 6.5 yuan)

(Reporting by John Ruwitch; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Nick Macfie)
Why BHP Billiton's Fiscal 3Q16 Results Were a Mixed Bag

(Continued from Prior Part)

Copper volumes

Companies that produce copper including BHP Billiton (BHP) (BBL), Freeport-McMoRan (FCX), Teck Resources (TCK), Southern Copper (SCCO), and Newmont Mining (NEM), are taking steps to increase production in order to lower costs.

Lowering costs is vital in price environments wherein copper prices are falling, and copper volumes are key for these companies copper segment revenues.

Copper volumes recover

BHPs total copper production for the nine months ended March 31, 2016, was 8% lower YoY (year-over-year) at 1.2 million tons. This was expected, as grade declines at Escondida had kicked in, according to BHPs management during its fiscal 2015 earnings conference call. However, production for the March quarter increased 18% from the December 2015 quarter as a result of higher concentrator throughput due to improved water availability. Here are other contributing factors for production in the nine months ended March 31 (or 9M16) :

At Escondida, production in 9M16 fell by 20% to 711,000 tons, as record metals mined and improvements in truck utilization were offset by a 28% grade decline.

Production at Pampa Norte also fell by 3% YoY to 186,000 tons. Higher grades and recoveries at Spence were offset due to planned maintenance at Spence and industrial action at Cerro Colorado during the March quarter.

Copper production at Olympic Dam rose by 46% YoY to a record 162,000 tons. This mainly reflects the improved smelter and mill utilization.

Guidance maintained

BHPs management maintained its copper production guidance of 1.5 million tons for fiscal 2016. This would be a fall of 12% YoY and would mainly be driven by the 28% grade decline at Escondida. However, we should take into account the following:

Production guidance for Escondida was also maintained at 940,000 tons for fiscal 2016. The company maintained that the ramp up of its Organic Growth Project 1 is progressing ahead of schedule, and the project is expected to be complete in the June 2016 quarter.

Pampa Norte production is expected to remain at a similar level as last year while production at Olympic Dam is expected to exceed 200,000 tons for fiscal 2016.

Higher copper grades should support production at BHPs Antamina copper mine in Peru in fiscal 2016. The production is expected to be 136,000 tons.

Story continues

Investors looking for diversified exposure to the materials sector can consider the iShares US Basic Materials ETF (IYM). Almost 12% of IYMs holdings are invested in metals and mining companies.

Continue to the next part of this series for a look at BHP Billitons petroleum production in 9M16.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
People the world over were touched by the heartbreaking story of a rescue dog that died after reportedly saving seven people in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in Ecuador last week.

SLIDESHOW  Earthquakes hit Ecuador >>>

The news quickly went viral after the fire department for the northern city of Ibarra announced the death of 4-year-old Labrador retriever Dayko, who had been with its K-9 unit for three and a half years.

The Fire Department of Ibarra would like to express a brotherly thanks to all the people who gave us their support, and not only in regards to the death of our beloved canine Dayko, the department said in a Facebook post.

According to Spanish-language news, such as ABC, Dayko suffered from heat stroke and injuries while braving the flames to find more victims, ultimately succumbing to a heart attack  despite resuscitation attempts by veterinarians and firefighters.

Dayko helped to find survivors of the earthquake. (Cuerpo De Bomberos Ibarra via Facebook)

The fire department posted a series of pictures in honor of Dayko that show him searching through the rubble left behind by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake on April 16.

Some lambasted the fire department for working the Labrador to the point of exhaustion. In a subsequent Facebook post, the department defended the handling of its canines.

The earthquake, which has been called the worst in the countrys history, has left more than 600 dead and over 12,000 injured. The United Nations announced Monday that its World Food Programme will distribute food to 260,000 people who are hungry after surviving the chaos.
The Hershey Company HSY is one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in North America marketing some of the worlds leading brands like Hersheys, Reeses and Kisses which enjoy widespread consumer acceptance.

Hersheys sales trends have been weak since 2014 due to lower retail store traffic, intense competition from the broader snacking category and soft international growth. However, margins have been better supported by price increase, supply chain savings and productivity gains.

HSY witnessed downward earnings estimate revisions for 2016 over the past 30 days. However, HSY has a decent earnings surprise history. HSY has posted positive earnings surprise in three of the past four quarters, bringing the average to a positive surprise of 1.88%.

Currently, HSY has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), but that could change following Hersheys earnings report which was just released. We have highlighted some of the key stats from this just-revealed announcement below:

Earnings: HSY beat on earnings. Our consensus earnings estimate called for EPS of $1.05/share, and the company reported EPS of $1.10 instead. Investors should note that these figures take out stock option expenses. Lower than expected advertising spend and lower share count due to share buybacks offset another weak top line performance.

Revenues: HSY reported revenues of 1.83 billion. This missed our consensus estimate of $1.92 billion. A shorter Easter season and continued weak China sales hurt the top line.

Key Stats to Note: Excluding the currency impact, sales declined 4.4%.

The company announced the acquisition of private company, Ripple Brand Collective, that owns the barkTHINS mass premium chocolate snacking brand.

Share Price Impact: In-active in pre-market trading.

Check back later for our full write up on this HSY earnings report later!

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>



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HERSHEY CO/THE (HSY): Free Stock Analysis Report



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The Pennsylvania Senate primary isnt just about the Democratic Party choosing the best steward of its values to represent the people in Washington. Neither are the high-profile endorsements that have come with the race, nor the glaring spotlight trained on towns from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia.

Rather, national Democrats see Pennsylvania as key to achieving an increasingly feasible goal: taking back the Senate. And theyre virtually united in their support of candidate Katie McGinty to beat Republican Senator Pat Toomey in the fall.

McGinty, who last worked as chief of staff to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, is in a neck-and-neck contest with former Democratic congressman Joe Sestak. The dynamic of the front-runner race is a familiar one this election year, with an establishment candidate, McGinty, taking on an independent-minded outsider, Sestak. A recent Franklin & Marshall poll showed Sestak leading McGinty by six points, but with a large enough margin of errorand enough undecided votersto keep the scene interesting. Two additional candidates, with slim chances, round out the ballot: John Fetterman, the semi-famous mayor of little Braddock, Pennsylvania, and businessman Joe Vodvarka.

Democrats have been plotting against Toomey for nearly two years; in recent months, theyve targeted him for, essentially, being too Republican, and for opposing the nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court. But their fortunes have looked more promising since Donald Trump took the lead in the presidential race. Pennsylvania is a swing state, but has gone blue in six of the last seven presidential elections. While Trump is leading Ted Cruz and John Kasich by wide margins there, he is not expected to wow among the states more moderate voters if hes the nominee. Instead, his candidacy is expected to negatively affect down-ballot Republicans like Toomey in the general.

Recommended: Why a Judge Ruled North Carolina's Voter-ID Law Constitutional

Story continues

Novembers contest gets started Tuesday night when polls close, and national Democrats, including President Obama, want McGinty to be the victor. Shes never held elected office, but has long been part of the Democratic political scene. Before working for Wolf, she ran against him in the 2014 gubernatorial primary race. Before that, she led the state Department of Environmental Protection. And before that, she worked on Al Gores presidential campaign and as chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Pennsylvanias race is one of a handful national Democrats are counting on in November.

Shes wracked up endorsements in the last few months, including from Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid; unions like the SEIU; the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; and the pro-choice womens group EMILYs List. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden publicly backed her in late March, another sign, The Hill wrote, that the partys establishment is coalescing behind her in a contentious Pennsylvania primary battle.

The endorsements have been glowingas endorsements typically areciting her career in public service. But theres political calculation going on as well. Biden has taken a particular interest in Pennsylvania as part of his boots-on-the-ground effort to flip the Senate; hes campaigned with McGinty in the past and was in Philadelphia with her on Monday. Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey has said shes the partys best chance. I think she will be the strongest nominee in the fall election against Senator Toomey, he said. And thats part of the determination that I have to make as a Democratic leader in the state but also as a voter.

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Sestak, for his part, seems proud not to have establishment backing, much like Bernie Sanders has rejected its support of Hillary Clinton. This isnt the first time he hasnt gotten it. Sestak, a former Navy admiral who represented the Philly burbs in Congress, hasnt always colored between the Democratic Partys lines. Against party wishes, he challenged Senator Arlen Specter in the 2010 Senate primary, but lost to Toomey in the general. This cycle, he didnt even give the DSCC a heads-up that he was announcing his campaign, which kicked off with Sestak planning to walk the width of Pennsylvania.

Terry Madonna, the director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll, called him a maverick in Philadelphias Newsworkssomeone whos distant and aloof from party leaders, and whose estrangement has made party leaders look for other candidates. Like, say, McGinty.

But some Pennsylvania observers think his positioning could be a positive among Democrats in this outsider-favored primary. This worked for him in 2010, and the conditions are even better now, a Wilkes University political science professor told The (Allentown) Morning Call in March. Sestak came within 80,000 votes of winning in 2010. There's a sense across the countryand we'll see shortly to what extent in Pennsylvaniathat voters are unhappy with the status quo. Sestak himself has acknowledged the potential advantage of his brand, though itd be disingenuous to suggest hes totally alone. A pro-Sestak super PAC planned a big TV ad buy ahead of Tuesday. McGinty has also seen major financial help from EMILYs List and the DSCC leading up to the race.

Pennsylvanias race is one of a handful national Democrats are counting on in November. If Sestak wins the primary but fails in the general, they could simply blame him for trying in the first place. He didnt heed their wishes, and he got punished for itfor the second time, by the same opponent. But if McGinty loses, the party would be in a more tricky position. After all the time and money spent to help her bid, the Democrats and their allies would have some explaining to do.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Pero_dog_running_home_header

LONDON  We've all heard the stories about pets travelling miles to get to an old home. We've all read tales of dogs and cats that get lost only to turn up on their owner's doorsteps weeks later.

We've all seen Homeward Bound, and we all cried at that bit near the end when we thought Shadow had died, but frankly that wound's still far too raw and we're getting massively sidetracked so let's leave that one there for now.

SEE ALSO: British pooch gets scared by fireworks, runs away from home, travels 24 miles by train

Pero, the pooch at the centre of this story, will surely have a film made about him one day. After his owners sent him to a man in Cockermouth, England to work on a farm, Pero escaped and apparently travelled "240 miles" back to his former owners' house near Aberystwyth, Wales.

Pero fled on April 8, and the journey home took him 12 days.

"We'd been told that Pero had disappeared, and was nowhere to be seen," former owner Shan James was reported as saying by the BBC.

"But then, last Wednesday evening, April 20, my husband Alan went out to check on the animals after supper and there was Pero on our doorstep."

James went on to say she believes Pero must have found things to eat along the way, as he didn't appear hungry when he turned up. Who knows what other shenanigans he got up to.

The sheepdog is now safely back at his old home in Wales, where he will remain.
Eb3b8200ff024023981404c33dfc79df

Finally, you can take your imitation of Drake's unusual dance moves from "Hotline Bling" out of the bedroom and into the club. In Australia, at least.

On Sunday night, the club Mr Kim's in Adelaide hosted its very own walk-in light box inspired by the hit music video  providing the perfect spot to call and annoy all your exes.

SEE ALSO: Drake is sitting on his city in new 'Views' album cover

Even DJ and producer Dillon Francis got in the box while touring in the city, and it looks like a helluva lot of fun.

The light box made its debut at a party called So Far Gone, which had a Drake theme on the night, but of course. It measured 3 metres (9.8 feet) long, 2.5 metres (8.2 feet) wide and 2.4 metres (7.8 feet) high, with 40 metres (131 feet) of lighting strips.

"It took us three weeks to organise supplies and build," Annabel Hartlett, who created the So Far Gone party alongside Daniel Atkins, told Mashable Australia.

While the light box was originally created for one night only, Hartlett said she'd love to keep it going.

"Originally we were just going to use it for our Drake night, but everyone blew up about it so we wouldn't want it to go to waste," Hartlett said. "We have certainly considered many avenues to go down in terms of a possible hire service or to take it around to various night clubs around Australia."

"Our main priority with this box and SO FAR GONE was to build a club night that was different to everybody else, to have an experience instead of just listening to DJ's and dancing on a dance floor," she added.

While you wait for the Drake box of love to arrive in your nearest city, you can practice that weird swimming in the air thing the rapper does in the original video. Drizzy doesn't judge.





[h/t Pedestrian.TV]
Voluptuous lines, sensual curves and braying crowds of young men eager to make one of the beauties on display their own. But this year, the desire on display is for cold metal and dark glass only.

The glamour girls whose bare flesh once graced the vehicles at the Beijing Auto Show have been banished, so the public can focus solely on the cars on display from more than 2,000 manufacturers across 14 countries.

Following in the footsteps of Auto Shanghai 2015, the organizers of the Beijing International Auto Show banned brands from using female models to promote the cars.

"After consulting multiple opinions from relevant parties including exhibitors, we decide to cancel the car modeling section in order to create an atmosphere that focuses on car products, technologies and innovations, and to create an orderly, clean and safe exhibition environment," the Beijing Auto Show Committee said in an official statement this month.

As a result, the glamorous "car show girls" have been replaced by male models, fully dressed and equipped with brushes and cloths to burnish the already gleaming cars.

A glance into the booths of of Citroen and Lexus reveals plenty of handsome car attendants, simultaneously wiping and striking a pose. Local auto maker Changan Auto, meanwhile, has gone for foreign men to represent its brand.

In previous years, the provocatively dressed female models often attracted more attention from the public and grabbed more headlines than the vehicles themselves, which led to fierce competition among car manufacturers to have the most scantily-dressed models.

China Daily called the interest "shallow, vulgar, and rather disturbing."

"Pretty women can certainly attract crowds, but they also prevent potential customers from focusing on the vehicles," the state-owned publisher wrote in an editorial defending the ban on female models .

The ones most unhappy with the ban, however, were the unemployed models themselves, who staged a high-profile protest outside last year's Shanghai Auto Show.

Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.
By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats on a powerful U.S. congressional panel are questioning whether Canada-based Valeant Pharmaceuticals may be wrongfully withholding documents in connection with its ongoing probe into sky-rocketing drug prices, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters on Tuesday.

The memo, which was sent to Democratic members of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform from the staff of its top Democrat Elijah Cummings, reveals that Valeant previously withheld readily available analyst reports prepared by banks such as Goldman Sachs, saying they were protected by attorney-client privilege.

The memo says it also raises questions about other documents that are still being withheld, saying some of these "were not drafted by attorneys and do not include communications with attorneys."

A spokeswoman for Valeant denied that the company has done anything wrong, saying it has already provided more than 78,000 pages of documents and will continue cooperating.

"We continue to discuss with the committee the issue of privileged documents, but any suggestion that we have withheld documents inappropriately is incorrect," Laurie Little said in a statement.

The April 26 memo comes just one day before three of Valeant's top executives are slated to appear before a different U.S. Senate panel that is also investigating high drug prices.

The company's outgoing CEO Michael Pearson will be testifying before the Senate Special Committee on Aging late Wednesday afternoon, along with activist investor William Ackman, a majority shareholder and board member, and Howard Schiller, a director and former chief financial officer.

Their appearance before Congress comes at an awkward and difficult time for the company, which is under fire from its shareholders and facing a number of ongoing government investigations into drug pricing and distribution, accounting and disclosures, and antitrust matters.

Story continues

Last month, the company announced that Pearson would be stepping down and that Ackman would be joining its board, after a board committee probe into the company's dealings with specialty pharmacy Philidor RX Services uncovered accounting problems dating back to December 2014.

The company said it would restate its earnings and delay filing its annual report, opening the door to a possible default on its $30 billion debt.

The company has blamed some of the accounting problems on Schiller, and asked him to step down from his board seat. Schiller has refused to do so, and has denied any wrongdoing through his attorney.

Valeant plans to file its annual report on April 29, two days after the hearing.

Wednesday's hearing will be primarily focused on Valeant's drastic price increases for two of its heart drugs.

The committee previously planned to vote to hold Pearson in contempt for failing to be deposed, but backed down after he agreed to be interviewed April 18.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Bernard Orr and Alan Crosby)
chapels

No more guilt! There are no excuses to skip a day (or night) of worship if youre just a few short steps from your own chapel. It might just be the ultimate indulgence for the faithful, whatever particular faith that happens to be. Maybe you want to have actual congregations in your abode. Or perhaps you just like the whole religious vibe. Either way, it sure makes attending services easieryoull need to bring only your own coffee and snacks after a daily devotional.

To find some awe-inspiring sacred spaces, we studied the good book of real estate. What we found were eight properties that offer stunning houses, endless acres, and their very own secluded chapel.

Whether you use the chapel for weddings, worship, or just preaching to the choir, we promise not to judge. Theres no guarantee if a higher power will do the same.

Price: $8.9 million

The gospel: Some consider nature a chapel, but why not let your home pull double duty? The little white church tucked away on this 87-acre lot on the Washington coast is the picture-perfect venue for a wedding ceremony. Surrounded by wooded, equestrian land and adjacent to a small pond, your private chapel is also a serene escape for personal reflection.

Anacortes, WA



Price: $5,995,000

The gospel: Prefer to pray by the ocean? This Mediterranean-style villa in Florida offers all the amenities a Renaissance-era Italian might expectincluding a chapel with all the trimmings. From a gorgeously detailed fresco on the ceiling to stained glass and saint statuettes, youll never dare to forget your biblical lore when kneeling at the wooden pews (backed in red velvet, of course).

Fort Myers, FL



Price: $4.25 million

The gospel: This Santa Fe stunner offers an intimate, Spanish-inspired chapel. Covered in adobe and featuring a stone floor, this small space offers room for two devotees to light a candle. Bright, colorful decor and painted figures around the altar complete the soul-soothing Southwestern vibe. You wont be hosting a sermon in the space, but its a private, calm space for contemplation.

Story continues

Santa Fe, NM



Price: $5.55 million

The gospel: Its clear Washington loves its private chapelsalthough this 5,800-square-foot Tacoma sanctuary on a 5-acre plot of land is more like a full-on church. With room for at least 140, this sacred space could host your own congregation. Your flock can even enjoy a holiday meal on the premises: The nearby education building (!) offers a commercial kitchen with plenty of space for an enormous spread.

Tacoma, WA



Price: $4.5 million

The gospel: Have simpler goals than founding your own megachurch? Try this castle-like chapel on for size. It has room for plenty of guests, while offering a far more rustic setting perfect for quiet contemplation. The stone walls, wood-beamed ceiling, and elegant pews are picturesque enough for even the pickiest bride, and 345 surrounding acres provide more than enough space for a reception tent or three.

Sterling, CT



Price: $2.95 million

The gospel: If you liked the look of the tiny, adobe-walled chapel in Santa Fe but need more space, consider this Spanish Eclecticstyle church, located on a 40-acre ranch. Quirky green pews, ironwork doors, and a statuesque altar give the room major personality.

Pojoaque, NM



Price: $2.75 million

The gospel: Everythings bigger in Texasand this barrel-ceilinged chapel located on a wooded 13-acre lot is no exception. Sure, the space fits only about 25, but something in the decor feels irresistibly grand. With stained-glass windows and intricately painted ceilings towering over the pews, this sanctuary is proof that holiness can come with a sense of style.

Dickinson, TX



Price: $2.3 million

The gospel: Are we sure this Louisiana town isnt called Prayerville? Because this itty-bitty chapel deserves the monikerpartly because thats about all you can do in it. Built from brick, this little chapel may not offer tons of space, but privacy lends itself to serenity. When youre tired of all the other amenities on the 2-acre lot, including a pool and courtyard, step inside the chapel for peace and quiet.

Prairieville, LA



More from realtor.com: An exclusive look inside an authentic Scottish castlein America

The post Houses of the Holy: 8 Real Homes With Their Own Chapels appeared first on Real Estate News and Advice - realtor.com.





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WisdomTree Investments, Inc. WETF is scheduled to report first-quarter 2016 results on Apr 29.



Last quarter, this New York-based exchange traded fund (ETF) and exchange-traded product (ETP) sponsor and asset managers earnings met expectations and came ahead of the prior-year quarter's earnings. Results reflected robust revenue growth, partially offset by higher expenses. Also, the company recorded growth in U.S. listed ETF assets under management (AUM) and European listed AUM.



Will WisdomTree be able to deliver improved earnings this quarter as well? Or will results be affected by significant outflows witnessed during the quarter? Lets see how things have shaped up.



Factors at Play



The beginning of 2016 has been quite tough for WisdomTree as it was hit with $5.2 billion outflows during the first quarter. This is in sharp contrast with the prior-year quarters net inflows of $13.7 billion.



The outflows have been mostly driven by international hedged products, particularly companys major currency-hedged funds  WisdomTree Europe Hedged Equity Fund (HEDJ) and WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity Fund (DXJ). Notably, HEDJ and DXJ which constitute around 60% of the companys AUM, experience elevated outflows as the U.S. dollar continued to weaken against most global currencies.



On the brighter side, funds that witnessed positive flows include Europe small-cap dividend (DFE), Japan hedged real estate (DXJR) and US Dollar Bullish Fund (USDU).



The first quarter experienced market turmoil driven by issues including the China turmoil and continued volatility in commodity prices. Therefore, taking the market performance in its stride, overall AUM is expected to trend down or remain stable for WisdomTree.



During the quarter, WisdomTree remained focused on executing its strategic growth initiatives including expansion of distribution capabilities, investment in technology, launch of innovative products and addition of personnel. Given such initiatives, we expect marketing and sales expenses to trend higher in the first quarter.



Considering the heightened volatility around flows, a key area to look at will be compensation expense level during the quarter. Management expects a compensation expense of 24-28% for the year.



WisdiomTrees activities during the quarter were inadequate to win analysts confidence. As a result, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter remained stable at 9 cents over the last seven days.



Earnings Whispers



Our proven model does not conclusively show that WisdomTree is likely to beat earnings in the upcoming release. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or at least #2 (Buy) or #3 (Hold) for this to happen. Unfortunately, this is not the case here as elaborated below.



Zacks ESP: The Earnings ESP for WisdomTree is 0.00%. This is because both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at 9 cents.



Zacks Rank: WisdomTrees Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) further lowers the predictive power of ESP. As it is, we caution investors against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 and #5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement.



Stocks That Warrant a Look



Here are some stocks you may want to consider, as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:



Federated Investors, Inc. FII has an Earnings ESP of +2.33% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will release results on Apr 28.



Legg Mason Inc. LM has an Earnings ESP of +7.69% and a Zacks Rank #3. It is scheduled to report on Apr 28.



Credit Acceptance Corp. CACC has an Earnings ESP of +0.53% and a Zacks Rank #2. It is expected to report results on May 2.



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CREDIT ACCEPT (CACC): Free Stock Analysis Report



LEGG MASON INC (LM): Free Stock Analysis Report



FEDERATED INVST (FII): Free Stock Analysis Report



WISDOMTREE INV (WETF): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
By Hyunjoo Jin

SEOUL (Reuters) - Hyundai Motor <005380.KS> posted its ninth straight quarterly profit drop on slower sales in China and other emerging markets, a trend the South Korean automaker seeks to reverse by supplying more sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and launching new sedans.

Strength in smaller, fuel-efficient sedans helped Hyundai Motor outperform the industry during the global economic downturn, but has left it reeling from a consumer shift to gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles (SUVs) in recent years, driven by a slump in the price of oil.

Hyundai Motor, the world's fifth-biggest automaker together with affiliate Kia Motors <000270.KS>, reported on Tuesday a 12 percent drop in first-quarter net profit to 1.69 trillion won ($1.47 billion), but higher than the 1.46 trillion won average estimate of 14 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

In China, its biggest market, Hyundai Motor sold 10 percent fewer vehicles in the quarter, as it trailed rivals in tapping soaring demand for SUVs.

"The biggest challenge facing Hyundai is securing its competitiveness in China and maintaining its market share there," said Kim Sung-soo, a fund manager at LS Asset Management, which owns Hyundai Motor shares.

Revenue rose 7 percent to 22.35 trillion won for the quarter, but operating profit declined 16 percent to 1.34 trillion won.

Hyundai Motor said on Tuesday it will aim to gradually improve earnings by launching its Elantra sedans and boosting SUV supply in the U.S. and China markets.

Hyundai needs to build its fourth and fifth factories in China because of its sustained growth, Hyundai's chief financial officer Choi Byung-chul said in an earnings conference call. His comments come amid concerns about slowing growth and rising competition in the world's biggest auto market.

VULNERABLE

The drop in the company's China sales came despite the country's tax cuts on small car purchases, as Chinese local rivals such as Great Wall Motor <601633.SS> offered cheaper SUVs. Hyundai's global sales declined 6 percent to 1.1 million vehicles in the quarter.

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Hyundai, together with Kia, have the highest sales exposure among major automakers to emerging markets, including China, Russia and Brazil, making them vulnerable to a slowdown in those markets, according to Macquarie Securities.

Emerging market downturn as a result of low oil price has decreased exports from domestic factories while the value of emerging markets like Russia and Brazil declined, offsetting the impact of the weaker South Korean won, Hyundai Motor said in a statement.

In the U.S. market, where appetite for SUVs and trucks has been strong, Hyundai posted a 1 percent sales rise in the first quarter, weighed down by its sedan-heavy lineup. Strong demand for large SUVs and trucks in North America helped U.S. automaker General Motors Co <GM.N> post bigger-than-expected first-quarter profits.

Hyundai shares closed 2.7 percent higher on Tuesday, compared with a 0.3 percent gain for the wider market <.KS11>.

(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
From Popular Mechanics

Even as Flydubai Flight 981 took off from Dubai on March 18, the pilots knew they'd be in for a difficult flight. Bad weather lay ahead at their destination, the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. As the plane skirted the Caspian Sea and crossed over the Balkans, the situation stayed iffy. By the time the plane approached Rostov airport, a landing looked challenging, but manageable, with rain and winds gusting to 40 mph.

Setting up for an approach from the northeast, the Boeing 737 broke through the cloud base at 1,800 feet and had the airport in sight directly ahead. But gusty conditions meant a risk of windshear-a sudden tailwind could cause the plane to drop out of the sky. Playing it safe, the flight crew did a "go-around," increasing engine power and climbing away from the runway. For the next hour and a half the plane flew holding patterns, waiting for a break in the storm, but none came. Finally the pilots decided to bring it around for a second try. Once again they descended through the clouds, got the runway in sight, and set up to land. Once again, wild winds forced them to abort. The plane accelerated and nosed back up into the sky.

"Once you get into the clouds, your senses start to play on you"

Later, security cameras on the ground would show the plane disappearing into the overcast sky-and then, mere seconds later, zooming back out of the clouds at a steep angle and impacting the runway in a fireball, instantly killing all 62 people aboard.

The reason for this tragedy, we now know, was not wind nor rain nor simple pilot error. It was an illusion.

For obvious reasons, initial speculation about what went wrong centered on the weather. Perhaps the plane had been hit by lightning or suffered particularly severe turbulence. Mechanical failure might have played a role, too. In several recent accidents, autopilot malfunction has caused planes to dive unexpectedly. And then there were potential psychological factors. Having already flown nearly two hours longer than they expected, with much of that time spent in turbulence, amid the stressful uncertainty of not knowing how and when they would get their passengers on the ground, the flight crew must have been tired. Pilot fatigue and challenging weather make a dangerous combination.

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The picture became clearer this past Wednesday with the release of the official preliminary report (pdf) on the accident by Russian aviation officials. Data recovered from the plane's black boxes ruled out mechanical failure or a violent weather event. The problem, most likely, was that the pilots fell victim to a pernicious form of disorientation called "somatogravic illusion."

During a go-around after an aborted landing, a plane tends to be lighter than normal since it's at the end of its flight and has burned up most of its fuel. That means its thrust-to-weight ratio is relatively high, so when the pilot pushes the throttle forward from idle to full thrust the plane accelerates with unusual alacrity. This acceleration pushes pilots back in their seats, which to the inner ear feels exactly the same as tilting upward.

In this case, the plane really is tilting upwards as it climbs away from the runway. But this weird sensation can throw off even seasoned pilots. As long as they can see the ground below them, the true orientation is clear. "When you initiate the go-around and still have some visual reference, you're fine," says aviation analyst Gerry Soejatman, "but once you get into the clouds, your senses start to play on you."

Black-box data show that as the plane started to enter the cloud after the second go-around, the flight crew briefly pushed the controls forward so that its rate of climb decreased, as if the pilots were momentarily disoriented. Then the plane returned to its previous rate of climb. For a few seconds, all was normal. The flight crew members were almost certainly following their instruments, as years of experience had taught them to do. Then, as if suddenly disoriented and unable to believe their instruments were correct, the flight crew pushed the stick far forward. "It takes time for someone to go from 'Oh, the instruments are saying this,' to 'No, no, no, this is all wrong!' and start pushing," Soejatman says.

The pilots probably believed they were preventing the plane from getting too nose-high, which could cause the plane to stall and crash. But in reality they were taking a safe situation and turning it deadly. The lurch downward would have caused them to rise up in their seats as though on a roller-coaster zooming over the top of a hill. By the time they rocketed out of the bottom of the cloud and gained a visual sense of their orientation, they were in a 50 degrees vertical dive at more than 370 mph and just a few seconds from impact. There was no time to pull out.

The violence of the resultant impact can be gauged by the by the condition of the remains recovered. From the 62 people aboard the plane, 4295 "samples of biological matter" were collected.

Somatogravic illusions don't cause plane crashes often, but a 2013 study by the French transportation safety agency identified 16 similar incidents. One crash that happened just two and a half years prior to the FlyDubai crash was eerily similar. Coming into Kazan, Russia, Tatarstan Flight 363 aborted a landing amid low clouds and gusty winds, started to climb out, then suddenly pitched down and plunged into the ground at a steep angle and high speed. All 50 people aboard that 737 were killed.

Wednesday's report was only a preliminary finding, meaning that investigators' findings may change. For the time being, however, they're recommending that pilots undergo fresh training in how to conduct go-arounds under different conditions and study how somatogravic illusions can occur.
India's Supreme Court on Tuesday extended the home leave of an Italian marine accused of killing two fishermen, the latest episode in a legal battle that sparked a bitter diplomatic row.

Massimiliano Latorre and his fellow marine Salvatore Girone are accused of shooting the fishermen while protecting an Italian oil tanker as part of an anti-piracy mission off India's southern Kerala coast in 2012.

The incident, which is now subject to international arbitration, has badly strained relations between Rome and New Delhi.

Both marines were barred from leaving India pending a trial, but Latorre was allowed to travel back to Italy in 2014 for medical treatment after he suffered a stroke.

On Tuesday India's highest court extended Latorre's permission to stay in Italy by five months, until September 30.

Girone is living at Italy's embassy in New Delhi and remains barred from leaving India pending a resolution of the dispute.

Italy initiated arbitration proceedings last year and in August the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) ordered India to suspend court proceedings against the pair.

ITLOS rejected Rome's request for both marines to be freed immediately pending a final ruling.

The detention of the marines, the murder charges and the long wait for the case to be resolved are sore subjects in Italy, with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi regularly flayed by opposition leaders for failing to get both men home.

Italy insists the oil tanker, the MV Enrica Lexie, was in international waters at the time of the incident.

India argues that the case is not a maritime dispute but "a double murder at sea", in which one fisherman was shot in the head and the other in the stomach.
* Indonesia calculates Freeport unit stake value at $630 mln

* Freeport offered to sell 10.64 pct stake at $1.7 bln in Jan (Adds Freeport CEO comment)

By Fergus Jensen

JAKARTA, April 26 (Reuters) - Indonesia has proposed a value for a 10.64 percent stake in Freeport-McMoran Inc's local unit that is about two-thirds below the figure the company proposed in January.

Copper miner Freeport's unit is valued at about $630 million and the U.S.-based parent has been asked to revise its offer, an Indonesian mining ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.

Freeport had offered to sell the stake in its Indonesian operations, including the Grasberg copper and gold mining complex, at $1.7 billion in January.

Under an agreement reached with Indonesia in mid-2014, Freeport must sell the government a greater share of its Grasberg mine and invest in domestic processing to win an extension of its operating contract when it expires in 2021.

Freeport wants to invest $18 billion to expand its operations, including underground mining, but is seeking government assurances first that it will get a contract extension.

"Based on the replacement value, the government calculates [the stake] to be worth around $630 million," ministry spokesman Sudjatmiko told Reuters, referring to a 2013 regulation that sets out how the government calculates mining stakes.

In all of Freeport's agreements with the Indonesian government, the company has indicted that a sale would be at fair market value, Freeport Chief Executive Richard Adkerson said.

"That's consistent with our contract and that remains our position," Adkerson said on a conference call with analysts to discuss Freeport's first-quarter results.

The Indonesian government wants to increase its ownership of Freeport Indonesia to 20 percent from 9.36 percent currently. A further 10 percent must be divested to the government by the end of 2019.

"We have asked Freeport to revise their offer. Once we reach an agreement on price we can make a timeline," he added.

Story continues

The U.S. mining giant valued its Indonesian asset, one of the world's biggest copper mines, at $16.2 billion.

But the amount was immediately criticised by Indonesia's state-owned enterprise minister Rini Soemarno, who hoped one of two government-owned companies, miner Aneka Tambang (Antam) or aluminium producer PT Inalum, would buy the stake.

"We will review and respond to every statement we receive from the government," Riza Pratama, a spokesman for Freeport Indonesia, said without elaborating.

Freeport's valuation of its Indonesian unit was based on an analysis of "fair market value for the Grasberg mining operations," Pratama said.

(Additional reporting by Wilda Asmarini and Nicole Mordant in Vancouver; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Alan Crosby)
From Harper's BAZAAR

Kick Kennedy was her father Joe Kennedy's favorite child and the "psychological twin" of her older brother Jack, who would go on to become President Kennedy. She led a life in the spotlight in England, where she became an unexpected star in the world of the British aristocracy. She married William "Billy" Cavendish, the Marquess of Hartington, but the marriage didn't last long. After her husband died in World War II, Kick became romantically involved with Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam, an even wealthier British aristocrat-who was married. Her scandalous life story is told in Barbara Leaming's new biography, "Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter." Here's an exclusive excerpt:

On April 29, 1947, Kick was in a contemplative mood as the hour drew near that the liner Queen Elizabeth, on which she had been traveling from America, was scheduled to dock in Southampton, England. The cause of her meditations was the sight of an American teenager named Sharman Douglas who, with everything ahead of her, reminded Kick of the girl she herself had been almost a decade before. Lewis Douglas was the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to the Court of St James's, and his sprightly daughter Sharman was sailing over in the company of her mother to join him at the American Embassy.

"It made me feel rather sentimental to see the daughter age 18, going to London for the first time like I did," Kick wrote from the boat to the Kennedys, whom she had just been visiting, "although the glories I found have vanished now."

In her day, Kick had been one of London's most popular debutantes. She had swiftly and skillfully penetrated the hermetically sealed world of the aristocratic cousinhood. She had been courted by various young noblemen. She had fallen in love with the heir to a dukedom, and by sheer persistence and obstinacy she had managed to keep that love alive in the face of monumental obstacles. She had struggled with ethical and religious dilemmas and she had finally taken a decision with which she, at least, could be at peace. She had become a wife and a widow in a matter of months. She had made a glittering future for herself and she had had that future abruptly snatched away by a German sniper's bullet. She had endured and emerged from paralyzing grief. She had moved to a new home of her own and she had established a political salon there.

Story continues

And now, though Kick spoke wistfully to the Kennedys of vanished glories, she perceived herself as having a chance not only to retrieve much of that glory, but perhaps even to surpass it.

One of Britain's wealthiest peers, a man whom she found incomparably attractive and whom she regarded as a hero in the great societal struggle of the postwar era, wished to marry her. This time, however, should she finally consent to become Peter Fitzwilliam's second wife, it seemed highly unlikely that she would ever discover a way, as before, to be at peace with her decision. Though Kick had defied both Hyannis Port and Rome in the past, she had never ceased to think of herself as a Catholic to whom the tenets of her faith were precious. When she married Billy Hartington, she had by no means agreed to abandon Catholicism, only to consent that any children she and he might have would be raised as Anglicans. By the time of Kick's initial plunge into the world of the aristocratic cousinhood, in 1938, Catholic principles had been long and deeply inculcated in her-and so, for all that she had experienced in the interim, they remained.

Such were the contradictions of Kick's nature that the same woman who had lately become a Whig grandee's mistress also at intervals went on retreats to convents whose "peaceful and tranquil" atmosphere, as she described it that emotionally turbulent spring of 1947, were as a balm to her. Because as a committed Roman Catholic Kick was deeply troubled by the fact that Peter was married, her excruciating conflict was not simply with her family and with her church-it was with herself. This time, nothing anyone else said or did could alter her conviction that marrying him would in fact be a sin.

In the course of her second postwar visit to the U.S., which had taken place between February and April, Kick had refrained from disclosing that dilemma to her family, who as yet knew nothing about her affair with Peter Fitzwilliam.

Jack would be the first Kennedy family member with whom she broached the subject of her affair. Newly elected to represent the 11th District in the House of Representatives-a campaign that Kick had followed from afar with intense interest and enthusiasm-Jack Kennedy came to Britain that summer on a congressional fact-finding mission. In the course of his visit, he joined Kick at a house party that she had arranged at Lismore Castle. She told Jack that she was in love with Peter, whom she compared to Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind and she urged her brother not to say anything of the affair to her parents until she had a chance to speak to them herself when she came again to the U.S. in early 1948.

On that visit Kick was booked to return to England on the liner Queen Elizabeth from New York City on April 22, 1948. Shortly before her departure, she joined Joe and Rose [her parents] on the occasion of the reopening of the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, where they had had their honeymoon thirty-four years ago. Kick postponed the disclosure of her wedding plans until the final night of their stay there. Immediately, there were hot words between her mother and herself. Rose Kennedy stipulated that if Kick committed the sin of marrying a divorced man, she would promptly be cut off from the family-not just from her parents, but from her siblings as well. The threat, whether or not Rose would be able to carry it out in its entirety, left Kick reeling. To her further anguish, her father, also in the room at the time, appeared by his silence to agree with Rose, both about the marriage and the banishment.

She told Jack that she was in love with Peter, whom she compared to Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind.

When Kick returned to London without having agreed to break off with Fitzwilliam, Rose did not resort to intermediaries, or retreat to a hospital bed, as she had done when she frantically sought to prevent her daughter's marriage to Billy Hartington. This time, the indignant matriarch pursued Kick, all the way to Smith Square, where the women battled on for four days. In the unlikely event that Kick had forgotten either point, Rose laid out yet again the Church's position on divorce and renewed her threats of expulsion from the Kennedy family circle. She demanded that Kick give up her life in London and accompany her to the U.S. at once. Still, when their war of words had died down, the mother had not succeeded in swaying the daughter from her purpose.

Nor had Rose extinguished Kick's hope that there was something old Joe might yet do on her and her lover's behalf. However much Kick had changed and grown through the years, she had never ceased to believe in the powers of "Darling Daddy" to make everything right.

Soon, the news that Joe Kennedy planned to be in Paris in May seemed to provide an opening. Kick and Peter were due to be in Cannes around that same time, and she asked the old man if they might come to see him. Her father agreed to have lunch with her and her lover at the Ritz Paris hotel on Saturday, the fifteenth. Peter was determined to marry Kick as soon as he could divorce his wife.

Two days before they were to see Joe at the Ritz, Kick and Peter were en route to Cannes on a chartered ten-seat de Havilland Dove plane when they stopped at Le Bourget airfield, near Paris, to refuel. On an impulse, Peter called some racing world friends in Paris and invited them for lunch on the Champs-Elysees. When he and Kick returned to the aircraft some two and a half hours later, the pilot insisted that turbulent weather conditions ahead made it unsafe to take off; any attempt to reach Cannes would require flying directly into a massive thunderstorm. Peter, however, simply would not hear of postponing the flight until the danger had passed. In defiance of the elements, he angrily demanded that the aircraft take off without delay. At twenty minutes past three in the afternoon, the plane, carrying Kick, Peter, and a two-man crew, departed for Cannes.

However much Kick had grown, she had never ceased to believe in the powers of "Darling Daddy" to make everything right.

In later years, [Kick's friend] Jean Lloyd remembered being confused about who might be calling at this hour. Shaking herself awake, she picked up the phone and heard the familiar voice of Tom Egerton, the closest friend of Billy Hartington's brother Andrew, who was a houseguest of Jean and her husband. Tom explained that Kick had been killed in a plane crash in France with Peter Fitzwilliam.

Andrew's reaction to the news was immediate. He pulled on his clothes and left the house before dawn in anticipation of making the rounds of newspaper proprietors in London. His aim was to ensure that both Kick and her late husband's family were shielded against any mention in the press of her affair with a married man. Thanks to Andrew's intervention, it was generally written only that Lady Hartington and Earl Fitzwilliam had been passengers on the same ill-fated aircraft. Kick was reported to have been en route to Cannes when, in Paris, she had a chance encounter with Peter Fitzwilliam, who, also on his way there, offered her a ride in his private plane.

Meanwhile, Joe Kennedy, in Paris when he learned of the accident, had set off at once for the town of Privas, some ten miles from where the plane had crashed in the midst of a thunderstorm. At the time of his arrival, the bodies were still in the process of being transported to Privas in an oxcart. Kick, whose corpse had been discovered on the sodden ground not far from the shattered aircraft, had been identified with the aid of her American passport. Still, it remained for Joe Kennedy to make the final definitive identification of the daughter he had long designated, in Rose's words to Nancy Astor, his "favorite of all the children." Until he actually saw her, old Joe yet retained a faint hope that there might be some mistake. But when, on Friday night, the four bodies- Kick's, Peter's, the pilot's, and the radioman's-were brought in at last to the town hall in Privas, Joe acknowledged that the young woman with the broken jaw and the deep laceration on the right side of her face was indeed his child.

Rose refused to travel to England to see her daughter buried. Nor did any other Kennedy fly over from the U.S. Even Jack, though he said he would be there, failed to materialize in the end. He, Rose, and the others held their own memorial service in Hyannis Port. Joe, meanwhile, was the sole family member to attend the Requiem Mass. While Joe was in London, his palpable and monumental sadness did not, however, restrain him from making a pass at Billy's twenty-two-year-old-sister, Elizabeth.

The very fact of Kick's burial in the Cavendish plot; the inscription memorializing her as the widow of Major the Marquess of Hartington; and the various Cavendishes, Cecils, and other members of the tribe who collected at the graveside-all of these elements conspired to enfold her, both for those present and for posterity, in her late husband's family, even though at the time of her death she had been about to marry into a rival dynasty.
Can Coty Beat Analysts' Estimates Yet Again in Fiscal 3Q16?

Cotys fiscal 2Q16 revenue recap

Coty (COTY) is set to release its fiscal 3Q16 earnings before the market opens on May 3, 2016. The companys fiscal 3Q16 ended on March 31, 2016.

Cotys earnings and revenue were ahead of Wall Street analysts consensus expectations in fiscal 2Q16, which ended on December 31, 2016.

Cotys net revenue fell 3.9% to $1.2 billion in fiscal 2Q16 compared to $1.3 billion in fiscal 2Q15. Its total adjusted revenue fell 1% like-for-like. However, on a constant currency basis, its net revenue rose 3% in fiscal 2Q16.

Despite a fall in the US market and falls in most currencies, Cotys fragrance segment trends and color cosmetics segment saw improvement compared to fiscal 1Q16.

Wall Street analysts expectations

For fiscal 3Q16 ended March 31, 2016, Wall Street analysts consensus revenue estimate is ~$1 billion, a rise of 4.4% from Cotys revenue in the same quarter last year.

Procter & Gambles (PG) revenue fell 8.5% to $16.9 billion in fiscal 2Q16. PGs revenue was negatively impacted by an 8% fall in foreign exchange, Venezuelan deconsolidation, and a 3% fall in brand divestitures.

However, Estee Lauders (EL) fiscal 2Q16 net revenue rose 2.6% to $3.1 billion compared to $3.0 billion in fiscal 2Q15. Avons (AVP) 4Q15 revenue fell 31.3% to $1.6 billion compared to $2.3 billion in 4Q14 due to Brazils IPI (Imposto Sobre Produtos Industrializados) tax, the VAT (value added tax) credit, and the adverse effects of foreign exchange headwinds.

Other companies such as LOreal (LRLCY) and Beiersdorf (BDRFF) have presences outside the United States, which makes them vulnerable to foreign exchange headwinds.

Investment in key brands

Coty expects its fiscal 2Q16 revenue trend to continue for the remainder of the fiscal year as it continues to rationalize its non-strategic product lines and businesses. The company plans to focus on investments made in key brands such as Calvin Klein, Rimmel, and Marc Jacobs.

Story continues

Coty makes up 1.4% of the PowerShares DWA Consumer Staples Momentum ETF (PSL).

In the next part of the series, well discuss Cotys 2Q16 earnings as well as what investors expect in 3Q16.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
PALO ALTO, CA / ACCESSWIRE / April 26, 2016 / Varian Medical Systems (VAR) will host a conference call and live webcast to discuss the results of the second quarter 2016, to be held Wednesday, April 27, 2016 at 5:00 PM Eastern Time.

To participate in this event, dial 877-869-3847 domestically, or 201-689-8261 internationally, approximately 5 to 10 minutes before the beginning of the call. Additionally, you can listen to the event online at www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=174844 or on the Varian Medical Systems website www.varian.com/investor.

If you are unable to participate during the live webcast, the event archive will be available at www.investorcalendar.com or www.varian.com/investor.

About Varian Medical Systems

Varian Medical Systems, Inc., of Palo Alto, California, focuses energy on saving lives by equipping the world with advanced technology for fighting cancer and for X-ray imaging. The company is the world's leading manufacturer of medical devices and software for treating cancer and other medical conditions with radiation. The company provides comprehensive solutions for radiotherapy, radiosurgery, proton therapy and brachytherapy. The company supplies informatics software for managing comprehensive cancer clinics, radiotherapy centers and medical oncology practices. Varian is also a premier supplier of X-ray imaging components, including tubes, digital detectors, and image processing software and workstations for use in medical, scientific, and industrial settings, as well as for security and non-destructive testing. Varian Medical Systems employs approximately 7,400 people who are located at manufacturing sites in North America, Europe, China and sales and support offices around the world. For more information, visit http://www.varian.com or follow us on Twitter.

SOURCE: Investor Calendar
An Irish Vodafone rep was the sixth person to fall to their death from London restaurant Coq DArgent, an inquest has heard.

Mike Halligan, 29, from Dublin, died from multiple injuries including skull fractures after falling 80ft from the restaurant in Bank on Sunday, January 17 this year.

Mr Halligan, who lived in Stuttgart, Germany, had travelled to London from Dublin the weekend of his death, City of London Coroners Court heard on Monday.

He was the sixth person to die after falling from Coq DArgent since 2007.

Mr Halligan went to the restaurant shortly after 2.50pm and ordered a meal, and was inadvertently photographed by a family dining nearby.

The court heard he later climbed a two-metre high fence before jumping to his death.

The fence had been erected as a security measure after five previous deaths. The restaurant have also placed security staff at the terrace.

Sergeant Fiona Doll told the coroner that officers had found a number of text messages on Mr Halligans phone which had not been sent.

One said: I am bored of life and the future possibilities disinterest me. Its nobodys fault. Nothing could have been done to change it.

Another message read: I have cracked.



A post-mortem examination revealed there were no alcohol or drugs in his bloodstream when he died.

When discussing his conclusion of suicide with the family, Coroner Dr Roy Palmer said: If you are going to jump off a roof in that way having left those messages I dont think there can be any doubt about it.

The coroner said: I am very sorry you have lost your son and your brother in such sad circumstances.

In a statement, Vodafone said it was deeply saddened to learn of Mr Halligans death.

There have been five previous deaths from falling from the restaurant terrace.

In October 2012, South African banker Nico Lambrechts, 46, a father-of-three, jumped from the terrace because of extreme stress at work.

A month earlier, British Library manager Rema Begum, 29, fell to her death after suffering depression when a Facebook stalker abused her for her westernised lifestyle.

Story continues

In July 2009, Oxford graduate stockbroker and Deutsche Bank worker Anjool Malde, 24, jumped to his death holding a glass of champagne after being suspended from his job.

And in May 2007, City marketing executive Richard Ford, 34, died after he fell from the terrace and landed on a bus.

(Pictures: SWNS)
Manila (AFP) - Islamic militants in the Philippines have beheaded a Canadian hostage, raising fears for more than 20 other foreigners held captive on remote islands, with troops and police vowing Tuesday to hunt down the extremists.

The man's head was found Monday dumped outside city hall on Jolo, a mountainous and jungle-clad island in the far south of the Philippines that is a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf Islamist group.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Filipino authorities identified the victim as John Ridsdel, a retiree in his late 60s who was kidnapped seven months ago from aboard a yacht, along with another Canadian man, a Norwegian and a Filipina woman.

"This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau said in Ottawa.

The four were abducted at a marina near the major city of Davao, more than 500 kilometres (300 miles) from Jolo, as part of a wave of abductions by the Abu Sayyaf -- a loose network of militants who for more than two decades have run a lucrative kidnapping-for-ransom business.

The other three were fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Hall's girlfriend Marites Flor and Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad.

Six weeks after the abduction, gunmen released a video of their hostages held in a jungle setting, demanding the equivalent of $21 million each for the safe release of the three foreigners.

The men were forced to beg for their lives on camera, and similar videos posted over several months showed the hostages looking increasingly frail.

In the most recent video, Ridsdel said his captors would kill him on April 25 if a ransom of $6.4 million was not paid.

Hours after the deadline passed, police in the Philippines said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, which is about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from Manila.

Ridsdel, a former journalist, oil executive and sailing enthusiast, had moved to the Philippines to manage a gold mine before retiring.

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- Hunt for militants -

Trudeau said Canada was working with the Philippines to pursue and prosecute the killers, and that efforts were under way to obtain the release of the other hostages.

In the Philippines, security forces said they were setting up checkpoints across Jolo to try to block the movements of the gunmen.

"There will be no let-up in the determined efforts of the joint task group's intensive military and law enforcement operations to neutralise these lawless elements," said a statement released Tuesday by the national police and military.

Philippine security forces have made similar statements many times against the Abu Sayyaf and often failed to achieve their objectives.

On April 9, 18 Filipino soldiers were killed as they waged a day-long battle against Abu Sayyaf gunmen on Basilan, an island next to Jolo that is also one of the group's strongholds.

The Abu Sayyaf is a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since the 1970s.

Authorities say the group is currently holding more than 20 foreigners after a recent wave of abductions.

These include 18 Indonesian and Malaysian sailors who were abducted from tugboats near the southern Philippines over the past month.

The Abu Sayyaf is also believed to be holding a Dutch bird-watcher kidnapped in 2012, while it recently released a retired Italian priest after six months in captivity.

One of the Abu Sayyaf's biggest recent windfalls is believed to have come in 2014 when it claimed to have been paid more than $5 million for the release of a German couple abducted from aboard their yacht in the southwest Philippines.

The Abu Sayyaf's leaders have recently declared allegiance to the Islamic State group. However, analysts say it is mainly focused on ransom money.

"I don't see the Abu Sayyaf as an ideological threat," Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asian security expert based at the National War College in the United States, told AFP.

"But they use the threat of terror and the threat of being part of Islamic State to very effectively raise the psychological stakes."
Tel Aviv (AFP) - When saxophonist Eli Degibri left Israel at the age of 18 to study jazz at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, he knew he'd come back home one day.

It took 15 years, which included playing with jazz greats like Herbie Hancock and Al Foster in New York, where he also led combos and recorded albums, before the time was right.

"I was only waiting for the opportunity to return, and knew that once I could without sacrificing my music -- I would," Degibri, who relocated to Israel five years ago, told AFP.

Degibri is one several Israeli musicians who are now helping to nurture a burgeoning local scene after years abroad where they trained and played with the best jazz performers.

There has long been a jazz presence in Israel, but never such a wealth of formal training centres alongside returning musicians, according to Ben Shalev, music reporter and critic for Haaretz newspaper.

"You've got 15-year-old musicians being inspired by the Avishai Cohens and their likes," he said referring to the prominent Israeli trumpeter and bassist who share the same name.

"There used to not really be such role models."

Shalev said there is an "unheard of" profusion of new Israeli jazz albums being released.

"This would have sounded like science fiction once," he said.

- Yael's Dream -

One of the forces behind the abundant recordings is Yael Hadany, who in late 2011 suggested to the owner of Beit Haamudim to turn his faltering bar in Tel Aviv's Carmel Market into a venue for live jazz.

"I was learning contrabass at the time and my teacher didn't have a place to play at," she told AFP from Beit Haamudim, where the Olden You Quartet was about to play its first set with the standard tune "On A Slow Boat to China".

"It started from one evening, and an audience grew around it; another evening, another one, another one. Now there are six a week, without a cover charge," she said.

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Beit Haamudim's unanticipated success led Hadany to initiate "Pannonica jazz," an association named after the legendary jazz patron Pannonica de Koenigswarter aimed at encouraging and documenting Israeli jazz. It also provides free studio time for artists recording albums.

Hadany believes that free performances and easily available albums can help draw jazz fans in Israel.

It was a strategy used by Mizrahi music -- the popular Israeli genre combining Mediterranean and Arab influences, whose stars began by performing in small clubs and selling cassettes for next to nothing.

"An audience is something that can grow in direct relation to exposure and repetition," she said.

- Falafel jazz no more -

Israeli jazz is also played at festivals across the country, most notably the Red Sea Jazz Festival in the southern resort city of Eilat.

Under Degibri's artistic direction, the festival will be marking its 30th anniversary this August in an event themed around celebrating Israeli jazz.

In the past Israeli musicians at times gravitated towards so-called "falafel jazz" -- the semi-derogatory nickname for jazz with heavy Middle Eastern themes and flavours, but more recently Israelis are distancing themselves from that genre, said Shalev.

While the style still exists, to an extent "it has been exhausted," said Shalev, who follows the jazz scene closely. "Young musicians don't feel a need to express their Israeli identity that way."

But even without a distinct sound, there are characteristics and traits that give Israeli musicians an edge in jazz and could help explain their prominence in the field worldwide.

"Jazz is individualism within dynamics," Hadany said. "In Israel, the individualism is very strong, and in many places you need to adapt yourself to fit in the framework."

Another central aspect of jazz is improvisation, which is "very present in the Israeli mentality" and life, where a volatile security situation and challenging economy "necessitate very quick decisions and adaptations."

Degibri, who will be playing with some of the world's finest musicians at the White House on the United Nations' International Jazz Day on April 30, attributes the rise of Israeli jazz to a combination of good musical education and loads of ambition.

"Any Israeli, in any field, has a kind of drive," he said. "Israelis always want to prove themselves. That's our nature."

On a recent chilly Jerusalem night, Ehud Ettun prepared to lead his trio in a performance at Hamarakia, a restaurant that for years has hosted jazz music.

Ettun, who was raised in Jerusalem and returned to it after studying and playing in the United States, said the city -- torn between Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and Muslim, religious and secular -- bears potential to become a "jazz capital."

"Jerusalem is such a diverse city, and New York is too," said the 28-year-old.

"Only in New York people say 'it's so cool, it's diverse,' while in Jerusalem people say 'oh no, we've got such problems'," he said.

"I want to connect people with music," he said. "Jazz is a very accepting music, and there's no reason it shouldn't touch everyone. It just needs to learn to be relevant to the communities in which it exists."
TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese government is looking to prepare an extra budget of more than 500 billion yen ($4.5 billion) for reconstruction in the areas affected by the recent earthquakes in southern Japan, sources told Reuters.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered his government on Sunday to compile the extra budget package to fund reconstruction.

The government aims to get approval from the cabinet on May 13 and put it into effect by June 1 when the current session of parliament ends, the sources said.

(Reporting by Takaya Yamaguchi, writing by Kaori Kaneko, editing by Chris Gallagher)
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan wants Australia to explain why it decided not to pick a Japanese design for a new fleet of submarines choosing instead a proposal from France's DCNS. "The decision was deeply regrettable," said Japan's Minister of Defense Gen Nakatani. "We will ask Australia to explain why they didn't pick our design," he added. Australian officials informed Japan of its choice on Monday, explaining that the French design best fitted its unique needs, Nakatani said. (Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
mark zuckerberg

Everybody who's anybody in tech has signed an open letter asking Congress to provide $250 million in federal funding to school districts to help teach kids how to code.

Signatures of the letter include 27 governors (both Democrats and Republicans), 12 educators and a giant list of tech execs like Airbnb's Brian Chesky, IBM's Ginni Rometty, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Yelp's Jerry Stoppelman, Oracle's Larry Ellison, Salesforce's Marc Benioff, LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Apple's Tim Cook, and others.

The letter points out that private industry has already donated tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of millions in tech to teach kids to code, including $48 million in donated funds announced on Tuesday.

This new donation includes $23 million from Microsoft, Google, Infosys Foundation, AT&T, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Jeff Bezos, Omidyar Network to Code.org, an organization that helps train teachers to teach computer programming.

Plus Google donated another $10 million for 2017, Microsoft chipped in an additional $10 million worth of various types of support, and Infosys is kicking in another $5 million for grants.

Mark Zuckerberg is also urging everyone to add their names to the letter through a Change.org petition.

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Jimmy Fallon paid tribute to Prince on The Tonight Show Monday by telling a hilarious story of the time the music legend challenged him to a game of ping pong.

Fallon and The Roots bandleader Questlove told the story of how Prince decided to challenge the late night host just after Fallons wife had given birth to their daughter.

Fallon had to decline the invitation the first time, as any good husband and father would. But you can only refuse the Purple One for so long. Princes team texted Fallon the very next night and said that Prince was waiting for him at a ping pong club in New York.

Also Read: Prince's Death: 5 Latest Developments

Im at dinner and I say, I gotta go. Prince just challenged me to a game of ping pong,' Fallon said. So he went to the club to find Prince waiting for him. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Prince, the music legend behind hits like Raspberry Beret, Purple Rain, and Little Red Corvette, was found dead last week at his Paisley Park compound in Minnesota.

While the coroner is working to determine the cause of death, it is known that Prince was briefly hospitalized in Moline, Illinois, the previous week while returning from a concert in Atlanta.

Watch the video

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Prince Song Purchases Spike 16,000 Percent

Bruce Springsteen, Others Perform Musical Tributes to Prince (Video)

Prince Cremated, Family and Friends Gather at Private Memorial Service
From Esquire

Not long before Lin-Manuel Miranda won the Pulitzer Prize for Hamilton, he made a desperate plea to congress to help his parents' homeland of Puerto Rico. "Our island is in crisis, and if I can help in any way, if I can get more eyeballs to this crisis, it's a fixable problem," Miranda said in a clip to kick off Sunday's episode of Last Week Tonight. Puerto Rico is currently around $70 billion in debt and has a poverty rate of 45 percent. "Puerto Rico is like the last Tower Records: everything's overpriced, everyone's being laid off, and there is still a really weird number of Ricky Martin CDs," Oliver said.

With a cocktail of poor legislation, a collapse of industry, shady hedge funds, and no access to bankruptcy protection Puerto Rico was "fucked," Oliver said. As a result, 3.5 million Americans are in need of help (remember: Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory). "We have to start treating [Puerto Rico] like an island of American citizens whose fate is interwoven with ours," Oliver said.

To speak on behalf of Puerto Rico, Oliver invited Miranda to perform a musical number. Accompanied by a piano player, Miranda rapped about the "the commonwealth with not a lot of wealth/a not-quite nation."

"Close the hospitals fuck the patients," Miranda said. "This is an island 100 miles across, a hurricane is coming and we're running up a loss."
Donald Trump

Donald Trump on Tuesday taunted his Republican presidential rivals, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, for the awkward start to their anti-Trump pact brokered over the weekend.

"The Cruz-Kasich pact is under great strain," Trump tweeted. "This joke of a deal is falling apart, not being honored and almost dead. Very dumb!"

Trump's jab came after Kasich and Cruz sent mixed messages about the nature of their alliance on its first day, leading to questions about its viability.

The agreement calls for Kasich's campaign to essentially concede Indiana, which votes next Tuesday, to Cruz. The Texas senator's campaign, meanwhile, will back out of Oregon and New Mexico and let Kasich devote resources to the Western states.

Kasich spent much of a Monday-morning campaign stop downplaying the deal. And when asked whether he would explicitly tell his supporters to back Cruz in Indiana, he demurred.

"I've never told them not to vote for me," Kasich said. "They ought to vote for me. But I'm not over there campaigning and spending resources."

Kasich also added to the confusion during a Tuesday-morning appearance on NBC's "Today" show.

"I have laid out a strategy, and I have not told anybody to not vote for me. I'm just not there campaigning," Kasich said. "You know what? When you don't campaign in certain areas in any kind of a race, guess what? Your turnout goes down. I don't tell people how to vote. I am not in that state right now. I will be in other states."

The speed bumps in the deal came as Trump was set to dominate another round of primary contests Tuesday. Polls have shown him with gigantic leads in Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, the five states that vote Tuesday.

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Junior doctors are today staging a historic walkout that has seen more than 125,000 procedures and operations cancelled.

From 8am to 5pm on Tuesday and Wednesday, A&E and maternity units will be staffed by senior consultants as juniors take to picket lines.

They are protesting a new contract that health secretary Jeremy Hunt wants all doctors below consultant level to be bound by from August.

Here is a timeline of how the dispute between the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Government developed:



2015

October 12 - Junior doctors demand concrete assurances from the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, saying the "threat that a contract will be imposed upon them must be removed

October 17 - Up to 20,000 people take part in a protest in London over the Governments plans to impose a new contract for doctors. Under the plans, the contract will reclassify doctors normal working week to include Saturdays and late evening working, with critics arguing it could lead to pay cuts of up to 30%.

November 4 - Government offers doctors time-and-a-half for night shifts, time-and-a-third for Saturday evenings and Sundays and an 11% pay rise.

November 19 - A total of 27,741 doctors (98%) vote in favour of strikes after being balloted by the BMA.

November 30 - Strikes planned for December 1, 8 and 16 are called off at the last minute. Government agrees to suspend its threat to impose a new contract.

A protestor supporting the strikes [Dinendra Haria/REX/Shutterstock]



2016

January 4 - BMA announces three strikes in England in January and February when only emergency care will be available. Talks between the union and the Government last less than an hour before breaking down.

January 12 - Thousands of doctors walk out for the first strike in 40 years. Around 4,000 operations and procedures are cancelled during the 24-hour walkout.

January 13 - Nick Hulme, chief executive of Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust, warns junior doctors views are being skewed by misinformation about the dispute on social media.

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January 16 - A new offer from the Government says that, as part of an overall agreement, a premium rate of pay could kick in from 5pm on Saturdays rather than 7pm. Premium pay could start at 9pm Monday to Friday rather than the original offer of 10pm. Dr Johann Malawana, chairman of the BMAs junior doctor committee, welcomes the involvement of Sir David Dalton but says an agreement could still not be made. Talks remain ongoing.

January 18 - David Cameron says the Government has not ruled out imposing a new contract on junior doctors if their dispute over new terms and conditions cannot be resolved in talks.

January 19 - The BMA suspends plans for 48-hour industrial action due to take place on Jan 26, on the basis that some progress is being made in the talks.

January 29 - Talks break down between the BMA and the Government. The main sticking points are unsocial hours, how rotas would be staffed and the fact the Government wants to punish doctors who worked the hardest.

January 30 - Family doctor and head of the BMAs general practice committee, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, warns that GPs are operating in a state of emergency because of problems with resources and staffing levels.

February 1 - The BMA announces a strike will take place the following week on Wednesday February 10.

He declined to comment [Natasha Quarmby/REX/Shutterstock]

February 2 - Health Secretary sends letter to BMA council chairman, Dr Mark Porter, saying he is sorry to learn that strike will be going ahead and that his door is open for negotiations.

February 6 - Vanessa Redgrave and Dame Vivienne Westwood join hundreds of protesters for a masked march" through London in protest over pay and conditions.

February 7 - The Scottish Government launches a recruitment drive to encourage junior doctors to consider careers in Scotland.

February 9 - Government is accused of blocking deal put forward by the BMA that would see junior doctors basic pay rise by about half the 11% offered by ministers in return for Saturday not to be treated as a normal working day. Jeremy Hunt refuses to deny claims that he rejected a deal that could have averted further industrial action.

February 10 - Thousands of junior doctors all over England take part in the second day of strikes.

February 23 - Three 48-hour strikes are announced by junior doctors to take place in March and April.

March 9 and 10 - Thousands of operations are cancelled as walkouts take place over two days.

March 31 - Details of the new contract are published by the Government on the same day the BMA launches a judicial review challenging the lawfulness of the decision.

April 5 and 6 - A second legal challenge is made by NHS staff campaign group Just Health and more strikes are held, causing around 5,100 procedures to be postponed. The cast of Green Wing reunited at the hospital they filmed at to show their support for junior doctors.

The cast of Green Wing show their support [Tolga Akmen / LNP / REX / Shutterstock]

April 7 - Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS Englands medical director, says the next strike would irreparably damage trust in the profession and urges doctors to rethink the move.

April 19 - The BMA offer to call off their next strike if Jeremy Hunt removes his threat to impose a new contract. The Health Secretary says it was not possible to change or delay the introduction of the controversial contract despite pleas from senior medics.

April 21 - Leaked emails suggest an indefinite walkout is one option that may be on the table for the BMA.

April 22 - A BMA poll of medical students suggests eight out of 10 are more likely to work outside the UK following the dispute over new contracts.

April 23 - NHS England confirms that 125,000 operations and appointments have been cancelled because of the upcoming strike and warns that ambulance trusts may need to put on temporary treatment centres.

April 23 - A group of cross-party MPs call on Jeremy Hunt to trial the new contract in a small number of trusts hoping the BMA would agree to call of the next strikes if he agreed. A Government spokesman says the contract being phased in was always the plan but there could be no more delays.

April 24: The BMA offers again to call off the strike if the threat of imposition is lifted. Mr Hunt writes to the head of the BMA, Dr Mark Porter, to suggest a meeting to avert the strike.

April 25 - Jeremy Hunt urges doctors not to withdraw emergency cover but says no trade union has the right to veto a Government manifesto commitment.



Lead image: Mark Thomas/REX/Shutterstock
gear vr plane selfie

Maybe I'm a weirdo, but I actually kind of enjoy long flights, despite the leg cramps that come with flying economy.

It's basically the only time where I can unplug for a solid five or six hours and get some unbroken time to myself without worrying about my email inbox.

(Sure, you could always use the inflight WiFi. But that usually means paying $40 or more for WiFi that's slower than a crowded city bus and half as reliable. It's absurd.)

On my latest cross-country flight this week, I figured, hey, Facebook boasts that virtual reality can almost "teleport" people. So why not see if it could teleport me off that plane and into a virtual wonderland?

And so, I strapped on a Samsung Gear VR  the entry-level $99 virtual reality headset codeveloped by the phone giant and Facebook's Oculus VR subsidiary  to see for myself if cocooning myself in the virtual world was preferable to the reality of a fully-booked flight from New York to San Francisco.

I learned that virtual reality has the potential to make flying a vastly more pleasant experience. But it's impossible to avoid feeling like the king of the dorks when you're wearing a set of Samsung-branded goggles over your glasses at 39,000 feet.

Why the Gear was the perfect choice

There are a few options for virtual reality on the market right now. At the lowest end, you have the Google Cardboard, a $15 viewer literally made of cardboard. It works, but it's not very immersive and you have to hold it up to your face when you're using it. That wouldn't work on a long flight.

At the higher end, you have Facebook's $599 flagship Oculus Rift headset and the $799 HTC Vive Pre. These two headsets represent the current bleeding edge in virtual reality technology. But they also require a connection to a super-beefy gaming desktop PC. Even if I had one, I'm not sure how the flight crew would feel about my setting up a PC gaming battlestation at my tray table.

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Oculus Rift Oculus Touch

But the Samsung Gear VR is really the only way to fly: It's powered by a Samsung phone (in my case, it was a Galaxy S6) slotted into the headset. That means it's totally self contained. Gear VR has a lower image quality than the Oculus Rift, its big brother, but it's worlds better than the Google Cardboard, and it's totally portable.

Gear VR Oculus Samsung

The Gear VR comes with Oculus Video, a nifty app for watching videos from services like Facebook, Vimeo, Twitch, and a fairly well-stocked video store of recent Hollywood blockbusters.

You can also copy your own movies to watch. If the video you're watching was filmed in 360 degrees, it'll render it as virtual reality, where you can move your head around and explore the scene. If it's a normal, everyday movie, you get placed in a nifty virtual movie theater that simulates watching it on a gigantic screen in a private showing.

oculus video

I loaded up "The Martian," which I had previously downloaded, and tried to bliss out in my own personal movie theater at 39,000 feet. It worked! It totally worked. Mostly.

I found that it was oddly relaxing to leave the plane behind and exist in this weird fascimile of a movie theater. It got even more zen once I switched it from the default movie theater experience to watching the film from a theater seat placed on the surface of the Moon.

There was something holding me back, though: I just couldn't stop remembering that I was sitting there, on a crowded plane, with a phone strapped to my face, actively trying to pretend like I wasn't actually there. It's a weight on your face that's hard to ignore, especially on a flight when you don't have much else to think about. And it doesn't look even slightly cool.

HTC Vive

I actually had to constantly shift my body because I kept slouching like I was actually sitting in a movie theater seat. At one point during the movie, I hunched over to find my cup of water by touch and bumped my head soundly on the seat in front of me. I'm 80% sure I heard some of the high schoolers on my flight laugh at me.

Not exactly the coolest moment of my life.

About 45 minutes into the movie, I ended up putting the Gear VR away, for a combination of reasons including an oncoming headache, a desire to nap, and a vague but abiding sense of shame. Your mileage may vary, depending on your capacity for withstanding eye strain and how much you care about the opinions of strangers.

At a Facebook conference earlier in April, Mark Zuckerberg promised that Oculus has a ten-year plan to bring virtual reality down from dorky headsets into something a little bit more like your normal everyday pair of glasses.

Man, I hope that works out. Because this little episode demonstrated, to me, that virtual reality has tremendous potential for taking us places we're not, whenever we want to go. But unless it really, truly hits the mainstream, it's going to feel weird using virtual reality in all but the most private settings. That's a shame, because it also limits that amazing potential for all but the most socially oblivious users.

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assad isis

Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime negotiated deals with the Islamic State's oil tycoon that at one point contributed up to 72% of the militant group's profit from natural resources, The Wall Street Journal reported this past weekend.

That is according to documents uncovered during a raid on the home of Abu Sayyaf, the Islamic State "oil minister" who was killed by US Special Forces at his compound in Syria's Deir Ezzour province in May.

Abu Sayyaf's division, which had successfully negotiated agreements with the Assad regime to allow Islamic State trucks and pipelines to move from regime-controlled fields through territory controlled by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh, helped the jihadists bring in roughly $40 million a month in oil sales alone, according to documents seen by The Journal.



Though Sayyaf was killed, his oil infrastructure remains largely intact. ISIS still controls the majority of Syria's oil fields, and the group continues to bring in roughly $1 million a day from oil sales, according to the Financial Times.

The Assad regime's oil ties to the Islamic State have been well documented. At least two Syrian government officials, including a Russian-Syrian businessman named George Haswani, were sanctioned by the US last year for serving as middlemen between Assad and ISIS for oil deals.

The Daily Beast reported in December, meanwhile, that ISIS delivers both oil and natural gas to the regime. The report said the resources were transported via "midstream" service providers who move the resources from ISIS territory to government territory for profit.

"In exchange for gas, the regime provides utilities like electricity, which ISIS taxes accordingly," wrote Matthew Reed, the vice president of Foreign Reports Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm focused on oil and politics in the Middle East.

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"At natural gas fields like those around Palmyra, which produce lighter liquid hydrocarbons in addition to gas, ISIS takes whatever it can turn into fuel," he continued. "The gas goes west to Assad."

isis oil

D

ocuments obtained in the raid on Sayyaf's compound corroborated those details.

One document, identified as Memo No. 156 and dated February 11, 2015, said agreements allowing trucks and pipeline transit from regime-controlled oil fields through ISIS-controlled territory were already in place.

The documents also confirmed previous estimates as to how lucrative the deals were. A senior US treasury official estimated in December that ISIS has made more than $500 million trading oil with the Assad regime, which amounts to roughly $40 million a month.

ISIS' oil ties to governments did not begin and end with Assad, however. Last July, The Guardian's Martin Chulov reported that separate documents uncovered in the Sayyaf raid linked Turkish officials to ISIS as well.

Flash drives seized during the raid reportedly revealed links "so clear" and "undeniable" between Turkey and ISIS "that they could end up having profound policy implications for the relationship between us and Ankara," a senior Western official familiar with the intelligence told The Guardian at the time.

Ankara, long accused by experts, Kurds, and even Vice President Joe Biden of enabling ISIS by turning a blind eye to the vast smuggling networks of weapons and fighters during the ongoing Syrian war, has vehemently denied participating in any kind of illicit oil trade with the militant group.

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LONDON  The Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival, which plays July 1-9, will put the spotlight on the current generation of Mexican female directors, and also plans to run a tribute to Otto Preminger.

Festival artistic director Karel Och said: KVIFFs special tributes will once again become an exciting meeting point between the modern and the classic. The festival will highlight the vital creativity of contemporary Mexicos young female directors, and will remember, three decades after his passing, the visionary genius of Otto Preminger, a fellow Central European who conquered the United States with his overpowering charm and unflagging advocacy for freedom of artistic expression.

The focus on women directors from Mexico includes nine films from the past five years. The festival highlights the founding of the Imcine film institute in 1983 as of undeniable importance to the increase of female directors in Mexico. It was this organization, the fest says, which assisted the careers of the countrys leading writer-directors and paved the way toward New Mexican cinema that soon began making a splash at international festivals. Alongside the top names of their more famous male colleagues, the new millennium saw an unprecedented number of women enter the Mexican film stage, the majority born in the early 1980s.

Young female directors, most of them university educated, captured the imagination not only of viewers, but also festival juries and consequently producers as well primarily with the courageous and spontaneous way they introduce into their films their generations specifically feminine take on reality, love and sex, and also issues of parenthood, the quest for the meaning of life and for their own identity, the festival states. Yet they also have their own special way of looking at social problems, and of isolating aspects of reality which their male counterparts might overlook.

In Victoria Francos first feature, Through the Eyes (A los ojos, 2014), which the director made with her brother Michel, the protagonist is a social worker trying her utmost to help the human wrecks languishing amid piles of trash as the victims of alcohol and drugs. The festival will also present Francos short film Borde (2014). Elements of social realism will also be found in Claudia Sainte-Luces first film The Amazing Cat Fish (Los insolitos peces gato, 2013), whose main character is unexpectedly lifted from her tedious existence as a supermarket cashier when she meets an unusual family who take her into their fold.

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Humor, if rather unintentional, also underlies The Pleasure Is Mine (El placer es mio, 2015), whose author Elisa Miller is the best known Mexican female director in international circles, and the only one to have won a Palme dOr  for her short movie Watching It Rain (Ver llover, 2006). The story of two people living in an unstable relationship and the rejection of the substitute father by the womans eight-year-old son is the subject of Semana Santa (2015), whose creator Alejandra Marquez Abella made two documentaries before shooting this feature debut.

A romantic encounter fuels the second film by Katina Medina Mora, Youll Know What to Do With Me (Sabras que hacer conmigo, 2015), whose protagonists have to deal with health issues and whose treatment betrays the directors experience in stage direction.

Of the work of the already well-known director Yulene Olaizola, the showcase will include her elegiac meditation on the futility of being, Fogo (2012), which in 2012 was part of the Directors Fortnight in Cannes. Melancholy tones also characterize Tatiana Huezos Tempestad (2016), recently screened at the Berlinale. Here, too, documentary and feature intertwine in a work that is consistent in its authentic portrayal of the lives of social outcasts. In a certain sense, the characters appearing in Betzabe Garcias documentary Kings of Nowhere (Los reyes del pueblo que no existe, 2015) are also outsiders, this time set in a partially submerged village in North-Western Mexico.

The festival will commemorate the work of the controversial visionary and independent filmmaking pioneer Otto Preminger (1905-1986), through eight of his films, including Laura.

He could be such a bully on the set and could destroy people, and then he would be a charming, witty companion at dinner who knew the best wines and caviar, recalled actress Deborah Kerr. Otto was a terrorist  hes Arafat, a Nazi, Saddam Hussein  who never knew the difference between lying and not lying, said author Leon Uris in exasperation over their problematic work together on the film adaptation of his best-selling novel Exodus, while Frank Sinatra, the star of The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), had nothing but words of admiration for Preminger (Otto was so smart in every possible way).

The native Austrian who set out across the Atlantic in 1935 broached a number of taboo themes, and so influencing the development of the American film industry. The first ever independent producer working with autonomy in the Hollywood system, Preminger emerged victorious from a variety of clashes with the censors, and with the gusto of the challenge-inclined he successfully fought against racial, sexual, and other prejudices, the festival said.

He offered powerful, career-launching roles to well-known actors such as Ben Gazzara and Kim Novak, and gave their much admired colleague William Holden a share in the profits as compensation for a salary cut  the first producer to do so. He brought Jean Seberg to the movie screen, and she went on to become the grand muse of the French Nouvelle Vague, as well as New York graphic designer Saul Bass, and by listing Dalton Trumbos real name in the credits he de facto rehabilitated the screenwriter, a victim of McCarthyism, long forced to work under a pseudonym after headlining the Hollywood blacklist.

A director, producer, actor and screenwriter, Preminger belonged to a group of European directors, who, in the 1920s headed overseas and in the following decades fundamentally influenced the character of local film production. By adapting the rules of various genres they created crucial works within an evolving industry.

While the centerpiece of the Karlovy Vary showcase will no doubt be the outstanding film noir Laura (1944), there is also the potential for an audience favorite in Premingers adaptation of the theater play The Moon Is Blue (1953), with which he entered the history of film not only as one of the first indie directors and producers, but also as a fighter against both hypocrisy and the system of censorship, whose antiquated rigidity he turned upon itself to promote his own scandalous work.

Also on view in Karlovy Vary will be Premingers controversial study of drug addiction The Man with a Golden Arm (1955), his adaptation of Francoise Sagans bestseller Bonjour Tristesse (1958), starring Jean Seberg, the remarkable courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959), the epic Exodus (1960), and the acclaimed political drama Advise & Consent (1962). The program will close with the informative documentary portrait Anatomy of a Filmmaker (1991), in which the audience is taken through the directors career by his frequent collaborator, actor Burgess Meredith.



For the second year, Karlovy Vary will be holding the Future Frames: Ten New Filmmakers to Follow program, which is organized in cooperation with European Film Promotion. Based on the nominations of EFP member organizations, the festival has selected 10 students of film schools from 10 European countries whose work shows great potential. During two days of the festival, the young filmmakers will personally present their films to the public, and will have the opportunity to meet leading figures from the film industry.

This year, Karlovy Vary, in cooperation with Barrandov Studio, will open a new Industry meeting place Film Industry Pool, located above the Thermal, where film industry professionals and filmmakers can meet during the festival.

The festival industry program includes Works in Progress, with a prize for the most promising project from Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet countries, Turkey and Greece.

The industry program will offer various events including a few new ones:

The festival will be presenting the first Eurimages Lab Project Award, which will be given to a European project that is on the edge of the conventional approach to film and presents a new form of artistic and visual expression. The eight projects that have been chosen and presented will vie for the award with a financial reward of 50,000 Euros. Submissions will be open until April 30.

Traditionally, documentary projects from Central and Eastern Europe in the production and post-production phases (Docu Talents @KVIFF), as well as Czech and Slovak projects that are still in the development phase but have international co-production potential (Pitch & Feedback @KVIFF), will also be presented.

For the second year in a row, the festival will be hosting the annual gathering of the network of independent European distributors, Europa Distribution, whose workshops on the theme of Film Education and Literacy will also be open to film professionals. At the same time the festival hopes to be devoting more time to the issue of the digital market in the context of new strategies from the U.S.

Educational platforms at the festival enable filmmakers to meet experts in their fields. The partnership with Torino Film Lab opens up an opportunity to look at the comedy genre  how to approach it properly so that it works on an international level. About 60 TFL graduates and tutors will be meeting in Karlovy Vary to examine the genres opportunities and pitfalls.

This year for the first time the MIDPOINT screenwriting platform, in cooperation with experts from the Sundance Institute, will be presenting an intensive program as part of the Karlovy Vary festival.

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UPDATED with Kelly Ripas return to Live: Our long national nightmare is over, Kelly Ripa said to a standing ovation, in making her return to Live with Kelly and Michael this morning. I am fairly certain there are trained professional snipers with tranquilizer darts in case I drive too far off message, Ripa began, addressing her absence from the show since learning last Tuesday her co-host Michael Strahan was leaving in September for Good Morning America.

Thanking viewers for the overwhelming show of love andsupport through this bizarre time, Ripa said shed gone MIA because I needed a couple of days to gather my thoughts, after 26 years with this company. I earned the right. And, lets be honest, she told her studio audience, I know half of you called in sick to be here, so we get each other.

Ripa said she gained perspective by not coming to work.

What transpired over the course of a few days has been extraordinary, in the sense that it started a much greater conversation, about communication, and consideration and, most importantly, respect in the workplace.

Huge applause from the crowd.

Apologies have been made, and the best thing to come out of all of this is that our parent company has assured me that Live is a priority, Ripa continued  which may, or may not, put the kibosh on reports the Strahan hire was Step 1 of ABC News getting the timeslot to expand GMA.

There is commitment to the show and people that work here and, most importantly to you, the viewers who have watched us every day for 30 years. I am thrilled for Michael. This is a tremendous opportunity and I couldnt be prouder of you and everything weve accomplished together. Ripa concluded.

Incidentally.my dad, who was a bus driver for 30 years, thinks were all crazy.

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Added Strahan, whod been standing to the side, letting Ripa have her Moment, Im so happy youre back. You love the show, love the fans, love the staff, I love you.

This show has been transforming for me and I know this show lives on because you are the queen of morning television, he said. Ripa smiled and insisted that title still belongs to Oprah.

PREVIOUS, Monday, 6 PM: Dont expect sparks to fly when Kelly Ripa returns to Live with Kelly and Michael in the morning, Ripa having receiving apologies from execs across Disney-ABC.

Ripa went MIA from the show last week after being informed following Tuesdays broadcast that Michael Strahan, her co-host of four years, would leave the show in September to work full time at ABC Newss Good Morning America. Among those who have said theyre sorry for how she learned the news: Disney-ABC Television Group president Ben Sherwood, ABC News president James Goldston, ABC Stations president Rebecca Campbell  who used to run WABC, where Live is produced  and current WABC GM Dave Davis.

Late Friday, Ripa emailed Live staffers to let them know everyone had kissed and made up. I wanted to thank you all for giving me the time to process this new information, she wrote. Your kindness, support, and love has overwhelmed me. We are a family and I look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday morning, she added.

Ripa learned of the Strahan/GMA deal less than 30 minutes before the press reported it  though that part had not been in ABCs playbook and had execs scrambling Tuesday, informed sources say. She did not show up for Wednesday or Thursdays broadcasts (she had been scheduled to take off Friday and today). Her absence Wednesday seemed to confirm she was blindsided by the development, though Strahan had been contributing to GMA twice a week for about two years. More media eyebrow-raising followed when Ripa failed to issue any congratulatory statement to Strahan. Tomorrow morning, she will fix that at the top of the show, an insider says.

In going MIA, Ripa stole the spotlight on Wednesday from Strahan and his big news. Opening Live awkwardly that day with Ive been in the news lately, Strahan discussed his new gig with fill-in co-host Ana Gasteyerof  but the SNL alums presence in Ripas chair was what made that days headlines.

Snatching opportunity, ABC had announced Ripa would be off the rest of the week and Dancing With the Stars co-host Erin Andrews would guest-host as a fill-in. On todays show, Strahan was joined by Pretty Little Liars star Shay Mitchell, whose show airs on Freeform  which, like ABC, is owned by Disney.

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Kelly's getaway from the drama! Kelly Ripa and husband Mark Consuelos celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary with a Caribbean vacation, and the couple shared an exclusive pic with Us Weekly.

PHOTOS: Kelly Ripa's Amazing Bikini Body

The talk-show host, 45, was all smiles with the Spanish-born actor in the sunny selfie. Both stars donned aviator sunglasses in front of a gorgeous beach backdrop.

The pair had planned the tropical trip prior to the Live controversy, which began when her cohost, Michael Strahan, unexpectedly announced on Tuesday, April 19, that he would be leaving for a full-time position at Good Morning America. Ripa reportedly wasnt informed of the decision until moments before the news broke to the public and decided to call in sick on Wednesday to process everything before leaving for the scheduled vacation.

PHOTOS: Best Dressed TV Show Hosts

Ripa returned to Live on Tuesday, April 26, and explained her weeklong absence to the audience in the opening monologue. I needed a couple of days to gather my thoughts after 26 years with this company. I earned the right and, lets be honest, I know half of you called in sick to be here, so we get each other, she joked. Then she turned to the more serious topic of Strahans exit and the ensuing fallout. So what transpired over the course of a few days has been extraordinary in the sense that it started a much greater conversation about communication and consideration and, most importantly, respect in the workplace, she continued.

PHOTOS: Talk Show Controversies and Feuds: The Biggest Ever

Later in the show, the former soap star shared another fun photo from her anniversary getaway  of her wearing her wedding dress from two decades ago! In the pic, Ripa, clad in a beautiful white spaghetti-strap gown, wraps her arms around Consuelos. Its a beach cover-up now. I wear it all the time. It was the best $199 I ever spent in my life, she told viewers.

The couple, who met on the set of All My Children, married in May 1996 and now share three kids, Michael, 18, Lola, 14, and Joaquin, 13.




Did Kelly Ripa just reveal who she wants her next co-host to be?

ET has learned that Michael Strahan will step down from Live! With Kelly and Michael earlier than expected -- multiple sources confirm his last day will be May 13 -- and, on Tuesday morning, Ripa clutched a copy of a very telling book as she left her apartment to make her emotional return to the talk show.

247PAPS.TV/Splash News

The 45-year-old co-host donned a chic, floral Erdem sheath dress and carried a copy of Anderson Cooper's new book, written with mom Gloria Vanderbilt, The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss.

MORE: Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan's 7 Most Awkward Moments During Her Return to 'Live!'

Cooper, who is a close friend of Ripa's, is indeed one of the frontrunners for the gig, a source previously told ET. The news anchor is apparently interested in the job, though he may need CNN's permission to do the show, another source revealed.

This isn't the first book that Ripa has used to send a message -- intentionally or not. On Thursday, amid her drama-filled absence from the show, she was spotted with a copy of David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell.

North Woods/Splash News

Ripa spent the rest of the week celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary in Turks and Caicos with her husband, Mark Consuelos. On Friday, she sent a late-night email to Live! staff thanking them for "giving me the time to process this new information."

EXCLUSIVE: Kelly Ripa Still Hasn't Talked to Michael Strahan Ahead of 'Live!' Return, Source Says

Strahan's exit was announced last Tuesday, leaving Ripa feeling "blindsided" and "betrayed," sources said. Ripa reportedly eventually received an apology from ABC execs regarding the mishandling of the announcement, with top brass expressing "regret for the way Kelly was told the news."

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Ripa made her return to Live! on Tuesday, where she tearfully told viewers that she needed a couple of days to "gather my thoughts" after a "bizarre" week.

"I always speak from the heart, and I didn't want to come out here and just say something I might regret," she revealed. "So, what transpired over the course of these days has been extraordinary. It started a much bigger conversation about communication and consideration and, most importantly, respect in the workplace."

Watch more of her emotional return in the video below.

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After opening with the serious business of addressing Michael Strahan's departure from Live! With Michael and Kelly on Tuesday, co-host Kelly Ripa got right back into the swing of things, dishing on her romantic anniversary getaway with husband Mark Consuelos.

The couple just celebrated 20 years of marital bliss on a pre-planned trip to Turks and Caicos, where they learned that while many things have changed, Ripa's figure has stayed the same.

WATCH: Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan's 7 Most Awkward Moments During Her Return to 'Live!'

"See that dress? That's my wedding dress!" Ripa pointed out. "And guess what? It still fits!"

LIVE with Kelly and Michael

What might also come as a surprise is that the dress was purchased long before her wedding day and she had no intention of wearing it during her eventual walk down the aisle.

"The dress is actually 25 years old. My marriage is 20 years old," Ripa said. "I just bought it because it was really pretty, and I wanted to buy something from the Barney's warehouse sale. I was working on the soap [All My Children] and I didn't make a lot of money. It was $199 on final clearance sale, and I was like, 'Do I eat this week or do I get this dress?'"

WATCH: Kelly Ripa Tears Up, Holds Hands With Michael Strahan as She Makes Her Return to Live!

Ripa gushed that the gown has been "the best $199 [she's] ever spent."

"I wear it all the time!" she said.

Consuelos' outfit, on the other hand, is another story. Ripa admitted that no one knows what happened to his wedding suit.

EXCLUSIVE: Oprah Winfrey on Kelly Ripa's Reaction to Michael Strahan Departure News -- 'Nobody Should Ever Be Blindsided'

"My dress really stood the test of fashion time better than his outfit," she shared. "I don't even remember what he was wearing. He was wearing, like, a black linen jacket with a shawl collar. It was a crazy."

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Ripa and Consuelos said "I do" in May 1996. They have three children together: Michael, 18, Lola, 14, and Joaquin, 13.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stressed the need for timely and credible elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo during a recent meeting with President Joseph Kabila, the State Department said on Monday amid concerns by opposition groups that Kabila may be seeking to delay elections. Kerry and Kabila held talks on the sidelines of the signing of a global climate pact at the United Nations on Friday. Congolese opposition groups have accused Kabila, who won disputed elections in 2006 and 2011, of maneuvering to stand for a third term, which is barred by the constitution. Kabila has not commented on his future. "The Secretary did emphasize that the U.S. stands ready to be a partner to all of those who are committed to timely, credible elections as called for by the DRC's constitution," State Department spokesman John Kirby told a press briefing. The Congolese government has suggested that logistical and budgetary constraints could force it to postpone the poll, a move some of Kabila's opponents say is a deliberate tactic by the president to cling to power. "The Secretary stressed that a peaceful transition in the DRC will allow President Kabila to cement his legacy," Kirby added. During their meeting, Kerry also emphasized that citizens should be allowed to speak freely without intimidation. Police, using tear gas, dispersed hundreds of anti-government protesters in southeastern DRC on April 20. Since then authorities have arrested dozens of critics of Kabila in what the U.N. and human rights groups said were trumped up charges. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Alan Crosby)
Scandal star Kerry Washington has signed an overall deal with the studio behind the ABC drama series, AB

ABC_Studios_logo

C Studios, and its cable/digital division ABC Signature Studios, for her recently launched production company Simpson Street. Under the two-year pact, Simpson Street  named after the street where Washingtons mom grew up in the Bronx  will develop broadcast, cable and digital projects exclusively for ABC Studios and ABC Signature.

As part of the deal, Washington has brought in Sharla Sumpter Bridgett as development executive/producing partner at Simpson Street.

Kerry Washington Confirmation

Simpson Streets first project, which preceded the overall deal, was the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas HBO movie Confirmation, which the company produced with ABC Signature as well as Groundswell Productions and HBO Films. The movie, in which Washington starred alongside Greg Kinnear and Wendell Pierce, premiered this month to strong reviews.

I believe strongly in the importance of having a seat at the table, which makes starting this production company thrilling for me, Washington said. Its an honor to be at a point in my career when I can help generate projects that that are exciting, necessary and truly reflect the world around us. Im grateful to be on this journey with ABC, a network that remains unparalleled in its commitment to inclusive storytelling.

scandalS5

Washington became the first black woman in nearly four decades to headline a network TV drama when Scandal premiered on ABC in 2012. It was followed by How to Get Away With Murder, toplined by Viola Davis, and other ABC series praised for their diverse casts and authentic storytelling including drama American Crime and comedies Black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat.

Kerry Washington is not only a great actress but a smart, creative producer, and were thrilled to have her new production company Simpson Street as part of ABC Studios, said Patrick Moran, EVP of ABC Studios. Were looking forward to making great television with Kerry both in front of and behind the camera.

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Bridgett

Sumpter Bridgett served as partner and president of production at Brian Robbins Varsity Pictures and president of film at Tollin/Robbins Productions. She and Washington worked together on the 2012 DreamWorks movie A Thousand Words, in which Washington starred opposite Eddie Murphy, and Sumpter Bridgett produced alongside Robbins. Most recently, Sumpter Bridgett consulted for Nickelodeon on the launch of the networks experimental new media division Creative Lab.

Washingtons portrayal of crisis manager Olivia Pope on the popular Shonda Rhimes drama Scandal, now in its fifth season, has earned the actress a Golden Globe, Emmy and SAG nominations as well as an NAACP Image Award.

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Kid Rock has paid tribute to his personal assistant Mike Sacha, who has died in an ATV accident at the age of 30.

In a letter published on his official website, the Detroit rocker (real name Robert Ritchie) said he was "beyond devastated" to learn of Sacha's death in Nashville.

Kid Rock Plants 'Kiss' at No. 1 on Top Rock Albums Chart

"He was a member of our family and one of the greatest young men I have ever had the pleasure to not only work with, but also to become friends with," Rock writes. "I know I speak for us all in sharing my deepest condolences to his family. I cannot imagine how they must feel."

Sacha was fatally injured on Knight Dr, Nashville police report. His death has been classified as accidental.

Michael Sacha, 30, personal assistant to Kid Rock, fatally injured in Nashville ATV crash on Knight Dr. Death classified as accidental.

- Metro Nashville PD (@MNPDNashville) April 26, 2016

Sacha is understood to have died after escorting guests following a meal on the artist's Whites Creek estate, the Tennessean reports. He apparently lost control of the vehicle and crashed on his way back to the residence.

Kid Rock notes he and his entourage were supposed to have returned to Michigan, "but I am going to stay here with Mike until I can bring him home to his family."
By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) - The risk of some childhood cancers might vary depending on where a childs mother was born, a new study suggests. For example, some brain and kidney cancers occurred less often in children whose Hispanic mothers were born outside the U.S. than in youngsters whose Hispanic or white mothers were born in the U.S., researchers found. However, the Hispanic children had a higher risk of certain blood cancers regardless of where their mothers were born. The researchers used California birth records of more than 4 million children of non-Hispanic white mothers, more than 2 million children of U.S. born Hispanic mothers and 4 million children of non-U.S. born Hispanic mothers from 1983 to 2011. According to California Cancer Registry records, there were 13,999 cases of childhood cancer occurring before age six in the total group. For certain types, like glioma and astrocytoma cancers of the brain, solid neuroblastoma tumors, and Wilms tumor of the kidney, children of non-U.S. born Hispanic mothers had the lowest risk, as reported in JAMA Pediatrics. We have little information on fathers who of course are important too, said lead author Julia E. Heck of the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of CaliforniaLos Angeles. But the marked difference in risk for some cancers based on maternal origin means that lifestyle differences may be playing an important role, Heck said. If there was no difference then genetics would be much more important, she said. In previous studies, Hispanic mothers who moved to the U.S. had better pregnancy outcomes than similar women born in the U.S. In Mexico, for example, women generally have strong social support networks and low stress levels during pregnancy, Heck said. Also, she added, Foreign mothers have incredibly low rates of smoking, drinking or drug use, and smoking during pregnancy is much less common in Mexico than in the U.S. When Hispanic women grow up in the U.S. they take on aspects of the U.S. lifestyle, which includes much more stress, she said. But, there are many types of brain tumors and cancers in general, and some other types didnt differ in risk at all, she noted. This is the first published study to evaluate whether cancer risk is different for children with non-US-born Hispanic mothers, so this is new information that will need to be further explored, said Susan Carozza of Oregon State University College of Public Health and Human Sciences in Corvallis. Think of it as a few new puzzle pieces to fit into what has already been uncovered about cancer risk in kids, Carozza told Reuters Health by email. Its difficult to estimate exactly how much risk was increased or decreased for particular cancers, since these childhood cancers are rare and there were a small number of cases to assess, she said. At this point, neither parents nor doctors should change what they are doing based on this study, Carozza said. With the Zika virus threat, it would certainly seem unwise to recommend that Mexican-American women planning to get pregnant return to Mexico for their pregnancy, she said. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1TbgoGf JAMA Pediatrics, online April 25, 2016.
Seoul (AFP) - North Korea is ready to carry out a fifth nuclear test and could press the button at any time, South Korea's president said Tuesday, amid reports Pyongyang has readied a powerful, new mid-range missile for an imminent flight test.

Concern has been growing for weeks that the North is building up to another nuclear experiment ahead of a rare, ruling party congress to be held early next month.

"We assess that they have completed preparations for a fifth nuclear test and can conduct it whenever they decide to," President Park Geun-Hye said during a meeting with local media.

If North Korea does go ahead, it would constitute a dramatic act of defiance in the face of tough UN sanctions imposed after its most recent nuclear test in January.

Some analysts have suggested that, by carrying out a fifth test so soon after the fourth, the North might hope to avoid a heavy package of additional sanctions -- but Park insisted that the international community's response would be swift and severe.

"Although the current sanctions are strong, we can impose even stronger sanctions that fill up any holes," the president said.

- Grave 'miscalculation' -

"North Korea's miscalculation is that by ignoring warnings from the international community and continuing to launch provocations, it will not defend its security, but only speed up its own collapse," she added.

In recent months the North has claimed a series of major technical breakthroughs in developing what it sees as the ultimate goal of its nuclear weapons programme -- an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets across the continental United States.

These have included success in miniaturising a nuclear device to fit on a missile, developing a warhead that can withstand atmospheric re-entry, and building a solid-fuel missile engine.

Earlier this month, leader Kim Jong-Un monitored the test of an engine specifically designed for an ICBM that he said would "guarantee" an eventual strike on the US mainland.

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The South's Yonhap news agency on Tuesday quoted unidentified government sources as saying the North had readied a medium-range Musudan missile for an imminent test launch.

Existing UN resolutions forbid North Korea from the use of any ballistic missile-related technology.

The Musudan is believed to have an estimated range of anywhere between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometres (1,550 to 2,500 miles). The lower range covers the whole of South Korea and Japan, while the upper range would include US military bases on Guam.

The missile has never been successfully flight-tested.

A test firing on April 15 ended in what the Pentagon described as "fiery, catastrophic" failure -- apparently exploding seconds after launch.

According to the Yonhap sources, North Korea had prepared two Musudans for the test, but the second launch was called off after the first failed.

"The remaining missile now appears to be standing by for launch," one of the sources said.
By Kieran Guilbert DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Burkina Faso's marriage laws are failing girls who are forced into early marriage by their families and threatened, abused and beaten by their partners for seeking contraception, Amnesty International said on Tuesday. Forced marriage is illegal in the West African nation, but the law applies only to state-registered marriages, rather than the religious and traditional ceremonies which account for most of Burkina Faso's forced and early marriages, Amnesty said. The law also states that a girl must be aged 17 or above to marry, yet half of girls aged 15 to 17 in the northern Sahel region are married, the rights group said in a report. "Current legislation in Burkina Faso has critical gaps... leaving many women and girls unprotected and unsupported," the report said. Burkina Faso has the sixth highest rate of early marriage in Africa, with one in 10 girls married by the age of 15 and more than half married by 18, according to the United Nations children's agency UNICEF. Families often marry off girls to improve family alliances and social status, or in return for goods, money and services. Some areas of Burkina Faso also have the practice of 'Pog-lenga' or 'bonus woman', where a bride brings her niece to the husband's family as an extra girl to be married, Amnesty said. "I did not want to marry the man (her aunt's husband). My aunt told me 'if you flee, we will destroy you'," Amnesty quoted 15-year-old Celine as saying, one of 379 women and girls interviewed by the human rights group. While the government and donors subsidise the cost of contraception, many married women and girls still struggle to buy it as they cannot afford it, do not have control of their income and are prevented by their partners, Amnesty said. Fewer than one in six women and girls in Burkina Faso use contraception, dramatically increasing the risk of unwanted and sometimes high-risk pregnancies, according to Amnesty. At least 2,800 women in Burkina Faso die in childbirth every year, a figure that could be reduced by one-third with better access to birth control, the report said. "There is a male chauvinistic culture which says: 'I will decide in the place of the woman'," Gaetan Mooto, West Africa researcher at Amnesty, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "Even when women have the money for contraception, they don't have the control over their own bodies," Mooto added. The government of Burkina Faso was not immediately available for comment. (Reporting By Kieran Guilbert, Editing by Ros Russell. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
MADRID  Eight-part La Habitacion, Sebastian Hiriarts Carrion and Ricardo Silvas William, el Nuevo Maestro de Judo, all winners at Los Cabos in Progress last November, will now segue from Mexico to Cannes to feature in the Cannes Film Market pix-in-post initiative Los Cabos Goes to Cannes.

They will be accompanied by Astrid Ronderos The Darkest Days of Us, chosen by the Tribeca Film Institute from Los Cabos 2014 lineup to feature in the TFIs Latin American Fund initiative.

Much expanded, and a highlight of this years Cannes Film Market  the Goes To Cannes work-in-progress initiative kicked off with just one showcase in 2013  the Goes to Cannes showcases feature brief introductions to excerpts from films presented by their producer and/or director.

Los Cabos Goes to Cannes kicks off an eight-strand program of movies in rough-cut tapping into some of worlds fastest-growing events  Los Cabos, Panama  regions  Central America, Mexico  and movie types: International animation and genre, catered for by the Fantasia Fests Frontieres Intl. Co-Production Market and an at least quartet of titles from the Annecy International Film Festival.

Set up at Mexicos Machete Producciones, whose credits include two of Mexicos most notable debuts in recent years  Michael Rowes Leap Year and Diego Quemada Diezs La jaula de oro  set in the same bedroom down the years, La Habitacion won a Fox Plus Cabos in Progress Prize at the 4th Los Cabos Festival in November.

Carrion reps the third feature from Hiriart whose 2010 debut, a magic realist parable A Stones Throw Away, won admirers, then directed the multi-part Filosofia Natural de Amor, a black comedy about animal instinct underlying disparate couples sexual relations. In Carrona, which also played Cabos in Progress last year, Hiriart portrays a couple who travel to a tropical resort to reboot their relationship. It transforms, however, into a love triangle with a violent closure.

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A project at Los Cabos in 2014 and a 2015 Tribeca Film Institute Latin American Fund grantee, Astrid Ronderos The Darkest Days of Us tracks a woman who returns to her hometown of Tijuana, a city that forefronts what she fears t be true about the world, as her return reawakens painful childhood memories.

William, el Nuevo Maestro de Judo (aka El Fracaso) marks the second feature from Ricardo Silva, whose debut, Navajazo, was a big festival breakout. It took the Cabos in Progress prize at 2015 Los Cabos in Progress. A startling hybrid mix of fiction and documentary set in Tijuana,

William weaves a reflection on the challenges of immortality as a Swede  described in a report as a semi-God  remembers his past lives. Paulina Valencia once more produces.

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Cannes Film Market Adds Annecy, Frontieres, Cabos, Panama to Goes To Line-Up
From Woman's Day

I never thought I would actually look forward to rifling through the trash on an airplane, especially in the bathroom on said airplane. A bathroom that had been used by more than 300 strangers. But there I was, looking forward to the moment when our flight from Johannesburg to Washington D.C. would touch down in Accra, Ghana for refueling. Only after the ground crew had cleaned could I dive into the abyss of stiff paper towels and used tissues.

Sometime during the flight I noticed it was missing. Luckily, with an empty seat next to me, no one else had the honor of being so up close and personal with my meltdown. If you've never had the experiencecrying on airplanewell, it sucks.

My fingers had swelled up early into the flight, which prompted me to take my ring off and put it on my pinky. I'd never done this. Not in a zippered pouch or my wallet. Not my pinky. This was a disaster of my own making. How would I get off the plane the next day and tell my husband that I'd lost my wedding ring and that it was my own fault?

Worst of all, I'd actually fallen asleep, which means that my sense of time was also lost. When had I taken my ring off? Had I gone to use the lavatory? Had I been in my seat the whole time? My hands started to search the area around and under me. I turned on the flashlight on my phone, trying to avoid waking up the sleeping passengers in my vicinity. I rummaged under the cushions, under the seat in front of me. I hovered over every step in the aisle, shining the beam of light on the blue carpet. Nothing.

I then asked the flight attendant, "Has anyone turned in a diamond wedding band?"

Minutes seemed like hours. It was just a ring, I'd tell myself. Yes, it was just a thing made of stones and metal. Except that it was more than that.

My wedding ring was a symbol of promise. Of hope. And now I'd lost it. My mind slid into a spiral of memories reminding me of my all my failures in love. And maybe this was me messing up again with the man that, thanks to the modern miracle of online dating, accepted me for all that I ammistakes and all.

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And yes, it was just a ring. But it was my ring and our story. So I cried and kept crying.

Eventually, even my best attempts to hide my emotions failed. Flight attendants stopped by at regular intervals to put a hand on my shoulder. A young woman seated across the aisle offered to help search when the lights came back on. And when the plane landed in Accra, complete strangers had joined me on hands and knees, like an army of ring-searching soldiers. One woman even said she'd go through the trash bag with me.

At the last minute, it was a couple married 54 yearsJim and Donnawho saved the day. They'd searched under my seat and around their own to no avail. But a shiny reflection caught their eyes as I was donning my rubber gloves, going in for what I thought was my last chance. The ring had gotten stuck between the hardware of the seat and the cushion.

Somehow the fact that this couple found my ring made it even more symbolic. With three adult children of their own and several grandchildren, here was a love that represented all that is possible. I'd seen them helping one another as they boarded the plane. I'd heard them chatting throughout the flight about their adventure in South Africa. I saw how even after all these years, they looked at one another with respect and affection.

"Is this your ring?" Jim asked with anticipation. He'd either made me the happiest woman on the planet or had just found a random diamond ring. I had to stop myself from kissing him right there in front of the lavatory.

"Yes. Yes, it is."
ExxonMobil Corporation XOM, the U.S. energy behemoth, is set to release first-quarter 2016 financial results before the opening bell on Friday, Apr 29.



The company reported stable results in the trailing four quarters, beating the Zacks Consensus in three out of the four, with a positive average surprise of 13.63%. In the last reported quarter, ExxonMobils earnings of 67 cents surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 64 cents by 3 cents. This was backed by better price realizations. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement.





Factors to Consider in the Past Quarter



Almost throughout first-quarter 2016, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude traded significantly below the $40-per-barrel level. Most importantly, WTI crude fell to the 12-year low mark of below $27 per barrel during mid February. The low levels were owing to plentiful supplies and lackluster demand. Predictably, ExxonMobils upstream division was able to extract less value for its products. This is sure to put pressure on the groups first-quarter profit margins, as it is the most oil-weighted among its peers.



However, the companys diversified operations should have offered some relief in the depressed price environment. Its downstream operations should benefit from improved margins and greater demand of refined products. Also, ExxonMobils consistent dividend payments and share repurchases score well with investors but must have taken a toll on its cash availability.



Overall, the companys activities during the JanuaryMarch period were inadequate to win analysts confidence. As a result, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the first quarter declined to 28 cents from 31 cents per share over the last 30 days.



Earnings Whispers



Our proven model does not conclusively shows that ExxonMobil is set to surprise this quarter. That is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for a likely beat. That is not the case here as you will see below.



Zacks ESP: ExxonMobil has an Earnings ESP of -3.57% for first-quarter 2016. This is because the Most Accurate estimate of 27 cents is lower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 28 cents per share.



Zacks Rank: ExxonMobil currently carries a Zacks Rank #3. Though a favorable Zacks Rank increases the predictive power of ESP, a negative ESP makes surprise prediction difficult.



We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell rated) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.



Promising Stocks



Here are some companies from the energy sector that, according to our model, have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:



SunCoke Energy Inc. SXC with an Earnings ESP of +150.00% and a Zacks Rank #1. The company is likely to release earnings on Apr 27.



TOTAL S.A. TOT has an Earnings ESP of +9.76% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company is anticipated to release earnings on Apr 27.



Phillips 66 Partners L.P. PSXP has an Earnings ESP of +1.85% and a Zacks Rank #2. The partnership is expected to release earnings results on Apr 29.

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Zacks Investment Research
Frankfurt (AFP) - Lufthansa will cancel almost 900 flights in Germany Wednesday when airport ground staff are expected to join a strike called by the country's biggest services union, Verdi, the carrier said.

Some 87,000 passengers will be affected and 895 Lufthansa flights scrapped because of the strikes at Frankfurt, Munich, Duesseldorf, Cologne/Bonn, Dortmund and Hanover airports, it said.

The walkouts are being staged by Verdi members working in air safety control, ground services, at check-in counters and in engineering workshops at the airports.

They are so-called "warning" strikes intended to increase the pressure in a battle the union is fighting over public sector wages with local and federal governments.

Wednesday's strike follows similar stoppages Verdi has recently organised in other institutions, including hospitals, town halls and child care centres.

Lufthansa blasted the walkouts.

"We are not involved in the dispute, but we're being affected the most," the carrier complained.

"It is unacceptable that our passengers are the ones feeling the effects of the strike," said Lufthansa's personnel chief Bettina Volkens.

"Verdi is hurting an airline that offers its workforce the highest welfare standards," she added.

Lufthansa has been repeatedly hit by strikes over the past year in wage disputes of its own, with both pilots and cabin staff staging a number of walkouts over pay and early retirement provisions.

Lufthansa said it has cancelled 545 flights arriving and departing from Munich, with 54,000 passengers affected.

In Frankfurt, where the stoppages would last until 3:00 pm (1300 GMT), some 350 flights and 33,000 passengers would be grounded.

In all, Lufthansa said it would only be able to uphold around 40 percent of its regular schedule on Wednesday, with just 500 flights taking off and landing in Frankfurt and 90 in Munich.

It did not specify how many flights would be cancelled at the smaller airports of Duesseldorf, Cologne/Bonn, Dortmund and Hanover.

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Lufthansa advised passengers to consult the website to see if their booked flight was taking place.

- Longer wait -

On domestic flights, passengers could exchange their tickets for rail tickets. Other passengers would be able to re-book their flights free of charge.

Fraport, which operates Frankfurt airport, said passengers should expect longer waiting times at security checkpoints and contact their airline before coming to the airport.

Despite the protracted industrial disputes last year and the Germanwings crash, Lufthansa saw its profits soar last year on the back of low oil prices and booming passenger business.

Investors mostly took the news of more strikes in their stride and Lufthansa shares were showing a modest loss of 0.1 percent in early afternoon trading on the Frankfurt stock exchange in a slightly softer market.
* French citizen accused of leaking tax deals

* Sapin expresses solidarity, says acted in public interest (Adds French finance minister comments)

LUXEMBOURG, April 26 (Reuters) - A man accused of leaking information exposing Luxembourg's tax deals with multinational companies only had access to the confidential documents because of a security glitch, a court heard on the opening day of the "LuxLeaks" trial on Tuesday.

Antoine Deltour, a French citizen and former employee of accounting firm PwC, is accused of passing data on PwC clients to journalist Edouard Perrin for a French television broadcast made in 2012.

Prosecutors say this data and material allegedly supplied by a second former PwC employee, Raphael Halet, was used in the 'LuxLeaks' revelations of November 2014 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The charges against the three Frenchmen range from violating secrecy laws to theft and IT fraud. Deltour's lawyer said his client did not set out to find the documents, but only came across them by chance.

France's Finance Minister Michel Sapin expressed "solidarity" with Deltour, saying the 30-year-old was defending the public's interest.

"It's thanks to him that we've been able to put an end to the opacity that prevented European countries from fully knowing the tax status of a number of large companies in Luxembourg," Sapin told lawmakers in the National Assembly.

Sapin has instructed France's ambassador in Luxembourg to assist Deltour during his trial if needed.

The LuxLeaks reports prompted accusations that Luxembourg had conspired with multinational companies to form tax arrangements that deprived other European Union states of revenue.

The leaked documents showed that companies such as PepsiCo , AIG and Deutsche Bank secured deals from Luxembourg to slash their tax bills.

The Grand Duchy says other countries have similar arrangements, and has offered to share details of the tax deals with other states.

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During Tuesday's hearing, a PwC expert said Deltour copied 45,000 pages of documents that he was able to access because of a glitch in the company's servers, which had since been fixed.

"He found them while looking for training documents," the lawyer, Philippe Penning, told reporters.

The trial, criticised by some as aiming to gag whistleblowers seeking to uncover corporate tax avoidance, attracted dozens of chanting protesters outside the courthouse.

Deltour faces up to five years in prison and fines of 1.25 million euros ($1.42 million) if found guilty.

"The message is to say, today citizens want more fiscal justice," said Frenchman Francois Thierry, wearing an "I support you Antoine" T-shirt. ($1 = 0.8828 euros) (Reporting by Michele Sinner and Miranda Alexander-Webber in Luxembourg, Yann Le Guernigou in Paris; writing by Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels; editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Mark Trevelyan)
Luxembourg (AFP) - Three Frenchmen went on trial in Luxembourg accused of an "incredible" document leak that exposed huge tax breaks for major global companies, in an issue brought sharply into focus by the Panama Papers scandal.

Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet, two former employees at services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and French journalist Edouard Perrin face charges over the theft of thousands of confidential files in the so-called LuxLeaks scandal.

The opening of the trial brought an unusual intervention by France in fellow EU-member Luxembourg's legal affairs, with Finance Minister Michel Sapin saying that he "would like to offer (Deltour) all our solidarity".

Around 50 supporters shouted "Thank you, Antoine, thank you Antoine!" as the defendants arrived at the courtroom in Luxembourg for the start of the trial, which is expected to last until May 4.

If found guilty, they face jail terms of up to 10 years.

The eruption of the LuxLeaks affair in November 2014 exposed "sweetheart" deals that saved firms including Apple, IKEA and Pepsi billions of dollars in taxes while European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was Luxembourg's prime minister.

A series of global news outlets examined 28,000 pages of documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), revealing the full scale of the tax breaks won by 340 companies.

LuxLeaks was the biggest expose of its kind until this month's publication of the Panama Papers, which revealed links between a number of international leaders and offshore shell companies that can be used to hide or launder wealth.

- 'I acted in public interest' -

Former auditor Deltour, 31, told the court on Tuesday he "recognises the substance" of the facts of the case while Halet, 40, and Perrin, 45, both dispute the charges.

"I feel very calm, I acted in the public interest," Halet told AFP as he arrived for the trial.

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Deltour is accused of stealing documents from the database of the accounting firm before he left in 2010, revealing business secrets, violation of professional secrets and money laundering.

The documents later became the basis of a 2012 story by Perrin on state-owned France 2 television but it stayed under the international radar until the LuxLeaks document dump.

Perrin is charged with being an accomplice in all the offences, while Halet -- who is accused of being behind a separate leak -- faces the same charges as Deltour.

The first witness, PwC internal auditor Anita Bouvy, told the court that investigators narrowed the leak down to Deltour, finding that he had accessed 2,669 documents in 29 minutes on the eve of his departure from the firm.

"Ninety-two documents per minute, it's just incredible," she told the court.

"Only one person, Mr Antoine Deltour, had access to these documents without being able to justify the access to this data by his position."

In his PwC personnel file, Deltour had mentioned his "frustration" because of the large amount of work he had, and had criticised working practices at PwC, Bouvy said.

Ahead of the trial Deltour insisted he had no regrets.

"At first I was just an anonymous source, and then I found myself at the front of the stage," Deltour told AFP on the eve of the trial.

Christophe Deloire, of the organisation Reporters Without Borders, said the trial "should never have taken place".

"The information revealed through LuxLeaks is of high importance and clearly in the public interest," he said.

- Campaigners slam 'farce' -

The LuxLeaks and Panama Papers scandals have together forced the EU to take tougher action against tax-avoiding companies, with ministers agreeing at the weekend on a fresh series of measures to fight such deals.

Juncker faced huge pressure in his first weeks as Commission head over the huge tax breaks granted to companies on his watch as premier of the small European duchy.

European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who has launched tax inquiries into a number of firms including Amazon, has been invited to testify at the trial in Luxembourg.

Aid group Oxfam, which has campaigned for a crackdown on tax avoidance, said the LuxLeaks defendants should be "celebrated and not prosecuted".
Saudi Arabia's government has unveiled a long-term economic blueprint for life in a low-oil-price world.



Titled "Saudi Vision 2030," the plan unveiled Monday includes regulatory, budget and policy changes that will be implemented over the next 15 years in the hope of making the kingdom less reliant on crude. It aims to build a "prosperous and sustainable economic future" for the kingdom, according to the press release.

Launching the program, the country's leadership said it would be built around three themes for a "vibrant society", "a thriving economy" and an "ambitious nation." The plan highlighted the country would raise its share of non-oil exports in non-oil gross domestic product ( GDP ) from 16 percent to 50 percent.

In a wide-ranging press conference in the capital Riyadh, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman addressed the different aspects of the announcement. The plan details the future of privatization in Saudi Arabia and the creation of what it calls the "largest sovereign wealth fund in the world." Prince Mohammed told CNBC that a new sovereign wealth fund could top $3 trillion and would be linked to its vast revenues from oil.

The planned economic diversification also involved localizing renewable energy and industrial equipment sectors and creating high-quality tourism attractions. It also plans to make it easier to apply for visas and hoped to create 90,000 job opportunities in its mining sector.



"We will smooth the process of listing private Saudi companies and state-owned enterprises, including Aramco. This will require deepening liquidity in our capital markets, fortifying the role of the debt market and paving the way for the derivatives market," the announcement said.



The reforms also included announcements in digital infrastructure, culture, education and the military. Prince Mohammed told reporters Monday that Saudi Arabia could achieve its vision with oil at just $30 a barrel.

"We can achieve this vision even if oil is lower than $30. We think it is almost impossible to go under $30 because of global demand," Prince Mohammed said in the news conference, according to Reuters. "The plan can deal with any price, $30, $28, $70... but the plan was made with $30 in mind."

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The announcement comes hours after Saudi Arabia confirmed that it planned to sell a stake of its state oil giant Saudi Aramco which was expected to be valued at more than $2 trillion.

The sale would be less than 5 percent of the company and would be via an initial public offering (IPO), Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in a television interview with the Al Arabiya News Channel.



He also said there were plans for Aramco, or to give it its full name Arabian American Oil Company, to be transformed into a holding company with an elected board, according to Reuters, with subsidiaries of the firm also to be sold by IPO.

There were also details of how the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom would increase women's participation in the workforce from 22 percent to 30 percent. It also said it would lower the rate of unemployment from 11.6 percent to 7 percent.

"With over 50 percent of our university graduates being female, we will continue to develop their talents, invest in their productive capabilities and enable them to strengthen their future and contribute to the development of our society and economy," the press release stated.

CNBC's Nyshka Chandran contributed to this article.







More From CNBC


Copenhagen (AFP) - Danish conglomerate A.P. Moller-Maersk said on Tuesday that one of its employees in Angola had been released unharmed after being held captive for four days.

"Maersk Group can confirm an employee was abducted in Angola and held captive for four days and that he has been released unharmed," spokeswoman Louise Munter said in a statement.

The company was providing support for the man and his family "in this difficult time," she said.

"Due to the ongoing investigation by local authorities and the security of our employees, the Maersk Group will not be providing any further details," she added.

Denmark-based website ShippingWatch said the man was a senior employee at Maersk's container terminal operating company, APM Terminals, in Angola.

The group's oil unit, Maersk Oil, also operates in the country but said in March it would cut staff in the capital, Luanda, "in view of the continued challenging market conditions for deepwater developments."

The drop in the price of crude oil has plunged the economy of Africa's second largest crude producer into a crisis, and risks threatening the stability of the country.

Despite the country's oil and diamond resources, the southern African country suffers endemic poverty, with more than a third of the population of around 24 million living below the poverty line, according to the United Nations.
Sao Paulo (AFP) - Six out of 10 Brazilians want snap elections to resolve the country's political crisis in which leftist President Dilma Rousseff faces impeachment, a poll released Tuesday said.

Rousseff, who is accused of illegally manipulating government accounts, could be suspended from office as early as mid-May. She would be replaced by her chief opponent, Vice President Michel Temer, whom she has accused of mounting a constitutional coup.

The IBOPE poll found that 62 percent of Brazilians want both Rousseff and Temer to stand down and for new elections to be held.

The option is currently not on the cards and would require Congress to pass a constitutional amendment, but the idea has gathered steam amid public disgust at the corruption and political infighting that has paralyzed the government.

Only 25 percent want Rousseff to remain in power, but a mere eight percent believe a Temer government would resolve the crisis, the poll found.

The next scheduled elections are in 2018.

According to the poll, the current leaders are environmentalist Marina Silva with 39 percent, followed by Aecio Neves, the rightwing opponent of Rousseff in her 2014 reelection, who would currently get 32 percent.

Close behind was Rousseff's predecessor and chief mentor, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, with 31 percent.

Jair Bolsonaro, a far right member of Congress who has praised Brazil's former military dictatorship and torture of opponents in the 1970s, including a young Rousseff, saw his polling number rise to a personal high of 11 percent.
LUANDA (Reuters) - Deaths from malaria in Angola this year look set to outstrip 2015 as a health crisis that includes one of the country's worst yellow fever outbreaks in decades spreads, the World Health Organisation said. Angola recorded 2,915 deaths from malaria in the first quarter of this year, compared with 8,000 for the whole of 2015 and 5,500 the previous year, the WHO told Reuters on Monday. "This new malaria outbreak has devastated the entire country, even in provinces that have low endemic prevalence we are seeing the spread and surge in cases," the WHO's Angola representative Hernando Agudelo Ospina said. Ospina said uncollected garbage in Luanda due to government budget cuts and a record amount of rainfall had contributed to high cases of malaria, yellow fever and chronic diarrhea. A yellow fever outbreak has killed at least 225 people in Angola and 21 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to data from two weeks ago. The WHO has warned the epidemic poses a global threat. Angola's budget has been slashed, debts are rising and the currency has plummeted this year as depressed oil prices hit the finances of Africa's second largest crude exporter. (Reporting by Herculano Coroado; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Ryan Woo)
KUALA LUMPUR, April 26 (Reuters) - The President of troubled Malaysian state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) said on Tuesday it was keeping its options open on another coupon payment for a $1.75 billion bond that is coming up on May 11.

"We are keeping our options open on the May 11 coupon and will deal with the payment closer to time," Arul Kanda Kandasamy said in an interview with Reuters.

Under the terms of an agreement reached in June last year, Abu Dhabi sovereign fund IPIC was to pay the interest for the bond.

But International Petroleum Investment Co (IPIC) terminated the deal and said 1MDB was in default.

"The guarantee is clear and there is no dispute - IPIC said they will pay under the guarantee and 1MDB as the borrower is the primary obligor," said Arul.

The May 11 coupon payment is for a fixed rate 5.99 percent on the $1.75 billion 1MDB Energy Limited notes.

1MDB said earlier on Tuesday it did not pay a $50.3 million coupon on another $1.75 billion bond, following a stand-off with Abu Dhabi sovereign fund IPIC, triggering cross-defaults on some of its other bonds.

Arul also said he was open to resolving this non-payment issue with IPIC in the best interest of stakeholders.

He said the Malaysian fund had no plans to make an early payment on the bonds.

(Reporting by Umesh Desai; Editing by Bill Tarrant)
Troubled Malaysian state investment fund 1MDB said Tuesday it had defaulted on $1.75 billion in company bonds after missing an interest payment, heightening fears of a market-rattling bailout of the scandal-hit company.

The fund, founded in 2009 by Prime Minister Najib Razak, is teetering on the brink of collapse amid multiple investigations around the world into allegations that billions were looted from it.

1MDB, or 1Malaysia Development Berhad, released a statement saying it was "now in default" on the bonds after missing the $50 million interest payment. It blamed a dispute with Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, the International Petroleum Investment Co (IPIC).

IPIC, the bonds' co-guarantor, earlier this month accused 1MDB of failing to pay it back a $1 billion loan, the latest indication of financial chaos at the state-owned fund.

1MDB insists it repaid the loan.

But IPIC says the money went to a company with which it has no relationship -- fuelling accusations the money was diverted. It is refusing to guarantee the bonds until the loan is repaid.

The Malaysian fund, whose advisory board is chaired by Najib, said the failed interest payment triggered "cross-defaults" on two other bond issues.

Malaysia's main stock index fell more than one percent and its currency also weakened following the announcement.

1MDB sought to reassure skittish investors, say it "will meet all of its other existing financial obligations and has ample liquidity to do so".

1MDB, which ran up more than $11 billion in debt in a series of much-questioned investments, has steadfastly denied money was stolen or that it was in financial trouble.

But those claims have been severely tested lately.

Earlier this month a Malaysian parliamentary committee said at least $4.2 billion in questionable overseas money transfers were made by 1MDB.

- 'House of cards' -

Tony Pua, a prominent opposition parliamentarian, said the bond defaults indicates "1MDB's house of cards has all but collapsed" and that Malaysian taxpayers would bear the cost.

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"This is another obvious admission that 1MDB will be relying entirely on the Malaysian government to bail out 1MDB in its burgeoning debt crisis," he said.

Najib was plunged into the 1MDB crisis last year when the Wall Street Journal revealed that $681 million was transferred to his personal bank accounts in 2013.

He claims that money was a gift from the Saudi royal family, most of which he returned. A Saudi official recently said that was true, but only after weeks of silence that cast doubt on the claim.

In a series of more recent investigative reports, however, the newspaper said Malaysian investigation documents indicate more than $1 billion in 1MDB-linked money had been funnelled to Najib.

Najib and 1MDB vehemently deny that.

Analysts said the bond defaults were likely to keep investors on edge.

"Investors are pulling back now and its a knee-jerk reaction," Geoffrey Ng, director at Fortress Capital Asset Management, told Bloomberg News.

"It presents a credit risk issue to foreign investors and it causes uncertainty in terms of the outlook for Malaysian government credit ratings."

Najib has faced mounting calls to resign over the year-long scandal but he has tightened his grip on the ruling party and thwarted domestic investigations. His position is not seen as under imminent threat.
New York (AFP) - A man jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge Tuesday in an apparent suicide attempt and survived without serious injury, police said.

The 31-year-old, described as emotionally disturbed, climbed onto a beam of the mid-section of the fabled New York span and jumped, falling around 40 meters (130 feet) into the East River.

"Apparently he tried to commit suicide," a police official told AFP.

A police boat pulled the man out of the water, and he was hospitalized in stable condition, with non-life threatening injuries.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 26, 2016 / Maritime Resources Corp. (MAE.V) is pleased to report that a portion of the non-brokered private placement announced on April 18, 2016 has closed for gross proceeds of $790,500. The Company has issued 5,270,000 Equity Units at $0.14 per Equity Unit and 5,270,000 Royalty Units at $0.01 per Royalty Unit. Each Equity Unit consists of one common share and one half of one non-transferable share purchase warrant (the "Warrants"). Each whole Warrant attached to the Equity Units entitles the holder to purchase one common share at a price of $0.20 per common share for 36 months (note this is a change from 24 months previously announced). The Company also reports that due to interest, the Company is increasing the placement by up to 20% to a total $2,400,000. The increase in the financing will be subject to regulatory approval.

Total royalties payable from the Royalty Units (the "Royalty Payment") will be capped at an amount equal to 100% of the total offering plus the sum of $195,000 raised in the previously completed private placement announced on February 12, 2016 (collectively, the "Royalty Financings"). Royalty Payments will be made annually, beginning on the first anniversary of the date of commencement of commercial production from the Project. Upon payment of aggregate Royalty Payments totaling 100% of the total investment made pursuant to the Royalty Financings, the Royalty will terminate. Royalty Payments will be funded solely from 10% of annual net cash flow from the Green Bay Project. For purposes of the Royalty, "net cash flow" will mean net production revenues realized from the Project after deducting all Project operating and debt servicing costs. Maritime also agrees that it will offer all Royalty Payments to be paid either in cash or in gold, at the option of the Company.

Finders' fees totaling $57,431.25 and 382,875 Finders Warrants were issued to Canaccord Genuity ($40,556.25 and 270,375 Finders Warrants) and Leede Jones Gable Inc. ($16,875 and 112,500 Finders Warrants) in connection with the completed portion of the offering. The Finders Warrants have the same terms as the Warrants attached to the Equity Units.

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All the securities issued hereunder are subject to a four month hold period and may not be traded until August 23, 2016.

About Maritime Resource s Corp:

Maritime has entered into a Letter of Intent ("LOI" or "Agreement") (see News Release dated November 17th, 2014) with Rambler Metals and Mining PLC which includes evaluating the economic potential of re-opening the past producing Hammerdown gold mine located within Maritime's Green Bay Property, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Should the economic and technical viability of the project be established in the PFS the arrangement will allow Hammerdown material to be toll treated in the gold hydromet CIP circuit at the Nugget Pond Mill of up to 500 metric tonnes per day ('mtpd'). A toll milling fee would be negotiated to cover the capital expenditures required to process the material at the Nugget Pond Mill with permanent storage of Hammerdown tailings at the Nugget Pond site.

Maritime Resources holds 100% of the Green Bay property, located near Springdale, Newfoundland and Labrador. The property hosts the past producing Hammerdown gold mine and the Orion gold deposit, separated by a 1.5 km distance, as well as the Lochinvar base metals/precious metals deposit.

An initial Independent Mineral Resource Estimate for the Green Bay Gold property was prepared in accordance to the requirements of NI 43 - 101 and released in early June 2013. The study estimates the property to contain in excess of 425,000 ounces of gold (727,500 tonnes @ 11.59 g/t Au at Hammerdown and 1,096,500 tonnes @ 4.47 g/t Au at Orion) in the Measured and Indicated categories and in excess of 660,000 ounces (1,767,000 tonnes @ 7.58 g/t Au at Hammerdown and 1,288,000 tonnes @ 5.44 g/t Au at Orion) in the Inferred category, both at a 3 g/t cut-off grade. The estimate was compiled by Tetra Tech of Ontario.

The Hammerdown gold deposit was successfully mined by Richmont Mines between 2000 and 2004 while gold prices averaged $325/oz. During its operation, a total of 291,400 tonnes of ore were mined and milled, at an average grade of 15.83 g/t Au, recovering a total of 143,000 ounces of gold. All of the ore was processed at the Nugget Pond mill, now owned and operated by Rambler Metals and Mining Canada Limited, with an average gold recovery of 97.1%. Mining terminated in 2004 due to low gold prices with mineralization remaining, although uneconomic at that time. The Orion gold deposit consists of two main vein systems, both of which are open along strike, and down plunge to the northeast.

Further information on the Green Bay Gold Property can be found on our website along with the NI43-101 compliant Technical Report filed on SEDAR on July 11, 2013 at www.maritimeresourcescorp.com.

Bernard H. Kahlert, P.Eng. is the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical disclosure contained in this release.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

"Doug Fulcher"

Doug Fulcher

President, CEO

For further information, please call:

Cathy DiVito, Investor Relations or Doug Fulcher

Telephone: (604) 336-7322

info@maritimeresourcescorp.com

The TSX Venture Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Statements in this press release, other than purely historical information, including statements relating to the Company's future plans and objectives or expected results, may include forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on numerous assumptions and are subject to all of the risks and uncertainties inherent in resource exploration and development. As a result, actual results may vary materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.

SOURCE: Maritime Resources Corp.
Matthew Knowles spoke out about Beyonce's Lemonade visual album in an interview that had a few tense moments.

Sirius XM host Mark Thompson interviewed Beyonce's father while he was in class with his students at Texas Southern University. Thompson said Matthew Knowles requested the interview himself, but when the "Make It Plain" host started asking questions about whether or not parts of Lemonade were true, Knowles got increasingly frustrated.

Thompson played a clip from Lemonade, from when Beyonce is presumably talking to her mother about an abusive relationship. She asked Knowles if he thought Beyonce was referring to him. "I don't know but I don't think so," said Knowles. "I've never in my life hit my daughter."

Thompson clarified that Beyonce was referring to someone hitting her mother, and Knowles responded by saying, "Well, there's no way that we can get into the mind of Beyonce. Only Beyonce can answer who specifically she was talking to."

"I'd rather not get into speculation, so my answer is I don't know," added Knowles. "I can only speak of being a proud father. I think Beyonce pushed the envelope of creativity on this HBO special."

The SiriusXM host responded by playing another audio clip. "You remind me of my father, A magician. Able to exist in two places at once. In the tradition of men in my blood, you come home at 3 am and lie to me. What are you hiding?" says Beyonce.

Read More: The Notable Cameos in Beyonce's 'Lemonade' Visual Album

Knowles refused to answer. "I have no reaction sir," he said "I know the response you want to get. You're not going to get that response." When pressed, Knowles deflected to talk about the large response the album has produced online.

"I think that's incredible," said Knowles, loudly. "I am so proud of Beyonce, because that means the body of work that she did has made that type of impact on the market place. Everybody's talking about it, everybody's tweeting about it."

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He said he has not spoken to Beyonce since the visual album was released but stressed that he does speak to her, contrary to what he says the media makes it seem like.

At one point in the interview, Knowles scolded Thompson for his questions. "You're sounding like a kid, asking me that," said Knowles, adding that he was 64 years old and doesn't care what people think of him. "They're trying to sell advertising," he said to his class, referring to Thompson and his show.

After saying he hopes Beyonce and her sister Solange team up to make an impact, Knowles repeated that he is "very proud" of his daughter. He said that Lemonade is "probably" Beyonce's "best body of work" and commended her for bringing awareness to Black Lives Matter as well as challenges people have with marriages and their parents.

Once the interview was finished, Thompson said he wanted it on the record that Matthew Knowles reached out to him and not the other way around. "I don't like people suggesting that I had some kind of agenda," said Thompson.

Listen to the full interview below.

Read More: Late Night Hosts Mock Beyonce's 'Lemonade'
* Lawmakers say Britain will lose all EU benefits

* Britain will have to renegotiate status with EU

* City of London would suffer (Adds Social Democrat lawmaker, background, and changes media identification slug from GERMANY-BREXIT)

By Andreas Rinke

BERLIN, April 26 (Reuters) - Britain should not get special treatment from the European Union if it leaves the bloc and should expect tough talks in sealing bilateral deals, lawmakers from German Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition said on Tuesday.

The British people should be aware of the risks if a Brexit went ahead, the lawmakers said, and applauded U.S. President Barack Obama for his comment last week that it would take years for Britain to negotiate a trade deal with the United States if it voted to leave the bloc on June 23.

Volker Kauder, the leader of Merkel's conservatives in parliament, said Britain would lose all the benefits it enjoys as a full member of the European Union: "Out means out!"

Opinion polls suggest the sides are evenly matched, with a survey by ICM showing a slight lead for those in favour of Brexit while a survey in the Telegraph newspaper gave a slight lead to those preferring to stay.

"Rules will be without doubt set for the internal European market. Discussions among leaders will take place as usual and Britain will not be there," Michael Grosse-Broemer, deputy floor leader of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) said.

He thanked Obama for "making it clear one more time that Britain, also in his view, has an important status in Europe, and this is also our belief".

Gerda Hasselfeldt, parliamentary group head of the Christian Social Union (CSU), Merkel's Bavarian allies, said Britain should not expect to have preferential treatment in case of a Brexit.

"To me, it is clear: exit means exit. Citizens have to know that with this decision there will be no special treatment for Britain," Hasselfeldt said.

'NO EXTRA BONUSES'

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble last month warned that a British vote to leave would "poison" the British, European and global economies.

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Schaeuble said that while Britain would still be able to trade with the EU after leaving, it could not have the advantage of access to the bloc's single market without accepting free movement of EU citizens or paying in to the EU's budget.

"We went some way toward accommodating Britain's demands," Thomas Oppermann, parliamentary faction leader of the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD) said, referring to a deal that British Prime Minister David Cameron sealed at an EU summit in February that gave Britain "special status" in the bloc.

"I believe that a Brexit will have devastating consequences for the British economy," he said. "The financial institutions in the City of London will look with horror at the day when such a decision is made."

EU leaders in February granted Britain an explicit exemption from the founding goal of "ever closer union", offered concessions on welfare rights for migrant workers and safeguards for the City of London financial centre.

(Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Balazs Koranyi and Raissa Kasolowsky)
By Sarah B. Boxer

Shes a groundbreaking celebrity in Afghanistan; at the ripe-old age of 6, shes breaking down boundaries on television and speaking to children there about education, exercise and peace. She just made her silver screen debut and has already met with the countrys first lady.

Shes also  a muppet.

Meet Zari, the first female muppet on Afghanistans version of Sesame Street. The show is called Baghch-e-Simsim.

Though Zari speaks the main languages of Afghanistan, Dari and Pashto, on the show, she spoke in English during her first American interview, with Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric.

I love learning about other cultures, and other languages. Its all just so interesting! Zari told Couric.

Sesame Street has aired in Afghanistan since 2011  funded in part by the U.S. State Department  but Zari is the first local character to hit the airwaves. Other muppets, like Ernie and Elmo, also appear on the show, but in dubbed voices. For the shows creators, it was important for the first Afghan muppet to be female, in large part due to Afghanistans very low literacy rate among young girls.

In Afghanistan, theres a large portion of girls who are not in school. In fact, its over two-thirds, says Sherrie Westin, Sesame Workshops executive vice president of global impact and philanthropy. And this is a culture where girls often arent valued in the same way, arent given the same opportunities. And we know, through the power of little characters like Zari, that theres a great ability to not only inspire young girls, but, I think equally important, is that we can model for young boys that its OK for a girl to have an education, and for women to have different roles and responsibilities.

Since Zari is based in Afghanistan, the interview with Couric was her first in the United States. When asked what she thought about New York, Zari replied, I really like that you call this city the Big Apple.

Why? asked Couric.

I really like fruit! the healthy-eating muppet explained.
Megan Kelly's book has a publication date.

The much-hyped memoir is set to hit bookshelves on Nov. 15. Kelly signed the book deal, rumored to be above $5 million but less than the $10 million others reported, in February. Her profile has taken a big bump in the last year because of the Fox News host's sparring with Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.

The book will be published by HarperCollins, which is a subsidiary of News Corp, which took control of the the newspaper and publishing operations when the company's TV and film assets were separated into 21st Century Fox, which runs Kelly's employer Fox News. Rupert Murdoch controls both companies.

A title and exact details have yet to be revealed, though the book is expected to be a memoir.

Kelly has been at Fox News since 2004. Prior to that she was a reporter for a Washington, D.C., station and spent nine years as a lawyer. She attended Syracuse University and Albany Law School.

Kelly announced the news on Twitter and Facebook:

Excited to announce my new memoir is coming out 11/15! Title & cover coming soon. Pre-order: https://t.co/Tf0QpA2dRd https://t.co/L1i5MGXJgx

- Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) April 26, 2016
A Prince performance was already an elusive experience; one at a wedding reception was a complete rarity.

But George Lucas and Mellody Hobson made it happen in 2013, and the Ariel Investments president - and a director of The Estee Lauder Companies, Groupon and Starbucks Corp. - recalled the experience Monday afternoon during an acceptance speech at the Matrix Awards.

"I want to talk about something that I really believe connects us all, something that w all have in common: We've all danced to music by Prince," she said at the annual New York Women in Communications luncheon. "You could've been dancing in your car, you could've been at prom, maybe it was a bar mitzvah, maybe you were just alone in the privacy of your own bedroom, but we've all been moved - literally, physically moved - by this remarkable artist.

"I didn't know Prince, but I loved his music, so much so that when George and I got married and we planned our wedding reception, we reached out to ask him if he'd be willing to play. And much to our shock and sheer delight, he said yes!" she shared. "So for one extraordinarily busy day, I got to see his genius up close. Watching his passion and perfectionism reminded me of a rhyme that my mother used to say to me. She said, 'Be the labor, great or small, do it well or not at all.' She said it over and over again. This labor, in the whole scheme of things, it was a wedding, it was small. But Prince, with his 22-piece band, they had 40 guitars, they played like it was everything. It could've been the Oscars, it was a full concert.

Read More: Dave Chappelle Honors Prince During Stand-Up Performance

"I had been feeling really sad about losing this once-in-a-lifetime creative spirit. It really made me appreciate something," Hobson reflected. "In the past, I've been talking a lot about my desire to be unapologetically black and unapologetically female. Prince was unapologetically original. He demanded artistic freedom when he was just 17 years old on his first album. He dressed like no one else.  When he was present, it was like there was no one else, there was no one like him. And in being comfortable with who he was, he gave so many other people permission to become cool with themselves. I believe that is communication on a very deep, very human level."

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She concluded: "I think the world would actually be a better place if we were all unapologetically originally, especially women and minorities who are so often expected to conform. Like Prince, let's accept our uniqueness while celebrating the uniqueness."

Hobson was honored alongside The Hollywood Reporter's co-president and chief creative officer Janice Min, Lena Dunham and A+E Networks' CEO Nancy Dubuc, among others.

Read More: Watch Prince Perform at 'SNL's' 40th Anniversary Afterparty
Back on his feet. Michael Phelps opened up about his past demons during an upcoming interview on the Today show, which is set to air on Wednesday, April 27.

In the sneak peek, the 22-time Olympic champion looks back at his two DUI arrests and how his mother, Deborah Phelps, feared for his life.



PHOTOS: Celebrity Rehab Centers

"I think my mom was happy that I was alive because I think she saw the sort of the path that I was going down," Phelps, 30, tells Today cohost Matt Lauer in the preview. "I think a lot of people close to me saw it. And I was going fast. Fast. Honestly, at one point I felt like I didn't want to see another day."

Phelps began to spiral out of control back in 2004. The now dad-to-be (fiancee Nicole Johnson revealed in November 2015 that she's pregnant) pleaded guilty to drunk driving in November of that year and was arrested again in September 2014 for DUI. He checked himself into rehab that October.

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Last month, Phelps opened up about turning his life around during the U.S. Olympic Committee's media summit in L.A. "Obviously there were a lot of things that I needed to fix," he told Us Weekly and other reporters on March 8. "Its pretty crazy how big of a change I see from not having a drink  I see a complete change in how I am day to day. [Im] completely clear-headed."

"Im actually happy every day," he added. "Im actually able to be productive every day. I think thats something that I am very proud of and, you know, I think when I do retire Ill be able to look back and say that [rehab] was something that really helped."

PHOTOS: Celebrity Drug Confessions

Phelps' full Today show interview airs on Wednesday, April 27.




Screen Media Films has acquired U.S. rights to writer-director Michel Gondrys Microbe & Gasoline, which bowed at the 2015 New York Film Festival. A July 1 release is planned in New York (the Landmark Sunshine Cinema) and Los Angeles (the Nuart Theatre) ahead of a platform release.

The StudioCanal pic is about two young friends who embark on a road trip across France in a vehicle they built themselves. Ange Dargent, Theophile Baquet and Audrey Tautou star. Georges Bermann is producer.

StudioCanal SVP International Sales Aska Yamaguchi negotiated the deal with Screen Media SVP Worldwide Acquisitions Seth Needle on behalf of the filmmakers.

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Satya Nadella

Microsoft CEO Satay Nadella gave a keynote speech at Hannover Messe on Tuesday, a big conference for industrial technology, and talked about his vision for the next generation of technology.

His vision is that of the Internet of Things, where all kinds of inanimate things become connected and smart.

"The very thing that you produce, that you manufacture, for the first time is connected to the web of activity around it. It's not just the connection with everything, it's the ability to reason about that activity, that data that's being generated, continuously," Nadella said.

And then he used a line he's used before: "When you change the way you see the world, you change the world you see,"

That's a paraphrase of a quote from Wayne Dyer: "Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change." Dyer says that the line is "one of my secrets for feeling successful and attracting bountiful abundance into my life" and Dyer repeats it to himself daily.

Nadella isn't advocating the quote as a new-age, abundance-producing axiom. But Nadella says the idea of changing how we look at the world by collecting new kinds of data from machines, with machines that can interpret and learn, is "fundamental to how this new paradigm can perhaps have an impact in all industries in all walks of life."

To prove the point, Microsoft demoed a bunch of new-age tech at the conference including:

Windows 10 streaming into car dashboards;

a partnership with Rolls-Royce to host and analyze airplane sensor engine data on Microsoft Azure;

manufacturing plants in Mexico and Malaysia that can predict when a piece of equipment is about to fail;

aging industrial machines that can collaborate together on tasks and extend their usefulness and be controlled with a Microsoft Band device;

and a smart refrigerator for laboratory and medical refrigerators that can alert its owners before it has a failure.

On top of that, Microsoft made a pitch to sell the crowd on its Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book by announcing the PCs have been certified to run Siemens heavy duty, industrial design software, Solid Edge. Historically, high-powered computer-aided-design software like that needed expensive, powerful desktop PCs.

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Microsoft says it's had success selling the Surface for engineering work already, including to companies like UK-based Ross Robotics.

Here's Microsoft's one-minute video that summarizes Nadella's vision:

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From Redbook

Jill Duggar is suddenly facing a lot of heat for a midwifery mishap that happened two years ago.

Tiffany Nance, whose birth was attended by midwife Vanessa Giron and Jill (Giron's apprentice at the time), recently claimed that she doesn't think Duggar is qualified as a midwife. Why?

The Arkansas native stated that when she gave birth to her daughter, Jozzie, two years ago, it was Giron's negligence (she refused to call 911 despite Nance allegedly begging) that the mother claims resulted in her child being born with cerebral palsy.

Both Duggar and Giron held certified professional midwife (CPM) licenses in Arkansas, which can sometimes be confused with a certified nursing midwife (CNM). The latter demands rigorous education, while the former comes with uncomfortably relaxed requirements.

Though of course Jill is not at fault for Jozzie's condition, if she been training for her CNM licensure, she would have at least known better and called 911 to put Nance at ease.

Today, neither woman is listed as a licensed midwife with the state of Arkansas (Giron's was revoked after the state found her negligent in Jozzie's birth).

And while Duggar has stepped out of the midwife game completely while she tends to her little ones at home, Giron is apparently back in biz in Oklahoma.

[H/T She Knows]
By Yuka Obayashi and Yoshiyasu Shida

TOKYO (Reuters) - Mitsubishi Corp <8058.T> won't boost its natural resources assets on a net basis for the next three years after a commodity slump forced it to warn of its first ever annual loss, the chief executive of Japan's biggest trading house said.

"We want to adjust our portfolio of resource and non-resource assets so that we can manage a commodity slump as big as the recent one," its President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Takehiko Kakiuchi told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

"We plan not to increase our resource assets on a net basis for the next three years while we put most of our management focus on non-resource operations," he said.

The commitment to freeze its assets growth is a major change in strategy for Mitsubishi, which has invested aggressively in metals and energy over the past several years.

Still, it aims to replace some of its core resource assets such as coking coal, copper, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) with more competitive ones, though that will be funded by selling some other assets, he said.

The Tokyo-based trading house warned last month it will post its first annual loss since its founding in 1954, hurt by huge writedowns from a slump in commodities.

Like major international oil and mining companies, Mitsubishi has been caught off guard by steep falls in the prices of goods from oil to copper as China's economic growth has slowed.

As of December 2015, Mitsubishi held energy assets worth 2.2 trillion yen and metals assets of 4.3 trillion yen. The combined assets accounted 40 percent of its total assets.

The 60-year-old Kakiuchi, who took the job this month, declined to say how much non-resource assets will be added in three years, but said the firm is on track to meet its goal of doubling net profit from non-resource segments by 2020 from 180 billion yen in the year to March 2013.

Food, retail, healthcare and infrastructure are among key growth areas, he said.

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Asked how he felt about Mitsubishi Motors Corp's <7211.T> mileage scandal, Kakiuchi said: "I could only say I was aghast."

"I could not believe this could still happen."

Mitsubishi Corp is Mitsubishi Motors' second-biggest shareholder - with a 10.06 percent stake as of March 2015.

Last week, the automaker admitted to manipulating test data to overstate the fuel economy of 625,000 cars sold in Japan, and said on Tuesday it had used fuel economy testing methods that were not compliant with Japanese regulations for 25 years.

Asked whether Mitsubishi Corp will provide support to its sister company, Kakiuchi said it is not at the stage to discuss on the matter.

"We'll take necessary measures after a full account of the issue is provided."

(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi and Yoshiyasu Shida; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Louise Heavens)
TOKYO (Reuters) - Mitsubishi Motors Corp on Tuesday said it would hold a media briefing later in the day after providing information to Japan's Transport Ministry on its falsification of fuel economy data. The Japanese automaker said that its Chief Operating Officer Tetsuro Aikawa will attend the briefing scheduled for 0730 GMT or 4:30 p.m. Tokyo time. Mitsubishi said last week it overstated the fuel economy of four domestic models, including two produced for Nissan Motor Co, affecting 625,000 vehicles sold in Japan. (Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
Shares in Japan's Mitsubishi Motors crashed again Tuesday after a report said it had been using an improper fuel-efficiency testing method for decades, widening a data-cheating scandal that has plunged the company into crisis.

The maker of the Outlander sport utility vehicle and Lancer cars had been supplying false results on more models than previously reported, the leading Nikkei business daily said.

In response, the Tokyo-listed shares dived 9.58 percent to close at 434 yen.

The firm's stock price has halved and billions of dollars have been wiped off its market valuation since it admitted Wednesday to falsifying efficiency data for hundreds of thousands of vehicles sold in Japan.

Authorities raided the company's office last week after its admission and the firm has warned that the number of vehicles involved could rise as it could be widened to include those sold overseas.

A spokesman declined to the comment on the latest report and it will hold a news briefing later Tuesday. The scandal comes a decade after the automaker was pulled back from the brink of bankruptcy after it was found to have covered up a series of vehicle defects.

The Nikkei report said Mitsubishi's inaccurate testing could stretch back to the 1990s -- rather than just 2002 as the company has said -- and affect more models.

On Saturday, the Nikkei said Mitsubishi plans to compensate customers in a bid to limit the fallout.

Japan's transport ministry has ordered the company to reveal the results of an internal investigation on Wednesday.

The embarrassing revelations have raised questions about the Japanese carmaker's future, and pointed to a broader problem in the global car industry as regulators probe other automakers' pollution and fuel-efficiency standards.

Embattled German carmaker Volkswagen said Friday the massive engine-rigging scandal it is currently engulfed in pushed it into its first annual loss in more than 20 years, and the final total costs are still not calculable.

Also Friday, Germany's transport minister Alexander Dobrindt said a probe sparked by Volkswagen's emissions-rigging scandal found irregularities at 16 car brands, including Mercedes, France's Renault, Alfa Romeo, Chevrolet, Hyundai, Jaguar, and Nissan.
Melissa Click University of Missouri

Melissa Click was nearly universally excoriated last fall when she was caught on video blocking journalists from filming protests at The University of Missouri.

She hit back at critics this week in an interview in The Chronicle of Higher Education. In the interview, she suggested that Mizzou's Board of Curators fired her because of her race, according to Reason.com.

"This is all about racial politics," she told The Chronicle, according to Reason. "Im a white lady. Im an easy target."

The confrontation between Click and the reporter last fall took place amid racial tension that had been accelerating since September on the Columbia, Missouri, campus.

Several African-American students on campus had been targeted with hate speech, and students on campus called for then president Tim Wolfe's resignation, according to the Columbia Missourian. Wolfe resigned in November.

In the video, Click suggested removing journalists by force.

"Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here?" she asked in the video. "I need some muscle over here."

Those remarks went viral and ignited fury from critics, who noted that as a media professor, Click should understand that the First Amendment protects her right to protest as well as reporters' rights to film on public property.

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One mom had the audacity to let her children play in their own backyard, and now she's paying for it.

Jacqui Kendrick, a stay-at-home mother of three, had a little visit by Child and Family Services for allowing her children, ages 10, five, and two, to roam in their enclosed yard without direct supervision. According to CTV News, a nicely neighbor complained to the authorities when she saw the frightful scene.

Kendrick, who lives in Manitoba, Canada, was able to assure the CFS worker who dropped by that she was indeed a fit mother. She shared that she felt "completely comfortable" letting her kids play make believe, while she looks on from her living room window.

"We've taught both the (older) kids so far that you look after each other. That's kind of the point. The older ones should be looking after the younger ones," Kendrick said.

"My 10-year-old is very responsible. We've taught the older ones already the whole stranger danger, and they know what to do. When my five-year-old's out there, she knows she's not supposed to go up to the gates."

Now this little hiccup is on Kendrick's permanent record. If a similar incident goes on her file, Kendrick says she risks having her children taken away.

Kendrick would have much preferred that the concerned passerby, who was troubled by the three tykes enjoying fresh air with a mom but a scream away, would have just knocked on her door.

[H/T CTV News]
Sierra Farinas and Freddy Salgado have found clever ways to wed in style without overspending. Theyve planned a ceremony on Halloween with decor both spooky and sweet, and because the holiday falls on a Monday this year, the caterer was willing to offer them steep discounts. To save even more, a friends sister will decorate the rented hall for a small fee, and two other friends will DJ at a discount. In that way, the couple had hoped to pull off a party for 80 to 90 guests and still come in under $10,000well below the average spent in northern New Jersey, where they live.

But lately, as Sierra and her mother, Leslie, have begun filling in the details, there are signs that those early vows of frugality may be weakening.

At a glitzy showcase of wedding services in March, the mother of the bride made an impulse buyreserving a 1959 Bentley for the couple to ride in at a cost of $500.

I got inspired, Leslie explains, and it was on sale.

Values and Perspective

The perfect wedding, circa 2016, can be a dazzling million-dollar blowout at a fancy hotel or a cozy backyard barbecue for a tiny fraction of the cost. Its all about values and perspective, taste, and yes, money.

But no matter what you expect to spend, its hard even for bargain-hunters to resist all of the shiny extras. Lures are everywhere, from frothy four-figure gowns to aerial views of the days festivities, shot by drones for hire.

The $60-billion-a-year wedding industry knows how to stoke expectations and drum up sales. So maybe its no surprise that Americans now spend an average of $27,000 on a wedding, according to The Wedding Report, an industry publication that tracks costs.

That got us to wondering about whether there exists, in this Wedding-Industrial Complex, a secret, hidden surcharge when an event is a wedding and not, say, an anniversary party. So we assigned our secret shoppers to find out.

More on Weddings

 Cheap Wedding: 31 Ways to Save on the Festivities

 How to Avoid Wedding Shopping Gotchas

 Should You Spring for a Wedding Planner?

 Can You Spot the $10,000 Wedding Gown?

 How Much Should a Wedding Guest Give?

Story continues

A Hidden Tax?

The results werent as straightforward as we had imagined. Among the 25 vendors whose prices we shopped and could compare in five regions, we found a fewparticularly limousine companies and photographersthat did charge more for a wedding than for another, similar event. When we did additional reporting, we saw a lot of caterers wedding menus priced much higher than what they charged for banquets for, say, the annual Lions Club gathering.

But we also found a number of those same vendors willing to work with our shoppers to reduce costs. Some even volunteered money-saving solutions. Yet a survey conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center found that consumers usually dont exercise their bargaining clout. Some, the survey found, take on debt to pay for their big day.

As we discovered by talking to wedding industry experts, vendors, and couples themselves, its still possible to plan a magical wedding even if your budget is modest. It just takes a certain willingness to ask sharp questions, keep talking, and bargain. And it really helps to consider creative, less traditional approaches and optionslike scheduling on Halloween.

Lifting the Veil on Markups

Earlier this year Consumer Reports secret shoppers went on a shopping spree to find out whether wedding couples are being overcharged. We focused on five metro areasAtlanta; Colorado Springs, Colo.; southeastern Maine; Minneapolis; and Ventura, Calif.,supplemented with research in several other cities. Pairs of shoppers called the same photographers, florists, caterers, and other party vendors at least a week apart and got comparative estimates for a wedding and a 50th anniversary party that were identical in every other respect. (We told photographers, for instance, that we needed their services only during the reception.) In more than a quarter of cases28 percentvendors quoted us prices that were higher for the wedding than for the anniversary party. That kind of wedding surcharge played out more in some areas than in others.

Some photographers inflated their pricing when the affair was a wedding. For instance, photography for a Saturday night wedding in mid-October cost $300 per hour at Angel Wings Photography in Atlanta. For a 50th anniversary party of the same size at the same time with an almost identical package of services, though, the charge was $150 per hour.

Several limousine companies priced their bridal packages higher than other comparable services or posed restrictions on wedding clients. At DDG Classic Limousines in Colorado Springs, bridal couples reserving a Lincoln Town Car Stretch for 12 can make only round-trip reservations, at $120 per hour, including gratuity. The company wont permit wedding parties to reserve point-to-point trips. DDG says the policy protects both seller and buyer. We and our customers have been burned before with the simple half-hour run going over by an hour or more and costing everyone more or making us late for our next appointment, the company explains on its website. So we do not book anyones special day that way.

We also uncovered built-in wedding-based gratuities of up to 26 percent and found an eye-popping $7 per-person cake-cutting fee buried in some caterers fine print. The Westin St. Louis, for instance, levies a 24 percent taxable service charge and a 5 percent taxable event fee. Add on the 10.179 percent sales tax thats applicable to any party, and an $18,000 wedding reception becomes a $25,584 affair, an increase of 42 percent.

We couldnt discern differences among prices by florists, photo booth rental companies, or bakerieswhere we asked for sheet cakes, not wedding cakes. When our shoppers were vague about their catering budgetsmerely asking for a moderately priced sit-down banquet for 100two opening proposals for weddings that we received were similar to those of the anniversary bashes. But comparing catering menus in general shows a huge pricing difference. At Mulino at Lake Isle, in Eastchester, N.Y., wedding banquets start at $125 per person in January and February; May to October weddings start at $140 per person. But for other types of banquetsmeetings and parties, for instanceprices per person start at just $55. And those prices dont vary by season.

Bargaining for Brides

In all, we gathered prices from 40 vendors in 12 states. While those data points arent enough to indict an entire industry, theyre a warning to wedding shoppers to read fine print, ask smart questions, and negotiate before signing anything. In fact, in a few cases we found that it wasnt hard to strike good deals with those same vendors.

Caterers, for example, sometimes offer two banquet menus: one for weddings and another for other types of banquets. The wedding menu might share entree and hors doeuvres optionsat the same price as the regular banquet menubut also include more choices and extras.

The Dish on Menus

At Mulinos, the venue in New York, a standard banquet involves nine entree options of chicken (five choices) and fish (four options). By contrast, the wedding menu offers 17 entree choices, including beef. When a shopper asked about using the banquet menu instead, the catering manager said that could be doneon a Friday or Sunday. Some items would not be included, but couples could pay to add options. But for a savings of at least $70 per plate, it seemed worth the compromise.

At Doolans Shore Club in Spring Lake Heights, N.J., co-owner Susan Doolan agreed to provide her three-course, sit-down banquet$60 per person including full bar and an hour of passed hors doeuvresinstead of a full wedding package, which ranges from $70 to $90 per person and includes a lot of extras. The banquet option would require add-on staff costs, though, and as with Mulinos, would be available only on Friday and Sunday. On a wedding, there have to be some kinds of upcharges, Doolan said. People are expecting a different level of service and quantity of food.

Even at DDG Classic Limousines, its seemingly airtight wedding ride policy got tweaked. The company permitted our wedding shopper to split the 2-hour minimum stretch limo ride into two 1-hour trips to and from the banquet venue, and not pay for the interim hours.

Helpful Vendors

Some vendors volunteered ways to save without our even asking. When one secret shopper said she didnt know how much to budget for centerpieces, Lori Goede of Skyway Creations, a Colorado Springs, Colo., florist, helpfully suggested an arrangement for just $25: a single flower floating in a glass globe, surrounded by colorful fall leaves. Thats an entry-level price, she explained.

Tiffany Dumas, owner of The Tiffany Studio, a photography vendor in Brunswick, Maine, recommended a contract for just 2 to 3 hours of a 4-hour wedding reception. By then youve got all your group shots, and some people already have left, she explained.

Still, she defended photographers pricing. Before I even begin shooting, Ive probably spent 3 to 4 hours getting to know the bride and groom, and planning the itinerary, she explains. Afterward, she could spend 8 to 10 hours fixing shots.

Whos Paying, and How?

In addition to bargaining, couples should try to establish a budget and stick with it.

When the Consumer Reports National Research Center surveyed 464 Americans whod had a wedding reception in the last five years, 78 percent of those newlyweds reported they had budgeted for their reception. But almost two-thirds said they had overspent by at least 20 percent.

In our survey, couples paid for about half47 percentof the receptions cost. Thirty-nine percent of the cost was borne by parents; friends and other relatives covered the rest.

Same-sex couples in our sampleabout 20 percent of the newlywed respondentsreported being more likely than heterosexual couples to rely on friends and relatives other than their parents.

To afford the bill, 41 percent of respondents said they withdrew from savings. But 11 percent took out a loan from a bank or credit union, 10 percent borrowed from a 401(k) or 403(b) account, and 10 percent withdrew from other investments. Nine percent, all under age 50, withdrew some money from a 401(k), 403(b), or IRAa move that generally triggers a tax penalty, not to mention a potential threat to retirement savings.

Say Yes to Less

Two-thirds of respondents took at least three steps to save money on their wedding. Thirty-seven percent bought items on sale or at a discount; 35 percent trimmed the guest list; 35 percent chose a less costly menu; and 34 percent made favors or other items themselves.

In a 2014 study of 3,000 people in the U.S. who had been married for some time in their lives, two economics professors from Emory University found that couples who spent the least on their wedding were less likely to divorce. It was possible, one of the researchers later told The Emory Wheel, the universitys student newspaper, that couples with lavish weddings might be the ones who tend not to be the best match.

Or perhaps its that tying the knot on a shoestring takes communication, teamwork, and the ability to compromiseall useful skills for a sound marriage.

Once More With Feeling

Spending on second and third weddings is higher than you might expect. And the more times people get married, the more they tend to splurge.

Subsequent chances at love often tug at the heartstringsand purse strings. The Wedding Report, an industry publication, says the average second wedding costs $14,803, roughly $10,000 less than the average first wedding, but not an insignificant sum.

Notably, costs jump to $38,701 for third and subsequent weddings. How to explain that?

With third weddings, couples are older and more established, and family may be far-flung, notes Sharon Naylor, author of 1001 Ways to Have a Dazzling Second Wedding (The Career Press, 2001). They may plan a five-day event and bring everybody in, or take everyone on a cruise.

Etiquette experts say its not acceptable for the more-than-once married to ask for cash. But, in some cases, its okay to set up a registry, target a charity, or seek donations toward the honeymoon via a website such as Honeyfund.

Some, though, still take a modest approach the second time around. When Paul Rothkopf and Elaine Ferreira of Summit, N.J., wed in 2013a second marriage for boththe party was in the backyard; snacks and desserts were provided mainly by Rothkopfs sister; and the couple served wine and beer, no harder alcohol. For far less than $5,000, we had a beautiful day for 50 close friends, Rothkopf recalls.Kenrya Rankin

Editor's Note: This article also appeared in the June 2016 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.





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SYDNEY (Reuters) - Seven out of eight models monitored by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) now indicate that a threshold for a La Nina weather pattern will be breached by September, the weather agency said on Tuesday. The increasing prospect of a La Nina comes as the strongest El Nino in nearly 20 years - which has been blamed for crop damage, forest fires and flash floods - starts to subside. La Nina is the opposite of an El Nino, which is characterized by warmer waters in the tropical Pacific. While a La Nina can be less damaging than an El Nino, severe La Ninas are also linked to floods, droughts and hurricanes. The Australia's bureau's individual models still showed a large spread between neutral and La Nina scenarios, the bureau said. As a result of the variances, the agency kept the chance of La Nina at 50 percent. The bureau said El Nino-related climate indicators have eased over the last two weeks but remain above neutral levels. (Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Ed Davies)
By Philip Scipio

NEW YORK, April 26 (IFR) - Matt Mallgrave joined Credit Suisse as its new head of US flow trading, according to an internal memo.

Mallgrave joins from Goldman Sachs after an 18-year career with the bank, most recently as a managing director and head of Americas cash high touch trading.

He has worked across regions and sectors, managing Delta One trading in Hong Kong and as a technology, media and telecoms block trader.

He will help Credit Suisse grow its flow trading platform and deploy it across the bank's client base. Mallgrave will be based in New York and oversee high touch cash trading and the program trading businesses.

Mallgrave will have joint oversight of the Delta One trading desk at Credit Suisse with Balaji Gopalakrishnan.

(Reporting by Philip Scipio)
(Citigroup, Smith & Williamson LLP, Duff & Phelps)

April 26 (Reuters) - The following financial services industry appointments were announced on Tuesday. To inform us of other job changes, email moves@thomsonreuters.com.

CITIGROUP INC

The bank has confirmed that Stuart Field will join the bank from Credit Suisse as managing director in its UK corporate broking team.

DEUTSCHE BANK AG

The bank named Greg Sommer and John Anos as co-heads of its natural resources group, according to an internal memo obtained by IFR.

M&G INVESTMENTS LTD

The asset manager appointed Taro Shiroyama to the newly created role of managing director, institutional business development in Japan.

STANDARD LIFE INVESTMENTS

The investment management firm, a part of Standard Life Plc , appointed Neil Slater as chief executive and representative director and Mikifumi Watanabe as vice chairman of its newly opened office in Tokyo.

SMITH & WILLIAMSON LLP

The UK-based financial services provider appointed John Cooney as a partner.

SAXO BANK

The trading and investment firm appointed Jeff Zorek to the newly created role of chief operating officer of global sales.

DUFF & PHELPS

Manish Das has joined the complex asset solutions business at Duff & Phelps, the advisory firm that has been appointed as administrator to ailing retailer BHS, IFR reported.

(Compiled by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru)
(Adds earlier personnel moves, additional information.)

By Kristen Haunss and Olivia Oran

NEW YORK, April 26 (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley has named Ed Bayliss and John Gally to lead corporate trading in North America, which includes investment-grade, high-yield, index and leveraged loan trading, according to an internal memo.

A Morgan Stanley spokesperson confirmed the contents of the memo to Thomson Reuters LPC and declined further comment.

"Both Ed and John have proven themselves to be market leaders in their crafts and will put our franchise in the best position to thrive going forward," Pat Haskell, head of North America credit complex trading, which includes credit, securitized products and munis, wrote in the memo.

Loan trading volume fell to US$628bn in 2015 compared to US$647.3bn in 2014, according to Markit data. The average daily trading volume for US high-yield bonds was US$10.5bn during the last three months of 2015, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) data.

The moves are the latest in a series of personnel shuffles in the bank's trading division as the firm reshapes the unit.

In February, Steve Zamsky, who previously headed credit at the Wall Street firm, became the chief operating officer of fixed income globally, replacing Steve D'Antonio.

Other moves included Jakob Horder, who became head of European fixed income and commodities, and Senad Prusac who took on a new role as global head of macro trading, and added rates to his responsibility.

Morgan Stanley said late last year it was cutting 25 percent of its fixed-income jobs because increased regulation made trading bonds less profitable for Wall Street firms. In January, it promoted former equities executive Sam Kellie-Smith to run fixed income.

(Reporting by Kristen Haunss and Olivia Oran; editing By Jon Methven)
LONDON (Reuters) - MPs have ordered EDF executives to appear in Parliament for a second time in three months, ramping up pressure on the French utility over its delay in making a decision to build the 18 billion pound Hinkley Point C nuclear plant. EDF last week delayed making a final decision on the project until after its May 12 shareholder meeting to allow time to consult its works council. The head of a British parliamentary committee on energy said he wants EDF executives to appear before the group, likely in late May, to explain the delay. Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of EDF's British unit EDF Energy, spoke to the same committee on March 23 and told MPs France's economy minister expected an investment decision would be made in early May. "At that hearing we said that we would call them back in if that timetable slipped again and that's what we are doing now," Angus MacNeil, chair of the committee, said in a statement. He said he was concerned that the project's cancellation would have huge implications for Britain's energy security and emissions reduction targets. EDF Energy declined to comment. Over the past two years, several decision deadlines have come and gone. A source close to the French economy minister told Reuters a new deadline could be two to four months away. (Reporting by Karolin Schaps; editing by Jason Neely)
Bernie Sanders Morning Joe

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday rejected claims that continuing his bid for the Democratic nomination is hurting the party.

Mika Brzezinski, a co-host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," pointedly asked Sanders whether he was hurting Hillary Clinton's chances going into the general election, citing claims from Clinton supporters.

Sanders chuckled at the suggestion, claiming that his campaign is "turning around millions of young people" and "getting them into the Democratic Party."

He cited a Harvard Institute of Politics survey, which found he was the only candidate to be viewed favorably by 18-to-29 year-olds, to back up his claims.

"So, I don't think we're hurting the party," Sanders continued. "I think a vigorous debate on the important issues facing the American people is not only exactly what democracy is about  at the end of the day, it creates more political interest, and when voter turnout is high, progressives and Democrats win elections."

Sanders also pushed back on suggestions that there was no path forward for his campaign, given Clinton's huge win in the New York primary last week.

"First of all, I do not accept that there is no path forward," Sanders said. "Let's not count our chickens before they are hatched."

Sanders pointed to the five contests on Tuesday  Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Maryland. He also brought up California, where he is gaining on Clinton in the polls before the state's primary on June 7.

"I think all people in this country have a right to participate, to determine who the Democratic nominee will be and what the agenda will be," Sanders said. "And I think it will be very healthy for democracy and the Democratic Party when we have the debate  the platform debates, the policy debates, at the convention."

Watch Sanders' 'Morning Joe' appearance below:

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Descendants of the swashbuckling British sailors and Tahitian women immortalised in the "Mutiny on the Bounty" movies have petitioned the United Nations to prevent what many consider an Australian takeover.

Norfolk Island, 1,500 kilometres (900 miles) east of the Australian coast and settled by the descendants of Fletcher Christian and other Bounty mutineers in 1856, has governed itself since 1979.

But it is effectively bankrupt and Canberra last year introduced legislation to scrap the Australian territory's parliament and replace it with a new regional council under Australian law.

It is due to take full effect on July 1.

Many are unhappy with the move and the Norfolk Island People for Democracy (NIPFD) lodged a petition at the United Nations on Monday to "have its parliament and self-government restored".

It was unclear how many of the 2,300-strong population signed the document that was delivered by leading human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who said there were consequences for the islanders.

"They will be forced to sing Advance Australia Fair over their preferred national anthem, which is God Save The Queen," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"They won't be able to compete under their own flag at the Commonwealth Games, they will have to join an Australian team."

The NIPFD said the petition demonstrated they "do not accept the perpetuation of injustice against the wishes of the majority of the governed on Norfolk Island".

Lisle Snell, a former chief minister of the tiny outcrop, which is eight kilometres long by five kilometres wide (five miles by three miles), said their proposal was not a declaration of independence.

"It's a declaration to seek listing on the decolonisation committee of 24 in New York to give the Norfolk Island the right to self-determination in free association with Australia," she told the ABC, referring to the UN body that deals with self-determination and decolonisation issues.

Story continues

Under Australian rule, personal and business tax will be introduced from July, and residents will in return be able to access social security, healthcare benefits and services enjoyed by other Australians.

The Australian government has previously said it was not sustainable to ask a small community to deliver local, state and federal services.

Most of the core population are descendants of the mutineers who set Captain William Bligh adrift from the British warship the Bounty when they famously fell in love with the South Seas, and its women, in 1789.

The mutiny gained such a romantic gloss that chief mutineer Christian has been portrayed by a series of Hollywood heart-throbs over the years, including Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando and Mel Gibson.

Christian and eight other mutineers first made their home on Pitcairn Island with a group of Tahitian women, but their descendants moved nearly 6,000 kilometres to Norfolk Island in 1856 when Pitcairn became too small for them.

Queen Victoria granted them the right to settle in the abandoned former penal colony.
By Aung Hla Tun and Timothy Mclaughlin YANGON (Reuters) - A Myanmar court on Tuesday jailed a former monk and leader of the 2007 anti-junta uprising for six months with hard labor on immigration charges, a member of his defense team said, but he was likely to be released soon because of time already served. The sentence came amid widespread excitement that has followed the release and dropping of charges against more than 100 political prisoners since Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy took power earlier this month. Nyi Nyi Lwin, better known as Gambira, was arrested in January for illegally entering Myanmar from neighboring Thailand. He has been held without bail since his arrest at a prison in Mandalay, Myanmar's second largest city. Myo Min Zaw, Gambira's assistant defense lawyer, said the Mandalay court sentenced Gambira to six months in jail with hard labor, but that the sentence would be reduced because of time served. "Since my client has already served several months in jail during the trial, he has only a month or two to serve. So we're not going to appeal against the verdict," Myo Min Zaw said. Gambira was freed from prison during a 2012 general amnesty, a year after the junta handed power to a semi-civilian government, following 49 years of direct rule of the Southeast Asian nation. Since his release, Gambira has divided his time between Myanmar and Thailand, but Myanmar authorities have re-arrested him several times, in what his family and rights groups have described as continued harassment for his criticism of the government. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a rights groups that supports and monitors political prisoners in Myanmar, called the charges "trumped-up" in a post on Twitter following the sentencing. "U Gambira's case reeks of the ugly political prosecutions of discarded military juntas," Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. In 2007, Gambira emerged as a leading figure in a mass protest over living conditions and the oppressive rule of then-dictator Than Shwe that was dubbed the Saffron Revolution. The government cracked down harshly in response, opening fire on protesters and sweeping up those who took part. A report from the United Nations found that at least 31 people were killed by security forces and thousands arrested. Gambira's prison term of 63 years for his role in the protest turned him into one of Myanmar's most prominent political prisoners. Members of his family were also arrested. While in detention, Gambira was repeatedly beaten and tortured, he and rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have said. (Editing by Nick Macfie)
Sagar Bhanushali

Hyundai has unveiled the Verna concept at the ongoing Beijing Motor Show. As you may have guessed by looking at it, this new concept is in near-production spec and will pretty much shape the next-gen Verna.

The Verna concept has been conceived using Hyundais Fluidic Sculpture 2.0 design concept, meaning it doesnt really look a whole lot different compared to the current model. Hyundai designers, in fact, have taken an evolutionary approach and blended in modern age cues for the makeover.

The concept features a massive hexagonal grille, sharply styled headlights and a rather busy looking front bumper complete with multiple chrome and silver accents. While the side profile is pretty much unchanged, the rear-end features beautifully detailed wraparound taillights and a stubby boot lid.

While there are no details whatsoever on the engine and drivetrain bits, Hyundai will reveal the full specifications nearer to the official global launch later this year. As for the Indian market, Hyundai is likely to launch the next-gen Verna sometime next year.

Image source_ mail.ru

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The next-generation engines that NASA is counting on to power missions to an asteroid and Mars will begin taking shape soon.

The space agency has awarded California-based company Aerojet Rocketdyne a $67 million, 36-month contract to design, build and test an advanced, superefficient solar electric propulsion (SEP) system. These new engines should have a profound impact on the future of spaceflight, NASA officials said.

"We basically are building a new drive train that enables whole new platforms for deep-space exploration," Bryan Smith, director of the Space Flight Systems Directorate at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Ohio, said during a news briefing Thursday (April 21). [Electric Vehicles to Explore Deep Space (Photo Gallery)]

SEP systems convert solar power to electricity, then use this electricity to accelerate ions out of a nozzle, generating thrust. Engineers have been developing SEP technology for more than half a century, and such ion thrusters have been used on multiple spacecraft over the years, including NASA's Dawn probe, which is currently orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres.

SEP engines are much more efficient than traditional chemical rockets, requiring less fuel to travel a given distance. However, ion engines generate less thrust than standard rockets do, so it generally takes SEP-powered craft quite a bit longer to get from Point A to Point B in space.

NASA said it wants Aerojet Rocketdyne to give ion engines more oomph, up to twice the thrust capacity of currently available SEP systems. The agency plans to use the advanced ion engines on a variety of missions, including its project to pluck a boulder off a near-Earth asteroid and drag the piece into orbit around the moon. There, astronauts will visit the rock.

The more powerful SEP system should also aid NASA's plan to put boots on Mars by the end of the 2030s, agency officials said. Such engines would still be too slow for crewed Red Planet missions (which would likely employ traditional, chemical propulsion), but they would allow cheaper and more efficient transport of the large amounts of cargo and infrastructure required to support astronauts, Smith said.

Story continues

SEP systems "allow you to either step down in launch-vehicle class, or increase cargo," he said.

NASA aims to launch the robotic asteroid-capture probe by 2020 or 2021. The new SEP system should be ready to go by then, if all goes according to plan, agency officials have said. (The astronaut visit to the redirected boulder, using NASA's Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket, will occur in 2025 or 2026.)

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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Nick Jonas and Demi Lovato have canceled a pair of North Carolina shows on their joint tour to protest the state's passing of the controversial House Bill 2 (HB2), also known as the "bathroom bill."

What It's Like to Use a Public Bathroom While Trans

"After much thought and deliberation, Nick and I have decided to cancel our shows in Raleigh and Charlotte," Lovato said in a statement to GLAAD. "We know the cancellation of these shows is disappointing to our fans, but we trust that you will stand united with us against this hateful law."

The duo was scheduled to perform in Charlotte on June 30th and Raleigh on July 2nd. "One of our goals for the Honda Civic Tour: Future Now has always been to create an atmosphere where every single attendee feels equal, included, and accepted for who they are," Lovato added.

"North Carolina's discriminatory HB2 law is extremely disappointing, and it takes away some of the LGBT community's most basic rights and protections. But we will not allow this to stop us from continuing to make progress for equality and acceptance."

Jonas and Lovato join Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Ringo Starr, Boston and more artists who have canceled North Carolina concerts until Governor Patrick McCrory fully repeals HB2. Other acts  like Mumford & Sons, Cyndi Lauper, Alabama Shakes and Father John Misty  have carried on with North Carolina shows, with proceeds from those gigs benefitting organizations in the state actively fighting the bill.

While those artists have opted to play North Carolina shows in order to raise money for local groups fighting HB2 and bring attention to the discriminatory bill, GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis supported Jonas and Lovato's decision to cancel their shows.

"Demi Lovato and Nick Jonas continue to be fearless advocates for LGBT equality and acceptance," Ellis said in a statement. "By taking a firm stand against North Carolina's discriminatory HB2 law, they're sending a clear message to fans and lawmakers alike: hate should never be tolerated."

Related
Abuja (AFP) - Nigeria needs to step up security to stem a rise in incidents of piracy and communal clashes, as well as the continued threat from Boko Haram insurgents, Defence Minister Mansur Muhammad Dan-Ali said Tuesday.

The minister, who is also a retired brigadier general, told a government-sponsored seminar that "all security agencies in Nigeria have been called upon to crush and deter the threats."

A statement reporting his comments said there would be continued support for all agencies, particularly those battling the Boko Haram insurgency in the country's northeast, which has claimed about 20,000 lives since 2009.

Ship hijackings meanwhile have become more frequent since President Muhammadu Buhari last year announced he was winding down an amnesty to former militants in the oil-rich Niger delta region.

Dirk Steffen, maritime security director at the Denmark-based Risk Intelligence firm, told AFP on Tuesday that some 40 vessels have been attacked by pirates inside and outside Nigerian territorial waters since the beginning of this year.

Clashes over grazing too have multiplied, with the latest attack on Monday by gunmen believed to be ethnic Fulani killing at least seven people in a farming community in southeast Enugu state, police said on Tuesday.

Local media however put the death toll at between 20 and 48 with scores of homes destroyed. Nigeria's police chief Solomon Arase said riot troops have been deployed to the affected Agatu area to restore peace.

In February, hundreds of people were reportedly killed in clashes between mostly Muslim Fulani herders and predominantly Christian farmers in Agatu district of Benue state.
By Chijioke Ohuocha LAGOS (Reuters) - Late rain in Nigeria this year is helping cocoa trees to flower, raising hopes of a good harvest in the world's fourth biggest grower, after dry weather last year hurt output, farmers and analysts said. Farmer Bojor Atangba has been spraying his trees to protect cocoa flowers from insects and clearing weeds to boost output since the rains started, adding that he wanted to produce enough to sell at record high prices in Nigeria. "We're hopeful that the harvest this year will be better than last year," said Atangba, who owns a 15-hectare cocoa farm in the southeast producing region of Cross Rivers state. A mix of rainfall and sunshine in the two main cocoa areas of Ondo state and Cross Rivers this year have helped pod formation but there are fears that too much rain may allow disease to spread, hurting bean quality, farmers say. Farmers expect the late rains to affect bean weight for the mid-crop which could be around 270-280 grammes, compared with average weight of around 300 grammes. Harvesting for the mid-crop could start around June or July, farmers say, as cocoa trees were still flowering in April. The late rains could see the main-crop extend to November. Last year dry weather caused a poor harvest, forcing the Cocoa Association of Nigeria to cut its output forecast by 7 percent to 260,000 tonnes. However, the government expects cocoa output of up to 350,000 tonnes this year. "The weather is very favourable. If it continues this way for the next couple of months, we would have a good harvest this year compared to last year," said cocoa analyst Robo Adhuse. Adhuse said farmers in Ondo state were still receiving free seeds from the government to boost output. But they were waiting for promised policies aimed at the sector, whose growth is seen as vital to offset a slump in oil revenue, one year after President Muhammadu Buhari took office. However, farmers have invested in inputs and agricultural practices, Adhuse said, because farmgate prices in Africa's biggest economy have been rising. They hit an all-time high of 900,000 naira per tonne this month against 450,000 naira a year ago, thanks also to a weaker naira. Most raw beans are usually destined for Asia and Europe, with only a small portion consumed at home. Now high prices is putting domestic demand at risk as local processors, fighting for survival as working capital needs rise, store only what they can grind immediately, analysts say. ($1 = 198.0000 naira) (Editing by David Evans)
(Corrects to three-week low from three-week high, in paragraph 3)

By Joshua Hunt

TOKYO, April 26 (Reuters) - Japanese stocks fell on Tuesday as the yen retreated from a three-week low against the U.S. dollar, pruning the profit outlook for major exporters.

The Nikkei share average slipped 0.5 percent to end the day at 17,353.28.

Uncertainty over whether the Bank of Japan will deliver on expectations of further stimulus at its April 27-28 policy meeting pulled the yen back from a three-week low and dimmed the profit outlook for Japanese exporters.

Home appliance and electronics exporter Panasonic Corp ended the day 1.4 percent lower while auto exporters Toyota Motor Corp and Nissan Motor Co Ltd declined 0.7 percent and 1 percent, respectively.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp plunged 9.6 percent after the Nikkei business daily reported the automaker used fuel economy testing methods which were not compliant with Japanese regulations since the 1990s. Citing unnamed sources, the Nikkei said the testing methods may have been used on dozens of models.

The automaker's stock has lost nearly half its value since it closed at 864 yen on April 19, the day before it announced it had overstated the fuel economy of four domestic models and used testing methods which were not compliant with domestic regulations going back at least to 2002.

Japan Steel Works Ltd bucked the day's weakness, soaring 12.7 percent after raising its profit outlook for the year through March 2016.

The broader Topix slid 0.7 percent to 1,391.69 and the JPX-Nikkei Index 400 fell 0.7 percent to 12,615.04.

(Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam (Photo: Yahoo Singapore)

Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam on Tuesday (26 April) said that the criticism by Singapore Democratic Party chief Chee Soon Juan about the upgrading plans for Bukit Batok was just bluster.

Chee, the SDPs candidate in the Bukit Batok by-election, had questioned the plans that were unveiled by Peoples Action Party candidate Murali Pillai, which include building more covered walkways and a park.

Its important that we begin to have an open process of making sure that we consult the residents on the things that we want to build and not take that decision away, not involve their input, Chee said in a Facebook video on Sunday.

Chee added that the PAP will always use these needs (of residents) as an election issue.

Tharman said he was puzzled by Chees comment as the SDP was not new to Bukit Batok. The party contested in the constituency in the General Election in 2015 and was on the ground quite early, he pointed out.

As such, SDP had the time to consult the residents and develop ideas for their own plans for the constituency, he said.

If they need more time, then say so I dont think theres anything wrong with that. But theres no need for all this bluster, Tharman said.

The DPM was speaking during a PAP press conference where Murali unveiled his manifesto for the by-election.

Muralis manifesto

In addition to the upgrading plans, Murali said that his manifesto would focus on several key areas, including more support for the elderly, the poor and the sandwiched class, and job creation.

PAPs Murali Pillai (Photo: Yahoo Singapore)

He said that the sandwiched class was having problems coping with the costs of caring for elderly in their families who needed long-term medical care or were in nursing homes.

For them, I think we can do more, Murali said. I believe the families from the sandwiched class should get higher grants to cope with the costs. Also, we can consider higher levels of Eldershield payouts.

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Murali said that he aims to establish a healthcare co-operative for the elderly to help reduce costs of certain healthcare consumables, as well as an additional senior care centre and a scheme to look after low-income elderly residents who live alone.

With the economic downturn, Murali said Bukit Batok residents are concerned about job security. He said that one of his goals in his manifesto will be a Job Placement Programme to help those who are affected by the slowdown.

Presently, we have an unemployment rate of about three per cent. But for a person who has lost his job he feels 100 per cent of the effect, Murali said.
From Popular Mechanics

North Korea just staged a second test of its submarine-launched ballistic missile. According to North Korean state media, the April 23 test was observed by ruler Kim Jong-un himself. The launch was conducted from North Korea's only ballistic missile submarine, Gorae ("Whale"), while submerged off the country's east coast. The underwater launch itself appears to have been a success, but the missile crashed shortly afterward into the Sea of Japan.

The missile, known as Pukkuksong-1 ("Polar Star"), is based on the obsolete Cold War-era R-27 ballistic missile. Kim Jong-un says the test means North Korea is "now capable of hitting the heads of the south (sic) Korean puppet forces and the US imperialists anytime as it pleases."



Interestingly, North Korean media mentioned that unlike the R-27, Pukkuksong-1 is a solid-fuel missile. Moving from liquid to solid fuel makes a missile safer to handle and more reliable, and ready to fire much more quickly.

This latest fire comes fast on the heels of a similar test back in December. That test was touted as a success, but analysis of the propaganda footage revealed that the footage was faked and that the Pukkuksong-1 missile exploded shortly after launch. The good news for the West is that the missile test failed-again. The bad news is that the missile actually flew a little while before exploding, about 18 miles, meaning North Korea is making progress.

The past six months have seen a dizzying number of nuclear and nuclear-related tests from the reclusive nation. Two weeks ago, North Korea tested a new road-mobile missile, the Musudan. The Musudan exploded immediately after launch in what a Pentagon spokesman described as a "fiery, catastrophic attempt" at a launch. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the launcher sustained damage.

In February, North Korea launched an earth observation satellite into orbit using an Unha-3 rocket. North Korea's space launch program is widely seen as a cover for ballistic (nuclear) missile research. North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, detonating an atomic device roughly half the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Meanwhile, preparations appear to be underway for a fifth nuclear test, as satellite photos appear to show tunneling at the country's Punggye-ri nuclear testing site. North Korea tests its nuclear weapons underground, in tunnels to prevent the release of radiation into the atmosphere.

Here's a North Korea news report on the test:
Oslo (AFP) - The Norwegian state will appeal an Oslo court ruling that mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik's solitary confinement in prison constitutes "inhuman" treatment, the government said on Tuesday.

"I have asked the attorney general to appeal the verdict," Justice Minister Anders Anundsen said in a statement.

Norway prides itself on a humane prison system aimed more at rehabilitation than punishment, and the April 20 verdict stunned observers.

The court found that the right-wing extremist, who has been held apart from other inmates for almost five years after killing 77 people in a gun and bomb rampage in 2011, has been subjected to "inhuman" and "degrading" treatment.

It said his "relative" isolation violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

But Anundsen said the state disagreed with that finding, and would in its appeal contest the court's interpretation of both the law and evidence.

The state's defence lawyer, attorney general Marius Emberland, has said he was "surprised" by the ruling and some relatives of the victims of Breivik's murderous rampage voiced dismay.

Breivik is serving a maximum 21-year sentence -- which can be extended if he is still considered dangerous -- for killing eight people in a bombing outside a government building in Oslo and then gunning down another 69, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Youth camp on the island of Utoya on July 22, 2011.

He enjoys comfortable conditions at the Skien Prison, with three cells at his disposal equipped with two showers, as well as two televisions, an Xbox, a Playstation, books and newspapers.

But he testified that his isolation regime was having negative effects on his health, citing headaches and concentration difficulties.

- Isolation is 'torture' -

The state "has been trying to kill me for five years," he said, describing his isolation as "torture".

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"I don't think many people would be able to survive as long as I have."

But doctors, psychiatrists and prison staff who examined him testified they had seen no major change in his physical or mental state due to jail conditions.

The state's lawyers had argued that his conditions fell "well within the limits of what is permitted" under the European convention, and were more comfortable than those of other prisoners.

Breivik, who testified in March that he was now a Nazi who had renounced violence, had also challenged restrictions on his mail and prison visits.

But Judge Helen Andenaes Sekulic ruled in favour of the state on that issue, finding that prison authorities had not violated his right to correspondence, guaranteed by Article 8 of the convention.

The state had argued those restrictions were necessary because he was "extremely dangerous", and were intended to prevent his supporters from carrying out future attacks.

"It was expected and understandable that the state would appeal, but we have to remember the pain that the attention causes for the bereaved," Lisbeth Kristine Royneland, the head of an association representing families of the victims, told AFP.

After the ruling, Breivik's lawyer Oystein Storrvik requested that his client's isolation be ended immediately.

But the warden of Skien Prison, Ole Kristoffer Borhaug, told AFP a day later that there would be no immediate changes to his prison routine.

Storrvik, who had previously said Breivik would not appeal the rulings that were not in his favour, said Tuesday that he and his client would now reconsider.

The state will send its formal appeal to the court by May 22 at the latest.

The date and location of the appeal hearing has not yet been decided.
Mauleon-Licharre (France) (AFP) - Let the scales fall from your eyes...

A French shoe manufacturer is urging fashionistas to take the plunge with what he claims is the world's first range of trout skin espadrille shoes.

Jean-Jacques Houyou has set out to persuade his compatriots that they should be wearing trout rather than merely eating them with a caper and black butter sauce.

The stack-heeled women's sandals in seven colours will go on sale in France this summer, selling for around 120 euros ($135) a pair.

Houyou has sourced salmon trout for the shoes -- whose skins he claims are particularly beautiful -- from the cold mountain streams of the renowned Banca valley in the foothills of the Pyrenees in the French Basque country.

All come the Goicoechea family's fish farm, whose trout are prized by gourmets.

And although his company is called Don Quichosse -- a play on Don Quixote -- Houyou insisted he was not tilting at watermills.

He admitted however that making the espadrilles was an "extremely exacting process, the most difficult thing is to find two skins with the same marks which makes each pair so original," he told AFP.

"Every pair is different because of the material itself," he said of the handmade shoes which are lined with goat skin.

Houyou has previously made Japanese-style sandals with salmon skin at his small factory in Mauleon, the centre of France's espadrille industry.

- Eco-friendly -

Most of his 10 shoemakers work in their homes turning out 20,000 pairs of espadrilles a year, which traditionally have soles made of jute.

But he has used cork to sole the trout skin shoes, which come with heels in two heights.

Espadrilles, often made of canvas, can trace their lineage back 4,000 years, and are still hugely popular summer shoes.

They are also much more eco-friendly than mass market footwear which is difficult, and sometimes almost impossible to recycle.

Several luxury shoe brands have also embraced what they term "fish leather" for their shoes, with the Spanish designer Manolo Blahnik once creating 800-euros-a-pair sandals for an "eco shoes" range.

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The Brazilian label Osklen has also had great success with it salmon skin Arpoador sneakers, which sell for $580.

It has previously made shoes from the skin of the Amazonian arapaima fish.

Fish skin boots have been worn for thousands of years by Inuit peoples, and fish skin shoes and handbags were common in Germany during World War II when cow leather ran out.

Environmentalists say that that countless tonnes of tannable fish skins are discarded every year because the public still worries wrongly that they might smell fishy.
The US National Transportation Safety Board has released new underwater video footage showing the discovery of the Voyage Data Recorder of the El Faro, a cargo ship that was lost at sea with all 33 crew members on October 1, 2015, after it sailed into Hurricane Joaquin.

This video shows the data recorder lying on the ocean floor next to the ships mast, according to the NTSB.

The El Faro was located in late October under more than 15,000 feet of water. The Voyage Data Recorder collects a multitude of data, including speed, location, hull stress, and radio communications from various sensors on board a vessel. It is built to withstand the most extreme marine incidents.

While Hurricane Joaquin is believed to be the cause of the vessel sinking, it is still not understood why the vessel ended up in the path of the storm, which has led to negligence lawsuits filed by families of the crew, according to a media report. Credit: YouTube/NTSBgov (National Transportation Safety Board)
Washington (AFP) - The number of foreign fighters entering Iraq and Syria has plummeted over the past year, a US general said Tuesday.

Major General Peter Gersten told Pentagon reporters that when he arrived in Baghdad about a year ago, between 1,500 and 2,000 foreign fighters were joining the Islamic State group's ranks each month.

"Now we have been fighting this enemy for a year, our estimates are down to 200 (per month) and we are actually seeing now an increase in the desertion rates of these fighters," Gersten said.

The general attributed the drop in part to the US-led coalition's continued attacks on the IS group's cash-storage facilities.

He said the coalition has carried out about 20 such strikes that have blown up as much as $800 million worth of cash, much of it stashed in houses.

"We are seeing a fracturing in their morale, we are seeing their inability to pay, we are seeing the inability to fight," Gersten claimed.

"We are watching them try to leave Daesh. In every single way, their morale is being broken," he added, using an Arabic abbreviation for the IS group.

Gersten declined to provide an estimate on the overall size of the IS force, but this month Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed the number was at its lowest ebb since the United States began monitoring the group in 2104.

That number has previously been estimated at between 20,000 and 31,500 foreign and local fighters.

In addition to hitting their cash stores, US planes and drones have targeted IS oil trucks and wells in a bid to further diminish their financial resources.

The United States has since August 2014 led a coalition attacking the IS group in Iraq and Syria.
NEW YORK, April 25 (Reuters) - Young people who joined the New York City workforce during and after the 2007-2009 recession earn less than earlier generations, a disadvantage that could last their entire working lives, a report by city officials said.

Academic research shows those joining the workforce during a recession can wind up in a lower paid and less prestigious job for years, and could even be less happy and less healthy than those who joined during a strong economy.

The report from the city Comptroller's office goes further, suggesting that a national focus on public sector "deficit containment" and "fiscal restraint" since 2010 was "imposed at great cost to the generation entering adulthood in the early years of the 21st Century."

Constraints on these workers may not fade as future generations enter the workforce, with many potentially facing a "wrenching readjustment" to a new normal in which career opportunities are more restricted, the report said.

As a counterbalance, the report suggests policies that disproportionately benefit young people such as raising minimum wages, keeping public universities affordable, cutting student debt, and creating more affordable housing.

The report on New York's "millennial" workers comes at a time of heated debate over income inequality and the ability of the U.S. economy to provide for young workers.

"Every generation is expected to do better than the last, but too many millennials are not getting a fair chance to make it in New York City," Comptroller Scott Stringer said in a statement on the generation defined by the report as those born between 1985 and 1996.

Millennials joined the city workforce when high-paying jobs in finance and law were drying up and lower paying jobs in hospitality and retail proliferated. As a result the cohort earns 20 percent less than earlier generations.

Average real incomes of employed 29-year olds in the city decreased from about $56,000 in 2000 to $50,300 in 2014, in what the report called a "fundamental deterioration of the earnings opportunities available to young workers."

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The new reality is an ill fit for millennials who are the most educated in the city's history and struggling with large student debt burdens.

Student debt held by millennials in New York City has reached about $14 billion, the report found, with graduates in New York State holding an average of $27,822 in 2014.

(Reporting by Edward Krudy; editing by Andrew Hay)
#Korean Air-Cebu incident Korean Air flight overruns Cebu runway, no injuries reported Korean Air Co. said Monday its flight KE631 with 173 people on board overran the runway while landing at Cebu International Airport in the Philippines a day earlier but no injuries...

#COVID-19 S. Korea's new COVID-19 infections continue on-week growth amid resurgence woes South Korea's new COVID-19 cases fell to below 15,000 on Monday, but the daily count recorded a marked rise from the previous week amid concerns over a virus resurgence in the wint...
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President Obama can make anything look great. Anything. Even a dorky VR headset.

At the Hannover Messe Industrial trade show in Hanover, Germany, Obama tried out a very special VR headset. How special? It had googly eyes on it. Yes, silly, adorable, googly eyes on the outside of the headset.

It's pretty clear Obama rocked this googly eyed VR headset like a boss.

SEE ALSO: VR headsets wouldn't be so nerdy if they looked like this

The VR headset was one of several new technologies he tried at the world's largest industrial trade show.

The headset, while not as advanced as the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, is a more sophisticated version of Google Cardboard.

IFM Electronic, the company that makes the headset, demoed a 3D picture that "looked like a color-coded heat map" taken from its world's smallest 3D camera, according to a White House report.

The company's CEO reportedly said Obama could use the headset, along with the camera, to "talk to his daughter virtually."

"It's a brave new world," Obama replied. Indeed, Obama. Indeed.

Image: Getty Images

Image: Getty Images

Image: Getty Images

Image: Getty Images

Image: AP
From Esquire

When we last brought you news of caucasian males of a certain age discussing Beyonce, the guys in question were mostly concerned with her effect on The Youth. She was tricking them into having sex, you see, and programming them to hate police officers. But Alex Jones has added a new freakout to the growing list: He believes that Beyonce is a tool of the Central Intelligence Agency, used by the government and corporate America to spread "deceptive" "propaganda" to the American people.

Jones' evidence for this is incredibly Jonesian: as usual, things you've never heard before are so obvious they don't need to be proven-or they "have video" or "have reported on it" or the perpetrators "have admitted to it," without any of this evidence ever actually being shown. The notion that No Child Left Behind-a Bush administration federal education program-was a globalist scheme to turn schools into propaganda mills in service of multinational corporate interests is demonstrated by showing the viewer a decade-old Democracy Now! headline. Good luck discerning how that relates to Beyonce.

Of course, there was still time to hock a knock-off Trump hat at the end:
It was a week where oil futures reached their highest levels of the year and natural gas settled above the psychologically important $2 threshold.

On the news front, Schlumberger Ltd. SLB kicked off the earnings season with a narrow miss, while smaller rival Halliburton Co. HAL postponed its release.

Overall, it was a good week for the sector. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rallied 4.7% to close at $43.73 per barrel, while natural gas prices jumped 12.5% to $2.14 per million Btu (MMBtu). (See the last Oil & Gas Stock Roundup here: Chevron Sells Wheatstone Gas, Carlyle Eyes Halliburton-Baker Hughes Assets.)

Oil prices moved north for a third straight week after a strike by oil workers in Kuwait disrupted supply eased the ill-effects from the failed Doha summit. Bullish comments from the IEA and continued decline in U.S. crude production also propped up the commodity. Things were further helped by the Baker Hughes report that showed another drop in oil-directed rigs  indicating a break in shale drilling activities  to the lowest level since November 2009.

Natural gas fared even better after warmer weather lifted prospects of the commoditys requirement for power burn.

Recap of the Weeks Most Important Stories

1. The worlds largest oilfield services provider Schlumberger Ltd. reported disappointing first-quarter 2016 results. The challenging market conditions (especially in North America, which has been the hardest hit during this downturn)  both in terms of pricing and activity  led to the underperformance.

Schlumberger  which closed the previously announced acquisition of oil drilling equipment maker Cameron International Corp. on Apr 1  reported adjusted earnings per share of 40 cents, a penny below the Zacks Consensus Estimate and way off the year-ago quarter earnings of $1.06. All groups  Reservoir Characterization, Drilling and Group  registered year-over-year fall in sales and income.

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Schlumberger said that it cut another 2,000 jobs during the first quarter, bringing the total layoffs to about 36,000 since the 2014 crude price collapse. (See More: Schlumberger Earnings Falter Amid Oil Crash, Cuts More Jobs.)

2. Another oilfield giant Halliburton Co. announced its decision to defer its first-quarter 2016 earnings conference call until May 3 to accommodate information related to the Baker Hughes Inc. merger  the deadline of which is Apr 30, 2016. The company was scheduled to report on Monday, Apr 25.

However, the company has come up with operating updates for the first quarter. In the JanMar period, Halliburton reported revenues of $4.2 billion, 40.8% lower than that the prior-year quarter figure but comfortably surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate.

The Houston-based company also said that it reduced headcount by more than 6,000 during the first quarter. In fact, following the weakness in oil prices since late 2014, the company cut almost one third of its jobs. (See More: Halliburton Postpones Q1 Earnings Call, Slashes 6K Jobs.)

3. British energy giant BP plc BP came out with better-than-expected first quarter numbers on higher production. The company reported adjusted earnings of 17 cents per ADS, contrary to the Zacks Consensus Estimate for a loss of 30 cents. However, sharply lower commodity prices and narrower refining margins meant that results deteriorated from year-ago levels.

BP expects second-quarter production to be lower sequentially, reflecting PSA entitlement impact, seasonal turnaround and maintenance activity. In the downstream space the company expects a significantly higher level of turnaround activity, particularly in the U.S., and some seasonal improvement in industry refining margins.

4. Integrated oil major Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM announced that production of oil has started at the Julia oil field in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM)  that too under budget and ahead of schedule. With the first well online, the company expects the second well to go onstream in the next couple of weeks. The Maersk Viking drillship is currently drilling a third well that is expected to come online in early 2017.

Discovered in 2007, the Julia field has five leases in the ultra-deepwater Walker Ridge area of the GoM, which is 265 miles southwest of New Orleans. The resource is located 30,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. The ownership of the Julia unit is equally shared between the operators, Exxon Mobil and Norways Statoil ASA. The oil field includes six wells with subsea tie-backs to Chevron Corp.s production facility Jack & St. Malo. (See More: Exxon Mobil Commences Production at Julia Oil Field in GoM.)

5. Independent natural gas operator Southwestern Energy Co. SWN reported narrower-than-expected first quarter loss as increased production growth more than offset lower price realizations.

During the reported quarter, the companys oil and gas production grew 2% year over year to 237 billion cubic feet equivalent (Bcfe), driven by increased Northeast Appalachia volumes. However, the companys average realized gas price for the quarter, including hedges, fell to $1.48 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf) from $2.99 per Mcf in the year-ago period. Oil was sold at $18.65 per barrel, significantly down from the year-earlier level of $30.90 per barrel. Natural gas liquids were sold at $4.98 per barrel, a steep decline from $10.35 in the year-ago period. (See More: Southwestern Energy Q1 Loss Narrower than Expected.)

Price Performance

The following table shows the price movement of the major oil and gas players over the past week and during the last 6 months.

Company Last Week Last 6 Months XOM +1.76% +7.52% CVX +2.58% +14.35% COP +2.43% -12.62% OXY +2.46% +4.80% SLB +1.12% +2.10% RIG +3.84% -32.01% VLO +1.65% -0.21% TSO +4.49% -16.35%

Over the course of last week, The Energy Select Sector SPDR was up 2.63% on signs of slowing production. Consequently, investors witnessed a buying spree in most large companies. The best performer was San Antonio-based refiner Tesoro Corp. TSO that added 4.49% to its stock price.

But longer-term, over the last 6 months, the sector tracker is down 2.89%. Offshore drilling giant Transocean Ltd. RIG was the main casualty during this period, experiencing a 32.01% price decrease.

Whats Next in the Energy World?

Apart from the usual releases in this week  the U.S. government data on oil and natural gas  market participants will be closely tracking a series of top-tier economic readings, including those on housing, durable orders, personal spending and GDP. However, the 2016 Q1 earnings remain the primary focus this week, with some S&P 500 members coming out with quarterly results.

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Oklahoma state Rep. Todd Russ stepped in a steaming pile of controversy last week when he claimed that Native Americans are "predisposed to alcoholism" and would be disproportionately impacted by laws expanding liquor sales in the state.

The representative's suggestion that "process alcohol differently" came during a debate on the House floor about a to the state constitution that would allow wine and to be sold in convenience stores.

Russ apologized for his comments in an email to Indian Country Today Media Network on Monday.

"I apologize for the unintended pain I have caused Native Americans by my statement that was based upon outdated information," he wrote. "I hope this misstatement has opened the dialogue that ensures the most accurate and current information is communicated."

Oklahoma House of Representatives.

An overwhelming body of research repudiates Russ' original claim. One study published by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found no correlation between alcohol abuse among Native Americans and how their bodies process alcohol. Another from the New England Journal of Medicine drew a similar conclusion, finding that whites and Native metabolize alcohol similarly.

But the myth persists nonetheless. "It's easier to pathologize people than it is to think critically," Jessica Elm, a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington who studies Native American health, told the Verge in October.

It is true, however, that Native Americans are significantly more likely to die of alcohol-related causes  for instance, traffic deaths and liver disease  than other groups. But this isn't because they are genetically predisposed to alcoholism. Public health researchers have linked high alcohol abuse among Native Americans to a variety of factors, including high rates of depression  Native American youth have the highest suicide rates in the nation among those of the same age  and endemic poverty.

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But instead of treating this as a public health problem and seeking ways to address it, lawmakers like Russ Native American people themselves.

To help address this public health problem, policymakers must ensure Native American communities have the resources to treat substance abuse and underlying mental health issues. But even that may fall short of addressing the root of the problem, which stems from social forces that require systemic change.

Here is a transcript of Russ' full apology:

I apologize for the unintended pain I have caused Native Americans by my statement that was based upon outdated information. I hope this misstatement has opened the dialogue that ensures the most accurate and current information is communicated. Opportunities to be more informed are welcomed as it gives me the knowledge to make the most educated decisions when I vote for legislation.



Substance abuse has no preference of race, gender, ethnicity, religion or socioeconomic status. I have been personally affected by the misery caused from substance abuse by loved one's myself. As a young boy, I witnessed the sadness of alcoholism with my Grandfather whom I loved dearly. As a result of my own family's predisposition to alcoholism, I latter [sic] witnessed the direct and indirect effects of alcohol on four of my five siblings. Unfortunate choices that started with alcohol bombarded those I loved the most. I am sad to say that we have since buried two of my younger brothers.



My life has been ripped and torn and broken from the dark nature of alcohol from my childhood. Because of my personal experiences, I am passionate about derailing efforts of the intoxicating liquor and wine industries to make alcohol even more readily available with fewer restrictions. In my concern for the unsuspecting public and other social groups, I let my emotions cloud my thoughts and words. I am very sorry and truly meant no hurt or harm.



I was elected to represent a beautifully diverse district and I work diligently to ensure everyone is represented. I take and will continue to take opportunities to immerse myself in the diversity so that I build relationships that strengthen the people whom I serve.



Again, thank you for the opportunity to share my intentions and my heart.



Rep. Todd Russ





h/t Indian Country Today Media Network
Cancer cells

Using nanoparticles to attack tumors has long been seen as a promising approach to treating cancer.

The goal for nanoparticles is mainly to be used in drug delivery. In people with cancer, the cancer cells often get good at recognizing the mechanisms the body is using to attack them. By throwing in a non-human element, the hope is to get the nanoparticle into the tumor so it can deliver medicine that will attack the cancer.

The treatment has succeeded in some limited cell and animal models. And its gained some celebrity backing: Futurist Ray Kurzweil, for example, wants to see programmable nanobots fighting off tumors, not just nanoparticles that carry a drug, Despite these gains, not a whole lot has translated into actual treatments in human clinical trials.

In a paper published Tuesday in Nature Reviews, researchers from the University of Toronto and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston looked at existing studies on nanoparticle delivery to tumors. In the past 10 years, they found, only 0.7% of the nanoparticles typically get into the solid tumor.

Nanoparticles are super tiny particles that are made out of either organic or inorganic (think gold, silica, etc.) materials. And they face a lot of challenges on their way to getting into tumors. For example, the researchers noted, the nanoparticles are often escorted out of the body, diffused around the body, or stick to the surface of a protein instead of going within it.

To counter that small amount of nanoparticles actually making it to the tumor, one option is to pump more nanoparticles into the body. But then, the researchers pointed out, there are problems with toxicity in the body (not to mention costs associated with pumping more nanoparticles into the body).

Going forward, the researchers suggested a focus on how the body filters out or accumulates the nanoparticles before they reach the tumor, as well as learning more about how exactly the nanoparticles interact with the tumor, now that there's been positive results. That way, the hope is to program the nanoparticles just the right way so they get to where they're supposed to go.

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NOW WATCH: 4.2 million Americans could be displaced by rising sea levels this century  see if your county is at risk





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Santiago (AFP) - It's back to the drawing board for what was to have been Chile's first drawbridge: its traffic decks were installed backwards.

The complete re-do will cost $15 million, on top of the $30 million that the flawed first span over the Cau Cau River cost, the government said Tuesday.

The bridge connects the southern city of Valdivia with Isla Teja.

The goof, discovered in January 2014 with inauguration day approaching, became a laugh fest for social media users.

The bridge is now one of Valdivia's main tourist attractions.

Drawbridges arc slightly from the center to keep water from forming puddles on them. As the two sections of the Chilean one were set up backwards, the effect was the opposite.

But that was not the only mistake. The equipment that raises the bridge to let ships pass also has to be changed.

"As far as citizens are concerned, we have to replace the bridge completely," Public Works Minister Alberto Undurraga said Tuesday.

Chile has blamed the bridge's builder, the Spanish infrastructure firm Azvi, and said it will make the company pay for the mistake.

Chile will seek bids next year for a new bridge design, the minister said.
Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Palestinians on Tuesday inaugurated a giant statue of Nelson Mandela donated by the South African city of Johannesburg to their political capital in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The six-metre (20-foot) two-tonne bronze statue was a gift from Johannesburg with which Ramallah is twinned.

"I think that Nelson Mandela himself would have been extremely proud of what has been done today," Parks Tau, the mayor of the South African city, told AFP.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas also attended the ceremony at the renamed Nelson Mandela Square in the Al-Tireh district.

Mandela, who died in 2013, was South Africa's first president after the era of apartheid, a regime of segregation that the Palestinians accuse Israel of also imposing.

He was an ardent supporter of the Palestinian cause and a champion for Middle East peace.

Ramallah several days ago installed huge posters celebrating the South African leader bearing his comment: "We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians".

Ramallah mayor Mussa Hadid said the statue "symbolises the shared suffering" of the South African and Palestinian peoples.

During its journey to the pedestal in the West Bank, the statue was retained by Israeli customs for 30 days, as the Palestinian Authority does not control its own borders.

"Nelson Mandela, who had already spent 28 years in the jails of the apartheid regime in South Africa, was again detained for 30 days by the Israeli authorities," Hadid said.

Tau said Israeli customs had sought duty "equivalent to 10 times the price of the statue", but that this was not paid.

Hadid said the statue sent "a clear message to the Israeli coloniser and occupier -- that we are closer to freedom than you think".
The Peabody Awards today announced the Documentary and Education program honorees, the final nine winners named as part of its inaugural Peabody 30.

They include documentaries Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (HBO), Listen To Me Marlon (Showtime), What Happened, Miss Simone? (Netflix) and ISIS In Afghanistan (PBS/WGBH).

The Peabody Awards are based at the University of Georgias Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. A full list of winners is available at peabodyawards.com.

Here are the Documentary and Education winners of The Peabody 30:

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (HBO)

Jigsaw Productions, HBO Documentary Films and Sky Atlantic

More than an expose, more like a demolition, Alex Gibneys film about the history and hardball tactics of the Church of Scientology draws its persuasive power from letters and documents contradicting the fabrications of its late founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and from blistering testimonials by prominent ex-church officials and former members about abuse and corruption.

How to Dance in Ohio (HBO)

HBO Documentary Films, Gidalya Pictures and Blumhouse

Filmmaker Alexandra Shiva focuses on three young women in Columbus, Ohio, who are living with autism and facing the daunting prospect of their first spring formal. The power and beauty of this closely observed, intimate documentary is that it doesnt patronize its subjects or its viewers with easy sentimentality.

Independent Lens: Indias Daughter (PBS)

Assassin Films, BBC Storyville, UK-INDIA, and Tathagat Films in association with Gamini Plyatissa Foundation, Vital Voices Global Partnership, DR, Plus Pictures Aps, CBC News Network, SVT, IKON, RTS, SRF and RAI

The internationally infamous 2012 gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old medical student, in Delhi is the impetus for this unflinching, deeply unflattering examination of the misogyny embedded in Indian society.

ISIS in Afghanistan (PBS/WGBH)

FRONTLINE

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Making the most of a difficult, dangerous assignment, Afghani journalist Najibullah Quraishi and his producing team got deep into ISIS-held territory to document its growing power and appeal in Afghanistan, its conflict with the Taliban and, most unnerving, its indoctrination and weapons training of children as young as 5.

Listen to Me Marlon (Showtime)

Showtime Documentary Films Presents, A Passions Pictures Production, Cutler Productions

Thanks to an imaginative director, a collection of audio tapes that Marlon Brando recorded over the years and a voice-synched, holograph-like image of the late, great Method actor, we get to hear Brando share deeply personal thoughts about how he became the man and artist he was. Its strange and wonderful, like a CGI resurrection.

Night Will Fall (HBO)

Spring Films, Angel TV, and Ratpac Documentary Films in association with HBO Documentary Films

Night Will Fall deftly weaves two stories into one documentary tale  one about the atrocities of the Nazi concentration camps, the other about the changing policies of postwar reconstruction that pulled atrocity images in and out of public view. The film artfully shows us an obscure moment in Holocaust history that attests to the enduring power of visual documentation.

POV: Dont Tell Anyone (No Le Digas a Nadie) (PBS)

A co-production of Portret Films, American Documentary | POV And Independent Television Service (ITVS) in association with Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) with major funding provided by The Corporation For Public Broadcasting (CPB)

An activist on behalf of young, undocumented immigrants like herself, 24-year-old Angy Rivera, a New York City resident since she was 4, is the eloquent focus of this documentary. What makes it even more memorable is how filmmaker Mikaela Shwer uses Riveras story to illuminate the plight of untold numbers of immigrants living in secrecy and fear.

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (HBO)

Hit the Ground Running

Andrew Jareckis seductive true-crime documentary takes viewers through a dark looking glass, down a rabbit hole and into the mind of Robert Durst, a real-estate tycoons heir and an elusive suspect in three murders, who tells a self-serving tale but then, stunningly, offhandedly and on-microphone, seems to confess.

What Happened, Miss Simone? (Netflix)

A Radical Media Production in association with Moxie Firecracker for Netflix

Tracing Nina Simones rise from classical piano prodigy to jazz/pop star, civil rights activist and expatriate, while showcasing her brilliance without dodging her mental-health problems and explosive personal life, this finely-crafted documentary is both a celebration and a compassionate post-mortem.

Related stories

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Peabody Awards Unveils First Group Of "Peabody 30" News Winners

Peabody Awards To Honor David Letterman & Jon Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon has found the root cause of stability issues with the radar software being tested for the F-35 stealth fighter jet made by Lockheed Martin Corp, U.S. Defense Acquisition Chief Frank Kendall told a congressional hearing on Tuesday. Last month the Pentagon said the software instability issue meant the sensors had to be restarted once every four hours of flying. Kendall and Air Force Lieutenant General Christopher Bogdan, the program executive officer for the F-35, told a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing in written testimony that the cause of the problem was the timing of software messages from the sensors to the main F-35 computer. They added that stability issues had improved to where the sensors only needed to be restarted after more than 10 hours. We are cautiously optimistic that these fixes will resolve the current stability problems, but are waiting to see how the software performs in an operational test environment, the officials said in a written statement. The statement added that a team of experts from the Navy and Air Force has been created to develop recommendations to ensure the F-35 software is robust and resilient into the future. The F-35 program had hoped to declare the Air Force version of the high-tech fighter ready for combat by Aug. 1, but Bogdan said difficulties with the plane's Autonomic Logistics Information System meant "initial operational capability" would likely be delayed by about 60 days. The system is the plane's main information infrastructure, integrating its operations, maintenance, prognostics, supply chain, training and other data. Despite that likely delay, Bogdan said the Air Force F-35 would still reach its initial operating capability by the threshold date of Dec. 1. Lockheed is developing three models of the jet, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter, or Lightning II. The Marine Corps version of the plane declared its initial operating capability last summer, and the Navy is due to declare its IOC in 2018. Congress has limited funding to buy the Air Force version of the F-35 until Air Force Secretary Deborah James can certify that the planes being delivered by 2018 will have full combat capability. Bogdan told lawmakers that he was preparing to recommend to the secretary that she make that certification to Congress. "I needed a few pieces of information before I could feel confident asking her to certify, and one of those pieces was the software stability issues ... were behind us," Bogdan said. "I believe they are now." (Story refiled to correct spelling of Frank Kendall in first paragraph) (Reporting by Idrees Ali and David Alexander; Editing by Alan Crosby)
Pentair Plc PNR is a global water, fluid, thermal management, and equipment protection partner with industry leading products, services, and solutions.



Pentair will benefit from improvement in the North American residential market, investment in its high-performing Technical Solutions and Water Quality Systems segments, ERICO acquisition. The company continues to aggressively manage its cost structure. The company had cautioned that the challenges currently faced by its Valve & Control segment that are likely to persist in the near term. Further, low oil prices, unfavorable foreign exchange and softness in industrial and infrastructure verticals will continue to weigh on Pentairs results.



Investors have thus been eagerly waiting to see how the company fares in its first quarter 2016 earnings results. Lets have a quick look at the earnings release of this Schaffhausen, Switzerland based diversified industrial manufacturing company with a market capitalization of $10.1 billion.



Estimate Trend & Surprise History: You should note that the earnings estimate revisions for Pentair depicted a neutral stance prior to the earnings release. The Zacks Consensus Estimate has remained stable over the last 30 days and currently stands at 72 cents for the first quarter.



As regards earnings surprise, Pentair has outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate in the past 4 quarters, with an average beat of 3.22%.



Earnings: Pentair beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 5.5%. Analysts polled by Zacks were expecting earnings per share (EPS) of 72 cents and the company reported EPS of 76 cents. Earnings even outperformed the management guidance of EPS in the range of 70 cents to 72 cents.



Revenue: Pentair also beat on revenues. It reported first quarter 2016 revenues of $1.575 billion, ahead of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.568 billion. Revenues however came below the management guidance of $1.6 billion.



Key Developments to Note: Pentair maintained its 2016 EPS guidance range of $4.05 to $4.25. While the company raised its fiscal 2016 sales projection from $6.6 billion to $6.7 billion, which is up approximately 3% year over year on a reported basis but down 1% on a core basis.



Pentair also initiated its second quarter 2016 guidance. The company expects EPS in the range of $1.08 - $1.11 on the back of revenues of approximately $1.7 billion.



Zacks Rank: Currently, Pentair carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). However, since the latest earnings performance is yet to be reflected in the estimate revisions, the rank is subject to change.



Market Reaction: Shares remained flat in pre-market trading following the release, at the time of this write-up.



Check back later for our full write up on this Pentair earnings report later!



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PENTAIR PLC (PNR): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
LIMA (Reuters) - A law in Peru that allows the military to shoot down planes suspected of smuggling drugs has forced traffickers to move cocaine out of a remote jungle region by boat and on foot, the prime minister said on Tuesday. The law, which ended a 15-year ban on the downing of civilian aircraft when it went into effect in January, intends to keep scores of small planes from flying drugs out of the Peruvian Amazon and into neighboring Bolivia and Brazil. Prime Minister Pedro Cateriano said that even though the military had not yet shot down any new planes, the threat of force had led to a sharp drop in the number of "narco-flights." "Drug traffickers are using other routes to transport drugs, we've seen that in recent months," Cateriano said at a press conference, citing police intelligence. "Now, for example, the trafficking is fluvial and there's more antwork transportation, that is, backpackers." Cateriano said the lack of an easy outgoing route for coca leaf, the main ingredient in cocaine, has led to excess supply and that has prompted its price to plummet. Coca is native to South America and is especially abundant in a group of jungle valleys in southeastern Peru known as the VRAEM. The U.S. State Department said in a 2015 report that small aircraft bound for Bolivia constituted the main method of transporting cocaine from Peru. Peru had stopped shooting at drug aircraft in 2001 after the military, in coordination with the CIA, downed a plane with missionaries on board, killing a U.S. woman and her baby. The United States also banned funding linked to shoot-down activities in Peru after the incident. However, the United States has not said that the reinstatement of the policy would affect its joint anti-narcotics programs in the Andean country. Congress unanimously passed the law reinstating the policy in August, even though Peruvian authorities said that U.S. officials had lobbied to stop it. Peru is virtually tied with neighboring Colombia as the world's top cocaine producer. (Reporting By Mitra Taj; Editing by Toni Reinhold)
Philip Morris Let Down Investors with 1Q16 Earnings

(Continued from Prior Part)

Geographic presence

Philip Morris International (PM) is divided geographically into the following four business segments:

European Union (or EU) Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (or EEMA) Asia Latin America and Canada

Revenue and operating income

The EU regions reported net revenue decreased 1.5% to $1.9 billion in 1Q16. The decrease was primarily due to unfavorable currency of $0.2 billion and the impact of acquisitions. However, excluding the negative impact of currencies, net revenue for the EU region increased 3.4%, driven by favorable pricing in Germany.

Reported operating income decreased 0.7% to $0.9 billion in 1Q16. Excluding unfavorable currency of $54 million, the EU regions 1Q16 adjusted operating income increased 3.6%, driven by lower manufacturing costs and favorable pricing. This was partially offset by investments behind the commercialization of reduced-risk products .

Market share

PMs cigarette market share increased by 0.6 points to 38.7%, with gains notably in France, Germany, Poland, and Spain. It was partially offset by Italy and Portugal. Marlboro, L&M, and Chesterfield shipment volumes increased in the EU region in 1Q16. Southern Europe witnessed a decline in illicit trade, less out-switching for the fine-cut category, and a lower prevalence of e-vapor products in 1Q16.

For British American Tobacco (BTI), volume and market share were higher in Germany. It was driven by Lucky Strike and Pall Mall. Japan Tobaccos (JAPAY) (JAPAF) GFB (global flagship brands) shipment volume increased 4.3%, reflecting growth in Germany, France, and Italy. Other companies such as Reynolds American (RAI) and Altria Group (MO) dont have a presence outside the United States.

New product launch

Philip Morris is focusing on the following new products:

Philip Morris 25s and 100s in January 2016

Architecture 2.0

L&M

Chesterfield 100s

super-slim variants

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These reflected higher market share growth in France and Poland.

PM makes up 0.9% of the iShares S&P Growth ETF (IVW).

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From Esquire

If you spent any time online at all this weekend, you've likely already gorged yourself on the glut of Beyonce-related content that sprung up around the release of her visual album Lemonade on HBO on Saturday night. Among fans it's become commonplace when talking about the artist to default to a sort of paroxysm of genuflection, and this was no less true of the responses this time around. But it's a manner of response that can be applied not only to fans' reaction to her work, but also the way sites-like this one, too-draw from that bountiful fount of life-giving celebrity.

You will have found no media outlet that was not compelled to turn around instant reactions to the piece-GIF highlights, memorable quotes, quickie reviews, and hot takes-and for good reason, as it's rightfully being heralded a stunning work and is deserving of the attention. There were thoughtful, inspired, and revelatory responses, thankfully, like this one in The New York Times or this one in The New Yorker, to say nothing of the countless affirmations from women of color, to whom in particular its core message rang true. Of course, none of our intentions here were pure. In the same way Beyonce gives her fans life, it's outsized artists like her, a dwindling resource to be sure, that sustains us in the media in our time of click famine.

In the life cycle of galvanizing media events, especially the rare occasion that's not the death of a beloved artist-as we saw last week with the passing of Prince, something only Beyonce has the cultural cache to knock out of the news cycle-the primacy of praise quickly gives way to the contrarian. This is not new, and it's not remarkable. In fact, it is the natural order of the internet, and is to be expected. In a way you almost have to admire the reactionary's brio, a sort of sustainable model of using the entirety of the content animal when resources are scarce. Offal may not appear as appetizing as the quality cuts of meat, but it's no less nourishing.

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But with so many of us swarming upon the carcass, it's not easy to shoulder one's way to the fore, to stand out among the deluge of voices. It takes a truly determined, and truly stupid, take to get the desired attention. When it comes to someone like Beyonce, there is plenty of drift speed to be borrowed upon in her victory lap. Fashion designer Rachel Roy-AKA "Becky with the good hair," a purported object of Beyonce scorn based on a rumored dalliance with Jay Z-found out the hard way when she found herself trending online, launching another round of headlines on all of the outlets who weren't asleep at the switch. Today that dubious distinction goes to columnist Piers Morgan, who is currently, as of this writing, rocketing to the top of the trending topics worldwide on Twitter for going up the pole, as they say in the UK, with a truly disastrous take.

From the likes of Morgan, and his compatriots in the reactionary ranks, it's certainly no surprise. In fact, it seems to have been exactly what he wanted.

But just because he seems to want to have turned the attention away from Beyonce's art and onto himself, and just because we know that's what he wants, and, further, that he knows that we know that's what he wants... Well, that doesn't mean we shouldn't give him the dragging he so richly deserves. Fighting, on the internet, and in real life, may be a largely inadvisable and fruitless pursuit, but sometimes there's really no better justification for punching a bully square in the teeth besides he was asking for it.

Morgan's chief conceit in his piece today for the Daily Mail, the Piers Morgan of publications, is that Lemonade is too political for his liking. In the mode of all such tone-policing concern trolls, he assured off the bat that he's a fan. "I bow to no man nor woman when it comes to my admiration for this lady," he writes with the approximate demeanor of a dog whose just been caught with his snout in the cat litter box. In fact, he even managed, in his capacity as a media personality, to enjoy a largely positive experience with Beyonce at one point, five years ago, in which she was pursued by fans that spanned age, race, and religion. To what might she owe that sort of demographic-spanning allegiance? Shutting up and singing, more or less.

"She's a global brand, one of the best in the business, and has generally steered studiously clear of saying or doing anything too contentious which might polarise that audience  preferring to entertain for the sake of entertaining," he writes. "But just lately, Beyonce's been adding a far more serious, deeply political and race-fuelled tone to her work."

He transgressions, he dutifully catalogues, include referencing Black Lives Matter in her "Formation" video earlier this year, which also included imagery of a sinking police car, graffiti reading "Stop Shooting Us" and a young black boy dancing in front of police, something that can clearly and obviously be read as "an attack on U.S. police." A dancing attack. What's more, during her performance at the Super Bowl halftime show, she has the temerity to step up her "police-hating theme" with references to the Black Panthers, with dancers who had "Panthers-style afro hairstyles," otherwise known as natural hair, and other symbolic gestures.

At the time everyone from Rudy Giuliani to Mike Huckabee chimed in on this egregious choreography crime.

"This is football, not Hollywood, and I thought it was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers who are the people who protect her and protect us, and keep us alive," the former mayor of New York and Official Mascot of Remembering 9/11 said. "And what we should be doing in the African-American community, and all communities, is build up respect for police officers. And focus on the fact that when something does go wrong, okay. We'll work on that. But the vast majority of police officers risk their lives to keep us safe."

Donald Trump too distended his horrible mandibles to belch forth on the topic. "At the Super Bowl, when Beyonce was thrusting her hips forward in a very suggestive manner, if someone else had done that, it would've been a national scandal. I thought it was ridiculous." He added, "I just thought it was not appropriate... The way the so-and-so was thrust forward continuously, give me a break."

It's somewhere in the middle of those two poles that the racist, sexist critiques of artists like Beyonce typically reside. If she expresses her sexuality, she's a mere slutty entertainer-as Mike Huckabee said a while back talking about her. "Do you know any parent who has a daughter who says, 'Honey, if you make really good grades, someday when you're 12 or 13, we'll get you your own stripper pole?'" - or, on the other end of the spectrum, if she dares to offer a political point of view, she's overstepping her bounds as a mere entertainer. Shut up and sing, in other words.

For all of the attention it's gotten as a document of marital betrayal, Lemonade is a decidedly and defiantly political salvo, two subject matters which aren't at odds, but rather inextricably woven together in the tapestry of African American culture. As a white man, much like Morgan, I'm certainly not the first person you'd ask to speak on the matter, but it's right there for the understanding if you merely pay attention to the woman speaking. The video and music is rife with references, both symbolic, and direct, to the experience of the African American woman, a person whose mere existence, in the home, and particularly in the public sphere, is by default a political one.

Morgan takes issue with Beyonce leaning on this reference for "strictly commercial reasons," as if we're meant to believe she needed to enlist the aid of mothers of murdered black men like Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, in order to move units. Their appearaned, he writes, made him feel "very uneasy."

It seems Morgan has missed the point, so let me say it as clearly as possible here: It was supposed to make you uneasy, dipshit. We should all feel uneasy about the state of police relations with citizens, and in particular young black men in general, every day.

Some five years ago, Morgan interviewed Beyonce on CNN, and she had a less engaged view on politics at the time. The president was black, and number one golfer was black, the biggest TV star was black, doesn't this mean, he implies, that racism is over and people should stop whining about it? She agreed things had improved, and said she hoped they would continue to.

"Beyonce then was unrecognisable from the militant activist we see now," he now writes. "Then, she was at pains to be seen as an entertainer and musician and not as a black woman who sings. Now, it seems to be the complete opposite. The new Beyonce wants to be seen as a black woman political activist first and foremost, entertainer and musician second."

"I preferred the old Beyonce," he goes on, in a closer that has to be read at length in order to drive home the enormity of his obliviousness. "The less inflammatory, agitating one.The one who didn't use grieving mothers to shift records and further fill her already massively enriched purse. The one who didn't play the race card so deliberately and to my mind, unnecessarily. The one who wanted to be judged on her stupendous talent not her skin color, and wanted us all to do the same."

The fact that there are people like Morgan out there who think merely referencing the experience of what it's like to black in America today-ones who, like Beyonce, have clearly become successful, and therefore should have nothing to complain about-is exactly why she might make a political statement like this. Beyonce may have changed in his estimation, but that's probably only because so many of the rest of us haven't changed at all.
Pioneer Natural Resources Beats 1Q16 EarningsWhat's Its Secret?

Pioneer Natural Resources 1Q16 earnings beat estimates

Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) announced its 1Q16 earnings on April 25, 2016, after the market closed. PXD reported an adjusted loss of $0.64 per share, $0.12 better than the Wall Street analyst consensus for a loss of $0.76 per share. Pioneer Natural Resources 1Q16 earnings are $0.61 per share lower than the 1Q15 loss of $0.03 per share. Even when compared sequentially with 4Q15, Pioneer Natural Resources 1Q16 earnings are lower by $0.46 per share.

Pioneer Natural Resources 1Q16 revenues miss estimates

For 1Q16, PXD reported adjusted revenues of ~$627 million, ~2% lower than the Wall Street analyst consensus for revenues of ~$642 million. PXDs 1Q16 revenues are ~21% higher than its 1Q15 revenues of ~$517 million. However, when compared sequentially with 4Q15, PXDs 1Q16 revenues are lower by ~21%.

Pioneer Natural Resources earnings trend

As seen in the above chart, Pioneer Natural Resources reported much lower earnings in 2015 due to lower realized crude oil (USO) (UWTI) (SCO) and natural gas (UNG) (BOIL) prices. In 1Q15, PXD saw its adjusted earnings turn negative for the first time since 2009. Since 1Q13, Pioneer Natural Resources has beaten the earnings expectations ~75% of the time.

Due to the steep downward trend in energy prices, upstream companies Memorial Resource Development (MRD), WPX Energy (WPX), ConocoPhillips (COP), and EV Energy Partners (EVEP) reported ~7%, ~19%, ~40%, and ~32% year-over-year declines in their 4Q15 adjusted revenues, respectively. Whereas the SPDR S&P Oil and Gas Exploration & Production ETF (XOP) generally invests at least 80% of its total assets in oil and gas exploration companies, the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE) generally invests at least 95% of its total assets in oil and gas companies.

In this series

Having analyzed Pioneer Natural Resources 1Q16 earnings performance, in the course of this series, well also look at PXDs operational performance, Wall Street analyst ratings, and how Pioneer Natural Resources stock price reacted to past earnings beats. Lets take a look at PXDs operational performance for 1Q16.

Story continues

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Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli police on Tuesday ejected nine Jews from the flashpoint Al-Aqsa compound in east Jerusalem for flouting the site's rules and briefly detained two Palestinians who attacked Jewish visitors.

Police did not say whether the Jews had violated the prohibition for them to pray at the site, but a video circulating online shows a scuffle between police and Muslim worshippers when two Jews prostrate themselves on the esplanade.

The compound, known to Muslims as the Al-Aqsa mosque and to Jews as the Temple Mount, is holy to both religions.

It is Islam's third holiest site and Judaism's holiest.

Jews are allowed to visit the site but not to pray there, and incidents occur regularly when Jews try to ignore the rule and Muslims intervene to stop them.

Two Palestinian employees of the Islamic "waqf" foundation which administers the site were briefly detained on Tuesday for "assaulting Jewish visitors", police said, without saying whether this was related to the incident shown in the video footage.

Waqf director Sheikh Azzam Khatib told AFP that an Al-Aqsa mosque guard and a foundation employee were arrested.

"Police claim that one of them assaulted an officer," he said.

There is a boosted Israeli security presence at the site for the Jewish week-long Passover holiday, when tens of thousands of Jews flock to the Old City.

Tensions are high in Israel following a wave of violence that has killed 201 Palestinians and 28 Israelis since last October.

Most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

Palestinians argue that Israel is seeking to change the status quo at the Al-Aqsa compound, claims that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other ministers have repeatedly denied.
Washington (AFP) - Voters went to the polls Tuesday in five northeastern US states, where strong showings by presidential frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could propel them closer to clinching the Democratic and Republican nominations.

Should Clinton sweep the primaries in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware, it would put her on the cusp of Democratic victory against her rival Senator Bernie Sanders, a monumental step in her quest to become the nation's first female commander-in-chief.

"I don't have the nomination yet," the former secretary of state said in a town hall event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's largest city, on the eve of the vote.

"We're going to work really hard until the polls close."

Trump also was expected to extend his formidable lead in the bruising Republican race, even as rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich mounted a hasty -- and already fraying -- tag team effort to block him.

Kasich agreed to forego campaigning in Indiana, a winner-take-all state that votes May 3, and Cruz will return the favor later in New Mexico and Oregon.

But within hours of the surprise deal, Kasich -- the governor of Ohio -- was already playing it down, saying he was not telling his supporters in Indiana not to vote for him.

"This joke of a deal is falling apart, not being honored and almost dead," Trump mocked on Twitter. "Very dumb!"

- 'Experience and wisdom' -

Tuesday's voting began at 6:00 am (1000 GMT) in Connecticut and one hour later in the other states. Polls close at 8:00 pm (0000 GMT Wednesday).

Voting was brisk in Maryland. "So far it looks good," said Lucy Freeman, 79, the Democratic precinct chair at a voting station in Chevy Chase, a Washington suburb.

New US citizen Imalka Senadhira, a 53-year-old born in Sri Lanka, was voting for the first time and said she was nervous about "which way the country might go."

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"I've always believed in experience and wisdom, so I'll go along with that," she told AFP.

Clinton was favored to win all five state Democratic contests, with polls giving her a double-digit lead over Sanders in Pennsylvania, the biggest state of the bunch with 189 delegates.

Should she run the board, it would heap pressure on Sanders, who has vowed to fight on until the California primary on June 7.

"I don't accept there is no path forward. Let's not count our chickens before they're hatched," Sanders told MSNBC Tuesday.

Sanders has deflected recent questions about whether he would actively support a Clinton candidacy if she is the nominee, suggesting it was up to her to win over his passionate young followers.

- 'Pathetic' plan -

Trump was riding high going into the latest "Super Tuesday" contests.

"We feel very good about our position tonight," campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said Tuesday on CNN.

Trump himself had been in full attack mode a day earlier, pouring scorn on the Cruz-Kasich deal and describing it as "collusion."

The partnership "shows how weak they are," Trump said. "It shows how pathetic they are."

Cruz, a US senator from Texas, told potential voters in Indiana Monday that the deal would give them "a straight and direct choice between our campaign and Donald Trump."

According to a recent CBS poll, Trump leads Indiana with 40 percent of likely Republican voters, compared to 35 percent for Cruz and 20 percent for Kasich.

Losing Indiana would make it much harder for Trump to gain the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination in the first round of balloting at the party's convention in Cleveland on July 18-21.

If he falls short, Trump runs the risk that his delegates, most of whom are bound to vote for him in only the first round, will desert him in subsequent rounds.

Lewandowski said that after Tuesday, Cruz and Kasich will both be mathematically eliminated from reaching the 1,237 threshold before the convention, and that they should both drop out and unite behind Trump.

But Cruz and Kasich have openly said they are now counting on a contested convention, where they have a shot at wooing enough delegates to snatch the nomination.

Cruz in particular has been successfully maneuvering in state party conventions to have individuals named to delegate slots who, though initially bound to Trump, would be sympathetic to Cruz in later rounds once free to vote for whomever they choose.

Party heavyweights, alarmed by the prospect of a Trump nomination, have long pressed for a united effort around a single candidate against him.

But Cruz is almost as unpopular with the party's establishment as Trump, and Kasich has refused to bow out even though he has only won his home state of Ohio.
Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, Inc. POT is set to release first-quarter 2016 results before the opening bell on Apr 28.



In the last quarter, the fertilizer giant delivered a negative earnings surprise of 20%. Its profit tumbled in the quarter, hurt by lower potash and nitrogen prices.



Potash Corp. has missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in the trailing 4 quarters with an average miss of 11.60%. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement.



Factors to Consider



Potash Corp., in its last earnings call, said that it sees potash gross margin of $0.8-$1.1 billion for 2016, down considerably from 2015 level as a sharp decline in potash prices through the back half of the year is expected to hurt on margins this year.



In phosphate, the company expects that weaker market fundamentals will keep prices for most products below 2015 levels. Moreover, improved operating rates at the companys U.S. facilities and the Lima nitrogen expansion are expected to boost Nitrogen sales volumes in 2016. Nitrogen gross margin is expected to be considerably low due to a softer pricing environment.



Potash Corp. expects full-year 2016 earnings in the range of 90 cents to $1.20 per share and first-quarter earnings of 10 cents to 20 cents per share. The quarterly guidance reflects severance and transition charges associated with the suspension of production at Picadilly and the possibility of some potash demand being deferred to the second quarter. Potash Corp. also cut its quarterly dividend by 34% to conserve cash amid the challenging operating environment.



Potash Corp. is faced with macroeconomic uncertainties and other issues such as price volatility and currency exchange fluctuations. Depressed crop pricing has created uncertainty about potash consumption. Further, a challenging currency environment combined with economic weakness has resulted in sluggish demand for potash across certain emerging markets. The company has also been facing earnings headwinds from tax changes.



Additionally, potash prices remain under pressure due to increased supply. Reduced global energy prices, higher supply and weak agricultural fundamentals have also contributed to a softer nitrogen pricing environment. As such, weak pricing may continue to hurt the companys sales and profits in the March quarter.



Earnings Whispers



Our proven model does not conclusively show that Potash Corp. is likely to beat estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1, 2 or 3 for this to happen. This is not the case here, as you will see below:



Zacks ESP: Earnings ESP for Potash Corp. is currently pegged at 0.00%. This is because the Most Accurate Estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate both stand at 16 cents.



Zacks Rank: Potash Corp. carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.



Stocks that Warrant a Look



Here are some companies in the basic materials sector you may want to consider as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:



Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. APD has an Earnings ESP of +0.56% and a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).



The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company SMG has an Earnings ESP of +1.21% and a Zacks Rank #2.



The Dow Chemical Company DOW has an Earnings ESP of +1.21% and a Zacks Rank #2.



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Image via Soothsayer

Image via Soothsayer

Australian producer Dro Carey has drawn from a wide variety of sounds across his past releases, as the influence of the UK underground mixes with his own take on house, techno, and electronica. On his new EP, Dark Zoo, a dance music edge is still evident, but bright pop moments shine through too, never more than on Queensberry Rules, premiering below.

As artists like FKA twigs and Kelela have reminded us recently, pop music can still have an experimental electronic edge and a real bite, and Dro Careys collaboration with Kucka is another brilliant example of that. From the hard-hitting opening, you might not expect that crisp, clean vocals are just around the corner, but when they do emerge, its clear that these two artists know exactly what theyre doing.

I came across Kuckas SoundCloud around the time that she was building up to her Unconditional EP, maybe a little before that, Dro Carey tells us. She was on my radar as a really interesting artist but this was back before there was even the sense that the next Dro release would have any vocals.

Later, after Id done some demos that were looking like potential vocal collaborations (including Queensberry Rules), he continues, I saw her name come up again one day. I always thought of her as a kind of dream collaborator to take a shot with (I felt that she might already have a lot lined up), so I was honestly a bit surprised when she came straight back after hearing the track and was keen to work on it!

The Dark Zoo EP is out May 20 via Soothsayer. Listen to Queensberry Rules and Grow Lithe from the EP below.

The post PREMIERE: Dro Carey Teams With Vocalist Kucka For the Edgy Pop of Queensberry Rules appeared first on Pigeons & Planes.
April 26 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

The Times

Philip Green and the owners of BHS are facing an investigation into their running of the retail chain after the pensions watchdog said it had begun looking at whether they had attempted to avoid plugging a hole in the company's retirement fund of more than 200 million pounds ($289.72 million). (http://bit.ly/1Ttz0nC)

The plan to create Britain's largest mobile phone network provider is set to be derailed by European regulators, who will veto the 10.25 billion pounds takeover of O2's UK network by CK Hutchison Holdings ltd, the owner of Three. (http://bit.ly/1TtzUAo)

The Guardian

The British Broadcasting Corporation's director general is understood to have met with finance minister George Osborne in an attempt to head off government attempts toward contestable funding under which some of the money from the licence fee could be used for organisations other than the BBC. (http://bit.ly/1TtA0rU)

Britain should withdraw from the European convention on human rights regardless of the EU referendum result, Home Secretary Theresa May has said, in comments that contradict ministers within her own government. (http://bit.ly/1TtA9vu)

The Telegraph

Channel 4's new chairman has launched a search for ethnic minority and disabled non-executive directors amid concerns that the broadcaster's board does not reflect its government-imposed diversity remit. (http://bit.ly/1TtAxtO)

Sky News

British department stores group BHS has gone into administration, putting 11,000 jobs at risk and threatening the closure of up to 164 stores. (http://bit.ly/1qNEWy5)

Marc Bolland is to join the board of British Airways parent IAG, weeks after stepping down as the boss of Marks and Spencer Group, Sky News has learned. (http://bit.ly/1TtyGVW)

($1 = 0.6903 pounds) (Compiled by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru)
April 26 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

** Federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr assured Albertans on Monday that he recognizes the importance of building oil pipelines to new export markets, although analysts question how much additional capacity is needed as depressed prices result in lower forecasts for oil-sands production. (http://bit.ly/1MVslDt)

** Mayor Don Iveson said Edmonton's economy is due for a rebranding as he unveiled plans on Monday to market the struggling city as Canada's hub for health innovation. (http://bit.ly/1QyjD8P)

** Bombardier Inc has cut by more than half the number of streetcars it is promising to deliver to Toronto this year, the latest in a series of delays that has left the Toronto Transit Commission head and city politicians outraged. (http://bit.ly/1QyhYju)

NATIONAL POST

** Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says she discussed with members of the federal cabinet the possibility of the Northern Gateway pipeline being rerouted to a different port in British Columbia, as multiple sources say Enbridge Inc is quietly examining potential alternatives for a new endpoint, including Prince Rupert. (http://bit.ly/1QyijTu)

** Keeping businesses in the family is good for the economy and Canada should encourage it, Cogeco Inc Chief Executive Louis Audet said during a speech at Toronto's Canadian Club on Monday. (http://bit.ly/1Qyj3b4) (Compiled by Shalini Nagarajan in Bengaluru)
April 26 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

- U.S. Federal regulators are poised to approve Charter Communications Inc's $55 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable Inc, but they will force the merged company to live up to stringent obligations that don't apply to its bigger rivals. (http://on.wsj.com/1SFDIPc)

- Stock markets across Asia were generally lower Tuesday as investors stayed cautious ahead of central bank meetings this week in Japan and the United States. (http://on.wsj.com/1Taq2Je)

- Chocolate maker Hershey Co has a solution for America's waning taste for candy: beef snacks. The 122-year-old company is betting that dried meat bars are the new chocolate bars. (http://on.wsj.com/1TtD5rV)

- Donald Trump is poised to sweep five states' Republican primaries on the Eastern Seaboard on Tuesday, but his rivals are already looking ahead to next week's contest in Indiana, which may be their last chance to keep Trump from clinching the party's presidential nomination. (http://on.wsj.com/23XxfHG) (Compiled by Aurindom Mukherjee in Bengaluru)
Pati Dubroff has crisscrossed the globe more times than she can count - both as a spokesperson for brands like Dior and Clarins, and as a makeup artist to her Hollywood clientele, including Kate Bosworth, Kirsten Dunst and Miley Cyrus.

For the latest stamp in her passport, Dubroff hit the road with Natalie Portman for a whirlwind visit to Beijing. "I was honestly bracing for a challenging trip. Everyone had warned me about terrible pollution and their general dislike of the city. We were extremely lucky as the air had been cleaned up for the festival and we had blue skies and clean air," says Dubroff of the experience, which centered around a showing of Portman's directorial debut, A Tale of Love and Darkness, at the Beijing Film Festival.

Before the L.A.-based artist packs her bags to head to New York City for the Met Ball, Dubroff gives us an inside glimpse of her three-day jaunt to Beijing, a stop at the Great Wall of China and plenty of delicious fare included.

One of my favorite meals in Beijing was at a restaurant called Kingsjoy, a very upscale Buddhist vegetarian restaurant housed in a traditional "hutong." The entire experience was like being in heaven. I will dream of this meal for a long, long time and hope to go back someday.

Delectable Chinese bakery goods, some filled with sweet beans, some with fruits and some with flowers (one of my favorites had roses inside!).

This photo really represents the contrast in china, old and new, East meets West.

Fans awaiting Natalie at the Beijing International Film Festival opening ceremonies. The building looked like a giant spaceship landed in the countryside outside the city.

Natalie Portman's directorial debut, "A Tale of Love and Darkness," shown at the festival.

The red carpet at the Beijing Film Festival's Opening Ceremony rivaled that of the Cannes Film Festival or the Oscars.

We did a very quick visit to the Great Wall. It is awe-inspiring - and to think this was built 2,300 years ago and spans thousands of miles. It was a dream come true to be able to visit.

Story continues

One of the sheltered fortresses along the Great Wall.

The incredible ancient architecture at the Lama Temple.

Offerings at the Lama Temple.

At the Lama Temple you pass through many buildings and courtyards to reach the heart of the temple. It's Iike peeling away layers and layers to reach the inner sanctum.

Keepers of the gate at the Lama Temple.
prince broadway

Prince had no known will according to his sister, the Associated Press reports.

The musician's sister, Tyka Nelson, 55, filed paperwork asking a Minneapolis court to appoint a special administrator to oversee his estate, according to the AP, following Prince's untimely death at 57.

Nelson is Prince's only surviving full sibling. In her filing she says immediate action is necessary to deal with Prince's business interests. She asks that the trust company Bremer Trust be named administrator.

Without a will that determines what happens to Prince's estate, its future could become messy, as Business Insider reported. Prince's net worth is valued at around $300 million.

Entertainers, however, are known for avoiding such legal planning.

"My experience with people in the music industry is, even more than other people, they think they'll live forever," Los Angeles-based attorney Laura Zwicker, who specializes in clients worth more than $100 million, told Business Insider. "So, getting them to focus on a plan is really a challenge."

You can find out more about what could happen to Prince's estate here.

NOW WATCH: The trailer for the first 'Star Wars' spin-off movie 'Rogue One' is here





More From Business Insider


New court documents say Prince had no will.

Read: Newly Surfaced Video Shows Prince Playing 'SNL' Afterparty

The musician "died intestate" - meaning he did not specify what should happen to his estate, his sister, Tyka Nelson claims.

In a court document, she says her brother has "substantial assets," but did not list them. Recent estimates have valued his estate at $300 million.

Nelson listed herself, three half-brothers and two half-sisters as heirs.

She asked the court to name a special administrator to oversee her brother's assets.

Meanwhile, reports surfaced claiming the celebrity's half-siblings had worried in the past about his alleged abuse of cocaine and the painkiller Percocet.

Read: Was Prince Awake For 154 Hours Before His Death?

Lorna and Duane Nelson have since died, but their attorney, Michael Padden, spoke to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about his client's alleged concerns.

Both were really concerned it would end his life prematurely, he told the newspaper.

Watch: The World Sees Purple in Tribute to Prince

Related Articles:
JCPenney Impressing with Merchandising Strategy and Initiatives

(Continued from Prior Part)

JCPenneys private brands

JCPenneys (JCP) strong assortment of private brands is facilitating increased store traffic by attracting its loyal customers. Some of the companys popular private brands include a.n.a, Worthington, St. Johns Bay, The Original Arizona Jean Company, Ambrielle, and Cooks.

Strong presence

In fiscal 2015 ended January 31, 2016, JCPenneys private brands accounted for 44% of the total merchandise sales, up from 42% in fiscal 2014 and 41% in fiscal 2013. Exclusive brands accounted for 8% the total merchandise sales in fiscal 2015. National brands like Nike (NKE) and Levis accounted for the remaining 48%.

JCPenney plans to further increase its private brand penetration, supported by an established global network of nine overseas sourcing offices and a team of over 200 in-house designers. According to the company, over 70% of its private brands carry five-star ratings.

In fiscal 2015, JCPenney launched new private and exclusive brands, including The Collection by Michael Strahan, Disney apparel by Okie Dokie, and Belle & Sky. JCPenney accounts for 0.2% of the iShares Core S&P Mid-Cap ETF (IJH).

JCPenneys rival Kohls (KSS) also sells private brands like Apt. 9, Croft & Barrow, and Jumping Beans. Macys (M) private brand portfolio includes Alfani, Epic Threads, Hudson Park, and Thalia Sodi. Nordstrom (JWN) sells private brands like Caslon, Zella, and Halogen.

Margin expansion

In fiscal 2015, JCPenneys (JCP) gross margin increased significantly to 36% from 34.8% in fiscal 2014, primarily due to improved margins on the companys clearance merchandise. The companys operating margin continued to be in the red in fiscal 2015 but improved on a year-over-year basis.

JCPenney considers private brand penetration as of one of the drivers for further gross margin expansion. JCPenneys private brands carry higher margins than the national brands as they help in managing product development costs, allow flexibility with regard to price offerings, and dont require dependence on a third party.

Story continues

Well look at the robust performance of JCPenneys stock in the final part of this series.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
The Q1 earnings season is going full throttle with over 180 companies on the S&P 500 index reporting this week. Taking into consideration the 132 companies that have reported results till Friday (Apr 22), the earnings trend has more or less confirmed the grim projections for the quarter. Based on results already declared, Q1 is widely expected to be the fourth consecutive quarter to report an earnings decline for the benchmark index.



Plagued by a plethora of macroeconomic issues and continued volatility in the equity market, Q1 earnings estimates for the S&P 500 index have gone downhill over the last three months, albeit improving slightly in the last few days. Per the latest Earnings Trend Report, overall Q1 earnings for the S&P 500 companies are expected to be down 9.4% on a 0.8% decline in revenues. Guidance for most companies that have reported so far was lowered to easy-to-beat levels, resulting in positive earnings and revenue surprises.



However, the overall Q1 earnings scenario still remains clouded with uncertainty. What is more alarming is that the likely dismal earnings performance is not attributable to the inherent weakness of the Energy sector alone. Rather, downward estimate revisions are expected in almost all the sectors, barring a few. About 9 of the 16 sectors are expected to witness an earnings decline in the quarter under review, with Oil/Energy, Basic Materials, Industrial Products, Aerospace, and Conglomerates being the most notable.



Among the Protection stocks slated to report this week, lets have a sneak peek at two major security services providers to see how things are shaping up for the upcoming quarterly results.



Tyco International plc TYC is scheduled to report second-quarter fiscal 2016 results before the opening bell on Apr 29. During the quarter, Tyco signed a merger deal with the global diversified technology firm, Johnson Controls Inc. JCI. Per the deal, Tyco will own 44% equity in the joint company. Post merger, the companies plan to strengthen their building products and technology, integrated solutions and energy storage portfolios. Tyco believes that this acquisition will help it to expand its global footprint in the building-technology market, enhance shareholder value and launch innovative solutions. For the impending quarter, Tyco has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% with a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) (read more: Will Tyco Q2 Earnings Surprise on Portfolio Reshuffle?).

Story continues





Allegion Plc ALLE will report first-quarter 2016 results before the opening bell on Apr 28. Allegion is likely to benefit from strategic acquisitions, collaborations and investment in new technology, as demand for electronic security products is steadily improving. The Sep 2015 acquisitions of Axa Stenman, a European residential and portable security provider, and SimonsVoss, a leading lock manufacturer based in Europe, should boost revenues from the continent. Moreover, the companys takeover of a South Korea-based producer of innovative electronic door locks, Milre Systek Co., Ltd, last year, will continue to add to its top line. For the first quarter of 2016, this Zacks Rank #3 stock has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% (read more: Allegion Q1 Earnings: Can the Stock Pull a Surprise?).





Stay tuned! Check later on our full write-up on earnings releases of these stocks.

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Apple's iPhone Production Cuts: Impact on Semiconductor Industry

(Continued from Prior Part)

Whats causing the slowdown in iPhone sales?

So far in this series, weve seen that Apple (AAPL) is reportedly extending its 30% reduction in iPhone production for another quarter until June 2016. We also saw the likely impact of this extension on semiconductor suppliers earnings and stocks. Now lets explore the root cause of declining iPhone sales.

Like PCs (personal computers), the smartphone market is beginning to see a prolonged slowdown. Apple is not immune to this trend. Several macroeconomic, technological, and industrial factors are affecting iPhone sales. Lets look at each factor in detail.

Macroeconomic environment

The weak global macroeconomic environment, especially in Apples key market China, has lowered consumers buying power. Apples growth in the United States has stagnated. The strengthening US dollar has made iPhones more expensive for consumers in China and emerging markets (EEM). This is attracting consumers to mid and low-end phones.

Qualcomm (QCOM) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (or TSMC) (TSM) have shifted their focus toward mid and low-end phones to maximize revenue growth. Apple also launched a cheaper version, the iPhone SE, in March 2016 to boost sales. But its unlikely that Apple will produce it in large volumes.

Lack of technology upgrade

The smartphone industry is struggling with a serioius challenge of stagnation in technology. The handset makers are left with very few new features to offer, which is discouraging consumers from upgrading their phones. Samsung (SSNLF) is looking to develop a phone that is bendable, but the technology is still in the research stage with no update on the progress.

The last time Apple witnessed a slowdown in iPhone sales growth was in 4Q13 when the company launched new models with bigger screens. This boosted iPhone sales significantly, particularly in Asia. Now the company has no dramatic features to offer that could boost iPhone sales.

Story continues

Apple launched software products such as Apple Pay, Apple Music, and smart home software, but none of these could grab consumers attention like the iPhone did. Now, all eyes are set on the upcoming iPhone 7. This has consumers excited, with 44% of respondents of a survey conducted by Goldman Sachs showing interest in buying the iPhone 7 in September 2017.

Rumors are floating around that Apple might move up the launch of its iPhone 7 to address the slump in sales. But theres no evidence for this. The above factors suggest that the iPhone boom period could be nearing its end.

In the final part of our series, well see why the semiconductor industry outlook is rather bleak.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Washington (AFP) - US President Barack Obama said his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin is trying to undermine European unity, which he sees as a threat.

Speaking to CBS News in an interview set to air Tuesday morning, Obama said Europe's migrant crisis is also a problem for the United States.

"But more importantly, more strategically, is the strain it's putting on Europe's politics, the way that it advances far-right nationalism, the degree to which it is encouraging a break-up of European unity, that in some cases, is being exploited by somebody like Mr. Putin," he said.

Putin sees NATO, the European Union and transatlantic unity as a threat, Obama added.

"Now, I think he's mistaken about that," he said. "I've indicated to him that, in fact, a strong, unified Europe working with a strong, outward-looking Russia, that's the right recipe."

"So far, he has not been entirely persuaded."

Obama was speaking at the end of a trip to the Middle East and Europe, where he urged European leaders to show greater unity in the face of lingering economic crisis, an Islamist terror threat and the huge flow of migrants from the Middle East and elsewhere.

He also urged Britain not to vote to leave the European Union in a referendum in June.
Qualcomm's Fiscal 2Q16 Earnings: A Mixed Bag

(Continued from Prior Part)

Qualcomm beats analysts estimates

In the previous part of this series, we saw that a mix of good and bad news affected Qualcomms (QCOM) fiscal 2Q16 earnings. Now lets look at the companys financial performance during the quarter.

Despite tough times, Qualcomm has managed to top analysts estimates over the last four quarters. Maintaining this trend, the company posted earnings that beat analysts estimates and were at the higher end of its guidance.

In fiscal 2Q16, Qualcomms (QCOM) non-GAAP revenue fell by 20% YoY (year-over-year) to $5.5 billion, topping the analyst estimate of $5.3 billion. The revenues fell as both its Chip and Licensing businesses reported a YoY fall of 25% and 12%, respectively. A decline in volume shipments was offset by growth in its ASP (average selling price).

Qualcomm saw reduced demand from its key customer Apple (AAPL), which scaled back its iPhone 6s and 6s Plus production by 30%. Even Micron Technology (MU) reported a revenue decline of more than 42% YoY in its Mobile segment in fiscal 2Q16 ended March 2016. This indicates that the companys slowing smartphone sales impacted the entire supply chain.

Qualcomms non-GAAP EPS (earnings per share) fell by 26% YoY to $1.04, beating the analyst estimate of $0.96 and its higher-end guidance of $1.00.

Profitability

On a non-GAAP basis, Qualcomms operating income fell by 30% YoY to $1.9 billion. Its net income fell by 34% YoY to $1.6 billion in fiscal 2Q16. The company earned a profit of $380 million from the sale of its UK-based (EWU) wireless spectrum. The margins fell as the non-GAAP operating expenses were flat and did not fall with revenues because of high legal expenses.

Another cause of this mismatch in revenues and profits is its uneven distribution between the chipset and licensing business. The QCT (Qualcomm CDMA Technologies) business accounted for 60% of the companys revenues and contributed only 9% toward its operating profit in fiscal 2Q16. The QTL (Qualcomm Technology Licensing) business accounted for 39% of revenues and contributed 98% toward the companys profits.

Story continues

The highly profitable licensing business has attracted NVIDIA (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to monetize their patent portfolios. Recently, AMD won a licensing deal from Chinas Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment, which saw the formers shares rise by a whopping 23%.

We will look deeper into Qualcomms two business segments in the coming parts of the series.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Image via @questlove

Image via @questlove

In recent years, the relationship between Prince and Questlove has been most famous for the time Prince chose a Finding Nemo DVD in favor of Questloves DJing. But that encounter is a poor indication of their relationship, as the two have worked together in the past, and Prince is actually something of a hero to The Roots leader.

Questlove recently penned an essay for Rolling Stone about Prince, in which he reminisces about being 11 and having to hide his Prince records from his conservative parents, and the gigantic impact The Purple One had on his life: Prince was in my ears and he was in my head. Starting then, I patterned everything in my life after Prince, he wrote. I had older half-brothers, but Prince  unknown to me then, but not unseen or unheard, thanks to magazines, TV, radio, and my secret stash  was a guide to me in every way.

He also shared a story about the time Prince made him pay into a swear jar:

Later on, I got into the music business myself. I got to meet Prince several times. I roller-skated with him. I went to parties that he threw. But I always felt like a fan, never a peer. I remember once I was at Paisley Park. By this time, Prince was a Jehovahs Witness, and he didnt stand for cursing. I slipped up. It wasnt anything too major. I think I said shit. Prince had a curse jar; every curse cost a dollar. But youre rich, he said. Put in $20.

Questlove also wrote about Princes relationship with hip-hop, which he said has been the subject of much scrutiny, but Questlove said that at heart, he was more hip-hop than anyone:

Prince was an outlaw. When he was giving interviews on the regular to Cynthia Horner in Right On! magazine, he was telling tall tales left and right. That was hip-hop. He built a crew, a posse, around his look and his sense of style. That was hip-hop. He had beef (with Rick James). He had his own vanity label (Paisley Park). He had parents up in arms over the content of his songs to the point where they had to invent the Parental Advisory warning. Hip-hop, hip-hop, hip-hop.

Story continues

Read the entirety of Questloves essay here.





Representin. It's Only Right. #Prince #BowlTrain #PurpleTRAIN #ThatDambFish A photo posted by Questlove Gomez (@questlove) on Apr 21, 2016 at 8:52pm PDT

The post Questlove: I patterned everything in my life after Prince. appeared first on Pigeons & Planes.

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Rachel Roy is directly addressing speculation that she's the woman behind Beyonce's now famous Lemonade lyric, "You better call Becky with the good hair."

The Beyhive has been targeting the 42-year-old designer aggressively on her social media accounts, speculating that she had an affair with Beyonce's husband, Jay Z, after Roy herself Instagrammed a selfie on Saturday night with the caption, "Good hair don't care."

Roy, who chose to share the now-deleted snap right after Bey's HBO special aired, now says there's "no truth to the rumors."

WATCH: Beyonce vs. Rachel Roy -- 8 Things to Know About the Fashion Designer

"I want to put the speculation and rumors to rest. My Instagram post was meant to be fun and lighthearted, it was misunderstood as something other than that," Roy tells ET in a statement. "There is no validity to the idea that the song references me personally. There is no truth to the rumors."

She also spoke out against the online harassment she's been receiving, specifically, on behalf of her two daughters, Ava and Tallulah, with her ex-husband, Damon Dash -- Jay's former business partner and friend. Roy's daughters have also been receiving negative social media messages since Lemonade dropped late Saturday.

"Consequently, online haters have targeted me and my daughters in a hurtful and scary manner, including physical threats," Roy says. "As a mother -- and I know many mothers would agree -- I feel that bullying in any form is harmful and unacceptable."

"I would hope that the media sees the real issue here -- the issue of cyber bullying -- and how it should not be tolerated by anyone," she adds.

Roy stepped out in Los Angeles on Monday after canceling a New York City appearance due to a "personal emergency," but stayed silent when asked by paparazzi about the Jay Z cheating rumors.

"I respect love, marriages, families and strength," she also tweeted on Sunday. "What shouldn't be tolerated by anyone, no matter what, is bullying, of any kind."

Story continues

I respect love, marriages, families and strength. What shouldn't be tolerated by anyone, no matter what, is bullying, of any kind.  Rachel Roy (@Rachel_Roy) April 24, 2016

Speculation about the nature of Roy's relationship with Jay actually began back in May 2014, when it was reported that Beyonce's younger sister, Solange, had a heated confrontation with the designer at a MET Gala after-party prior to her infamous elevator attack on her brother-in-law.

WATCH: Rachel Roy Steps Out in L.A. Amid Beyonce Drama

Watch the video below to find out more on Roy, including her history with Beyonce and Jay.

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Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) said the U.S. Navy's Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) has awarded it a maximum of $104 million contract to conduct operations and maintenance for the Relocatable Over-the-Horizon Radar (ROTHR) program. According to the company, ROTHR was long-range surveillance radar used by the government in counter narco-terrorism operations.

Raytheon said its designed and built ROTHR would provide operations support, and modernization apart from the maintenance of the radar system.

The company's President of Intelligence, Information and Services (IIS), Dave Wajssgras, said "Raytheon and ROTHR technology help to make the world a safer place. Our team will work closely with the U.S. Navy's Forces Surveillance Support Center and the Joint Interagency Task Force South, tracking hundreds of illegal activities every year that threaten to enter our borders."

ROTHR was a high-frequency radar system originally designed and built to offer long-range detection, as well as tracking of aircraft and ships. Each radar provided more than 2.5 million square miles of coverage area, resulting in extremely low operational costs.

Raytheon's Mission Support and Modernization VP, Todd Probert, concluded, "Raytheon will provide critical mission support to ROTHR, collecting vital detection and tracking data for operational commanders. This new contract demonstrates trust in Raytheon to bring innovative, no-fail sustainment, modernization and operations support to the critical mission of securing our borders."

On Tuesday, the stock traded higher by 0.92 percent.

See more from Benzinga

 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Its been six years since Sri Lankas long civil war came to an end. Now this island-state of 20 million seems to have entered a new era of peace and prosperity: The economy is growing at 6 percent, reconciliation is under way and the new government is saying it will welcome any refugees who want to return. Theres only one little hiccup: Many refugees dont want to go back.

There are about 100,000 Sri Lankan refugees (mostly Tamil) living in camps in the south of India.

Though you might think theyd jump at the chance of returning to their homeland (especially if the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is paying for the plane ticket), its not so uncomplicated. There is a lot of anxiety over whether to leave or to stay, says Miriam George, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth Universitys School of Social Work who conducts research on the issue. Having to choose is causing trauma between generations.

Many of the older generation, those who fled in the 80s and early 90s, want to return home, eager to reconnect with the friends and family members they left behind. Yet for others, returning is risking their lives, says Aran Mylvaganam, spokesman for the Tamil Refugee Council. The countrys decades-long civil conflict ended after 100,000 people died, with the Tamil Tigers defeat and both sides accusing each other of crimes against humanity. Refugees from the region of Jaffna, which saw some of the heaviest fighting between government forces and the Tamil Tigers, are likely to be greeted with suspicion upon their return. A recent report by the International Truth and Justice Project found 20 cases of returnees in 2015 who were victims of torture and rape at the hands of Sri Lankan security forces in what the authors described as a predatory climate against Tamils. (The Sri Lankan government did not reply to request for comment.)

The younger generation of Tamil refugees isnt exactly queuing at the airport either, but not out of fear of retaliation. For the thousands who were born in camps, India is their home country, where their roots, friends and studies are. Many are already in their 20s, and some have even attended college in India. And while career prospects for refugees are limited (India does not grant Tamils nationality even if they are born there), the prospect of starting from zero in a foreign land sounds even less enticing.

Story continues

Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan government continues to campaign for Tamil return. Between 2002 and 2015, more than 12,000 refugees were repatriated voluntarily to Sri Lanka; according to UNHCR India, another 41 have returned since the start of 2016. Those who choose to stay face an uncertain future since India is not likely to allow them citizenship anytime soon. (The Indian government did not reply to request for comment.). Yet Tamil refugees are full of resilience and hope for the future, says George. Which, after 30 years in limbo, is a victory in itself.

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By Ben Gruber BOSTON (Reuters) - In an intriguing approach to the fight against cancer, researchers for the first time have used light to prevent and reverse tumors using a technique called optogenetics to manipulate electrical signaling in cells. Scientists at Tufts University performed optogenetics experiments on frogs, often used in basic research into cancer because of the biological similarities in their tumors to those in mammals, to test whether this method already used in brain and nervous system research could be applied to cancer. "We call this whole research program cracking the bioelectric code," said biologist Michael Levin, who heads the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. Whether optogenetics can be used to treat cancer in people remains unclear, but the underlying science of how electricity functions in the body could lead to new ways for treating a variety of diseases, the researchers said. "The idea is much like the brain, when neuroscientists try to figure out the semantics of electrical states in the brain. We try to figure out how patterns are encoded in electrical states in the body," Levin said. The researchers injected frog embryos with two types of genes, one to predispose them to cancer and another to produce light-sensitive ion channels in tumor cells. Ion channels are passageways in and out of a cell that open in response to certain signals. When the channels are open, the movement of ions in or out of the cell creates an electrical signal. The researchers activated the ion channels on tumor cells by exposing the embryos to light. By activating the channels and adjusting the electrical signals in the cells, the researchers said they were able to prevent and reverse tumor formation in 30 percent of the embryos. "You can turn on the light, in this case it's blue light, and you blink this blue light at this tumor, I believe it's 24 hours, and the tumor goes away," said Tufts biologist Dany Adams, another of the researchers. By targeting the electrical patterns in cells, it becomes possible to control how quickly the cells divide and what information they share with their neighbors, Levin said. "The electrical communication amongst cells is really important for tumor suppression," Levin said. "The bigger picture is to understand how these voltages are passed among cells and how they control the transfer of chemical signals among cells." The researchers said they are planning similar experiments on mammals. The study was published last month in the journal Oncotarget. (Reporting by Ben Gruber; Editing by Will Dunham)
By Colleen Jenkins WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - Civil rights groups and churches opposed to sweeping changes to North Carolina's election rules said on Tuesday they would ask an appeals court for a reversal after a federal judge upheld provisions they argue will suppress minority votes at the polls in November. The ruling late on Monday was highly anticipated in a presidential election year in a state that had close results for the White House in 2008 and 2012, and it received praise from the voting law's Republican backers. U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder in Winston-Salem said the state could require voters to show approved photo identification at the polls, one of a number of provisions in the law that challengers have said targets groups of people who typically support Democratic candidates. Schroeder, who was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, also upheld provisions that eliminated a week of early voting, ended same-day registration and banned provisional ballots cast outside the correct precinct from being counted. Lawyers for groups including churches, the North Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday filed a notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. They said they were confident they would prevail. "If this decision remained in effect, the impact on the November election could be devastating," said Penda Hair of the Advancement Project civil rights organization, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. The U.S. Justice Department, which also challenged the North Carolina law, said it was evaluating its options for moving forward. "We're disappointed in the ruling," the department said in a statement. The Republican chairmen of the North Carolina legislature's elections oversight committee criticized the legal challenges as an abuse of the court system. "We are glad the court recognized the law provides all voters an equal opportunity to vote," Representative David Lewis and Senator Bob Rucho said in a statement. Backers of the law said the voter ID provision would guard against fraud, though the plaintiffs in the case said there was little evidence of such fraud at the polls. Schroeder found the Republican-controlled legislature did not act with discriminatory intent when it overhauled the state's voting rules in 2013. The revisions were made soon after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that North Carolina and other states with a history of discrimination no longer needed federal approval for voting law changes affecting minorities. The judge also said the plaintiffs had not established that African Americans or Hispanics had less opportunity to participate in the political process than other people as a result of the law. (Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Additional reporting by Julia Harte in Washington; Editing by Alessandra Rafferty)
More than an hour into Monday night's Chaplin Award gala, honoring Morgan Freeman with the 43rd annual prize, Robert De Niro had the well-heeled crowd at New York's Lincoln Center laughing and applauding as he gently roasted himself, fellow actor Michael Douglas and President Barack Obama.

De Niro began by zinging the POTUS, joking that Freeman's role as President in 1998's Deep Impact inspired Obama's White House run.

"According to reports, after seeing the film, Barack turned to his friends in Kenya and said, 'I want to be president, too - if only I had a birth certificate,'" De Niro said to laughter and applause. He went on to joke that Obama has faced greater challenges than "a giant asteroid."

De Niro continued: "Unfortunately, it didn't turn out so great for him. Morgan's President Beck only had to deal with a giant asteroid hitting earth and wiping out mankind. President Obama has had to deal with a Republican Congress."

He then moved on to Douglas, his and Freeman's co-star in 2013's Last Vegas, a comedy about an elderly group of friends who go on a trip to Sin City.

Read More: Morgan Freeman to be Honored With Film Society of Lincoln Center's Chaplin Award

"[In the movie], Michael Douglas learns that you don't need a woman 40 years younger to find happiness, only 20 years younger ... so just like real life," said De Niro.

The venerable actor then used his recent roles to jokingly disparage himself and praise Freeman.

"Morgan, I wish I had your career," said De Niro. "You're the president, you're God, you're Nelson Mandela for God's sakes. Me, in the last year, I've been an intern, a dirty grandpa and Bernie f - ing Madoff."

While De Niro, Danny Glover, Matthew Broderick, Helen Mirren and Christopher Nolan, the latter appearing via video, all praised Freeman, remarking on his exceptional abilities as an actor, Freeman's Street Smart director Jerry Schatzberg and his Shawshank Redemption co-star Tim Robbins, appearing via video, all took the opportunity to gently rib the honoree.

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Robbins joked that after he introduced himself to Freeman on the set of Shawshank, Freeman said, "Nice to meet you, Ted," and still calls him by the wrong name. But they're not the only ones who can't get it right. Robbins recalled that he and Freeman often compare notes on the latest mangled version of the Shawshank Redemption's title that fans have come up with, claiming that people can't seem to remember the name of their movie. "It completely explains why the film didn't make money when it first came out," he said. "People saw this movie and said, 'That was a great movie,' but they can't remember the title." Towards the end of his remarks, Robbins jokingly addressed Freeman as "Milton Friedman."

Schatzberg also recalled a humorous incident with Freeman, explaining that the actor started munching on a piece of fruit during their meeting about 1987's Street Smart.

Read More: Robert De Niro to Receive GLAAD Award

"In the middle of our conversation, Morgan reached down into his bag and pulled out a banana," Schatzberg recounted. "He started to peel the banana. And I said to myself, 'That's audacious.' He continued peeling the banana. He started eating the banana. He didn't even offer me a bite."

The director ultimately realized Freeman was right for the role of Times Square pimp Fast Black, which became his breakthrough role and earned him his first Oscar nomination. While working on the film, Schatzberg said, he was struck by Freeman's humility.

He explained that the actor told him not to bother with shooting a close-up of him in a scene, arguing that Schatzberg wouldn't use that shot.

Joking that he found it unusual for an actor to turn down a close-up, Schatzberg said, "I realized how generous Morgan was as an actor to worry about the scene, not his ego."

In closing, Schatzberg didn't miss the opportunity to pay tribute to the fruit that stood out during his meeting with Freeman, pulling out a couple from the podium as he said, "All I can say is thank goodness for bananas."

Read More: Morgan Freeman Lends Voice to GPS App Waze

Freeman is still humble, even after being nominated for four more Oscars and winning the supporting actor prize for his role in 2004's Million Dollar Baby. On the red carpet ahead of Monday night's gala, Freeman suggested that this honor meant as much to him as any other.

"Everytime someone pats you on the back, it doesn't matter where they reach from, they're patting you on the back saying 'well done,'" he told The Hollywood Reporter.

Inside, Freeman said that while he'd been laid-back about the ceremony leading up to it, the tributes he received from his colleagues left him overwhelmed.

"The people who've come up here and spoken about me have turned my head. I didn't know all of that was thought about me," he said. "I hoped."

Freeman went on to say that when he initially found out he was receiving the Film Society's annual award, he first wondered if it signaled the end of his acting career, asking aloud, "Are they going to get someone else to do the voiceover for March of the Penguins II?"

He added: "The second reaction was to take a few moments to look back on my career and realize that all of these different films, all different roles, all of that travel, all wonderful actors was me living the dream, just like now."

See More: Morgan Freeman's Most Memorable Movie Roles
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is supplying its S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran ahead of schedule and is now in talks with the Islamic Republic on deliveries of other military equipment, the head of Russia's federal arms exports service, FSVTS, said on Tuesday. "The talk is about only permitted items which are not on the U.N. list of banned (weapons)," Alexander Fomin told reporters. He did not elaborate. (Reporting by Denis Dyomkin; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Dominic Evans)
cause yeah

The Russian Ministry of Defense has announced plans that it is seeking to buy five young and healthy dolphins, Russian news sources reported this week.

According to the Russian media company TASS, the defense ministry is willing to pay upward of $25,000 for the dolphins.

Specifically, the Kremlin is looking to buy two females and three males between three and five years of age.

The dolphins must also be between 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) and 2.7 meters (8.9 feet) long.

According to NBC News, Moscow's Utrish Dolphinarium promised to supply the dolphins "with all teeth intact' by August 1.

TASS notes that the Ministry of Defense has not specified the reasons it is looking to purchase the marine mammals.

However, an anonymous Russian military source told Russian media company RIA Novosti that the Kremlin wanted the dolphins to add to the stocks of trained dolphins that Russia had seized from Ukraine in Crimea.

Russia seized control of Ukraine's military-dolphin division in March 2014. The dolphin division was originally created by the Soviet Union, but passed into the control of Ukraine following the union's dissolution.

After the seizure of the dolphins in March 2014, RIA Novosti wrote that the "dolphins are trained to patrol open water and attack or attach buoys to items of military interest, such as mines on the sea floor or combat scuba divers trained to slip past enemy security perimeters, known as frogmen."

Russia's interest in acquiring new dolphins demonstrates the country's efforts to perpetuate its dolphin program.

Ukraine, for its part, has been lobbying Russia to return the dolphins it seized in Crimea, stating that the dolphins did not have a choice of whether they wanted to be part of Russia or Ukraine during the Crimean referendum.

NOW WATCH: There is a life-size chocolate statue of Vladimir Putin  and he's the only one who's allowed to eat it





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PARIS, April 26 (Reuters) - The head of France's Safran declined to comment on Tuesday on a recent report that the company was considering making an offer for smaller aerospace supplier Zodiac Aerospace, saying it was its policy never to respond to speculation.

"We never comment on market rumours," Chief Executive Philippe Petitcolin told reporters on a conference call.

On Friday, shares in aircraft seats and equipment maker Zodiac rose as much as 14.8 percent after Bloomberg News reported Safran was in the early stages of evaluating a bid.

Reuters cited a source close to Safran as saying an offer for Zodiac was, however, "not on the agenda".

Petitcolin said Safran expected to realise a gain of "tens of millions of euros" from its agreement last week to sell its Morpho Detection unit to UK engineering firm Smiths Group .

Safran expects to complete a strategic review of its remaining security activities this year, he said.

Testing of the LEAP aircraft engine is going well and it will meet specifications from the outset for both Airbus and Boeing jets, he added.

Separately, a temporary fix for A400M gearbox problems will be introduced in the coming weeks and a permanent solution for difficulties with the gearbox supplied by GE subsidiary Avio Aero will follow in the coming months, he said.

(Reporting by Tim Hepher and Cyril Altmeyer; Editing by James Regan)
(Adds CEO comments, background)

By Tim Hepher and Cyril Altmeyer

PARIS, April 26 (Reuters) - France's Safran on Tuesday posted a slightly higher-than-expected 7.8 percent increase in first-quarter revenue to 4.24 billion euros ($4.77 billion), led by double-digit aero engine and security gains, and reaffirmed full-year targets.

Revenue grew 6.7 percent on a like-for-like basis, while civil aftermarket revenue rose 8.6 percent in dollar terms, in line with its goals for the year.

In a note, U.S. brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein called the results, which showed growth in all divisions except defence, a "solid start to the year".

Safran, which partners General Electric in building engines for Airbus and Boeing medium-haul airliners through their CFM International joint venture, said its new LEAP engine remained "on track and on time".

Chief Executive Philippe Petitcolin said the engines would meet specifications, which include fuel savings of 15 percent, as soon as they enter service, first for Airbus and then for Boeing jets.

He declined to comment on a recent report that the company was considering making an offer for smaller aerospace supplier Zodiac Aerospace.

"We never comment on market rumours," he told reporters in a conference call.

On Friday, shares in aircraft seats and equipment maker Zodiac rose as much as 14.8 percent after Bloomberg News reported Safran was in the early stages of evaluating a bid.

Reuters reported a source close to Safran as saying an offer for Zodiac was, however, "not on the agenda".

Petitcolin said Safran expected to realise a gain of "tens of millions of euros" from its agreement last week to sell its Morpho Detection unit to UK engineering firm Smiths Group .

The French company expects to complete a strategic review of its remaining security activities this year.

Safran said a final deal on the second phase of a space launchers joint venture with Airbus Group was expected "in the coming weeks".

It reported no new problems with its delayed Silvercrest business jet engine and said a temporary fix for separate gearbox problems that delayed deliveries of the Airbus A400M military transporter would be introduced in coming weeks.

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A permanent solution for difficulties with the gearbox supplied by Italy-based GE subsidiary Avio Aero will follow in coming months, Petitcolin said.

Shares in Safran closed at 62.35 euros on Monday, down 1.6 percent so far this year.

(Reporting by Tim Hepher and Cyril Altmeyer; editing by James Regan and Jason Neely)
University of Colorado educated Aeronautical Engineer, Samish Kumar - bred in America, India, and Africa, perhaps had never imagined during his college days that his ambition of being an aeronautical engineer would one day fly out in thin air and that he would shift gears and accelerate his business operations to a global funds transfer company with a banking network across over 120 countries and 200,000 payout points in the Americas, Middle East, Asia, Europe and Africa  all backed by GCP Capital Partners, a $1.8 billion private equity fund led by top investors in the payments industry!

Samish Kumar, NRI and the CEO of New York based Transfast has had a fascinating upbringing. After schooling in Bengaluru and Kanpur, he moved to Lagos in the 1980s to join his mother, who had moved there to embark on a teaching profession in an alien country. Samish shares My mom, a single mother, decided to move to Nigeria to take up the challenge of teaching. She had two young children to raise but she could do it because she was a very resourceful person. Eventually, her resourcefulness brought me to Lagos. "My mothers family is a business-oriented family and the conversation at the dinner table was business, or politics. Because my mothers brother had a cement and transportation business, there was talk of government regulations and complexities. Solving those problems sounded fascinating. Even as a child, I could understand that business had lots of moving parts and that sounded interesting. Ultimately, business and entrepreneurship drew me in and became my career focus". Samishs father is a leading physicist.

Enrolling in the University of Colorado, Samish started out studying physics but later felt that it wasnt practical enough. He reflects Engineering appeared practical and aerospace seemed interesting, which is why I pursued Aerospace Engineering. The University of Colorado was a key participant in the Strategic Defense Initiative, known as Star Wars, and the program was well regarded. As I studied it, I realized it was an interesting field, but in the end, I couldnt see myself as an engineer". Samish decided to pursue investment banking out of undergrad, and later enrolled in Columbia Universitys Graduate School of Business, earning an MBA, and then worked on Wall Street in New York at UBS Warburg. He spent most of his career prior to Transfast in emerging markets. Samish elaborates on his journey Even when I worked in large banks such as Barings and Warburg, I had entrepreneurial roles where I had to build something, think about issues around strategy and decide how to create the foundation to build a business. Investment banking gave me tremendous exposure to emerging markets and successful businessmen.

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Early Influences

On a personal level, Samishs mom was a key influence. She was very pragmatic and a doer with lots of natural leadership skills, even without any formal training. Samish smiles and adds "My mom gave me lots of practical advice which, like many children, I rarely listened to when I was young, but now appreciate.

"As for professional influences, I enjoy reading about business leaders and how they got to where they are. Its fascinating to learn about the personalities of business leaders and what made them successful. I learned from many people I worked with along the way, and whenever anyone would say something thoughtful and insightful, I would make a mental note.

Acquiring Transfast

In the late 1990s during the dot-com bubble, Samish Kumar backed a financial venture. They were heavily exposed to the trade show industry and he took on the role of CEO. After 9/11, the trade show industry collapsed, and Samish had the choice of either going back to investment banking or continuing in an entrepreneurial role. He says I decided to stay in an entrepreneurial role because I loved it, but I decided to do something closer to my background in financial services and emerging markets. I researched businesses that were fragmented and where barriers to entry were rising, where I thought there would be a good opportunity. Thats when I became interested in the cross-border funds transfer and payments industry. Having spent time in emerging markets, I was familiar with the industry. Back when I was a child in India and my mom was teaching in Nigeria, it took a month to receive the money she sent home, via banks, so I knew first-hand the challenges people faced in sending money home. Barriers to entry were going up post-9/11, and I thought the industry would consolidate. There was high growth and great margins, and I felt that technology and the regulatory market would change the industry over time. The best way to get in was to acquire a company, so thats what I aimed to do.

He shares that the process of finding and acquiring a company was a difficult journey fraught with a lot of uncertainty. Acquiring the right company was critical to raise enough capital.The process took four years, from 2002-2006, with a failed deal in between. Samish adds It felt like four years in the wilderness. He credits his wife Janice, for supporting and encouraging him during those tough years. Janices moral support and unflagging enthusiasm, plus her belief in me, made all the difference.

Tough Times and Challenges

Transfast is based in New York and is a leading omni-channel provider of multi-currency cross-border payments and funds transfer solutions for consumers and businesses around the world. It operates a best-in-class network across over 120 countries and 200,000 payout points in the Americas, Middle East, Asia, Europe and Africa with multi-product capability, including a leading, one-of-a-kind instant bank transfer offering. Their customers can send via desktop or mobile device, or from an in-person location, either directly into the recipients bank account, or for cash pick-up at one of their locations.

Though things are going great today with year on year exponential growth, it was not rosy for Samish before its acquisition in 2007. He looks back on his struggle, saying, "I spent that four years knocking on doors. I tried to understand owners and entrepreneurs and what they were doing, while looking at opportunities and trying to figure out which company I could acquire. All the while, I was traveling on my own nickel. I was competing with another businessperson who was doing the same, but he was more credentialed and had already lined up some backers. Every company I spoke to had already talked to him. Then, as destiny would have it, Samish found a Brazilian entrepreneur whod been approached by the other businessman but refused to do a deal. Samish educated him as to why it was the right time to sell, and that the time for what he had built had passed. His business needed an injection of funds and talent. Transfast thus fell in Samishs lap after a four-year struggle and he acquired it in April 2007.

Transfast had a good team and an excellent compliance track record, but it wasnt growing. The economy collapsed later that year, in 2007, and Samish was faced with the challenge of steering the companys growth in that environment. Despite all hurdles and challenges, Transfast managed to grow, and is today one of the fastest-growing companies in the industry.

Massive African Presence

Transfast has a massive presence in Africa where they operate in 23 nations; their bank network covers up to 90 percent of adult bank account holders in those nations. Their customers in U.S. and Canada can send online or via mobile to recipients bank accounts at nearly 600 banks or to 6,000 cash pick-up locations inside banks in Africa.

Since Samish spent a considerable amount of his growing years in Lagos, Nigeria, he sees the opportunity offered by that vast continent. He adds,  Africa is an exciting place with tremendous opportunities and challenges. Africa is a white board and you can create what you want, leapfrogging entire generations of technology. When I lived in Lagos, I used to travel 40 miles to make an international phone call. Today they have mobile phones and a 4G network. Were excited about the opportunity in Africa and will continue to be a leader there.

Indias Growth Story and Its Impact

Samish finds Indias growth story to be very exciting as it is a large country with favorable demographics and a population which is very young. He opines that Indias role in the tech industry goes back to the late 1980s and in todays global economy, tech is playing an important role in reshaping industries. This according to him augurs well for Indias growth prospects. He feels that Indias economy is a broad one, not necessarily export-based and not reliant on export markets. With lower oil prices, the macro picture for India according to Samish looks very good.

Presence in India - 45,000 Locations and Counting

Transfasts reputation of being an innovator was established when it became the first money transfer company to offer instant bank transfers, back in 2009. Transfast continues to expand its footprint across India and is in 45,000 locations. Samish dreams to reach people in every corner of India. He adds India is a large country with more than 600,000 villages, and almost half of the population lives in rural areas. Having a network thats able to serve customers in the most remote part of the country where there is little bank coverage enables us to play a role in building financial inclusion.

Best of Both Cultures

Samish says that it is no surprise that America is considered the hotbed of entrepreneurship in the world as he thinks America is an incredible country where everything and anything is possible, irrespective of where you come from or what your personal background is. He adds For an entrepreneur, America has an ecosystem which helps foster a supportive culture for entrepreneurship. People are open-minded about backing ideas from both proven entrepreneurs as well as from those without a track record. Theres access to capital and as importantly, access to advice. Theres no place like the U.S. for an entrepreneur, anywhere in the world.The country offers a big market across all industries, and its a culture where youre never held back by the fact that something hasnt been done before. The U.S. is the place for innovators. In the U.S., theres emphasis on education, but also an equal acceptance and open-mindedness toward someone with great ideas even though they might not have the right educational pedigree. Theres an American openmindedness in listening to their ideas and not dismissing them solely because they dont have the traditional education. Many entrepreneurs and CEOs dont have Ivy League degrees and they are incredibly successful".

He feels that India is producing some very good entrepreneurs and that India is an environment where you have to adapt to survive and thrive. He opines  It produces people who are able to adapt to different cultures. India is a complex place, so you have to adapt and compromise and get along. There are millions of people on the streets every day  adapting and compromising allow you to make it. In India, theres a real appreciation for hard work. Plus, you have to be pragmatic if you live in India. Pragmatism is one of the qualities that helps India be so successful. Another strength is the emphasis on education which is a big plus for India.

Advice to Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Samish has worked hard to reach where he is today and he did not let his dreams fade away. He advises Youve got to dream and believe in your dreams. You have to be a hard worker. Hard work trumps everything else, and focus is critical. There will be bumps along the road and possibly even failures. You have to get up and push ahead. Its important to have the dream, the persistence and passion. You cant do it just for money. Yes, money is important  but it cant be the only thing driving you.

Todays India is a very different place than it was when I grew up, and there are positive cultural changes that bode well for entrepreneurship. I see a greater acceptance of entrepreneurs and more tools at their disposal. Traditionally, there was emphasis on going to work for an established company. Theres nothing wrong with that, but the exposure you get at small companies or from being an entrepreneur is starting to gain real respect in India.

He advises, Whats important as an aspiring entrepreneur is how you take advantage of your experiences, whether at a big company or small company. Ask yourself what youve learned from those experiences and apply them to an entrepreneurial role. Theres no one way to become an entrepreneur  there are many paths, all of them potentially beneficial.

Images Courtesy : Transfast.
By Katie Paul

DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is revising plans for a glitzy financial district in Riyadh and the creation of six industrial cities, after the projects were plagued by delays and a lack of enthusiasm among potential tenants and investors.

The government's frank, public assessments of the projects suggest Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is not hesitating to tackle projects which once enjoyed top-level political support as he pushes an economic reform drive launched this week.

The project to build the King Abdullah Financial District began in 2006; skyscrapers were to house banks and the financial regulator. Parts of the area will now be turned over to residential housing, hotels and commercial establishments.

A document outlining Prince Mohammed's Vision 2030 reform plan, released on Tuesday, also said authorities would "strive to salvage" the industrial cities, which were designed to diversify the economy beyond oil and create jobs.

It said the financial district had been started "without consideration of its economic feasibility" and that the project had failed to convince the financial community to invest.

"Without any dramatic shift in direction, renting the 3 million square metres of built-up areas at reasonable prices, or even achieving decent occupancy rates, will be very challenging," the document said.

The government will therefore aim to transform the district into a special business zone with competitive regulations, visa exemptions for foreigners working there, and direct connections to Riyadh's international airport, it said.

"We will also seek to repurpose some of the built-up areas and change the real estate mix, increasing the allocation for residential accommodation, services and hospitality areas."

The financial district will house the headquarters of the government's Public Investment Fund, which Prince Mohammed plans to build up in the reform drive to hold 7 trillion riyals ($1.9 trillion) of assets compared to 600 billion riyals at present.

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The reform document also acknowledged difficulties in efforts to create the six "economic cities".

The most prominent of these is King Abdullah Economic City on the Red Sea coast near Jeddah, which is being developed by Emaar the Economic City , a publicly listed firm.

"Work has halted in several cities, and others face challenges that threaten their viability," the document said.

"We have worked in cooperation with Aramco to restructure Jizan Economic City," it said, referring to state oil giant Saudi Aramco.

"We will strive to salvage other economic cities, especially those with comparative advantages. To achieve this, we will work with the companies owning those cities to revamp them and transfer vital facilities."

(Editing by Andrew Torchia and Alison Williams)
Detroit (AFP) - German automaker Volkswagen, already deep in trouble in the United States over its polluting diesel engines, is also fighting a union challenge at its plant in the southern state of Tennessee.

Volkswagen of America, the automaker's US arm, said Monday it plans to appeal a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that would allow the United Auto Workers to negotiate a labor contract for 160 maintenance workers at the company's plant in Chattanooga.

The escalating issue with the powerful UAW union comes as Volkswagen is mired in legal and regulatory battles in the United States and other countries since its emissions-cheating scandal emerged in September.

VW has acknowledged 11 million vehicles worldwide are outfitted with software that reduces pollution levels only when the car is being tested for emissions.

The German automaker had not yet filed the appeal but decided to challenge the NLRB ruling rather than let the decision stand, Volkswagen spokesman Scott Neal Wilson said Monday.

"We didn't state that an appeal was filed, only the decision to do so," he said.

Earlier this month, a three-member NLRB panel had denied Volkswagen's request for the agency to review a December 2015 election in which skilled-trades employees in Chattanooga voted overwhelmingly to designate UAW Local 42 as their collective bargaining representative. The NLRB upheld the results of the election, which it had supervised.

The December vote in Chattanooga marked the first time workers in the US South voted for union representation. The Chattanooga facility is the only Volkswagen plant in the world without union representation, the UAW said.

Volkswagen had argued that the skilled-trades-only bargaining unit in Chattanooga plant is not appropriate for collective bargaining. VW says that production and maintenance employees share a common community of interest and should have an equal voice in their workplace.

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The UAW has pressed VW to negotiate a new contract for the unit's 160 members approved by the NLRB that would be the first negotiated at an auto plant in the South owned by an Asian or European carmaker.

The Chattanooga workforce is expected to grow as the company prepares to use the plant for building a new sport utility vehicle, Cross Blue, which is critical for rebuilding VW's sales in the country after the emissions scandal.

- 'Stall tactic': UAW -

Gary Casteel, the UAW executive board member in charge of the organizing effort in Chattanooga, said Volkswagens refusal to come to the bargaining table since the December election has been a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.

Divided union representation is not uncommon at Volkswagen plants around the world or work sites throughout the United States.

"If Volkswagen tries to force this matter into the federal court of appeals, we see it as a stall tactic that won't work," Casteel said.

"The appeals court with jurisdiction over the Chattanooga plant already has ruled that clearly identifiable employee units within a workforce, such as the skilled-trades unit at Volkswagen, can seek recognition in order to achieve collective bargaining," said Casteel, noting that US courts have long ruled that unions can represent part of a company's workforce.

"Furthermore, Volkswagen plants around the world -- including in such countries as Italy, Russia and Spain -- recognize multiple unions that represent portions of a workforce," he added.

Volkswagen of America, however, is facing heavy pressure from conservative Republicans, who dominate the state legislature in Tennessee and had long assumed the Chattanooga plant would be a non-union operation when they voted to help subsidize its construction.

"At a time when Volkswagen already has run afoul of the federal and state governments in the emissions-cheating scandal, we're disappointed that the company now is choosing to thumb its nose at the federal government over US labor law," Casteel said.

"At the end of the day, the employees are the ones being cheated by Volkswagen's actions."
Lawyers for David Miscavige are mounting an eleventh-hour attempt at preventing the publication of a new tell-all about the Church of Scientology leader. The author is Miscavige's own father, Ron Miscavige.

As first reported by Scientology observer Tony Ortega on his website, London-based publisher Silvertail Books has received a letter from Johnsons Solicitors, a powerful law firm "with a strong reputation for its expertise  in media and defamation," according to its website.

The letter warns of a defamation suit should the book, Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me, get a May 3 release in the U.K. as planned. It goes on to say that St. Martin's Press, which is releasing the book in the U.S., has received a similar letter.

"As you are no doubt aware, U.K. and Irish libel laws offer more extensive protection to individuals, and indeed religious organizations, than those in the U.S.," the letter states. To a large extent that's true, as U.K. libel laws remain more plaintiff-friendly than in the U.S. However, in 2013, the U.K. amended its defamation laws to provide defenses of truth, opinion and - likely of relevance here - "publication on a matter of public interest."

Still, Miscavige's lawyers are hoping the laws will bend to their favor. "You are now on notice of the highly defamatory content of the subject book. Accordingly, in the event that you proceed with the release of this book, in total disregard for the truth, our client will be left with no alternative but to seek the protection of UK/Irish defamation and other laws," the letter continues, setting the stage for a father-son courtroom face-off.

Read More: Scientology's Seduction of Tom Cruise, Role in Nicole Kidman Split Detailed

Among the "malicious,misleading and highly defamatory" assertions made in the book: that Miscavige "seized power" from Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard by "outmaneuvering rivals"; that "Gold Base" headquarters in Hemet, Calif., has "appalling conditions" and staff "were not permitted to leave"; that church members were "subjected to deprivation and violence" while detained in a prison-like containment center known as "the Hole"; and that Miscavige hired private detectives to trail his father.

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Many if not all of these claims have been previously made in other Scientology exposes, including Lawrence Wright's Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief. The 2013 book was released throughout the U.S. and Europe, but, due to its libel laws, not in Britain; last month, Silvertail announced it would finally release the book there. (The accompanying Going Clear film aired in the U.K. on Sky Atlantic in September 2015 and was the most watched documentary on the channel in three years.)

Speaking from his London offices, Silvertail Books publisher Humfrey Hunter tells The Hollywood Reporter, "My plans for the book haven't changed at all since I received the letter. Full legal due diligence has been carried out on the manuscript, and I am both confident in its integrity and very proud that Silvertail is publishing it. Ron's story is an important one, and he is a brave man to be telling it."

Ruthless will be the focus of a special this Friday on ABC's 20/20. The Church of Scientology did not respond to a request for comment.

Read More: Tom Cruise and Scientology's David Miscavige: 'Most Intense Bromance in History'

The full letter is embedded below.
My mother taught me, at the age before memory, how to wash the rice. I would stand at her elbow, as she had stood at her mothers, watching an ivory arc of grains cataract into the pot. She would cover the rice with cold water, and I loved watching the water bloom with starch as the grains swished through her fingers. Shed pour off the cloudy water, refill, and repeat, until it ran mostly clear.

My mother is sansei, third-generation, born to nisei parents during World War II. They did not teach her Japanese; they passed down food customs instead. Mom married my father, a Kansas man, and learned to cook pot roasts and potatoes. But every day we had rice.

Gohan, the Japanese word for cooked rice, is also the word for meal. It is not a side dish. In Japan, it is the centerpiece, three times a day. It has rules: Never pour soy sauce on rice (thats insulting). Never leave chopsticks protruding from it (a funeral rite). And finish every grain (unless you want seconds).

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Like most Asians I know, I cannot cook rice without a rice cooker. My Zojirushi, the Cadillac, has 10 settings and a timer, and it plays a little tune when the rice is starting and another song when its done. Nothing but rice and water go in it. Ever. Once, in my twenties, a boyfriend threatened its sanctity with a bouillon cube. This is not going to work, I thought, about the relationship and the rice. Luckily, my future husband learned, and never did it again.

When I was little and sick, my mother would feed me tea on rice. A peasant dish, O-chazuke rejuvenates cold, stale rice by drowning it in hot green tea. The warmth and clean flavor settle the stomach, especially when served with tsukemono, a variety of Japanese pickles. My favorite is beni-shoga, a salty pickled ginger colored with red shiso leaves (perilla). I still crave this when Im sick.

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For mom, washing rice is an ordinary task, but for me its a meditation. It reminds me of touching wet sand at the beach, in the shallows, between waves. The sound is soothing. The process, spare. Cleansed of polishing agent, the grains swell and shine, like tiny seed pearls. Cooked, the flavor is cleaner, the fragrance sweeter. Fluffed and steaming in a bowl, the result is sacred and beautiful.

GOHAN (COOKED RICE)

Measure 3 cups[1] Japanese short-grain white rice (Nishiki is my favorite) into the pot of a large rice cooker. Cover with several inches of cold water, and agitate the grains until the water is opaque. Pour out the cloudy water; repeat until water runs mostly clear (3 to 4 times). Add water to level indicated in rice pot (or use the old-fashioned method, placing the tip of your thumb on top of the rice, then adding water to the first knuckle). Cook according to manufacturers instructions.[2]

O-CHAZUKE (TEA ON RICE)

In a teapot with a removable strainer, measure 1 teaspoon of loose sen-cha[3] for each cup of water. Fill a kettle with filtered or distilled water, bring to a boil, and let stand 60 seconds. (Boiling water can scald the tea.) Steep for 90 seconds (the longer you steep, the more bitter the tea). Remove strainer. Fill a bowl half-full with steamed rice, and fill the rest of the bowl with tea. Eat with a spoon, like soup, and serve with a variety of tsukemono (pickles)[4] for a punch of flavor. For a slightly more substantial meal, add a slice of chicken breast or leftover fish, topped with a splash of soy sauce.

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[1] For some reason, its hard to cook less than 3 cups of rice with good results. Most rice cookers made in Japan are sold with a Japanese-sized measuring cup (about two-thirds to three-fourths the size of a U.S. cup) that corresponds with the markings for water levels etched in the pot.

[2] If you dont have a rice cooker, you can make the rice on the stovetop in a large saucepan. Start with 2 (U.S.) cups of rice. Bring rinsed rice and 3 (U.S.) cups water to a boil; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 12 minutes. Remove from heat; let stand, covered, 10 minutes.

[3] Quality loose green tea produces best results, and it need not be expensive. I prefer loose-leaf sen-cha from an Asian market (my everyday bag of Ito-en costs less than $5). When traveling, my go-to is Costcos house brand, Kirkland Signaturecontains a bit of powdered matcha for depth.

[4] Tsukemono guide: beni-shoga (red ginger): salty and vinegary; rakkyo (baby scallions): sweet-tart; ume-boshi (tiny plums): puckeringly salty and sour; takuan (daikon radish): mildly salty and sour

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BELGRADE (Reuters) - A Serbian engineer has been kidnapped in a remote area of Libya near the Egyptian border, the Serbian foreign ministry said on Tuesday. Miroslav Tomic, a maintenance engineer employed by a German company, was abducted on Saturday while travelling to inspect an oil field around 1,200 km (750 miles) from the capital Tripoli. "We are waiting for more information about the details of the abduction," a foreign ministry spokeswoman said without elaborating. Two Serbian embassy staff kidnapped last November near the Libyan coastal city of Sabratha were among nearly 50 people killed in February in U.S. air strikes on a suspected Islamic State training camp. The new U.N.-backed unity government is trying to establish its authority over Libya, where a self-declared Tripoli government and a rival in the east and various armed factions have been vying for power and a share of the oil wealth. (Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / April 26, 2016 / Levi & Korsinsky announces it has commenced an investigation of Investors Bancorp Inc. (ISBC) concerning possible breaches of fiduciary duty by its Board of Directors. To obtain additional information, GO TO: http://zlk.9nl.com/investors-bancorp-isbc or contact Joseph E. Levi, Esq. either via email at jlevi@zlk.com or by telephone at (212) 363-7500, toll-free: (877) 363-5972.

Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington D.C. The firm's attorneys have extensive expertise in prosecuting securities litigation involving financial fraud, representing investors throughout the nation in securities and shareholder lawsuits. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

CONTACT:

Levi & Korsinsky, LLP

Eduard Korsinsky, Esq.

30 Broad Street - 24th Floor

New York, NY 10004

Tel: (212) 363-7500

Toll Free: (877) 363-5972

Fax: (212) 363-7171

www.zlk.com

SOURCE: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP
LONDON (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell will close the head office of BG Group, the gas producer it agreed to acquire for $50 billion (34.4 billion pounds) in February, by the end of the year, it said on Monday, as part of a plan to save costs and cut 10,300 jobs worldwide. The oil major will also offer voluntary redundancy packages to staff at the BG headquarters in Reading, near London, and to Shell staff in the UK. This follows a similar announcement made to Dutch staff earlier this month. The oil company is under intense pressure to rein in costs as a slump in oil prices has hit its profits. Shell also said on Monday it would close BG's Aberdeen office to focus onshore operations in the Scottish city at its own site. Shell will also close its Brabazon House office in Manchester by the end of 2017, it said. The site closures and voluntary redundancy offers are subject to consultation with staff, Shell said. As part of the 10,300 job cuts it has already announced, 2,800 will come from the integration of BG and 7,500 from its existing staff and direct contractor base. (Reporting by Karolin Schaps and Ron Bousso, editing by Louise Heavens and Susan Thomas)
Shells Upcoming 1Q16 Results: Will They Be Hit by Low Crude Oil?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Performance of Shell stock

In 2016, integrated energy stocks have risen since February due to spikes in oil prices. Rising oil prices are usually favorable for upstream segment earnings of integrated energy companies. Since mid-February, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) stock has risen about 25%.

Shell peers YPF (YPF) and Cenovus Energy (CVE) rose 28% and 56%, respectively, during the same period. Petrobras (PBR) rose sharply by 135%. If youre looking for exposure to high dividend stocks, you can consider the Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF (VYM). It has ~10% exposure to energy sector stocks.

Shells capex, costs, and restructuring plans

In 2015, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) incurred total capital investments of $29 billion. In 2016, Shell plans to lower capex (capital expenditures) for the merged entity (Shell and BG Group) to $33 billion with an option of cutting it further if the situation demands.

Shell also continues to focus on cost reduction. The company reduced $4 billion of operating costs in 2015. It expects to reduce costs further by about $3 billion in 2016.

Shell is also restructuring its asset portfolio. From 20162018, Shell expects to divest ~$30 billion worth of assets. In fact, Shell has already reached an agreement for the sale with Idemitsu (for the stake in Showa Shell in Japan), Couche-Tard (for the marketing business in Denmark), and Malaysian Hengyuan International (for the stake in Shell Refining).

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Manchester (United Kingdom) (AFP) - David Silva will not play in the second leg of Manchester City's Champions League semi-final against Real Madrid after injuring himself in Tuesday's first leg, manager Manuel Pellegrini said.

Silva was obliged to leave the fray in the 40th minute at the Etihad Stadium after damaging his hamstring as he slid in to challenge Gareth Bale, for which he was booked.

City, appearing in their first Champions League semi-final, resume hostilities with Madrid at the Bernabeu next Wednesday and Pellegrini said that his Spanish playmaker will not be able to take part.

"David Silva has a hamstring injury and will not be fit in one week," Pellegrini told BT Sport.

City were also missing Yaya Toure against Madrid due to a thigh problem.
Ap_1603011759150168

Snapchat is taking new steps to make sure its users' selfies are legal in more places.

The company filed court paperwork last week as part of a legal case seeking to defend voters' right to take and share "ballot selfies" on election day.

SEE ALSO: 3 major problems with using decade-old voting machines in November

Snapchat's filing is just the latest development in more than a year and a half of legal wrangling over whether New Hampshire voters have the right to share photos they take at the ballot box on social media.

In September of 2014, the state of New Hampshire passed a law banning voters from sharing photos of marked ballots on social media, with those who violated the law subject to fines up to $1,000. Soon after, the ACLU challenged the law on behalf of three New Hampshire voters, saying it violated their First Amendment right to free speech.

In August 2015, a federal court sided with the ACLU and struck down the law saying it restricted free speech. But the state of New Hampshire filed an appeal to the decision, which is still making its way through the court system. This is where Snapchat's legal team stepped in to lend support to the cause of "ballot selfies."

Though Snapchat was not part of the original case, the company filed an amicus curiae, or "friend of the court" brief, in United States Court of Appeals on Friday in support of the appeal.

"Whether it's a campaign button or a selfie from the ballot box, Snapchat believes that expressing participation in the democratic process is an important part of free speech and civic engagement that the First Amendment roundly protects," a Snapchat spokesperson said in a statement provided to Mashable.

Interestingly, in the brief, Snapchat cites its First Amendment right as a "newsgatherer" to share user-generated content. From the court filing:

The brief goes on to mount an impassioned defense of the so-called "ballot selfie," arguing that it's a "uniquely powerful form of political expression."

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New Hampshire is far from the only state to ban voters from photographing or recording their ballots while in the voting booth. Dozens of states have similar laws on the books (the specifics vary state by state, but The Huffington Post compiled a handy list outlining the policies for each state here.)

Snapchat has been covering the elections heavily in recent months; both through live stories on election day, as well as through its "Good Luck America" show, which features the company's head of news (and former CNN political reporter) Peter Hamby who reports from the campaign trail.

h/t: New York Times
Investors of soft drink stocks have ample reason to be optimistic with leading companies like PepsiCo, Inc. PEP and The Coca-Cola Company KO delivering solid Q1 results. Despite declining demand for their sugary sodas, currency headwinds and slowdown in key emerging markets, earnings of these soft drink behemoths beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate, thereby bringing the sector in the limelight. Notably, Coca-Cola also beat sales expectations, while Pepsis top line narrowly missed the same.

Higher sales of the so-called healthy non-carbonated drinks, improved performance in the North America segments, pricing gains, lower costs of key raw materials, cost reductions and productivity gains and overall better execution helped these companies deliver impressive results in the reported quarter.

However, despite strong Q1 results, both Pepsi and Coca-Cola retained their previously issued guidance for 2016 due to a volatile macro outlook.

This week, three other soft drinks companies, Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. CCE, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Inc. DPS and Fomento Economico Mexicano, S.A.B de C.V FMX are set to report their quarterly results. Will these soft drink makers repeat Pepsi and Coca-Colas performance? Lets have a look at what might be in store for them.

Coca-Cola Enterprises

The Western European bottler of The Coca-Cola Company is set to report Q1 results on Apr 28. Last quarter, the company delivered a positive earnings surprise of 3.92%.The company has an Earnings ESP of 2.50% and a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter is pegged at 40 cents.

Coca-Cola Enterprises delivered positive earnings surprises in each of the past four quarters with an average surprise of 3.50%.

Despite weak sales and volumes, certain positives like commodity cost favorability, cost cutting and share repurchases are driving the companys operating profit and EPS growth. We expect the trend to continue in the to-be-reported quarter.(Read more: Coca-Cola Enterprises Q1 Earnings: What's in Store?)

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Dr Pepper Snapple

The company is set to report Q1 results on Apr 27. Last quarter, the company delivered a positive earnings surprise of 2.04%.The company has an Earnings ESP of -1.16% and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter is pegged at 86 cents.

The company surpassed estimates in each of the trailing four quarters with an average positive surprise of 3.80%.

Though pricing and productivity gains should boost profits in Q1, currency headwinds, softer volumes of non-carbonated beverages (NCB) and higher interest might limit the upside. Nonetheless, marketing costs are expected to be lower in Q1 due to the favorable timing of several media campaigns. This, in turn, should also boost profits. (Read more:What's in Store for Dr Pepper Snapple in Q1 Earnings?)

Fomento Economico Mexicano (FEMSA)

This Mexican bottler of The Coca-Cola Company is set to report Q1 results on Apr 28. Last quarter, the company delivered a negative earnings surprise of 12.87%.The company has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank #4 (Strong Sell). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter is pegged at 49 cents.

Additionally, the leading Latin American beverage company delivered negative earnings surprises in three of the last four quarters, with an average negative surprise of 6.42%.

FEMSAs store openings, diversified business portfolio and focus on core business activities should drive growth in Q1. However, currency headwinds, along with continued regulatory pressures, can dampen its profits.(Read more: Will FEMSA Stock Suffer on Likely Dismal Q1 Earnings?)

Dont miss out on our full earnings release articles for these soft drink stocks, as the actual results might hold some surprises!

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Sohu.com Inc. reported adjusted loss of 53 cents a share in the first quarter of 2016, which narrowed considerably from the prior-year quarter loss of 81 cents per share. However, revenues in the quarter were down 10.4% to $408 million due to lower revenues from online gaming.

Following the release, the companys shares declined over 3.4% in yesterdays trading session.

Segment Details

Total online advertising revenues, which include revenues from brand advertising, search and web directory businesses, were $259.3 million, up 9% year over year.

Brand advertising revenues in the reported quarter totaled $125.5 million, down 6.2% year over year owing to sluggishness in online video and 17173 advertising businesses. The companys revenues from Sohu Media Portal remained flat year over year at $45 million. Sohu Video, however, fell 16% on a year-over-year basis to $41 million.

Search and search-related revenues was $133.8 million, a robust increase of 27.3% on a year-over-year basis owing to growth in mobile traffic.

Online game revenues for the quarter were $103 million, down 45% on a year-over-year basis as a result of lower revenues from older games and a decline in web game revenues due to the divestment of the 7Road business.

Sogous revenues were $147 million, representing a significant 27% year-over-year increase driven by higher search related revenues. However, Changyous CYOU revenues were $130 million, a decrease of 38% on a year-over-year basis.

Margins

Non-GAAP gross margin in the quarter increased to 53% from 51% in the year-ago quarter. Non-GAAP gross margin of the companys online advertising business was 43%, up from 35% in the prior-year quarter while brand advertising business margin was 32%, up from 22% reported in the year-ago quarter. Decreasing video costs and changing revenue contribution from mobile games led to the rise in margins.

Non-GAAP gross margin of the companys online game business was up to 75% from 73% in the prior-year quarter. Non-GAAP operating profit remained flat at $15 million in the quarter.

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Balance Sheet

Sohu exited the quarter with cash and cash equivalents (and short-term investments) of $1.44 billion, compared with $1.42 million as of Dec 31, 2015.

Outlook

For the second quarter of 2016, Sohu expects revenues in the range of $420 million$450 million.

Management estimates brand advertising revenues in the range of $125 million to $135 million, representing 11% to 17% year-over-year decline. The company expects to generate 35% to 38% of total brand advertising revenues from Sohu Media Portal and 36% to 39% from Sohu Video.

Sogou revenues are expected to be in the range of $175 million to $185 million, representing 19% to 25% year-over-year growth. Online game revenues are expected in the $95 million$105 million range, indicating year-over-year decline of 39% to 45%.

The company expects non-GAAP loss per share to be between $1.30 cents and $1.55 cents. GAAP loss per share is expected to be in the range of $1.45 cents to $1.70 cents.

To Conclude

Sohu is a relatively small player in the online advertising market and continuing investments in product development are necessary to expand its market share. Additionally, the ongoing sluggishness in China and unfavorable currency translation can have some negative impact on the business going ahead.

Nonetheless, Sohu seems well positioned to benefit from strong traffic growth in search, online video and mobile businesses. The company expects strength in Sogou to continue going ahead on the back of increased investment in its search division. On the other hand, the company is redefining its business strategy for Changyou, which would likely be a key long-term driver despite some setbacks in the near term.

Amid all these, stiff competition from the likes of Baidu, Inc. BIDU, NetEase, Inc (NTES) and SINA Corporation (SINA) and such others remains a concern.

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CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - The successful pricing by South Africa of a 10-year dollar bond by the National Treasury earlier in April was a good sign for state-owned power utility Eskom, its chief executive said on Tuesday. Eskom, which will spend 340 billion rand ($23.5 billion)over the next five years to build new plants and transmission lines, will go to the market "opportunistically" to raise between $750 million to $1 billion, Brian Molefe told reporters. ($1 = 14.4490 rand) (Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by James Macharia)
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's Impala Platinum posted a 17 percent rise in production in the quarter to the end of March thanks to a 71 percent rise in output at its Zimbabwe unit Zimplats, the company said on Tuesday. Despite a fire at its Rustenburg operation, Implats' output was steady at 142,000 ounces compared to 143,000 ounces in the same period last year. But the tonnage milled declined to 2 million tonnes from 2.5 million tonnes the year before and so production at Rustenburg will likely decline this quarter. At Zimplats, the start of an open-pit operation has helped to compensate for the loss of production at the Bimha mine, which is being redeveloped because of concerns about the stability of its ground and tunnels. Implats said it expected to produce 1.42 million refined platinum ounces compared to 1.276 million ounces last year. (Reporting by Ed Stoddard; Editing by Joe Brock)
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's top court on Tuesday ordered mobile operator Vodacom to compensate a former employee who invented a free messaging system used by the company, after an eight-year legal battle. The ruling by the the Constitutional court gave South Africa's largest mobile firm Vodacom 30 days to begin negotiations to set a "reasonable compensation" to be paid to Nkosana Makate. According to the judgment, Makate consulted Philip Geissler the company's then-director of product development and management, about his idea of developing the "Please Call Me" service. Geissler then agreed orally to put the product on trial for commercial viability, the court papers showed. Makate was then told by the company that he would be paid a share in the revenue generated by his product, but this did not take place, according to the judgement. Failing to negotiate compensation for four years after the product was launched, Makate sued the mobile operator. "Its just a relief for me you know, eight years in trial. I'm just happy we are now at the end of this journey," Makate said in an interview with state-owned broadcaster SABC. "I never really lost faith that I'll win this case, I think that really kept me going even in times when I lost hope or felt a bit despondent." Vodacom's spokesman Byron Kennedy said the firm was studying the court's ruling. (Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; Editing by James Macharia)
Juba (AFP) - South Sudan's rebel chief Riek Machar finally returned on Tuesday to the capital Juba, where he was sworn in as vice-president of a unity government formed to end more than two years of civil war in the world's newest country.

His return, delayed by a week, is seen as a crucial step towards cementing a fragile peace deal brokered in August 2015.

The conflict in South Sudan, which won independence from Sudan in 2011, has pitted government troops loyal to President Salva Kiir against those of Machar, who was sacked as vice president five months before the war began in December 2013.

Tens of thousands have been killed and more than two million people forced from their homes.

The UN says South Sudan ranks "lower in terms of human development than just about every other place on earth".

Here are key events in the war.

- 2013 -

December 15: Heavy gunfire erupts in Juba, where tensions have risen since July when Machar was fired as vice-president. Kiir blames Machar for an attempted coup, but Machar denies this and accuses the president of purging his rivals. Fighting spreads and rebels seize key towns.

- 2014 -

January 10-20: Uganda sends troops to back Kiir. Government troops recapture the northern city of Bentiu, capital of oil-rich Unity State, and Bor, capital of the eastern state of Jonglei.

April 15-17: More than 350 civilians are massacred in Bentiu and Bor, according to the UN.

August 26: A UN helicopter is shot down, with three onboard killed. Each side blames the other.

- 2015 -

February 1: Kiir and Machar sign a new agreement to end the fighting, the latest in a series of deals. Like the others, it is broken within days.

June 30: South Sudan's army raped then torched girls alive inside their homes, a UN rights report says, warning of "widespread human rights abuses". Rebels have been accused of similar atrocities.

July 2: UN and US sanctions decided against six leaders from both sides.

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August 17: Machar signs a peace deal in Addis Ababa.

August 26: Kiir signs the peace accord, but issues a list of "serious reservations". Fighting continues.

October 3: Kiir nearly triples the number of regional states, undermining a key power-sharing clause of the peace agreement.

October 28: African Union investigators list atrocities committed, which include forced cannibalism and dismemberment.

November 5: UN experts warn that killings, rapes and abductions continue and that both sides are stockpiling weapons. Over two dozen armed groups are involved in fighting characterised by shifting alliances, opportunism and historic grievances.

November 27: Some 16,000 children have been forced to fight, amid a growing humanitarian crisis, the UN says. More than 2.8 million people, almost a quarter of the population, needs emergency food aid.

- 2016 -

February 8: UN agencies warn at least 40,000 people are being starved to death in the war zone, with rival forces blocking aid.

February 12: Kiir reappoints Machar as vice president.

April 11: A 1,370-strong rebel force completes their arrival in Juba ahead of Machar's expected return. A day later South Sudan's rebel deputy chief Alfred Ladu Gore returns to the capital.

April 25: South Sudan's top rebel military commander Simon Gatwech Dual returns as well.

April 26: Machar returns to Juba and is sworn in as vice-president.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calls for a new unity government to be immediately set up.
By Denis Dumo JUBA (Reuters) - South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar was sworn in as first vice president on Tuesday, hours after he returned to the capital of Juba for the first time since conflict erupted more than two years ago. Machar took up the post under the terms of a peace agreement reached eight months ago, implementation of which had been repeatedly delayed by disputes between Machar and the government of President Salva Kiir. "Now that Dr. Riek has taken the oath of the first vice president, we will immediately proceed with the establishment of the transitional government of national unity," Kiir said after Machar was sworn in at the president's office. "I ask you to join me and my brother Riek Machar in peace and reconciliation." Machar was greeted by government officials, members of his SPLM-In-Opposition party, diplomats and officials from the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, with the airport under heavy guard, a Reuters witness said. His return is a crucial part of the peace agreement - it was Kiir's sacking of Machar as his deputy that ignited the two-year war in December 2013, which has killed thousands and displaced millions in the world's newest country. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon welcomed Machar's return. "The Secretary-General calls for the immediate formation of the Transitional Government of National Unity," Stephane Dujarric, Ban Ki-moon's spokesman, said in a statement. "The Secretary-General also calls on the Security Council to work closely with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) to mobilize all the required support for the peace process." CHALLENGES Machar's arrival had been continually postponed since the peace agreement was signed in August. Just last week, it was put off again, until international mediators intervened to end a dispute over how many soldiers and what weapons Machar would be allowed to bring with him. "I am happy with the welcome that I have seen at the airport. I hope that with my arrival we shall finish with the obstacles and get into the implementation of the government," Machar told reporters when he arrived. "There are challenges that we need to overcome. The first challenge is the stabilization of the security situation of the country. The second is the challenge is the stabilization of the economy." The conflict in South Sudan split the five-year-old country along ethnic lines, pitting Kiir's dominant Dinkas against Machar's Nuer. The fighting turned bitter enough to prompt the United Nations to set up an inquiry into possible human rights violations. It also disrupted the South Sudanese economy. Oil output, on which the government depends, has plummeted and many of the nation's 11 million people have struggled to find food to eat. (Reporting by Denis Dumo; Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Larry King)
By Julien Toyer and Blanca Rodriguez MADRID (Reuters) - A new national election in Spain is now inevitable, Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday after he told King Felipe he could not form a coalition government and resolve a four-month political stalemate. The parties have been unable to form a new government since an inconclusive December election and a final round of one-to-one meetings between the king and party leaders. With acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy having already said he was also lacking the necessary parliamentary backing, the lower house is now expected to be dissolved on May 3 and the new general election is seen taking place on June 26. Opinion polls suggest a new vote would do little to resolve the deadlock created by December's election, which produced the most fragmented result in decades. Rajoy's People's Party won 123 seats in the 350-seat lower house of parliament while the Socialists took 90, Podemos 69 and Ciudadanos 40. Party leaders have already entered campaign mode, blaming each other for the impasse that may start taking its toll on the economy more noticeably if Spain remains without a government for many more months. "I have told King Felipe VI that I don't have enough parliamentary seats to be elected Prime Minister ... With all probability we are heading towards new elections," Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez told journalists. "In my opinion, Mr Iglesias never wanted to pact with the Socialist party. Spanish politics have suffered a double blockade, from Mr Rajoy and from Mr Iglesias," he also said. Raising hopes that a last-ditch coalition deal was possible, the Socialists said earlier on Tuesday they were ready to agree on 27 of 30 proposals made by small leftist party Compromis and modeled on a deal it helped broker last year between left-wing forces in the eastern region of Valencia. But anti-austerity party Podemos said those three conditions - mainly who should take part in the government and how to ensure its stability - had made any agreement impossible. Iglesias, however, said he would still try to form an alliance with the Socialists after a new election, although they would have to bury their disagreements over fundamental issues including economic policy and the degree of autonomy to grant Catalonia. (Additional reporting by Sarah White; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
* Socialist leader says lacks support to be prime minister

* Says an election re-run in June is now unavoidable

* Last-minute talks between left-wing parties failed

* Talks with king were last chance to forge coalition (Recasts with comments from Socialist leader)

By Julien Toyer and Blanca Rodriguez

MADRID, April 26 (Reuters) - A new national election in Spain is now inevitable, Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday after he told King Felipe he could not form a coalition government and resolve a four-month political stalemate.

The parties have been unable to form a new government since an inconclusive December election and a final round of one-to-one meetings between the king and party leaders.

With acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy having already said he was also lacking the necessary parliamentary backing, the lower house is now expected to be dissolved on May 3 and the new general election is seen taking place on June 26.

Opinion polls suggest a new vote would do little to resolve the deadlock created by December's election, which produced the most fragmented result in decades. Rajoy's People's Party won 123 seats in the 350-seat lower house of parliament while the Socialists took 90, Podemos 69 and Ciudadanos 40.

Party leaders have already entered campaign mode, blaming each other for the impasse that may start taking its toll on the economy more noticeably if Spain remains without a government for many more months.

"I have told King Felipe VI that I don't have enough parliamentary seats to be elected Prime Minister ... With all probability we are heading towards new elections," Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez told journalists.

"In my opinion, Mr Iglesias never wanted to pact with the Socialist party. Spanish politics have suffered a double blockade, from Mr Rajoy and from Mr Iglesias," he also said.

Raising hopes that a last-ditch coalition deal was possible, the Socialists said earlier on Tuesday they were ready to agree on 27 of 30 proposals made by small leftist party Compromis and modelled on a deal it helped broker last year between left-wing forces in the eastern region of Valencia.

Story continues

But anti-austerity party Podemos said those three conditions - mainly who should take part in the government and how to ensure its stability - had made any agreement impossible.

Iglesias, however, said he would still try to form an alliance with the Socialists after a new election, although they would have to bury their disagreements over fundamental issues including economic policy and the degree of autonomy to grant Catalonia.

(Additional reporting by Sarah White; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
Daisy Ridley offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of her martial arts progress, two British princes are linked with cameo roles in "Star Wars: Episode VIII," and R2D2's true purpose is revealed by the franchise's creator.

- Ridley's Wushu magic -



An instant superstar after her turn as lead character Rey in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," Daisy Ridley is to reprise her role for December 2017's "Star Wars: Episode VIII" and, presumably, "Star Wars: Episode IX" in 2019.

In a video posted to Instagram, and with Chinese stunt trainer Liang Yang holding the camera, Ridley demonstrated some of her newly acquired proficiency.

Yang played Finn's melee-focused battlefield opponent in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," held the camera for Ridley's video and, according to the actress, is a "Wushu fricking master."

"I always try to get him to teach me things," she said, praising both him and the 2017 film's stunt team.

- Royal cameo -



British princes William and Harry recently visited the "Episode VIII" set, and even marked the occasion by dressing up as Stormtroopers.

The Daily Mail now reports, with spoilers for their scene's details, that the siblings also have cameo roles for "Episode VIII" -- though it won't be easy to identify them behind those First Order suits of armor.

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" had its fair share of cameo appearances, with Daniel Craig as its own not-so-secret celebrity Stormtrooper.

- R2-D2, interstellar raconteur -



Newly obtained information about the "Star Wars" universe claims that the entire epic is being retold by its enduringly faithful bacon-saving device, three-legged droid R2-D2.

That's according to Chris Taylor, author of "How Star Wars Conquered the Universe," recounting a conversation between "Star Wars" creator George Lucas and "Episode III" animation director Rob Coleman.

"The entire story of Star Wars is actually being recounted ... a hundred years after the events of 'Return of the Jedi' by none other than R2-D2," reads the excerpt recently retrieved by io9.
Photographed by Sofia Sforza

First, a confession. I have never read Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilberts multi-million selling memoir of self-discovery, which is ten years old this month. I have a copy lying somewhere in a storage unit (well come to that) and Ive seen half of the film on Netflix.

But you dont have to be one of the 10 million readers to understand the impact of Gilberts book  which charts how, in her early thirties and recently divorced, she spent a year travelling the world to find herself. To mark the anniversary, Gilbert has published a collection of essays by 47 women whose lives were changed by her book (youve got to love her modesty), called Eat, Pray, Love Made Me Do It.

Gilberts memoir inspired devotion and derision in equal measure. Cynics noted that she had a pretty strong incentive to find herself on her trip  shed secured a $200,000 advance to write a book about it. Still, it spent over 200 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, was translated into 30 languages, and is loved by Oprah and Hillary Clinton.

It also spawned a multi-million pound merchandising industry, with everything from pasta dishes to prayer beads trading off the name. Then there were the holidays. Type Eat, Pray, Love trips into Google and youll get dozens of companies offering themed excursions where you can experience a piece of Elizabeth Gilberts self-discovery  even ten years on.

Because thats the books biggest legacy  the idea that, if youre going through a crappy time in your life, a big trip can fix it all. Doing an Eat, Pray, Love has become shorthand for using a plane ticket to turn life dissatisfaction into enlightenment.

The idea isnt a new one. Back in the '80s, Shirley Valentine was the original Liz Gilbert, leaving behind a controlling husband and life of drudgery for Tom Conti on a boat in Greece. More recently, Wild, Cheryl Strayeds memoir of the 1100 mile hike she went on after losing her mother, became an Oscar nominated film starring Reese Witherspoon.

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The idea of using a journey to fix your problems is romantic and powerful, and one I bought into for a long time. It just never seemed to work for me.

There was the time when, after a difficult few weeks, I booked a flight to New York leaving three days later. I couldnt seem to work out the answers at home, so hoped I might 3,500 miles away. A week later, I had no answers, just several hundreds pounds less in my bank account. In Greece I didnt gain perspective (or Tom Conti), just the worst mosquito bites of my life.

But each plane ride brought a new shot at my own life changing trip.

Photographed by Sofia Sforza

So last year, unhappy with work and where I was living, and generally feeling a bit lost, I handed in notice on my flat, put all my stuff in storage (including the unread copy of Eat, Pray, Love), and went to America for a few weeks, travelling around upstate New York. "What are you going to do when you come back?" asked friends. I didnt have a plan. But I was pretty sure Id have one by the time I returned.

Booking into a cabin in the Catskill mountains, I figured this was going to be my version of Wild. There weren't coyotes or bears, but there were chipmunks. I thought time alone, a break from my routine, and distance from my problems would somehow combine to give me a fresh perspective. Finding a buff husband, like Gilbert did on her travels, would be an added bonus.

But, in my cosy cabin in the woods, I didnt figure life out. Instead, I drank Makers Mark and watched Keeping Up With The Kardashians. I went for a hike (if you can call it that when youre wearing converse and a sundress) through the woods to channel my inner Cheryl Strayed. I saw Bob Dylans old house but had no epiphanies. I got drunk with strangers, hoping one would offer a piece of life changing advice, but nothing.

The signposts youre looking for in life might come on a beach in Malaysia, but theyre just as likely to hit you when youre tucking into half a chicken in Nandos

In New York on the last night of my trip, when I should have been soaking up every last drop of the city, I went to bed early, feeling deflated and a bit of a failure that I was going home as clueless about my life as when Id left the tarmac at Heathrow.

Which was a shame. Because the trip wasnt a failure  no holiday where you discover fried chicken and donut sandwiches can ever be (the Eat part of Gilberts journey I actually emulated quite well.)

Photographed by Sofia Sforza

Ive finally realised that going away rarely changes anything. You cant force clarity on a situation. The signposts youre looking for in life might come on a beach in Malaysia, but theyre just as likely to hit you when youre tucking into half a chicken in Nandos, or listening to Drake and staring through the grease-smeared window of the number 73 bus on your way home from work.

You might get lucky like Liz and meet the love of your life in Bali. But stories like that are the anomalies  thats why theyre turned into books. Julia Roberts has only got time to play so many spiritually awakened women.

Even Gilbert herself recognises that travelling the world isnt the answer for everyone. I get more excited when people find their own truth than when they imitate my journey, she said recently of the people who obsessively track down the exact pizza place she went to in Naples.

Thats not to say that going away by yourself isnt a worthwhile thing. Earlier this year, when the deaths of two backpackers in South America provoked some victim blaming comments about them travelling alone, women took to social media to share their positive stories of travelling solo with the hashtag #viajasola (I travel alone.)

Being on your own on the other side of the world forces you out of your comfort zone and your shell. You become bolder and have more adventures. You dont have to compromise on what you want to do, or share your food. Im already planning my next solo trip. But this time, if all I come home with is a suitcase of naff souvenirs, then Im fine with that.

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

25 Insanely Romantic Trips You'll Never Forget

The Best Airbnbs In Cuba That You Can Rent Right Now

Where To Travel This Summer  According To Your Personality
Grupo Televisa SA TV, the largest cable MSO (multi service operator) in Mexico, is slated to release first-quarter 2016 results on Apr 28, after the market closes.

In the last reported quarter, Televisas earnings lagged the Zacks Consensus Estimate by a massive 54.29%. The company delivered a positive earnings surprise in only one of the four trailing quarters, with an average beat of 7.02%. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement.

Factors Likely to Influence this Quarter

Intensifying competition in its core pay-TV market is forcing Televisa to spend increasingly on expanding its client base. Gaining of new subscribers is generally associated with higher expenditure since the company needs to install equipment, such as satellite dishes and set-top boxes on their premises. This has led to a rise in depreciation and amortization charges for Televisa.

The telecommunications industry reform bill of the Mexican government will allow America Movil SAB AMX to enter the countrys broadcasting market, which has been controlled by Televisa for a long time. This may substantially dent Televisas advertisement revenues. In fact, America Movil has long been eyeing this market given its existing telecom network.

On the other hand, the new regulations may pave the way for Televisa to capture a large share of the wireless market.However, the company is yet to take any decision regarding its entry into the Mexican wireless market, which is becoming increasingly competitive after the emergence of the U.S. telecom behemoth AT&T Inc. T.

Earnings Whispers

Our proven model does not conclusively show that Televisa is likely to beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. Unfortunately, that is not the case here as elaborated below:

Zacks ESP: Televisa has an Earnings ESP of +83.33%. This is because the Most Accurate estimate stands at 11 cents while the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged lower at 6 cents.

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Zacks Rank: Televisa has a Zacks Rank #4. Please note that we caution against Sell-rated stocks (#4 or 5) going into an earnings announcement.

A Stock to Consider

Here is a company you may consider, as our model shows that it has the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:

TEGNA Inc. TGNA has an Earnings ESP of +2.44% and a Zacks Rank #2.

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From Woman's Day

Each hour in the U.S., about 38 people experience a cardiac arrest event outside of a hospital setting. Nine out of 10 won't survive, but receiving cardiopulmonary resuscitation can increase those odds. That's why, over the past five years, dozens of states have added CPR training to their public curriculum. Lawmakers hope to prevent deaths by equipping citizens with the life-saving skill. South Carolina recently joined the bandwagon, becoming the 30th state to do so.

Governor Nikki Haley signed House Bill 3265 into law last Thursday. The law requires all students in public school to learn hands-on CPR as part of their high-school health education.

"We have been working so hard on this legislation for the past four years, and it is great to finally see the result of our hard work today," said Coleman Maness, a young man who survived cardiac arrest after a bystander performed CPR on him. "This bill will ensure that other cardiac arrest victims will have a greater chance at survival."

Coleman's experience inspired his friend, Sally Sheppard, a high school student at the time, to approach a local legislator about introducing "CPR in Schools" legislation.

Twenty-nine other states, including Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and, recently, Kentucky and New Mexico, also require that CPR be taught in schools. Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin may soon join them - all have bills in the state legislature or awaiting the governor's signature, according to the American Heart Association.

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Lil' Kim Reveals New Look on Instagram [CNN]

Lil' Kim's got a brand-new look - and not all of her fans are into it. After posting a selfie collage on Sunday, Lil' Kim's Instagram page blew up with fans voicing their anger at the rapper's decision to change up her appearance over the past few years by lightening her skin and refining her facial features. Lil' Kim has been known to change up her hair color in the past, however she's currently sporting light blonde locks, which has caused many to criticize her for "trying to look white."

Charlotte Olympia Debuts Activewear [WWD]

Accessories brand Charlotte Olympia - best known for cheeky, colorful clutches and heels - has officially joined the activewear movement. The brand partnered with Bodyism for a collection which features 10 ready-to-wear pieces as well as a gym bag and two sneaker options. Naturally, the offering includes leopard-print pieces and Charlotte Olympia's "kitty" face, which is a signature on the brand's uberpopular ballet flats. Prices range from $108 to $425 and the linelaunches in the U.S. this May on Shopbop.com.

Mickey Drexler Gives out Email Address, Asks Customers for J. Crew Feedback [Business Insider]

J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler is getting personal with customers. In a new ploy to win back shoppers, Drexler sent the retailer's email subscribers his own email address, encouraging consumers to get in touch with him directly to voice their opinions about the product and make suggestions about the retailer's website and stores. J. Crew has been struggling for the past few years, but only time will tell if this stunt is successful. (For the record, his email address is msd@jcrew.com.)

YSL CEO Opens Up About Post-Slimane Era [Business of Fashion]

Following Hedi Slimane's departure from Saint Laurent last month, many have wondered how the brand will continue its staggering upward momentum (the company just reported double-digit growth for the first quarter). In her first-ever in-depth interview, CEO Francesca Bellettini promises that under newly appointed creative director Anthony Vaccarello, Saint Laurent will definitely evolve, however the changes implemented by Slimane will not necessarily be wiped clean. Going forward, the French luxury house will continue its focus on balance, with regards to both men's and women's offerings, geographic distribution of its stores, national diversity of its customers and its product categories.
Khartoum (AFP) - Sudanese police used tear gas Tuesday against students protesting over what they say is a plan to sell off buildings belonging to Khartoum university, despite the government denying the charge.

Around 200 students protested at the campus on the banks of the Blue Nile in central Khartoum, an AFP reporter said.

Demonstrators were also protesting against the arrest of several fellow students during a similar rally last week, witnesses said.

Protesters who left the campus main gate were swiftly confronted by dozens of riot police and plain-clothed officers on Tuesday.

Angry students threw stones at the police who fired tear gas and also used their batons, witnesses said.

An AFP correspondent at the scene reported a thick stench of tear gas in the area.

Seven police trucks were parked near the university and dozens of policemen deployed near the campus, the correspondent reported.

Demonstrators carried pictures of the arrested students and chanted "Release them! Release them!" They later dispersed.

President Omar al-Bashir's government has denied plans to sell iconic university buildings and move the institution to a new site in the capital.

Khartoum university has seen regular anti-government protests, and is often closed by the authorities in an attempt to prevent unrest.
Khartoum (AFP) - Sudan said on Tuesday the result of a referendum in Darfur shows that the conflict in the war-torn region that has killed tens of thousands of people is finally over.

On Saturday, officials announced that almost 98 percent of Darfur voters had opted to keep the region as five states in a referendum that was boycotted by the opposition and criticised internationally.

The vote on whether to unite Darfur into a single autonomous region was held over three days between April 11 and 13.

"The page on the Darfur crisis has now been turned," Amin Hassan Omar, the official in charge of the Darfur file in President Omar al-Bashir's government, told reporters at a press conference in Khartoum.

"Now we need to deal with the after-effects of this crisis."

In 2003, ethnic minority rebels in Darfur mounted an insurgency against the Arab-dominated government of Bashir -- who is wanted for alleged war crimes in the conflict -- complaining of economic and political marginalisation.

More than 2.5 million people displaced by the conflict live in the vast region of western Sudan, and according to United Nations figures 300,000 have been killed in the conflict.

A united Darfur with greater autonomy has long been a demand of ethnic minority insurgents battling Khartoum, but rebel groups boycotted the referendum, calling it unfair.

Bashir, whose ruling National Congress Party supports the five-state system, had insisted that the ballot go ahead as stipulated in a 2011 peace agreement signed with some rebel groups.

Darfur was a single region until 1994 when the government split it into three states, and later added another two in 2012, claiming it would make local government more efficient.

On Tuesday, Omar blamed the rebels for the unrest.

"The rebel groups didn't want peace. They want war," he said, adding that the government now plans to collect weapons that are widespread in the region.

"We will first collect heavy weapons which are in the hands of outlaws," Omar said, adding that some of these "outlaws had ties" with the country's security apparatuses.

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Since 2003, parts of Darfur have been further destabilised by conflicts between the region's myriad ethnic and tribal groups, as well as by rising crime levels.

Later on Tuesday, the head of the Darfur Regional Authority, Tijani Sissi, also called for the speedy round-up of weapons in Darfur.

"I urge the state to speed up the collecting of weapons from citizens in order to prevent Darfur from falling into tribal conflict," the official SUNA news agency quoted him as saying in parliament.
The start of the Sumner Redstone health care trial is coming up fast so things are starting to heat up. Today they got close to blistering as the media moguls Loeb & Loeb lawyers filed a proposal to limit what portions of the L.A. Superior court trial and its exhibits the public and the media should be able to see.

The overriding interest of Mr. Redstone in preserving his privacy supports limited closing of the courtroom and sealing of exhibits, says attorney Laura Wytsma in the signed paperwork. The filing Monday comes ahead of a scheduled April 27 hearing (read it here) on pretrial matters.The trial is set to start on May 6 in Judge David Cowans downtown L.A. courtroom.

If trial testimony and exhibits containing confidential medical information are not sealed, they will be widely disseminated by the media, violating not only Mr. Redstones privacy rights, but compromising the dignity that this Court has endeavored to safeguard through out this proceeding, Wytsma adds.

In the over 5-month long matter from Redstones ex-companion Manuela Herzer, the ex-Viacom boss lawyers have repeatedly sought to seal documents, depositions and other material. Todays proposal was in response to Judge Cowans request for ideas on how to keep Redstones medical info private  and to put it mildly, this is sure one way of addressing that.

If granted, the highly unusual limited closing of Judge Cowans downtown courtroom and sealing of exhibits would literally see non-lawyers and others escorted in and out repeatedly over the approximately 6-day trial over who is to be Redstones health care agent.

The trial testimony and exhibits will contain private, personal information about Mr. Redstones life-information that his nurses have access to only because they are present to provide him in-home medical care, asserts the Loeb & Loeb lawyers of the necessity of such a clampdown. The disclosure of this personal information would violate Mr. Redstones fundamental, constitutional right to privacy in his own home.

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RelatedDoes Sumner Redstone Oppose Sale Of Paramount Stake?

With that, Redstones reps say the 92-year old doesnt seek the complete closure of the trial and agrees that general summaries of closed testimony or sealed exhibits be provided to the public. So, essentially, in what they claim is a special proceeding with extra values required, the Redstone side wants to edit what is said and take out the bits they dont want anyone to know about the moguls contested capacity from actual medical professionals.

Part of the argument is that if Herzer really cares for Redstone as much as she claims  with the unspoken implication that shes just in it for money  then she should want to protect his privacy and dignity  a point that has been made almost from Day 1 of the action. This comes as Redstones side Monday also followed the courts March 18 order to file newly unsealed documents and exhibits.

Philippe Dauman Shari Redstone

Meanwhile, Redstones attorneys make a point of noting that they have never had a problem with the public and the media hearing what Herzer herself has to say  including about how she was replaced as the moguls health care agent and booted out of his Beverly Hills mansion last spring. Nor do they seemingly want testimony from Viacom CEO and Chair and current Redstone health care agent Philippe Dauman, daughter Sheri Redstone, other ex-companion Sydney Holland or the likes of handwriting forensic experts sealed in any way  at least not yet. As ordered by the court, the younger Redstone was deposed last week and NYC-based Dauman is set to sit down with Herzers lawyers tomorrow.

As settlement talks broke down in the matter earlier this month, both sides have upped their posturing and legal sharp moves as the trial looms.

After some indication by his lawyers he may serve as a witness, it has been established that Redstone himself will likely not be a witness in the case. In an April 14 hearing, Judge Cowan refuted Team Sumners attempt to be able to include written testimony from the speech impediment impaired billionaire. Herzers Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinge attorneys had filed an application to take a video deposition of Redstone when the other side indicated he could appear as a witness. When Redstones lawyers withdrew that notion, Pierce ODonnell and crew pulled back their application in the mutual game of brinksmanship.

As it stands right now, Judge Cowan will probably rule on the proposal on Wednesday  which, one way or another, will heat up the stage for this already boiling action.

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Sumner Redstone, whose television networks made a fortune airing reality shows like The Real World, Survivor and Jersey Shore, is demanding more privacy.

Redstone's attorneys have submitted a proposal in Los Angeles Superior Court that seeks to foreclose the public from attending certain portions of a trial set to begin on May 6. The controlling stakeholder of Viacom and CBS is battling his former companion Manuela Herzer, who has filed a petition to restore her authority to make healthcare decisions for the 92-year-old. The two sides have previously addressed how decisions in this case would set a precedent for geriatric care in the state of California. Now, however, Redstone's lawyers are holding up Redstone's statutory right of privacy as outweighing public access.

"The overriding interest of Mr. Redstone in preserving his privacy supports limited closing of the courtroom and sealing of exhibits," state court papers filed by Loeb & Loeb. "If trial testimony and exhibits containing confidential medical information are not sealed, they will be widely disseminated by the media, violating not only Mr. Redstone's privacy rights, but compromising the dignity that this Court has endeavored to safeguard throughout this proceeding."

The filing was made on the same day Redstone filed 315 pages of unsealed records, which came after The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and the Los Angeles Times intervened in the case to urge the judge to not to waste a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to learn how and why the probate courts serve the public" and to pay heed to a media figure impacting thousands of employees at his companies and a multitude of shareholders.

Judge David J. Cowan previously granted motions to seal in part and noted, "the privacy and dignity of the patient in the context of this unique proceeding outweigh the interest of the press in scrutinizing judicial proceedings."

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It's extremely rare, though, for a judge to close portions of a trial. Redstone's attorneys acknowledge in court papers that trials "are presumed open" but argue that "this is no ordinary civil proceeding," with emphasis on the medical nature of what's happening.

Even if Redstone gets his wish, there's no objection being made to having the public attend testimony from Herzer, Viacom chief Philippe Dauman, Shari Redstone, Sydney Holland and some of the other witnesses not involved in his medical or nursing care. Dauman, for one, is scheduled to be deposed in New York today.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 26, 2016 / Sunridge Gold Corp. (the "Company" or "Sunridge") (TSX.V: SGC/ OTCQX: SGCNF) is pleased to announce that Sichuan Road & Bridge Mining Investment Development Corp. Ltd. ("SRBM") and the Company have completed the purchase and sale of Sunridge's 60% interest in the Asmara Mining Share Company ("AMSC") on April 26, 2016.

Sunridge has confirmed payments aggregating US$68.6 million have been received or are in transit:

- US$65 million by SRBM for the purchase price of the shares of AMSC, net of US$3.3 income tax withheld for the capital gain to the Company and paid to the Government of Eritrea;

- US$6 million by SRBM as the first instalment of the remaining principal of the deferred payment of US$13.33 million (the "Deferred Payment") owed to the Company by Eritrean National Mining Corporation ("ENAMCO"); and

- US$950,982 of interest accrued on the Deferred Payment to closing by ENAMCO, net of US$98,427 income tax withheld for the interest earned by the Company and paid to the Government of Eritrea.

The second and final instalment of the principal of US$7.33 million of the Deferred Payment, is secured by a bank guarantee, and will be paid to Sunridge by October 26, 2016. ENAMCO will concurrently pay Sunridge interest on the second and final instalment of the Deferred Payment.

"This transaction marks the end of a very successful 11 year run for the Sunridge team in Eritrea," said Michael Hopley, President & CEO. "We have advanced the Asmara project from early stage exploration, through a gamut of engineering and environmental studies, culminating in the issuance of a mining license to AMSC to develop the Asmara Project. During our time in Eritrea, the team forged a close working relationship with ENAMCO and made many friends in the country. We thank the Ministry of Energy and Mines as well as ENAMCO for their support over the years and we certainly wish SRBM every success in the future with the Asmara Project."

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On January 22, 2016, the shareholders of Sunridge approved the distribution of the net proceeds of the sale of AMSC as a return on capital to the shareholders in two tranches (the "Distributions") after satisfying all the liabilities of the Company followed by the dissolution of Sunridge.

The Board will meet on April 29, 2016, to set the record date for the Distribution (the "Record Date"), expected to be 14 calendar days from the meeting date, and to make application to the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange") to have the Company's shares de-listed from trading not less than three days after the Record Date. Sunridge intends to announce the Record Date and the timing of and the amount of net cash available to be distributed to shareholders on April 29, 2016. The first Distribution will be made 3 business days after the Record Date. The second Distribution will be paid approximately six months later, after receipt of the final installment of the Deferred Payment and all remaining obligations of the Company have been settled. The Company will then voluntarily dissolve.

The 60,774,558 share purchase warrants that are listed for trading on the Exchange are subject to a warrant indenture (the "Warrants"). Any Warrants that have not been exercised on or before the delisting date will be automatically cancelled, in consideration for the payment to the holders of such Warrants C$0.02 per warrant. This payment will be paid to the Warrant holders at the same time as the first Distribution.

For additional information on the Company visit our website at www.sunridgegold.com or call Greg Davis at the number listed below.

SUNRIDGE GOLD CORP.

"Michael Hopley"

Michael Hopley, President and Chief Executive Officer

For further information contact:

Greg Davis, VP Business Development

Email: greg@sunridgegold.com

Tel: 604-688-1263 (direct)

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release contains certain statements or disclosures that may constitute forward-looking statements or information ("forward-looking statements") under applicable securities laws. All statements and disclosures, other than those of historical fact, which address activities, events, outcomes, results or developments that management or the directors of the Company, anticipate or expect may, or will occur in the future (in whole or in part) should be considered forward-looking statements. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terms such as "may", "will", "expect", "anticipate", "believe", or other comparable terminology.

Forward-looking statements presented in such statements or disclosures may, among other things, relate to: the currency exchange rates, the amounts to be paid and the provisions to be made to settle the Company's obligations, the timing and amounts of any cash distributions to be made by the Company, and the planned dissolution of the Company. Risks and uncertainties relating to such matters include Chinese regulatory approvals and other risks and uncertainties of completing complex international transactions.

The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The Company is not obligated to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable laws. Because of the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or disclosures.

SOURCE: Sunridge Gold Corp.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed one of two Italian marines facing murder charges over the deaths of two Indian fishermen to further delay his return for the trial until the end of September. The court had earlier allowed Massimiliano Latorre to stay in Italy until April 30 following heart surgery. In 2012, India arrested Latorre and Salvatore Girone who were escorting an oil tanker on suspicion of shooting dead two fishermen they mistook for pirates. They were not charged but were barred from leaving India. Latorre was allowed to return home last year for medical treatment but Girone has been confined to New Delhi, where he lives at the Italian ambassador's residence and reports regularly to police. Soli Sorabjee, one of the lawyers appearing for Latorre before the Supreme Court, argued for delaying his client's return, citing the suspension of the trial on the orders of a UN tribunal. "Everything has been stayed in India," Sorabjee said. "What is the point of coming here?" The Indian government's lawyer did not contest his plea. Italy and India have been at loggerheads over who has jurisdiction over the case. Italy has sought international arbitration. Rome maintains the immunity of both the marines to prosecution since they were serving on a U.N.-backed anti-piracy mission and the oil tanker they were escorting was in international waters when it fired on the fishermen. The Supreme Court last year suspended all legal proceedings against the two Italian marines on the orders of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). However, it keeps setting dates to be informed of the status of the proceedings at the UN tribunal. The court has set the next date of hearing for September 20. (Reporting by Suchitra Mohanty; Writing by Rajesh Kumar Singh; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
Aleppo (Syria) (AFP) - Air strikes and shelling on Syria's second city Aleppo and a town to its west left 25 civilians reported dead Tuesday, as a surge in violence tests a troubled ceasefire.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he was "deeply concerned" by the fighting and urged both sides to stick to the two-month-old truce and troubled peace talks in Geneva.

"The cessation of hostilities should go on, otherwise it will be very difficult for humanitarian workers to deliver," Ban told reporters in Vienna.

The fighting severely threatens the February ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia and comes as UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva stall.

Syria's main opposition group, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), halted its formal participation this week in the latest round of talks that began on April 13.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura is due to give a progress report to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, when the talks are scheduled to go into recess.

A Syrian opposition group tolerated by President Bashar al-Assad's regime said Tuesday it had asked the United Nations to merge all opposition factions into one delegation at the next round of peace talks.

The comments came from Syria's former deputy premier Qadri Jamil, who was sacked by Assad in 2013 and now heads the so-called Moscow Group, an opposition faction close to the Kremlin which has met repeatedly with De Mistura at negotiations in Geneva.

- Rescue workers 'exhausted' -

On the ground, at least two male civilians died in rebel rocket fire on government-controlled areas in the west of Aleppo city on Tuesday afternoon, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In the rebel-held east, the air strikes and shelling came down "like rain", one resident told AFP.

Fifteen civilians were killed in air strikes on several rebel-held districts, according to civil defence volunteers known as White Helmets.

Another three civilians -- two women and a child -- were killed in government artillery shelling on another eastern neighbourhood, they said.

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"The planes are bombing markets, residential areas... We're exhausted, we can't keep up," one civil defence worker said.

Five of their own were killed when the White Helmets headquarters in the town of Al-Atarib, controlled by Islamist rebels, was hit by an overnight air strike, the group said on Twitter.

It was not immediately clear whether the strike on Al-Atarib, 35 kilometres (20 miles) from Aleppo, was carried out by Assad's air force or his ally Russia.

An ambulance and a fire truck, both damaged, were parked in the bombed-out headquarters, surrounded by rubble and twisted metal frames.

A civil defence worker in Aleppo city said he and his colleagues were afraid their local headquarters would also be targeted.

- 'Killing machine' -

Fighting has surged on several fronts in Aleppo province, which is criss-crossed with supply routes that are strategic for practically all of Syria's warring sides.

Once Syria's commercial hub, Aleppo has been divided between rebel control in the east and government forces in the west since 2012.

In the rebel-held Fardos neighbourhood, an AFP correspondent saw a youth being helped down a rubble-strewn street with blood streaming from his head and leg.

Violence has rocked the city since Friday, with at least 100 civilians killed by artillery or rocket fire and air strikes.

On Monday, rebel shelling killed at least 19 civilians in government-held districts, according to the Observatory, a British-based monitor which relies on a network of sources on the ground.

A leading opposition group, the National Coalition, condemned the strike on Al-Atarib and hailed the "remarkable efforts and bravery of Civil Defence workers".

"Favourable conditions for the political process cannot be created whilst the Assad regime's killing machine continues to wreak death across Syria," the Coalition said in an online statement.

More than 270,000 people have been killed in Syria and millions forced from their homes since the conflict erupted in 2011.
Since its start more than five years ago in March 2011, the Syrian civil war has been marked by death, carnage and dislocation  with no real end in sight.

More than 470,000 people have been killed in the conflict, 6.6 million were internally displaced and more than 4.8 million refugees have fled the country, according to various estimates.

Related: Obama, European Leaders Urge Syria Parties to Respect Truce

With signs that a February truce negotiated by the U.S. and Russia is collapsing, there are certain to be more casualties as civilians flee the violence from aerial attacks, car bombings, chemical warfare and extreme brutality and killings by ISIS.

While much has been made of the suffering and traumatization of the victims, either trapped in Syria or struggling to survive in Europe and elsewhere, relatively little attention has been given to the mental health catastrophe wrought by the conflict.

Now, a new analysis by the Brookings Institution takes stock of the terrible toll the civil war has taken in that regard.

Despite the roughly $5 billion in humanitarian aid poured into the region since 2012, the response does not begin to meet the growing demand for mental health treatment, let along the scores of other needs for food, shelter and general health care, the report indicates. Generations of Syrians, from grandparents to young children, are trying to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder and acute depression under the most horrible conditions imaginable.

Related: Obama Ramps Up Special Forces Mission in Syria Against Islamic State

A report last year by the International Medical Corps (IMC), which provides mental health services to Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey, found that 54 percent of the displaced Syrians had severe emotional disorders, while nearly 27 percent of children faced intellectual and developmental challenges.

That was followed by problems of epilepsy and psychotic disorders. Among children, epilepsy, intellectual and developmental disorders and severe emotional disorders are most common.

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Omer Karasapan, a Middle East and North Africa specialist at the World Bank who authored the Brookings analysis, wrote that children and women in particular confront difficult vulnerabilities.

Women and girls in Syria and host countries often feel threatened by gender-based violence, sexual abuse, isolation and forced early marriages. Life in exile for these women has often meant becoming the main breadwinner, and for many the burden is overwhelming.

Related: Syrian War Creates Child Refugees and Child Soldiers

Meanwhile, children, who make up about half the total refugee population, are not only victims in their own right, but the biggest source of stress for many adults worrying about the fate of their young family members. At the same time, Children also suffer the stress of constantly worrying about their parents and siblings, according to the Brookings analysis.

Whats more, children have reported being actively recruited to take part in the fighting by parties to the conflict who have offered gifts and salaries' of up to $400 a month, according to a recent report by Reuters.

Here are several other findings in Karasapans report:

Roughly half the Syrian refugees in Germany have mental health issues. Seventy percent say they witnessed violence and half said they were the victims of violence, according to a 2015 study by the German Federal Chamber of Psychotherapists.





Turkish authorities reported that 55 percent of Syrian refugees there needed psychological services.





The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stated that the most prevalent and most significant clinical problems among Syrians are emotional disorders, such as: depression, prolonged grief disorder, PTSD and various forms of anxiety disorders. Their problems only get worse without treatment, but medical care is out of reach for most.

Despite the widespread mental health problems in Syria, the country currently has only one partially operating mental health hospital. More than half of the doctors and medical professionals there have fled the country.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
The organiser of a party which saw a fireball rip through a Taiwan waterpark, leaving 15 dead and hundreds injured, was jailed for almost five years Tuesday as the court cited the "excruciating pain" of the bereaved.

Lu Chung-chi, owner of Colour Play Asia, was behind the event at which coloured corn starch being sprayed on around 1,000 partygoers ignited under the heat of stage lights last June, sending them running for their lives.

Almost 500 were injured in the blast at Formosa Fun Coast, more than 200 of them seriously. Horrific video footage showed revellers -- mostly aged between 18 and 25 -- screaming as they tried to escape the raging flames.

Some were left with more than 90 percent burns, in some cases leading to amputations. The only undamaged skin on some survivors' bodies were the parts covered by swimsuits.

Although all have now been released from hospital, many are still enduring painful rehabilitation treatments and surgery.

Lu, who was not in court, was found guilty of negligence causing death at Taipei's Shihlin district court as relatives of victims gathered outside waving banners calling for justice.

A statement from the court after the verdict paid tribute to the young victims of the tragedy -- and revealed that one bereaved father had taken his own life in grief.

"Most of the victims were very young and their wonderful lives were about to start. They had beautiful dreams to be realised," it said.

"Because of the explosion, 15 of them lost their lives and most of the survivors suffer tremendous physical and emotional pain and torment.

"Relatives of the deceased suddenly lost their family members and suffered irreparable and excruciating pain and regret," it added.

The statement said the father of a victim surnamed Wang had committed suicide.

"All of this is enough to show the very serious harm inflicted by the defendant's offence," it said.

- Calls for justice -

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The case has angered grieving relatives and the families of the injured as only Lu was indicted over the disaster. He was one of nine people investigated, including the chairman and president of the water park.

The high prosecutors' office told AFP Tuesday it had ordered a district court to reopen the probe into the other eight after an appeal by a group of victims.

Campaigners have urged prosecutors to reopen the investigation. A group of 50 rallied outside court Tuesday, waving banners reading: "Return Justice and Fairness to Me."

Most said the sentence was not long enough. The charge of negligence leading to death carries a maximum sentence of five years.

"At least the charges were held up, but this is not enough for the relatives. Four years and 10 months is too little," said Julie Wang, spokeswoman for a victims' association. Her 21-year-old son suffered 55 percent burns.

Medics described the waterpark tragedy as an unprecedented disaster for Taiwan, given the scale and severity of the injuries.

Specialists from Japan were flown in to advise on the treatment of the seriously injured and Taiwan imported metres of skin for grafts.

An investigation showed the hottest parts of the stage lights hit temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius, while the powder's ignition point was just 500 degrees Celsius.

One mother, Chen Lu-yu, whose student son died in the disaster, called for the "real perpetrators" to be brought to justice.

She said the family had donated her son's organs after his death in the hope that it would enable others to have a "happy and healthy" life.

"I see other families, other people holding grandchildren," she told AFP outside the court.

"My son will never have a chance again. He will never have a chance to live out his dreams."
DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzanian President John Magufuli suspended the head of the telecoms regulator on Tuesday, saying the watchdog failed to monitor the industry, resulting in the loss of potential tax revenues of 400 billion shillings ($182.15 million) a year since 2013. Magufuli, who took office late last year, has pledged to root out corruption and inefficiency in Tanzania. He has already sacked several senior officials, including the head of the government's anti-graft body, the head of the tax authority and the chief executive of the country's port authority. [nL8N1660G0] "I want the government to collect all outstanding (tax) revenues and I will not hesitate to take action against anyone who becomes an obstacle in this tax collection drive," a statement from the president's office quoted him as saying. It said Magufuli had also dissolved the governing board of the state-run Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority. The president's office said the telecoms regulator, headed by Ally Simba, had signed a contract with a private firm in 2013 for the installation of a telecommunications traffic monitoring system, but the regulator had failed to use it. The telecoms regulator did not immediately respond to Reuters' request to comment. Communications is the fastest growing sector in east Africa's second-largest economy, which has a population of more than 47 million. The number of mobile phone subscribers in Tanzania rose by 25 percent in 2015 to 39.8 million, according to latest government figures. As in other African countries, mobile phone use has surged in Tanzania over the past decade, helped by the launch of cheaper smartphones. Mobile phone operators in Tanzania include Vodacom Tanzania, part of South Africa's Vodacom, Bharti Airtel Tanzania, Tigo Tanzania, which is part of Sweden's Millicom, Zantel and Halotel, owned by Vietnam-based telecoms operator Viettel. The president has also launched a general tax crackdown and ordered the country's revenue authority to target large-scale tax evasion by big companies. ($1 = 2,196.0000 Tanzanian shillings) (Reporting by Fumbuka Ng'wanakilala; Editing by George Obulutsa and Jane Merriman)
target worker

Target has become the central battleground of a vitriolic national debate over transgender rights in the US.

Nearly 700,000 people have signed a pledge to boycott the retailer after it announced last week that it would welcome transgender customers to use any bathroom or fitting room that matches their gender identity.

The backers of the pledge  including Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick  claim that the policy poses a "danger to wives and daughters" and is "exactly how sexual predators get access to their victims."

Some critics are visiting Target stores across the country and demanding access to bathrooms of the opposite sex to support claims that "perverts" can now gain access to children and women as a result of the policy.



Greg Locke, a pastor at Global Vision Bible Church in Tennessee, posted a video outside a Target store saying he got permission to use the women's restroom when he questioned store management.

In the video, which has been viewed more than 14 million times, he says the policy opens the door for "perverts and pedophiles," The Tennessean reports.

Another nontransgender man filmed himself going into Target and asking an employee if he could use the women's restroom because that's where he "feels comfortable." The employee gives him permission and says if any women express concerns "They can come and we will speak to that."

In a third incident, a man brought his daughter to Target and confronted store management about the policy, saying it made his daughter uncomfortable, then posted about it on Facebook. The post has been "liked" more than 135,000 times.

A conservative blogger in Florida and a group of protesters tried to stage a similar stunt at their local Target, but were rebuffed by store security, the Daily Commercial reports. They ended up holding a protest outside the store.

Target critics, including the conservative blogs Red State and The Blaze, are using the videos and posts to support their theory that the new policy is dangerous for women.

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"A man, dressed as a man, who does not claim to be a woman, and does not claim to identify as a woman, may use the restroom designated for women if he feels more comfortable there," Red State's Caleb Howe writes. "If women have a problem with it, their complaints will be handled by security or management. Unbelievable."

Some critics are even threatening violence over the new policy. Orlando-based lawyer Anita Staver says she will be taking her gun inside the restrooms at Target stores from now on, Orlando Weekly reports.

I'm taking a Glock .45 to the ladies room. It identifies as my bodyguard. #BoycottTarget @Target  Liberty Lawyer (@AnitaStaver) April 22, 2016

Target has responded to the rash of protests and store demonstrations, saying it remains committed to its bathroom policy.

"We certainly respect that there are a wide variety of perspectives and opinions," Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder told Business Insider. "As a company that firmly stands behind what it means to offer our team an inclusive place to work  and our guests an inclusive place to shop  we continue to believe that this is the right thing for Target."

The chain's policy was a response to recent debates in state legislatures across the country around the appropriateness of transgender bathrooms.

The governor of North Carolina signed a bill in late March forcing people to use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex listed on their birth certificate.

In Minnesota, where Target is headquartered, a Republican state senator proposed a bill that would limit access to restrooms and dressing rooms based on "biological sex."

"We welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity," the retailer said in a statement announcing the policy. "Everyone deserves to feel like they belong. And youll always be accepted, respected and welcomed at Target."

While Target's move ignited a lot of criticism, it also won Target a fair amount of praise on social media.

"You have, again, shown that your stores are inclusive and meant to be a safe haven, and I intend to repay your loyalty with my own," one customer wrote on Target's Facebook page.

Another customer wrote, "I want to tell you that I will forever be a Target shopper." A third said, "Thank you for always being a place I have felt welcomed."

NOW WATCH: We went to check out the new 'walk-up' McDonald's that has no dining tables or chairs





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Target (NYSE:TGT) has its eye on the wellness market and is enlisting the most elite fitness brands to get there.

Earlier this month, the retailer partnered with fitness guru and celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson to release a new line of organic protein bars and protein shakes.

There are people that are like why do you want to be in a Target or a Walmart? And accuse me  of course I want to be there. You think I dont want to be on the shelves when someone is in that store deciding thats the moment they want to start showing up for their health? I want to be there for them, Anderson, creator of The Tracy Anderson Method, tells FOXBusiness.com.

Anderson, who is known for training some of Hollywoods biggest stars like Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Lopez, Kim Kardashian and Madonna, has created a massive fitness empire over the last decade. She has studios around the country from Los Angeles to New York to London, with memberships costing as high as $900 a month.

In addition to that, she has an online video streaming service for $90 a month, a slew of DVDs, an apparel line and a new food company called 3 Green Hearts, which she started with her business partner Gwyneth Paltrow.

For me, I never set out to be an entrepreneur. It wasnt that I want to build a business  you know have jets or gold toilets. Thats not for me, she says. I never wanted to work for only influential people or people who can only afford a certain gym membership  that has never been my mission.

Her Target products, called Tracy Anderson Clear, will be considerably less expensive than the protein shake she sells on her personal website.

We would not compromise on the integrity of the ingredients to meet a certain price point and if it meant that we couldnt be part of that game yet then we couldnt be part of it yet, she adds.

A 28-day supply of her protein shakes costs around $120 on her website, whereas at Target the protein shakes will cost $29.99 and a box of the bars will cost $6.99. Target, the second largest retailer in the U.S., says wellness is a growing priority for its guests and a rapidly growing industry altogether.

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Well differentiate Target by making healthy eating, active living and clean label solutions affordable, accessible and inspiring. These products from Tracy Anderson are just one example of how we are helping our guests on their wellness journey, Kate Decker, a Target spokesperson, tells FOXBusiness.com.

In January, the company also partnered with high-end fitness boutique SoulCycle to offer pop-up classes throughout stores across the country and sell the brands apparel line.

Other health brands like Method, Evol, Justins, Happy Family, Yes To and Ellas Kitchen are also featured in Targets Made to Matter collection, which offers a selection of natural, organic and sustainable products.

Anderson says she hopes this partnership is a game-changer for her brand and for women across the country to get healthy.

I fought really hard for years for publications to not come up to me and say how do you get J. Los butt? Im like come on, women dont want to hear that. I want every woman to have permission to have her own butt and to love it.





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Police used teargas to disperse supporters of Kenyas Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) who rallied at the offices of the countrys Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) on Monday, April 25. According to Kenya Today, several political leaders were involved in the protest.

Opponents of the ruling Jubilee Alliance claim that it and the IEBC are blocking electoral reforms. The IEBC tweeted that it was ready to discuss any opposition concerns. Credit: Milestone Magazine/Allan Kasule
(Reuters) - Canadian miner Teck Resources Ltd reported a surprise quarterly profit as cost-cutting measures and a weak Canadian dollar helped cushion the impact of lower coal and copper prices. The global commodity rout has pushed coal and copper prices to multi-year lows, forcing miners to sell assets, lay off workers, and cut dividends and capital spending to preserve cash and reduce debt. However, a strong U.S. dollar has helped Teck, which sells commodities in the U.S. currency but incurs expenses in local currencies, particularly the Canadian dollar. Teck, the largest producer of steel-making coal in North America, said on Tuesday it expected coal sales to exceed 6.5 million tonnes in the current quarter. The company said the construction of the Fort Hills oil sands project in northern Alberta is more than 55 percent complete and was on track for first oil production by late 2017. The company had earmarked C$2.9 billion for the project, of which about C$1 billion remains to be spent as of April 25, the company said. A prolonged slump in oil prices has resulted in a number of oil projects being deferred, but Fort Hills is one of the projects that is expected to be completed because of the investments already made. Teck owns a 20 percent stake in Fort Hills, majority owned by Suncor Energy Inc . Net profit attributable to the company rose to C$94 million ($74 million), or 16 Canadian cents per share, for the first quarter ended March 31, compared with C$68 million, or 12 Canadian cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding gains from asset sales and other items, the company earned 3 Canadian cents per share, compared with analysts' average estimate of a loss of 3 Canadian cents. The Vancouver-based company's revenue fell by 16 pct to C$1.70 billion. The company's total debt was $6.97 billion, as of March 31, slightly higher than $6.96 billion at the end of last year. (Reporting by Amrutha Gayathri in Bengaluru; Editing by Anupama Dwivedi and Shounak Dasgupta)
By Jon Herskovitz

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A man who spent about 35 years on death row in Texas claiming he was innocent has died of natural causes at age 60, prison officials said on Tuesday, after decades of campaigning by anti-death penalty activists failed to have his conviction overturned.

Lawyers for the inmate, Max Soffar, asked the Texas governor and a court in 2014 to grant his release, saying he had been diagnosed with terminal and inoperable liver cancer.

He died on Sunday at the state's Polunsky Unit, which houses death row, officials said.

In 2014, his lawyers filed court papers that said: "Max Alexander Soffar is an innocent man on death row who is dying from a painful and aggressive form of liver cancer."

Soffar was convicted in the July 1980 slaying of three people at a Houston bowling alley. His supporters have said he was largely convicted on the basis of a confession signed after days of "oppressive interrogation" and without clear objective evidence pointing to his guilt.

The state has maintained the confession was voluntary, lawful and implicates him as the murderer.

The three people killed at the bowling alley were Arden Fisher, 17, her boyfriend Tommy Temple, 17, and Stephen Sims, 25. All three were shot execution-style with a handgun, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said.

"Unlike many other death row inmates, six judges have acknowledged that the only evidence against Mr. Soffar - a statement he signed after days of oppressive interrogation - is fundamentally unreliable," his lawyers said in a court filing.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by David Gregorio)
A Belgian minister has said that Muslims will very soon outnumber practising Christians in Europe.

Koen Geens, the countrys justice minister, told the European Parliament, In Europe, very shortly were soon going to have more practising Muslims than practising Christians.

That is not because there are too many Muslims, it is because Christian are generally less practising.

Europe does not realise this, but this is the reality.

Belgiums deputy prime minister, Jan Jambon, told a hearing by MEPs into the Brussels attacks that the worst thing that Europe could do would be to make an enemy of Islam.

Instead, Jambon told the hearing that Europe should focus on getting Muslims on side - while targeting terrorists.

Jambon said, Ive said a thousand times, the worst thing we can do is to make an enemy of Islam. That is the very worst thing we could do.

We have 600,000 to 700,000 Muslims in Belgium and the overwhelming majority of those people share our values.

To make an enemy of all of those people, we really will be creating problems. We need to see who the terrorists are, who supports the terrorists, what networks are there to support them.

That is who we need to tackle and we need to get all of the rest of the Muslims on our side not working against us.
Guccis SS16 hand-painted collection [Photo: Pinterest]

Ever since Gucci sent its stunning collection of hand-painted garments down the catwalk for Spring 2016, weve all been lusting over jackets, boots and dresses featuring a lick of paint.

Weve all decorated a T-shirt or two in our lives, however, we can all admit our works of art were pretty shoddy. Definitely nowhere near good enough to be sold on ASOS or in Liberty London.

However, things are a little different for the designers listed below. Theyve all harnessed their skills to create hand-painted wears that are taking the shops by storm.

Phiney Pet



[Photo: Phiney Pet/ Instagram]

There is no stopping designer Phiney Pet. Shes already collaboration with JuJu Footwear and has seen celebrities such as Miley Cyrus don her creations. Her fun and colourful illustrative prints have us all lusting over her collections. And it seems very soon we will all be able to get our hands on it a lot easier as Phiney Pet is doing an exclusive collab with ASOS. We can hardly contain our excitement.

Elizabeth Ilsley

[Photo: Elizabeth Ilsley/ Instagram]

When art student Elizabeth Ilsley started painting sassy slogans on jackets she probably never guessed the attention and demand they would receive.

Her most coveted pieces, which include boys suck black patent boots and I shave my legs for you leather jackets, have proved so popular that shes currently launching a exclusive line of jackets for Liberty London.

Hannah Beth Fincham

[Photo: Hannah Beth Fincham/ Instagram]

We honestly cant decide what collection of customised denim, leather or tees we love best from designer Hannah Beth Fincham. Her lovingly handmade embroidered, studded and painted pieces have been seen on everyone from Rita Ora, Halsey and Fearne Cotton.

The Ragged Priest

[Photo: The Ragged Priest]

The Ragged Priest is the ultimate brand for hand-painted items. Their creative jeans and jackets have earned them a thriving fan base and they are stocked everywhere from Topshop to ASOS. EVERY cool girl wants their pastel mermaid or gothic snake prints in their life.

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Dirty Disco

[Photo: Dirty Disco]

Dirty Discos colourful hand-painted collections have grown to become a huge hit on ASOS Marketplace. Their vintage pieces, decorated with eye-catching, modern designs make them completely unique - so no one else will ever to wearing the same outfit as you ever.

Jac Vanek

[Photo: Jac Vanek]

Jac Vaneks honest and humorous slogans have made every single girl who comes across her designs want one immediately. Due to high demand she is also now stocked in uber cool shops Nylon Shop and Urban Outfitters.

Peggy Noland



[Photo: Nasty Gal]

Peggy Nolands pop art-inspired and eccentric hand painted designs definitely stand out from the crowd in the best way possible. Shes set for big things having already gone and collaborated with coolest shop on the block Nasty Gal to create three exclusive styles that sold out before we even had a chance to get on the site.

Every Single Cactus Covered Buy You Need To Own Now

Trend Watch: The Slip Dresses Youll Want To Wear Outside The Bedroom This Spring
A monkey who was kept inside a garage on his own for nearly a decade became so depressed that he started to self-harm.

Jersey lived with a family in Indiana since he was just three days old but quickly became stressed with living in captivity.

The family moved the brown capuchin monkey to the garage where he was forced to live a solitary life and soon started hurting himself after growing depressed and bored.

His self-harm grew so extreme that he even chewed off his own toes, before moving onto his hands.

The family eventually took him in to a rescue centre where his hands and feet were bound together to stop him from hurting himself any further.

He was then moved to the Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary in Florida where he was put on anti-depressants.

Self-harm: Jersey was bandaged up to stop him from hurting himself (Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary)

Jungle Friends founder Kari Bagnall told The Dodo: He started with his self-mutilation in boredom as a pet.

But then, his leg was dying and I think thats why he was attacking it more than anything.

The painful decision was made to amputate part of Jerseys left foot and right leg - but Jersey started becoming a happier animal after surgery.

Bagnall added: "I never found a smile, I never saw a play face or him be happy at all, until the day we had his leg amputated.

"That day after the surgery, I got a big play face from him. He was like a different monkey.

Jersey now lives at Jungle Friends permanently and has become inseparable from a female capuchin monkey called Elizabeth.

Happy at last: The monkey has now found love at his new home (Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary)

Today, Jersey runs and plays just like any other monkey at the sanctuary. Hes also found a special someone to share his life with at his forever home  another capuchin named Elizabeth.

The two met during Jerseys stay at the sanctuarys clinic during his post-surgery recovery. Elizabeth was sick from an infection, and Bagnall said she believed the female monkey wasnt going to make it. But then she found a friend, and more, in Jersey.

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Bagnall said: "We were really glad Jersey ended up taking a liking to her.

Theyve been living together since he had his amputation. It was love at first sight.

Top pic: Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary
Baghdad (AFP) - Iraqi lawmakers approved five of the prime minister's candidates for a new cabinet on Tuesday after weeks of delays and chaos at parliament, as thousands of people demonstrated for reforms.

But some MPs, who were barred from attending after chanting for the parliament speaker's removal and disrupting an earlier session, said they would mount a legal challenge.

Iraq has been hit by weeks of political turmoil surrounding Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's efforts to replace the cabinet of party-affiliated ministers with a government of technocrats.

The crisis comes as Iraqi forces battle to regain more ground from the Islamic State group, and both the United Nations and Washington have warned that it could undermine the fight against the jihadists.

Iraq has also been hit hard by the plummeting price of oil, revenues from which account for the vast majority of government funds.

The proposed cabinet changes have been opposed by powerful political parties that rely on control of ministries for patronage and funds, and parliament has repeatedly failed to vote on a new cabinet list.

Lawmakers approved Abadi's candidates for the ministries of electricity, health, higher education, labour and water resources, MP Sarwa Abdulwahid and two parliamentary officials told AFP.

But they rejected some of Abadi's nominees, and the premier will present additional candidates on Saturday, the sources said.

Earlier in the day, some MPs prevented Abadi from speaking at parliament and threw water bottles in his direction, lawmakers and a parliamentary official who was present at the session said.

Some lawmakers also chanted against parliament speaker Salim al-Juburi, terming him "illegitimate" and saying: "Salim! Out, out!"

The protesting lawmakers were then barred from attending the second session at which the partial cabinet was approved, vowing to file a court case over the issue.

Parliament has repeatedly been hit by chaos in recent weeks, with MPs holding an overnight sit-in at parliament, brawling in the chamber and seeking to sack Juburi, electing an interim replacement who has chaired his own rival sessions.

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Abadi called a week ago for parliament to put aside its differences and do its job, but the antics in the legislature have continued.

- Only 'poverty and killing' -

As the latest political turmoil played out in parliament, thousands of protesters demonstrated for reforms nearby, answering a call from powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to do so.

The demonstrators, many carrying Iraqi flags, marched from Tahrir Square in central Baghdad to an entrance to the heavily fortified Green Zone where the government is headquartered, chanting that politicians "are all thieves".

The government "did not bring the country and Iraqis anything but poverty and killing," said demonstrator Abu Ali al-Zaidi, who travelled from Maysan province in the south for the protest.

"The political quotas and the parties that control everything are the reason for the failure of the government," said Abu Mohammed al-Sudani, a protester from Baghdad who carried an Iraqi flag.

Key government posts have for years been shared out based on political and sectarian quotas, a practice demonstrators want to end.

Ali al-Bahadli, a cleric from the Sadr Movement who was taking part in the demonstration, said: "We want the ministers to be independent, outside the control of the political parties and parliament."

Sadr, the scion of a powerful clerical family who in earlier years raised a rebellion against US-led forces and commanded a feared militia, had called for a mass demonstration in Baghdad on Tuesday to pressure the government to carry out reforms.

He organised a two-week sit-in at entrances to the Green Zone last month, calling it off only after Abadi presented a list of cabinet nominees.

Abadi called in February for "fundamental" change to the cabinet so that it includes "professional and technocratic figures and academics".

That kicked off the latest chapter in a months-long saga of Abadi proposing various reforms that parties and politicians with interests in the existing system have sought to delay or undermine.
Think of it as the high-stakes, high-flying dogfight that everyone from military pilots to members of Congress has been waiting for.

The venerable A-10 Thunderbolt II jet will take on the high-tech F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in comparison testing later this year to determine which platform can best support U.S. ground forces, a top U.S. Defense Department told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

Related: The F-35s Billion-Dollar Brain Fails an IQ Test

To me, comparison testing just makes common sense, Michael Gilmore, the director of the Pentagons operational test and evaluation office, said during a Capitol Hill hearing. If youre spending a lot of money to get improved capability, thats the easiest way to demonstrate it is to do a rigorous comparison test.

The U.S. Air Force has waged a years-long campaign to scrap its 1970s-era A-10 fleet in a bid to save roughly $4 billion in operating costs. Service leaders contend the A-10s close air support functions can be performed by other planes, including the F-35.

Congress has flatly rejected the push to mothball the A-10 and has been highly critical of claims about the F-35, largely because years of cost overruns and technical delays have kept the fifth-generation warplane, which could cost taxpayers more than $1.3 trillion over its lifetime, from ever seeing real combat.

Related: 5 Attack Planes That Could Replace the A-10 Warthog

The Air Forces fiscal year 2017 budget request indicated that the A-10, affectionately called the Warthog by troops, would be retired in 2022. The Air Force has also started circulating draft requirement documents for an A-10 alternative.

The battlefield comparison will pit the two jets against each other in a variety of war scenarios, including close air support and combat search and rescue.

Were going to do it under all the circumstances that we see [close air support] conducted, including under high-threat conditions in which we expect F-35 will have an advantage and other conditions requiring loitering on the target, low-altitude operations and so-forth, Gilmore told lawmakers.

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Related: Another F-35 Glitch Requires Restarting the Radar System  in Flight

There are a lot of arguments that ensue about which aircraft might be  have the advantage, the A-10 or F-35, but that's what the test is meant to show us, he added.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chair John McCain (R-AZ), who last month dressed down outgoing Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh over the lack of a viable substitute for the Warthog, let his preference be known at the start of Tuesdays hearing.

The F-35 program's record of performance has been both a scandal and a tragedy with respect to cost, schedule and performance, and it's a textbook example of why this committee has placed such a high priority on reforming the broken defense acquisition system, he said in his opening statement.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
KIEV (Reuters) - A prominent TV talkshow host in Ukraine declared on Tuesday he was going on hunger strike in protest over a decision by state authorities to strip him of his work permit, a move he described as politically motivated. His move comes as Ukraine's commitment to Western-backed reforms comes under scrutiny following political upheaval that has delayed billions of dollars in international loans. The state employment agency said it had withdrawn the work permit of TV journalist Savik Shuster, a Canadian citizen, because he had not informed them he was being investigated by the tax authorities. "The authorities have returned to a standard post-Soviet state where they don't want to hear anything critical, anything reasonable," Shuster said on his online channel. "I declare a hunger strike until my right to work in Ukraine is returned to me," he said. Born in the Soviet Union, Shuster started working in Ukraine in 2004. He hosts the 'Shuster Live' political television show which asks audience members to rate government policy. As a foreigner who funds his own programs through donations from viewers, he is seen as a relatively independent voice compared to other media outlets, most of which are owned by Ukrainian oligarchs. "The circumstances of this case raise a number of concerns and questions," said Dunja Mijatovic, media freedom representative for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a rights body. He urged Ukraine to ensure "that the journalist's rights are safeguarded and that Shuster is allowed to continue performing his work in a free and safe manner". Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the newly appointed prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, also called for the issue to be resolved urgently. Groysman took office last week, ending months of turmoil amid growing frustration about a lack of progress made in tackling graft and rebuilding the economy after street protests in 2014 ousted a Moscow-backed president. Pro-European reformists in Ukraine have expressed concern that the latest political reboot will not eliminate the influence of powerful business interests on policymaking. (Reporting by Natalia Zinets; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Gareth Jones)
The capital of one of the worlds most prolific film industries, Lagos, Nigeria, will step into the spotlight at the Toronto Intl Film Festival this year as the selection for its annual City to City program.

Festival artistic director Cameron Bailey, who will curate the Lagos program, made the announcement today.

Now in its eighth year, City to City features recent work from filmmakers living and working in hot spots of global cinema. Previous editions have showcased London, Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Athens and Seoul.

Bailey, who first visited Lagos in 2005, said he was so impressed by the vitality of the city, the hub of an industry considered second only to Bollywood in terms of its annual output.

While the Nigerian industry, known as Nollywood, has earned worldwide recognition  and notoriety  for its frantic shoots and shoestring budgets, Bailey says he has seen the biz mature through the years, offering local helmers an opportunity to start plugging into the formal industry around the world.

There was always a sense that the work coming out of Lagos was very commercial, was made for the DVD marketand wasnt really best-suited to play at international festivals, he says. But I think thats changing.

Citing rising budgets, improved production values, and more ambitious story-telling, Bailey says there is a whole new generation that can really make the most of the exposure in Toronto.

The films selected for the City to City program will be announced in August.

The 41st annual Toronto Intl Film Festival runs Sept. 8 to 18, 2016. Film submissions are now open, and the deadline is May 6. The late submission deadline is June 3.

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Sometimes, taking a stand is as easy  and as brave  as using the women's restroom.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, was in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Monday to help deliver the North Carolina NAACP's proposed Human Rights Act. The bill would repeal the controversial anti-trans HB 2, which requires transgender people to use the bathroom matching their gender assigned at birth, not their gender identity. Activists also delivered petitions against HB 2.

Proudly delivering the NC NAACP's proposed NC Hmn Rights Act to Gov McCrory. #flushdiscrimination #transequalitypic.twitter.com/xTCo7atVnc https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cg5vWXQXEAESovm.jpg:large

While she was there, Keisling, a transgender woman, used the women's restroom in the governor's mansion  in direct opposition to North Carolina's bill. She caught the moment of civil disobedience on camera and posted it to Facebook.

She posted it with the caption, "And ... I used the women's room in the governor's office. Governor McCrory can't even enforce the law in his house."

"I was a guest of the state of North Carolina, so guests get to use the bathrooms," Keisling said to BuzzFeed.

Source: National Center for Transgender Equality/Facebook

"No one was bothered, because when I go to the bathroom, I do my business, I mind my own business, and then I go about my business," Keisling said to BuzzFeed.

About 20 people saw her enter the restroom, including a police officer who stood close by, according to Keisling. The officer did nothing.

Keisling's bathroom break was just one act of protest that day. According to the Associated Press, at about 2:25 p.m., around 20 protesters, including Keisling, sat outside the governor's mansion, joined arms and sang songs such as "We Shall Not Be Moved."

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Some hours later, police began to arrest protesters, according to the Associated Press. Keisling was arrested for her participation in the sit-in, the National Center for Transgender Equality's Facebook page posted.

Source: National Center for Transgender Equality/Facebook

Fifty-four people were arrested during the sit-in, which was a part of the North Carolina NAACP's "Moral Mondays" movement.

54 people arrested in protest against #HB2, after day of protests from both sides:http://abc11.tv/1TtF5Al #ABC11pic.twitter.com/cr1K7N34Ow https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cg7mrbDXEAAPXLL.jpg:large

Keisling updated her Facebook again around midnight, saying she had been released and was safely back with her colleagues at National Center for Transgender Equality.

McCrory's press office did not immediately return a request for comment.
The U.S. leads the world in prison population, both as a total number and per-capita, yet lags well behind many other nations in terms of re-integrating ex-cons back into civilian life  a lack The Return illustrates with particular acuteness. Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloways feature follows men released after recent reform of the 1994 California Three Strikes law that had seen them and thousands of others given virtual life sentences for frequently petty crimes, suddenly starting over after years of anticipating no such chance. Their struggles are depicted in a film thats naturally compelling despite some narrative gap, as evidenced by its audience award win at the Tribeca film festival.

Though not the first state to enact similar legislation (trailblazer Texas at one point upheld the contested life sentence of a man whose three felonies comprised a grand total of $230 in fraudulent activity), Californias 1994 Proposition 184 was the most sweeping, its extreme rhetoric rubber-stamped by voters in the wake of 12-year-old Polly Klaas high-profile abduction, rape and murder by a released serial violent offender. (Two dozen other states eventually passed similar habitual offender laws.) But as the third strike didnt have to be a violent felony, prison populations swelled with a new influx of lifers who werent necessarily menaces to society  and whose removal from the general populace did not significantly reduce crime statistics as hoped. Budget reductions in some cases axed these prisoners access to vocational training, addiction counseling and other in-prison programs, the idea being that such help was wasted on lifers with little chance of parole.

So the protagonists in The Return are even less equipped to re-enter society than they might have been when Californias Prop. 36 became the first-ever time U.S. voters enabled sentence shortening for the already-incarcerated. That bill was largely a product of the Stanford Three Strikes Project, whose director Michael Romano as well as attorney Susan Champion are major onscreen presences here.

Appalled that crimes such as stealing a few clothes from Sears or possessing $5 in crack cocaine could lead to life sentences, they successfully agitated for reform of policy that many now agreed had been disastrous. When the new law passed in 2012, a tidal wave of release petitions hit the courts. Not only did each case need to be argued for, but Romano and company realized prisoners (many of whom had disengaged from their any families and communities left behind, believing theyd never live among them again) would require re-entry support systems that were very poorly provided for in the status quo.

The principal figure followed over his first year of freedom is Kenneth Anderson, a bearish middle-aged man who moves back in with his middle-class L.A. African-American family after well over a decades absence. Hed gotten 25-to-life over a purse snatching, the fateful last blunder in a struggle with drug abuse brought on by stress over his failed janitorial business. Welcomed back by his ex-wife, variably wary now-adult offspring and several grandchildren hes never met, hes fortunate in many respects  but still encounters considerable hurdles, on the job front and elsewhere. By contrast, Bilal Kevin Chatman has no spouse or children to return to. After 11 years inside (his third strike was selling $200 in drugs to an undercover agent), he heads straight from prison to Home of the Loving Father Re-Entry Facility, a halfway house in San Jose.

Chatman is given much less screen time than Anderson, and even the latters evolving story has some awkward blank spots  when hes abruptly fired from the job he finally lands, precipitating a crisis, we have no idea why. The filmmakers (whose prior doc Better This World dealt with a very different type of questionable criminal sentencing) also follow the release petitioning for Lester Wallace, a diagnosed schizophrenic who became Californias very first Three Strikes conviction after an attempted car-stereo theft. But we never actually hear from him, only glimpse him in court as his case is argued. And theres just a single scene portraying the new life (working on a farm) for Shane, whose being raised in a frequently homeless, drug-addled family made him the perfect candidate for what Romano says was too often the solution for a generation to problems of poverty, addiction and mental illness: Lock em up and throw away the key.

The Return would be more satisfying if it had given these figures equal screen time, investigating more fully a greater range of ex-inmate experiences. It also mentions without explaining a significant event: the fact that many state prosecutors began unexpectedly challenging these release petitions. Were they trying to protect a now-lucrative prison-industrial complex from declining inmate numbers?

Nevertheless, whats here is potent stuff, as it vividly captures the psychological as well as logistical difficulties of re-adjusting to civilian life. If nothing else, The Return underlines that at least as much care should be put into the process of de-institutionalizing offenders as goes into institutionalizing them in the first place. (A closing text notes that, despite the limited availability of such infrastructure, so far released Three Strikes ex-cons in California have a recidivism rate well below the national average.)

The briskly paced doc is well-shot by d.p. Mario Furloni, with other tech/design contributions also solid.

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So much for the idea that Tribune Publishing execs would be cheered by the 63% premium in Gannetts $815 million (including debt) buyout offer yesterday.

In a letter to Gannett, sent yesterday but disclosed this morning, Tribune CEO Justin Dearborn accused the owner of USA Today of playing games, engaging in erratic and unreliable behavior, and taking an aggressive and hostile approach with its bid.

After describing his contacts with Gannett leading up to its public announcement yesterday of its $12.25-a-share offer, Dearborn said that Tribune plans to expeditiously review it in a manner that enables the Board to fully assess your proposal.

Gannett CEO Robert Dickey responded today that its not constructive to address the inaccuracies in Dearborns letter. But he adds that hes still eager to negotiate a transaction with Tribune and pressed his counterpart to say when and where you would like to meet.

Tribunes properties include the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and Hartford Courant. Its shares, which soared nearly 53% yesterday, are up less than 1% in mid-day trading. Gannett is down 1.9% after a 6.5% rise yesterday.

Tribunes leaders could face multiple lawsuits for violating their fiduciary responsibility to investors if shareholders believe that the company stiff-armed a potentially lucrative buyout offer.

Dearborns letter appears designed to demonstrate that he put their interests first by going to what he describes as great lengths to respond to Gannett after it privately made its offer in an April 12 letter.

The companies had multiple discussions regarding our plans for next steps, he says.

Earns Gannett

The CEO accused Gannett of cancelling an April 16 dinner in Washington, D.C. without offering a reason. Tribune sent a letter on Friday saying that it was still finalizing arrangements to hire Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Lazard to provide financial advice, and Kirkland & Ellis to be its legal advisor.

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Since then, he personally engaged with Dickey numerous times both in writing and via phone and made every effort to establish open lines of communication and maintain a constructive dialogue.

The Tribune chief charged that Dickey sent a letter on Sunday demanding that the board provide a substantive response. to the offer within 90 minutes. Dearborn responded that he would meet promptly following our first quarter earnings call on May 4.

Dickey says, in his letter, that from the start all we have asked for is a substantive response to our proposal.

Although he declined to offer a point-by-point rebuttal, he said the charge that Gannett had cancelled a dinner meeting in D.C. to discuss the offer cant go without comment.

That dinner would have been attended by a member of the Tribune team who had not been made aware of our offer, so no substantive discussion could have taken place, Dickey says. Gannett cancelled because it had just closed its acquisition of Journal Media Group and scheduled a dinner to welcome its publishers.

Tribune was well aware of Gannetts reason for cancelling the dinner and Tribunes largest shareholder, Michael Ferro, commented to me that he would have done the same thing if he had been in Gannetts position, Dickey says.

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Donald Trump is becoming more formidable as his campaign becomes increasingly professional, Democratic former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. said Wednesday.

Ford, now a Morgan Stanley managing director, offered his assessment one day after the Republican presidential front-runner won the GOP primary in New York.

In addition to bringing on new campaign staff, Trump showed discipline during his victory speech by referring to his opponent as Sen. Ted Cruz, rather than "Lying Ted," as he has in the past, Ford said.

"If this is the transition and pivot he's going to make, I've said to my party and my candidate, I think we win, but Donald Trump will be a tough opponent between now and November," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Hillary Clinton , who won the Democratic contest in New York, cannot necessarily rely on poor favorability ratings for Trump because she is also unpopular with many Americans, he said.

A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 65 percent of Americans have a negative view of Trump, while 56 percent were sour on Clinton.

"I don't think we'll see a race in the near term  because we focus on this for such a long period of time  where the nominees come out of the party with higher favorables than unfavorables," Ford said.

Joe Watkins, Republican political analyst and former White House aide to George W. Bush, said this is a very different election cycle in which many Americans are angry.

"If Donald Trump is the nominee don't suppose that he won't be able to actually reach across the aisle and actually get Democrats, Democrats who feel like they've been left out," he told "Squawk Box."

Correction: This article has been corrected to show that Harold Ford Jr. is a managing director at Morgan Stanley.





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Donald Trump

Donald Trump passed along some advice to Bernie Sanders in a Tuesday tweet.

The GOP frontrunner and Manhattan billionaire said Sanders, a Vermont senator, should run for president as an independent candidate in the fall's general election.

"Bernie Sanders has been treated terribly by the Democratsboth with delegates & otherwise," Trump tweeted. "He should show them, and run as an Independent!"

Sanders running as a potential independent candidate against Trump and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton would largely benefit Trump.

Both Trump and Sanders have railed on their respective party's nominating processes, calling them "rigged" to favor establishment candidates.

Trump has also made a point of mentioning what he believes to be Sanders' unfair treatment while speaking on the stump during some recent campaign rallies.

NOW WATCH: 'It's pure political correctness: Trump on Tubman on the $20 bill





More From Business Insider


While Republican frontrunner Donald Trump still needs more than 300 delegates to reach 1,237  the magic number needed to secure the GOP presidential nomination  he has finally reached a key milestone in his bid for the White House: support from half of the countrys likely Republican voters.

According to a new NBC News/SurveyMonkey national tracking poll released Tuesday, 50 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they support the real estate moguls candidacy, compared to the 26 percent who support Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and the 17 percent who are backing Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Trumps double-digit lead over his GOP rivals is one reason Cruz and Kasich banded together this week in an effort to block the brash billionaire from winning the GOP nomination.

Excluding independents, Trump now enjoys 49 percent support among Republican voters, up six points from last week, when the same poll was conducted prior to his resounding primary victory in New York.

Trump nearly reached 50 percent in a CNN/ORC poll conducted in February, when he led Florida Sen. Marco Rubio by 33 points (49 percent to 16 percent) among Republican and Republican-leaning voters.

Crossing the 50 percent threshold is important for Trump, who has hovered in mid-to-high-40 percent range in recent weeks  leading some to speculate that the White House hopeful had hit his ceiling with GOP voters.

In a statement blasting the Cruz-Kasich pact Monday, Trump complained that he would be receiving in excess of 60% of the vote except for the fact that there were so many candidates running against him.



On the Democratic side, frontrunner Hillary Clinton is ahead of Bernie Sanders nationally, but her lead has narrowed to just 2 points, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Monday shows.

According to the survey, the former secretary of state has the support of 50 percent of likely Democratic primary voters, while Sanders has the support of 48 percent. In the same poll conducted last month, Clinton held a 9-point lead over the Vermont senator.

Heading into Tuesdays primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, recent polls show Trump and Clinton leading in all five states  where wins would put each candidate closer to clinching their respective partys nomination.

Slideshow: Candidates vie for 5 Northeastern states >>>
By Emily Stephenson (Reuters) - Donald Trump is poised to extend his lead in the Republican presidential race in a string of East Coast primaries on Tuesday, but a complicated contest in Pennsylvania, the day's biggest prize, will test his recently reorganized campaign. The state features the sort of complex rules that Trump has repeatedly slammed for being "rigged" and that forced him this month to reshuffle his team to better compete with Ted Cruz, his main rival for the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination for the Nov. 8 election. Before polls opened, Trump kept battering the Republican delegate allocation system. "The whole delegate system is a sham," he said on Fox News. Just 17 of the 71 Republican delegates up for grabs in Pennsylvania on Tuesday are allocated to the candidate who wins its primary. The other 54 delegates - who are elected directly by voters - are free agents, able to support anyone they choose at the Republican National Convention in July. Polls show Trump leading in all five of Tuesday's nominating contests in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and Maryland, which have a total of 118 pledged delegates at stake in addition to the 54 unbound Pennsylvania delegates. Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, and Ohio Governor John Kasich, the third Republican in the race, have formed an anti-Trump alliance in an effort to stop the New York billionaire from reaching a first-ballot victory at the July convention in Cleveland, Ohio. Former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, a Trump supporter, said the deal between Kasich and Cruz would backfire because it smacked of backroom politics. "The people have sort of risen up and theyve said we dont want all this stuff that is going on, all this intricate, backroom stuff," Carson said on Fox News. But Gertrude Taylor, 86, who was voting in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown, said she cast a ballot for Kasich because he was a "down-to-earth man" and there was "no way" she could back Trump. "He's too outspoken, he gets mad if things dont go his way. I think he should keep his thoughts to himself," Taylor said. In the Democratic race, front-runner Hillary Clinton looks set to expand her lead over U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in Tuesday's contests. A strong showing by Clinton could turn up the pressure on Sanders to get out of the race or ease his criticism of her. The former secretary of state has an almost insurmountable lead of 275 pledged delegates heading into Tuesday's contests, and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid told reporters he did not think Sanders had a realistic path to winning the nomination. Reid said Sanders had run a "unique and powerful" campaign and he refused to urge him to step aside. But asked if he thought Sanders had a path to the nomination, he said: "No I do not." A senior strategist for Sanders, Tad Devine, told the New York Times that Sanders would "reassess" any possible adjustments to his campaign after Tuesday, although he said the candidate would stay in the race. 'NOT GETTING OUT' "Since Iowa, weve been asked at every election: 'Are you getting out now?' The answer is no," Sanders' wife, Jane, told MSNBC. Sanders, who has attacked Clinton from the left with pledges to do more than she would to address social inequality, insisted he stood a good chance to win some of the states. "I think we've got a path to victory and we're going to fight this until the last vote is cast," Sanders said on CNN. On Twitter, Trump expressed sympathy for Sanders, saying he had been "treated terribly" in the Democratic race. Clinton has added to her lead over Sanders with strong support from superdelegates free to back any candidate. Trump, who would benefit if he faced two opponents in November instead of one, suggested Sanders "should show them, and run as an independent!" Sanders has said he would not make an independent run for the White House. While railing against the Republican system, Trump announced on April 7 he was reorganizing his campaign to focus on delegate and convention strategy, hiring advisers with convention experience. In Pennsylvania, candidates hope to get as many die-hard supporters as possible elected as delegates, both to build support on the first ballot and to bolster their position if no one gets to 1,237 delegates outright and the Cleveland convention becomes a protracted fight for the nomination. It is unclear if Trump's campaign revved up its efforts in time to make a difference in Pennsylvania's delegate race. U.S. Representative Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania, a Trump surrogate, said the campaign had taken some steps, including printing cards naming its preferred candidates for delegates so that voters going to the polls would know who backs Trump. Before that, "we were just scribbling names on a piece of paper for them," Barletta said. "I think the organization coming here to Pennsylvania was just in the nick of time." Cruz's Pennsylvania chairman, Lowman Henry, said he had not noticed a ramp-up by Trump there. "All we've noticed is a bunch of whining about it," he said. "Our response is: They whine, we win." Cruz has met with would-be delegates who have promised to support him if they are elected, as well as candidates who have not declared any allegiance, Henry said. Kasich has also met with prospective delegates. It is difficult to predict which presidential candidate will get the most support from Pennsylvania. Many delegate candidates have said they will vote for whoever wins the state or their district, at least on the first ballot at the convention. If those delegates hold to their informal promises, Trump could win most of Pennsylvania's votes on the first round in Cleveland, said Charles Gerow, a conservative strategist also running to be a Pennsylvania delegate. But if Trump falls short of the votes needed to win on the first ballot in Cleveland, and delegates across the country begin switching sides, the efforts now being made to woo Pennsylvania delegates could pay off. (Reporting by Emily Stephenson in Washington; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington and Amanda Becker in Philadelphia; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Frances Kerry and Peter Cooney)
As the Trump carnival campaign rolls past petrified Republican Party officials, egg-on-their-face pundits, media executives gleeful over this primary seasons ratings bonanza and all manner of angry, left-behind voters, its time to take a serious look at who might be standing at The Donalds side next July in Cleveland as the GOP National Convention cheers (or jeers) for its 2016 presidential ticket.

Although Trump seems to be making a concerted effort to appear more presidential by delivering a speech on foreign policy in Washington on April 27 and more traditional by bringing in grown-ups like veteran GOP political operative Paul Manafort, his choice of a running mate could still be as unconventional as his cant-look-away campaign has been.

Slideshow: 16 Picks for Trumps Vice-President

Among the obvious candidates are former rivals like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who threw himself onto Trumps gold-plated bandwagon shortly after pulling out of the primary race; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who would help in his crucial home state and possibly offset some of the Hispanic animus toward the illegal immigrant-bashing billionaire; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, an early primary dropout and former darling of conservative fat cats; and Ben Carson, the soft-spoken former neurosurgeon who has endorsed Trump and could add gravitas to the ticket  plus as an African American, he might make it seem more inclusive.

Then there are current rivals Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Selecting either one, though Kasich more than Cruz, could help repair a fractured Republican Party, but walking back some of their attacks on Trump could be difficult.

If the national polls are accurate and Trump must overcome an 8 percent deficit to beat Democrat Hillary Clinton  and everything currently points to her as her partys nominee  he might want to put a woman on his ticket.

Related: A Female VP for Trump? Here are Five Options (Plus Oprah!)

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Former Alaska Governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin would be the gonzo choice. But the Saturday Night Live skit following her endorsement of Trump might be enough to give him pause.

Arizona Representative Martha McSally is not only a woman but a retired Air Force colonel who flew combat missions, a triathlete and a member of the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees. She could help bolster a Trump tickets bona fides on national security and the fight against ISIS.

Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst also has military record to tout, having been a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard, and her startling swift rise has been helped by support from wealthy conservatives, who presumably would look more kindly on Trump as the GOP standard bearer with her on his team.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has an impressive command of the issues but has the same problem as Cruz and Kasich. As a Republican primary rival, she was a caustic critic of Trump and has continued to call him to account as she stumps for Cruz (on Monday she declined to rule out running as Cruzs veep if asked). Still, if Trump wants an attack dog, not one of the candidates in either party this election season is as fierce a Rottweiler when it comes to Clinton as Fiorina is: She would clamp onto a leg of Hillarys pantsuit and never let go.

Trump/Fiorina? Yes, this election could get stranger.

Click here for 16 possible picks for Trumps vice president.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Paul Manafort on Meet the Press earlier this month. (Photo: William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC NewsWire via Getty Images)





A lawyer for Paul Manafort, Donald Trumps chief campaign aide, acknowledged Tuesday evening that the longtime GOP operative has been questioned by officials from the Cayman Islands in connection with a $26.2 million investment by a billionaire Russian oligarch who was his partner in an ill-fated telecommunications development in Ukraine. The lawyers comments came in response to an earlier story by Yahoo News about the Cayman officials efforts to track down Manafort for his testimony.

The dispute goes back years, but last summer, court-appointed liquidators from the Cayman Islands initiated legal action in federal court in Alexandria, Va., seeking to question under oath Manafort and two business partners about a business deal involving firms controlled by Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate who for years was barred from entering the United States over allegations of ties to organized crime.

These guys are chasing their money, said Rick Davis, one of the partners subpoenaed in the case and the manager of John McCains 2008 presidential campaign. They [Deripaskas firms] invested in something and it just went away. They are actually trying to track down where the company went and where the [money] went.

Richard Hibey, a lawyer for Manafort, emailed Yahoo News Tuesday night stating that Mr. Manafort and others appeared for depositions some months ago and answered all questions, mooting the legal action in Virginia, and added, we are not privy to any other developments. HIbey, however, declined to address any specifics about Manaforts dealings with Deripaska, noting that since the matter is pending in the Caymans, it would be inappropriate to discuss it.

Davis told Yahoo News that, through his lawyer, he informed the Cayman Island court officials that he knew nothing about the investment, even though Manaforts company in the partnership with Deripaska, Davis Manafort International, still bears his name.

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In fact, Davis said, he hasnt spoken to Manafort in more than five years, didnt know how to reach him and was stunned to learn last year about Manaforts side business investments with Deripaska, a controversial figure who  through Davis help  had met with McCain and other U.S. senators in 2006 during a time the Russian oligarch was seeking to persuade U.S. authorities to allow him to enter the United States.

I was like, what the f*** is this? Davis recalled when he learned the Cayman Island court officials wanted to question him about the Ukrainian telecommunications investment. I wasnt involved in this thing.

In earlier court filings in the Caymans, Deripaskas lawyers had alleged that Manafort and another of his business partners, Rick Gates (who also recently went to work for the Trump campaign), had failed to respond to repeated requests for audit reports or any other information about the Ukrainian investment funds put out by Deripaska. Gates also did not respond to a request for comment by Yahoo News. It appears that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates have simply disappeared, Deripaskas lawyers wrote in a petition to the Cayman Islands court filed in Dec. 4, 2014.

Whatever the explanation, the court documents shed new light on a trail of complicated offshore business dealings (many of them through firms registered in the Cayman Islands, Cyprus and elsewhere) that Manafort engaged in with wealthy Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs  relationships he appears to have forged while serving as chief political consultant to former Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych, an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin who fled Kiev in February 2014 and now lives in Moscow.

These ties could prove problematic for Manafort, especially in light of a report today by Politico that Trump has increasing misgivings about his new top aide, who is trying to position the Republican frontrunner as a more conventional candidate. According to Politico, Trump also had concerns about Manaforts past ties to controversial foreign figures like Yanukovych and, as reported by Yahoo News last week, to a Pakistani intelligence front group  associations that Trump was apparently unaware of when he hired him.

A separate lawsuit filed in New York three years ago details multiple business deals that Manafort had with another pro-Putin oligarch, Dmitri Firtash, including plans to purchase New Yorks Drake Hotel and develop a high-end resort on the Bahamian island of Bimini.

The New York lawsuit, filed on behalf of former Ukranian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Yanukovychs rival, alleged that Manaforts business deals were part of a racketeering scheme to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through a labyrinth of Firtash-controlled companies in Panama, Cyprus and Europe for the benefit of Yanukovych.

The lawsuit was tossed out by a federal judge in New York last fall on the grounds that it mainly involved overseas activity that was not within the jurisdiction of the court. But as part of the case, the lawyer for Tymoshenko, Kenneth F. McCallion, put into the court record documents detailing Manaforts business arrangements with Firtash, including memos and emails about meetings between them in Kiev and a copy of an agreement to create a limited partnership with Firtash registered in the Cayman Islands that was signed by Manafort in April 2009. (Firtash two years ago was indicted by a federal grand jury in Chicago for alleged conspiracy to bribe Indian government officials for a titanium contract. He was arrested in Vienna, but the Austrian government rebuffed a Justice Department request for his extradition last year. The oligarch remains a federal fugitive with an outstanding Interpol warrant, afraid to risk arrest by leaving Austria, according to a source close to him.)

During the same period that Manafort was pursuing the business deals with Firtash, he was also soliciting investments from Deripaska, according to the court petition filed by Deripaskas lawyers in the Cayman Islands and, more recently, by the Cayman liquidators in Alexandria, Va.

Long known as one of Putins favorite oligarchs, Deripaska made billions of dollars in the aluminum business in the 1990s, becoming one of Russias wealthiest men. But in 2006, the State Department, at the FBIs request, revoked his visa to enter the United States because of concerns about allegations of corruption, bribery and possible ties to organized crime, which Deripaska denied.

According to Missing Man, a forthcoming book by New York Times reporter Barry Meier, the FBI later relented and secretly arranged to have the Department of Homeland Security issue Deripaska a temporary visa in 2009, allowing him into the U.S. to meet with American business leaders after the oligarch promised he could help the bureau find Robert Levinson, a former bureau agent who has gone missing in Iran. But according to Meiers book, Deripaskas leads went nowhere and bureau officials determined they had been had by the Russian. The FBI concluded that Deripaska and two associates were bullshit artists who had used Bobs case as a means to try to get the United States to do what they wanted without ever delivering anything, Meier writes.

The court filings in Alexandria stem from an agreement in March 2007 to create a Cayman Islands partnership called Pericles Emerging Market Investors, between a firm owned by Manafort and Gates and Surf Horizon, described as a company incorporated that summer in Cyprus to serve as a special purpose vehicle for investments by one of Deripaskas companies in Moscow. (Deripaska is not identified by name in the court filings, but sources directly familiar with the case told Yahoo News he was the principal figure with whom Manafort had partnered.)

The partnerships purpose was to generate significant long-term capital appreciation through private equity investments in Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere. As part of the deal, Deripaskas firms paid $7.35 million in management fees to Manafort and Gates.

But the deal went south after Pericles paid $18.9 million in 2008 to holdings in Cyprus controlled by Manafort and Gates for the purchase of Black Sea Cable, a Ukrainian holding company for telecommunications and Internet interests in that country. Citing the worldwide financial crisis that year, Deripaskas firms later suspended further investments and the two parties agreed to wind down their partnership, according to the filing by Deripaskas lawyers.

Lawyers for the Russian oligarch then started seeking information  and audits  about what happened to the investment and the management fees Deripaskas firms had paid. In court papers, they allege they discovered that the Ukranian investment had been structured differently than they had been led to believe  and with different partners. When they sought obtain copies of the agreement and sales contracts, as well as promised audit reports on their investment, Manafort and Gates did not respond to their requests. Deripaskas lawyers then sought and obtained the appointment of court-appointed liquidators to investigate what happened to his money.
Taiwan Earthquake and Slow Apple Sales Shake TSMCs Fiscal 1Q16

(Continued from Prior Part)

TSMCs growth forecast for the semiconductor industry

As we come to the end of the series, we look back at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (or TSMC) (TSM) and its strong financial position to withstand the short-term headwinds. The company has also been actively investing in advanced technology to meet the future demands of its customers. The company makes its strategic decisions based on its forecast for the consumer market.

The company expects the global semiconductor industry to grow ~1% in 2016, with the foundry market expected to grow ~5%. The company has maintained its fiscal 2016 revenue growth forecast between 5% and 10%.

TSMC revises down industry growth forecast for consumer segments

TSMC has revised down its growth forecast for its consumer market due to a weakness in the macroeconomic environment. In its fiscal 1Q16 earnings call, the companys co-chief executive officer Mark Liu stated that the company has lowered its 2016 growth estimate for smartphones from 8% to 7%. For PCs (personal computers), it has lowered its growth estimate from -3% to -6%, and for tablets from -7% to -9%. This would impact its communications and computer segments, which together account for 72% of the companys revenue.

However, the company has maintained the 2016 growth rate for digital consumer electronics at -5%, Liu added.

Growth opportunities

Liu stated that theres still growth opportunity amidst this slowdown.

Theres an increase in demand for mid and low-end smartphones from China and emerging markets (EEM).

Theres an increase in demand for broadband networks and wireless infrastructures as China resumes LTE (Long Term Evolution) deployment. Qualcomm (QCOM) is likely to benefit the most from this deployment as it holds the patent for 3G (third-generation) and 4G (fourth-generation) wireless technology.

The advent of virtual reality is a boon for the gaming industry. Theres increased demand for gaming GPUs (graphics processing units). Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) are competing head-to-head to gain gaming market share.

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According to Gartner, revenue for the global semiconductor industry fell 2.3% year-over-year in 2015, while foundry revenue grew 4.4%. TSMC led the market with 54.3% market share, followed by GlobalFoundries in second place. This year is expected to be a better year for foundries than for the overall semiconductor industry, according to IC Insights.

Browse this series on Market Realist:
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey will take additional military measures after suffering 46 artillery attacks from Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria since January, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Tuesday. He was speaking to members of the ruling AK Party in parliament. Newspapers on Tuesday said 17 people have been killed in the Turkish border town of Kilis this year from repeated rocket attacks. (Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley; Editing by Nick Tattersall)
By David Alexander WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military conducted "freedom of navigation" operations against 13 countries last year, including several to challenge China's claims in the South and East China seas, according to an annual Pentagon report released on Monday. The operations were against China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, the Maldives, Oman, the Philippines and Vietnam, the report said. It did not specify how many such operations were conducted against each of those countries. The U.S. military carried out single operations against Taiwan, Nicaragua and Argentina, for a total of 13 countries, the department said in the two-page report. The freedom of navigation operations involve sending U.S. Navy ships and military aircraft into areas where other countries have tried to limit access. The aim is to demonstrate that the international community does not accept such restrictions. The U.S. military has repeatedly conducted operations disputing China's maritime claims in recent years and did so again in 2015, a year in which Beijing's island-building activity in the resource-rich areas of the South China Sea led to rising tensions in the region. A U.S. guided-missile destroyer conducted a freedom of navigation patrol near one of China's man-made islands in the Spratly archipelago in October. U.S. military flights near the islands have been warned off. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the Navy would continue to operate in the region despite China's condemnation of the patrols. China's Defense Ministry said in a statement on its website late on Monday that it was deeply concerned by such operations. "The United States carries out militarization in the South China Sea in the name of freedom of navigation and overflight, threatens coastal nations' sovereignty and security and destroys regional peace and stability," the ministry said. It made the comment in response to what it said were reports of recent U.S. military flights near Scarborough Shoal - known by Beijing as Huangyan Island - an area China seized control of after a stand-off with the Philippine coast guard in 2012. Admiral Harry Harris, the head of U.S. Pacific Command, said this year the Navy would step up the freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea because of concerns China is attempting to assert its dominance by building military facilities there. U.S. freedom of navigation operations last year also challenged China's claims of jurisdiction in the airspace above its maritime Exclusive Economic Zone as well as restrictions it has tried to impose on aircraft flying through an Air Defense Identification Zone over the East China Sea. The number of countries the United States challenged last year was down from 2014, when it targeted 19 countries. That was the largest number in more than a decade. Iran and the Philippines have been the most frequently challenged countries over the years, mainly because they sit astride busy sea lanes whose use they have tried to limit or govern. (Reporting by David Alexander; Additional reporting by Michael Martina in Beijing; Editing by Peter Cooney and Simon Cameron-Moore)
From Popular Mechanics

The latest weapon in the United States' fight against ISIS isn't guns or tanks or any typical sort of weapon. According to deputy secretary of defense, Robert O. Work it's something a little more technically sophisticated, at least in theory. "We are dropping cyberbombs. We have never done that before."

Work's specific quote comes by way of CNN earlier this month, backed up by additional details from a report by the New York Times, which goes slightly more in-depth to describe the lengths to which the military's six-year-old "Cyber Command" is going to fight ISIS on battlegrounds that don't exist here in the real world. According to the Times, a briefing is scheduled for Monday, during which President Obama and leaders from Britain, France, Italy and Germany will discuss the specifics of this otherwise vague campaign in greater detail.

The Times was able to suss out the following specifics through a series of interviews with senior officials:

[The] effort has begun with a series of "implants" in the militants' networks to learn the online habits of commanders. Now, the plan is to imitate them or to alter their messages, with the aim of redirecting militants to areas more vulnerable to attack by American drones or local ground forces.

ISIS has been a particularly tech-savvy terrorist force, making use of everything from Twitter to GoPro camera's to spread its message and attempt to radicalize receptive individuals to their cause. It only makes sense to fight them on that turf. And while these strategies could ultimately prove to be effective, the phrase "cyberbombs" betrays a few uncomfortable truths about the current state of cyber-warfare. One, these terms only ever convey notions of "high tech" and "powerful" and not much actual information. Two, you can be literally saving the world with your cyberbombs, but you will sound like a character from Hackers every time you talk about it.

Whatever they actually are and despite how silly they sound, let's just hope these cyberbombs pack a punch.

Source: The New York Times
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - The United States warned U.S. citizens in Turkey on Tuesday about "credible" terrorist threats to tourist areas in the country. Turkey has been hit by four suicide bombings already this year, most recently in Istanbul last month. Two of the bombings have been blamed on Islamic State, while Kurdish militants have claimed responsibility for the other two. "The U.S. government continues to receive credible indications that terrorist groups are seeking opportunities to attack popular tourist destinations throughout Turkey," the embassy in Ankara said in a statement emailed to U.S. citizens. "Foreign tourists in Turkey have been explicitly targeted by terrorist organizations," the U.S. embassy said in what it described as an "emergency message". Last month's attack in Istanbul's main shopping district killed three Israelis, two of whom held dual citizenship with the United States, and one Iranian. A separate attack in the city's historic heart in January killed 12 German tourists. Turkey is facing multiple security threats. As part of a U.S.-led coalition, it is fighting Islamic State in neighboring Syria and Iraq. It is also battling Kurdish militants in its southeast, where a 2-1/2-year ceasefire collapsed last July, triggering the worst violence since the 1990s. (Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul, Writing by Seda Sezer; Editing by Gareth Jones)
By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday unanimously voiced alarm over Israeli statements about the Golan Heights on Syria's border with Israel, a declaration that elicited a sharp response from Israel. Earlier this month Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would never relinquish the Golan Heights, in a signal to Russia and the United States that the strategic plateau should be excluded from any deal on Syria's future. "Council members expressed their deep concern over recent Israeli statements about the Golan, and stressed that the status of the Golan remains unchanged," China's U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi, president of the 15-nation Security Council this month, told reporters after a closed-door meeting. He added that council resolution 497 of 1981 made clear that Israel's decision at the time to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the Golan was "null and void and without international legal effect." Council statements are adopted by consensus, which means all its members, including Israel's ally the United States, backed it. Israel's U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon issued a statement rejecting the council complaint. "Holding a meeting on this topic completely ignores the reality in the Middle East," he said. "While thousands of people are being massacred in Syria, and millions of citizens have become refugees, the Security Council has chosen to focus on Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East." "It's unfortunate that interested parties are attempting to use the council for unfair criticism of Israel," he added. Netanyahu's April 17 declaration came on the occasion of the first Israeli cabinet session on the Golan since the area was captured from Syria in a 1967 war and annexed in 1981. Israel's annexation of the Golan has not won international recognition. Past U.S.-backed Israeli-Syrian peace efforts were predicated on a return of the Golan, where some 23,000 Israelis now live alongside roughly the same number of Druse Arabs loyal to Damascus. Liu said the council supported a negotiated arrangement to settle the issue of the Golan. There is a U.N. peacekeeping force deployed in the Golan called UNDOF. Established in 1974, UNDOF monitors a ceasefire line that has separated Israelis from Syrians in the Golan Heights since a 1973 war. The force has had to pull back from a number of positions on the Golan due to fighting between militants and Syrian government forces in the five-year-old Syrian civil war. Its peacekeepers have been fired upon and captured by militants on several occasions. (Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Tom Brown and James Dalgleish)
(Recasts with committee vote, details of meeting)

By Toni Clarke and Natalie Grover

April 25 (Reuters) - An experimental drug to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a devastating degenerative disease that mostly affects boys, has not been proven effective, a U.S. advisory panel concluded on Monday.

The vote followed an emotional meeting at a hotel in Hyattsville, Maryland, where hundreds of patients and their advocates urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve Sarepta Therapeutics Inc's eteplirsen, saying their children had benefited.

The FDA is not obliged to follow the advice of its advisory panels but typically does so.

The panel voted 7-3, with three abstentions, that the clinical trial of 12 patients did not provide substantial evidence the drug was effective for muscular dystrophy patients with a specific genetic mutation.

The vote followed a skeptical presentation by FDA reviewers, who questioned the validity of the data. They said the results were hard to interpret and there was no clear evidence the drug slowed progression of the disease, as Sarepta says.

The panel gave its recommendation after more than 50 patients and family members pleaded with the agency to approve the drug.

"FDA, please don't let me die early," urged 15-year-old Billy Ellsworth, who has the disease.

The panelists said they were moved by the patients' testimony and that in some cases, it swayed their votes. The majority said the company's clinical trial was not adequate or well controlled enough to demonstrate that the drug was responsible for some of the benefits claimed by patients.

But the FDA kept the door to approval open.

Dr. Janet Woodcock, the head of the agency's pharmaceutical division, made a rare appearance at the event and said that while it was hard to know whether the drug conferred a benefit, the consequences of failing to approve a drug that actually works in devastating diseases were "extreme" and borne by the patient.

PROGRESSIVE MUSCULAR DISEASE

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Duchenne's is a rare genetic disorder characterized by progressive muscular weakness. The disease is caused by a lack of dystrophin, a protein needed to keep muscles healthy. Eteplirsen is designed to increase the production of dystrophin.

The disease typically emerges in boyhood, causing weakness in the arms and legs and eventually the lungs and heart. Patients typically lose the ability to walk during adolescence and frequently die in their 20s or 30s, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Panelists were asked whether the company had proven that eteplirsen induces production of dystrophin to a level reasonably likely to predict a clinical benefit, a measure needed for the company to win accelerated approval of the drug. The panel voted 7-6 that it had not.

The FDA can grant accelerated approval to a drug based on preliminary data and wait for confirmation through additional trials.

FDA reviewers were ridiculed by advocates as they sought to present an analysis suggesting the drug's apparent efficacy in a small number of patients could be due to chance because the company had not conduct a randomized, controlled clinical trial.

Instead, the company compared the treated patients against how untreated patients had progressed historically.

FDA officials said they had not made their decision on whether to approve the drug and would take the patients' input to heart.

BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc's Kyndrisa, designed to address the same subset of patients as Sarepta's drug, was rejected by the FDA in January. That includes about 13 percent of all DMD patients or some 1,300 to 1,900 patients in the United States.

(Reporting by Toni Clarke in Hyattsville, Md., and Natalie Grover in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Cooney)
(Adds analyst and company comment, detail on industry context)

NEW YORK, April 26 (Reuters) - U.S. Steel Corp has launched a campaign to prevent imports from China's largest steel producers, it said on Tuesday, the boldest step yet by a U.S. company as a trade brawl with the world's largest steel producer escalates.

In a complaint to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), the U.S. steelmaker called on regulators to investigate dozens of Chinese producers and their distributors for allegedly conspiring to fix prices, stealing trade secrets and circumventing trade duties by false labeling.

Analysts said it could be the most significantly development in U.S. steel trade in a quarter of a century, and will likely ratchet up tension between China and major steel producing nations, as the global industry grapples with chronic oversupply and sluggish demand.

The petition, known as Section 337 and used to protect against intellectual property theft, listed some of China's top producers, including Hebei Iron & Steel Group and Anshan Iron and Steel Group and Shandong Iron & Steel Group Co .

"We have said that we will use every tool available to fight for fair trade," said U.S. Steel Corp President and Chief Executive Officer Mario Longhi in a statement.

"With today's filing, we continue the work we have pursued through countervailing and antidumping cases and pushing for increased enforcement of existing laws."

It comes after U.S. officials last week warned that China should take steps to cut excess output or face possible trade action and Australia said on Saturday it will impose import duties on certain types of Chinese steel to protect domestic steelmakers.

Even before the ITC makes its ruling, Chinese exporters may curb shipments fearing retroactive measures, Michelle Applebaum, analyst at Steel Market Intelligence, said.

The ITC has 30 days to decide whether to initiate the case. It is also investigating allegations of unfair trade practices in the stricken aluminum industry.

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Beijing has defended itself against the allegations, saying it has done enough to reduce steel capacity and blaming global excess and weak demand for the industry's woes.

GOING IT ALONE

The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-headquartered company has filed the complaint on its own and is relying on a clause in U.S. tariff law 337 not used by the steel industry for almost four decades.

"It's a bold step," by U.S. Steel, said Patrick Macrory, director of the International Trade Center at the International Law Institute in Washington.

In 1978, eight U.S. firms that used the clause went after 35 Japanese competitors over welded stainless steel pipe imports. Back then, rather than barring the product from U.S. shores, ITC issued a "cease and desist" order against 11 companies for engaging in unfair competitive practices.

(Reporting by Josephine Mason in New York, David Lawder in Washington D.C. and Nick Carey in Chicago; editing by Bernard Orr)
By Robert Iafolla WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that a former police detective can sue a New Jersey city claiming he was demoted as punishment after getting a campaign sign for his bedridden mother supporting the mayor's rival in a 2006 local election. The court, in its 6-2 ruling, found that Jeffrey Heffernan, a now former member of Paterson's police force, was not in fact exercising his rights to freedom of association under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment because he picked up the sign for his mother and not himself. But the justices decided he could sue the city for violating those rights because the boss who demoted him believed, albeit mistakenly, that Heffernan supported the mayor's opponent. "We conclude that ... the government's reason for demoting Heffernan is what counts here," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court. "When an employer demotes an employee out of a desire to prevent the employee from engaging in political activity that the First Amendment protects, the employee is entitled to challenge that unlawful action ... even if, as here, the employer makes a factual mistake about the employee's behavior." The high court reversed a 2015 ruling by the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissing Heffernan's lawsuit on the grounds that a First Amendment retaliation claim cannot be based on an employer's perception of a worker's actions. The day before Heffernan was demoted, an aide to Jose Torres, Paterson's mayor at the time who was running for re-election, saw Heffernan getting a large campaign sign backing another mayoral candidate. Heffernan said he got the sign while off-duty as a favor for his mother after her previous sign had been stolen from her front yard, and that the sign did not reflect his personal preference in the mayoral election. The next day, the police department demoted him from detective and transferred him to the traffic division's walking squad, a move he saw as political retaliation. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the dissenting opinion, arguing that Heffernan should not be able to sue regardless of whether his demotion was misguided or wrong because he had not been exercising his constitutional rights. (Reporting by Robert Iafolla; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Will Dunham)
By Elias Biryabarema NAIROBI (Reuters) - Uganda said on Tuesday the cost of pumping its crude oil via a pipeline through Tanzania will be capped at $12.20 per barrel although the two had yet to agree a final levy in a project likely to be a public private partnership. On Saturday landlocked Uganda said it had picked a route through Tanzania to Tanga port for the pipeline, rejecting one through Kenya, with which it had agreed last year to host the same pipeline. Uganda and Kenya have confirmed commercial crude reserves and the potential for substantial extra discoveries, and oil firms in both countries have been eager for an agreement on the export pipeline to make final investment decisions. Kenya, which has discoveries in the Lokichar basin in its northwest, had pitched for the pipeline to link the two countries' fields and onto its Lamu port, earning it transit fees and potentially cutting the cost of exporting its own oil. Uganda's Energy and Mineral Development Minister Irene Muloni also told Reuters the pipeline was expected to be ready by 2020. When asked what key considerations had gone into Uganda's decision to pick Tanzania for the route, Muloni said: "A project cost of $3.55 billion and a (transit) tariff of not more than $12.2 per barrel ... those were the considerations." French oil major Total, which had favoured the Tanzanian route, has said it is willing to fund the project but has not stated whether it wanted to fully or partially own it. Total owns fields in Uganda alongside China's CNOOC and London-listed Tullow Oil which also operates in Kenya. "It's most likely to be a PPP (public private partnership) arrangement," Muloni said in a telephone interview, referring to the pipeline's ownership. In March, Tanzania's presidency said Total had set aside $4 billion to build the pipeline and that Tanzania wanted the three-year construction timetable shortened. Emma Gordon, senior Africa analyst at UK-based risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, said in a research note Tanzania offered Uganda incentives including a promise to waive transit fees for an initial period to secure the deal. Muloni did not confirm the fees waiver promise but a day before the pipeline decision was announced she said Tanzania had agreed to take an 8 percent stake in Uganda's planned refinery, a move seen as an extra sweetener for the pipeline deal. (Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; editing by George Obulutsa and David Evans)
London (AFP) - The US-led coalition against the Islamic State is squeezing the group's revenues from oil, taxation and financial markets but it needs to step up its campaign of "economic warfare", a leading British official said Tuesday.

Air Vice-Marshal Edward Stringer, who is leading British government efforts to disrupt IS financing alongside international allies, said the jihadist group was showing signs of the pressure on its finances.

But the military chief told parliament's foreign affairs committee: "It's a pseudo-state and we need to think in terms of how you take a state structure apart. So we're involved in economic warfare."

Experts have noted a recent reduction in the IS group's oil production, largely down to air strikes by the US-led coalition and Russia.

The IHS research group last week said production in IS-controlled territory was down from 33,000 barrels to 21,000 a day since the middle of last year.

It said the group's total revenues had fallen 30 percent from around $80 million (71 million euros) in mid 2015 to $56 million in March 2016.

Stringer said oil still represented around 40 percent of the jihadists' revenue, but noted that it was largely sold within their territory, where there was a captive customer base who could not negotiate on price.

Another 40 percent comes from extortion, taxation and the local cash economy, with the remaining 20 percent from selling antiquities, donations and other sources, according to British government estimates.

These revenues are also under strain from air strikes that have reduced IS territory, and thus its tax base, and which have destroyed stores of cash in northern Iraq worth "hundreds of millions" of dollars, Stringer said.

Stringer said there were signs that the coalition's actions were beginning to take their toll.

"We are starting to see evidence of corruption and embezzlement within the high command, or the senior people within Daesh, and we are starting to see more arbitrary taxation," Stringer said.

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But he added: "As we understand exactly how that taxation works, how they run the economy, and how we start to attack those elements which they need to run the war machine and the enterprise -- without killing off the elements of the economy that the local civilians absolutely require to keep life going -- then that's the area we need to look at next."

US pressure on the Iraq government has also forced the Iraqi central bank to tighten up its dollar auctions, amid concerns that IS was using them make money through unregulated exchange houses.

At a previous hearing, the committee heard evidence that the jihadist group had been making $25 million a month through these kind of transactions.

The US Federal Reserve temporarily suspended the delivery of dollars to the Iraq central bank last year amid concerns about the auctions. The bank responded by banning 142 money exchange houses from participating.
By Alessandra Prentice and Natalia Zinets KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine held memorial services on Tuesday to mark the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster which permanently poisoned swathes of eastern Europe and highlighted the shortcomings of the secretive Soviet system. In the early hours of April 26, 1986, a botched test at the nuclear plant in then-Soviet Ukraine triggered a meltdown that spewed deadly clouds of atomic material into the atmosphere, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes. President Petro Poroshenko attended a ceremony at the Chernobyl plant, which sits in the middle of an uninhabitable 'exclusion zone' the size of Luxembourg. "The issue of the consequences of the catastrophe is not resolved. They have been a heavy burden on the shoulders of the Ukrainian people and we are still a long way off from overcoming them," he said. More than half a million civilian and military personnel were drafted in from across the former Soviet Union as so-called liquidators to clean-up and contain the nuclear fallout, according to the World Health Organization. Thirty-one plant workers and firemen died in the immediate aftermath of the accident, most from acute radiation sickness. Over the past three decades, thousands more have succumbed to radiation-related illnesses such as cancer, although the total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate. Nikolay Chernyavskiy, 65, who worked at Chernobyl and later volunteered as a liquidator, recalls climbing to the roof of his apartment block in the nearby town of Prypyat to get a look at the plant after the accident. "My son said 'Papa, Papa, I want to look too'. He's got to wear glasses now and I feel like it's my fault for letting him look," Chernyavskiy said. The anniversary has garnered extra attention due to the imminent completion of a giant 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) steel-clad arch that will enclose the stricken reactor site and prevent further leaks for the next 100 years. The project was funded with donations from more than 40 governments and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Even with the new structure, the surrounding zone - 2,600 square km (1,000 square miles) of forest and marshland on the border of Ukraine and Belarus - will remain uninhabitable and closed to unsanctioned visitors. The disaster and the government's reaction highlighted the flaws of the Soviet system with its unaccountable bureaucrats and entrenched culture of secrecy. For example, the evacuation order only came 36 hours after the accident. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has said he considers Chernobyl one of the main nails in the coffin of the Soviet Union, which eventually collapsed in 1991. (Additional reporting by Margaryta Chornokondratenko, Sergei Karazy and Andriy Perun; Editing by Robert Birsel and Richard Balmforth)
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has released new footage showing UN relief efforts in Ecuador, in the aftermath of the devastating 7.8-magnitude quake that shook the country on April 16.

This video offers a glimpse at tents being set up for displaced residents in San Jose de Chamanga, located in northwest Ecuador.

According to UN News Centre reports, the quake left over 600 dead and has affected at least 520,000 Ecuadorians. Credit: YouTube/United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Bison are on track to become the United States national mammal. (Photo: Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation Society)

Update: On May 9 the White House announced that President Obama had signed the National Bison Legacy Act, officially making it the national mammal of the United States.

They want to preserve a home where the buffalo roam.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the National Bison Legacy Act Tuesday to make the American bison the official national mammal, and the Senate is expected to adopt the bill later this week. Afterward, all thats needed is President Obamas John Hancock.

Under the bill, the first Saturday of November will be dubbed National Bison Day, giving conservationists a designated day to celebrate the animal and raise its profile among the general population. The bill does not affect any policy or action by the federal government.



Its a way to do good things for bison in North America without a massive regulatory hammer. Its a symbolic thing, but it really brings a lot of opportunities to raise the profile of this species for the American public, Keith Aune, director of the bison conservation program for the Wildlife Conservation Society, said in an interview with Yahoo Politics.

According to the National Bison Legacy Act, Congress finds bison can play an important role in improving the types of grasses found in landscapes to the benefit of grasslands. (Photo: Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation Society)

To justify the newfound status, Congress listed, among many reasons, the historical use of bison as a symbol of the United States and the mammals links to the economic and spiritual lives of many Native American tribes.

Bison are considered the first major conservation success story on earth. At the turn of the 20th century, the bison population had dwindled to about 1,000. Concerned citizens, including American icon and President Teddy Roosevelt, formed the American Bison Society to help relocate 15 bison from the Bronx Zoo to a refuge in Oklahoma, from which the animal could start to repopulate the West.

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Aune said the conservation effort moved along slowly at first, but a wave of commercial interest propelled it forward in the mid-20th century.

We know they are a healthy red meat thats low in cholesterol and high in omega-3s. There are commercial bison in all 50 states, privately owned for meat production, he said.

The Wildlife Conservation Society continues to work on growing the bison population in the West alongside the InterTribal Buffalo Council and the National Bison Association. These organizations are interested in preserving the mammal for cultural reasons and for ranching and production purposes, respectively.

But, Aune said, the conservationists realized that many Americans are not terribly familiar with bison and do not feel a particular connection with them. The National Bison Legacy Act might rally more people around their cause.

Rep. Lacy Clay, D-Mo., introduced the bill on June 25, 2015. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., has called a press conference for Friday morning where hes expected to announce that the bill is more or less a done deal.


Sydney (AFP) - Never-before-seen footage of The Beatles "mucking around" in a make-up studio ahead of a television performance, shot more than half a century ago, was released by Australia's national film and sound archive Tuesday.

The 49-second black-and-white silent film clip -- which the national archive described as "really rare" -- was shot with an 8mm camera belonging to Australian dancer and make-up artist Dawn Swane, who was working at Granada TV in Manchester, Britain, at that time.

The previously unreleased footage, from November 1, 1965, shows the four members of the legendary band having fun in front of the camera as their make-up is applied.

"I was in the make-up room. And so we were having some champagne," Swane, now 83, said in a statement released by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA).

"And anyway, I don't know if it was John (Lennon) or if it was Ringo (Starr) but they took the camera off me and said, 'This is no way to use a camera', and they sort of jiggled it upside down and inside out a bit, and everybody was just mucking around.

"But that was great. I mean they were a nice group of people. They really were."

The clip, along with other home movies, including British actor Michael Caine in the make-up chair, was donated by Swane's daughter Melinda Doring to the national archive.

"We don't have anything as significantly rare in the collection in terms of a home movie," NFSA assistant film curator Tara Marynowsky told AFP.

"(To have) something so high-profile is just quite incredible to have, especially when our client Dawn Swane held on to it for quite some time. Years and years later, we get to uncover this and make that available to audiences... it's really, really rare actually."

Doring said she first saw the footage as a teenager, but came across it again four years ago and realised it was starting to have "vinegar syndrome", a chemical process which causes film to deteriorate.

"I knew there was stuff there that needed to be preserved, so I knew it was the right time to ring up the archive and get it stabilised and preserved before it would have been lost forever," Doring told AFP.

Swane has also kept the original call sheet for the television programme the performers were preparing for, "The Music of Lennon & McCartney", which has on it autographs from all four Beatles as well as legendary American composer Henry Mancini.
Washington (AFP) - The US military is now conducting cyber attacks on the Islamic State group, a general said Tuesday as the Pentagon looks to accelerate the fight against the jihadists.

A US-led coalition has been striking IS fighters in Iraq and Syria since August 2014, and officials have long stated the importance of using cyber techniques such as overloading IS networks to limit the group's communications and ability to reach potential new recruits.

"We have now begun to use our exquisite cyber capabilities in this fight against Daesh," Baghdad-based Major General Peter Gersten told Pentagon reporters, using an acronym that comes from the group's name in Arabic.

He did not elaborate except to say the effort is "highly coordinated" and has been "very effective."

In February, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and the US military's top officer, General Joe Dunford, said the United States was determined to "accelerate" the anti-IS campaign, and indicated cyber warfare would play an increasingly important role in doing so.

Earlier this month, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said: "We are dropping cyberbombs" on the IS group.

The New York Times published a story Sunday saying the US Cyber Command had placed "implants" in IS networks that let experts monitor the group's behavior and ultimately imitate or alter commanders' messages so they unwittingly direct fighters to areas likely to be hit by drone or plane strikes.

The US Cyber Command is charged with protecting America's military and some civilian networks from attacks, as well as deploying its own offensive cyber strategies if needed.

By 2018, it will have more than 6,000 military and civilian technical experts working across 133 teams.

One such team, comprising about 65 people, today works in the Middle East and carries out cyber operations against IS networks.

Admiral Michael Rogers, head of both Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, declined to provide any additional information Tuesday.

"We have publicly acknowledged that we are using cyber as another tool against ISIL," Rogers said at a Georgetown University cybersecurity conference, using an acronym for the IS group.

"I want them to be aware: We are going to contest you on the kinetic battlefield, we are going to contest you with information dynamics, we are committed to this fight," he added.
Washington (AFP) - Before blowing up a jihadist cash hoard in Iraq, the US military warned bystanders of an impending strike by using a Hellfire missile to deliver the wartime equivalent of a doorknock, an official said Tuesday.

It was the first time the Pentagon has conducted a "knock operation" in Iraq and Syria, and the inspiration came from watching the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pioneer the controversial tactic in Gaza, Major General Peter Gersten said.

The Baghdad-based commander told Pentagon reporters that ahead of the strike on a cash-storage facility on April 5 in Mosul, the military learned that a woman, children and other "non-combatants" also were using the building.

He said the United States aims to avoid civilian casualties, and in this instance decided to warn occupants by exploding a missile just above the roof.

"We went as far as actually to put a Hellfire on top of the building and air burst it so it wouldn't destroy the building, simply knock on the roof to ensure that she and the children were out of the building," he said.

"Then we proceeded with our operations."

Ultimately, the woman died anyway because she ran back just after US forces launched bombs to blow it up.

"Much as we tried to do exactly what we wanted to do and minimize civilian casualties, post-weapons release, she actually ran back into the building," Gersten said. "That's ... very difficult for us to watch."

Gersten said several men had also fled the building. He did not say if they were IS jihadists.

"The men that were in that building, multiple men, literally trampled over her to get out," he said.

The coalition has carried out about 20 strikes on IS cash, blowing up as much as $800 million worth of cash in the process, Gersten said.

Critics of the 20-month-old US-led coalition attacking the IS group in Iraq and Syria say the military is overly cautious in avoiding civilian casualties.

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In a move ridiculed by hawkish opponents in the US Congress and privately by some coalition partners, pilots dropped pamphlets before bombing trucks ferrying illicit oil around Syria for the IS group.

The IDF has for years warned occupants of buildings suspected of housing Hamas weapons to get out by "roof knocking."

The technique has drawn sharp criticism. Observers say occupants are sometimes killed in the warning strike, or even run up to their rooftops to see what happened -- only to be killed in the follow-up strike.
US Steel Corporation filed a trade complaint Tuesday against big Chinese steel makers and distributors, seeking to bar allegedly unfairly traded Chinese products from the US market.

The US company, which produces and sells steel products in North America and Europe, said it had filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) to launch a probe under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 against the largest Chinese steel producers and their distributors.

The complaint "alleges illegal unfair methods of competition and seeks the exclusion of all unfairly traded Chinese steel products from the US market," the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based company said in a statement.

The complaint accuses the Chinese companies of illegally conspiring to fix prices, stealing trade secrets and false labeling to avoid duties.

"We have said that we will use every tool available to fight for fair trade," said Mario Longhi, US Steel president and chief executive, in the statement.

The ITC has 30 days to evaluate the complaint and decide whether to open an investigation.

China was on the firing line in Brussels on April 18 as ministers and top officials from steel-producing nations met to discuss cheap Chinese steel exports that are blamed for plant closures and job losses in some countries.

China produces more than half of the world's steel and is accused of flooding the market with products sold below cost in violation of global trade rules.

Angry steel manufacturers have urged the European Union, the second-biggest steel producer, to follow the United States in punishing China with harsh tariffs.

The US in March slapped tariffs of nearly 300 percent on cold rolled steel used to make auto parts, but the EU settled on a more cautious 20 percent duty for the same product.
Caracas (AFP) - Venezuela's government Tuesday announced enforced leave for public sector workers three days a week, meaning they will only work just two days, in a bid to tackle an electricity shortage.

"There will be no work in the public sector on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, except for fundamental and necessary tasks," Vice President Aristobulo Isturiz said on television.

It is the latest drastic measure by the government as it also grapples with an economic crisis that has Venezuelans queuing for hours to buy scarce supplies in shops.

President Nicolas Maduro's government had already cut the work day for the country's two million public sector employees to six hours and put them on paid leave on Fridays until June 6.

His vice president on Tuesday said the measure would now be extended by two days, apart from the weekend, so they will only work on Mondays and Tuesdays.

He added that primary and high schools will also now be closed to pupils on Fridays.

The government blames the power shortage on a drought caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, which has caused the country's hydroelectric dams to run low.

Venezuela is hoping for a lot of rain over the coming weeks to replenish the reservoirs while the restrictions are in place.

Critics say the shortage is the result of economic mismanagement and inefficient running of the energy network.

The government also imposed four-hour daily electricity blackouts this week on eight regions in the country.

That raised discontent among citizens who are already suffering shortages of medicines and goods such as toilet paper and cooking oil.

Last week, the government also said it was shifting its time zone forward by 30 minutes to save power by adding half an hour of daylight.

- Recall referendum drive -

Venezuela's economy has plunged along with the price of the oil it relies on for foreign revenues.

Maduro blames the collapse on an "economic war" by capitalists.

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Maduro is under growing pressure from the center-right opposition, which vowed to oust him when it took control of the legislature in January after winning an election.

His opponents advanced Tuesday in their mission to drive him from office when electoral authorities gave them authorization to take initial steps seeking a recall referendum.

The National Electoral Board said it would hand over the paperwork allowing them to seek nearly 200,000 signatures needed as a first step towards calling a referendum.

"The country is on the move to achieve democratically what is allowed under the constitution: to hold a referendum this year and then elect a new government of national unity that can get us out of this chaos," said Julio Borges, leader of the opposition majority in the legislature.

Maduro's opponents say he controls the electoral authorities and the Supreme Court, which has blocked several of their bills in the legislature.

Analysts and some politicians have warned that public discontent could lead to mass unrest in the country, which is already ranked by the United Nations as one of the most violent in the world.

Anti-government street protests in Venezuela left 43 people dead in 2014.
The winner for the Round 3 of VIMA Model Awards, a.k.a. the Fioris Award, goes to Sophie (Sofia Sanford) from Malaysia who has proved her worth as a great communicator and presenter.



Held at Glory Beach Resort Port Dickson, the third round required the models to participate in three different activities which tested them on their communication and presentation skills as well as their creativity and teamwork.

The first activity was a group presentation while the second activity was the talent night where the model showcased their special talents in the most creative ways.



The third activity was an individual presentation where the contestants talked about topics that are close to their heart.

"Throughout Round 3 we were also looking at how contestants were able to engage their audience. This round was very challenging because it required a lot of thinking and planning and the need to present a task within a given time," said Rekha Menon, co-founder of VIMA Model Awards.



"However, in spite of the hectic schedule and the demanding criteria for each activity, the contestants developed a very close bond among themselves which created a lot of fun moments. On the whole, the weekend turned into an unforgettable experience for all," she added.

12 contestants from Round 3 will move to Round 4, "The Thinker" which will test the contestants' problem solving skills, quick thinking and intellectual discourse.



The Top 5 winners of Round 3 will receive the following:-



1. Sophie (Malaysia)  Crystal award and certificate

2. Mandana (Iran)  Crystal awards and certificate

3. Elyssa Choy (Malaysia)  Certificate

4. Joanna Joseph (Malaysia)  Certificate

5. Anika (Russia)  Certificate



Previously for Round 2, Pema Tshoki from Bhutan had won the Visage Award (Face of The Year) while Mary from the Philippines winning the surprise award from Round 2, the Vox Populi Award (People's Choice Awards).
bunny statue in Vandal

In New York, there are nightlife impresarios and then there are nightlife kings.

The heads of Tao Group, the ubiquitous nightlife empire stretching from Las Vegas to Sydney, are kings. They basically invented the "clubstaurant" concept with massively successful venues like their namesake Tao and Lavo.

Wall Street money loves Tao Group, and it's almost guaranteed that you'll find groups of second-year bank analysts, private-equity VPs, and hedge fund managing directors at any of its properties at any given time.

But that doesn't mean the food is good.

The new hot Tao clubstaurant is Vandal. It serves nonsense items like a knish Reuben and something called the "banh mi'eatball slider." Ryan Sutton of Eater just gave it a blistering zero-star review.

From Eater:

The space is fascinating enough that if Vandal simply served competent brasserie fare, the entire endeavor would be somewhat civilized, a place for the cool kids to congregate and look at art. But what Vandal serves is not competent brasserie fare.

This is a good time to talk about Vandal's banh mi'eatball slider. The name of the dish is a portmanteau of three trendy foodstuffs: the banh mi, a Vietnamese sandwich of pate, pork, pickled carrots and chiles; the slider, a tiny White Castle-style burger; and the meatball, an Italian-American symbol of thrift. Now here's what you actually get: a single dense ball of spiced ground lamb, sandwiched within a slaw-stuffed baguette. The menu says the dish includes foie gras, none of which I detected. This two-bite travesty costs $8, which is more than what you ought to ever pay for an entire banh mi, a single meatball, or a solitary slider.

Brutal. Sutton, at least, has the courtesy to mention that Tao Group's properties are popular, money-making machines, and that Vandal is constantly host to glamorous people like Hannah Bronfman and "Snap Packers" like Barron Hilton.

But again:

At Vandal, [chef Chris] Santos smears beef tartare over a hot pretzel, resulting in hot mush. The menu is "inspired by street fare from around the world," the restaurant's website asserts, a statement that raises the question of what precisely is "street" about a two-pound lobster scampi that costs $68.

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It should be noted that Sutton is a repeat offender in the business of bashing Tao Group. He wrote a devastating takedown of Tao Downtown in Bloomberg in 2013, when it opened. He managed to get another Tao jab into this Vandal piece, too:

Then there is the Tao juggernaut itself, a trio of hot spots in Midtown, West Chelsea, and Las Vegas, where the diverse foodways of the global East are diluted down to overpriced Red Bull, wontons, and Wagyu. Tao sells "Asia," a bro-friendly bacchanalia where everyone is fluent in the universal language of loosened ties. I'll take two Grey Goose sodas... no, make that three! The food ranges from awful to passable, but I've found that sitting on Tao's candlelit staircase while overlooking the 24-armed Buddha statue is as surefire a way to impress one sort of date as cocktails at Bemelmans is another. Really, where else can New York diners pay gustatory tribute to the life of the humble Siddhartha in a way that would make both Lil Wayne and Michael Bay proud?

For the full review, if you can take it, head to Eater >>

NOW WATCH: A restaurant in Brooklyn is serving Trinidad's most popular street food





More From Business Insider


By Magdalena Mis LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A shortage of funds from donors turning to other crises may force UNICEF to make drastic cuts in its humanitarian aid to Sudan, although displaced people there need more help, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday. UNICEF has received only 13 percent of the $130 million it sought to fund its operations in Sudan in 2016, and if no new funding comes in, its health, education, nutrition and other services will be hit, the agency's Sudan representative said. "You have a major crisis out there but you make the call for that crisis and you have the feeling sitting in Khartoum that nobody is interested any more," Geert Cappelaere told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview. "We see the funding decreasing year after year, while we don't see the needs decreasing. On the contrary, the needs are bigger," Cappelaere said. "If no new funding comes in we'll have to start drastically reducing our assistance ... because there is simply no money any more to help the people of Sudan." Sudan has been at war for decades, with impoverished border regions clashing with Khartoum for more political power and a greater share in the country's wealth. Some 300,000 people have been killed in western Darfur region since the conflict flared in 2003, while 4.4 million people need aid and more than 2.5 million have been displaced, the United Nations says. Violence has lessened in recent years, but the insurgency continues and Khartoum has increased its attacks on rebels over the past year. At least 130,000 people have fled fighting in the central Jebel Marra area since mid-January. Up to 80 percent of those displaced are children, who are severely distressed by the threat of more conflict, Cappelaere said. "Children have only one plea to the government and the rebel groups, and that is for the war to stop." The living conditions of the tens of thousands of people displaced by the recent fighting in Jebel Marra are dire, Cappelaere said. Some 25,000 people fled to an area in northern Darfur where there was "nothing" and the agency had great difficulty at first providing the minimum of 15 liters of water per person per day. The temperature is expected to rise to 45 Celsius (113F) in the summer, exposing people with little shelter to intense heat. "It's very difficult to keep the international community, the donors, focused on Sudan because of so many other competing crises in the world," Cappelaere said. (Reporting by Magdalena Mis, editing by Tim Pearce. Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
This is the mutant cow that locals have dubbed a modern day unicorn after it was born with a third horn growing out of the middle of its head.

Footage of the animal, taken in Uzbekistan, shows a small group of men and a little boy holding onto its horns.

Mutant: The cow was born with a third horn on its head (CEN)

Bully: The cow has used its horn to its advantage (CEN)

Despite the unusual look, the third horn has not been given the cow too much trouble.

According to the farmer who owns the cow, he had initially been worried that the other animals might not accept it.

But the extra horn actually gave the youngster something of an advantage, even using it to bully the other calves by poking them out of the way.

Cause: Locals have blamed pollution for the unusual birth defect (CEN)

The cause of the extra horn has not yet been determined, although some have blamed pollution causing birth defects.

Others seem to be impressed by the unicorn cow, saying that they hope that more cows would also be bred that way.


Archimedes is said to have set Roman warships on fire with his death ray during the Second Punic War. Children are said to have set ants ablaze with magnifying glasses during recess. Scientists are now using a similar technique to harness the power of the Sun, only instead of just setting ships or insects on fire, they are burning lots of other shit.

Source: YouTube

The world's largest solar furnace is nestled in Odeillo, a commune in the south of France that receives over 3,500 hours of sunshine per year, according to Amusing Planet.

Source: YouTube

The solar furnace is made up of 10,000 mirrors, which gather and bounce the sun's rays onto a larger concave mirror, focusing this sunlight onto an area "roughly the size of a cooking pot," Atlas Obscura reported. It can reach temperatures above 3,000 degrees Celsius. Hot damn.

It was built by the National Scientific Research Center in 1969 to study "heat transfer fluid systems, energy converters and the behavior of materials at high temperatures," according to Amusing Planet. And what better way to test the behavior of materials at high temperatures than to set them ablaze?

Like this wood plank, now just dust in the wind.

Source: YouTube

A hunk of steel? Burned to the core.

Source: YouTube

Source: YouTube

It was left with a fiery hole where its cold metal heart would've been.
" " Love chess? If you can't find a pickup game at your local park, it might be time to build a set of your own. iStockphoto/Thinkstock

In 1974, the film "The Three Musketeers" starring Raquel Welch, Richard Chamberlain and Michael York, among others, hit big screens across the U.S. Based on the classic novel by Alexandre Dumas, the farcical comedy centered on a young man who arrives in Paris to become one of the king's musketeers. The film was noted not only for its all-star cast but also for its beautiful European locations.

To illustrate the extravagance and garishness of France's prerevolutionary monarchy, director Richard Lester filmed a scene in which King Louis XIII is playing chess. Louis wasn't playing on an ordinary chessboard. He was playing on a king-sized one carved into the well-manicured lawn of Versailles. Great Danes, Dalmatians and other dogs served as movable chess pieces.

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You might think that playing lawn chess with dogs is a game that only the rich and make-believe kings can enjoy. Hold on to your rooks (or your retrievers). You, too, can play outdoor chess, and we're not talking with a board on a picnic table. Many homes, buildings and public spaces have oversized chessboards. On Long Island, for example, an affordable housing complex called Arbor House has an outdoor fitness park with a jumbo chessboard and pieces standing 4 feet (more than 1 meter) tall. In Scotland, children move chess pieces almost as large as they are to help fight obesity [sources: Alvarez, The Scotsman].

We can set you up with an outdoor set and life-size pieces. All it takes is a bit of ingenuity, or at the very least, a credit card. Read on to find out how you, too, can beat your courtiers on a chessboard that will make your home into a mini-palace.
A website has been forced to remove merchandise bearing the face of Moors murderer Myra Hindley after it was branded upsetting and disgusting.

Los Angeles-based society6 faced a backlash after totes, T-shirts and iPhone cases featuring a sketch of the notorious killer appeared online.

Hindley, along with Ian Brady, murdered five children in the Greater Manchester area between 1963 and 1965.

The children  Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans  were aged between 10 and 17.

The killings became known as the Moor Murders after victims were found on the Saddleworth Moor.

South African fashion designer and artist Paul Nelson-Esch is behind the products, which now have been quietly removed from the site.



The products have now disappeared from the website (Society6)

According to the Manchester Evening News, Nelson-Esch has also withdrawn from social media.

The artists other works features faces of celebrities such as Woody Allen and Morrissey.

There was an immediate backlash after the products appeared online.

On Twitter, @JenniferJRobert wrote: DISGUSTING! @society6 thats NOT Art it is a pure EVIL & an insult to the people of the #UK





@kateydoodles wrote: I find it upsetting and disturbing that @society6 (who I normally love) are selling Myra Hindley merchandise.

Mum-of-one Amelia Barker told the Manchester Evening New: Its disgusting. I hope none of the family members of her victims see it.

Im originally from Hattersley and my great Nanna knew Myras mum.

Its still raw for the people who live there  that something so terrible happened on their doorstep.

Hindley died in 2002 in prison, aged 60.

Mugshots of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley
(Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) shareholders approved all 15 nominees to the bank's board and the pay for the company's top executives in a non-binding vote at its annual general meeting on Tuesday.

Investors voted against two shareholder proposals  one that called for an independent chairman and one that required Wells Fargo to provide a report on its lobbying activities.

Wells Fargo's board had recommended shareholders vote against the proposals.

Only 17 percent of the vote was in favor of the company requiring an independent chairman. The proposal has failed for 11 years now going back to 2006, according to Proxy Monitor.

John Stumpf is Wells Fargo's chairman and chief executive.

Proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) had recommended investors approve all the board nominees and oppose the two shareholder proposals.

Glass, Lewis & Co, another proxy adviser, had also recommended investors vote in favor of all board nominees, but urged Wells Fargo shareholders to install an independent chairman.

Shareholders also ratified KPMG as Wells Fargo's independent auditor.

The meeting, held in Scottsdale, Arizona lasted just over half an hour.

(Reporting by Dan Freed in New York and Richa Naidu and Nikhil Subba in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza)
U.S. energy giant Chevron Corp. CVX is expected to release first-quarter 2016 results before the opening bell on Friday, Apr 29.

In the preceding three-month period, the San Ramon, CA-based superpower delivered a 164.58% negative earnings surprise. Moreover, the company posted an average miss of 28.73% for the trailing four quarters amid weak oil prices.

Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement.

Factors to Consider This Quarter

During the first quarter, most of the times, crude traded below $40 per barrel. Most importantly, the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell to the 12-year low mark in mid February. The low levels are owing to plentiful supplies and lackluster demand. Predictably, Chevrons upstream division has extracted less value for its products. This is expected to put pressure on the companys first-quarter profit margins, as it is the most oil-weighted among its peers.

However, one positive development should be kept in mind. Last month, in a milestone move, Chevron commenced the production of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and condensate from the massive Gorgon project located offshore Western Australia. Gorgon LNG  in which Chevron has a 47.3% ownership  is touted to be the largest resource development in the history of Australia. After that, the company sent the first LNG cargofrom its $54 billion worth Gorgon development, located off the coast of Australia. The cargo was dispatched to a Japanese customer.

Finally, downstream results are likely to be strong as refining margins should get a boost from lower input costs. But will these translate into an earnings beat at Chevron?

Earnings Whispers

Our proven model does not conclusively show that Chevron will beat estimates this quarter. That is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESPand a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) to be able to beat consensus estimates. That is not the case here as you will see below.

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Zacks ESP: Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is -54.55%. This is because the Most Accurate Estimate stands at a loss of 17 cents while the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged narrower at a loss of 11 cents.

Zacks Rank: Chevron has a Zacks Rank #3. Though a favorable Zacks Rank increases the predictive power of ESP, the companys negative ESP makes surprise prediction difficult.

We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell rated) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.

Stocks to Consider

Here are some companies from the energy space that, according to our model, have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:

McDermott International Inc. MDR with an Earnings ESP of +100.00% and a Zacks Rank #2.

Contango Oil & Gas Company MCF with an Earnings ESP of +40.63% and a Zacks Rank #2.

Seadrill Partners LLC SDLP has an Earnings ESP of +3.03% and a Zacks Rank #2.

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CHEVRON CORP (CVX): Free Stock Analysis Report



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Washington (AFP) - It is Donald Trump's worst nightmare: the Republican White House nomination slipping through his fingers at the party convention in Cleveland in July, after dominating the months-long primary race.

Trump's White House rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich said Monday they were teaming up to try to block him from an outright victory in Cleveland -- if he does not have a majority of delegates, the GOP would find itself in a contested convention.

So what is a contested convention?

Republican delegates designated during the state-by-state primaries and caucuses held from February to June will choose the party's candidate for president in Cleveland from July 18-21.

To seize the nomination outright, a candidate must reach an absolute majority of the delegates in play.

For the past four decades, the frontrunner has always reached the magic number -- which this year is 1,237.

But the strength of resistance to Trump's candidacy -- still challenged by Cruz, a US senator from Texas, and Kasich, the governor of Ohio, as well as the bulk of the Republican establishment -- makes it possible that he may fall short.

That would result in what is known as a contested, or brokered convention.

How would the party pick its nominee?

When a candidate has an absolute majority, party delegates at the convention play a purely symbolic role, effectively rubber-stamping the results of the primaries.

But in the alternative scenario -- if no contender can claim the crown outright -- the nominee is selected through a series of ballots at the convention, in which the delegates acquire a critical influence.

For the first ballot, party rules in all but a handful of cases oblige delegates to back the candidate to whom they were pledged in the primaries.

Even if Trump does not have 1,237 delegates before the convention, a small number of uncommitted delegates could help him win in the first round.

But if no candidate has a majority in the first round, there is automatically a second ballot.

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And that is where things start getting interesting.

"The majority of states free their delegates after the first ballot," explains Josh Putnam, a campaign expert and political science lecturer at the University of Georgia.

That means those delegates could change their votes -- and may gravitate towards an alternative candidate.

The rules vary by state, and in Florida, for instance, delegates are only "released" on the fourth ballot. But according to The New York Times, 57 percent of the delegates would be free to change their votes in the second round, and 81 percent would be freed in a third round.

There is no limit on the number of rounds before a candidate earns a majority.

Who are the delegates and how are they chosen?

According to Republican Party rules, each state and a handful of territories send a certain number of delegates to the convention to elect the nominee.

Over the course of the primaries, each candidate amasses delegates. The rules for choosing these vary from state to state.

Delegates are chosen in local party conventions held throughout the months-long process.

In nearly three quarters of states, they are selected without input from the candidates themselves, according to Ben Ginsberg, a former Republican National Committee lawyer.

In some states, like Connecticut and Rhode Island which vote Tuesday, delegates are awarded proportionally to candidates.

Other states have a winner-takes-all system, like Florida, where all 99 delegates went to Trump as the winner of the state primary on March 15.

Given the choice, many delegates may prefer to back another candidate than the one to whom they were pledged.

That is why the Cruz and Kasich teams have been pulling out the stops to position their supporters at the local conventions that pick delegates.

Who could emerge as nominee?

A contested convention could theoretically throw open the 2016 race to candidates other than Trump, Kasich and Cruz.

But the party could set last-minute rules to limit outside candidacies -- for example by requiring that the eventual nominee must have taken part in this year's primaries.

That would rule out the former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, or House Speaker Paul Ryan -- both have been put forth as potential "saviors" for a Republican party in disarray.

Has this happened before?

Brokered conventions are rare in modern American politics.

In 1976, no Republican candidate had a majority when incumbent president Gerald Ford faced Ronald Reagan.

After several days of deal-making, Ford won in the first round thanks to support from a small number of uncommitted delegates.

The last time several vote rounds were needed came in 1948, when Thomas Dewey was the eventual candidate. For the Democrats, the last brokered convention was in 1952, with three rounds necessary to pick Adlai Stevenson.
Togetherness star Amanda Peet admits that she cares about her looks being an actress in Hollywood, but would never get botox because shes scared of it.

Im afraid one visit to a cosmetic dermatologist would be my gateway drug, she wrote in Lena Dunhams Lenny newsletter. Id go in for a tiny, circumscribed lift and come out looking like a blowfish. Or someone whose face is permanently pressed up against a glass window. Or like Im standing in the jet stream of a 747. Whats the point of doing it if everyone can tell? I want the thing that makes me look younger, not the thing that makes me look like I did the thing.

In the letter, she revealed that her daughters are quickly learning that Peets employability is based on looks, while her sister, who is a doctor, can embrace aging in her chosen field.

Also Read: Amanda Peet Defends 'Game of Thrones': Backlash Over Misogyny Is 'Misplaced'

I care about my looks, wrote Peet. How else can I explain my trainer, stylist and Barneys card? Ive bleached my teeth, dyed my hair, peeled and lasered my face, and tried a slew of age-defying creams. More than once, Ive asked the director of photography on a show to soften my laugh lines. Nothing about this suggests Im aging gracefully.

And in the essay, Peet talked about aging in Hollywood, a topic that has been discussed by other actresses such as Meryl Streep, Sarah Silverman and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who told TheWrap last May that she was turned down for a role in a movie because she, at 37, was too old to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man.

Since my show got canceled, I have plenty of time to talk about what it feels like to be bombarded with wrinkles and, at the exact same time, try to remain gainfully employed as an actress, said Peet. Or employed in any way, shape, or form as an actress.

Also Read: How Amanda Peet Braves 'Togetherness' Nudity, Desperation and 4 Other Emmy Contender Quickies

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Like Gyllenhaal, Peet was turned down for a role because she wasnt current enough.

Im constantly pushed out by younger talent, like Alicia Vikander, she added. You might think, Wait, shes 27 and a gorgeous movie star, and youre 44 and a low-tier, TV-mom-type; youre not in the same ballpark. But she is squeezing me out. Shes in the hot center and Im on the remote perimeter. The train has left the station and Im one of those moronic stragglers running alongside with her purse caught in the door. Everyones looking at me like, Let go, you bullheaded old hag! Theres no room for you.'

Related stories from TheWrap:

Diane Keaton Isn't Concerned About Hollywood Ageism: 'There's a Plethora of Possibilities'

Helen Mirren Uncensored on Hollywood 'F-ing Outrageous' Ageism, Sexuality, Royalty and Fear (Video)
San Francisco is among Americas richest cities. Its budget is nearly $9 billion a year. It is only 47 square miles in area. So why are city leaders unable to stop vandals from smashing car windows at the astonishing rate of more than 70 per day?

The city took 25,899 reports of car break-ins in 2015, The San Francisco Chronicle reports. That's a 77 percent increase over the five years beginning in 2010.

The epidemic has been getting worse for years. Back in 2006, when there were 10,000 fewer break-ins per year, police, prosecutors, and then-Mayor Gavin Newsoms office felt that 41 such burglaries a day was enough to justify a crackdown.

For visitors, these smash-and-grab burglaries are enough to ruin a vacation, as thieves bust open rental cars and make off with suitcases, cameras, and even passports.

Locals arguably have it even worse. They cant park at night without worrying that their windows will be busted a second or third or fourth time. For the very rich, the repair job is pocket change. For everyone else, its a significant surprise expense.

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I discovered that the hard way. A couple months ago, I parked a 10-year-old Nissan Altima on 18th Street near South Van Ness in The Mission while in town to attend a wedding. It was only there overnight. Before I returned the next morning, a vandal had smashed both passenger-side windows. As best I can tell, nothing was stolen. It cost roughly $340 including tip to get the windows replaced. I could manage the expense, but federal data suggests that nearly half of Americans would have trouble coming up with a similar sum in an unexpected emergency.

A lot of San Francisco journalists whove covered this story have their own tales of woe. Sergio Quintana of the local ABC affiliate said that his car has been broken into three times in recent years. KTTV says its cars and news vans have been hit several times.

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San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr had his car window smashed, too.

Why San Francisco is suffering a unique spike in property crime hasnt been fully explained, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, but the problem is at the center of a war between District Attorney George Gascon and the citys police officers union over their respective crime-fighting competence as well as the impact of reforms favored by Gascon and other progressives designed to thin jails and prisons.

The police particularly dislike Proposition 47, a ballot initiative passed into law in November 2014 that reduced six nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors. But that was a statewide measure, while the smash-and-grab epidemic is local and predates 2015. Whats more, Gascon says that he still charges car break-ins as felonies.

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After the San Francisco Fox affiliate had a vehicle broken into in broad daylight while staffers were eating lunch, they called police, but didnt get much help. Then they tracked down security camera footage that showed two men breaking into their vehicle, including their faces and the license plate of the car they climbed into.

7 weeks later the SFPD still hadnt identified or caught them.

Other local press outlets report that a great many smash-and-grab car burglaries are perpetrated by repeat offenders who are given light sentences by judges who dont see the crime as a particularly serious offense. Is that judgment correct?

The cost to victims is highly variable. Some are like me and have nothing stolen. The only cost is replacing the glass. Others lose purses, laptop computers, and other valuables, sometimes including items with sentimental value that can never be replaced.

If were very conservative, and figure an average of $500 of economic damage to victims of car break-ins, these thieves cost San Francisco victims just short of $13 million last year. And thats using the number of reported break-ins. Many more go unreported.

There are other costs, too:

A handful of guns stolen from vehicles in San Francisco and then used to kill peopleincluding a muralist in Oakland, a backpacker in Golden Gate Park, a hiker in Marin and a woman walking on a city pierhave made headlines. But those high-profile cases represent just a fraction of the guns stolen from cars in a city that has seen a rash of auto burglaries. Through Nov. 20, 57 guns have been stolen from vehicles in San Francisco. Thats up from 48 in all of 2014 and 31 in 2013, according to San Francisco Police Department statistics.

In a related story, the New York Times reported, Recent data from the F.B.I. show that San Francisco has the highest per-capita property crime rate of the nations top 50 cities. About half the cases here are thefts from vehicles, smash-and-grabs...

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The article continues:

Scott Wiener, a supervisor and an advocate for more aggressive law enforcement, said his constituents were urging him to act. I cant tell you the number of times where I have received emails from moms saying, My kids just asked me why that man has a syringe sticking out of his arm,  he said. San Francisco at times is a consequence-free zone, Mr. Wiener said. Im not advocating extreme law and order, but there has to be consequences. Sometimes people might need to spend six months in jail to think about what they did. In a bitterly contested 6-to-5 vote last year, Mr. Wiener led the passage of a measure adding several hundred officers to the citys police force, the first increase since the 1980s, when the population was over 10 percent smaller.

But the supervisor for the area that includes The Mission, where my car was burglarized, said this:

On the other side is David Campos, a supervisor who opposes the increase in police officers and describes Mr. Wieners views as a very knee-jerk kind of punitive approach that is ineffective and inconsistent with the values of San Francisco. Mr. Campos and many others evoke the charitable spirit of the citys namesake, St. Francis. We are not going to criminalize people for being poor, he said. That criminalization is only going to make it harder for them to get out of poverty. San Franciscos liberal ethos, Mr. Campos said, was changing as the city focused more on business and the needs of the tech industry. I think there has been a shift in the people who have come to San Francisco, Mr. Campos said of the citys new arrivals, a group that is well educated and well heeled. He deplores what he describes as a growing sink-or-swim free-market ideology that stands in contrast to the citys traditions. I dont know which San Francisco will prevail, he said.

Campos position is frustrating. (See update here*.) The people who want San Franciscos smash-and-grab vandals punished, myself included, do not want to criminalize people for being poor. We want to criminalize people for willfully smashing in car windows, stealing personal items, and imposing hundreds of dollars in repairs on victims, most of whom are working people who really suffer from such a loss.

Campos vilified his colleague for saying, Sometimes people might need to spend six months in jail to think about what they did. Yet how did Campos react to news that guns are being stolen in some of these smash-and-grab burglaries? He crafted legislation to require that law enforcement officers as well as civilians who leave guns in parked vehicles in the city secure the weapons in lock boxes or in an enclosed, locked trunk. Failing to secure a gun in a parked car would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail or a $10,000 fine.

In other words, he wants to punish some of the victims of smash-and-grab burglaries with longer jail sentences than he is willing to give the perpetrators of the crime.

A backlash against figures like Campos helped fuel Californias last round of over-punitive criminal-justice policies. Fortunately, there is a much more sensible course available today.

Contra the San Francisco cops and Campos, there is no contradiction in believing that California imposed overzealous penalties on petty criminals for a generation and believing that a crackdown on property crime in San Francisco is overdue. The key is to avoid the mistakes of past crackdowns by internalizing the lesson that raising the likelihood of punishment is more important than increasing its length.

San Francisco shouldnt send first-time smash-and-grab convicts to state prison for five years, or for life because theyve already got two felony drug convictions in their past.

But they should punish as many perpetrators as possible as quickly as possible.

They should force first-time offenders to do a short stint in city jail30 days, say to strap on an ankle bracelet that monitors their location after their release, and to make restitution. For second-time offenders, six months in jail to think about what they did, plus two-years of monitoring, seems like a reasonable punishment to me.

Alternatively, city officials could continue to tolerate the window-smashing, causing more working people to be victimized and making their city a more lawless place. At some point, San Francisco residents will get so fed up that voters will elevate their own version of a Rudy Giuliani figure, embrace surveillance cameras, and otherwise react more harshly than wouldve seemed necessary if municipal officials had only exercised a modicum of common sense.

The movement opposing over-incarceration is overdue, important, and fragile. It cant survive another era of big-city progressives failing to keep crime at reasonable levels. L.A. has 4 million residents and had 27,535 car burglaries last year. 25,899 car burglaries in a city of less than a million people just isnt reasonable.

*Update: After this article was published Supervisor Campos emailed me, writing that the NYT article you rely on is wrong in its reporting, and adding, We should target property crime and I have advocated as much. I replied, I am eager to update my article if it misrepresents your position, then asked followup questions: What specifically did the New York Times get wrong? With regard to the comments made by your colleague: Do you think six months in the city jail is an appropriate punishment for someone caught in a smash-and-grab car burglary? What else, if anything, would you do about the smash-and-grab car burglary epidemic?



He suggested a phone call Wednesday, then wrote this:

I'm happy to explain when we speak, but the main problem with the NYT article is that the reporter is asking me for my views on the most pressing issue facing SF based on a Chamber poll. He describes that issues as street conditions and I assumed he is talking about homelessness, which the Chamber poll found to be number one issue. My comment about not criminalizing the poor had to do w/ homelessness. Had he asked me about property crime in particular, I would have noted that I actually held a hearing on car break ins where I called for more enforcement by police. And if he had asked me about police staffing, which he didn't even raise the issue, I would have noted that my problem w/ the Wiener approach is twofold. One, he calls for more cops without any analysis of what the need is. I am a former police commissioner so I know it's a complicated issue. Two, as the DA notes, the problem w/ car break-ins is that the police have made arrests only in 4 percent of the cases, well below the national average of 14 percent. Thus, unless we do something about arrests, we are going to have a problem. Is it a deployment issue or staffing issue. In any event, happy to chat.

Ill continue trying to find out what he believes the penalty ought to be for smash-and-grabs and update this article again if Im successful.

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This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Investors are always looking for stocks that are poised to beat at earnings season and CGI Group Inc. GIB may be one such company. The firm has earnings coming up pretty soon, and events are shaping up quite nicely for their report.

That is because CGI Group is seeing favorable earnings estimate revision activity as of late, which is generally a precursor to an earnings beat. After all, analysts raising estimates right before earningswith the most up-to-date information possibleis a pretty good indicator of some favorable trends underneath the surface for GIB in this report.

In fact, the Most Accurate Estimate for the current quarter is currently at 68 cents per share for GIB, compared to a broader Zacks Consensus Estimate of 65 cents per share. This suggests that analysts have very recently bumped up their estimates for GIB, giving the stock a Zacks Earnings ESP of 4.62% heading into earnings season.

Why is this Important?

A positive reading for the Zacks Earnings ESP has proven to be very powerful in producing both positive surprises, and outperforming the market. Our recent 10 year backtest shows that stocks that have a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) or better show a positive surprise nearly 70% of the time, and have returned over 28% on average in annual returns (see more Top Earnings ESP stocks here).

Given that GIB has a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and an ESP in positive territory, investors might want to consider this stock ahead of earnings. Clearly, recent earnings estimate revisions suggest that good things are ahead for CGI Group, and that a beat might be in the cards for the upcoming report.

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On April 29th, 2011, Kate Middleton donned a McQueen dress (with a serious bang of 'Princess Grace' off it), complete with a majestic train carried by sister Pippa, who's posterior then went on to garner worldwide fame.



Now, five years later, deceased designer Alexander McQueen is being sued for allegedly copying the dress by a bridal designer from Hertfordshire called Christine Kendall. Kendall has filed with the Intellectual Property Enterprise in London, claiming that "the dress copied aspects of her own designs, which she says she sent to the palace prior to the royal wedding. With what she calls a '1950s theme' featuring a "full A-line skirt and an unusual feature at the rear using layers edged with applique lace,' the designer says the final design would not have been the same without her input."

In which, a rep for Grace Kelly and several other brides in between should probably get in touch...

The wedding trend Kate Middleton and Grace Kelly got right: http://t.co/h6powzjcVK pic.twitter.com/lQnAteNXve  Colin Cowie Weddings (@ColinWeddings) February 20, 2015

Kendall says she submitted the design to the Royals five months prior to the wedding, and received a response along the lines of, "thanks a million, if Kate's interested in your designs, she'll give you a shout."

Speaking with The Sunday Times, a rep for McQueen said: "Christine Kendall first approached us almost four years ago, when we were clear with her that any suggestion Sarah Burtons design of the royal wedding dress was copied from her designs was nonsense."

Via People
Mathematically, its over for Ted Cruz and John Kasich. Neither candidate can win enough states get the 1,237 delegates required to claim the Republican nomination.

Having already crossed that Rubicon, Ted Cruz and John Kasich have now pledged to try and row back across the river together. On Monday, the Kasich campaign said it would cease campaigning in Indiana, clearing the way for Cruz to compete there. Cruz, in turn, will cede New Mexico and Oregon. They aim to hobble Donald Trump by winning enough delegates to force a contested convention, playing spoiler against the front-runner with hopes of competing on more even ground in Cleveland.

Cruz could do well in Indiana, where he trails Trump by only a handful of percentage points. With 57 delegates, its one of the biggest states left where he has a real chance. Kasichs advantage in Cruz-friendly New Mexico and Oregon is less clear; its possible he accepted them to keep the pretense of an even trade.

Plenty of pundits say the two men should have struck this deal sooner, given Donald Trumps sizable lead. (Trumps thoughts, by the way: DESPERATION!) It wouldn't have made a difference, though. Its hard enough to see how this vote-throwing arrangement has a chance in coming contests. But the deal would have had zero effect on past primaries, even if the two candidates shook hands weeks ago.

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Lets presume this deal only became possible after Marco Rubio dropped outafter all, the Florida senators last-ditch efforts to direct support toward Kasich were rebuffed. The next major contest was Arizona, a winner-take-all state that Trump won with 46 percent of the vote. Kasich and Cruz, as much as they tried, only got a combined 40 percent. No amount of vote-swapping would have changed that outcome.

New York, the next stop in our time machine, looks a bit more promising. Kasich won parts of Manhattan and Queens in New York City, albeit by a mere 70 votes, and came close in several counties upstate. Some extra juice from Cruz could have pushed the Ohio governor over the top in a few districts, though probably not enough to top Trumps 60-percent lead statewide.

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Paradoxically, Kasich could have actually performed worse in an Empire State primary without Cruz in the competition. The polls dont uniformly agree, but at least one pre-election survey showed the average New York Cruz supporter would pick Trump, not Kasich, if forced to drop the Texan. While Kasich performed better against the New York billionaire than Cruz statewide, Cruzs people preferred Trump as their second choice in this early survey. (Exit polls dont ask similarly clear questions about voters second-choice candidates.) Thats a warning worth heeding in later contests, where Trump support could pop up where its least expected.

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That takes us to Indiana, where Kasich will bow out and let Cruz take the lead. Cruz does poll better there than Kasich does; the Ohio governors 16 percentage points of support could prove pivotal in closing the gap between Trump, who is currently polling at 41 percent, and Cruz, who has 33 percent.

But theres no guarantee this will pan out as planned. Remember: People dont like Ted Cruz. Only half of Kasich supporters say theyd vote for the Texas senator. Only a third of voters say theyd even be willing to vote for someone other than their first choice, period. In the best case scenario, the Texas senator could win only a few extra percentage points of support, well below what he would need to beat Trump.

Theres not much polling for New Mexico and Oregon, but Nate Cohn at The New York Times notes the Kasich-Cruz bargain could bolster Trump, as it could have in New York. Not that it makes much of a difference, given those states delegate counts are teeny-tiny and proportionally allocated.

Mr. Cruz has fared very well out West, and he might have been favored to win either or both states over Mr. Kasich and Mr. Trump. Mr. Cruzs concession would seem to increase the chance that these states go to Mr. Trump. But this has virtually no downside to anti-Trump forces, at least from a delegate perspective. Thats because New Mexico and Oregon are the only two states after Rhode Island on Tuesday that award their delegates on a purely proportional basis  meaning they award their delegates in proportion to a candidates statewide share of the vote.

But this is all exceptionally squishy to forecast. After all, who is to say that Kasich and Cruz voters will play along with this bargain? Its a lot to ask an electorate to pick you for president. These two men are going even further, essentially telling voters to cast ballots for another guy, so a third guy wont win, so theyll have a shot at winning later, maybe.

You cant be half pregnant, the saying goes. If youre a political candidate, you also cant be half dropped-out. The Cruz-Kasich alliance would be more compelling if one of them actually left the race and threw their weight behind the other. As it stands, their voters are stuck in a marriage of convenience that neither man really wants.

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This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
From Esquire

Jeremy Buckingham, a lawmaker from the Greens Party in Australia, recently took to the Condamine River in Queensland to check on the huge amount of methane gas now bubbling to the water's surface. By way of illustration, Buckingham brought along a lighter, which he flicked to try to ignite the gas floating to the surface. It ignited with such force that there was nearly an explosion.

Buckingham believes the rising methane levels are due to fracking in the area. There is some evidence of a relationship, according to The Washington Post: "Homeowners living near hydraulic fracturing wells in Texas and Pennsylvania were able to light methane in the water coming out of their faucets." However, the Post also cites an Australian government researcher who piled doubt on the connection (but who also had ties to the natural gas industry).

Beyond its flamability, methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas. Once it reaches the atmosphere, some estimate it traps 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. It's safe to say we're better off without this in our air or our rivers.
A judge in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, ruled Monday night that the states strict new voting law is constitutional, delivering a major win for conservatives who have sought to tighten laws across the country, and dealing a blow to efforts to stop those laws.

Judge Thomas Schroeders opinionincluded in a massive, 485-page rulingupheld the full swath of HB 589. Passed by the Republican-dominated General Assembly in 2013, the law changed a slew of North Carolinas voting rules, including reducing early voting, eliminating same-day registration, banning out-of-precinct voting, and ending pre-registration for 16-year-olds. Perhaps most prominently, the bill instituted a requirement that voters show photo ID to cast a ballot.

Related Story

The Past Goes On Trial in North Carolina

Legislators and other proponents of the bill argued that the voter-ID law was a commonsense measure, and that it and other changes were needed to prevent fraudulent voting. The laws opponents, meanwhile, pointed that there were practically no documented cases of voter fraud in the state, and argued that the changes would disproportionately affect poor and minority voters in the Old North Statevoters who are more likely to vote Democratic, which they argued was not a coincidence. Much of the trial focused on whether there was real evidence of fraud, and whether the law actually disadvantages minorities. Both sides brought a barrage of experts to back their view.

Schroeder, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that while North Carolina had been on the progressive end of the spectrum of voting, the new rules were simply retrenchment and were constitutional. He said the plaintiffa group that included the North Carolina NAACP, the Justice Department, and othersfailed to show that such disparities will have materially adverse effects on the ability of minority voters to cast a ballot and effectively exercise the electoral franchise.

Story continues

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Schroeders decision to uphold the law was not unexpected. The plaintiffs have already vowed to appeal the decision to a federal appeals court.

The trial was held in two phases. The first, which began last July, focused on the early voting, out-of-precinct voting, and same-day registration portions. Because of last-minute changes to the voter-ID section of the lawlegislators created a process by which voters could cast a ballot by swearing they had a reasonable impediment to getting a photo IDa trial about the ID requirement was not held until January. Schroeder upheld both halves of the law in his ruling.

The voting law was passed shortly after the Supreme Courts decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down a crucial section of the Voting Rights Act that required certain states and jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to receive pre-clearance from the Justice Department before changing their voting laws. While Republicans had been considering changes already, the ruling allowed them to expand their ambition. Now we can go with the full bill, Senator Tom Apodaca, chairman of the rules committee, said at the time.

With the Voting Rights Act in the background, the fight over HB 589 became a referendum on the past, and whether the new rules wereas the plaintiffs chargeda revival of Jim Crow rules like literacy tests, intended to weed out black voters.

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This is our Selma, said the Reverend William Barber II, the head of the state NAACP and an organizer of Moral Mondays, a series of huge demonstrations in Raleigh and elsewhere that have gone on since Republicans took control of the state and began passing a series of very conservative reforms.

The defendants disagreed. The history of North Carolina is not on trial here, a lawyer for Governor Pat McCrory said at the trial.

In the end, Schroeder sided with the defendants. There is significant, shameful past discrimination. In North Carolina's recent history, however, certainly for the last quarter century, there is little official discrimination to consider, he wrote.

There is significant, shameful past discrimination. In North Carolina's recent history, however, there is little official discrimination to consider.

Once the central story in the Old North States political battlethe state has become hyperpolarized in the years since Republicans won control of the General Assembly in 2010 and the governorship in 2012the voting-rights story has been pushed to the side more recently by the even-hotter controversy over HB2, the recently enacted law that bans transgender bathroom accommodation in state facilities and preempts city rules on transgender accommodations, LGBT non-discrimination, and living wages. In the hours before Schroeders ruling was revealed on Monday, Moral Monday protestors were demonstrating in the streets of Raleigh against HB2.

During the voting-rights trial, the defendants presented evidence that the tools that had been eliminated were disproportionately used by black voters. But the defendants countered by showing that black turnout in 2014, when all but the voter-ID portion was in effect, actually increased over the previous midterm elections, a jump the plaintiffs attributed to a contested Senate election and grassroots organizing after the law. The defendants also argued that the law couldnt be unconstitutional because several other states offer similarly few accommodations.

Recommended: Why Are There Still So Many Confederate Monuments?

But North Carolinas rollback is one of the most dramatic in the nation, and if it stands, its expected to serve as a model for other conservative legislatures to pass similarly strict laws. Thats one reason both sides have put so much emphasis on the fight in North Carolina. The outlook for the plaintiffs has always seemed somewhat more promising at the circuit court, where they would argue before a panel of three judges. (That court granted them a preliminary injunction to block certain provisions at an earlier stage in the process.) Many observers expect that regardless of the result at the appeals court, the case will end up at the Supreme Court. The death of Justice Antonin Scaliaand uncertainty over whether Merrick Garland, President Obamas pick for the vacancy, will be confirmedmakes it tough to predict the result there.

The plaintiffs hope to get an appeal in process in time to get a ruling ahead of Novembers election, or at least to have the law put on hold. Its not clear whether the courts can and will move fast enough. That means that while HB 589 may have a lasting national legacy, it might also play a role in this years election. McCrory is in a tight race for reelection against state Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat. Meanwhile, the chaotic Republican race has put the Old North State in play in the presidential race as well. The state voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, but demographic changes make North Carolina a potential swing state. And even if the law causes only a small variation in turnout, that could have a big impact on the result: When Barack Obama carried North Carolina in 2008, he did so by just 0.32 percent.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Mead Johnson: Upgrades, Target Prices, and Upcoming 1Q16

(Continued from Prior Part)

Earnings expected to fall

In the previous parts of this series, we looked at Mead Johnsons (MJN) estimated revenue for fiscal 2016 and what might affect revenue growth. In this part, well look at analysts EPS (earnings per share) estimates and management outlook for 2016.

Fiscal 1Q16 EPS estimates

Analysts are expecting Mead Johnsons adjusted EPS to be $0.84, compared to $1.09 in 1Q15. It represents a massive decline of 23%. In the chart above, you can see that in the past 12 quarters, the company beat analyst expectations except for four quarters. Below are factors that are expected to cause a slight decline in 1Q16 EPS.

unfavorable currency headwinds

charges related to Fuel for Growth initiative

Outlook for 2016

Mead Johnson expects non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) EPS of $3.48$3.60 based on current exchange rates. The company expects modest single-digit EPS growth due to the strengthening dollar, which is affecting operations.

Analysts expect earnings to decline only in the first quarter of fiscal 2016. Earnings are expected to bounce back in the second half of 2016, making fiscal 2016 earnings growth positive. In 2Q16, 3Q16, and 4Q16, growth is expected to be 6%, 16%, and 18%, respectively.

Earnings estimates for peers

Mead Johnsons peers in the packaged food industry include JM Smucker (SJM), Lancaster Colony (LANC), and Pinnacle Foods (PF).

JM Smuckers EPS for fiscal 4Q16 is expected to rise by 21%.

Lancasters EPS for fiscal 3Q16 is expected to rise by 8%.

Pinnacles EPS for fiscal 1Q16 is expected to rise by 2%.

To gain exposure to MJN, you can invest in the First Trust Capital Strength ETF (FTCS), which invests 2% of its portfolio in MJN.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
If Ted Cruz's plan to keep opponent Donald Trump from clinching the GOP nomination this summer goes well, there might be a woman by his side through the final election stretch.



Former Republican candidate Carly Fiorina is being vetted by the Cruz campaign, a spokeswoman for 61-year-old Texas businesswoman confirms to PEOPLE.



Cruz told reporters on Monday that his campaign has a short list of candidates for the vice presidential spot on his ticket  news his campaign manager Jeff Roe had revealed on Twitter earlier in the day.



"No decision has been made in terms of who a nominee would be or what the timing would be of the announcement," the senator insisted.







Fiorina, who previously served as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, suspended her Presidential campaign in February. Her spokeswoman says that she's been traveling the country to campaign for Cruz ever since.





What You Need to Know About a Contested GOP Convention





Cruz and John Kasich announced on Sunday that they will work together to prevent Trump from winning the GOP nomination. Kasich promised the Texas senator a "clear path to victory" in Indiana's upcoming winner-take-all contest. In return, Cruz will concede both Oregon and New Mexico to Kasich. The candidates hope the result will be blocking Trump from obtaining the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination.



The news came just ahead of Tuesday's five major primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.



 Reporting by Sandra Sobieraj
Charlie Cox says his return as Daredevil "still feels too good to be true"
A New York man was assaulted over the weekend because it seems he too closely resembles Shia LaBeouf.

Mario Licato, 26, was sucker punched around 8 p.m. ET on his way to a show on the Lower East Side, New York police confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. The suspect told Licato, the attack happened "because you look like Shia LaBeouf," police said, citing the report. The sucker punch is a misdemeanor assault, police said.

The punch rendered Licato unconscious, he told Gothamist. Licato also posted a picture to social media of his injuries.

"I wanna thank the guy who randomly decided he needed to hit me last night. 'This happened bc you look exactly like Shia labeouf'. Well sir you boosted my self esteem bc he's p hot," Licato wrote along with the picture of his injuries.

This was not the first time Licato has been mistaken for LaBeouf, but never has it ended in violence, he told Gothamist. "I've been stopped on the street before, at least 10 times in my life," he told the website.

Still Licato said he wants answers about this attack. "I wanna know what Shia LaBeouf did to [the suspect]," Licato told Gothamist. "What did Shia LaBeouf do to him that he punched somebody that looks like him? He must have did something so mean. Did he steal his girlfriend? Did he just see his last performance-art piece?"

The suspect is at large, police said.
Hundreds of firefighters battled a difficult fire at Sams Point Preserve in Ulster County, New York, that had spread to 800 acres on Monday, April 25. Flames reached 35-40 feet in the air, according to local media.

No homes were in danger; firefighters were taking precautions to ensure no properties would be damaged.

The fire ignited on Saturday, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered state assistance to fight it on Sunday. That included helicopters with buckets to drop water on the fire, which can be seen in this video. The preserve is at the highest point of the Shawangunk Mountains, which makes the fire difficult to fight. Credit: Twitter/Jim Malatras
By Jessica Toonkel

(Reuters) - The New York Times Co (NYT.N) said on Tuesday it would close its editing and pre-press print production operations in Paris, resulting in the elimination or relocation of up to 70 jobs as it moves to cut costs at its international newspaper.

"To remain competitive, we need to adapt to a changing market," employees were told on Tuesday in a memo seen by Reuters. "We need to rethink what the print New York Times means to our international, frequently traveling readers in a world where they are getting their news primarily from digital sources."

The New York Times news bureau and advertising department will not be affected, according to the memo.

The changes are part of an effort to simplify the editing and production processes of the International New York Times, and roles involved with those operations will be moved to New York and Hong Kong, according to the memo.

The company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it expected to incur about $15 million in costs related to the measures, with substantially all of the charges to be taken in the second quarter.

The International New York Times evolved from the International Herald Tribune, which was once co-owned by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The New York Times, facing diminishing revenue from print advertising, has been trying to popularize its digital content through marketing and actions such as allowing subscribers to pay in local currencies.

In October, it said it aimed to double its annual digital revenue to $800 million by 2020.

(Reporting by Alan John Koshy in Bengaluru and Jessica Toonkel in New York; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Toni Reinhold)
(Adds details from memo to employees)

By Jessica Toonkel

April 26 (Reuters) - The New York Times Co said on Tuesday it would close its editing and pre-press print production operations in Paris, resulting in the elimination or relocation of up to 70 jobs as it moves to cut costs at its international newspaper.

"To remain competitive, we need to adapt to a changing market," employees were told on Tuesday in a memo seen by Reuters. "We need to rethink what the print New York Times means to our international, frequently traveling readers in a world where they are getting their news primarily from digital sources."

The New York Times news bureau and advertising department will not be affected, according to the memo.

The changes are part of an effort to simplify the editing and production processes of the International New York Times, and roles involved with those operations will be moved to New York and Hong Kong, according to the memo.

The company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it expected to incur about $15 million in costs related to the measures, with substantially all of the charges to be taken in the second quarter. (http://1.usa.gov/26rdHdy)

The International New York Times evolved from the International Herald Tribune, which was once co-owned by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The New York Times, facing diminishing revenue from print advertising, has been trying to popularize its digital content through marketing and actions such as allowing subscribers to pay in local currencies.

In October, it said it aimed to double its annual digital revenue to $800 million by 2020.

(Reporting by Alan John Koshy in Bengaluru and Jessica Toonkel in New York; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Toni Reinhold)
Male chauvinist jerk directors, resentment from her acting peers, the early death of her beloved actor boyfriend, and even a (literal) slap in the face from Dustin Hoffman while filming 1979s Kramer vs. Kramer. Those are all things a 20-something Meryl Streep had to endure in the 1970s at the start of her acting career. In his new book, Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep (HarperCollins, $26.99), New Yorker contributor (and avowed Streep fanatic) Michael Schulman draws from countless interviews and a wide array of archival material to tell the story of Streeps first decade as an actor, from her New Jersey hometown to hippie-era Vassar, then from Yale School of Drama to the stages of New York City  and finally to Hollywood, where she earned her first Oscar for the role of the ambivalent wife and mother in Kramer vs. Kramer. Here, Schulman talks about why and how he focused on Streeps early career, how her personal journey reflected the broader era, and why he thinks there isnt quite yet a millennial equivalent to Streep.

Yahoo Style: This is such a great read, so seamless and seemingly in Streeps head. What inspired this book? What is it about Meryl for you?

Michael Schulman: Ive always admired her. I think shes the greatest actress of her generation. I also love her acceptance speeches, where she manages to be both self-deprecating and grand at the same time. She seems to have been really liberated the past decade and at the top of her abilities at 66, which is amazing. I thought to myself, If I had to think about the same person every day for two years while writing a book, who would it be? And what made it come together was the decision not to do a soup-to-nuts biography but to focus on her 20s and her coming of age as a woman and an actor in New York theater and the new Hollywood of the 1970s.

Photo: Courtesy of C. Otis Sweezey

Whats the first Streep movie you saw?

I was born in 1981, so it would be The River Wild in 1994  her only action movie. But my real love of her began in the late 2000s when she started doing The Devil Wears Prada and Julie and Julia. By this point she seems like shes really having fun and entering a new creative phase.

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What about her great films of the late 1970s and early 1980s? Kramer vs. Kramer, The Deer Hunter, The French Lieutenants Woman, Sophies Choice?

I got to them eventually, but my favorites arent the big 80s epics. My favorite is a tie between Kramer vs. Kramer and The Devil Wears Prada. Theyre both based on a book where her character is supposed to be the villain, but Streep flipped the movies on their head and made us empathize with her characters.

Have you met her? Did you ask her to participate in the book?

In 2009, I interviewed her and her kids when they all did a play reading together. We were at a reception and she tried to give me a glass of white win, but my hands were full with my pen, notebook, and recorder. So she put the glass on her palm and leaned in and said, Ill be your cocktail table. Everyone needs one. And Im standing there thinking, Oh my God, Meryl Streep is my cocktail table. So when I started the book, I wrote to her via her publicist to let her know I was writing the book. I reminded her she had once been my cocktail table and I said I was a big 1970s New York theater nerd writer, not just a random Mamma Mia fan. And in a week she wrote back a note that I really love because it was in her voice. She said, Dear Michael  heres the deal. She aired her anxieties about someone writing a book about her, which is understandable. She doesnt like people putting her on a pedestal. She wrote, Leave me to the thing I love. I love acting. But being called the greatest living actress is a designation not even my own mother would sanction. Its the opposite of good or valuable or useful. Its a curse for a working actor. Her publicist has a copy of the book, but I havent heard if shes read it, and I dont expect to.

What other actresses do you love? And why Streep above all?

Lisa Kudrow, Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore, and Sarah Paulson. But Meryl has this incredible self-possession, this command over every part of herself. She can do any accent and has an incredible sense of timing and rhythm, but she also has a way of delivering a line that infuses it with two feelings at once. She can communicate cognitive dissonance. She started out at Yale as a great comic actress and she didnt get to do comic roles in film until the late 1980s and early 1990s, with She-Devil and Death Becomes Her.

I have a friend whos really into comic books who read an early version of this book and said that it reminded him of a superhero origin story. Whats interesting isnt Streeps talents per se but how she learned to use them. She always had this knack for mimicry, but in high school she was pursuing this shallow goal of being the most popular girl, the homecoming queen. But then in college and grad school, she discovered feminism and deepened her craft, so that by the time she gets to Kramer vs. Kramer, shes developed a worldview and can sway the balance of a story.

Photo: Courtesy of the Bernardsville Public Library Local History Collection

You talked to more than 80 of her friends, ex-boyfriends, classmates, colleagues, et cetera for the book.

Yes, and to my knowledge she didnt try to prevent them from talking to me, because about 95 percent said yes.

Considering that she didnt talk to you, you did an amazing job of writing the book almost from inside her own head.

But I didnt make any assumptions or make stuff up. Everything is from sources or old interviews she did. Like one when she was 29 and said, My first year in New York, I told myself, Im 26 and Ive really go to make it this year. I also got to read things like letters she sent her high school sweetheart.

What was the hardest part?

Not being able to ask her simple questions like what street her voice lessons had been on when she was a kid. I had to go on a scavenger hunt to find out details like that.

What would you tell her about why you wrote this book?

She would very humbly say that she is just a vessel for her characters, but I dont think thats true. I think we learn something important from looking at her origins and her own biography. She was a product of the 1970s and came up in the time of Ms. magazine and Gloria Steinem, which helped me figure out why she made the choices she did and break the mold of so many actresses who only played sex symbols or wives.

You present her quite heroically, as someone extremely capable and determined to have it all  career, relationships, friendships, a family. She was incredibly good to her actor boyfriend John Cazale when he was dying in the late 1970s, even while her own career was taking off, and she kept right on working after he died despite her grief. Does she have any flaws?

The fact that she always managed to become isolated by her own success and then doesnt quite understand why her peers resent her, like when she was getting all the roles at Yale at the other female students expense. Shes so able to best everyone and then she kind of hates it. I think if youre the best at something, you should just be the best. It took her time to master how to deal with her own superiority. Today we see her deftly cutting herself down, making jokes at her own expense in a very suave, funny endearing way. But that took time.

Its really frustrating to read in your book about the bullshit she took from some  not all  male directors and colleagues. Most of all when, supposedly to prepare her for a scene in Kramer vs. Kramer, Dustin Hoffman slapped her. And then she didnt complain and even kissed him on her way to the stage to get her Oscar.

I think it was part of the culture of the 1970s. It was the machismo that the male Method actors had then, thinking they had to live the role to play it well. Those guys saw acting as an extreme sport, with the Deer Hunter guys not showering for a month while playing prisoners of war. As for the slap and why she didnt report him or complain, she never let emotion leak out, no matter how trying the circumstances were. She performed so wonderfully in that film, I think it was her way of proving to Hoffman that she didnt need to be slapped.

There is such a conversation in Hollywood right now about womens pay versus mens and about what roles are offered to them. Do any millennial actresses seem to be following in her tradition?

I dont really think so. Jennifer Lawrence is a Hollywood personality, which Meryl was never interested in being. Meryl has barely ever lived in Hollywood except for a few years in the early 90s. Maybe Saorise Ronan because she has such poise or maybe Lupita Nyongo, who also went to Yale and has such craft. But neither of those are perfect analogies. I also dont think Hollywood has changed that much for women since Streeps early days, unfortunately. Meryl freaked out and really scrambled when she turned 40, thinking shed never again play good roles. And with the exception of her, Cate Blanchett, and Julianne Moore, its still very hard for actresses over 40. The field gets really sparse.
LUSAKA (Reuters) - Zambia and Zimbabwe plan to start repairs to Kariba dam in the first quarter of next year without affecting hydro power supply in either country which is generated from the reservoir, a senior World Bank official said. The Zambezi River Authority, a joint venture between Zambia and Zimbabwe, the African Development Bank, the European Union, Sweden and the World Bank provided $294 million for the project, the World Bank's Senior Water Resources Specialist Marcus Wishart said in response to emailed questions. The dam, which is more than five decades old, supplies water to a hydro-electric power station in Zambia with an installed capacity of 1,080 Megawatts (MW) and another in Zimbabwe which has an installed capacity of 750 MW. Zambia has a total installed capacity of 2,200 MW, higher than its southern neighbour, Zimbabwe which has an installed capacity of 1,980 MW. (Reporting by Chris Mfula; Editing by James Macharia)
Even a tech giant like Apple isnt invincible: The Cupertino-based companys quarterly revenue declined for the first time in 13 years during the first three months of this year, according to its fiscal Q2 of 2016 earnings report. Weakening iPhone sales were a major factor causing the decline, but the company also blamed ongoing international economic uncertainties. Our team executed extremely well in the face of strong macroeconomic headwinds, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement.

Here are the numbers in a nutshell: Apple generated $50.6 billion in revenue during its fiscal Q2 of 2016, which ended on March 31. This is below the $58 billion Apple clocked during the same quarter last year, and notably below analyst expectations: The analyst community had expected Apple to post revenue of $52 billion. The companys net profit came in at $10.5 billion, compared to $13.6 billion during the same quarter a year ago. This equals earnings of $1.90 per diluted share, compared to $2.33 a year ago.

Analysts had expected $2.00 earnings per share. Apples stock was down 8 percent in afterhours trading.

The company sold a total of 51.2 million iPhones during its most recent quarter, compared to 61.2 million during the same quarter last year. iPhone sales declined by 16 percent, and revenue was down 18 percent year-over-year. Thats a significant decline, as the iPhone has been Apples biggest money maker for years.

But in light of continued uncertainty in overseas markets and the emergence of budget-priced competitors from companies like Xiaomi, appetite for the flagship device seems to be slowing down. Apple seems keenly aware of this trend, and introduced the budget-priced iPhone SE at the end of March. The introduction was too late to still make a dent in the quarters numbers, but Cook said during the companyts earnings call that demand for the iPhone SE currently exceeds supplies.

Speaking of China: The country also saw some of the biggest year-over-year decline in revenue, with Apple generating $12.5 billion in revenue in greater China. A year ago, that number still stood at $16.8 billion. Cook blamed much of this on economic weakness in Hong Kong.

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Another weak spot in Apples earnings report was the iPad. Sales of the tablet have been declining for some time, and Apples attempt to turn around this trend with the plus-sized iPad Pro doesnt seem to have made a dent just yet. Apple sold a total of 10.3 million iPads during its fiscal Q2, which is below the 12.6 million it sold during the same quarter last year. iPad revenue and unit sales both declined by 19 percent.

SEE MORE: Steve Jobs Vision Is Still Alive in the iPad Pro: It May Just Be Wrong

The company doubled down on the iPad with a new 9.7 inch iPad Pro it introduced in March. The model may have come too late to make a significant dent in the quarters numbers, but Cook suggested that it may be able to boiost iPad sales in the coming quarter. We continue to be very optimistic for the iPad business, he said.

Cook highlighted services as a positive spot for Apple during the companys earnings call, stating that Apple Music now has more than 13 million paying subscribers. Total service revenue was up 20 percent year-over-year, with Apple generating close to $6 billion during its most recent quarter with all of its services combined. Apple also increased sales of its Watch, with Cook saying that it exceeded internal expectations. However, the company has yet to break out sales of the gadget.

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The Apple Watch is a miserable failure... or something like that.

On Monday we discussed how a number of high-profile industry watchers have labeled Apple's first foray into fashion and wearable tech a flop. For whatever reason, nothing Apple does is a success in some people's eyes unless it instantly becomes a business as big as the iPhone. Of course, we also noted the obvious fact that not even the iPhone was as big as the iPhone when it first launched. Actually, the Apple Watch is believed to have doubled Apple's iPhone revenue during their respective first years of availability.

Well, here's another simple comparison for you to help gauge just how badly the Apple Watch flopped: According to estimates, Apple Watch sales in its first 12 months totaled about $1.5 billion more than Rolex's total revenue last year.

DON'T MISS: Is this how Microsoft Windows finally dies?

Google Ventures general partner M.G. Siegler tweeted a link on Monday to the same Wall Street Journal article we discussed yesterday. In it, the Journal noted that estimates peg Apple's Watch revenue during the device's first year of availability at $6 billion. We used Apple's original iPhone launch in 2007 as a frame of reference to put that $6 billion figure in perspective, since it was double the sales Apple enjoyed during the iPhone's first year on the market.

Well, there's another frame of reference we would now like to draw your attention to.

In response to Siegler's tweet, Twitter user @heyyoudvd pointed out a great little stat that really paints a picture of the state of watches right now. In 2015, Rolex's combined revenue totaled $4.5 billion. That's down a good deal from years past, but the watch market has been in decline for some time now. All in all, it wasn't a terrible year for Rolex.

Meanwhile, Apple Watch revenue totaled $6 billion in its first 12 months of availability.

https://twitter.com/heyyoudvd/status/724388544740003841

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So, just to reiterate one last time and let it really sink in, Apple Watch sales totaled about $6 billion in its first year of existence. Meanwhile, the world's foremost luxury watch brand did $4.5 billion in sales across its entire product portfolio last year. In fact, the combined sales of all top Swiss watch makers totaled roughly $20 billion in 2015, so Apple is nearly one-third of the way there after just one year.

https://twitter.com/boygenius/status/724398472389136384

Quite a flop, indeed.

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Filming continues for the upcoming eighth episode of the Star Wars saga, with a report suggesting that Disney will use some unexpected Stormtrooper cameos once again, just like Episode VII. In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, none other than Daniel Craig took on the role of a Stormtrooper, and he even had a few lines of dialogue  if youre good with voices, youll know which one he was.

In the untitled Episode VIII, which is set to premiere in mid-December next year, well see at least two more well-known celebrities hide in Stormtrooper armor. This time around theyre not actors, but theyre certainly famous. And, ironically, theyll play empire servants even though theyre in line to actually run an empire in real life.

MUST SEE: 20 apps that hardcore iPhone fans cant live without

Princes William and Henry have secretly filmed Stormtrooper scenes for the next Star Wars movie during their visit to the set last week, The Daily Mail reports. Images showing the two royals playing with Star Wars props on the set surfaced last week, but it wasnt known at the time they were actually filmed for the movie.

According to the Mail, the brothers appeared alongside Daisy Ridley (Rey), John Boyega (Finn) and Benicio del Toro (Lord Vikram). The scene involves Rey and Finn infiltrating a secret base. The rebels are in an elevator with Lord Vikram when a group of Stormtroopers, including the princes, enter.

Apparently, after posing for official photo shoots, William and Henry went on to shoot their scene and only the director, producer and essential crew knew about it.

The line given was that they were going to have lunch and a private tour of the rest of the set, a source told the paper. What really happened is that the director came over and told them it was time to get suited and off they went to the wardrobe department.

The princes spokesman would neither confirm nor deny whether the pair will appear in the movie, but he said the Princes had a great day at the event.

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Future King of England Prince William even presented a birthday cake to a crew member while wearing the Stormtrooper costume. Thats probably as good as it gets if you like Star Wars.

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Martin Russell (The European Parliamentary Research Service)

In early 2014, Russia violated international law by annexing Crimea and by allegedly inciting separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. In March 2014, the EU, US and other Western countries reacted in a diplomatic manner, for example by suspending cooperation and preparations for trade and other agreements. Eventually, they proceeded by penalizing individuals and organizations that had publicly supported the violation of Ukraines sovereignty. These were, specifically, asset freezes and visa bans, along with other implemented measures. In July, the first economic sanctions in the energy, defense and finance sectors were introduced. In the spring 2015, the European Council linked the duration of economic sanctions to the full compliance with the Minsk Protocol.

However, the introduced measures have not changed the mind of the Russian public, which still supports the Kremlins activities in Ukraine. On the contrary, the approval rate for the steps undertaken by the EU and the US has fallen even more. The diplomatic impact on Russia, in the form of its exclusion from international negotiations and problem-solving, has been recently limited due to its military intervention in Syria and its involvement in the negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program. Moreover, Moscow has sought to develop cooperation with other countries, notably China, thereby partially breaking out of its diplomatic isolation. As to the situation in Ukraine, it is difficult to determine the degree to which the measures imposed by Western countries affected the situation on the ground. It is, however, possible to say that the sanctions have dissuaded Kremlin from supporting the separatists to gain more territory.

By contrast, the impact of economic sanctions on individual sectors has been pronounced, since these have further deepened the economic downturn triggered by the fall in oil prices. The sanctions affect the Russian economy in different ways. The most significant short-term impact is visible in the restrictions on Western lending and investment in Russia. In the long term, Russia is likely to suffer in the production of oil and natural gas, which has so far not been affected by the sanctions. The sanctions also touch upon the availability of technologies that would make access to or enable an effective exploitation of new deposits of fossil fuels.

The unavailability of state-of-the-art technology will likely hit the Russian army and the rearmament program is also jeopardized. However, the agricultural sector has so far benefited from the current situation and Moscows countermeasures due to its effort to replace the shortfall in supplies from other countries. As a result, the agricultural sector in Russia has experienced some growth. In spite of this, consumers often feel the change as prices have increased while the choice of products and their quality have decreased. Ultimately, the real consequences of Western sanctions have been Russias partial isolation from the global economy and the slowdown in the modernization of its economy.

(The study can be downloaded here:http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=EPRS_BRI(2016)579084)
By Jim Finkle (Reuters) - SWIFT, the global financial network that banks use to transfer billions of dollars every day, warned its customers on Monday that it was aware of "a number of recent cyber incidents" where attackers had sent fraudulent messages over its system. The disclosure came as law enforcement authorities in Bangladesh and elsewhere investigated the February cyber theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank account at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. SWIFT has acknowledged that the scheme involved altering SWIFT software on Bangladesh Bank's computers to hide evidence of fraudulent transfers. Monday's statement from SWIFT marked the first acknowledgement that the Bangladesh Bank attack was not an isolated incident but one of several recent criminal schemes that aimed to take advantage of the global messaging platform used by some 11,000 financial institutions. "SWIFT is aware of a number of recent cyber incidents in which malicious insiders or external attackers have managed to submit SWIFT messages from financial institutions' back-offices, PCs or workstations connected to their local interface to the SWIFT network," the group warned customers on Monday in a notice seen by Reuters. The warning, which SWIFT issued in a confidential alert sent over its network, did not name any victims or disclose the value of any losses from the previously undisclosed attacks. SWIFT confirmed to Reuters the authenticity of the notice. SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions. Also on Monday, SWIFT released a security update to the software that banks use to access its network to thwart malware that security researchers with British defense contractor BAE Systems said was probably used by hackers in the Bangladesh Bank heist.[L2N17S0RG] BAE's evidence suggested that hackers manipulated SWIFT's Alliance Access server software, which banks use to interface with SWIFT's messaging platform, to cover their tracks. BAE said it could not explain how the fraudulent orders were created and pushed through the system. But SWIFT provided some evidence about how that happened in its note to customers, saying that in most cases the modus operandi was similar. It said the attackers obtained valid credentials for operators authorized to create and approve SWIFT messages, then submitted fraudulent messages by impersonating those people. FireEye, the internet security company whose Mandiant unit was hired by Bangladesh Bank to help investigate the heist, said the same group behind that hack had probably attacked other financial targets. "FireEye has observed activity in other financial services organizations that is likely by the same threat actor behind the cyber attack on the Bank of Bangladesh," Vivek Chudgar, Mandiant's senior director for the Asia Pacific said in a statement emailed to Reuters. FireEye declined to go into detail. Rakesh Asthana, the World Informatix Cyber Security CEO, who is overseeing Bangladesh Bank's probe into the hack, declined to discuss the other attacks that SWIFT referred to. He did, though, urge banks to conduct independent security assessments to make sure their networks are secure and prevent future attacks. SWIFT builds on security practices established by the customer itself and therefore it is imperative that in the wake of this attack, customers using SWIFT Alliance Access must strengthen their cyber security posture, Asthana said FOLLOWING THE MONEY Cyber security experts said more attacks could surface as SWIFT's banking clients look to see if their SWIFT access has been compromised. Shane Shook, a banking security consultant who investigates large financial crime, said hackers were turning to SWIFT and other private financial messaging platforms because such attacks can generate more revenue than going after consumers or small businesses. "These hacks specifically target financial institutions because smaller efforts result in much larger thefts," he said. "It's much more efficient than stealing from consumers." Justin Harvey, chief security officer with Fidelis Cybersecurity, said hackers followed the money and would be drawn into such schemes in hopes of emulating a big heist like the one on Bangladesh Bank. "After the Bangladesh Bank heist became public, every other attacker out there is looking to see if they can do the same," he said. SWIFT spokeswoman Natasha Deteran told Reuters that the commonality in these cases was that internal or external attackers compromised the banks own environments to obtain valid operator credentials. "Customers should do their utmost to protect against this," she said in an email to Reuters. SWIFT told customers that the security update must be installed by May 12. "We have made the Alliance interface software update mandatory as it is designed to help banks identify situations in which attackers have attempted to hide their traces - whether these actions have been executed manually or through malware," she said. (Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston; Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir in Dhaka; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Martin Howell and Peter Cooney)
A disturbing new report shows that the FBI may have a severe hair problem on its hands, one its fully aware of  and acknowledging  and one that may have led to an unknown number of wrong convictions spanning decades. Apparently, FBI experts gave flawed testimony in criminal trials for a period of more than two decades, and the agency is just now trying to fix its mess.

DONT MISS: Elon Musk says Tesla's next car will be even cheaper than the Model 3

According to The Washington Post, the Justice Department and the FBI have acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.

26 of the 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratorys microscopic hair comparison unit overstated forensic matches, favoring the prosecution in more than 95% of the 268 trials reviewed so far. And there are even more trials to look into, assuming theres data available to analyze.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project are assisting with this massive investigation. The Post says that the cases include 32 defendants sentenced to death, with 14 of them having already been executed or died while imprisoned.

The FBIs three-decade use of microscopic hair analysis to incriminate defendants was a complete disaster, Innocence Project co-founder Peter Neufeld said. We need an exhaustive investigation that looks at how the FBI, state governments that relied on examiners trained by the FBI and the courts allowed this to happen and why it wasnt stopped much sooner.

The Post does say that these errors do not indicate whether or not there was other evidence to prove a suspect's guilt, yet defendants and prosecutors in 46 states and Washington D.C. are being notified in order to determine grounds for appeals. But the investigation was launched in 2012 after a report from the same paper revealed that flawed forensic matches related to hair might have led to the conviction of hundreds of potentially innocent people since the 1970s.

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The FBI has identified some 2,500 cases where the FBI Lab's hair matches need to be reviewed. More than 340 cases were already reviewed.

In 2002, the Bureau reported that its DNA testing found that examiners reported false matches 11% of the time. The Post found that in the District, where all the FBI hair convictions were reinvestigated, three of seven defendants were exonerated  and courts later exonerated two more men. The five people in question each served between 20 and 30 years in prison for either rape or murder.

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FBI Director James Comey portrayed Hillary Clinton as "extremely careless" with sensitive information and said her emails could have been hacked (AFP Photo/Yuri Gripas)

Washington (AFP) - FBI Director James Comey said Tuesday he has seen some improvement in cooperation from China in fighting cybercrime following last year's bilateral agreement on the issue.

Chinese authorities "seem to have an agreed upon framework for what is nation-state action appropriate, that is intelligence collection, and what is theft," Comey told a cybersecurity event in Washington, when asked about international cooperation on cybercrime.

"There are signs of progress in the Chinese helping us impose costs on active engagement and theft. I'm reasonably optimistic (about China), less so with Russia."

Comey's comments were far more upbeat than those from National Security Agency chief Michael Rogers earlier this month on the implementation of last year's accord between President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

The two leaders agreed on principles aimed at stemming what has been seen as a wave of hacking directed against US companies and organizations.

Rogers told Congress earlier this month that Chinese hackers remain "engaged in activity directed against US companies" and that the "jury is still out" on whether China indeed passes intel to the business world.

Comey, speaking at the Georgetown International Conference on Cyber Engagement, said the FBI was ramping up its ability to combat hacking and cybercrime.

"We think we have to be more predictive and less reactive," he said.

Part of this strategy, he said involves "naming people and shaming them" to demonstrate costs of hacking into US computer systems.

The FBI, he said, wants to "make people feel our breath on the back of their neck --- physically ideally, but metaphorically" to deter hacking.

- Talking encryption 'costs' -

Comey also reiterated concerns about the impact of strong encryption in the wake of the legal battle over access to the iPhone used by a California attacker.

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"I'm very glad that the litigation between the FBI and Apple on San Bernardino has ended, because it really was about getting access to that phone," Comey said, referring to the court case in which the FBI sought to compel Apple to help unlock the phone used by one of the shooters in last year's deadly attack.

But Comey said it was still important to have a discussion on the topic because "there is a collision going on between values of all shades between privacy and security."

Comey said encryption and privacy are important but "there has never been a time in the 240 years of our country when privacy has been absolute."

He added that he is concerned that defenders of strong encryption, which allows only the users to access data, have failed to consider all the implications.

"We are moving to a place in American life, because we live our lives on these devices, (where they) will be immune to the judicial process," he said.

"My only request is that we talk about the costs ... We should not drift to a place where wide swaths of American life become off limits to the judicial process without a serious, adult conversation."

Comey had previously expressed concerns about "warrant-proof" spaces that allow criminals to evade detection as he debated Apple and its backers. Apple argued that enabling access would weaken security for all iPhone users and open doors for hackers and others.

The government ended its request after finding a way to access the phone with the help of a third party.

Comey said the FBI has not yet decided whether to tell Apple about how it accessed the data.

Some activists have said the FBI should tell Apple under a US policy aimed at helping tech companies plug security vulnerabilities.

Comey said that "we are in the process of sorting it out, we are close to a resolution but I'm not ready to make news on this."
David Strickland, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on March 2, 2010 on Capitol Hill in Washington DC (AFP Photo/Tim Sloan)

San Francisco (AFP) - Google and Uber are part of a coalition unveiled on Tuesday to push for a unified US legal code on self-driving cars as part of a broader lobbying drive to promote that technology.

Car makers Ford and Volvo along with ride-sharing start-up Uber's rival Lyft rounded out a roster of five founding members of the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets.

Former US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration administrator David Strickland was named as coalition counsel and spokesperson.

"Self-driving vehicle technology will make America's roadways safer and less congested," Strickland said in a release.

"The best path for this innovation is to have one clear set of federal standards, and the coalition will work with policymakers to find the right solutions that will facilitate the deployment of self-driving vehicles."

The US Department of Transportation has estimated that self-driving vehicles could help significantly reduce the severity and frequency of crashes, the vast majority of which are caused by human error in this country, according to the coalition.

"Self driving cars can help save millions of lives as well as cut congestion in our cities," an Uber spokesperson said in response to an AFP inquiry.

"That's an exciting future, and one Uber intends to be a part of.

Google, Lyft and auto industry executives urged lawmakers last month to help create a regulatory fast lane to facilitate the introduction of self-driving cars.

In testimony at a Senate hearing, representatives of General Motors and auto-equipment maker Delphi touted what they said were numerous safety and environmental benefits of autonomous vehicles.

Chris Urmson, who heads the Google self-driving car project, said a consistent regulatory framework is important to deploying those technologies, and that conflicting rules in US states could limit innovation.

"The leadership of the federal government is critically important given the growing patchwork of state laws and regulations on self-driving cars," he said.

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In the past two years, 23 states have introduced legislation that affect self-driving cars, "all of which include different approaches and concepts," he noted.

Five states have passed such legislation, all with different rules, Urmson said.

But the Senate panel should exercise caution, said Mary Cummings, who heads the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke University.

She said it's not yet clear that self-driving cars can operate safely in all situations.

"I am wholeheartedly in support of the research and development of self-driving cars," she said.

"But these systems will not be ready for fielding until we move away from superficial demonstrations to principled, evidenced-based tests and evaluations."
(Photo by Rob Pegoraro/Yahoo Tech)

The Internet is unlike many other major human inventions in one way: Most of the people who helped create it are still around. So if you have a chance to hear one of them talk, you should take it.

One such opportunity brought me to downtown Washington Saturday to hear Vint Cerf  co-author of the Internets core TCP/IP framework and Googles Chief Internet Evangelist  talk about how his baby has grown up and where he thinks it will be in another 20 years.

Cerf was part of a long lineup at Smithsonian magazines The Future Is Here festival, a gathering that last year featured an onstage demo of Arx Paxs Hendo hoverboard (it actually hovers instead of rolling around on wheels and then catching on fire) and a surprisingly optimistic take on robot soldiers. Beyond Cerf, this years speakers included William Shatner; I may have to turn in my nerd credentials for missing his appearance.

Big to little, little to big

Its easy to forget how bulky computers once were, but Cerf reminded the audience at the Shakespeare Theatre Companys Sidney Harman Hall of the Internets unwieldy origins by showing photos of a closet-sized router and a van stuffed with communications hardware for experiments in packet-switched voice communication.

Big, expensive things eventually get cheaper and smaller until they are personal things, said Cerf, sharply dressed as usual in a three-piece suit. The thing you carry in your pocket once took an entire van to do.

For the most part, the Internet has scaled amazingly well from those origins. Or as Cerf said: Its a miracle whenever software works.

But the co-author of protocols on which the Internet still relies  Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and its companion Internet Protocol (IP) admitted that they baked in one mistake: The current version of the IP only allows 4,294,967,296 distinct addresses at a time for devices on the Internet.

In 1973, that sounded like more than enough to do an experiment, Cerf said. Years ago, work began on a new version, IPv6, that can accommodate a full 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,770,000,000 addresses  a number only Congress can appreciate, he added.

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Despite its importance, this switchover has received little attention. (My own desperate attempt to publicize it in 2011 with a hypothetical example involving Katy Perry and Lady Gaga fell flat.) But Cerf made his own pitch: Go ask your service provider, when can you give me an IPv6 address? I have to admit, I have no idea if mine even can.)

So many devices

Cerf said well need such an enormous number of IP addresses to accommodate all the devices coming online  from 10 to 15 billion today to 1 trillion in 2036. In the same time period, he said, the number of people using the Internet should grow from only 3 to 3.5 billion to 8 to 10 billion.

He cited the example of his wine cellar. At first, he only had temperature and humidity sensors there. He then he added RIFD tags to each bottle. Then he figured he might as well put a sensor in each cork to see if the wine in a bottle had begun to age poorly. The advantage all these networked sensors provide: You can give the bottle to somebody who wont know the difference.

Cerf walked the audience through some other Google projects that will put more hardware on the Internet: smart contact lens for diabetics that can measure the level of glucose in your tears and ingestible robots that could crawl around your vascular systems and make corrections.

Now, this is not nuts, Cerf assured an audience that may not have been convinced by that statement.

Cerf then spent some time discussing Googles project to develop self-driving cars. He voiced more caution about that than Ive heard from other Googlers, saying We are far from having a car that can drive under all conditions. Cerf noted that one test vehicle recently had a 3-mph scrape with a bus in San Francisco.

But Googles driverless cars will get better because they can share their lessons learned in real time.

The cars learn from each other something that our human being drivers dont ever do, he said. Unsaid by Cerf: That human drivers tend to overstate both their own competence and their risks of losing all control to robots.

Cerf also touched on augmented reality (he sees a bright future for Google Glass in helping surgeons at work, something I saw an Austin, Tex. startup called Pristine pitch at the Demo conference in 2013) and virtual reality (he thinks todays headsets make us look like Darth Vader and expects 3-D holograms will take their place).

To the stars

Cerf closed with a favorite subject: interplanetary Internet, a set of Internet protocols adapted to ensure delivery of data over millions or billions of miles.

NASA has been using it since 2008, and today it helps connect Mars probes to Earth. As more spacecraft go online and build out this network, Cerf predicted, well accrete an interplanetary backbone.

And if a new venture by physicist Stephen Hawking and Russian investor Yuri Milner to send a light-powered probe 4.37 light years to Alpha Centauri succeeds, the interplanetary Internet can become interstellar.

I wont live to see this thing get there or even launch, Cerf said. But when youre working on stuff like this, its like living in a science-fiction story and its really a lot of fun.

Email Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com; follow him on Twitter at @robpegoraro.
Reuters

When Alibaba kicks off its Singles Day extravaganza on Monday, it will for the first time in years not be headlined by its two mega sales stars, casting a pall over China's biggest shopping event and leaving brands guessing how well they will do. In recent years, pre-sales were headlined by Li Jiaqi and Viya, known respectively as China's livestreaming sales king and queen who sold everything from lipstick to rocket launchers on Taobao Live, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's livestreaming channel. But there will be no Viya this year.
The heads of Amazon, Apple and Facebook were among powerhouse names April 26, 2016 on an open letter as well as a petition online at change.org calling for the US to become a leader in computer science education in public schools (AFP Photo/dsk) (AFP/File)

San Francisco (AFP) - Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg were among tech titans who joined school officials, non-profits and state leaders to urge the US government to better back teaching computer science.

The heads of Amazon, Apple and Facebook were among powerhouse names Tuesday on an open letter as well as a petition online at change.org calling for the US to become a leader in computer science education in public schools.

"Whether a student aspires to be a software engineer, or if she just wants a well-rounded education in todays changing world, access to computer science in school is an economic imperative for our nation to remain competitive," read a petition aimed at the US Congress.

"And with the growing threat of cyber warfare, this is even a critical matter of national security."

The more than 5,800 names on the petition as of Tuesday included top corporate executives from an array of industries, and governors of more than two dozen US states.

Backers of the petition also stated their case in an open letter to Congress, asking for funding to provide "every student in every school the opportunity to learn computer science.

Microsoft and Google along with Amazon founder Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and his wife were among supporters who pledge a combined total of $48 million in contributions to increase access to computer science education, according to a release.
Tilt2016-jan19-uconn-3979__1_

Australian students need never pay for a party bus in cash again.

The startup Tilt, founded in the U.S. in 2012, officially launched in Australia on Tuesday. Targeted at young people, and especially university students, the app aims to help users pool money for activities or gifts through its iOS and Android app.

SEE ALSO: Facebook is reportedly working on a Snapchat-like camera app  again

Image: tilt

Image: tilt

Unlike public crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, Tilt allows people to collect money off friends or their immediate social network, Harrison Uffindell, Tilt's country manager, told Mashable Australia.

"You can see who chipped in, you can see which friends are going. You can leave comments and upload photos," he said.

With a team of two on the ground, the app undertook a soft launch in Australia in October 2015 and began recruiting university ambassadors across the country  a tactic Tilt has used to spread the word among its target audience.

With around 200 ambassadors now spread throughout Australia, Uffindell said the students were not paid for their spruiking of the service to their peers, but were simply "power users" who wanted to be involved with an exciting startup. "There are a lot of keen students," he said. "Students are always on the look out for the next big thing."



In Australia, sporting clubs and university societies have been using Tilt to sell event tickets, Uffindell said, among more personal projects, like chipping in for a friend's birthday present.

Image: instagram/tilt

Judging by Tilt's social media presence, which features plenty of spring break-style party shots, students are undoubtably the key audience. Unless you're an adult with a Peter Pan-type mentality.

"Students are a good early focus for us in the market, because Tilt grows really well community by community," Uffindell said. Still, he thinks its appeal is broader: "People are using Tilt for hens nights, raising money for wedding gifts and to give their parents a holiday," he said.

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The app is free to download, and using it to raise money is also free. While there is no advertising, Uffindell said the company earns revenue through its business offering. "Businesses will often use Tilt to engage and reach their users. Typically, doing things to sell tickets to a big event or to sell merchandise," he said. For that service, the company charges a 2.5% commission.

Image: tilt

He said the company also hopes to launch Tilt Pro, its crowdfunding solution, in Australia at some point. In the meantime, the company has raised a fair amount of capital in recent years  more than $67 million (A$89 million), it said in a statement.

While the fact Tilters are sharing personal details with the platform, including their name, university and bank details, may worry parents or university administrators, Uffindell emphasised the company has stringent privacy protections in place. "We don't hold any credit card details on file," he said. "[Security has] been a focus since day one."

If Tilt gets its way, Australian campuses could be cash free in no time.
Chinese vice-premier presses effort to promote foreign trade Updated: 2016-04-26 09:07 (Xinhua)

GUANGZHOU - Vice-Premier Wang Yang called for more to be done to promote foreign trade while visiting Shenzhen on Monday, as foreign trade will continue to propel economic growth.

"More must be done to mobilize the enthusiasm and creativity of enterprises to make foreign trade more stable and stronger," Wang said.

Wang visited companies including Huawei, drone-maker DJI-Innovations and mobile phone manufacturer Transsion Holdings. He said China still has competitive advantages in foreign trade thanks to the emergence of innovation-driven growth engines, while traditional drivers are still functional.

"Foreign trade should be put in a prominent position in our economic work at present," he said, adding that targeted supportive measures should be carried out and protection of intellectual property rights enhanced.

Tepid global demand and slowing domestic economy have dealt a blow to China's foreign trade. It fell 7 percent year on year in 2015, with exports down 1.8 percent and imports down 13.2 percent.

Data in March provided some relief. Exports surged 18.7 percent year on year, the first increase since December, compared with falls of 20.6 percent in February and 6.6 percent in January. Imports dipped 1.7 percent, an improvement from February's 8-percent drop.
Canadian tourism industry focuses on growing Chinese market Updated: 2016-04-26 13:44 (Xinhua)

MONTREAL - The Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC) and Destination Canada (DC) on Monday announced a new plan to tap the potential of the growing Chinese market.

The Canana-China Tourism Advancement (CCTA) program, announced at Canada's premier international tourism conference -- Rendez-Vous Canada 2016, expands on the Canada-China Inbound Tour Operator Accreditation Program to help all members of Canada's tourism industry take advantage of growing opportunities in the Chinese marketplace.

On June 24, 2010, China and Canada signed a Memorandum of Understanding to facilitate outbound tourist group travel from China to Canada. The Canada-China Inbound Tour Operator Accreditation Program has been implemented since May 2010 to fulfill the requirement of the memorandum.

Charlotte Bell, TIAC president and CEO, said an average annual growth rate of 24 percent per year generated over $3 billion in revenue.

"However, the Chinese market is changing due to the new 10-year multiple visa, the growth of the Free and Independent Travel (FIT) segment, increased air capacity, as well as increased competition. TIAC understands that to truly capitalize on the opportunities, a more coordinated, sophisticated and broader platform needs to be developed," Bell said.

"We are pleased to partner with TIAC to move Canada's tourism industry from 'China Ready' to 'China Ambitious,'" said David Goldstein, president and CEO of the DC, adding that this program will help tourism operators make Canada Chinese travellers' number one destination of choice.

China's UnionPay International has joined the CCTA program as a key partner. Pilot projects to be launched in late 2016 include a trade mission to China and an industry bilateral forum with the Shanghai Huangpu Hotel Association hosted in Canada.
Beijing least affordable city in the world to rent: Report Updated: 2016-04-26 15:00 By Dai Tian(chinadaily.com.cn)

Photo taken on Mar 29, 2016 shows residential building in Beijing. [Photo/VCG]

Beijing has the world's least affordable rental housing market, according to a survey of 15 global cities, with costs soaring to more than 1.2 times average wages.

In part due to high rents, the city also has the second-longest commute, an average of 104 minutes per round trip, ranking only after Mexico City, according to the report by UK-based not-for-profit organization Global Cities Business Alliance.

Shanghai takes a third place among the world's 15 major cities, with daily commute of 101 minutes on average, according to the study.

The rent spikes come as China's property sector has staged a revival over the last couple of months. Beijing saw home price rise 18 percent in the year to March, and restrictions on non-residents buying housing until they have paid tax in the city for five years makes renting the only option for many.

Out of the 15 cities in the study, San Francisco has the most expensive monthly rent of $2,824, while Beijing, $789 per month, is the least affordable given local salary level, according to the report.

"Beijing's average housing cost accounts for more than 100 percent of net earnings, suggesting that a worker on an average salary cannot live alone in typical city accommodation," said the report.

For bus drivers, nurses and primary school teachers in the city, the average cost of housing exceeded their annual disposable income level in 2015, the findings showed.

Abu Dhabi only comes as a distant second in terms of affordability, with rental costs equal to 69.5 percent of local net earnings, followed by Hong Kong as a third.

Beijing could have seen spending boosted by $3.4 billion and have added some 422,000 new jobs if housing only rose 10 percent over the past five years, according to the report.

"Rising housing costs place upward pressures on wages as businesses attempt to retain top talent in expensive cities," said the report.
Park offers enterprising Chinese returnees start-up support Updated: 2016-04-26 17:00 By Cai Muyuan(chinadaily.com.cn)

Lang Jing, secretary general of Chinese Returned Overseas Scholars Entrepreneur Parks' Alliance, speaks at the launching ceremony of 'Returnee Entrepreneurship Park' in Beijing on April 26, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A 'Returnee Entrepreneurship Park' was launched at a ceremony in Beijing on Tuesday in a bid to help returnees start businesses and incubate programs for long term development.

Hosted by Chinese Returned Overseas Scholars Entrepreneur Parks' Alliance and Haidian District's Bureau of Forestry, the park aims to encourage mass entrepreneurship and innovation as well as look for methods to combine forestry resources with technology to deepen eco-innovation.

More than 80 representatives including investment institutions, entrepreneurs and returnees joined the ceremony and witnessed the opening of the parks training camp as well as road show of potential start-up programs.

The park will host lectures and road shows for returnees and also provide returnees with policy interpretation and opportunities to share their experiences.

Lang Jing, secretary general of Chinese Returned Overseas Scholars Entrepreneur Parks' Alliance, said the park serves as a platform which includes training, communication and incubation. "We aim to build a demonstration base and a mature model that can be promoted nationwide and form a network for returnee entrepreneurs," he said.
Liang's trial tests US social justice Updated: 2016-04-26 06:59 (China Daily)

Protesters support former New York Police Officer Peter Liang outside a Brooklyn courthouse before his sentencing for manslaughter in the killing of Akai Gurley, in New York, April 19, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

At his sentencing, the charge against former New York City police officer Peter Liang, the rookie cop convicted of the fatal shooting of a black man, Akai Gurley, in a Brooklyn housing project, was reduced from manslaughter to criminally negligent homicide; as a result he was sentenced to five years probation and 800 hours of community service.

The final developments of the case are yet to be known, but the polarized reactions it has sparked between the Asian-American and African-American communities reflects the deep schisms in US society as a result of its prevailing political and cultural practices.

For a long time, different ethnic groups in the United States have been given different labels, although all of them have made huge contributions to the US economic and social development. For example, those of Asian origin, including those from China and India, are labeled as "model minorities". Such a "good label" does not result from a lack of prejudice, it is the result of comparing Asian-Americans with other minorities.

Such comparisons have to some extent widened the psychological distance between the two communities. While consolidating the "superiority complex" of white Americans, such an artificial division has weakened the mutual identification and integration among different minorities, and aggravated the discrepancies between their perceptions of the same events.

As far as Liang's case is concerned, Chinese-Americans believe they are an alien group and so they felt they needed to take the initiative to promote a fair trial. However, African-Americans believe they are in a much weaker position and so they felt they needed to make efforts to defend their rights and interests during the trial.

Liang's case and other high-profile officer-involved shootings will increase the sense of insecurity among ethnic groups in the US and exacerbate the divides that already exist in US society.

--Beijing News
ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- When asked about his post-primary plans, if Hillary Clinton clinches the Democratic nomination for president, Bernie Sanders was quick to tell ABC News in Rome last week that he would go back to his day job as a U.S. senator from Vermont.



But several of the advocacy groups backing his campaign have begun strategizing about the next phase of what many of them view as Sanders political revolution.



Many are wondering, Whats next? We want to get together and talk about it, said Charles Lenchner, co-founder of People for Bernie, a grassroots organization that has been unofficially working alongside the senators presidential campaign from the beginning.



Lenchners group and National Nurses United, one of Sanders earliest and most visible union endorsers, have been working in tandem to plan a conference bringing Sanders supporters and progressive groups together after the final votes in the Democratic Party primary.



The event, titled The Peoples Summit, has been scheduled for late-June in Chicago, just days after the final primary contest.



So far, the events website lists speakers such as author and social activist Cornel West, one of Sanders surrogates, and the United States Student Association and Progressive Democrats of America as some of his sponsoring partners. The explicit goal is to bring together people and organizations who have supported the senator's campaign and have a conversation about what comes after the primaries, Lenchner told ABC News.



I think it will be an opportunity for people to meet each other outside of the specific groups and areas where they have been active for the first time, Lenchner said in a phone interview.



Sanders campaign and volunteers have arguably built one of the largest and most effective grassroots progressive organizations in recent history. How exactly to capitalize on the energy surrounding the campaign and mobilize the social media community remains the million-dollar question for groups hoping to push Sanders policy platforms during the next administration. How the formal Bernie 2016 campaign chooses to mobilize its golden email list is another question all together.



Some people, such as those from National Nurses United, will likely come to the summit ready to push specific policy platforms, while others have a background in more general grassroots organization building.



Prior to the formation of People for Bernie, Lenchner, for instance, was with MoveOns Ready for Warren campaign, and before that worked with the Occupy Wall Street effort.



One of the nations largest progressive grassroots groups, MoveOn, has been organizing on behalf of Sanders presidential bid since endorsing his candidacy and is also in touch with those planning the summit.



As Bernie Sanders has said from the beginning, the political revolution is bigger than one candidate or one campaign, MoveOns Washington director Ben Wikler said. While fighting to win primaries and caucuses, MoveOn members are also thinking about how to help make the incredible success of the Sanders' campaign a permanent force in our politics for positive change.



He added: "MoveOn is talking with many progressive allies, including some of those behind the People's Summit, about the way forward for this movement, whether Bernie is the nominee, a senator, or the president of the United States.



National Nurses United spokesman Chuck Idelson agreed Monday afternoon: [Sanders] has always said, its not about him, but about a movement.



Still, summit planning participants also insist that that they are not conceding the Democratic nomination.



Honestly, almost everyone involved is so busy in trying to earn even more delegates for Bernie, People for Bernie co-founder Lenchner said. He still has a shot.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Apple (AAPL) is scheduled to announce its quarterly earnings on Tuesday after the markets close.

Analysts are expecting the tech giant to report revenue of $52.0 billion and earnings of $2.00 per share, down from $58.0 billion and $2.33, respectively.

Behind the big drop in revenue and earnings is an expected decline in iPhone sales.

Apple's iPhone sales are expected to dip by at least 17.5 percent in Q2. (image: FactSet).

Over the past three years on average, the iPhone product segment has accounted for nearly 60% of the total revenues generated by Apple, FactSets John Butters said. In four of the past five quarters, the iPhone product segment has reported year-over-year revenue growth in excess of 35%. However, last quarter (Q4 2015), the segment reported year-over-year revenue growth of only 7%. For Q1 2016, the segment is projected to report a year-over-year revenue decline of -18%.

Naturally were going to have a number of other questions about Apples performance. But these are the ones well be looking at the closest.

What were iPhone 6s and 6s Plus sales really like?

Apple releases its iPhones in tick-tock yearly cycles. During tick years, Apple unveils a numbered iPhone such as the 4, 5, or 6. Those tend to get new designs and slight feature updates.

During the subsequent tock years, the company debuts its s-series iPhones such as the iPhone 4s, iPhone 5s, and last years iPhone 6s. S-series iPhones usually look similar to their numbered predecessors, but come with major technology improvements like fingerprint readers and upgraded cameras.

The vast majority of Apple's revenue comes from iPhone sales. Will Apple have to report a loss?

Apples sales in the U.S. hit their peak in the final three months of the year thanks to the holiday shopping season, and fall off in the first three months of the new year. Couple that with the fact that the iPhone 6 was an absolutely sales monster and that were already hearing talk of the iPhone 7, and sales of the 6s and 6s Plus could take quite a hit.

Has the iPhone SE been a sales winner?

Apple introduced the iPhone SE in March as a way to provide fans of smaller handsets like the 4-inch iPhone 5s with a more modern device. And with a relatively low starting price of $400, the SE would seem to be a solid purchase for first-time smartphone buyers.

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But unlike most iPhone launches, the SEs debut saw little fanfare. Thats likely a result of the fact that the handset is essentially an iPhone 6s crammed into the body of an iPhone 5s. There was nothing truly new about the phone, which could have hurt its appeal in consumers eyes.



That said the handsets low cost could make it an attractive buy in emerging markets. Either way, it will be interesting to see how successful the phone has been in its first month on the market.

How is Apple performing in China?

With its massive population and burgeoning middle class, China is one of the most important markets for Apple.

In the first-quarter of 2016, CEO Tim Cook told investors that his company saw 14 percent year-over-year growth in the country. And as one of the worlds fastest growing smartphone markets, so it behooves Apple to get as much out of the region as possible.

But the iPhone is facing increasingly stiff competition from homegrown Chinese smartphone makers including Xiaomi and Huawei.

In addition to growing competition UBS analyst Steven Milunovich says Apple could face issues if the Chinese government chooses to favor domestic companies over outside sources like Apple. This threat isn't out of the realm of possibility, either, as Milunovich points out that IBM, HP, and Cisco have seen declining sales as the government has instead turned toward Lenovo and Huawei.

Seeing as how the vast majority of Apples revenue comes from iPhone sales, and that the Chinese market isnt nearly as saturated with smartphones as the U.S. market, learning how many iPhones were sold in China in the second-quarter of 2016 can give us a better idea as to the companys long-term health.

How many Apple Watches have been sold?

According to Cook, the Q1 of 2016 was a banner quarter for Apple Watch sales. Unfortunately, that doesnt mean very much when we dont know exactly how many units the company actually sold. According to The Wall Street Journal, though, analysts say Apple sold more Apple Watches in the product's first year than the company sold iPhone's in the smartphone's first year of availability.

Apple is unlikely to give us a definite number of Apple Watches sold.

In fact, as The Journal points out, research firm IDC says the Apple Watch sales accounted for 61 percent of the total smartwatch market in 2015.

Then, however, there are the ever-growing number of stories by tech reviewers and experts saying theyre ditching their Apple Watches after having them for a few months. So is the Watch a winner, or has it already lost its luster?

Has the smaller iPad Pro helped iPad sales?

Apples iPad sales have been falling off a cliff for quite some time now. Thats likely because people simply dont upgrade their tablets as often as they upgrade their smartphones. Not to mention the fact that bigger-screen handsets like the iPhone 6s are eating into tablet sales.

We're hoping to get some information on whether the iPad Pro helped improved iPad sales.

When Apple introduced the low-cost iPhone SE in March, it also rolled out its new iPad Pro 9.7-inch. The same size and weight as the iPad Air 2, the Pro promised the same kind of performance and capabilities as the 12.9-inch iPad Pro in a smaller, more manageable package.

While the first Pro received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics, it didnt do much to turn around the decline Apples declining iPad sales. Will the smaller iPad Pro change the companys fortune? Well have to wait and see.

Email Daniel at dhowley@yahoo-inc.com; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.
Why Alaska Air Group's Upbeat 1Q16 Results Left Investors Flat

(Continued from Prior Part)

Earnings grow

Alaska Air Groups (ALK) operating profit increased by 22% to $290 million, and its net income increased by 23% year-over-year (or YoY) to $184 million. Its diluted earnings per share (or EPS) grew by 30% YoY to $1.46, higher than analysts consensus estimate of $1.43 per share.

Cost savings

Substantial fuel savings as a result of falling crude oil prices has helped Alaska Air Group (ALK) to reduce its expenses. ALKs fuel costs fell by 34.8% YoY to average $1.29 per gallon in 1Q16. Cost per available seat mile, or CASM-ex fuel, also declined by 1.2%.

Declining utilization

Alaska Air Groups aggressive capacity expansion led to a 1.4% decline in capacity utilization, which is expressed as the airlines load factor. This limited the airlines margin expansion.

Can fuel costs decrease further?

Alaska Air Group (ALK) expects to maintain its fuel costs at ~$2.00 per gallon for 2016 and 2017. This is more or less in line with its peers Delta Air Lines (DAL), American Airlines (AAL), and United Continental (UAL). Analysts are estimating that the airline margins have peaked, and they do not expect ALK to see significant incremental benefits from its fuel costs.

However, if demand growth does not correspond to Alaska Air Groups aggressive capacity expansion, falling utilizations should add to the pressure on Alaska Air Groups margin. On the other hand, higher debt may contract Alaskas margins. Read our next article to find out more.

Alaska Air Group (ALK) comprises ~1.7% of the Industrials/Producer Durables AlphaDEX ETFs (FXR) holdings.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Zhang Peng | LightRocket | Getty Images. Ant Financial, the affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba that runs Alipay, confirmed on Tuesday that it had raised $4.5 billion in what is the world's largest single private funding round for an internet company.

Ant Financial, the affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) that runs Alipay, confirmed on Tuesday that it had raised $4.5 billion in what is the world's largest single private funding round for an internet company.

The funding round values the company at roughly $60 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter, as previously reported by CNBC .

Chinese sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation together with China Construction Bank led the round. They were joined by existing Ant Financial shareholders which include China Life; China Post Group, the parent company of Postal Savings Bank of China; China Development Bank Capital and Primavera Capital Group.

The round makes Ant Financial the second-most valuable private technology firm behind U.S. ride hailing app Uber, which is worth over $62 billion, and ahead of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, which has a valuation of $45 billion.

Ant Financial said that the money would be used to invest in infrastructure such as cloud computing and biometric verification technologies in order to drive growth internationally and in rural areas of China.

The company, which was spun off from Alibaba before it went public in 2014, runs China's biggest payments service Alipay which boasts a total of 450 million active users and processes 170 million transactions per day. It also operates online money-market fund Yu'e Bao, banking service MYbank and a lending platform called Ant Micro Loan.

Ant Financial has been on a drive to expand Alipay beyond China, particularly to help Chinese tourists make purchases abroad using its platform.

Alibaba and Ant Financial upped their stake in Indian payments firm Paytm last year as it looks to expand into India.

Sabrina Peng, president of Alipay International, told CNBC this month, that the firm is "actively looking" for more partners in Asia as it looks to go deeper into the region. The fresh funds should give Ant Financial the firepower to continue investing in firms.

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Alipay also launched in Europe earlier this month.

Ant Financial is not the only payments company raising large sums of money. The finance unit of rival JD.com - JD Finance - took a 6.65 billion yuan ($1.02 billion) funding round in January, valuing it at 46.65 billion yuan ($7.2 billion).









More From CNBC


The masters of the universe running Apple have just discovered that the Celestial Kingdom is slipping out of their grasp.

China's recent decision to ban Apple from offering its iTunes Movies and iBooks Store services must have come as a shock to executives at the world's most valuable company. As Apple's second-largest market for iPhones, China is critical to the Cupertino-based company's future. Total revenue from the Greater China region (which includes mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) now accounts for about a quarter of Apple's sales. And Apple has invested heavily in cultivating good relations with the Chinese government. CEO Tim Cook has visited China at least seven times since assuming his position in 2011.

Yet the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does not seem to value such demonstrations of goodwill. The CCP seldom allows sentimentality to get in the way when a foreign company - even an old "friend of China" such as Apple--does something that arouses the party's paranoia.

In this particular case, the digital books and movies offered by Apple are considered a potential threat to the Chinese government's ongoing campaign of keeping out Western liberal ideas. In addition, the notion that Apple could dominate China's digital content market must also have offended Beijing's protectionist instincts.

Apple's unpleasant experience offers a warning to American tech giants eager to break into China. Facebook and Twitter, for instance, are currently blocked inside China, but both hope to get a piece of China's vast Internet market in the future. What tech leaders such as Mark Zuckerberg and Cook need to learn is that no matter how hard they may try to convince Chinese leaders of their innocent intentions and the potential benefits of a partnership, they are unlikely to get anywhere. On a fundamental level, Beijing wants to keep foreign firms from dominating China's information sector and from posing an existential threat to the CCP's monopoly of power. China may have to pay a high price for such resistance. They may have to use inferior technology, products, and services. But such costs are considered affordable to the regime because they are borne almost exclusively by ordinary Chinese people.

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American companies face a dilemma, as China's market is simply too big to ignore. If they do not try to curry favor from Chinese authorities, their competitors will. And ceding China to a rival is simply unthinkable.

Driven by such considerations, Western companies, including American giants in all sectors, have adopted two principal strategies so far. The first is to demonstrate their commercial value to Beijing. The other is to establish rapport with Chinese leaders and build good guanxi (relations). Based on China's recent turn toward protectionism and xenophobia, it looks like Western firms need to adopt a new approach to protect themselves.

Any strategy that relies on the good will of Chinese authorities is dicey because of the arbitrary nature of the Chinese regime. A Western company that's an "old friend" today could be a reviled "foreign devil" tomorrow if Beijing does not like what it is doing in China.

Western companies ought to pursue a self-help strategy instead. The best source of such help is Washington. The Chinese government has signed many trade and commercial agreements with the U.S. and is a member of the World Trade Organization. U.S. firms should not hesitate to pressure Washington to hold Beijing to its commitments. China may have grown too powerful for most countries in the world to handle alone, but the U.S. retains sufficient clout to make China pay a heavy price if it treats American firms unfairly.

Western companies should also band together. China plays the classic game of "divide and conquer" in dealing with Western companies, wooing some while bullying others. Regrettably, Western companies have been unable to form a united front, making themselves vulnerable to Beijing's capriciousness. Individually, no Western firm, however successful or big, is a match for China. But China cannot afford to alienate a group of Western companies whose technologies, products, and services it sorely needs.

So, the first step Apple should take is not to send Tim Cook to Beijing to plead its case. Kowtowing seldom works. Instead, Cook should take the lead in organizing other American companies with high stakes in the Chinese market to push back against Beijing's opaque and arbitrary use of regulatory authority. Contrary to conventional wisdom counseling against public defiance toward Beijing, Apple and other American firms need to know that only collective action will get the attention of the Chinese government.

Minxin Pei is the Tom and Margot Pritzker Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and a non-resident senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States

See original article on Fortune.com

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(Corrects to IHS Jane's in paragraph 16)

* Fleet of 12 submarines to be built in South Australia

* Decision has political implications at home, abroad

* Decision a blow for Japan's nascent defence export industry

* Raytheon, Lockheed bid for separate weapons contract

By Colin Packham, Nobuhiro Kubo and Tim Kelly

SYDNEY/TOKYO, April 26 (Reuters) - France has beaten Japan and Germany to win a A$50 billion ($40 billion) deal to build a fleet of 12 submarines for Australia, one of the world's most lucrative defence contracts, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Tuesday.

The victory for state-owned naval contractor DCNS Group underscored France's strengths in developing a compelling military-industrial bid, and is a blow for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push to develop defence export capabilities as part of a more muscular security agenda.

Reuters earlier reported that DCNS would be announced as the winner, citing sources with knowledge of the process.

"The recommendation of our competitive evaluation process ... was unequivocal that the French offer represented the capabilities best able to meet Australia's unique needs," Turnbull told reporters in the South Australian state capital of Adelaide where the submarines will be built.

In a statement, French President Francois Hollande said the deal "marks a decisive step in the strategic partnership between our two countries", while Prime Minister Manuel Valls said it was "cause for optimism and pride."

The French shipbuilder's share of the overall contract will amount to about 8 billion euros ($9.02 billion), according to sources with knowledge of the deal. DCNS chief Herve Guillou said the deal would create around 4,000 French jobs, benefiting shipyards and industrial sites in Lorient, Brest, Nantes and Cherbourg.

Australia is ramping up defence spending, seeking to protect its strategic and trade interests in Asia-Pacific as the United States and its allies grapple with China's rising power.

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Japan's government with its Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries boat had been seen as early frontrunners for the contract, but their inexperience in global defence deals and an initial reluctance to say they would build in Australia saw them slip behind DCNS and Germany's ThyssenKrupp AG.

POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

Industry watchers had anticipated a decision to come later in the year, but Turnbull's gamble on a July 2 general election sped up the process.

The contract will have an impact on thousands of jobs in the shipbuilding industry in South Australia, where retaining votes in key electorates will be critical for the government's chances of re-election.

"The submarine project .. will see Australian workers building Australian submarines with Australian steel," said Turnbull.

DCNS, which traces its roots to 1624 and is 35 percent-owned by defence electronics giant Thales SA, proposed a diesel-electric version of its 5,000-tonne Barracuda nuclear-powered submarine. DCNS enlisted heads of industry and top government figures to convince Australia of the merits of its offering and the benefits to the broader relationship.

"This is a great opportunity for DCNS because they will work with the Australian navy for the long run as it is a series of contracts and a huge opportunity to invest more and to develop business," French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron said on the sidelines of a trade fair in Hannover, Germany.

Thales shares initially rose more than 3 percent in Paris to a record high.

Japan had offered to build Australia a variant of its 4,000 tonne Soryu submarine, a deal that would have cemented closer strategic and defence ties with two of Washington's key Asia-Pacific allies, but risked antagonizing China, Australia's top trading partner.

Paul Burton, Defense Industry and Budgets Director at IHS Jane's said it was a surprise from a strategic standpoint that Japan didn't win. "Japan is very keen to secure a significant piece of overseas business following the relaxation of its export legislation, and this Australian submarine deal was widely regarded as becoming a landmark trade," he said.

"The tradecraft required to convince a sophisticated domestic buyer that Japan's was superior to that offered by France was lacking."

ThyssenKrupp was proposing to scale up its 2,000-tonne Type 214 class submarine, a technical challenge that sources had previously told Reuters weighed against the German bid.

Both losing bidders said they were disappointed by the decision, but remain committed to their Australian businesses.

"Thyssenkrupp will always be willing to further contribute to Australia's naval capabilities," said Hans Atzpodien, Chairman of Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems.

Japan's Defence Minister Gen. Nakatani said the decision was "deeply regrettable," and he would ask Australia to explain why it didn't pick Japan's design.

America's Raytheon Co, which built the system for Australia's ageing Collins-class submarines, is vying for a separate combat system contract with Lockheed Martin Corp , which supplies combat systems to the U.S. Navy's submarine fleet. A decision on the weapons system is due later this year. ($1 = 1.2967 Australian dollars) ($1 = 0.8864 euros)

(Reporting by Colin Packham, Nobuhiro Kubo and Tim Kelly, with additional reporting by Matt Siegel in Sydney, Cyril Altmeyer in Paris and Andreas Framke in Hannover; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Ian Geoghegan)
SYDNEY, April 26 (Reuters) - France's state-controlled naval contractor DCNS Group has been awarded a A$50 billion ($40 billion) contract to build Australia's new fleet of submarines, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Tuesday.

Australia will buy 12 new submarines, a centerpiece of its defence strategy unveiled in February, and build them in South Australia Turnbull said, confirming an earlier Reuters report.

France's state-controlled naval contractor DCNS has proposed a diesel-electric version of its 5,000-tonne Barracuda nuclear-powered submarine.

(Reporting by Colin Packham in Sydney; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
Australia's detention of asylum-seekers on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island is unconstitutional and illegal, a court ruled Tuesday, prompting some refugee advocates to call for the camp to be shut down.

Canberra has come under international criticism for sending asylum-seekers who attempt to enter the country by boat to remote processing centres on Manus or the tiny Pacific island of Nauru but said the finding would not change its policies.

Papua New Guinea's then opposition leader Belden Namah challenged the Manus arrangement in court, claiming it violated the rights of asylum-seekers.

In its 34-page finding on Tuesday, Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court found that detaining asylum-seekers on the island was "contrary to their constitutional right of personal liberty".

"The detention of the asylum-seekers on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea... is unconstitutional and illegal," it said.

The court ordered the Australian and Papua New Guinean governments to "take all steps necessary to cease and prevent" the continued detention of the asylum-seekers and transferees on Manus.

It was not immediately clear how the ruling would affect the around 850 men held at the centre. Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said the court's decision "does not alter Australia's border protection policies - they remain unchanged".

"No one who attempts to travel to Australia illegally by boat will settle in Australia," he said in a statement.

PNG's Immigration Minister Rimbink Pato told Fairfax Media he would make a statement after digesting the decision and taking legal advice.

- 'Stop the abuse' -

Under a policy accepted by both sides of politics in Canberra, asylum-seekers found to be genuine refugees are denied resettlement in Australia. They are instead urged to return home or be resettled in PNG or Cambodia under a policy designed to stop people-smuggling boats.

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Australia has long defended its policy, saying it has prevented the deaths of asylum-seekers at sea and secured its borders.

Under the previous Labor government, at least 1,200 people died trying to reach Australia by boat between 2008 and 2013.

Rights campaigners welcomed the court's decision, saying it was time for the Manus detention centre to be shut.

"PNG's Supreme Court has recognised that detaining people who have committed no crime is wrong," said Elaine Pearson, director of Human Rights Watch in Australia.

"For these men, their only 'mistake' was to try to seek sanctuary in Australia -- that doesn't deserve years in limbo locked up in a remote island prison.

"It's time for the Manus detention centre to be closed once and for all."

GetUp! human rights campaigner Aurora Adams said some people had been detained for close to three years and needed to be brought to Australia.

"It is time to stop the abuse of vulnerable people who only ask for safety and the opportunity to rebuild their lives," she said.

"The moral case is clear, there is no justification for locking people in offshore prison camps indefinitely."

Those detained on Manus should "immediately be released and guaranteed full constitutional rights", added Amnesty Internationals director for South East Asia Rafendi Djamin.

"There has been enough suffering," Djamin said. "It is time that the Australian government closed down the Manus Island detention centre, and the asylum seekers should be welcomed to Australia.

The Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA) said the ruling could open the door to asylum-seekers making claims for damages for allegedly being falsely imprisoned.

"The decision also strengthens claims that Australia has breached its duty of care to those who come within its migration system by keeping them in conditions that are unlawful," ALA spokesman Greg Barns said in a statement.

Reports said immigration authorities have recently been trying to move those classed as refugees out of detention in Manus and into a "transit centre", allowing them to leave during the day.

A similar policy has been adopted in Nauru, where the government last October said the Regional Processing Centre had been converted into an "open centre", giving its inhabitants freedom of movement.
(Adds Senate picks committee stacked against Rousseff)

By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA, April 25 (Reuters) - Brazil's largest opposition party is divided over how strongly to back a new interim government if it succeeds in having President Dilma Rousseff stripped of office, as it eyes a run at the presidency in 2018, senior members said on Monday.

The Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) will support a government led by Vice President Michel Temer from the aisles of Congress if the left-leaning Rousseff is unseated next month, but the party is split over whether to join his cabinet.

The Senate picked a committee stacked with supporters of impeachment that will report back on whether to put Rousseff on trial on charges of deliberately breaking budget laws to boost her re-election bid in 2014. Only five of the committee's 21 members have declared their support for the leftist president.

The lower house voted this month there were grounds for a trial. If the Senate agrees to put her on trial in a May 12 vote, as expected, Rousseff will immediately be suspended from office for the period of the proceedings.

She denies any wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, Temer, whose Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) quit the government last month, is preparing to govern. Former central bank governor Henrique Meirelles is emerging as the top candidate to become finance minister, a source familiar with the talks told Reuters.

Investors are looking to Temer to restore confidence in Latin America's largest economy. Brazil was stripped of its coveted investment-grade credit rating in December amid the worst recession in decades and an acute fiscal crisis.

Business leaders are pressing the PSDB to join Temer to help restore credibility in economic policy, but many inside the party are wary of the risks in terms of future elections of failing to pull the country out of its worst recession since the 1930s.

Party leader Aecio Neves, who narrowly lost to Rousseff in 2014 and is expected to run again in 2018, said last week that he does not want party members to accept ministerial positions in a Temer cabinet.

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However, Senator Jose Serra, a former health minister who has his own presidential ambitions, is keen to be a minister and the vice president wants him in, said lawmaker Bruno Araujo, leader of the PSDB in the lower house.

PRESSURE INCREASING

Araujo said the majority position within the PSDB ahead of the this month's vote in the lower house had been to support Temer, but not enter his government. Since then, pressure has increased on the PSDB from many sectors of Brazilian society to help make a Temer government succeed, he said.

"There is a growing feeling in the party that if it does not take the risk of joining the Temer cabinet, Brazilians will suspect it wanted Temer to fail," Araujo said by telephone.

The PSDB will meet on May 3 to set its position, mindful that if it stays out of the government and Temer turns the country around, it could pay the price in the 2018 elections.

Serra was interested in becoming finance minister, a position that would enhance his presidential hopes for 2018, but party insiders say Temer will offer him other portfolios, such as health.

As health minister in 2001, Serra defied the international pharmaceuticals industry and allowed generic copies of brand-name drugs to be made in Brazil without the permission of the company that owns the patent.

The PSDB's top economic thinker, hedge fund investor and former central banker Arminio Fraga has offered advice to Temer, and several party economists have been named as possible members of his economic team.

In a Temer government, the key finance job will likely be offered to Meirelles, a former president and COO of BankBoston who has strong ties to Brazil's largest business groups. Meirelles' PSD party broke from Rousseff's coalition last week.

Meirelles met with Temer on Saturday and signaled he would agree to lead the economic team if he has a say in picking its other members, such as the central bank chief, the source said.

"He has a strong party behind him and he is widely respected by the markets," said the source, who asked not to be named because he was not allowed to speak publicly. "Meirelles is an ideal candidate, but no decision has been taken." (Additional reporting by Alonso Soto and Maria Carolina Marcello; editing by Daniel Flynn, G Crosse and Frances Kerry)
(Adds Enbridge statement)

By Nia Williams

CALGARY, Alberta, April 25 (Reuters) - Canadian regulators on Monday recommended the federal government approve Enbridge Inc's plan to replace one of its major crude oil export pipelines, but also imposed 89 conditions on the project to enhance safety and environmental protection.

Calgary-based Enbridge plans to replace all segments of pipe on the 1,031 mile (1,659km) Line 3 between Hardisty, Alberta, and Superior, Wisconsin, by 2019, in what will be the company's largest-ever project. The cross-border endeavor will cost more than C$7.5 billion ($5.91 billion).

Monday's recommendation only applies to the Canadian section of the line. U.S. regulators are in the process of dealing with the southern leg.

In a statement Enbridge said it was pleased with the regulator's announcement and was in the process of reviewing the 89 conditions.

Despite being a cross-border project, Line 3 will not require a U.S. presidential permit, which ultimately scuppered TransCanada Corp's Keystone XL, because Enbridge is restoring the pipeline to its original capacity.

President Barack Obama rejected Keystone XL last November after a seven-year delay, and other proposed export pipelines from Alberta's oil sands to the Canadian east and west coasts are also facing additional regulatory scrutiny.

The Line 3 project will allow Enbridge to run the pipeline at maximum capacity of 760,000 barrels per day. Currently capacity is 390,000 bpd because of voluntary pressure restrictions.

Dr Robert Steedman, chief environmental officer at the National Energy Board, said a regulatory panel had concluded the project was in the public interest and unlikely to cause significant adverse environmental affects.

"The new pipeline will be built to modern standards and will operate with improved safety and reliability," he said.

The NEB's conditions also required Enbridge to continue consultation with landowners and aboriginal groups who live along the pipeline's route. Steedman said the NEB always imposed conditions when recommending projects and the 89 required of Line 3 were not unusually high.

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Federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said in a statement he would study the report and seek additional public input before making a decision "in fall 2016."

Enbridge ships more than 2 million bpd of crude exports to the United States, the bulk of Canada's total exports.

Chief Executive Al Monaco has previously said the project, which involves replacing existing 34-inch diameter pipe which 36-inch diameter high-strength steel pipe, would not boost total exports as the Enbridge system is in balance, meaning efforts to lift crude flow could cause bottlenecks.

($1 = 1.2685 Canadian dollars) (Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Alan Crosby and Andrew Hay)
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's top steel making province will ban the reopening of steel mills that had been previously ordered to shut down, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Tuesday, as soaring steel prices lure back producers. Provincial authorities in Hebei also pledged to step up monitoring of steel mills, punish closed mills that reopen and investigate and sack local officials who allow the reopening of mills and approve illegal projects, Xinhua said. Hebei accounts for just under a quarter of steel production in China, by far the world's top steel producer and consumer. A jump in steel prices this year has encouraged many producers in China to rekindle their furnaces and ramp up production, potentially exacerbating a global steel glut that has sparked trade friction with other producers including the United States, Britain and Australia. Some mills in China have been ordered to close as part of the government's efforts to trim overcapacity. Xinhua quoted a notice from the Hebei government as saying officials were not allowed to permit these facilities to restart production "under any circumstances." Other mills, facing losses, cooling demand and tighter credit conditions, have trimmed output or suspended production for economic reasons. It was not clear if these mills were included in the ban on resuming production. Australia said on Saturday it would impose duties on certain types of Chinese steel to protect domestic steelmakers, while the United States and seven other countries called earlier this month for urgent action to address global overcapacity. Chinese steel futures have jumped more than 50 percent so far in 2016 after six straight years of losses. Dalian iron ore futures have risen about 55 percent since the beginning of this year, as investors bet the government will take more measures to stimulate the economy. Despite Beijing's efforts to cut surplus Chinese steel capacity and pressure from other countries to cut exports, China's steel output rose to a record in March while its steel shipments rose 30 percent from a year ago. China has a total crude steel capacity of 1.13 billion tonnes, but produced about 800 million tonnes of crude steel last year, suggesting more than 300 million tonnes of surplus capacity. The country plans to shed 100-150 million tonnes of domestic crude steel capacity in the next five years, and another 500 million tonnes of surplus coal production, in a bid to tackle huge capacity overhangs that have saddled domestic firms with losses and debts. (Reporting by Ruby Lian and John Ruwitch; Editing by Richard Pullin)
Steve Warren

The spokesman for the US military operation against ISIS made a comment in a Wednesday press briefing in Baghdad that helps justify Russia's continued attacks on Syria's largest city in the midst of a truce.

US Army Col. Steve Warren, the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq, was asked whether Russian airstrikes on Aleppo, the current epicenter of the war, meant that Moscow was preparing to end the cessation of hostilities (CoH) agreement between government forces and the opposition signed on February 29.

Warren responded that it was "complicated" because al-Nusra "holds Aleppo" and is not party to the agreement.

Warren said of Russia:

I'm not going to predict what their intentions are. What I do know is that we have seen, you know, regime forces with some Russian support as well begin to mass and concentrate combat power around Aleppo. ... That said, it's primarily al-Nusra who holds Aleppo, and of course, al-Nusra is not part of the cessation of hostilities. So it's complicated.

As Middle East analyst Kyle Orton noted on Twitter, Warren came "pretty close" to saying that the coalition supports Russia's airstrikes in the city. Those strikes, however, are aimed at degrading any and all opposition to Bashar Assad  the embattled Syrian president who the Obama administration has repeatedly insisted "has to go."

aleppo rubble assad regime air strike

Warren, moreover, was effectively echoing Russia's own military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy. He said earlier this month that 8,000 Nusra militants were amassing around Aleppo and preparing to cut off the city's main road to Syria's capital, Damascus.

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Emile Hokayem, an expert on Syria and a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, seemed surprised by Warren's comments.

"Does the US military really believe that Nusra 'holds Aleppo'?" Hokayem tweeted on Friday. "Did Warren misspeak?"

While Nusra has indeed been building up its presence in Aleppo since February, the city is also occupied by civilians and armed opposition groups associated with the US-backed Free Syrian Army that agreed to abide by the fragile agreement.

Civil defence members look for survivors after an airstrike on the rebel-held Old Aleppo, Syria April 16, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail

The CoH was brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva in February. Lavrov indicated that Russia would continue supporting the Assad regime's attempts to "liberate" Aleppo, which he said had been "captured by illegal insurgent groups."

But for one of the US's top military leaders to stop short of condemning Russia's airstrikes on the city sends mixed signals about Washington's commitment to upholding the truce. Warren's comments came two days after US President Barack Obama urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to "use his influence with the Assad regime to live up to the commitments that they've made in the context of the cessation of hostilities," said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary.

He added: "Unfortunately, we've seen that the cessation of hostilities continues to be fragile and increasingly threatened due to continued violations by the regime."

'The worst day in Syria for over a year'

Syria's civil defense, a neutral organization of nearly 3,000 volunteers that respond to bombings against civilian communities in Syria, said that warplanes attacked Aleppo at least 20 times on Friday in what was "the worst day in Syria for over a year." At least 14 people were killed in the attack and dozens more wounded.

Tracking attacks in Aleppo, Idlib, Homs and Damascus. Furious intensity. Teams report streets littered with bodies. pic.twitter.com/oBByKD0RAN  The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) April 22, 2016

In Idlib, meanwhile, the White Helmets recorded even more attacks than in Aleppo on Friday. Nusra took over bases and seized US-supplied weapons from the Free Syrian Army's 13th Division in Idlib last month, giving Assad another bargaining chip to argue that he is the best option for preventing the spread of terrorism in Syria.

Significantly, Nusra's takeover of rebel-held areas around Syria has been met with fierce backlash by activists and the more moderate rebel groups battling Assad's forces. Opposition groups realize that "the more territory al-Nusra controls, the more the 'us or them' narrative grows stronger and, ironically, the less support moderates get from the coalition," Abu Faisal, a Syrian aid worker who goes by a pseudonym, told Business Insider's Pamela Engel last month.

Syria map

But Nusra's presence in Idlib and Aleppo  and, now, Warren's hint that the US might not be wholly opposed to a Russian offensive there  has given Moscow an excuse to revamp its military presence inside Syria just over one month after announcing it planned to withdraw from the conflict.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Russia is moving heavy artillery back into the northeast, likely in preparation for a major escalation there.

John Kerry confirmed the Russian buildup near Aleppo in a meeting with The New York Times editorial board on Friday.

He told the Times that Russia might really be targeting Nusra in Aleppo, but is "killing people" because it has "proven harder to separate" the militant group from the more moderate opposition groups "than we thought."

"And there's a Russian impatience and a regime impatience with the terrorists who are behaving like terrorists and laying siege to places on their side and killing people," Kerry said, according to The Times.

Experts are skeptical, however, that Russia's singular intention is to target Nusra alone.

"If Russia is signaling an offensive against Nusra, you can be sure other rebel groups will be targeted," Nadav Pollak, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, tweeted last week.

And as Jeff White, a military analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Business Insider in an email, the Russians are likely taking advantage of the crumbling cessation of hostilities by blaming violations on Nusra  and everyone else who opposes Assad.

"Even if they don't participate in a 'pitched battle' for Aleppo," White said, "the Russians can still help the regime complete the isolation of the city."

NOW WATCH: A German orchestra traveled to Jordan to teach Syrian refugee kids how to play instruments





More From Business Insider


Exchange traded fund investors have largely shunned developing economies as the area underperformed developed markets over the past few years. As more look to diversify away from an aging bull rally in the U.S., investors should consider re-allocating toward the developing world.

According to a recent Emerging Global Advisors survey on investor sentiment, less than a third of respondents are confident that their emerging market allocations reflects the regions and themes with the greatest investment opportunities in the next 12 months.

Specifically, 37% of respondents have either 5% to 10% allocated toward emerging markets while 36% of respondents have 1% to 5% in EM assets. Moreover, 37% of those surveyed also said that their allocations to the emerging markets are lower year-over-year, but 48% said allocations are about the same.

Nevertheless, investors are beginning to take a renewed interest in the emerging economies. About 44% or respondents expect to raise their EM equity allocation in the next 12 months.

With emerging markets leading other equity regions in the first quarter and asset flows turning positive after outflows in the second half of 2015, investors are showing growing interest in increasing portfolio allocations to emerging markets, according to Emerging Global Advisors.

For instance, the Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (VWO) and the iShares MSCI Emerging Index Fund (EEM) , the two largest emerging markets exchange traded funds by assets, have attracted $329.6 million and $234.2 million in net inflows, respectively, so far this month, according to ETF.com. [ Read: Inflows to Emerging Markets ETFs Keep Coming ]

Trending on ETF Trends

Investing in What Appears to Be an Illiquid ETF

Oil Services ETF can Keep Ripping Higher

Inflows to Emerging Markets ETFs Keep Coming

Trouble Brewing For Technology ETFs

Keep REIT ETFs on Your Radar This Summer

Investors are also showing a greater preference for specific emerging markets as global economies begin to diverge. For instance, the oil rout and depressed commodity prices have weighed on resource-dependent countries, like Brazil and Russia. Meanwhile, China is exhibiting slower growth as Beijing shifts from an export-oriented growth model to domestic consumption.

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For the best EM investment opportunities/themes in the next 12 months, investors point to India, Asia and domestic consumer demand, according to Emerging Global Advisors.

Investors can also access these areas through targeted ETF options. For instance, the WisdomTree India Earnings Fund (EPI) , PowerShares India Portfolio (PIN) and iShares India 50 ETF (INDY) provide broad India exposure. Additionally, the EGShares India Consumer ETF (INCO) focuses on Indias consumer sector.

ETF investors can look at emerging Asia options, including the Global X FTSE ASEAN 40 ETF (ASEA) , SPDR S&P Emerging Asia Pacific ETF (GMF) and iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Asia ETF (EEMA) .

ASEA leans toward southeast Asian economies, including Singapore 36.8%, Malaysia 26.8%, Indonesia 18.5%, Thailand 13.4% and Philippines 4.5%.

GMF top country weights include China 44.0%, Taiwan 20.8%, India 17.5%, Malaysia 5.3%, Thailand 4.6%, Indonesia 4.2% and Philippines 2.6%.

EEMA also includes Asia Pacific exposure, except the MSCI categorizes South Korea as an emerging economy. Country weights include China 34.1%, South Korea 22.4%, Taiwan 17.2%, India 11.7%, Malaysia 5.0%, Indonesia 3.9%, Thailand 3.1% and Philippines 2.0%.

Additionally, investors can also monitor the emerging market consumer sector through the EGShares Emerging Markets Consumer ETF (ECON) , iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Consumer Discretionary ETF (EMDI) and WisdomTree Emerging Markets Consumer Growth Fund (EMCG) .

Want more news on Equities ETFs? Visit www.etftrends.com/equities
Mozambique, with 1.5 million people reeling from the drought, is one of the worst-hit countries, along with Zimbabwe, Malawi, Lesotho and southern Madagascar (AFP Photo/Roberto Schmidt) (AFP/File)

Gambela (Ethiopia) (AFP) - Clashes between different ethnic groups in west Ethiopia have left 14 dead, while UN and MSF offices were targeted by angry protesters, local security service sources said.

The violence was sparked after an NGO car with an Ethiopian driver ran over and killed two children from the Nuer ethnic group in a camp for South Sudanese refugees on Friday, the sources told AFP.

In response, a group of refugees attacked Ethiopians living around the camp, killing 10 men and women.

Ethopians from the Anuak ethnic group -- traditional rivals of the Nuer -- then marched on the city of Gambela, killing four Nuer Ethiopians in separate incidents on Saturday and Sunday.

"People are angry, we want revenge. If the police hadn't got involved, plenty of Nuer would have been killed," Addis Alemayu of the Anuak group said.

"With all these refugees coming from South Sudan, things are only getting worse... this is our land, we were here before them."

Protesters also attacked buildings and vehicles belonging to the United Nations, which they accuse of aiding Nuer refugees.

"Protesters broke open the entry gate to one of our residences and destroyed a vehicle," said Stephanie Savariaud, spokeswoman for the UN's world food programme in Ethiopia.

Groups also targeted the offices of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), damaging some of the aid organisation's vehicles and forcing staff to stay in a city hotel.

Gambela has a population of 300,000 but has taken in 270,000 mainly Nuer refugees fleeing the conflict in neighbouring South Sudan. Several different ethnic groups live in the town and violence between them is frequent.
By Georgina Prodhan

HANOVER (Reuters) - Europe may end up with more gas than it needs if the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, designed to double the amount of gas Russia pumps to Germany via the Baltic Sea, is built, the European Union's most senior energy official said on Monday.

Maros Sefcovic, European Vice President for Energy, said the pipeline plans raised a lot of questions, including over its business case in light of the EU's own gas demand estimates.

"It would imply that we are going to build excessive capacity ... and which would make it economically very difficult to operate the Ukrainian transit route," Sefcovic told Reuters.

Gazprom (GAZP.MM) and its European partners agreed the project last year but many eastern European countries and the United States have said the pipeline could limit supply routes and the energy security of the EU, which gets a third of its gas from Russia.

They also argued it would affect Ukraine's efforts to reform its economy because Nord Stream 2 would sideline the country as a gas transit route, depriving it of billions of dollars in transit fees.

Gazprom's gas routes to Europe have become increasingly politicised following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and role in the Ukraine crisis.

Russia has long sought to bypass Ukraine as its main supply route to Europe partly because of pricing disputes. The EU, for its part, has been trying to reduce its reliance on Russian gas.

Sefcovic said the construction of Nord Stream 2 would raise doubts also over the long-term use of the existing Yamal pipeline, which delivers mainly Russian gas to Germany and Poland. Germany tried in January to reassure Poland the Yamal route was safe.

Facing down the critics, the Nord Stream-2 consortium, which includes E.ON (EONGn.DE), Wintershall (BASFn.DE), Shell (RDSa.L), OMV (OMVV.VI) and Engie (ENGIE.PA), has said the project is needed to plug a supply gap of around 140 billion cubic metres (bcm) by 2035 due to rising demand and falling domestic gas production in Europe.

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The EU executive's own estimates of how much gas it will need by 2030 - between 370 bcm to 450 bcm per year - have been criticised as too high by some analysts and environmental groups.

In response, Sefcovic said the European Commission was seeking additional expertise from the International Energy Agency and its own gas transmission operator, ENTSOG.

Sefcovic and other EU officials have also said they have yet to rule on whether the pipeline would run up against EU anti-trust rules.

Nord Stream 2 would double capacity along the existing Nord Stream 1 route under the Baltic Sea to 110 bcm per year.

Gazprom did not immediately respond to a Reuters' request to comment. The company has always said its gas is highly competitive in Europe.

(Writing by Alissa de Carbonnel, additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin. Editing by Jane Merriman)
* Denmark to pick either Boeing or Lockheed Martin jets - sources

By Erik Matzen and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen

COPENHAGEN, April 26 (Reuters) - U.S. defence giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing have stepped up their battle in Denmark to win a $5 billion order for combat jets which is due to be decided next month, with an advertising blitz in newspapers and on billboards by Boeing reflecting the importance they give to winning the deal.

The result of the Danish government's lengthy deliberations is expected to make waves around the global defence market, as several other nations also have to decide whether to replace their aged warplanes with Lockheed Martin Corp's brand new F-35 Lightnings or play safe with cheaper, older-generation planes such as Boeing's F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.

With so much at stake in terms of prestige, the bitter rivalry between the two has erupted into a public spat in Denmark as Boeing compares its rival's new aircraft to a scandal over the botched purchase of Italian trains a decade ago.

"The choice of fighter jets is not just about Denmark's defence. It's also about working from day one," Boeing has said in newspaper and billboard ads, in a clear reference to the F-35 which entered service last July for the U.S. Marine Corps but is still completing a development program which began in 2001.

The U.S. Air Force is slated to declare an initial squadron of F-35s ready for combat later this year.

In the ads a full-page photograph shows some of the defective trains that had yet to be fully developed at the time of order. Technical problems with the 85 trains, of which less than half are in use to date, ended up costing the Danish state hundreds of millions of dollars, causing a public outcry.

Towards the end of the campaign which started in March and peaked in April in newspapers, on outdoor billboards, radio spots and door-to-door distribution, Boeing had bought ads worth 9.65 million crowns ($1.5 million), excluding discounts, according to TNS Gallup Adfacts.

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But by reminding Danes of a past purchasing scandal, the ad campaign has raised hackles in some quarters over the use of such tactics but nevertheless has also sparked a public debate about the merits of investing in untried technology.

"We don't use such methods in Denmark," said one defence lawmaker who is involved in the decisionmaking process.

"Boeing ought to be careful not to be hit by its own boomerang, if we get disgusted by the company. Right now, Boeing is close to giving me this feeling," the person said in reaction to the ad campaign.

However, in the wider public - more accustomed to ads for organic cheese than fighter jets - the discussion quickly shifted from what type of plane should be purchased to whether Denmark should buy new warplanes at all.

Boeing has defended its advertising.

"The informational campaign was created firmly out of respect and understanding of the documented Danish acquisition process which has a phase of public debate," Tom Bell, the top sales executive for Boeing's defence business, told Reuters.

And Boeing executives are publicly bullish about their chances of winning the Danish order for up to 30 jets, but privately concede winning Denmark would be a long shot, making the ad campaign seem like a last-ditch effort.

"Winning Denmark is absolutely vital for Boeing which has limited firm export orders left for the (Super Hornet) and is desperate for business," said Francis Tusa, Editor of Defence Analysis.

Outside the traditional major arms purchasers in the Gulf, nations currently shopping for fighters include Belgium, Indonesia and Malaysia, while eastern Europe is looking for secondhand aircraft..

The United States is poised to approve two long-delayed sales of Boeing fighter sales to the Gulf including 28 Super Hornets worth $3 billion for Kuwait.

A separate but unfunded U.S. Navy requirement calls for another 12 jets, but Boeing remains keen to win new export orders to shore up future production for its fighters in St Louis.

For Lockheed Martin, losing the Danish order could dent market confidence in the F-35.

Denmark is one of eight original partners that helped fund development of the F-35 and flies Lockheed F-16 jets alongside Belgium, Norway and the Netherlands. Norway and the Netherlands have ordered F-35s and Belgium has expressed interest.

However, the $379 billion F-35 program has been plagued with cost overruns and delays, although U.S. officials say the program has met its cost and schedule targets since a major restructuring in 2010, and acquisition costs are now finally coming down.

Software issues and problems with a complex logistics system still pose challenges, according to a U.S. congressional report released this month, which said the lack of a back-up system could potentially ground the U.S. F-35 fleet.

Lockheed officials say they are confident that the new jet's superior data-processing and "fusing" capabilities, coupled with its ability to evade radar, will ultimately prevail over the older-generation Super Hornets.

A third contender in Denmark, the Eurofighter Typhoon made by Airbus Group, BAE Systems and Finmeccanica , officially remains on the shortlist, but Danish government sources say it is no longer being considered.

Eurofighter said it was confident of winning more orders after a recent deal for 28 planes in Kuwait.

(Additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris, Andrea Shalal in Washington; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
By George Georgiopoulos

ATHENS, April 26 (Reuters) - The Greek government is using cash surpluses deposited by public sector entities to pay its bills because delays on a bailout review have stopped funds from international lenders being disbursed, officials said on Tuesday.

Shut out of debt markets and with aid from its official lenders frozen, Greece has borrowed the cash that institutions such as schools, hospitals and utilities must deposit with the central bank if they do not immediately need it.

The government has used between roughly nine billion euros ($10 billion) and 10 billion through repurchase agreements since last year, most of which has been rolled over, officials said.

"The situation is not pleasant but not as dramatic as last year," said one government official, who declined to be named. "But the more time passes without concluding the review, we could find ourselves with our backs against the wall."

"The cash earned an annual 3.7 percent on average in the second half of last year and the return during the first half of 2016 is similar, better than what the entities would have been earning from commercial banks," a second official said.

A third bailout deal of up to 86 billion euros was agreed last summer but a review of compliance with the terms of the agreement was expected to be completed late last year and Athens is still scrambling to conclude those requirements.

"It has been a bumpy road since mid April but Greece can make it and not go bust until the end of May or early June by also using pension funds cash reserves and piling up state arrears if needed," a senior government official told Reuters.

Public entities, including parliament and the state manpower organisation (OAED), have deposited nearly 500 million euros with the central bank this month, the officials said.

As well as surplus cash that public entities that have not deposited at the Bank of Greece, there are a few billion euros that state pension funds have on deposit at commercial banks which could be tapped via repos, the officials said.

(Additional reporting by Lefteris Papadimas; Editing by Louise Ireland)
SALT LAKE CITY, UT--(Marketwired - Apr 26, 2016) - Inception Mining Inc. (OTCQB: IMII) ("Inception" or the "Company"), through its majority-owned subsidiary Clavo Rico Ltd., is pleased to announce the recent hiring of Mr. Carlos Calderon as the new General Manager of Honduran Operations.

Mr. Calderon has extensive mining experience spanning exploration, engineering, design, operations, and management of small and large mining projects, exploring for metal and non-metal materials in the United States and Latin America. He has degrees in engineering and mathematics, and has held numerous positions in the industry, from field engineer to vice president. Mr. Calderon's most recent position was that of General Manager of Minerales de Occidente, S.A. de C.V., in Copan, Honduras, a surface gold mine located in Western Honduras that regularly produces 70,000 ounces per year. His full CV is accessible on the Company's website: www.inceptionmining.com.

Mr. Calderon has extensive industry contacts may benefit the Company's operations. He has family in Honduras and, together with his wife, is looking forward to renewing friendships and being close to family.

With the addition of Mr. Calderon, the Company believes that it now has the team in place to expand business endeavors and embark on the open pit operations of the recently acquired properties.

Clavo Rico Ltd. is a majority-owned subsidiary, having positive revenue and significant resources. Its mining concessions include several historical underground operations dating back to the early Mayan and Spanish occupation. The operating entity is engaged in processing historical tailings ( > 3GPT) along with several open pit (3-6+ GPT) ore bodies, utilizing a new 650,000-ton membrane-lined leach system and ADR recovery plant.

About Inception Mining Inc.

We are a minerals resource company engaged in the production of precious metals. Our activities also include acquisition, exploration, and development of primarily gold related properties. Our primary target properties are those that have been the subject of historical exploration having significant supporting data.

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Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and is subject to the Safe Harbor created by those sections. This material contains statements about expected future events and/or financial results that are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements by definition involve risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Inception Mining Inc. to be materially different from the statements made herein. Specifically, forward-looking statements in this news release include statements with respect to the potential mineralization and geological merits of the Company properties. There can be no assurance statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from anticipated in such statements.

Inception Mining Inc. disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events except as required by applicable securities legislation.
LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - A man accused of leaking information exposing Luxembourg's tax deals with multinational companies only had access to the confidential documents because of a security glitch, a court heard on the opening day of the "LuxLeaks" trial on Tuesday. Antoine Deltour, a French citizen and former employee of accounting firm PwC, is accused of passing data on PwC clients to journalist Edouard Perrin for a French television broadcast made in 2012. Prosecutors say this data and material allegedly supplied by a second former PwC employee, Raphael Halet, was used in the 'LuxLeaks' revelations of November 2014 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The charges against the three Frenchmen range from violating secrecy laws to theft and IT fraud. Deltour's lawyer said his client did not set out to find the documents, but only came across them by chance. France's Finance Minister Michel Sapin expressed "solidarity" with Deltour, saying the 30-year-old was defending the public's interest. "It's thanks to him that we've been able to put an end to the opacity that prevented European countries from fully knowing the tax status of a number of large companies in Luxembourg," Sapin told lawmakers in the National Assembly. Sapin has instructed France's ambassador in Luxembourg to assist Deltour during his trial if needed. The LuxLeaks reports prompted accusations that Luxembourg had conspired with multinational companies to form tax arrangements that deprived other European Union states of revenue. The leaked documents showed that companies such as PepsiCo, AIG and Deutsche Bank secured deals from Luxembourg to slash their tax bills. The Grand Duchy says other countries have similar arrangements, and has offered to share details of the tax deals with other states. During Tuesday's hearing, a PwC expert said Deltour copied 45,000 pages of documents that he was able to access because of a glitch in the company's servers, which had since been fixed. "He found them while looking for training documents," the lawyer, Philippe Penning, told reporters. The trial, criticised by some as aiming to gag whistleblowers seeking to uncover corporate tax avoidance, attracted dozens of chanting protesters outside the courthouse. Deltour faces up to five years in prison and fines of 1.25 million euros (1 million pounds) if found guilty. "The message is to say, today citizens want more fiscal justice," said Frenchman Francois Thierry, wearing an "I support you Antoine" T-shirt. (Reporting by Michele Sinner and Miranda Alexander-Webber in Luxembourg, Yann Le Guernigou in Paris; writing by Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels; editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Mark Trevelyan)
Malawi's president has declared a state of national disaster after long periods of drought (AFP Photo/Aris Messinis)

Blantyre (Malawi) (AFP) - Malawi and Mozambique sounded alarm bells on Wednesday over worsening food shortages caused by severe drought as concerns grow over a hunger crisis spreading across much of southern Africa.

Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Zambia are also suffering food supply problems, while South Africa has said the recent drought was its worst in more than 100 years.

"I declare Malawi (in) a state of national disaster following prolonged dry spells during the 2015/16 agriculture season," President Peter Mutharika said in a statement.

"The projected drop in maize harvest is estimated at 12 percent from last year's output.

"More people will be food insecure and will require humanitarian relief assistance for the whole of the 2016/17 consumption year."

Neighbouring Mozambique issued a "red alert" because of drought conditions in the country's central and south regions affecting 1.5 million people.

The government released $9.5 million of emergency aid after 90 percent of crops were destroyed in some areas and thousands of cattle died from lack of water.

The World Food Programme said it was currently assisting nearly three million people in Malawi, with about 23 of 28 districts badly affected.

"The current drought situation in Malawi came on the back of a bad crop last year, due to flooding which affected parts of the country," WFP's southern Africa spokesman David Orr told AFP.

"The situation is quite dire and we believe the worst is still to come. It will take a long time before the situations improves. Any improvement in the next months would be negligible."

- Limited response -

In February, the WFP warned that Malawi was facing its worst food insecurity for a decade. The country has recently suffered flash floods in the north as well as drought.

The United Nations and aid groups in Mozambique have released a total of $15 million since the beginning of the crisis, Michel Le Pechoux of the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) which coordinates relief efforts, told AFP.

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"But the response is still very limited compared to the actual needs, which amount to about $200 million," he said, adding that central Mozambique was the worst-hit area.

Renewed conflict between government troops and the armed wing of main opposition party Renamo since January has also made delivery of aid difficult due to attacks on roads.

"Some drought-stricken districts are located in areas of military tensions and are almost inaccessible," Le Pechoux said.

In Zimbabwe, 2.8 million people -- more than a quarter of the rural population -- do not have enough to eat.

The WFP, which is providing assistance for about 730,000 Zimbabweans, has reported that casual agricultural labourers have no work and many children are missing school because of hunger.

Southern Africa endured a poor harvest last year combined with a strong El Nino weather phenomenon, which resulted in reduced rains across the region.

South Africa, which in the past has exported food to its regional neighbours, is to import maize after last year was the driest year in the country since records began in 1904.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Apr 26, 2016) - Mawson Resources Limited ("Mawson") or (the "Company") TSX:MAW)(MXR.F)(OTC PINK:MWSNF) provides an update on the final 8 drill holes (PAL0018-25) from the 16 hole, 3,386 metre winter drill program at the 100% owned Palokas gold project in Finland. Two hand-portable Energold Group EGD Series III rigs modified to meet environmental requirements and climate conditions were used for the drill program.

Key Points:

Palokas mineralization extended to north : PAL0019 discovered the down plunge extension of mineralization at Palokas, intersecting 2.9 metres @ 5.9 g/t gold from 176.7 metres, including 1.0 metre @ 16.7 g/t gold from 178.7 metres. Mineralization is hosted within a 40 metre thick chlorite-tourmaline-amphibole-pyrrhotite rock, and is the deepest discovery at Palokas to date.

Multiple mineralized zones defined : Mineralization in PAL0018 ( 1.0 metre @ 17.9 g/t gold from 172.0 metres) is hosted in altered sericitic calcsilicate-bearing albitites interpreted to be 50 metres lower in the stratigraphy than the Palokas mineralization.

Mineralized rocks drilled over 3.5 kilometres strike: Drill hole PAL0023 ( 3.0 metres @ 2.1 g/t gold from 84.4 metres) is significant as it is located 2 kilometres from Palokas, and is the most easterly hole drilled along the Palokas target horizon. The main Palokas mineralized position was found within a 100-metre thick hydrothermally altered talc-silicified-pyrrhotite-amphibole rock. The host sequence here is inverted, increasing both complexity and volume of potential host rock within the target area.

Multiple targets remain untested: A thin veneer of glacial soils that average 3-5 metres thick cover 99% of the area. In combination with the ubiquitous presence of gold mineralization in both drilling and surface sampling over a large area, many areas remain untested. These include: Rumajarvi, located 1,500 metres south of Palokas, where 68 boulders and subcrops >0.1 g/t gold ranged from 0.11 g/t gold to 3,870 g/t gold with an average of 101.4 g/t gold and median of 0.6 g/t gold. Two holes drilled at Rumajarvi failed to find the source of the boulder train. Joki, which was not tested during this drill campaign, where 13 boulders and outcrops >0.1 g/t gold ranged from 0.10 g/t gold to 2,871 g/t gold with an average of 518.5 g/t gold and median of 135.5 g/t gold. Boardwalk, which was not tested during this drill campaign, where 13 boulders and outcrops >0.1 g/t gold ranged from 0.18 g/t gold to 221 g/t gold with an average of 38.2g/t gold and median of 1.0 g/t gold.

The Finnish Nature Conservation Association Lapland District ("NGO") retracts their false accusations in their re-appeal to the Supreme Court after police investigation.

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Mr Hudson, President & CEO states, "We are pleased, after the hard work of our team over many years, to have completed a successful first full winter drilling program. We have discovered a large gold mineralized system, within an area of 100 square kilometres, of a type previously unrecognized in Finland. The new data received from this program allows us to move forward with confidence into the summer season, with a greater understanding of the three dimensional nature of this exciting project. This winter's drill program supports the large scale of the mineralized system at Palokas, now drilled over 3.6 kilometres, with multiple mineralized positions discovered. With the majority of the target area still untested, the project demands significantly more drilling to constrain and define further mineralization."

The winter drill program completed 16 holes for 3385.7 metres at the Hirvimaa and Palokas prospects plus one abandoned and one short test hole. Tables 1 and 2 include collar and best assay results to date from the winter drill program. The true thickness of mineralized intervals is interpreted to be approximately 90% of the sampled thickness. Plan maps of drilling and gold results are shown in Figures 1 and 2, with representative cross sections shown in Figures 3 to 7.

Although structural control is difficult to establish with minimal outcrop and limited drilling, it appears gold is controlled by an interplay between quartz veins, gold in fractures and isoclinally folded host rocks. Consequently, the exploration target may be more attenuated than previously interpreted, with the target size increased across multiple potential ore positions.

A summary of holes reported here includes:

Drill hole PAL0018 (Figure 3) was a single hole test on a section located 110 metres north of PAL0016 (8.4m @ 4.2 g/t Au in PAL0016 from 206.15 metres) and 250 metres south of the main Palokas mineralization. PAL0018 intersected a 110 metre thick altered package, which included the presence of visible gold at both 137.2 metres and 170.3 metres. Best results were 1.0 metres @ 1.0 g/t from 137.0 metres and 1.0 metre @ 17.9 g/t gold from 172 metres.

PAL0019 (Figure 4) drilled 2.9 metres @ 5.9 g/t gold from 176.7 metres, including 1.0 metre @ 16.7 g/t gold from 178.7 metres. This was a successful test of the downhole plunge of mineralization at Palokas, located 120 metres down dip from the earlier drilled PRAJ0114 (7.0 metres @ 7.2 g/t gold from 61.1 metres).

PAL0020 (Figure 5) was a single hole test on a section to test the Palokas stratigraphic position, located 1.1 kilometres south of PAL0016 (8.4m @ 4.2 g/t Au in PAL0016 from 206.15 metres). The hole commenced in a well-defined mafic rock, then passed through magnesium silicate-altered rocks, followed by calcsilicate-bearing albitites with amphibolite. Gold mineralization was not intersected, but the near-miss alteration style is interpreted to be favourable for targets in the near vicinity.

PAL0021 and PAL0022 (Figure 6) were drilled to test the Rumajarvi boulder field which contains 68 boulders and subcrops >0.1 g/t gold which range from 0.11 g/t gold to 3,870 g/t gold with an average of 101.4 g/t gold and median of 0.6 g/t gold. Although PAL0022 interested 1.2 metres @ 2.3 g/t gold, both holes failed to intersect the gold bearing host rocks and the source of the mineralized boulders remains to be discovered.

PAL0023 (Figure 7) is significant in an exploration sense as it is located 2 kilometres from Palokas, and is the most easterly hole drilled along the Palokas target horizon. The main Palokas mineralized position was found within a 100-metre thick hydrothermally altered talc-silicified-pyrrhotite-amphibole rock with the best result of 3.0 metres @ 2.1 g/t gold from 84.4 metres. In this case the host sequence is inverted, confirming the inferred polydeformed, open to tightly folded rocks. This increases the project complexity, but increases the volume of potential host rock within the target area. Zones of additional structural complexity, such as the interaction of fold hinges with brittle, gold-mineralizing fractures and veins provide excellent targets for the future.

PAL0024 was drilled to test a proposed westerly plunge to mineralization at Palokas. It failed to test the target.

PAL0025 was drilled to test a strong VTEM anomaly at South Hirvimaa. It remained in the hanging wall sequence and failed to test the target as it appears the conductor is dipping away from the drillhole.

The 2016 summer-autumn program, which will start in June 2016, will consist of:

Base of till drilling outside Natura 2000 areas to aid in targeting gold at both the Palokas and Rompas prospects (located 8 kilometres east) with a best drill result of 6 metres at 617g/t gold from 7 metres in drill hole ROM0011 which includes 1 metre at 3,540g/t gold from 11 metres depth;

Winkie drilling down to 100 metres depth will recommence from August 2016;

Field mapping within the newly defined target areas;

Continued baseline mapping of species, habitats and vegetation.

Larger scale drilling, subject to final permitting and when the ground freezes, from December 2016.

Mawson, in conjunction with all environmental authorities, ensured that all parts of the exploration programs were undertaken with minimal environmental impact. Baseline mapping of species, habitats and vegetation are undertaken during each summer and autumn. Mapping and identifying the nature values of the area ensures that threatened and endangered species are not negatively affected by exploration activities.

In other news, on August 24 2015, the Company announced that it requested a police investigation into certain accusations made by the Finnish Nature Conservation Association Lapland District ("NGO") in its appeal to Supreme Administrative Court on an earlier ruling made by the Regional Administrative Court in May 2015. The NGO made false claims that the Company had performed deep drilling inside Natura 2000 areas before permitting had been completed. After almost 6 months after filing the re-appeal and commencement of the police investigation, the NGO retracted their false accusations. Subsequently, the Company was informed by the Rovaniemi Police that the investigation was closed on April 07, 2016. The Company is pleased that the retraction was eventually provided. Unfortunately, Mawson has lost one year of research in the appeal process, and significant employment opportunities because of false allegations. While too late for this current legal process, Mawson also welcomes the Finnish Government's New Governmental Coalition Program, which limits access to the Supreme Administrative Court in environmental and construction matters.

Technical and Environmental Background

The qualified person for Mawson's Finnish projects, Mr Michael Hudson, President & CEO for Mawson and Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining Metallurgy has reviewed and verified the contents of this release.

Two Energold Group ("Energold) EGD Series III rigs which have been modified to meet environmental requirements and climate conditions were used for the drill program. Core diameter is NTW (56 mm) diameter core. Core recoveries were excellent and average close to 100% in fresh rock. After photographing and logging, core intervals averaging 1 metre in length for mineralized samples and 2 metres for barren samples were cut in half at the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) core facilities in Rovaniemi, Finland. The remaining half core is retained on site for verification and reference purposes. Analytical samples were transported by Mawson personnel or commercial transport from site to the CRS Limited facility in Kempele, Finland. Samples were prepared at Kempele and analyzed for gold at Raahe using the PAL1000 technique which involves grinding the sample in steel pots with abrasive media in the presence of cyanide, followed by measuring the gold in solution with flame AAS equipment. The QA/QC program of Mawson consists of the systematic insertion of certified standards of known gold content, and blanks at the within interpreted mineralized rock. In addition, CRS inserts a number of blanks and standards into the analytical process.

About Mawson Resources Limited (MAW.TO)(MXR.F)(OTC PINK:MWSNF)

Mawson Resources Limited is an exploration and development company. Mawson has distinguished itself as a leading Nordic Arctic exploration company with a focus on the flagship Rompas and Rajapalot gold projects in Finland.

On behalf of the Board,

Michael Hudson, President & CEO

Forward-Looking Statement

This news release contains forward-looking statements or forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). All statements herein, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. Although Mawson believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: aim, believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate, and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. Mawson cautions investors that any forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, capital and other costs varying significantly from estimates, receipt of shareholder approval of the Placement, successful completion of the Placement, timing and the successful completion of an initial mineral resource estimate at the Rompas-Rajapalot prospect in Finland, changes in world metal markets, changes in equity markets, planned drill programs and results varying from expectations, delays in obtaining results, equipment failure, unexpected geological conditions, local community relations, dealings with non-governmental organizations, delays in operations due to permit grants, environmental and safety risks, and other risks and uncertainties disclosed under the heading "Risk Factors" in Mawson's most recent Annual Information Form filed on www.sedar.com. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, Mawson disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise.

Table 2: Bulk weighted assay data from the Palokas Prospect for the Energold winter 2015/16 drill program A lower cut of 0.5 g/t over 2 metres was applied except hole PAL0013 where no lower cut was applied for 131.0-140.8m. Hole_id From (m) To (m) Width Au g/t Comments PAL0008 31.0 34.0 3.0 1.4 PAL0009 135.0 136.0 1.0 0.7 PAL0009 148.0 149.0 1.0 0.7 PAL0009 152.0 156.0 4.0 1.2 PAL0009 157.0 158.0 1.0 0.5 PAL0009 173.0 174.0 1.0 1.1 PAL0010 No significant mineralization PAL0011 Shallow test hole, no assays PAL0012 150.6 153.7 3.1 1.4 PAL0013 138.5 139.5 1.0 0.6 PAL0013 131.0 140.8 9.8 0.3 PAL0014 Abandoned, no assays PAL0015 No significant mineralization PAL0016 164.15 165.5 1.35 1.2 PAL0016 206.0 214.4 8.4 4.2 Including 3.4 metres @ 9.5 g/t gold from 211.0 metres PAL0017 No significant mineralization PAL0018 137 138 1.0 1.0 Visible gold @ 137.2 metres PAL0018 172 173 1.0 17.9 Visible gold @ 170.3 metres PAL0019 176.7 179.6 2.9 5.9 Including 1.0 metre @ 16.7g/t gold from 178.7 metres PAL0019 194 197 3.0 1.5 PAL0019 200 201.8 1.8 1.2 PAL0020 No significant mineralization - in footwall PAL0021 No significant mineralization PAL0022 16.6 17.8 1.2 2.3 PAL0023 84.4 87.4 3.0 2.1 PAL0024 No significant mineralization PAL0025 No significant mineralization

To view Figures 1-7, click the following links:
Alkis Konstantinidis | Reuters. Hardly any of the recent migrants arriving in Europe have been integrated in the labor market, according to recent figures.

Hardly any of the recent migrants arriving in Europe from war-torn areas such as Libya or Syria have been integrated in the labor market, according to Jacques van den Broek, chief executive of the Randstad Group.

In 2015, 1.3 million people sought asylum in Europe, according to Eurostat figures. The majority come from Syria, with Afghanistan and Iraq following closely behind. Germany received the highest number of asylum seekers; more than 476,000 applicants in 2015.

However, these migrants have yet to be processed so that they can seek work.

"It's a very lengthy procedure the procedure might last up to one and a half years even so it's very tough," Van den Broek, who heads the Dutch global human resources consulting firm, told CNBC on Tuesday. "I can't even give you a real feedback on the quality and employability of these people so it's really early days."

Europe is trying to curb the number of further asylum seekers. In the U.K., a campaign to accept 3,000 child refugees was voted down by the Conservative party on Monday.



And last month, the European Union made a controversial deal with Turkey to return migrants to the country if they had not made legitimate asylum requests. Over the weekend, European Council president Donald Tusk and German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited a refugee camp in Turkey, where Tusk praised the deal.



However, fewer than 0.1 percent of Syrians in Turkey currently stand to gain the right to work under Turkish labor laws, reported The Guardian newspaper.



Since the Vietnam War, the U.S. has resettled 3 million refugees, according to UNHCR.







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By Jack Kim and Lesley Wroughton SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States warned on Tuesday it would consider "other" options, which could include new sanctions or security steps, if North Korea continued nuclear and ballistic missile testing.South Korea's Yonhap news agency earlier said North Korea appeared to be preparing a test-launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile, after what the United States described as the "fiery, catastrophic" failure of a launch attempt this month. It is widely expected to conduct a fifth nuclear test soon, perhaps ahead of a congress of the ruling Workers Party congress in early May. President Barack Obama said the United States was working on defending itself and its allies against potential threats from North Korea, which he called an "erratic" country with an "irresponsible" leader. In a CBS interview that aired on Tuesday, Obama said the United States was spending a lot more time positioning its missile development systems to set up a shield "that can at least block the relatively low-level threats," posed by North Korea. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner urged North Korea to refrain from actions that destabilize the region and said Washington would consider "other" options if Pyongyang continued nuclear and missile testing. Toner noted that past steps had included sanctions and security measures, but declined to elaborate. "I think it's pretty clear that as North Korea continues to make decisions that we believe are counterproductive, that we've got to also continually look at what our options are in terms of response," he told a daily briefing. Asked what those options were, Toner added: "We don't want to announce anything before it's been fully formed and fully vetted." North Korea tested its fourth nuclear bomb on Jan. 6 and launched a long-range rocket on Feb. 7, prompting a significant tightening in United Nations and U.S. sanctions. It has conducted several missile tests since, including what it said was a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Saturday. On April 15, North Korea failed to launch what was likely a Musudan, a missile with a range of more than 3,000 km (1,800 miles), meaning that it could, if launched successfully, hit Japan and also, theoretically, the U.S. territory of Guam. Yonhap quoted an unnamed South Korean government official as saying there were indications North Korea might try to launch another of the missiles, which is not known to have been successfully flight-tested. South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun declined to confirm the Yonhap report but said North Korea's military would likely spend some time trying to fix the problem following the failed launch. North Korea's Foreign Ministry was quoted on Tuesday as saying that the country needed a "powerful nuclear deterrence" to counter U.S. hostility and threats. It said "nuclear threat and blackmail" would only prompt it to make "drastic progress in bolstering nuclear attack capabilities," state media said. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said he could not confirm reports that North Korea appeared to be preparing for another nuclear test. However, he said Washington would continue to "ramp up the pressure," including working with China, to persuade Pyongyang to curb its nuclear activities. North Korea, whose lone ally is China, routinely threatens to destroy South Korea and its major ally, the United States. The two Koreas remain technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, rather than a peace treaty. Obama said there "was no easy solution" to the North Korean threat. He said that while the United States "could destroy North Korea with our arsenals," there would not only be humanitarian costs, but also a potential impact on South Korea. Experts see North Korea's Musudan test as part of an effort to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the mainland United States. Obama said it was important to guard against such attacks. "They are erratic enough, their leader is personally irresponsible enough that we don't want them getting close" to obtaining such weapons, he said. The April 15 failure was seen as an embarrassing blow for its leader, Kim Jong Un, who has claimed several advances in weapons technology in recent months. North Korea said its submarine-launched ballistic missile test on Saturday was a "great success" that provided "one more means for powerful nuclear attack". South Korea on Tuesday described the test, which sent a missile travelling about 30 km (18 miles), as a partial success. Washington and Seoul began talks on possible deployment of a new missile-defence system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), after the latest North Korea nuclear and rocket tests. (Reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul; Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton, Susan Heavey, Alana Wise and David Brunnstrom in Washington and Dominic Evans in London; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and James Dalgleish)
A general view of a crude oil importing port in Qingdao, Shandong province, in this November 9, 2008 file photo. REUTERS/Stringer/Files

By Barani Krishnan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Crude oil prices hit 2016 highs on Tuesday on the back of a rally in the gasoline market and after an industry group reported a surprise draw in U.S. crude stockpiles.

Brent and U.S. crude's West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures finished regular trading about 3 percent higher, riding on the coattails of a gasoline rally that hit August highs after a series of refinery hikes.

In post-settlement trade, both benchmarks rose more than 4 percent after the American Petroleum Institute reported a drawdown of nearly 1.1 million barrels in U.S. crude inventories last week versus a 2.4 million-barrel build expected by analysts in a Reuters poll.

The API report is a precursor to official inventory data due on Wednesday from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

"There's a possibility we could see newer highs from here, notwithstanding the EIA data, as the market is really fired up on the idea of tightening supplies," said John Kilduff, partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital.

Brent crude futures finished up $1.26 at $45.74 a barrel. In post-settlement trade, it rose as much as $2.01 to a 2016 high of $46.49.

U.S. crude futures settled up $1.40 at $44.04. It gained $2.19 in after-hours trade to reach a year-to-date peak of $44.83.

Crude markets got off to a rousing start in the New York session as gasoline futures and gasoline refinery margins both surged from refinery outages, Venezuela buying and a reported drop in New York inventories.

"I think the market has become more optimistic on oil products," said Scott Shelton, broker and commodities specialist with ICAP in Durham, North California. "If refining margins stay strong, crude runs will be quite high and that will make the odds of a crude stock draws increase significantly."

Oil prices are headed for a fourth straight week of gains, with Brent on track to finish April 17 percent higher for its best monthly gain in a year, despite aborted plans by major producers to agree on an output freeze at a meeting in Qatar earlier this month.

Story continues

Tuesday's oil rally was also underpinned by a weaker dollar, which fell on expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will keep interest rates at existing levels. The dollar rallied earlier this year, weighing on oil, as investors braced for higher rates.

"For now, the line of least price resistance remains to the upside, and we will be reassessing this view in light of tomorrow's FOMC statement," said Jim Ritterbusch of Chicago-based oil market consultancy Ritterbusch & Associates.

(Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in LONDON and Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE; Editing by David Gregorio, Marguerita Choy and Jonathan Oatis)
Donald Trump

Pennsylvania is home to one of the quirkiest delegate systems on the Republican nominating schedule.

The state will be electing 54 delegates who are "unbound," in addition to the 17 bound delegates who must vote for the statewide winner on the first ballot. The 54 unbound delegates are free to vote for whomever they choose at the July convention.

Many have committed to vote for either GOP frontrunner Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, the Texas senator looking to secure the Republican nomination on a second ballot at the convention.

But many other potential delegates remain uncommitted or have pledged to vote along with how their congressional district or their state as a whole votes. Three unbound delegates will be elected in each of Pennsylvania's 18 congressional districts.

To show how volatile those pledges can be  they're not at all binding  take Mark Holt of the state's 10th District as an example.

On Monday, Holt  who previously told reporters, as well as Business Insider, that he leaned toward supporting Trump but favored the popular vote of his congressional district  came out in support of Cruz.

Here's what he said in an email to Business Insider explaining his process:

It has been reported that I support Mr. Trump, when I favored the [popular] vote of the people for my choice.

Then it was reported that I was uncommitted (made no choice) when I still favored the [popular] vote of the people.

Then the Trump people called me and told me they were going to endorse three candidates and I didn't make the cut !

An endorsement from these powerful political machines can make or break a campaign, and I just lost one by my favoring the [popular] option instead of the endorsement option. My bad.

[On] 4/22 The Cruz campaign was in town. They ask[ed] me to meet with the Senator. I did. We talked. I was impressed by him.

[On] 4/23 The Cruz campaign ask[ed] me to endorse Senator Cruz. I said Yes because he sold me the day before when we spoke.

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Also I have two platform concerns about Mr. Trump. One is his love of eminent domain.

The other is his mixed message on abortion and the right to life of unborn babies.

After serious consideration and many phone calls requesting me to support or endorse a candidate, I have concluded that Senator Cruz meets my expiations [sic] for a President. I admire both men but feel more comfortable with the Senator. Therefore as of 4/24/2016 12:00 pm I endorse Senator Cruz for President of The United States of America.

The voters want to know who each delegate will support to that end: I have picked Senator Cruz !

When voters head to the polls to cast ballots for the delegates of their choosing, they will be presented with a list of choices for their congressional district. But the preferences and pledges of the candidates will not be available.

The change of opinion from Holt, which happened over the course of just a couple days, also shows how the delegates, once elected, could change their minds a number of times in the three months before the July convention.

Based on recent projections, Pennsylvania's unbound delegates could make the difference in whether Trump lands the GOP nomination on the first ballot or is thwarted, opening up a second ballot and possibly more.

NOW WATCH: Ted Cruz and John Kasich are officially teaming up to stop Donald Trump





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(Adds quotes, background)

DUBAI, April 25 (Reuters) - Qatar Airways is speaking to Boeing to secure substitute aircraft after further problems were discovered with the Airbus A320neo, the airline's chief executive said on Monday.

The Gulf airline could walk away from between four and six aircraft orders that have yet to be delivered after problems affected the A320s hydraulics and software, Akbar al-Baker told reporters at a media roundtable in Dubai.

Baker criticised U.S engine maker Pratt & Whitney last month, saying the engines it supplied for the A320neo were inadequately tested for the high temperatures experienced in the Gulf region.

"They have indicated they will have all those fixes by the end of the year," Baker said of Airbus on Monday.

"We have talked to Airbus, they know very well that we're a very unhappy, very unhappy customer."

Baker said it could turn to the Boeing 737NG as a replacement, noting the U.S. aircraft maker was "trying to oblige and give us the aircraft that we require".

(Reporting by Matt Smith; Writing by David French; Editing by David Goodman and Mark Potter)
Donald Trump

"Once we commit, we lose our advantage."

Pennsylvania has one of the strangest delegate-allocation systems in the Republican-primary process.

Seventeen delegates are bound to the statewide winner. But those are the only of the state's 71 total delegates that will be allotted when the state votes Tuesday.

Another 54 people are elected by voters as "unbound" delegates, free to vote for whomever they want on the first ballot at the July convention. Those "free-agent" delegates could play a key role in whether GOP frontrunner Donald Trump clinches the Republican nomination on the first ballot of the convention.

The 54 are also in no way required to commit or pledge their support to any one candidate  or to how their congressional district or state votes. It's a system that leaves the door open to plenty of persuasion from the candidates.

Al Quaye, who's running for an unbound delegate slot out of Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district, put it best.

Quaye, an uncommitted delegate, told Business Insider: "Once we commit, we lose our advantage."

That mindset is certainly going to be in play as Pennsylvanians elect delegates on Tuesday. Many have come out in support of Trump or Ted Cruz, a Texas senator. But the vast majority have either remained uncommitted or are pledging to vote with their congressional district, which some believe is an iffy promise at best.

"I've seen interviews where people say they'll go for whoever their [district] goes for  but you and I both know that's something that could change pretty quickly," Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College, told Business Insider. "And the other thing is I don't know how many voters are actually going to know that."

When voters turn out to cast ballots for the unbound delegates, they will simply be presented with a list of names at the polls. Whether a candidate is pledged to Trump, Cruz, or Kasich, or is uncommitted or pledged to voting along with their congressional district or the state will not be presented.

Story continues

Like Madonna, John Kennedy, an associate professor of political science at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, told Business Insider the candidates "might be masking it" when they say they're going to vote along with their congressional district or state.

Louis Valente, of the 12th district, feels the same way. He said he's given at least six speeches proclaiming his willingness to vote along with the voters in his district, should he represent it in Cleveland.

"On the first ballot and every ballot," he told Business Insider.

But he's as skeptical as anyone of the other uncommitted delegates.

"I was going to run and strictly stay with what the 12th congressional district wanted," Valente said. "And I'm afraid these other people are saying that, and many of them are not necessarily living up to that."

NOW WATCH: OBAMA: This was my worst mistake as president





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Saudi Arabia's reliance on the oil industry may come to an end, thanks to a new project dubbed "Vision 2030."

Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is being tasked with diversifying the country's economy and ridding its "addiction to oil." As part of the plan, the country will operate "without any dependence on oil" by 2020 and become a "global player."

According to The Washington Post, the oil industry accounted for around 90 percent of the government's income in recent years. However, the recent plunge in oil prices from over $100 a barrel in 2014 to the current $40 per barrel level has resulted in a $98 billion deficit last year.

Related Link: What's Goldman Saying About Oil Majors And Refiners?

The Washington Post added that the Vision 2030 plan has been approved by the country's cabinet and the top priority of the plan consists of the sale of a small stake of less than 5 percent in the state-owned Saudi Aramco.

Saudi Aramco could be valued at up to $2.5 trillion, according to Saudi officials. The proceeds from a share offering would be used to jump-start a $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund.

Other initiatives of the Vision 2030 include a revised "green card" program, increasing female participation in the workforce, building a domestic arms industry and investing in tourism related projects.

See more from Benzinga

 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Saudi Arabia confirmed on Monday that it planned to sell a stake of its state oil giant Saudi Aramco which was expected to be valued at more than $2 trillion.

The sale would be less than 5 percent of the company and would be via an initial public offering (IPO), Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in a television interview with the Al Arabiya News Channel.

He also said there were plans for Aramco, or to give it its full name the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, to be transformed into a holding company with an elected board, according to Reuters, with subsidiaries of the firm also to be sold by IPO.

"The 5 percent is from the parent company," Prince Mohammed told Al Arabiya in the interview.

"The kingdom can live in 2020 without any dependence on oil  The Saudi addiction to oil has disturbed development of many sectors in past years," he added.

"We plan to set up a $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund... part of its assets will come from the sale of a small part of Aramco."

The announcement came as Saudi Arabia's government unveiled a long-term economic blueprint for life in a low-oil-price world.

Titled "Saudi Vision 2030," the plan includes regulatory, budget and policy changes that will be implemented over the next 15 years in the hope of making the kingdom less reliant on crude.

It aims to build a "prosperous and sustainable economic future" for the kingdom, according to the press release. It also gave details on privatization and the creation of what it called the "largest sovereign wealth fund in the world."

"We hope citizens will work together to achieve Saudi Vision 2030," King Salman said in a brief statement, according to the Al Arabiya broadcaster.



As the world's largest oil exporter, the bulk of Riyadh's state revenues come from energy exports. But with crude prices extending their declines  the per-barrel price of global benchmark Brent is down 60 percent since the rout first started in June 2014. The country logged a record $98 billion budget deficit for 2015.

Story continues

Officials are already taking action to diversify revenue sources before existing state coffers get depleted. This month, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that ownership of the Aramco and some other national assets would be transferred to a public fund that invests cash from the country's oil and gas operations into other sectors.



Aramco does expect the oil supply-demand balance to bring a recovery in crude prices by the end of 2016.



"(This is) what we hope for ... by the end of the year, as we have always said, prices will start adjusting upward because the current market price is not sustainable for the long term," Aramco CEO Amin Nasser told Reuters.

Analysis from McKinsey, before the announcement Monday, suggested the kingdom could double gross domestic product (GDP) growth from 3.4 percent in 2015 and create as many as six million jobs by 2030 by focusing on eight non-oil sectors, including manufacturing, mining, tourism, healthcare and finance.

 Reuters and CNBC's Nyshka Chandran contributed to this article.





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By Kate, Kelland, and and Stephanie LONDON/GENEVA, (Reuters) - Amid rising concern over a deadly outbreak of yellow fever spreading from Angola, the World Health Organization on Tuesday urged travellers to the African country to heed its warnings and get vaccinated. At least 258 people have been killed and there have been around 1,975 suspected cases of the mosquito-borne disease since an epidemic erupted in December 2015. It has already grown to become the worst outbreak in decades. Yellow fever is transmitted by the same mosquitoes that spread the Zika and dengue viruses, although it is a far more serious disease with death rates as high as 75 percent in severe cases requiring admission to hospital. Angola's outbreak has already spread to other countries in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and at least 11 cases of yellow fever have been imported into China in people travelling from Angola. "Cases of yellow fever linked to this outbreak have been detected in other countries of Africa and Asia," WHO director-general Margaret Chan said in a statement. "We are particularly concerned that large urban areas are at risk and we strongly urge all travellers to Angola to ensure they are vaccinated against yellow fever and carry a valid certificate." The WHO's regional office for Africa said last week that yellow fever in people who travelled from Angola has been reported in China (11 cases), DRC (10 cases with 1 in Kinshasa) and Kenya (2 cases). It said three further cases have been reported in Uganda, but these patients had no history of travel to Angola. The WHO "is working with neighbouring countries such as the DRC, Namibia and Zambia to bolster cross-border surveillance with Angola and information sharing to prevent and reduce the spread of infection", it said. Jack Woodall, a yellow fever expert who formerly worked for the WHO and the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, said he is worried the outbreak could spread rapidly along a major trucking route from DRC to Uganda's capital Kampala. "Surveillance of this trade route should be intensified and vaccination of people living along it should be top priority," he said. A spokesman for the WHO in Geneva said a nationwide vaccination programme that began in Angola in February has reached 7 million people. But experts are warning the world's stocks of yellow fever vaccines are under sever pressure form the outbreak, with some calling for a radical switch in strategy to use a tenth of the normal dose and aim to cover more people. (Additional reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Dominic Evans)
Madrid (AFP) - Spain geared up for fresh elections Tuesday as the king put in motion a process to dissolve parliament after months of failed coalition talks that have left the country in political limbo.

Following talks with party leaders, King Felipe VI concluded there was no prime ministerial candidate possible more than four months after inconclusive December elections, triggering a constitutional mechanism that dissolves parliament and calls new polls.

"His Majesty the King... has established that there is no candidate with the necessary support," the palace said in a statement.

Bar any last-minute surprise turn-of-events, the new elections will be announced on May 3.

Under an official timeframe, they are then expected to take place on June 26 -- the first time a general election will have to be repeated since Spain returned to democracy following the death of long-time dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

- Hopes dashed -

December's vote upended Spain's traditional two-party system as voters weary of austerity, corruption and unemployment flocked to new groupings.

While historic, the result left Spain in uncharted waters as the country has never had a coalition government since its transition to democracy.

Parties were forced to go to the negotiating table, but unused to these types of talks, they were unable to reach a deal as the deadline approached.

So the king launched a third and last round of consultations with party leaders on Monday and Tuesday, after which he had been expected to make the announcement.

In a surprise move that gave Spaniards a brief glimmer of hope, a small regional grouping came up with a last-ditch proposal to form a new government for the eurozone's fourth-largest economy.

Party leaders examined it, but as the day wore on they either rejected it or accused others of torpedoing the document.

The final nail in the coffin came when the main opposition Socialists (PSOE) -- who had been tasked by the king with forming a government following December's election -- said they had given up.

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"We are heading to new elections," PSOE chief Pedro Sanchez told reporters after meeting the king.

The Socialists had plunged into negotiations after acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose conservative Popular Party came first in December but lost its majority, failed to drum up enough support.

Sanchez managed to strike a deal on a government with centrist upstart Ciudadanos -- which came fourth in the election -- but the two parties had too few seats in parliament to win a vote of confidence.

Sanchez then tried to enlist the support of far-left party Podemos, whose 65 parliamentary seats would have got it through, but failed -- prompting the current political paralysis.

- Socialists blame Podemos -

Sanchez placed much of the blame for the failure to form a government on Podemos, at a press conference that sounded like a public goodbye -- he thanked the media for their work, along with his allies.

Podemos, led by the charismatic Pablo Iglesias, was born just over two years ago from the Indignados anti-austerity movement. It has made no secret of its desire to supplant the Socialists as Spain's main left-wing grouping.

"Mr Iglesias never wanted a Socialist prime minister," Sanchez said, accusing him of having "closed the door" to a reformist government and offered a "lifeline" to Rajoy and the conservatives.

At an earlier press conference, Iglesias accused Sanchez of saying "no" to everything.

Research polls have suggested that fresh elections will do little to change the December outcome.

Rajoy's conservatives could gain ground, while Podemos and its allies may lose a little as some of the five million people who voted for the party believe it should have worked with the Socialists.

But parties are very likely to have to sit down for new coalition talks after the fresh election -- meaning yet another headache for Spain.
A man walks past a Toshiba Corp logo displayed on one of its television sets in Tokyo, Japan, November 26, 2015. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/Files

By Makiko Yamazaki

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Toshiba Corp said on Tuesday that it booked an impairment charge of $2.3 billion for the past financial year on U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse, a much-anticipated move to address lingering doubts over its book-keeping.

The 260 billion yen writedown is a reversal of Toshiba's long-time refusal to mark down the 330 billion yen goodwill value of Westinghouse despite a deterioration in the nuclear business since the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Toshiba bought Westinghouse in 2006 for $5.4 billion.

Investors have said that concerns over the value of the business have been a major reason behind the lack of recovery in Toshiba's share price following a $1.3 billion accounting scandal last year.

The shares closed at 241.9 yen on Tuesday, still worth less than half of their value before the company first disclosed cases of accounting irregularities around a year ago.

The laptops-to-nuclear conglomerate said the reversal was prompted by its weaker debt-financing abilities for nuclear projects after the scandal led to a business overhaul and a slew of credit-rating downgrades.

Chief Executive Masashi Muromachi, however, dismissed suggestions that the nuclear division was in trouble. Many countries have frozen nuclear energy expansion plans in recent years, especially in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.

"Regardless of the writedown, the nuclear business is progressing as planned," he said at a press conference.

Despite the Westinghouse charge, Toshiba raised its earnings estimates for the year ended in March as it booked a pretax profit of 590 billion yen from the sale of a medical equipment division to Canon Inc using an unusual method to get cash before the deal gained regulatory approval..

It now forecasts a net loss of 470 billion yen, smaller than a 710 billion yen loss estimated earlier. The company will release its results on May 12.

Toshiba is also in final talks to replace Muromachi in June. Muromachi took over the company last July after his predecessor and a slew of other top executives resigned for their roles in the scandal.

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"The nomination committee is currently discussing the CEO selection," Muromachi said at the press conference. "It will make a final decision probably after the Golden Week holiday (that ends early May)."

A source has told Reuters that Senior Executive Vice President Satoshi Tsunakawa was a leading candidate, noting that he was not embroiled in the scandal.

Tsunakawa is credited for having increased earnings at the medical equipment unit.

($1 = 110.9900 yen)

(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Simon Cameron-Moore)
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela has proposed that non-OPEC oil producers attend the group's June meeting in Vienna to continue "dialogue and coordination," according to a letter from the South American country's oil minister to the Qatari energy minister, who is also the current OPEC president. A deal to freeze oil output by OPEC and non-OPEC producers fell apart in Doha this month. Price hawk Venezuela had been pushing for a deal to boost prices and is now trying to revive negotiations. In a letter to Qatar's Mohammed al-Sada dated April 21, Del Pino floats the idea that major oil producers who attended the Doha conference attend the Vienna OPEC Ministerial Conference as observers. "We formally require of your kind support, as President of OPEC Conference, to activate mechanisms for consultations among all OPEC Member Countries," reads the letter, seen by Reuters. Venezuelan Oil Minister Eulogio Del Pino told Reuters on Tuesday that "we've formally proposed to continue Doha discussions in Vienna." Overcoming tensions between OPEC's de facto leader Saudi Arabia and Iran will be a tall order, however. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia surprised markets by saying it wanted all members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to take part in the planned output freeze, including Iran, which was absent from the talks. Tehran has refused to stabilise production, seeking to regain market share after sanctions on it were lifted. (Reporting by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Virgin America Inc. VA is set to release first-quarter 2016 results after the market closes on Apr 28.

Last quarter, the companys earnings came in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement.

Factors at Play this Quarter

Virgin America reported a significant rise in air traffic for Mar 2016. Traffic, which is measured in revenue passenger miles (RPMs), was up 14.6% on a year-over-year basis to 977.46 million. Moreover, capacity (or available seat miles/ASMs) soared 15.1% to 1.16 billion.

Moreover, onboard passengers were up 14.9%. In the first three months of the year, traffic climbed 15.9% on a 15.8% capacity expansion. Load factor remained flat at 80.1%.

On the flip side, Virgin America has been witnessing declining operating revenue per available seat mile (RASM  a key measure of unit revenue), like many other airline players. In fact, the carrier projects a 35% drop in its first-quarter RASM.

We note that Alaska Air Group ALK has won the bidding war against JetBlue Airways Corporation JBLU to take over Virgin America. We expect investor focus to remain on further updates related to this burning issue.

Earnings Whispers

Our proven model does not conclusively show that Trinity is likely to beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or at least 3 (Hold) for this to happen. Unfortunately, this is not the case here, as elaborated below.

Zacks ESP: Trinity Industries has an Earnings ESP of 0.00%. This is because both the Most Accurate estimate and Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at 36 cents.

Zacks Rank: Trinity carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), which increases the predictive power of ESP. However, the companys 0.00% ESP makes earnings prediction difficult.

A Stock to Consider

Here is a company you may want to consider, as our model shows that it has the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter.

Story continues

Copa Holdings SA CPA, with an Earnings ESP of +8.70% and a Zacks Rank #3.

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By Meredith Davis (Reuters) - Whirlpool Corp reported lower-than-expected first-quarter earnings on Tuesday as cost and capacity reductions were offset by soft demand in emerging markets and unfavorable currency exchange rates, the company said. In Latin America, weak demand in Brazil and the negative impact of currency exchange pulled sales down to $705 million, from about $900 million a year ago, the company said. Many U.S.-based manufacturers' sales have been hit by weakness in Brazil's currency and the country's unstable political environment. "There is some concern about European market loss," Gabelli analyst Alvaro Lacayo said. Overall industry shipments were down about 1 percent in Europe, but Whirlpool saw slightly steeper losses, the Whirlpool said. During a conference call with Wall Street analysts Whirlpool's COO Marc Bitzer pointed to Russia and the United Kingdom as specific drags on Whirlpool's European sales. Currency weakness, base pricing increases, and a safety recall, which is a temporary issue, led to weak sales in the United Kingdom. In Russia, sales were soft in the first quarter, and the volatile market will be difficult to predict, Bitzer said. Sales in North America, Whirlpool's biggest market, rose about 4 percent to $2.4 billion. Whirlpool expects to continue to regain U.S. market share throughout the second quarter, Bitzer said. Whirlpool reported net earnings of $150 million (103 million pounds), or $1.92 per share, down from $191 million, or $2.38 per share, a year earlier. Whirlpool said first-quarter ongoing business earnings rose to $2.63 per share from $2.14 in the same period last year. Analysts had expected $2.68. The company said it still expects full-year 2016 ongoing business earnings per share at $14 to $14.75. Ongoing business earnings per share exclude special items such as restructuring charges or other one-time fees that do not reflect the company's ongoing operations. Net sales fell to $4.6 billion from $4.8 billion a year earlier. Whirlpool said it expects full-year 2016 industry shipments in North America to rise by 5 percent to 6 percent, an increased range from its previous forecast of 5 percent. Brazil industry shipments are forecast to fall 10 percent, Europe is seen flat to up 2 percent and Asia flat, all unchanged from previous forecasts. Whirlpool shares were down about 3.9 percent to $178.75. (Reporting by Meredith Davis; Editing by Bill Trott and James Dalgleish)
One stock that might be an intriguing choice for investors right now is Kansas City Southern KSU. This is because this security in the Transportation-Railspace is seeing solid earnings estimate revision activity, and is in great company from a Zacks Industry Rank perspective.

This is important because, often times, a rising tide will lift all boats in an industry, as there can be broad trends taking place in a segment that are boosting securities across the board. This is arguably taking place in the Transportation-Rail space as it currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 26 out of more than 250 industries, suggesting it is well-positioned from this perspective, especially when compared to other segments out there.

Meanwhile, Kansas City is actually looking pretty good on its own too. The firm has seen solid earnings estimate revision activity over the past month, suggesting analysts are becoming a bit more bullish on the firms prospects in both the short and long term.

In fact, over the past month, current quarter estimates have risen from $1.07 per share to $1.09 per share, while current year estimates have risen from $4.57 per share to $4.63 per share. The company currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), which is also a favorable signal.

So, if you are looking for a decent pick in a strong industry, consider Kansas City. Not only is its industry currently in the top third, but it is seeing solid estimate revisions as of late, suggesting it could be a very interesting choice for investors seeking a name in this great industry segment.

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The United States Oil Fund (USO) , which tracks West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures, is up nearly 15% over the past three months while the United States Brent Oil Fund (BNO) , which tracks Brent crude oil futures, has surged more than 28% over that period.

Those showings might just be enough for some investors to think the worst is over for oil prices. Some analysts appear inclined to agree. Still, there are plenty of factors to consider before coming to the conclusion that oil and the related exchange traded products are completely out of the woods. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia and Iran failed to find common ground during the oil freeze talks in Doha, Qatar.

Saudi Arabia declined to push forward with a supply limit at current levels if Iran continued to ramp up supply  Iran has been steadily increasing exports to pre-sanction levels. Add to that, some members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), including Iran, are considering boosting production to make up for lost revenue.

Iran, which is just coming off a years of a sanctions and embargo, has been left out of the oil market and is just beginning to ramp up production for global sale. The Middle East country maintained that it will not contribute to any output freeze until its crude exports hit pre-sanction levels.

Kuwait oil workers are protesting cuts in pay and benefits after the Middle Eastern oil exporter diminished subsidies and government handouts in response to the plunge in crude prices. Virendra Chauhan, an oil analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd., projects that the strike could last 10 to 15 days  the government set up a joint committee to negotiate with the union over 10 days.

Consequently, the output loss from Kuwait could exceed the global surplus that brought oil prices to a 12-year low in February.

The fact that crude futures didnt sell off after major oil producers failed to reach an agreement to cap production last week is another sign the commodity has bottomed, RBC Capital Markets Helima Croft said Monday, reports CNBC.

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Rebounding Brent crude prices have also boosted an array of single-country ETFs, including the Market Vectors Russia ETF (RSX) and the iShares MSCI Russia Capped Index Fund (ERUS) .

As for Iran, a deputy oil minister for the country said output could return to pre-sanctions levels by June, Reuters reported. That time frame aligns with a scheduled OPEC meeting, potentially positioning Iran to participate in a freeze deal, according to CNBC.

Want more news on Alternative ETFs? Visit: www.etftrends.com/alts

United States Oil Fund

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The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product.
Georgetown University students

The New York Times editorial board published a blunt condemnation of the role that slavery played in the formation of Georgetown University.

In the editorial, published in Saturday's edition, the board said Georgetown has a moral imperative to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves it sold to plantations in the South.

The board wrote:

In 1838, the Jesuits running the college that became Georgetown sold 272 African-American men, women and children into a hellish life on sugar plantations in the South to finance the colleges continued operation. On that fact, there is no dispute. [...]

Georgetown is morally obligated to adopt restorative measures, which should clearly include a scholarship fund for the descendants of those who were sold to save the institution.

The Times put this number at 12,000 to 15,000 descendants of the 272 enslaved Americans, citing figures from the nonprofit Georgetown Memory Project's statistical model.

The editorial adds to the chorus of calls for the acknowledgement and rectification of the history of institutional racism at colleges across the nation.

In March, Harvard Law School agreed to remove its official seal, following months of protests urging its elimination because of its ties to a slave owner.

The Royall family's coat of arms was adopted as the seal to honor slave owner Isaac Royall Jr.'s gift to Harvard upon his death in 1781, which allowed the formation of Harvard Law School.

And in November, the editorial board of The New York Times, wrote that Princeton University should remove Woodrow Wilson's name from buildings, rescinding the honor it "bestowed decades ago on an unrepentant racist."

In the case of Georgetown, The Times argued that there is an even stronger argument for reparations, as the school's ties to slavery are irrefutable.

"At Georgetown, slavery and scholarship were inextricably linked," the board wrote. "When the school fell into trouble, the sale of the African-American men, women and children staved off its ruin."

Story continues

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GENEVA - Switzerland became on Monday a ratifying adherent of the China-sponsored Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), making the confederation the 37th country to complete the membership process.

Having submitted its ratification document, Switzerland will now be able to fully participate on the board of governors and have access to the bank's board of directors.

The country will also be entitled to have its say in the institution building process of the bank.

The confederation's stake in the bank's $100 billion capital stock will amount to a total of $706,4 million, to be paid in five annual installments.

Switzerland's voting power (0.8745 percent) will yield more clout than its financial input through the country's basic and founding member votes.

The Swiss Federal Council has nominated federal councillors Johann N. Schneider-Ammann and Didier Burkhalter in the capacity of governor and alternate governor of the bank.
Charge laid after Pride flag burned during annual LGBTQ celebration at UBC





VANCOUVER  A charge of mischief under $5,000 has been laid following the burning of a rainbow Pride flag at the University of British Columbia.

Court documents show Brooklyn Marie Fink was charged last Monday in connection with the Feb. 6 incident at the Point Grey campus.

Fink is slated to appear in provincial court in Richmond on Tuesday.

The flag burning sparked outrage in February, during the universitys annual OUTweek celebrating gender and sexual diversity.

University officials condemned the vandalism as an act of hate violating the schools deeply held values of equity, inclusion and respect.

Concern for participants safety prompted OUTweek organizers to cancel a march just days after the burning, but other events went ahead as planned and no further violence occurred.





After reading this I was PISSED to no end. Here is my bitch...... Its okay for immigrants to burn the Canadian Flag and its viewed as freedom of speech... when a Gay Pride flag is burned... Its an act of Mischief, hate.... WTF.... Talk about double standards. I don't agree with this one bit. All too often we let these things snowball when one person practices their RIGHT to freedom of speech, They are charged for being open about their beliefs. I guess its okay for immigrants to burn the flag of the country that accepted them but now if anyone else has a problem... We have to keep it to oneself. Just the way I see it. Feel free to share your thoughts. Don't shoot the messenger...
but you cant take the 3rd world out a person.Free Axe body spray for everyone!!!Police say Kual Ashweel, 18, was one of four youths who drove around in a stolen car at night, demanding phones and cash from people who were sometimes attacked with a baton. The alleged crimes  five within two hours on April 10  took place in Southbank and Richmond.The group allegedly asked one victim for help, before telling him: Brother, stop. Give me your phone and money otherwise Ill kill you.The man was chased back to his car, hit with a baton and grabbed by the throat before handing over his phone, wallet and banking passwords, court documents show.mo
Forty days after rising from the dead, the Bible records that Jesus ascended into heaven. Catholics celebrate this day by going to church on Ascension Thursday and attending Mass.

The day of celebrating the Ascension depends on where you live. In Nebraska, the Ascension is celebrated on Thursday, May 5. It is one of six holy days of obligation in the United States.

Jesus ascent into heaven is fascinating to me. St. Luke says that Jesus lifted up his hands and blessed his disciples. And while he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him (Lk 24).

Imagine this scene. Imagine being there and worshipping him. How glorious and profound a moment must this have been! Jesus left earth to be our advocate in heaven. There, he shows his wounds from his passion and death to his Fatherand oursand pleads for mercy for us.

I remember my first year of preaching as an ordained deacon and the homily I prepared for Mass on Ascension Thursday. It remains a special day to me. Encounter the adventure of Jesus love for you by prayerfully celebrating the Ascension next week.
KINGSTON, Okla.  A Conestoga High School graduate informed scientists from across the United States about his research on coyotes this month at a major academic conference.

Jay Bryant participated in the 49th annual meeting of the Southwestern Association of Parasitologists April 14-16. The conference took place at the University of Oklahoma Biological Station on Lake Texoma in Kingston, Okla. Lake Texoma is the 12th-largest lake in the United States. It is located on the Red River and straddles the border of Oklahoma and Texas.

Bryant and fellow Peru State College student Whitni Redman delivered a presentation about their research with parasites that live in coyotes. The research project was entitled Gastrointestinal Helminthes of Coyotes (Canis latrans) from Southeast Nebraska and Shenandoah Area of Iowa. Bryant and Redman worked with Peru State Assistant Professor of Biology Dr. Gul Ahmad on their project.

The Southwestern Association of Parasitologists was formed in 1967 to promote parasitological research and teaching. Bryant and other students were able to network with various scientists and leaders in parasitology fields at this years conference.

Bryant is a Deans List student at Peru State and has been involved in multiple science-based projects and courses. He is the current president of the Peru State Science Club.
Church of the Holy Spirit parishioners and St. John the Baptist School officials honored longtime Plattsmouth residents Charles and Irene Warga for their dedication to faith, family and community April 23 during the annual dinner auction.

It is with extreme gratitude and thanks that we honor Charlie and Irenes spiritual life achievements, information about them states. They have attended and supported all of our annual Spring Benefit Dinners. Their love and contributions to our school are many as seen by the numerous plaques under the Crucifixes in our (St. Johns) classrooms. They truly believe that God should be first above all else, and are most thankful to God for their faith, family heritage and community  their most treasured possessions.

Catholic from birth, Charlie and Irene instilled their faith in their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren over the years.

Their children Steve, Mary Joe, Tom and Joe graduated from St. Johns school and married in the Catholic Church. Their 12 grandchildren either graduated or attended St. Johns. Over the past 30 years, Irene often took her grandchildren to and from school.

There is a great sense of pride for Charlie and Irene that all 12 grandchildren were baptized, received first communion and penance, and were confirmed at Church of the Holy Spirit, information on the Wargas stated.

Of their seven great-grandchildren, two who are school-aged attend St. Johns.

Including their own, their childrens, grandchildrens and great-grandchildrens education, there are more than 170 years of combined Catholic education in their family  and counting, information states.

Charlie started Warga Sales and Service appliance business on the farm and then, after marrying Irene in 1957, operated the business out of their home.

In 1962, he opened Warga Realty and served as broker and appraiser. Forming Platte Broadcasting Company, Inc., he built radio station KOTD AM in 1970 and KOTD FM in 1993.

Always active in the community, Charlie is a past president of Plattsmouth Chamber of Commerce, a former Jaycee member and past resident, Plattsmouth Planning Commission chairman, Rotary Club member and past president, and Plattsmouth Eagles Club member. He served on the Plattsmouth Industrial Development Committee, is a Knight of the4 Realm and was crowned King of Kornland in 1996. He served on Midlands Community Hospital Board of Trustees when the hospital was built. He is also a member of the national, state and Omaha Board of Realtors, and belongs to the National and State Broadcasters Association.

In the parish community, Charlie has served on the Parish Council and Finance Committee. He also volunteers for a Holy Hour of Adoration.

He was an usher at Mass and is a member of Knights of Columbus, the information states.

When a decision was made to build a new church and a grade school, Charlie suggested 18th Street as an ideal location.

Before there was Catholic radio, KOTD broadcasted the Rosary daily and partnered with Plattsmouth churches for a daily 1-2 minute devotional talk, information states.

Irene has proved her dedication to the Catholic faith and her many times over. She attends daily Mass, has a Holy Hour of Adoration, prays constant rosaries for those in need, serves at funeral dinners, helps prepare for the fish frys and sets the tables for meals served by the catering group.

Shes been involved in the PCCW and Stewardship Committee. She served as a lector at Mass and makes phone calls to arrange delivery of communion to home-bound parishioners.

Family birthdays, baptisms and first communions are also important to her as well as confirmation and wedding anniversaries. She takes Mother Teresas advice to heart: Its not so much to be successful but faithful.
Got Mail?

By Congressman Jeff Fortenberry

At my last town hall meeting in Bellevue, we had a robust discussion about the challenges facing America. A big surprise came afterward. A constituent told me he had received the invitation to the meeting that same day. Although the invitation had been sent in a timely manner, most people in the community saw it when they returned home from workafter the event. I found the whole thing quite embarrassing.

Fortunately, through social media, email, and other forms of communication, a reasonable crowd attended the town hall. However, a similar problem occurred to a friend of mine, who stopped me to tell me about his own event, complaining that his invitations had never been received even though they had been mailed well in advance. I hear stories like this over and over again.

For the most part, my encounters with the United States Postal Service (USPS) in Nebraska, on my personal time or through my office, have been quite good. I have always found persons with the post office eager to help, professional, and kind. Unfortunately, something has gone wrong with the process of late. Prescription drugs are late, bill payments are late, and personal correspondence is late. One person told me about the delay in receiving their heart medication, forcing them to seek pharmacy help until their mail-order prescription arrives. The complaints keep coming. The disruption is real, along with the long term negative impact on the USPS.

I suspect the root cause of the problem has been the consolidation of mail processing in Omaha. Several local plants have closed. Even a letter going across Lincoln now has to go through Omaha first. According to postal delivery standards, first class letters, packages and bulk mail dropped off in the communities of Lincoln, Norfolk, Columbus, Bellevue and Nebraska City should be delivered in two to three days. In some cases, it is taking five to ten days. There are similar delays with first class mail in Platte and Madison counties as well. Years of declining mail volume likely triggered the changes that caused these disruptions. While I shared my concerns with the Omaha processing facility in 2015, the situation has not improved, despite a subsequent letter to the Postmaster General in Washington.

I have requested that the USPS Inspector General intervene and analyze the problems with the mail system in Nebraska. The goal is not to play the typical Washington blame game but to fix troubling mail mishaps. Not conforming to delivery standards could make the USPS less competitive, further reducing the customer base of the postal service. You deserve the highest level of service and my hope is to help the post office retain the reputation it has earned.

The USPS has been under financial stress for many years due to a variety of factors. Tension exists between the necessary movement toward efficiency and consolidation, the declining use of services, and the constitutional dictate that the USPS deliver mail across the country. One problem for us is that rural communities can become the easiest target for post office closure. But in many of these places, post offices are not only hubs to send and receive mailthey are reinforcement centers of American society. The USPS has enacted some reforms, for example embedding post offices in retail structures. Rethinking government with an entrepreneurial spirit aimed at facilitating social vibrancy could help post offices co-join with other community services.

By consolidating processing plants in Omaha to cut costs, the postal services reputation has suffered through a deteriorating service model. Until this year, I rarely received complaints about the mail. Nebraskans value the postal service, and the postal service personnel I know reflect a genuine professionalism and spirit of public service. However, our state deserves a postal service undiminished by utility considerations that damage mail delivery standards. Since post offices are often centers of American community life, there is a balance between retaining the connection to community while enhancing operating efficiencies.

Write me a letter and tell me what you think!
The republican campaign trail took a succinct turn through Fremont Monday afternoon as Heidi Cruz swept through the area, stopping for a short  practically unannounced  meet and greet session at the popular Main Street Restaurant, Js Steakhouse.

Heidi, the wife of Republican presidential hopeful, Ted Cruz arrived in Fremont after a similar event in Omaha. For a brief 15 minutes, Cruz spoke to about 25 area Ted Cruz supporters, presenting her husbands campaign platform and how the aspirations and core values of that platform coincide closely with the goals and ideals of Nebraska citizens.

Shortly before her presentation, Cruz offered a few words on her experiences thus far along the campaign trail.

Weve been traveling the country for just over a year now and its been really terrific to meet so many fellow American and to realize that so many people that youve never met  all have the same values, Cruz said.

She further emphasized, the joy and significance that meeting new people during the campaign has played for her and her husband.

This is a people business, she added.

She pointed out however, running a campaign can also be characterized by various difficulties. As the nightly news illustrates, it can be a trail of arduous ups and downs.

But for Cruz the difficulties come from a more genuine place that remains focused on the purpose of the campaign process.

The thing that can be tough for campaigns can be running a consistent strategy all the way through, and Ted did an amazing job of bringing together talent  people who wanted to do this for the cause of the voters, not for Ted, not for money, but to win an election and to get Washington and those we elect representing the will of the people again, she said.

She pointed to the field of candidates that started out as 17 individuals. Her husband has, and continues to, persevere and remain consistent in his message.

Various Fremont and other Nebraska residents echoed some of those ideas. Brad Beam, a volunteer for the Ted Cruz campaign from Lincoln, who also served as a Ted Cruz volunteer four years ago when Ted campaigned for U.S. Senate in Texas.

I feel strong about Ted Cruz, Beam stated, citing his observations that the republican candidate represents very principled and conservative values, values that Beam feels are representative of many Nebraska communities, like Fremont.

Cruz echoed those observations about her husbands candidacy.

(Ted) is a conservative republican who has a proven record of doing the things that hes running on, she said, pointing out that some campaigns are guided by talking points; in other words, to garner support, and ultimately win the vote, candidates say what they need, or what people want to hear..

In contrast, Cruz accentuated that her husband runs a campaign with sincerity and authenticity, Ted is going to run exactly as who he is  and thats a wonderful refreshing thing that we probably havent seen since Ronald Reagan.

She went on to list several accomplishments Ted achieved with that authenticity and consistency of character. Some of those accomplishments include: a proven record on defending constitutional freedom of speech and religious liberty in Texas; he pulled together 31 states to support 2nd Amendment rights; hes argued U.S. sovereignty and partaken in several other leadership exploits that make people trust him.

Cruz highlighted three primary issues that her husband hopes to carry forth if he achieves presidency, all issues to which Fremont citizens can relate. Those issues include bringing jobs back to the economy, protecting constitutional liberties and lastly, keeping the country safe.

We must defeat radical Islamic terrorism, she stated concisely.

Shelly Peterson, a Fremont resident believes that Cruzs husband embodies the type of person that can address and overcome the obstacles related to those primary issues. Peterson pointed out that she believes Donald Trump is too liberal and John Kasich is a moderate. She believes that Cruz better exemplifies the core values, integrity and character of Fremont and Nebraska residents.

(Ted Cruz) is the only real conservative  hes someone who will uphold our constitution, Peterson said.

Cruzs charitable description of the Fremont community and its people played a large part in the campaigns decision to visit the area.

This is a wonderful town to come to that a lot of people (running for office) dont get the chance to see, she explained. And we want to send the message to voters all across the state that Nebraskans are important to us.

Finally, Cruz conveyed the importance of education to both her and Ted and how highly they regard the institution.

Ted and I have a real burden for education in this country and ensuring that every child has the opportunity for equality in education, she said.

Breaking it down further, Cruz indicated that, as First Lady, school choice would be front and center in her agenda. She said it is the civil rights issue of our time particularly in regards to those who lack the opportunity, or are separated from the access to good education. She explained that opportunity for good education can result in the cultivating of generations of good leadership.

In addition to Fremont Cruzs visit to Nebraska will include Omaha, Lincoln and Norfolk.
A former Midland University student-athlete pleaded guilty and was found guilty of attempting to distribute cocaine Monday morning in Dodge County District Court.

Tyler M. Calder, 20, of Omaha pleaded guilty to a single count of being in possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver  cocaine, a Class II felony.

Calder faces a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison, and a minimum of one year in prison.

As part of a plea agreement, Calder had additional charges of conspiracy with intent to deliver cocaine, conspiracy with intent to deliver LSD, possession of marijuana less than an ounce and possession of drug paraphernalia dropped.

Calder was arrested March 16 after an investigation led by the III CORPS Drug Task Force and the Fremont Police Department led to the discovery that the defendant was distributing narcotics.

Court records show that Calder was contacted by a law enforcement official who was staging as a potential buyer through a series of text messages and phone calls and a meet was scheduled.

Officers responded to a location near Midland Universitys campus where contact was made with Calder.

Records show that 8.32 grams of cocaine was found inside of his vehicle, along with several other narcotics.

During a bond review, Calders bond was reduced from $300,000 with a 10-percent option $15,000 with a 10-percent option.

Calders defense attorney made the case that other than two speeding tickets, Calders record was previously clean prior to his current charge.

In terms of recidivism, danger to the public and flight risk, I dont see much risk in this case, his attorney said.

Calder plans to apply for drug court, and if he is accepted and completes the multiple-year program, the cocaine charge would be expunged from his record.

Judge Geoffrey Hall ordered a pre-sentence investigation and scheduled sentencing for 9 a.m. June 13.

In other District Court News:

*Taylor Syvertsen, 22, from California, pleaded not guilty to being in possession of marijuana with intent to deliver and being in possession of drug paraphernalia. Syvertsen was arrested in March following an investigation led by the III CORPS Drug Task force in collaboration with the Fremont Police Department. A status hearing is scheduled at 9 a.m. June 6.

*Jeromy Henrichson, 24, of Fremont pleaded not guilty to being in possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver  methamphetamine, and being in possession of a deadly weapon by a prohibited person. Henrichson has a status hearing scheduled at 9 a.m. June 6.

*Denise M. Gardner, of Fremont, was sentenced to 30 months of intensive supervised probation, moral reconation therapy and 120 hours of community sentence after being found guilty of distributing a controlled substance  alprazolam.
Lillian Grace Emma Hasemann was born Aug. 28, 1926, on the family farm in Dodge County, near Scribner to Henry Arnold and Lilly Frieda (Klahn) Hasemann and was baptized and confirmed into the Lutheran faith. She graduated from Scribner High School in 1946. Lillian continued living with her parents in Scribner as a caregiver and companion to her mother after Lillians fathers death. She moved to Fremont where she worked briefly as a caregiver. Lillian moved to St. Josephs Retirement Community in the 1990s where she was a smiling sentinel in the lobby for over 15 years. She will be remembered for her lively conversations to all who entered St. Joesphs and Premier Estates.
Around 1,000 people have staged a rare public protest the Kazakh city of Atyrau, rallying against the government's decision to sell land in auctions.

The protest in the central Isatai-Makhambet Square on April 24 came as public fears in the city have grown that changes in the Land Code could allow sales of land to foreigners, though the government has said this will not happen.

Senior city and regional officials arrived at the scene and sought to disperse the rally by addressing the crowd and saying the Land Code did not threaten public interests. They also said that the rally was unsanctioned and protesters must disperse.

Organizers' request for official permission to stage the rally had previously been denied.

Protesters did not immediately leave and remained in the square for several hours amid the heavy presence of both uniformed and plainclothes police, though authorities did not use force to disperse the rally.

The oil region's governor, Nurlan Nogaev, told the crowd that he would relay the demonstrators' concerns to lawmakers and the government in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana.

WATCH: In the Kazakh city of Atyrau, around 1,000 people staged a rare public protest to denounce a government decision to sell land in auctions.

The amendments to the Land Code are set to take effect on July 1. They will allow the government to sell land to joint ventures, as long they are controlled by Kazakh residents.

Kazakhstan continues to bar land sales to foreigners, but the amendments will extend the maximum term of lease to foreigners from 15 years to 25 years.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev, who has led the country for more than two decades, has kept a tight lid on dissent during his reign over the country, which is the second-largest exporter of hydrocarbons in the former Soviet Union after Russia.

Slumping oil prices, however, have triggered a slide in the country's currency, sparking public protests over the past year both in Astana and the Central Asian nation's economic hub and largest city, Almaty.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Kazakh Service and Reuters
Pakistani police have arrested six people suspected of being involved in the killing of a Sikh official.

Authorities also are denying a Pakistani Taliban claim of responsibility for the April 22 murder of Sardar Suran Singh, saying they think a rival politician within the Sikh community hired assassins to carrying out the killing.

Singh, a provincial adviser on minority affairs in Pakistans northwestern Pakhtunkhwa Province, was shot dead on April 22 as he was heading to his home.

Azad Khan, police chief of the Malakand District where the shooting took place, said on April 25 that rival Sikh politician Baldev Kumar was among those in police custody.

Khan said Kumar is suspected of paying about $10,000 to have Singh killed.

Based on reporting by AP and Dawn
At least 23 people have died and dozens of others have become sick in central Pakistan after eating sweets that police suspect were tainted with pesticides.

Pakistani officials say the wave of deaths began when Umar Hayat, a resident of the Karor Lal Esan area in Punjab Province, bought baked sweets on April 17 to distribute to friends and family after the birth of his grandson.

Ten people who ate the sweets died the same day.

By April 25, authorities said 13 more people who became ill had died in hospitals and another 52 were still being treated.

The dead include the newborn boys father and seven of his uncles.

A senior police official in the area, Rameez Bukhari, said three people have been arrested in the case -- two brothers who run the bakery and a worker there.

Authorities suspect the worker may have inadvertently added pesticide to the sweet mix.

Based on reporting by AFP and Dawn
The French call this a salad; we call it dinner. Granted, we took some liberties with the traditional salad, adding potatoes to make it heartier.

Use a sturdy lettuce with slightly bitter greens, like frisee or romaine. Play off the crisp bacon, creamy eggs and warm potatoes to create a delicious meal.

The salad is popular throughout France, particularly in the small eateries, known as bouchons, in Lyons, a city in the Rhone-Alps region

Key to the salad is the poached egg. You can use an egg poacher, of course, but if you dont have one, go free-style.

Bring a pot of salted water barely to a boil. Crack the eggs one at a time into a small cup and slide the egg gently into the water. The freshest eggs work best here, as their whites will hold together better.

Cook the eggs for 2 or 3 minutes, then use a slotted spoon to remove from the water.

Salade Lyonnaise

Servings: 4

3 bacon slices

2 russet potatoes, cut into -inch cubes

2 leeks (white part only), sliced

3 tablespoons olive oil

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground black pepper

4 cups frisee or curly endive

4 poached eggs (cooked about 2 minutes)

Shaved Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (optional)

1. Cook bacon in a large, nonstick skillet over medium heat until done, about 5 minutes. Remove bacon, reserving fat. Add potatoes to the pan; cook 5 minutes. Add leeks and continue cooking until potatoes are done, about 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

2. Combine oil, vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper in a small bowl; whisk well.

3. Toss frisee with dressing. Place on serving plates. Top each serving with potatoes, egg, crumbled bacon and cheese, if using.

Recipe by Laraine Perri
DES MOINES  A last-second plan to address perceived school funding inequities by allowing the Davenport school district to use its cash reserves for one year has been included in a budget bill under consideration by state lawmakers.

The plan would permit Davenport schools to use their cash reserves for one year to add budget spending up to the maximum per-pupil allowed in other school districts across the state. The district would have to replenish that reserve fund in the next fiscal year.

Davenport superintendent Arthur Tate said the proposal offers no help at all.

Since the bill requires that reserves used in that way have to be paid back eventually out of the general fund, the only effect is to make me legal for one more year, Tate said in an emailed response to the Des Moines Bureau. It does not address the moral imperative to make every student worth the same in Iowa.

Davenport school board president Ralph Johanson did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

The proposal split Scott County legislators along party lines during a sometimes tense House floor debate.

Democrats decried it as a shell game.

This is not a solution. It does not give them any more spending authority. It does not give them any more resources. It punishes them for bringing an issue to the state Legislature on funding inequity, said Rep. Cindy Winckler, D-Davenport.

Rep. Phyllis Thede, D-Bettendorf, said she preferred a proposal made earlier in the year that gave schools below the states top per-pupil spending authority to use their cash reserves over three years.

School districts are asking for our help on this inequity piece. Theyre asking for us to do something responsible. This is not responsible, Thede said of the one-year proposal debated Monday.

Rep. Ross Paustian, R-Walcott, implored his Democratic colleagues to support the proposal, which he said allows Davenport schools to address its budget issues for one year without raising property taxes. He said

This is what we come up with now, Paustian said. And I do want to work with you (Rep. Winckler) next year to find a permanent solution.  This is just a one-year deal.

Leaders in the Davenport school district seek to close a budget hole by using its cash reserves, which is not permitted by law. The district is constrained by law to spend less per student than other districts; the disparity reaches as much as $175 per student.

Tate and the school board have pledged to spend $2.7 million from the districts cash reserves in the 2017-2018 school year, which would place them in violation of state law.

The one-year spending proposal was included in the Legislatures standing appropriations bill, which is headed for negotiations between leaders in the Republican-led House and Democratic-led Senate as state lawmakers inch close to completing their work for 2016.
MASON CITY  The Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors will contribute to keeping a Music Man sculpture in Mason City.

The board unanimously agreed Tuesday morning to provide $500 to clean, protect and move 76 Trombones to its new home.

Some sculptures head out; `76 Trombones' remains MASON CITY  Several sculptures were removed from downtown Mason City Thursday, en route to 

A number of donations were received by the sculpture committee, Jack Leaman said. I am, of course, pleased that it will stay right here in River City.

Leaman led the charge, raising $15,000 to purchase the sculpture and keep it in Mason City. He has permission from the board of The Music Man Square to place it in a planter at the west end of the square.

Efforts continue to save '76 Trombones' sculpture MASON CITY  There is a scene in The Music Man in which Professor Harold Hill tells young 

The reason I like that very much is as you come up Highway 65 and take that diagonal over onto Delaware Avenue, that statue is going to be right there in the front, he said.

The sculpture is being cleaned and spray coated with a protective clear coat before it will be displayed again.

Supervisor Jay Urdahl expressed his support for the cause.

I think youve got a great location there, Urdahl said. You have something to highlight the west end.
THOMPSON  A Minnesota man faces multiple felony charges after a burglary at a rural Thompson residence.

Juan Vasquez Jr., 39, Bricelyn, Minnesota, will be arraigned May 10 in Winnebago County District Court on charges of first-degree theft and first-degree criminal mischief, both Class C felonies; third-degree burglary, a Class D felony; and trespassing, a serious misdemeanor.

Vasquez entered a home on 460th Street near Thompson on March 31 and stole $20,000 worth of property and committed $50,000 in damage to property and objects inside the residence, according to the Winnebago County Sheriffs Office.

The stolen items were found at his residence during a search warrant April 10, authorities say.

Vasquez was arrested by the Freeborn County Sheriffs Office April 14 after a joint investigation by that department and the Winnebago County Sheriffs Office.

He was transported to the Winnebago County Jail April 16.
MITCHELL  A North Iowa man has pleaded not guilty to first-degree kidnapping and other charges after allegedly injuring a woman while holding her against her will at a Mitchell residence in March.

Nicholas Lenz, 23, Mitchell, is scheduled to have his case tried June 22 in Mitchell County District Court.

According to the criminal complaint filed by the Mitchell County Sheriffs Office, Lenz confined the woman March 5 and 6 by using zip ties and packaging tape.

While the woman was confined Lenz punched her several times in the face and chest, causing injuries that required surgery, the complaint said.

First-degree kidnapping is a Class A felony. If convicted, Lenz faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Lenz also pleaded not guilty in a written arraignment Tuesday to two counts of willful injury, Class C felonies; two counts of first-degree theft, Class C felonies; three counts of third-degree burglary, Class D felonies; and one count each of third-degree theft and operating a motor vehicle without the owners consent, both aggravated misdemeanors.

Lenz, who investigators say left Beje Clark Residential Center in Mason City on Feb. 26, was found sleeping on a couch at a Mitchell residence around 6:30 a.m. March 7, according to authorities.

He reportedly admitted to law enforcement a revolver in his possession was stolen.

He allegedly entered a vehicle that did not belong to him in an attempt to escape law enforcement.

A woman found during Lenzs arrest was transported to a local hospital. She was later transferred to a Minnesota hospital for additional treatment.

Some of the charges against Lenz stem from burglaries and thefts authorities say he committed at a rural St. Ansgar residence and Sportsmans Bar and Grill in St. Ansgar March 6, as well as a burglary at Gerbs Bar in Stacyville at 1:30 a.m. March 7.

Letitia Turner has been appointed to defend Lenz, who remains in the Mitchell County Jail on $50,000 cash bond.
OSAGE  A sentencing to determine the adult fate of an Osage juvenile found guilty of second-degree murder in the 2012 shooting death of his mother is set for May 6 in Mitchell County District Court.

Noah Crooks, who turns 18 in July, was placed at the State Training School in Eldora after a jury found him guilty in 2013 because he received a youthful offender deferred sentence.

Under Iowa law those who receive this deferred sentence are to have a hearing in district court before their 18th birthday to determine whether they should be discharged or continue to be under the supervision of the court after their 18th birthday.

Incarceration is one of the options that can be considered.

The maximum sentence for second-degree murder under Iowa law is 50 years in prison.

Crooks was 13 when he shot his mother, Gretchen, with a semi-automatic rifle in their home in March 2012.

His trial was moved from Mitchell County to Wright County on a change of venue.

Crooks was charged with first-degree murder and assault with intent to commit sexual abuse. The jury found him guilty of second-degree murder and not guilty of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse.

During the trial the defense contended Crooks suffered from intermittent explosive disorder, which is characterized by periods of extreme rage and violence.
MASON CITY | The Kiwanis Builders Club will hold its second annual fundraiser Saturday, May 7.

Fifth and sixth-grade students from Lincoln Intermediate will be putting on games and holding a bake sale to raise money for Family Connections.

The organization, based out of Mercy Medical Center, provides parenting support services for pregnant clients and young families.

Admission is free and open to the public, but donations are encouraged. Supplies needed include baby bottles, size newborn to 5T clothing and educational toys.

The fundraiser is 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Roller City, 600 Second St. N.W., in Mason City.

For more information, call 641-422-5994.
Drive out in the country these spring nights and youre likely to see bright lights in many fields. Its UFOS. No, not the flying kind. Rather, unusually busy farm operators.

Its planting season, and the weather, although a bit wet here and there, has been nearly ideal for farmers to get their seeds planted. That often means some around-the-clock work for the farmers and the folks who help make their operations go.

But non-stop farming doesnt come without some risk. Farmers are always cautioned about not getting over-fatigued because that can lead to mistakes. And those mistakes can be tragic, the kind we never want to write about.

According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, about 500 Iowans report injuries from farm machinery, tractors and falls on the farm every year.

The DPH offers several suggestions to farmers to help minimize risks. Theyre nothing new but theyre well worth repeating:

Review equipment manuals to become more familiar with seasonal equipment.

Assess conditions and adjust machinery accordingly.

Perform routine maintenance.

Survey fields for other problems. Mark stumps, large stones or other obstacles you might not see otherwise, especially at night.

Develop a professional attitude toward safety; dont rely on good luck.

And to make sure motorists see you, check that all of your lights are working and that slow-moving vehicle signs are attached.

Motorists also have to be aware that farm equipment may show up where and when you might not expect it. The DPH has tips for motorists as well:

Give full attention to the task of driving and be alert for slow-moving vehicles. Do not text and drive.

Put additional space between your vehicle and those ahead. At this time of the year, the sun can be blinding to drivers during sunrise and sunset. The added space helps you safely maneuver if there is a sudden stop, turn or a slow-moving vehicle ahead.

Be patient and do not assume the equipment operator can move aside to let you pass. The shoulder may not be able to support a heavy farm vehicle.

Slow down as soon as you see the triangular-shaped red and fluorescent orange slow-moving vehicle emblem.

No question about it, a car-combine collision will always favor the combine, so attention is Job 1 behind the wheel no matter what sort of vehicle youre operating.

Heres to safe planting season that will lead to another bountiful harvest. Our farmers are off to a terrific start as they work to do what they do better than anyone  provide food for the world.
DENVER, April 25, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- An analysis of nearly 35,000 online reviews of doctors nationwide has found that customer service  not physicians medical expertise and clinical skill  is the overwhelming reason patients complain about their healthcare experiences on the Internet.



The study published in the current issue of the Journal of Medical Practice Management reveals that only 1 in 25 patients rating their healthcare providers with two stars or fewer is unhappy with his or her physical examination, diagnosis, treatment, surgery or health outcome.

The other 96 percent of patient complaints cite poor communications, disorganization and excessive delays in seeing a physician as the cause for dissatisfaction.

The nearly unanimous consensus is that in terms of impact on patient satisfaction, the waiting room trumps the exam room, said Ron Harman King, co-author of the JMPM article and CEO of Vanguard Communications, a marketing and public relations firm for specialty medical practices.

Our study uncovered a torrent of patient allegations of doctors running behind schedule, excessive waiting time to see a provider, billing problems, indifferent staff, and doctors bedside manners, King said. Yet hardly anyone had a beef with the quality of healthcare received.

The absence of dissatisfaction with doctor skills per se means practices should be able to improve online reviews comparatively easily, King added. Generally, its far simpler to fix problems at the front desk or physician scheduling than to deal with allegations of inadequate medical skills. Of course, this requires a commitment from doctors to stick to schedules, allowing for only occasional urgencies that interrupt a physicians day.

Researchers for the study developed customized software to analyze online reviews of doctors, medical practices, clinics and hospitals coast to coast. The software identified and classified millions of words patients used in describing their experiences.

Additionally, the software identified the most common phrases associated with each star-level rating, as reviewers are generally able to rate their experiences on a scale of one to five stars.

While online patient reviews cause handwringing among healthcare professionals, doctors generally fare well in this medium: 3 of 5 reviewers in the study (61 percent) gave their doctors five stars and accounted for 69 percent of verbiage in all reviews. Only about 1 in 3 (32 percent) gave ratings of one or two stars.

Forty percent of the five-star reviews complimented doctors on their bedside manners, while 28 percent complimented the staff in clinics and hospitals.

Among the unhappiest patients, 53 percent cite communications frustrations, using descriptions such as to get an appointment and I was told that

Co-authoring the study were King; Jonathan Stanley, Vanguard technology director; and Neil Baum, M.D., a New Orleans urologist and author of nine books on medical practice management and marketing. More details available at VanguardCommunications.net/patient-complaints.
English Danish

Struer, 2016-04-26 08:00 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Company Announcement no. 15.17

Bang Olufsen has appointed Henrik Clausen as new CEO with effect from 1 July 2016. Henrik Clausen replaces Tue Mantoni who some time ago initiated a dialogue with the Board of Directors about his long term commitment as CEO once certain important projects had been completed.

Henrik Clausen (52) comes from the Telenor group where he was CEO of the Danish business from 2005-10 and CEO of the listed Malaysian DiGi from 2010-14. Since 2014, Henrik has been executive vice president for strategy and digital for the Telenor globally; and advisor to the group CEO. Henrik has lived in Asia for the last 6 years and will be relocating to Denmark when he joins Bang & Olufsen on 1 July. Henrik holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering and an MBA from INSEAD.

Tue Mantoni, who became CEO in March 2011, steps down when Henrik Clausen takes over and will remain available for a transition phase.

Chairman of the Board of Directors Ole Andersen: We look forward to welcoming Henrik Clausen. I am confident that he has the international leadership experience required to take Bang & Olufsen to the next level. I want to thank Tue Mantoni for his contributions to Bang & Olufsen. Tue initiated a dialogue about his long term commitment with the Board of Directors some time ago. Following the completion of a number of important projects Tue will now step down as CEO.

Henrik Clausen: Bang & Olufsen is an iconic brand, with state-of-the-art quality products and a unique heritage. I look very much forward to joining the organization and working with the team to further exploit the global potential.

Tue Mantoni: Bang & Olufsen is a great company, and I believe a lot in its future. I have no plans of continuing my life as a top executive for now. My future plans include a strong wish for more flexibility, permitting me to devote more time to a number of exciting start-up projects, as well as to a handful of board positions in Denmark and abroad.

Ole Andersen

Chairman of the Board

For further information, please contact:

Investors: Claus Hjmark Jensen, tel. +45 9684 1251

Press: Jan Helleskov, tel. +45 5164 5375
DGAP-News: Dialog Semiconductor Plc. / Key word(s): Miscellaneous/Product Launch Dialog Semiconductor Plc.: Dialog Semiconductor Smart Lighting Dual-Dim(TM) LED Driver Provides Single-Chip TRIAC and Digital Dimming (news with additional features) 26.04.2016 / 08:00 The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The iW3690 driver IC bridges the gap between traditional wall dimmers and the latest digital solutions accelerating smart lighting penetration in a market which is forecast to be worth 58 billion USD annually by 2020 London, United Kingdom - April 26, 2016 - Dialog Semiconductor plc (FWB:DLG), a provider of highly integrated power management, AC/DC power conversion, solid state lighting (SSL) and Bluetooth(R) low energy technology, today announced the iW3690, a revolutionary driver IC for LED smart lighting that combines digital control (I2C) with the company's advanced phase-cut TRIAC dimming technology. For the first time, a single chip solution provides Smart LED luminaires the ability to dim using digital commands, including those sent wirelessly, while working concurrently with traditional TRIAC wall dimmers. Suitable for applications up to 25W, the IC's Dual-Dim technology enables dimming from 100% to 1% without flicker or shimmer. The driver IC works with any wireless protocol including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and ZigBee. Optimal wireless connectivity is made cost effective and easy using Dialog's SmartBond(TM) DA14580 Bluetooth low energy System-on-Chip (SoC) to create a high-performance wireless smart dimming platform with the minimum number of external components and the lowest system bill of materials (BOM). The iW3690 enables digital link dimming and remote on/off at any AC phase conduction angle. It employs resonant control and features 0.95 power factor (PF), less than 20% total harmonic distortion (THD) and 85% typical efficiency, comfortably meeting DesignLights Consortium(TM) (DLC) requirements. The device automatically protects against over-temperature conditions, LED open and short circuits, AC line over-voltage, and output over-current. "Until now, designers were forced to compromise on legacy dimmer control in order to provide users with digital smart lighting control. Combining support for legacy analog dimmers with a digital interface in a single unifying IC offers designers of LED luminaires the most cost-effective and easy-to-implement control solution for smart lighting," said Davin Lee, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Dialog's Power Conversion Business Group. "Combining our leadership positon in innovative LED driver ICs and Bluetooth low energy SoCs enables Dialog to provide optimal interfacing and best-in-class standby power; an important factor given that smart lighting must be always-on in order to receive wireless commands." The iW3690 is sampling now and will be available in production quantities this quarter. Dialog's Dual-Dim controllers and Bluetooth solutions are being demonstrated at 2016 Lightfair International (LFI), April 26 - 28 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. - ENDS - NOTES Market forecast from Transparency Market Research: Smart Lighting Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 - 2020. The DesignLights Consortium(TM) is a trade organization that brings stakeholders together to define and promote leading edge, high quality, high efficiency commercial lighting. Dialog, the Dialog logo, Dual-Dim(TM) and SmartBond(TM) are trademarks of Dialog Semiconductor plc or its subsidiaries. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners. (c) Copyright 2016 Dialog Semiconductor. All rights reserved. Company Contact: Lauren Ofstedahl Dialog Semiconductor Phone: +1 (408) 845 8518 lauren.ofstedahl@diasemi.com Web: www.dialog-semiconductor.com Twitter: @DialogSemi About Dialog Semiconductor Dialog Semiconductor provides highly integrated standard (ASSP) and custom (ASIC) mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs), optimized for smartphone, computing, IoT, LED Solid State Lighting (SSL) and smart home applications. Dialog brings decades of experience to the rapid development of ICs while providing flexible and dynamic support, world-class innovation and the assurance of dealing with an established business partner. With world-class manufacturing partners, Dialog operates a fabless business model and is a socially responsible employer pursuing many programs to benefit the employees, community, other stakeholders and the environment we operate in. Dialog's power saving technologies including DC-DC configurable system power management deliver high efficiency and enhance the consumer's user experience by extending battery lifetime and enabling faster charging of their portable devices. Its technology portfolio also includes audio, Bluetooth(R) low energy, Rapid Charge(TM) AC/DC power conversion and multi-touch. Dialog Semiconductor plc is headquartered in London with a global sales, R&D and marketing organization. In 2015, it had approximately $1.35 billion in revenue and was one of the fastest growing European public semiconductor companies. It currently has approximately 1,650 employees worldwide. The company is listed on the Frankfurt (FWB: DLG) stock exchange (Regulated Market, Prime Standard, ISIN GB0059822006) and is a member of the German TecDax index. +++++ Additional features: Picture: http://newsfeed2.eqs.com/dialog-semiconductor/457613.html Subtitle: The iW3690 driver IC bridges the gap between traditional wall dimmers and the latest digital solutions accelerating smart lighting penetration --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 26.04.2016 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Media archive at www.dgap-medientreff.de and www.dgap.de --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language: English Company: Dialog Semiconductor Plc. Tower Bridge House, St. Katharine's Way E1W 1AA London United Kingdom Phone: +49 7021 805-412 Fax: +49 7021 805-200 E-mail: jose.cano@diasemi.com, lauren.ofstedahl@diasemi.com Internet: www.dialog-semiconductor.com ISIN: GB0059822006, XS0757015606 WKN: 927200 Indices: TecDAX Listed: Regulated Market in Frankfurt (Prime Standard); Regulated Unofficial Market in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart; Terminborse EUREX; Luxemburg End of News DGAP News Service --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 457613 26.04.2016
English Danish

Today, FirstFarms A/S held its annual general meeting which resulted in the following:

1. The report on the company's activities was taken into cognisance.

2. The audited annual report 2015 was approved and decharge was given to the Board of Directors.

3. The result of the year of tDKK -3,959 for FirstFarms A/S was carried forward to next year.

4. The general meeting resolved that the Board of Directors for the coming year consists of 4 members and re-elected Henrik Hougaard, Jens Bolding Jensen, Bent Juul Jensen and Asbjrn Brsting as the company's Board of Directors.

5. Ernst & Young P/S was re-elected as the company's auditor.

6. Proposals from the Board of Directors:

6.a The general meeting adopted the Board of Director's proposal about prolongation of the authorisations in item 5.3.1 and 5.3.2 in the Articles of Association.

6.b The general meeting authorised the Board of Directors, in the period until the next annual general meeting, to let the company acquire own shares.

6.c The general meeting authorised the chairman of the meeting with substitution right to report the adopted amendments and undertake the amendments in the adopted, which the Danish Business Authority or other authorities might demand or request carried out as condition for registration or approval.

On a board meeting held immediately after the annual general meeting the Board of Directors constituted itself with Henrik Hougaard as Chairman.

Best regards

FirstFarms A/S
English Danish

Aalborg, Denmark, 2016-04-26 16:35 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

Today the Annual General Meeting of TK Development A/S was held.

Items 1 - 3 on the agenda were considered and adopted in accordance with the submissions. No dividend will be distributed for the 2015/16 financial year.

The Board of Directors proposal for approval of fees payable to the Board of Directors for 2016/17, was adopted, see item 4.1.1 of the agenda.

In accordance with item 5 of the agenda, the proposal for the Board of Directors to remain composed of six members was adopted. Niels Roth, Peter Thorsen, Arne Gerlyng-Hansen, Morten E. Astrup, Kim Mikkelsen and Henrik Heideby were re-elected.

The Board of Directors proposal that one auditor be elected was adopted. Deloitte, Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerselskab, was elected as the Companys auditor; see item 6 of the agenda.

After the General Meeting, a meeting was held for the purpose of electing officers, with Niels Roth being re-elected as the Chairman, and Peter Thorsen being re-elected as the Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors.

TK Development A/S

Niels Roth

Chairman of the Board of Directors

Contact information:

Frede Clausen, President and CEO

Tel. +45 8896 1010
Dublin, April 26, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Immunoglobulin Products Market 2016-2020" report to their offering.



The global immunoglobulin products market is set to grow at a CAGR of 6.84% during the period 2016-2020.



Immunoglobulins, also known as antibodies, are proteins that help neutralize foreign objects such as bacteria and viruses. They help recognize and bind to particular antigens. Based on the difference in the amino acid sequence in the fragment crystallizable (Fc) region of the antibody heavy chain, they can be categorized into the following isotypes:



IgA

IgD

IgE

IgG

IgM.



Immunoglobulin products are used to treat primary antibody deficiency, complex immune deficiency disorders, and life threatening infections. Immunoglobulin therapeutic products help prevent infections, improving the quality of life and increasing life expectancy.



As plasma therapeutics are often expensive, vendors provide co-pay assistance to patients to enable the purchase of these drugs. For instance, Baxter's Gammagard liquid support program provides financial assistance to individuals with primary immunodeficiency. According to the Gammagard Liquid SubQ CoPay card, an eligible patient receiving treatment with Gammagard Liquid SubQ for primary immunodeficiency is entitled to save up to $2,500 on the coinsurance/co-payment costs over a 12-month period.





According to the report, growing older population is driving the market growth. The immune system becomes weak with age, causing many immune deficiency syndromes. Individuals with immune deficiency require immunoglobulin products for proper functioning of the immune system.



Further, the report states that immunoglobulin products are produced from plasma, and obtaining high-quality plasma is an expensive and challenging exercise. Moreover, the cost of immunoglobulin is dependent on the availability of human donors. Fractionation of plasma is the standard method of producing immunoglobulins and is a highly complex procedure.



Key vendors:



Baxalta

Biotest Pharmaceuticals Corp.

CSL Ltd.

Grifols SA

Kedrion SpA

Octapharma

Key questions answered in this report:



What will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?

What are the key market trends?

What is driving this market?

What are the challenges to market growth?

Who are the key vendors in this market space?

What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?

Key Topics Covered:



PART 01: Executive summary

PART 02: Scope of the report



PART 03: Market research methodology



PART 04: Introduction



PART 05: Plasma products: An overview



PART 06: Regulation of plasma products



PART 07: Pipeline portfolio



PART 08: Market landscape



PART 09: Market segmentation by type of immunoglobulins



PART 10: Market segmentation by application



PART 11: Market segmentation by ROA



PART 12: Market segmentation by volume



PART 13: Geographical segmentation



PART 14: Market drivers



PART 15: Impact of drivers



PART 16: Market challenges



PART 17: Impact of drivers and challenges



PART 18: Market trends



PART 19: Vendor landscape



For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/c45285/global
Lexington, April 26, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a38fc645-4c28-45e7-b163-fb2819f75a62

April 26, 2016  Impact 21, a retail consulting, analytics and services company, announced the appointment of Lucia Romanello Crater to the position of Executive Vice President, Sales & Business Development. Crater will lead the companys expansion efforts to serve more retailers, suppliers and technology companies. The company has seen greater demand for its services in retail strategy, acquisition integration, operations, technology, project management and analytics.

We are thrilled to welcome Lucia to the Impact 21 team, said Impact 21 CEO, Lesley Saitta. She will be instrumental in aggressively expanding our services to existing and new clients as well as identifying new business development opportunities that leverage our extensive investments in project management, collaboration and cloud-based analytics. Having an industry leader like Lucia on board is a real game changer for Impact 21a milestone for our company. We now have a dedicated focus on providing our clients with new and innovative services that deliver greater results.

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7095f44f-a08f-4d88-9d30-d9e23a89804e

Lucia Romanello Crater brings over 25 years of experience in the convenience store industry, with a track record revealing exceptional growth and market share gains for the companies shes served. Most recently, Crater was the Director of Convenience at Jack Links where she successfully led a team of 28 account managers to implement new go-to-market strategies. In this role she surpassed top line sales budgets while delivering the bottom line gross profit budget. Lucia has held executive sales positions at leading companies such as KIND Healthy Snacks, Cardtronics, US Nutrition and GSP, where she was instrumental in driving convenience store market share.

As an industry leader, Lucia is currently a member of the NACS Supplier Board which she has served on since 2005. She was elected Chairman of the NACS Supplier Board in 2012 and served on the NACS Retail Board from 2011-2013.

In 2014, Crater was awarded by Convenience Store News Magazine the honor of one of the Top Women in Convenience at the Senior Executive Level. She is a Founding Member of the Network of Executive Women in the Consumer Products Industry (NEW) where she served as a Board Member from 2001-2008 and was Chairman of the Membership Committee from 2001-2007.

Crater added, Its an honor for me to join the Impact 21 teamlike-minded experts committed to bringing strong results for clients. Im excited to lead the companys sales and business development expansion, extending its highly-regarded position among the customers and channels it has served for over 18 years. Impact 21 has a stellar reputation of professionalism and integrity and is actively engaged in giving back to the industries and communities it serves. I look forward to working with this exceptional team to deliver on its aggressive goals.

About Impact 21

Impact 21 was founded in 1998 by industry experts and former retailers, Lesley Saitta and Lisa Stewart. The company is headquartered in Lexington, KY.

By offering a proven business model for integration of business and technology strategies, as well as a world class collaboration, project, and content management solution, we position companies to drive profitability and enhance their customers experience.

Our experienced team of industry experts bring real-world solutions to manage and execute initiatives of all sizes and impact. We have a passion for driving business alignment for our clients and bringing thought leadership to all the industries and clients we serve.

For more information please visit www.impact21.com or call (859) 219-3040.

###
CHICAGO, ILL., April 26, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gianna Scatchell and Adam Codilis, 2009 graduates of The John Marshall Law School, are launching a mobile app in Chicago this summer that helps attorneys find other lawyers in their area to cover their court appearances when they cannot attend.

"As a solo practitioner, you are wear several different hats - the emails and phone calls don't answer themselves, and often you have to be in two places at once," Scatchell said.

Scatchell developed her start-up app, Run the Call, out of personal frustration. As a solo practitioner, she wanted a way to connect with other legal professionals who could provide coverage for her court appearances when she could not be in two places at once.

Run the Call also features on-demand scheduling; access to prescreened licensed attorneys; and a flat-fee, fixed-pricing model. Scatchell hopes that these features will make the app stand out among any competing services.

In order to use the app, a user must choose their courthouse or division, confirm the date and time of services needed and clarify any special instructions or details about the case. The app also allows the user to scan and upload any relevant documents that might be needed by the "covering attorney." When choosing a covering attorney, the app allows the user to view professional profiles and engage in real-time messaging. At the end of each court call, the user will receive a confirmation summary, including attachments of any filed documents and the date of their next hearing.

Scatchell received her J.D. in 2009 and her LL.M. in International Business & Trade Law in 2012, both from John Marshall. Currently, Scatchell is working on her second LL.M. in Information Technology & Privacy Law (also from John Marshall). Scatchell independently started her law firm, Law Offices of Gianna Scatchell, dedicated to matters sounding in internet law, intellectual property, and privacy-based transactional and litigation work. Moreover, Scatchell counsels law enforcement agencies and schools addressing the unique challenges that technology causes in terms of privacy, compliance, online bullying and criminal behavior.

Codilis received his J.D. in 2009 from John Marshall. Since then, Codilis has been working at Codilis & Associates, P.C., a real estate law firm concentrating in creditor's rights, mortgage foreclosure, bankruptcy, litigation and REO and real estate transactions. Codilis currently serves as Vice President of their Illinois law practice Codilis & Associates, P.C. He also serves as an Advisory Board Member for the Legal League 100 and was appointed to be on the Membership Committee of the Chicago Bar Association. In his free time, Codilis enjoys investing in real estate and volunteering his time as a board member of the Mercy Home for Boys and Girls.

About The John Marshall Law School

The John Marshall Law School, founded in 1899, is an independent law school located in the heart of Chicago's legal, financial and commercial districts. The 2017 U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Graduate Schools ranks John Marshall's Lawyering Skills Program 5th, its Trial Advocacy Program 19th and its Intellectual Property Law Program 21st in the nation. Since its inception, John Marshall has been a pioneer in legal education and has been guided by a tradition of diversity, innovation, access and opportunity.
BYD's new-energy vehicle EV300 on show at a car expo held in Beijing.[Provided to China Daily] Carmaker's 2015 sales topped $12b thanks to boom in new-energy vehicle sector

BYD Co Ltd, a major Chinese new-energy vehicle manufacturer, is likely to join the ranks of Global Fortune 500 companies in 2017 as the carmaker has grown rapidly amid the country's booming green automobile sector, according to a top executive of the company.

"A new era has come for Chinese homegrown vehicle makers, especially in the new-energy sector," said Wang Chuanfu, chairman and chief executive officer of BYD.

Driven by the electric- and hybrid-car sectors, BYD sales topped 80 billion yuan ($12.3 billion) in 2015, a year-on-year increase of 37.8 percent, according to Wang.

"The growing momentum will be maintained in the years ahead, due to growing demand for new-energy vehicles both in the domestic and overseas markets," said Wang, predicting the company's sales will surpass 100 billion yuan in 2016.

"If the fast-growing market trend continues, we will eventually become one of the global top 500 enterprises by 2017," said Wang.

BYD is based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, where companies, including Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China Ltd, Huawei Technologies Co, China Merchants Group, Amer International Group, have already become global top 500 enterprises.

"About a decade ago, electric cars were little more than just a concept. But now Chinese consumers have developed a growing interest in the new-energy vehicles," said Wang.

China's sales of new-energy cars reached more than 330,000 units in 2015, increasing by 3.4 times over the previous year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

BYD, listed in Hong Kong, has surpassed US firm Tesla Motors Inc to become the world's largest producer and seller of new-energy cars, selling 58,000 new-energy vehicles in 2015, an increase of 208.13 percent year-on-year, according to the company.

"The upward trend has arrived, with tremendous market opportunities ahead," said Wang.
GEORGETOWN, Texas, April 26, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Collain Healthcare, an LG CNS Company, announces that the LG CNS EHR SNF Version 1.5 (LG CNS EHR) has achieved Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC-Health IT) 2014 Edition Modular Certification via Drummond Group LLC, an Authorized Certification Body (ACB) that has been empowered to test software for compliance with the requirements of the federal governments program. The stamp of approval designates that the software provides functionality that can assist eligible providers in meeting Stage 1 and Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements.



We are pleased to have accomplished this certification process as it represents just one of the strategic steps we are taking to provide innovative certified solutions to our partners, says Robert Baker, President  Senior Housing of Collain Healthcare.

To earn the certification, LG CNS EHR was tested to be in accordance with applicable standards and certification criteria put forth by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

LG CNS EHR, which met the requirements for EHR Module (Ambulatory), is a pioneering solution with the most modern EHR functionality for the skilled nursing setting and includes an integrated telehealth and population health platform to enable team care. All LG CNS Healthcare Solutions were developed in the modern healthcare reform era to empower providers of frail and vulnerable populations with the platform and tools necessary to participate in value based care and advanced payment models.

The ONC Edition certification criteria represent some of the most sophisticated set of features in modern health IT. It is intended to enable system-to-system interoperability, patient engagement, detailed clinical quality measures and patient privacy and security, says Kyle Meadors, President of Drummond Group LLC. To be certified in this program by Drummond Group is a significant accomplishment given the complexities and high design requirements of the ONC test procedures and test tools.

This EHR Module is 2014 Edition compliant and has been certified by an ONC-ACB in accordance with the applicable certification criteria adopted by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This certification does not represent an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or guarantee the receipt of incentive payments.

Vendor Name: LGCNS

Date Certified: February 11, 2016

Modules Tested: 170.314 (a)(1-4, 6,7); (d)(1, 5); (g)(2-4)

Certificate No. 02112016-5300-6

LG CNS EHR SNF for Skilled Nursing Facilities, this ONC certified product-version may require a one-time Application set-up for each Customer. In consideration for the license granted, the Customer shall pay one-time payment and/or recurring charges when due. Customer is granted a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable and limited license during the applicable term and only it and its users are permitted license to access and use the LG CNS EHR SNF for Skilled Nursing Facilities.

When purchasing this certified product-version, Customers must sign a contract by mutual consent, in which detailed terms and conditions are specified.

Additional cost:

Collain/LG CNS may charge an hourly service fee for technical engineering service, training and on-site go-live support service plus travel expenses. This certified product-version may require one-time and/or re-occurring costs to establish 1.) interfaces to 3rd party applications (pharmacy, rehab, laboratory, etc.) and 2.) the inclusion of 3rd party copyrighted content (such as forms, assessments or protocols).

About LG CNS

Collain Healthcare, the US Health Care Subsidiary of LG CNS, is headquartered in Georgetown, TX. A global leader in healthcare technology, LG CNS is pioneering solutions for population health with the most modern EHR suite for the long-term and post-acute care continuum as well as an integrated telehealth and population health platform that empowers the patient and coordinated care teams. Led by a physician, the leadership team is comprised of experts with deep knowledge across the continuum of care. Clients benefit from the most advanced health information technology platform created from the ground up with customers, following the passage of ACA and focusing on the future of healthcare. For more information, visit http://ehr.lgcns.com.

About Drummond Group LLC

Drummond Group LLC is a global software test and certification lab that serves a wide range of vertical industries. In healthcare, Drummond Group LLC tests and certifies Controlled Substance Ordering Systems (CSOS), Electronic Prescription of Controlled Substances (EPCS) software and processes, and Electronic Health Records (EHRs)  designating the trusted test lab as the only third-party certifier of all three initiatives designed to move the industry toward a digital future. Founded in 1999, and accredited for the Office of the National Coordinator Health IT Certification Program as an Authorized Certification Body (ACB) and an Authorized Test Lab (ATL), Drummond Group LLC continues to build upon its deep experience and expertise necessary to deliver reliable and cost-effective services. For more information, please visit http://www.drummondgroup.com.
DALLAS, Texas, April 26, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Southcross Energy Partners, L.P. (NYSE:SXE) (Southcross) announced today that it will release its first quarter 2016 results before the New York Stock Exchange opens for trading on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 and will host a conference call for investors at 10:00 a.m. Central Time (11:00 a.m. Eastern Time) on that date to discuss first quarter 2016 financial and operating results. Hosting the call will be John E. Bonn, President and Chief Executive Officer and Bret M. Allan, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Southcross general partner.



The call can be accessed live over the telephone by dialing (877) 705-6003 or, for international callers, (201) 493-6725. The replay of the call will be available shortly after the call and can be accessed by dialing (877) 870-5176 or, for international callers, (858) 384-5517. The passcode for the replay is 13636032. The replay of the call will be available for approximately two weeks following the call.

Interested parties may also listen to a simultaneous webcast of the call on Southcross website at www.southcrossenergy.com under the Investors section. The replay of the webcast will also be available for approximately two weeks following the call.

About Southcross Energy Partners, L.P.

Southcross Energy Partners, L.P. is a master limited partnership that provides natural gas gathering, processing, treating, compression and transportation services and NGL fractionation and transportation services. It also sources, purchases, transports and sells natural gas and NGLs. Its assets are located in South Texas, Mississippi and Alabama and include four gas processing plants, two fractionation plants and approximately 3,100 miles of pipeline. The South Texas assets are located in or near the Eagle Ford shale region. Southcross is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Visit www.southcrossenergy.com for more information.
MEMPHIS, Tenn., April 26, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- First Horizon National Corp.'s (NYSE:FHN) board of directors expanded First Horizons 2014 common share purchase program based on the strong financial position of the company. As amended the program provides First Horizon with $150 million of new authority, or approximately $210 million in currently available authority, to make share purchases, and it will expire on Jan. 31, 2018. Purchases will continue to be made in the open market or through privately negotiated transactions and will be subject to market conditions, accumulation of excess equity, prudent capital management and legal and regulatory restrictions. The 2014 program, originally announced in January 2014 and previously amended in July 2015, is not tied to any compensation plan.

In addition, the board of directors has approved payment of a quarterly cash dividend on First Horizons common stock of $.07 per share. The dividend is payable on July 1, 2016, to the common shareholders of record on June 10, 2016.

The board of directors has also approved payment of a quarterly cash dividend of $1,550.00 per share on First Horizons Non-Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series A ("Series A Preferred Stock"). This equates to a cash dividend of $.387500 per Depositary Share (NYSE:FHN PrA), which each represent a 1/4000th interest in a share of the Series A Preferred Stock. The dividend is payable on July 11, 2016, to the preferred shareholders of record on June 24, 2016.

About First Horizon

The 4,300 employees of First Horizon National Corp. (NYSE:FHN) provide financial services through more than 180 bank locations across Tennessee and the southern U.S. and 29 FTN Financial offices across the U.S. The company was founded during the Civil War in 1864 and has the 14th oldest national bank charter in the country. First Tennessee has the largest deposit market share in Tennessee and one of the highest customer retention rates of any bank in the country. FTN Financial is a capital markets industry leader in fixed income sales, trading and strategies for institutional customers in the U.S. and abroad. First Horizon has been recognized as one of the nation's best employers by Working Mother and American Banker. More information is available at www.FirstHorizon.com.

FHN-G
HAMILTON, Bermuda, April 26, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Grainne Richmond has been appointed the new president of the Bermuda Insurance Management Association (BIMA), following the groups AGM this month.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/12f99d66-6814-459c-990b-d3c31d6c4bff

Richmond takes over from Robert Paton, executive vice president at Aon Risk Solutions, who has served a two-year term as BIMA president.



The role of president is a great responsibility, but also a great opportunity to continue working with government, the regulator, and a wide range of industry bodies to assist in ensuring a strong future for the Bermuda captive insurance industry, said Richmond, who is vice president of Dyna Management Services, a Bermuda-based insurance management company.

I am very honored to be elected president of BIMA and acknowledge the important trust the executive and membership have placed on me in appointing me in this role. Thank you, also, to Rob Paton, whose dedicated work over the past two years have served BIMA well.

A chartered accountant, Richmond has worked in accounting and insurance since 1996. She joined Dyna in 2011, having previously worked in Bermuda in the area of captive insurance management and fund administration. Her prior experience includes positions with Artex Risk Solutions (Bermuda) and International Advisory Services (now Marsh IAS). Previously, she worked in Ireland with PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte.

I look forward to continuing and building on the great work and initiatives started by my predecessor, Rob, including working with BIMA membership and liaising with the BMA on initiatives impacting the captive industry, both here in Bermuda and abroad, said Richmond.

Well also be lending support to the Bermuda Business Development Agency (BDA) on jurisdictional advocacy overseas, helping to spread the message that Bermuda is Differentthat Bermuda is a blue-chip domicile known for robust regulation, transparency and compliance.

Another area of continuing focus for BIMA is informing and educating people on the island about the important role the captive insurance industry has in Bermudaand encouraging more young Bermudians to step into this space, she said.

BIMA was established in 1977 and is an association of professional insurance managers and other captive service providers in Bermuda. Its mandate is to protect the interests of members and their clientsmore than 900 Bermuda registered insurance, reinsurance companies and SPIs. BIMA currently represents more than 28 licensed insurance managers and 14 associate members, including banks, audit firms, law firms and corporate secretarial firms.

Bermuda is the top global captive jurisdiction, home to more than 800 captive insurance companies, supporting primarily Fortune 500 corporations in the US, and generating over $48 billion in annual gross written premiums. A total of 22 new captives incorporated in Bermuda in 2015.

Bermuda-based captives support an estimated 25 percent of the American medical insurance and reinsurance market, and a growing number have originated from Canada and Latin America in recent years.

CONNECTING BUSINESS

The BDA encourages direct investment and helps companies start up, re-locate or expand their operations in our premier jurisdiction. An independent, public-private partnership, we connect you to industry professionals, regulatory officials, and key contacts in the Bermuda government to assist domicile decisions. Our goal? To make doing business here smooth and beneficial




CARDIFF BY THE SEA, Calif., April 26, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- After several months of negotiations, MGN Online is pleased to announce a Group Agreement with Alpha Media Radio Stations has been reached. The Group Agreement will allow Alpha Media to on-board any of their 251 Radio Stations as they determine appropriate. Alpha Media will be using MGN News Graphics and Photos to support their Online Radio Websites.



"We are excited to have reached this agreement that allows Alpha Media to maintain control and flexibility to bring new accounts in as they see fit. MGN looks forward to servicing one of the Radio Industries most progressive Groups", said Gill Davis, President/CEO of MGN Online.



MGN continues to expand with the Radio Industry as more Radio Stations find the need for a strong Online Presence to Engage their Listeners. Over the years, MGN has seen an increase in demand for high quality News Graphics and Photos that enhance Listeners Experience while viewing the Radio Station's Website. High Quality Graphics and Photos on Radio Station's Websites improve Page Views and Click Through Rates.



News Graphics are at a higher demand than ever before. MGN Online is excited for what the future holds as Radio, News Publishers and Broadcast Affiliates continue towards a strong Online Presence. MGN proudly serves over 750 Broadcast, Radio and News Publishing affiliates with News Graphics Nationwide and continue to strive for improved Services and Website Features for the News Media Industry.



About Alpha Media USA

Alpha Media, headquartered in Portland, Oregon owns and operates 251 radio stations within 52 markets across the US. Formats include Top 40, Adult Contemporary, Spanish, Urban, News Talk, Sports, Rock, Country and more. In addition to the radio stations; Alpha Media owns the intimate performance venues, Skype Live Studio in Portland, Oregon and Alamo Lounge in San Antonio, Texas.



About MGN Online

MGN Online is America's Premiere Resource for Still, Animated and Photo Graphical Images. MGN Online has a wide-ranging client roster of affiliates extending across print, television, and online media. MGN Online serves Newspapers, TV Broadcast News, Webcasts, Web Radio and other News and information services 24/7 through its innovative content creation, storage and distribution facilities. MGN Online is a division of Multimedia Graphic Network Inc., founded in 1982 and based in Cardiff by the Sea, California.

CONTACT:Griffin Reinhard 760-230-2752 griffin@mgnonline.com
-Melissa and the Fortuna Admissions Team



Melissa Jones | Fortuna Admissions - a dream team of former Admissions Directors from the world's top business schools



Interested in a free 30-minute admissions consultation? Sign up on our website Interested in a free 30-minute admissions consultation? Sign up on our website http://www.fortunadmissions.com Signature Read More

Hi there,Applying for an MBA sounds like a good choice for you. Firstly terrific gmat score, congrats!As you know all schools will be wondering why you need an mba and what your short and long terms goals are.As an IT consultant, also coming from a 'big name' company, you will be competing with a big pool with similar backgrounds. So you will really need to differentiate yourself not just by way of what you accomplished at Deloitte and what kinds of leadership roles you've had, but also by perhaps telling your story and what it was like as an individual moving to the US from a former soviet state. It's also not too late to start engaging in other kinds of community work/volunteering, hobbies etc to help make your profile more well rounded.But I really love what you plan to do and is a nice segue from you already working in the public sector. It will be really intriguing to the ad coms to hear that you want to combine your passion of fitness and really making a difference in the world (through the government). It's a terrific story and speaks to why you need an mba. All schools are looking for future leaders and want people in their classrooms that really want to contribute to the well being of others. Just make sure you can give more details as to how you envision this panning out. It will also come across as authentic and a true passion since you already created an initiative/project in this field so would be important to mention that as well so they see the trend. Basically you could make a major theme in your essays/app about health, well being and fitness.If you'd ever like to get a free assessment on your profile we'd be more than happy to chat with you. Our team is made up of former directors/managers of admissions from top business schools - including the b-schools that you are interested in so we know first hand what ad coms are looking for in terms of what to write/not write and include in your applications.I hope that was helpful. Wishing you well._________________
You have a nice academic profile with strong performance in undergrad. Your work experience is very light so you may want to consider gaining a few more years of work experience. You are applying to some of the top schools in the world so you should be aiming to fall comfortably in the GMAT range which for most of these schools will be 710+. But you do have the makings of someone who can secure a top_________________
This past weekend, Mario Licato had all the makings of a carefree Saturday. He'd met some friends for lunch, then repaired to a friend's apartment in Cobble Hill for the afternoon. Around 8 p.m., he hopped on the F train by himself to go catch a show at Pianos on the Lower East Side. Getting off the train at Delancey Street, he ran into trouble.

"I was walking up the stairs," he remembers. "I had my head downthere were people in front of mejust to make sure I wasn't going to fall."

He continued:

I didn't even see the guy. I just see his fist coming towards me. It knocked me, and while I was falling down the stairs, all I hear was, "This is because you look exactly like Shia LaBeouf!"

Licato says he lost consciousness when he landed at the foot of the stairs, and when he came to his face was covered in blood, his glasses broken in half. A couple rushed to his aid and asked, "Did you know that guy?"

The couple, according to Licato, described the attacker as in his mid-20s, 6 foot to 6-foot-3, and muscular, like a frat boy. Licato, to the best of his knowledge, did not know the guy. The LaBeouf hater, as Licato says witnesses recounted, was running down the stairs when he punched Licato and kept going, then boarded a train.

Licato said he had difficulty processing what had happened.

I was so confused. I was even more confused because I got up and I was like, am I crazy or did I hear him say, "This is because you look like Shia LaBeouf?" And [the couple] were like, "Nope. That's exactly what he said as he was running away from you."



Shia LaBeouf, that time he watched all of the movies he has appeared in consecutively and live-streamed it.

The couple called 911 and helped Licato up the stairs to the sidewalk to wait for an ambulance. One arrived within minutes, but Licato says the emergency medical technicians who stepped out weren't exactly comforting.

They got out of the car and the first EMT guy, while I'm gushing blood from my face, with my broken glasses, just says, "Welcome to New York, buddy."

My response was "Well, fuck you, Im born and raised here." I was like, "Are you kidding me? You're standing in front of somebody who's bleeding out of their face and that's your first response?"

Licato says that, having broken the ice, the EMTs checked him for a concussion, ruled that out, and told him that he could get stitches for his eyebrow, but that a butterfly bandage would probably hold it just as well. Then, he says, they left, not staying for the police to arrive as EMTs are required to do.

Cops did arrive, and Licato says they were helpful, questioning him for what little information he could provide, and canvassing people around the station. The whole process took about an hour, and once the officers left, Licato took a cab home to Bushwick, night ruined.

Licato works as an art director in advertising, and said that he couldn't get out of working a shoot on Monday. His bruises, he said, are "changing color by the hour," he has developed numbness in his left nostril, and yesterday morning he woke up with one eye turned red. A coworker warned the people on the job before Licato's arrival.

"It's not super cute," Licato said of his condition.



The attacker may have cursed when making his declaration of LaBeouf hatred. (NYPD)

The responding officers told him they would look into the EMTs' alleged dereliction of duty, though it is not mentioned in the police report. Also missing is a physical description of the assailant, but Licato said the cops sounded confident that they would be able to pull surveillance video from the subway station. An FDNY spokesman said the department has not received a complaint related to the incident.

And what of Licato's alleged resemblance to LaBeouf? Has he gotten that before?

"So many times," Licato said. "That's why I knew I wasn't that crazy. I got it three years ago. I've been stopped on the street before, at least 10 times in my life."

The attack is still deeply perplexing.

"I wanna know what Shia LaBeouf did to him," Licato said. "What did Shia LaBeouf do to him that he punched somebody that looks like him? He must have did something so mean. Did he steal his girlfriend? Did he just see his last performance art piece?"
Police are still searching for a man who stabbed a driver on East 61st Street eleven times on Saturday night, in what's being described as a road rage incident. The victim is clinging to life following the stabbing attack, and the suspect remains at large. This morning, the NYPD released video of the alleged assailant:

Police say the victim and the stabber pulled over outside of 420 East 61st Street around 11:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 23rd. According to investigators, the assailant got out of his silver Toyota Camry, approached the victim, and stabbed him nearly a dozen times as he dragged him out of his car. The victim, 45, got back into his Toyota Corolla and tried to drive from the scene, only to crash into a parked car near East 76th Street and Madison Avenue.

Yesterday NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told reporters that the incident was likely sparked over "an argument over traffic" on the Queensboro Bridge.

"It was something from a horror story, one woman, who witnessed the incident from a cab, told CBS 2. "The guy that opened his door got out and was stabbing him right in the middle of his chest. Then he came back over to us and was in complete shock."

According to the witness, the victim "walked over and stood in front of the hood of the cab." She said "she didnt see any injuries until he pulled off his t-shirt." At that point, she tells CBS2, "I was screaming, I was scared, and there was just blood pouring out everywhere."

The NYPD says the suspect is a black male in his early 30s.

Anyone with information in regards to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime stoppers website or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577. All calls are strictly confidential.
The Bureau of Reclamation has launched an investigation in response to a 3-year-old childs death following injuries sustained at a Canyon Ferry Reservoir recreation site last week.

Landon Haight of Butte was injured when a metal dock stored on shore partially collapsed and pinned him at about 3:30 p.m. Friday at the Shannon Boat Launch, a site owned and managed by Reclamation. Several people at the site assisted, including performing CPR, and the boy was transported via ambulance to St. Peters Hospital. He was stabilized and then flown to a hospital in Spokane, Washington, where he later died.

A spokesman for Reclamation on Monday said the agency has convened a team to investigate the incident.

The Reclamation family is deeply saddened by this tragedy. Reclamation offers its condolences to the family members, Reclamation spokesman Tyler Johnson said in an email.

We cannot speculate on what happened; Reclamation has launched a full safety team to investigate the circumstances of the accident. Any recommendations that come from the safety team will be implemented.

The safety of individuals visiting Reclamation facilities is Reclamation's top priority.

The Lewis and Clark County Sheriffs office concluded its investigation as of Saturday. Sgt. Brian Robinson told the Independent Record, It was just an unfortunate accident that occurred, while thanking those on the scene who assisted.

Haights family launched an online fundraiser to help with medical expenses. To donate to the boy's family, visit https://www.gofundme.com/sstxztq4.
Scarface is dead.

No, not the character from the 1983 movie starring Al Pacino. This Scarface was the real deal  a 25-year-old Yellowstone National Park grizzly bear who received his nickname from the extensive scarring on the right side of his head.

Scarface the bear and Scarface the movie character do have one other thing in common besides their name, though: they both died of gunshot wounds.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks confirmed in a Monday press release that the male grizzly bear shot in late November 2015 north of Gardiner was the bear known to researchers as No. 211  Scarface.

No. 211 was killed in the Little Trail Creek drainage north of Gardiner on the Gallatin National Forest, an event under investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency doesn't comment about ongoing investigations.

Scarface was well known in Yellowstone by biologists and photographers. He was first collared after being captured when he was 3 years old and had been recaptured 16 times after that, unprecedented for the average grizzly.

"In his prime, he was about 600 pounds," said Kerry Gunther, bear management biologist in Yellowstone National Park. "That's about as big as they get in Yellowstone."

Wyoming photographer Sandy Sisti remembers seeing him for the first time in 2011. After that she photographed the bear or saw him at least once a year, not surprising since male grizzlies have an average home range of 338 square miles and that Scarface spent most of his long life inside Yellowstone.

"I saw him along Yellowstone Lake in October," she said. "I was concerned about him. He looked terrible and was very thin."

Sisti was upset that Scarface had been shot instead of dying a natural death, especially since it was evident that his health was declining.

"I'm just really kind of choked up," she said. "He was an icon in the park. There was just something about him. He had so much character and, oh my gosh, he'd been in the park since before the wolves were introduced."

No. 211 probably got his scars from fights with other male grizzlies for females during mating season or when claiming deer, elk or bison carcasses. The scars were first noted by bear researchers in 2000 when he was 11 years old  which is the average age at which most male grizzlies in Yellowstone die, Gunther said.

"If you've ever seen bears fighting they bite to the head and neck a lot," Gunther said. "His scarring was more severe than many others."

At his last capture in 2015 Scarface had lost nearly half of his body weight, weighing in at only 338 pounds. His weakened condition was probably linked to his advanced age, although even at 25 he isn't the oldest bear ever documented in Yellowstone. That went to a 31-year-old. Less than 5 percent of male bears born in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem survive to 25 years.

Grizzly bears are protected by the federal government and the state of Montana as a threatened species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service routinely investigates incidents affecting threatened and endangered species and is conducting an investigation with the assistance of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

"Even when I would only see him cross the street I would get so excited," Sisti said. "To live all of that time in Yellowstone is pretty amazing."
Dick Meyers lengthy op-ed, More democracy in parties means less democracy in govt, is a valuable case against the Trump and Sanders phenomenon, in which an outsider with inciteful words but no clear blueprint for action can either hijack a party or, without remorse, destroy it just to send a message, and perhaps to feed a starving ego. But I think the lament is more relevant to the 20th century than the 21st.

The author gives only scant attention to the new reality. There is much more than open primaries to threaten a partys right to select its own candidates: Begin with a partisan, conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court that twists judicial reasoning to declare that corporations are people and money is speech, and gives us decisions as in Citizens United, removing limits on what corporations and wealthy individuals may pour into political campaigns. Then allow that money to be dark, or anonymous through another distortion -- the use of social welfare organizations under section 501-C-4 of the Internal Revenue Code as a tax-exempt funnel for such money. Then note that Republicans underfund and browbeat the IRS, rendering it virtually unable to police such organizations and to remove their tax exempt status if they engage in politics, which is forbidden in exchange for tax-exempt status. Follow this with Republicans in Congress expressing alarm, and exacting vengeance, when the IRS has the temerity to suggest the tea party engages in politics. The false accusation that IRS targets only conservative organization follows, of course. As does more abuse and more underfunding of the agency.

Add to the above the rapid growth in number and resources of backstage political organizations that essentially ignore the parties and focus directly on campaigns, amassing and spending more money than the parties themselves. According to the solidly researched and fact-checked book, Dark Money, by Jane Mayer, the Koch brothers and the small group of right-wing billionaires in their network, who, over 30 or 40 years, have carefully built and funded a political and intellectual infrastructure for the conservative movement, now, with the removal of limits on campaign financing, regard the Republican National Committee as inept and irrelevant. They essentially have built their own stealth political party, supported by their own, avowedly conservative, think tanks (Cato, Heritage, etc.), and conservative propaganda operations funded by them on university campuses, where they masquerade as scholarly endeavors. (They practically own George Mason University.)

It may be a chicken-or-egg problem to determine which is cause and which is effect, but the economic and political systems are both rigged in favor of the very wealthy, and for an anti-tax, anti-government agenda that keeps it that way.

Dick Meyers solution of a Constitutional amendment to mention political parties for the first time, with appropriate prescriptions and proscriptions, will not do the job without first addressing the problems mentioned above. We can begin by supporting the efforts of Sen. Jon Tester and others to pass an amendment to undo the Citizens United decision. And, since the only calls for reform have come from the Democratic side of the aisle, we can help the politically naive to disabuse themselves of the false equivalence that the parties are essentially the same and equally to blame for the present predicament. We can work in this watershed political year to ensure the election of a Democratic president and a Democratic-controlled Congress. This is the only way we can restore the Supreme Court to judicial objectivity (through presidential appointment and Senate confirmation of justices), and the only way we can pursue a progressive agenda that begins to restore traditional American democracy.
The Montana Public Service Commission is proposing to change the rules on who can have their power shut off in Montana.

The rules were adopted in 1980 and haven't been changed much since. They protect lower-income, older and sick people who struggle to pay their bills in the winter. The proposed new rules include:

Disconnect would not be allowed on any account when the ambient air temperature at 8 a.m. is at or below 20 degrees or if a snowstorm is forecast.

Utilities would be required to have procedures in place to allow for uninterrupted continuation of service from one account holder to another when service is disconnected.

Changing the winter moratorium period from the current period of Nov. 1 through April 1, to Dec. 1 through the last day of February.

Commission approval would no longer be necessary for winter termination on accounts not protected, rather the criteria to be considered would be established in administrative rules.

The Medical Exception section of the rules would be changed to allow a six-month agreement rather than a 12-month agreement, lower from $500 to $300 the minimum balance that could initiate a disconnect if payments are not made, and change the method of handling situations where the medical payment arrangement was broken.

The PSC will hold a public roundtable on May 5 to discuss proposed changes. The roundtable will take place in the Bollinger room at the PSC offices in Helena, and will start at 2:30 p.m.

To view staffs full proposed changes to the rules, visit: http://1.usa.gov/1UcvuQU.
The term "breakfast nook" sounds hopelessly trapped in the 1970s, but modern homeowners are embracing the style and practicality of built-in seating in the kitchen.

"The idea of the built-in, with the kids piled in it and the pillows" can bring the casual fun of a beach house or farmhouse to any home, said Massachusetts-based interior designer Kristina Crestin, featured this season on "This Old House."

Maxwell Ryan, founder of ApartmentTherapy.com, said built-in kitchen seating can maximize space in smaller kitchens and highlight a great window view. It can even become the most distinctive design element in your home.

"People, especially children, will gravitate toward it," Ryan said. "Who doesn't like to get a booth at the diner over a table?"

Practical and pretty

For homeowners with an open-plan kitchen, built-in seating creates a cozy gathering place that functions like a formal dining room but is right in the heart of the cooking and socializing.

In smaller kitchens, a nook allows the dining table to be positioned along a wall or in a corner without looking as if it were stuffed awkwardly out of the way.

Built-ins also offer lots of space for storage.

"The space underneath a built-in banquette is ripe with possibilities," said stylist and crafter Marianne Canada, host of the "HGTV Crafternoon" web series. Closed cabinets can be designed to match your existing cabinetry, or you can add open shelving, she said, to "add texture with baskets, show off your cookbook collection, even use it to store large ceramic bowls that take up too much cabinet space."

Just be sure the design of the built-in seating area matches the architecture of the rest of the house, said Crestin. Sketch out what you want and plan carefully before starting construction. If the breakfast nook will include a window, she said, consider the height of the sill and whether it will hit the backs of people seated along the wall.

Also, be sure to use a pedestal table so you're not bumping into table legs when sliding into the seats.

Cool variations

If you can't commit to a fully built-in breakfast area, or if you worry your kitchen will look too much like a roadside diner, Canada suggests adding a banquette to just one side of the kitchen dining area.

"This gives you the best of both worlds," she said, "an architectural feature that provides storage and easy seating, and the opportunity to mix things up with chairs."

This approach is cheaper to build and easier to remove if you want something different later.

One popular option: Extend the bench the entire length of one wall, installing open or closed storage underneath.

"A table at one end for kitchen dining, general seating for those times when everyone ends up in the kitchen, and a space near the door that serves as a landing area for shoes, backpacks and jackets," Canada said. "Add some hooks above the bench, and baskets below, and you'll find that clutter disappears effortlessly."

Fabrics

One big draw of built-in kitchen seating is the softness and color of the cushions and pillows. A tip from Crestin: Invest in high-quality fabric in a pattern and colors that are neutral enough you can love them for years to come. Then get really creative with fabrics for loose pillows, spending a bit less so you can swap those out seasonally for new ones when the urge strikes.

To highlight the fabrics you've chosen, Ryan painting the backrest area behind the seating in a coordinating color.

"You can easily swap out the fabric on the seat or the paint on the backrest anytime you want to shake up your kitchen decor," he said.

And here's a secret: If you love this look but want to avoid the commitment and cost of real built-in seating, you can create a faux version. Ryan suggests installing a large upholstered bench along one wall and painting the wall around it with semi-gloss paint (easily wiped clean) to highlight the space. Add pillows and you've got a perfectly cozy space where guests can lean back and enjoy your kitchen.
LONGVIEW, Texas (AP)  Police say a man stole steaks from an East Texas Wal-Mart then tossed some of the meat from his vehicle as authorities pursued him in a high-speed chase.

Police say the pursuit began around 11 a.m. Wednesday after the suspect fled the store in Longview, in Gregg and Harrison counties, about 130 miles east of Dallas.

East Mountain Patrol Sgt. Marc Nichols who was one of the officers pursuing the man tells TV station KLTV that the suspect was throwing the meat out of his vehicle. He says one steak bounced off his patrol car.

The Associated Press reports that the man sped across two counties, sometimes topping 100mph, before deputies apprehended him in Upshur County.

No officers were injured.
New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning, then cloudy skies late. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High 91F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Rain showers early with mostly clear conditions later at night. Low 56F. SSW winds shifting to NW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.
Donald Trump, left, and Scott Walker, right, mixed it up on the presidential campaign trail, but now Trump is speaking favorably about the Wisconsin governor and Walker says he will support Trump if the billionaire gets the GOP nomination.
A Portage voter waits to get his ballot in the spring 2015 election.
JUNEAU  A 70-year-old Fox Lake man is facing multiple felony charges resulting from a 2014 traffic crash that led to the death of an 9-year-old Lindenhurst, Illinois, boy and severely injured two adults.

Lee Henricksen is charged with felony homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle and two felony counts of reckless driving, cause great bodily harm. If convicted of all charges he faces up to 17 years in prison and $45,000 in fines.

On Aug. 15, 2014, a semi truck, Honda Insight and Dodge Intrepid were involved in a crash at the intersection of Highway A and Burns Road in the town of Beaver Dam.

Acccording to the criminal complaint, the Dodge County Sheriffs Department crash reconstructionist determined that the driver of the semi truck, identified as Henricksen, failed to stop or brake for the Honda who was stopped at the intersection of Highway A and Indian Hills Trail waiting for a northbound vehicle to pass so it could make a left turn. Henricksens semi truck struck the Honda and pushed it into oncoming traffic where it was struck by the Dodge Intrepid.

According to the criminal complaint, the sheriffs crash team determined that Henricksen was not paying attention to the roadway and was exceeding the posted speed limit at the time of the crash. Officers estimated his speed between 58 and 70 mph when the posted speed limit is 45 mph.

The driver of the Honda, identified as Judith Haddad, 45, of Lindenhurst, Illinois, told officers that her 8-year-old son, Ilan Hurtado, was trapped in the backseat and unresponsive. Officers located a pulse on the son but noticed it was very weak. Both Haddad and her son were extricated from the vehicle taken by Flight For Life to UW Hospital in Madison.

The driver of the Dodge, identified as Jennifer Polenska, 31, Waupun, told officers that she was driving north on Highway A and saw the black Honda stopped at the intersection of Highway A and Indian Hills Trail. She allegedly said that a semi truck struck the back end of the black Honda which was pushed into her lane of traffic. Polenska said she then struck the black Honda although she tried to avoid the vehicle.

Polenska identified the operator of the semi truck as Henricksen. Officers interviewed Henricksen who said that he did not see the vehicle in front of him and rear ended the black Honda. He said that the Honda then swung into oncoming traffic, striking the Dodge Intrepid head on.

While being interviewed, Henricksen allegedly said, I have been driving for 35 years. I never did anything or hurt anybody.

Henricksen was uninjured in the crash and voluntarily submitted to a blood draw following the accident at Beaver Dam Community Hospital. No alcohol or drugs were detected in Henrickens blood.

On Aug. 19 the 9-year-old child who was trapped in the Honda during the accident was pronounced dead at UW Hospital in Madison. An autopsy was conducted and the cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the brain which caused swelling.

Haddad suffered multiple fractures including a pelvis fracture, broken ribs, and broken lower vertebrae. According to the criminal complaint, she currently remains in a rehabilitation facility in Chicago for the injuries sustained in the crash. Polenska suffered a broken right ankle, a broken left arm, damaged tendons in the right knee, and contusions and abrasions over her body.

Henricksen will make his initial appearance in court on May 9 at 9 a.m.
A Dane County man was ordered on Monday to serve four months in jail and time on probation for traveling to Racine County in 2014 for a sexual encounter with a person he thought was a 15-year-old boy.

Mark A. Lentz, 53, of Madison, apologized, saying he made a very bad mistake and has mentally beaten myself up because of it.

Racine County Circuit Judge John Jude sentenced Lentz to four years in prison plus three years on extended supervision, but stayed those terms. That means the sentence wont take effect unless he violates probation, which he will be on for the next six years. Another two months of jail time also was stayed.

Im accepting that I will be a sex offender for the rest of my days, said Lentz, who in fact must register as a sex offender.

Prosecutors charged Lentz in 2014 with using a computer to facilitate a child sex crime and attempted second-degree sexual assault of a child. He pleaded no contest Feb. 9 to attempted second-degree sexual assault of a child.

He drove from Madison to a Racine County home on April 18, 2014, after communicating with a Racine County sheriffs investigator who posed as a 15-year-old boy named Erik. The investigator was conducting an undercover sting for child sex crimes, and responded to an ad posted on Craigslist, according to Lentzs criminal complaint. Lentzs ad was titled clean cut daddy seeks young twink.

He went looking for young boys to, basically, hook up with, Assistant District Attorney Dirk Jensen said during Mondays hearing.

Jensen called for Lentz to be sentenced to five years in prison plus five years on extended supervision, saying the sentence must serve as punishment as well as a deterrent for others who might take these actions.

But Lentzs defense attorney, Christy M. Hall, argued for probation with possible jail time. She said Lentzs record consists solely of a drunken driving offense in 1997 in Colorado and hes not a risk to the public.

Jude ordered Lentz to report to the Racine County Jail on May 7, but said his jail time can be transferred to the Dane County Jail, where he will have release privileges for work and counseling appointments.
The driver of a 2007 Chevrolet Suburban truck was traveling in the wrong lane in a Saturday night crash that killed a Bloomer special education teacher, a report by the Chippewa County Sheriffs Office said.

The report stated that Chad A. Sommer, 36, of Bloomer was driving the truck eastbound in a westbound lane, leading to the crash at 9:46 p.m. on Highway 64 that killed Derek J. Thompson, 32, of Bloomer.

Thompsons wife, Brittany J. Thompson, 28, is one of four injured passengers in the van who were hospitalized.

Derek Thompson, a graduate of Bloomer High School, started working in the school district in 2011.

Mr. Thompson was an exceptional young man, Superintendent Dr. Mary Randall said Monday. Hes going to be very sadly missed.

All one had to do was to gauge the mood at Bloomer Schools on Monday to see how greatly his loss affected people at the schools, Randall said.

She said a message about Thompsons death was sent to parents Sunday evening, and another letter offering tips on how to cope with grief will also be sent, along with a listing of websites offering help.

On Monday a large number of counselors were available, along with members of a ministerial association, to help at the school.

Randall said the administration met with staff Sunday and again Monday, and a statement was read to students.

He was an exceptional teacher who cared greatly for his students, she said of Thompson.

Mona McMenamin didnt know Derek Thompson personally, but knew what he did for one of his students, her grandson Parker LaRock.

Patience is one thing that comes to mind, positive attitude and genuine caring, McMenamin said of Thompsons attributes.

He was so positive when it might not be easy to be positive, she said. We are very thankful for all those things hes done for Parker.

LaRock, a senior at Bloomer Senior High School, said Thompson has helped him.

He helped out with the special ed. If I ever need something, he would try to help up as much as he could. And he was a nice guy, LaRock said of Thompson.

The crash happened three-tenths of a mile east of 102nd Street.

Passengers of (Thompsons van) stated the operator of their vehicle was trying to avoid a collision by swerving into the eastbound lane before swerving back and attempting to drive into the ditch. (The van) was struck by (Sommers Suburban) on the front passenger side of the vehicle, causing severe damage to both, the report said.

The sheriffs office report said Sommer was wearing a shoulder and lap safety belt. He was listed as being trapped and extricated, and as having an incapacitating injury.

Listed as driver factors for Sommer were inattentive driving, driving left-of-center and failure to have control. Alcohol and drug tests were administered.

Hospitalized from the 2014 Chrysler Town and Country van Thompson was driving were: Brittany J. Thompson; Sandra L. Loew, 49, of Bloomer; Blaine R. Seibel, 24, of Minneapolis; and Jessica L. Kleinhans, 22, of Menomonie.

Loew, Seibel and Brittany Thompson were listed as having incapacitating injuries, while Kleinhaus was listed as having a non-incapacitating injury. Loew and Seibel were listed as being trapped and extricated.

The sheriffs office report said Sommer was wearing a shoulder-and-lap safety belt. He was listed as being trapped and extricated and as having an incapacitating injury.

Derek Thompson was listed as wearing the shoulder and lap safety belt.

The sheriffs office and the Wisconsin State Patrol are investigating the crash.

A campaign at www.gofundme.com has been set up for Thompsons family, and as of mid-afternoon Monday more than 300 people had contributed $17,570 out of a $25,000 goal. The website says the couple have two children, Griffin and Willow.

Schriver-Thompson Funeral Home and Chippewa Valley Cremation Services in Bloomer is handling arrangements for Derek J. Thompson.
The Racine man who shot another man in the chest in broad daylight Sunday claimed he acted in self-defense, according to a criminal complaint.

William M. Lockhart, 34, was charged Tuesday with attempted second-degree intentional homicide for allegedly shooting Darnell L. Barker, 47 near the intersection of Sixth and Jones streets at about 11 a.m. Sunday. Lockhart told police he felt Barker planned to assault him, and claimed that similar actions by Barker in September led to the death of one of Lockharts cousins, according to the complaint.

Lockhart made his initial appearance in court Tuesday, according to court records. Court Commissioner Alice Rudebusch postponed Lockharts initial appearance until Wednesday, April 27, after Lockharts defense attorney, Helmi Hadad, declared a conflict of interest, records show.

Court records show that Hadad represented Barker for approximately four months, from September to December 2015. Barker faces a felony substantial battery charge in an incident that involved Lockharts cousin.

The shooting

According to the criminal complaint, Lockhart was walking his dog in the area of the shooting Sunday when Barker, who was sitting on a nearby porch, walked over to Lockhart to confront him about damage to his vehicle from the day before. A witness who was with Barker told The Journal Times that Lockhart had called Barker over and that the damage to Barkers vehicle was a death threat keyed into Barkers bumper by Lockhart.

Another witness told police that she pulled up in a vehicle alongside Barker and Lockhart while they argued, and that two other people that were with Barker followed Barker over to where Lockhart stood. The witness in the vehicle observed Lockhart shoot Barker in the chest one time, leave his dog at the scene and flee in a vehicle heading eastbound on 6th Street, according to the criminal complaint.

The witness in the vehicle followed Lockhart while on the phone with police and helped them to detain him in the area of State Street and Memorial Drive, police said. Police said that Lockhart did not have a firearm on him at the time of the arrest.

According to the criminal complaint, Lockhart became emotional when asked about the September incident that resulted in the death of his cousin. The complaint indicated that Barker and Lockharts cousin may have argued, which could have resulted in Lockharts cousin falling off a porch. Lockharts cousin later died from his injuries.

Police said that Lockhart claimed he was not in Wisconsin Saturday, meaning he couldnt have vandalized Barkers vehicle as witnesses stated. According to the criminal complaint, Lockhart said he shot Barker because he felt boxed in by Barkers friends and Barker advanced towards him in a threatening way.

Lockhart pleaded guilty to the same charge, second-degree attempted homicide, in 2004, after he shot Kendrick Smith. In that instance, Lockhart claimed he was similarly jumped by nearly a dozen people and only meant to shoot into the air to scare them off.

He was sentenced to four years in prison and another 10 on extended supervision in July 2004 and was released in May 2007, records show.

Lockhart will make his official initial appearance in court at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Madisons Oscar Mayer plant will close by the end of March 2017, parent company Kraft Heinz told state officials in a letter dated last Thursday and released on Tuesday.

Shutdown of the nearly century-old Oscar Mayer operations in Madison will occur in phases, starting June 30 and finishing by the end of the first quarter of 2017.

About 46 salaried employees and 515 hourly plant workers will lose their jobs, the company said.

The notice to the state Department of Workforce Development updates the Kraft Heinz announcement last November that operations here would end as part of a plan to close seven factories in the U.S. and Canada and eliminate 2,600 jobs nationwide.
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Since mid-March, UW-Madison students have used the Twitter hashtag #TheRealUW to detail hundreds of alleged racist incidents and other campus race-related complaints.

UW-Madison police, meanwhile, report they looked into four reports of hate crimes in 2014, one last year and none so far this year. From 2012 to 2014, the agency did not report any hate crimes under the Clery Act. Last semester, the universitys Hate & Bias Incident reporting system received 23 reports alleged over six months. Only five of the reporters asked for follow up. Reports for this semester and prior years were not available Monday.

Its not surprising in this age of social media that its the hashtag thats spurring (traditional) media coverage and student protests, and lighting a fire under UW-Madison administrators to do something about the supposedly toxic environment that exists on campus for people of color. Not surprising, but maybe misleading.

Twitter might be as close to pure democratic participation as there is. Insightful comments by world-renowned thinkers have the same access to the global public square as the moronic brain droppings of anonymous trolls. It also allows activists a way to coordinate their work and disseminate information those in power might not want the rest of us to know.

Addressing race-based grievances via more traditional methods  say, by going to the police or filing a hate/bias incident report  is, by comparison, a hassle.

The police are going to want your name and ask a lot of questions. Instances of hate or bias on campus can be reported anonymously, but you still have to answer questions about where the incident happened, when and whom it targeted.

Plus, going to the police or university amounts to a tacit admission of their authority and some level of trust in their motives. And not everyone, especially groups that have been burned by traditional authorities in the past, are too hot on that.

The more difficult process does provide an opportunity for verification, though  to know whether what someone says happened actually happened. And for accountability  to find the hater and charge him or her with a crime, or levy some other sanction.

Twitter, by contrast, is largely unverifiable. Its tweeters, unaccountable.

This is not to say the picture painted by #TheRealUW isnt, well, real. There have been a handful of verified racist incidents this semester on the campus of 43,389 students and 21,608 faculty and staff, and the day when the world is free of racists and ignoramuses is probably a day none of us will ever live to see.

I asked Chris Wells, a UW-Madison assistant professor of journalism and mass communication and an expert on social media, which was a better gauge of UW-Madisons racial climate, #TheRealUW or the universitys official reports.

What is real is that there is a serious racial climate problem at the UW, and if racial incidents are not ticking up, the hashtag is mostly revealing a reality that was already there, if largely unacknowledged, he said.

Which I guess is true enough, depending on your definition of reality.
A man who Middleton police said hit two middle school girls with a truck after leading police on a chase last week was jailed on $20,000 bail and could soon face a slew of charges.

Ross C. Cotter-Brown, 30, of Edgerton, started the chase Thursday on Madisons North Side when he was seen driving erratically and struck a sign, said Assistant District Attorney Shaun OConnell. He continued even after he had struck the girls in Middleton, stopping only after his truck had become disabled following a near head-on crash a short time later, OConnell said.

When police arrested Cotter-Brown, OConnell said, they noticed the smell of alcohol and saw a package of synthetic marijuana in his truck.

Based on the defendants behavior, it is believed he had been consuming synthetic marijuana and alcohol, OConnell said.

Cotter-Browns lawyer, William Ginsberg, said Cotter-Brown has no memory of the events, attributing that possibly to the synthetic marijuana.

Cotter-Brown appeared in court Tuesday wearing a suicide prevention smock and was brought in shackled in a restraint chair. He appeared on the verge of tears at several occasions.

OConnell said a criminal complaint will be ready by May 9, when Cotter-Brown is expected back in court.

The girls, ages 12 and 13, who were walking home from Kromrey Middle School, sustained non-life-threatening but significant injuries, police have said.

At a minimum, OConnell said, Cotter-Brown could face three counts of hit and run, two counts of hit and run causing great bodily harm, drunken driving, recklessly endangering safety and attempted escape.

Cotter-Brown was charged Tuesday with his fourth drunken driving offense, for an arrest March 23 in the town of Pleasant Springs. He also faces charges of marijuana possession and possession of drug paraphernalia.

In that incident, Cotter-Browns blood alcohol concentration was 0.09 percent, above his 0.02 percent maximum as a three-time drunken driver.

OConnell said Cotter-Brown was released after his arrest in that incident while investigators waited for the results of blood tests.

OConnell said that the incident on Thursday began on Northport Drive when Cotter-Browns truck was seen being driven erratically, striking a sign. He continued into the town of Westport, and west on Highway M, where a Dane County sheriffs deputy tried to stop him.

At one point, OConnell said, Cotter-Brown rear-ended another vehicle, and was seen driving on the left side of the road into oncoming traffic, causing people to swerve off the road.

He continued into Middleton, when the deputy stopped pursuing Cotter-Brown for safety reasons, OConnell said. On Century Avenue, OConnell said, Cotter-Brown went through a red light and struck the girls, who were in a crosswalk.

Witnesses indicated that he was driving at a high rate of speed, and when he struck the two girls he actually accelerated from there, OConnell said.

Cotter-Brown continued on Century Avenue until he again crossed into oncoming traffic and struck another vehicle nearly head on, then drove away until his truck became disabled.

Cotter-Brown was taken to UW Hospital, where he was kept under guard. On Friday morning he was told he would be discharged to the jail.

At that point, the defendant stood up and tried to flee the hospital, OConnell said, but he was taken down by a sheriffs deputy.
Quick action by a custodian with emergency medical training is being credited with saving a student choking on a piece of lettuce at Madisons Sherman Middle School.

Sieg Thies, an employee of the Madison School District for 35 years and a custodian at Sherman for the past four, swooped in when a seventh-grade boy rushed toward a trash can in distress.

The boys airway had become clogged and he was close to losing consciousness, said Sandy Tiedt, school secretary.

(Thies) ran over there and was able to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him, Tiedt said. It was a very close situation.

The incident happened on Feb. 24. News spread of what Thies had done, and Monday, the Madison School Board honored him with a resolution thanking him for his quick thinking and courageous, life-saving action.

Thies is described by co-workers as genuine, prompt and having tremendous dedication and care for the students, according to the resolution.

Thies, 59, said Tuesday he learned CPR and other medical techniques as a teen in Germany.

In the town I grew up in, you had a choice to go to the local Red Cross or the fire department, he said. I chose the Red Cross, and we got trained on all sorts of life-saving stuff.

He had noticed the boy could no longer breathe, he said.

He got pretty bug-eyed for a while, Thies said. I turned him around and grabbed him and lifted him up and squeezed. The piece of lettuce in his throat came popping out.
A top Assembly Republican on Tuesday blasted UW-Madison faculty members for proposing a vote of no confidence in the leaders of the University of Wisconsin System.

UW-Madisons Faculty Senate will vote next week on a resolution, written by sociology professor Chad Alan Goldberg, that states faculty have no confidence in UW System President Ray Cross and the Board of Regents after they approved new tenure policies that weaken faculty members protections from layoffs, among other complaints.

UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank has opposed the resolution, warning it could prompt a backlash from legislators who will soon consider the UW Systems budget.

On Tuesday, Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, defended Cross and the Regents, described the changes to tenure as minor and criticized faculty for bringing the no confidence vote.

This action ... shows an arrogance that doesnt serve the university or its students well, he said. Its a clear example of the complete disconnect between UW-Madison faculty who seem to expect their job to come with a forever guarantee and the average Wisconsin family struggling just to make ends meet.

Goldberg, who protested the new tenure policies and has frequently spoken against them, responded that the new rules will make it harder for UW-Madison to attract top professors, and could threaten the quality of students education.

The faculty are standing up for Wisconsins students, who deserve better, Goldberg said.

Its not clear whether the Faculty Senate will approve the resolution when it meets on May 2. Speaking to the senates executive committee on Monday, Goldberg said its possible senators will amend his resolution to remove the no confidence provision.
The state elections board will ask lawmakers for $250,000 to publicize Wisconsins new voter ID requirement in the lead-up to the November election.

The co-chairman of the Legislatures budget panel, Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, said Tuesday that he expects it to seriously consider the request.

Providing $250,000, to assure every vote is counted, I dont think is a problem, Nygren told the Wisconsin State Journal.

The Government Accountability Board approved the request on a 4-2 vote at its regular meeting Tuesday. Judges Harold Froehlich and Timothy Vocke were the dissenting votes.

The vote means the board will ask the Joint Finance Committee for the funds, likely later this spring, board spokesman Reid Magney said.

The board developed an ad campaign to raise awareness of the requirement but said it doesnt have the money to put it on the airwaves.

Wisconsins requirement for voters to show photo IDs at the polls is in effect in statewide elections for the first time this year. It was approved in 2011 but largely has not been in effect since, due to a string of court challenges.

Voter ID critics have said a public awareness campaign is critical to ensuring all voters know the requirement will be in place for the high-turnout presidential election. State Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, a finance committee member, urged the board Tuesday to request money for what she described as a desperately needed campaign.

Supporters of voter ID have said the requirement has been widely publicized and debated in the five years since Gov. Scott Walker signed it into law.

The vote comes as the board nears its expiration date. New elections and ethics commissions, created by Walker and Republican lawmakers, will replace the board on June 30.

The new commissioners attended and participated in Tuesdays meeting. Election commissioner Ann Jacobs, a Democratic appointee, suggested there could be value in an education campaign for the many voters who participate only in presidential elections.

We have a surprising number of people who are four-year voters, Jacobs said.

Froehlich dismissed the notion that lawmakers, if they had $250,000 to spend, would put it toward voter ID awareness.

Were spinning our wheels asking for money, Froehlich said.

Lawmakers provided $436,000 for a public education campaign in 2011 when the voter ID law was enacted.

The board spent about $181,000 of that crafting much of the ad campaign for which it will seek funding. But a 2012 court order halted the implementation of voter ID, and what was left of that money was spent elsewhere or returned to the state treasury.
Fourteen years after Verona created a special tax district to lure Epic Systems Corp. out of Madison, city officials are preparing to close the district ahead of schedule  a move that could net the city, school district and other public bodies more than $21 million next year.

Veronas City Council on Monday unanimously directed city staff to draft a resolution to close tax incremental financing (TIF) district No. 7. The resolution, which will be considered at the May 9 council meeting, is the first step in cashing the districts surplus and returning the majority of Epics campus  worth more than $393 million  to the tax rolls.

The action comes on the heels of an analysis from city financial consultant Ehlers Inc., which projected the districts fund will contain $21.2 million in surplus cash by the end of 2016. That includes an estimated $11.23 million for the Verona School District, $6.15 million for the city, $2.95 million for Dane County and $868,664 for Madison Area Technical College that would be paid in one-time lump sums.

The massive pot of tax revenue is testament to the growth Epic has experienced since 2001, when executives of the then-550-employee company announced plans to build up to four offices on 340 acres of undeveloped land west of Verona.

Verona officials created the special tax district to help fund Epics relocation in 2002, construction on the campus began in 2003 and its first employees arrived in late 2005. Seventeen buildings later, the electronic medical records company has become a health care industry juggernaut with more than 9,500 employees and annual revenue exceeding $2 billion.

Its rapid growth has had colossal effects on Dane Countys economy, whether its in housing, hotels or airport traffic.

But Verona, which spent $31.4 million on infrastructure improvements and development incentives in the district through the end of last year, has yet to see the full tax benefit because only a handful of Epics newest buildings are located outside the TIF district. Eleven office buildings and part of the 11,400-seat Deep Space auditorium are inside the TIF district, where tax revenue from new construction is siphoned into the district fund.

Under tax incremental financing, a base value for all of the properties in the district is established at the time the TIF district is created. Taxing entities continue to collect their share of the base value while the additional tax revenue generated by construction in the district, called increment, is collected in a fund to pay eligible expenses such as infrastructure improvements, environmental remediation or direct contributions to developers.

Jury awards Epic Systems nearly $1 billion in damages in infringement case A federal jury late Friday awarded Verona health care software giant Epic nearly $1 billion in damages after finding that an Indian conglomerate had stolen trade secrets from the company.

Any surplus when the district is closed is allocated among the districts taxing entities. Once its closed, the properties in the district return to the tax rolls at their full, current value.

Since the Epic district was created in 2002, its equalized value has skyrocketed from $320,400 to $393.14 million in 2015. Thats equal to about one-quarter of Veronas entire tax base, and a value eclipsed by only one of Madisons 15 TIF districts  TIF district No. 32, which encompasses the State Street corridor.

The structuring of Epic district allows the city to continue spending in the district through 2020 and make debt payments through 2025, but Verona finance director Cindy Engelke said the city is closing it at the end of 2016 because Epic has generated enough increment to pay off the citys debts ahead of schedule.

Engelke, who is in her 17th year with the city, said Epics growth has exceeded all expectations city officials had when they convinced the company to relocate to Verona.

This one number sticks in my mind, Engelke said. When (Epic executives) first met with the city and were putting together a TIF project plan, the value that they used was $45 million. So, $45 million compared to where theyre really at now is a huge difference.

I dont know about the people at Epic, but we, in the city, didnt know it would happen anything like this. Its a happy surprise.

TIF windfall

Even happier than the city is the Verona School District, which may use the one-time cash influx to pursue a building referendum next year, said Superintendent Dean Gorrell.

If thats where theyre at, we werent anticipating that much, Gorrell said of the $11.23 million TIF payout projected for the district.

The district has been moving toward expansion for several years. A recently completed growth study projected 4,500 new single- and multi-family housing units will be added within the school district by 2030, and Gorrell said capacity and condition studies have already been completed for all of the districts buildings.

Last year, voters approved an $8.35 million referendum to buy three properties, totaling 108 acres.

Given all that, what were now turning our attention to is, What do we build? Its really not if, its what, Gorrell said.

Epic Systems Corp. contract with U.S. Coast Guard expires The Verona electronic health records company was one of several providers for the organization.

Next month, the district will host a series of public meetings to discuss options for expansion. Those options could include a new elementary school, a new elementary and a new high school, or a new high school and a repurposed version of the existing high school.

Were seeking to add some clarity from the community in these workshops and early next fall, we will put out a survey narrowing the options down and gauging community support, Gorrell said.

The sustained financial impact of the TIF district closure, however, will hurt the flow of state aid into the school district because per-pupil aid is inversely tied to the valuation of property in the district. The inclusion of Epics entire campus will drastically increase the districts tax base and, in turn, drive down state funding.

As for the city, Engelke said the one-time TIF payout would likely be allocated toward a capital project or to pay down debt.

The closure is expected to increase the citys annual levy by about $1.3 million, which officials have discussed using to add another ambulance, increase road resurfacing funding, and reduce the amount of reserve funding the city applies annually to keep the levy down, Engelke said.

If the City Council approves the closure, the TIF district will be audited at the end of the year and surplus payments will be distributed sometime next spring.
Malkin and co-author John Miano, recently published Sold Out, a devastating indictment of a program originally enacted to supply skilled workers to companies unable to find American talent, only to be distorted by corporate lobbyists and Congress mostly willing to overlook the fact that H-1B had become nothing more than an outsourcing scheme that replaces American workers.

Some in attendance were among the 150 workers let go by nearby Abbot Laboratories in a recent outsourcing move.

"The American worker was born in 1776, but murdered by Beltway Crapweasels," she told about 50 people at Flanagan's Restaurant in North Chicago.

Conservative author Michelle Malkin minced no words last Friday night when speaking about the abuses associated with the H-1B visa program.



Marco Pena, ousted Abbott IT specialist |photo from Ulysses S. Arn YouTube

Employees ousted by H-1B program speak out

Marco Pena is one of those Abbott employees who finds himself out of work due to the company deciding to use employees from Wipro, an Indian firm specializing in providing tech workers to American firms.

Pena refused to take or sign a severance agreement offered by Abbott because it came with strings attached, among them agreeing not to sue the company or publicly criticize it.

"I did not sign the agreement so I'd have the ability to speak out," he said.

He noted that many of his coworkers were afraid to lose their severance packages, but stressed that being single and leading a frugal lifestyle, he didn't have the same pressure.

"I can survive," he said.

Several other laid-off Abbott employees declined to go on the record, saying they needed their severance pay and feared retaliation.

"A lot of them are afraid to come tonight," Sara Blackwell, an attorney active in the fight against H-1B abuse, said.

Indeed, one woman asked not to be photographed or identified by name, traveled from the East Coast to relate how she'd been outsourced by a prominent insurance company, and had to suffer the indignity of training her replacement.

"If we didn't train them, we won't get our severance," she said. "We're worried about our pensions. This is happening across America."

Jennifer Wedel spoke of her husband being outsourced by Texas Instruments in 2009, saying "my husband was tossed into the street like trash," while urging American people to wake up to the realities of how the visa was being abused.

"It's time we held the corporate world accountable," she said.

Abbott responds

In an email exchange, Abbott spokesperson Scott Stoffel responded that in order to remain globally competitive, "work being done by fewer than 150 Abbott U.S. employees would move to Wipro as part of a global restructuring of IT."

Stoffel stressed that only 20 percent of Wipro workers would be H-1B visa holders, with the other 80 percent remaining U.S. workers.(Other media reports had the number laid-off as 180 or 200)

The H1-B visa program began in 1990 as a way to meet the need for skilled employees to fill positions that employers would otherwise have trouble filling with available U.S. talent.

The website of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service indicates that the program is intended for specialized labor, "including but not limited to scientists, engineers and computer programmers." The general requirements mandate a bachelors degree, although some work experience may satisfy the requirement.

The program is capped at 65,000 during each fiscal year, but the first 20,000 applicants with masters degrees or beyond are exempt from the cap.

Moreover, those performing research for universities, nonprofits or government are completely exempt from the cap.

The USCIS web site specifically states that H-1B visa holders "must be paid at least the actual or prevailing wage for your occupation, whichever is higher."

But the program has been criticized for several years from those who maintain that the shortage of American workers is exaggerated and that the real reason is to replace American workers with cheap foreign labor.

Since cases of Abbott Laboratories and other companies outsourcing with H-1B visas, including Disney and Southern California Electric, are obviously not caused by a shortage of skilled American workers, critics maintain that there is only one explanation.

"Because they're (foreign workers) cheaper," Blackwell said, stressing that American workers are "not going to do the job for a dollar a day."

Pena agreed, as did everyone else in the room, although none of them have access to hard information on Abbott's new Wipro outsourcing agreement.

Indeed, supporters of the H-1B program have long maintained that the criticism that the program is nothing more than a cost-cutting measure is based on flimsy, often anecdotal evidence.

But even if Blackwell's comment about a "dollar a day" is hyperbolic, recent scholarship on the issue shows that the "anecdotal evidence" charge is starting to lose its credibility.

Are H-1B workers cheaper?

Dr. Ron Hira is an associate professor of public policy at Howard University whose areas of expertise are offshoring, skilled immigration and innovation and competitiveness.

In February 2016, he testified before a Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, and his testimony left no doubt that the driving force companies seeking H-1B visa workers was cost control.

"The reason Southern California Edison chose to replace their (300) American workers with H-1Bs is simple: the H-1B workers were cheaper," he said of the outsourcing by that utility that erupted into a scandal several years ago.

Hira said that the replacement workers were paid at least $40,000 less than the workers they replaced, a savings of 40 to 50 percent, depending on the employee.

Despite the program's requirement that the H-1B visa holders have to be paid the prevailing wage and not have an adverse effect on the working conditions of those similarly employed, Hira noted that a U.S. Department of Labor review had concluded that the outsourcing was legal, as was the lower pay.

He testified that one way that a company might get around the letter of the law was that it was able to define the job position for the visa sought.

He noted that in fiscal year 2015, 41 percent of H-1B visas approved went to "Level 1" employees, described by the U.S Department of Labor as comparable to an entry level position, or "Job offers for beginning level employees who have only a basic understanding of the occupation."

Hira testified that Level 1 employees were typically paid 40 percent below the average wage.

So while the salaries of the outsourced Disney workers was about $100,000, with benefits, the H-1B visa holders that replace them made 33-39 percent less, depending on the position.

Hira's figures show that for FY 2013, the largest number of new H-1B visas went to Tata, who paid their H-1B workers a mean salary of $65,600 per year. Wipro, the fifth largest recipient of new visas, and the company that is handling the outsourcing of the Abbott workers, pays its replacement workers an mean salary of $64,522 per year.

Annual pay of $60,000 or slightly above is a recurring theme connected to H-1B workers.

Bill Snyder, a tech writer at the online publication InfoWorld, echoes Hira's findings and explains that companies that are so-called "H-1B dependent,"--having more than 15 percent of their U.S.-based workforce visas holders--are required to make a "good faith" effort to hire American workers.

But the companies can get around the requirement if they don't undercut the prevailing wage by too much.

"What companies do is to pay the imported workers a little more than the minimum amount ($60,000) that will cause the federal government to penalize them for replacing U.S. workers with foreign H-1B visa holders," Snyder wrote in a November 2015 article.

Stoffel didn't respond to the question of whether the salaries between the outsourced workers and those who replaced them were comparable, and also didn't respond to a question regarding the ages of the workers who lost their jobs.

And he offered no thoughts on whether or not Abbott's action was an abuse of the H-1B program.

Despite complaints, Abbott denies the company abuses H-1B program

Stoffel denied that any of the outsourced Abbott workers would be required to train their replacements as part of their severance package.

Attempts to contact Wipro were unsuccessful at the time of publication.

Complaints about H-1B abuse have drawn the interests of several elected officials, including Illinois Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin, who recently sent a letter to the Abbott CEO Mile White, imploring him to restore the outsourced employee's jobs, calling the move "harsh and insensitive conduct (that) is not justified by whatever marginal financial benefits might accrue to your company, which is already making millions of dollars in profits every year."

Other elected officials have taken up the cause.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, has in the past co-sponsored legislation with Durbin to reform the H-1B program. Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut expressed his concern to the U.S. Justice Department over whether or not Eversource Energy broke any laws when it outsourced 200 IT workers in 2014. But he also sponsored legislation in 2015 that would raise the yearly cap on H-1B visas to 195,000.

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has called for a 180-day suspension of the H-1B program until it can be reviewed for abuses, and with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), co-sponsored the American Jobs First Act of 2015, which require employers to pay H-1B workers a minimum of $110,000 annually.

Blackwell acknowledged the efforts of the elected officials, but remained pessimistic about the possibility of real reform coming from Congress.

"They are bought and paid for," she said of the Congress as a whole.

Malkin urged people involved in the fight against H-1B abuse to spread the word.

"We need voices in the courtroom and we need voices in the classroom," she said.

And she told those affected by the program not to lose hope.

"You are not alone," she said.

Hank Beckman is a freelance writer from the Chicago suburbs.
Not only is Ace Metal Crafts culture unique, so is the fact that while the vast majority of manufacturers struggled to get through the 2008-2009 recession, Ace Metal Crafts nearly doubled.

Were culture people, were all about the people that work for us, Pitzo said during a recent company visit. We can talk about metal fabrication, or we can talk about our company culture, whichever you want.

BENSENVILLE - Besides making customers happy and meeting deadlines with high quality products, at Ace Metal Crafts in Bensenville, Its all about the company culture," says CEO Jean Pitzo.

So why and how did that happen?

One of the things that has been a key to our success is Deb Benning, Jean said.

When Benning, Ace Metals vice-president of sales and marketing, joined the company, she took on many of Jean Pitzos responsibilities and quickly doubled the size of the company, then grew it by 50 percent again.

Bennings experience in the steel industry prior to Ace Metal proved invaluable, but her being a key part of the leadership team during the 2008 recession was also crucial.

Ace Metal Crafts metal work skyrocketed during the recession because two of their clients  the fast food industry and the single serving coffee phenomena  were hitting high demand levels in 2008 and 2009, along with environmental and pharmaceutical customers.

During that time, people ate more fast food, and we make components for meat processing machines that supply that industry. We were also making frames for a company that puts the coffee in those little cups, Pitzo said. It was exploding at the same time. While other companies had their foot off the accelerator, we were going full board.

And because they were so busy, Ace needed more space to meet their customers demands. Thats when they moved to Bensenville from Franklin Park, where the company had been located for 51 years.

It worked out perfectly. We had to get bigger space because we were jammed into 40,000 square feet. Now were in 82,000 square feet, Pitzo said. In 2011, the buildings were plentiful and less expensive.

It was eight years before the 2009 recession that Ace Metal Crafts had their tough times, Pitzo said.

In 2001, we were losing $5000 every day we opened the door, she said. It was the mad cow disease, and meat processing took a major hit. Then September 11, 2001 happened, and the bottom dropped out.

Everyone took a pay cut and sadly, we had to do some layoffs, Benning said.

Still, despite all the ups and downs, Jean Pitzo says she loves every second as Ace Metal Crafts' CEO. Pitzo took over as a 31-year-old president in 1989, six years after her father, Jack Lichter, bought the business that was started in 1960 by 16 sheet metal workers.

In 1991, with an undergraduate degree in marketing and an MBA in finance from Northern Illinois University, Jean bought the company from her father and became the companys CEO, and her sister Mary became the human resources manager.

Now in 2015, Ace Metal Crafts is thriving  and its partially because of the companys unique trust culture.

My father didnt start the company, he bought it. He was a businessman  and very quickly it turned over into my hands, Pitzo said. I was 31, so I didnt know how to do anything in the shop. I still dont know how to turn the equipment on, but I can buy it and finance it. So, from day one I had to trust our workforce.

There were many very good people that had been at Ace Metal Crafts for many years, and they had helped start the company. They helped me along the way, so all along Ive always been about the trust, she said.

It was a unique situation, she said. I admire my father for turning it over to me, and I admire the men that helped me along the way to make this company successful.

When Pitzo and Benning are asked by others why the company exists, they say, To inspire and connect with people to have them unleash their potential and be free to express themselves.

We want people to be their best selves, Benning said.

And when people are happy working, they are productive and are happier when they go home, Pitzo said.

Both Pitzo and Benning advocate lean manufacturing, a movement that has gained momentum over the past decade. Ace Metal Crafts has been selected by Toyotas philanthropic arm to be one of three companies in the Chicago area to implement Toyotas successful lean manufacturing strategy.

Ms. Benning is using the skills shes acquired to serve on TMAs Business Management Council, which is working to mentor a younger generation on leadership skills.

At the same time, the American Psychological Association bestowed Ace Metal Crafts with an award for psychologically safe work for the state of Illinois that theyve cultivated for their 116 employees.

But Pitzo doesnt want to give the wrong impression about Ace Metal Crafts being so caring of their team that they dont push for deadlines to be met. Encouraging others to meet expectations builds a positive work experience, too.

You can meet any challenges with the right attitudes and the right belief system, she said.

Will a third generation succeed Pitzo at Ace Metal Crafts helm?

Her daughter Angela, 26, is learning the business from the shop floor up, and Pitzo says she plans to hand her daughter the keys to the company just as her father did - when the time is right.

Ace Metal Crafts is located in 484 Thomas Drive in Bensenville, Illinois or at www.acemetal.com .

Story first published in Technology & Manufacturing Association's monthly newsletter. Used by permission.
In The Time Machine the protagonist Time Traveler insists at a dinner party that time travel is indeed possible and then develops his time machine. It goes out of control and sends him 802,701 years in to the future. In this future world, the Time Traveler meets the Eloi, a fair-haired race of young people. He quickly determines that this race is completely ignorant and interested in only one thing  playing. Sound familiar?

George Orwell is probably best known in political circles for 1984, his classic fictional account of a future dystopia. Orwell wrote this book in 1948 and feared at the time that a totalitarian and omnipresent super-state would emerge just 36 years later. This prediction did not happen of course, but given current technological trends he may just have been a little early in his prediction. But another famous epic novel about the future by H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, may be late in its forecast about the future- about 800,000 years too late to be exact.

With DePaul University in the news recently for banning chalking  a time honored tradition on many campuses across the country where students express their feelings and views on many political topics (usually liberal)  one has to wonder how far off the mark Wells was really?

In the last few years, we have heard numerous stories about college students and their extreme sensitivities. From students expecting new posh dormitories with food courts that offer the best, healthiest and non-culturally appropriating cuisine to students at Yale being offended by Halloween costumes to students at numerous universities requiring safe spaces, one can see that students today are more sheltered and coddled than ever.

A Safe Space, in case you grew up in times with less absurdity, is defined by the Safe Space Network (yes there is such an organization) as a place where anyone can relax and be able to fully express, without fear of being made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, or unsafe on account of biological sex, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, cultural background, religious affiliation, age, or physical or mental ability. I wonder what George Washington would have thought of this.

And heavens to think one might feel a bit uncomfortable. To be fair, I wonder if there will be safe spaces in the inevitable gender-free public bathrooms for those who might feel a little uncomfortable with someone of the other sex in the bathroom with him/her. But I digress.

No, its clear the Eloi have arrived on campuses across the country. I recall the fictional Eloi did not read books either. The Time Traveler had them show him their library and when he took a book off the shelf it quickly turned to dust. Today its even more bizarre. For instance, many colleges require trigger warnings on books that indicate ahead of time that there might be something offensive in the books content. Heavens! And there was interesting piece out of the Epoch Times a few days ago about how many students today in the British university system are unable to read books from cover to cover.

All of this brings to mind something I remember from economics regarding the value of education. Essentially there are two views on this topic. The first and most accepted view is the "Human Capital Theory" which states that education improves ones productivity - which is a measure of the ratio of Outputs to Inputs in any process. This certainly is the traditional view and certainly has a lot validity especially in regards to occupations that require some sort of specific skill where the rate of Output production can be improved with training and education.

The second major theory on the value of education though is called "Signaling Theory." Basically it says that employers look at a college degree as a sort of stamp of approval that shows that the recipient is inherently capable of higher productivity. The education signals that someone is more productive. It assumes that education does not really make one more productive, it just shows ones ability to handle rigor.

One now has to ask if a college degree even has any validity anymore as a signal? What exactly would it be a signal of? Is it ones ability to run to the nearest safe space once one was confronted with a challenging idea? And college professors as a whole are already so liberal that one has to wonder if the typical graduate has even been exposed to any ideas that might run counter to so-called progressive orthodoxy? What does that signal to potential employers?

So, can the university system itself be saved? Can our society? Or are they just becoming a playland for the modern day Eloi? As Lenin once quipped, What is to Be Done? FDR had a good idea in the Civilian Conservation Corps. It allowed mostly young men and women of the 1930s to be put out in the countryside to work off their angst by planting trees. And if they had urges to rebel, they could go howl at the moon in the national parks until it wore off.

JFK also gave us the Peace Corps which gave 1960s youngsters an outlet outside of our country to go work off their radical notions and feel better about themselves despite their guilt over their privilege. Maybe our next President could come up with a similar program. This might be a better option for the modern day Eloi as in the book they were fed upon by the Morloch race.

Evidently there arent any safe spaces 800,000 years in to the future.
An opportunity exists with bipartisan support to rally around manufacturing by supporting the modern and permanent extensions of four critical tax incentives including the R&D tax credit, reform of the Manufacturers Purchase Credit (MPC), modification to the graphic arts sales tax exemption and a permanent coal, aggregate exploration, mining and off-highway sales tax exemption.

Thats why a diverse group of industries have come together urging lawmakers to support a series of tax incentives that will help reinvigorate the states manufacturing sector and provide businesses the certainty they need to invest and create jobs: its called the Advance Illinois Manufacturing (AIM) Coalition.

Illinois unemployment rate rose again last month to 6.3 percent -- the fourth highest in the nation and well above the national average. Unfortunately, weve heard this news before, but at least we know the solution: a stable and predictable business climate.

These comprehensive proposals would put people across Illinois back to work in good, high-paying jobs that provide an economic boost to our economy, generates state revenue at a time when its sorely needed and most of all sends a message to businesses that were turning the page on our past and that Illinois is open for business.

Lets take a moment to discuss crystal clear examples of why these common-sense incentives are needed.

Illinois is home to more than 450 corporate R&D facilities, yet businesses watched the MPC renew and expire four different times over the last 13 years. Imagine how hard it must be for a business to invest and spend in Illinois with the uncertainty of our tax environment. Companies plan their R&D investment five, 10 or even 20 years down the road and the present on/off again cycle is one we need to break.

Further, the absence of a permanent policy is driving R&D investments to neighboring states,taking those good, high paying jobs averaging salaries of $80,000 with them. We are seeing this migration more frequently as new agriculture implement research expands in Iowa and as companies remain headquartered in Illinois, but choose to manufacture and develop products across state lines.

Or in the case of commercial printing industry, Illinois is the only state in the nation without an incentive for commercial printers engaged in manufacturing activity. Yes, once again were at the bottom.

The graphic arts exemption expired at a time when the industry employed 55,100 workers in more than 2,300 facilities. Quite simply, that industrys livelihood is dependent upon this incentive encouraging businesses to invest in higher quality, more technologically advanced printing and graphic arts equipment.

Theres no doubt that our state is home to some pretty incredible industries  including manufacturing which alone generated $101 billion in manufacturing output and exported more than 64 billion worth of goods in 2014. Despite our current challenges, manufacturing remains a known leader in technology and innovation and contributes the single largest share  12.4 percent -- of the Gross State Product and employs more than 570,000 workers in good, high paying jobs.

But almost like its written in glaring red ink, we are the face of an outdated tax structure  one that fails to encourage R&D investment, one that sunsets tax incentive programs that encourage manufacturing spending, and one that lacks innovative solutions to securing business growth and development in our state.

Why choose Illinois when neighboring states offer more incentives for our business? These thoughts are keeping business owners up at night and as concerned Illinois constituents and employees struggling through a tough economy, we should be concerned, too.

We cannot continue to leave Illinois pro-business reforms by the wayside. Our coalition stands ready to work with lawmakers to make a case for why these modern and permanent tax incentives are a shot-in-the-arm to our ailing state economy.

Illinois cannot sit on the sidelines of prosperity. Its time to create stability and predictability for our job creators and put more Illinois families back to work.

-- Submitted by Mark Denzler, vice president and COO of the Illinois Manufacturers Association, Steve Rauschenberger, president of The Technology & Manufacturing Association and Bill Gibson, Illinois state director at Great Lakes Graphics Association on behalf of the AIM Coalition, representing a diverse group of industries including manufacturing, agriculture, biotech, printing and other important sectors of the states economy.

First published in the Rockford Register-Star
Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani is host to the World's most expensive private residence.

By India Today Web Desk: Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani is host to the World's most expensive private residence. The property which bears the name of 'Antilia' is a 27 storied skyscraper building with an area of 400,000 square feet is located in the Southern hemisphere of Mumbai. The property is named after a mythical island in the Atlantic and includes six stories of underground parking, three helicopter pads and reportedly requires a staff of 600 to keep it running.

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READ: Forbes 10 Most Expensive Billionaire Homes In The World



Here's a list of 10 most expensive residential properties in India:

L - Antilia; M - Mannat; R - Abode

Property Owner Value Antilia, South Mumbai Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani, Chairman & M.D. of Reliance Industries Rs 10,000 Crore Anil Ambani's Abode, Pali Hill, Mumbai Anil Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Group Rs 5,000 Crore Ratan Tata's bungalow, Colaba, Mumbai Ratan Naval Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons Rs 125 Crore - 150 Crore Mannat, Bandra, Mumbai Shahrukh Khan, Bollywood Actor Rs 125 Crore - 150 Crore Navin Jindal's home, Leafy Lutyens, Delhi Naveen Jindal, Chairman of Jindal Steel and Power Limited Rs 125 Crore - 150 Crore Rana Kapoor's home, Tony Altamount Road, Mumbai Rana Kapoor, C.E.O. and M.D. of YES Bank Rs 120 Crore Shashi Ruia and Ravi Ruia's bungalow, Tees January Marg, New Delhi Shashi Ruia, Chairman, and Ravi Ruia, Vice Chairman of Essar Group Rs 120 Crore

(With inputs from top10wala.in)



Interested in General Knowledge and Current Affairs? Click here to stay informed and know what is happening around the world with our G.K. and Current Affairs section.

To get more updates on Current Affairs, send in your query by mail toeducation.intoday@gmail.com.





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By PTI: Muzaffarnagar, Apr 26 (PTI) Seven Indians, allegedly working in hostile conditions in a Sri Lanka factory, were rescued and reached home today at Sujru village here, police said.

According to SSP KB Singh, a complaint was lodged by Tohid Ahmed, a family member of one of the bonded labourers, against Asif and Mehbood, the two contractors accused of cheating the workers by sending them to Sri Lanka with fake promises of better pay, accommodation and food.

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A case was registered at kotwali police station here against the accused duo under section 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 406 (Punishment for criminal breach of trust), 323 (Punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (Intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, on April 22.

The rescued people were working as bonded labourers in Indo Coal Steel Factory in Colombo since February 9 in extreme hostile conditions with poor food and little money, police said.

The seven workers were freed yesterday with the efforts of the External Affairs Ministry, said Akhil Rana, a social worker and president of Rashtriya Sangharsh Morcha who pursued the case before the Indian government.

The accused contractors are absconding, police said, adding efforts are on to nab them. PTI COR ARK ZMN ARK

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The Modi government will complete two years in office on May 26 and plans are underway to celebrate the occasion.

After 'Saal Ek Shuruat Anek' tagline for the first year, the Narendra Modi goverment is going with 'Zara Muskura Do' for their second year.

By Kumar Vikram: The NDA government will complete two years in office and the occasion will be marked by celebrations to showcase initiatives that have brought smiles on the faces of common people.

The government's campaign, 'Zara Muskura Do' (Smile Please!), will consist of citizen centric initiatives like Jan Dhan scheme, Deen Dayal Gram Jyoti Yojna, LPG 'Give it Up', Crop Insurance Scheme, Digital India, Swachch Bharat mission and others.

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The Modi government will complete two years in office on May 26 and plans are underway to celebrate the occasion. The ministries have asked to prepare a list of successful programmes undertaken by them in the past two years which could be publicised.

A senior government official said that details regarding how a particular government initiative has benefitted the common people, number of people who availed the scheme and the money allocated will all be part of the campaign.

Information regarding schemes launched for empowerment of SC/ST and women have also been asked from various departments.

The flagship schemes like LPG Give it Up, village electrification, Mudra Loan Initiative, Jan Dhan Yojna and many others have been considered to be very successful by ministries as they are related with common people and have received huge response.

For example, over a crore people have stopped using subsidised cooking gas after Modi made the appeal in March last year to give up subsidy.

While the aim was to bring down the country's dependence on energy imports by 10 per cent by 2022, the surrendered subsidy is being used by the government to provide cooking gas connections to the poor in rural households free of cost.

Similarly, Modi launched the much coveted scheme of village electrification in July 2015, with the aim of electrifying 18,452 villages by May 1, 2018 - within 1,000 days. So far, over 7,000 villages across the country have reaped its benefits.

Besides, the financial inclusion initiatives have also received massive responses.

Under the Jan Dhan Yojana, over 21.3 crore accounts have been opened, while under the Mudra Yojana, loans over `1.22 lakh crore has been disbursed. Officials claimed that lack of publicity of government achievements has been a cause of concern for the Centre and to address this, BJP parliamentarians and ministers will be told to visit their respective constituencies for public connect and to inform people.

While the MPs will be told to concentrate on their constituencies, ministries will have to cover at least two parliamentary constituencies. This time, the information and publicity department will also publish a booklet listing the achievements.

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Consultations have already started work so that a detailed communication plan can be formulated involving the Press Information Bureau, Doordarshan, AIR and other publicity units and ministries.

According to officials, meetings have been held with the concerned departments and all media units, under the information and broadcasting ministry, have been asked to share their action plans. Department publicity officers have been asked to outline major initiatives taken by their ministries over last two years.

Apart from this, Doordarshan has also been asked to outline a comprehensive strategy for its regional and national network, including Kisan TV channel. In the process, the ministry may also consider taking the assistance of industry professionals to ensure that a crisp and clear communication strategy is put in place, said an official.

Also read:

Modi, Mehbooba share platform after Handwara violence, talk development



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Crime rates have dropped by 27 percent and road accidents by 33 percent after the liquor ban came into effect on April 5.

By Indo-Asian News Service: The complete ban on liquor in Bihar is showing positive results, crimes as well as road accidents have come down in the last 20 days, officials said on Tuesday.

"Crime rates have dropped by 27 percent and road accidents by 33 percent after the liquor ban came into effect on April 5. This official data was presented before Chief Minister Nitish Kumar during a review meeting here," said an official from the Chief Minister's Office.

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According to official figures, compared to 3,178 incidents of crime reported from Patna division during April 1-23 last year, after the ban on liquor, the crime graph registered a decline with 2,528 incidents in the corresponding period this year.

Riots during religious events have also come down.

"The chief minister has directed officials to ensure a complete ban on liquor and monitor its implementation and warned of action against officials found responsible for negligence," the official said.

Banning liquor was one of the main poll promises of the Grand Alliance in the Bihar assembly elections. Experts say the ban would cost the state government a whopping Rs.4,000 crore in revenue annually.

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The worst quake the country faced in nearly seven decades, left 12,000 people injured and destroyed 7,000 buildings. Half a million people are in need of food assistance after the country was hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on April 16.

By India Today Web Desk: A devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed around 650 people in Ecuador and those who survived are left with no food.

The United Nations will distribute food to more than a quarter of a million people who survived the hazard.

One in every 30 Ecuadorians or, or half a million people, are in need of food assistance after the quake ravaged the country's Pacific coast on April 16.

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The UN World Food Programme (WFP) will be assisting 260,000 needy people including children, people living in shelters and those hospitalized.





Photo: AP

The government and many foreign aid workers are already distributing good, water and medicine in the quake zone. According to estimates, the cost of its three-month operation is $34 million.

President Rafael Correa announced on Saturday eight days of national mourning for the victims of the quake.

The quake ravaged country saw a damage $2 billion to $3 billion, its impact will also be shown in the economic growth as the oil-dependent economy could knock 2 to 3 percentage points off.

The worst quake the country faced in nearly seven decades, left 12,000 people injured and destroyed 7,000 buildings. More than 700 aftershocks have continued to shake the country since the major quake causing additional damage.

Photo: AP





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The actress's name had figured in the recent Panama Paper leaks for allegedly having links with offshore entities.

By Press Trust of India: Actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan today said all information regarding the Panama Paper leaks, in which her name figures, were being given to the government.

The actress's name had figured in the recent Panama Paper leaks for allegedly having links with offshore entities.

"A statement has been issued and that stands true. A statement has already been given individually as well as by the members of the family. A statement has already been given to the media. And rest, all the queries that need to be answered to the government of India is being done. Thank you," Aishwarya told reporters at an event, when asked about the Panama Paper leak.

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The reported secret list, called 'Panama Papers', contains names of about 500 prominent Indians including megastar Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya besides politicians and businessmen.

The Panama Papers are a leaked set of 11.5 million confidential documents that provide detailed information about more than 214,000 offshore companies listed by the Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, including the identities of shareholders and directors of the companies.

Earlier, Bachchan had issued a statement saying that his name was "misused" and he was not aware of any of the companies mentioned in the report.

Aishwarya's spokesperson had also called the information about her name cropping up in the list as "totally untrue and false".

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Mannan, 35, was hacked to death on Monday in his apartment in the capital Dhaka by a group of assailants posing as couriers.

By Reuters: A group affiliated to al Qaeda claimed responsibility on Tuesday for killing a Bangladeshi gay rights campaigner and his friend, the latest in a string of murders of liberal activists and other minorities in the South Asian nation.

The slaying of Xulhaz Mannan, editor of Bangladesh's first magazine for gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, has deeply shocked Bangladesh's embattled community of free-thinking intellectuals.

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Mannan, 35, was hacked to death on Monday in his apartment in the capital Dhaka by a group of assailants posing as couriers. His friend, actor Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy, 25, was killed in the same attack, according to police.

Islamist militants have targeted atheist bloggers, academics, religious minorities and foreign aid workers in a series of killings that dates back to February 2015 and has claimed at least 17 lives.

But the death of Mannan, who published gay rights journal Roopbaan and also worked for U.S. aid agency USAID, has caused particular alarm because his links to a powerful Western government offered no guarantee of safety.

"There's a complete state of shock. People are really scared," said one security analyst who knew Mannan personally and asked not to be named for reasons of safety.

The person said that the killing could "precipitate" moves abroad by those who feel the risks of staying in Bangladesh are too great.

CLIMATE OF INTOLERANCE

Homosexuality is illegal in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation of 160 million people where sexual minorities are more marginalised than in neighbouring India.

A 2014 survey carried out by Roopbaan found that 54 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals suffered constant fear that others would find out their sexual orientation.

Just over half of the 600 respondents said that they were mentally stressed, leading to depression, suicidal tendencies and self-hatred.

Roopbaan had no official permission to publish in Bangladesh. It was not available on news stands and appeared only sporadically.

"It was a publication mainly for the community and was not sold for outsiders," said one supporter of the group. Another gay rights activist added: "We don't know when the next edition will be published - all of us are saddened and devastated."

International human rights groups say a climate of intolerance in Bangladeshi politics has both motivated and provided cover for perpetrators of crimes of religious hatred.

A Twitter handle identifying itself as an outlet of Ansar Al Islam said on Tuesday that its fighters had killed Mannan and Tonoy, denouncing them as "the pioneers of practicing (sic) and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh."

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Ansar Al Islam, which is part of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, has issued similar claims in the past, but its authenticity could not immediately be verified.

MILITANT CLAIMS QUESTIONED

Maruf Hossain Sardar, spokesman for Dhaka city police, dismissed the group's claim as baseless, saying that international militant groups like Islamic State or al Qaeda had no organisational base in Bangladesh.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the weekend killing of Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, a 58-year-old English professor at a university in the northwest who was hacked to death at a bus stop.

Western security experts doubt that there are any direct operational links between Islamic State, based in the Middle East, and militants operating on the ground in Bangladesh.

But they do say that a "call and response" of claims and statements of support for militant attacks through their propaganda channels allows them to create the impression of being in league together.

Human rights activists urged mainstream politicians in Bangladesh to abandon sectarian hostilities that date back to the 1971 war of independence, and to engage in a constructive dialogue that would deprive Islamist extremists of cover for their attacks.

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"The Sheikh Hasina government needs to take an unequivocal stance on issues such as secular thought or gay rights, and ensure that those behind these attacks are properly prosecuted," said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, referring to the prime minister.

"The government seems much more obsessed with cracking down on political opposition than on ensuring that criminals with machetes stop axing down those that don't agree with an extremist view of Islam."

Also Read: LGBT magazine editor among 2 hacked to death in Bangladesh



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The Centre of European Policy Studies, the European Union's leading think tank, issued a report recently outlining reasons why Beijing and Brussels should launch free trade agreement talks.

The opinion of most experts is in line with that of the team led by Senior Research Fellow Jacques Pelkmans at the CEPS.

However, there have been voices claiming that although it would benefit both sides to reach a deep and comprehensive free trade deal, it is too early to take action right now.

Their arguments range from whether to give China market economy status to dealing with terrorism and the migrant crisis and economic challenges.

Apart from that, they say Brussels is busy talking with Beijing to reach bilateral investment agreement and it is more willing to conclude and ratify this agreement first before entering into free trade talks.

Compared with Brussels' reaction, Beijing has been more proactive and it has been actively pushing for such talks.

When President Xi Jinping paid his first visit to European Union headquarters in Brussels as Chinese president two years ago, he raised the idea that both sides should do feasibility study for talks on a free trade agreement.

And when Xi visited the United Kingdom last year, China and the UK agreed to push such talks at the Beijing-Brussels level.

Pelkmans' team says in its report that Brussels has slowly got used to China's urgency, which stated in its recent foreign policy update that entering free trade agreements with its partners tops its agenda.

Is it really too early for Brussels to engage with Beijing and kick off free trade talks?

The answer is no.
Tej Pratap Yadav, Lalu's eldest son, who happens to be the health minister in the Nitish Kumar government, is playing the role of a chief minister in a Bhojpuri film, Apharan Udyog (Abduction industry).

RJD chief Lalu Prasad's son Tej Pratap wants to obliterate the negative image of his party by playing the role of an honest chief minister in the film titled Apharan Udyog.

By Giridhar Jha: The 15-year-long regime of Rashtriya Janata Dal headed by Lalu Prasad and Rabri Devi may have earned widespread criticism for the rise in abduction cases in Bihar but their minister son now appears to be trying to refurbish the past image of his party in his own way.

Tej Pratap Yadav, Lalu's eldest son, who happens to be the health minister in the Nitish Kumar government, is playing the role of a chief minister in a Bhojpuri film with an interesting title, Apharan Udyog (Abduction industry).

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Tej Pratap took part in the muhurat and shot for the film - starring Bhojpuri actor Chhotu Chhalia as the lead - at the tourist town of Rajgir in Nalanda district on Sunday. The 27-yearold minister, who also holds additional portfolios of minor irrigation and forest and environment, enacted a scene at the location in the midst of hundreds of curious onlookers.

The sequence saw Tej Pratap playing the chief minister, who pacifies a crowd protesting against the kidnapping of a youth. As the protesters shouted slogans demanding immediate recovery of the abducted youth and restoration of the law and order situation, Tej Pratap arrived at the scene and reassured people that the kidnapped youth would be recovered safely.

Asserting that criminal activities would not be allowed in the state, he told them that the abduction was part of the conspiracy hatched by the Opposition to defame the government.

"No matter how big a criminal is, the law will take its own course," he said effortlessly in the shot which was okayed quickly.

Sharing his experience of shooting for the film on his Facebook account, Tej Pratap said that this was another facet of his personality. He said that he had played a positive role of a chief minister in the film.

Interestingly, the locals who had thronged the shooting location did not take his acting seriously and besieged him with different demands. They apprised the minister about the deplorable condition of the government hospital at Rajgir and urged him to conduct an inspection to help ameliorate it.

Tej Pratap lent a patient ear to their problems and grievances and assured them to look into their demands. "I have not come here on an official visit this time but I am chalking out a programme to inspect all hospitals across the state from next month," he told the residents of Rajgir.

The next round of the film's shooting is due to take place in Patna. Apart from Chhotu Chhalia, Apharan Udyog stars Birendra Kumar, Kishan Choudhary, Mahesh and Sangita in stellar roles.

A new challenge Many movies based on the theme of the rise of abduction industry between 1990 and 2005 have been made in different languages so far. Bihar-born filmmaker Prakash Jha had made the Ajay Devgn-starrer, Apaharan while Bollywood actress Neetu Chandra had produced Deswa in Bhojpuri and Once Upon A Time in Bihar in Hindi based on the abduction industry flourishing in the state.

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Chandra's film was recently yanked off the Patna Film Festival because of its controversial theme. But now, Tej Pratap has taken it upon himself to obliterate the negative image of his party by playing the role of an honest chief minister.

Also read:



Lalu demands electrification of 36 riverine villages in Bihar

Tejaswi backs Lalus support to Nitish as PM



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By Baishali Adak: The question on exempting two-wheelers from the odd-even scheme may be back to haunt Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal. A report by the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) says that the number of scooters and motorbikes during odd-even phase 2 has actually gone up vis-a-vis 'non-odd-even' days.

The rise is most pronounced on the Ring Road, where the number of two-wheelers has almost doubled, from 25 to 46 per cent. An SPA team first checked on Monday, April 11, before odd-even phase 2 came into effect. To their surprise, when the team rechecked on April 18, the first working Monday after odd-even was enforced, the number had gone up.

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Similar trends were noted in Punjabi Bagh, Anand Vihar, Indraprastha, Maharani Bagh, Mandir Marg, Gurgaon Expressway and Lodhi Road: a total eight locations where SPA conducted their study. Dr Sewa Ram, Associate Professor at SPA and leader of the research team said, "The whole traffic flow data was collected through videographic technique for peak hour."

An estimated 55 lakh scooters and motorbikes run on Delhi roads as against the 27 lakh private cars. Think tanks like the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) have repeatedly stressed that two-wheelers contribute 31 per cent of the particulate load from vehicles and must be brought under the ambit of the odd-even scheme.

Dr PK Sarkar, head of department (Transport Planning), told Mail Today, "More homework is required on the odd-even scheme. Before we go in for the third phase of the traffic-rationing scheme, which I must add is an emergency pollution measure only. We must conduct further scientific studies and weigh in the benefits better."

At Indraprastha, the rise in two-wheelers was from 34 per cent to 47 per cent while Maharani Bagh saw two-wheelers increase from 36 per cent to 41 per cent. Punjabi Bagh witnessed a two per cent rise from 44 per cent to 46 per cent, Gurgaon Expressway saw an increase from 26 per cent to 27 per cent. Two-wheelers in Anand Vihar rose from 44 per cent to 45 per cent and in Mandir Marg, their numbers rose from 41 per cent to 42 per cent.

Interestingly, the number of private cars also seems to have gone up from odd-even phase I days.

Most notable is Maharani Bagh, where the share of private cars before odd-even phase I (December 2015) was 37 per cent. During odd-even phase I (January 2016), it came down only marginally to Bike rush crushes odd-even gain 35 per cent.

However, during odd-even phase II, the number has shot up to 42 per cent. The corresponding rise in Indraprastha has been 32 per cent to 36 per cent and on Gurgaon Expressway 45 per cent to 48 per cent.

SPA professor Dr Sewa Ram said, "The survey focused on traffic data only. However, we will correlate it with data from Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) monitoring stations nearest to the survey sites and give an analysis."

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Also read:

Odd-even 2.0: Frustrated with restrictions, parliamentarians demand exemption

Odd-even effect: Special buses for MPs to reach House



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Thirty years ago today, the world's worst nuclear disaster took place in Chernobyl. But this 90-year-old man still lives in his birthplace which is poisoned with radioactive fallout from the nuclear meltdown.

By India Today Web Desk: Today marks the 30th anniversary of the worst nuclear meltdown in history.

For 90-year-old Ivan Shamyanok leaving the place of birth was not an option, even when it is a Belarusian village poisoned with radioactive fallout. This is what he considers to be the secret to his long life.

Photo:Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

Ivan Shamyanok lives in the Belarusian village of Tulgovich, on the edge of the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. The zone is 1,615 miles or roughly the size of Luxembourg.

Photo:Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

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He and his wife turned down the offer to relocate after the 1986 disaster and he says that life didn't change much after the meltdown.

In fact, he and his entire family continued to eat vegetables and fruit grown in their own backyard and kept cows, pigs and chickens for the meat, milk and eggs.

Photo:Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters Photo:Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

"So far, so good. The doctors came yesterday, put me on the bed and checked and measured me. They said 'everything's fine with you, granddad," Shamyanok told Reuters.

"My sister lived here with her husband. They decided to leave and soon enough they were in the ground. They died from anxiety. I'm not anxious. I sing a little, take a turn in the yard, take things slowly like this and I live," he said.

Photo:Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

Ivan Shamyanok, 90, visits his brother's grave at a cemetery in the village of Tulgovichi Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

Now that his wife has died and children moved away, he and his nephew, who lives on the other side of the village, are the only people left. "Will people move back? No, they won't come back. The ones who wanted to, have died already."

Shamyanok lives a quiet life. He gets up at 6am when the national anthem is played on the radio, lights his cast iron stove to heat his breakfast and feeds his pigs and his dog.

Photo:Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

Photo:Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

A mobile shop operating out of the back of a car visits the village twice a week and on Saturdays Shamyanok's granddaughter comes to cook food for the week and clean his house.

He says he doesn't have any problems with his health, but takes medication sometimes and drinks a small glass of vodka before meals "to help the appetite".

Ivan Shamyanok eats lunch in his house Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

The worst nuclear meltdown in history: Chernobyl 30 years on



On April 26, 1986, a botched safety test in the fourth reactor of the atomic plant went awry. It sent clouds of nuclear material across much of Europe and forced more than 100,000 people to leave a permanently contaminated "exclusion zone".

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The explosion and the consequent fire which released a massive radioactive plume engulfed the region including the nearby town of Pripyat.

50,000 residents of Pripyat were evacuated and the Soviet authorities turned an area of 2,600 sq kms into what is now known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

A doll wearing a children's gas mask is seen amongst beds at a kindergarten. Long-standing evidence of a hurried departure. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

Checkpoints were placed at all entry points to ensure that no one, except emergency relief and cleanup crew got in. The official short-term death toll from the accident was 31 but many more people died of radiation-related illnesses such as cancer.

The evacuation order came only 36 hours after the accident which clearly shows the inefficiency of the then Soviet government. The disaster also contributed to the downfall of the of the Soviet Union.

The long-term effects are still debated. Nobody can say for sure when the area will be safe again, but some scientists estimate that it could be 20,000 years before people can live near the plant again.

A view of an amusement park in the centre of the abandoned town. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

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In the wake of the disaster, it was decided that a massive "safe confinement" or a sarcophagus will be constructed to isolate the damaged reactor. But hasty construction made it vulnerable to degradation and corrosion.

On 17 September 2007 Vinci Construction Grands Projets and Bouygues Travaux Publics started building New Safe Confinement. This new safety cover is designed to contain the radioactive remains of Chernobyl Unit 4 for the next 100 years.

Photo: Reuters

However, people in affected areas are still coming into daily contact with dangerously high levels of radiation. A Greenpeace report called Nuclear Scars: The Lasting legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima says,"It is in what they eat and what they drink. It is in the wood they use for construction and burn to keep warm." Thousands of children, even those born 30 years after Chernobyl, still have to drink radioactively contaminated milk.



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The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that placing a 'technical hold' on Masood Azhar at the UNSC sanctions committee was "in line with the committee's rules of procedures".

By Ananth Krishnan: China has hinted it won't change its stance on placing a 'technical hold' on Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions committee despite India's objections.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that placing the hold was "in line with the committee's rules of procedures".

The ministry, in a statement sent in response to questions from the media on the hold on Azhar, indicated further that China wanted India to talk directly with Pakistan to resolve the issue, rather than get the UNSC sanctions committee to act. The likelihood of that, however, remains dim, considering Pakistan's past record of failing to address India's concerns on terror emanating from its soil.

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The Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said, "In accordance with the rules of procedure of the 1267 committee, the committee encourages communication between countries that ask for the listing and countries where individuals or entities covered in the listing come from or live in. We encourage all parties related to the listing matter of Masood Azhar to have direct communication and work out a solution through serious consultation. China is willing to continue with its communication with all relevant parties."

Separately on Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying confirmed that China had raised its concerns with India over the issuing of an electronic visa to the Uighur exile leader Dolkun Isa. India on Monday said it cancelled the visa, citing a red corner notice issued by Interpol on China's behest.

"At first when we saw India planned to issue a visa to Dolkun Isa we expressed our concerns to the Indian side immediately," Hua said. "Dolkun is on the red corner notice of Interpol and we believe it is the responsibility of all countries to bring him to justice. At the moment China and India are in very good communication and we hope two countries will properly deal with the relevant issue."

Beijing views Isa as "a terrorist" and has blamed him for bombings carried out in Xinjiang in the 1990s, although Isa, who has been living in Germany for a decade and has been awarded by the West for his human rights activism, denies the charges and says he is working to highlight the plight of Uighurs.

ALSO READ

China blocks India's bid to ban JeM chief Masood Azhar, says he's not a terrorist

In Russia, Sushma objects to China's veto protecting Masood Azhar



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Nitish Kumar has said that he is not in the race for the Prime Minister post and added that JD(U) was trying to act as a "catalyst to unite non-BJP parties".

By India Today Web Desk: Even before the idea of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for Prime Minister in 2019 took off in real earnest, it has already hit its first roadblock.

Nitish's alliance partner in the Bihar government, Congress has strongly opposed any attempt by him to project himself as the prime ministerial candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

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After supporting the Janata Dal (United) in the Bihar Assembly elections, the Congress now wants it to back Rahul Gandhi for PM's post in 2019. Even though this may have no bearing on the general elections which are still three years away, it is leading to the first sign of tension in the ruling coalition in Bihar.

Earlier this week, Nitish Kumar had said that he was not in the race for the Prime Minister post and added that JD(U) was trying to act as a "catalyst to unite non-BJP parties".

"We are attempting a unity at the national level in the same way we forged a Grand Alliance in Bihar. Who will lead it can be decided at the right time. I have just spoken about a Sangh-mukt Bharat. I am not staking a claim (for the PM post)," he had said.

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad had earlier said that his party will support Nitish Kumar if he is projected as a PM candidate in 2019.

"The elder brother will be happy if the younger one becomes prime minister," Lalu Prasad had said.

The Bihar CM had also suggested that media should refrain from asking leaders if they are in the run for the PM post.

"Please do not digress the debate. One might say he is a PM candidate, but not become one in seven births. But if one is destined to become PM, he will," he had said.



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By PTI: Mumbai, Apr 25 (PTI) Capital Small Finance Bank (CSFB) has started operations after getting the licence, kicking off the era of differentiated banking in the country, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan said here today.

CSFB, earlier known as Capital Local Area Bank, was given the licence recently. It became the first Small Finance Bank and the second differentiated bank after Bharti Airtels Payment Bank to get the final go-ahead.

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As CSFB was already operational as a local area bank, it was easy for it to start functioning. According to reports, the Jalandhar-headquartered bank started with 10 branches from yesterday.

"My sense is, this is going to create a revolution in the banking sphere. And a revolution in the banking sphere will create easier access to finance for small entities," Rajan said, delivering the Y B Chavan Memorial Lecture here.

The governor said he expects each of these banks to start with a higher-than-required capital of Rs 500-600 crore, which will entail having an asset book of up to Rs 6,000 crore and stressed that these will not be "tiny banks".

He said there is a need for such entities not to concentrate lending activity in a particular district or sector and expressed confidence the requirement to have 50 per cent of the lending to smaller entities will take care of the risk of concentration.

The RBI has given a total of 22 in-principle nods to small finance banks and payments banks and expects all the banks to get operational in a year, he said.

The introduction of the new entities, through which the RBI is targeting to deepen financial inclusion, was a part of an exercise to make regulation more lighter and transparent, and create level-playing field, Rajan added.

The RBI had first come out with a paper on the need to go beyond universal banks and have differentiated banks serving a special purpose. To start with, it chose to have small finance banks and payments banks, while others like wholesale banks are in pipeline. PTI AA KRK ABK PTP

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The minor was denied bail last week as the board observed that the accused was a repeat offender and had been fined for rash driving on previous occasions.

By India Today Web Desk: The Juvenile Justice Board today granted bail to the minor who is accused of killing a man while driving his father's Mercedes. The JJB allowed the Class 12 student to take college entrance exams and asked to furnish a personal bail bond of Rs 5000.

The minor was denied bail last week as the board observed that the accused was a repeat offender and had been fined for rash driving on previous occasions.

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The accused, who turned 18 just four days after the accident, was allegedly driving at a speed of 80 kmph when his car hit Siddharth Sharma, 32, in Delhi's Civil Lines area on April 4 killing the marketing executive on the spot. The teenager surrendered on April 10 and was sent to a Juvenile Justice Home. His father was also taken into judicial custody but granted bail later.

The boy's father was arrested under section 304 (abetting the crime of culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of IPC for letting his minor son to drive even after knowing that he had caused an accident earlier.

Police had earlier told the court that CCTV footage showed that the minor offender was driving the car way above the permissible speed limit in a residential area.

Also read:

Delhi Mercedes hit-and-run: Time to rethink Juvenile Justice Act?



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By PTI: London, Apr 25 (PTI) Dinosaurs migrated out of Europe between 125 and 100 million years ago after the original super continent broke up, according to a new study that used network theory for the first time to visually depict the movement of dinosaurs around the world.

The research also reaffirms previous studies that have found that dinosaurs continued to migrate to all parts of the world after the super-continent Pangaea split into land masses that are separated by oceans.

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"We presume that temporary land bridges formed due to changes in sea levels, temporarily reconnecting the continents," said Alex Dunhill, from the University of Leeds in the UK, who led the study.

"Such massive structures - spanning, for example, from Indo-Madagascar to Australia - may be hard to imagine," Dunhill said.

"But over the timescales that we are talking about, which is in the order of tens of millions of years, it is perfectly feasible that plate tectonic activity gave rise to the right conditions for such land bridges to form," he said.

The researchers used the Paleobiology Database that contains every documented and accessible dinosaur fossil from around the world.

Fossil records for the same dinosaur families from different continents were then cross-mapped for different periods of time, showing connections that show how they have migrated.

Some regions of the world, such as Europe, have extensive fossil records from a long history of palaeontology digs, while other parts of the world have been largely unexplored.

To help account for this disparity in fossil records, which could otherwise skew the findings, the researchers applied a filter to the database records to only count the first time that a dinosaur family connection occurred between two continents.

The findings support the idea that, although continental splitting undoubtedly reduced intercontinental migration of dinosaurs, it did not completely inhibit it.

The research also showed that all connections between Europe and other continents during the Early Cretaceous period (125-100 million years ago) were out-going.

While dinosaur families were leaving Europe, no new families were migrating into Europe, researchers said.

While network theory is commonly used in computer science for quantifying internet data, such as friend connections on Facebook, it has only recently been applied to biology research and this is the first study to use it to on dinosaur research.

The study was published in the Journal of Biogeography. PTI MHN SAR SAR

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Other students political outfits in the varsity have also decided to boycott the decision and will ask the administration to withdraw the punishment given to the students.

By Astha Saxena: The Jawarharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA) has expressed disappointment over the recommendations and the punishment imposed by the university on the students over the controversial Afzal Guru event which took place on February 9 inside the campus.

The university on Monday rusticated Umar Khalid and two other students for varying duration and imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on Kanhaiya Kumar. "This is wrong to punish on the basis of an enquiry which is not credible in the eye of students and even the teachers and other eminent personalities. This is not justified. We don't agree with the decision and present our stand to them. Many of the students who have been given such harsh punishment were not involved in the enquiry procedure," said Ajay Patnaik, president, JNUTA. The High-Level Enquiry Committee (HLEC) set up by the university has always been under scanner as the students allege that the members of the committee are biased and specifically handpicked by the varsity.

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The committee has faced a series of hiccups since its constitution. While the varsity's proctorial committee was first given the task to probe the issue, a day later it was replaced by a high-level committee.

The JNU Students' Union has also rejected the administration decision and has decided to go against the move. "We completely reject this farcical enquiry report, as it is based on sheer vendetta and a biased enquiry. These are all innocent students, coming from extremely humble and underprivileged backgrounds. They are all dedicated activists and this is a conspiracy to crush anti-Modi voices," said Shehla Rashid, vice-president, JNUSU.

"Not only will we not remain silent against this anti-people government, we will also challenge this sham of a report. The punishments are all based on one-sided statements from ABVP members, and our repeated calls to conduct a fair enquiry were ignored. We will launch a countrywide campaign to expose this government's anti-student, anti-Dalit character," she added. Other students' political parties in the varsity have also decided to boycott the decision and will ask the administration to take back the punishment given to the students.

"We won't accept the recommendations made by the high-level enquiry committee. The political and legal struggle will continue until the university administration takes back the decision. No action of this sort should have been taken against the students. This is completely a one-sided and a biased decision and we reject it," said G Suresh, secretary, Students' Federation of India (SFI) Unit, JNU.

"From the very beginning, we have been saying the committee has not followed any guidelines. The committee has charged the students on the baseless allegations. The varsity's enquiry is not bigger than the country's legal system. The legal system has given them a bail," said Aparajita, president, All India Students' Federation (AISF) unit of JNU.

In his reaction, Kanhaiya Kumar said the punitive action handed down on the basis of a farcical probe was simply unacceptable and that the Union rejects it. "JNUSU rejects the punishment handed down by the administration on the basis of a farcical committee!" Kanhaiya tweeted. Anirban and Umar alleged the authority's action amounted to a witchhunt under the diktats of RSS.



Also read:

JNU rusticates Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya; Kanhaiya Kumar fined Rs 10,000



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Over the last four months, the Congress in Karnataka is clearly divided between the veterans and 'new-comers' like Siddaramaiah and his followers, who are now enjoying power in the state.

By Mail Today: While the whole of drought-hit Karnataka is in distress, the public spat between the senior Congress leaders and Chief Minister Siddaramaiah over governance - ever since the scams allegedly involving the latter's son came to the fore - has taken centre stage, with leaders trading charges in the open.

"I did not become the chief minister because of the Lokayukta. People voted for me and the High Command appointed me as the CM," Siddaramaiah told journalists in Belagavi in northwestern Karnataka, while inspecting drought-hit regions.

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He was reacting to former Union minister B Janardhana Poojary, who on Sunday said that Siddaramaiah should be thankful to the Lokayukta, whose expose led to the downfall of the previous BJP regime prompting people to vote for the Congress instead.

The statement did not go down well with Siddaramaiah. Poojary is an open critic of Siddaramaiah and his tirade increased ever since the government created the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) and undermined the Lokayukta.

"There was no reason for the government to create the ACB. Siddaramaiah should remember the noble works of the Lokayukta. He should also remember that he is the CM today because of the Lokayukta," Poojary had said.

Over the last four months, the Congress in Karnataka is clearly divided between the veterans and 'new-comers' like Siddaramaiah and his followers, who are now enjoying power in the state. Last year, former CM S M Krishna too had come down heavily on Siddaramaiah for ignoring the plight of farmers, who committed suicide owing to mounting debts. Poojary had also joined hands with

Krishna to criticise the CM then. Political analysts pointed out that Siddaramaiah should focus on drought relief rather than reacting to political statements.

"Siddaramaiah should take the drought-related crisis seriously. People are looking up to him for help. Water supply has gone dry in many parts of the state and livestock are dying due lack of fodder. He should address these issues on priority. He should not use the drought platform to make political statements," political historian Dr A Veerappa, said.

Also read:

Yeddyurappa uses Rs 1-crore SUV to tour drought-hit areas



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These call details have been made available to the India Today Group by a Vadodara based ethical hacker Manish Bhangale and his partner Jayesh Shah, who hacked into a Pakistani telecom company's database.

In a major breakthrough, India Today has accessed call records of four landline numbers registered at underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's mansion in Karachi, Pakistan, and some Indian politicians feature on the list.

The call records are for a seven-month period starting 5 September 2015 to 5 April 2016. A data analysis of the most dialled numbers from Dawood's residence shows that sitting secure at the palatial house in Karachi, members of his family have been frequently calling numbers in India. What is most disconcerting is that prominent Indian political leaders from Maharashtra feature on the list.

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These call details have been made available to the India Today Group by a Vadodara based ethical hacker Manish Bhangale and his partner Jayesh Shah, who hacked into a Pakistani telecom company's database. India Today has cross-checked the telephone numbers provided to us with senior officials from India's premier intelligence agencies who confirmed that the telephone numbers were part of the list of numbers Indian agencies believed were being actively used by Dawood and his family members.

All four telephone numbers made available to India Today are registered in the name of Dawood Ibrahim's wife Mehjabeen Shaikh. These numbers are 021-3587**19, 021-3587**39, 021-3587**99, 021-3587**99. All four numbers belong to the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL). PTCL was originally a state owned corporation but in 2006 the government of Pakistan partially divested its stake. Bills have been generated for these numbers till as recently as March 2016.

Of these four numbers, India Today analysed the 10 most frequently dialled international numbers for 021-3587**19. This telephone number has been fairly active in the last few months. In March 2016, a bill of Rs 5689.53 was generated on this number. Out of the 10 most dialled international numbers, five were in India, four were located in United Arab Emirates (UAE), while one belongs to a top international bank in the United Kingdom.

One number in particular is raising eyebrows in India's intelligence apparatus as it belongs to a senior Maharashtra leader from a major political party. When approached for a reaction, the leader asked our correspondent to send him the telephone bills which show that his number is being dialled from Dawood's residence. So far this leader has not got back to us with a formal response. India Today has decided to hold back his name till we hear what he has to say about receiving multiple calls from Dawood Ibrahim's land line in Karachi.

Dawood's telephone numbers are also part of the dossier that India's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval presented to his Pakistani counterpart General Nasir Khan Janjua. However, the actual call records of the telephone numbers have never been seen in the public domain before this. Ethical hacker Manish Bhangale, who collaborated with India Today said, "I was able to get the call records of the telephone numbers registered at Dawood Ibrahim's address by hacking into the website of PTCL and typing in the Customer Identity and Exchange Code for the telephone numbers that were registered in Mehjabeen Shaikh's name. The public directories of Pakistan also show that these numbers are registered at the same Clifton address. Dawood does not have telephone connections in his own name. All the connections are in the name of his wife."

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Bhangale, who has been working on this project for eight weeks now, also said, "It is very clear that Dawood and his family are in constant touch with people in India. Now the cops should investigate the numbers of the politicians and the others who are receiving calls from Dawood."

One of the four UAE numbers 0097156718**88 belongs to a prominent local security firm, which would suggest that security is one of the prime concerns for the Dawood family. Some of the numbers which have been dialled from Dawood's residence are unlisted, which would suggest that the people on who's names these phones are registered have gone to great lengths to shield their identity.

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Indian agencies have started to look at the Indian angle to Dawood's phone records. While Dawood may still remain out of India's reach in the immediate future, the police can probe those who Dawood continues to remain in touch with.

ALSO READ

Azam Khan says PM Modi met Dawood in Pak: Why do politicians resort to cheap polemic?



Exclusive: New Dawood Ibrahim photo surfaces

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This city in Germany has taken traffic lights to the next level. To help smartphone-obsessed pedestrians cross the road safely, they have literally installed lights on the pavement.

By India Today Web Desk: Officials in the city of Ausburg, Germany have come up with an innovative solution to help the platoon of walkers-and-texters to cross the road safely.

This is a problem all over the world, people who are hooked on to their smartphone turn completely oblivious to their surroundings.

To solve this crisis, they have embedded traffic lights right into the pavement, so that the pedestrian can continue looking at the phone while walking.

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In the Washington Post's translation of German paper Suddeutsche Zeitung, the city spokeswoman Stephanie Lermen said, 'It creates a whole new level of attention.'

This city embedded traffic lights in the sidewalks so that smartphone users dont have to look up https://t.co/SOcQQy6wHf Post World (@PostWorldNews) April 25, 2016

However, this move was not welcome by all. A few criticized the project by saying that it was a waste of taxpayers money.

A survey conducted in Berlin and several other European countries shows that close to 20 percent pedestrians are distracted by their phones.

Younger people especially have an obsessive need to check their Facebook profiles and Whatsapp messages only to put their lives in jeopardy while walking on busy streets.

The main trigger for the city officials to introduce this unique traffic light system was after a 15-year-old girl was killed by a tram. Reports state that the girl was using her smartphone when the incident took place.

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Congress MPs trooped into the Well of the House raising slogans against the government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said no discussion other than on the proclamation of the President's Rule in Uttarakhand can take place.

By India Today Web Desk: Slogan-shouting Congress members forced the adjournment of Rajya Sabha till 2 pm today after the government, for the second straight day, rejected their demand for a discussion on a motion on the dismissal of the Uttarakhand government.

Congress MPs trooped into the Well of the House raising slogans against the government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said no discussion other than on the proclamation of the President's Rule in Uttarakhand can take place.

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Justifying the imposition of the central rule in the state, Jaitley said the "real breakdown of constitutional machinery" happened in Uttarakhand when the Speaker "ignored" the vote of 35 of 67 members against the Appropriation Bill to declare it passed.

Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien's pleading that the Chair was in favour of a discussion and the protestors should allow the House to function went unheeded, forcing him to adjourn the proceedings till 2 pm.

Congress leaders Anand Sharma and Pramod Tiwari gave notices under rule 267 seeking suspension of business to take up the discussion on the alleged abuse of Article 356 by the Centre to dismiss a democratically-elected government in Uttarakhand.

While Naresh Agrawal of the Samajwadi Party too gave notice under the same rule, BSP's Mayawati supported the demand for the suspension of business to take up the debate.

Jaitley said it had never happened in the history of independent India that a presiding officer of a state Assembly has converted a majority into minority and vice-versa. "This is the real breakdown of constitutional machinery," he said.

He said 35 of the 67 members in Uttarakhand Assembly had voted against the Appropriation Bill, but the presiding officer came to the conclusion that it was passed. "That is breakdown of constitutional machinery."

Jaitley said the discussion will take place when the proclamation for President's Rule is placed before the House. "There is no procedure of having pre-proclamation discussion," he said.

Also Read

Congress raises NIT Srinagar issue in Parliament

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A photo with Hrithik Roshan hugging Kangana Ranaut had gone viral on the internet yesterday, which was supposedly leaked by Kangana's team. Now, Hrithik has hit back with more photos of them.

By Ananya Bhattacharya: Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut's mudslinging matches are far from over. What started off as a comment by Kangana to a website, has now taken on the form of an out-and-out war. The latest development in the case is a certain photo of Hrithik and Kangana together from a party back in 2010, where the former is seen hugging the latter.

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ALSO READ: Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut were never in a relationship? This leaked photo proves otherwise

ALSO READ: Was Sussanne Khan discussing Hrithik and Kangana's legal spat?



While this photo had been presented by Kangana's side as a proof of their 'relationship', Hrithik's team has now released a bunch of photos from the same party that the photo in discussion was clicked. In the other photos accessed by IndiaToday.in, Hrithik is seen along with his ex-wife Sussanne Khan, actor Arjun Rampal and his wife Mehr Jessia Rampal, director Abhishek Kapoor, fashion designer Nandita Mehtani and actor Dino Morea among others. Goes without saying, Kangana was also part of the merriment.

(L-R) Arjun Rampal, Kangana Ranaut, Hrithik Roshan and Nandita Mehtani

The fresh photos date back to a party from December 2010, which was attended by Hrithik and ex-wife Sussanne, and had Kangana too in attendance. An industry insider, who is close to Hrithik, lambasted Kangana's move of making public the photo that had gone viral yesterday.

Hrithik Roshan, Sussanne Khan and Dino Morea

Says the insider, "In her desperation to prove that she had 'something' to do with Hrithik Roshan, Kangana has done the unthinkable. She has used a distorted picture from a party to prove that point. In the same party, Hrithik's ex-wife Sussanne was also there along with many of their common friends. All of them are hugging each other; making for a jovial group picture. A group picture has been zoomed in to give the impression that Kangana was in a personal relationship with Hrithik."

A group photo with Kangana and Sussanne among others A group photo with Kangana and Sussanne among others

The Kangana and Hrithik war began a few months ago when Ranaut was quoted by a website as referring to Hrithik as her 'ex' who did 'silly things to get people's attention'. Over the last few months, both Hrithik and Kangana's legal and PR teams have fired innumerable missiles at each other, all making the country witness something that Bollywood has hardly ever seen.

While the grapevine and gossip columns have had a field day for several weeks now, thanks to l'affaire Hrithik-Kangana, it is yet to be seen if the Krrish 3 co-stars manage to arrive at a solution sometime soon.



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Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut's fight has become the talk of the town. And now reportedly, Hrithik's ex-wife Sussanne Khan was overheard discussing their legal fight.

By India Today Web Desk: Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut's fight has become the talk of the town. From the gossip mills to the insiders in the film industry, their fight has got the attention of everyone and it has only got murkier by the day. And now according to a report in DNA, Hrithik's ex-wife Sussanne Khan was overheard discussing their legal fight.

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The report stated that Sussanne was on her way back Mumbai from Istanbul with her sister-in-law Malaika (Zayed Khan's wife), father Sanjay Khan and kids when she was overheard talking about Hrithik and Kangana's legal battle.

A source revealed the tabloid, "I heard them talking about Hrithik and Kangana's case. They continued walking so couldn't hear what they were exactly talking about. However, I must add that they were so engrossed in their talk that they weren't looking at their children and it was maid who had to look after all four of them."

After the reports of Sussanne discussing Hrithik-Kangana case went viral, she took to Twitter and wrote, "Hello @dna you wanna know what I am thinking..So sorry you will never know. So continue guessing (sic)."

Hello @dna you wanna know what I am thinking..So sorry you will never know. So continue guessing pic.twitter.com/YS1n5uMJa4 Sussanne Khan (@sussannekroshan) April 26, 2016

Earlier, there were reports that Sussanne had confronted Hrithik a number of times about his relationship with Kangana. But the Dhoom 2 actor always denied the rumours of him dating the Queen actor. "Sussanne was not living on some other planet. A wife can smell it if her husband is attracted to another woman. Sussanne knew that Hrithik was drawn towards Kangana," a source had earlier told Spotboye.com.

On December 14, 2013, Hrithik Roshan and Sussanne Khan announced the end of their 13-year marriage.

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By PTI: New Delhi, Apr 26 (PTI) Reaffirming its strong commitment to peace and stability of Afghanistan, India today said the war-ravaged country can emerge as a hub of trade and energy arteries and that it was the responsibility of all nations in the region to help it embark on the path of development.

Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh, addressing Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process, said a collective approach was required to help Afghanistan deal with challenge of violence and instability.

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"For our stable and prosperous region, a strong, peaceful, prosperous and democratic Afghanistan is an imperative. Such an Afghanistan will be a bridge of connectivity between East and West, and Central and South Asia," he said.

The Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process was established in 2011 to provide a platform to discuss regional issues, particularly encouraging security, political, and economic cooperation among Afghanistan and its neighbors.

"To achieve progress and prosperity together, we need to address challenges together. This is not only in Afghanistan?s interest, but in the interest of the whole of the Heart of Asia region.

"It is our collective and individual responsibility to help and support Afghanistan in combating the challenges it faces to its stability and security," Singh said.

Pitching for developing trade routes to Afghanistan, he said connectivity in the region has to be the centrepiece of efforts to enhance trade, commerce and investment among countries in the region.

"It can help fully harness Afghanistans trade and transit potential. It will also serve to tap Afghanistans vast natural and human resources. Afghanistan can emerge as a hub of regional trade and energy arteries," said Singh.

He said Afghanistan, Iran and India are waiting to develop trilateral transit route through Chabahar in Iran and that New Delhi is also willing to avail of other regional and trans-regional connectivity initiatives such as the North ? South Transport Corridor and the Ashgabat Agreement.

"Creating more employment opportunities is also important to wean (away) youth lured to narcotics, extremism, terrorism and other criminal activities. More jobs and economic avenues in Afghanistan would create the conducive conditions for Afghans to stay and contribute to its development," said Singh. PTI MPB SK

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"We encourage all parties related to the listing matter of Masood Azhar to have direct communication and work out a solution through serious consultations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.

By Press Trust of India: India and Pakistan should resolve the issue over Masood Azhar through "direct" and "serious consultations", China today said, weeks after blocking Indias bid in the UN to ban the JeM chief that generated negativity in bilateral ties.

"We encourage all parties related to the listing matter of Masood Azhar to have direct communication and work out a solution through serious consultations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said in a written communication to PTI here on the issue which drew serious protests from New Delhi over Beijing's last minute move to block India's bid to slap a UN ban on Azhar.

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Replying to a question about whether there is any change in China's stand on the issue after a number of top Indian officials conveyed India's strong concerns over the move, Hua said as per the rules of the UN Committee on counter terrorism, the relevant countries should have direct talks.

In addition to Hua's comments, Chinese officials expressed confidence that the issue will be resolved as Beijing is also in touch with Islamabad on the issue.

Her comments came as Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan held talks in New Delhi today, in which India raised the Azhar issue.

While External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took up the issue with her counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of Russia, India, China (RIC) Ministers meet in Moscow on April 18, it was raised by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar with his Chinese counterpart the same day in Beijing.

The issue was subsequently raised by National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi during the just-concluded 19th round of India-China border talks.



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By India Today Web Desk: After stalling India-Pakistan Foreign Secretary talks to 'near future' for more than three months, the two top diplomats today met. Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar met his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary ahead of the Heart of Asia Conference to be hosted in New Delhi on Tuesday.

A statement released the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "Pakistan looks forward to active participation in the forthcoming 'Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia' process reflecting our commitment to efforts for promoting long term peace and stability in Afghanistan. Pakistan delegation will also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting."

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The conference seeks to charter counter terror security and economic development path for war ravaged Afghanistan. The 5th Heart of Asia conference was chaired by Islamabad in December 2015. Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's sudden and historic stop-over at Lahore, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj had attended the Islamabad conference. And India and Pakistan decided to renew the bilateral dialogue under a new name. However, Pathankot terror attacks in early January applied brakes onto the dialogue process, without either side saying that the talks had been called off.

New Delhi at the moment is keeping a low key expectations. According to sources, terror will remain the centre stage of talks for India. India is also expected to ask for the progress report on the Pathankot investigations and action taken since visit of Pakistan JIT team to Pathankot will be sought. Also, India would question about possible reciprocal visit of NIA team to Pakistan. India will raise issue of consular access to its national Kulbhushan Jadhav in Pakistani custody

Meanwhile, Pakistan is expected to raise the issue of arrests of alleged Indian spies in its territory. Islamabad could also raise the K-bogey pointing to the situation in the valley.

The two sides could raise bilateral topics included in the comprehensive dialogue agenda

At the MEA-organised Raisina dialogue in March, when asked if going forward the bilateral talks would now be conditional to outcomes of the Pathankot terror probe, FS Jaishankar replied, "In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what do you give priority to, a terrorist attack or a diplomatic dialogue, I think the answer should be obvious."

Though the two foreign secretaries had opportunities for informal chats along the SAARC council of ministers meeting in Pokahara last month. They were seen engaged in conversations informally over breakfast and over a two-hour long dinner where they sat next to each other. The two sides led by Sushma Swaraj and Sartaj Aziz-Advisor to Pakistan PM on Foreign Affairs - also held formal one on one and delegation talks. It was in Pokhara that the ground had been cleared for a Pakistani Joint investigation team to visit Delhi and Pathankot to probe the terror attacks.

Despite India having pushed back talks that were slated for January 14 in Islamabad in the wake of the fresh terror strikes, the two sides have remained in touch. NSA Ajit Doval has been sharing information with his counterpart Janjua. Prime Minister Modi too recently spoke to Nawaz Sharif after the deadly attacks that claimed scores of innocent lives in Lahore on Easter.

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But Pakistani envoy to India Abdul Basit had stirred a hornet's nest earlier this month when at a press conference he said that India had suspended the talks . And rejecting possibility of return visit of NIA team he added, "This is not a question of reciprocity. It is about extending cooperation between our two countries to get to the bottom of this."

Pathankot terror attack staged by India, says Pakistan JIT: Report

India-Pak talks: Abdul Basit kills peace process or has he been misunderstood?



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Pakistan's foreign secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary will arrive in New Delhi in the morning, followed by a bilateral meeting with foreign secretary S Jaishankar in the afternoon.

By Smita Sharma: After stalling India-Pakistan Foreign Secretary talks to 'near future' for more than three months, the two top diplomats will look at picking up the threads of the comprehensive bilateral resumed dialogue formally. Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar will meet his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary ahead of the Heart of Asia Conference to be hosted in New Delhi on Tuesday.

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A statement released the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "Pakistan looks forward to active participation in the forthcoming 'Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia' process reflecting our commitment to efforts for promoting long term peace and stability in Afghanistan. Pakistan delegation will also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting."

The conference seeks to charter counter terror security and economic development path for war ravaged Afghanistan. The 5th Heart of Asia conference was chaired by Islamabad in December 2015. Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's sudden and historic stop-over at Lahore, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj had attended the Islamabad conference. And India and Pakistan decided to renew the bilateral dialogue under a new name. However, Pathankot terror attacks in early January applied brakes onto the dialogue process, without either side saying that the talks had been called off.

New Delhi at the moment is keeping a low key expectations. According to sources, terror will remain the centre stage of talks for India. India is also expected to ask for the progress report on the Pathankot investigations and action taken since visit of Pakistan JIT team to Pathankot will be sought. Also, India would question about possible reciprocal visit of NIA team to Pakistan. India will raise issue of consular access to its national Kulbhushan Jadhav in Pakistani custody

Meanwhile, Pakistan is expected to raise the issue of arrests of alleged Indian spies in its territory. Islamabad could also raise the K-bogey pointing to the situation in the valley.

The two sides could raise bilateral topics included in the comprehensive dialogue agenda

At the MEA-organised Raisina dialogue in March, when asked if going forward the bilateral talks would now be conditional to outcomes of the Pathankot terror probe, FS Jaishankar replied, "In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what do you give priority to, a terrorist attack or a diplomatic dialogue, I think the answer should be obvious."

Though the two foreign secretaries had opportunities for informal chats along the SAARC council of ministers meeting in Pokahara last month. They were seen engaged in conversations informally over breakfast and over a two-hour long dinner where they sat next to each other. The two sides led by Sushma Swaraj and Sartaj Aziz-Advisor to Pakistan PM on Foreign Affairs - also held formal one on one and delegation talks. It was in Pokhara that the ground had been cleared for a Pakistani Joint investigation team to visit Delhi and Pathankot to probe the terror attacks.

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Despite India having pushed back talks that were slated for January 14 in Islamabad in the wake of the fresh terror strikes, the two sides have remained in touch. NSA Ajit Doval has been sharing information with his counterpart Janjua. Prime Minister Modi too recently spoke to Nawaz Sharif after the deadly attacks that claimed scores of innocent lives in Lahore on Easter.

But Pakistani envoy to India Abdul Basit had stirred a hornet's nest earlier this month when at a press conference he said that India had suspended the talks . And rejecting possibility of return visit of NIA team he added, "This is not a question of reciprocity. It is about extending cooperation between our two countries to get to the bottom of this."

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Pathankot terror attack staged by India, says Pakistan JIT: Report

India-Pak talks: Abdul Basit kills peace process or has he been misunderstood?



--- ENDS ---
New Delhi emphasised that it expects Islamabad to act against Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar, who India believes masterminded the January 2 Pathankot attack.

Speaking to Karan Thapar on his show To The Point, India's Former High Commissioner to Pakistan Satyabrata Pal described the meeting between the top officials of the two countries as an important initiative.

By India Today Web Desk: Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar met his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry in New Delhi today. The 90-minute meeting was the first senior-level conversation between the neighbouring countries after January's deadly terror attack at the Pathankot air force base by a group of terrorists from across the border.

Last month, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj met her counterpart Sartaj Aziz at a summit in Nepal and emphasized that any dialogue between the two countries will have to include a detailed response from Islamabad on how it plans to act against those responsible for the Pathankot terror attack.

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During the meeting today, New Delhi emphasised that it expects Islamabad to act against Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar, who India believes masterminded the January 2 Pathankot attack.

Following the meeting, both sides issued intriguingly different statements. India's statement lays stress on Pathankot and terror and doesn't mention Kashmir. Pakistan's talks about Kashmir and the comprehensive bilateral dialogue but makes no mention of Pathankot and terror.

So, what sort of meeting was it? Could the ice have cracked or has it remained intact? and where do India-Pakistan relations stand today?

Big Questions



Is Foreign Secretary-level talks an ice-breaker? Where does India-Pakistan relation stand today? Pakistan deliberately ignored Pathankot issue? Why is Pakistan pushing the K-agenda again? Tit for tat diplomacy at play? Constructive dialogue to improve India-Pakistan ties? Nawaz Sharif and Narendra Modi under western pressure to talk? Will Pakistan take action against Masood Azhar? Will Pakistan conduct fair probe in Pathankot attack? Will NIA be allowed to visit Pakistan after Foreign Secretary talks?

Speaking to Karan Thapar on his show To The Point, India's Former High Commissioner to Pakistan Satyabrata Pal described the meeting between the top officials of the two countries as an important initiative.

"Clearly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted a way to take forward his initiatives. They've had what is being described as a frank and constructive dialogue. Often these type of conversations are necessary," Pal said.

"The Indian side has put its cards on the table. Now, its upto Pakistan how it responds," he added.

Pakistan's Former High Commissioner to India Ashraf Jehangir Qazi said that the meeting of Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan is a welcome step.

"Pakistan will host the next SAARC summit. I hope Indian PM visits Pakistan to attend that in November," Qazi said.

"After Pathankot, India appreciated Pakistan's cooperation, now it seems there is a rethinking on this stance," he added.

Former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal, however, underlined that nothing extraordinary should be expected from today's meeting.

"I will not attach much importance to this meeting. Pakistan is not going to give access to Jaish-e-Mohammad or to Bahawalpur," Sibal said.

Douglas Busvine, Chief of Bureau, Reuters, pointed out that both India and Pakistan are struggling to cope with issues arising out of Pathankot attack and arrest of ex-Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav in Balochistan.

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"Kulbhushan Jadhav allows Pakistan to level charges against India, there's a chess game going between the two countries," Busvine said.

ALSO READ

India, Pakistan should have direct talks on Masood Azhar: China



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Indian Mujahideen terrorist Zainul Abedin is believed to be the person who supplied explosives for multiple blasts across the country.

By India Today Web Desk: A joint team of Maharahstra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Gujarat, Karnataka police and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested wanted Indian Mujahideen terrorist Zainul Abedin from outside the Mumbai airport today.

Abedin is believed to be the person who supplied explosives for multiple blasts across the country. He was wanted for his role in 13/7 Mumbai blasts.

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Abedin, who had close links with Indian Mujahideen's founder leader Riyaz Bhatkal, was also wanted in connection with blasts in Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Bangalore.

ALSO READ

10 held guilty for Mumbai triple blasts

Mumbai blasts 2002, 2003: Main accused, two others get life imprisonment

--- ENDS ---
India's target to build 20 million new houses for the nation's poor is failing slum dwellers and those living on the city's streets.

By Reuters: India's ambitious target to build 20 million new homes for the nation's poor is failing slum dwellers and those living on the city's streets, Leilani Farha, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, has warned.

She said India, which has the world's largest number of urban poor and landless people, is trying to address the "scourge" of inadequate housing through its 'Housing for all' policy that vows to provide homes for all families by 2022.



But opponents fear this construction programme focuses too much on driving economic growth with a concentration on new houses rather than the need to upgrade and provide services to existing communities in city slums or living on the streets.

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"For every luxury unit created, an untold number of households may be evicted and rendered homeless," Farha told a conference at the UN office in Delhi, calling for a moratorium on evictions and obligations to address homelessness.

"I am extremely concerned for the millions of people who experience exclusion, discrimination, evictions, insecure tenure, homelessness and who lack hope of accessing affordable and adequate housing in their lifetimes."

Farha made her comments after a two-week tour through India which included visits to Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. During her trip, she spoke to a range of city residents, including the homeless people described as "pavement dwellers".

An estimated 65 million people, or 13.6 million households, are housed in urban slums, according to the 2011 Indian census which estimated an additional 1.8 million people in India were homeless.

Farha said the Indian government's push to encourage development of more housing nationally threatened to become what she described as a "a zero-sum game".

"Its drive to become an economic giant through real estate investment and development of infrastructure is creating homelessness and housing disadvantage," she said.

RIGHT TO HOUSING

A Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation study in 2012 estimated that the urban housing shortage affected some 18.7 million people, with 96 percent of citizens in this group earning an annual income below $3,000.

The 'Housing for all' scheme has been cited to potentially boost the country's economy by 3.5 percent by 2022, according to the Fitch group rating agency, India Ratings.

Farha said India's 'Housing for all' project aims to build 20 million dwellings with toilets, water and electricity by 2022 which would be provided for 100 million low income households. She said this had a positive impact on residents gaining security of tenure for the first time.

But Farha said the programme did not cover people living on India's city streets with no national law reform plan, policy or programme to address urban homelessness, which left women particularly vulnerable.

"I met many women who had fled violent households and with few housing options, were left destitute living on the side of a road," Farha said. "Women face multiple layers of discrimination with respect to access, control and ownership and inheritance of housing, land and property."

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The Bengaluru-based Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) says the government's vision of a slum-free India can succeed only if the focus is on upgrading existing housing for communities rather than constructing new units.

But the Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty, Venkaiah Naidu, said the 'Housing for all' programme addresses the shortcomings of earlier schemes and would be more "workable".

Farha will present a detailed report of her India findings in March 2017 to the U.N. Human Rights Council which appoints independent experts or special rapporteurs to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme.

Also read:

Regularise pre-2015 slums in Mumbai: Congress



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Rising Pune Supergiants ended their four-match losing streak in the Indian Premier League with a 34-run win via Duckworth/Lewis method over Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Tuesday.

By Indo-Asian News Service: Rising Pune Supergiants ended their four-match losing streak in the Indian Premier League (IPL) with a 34-run win via Duckworth/Lewis method over Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Tuesday. (Scorecard)

The foundation of the big win for Pune in the rain-marred contest was set up by medium pacers Ashok Dinda (3/23) and Mitchell Marsh (2/14) as Sunrisers Hyderabad were restricted to 118/8 in 20 overs.

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In a match marred by delayed start, half of the Hyderabad team was back in the dug-out by the ninth over with only 32 runs on the board. But a 47-run stand between Shikhar Dhawan (56 not out) and Naman Ojha (18) came to Hyderabad's rescue as it ensured that the team crossed the 100-run mark. (Full IPL Coverage)

Dhawan was the only bright spot for Hyderbad as the left-hander scored his second consecutive fifty. With the help of two fours and a six, he made 56 off 53 deliveries.

At the fag end, Bhuvneshawar Kumar's brisk cameo of eight-ball 21 lifted them to 118/8. (This is how Dinda, Smith put an end to Pune's losing streak)



In reply, Steve Smith (46 not out) and Faf du Plessis (30 off 21 deliveries) put Pune in strong position to overhaul the target. Pune lost Ajnikya Rahane (0) early - dismissed by Bhuvneshwar. But South African du Plessis and Australian Smith forged an 80-run stand for the second wicket to put the chase in commanding position.

They were cruising at 94/3 in 11 overs when rain halted play, forcing the umpires to decide the match D/L method through which Pune were declared winners by 34 runs.

This was Pune's second win - having won the opening match, while Hyderabad suffered a loss after hat-trick of wins and overall, third defeat in six outings.

Earlier, put into bat by Pune captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Hyderabad batsmen were undone by reckless batting and poor shot selection. It started with the very first over when in-form David Warner hit a wide ball from right-armer Dinda straight to Ajnikya Rahane at backward point in the first over. The wicket of the Australian left-hander, who had scored four fifties in five games before Tuesday, for a duck gave a big relief to Pune.

Dinda removed Aditya Tare (8) when the right-hander top-edged a wide delivery to Thisara Perera at cover as Hyderabad lost their second wicket at 26 runs in five overs.

Medium pacer Mitchell Marsh reduced Hyderabad to 27/3 in the next over as England left-hander Eoin Morgan's drive found an edge to wicket-keeper Dhoni.

After a quiet seventh over bowled by Perera, off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin gave further joy to Pune camp as he dismissed Deepak Hooda (0), who edged it to Dhoni.

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Marsh continued the flow of wickets as he got rid of compatriot all-rounder Moises Henriques (1), who managed to find an edge to a ball outside the leg stump to Dhoni.

At this stage, Hyderabad were reeling at 32/5 in 8.1 overs and were in desperate need of a partnership. Dhawan found support from Ojha as the duo tried to resurrect the innings, with ones and twos.

The gentle medium pace bowling from Rajat Bhatia also allowed them to score occasional boundaries as they stitched a 47-run stand for the sixth wicket.

Dinda broke the stand when he rattled Ojha's stumps as the right-hander batsman missed the line.

Later, Hyderabad were propped up by Bhuveshwar's three hits to the fence and one over it to recover a bit from ignominy.

Brief scores: Hyderabad: 118/8 (Shikhar Dhawan not out 56; Ashok Dinda 3/23, Mitchell Marsh 2/14). Pune: 94/3 in 11 overs (Steve Smith 46 not out; bhuvneshawar Kumar 1/17). Pune won by 34 runs via D/L method.

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The minister, however, clarified that as per CAR reports, there is no evidence to suggest any direct transfer of goods to the Islamic State forces by the countries and companies mentioned in the report.

By India Today Web Desk: Some of the crucial equipments used by the Islamic State to assemble deadly Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were manufactured by seven Indian companies, according to an investigation by independent group, Conflict Armament Research (CAR), the Lok Sabha was informed today.

Responding to a question, Minister of State for Home Affairs Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said, "All such components documented by CAR were legally exported from India to business entities in Lebanon and Turkey."

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The minister, however, clarified that as per CAR reports, there is no evidence to suggest any direct transfer of goods to the Islamic State forces by the countries and companies mentioned in the report.

Chaudhary said the Conflict Armament Research, claiming to be an independent organisation mandated by the European Union to investigate the supply of weapons into the areas of armed conflicts, released an online document titled "tracing the supply of component used in Islamic State (IS) IED".

"The CAR examined nearly 700 components used by IS to manufacture IEDs between 2014 to February 2016. The report indicates that some of the components procured by the IS operatives included detonators, detonating cards and safety fuses, which, in addition to other countries, were also supplied by seven Indian companies," he said.

The Islamic State controls vast areas in Iraq and Syria and is accused of orchestrating a series of terror attacks in Europe and Asia.

ALSO READ

Sri Sri offers peace talks, ISIS replies with beheaded man's photo



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12-year-old Dima al-Wawi was released on Sunday after being imprisoned by Israel for planning an attack on Israelis in a West Bank settlement.

By India Today Web Desk: The vacant look in the eyes of 12-year-old Dima al-Wawi is a story in itself.

A resident of Halhoul in West Bank, this young Palestinian girl was imprisoned in February for planning a stabbing attack on Israelis. After over two months of imprisonment, she was finally released this Sunday.

Dima's life took a drastic turn when she was caught approaching the West Bank settlement of Carmei Tsur with "a knife hidden under her shirt".

Dima being kissed by her father after being released. Source: AP

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Court documents provided by the military says she was ordered her to stop, drop to the ground and give up the knife, which she did. When asked if she had come to kill Jews, and she reportedly said yes.

A video clip, which featured on Israeli TV, is said to have showed a school uniform clad Dima admitting to her plan of attacking Jews.

She later pleaded guilty to attempted manslaughter in a plea bargain and was sentenced to four-and-a-half months in prison. However, she was freed early after an appeal.

Dima was welcomed home by her extended family in Halhoul, a village near West Bank's Hebron city that has been a focal point of violence. But even that joy cannot undo the tortured look in her eyes.

Dima being welcomed home. Source: AP

Dima is being believed to be the youngest female Palestinian ever imprisoned. Her case had put Israel's military justice system in a tough spot because of her young age.

Speaking to The Associated Press, she said, "I am happy to be out. Prison is bad. During my time in prison, I missed my classmates and my friends and family."



Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, and Palestinian residents here are subject to a military law that can sentence suspects as young as 12 to prison.



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This kind of brazen toadying is not new to the AIADMK. Panneerselvam, in particular, is known for displaying his 'devotion' for Amma on many occasions.

By India Today Web Desk: Sycophancy seems to be touching new lows in Tamil Nadu, literally. Former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Panneerselvam and several other AIADMK leaders were seen bending to touch a road in Chennai on Monday. No, they weren't bowing in front of a deity. The leaders were showing 'respect' towards their supreme leader J Jayalalithaa.

The public display of sycophancy by Panneerselvam and other AIADMK leaders was witnessed when Jayalalithaa went to file her nomination papers in RK Nagar constituency in Chennai for the May 16 Assembly election.

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As soon as the AIADMK boss's SUV stopped outside the corporation office, Panneerselvam and other party leaders wished Jayalalithaa with folded hands. They then bent and touched the road.

This kind of brazen toadying is not new to the AIADMK. Panneerselvam, in particular, is known for displaying his 'devotion' for Amma on many occasions.

In 2014, when Panneerselvam took oath as Tamil Nadu's chief minister after Jayalalithaa was jailed in the disproportionate assets case, he cried through the swearing-in ceremony.



The AIADMK had claimed that 193 people committed suicide when the court sent Jayalalithaa to jail in Rs 6-crore disproportionate assets case.

Jayalalithaa had then announced a cash relief of Rs 3 lakh to the families of those who died. She also announced a payout of Rs 50,000 to the three who tried to commit suicide.

Also Read:

Karunanidhi targets Jayalalithaa 'self publicity'



Why Jayalalithaa is the Chennai Super Queen



--- ENDS ---
The JNU administration fined Kanhaiya Kumar Rs 10,000 and rusticated Umar Khalid for a semester and Anirban Bhattacharya till July 15 for taking part in an event to commemorate the Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

By India Today Web Desk: The Jawaharlal Nehru University students' union has decided to go on an indefinite hunger strike starting Wednesday to protest the "unjust and retributive" action taken against its president Kanhaiya Kumar and others in the Afzal Guru controversy.

Protesting against the move, Kumar burnt the copy of the action taken report in JNU today and later addressed a press conference, calling the university's inquiry committee casteist.

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"It is a casteist inquiry committee. We don't believe the committee nor the penalties imposed," Kanhaiya said.

He claimed that the committee didn't allow Umar and Anirban to put their perspective over the controversy.

The JNU administration fined Kumar and rusticated Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya on Monday for taking part in an event to commemorate the Parliament attack convict, two months after they were sent to jail for sedition.

While Kumar was fined Rs 10,000, Khalid was rusticated for a semester; Bhattacharya till July 15 and barred from the university from July 25 for five years. Bhattacharya was allowed to submit his Phd during the July 15-25 period. Khalid also must cough up Rs 20,000 in fine by May 13.

Mujeeb Gattoo, another student, was suspended for two semesters, an order from the university proctor said. Ten other students were also fined varying amounts, including one from the ABVP on charges of obstructing traffic in the campus.

Bhattacharya, Khalid and Gattoo were accused of taking part in a meeting on February 9 in the campus where "objectionable slogans" were raised, which the order said demanded "stringent punishment".

The university said the organisers showed defiance by holding the meeting against the wishes of the administration. "The committee has recommended rustication/fine for three students, withdrawal of hostel facilities/financial penalty for two students and only financial penalty for 14 students. Two former JNU students, moreover, have been declared out of bounds," a university statement said.

The statement said Khalid, Bhattacharya and Gattoo were found guilty of staging a protest under the pretext of holding a poetry reading of "A Country Without a Post Office", a collection of the late Agha Shahid Ali, a Kashmiri poet.

The action comes after a five-member panel probed the February 9 event that sparked off nationwide protests for and against Kumar and others as they were jailed after being arrested on sedition charges. He was also attacked when he was produced in a Delhi court.

Khalid said the university had declared its "allegiance to RSS" by punishing the students. "A farce is what this enquiry has been... made to witch hunt and punish students by hook or crook," he said on Facebook.

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"Do we need to remind you, Jagdish Kumar, that unlike you, the students and teachers of this campus are not plaint stooges of the RSS?" he wrote, addressing the university vice chancellor. "The punishments are not acceptable. Get ready for a fight back."

On the other hand, the ABVP said the quantum of punishment was "a great disappointment" and accused the university of surrendering to "anti-India section of JNUTA as well as leftist student organisations".

Kumar is the first JNU Students Union president from the CPI-affiliated AISF. The JNU Teachers Association has largely stood by the students during the university crackdown.

Also Read:

JNU rusticates Umar and Anirban for 'anti-national' activities, fines Kanhaiya Rs 10,000



Kanhaiya Kumar at India Today Conclave: Kashmir an integral part of India



--- ENDS ---
The JNU on Monday fined students union president Kanhaiya Kumar and rusticated three other students for taking part in an event to commemorate parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

Atmosphere of universities is being vitiated, the HRD ministry is directly involved-Anand Sharma in Rajya Sabha. (Photo: ANI)

By Indo-Asian News Service: The Opposition in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday condemned the rustication of three students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

Raising the issue, CPI-M member Tapan Kumar Sen described the punitive action of the JNU the "most arrogant, anti-democratic act being patronised by the government".

"Rusticating them, debarring them for five years and thereby taking vengeance against their educational career in a very unjust manner - this is a part of this government's project," Sen said.

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CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury sought a proper debate on the issue.

CPI leader D Raja also raised the issue.

"This house cannot be a mute spectator when such things are happening in JNU. This is very vindictive, revengeful action," Raja said. Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien said that the universities are autonomous.

Yechury countered that statement, saying the university has been established by an act of parliament.

Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad supported the Left leaders in decrying the punitive action taken by the university.

"Universities' atmosphere is being vitiated. It is the HRD ministry which is responsible," Congress leader Anand Sharma said.

The JNU on Monday fined students union president Kanhaiya Kumar and rusticated three other students for taking part in an event to commemorate parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

While Kanhaiya Kumar was fined Rs.10,000, Anirban Bhattacharya was rusticated till July 15 and barred from the university from July 25 for five years. He can submit his Phd in the July 15-25 period.

Bhattacharya and Umar Khalid will lose a semester of their academic session while Mujeeb Gattoo, another student, has been suspended for two semesters, an order from the university proctor said.

Khalid also must cough up Rs 20,000 in fine by May 13.

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The development came on a day the Delhi government alleged in a court that some of the video footage of the February 9 protests at the JNU campus aired by three TV news channels were doctored and sought their prosecution.

JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested days after the February 9 on-campus event but was later released on bail.

By Astha Saxena: The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) suspended on Monday students Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya and Mujeeb Gattoo while slapping a fine of Rs 10,000 on Kanhaiya Kumar over an on-campus event that marked the anniversary of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru's hanging.

A high-level probe panel's report said Umar was one of the main organisers of the February 9 rally and it found him and Anirban guilty of "arousing communal, caste or regional feeling or creating disharmony".

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The students were arrested days after the programme, during which anti-India slogans were allegedly chanted, but were later released on bail. The police action against them triggered protests across universities and accusations by the Opposition that the BJP-led Centre was trying to muzzle dissenters.

Mail Today was the first to report on February 10 about how JNU turned into a battleground as the Right and Left clashed over the event.

Umar has been rusticated for one semester and will have to pay a fine of Rs 20,000. Anirban has been suspended till July 15 and barred from the campus for a period of five years from July 25.

"The committee has recommended rustication/fine for three students, withdrawal of hostel facilities/financial penalty for two students and only financial penalty for fourteen students. Two former JNU students, moreover, have been declared out of bounds," the university said in an official statement.

Kashmiri student Mujeeb has been rusticated for two semesters. The social science scholar joined the institute in 2012 and was not involved in any political agenda, said his fellow students. The committee said he participated in slogan shouting. Students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar was pronounced guilty of indiscipline and misconduct.

"We have received no such information officially. Till the time, we get any final confirmation from the university, we will not be able to comment on the issue," said Anirban's father, Dr Nanda Madhav Bhattacharya.

The development came on a day the Delhi government alleged in a court that some of the video footage of the February 9 protests at the JNU campus aired by three TV news channels were doctored and sought their prosecution. The matter will be heard on May 26.

Slogans like "Kashmir ke log sangharsh karo hum tumhare saath hain", "Afzal Guru Zindabad, Cheen ke lenge Azaadi", "Hindustan ki barbadi tak jung rahegi jang rahegi", etc, were chanted at the event , the report said.

A fine of `20,000 has also been imposed on JNU students' union (JNUSU) joint secretary Saurabh Sharma, the only ABVP member in the outfit. He has been found guilty of blocking traffic on the day of the event. Surprisingly, student Aishwarya Adhikari, whose name was not mentioned in the report, also got the same penalty.

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Lapses

"We completely reject this farcical enquiry report, as it is based on sheer vendetta and a biased enquiry. These are all innocent students, coming from extremely humble and underprivileged backgrounds," JNUSU vice-president Shehla Rashid Shora told the media.

"The V-C is taking directions from the Central govt. He should have acted first as an academician and then as an RSS loyalist."

Those who will have to pay a similar fine include former students' union president Ashutosh Kumar, former general secretary Chintu Kumari, current general secretary Rama Naga and former vice-president Anant Prakash Narayan for violating disciplinary norms.

The campus has been made out of bounds for two former students - Banojyotsana Lahiri and Draupadi - while hostel facilities of Ashutosh Kumar have been withdrawn for a year and of Komal Mohite till July 21.

The report of the five-member panel also pointed out lapses on part of the administration and the role of outsiders. However, no action has been taken against any official.

Findings

"As per the committee's findings, the application for holding this event 'circumvented' the 'permission process' and 'the organisers disobeyed the instructions from the administration' not to hold it and that amounted to 'willful defiance'," a JNU official said.

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He said disciplinary measures have been taken for not following university procedures, misinforming the university, misconduct and indiscipline, causing and colluding in the unauthorised entry of persons into the campus, putting up objectionable posters, arousing communal, caste or regional feelings and creating disharmony, blockade or forceful prevention of any normal movement of traffic and violation of security, safety rules notified by the university.

Based on the panel's preliminary findings, the university had suspended eight students.

However, the move was revoked when the high-level committee submitted its report on March 11.

Also read:

JNU rusticates Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya; Kanhaiya Kumar fined Rs 10,000



--- ENDS ---
By PTI: From Aditi Khanna

London, Apr 26 (PTI) For the first time, some 50,000 junior doctors today began an all-out strike across England to protest a new contract, with the government admitting that it was a "very bleak day" for the countrys health service.

The all-out strike is the first in the history of the National Health Service (NHS) as the doctors have also withdrawn emergency services cover, which had been provided in the previous walkouts over the past few months.

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UK health secretary Jeremy Hunt described it as a "very, very bleak day" for the NHS, one of Britains most respected institutions which largely provides free medical care. But Hunt said no union had the right to stop a government trying to act on a manifesto promise.

"The reason this has happened is because the government has been unable to negotiate sensibly and reasonably with the BMA (British Medical Association)," he said.

NHS England said "military level" contingency planning had been carried out to protect urgent and emergency care.

Talks between the UK government and British Medical Association (BMA) broke down in January, prompting the government to announce in February that it would be imposing the new contract by force.

Currently junior doctors are paid more for working "anti-social hours" at night or at the weekend, but under the imposed new contract the Saturday day shift will be paid at a normal rate in return for a rise in basic pay.

The doctors have also warned that the new contract creates unsafe shift patterns as the existing number of doctors within the NHS will have to work extra and longer shifts, which would ultimately risk patient safety.

"No doctor wants to take any action. They want to be in work, treating patients, but by refusing to get back around the negotiating table the government has left them with no choice but to take short-term action to protect patient care in the long term," said BMA junior doctor leader Johann Malawana.

There is a wide public support for the strikers, with passers-by stopping to shake hands with picketing doctors and wishing them luck.

Further all-out strike action is due to take place tomorrow, between the same hours of 8 am and 5 pm local time.

Prime Minister David Camerons government argues that reforms to junior doctors contracts are necessary to ensure that the quality of care for patients is as high at weekends as it is during the week. PTI AK UZM AKJ UZM

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There's a good news for Kapil Sharma's UK fans; come August the ace comedian and his gang are coming to your country for a live concert.

By India Today Web Desk: After performing in live shows across the globe in countries like USA, Malaysia, Dubai and Canada, Kapil Sharma and his team--Ali Asgar, Chandan Prabhakar, Sumona Chakravarti, Kiku Sharda and Sunil Grover will head to UK for their first-ever live concert in the country, on August 20 this year.

But this is for the first time Kapil Sharma would probably use his The Kapil Sharma Show (TKSS) branding instead of Comedy Nights With Kapil one, in a live show. In the US and Canada live concerts in July-August last year--Gutthi, Dadi, Bua, Manju etc accompanied Bittoo Sharma aka Kapil. In the promotional poster of the upcoming UK tour, Kapil Sharma and his team are in their TKSS avatar they donned for the first promo of the show. And naturally so to avoid legal hassles.

Promotional poster of Kapil's US-Canada live concert

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Also read: The Kapil Sharma Show fails to live up to the hype; here's what the second episode was all about



The ace comedian and his team are currently seen on The Kapil Sharma Show that premiered on April 23, on Sony TV.

Titled The Comedy Show With Kapil Sharma & Family, the live concert will be held at SSE Wembley Arena. Tickets for the show have been made available April 18 onwards.

Also read: The first episode of The Kapil Sharma Show was a letdown; here's why



The live show will also feature a special act just for the UK audience, apart from Kapil's other popular performances.

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India has accused Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) for the killing of seven security personnel in the attack and has been pressing for action against the terrorists responsible for the audacious attack on the premier IAF base.

By India Today Web Desk: Calling the Kashmir conflict a core issue, Pakistan today released a statement even as the Foreign Secretary-level talks with India were on in New Delhi, the first bilateral meeting between the two countries since the Pathankot attack.

"Kashmir requires a just solution in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people," a Pakistani spokesperson said even as S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry were meeting in New Delhi. India is yet to respond to the remarks.

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It was the first formal meeting of the two diplomats from India and Pakistan after talks were suspended following the Pathankot air base attack in January. India has accused Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) for the killing of seven security personnel in the attack and has been pressing for action against the terrorists responsible for the audacious attack on the premier IAF base.

"Another important bilateral for Foreign Secretary as he meets with his Pakistan counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry," tweeted External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup.

The Pakistan Foreign Secretary is in New Delhi on a day-long visit to attend the 'Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia ? Istanbul Process'. Jaishankar is understood to have raised the issue of investigation into the Pathankot terror strike.

This is also the first formal meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry after the announcement of CBD by the Foreign Ministers in Islamabad last December. The two secretaries had a informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March this year.

Jaishankar was scheduled to travel to Islamabad to hold talks with Chaudhary on January 15 but both the countries had announced deferment of the talks with "mutual consent" in the wake of the Pathankot attack.

Todays's meeting comes in the backdrop of Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit's recent comments that the bilateral peace process was suspended, evoking a sharp reaction by Indian side. India has been maintaining that communication channels were on at various levels but also made it clear it wants to see action on terror and Pathankot first before the dialogue could be resumed.

Also Read



India, Pakistan Foreign Secretaries meet, all issues including terror discussed

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As many as six fire officials were rushed to hospital after they inhaled excessive smoke even as 40 fire engines worked through the night to put out the blaze that broke out at 1:45 AM.

By India Today Web Desk: A massive fire gutted the National Museum of Natural History in the heart of Delhi late on Monday, destroying many rare specimens and taxidermied animals.

As many as six fire officials were rushed to hospital after they inhaled excessive smoke even as 40 fire engines worked through the night to put out the blaze that broke out at 1:45 AM.

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Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar visited the site and ordered an energy and fire audit of all the establishments under his ministry throughout the country.

"This is unfortunate... Museum of Natural History is a national heritage. Thousands of exhibits were there and thousands of people visit the museum everyday," he said, adding that officials were ascertaining the extent of the damage and ways to restore it.

The fire broke out on the top floor of the museum, located in FICCI Building in Mandi House, where some repair work was underway. The blaze quickly spread to all other floors of the building. The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained, a senior police official said.

The National Museum of Natural History was set up in 1972 to promote environmental awareness and sees as many as 1,000 visitors every day.

The museum had rare exhibits like herpetological specimen, dinosaurs and mounted animals as well as galleries on origin and evolution of life, conservation of nature, the food chain and overall flora and fauna. In fact, the Museum also has an extensive collection of films on wildlife, ecology, conservation and the environment in general and frequently holds screenings for the public.

Fire safety mechanism failed

The fire safety mechanism of the National Museum of Natural History in FICCI building was "not functioning" which could have controlled the fire, fire service officials said.

"The fire safety systems were there but they were not functioning at the time when we tried to operate them. Had they been working, the fire would have been curtailed at the earliest," Deputy Fire Chief Rajesh Panwar said.

"Had the fire system been working it would be easier to control the fire at the earliest time because we had to depend on our resources only," he said.





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By PTI: New Delhi, Apr 26 (PTI) To check minors taking control of the wheels, a ministerial panel will decide on stricter penalties for the underage drivers and their custodians in the proposed new road safety bill.

A Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by Yunus Khan, Minister for Transport, Rajasthan and comprising state transport ministers will decide on penalties for driving by minors, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari today said.

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The GoM which is scheduled to meet here on April 29 will deliberate on all aspects and will propose penalties for such offences and subsequently a wider consultation will be done, he said.

The development assumes significance as minor drivers had caused over 19,000 road accidents in 2014.

The number of accidents by such drivers was 21,496 in 2013 and 20,110 in 2012.

The new road safety bill could not be introduced in Parliament as some states have opposed it saying it encroached on their financial rights.

In order to address this concern as also to bring in a stricter road safety regime, a meeting of state transport secretaries and stakeholders was held here on April 22 to provide inputs for the April 29 meeting.

"All states are on board as far as issues like preventing minors from driving vehicles, curbing drunken driving and simplification of forms for transfer of vehicles are concerned. The bone of contention is taxation. The meeting today decided to concentrate on road safety issues," an official told PTI.

A final decision on the new safety bill will be taken in the meeting and based on that, consent from states will be sought as the issue falls under concurrent list.

Gadkari recently said: "Despite our best efforts, the Bill (Road Transport and Safety Bill, 2015) which we made could not be introduced in Parliament. This is a difficult problem for us. It falls in the purview of concurrent list and both state governments and the Centre have rights. Different lobbies are there who are opposing the Bill."

India accounts for 5 lakh road accidents annually in which 1.5 lakh people die and another 3 lakh are crippled.

The 2015 Bill seeks to come down heavily on traffic offenders and proposes steep penalties of up to Rs 3 lakh along with a minimum 7-year imprisonment for death of a child in certain circumstances, besides huge fines for driving violations.

As a signatory to Brasilia Declaration, India has expressed its commitment to reduce the number of road accidents and fatalities by 50 per cent by 2020. PTI NAM ANU

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When asked about the possibility of giving relief to AgustaWestland in the Rs 3,600 crore chopper scam, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said, "There is no question of giving any relief to those who have been chargesheeted by the CBI."

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to name Congress President Sonia Gandhi in the infamous Rs 3,600 crore AgustaWestland deal. The Defence Ministry plans to seek details from its embassy in Rome for details of the Italian court verdict on the case.

BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said Congress chief Sonia Gandhi should come out with a clarification over the reported mention of her name in the Italian court's order.

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"Her government was the champion of corruption. She must issue a clarification over the mention of her name by the court," Sharma said.

Asked to comment on the issue, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar told Aaj Tak, "There is no question of giving any relief to those who have been chargesheeted by the CBI as they are facing serious criminal offences." He was asked if there was any possibility of giving relief to AgustaWestland in the Rs 3600 crore chopper scam in which kickbacks were paid allegedly to the tune of over Rs 350 crore in 2010.

The Defence Ministry has also refused to accept the three AW-101 choppers supplied before the contract was scrapped on January 1, 2013 as it said that it has already recovered Euro 255 million from the Italian firm which was paid as advance for the deal.

The three choppers are currently kept at the Palam air base in New Delhi and are not used for flying operations.

In face of the new revelations and allegations in the case, former Defence Minister AK Antony put up a brave face saying the "government should do what it wants but it should finish the inquiry fast and punish the guilty." This resurfacing of the issue has also given a new weapon to the government to attack the Congress in Parliament.

Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also dared the Congress to come clean on the chopper deal.

"Now that bribe-givers have been convicted, what should happen to the bribe-takers? Will Mr. (former defence minister AK) Antony publicly give a statement on this? Will he accept that his partymen are involved in the scam?" he said.

What is the case

Italian group Finmeccanica's former chief Giuseppe Orsi and AgustaWestland's former head Bruno Spagnolini were sentenced by a Milan appeals court to jail terms for false accounting and corruption in the sale of the firm's 12 VVIP choppers to India.

While Orsi was given four and a half years in jail, Spagnolini was awarded a four-year jail term.

Three of the helicopters were delivered to the Indian Air Force before the contract - signed in February 2010 - was cancelled.

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The IAF sought the AgustaWestland choppers as a replacement for its Mi-17 cargo helicopters that have been modified for VVIP deployment.

Also Read:

CBI likely to close AgustaWestland probe

AgustaWestland chopper scam: No corruption by ex-IAF chief SP Tyagi, says Italian court



Chopper scam: India recovers Rs 1,818 crore from AgustaWestland







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With the fifth phase of Assembly polls due on April 30, the TMC chief asked her partymen not to be afraid of the centre backed forces.

By India Today Web Desk: Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee today slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress President Sonia Gandhi for spreading rumours about her.

According to Mamata Banerjee, the reason why Congress formed an alliance with CPI-M was because both the parties were scared of her.

"Narendra Modi, Sonia Gandhi. Such big leaders. You will never find them in Bengal. They don't even enquire about the state. Now they are roaming here and spreading canards about me," she said adressing an election meeting at Baruipur in South 24-Parganas district.

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"BJP is trying to scare us by deploying police force from Delhi (for election). I don't blame the police. They (BJP) are declaring more than Emergency," she claimed.

"They can't run Delhi (central government). They only create Hindu-Muslim divide and flare up tension. They try to scare when election comes. They want to dismiss all state governments. Other states may accept but Bengal will not", she fumed.

Claiming that Modi had a cordial relationship with CPI-M and Congress, she said, "Modi's anti-Congress stance in public is an eyewash".

With the fifth phase of Assembly polls due on April 30, the TMC chief asked her partymen not to be afraid of the centre backed forces.

"Don't be afraid of central forces. There will also be a smear campaign. Contest the election in an intelligent way. There is no reason for worry. We will be there. I don't want to listen to anything. We have to win," she told her party's election agents and workers at Raidighi.

She also alleged, that the oposition CPI(M) was planning to rig polls at Raidighi, "Booths to be targeted have been decided. Remain alert and foil any such attempt."

Apparently referring to Election Commission's strictness during Monday's fourth phase poll, Banerjee said, "None has the right to stop people from voting. Voters are being harrassed. I will not tolerate this".

The TMC chief also mocked the Congress-Left alliance saying, "They have become one just for fear of me. Ami ki bag na bhalluk (Am I tiger or bear)", she wondered.

Stating that this time election would create history, she said, "Congress and CPI-M will be reduced to mere signboards. Left front will disintegrate."

She also ridiculed CPI-M state secretary Surya Kanta Mishras claim that Congress-Left alliance was aiming for 200 seats.



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Two specific files, including one from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), related to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose are missing, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

By Indo-Asian News Service: Two specific files, including one from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose are missing, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

He also informed the house that Japan has agreed to declassify two files related to Netaji by end of the year.

"Despite attempts being made, one file is missing from the ministry of home affairs also," Rijiju said during question hour.

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The file that's missing from the PMO relates to the "proposal" to bring back the ashes of Netaji from Tokyo and on building a national memorial in his honour at the Red Fort, he said.

Replying to supplementary questions from members, including Bhrutihari Mahtab of Biju Janata Dal, the minister said efforts have been made by the Narendra Modi government to procure records, files and documents from various countries, including Russia and Japan.

"Japan has agreed to declassify two files out of five by the end of this year," he said.

Rijiju said that Japan has not given any assurance about the other three files.

He said the government has decided to declassify 25 files every month.

Also Read:

Exclusive: Nehru didn't believe Netaji died in plane crash



PM Modi declassifies 100 #NetajiSubhasChandraBose files







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The Oppenheimer Blue diamond is expected to fetch a record price when it goes under the hammer, next month.

By Reuters: The largest 'Fancy Vivid Blue' diamond ever to be offered at an auction will be a part of a dazzling jewellery sale in Geneva next month, where it could possibly fetch around USD 45 million (almost Rs 300 crore approximately), according to Christie's.

Also read: Koh-i-Noor to Hope: 5 of the most expensive diamonds in the world will blind you with their beauty

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The rectangular-cut Oppenheimer Blue, which is measured at 14.62 carats, will take its place in the Magnificent Jewels auction on May 18 which will feature more than 280 lots from 19th century pieces to contemporary designs.

"It's quite likely to make a world record price," David Warren, Senior International Jewelry Director, Head of Jewelry Middle East at Christie's, told Reuters at a media preview in London.

Last year, a rare and flawless 'Blue Moon Diamond' sold for USD 48.4 million.

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Pakistani foreign ministry said Pakistan was making serious efforts to facilitate peace process in Afghanistan but the country was "not solely responsible" for bringing the Afghan Taliban to negotiations table for dialogue.

By Indo-Asian News Service: Pakistan on Tuesday said it was making efforts to promote peace in Afghanistan and denied providing shelter to Taliban members as claimed by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

"Pakistan has made sincere and consistent efforts to promote lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan," Efe news quoted Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson Nafees Zakaria as saying.

Zakaria said Pakistan was making serious efforts to facilitate peace process in Afghanistan but the country was "not solely responsible" for bringing the Afghan Taliban to negotiations table for dialogue.

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He also said Aghan Taliban were not being sheltered in Pakistan, as Ghani claimed in his speech on Monday, while Dawn online on Tuesday reported that the Pakistani government recently admitted, after years of official denial, that the Afghan Taliban leadership enjoys safe haven inside the country.

Zakaria's statement was made in an apparent response to the Afghan president's assertion on Monday that Afghanistan "no longer expects Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table".

Zakaria said Pakistan does not believe violence and bloodshed were the path to peace, and stressed that Islamabad condemned last Tuesday's terrorist attack in Kabul, in which 64 people were killed and over 347 injured.

Not just Pakistan, but the US, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan were also responsible for negotiating with the Afghan Taliban, he said.

On Monday, Ghani warned Pakistan if it does not take imminent military action against Taliban, it will take the case to the UN Security Council.

Ghani added the country's intelligence agencies and its international allies, including several Pakistani authorities, have confirmed that many Taliban leaders live in complete impunity in Pakistan, in the cities of Quetta and Peshawar.

He also said the Afghanistan spy agency held the Haqqani Network jihadist group, allegedly backed by Pakistan, responsible for the attack in Kabul.

The Haqqani Network -- affiliated to the Afghan Taliban -- controls wide swathes of territory in southeastern Afghanistan, although its main leaders are believed to be operating from Pakistani tribal areas.

Following last week's attack, US State Department spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau said the US has asked Pakistan to end its "continued tolerance" towards such groups.

Trudeau asked Pakistan "not to discriminate between terror groups regardless of their agenda or their affiliation" and undertake concrete action against the Haqqanis.

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By PTI: From Aditi Khanna

London, Apr 26 (PTI) Lauding Parsis for their role in Indias freedom struggle and post-independence nation building, Indian High Commissioner to the UK Navtej Sarna has said the community has made immense contributions to the country.

Sarna was speaking at an event held yesterday under the aegis of Zoroastrian All Party Parliamentary Group, in association with the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe (ZTFE), at the British Parliament.

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It was chaired by Cobra Beer chief Lord Karan Bilimoria, the first Zoroastrian Parsi to sit in the House of Lords.

Sarna was the special guest speaker alongside Dr David Landsman, head of Tata in the UK, and Sir Mominic Cadbury, former chairman of Cadbury and Schweppes, on the topic Faith based ethics in Business: The Cadbury and The Tata Way.

"A handful of people from Iran had landed on Indian shores seeking a place where they could freely profess and pursue their religion more than a thousand years ago.

"The Zoarastrians or Parsis, as they came to be known had been absorbed into Indias patchwork quilt of religions and ethnicities," Sarna said.

He noted that maintaining their strong sense of identity and culture, Parsis had contributed to India richly over the centuries through personalities like Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, Dr Homi Bhaba, Field Marshall Sam Maneckshaw and maestro Zubin Mehta, who had all played a great role in various fields in modern Indian history. PTI AK CPS AKJ CPS

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By India Today Web Desk: Not many of us would meet a world leader in our pyjamas, right? And by some dumb stroke of luck if something of this sort were to happen, we would probably make a fool of ourselves by being all clumsy or just too consumed by the moment.



Also read: Awwdorable: Prince George will soon be seen driving this Aston Martin

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However, when you are Prince George or the son of British royals--the Duke of Cambridge, William, and the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate--then these things just don't matter.

Meeting President Obama and First Lady of the US, Michelle Obama, attired in a robe, the red-cheeked Prince George crossed all levels of cuteness. The little Prince was reportedly allowed to stay up 15 minute past his bedtime for the special meeting that also saw him thank the American President for gifting him a rocking horse when he was born.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/@kensingtonroyal

However, more than anything, the pictures of Prince George in the blue-edged gingham robe led to a complete frenzy over mothers going crazy in their will to have their kids don the same robe. Available at My 1st Years, the luxury baby goods retailer also offers free personalisation service that ensures that every little kid feels like the prince of his home.

Also read: This is what Prince George's first day at nursery looked like

Retailing at GBP 27 (approximately Rs 2,615), as soon as the pictures circulated on the internet, the item sold out in minutes and is now available for pre-orders on the website.

The navy blue velvet slippers from Trotters worn by Prince George, that come with a 'fruity scent' and feature a biplane embroidery detail also sold out within minutes! They aren't available for pre-order yet, but we can already sense anxious mamas tapping away in search of a similar pair furiously.



Picture courtesy: www.trotters.co.uk

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Vijay Mallya had claimed that as an NRI, he was not obliged to disclose his overseas assets, and added that his three children, wife, all US citizens, need not disclose their assets either.

By India Today Web Desk: The Supreme Court today directed beleaguered liquor baron Vijay Mallya to disclose all the overseas assets held by him and his estranged wife and children to the banks, which are seeking the recovery of more than Rs 9,000 crore loaned to his now-grounded Kingfisher Airlines.

The direction came after the court noted the unwillingness of Mallya to return to India and personally apper before it. Mallya, who left for the United Kingdom last month, has claimed that as NRIs, he or his family members are not obligated to disclose their overseas assets.

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The banks would act on the disclosures in accordance with law, the apex court bench of Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman said, directing the disclosure of the assets Mallya holds abroad. The apex court also directed the Bengaluru-based debts recovery tribunal to dispose of the matter pending before it expeditiously, possibly within two months.

The court recorded the statement of senior counsel CA Vaidyanathan that these assets held by Mallya, his estranged wife and children were not covered under the personal guarantee given by Mallya to the banks to return the loans that the consortium of 13 banks, headed by the State Bank of India (SBI), to his now-grounded Kingfisher Airlines.

The court also recorded a submission by Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, reserving his right to refute the submission made on behalf of Mallya.

The apex court order came a day after the consortium of banks alleged that the 60-year-old businessman was not cooperating in the investigation of cases lodged against him and was averse to disclosing foreign assets.

The apex court by its April 7 order had asked Mallya to disclose all his assets -- movable, immovable, tangible and intangible -- and other shareholdings and beneficial interests in India and abroad by April 21. It had asked Mallya, who owes over Rs 9,000 crore to nearly 17 banks, to deposit a "substantial amount" with it to "prove his bonafide" that he was "serious" about meaningful negotiations and settlement.

The banks have taken exception to Mallya refusing to disclose his overseas assets saying that it amounted to holding back important information, and that given the background, Mallya could not claim any privilege.

The banks said Mallya and his family were bound to disclose their overseas assets, referring to his April 9, 2009 statement in which he had disclosed his overseas assets were then to the tune of Rs 796 crore.

ALSO READ

Vijay Mallya should be expelled from Parliament, says House panel

Bringing back Mallya: 7 stages of extradition process

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By PTI: Bhubaneswar, Apr 26 (PTI) The first day of the second phase of Odisha Assemblys budget session was adjourned today due to pandemonium over the chit fund scam as Congress and BJP legislators staged a walkout protesting the Speakers denial of permission to hold discussion on the issue.

As soon as the House assembled for Question Hour, the opposition Congress and BJP members rushed to the Well and protested Speaker Niranjan Pujaris denial of permission for a discussion on the chit fund scam where the ruling party leaders, including ministers, were allegedly involved.

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As angry opposition members attempted to climb the Speakers podium, Pujari first adjourned the House till 3 PM. When the House reassembled at 3 PM, Leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra of Congress raised question on the denial of permission to hold a discussion on the chit fund scam.

"How can the Speaker deny permission to hold a discussion on an issue which has created difference of opinion in the council of ministers," Mishra said before leading the walkout of Congress members.

BJP members also staged a walk out protesting the Speakers denial of permission to hold discussion on the chit fund scam.

"We were demanding that the House must discuss the matter, which is for larger interest of thousands of poor and gullible investors. The state government had already announced it will start disbursing money among small investors from March 15. But, it has failed to meet the deadline. BJP wanted to know the status on this, but the Speaker adjourned the House," BJPs Pradeep Purohit said.

BJP demands resignation of food supplies and consumer welfare minister Sanjay Dasburma after he was issued a notice by the CBI in the chit fund scam, he said.

Ruling BJD member Pratap Jena, however, said outside the House that the Speaker denied permission on the discussion on the chit fund case as it was sub-judice.

"Whatever the issue may be, we must respect the ruling of the Speaker," BJD spokesperson Sashibhusan Behera said.

When the opposition members walked out of the House, Pujari allowed the government to present reports of different Standing Committees. PTI AAM DKB DBS LNS

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By PTI: rule

New Delhi, Apr 26 (PTI) A delegation from Russia today met Delhi Transport minister Gopal Rai and discussed the ongoing odd-even scheme aimed at curbing pollution and traffic congestion.

"The delegation discussed Delhis public transport system and the second phase of odd-even scheme as there is also traffic problem in capital Moscow of Russia," Rai said.

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The delegation headed by Sergey Andreykin, the first Deputy Head of the Department for Transport and Development of Transport Infrastructure, Government of Moscow, visited DTC Headquarters and observed the operation of CNG-run buses there.

"The problems in operation of urban transport - metro, rail and buses were discussed and the experiences of both the countries as to how to overcome these problems, were discussed at length," a senior official said. PTI BUN PVI PAL PVI

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The apex court reminded the Mumbai DCP (licensing), who had been summoned to the court, that it was better for women to perform in dance bars than begging on streets or indulging in unacceptable activities.

By Harish V Nair: The Supreme Court on Monday slammed the Maharashtra Police for coming up with new weird pre-conditions and trying its best to prevent reopening of Mumbai's nearly 200 dance bars despite the court's order issued six months ago to grant them licence.

The apex court reminded the Mumbai DCP (licensing), who had been summoned to the court, that it was better for women to perform in dance bars than begging on streets or indulging in unacceptable activities.

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"You have to change your mindset. Regulation is different from prohibition. This is a dance, a performance and if it enters the realm of obscenity, it is prohibited. Then IPC will take care of it.

"See it is better for women to perform in dance bars than begging on streets or indulging in unacceptable activities," Justice Dipak Misra asked the official and Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, who represented the Mumbai Police.

"You are saying you do not want to see the bars opened to ensure that the dignity of women is protected. But then is closing a workplace the option? No," said Justice Misra.

After 154 bar owners complied with nearly two dozen conditions, including contentious ones like installing CCTVs at entrance and exit and no showering of notes, the police had imposed new conditions that alcohol cannot be served at the place from where the performance is watched, no bars within a kilometre of religious structure or educational institutions which the judges outrightly rejected.

The new rules, which have now been notified also, say "nothing will be permitted which arouses the prurient interest of the audience, consists of a sexual act, lascivious movements, gestures for the purpose of sexual propositioning or indicating the availability of sexual access to the dancer or in the course of which the dancer exposes her genitals or if a female is topless".

As the bench sought an explanation on the new definition of 'obscenity', ASG Pinky Anand, appearing for the Centre, said, "We have only said dance cannot be obscene." The bench then retorted, "That is what we have also said. Obscenity is anyway prohibited under section 292 of the IPC. What is there to bring in a new Act? When will you comply with our previous orders? Dance bar is not like liquor trade. Dance bars are permissible, subject to certain regulations."

Senior advocate Jayant Bhushan, appearing for Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association, alleged that Maharashtra has not complied with the direction to grant licences to dance bar owners within ten days after they complied with the modifications and urged the court to summon the responsible officer. "They gave us licences and took it back within two days," Bhushan said.

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Also read:

Better to dance in bars than beg on streets: Supreme Court to Maharashtra



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By PTI: New Delhi, Apr 26 (PTI) The Supreme Court today dismissed beleagured Vijay Mallyas prayer for protection from disclosure of his assets and those of his family, in India and abroad, to Kingfisher Airlines lenders, saying "no tangible" grounds have been raised to maintain secrecy of information.

"We dont find any tangible objection in disclosing the assets (of Mallya, his wife and children) to banks," a bench comprising Justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman said.

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The bench directed the apex court registry to furnish to the lenders, a consortium of banks, the details of assets, both domestic and foreign, declared by the former liquor baron of himself and his family members, in sealed cover to the apex court.

The top court, which said Mallya has not complied with its April 7 order in its letter and spirit, observed that "the whole purpose of asking for disclosure was to give a fair idea to banks for entering into a meaningful and viable settlement."

It asked the Debt Recovery Tribunal in Bengaluru to "expeditiously decide" within two months, the pleas of banks and financial institutions for recovery of their loans.

The direction was issued after Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi submitted that there was "total non-compliance" with the apex courts April 7 order as Mallya was neither indicating the date of his return to the country to make an appearance before the court nor was he showing his bonafide for reaching a settlement with the lenders by not showing willingness to deposit a substantial part of the amount he owed them.

"He is a fugitive from justice in India," the Attorney General said, adding the embattled businessman was playing "hide and seek" and cooking "cock and bull story". Rohatgi said Mallya was "deliberately concealing something from the court" as he had "no intention to come back".

However, senior advocates C S Vaidyanathan and Parag Tripathi, appearing for Mallya and his companies respectively, submitted that he was a "defaulter but not a wilful defaulter" and "here this is a case of business failure and not that of wilful default".

Vaidyanathan submitted the accumulated loans of Kingfisher Airlines stood at Rs 16,000 crore in 2013 and all loans were given on the basis of personal assets of Mallya which is in the records of the banks. That being the case the liabilities cannot be attached to his estranged wife living abroad and NRI children who are protected under the law from disclosing their overseas assets, he contended.

Mallya has defaulted on repayment of loans of Rs 9,400 crore to a State Bank of India-led consortium. MORE PTI SJK MNL RKS SK SK

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The party's mouthpiece targeted Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu's decision to broadcast Modi govt's success story in cinema halls before every show.

By India Today Web Desk: Hitting out at the Centre, the Shiv Sena in its editorial mouthpiece Saamana said that the promotional film showing good works by Modi government won't work, as country's 33 per cent area is facing drought-like situation and the govt has been unsuccessful in providing them with relief.

The party's mouthpiece targeted Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu's decision to broadcast Modi govt's success story in cinema halls before every show.

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The editorial compared Naidu's statement calling 'Narendra Modi God's gift for India' with Congress leader Deokant Barua's statement 'India is Indira' during Emergency days.



"Is this really time to show what you have done, it shouldn't bounce back like 'Shining India ' campiagn," the editorial cautioned BJP.

This is not the first time Sena has criticised the government. Despite being part of the govt, the party is unhappy over the way BJP is been treating Shiv Sena since 2014.

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By PTI: New Delhi, Apr 26 (PTI) Leading European bourse SIX Swiss Exchange is courting Indian life sciences and specialty chemical firms to get listed on its platform and has reached out to over 200 firms in the country for their IPOs.

"We are targeting players from pharmaceutical, biotech, health care and medtech for listing on our platform. Besides, we are focusing on companies which provide services to these sectors," SIX Swiss Exchange Head Issuer Relations Marco Estermann told PTI here.

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He is in India to interact with prospective firms in Delhi and Mumbai.

The Swiss financial centre and SIX Swiss Exchange hold a strong appeal for life sciences and specialty chemical companies.

"We have zeroed in on 200-250 companies from these sectors. Some of these firms have just begun operations and will take them 2-3 years to come out with an initial public offering. We are making sure we are here for these firms," Estermann said.

The exchange with over USD 1.2 trillion of free float market capitalisation has many benefits to offer to Indian companies.

For one, for Indian companies looking to raise money in Europe, SIX Swiss Exchange provides access to an experienced pool of Swiss and international investors. It will also enable them to gain visibility and trading liquidity.

Asked about the exchange finding it difficult to attract Indian firms as Switzerland is perceived as a tax haven, Estermann said, "I do not think, its coming in our way to attract an Indian issuer. It has been a topic in some of the discussions we have had. Switzerland is adhering to all OECD standards."

He added: "It is an FATF (Financial Action Task Force) approved jurisdiction. Now, the new norms have come in, any Indian unlisted company can list overseas on any of the 34 FATF-approved jurisdiction. Switzerland is an FATF approved jurisdiction. We have not faced any challenges in terms of attracting Indian issue."

Also, SIX Swiss Exchange allows confidential filing and a maximum four-week documentation review process, thus facilitating a quick listing.

Apart from equity, the Zurich-headquartered bourse is eyeing participation from Indian companies in bond issuance and depository receipts (equity side) too.

A total of eight Indian firms had mobilised USD 2 billion in debt on the SIX Swiss Exchange in the last four years. PTI SP SBT ARD

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By PTI: (Attn.editors: The following press release comes to you under an arrangement with PRNewswire. PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.) Street in US Named After KMC Manipal Alumnus

BANGALORE, April 26/PRNewswire/ --A 1962 batch alumnus of Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, Dr Sampat Shivangi was in the news once again as a street in the U.S. state of Mississippi was named after him for his services to the community. The, "Dr. Sampat Shivangi Lane," was formally named on Saturday in recognition of Shivangi, an eminent Republican from the state, said PTI in a release from Washington. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/10144861 )

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Dr Shivangi conveyed the news of the street being named after him to the Chancellor, Manipal University, Dr Ramdas M. Pai and in ereply, Dr Pai wrote; "I am glad to have your e-mail of 24th instantly and to know that a street in Mississippi has been named after you. It is indeed a great recognition of your services to the community. My congratulations to you." Dr Pai said, "It is indeed a joyous moment for Manipal University. All of Manipal is proud of the great work Dr Shivangi is doing in the U.S."

State governor, Phil Bryant also reappointed him for a second seven-year term to the Board of Mississippis department of Mental Health. In June 2014, he became the first Asian-American to become Chairman of the Board which has close to a billion dollar budget with staff strength of over 8500. From 2005-2008, Dr Shivangi served as the Advisor to the US Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is the Founding President of the American Association of Physicians of Indian origin in Mississippi and is the past President and Chair of the India Association of Mississippi. Media Contact: Rozann Peter, rozann@brand-comm.com +91-9916381514, PR Consultant, brand-comm Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/10144861 Source: Kasturba Medical College.PRNewsWire TLS

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By India Today Web Desk: Director and producer Sujoy Ghosh has finally revealed the release date of Ribhu Dasgupta's directorial venture TE3N.

ALSO READ: TE3N - After riding a scooter on the streets, Amitabh Bachchan explores fish markets in Kolkata

ALSO READ: TE3N - Amitabh Bachchan-Nawazuddin Siddiqui's film to promote tourism in Bengal



The Kahaani director retweeted a post by 'Complete Cinema' which said, "Ribhu Dasgupta's #TE3N *ring @SrBachchan @Nawazuddin_S & @vidya_balan will release on 10th June'16. @sujoy_g #Bollywood #Films #Cinema."

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The film, directed by Ribhu Dasgupta, with Amitabh Bachchan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vidya Balan in the lead roles was earlier slated to release on May 20.

But, the producers shifted the release date when it was announced that Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's Sarbjit will also hit the screens on the same date.

In order to avoid the clash with Amitabh's daughter-in-law's film, the producer postponed the release date of TE3N. It is rumoured that Big B had called director Ribhu Dasgupta and producer Sujoy Ghosh and asked them if they could shift the release date of his film.

After several discussions, the makers decided to push the date. An ANI report states that the 73-year-old actor apparently got the film postponed for Aishwarya, who is emotionally attached to her upcoming film Sarbjit.

This isn't the first time Amitabh Bachchan has asked a director to postpone his film's release date. In 2010, Amitabh had got Shonali Bose's Chittagong release date postponed for Abhishek Bachchan-starrer Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey (KHJSS). Both the films were based on the Chittagong uprising and were meant to release around the same time.

Anurag Kashyap had accused the megastar on social media, "See Chittagong, a far superior film made on the same subject as Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey.. At 1/8 th the cost, far superior actors and immense passion... Producers decided to sit on it, because of a phone call from someone, because that someone was trying desperately to save his son's career... welcome to Bollywood, where whose son you are outshines all the hard work and passion and potential and talent. KHJJS came and went, now what?."

(With inputs from ANI)



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Sunny Leone, the former adult actor, has been in news for her controversies ever since she has entered Bollywood. And the latest one is that one of Sunny's topless photos popped on the main page of a government website.

By India Today Web Desk: Sunny Leone, the former adult actor, has been in news for her controversies ever since she has entered Bollywood. And the latest one is that one of Sunny's topless photos popped on the main page of the website of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).

ALSO READ: Sunny Leone slapped journalist for asking how much she charges for 'night programmes'?

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ALSO READ: Sunny Leone, quit India? How about more porn films instead?

Despite the technical team's several attempts to fix the error, the photo continued to appear on the website. The nude picture of the Jism 2 actor was said to be appearing with a caption "having fun in the shower". This incident happened on Monday (April 25) and soon after her picture flashed on the website, the count of daily visitors went up by 16 percent.

According to a report in Mumbai Mirror, the technical team worked on resolving the issue throughout the day. They somehow managed to take down the picture from the main page, but then it started appearing on other links of the website. A GHMC official told Mumbai Mirror that the site is maintained by the Centre for Good Governance (CGG) and hence the onus lies with it.

"We cannot be held responsible. As far as we know, the agreement between the operating company and the corporation was terminated," Director, E-Governance, CGG, Vijay Karan Reddy told Times Of India. Surendra Mohan, additional commissioner (IT), GHMC, also told the leading daily, "An internal probe was on to nail the culprits, hoping this would never happen again."

This is not the first time that Sunny has landed herself into a controversy. The Ek Paheli Leela actor was earlier in news for slapping a journalist at an event, called 'Play Holi With Sunny Leone'. But later on, she denied any such reports that she had slapped any journalist.

Not just this, Sunny's condom commercial stirred up a controversy with senior CPI leader Atul Anjan's remarks that her advertisements are vulgar and one of the reasons behind the increase in rape cases in India.

On the work front, Sunny Leone will next be seen in Jasmine D'Souza's film One Night Stand. The film is set to hit the screen on May 6 this year.

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A 19-year-old girl's response to Shobhaa De's sexist 'saree' remark against Kate Middleton has been garnering much attention in the social media.

By India Today Web Desk: "But a saree needs curves. A saree demands a derriere. Kate has none."

Whatever it was that writer Shobhaa De was thinking of while typing these words, it did not sit well with her readers.



De's scathing sexist remark on Kate's body type, which appeared in her opinion piece on Prince William and Kate Middleton's India visit, incurred much wrath from readers on social media.

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But the most viral response to De's comments came from a 19-year-old college student. And dare we say, she had a point.

In a concise Facebook post, Guwahati-resident Sneha Roy had a simple message for Shobhaa De: A Sari needs no curves.

But she did not just say it, she proved her point with apt examples:

"Let me tell you, when an 80-year old Indian woman, be it your aging mother, mother-in-law, or your own grandmother : greets you with a smile so radiant, bedecked in a saree loosely draped over her frail body : her once supple youth having fallen victim to Time :

A Sari needs no curves.

Let me tell you, when your daughter of ten, excitedly dons on a sari, with a being glowing soft with a loveliness so childlike on Saraswati Puja :

A Sari needs no curves.

Let me tell you, when an anorexic Indian girl, dresses up all pretty in a pink sari to bring in a new tomorrow, lighting up her father's face to remove his tears of distress :

A Sari needs no curves.

But, I being an amateur, find it rather hilarious to tell you what a writer needs.

Empathy.

Respect.

And, a heart.

Ms De, seems like, you my "curvaceous" woman, have none.

Such a Shame."

Here's her original Facebook post:





Well said, Sneha.

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Justice Mridula Bhatkar heard the audio clip of the last telephonic conversation between Rahul Raj Singh and Pratyusha Banerjee, an hour before the actress committed suicide.

By India Today Web Desk: On Monday, the Pratyusha Banerjee death case took a fresh turn with Justice Mridula Bhatkar hearing a three-and-half minute audio clip of the last telephonic conversation between Rahul Raj Singh and Pratyusha Banerjee, while hearing the anticipatory bail plea of Rahul, accused of abetment to suicide.

The said conversation took place an hour before the actress committed suicide at her suburban home on April 1. The Bombay High Court on Monday thereafter granted anticipatory bail to the actor-producer. Granting the bail, Justice Bhatkar observed that there was no prima facie evidence to show that the accused "instigated or intended" the suicide.

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Mumbai tabloid Mid-Day has published a part of the transcript from the last call made by Pratyusha to Rahul.

Time: 3.43 pm

Call duration: 201 seconds

Pratyusha: You cheater, tumne mujhe cheat kiya hai, mujhe mere maa baap se alag kar diya, ab dekho main kya karne ja rahi hoon (You cheater, you cheated on me, you separated me from my parents, now see what I do)

Rahul: What happened? I will talk to you once I reach home, I am on the way; till I reach, don't do anything.

Justice Bhatkar was hearing an application filed by Rahul seeking pre-arrest bail after the sessions court rejected his plea. The court directed Rahul to appear three times a week for two weeks at the Bangur Nagar police station, which is investigating the case.

Special Public Prosecutor Nilesh Pawaskar told the court, "The investigations are presently revolving around 306 of IPC (abetment) and 302 of IPC (murder). We suspect Rahul had much more to do than abetment but only his custodial interrogation can tell us more," reports Mid-Day.

Justice Bhatkar, however, said, "If you have evidence, why don't you register a murder case against Rahul? Why do you need his custodial interrogation to register a murder case? Don't you register murder cases when the accused is absconding? If you register a murder case, I will look at the matter from another point of view and will not grant Rahul bail or any relief."

Justice Bhatkar further observed that from witness statements, it was clear that harassment and disputes existed between Rahul and Pratyusha, but there was nothing prima facie on record to show abetment.

She said harassment or dispute could be a reason for a person to dislike the other person and take steps to end his/her life, but for proving the abetment, there should be evidence to show instigation, provocation and intention.

The court ruled that after perusing all the facts in the case, the police could investigate it without any custodial interrogation of the accused.

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Arguing in favour of granting the pre-arrest bail, Rahul's lawyer Abaad Ponda said both Rahul and Pratyusha were happy with each other and had partied together the night before she committed suicide.

That day (April 1) around 3.30 p.m., Rahul had gone out to get lunch. Pratyusha called him at 3.43 p.m. and he rebuked her for drinking during the day, and said he would return home soon.

He also cited the autopsy report which indicates that Pratyusha committed suicide.

Famous for her role of the adult Anandi in tele-serial Balika Vadhu, Pratyusha was found hanging in her Goregaon flat by Rahul on the evening of April 1.



(With inputs from IANS)



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By PTI: Houston, Apr 26 (PTI) A 31-year-old US man has been charged with suffocating his two-year-old daughter to death for distracting him from his computer games, a media report said.

Anthony Michael Sanders was charged with capital murder in the December death of Ellie Sanders at the familys suburban home in the US state of Texas, Watauga police said.

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He is accused of suffocating his daughter while caring for her and his five-year-old son.

Investigators believe an enraged Sanders bruised Ellie all over her body, bit her on her back and murdered her by holding her down with his hand over her face, police officials said.

"He was very involved in computer gaming... That is something he did constantly. She may have interrupted him somehow. His day may have been interrupted," police officer Babcock was quoted as saying by the Star-Telegram newspaper.

Tarrant County medical examiners ruled earlier this month that the infants death was a homicide by asphyxiation.

Sanders was asked to take care of Ellie and his son while his wife went to an art show, according to an arrest affidavit cited by the newspaper.

The boy discovered his sister in a bedroom and "tried to wake her up and she would not wake up", Babcock said.

Detectives suspected foul play as doctors found fresh injuries when they examined the infant. They found bruises around her eyes, blood behind her ear and two adult bite marks on her back, according to the affidavit.

Sanders could not explain her injuries and claimed he had changed Ellies diaper about a half hour before his wife came home, according to investigators. PTI CPS AKJ CPS

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"One of the things that we have been doing is spending a lot more time positioning our missile development systems," US President Barack Obama said.

By Reuters: The United States is preparing to defend itself against North Korea, positioning its missile development systems and setting up a "shield" to counter low-level threats from an "erratic" country, US President Barack Obama told CBS in an interview that aired on Tuesday.

"One of the things that we have been doing is spending a lot more time positioning our missile development systems, so that even as we try to resolve the underlying problem of nuclear development inside of North Korea, we're also setting up a shield that can at least block the relatively low-level threats that they're posing now," Obama said.

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ALSO READ: US challenged India, China and 11 others on navigation rights last year

North Korea fires submarine-launched ballistic missile off its east coast: South Korea



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The face-off between the Congress and the BJP over Ishrat Jahan's encounter and President's rule in Uttarakhand rocked the Parliament on day one during the second half of the Budget session.

By Amit Agnihotri: The Congress' attempt to play victim in Parliament over dismissal of its government in Uttarakhand was thwarted by the NDA, which hit back at the principal opposition party for compromising national security in the Ishrat Jahan case.

The face-off between the Congress and the BJP over Ishrat Jahan's encounter and President's rule in Uttarakhand rocked the Parliament on day one during the second half of the Budget session.

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Both the ruling and the opposition parties have hardened their position over the two issues as they made full-throated allegations against each other. BJP lawmaker Kirit Somaiya raked up the Ishrat Jahan issue in the Lok Sabha accusing a former UPA home minister of playing with national security by seeking to dub a terrorist as a martyr.

He alleged that the former home minister (P Chidambaram) had dubbed Ishrat as a terrorist in the first affidavit but changed it in the second affidavit.

In a series of tweets, Chidambram defended his decision.

"The affidavit controversy is only to divert attention from the real issue in the Ishrat Jahan case. Real issue is whether there was fake encounter & whether four people already in custody were killed in that fake encounter," he tweeted.

Ishrat Jahan and three other accomplices were killed in an encounter by the Crime Branch of Ahmedabad Police on June 15, 2004, up on the allegation that they were LeT operatives and plotting to kill then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

The Congress has argued that the saffron party wants to deliberately block the case as it would reach Prime Minister Modi, who was the then Gujarat chief minister and BJP chief Amit Shah, who was the state home minister. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah need to answer as to why are they trying to bypass the judicial findings of Metropolitan Court,

Ahmedabad and Division Bench of Gujarat High Court. Why is the Government of India and the government of Gujarat not sanctioning the prosecution of officers found responsible for the fake encounter of Ishrat Jahan and the accomplices? Why is the PM and the BJP President trying to block an ongoing trial and blatantly interfering with the judicial process? What is it that they seek to hide or are scared of?" Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said.

The Congress has also negated the BJP's charge that Chidambaram changed the second affidavit at the instance of party chief Sonia Gandhi. While the BJP is highlighting the Ishrat Jahan case against the Congress, the opposition party is in an aggressive mood over the dismissal of its government in Uttarakhand and has made it clear it will not let go of the issue easily.

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"Uttarakhand issue is very important for us," Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said after the party did not allow Rajya Sabha to function over the issue.

Congress strategists said the party is also pinning its hope on disqualification of the nine MLAs as it would facilitate the trust vote as ordered by the high court on April 29.

Also read:

How long will Congress protect a terrorist? Rijiju slams Chidambaram over Ishrat affidavit



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The mansion was bought from the father of Lewis Hamilton, the Formula One champion, by a company with offshore links.

By Indo-Asian News Service: Indian liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who owes Rs. 9,000 crores to various banks in the country, has been living at a $15 million mansion in England's Hertfordshire county, The Sunday Times reported.

The mansion was bought from the father of Lewis Hamilton, the Formula One champion, by a company with offshore links, the daily said.

An arrest warrant for Mallya, 60, nicknamed "the King of Good Times", was issued by an Indian court last week after he flew to Britain.

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The use of companies with offshore links to buy properties in Britain has come under increasing scrutiny as the practice can allow the real owner or beneficiary to remain hidden sometimes for tax purposes.

Such companies collectively hold up to $245 billion of British property, much of it in London and the home counties.

Mallya is one step closer to being deported from Britain after his passport was revoked by India's external ministry on Sunday.

Meanwhile, a media report said Mallya appears on the electoral rolls in Britain with his country home in Hertfordshire as his recorded address.

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The practice is catching on among India's well-off urban professionals, growing by word of mouth as a way to relieve stress. Most of those picking up the practice are Hindu, but they say they see no conflict between their religious beliefs and the chanting. Some say it is soothing, others invigorating.

By AP: The bank executive, the book publisher and the social worker had one thing in common: Their hectic lives in the crowded Indian capital had become so chaotic and stressful, they've turned to chanting Buddhist mantras in search of calm.

The practice is catching on among India's well-off urban professionals, growing by word of mouth as a way to relieve stress. Most of those picking up the practice are Hindu, but they say they see no conflict between their religious beliefs and the chanting. Some say it is soothing, others invigorating.

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"I feel it just makes me a better human being, more humane," says Gaurav Saboo, 34, a devout Hindu working at an international bank in New Delhi. "It enables me to understand the suffering of others and reach out to others."

Buddhism, he says, "is a philosophy, a way of life," and the chanting has brought a positive energy into his life.

While Buddhism began on the Indian subcontinent around the 5th century BC, it has waned in both India and Nepal while flourishing in different forms in Japan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and other countries. With its easy rituals and lack of dogma, Buddhism has long drawn supporters from afar. Hollywood celebrities, agnostics, Christians and Jews alike attend Buddhist spiritual retreats.

Archi Sharma, a housewife who took up chanting a year ago, says she was "searching for some meaning" in her life when she heard about Buddhist chanting from friends. "I felt there was a vacuum in my life," Sharma said. "The chanting has helped. It stops you thinking about me, myself. It makes one think of others first."

Sharma, who chants twice a day between household chores and taking care of an ailing relative, said she saw no conflict between her family's traditional Hindu beliefs and her chanting. "The chanting is not invasive and runs parallel to what we practice as Hindus," she said. "It opens a doorway to another stream of happiness into one's life."

The practice of repeating a mantra is not exclusive to Buddhism. Many across Hindu-dominated India also include chanting as part of their yoga, and some Christian groups repeat chants. While Hindu chanting is often associated with religious rituals, Buddhist chanting is seen as less dogmatic, aimed at calming the nerves or feeling a sense of wellbeing, said New Delhi-based sociologist Abhilasha Kumari.

"Hindu chanting is linked to religious ritual," she said. "Buddhist chanting is a free space where you chant and are not tied down to other aspects of religiosity."

Many Indians who have picked up chanting have been drawn to sessions organized by Soka Gakkai International, the lay organization of a major Nichiren Buddhist sect whose stronghold is in Japan. The group traces its roots to the chants and teachings of a 13th century Japanese monk named Nichiren.

The group has not been engaged in an active campaign to promote chanting in India, although it claims to have introduced the practice to around 100,000 Indians since setting up in the country in 1986, according to the group's office in New Delhi.

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Practitioners chant individually but many meet monthly. Many say that that apart from easing their own stress, the chanting also makes them understand people around them and working for the happiness of others.

At a recent gathering in a middle class New Delhi neighborhood, participants shucked off their shoes and quietly sat down on thin mattresses in the basement of an apartment building. They faced an ornate wooden altar holding a scroll on which the words they will chant for the next hour are written: "Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo," which refers to the law of cause and effect.

Latecomers seamlessly joined in, blending their chant with the ongoing rhythm. Soon the incantation picked up speed, building to a crescendo and then slowing again while the chanters recovered their breath. Faintly, there was the clicking of wooden beads that the chanters used to help focus their thoughts on the mantra. Every now and then, one of them struck a gong.

"You feel invigorated. It's a great feeling," said Ruma Roka, 54, at the end of the chanting session as she and the others moved to another room for discussions over tea. Roka started chanting about 10 years ago as a housewife, and has found it helps her cope with the stress of her job teaching the hearing impaired at the special clinic she runs.

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"If I did not chant, if I went back home with all the heaviness of this very challenging work... I would not be able to survive," Roka said. "I would have a compassion deficit."

Getting numbers on the recent growth of chanters is difficult, but Indian media has reported on the trend. Many individuals hear about the chanting sessions by word of mouth, and are often simply looking for new ways of stress-busting after trying other traditional methods.

Namrta Bangia, a 32-year-old publishing executive, said she had tried Pranayama, an ancient Indian breathing practice, and the silent Hindu meditation of Vipassana before settling on Buddhist chants. Her family and friends tell her they have noted a change in her.

"I've become more positive, more confident, more cheerful," she said after a recent group session. "I'm a different person. I am not going to get defeated."



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Additionally, the company is also expected to launch a second 'mystery' product in India on the said date.

By Saurabh Singh: Chinese company Meizu will launch its budget phone M3 Note in India on May 11, sources have told IndiaToday.in. The company is currently in the process of sending out 'block your date' invites to the media for the launch event. To recall, India Today Online had earlier (a day after its China unveiling) reported that Meizu was planning to bring the M3 Note to India sometime in May.

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Additionally, the company is also expected to launch a second 'mystery' product in India on the said date.

The Meizu M3 Note could be priced as low as Rs 9,000 which would pit it straight up against Xiaomi's new Redmi Note 3. It is available in China at a starting price of CNY 799 (about Rs 8,200) for the 2GB RAM and 16GB memory variant. The company is also offering a 3GB RAM and 32GB memory variant of the phone at CNY 999 (about Rs 10,300). It isn't clear yet which variant (or both) will be coming to India.

The M3 Note comes with a 5.5-inch FullHD display and is powered by an octa-core MediaTek Helio P10 processor. The phone supports expandable storage using microSD card.

Also Read: Meizu may launch Redmi Note 3 rival M3 Note in India in May

The dualSIM phone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop-based Flyme OS and comes with a physical home button housing mTouch 2.1 fingerprint reader. The M3 Note also boasts of 6000 series aluminum unibody.

On the camera front, it has a 13-megapixel rear camera with f/2.2 aperture and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. The phone is backed by a 4,100mAh battery.

At its price, Xiaomi's Redmi Note 3 will be the M3 Note's biggest rival. The Redmi Note 3 is available in two variants: while the 16GB variant has been priced at Rs 9,999, the 32GB memory variant of the phone comes at Rs 11,999. The phone comes with full metal unibody and also includes a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner.

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A comprehensive approach

Guaranteeing the right to abortion isnt enough. We know that economic, cultural, religious, and systemic barriers prevent many people from accessing abortion care even where its legal and available.

Our solution: We work across institutions and communities to build sustainable abortion ecosystems. In such an ecosystem, people have the information they need to make decisions about reproductive health, theres community and health-system support for human rights and abortion access, and laws and policies support full bodily autonomy.
Zuma was reportedly accompanied by a number of ministers and a delegation of South African business leaders and was aimed at exploring prospects for trade and investment. At least eight agreements were signed during Zumas time in Tehran, where he also spoke favorably about the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The political group Untied Against a Nuclear Iran, which is a prominent Western voice of opposition to Irans theocratic regime as well as its nuclear program, issued a statement in response to Zumas visit, which was carried by Business Wire on Monday. In lieu of simply criticizing the visit, UANI evidently strove to undermine Zumas motivations by emphasizing the obstacles that still stand in the way of investment in the Islamic Republic.

In this way, the statement was strongly reminiscent of recent controversies that have been spearheaded by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has used the limited effects of sanctions relief in order to ramp up his regimes anti-Western rhetoric. Khamenei and his fellow officials have accused the US of violating the spirit of the nuclear agreement by failing to actively encourage businesses from the European Union and other US-allied countries to reestablish their economic relations with Iran.

It is understood most international banks are still hesitant to begin conducting transactions in the Iranian rial out of fear that they may still fall afoul of sanctions enforcement. The UANI statement took care to effectively advertise this fear to the Zuma government, saying, An environment of risk and uncertainty looms large for the shareholders and executives of companies considering doing business with Tehran.

On the other hand, the White House has been making some effort in recent weeks to assuage Iranian concerns about the lack of support for the countrys reentry into international markets. It has, for instance, dispatched diplomats to discuss the Iran nuclear agreement with the executives of international businesses, in order to convey the idea that they have little to fear from the US government unless they violate the non-nuclear sanctions that still remain in place on Iran.

But many members of Congress, whose views are more closely aligned with the views of UANI than with those of the Obama administration, have taken issue with some of these efforts and have tried to push back against them. An article that appeared at BSC Comment on Monday once again detailed the lawmakers denunciation of the administrations concessions. It quoted Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan as saying, for instance, that White House efforts to partially open the American financial system to the Islamic Republic could directly subsidize Irans nuclear program.

Ryan and his congressional colleagues have also expressed concern that the administration would not be able to guarantee that financial transactions or assets released to Iran under the nuclear agreement would not end up in the hands of terrorist organizations. In fact, Secretary of State John Kerry, one of the leading architects of the deal, has even acknowledge that there is a chance that some portion of the sanctions relief will reach such Iran-affiliated groups, which include Hezbollah and various other Shiite militias.

Meanwhile, Iranian officials have shown no sign of willingness to acknowledge the regimes culpability for the past activities of these groups. Kerrys Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has now threatened to take the United States to international court over a US Supreme Court ruling that holds back some Iranian assets as reparations for victims of terror.

The ruling was announced on Thursday and upheld a two year-old decision by a lower court, which found that two billion dollars worth of frozen Iranian assets could be seized to pay the families of victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorist acts, including the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut. Iran has simply denied responsibility for such incidents, although its connections to Hezbollah and other perpetrators are well documented.

Agence France-Presse quotes Zarif as saying about the Supreme Court decision, We hold the U.S. administration responsible for preservation of Iranian funds and if they are plundered, we will lodge a complaint with the [International Court of Justice] for reparation.

By avoiding the terrorist issue, such remarks serve to further underscore the obstacles that stand in the way of foreign investment in Iran. Whereas Zarif and Khamenei have held the US responsible for not facilitating the reentry of foreign companies, the Fayette Advocate points out that many US officials and European experts agree that the Islamic Republic has made such reentry difficult because it has not improved the environment of Iranian-Western relations.

Despite the fact that the nuclear negotiations that led to last summers agreement began well over two years ago, neither the Iranian government in general nor supposedly moderate President Hassan Rouhani in particular have made any noticeable moves to reform Irans laws regarding money laundering and the support for terrorist organizations.

The UANI statement on Zumas visit points out that American legislation still considers the entire Iranian financial system to be of primary money laundering concern. But the statement also appears to recognize that such warnings cannot immediately halt the interest in investing in the Islamic Republic. Therefore it ends by advising Zuma, and presumably anyone who makes a similar state visit in the near future to recognize that they have a special responsibility to focus [their] efforts on pressuring Tehran to halt its destabilizing and provocative behavior rather than prematurely rewarding the Iranian regime with lucrative business opportunities.
There was some hope that those prices would begin to recover after a meeting of oil producing countries earlier this month, but the inability of Iran and Saudi Arabia to reconcile led to the failure of the would-be Doha agreement. The Saudis said that they would not agree to a freeze of oil output unless all relevant parties including Iran agreed to it; but Iran, which is focused on restoring its own oil output to pre-sanction levels, refused to do so and ultimately declined to even attend the Doha meeting.

The Saudi ultimatum can be interpreted as part of an effort to limit or at least delay Irans recovery, but the Bloomberg article suggests that if that is the intent, it may not be successful. To the frustration of all those who are concerned about the dangerous ways in which additional Iranian oil revenue could be spent, the countrys output has apparently increased at rates that are significantly greater than many independent analysts had projected.

Specifically, Bloomberg notes that experts did not expect the Islamic Republic to be able to restore pre-sanctions levels until approximately a year after the implementation of last summers nuclear deal. But about three months after implementation day, Irans estimated production has already nearly reached that point, currently standing at about 3.5 million barrels per day.

Although the pre-sanctions peak was only internationally recognized as being around 3.7 million, Iranian authorities have reportedly pegged it as approximately an even four million, and are aiming for that level before they agree to any sort of globally mediated freeze. But Iranian oil may be well on its way to that benchmark by the time of the next OPEC meeting in June, and Bloomberg speculates that this could present a serious challenge for Saudi Arabia.

That is to say, if the Saudis want to continue to try to box out Iranian competition by maintaining high levels of low-price foreign exports, it will be rather difficult for them to justify such a move, provided that Iran reports that it is willing to participate in a coordinated freeze.

For the time being, Irans adversaries including the Saudis and most of the US Congress have apparently had marginal success in holding back the prospective rush to invest in the Islamic Republic. That is, they have helped to maintain a set of circumstances in which Iran is viewed as still being an unsafe investment, on the basis of lingering sanctions threats and low prices for its main commodity.

These factors may have affected the decision-making of international partners such as India, which, on the one hand, has increased its Iranian oil imports but on the other hand has held back from some would-be investment opportunities. Chief among these is a planned oil pipeline connecting India, Iran, and Pakistan. Whereas Iran has completed its portion of the project and Pakistan is under pressure to do so, India has not participated since 2007, according to DNA India, and this has been explained partly in terms of Indias close relationship with the US.

The Iranian ambassador to India recently declared that the pipeline should be written off over the short term, because the US would never allow it to go forward. But this is certainly debatable in light of the efforts that the White House has put forth to preserve the nuclear deal, even going so far as to purchase 8.6 million dollars worth of surplus Iranian nuclear material.

Meanwhile, there are other entities that are making a much stronger push to limit foreign investment in the Islamic Republic. Saudi Arabia is certainly one of them, and Israel is another. And whats more, a Guardian article on the complex relations among Iran, Israel, and Russia indicates that the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors have actually become increasingly cooperative on the basis of their mutual fear of an ascendant Iran.

That fear is founded in large part upon the influence that Iran encourages among Shiite militias and other terrorist groups, including Hezbollah and in a number of cases Hamas.

Saudi Arabia and its partners are making efforts in multiple domains  certainly not only economics  to constrain the growth of Iranian influence. And as part of their political and diplomatic efforts, the nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council announced in early March that they had each formally listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
According to an April 23 report by Mehr News Agency, which is affiliated with the Iranian regime Intelligence Ministry, Khameneis advisor on international affairs, Ali Akbar Velayati met with the Syrian ambassador to Tehran to discuss a range of regional issues including the latest developments in international negotiations regarding the Syrian crisis.

Velayati said that the Islamic Republic of Iran supports the sovereignty and independence of Syria and considers the rule of Bashar al-Assad to be lawful.

Tehran is extensively involved in the Syrian Civil War as the main supporter of the Assad regime.

Although the mullahs regime insists on supporting Assad, heavy casualties and a critical public response to the ongoing operations are causing problems for the mobilization of forces, even among foreign mercenaries including Afghans living in Iran. This has forced the regime to deploy units of army commandos from the 65th Nohed Brigade, in addition to the previously deployed Revolutionary Guard forces.

Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alawi spoke on the presence of the army, Revolutionary Guards, and its foreign operations Qods Force division in Syria on April 24. He indicated that Irans own domestic security was dependent upon the success of its missions abroad.

Today, these dear ones have gone 2000 kilometers away to fight the enemy, Alawi said, according to Fars News Agency. Had we not confronted it there, then we would have confronted it in Kermanshah, Ilam and Hamadan. Today, we owe our security in the Islamic Republic to the martyrs of the shrine.

The Iranian regime has declared that its armed forces and mercenaries are in Syria to defend the sacred shrine of Zeinab and it calls those killed there martyrs for the defense of the shrine. This is despite the fact that most of the regimes forces have been killed in Aleppo province hundreds of kilometers away from the shrine.

Maryam Rajavi, the president of the Iranian Resistance, said in an interview with the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat on April 17 that the mullahs regime in Iran would collapse once Syrian dictator Assad is toppled.
[April 25, 2016] Nacho Mail introduces Work-Chat

PORTLAND, Ore., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Nacho Mail, an enterprise class email solution announces Work-Chat, the latest addition to its capability. Work-Chat is a part of Nacho Mail's great user interface, allowing users to chat with anyone using just an email address they know. Unlike other enterprise chatting solutions, Work-Chat allows users to easily chat with anyone without requiring the recipients to join a completely separate chat tool. "One of the major issues facing enterprise employees is the need to join or ask others to join a specific chat solution, forcing each user to monitor and participate in more than one tool.", says Chris Perret, CEO of Nacho Cove. "We see many employees usig Skype, Slack, HipChat and email. This forces them to monitor each separate solution, and creates the potential for missed critical messages".



Nacho Mail has an integrated AI engine, which highlights and brings to the forefront messages which are deemed critical and must-see. This same capability is applied to Work-Chat messages, ensuring that all critical messages are seen and highlighted. Best of all, the architecture of Nacho Mail, and it's Work-Chat component means that all messages are held on the enterprises already secure servers. For organizations with compliance needs, controls can be applied to ensure Work-Chats are only held between authorized users, ensuring that these professionals subject to compliance requirements can rapidly collaborate. Of course, Nacho Mail is compliant with App Configuration Community, a consortium of leading EMM vendors and ISV's, ensuring that distribution and configuration of Nacho Mail can easily be done via all major MDM vendors. The design of Nacho Mail and its Work-Chat component also ensure that content remains only on the enterprise secure servers, or compliant devices. This is a critical element required to meet regulatory compliance requirements.

"The use of Work-Chat by enterprises will reduce email overload as employees rapidly communicate and collaborate over Work-Chat," continued Mr. Perret. "Best of all, employees can use one integrated solution for all their communication needs". Many users need to have a seamless way to communicate among each other without having to monitor multiple tools. Nacho Mail provides a single tool that meets enterprise users needs while addressing the IT compliance and security concerns as well. About Nacho Cove Inc. Nacho Cove is committed to making enterprise communication work for employees. Nacho Cove was founded by a security minded, mobile team that has successfully deployed cutting edge mobility technology to the enterprises that need it. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150921/268800LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nacho-mail-introduces-work-chat-300256817.html SOURCE Nacho Cove Inc.

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[April 25, 2016] The Southwest Effect Makes its Way Into International Markets

DALLAS, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- FareCompare released today its first findings of a comprehensive analysis of the Southwest Effect in new international routes, discovering significant savings for U.S. consumers. The company compared prices on new routes that the airline launched in the fall of 2015 for non-stop flights between Houston and some of Southwest's new cities in the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico. The initial report is now available online at farecompare.com/southwesteffect. "We know that when there is competition, fares drop. And when Southwest or other low-cost carriers enter a market, consumers benefit from falling prices," said Rick Seaney, CEO and co-founder of FareCompare. "Our team leveraged our extensive database of current and historical fares to identify for the first time the scale of the Southwest Effect in international routes." The Methodology:

FareCompare analyzes more than 17 billion itineraries daily to find the lowest available prices on existing flights. For this project, the team compared available airfare prices from Houston to eight new Southwest Airlines non-stop destinations from Houston - Belize City, Cancun, Liberia, Montego Bay, Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta, San Jose del Cabo and San Jose Costa Rica. The first analysis compared 70,410 airfare searches of the first quarter 2015 with the first quarter of 2016 searches to determine if baseline price changes had occurred. Prices were based on the average of the lowest detected prices for the advance purchase of between 14 and 34 days before departure, for stays from 4 to 14 days. The second analysis compared a total of 233,704 airfare searches between January 2015 through mid-April 2016, using the same filters applied to the first analysis.



The Findings:

The Southwest Effect appears to extend to international destinations, at least in most cases. Overall, average lowest prices on round-trip flights to these destinations dropped significantly with the exception of fares to San Jose del Cabo, which rose slightly. Price drops for all destinations averaged out to $155 or nearly 25% from year-to-year; when San Jose del Cabo fares are removed from consideration, the drop was slightly above 30%. However, there are likely other factors at play as well, including other low-cost carriers in the market and the Zika virus scare. The full report is available now from FareCompare.

"I think it is important to note the Southwest Effect is essentially a competition effect but competition has been decimated the past 6 years with mega-mergers; it is good to see what happens when airlines compete," Seaney added. The research project was lead by Dr. James C. Stone, Ph.D., Lead Data Scientist at FareCompare, supported by Anne McDermott, Editor and the entire analytics and communications team at FareCompare. The team continues to analyze this data to determine how shoppers can get the best deals and will provide updates on the findings in the near future. About FareCompare

Headquartered in Dallas, FareCompare makes shopping for airfare easy and simple by comparing currently available fares from a wide variety of sources through one simple search. The company's multiple products allow customers across the world to keep track of their favorite destinations and specific travel dates, plus find great low price deals that are not publicized through its best-in-class deal detection algorithms.FareCompare.com is the trusted source of 6 million global users every month. Media Contact: Alex Williams, [email protected] (972) 588-1448 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-southwest-effect-makes-its-way-into-international-markets-300256877.html SOURCE FareCompare

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[April 25, 2016] American Megatrends to Demo MegaRAC Composer Software on Dell DSS 9000 Modular Rack-Level Infrastructure at OpenStack Summit in Austin, TX from April 25 - 29, 2016

NORCROSS, Ga. and AUSTIN, Texas, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- American Megatrends Inc. (AMI), a global leader in UEFI and BMC firmware, is proud to announce a joint demonstration with Dell at the upcoming OpenStack Summit from April 25-29, 2016 in Austin, Texas. The OpenStack demonstration will provide an early look at the forthcoming MegaRAC Composer Pod Management software running on the Dell DSS 9000 rack-level infrastructure. Developed to be fully compliant with Intel Rack Scale Architecture, MegaRAC Composer from American Megatrends is a Pod Management software solution that allows users to browse physical resources at the rack, chassis, and system level through an intuitive web-based user interface. Administrators can then assign and compose those physical resources to create a logical node, which provides the advantage of demand-driven dynamic scaling to optimize datacenter resource utilization. MegaRAC Composer also allows for the composition of physical resources based on templates, which can then be stored in the software and reused as a time-saving feature. In addition, MegaRAC Composer gives users the ability to power on, force off, and gracefully shutdown composed nodes. Building on Dell's hyperscale success with the rack-scale DCS "G5" hardware solution, the DSS 9000 is a flexible, modular rack-level infrastructure that will offer compute and storage sleds, built-in networking, shared power & cooling, as well as next-generation management via Intel Rack Scale Architecture and Redfish - new, open management APIs that will allow users to create an agile, composable infrastructure at a rack-level. This solution was first announced by Dell at Mobile World Congress in early 2016 and will be available commercially in the second half of 2016. "Carriers and service providers are struggling to keep up with massive data growth, maximize infrastructure utilization rates and accelerate delivery of new dynamic services. In order to stay competitive, these companies are looking to hyperscale architectures based on open designs when upgrading their legacy infrastructure. Leveraging our history and exprtise in hyperscale environments, Dell's Extreme Scale Infrastructure (ESI) group is enabling the telecommunications industry and cloud service providers to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow with our new rack-level infrastructure. By collaborating with AMI on a joint demo at OpenStack Summit, we are offering a preview of next-generation infrastructure, complete with robust and open management capabilities to simplify the user experience," said Stephen Rousset, Distinguished Engineer and Director of Architecture, Dell Extreme Scale Infrastructure.



"Intel has been closely collaborating with leading software companies to prepare the broad ecosystem for the next wave of cloud technology innovations. AMI has been on the forefront of that revolution in supporting Intel Rack Scale Architecture and bringing their MegaRAC Composer to market. AMI's solution is also the industry's first product to include the Chinook Extensions to Redfish, providing the ability to dynamically compose pools of resources," said Raejeanne Skillern, Vice President, and General Manager Cloud Service Providers, Intel Corporation. "AMI is greatly pleased to collaborate once again with Dell and Intel through this demonstration of MegaRAC Composer on the forthcoming DSS 9000 infrastructure at OpenStack Summit in Austin. To us, this demonstration embodies the perfect synthesis of rock-solid, feature-rich management software for which AMI is known through its MegaRAC brand and the latest in Dell Extreme Scale Infrastructure, the DSS 9000, to illustrate the possibilities of modular, agile and efficient rack-level infrastructure that perfectly suits all compute-intensive datacenter environments focused on balancing efficiency and performance," said Subramonian Shankar, President, Founder and CEO of American Megatrends.

Customers, partners, press and analysts are warmly invited to see the demo of MegaRAC Composer Pod Management Software on Dell DSS 9000 modular rack-level infrastructure at Open Stack Summit in the Dell booth #D6 throughout the course of Open Stack Summit in Austin from April 25  29, 2016. An invitation is also extended to a breakout session hosted by Dell on Tuesday, April 26 in Meeting room 12 A/B on Level 4 of the Austin Convention Center from 11:15-11:55am CDT. In this session, attendees will get a behind the scenes look at how Dell, Intel and AMI worked together on an OpenStack technology demonstration to help companies stand up, manage and orchestrate infrastructure at scale. MegaRAC Composer from AMI is slated to be available to early adopters in June and commercially available in Q3 of 2016. For additional details and information on this upcoming product, please visit ami.com/products/remote-management/megarac-composer. About AMI:

Founded in 1985 and known worldwide for AMIBIOS, American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) supplies state-of-the-art hardware, software, and utilities to top-tier manufacturers of desktop, server, mobile and embedded systems. AMI's industry leading Aptio V UEFI BIOS firmware, innovative StorTrends Network Storage hardware and software products, MegaRAC remote server management tools, and solutions based on the popular Android and Linux operating systems continue to garner industry acclaim and awards around the world. In line with the diversity of its technology and product line, AMI is a member of a number of industry associations and standards groups, such as the Unified EFI Forum (UEFI), the Intel Internet of Things Solutions Alliance and the Trusted Computing Group (TCG). Headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, AMI has locations in the U.S., China, Germany, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan to better serve its customers. For more information on AMI, its products or services, call 1-800-U-BUY-AMI or visit www.ami.com. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/american-megatrends-to-demo-megarac-composer-software-on-dell-dss-9000-modular-rack-level-infrastructure-at-openstack-summit-in-austin-tx-from-april-25---29-2016-300256881.html SOURCE American Megatrends Inc.

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[April 25, 2016] Military Technology Leaders Call For Greater Collaboration with Industry

WASHINGTON, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The next generation of U.S. military information systems will be a product of the private sector if the Defense Information Systems Agency's (DISA's) plans come to fruition. The agency already is relying on industry for key services and this partnership will grow in the coming years. These insights were among many DISA leaders shared at the AFCEA International Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium held April 20-22. Driving this cooperation are some harsh realities. Cyber defense teams find themselves defending against a wider range of adversaries whose malevolent abilities are constantly changing. Mobile communication capabilities are emerging from the consumer market faster than the military can develop them for its own use. In addition, commercial services are replacing military equivalents as tight budgets squeeze defense organizations out of their traditional business models. DISA's director, Gen. Alan R. Lynn, USA, focused on industry's expanded role in future agency activities. "We want the technology industry to partner with us to develop the next generation of military [information technology] services," Gen. Lynn stated.



Addressing hundreds of industry representatives at the symposium, Gen. Lynn cited network anomaly detection as one business opportunity. "If you have something that allows us to see anomalies better, we'll plug it into our systems," he said. That is a near-term need; for the mid term, DISA will need software-defined networks, he added. Above all, security measures reign supreme. "If you have novel ideas of how to do encryption, we're all ears," the general said. DISA's efforts to build out the network, which are essential with the looming Internet of Things, will rely on the assured identity and security piece, he allowed.

During a pre-conference presentation titled "DISA 102," Tony Montemarano, executive deputy director, DISA, shared his opinion about the growing opportunities for industry. "There's less and less development going on in the department; we have less and less latitude. We need to rely on commercial products, we no longer are in the build-it-from-scratch mode." DISA officials recognize that taking full advantage of what industry has to offer requires changes to its procurement processes. They agreed that a new partnership paradigm would be absolutely necessary if both are to succeed in speeding innovative technologies into the U.S. military. Terry Halvorsen, U.S. Defense Department CIO, explained that the solution to fixing the current disconnect is about more than technology. "Now it's time to have a conversation about culture changecyber culture, tech culture," he emphasized. "The issue is how we in government look at industry and how industry looks at government. The partnership where we understand what industry is doing and industry understands government is a win-win," Halvorsen stated. Government needs to listen to industry more, he allowed, and industry must be dedicated to working in new directions. Additional coverage of the Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium including video and audio recordings is available online. AFCEA International, established in 1946, is a non-profit non-lobbying membership association serving the military, government, industry and academia. Join online. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160425/359665

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130410/DC92618LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/military-technology-leaders-call-for-greater-collaboration-with-industry-300256999.html SOURCE AFCEA International

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[April 26, 2016] APWG Receives Contribution From craigslist Charitable Fund to Prevent Online Crime

The APWG is pleased to announce it has received a grant from the craigslist Charitable Fund to pursue its non-profit objectives to prevent online crime. "The APWG directors are thankful to the craigslist Charitable Fund for contributing to our work in scientific research, education and data sharing to prevent cybercrime from harming businesses and individuals", said APWG Secretary General and co-founder, Peter Cassidy. The charitable fund is financed by donations from Craigslist Inc., the online classified listings site founded by Craig Newmark in 1995. Based in San Francisco, the private foundation grants millions of dollars each year to nonprofits active in areas such as environment, justice, non-violence, and journalism. Among its awardees are such esteemed institutions as: Oxfam America; Electronic Frontier Foundation; Brennan Center for Justice; and the American Library Association. APWG, a global NGO with operations bases in Massachusetts, California, Georgia and Barcelona, Spain, will use the donation to advance its programs to combat global cyber crime: cybercrime data sharing; supporting emerging cybercrime research in universities; and public awareness education. APWG Chairman Dave Jevans said, "Craigslist has empowered millions of individuals and small businesses to connect and create a dynamic economy where people can find jobs, housing, goods and services from their local markets. Cybercriminals have unfortunately plagued such marketplaces around the world. "APWG is proud to have received this grant from Craigslist, and we hope that our efforts will continue to make a positive impact for consumers, businesses and governments alike in fighting cybercrime," Mr, Jevans said. About the APWG (www.apwg.org) The APWG, founded in 2003 as the Anti-Phishing Working Group, is a global industry, law enforcement, and government coalition of more than 1,800 institutions working to unify the global response to electronic crime. Since 2004, the APWG has developed and curated one of the world's largest NGO-managed clearinghouses of cybercrime event data enabling the sharing of this data to protect consumers and businesses alike.



APWG's directors, managers and research fellows advise and correspond with national governments; global governance bodies like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, International Telecommunications Union and ICANN; hemispheric and global trade groups; and multilateral treaty organizations such as the European Commission, the G8 High Technology Crime Subgroup, Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime, United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Europol EC3 and the Organization of American States. APWG is a member of the steering group of the Commonwealth Cybercrime Initiative at the Commonwealth of Nations.

Membership is open to qualified financial institutions, online retailers, ISPs and Telcos, the law enforcement community, solutions providers, multi-lateral treaty organizations, research centers, trade associations and government agencies. The APWG's <www.apwg.org> and <education.apwg.org> websites offer the public, industry and government agencies practical information about phishing and electronically mediated fraud as well as pointers to pragmatic technical solutions that provide immediate protection. APWG is co-founder and co-manager of the STOP. THINK. CONNECT. Messaging Convention, the global online safety public awareness collaborative <https://education.apwg.org/safety-messaging-convention/> and founder/curator of the eCrime Researchers Summit, the world's first peer-reviewed conference dedicated specifically to electronic crime studies <www.ecrimeresearch.org>. Among APWG's corporate sponsors include: AhnLab, Area 1, AT&T (T), Afilias Ltd., Avast!, AVG Technologies, Axur, Baidu Antivirus, Bangkok Bank, BBN Technologies, Barracuda Networks, BillMeLater, Bkav, Blue Coat, BrandMail, BrandProtect, Bsecure Technologies, CSC Digital Brand Services, Check Point Software Technologies, Claro, Cloudmark, Comcast (News - Alert), CSIRTBANELCO, Cyber Defender, Cyveillance, DigiCert, Domain Tools, Donuts, Easy Solutions, eBay/PayPal (EBAY), eCert, EC Cert, ESET, EST Soft, Facebook, FeelSafe Digital, FEBRABAN, Fortinet, FraudWatch International, F-Secure, GetResponse, GlobalSign, GoDaddy, Google, GroupIB, Hauri, Hitachi Systems, Ltd., Huawei Symantec, ICANN, Infoblox, IronPort (Cisco (News - Alert)), ING Bank, Infoblox, Interac, Internet.bs, IT Matrix, iThreat Cyber Group, iZOOlogic, LaCaixa, Lenos Software, MX Tools, MailChannels, MailJet, MailChimp, MailShell, MarkMonitor, M86Security, McAfee (MFE), Melbourne IT, MessageLevel, Microsoft (MSFT), MicroWorld, Mimecast, Mirapoint (News - Alert), NHN, MyPW, nProtect Online Security, Netcraft, Network Solutions, NeuStar, Nominet, Nominum, NZRS Limited, Public Interest Registry, Panda Software, Phishlabs, PhishMe, Planty.net, Prevelent, Prevx, Proofpoint, QinetiQ, RSA Security (News - Alert) (EMC), Rakuten, Return Path, RiskIQ, RuleSpace, SalesForce, SecureBrain, SendGrid, S21sec, SIDN, SilverPop, SiteLock, SnoopWall, SoftForum, SoftLayer, SoftSecurity, SOPHOS (News - Alert), SunTrust, SurfControl, Symantec (SYMC), Tagged, TDS Telecom, Telefonica (TEF), TransCreditBank, Trend Micro (TMIC), Trustwave, Vasco (VDSI), VADE-RETRO, VeriSign (VRSN), Wombat Security Technologies, Yahoo! (YHOO), and zvelo. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425006659/en/

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[April 26, 2016] Absolute to Host Conference Call for Fiscal 2016 Third Quarter Financial Results

VANCOUVER, April 26, 2016 /CNW/ - Absolute (TSX: ABT), the industry standard for persistent endpoint security and data risk management solutions, today announced that it will host a conference call on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 at 8:30 a.m. ET (5:30 a.m. PT) to discuss its fiscal 2016 third quarter financial results. Mr. Geoff Haydon, Chief Executive Officer, will host the call. A press release announcing the quarterly results will be issued at 7:00 a.m. ET (4:00 a.m. PT) that same day. The corresponding Management's Discussion and Analysis and financial statements will also be made available at www.absolute.com. All interested parties can join the call by dialing 647-427-7450 or 1-888-231-8191. Please dial-in 15 minutes prior to the call to secure a line. The conference call will be archived for replay until Tuesay, May 17, 2016 at midnight. To access the archived conference call, please dial 416-849-0833 or 1-855-859-2056 and enter the reservation code 87740234.



A live audio webcast of the conference call will be available at www.absolute.com and http://bit.ly/1WBLg8s. Please connect at least 15 minutes prior to the conference call to ensure adequate time for any software download that may be required to join the webcast. An archived replay of the webcast will be available for 90 days. About Absolute

Absolute Software Corporation (TSX: ABT) is the industry standard in persistent endpoint security and data risk management solutions. Persistence technology from Absolute provides organizations with visibility and control over all of their devices, regardless of user or location. If an Absolute client is removed from an endpoint, it will automatically reinstall so IT can secure each device and the sensitive data it contains. No other technology can do this. Persistence technology is embedded in the firmware of computers, netbooks, tablets and smartphones by global leaders, including Acer, ASUS, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, Panasonic, Samsung, and Toshiba, and the Company has reselling partnerships with these OEMs and others, including Apple. For more information about Absolute, visit www.absolute.com. 2016 Absolute Software Corporation. All rights reserved. Absolute and Persistence are registered trademarks of Absolute Software Corporation. For patent information, visit www.absolute.com/patents. The Toronto Stock Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved of the information contained in this news release. SOURCE Absolute Software Corporation

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[April 26, 2016] Voxbone Delivers Hot Service to Online Takeout Company foodpanda

Food delivery service, foodpanda, has customers in 24 countries asking, "What's for dinner?" With such a geographically diverse user base, and plenty of growth in sight, foodpanda is ordering in from Voxbone for its local direct inward dialing (DID) numbers. By leveraging Voxbone's (News - Alert) DIDs in its contact center network, foodpanda now has a menu of over 55 countries and 8,000 cities to choose from. foodpanda's online and mobile service streamlines food delivery, partnering with more than 40,000 restaurants worldwide to offer customers an easy way to order take-out. If anyone has a question or needs support using the service, they're just a phone call away from peace of mind. foodpanda's contact centers use Voxbone DID numbers, which are transported over a privately maintained network to ensure call quality. This way customers can rest assured that their order of 'grilled Mahi' doesn't arrive as 'chilled sake'. "The momentum we've seen since our inception in 2012 has been staggering. While the growth is certainly exciting, it has come hand in hand with some challenges, especially in regards to how we look at telecoms," said foodpanda Global Head of Customer Care, Niels Brants. "Choosing Voxbone gives us the benefit of a worldwide foundation for our contact centers." Voxbone's services allow any enterprise, regardless of sector, to benefit from the latest VoIP technologies. As Voxbone is a compliant telecom provider in the countries where it operates, its customers do not need to rely on multiple regional carriers. The reduced administrative and overhead costs mean companies ike foodpanda can serve up the highest quality product at the lowest price.



"At Voxbone, we've been helping many e-commerce companies 'localize' their services, enabling them to reach new cities instantly without ever building local telephony infrastructure," said Voxbone CEO Itay Rosenfeld. "We're especially delighted to work with foodpanda, and hope we will help them deliver delicious meals on time to an ever growing base of hungry customers." For more information on how to integrate Voxbone DID numbers into your network, visit www.voxbone.com.

About Voxbone Voxbone is the market leader in providing virtual local phone numbers (often referred to as DID numbers). Its services enable cloud communications providers, international carriers and enterprise contact centers to extend the reach of their voice networks internationally, rapidly and at minimal cost. The company delivers high-quality DID numbers from more than 55 countries and over 8,000 cities around the world. Voxbone's geographic, mobile and toll-free numbers can be ordered in real-time via a web portal or an API. Voxbone is the only operator of its kind with its own number ranges, telecommunications licenses and a global private VoIP backbone. Customer references include: Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Orange Business Services (News - Alert), NTT Communications, 8x8 Inc., InContact, LiveOps and Skype. For more information, visit www.voxbone.com or connect with Voxbone via our blog, LinkedIn or Twitter. About foodpanda The foodpanda group is the leading online food delivery marketplace in emerging markets. The company operates in 24 growth countries in Asia, Middle East and Eastern Europe. It enables restaurants to become visible in the online and mobile world and provides them with an industry leading software and technology to generate additional demand. For consumers, foodpanda offers the convenience to order food online and the widest gastronomic range, from which they can choose their favorite meal via app or online with a few fingertips. foodpanda has a market leading position in most of its markets, including India, Russia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. It has built proprietary food ordering software and technology for over 40.000 partner restaurants and over 6mm active users worldwide. Furthermore, foodpanda is able to ensure in-time delivery and quality through proprietary, own "last-mile" delivery technology and operations - even in complex markets and cities. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005262/en/

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[April 26, 2016] Paramount Defenses to Donate up to $50 Million of Its Microsoft Active Directory Security Audit Software and Offer a Free Version for Use in Every Active Directory in the Cloud and On-Premises

Paramount Defenses, the world's #1 cyber security company in the Microsoft (News - Alert) Active Directory Security and Privileged Access/User Audit Space announced an initiative to help organizations that use Microsoft Active Directory on-premises as well as in the Cloud, easily and trustworthily fulfill their basic Active Directory security audit needs. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005850/en/ Free Active Directory Audit Tool (Photo: Paramount Defenses via Business Wire) Microsoft Active Directory is the lifeline and foundation of IT and cyber security at over 85% of all organizations worldwide, and one of the world's most pervasive technologies worldwide today. Paramount Defenses develops the world's best Active Directory security and privileged access audit solutions to empower organizations worldwide to obtain both basic cyber security insight as well as advanced privileged access insight into their Microsoft Active Directory deployments. Its privileged access audit solutions embody unique, innovative, patented access assessment technology that governs the precise assessment of effective access in Microsoft Windows and Active Directory environments.





ACTIVE DIRECTORY IN THE CLOUD Microsoft's foray into Cloud Computing and its introduction of Microsoft Azure Active Directory, its multi-tenant cloud based directory and identity management service, as well as Amazon's foray into offering organizations the ability to run Active Directory as a managed service via Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) (AWS) Cloud, are likely to substantially increase the use of and reliance on Active Directory. As the world's use of and reliance on Microsoft Active Directory increases, so does the need to obtain both basic as well as advanced cyber security insight into various aspects of Active Directory security, such as the ability to know exactly who has what effective privileged access in Active Directory. The company's unique effective privileged access audit solutions already empower many of the world's top business and government organizations to fulfill this advanced and paramount cyber security need. The company's commitment announced today focuses on helping organizations worldwide that rely on Microsoft Acive Directory, both on-premises and in the Cloud, to be able to easily and trustworthily obtain the basic cyber security insight they need into their foundational Active Directory deployments.



Towards this commitment, the company will make available for free, effective immediately, a limited version of its entry-level Microsoft Active Directory Security Audit Software, that all organizations worldwide can use in every Microsoft Active Directory deployment, both on-premises and in the Cloud. The company also plans to donate, over the next five years, up to $50 Million of its entry-level Microsoft Active Directory Security Audit Software, measured at fair market value, to non-profit and other organizations such as K-12 schools, public universities, hospitals and government agencies across over 100 countries worldwide.







THE NEED FOR TRUSTWORTHY BASIC ACTIVE DIRECTORY CYBER SECURITY INSIGHT Organizations have a need to be able to not only fulfill basic Active Directory security audit needs, such as the need to assess the state of all user accounts and security groups in Active Directory, but also fulfill advanced privileged access audit needs, such as the need to know exactly how many personnel possess privileged access in the Active Directory. The company's cyber intelligence indicates that most organizations have yet to fulfill even these basic needs, and in their attempts to fulfill these basic needs, everyday IT personnel from across the world, including from many of the world's most prominent business and government organizations, continue to look for free tooling in their attempts to fulfill these needs. This suggests that the capabilities of native tooling in Active Directory may be insufficient to help easily fulfill even these basic needs, and that many organizations may not have basic cyber security policies in place that disallow the download and use of potentially untrustworthy software in their IT networks. Consequently, today large numbers of IT personnel around the world may be downloading and using potentially untrustworthy or unreliable free software, the use of which could jeopardize their security. For instance, an IT enthusiast may make available certain scripts or amateur software, that unbeknownst to him/her may be inaccurate, insufficiently tested or easily modifiable, yet thousands of unsuspecting users, who may not know better, may download and use it and obtain inaccurate insight. Similarly, a malicious entity such as a hacking group or an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT (News - Alert)) could develop and make available a seemingly useful yet covertly malicious tool for free online, which when downloaded and run by an unsuspecting user, could grant the malicious entity instant unauthorized access to and privileged access in the organization's IT environment. "Law #1 of the 10 Immutable Laws of Security states that if a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore. A corollary of this law is that if you yourself download and run a program possibly written by a bad guy, on your computer, it may not be your computer anymore, and if you're a privileged user, your network may no longer be your network anymore too," said Sanjay Tandon, Chief Executive Officer of Paramount Defenses. The use of potentially untrustworthy or unreliable free tooling can seriously endanger organizational security, yet thousands of organizational IT personnel continue to seek, download and use such tooling. "The unfortunate problem with most free tooling out there is that there is little to no assurance of it being trustworthy or reliable, and consequently, any reliance on it, and especially its use by privileged IT users could potentially seriously jeopardize organizational security," he added. As a mature and disciplined software and cyber security company, Paramount Defenses goes to great lengths to develop highly trustworthy Active Directory audit software for organizations worldwide. To help all organizations worldwide trustworthily fulfill their basic Active Directory security audit needs, the company has decided to make available a limited version of its trustworthy entry-level Gold Finger Active Directory Security Audit Tool for free, effective immediately. "We're happy to empower organizational IT personnel easily and trustworthily fulfill their basic security audit needs, so that they can engage in secure computing practices, and focus their valuable time and resources on addressing more important and urgent security needs, such as the ability to identify and determine exactly how many privileged users exist in their foundational Active Directory deployments today, i.e. how many individuals have the Keys to their Kingdom," added Mr. Tandon. Considering that 100% of all major recent cyber security breaches involved the compromise of a single Active Directory privileged user account, the company intends to help organizations progress beyond fulfilling basic cyber security needs, so that they can focus on understanding and addressing advanced, paramount cyber security needs i.e. precisely identifying and minimizing the number of privileged users in their on-premises Active Directory deployments, as well as in Active Directory deployments in the Cloud. The free version of its Gold Finger Security Audit Tool is now available online for free download at - http://www.paramountdefenses.com





ABOUT PARAMOUNT DEFENSES Established in 2006 by former Microsoft Program Manager for Active Directory Security, Paramount Defenses is the world's #1 cyber security company focused on Microsoft Active Directory Security and Privileged Access/User Audit. Its industry-leading, innovative, patented cyber security solutions uniquely help organizations worldwide audit effective privileged access in Microsoft Active Directory environments, both On-Premises and in the Cloud. The company's global customer base spans six continents worldwide and includes many of the world's most prominent organizations including the United States Government, numerous Fortune 100 companies, financial institutions, defense contractors, Internet, software and technology companies, oil and gas companies, and other organizations worldwide. Paramount Defenses is a registered trademark and Gold Finger is a trademark of Paramount Defenses. Microsoft, Windows and Active Directory are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005850/en/

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CHARLESTON  The Coles County Farm Bureau Foundation has received a $2,500 donation from Americas Farmers Grow Communities, sponsored by the Monsanto Fund and directed by local farmer Jill Walker of Coles County.

The Coles County Farm Bureau Foundation provides scholarship money to young people interested in careers in agriculture," said Walker. "My own kids were recipients and I was happy to hear Monsanto's award money could go towards the scholarship fund.

The Coles County Farm Bureau Foundation is very honored and appreciative that Walker selected our organization. This donation will definitely help the foundations scholarship fund, plus it is a wonderful investment for the future of agriculture.

For six years, Americas Farmers Grow Communities has collaborated with farmers to donate more than $22 million to more than 8,000 community organizations across rural America. Winning farmers will direct donations to nonprofits to help fight rural hunger, purchase life saving fire and EMS equipment, support agriculture youth leadership programs, buy much needed classroom resources, and so much more.

Americas Farmers Grow Communities partners with farmers to support local nonprofit causes that positively impact farming communities across rural America.

Grow Communities is one program in the Americas Farmers community outreach effort, sponsored by the Monsanto Fund. Other programs include Americas Farmers Grow Ag Leaders, which encourages rural youth to remain in agriculture and provides $1,500 college scholarships to high school and college students pursuing ag-related degrees and Americas Farmers Grow Rural Education, which works with farmers to nominate rural school districts to compete for $10,000 and $25,000 math and science grants. Visit www.AmericasFarmers.com to learn more.

About the Monsanto Fund

The Monsanto Fund, the philanthropic arm of the Monsanto Company, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the communities where farmers and Monsanto Company employees live and work. Visit the Monsanto Fund at www.monsantofund.org.
CHARLESTON (JG-TC) -- The Coles County chapter of Habitat for Humanity is looking for volunteers for repairs and other work at a chapter home.

The three work days at the site are in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity's annual "National Women Build Week," according to a news release.

The work days are scheduled for Saturday and for May 4 and 7 at the Habitat for Humanity home at 408 N. Fourth St., Charleston, the news release said. Work will start at 8:30 a.m. each day and is open to anyone who wants to volunteer, not only women, it said.

The work schedule is for cleaning the home's interior on Saturday and doing painting, landscaping and minor repairs on the two other dates, according to the chapter.

Lowe's home improvement stores are a national sponsor of the "Women Build" week and provided the county Habitat for Humanity chapter with a $5,000 grant for its activities.

The news release said construction experience isn't necessary to take part in the volunteer activities. It said tools will be provided and lunch will be served.

The release also said anyone interested in volunteering or who wants more information can contact the chapter by phone at 217-348-7063 or by email at colescountyhabitat@consolidated.net.
SPRINGFIELD -- An Illinois Supreme Court ruling from earlier this year has united two groups that are often at odds when it comes to legislation pending at the Statehouse.

The Illinois Municipal League and the Associated Fire Fighters of Illinois, the states largest firefighters union, have joined forces to back a bill they say would shield local governments and public safety employees from being sued over the way they prioritize services.

In these unusual times at the state Capitol, I think this is a good example where divergent interests can come together in support of something that really is common sense, said Pat Devaney, president of the Associated Fire Fighters.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. James Clayborne, D-Belleville, would codify the so-called public duty rule, which the Supreme Court struck down in a January ruling. The long-standing rule held that units of government and their employees have a duty to protect the well-being of the community as a whole rather than that of individual people.

The Supreme Courts decision came in a case involving the death of Coretta Coleman in 2008 in unincorporated Will County.

Coleman, 58, called 911 because she was having difficulty breathing. There was a series of delays and miscommunications among emergency personnel, and by the time Colemans husband arrived home and let paramedics in, more than 40 minutes had passed. She was found unresponsive inside and was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Colemans family sued the East Joliet and Orland fire protection districts, Will County, and their employees who were involved in the response. Citing the public duty rule, lower courts ruled in favor of the defendants, but the high court overruled them in a 4-3 decision, abolishing the rule, which it had established in previous decisions.

Obviously, if the legislature determines that the public policy requires it, it may codify the public duty rule, but we defer to the legislature in determining public policy, Justice Thomas Kilbride wrote in the majority opinion.

Thats precisely what the Municipal League and the firefighters union are urging the General Assembly to do.

In the Coleman case, the court decided to abandon the public duty rule and to abandon the public safety employees who the rule supports and defends, said Brad Cole, the Municipal Leagues executive director, calling it a dangerous decision.

For example, Cole said, it could expose local governments and their employees to lawsuits resulting from how they decide to prioritize numerous calls for help at the same time.

Devaney said the ruling could lead to a cottage industry of frivolous lawsuits aiming to capitalize on the suffering of others.

The bill would not protect emergency personnel who engage in willful and wanton misconduct, they said.

While there hasnt been a flurry of new lawsuits since the ruling, supporters noted that the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association opposes the measure.

Perry Browder, president of the association, said the proposed legislation is overly broad and could block an important check on how public safety agencies operate.

We certainly dont want to encourage frivolous lawsuits, Browder said. But at the same time, we dont want to encourage reckless conduct or intentional disregard (by public safety employees) because that harms the public, harms our citizens and puts people at risk.
I would like to challenge your readers to celebrate Earth Day 2016 by making a gift for the Lets Get Dirty funding request made by a Charleston, IL classroom teacher on DonorsChoose.org.

In March I heard a presentation given by late-night show host Stephen Colbert on the Today show in which he mentioned he had just funded all of the classroom requests on DonorsChoose.org in his home state of South Carolina. He challenged his celebrity friends to adopt their own home state to do the same.

Having been a classroom teacher, the concept of the non-profit school funding website hit my heart. I searched to see if there were any funding requests in Oakland, IL. Seeing none I broadened the search to include schools attended by my daughter, my husband, and myself. Still no hit so I searched Coles County and discovered the Earth Science program at Jefferson Elementary School needs two EcoSTEM Earth Kits. Having been raised on a farm, earth science is a favorite project plus my grandchildren attend Charleston schools. Because it was a match for me I made a generous donation. So have three other families but $253.88 is still needed to get this project off the ground.

The Lets Get Dirty funding request expires on June 10, 2016, but I am hoping that others will sign into DonorsChoose.org and read the details on this project. Unlike taxes, a gift to this funding site is not laundered by school administrators or held hostage by Illinois government. Your gift actually gives a classroom teacher the means to make a difference in the lives of local students.

Roxanne Frey, Oakland
The State budget is being held hostage for a personal agenda, and the State is spending a fortune to do so.

Former Governor Jim Edgar is reported in the St. Louis Dispatch on October 19, 2015 saying:

  Rauner is wrong to hold the budget "hostage" over non-budgetary policy goals; that his confrontations with Democratic legislative leaders have been counter-productive and unwisely focused on "personalities";  even Rauner's stated top goal  making Illinois more business-friendly  is being thwarted by his administration's actions.

A Chicago-area CEO is quoted in Crains Chicago Business (Jan. 9, 2016) as saying, Rauner does not seem to be concerned by the damage being done to the State and institutions . referring in part to the additional $33 million in red ink that the Civic Federation says the State racks up each day it goes without passing a balanced budget.

Illinois Senate President John Cullerton is quoted in Chicago Tribune (October 21. 2013):

 the state's massive public employee pension debt is not a "crisis," but instead an issue being pushed by business-backed groups seeking lower income taxes at the expense of retiree benefits.

"People really misunderstand the nature of this whole problem. Quite frankly, I don't think you can use the word 'crisis' to describe it at the state level," Cullerton said in an interview on WGN-AM radio.

Why is this so-called crisis happening? Because the Governor and his friends want to accomplish their so-called reform (cut and burn) agenda which is actually a pro-business, anti-worker agenda with objective and tactics of robber barons of the past. He is using his experience to treat Illinois like a corporation and willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

What is the endgame? To intentionally manufacture a crisis so serious that the State can use its emergency "police powers, powers which according to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan can be used to change contracts in extraordinary circumstances. The Governor and friends are not happy about the Illinois Supreme Courts decision about employee pensions. They tried using police powers rationale with the pension case in Illinois Supreme Court but failed. Now they are making sure that we are in a clear and catastrophic freefall so that the only available option is to use such police powers to further dismantle public higher education, reduce or eliminate public services, and diminish employee rights.

Melody Allison, Charleston
MATTOON -- The owner of the Fujiyama Japanese Steakhouse in Effingham plans to open a new location in the former Cody's Road House building in Mattoon.

Owner Benny Qiu said he hopes to open his new Fujiyama location by late 2016 or early 2017 in the Cody's building, 1320 Broadway Ave. East, after this structure is renovated. Qiu said the Mattoon location will offer the same menu and hibachi-style dining as his Effingham location, which opened in March 2014.

At Fujiyama in Effingham, diners can sit around the hibachi grills or in the dining room. The chefs who work the hibachi grills put on a show of cooking the sizzling meat, seafood, vegetables, noodles and rice on the grills. Fujiyama also offers teriyaki dishes, sushi, and more.

Qiu said he decided to open a Mattoon location after seeing a lot of customers from this community frequent the Fujiyama in Effingham. Qiu said he wants to offer Mattoon area residents more dining choices in their community.

City Administrator Kyle Gill said he is glad that the former Cody's building will be put to new use, particularly for hibachi-style dining that will be a new addition to the local restaurant scene.

"This is a different type of restaurant that I think will help draw people," Gill said, adding that the Mattoon Fujiyama will likely serve customers from surrounding communities. "Hibachi grills are unique and something people like to see."

Cody's closed in May 2015 after being in business for 19 years. The building at 1320 Broadway Ave. East was previously a Bonanza restaurant.

Gill said other developers have been inquiring about the availability of properties near the former Cody's. Gill said he is pleased to see this potential interest and see ongoing commercial development at other sites in Mattoon, such as the Denny's that is preparing to open later this year in the former Ponderosa building at 224 Richmond Ave. East.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second of seven profiles of this year's local Jefferson Awards for public service winners.



NEOGA -- For Gary Swearingen, seeing and understanding what service can do for an individual was a primary motivator for him to be involved in community service projects like the Mattoon Rotary Food Drive.

Swearingen said his father always told him to focus less on being blessed and more on being a blessing for others.

Swearingen has participated in the Mattoon Rotary Food Drive for much of his professional life and has spearheaded it for 11 years.

The food drive enlists people from the community to collect food across Mattoon to then be given to the Salvation Army and the Mattoon Food Bank. This nets an estimated 20,000 pounds of food, ranging from green beans to cereal, that were given directly to the food center and the Salvation Army along with cash donations.

He also created an endowment to help the food center financially aside from the donation of food.

For his efforts and passions for this project and others, Swearingen was named one of the 2016 Jefferson Award winners.

His passion for community service stemmed from his mother and previous volunteer work during the aftermath of the 9/11 events. During the events of 9/11 and the aftermath, Swearingens intentions to help and support the community either through financial or physical means were solidified.

Swearingen along with others volunteered as part of the American Red Cross and headed to New York City during the city's recovery to help those who were affected by the attack. He said he helped those affected financially and emotionally on how to get back on their feet.

One of the harder moments on this trip to New York City was helping a family who not only lost their business in the collapse of the towers, but also their home that was just above.

Seeing these people and the impact he had on them drove him to serve the community more.

"It really changed my life," he said.

Growing beyond the food drive, Swearingen honed an understanding of what can be done and what could be impactful in the community leading him toward several other projects.

"When you give back your time you truly understand the impact you have," Swearingen said.

In 2003, Swearingen sought to do something big for the community by bringing volunteers together to have the Band Shell in Peterson Park created, a $200,000 project.

The list of volunteers to bring this project to life is very long and Gary, through his tireless efforts, brought them all together in a timely fashion so that the Band Shell was presented to the community, Malcolm ONeill said in a nomination letter for him.

Swearingen also formed a committee that raised large sums of money toward making sure sophomore athletes can be scanned for myocardiopathy, a heart disease that can found in athletes.

Over the year, Swearingen has also donated large monetary sums to the Little Theatre in Sullivan.

He said community service has just become a passion for him, a passion he has now instilled in his children.
Varee International School is looking to recruit a Travel and Tourism/Business Studies specialist teacher to start in August 2016.

The Position

Duties will include teaching A-Level (age 16-18) and some classes with younger students. Ideally the teacher will be home country qualified, though we will accept applications from teachers with relevant experience who can commit to becoming qualified during the first year of their contract.

Teachers are contracted for 20hrs of contact time per week. The schools offers two year contracts. The school also provides teachers with work permit, BUPA health insurance and 11 weeks paid holiday. Salary negotiable depending on experience.

The School

Varee International School is a fully-equipped, modern school, located near the centre of Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. The school has a positive environment and is a great place to work, with regular opportunities for professional development.

Varee School is recognized by CIE as a Cambridge International School and accredited by the UK based Education Development Trust.

For more information visit the schools website

www.international.varee.ac.th

To Apply

Interested candidates need to send their CV to international@varee.ac.th with a current photo
1960

Breakthrough: Nobel Prize awarded for the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance.

Description: Immunological tolerance is the ability of the immune system to accept foreign cells. Scientists Rupert E. Billingham and Peter Medawar first showed this in 1953 when they injected foreign cells into fetal mice and these mice could later accept future tissue grafts from the same foreign cell donor. Scientist Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet added to this with his work on the immunology of viral infections.

1961

Breakthrough: Nobel Prize awarded for the discoveries of the physical mechanism of stimulation within the cochlea.

Description: These discoveries helped lead to revolutionary treatments for deafness, such as metal replacements for the three tiny bones of the inner ear.

1962

Breakthrough: First oral polio vaccine created.

Description: Seven years after the initial polio vaccine was licensed, this vaccine helped contribute to the eventual eradication of Polio in the U.S. by 1979.

1963

Breakthrough: First vaccine for measles licensed.

Description: This vaccine contributed to the vaccination program that ultimately eliminated measles from the United States in 2000.

1964

Breakthrough: Nobel Prize awarded for discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism.

Description: Scientists Konrad Bloch and Feodor Lynen explained the mechanisms of cholesterol biosynthesis as a result of independent, yet parallel, research. Because cholesterol is an integral component of many cellular structures, these discoveries held widespread significance.
These are the hauntings of a town devastated by the world's worst nuclear disaster 30 years ago. [Photo/IC]

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine - Some people found life away from home so unbearable they decided to return, even when home was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster.

Maria Lozbin was one of tens of thousands of people to be evacuated from their homes after the Chernobyl accident in April 1986, but returned with her family six years ago, to live off the land inside a 30 km (19 mile) exclusion zone where the risk of radiation poisoning remains.

A 69-year-old with a ready laugh and a green shawl wrapped round her, Lobzin said the village to which she had been evacuated was full of drunks and drug addicts.

The house into which she was moved was so shoddily constructed, with a huge crack running from the roof to the basement, that she was afraid of being killed or maimed by a falling object.

"Living there was like waiting for death," she said.

Now she lives with her son and his family back in Chernobyl, in a zone that can only be reached by crossing a checkpoint and where guides accompany curious tourists with radiation meters.

By contrast, a deathly silence hangs over the nearby abandoned town of Prypyat, where a rusting fairground wheel, and a kindergarten with toys, dolls and small beds are a grim testimony to the scale and speed of the disaster.

Lozbin keeps chickens, geese and ducks, grows potatoes and tomatoes, and goes foraging for mushrooms in nearby woods.

"There is no radiation here. I'm not afraid of anything," she said. "And when it's time for me to die, it won't happen because of radiation."
This website is intended for U.S. visitors only.
The Nebraska Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday about why a Lincoln man should or should not have been allowed to withdraw his plea to manslaughter after a new witness came forward before his sentencing.

In September, Joshua Carr got 33 to 50 years in prison after a district judge rejected a motion to take back his no contest plea in a home-invasion robbery that left 21-year-old Maurice Williams dead.

On Aug. 30, 2014, two men burst into Williams' apartment at 51st and Vine streets  each armed with a rifle  to rob him, and Williams was shot in the chest.

After sentencing, Carr appealed.

On Tuesday, attorney Sarah Newell of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy told the high court Carr always has maintained his innocence but entered into a plea agreement because he was 19 and looking at a potential life sentence.

His plea to manslaughter took that off the table.

But a day after his plea hearing, Lincoln police interviewed a man who said he saw another man, one of Carr's co-defendants, with blood on his shirt the night of Williams' death saying they had "f---ed up and killed Mo," who he took to mean Williams.

"Carr has always known that he had an alibi defense," Newell said. "The problem is he didn't know he had any evidence that supported an alibi defense. It was always his word against these five or six other people."

She argued that the new evidence potentially could have cleared Carr and that Lancaster County District Judge Steven Burns erred by not letting him withdraw his plea and go to trial.

Assistant Attorney General Austin Relph countered that there was no error and asked the high court to affirm Burns' decision.

He said Burns was right to find the evidence wouldn't have cleared Carr. When the new witness referred to the man with blood on his shirt, he said, he could have meant Carr.

So, even if it were true, it wouldn't have helped Carr, Relph argued.

By law, if Carr was there, participating in the robbery, he could be guilty of felony murder.

The Supreme Court will rule later.
A Nebraska jury found a California man not guilty of possessing methamphetamine with intent to distribute after a search of a car in which he was riding turned up 2 pounds of it last year.

Alberto Hineges Jr., 30, of Mendota, was a passenger in the 2013 Subaru Legacy in which Nebraska State Patrol troopers found meth in a hidden compartment after a stop on Interstate 80 just west of Elm Creek.

According to court records, a trooper stopped Jose Ivan Preciado on Feb. 28, 2015, for following too closely, and a search revealed six packages of meth weighing a total of just more than 9 pounds.

In February, Senior U.S. District Judge Richard G. Kopf sentenced Preciado, 28, of Mojave, California, to 6 years in federal prison, plus three years of supervised release. He had pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute.

A federal jury found Hineges not guilty on late last week.
Mayor Chris Beutler has tapped a Clovis, California, fire chief to lead Lincoln Fire and Rescue.

Micheal Despain was chosen from three finalists, all from fire departments outside Nebraska.

If confirmed by the City Council, he'll start work in Lincoln July 18 at an annual salary of $140,000.

A firefighter for 31 years, the 49-year-old said he fell in love with the job as a volunteer firefighter for a rural agency when he was 18 and worked for the Tulare County (California) Sheriff's Department.

He spent the past 20 years in the fire departments in Clovis and nearby Fresno. He was deputy fire chief in Fresno from 2006-12, serving briefly as interim chief.

He returned to Clovis in 2012, transitioning from deputy chief to chief within a few months. Despain has degrees from Fresno Pacific University and National University in California.

In a news release, Beutler said he's impressed with Despain's "common sense, data-driven approach to the profession."

"While his career has been spent until now in California, he demonstrates the same kind of strong work ethic that we value in the Midwest," the mayor said.

Despain will succeed Chief John Huff, who retired in June. Interim Chief Tim Linke, who didn't apply for the top job, will return to his position as battalion chief.

The mayor has been looking to fill Huff's job since fall and reopened the search after a candidate who was offered the job declined.

At a public reception for the second batch of candidates earlier this month, Despain said he's not looking to slow down, although he could because he's worked long enough to retire comfortably.

His family visited Lincoln last week and loved the city, he said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

"Within minutes of stepping off the plane, (we were) literally in awe of the community, Despain said.

As fire chief here, he said, he'll take a critical look at how equitably resources are spread in the department and work for the most efficient response to improve outcomes.

His focus will be on improving the quality of emergency medical and fire service at the best cost to "the customer," aka the taxpayer, he said.

"I cant say that I have the magic solution to make everything perfect," Despain said, but he plans to bring together fire administrators, the union, city officials and the public to move the department forward.

Now, he oversees 62 firefighters and a $13 million annual budget. Lincoln has about 300 firefighters and a budget of $32 million.

Lincoln Firefighters Union President Ron Trouba said members are hopeful Despain will bring the strong leadership needed to move the department forward.

Union members believe LFR needs to add a fire crew to keep response times low and to reduce the risk of burnout and injury on crews working more calls, he said.

"Weve grown by more than 60,000 people since the last time they added one fire crew, Trouba said.
Despite his attorney's plea for probation, a 26-year-old Iowa man got 20 years in prison Tuesday for more than 3 pounds of meth found hidden in a spare tire in a traffic stop on Interstate 80 in 2014.

Jorge Perez Derreza, 26, of Marshalltown, had denied knowing about the drugs.

"He maintains he was taken advantage of, and I strongly believe that he was," defense attorney Carlos Monzon argued.

He described Derreza as a family man with a 1-year-old child and very little criminal history and said a sentence of 20 years would be harsh and "not equal to the crime."

"How much longer do we need to warehouse this individual because there's nothing to rehabilitate?" Monzon asked. "It's just pure punishment."

In February, a Lancaster County jury found Derreza guilty of possession with intent to deliver, a charge that carries a sentence of 20 years to life because of how much was involved.

On Sept. 5, 2014, a Nebraska State Patrol trooper stopped Ronnie Menter driving a rented Chevy Impala east on I-80 after clocking him going 5 mph over the speed limit.

As he tried to pull him over, the trooper noticed a Chevy Tahoe shadowing the Impala and stopped it, too. Menter's brother Blake Thomas was driving it. Derreza was his passenger.

A police dog signaled that it smelled drugs coming from the Impala, and the trooper found 3.8 pounds of meth in two packages hidden in a spare tire, according to affidavits for their arrests.

"We're talking about 3 pounds of methamphetamine," Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Jeff Mathers said Tuesday.

Derreza's two co-defendants accepted plea agreements and got five- to 10-year sentences. Mathers said it would be unfair for Derreza to take no responsibility and get probation.

"He was in charge and he deserves to be held accountable," he said.

Lancaster County District Judge Jodi Nelson said Derreza could claim he didn't do anything, but that ship has sailed.

She said she didn't disagree that the sentencing range was harsh, but Derreza chose to take drugs across the country, then to not plead to a lesser charge.

"You don't want the consequences and I understand that," Nelson said. "Who would?"

But here we are, she said. And she sentenced him to 20 years, which translates to 10 if he loses no credit for good time. He's already served 598 days.
A 77-year-old Lincoln woman was conned out of $8,000 in a phone scam by someone claiming to be a Las Vegas police officer who demanded iTunes cards to pay for her relatives legal fees, Lincoln police said.

The caller claimed to be someone helping her relative, who had crashed a rental car, and that for the relative to go home, the police officer would need the iTunes cards, Capt. Bob Farber said.

The woman bought the cards and then when the scammers called back, she read the redemption codes on the cards over the phone, Farber said.

In a later call the scammer claimed additional iTunes cards were needed to cover "jury fees," Farber said.

The calls occurred between Friday at noon and Saturday night, when it was reported to police.

Police did not have any suspects Monday night.
Feeding a global population expected to top 10 billion by 2050 will require tremendous societal and systemic change.

The University of Nebraskas Water for Food Institute is working to forge the type of partnerships capable of meeting those challenges, former Microsoft executive Jeff Raikes told the institute's annual conference Monday.

Raikes said organizations like Water for Food have a unique opportunity to address problems both the public and private sector may avoid through Catalytic Collaborations" -- the title of this years seventh annual conference -- and what he called "catalytic philanthropy."

The private sector is a very, very effective mechanism for allocating goods and services as long as there is a market opportunity, said the CEO of the Raikes Foundation.

The public sector, which has significantly greater restraints on its resources, may have less of an appetite for risk, he added.

But between the two is a sweet spot where philanthropic organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- which Raikes ran for six years -- and the Daugherty Foundation, which gave $50 million to help launch the Water for Food Institute, are able to flourish.

According to founding executive director Roberto Lenton, Water for Food is ready to begin solving the challenges of feeding a growing global population within the restrictions placed upon food producers in a closed system.

For most of its first five years, the institute identified its key goals as improving groundwater management, closing crop yield gaps, improving high-efficiency agriculture and developing policy and solutions related to water, food, health and ecosystems.

As Water for Food looks ahead, it plans to wield the results of its catalytic philanthropy to point to opportunities for both the public and private sectors.

It has helped develop the Global Yield Gap Atlas with the Gates Foundation, Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security.

The atlas gives researchers a tool to study location-specific data tied to weather and evaporation compared against crop yields in Sub-Saharan Africa and other places around the world, giving public agencies and those in the private sector a tool to make better decisions on how to leverage resources.

That has already started producing really important information to what extent farmers in particular areas are achieving their full potential, Lenton said. Where there are big gaps, there are also big opportunities for improvement.

Eventually, the data will be scaled down to represent the water efficiency and crop production in 30-meter long segments, giving valuable insight to local farmers on how to better use resources for maximum gain.

With tools like the Global Yield Gap Atlas in hand, Water for Foods next director, Peter McCornick, told the conference the institute must be ready to provide solutions for specific challenges around the world.

While Raikes' "catalytic philanthropy" can be key in providing solutions, McCornick said there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the problems Water for Food is addressing like efficient water use in crop production.

"This can't be done by providing philanthropic investment for each farmer," he said. "It has to actually be scaled up across the various communities and allow farmers to invest in their own areas.

"It's looking at these as businesses: How do the farm families become businesses rather than subsistence farmers?"

But McCornick also warned that Water for Food's mission must consider the challenge water presents outside of food production.

Referring to the World Economic Forum's 2016 Global Risk Report, he noted that water and food security have both risen on the list of threats to populations around the world.

"This is not a static situation," he said. "This is a situation if we do nothing, business as usual, we will go backwards."

The conference continues Tuesday and will close with a Heuermann Lecture by Sally Rockey, executive director of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture in Washington, D.C.
Thanks to Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-Va.) 200,000 convicted felons in the state of Virginia may now register to vote.

Writes The Washington Post, "The change applies to all felons who have completed their sentences and been released from supervised probation or parole. The Democratic governor's decision particularly affects black residents of Virginia: 1 in 4 African Americans in the state has been permanently banned from voting because of laws restricting the rights of those with convictions."

McAuliffe's executive order also allows felons, including rapists and murderers, to run for public office, serve on a jury and become a notary public. I can just visualize the campaign slogan now: "Vote for me. I've already done time."

Republicans are outraged, of course. Virginia House of Delegates Speaker William J. Howell said: "The singular purpose of Terry McAuliffe's governorship is to elect Hillary Clinton president of the United States. This office has always been a stepping stone to a job in Hillary Clinton's cabinet." It's an accusation McAuliffe vehemently denies.

Hillary Clinton tweeted, "Proud of my friend (at)GovernorVA for continuing to break down barriers to voting. -- H."

After many years as a Republican, or red state, Virginia more recently has become a swing state and important to Democrats for winning the presidency. Just as former slaves in Virginia and elsewhere were loyal to Republicans for many years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation it is likely that many of these felons will become reliable Democratic voters. Maybe Democrats will next figure out a way to hand illegal immigrants crossing our southern border the right to vote.

McAuliffe, a prolific fundraiser for the Clintons, appears to be as loyal to them as a family's faithful golden retriever. He has raised millions for them and for the Democratic National Committee. For a good account of McAuliffe's fundraising antics and other financial dealings, visit the website counterpunch.org.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "In 38 states and the District of Columbia, most ex-felons automatically gain the right to vote upon the completion of their sentence." In liberal Maine and Vermont, convicted felons may cast their ballots while in prison and are never disenfranchised. Most states require ex-convicts to apply to have their voting rights restored. Many factors go into the decision, including the nature of the crime. It is not always automatic.

In his book "The Virginia Constitution," John J. Dinan writes: "Virginia's felon disenfranchisement provision ... has been challenged in several cases, but sustained in each instance." In 1982, Virginia voters rejected a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have allowed convicted felons to vote. As recently as 2004, notes Dinan, a constitutional amendment to automatically restore felons' voting rights after the completion of their sentences "was considered by the General Assembly, but failed to achieve a majority in either the House or Senate."

Societies going back to Greek and Roman times have disenfranchised convicted criminals, because they regarded such actions as part of their punishment. There was also a sense that not allowing convicted felons to vote might, when combined with other forms of punishment, serve as a deterrent to crime.

Republicans have long accused Democrats of election shenanigans. i.e., Mickey Mouse's name showing up on registration lists, voters giving nonexistent addresses, some voting more than once. And let's not forget what I call the "cemetery vote," or the ultimate absentee ballot, where the dead get to "vote."

In an interview following McAuliffe's announcement, Speaker Howell suggested legal action might be taken. There isn't much time between now and November and the Republican majority legislature is not even in session. Legal action would be difficult.

If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency and the votes of Virginia felons prove decisive, cheating and voter cynicism will plunge to new depths. Most people probably think politics can't get any dirtier. McAuliffe's action shows they are wrong.
With Democrats preparing to nominate a presidential candidate whose unfavorable rating tops 50 percent in poll after poll, one would think that Republicans would be looking for a worthy champion to carry their banner in 2016.

You would think wrong.

Instead the front-runners are the weakest group in memory.

You dont have to take the Journal Star editorial boards word for that. Its widely acknowledged even in conservative circles.

This week noted conservative Charles Koch said that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich were terrible role models.

Koch cited Trumps proposal to create a register of all Muslims in America, which Koch said was reminiscent of Nazi Germany. I mean, thats monstrous. He also referred to Cruzs promise to make the sand glow in the Mideast. I mean, that a candidate, whether they believe it or not, would think that appeals to the American people, that is frightening, Koch said.

Nonetheless, Nebraskans voting in the Republican presidential primary on May 10 will have to choose among that slate. The names of Ben Carson and Marco Rubio will be on the ballot, but both have dropped out of the race.

Of the three GOP candidates still in the race, the Journal Star editorial board recommends that voters choose Kasich, even though he trails far behind by any measure.

At least Kasich has a record of effective political leadership. Thats more than the either Trump or Cruz can say.

For example, Kasich helped balance the federal budget when he served as chair of the House budget committee in the 1990s. In fact Kasich sponsored the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Kasich cant take all the credit obviously, but PolitiFact rated the claim that he balanced the federal budget as mostly true.

When Kasich left Congress to become governor of Ohio, he inherited a fiscal mess. Under his leadership the state moved from a budget deficit of at least $6 billion to a surplus of $2 billion.

Some Republicans have taken potshots at Kasich for helping to sign his state up for Medicaid expansion, lowering the percentage of uninsured working poor in his state from 17.3 percent in 2012 to 8.7 percent in 2015. The editorial board thinks that shows that Kasich has common sense.

In the end Nebraska Republicans face a tough decision. But if they vote for Kasich theyll have less reason to regret their choice.
The Journal Star editorial board recommends Jim Ballard for the Republican nomination to replace longtime Lancaster County Board member Larry Hudkins, who is retiring.

Ballards private sector experience running James Arthur Vineyards near Raymond would be valuable as a member of the county board. He knows how to balance a budget and make tough decisions when warranted.

Ballard has an approachable personality. He would be a good listener and a good communicator with the public.

Hes honed leadership skills in a variety of professional and community organizations. Currently he is president of President of the Nebraska Winery and Grape Growers Association and a board member for the National Grape and Wine Initiative and Wine America, where he served as chair of the Board for 2 years. He is a graduate of the Nebraska LEAD program and Leadership Lincoln.

He demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the challenges facing the county in catching up to a backlog of road and bridge construction and replacement needs. He pledges to work to keep the South Beltway on schedule.

The editorial board differs with Ballard on one issue. We think the county boards recently enacted noise limits for wind turbines are too onerous. Ballard says he supports alternative energy, but he does not want a wind turbine in his back yard.

Opposing Jim Ballard for the Republican nomination in District 2 is Joe Lefler, who is retiring as a captain in the Lancaster Sheriffs Office after 40 years. The winner will face Jennifer Brinkman, who is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination.
When it comes to city living, a decent storm sewer system is one of the basics.

Generations of Lincoln residents have recognized that reality of life. The unbroken string of stormwater bond issues that have been approved by voters is in the double digits and goes back more than three decades.

For an example of what happens when a city doesnt keep up with development, do a quick Internet search on the flooding earlier this month in Houston which damaged nice homes and killed seven people.

Failure by local officials to compensate for the changes that development brought to the areas natural drainage system meant the system was unable to keep up with record rainfall.

Placing the question of whether to improve and expand the stormwater system before voters is a local quirk. In many communities the decision is left in the hands of local officials.

So credit the common sense and practicality shown by residents. When record rains hit last spring, the system was stretched to the limit, but it worked. Damage was limited to a few areas.

The $6.3 million stormwater bond issue will pay for more than two dozen projects scattered across the city, ranging from the $400,000 local match for a $3.2 million project at 56th and Morton to replacing drainage channels at Rudge, Stransky and Irvingdale parks to replacement of an old storm sewer that is deteriorating near 20thy and Calvert. A complete list is available on the citys website.

Some of the elected officials at City Hall got crosswise with each other a few weeks ago over the project at 56th and Morton. Thats all been patched up, and all the city council members and Mayor Chris Beutler are in favor of the bond issue passing.

Approval of the bond issue would raise the taxes on a home valued at $150,000 by $4 a year, or less than 35 cents a month. Thats a small price to pay to keep floodwaters away.
On a day when Sen. Ted Cruz braced for a string of likely losses to Donald Trump in the Northeast, Heidi Cruz told supporters in Lincoln that Nebraska will be a vital part of her husband's comeback surge.

"You are in a position of great power and that's why I've come here," she said Tuesday. "We will spend a lot of time here.

"Your vote really matters; your voice is going to be heard."

Nebraska Republicans will cast their presidential primary votes on May 10, one week after Republicans in Indiana vote. Ted Cruz is counting on wins in both states to put the brakes on Trump's momentum.

"With Nebraska and Indiana, Donald Trump will not have the delegates needed" to clinch a first-ballot nomination in advance of the GOP national convention in July, state Sen. John Murante of Gretna said, and that would mean the prize is up for grabs.

"Tomorrow, it's our turn," he said.

"The people of Nebraska are going to have a voice for the first time in a long time," Murante told more than 100 supporters gathered in the Apothecary atop the Haymarket. He is state chairman of the Cruz campaign.

When the Texas senator comes to Nebraska to campaign, it appears likely he may be greeted by an endorsement from Gov. Pete Ricketts.

Cruz endorsed Ricketts in his hotly contested 2014 Republican gubernatorial primary battle, and national funding from the family of Joe Ricketts, the governor's father, has been directed at defeating Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.

At stake in Nebraska next month will be a valuable winner-take-all bloc of 36 delegates.

Heidi Cruz made campaign stops in Omaha, Norfolk, Fremont, York and Lincoln Monday and Tuesday.

She said constitutional liberties, freedom of speech and religion, and the right to bear arms are all at stake in this year's presidential race.

The U.S. Supreme Court is in balance, stuck now in a 4-4 division between conservative and moderate or liberal justices, she noted, with the next president positioned to nominate the justice who may swing the court's future decisions.

"If we don't get it right," she said, that could "destroy American values."

Cruz said President Barack Obama's "disastrous foreign policy" makes Americans less safe from terrorism.

Her husband, she said, would push for tax reform that creates a flat-rate income tax and abolishes the Internal Revenue System, regulatory reform, creation of "the strongest military this nation has ever seen," and security of U.S. borders from illegal immigration.

"Strong, principled conservatives do what they say they will do," Cruz said.
Officers who responded to an initial report of shots fired Monday afternoon found the woman outside of an apartment in the neighborhood. Another shooting was reported just east of the park around the same time. Officers found 31-year-old Johnny Marion there. He was wounded and has been hospitalized.
This is a recipe for success.

It wont make you rich. But it could boost the fortunes of hundreds of children and youth and bring you a wealth of fuzzy, warm-all-over feelings of satisfaction.

Its a recipe for a large, fund-raising pancake feed, as tested and proven for about 25 years by the men and women of Cornhusker Kiwanis, and the hundreds of guests who show up annually on a spring Saturday for a scrumptious breakfast and a plateful of good causes.

This recipe comes with a Kiwanis challenge  to improve the world, one child and one community at a time.

The key ingredient  like Grandmas love in sugar cookies  is dedication. Without dedication, your results will be flatter than, well, a pancake. Dedication is what brings out 40 or so volunteers, working 3- to 4-hour shifts, beginning at 5:30 a.m. Some of those folks, in club shirts and tan and red caps, will stay busy from before dawn until late in the afternoon, when the rented grills have cooled, been scrubbed and loaded onto the truck, the last of the 20 round dining tables have been wiped clean and put away and the Kiwanis feather flag has been furled and put away for another year.

Youll find no magic in this recipe -- no open the carton, toss into the microwave, push the start button and voila! It takes hours of mixing, stirring, pouring, dipping, browning, grilling, carrying, serving, clearing, cleaning, greeting, thanking, and just standing around  waiting for the hot grills to slowly revolve and the pancake bubbles to pop so you can resume flipping.

(W.C. Fields said the laziest man he ever knew put popcorn in his pancake batter so the pancakes would flip themselves. Rest assured, there is no popcorn in this recipe!)

By days end, you will have dished up about 2,500 pancakes to anywhere from 700 to 1,000 guests. This years batter is coming courtesy of Lincolns IHOP restaurant.

And while the event is still called Pancakes in the Park (its held at Auld Pavilion and Recreation Center in Antelope Park), this fundraiser for several years has also offered French toast. On average: 1,800 pieces of Texas toast. Thats 105 loaves, guaranteed not fresh  because fresh bread dipped in a cinnamon custard mixture with eggs, milk and vanilla will go limp. Thick, vintage bread is preferable.

For best results, swath the pancakes and French toast with butter and smother your whole stack with syrup. To complement the entrees, brown and serve an average of 2,300 links of zesty, sizzling sausage.

Cornhusker Kiwanis sponsors student leadership and service groups in six schools, from elementary to high school. So, along with members of Aktion Club (sponsored by Kiwanis for adults with disabilities), K-Kids and Builders may be clearing your tables and setting out fresh napkins and plasticware. Key Club members may be pouring your milk, orange juice and coffee.

It takes a small dairy  producing 448 cups of milk, and a small orchard  filling 672 cups of orange juice, to quench the thirst of hungry guests. And the coffee spigot gets turned on somewhere high in the Andes and the brew flows for hours directly to the pavilion.

Near the stage, Aktion Club always offers up honey-bear bottles of locally produced honey for sale. This years sales goal: 84 12-ounce honey-bears.

For all the work a successful pancake (and French toast) feed entails, its success may also be best told by numbers, such as:

 885  the number of new books Cornhusker Kiwanis sent home with preschoolers this year after reading three times to 16 classes  about 300 children  at six schools. K-Kids actually do the reading at Holmes Elementary  kids helping other kids.

 480  the number of apples and oranges club members added each month to Food Bank backpacks for about 120 Belmont Elementary students. The club also donates $1,000 to the Food Bank backpack program and another $500 to the Summer Lunch program.

 $4,500  the total value of three $1,500 college scholarships Cornhusker Kiwanis awards each year. The club also conducts bicycle safety rodeos at several elementary and preschools, sponsors Boys State and Girls State participants, and sponsors or supports several other programs.

 $41,000  the total donated so far by Cornhusker Kiwanis members to Project Eliminate, a multi-year effort by Kiwanis International and UNICEF to eradicate maternal and neonatal tetanus, which kills nearly 50,000 babies in developing countries every year. Worldwide, Kiwanis is donating $110 million toward the effort; $48,000 will come from Cornhusker Kiwanis.

 100  the number of pairs of sweatpants the clubs annual donation of $500 can buy for Willies Underwear Project, an effort by former Lincoln teacher Willie Schafer to provide school nurses with new underwear and sweatpants for children who have an accident at school.

To top off your recipe, you might choose to offer a variety of toppings. Pancake veterans at Cornhusker Kiwanis say maple syrup always works. Or as one sage is said to have said, My favorite pancake topping? Two more pancakes!
The McPhee Community Kiwanis K-Kids, a new club sponsored by the Lincoln Center Kiwanis, ended their club school year with a terrific book drive. The 15 K-Kids came up with the idea for a book drive and carried it out with great success.

The purpose of the book drive was to ensure all kids at their school could have their own books at home. Over 875 childrens books were contributed by parents and families at McPhee plus some help from the sponsoring Lincoln Center Kiwanis Club and Men with Dreams.

The kids got the word out with posters and a letter for parents. The K-Kids sorted the books by reading level. The books will be distributed at a special Splash Night in mid-May. Books not finding a home then will be provided to a Free Little Library near the school and other places where kids need books.

The kids have completed many service projects during this first year in operation at McPhee. They provided thank-you notes to the school faculty, decorated panels for the Lincoln Childrens Zoo Polar Express train tunnel, conducted numerous school ground cleanups, provided school decorations, and a host of other activities. They have also been busy at McPhee Elementary School helping out on Science Night, a multicultural event, popcorn sales and other special events at the school.

Gary Muckel, Lincoln Center Kiwanis advisor, and Nicole Weber, also a Kiwanian, school sponsor and Community Learning Center coordinator, organized the after school club in September. Muckel, Weber and all the Lincoln Center Kiwanis Club members are very proud of the outstanding first year achievements by this great group of K-Kids.

Kiwanis K-Kids is a service leadership program for grade school age children. Kiwanis International offers similar programs at the middle school (Builders Club), high school (Key Club) and college levels (Circle K). The McPhee Community K-Kids is part of a partnership with the McPhee Elementary School, the Community Learning Center, and Lincoln Center Kiwanis.

Lincoln Center Kiwanis also sponsors a Kiwanis K-Kids at Everett Elementary and a Kiwanis Key Club at the Lincoln Science Focus School at the Lincoln Childrens Zoo.
According to researchers at the Association for Psychological Science, completing word puzzles probably wont bring noticeable benefits to an aging mind.

However, those who participated in continuous and prolonged mental challenges, like taking up photography or quilting, showed vast improvement.

The research didnt exactly mention melodramas but it stands to reason that participating in a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters, requiring the memorization of 100-200 lines of script, and a rehearsal schedule of twice a week for three months, probably arent for the young of heart.

Or, is it?

It is, if you live or work at The Landing at Williamsburg Village.

Ten years ago, Kay Anderson  The Landings lifestyle supervisor -- and Dellouise Carroll were talking about what they might offer in the way of activities that would be different. Carroll, who runs The Emporium Gift Shop at the Landing, and her husband owned a theatrical costume shop in Lincoln for 25 years before closing it and retiring in 1995. But she managed to hang on to a few costumes  ones she particularly liked and were special. It wasnt long before she was directing the first melodrama in the history of The Landing.

Things have evolved during the 10-year history of the productions. Cardboard sets have given way to a larger, sturdier stage. Microphones worn around the necks have been replaced by rented microphones and soundboards. The original costumes , having seen better days, have been replaced by rented apparel.

The melodrama idea caught on early, and the crowds have continued to come. Crowds totaling nearly 500 paid $8 each to see this years three performances and dress rehearsal for Pecos Bill & Slue-Food Sue Meet the Dirty Dan Gang.

The 10th production in the history of the melodramas featured a 17-member cast  nine residents, three staff members and five volunteers. The average age of the resident actors is 80.

To meet some of the members of the cast, see page 6.
Dear Dr. K: It seems like several years ago all my friends were taking antioxidant pills. Now I don't hear about antioxidants as much. Are they worth taking?

Dear Reader: Here's what we know, and here's what is still controversial. The cells of our body are full of chemicals interacting with other chemicals. In the process of getting the energy they need to survive and carry out their functions, cells naturally produce chemicals called "free radicals." Just as political free radicals can sometimes damage society, chemical free radicals can damage body tissues.

Our environment also exposes us to substances that increase our production of free radicals. Examples are tobacco smoke, ultraviolet rays and air pollution.

To fight the effect of free radicals, our body makes natural antioxidant chemicals. We also get antioxidants in foods. In particular, several vitamins -- primarily vitamins A, C and E -- have antioxidant powers.

If the levels of antioxidants match the levels of free radicals, we're in balance. However, if free radicals exceed the antioxidants in our body, we're out of balance. This is called "oxidative stress." Frequent bouts of oxidative stress may increase the pace of aging.

There is very strong evidence that eating a lot of foods rich in antioxidants can help lower your risk of many diseases. Good food sources of antioxidants include fruits and vegetables, particularly tomatoes, kale, blueberries, onions and apples. Other good sources include dark chocolate, whole grains, coffee, green tea and vegetable oils. That's not controversial.

Here is where the controversy begins. As scientists came to better understand the balance between free radicals and antioxidants, a beautiful theory emerged. Perhaps, scientists thought, taking antioxidant vitamin supplements would slow diseases of aging. Perhaps these supplements would fend off heart disease, improve flagging vision and curb cancer. It was a theory worth testing.

Some scientists find their theories so attractive that they don't bother to test them. When that happens, they cease being scientists. Much more often, scientists put their theories to the test. Because the antioxidant vitamin pill theory was so compelling, a lot of time and effort was spent in testing it.

Unfortunately, results from well-designed trials of antioxidant supplements have failed to back up many of the claims of benefits. One study pooled results from 68 trials with more than 230,000 participants. It found that taking antioxidant supplements is unlikely to help you live longer. Sixty-eight rigorous studies, involving hundreds of thousands of people whose health was followed for many years, failed to show a benefit from antioxidant vitamin supplements.

Sometimes something terrible happens to scientists: a beautiful theory is murdered by a brutal gang of facts. Those 68 studies were a brutal gang indeed.

It was good that those studies were done, even if the results disappointed some scientists. People were spending a lot more money buying these supplements than was spent conducting the research to see if they were worth taking.

To answer your question, I don't recommend that people routinely take antioxidant vitamin supplements. Your money is better spent elsewhere.

(This column is an update of one that ran originally in March 2013.)
RACINE  From all outward appearances, a press conference Tuesday at the Racine County Courthouse had appeared to be the kick-off to District Attorney Rich Chiapetes re-election campaign.

But after starting his speech with his background and accomplishments in his office, Chiapete threw a curveball, announcing he will not seek another four-year term.

Choking back tears, Chiapete said he and his family prayed and reflected on the decision before deciding not to run again. Deputy District Attorney Tricia Hanson, who was present at the conference, will run for the seat in the fall.

After careful consideration, we do believe its time that I walk a different path, Chiapete said.

It truly has been my privilege and honor to serve all of you.

Chiapete declined to elaborate on his decision, saying only it was made with his family. He did not mention any plans after he leaves office, saying that stuff will work itself out.

Asked if his decision was related to a 2014 drunken-driving crash, Chiapete said everything goes into the dynamic. Theres no one overriding factor. I thought it was best for my family if we went a different direction.

Chiapete pleaded guilty to first-offense operating a vehicle while under the influence, obstructing an officer and hit and run after striking a traffic light near his home in April 2014.

Officials surprised

Chiapete was flanked by law enforcement officials from throughout the county and state Attorney General Brad Schimel, who called Chiapetes decision a big loss for Racine County. Schimel worked with the Racine County DAs Office often when he was Waukesha County district attorney, he said.

Its a really well-run place and a lot of that is due to the leadership and mentorship of Rich over the years, Schimel said.

Local officials said they were caught off guard by Chiapetes decision.

Mount Pleasant Police Chief Tim Zarzecki, who attended the press conference, called it heartbreaking, saying Chiapete has served well in the role.

It was actually a shock, Zarzecki said. But its a personal decision and we respect him for it.

County Executive Jonathan Delagrave said he was also surprised. Chiapete has served this county above and beyond what a normal DA does, and he definitely will be missed, he said.

Contested election

The battle to replace Chiapete, meanwhile, is only just beginning.

In addition to Hanson, Racine lawyer Eugene B. Loftin previously announced he would run for DA as a Democrat, while lawyer Thomas Binger said in a Facebook post Monday he also would seek the position.

Loftin owns Loftin Legal, 209 Eighth St., where his practice includes criminal defense and civil law, estate planning and business and tax work. Loftin also is an adjunct faculty member in the criminal justice program at Carthage College in Kenosha.

I was surprised by the announcement today, Loftin said. He probably made the best choice for himself and his family and probably the people of Racine.

Binger said in his Facebook post he has many years of experience as a prosecutor handling homicides, sexual assaults, heroin and other drug cases, violent crimes and drunken driving and domestic violence cases.

He declined further comment, saying he would make a formal announcement later in the week.

Hanson, a Republican, has the backing of Schimel, Chiapete and many law enforcement officials who attended Tuesdays press conference. She said it was not an easy day for us on the ninth floor of the courthouse, home to the District Attorneys Office.

I hope I can stand before you in November and tell you that Im going to continue the great work that Rich has done and continue to do my best to advocate for justice for the citizens of Racine County, said Hanson, who unsuccessfully ran for Racine County Circuit Court judge last year.

The election is Nov. 8. If more than one candidate in a party registers a campaign, a primary would be held Aug. 9.

18-year tenure

Chiapete is a Racine County native, graduating from St. Catherines High School in 1983.

He began his tenure with the District Attorneys Office in 1998, serving in nearly every capacity.

Gov. Scott Walker named Chiapete district attorney in March 2012 after former DA Mike Nieskes became a Racine County circuit judge, a post Nieskes held only briefly after losing the subsequent election. Chiapete won a four-year term after running unopposed in November.
RACINE  A Park High School student faces two misdemeanor charges after reportedly bringing a steak knife, pepper spray and a multi-purpose tool with multiple blades on it to school Monday.

Crystal D. Brown, 17, of the 2000 block of Orchard Street in Racine, was charged with disorderly conduct and possession of dangerous weapons on school premises Tuesday. School officials searched Brown after a parent complained that Brown was bullying her daughter, police said.

Brown made her initial appearance in court Tuesday, according to court records. Records show her bail was set at $200 with a condition she not make contact with the girl she was allegedly bullying.

According to the criminal complaint, the quarrel between the two girls may have been over a male student. Police said Brown and the girl she was allegedly bullying had agreed to engage in mutual combat.

Brown told police she carried the knife and pepper spray on her at school for self-defense purposes, according to the criminal complaint.
RACINE  Alcohol and drugs make a Racine man a dangerous, aggressive person capable of stabbing an individual nearly two dozen times, a judge said in sentencing him on Monday.

Emilio A. Delgado, 20, of Racine, didnt have a criminal record, either as a juvenile or an adult, until now. He was sentenced on Monday to eight years in prison plus another seven years on extended supervision. The punishment, a prosecutor said, was for stabbing a man 23 times on July 28, 2013, in Racine.

You are living out the consequence of a very tragic decision you made that night, Racine County Circuit Judge John Jude said in sentencing Delgado. You easily could have hit an artery.

The stabbing occurred at about 3 a.m. in the 1300 block of Douglas Avenue. A man with Delgado and his younger brother, Joseph, at the time told police they were walking him home after a party because he was drunk and unfamiliar with the area, according to the brothers criminal complaints.

The man became ill and while regaining his composure, the brothers talked with several passers-by so they wouldnt hassle their friend, the complaints state.

But Emilio Delgado reportedly confronted a man before stabbing him, according to the complaints. Younger brother Joseph R. Delgado is seen on surveillance video kicking the man until a motion-activated light from a nearby building flicks on. The brothers then fled, the complaints state.

Deputy District Attorney Tricia Hanson said the teens were drunk and high at the time.

The victims sciatic nerve was cut, she said, and hes scarred forever now, impacted forever.

The victim, now living in Minnesota, didnt attend Mondays sentencing.

I am not a bad person

Emilio Delgado pleaded guilty on Feb. 15 to a downgraded charge of first-degree reckless injury while armed. That charge was punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison, Hanson said, and Emilio Delgado should be sentenced close to that 20-year initial confinement.

A Wisconsin Department of Corrections probation agent recommended a 12- to 15-year prison sentence, she said.

His defense attorney, Michael B. Plaisted, asked for a six- to 10-year prison sentence, saying the attack  which was captured on video  doesnt show what prompted Emilio Delgado to fear for his and his brothers safety.

A gun was never seen on the victim but somebody shouted theres a gun before this incident got started, Plaisted said.

These are young people who are intoxicated and in the street in the middle of the night and made a very bad mistake, Plaisted said, adding Emilio Delgado was trying to protect himself and his brother when he hit the man repeatedly while holding a fishing knife.

Emilio Delgado initially was charged with attempted first-degree intentional homicide. During his sentencing, he apologized for my behavior. I wish I had never done that to him.

But he said he didnt try to kill the man.

I am not a bad person, Your Honor, he said standing before the judge. I just made a bad choice.

Others convicted

Joseph Delgado, 19, formerly of Caledonia, was ordered on April 19 to serve two years on probation for kicking the man. The Racine teen was ordered to serve 360 days in the Racine County Jail, but received credit for 676 days he had already spent behind bars awaiting the outcome of the case. He attended his brothers sentencing on Monday, during which Jude ordered Emilio Delgado not to retaliate because his brothers sentence was lighter than his own.

Another man, Jose A. Vazquez Jr., 19, of Racine, was sentenced in March 2014 to three years in prison and three years of extended supervision for robbing the man as he lay bleeding on the ground after the attack.
RACINE  Police confirmed Monday that they have made an arrest in connection with a shooting late Sunday morning in the area of Sixth and Jones streets.

According to witnesses, William M. Lockhart, 34, of the 1700 block of Maple Street, was walking his dog Sunday when he called over to Darnell L. Barker, 47, began to argue with him, and allegedly shot Barker in the chest.

Witnesses indicated Barker was in stable condition on Sunday afternoon, but police have yet to comment on his condition.

Jail records show Lockhart was arrested Sunday. While he hasnt officially been charged, police said and jail records confirm that hes being held at the Racine County Jail on suspicion of attempted homicide. According to witnesses, Lockhart threatened to kill Barker before the shooting in a message he scratched onto Barkers car.

Prior Convictions

If Lockhart is charged with attempted homicide, it would not mark a personal first. In 2004, Lockhart pleaded guilty to second-degree attempted homicide.

According to a Journal Times story from 2004, Lockhart, then 22, was accused of shooting Kendrick Smith at close range during an argument in the 600 block of 12th Street on June 26, 2003.{/span}

Lockhart had been riding in a car with some other people when the driver stopped the car near where Smith was standing, according to court records. Lockhart got out of the car, they argued and Lockhart shot Smith.

Lockhart said he was jumped by close to a dozen people and only meant to shoot into the air to scare them off.

In July 2004, Lockhart was sentenced to four years in prison and 10 years of extended supervision, court records show. He was released in May 2007, according to Wisconsin Department of Corrections records.

Lockhart returned to prison in 2010 for reasons that were unclear Monday, and was released in September 2012. He pleaded guilty to firearm and marijuana possession in 2014.

Just last week, police cited Lockhart for operating a vehicle while suspended and without insurance.
The students went to school with their exchange partners who visited Waterford in March, and got to experience what school in California is like. In addition, students took a number of excursions to the nearby sights, including Yosemite and San Francisco.
WATERFORD  Holocaust survivor Howard Melton shared his story with the Waterford High School sophomore class. His presentation was the capstone for the students World War II and Holocaust unit in the World Histories class.

Melton is a survivor of the concentration and work camp Dachau. He was 10 years old when the Holocaust came to his home country of Lithuania and he was liberated at the age of 14 by U.S. soldiers who found him while on a death march from Dachau. Melton presented his story and students were able to ask questions at the end of the presentation.
RACINE  Gateway Technical College and Racine shared in the national spotlight Monday as SC Johnson Chairman and CEO Fisk Johnson and veteran Gateway Board Member Pamela Zenner-Richards spoke on a White House conference call about tuition-free community college.

We feel incredibly fortunate to have Gateway in our community, Johnson said. Theyve truly done an outstanding job training chronically underemployed people with skills that are in demand in todays workforce.

The conference call served as a precursor to Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, announcing a new $100 million investment in job training grants on Monday at the Community College of Philadelphia. The donation is intended to further the commitment by President Barack Obama administrations to tuition-free community college through its Americas Promise program.

One key thread across all of these events is the focus on community, said Cecilia Munoz, director of the Domestic Policy Council. We are engaging everyone from teachers to students to members of the community in an effort to make sure we are opening doors to every American possible.

Gateway Promise

Johnson expressed his gratitude for the opportunity to promote the effectiveness of programs like the Gateway Promise, Gateways commitment to free tuition for local high school students announced in February. Both SCJ and Johnson himself helped fund the program.

I think its really important for people to know that there are programs out there that truly work, programs that serve the needs of business, that serve the need of the community and that serve the needs of those who yearn for a foot on the ladder, he said.

Johnson and Zenner-Richards mentioned Gateways completion of 21 18-week training boot camps in various fields that have propelled graduates to employment.

Together, theyve changed the lives of hundreds of youth and adults, Zenner-Richards said. Ive met many of the students in these programs, and continue to be inspired by their stories of courage and dedication to better their lives.

Building community

Zenner-Richards stressed SCJs importance in the funding those programs.

SC Johnson supports full tuition for all boot camp students and invests in ongoing curriculum development for the program, she said. Tuition support is the only way these students would be able to attend college.

Johnson fielded a question about specific skills required to work at SCJ at one point during the call, and his answer seemed to reflect the importance of training programs for Racine as a whole rather than just for SCJ.

We employ several thousand people in this city and it really runs a wide variety of skill requirements. he said. We have a pretty strong internal training program ourselves, so we are a little less dependent on local area colleges for the training requirements of our jobs.

In the end, Johnson made sure the national audience knew why he contributed to Gateways programs.

There are few things that are more important in this country than breaking down the barriers to income mobility and to help bring a good, life-sustaining wage for those who want to work hard and have a real chance, he said. I wanted to be a witness to that.
RACINE  A Racine County judge Tuesday kept most communication and jail restrictions in place for the man accused in a triple shooting last month at the Bray Center.

Zerell A. Strong, who is in the Racine County Jail, will remain segregated from other inmates most of the day and will not know the names of witnesses or victims in his case until closer to the trial.

He had also been barred from interacting with family members, an order Judge Eugene Gasiorkiewicz amended to allow Strong to communicate only with his mother.

Strong is charged with three counts of first-degree reckless injury and three counts of felony bail jumping in connection with the March 11 shootings inside the George Bray Neighborhood Center, 924 Center St.

Police say Strong began firing during an altercation with a rival gang. A 16-year-old girl, a 20-year-old woman and a 23-year-old man reportedly received gunshot wounds in the incident.

Safety risk claimed

A prosecutor and two police officers said Strong, an alleged gang member, posed a safety risk to witnesses if their names are disclosed. Several social media videos purporting to show Strong with a handgun were played in court Tuesday.

Officers involved in the case said the order was rare but necessary, saying Strongs alleged ties are to the most violent gang in the city.

The state believes the order of the court is eminently appropriate, said Racine County Assistant District Attorney Sharon Riek.

Lori Kuehn, Strongs attorney, argued Strong would be denied his right to assist in his defense and called the jail isolation order an example of cruel and unusual punishment.

Clyde Strong, who said he is Zerells grandfather, said Zerell has been unfairly treated.

I just want him to be treated like hes a human, said Clyde Strong, 60, a retired state worker. His civil rights and human rights are being violated at this point.

A pre-trial conference is set for June 3. If convicted, Strong faces up to 15 years behind bars for each of the reckless injury counts and three years in prison for each of the bail jumping charges.
MADISON  The state elections board voted Tuesday to ask lawmakers for a quarter of a million dollars to revive its efforts to educate people about photo identification requirements at the polls ahead of the fall election season.

The Government Accountability Board mothballed its voter ID outreach campaign in 2012 after a court challenge blocked the requirement. A federal appellate court ultimately upheld the law in 2014 and it was in effect for both this past February's primary and the April 6 general election, which included the presidential primary.

Democrats feared the voter ID law would prevent some people from voting, but the turnout was 47 percent in the April election, the highest since 1972. GAB officials have said things went smoothly for the most part, although some voters faced long lines and difficulties trying to obtain valid IDs, particularly college students. Most college IDs aren't acceptable under the law, so University of Wisconsin schools provided students with free secondary IDs for voting.

Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, and Wisconsin League of Women Voters Andrea Kaminski asked the GAB on Tuesday morning to revive the education campaign, saying the law is confusing and convoluted. They argued turnout for the April election could have been even higher if more people understood the ID requirements and that even more people will likely vote in November.

GAB public information officer Reid Magney told the board that radio and TV ads from 2012 could be updated and re-used if the board had money to pay for air time.

That idea got a lukewarm response among board members. John Franke argued that if people don't know by now that Wisconsin requires photo ID at the polls, more publicity likely won't help them. People who were turned away this year probably fell prey to nuanced details  things that won't be solved through broad publicity, he said.

Magney said the ads direct people to the GAB's website, where they can learn more about the law's nuances. In the end, the board voted 4-2 to ask for $250,000 from the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee to re-start the campaign.

Board member Harold Froehlich said he doubted the committee would give the GAB any money.

The panel's supplemental fund contains only $267,000 for all state agencies through the end of June 30, 2017. What's more, Republicans control the panel and that party is far from pleased with the board after it helped Milwaukee prosecutors investigate Gov. Scott Walker's recall campaign. Walker signed a bill last year that replaces the GAB with two partisan commissions as of July.

Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, and Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, serve as the finance committee's co-chairs. A Darling spokesman said she wants to see the details of the request. Nygren's spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a message.

___

Follow Todd Richmond on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trichmond1
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40 health facilities rebuilt so far, says Health ministry

A total of 40 public health facilities, including health posts, primary health centres and a hospital, that were destroyed in the earthquakes last year have been rebuilt so far, according to the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP).
Call for Dixits immediate release

Civil society leaders and journalists said on Monday that the arrest of Kanak Mani Dixit, chairperson of Sajha Yatayat, by the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), was derived from personal vendetta against him. They demanded his immediate release.
Call on Chinese to tour Nepal

The Nepali Embassy in Beijing has urged the Chinese people to visit Nepal for supporting the ongoing reconstruction initiatives.
Durja Kumar Rai appointed APF Inspector General

The government has appointed Durja Kumar Rai as Inspector General of Armed Police Force (APF).
Fans mourn the passing away of Thinley: Nepals first global star

Nepals social media platform was awash with outpouring of grief at the news of the passing away of the renowned actor Thinley Lhondup Lama from the Caravan-fame.
Fate of biometric national ID card project hangs in balance

The fate of the much-awaited national identity card project is uncertain after French company Safran SAs decision to sell Morpho Security, the firm selected for preparing the biometric cards.
Final rites of Adams performed

Final rites of Barbara Adams were performed as per Hindu tradition at the Pashupati Aryaghat on Monday.
FNJ smells rat in CIAAs investigation against journo Dixit

Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) has raised doubts over the investigation process being carried out by the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) against journalist and Sajha Yatayat Chairman Kanak Mani Dixit.
France sinks Japanese, German bids to win $40 billion Australian subs deal

France has beaten Japan and Germany to win a A$50 billion ($40 billion) deal to build a fleet of 12 new submarines for Australia, one of the world's most lucrative defense contracts, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Tuesday.
Ghumphir Barsha launched: Go out and enjoy Nepal

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on Monday officially declared Bikram Sambat 2073 as Ghumphir Barsha, or travel year, urging domestic and international travellers to explore Nepal without hesitation.
Held Indian police officials released

Five Indian police personnel who were detained by the Doti District Police for illegally entering Nepal with arms on Sunday have been released.
House session may begin from May 3

The Parliament Secretariat on Monday proposed convening the House session from May 3.
Innovative minds

Govt should make local entrepreneurs aware about the role of IP in protecting their intellectual creation
Justin Trudeau outrage at 'cold-blooded murder' of hostage

The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the killing of a Canadian hostage kidnapped by Islamist militants in the Philippines.
Mitsubishi Motors admits cheating fuel tests since 1991

Mitsubishi Motors has admitted to falsifying some fuel consumption tests since 1991.
Parbat survivors unsure about rebuilding aid

It has been a year since the seven family members of earthquake survivor Min Prasad Upadhyaya have been living under a flimsy tent at Ranipani village in Parbat.
PM assures shelter to quake survivors before mid June

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli today assured of bringing the quake-stricken under the shelters by the second week of June.
Prez calls budget session from May 3

President Bidhya Devi Bhandari on Tuesday called the budget session for Parliament from May 3, as per the recommendation by the government.
Protest delays allotment of Upper Karnali shares

The government has been putting off allotting shares of the Upper Karnali Hydropower Project to locals that will be affected by its construction due to strong opposition from regional political leaders including a cabinet minister, sources said.
Sebon blasts Nepal Stock Exchange

The Securities Board of Nepal (Sebon) has blasted the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) for not implementing its directives to buy foreign software and appoint two more clearing banks while the countrys only bourse has replied that it has fully carried them out.
SKorea asked for more job quotas

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has expressed his readiness to send more workers to South Korea if the country considers increasing job quotas for Nepalis.
Son dies after falling off tractor driven by father

A boy died after a tractor his father was driving overturned and fell some two meteres down the road in Narayani municipality of western Chitwan on Sunday night.
Thinking big

We need to realise that we will never be able to compete in low-value, high-volume products
US renews rebuilding aid pledge

The United States has reiterated its support to Nepal in its post-earthquake rebuilding process.
Wheat output drops in Jajarkot due to drought

With draught affecting the entire Karnali region, wheat production in Jajarkot dropped two-thirds from last years output.
When PM asked 'Hello students, are you happy?'

"Hello students, are you happy? I hope you are happy today," Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli asked students of Mahendra Rastriya Higher Secondary School close to the PM official residence at Baluwatar in the Capital on Monday.
Yes, its hard to to tell when one enters the city limits

Yes, they will make the city more inviting

Maybe ... does it really matter?

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The ministry of energy and minerals has started investigating the cause of cracks said to have developed on Karuma Power dam that is still under construction.

According to the report tabled by Energy State minister Simon Djang before the parliamentary committee on natural resources, before the cracks repairs are undertaken, punitive measures shall be taken to ensure that such incident do not occur again.

He explained that they are to hire experts from China to investigate the cause of these cracks and whoever is responsible will be penalized.

Once complete, the dam is expected to generate about 600 Megawatts and the project is expected to cost $1.688billion, with Exim Bank of China financing 85 per cent and the government of Uganda 15 per cent.

According the agreement signed with government, the project will be complete by December 2018.

Story By Moses Kyeyune
South Sudan rebel leader Dr. Riek Machar has this afternoon been sworn in as the countrys Vice President.

He becomes the first Vice President under a unity government with Salvar Kiir as President.

Machar returned to the capital Juba earlier today as part of the deal to end two years of civil war.

His return was earlier postponed twice, over disagreements between the Juba government and the SPLM-in Opposition over the number of guns and troops to be deployed in the capital Juba.

Machars return is seen by analysts as a key step towards restoring total peace in Africas youngest nation.
Government has condemned critics who accuse it of abandoning Ugandans to suffer at the hands of oppressors in the United Arab Emirates.

Several Ugandans especially young women have often been victims of enslavement and sexual exploitation, leaving critics and government in an endless blame game.

Ugandas Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates Irene Florence Wekiya tells KFM that those who attack government officials, lack information regarding government position on labour exportation.

Government early this year banned the exportation of labour to the United Arab Emirates, citing abuse and torture of Ugandans by their employers.

Story By Moses Kyeyune
A section of members of parliament has hit at the permanent secretary ministry of finance Keith Muhakanizi over statements he made in line with the tax amendment bill 2016.

Muhakanizi was quoted in the media as saying government had rejected a proposal by the Members of Parliament to exempt their allowances from taxes.

Addressing journalists at parliament on Tuesday afternoon, Members of Parliament Peter Ogwang and Henry Musasizi argued that this facilitation is not for their personal benefit but only helps them deliver on their mandate and as such should not be taxed.

They further say Muhakanizi has no right to speak the position of government on the matter since he is not a minister advising him to concentrate on his job.

Students from various schools in Kawempe Division under the Students for Global Democracy Uganda have staged out a peaceful demonstration in protest of the proposed exemption of tax on MPs allowances.

The students have also appended signatures onto a citizens petition to President Museveni, asking him not to assent to the amended tax bill that was recently passed by the legislators.

Story By Benjamin Jumbe
The government of Uganda is lobbying other regional blocs and the African Union to join the bargains against a proposed cut in aid by the United Nations to Uganda Peoples Defense Forces (UPDF) fighters in Somalia.

The United Nations has announced a 20 per cent cut in its support to the troops from over Sh3 million to slightly above Sh 2 million for every soldier.

Foreign Affairs Minister Okello Oryem tells KFM that the move by the UN is dangerous not only to Somalia but Africa as a continent.

Uganda deployed her troops in Somalia in 2007 to fight the Al-shabaab Islamist militants and has since made several strides towards restoration of peace and order.

Story By Moses Kyeyune
The United States of America president Barack Obama is among the many heads of state invited for the fifth term swearing- in of President Yoweri Museveni scheduled for May 12th.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also sent invitations to African Union head of states, and the United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameroon among others.

Speaking in an interview with Daily Monitor, the ministrys Permanent Secretary Ambassador James Mugume said first considerations have been given to AU to demonstrate African solidarity.

According the Government spokesperson Ofwono Opondo, eleven heads of state have so far confirmed their attendance for the swearing- in ceremony but the number is expected to rise.

Meanwhile, opposition Forum for Democratic Change(FDC) has announced a demonstration in Kampala and all districts across the country on May 5 to disrupt the ceremony on grounds that president Museveni was not legitimately elected.

The protest will demand that 2016 elections be audited before Museveni can be sworn in.

However Opondo maintains that President Museveni is the legitimate winner of the highly contested 2016 presidential elections, rubbishing claims by the FDCs Dr Kiiza Besigye that he was robbed of his victory.

Story By Stephen Wandera
By Doug Bandow



Despite recently expressing doubts about America's relationship with Saudi Arabia, President Barack Obama again flew to Riyadh and sought to "reassure" the Saudi royals about U.S. support.



In fact, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia raises the question: what are allies for? If the president wants to leave his mark on American foreign policy, he should have started moving Washington and Riyadh toward a more normal relationship.



Most important, the U.S. should drop any security guarantee, whether explicit or implicit. If the KSA is worth defending, its own people should do so. At the same time, the U.S. should take a more even-handed approach in the Iranian-Saudi cold war, looking for opportunities to draw Tehran away from Islamic extremism.



America's relationship with the KSA was always based on oil. But supplies are expanding; even the U.S. is going from net consumer to exporter. Anyway, a successor regime would sell to the highest bidder.



Saudi Arabia is supposed to promote regional stability, but intervened in Bahrain to block reforms by the Sunni monarchy for the Shia majority, funded radical insurgents in an attempt to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and is seeking to destabilize Lebanon's fragile confessional political system.



Worse, Riyadh has turned Yemen's long-running domestic conflict into a destructive sectarian battle with Iran. Unfortunately aiding the kingdom's brutal behavior could create future terrorists targeting America.



Since the 1979 overthrow of the Shah Washington has seen the KSA as a significant barrier to expansion by Tehran. However, the nuclear agreement creates important new opportunities.



Change will not come easily or quickly, given determined resistance in Tehran, but Iran is far more likely to evolve in a more liberal and democratic direction than Saudi Arabia. Security concerns will remain in the meantime, but monarchy has more to fear domestically than internationally.



The KSA also is nominally a leader in the war on terrorism. Yet Riyadh's attack on Yemen has empowered that nation's al-Qaeda affiliate. Moreover, domestic "anti-terrorism" efforts are directed at suppressing dissent more than violence.



Worse, Riyadh has underwritten Islamic radicalism around the world. The government funds fundamentalist madrassahs. Intolerant Wahhabist teaching creates the foundation for violence.



While the royal regime apparently has not directly supported terrorism, individual Saudis have, both funding and joining al-Qaeda. The George W. Bush administration refused to release a 28-page section of the 9/11 report detailing apparent Saudi support for terrorism. Wikileaks disclosures discusssed the continuing flow of Saudi money to terrorists.



Finally, the kingdom does not share values with America, democratic or other. Saudi Arabia is at best a slightly more civilized variant of the Islamic State.



The latest Freedom House rated the KSA as "Not Free." The group said simply: "Political dissent is criminalized." Reported Human Rights Watch: "Saudi authorities continued arbitrary arrests, trials, and convictions of peaceful dissidents. Dozens of human rights defenders and activists continued to serve long prison sentences for criticizing authorities or advocating political and rights reforms." The State Department took 52 pages to detail Saudi human rights malpractices in its recently released annual report.



Religious freedom also doesn't exist. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted that "Saudi Arabia remains unique in the extent to which it restricts public expression of any religion other than Islam." At least there is liberty to violate in countries such as Iran. Not so in Saudi Arabia.



In practice, Saudi Arabia differs little than the Soviet Union. Both were totalitarian states animated by transcendent worldviews. Both regimes suppressed human liberty in service to those visions, one secular, and the other religious. The main difference is that the second posed a direct security threat to America, while the first sometimes interferes with U.S. interests indirectly.



None of this prevents Washington and Riyadh from cooperating. However, the U.S. should stop acting as supplicant.



The royals' continued rule, however advantageous for U.S. geopolitical interests in the short-term, is by no means vital to America in any meaningful sense of the word. The greatest danger for Washington may be the moral hazard from defending such a regime, encouraging it to resist needed reforms.



Would the U.S. "lose leverage" by disengaging? Riyadh is likely to do more if the U.S. drops its promise to defend the kingdom.



Which would be all to the good. America has spent decades attempting to micro-manage and geopolitically engineer the region, with disastrous results. Let Saudi Arabia spend its money and lives for a change.



President Obama wasted his final trip to the KSA pursuing politics as normal. Washington needs to put distance between America and its counterproductive partners, such as Riyadh.



Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan.




INDIANAPOLIS  For Indiana Army National Guardsmen, citizen-soldiers who wear the cloth of nation in part-time roles while also maintaining a civilian career, transitioning from one job to the other can sometimes be difficult.

But it wasnt for at least one Indiana Army National Guard captain and Auburn resident who took the time to thank and honor his civilian employer.

Capt. Nicholas F. Wallace, a 38th Infantry Division judge advocate general, presented Jeremy Musser, the Stueben County Prosecuting Attorney, with a Patriot Award Certificate of Appreciation at an employee appreciation celebration at the Timbers Steak House and Seafood in Angola on April 16.

Each time I was called to duty, Jeremy Musser made the transition from civilian work to military service and then back again, seamless and extremely easy for me, said Wallace via email. For that, I wanted to show him gratitude for his continued support for me and the military.

Wallace, the former deputy prosecutor, worked with Musser at the Steuben County prosecutors office since October 2011. In that time Wallace not only religiously attended 15-day annual training periods and monthly drill weekends, which sometimes can be to three or four days, but he also deployed to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt in 2015 for nine months.

Musser, for his part, was appreciative of Wallaces service, sacrifice and dedication to the Hoosier State and to the nation.

I was proud of Nick. We need more people willing to serve, said Musser. He was in harms way in the Middle East. Its easy for me to read about it in the news, but he went out and did it.

Musser also said Wallaces commitment the military translated to his civilian job as well.

Im proud to have someone in my office to serve the military, said Musser. Nick is the epitome of high character and work ethic, and hes dedicated to his job and country.

Wallace joined the Indiana Army National Guard in June 2012, and received a direct commission after finishing law school. Wallace left the Steuben County prosecutors office earlier this month, and joined the Leonard, Hammond, Thoma & Terrill law firm in Fort Wayne.
UNITED NATIONS - A Chinese envoy to the United Nations on Monday called on the international community to help countries in the Gulf of Guinea with capacity building to counter-piracy and armed robbery at sea.

"The Gulf of Guinea has fallen victim to frequent incidents of piracy and armed robbery at sea in recent years," Liu Jieyi, China's permanent representative to the UN, told a Security Council debate, noting that the links between piracy, terrorist groups, armed groups and criminal networks have posed "serious threats" to the safety of navigation as well as to regional peace and security.

China is holding the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council for April.

"We call on the international community to take note of the challenges faced by regional countries in their fight against piracy, such as lack of fund, infrastructure and facilities," said Liu, urging international assistance to enhance capacity building in the region.

He also called on the establishment of regional long-term mechanism to counter piracy.

"China hopes an Extraordinary Summit on Maritime Security and Safety and Development to be held in Togo in October 2016 will achieve positive outcome and further promote regional and sub-regional efforts in countering piracy," Liu said.

China has been actively participating in international cooperation to fight piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, as well as providing assistance in capacity-building of related countries.
The La Crosse Board of Public Works took action Monday to improve the La Crosse River Marsh, approving a resolution to address lead contamination and a request for volunteer trail maintenance.

The resolution, which will go before the citys Finance and Personnel Committee and Common Council next month, allows the city to spend up to $25,000 of reserve funds for an environmental consultant to further study lead contamination found in the La Crosse River Marsh.

A study by the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse  funded with an U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant and support from both UW-L and the state Department of Natural Resources  found high lead levels in 25 acres of the marsh due to its previous use as a trap shooting range.

The La Crosse Gun Club leased a portion of Myrick Park from 1929 to 1963, setting up four trap shooting stations to shoot targets out over the marsh. The research team took 400 surface soil samples and 33 core samples, which showed 50,000 lead pellets per square meter imbedded in the underwater soil.

According to the study, which was first presented to the board in February 2015, the west soils on the west side had surface lead levels as high as 26,700 milligrams per kilogram, qualifying the area as contaminated. However, the study concluded a cleanup would cause more harm than good.

In its first step toward addressing the pollution, the board approved placing signs in August 2015, which warn the public away from the lead contaminated area and caution people about repercussions of legacy pollution.

After the city received the final results of the study earlier this year, the Wisconsin DNR directed the city to investigate and restore the area, beginning with the hiring of an environmental consultant and development of a work plan to address the lead shot it found.

Public Works Director Dale Hexom recommended the city spend $5,500 to hire OS Group LLC of La Crosse for the first phase of the lead contamination project, which will include a review of the UW-L study and supplemental data gathered.

OS Group had the low bid; however, Hexom said the decision was really more expertise and experience-based.

The city will be required by the DNR to submit a work plan for the site within 90 days of hiring OS Group and submit a report listing the options for remedial work 60 days later.

Chuck Lee, president of the Friends of the La Crosse River Marsh board of directors, spoke in favor of the city taking action to keep an eye on the contamination.

Even without any action by the EPA or DNR, we do support the study and its call for further monitoring, Lee said.

The board also approved Lees request to continue a La Crosse River Marsh restoration effort to clean out invasive species and replace them with native shrubbery.

The work began last year with the help of the citys Parks, Recreation and Forestry Department, which helped the volunteer group plan trees and shrubs along the marsh loop trail.

On the marsh loop trail, there are three large categories of invasives that wed like to take action and get rid of, Lee said.

They will remove honeysuckle, buckthorn and phragmites grass and replace them with native plants to provide food for small, migratory birds to improve the native habitat. The parks department has agreed to haul away any brush that is cut and piled up.

Its going to be a long-term project. Its not something well finish this year, Lee said.

Work at the marsh will begin as soon as the organization gathers volunteers, as the native plants will need to be planted before it gets too warm. The work will not close any of the marsh trails.
One of Americas most performed living composers is coming to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

Libby Larsen, a Grammy Award-winning, widely recorded artist, will work with students from UW-L and the La Crosse School District. She co-founded the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composers Forum. A former holder of the Papamarkou Chair at John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, Larsen has also held residencies with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony and the Colorado Symphony.

During Larsens stay at UW-L as composer-in-residence, performances free and open to the public include:

7:30 p.m. Friday, choir concert featuring the UW-L Womens Choir, Central High School Robed Choir and the Logan High School Select Choir in the Annett Recital Hall at the UW-L Center for the Arts.

9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday, open rehearsal with the UW-L Wind Ensemble in Room 56 of the UW-L Center for the Arts.

5:30 p.m., Sunday, concert featuring the Logan High School Wind Ensemble, UW-L Wind Ensemble with UW-L Assistant Professor of Music Jonathan Borja on flute at the Viterbo University Fine Arts Center.
The Hunger Task Force of La Crosse will sponsor the 2016 Hunger Forum from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday, May 9, at the La Crosse Public Library, 800 Main St.

The event is titled Our Food Community Safety Net  Are We up to the Task? Guest speaker Wisconsin Senate Minority Leader Sen. Jennifer Shilling will talk about the Wisconsins Foodshare requirements.

Register by sending your name, organization, address, phone number and email address by May 5 to lacrossehunger@gmail.com or Hunger Task Force, 1240 Clinton St., La Crosse, WI 64603. Register by phone at 608-783-1002.
Families and workers will unite on Thursday in remembrance of those who lost their lives on the job.

The event will be at 5 p.m. at Green Island Park, S. 2312 Seventh St.

La Crosse Mayor Tim Kabat will read a formal proclamation from the City proclaiming the day as Workers Memorial Day in the City of La Crosse. Family and co-worker guest speakers will honor their own fallen by sharing their memories and pointing out that one of the best ways to memorialize these workers is by preventing other workers from being killed on the job.

The event is part of International Workers Memorial Day, held annually on April 28 with thousands of groups around the globe uniting together under the banner, Mourn for the Dead. Fight for the Living!

In 2014, nearly 4,700 workers were killed on the job. Every day in America, 13 people go to work and never come home, and each year nearly 4 million people suffer a workplace injury from which some may never recover, said Bill Brockmiller, President Western Wisconsin AFL-CIO. Remembering those workers who gave everything to support themselves and their families is the least we can do.
Three western Wisconsin public schools will receive solar panels through Dairyland Power Cooperatives Solar for Schools initiative.

The company announced that 12-kilowatt solar installations will be constructed this summer at Alma Area School, Cochrane-Fountain City School and De Soto Area Middle and High School.

Dairyland issued a Request for Proposals for the projects last fall. Regional contractor ABLE Energy Co. of River Falls, Wis. will begin construction shortly, with plans for each solar installation to be operational by the start of the school term this fall.

Renewable energy produced by the solar arrays will help power the schools, the release said, partially offsetting the current energy use by the facilities. Each school will have access to online tools that will enable teachers and students to monitor the total and hourly output of the array, environmental benefits delivered and many other metrics.

Solar for Schools is an exciting project for many reasons, said Brian Rude, Dairyland vice president for external and member relations. The solar arrays will be a great educational tool in the schools, in addition to the benefit of helping power the schools with renewable energy from the sun.
Every year since 1963, the president has officially designated a National Small Business Week. This is a perfect time for us to renew our commitment to Americas small businesses, the backbone and foundation of the strongest, most resilient economy the world has ever known.

This year, National Small Business Week is from May 1-7, and the theme is Dream Big, Start Small. Across the country, the U.S. Small Business Administration will recognize the big impact small businesses have in building our communities. Today, they continue to drive our nations economy forward by creating two out of every three new private-sector jobs and employing half of the private workforce, including in the Badger State.

For more than 200 years, American innovation has sparked ideas that have changed the course of history and improved lives for millions. At the SBA, we are poised to help entrepreneurs and determined to ensure they continue to have the financial tools, resources and expertise they need to succeed. Every day, the SBA is working to grow small businesses, create 21st century jobs, drive innovation, and increase Americas global competitiveness.

For example, Wisconsins 2016 Small Business Person of the Year Mark Matthiae, who owns Crystal Finishing Systems, has used SBAs 504 financing several times, diversifying operations, growing facilities and increasing employment. The funding has enabled the company to leverage its development from a paint job shop to a full-service manufacturing, warehousing and delivery firm with seven divisions in three locations: Schofield, Mosinee and River Falls.

Small businesses such as Crystal Finishing Systems are the unsung heroes of America. Together, lets seize the opportunity the first week of May to highlight the impact of outstanding entrepreneurs, small business owners and their supporters from all 50 states and U.S. territories. To find out about live-streamed events in your area and webinars available to all, visit www.sba.gov/nsbw. For Wisconsin events and trainings, read the Wisconsin offices National Small Business Week e-news.
Officials at the Tomah Veterans Administration Medical Center said Tuesday they are happy with results of a 100-day plan to improve operations, but are still looking for personnel to reopen the psychiatric unit and to take over as director.

Tomah VA interim director Victoria Brahm said the hospital has made significant progress since it was shaken by reports of patients being prescribed excessive dosages of painkilling drugs.

I am really excited that we have done so well with this, Brahm said. Were on our way to a much healthier environment, a trusting environment, a quality environment and a positive experience for our veterans. I am so proud of our staff. I can see them have energy again.

She said the main goals of the plan are to restore public trust, improve employee engagement and address the pain management issues that led to the facilitys recent turmoil. She called them visible wins that have improved employee morale and patient satisfaction.

Brahm said the opioid safety initiative is a huge focus for us. It includes adopting the standards of the states prescription drug monitoring program and increasing drug screening compliance.

All veterans are getting monitored the way they should be, she said.

Those steps, along with pursuing non-drug alternatives to alleviate pain, have reduced drug dosages by nearly 25 percent.

Brahm said 98 percent of appointment requests are fulfilled within 30 days and that wait times are fewer than two days for mental health. From November 2015 to January 2016, more than 90 percent of patients said they were satisfied or completely satisfied with their appointment scheduling.

She said the facility is working to reopen the hospitals acute psychiatry inpatient unit that was closed in August 2015. She said it has been difficult to attract a qualified psychiatrist to work in the unit despite retaining a national recruiter.

I wish I had a timetable, she said. The nursing staff is completely ready. The unit has been redone ... weve done all the upgrades we need to do.

One person who isnt a candidate for the job is staff psychiatrist Dr. David Skripka, who was the subject of a December 2015 story in the Daily Caller. The story says Skripka, the Tomah VAs associate chief of staff for mental health, has been allowed to live in Madison while working in Tomah one day a week.

Brahm said Skripka is fulfilling his obligation to Tomah patients through telemedicine.

He takes a full panel of mental health patients and performs tele-mental health, which is helping us beautifully because those patients need to be seen, Brahm said. Tele-mental health is a growing mechanism to take care of patients, and it has really helped us while we are doing the recruitment for our mental health personnel.

Matt Gowan, the VAs public affairs officer, said family obligations prevent Skripka from applying for the position.

Gowan said hospitals statewide are having difficulty hiring psychiatrists and noted that Mayo Clinic will be diverting patients from its La Crosse inpatient behavioral health unit starting in mid-June.

Its not just a Tomah problem; its not just a VA problem, Gowan said. Its a national problem.

Brahm didnt offer a timetable for hiring a permanent director. When asked about the position, she replied, We are in recruitment.

Brahm is the facilitys second interim director since Mario Desanctis was dismissed in March 2015. John Rohrer, the first interim director, has since been hired as permanent director of the VA hospital in Madison. Brahm has served as interim director in Tomah since October.

The facility also is in the process of filling openings for associate director, chief of staff and associate chief of staff for mental health.
MADISON  The University of Wisconsin-Madison Faculty Senate is preparing to take a no-confidence vote on UW System President Ray Cross and the Board of Regents for changing the school's tenure policy.

The regents approved changes to UW-Madison's policy earlier this month. The policy largely mirrors new overarching tenure protocols that allow layoffs and impose performance reviews.

The Capital Times reported Monday that the Faculty Senate has drawn up a resolution expressing no confidence in Cross and the regents. The resolution accuses them of adopting the policy without faculty suggestions and damaging the university's reputation.

The Senate plans to vote May 2.

System spokesman Alex Hummel called the resolution a faculty matter. He says Cross and the regents remain focused on keeping system schools world-class.
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On Saturday we reported that eight people had been hospitalized after possible overdoses on Skid Row on Friday night. Over the weekend, that number jumped to 14. The culprit? A new, potentially deadly ingredient in "spice," synthetic marijuana known to cause psychotic episodes and more recently on Skid Row has led to users passing out unconscious on the sidewalk.

According to the L.A. Times, three more people were taken to the hospital to treat overdoses on Saturday from the same area. Rev. Andy Bales with the Union Rescue Mission told ABC 7 that four people were found passed out on the same corner on Sunday. "Spice has been an epidemic, and now with this extra ingredient, it's possibly a deadly epidemic," he said. At just $1 or less per joint, spice, also referred to as "incense" or "potpourri," is an affordable, untraceable, way for those on Skid Row to get high.

LAPD Officer Deon Joseph told the Times:

They change the chemical components to make it untraceable. It's five times stronger than marijuana, and can cause two common signs of overdosing depending on the chemical components. One is the appearance of paralysis or someone being in a catatonic state for hours. Or causing them to hallucinate and go berserk for long trips.

While authorities are still investigating what exactly is being added to this batch, spice itself is made out of a cocktail of cheap chemicals found in household products. This chemical irregularity is a factor in its unpredictability. As Rolling Stone noted last year, "When users are grabbing different brands made from different chemicals with different potencies, monitoring dosage is difficult, and may lead to the accidental ingestion of more than intended."

When spice is smoked, it releases a distinct smell which can make people sick even via secondhand fumesthis is in fact what sent one of the responding LAPD officers to the hospital on Saturday.

Bales told ABC that it "smells like marijuana, with some plastic and rubber mixed init's just a horrible smell that I've choked on a few times, but this seems to have an additive ingredient that is causing people to keel over who come near the smoke."

A man named Twin Skid Row told the Times that on Friday he saw people, "passing out like dominoes." The mass overdoses were so concerning that HazMat was called, and some surrounding streets were totally closed.

Bales told KPCC:


The weather changer known as El Nino has left countries in east Africa in danger of famine, according to a group of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

The Somalia NGO Consortium said Tuesday that El Nino is creating drought and food shortages. The group released the statement to coincide with a United Nations meeting on humanitarian needs related to the effects of El Nino.

El Nino is the natural warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide. El Nino occurs every several years and lasts close to a year, according to the Associated Press.

El Nino impacts weather systems around the globe. For example, some places receive more rain, while others receive no rain or snow.

Last year, El Nino mostly helped conditions in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Tanzania by creating more rainfall.

But this year, El Nino has severely reduced rainfall in Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti. As a result, close to 19 million people in the Horn of Africa region face food shortages, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Cash, cash vouchers and food have already been issued to Somalians. But the Somalia NGO Consortium says more help is needed. The Consortium is calling for urgent humanitarian action.

Somalia suffered a deadly famine from 2010 to 2012. More than 250,000 people died because of drought and food shortages. NGOs are hoping to avoid a similar  or even larger  disaster this year.

Im Jim Dresbach.

The staff at VOA News wrote this story. Jim Dresbach adapted this story for Learning English. Kelly Jean Kelly was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or visit our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

El Nino  n. the natural warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide

famine  n. a situation in which many people do not have enough food to eat

consortium  n. a group of people or companies that agree to work together

drought  n. a long period of time during which there is very little or no rain

shortage  n. a state in which there is not enough of something that is needed

voucher  n. a document that gives you the right to get something, such as a product or service, without paying for it
The area in northern California between San Francisco and San Jose is known as Silicon Valley.

Some of the worlds most famous technology companies have headquarters there. Apple and Facebook are two big ones.

Besides established companies, there are many small companies trying to get started. These businesses are known as start-ups.

Some of the people behind the start-ups are immigrants from countries like Sri Lanka, Taiwan and China.

One of those start-ups is called Cloud of Goods. It is an online business that links local residents who have things to rent with tourists who need those things. People who need car seats, strollers, bicycles or camping equipment can use the service to rent these goods.

Punsri Abeywickrema is the founder of Cloud of Goods. He is from Sri Lanka. He says he has based his business on the fact that we all buy goods that we do not use all the time. When they are not being used, they can be rented to someone else.

The idea was, you know, there's a lot of resources that we all (have) accumulated in our homes, in our garages, in our closets, that (are) sitting idle, and how can we use this to make it better for everyone?

The company just opened for business. Workers at the company recently celebrated its first $500 of income with a drink of sparkling wine.

There are computer programmers working on Cloud of Goods website in Sri Lanka. But in California, there are 10 unpaid employees trying to build the company.

Stacy Tran is part of the start-up. She says the company is trying to start small and then expand. Similar to how Amazon did it with books, she says.

Gee Chuang founded Listia with James Fong. They are Chinese-Americans who met at Cornell University in the state of New York. Listia is an online marketplace where people can trade in used items for credit. Then they can use the credit to buy other items, like collectible coins, video games or cell phones.

Listia has been in business since 2009 and has 9 million users.

The founders overcame some problems two years ago. The U.S. Department of Labor investigated the business. The founders were required to pay wages to the website moderators who should have been considered employees. Now, 18 people work at their office in Santa Clara, California.

Chuang says it is very important to hire people that know more than you to start a successful business.

Neal Gorenflo is a business analyst for a site called Shareable that tracks what is called the sharing economy. He says it is hard for businesses like Listia and Cloud of Goods to find out what it takes to be successful.

But that is not because there are not enough smart and motivated people looking to work in new businesses. Abeywickrema says Silicon Valley provides the perfect mix of people with skills and opportunities.

All that, you know, different expertise, different skill sets, different talents mix here together, and that is the right recipe for a, you know, successful company.

Im Christopher Jones-Cruise.

VOA Correspondent Mike OSullivan reported this story. Dan Friedell adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter was the editor.

What qualities would you bring to Silicon Valley? We want to know. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

talent  n. a special ability that allows someone to do something well

moderator  n. someone who leads a discussion in a group and tells each person when to speak; someone who moderates a meeting or discussion

overcome  v. to successfully deal with or gain control of (something difficult)

resource n. a place or thing that provides something useful

accumulate  v. to gather or acquire (something) gradually as time passes

idle  adj. not working, active, or being used

founder  n. a person who creates or establishes something that is meant to last for a long time (such as a business or school); a person who founds something

rent  v. to pay money in return for being able to use (something that belongs to someone else)

tourist  n. a person who travels to a place for pleasure

start-up  n. a new business
The parents of 43 Mexican students missing since 2014 said the government lied to them.

The parents made their claim a day after a group of international experts issued a report criticizing the way the Mexican government handled the case.

One parent said the government started lying to us from the start.

The Mexican government said the students were training to be teachers at a small college when they were kidnapped. They said corrupt local police officers turned the students over to a drug gang.

The government said the students were killed and their bodies were burned in a mass grave in the southern part of Mexico.

Experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights studied the case and said there are problems with the way the Mexican government presented the cases timeline. There are also problems with the way they studied the bones left at the mass grave.

Experts also said the government provided information from suspects who were tortured by police and military personnel. The torture led to confessions that will not be allowed in court by Mexican judges.

The report also said any information that did not support the governments original description of the case was not taken seriously.

The Mexican president, Enrique Pena Nieto, wrote a message on Twitter saying the government will analyze the whole report.

In spite of the new report, there is no new information about the students, who have been missing since September 2014.

When the report was presented at a news conference on Sunday, parents chanted: They took them away alive, we want them back alive!

Im Mario Ritter.

Dan Friedell adapted this story for Learning English based on reports by the Associated Press. Hai Do was the editor.

What do you think happened to the Mexican students two years ago? We want to know. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

__________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

confession  n. a written or spoken statement in which you say that you have done something wrong or committed a crime
Despite the massive fire that Grand Island firefighters responded to Sunday night at Winfrey Plumbing, Fire Chief Cory Schmidt said live firefighting experiences are rare.

"The Grand Island Fire Department and other departments in our mutual aid association struggle to find live fire training opportunities," he said.

Schmidt will ask the Grand Island City Council during a meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday to authorize a grant application for a $570,000 fire training simulator.

If awarded, the city would have to match 10 percent, $57,000, and would need to spend about $10,000 to $15,000 to move fencing and pour a concrete pad for the simulator on land that could be used by Grand Island firefighters, as well as other firefighters.

Specifically, the Fire Department proposes to partner with the Grand Island Rural Fire Department, Aurora Fire Department, Chapman Fire and Rescue and Phillips Rural Fire District.

"If we get the simulator, we would place it behind Fire Station No. 1," Schmidt said of the station at 409 E. Fonner Park Road. "The city owns the land on the south side between the fire station and State Fair Boulevard."

That could also make the simulator available to the more than 1,000 volunteer firefighters who attend Nebraska State Fire School each May at Fonner Park, Schmidt said.

Sharing the simulator with multiple agencies increases the likelihood that the grant could be awarded, he said.

Grand Island last had a five-story training tower in 2007. That tower was abandoned when the department's headquarters station moved from Pine Street to Fonner Park Road. The training tower was too costly to move, Schmidt said.

The new simulator is essentially two shipping containers that sit side by side and can be stacked to provide a variety of fire-training scenarios.

A schematic provided to the city council shows training units including those with exterior stairs, interior stairs, burn rooms of varying sizes, roof training, a rappelling tower, practice area for connecting to standpipes, pitched-roof training, forced-entry door training, breached windows and confined-space training.

Schmidt said the city has been lucky to receive donated structures that are used for live practice burns, but the timing of those donations is not routine, and donated buildings may not provide all facets of training.

It's important to have routine training so the department's newest firefighters can get live fire training experience before being called out to a fire such as the one Sunday night, he said.

"This would be a huge asset," Schmidt said.

On the agenda

Other issues before the city council include:

 Approving an ordinance to establish a seven-member tree board.

 Lowering the speed limit along Sky Park Road to 45 mph from Airport Road to Abbott Road due to increased traffic at the Central Nebraska Regional Airport.

 Considering a five-year electric utility call-answering agreement with Nebraska Public Power District. The cost is $7,700 to set up and $4,300 a month.

 Approving the Hall County Hazard Mitigation Plan, as required by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

 Considering joining the Cooperative Purchase Network for competitive pricing on nuts, bolts and other hardware and wastewater treatment plant chemicals.

 Amending the salary ordinance to add full-time community service officers into the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1597 (service and clerical workers), add a $10 per pay period uniform allowance for them and add a uniform allowance not to exceed $10 per pay period for part-time non-union community service officers.

 Setting the tap fees for a sanitary sewer line in the Voss and Windolph's subdivisions at $101,070. Each property will have a fee ranging from $7,500 to $7,900.

 Setting the tap fees for a sanitary sewer line in the Spiehs Subdivision at $177,026. Each property will have a fee of about $7,500.

 Public hearing and action on liquor license requests for Fuji Steakhouse at 1004 N. Diers Ave.; and Azteca Market, doing business as the Brick House at 115 to 117 W. Third. A background check on Azteca Market has raised concerns regarding the business being delinquent in downtown improvement board taxes and city occupation taxes and having started construction of second-floor apartments without proper building permits and not following life safety codes for buildings.

 Meeting in closed session regarding imminent litigation.

If you go

What: Grand Island City Council meeting

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday

Where: City Hall, 100 E. First St.

Topics: liquor license request for the Brick House run by Azteca Market, establishing a tree board, authorizing a grant application for a $570,000 fire training simulator.
A California man and Nevada woman were arrested on drug charges Saturday following a traffic stop in Dawson County.

Miguel Sanchez, of Chula Vista, Calif., and Teara Voris, of Dayton, Nev., are charged with possession of heroin with intent to distribute, as well as possession of heroin.

Sheriff Gary Reiber said the Nebraska State Patrol initiated a traffic stop at approximately 2 p.m. at mile marker 248. A Dawson County Sheriff K-9 unit assisted at the scene. Reiber said the K-9 alerted on the rear door of a U-Haul trailer the vehicle was pulling. Authorities requested a key to the trailer. Sanchez and Voris initially denied having the key, but produced it eventually, Reiber said.

The trailer contained furniture and a refrigerator that had a false panel. Upon removing the panel, law enforcement found five approximately 2.5 lbs. packages containing that field-tested positive for heroin. The packages were packed heavily in foam and covered with a red grease, which Reiber said is often an attempt to mask the odor of the narcotics.

The State Patrol seized the trailer and transported the suspects to DawsonCounty jail.

Reiber also reported an unrelated matter involving an ATV accident. He said at 7:45 p.m. Sunday DCSO was contacted by staff at LexingtonRegionalHealthCenter. Hospital staff said that at 6:30 p.m. Thomas Longly, 60, of rural Lexington, was pulling into his driveway on an ATV when he cut the corner too close, lost control, and was thrown from the vehicle as it slid into the ditch.

Longly eventually drove himself to the hospital in Lexington, and shortly thereafter was transported to CHI Good Samaritan in Kearney to be treated for head trauma.
Don Bacons eyes squint with amusement when hes asked the establishment question.

The retired brigadier general thinks its funny that his opponents are trying to give him that label  which in this years toxic political environment is about as healthy for his head and his campaign as being tarred as the bourgeoisie during the French Revolution.

But how, Bacon asks, can he be the establishment candidate? Hes never held public office  unlike Chip Maxwell, his opponent for the Republican congressional nomination in the May 10 primary.

Ive never run before. It cracks me up, said Bacon, 52, who is battling Maxwell for the chance to unseat Democratic U.S. Rep. Brad Ashford in Omaha-based 2nd District.

In fact, Bacon is running as a political outsider who can bring his fresh approach, military background and leadership experience to Congress.

Still, its also easy to see how he could be viewed as the inside

candidate in the GOP contest.

Bacon has been embraced by many of the states most influential and powerful Republican elected leaders, who effectively gave a cold shoulder to Maxwell, the native son in the race.

Republican Sen. Deb Fischer decided to back Bacon, even though top Republican officials typically stay out of contested primaries. Hes also got the support of the mayors of Bellevue, Papillion and La Vista, as well the sheriffs of Sarpy and Douglas Counties.

Bacons opponent, meanwhile, is more closely aligned with the Tea Party faction in the Republican Party. Maxwell is a former conservative radio talk show host and, unlike Bacon, has made it clear that if he is sent to Congress, he will side with like-minded lawmakers such as those in the Freedom Caucus. Members are Tea Party sympathizers who have, in the past, preferred to shut down the government than raise the nations debt limit.

Theres even talk in some Nebraska circles that Bacon was sent to the state by Republicans in Washington, D.C., after his retirement from the U.S. Air Force, in order to run for Congress. Last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee echoed that speculation and ran a television ad calling the former Air Force intelligence officer a handpicked candidate of the Washington political establishment.

Bacon dismisses the conspiracy theory.

Its totally, absolutely false, he says.

The first time that national Republicans found out about his interest in Congress was when he called them, he says, not the other way around.

Bacon said his decision to come to Nebraska centered on grandbabies, not politics. Before his retirement in 2014, he and his wife, Angie, had already decided to settle in Nebraska, following in the path of two of their adult children who had already returned to the state and begun raising families.

After 15 assignments  seven states and three foreign countries  Bacon wanted to settle down. Three of those deployments were at Offutt Air Force Base near Bellevue, where Bacon served for a total of nearly eight years with deployments that began in 1986, 1998 and 2011.

During his last stop, he was the base commander.

It was our familys consensus that we liked Omaha the best, Bacon said.

Bacon didnt tout any political ambitions when he gave a July 2014 interview to his hometown paper in Momence, Illinois. He said he planned to return to Nebraska to be with his children and pursue a career in academics. He currently is an assistant professor at Bellevue University.

Bacon moved to Papillion in August 2014 and registered to vote in Nebraska.

Several months later, longtime Republican Rep. Lee Terry lost to Ashford. It was then that Bacon began going to Republican functions and introducing himself to the states political leaders.

The first day I thought about running was the day after Lee Terry lost, Bacon said. The NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) had no clue who I was.

Of course, many Nebraskans knew Bacon from his time at Offutt, including Bellevue Mayor Rita Sanders. And for a short time, Bacon worked as a military adviser for Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., whose Lincoln-based 1st District includes Offutt.

Others came to know him after he expressed interest in the seat, including former Nebraska Gov. Kay Orr, who has a track record of endorsing political winners, including Gov. Pete Ricketts and Sen. Fischer.

Orr said she met Bacon at a fundraiser for Rita Sanders in the fall of 2014 and was instantly impressed.

Bacon may find the establishment label funny, but Orr is less amused. She says it isnt fair.

How could he possibly (be establishment)? Orr asked. He couldnt be in politics all those years he was serving our country in the military. Hes only been in politics since his retirement.

Yet to call Bacon a political neophyte isnt exactly correct. He has long had an interest in politics and majored in political science at Northern Illinois University, where he also enrolled in the colleges ROTC program.

Ive been reading National Review since I was 13, Bacon said.

Rather than pursue politics after college, Bacon chose a military career.

Bacon had many jobs during his 29 years in the Air Force. He started as an intelligence officer, gathering information and monitoring the former Soviet Unions intercontinental ballistic missiles. He then went to school for electronic warfare, becoming the guy in the back of the plane who monitors enemies movements and uses a jammer to mess with their radio communications.

Along the way, he served three tours of duty in the Middle East and participated in the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War.

In Iraq, U.S. special forces would use Bacon and his crew to shut down communications before they entered a house on a mission. We would get there 30 minutes early, and I would do a little jam ... Id put this kind of a circle around it and jam everything so no comms are going in and out, so no one could warn the bad guys, Bacon said.

He also served during the Iraq surge under Gens. David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal. His role was as a public information officer working to undermine the enemy and to learn as much as possible about Irans role.

If U.S. Special Forces acquired a diary kept by the enemy during one a mission, they would turn it over to Bacon and his crew, who would then look for things they could use to embarrass the enemy.

He rarely left the confines of the old U.S. embassy in Baghdad known as the Green Zone, but he still got a taste of war. The enemy lobbed missiles every day into their camp, Bacon said.

During my first month there, I was walking down the side of the embassy building and a rocket hit the other end, he said. I watched the whole thing, and I thought, What if I would have been three minutes faster? 

Bacon attained the rank of a one-star general in 2011, which is no easy feat. There are 312,000 men and women on active duty in the U.S. Air Force, but only 150 of them are brigadier generals.

Bacon said he would like to put his experience and knowledge of foreign and military affairs to use in Washington, D.C.

He is running as a fiscal and social conservative, but his views are less philosophical and more pragmatic than his opponent. Unlike Maxwell, for example, Bacon does not want to end Social Security or Medicare. Instead, he wants to find ways to fix the two popular social programs.

I think we have to slowly and incrementally raise the retirement age, Bacon said.

In many ways, Bacon is sounding typical conservative themes that have been sounded by many other Republican candidates. He is staunchly anti-abortion. He portrays himself as pro-business. He wants to lower the nations corporate tax rate, roll back regulations that stifle small businesses and beef up the nations military.

He also calls for stronger security on the nations southern border but does not believe that all 11 million illegal immigrants in this country can be deported. Bacon said those people need to be held accountable and should never be given all rights of citizenship, but he would support a pathway that would give them legal status to stay.

But it is not his policy issues that Bacon is selling as much as his experience in the military.

Im a fresh face. I think I have a record performing outside of politics, he said with a smile.
Fernando Garcia walked out of the jail where his brother, Anthony, has sat for almost three years, awaiting trial on charges that he killed four Omahans.

And the younger sibling gave his own version of He aint guilty; hes my brother.

But that wasnt all.

Fernando Garcia continued a recent defense push to paint Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine as unfair  a push that included a 38-page motion to appoint a special prosecutor.

That defense motion came just days before Garcias defense team decided to appeal Judge Gary Randalls removal of lead attorney Alison Motta from the team for making inaccurate comments about a DNA test that she said exonerated Garcia.

The defenses appeal delayed Garcias trial indefinitely  and thus delayed any hearing on the defense motion to remove Kleine. The Nebraska Supreme Court first must decide whether to uphold Mottas removal or allow her back on the case. For now, Garcia is represented by Mottas husband, Robert Motta Jr., and father-in-law, Robert Motta Sr.

It has been very apparent to us and pretty obvious that the prosecution, in particular Don Kleine, is not playing fair, Fernando Garcia said Monday. And that his intentions are not in finding the truth.

Don Kleine is committed to telling you a story, but he is leaving out key facts and pertinent information. Hes just committed to a story; he has no evidence.

Kleine dismissed the complaints Monday, noting that they are coming from the brother of a man his office has charged with four murders.

I understand hes the brother of the defendant, and hes going to say what he wants to say, Kleine said. But were very anxious to get this case to trial so we can quit hearing some of these things, stated by the defense team, that are not accurate. Were anxious to put the facts before a jury.

Fernando Garcia, an investment adviser from Garcias hometown of Walnut, California, said Kleine has been painting an unfair picture of his older brother. Prosecutors say Anthony Garcia, 42, committed four killings  the March 2008 slayings of 11-year-old Thomas Hunter and 57-year-old Shirlee Sherman and the May 2013 deaths of Dr. Roger Brumback and his wife, Mary  out of revenge for his 2001 firing from the Creighton University Medical Center.

In both Fernando Garcias 15-minute press conference and the defenses 38-page motion, Anthony Garcias defenders pointed to the following:

 Kleine made a comment shortly after Garcias arrest that the state would be seeking to bring Garcia back from Illinois for these crimes he committed in Nebraska. The defense says it was an out-of-court comment indicating guilt. Kleine says he was referring to the process of extraditing a defendant.

 Kleines prosecution team sought to introduce evidence that a bloodhound tracked victim Shermans scent to near Garcias house in Terre Haute, Indiana. Judge Gary Randall threw out that evidence, citing a 106-year-old Nebraska Supreme Court ruling that declared the scent-tracking evidence unreliable.

The state wasted this courts time (and) squandered valuable resources on the taxpayers dime, Robert Motta Jr. wrote.

Kleine said the state was following a court-required Daubert procedure to test if evidence is admissible. He said it would have been foolish of the state to not test whether that century-old ruling still applies today.

 Kleine twice filed motions for sanctions against Alison Motta. After the second motion, two local members of the defense team withdrew. That, in turn, caused Alison Motta to have to reapply to practice law in Nebraska. Judge Randall denied her application.

The first motion for sanctions came after a witness  an exotic dancer  told an investigator that Alison Motta had told her that she wished she could make the dancer disappear. Alison Motta has adamantly denied that claim.

Her husband, Robert Motta Jr., has blasted Kleine for filing that first motion, even screaming at Kleine during a hearing. Kleine later dropped the motion because, he said, he wanted to move the case forward.

The County Attorney has systematically and recklessly orchestrated the poisoning of the jury pool, Robert Motta Jr.s motion read.

Kleine said he takes his ethical duties seriously  and, he said, this is the first time in his 30 years as a prosecutor that any defense attorney has accused him of misconduct.

Kleine said any motions and hearings are a matter of public record.

Kleine called it nonsense to try to equate his motions in court with Alison Mottas out-of-court comments.

Judge Randall removed Alison Motta after she told several media outlets that a DNA sample from Shermans bandanna conclusively exonerated Garcia and linked another man to the slaying.

The judge ruled that the comments, made just a week before Garcias originally scheduled April 4 trial, violated a judges order and were designed to influence prospective jurors.

A DNA expert said the sample was so mixed as to not conclusively link anyone, let alone the man Alison Motta implicated.

Fernando Garcia (Monday) and the defense team (previously) have blamed Kleine for the trial delays.

The record shows the delays have been defense or defendant driven. A 2015 trial start didnt happen because Garcia had claimed that he was raped by five jailers. And the judge scratched the April 4 trial date after allowing local members of Garcias defense team to withdraw.

Don Kleine wants you to believe that the Mottas are some kind of out-of-town slicksters trying to get a guilty man off, Fernando Garcia said. The Mottas are good and honest people. They have worked very hard to uncover the truth in this case. ... Were very proud of what theyve done.

Fernando Garcia said his brother has been locked up 23 hours a day for three years for something he didnt do.

A reporter asked Fernando Garcia why his brother, an Illinois resident, was in the Omaha area the weekend that the Brumbacks were killed. Surveillance video showed him at a Council Bluffs convenience store. Credit card receipts put him in west Omaha.

That is something Im going to have to give a no comment on because that is something well talk about at trial, Fernando Garcia said. Thats obviously a good question.
Theres the age-old idiom  'where the shoe pinches'. It is all about empathy, which was better put by Harper Lee in her brilliant To Kill a Mockingbird: You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

Without empathy, the world can get one-sided  all in favour of the guy with the upper hand. Like not even attending to a visitor in a sweetmeat shop because they did not appear to be a potential buyer. So, he or she can go to hell, the shop will close on time for the siesta of the employees. This absence of empathy is lacking among public administrators.

In the Marathi movie, Court, a person charged but acquitted several times finds the charge repeated, despite his acquittals. When he points to his deteriorating health, what with the turns at the court, the Sessions Judge says, No bail. The accused can approach the High Court; as if it was like walking to the next store to buy an item you couldnt find in the first.

It is all about the absence of feeling. The system looks at people as statistics. Their efficiency measured not by whether the intended outcomes have been realised but by financial outlays towards that end. You miss the frustration of the others if you are an administrator at any level, especially at the cutting edge, and go either by rules or by grease alone.

And if the administrator, or the guy at the higher levels of the food chain doesnt know what it is like out there, he would be missing a lot. Raghuram Rajan, RBI Governor, recently said, "Only when we lose the assistant, the assistant to the assistant, post-retirement, that's when the system is much harder to deal with than while in office."

They would flounder when dealing with their travails, which is actually what they allowed to take root and flourish. Initially, their connections in the offices and the offices they interacted with as officials can see them through. But over time, the staff changes and the younger ones not there in your time don't give two hoots about you.

Speaking at the Indian Institute of Public Administration, Maharashtra Branch  an entity with a membership comprising IAS offices in the state, and the chief secretary as its head, Rajan said that he has asked the officers to try to change the nominee for a fixed deposit, to see what kind of documents the bank requires and whether they are easily available. We should all try it for a day, this will help us get a better sense of the hardships that a common man faces and bring in a greater sympathy for the system."

Moves toward a digital India, with linking Aadhar to a bank account, and in fact facilitating bank accounts to anybody, has made things easier, but not all could breach the wall of insularity. A domestic help I know applied to open an account in a nationalised bank when Narendra Modi announced it as a must, and she has been told the papers have been sent and she should come later to enquire the status.

She has given up. She doesnt even want to talk about it anymore.

Her daughter, recipient of a scholarship of Rs 1,000 in Nanded had to go there from Thane to get it for she had no account because she had no documents. To get that sum, she spent five days of travel and stay which set her back by Rs 600. Not an efficient way at all, but someone out there is not wearing her skin.

Would a bank official worry about it? Scarcely perhaps. A customer like her who would not bring any money worth his trouble, which in any case would be too small to leverage  it does not matter. She is a form duly filled in and perhaps left unattended, or not followed up.

Rajans advise, in short, means get out of your self-made cocoons and feel the world. Mighty sensible. We dont know what triggered this theme in his mind and it would be interesting to know. But what he told the officialdom was perhaps the best suggestion towards reform ever made. Thank you, Raghuram Rajan.
New Delhi: With problems continuing in using the MCA21 portal, the Corporate Affairs Ministry might deduct

payments to IT major Infosys, which expects the situation to be normal in the next few weeks.

Infosys, which is managing MCA21, has been facing flak from different quarters on the woes pertaining to the portal, which is used by stakeholders to make electronic filings under the Companies Act.

Sources said problems being faced in using the portal after its upgradation last month are being sorted out and would take some more time.

There are provisions for deducting payments that are due to Infosys with regard to managing the portal in case there are problems and the ministry might look at that also, sources added.

The system was upgraded to SAP platform and went live on March 27, and since then, there have been some glitches such as difficulty in uploading documents.

"We will continue to monitor the situation and work closely with the ministry. We expect the situation to come back to normal in the next few weeks," an Infosys spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement late Monday while responding to queries related to MCA21 problems.

To a query on whether the ministry has told the company that payment could be withheld if the problems in MCA21 are not resolved, the spokesperson said "it is speculative".

The continuing woes with regard to using MCA21 have attracted flak for Infosys from various quarters.

In reference to the MCA21 problems, a few days back, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant had tweeted that "as service provider Infosys has let down the country".

Infosys did not comment on Kant's remark. Subsequent to the new Companies Act, it has upgraded the MCA21 system to run on the SAP platform.

"Post the go-live, as on April 22, over 1,183 Indian companies have been incorporated and 1,647 Limited Liability Partnerships have been registered on the system.

"In addition, since March 27, 2016, there have been more than two lakh filings. Looking at the data for the week gone by in 2015 during the same week, we have had an average of 8,013 filings per day (excluding the weekends) while the current average is around 9,759, an increase of more than 20 per cent," the company said on Monday.

Further, Infosys said that during the first couple of weeks, after migrating to the new system, there were some issues which by and large have been sorted out.

"There were some delays in the incorporation of some companies due to holidays. The ministry has made arrangements to clear the pendency by deploying additional Assessment Officers," it had said.

Against the backdrop of MCA21 glitches, the ministry has extended the deadline for submitting filings without additional fee till May 10.
New Delhi: India's overall trade deficit has been improving steadily, narrowing to 5.6 per cent of GDP in the fiscal year ending March 2016. But China continues to be a pain, overriding the Make-in-India theme as our exports to that country continue to falter.

The Chinese send value added goods at competitive prices to Indian shores whereas we continue to export what are known as 'primary' and intermediate products. So even when India's overall trade deficit has been improving, that with China has been deteriorating rapidly.

Trade deficit, which is also referred to as net exports, is an economic condition that occurs when a country is importing more goods than it is exporting. The deficit equals the value of goods being imported minus the value of goods being exported. Put simply, we allow more Chinese goods to be imported to India compared to Indian goods being sent to China, in terms of volume and value.

According to an analysis by rating agency Crisil, India's trade deficit with China widened in the last decade and "compounded at an annual 30 per cent or thrice as fast as India's overall trade deficit. If the trend continues, the trade deficit with China will equal or even surpass what India runs with the rest of the world," the Crisil report said.
New Delhi: Patanjali Ayurved is expecting 150 percent growth in 2016-17, reaching an over Rs.10,000 crore turnover in the current fiscal, its founder yoga guru Ramdev said on Tuesday.

We are targeting to cross Rs.10,000 crore turnover in the current fiscal from Rs.5,000 crore in 2015-16. We will grow by 150 percent this year, Ramdev told reporters at a press meet.

The company will be investing Rs.1,000 crore this year in setting up five to six new processing units of its various products in different states.

We will set up five to six processing units in Assam, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Out of these, four will be fully functional within this year, Acharya Balkrishna, managing director of the company, said.

From March 2012, when Ramdev announced his entry into the fast moving consumer goods and herbal retail markets with his 'swadeshi' line of products, the yoga guru today has emerged as one of Indias more successful brands in the otherwise less penetrated rural markets too as his 150-200 dedicated outlets in 2012 have grown to almost 4,000 now, prompting Ramdev to sell the FMCG range in the open market too.

Ramdev's products are 30 percent cheaper compared to products being sold by MNCs like Hindustan Lever and P&G.

From toothbrushes to night suits to breakfast cereals, Baba Ramdev has added a spiritual touch in each item up for sale thanks to his massive customer communities, and may just give FMCG firms a a run for their money.
A New Indian Express report published today says that it has unearthed evidence that Karti Chidambari, son of former Union Finance Minister, P Chidambaram, owns benami assets across the world.

The report reveals evidence that shames the lies of Chidambaram and his son, Karti that Advantage Strategic Consulting Private Limited (Advantage) belongs to their friends and not to them.

However, the report states that the Chidambaram family holds properties worth thousands of crores, maybe more in India and across the globe in benami names.

The New Indian Express says that benami deals are difficult to prove simply because they are held on secrecy and trust between the real owner and the benamis. The real owner does not have to do any documentation, the report says.

Modus Operandi

In a series of articles published in September-October last year, the New Indian Express report had exposed Vasan Eye Care, Chidambaram and Karti. Advantage India holds 90,000 shares out of the 1.5 lakh equity shares of Vasan Eye Care. The firm procured the shares at a throwaway price of Rs 100 per share. However, the report states, that it actually paid only one-third, or Rs 33 per share.

It sold 60,000 shares in two tranches of Rs 30,000 to Sequoia Capital Investments, a Mauritius-based investment fund. In the first tranche, 30,000 shares were sold at Rs 7,500 per share or Rs 22.5 crore. Assuming that the second tranche was also sold at the same price and if the balance shares are valued at the same price, then Vasan Eye Care's share would amount to Rs 112.5 crores which Advantage acquired at a mere Rs 50 lakh, reveals the report.

It may be recalled that on April 16, Sequoia was raided by Enforcement Directorate for its alleged complicity with Karti, says the report.

The report reveals that Karti Chidambaram has admitted to owning two-thirds of Advantage through his holding company Ausbridge. Later, the ownership of Advantage was shown in the name of benaami holders, says the report.

He has documented to the benami deals by executing Wills of shares of the firm (Advantage) in such a manner that after the lifetime of the benami holders, the shares will go to his daughter. Karti Chidambaram has kept these wills executed by the benami holders to himself.

All this came to light because of the raids of the Income Tax and Enforcement wings of the government which found the wills in Karti Chidambarams vault.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday cracked the whip on embattled liquor-baron, Vijay Mallya asking him to disclose all assets, including foreign assets and that of his wife and children. The apex court, hearing a plea from Mallya, also directed the Bangalore Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) to expedite the case and set a 2-months deadline to pronounce the order in the case.

Earlier, Mallya had refused to disclose his foreign assets citing his NRI status. Mallya has pegged his domestic assets at Rs 2,014 crore, overseas assets at Rs 748 crore. The liquor-baron repeated his stance to the Supreme Court that the atmosphere is not conducive for him to return to India and hell be sent to Tihar jail the moment I get back.

A clutch of 17-banks are fighting to get back Rs 9,000 crore money lent to Mallyas now defunct Kingfisher Airlines that stopped flying in 2012. Though banks classified Mallya as a defaulter that year itself, banks have so far not been able to make any meaningful recovery in this case. This is despite two lendersState Bank of India and Punjab National Bankhave tagged Mallya as a wilful defaulter. Recently, the bank consortium moved to the SC seeking action against Mallya.

Mallya, who flew on 2 March to UK while investigations were still on the issue, has refused to return since then. Mallya said his personal liberty at stake and he must have the freedom to mobilise funds. Banks are more interested in putting him behind bars rather than getting their money back, the liquor-baron told the court. Mallya informed the court through his lawyers, adding returning to India is meaningless in the current context.

The attorney general, representing the government, said Mallya is playing hide and seek and he is a fugitive from justice. The money involved in this case is not of a King but of banks, the AG said. If necessary, the government will move UK government to take action against Mallya, the AG said.
Ahmedabad: The Gujarat Government wants the PhD students in the state to do research on the government schemes and has issued a list of possible topics, but the move has drawn an adverse reaction.

The list has been issued to the universities. The topics which are suggested for the research include the Mahatma Gandhi Swachhata Mission, Kanya Kelavni, Gunotsav, Garib Kalyan Mela, Vajpayee Bankbable Yojna, Mukhyamantri Amrutam (MA) Yojna, etc.

Some academicians have said that the Government should not 'force' subjects upon students and guides, and if somebody decides to do research on a government scheme, it should be conducted independently.

Congress reacted very sharply, saying this kind of research would never be independent.

"It is least likely that PhD conducted on government schemes will be independent, as government will influence their outcome because they will never want the scam behind its schemes to come out in the public. Universities here are already far behind other states in terms of research output. By dictating PhD topics, it will only worsen the quality of research," said Manish Doshi, state Congress spokesperson.

AU Patel, an adviser to the Knowledge Consortium of Gujarat (KCG), an independent society headed by the commissioner of state higher education department which has come out with the list of topics said "Government has asked the universities to suggest the students and their guides that they may choose from the topics offered by it, so that the outcome of the research could be used to improve the schemes,".

"To conduct an independent evaluation of government schemes, KCG framed a range of topics on which students in our universities could conduct PhD. The study, survey, analysis, and overall outcome will help improve the schemes. The university will ask PhD guides to suggest 3-4 topics to their students to pick up for PhD," Patel said.

For Kanya Kelavni, a scheme for girls' education, for example, it suggests students may review and prepare a road map for future of the scheme. It wants government to explore analytical models for strengthening quality of primary education through Gunotsav, another scheme to evaluate the quality of primary education.

There are as many as fifty such topics, including women helpline, action plan for minorities through education, role of soya-fortified wheat atta in improving nutritional status, analysis of Gujarat's development model, among others.

"Every student has the freedom to propose topics for PhD. Government can suggest topics for research. It is acceptable only as long as it is not forced upon the students and their guides. Government schemes are worth PhD research, but only if the research is conducted independently," said Aashir Mehta, an economics professor at the MS University of Baroda.

Another faculty member of MSU, Bharat Mehta, said that research on government schemes will help bring out real facts surrounding such schemes, but the choice must not be influenced by the Government.

"It is a good idea, but the research topic should be independently framed by students and research should not be influenced by government," he said.
That the Chief Justice of India would be on the verge of tears in public does make for good optics. It looks worse when he has to do it on an issue that is not even personal. The matter of acute shortage of judges in higher judiciary is not a new one. That the Indian judiciary has a backlog of 30 million cases and much of it has to do with paucity of judges is no news either. The problem should have been addressed long ago but successive governments have gone easy about it, too easy one must say.

The judiciary accounts for only about 0.5 percent of the budgetary allocation. And India has merely 13 judges per 1 million of population, while more advanced countries have 50 judges or thereabouts. That explains why judicial infrastructure, apart from the head count of judges, is in a sorry state across the country. If theres a situation of scarcity in judiciary, it is a result of deliberate negligence or callous indifference from the governments. The result: delay in justice for millions of common Indians, which in many cases amounts to denial of justice.

As if aware that this alone may not be a strong enough reason for the latter to wake up and take note, Chief Justice T S Thakur brought in foreign investors  who are being aggressively wooed by the present government - into the frame. He said people investing in India would be worried about the ability of our judiciary to settle commercial disputes quickly.

The edit page piece in Hindustan Times says this: The government has taken a laudable initiative of setting up commercial courts. But it has not allocated separate manpower and infrastructure for it. This sort of practice can defeat the very purpose of having such specialised courts. The Constitution aims to secure social, economic and political justice to all citizens. Its sad commentary on our performance that even after 66 years of Indias existence as a modern republic, access to affordable and timely justice remains a far cry."

Our policy makers must realise that the number of new cases filed increases with literacy and wealth. For example, Kerala, with a literacy rate of more than 90%, has some 28 new cases per 1,000 people, as against some four cases per 1,000 in Jharkhand, which has a literacy rate of around 53%.

The consequences of an overburdened, overworked judiciary need not be overstated. The worst could be the loss of public faith in the institution. According one estimate, it takes an average of 15 years for a case to be concluded in the country. If the delay increases further, people would see little point in going to courts for settlement of disputes. The collapse of the institution is a situation no country can afford. Justice Thakur made the point without spelling it out in as many words. But the fact that he had to come across as pleading before the government does not show the arrangement of power among institutions in the country in good light.

However, the judiciary must take some blame for the sorry state of affairs too. Initiatives from its side have not been strong enough. And theres a conspicuous absence of the sense of urgency in addressing in-house problems. It could, for example, have tackled the tarikh pe tarikh syndrome, where hearing dates keep shifting, with some in-house rules. We have not seen any.

This is what The Indian Express has to say about the matter: However, the judiciary, too, has not given sufficient attention to the small systemic interventions that could disproportionately increase the efficiency of justice delivery. For instance, the ease with which adjournments can be secured is a well-known cause of delay in civil cases. A direction from the Chief Justice limiting reasonable grounds for adjournment would reduce pendency considerably. Besides, cases in busy sectors of civil law fall into repetitive patterns. Tenancy matters tend to be structurally similar, for instance, and focusing on unique factors in each case would speed up trials. The chief justice may also consider communicating with the government, which is a party in a large number of cases. Simplification of tax law, for instance, would sharply reduce the volume of litigation in the higher courts.

Its time both sides  the executive and the judiciary - came together to sort out chronic problems with the judiciary. A hostile equation between both is neither acceptable nor good for the citizens.
Within a period of five days, three attempts to attack Professor GN Saibaba were made inside his college campus in New Delhi  allegedly by the members and goons of the right-wing affiliated students union.

The third attempt was made on the wheel-chair bound professor of English on Monday, but Saibaba wasnt hurt as staff members and students of Ram Lal Anand (RLA) College, affiliated to the Delhi University, protected him by making a human chain around him. In a three-hour scuffle inside the college campus, some of the students in their bid to protect the professor also got hurt.

The first attempt to attack Saibaba was made on 21 April on the occasion of the governing body meeting of the college; the next was on the annual day celebration of the college on 22 April.

According to the college staff members, students and staff association, the ruckus inside the college and the attempts to attack on the professor was allegedly made by members of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

Outsiders attack professor and students protecting him

The wheel-chair bound professor, Saibaba, who suffers from almost 90 percent disability told Firstpost, Its the third attempt on me. In the last five days, attempts were made thrice to physically attack me inside the college campus. The earlier two attempts were made on 21 and 22 April. The police had been called, but they stood like bystanders and no attempt was made to stop the outsider group.

He said, Third attempt was made on 25 April when I went to college to submit my application regarding revocation of my suspension. Suddenly, a group of students barged into the staff room and tried to physically attack me. Due to the students and my colleagues I remained unharmed. The outsiders even attacked my students, who supported and tried to protect me.

Though I couldnt recognize the members of the group who came to attack me, except the one  the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) joint secretary Chhattrapal Yadav, who the led the group. As Im on a bail from the Supreme Court and the case is going on, I applied for the revocation of my suspension order and this outsider group demanded otherwise, added the professor.

Both the Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) and the Staff Association of RLA College have appealed the governing body of the college to revoke Saibabas suspension order.

Why Saibaba was attacked

The group that barged inside the college campus raised slogans against Saibaba such as, Deshdrohi wapas jao (Go back traitor) Dont allow Naxal in the campus, etc. According to the eye-witness, the students group that barged into the campus had a strong objection to the application given by Saibaba for revocation of his suspension.

The three attempts on him were made to give a message to the governing body that he shouldnt be reinstated. The goons and members of the right-wing affiliated ABVP demanded that the person (read Saibaba) whos a face of the Maoists and strongly supports Naxalism shouldnt be allowed to teach students, final-year student of RLA College said.

Today when Prof Saibaba came to submit his application, the ABVP members of DUSU tried to attack him physically. They raised slogans against him. There were around 50 students who forcefully entered the staff room and gheraoed the professor. Even on 22 April on College annual day, they heckled Saibaba. DUTA and our staff association have taken it up with the governing body, said Rajiv Kumar, media in-charge, RLA College.

Saibaba was arrested by the Maharashtra police for alleged Maoist links in 2014. After the arrest, he was suspended from college. It was on the afternoon of 9 May, 2014 when Saibaba was heading back home from the university, a group of policemen in plainclothes stopped his car, dragged the driver out and drove him out of the university campus. The next morning after his arrest from Delhi, he was flown to Nagpur, where the District Magistrate heard his case and sent him to prison. He spent 14 months in jail before the Mumbai High Court granted him bail for six months in July last year for his deteriorating health condition. He had to surrender and again go back to jail in December. He was recently granted bail by the Supreme Court and the RLA Colleges governing body constituted a one-member committee to revoke his suspension and reinstate him.

Resolution passed

The staff association of RLA College has passed two resolutions in this context.

Two resolutions were passed on Monday evening. First, weve strongly condemned the failure of the college principal and the administration to stop goons from entering the college campus and create havoc. The administration of the college has collapsed. The manner in which Prof Saibaba was attacked thrice has made students and staff members insecure. Second resolution has been passed to set a time limit to the one-member committee. We want the committee to submit its report on revocation of suspension within a stipulated time frame, said RLA College staff associations secretary, Dr Rakesh Kumar.

Irrespective of any political affiliation or ideology, creating ruckus inside the campus of an educational institution is completely unwarranted and unacceptable. It shows total degradation of college administration. The role of police is also questionable on why it didnt act, he added.

Ambedkar Bhagat Singh Students' Front has strongly condemned the continued harassment of Saibaba. DUSU joint secretary, Chhatarpal Yadav with other ABVP goons in huge police presence tried to terrorize the Prof Saibaba. This whole incident happened in front of college principal, chairman and the police, but no one came to his defense and it was the college students who formed a human chain around him to protect him from ABVP goons. No strict action was taken by college administration, and we strongly condemn this insensitive attitude of the college authorities, the Students Front said.

What the ABVP says

The ABVP has denied any kind of involvement in the alleged attack on Saibaba.

Its a known fact that Saibaba has Maoist links and is a face of Naxals. The Maharashtra ATS on the basis of evidences arrested him and was sent to jail. But, ABVP has nothing to do with it. The matter is subjudice and the law will take its course. Its always easy to level charges and put blames, but none of our members were involved in the attack inside RLA College campus, national spokesperson and media in-charge of ABVP, Shreerang Kulkarni told Firstpost.
In November 2010, a team of around 40 officials from CID and Himachal police raided the Malana village and other surrounding areas in the Parbati valley of Himachal Pradesh, arresting an Italian man in his sixties named Galeno Orazi in the process.

Orazi was arrested from a house in Nerang forest, where he had been staying for several years in direct violation of many legal norms. According to the police, his visa had expired a year before his arrest.

The house was stacked with large quantities of ganja (marijuana). Orazi, in every respect, looked like a native of Malana  with a long beard and wearing the traditional attire of the area.

For the 12-13 years that Orazi stayed in Malana, he was involved in the production and trade of cannabis with the active connivance of the village people, who find easy money in the production of illicit drugs.

The hill state, with its snow-capped mountains and clean air, has always been a preferred destination for the city dwellers.

Malana and Kasol have been preferred destinations for Israeli youth, who visit the place in huge numbers, after their mandatory service in the army, for a therapeutic experience.

However, the therapy is not provided by the peaceful environs of the mountains but with something for which Malana is now known the world over: Malana Cream, a local variety of hashish; a purified resinous extract of cannabis, highly valued in the international market.

Cannabis has always been grown in this area, but was meant for personal consumption and has great level of social acceptance. The local culture, which is guided to a great extent by belief in devta (almost every village in Himachal has their own local deities and all major decisions are taken with their permission), treats cannabis as shiv ji ki buti and does not see cannabis production as something wrong.

The problem, however, started with the commercialisation of the production and the entry of foreigners. The locals, who were attracted by the prospects of big money, started producing cannabis and trading it in connivance with the foreigners.

Ashok Kumar, SP Narcotics, stressing on this point said, Earlier, local varieties of cannabis were produced but now hybrid varieties are being grown with the help of foreigners. It is not for personal consumption, rather for trade.

Regions that are indentified as important for the illicit cultivation of cannabis in Kullu include Malana and Manikaran, Tosh-kutla Regions, Banjar Valley, and the Sainj Valley in the Aani-Khanag Region. In Mandi district, areas where cannabis cultivation is widespread is Chauhar Bali Chowki (Thachi and Dider Jhamach), and the Gada Goshaini (Siraj Region) contiguous with Banjar Valley.

OP Sharma, former superintendent of narcotics control bureau (NCB) Chandigarh and currently posted as Sr. Superintendent (Preventive) of Central Excise & Service Tax, Shimla feels that drug problem in Himachal Pradesh has three aspects: (1) Illicit cultivation of cannabis and opium poppy: the production of respective narcotic drugs thereof (2) the illicit trafficking of the drugs so produced, i.e. the supplies to inter-state and international destinations (3) the drug consumption, i.e. the market within the state and outside.

The cultivation in turn can be categorised in two parts  the organised cultivation on private lands and government/ forest lands, and the unchecked wild growth of cannabis.

According to Sharma, it is the organised cultivation that is of utmost concern. The extent of organisation of the cannabis and opium cultivation can be gauged by this picture taken by Sharma which he shared with Firstpost.

The extent of the problem

The number of cases registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act in Himachal Pradesh has more than tripled in last decade. 242 people were arrested in 2005 under the NDPS law, which rose to 596 in 2010 and to 622 in 2015.

While the cases registered increased over the years, conviction rates under the NDPS act have been abysmally low. In 2005, the percentage of conviction of those arrested under the NDPS law was 32 percent, which fell to 28.20 percent in 2015.

We have to think about why conviction rate is so less, Kumar said.

Looking at the profile of those arrested in Kullu, Chamba and Mandi shows that while majority of them are residents of Himachal, 23 percent are outsiders and 47 percent of those arrested fall in the age group of 20-30.

To discuss the different aspects of the drug problem in Himachal Pradesh, a three day conference starting 18 April was held in the state. It was focused on the problem of illicit cultivation, trade and consumption of cannabis and other drugs and was organised by the Institute for Narcotics Studies and Analysis (INSA) in Kullu.

Going beyond general theorising, the conference brought together all the major stakeholders to deliberate upon the problem of the drug menace in the state and come out with viable solutions.

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, speaking on the issue, acknowledged the problem and said that addiction of any types is injurious and there is no country that has not faced the problem of drug abuse.

It is a big threat to the country and is destroying the present generation and humanity at large. There is a constant war between people who are trading in drugs and people who want to stop this. We have to stop this at any cost, said Virbhadra Singh.

He added, Government cannot do this alone, people have to make immense contribution in curbing this menace. Syndicates involved in this are very powerful but we have to destroy them.

While the reasons behind the drug problem were deliberated upon, at length, it was a serious attempt to propose a solution that was appreciated by all participants. In this context alternative development became the focal point of the discussion.

The discussion on alternative development centered around finding viable alternate crops that people engaged in illicit farming of cannabis can be motivated to grow. This can only be made possible if those producing cannabis are assured that their income would not be reduced by switching over to other crops.

In this context J C Sharma, managing director HP Horticulture Produce, Marketing and Processing Corporation (HPMC), made a presentation where he talked about a project initiated by HPMC in which a new variety of apple will be grown where cannabis is being currently produced.

The new variety of apples will provide 10-12 times higher yields, which have ready markets as currently India is importing huge quantities of apple from various foreign countries.

If implemented, this alternative to cannabis and opium would not only meet the demand of apples in India but would also result in saving of large amounts of foreign exchange.

In the context of alternative development, Jahan Pesron Jamas of Bombay Hemp Company, instead of proposing an alternative crop, talked about the utility of cannabis plant itself for use in the industry.

He highlighted that hump fibre, being a very strong material, can be used in fabric, ropes, cosmetics, and for medicinal use. However, he also stressed that more research is needed to develop plants that are low on intoxicating content, making their diversion for recreational purpose difficult, but at the same time making them useful for legitimate industrial and medicinal purposes.

Another problem that was discussed by all panelists was the lack of a detailed survey on the extent of the drug problem. The last survey to ascertain the extent of the problem was done in 2001. Lack of coordination among different authorities like police and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) was also marked as a major problem in dealing with the issue.

Lack of coordination among different agencies and political will are major roadblocks in curbing the menace. OP Sharma, who has travelled to the remotest parts of Himachal to understand the reasons behind the persistence of the drug problem, highlights the important reasons for the persistence of the problem through a case study of Malana.

According to Sharma, cannabis consumption is inherent in the culture and the hilly terrain makes the area almost inaccessible to enforcement agencies, making it a safe haven for drug traders.

The fact that there is lack of proper monitoring of the movements of foreigners by the enforcement agencies is also adding to the problem.

In this context, Puneet Raghu, Himachal Police Service (HPS) referred to two NDPS cases where the passport of the arrested person was already expired but investigating agencies failed to book them under foreigners act.

Echoing the same views Ashok Kumar, SP narcotics said that there is a provision that if someone is arrested for indulging in illegal activities he or she can be blacklisted and barred from entering the country again.

Usually this is not done but when I was posted in Mandi, we prepared a list of such people and sent it to the ministry of external affairs. I feel that this should be done on a regular basis, Kumar said.

According to OP Sharma, drug gangs from over six countries have established their centers in the state, and a few arrests made from this area is a testimony to this fact.

A strong narcotics cell is the need of the hour but as highlighted by Ashok Kumar, the narcotics cell in the state is toothless and is struggling with limited manpower and infrastructure.

Then there are also some vested interests in politics pleading for legalisation of cannabis.

The Legislative Assembly mooted such proposals to the government of India from time to time, thus, somehow strengthening the drug managers, said OP Sharma.

According to Sharma, in the year 2002-03, not even a single inch of land in Malana was free from cannabis. The illicit trade brought prosperity to 200 families, and these foreigners are their new gods/role models. This shows why the villagers are not able to give up the cannabis cultivation, Sharma said.

The drug mafias have so deeply penetrated into the local life that now villagers are using religion and faith to promote the interest of the drug peddlers.

The powerful village council has become a tool in the hands of the mafia. The dependence on drugs is so strong that these people are not ready to see its ill effects, said Sharma.

In the short run, it is a win-win situation for all. The backpackers dancing madly on the full moon nights get their dose of adrenaline rush  cheap and handy in these places. The cultivators and traders getting easy money to buy the material comforts from which many of their customers have run away from.

For some of the law enforcers, drug trade allows some extra income that apple production will not. As for loss, it is only of the nation that is losing a generation to drugs.

Malana Cream: An International Hit

- Malana is the producer of the second best quality of hash in the world

- Brands like Malana cream, Malana gold, Malana biscuits and AK-47 are international brands available for sale in Europe and other International destinations ONLY.

- The 155 Kg hashish seizure from the foreign kingpin and his Indian counterpart is testimony to this fact.The foreign mafias with their Indian counterparts and official channels have made most of the profits from the Malana sale.

- More than 60% of the village population still remains under poverty, mostly under abject poverty.

- The Malana brands are so popular in foreign markets that even the Nepalese hashish is making entry into Kullu and being exported under the brand names of Malana Cream after processing.

(Statistics courtesy: OP Sharma and Ashok Kumar)
A suspected Indian Mujahiddeen (IM) operative wanted by Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat Police forces for various acts of terror  among these the July 2011 triple blasts of Mumbai  was arrested from the Mumbai airport on Tuesday, a senior police officer said.

#FLASH Terrorist "Wanted" in 13 July 2011 blast in Mumbai, Zain ul Abedin arrested by Maharashtra ATS.  ANI (@ANI_news) April 26, 2016

"We had received information that Abedin would be coming to India to visit his native Bhatkal, and that he would be going there via Mumbai. Accordingly, we laid a trap and arrested him," an ATS officer told The Hindu.

A red corner (RC) notice was issued against the accused, based on which the ATS sleuths of Kalachowki unit arrested him, police said, according to PTI.

According to police, Abedin was allegedly responsible for supplying explosives for operations of the banned outfit, blamed in the past for a string of terror strikes in various parts of the country

The IM operative, identified as Zain-ul Abedin, was nabbed at Chhattrapati Shivaji International Airport where the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) had laid a trap for him, said Special Inspector General of Police (ATS) Niket Kaushik. The accused has been sent to police custody till 6 May.

The three blasts on 13 July, 2011, at Dadar, Opera House and Zaveri Bazar during the evening peak hours had claimed 26 lives besides injuring over 130 other people.

With inputs from IANS and PTI
Raipur: A CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action) jawan was on Tuesday injured in an exchange of fire with naxals in the dense forests of Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Bijapur district, police said.

The skirmish took place early this morning when a team of CRPF's elite unit  CoBRA 204th battalion was conducting an anti-naxal operation in the interiors of Basaguda police station limits  a naxal hotbed, Bijapur Additional Superintendent of Police Indira Kalyan Elesela told PTI.

While cordoning off the region, located around 450 kms away from the state capital, when security forces reached Puvarti village forests, naxal opened indiscriminate firing on them leaving a constable Deepu Das injured, he said.

However, Maoists soon fled from the spot as jawans launched retaliatory attack on them, he said.

"Das, a constable belonging to CoBRA 204th battalion sustained bullet injuries on his back," Elesela said.

Reinforcement was rushed to the spot and the injured jawan was evacuated from the forests, he said adding that he has been airlifted to Raipur for treatment.
New Delhi: The JNU on Monday slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and rusticated three others for varying durations over their alleged role in the controversial 9 February event for which they were charged with sedition, an action which had sparked outrage and triggered protests.

Based on the findings of a high-level enquiry committee (HLEC), Umar Khalid has been rusticated for one semester and another leader Anirban Bhattacharya till 15 July. Umar has also been slapped a fine of Rs 20,000. Anirban has also been barred from JNU campus for a period of five years from 23 July.

Kashmiri student, Mujeeb Gattoo, has been rusticated for two semesters. A penalty of Rs 10,000 has been imposed on JNU students union (JNUSU) joint secretary Saurabh Sharma, the only ABVP member in the union.

JNU students union president Kanhaiya, Umar and Anirban were arrested on charges of sedition in February in connection with the controversial event and are out on bail.

Their arrests had triggered widespread protests at JNU and many other universities, following which the Opposition had accused the government of attempting to stifle dissent.

While Umar and Anirban were blamed for "triggering communal violence" and "disrupting" communal harmony on the campus, Mujeeb was found guilty of participating sloganeering. Kanhaiya was pronounced guilty of indiscipline and misconduct.

Those who have been imposed fine of Rs 20,000 each include former JNUSU President Ashutosh Kumar, former general secretary Chintu Kumari, current General Secretary Rama Naga, Aishwarya Adhikari, former Vice President Anant Prakash Narayan and Gargi for "violating" dissciplinary norms.

The campus has been made out of bounds for two former students -- Banojyotsana Lahiri and Draupadi -- while hostel facilities of Ashutosh Kumar have been withdrawn for a year and Komal Mohite till July 21.

In his reaction, Kanhaiya said the punitive action announced by the authorities was "simply unacceptable" and that the students rejected it. The students will hold an "all party" meeting later tonight to finalise future course of action.

"We completely reject this farcical enquiry report, as it is based on sheer vendetta and a biased enquiry. These are all innocent students, coming from extremely humble and underprivileged backgrounds," JNUSU Vice President Shehla Rashid Shora said.

The JNU had constituted a five-member high-level enquiry committee to investigate the controversial event at the campus on February 9 and the panel had found some students guilty of violating disciplinary norms and disrupting communal harmony. on the campus.

An official of the JNU said financial penalty has been imposed on 14 students including Kanhaiya.

Anirban's punishment is the harshest as he has been debarred from the university for five years.

When asked about punishment to Anirban, the official said, "During the period of rustication, the student ceases to exist on rolls of the university but has an option of joining back and re-enrolling in the same course after period of rustication is over.

"However, following debarment from the university for a period the student cannot enroll in any course or join any academic activities on campus," the official said.

He said while Umar and Gattoo will have the option of resuming their courses once the period of rustication is over, Anirban has been given a window of a week (July 16-23) to complete his thesis.

"If he is unable to do so, he will not be able to seek an extension or re-enroll as he has been debarred from university for five years on completion of that week. If his PhD is not completed during this period he will not be able to do it from JNU for five years however he can enroll at some other university," he said.

The official said disciplinary measures have been taken for not following university procedures, misinforming the university, misconduct and indiscipline, causing and colluding in the unauthorised entry of persons into the campus, putting up objectionable posters, arousing communal, caste or regional feelings and creating disharmony, blockade or forceful prevention of any normal movement of traffic and violation of security, safety rules notified by the university.

The committee imposed the fine on Sharma, who had objected to the event, for blocking traffic on the day it happened. Surprisingly, Aishwarya whose name was not mentioned in the report, has also been imposed the financial penalty.

"A farce is what this enquiry has been made from day 1 to witch-hunt students and punish them by hook and crook. I want to tell the VC that his friend Appa Rao did the same in Hyderabad university but our friends fought back. We will also do the same," said Umar.

A senior university official said, "Based on the report of the high-level committee which arrived at its conclusion based on depositions, perusal of video clips (provided by JNU security and authenticated by forensic tests), and examination of documents on record, the university has decided to rusticate three students.

The report of the five-member panel has underlined lapses on part of administration and taken into account the role of outsiders in the event. However, no action has been taken against any administrative official.

"As per the committee findings, application for holding this event circumvented the permission process and the organisers disobeyed the instructions from the administration not to hold it and that amounted to wilful defiance," the JNU official said.

Following the preliminary report of the committee, the university had suspended eight students. However, their suspension was revoked when the panel submitted it report on March 11.

Slamming the authorities for the action against the students, Shora said,"They are all dedicated activists and this is a conspiracy to crush anti-Modi voices.



"Not only will we not remain silent against this anti-people government, we will also challenge this sham of a report. The punishments are all based on one-sided statements from ABVP members, and our repeated calls to conduct a fair enquiry were ignored."

Accusing the Vice Chancellor of "taking directions" from the Centre and acting as an "RSS loyalist", she said the students will launch a countrywide campaign to "expose" the government's "anti-student and anti-Dalit" character.

"Rakesh Bhatnagar, the head of the committee, is the treasurer of anti-reservationist Youth for Equality, and most students who have been punished belong to Dalit, Muslim and backward castes," she said.

ABVP's Sharma said punishments announced by JNU is a "compromise and not penalty".

"Penalising me for blocking traffic for stopping the event is injustice," he said.
The Airtel number you are calling is switched off. Please call again later.

This was the continuous response from the phone number that Firstpost tried calling umpteen number of times on Monday. It belongs to Manas Deka, coordinator, BJP National Security Cell. However, it was not surprising at all to find the mobile phone switched off.

Thanks to the feisty boss of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU)Kanhaiya Kumarand the high-handedness of his friends, they managed to put an unassuming individual in as much trouble as they could. His fault: his name is Manas Deka and he is a BJP man.

The whole drama started on Sunday when Kanhaiya apparently got into a fight with one of his co-flyers aboard a Jet Airways flight bound from Mumbai to Pune claiming that he was under attack. His co-passengerManas Jyoti Dekanearly a namesake of BJP's Manas Deka, is a Tata Consultancy Services employee and was sitting next to Kanhaiya in the flight.

Although multiples versions are emerging as to what exactly transpired between the two, there was certainly physical contact, although the degree of its severity now resides in the realm of phantasmagoria. While Kanhaiya claimed that it was an attempt to "strangulate" him, the TCS employee brushed it aside as a "cheap publicity stunt". All including the high profile Kanhaiya and company and Deka got offloaded after it was decided so by the captain of the aircraft.

https://twitter.com/jetairways/status/724131269777313792

The action didn't end here. Having turned into the poster boy of the Indian media of late, Kanhaiya and company decided to make use of the incident to get another round of limelight. As luck or ill-luck would have it, they discovered that there is one Manas Deka in the BJP. Both the Manas Dekas are also from Assam. Then went out a series of tweets from Kanhaiya. Boom!

"Yet again, this time inside the aircraft, a man tries to strangulate me."

"After the incident @jetairways staff completely refuses to take any action against the man who assaulted me."

"Basically @jetairways sees no difference between someone who assaults nd d person who is assaulted. They will deplane you, if you complain."

And then the bomb:

https://twitter.com/kanhaiyajnusu/status/724120893740326913

So charged up Kanhaiya got for his Pune event, he tweeted soon after:

https://twitter.com/kanhaiyajnusu/status/724144782231007232

Unwilling to relent and check into facts, Kanhaiya kept his virtual assault on albeit on two individuals together  one in the know and the other completely ignorant about the whole issue until hell fell on him.

https://twitter.com/kanhaiyajnusu/status/724204682432811009

"I was not in touch with the news as I was busy with something else. I got to know about it around 6 pm (on Monday)," BJP's Manas Deka told Firstpost from New Delhi after he finally switched on his phone and picked up the call.

Before that, the moment Manas realised that the call is from a media house, he immediately said, "I am not that Manas." Only after he was let known that Firstpost is aware about it, he did answer to the question on the number of calls he received with a sigh of relief. "I have attended some 150 calls today (Monday). I also have a huge number of missed calls. Besides I had kept my phone in switched off mode for a while," he said.

Leave alone Mumbai, BJP's Manas Deka was not even in the state of Maharashtra when all this ruckus happened. Tired and polite, although a BJP member, Manas sounded quite unlikely a person who would strangle the JNU student union leader even if he meets him in person. "I have had enough of this. I just wanted this matter to be closed," he said, not uttering a single word of vengeance against Kanhaiya.

Are you listening, Mr Kanhaiya Kumar?

The other Manas Deka, who works in the BPO arm of IT giant TCS in Kolkata, however, could not be reached despite multiple attempts. His byte to TV channels later after the incident that he is not a BJP member or supported in all likelihood holds some water given the confusion with the name.

No sooner the matter out in public domain, the amount of hate messages that TCS's Manas Deka got on his Facebook profile made him delete it. But the snooping crowd was quick enough to to dig this out from the account before it disappeared.

Leaving his like or dislike for Kanhaiya Kumar or JNU in the personal domain, it is however quite confounding to the common sense that any sane individual would choose a filled Boeing aircraft to strangulate another human being.

As Kanhaiya went about in Pune with his "Jai Bheem! Laal Salaam!" agenda, there was however not any remorse or apology from this emerging student leader who has lately taken the responsibility of reforming India.

Worse, even social media ignited with much venom willing to take on the TCS employee.

And there was another among many which jumped to the conclusion even before the formal investigation is over.

TCS has maintained silence on the issue so far.

In the meanwhile, no one had the time to think that in all this mayhem, there is an individual who bore the brunt of this fracas quite needlessly.

Kanhaiya Kumar now often embarks on tours to spread the message of Babasaheb Bhimnrao Ambedkar and democracy. On 14 April, while reaching Nagpur, the JNUSU president had tweeted: "As I arrive at Nagpur to spread his message of Dignity, Justice nd Peace."

Left "Wondering?" how? Over to trolls.
Hazaribagh (Jharkhand): An NIA team on Tuesday reached Hazaribagh to examine the circumstances behind the 17 April Ram Navami violence and the subsequent bomb blast at Habibinagar Colony that killed six persons and injured two.

Officials of the team visited the place soon after arrival and would like to stay in Hazaribagh in connection with the inquiry, Superintendent of Police, Akhilesh Kumar Jha, said.

Senior BJP leader and former External Affairs minister Yashwant Sinha had on 21 April demanded an NIA probe into the blast.

Meanwhile, another person was arrested on Tuesday at Marhetta under Hazaribagh Mufassil police station area after the police came to know that he was also injured in the blast and now under treatment at his in-laws' place, Jha said.

He has since been shifted to Hazaribagh Sadar Hospital, the police officer said.

Sinha added that interrogation of the accused was on to ascertain how many people were involved in the making of the bomb that resulted in the blast.

Earlier, the police got information from one of the injured persons and accused that seven persons had allegedly been involved in the bomb making when the blast took place and that the dead were buried.

Subsequently, the police moved the court and exhumed five bodies on Monday.

After autopsy, the bodies were again buried here today in the presence of their relatives, the police said.

The 17 April violence during Ram Navami procession had led imposition of curfew in Hazaribagh town and its surrounding areas for a week.

Altogether six persons had been killed and two others were injured in the bomb blast, the SP said. One body was recovered on 20 April.

Both the injured have been arrested and being treated for their wounds.
Will the Panama Papers probe go the way of the Swiss Leaks investigation? In the Swiss Leaks probe last year that involved more than 1000 Indians holding account in HSBC bank in Geneva, Switzerland, the government claimed that suitable action was taken against all those who held illegal foreign accounts. But, pray, who were those who held illegal foreign accounts and what action was taken against them?

Indias finance ministry refuses to place any details in the public domain on the specious plea that it would vitiate Indias economic environment. It is exactly the same argument that the RBI governor Raghuram Rajan had advanced when he pleaded with the Supreme Court last month that the names of the big bank loan defaulters (each of whom has borrowed more than Rs 500 crore of public money and has run away) must be held back lest financial instability sets in.

When both the finance ministry and the RBI resort to such dubious arguments, it is not surprising that those who have stashed away black money abroad have reasons to feel assured that their interest would be protected against all odds.

There is a strong likelihood that the outcome of the Panama Papers probe will go the Swiss Leaks way. Take a look at the sequence of events: Panama Papers were published in the Indian Express on 4 April. Barely a fortnight later, a senior government official told the Economic Times (ET did not disclose the identity of the official) that more than 90 percent of those whose names have appeared in the Panama Papers (there are 500 of them) have been found to be holding legal accounts in tax havens like British Virgin Islands, Bahamas or Panama.

What was the intent of the inspired leak? Is it that the government machinery has become so super-efficient that the multi-agency probe has been able to complete the investigation involving 500 persons in barely two weeks? One can only surmise that the government is only over-eager to offset the heat generated by the Panama Papers and divert attention from the black money issue at any cost.

RBI has also come to the rescue of the government to dilute the ardour of the black money expose. Referring to the Panama Papers, RBI chief has come out strongly against the dangerous trend of questions being raised over the legitimacy of wealth. And who are the culprits who are raising unnecessary questions, according to the RBI governor? In a lecture last week, Raghuram Rajan offered these pearls of wisdom: If most people dont have opportunities, then their focus will be on people who have more.

So, to Mr Rajan, the black money issue is borne out of frustration  an outcome of envy and jealousy of the majority of Indians who aspire to the lifestyle of the billionaires but who cannot have it. He says: One of the important sources of concern which you have seen with some of these Panama Reports and so on is building in to this notion of the illegitimacy of wealth. And he bemoans that earlier, the crisis built up the idea that the bankers were illegitimate.

Rajans advice to the people of India who have no spare money, let alone black money: It was important that societies worked towards legitimising wealth. It was quite apt that the Indian Express gave the headline to the news report: Panama Papers: Dangerous to question the legitimacy of wealth, says Raghuram Rajan. With men like Rajan extending such protecting umbrella, it is hardly surprising that holders of black money are being shielded, not brought to the public domain.

There is a need for a nationwide movement to expose the shenanigans of Rajans and the like. The movement must plead for complete transparency.

Let the Panama Papers be the starting point. There are several kinds of cases within its rubric. The first pertains to the film stars such as Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai (their cases are separate and pertain to the period before Aishwarya became Amitabhs daughter-in-law in 2008) who have gone on record to question the authenticity of the Express report and have categorically denied the charge that they had made any overseas investment. The Indian Express investigations, however, have demolished their claim. Amitabh has been shown on record as directors of four offshore shipping companies between 1993 and 1997 (when any foreign investment was illegal); what is more important, the Indian Express published documents to show that Bachchan had taken part in board meetings of these companies by telephone conference.

Records also tell us that Aishwarya Rai, her parents and brother became directors of an offshore company in 2005. The Indian Express published a letter which showed that she later that year requested her name to be shortened to A Rai for confidentiality reasons. Her request was honoured and the name was accordingly changed in all records. Despite such obvious evidences, both Amitabh and Aishwarya have gone on the denial mode.

Given the fact that Amitabh Bachchan shares a close personal relationship with the Prime Minister (he was the brand ambassador of Gujarat Tourism when Narendra Modi was the chief minister of the state), that he had been tipped to be the brand ambassador of the Incredible India campaign replacing Aamir Khan and that even reports projected the superstar as the likely NDA candidate for the highest office of the president of India, there is a lurking apprehension that the government departments will cover up his murky dealings. The best way to do the cover-up is to make the bland statement, a la the Swiss Leaks probe, that all appropriate actions have been taken against the guilty.

The popular demand should be to urge the government to make all investigations public.

There is another category of the people, like the corporate lawyer Harish Salve and a doctor like Jehangir Sorabjee (son of a corporate lawyer, Soli Sorabjee), who say that all the information revealed by the Indian Express are authentic, but the publication of their names is an invasion into their privacy as they have reported all their foreign investments in their income-tax returns. Fair enough. To enhance the credibility of these honourable men, the government of India must place their income-tax returns of the relevant years in the public domain.

It is not a preposterous demand: after all, the prime minister of England, David Cameron, put out six years of his income tax returns for public scrutiny when his fathers name figured in the Panama Papers and some voiced the concern that Cameron might have been a beneficiary of his fathers fortunes without paying taxes. If a Camerons IT returns can be made public, why not that of a Salve or a Sorabjee or, for that matter, anyone else named in the Panama Papers?

Is Narendra Modis India any less of a democracy than David Camerons United Kingdom?
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj was on Thursday admitted to the country's premier All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi after she complained of severe chest congestion.

According to sources at AIIMS, she was admitted to the old private ward under Pulmonary Medicine Department around 5 pm.

Around 10 pm, sixty-four-year-old Swaraj was shifted to the Cardio-Neuro Centre of the hospital.

A senior doctor said her condition was stable.
New York: Continuing to have social interaction is key to keeping your ears sensitive even in old age, suggests new research.

Hearing socially meaningful sounds can change the ear and enable it to better detect those sounds, the findings showed.

"The ear is modifiable," said one of the researchers Walter Wilczynski, professor at Georgia State University in the US.

"It's plastic. It can change by getting better or worse at picking up signals, depending on particular types of experiences, such as listening to social signals, Wilczynski explained.

The researchers studied the phenomenon in green treefrogs. Researchers used green treefrogs because they have a simple social system with only one or two vocal calls.

In the lab, the experimental group heard their species' specific calls every night for 10 consecutive nights as they would in a normal social breeding chorus in the wild, while the control group heard random tones with no social meaning.

Then the researchers placed electrodes on the skin near the frogs' ears and measured the response of their ears to sound.

"If frogs have a lot of experience hearing their vocal signals, the ones that are behaviourally meaningful to them, their ear changes to help them better cope with processing those signals," Wilczynski said.

The findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

The findings could have important implications for elderly people in nursing homes or prisoners in solitary confinement, both of whom have little social interaction.

"My guess is people who have a lot of experience with our social vocal signal, which is our speech, this probably helps keep their sensory system in a healthy state that helps them pick out those signals," Wilczynski said.

The researchers are unsure, however, how this change in the ear occurs or what particular change has been made, although they believe the modification occurs in the inner ear based on electrophysiological tests.
New Delhi: A massive fire that gutted the building of National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) Monday night caused tremendous loss of material of historical and heritage value.

The fire brigade team that has been working since Monday night said the enormity of fire was so severe that it engulfed the large collection of taxidermic animals, birds and other items on display besides the office furniture, wooden flooring and documents in all the five floors of the museum situated next to FICCI-KK Birla Auditorium on Tansen Road near Mandi House.

Entry has been banned for all except fire tenders, police and officials inspecting the damaged building. Due to heavy smoke all floors of the museum turned virtually black. It took nearly 30 fire tenders to douse the fire.

Severe loss to collections of historical value

The damage is immense. It cant be judged in terms of money because the collections which have turned into ashes have a high historical and heritage value. Minister of Environment and Forests Prakash Javdekar visited in the morning and has ordered a probe. Assessment would be made following an inquiry. Its too early to comment on anything. Were also trying to find out the cause of the fire breakup, an official of NMNH said on condition of anonymity.

The Museum was planned as part of the 25th anniversary celebrations for India's independence, and finally opened on 5 June 1978. From being a single museum located in New Delhi, NMNH extended its geographical range by establishing Regional Museums of Natural History (RMNH) in Mysore, Bhopal and Bhubaneswar. Two more museums are being established in Sawai Madhopur and in Gangtok.

NMNH and RMNHs focus on India's flora and fauna and are also committed to environmental education. Besides having a large collection of stuffed animals and birds, both the national and regional museums showcase the rich diversity of Indias tribal life.

Art critic Uma Nair said, Its a big loss in terms of historical and heritage value of collections that got damaged by fire. Its a very sad state of affair and the loss is irreparable. The most unfortunate part is that in India we need museum and institution buildings like those abroad, but when it comes to safety measures and maintenance, we fail.

What could have been the cause?

Everyone is tight-lipped at the moment, as the fire fighters are busy clearing five floors till 3 pm on Tuesday. Both, the museum administration and fire brigade personnel termed it too early to comment anything on the cause of fire breakup.

Its a major inferno. Its too early to say anything about the cause of fire. The possible reason could be from short-circuit, a fire tender operator on job remarked.

Stating the incident very tragic, Prakash Javdekar has ordered an energy and fire audit of all the establishments across the country. We have 34 museums and well ensure that such incidents dont happen, the minister said.

Beside wooden furniture, the museum also had wooden decor, flooring and panels  all of which has been gutted by fire.

The level of preparedness and maintenance is poor in large number of cases. Theres a lack of periodical review of disaster management, which is must for institutions like NMNH which has heritage value, said Uma Nair.

Its a known fact that museums do have volatile and inflammable contents. Forget fire, even smoke and water can cause immense damage to collectibles, especially when they have heritage value, she said.

Fire fighting

The fire broke at 1.45 am on the top floor of the museum. By the time security guard alerted fire brigade, police, NMNH and FICCI officials, and fire tenders swung into operation, the fire had already caused havoc and engulfed all the floors.

The fire safety systems were there but they were not functioning at the time when we tried to operate them. Had they been working, it would have been easier to control the fire at the earliest, Deputy Fire Chief Rajesh Panwar reportedly told agency.

The NMNH is housed in the rented accommodation on the five floors of the building belonging to FICCI. Next to the museum building is FICCIs auditorium and the Federation House.

Though the top five floors have been gutted by the fire, no damage has been caused to the FICCI office on the first floor of the museum building, adjoining KK Birla auditorium and the Federation House.

FICCIs secretary general, Dr A Didar Singh tweeted: Yes unfortunate fire incident in Museum building in FICCI premises. FICCI office and auditorium are okay. None hurt.

The industry body FICCIs media head, Rajiv Tyagi told Firstpost, The safety and security standards at FICCI are of the highest order, because we receive dignitaries and personalities from India and abroad, including our Prime Minister. We cant fault on safety and security. Besides our fire-fighting equipment, we have underground water reservoir of 1.5 lakh litre and 50,000 litre additional water reservoir for this kind of emergency. In this case, we supplied water to douse fire. FICCI has given the space on rent to NMNH and as per the contract, the responsibility of maintenance and security of the museum lies with them.

Nair added, It needs to be found out whether the museum had early fire detection system like Titanus that alerts a fire break much faster and at an initial phase, when it can be controlled. Besides, Oxy-reduction fire prevention safety measure is a must for museums, as it stops fire from spreading. Surprisingly, these systems lack in many of our premier institutions of national importance.
Ahmedabad: Notwithstanding the tie verdict in the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation (GMC) elections on Tuesday, BJP said its acceptability in the state capital has increased due to its "development-oriented policies".

The BJP and the Congress won 16 seats each out of the total 32. The Mayor and other office-bearers will now be selected through a draw of lots.

"In the last election in 2011, BJP had won 15 seats, while Congress won 18. This time, we added one more seat in our old tally, while Congress lost two in comparison to 2011. This shows that our support base has increased. We have definitely improved our position this time," Gujarat BJP president Vijay Rupani said.

He said the hard work done by BJP has resulted into people from Gandhinagar backing the party.

"As far as the question of the tie verdict is concerned, we respect the verdict given to us by our the citizens," Rupani, a minister in state government, said.

He said people have rejected negative politics of the Congress and have "once again put their trust in the development-oriented politics of BJP".

Meanwhile, state BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya denied the Patel quota issue had any impact on the party's performance in GMC.

"Patel as well as other communities remained by our side in this election. Though Congress had tried to use the agitation (by Patels) for their political gains and tried to incite violence, people realised this negative tactics of Congress and rejected them," Pandya claimed.
New Delhi: Former IAF chief S P Tyagi on Tuesday denied allegations that he had influenced the 3,600-crore deal for VVIP helicopters in favour of Italy's AgustaWestland.

"My first reaction is shock... How can anybody say this, on what basis?" Tyagi told NDTV when asked whether he was involved in the VVIP chopper scam.

"They have blamed me for corrupt practices in which I changed the height to assist AgustaWestland, although this decision was not against the public interest. But I was nevertheless being (called) corrupt," the former IAF chief said.

"It would appear that the part of the loot came to me. I am shocked," he said.

Referring to the case, he said, "This is not a new case. (It has been) going on for years. All the evidences were also presented to the court in Milan itself. The trial court in Milan gave judgement in which they said there was no case of corruption.

"Same evidence was now produced in High Court. They seem to feel that it was done in corrupt practices. Why they have said it I am not in a position to comment," he said.

Asked pointedly whether he had received money for the Augusta deal, Tyagi said, "No, no, no, no. This question hurts me."

Asked whether his family members had received kickback, he said, "No, no no."

On the change of height parameter of the helicopters, Tyagi said this is in public domain why the height was changed and who changed it.

He said it involved two governments led by NDA and UPA and the National Security Advisors of both the governments were part of the meetings.

"They insisted on SPG and SPG got into it. They did not like the height, they did not like the single window...these are all in the public domain," he said.

Defending himself, he said, "Proforma clearance was given to me. The decision must have been taken by the government. The users were VVIP. IAF was not the user. SPG had to be consulted, therefore PMO stepped in. Otherwise PMO does not come into air force purchase. They took the decision and they asked the air force to change the requirement."

"SPG was not happy with the cabin height. SPG guards will not be able to stand with their guns to protect VVIP. These were issues and they discussed at length. Then decision was taken. IAF was asked to redo them. Now you are saying chief of AIF changed to assist Augusta. It was a collective decision," he asserted.

When told that Congress president Sonia Gandhi's name came up repeatedly for allegedly lobbying for the deal, Tyagi said, "All the documents available with Italian court are also available to investigating agencies. For the past three years, the investigating agencies have looked into all these documents. They have interviewed former Cabinet Secretary, former NSA, former DG of SPG."

We are still investigating with all the documents. Some of the documents have not been received and you have already decided who is corrupt... I find it very strange."
New Delhi: The issue of rustication of three Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students and slapping of fine on students' union leader Kanhaiya Kumar was raised in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday by the Left parties, which termed the action as vindictive and vengeful.

When the House started proceedings after some new members took oath and the listed papers were laid on the table, Tapan Kumar Sen (CPI-M) said he had given notice under rule 267 seeking suspension of business to raise the "serious issue" of "arrogant" and "anti-democratic" actions by JNU authorities.

He termed the rustication of Umar Khalid for one semester, Anirban Bhattacharya till 15 July and Kashmir student Mujeeb Gattoo for two semesters as well as the Rs 10,000 fine on Kanhaiya Kumar as "vindictive and vengeful" action taken in an "unjust manner".

"This is part of government's project to tamper with the rights of citizens. In the name of Constitution, they are tampering with the Constitution itself," Sen said.

The students were penalised for taking part at an event in JNU where slogans were raised in support of 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, who was hanged in February 2013.

CPI leader D Raja said that Parliament cannot remain a mute spectator to the university rusticating students in a vindictive manner on the basis of "doctored and false" videos.

Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien expunged certain remarks of Raja against the university saying since its representatives cannot defend themselves, such harsh words should not be used.

Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "we totally support whatever our colleagues have said."

Congress leader Anand Sharma said, "we are worried how the atmosphere in one after the other university is being vitiated."

The Chair could not give a ruling on the notice, as Congress members disrupted proceedings over dismissal of their party's government in Uttrakhand, leading to adjournment of the House.
In their first formal meeting after the terror strike by Pakistani terrorists in Pathankot, Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan on Tuesday held talks in New Delhi focusing on a range of outstanding issues including the Pathankot probe and Kashmir dispute.

While the Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar emphasized on need for 'early and visible progress' on Pathankot attack probe and on 26/11 trial, his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry stressed on the fact that Kashmir remains the core issue.

Chaudhry pointed that Kashmir requires a just solution in accordance with UNSC resolutions and wishes of Kashmiri people.

In a statement released before the talks came to a conclusion, Pakistan High Commission said that their Foreign Secretary underscored Pakistan's commitment to have friendly relations with all its neighbors and that all outstanding issues including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute were discussed.

"We pressed for immediate consular access to Kulbhushan Yadav, former naval officer, abducted and taken to Pakistan," said Vikas Swarup, the Ministry of External Affairs(MEA) spokesperson, reported ANI.

During the talks, Jaishankar conveyed that Pakistan cannot be in denial on the impact of terrorism on the bilateral relationship.

"Terrorist groups based in Pakistan targeting India must not be allowed to operate with impunity," Jaishankar said, according to a statement released by MEA.

India also took up the issue of listing of JeM chief Masood Azhar in the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee, the MEA informed.

Jaishankar firmly rebutted allegations of India's involvement in Balochistan or other areas, sources told ANI. Jaishankar asked which spy agency would put their agent in field with their own passport and without a visa.

Foreign Secretary Chaudhary, who arrived to attend the Heart of Asia conference, was received by Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

He later went to South Block to meet Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar.

Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry arrives in Delhi to attend 'Heart of Asia' conference pic.twitter.com/AMgPpfbGZp  ANI (@ANI_news) April 26, 2016

According to DNA, India-Pakistan talk process was temporarily halted after the Pathankot attack and Pakistan envoy to India, Abdul Basit, said that talks have been suspended between the two countries.

Hence Tuesday's meeting in the sidelines of the conference was of great significance for the relationship between the two countries.
Nainital: Rejecting the their claim that they were still in the party, the Congress Chief whip on Tuesday told the Uttarakhand High Court that the nine rebel MLAs had "in one voice" with the BJP legislators told the Governor that the Harish Rawat government was in minority and presented themselves as an alternative regime.

The submission was made before Justice UC Dhyani by advocate Amit Sibal, appearing for the Chief whip, who further argued that the nine were "paraded" before the Governor to show the "new majority".

The judge was hearing the petition by 9 Congress MLAs who were disqualified by Assembly Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal under the anti-defection law.

"Through the letter of March 18 morning and later the appearance in person of all the 35, they were presenting themselves to the Governor as an alternative government. They (the nine) need not have gone in person, yet they were paraded. Why would they go in person if not to show that they constitute a new majority.

"The joint memorandum was submitted on the letter head of Leader of Opposition Ajay Bhatt signed by all 35. It shows that the nine Congress MLAs were speaking in one voice with the 26 BJP MLAs," Sibal argued.

He also contended that the nine were "hell bent" on seeking dismissal of the government by "whatever it takes", be it "making false statements" or "suppression of documents".

He also said that though the dissident Congress MLAs say that they are willing to support another Congress government under another CM, this is not said in the memorandum to Governor and as it was a joint memo, the BJP MLAs would never say that.

Sibal further said, "Money bill or no money bill, on the morning of March 18 they told the Governor that the Congress government was in minority and that it was carrying on unconstitutionally. Therefore, their stand is clear and unequivocal."

"Their conduct cannot get any more overt than this. Money bill was the essence, the core of the party of which they are members. So if they sought a division of votes, that amounts to opposing the money bill," he said.
Coimbatore: A day after announcing that he would not contest the 16 May Tamil Nadu polls, MDMK chief Vaiko on Tuesday said that he will stand firm on his decision.

Vaiko, a key architect of the DMDK-PWF-TMC combine, had on Monday alleged that the DMK was planning to create "caste violence" in Kovilpatti constituency, from where he had earlier planned to contest.

"I am firm on my decision to not to contest," he told reporters in Coimbatore.

"DMK has hatched a plot to create tension in Kovilpatti between Thevar and Naicker communities by using my name and make me an accused, preventing me from contesting polls," Vaiko alleged.

Claiming that he was always "above caste politics", Vaiko said he backed out from contesting the poll so that it could "help to avoid triggering caste clashes".

"Despite the requests from the People's Welfare Front leaders to reconsider the decision, I am firm on it. It is not a drama," he said.

"If I preferred to contest from any other constituency, that will look like a drama," Vaiko said.

Vaiko said that the manifesto of the Peoples' Welfare Front (PWF) would be released on 28 April and it will have various schemes to generate money to the exchequer.

Many eyebrows were raised to know how the PWF government, if came to power, will raise the money, once total prohibition was introduced, by which a revenue of Rs 29,000 crore would be lost to the exchequer, Vaiko said.

The front has various schemes to generate the necessary fund, which will be highlighted in the manifesto, he said.

Schemes would also be introduced for the farmers and problems in the industrial sectors like Powerloom, Handloom and Knitwear, will be solved by putting in place single window system, by which licences will be issued within 30 days.

The front and its partners DMDK and TMC have already announced to waive the students' educational loans and farmers loans, he said.
New Delhi: Hitting back at BJP on the VVIP chopper deal, Congress on Tuesday sought to know why was Agusta Westland removed from the blacklisted category by the Modi dispensation.

Rejecting the accusations levelled against the party in the deal, Congress leader and former Union Minister Anand Sharma said, "The chopper deal was scrapped. Action was taken by the UPA government. A K Antony, the then Defence Minister had made a statement in Parliament and Agusta Westland was blacklisted.

"Probe was ordered by the UPA government  both by the ED and the CBI," he told reporters.

BJP is planning to target Congress President Sonia Gandhi and other party leaders on the issue of payment of bribes in the Augusta Westland chopper deal during the UPA rule in a bid to corner the main opposition party which has been paralysing Rajya Sabha on the Uttarakhand issue.

Sharma claimed that instead of putting the probe on the fast track, the Modi government removed Agusta Westland from the blacklisted category so that it "could bid for some projects of Navy as part of the Prime Minister's Make in India programme".

"What prompted the BJP government to reverse the decision of blacklisting," he asked insisting that the UPA government had been proactive in the probe once it came to know that some corruption was involved.

"We took the matter to the Milan court, to the Naples prosecutor," he said.

The Congress leader's reactions came following media reports that an Italian court, which has convicted Augusta Westland chief Giuseppe Orsi, has reportedly referred to how the firm paid bribes to top Congress leaders to bag the Rs 3,600 crore deal.

About allegations against Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the matter, Sharma said, "We reject them with the contempt they deserve".

"No one should be making loose comments against Congress President and Manmohan Singh whose integrity and intellect was never in question," he said.

Noting that he was not privy to the Italian court's documents, Sharma took a dig at BJP saying perhaps the "ruling party has got a special interpretation and translators team at their headquarters".

"BJP has been making irresponsible statements and the Congress is not going to accept this. They have been hurling wild accusations. We are not running away from debate. Why the probe is not over in the last two years," he said.

The Congress' counter-attack came close on the heels of BJP using the conviction of Italian officials linked to the VVIP chopper scam to target the former. The saffron party has asked A K Antony to name the party leaders allegedly involved in the scandal.

BJP wanted to know who were the "bribe takers" after those who allegedly gave the bribe were convicted by an Italian court.

Addressing a press conference earlier in the day, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Antony had in March 2013 admitted corruption had taken place in the purchase of VVIP choppers and that bribe had been taken. He asked Antony to come clean on the whole issue.
By CAI HONG in Tokyo and WANG QINGYUN in Beijing (China Daily)

China said on Tuesday it has noted Japan's positive tone over bilateral ties, but warned Tokyo to stop making indiscreet comments on issues including the South China Sea.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the remarks after Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida delivered a speech on Sino-Japanese relations on Monday.

Kishida said he will pay a visit to China. The visit, starting on Friday, will be his first formal visit to the country since the administration of Shinzo Abe took office in December 2012.

Relations between the two countries nose-dived after Japan moved to "purchase" the Diaoyu Islands in September 2012.

Kishida said in his speech "the only choice" for the two countries is to try to contribute to the world through friendship and cooperation, and that he hopes to contribute to establishing China-Japan relations that "suit the new times".

Kishida called on the two countries to expand cooperation and improve understanding and trust between their peoples.

Hua said that China hopes Japan will match its deeds with "positive information" Kishida delivered in his speech, and make effective efforts to improve bilateral ties.

However, Beijing "regrets to see that Japan is still commenting indiscreetly on China over some issues".

Kishida had voiced "worry" over what he called China's "fast and opaque increase in military spending" and its activities in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.

Hua said: "China has been sticking to the path of peaceful development and pursues defensive national defense policies. Its strategic purpose is transparent."

Japan, as a country outside the South China Sea region, "should get its position and attitude right and stop making indiscreet judgments on China", Hua said.

She emphasized that China's activities in the East China Sea and the South China Sea have been "totally legitimate and lawful".

Lyu Yaodong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Japanese Studies, said Kishida's comments reflect a four-point agreement China and Japan reached in November 2014. Under this, both countries agreed to gradually resume political, diplomatic and security dialogue through various multilateral and bilateral channels, and to try to establish political mutual trust.

"I hope Japan will effectively honor the comments made by Kishida in his speech. China has been easing and improving bilateral relations with the utmost sincerity," he said.

Contact the writer at wangqingyun@chinadaily.com.cn
Canning (West Bengal): Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for making "false promises", and said the "Modi-Mamata collusion" was a grave danger to the state as well as democracy.

Canvassing for the assembly polls here in South 24 Parganas district, Gandhi ridiculed Trinamool Congress supremo Banerjee's "tall claims of development", saying the only development was in the form of unemployment, farmer suicides and absence of law and order.

"The Trinamool which forgot all the promises it made before the polls, is now harping on development. But the reality is in front of you. If there is any real development, then why is industry closing, why are farmers committing suicide, why is there unemployment?"

"The industries are closing, there is no sign of law and order, there is rampant crime against women and there is so much of corruption that even new bridges are collapsing," she said.

Gandhi used the example of Hilsa, the exquisite gourmet fish of Bengal, to launch a scathing attack on both Banerjee and Modi.

"You must have heard how one fish can dirty the entire pond. The Trinamool in the last five years has dirtied so much that even your Hilsa have fled...Once Bengal's pride, such is the condition that now Hilsa has to be imported. And this is all because of Modi and Mamata."

"The BJP and Trinamool collectively have put prohibition on Indian fishing trawlers but trawlers from our neighbouring countries are being allowed to catch our fish," she alleged.

"Modi talks big about border security. When he couldn't save the fish, how will he secure our borders? The Pathankot attack is a big example of that," said Gandhi, referring to the January terror attack at the Pathankot air force station in Punjab.

"Much like Modi says Congress did nothing in 60 years and all the development work has been done by the BJP government, Mamata too says there was nothing in Bengal before she came to power.

"This Mamata-Modi collusion is a big danger for Bengal. These twin arrogant forces are a danger to democracy.

"The way the Modi government is functioning, it is endangering our country's basic structure, our secular values, endangering democracy and our age-old tradition and values," she said.

Urging people not to fall into the trap of the BJP and Trinamool's fake promises, Gandhi called upon people to vote for the Congress and the CPI-M led Left Front which have entered into an alliance.

"Five years back, the Trinamool fooled you with its tall promises and two years back Modi did the same. This time don't get entrapped by the BJP and Trinamool's tall promises, but vote for the Congress and Left Front nominees," she said.
Aleppo: Air strikes on rebel-held areas of Syria's second city Aleppo and a town to its west killed at least 19 people on Tuesday, emergency workers said.

The strikes came after rebel shelling killed at least 19 civilians in government-held districts of Aleppo on Monday and are the latest in a surge of violence in and around the city that has severely tested a 27 February ceasefire.

Fourteen civilians were killed in the strikes on rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo city, the civil defence  known as White Helmets  said.

Five of their own rescue workers were killed when their headquarters in the town of Al-Atarib, controlled by Islamist rebels, was hit by an air strike, the group said on Twitter.

It was not immediately clear whether the strike on Al-Atarib, 35 kilometres (20 miles) from Aleppo, was carried out by the Syrian air force or its Russian ally.

Fighting has surged on several fronts in Aleppo province, which is criss-crossed with supply routes that are strategic for practically all of Syria's warring sides.

Once Syria's commercial hub, Aleppo has been divided between rebel control in the east and government forces in the west since 2012.

In the rebel-held Fardos neighbourhood, an AFP correspondent saw a youth being helped down a rubble-strewn street with blood streaming from his head and leg.

Violence has rocked the divided city since Friday, with at least 100 civilians killed by artillery or rocket fire and air strikes.

The fighting severely threatens the February ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia and comes as UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva stall.

More than 270,000 people have been killed in Syria and millions been forced from their homes since the conflict erupted in 2011.
BEIRUT Attacks by government forces and rebels killed at least 30 people, including eight children, in the last 24 hours in Aleppo, a city seeing some of the worst of a renewed escalation in the Syrian war, a monitoring group said.

Intensified fighting has all but destroyed a partial ceasefire that started at the end of February, with U.N.-led peace talks in disarray.

In Aleppo, divided between areas controlled by the government and by rebels, 19 people were killed by rebel shelling and 11 were killed by government air strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

That adds to another 60 people killed over the weekend in Aleppo, Syria's largest city before the war, according to the Observatory. Air strikes were also reported in rebel-held areas near Damascus and in Hama province on Tuesday.

In a separate incident west of Aleppo, five Civil Defence workers - first responders in opposition-held territory where medical infrastructure has all but broken down - were killed by air strikes and a rocket attack on their centre.

The Observatory and Civil Defence colleagues said the attack appeared to have deliberately targeted the rescue workers in the town of Atareb, some 25 km (15 miles) west of Aleppo.

"The targeting was very precise," Radi Saad, a Civil Defence worker, told Reuters.

"They were in the centre and ready to respond. When they heard warplanes in the area they did not think they would be the target." Two people were seriously wounded and ambulances and cars belonging to doctors were destroyed, another Civil Defence member, Ahmad Sheikho, said.

It was unclear whether Syrian or Russian warplanes had launched the raids. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.

Each side accuses the other of targeting civilian areas in the five-year-old war that has killed more than 250,000 people.

A Syrian military source said the army would "respond firmly" against rebels attacking government-held parts of Aleppo. State news agency SANA said what it called terrorist groups, including the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, had shelled those neighbourhoods.

In the north of Aleppo, insurgents resumed bombardment of a Kurdish-controlled neighbourhood, Sheikh Maqsoud, according to the Kurdish YPG militia.

"Civilian areas were shelled at random," the YPG said.

The YPG and its allies have been battling rebels, including groups backed via Turkey by states opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, for several months near Aleppo and close to the Turkish border.

Rebels accuse the YPG of collaborating with the government in trying to stop people using the only road into opposition-held Aleppo, something the YPG denies.

Turkey sees the YPG as a terrorist group and is concerned at moves by Kurdish forces to expand their control along the Syrian-Turkish border, where they already hold an uninterrupted 400 km (250 mile) stretch.

(Reporting by John Davison; additional reporting by Tom Perry and Marwan Makdesi in Damascus; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
(Paragraph seven contains language that may offend some readers)

By Martin Petty and Manuel Mogato

DAVAO, Philippines As mayor of the Philippine city of Davao, Rodrigo Duterte has secretly rented a taxi and cruised crime-infested streets with a pistol by his side, hoping robbers would target him.

He has joined armed police raids on drug dens, negotiated in hostage incidents and advocated vigilante killings, making him a hero in a once lawless town he has run for 22 years

Duterte is known in the Philippines as "the punisher", an uncompromising provincial tough guy, whose profanity-packed speeches and death threats to drug gangs are now resonating far beyond Davao ahead of the May 9 presidential election.

A late entry into the race for the presidency, Duterte is now on the cusp of victory, surging in popularity after his promises to wipe out crime within six months.

Even the mere mention of crime gets him worked up.

"I will not let drugs and criminality destroy my country, I simply cannot accept that," Duterte told Reuters last week, surrounded by fans and posing fist-clenched for photographs.

"If everyone sits on their ass, we'll let criminals have their way," he said. "We have to stop fucking our people."

Dutertes crime-busting platform has tapped into concerns that growing drug usage among Filipinos has caused crime to skyrocket. Reported crimes in the Philippines soared five-fold from nearly 218,000 in 2012 to 1,161,000 in 2014, according to official data. Roughly half of those were serious crimes.

Duterte is stretching his lead in opinion polls and eclipsing traditional candidates Vice President Jejomar Binay and Manuel Roxas, whom outgoing President Benigno Aquino backs. Two surveys this week put Duterte between seven and 12 percentage points ahead of his nearest rival, Grace Poe.

NO REMORSE

His brashness and his rapid rise from outside of the political establishment has seen him likened to Donald Trump, as has his outrageous comments and refusal to act presidential.

The former prosecutor is indifferent to the 1,424 suspicious murders since 1998 documented in Davao by rights groups, which say "Davao death squads" operate with impunity on Duterte's watch. "Duterte Harry", as he is known, denies ordering extrajudicial killings, but he doesn't condemn them

"You talk about summary killings? I'm sorry, bad guys were killed. But what about the people who were abused? Who takes care of them?" he said.

Duterte, 71, was in hot water recently over a remark about an Australian missionary killed in a 1989 Davao prison riot. He said inmates had lined up to rape her and as mayor, he should have been first.

He is a self-confessed womaniser who lives modestly and typically dresses in jeans, polo shirts and loafers. He doesn't own a suit and said he has no plans to wear one as president.

Those who work with him tell the same stories of an unpredictable, hot-headed maverick who is charitable, but brutally strict.

Duterte banned smoking in Davao and threatened to kill a restaurant customer who refused to put out his cigarette. He made him eat it.

He has pulled over traffic violators and made them run laps around a park and has forced land-grabbers with forged documents to eat them, and tell him they tasted delicious.

"I'm sure he can be eloquent and savvy, but right now, that's not who he is," said Trisha Corpus, station manager at ABS-CBN TV radio Davao, where Duterte had a weekly show.

"Because of his simplicity, he's underestimated."

Live on air, Duterte cursed angrily and read out names of criminals, some of whom wound up dead days later. Many left town. Pressured by regulators, ABS-CBN had to pre-record his programme and bleep out expletives that averaged 30-40 per show.

Critics scoff at his plan to take his crime-busting model nationwide. Those who know him say it's not impossible.

"He's instilled fear among criminals," said one senior Davao policeman. "If his subordinates obey him, then it'll be easy."

'ROUGH AND SIMPLE'

Former congressman Jesus Dureza grew up with Duterte and offers a perspective that belies the mayor's thuggish image.

Dureza describes him as an accomplished lawyer who studies economic research papers, follows foreign affairs and regularly consults his policy teams.

"He's much deeper than what he wants people to see," Dureza said. "He comes across as rough and simple, shoot from the hip, but he wants to keep it that way."

He doubts Duterte ordered extrajudicial killings but said it wasn't in his interests to distance himself from them.

"He cashes in on that image," he said. "The hits aren't Duterte."

But not everyone is convinced.

Clarita Alia, 62, lost four teenage sons in Davao street killings between 2001 and 2007 and blames vigilantes she is certain Duterte has links to.

"When I see posters of him, I see the devil," she said. "I pray he won't win."

Father Amado "Picx" Picardal, a Catholic priest who documents the Davao killings, is worried Duterte will stay true to his word on crime.

"I don't think this is just hyperbole to win votes," he said. "He believes extrajudicial killings are justified and I expect what he promises, he'll try to do it."

(Reporting by Martin Petty and Manuel Mogato. Editing by Bill Tarrant)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
SYDNEY/TOKYO Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will announce on Tuesday whether France, Germany or Japan is the successful bidder for an A$50 billion ($40 billion) contract to build the country's new fleet of submarines, according to sources.

Two sources with knowledge of the negotiations said the contract for the 12 new submarines, a centrepiece of Australia's future defence strategy, would be announced within hours.

Local media reports suggested last week that Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (7011.T) and Kawasaki Heavy Industries (7012.T), the previous frontrunners for the contract, had dropped out of contention, leaving France's state-controlled naval contractor DCNS and Germany's ThyssenKrupp AG (TKAG.DE) to battle it out.

Beyond the contract price tag, one of the most lucrative global defence deals going, Australia's decision on the submarines has political implications both at home and abroad.

Industry watchers had anticipated a decision to come later in the year, but Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's recent gamble on a July 2 election has sped up the process.

The contract will likely have an impact on thousands of jobs in the shipbuilding industry in South Australia state, where retaining votes in key electorates will be critical for the government's chances of re-election.

"There are significant expenditures of public money," Treasurer Scott Morrison told reporters ahead of the announcement. "The focus is on Australia getting real benefits from jobs and experience in the future."

ThyssenKrupp is proposing to scale up its 2,000-tonne Type 214 class submarine.

France's state-controlled naval contractor DCNS has proposed a diesel-electric version of its 5,000-tonne Barracuda nuclear-powered submarine.

Japan has offered to build Australia a variant of its Soryu submarine.

A deal with the Japanese would cement closer strategic and defence ties with two of Washington's key allies in the region and represent a significant shift in Japan's post-war defence posture, but would also risk antagonizing China, Australia's top trading partner.

America's Raytheon Co (RTN.N), which built the system for Australia's ageing Collins-class submarines, is vying for a separate combat system contract with Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), which supplies combat systems to the U.S. Navy's submarine fleet.

(Editing by Lincoln Feast)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
SYDNEY/TOKYO Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will announce on Tuesday whether France, Germany or Japan is the successful bidder for an A$50 billion ($40 billion) contract to build the country's new fleet of submarines, according to sources.

Two sources with knowledge of the negotiations said the contract for the 12 new submarines, a centrepiece of Australia's future defence strategy, would be announced within hours.

Local media reports suggested last week that Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (7011.T) and Kawasaki Heavy Industries (7012.T), the previous frontrunners for the contract, had dropped out of contention, leaving France's state-controlled naval contractor DCNS and Germany's ThyssenKrupp AG (TKAG.DE) to battle it out.

One source with knowledge of the process told Reuters he had been told that DCNS had won the contract, while a second source at the French naval contractor said he was "quietly confident" of success ahead of the announcement by Turnbull.

Beyond the contract price tag, one of the most lucrative global defence deals going, Australia's decision on the submarines has political implications both at home and abroad.

Industry watchers had anticipated a decision to come later in the year, but Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's recent gamble on a July 2 election has sped up the process.

The contract will likely have an impact on thousands of jobs in the shipbuilding industry in South Australia state, where retaining votes in key electorates will be critical for the government's chances of re-election.

"There are significant expenditures of public money," Treasurer Scott Morrison told reporters ahead of the announcement. "The focus is on Australia getting real benefits from jobs and experience in the future."

France's state-controlled naval contractor DCNS has proposed a diesel-electric version of its 5,000-tonne Barracuda nuclear-powered submarine.

Japan has offered to build Australia a variant of its Soryu submarine.

A deal with the Japanese would cement closer strategic and defence ties with two of Washington's key allies in the region and represent a significant shift in Japan's post-war defence posture, but would also risk antagonizing China, Australia's top trading partner.

ThyssenKrupp is proposing to scale up its 2,000-tonne Type 214 class submarine, a technical challenge that sources had previously told Reuters was weighing against the German bid.

America's Raytheon Co (RTN.N), which built the system for Australia's ageing Collins-class submarines, is vying for a separate combat system contract with Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), which supplies combat systems to the U.S. Navy's submarine fleet.

(Editing by Lincoln Feast)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Dhaka: The Al Qaeda terrorist outfit on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the brutal killings of Bangladesh's first LGBT magazine editor along with a friend here, saying they were executed for "pioneering" homosexuality in the Muslim-majority country.

Julhash Mannan, the editor of 'Roopban' - the only magazine in Bangladesh advocating gay rights - and his friend Tanay Fahim were killed yesterday by armed assailants who entered the flat impersonating as courier company officials, police said.

The Al Qaeda in the Indian Sub continent (AQIS) claimed responsibility for killing the duo, saying that the two were because they were "pioneers of promoting and practicing homosexuality."

"The mujahidin of Ansar al-Islam (AQIS, Bangladesh branch) were able to assassin Julhash Mannan and his associate Tanay Fahim. They were the pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh," the AQIS said in a Twitter post.

"They were working day and night to promote homosexuality among the people of this land with the help of their masters, the US crusaders and its Indian allies," it was quoted as saying by Dhaka Tribune.

Mannan, 35, a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni and ex-protocol officer of the US embassy, was known for his gay rights activism. Fahim, the other victim, was also a LGBT activist.

The assailants barged into Mannan's flat on the second floor and stabbed him and his friend indiscriminately, Abdul Bari, a sub-inspector of Special Branch (SB) of police, was quoted as saying by the Daily Star.

The two died immediately on the spot. Mannan's body was found lying at the entrance of the house while Fahim's body was found inside. The killings came two days after the grisly murder of liberal university professor Rezaul Karim Siddiquee in the northern Rajshahi city. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State.
Rajshahi University, Bangladesh has been known for having a pool of progressive academics with secular bent of mind fostering cultural activities. On the other hand, there are fanatics who have been resorting to mindless violence killing the intellectuals in a systematic manner. The extermination of intellectuals in run up to the liberation struggle of 1970-'71 seems to be resonating even now.

The latest victim of this killing is professor Rezaul Karim Siddique (58), who was hacked to death mercilessly in Rajshahi. Slain Siddique was a cultural activist and Islamic extremists do away with such forces.

Earlier, seven bloggers, opposed to Islamic fundamentalism were hacked to death, beginning from 2013, when Rajib Haidar was killed followed by killings of Avijit Roy, Washiqur Rahman Babu, Ananta Bijoy Das and Niloy Chatterjee. We see a pattern in such killings. What's disturbing is the involvement of Ansar Al Islam, Bangladesh branch of Al-Qaeda. Complicity of such international terror outfit is an early warning signal for all the secular forces.

Significantly, Islamic State (IS) claimed that Jamat e Islami (JeI) grassroot workers of Bangladesh are being inducted into the IS. Shaykh Abu Ibrahim Al Hanif, IS modal man for Bangladesh, claimed in an interview in Dabiq that IS was responsible for targeting minorities in Bangladesh. According to Hanif, IS chose Bangladesh as its base in South Asia due to what IS described the country's important strategic geographic position, as then attacks in India and Myanmar could be coordinated from here. Isn't it a wake up call for all of us? This factor can not be ignored.

Bangladesh government has always been denying involvement of IS and Al-Qaeda in the killings stating that the violence was perpetrated by home grown terrorists. Either way, innocents continue to be the soft targets and government is seen as a mute helpless spectator to the never ending murders. By implication, one may infer that there is a possibility of collaboration by one section of the establishment. Or else, such activities can not go on and on.

Hindu minority, in the meantime, has been facing massive atrocities. According to a secular and cultural activist Kamal Lohani, there were 34 percent Hindus in Bangladesh soon after its independence in 1971. Now the figure stands at a meagre 8 percent. Many must have migrated to India while many became hapless victims of excesses by Islamic extremists.

Head of the minority association, Rana Dasgupta claimed that from January to March this year alone, there were 732 cases of Human rights violations against the minorities, especially the Hindus. This is no mean statistics. Such atrocities include forced conversions, murders, desecration of places of worship and illegal occupation of Hindu property. A section of the polity even accuse the ruling Awami League of direct connivance in such acts. And if there is state complicity and a deep rooted conspiracy in suppressing the Hindus, then it's really disturbing and has far reaching implications for India.

Under these circumstances, Indian and Bangladeshi security and intelligence agencies must work in very close coordination to stem the growing influence of IS in Bangladesh as evident by frequent killings. Till then, the secular forces and minority community remain vulnerable to threats emanating from powerful quarters enjoying IS support.

The author is an ex-IPS officer who has been following Bangladesh for the last many years.
Washington: US President Barack Obama said Monday that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin is trying to undermine European unity, which he sees as a threat.

Speaking to CBS News in an interview set to air Tuesday morning, Obama said Europe's migrant crisis is also a problem for the United States.

"But more importantly, more strategically, is the strain it's putting on Europe's politics, the way that it advances far-right nationalism, the degree to which it is encouraging a break-up of European unity, that in some cases, is being exploited by somebody like Mr. Putin," he said.

Putin sees Nato, the European Union and transatlantic unity as a threat, Obama added.

"Now, I think he's mistaken about that," he said. "I've indicated to him that, in fact, a strong, unified Europe working with a strong, outward-looking Russia, that's the right recipe."

"So far, he has not been entirely persuaded."

Obama was speaking at the end of a trip to the Middle East and Europe, where he urged European leaders to show greater unity in the face of lingering economic crisis, an Islamist terror threat and the huge flow of migrants from the Middle East and elsewhere.

He also urged Britain not to vote to leave the European Union in a referendum in June.
KANANASKIS, Alberta Canada and Britain will urge other nations not to pay ransoms to free kidnap victims, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday, the day after a Canadian hostage was found dead in the Philippines.

Trudeau said if Canada paid ransoms it would put at risk all of its citizens who travelled or lived abroad. Islamist militants beheaded the Canadian man this week after a deadline passed.

Asked about nations that do pay off kidnappers, Trudeau said he had discussed the matter with British Prime Minister David Cameron and both were convinced the practice was wrong.

"We agreed that it is something that we are going to make sure we do bring up with our friends and allies around the world," Trudeau told reporters after a cabinet retreat in the Alberta resort of Kananaskis.

"We need to make sure that terrorists understand that they cannot continue to fund their crimes and their violence (by) taking innocents hostage," he said.

John Ridsdel, 68, a former mining executive, was executed by Abu Sayyaf militants who captured him and three others in 2015 while they were on vacation on a Philippine island. Another Canadian, Robert Hall, is still in captivity.

"We are working with our allies, including the Philippines, to ensure the perpetrators of this heinous act are brought to justice," said Trudeau, who dismissed media reports saying he had been involved in talks to free the hostages.

Last year Canadian police arrested a Somali man in Ottawa for what they say was his role in the 2008 hostage-taking of a Canadian freelance journalist in Somalia. Police said the arrest came after extraterritorial undercover operations, but gave no details.

Abu Sayyaf, which is linked to Islamic State, has collected tens of millions of dollars from ransoms since it was formed in the 1990s, security experts say.

The Philippines rarely publicizes payments of ransom, but it is widely believed no captives are released without them.

Questions about whether Ottawa has paid kidnappers arose in April 2009, after the release of two Canadian diplomats who were seized in Mali in December 2008.

Stephen Harper, who was prime minister at the time, denied Canada had paid any money to secure the men's freedom.

In October 2009, the Globe and Mail newspaper cited Mali government sources as saying the African nation had released four al Qaeda members in exchange for the two Canadians.

(Writing by David Ljunggren; Editing by David Gregorio and Tom Brown)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Beijing: China on Tuesday said it had expressed concern to India through diplomatic channels over granting visa to Chinese dissident Dolkun Isa before it was revoked by New Delhi and hoped that the two sides would properly deal with the issue.

"We have noted relevant report. At first we saw that India planned to issue visa to Dolkun, we expressed our concern to the Indian side immediately," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing in Beijing when asked about India cancelling the visa.

"Dolkun is on the red notice of Interpol and we believe that it is the responsibility of all the countries to bring him to justice," she said.

"At the moment China and India are in very good communication and we hope the two countries will properly deal with the relevant issue," she said.

Later officials said that China had conveyed its concerns to India through diplomatic channels. It is not a protest but China's concerns has been conveyed to India, they said.

Isa, who heads the World Uyghur Congress, which campaigns for rights of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province which is in turmoil for several years over protests against the settlements of Hans from different parts of the country.

Xinjiang, which has over 10 million Uyghur population of Turkik-origin, was on the boil for several years over Uyghur protests against the large-scale settlements of Hans from different part of the country.

China blames al-Qaeda-backed East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) for the violence in Xinjiang and other parts of the country.

Chinese officials allege that Isa provided funding and training to ETIM militants to facilitate their terrorist activities.

Earlier, a Chinese state-run Think Tank said that the cancellation of Isa's visa by India will contribute to healthy development of relations between the two countries and it shows their common views in fighting terrorism and separatism.

"India has made a cogitative decision, and shows the common views of China and India in fighting terrorism and separatism, and the determination of further cooperation," Fu Xiaoqiang, an expert on South Asian studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times.

"It will contribute to the healthy development of relations between China and India," Hu said.
Washington: In a head-to-head match-up, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has a three percent advantage nationally over her Republican rival Donald Trump, according to a new poll.

The latest George Washington University Battleground (GW Battleground) poll puts her ahead at 46 to Trump's 43, with 11 percent of the voters undecided.

Interestingly, though, Senator Bernie Sanders, who has mounted a spirited but now seemingly futile challenge against Clinton, fares much better against Trump nationally, with an 11 percent advantage at 51 to 40, with the rest undecided.

The bipartisan poll, conducted in partnership with The Tarrance Group and Lake Research Partners, found that among "likely voters", an overwhelming 89 percent have been following the nomination process of the two parties closely, and that they have "negative views of almost all major candidates".

The poll found that of the five candidates still in the race for the highest office, only two  Vermont Senator Sanders and Ohio governor John Kasich  have an unfavourable rating below 50 percent, at 44 and 29, respectively.

The three others  former Secretary of State Clinton (56 percent), Texas Senator Ted Cruz (55 percent) and businessman Trump (65 percent)  are all mostly disliked, with a majority of voters saying they would not consider voting for them for president.

Interestingly, the poll found that former president Bill Clinton, who has been campaigning for his wife, has a higher favourability rating than four of the five contenders: with 54 percent favourable and 41 percent unfavourable.

The current president, too, fared better than the candidates. President Barack Obama's job approval rating was at 51 percent. This is the first time since December 2012 that the GW Battleground Poll found a higher approval than disapproval rating for President Obama.

"There is bad news aplenty here for both parties. Voters are disheartened, discouraged about the future and disdainful of the leading candidates in both parties," Christopher Arterton, founding dean of the GW Graduate School of Political Management was quoted as saying in a release.

"On many important issues, the public seems to lean toward the Republican party... But since the two candidates with the best chance of receiving the Republican nomination are viewed even more unfavorably at this point than Secretary Clinton, there's a good chance we are headed into an election where voters will see their choice as between the lesser of two unhappy options."

The poll surveyed 1,000 "likely voters" nationwide from April 17 to 20. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Indias decision to cancel Dolkun Isas visa may placate China, but is a huge embarrassment for the Narendra Modi government, which prides itself in being assertive, unlike its wishy-washy UPA predecessor.

Dolkun Isa has made it plain that New Delhi buckled under Chinese pressure. India firmly denies this and says it was unaware of the red corner Interpol notice that has been issued against the leader of the World Uyghur Congress.

That admission reflects poorly on India. It shows the level of incompetence in the government, and indicates that the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. It now appears that the home ministry did not know who is Dolkum Isa. The fact that China regards him as a 'terrorist' and has a red-corner notice issued against him, was completely missed.

If what officials are putting out is true, it speaks volumes about the way home ministry functions. The level of ignorance about China is abysmal. Are they not aware of the ethnic unrest in the Xinjiang province, which China has been fighting for several years.? The Islamic population there wants to carve out an independent state made up of the Muslim Uighurs. There have been plenty of reports about the violence in Xinjiang, and if India has not kept abreast of events in the restive region, it is a telling comment on the government of the day.

Government sources insist that the visa was not withdrawn to offend China, but was a genuine mistake in the electronic data base which did not show up the red corner notice against Isa. Whatever the reason, the government appears to have blundered, and badly. But many former officials do not buy the bungling theory.

Former foreign secretary Lalit Mansing said, "It is a serious embarrassment. The government took a calculated step, which we all welcomed but did not follow through with it. He added that the logic was simple. " India was not trying to challenge China, but the message had to go across after the Masoor Azhar episode that India could also play the same game. But there seemed to be a sudden change of heart.

Senior officials privately admit it is an embarrassment, more so because the initial reaction of most Indians was to welcome the move. Former Cabinet Secretary Naresh Chandra, who had earlier welcomed the move to grant Dolkun Isa a visa, said he was disappointed. "It was a good move to grant the visa. But considering that there was a Red Corner Notice against Isa, the government could not have done anything other than cancel it. At the same time, the Chinese are not fools and have got the message."

"By giving Dolkun Isa a visa, India recorded its displeasure on Chinas stand on Masood Azhar at the UNSC. For two days, everybody talked about it. Just as suddenly, Delhi decided to withdraw it, which was a good move. If he had come for the conference, it would have been a serious issue. It would have negated much of the gains India-China ties had in recent years. There is a certain momentum in the relations which neither India nor China wish to disrupt, said China scholar Manoranjan Mohanty. "But such hiccups are part of India-China relations, he added ``and will continue till major issues are resolved. Mohanty believes that scaling down tensions between the two Asian giants is the right way forward and that there was no need for either country to flex its muscles. It is important to maintain peace and tranquility in the border. If Delhi hosted Isa, Indian separatists could well be hosted by China, as a tit-for-tat measure.

Srikanth Kondapalli of JNUs Institute of Chinese Studies, has a different take on the visa drama. He believes there was no bungling by the government. "It was a deliberate move and some behind-the-scenes hard bargaining took place. You will see the result of all this next when the Masood Azhar issue crops up again at the UNSC. My hunch is that China will not oppose the move.

Kondapallis view that China was ready to do hard bargaining with India can only be known in the future. But for now there is nothing to suggest that this has happened.

Whatever be the view of experts, the fact remains that Indias climb down did not go down well with the general public. Perhaps Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his advisers should think through the consequences of its action, when dealing with a complex and powerful neighbour like China.
London: A 28-year-old prisoner lodged in a high-security British jail has topped his class in a Masters course in criminology at the elite Cambridge University.

Gareth, whose last name and details are being withheld by the UK's Ministry of Justice, was one of the 22 inmates at Her Majesty's Prison (HMP) Grendon in Buckinghamshire, south-east England.

He studied alongside nearly a dozen criminology students at Cambridge in one of their Master of Philosophy modules. Gareth, who is five years into his sentence, is serving an undisclosed prison term, The Times reported.

"What makes Gareth great is his eloquence, his passion for social justice issues, his high capacity to process and probe complex ideas... and his deep humanity and humility. He loves ideas, was ready to challenge himself and put in the hard work necessary," Dr Amy Ludlow, law lecturer at Gonville and Caius College, and Ruth Armstrong, research associate at St John's College of the university, told the newspaper.

The inmate described the eight-week course as "transformational". "Talking to Cambridge students was very different to talking to other prisoners. Prison means that you are isolated from the rest of the world not just physically, but socially too. But we had more in common than I thought we would. Then I found I could grasp theories and models quickly and keep them in my head. I did work hard. I always did my pre-reading and was known as diligent," he said.

Gareth now hopes to complete his MPhil at Pembroke College, Cambridge, when he finishes his sentence, the time-frame for which is not being revealed.

He has been made a conditional offer and has had two papers accepted by academic journals, to be published next month. Gareth will secure his place at Pembroke if he obtains a first in the Open University degree in social science for which he is now studying.

HMP Grendon is referred to as a "therapeutic" prison, the only one of its kind in Europe. Inmates apply to go there from elsewhere in the UK prison system and undergo intensive psychotherapy as part of their sentence.

The distance learning project was designed to offer high-end education in the prison and enable Cambridge University students to leave the campus and gain a deeper understanding of the UK criminal justice system and those who commit crime. It was structured and organised by Dr Ludlow.
Washington: Five US states vote Tuesday at a critical juncture in the presidential race, with Hillary Clinton seeking a knockout against Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump confident of extending his lead despite rivals joining forces against him.

A very strong showing in primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island would put former secretary of state Clinton on the cusp of Democratic victory, a monumental step in her quest to become the nation's first female commander in chief.

"I don't have the nomination yet," she said in an MSNBC town hall event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's largest city.

"We're going to work really hard until the polls close tomorrow."

Trump too was traveling the primary landscape in an intensifying effort to surpass the threshold of 1,237 delegates needed to lock down the role of 2016 Republican flag bearer.

But his rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich controversially have joined forces to thwart the frontrunner, unveiling a late ploy that allows them to essentially go one on one against Trump in key upcoming states.

According to the surprise deal, Kasich will forego campaigning in Indiana, which votes 3 May, and Cruz will return the favor later in New Mexico and Oregon to try to deprive Trump of victories there.

Cruz told potential voters in Indiana Monday that the deal would give them "a straight and direct choice between our campaign and Donald Trump."

Indiana is a winner-take-all state where a Trump loss would make it much harder for him to reach the winning delegate threshold.

'Pathetic' plan

Trump erupted at news of the deal, assailing the pair as engaging in a desperate strategy that he described as collusion.

"You know if you collude in business, or you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail," Trump boomed in Warwick, Rhode Island.

"But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude."

The partnership "shows how weak they are," Trump said. "It shows how pathetic they are."

Kasich's campaign said the aim was to open the July nominating convention in Cleveland so that a unifying figure other than Trump can emerge as the candidate.

The Ohioan insists he is the only one who could beat Clinton. But his remarks suggested the alliance with Cruz was already fraying.

"I've never told them not to vote for me" in Indiana, he told reporters at a Philadelphia diner. "They ought to vote for me."

"What's the big deal?" he added.

According to a recent CBS poll, Trump leads Indiana with 40 percent of likely Republican voters, compared to 35 percent for Cruz and 20 percent for Kasich.

The newfound allies acknowledge their only hope of success lies in blocking Trump from reaching 1,237 delegates before the convention.

If he falls short, Trump runs the risk that his delegates, who are bound to vote for him in only the first round of balloting, will desert him in subsequent rounds.

Cruz in particular has been successfully maneuvering in state party conventions to have individuals named to delegate slots who, though bound to Trump on the first ballot, would be sympathetic to Cruz in subsequent rounds when they are free to vote for whomever they choose.

Party heavyweights, alarmed by the prospect of a Trump nomination, have long pressed for a united effort around a single candidate against him.

But Cruz is almost as unpopular with the party's establishment as Trump, and Kasich has refused to bow out even though he has only won his home state of Ohio.

"Folks, they ought to both drop out of the race so we ought to unify the Republican Party," Trump told supporters in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

'Terrible role models'

Cruz, perhaps emboldened by the prospect of stopping Trump, has already begun searching for possible vice presidential options.

His campaign chairman Chad Sweet confirmed to CNN that Cruz was vetting several potential vice presidential candidates, and that businesswoman Carly Fiorina, herself a former White House hopeful, "absolutely" was among them.

In an election year that has highlighted voter disaffection with politics as usual, a chaotic convention fight would almost surely damage Republican prospects in November.

The bruising battle is already straining the party and its supporters.

Billionaire Charles Koch, a mega-funder for conservative causes, said in an interview Sunday with ABC's "This Week" that the Republican candidates were "terrible role models" and did not see how he could support them.

Raising eyebrows among Republicans, Koch added it was "possible" Clinton would be a better president.

Trump is favored to win all five states Tuesday, while Sanders, whose grass-roots campaign has done well against the Clinton juggernaut, is seen as mounting a last-gasp effort.

"We are running as hard as we can to win this thing," Sanders said Monday.
New Delhi: The much-awaited foreign secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan got underway on 26 April with Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar meeting his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry in South Block here on Tuesday.

Another important bilateral for foreign secretary as he meets with his Pakistan counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry, external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup tweeted along with pictures of the two officials.

Jaishankar had earlier on Tuesday held a bilateral meeting with Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Karzai.

The talks between the Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries are being held on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process conference that India is hosting on Tuesday.

The two top diplomats will strive to put the bilateral dialogue process back on track during the meeting at the South Block.

The talks, earlier scheduled for the middle of January this year, got stalled following the cross-border attack on the Pathankot air base on 2 January in which seven Indian security personnel were killed by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed militants.

The attack derailed the dialogue process which got a kick-start with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's visit to Islamabad last October for a Heart of Asia ministerial meeting jointly hosted by Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Kashmir remains the "core issue" with India, Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry told his Indian counterpart as they met on the sidelines of a global conference.

A statement from the Pakistan High Commission said "all outstanding issues, including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, were discussed".

"The Foreign Secretary (Chaudhry) emphasized (in his meeting with Jaishankar) that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution, in accordance with UN resolution and wishes of the Kashmiri people," the statement said.

Both the sides agreed on resumption of the bilateral dialogue, naming it Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 25 December stopover to Lahore during which he met his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif also gave a fillip to the dialogue process.

The Heart of Asia Istanbul Process senior officials meeting will begin at Hyderabad House at 3 pm on Tuesday.
The foreign secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan on the sidelines of the 'Heart of Asia' meet were expected to take a step forward towards the initiation of a comprehensive dialogue between the two neighbouring countries.

It would have given an idea as to when would the next meet be  either ministerial or official, when would Pakistan allow the NIA to visit there to take the Pathankot investigations further, or when would Pakistan make any move against Maulana Masood Azhar and Hafiz Saeed. But, none of this happened.

Instead, we got a statement from India's external affairs ministry saying that, "the two foreign secretaries exchanged ideas on taking the relationship forward and agreed to remain in touch".

No dates, no time frame, no word on modalities of "remain in touch" were given.

From the statements issued by the Indian and Pakistani sides, it would appear to any ordinary citizen that the two sides were almost in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation mode, albeit with all the niceties of diplomatic protocol intact. From the quick official statements or the tweets fired by the two sides, it does not appear that it was a friendly talk.

Both sides stated their positions, saying that the meet was just a direct, one-to-one official meeting. No forward movement, not even a date or a tentative time frame as to when they would confront each other next was stated.

Compare and contrast the statements issued by the two sides, and it appears to be more than clear that each is rebutting the other, while raising counterpoints:

Official twitter account of High Commission for Pakistan said: "FS emphasized that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution in accordance with UNSC resolutions & wishes of Kashmiri people. All outstanding issues including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute were discussed."

India's MEA statement said: "Foreign Secretary Jaishankar clearly conveyed that Pakistan cannot be in denial on the impact of terrorism on the bilateral relationship. Terrorist groups based in Pakistan targeting India must not be allowed to operate with impunity."

Pak: "FS took up matter of RAW officer, Kulbushan Jadev & expressed serious concern over RAW's involvement in subversive activities in Baluchistan/Khi"

India: "We pressed for immediate consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav, the former Naval officer abducted and taken to Pakistan."

Pak: "FS also conveyed concern over the environment being created in India for the release of the prime suspects of the Samjhauta Express blasts. The FS said such acts undermine efforts to normalize relations between the two countries."

India: "India's Foreign Secretary emphasised the need for early and visible progress on the Pathankot terrorist attack investigation as well as the Mumbai case trial in Pakistan. He also brought up the listing of JeM leader Masood Azhar in the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee."

Pak: "FS further pointed out that, despite repeated requests India has not shared investigation reports in which 42 Pakistanis had lost their lives"

India: "The discussions also covered humanitarian issues including those pertaining to fishermen and prisoners, and people to people contacts including religious tourism."

Pak: "The meeting provided a useful opportunity to exchange views on recent developments in bilateral context."

India: "Their discussions were frank and constructive. Both sides raised issues of concern to them."

By stating their positions and letting them out into the public domain, it is clear that both the Indian and Pakistani establishments were keen to underscore their points to their respective domestic audiences, and to let the international community know what they were talking about.

The officials maintain that this meet provided an occasion, after the Pathankot terror attack, to do some direct plain speaking with Pakistan.

The ruling BJP will have a tough time in explaining it's position, and would have to explain why the Modi government agreed to proceed with the bilateral talks despite Pakistan not taking any visible action against the perpetrators of the terror attacks in Pathankot and Mumbai.

True that the Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry and his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar met on the sidelines of a multilateral Heart of Asia meet, which India is hosting, but given Prime Minister Narendra Modi's strong pre-parliamentary poll positioning, things appear to be becoming difficult for him and his party.
Manila: Islamic militants in the Philippines have beheaded a Canadian hostage, sparking fears for more than 20 others they are holding on remote islands, with security forces vowing Tuesday to hunt down the extremists.

The man's head was found Monday dumped outside city hall on Jolo, a mountainous and jungle-clad island in the far south of the Philippines that is a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf Islamist group.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Filipino authorities identified the victim as John Ridsdel, a retiree in his late 60s who was kidnapped seven months ago from aboard a yacht, along with another Canadian man, a Norwegian and a Filipina woman.

"This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau said in Ottawa.

The four were abducted at a marina near the major city of Davao, more than 500 kilometres (300 miles) from Jolo, as part of a wave of abductions by the Abu Sayyaf, a loose network of militants who for more than two decades have run a lucrative kidnapping-for-ransom business.

The other three were fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Hall's girlfriend Marites Flor, and Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad.

Six weeks after the abduction, gunmen released a video of their hostages held in a jungle setting, demanding the equivalent of $21 million each for the safe release of the three foreigners.

The men were forced to beg for their lives on camera, and similar videos posted over several months showed the hostages looking increasingly frail.

In the most recent video, Ridsdel said his captors would kill him on 25 April if a ransom of $6.4 million was not paid.

Hours after the deadline passed, police in the Philippines said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, which is about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from Manila.

Ridsdel, a former journalist, oil executive and sailing enthusiast, had moved to the Philippines to manage a gold mine prior to retiring.

Hunt for militants

Trudeau said Canada was working with the Philippines to pursue and prosecute the killers, and that efforts were under way to obtain the release of the other hostages.

In the Philippines, security forces said they were setting up checkpoints across Jolo in an effort to block the movements of the gunmen.

"There will be no let up in the determined efforts of the joint task group's intensive military and law enforcement operations to neutralise these lawless elements," said a statement released Tuesday by the national police and military forces.

However, Philippine security forces have made similar statements many times against the Abu Sayyaf and often failed to achieve their objectives.

Most recently, 18 Filipino soldiers were killed on 9 April as they waged a day-long battle against Abu Sayyaf gunmen on Basilan, an island neighbouring Jolo that is also one of the group's strongholds.

The Abu Sayyaf is a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since the 1970s.

Kidnapping spree

Authorities say the group is currently holding more than 20 foreigners after a recent wave of abductions.

These include 18 Indonesian and Malaysian sailors who were abducted from tugboats near the southern Philippines over the past month.

The Abu Sayyaf is also believed to be holding a Dutch bird-watcher kidnapped in 2012, while it recently released a retired Italian priest after six months in captivity.

One of the Abu Sayyaf's biggest recent windfalls is believed to have come in 2014 when it claimed to have been paid more than $5 million for the release of a German couple who were abducted from aboard their yacht in the southwest Philippines.

The Abu Sayyaf's leaders have recently declared allegiance to the Islamic State group that is causing carnage in the Middle East and has carried out deadly attacks in Europe.

However, analysts say the Abu Sayyaf is mainly focused on getting money through its kidnappings, rather than waging an ideological war.

The United States deployed special forces advisers to provide training and intelligence to Filipino troops from 2002 to 2014, which led to the killing or arrest of many Abu Sayyaf leaders.

However the Abu Sayyaf, which is believed to have hundreds of armed followers, has since re-emerged as a major threat.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended the stay of marine Massimiliano Latorre, who along with his colleague Salvatore Girone is accused of killing two fishermen off Kerala coast in 2012, in Italy till 30 September.

The court was informed by the Centre that international arbitration proceedings in the matter would be completed by December 2018.

A bench comprising Justices AR Dave, Kurian Joseph and Amitava Roy asked the Italian authority in New Delhi to give an undertaking to abide by the conditions under which Latorre was allowed to leave India.

It said a fresh undertaking has to be furnished before 30 April when the earlier extension of his stay comes to an end.

Solicitor General (SG) Ranjit Kumar apprised the bench about the schedule of proceedings fixed before International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Germany.

"End of 2018 is when the award will come," the SG told the bench, saying that India had not agreed for the conclusion of proceedings in 2019.

The apex court had on 13 January asked the Centre to apprise it of the status of international arbitration proceedings in the case.

The court had earlier stayed all criminal proceedings, including the trial of the two marines.

While allowing the joint request of India and Italy, the apex court had said the proceedings would remain stalled till the jurisdictional issue about which country has the right to conduct trial was decided through international arbitration.

The SG said that all the proceedings will remain stayed in India till the matter is pending in the tribunal. He also said the Government of India is clear that nothing can proceed till the tribunal passes the award.

Senior advocate Soli Sorabjee, appearing for the marine, wanted the extension of Latorre's stay in Italy till the year end but the court did not agree with him.

Sorabjee was of the view that since there was no trial, there was no point in compelling him to come back.

The marines, who were on board ship 'Enrica Lexie', are accused of killing two Indian fishermen off the Kerala coast on 15 February, 2012.

The counsel, appearing for victim fishermen, raised an objection that identical relief of allowing the other accused marine Salvatore Girone to leave India, should not be given.

The SG said that it has been told to the tribunal that India has the freedom to go ahead with the trial.

The apex court had on 26 August, 2015 suspended all court proceedings here in pursuance of an interim order of the ITLOS asking India to maintain "status quo" in the case.

The Centre had then said that a five-member tribunal (ITLOS Annex VII arbitral tribunal) would be set up, probably to decide the issue of jurisdiction.

The court, in August last year, had extended the stay of Latorre, who underwent a heart surgery in Italy, by six months while asking him to file an undertaking that he would abide by its conditions.

Latorre, who had suffered a brain stroke on 31 August, 2014, was allowed by the apex court on 12 September, 2014 to go to Italy for four months and after that, extensions have been granted to him.

The complaint against the Italian marines was lodged by Freddy, the owner of the fishing boat 'St Antony', in which the two Indian fishermen were killed when the marines opened fire on them allegedly under the misconception that they were pirates.
New Delhi: Two crucial files relating to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose will be declassified by Japan this year-end, but the country has given no assurance regarding three more such files in its custody, government said on Tuesday.

Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju told Lok Sabha that these five files, which are with Japan, could be "crucial" to resolve the mystery over the fate of Bose.

"Japan has conveyed to us that they will declassify two of the five files by the end of this year but no commitment has been given to the rest of the three files. But we are hopeful that they will declassify the remaining three files too," he said during Question Hour.

Rijiju said two files relating to Netaji which were with the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Home Affairs continue to be missing and efforts were on to trace them.

While the file, which was with the PMO, related to bringing back the ashes believed to be of Netaji from Renkoji temple in Japan to India and installation of his statue at Red Fort, the file which was with the MHA too related to the ashes, he said, adding efforts were on to find these two files.

Rijiju said India has approached a number of countries to retrieve any documents related to Netaji and they have responded to the requests.

While Austria, Russia and the United States have conveyed to the Indian government that they do not have any file or document relating to Netaji, the United Kingdom said that all 62 files under their possession were given to British Library and are available for public.

Germany too has said that the files relating to Netaji were archived after declassifying them, he said.

Rijiju said the first two inquiry commissions had suggested that Bose died in a plane crash in Taihoku (now Taipei) on 18 August 1945, but the Mukherjee commission had rejected the conclusions of the previous two inquiry commissions.

"We are not in a position to say actually what had happened to Netaji," he said.

The Minister said around 150 Netaji files have been declassified so far and were available online, while 25 more files each are being uploaded online every month.

In October last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met the family members of Netaji and announced that the government would declassify the files relating to the leader whose disappearance 70 years ago remains a mystery.

While two commissions of inquiry had concluded that Netaji had died in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945, a third probe panel, headed by Justice M K Mukherjee, had contested it and suggested that no such aircrash had taken place.
HANOVER, Germany President Barack Obama announced on Monday the biggest expansion of U.S. ground troops in Syria since its civil war began, but the move was unlikely to mollify Arab allies angry over Washington's cautious approach to the conflict.

The deployment of up to 250 Special Forces soldiers increases U.S. forces in Syria roughly sixfold and is aimed at helping militia fighters who have clawed back territory from Islamic State militants in a string of victories.

Defense experts said giving more fighters on the ground access to U.S. close air support could shift the momentum in Syria. But a senior member of the Saudi royal family who asked not to be identified dismissed the decision as "window dressing."

In announcing the deployment, Obama emphasized the importance of sustaining the gains made in the fight against Islamic State, although he cautioned that the U.S. forces would not be spearheading the battle.

"They're not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces as they continue to drive ISIL back," he said in a speech in the German city of Hanover, using an acronym for Islamic State.

Obama was speaking on the last stop of a foreign tour that also took him to Saudi Arabia and Britain.

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and her rival, Bernie Sanders, voiced support on Monday for the deployment.

"These Special Forces will continue to provide critical support to local forces on the ground who ultimately must be the ones to win this fight," Clinton's campaign said in a statement. The former secretary of state previously called for a tougher approach to fighting Islamic State militants, including more air strikes and Special Forces.

Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, said during an MSNBC town hall: I think what the president is talking about is having American troops training Muslim troops, helping to supply the military equipment they need, and I do support that effort."

The U.S. military has led an air campaign against Islamic State since 2014 in Iraq and Syria, but its effectiveness in Syria has been limited by a lack of allies on the ground in a country where a multi-sided civil war has raged for five years.

A Russian air campaign launched in Syria last year has been more effective because it is closely coordinated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is Moscow's ally but a foe of the United States.

Rising tensions with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab monarchies, which have privately criticized the Obama administration's security policy toward the region, also have complicated the U.S. effort in Syria.

U.S. Republican Senator John McCain called the move overdue but insufficient. "Another reluctant step down the dangerous road of gradual escalation will not undo the damage in Syria to which this administration has borne passive witness," said McCain, who leads the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump did not mention the deployment during a campaign rally in Rhode Island. He plans to address foreign policy in a speech on Wednesday in Washington.

CLOSE AIR SUPPORT

Washington's main allies on the ground have been a Kurdish force known as the YPG, which wrested control of much of the Turkish-Syrian border from Islamic State. But the alliance has been constrained because U.S. ally Turkey is deeply hostile to the YPG.

"Presumably these (extra U.S. forces) are going to assist our Kurdish YPG friends to widen and deepen their offensive against IS in northeastern Syria, said Tim Ripley, defense analyst and writer for IHS Jane's Defense Weekly magazine.

The deployment will include medical and logistics support personnel, officials said, and U.S. support for the American forces in Syria will be staged out of northern Iraq.

Their goal will be to help screen and equip Arab fighters seeking to join up with the majority Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. U.S. officials say Arab fighters will be crucial to future operations against Islamic State in traditionally Arab parts of Syria.

But Washington would still have to take a political decision to help the Kurds despite Turkish objections. Kurdish advances have largely stopped since February, with Turkey opposed to the Kurds taking more territory.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed coalition set up in October to unite the Kurdish YPG and some Arab allies, welcomed Obama's announcement but said it still wanted more help.

"Any support they offer is positive but we hope there will be greater support," SDF spokesman Talal Silo said. "So far we have been supplied only with ammunition, and we were hoping to be supplied with military hardware."

The HNC umbrella opposition, which represents groups opposed to Assad but not the Kurds, also welcomed U.S. forces helping rid Syria of the Islamic State "scourge", but said Washington should do more to fight Assad.

If the Kurds are given the green light to advance with American air support, the main short-term objective could be sealing off the last stretch of the border that is not held by the Kurds or the government, west of the Euphrates river.

That would deny Islamic State access to the outside world, but would infuriate Turkey, which regards the border as the main access route for other Sunni Muslim rebel groups it supports against Assad, and for aid to civilians in rebel areas.

THE RACE FOR RAQQA

U.S. Special Forces teams providing close air support could ultimately help the Kurds advance on Raqqa, Islamic State's main Syrian stronghold and de facto capital.

With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting in the audience in Hanover, Obama also urged Europe and NATO allies to do more in the fight against Islamic State. The group controls Mosul in Iraq in addition to Raqqa and a swathe of territory in between, and has proven a potent threat abroad, claiming responsibility for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March.

"Even as European countries make important contributions against ISIL, Europe, including NATO, can still do more," Obama said.

European countries have mostly contributed only small numbers of aircraft to the U.S.-led mission.

Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency he has found it necessary to keep troops in Afghanistan, return them to Iraq and send them to Syria, where at least 250,000 people have been killed in the civil war.

In Iraq, Islamic State has been forced back since December when it lost Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar. In Syria, jihadist fighters have been pushed from the city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces.

TALKS IN MELTDOWN, TRUCE IN TATTERS

But Washington's lack of allies on the ground has meant its role in Syria has been circumscribed. The entry of Moscow into the conflict last year tipped the balance of power in favor of Assad against a range of rebel groups supported by Turkey, other Arab states and the West, including the United States.

Washington and Moscow have sponsored a ceasefire between most of the main warring parties since February, which allowed the first peace talks involving Assad's government and many of his foes to begin last month.

Those talks appear close to collapse, with the main opposition delegation having suspended its participation last week, and the ceasefire is largely in tatters. Islamic State is excluded from the ceasefire.

Obama, Merkel and the leaders of Italy, Britain and France on Monday called on the parties in the Syrian war to respect the agreement to cease hostilities and make peace talks work, the White House said in a statement after the Western leaders met.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Andreas Rinke in Hanover, Jeff Mason, Kevin Drawbaugh, John Walcott, Phil Stewart, Emily Stephenson and Patricia Zengerle in Washington, Michelle Martin in Berlin and Peter Graff in London; Writing by Noah Barkin and Peter Graff; Editing by Peter Millership, Giles Elgood, Paul Simao and Peter Cooney)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Isla Negra (Chile): Chile reburied Nobel prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda's remains on Tuesday after exhuming them to determine whether he was assassinated by late dictator Augusto Pinochet's regime - a mystery that still lingers.

A casket bearing Neruda's remains was buried at his one-time home in the Pacific coast resort town of Isla Negra, where authorities had dug them up three years ago to analyze whether he was poisoned.

Neruda died in 1973 aged 69, just days after Pinochet, then the head of the army, overthrew Socialist president Salvador Allende in a bloody coup.

The poet, who was also a prominent politician and member of the Chilean Communist party, had been preparing to flee into exile to lead the resistance against Pinochet's regime.

He died in a Santiago clinic where he was being treated for prostate cancer - the official cause of his death.

Doubts have surrounded his death since his former driver claimed the poet was given a mysterious injection in his chest.

A team of international specialists who examined the remains are due to release their findings in May.

Neruda's coffin, draped in a red, white and blue Chilean flag, lay in state in the Congress in Santiago yesterday after being transferred from the forensic medical service where it was examined.

"I feel proud that they listened to me once and for all," the poet's former driver, Manuel Araya, told AFP.

The lawyer who brought the case to have the remains examined, Eduardo Contreras, told AFP that since so much time had passed, there was a risk the tests would be inconclusive.

"Even though all the evidence points to a crime, it will be technically very difficult to prove," he said.

But "anyone who sees the thousands of volumes of evidence" will conclude that Neruda was assassinated, he added.

Pinochet, who went on to rule Chile for 17 years, installed a regime that killed some 3,200 leftist activists and other suspected opponents.
Islamabad: Pakistan was making serious efforts for peace in Afghanistan but the country was not solely responsible for bringing the Afghan Taliban on negotiation table for dialogue, foreign office said on Tuesday.

Foreign office spokesman Nafees Zakaria made the statement in an apparent response to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's comment in a speech on Monday that Afghanistan "no longer expects Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table".

Zakaria said Pakistan condemns terrorism in all forms and does not differentiate between terrorist groups.

He also said peace in Afghanistan was in the best interest of Pakistan, Dawn Online reported.

Zakaria said Pakistan itself was the biggest victim of terrorism as thousands of its citizens and security forces personnel have been killed in the war against terror.

He said a quadrilateral group was formed to streamline the efforts directed towards bringing peace in Afghanistan so Pakistan cannot solely be held responsible for failure of the talks.

The statement comes after Ghani on Monday threatened diplomatic reprisals against Pakistan if it refused to take action against the Taliban, in a new hard-line stance after the Kabul attack left 64 people dead last Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a BBC Urdu service report citing diplomatic sources said an Afghan Taliban delegation based in Qatar was in Karachi for direct talks with the Afghan government.

Pakistan hosted a meeting between the Afghan government and Taliban representatives in Murree in July 2015 along with the representatives from China and the US.

The second round of the talks scheduled to be held in Pakistan on 31 July 2015, was cancelled in view of the reports about the death of Taliban chief Mullah Omar and the leadership crisis in the outfit.
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As the new head of Save the Children International, Helle Thorning-Schmidt is on a mission - to grow the charity globally and ensure all children have a chance in life.

Thorning-Schmidt, who was Denmark's first female prime minister, is the latest former national leader to jump from politics into an international humanitarian role, bringing with her links to friends in high places and a reputation for action.

In her first interview since taking up the role this month, Thorning-Schmidt said she wanted to make sure that everyone knows Save the Children and understands the philosophy that changing one child's life can change the world.

Launching a three-year campaign called "Every Last Child", she called for legislation, finance and a change in attitude to ensure even the poorest children receive life-saving services.

The campaign accompanied a Save the Children report released on Tuesday showing an estimated 400 million children are excluded from basic services such as healthcare and education due to gender, ethnicity or religion - and it is getting worse.

"There are small children that just don't have a chance in life ... girls, refugees, street children, disabled children, children from ethnic minority groups," Thorning-Schmidt told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in her central London office.

"This is not just about poverty but also discrimination.

"We have made huge progress but we need to do more as it is not impossible in our lifetime to see a world here we have millions more children surviving after the age of five, going to school and learning, and not being subjected to violence."

"SELFIE" FAME

The campaign mirrors targets in some of the 17 global goals adopted by 193 United Nations member states last year that committed to eliminate extreme poverty, inequality and address climate change by 2030, vowing to "leave no one behind".

Thorning-Schmidt, 49, a Social Democrat who led a Danish coalition government from 2011 until an election loss in 2015, took over from Jasmine Whitbread as chief executive of Save the Children International, part of the charity group that dates back almost 100 years.

The high-profile appointment came after a restructuring which created the umbrella organisation Save the Children International in 2010. Save the Children works in 120 countries with more than 25,000 staff and a $2 billion (1.4 billion pounds) budget.

Thorning-Schmidt became an Internet sensation in late 2013 for posing in a "selfie" with U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron at Nelson Mandela's memorial service with an unamused Michelle Obama looking on.

While not missing the cut and thrust of political life, she said she hoped her 20 years in politics and profile would add value to Save the Children and help the organisation grow.

"We want to be better known, we want to be a movement of millions, so we want to have more people following us and contributing to the work that we do globally," she said.

Thorning-Schmidt joins the likes of former British foreign minister David Miliband who became chief executive of the International Rescue Committee, as well as former prime minister Gordon Brown and former U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton who also shifted from politics into humanitarian work.

Andrew Cooper, author of "Diplomatic Afterlives" and political science professor at Canada's University of Waterloo, describes these former political masters as "hyper-empowered individuals" with access to current and former national leaders.

Thorning-Schmidt said she hoped her network and profile would make a difference and help Save the Children's goal to stop children from dying from preventable causes, have access to quality education, and live without violence and abuse.

Studies show since 1990, the proportion of children dying before the age of five from preventable causes has halved.

The number of children out of primary school has fallen 42 percent since 2000 but 58 million primary-school age children are still out of school.

"I don't think there should be a contest or a battle between the political world and the civil society world," said Thorning-Schmidt, who has two daughters.

"We are all trying to make change, we want to change things for people. We have to work for it but it is possible."

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Ros Russell.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

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California's Napa Valley draws thousands of national and international tourists each year. With demand on the rise and occupancy reaching new heights, the local hotel market is on the verge of an upswing in supply. Strong average rates attract developers and investors to this highly desirable market.

As the "Food and Wine Capital" of the U.S., northern California's Napa Valley is world-renowned as a winemaking region of remarkable natural beauty. The artisan culture and Mediterranean climate supply Napa County with very strong levels of tourism, and developers have put more than a dozen proposed hotel projects into the pipeline to meet the demand.

Established in 1850, Napa County contains five incorporated cities:American Canyon, Calistoga, Napa, St. Helena, and Yountville. Within and around these urban centers, winemaking operations and vineyards dominate the region. Napa Valley, a 35-mile-long, 5-mile-wide American Viticultural Area (AVA), is one of the most prominent and well-regarded winemaking regions in the world. Napa Valley's history in commercial agricultural production and winemaking dates back two centuries, but its reputation for world-class viticultureand the commercial and tourism opportunities associated with itwas not realized until the mid-1960s. Ever since, Napa Valley's economy has capitalized on the draw of the region's winemaking and culinary arts, making it one of the busiest tourism centers in California. Natural features such as two surrounding mountain ranges and Lake Berryessa also make Napa Valley a major recreational destination for the entire Bay Area.

On August 24, 2014, Napa Valley was struck by a 6.0-magnitude earthquake, the strongest to hit the San Francisco Bay Area in nearly 25 years. The earthquake and aftershocks resulted in injuries to dozens of people, damage to historic buildings in Downtown Napa, gas leaks, and downed power lines. Downtown hotels, including the Andaz Napa, the Marriott Napa Valley Hotel & Spa, and the Westin Verasa Napa suffered damages and were temporarily closed. Hotels experienced last-minute changes and cancelations in the following weeks, which negatively affected occupancy for the local hotel market in 2014.

The negative effects on tourism were, however, short-lived, and hotel demand in Napa Valley remains strong.1 In 2014, Napa Valley welcomed 3.3 million visitors, up from 2.94 million in 2012. Two-thirds of these (2.2 million) were day-trip visitors.2 The top domestic feeder market was the San Francisco  Oakland  San Jose MSA, which accounted for 45.3% of all domestic Napa visitors.3

Nearly 83% of Napa Valley visitors in 2014 reported leisure (vacation, weekend getaway, or other personal travel) as their primary reason for traveling to the area. Napa and St. Helena had the most visitors, followed by Calistoga and Yountville. Nearly all travelers to Napa Valley (94.1%) arrive by car and visit an average of three wineries per trip.4

VISITOR SPENDING TRENDS

An estimated 11,766 jobs are supported by visitor spending in Napa Valley; of these, 4,567 are in restaurants and 3,383 are in hotels.5 Visitors to Napa Valley helped generate $1.63 billion in direct Napa County spending in 2014, up from $1.4 billion in 2012. Per day in 2014, the average visitor spent $482.71, with overnight guests spending $807.18 and day trippers spending $341.53.6 Per day in 2012, the average visitor spent $458.87 ($708.47 for overnighters and $349.78 for day trippers).7

Napa Valley currently has approximately 70 hotels, inns, resorts, and bed & breakfast establishments, totaling just over 4,800 rooms. Between 2001 and 2005, supply rose by almost 15%, followed by a nearly 40% increase from 2006 through 2010. Since 2011, the pace of new supply entering the market has slowed considerably; no new properties opened between 2011 and 2015, and just one hotel, the Hampton Inn & Suites Napa, has opened so far in 2016.

The chart below illustrates trends in hotel supply in Napa Valley since 2001.

Historical Supply Growth (Number of Rooms)

*Through March 2016

Source: HVS with data from STR

It is important to note that Napa has a perennial list of new supply, but new hotels often open in a trickle, staggered over time, given the challenges of project approvals and financing. This has been favorable, allowing Napa to slowly absorb new supply over time.

Of the 4,815 rooms in inventory as of March 2016, roughly 51% were affiliated with a brand, with the remaining 49% operating as independent hotels. Wyndham Worldwide operates approximately 25% of the 2,443 branded rooms in inventory, the largest share of any major brand in the market; Hilton Worldwide, Marriott International, and Best Western Hotels & Resorts each have market shares between 10% and 22%. As noted in the following chart, other brands such as Choice Hotels, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), and Motel 6 hold a combined market share of roughly 11%. However, it should be noted that of the 70 hotels currently in the market, only 19 are brand-affiliated properties, while the remaining 51 hotels are independent. The branded hotels tend to have a larger room count than the independent hotels, which allows them to make up slightly more than half of the market's room supply.

Market Share by Brand

* Other brands include Choice, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), and Motel 6

Source: HVS with data from STR

Starwood Hotels & Resorts operates one hotel in the market, though a Luxury Collection Las Alcobas Hotel by Starwood is in development and is scheduled to open in 2016. Four Seasons is perhaps the most notable luxury brand missing from the market as of 2016; however, Four Seasons is anticipated to open an 85-room hotel in Calistoga in 2018.

The hotel pipeline in Napa Valley is on the verge of another boom, with 19 properties and over 2,000 guestrooms in either the planning or construction phases.

New Supply Planning

Source: HVS, Napa Valley Planning Departments

Though the pipeline spans hotels of many sizes, asset classes, and brands, a few notable trends are present. Most hotels in the planning phase are unbranded, while two of the three hotels already under construction represent branded assets. This gives some indication of the power of branding when it comes to initiating and finalizing construction in today's market.

Even though projects may receive preliminary approval, the high barriers to entry in Napa Valley often produce substantial hurdles and lengthy timelines for new developments. The biggest obstacle for projects is receiving approval, followed by obtaining financing for large projects. Historically, the smaller projects have had a better chance of being financed, compared to larger projects. Some projects that received design approval prior to the 2008/09 recession are now no longer feasible due to features such as underground parking or other design elements; these proposed projects now have to undergo revision and resubmission for review and approval, further delaying the development timeline.

Concerns over available water supply, sewer infrastructure, environmental pressures, and increased traffic are additional constraints limiting the number of new hotels in Napa Valley. Traffic congestion on State Highway 29 is a particular problem; at its intersection with First Street, the average daily traffic count in 2001 was 52,000, a number that had risen to 61,000 in 2014.8

Land-use policy is a major factor in hotel development. Napa County has had agricultural land protection policies since the 1960s to preserve the agricultural character and quality of the Valley. In addition, new development and redevelopment projects in Napa Valley may be subject to extra infrastructure improvements, which can inflate costs, further hindering project feasibility.

New Supply  Under Construction

Source: HVS, Napa Valley Planning Departments

Getting hotel developments approved and financed can take multiple years. Two such examples are the New Hotel & Resort (formerly known as the Montalcino Resort), which has been proposed for over 15 years, and the Oxbow District Hotel (formerly known as the Ritz-Carlton site), which was first approved in 2008, but could not be financed during the height of the financial crisis. Both projects have subsequently been listed for sale multiple times and both were listed most recently in 2015. As of March 2016, both projects did not transact; however, the current ownership of the Oxbow District Project will reportedly proceed with plans for the hotel.

At a combined 729 rooms, each of these proposed hotels is more than 50% larger than any other hotel currently under development in the area; together, they also represent approximately 43% of the new supply currently in the planning stage of development. Having been stalled so long in the planning stages, however, it is uncertain whenor ifthese hotels will actually be completed.

There have been 16 hotel transactions in Napa Valley over the past five years, with prices ranging from $115,254 to $1,370,968 per key, with the top sale being $1.3 million per key for the leasehold interest in Bardessono. These high prices per key are another factor that attracts developers to the market.

Napa Valley continues to be one of the strongest resort submarkets in California, driven by healthy demand and constraints on the development of new supply. With the recovery and resurgence of the regional Bay Area economy, largely led by the technology sector, area residents have increased discretionary spending related to travel, particularly for drive-to destinations like Napa Valley. The area also mounted a remarkable recovery from the recent earthquake, a sign of not only economic resilience but the determination of Napa County's winemakers, businesses, and government to keep tourism flowing.

Lodging demand is expected to remain strong through the near term, enhancing the market's appeal for hotel investors and developers. Furthermore, new supply should come about in staggered stages, allowing for healthy absorption of the additional room nights. This supports an optimistic outlook for the Napa Valley hotel market in the near term.

1 Occupancy in the first quarter of 2016 was slightly down compared with the same period in 2015, when a mild winter siphoned a large number of Tahoe tourists to Napa, inflating occupancy.

2 Destination Analysts. "Napa Visitor Industry 2014 Economic Impact Report." http://www.visitnapavalley.com/research_statistics.htm.

3 Destination Analysts. "2014 Napa Valley Visitor Profile. http://www.visitnapavalley.com/research_statistics.htm.

4 Ibid.

5 Destination Analysts, "Napa Visitor Industry 2014 Economic Impact Report,"http://www.visitnapavalley.com/research_statistics.htm.

6 Ibid.

7 Destination Analysts. "2012 Napa Valley Visitor Profile."http://www.visitnapavalley.com/research_statistics.htm.

8 California Department of Transportation, 2014. http://traffic-counts.dot.ca.gov/2014all/Route22-33.html.

Katie Minnock

Consulting & Valuation - HVS San Francisco

+1 (415) 268-0354

HVS

View source
Bangkok -- Best Western Hotels & Resorts has unveiled an exciting new property in Puerto Princesa, the largest city on the tropical island of Palawan, in the Philippines.

Scheduled to open in June 2016, Best Western Plus Ivy Wall is a brand new midscale hotel that provides both business and leisure travelers with convenient access to all the city's main landmarks and attractions.

It is located just a few minutes from Puerto Princesa International Airport, which has regular flight connections to Manila and other cities across the Philippines, and 1.5 hours' drive from the stunning, UNESCO World Heritage-listed Puerto Princesa Underground River.

"Best Western's expansion in the Philippines continues to gather momentum, and I am delighted to be able to welcome guests to another exciting destination in this vibrant country," said Olivier Berrivin, Best Western Hotels & Resorts' Managing Director of International Operations - Asia.

"Puerto Princesa and the island of Palawan are becoming new tourist hotspots in Southeast Asia, with an increasing number of travelers eager to experience this tropical paradise. With idyllic beaches and bays and the breath-taking Puerto Princesa Underground River, which has been listed as one of the 'New 7 Wonders of Nature', Puerto Princesa is a wonderfully unique and attractive destination for tourists.

With its contemporary style and range of international amenities, I am confident that Best Western Plus Ivy Wall will become a firm favorite among the rising number of travelers to Puerto Princesa," Mr. Berrivin concluded.

A modern midscale hotel, Best Western Plus Ivy Wall offers 120 rooms and suites, all of which feature a contemporary Filipino design and come equipped with 42-inch LCD televisions, DVD players, mini-bars, spacious work desks and complimentary tea and coffee making facilities.

And as with all Best Western hotels worldwide, Wi-Fi is free-of-charge both in guest rooms and public areas.

When they are not exploring the stunning local scenery, guests can unwind with a treatment at the hotel's spa, plunge into the tropical outdoor swimming pool, or enjoy exquisite local and international cuisine at the on-site restaurant. There is also a poolside bar, allowing guests to unwind with a refreshing cold drink during the heat of the day.

For the corporate and events market, the hotel features a business center, three meeting rooms and a 300m ballroom, plus a VIP dining room which is served by a private butler and can host intimate dinners.

Best Western Plus Ivy Wall becomes the eighth Best Western hotel in the Philippines, joining existing properties in Manila, Makati City, Cebu City, Subic Bay and the resort island of Boracay.

It also becomes the country's fourth midscale Best Western Plus hotel, following the Best Western Plus Antel Hotel in Makati City, Best Western Plus Lex Cebu and the recently-opened Best Western Plus Hotel Subic.

About BWH Hotel Group

BWH Hotel Group is a leading, global hospitality network comprised of three hotel companies, including WorldHotels Collection, Best Western Hotels & Resorts and SureStay Hotel Group. The global network boasts approximately 4,500 hotels in over 100 countries and territories worldwide*. With 18 brands across every chain scale segment, from economy to luxury, BWH Hotel Group suits the needs of developers and guests in every market.

WorldHotels

WorldHotels Collection is a privately held hotel soft brand within the BWH Hotel Group global network. Founded by independent hoteliers dedicated to the art of hospitality, and celebrating its 50th year anniversary in 2021, WorldHotels offers one of the finest portfolios of independent hotels and resorts around the globe, expertly curated to inspire unique, life enriching experiences that connect people and places. WorldHotels is comprised of four unique collections, each with its own personality and style to appeal to the needs of today's traveler. The collections include: WorldHotels Luxury, WorldHotels Elite, WorldHotels Distinctive and WorldHotels Crafted. For more information visit WorldHotels.com.

*Numbers are approximate, may fluctuate, and include hotels currently in the development pipeline.

Siriporn Trachoo

Marketing & Communications Best Western International  Asia

+66 2 656 1260

BWH Hotel Group
The CSIRO will split its climate science into two, creating a special unit based in Hobart but leaving in doubt the future of at least 50 climate researchers.

A new CSIRO Climate Science Centre, foreshadowed by Fairfax Media, will coordinate the work of 40 scientists carved out of existing CSIRO teams, and also tap into work by the Bureau of Meteorology and universities.

However, a separate email sent to staff on Tuesday morning shows the Oceans and Atmosphere division which houses the main climate modelling and monitoring units will shed about 75 of its 140 staff.
A navy officer has been bashed by a group of men on a train in Sydney's south-west while returning home from an Anzac Day service on Monday.

The 24-year-old, who was in full uniform, approached a group of men, who were drinking alcohol and harassing commuters, about 2.45pm.

After asking that they stop drinking and curb their behaviour, the officer was punched in the nose by one of the men as he left the train at Glenfield.

The officer suffered a bloody nose but did not require any treatment.
The country, he said, was reeling. "It couldn't believe that something of this magnitude could happen in Australia. I thought, I have this huge majority, we have elected a new government and we have to do something." The Prime Minister and his wife Janette in 1996 at a Canberra service to pray for the victims and families of the Port Arthur tragedy. Credit:Mike Bowers He flew to Tasmania, with Labor leader Kim Beazley and Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot to attend services and lay a wreath at Port Arthur. He met with the traumatised emergency workers who had to deal with the shattered bodies of the 23 wounded. But front of mind for Howard was how to prevent such a tragedy ever again. About 700,000 guns were handed in to Australia's buyback nearly 20 years ago. Credit:Dean Sewell

What followed was a concerted effort led from the top to ban the importation and sale of automatic and semi-automatic weapons in Australia. Breaking the gun culture Gun laws are primarily a state matter. The federal government has control only over importation, which meant Mr Howard had to convince all the states and territories to embrace consistent laws which he would propose. The 20th anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre should remind Australians that gun laws matter. Credit:Cathryn Tremain "I thought if ever we were going to do something dramatic and lasting to change Australia's gun laws to prevent the emergence of a more alien gun culture in our country, this was the time to do it," he said.

The federal government worked with the states to buy back the banned weapons and any weapons people no longer wanted, with nearly 700,000 handed in. For its part, the Federal government increased the Medicare levy to pay for "buyback". Bipartisan approach: Prime Minister John Howard, Opposition leader Kim Beazley and Democrats' leader Cheryl Kernot lay a wreath at the cafe at Port Arthur on May 1, 1996. Credit:Palani Mohan New consistent laws on licensing and storage of legal weapons were introduced by all the states. People who needed guns for their livelihood had to be licensed and their weapons registered and guns needed to be stored in a locked cupboard, unloaded. Within days of the Port Arthur massacre, the police ministers met in Canberra, at a meeting hosted by the then Attorney-General, Daryl Williams. The Sydney Morning Herald's front page for May 1, 1996. At Port Arthur, Martin Bryant had killed more than 30 people and continued to fire at police but snipers were not authorised to take him out. Credit:SMH

"It was difficult for my National Party colleagues. It was particularly difficult for the National Party leader in Queensland, Rob Borbidge. There was resistance in Western Australia, I think as much on states' rights' grounds as on anything else," he said. "Daryl had a meeting with the police ministers and then he brought them all round to my office. I had made a point of being in Canberra that day, in reserve, so to speak. I thought it might be necessary to talk to the police ministers, and I did," Howard said. As Prime Minister, he was the person who had to sell the reforms to the public, and in rural Australia there was deep anger that their gun ownership would be curtailed because of a madman in Tasmania. After receiving death threats just before he spoke at a rally at Sale in rural Victoria, Howard's advisers recommended he don a bullet proof vest before he spoke. It was a decision he said he regretted as he did not feel unsafe. Soon television screens were filled with pictures of huge piles of weapons being dismantled and crushed.

"I don't believe we were on the cusp of going down the American path," Howard said. "But I do think the gun laws have had the practical value of reducing the mass slaughters. There were 13 before the new laws; and if you define such an event as five or more victims, there have been none since. "Surveys indicate it had a big impact on male youth suicide. I believe we have prevented a lot of death of people who would once grab hold of a rifle. "The simple reality is it is easier to kill 10 people with a gun than it is with a knife or a hammer or something else. I also think the community believes this is something of a demonstration to the rest of the world and that they might follow our lead." The international response For his part in making Australia safer, Mr Howard has been personally vilified by the National Rifle Association, the powerful US gun lobby. In the current presidential campaign the NRA is again running ads claiming that Australia's laws mean taking away people's guns and making gun ownership a crime - without distinguishing between the ban on semi-automatic weapons and rights to still own guns responsibly.

As prime minister, Mr Howard had brief discussions with then President George Bush and Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, but said their experiences and the US's history made the discussion a difficult one. Asked what he would say to the current presidential hopefuls, Mr Howard said he would simply explain what he had done, and the results. "I would not presume to lecture the American candidates. I would just point out that we are a safer country, and I would say I understand what a terrible burden gun deaths are on black America. Black males make up 6 per cent of the US population, yet they comprise 46 per cent of gun related homicide," he said. "Americans will often say to me there are so many guns in circulation the only way the good guys can protect themselves is to also have a gun. Now I think that is a stupid argument myself." Mr Howard estimates that the gun buyback in Australia was the equivalent of taking 30 to 40 million guns out of circulation in the US.

Twenty years on Twenty years on Mr Howard said his gun laws have stood the test of time. "You might argue that laws allowing hunting in national parks [in NSW] have slightly watered things down but not to a significant degree. The police think there are too many handguns. That's a matter for state governments," he said. He also queried whether an amnesty to allow handguns to be handed in would have much effect, given that most of the illegal weapons are in the hands of criminal gangs. But there are pressures. A 2012 Crime Commission report, which was not publicly released but was quoted by then police minister, Jason Clare, found there were 2.75 million registered guns in Australia held by 730,000 licence holders.
Civil rights groups are considering an appeal to a court ruling that upheld a North Carolina law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, a ruling they say discriminates against minorities.

Tuesday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder in Winston Salem is a victory for Republicans who contend the law is needed to prevent voter fraud.

Republican North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, who's seeking re-election this year, applauded the decision.

"This ruling further affirms that requiring a photo ID in order to vote is not only common sense, it's constitutional," he said in a statement.

But the ruling is being "condemned" by some civil rights organizations considering an appeal. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Southern Coalition for Social Justice say the ruling keeps a law in place that unfairly targets African-Americans and other minority voters.

"The sweeping barriers imposed by this law undermine voter participation and have an overwhelmingly discriminatory impact on African-Americans," said ACLU Voting Rights Project Director Dale Ho.

"We are already examining an appeal," she added.

The case tested a key component of numerous voting restrictions that were approved after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2013 effectively eliminated a key part of the Voting Rights Act. The high court ruling eliminated the need for North Carolina and other states with a history of voter discrimination to get federal approval prior to changing voting laws that impact minorities.

Tuesday's decision is an indication of how federal courts may handle future cases involving voting laws.

The ruling also upheld the elimination of a week of early voting, the end of same-day registration, and the prohibition of counting of out-of-precinct ballots.

In the 485-page ruling, Judge Schroeder wrote that North Carolina has "provided legitimate state interests for its voter-ID requirement" and that the plaintiffs have "failed to show that any North Carolinian who wishes to vote faces anything other than the 'usual burdens of voting.'"

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) supports the U.S. Justice Department position that the law disproportionately burdens African-Americans and Latinos, who are less likely than whites to possess the required forms of photo-IDs such as driver's licenses, passports or military IDs.

"Were disappointed in the ruling, reviewing the decision carefully and evaluating our options, said Justice Department Spokeswoman Dena Iverson.

If the case is appealed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia would be the first to consider it.

Barring an appeal, the law would be in effect during this year's November elections, when the ramifications of the ruling could be significant in North Carolina. It has has been a swing state in the last two presidential elections, giving Democrat Barack Obama a narrow victory in 2008 and Republican Mitt Romney a hard-earned win in 2012.
South Sudan rebel leader Riek Machar returned Tuesday to the capital after fleeing two-and-a-half years ago as civil war broke out. Now back in Juba, he was sworn in as the country's top vice president under President Salva Kiir.

Machars and Kiir's forces have waged a brutal war against each other since December 2013, a few months after the president fired Machar as his deputy. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and some 2.3 million have fled their homes.

The two men signed a peace deal last year, but implementation has been slow with fighting continuing in some areas. Machar's return raises hopes that the deal can take effect, and the conflict-torn nation can move toward peace.

Talk of unity

At the airport upon his arrival, Machar said security must become a reality.

"There will be challenges ahead, Machar said, there will be obstacles. But as long as there is political will we can overcome all these challenges, all these obstacles."

After arriving, Machar was whisked away to the presidential palace, where he was sworn in. At the ceremony, Kiir spoke of uniting the broken country.

"Our people are tired of war and they need peace now, Kiir said. Together, we can accomplish far more than what we can when we are divided. Our strength lies only in our unity."

The two men face a daunting task. Machar said the country's failing economy must be stabilized.

The former rebel also called for aid to help those affected by the war, and for national reconciliation to take place. The war has bitterly divided the country by ethnicity.

"It is important to start thinking of how we should kick off national reconciliation and healing in our country, he said. The war was vicious, we have lost a lot of people in it, and we need to bring our people together so that they can unite, reconcile and heal the wounds."

Deep mistrust

Kiir and Machar themselves must reconcile. There is deep mistrust between the two men and their supporters. Whether Kiir and Machar can put aside their power struggle and lead South Sudan to peace and prosperity is an open question.

British Ambassador to South Sudan Tim Morris said the leaders must show they are putting their country first if they expect the rest of the world to back them.

"This is not about power, this is about a country, Morris said. It's about millions of people who face hunger, who are dispossessed, who are not planting their crops, half of whose children are out of school. That is the agenda, and that is the test. If the transitional government of the leaders of South Sudan can shift their attention to running their country, that will have our support."
A U.S. federal judge has sentenced a Malian national with ties to extremist groups in Africa to 25 years in prison for the murder of a U.S. diplomat 15 years ago in Niger.

Defendant Alhassane Ould Mohamed was taken into U.S. custody and indicted in 2013 for the killing of William Bultemeier and the attempted killing of a U.S. Marine as the two left a restaurant in the Niger capital, Niamey, in December 2000.

Investigators said Mohamed, also known as Cheibani, and another assailant confronted the two Americans and demanded the keys to their vehicle, which bore U.S. diplomatic plates. Prosecutors said the armed duo then opened fire, killing Bultemeier and wounding Marine Corps staff sergeant Christopher McNeely.

Police in Mali later arrested Mohamed, who then escaped custody and remained at large until his arrest eight years later in connection with an attack on a Saudi diplomatic convoy in Niger that left four dead.

While serving a 20-year term for that attack, he again escaped prison in 2013.

Mohamed was apprehended later that year by French forces and extradited to the United States. He pleaded guilty last month to the Bultemeier killing as part of a deal capping his sentence at 25 years.
African elephants are the largest land animals on Earth, weighing as much as six tons, and measuring up to 7.5 meters long.

But despite their size, they find humans to be their greatest threat: Tens of thousands of these animals are killed every year for their ivory tusks.

Researcher Lucy King, head of the human-elephant coexistence program at Kenya-based conservation group Save the Elephants, said poaching is devastating animal populations across Africa.

But another major concern is human-wildlife conflict.

When elephants raid crops, it causes financial loss to the farmers and potential harm to the elephants.

'Increasing exponentially'

The population in Africa is increasing exponentially, and the land space for elephants and other large game is shrinking exponentially, King said. Corridors are being blocked, infrastructure development is coming up, and so I believe the next big challenge for elephants is going to be conflict.

"And that interface between farmers and elephants is the one were working on, and we feel we can do something with," she said.

So she did.

King learned that when elephants heard the distinctive sound of bees, they rounded up their herd and quickly moved away.

Local farmers attested that despite the elephants thick skin, bees could still sting around their eyes and disturb their ears, causing them to shy away when they heard buzzing.

And the Elephants and Bees Project was born.

King and her team work near in the Taita-Taveta area of Kenya, near Tsavo East National Park, where theyve helped 22 farmers build and maintain beehive fences, consisting of between 10 and 21 hives, depending on the size of the farmers plot, plus dummy hives to help spread out the bee concentration.

Deterrent

The hives are strung along the periphery of a farmers crops to deter the elephants from crop raiding.

The team monitors each farmers hives carefully, taking notes on each one and also working with the farmers to determine the elephants movements in the area.

King says a beehive fence features a critical difference from an electric fence.

Electric fencing provides a shock to the body, but its static. So the elephants can learn, 'If I touch that, its going to hurt.' But they can test it, they can put their bodies against it, they can push their feet on the posts, and eventually they can work out, one quick shove and the fence will go down, King said. But the fence doesnt chase them afterwards.

Local farmer Charity Mwangome, who built her fence in 2012, believes the research buzz.

It helps a lot because if the elephants come in and they see the fence, they stop and dont come into the farm. They instead go around," Mwangome said.

But the beehive fence, which King said has about an 80 percent success rate, doesnt just help with keeping out the elephants. It also provides farmers with another means to generate income, through honey production.

WATCH: Video clip of elephants

Boost to income

And for farmers who make on average $300 per year, less than a dollar a day, the 30 to 50 percent income boost makes a big difference.

Research center coordinator Matthew Rudolph said the biggest problem is just keeping up with consumer demand for the honey, which he and other staff members process at its center here.

People pick it up as soon as it is jarred, Rudolph said.

And it goes fast, Rudolph and King said.

The center typically harvests the honey twice a year -- in January and May -- and produces about 500 jars. However, requests worldwide far exceed the production, the researchers said.

King said the priority is to first supply local markets so word about the beehive fences will spread.

An open-source manual for constructing a beehive fence can be found on the groups website.

King said she has received comments from people in at least 11 African and Asian countries who have used the plans to build their own beehives, adapting them to local conditions.

Poaching issue

Although this project helps combat human-wildlife conflict, poaching remains the No. 1 threat to elephants.

Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta will host this months Giants Club Summit, which will bring dignitaries together at Mount Kenya to find solutions to combat the crisis.

Organizers expect presidents from four African countries -- Botswana, Gabon, Kenya and Uganda -- and their representatives to attend the event, to be held Thursday through Saturday.

The event will conclude in Nairobi Saturday with the destruction of 105 tons of seized ivory to prevent its economic use.

PHOTO GALLERY: Related Elephant and Bee Project photos
The United States has urged the Vietnamese government to release all political prisoners and cease its harassment of civil society activists. Officials made the appeal ahead of President Barack Obamas first visit to Vietnam in May.

The promotion of human rights remains a crucial part of U.S. foreign policy and is a key aspect of our ongoing dialogue within the U.S.-Vietnam comprehensive partnership, said State Department spokesman John Kirby Monday, as the U.S. and Vietnam held the 20th session of their Human Rights Dialogue in Washington.

The Dialogue has covered a wide range of human rights issues, including the importance of continued progress on legal reform efforts, rule of law, freedom of expression and assembly, religious freedom, labor rights, disability rights, LGBT rights, multilateral cooperation, as well as individual cases of concern, according to the State Department.

The U.S. had expressed deep concerns over the case of Nguyen Van Dai, a human rights lawyer who was arrested by authorities in mid-December of 2015.

The arrest came as he was preparing to meet European Union delegates who were in Hanoi for EU-Vietnam human rights dialogue.

Speaking on Nguyens case last December, the State Department urged Vietnamese authorities to ensure its actions were consistent with its international obligations and called on Hanoi to release unconditionally all prisoners of conscience.

Another high-profile case is the trial of blogger Nguyen Huu Vinh (also known as Anh Ba Sam), who was sentenced to five years in prison last month for what authorities called abusing rights to freedom and democracy to infringe upon the interests of the state.

The State Department raised several concerns about Vietnam in its 2015 Country Report for Human Rights Practices. These problems included severe government restrictions of citizens political rights, particularly their right to change their government through free and fair elections; limits on citizens civil liberties, including freedom of assembly, association, and expression; and inadequate protection of citizens due process rights, including protection against arbitrary detention. 

While newspapers and TV stations still face censorship and legal restrictions in Vietnam, Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted progress in Hanois human rights practices, including commitments to bring domestic laws into synch with international human rights obligations.

Blinken applauded Vietnams ratification of the Convention against Torture and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as well as allowing independent trade unions for the first time in modern history, in a speech at a Hanoi university last Thursday.



He also commended the Vietnamese governments efforts to consult with a range of local religious and civil society stakeholders during the drafting of a new religion law, which the U.S. hopes will protect the rights of people of different faiths.
Albanias Tirana International Airport has been bought by Hong Kong-based China Everbright and Friedmann Pacific Asset Management.

According to a statement emailed to The Associated Press yesterday by China Everbright, the two companies have created a joint venture, Keen Dynamics Limited, or KDL, that has signed an agreement with the airports concessionary developer and operator.

No details of the deal were provided given.

Since 2005 Tirana International Airport has been managed and operated by a private consortium called Tirana International Airport, or TIA, with a 20-year concession.

TIAs spokeswoman Arlinda Causholli said there is no official announcement from the TIA shareholders. AP
Bus companies in Macau are expected to lose around 10 percent of their drivers to retirement within the next four years, said Lam Hin San, director of the Transport Bureau (DSAT), the other week  though from my anecdotal evidence as a frequent bus-taker, I am surprised that the figure is not higher.

All in all, this will equate to roughly 110 fewer drivers than there are today, unless the bus operators can replenish their ranks with fresh youngsters.

According to a report published in the Times this month, the DSAT maintains that the best way to alleviate the heavy pressure on the sector, and to encourage young locals to join the service, is to simplify the examination procedures for licenses. Specifically, they are planning to strike the mechanical component of the examination.

But this seems unlikely to have much of an effect.

Bus drivers are not glamorous, and lowering the roles barriers to entry is less likely to encourage youngsters to sign up than buffing the roles appeal through increased pay and related compensation benefits, you know, the normal way to resolve supply shortage and demand surplus.

With locals earning more and gaining access to better education, they are quite reasonably moving into higher-wage roles  that migrant workers often cannot access  leaving lower-wage, unskilled roles vacant.

In some countries where labor laws are strong and non-residents are not considered for the transport sector, workers are paid generously and entitled to  some might say  ample vacation time.

But if this is going to upset balance sheets in Macau, then maybe bus companies can do the obvious and look to the large pool of migrant labor eagerly awaiting work opportunities in the MSAR.

Migrant workers are normally associated with higher job enthusiasm and performance, usually because they value the work more, as their livelihood depends on it.

However, DSAT says that they are not opening up job vacancies to non-resident workers, adding that they are focused on encouraging young locals to join the service.

Actually, according to the New Era bus companys website, the recruitment criteria does not specify any requirements for applicants to be residents.

It only requires a good behavior record (which is encouraging), enthusiasm to serve the public, and a valid D1 or D2 license. The advertisement did not specify the wage, nor did the company reply to the Times request for that information.

Separately, an astonishing phenomenon I have noticed among bus drivers in Macau is that I sometimes see them listening to music on their earphones, which is a dangerous practice for obvious reasons. In light of the occasional accident, such as the New Era bus crash in Coloane last month, I am perplexed as to why the company would permit its employees to do this.

One more thing  a bit of a non-issue but worth raising anyway  why do the bus drivers in Macau brake so violently? At first I thought that this was a problem with the actual buses, but it turns out that not all drivers insist on accelerating up to a bus stop, only to suddenly slam the brakes.

Its not such a problem if you dont mind swaying, swinging and generally tumbling around the standing area of the bus every time the driver takes a sharp turn, but perhaps they could act a little more concerned when a pregnant lady boards, or a mother carrying a baby. Perhaps they could let these individuals sit down first before speeding off down the road, haphazardly accelerating and braking as they go. Daniel Beitler
In his first second-term policy address in March 2015, Mr Chui Sai On gave the assurance that consultative bodies would from now on be better regulated. The pledge was twofold: limit the number of consultant positions concurrently held by the same person to a maximum of three and limit the number of years of service in such positions to a maximum of six. A brand new team of Secretaries having been sworn in, the rationale was that if much needed and imaginative public policies were to be put in place, cells of resistance and possible conflicts of interest had to be subdued within these consultative bodies.

When things are decided by the happy few, consultation processes become a life-line. During an official ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the Communist regime in September 2014, Mr Xi Jinping himself praised consultative democracy as Chinas unique way of allowing the people to participate in governance. Even if the Presidents understanding of democracy was clearly derived from Marxism-Leninism, his urge for a well-established feed-back mechanism coming from the masses was genuine.

In Macao, dozens of public consultations concerning all kinds of governmental decisions have been organised, with varying degrees of soundness, relevance and legitimacy, despite a thorough revamping of the rules in August 2011. Moreover, consultative bodies have mushroomed, totalling now 46 such institutionalised gatherings placed under the direct authority of either the Chief Executive or one of the five Secretaries. With 17 consultative bodies under him, the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture tops them all. These organs do not hold any actual power, but their members do influence the decision-making processes and ultimately the policies themselves.

In mid-March, All About Macau, a liberal-minded Chinese newspaper, came up with the story proving that prominent businessman Paul Tse was actually sitting on more than three such bodies, contrary to Chuis commitment. Then, the same online outlet published a list of 24 personalities sitting on at least three boards of public agencies and consultative committees. Paul Tse was listed with seven such positions and so was lawyer-turned-legislator Vong In Fai, who was also Mr Chuis chief campaigner in 2014. Chui Sai Peng, the very own cousin of Mr Chui Sai On and also a legislator, appeared on the list as well, and his name appeared again in the headlines on April 11 when it was discovered that an association he is heading had received important public funding to publish textbooks without going through a public tender. Possible conflicts of interest come in many guises in Macao but often originate in business circles, the Legislative Assembly and these consultative bodies.

Ever since the unravelling of the Ao Man Long scandal, the prevention of corruption at the highest echelon has been advertised as a priority: Chui Sai Ons first real policy address in November 2010 was all about sunshine government and scientific administration. If the enduring results of the latter had been always seriously doubted, the former was somehow being given credence, at least until February this year: the arrest of former prosecutor-general Ho Chio Meng on charges of fraud and abuse of power is now casting a long shadow on the system as a whole.

A conflict of interest  a personal interest taking precedence over the communitys  does not equate with corruption, but in the words of the European Parliament it can be considered an indicator, a precursor and a result of corruption. When the secretary for Administration and Justice Sonia Chan asserts that there are less than ten personalities who participate in more than three consultative bodies and that this is being taken care of gradually, should we trust her, especially when the time spent in any given position is not even questioned? What about the issue of patronage? Indeed, the very same Chui Sai Peng sits on a staggering 143 boards of associations! And what about a standing committee member of the CPPCC sitting concurrently on boards of three universities in Macao?

The small world excuse is just that: an excuse. After all, the Athenian Democracy was designed for a city half the size of Macao.
The American National Security Agency (NSA) has declassified documents that show that Portugal was concerned with the fate of the Asian territories it administrated during World War II, when the Japanese were occupying all the territories surrounding Macau.

We want you to ask the Japanese government what will definitely happen in the Pacific, especially in what is related to the Macau and East Timor situation, stated a message from the Minister of Portuguese Foreign Affairs to the Ambassador in Tokyo, which was intercepted by the U.S. secret service.

The message is an excerpt from one of several which are now disclosed in the documents that the American secret agency declassified in November 2014. The documents contain messages between Portuguese government and diplomats, Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias (DN) reported.

One of the messages also states that Portugal had suffered great losses in East Timor when the Japanese intervened (unlike Macau, the territory was invaded) and that even if they displayed a friendlier attitude, the Portuguese government still would not agree to discuss the subject.

The Japanese had a spy network in Portugal, during World War II, which was focused on this issue of East-Timor, said Jose Antonio Barreiros to DN, adding that Japanese television station NHK was in Portugal to complete a report on the Japanese espionage cell in Lisbon, which was operating with the support of the embassy.
TWIN FALLS | Warmer weather means home improvement is on the brain.

The Better Business Bureau is being flooded with questions about home-improvement companies as folks begin to think about spiffing up their homes.

The non-profit business watchdog group says inquiries about contractors generally increase as people begin gearing up for the warm season, though with hundreds of new homes popping up around Twin Falls its probably not a big surprise home builders topped the list of businesses Twin Falls asked the BBB Northwest about in April. Still, the BBBs top 10 list included questions about general contractors, roofing, concrete, and construction and remodeling services. The BBB had 260 types of businesses inquired about in southern Idaho.

Looking for a contractor to do some work around your home this spring? Here are some answers to common questions:

Who has to be licensed?

Mechanical, electrical and plumbing businesses have to be licensed with the state, Twin Falls Building Official Jarrod Bordi said.

Building contractors who make changes to the structure itself, including roofers, need only be registered with the state. Registration requires an application and verification of insurance.

We verify that the contractor is current on their registration or license, Bordi said.

How can I know if a business is in good standing?

Check online with the Idaho Bureau of Occupation by visiting ibol.idaho.gov/IBOL and selecting the Contractors link on the left side of the page. From there, you can find all registered contractors that have had disciplinary action taken.

The Idaho Division of Building Safety also has a director of violations by mechanical, electrical and plumbing businesses at https://web.dbs.idaho.gov/etrakit3. Users can search by the contractor name or owners name.

The Better Business Bureau offers reviews on contractors at its website, bbb.org.

Do I need a building permit?

Each city has different requirements for permits, said Shae Mayner, owner of Rain Guard Roofing. For example, Buhl, Ketchum and Sun Valley, require permits for roofs  but not Twin Falls.

The Twin Falls city building code designates what requires a building permit and what doesnt.

The building code actually has a list of things that are exempt, Bordi said. If it falls under that, I tell them to have at it and have fun.

For example, a detached structure such as a shed or a shop doesnt require a permit if it is 200 square feet or smaller. However, setbacks from the property line must be maintained.

It depends on the zone theyre in, Bordi said.

Can I go with an unregistered contractor?

Bordi does not recommend this, especially with projects that require a building permit because the contractor wont get the permit.

That could be a real headache for the homeowner, he said.

DIY

A homeowner can do any kind of work  mechanical, building, plumbing or electrical  without being registered or licensed.

The intent is to allow people to work on their own home, Bordi said. If theyre competent, they can save money.

There is no limit to the scope of work, he said. Even building from the ground up.

Some work still requires a permit. And the work must be inspected and be up to code. The cost of the permit varies on the evaluation of new construction. For mechanical and other work, there is a flat fee on the square footage and what is being done, Bordi said.
NEW BERLIN, N.Y.  Chobani is giving its employees ownership stake in the company, a surprise move that could make some of the yogurt companys longest employees very rich.

The news was broken Tuesday morning by The New York Times, which was given an exclusive interview with Hamdi Ulukaya, the Turkish immigrant who founded the company in 2005. Employees at Chobanis New York facility were handed white envelopes Tuesday that contained shares of up to 10 percent of the company when it goes public or is sold. The number of shares was based on tenure.

Employees at Chobanis factory in Twin Falls are expected to be given similar envelopes Thursday.

Ive built something I never thought would be such a success, but I cannot think of Chobani being built without all these people, Ulukaya told the New York Times. Now theyll be working to build the company even more and building their future at the same time.

Assuming the company is worth $3 billion  a low-end valuation figured when the company received a loan two years ago from private equity firm TPG Capital  the average employee payout would be $150,000.

The earliest employees could receive shares worth more than $1 million.

The shares come directly from Ulukayas stake in Chobani. He owns the vast majority of Chobani, but TPG Capital has the option to buy a stake as part of a $750 million loan it gave Chobani in a bail out to save the company.

Giving employees ownership stake is rare in food manufacturing companies, the Times reported. Its more commonly seen in tech startups who struggle to pay employees as the companies get off the ground. Similar employee-stake arrangements made early employees at Apple billionaires.

This deal is different, the Times reported, because Chobani is already a large and well-established company.

After a rocky start at its Twin Falls facility  widely regarded as the worlds largest yogurt factory  Chobani has surged, largely on the strength of new product lines coming out of Twin Falls.

The company announced in March a $100 million expansion of its Twin Falls factory as it continues to diversify its yogurt products with several new lines in Twin Falls. And, the company told the Times-News, it will also build a global research and development facility for its existing Twin Falls scientific team, office expansions to accommodate current and future employees and an employee cafeteria.

The city granted Chobanis building permit Feb. 26 for a nearly $7.9 million addition of packing and filling rooms to the east side of its facility at 3450 Kimberly Road. The application had been submitted just 10 days before approval, and the company paid more than $82,000 in fees.
BONNERS FERRY (AP)  Federal investigators are trying to determine whether the arson fire that destroyed a Catholic church in Idaho was driven by religious or racial bias.

The Spokesman-Review reports that the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are investigating the Thursday fire at St. Anns Catholic Church in Bonners Ferry.

St. Anns parish priest is from Colombia and some of the parishioners are Hispanic. The church was also vandalized in February and investigators are looking into whether the crimes are connected.

The FBI says the crime can be prosecuted under the Church Arson Prevention Act if it was motivated in whole or part by an offenders bias against a race or religion. That would make the arson a federal crime that carries a prison term of 20 years.

Bonners Ferry Police Chief Vic Watson said hes optimistic the crime will be solved.

Im pretty confident that were going to get charges filed in this and that the evidence is good enough that the people are going to have their day in court, Watson said.

He said his department turned the case over to federal agents and is in the process of transferring evidence.

Watson last Thursday said investigators had identified a person of interest in the case who was already in custody on unrelated charges. Police havent released details, however.

No one was injured in the fire that caused more than $1 million in damage.
TWIN FALLS  Marisela Flores Lua wrote mock legislation for her government class that would have required more evaluations for special-education teachers.

Her Canyon Ridge High School classmates voted against it. But she gained a better understanding of how the state legislative process works. And on Monday, she and other teenagers in Wendie Munozs class heard from a real lawmaker: Rep. Maxine Bell, R-Jerome.

Since many of Munozs students will be 18 by the next election, she wants them to be informed about how government works and how current issues affect them before they cast a ballot.

I appreciate that youre the next group of citizens, Bell told more than 25 students. One of you will probably have my job one day.

Bell  co-chairwoman of the powerful Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee  shared her experiences about being a legislator since 1988.

Her talk was full of humor and students frequently laughed. Afterward, a group of students gathered around Bell to talk with her more.

Bell puts a face on government and makes it real, Munoz said. Theres a handful of refugee students in her class  some of whom will take the U.S. citizenship test in the future.

Each year, Munoz  and other Canyon Ridge government teachers  assign students to write a mock bill. They must research the topic and present evidence to their classmates, who vote on it.

Its quite educational for them, Munoz said, later adding, This isnt a textbook class.

Topics included raising the cigarette tax to $10 to discourage teenagers from smoking, making auto insurance optional and starting the school day at 9 a.m.

Lua, 19, wrote about teacher evaluations because she wants to become a special-education teacher. She has a brother with autism.

On Monday, it was the first time shed met a state legislator. It was interesting, she said.

Andrew Borrayo, 18, created a bill about restricting nuclear weapon development. What sparked the idea? Seeing news about the recent Iran nuclear deal, he said.

He did research about North Korea, as well as the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

On Monday, Barrayo said he was surprised to learn how hard state legislators work. As for Bell, she was a really kind, nice lady, he said. She definitely kept our attention going.

Throughout this school year, Munozs students have been following the U.S. presidential campaign closely and have watched debates to get a taste for the candidates. On a state level, they need to be looking at laws and how it impacts them, she said.

Bell told students about an example of where the legislative system worked ideally this session: a bill to extend protections for stalking victims.

A story in the Times-News in November 2015 caught the attention of Rep. Lance Clow, R-Twin Falls. It was about Savahna Goodman, a Twin Falls woman who was harassed and stalked by a man she met through her job at a property management company  a man who, she later found out, had been arrested for rape and kidnapping in the past. But she couldnt get a no-contact order because they didnt have a prior relationship.

Clow and Sen. Grant Burgoyne, a Democrat from Boise, crossed party lines to partner on the bill. After clearing both the House and Senate, Gov. C.L. Butch signed it into law.

One student asked if Bell plans to run for a different office. She said no.

I like this office, Bell said. She joked shes getting old, but I dont how to knit, so I cant stay home.

And theres work left to accomplish, she said, citing the Medicaid gap. It affects an estimated 78,000 Idahoans who dont qualify for Medicaid, but cant buy insurance on the states health insurance exchange.

Students also asked about topics such as constitutional carry within city limits and medical marijuana.

One student asked about her views on immigration reform. Bell responded: Well, Im glad its a federal issue. And its a complex topic, she added, with no easy solution.

Do you have an answer? she asked. Not really, the student replied.
TWIN FALLS  Hanging onto employees is something city officials need to keep in mind as they put next years budget together, a group of department heads told the City Council on Monday.

Over the past five years, the city has lost about 130 employees, and of them 89 left for other jobs, police Chief Craig Kingsbury said. This includes 54 police officers who left in that time frame, of whom 34 left because they found other employment.

Just in the five months Kingsbury has been chief, he said, two officers have left, one for a job with the federal government and one to work at St. Lukes Magic Valley Medical Center. High turnover means the city has to spend money on recruiting people, Kingsbury said, plus putting time and money into training and equipping people who dont stay long.

Retaining employees truly is the No. 1 goal of the Long Term Planning Committee, Kingsbury told the Council.

That committee consists of employees from different city departments, who have been meeting to prepare recommendations on the citys personnel and capital needs to help implement the citys strategic plan. On Monday, they were presenting recommendations to consider as city officials start work on the next budget.

As well as recommending more of a focus on retention, the group also discussed new positions the city might want to consider adding to the budget, such as hiring another mechanic, making the fire training officer full-time and adding a couple of positions in the police department.

The Council also voted unanimously to approve a deal to finish a section of the Canyon Rim Trail that would go over private property between Eastland Drive North and Hankins Drive North. The Magic Valley Trail Enhancement Committee has until next March to come up with the $600,000 to pay the Storrers, who own the property, and the city would then be responsible for the estimated $800,000 cost of trail design and construction.

And, the transition from the current City Hall to the citys temporary headquarters in the former KeyBank building at the corner of Main Avenue and Shoshone Street is on schedule, said City Manager Travis Rothweiler. The move started on Monday, and on Wednesday city residents should go to the old KeyBank building, not the current City Hall, to pay bills and access other city services that are at City Hall now.

The current City Hall had to be emptied out for construction, since it is being renovated into a police administrative building as part of the City Hall/Public Safety Complex project.
Forbidden History - The 1916 Irish Uprising against British Imperialism

With the Easter Rising of 1916, the world was introduced to the eulogy of Pax Britannica. Much like the coercion used by the Roman Empire, the British Crown were masters at colonial repression and exploitation of royal holdings. The long strained history between the Emerald Isle and the City of London dates back many centuries. From the punitive exploits of Oliver Cromwell to the use of the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary (ADRIC), the shrift shed blood on both sides. Independence comes at a high price when the imperium masters dig in to keep their rule in place.

Easter Rising 1916 is a short but excellent overview of the circumstances and developments of that fateful revolt. The context is well stated in this quote.

"Ireland is too great to be unconnected with us, and too near us to be dependant on a foreign state, and too little to be independent." C.T. Grenville to the Duke of Rutland, December 3, 1784 (H.M.C. 14 report app. 1, p. 155) This statement sums up the attitude of Great Britain toward Ireland from the twelfth century to the twentieth.

For an even more descriptive revelation of the era, review the 50 facts about the Easter Rising (in PHOTOS). This history is not often taught in our educational institutions and certainly not featured in the mass media multiculturalism programming that stresses amnesia from the reality of a mere century ago.

So what was this uprising all about? Shaun Harkin offers this established view of Ireland's Easter Rising against colonial rule. However, he provides a much different evaluation, a century later in the conclusion of his essay.

HISTORIAN PIERS Brendon, author of The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, described the immense impact of the Irish Rising as "blasting the widest breach in the ramparts of the British Empire since Yorktown," referring to the decisive victory over the British Army during the American Revolutionary War.

In the early 1900s, Britain held 50 colonies and 345 million people under its rule. By 1914, the economic competition between Britain and the other imperial powers spilled over into an all-out industrial war for geopolitical dominance across the globe.

The rising was designed to inflict the maximum damage to the prestige of the British Empire while it was consumed with war on the continent. Ireland, Britain's oldest and closest colony, defied imperial rule, and others under the boot of the Union Jack would follow.

Substitute the Irish liberation struggle for the name of countless other ethnic societies and subjugated colonies from their oppressor empires, and the pattern is similar. Yet the Irish revolt has its own unique significance.

In a well thought out account, David Reynolds writes in As the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising approaches, the history wars in Ireland still rage.

Thinking of Ireland comparatively, the country was distinctive among national revolutions of the era in at least three important respects. First, a serious national rising took place during the war  in fact, right in the middle  rather than at the end, amid the turmoil of 1918. The latter was the pattern across central and eastern Europe, resulting in new states such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Second, Irelands war of independence was waged successfully against a victor power, not  as in the Balkans or the Baltic states  against one of the defeated empires. This was part of the global appeal of the Irish struggle, not least in the United States, where it could easily be enfolded into the American saga of 1776 and all that. And yet, third, the victor imperial power hung on in the north-east of the country  not just for a few years but right up to the present day. Hence, for hardline republican nationalists, then and now, the continuing affront of an unfinished revolution.

The British Empire would hang on until World War II, but the troubles in Ireland brought the culmination of centurys old tension to an open conflict.

An international perspective is given by Liam O Ruairc in The global-historical significance of the 1916 Rising.

The Easter Rising also had a significant impact on imperial rule. Leading establishment figures saw Ireland as a vital link in the chain that bound the British Empire together, so to lose Ireland would mean to lose the Empire. If we lose Ireland we have lost the Empire, declared Chief of the Imperial General Staff and Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson on 30 March 1921. After the 1916 Rising, Unionist leader Edward Carson warned the British government of the consequences of defeat in Ireland for the Empire: If you tell your Empire in India, in Egypt, and all over the world that you do not got the men, the money, the pluck, the inclination and the backing to restore order in a country within twenty miles of your own shore, you may as well begin to abandon the attempt to make British rule prevail throughout the Empire at all. In response to the Irish demand for independence, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George observed: Suppose we gave it to them? It will lower the prestige and the dignity of this country and reduce British authority to a low point in Ireland itself. It will give the impression that we have lost grip, that the Empire has no further force and will have an effect on India and throughout Europe.

The British states reaction to the Easter Rising is thus not to be understood purely in an Irish context; but in the overall context of its empire. On 29 May 1916, one month after the Easter Rising, British Prime Minister Lloyd George wrote to Unionist leader Edward Carson: We must make it clear. . . that Ulster does not, whether she wills it or not, merge in the rest of Ireland.

Often lost in the political reactions and responses of an immediate crisis of will, is the wisdom from previous generations that brings their own intuitive insights to future event. One such sage of Irish culture and politics is Edmund Burke and his interaction in the English Parliament.

While Edmund Burke and the Politics of Empire is a reflection of 18th century thought, the application to the continued struggle of the 1916 Easter Rising in important to understand the nature of religious differences, attitudes of loyalty to England and the prospects of representation versus egalitarian democracy. Burkes perspective on the Easter Rising would certainly manifest the following sentiments, while maintaining a sense of order and respect for tradition. Yet, in all revolutions, rational balance seldom is the operating principle.

While Burke supported extension of the franchise in Ireland, his support for voting rights, and for the need for Catholics to sit in the Irish Parliament, was not based on a Jacobite faith in the merits of equal representation. It was, rather, drawn from his moral-imaginative perspective on how society, and how moral and political behavior, are shaped. As Kirk puts it, Burkes concern was that the continued exclusion of Catholics from Parliament amounted to the denial of aristocratic leadership to the Catholic community. Burke was not an elitist in the usual sense; he had denounced as oligarchical earlier efforts to provide a more limited Catholic franchise based on stringent property qualifications. He believed, however, in the need for a well-bred, educated, stable leadership class among the Irish Catholics. The political power exercised by members of the Irish Parliament was, in practice, greatly constrained, but they were public figures and in that respect could play an important role in shaping Irish politics and society.

If Burkes concerns about the excessive abuses from a Jacobite mindset applied to the most radical elements among IRA zealots, the fundamental expression of revolution with crossing O'Connell Bridge was a journey well worth mailing a letter of liberty at the Post Office.

Shaun Harkin concludes with his final assessment: The 100th anniversary should be celebrated as a stand against imperialism and for Irish self-determination. However, the goals of the Irish revolution are still unmet. Ireland needs another rising involving millions opposed to austerity, imperial war and social injustice.

Well, any ongoing clash of civilizations reverts to ugly consequences when a dominating empire seeks to control a resisting satellite protectorate. Black and Tans enforcers will either become executioners or carcasses from a death blow by a freedom fighter. The British Empire was able to extend their rule over much of the world by exploiting the divide and conquer strategy.

While the colonial era established advancement and enlightenment on many levels, the acculturation factor was acutely missing. Cultures are different for real reasons. The Irish are just as much different from the Kings English as the Scots are from their Brit neighbors. Imperialism does not recognize political self-determination. The lesson of the Easter Rising is that the desire for freedom from foreign oppression is universal.

For all their wealth of wisdom and heritage of Magna Carta, the English lose sight of their greatness when the British Crown wants to rule the world.

SARTRE  April 26, 2016

Source: http://batr.org/forbidden/042616.html

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King Mohammed VI of Morocco held talks Monday with King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain shortly after arriving in the Gulf country on a brotherly and working visit.

The two leaders reviewed their countries long-standing historic relations and ways to further expand their cooperation and reviewed the developments in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, reported Bahrain News Agency (BNA.)

King Hamad said the Moroccan sovereigns visit to Bahrain reflects the solid relations binding the two countries and embodies firm keenness on continuing consultation and cooperation for the sake of shared interests.

During the talks, King Hamad reiterated Bahrains support to Moroccos territorial integrity and rejection of all encroachment on any inch of its territories, and renewed firm backing to Moroccan efforts to settle the dispute over Western Sahara, said BNA.

King Hamad also commended the dedicated efforts made by the Moroccan leader, as chairman of the OIC Al-Quds Committee, in support of the Palestinian peoples inalienable rights.

The two sides hailed the positive results of the first Morocco-GCC Summit, which was held in Riyadh last week and which reaffirmed the strong relations and strategic partnership between Morocco and the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council; namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The Riyadh Summit had actually issued a joint statement underlining that this summit is but a reflection of the special and exceptional relations, binding GCC member states and Morocco, and stressing the keenness of the GCC member states leaders to enhance their relations with Morocco, to the highest levels, in political, economic, military and security-related sectors.

The GCC leaders also renewed their unfailing support to Morocco in the Sahara issue and to the autonomy initiative it presented as the basis for any solution to this artificial regional dispute. They expressed their total ejection of any act that may affect Moroccan supreme interests, on top of which the Moroccan Sahara issue, the joint statement said.

King Mohammed VI and King Hamad, who had both attended the Riyadh Summit along the other leaders of the Arab Gulf countries, also stressed at their talks the need to pool all efforts, Arab and international, to combat the scourge of terrorism which is destabilizing countries and threatening international security and stability, BNA stated.

The two leaders afterwards presided over the signing ceremony of two protocols and an executive cooperation program.

The first protocol amends the agreement on non-double taxation and fight against tax evasion signed in 2000.

The second text concerns the implementation program of the endowments and Islamic affairs cooperation agreement for the years 2016, 2017 and 2018, while the third provides for enhanced cooperation between the Moroccan Institut Superieur de la Magistrature and Bahrains Institute for Judicial and Legal Studies.

The Moroccan Sovereigns visit to Bahrain is part of a tour he is undertaking in a number of Gulf States in the wake of the Riyadh summit.

King Mohammed VI is expected this Tuesday in Qatar for talks with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani on means to bolster bilateral relations and on issues of common interest.
Egyptians were out on the streets on Monday for different reasons. Celebrations organized by the Future of Homeland Party celebrated the 34th anniversary of the handing over of the Sinai Peninsula by Israel in 1982 under the 1979 Camp David peace agreement while on the other hand, there were protests under the banner of Egypt Not For Sale as President Sisi is accused of selling the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Riyadh for economic and financial aid and investment.

Protesters changed their venue from downtown Cairo to Dokki because security forces had blocked access to the area. Several hundred people attended the protest and there were low turnouts in Alexandria and Damanhour in northern Cairo.

Security forces dispersed the protesters and more than 100 people have been arrested in Cairo and held in custody in other provinces according to lawyer Ragia Omran of the Front to Defend Egypts Protesters.

Maasoum Marzouk, an official of the Arab nationalist Karama Party said some of those who were fleeing the protest sheltered together with other party officials at its headquarters in Dokki. He described the scene as a city under occupation now by security forces.

The crackdown on the protesters was also used to target journalists and the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate said 12 were arrested and 3 attacked while covering the protests. It claimed that pro-Sisi supporters together with men in police uniform had attempted to storm its downtown headquarters, one of the planned rallying points for the protests.

Meanwhile, at the 34th anniversary celebration of the handing over of the Sinai Peninsula in downtown Cairos Abdeen Square, patriotic songs honoring the Egyptian Armed Forces were chanted. Posters and banners expressing support for Sisi were held up while fighter jets paraded in the sky.

There is increasing opposition against President Sisis policies and critics say he is using the security forces to quell any public protest against his government. Human rights groups have often accused his administration of ruling with an iron fist.
Seven ministries in Tripoli including the foreign affairs ministry were handed over to the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) on Monday and Mohammed al-Ammari, a member of the Presidential Council formed under the Libya Political Agreement (LPA), said the planning, labor and education ministries will follow in the next few days.

He said the transfer of power to the GNA is going well and as soon as the ministers take the oath of office, they can begin working from these ministries.

Since its arrival in Tripoli last month onboard a ship, the GNA has been handed several ministries but it has however not started work as cabinet members continue to camp at the heavily fortified Bu Setta naval base in Tripoli which serves as its headquarters. The foreign affairs ministry is close to the base and was already effectively in the hands of Mohamed Siala appointed as the foreign minister of the GNA.

Under the LPA reached in Morocco in December, the UN-backed governments legitimacy depends on its approval by the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR) through a vote of confidence. Numerous attempts to hold a voting session was blocked due to diverging issues between the lawmakers on whether the approval of the constitutional draft or the GNA should be held first.

However, it seems like the Tobruk-based government led by Prime Minister Thinni and once referred to as the internationally recognized government before the formation of the GNA does not have plans to cede power as reports emerge that it has loaded its first oil shipment for sale despite warnings from the National Oil Corporation (NOC); the sole body authorized to oversee Libyas oil transactions.

The sale will provide the Tobruk-based government with the much needed revenue to continue its activities amid the growing international isolation and even reinforce its defiance against the GNA.
The speaker of the Turkish parliament, Ismail Kahraman, has called for the emulation of other Middle Eastern states through a constitutional reform because the word Allah does not appear in the Turkish constitution.

He said as a Muslim country, Turkey needs a religious constitution rather than using word secularism. He questioned why should we, as a Muslim country, distance ourselves from our religion as he spoke at a conference in Istanbul attended by academics and writers from Islamic countries.

Kahraman has the right to propose constitutional amendments as the speaker of the parliament and his party, the ruling AKP, has 317 of the 550 seats which is short of the 330 votes required to submit it for a referendum. It is unclear if the plan will be supported by the party.

Opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the secular CHP blasted the speakers remarks stating that the chaos in the Middle East is the result of politics instrumentalizing religion.

Secularism is the primary principle of social peace and also ensures that everyone has religious freedom Kilicdaroglu posted on Tweeter in response to Kharamans statement.

Kharaman had stressed that the constitution needs to discuss religion  It should not be irreligious, this new constitution, it should be a religious constitution.

Under the rule of the AKP, calls for a new constitution have been increasing but the head of the parliaments constitutional commission and fellow AKP member Mustafa Sentop said there were no plans to remove the concept of secularism from the future draft.

If the party gets support of other political parties, Turkey could soon be shifting from being a secular state where religion and state are separated to a constitutionally religious state where the laws of the land would be heavily influenced by Islam.

The majority of the 78million strong population is Sunni Muslim, according to Reuters. About a fifth is estimated to be Alevi, which draws from Shia, Sufi and Anatolian folk traditions. There are about 100,000 Christians and 17,000 Jews living in the country.
International Criminal Courts prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda and her team will investigate outbreaks of violence in Burundi that have killed hundreds and forced hundreds of thousands to flee the country since a political crisis erupted in 2015.

At least 3,400 people have been arrested and over 230,000 Burundians were forced to seek refuge in neighboring countries, Fatou Bensouda said on Monday.

Armed rebel groups have emerged in the East African country since a political crisis erupted in 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza launched his bid for a third term in office and then won the disputed election in July.

The ICC prosecutor said she had warned that those alleged to be committing crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court could be held individually accountable.

Her office had reviewed reports detailing acts of killing, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as cases of enforced disappearances.

All these acts appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC, she said.

Preliminary examinations at the court, based mainly on publicly available information, can last for months or years before leading to a possible full investigation.

Rights groups have welcomed the decision announced by the ICC chief prosecutor.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has called, during a recent meeting with President Joseph Kabila, for timely and credible elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the State Department said on Monday.

The talks were held on the sidelines of the signing ceremony of the Paris climate agreements in the United Nations headquarters last Friday.

The US is pledging additional funding for elections and for helping to demobilize fighters in eastern provinces.

Kabilas political opponents fear he will again change the constitution to run for another term as he did in 2011.

Delays in drawing up the voter register and delivering electoral materials are posing a serious threat to the countrys second post-war polls, due in November.

The Secretary did emphasize that the US stands ready to be a partner to all of those who are committed to timely, credible elections as called for by the DRCs constitution, State Department spokesman John Kirby told a press briefing.

The Secretary stressed that a peaceful transition in the DRC will allow President Kabila to cement his legacy, Kirby said.

Kerry also emphasized that citizens should be allowed to speak freely without intimidation.

The polls are seen as a crucial step towards stabilizing the vast minerals-rich country, which is still recovering from a vicious civil war that ended in 2003 with more than 5 million people dead.

The electoral commission and its partners, including the United Nations, say the November 28 date is still achievable despite growing skepticism in diplomatic and political circles.
A new study in Biological Psychiatry reports structural brain damage from an autoimmune encephalitis that impairs behavior in ways that are somewhat similar to the effects of "angel dust."

The body sometimes makes substances that have effects on the brain in ways that resemble the effects of illicit drugs. In their paper, the authors report findings on a syndrome called anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis that arises when the body makes antibodies that target one of the subunits of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) subtype of receptor for the chemical messenger, glutamate.

The antibodies appear to mimic effects produced by the drug phencyclidine (PCP), also known as "angel dust", which produces a schizophrenia-like syndrome by blocking the NMDA glutamate receptor. Schizophrenia itself is also associated with NMDA receptor dysfunction.

Senior author of the study, Dr. Carsten Finke, Professor at Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin, explains, "Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis is a recently discovered autoimmune disorder of the brain, which causes a severe neuropsychiatric syndrome with behavioral changes, psychosis, memory loss, and decreased levels of consciousness. Although many patients recover well, the majority suffer from long-term cognitive impairment."

In this issue of Biological Psychiatry, Finke and his colleagues analyzed multimodal magnetic resonance imaging data from 40 patients who were recovering from anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.

They discovered that the patients had structural damage of the hippocampus and impaired hippocampal microstructural integrity, which strongly correlated with memory performance, disease severity, and disease duration. The hippocampus is a brain structure that plays an important role in memory.

"The results of the study therefore reveal a structural correlate of the persisting memory deficits - the chief complaint affecting daily life of patients after the acute disease stage," said Finke. "Furthermore, these observations are also in line with evidence that dysfunction of hippocampal NMDA receptors causes severe amnesia."

These findings suggest that the disease, which can be particularly difficult to quickly diagnose, is critical to treat promptly because the behavioral symptoms can be signs that the antibodies are actively damaging the brain.

"The atypical psychosis syndromes arising from the development of anti-NMDA receptor antibodies are extremely important to diagnosis and treat," commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "They may be easily misdiagnosed as the psychiatric disorders that they superficially resemble.. Nonetheless, these syndromes highlight the importance of NMDA receptor signaling for the genesis of symptoms associated with psychotic disorders."

More information: Carsten Finke et al. Structural Hippocampal Damage Following Anti-N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor Encephalitis, Biological Psychiatry (2016). Journal information: Biological Psychiatry Carsten Finke et al. Structural Hippocampal Damage Following Anti-N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor Encephalitis,(2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2015.02.024

Provided by Elsevier
Prevalence of childhood obesity, 1999-2014. Credit: Mark Dubowski for Duke Health

The alarming increase in U.S. childhood obesity rates that began nearly 30 years ago continues unabated, with the biggest increases in severe obesity, according to a study led by a Duke Clinical Research Institute scientist.

"Despite some other recent reports, we found no indication of a decline in obesity prevalence in the United States in any group of children aged 2 through 19," said lead author Asheley Skinner, Ph.D., associate professor at Duke. "This is particularly true with severe obesity, which remains high, especially among adolescents."

Skinner, along with colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University, analyzed data from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey, a large, ongoing compilation of health information that has spanned decades.

Reporting online April 26 in the journal Obesity, the researchers found that for 2013-2014, 33.4 percent of children between the ages of 2 through 19 were overweight. Among those, 17.4 percent had obesity, which includes a range from the lower end of the designation criteria to the higher end.

These rates were not statistically different than those from the previous reporting period of 2011-2012. Across all categories of obesity, a clear, statistically significant increase continued from 1999 through 2014.

"Most disheartening is the increase in severe obesity," Skinner said.

The prevalence of severe obesity - correlated to an adult body mass index of 35 or higher - accounted for the sharpest rise from the previous reporting period. Among all overweight youngsters in the 2012-14 reporting period, 6.3 percent had a BMI of at least 35, which was defined as class II obesity. Another 2.4 percent of those had severe obesity, defined as class III, which was consistent with an adult BMI of 40 or more.

For the previous reporting period, 5.9 percent of youngsters had class II obesity, and 2.1 percent of those were at class III levels.

"An estimated 4.5 million children and adolescents have severe obesity and they will require new and intensive efforts to steer them toward a healthier course," Skinner said. "Studies have repeatedly shown that obesity in childhood is associated with worse health and shortened lifespans as adults."

Sarah Armstrong, M.D., a pediatrician and director of the Duke Healthy Lifestyles Program who was not involved in the study, said the population-wide findings in the study are consistent with what she sees in her clinical practice. While families are more attuned to the health effects of obesity, she said, reversing the problem is as difficult one-on-one as it is nationally.

"Certainly progress has been made in addressing the issue in our country," Armstrong said. "But this study highlights that we may need to be more disruptive in our thinking about how we change the environment around children if we really want to see that statistic move on a national scale."

Skinner said the study has limitations, relying on two-year data that provides a snapshot in time across a wide population. But she said the NHANES database is a broader source than those used in studies that found declines in obesity rates among smaller or segmented populations.

"We don't want the findings to cause people to become frustrated and disheartened," Skinner said. "This is really a population health problem that will require changes across the boardfood policy, access to health care, school curriculums that include physical education, community and local resources in parks and sidewalks. A lot of things put together can work."

Explore further Severely obese children may be at higher risk of heart disease and diabetes

Provided by Duke University Medical Center
A pile of cocaine hydrochloride. Credit: DEA Drug Enforcement Agency, public domain

(Medical Xpress)A team of researchers affiliated with the University of Michigan and the University of Alabama has found two molecules expressed in rats that are involved in their response to cocaine and other stimulants. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research group describes their study of two molecules, fibroblast growth factor and dopamine D2 receptor, which appear to make a rat more or less sensitive to cocaine addiction.

To better understand why it is that some people seem to be more likely to become addicts if they try certain drugs, the researchers have been looking for genetic differences, in this case, in rats. They bred two different rat lines, one group that were called "high responders" because they were more impulsive and had a temperament that mimicked that of human addicts, and the other which they dubbed "low responders" which were rats that had "average" personalities and that did not respond as dramatically to stimulants.

In studying the rats prior to offering them cocaine, the team found that the high responders had higher than average amounts of fibroblast growth factor in their bodies, and that it stayed at high levels even after they became addicted to cocaine. Interestingly, the same rats also had lower than normal levels of the dopamine D2 receptor prior to addiction, but normal levels once they became addicted. The molecule levels in the rats are regulated by genetic factorsthe proteins are encoded by genes, and thus more are created in some rats than others, for unknown reasons.

The group's findings suggest that levels of both molecules in the body can be used as a means to gauge a rat's (and perhaps a person's) susceptibility to becoming an addict, (which is easily checked using blood or saliva tests) before they ever try a drug, perhaps offering an early intervention warning.

The team next plans to look a little deeper at the molecules and their impact on both rats and humans to try to better understand why their levels can make rats (and people) more likely to become addicts and then perhaps to look into ways to counteract their impact.

In these images of rat brains, differences in gene expression of genes for fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2, top set) and dopamine 2 receptor (D2, bottom sett) can be seen in rats of two breeds before (left) and after (right) cocaine exposure. The addiction-prone bHR rats differed significantly in several ways from the timid bLR rats. Credit: Flagel Lab, University of Michigan

Explore further Long-term cocaine addiction therapy developed

More information: Shelly B. Flagel et al. Genetic background and epigenetic modifications in the core of the nucleus accumbens predict addiction-like behavior in a rat model, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2016). Shelly B. Flagel et al. Genetic background and epigenetic modifications in the core of the nucleus accumbens predict addiction-like behavior in a rat model,(2016). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1520491113 Abstract

This study provides a demonstration in the rat of a clear genetic difference in the propensity for addiction-related behaviors following prolonged cocaine self-administration. It relies on the use of selectively bred high-responder (bHR) and low-responder (bLR) rat lines that differ in several characteristics associated with "temperament," including novelty-induced locomotion and impulsivity. We show that bHR rats exhibit behaviors reminiscent of human addiction, including persistent cocaine-seeking and increased reinstatement of cocaine seeking. To uncover potential underlying mechanisms of this differential vulnerability, we focused on the core of the nucleus accumbens and examined expression and epigenetic regulation of two transcripts previously implicated in bHR/bLR differences: fibroblast growth factor (FGF2) and the dopamine D2 receptor (D2). Relative to bHRs, bLRs had lower FGF2 mRNA levels and increased association of a repressive mark on histones (H3K9me3) at the FGF2 promoter. These differences were apparent under basal conditions and persisted even following prolonged cocaine self-administration. In contrast, bHRs had lower D2 mRNA under basal conditions, with greater association of H3K9me3 at the D2 promoter and these differences were no longer apparent following prolonged cocaine self-administration. Correlational analyses indicate that the association of H3K9me3 at D2 may be a critical substrate underlying the propensity to relapse. These findings suggest that low D2 mRNA levels in the nucleus accumbens core, likely mediated via epigenetic modifications, may render individuals more susceptible to cocaine addiction. In contrast, low FGF2 levels, which appear immutable even following prolonged cocaine exposure, may serve as a protective factor.  Press Release Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

 2016 Medical Xpress
The ITA.LI.CA prognostic system, a model integrating tumor staging, liver function, functional status, and alpha-fetoprotein level, builds on previous models of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) prognosis and shows superior survival prediction in Italian and Taiwanese cohorts, according to a study published this week in PLOS Medicine by Alessandro Vitale of Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria di Padova, Italy, and colleagues.

Primary liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Current prognostic models for HCC (the most common liver cancer) do not integrate a number of patient-level factors that affect prognosis and treatment eligibility. Using the ITA.LI.CA dataset, prospectively collected from 5,290 consecutive patients with HCC from 19 institutions in Italy, Vitale and colleagues created an ITA.LI.CA staging system using tumor characteristics, and then developed a parametric multivariable survival model integrating ITA.LI.CA stage, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status, Child-Pugh score, and alpha-fetoprotein. The resulting prognostic score had concordance indices of 0.71 and 0.78 in internal (a subset of ITA.LI.CA) and external (Taiwanese, n=2,651) validation cohorts, respectively, and compared favorably (p < 0.001) to other prognostic systems for HCC (BCLC, HKLC, MESIAH, CLIP, JIS). Moreover, it allows asimple but accurate clinical description of each HCC patient, with the potential to be used for deciding treatment or designing clinical trials.

Prospective trials beyond the two populations studied are needed to validate the generalizability of the ITA.LI.CA prognostic score.

Nonetheless, strong performance in two distinct cohorts suggests that Vitale and colleagues have developed a promising tool. In a Perspective on the study, Neehar Parikh of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan (US) and Amit Singal of UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas (US) (both uninvolved in the study) discuss why ITA.LI.CA is timely and provides an advance, and propose next steps. On this study's impact, they say, "[t]his system is an important iteration in the evolution of staging for HCC, and, while it enters a crowded field, the ITA.LI.CA staging system is a worthy entrant."

Explore further Revised staging system prognostic for multiple myeloma

More information: Farinati F, Vitale A, Spolverato G, Pawlik TM, Huo T-l, Lee Y-H, et al. (2016) Development and Validation of a New Prognostic System for Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma. PLoS Med 13(4): e1002006. Journal information: PLoS Medicine Farinati F, Vitale A, Spolverato G, Pawlik TM, Huo T-l, Lee Y-H, et al. (2016) Development and Validation of a New Prognostic System for Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma.13(4): e1002006. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002006

Provided by Public Library of Science
Antibiotic-resistant intestinal bacteria enter the environment through toilets and sewage water treatment plants. Some multiply or survive there or transfer their genes to other microorganisms. People can be colonized with these bacteria, for example via contact with surface water. If the bacteria cause an infection  which in most cases happens in the hospital as urinary tract infection or sepsis  it gets difficult to combat the infection effectively with antibiotics. It is therefore in the interest of our society to quickly determine whether and how resistant bacteria spread via sewage water - and how this could be prevented. The new project HyReKA studies these aspects, while also looking for answers to the question: How relevant are these bacteria for our health?

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is promoting the joint project "Biological and hygienic - medical relevance and control of antibiotic-resistant pathogens in clinical, agricultural and municipal waste water and their relevance in raw water (HyReKA)". Scientists from different research institutions as well as suppliers of water infrastructure, industry partners and authorities are involved. The Institute of Hygiene and Public Health of the University Hospital Bonn is leading the project. The project examines the spread of resistant pathogens through wastewater from hospitals, municipal areas, agricultural facilities and slaughterhouses as well as airports and considers the appropriate response strategies.

The worldwide increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria is considered as a major challenge by the World Health Organization (WHO) and was a topic at the G7 summit at Elmau Castle in 2015. To minimize the leaking of antibiotics or antibiotic-resistant bacteria into the environment the use of antibiotics in human and veterinary medicine needs to be reduced according to the German Antibiotic Resistance Strategy (DART).

A particular danger is represented by pathogens with a resistance against last resort antibiotics. It can be very difficult to cure patients that suffer from an infection with these resistant bacteria. This was exemplified by an outbreak of different intestinal bacteria in 2014. Here, food from a hospital kitchen had been contaminated by contact with waste water. After the transmission path had been detected the outbreak could be brought under control within a very short time thanks to targeted hygiene measures.

The first indications of the importance of sewage water for the spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens were already found in a previous project of the BMBF funding measure "Risk management of new pollutants and pathogens in the water cycle (RiSKWa)". With HyReKA the BMBF now starts a detailed new project for this research topic. It is focused on the hygienic - medical relevance of resistant pathogens in clinical, agricultural and municipal waste water and their importance for the production of drinking water.

Researchers test new wastewater treatment techniques

In the course of the project the spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens from hospitals, agricultural facilities, slaughterhouses and airports via wastewater and sewage water treatment plants into surface waters will be tracked. Moreover, in a large sewage treatment plant new wastewater technologies are tested with which resistant bacteria can be retained. The scientists also want to investigate the risk that multiresistant bacteria spread in waters or consumer goods (such as meat or drinking water) and resources (such as raw water) used by humans. Another question is whether the antibiotic concentrations in waste water and surface water are sufficient for resistant pathogens to gain an advantage - that would favor the spread of multiresistant bacteria.

The results will help to identify and to avoid the risk of spreading multiresistant bacteria through wastewater. This is also important in terms of sustainable risk regulation and the "Sustainable Development Goals" of the UN. The researchers also want to find technical solutions for example in waste water treatment and monitoring of medical and agricultural facilities and slaughterhouses to hold harmful bacteria at bay.

Explore further Special collection presents the state of science for evaluating antibiotic resistance in agroecosystems

Provided by University of Bonn
Pills. Credit: Public Domain

An international evidence review has found that certain nutritional supplements can increase the effectiveness of antidepressants for people with clinical depression.

Omega 3 fish oils, S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe), methylfolate (bioactive form of folate) and Vitamin D, were all found to boost the effects of medication.

University of Melbourne and Harvard researchers examined 40 clinical trials worldwide, alongside a systematic review of the evidence for using nutrient supplements (known as nutraceuticals) to treat clinical depression in tandem with antidepressants such as SSRIs, SNRIs and tricyclics.

Head of the ARCADIA Mental Health Research Group at the University of Melbourne, Dr Jerome Sarris, led the meta-analysis, published today in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

"The strongest finding from our review was that Omega 3 fish oil - in combination with antidepressants - had a statistically significant effect over a placebo," Dr Sarris said.

"Many studies have shown Omega 3s are very good for general brain health and improving mood, but this is the first analysis of studies that looks at using them in combination with antidepressant medication.

"The difference for patients taking both antidepressants and Omega 3, compared to a placebo, was highly significant. This is an exciting finding because here we have a safe, evidence-based approach that could be considered a mainstream treatment."

The University of Melbourne research team also found good evidence for methylfolate, Vitamin D, and SAMe as a mood enhancing therapy when taken with antidepressants. They reported mixed results for zinc, vitamin C and tryptophan (an amino acid). Folic acid didn't work particularly well, nor did inositol.

"A large proportion of people who have depression do not reach remission after one or two courses of antidepressant medication," Dr Sarris said.

"Millions of people in Australia and hundreds of millions worldwide currently take antidepressants. There's real potential here to improve the mental health of people who have an inadequate response to them."

Dr Sarris said medical professionals may be hesitant to prescribe nutraceuticals alongside pharmaceuticals, simply because there has been a lack of scientific evidence around their efficacy.

"Medical practitioners are aware of the benefits of omega 3 fatty acids, but are probably unaware that one can combine them with antidepressant medication for a potentially better outcome," he said.

The researchers found no major safety concerns in combining the two therapies, but stressed that people on antidepressants should always consult with their health professional before taking nutraceuticals and should be aware these supplements can differ in quality.

"We're not telling people to rush out and buy buckets of supplements. Always speak to your medical professional before changing or initiating a treatment," Dr Sarris said.

The researchers are currently conducting a National Health and Medical Research Council study using a combination of these nutraceuticals for depression.

Explore further Nutrient combination super pill to treat depression

Provided by University of Melbourne
Georgia to ensure judiciary transparency

By Messenger Staff

Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muiznieks report, which refers to human rights situation in 2015, describes the situation in Georgia as well."The Commissioner welcomes the achievements and positive trends in Georgia in terms of judicial reform, including in juvenile justice. However, the Commissioner was informed about the functioning of the judicial system and a number of disturbing factors in terms of its independence. He called on the government to ensure transparency of selection and appointment of judges, the report says.The document also states that the Commissioner is concerned about alleged politically motivated and biased approaches towards parliamentary opposition members. In addition, the Commissioner calls on the government to create necessary conditions to ensure that anti-discrimination laws are effectively implemented.A fair and competent justice system is a fundament for any democratic country.Unfortunately, Georgia has no tradition of having a transparent court system. After emerging from the Soviet Union, of the Soviet Union, successive Georgian governments tried to use the court system for their own interests.The current government refused to dismiss judges who were allegedly involved in criminal activity under the previous state leadership.Apparently, the number of such judges was high, but they refrained from removing them so as not to damage relations with Georgia's international partners.Herewith, it is likely there are still many former officials in a number of state institutions who hinder the process of systemic changes in the court system.It is hard to believe that a judge who once consistently made partial verdicts to be absolutely impartial in the future; he at least might become a subject of blackmail.Georgia needs very clear criteria on how to select judges and then further reforms in the court system, otherwise it will be hard for the country to dismiss speculation over the impartiality of the judiciary.
via @learyreports

Sen. Bill Nelson on Monday wrote to President Obama and appeared to question speculation, largely coming from former Sen. Bob Graham, that the 9/11 report shows ties to Saudi Arabia.

The letter follows high-profile media appearances by Graham, who has strongly suggested a Saudi relationship with the terrorists.

Nelson's letter:

I understand that your administration may soon decide whether to declassify part or all of the 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 report that have not yet been made available to the public.

As Im sure you are aware, there is growing speculation that information contained in these 28 pages will show that Saudi Arabia provided support to those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I have read the 28 pages, and I have also read intelligence reports that debunk them.

If you declassify these 28 pages, I strongly urge you to also declassify intelligence reports that debunk them in order to provide the American people with a complete picture of this issue.

--ALEX LEARY, Tampa Bay Times
via @learyreports

Former Sen. Bob Graham said Sunday that the Obama administration will decide by June whether to release a classified portion of the 9/11 report and left no doubt he thinks the Saudis played some role.

The most important unanswered question of 9/11 is did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported? Graham said on Meet the Press.

I think it's implausible to think that people who couldn't speak English, had never been in the United States before, as a group were not well-educated could have done that. So who was the most likely entity to have provided them that support? And I think all the evidence points to Saudi Arabia. We know that Saudi Arabia started Al Qaeda. It was a creation of Saudi-- of Saudi Arabia.

Host Chuck Todd asked, And when you say Saudi Arabia, are you saying the government? Or are you saying wealthy individuals who happen to be Saudi Arabian?

Graham: That is a very murky line. Saudi Arabia has made it murky by its own legal action. Whenever a U.S. group sues a Saudi Arabian entity, whether its a bank, a foundation, a charity, immediately, the defense of sovereign immunity is raised. The Saudis don't recognize the difference between a royal decision and a societal decision in the same way that other countries might. So I think it covers a broad range, from the highest ranks of the kingdom through these, what would be private entities.
@ByKristenMClark

Florida Democrats are pouncing on Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carlos Beruff today after he told a gathering of Broward County Republicans on Monday night that he doesn't want to let "anybody from the Middle East into this country."

The Sun Sentinel reported on the Manatee County developer's speech, noting that the remark was in response to a question from an audience member about his "position on Muslim immigration."

"Ah ha," the newspaper quoted Beruff as saying. "I think our immigration department is broken. And I don't think it's safe to allow anybody from the Middle East into this country."

He later clarified to the newspaper that "Israel is an exception" -- because "I think Israel's security measures are pretty strong" -- but his ban would apply to Christians and Muslims, the Sun Sentinel reported.

Spoke to my fellow Republicans at the @BrowardGOP meeting tonight about how we need real change in Washington. pic.twitter.com/K5I70gEC0r  Carlos Beruff (@carlosberuff) April 26, 2016

After the Sun Sentinel published its story online today, Florida Democratic Party spokesman Max Steele released a statement, calling Beruff's idea "absurdly misguided as it is bigoted."

"With these comments, Carlos Beruff has made it clear to Floridians that he lacks both the temperament and common sense to represent a proudly diverse state like Florida in the United States Senate," Steele said.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Patrick Murphy also weighed in, saying in a campaign statement that Beruff's "full embrace of Donald Trump's extreme bigotry is flat-out un-American."

Beruff's comments echo -- and build upon -- remarks the GOP presidential frontrunner made in December. Trump called for a "total and complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the U.S. in the aftermath of the San Bernardino shooting.

Beruff said last month he would support whoever the Republican nominee is for president, while noting in regards to Trump specifically that there are "some things I don't agree with."

Murphy, a congressman from Jupiter, added that "Mr. Beruff's asinine comments and out-of-touch values are not just dangerous to our democracy, but are absolutely unacceptable for any candidate who wants to represent Floridians in the U.S. Senate."

Beruff's four main competitors in the GOP primary for the U.S. Senate race haven't volunteered their thoughts on Beruff's remarks yet, nor has Murphy's main Democratic primary opponent, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando. The other Republican candidates are: U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis of Ponte Vedra Beach, U.S. Rep. David Jolly of Indian Shores, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera of Miami and Orlando businessman Todd Wilcox.

Republican Gov. Rick Scott last week spoke glowingly of Beruff. When asked today by reporters in Tallahassee about Beruff's comments, Scott said: "I have not seen his comments, but in our state, I want people to come to our state."

In the face of today's criticism, Beruff doubled down in a statement this afternoon.

"The liberal media is out of control. And Democrats refuse to deal with reality. They make things up, sensationalize common sense solutions and exacerbate this obsession over political correctness. I stand by my answer and will repeat: anyone with ties, or possible ties, to terrorism should not be allowed in the United States," Beruff said.

He added: "The Obama Administration has allowed our immigration system to become a serious national security risk. Until we can ensure that our vetting process is full-proof and nothing will be missed in the process of approving people for admittance to the United States, it is the federal government's responsibility to do whatever is necessary to keep us safe here at home."

Herald/Times reporter Michael Auslen contributed to this report.

Photo credit: Bradenton Herald
Despite lawmakers virtually ignoring his budget wish list during the 2016 legislative session, Gov. Rick Scott is boasting about fulfilling a campaign promise to cut taxes by $1 billion in his second term.

Scott took credit for the fiscal feat both before and after signing the Legislatureswide-ranging tax-cut package, HB 7099. "Over the past two years, Florida has cut more than $1 billion in taxes," an April 13, 2016, press release from the governors office read.

Scott had pledged to hit the billion-dollar mark in tax reductions during his successful 2014 re-election campaign, mostly by giving breaks to businesses and limiting property tax growth. In his March 15 press release announcing his intention to sign the Legislatures budget, Scott said hed kept his promise with $1.2 billion in tax cuts over the first two years of his second term.

Scott has repeated this claim several times in one form or another. But have taxes really gone down by more than $1 billion in two years, like he says? It depends on how you look at what the Legislature has done, but the changes havent happened the way Scott wanted.

Keep reading Joshua Gillin's fact-check from PolitiFact Florida and check out Scott's full Truth-O-Meter record.
@JeremySWallace

After the Florida Cabinet again deadlocked over who to make the new insurance commissioner, Florida Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater said he is just not certain that the man Gov. Rick Scott is committed to for the job has the right background for the post.

Moments after Scott and Atwater, both Republicans, declared another impasse in picking a commissioner, Atwater told reporters that he doesn't know if Pinellas County resident Jeffrey Bragg has the required private sector experience or regulatory experience to even legally hold the position of Florida Insurance Commissioner.

"I don't know the answer to that," Atwater told reporters.

Bragg, a 67-year-old Republican who lives in Palm Harbor, ran the nation's terrorism risk insurance program from 2003 until his retirement in 2014. In the early 1980s, he worked under the Reagan Administration, serving in the Federal Emergency Management Agency where he was the administrator for the national flood insurance program.

Between those appointments, Bragg worked in the private sector, including as a senior vice president for Zurich Risk Management from 2001 to 2003 and as executive vice president for IMSG in St. Petersburg from 1997 to 2000.

During a public interview with Bragg on Tuesday during the cabinet meeting, Atwater said he tried to probe him about his regulatory background to get answers as to whether Bragg really is qualified to regulate Florida's insurance market.

"He wasn't regulating players offering products in the private sector market place or who the complied with his programs," Atwater said.
via @adamsmithtimes

TAMPA -- As far as we know, only one candidate for Floridas open U.S. Senate seat has publicly spoken of killing someone.

Only one is a trained sniper and Arabic-speaking former CIA officer.

Only one has experience commanding an elite squad of counterterrorism hostage rescuers. Raising daughters as a single father. And making tens of millions as an entrepreneur.

In an election cycle where political and government experience seems more of a liability than an asset, newcomer Todd Wilcox, 49, may be the sleeper candidate in a wide-open race to succeed U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.

His resume has more in common with Tony Stark of Iron Man than a typical contender, but if testosterone matters, Wilcox is a shoo-in.

Weve got to get back to being the America we once were, Wilcox, in his clipped military cadence, told an enthusiastic crowd of Republican activists in north Tampa on Tuesday. The entrepreneurial spirit. The accountability. When a man was a man. Its time to elect a warrior.

The winner of Floridas Senate race could well determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the Senate, but less than 90 days before the first ballots are mailed you would be hard pressed to find people who can name even one of the five leading Republicans running: Home builder and prolific campaign donor Carlos Beruff of Bradenton; U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis of Ponte Vedra Beach; U.S. Rep. David Jolly of Indian Shores; Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera of Miami; and Wilcox of Orlando.

More here.

Photo credit: David W. Doonan Special to the Tampa Bay Times
@PatriciaMazzei

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is bringing a little touch of Miami to Washington D.C. for her next fundraiser.

Next month, her re-election campaign will hold a reception branded as "Moon Over Miami." Mojitos and Cuban food are promised.

The event will take place at the Republican's Southeast D.C. townhouse May 25. A $500 contribution is suggested from individual donors, and $1,000 from political action committees.
via @adamsmithtimes

Republican U.S. Senate candidate and U.S. Rep. David Jolly of Indian Shores received glowing coverage on 60 Minutes for his "Stop Act" proposal to bar federal officer holders from asking for campaign donations. The piece featured hidden camera footage of the tiny cubicles Republican House members use to dial for dollars most every day.

"It is a cult-like boiler room on Capitol Hill where sitting members of Congress, frankly I believe, are compromising the dignity of the office they hold by sitting in these sweatshop phone booths calling people asking them for money," Jolly told Norah O'Donnell. "And their only goal is to get $500 or $1,000 or $2,000 out of the person on the other end of the line. It's shameful. It's beneath the dignity of the office that our voters in our communities entrust us to serve."

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel appeared as well, lamenting the amount of time members spend raising money but dismissing the Stop Act proposal and giving Jolly's bill zero chance of passing.
@ByKristenMClark

Speaking to the Economic Club of Florida today in Tallahassee, Tampa venture capitalist John Kirtley likened the push for "school choice" in Florida's public education system to the Cold War divisions the Berlin Wall illustrated.

East Berlin, he said, was like today's traditional public school system -- "where decisions were made at the top" and a uniform system applied to everyone -- whereas West Berlin offered freedom and economic opportunities.

"I think that its just too hard, even if you have the best people, to manage a huge system from the top down and allocate resources that way," Kirtley told a crowd of about 150 people at the Economic Club luncheon. "If parents were empowered to choose, it would be better for teachers, better for parents and better for students."

Kirtley has been an influential voice in education in the Sunshine State. He fought 15 years ago for lawmakers to create the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program and now serves as chairman of Step Up for Students, the main organization that doles out those voucher-like scholarships to help poor children attend private school.

He has numerous other roles on the boards of national and state pro-"school choice" organizations and, in recent years, has given hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions to get "school choice" advocates elected to county school boards and the Florida Legislature.
Beau Donaldson, convicted in the 2010 rape of a friend, will be granted parole after he completes the prerelease program in Billings.

The Montana Board of Pardons and Parole made the decision during a parole hearing on April 21. Senior parole board analyst Julie Thomas said the board's approval means Donaldson can work with his case manager to create a plan for what he intends to do when he is released.

In 2013, Missoula County District Court Judge Karen Townsend sentenced Donaldson to 30 years in the Montana State Prison with 20 years suspended after he pleaded guilty to sexual intercourse without consent for raping a friend in September 2010.

In the spring of 2015, the Board of Pardons and parole denied Donaldsons parole, instead allowing him to attend a boot camp program at the Treasure State Correctional Center and a Great Falls-based aftercare program for 100 days, after which he was moved to the Billings Pre-Release Center. At last year's hearing, the board said once he successfully completed the programs he could apply for parole again.

Thomas said Tuesday that Donaldson's parole is contingent upon successful completion of the Billings Pre-Release Center, a process that usually takes about six months. Donaldson has been in Billings' prerelease program since Dec. 9.

When he develops a parole plan, Donaldson will submit it to the board for approval, after which a date for his release will be set. Thomas said details such as the location where Donaldson will be living on parole would be a part of that plan.

In addition to completion of the prerelease program, the board also stipulated that Donaldson receive regular chemical dependency and sex offender counseling.

Donaldsons rape conviction was one of the court cases covered in the book Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town released last spring by author Jon Krakauer.
A group of Missoula activists hopes to put a Montana stamp on next months protest rally against a fossil fuel refinery in Anacortes, Washington.

Its going to take people in the streets protesting for social change, said retired University of Montana professor Lee Metzgar, one of about a dozen people at a planning meeting for the May 13 rally. We need some kind of popular movement on the order of the Civil Rights movement. Otherwise theres no hope the established political process will solve this in time.

The members of 350 Missoula, an offshoot of the 350.org international network of global warming activists, intend to send a contingent of both observers and potential civil disobedience objectors to Anacortes. That rally is scheduled to be one of six regional demonstrations in the United States calling for public commitment to the Paris climate accords, which President Barack Obama has signed. The accords ask more than 200 signing nations to keep global temperatures from warming another 1.5 degrees Celsius by restraining growth and use of fossil fuels.

The group plans training sessions on Tuesday and on May 3 for both land-based and water-based protests. Theyre doing so in a state with the nations largest proven coal reserves and a significant slice of the Bakken Oil Field on its eastern quarter. They met in Missoulas Union Hall, a building dedicated to the fight for workers rights a century ago.

Were going to have an attorney at some of the training if folks want to be arrested, so they know how to respond and what their rights are, said Carol MacIntyre, who is also coordinating the banners and artwork for the Montana contingent. The other training is for the legal observers, who are there to document how the police treat people but step back and not be a part of the action at all.

Meeting organizer Jeff Smith said climate activists are trying to affect both local decisions like the expansion of oil refinery and export operations at Anacortes and larger matters like the refocusing of global power usage.

Were at a moral junction where any investment in fossil fuel infrastructure takes money away from where we need to go, Smith said. Its a myth that were years away from functional renewable energy from solar, wind and water. In this country, weve always been the people who choose to do the difficult, if not impossible, things. We can apply that entrepreneurial spirit to this.

Documentary filmmaker Robbie Liben agreed that the United States has a history of abrupt economic changes for the public good, exemplified by the transformation during World War II necessary to defeat the Nazis.

Montana is ground zero for everything thats going on for fossil fuel energy, Liben said. If we can move things toward renewable energy and away from fossil fuel here, we can do it anywhere.
The so-called Islamic State is neither a state nor Islamic.

Its a deviant group of gangsters driven by anger and hatred and a thirst for power, Jameel Chaudhry told a packed Lutheran church basement of mostly non-Muslims on Monday evening.

Leaders of that ragtag band define who the faithful are, said Chaudhry, a Muslim and an ethnic Indian from North Africa.

If you dont pledge allegiance, if you dont follow ISIS, youre not a Muslim. You can't call yourself a Muslim, he said. And if they dont call you Muslim, its OK for them to kill you.

Chaudhry, the longtime campus architect for the University of Montana, was emcee and one of four presenters at Saint Paul Lutheran Church in the first of four events during Celebrate Islam Week in Missoula.

Sponsored by the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center and presented by SALAM, the Arabic word for peace and an acronym for Standing Alongside Americas Muslims, the dinner program drew a capacity crowd to a room with a maximum occupancy of 125.

After a greeting from Mayor John Engen, a proclamation from SALAM declaring Celebrate Islam Week was read that decried the alarming escalation of national and local incidents and rhetoric directed against people of the Muslim faith and celebrated Missoula's long history of embracing diversity and dignity for all by statute and practice.

No dissension was voiced from the crowd. One protester held a sign outside the church on Brooks Street and was joined by a few others as the evening went on.

Wurri Kusumastuti, a graduate teaching assistant at UM from Indonesia, explained why she and other Muslim women wear hijabs, traditional veils that cover their heads and indicate a standard of modesty.

The most important time to wear a hijab is during prayer, the effervescent Kusumastuti explained. And Muslims pray five times a day.

I was born Muslim and, I dont know, I just got used to it, she said of the veil. By using this kind of attire, when its time to pray, I just pray.

***

In the 1980s, hijabs were banned in Indonesia and students who protested the act were arrested. Some disappeared, Kusumastuti said. From 1982 to 1998, any religious movement in her country was considered a betrayal by the government.

Slowly the shackles have come off, to a point where today in Indonesia theres a growing market for hajibs.

They are very big business, said Kusumastuti. Theyre not a symbol of oppression. In Indonesia theyre symbols of freedom.

Technical problems with a short video initially marred the presentation of Hanan Omar, a UM graduate student from Saudi Arabia. Eventually they were straightened out and through music and poetic narration, the video portrayed what she called the real meaning of the Islamic phrase Allahu Akbar -- literally God is the greatest.

Its meaning has been demeaned by videos of sick, twisted minds screaming it before explosions, the narrator said.

But in fact its known and celebrated by millions of Muslims who gather and speak it with one voice, one love and no hate.

We say it in every occasion and in every way,  at prayer, when one is startled by beauty or frightened by disasters or scared and weak or joyful and at our peak, the narrator said.

Dont allow terrorists to contaminate a peaceful religion and a phrase that is so great. When you hear it let it show its true colors, let it resonate, that Allahu Akbar is about love and trust from 1.6 billion Muslims to the creator of our faith.

Julian Adler, a UM student in philosophy and political science, studied in Morocco and said he bugged his professor there with questions about religion until he was given a life-altering book on the histories of the world's religions. Adler compared the similar philosophical developments of Christianity and Islam.

Like all other religions they shared basic philosophical ideas with each other that still resonate with us today, he said. Both churches have had histories of both enlightenment and repression.

Celebrate Islam Week continues on Wednesday in the Hellgate High School Auditorium with the showing of most of the movie The Muslims Are Coming based on Muslim comedians routines, as well as a TED talk by Dalia Mogahed called What Do You Think When You Look at Me?

On Thursday UM professor Samir Bitar will be keynote speaker at the Urey Lecture Hall on the UM campus, and Kusumastuti and Chaudhry will take part in a panel discussion afterward.

The weeks events culminate on Saturday when Har Shalom on South Russell Street hosts Dances of Universal Peace. No musical or dance experience is required. All three events begin at 7 p.m.

For more information go to SALAMs Facebook page at facebook.com/SALAMMissoula.
Two candidates filed to run for the three-year term open seat on the Target Range School District board of trustees: Jennifer Long and Evan Rosenberg.

A separate uncontested race is for a one-year term seat. That candidate is Boone Jensen.

Why are you running for the school board?

I am running because I believe that public education is intimately tied to the vitality of our local community, state and our nation. My goal is to be a part of an effective and engaged team of people working to provide the absolute best educational experience possible for all of our children. I want to ensure that we make best use of every resource possible to meet this goal, especially those resources right within our own community.

What is the school districts most pressing issue? How would you help solve it?

I am willing and able to participate in intense, provocative board sessions where controversial issues are debated and innovative decisions are made. Fortunately, I do not believe the school district has any urgent issues to address right now because of the proactive nature of the current administration and board in anticipating future concerns, including annual updates to school policy and the strategic plan, and by staying informed and participating in changes to national and state education policy. Of course, anticipating future funding without a crystal ball is always a challenge in development of any school budget. By being an active board participant, asking tough questions, and close work with the administration, I will continue to support this practical approach to prevent future tasks from becoming problems.

Do you support efforts to redraw school district boundaries, and how much effort are you personally willing to put toward it? How would you deal with the subsequent financial restructuring?

Effective decision-making requires thorough analysis, the ability to hear and balance all stakeholder needs and concerns, and the foresight to see the long-term implications of an action. While there is no current effort or need for that matter, to transfer, annex or consolidate our school district, any major undertaking such as this requires meaningful public conversations, candor, transparency, and an extensive collaborative planning effort in which I would enthusiastically participate.

What is your position on open enrollment? Should the district charge out-of-district students? Why or why not?

Open enrollment is a policy tool and solution for the simple fact that the Target Range School District does not have enough K-8 aged children within its boundaries to fill up our school at present. Higher home values and maturing age demographics mean that our neighborhood school would be under-enrolled and operated under building capacity if we eliminated this policy. If we drop out-of-district children, state funding will decrease and our tax burden may even go up. Services and teachers could also be cut, putting our quality education at risk. Charging tuition for out-of-district students is not only unnecessary, but it is counter-productive and elitist; we risk losing students who cannot afford the tuition, plus we lose the entitlement funding associated with those children. Open enrollment also provides options and opportunities for our neighborhood if demographics shift once again towards younger families with children by maintaining a vibrant and relevant neighborhood school.

What policies most need updating? What changes would you support?

Target Range School Board policies are updated on an annual basis. I believe they must be kept current to follow best educational practices and new educational policy and law defined by the state of Montana, superintendent and school attorney. They must be kept relevant to our school and community. And they must support an effective organizational structure so that we can let the administration manage the school, the teachers teach, and the students learn. As a board member, I will work closely with the school and community to continue this update process by considering the current needs of the school and anticipating future requirements.

What is your stance on the teachers union?

I am continually inspired by Target Range teachers and staff who are fundamental to creating caring friends, good students and constructive citizens. To help our children succeed and stand out unique in our world these days, we must produce a relevant and innovative workforce who is not afraid to problem-solve. Teachers are best positioned to inform continuous progress and improvements in education. I support Target Range teachers.
"Earthquakes strike Kumamoto, Japan. For most people in the world, a headline like that might not get a second noticejust another natural disaster in an endless series across the globe.

For me, though, the headline might as well be: Earthquakes threaten home, family and friends. Thats how deeply I feel about our sister state.

Montana and Kumamoto became sister states in 1982 thanks to then-Ambassador Mike Mansfields vision. For Montanans who have visited Kumamoto or interacted with Kumamoto people in the ensuing years, the experience almost always has been life-changing. It certainly was for me. Put simply, there is no place in the world where being a Montanan means more; the level of hospitality and generosity that awaits a Montanan in Kumamoto defies description.

As president of the Japan Friendship Club of Montana, Ive spent more than 20 years helping foster the Montana-Kumamoto relationship and reminding Montanans that Kumamoto is our sister state. Just one month ago, I was in Missoulaat Hellgate High School and the University of Montanas International Culture and Food Festivalencouraging others to become involved in the relationship.

Today, with dozens dead and seemingly everyone in Kumamoto touched by the quakes, my thoughtsand those of my fellow club memberscenter on a simple question: How can I help? In the coming days, those of us in the club will seek answers to that question.

We can be inspired in our efforts by what weve seen in the past two decades. In 2000, with wildfires raging across much of Montana, Kumamotos citizen Montana Club raised almost $16,000 to help Montanans affected by the fires.

In March 2011, when the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis struck at Fukushima Prefecture north of Tokyo, Montanans responded with several fund-raisers over the ensuing weeks.

Now its time for Montana to show its support, caring and friendship for the one place on the globe where Montanans are welcomed and embraced just for being Montanans.

Its quite possible that special fundraising events may be organized in the near future. Meanwhile, the Japan Friendship Club is working to arrange a bank account that can accept donations. For information, visit the Japan Friendship Clubs page on Facebook. All donations will be sent to Kumamoto prefectures relief fund, the Japanese Red Cross or another charity providing relief in Kumamoto.

Next year will mark the 35th anniversary of the Montana-Kumamoto relationship. As with past milestone years, it promises to be memorable. On behalf of the Japan Friendship Club, I pledge to make 2016 memorablenot with parties or speeches, but with acts of generosity and caring toward the residents of our sister state.
After five years of decline, it is time to speak frankly about the deteriorating situation at the University of Montana.

Having a frank discussion requires us to be courageous and abandon talking points such as, Student enrollment at UM has always ebbed and flowed over the years, and its no different now. Not only do these talking points reflect an "under siege" mentality, they also create the false impression that somehow, this time, UM will bounce back magically, just by the intervention of some secret formula.

It is well known that for the past five years UM has been struggling with declining enrollment and falling revenue. In the battle over student recruitment, the competition, namely Montana State University, has beaten UM. Some at UM claim that MSUs success is due to its strategy of carpet bombing prospective students with attractive recruitment materials. Recruitment battles are not, however, won through recruitment materials; they are won through the substance of a universitys curriculum and the quality of its academic programs.

The identity of a university is its curriculum, the quality of its course offerings, and the national reputation of its programs and faculty. A university that lacks such a unique identity can never attract students, regardless of how much it spends on developing flashy promotional flyers.

In the past five years UM has gradually abandoned its unique identity as the flagship liberal arts institution in the state of Montana. Instead, it has adopted a jumbled identity that lacks any link either to its past or to an exciting vision of a promising future. Without a coherent vision to guide it, UM leadership has neglected to lead its own parade; it fails to educate the state about UMs mission and contributions to Montana. Instead, UM leadership shadows and follows the latest marching orders from Helena.

Thus, when the Legislature began to tout the need for two-year education and dangled the carrot of state funds for construction of a new building for the Missoula College, UM administrators desperate for state funds and a bit of good news rushed to grab hold without thinking about the long-term consequences of such a move on the future of the universitys educational mission. To justify this sudden shift and as an afterthought, university leadership began to boast its commitment to two-year education.

More recently, the administration has declared cyber security and data analytics as fields that would pave the road to a new and promising future for UM. UM President Royce Engstrom, stated that one particular area of programming thats developing and relates directly to Missoula is the area of data science. ... It is a perfect industry for Missoula and a perfect connection between the university and Missoula. Really! How did data science suddenly emerge as the perfect industry for Missoula? And how can a university know what is best for the community when there has never been a real discussion either on campus or between the campus and the city about these important issues?

For decades, the University of Montana was a flagship institution recognized for its high-quality programs in humanities, social sciences and hard sciences, as well as the high quality of its professional schools. These programs put UM on the map, allowing the university to market the university as an attractive destination for thousands of students with diverse sets of interests. This did not mean that the universitys mission and the economic needs of our community were incompatible. Far from it, but UM did not function as the University of Missoula. It served as a nationally ranked university that offered a strong curriculum, attracting students from all 50 states of the union as well as all around the world.

A university is not a community college that trains the local labor force, but it serves as a national hub for the best thinkers, teachers and researchers in every possible field of knowledge, who can attract students from near and far to study and learn right here in Missoula. The time has come for a new leadership that can restore UM as the state flagship and the leading instructional and research hub in Montana.
BILLINGS  A woman on a Montana American Indian reservation pleaded not guilty to murder Tuesday in the alleged beating death of a 13-month-old relative who was under her care, court officials said.

Janelle Red Dog, 42, is accused of striking and killing Kenzley Olson, then putting her body in a trash dumpster before reporting the girl missing April 19.

Judge Marvin Youpee denied bond for Red Dog and ordered her back into custody pending a May hearing, according to the Fort Peck Tribal Court clerk's office.

The defendant's mother, Rhea Starr, said she believes Kenzley's death was an accident and Red Dog had been caring for the baby when no one else would.

"That baby was passed along like yesterday's gossip," Starr told the Associated Press. "I don't think (Kenzley's death) was intentional. I think my daughter was trying to help the baby and panicked."

Kenzley's mother and other family members could not be immediately reached for comment.

The defendant's initial claim  that Kenzley disappeared from the house where Red Dog was caring for her  triggered an Amber Alert for an abducted girl that was broadcast in Montana and North Dakota. Authorities canceled the alert after Red Dog purportedly confessed a day later and drew a map that led them to the baby's body.

Red Dog also faces a misdemeanor charge of hindering law enforcement for giving a false report to police.

The Fort Peck Reservation is about 20 miles from the U.S.-Canada border. Funeral services for Kenzley originally were scheduled for Sunday, but they were postponed until Wednesday. Her obituary described the girl's "tiny fingers, baby soft skin and beautiful smile."

Kenzley had been under Red Dog's care for about two weeks, after her mother dropped her off and failed to return, Red Dog's mother and her lawyer said. The tribal jail confirmed the mother was behind bars on unspecified charges when Kenzley died.

Defense attorney Mary Zemyan said told The AP that from the limited information authorities have shared with her, the cause of the baby's death is unclear.

Additional charges could be filed in tribal court later, Fort Peck Tribes Chief Prosecutor Scott Seifert said. Tribal law allows for a maximum three-year prison sentence on any one charge, with a combined maximum of nine years in prison and a $5,000 fine per charge, he said.

The severity of the crime and age of the victim merit the maximum punishment, Seifert wrote in a notice filed with the court.

Separate federal charges that could carry a more severe punishment also are expected in the case.

Kenzley's death was the second major crime in recent weeks to hit the reservation, which is home to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes and has a population of about 10,000.

In late February, a man allegedly abducted a 4-year-old girl from a park in the town of Wolf Point, sexually assaulted her and tried to kill her. The girl was found alive several days later.

Zemyan has said Red Dog admitted to authorities that she struck Kenzley on three occasions. But she said it was unknown if that's what killed the girl.

"I haven't seen any autopsy so I'm not sure," Zemyan said.

Starr said Kenzley had been sick in recent weeks, coughing and throwing up, and she speculated that illness could have played a role in her death.

An investigator testified during a probable cause hearing last week that an autopsy determined Kenzley died of blunt force trauma. However, the court has not released the autopsy results or an affidavit from prosecutors that was said to have further details on the case.

Fort Peck Tribal Chairman Floyd Azure has blamed Kenzley's death and the recent kidnapping on a rising drug epidemic that he says the reservation must address.

Starr said her daughter had been addicted to painkillers "quite a few years ago" but was unsure if she had recent involvement in drugs.

"One addiction leads to another," Starr said. "There's so much drugs on this reservation it's crazy," she said.
HELENA - The Bureau of Reclamation has launched an investigation in response to a 3-year-old childs death following injuries sustained at a Canyon Ferry Reservoir recreation site last week.

Landon Haight of Butte was injured when a metal dock stored on shore partially collapsed and pinned him at about 3:30 p.m. Friday at the Shannon Boat Launch, a site owned and managed by Reclamation. Several people at the site assisted, including performing CPR, and the boy was transported via ambulance to St. Peters Hospital. He was stabilized and then flown to a hospital in Spokane, Washington, where he later died.

A spokesman for Reclamation on Monday said the agency has convened a team to investigate the incident.

The Reclamation family is deeply saddened by this tragedy. Reclamation offers its condolences to the family members, Reclamation spokesman Tyler Johnson said in an email.

We cannot speculate on what happened; Reclamation has launched a full safety team to investigate the circumstances of the accident. Any recommendations that come from the safety team will be implemented.

The safety of individuals visiting Reclamation facilities is Reclamation's top priority.

The Lewis and Clark County Sheriffs office concluded its investigation as of Saturday. Sgt. Brian Robinson told the Independent Record, It was just an unfortunate accident that occurred, while thanking those on the scene who assisted.

Haights family launched an online fundraiser to help with medical expenses. To donate to the boy's family, visit https://www.gofundme.com/sstxztq4.
BOZEMAN (AP)  A Bozeman man pleaded guilty Tuesday to breaking into his former girlfriend's house in violation of a restraining order and fatally shooting her as she tried to hide in her closet.

Anthony Fagiano, 35, pleaded guilty to deliberate homicide, aggravated burglary, theft and violating an order of protection in the March 9 death of Darcy Buhmann, 37. The shooting happened 17 days after he was served with the restraining order.

Chief Deputy Gallatin County Attorney Eric Kitzmiller said he offered a plea agreement, but that Fagiano rejected it.

District Judge Holly Brown scheduled Fagiano's sentencing for June 23. Kitzmiller said he will recommend a 160-year prison sentence, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported.

Fagiano has been in the Gallatin County jail since he surrendered to authorities hours after the shooting.

Fagiano told investigators he had been thinking about killing Buhmann for several months and stole the AR-15 rifle from a friend with the intention of using it to kill Buhmann, court records said.

He said he drank a lot of beer in the hours before the shooting and at one point had talked himself out of killing her, but eventually decided to follow through with his plan.

After the shooting, Fagiano took Buhmann's vehicle and confessed to the killing via text messages sent to family members and to Buhmann's estranged husband, Christopher Wood. Wood called 911. Fagiano's sister talked him into surrendering to police.

Fagiano drove Buhmann's vehicle to the Law and Justice Center, left the gun in the vehicle and waited by the door until a police officer showed up.

When the officer asked Fagiano if his girlfriend needed medical attention he replied: "No man, she's dead. I popped her in the head."
Give Oklahoma lawmakers points, at least, for honesty. They wanted to ban abortion, so they voted effectively to do just that  without offering any pretense of trying to protect womens health, as supporters of other virulent anti-choice laws in states like Texas have done.

Last Thursday, the Oklahoma House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to bar doctors from performing abortions in all cases except to save the womans life. A doctor who violates the law would be committing a felony, punishable by up to three years in prison and the loss of his or her medical license.

If the House bill gets final approval from the State Senate, which passed an earlier version in March, it will be sent to Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, who has signed several other measures to reduce womens access to abortion and reproductive health care in Oklahoma, where only two abortion clinics remain.
A 45-year-old Butte man accused of striking his 1-year-old baby was charged in Butte justice court Tuesday.

Gregg Keller is facing a felony charge of assault on a minor after he allegedly hit his daughters face with the back of his hand that caused a red mark, according to a police report. The incident occurred in the familys home on the 1500 block of Sage Street on Feb. 2, states a complaint filed by Butte-Silver Bow County prosecutors.

Sheriff Ed Lester said Keller lives at the residence with his wife and another child.

The alleged assault was reported to police by the state Child and Family Services Division, the sheriff said. Alcohol or drug use were not mentioned in the police report, he added.

Keller was arrested Monday in Warm Springs on a warrant. Police did not provide additional details, including what precipitated the incident.

Keller is being held at the county jail on $100,000 bond. A preliminary hearing was set for May 26.
Idaho authorities believe Butte native Paul Joyce was unfamiliar with the area and made a wrong turn before the car he was driving plunged into the Dworshak Reservoir in Idaho, where he drowned, authorities said Tuesday.

Joyce, 57, who graduated from Butte High School in 1977 and was a dean at the University of Idaho in Moscow, was found dead in the submerged car around 5:20 p.m. Saturday, the Clearwater County Sheriff's Office said Sunday. The county is in northern Idaho and borders Montana.

In an updated news release issued Tuesday afternoon, the office said Joyce left the High Country Inn near the small town of Ahsahka at about 10:30 p.m. Friday and was going to the Best Western in Orofino to spend the night.

"Mr. Joyce was not familiar with the area and was given directions on how to get to Orofino," the release said.

When he reached an intersection, "he turned left instead of right and was traveling toward the Big Eddy Marina and boat ramp" located on the reservoir, it said.

"The vehicle entered the water by going down the boat ramp," the release said. "The submerged car was first seen at 6:30 a.m. on April 23rd by some fisherman launching at the boat ramp but no one called the sheriff's office until approximately 5:20 p.m."

Sheriff's officials said they still have some follow-up interviews to complete and are awaiting toxicology reports before they are able to complete the investigation.

But an autopsy was completed on Monday and the preliminary cause of death was drowning, they said.

Joyce joined the University of Idaho faculty in 1991 and was appointed dean of the College of Science in 2013.

He lived in Moscow, Idaho. His siblings include Eileen Joyce, who is the county attorney in Butte-Silver Bow.

A wake will be held on Friday, April 29, at the Best Western Inn in Moscow, Idaho at 7 p.m. Friends and the public are welcome to come listen to and share memories of Paul. A service will be held at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, April 30, at the University Administrative Auditorium, with burial to follow at Moscow Cemetery. A reception will be held at the Best Western at 5:30 p.m.
TO THE CITIZENS OF MUSCATINE, IOWA: You are notified that the City Council of Muscatine, Iowa, is considering declaring the following described real estate in Muscatine, Iowa, to-wit:

Lot 2 of Subdivision of Lot 11 of Block 1 of Brook Street Addition to City of Muscatine, Muscatine County Iowa.

Known as 303 Brook Street, Muscatine, Iowa as surplus property and offering said real estate for sale.

You are further notified that oral or written statements in support of or opposition to this proposed lease may be made at a public hearing before the City Council to be held at 7:00 o'clock P.M. on May 5, 2016, in the Council Chambers in City Hall, 215 Sycamore Street, Muscatine, Iowa.

Gregg Mandsager, City Clerk
One of two people shot during the execution of a police search warrant in Morrison, IL., Friday was struck by a trooper's bullet, police say.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The anticipation was high as a large crowd waited to see what would be found inside a time capsule tucked inside the cornerstone of the old Jefferson School in 1927.

Current and former Jefferson Elementary School students, teachers, school administrators and community members gathered in the gym of the new Jefferson Elementary.

Everyone had ideas about what might be in the time capsule, and the excited chatter continued to grow as students filed in with their teachers.

Several fifth-grade students had their own ideas about what the time capsule might hold. Wyatt Dengler said he was excited, and surprised that there was a time capsule in the old school. Reece Whittaker agreed, and hoped some toys might be included.

"Probably there will be a picture of the people who built the school, and the teachers that were there, and maybe some old toys, like a doll, and maybe a toy for a boy too, but I don't know," she said.

AnnaLee Murphy said she hoped to get a detailed glimpse of life in the 1920s.

"I think there are some videos in it, of people in the past," she said.

Sebastian Camderom agreed, and also said he hoped for some toys as well.

"I think that there's going to be photos and videos and pictures and stuff, because they want to see what kind of people were there back then, and I'm pretty sure there are going to be toys back then," he said.

Willie Leza attended Jefferson in the late 1980s, and said that he and his friends had always wondered what might be hidden behind the cornerstone.

"My friends and I, where that corner was, there was a four-square on the concrete there and we'd always play around there and whatnot. And as kids, we'd always heard that there was a time capsule there, and as kids you think, 'that'd be kind of neat, but I'm never going to see it,' so I am really excited to see it after all these years," Leza said.

Current and former students held their breath while Cliff Weaver, a construction worker at the old Jefferson site, opened the copper box. Cheers and applause echoed as the lid was lifted, and, with a camera giving students a close-up view on a projector, the first item, a bible, was unwrapped.

While the box did hold photographs, as the fifth-grade students were hoping, they were in the form of a yearbook and three newspapers. There was also a telephone book, a petition for the construction of the Jefferson school building, a study book, a school directory, and other papers from the 1920s, when the building was being constructed.

Corry Spies, the principal at Jefferson, said he was surprised by the good condition of the contents, and he and other residents of Muscatine were excited to open the time capsule.

"There was much more in there than we thought we would find today, and certainly it's neat for the students. It's probably more gratifying to be an adult in the community, but definitely a neat experience for the community," Spies said.

Jerry Riibe, Muscatine superintendent, said that he was also impressed by the preservation of the contents.

"It is exciting to see the things that people wanted us to see today ... And I was shocked at how well-preserved things were, and the other thing that surprised me is when you looked at the newspaper headlines, we are still struggling with a lot of the same issues, which is probably a good lesson for us. I think this is also really nice for the kids to see the history of their community. Muscatine has a long, proud past and they are now being part of seeing that," Riibe said.

Weaver, who opened the box, said he loved being involved in the opening, because, although he has been part of the construction and discovery surrounding time capsules before, he had never been included in the process.

"It was pretty neat, from as many of them as I have gotten out or salvaged, and just turned them over to the owners, and never see them or know what happened to them it was neat to be involved with it today. I'm glad they asked me to do it," he said.

Hailey Shank, a second-grade student at Jefferson, said that even though she wished there were more pictures of students in the 1920s, she liked seeing the time capsule being opened.

"I thought it was pretty cool. I think the yearbook was the coolest part," she said.

Johanna Lokale, also a second-grader, said that she liked seeing the pictures of people from the past, and that she had guessed correctly when she thought that newspapers would be in the time capsule.

Second-grader Andrew Ross said he also thought that news would be included in the content.

"The box was really old and I thought that there was going to be news from 1927. My favorite part was when they told us how the weather was from the newspaper," he said.

For Muscatine resident Tom Meerdink, who attended Jefferson Elementary, as did his mother and sons, the stories he had heard about the time capsule from his father made the opening exciting.

"My dad, when he was little, lived out in the country, and he'd come visit his grandmother, just up 11th Street, and they would walk down and watch it being built. I remember him telling me about that ... I enjoy the things that are in there, and I'm surprised at how well-preserved they are," he said.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The Muscatine Art Center invites the public to an illustration workshop for children with guest instructor Claudia McGehee

The workshop will be 1:30-3:30 p.m. Saturday, April 30. Participants are asked to RSVP by April 28. The workshop is free, but space is limited and all supplies will be provided. For more information or to make a reservation, call 563-263-8282 or stop by the Muscatine Art Center at 1314 Mulberry Ave. Muscatine. T

The workshop was provided by a donation from Muscatine Veterinary Hospital, P.C., according to a press release from the art center.

Author and illustrator Claudia McGehee will lead the childrens workshop on capturing animals and nature with a scratchboard. In honor of Adopt a Shelter Pet Day, kids will be encouraged to create a work featuring their own pet or a pet currently available for adoption at the Muscatine Humane Society. Photos and information will be available about pets up for adoption, the press release stated.

I like to think people see little reminders of their own natural world in my illustrations, McGehee stated in the press release. A bird in a tree or grass stems waving in the wind are images we may see on a regular basis. Perhaps it makes us feel part of the Big Picture for a moment. While we are seemingly never offline anymore, I see nature as an important life source, comfort and escape for humans. I hope my illustrations expresses the value of our natural treasures and reminds people that spending time in the wilds can refresh us.

Claudia McGehee is the author/illustrator of several nonfiction picture books including "My Wilderness: An Alaskan Adventure," A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet, A Woodland Counting Book and Where Do Birds Live?" She is a native of Washington state and lives with her family in a house and studio on a hill in Iowa City. She earned degrees in anthropology (archaeology), and graphic design.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The Muscatine School Board discussed the timing of an election to renew the district's voter-approved Physical Plant and Equipment levy during Monday night's regular board meeting.

This PPEL expires June 30, 2020. Muscatine Superintendent Jerry Riibe has urged the board to place the matter before the voters sooner rather than later allowing for a second attempt at passage if necessary.

No decision was made on a date for the vote Monday night. Board members were unanimous in their wish to show the public that funds are being put to good use in the district financing needed improvements.

"I think it is important that we give ourselves plenty of time," Riibe said. A September date was discussed but no date was selected.

Housekeeping matters also occupied the Board of Education Monday night.

School board members accepted bids for replacement of roadway, sidewalks and curb and gutter at Muscatine High School and the purchase of approximately 666 seats for the Muscatine High School auditorium. The new seating includes replacement of 642 seats and the addition of a row of approximately 24 removable seats and aisle lighting.

All American Concrete, Inc,, West Liberty, was the low bidder for the street replacement at $303,694. The district received eight bids ranging from All American's bid to a bid of $681,925 by McCarthy Improvement.

The road work will begin by the greenhouses continuing to the east, running down the drive to Cedar Street and then across the entire front of the high school. The tentative timeline is for work to begin June 1 and be completed by July 15.

Wenger Corporation, Owatonna, Minnesota, was the low bidder for the auditorium seating at $208,579. There were four bidders.

Board members also agreed to seek bids for 1,760 Chromebooks for Muscatine High School. The district has switched to Chromebooks from Macbook Air computers. The Chromebooks are faster, have a longer battery life and can be quickly repaired.

A 3.5 percent salary and benefit package increase was approved by the board for the district's non-bargaining unit employees.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Pilot Club of Muscatine will host the 54th annual Chub Brain Pilot Club Pancake Breakfast 7:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Sunday, May 1, at the Muscatine Masonic Center, 301 Walnut St.

The menu includes pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, coffee, tea, milk and orange juice. A bake sale will also be going on at this time.

Tickets are $6 for adults, $4 for ages 3-12 years old and free for 3 and younger. Tickets are available from Pilot members or at the door.

The pancake breakfast is a major fundraising event for the local Pilot Club, an international service organization. The local chapter was chartered in 1961 in Muscatine. Pilot International was organized in 1921 has many clubs in the United States, Bahamas, Canada and Japan.

Proceeds from Pilot Club of Muscatine fundraising has over the years assisted a variety of programs including: Lifeline, the original Jaws of Life, WE II systems for Special Educations classes, AEA learning tools, Special Olympics, Harmony Place ceiling transfer system, bicycle safety programs, and most recently the Lets Chat communications program for Madison Elementary School.

Pilot Clubs focus is education related to prevention of brain injuries and support and care for those affected by brain disorders and their caregivers. For more information or tickets, call Pat Castle at 563-571-0029.
Donald Trump can thank a broad base of support for his decisive victory in his home state of New York. In other primaries, Trump has struggled to earn a majority of womens votes, but in New York state, 59 percent of Republican women backed him.

This does not mean, however, that Trump is suddenly popular with women everywhere. Seven-in-10 women across the country still have an unfavorable opinion of him. Trump and other GOP candidates need to craft a better strategy to broaden their appeal, especially to the fairer sex. They can do this by embracing a strong pro-woman agenda.

Republicans will need to make women a campaign priority, no matter who clinches the Democratic nomination. Despite watching Bernie Sanders slowly close her once double-digit national lead among women, Hillary Clintons New York primary victory was largely due to solid support from women and minority voters, a win that makes her nomination more likely.

Democrats traditionally have an advantage with women voters in the general election, in part because they consistently demonstrate concern about the workplace issues women care about. They advocate for pay equity and support proposals such as mandated paid family leave and increased minimum wages in the name of helping women.

Sadly, these one-size-fits-all regulations can ultimately hurt the very women they are intended to help, by making our workplaces less flexible and job opportunities scarcer.

Republicans need to engage on these issues. They can start by correcting some of the biggest myths promoted by the Left. Pay equity is a largely misunderstood issue, thanks to the infamous wage gap figure, which shows women earn only 79 percent of mens earnings. This figure compares averages; it doesnt compare men and women in the same job with the same qualifications. As a Department of Labor report found in 2009, The raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct.

That doesnt stop Clinton and others Democrats from backing harmful legislation like the Paycheck Fairness Act that would pile red tape on employers and increase the legal exposure they face when they hire and advance women workers. Thats certainly not good for womens earnings prospects.

Paid leave mandates are another popular, but misguided, plank of the Democrats economic agenda. Most full-time working women already enjoy some kind of paid leave benefit. But in cases where employers do not offer these benefits today, a mandate may do more harm than good. Employers will respond by offering fewer jobs, reducing take-home pay, or favoring male workers who are less likely to take advantage of the mandated paid leave.

Paid leave mandates increase labor costs the same way minimum wage increases do. Its well established that increases to the minimum wage decrease employment.

Many Republicans are often caught off-guard when asked about the issues of pay equity or paid family leave. Their generic solutions, such as economic growth or deregulation, may not seem to offer particular benefit to working women. They need to prepare to take these issues head on and make a positive case for how conservative economic principles can improve womens lives.

The good news is that the Independent Womens Forum just released Working for Women, that makes exactly this case. The 56-page report is filled with ideas to modernize tax and workplace laws to provide maximum flexibility and prosperity for all women.

Heres one example: IWF proposes the creation of Personal Care Accounts, tax-free savings accounts that women could use to save for maternity leave.

Employers, workers and even pro-family non-profit organizations could make contributions to these accounts so more women could afford to spend time out of work with a new baby (without the unintended, costly effects of a paid leave mandate).

The report also highlights a variety of other tax, workplace and licensing reforms, and reforms to programs like Social Security that would primarily benefit women. It even takes on educational savings reforms and addresses high childcare costs.

Conservatives have a great case to make to women voters. Theres no need to pander or use gimmicky campaign ads. The best strategy for appealing to women is to champion an array of policy solutions that would create a more dynamic, innovative, and flexible work world, and make life more affordable for women and their families. The blue print is there; now candidates need to take that winning message to the voters.

Hadley Heath Manning is a senior policy analyst at the Independent Womens Forum (www.iwf.org). She wrote this for InsideSources.com.
Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi []
Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes []
The Constitutional Court has slammed former Vodacom executives version of how the companys Please Call Me product started as a lie.

The Constitutional Court on Tuesday morning found Vodacom was bound by an agreement with Kenneth Nkosana Makate, the inventor of the Please Call Me concept.

Vodacom now has to negotiate with Makate about compensation for the multi-billion rand idea.

The court, in its judgment, said that despite the product being a success, Vodacom did not negotiate compensation for the use of the applicants idea.

And the judgment had harsh words for former Vodacom CEO Alan Knott-Craig and its ex-head of product development Philip Geissler.

Instead, as the High Court later held, Messrs Knott-Craig, Vodacoms CEO, and Geissler created a false narrative pertaining to the origin of the idea on which the Please Call Me product was based, said the Constitutional Court judgment.

They dishonestly credited Mr Knott-Craig with the idea and this lie was perpetuated in the latters autobiography, said the judgment, referring to the book Second is Nothing.

The court highlighted how Geissler, responding to an email from Knott-Craig, said on December 25 2009 that him and Knott-Craig came up with the idea. The email exchange happened after media had queried the correctness of the story.

But the Constitutional Court said Geisslers response in 2009 contradicted his earlier email of 9 February 2001 which was addressed to staff at Vodacom.

In the email, Geissler said Kenneth Makate from our Finance Department came up with this idea a few months ago and brought it to the Product Development Division. We wish to thank Kenneth for bringing his idea to our attention.

The Constitutional Court further said that Vodacoms managing director further acknowledged Makate for the idea in a newsletter published in March 2001.

Despite these facts, Messrs Knott-Craig and Geissler later claimed that it was the CEOs idea, said the judgment.

This untrue story appears to have been part of a stratagem to deny the applicant compensation for the idea.

Vodacom first accused him of having stolen the idea from MTN, its competitor, said the judgment.

Previous criticism

Its not the first time that Knott-Craig and Geisslers version of the Please Call Me story has come under the spotlight.

In 2014, the South Gauteng High Court found that Knott-Craigs claim to have invented Please Call Me was implausible.

Judge Phillip Coppin, at the time, expressed concerns about Knott-Craigs evidence.

In his judgment, Judge Coppin said: In my view, Mr Knott-Craig was not frank and honest about his knowledge of (Mr Makate) and his idea and its link to the Please Call Me product.

Judge Coppin, though, dismissed Makates claim with costs as he said his application was lodged years too late. Makates first court bid on the matter occurred in 2008 after he said he invented the idea in 2001.

Knott-Craig left Vodacom in 2008. He then joined Cell C as its CEO in 2012 but he left in 2014 after suffering a stroke.

Geissler, meanwhile, left Vodacom in 2012 and he also spent a brief period at Cell C before going on academic leave in 2013, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Fin24

More on Vodacom

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Pick n Pay has stated that its online shopping turnover grew 38% over the past year, with a stronger range and a substantial improvement in product availability.

The company made the announcement in its annual financial statements for the 2016 financial period.

The team is particularly pleased with the growth in demand from its business-to-business customers, said Pick n Pay.

The online business in the Western Cape has benefited from the dedicated picking warehouse established at the Brackenfell Hypermarket last year, and the Group will look to invest in a similar solution in the Gauteng region of South Africa, towards the end of this year.

More about online shopping

Getting your online shopping parcels through the Post Office

Massive growth in online shopping in South Africa
After a four month hiatus, Nyeri County governor Nderitu Gachagua is back in the country.

The governor received a grand welcome from hundreds of residents at Kamukunji stadium in Nyeri over the weekend. Gachagua who was last seen in the limelight during last years Jamhuri Day Celebrations left the country for India in late December to seek treatment.

Speaking during the event, Gachagua accused his opponents of taking advantage of his health condition to campaign for the upcoming General Election.

While I was away, there were people going around seeking reports on the basis of my health. I think that is not right because life is given by God, and taken away by God, Nderitu Gachagua said.

During his lengthy absence, residents sought an official statement concerning the governor to no avail.

His homecoming party, was however without drama. A middle aged man identified as Daniel Gatei, emerged from a mammoth crowd and charged towards the dais a few moments before the Governor addressed his supporters, and started hurling insults at the governor.

Security agents who had been deployed at the ceremony quickly pounced on the man and threw him out of the venue.

However, Gatei was not done yet as he found his way back to the rally with more insults while running towards the governor accusing him of neglecting the youth.

He was arrested and whisked away into a waiting police vehicle.












Cord leader Raila Odinga had a good chance to retire in peace in 2013 and be branded at true African modern-day hero.

He had a chance to show that he is not just another self-centered politician by nurturing new leadership in his party. Now less than 2 years to the general elections, he is still the undisputed Cord leader and basically the coalition cannot exist without him. There is talk of MoUs that have not been honored, and all indications are that Raila will not back either Kalonzo or Wetangula for the top seat. He will be the flag bearer in 2017.

If thats the case, I dont see how Cord in its current form will hold. While Wetangula might hang on, Kalonzo will sure as day walk out if he is not the flag bearer.

Even with a united Cord, the numbers are not in their favour. Nothing has happened to indicate a shift in the voting patterns commonly known as tyranny of numbers. Raila will never get votes from GEMA and Ruto has Rift Valley in the basket.

Its too early to say much about Western, considering Wetangulas influence in the region, and whether hell remain in Cord is unclear.

But if Raila will be the flag bearer, he can kiss the Kamba goodbye.

The former Prime Minister knows that his chances of being President will never be as good as in 2007.

With all due respect, his hunger for power will continue eroding any statesman tag he might still have. It will lead no where and only destabilize this country.

Raila has let himself be used by his hangers-on; politicians whose only chance of being elected in their constituencies is by being seen to fight for Baba. Their reasons for taking to the streets for Baba are self-serving.

With the march to IEBC offices on Monday, Raila is preparing the ground for another chaotic elections. Some analysts have argued that he wants another power-sharing agreement in 2017.

Every objective person knows that Railas fourth attempt at the presidency will end up like the other three. Even his staunchest supporters will admit this in private. Raila himself knows it but does not want to admit it.

IEBC is the perfect scapegoat to advance their message  that the elections results cannot be trusted.

It has been suggested that by drawing goats and cows on the Okoa Kenya signature booklets, Cord was setting up IEBC. They were never interested in a referendum. IEBC played into their plan by rejecting the signatures and dismissing Okoa Kenya. That way, Raila can tell Kenyans that IEBC is not to be trusted.

Then came the calls for commissioners to resign.

Its a long shot, but Id not be shocked if Raila is secretly hoping they dont resign. That way, he will dismiss the election results and probably set himself up for another power-sharing deal.

What if they were to resign? Another bunch of commissioners will come in, and the same allegations will fly again. After all, Jubilee controls parliament.

2013 was widely accepted as Railas last shot at the presidency. However, he refused to accept that and now hes back.

While we may have avoided chaos in the last elections, with the current environment it is unlikely well be twice lucky.

Raila will be almost 73 during the next elections. Careful not to rule him out of the 2022 elections at age 78, it is quite likely this will be his last try.

Our neighbors are building mega infrastructure and we just lost an oil deal to Tanzania. This country needs political stability now more than ever.

Is IEBC independent as it is supposed to be? Heck NO.

Has it lost public trust? Big Yes.

But is marching to Anniversary tower the right/constitutional way of going about things?

But perhaps it would be wise to bow to Railas demand that IEBC be disbanded, and a new one comes into office. That way, his biggest arsenal of a compromised commission will be taken away from him.

It is illogical to change commissioners every election cycle, but these are special times. Raila is a special politician and it may only be one more election before he stops being on the ballot.

Kenyas economy may never recover if scenes of youths lighting fires on tarmac, looting mega stores in cities and uprooting railway lines are repeated again next year. No foreigner will invest mega-bucks in a country that lights up every 5 years.

Raila fought for many freedoms we enjoy today, but some of his actions might leave us with no country to enjoy them.

What do you think?


The Hottest Stories on the Internet Today
HANNOVER, Germany  Evoking history and appealing for solidarity, President Barack Obama on Monday cast his decision to send 250 more troops to Syria as a bid to keep up momentum in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State extremists. He pressed European allies to match the U.S. with new contributions of their own.

Obamas announcement of the American troops, which capped a six-day tour to the Middle East and Europe, reflected a steady deepening of U.S. military engagement, despite the presidents professed reluctance to dive further into another Middle East conflict. As Obama gave notice of the move, he said he wanted the U.S. to share the increasing burden.

Obama discussed the IS fight with British Prime Minster David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minster Matteo Renzi.

The president formally announced the new troop deployment in a speech about European unity and trans-Atlantic cooperation  a running theme of his trip. Speaking in Germany, he evoked the continents history of banding together to defeat prejudice and emerge from the ruins of the Second World War.

Make no mistake, Obama said. These terrorists will learn the same lessons as others before them have, which is, your hatred is no match for our nations united in the defense of our way of life.

The rhetoric belied an underlying frustration in his administration about allies contributions to the U.S.-led fight in Syria and neighboring Iraq. Although the coalition includes some 66 nations, the U.S. has conducted the vast majority of the air strikes, and there has been little appetite by other nations to send in ground troops of their own.

The president recently rattled leaders in Europe and the Middle East by describing allies as free riders. He made a passing reference to that complaint on Monday, as he noted that not all European allies contribute their expected share to NATO: Ill be honest: Sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense.

On stops in Riyadh, London and Hannover this week, Obama repeatedly pushed allies for more firepower, training for local forces and economic aid to help reconstruct regions in Iraq that have been retaken from Islamic State control but are still vulnerable. Obama appeared to come up short in Riyadh, when he met with Arab allies.

He made the pitch again in Hannover, where he attended a massive industrial technology trade show on what was likely his last presidential visit to Germany.

These terrorists are doing everything in their power to strike our cities and kill our citizens, so we need to do everything in our power to stop them, Obama said.

The new deployment brings the number of U.S. military personnel in Syria from roughly 50 to roughly 300. It follows a similar ramp-up in Iraq, announced last week. The new Syria forces will include special operation troops assisting local forces, as well as maintenance and logistics personnel.

Obama, in an interview with CBS News, declined to say whether the forces might be dispatched on search-and-kill missions.

He did say, As a general rule, the rule is not to engage directly with the enemy but rather to work with local forces.

Obamas troop announcement was called a good step by Salem Al Meslet, spokesman of the High Negotiations Committee, the main Syrian opposition group.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said it was a welcome development, but one that is long overdue and ultimately insufficient.

Obamas call for European solidarity extended beyond the anti-Islamic State campaign.

Amid what he described as unsettling times, Obama revived the argument he made in London days earlier that Britain and the European Union are strongest if Briton votes in an upcoming referendum to remain in the 28-member nation block. And Obama mounted a forceful defense of his host in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is facing criticism for her willingness to take in refugees from Syria.

Chancellor Merkel and others have eloquently reminded us that we cannot turn our backs on our fellow human beings who are here now and need our help now, Obama said. We have to uphold our values, not just when its easy but when its hard.

The migrant crisis was a central focus as Obama met with European leaders just before returning to Washington. Merkel said the leaders had discussed ways to expand military efforts to stop human smuggling across the Mediterranean from Libya.

With the NATO mission in the Aegean, the United States of America have shown their readiness to take part in the fight against illegal migration, Merkel said. A senior U.S. official said the U.S. was indeed ready to help with that effort but had no new mission to announce.

Obama, who used one of his final foreign trips to start trying to shape his legacy, said he saw Europe facing a defining moment. He urged the continents leaders to pay attention to income inequality, education for young people and equal pay for women.

If we do not solve these problems, we start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way, Obama said.
COLUMBUS, Ohio  Seven of eight relatives who were killed in their southern Ohio homes had been shot multiple times, including one who was shot nine times, according to autopsy results released Tuesday. Some also had bruising, which matched a report from a 911 caller who said two appeared to have been beaten up.

The Hamilton County coroner said the victims  three women, four men and a 16-year-old boy  had wounds to their heads, torso and other parts of the body. Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco's report said one victim had a single wound, one had two wounds, and the rest had three or more. The report didn't specify which victim had which number of wounds.

Ohio's attorney general has called the deaths carefully planned slayings carried out at four locations in Piketon, a rural Appalachian Mountain region community. Mike DeWine has also said there were marijuana growing operations at three of the locations where bodies were found.

DeWine said Tuesday that investigators have received more than 300 tips and are continuing to serve search warrants in an effort to identify the killer or killers. He said 79 pieces of evidence have been sent to a state crime lab for testing and analysis.

Authorities have said members of the Rhoden family were targeted in the slayings.

A woman who called 911 Friday morning to report finding two of the bodies said that she saw "blood all over the house" and that the two looked like they had been badly beaten.

The victims are 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his ex-wife, Dana Rhoden; their three children, 16-year-old Christopher Rhoden Jr., 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden and 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden; Christopher Rhoden Sr.'s brother, 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; their cousin, 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; and 20-year-old Hannah Gilley, whose 6-month old son with Frankie was unharmed. Two other children, a 6-month-old and a 3-year-old, were also unharmed.

Leonard Manley, father of Dana Rhoden, told the Cincinnati Enquirer that he first learned about the marijuana operations from news reports. Manley, 64, said he's sure his daughter couldn't have been involved in anything illegal.

"They are trying to drag my daughter through the mud, and I don't appreciate that," said Manley, whose three grandchildren  Dana's children  were also among the dead.

Manley also noted that the assailant was able to get by his daughter's two dogs.

"Whoever done it knows the family," Manley said. "There were two dogs there that would eat you up."

Pike County Prosecutor Rob Junk told the Columbus Dispatch on Monday that the marijuana operations included a grow house sheltering hundreds of plants.

"It wasn't just somebody sitting pots in the window," Junk said.

DeWine said Monday there was also possible evidence of cockfighting at one of the properties, but he didn't know what was relevant to the investigation.

More than a dozen counselors, clergy and psychologists arrived at the local high school on Monday to help friends and neighbors cope with their grief as they remembered the victims as loyal and caring people.

Dana Rhoden "always wanted what was best for her kids," Scioto Valley Local School District Superintendent Todd Burkitt said.

The youngest victim, Christopher Rhoden Jr., was a freshman at Piketon High School.

"He was the first one that if he thought that someone wasn't being treated fairly or felt like someone wasn't being treated appropriately, he would speak up about it," Burkitt said.

Hanna and Frankie Rhoden also had attended the school.

While authorities have not released any details about a motive, the attorney general's office did confirm Monday that one of the victims had received a threat via Facebook. Authorities didn't elaborate.

A Cincinnati-area businessman offered a $25,000 reward for details leading to those responsible.
SACRAMENTO  Democratic lawmakers are calling for California to spend $1.3 billion next year to help workers afford housing and to shelter homeless people.

Assemblymen David Chiu of San Francisco and Tony Thurmond of Richmond, flanked by nine other Democratic legislators, announced the proposal Monday.

Gov. Jerry Brown was noncommittal on the proposal to use an unexpected tax windfall for housing.

It comes as homelessness and rising housing costs have become a growing issue across the state. Senate Democrats have a different proposal to aid the homeless.

Assembly Democrats plan would give private organizations and local governments money to build affordable housing and help people pay for increasingly expensive homes and rentals.

Republican Assemblyman Marc Steinorth of Rancho Cucamonga objected to a plan he says involves throwing money at the problem.
A few months ago, I was sitting at my computer getting ready to write yet another column about my oak tree.

I am officially out of material, I told myself. I need to take a trip to have something interesting to write about.

It was a dreary day, so I started fantasizing about flying away to someplace warm and sunny. Without warning, the idea of Cuba popped into my head.

The island nation was in the news a lot at the time, since the president, the pope and the Rolling Stones had all announced upcoming visits. In fact, I was kind of mad that they were all beating me to the punch. Cuba has been on my must visit one day list for years. My parents honeymooned there in the 1940s, and it has always fascinated me that they could do it. Most of my life, the country has been embargoed and difficult for Americans to visit.

Cubas longtime forbidden fruit status makes it extra enticing (plus, it offers major bragging rights if one can get there). But that is about to disappear  possibly taking with it some of the nations charm. With regularly scheduled flights to Havana beginning this fall, hotel deals in the works and a dock for cruise ships under construction, the once hard-to-reach spot is in danger of becoming just another Caribbean island.

I realized it was time to stop daydreaming and start planning.

For now, the main way for Americans to reach Cuba is still through an officially sanctioned cultural exchange group. I have friends who have visited with groups focused on architecture, photography, agriculture and similar topics that I didnt qualify for or that didnt excite me.

In advance of the embargo lifting, the requirements are loosening. I had been getting offers from my alumnae group and other organizations, so I knew trips were available.

But their tours did not excite me. They sounded too packaged. No matter how exotic the location, I resist being shepherded on and off a bus with two dozen fellow tourists.

Plus, as you know, I firmly believe that the most worthwhile exchange takes place in the kitchen or at the dining table. For me to sign up for a group tour, I need a guarantee that it will mostly involve cultural consumption of the edible variety.

On a whim (and because travel fantasies were far more appealing than penning yet another column on leaf raking), I Googled Cuba culinary travel to see if anyone else had the same idea.

And like magic, up popped an organization called Access Trips that specializes in foodie travel  with a Cuba trip that sounded like I invented it myself.

Their groups were small  just eight people or fewer. Transportation was in the totally cool 1950s cars that are a symbol of Cuba. Accommodations were in luxury guesthouses rather than hotels. And the entire focus of their people-to-people cultural exchange was culinary, complete with visits to farms, numerous paladars (private restaurants) and markets.

Not only that, but the first opening available was in my birthday week in April. Kismet! I couldnt think of a better way to celebrate and take the sting out of the (incredibly large but I dont look a day over some much smaller number, please tell me that even if you are lying) age that was looming.

Clearly, it was meant to be. So I persuaded my sister Margie to come along (which wasnt hard  she likes to eat and, coincidentally, her parents had also honeymooned in Cuba). A credit card number and a few clicks of the mouse, and we were ready to roll.

We got back last week, and what a trip it was!

But oops, Im out of space for today.

Which is according to plan, as I intend to drag out tales of this trip for weeks. (Its either that, or adopt a new cat to write about. I fear your loyalty may not survive a spring series about the oak pollen drifting onto my patio.)

So youll have to wait till next time for tales of our Cuban idyll.

But I will tell you this much. It was awesome: fascinating, surprising, educational and tons of fun.

And yes, delicious.

Moors and Christians

(black beans and rice)

Adapted from Foodnetwork.com, credited to Maricel Presilla

Ive heard tales of folks who came back from Cuba complaining that all they ate was rice and beans. Im not sure what trip they were on (not ours, for sure!), as I mostly lament having eaten too much lobster.

We did enjoy this colorfully named national dish of rice and beans, but it appeared only as a side dish. Rather than being sick of it, I find its one of the things I miss the most now that I am home. Im still working to perfect it. But in the meantime, this version, adapted from one I found online, is pretty tasty.

You may be tempted to use canned beans. But to achieve the proper dark color, this dish needs the cooking liquid from the beans. So I wouldnt substitute them.

Serves 8

For the beans:

1 cup dried black beans

1 onion coarsely chopped

1 whole clove garlic

1 green pepper, coarsely chopped

3 garlic cloves finely chopped

For the rice:

1 cup long-grain rice

1/4 lb. bacon (4-5 slices), 1/2-inch dice

1 onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 green pepper, finely chopped

1 Tbsp. ground cumin

1 Tbsp. dried oregano

1 bay leaf

1 tsp. salt

1 Tbsp. white vinegar

1 Tbsp. dry sherry

Soak the beans for 6 hours or overnight in enough water to cover them.

Drain the beans, then place them in a saucepan with the coarsely chopped onion, green pepper and garlic clove. Cover with 6-8 cups of water.

Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook until the beans are tender but not mushy, about half an hour.

Drain the beans, discarding the mushy vegetables but reserving the cooking liquid, and set both aside.

Wash the rice several times, draining it between washings, until the water is fairly clear. Drain and set aside.

In a large saucepan over medium heat, cook the bacon until it renders its fat and turns golden. Add the chopped onion, green pepper and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until they soften and the onion turns translucent. Add the drained rice and the beans, along with the cumin, oregano, bay leaf and salt, stirring to coat them and incorporate the spices.

Add three cups of the reserved bean-cooking liquid, along with the vinegar and sherry. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat to medium low and cook, uncovered, until the liquid is mostly cooked away and you see craters forming on top of the rice.

Cover and turn the heat to low. Cook for 20 minutes more, then turn off the heat and let the pot sit for a few minutes before serving.
It seems like the last Napa Farmers Market was just a few days ago, but in reality it has been five months. With a new season about to begin on Tuesday, May 3, market manager Charlotte Billings and the markets board of directors have been busy getting ready.

Mayor Jill Techel will cut the ceremonial ribbon on opening day at 8 a.m. At 9 a.m., chef Brian Streeter of Cakebread Cellars will lead shoppers on a half-hour market tour and share recipe ideas and shopping tips. Tour space is limited, so come early and sign up at the information booth when you arrive.

This years major development is that the market has a new home. The Gasser Foundation is welcoming the market to the South Napa Century Center with open arms. The board of directors reviewed many potential sites, but all were unsuitable for one reason or another. The main goal was to find a site with abundant parking, and no other site stood out like Century Center.

Other potential venues had no storage space for market equipment or couldnt provide utilities. Some couldnt host both Tuesday and Saturday markets or had scheduling conflicts with market days. Century Center had everything a farmers market needs, plus a can do attitude.

When construction of the building on the south end of Century Center is complete, well have an asset that will please all market customers, vendors and staff: indoor washrooms. No more portable toilets at the market. Anyone who has ever experienced a portable toilet on a hot summer day will applaud this improvement.

Biking and walking enthusiasts will appreciate Century Centers proximity to the new Napa Valley Vine Trail. The markets new location is 1.8 miles from the intersection of Main and First Streets: a 35-minute stroll or a 15-minute bike ride. Once you reach the market, you will find a secure place to park your bike.

The markets information booth will once again be staffed by the crack volunteer team of Ivan, Herb, Jesse, Tristan and Luis. This dedicated gang has been volunteering at the market for many years. They answer questions, sell merchandise, process EBT requests and do anything else that needs doing.

Another great development: We can now accept credit cards for the stylish logo wear at the information booth. Stop by for a cap, T-shirt or onesie when you need a gift. We also have a new education manager, Barbara Ciapponi, who is lining up some exciting chef demonstrations and educational programs for children. And we have a new card reader that will make processing requests for EBT tokens much easier and faster.

When you visit the market, youll find almost all of the farmers, food producers and artisans who participated last year, plus a few new folks. I hope youre as excited about the new season as the markets staff and board of directors.

Roasted Asparagus

This recipe is adapted from Fresh From the Farmers Market by Janet Fletcher (Chronicle Books).

Fresh asparagus needs the addition of few ingredients to showcase its wonderful flavor and texture.

2 pounds asparagus tips

 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Kosher or sea salt

Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Divide the asparagus between 2 rimmed baking sheets.

Drizzle half the olive oil over each batch and sprinkle generously with salt. Toss the spears with your hands to coat them evenly with oil and salt, then spread them out so that they are in one layer.

Bake until the spears are sizzling and just tender, about 10 minutes, switching the position of the trays halfway through. Transfer to a platter and serve immediately.

Serves 4

The Napa Farmers Market takes place on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., May through October, in the parking lot of the South Napa Century Center, 195 Gasser Drive, Napa. The Farmers Market accepts WIC, CalFresh food stamps through EBT (electronic benefits transfer), and the Senior Nutrition Program. CalFresh users can receive double the value of the withdrawal from their EBT account at the markets information booth. For information and upcoming events, visit NapaFarmersMarket.org or visit the market on Facebook.

This story's reference to the Senior Nutrition Program has been corrected since first posting.
The League of Women Voters of Napa County will be hosting a forum on Thursday for candidates running for the Napa County Board of Supervisors and state Assembly.

The event is from 6:45 to 8:30 p.m. at the Senior Citizens Center, 1500 Jefferson St., Napa.

The forum will include those running for Napa County supervisors in District 2 and District 4, as well as those competing to represent the California State Assemblys 4th District.

The invited District 2 candidates are incumbent Mark Luce, business consultant Derek Anderson, civil engineer Ryan Gregory and political observer James Hinton.

The 4th District candidates are incumbent Alfredo Pedroza, environmental advocate Chris Malan and Napa Vision 2050 member Diane Shepp.

There are five contenders to replace Bill Dodd in the Assemblys 4th District, which covers all of Napa County plus five other counties. They include Davis Mayor Dan Wolk; Yolo County Supervisor Don Saylor; Charlie Schaupp, an Esparto Republican who lost to Dodd in a 2014 Assembly race; Winters Mayor Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, and Elmer Mark Kropp, a Davis Democrat.

Questions will be collected from the audience to be answered by candidates.

For information, email lwvnapa@gmail.com.
When someone is sentenced for a crime, sometimes they are ordered to pay restitution to those who were affected by their actions. But they dont always pay.

Years later the victim hasnt received any money, said Napa County Assistant District Attorney Paul Gero.

Hoping to improve this situation, the county has launched Restitution Court, which meets the third Monday of the month.

Restitution Court is designed to enforce and monitor restitution payments. My goal is that these (people) pay the money that they owe, Gero said.

The court met for only the second time last week before Judge Mark Boessenecker.

Armando Cazares, 22, was first on the calendar. Cazares pleaded no contest to vandalism exceeding $400 in damage last May.

Before Boessenecker, Cazares vowed to begin restitution payments. Ill start in two weeks, he said of a job that paid minimum wage.

I have applied to some other places, but I still havent gotten a call back, he said of his prospects for bringing in more income.

Hopefully youre up and working, said Boessenecker, who ordered him to return to court on May 16.

In addition to checking in on individual employment statuses, the court also plays a sort of mediating role to figure out if the probationers can afford to pay anything, how much they might be able to afford to pay and how soon those payments might be made. Probationers can be ordered to come back each month to check in until there is a consistency in their payments.

Kaela Dennis, 21, and Christopher Gomez, 22, pleaded no contest to grand theft in February 2014. Dennis was ordered to pay $42,005 in restitution and Gomez was ordered to pay $39,000.

It looks like both of you have  made a $100 payment, Boessenecker said.

Dennis expressed concern over the differing value of restitution for her and Gomez since both were from the same incident. Boessenecker agreed to consider modifying the amounts at their next court date. He also said that evaluations may be made in the future to see if either of them could pay more than $100 each month.

Obviously theres a lot of money involved, the judge said.

Boessenecker seemed to have a good rapport with many of the probationers.

Did you cut your hair? he asked Isaac Fregosi.

Yes, sir, Fregosi said.

You look good.

Fregosi, 24, pleaded no contest to participating in a criminal street gang and to felony battery in 2013. He has been making $20 payments fairly consistently, noted Boessenecker.

Probation would like 100 bucks a month, he added.

Fregosi agreed to the payment plan, showed that he had just made a recent payment and said that he has been working at the same job at a local restaurant for about two years now.

Keep up the good work, Boessenecker said.

In the first two sessions of Restitution Court, 10 people were on the calendar. Their crimes were varied, including theft, vandalism, domestic violence, stalking and driving under the influence causing injury.

To qualify for Restitution Court, offenders must be placed on formal probation or mandatory supervision for a felony offense, have a restitution order of more than $1,000 and have the ability to make payments, Gero said.

Even if the individuals arent able to pay a lot each month, just by paying something, it shows effort, Gero said. These are convicted felons who are ordered to pay restitution to their victims and we want to make sure theyre held accountable.

Victims are allowed to speak during Restitution Court. During the first session, victims spoke to the judge about how the lack of restitution had affected them, Gero said.

I think it was helpful for them to be there and see the court hasnt forgotten about (them)  and someones holding this person accountable.

Restitution Court is back in session on May 16.
PRAGUE

Gorilla gives birth unexpectedly at Prague zoo

It was an unexpected birth that took everyone at the Prague zoo by surprise.

Nobody noticed that 24-year-old gorilla Shinda  who is a bit overweight  was pregnant. After several miscarriages, she was expected to remain childless.

Zoo director Miroslav Bobek says, it seems that a miracle happens from time to time.

Bobek says the zookeepers had given up any hope she could get a baby.

As the birth on Saturday afternoon was smooth and both mother and newborn have been doing well, visitors have been already allowed to see them. The babys gender is not yet known.

The gorillas are among the most popular animals at the zoo. Tens of thousands of people watched the birth of another gorilla online in 2007.

MEXICO CITY

Parents of missing Mexican students slam government probe

The parents of 43 missing students who disappeared in September 2014 are accusing the government of lying to them, planting evidence and not adequately investigating the case.

The parents comments come a day after a group of international experts issued a report criticizing the investigation.

The report says suspects appear to have been tortured and key pieces of evidence related to the supposed burning of the students bodies were not correctly investigated.

Parent Mario Cesar Gonzalez said Monday that prosecutors had lied and planted a bag of charred bone fragments. Tests have linked the fragments to only one of the students.

The government says a drug gang killed and burned the students. Parents reject that.

Human rights activist Mario Patron said the torture allegations endanger efforts to find the truth.

TORONTO

Canada confirms Canadian killed by terrorists in Philippines

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the cold-blooded murder of a Canadian by terrorists in the Philippines who were holding him hostage.

Trudeau confirmed Monday that the victim was John Ridsdel of Calgary, Alberta. He was 68 years old.

Ridsdel was one of four tourists  including Canadian Robert Hall, a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman  that were kidnapped last September by Abu Sayyaf militants from a marina on southern Samal Island.

The militants had threatened to kill one of the three male hostages if a large ransom was not paid by 3 p.m. Monday local time 0800 GMT.

Trudeau says his government will work with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act.

ANKARA, Turkey

Turkey says it has deported 3,300 suspected jihadi fighters

A top official says Turkey has deported 3,300 foreigners suspected of links to jihadi groups, particularly the Islamic State militants, and another 41,000 foreigners have been barred from entering Turkey as part of the countrys fight against the militant group.

Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also says Monday that Turkish profiling teams have interviewed 9,500 people upon their arrival in Turkey. Some 2,000 of them were denied entry.

He says some 2,770 suspects, including 1,232 foreigners, have been caught in police sweeps and 954 of them are being prosecuted.

Turkey, long accused of turning a blind eye to the extremists crossing into Syria, has now taken a larger role in the fight against IS. Four deadly bomb attacks in Turkey since July have been blamed on IS.

LONDON

Britains Prince Harry honors Australian, New Zealand fallen

Britains Prince Harry has laid a wreath during an early morning ANZAC Day service in London honoring fallen New Zealanders and Australians.

Thousands of people gathered at dawn Monday in central London for the annual events that mark the anniversary of the 1915 ANZAC landings at Gallipoli during World War I. Australia and New Zealand suffered major casualties during the ill-fated operation.

Harry placed a wreath at the memorial in Hyde Park Corner and was followed by diplomats from New Zealand and Australia.

The prince will be representing his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II at other ANZAC Day memorial events, including a parade and a thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey.

Other countries, including Australia, New Zealand and France, also held ANZAC Day ceremonies.

ACAPULCO, Mexico

Gunmen in Acapulco attack police at headquarters, hotel

Armed men in Mexico have launched near-simultaneous assaults on police in the resort city of Acapulco, setting off shootouts in which one attacker was killed and one officer wounded.

The attacks took place Sunday night against federal polices local headquarters in a beachside tourist quarter and a hotel across town where its agents were lodged.

Two security officials said an attacker was killed and his body was recovered in a vehicle that was left behind, while an officer was wounded in the leg. They were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Guerrero state Attorney General Javier Olea told journalists the attacks may have been a response to recent detentions of drug cartel leaders, but did not give more details.
As a teacher at Napa High School and Vintage High School for 35 years, retiring in 2000, I had firsthand knowledge of school facilities. Growing up in Michigan and intern-teaching in Wisconsin, I was shocked at the difference between school facilities there and what I saw in Napa.

When Vintage High School was designed and built in 1972 and Napa High School was expanded, the costs were paid through a state loan. No frills were allowed. Consequently in the years that followed, the inadequate heating/cooling system cost the district more than a better-funded system would have. And, of course, in the 1970s the earthquake standards were far inferior to those in place today, as the numerous damaged classrooms and libraries testify in the quakes that have hit since then.

The most recent quake damaged 24 schools, and we now know that three schools (Napa Junction, Snow and Stone Bridge Elementary) are located over or near active fault lines. Thus its apparent that Measure H is needed to provide a safe environment for our students. But the need for funding is much greater than just earthquake safety. In the 21st century, labs and technology are costly but necessary. And overcrowding in many schools, often resulting in aging portable classrooms brought in, requires the construction of new facilities.

Though the total needs reach $475 million, Measure H is asking for a more affordable $269 million. Regular school maintenance budgets are inadequate to fill the current needs of NVUSD. Quality schools benefit everyone in the community, not just those with children in schools. Areas with good schools benefit from better property values. So I ask you to vote yes on Measure H in June.

Dan Wolter

Napa
Are we supposed to be impressed? I can count 33 cellphone-distracted drivers in Napa in 33 minutes ("Police issue 33 citations for talking, texting on cellphones," April 9). Just look at any Escalade, cutesy BMW, Prius, or one of many scores of unregistered vehicles in Napa County.

The National Safety Council reports that cellphone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year, not to mention the near misses. A recent survey released by AT&T in May 2014 showed that roughly 70 percent of respondents use their smartphones while driving. In fact it has been reported, at any given time throughout the day, approximately 660,000 drivers across the country are attempting to use their phones while behind the wheel of an automobile. Nearly 330,000 injuries occur each year from accidents caused by texting while driving.

In 2015 it has been reported that 1 out of every 4 car accidents in the United States is caused by texting and driving. According to the National Safety Council, texting while driving is six times more likely to cause an accident than driving drunk. Over 3,200 persons lost their lives last year due to distracted driving.

Only once the law starts treating cellphone usage while driving on par with drunken driving -- with all of the associated fines, safe driving classes and jail time -- will we be able to reduce traffic deaths and injuries, and control this problem that subjects all of our loved ones to undue risk.

Of those token 33 citations, how many drivers had children under 18 years old in their car? In my book as well as the California Criminal Code, that is a clear case of child endangerment. Dont agree? Let me quote the legal definition of child endangerment: Child endangerment charges are brought when a person engages in conduct that places a child in imminent danger of death, bodily injury, or physical or mental impairment. Child endangerment is usually listed with assaultive offenses, but does not automatically require the commission of an assault or evidence of an actual injury. Instead, child endangerment focuses more on the potential for a harm or injury to the child.

How many of those drivers were charged with child endangerment? Was Child Protective Services called? I seriously doubt it. Are we going to wait until dead children begin to litter the roadways because the drivers could not wait to text or place that call before the Legislature takes action?

Had our local law enforcement issued 330 citations that day I would have be impressed. I believe the current first offense is only $162 and $285 for subsequent offense. Do the math if all 330 citations were first-timers: It equals over $53,000 in fines in a single day. Thats over $1.6 million in a 30-day period. Napa County could use that type of income with the added benefit of safer roadways.

Robert L. Carter

Napa
Beringer Vineyards, the iconic Napa Valley winery at the Elm Tunnel of Highway 29, celebrated its Founders Day, commemorating its 140th anniversary last Sunday, and more than 600 visitors attended the grand party. There was music, ample opportunities to tour the vineyards and estate, historical presentations, and  of course  plenty of wine.

The day started early, with a vineyard hike through the Beringer Vineyards at 10:30 a.m. It was followed, at 11 a.m., with a tour of the beautifully ornate 1880s stained glass windows within the Rhine House mansion. At noon, chief winemaker Mark Beringer  great-great-grandson of founder Jacob Beringer  along with his parents, Fred and Cathy Beringer, led a tasting of the 2013 vintage. Meanwhile, music was provided by Whiskey & Honey & Bocce in the backyard of the Rhine House.

At 1 p.m. Mariam Hansen of the St. Helena Historical Society gave an intriguing talk documenting the history of the grand estate with many illuminating facts about the two brothers  Jacob and Fritz Beringer  who emigrated from Mainz, Germany, in the 1860s.

For instance, Jacob first arrived in St. Helena and found work in 1870 as cellar master at the Charles Krug winery down the road. He continued in that position for many years even as he tended his own vineyards and began his enterprise at todays Beringer Vineyards.

Meanwhile, his brother Fritz  who was a wine merchant in New York  decided to join his brother in St. Helena. The original two-story house at the site where today the Gothic Rhine House resides  built by David Hudson, one of the towns earliest white settlers  was moved 200 feet north on the property so that Fritz might have a better building site for his Rhine House.

The Hudson House still resides on the property, and Jacob and his wife, Agnes, raised six children there while other winery buildings and the famous caves were constructed by Chinese workers.

The Rhine House itself  today the symbol of the historic winery  was designed by architect Albert Schroepfer, whose designs have come to define the 19th-century flavor of Napa Valley wine estates (Sutter Home Victorian, Miravalle at Spring Mountain Winery, and Niebaum home at Inglenook). However, according to Hansen, its design was so ornate that construction took nearly two years to complete.

Hansens depth of research was particularly useful in placing the rise of Beringer Brothers in the context of all that was transpiring in Northern California. For instance, an 1876 vintage report showed 17 cellars making wine locally, with a total estimated production of 848,000 gallons. She also paid tribute to the legions of Chinese laborers  many of whom lived in St. Helenas China Town on West Charter Oak  whose hard work enabled the rapid growth of the wine industry throughout the late 1800s.

Hansens talk was followed by other tours and vineyard hikes, and the day was concluded with a library tasting of six Beringer Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon vintages spanning four decades from 1980 through 2010.
Construction career fair recruits next generation

The sound of hammering, drilling and other construction noise outside the Napa Valley College library on Friday morning wasnt the start of a campus addition or other project. It was the sound of the start of new careers.

A career fair for anyone interested in becoming a mason, electrician, iron worker, painter, plumber, roofer or other such skilled worker was presented by the North Bay Apprenticeship Coordinators Association, Kaiser Permanente, Carpenters Local 180 and Napa Solano Building Trades Council.

Vallejo resident J.J. Carnell, currently in the California Conservation Corps (CCC), said on Friday that he was most definitely looking for a skilled trade job. Through the CCC, hes been trained in landscaping, tree removal, fire prevention and trail maintenance, among other skills.

My ideal job would be in irrigation, he said. The career fair is great, he said, especially for people already doing hands-on work like in the CCC.

Im looking for a good trade and good-paying job with benefits, said A.J. Williams of Vallejo. Also a CCC member, Williams said outdoor work was best for him. If I was in an office all day, Id lose my mind.

Child advocates say higher wages, affordable housing needed

County child advocates say raising the local minimum wage to $15 an hour more quickly than the states multiyear, phased-in approach would help children in low-income families.

The stress of poverty and near-poverty is highly detrimental to children and adults alike, said Joelle Gallagher, co-chairwoman of the Napa County Child Abuse Prevention Council.

Last week Gallagher presented the councils 2016 Report on Children to the county Board of Supervisors. She sketched out the challenges faced by children and also made recommendations.

Even though Napa County has a median household income of $74,123 annually, 43 percent of families live at or below the $47,700 needed for a family of four to be self-sufficient, the report said. Also, 9.6 percent of households with children live below the $23,850 federal poverty limit for a family of four.

Frogs Leap seeking unusual winery approval

Frogs Leap Winery wants more visitors and more production, but this time a seemingly familiar request among local wineries comes with a twist  the expanded processing doesnt involve grapes.

The winery at 8815 Conn Creek Road near Rutherford wants to build a 3,000-square-foot building where it would process fruit from its 2-acre orchard. It would make jams and butters.

Frogs Leap Winery grows such crops as peaches, apples and pomegranates, said Jeff Redding, a consultant working on the winerys application to the county. It is a bio-diverse farm, he said.

This really is agriculture at its best, Redding said during a break in Wednesdays Napa County Planning Commission meeting.

But issues associated with the visitation request led the Planning Commission to continue the hearing until June 15 at the winerys request.

Restitution Court: Helping victims collect compensation

When someone is sentenced for a crime, sometimes they are ordered to pay restitution to those who were affected by their actions. But they dont always pay.

Years later the victim hasnt received any money, said Napa County Assistant District Attorney Paul Gero.

Hoping to improve this situation, the county has launched Restitution Court, which meets the third Monday of the month.

Restitution Court is designed to enforce and monitor restitution payments. My goal is that these (people) pay the money that they owe, Gero said.

The court met for only the second time last week before Judge Mark Boessenecker.

A coffee lounge, dining coming to Century Center

Napas South Napa Century Center continues to grow at a fast pace, with a new Hampton Inn & Suites and In-Shape fitness center open and a section of retail and restaurant space under construction.

The developer, the Gasser Foundation, announced the next phase, a 19,000-square-foot, two-story building parallel to Imola Avenue, east of Hampton Inn & Suites.

The foundation said the building will contain a coffee lounge as well as the offices of NakedWines.com, followed by a tasting room.

We are excited that our permanent home will be a state-of-the-art building designed specifically for our truly innovative culture  right in the heart of Napa, said Zack Crafton, Naked Wines director of operations.

Nakes Wines was previously located downtown where it had a tasting room on First Street. Currently the companys offices are located in an airport industrial park.

NVTA finds possible bus yard site near airport

A 2-year search to find a suitable site to build a $31.6 million VINE bus yard amid the pricey Napa County real estate market may have finally yielded fruit.

The Napa Valley Transportation Authority is looking at two adjacent properties totaling about 8 acres on Sheehy Court. This area in the airport industrial area could become the place where more than 80 buses are kept, repaired, cleaned and maintained.

Were negotiating with the owners, NVTA Executive Director Kate Miller said. But in order to move forward, we really need to do some environmental assessment to understand whether we can build on that site.

The NVTA board of directors voted Wednesday to spend $175,000 for Rincon Consultants Inc. to do an environmental study and design work. The agency wants to find out if the two properties are home to rare species, have contaminated soils, have water availability issues or have other constraints before it spends public money buying them.
Napa Countys 2015 agricultural production value fell 24 percent from the previous years all-time high, though county agricultural officials are by no means sounding the alarm.

Gross agricultural production totaled $553 million, compared to the record-breaking $724 million in 2014, according to the newly released 2015 Napa County Agricultural Crop Report. This marked the lowest amount since $431 million in 2011.

Farming  especially grape farming  plays a huge role in Napa Countys economy and very sense of identity. Agricultural Commissioner Greg Clark gave farm production a clean bill of health, despite the drop-off.

Theres always variation from year to year, both crop size and crop value, Clark said prior to Tuesdays Board of Supervisors meeting, where he presented the crop report.

As grapes go, so goes county agriculture. Wine grape production accounted for 99 percent of the total agricultural value.

Clark said a 24 percent drop in grape production value and 29 percent drop in grape tonnage after three very good harvests came about in part because of the weather. A cool, windy May during bloom led to grape clusters failing to develop properly, a condition called shatter.

We dont control the weather, Clark said.

Still, Napa County wine grapes on average fetched a state-high $4,405 per ton. That compares to the $670-per-ton average for all of California.

That shows our strength, our beautiful soils, our climate and professional farming skills we have in the county, Napa County Farm Bureau Executive Director Sandy Elles told the Board of Supervisors.

While the overall grape production value fell, grape prices rose. The average 2015 price per ton for red wine grape varieties was $5,181, compared to $4,867 in 2014. The average price per ton for white varieties was $2,394, compared to $2,313 in 2014.

Cabernet sauvignon was king in three major categories, with 21,376 acres planted, 53,195 tons harvested and $6,289 per ton yielded in the marketplace.

Several proposed vineyard projects have generated controversy, in part because growers are turning to the hillside watershed areas to find space. But in 2015, vineyard acreage fell almost 400 acres, to 45,508.

Clark said growers change varieties and rootstocks and that vines have a lifespan.

Its just year-to-year variation, he said. Its just part of farming.

The crop report said that hay production increased because several vineyard owners used otherwise fallow land to produce hay between pulling and replanting grape vines. Hay acreage rose from 650 acres to 1,032 acres.

In the long view, grape acreage is rising. Napa County had:

 25,215 acres of vineyards in 1980

 32,715 in 1990

 40,016 in 2000

 45,463 in 2010

The crop report also looks at the by-comparison pocket change that is the non-grape agriculture. Floral and nursery crops led the way, jumping from $1.9 million in value in 2014 to $2.5 million in 2015.

Livestock production was worth $1.8 million. But production for other animal products and for field crops came in at about $530,000 apiece and vegetables at $367,700  values less than the median price of a Napa County house.

Olive production fell from $645,900 in 2014 to $300,300 in 2015. The crop report said producers are battling the olive fruit fly and many minor producers didnt harvest because olives have alternate year reduced yields.

Organic production for all crops fell from 3,517 acres in 2014 to 3,305 acres in 2015.

Napa County is hardly a California agricultural behemoth. Rather, it is like a fine wine boutique shop amid the world of big-box farming.

In 2014, the county ranked 22nd in agricultural crop value among the states 58 counties. Tulare County, with its milk, cattle oranges and table grapes, led the way with a value of $8 billion  11 times the Napa County total.

Go to www.countyofnapa.org/agcom/cropreport to read the crop report.
Its not every day that we receive good news from Haiti, but Helen Walka Dake has just returned from a trip to Port-au-Prince, and for Dake and many others, the St. Helena connection to this tiny country is as personal as the farm stand that she and her husband, Chuck, ran for seven years.

I just returned from a trip to Haiti, Dake wrote. The What If? Foundation along with the local Haitian community has just finished a three-story school building along with a cafeteria/kitchen. We had a ribbon cutting ceremony and celebration last weekend.  I think people here would like to hear about how their contributions have resulted in a wonderful outcome.

The school had been a long-held dream of the Ti Plaz Kazo community and was built in memory of Father Jean-Juste, whose vision of a childrens food program inspired Margaret Trost to create the What If? Foundation in 2000. The foundation, which operates out of Berkeley, sends its funds to a local organization called Na Riv, which feeds up to 1,500 meals a day, five days a week, to children of the Ti Plas Kazo community.

Dake, who has a doctorate in developmental psychology, became interested in the What If? Foundation as a program evaluator and researcher. Her interest and her firsthand knowledge of the needs of children led her to become a board member of the nonprofit.

Dake alerted the St. Helena community to the funding needs of the What If? Foundation through a number of fundraisers and with her farm stand where fresh vegetables were sold. Founder Trost also visited St. Helena on several occasions to raise awareness and funds, and many will remember her impassioned talks at a number of churches in town.

Fundraising efforts were progressing steadily when the 2010 magnitude-7.0 quake hit, killing more than 120,000 people and leaving a million and a half homeless. The demand on Na Riv for food skyrocketed, and by the end of 2010 more than 750,000 meals had been served by Na Riv.

But the dream of the school project  to provide full K-13 education for up to 350 impoverished children  continued to blossom, and today, according to Dake, its a reality.

According to the organizations news release, the new building has three stories and six classrooms for 40 students each. It also houses the food program, equipped with a kitchen and cafeteria.

For information about the What If? Foundation, visit WhatIfFoundation.org.
Press release:

Taking the stage for the first time since earning this years ACM Entertainer of the Year title, Jason Aldean celebrated with his hometown of Macon, GA on April 22, while raising over $500,000 for Childrens Hospital, Navicent Health. Every ticket was instantly snatched to the exclusive event held at the citys downtown historic Grand Opera House, as familiar faces were treated to an intimate stripped-down performance. The impressive amount of money raised by Bibb County benefits the only dedicated pediatric facility in central Georgia that enhances the lives of children through patient care, research and education.

Pretty overwhelming the amount of money that was raised by the community of Macon last night and I couldnt be more proud to call it my hometown, shares Aldean. Every single penny helps an organization that means a lot to me and I cant thank everyone enough for helping these kids. Emotions were running high seeing all those faces familiar faces come out to support.

We are thrilled and so very appreciative that Jason took time from his busy schedule to visit Macon and offer an exclusive performance for the benefit of our patients at Childrens Hospital, Navicent Health. Our young patients and their families are grateful for his support and advocacy, said Dr. Ninfa M. Saunders, President and CEO of Navicent Health.

Aldean recently released his muscular new single (Rolling Stone) Lights Come On as the lead single from his upcoming seventh studio album, which immediately reached the No. One spot on Billboards Country Digital Songs chart upon release. He will return to the road as his SIX STRING CIRCUS TOUR launches May 19th in Rogers, AR with continued support from Thomas Rhett and A Thousand Horses. For more information and for a full list of upcoming tour dates, visit www.jasonaldean.com.
The North Atlantic Council and Military Committee visited the Command of the French Nuclear Strategic Force at LIle Longue (France), on Tuesday (26 April 2016).

The visit stresses the essential contribution that Frances conventional and nuclear forces bring to the security and defence of the Alliances territory and population. The NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg described it as a clear demonstration of the credibility of Frances strategic nuclear forces.

Modernizing NATOs deterrence and defence posture will be an important part of the agenda of the next Warsaw Summit in July. Mr. Stoltenberg underlined that the Summit will ensure that NATOs nuclear deterrent is credible and fit for purpose.

At LIle Longue NATO Ambassadors and the members of the Military Committee visited several French nuclear submarines. They also exchanged views with French senior civilian officials and military officers, including the Chief of Defence, the Director General for International Affairs and Strategy at the Ministry of Defence, the Commander of the Nuclear Submarine Strategic Force, and the Commander of the Strategic Air Force.
(As prepared)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for that welcome. It is a great pleasure to be back in Romania  a country which, in the 12 years since it joined NATO, has proven itself an extremely steadfast and effective member of the Alliance.

I want to thank your country for everything it does to support transatlantic security and NATOs longstanding goal of a Europe whole, free and at peace. Romanias involvement in NATO operations in Afghanistan and Kosovo; its hosting of key elements of NATOs missile defence capability; its commitment to meet NATOs defence spending targets; its influence as an advocate of greater cooperation between NATO and the European Union: these are all important contributions to the Alliances overall strength and effectiveness. So, thank you.

Keeping the Alliance strong and effective is as important today as it has ever been.

For almost seven decades, NATO has preserved the peace in Europe  the longest sustained period in its history  and we have extended NATOs values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law across Central and Eastern Europe, and beyond.

Despite all that the Alliance has achieved, however, there is a lot more to do. The challenges we face today are of such complexity and breadth that we cannot afford to rest on our laurels.

Of most concern are the destabilising actions of a more aggressive and unpredictable Russia, and the tide of instability which has swept across the Middle East and North Africa in recent years. But we are also wrestling with other complex risks and threats  to our cyber security, to our energy supplies, and, in the case of international terrorism, to the safety of the people on our streets.

Naturally, NATO is doing everything it can to understand these challenges and to respond appropriately. The Alliance takes a 360-degree approach to deterring threats, to protecting its member nations and, if necessary, to defending them. That is the thinking behind our Readiness Action Plan  a series of measures that we agreed at our last Heads of State and Government Summit in Wales in 2014.

These measures include tripling the size of NATOs Response Force, to more than 40,000 troops, while enabling its Spearhead Force to be ready to deploy within days. We have also set up a series of small headquarters  including here in Romania  to support planning, training and, if needed, reinforcement. And Romania is doing its part, providing the core of a multinational division headquarters that will contribute to collective defense for the region.

As we develop our understanding of the evolving security environment, our responses develop with it. In February of this year, NATO defence ministers agreed that an increased capacity for rapid reinforcement is essential, but it's not enough. They concluded that we also need to enhance our forward presence in the eastern part of the Alliance. At the same time, the United States announced plans to quadruple the money it spends on Europes defence as part of its European Reassurance Initiative  to $3.4 billion next year  and to increase its rotational presence of troops in Europe. And Romania and other Eastern European Allies are looking at how they can also make a stronger contribution to their own security and to NATO's collective defence.

As recently as 2013, these were not measures we expected to have to take. In the years following the Cold War, our relations with Russia became increasingly constructive. We shared a common interest in forging an integrated, rules-based European security architecture grounded in military restraint and respect for the sovereignty of all independent nations, including those that emerged from the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union. And we succeeded in cooperating on shared concerns such as stabilising the Western Balkans and Afghanistan, fighting piracy, and countering terrorism.

NATOs ambitions for a mutually beneficial partnership evaporated the moment Russia launched its aggression against Ukraine  illegally annexing Crimea, and organising a separatist insurgency in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine. By its actions, the Kremlin has torn up the international rule book and gravely undermined the European security order that it first helped to create  including through the Helsinki Final Act, and numerous post-Cold War agreements, such as the Charter of Paris and the NATO-Russia Founding Act.

Russia has engaged in a series of destabilising actions  using propaganda, subversion and cyber attacks  both to undermine the security and stability of Ukraine and to test the readiness and resolve of the NATO Alliance. It continues to assemble so-called Anti-Access and Area Denial capabilities close to our borders  anti-ship and anti-aircraft weapons that could hinder the Alliances ability to reinforce eastern Allies in an emergency. That includes, of course, the ongoing militarisation of occupied Crimea and a build-up of other capabilities in and around the Black Sea  which Romania has rightly highlighted as an area of key concern for the Alliance.

NATO is responding in a number of ways. We are intensifying our maritime patrols; exploring the need for increased military training and exercise activity; providing support to partners like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova; and encouraging efforts to strengthen energy security. In this regard, Romanias efforts to build a gas pipeline to Moldova, for example, will be critical in reducing that countrys energy dependence on Russia.

Disturbingly, Russia has also amplified its nuclear rhetoric and posture, and withdrawn from, or ignored, many of its obligations under existing arms control and transparency agreements. And it has done all this while falsely portraying NATO as seeking to weaken and encircle Russia, and claiming that Russia's provocative military activities are a response to NATOs actions.

NATOs message is clear and consistent: we are a defensive alliance, and we do not seek confrontation with Russia. A new Cold War is not in anyones interests.

But we cannot simply ignore Russias actions. To do so would not only betray our own principles and encourage Moscow to risk further aggression against its neighbors. It would also be an inherently unstable basis for our future relations with Russia and other Eastern neighbours. Citizens in countries like Ukraine and Georgia will never accept the idea that they should permanently be consigned to what Russian leaders have described as Russias sphere of privileged interests. In the 21st century, security cannot be based on spheres of influence in which the great powers dictate the choices of their neighbors, and change borders by force.

The best response to Russias behaviour, I believe, is to take a two-track approach, one that combines strength with dialogue. First of all, we must  and we will  bolster our defence and deterrence, so that Russia or any other potential adversary would not even think of launching aggression against a NATO member. At the same time, we will continue to engage in dialogue with Russia, with a view to communicating our resolve, restoring military transparency, and thereby reducing the risk of conflict. We did just that when we met with the Russian Ambassador in the NATO-Russia Council last week.

But one thing should be crystal clear: until Russia comes back into compliance with international law, ends its aggression against Ukraine, and fully abides by its obligations under the Minsk accords, we cannot return to any kind of business as usual.

Looking forward, as an Alliance, in order to bolster our deterrence, we will need to go beyond the measures we agreed at our Summit in Wales two years ago. In particular, at our next Summit in Warsaw this July, NATO leaders will agree on the scale, scope, and composition of the enhanced forward presence along the Eastern flank of the Alliance  in particular in those countries most exposed to a direct military threat. That presence will be rotational, multinational and combat-capable. It will thereby send a clear message to any potential aggressor that, if they violate NATO territory, they will face a strong response from the whole alliance  Americans, Europeans and home defence forces  and pay a disproportionately high price for their actions.

Here in the Black Sea region, Allies need to consider a more persistent, multinational NATO presence, with a particular focus on our maritime capabilities. Such a presence could be robust, but defensive in posture, and consistent with the Montreux Convention. It could be based on enhanced cooperation among the regional states  Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey  in the air, land and maritime domains, reinforced by other allies and the longstanding presence of US forces in the region.

The Summit will also ensure that our nuclear deterrent is credible and fit for purpose, especially in the face of the increasingly irresponsible nuclear rhetoric by Russia in recent years. It is important to remember, however, that nuclear weapons will only ever be a last resort for NATO. Indeed, the circumstances in which any use of nuclear weapons might have to be contemplated are extremely remote. But no one should think that nuclear weapons can be used as part of a conventional conflict. Their use would change the nature of any conflict fundamentally and irrevocably.

In Warsaw, we will also take important decisions to address the situation along our southern borders. Even as we confront the Russian challenge and bolster our deterrence, we face equally daunting security threats from an increasingly unstable Middle East and North Africa  a region where terrorist groups like ISIL have proliferated, where fragile states risk becoming failed states, and where we have witnessed a huge exodus of millions of refugees and migrants.

Here too, NATO cannot simply sit back and hope that these things resolve themselves. While the Alliance itself is not involved directly in the US-led Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, all 28 Allies are part of the coalition and NATO contributes in other ways to increase stability and security in our southern neighborhood.

We are already working closely with several partners in the region to help them to bolster their own security. We are running defence capacity building projects with Iraq and Jordan  training Iraqi officers, for example, in tackling Improvised Explosive Devices. We are helping Tunisia improve its special operations forces. And we stand ready to assist Libya in building its defence institutions if requested by the new unity government.

But, in my view, NATO can do much more to project stability in North Africa and the Middle East. I believe we should seek closer cooperation with regional organisations such as the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the African Union. And I hope that other means of boosting our defence capacity building programmes  training, advising, assisting  will get the attention  and the extra resources  they deserve in Warsaw.

I also believe that we should take our cooperation with the European Union to a new level  including in projecting stability in our common neighbourhood, East and South. And here I wish to applaud the efforts of the Romanian government in both advocating and facilitating that cooperation. Our efforts are all the stronger when we work hand-in-hand and side-by-side with the EU. And there is much to be gained from NATO and the EU working together on issues such as hybrid warfare, cyber defence and civil preparedness.

The final issue I want to address is defence spending. If the Alliance is to secure its own territory while also projecting stability in our neighbourhood, we need far greater investment in defence. That is why, at Wales two years ago, all Allies committed themselves to halting the cuts in their defence budgets, and gradually increasing their spending to 2% of GDP within a decade.

Romania, I am pleased to say, is one of sixteen European Allies that spent more in 2015 than they did the year before. I warmly welcome the agreement between all parliamentary parties here to hit the 2% target by 2017. And I congratulate the government on its intention to spend more than a quarter of its defence budget this year on major equipment  a greater share than the 20% guideline agreed by Allies.

Our recent assessments show that it will not always be easy to live up to these expectations, even for Romania. I urge you to continue that overall upward trend, ensuring, at the same time, that the capabilities in which you invest are effective, appropriate for the threats we face, and suitably interoperable  meaning that your military is able to work seamlessly with other NATO Allies against common threats. Along with spending more money on defence, it is essential that all Allies ensure the highest levels of interoperability.

Before I finish, let me also commend Romania for agreeing to host an Aegis Ashore missile defence system at Deveselu. NATO remains committed to defend its members against any kind of attack. Contrary to Moscows claims, our ballistic missile defence system is entirely defensive in nature, and is optimised to defend against ballistic missile threats from the Middle East. The missile defence site at Deveselu  in terms of its capabilities and location  has absolutely no capacity to undermine Russias strategic deterrent. This is a question of geography and physics, which Russian rocket scientists understand full well, despite the propaganda that is constantly repeated by Russian officials.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a little over ten weeks until NATOs leaders gather in Warsaw to discuss the many challenges we face.

The decisions we take there will be crucial to the continuing security of our nations.

I am confident that, together, we will prove ourselves more than capable of delivering a strong response to the many challenges we face, and that NATO has the resolve and the capabilities to face down aggression from wherever it may come  and to project stability well beyond our own borders.

Thank you for listening. I very much look forward to your questions.
Yelena Eckemoff, the prolific and enthralling pianist and composer, has earned plaudits for her recent releases Everblue, Lions, A Touch of Radiance, Glass Song and more. She has made high-level original music with sidemen on the order of, and. With her new release Leaving Everything Behind, she deepens her multifaceted body of work by drawing on older original material- a few pieces dating as far back as the 1980s. To emphasize my concept behind this album, I needed to go back to my roots," says the pianist. I wanted to draw on music I composed when I knew very little- if anything at all- about the modern jazz field."These compositions, in various ways, recall for Eckemoff deeply personal events and contemplations. Yet in reinventing her own works so thoroughly and imaginatively, Eckemoff looks back to look forward, approaching her older material from the heights of her acquired skills as a jazz pianist and band leader. Inhabiting that rarefied area between modern classical chamber music and progressive jazz" (All About Jazz), Eckemoff once again enlists legendary drummer Billy Hart, whose expressive capacities and timbral choices give the music an unstinting freshness. Completing the lineup is sought-after bassist Ben Street and seasoned violinist and improviser Mark Feldman.Eckemoff's album title, Leaving Everything Behind, was inspired by her departure from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991. Having trained extensively as a classical pianist at the Moscow State Conservatory, Eckemoff showed a strong desire to cross musical boundaries and create her own unique oeuvre. When my husband and I came to America it was a really difficult time," she recalls. We came to America with less than twenty dollars in our pocket, didn't know the language, we were struggling to get established. Listening to music was not a priority, but I did a lot of composing and performing as a solo pianist."The hardest thing by far, however, was leaving behind three small boys. It was really impossible for us to leave Russia," says the pianist, so we had to leave our children with my parents for a year and two months just come to America together. It was the most difficult thing we ever did. We didn't know if we'd have to go back or if they would be brought to us. It was indefinite- we didn't know how long we weren't going to see them."Eckemoff confronts these memories and others in a series of poems that accompany each of the tracks on Leaving Everything Behind (a practice she began on Glass Song from 2012). The cover art and all interior drawings are also Eckemoff's- in fact the front cover artwork dates back to the time when she composed the music. I am a professional musician, and painting and poetry for me has always been just a hobby. But I believe that including my own poetry and paintings into the album package gives people an opportunity to connect with my music on a deeper, more personal level. Also, I think it's important in the age of streaming to offer people a comprehensive physical object, a fuller experience of art."There is a strong through-composed element in Eckemoff's music, yet her melding of complex written material with a flowing, elastic sense of rhythm is what gives her efforts, Leaving Everything Behind included, an improvisational and even playful feeling. Of the eleven pieces, Mushroom Rain," Leaving Everything Behind" and Hope Lives Eternal" were composed when Eckemoff was in her early 20s. Ocean of Pines," an intricate piece with waltz, 4/4 and rubato sections and a haunting, elusive harmonic character, was composed in 2005, while six remaining pieces stem from a fruitful period in 2008.There is a magnificent texture of the quartet and the transparent beauty of these four unique instrumental voices is immediately apparent on Prologue," which leads to the darker, more rhythmically emphatic Rising From Within." Other highlights include the contrapuntal dancing of Eckemoff and Feldman on Spots of Light," the Billy Hart-driven groove of Love Train" (not to be confused with the O'Jays hit), the lilting quasi-shuffle feel and poignant lyricism of Tears of Tenderness" and the stately 3/4 pulse and soaring Feldman solo that enlivens A Date in Paradise."Eckemoff, who also produces all her albums, elaborates on her methods: Traditionally, jazz is about extensive improvising on what might even be a simple tune. What I'm doing is taking more charge of the outcome. I provide a comprehensive, carefully thought-through musical framework, based on the important melodic material, and share with performers my sentiments about what each piece is meant to express. At the same time I leave much space in this framework for the creative reading by each band member, as well as the band as a whole. When we start playing together, each band member brings a personal interpretation of the music material, and sometimes the outcome evolves away from what was initially intended. The improvisational parts, both structured and free, add a strong element of unpredictability, and also the interplay between band members often takes the music in a new direction."Yelena says about great Billy Hart, He really understands where I'm coming from, and he was a first one to describe my approach to composition as 'pioneering the ground of making jazz an American classical music.' Also, Billy likes the task of expressing things through his drumming. He always wants me to tell him what I want to express: he loves this challenge, and when he plays, he always gives himself to the music completely." The story behind Coffee and Thunderstorm" makes Eckemoff laugh: At first I named it 'Fresh Air and Coffee,' and that's how I sent it to Billy. But then I renamed it because it was much more turbulent and my title didn't fit. Billy didn't know, so when we were playing it I said to him, 'Can you play something more like a thunderstorm?' He said, 'Oh, but I was trying to express fresh air!' 'Well, I changed my mind!' And then he was all thunderstorm.'"While Leaving Everything Behind tells a story that is inescapably Eckemoff's own, her poem accompanying the title track, which mentions the Israelites leaving Egypt, hints at what appears to be a deeper message. They could not take with them all their possessions. They should have taken a lot, though, to start from scratch in a new land. Yet I cannot stop thinking about all that they left behind... And I wonder if they had not left at all, that their essence, after thousands of years, still lingers there, in Egypt."
Russia to evade G7 plan to cap oil prices, export 90% of its oil?

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Climate protesters throw mashed potatoes at Monet painting in Germany museum

There is chance for peace in Ukraine, Macron says

US, Russia defense chiefs discuss Ukraine situation for 2nd time in last few days

Turkey plans to set up 2 more military bases in northern Syria

Germany wants to use Israel UAVs to protect its key infrastructures

UK defense secretary holds phone talk with Russia counterpart

US to attempt set Russia oil price cap above $60 per barrel?

Russia, Turkey defense ministers confer about Ukraine situation

Armenia official: Terms for buying, building houses for those displaced from Artsakh have improved

Saudi Arabia forum set to draw American business leaders despite existing tensions

Iran plans to increase natural gas exports to Turkey

Iran army ground forces holding exercise in West Azarbaijan Province

Sovereignty renunciation to be punished in Armenia with 12-15 years of imprisonment, as per justice ministry draft

2 pilots killed in Russia fighter jet crash

Russia, France defense ministers discuss Ukraine

Fighter jet crashes into house in Russias Irkutsk

150 residents of 3 Karabakh settlements handed over to Azerbaijan get compensation certificates

Rishi Sunak confirms UK premier bid

Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson hold talks

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Iran MP: Military exercises on Azerbaijan border are decisive response to Israel

Xi Jinping elected Communist Party of China Central Committee general secretary

Armenia envoy presents credentials to Bosnia and Herzegovina Presidency chair

Hungary to approve by years end Sweden, Finland petitions to join NATO

US researchers debunk main theory for origin of life

Iranian MP: Iran will conduct military exercises wherever it deems necessary

Finnish delegation to visit Ankara to discuss NATO membership

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Lithuanian President Nauseda is named most popular politician in country

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Deputy Director of Institute of Oriental Studies of RAS: Baku's goal is that Karabakh has no Armenian population

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Italy's new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, begins forming government

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Telegraph: Britain to send about 60 old tanks to NATO base in Germany for exercises

Artak Beglaryan: You will see me in new position

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Russia and Turkey begin to develop gas hub project

PM Pashinyan discusses agenda of bilateral relations with Iranian FM

Anna Hakobyan meets Armenians in Paris

Sargsyan: Recognition of Artsakh people's right for self-determination must be reflected in legal documents

Italy's first female prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, sworn in

Private jet goes missing off coast of Costa Rica

Times of India: India tests nuclear-capable Agni Prime missile

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Secretary of Security Council of Armenia and representatives of AIISA discuss security issues

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President Harutyunyan receives group of members of Union of Artsakh Reserve Officers NGO

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China hit by 5.5 magnitude earthquake

Armenian Defense Ministry denies Azerbaijani report on shelling, calling it disinformation

Blinken: Moscow is not interested in stopping aggression against Ukraine

Japan and U.S. will hold joint military exercises

France withdraws from Energy Charter Treaty

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Ankara decides to stand up for Riyadh amid deteriorating relations between Saudi Arabia and U.S.

French Foreign Minister considers it vital to keep lines of communication with Russia open

Pentagon refuses to give details of conversation between Austin and Shoigu

Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin: Head of Caucasus Muslims Department again made slanderous and false statements

Erdogan denies using chemical weapons against Kurds and threatens those who dare to talk about it

Saudi Arabia and China will strengthen their ties in energy sector

Governor of Gegharkunik province receives representatives of OSCE fact-finding mission

Penny Mordaunt runs for Prime Minister of Great Britain

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Russian Railways is negotiating with Azerbaijan and Iran to launch the Rasht-Astara route

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Armenian Defense Minister's working visit to India is over

Hungary will not agree to limit prices for imported gas

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Baza: Mobile military registration and enlistment offices will be removed on Russian-Georgian border

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The tragedies happening far away are not troubling, wrote Antonio Gramsci, one of the founders of Italian Communist Party, who still remains one of the most cited Italian thinkers abroad.

Italian socialist newspaper Il Grido del popolo published several of his excerpts in its March issue. The article reads:

This is always the case. For something to touch us and become part of our internal life it is necessary that it happen near us and with people who we have heard of. In Father Goriot, Balzak puts such a phrase in Rastignacs lips: If you knew that every time you ate an orange, one Chinese would die, would you give up eating orange? And Rastignac answers: I know oranges, but the Chinese are so far that I dont even know whether they exist or not.

Of course, our answer will never be as cynical as that of Rastignac. But when we hear that the Turks exterminated hundreds of thousands of Armenians, do we feel the same horror as during the occupation of Belgium by the Germans?

In the most difficult moments, Armenia never received anything but platonic expressions of compassion and contempt for its enemies. The words Slaughter of Armenians are repeated as a saying, but nothing is visualized behind these words. They cant imagine living humans from flesh and blood. It was possible to suppress Turkey, which had so many interests with all the European countries. But nothing like this was done - at least nothing that would yield specific results.

There was less talk about the Russians leaving of Erzrum, and possible return of Turkish troops to all the Armenian regions, than about the forced landing of zeppelin in France. The Armenians living in Europe should have made their homeland, history and homeland more known.

The same thing happened both to small Armenia and great Persia. Who knows that the greatest Arabs (Averroe, Avicenna, etc.) were in reality Persians? Who knows that the civilization which we got used to name Arabic is Persian in a lot of ways? And do many of us know that the recent reforms and development of Turkey are in many ways connected with the Armenians and Jews? The Armenians should have done so that people knew Armenia better.

Something is happening in Turin. For several months Armenia newspaper has been published, which shows who the Armenian people are and what they want. This could be followed by a series of books, which would give Italy an idea about the Armenian nation.
Hamdullah Mohib, ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and his wife, Lael Mohib, visited Emory earlier this month to discuss the country's politics with students and faculty.

The couple represents a new generation of Afghan leaders. As a child, Hamdullah Mohib lived in refugee camps; as a teen, he left Afghanistan to escape the Taliban. Now at age 32, he has a PhD from Brunel University in the United Kingdom and worked for the American University of Afghanistan and Intel Corporation before joining the government. Lael Mohib, founder of the Enabled Children Initiative, also worked for the American University of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, as well as India and Pakistan, are playing increasingly important roles in regional and global affairs, notes Marion Creekmore, distinguished visiting professor of history and political science at Emory, whose course "South Asian Politics Since 1945" was visited by the Mohibs.

Creekmore, former U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, draws heavily on his personal experience and connections in his teaching, offering students a combination of academic and practical expertise.

Students interested in global work need to develop a solid understanding of these countries current political, economic and security concerns as well as how their policy decisions of the past are influencing their present thinking and action," he says.

During their visit, the Mohibs translated students studies into the real-world framework of a country focused on managing a successful transition to self-reliance in the wake of the drawdown of U.S. and NATO troops.

They stressed that the new Afghan government is rebuilding its citizens' trust by tackling internal corruption and taking actions to create a unified and peaceful political future.

The majority of Afghanistans citizens are under 35  a generation that grew up with war and is deeply invested in peace. After 40 years of continuing war, being an ordinary country is what has escaped us," the ambassador explained.

Bridging the gap between perception and reality

Students in the South Asian politics class focus on the relationships between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. For their final project they are working in small groups, simulating the role of policy advisers to the leader of one of the countries, and recommending the policy objectives and supporting initiatives that should be pursued toward another of the countries over the next five years.

Students asked detailed questions covering security concerns, the repatriation of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, bilateral relations with Pakistan and India, bilateral and multilateral trade and investment, womens rights, multiculturalism and other topics.

The Mohibs engaged candidly with the students, briefing them on the larger issues and context even as they answered their specific questions.

The ambassador also wanted to better understand how the students perceive Afghanistan and expressed the desire for a mutual learning process.

Afghanistan is talked about in the media quite a bit, but its in the abstract. We want to bridge the gap between what is being done in Afghanistan and what is being perceived," he said. The challenges impacting the new Afghanistan are often missing from the global conversation.

Throughout the day, Lael Mohib, who most recently served as chief of staff at the American University in Kabul, emphasized the centrality of the womens empowerment agenda to the countrys goals for self-reliance.

We currently have four female cabinet members, three female ambassadors, and two female governors, Hamdullah Mohib noted in answer to a students question. He also pointed out that President Ashraf Ghani had recently nominated a woman to the countrys Supreme Court, and said of Ghani's wife, Rula Ghani, We havent had a first lady this active since the 1920s.

During their April 6 visit to campus, the Mohibs also met with Gary Hauk, Emory's vice president and deputy to the president; spoke to political science professor Carrie Wickhams class on Islam and politics; consulted with Karin Ryan of The Carter Center; and engaged with a Halle Institute-sponsored luncheon for faculty.
For indigenous people seeking health care in Mexico and the United States, the biggest barrier must be language, Dalila Vazquez Herrera thought.

An Emory College senior majoring in Spanish and biology, Vazquez had already taken a class in which she explored negotiations between traditional and Western practices of healing for Mixtec speakers in rural Mexico.

But diving deeper as one of 14 grantees in the Scholarly Inquiry and Research at Emory (SIRE) program, she found that cultural communication  not simply language  proved to be a barrier for health care delivery.

I appreciated learning about different cultures at Emory, and what we can learn from each other and help each other, she says. Learning other cultures is part of becoming part of the community. I argue community is very important in health care.

Vazquez had that sense of community growing up in her study town, Yucuquimi de Ocampo, in the mountains in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. She, too, spoke the indigenous Mixtec language and didnt speak Spanish until she went to school. And her family sometimes relied on traditional healers for simple care or vitamins.

By the time she and her family moved to Brunswick, Georgia, eight years ago, Vazquez had left that history and focused more on modern medicine. She came to Emory planning to go on to dental school.

Yet her life experiences and college coursework began to merge when she realized that her language skills gave her the unique ability to ask providers, patients and families about health care and medicine.

The results of that research surprised Vazquez. For instance, most of the indigenous patients did not reject Western medicine or care.

They simply relied on traditional healers because the language and cultural connections made it easier to talk about their ailments. They were more likely to share information about their lives because of that bond.

That in turn allowed the healers to treat patients holistically, knowing for instance about the stresses that could exacerbate medical woes. The level of trust also helped because the healers were quick to recommend Western doctors for more severe medical problems and even routine medical check-ups.

The Western medical clinic in town, meanwhile, learned to hire Mixtec speakers to gather patient information but also to discuss more Western concerns, such as public health.

We knew there would be barriers but I argue there are ways to increase access because health care is truly important to everyone, Vazquez says. Both sides could learn from the other.

Implications for health care in the U.S.

Vazquezs research shows the need for more funding, and time with patients, for Western medical providers to take hold in indigenous communities.

But she also sees lessons for health care workers in the United States. That conclusion doesnt surprise Karen Stolley, the Spanish professor who mentored Vazquez through her study.

Its been a wonderful experience to work with her. She has seen that challenges for non-Spanish speaking immigrants from Mexico, who are often assumed to speak Spanish, in securing health care and other services are an issue not only here in Georgia, but across the U.S., Stolley says. Im confident that Dalila will go on to make an important contribution to her community.

The research project has changed how Vazquez plans to contribute. She is taking a year off after she graduates to work in the immigrant community in the United States to better understand medical care and issues here.

Then, instead of dental school, she plans to pursue a Masters of Public Health to continue delving even deeper into the same research.

I would like to work on more research about language and cultural and other barriers to health care, Vazquez says. This was just the overview. This was just the beginning.
Emory President James Wagner sent this message via email to the Emory community on April 26.

Dear Emory Community,

This customary end-of-year letter offers me a chance to send a thank-you note for your kind celebration of Debbie and me during last Thursdays block party. Thank you indeed! Your presence and good wishes meant a great deal and will be a lasting memory.

It is good and right to celebrate, it seems to me, in ways that permit us to enjoy one another and acknowledge so many things for which we can be grateful. Doing so does not ignore the challenges to which we are also called, whether in response to disasters like the devastation in Ecuador, or inhumanity that drives families to seek refuge with European hosts, or our ongoing struggles right here at home to secure liberty and justice for all. In fact, it may be that the practices of genuine community, including an insistence on celebration, can provide us with greater collective strength to address our challenges more successfully. In his poem A Brief for the Defense, Jack Gilbert writes, We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. So let us celebrate and do so gladly.

In less than two weeks, we will host our annual Commencement celebration. Nearly 15,000 will gather on the grand lawn of the Quadrangle to acknowledge the achievements of our graduates, to honor them and the faculty, staff, family, and friends who have contributed to their academic success. Moving on from that celebration our graduates can gladly open the next chapters of their lives, pursuing the opportunities and conquering the challenges of days ahead. Great congratulations and very best wishes to all of our graduates.

For those of you remaining behind, either anticipating your own future graduation or contributing through your careers to the noble mission of this place  to create, preserve, teach, and apply knowledge in the service of humanity  please accept my thanks and, in your own way, celebrate the end of another academic year. Make time for yourselves and family to refresh.

As we all reflect on the year behind us, I reflect also. Following this Commencement, I soon will be moving on as well. It has been an immense joy to be in a community committed to excellence in everything we do  teaching, research and scholarship, service, health care, business, and stewardship of our facilities and financial assets. It is a joy also to experience the extraordinary nobility of this community that values what is true and right beyond what is merely expedient or profitable. Emory is a university with a soul, truly endeavoring to be both great and good. It provides fertile soil in which to grow and change and to push for growth and change in the world through service to all of society. I have grown and changed, too, and will forever celebrate that.

Sincerely,



Jim Wagner
At a recent luncheon to thank Emorys Wellness Champions, a timeline showed just how far the program has come in the three years since its inception.

Begun in January 2013 with 14 Emory employees, the program today has 108 Wellness Champions throughout the units of Emory University and Emory Healthcare.

The program is part of Healthy Emory, an initiative established in 2013 to develop an inclusive approach to health promotion, well-being, recreation, fitness and healthy living across Emory. The Champions main responsibilities are sharing information about Emorys health & wellness programs and encouraging healthier habits within their work areas.

These volunteers are recruited by the health and wellness team, which oversees the program under the direction of Melissa Morgan, Emorys manager of wellness programs.

During the luncheon, Morgan ticked off some of the differences the Wellness Champions had made in Emorys efforts to encourage healthier living by employees, including contributing to the growth and expansion of the Healthy New YOU Expo and the Know Your Numbers onsite biometric screenings; increasing participation in the Move More Challenge and the Colorful Choices Nutrition Challenge; and increasing participation in National Walking Day.

In 2012, there were 132 walkers signed up on National Walking Day, Morgan says. In 2016, we had over 40 organized walks and over 580 walkers.

The Move More Challenge, held last fall, did a lot for the visibility of Healthy Emory, Morgan says. More than 8,000 people registered to participate in the eight-week physical activity program, which offered Fitbit wearable devices at a reduced price to encourage employees to "move more." The challenge will be offered again in 2016.

Collectively, we covered over 1 million miles and averaged 9,000 steps a day, she says.

The Fitbit company was so impressed by Emory's program that they are completing a promotional video featuring a number of Emory employees including Morgan. The video, shown in its initial format at the luncheon, should be completed and finalized by early summer, Morgan told the group.

Making a difference across Emory

Wellness Champions are making a difference across Emory, from office buildings to hospitals.

For example, Jeanne Landry, vice-president of human resources at Emory Saint Josephs, praised the work of Wellness Champions Ansley Thompson and Lianne Sagorski. Thompson is manager of community relations and Sagorski is in human resources at Saint Josephs.

These two have really embraced this initiative. From early on they have organized the wellness committee for Emory Saint Josephs to include the entire campus, Landry says.

They have organized walking Wednesdays, aided with the Healthy New YOU Expo for the past two years, and have been instrumental to me in finalizing a ESJ Campus outside walking path, by defining the course and helping in selection of the graphics and monument signs, she notes.

Volunteers are asked to commit to serving as a Wellness Champion for two years. They also submit a monthly report detailing wellness initiatives in their department or division; attend two or three in-person meetings per year; and participate in a monthly conference call.

To volunteer to become a Wellness Champion, contact Morgan.

Why be a Wellness Champion?

We asked a diverse group of Wellness Champions about their reasons for volunteering. Here are a few of their answers:



 "I became a Wellness Champion to help others learn about the great programs that Healthy Emory has to offer. Wellness is important to everyone, and I want to be a part of helping others to be well in all areas of their lives."

Kendra Price

Government Affairs Manager

Office of Government Affairs



 "I really enjoy spreading the wellness word to my fellow co-workers. Being the Wellness Champion at Emory Johns Creek Hospital has allowed me to encourage and educate on nutrition and fitness."

Julie Parish

Clinical Nutrition Manager

Emory Johns Creek Hospital



 "Im brand-new to the role, so Im definitely still learning. I became a Wellness Champion because I have really seen the benefits of increased activity in my own life, and I wanted to share that with others. Also, its a great chance to talk with co-workers outside my area. Ive really enjoyed the community aspects of the wellness programs at Emory."

Ben Chapman

Assistant Dean for Information Technology

Emory University School of Law



 "Being a Wellness Champion has been such a wonderful experience. I get to see people take on challenges to better themselves. The excitement people feel and sense of accomplishment shines through."

Melanie Hof

Clinical Assistant to Kenneth Mautner, MD



 "Being a Wellness Champion is a way for me to give back to Emory in a meaningful way. As a public health professional working with Oxford students, I experience gratitude daily for the opportunity to positively impact student well-being. Now, as a Wellness Champion, I can experience the same joy by empowering my colleagues to treat health as a priority."

Amanda Yu

Director of the Center for Healthful Living

Oxford College



 "Being a Wellness Champion is my small way of taking care of my organization. Its my opportunity to be Mom to a lot our staff. Its also a great opportunity for me to plan events and initiatives for my very large diverse group."

Shervon Lewis

Program Coordinator

Campus Services Human Resources



 "I like being a Wellness Champion because I enjoy encouraging others to be well and healthy. We all know that we do our best in life when we are feeling our best. If we commit to helping each other be well, we continue to make Emory a great place to come to work every day."

Stephanie Parisi

Instructional Designer

Teaching and Learning Technologies, LITS



 "I get so excited when I see my coworkers actually choosing healthier snacks and meals, and participating in our 'Get Up And Move' activities."

Andrea Dyer-Archa

Infusion Managed Care Reimbursement Specialist

Patient Financial Services at Peachtree Center



 "Healthy living has always been a personal struggle for me. I have never been a healthy eater, despite the fact that I managed to keep my weight down. I became a Wellness Champion to hold myself more accountable and to encourage others to do the same."

Terry Martin

Executive Senior Administrative Assistant

Emory Healthcare Nursing
Posted by PickupTrucks.com Staff | January 16, 2011



Photos and Words by Jim McCraw; above photo courtesy of Ford

Ford Motor Co. made some history over the weekend when it did a complete engine tear-down and inspection of a "torture tested" 3.5-liter EcoBoost twin-turbo V-6 used in the latest F-150 at the 2011 North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

Auto shows, like NAIAS, typically showcase the latest metal in fancy displays bathed in brilliant lights and staffed with beautiful spokesmodels. Theyre about as far as you can get from the garages that all cars and trucks will eventually require a visit to for service and maintenance. But for an hour Saturday, Ford turned part of its spotless blue and white display space inside Detroits Cobo Hall into a service bay for the last chapter of the F-150 EcoBoost torture test.



The front of the 3.5-liter EcoBoost V-6 prior to the start of the teardown in front of an estimated audience of more than 1,000 people at the 2011 Detroit auto show.

In case youre one of the three or four people who havent been following the F-150 EcoBoost torture test story online, heres a recap:

A production EcoBoost V-6 engine, serial number 448AA, was randomly selected off the assembly line at Fords Cleveland engine plant. The dual-overhead-cam power plant was shipped to dynamometer cell 36B in the Ford Dearborn engine labs and run for 300 hours to replicate the equivalent of 150,000 customer miles, including repeated temperature-shock runs when the engine was cooled to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit and then heated to 235 degrees.

The engine was then shipped to Ford's Kansas City truck plant and installed in an F-150 4X4 crew-cab pickup. It was driven to Nygaard Timber in Astoria, Ore., and put to work as a log skidder, dragging a total of 110,000 pounds of logs across the ground to demonstrate its 420 pounds-feet of torque.



The front engine cover, intake manifold and heads are removed from the engine to expose the valvetrain.

From there, the truck was driven across the country to Homestead Miami Speedway, where it was hooked up to a trailer carrying two of Richard Pettys Ford Fusion racecars, a load of 11,300 pounds, and run continuously around the track for 24 hours, averaging 82 mph and covering 1,607 miles.

It was then taken to Davis Dam in Arizona, where it bested both the 5.3-liter Chevy Silverado V-8 and the Ram 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 in an uphill towing contest pulling 9,000 pounds up a 6 percent grade on Highway 68.

Finally, the 3.5-liter twin-turbo EcoBoost engine was shipped to Mike McCarthys race shop in Wickenburg, Ariz., and installed in his 7,100-pound F-150 race truck. McCarthy practiced locally for 1,200 miles and raced the truck in the SCORE Baja 1000, the toughest off-road race in North America, finishing first overall in the new Stock Engine class after 1,062 race miles.



A close-up photo of three pistons still inside their cylinders. Note the carbon buildup on the piston crowns.

McCarthy said the engines fuel economy was so good compared with his previous V-8 engines that he was able to skip two planned fuel stops during the Baja event, which helped him win the class.

After Baja, the thoroughly thrashed and raced engine was shipped back to Ford headquarters in Dearborn, Mich., and dyno-tested once again. It was found to produce 364 horsepower and 420 pounds-feet of torque, just one horsepower less than its rating and exactly the same output as its nominal torque rating, according to Ford.

More From PickupTrucks.com:

A leakdown test was performed to measure how well the engines 24 intake and exhaust valves and piston rings were still able to seal the cylinders. One cylinder was found to have a cautionary 13 percent air loss past the combustion chambers seals, while all other cylinders were acceptable with single digits of air leakage.



Pistons and crankshaft displayed on a parts table.

Oil pressure at idle on the dyno was normal, in the mid-40 psi range.

After the dyno, engine 448AA, which had never been opened or inspected, was shipped to the Detroit auto show where, on Saturday, it was torn down for inspection in front of a live audience of more than a thousand Ford engine enthusiasts and their families.

The teardown was narrated for the audience by Jim Mazuchowski, Fords chief engineer for V-6 engines. Powertrain engineer Phil Fabien explained the advantages of things like turbocharging, direct fuel injection and twin independent variable cam timing while engine technicians Chris Brown on the right bank and Chris Rahill on the left bank took the engine apart using a pair of air wrenches and hand tools.



The engine's four camshafts - two per cylinder bank to control intake and exhaust valve timing.

As they went, the engine parts were laid out on three huge tables so that when the tear-down was complete, the engineers and the audience could take a closer look. During the tear-down, engineers Steve Matera, Kirk Sheffer and Jeanne Wei organized the parts and made some key measurements.

Valve lash, which measures valvetrain clearance between the camshafts and valves, was checked at 0.17 mm on the intakes and 0.38 mm on the exhausts. Thats well within normal range for both, according to Ford. Crankshaft end play was measured at 0.12 mm, also acceptable.

The timing chain, which controls valve timing and synchronizes engine operation, was still within normal tolerances. With age, a timing belt loses tension, and a hydraulically operated timing chain tensioner is used to compensate for slack. The tensioner has 10 teeth that work like a ratchet to maintain tension. The EcoBoost V-6 used three teeth, well within the timing chains operating specs.



Exhaust side view of one of the engine's two turbo assemblies.

We didnt get a photo of the valves, but they had carbon deposits similar to that found (and seen in pictures) on piston combustion surfaces.

Visual inspection of the cylinder heads, twin turbos, piston crowns, ring lands, rod bearings and cylinder bores by the engineers and your correspondent showed no major signs of anomalous wear after 163,000 miles of endurance testing. The main bearings showed cosmetic grooves but not excessive wear through the metal.

Engineer Wei said each and every part would be taken back to Fords labs to be checked with scales, cameras, lasers, micrometers and other measuring tools to get the final details on the rich, full life of EcoBoost V-6 engine 448AA.

You can see the disassembled engine with your own eyes until Jan. 23 at NAIAS.

Please see our Facebook page for more photos.
11:12

Former PM Dr Manmohan Singh has responded to the allegations of bribery in the AugustaWestland chopper deal during the UPA government. Ahead of the Parliament convening on day 3, Dr Singh said, There is no case, my party will respond."





The BJP and Congress are headed for an escalating confrontation over allegations of bribery in the Rs 3,600 crore VVIP helicopter deal during the UPA regime, with Sonia Gandhi clearly being the target of the ruling party's attack.



Reports from Italy based on a court judgement citing notes from middlemen that around Rs 120 crore were paid to some political leaders in the deal provided fodder to the BJP which has decided to attack the Congress leadership both inside and outside Parliament.



A note from a middleman reportedly describing Gandhi as the "driving force" behind the deal was seized upon by BJP, but the Congress hit back saying that integrity of Gandhi and the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was unquestioned.



The top brass of the BJP including its President Amit Shah, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and other parliamentary leaders met here to chalk out a strategy.



The issue also figured in the BJP Parliamentary Party where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present. Congress would also be targeted on the controversial Aircel Maxis deal and the affidavits in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case.



Dismissing allegations, AK Antony, the defence minister in the UPA government, asked the Modi government to fast track the probe into the chopper scam and find out the truth as the UPA government had cancelled the contract and ordered a CBI investigation into it.



"When the primary allegation came out in the media, we immediately ordered a CBI inquiry. We cancelled the contract and fought the case in the Milan court. We won the case and

got back all the money we paid in advance by bank guarantee," he told reporters.



"The Indian government has gained more (information) now. My request to the Indian government is that the probe has been going on for a long and hence please speed up the inquiry and find the truth," he said.



The Congress party also hit back at the BJP leaders and said they reject all allegations against Gandhi and Singh "with the contempt they deserve".



"No one should be making loose comments against the Congress President and the former PM, whose integrity and intellect was never in question," party deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma told the media.



Sharma also claimed that a businessman "close to" Modi has entered into an MoU with AgustaWestland. But he refused to name him.
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NEW YORK: More than one million people are now connecting to Facebook through Tor "dark web" -- which maintains privacy and leaves no digital trail -- every month, media reports said on Saturday.

According to Facebook, the growth of Tor over the past few years has been "roughly" linear, noting that some 525,000 people who accessed the service via Tor in June 2015 rose to more than one million in April this year.

"This [Tor] growth is a reflection of the choices that people make to use Facebook over Tor, and the value that it provides them. We hope they will continue to provide feedback and help us keep improving," TechCrunch quoted Facebook as saying.

Tor allows anonymous web browsing by sending data through multiple encrypted steps rather than making direct connections that shields the identity of its users.

Facebook created a dedicated address for Tor access in October 2014, making it easier for users to connect via Tor and give them privacy.

Facebook also expanded its Tor support at the start of this year by rolling out support for the Android Orbot proxy, giving Android Facebook users an easier way to use Tor. Apple's iOS platform still does not have Tor support.

Confirming Facebook's claim, a spokeswoman for Tor said in a statement: "When using Facebook website over Tor, Tor Browser is in charge of that data, so it is anonymous. Of course, someone may post a status update saying that they are at some restaurant, for instance, and that would de-anonymise them."

Tor could be used in countries where internet access or use of Facebook is blocked or censored, the Tor statement added.

"Many people use Tor in countries where the internet is censored, not in order to be anonymous. Tor allows them to access the uncensored internet, including reaching Facebook. In Iran, for instance, Facebook is blocked. So people use Tor to get onto the internet and browse and from there they can reach Facebook," it read.

Privacy activists, hackers, activists and journalists use this "dark web" to communicate securely.

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Another important bilateral for foreign secretary as he meets with his Pakistan counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry, external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup tweeted along with pictures of the two officials.

Jaishankar had earlier on Tuesday held a bilateral meeting with Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Karzai.

The talks between the Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries are being held on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process conference that India is hosting on Tuesday.

The two top diplomats will strive to put the bilateral dialogue process back on track during the meeting at the South Block.

The talks, earlier scheduled for the middle of January this year, got stalled following the cross-border attack on the Pathankot air base on Jauary 2 in which seven Indian security personnel were killed by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed militants.

The attack derailed the dialogue process which got a kick-start with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's visit to Islamabad last October for a Heart of Asia ministerial meeting jointly hosted by Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Both the sides agreed on resumption of the bilateral dialogue, naming it Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's December 25 stopover to Lahore during which he met his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif also gave a fillip to the dialogue process.

The Heart of Asia Istanbul Process senior officials meeting will begin at Hyderabad House at 3 p.m. on Tuesday.

--IANS ab/vm

( 274 Words)

2016-04-26-11:48:05 (IANS)
Jaishankar and Karzai met here to discuss the agenda ahead of co-chairing later in the day the senior officials' meeting of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process conference aimed at bringing peace and stability in Afghanistan.

They also discussed the situation in Afghanistan in the context of the deadly terrorist attack in Kabul on April 19 and the response of the international community to the continuing violence in Afghanistan, external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said.

Developments regarding the Chahbahar project (in Iran) and Salma Dam were discussed, as also Indias various other development assistance and support to Afghanistan, he added.

--IANS ab/vt

( 148 Words)

2016-04-26-15:32:05 (IANS)
Deepening the Caribbean connection. MOS @Gen_VKSingh meets with Fredrick A. Mitchell, Foreign Minister of Bahamas, external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup tweeted along with pictures of the two leaders.

Mitchell, who arrived here on Saturday on a five-day visit to India, is scheduled to attend a business meeting with the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham) later on Monday.

On Tuesday, he will meet Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi besides attending two other business meetings with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) and the PHD Chamber of Commerce.

--IANS ab/dg

( 124 Words)

2016-04-25-14:38:06 (IANS)
As the Himalayan country's tourism industry struggles to recover from last year's earthquake and subsequent blockade in the country's southern border, the campaign is an effort to revive the flagging sector by encouraging Nepalese people to travel in various tourist destinations of the country.

Nepalese Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli officially launched the campaign amid a function on Monday, urging domestic and international travellers to explore Nepal without hesitation.

"Although we suffered a devastating earthquake last year, most of the tourism destinations are safe except few ones," said Oli.

He also urged foreign investors to take full advantage of the enormous potential and opportunities to invest in Nepal, asking them not to withdraw after negative rumours about the safety situation in Nepal.

It is the first time that the Himalayan country announced a Travel Year targeting to promote domestic tourism. Earlier, Nepal had implemented "Visit Nepal 1998" and "Nepal Tourism Year 2011" targeting international visitors.

Tourist arrivals to Nepal fell to a six-year low of 538,970 in 2015, a sharp drop of 31.78 percent from 2014, after the April 25 earthquake and subsequent blockade kept visitors away.

According to the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB), the main tourism promotion body of Nepal, it would encourage the private sector to create special packages targeting domestic travellers. NTB has planned to help the private sector to promote the tour packages.

To make the travel year successful, the NTB has suggested an allocation of a separate budget for travel leave for the government employees. Besides, the tourism promotion body has also planned to encourage the corporate sector to provide travel leave holidays.

--IANS ahm/

( 309 Words)

2016-04-26-01:44:05 (IANS)
Advocate V. Ashokan of Vanchiyoor court lodged the complaint stating that Achuthanandan through his remarks aimed to spread hate politics.

The CPI (M) veteran had earlier alleged that more than 31 cases are pending against Chief Minister in the Supreme Court and over 136 corruption cases against pending against 18 UDF Ministers.

However, Chandy had slammed Achuthanandan and asked him to stop his 'lie campaign' and apologise for his 'blatant lies'.

"Achuthanandan is using his election campaign to spread blatant lies. He has stated that there were 31 cases pending against me in the apex court and 136 corruption cases against 18 UDF ministers," Chandy said.

In a statement issued in Thiruvananthapuram, Chandy said the opposition leader should make it clear which were the cases pending against him and his Cabinet colleagues.

The general election for the fourteenth legislative assembly will be held on May 16, 2016 to elect representatives of the 140 constituencies in Kerala.

The tenure of Kerala Legislative Assembly ends in May 31, 2016. (ANI)
According to a statement issued by the Pakistan Foreign Office, since its inception in 2011, Pakistan has continued to play an active role in the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process.

The Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process is a platform to discuss regional issues, including security, economic cooperation and connectivity among Afghanistan, its neighbours and regional countries with a view to promote lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Pakistan and Afghanistan jointly hosted the fifth Heart of Asia ministerial meeting in December 2015.

The conference adopted a forward looking Islamabad Declaration entitled "Emphasizing Enhanced Cooperation for Countering Security Threats and Promoting Regional Connectivity".

It is being speculated that Pakistan's agenda for the forthcoming event is promotion of long term peace and stability in Afghanistan.

The Pakistan delegation is also scheduled to hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting.

A meeting between the Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries to restart the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue (CBD) was derailed after the Pathankot terror attack.

Since then no date for talks between the foreign secretaries were decided, but both sides have been in touch regarding the matter.

India is expected raise the issue of investigation the Pathankot attack, apart from discussing modalities of resuming the CBD.

The foreign ministers of both the nation had met during SAARC summit in Nepal in November last year. But then the Pathankot attack acted as a speed-breaker in the talks process. (ANI)
Much awaited talks between Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will be held this morning at South Block here. This is for the first time that the two foreign secretaries are meeting after the Pathankot terror attack which led to the postponement of their meeting on Jan 15-16 in Islamabad. "Foreign Secretary will have a bilateral meeting with Afghanistan at 1000 hrs in his chamber in South Block followed by a bilateral with Pakistan at 1100 hrs," MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. Pakistani Foreign Secretary is traveling to India to attend Heart of Asia Istanbul Process Senior Officials meeting, will be convened at Hyderabad House this afternoon. After the Pathankot terror attack stalled dialogue process, India and Pakistan's foreign ministers and foreign secretaries had met in Pokhara in delegation-level talks, on the sidelines of the SAARC foreign ministers meeting. The two sides announced the visit of Pakistan's Joint Investigation Team after their bilateral meeting in Nepal. UNI MK CJ0913 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0090-701224.Xml
Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry are meeting here today on the margins of Heart of Asia conference. The nature of the meeting is not the same as envisioned for the Foreign Secretary-level talks which were scheduled for January 15 last but were deferred in the wake of the Pathankot terror attack. However the issue of resumption of the comprehensive composite dialogue and the meeting to discuss the modalities of the dialogue process may come up for the discussion, according to the sources. This is for the first time that the foreign secretaries of the two sides will be having a bilateral meeting after the terror attack . Mr Jaishankar and Mr Chaudhary had last met in March during SAARC related events but no bilateral meeting had taken place. The Pakistani Foreign Secretary will be arriving here at around 0930 hrs and the bilateral meeting with Mr Jaishankar is likely to take place prior to the Heart of Asia conference in which officials of 14 countries of the region will be discussing regional issues, especially security, connectivity and cooperation among Afghanistan and its neighbours. According to sources the Pathankot terror attack will be high on the agenda of the meeting. The terror attack on the airbase in the Punjab on January 2 had left seven security personnel dead, and India believes the attack was carried out by Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad. New Delhi had asked Islamabad to take credible action to bring the culprits to book before any comprehensive talks could be possible, following which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had constituted a high-level inter-agency Joint Investigation Team(JIT) to probe the attack. The JIT visited India last week. The NIA was also supposed to visit Pakistan, but the country's High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit had recently created a controversy when replying to a question at a press conference here about NIA's proposed visit to his country, he had said it was ''cooperation not reciprocity'' which was more important. His statement was taken as an indirect rejection of the idea. His remark in the same event that the peace process between the two countries had been suspended had also put a question mark over the whole process. However, India continued to maintain that it had not suspended the peace process and modalities for foreign secretaries talks were being worked out. The Pakistan Foreign Ministry too had later said Mr Basit's statement was over interpreted, and that the Nawaz Sharif government was committed to the peace process.UNI NAZ PS0817 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0421-701206.Xml
The condition of External Affairs Minister Swaraj was stated to be stable today, who was under treatment for fever, chest congestion and symptoms of pneumonia. Ms Swaraj was admitted to AIIMS yesterday after she complained of chest congestion and uneasiness. A medical board has been constituted to formulate the combined treatment strategy for Ms Swaraj, a medical bulletin issued by the AIIMS said. "A medical team of specialists is looking after her. Her current condition is stable," the bulletin added. The Minister has been hospitalised at a time, when the crucial Heart of Asia Conference is taking place this afternoon, being attended by senior officials of 14 countries, including Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry. UNI MK RJ 1116 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0090-701344.Xml
The Supreme Court today once again allowed one of the two Italian marines, Massimiliano Latorre, facing murder charges, to further extend his stay in his home country until September 30.Latorre was granted permission by the highest court of India to remain in Italy for a further period of five months until September 30.An apex court three-judge bench, headed by Justice Anil R Dave, after going through his plea, passed the order and fixed the matter for further hearing till September 20.Soli Sorabjee, one of the lawyers of Lattore, argued before the court that there was no point to come back here as the proceedings had been stayed here and the matter was going on in an arbitration. "Everything has been stayed in India. What is the point of coming here," Mr Sorabjee asked.Government of India's lawyer Ranjit Kumar did not contest to this. Latorre and another marine, Salvatore Girone, part of a military team protecting a cargo ship, said they mistook Indian fishermen for pirates and fired warning shots during the incident in 2012 off the southern Indian coast. Two fishermen were killed.The marines' arrest opened a diplomatic rift between Rome and New Delhi.Girone is staying in the Italian Embassy in New Delhi, awaiting trial.In April 2012, Rome paid almost 190,000 dollars to each of the victims' families as compensation. In return, the families dropped their cases against the marines, but the state's case has yet to come to trial.UNI CJ RJ 1346 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-701555.Xml
Former union minister and leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad on Tuesday accused the ruling BJP of retracting from its earlier stand on Pakistan and alleged that the latest political development between the two Asian neighbours is a clear indication that there has been a toned down approach on part of the ruling dispensation. Azad also used the occasion to take a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for making tall claims before the nation during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. "When the BJP was contesting the (2014) Lok Sabha polls, they had said and in fact Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that vote for us as the Congress government is weak and is not able to hold talks properly with Pakistan and we will look into their eyes and talk.But the fact now is that their position has become soft towards Pakistan and China," said Azad. "Our Prime Minister went to Pakistan to wish Nawaz Sharif on his birthday and attend his grand-daughter's wedding but a week later an attack took place on the Pathankot air base. We thought that our government would initiate tough action against Pakistan post the Pathankot attack, but their attitude towards Pakistan has become flimsy," he added. Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry today held bilateral talks in New Delhi focusing on a range of issues. The two Foreign Secretaries are also believed to have deliberated on ways to take forward the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue (CBD) between both sides. India has been pressing for action against terrorists responsible for the audacious attack on the premier IAF base to move ahead in the talks. During the meeting, the Pakistan Foreign Secretary emphasized that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution, in accordance with UNSC resolutions and wishes of the Kashmiri people. The Pakistan Foreign Secretary is in New Delhi on a day-long visit to attend the senior officials meeting of the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process. It was the first such formal meeting between the two top diplomats after the talks were deferred in January following the strike by Pakistani terrorists at the Pathankot Airbase. (ANI)
The clash broke out after some prisoners went berserk over high handness of the jail authorities. But, some say that the clash between two groups of prisoners over smoking ' Ganja' resulted in the violence.

Police sources said PAC was called inside the jail to control the situation and the security personnel had to fire in the air to disperse the stone pelting prisoners.

The under trials came out of their barracks and some even climbed on the trees inside the jail premises.

Jail Superintendent Ranj Bahadur Patel, said that the situation after four hours of unrest was controlled and the inmates have now gone back in their barracks.

The District Magistrate and the Police Superintendent also rushed inside the jail to control the situation.

Meanwhile after the violence, the authorities went for search operation inside the barracks and they recovered several indiscriminate items.

In the recent past, Uttar Pradesh jails have witnessed violence by the prisoners. Similar violence had been reported from Varanasi,Azamgarh, Faizabad and Meerut.UNI MB RJ AS1455

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The second phase of the budget session of the Assembly commenced today after a 25-day holiday.

As soon as the House assembled for the day at 1030 hrs, Congress and BJP members raised slogans on the chit fund scam and trooped into the well.

The treasury bench members tried to counter the Opposition by raising the issue of central negligence and the House soon plunged into a chaos.

The Speaker, sensing the mood of the House, first tried to run the business and asked Forest and Environment Minister Bikram Arukh to reply to a question of Mahesh Sahu (BJD) in the absence of first questionnaire Chiranjeev Biswal of Congress.

When Mr Arukh stood up to reply, Congress members, led by Opposition Chief Whip Tara Prasad Bahinipati, rushed to the well and started shouting slogan ''who has pocketed the chit fund money''.

They were joined by the BJP members when BJP Legislature party leader Basant Panda and his party colleagues rushed to the well and shouted slogans on the chit fund scam.Unable to run the business of the House, the Speaker adjourned it at 1031 hrs till 1500 hours. UNI BD DP PL RJ AS1437

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President Pranab Mukherjee today extended his greetings and felicitations to the King, Government and people of the Netherlands on the eve of their King's Day, a Rashtrapati Bhawan spokesperson said. In his message to King of Netherlands Willem-Alexander, the President said, ''On behalf of the Government and people of India, I would like to extend warm greetings and felicitations to you, the Government and the people of the Netherlands on the occasion of 'King's Day'.'' ''India and the Netherlands enjoy warm and friendly bilateral relations evolved over the last 400 years which are today anchored in a rich and multifaceted partnership. There is a new momentum in our ties due to the many complementaries that we share especially in the economic and commercial sections.'' ''India remains committed to the diversification and strengthening of our bilateral cooperation. I am confident that during Your Majesty's reign, the excellent relations between our two countries will be further enhanced to the mutual benefit of our people,'' the President said. ''Please accept, Your Majesty, my best wishes for your good health and well-being and for the continued progress and prosperity of the friendly people of the Netherlands,'' he added.UNI AR AE/RSA 1601 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0092-701832.Xml
Claiming to be harbinger of change in people's lifestyle, Yoga Guru Ramdev today underscored that his brand Patanjali would soon wash out foreign competitors--Nestle, Colgate, Pantene and Unilever-- from the market. Describing himself as 'Free Ka Ambassador' (non-paid ambassador), the Yoga Guru said the soaring business of Patanjali was giving nightmares to the foreign brands, which he alleged were misleading people with their advertisements and portraying women in them as 'commodity' unlike him. ''While our ghee business has now touched Rs 1,308 crore mark, our toothpaste 'Dant-Kanti' is now a brand of Rs 425 crore. Our hair product 'Kesh-Kanti' is touching Rs 350 crore,'' Ramdev, flanked by his deputy Acharya Balkrishna, told mediapersons here. ''Soon, the bird of Nestle (whose logo has a bird) will fly away, gate of Colgate (toothpaste brand) will be closed, Pantene's pant will loosen and Unilever's liver will become upset,'' the Yoga Guru mocked his competitors. Attributing success behind his multi-crores brand Patanjali to purity, affordability, low profit margin and his nationalistic approach, the Yoga Guru said nobody could believe a couple of years back that a 'Swadeshi' company of a 'Desi Baba' would make established foreign brands bite dust. ''Whether he is a poor or a rich man, everybody is using Patanjali nowadays. It is due to us that those companies that used chemicals in their products earlier are now advertising them as product of Neem and Namak,'' Ramdev said. Around Rs 100 crore were being spend on research on cow conservation and breeding projects, Ayurvdeda and texting ancient manuscripts related to yoga and health for general public, he said. Asked about his 'beheading remark' made against Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, he said, ''the remark was made in an 'informal manner', but it was foolish on the former's part to give statements against Mother India as one should have respected it''. Holding that there was an ideology and policy crises in the country, which he linked with unrest in several universities such as JNU, Ramdev said he was also planning a world class Gurukul (ancient education system), where students will be taught modern education, besides ethics and morals. The Yoga Guru said Patanjali will help farmers in cultivation in drought-hit areas such as Bundelkhand, Marathwada to support them and added that soon a 'state of art' biodiversity lab will come up by his group. UNI RG AE/RSA 1504 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0377-701678.Xml
Amanullah Khan, one of the founding members of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, passed away at Rawalpindi in Pakistan today, sending waves of grief in the Valley.The 82-year-old Khan, who hailed from Gilgit in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), was the father-in-law of Sajjad Gani Lone, a minister in the Peoples Democratic Party-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition government, in J&K. Though Mr Lone has taken oath, he has not attended office due to differences over portfolio. Moderate Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Moulvi Omar Farooq expressed grief over the death and described Khan as one of the founders who fought for the freedom of Kashmir. He said a condolence meeting will be organised at Hurriyat headquarters tomorrow noon.Hardline Hurriyat leaders also expressed condolences on the demise of Khan. A number of other separatist organisations also expressed grief and decided to hold 'Nimaz Jinazah' in absentia tomorrow at historic Lal Chowk.Khan was born in the Astore area of Gilgit on August 24, 1934 but migrated to Kashmir at the age of six years. After passing his Matric examination from Kashmir University in 1950, Khan joined Sri Partap College and later Amar Singh College, Srinagar. He migrated to Pakistan in 1952, where he joined S M College Karachi, graduated in 1957 and obtained a degree in law in 1962. He was the co-founder of the Kashmir Independent Committee in 1963, and was elected Secretary General of Jammu and Kashmir Plebiscite Front (PF) in 1965. He later co-founded the Jammu and Kashmir National Liberation Front with Mohammad Maqbool Bhat, who was hanged to death in Delhi's Tihar jail on February 11,1984 and later buried there. Khan, accused of being an Indian agent, had spent 15 months in Gilgit prison in 1970-72. In 1976, Khan went to United Kingdom where in May 1977 he renamed the England branches of JKNLF into Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). He was arrested in England in September 1985 and acquitted but deported in December 1986 to Pakistan.India had issued Interpol warrants against Khan and got his US visa cancelled in 1990.However, he was arrested in Belgium in October 1993 where he was invited by the European Parliament to attend a seminar on Kashmir. Both former J&K chief minister Dr Farooq Abdullah and socialist leader George Fernandes, who were also attending the seminar, condemned his arrest. The Belgian court rejected the Indian government's demand for his extradition to India and released him after about three months.Khan's only daughter Asma has married to Sajjad Gani Lone.UNI BAS SW RP1552 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-701723.Xml
He was received at the International Airport by Kerala Chief Secretary P K Mohanty and other top officials.

Official sources said the president of the Indian Ocean archipelago nation would attend a few private functions in the state capital during his two-day visit.UNI CR KVV ADB1855

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The dispute within the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha(ABHM) came to the fore here today when two rival groups almost clashed during a press conference in the state capital. Later, a group torched the hoarding of the other at the busy Hazratganj crossing.The dispute rose, when a group of the party led by Swami Chakrapani was addressing a press conference at the Press Club threatening the BJP to announce the date for the Ram Temple at Ayodhya failing which, Hindus would not support them in the UP assembly polls. The group had also erected several big hoardings in the state capital saying that," If no Ram temple in 2016 then no vote for BJP in 2017". But suddenly in between the press meet supporters of another faction of jailed under NSA Kamlesh Tiwari thronged the press club and raised slogans against Swami Chakrapani and his supporters. However, Chakrapani, avoiding any clash left the place in hurry along with his supporters.Later the supporters of Tiwari burnt the hoarding of Swami Chakrapani in the busy Hazratganj area to lodge their protest. Kamlesh Tiwari, is jailed under NSA for making deregotary remarks on Islam.During the press meet, when scribes wanted to know why he was opposing BJP when he was regularly attending programme with BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj, Chakrapani could not reply and just tried to avoid the media.The dispute between different groups in the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha is old and even court had refused to identify any one as the president of the party. Recently, Election Commission had also refused to provide a common symbol to Hindu Mahasabha candidates in the ongoing assembly polls in five states.Meanwhile, Baba Nand Kishore Mishra, working president of the adhoc committee of the party, who is fighting the case in the court, said that Swami Chakrapani had been sacked by the court and he is not even the primary member of the Hindu Mahasabha.Property in Delhi is said to be the main reason for the dispute within the party leaders. Two groups, one led by Chakrapani and another by Chandra Prakash Kaushik are already occupying the sprawling campus of the Central office in the posh New Delhi.UNI MB SB BD1922 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-702265.Xml
On the basis of the merit of the complaint and the secret verification conducted in the matter, Jammu and Kashmir State Vigilance Commission today asked the Vigilance Organisation to initiate regular preliminary inquiry into the allegations leveled against two engineers of Jammu University for making fraudulent payments. The Commission had received a complaint about the misuse of official position and university funds by two Assistant Engineers working in the Works Department of Jammu University. The complainant alleged that the concerned engineers, hand in glove with contractors, have drawn the payments of works despite knowing that substandard material, which too in less quantity was used in construction works, by the said contractors. ''It further alleged that advance payment was made by the engineers to the contractors for construction of MBA building prior to starting of work in violation of prescribed norms,'' official spokesman here said. He said the secret verification conducted by SVC in the matter prima facie revealed nexus between the concerned engineers and contractors, "who in league with each other have drawn payments fraudulently for their personal gains." The report revealed that substandard material that too in less quantity has been used in the construction works. In view of the gravity of allegations leveled against the engineers, the SVC directed the Vigilance Organisation to conduct a regular preliminary inquiry in the matter, he added. UNI VBH PY 2113 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-702795.Xml
One NSCN (R) militant was nabbed along with arms and ammunition by the Assam Rifles jawans in Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh. Acting on specific intelligence input, the jawans of Assam Rifles under the aegis of 25 Sector cordoned off the general area of Old Changlang and launched search operations which led to the apprehension of self-styled Sergeant Major Nanghap Jugli(35), from Old Changlang on Sunday morning, last, official sources informed here today.A Chinese made 7.65mm pistol, 3 rounds and magazine were recovered from his possession. The apprehended NSCN ultra was handed over to the Changlang police station and a case has been registered against him and further investigation is going on, sources added. UNI PB AKM SW BD2037 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-702541.Xml
Ministry of Commerce and Industry's joint secretary Ravi Capoor today warned the Indian industrialists saying that if they did not adopt hi-tech technology in producing valued added goods then they will be out of export markets in next two decades time. Addressing a technology meet organised by Engineering Export Promotional Council India, Mr Capoor said India was gradually falling back in export of engineering goods in the global markets. He said, India's export of engineering goods was getting slower and slower years after year and the gap with the other nations in the export market was increasing. India was facing tough challenge from immediate neighbour China. Over the last three years 2013, 2014, and 2014 China's engineering exports to South Asian Nations (excluding India) was USD 10.4 Bn,USD 12.6 Bn and USD 15.9 Bn, whereas India's engineering exports were lacking any growth momentum as USD 4.8 Bn, USD 6.9 Bn and USD 5.6 Bn. Mr Capoor said that the government has set up 15 labs under one roof for R&D to make special pump, which could be a world class. The EEPC India also signed a MOU with National Research and Development Corporation (NRDC) which enviasages that the enginnering exporters shall avail latest manufacturing technology available with national and international R&D labs and enhance their capabilities in global market.UNI PC AKM SB AN2034 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-702560.Xml
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has said clean Ganga is only possible when other rivers are also be cleaned. Stating that his government was keen to clean up the holy river, Mr Yadav pointed out that it was for this reason that cleaning up work was underway in Varuna river, Yamuna in Vrindavan and Gomti river in Lucknow. He also said Varuna will only be clean when the sewer water and water coming out from the hotels and industries was completely stopped from going into the river. He also exhorted people who believe in clean rivers, to come forward and help the government in this initiative. The Chief Minister was in the city today to attend a wedding function at Katherva village in Phoolpur area at the house of former MP Toofani Saroj. He later interacted with waiting mediapersons and informed them that the DPR for Varanasi Metro Rail had been approved and many other projects have also been kicked off at war-footing in the temple city. Mr Yadav pointed out that large scale recruitments in different government departments were on and the police recruitment procedure has been made easier. He also mentioned various schemes rolled out by the Samajwadi government like the Agra-Lucknow Expressway, Samajwadi Poorvanchal Expressway, four-lane linking of all district headquarters, Metro Rail projects in all major cities of the state including Lucknow, construction of cycle tracks, free irrigation to farmers, ensuring timely and adequate supply of seeds and fertilizers to farmers, providing financial assistance in cases of their crop being hit by natural disasters etc. He added that the Samajwadi government would go into the state assembly polls with their achievements and return to power with a big mandate. Mr Yadav also mentioned plans to develop tourist spots like Varanasi, Mathura and Agra. To a poser, he said,''revolution was necessary but it depended on who will usher it in!''He further said his government was committed to the welfare of the farmers, poor, the marginalised and downtrodden sections of the society.To a pointed question on the law and order scenario in the state, he said it was under control and that atrocities against Dalits had come down in his tenure. UNI MB PY SB 2239 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-702849.Xml
With a condition that they should be present at the examination hall an hour before the commencement of examination for frisking, if necessary, the Kerala High Court today granted permission to Muslim girls to wear hijab. While hearing a writ petition, filed by one Aminah Bint Basheer, challenging the dress code prescribed for the candidates by CBSE in the bulletin related to conduct of the AIMPT-2016, the High court Judge Justice Muhammed Mushtaq issued the order granting the permission to Muslim girls to wear hijab, a traditional religious dress covering their head and issued directions to the CBSE to permit Muslim girl students to wear hijab for attending the AIPMT examination. The instructions contained in the AIPMT-2016 bulletin on dress code, as per her religious beliefs and practices, would amount to violation of exercise of religious freedom, the petitioner in her plea argued. The court also directed that necessary arrangements should be for the smooth conduct of the examination without any complaint in the next year Last year the examination officials had denied permission to those girls who wear hijab had invited serious controversies.UNI CGV PY 2244 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-702860.Xml
Mr Marak's decision to quit as Parliamentary Secretary was expected as his names was doing the rounds that he will contest the by-election to the Lok Sabha from Tura parliamentary seat.

"My decision to quit as parliamentary secretary was mainly because I am fed up with the Congress government and also to contest the by-election as an Independent candidate," Mr Marak told UNI over phone.

The by-election slated on May 16 was necessitated following the demise of Tura Lok Sabha member and former Speaker Purno Agitok Sangma. UNI RRK PY 2322

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Accused Jai Panpatte was rounded by the Bhagya Nagar Police late last evening. He had posted various objectionable matter about Hindu Gods and Goddesses on Facebook, police said.

When the activists of Yuva Sena and Bajrang Dal came to know about the matter, they rushed to the Bhagya Nagar police station and raised a demand to arrest the accused.

Taking cognisance of the demand, the police rounded up the accused and filed a case against him for creating nuisance and disturbing peace in the society, sources added.UNI XR SS SB AN2257

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The custom officials intercepted the man for not giving satisfactory reply.

The passenger was handed over to the Police for further legal action.

Police confirmed powder to be pure cocaine weighing about 20 grams.UNI XC-BM SB RK2241

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Burundi's President Pierre Nkurunziza has condemned the killing of a senior army officer, who was shot along with his wife and bodyguard in an attack that also wounded their child in the central African nation's expanding wave of deadly violence.Brigadier general Athanase Kararuza, who was a military adviser in the office of the vice president, was dropping his child at a school in a neighbourhood of the capital Bujumbura on Monday when his car was attacked by rocket and gun fire, army spokesman Gaspard Baratuza told reporters.Kararuza has previously worked as a deputy commander of an international peace force in the Central African Republic (CAR)."He energetically fought against the coup plotters last year and exceptionally contributed in strengthening peace and security during and after elections," Nkurunziza said in a statement late on Monday."We humbly pray that with the help of God perpetrators of the shameful acts are arrested and quickly punished according to the law."Tit-for-tat attacks between Nkurunziza's security forces and his opponents have escalated since April 2015 when he announced a disputed bid for a third term as president and won re-election in July.The U.N. says more than 400 people have been killed and over 250,000 have fled.On Monday, the international war crimes court said it will investigate the rising violence in Burundi.Nkurunziza's opponents said his third term bid broke a peace agreement that ended a previous civil war while the government said a third term was legal, citing a constitutional court ruling.The president won re-election in July.Three armed groups, including one led by officers that attempted a coup in May 2015, have launched armed rebellions against Nkurunziza's government.Reuters CJ VP1146 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-701358.Xml
TOLO News has reported that the attack took place on Monday in Gereshk district of the province after the Taliban attacked a police outpost and engaged in clashes. This was confirmed later by District Governor Salim Rodi.

There is no exact information on Taliban casualties, Rodi was quoted, as saying.

This latest incident comes as security forces are currently embroiled in 15 military operations in seven provinces. (ANI)
New York-based Human Rights Watch has asked Sri Lanka to step up efforts in building trust among communities and be more transparent on measures it is taking to deliver on its promises. "As the next UN discussion in June approaches, it is critical for the government to confirm publicly the steps it has taken toward delivering on its promises. Failure to do so has already eroded the trust of some segments of society, particularly Tamil and Muslim groups in the north and east. The government would do well to wipe away the fog of rumor and make clear public statements about what it is doing and how to implement its obligations," the Colombo Page quoted the group as saying. Asserting that Colombo has made progress in handling consultations on constitutional reforms, Human Rights Watch said there was less progress made towards fulfilling the resolution agreed to at the UN Human Rights Council. "With less than two months to go before the next Human Rights Council session, it is critical for the government to be more open about who the members are and what they have been doing. Even some international bodies that are supposed to be engaging with the working group say that they do not have the most basic information about its structure," the Colombo Page quoted the group as saying. While public consultations on the "four pillars" are to be opened, the workings of the task force appointed to conduct them remains opaque, the group said. (ANI)
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi attended a heavily scrutinised parliament session on Tuesday after tens of thousands of protesters took over part of central Baghdad demanding a vote on a cabinet reshuffle to fight corruption.Most of the demonstrators at the gates of the heavily fortified Green Zone housing parliament and foreign embassies were supporters of powerful Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has pressured Abadi to follow through on months-old reform proposals.The largely peaceful gathering was the biggest in the capital in weeks, with protesters filling a main road stretching nearly two km (1.3 miles) from Tahrir Square to the Green Zone, a Reuters cameraman said.A parliament session called for by speaker Salim al-Jabouri convened with enough attendees to reach a quorum, despite attempts to block the meeting by around 100 deputies who have been holding a sit-in in and around the main chamber for nearly two weeks, bringing government to a standstill.Protesting deputies gathered in the parliament cafeteria chanted "illegal" as the session came to order, a Reuters witness said.Abadi then entered the chamber where Jabouri called for dialogue with the members who were protesting, a state television correspondent said.Some lawmakers who had halted their sit-in to attend the session said earlier they would only do so in order to vote on a cabinet reshuffle."We are present today at parliament to attend a session whose main goal is the cabinet overhaul," Dhiaa al-Asadi, who heads Sadr's bloc in parliament, told reporters.Yet it was not clear whether Abadi, who has presented two new lineups in the past month, would offer a third list on Tuesday or revive some of the previous names.The protesting lawmakers argue that Jabouri's session is unconstitutional.In a widely contested vote this month, they moved to sack him as part of demands to reform a system that allocates positions based on ethnic and sectarian quotas. They have also threatened to take the issue to court.Abadi, who under reforms of his own announced in February is pushing to replace party-affiliated ministers with technocrats, has warned that the political crisis could hamper the war against Islamic State, which controls swathes of territory in the north and west of the oil-rich country.Demonstrations in recent weeks have forced some military forces to leave the front lines to secure the capital, according to security sources.Today, protesters braving unseasonably hot weather waved Iraqi flags and chanted pro-Sadr slogans as they crossed a bridge over the Tigris River to reach the gates of the Green Zone.Reuters SW VP1732 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-702150.Xml




XI'AN, April 25, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Liu Yunshan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, visits the Party committee in Zhujiawan Village in Shangluo of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, April 24, 2016. Liu made an inspection tour in Shaanxi from April 22 to 25. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

XI'AN, April 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese senior official Liu Yunshan has called for better Party building and political education in local communities during his research tour in northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

Liu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, visited villages, companies and colleges in several cities in the province from April 22 to 25.

Party units at the community level are the closest to the people and directly serve them, therefore, they should be equipped with outstanding leaders to better perform duties and exert their roles of fortresses and pioneering models, said Liu.

Liu stressed the principle of strictly governing the Party by championing the campaign of studying the Party code of conduct, studying the essence of President Xi Jinping's speeches, and becoming qualified Party members.

While visiting veteran Party members and those relocated as part of poverty reduction projects, he asked local authorities to promote economic and social development and pull more people out of poverty while improving Party building and conducting the education campaign.

More outstanding cadres should be sent to the poor areas for poverty relief and a stable leadership system should be ensured before the task is accomplished, said Liu.
The Next Librarian of Congress: History Has Its Eyes on Her



In February 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Carla D. Hayden, CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, for the open Librarian of Congress positionwhich has been temporarily filled by David S. Mao after James H. Billington retired in September 2015.

In the librarys 216-year history, there have been only 13 Librarians of Congress, who could hold the position for life. Recent legislation limited the librarians service to a renewable term of 10 years. None of these former librarians was an actual librarian, although two did have library experience. All were men. This is the first time that a true librarian and a woman has been nominated for this prestigious and challenging job, and Hayden more than meets the requirements both in experience and in educational background: She has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicagos Graduate Library School. President Obama said in the press release announcing her nomination, Dr. Hayden has devoted her career to modernizing libraries so that everyone can participate in todays digital culture. And library groups have publicly championed her library experience and technological capabilities.

It Must Be Nice, It Must Be Nice, to Have Senators on Her Side

The first step to confirming Haydens nomination is approval by the U.S. Senate. This process began on April 20, with a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. Hosted by the chairman, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the hearing began with the two current senators from Maryland, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D) and Sen. Ben Cardin (D), and former Maryland senator Paul Sarbanes (D), who introduced Hayden. They praised her and her qualifications for the position, citing her competence, commitment, integrity, and proven leadership during her stellar career, especially during her 23 years at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. While there, she spearheaded the opening or updating of eight new branches and helped create Sailor, a project of Marylands public libraries that provides broadband Internet access for public libraries, schools and local government in Maryland, and an extensive collection of research databases for the use of Maryland public library customers, thereby making Enoch Pratt the first public library in the state to provide internet access.

She Wants to Be in the Room Where IT (and Copyright) Happens

Next, other participating senators asked questions. Their topics varied, but copyright and the IT infrastructure at both the Library of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office dominated the conversation. At the forefront of these issues is a March 2015 report, in which the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) called for the Copyright Office to address organizational and technical challenges. It recommends that the Copyright Office (1) develop key information to support proposed initiatives for improving its IT environment and submit them to the Librarys IT investment review board for review, and (2) develop an IT strategic plan that is aligned with the Librarys strategic planning efforts.

Moreover, in a related report released in December 2015, the GAO recommended that the Library of Congress take 31 actions to address weaknesses in six IT management-related areas and that the Copyright Office, among other things, develop an IT strategic plan. As a first step in beginning this technological transformation, in September 2015, the library hired Bernard A. Barton Jr. as its first CIO since 2012. Barton was previously CIO at the Defense Technical Information Center, which is essentially the Department of Defenses library. When asked about what she would do to remedy the IT deficiencies, Hayden referred to Barton and her faith in his ability to help fix the issues and create a solid IT infrastructure and strategy.

Perhaps the most significant question was asked by Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who stated emphatically that copyright is one of the most important jobs before you. He asked if Hayden agreed with the recommendations of several congressional hearings that have advised that the Copyright Office needs to be spun out from under the Library of Congress, that its being lodged in the Library [makes it] a historical artifact, and that given its importance in our society of intellectual property, should have own separate existence and its own presidentially appointed director and its own office.

Hayden neither supported nor opposed the idea of separating the office from the library. She said that in terms of the independence of the office itself, I have heard quite a few proposals, and they all get back to the core concern and one that I share, that the Copyright Office should be fully functional and should have its independence to carry out its mandates to protect the creators of content. As Ive mentioned earlier, my father was a recording artist, and as a child, I recall going into a mall and hearing snippets of his music, so I know how vital it is that artists and creators of content get to register their works and even challenge the use of their works in a timely and efficient fashion. So, if confirmed, I would take special interest in making sure that the office is able to perform its functions in a way that will protect the people that it serves, that is the creations and the creators of content.

Hayden said she did not want to comment at this time on whether the office and library should part ways, but if that happens, she would want to first make sure that the office had everything it needed, and she would work with Congress to make sure that would happen. It was apparent that she would not make any rash decisions, but instead would want to take time to decide the best solution for the two entities.

When asked what her biggest priorities and challenges would be as Librarian of Congress, Hayden listed the technology infrastructure and securing that base for all operations, including the special needs of the Copyright Office and the Congressional Research Service.  [A]lso to bring the leadership team and the wonderful staff members at the library together with a shared vision, and to work as a team together to get everyone rolling in the same direction, with the same goals in mind.

Shes Going to Need Congressional Approval  But Does She Have the Votes?

Throughout the hearing, Hayden responded in a polished and professional manner, impressing attendees with her poise and knowledge of the ins and outs of libraries. At one point, she mentioned that of all the titles she has had in her professional career, I am most proud to be called a librarian. It would be my honor to have the opportunity to be the Librarian.

Committee chairman Blunt concluded the hearing with a reminder that written testimony and comments from members of the committee are due by April 27, and nonmembers testimonies need to be submitted by May 7.

The day after the hearing, the American Library Association (ALA) reinforced its backing of Haydens nomination in a letter of support addressed to Blunt, Schumer, and other members of the Committee on Rules and Administration. It features an endorsement by more than 140 national nonprofit and library groups, schools, and academic libraries that states, [T]he Library of Congress has never needed more the unique combination of character, acumen and humanity that Dr. Carla Hayden is so professionally, intellectually and personally qualified to offer that great institution. We urge her earliest possible approval by the Rules Committee and rapid confirmation by the Senate.

Hayden is truly a brilliant and inspiring choice for the next Librarian of Congress, one who is well-suited to ensuring the future success and growth of the institution and its role and responsibilities as a true national library.
Body burnt in Laventille identified

This was how a forensic pathologist said 33-year-old Marlon Edwards was killed. His charred, unrecognisable body was found early Saturday morning at Mango Alley in Laventille.

Positive identity was made via fingerprints. An autopsy revealed Edwards suffered an injury to the right side of his head, but this was not how he died.

A pathologist told Newsday that Edwards was doused with an accelerant while unconscious and then set on fire.

Death was caused by massive shock due to burning. His death would have been agonising. Third degree burns to all of his body, from head to toe. He died from what I would saw was, painful shock, said the pathologist.

At about 3.30 am on Saturday, residents called police and reported hearing a loud commotion along Mango Alley. When police arrived, they found Edwards burnt body along a flight of stairs.

Frightened relatives, who begged not to be identified, yesterday told Newsday they had no idea why anyone would want to kill Edwards in such a painful manner.

I have no idea why this happened.

I just know my little brother is dead, said a relative.

He was just normal, a cool person.

I never knew him to be in anything wrong or illegal. I dont know what he could have done to someone for him to deserve this. Relatives said Edwards was originally from Morvant and was a labourer.

Police are still trying to ascertain a motive for Edwards murder.

Another burnt body, found last week Monday at Park Street in Port-of-Spain remains unidentified.

The murder toll for the year now stands at 149.
Woman fatally stabbed in bar brawl

According to reports, Jilkes and another woman were at Flirts Bar in Cunupia liming with friends when at about two oclock she got into a heated argument with another female patron.

During the altercation, the two women were seen struggling and Jilkes was later found lying on the ground clutching her chest. A check was made and it was discovered that Jilkes had been stabbed by her attacker.

She was rushed to the Chaguanas Health Facility and transferred to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex (EW MSC) where she was pronounced dead on arrival. A 25-yearold female suspect was later detained by police and a blood-stained knife also seized.

The body was later sent to the Forensic Science Centre in St James for autopsy.

Officers of the Homicide Investigations Bureau visited the bar and spoke to several persons.

Investigations are continuing.
Southern Division cops seize 7 stolen vehicles, detain 103 persons

The vehicles recovered included B12s ,B13s, Tiidas and Almeras.

The exercise started on Thursday and ended on Sunday under the supervision of Senior Supt Irvin Hackshaw, Asp Rawle Ramdeo and Insp.

Don Gajadhar. Other officers included Cpls Dino, Warren and Nanan, Sgt Ramroop, PCs Bacchus, Morris, Rampersad, Moses and Griffith.

Newsday understands that the Southern Division has embarked on a series of anti-crime exercises aimed at dealing with illicit activities. Some of the initiatives include searching areas around bars, searching patrons liming into the early morning hours at bars and the illegal parking of vehicles near bars.

The initiative also includes seeking out any breaches of the law such as the playing of loud music. Officers have also been targeting so-called hotspot crime areas and increasing police visibility.

According to figures released by the Southern Division yesterday, between Wednesday last and Sunday, 103 people were arrested for various offences including 11 for driving under the influence, 84 under outstanding warrants, 53 for traffic offences. Four people were arrested in connection with the seizure of the seven stolen vehicles and yesterday police officers advised the public to visit the San Fernando Police Station to view three of the seven vehicles which have not yet been identified by members of the public.

Yesterday Hackshaw heaped praise on the police officers in his division saying that they have been working tirelessly. He described the recovery of the stolen vehicles as a major breakthrough in a car stealing racket in the Southern Division
Rodney Wilkes Jr freed of weed trafficking

The bronze medal, including a gold he won in the Pan American games, are currently on auction on eBay, and may have already been sold.

Wilkes son, who carries his fathers name, Rodney Wilkes, had been on trial in the San Fernando High Court over the past month for trafficking in over 107 kilogrammes of marijuana. Wilkes was asked whether he would seek to find out the persons responsible for putting his fathers medal up for sale, and he said, Yes, definitely. Is now I going to see about that. Wilkes, 60, of Bertrand Street, San Fernando, had been on trial before Justice Hayden St Clair Douglas.

The marijuana was allegedly found at Motown panyard on Bertrand Street, San Fernando, on May 31, 2004. Wilkes was a caretaker and pan arranger.

He testified that whilst he had a key for a section under the stage where the marijuana was found, three other persons who worked in the panyard, also kept keys. Attorney Lisa Singh-Phillip defended Wilkes while Senior State Attorney Trevor Jones prosecuted.

The jury deliberated for three hours yesterday after St Clair Douglas summed up the case. The foreman announced, from among the eight-member panel of jurors, that Wilkes was not guilty of the charge. It was Wilkes second trial. In 2011, a nine-member jury had failed to arrive at a verdict and a retrial was ordered. It was an elated Wilkes who walked out the court smiling when the judge told him he was free to go. In 2014 Wilkes father died at 83, he having copped, in the weightlifting category in the 1951 Olympics in Finland, a Bronze medal.

The younger Wilkes told Newsday outside the court, that he used to sit and shine all his fathers medals. Told that the current bidding price for the medal on eBay is US$30,500, Wilkes said, Well, I now have to see about that. Right now, I feel vindicated and I am happy. It was my father who stood bail for me and who stood with me throughout my last trial. He is not here now, but this one is for you dad.
Hinds: Licensing most corrupt

He spoke in yesterdays Lower House debate on two motions for a tax-hike on luxury cars moved by Finance Minister, Colm Imbert, to effect measures proposed in his recent Mid Year Review of the Economy.

Hinds, lamenting the corruption at the Licensing Office as being decades old, vowed not to sit by idly but to address it. Hinds also endorsed the revenue-raising motions, by citing the Governments need to seek funds. The Government needs more money to run the country, and today has no money, he said. The Government finds itself scrimping and saving for revenue. Replying to earlier queries by Caroni Central MP, Dr Bhoe Tewarie, as to the reason for this new taxation, Hinds replied, Our job is to stabilise the country from the turbulence of the last government. Hinds criticised the former Peoples Partnership (PP) government for its spending, including some $10 billion on the Point Fortin Highway, in excess of the initial engineers estimate of $3.6 billion, and lamented that these funds came from the governments current account instead of an Inter American Development Bank (IDB) loan. By contrast he said the current Government has taken IDB advice to stay its hand on a costly mass transit system.

Hinds also touted the free initiatives for needy persons initiated by a past Peoples National Movement (PNM) government including GATE, CDAP and free school meals.

Hinds retorted to Opposition criticisms of Imbert engaging with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the TT economy as a proactive move. We asked the IMF to come here before they had to impose themselves on the country. I want to commend the Minister of Finance for his genius. Hinds said the IMF will offer advice to stop TT from crossing that horrible line, and instead be wellsteered by Minister Imbert. We are trying to keep the country out of the hands of an imposed environment in a difficult economic time.
Foreign court trumps Parliament

The officials faced protests from Committee members, including its chairman Independent Senator David Small and Opposition Senator Wade Mark .

Mark pointed out the anomaly that Petrotrin documents had been reportedly forwarded to the Law Association, at the behest of Attorney General Faris Al Rawi, yet the Parliament committees request had been blanked .

However, Petrotrin President Fitzroy Harewood gave an undertaking that the company would reconsider its position. He gave no time-line or assurances .

The Committee also heard the bizarre details of the history of the lawsuit which, at one stage, appeared to involve one lawyer for Petrotrin blanking Petrotrins own request for information, also citing legal professional privilege .

That impasse resulted in one Petrotrin official contacting Al-Rawi  whose Ministry oversaw the litigation  to intervene, weeks before the board took a decision to drop the Jones lawsuit .

Near the end of yesterdays hearing, Small warned Petrotrin officials they had obligations to the committee .

While we understand you have international obligations, we want Petrotrin to understand that you have obligations to the Parliament, Small said. Earlier, Radica Maraj-Adharsingh, Petrotrins senior manager on law and land management, told the Committee that documents requested were covered by legal professional privilege and also engaged other considerations .

The official said, Petrotrin, in these documents you will see, is a party to international obligations .

You have the ICC body (the ICC International Court of Arbitration) and the London Court of International Arbitration, by which Petrotrin is obliged to maintain confidentiality. The witness statements that were given, that were relied upon in the opinions, those witness statements formed part of the records of these arbitrations. She added, It would be very difficult for Petrotrin to breach its obligations with an international body and give those documents. Maraj-Adharsingh continued, It would be difficult for us to obtain witnesses and even, indeed, to appear before an international body where you have confidentiality obligations. It has far-reaching consequences for the State of Trinidad and Tobago where we appear before international bodies and we breach our obligations. She said Petrotrin was obliged to act responsibly in accordance with its duties under the Companies Act .

Small said the failure of Petrotrin to disclose the unspecified materials  which could have been considered in-camera  harmed the Committees ability to probe the matter .

This is a matter that has troubled the committee, he said .

The documents that the board relied upon to make its decision were not submitted. In the absence of that, the committee has a challenge .

There is no way the Committee could understand the reasoning. Maraj-Adharsingh disclosed the former Petrotrin board  under Lindsay Gillette  dissolved in 2011 and agreed that the Ministry of the Attorney General would take conduct of the High Court litigation. The Ministry engaged attorney Varun Debideen .

However, Petrotrins in-house legal department, thereafter, had no involvement .

Only in July 2015 was there contact from the Ministry of the Attorney General. Debideen asked Petrotrin for witness statements and tribunal awards in relation to arbitrations. Joness legal team at the High Court had sought disclosure of these documents .

Petrotrins legal team supplied the documents to Debideen, legal privilege notwithstanding, because he was their l
Petrotrin directors pay jumps to $29M

The Joint Select Committee on State Enterprises asked Petrotrin officials to explain why the pay had spiralled.

In your submissions there has been a significant escalation in the cost for an item called directors and key managers  remuneration, Independent Senator David Small said. We would just like to get an explanation as to how it virtually tripled from the average, especially at a time of low oil prices. We would like to understand what happened there. The Committee chairman said from 2006 to 2012, the item averaged between $6 million and $8 million. In 2013, it was $9 million.

In 2014, the item moved to $11 million. But in 2015 it was $29 million.

We will respond to that in writing, Petrotrin President Fitzroy Harewood told the committee.

Chief Financial Officer Ronald Huff and Vice President of Human Resources Neil Derrick made no remarks.

The Committee also asked the Petrotrin officials to give an update on the new headquarters being constructed for the company, a project which has stalled.

Harewood said a decision has been taken to defer the project given other priorities.

Given what is the state of the organisation at this point in time, we think that is one project we can reasonably defer, Harewood said. The officials were still awaiting technical reports on the ultra low sulphur diesel project, but said it remains a project which is, important for the future of refinery.

They could not say how violations of earthquake specifications in the projects construction would be dealt with, pending a final report.

The Petrotrin President also said of the companys performance, We are not happy with our safety performance. He said $5 billion was needed to get assets up to scratch.
Ceremony to hand over ORTT to NALIS

The ceremony is scheduled to be held at the Office of the President, Circular Road, St Anns.

The ORTT medal was awarded posthumously to trade union leader Adrian Cola Rienzi.

A public outcry ensued when news broke of this countrys highest national award had been put up for auction in March.

In response, Anthony Norman Sabga, chairman and chief executive of Ansa McAl, placed a bid of US$25,000 for the medal on March 8 and secured it.

The medal was awarded to Rienzi by the Kamla Persad- Bissessar administration in 2012. The original award document, signed by President Anthony Carmona and stamped with the Presidential seal was also included with the award
Motorcyclist loses arm in accident

According to a police report, about 4 pm on Sunday, Phillip was proceeding east along SS Erin Road, Quarry Village, Siparia when he crashed head-on into a black Nissan Bluebird car driven by Mukesh Oudit.

Police said Oudit of Rebeiro Trace, Rock Road, Penal and Phillip were rushed to the SFGH where they received medical attention.

Oudit was treated and discharged while Phillip, who sustained severe injuries to his right arm and leg, was warded.

The front windscreen of Oudits car was shattered. Yesterday as prayers went out for Phillip, there was strong condemnation on Facebook from his close relatives and friends for the person who posted scenes of the injured man, with his arm missing, lying on the ground and being assisted by paramedics. He was, at the time, bleeding profusely.

One woman posted: Saw dey takin his hand out d back seat of d car - it made me cry - cant even eat - so sad. Another wrote: I hate this new age with all these camera phones. People dont care or respect the privacy of other peoples situations, while another said: I ask myself, if, God forbid, I was this person, would I want this shown on Facebook. Another wrote: He is my friend and I wish this was not shared on Facebook. PC Balkaran of the Siparia Police Station is investigating.
Telecom Seeds for the Future UWI Huawei

This follows the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) yesterday between UWI and Huawei, a global leading information and communication technology (ICT) solutions provider.

Fully funded by Huawei, the Telecom Seeds for the Future programme was first launched in 2008 with two Universities in Thailand. Since then, the company has worked with more than 150 universities in 54 countries, benefiting more than 10,000 students.

The programme is designed to help bridge the gap between what is learned in school and what is practised in the work place.

Here in Trinidad and Tobago (TT), it is also meant to help develop local ICT talent, promote greater understanding of the telecommunications sector and encourage participation in the international ICT community.

Top-performing students from the Department of Computing and Information Technology and from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering will be nominated by UWI, with Huawei making the final selection.

Speaking at the MoU signing at Hilton Trin idad, Huawei TTs General Manager, Jason Deng, said participating students will spend a week in Beijing, studying Chinese and learning about Chinas culture, then a week at Huaweis labs in Shenzhen, where the students will learn the latest ICT technologies, like 5G, LTE and Cloud Computing, and get hands-on work experience. UWIs Pro-Vice Chancellor and St Augustine Campus Principal, Professor Clement Sankat, spoke of his hope that a greater number of UWI engineering students would be able to benefit from Huaweis expertise.

I am hopeful that...

Huawei will work with us to quickly develop a laboratory for communications technology hardware in the Faculty of Engineering.

I want our electrical and computer engineering students to have knowledge and expertise in the latest communications hardware in this digital world.

We cannot send all of them to China, therefore we must bring some of Huawei to the campus, Sankat said.
Moonilal: Did Ministers order cars?

He suggested that any such arrangements could lead to car import companies making sweetheart deals with the Governments friends and financiers to dishonestly backdate the order forms, so as to dodge the new tax-hike. Moonilal asked Imbert to state if any minister or former minister had ordered such a car? Attorney General Faris Al Rawi rose to object that Moonilal was suggesting impropriety by the tone of his voice, and the content and context of his words. Speaker Bridgid Annisette-George asked Moonilal to withdraw, saying his tone did not suggest his remarks constituted a question. At that, Moonilal played along to a lower pitch and a softer tone to say, Could I humbly and gently ask the Minister of Finance if other Members have applied for ordered cars?.

An irritated Al-Rawi rose to say, This device is a ruse to circumvent your direct ruling. He urged Moonilal to clearly state anything he had to say. The Speaker chided Moonilal, who declared, I withdraw...Methinks the Member doth protest too much. Moonilal then challenged the Governments avowed stance on climate-change - one of the justifications for the days motion - by saying Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley had not seen fit to attend recent United Nations climate- change talks at which was United States President Barack Obama but instead had attended a political party fund-raiser in London. Further, TT had not ratified that agreement, behind the likes of Grenada.

Lamenting the recent suicide of a retrenched worker of Arcelor Mittal, he said under the Government persons from a Central Bank Governor to a sanitation were losing their jobs. He lamented the economic suicide by person(s) who felt unable to provide for their families, and said he hoped Mr Francis would be the last such case but added that he doubted it.

Moonilal hit Imbert for consulting the IMF, even after Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley had vowed not to. He said that had Opposition Leader, Kamla Persad- Bissessar, still been in power she would have sent a team to talk to the steel company whose 650 former workers would today still have had jobs.

Saying that even a humble doubles man or nuts vendor will keep a better tab on his daily sales-figures that Imbert keeps over the countrys economy, Moonilal declared, A doubles man could run this country better than the Member for Diego Martin North East (Imbert). The nutsman would make a better Minister of Finance. He saw the former PP governments now-stalled projects of Couva Childrens Hospital and the Debe Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI, St Augustine, as being measures for economic diversification, such as by earning revenues respectively from medical tourism and education
Government will waive taxes on CNG and hybrid vehicles

Imbert moved two motions yesterday in the Lower House of the Parliament, Port-of-Spain to amend the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Act to allow for the taxation on vehicles of over 1999 cc and not exceeding 2499 cc for private use, and the Customs Act to enable the levying of duties and taxes on the vehicles. Provision has been made for the duties and taxes to be excluded on passenger vehicles such as maxi taxis, private school buses and vehicles used for public purposes.

The waiver of taxes on the large engine vehicles that use clean fuel, such as compressed natural gas (CNG), electrical or other hybrid vehicles, Imbert said, was in keeping with the Paris Agreement to end the fossil fuel era. Government signed the agreement last Friday at the United Nations in New York.

Trinidad and Tobago was committed, he said, to do its part to cut down on fossil fuel emissions, reduce its carbon footprints, and to encourage the population towards the use of renewable energy such as solar, wind and clean fuel such as CNG, and to move towards the use of hybrid vehicles.

The past administration had tried using incentives to encourage the use of hybrid and clean vehicles, but that did not catch on because, he said, they were still not competitive, to allow the price of hybrid vehicles to land in TT and compete with the traditional combustion vehicles. Building on what was done before by the previous administration, he said, This Government will be removing all taxes on these types of vehicles. The imposition of the 50 percent taxation for the large engine vehicles, Imbert said, was multi-fold and include spreading the burden of adjustment across the society.

He noted that some of the measures imposed to generate revenue, given the drop in the steep drop in oil and gas revenue, have created some discomfort to some in the lower income groups. The larger engines, he said, burn more fuel and in the context of the fuel subsidy and Governments commitment to the environment We are trying to conserve fuel by making these larger engine vehicles expensive, encouraging people to bring smaller vehicles onto the road, and to move towards hybrid vehicles that will not consume gasoline at all, he said.

Jamaica, Grenada and Barbados, he said, have applied a start off base of 80 percent taxation on landed costs for similar luxury vehicles, and as much as 157 percent on older vehicles. We in Trinidad and Tobago, for many, many years have enjoyed relatively low levels of taxation, he said. We are trying to reduce the number of cars, reduce emissions and reduce fuel consumption as the rest of Caribbean has done for many, many years, he added.
Local Govt Minister visits THA

In a statement issued by the ministry on Thursday (April 21), Khan was quoted as having told a panel of 20 THA representatives during a meeting at the Victor E Bruce Financial Complex in Scarborough that, the THA has a wealth of experience which can be brought to bear on the current local government transformation process now on in Trinidad. Khan said the aim is to give local government bodies a level of autonomy and executive authority similar to that of the THA.

Meanwhile, THA Chief Secretary, Orville London, said the Assembly welcomed the opportunity to share its experiences with the TTC.

He cautioned however that this exercise is not going to be a panacea for the challenges that we face in local government, warning that de-centralisation will not automatically lead to transformation.

London said de-centralisation can cause further problems if it is not implemented properly.

He added that there are three, linked, phases of the process to consider: enacting the legislation, implementing it, and also enhancing delivery.

You have got to have legislation which is implementable legislation, and in order to implement you have got to enhance delivery...From our experience, you have got to bear in mind the realities of politics and you have got to have legislation which would protect the weak against the stronger regardless of the circumstances, London stated.
What you need to know about the Octagon Art Festival on Sunday in Ames

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California Seeks to Eliminate All Gun Dealers

Talk about infringing on the Second Amendment! Not only is the State of California targeting honest gun owners with totalitarian gun laws and limit purchases of firearms, but they are actually seeking to implement legislation that would ban all home FFL dealers from the state and impose Orwellian -style regulations on existing gun stores to the point where they would not be able to stay in business.

Guns in the News reports:

To start, AB 2459 will ban all home FFL dealers. There are hundreds of them in the state, and they may serve areas where a traditional brick and mortar store wouldnt prosper.

Rural residents would be denied their right to defend themselves. They could not legally purchase a firearm unless they drove hours to a larger population area.

For traditional gun stores, the remaining two portions of the bill could drive them out of business.

AB 2459 would then force all gun dealers to video record all areas of their store wherever firearms or ammunition are stored, displayed, carried, handled, sold, or transferred, including, but not limited to, counters, safes, vaults, cabinets, shelves, cases, and entryways.



Adding to the Orwellian-ness, gun dealers will have to spend thousands of dollars on storing the high-quality data for up to 10 years on-site, turning each gun store that can afford it into a high capacity hard drive that most tech firms would be jealous of.

Assuming a gun dealer is still in business after the first two requirements, the last one will do them in.

AB 2459 mandates a first in the world form of insurance an unobtainable policy that covers the criminal acts of second, third and fourth parties using a firearm or ammunition from the store in question, even if the retailer is in fact the victim of the crime or if the gun or ammo was stolen from the store.



Petitions are being signed now to oppose the bill.

The state killed legislation that repeals unconstitutional laws. For instance, AB 2229 was designed to remove a 10-day waiting period to purchase a gun, citing the US District Court case Silvester v. Harris. The Harris case found the 10-day waiting period violates the Second Amendment of those who successfully pass the standard background check prior to 10 days and who are in lawful possession of an additional firearm, possess a Certificate of Eligibility, or have a CCW.

Additionally, California is seeking to kill AB2508, which would have allowed handguns to be reinstated to Californias diminishing Handgun Roster if it did not fail a safety test, allowing the handgun manufacturer to make necessary improvements based on customer feedback and supply chain changes.

Since the right to keep and bear arms should be understood as a God-given right (Declaration of Independence) and not a right given by the state, the state should not be involved in any type of regulation or restriction of firearms. California is not following the law. It is a lawless state and its becoming more apparent every day.

Submit a correction >>
Exclusive: The U.S. is considering more support for U.A.E. push against Al Qaeda

(NationalSecurity.news) WASHINGTON (Reuters)  The United States is considering a request from the United Arab Emirates for military support to assist a new offensive in Yemen against al Qaedas most dangerous affiliate, U.S. officials tell Reuters.

A U.S.-backed military push by the Gulf ally could allow the administration of President Barack Obama to help strike a fresh blow against a group that has plotted to down U.S. airliners and claimed responsibility for last years attacks on the office of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has exploited the chaos of Yemens year-old civil war to become more powerful than any time in its history, and now controls a swathe of the country.

The UAE has asked for U.S. help on medical evacuation and combat search and rescue as part of a broad request for American air power, intelligence and logistics support, the U.S. officials said. It was unclear whether U.S. special operations forces  already stretched thin by the conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan  were part of the request.

The U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the UAE was preparing for a campaign against AQAP, but declined to offer details, citing operational security. The UAE is playing a key role in the Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen that are loosely allied with Iran.

The White House and the Pentagon declined to comment. Government officials in the UAE did not respond to request for comment.

Washingtons consideration of the request comes ahead of Obamas planned trip next week to a summit of Gulf leaders in Saudi Arabia. The multiple conflicts in Yemen will be high on the agenda.

Saudi-backed Yemen government forces and the Houthi fighters began a tentative truce on Sunday, although there have been reports of violations.

Despite significant U.S. strikes, including one that killed AQAPs leader last year, U.S. counter terrorism efforts have been undermined by Yemens civil strife.

The worsening conflict forced the evacuation in early 2015 of U.S. military and intelligence personnel who had orchestrated an anti-AQAP campaign involving Yemeni special forces raids backed by U.S. air power.

Renewed ground operations spearheaded by UAE special forces would fit the so-called Obama doctrine of relying mostly on local partners instead of large-scale U.S. troop deployments. Washingtons use of surrogate fighters has been criticized as inadequate in conflicts ranging from Iraq to Syria to Afghanistan.

LITTLE SPARTA

The officials said the U.S. governments consideration of the UAEs request in part reflected the Emirates proven capabilities, including well-trained and resourced special operations forces on the ground.

Michael Knights, an expert on Yemens conflict at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he and a colleague estimated the UAEs presence in Yemen peaked at about 5,500 troops in July-October of last year and now is as low as 2,500 personnel.

Knights said the UAE played a critical role in efforts by the Saudi-led alliance to push back the Houthis, employing a mix of capabilities, including mechanized infantry columns, that proved decisive.

The UAE has been the real central player in the ground war, he said.

In contrast, Saudi-led air strikes drew sharp condemnation from the United Nations top human rights official last month, who said the coalition may be responsible for international crimes.

In a nod to its capabilities, some U.S. military officials have nicknamed UAE Little Sparta after the ancient city-state known for its fighting prowess. Analysts note that the small Gulf state has also played an outsized role in other conflicts, from Libya to Afghanistan.

Frederic Wehry, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a U.S. Air Force veteran, said the UAEs ability to combat AQAP would rest partly on its ability to navigate Yemens complex web of tribal allegiances.

UAE forces currently are concentrated mostly around the southern port of Aden where the embattled Yemeni government has found safe haven. But since retaking the city in mid-2015, they and local forces have struggled to impose order, opening the way for al Qaeda and Islamic State militants to operate there.

AQAP is estimated to now control 600 km (373 miles) of Yemeni coastline and the southeastern port city of Mukalla, home to 500,000 people.

The fight against AQAP is of greater importance to the United States than the battle against the Houthis, which until now has been a higher priority for Americas Gulf allies. The Gulf states see the fight against the Houthis through the lens of a regional rivalry with Shiite Iran.

One particular U.S. concern is Qassim al-Raymi, who last year succeeded Nasser al-Wuhayshi as AQAPs military commander after a U.S. drone strike killed Wuhayshi.

One U.S official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said al-Raymi appears to us to have intent as well as operatives with capability to be able to do external plots.

The United States thinks there are dozens of AQAP operatives deemed to be true threats capable of mounting external attacks, the official added.

Washington also has long sought Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, considered the most formidable extremist bomb designer. He is accused of a creating hard-to-detect bombs, including one used in a failed bombing of a U.S.-bound airliner in 2009.

The United States has continued a campaign of sporadic air strikes in Yemen, including one in March on an AQAP training camp that killed at least 50 suspected militants.

(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumi. Editing by John Walcott, Warren Strobel and Stuart Grudgings.)

NationalSecurity.news is part of the USA Features Media network.

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Over 95% of all endangered species existence threatened by not one, but two commonly used pesticides in the U.S.

The Environmental Protection Agency  just typing that name feels incongruent  proclaimed that we should keep our eyes on two harmful pesticides, plus one. The Guardian reports:

Almost all of the 1,700 most endangered plants and animals in the US are likely to be harmed by two widely used pesticides Malathion, an insecticide registered for use in the US since 1956, is likely to cause harm to 97% of the 1,782 mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and plants listed under the Endangered Species Act. Malathion is commonly used to treat fruit, vegetables and plants for pests, as well as on pets to remove ticks.

A separate pesticide, chlorpyrifos, is also a severe risk to 97% of Americas most threatened flora and fauna. Chlorpyrifos, which smells a little like rotten eggs, is regularly deployed to exterminate termites, mosquitoes and roundworms.

A third pesticide, diazinon, often used on cockroaches and ants, threatens 79% of endangered species. The EPA Study is the first of its kind to look at whether common pesticides harm U.S. wildlife. In March last year, the World Health Organization said that malathion and diazinon are probably carcinogenic to humans.'

Glyphosate is not on the list. Hmm, wonder why?

The EPA hasnt bothered to test it; well, they did once, back in 2011, where 271 out of 300 soybean samples tested positive for glyphosate residue. But theres been no large scale testing, even though, according to a report filed by Ecowatch, Farmers sprayed 2.6 billion pounds of Monsantos glyphosate herbicide on U.S. agricultural land between 1992 and 2012, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Perhaps glyphosate will be on a future list that shows extensive damage to a very important endangered species: male and female. The EPA announced that they will test for the residues on a few foods in 2016 they plan to discover how much of this toxin were eating from corn, milk, eggs, soybeans and other foods sometime in 2016.

2,4-D, the Agent Orange ingredient now in GMO corn wasnt listed either

For those with no memory of the Vietnam war, Monsantos Agent Orange was used extensively as a weapon to defoliate. Heres what the Aspen Institute says about the killercide Agent Orange:

Agent Orange was a herbicide mixture used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Much of it contained a dangerous chemical contaminant called dioxin. Production of Agent Orange ended in the 1970s and is no longer in use. The dioxin contaminant however continues to have harmful impact today. As many U.S. Vietnam-era veterans know, dioxin is a highly toxic and persistent organic pollutant linked to cancers, diabetes, birth defects and other disabilities.

The Red Cross estimates that three million Vietnamese have been affected by dioxin, including at least 150,000 children born with serious birth defects. Millions of Americans and Vietnamese are still affected, directly and indirectly, by the wartime U.S. spraying of Agent Orange and other herbicides over southern and central Vietnam Agent Orange was banned by the U.S. in 1971

But now Dow Crop Sciences uses a component from Agent Orange  2,4-D  in Enlist 3 their fully approved triple stack of GMO corn with its DNA invaded by glyphosate, 2,4-D and glufosinate. Now thats a death cocktail for our soil, plants, animals and children that you might know about. And they call it Enlist. Thats a travesty in itself.

Boycott all GMOs. Educate yourself and your family members. Spend your dollars wisely on clean organic food and alternative healing methods. Make each day count. And forgive one another. Thats one substance we could spray all around every day, yes?

Sources:

TheGuardian.com

ECOWatch.com

Science.NaturalNews.com

AgriPulse.com

FoodForensics.com

Enlist.com

AspenInstitute.org

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This fourth installment of the multi-part series on the granularity of the recent white paper done for Nokia (News - Alert) by Diffraction Analysis, Government broadband plan: 5 key policy measures that proved to make a difference. In the previous posting the focus was on public investment in access. This week the deeper dive focus is on a framework of infrastructure sharing.





Sharing cuts cost and speeds deployment

This is an instance where there is true measurable short-term impact. In fact, as the white paper notes, and can be seen in the graphic below, governments whose national broadband plans include a regulatory framework for infrastructure sharing show a marked improvement in just a few years in the proportion of households with Internet access. And, the longer it is in place the wider the gap between countries that encourage sharing and those that do not grows.

Source (News - Alert): Nokia, Diffraction Analysis report: Government broadband plan: 5 key policy measures that proved to make a difference

In fact, as can be seen from the comparison, it is almost as if sharing is the equivalent of stepping on the accelerator. It also provides an even bigger bang for the buck than public access investments.

The case studies that prove the point are Brazil and France. The results are impressive and speak to the point that cooperation on the sharing, even in hotly competitive markets, can be extremely beneficial for all involved.

Sharing in Brazil

In 2012, Brazils telecommunications agency, Anatel, approved the General Plan for Competition to stimulate competition. Part of the plan was to obligate dominant carriers to allow smaller operators to access such things as local access, local and long-distance transport, and passive infrastructure to speed the development of competition and spur user adoption. Based on a unique platform created, the Brazilian National Wholesale Trading System (SNOA), which functions as a virtual trading exchange for fair treatment of significant market powers (SNPs) and their non SNP competitors that is funded by the SNPs but has a board with equal representation to assure non-discrimination, the results since implementation in September 2013 have been impressive. By April of 2015 more than 34,000 requests had been recorded.

In addition, what was good for the fixed networks also was thought to be good for mobile operators. In April of 2015, the Antenna Law was passed to enable fair sharing of network antennas in urban areas, and have the dominant mobile provider share their excess capacity. While too early to confirm, the regulators believe that the mobile sector should mimic the results of what has already happened in the fixed network arena.

Nokia cites as the key factors for success.

Focus on real entry barriers: costly infrastructure (ducts, access network) and players with significant market power

Implementation of processes and platforms to facilitate communication between partners

They could have added that the communications between partners was not just about sharing physical assets, but that their communications on the board established to assure equitable treatment has also been a key for success.

Sharing in France

The French government released its national broadband plan  Programme National Tres Haut Debit (PNTHD) in 2010, followed in 2013 by an update  Plan France Tres Haut Debit (PFTHD). As noted in the white paper, the initial goal was local loop unbundling in general, but the PNTHD update included new objectives for the deployment of FTTH networks:

Stimulate the investment of private operators where the deployments are deemed profitable

Support projects led by public authorities elsewhere.

The launch of the PNTHD was accompanied by regulatory measures to reduce the duplication of infrastructure where it was not deemed necessary. These were deemed to be: in dense areas (mainly cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants) where the part of the network within buildings has to be shared; less dense areas where the last mile is shared between operators from the optical distribution frame; and in areas where the low density deters private operators from investing, local authorities invest in open access networks, with some state subsidies.

Other regulations regarding specifics on what was to be shared were also promulgated on a variety of duct sharing and maintenance issues. The operators (the incumbent France Telecom (News - Alert), and to a lesser degree two of its competitors) committed to cover 57 percent of the population despite the fact that only about 20 percent of the population lives in the denser more profitable areas where obviously new entrants are most interested in seeking customers.

The white paper does not provide details on how close the competitors have come to meeting their goals. However, as visitors to France are aware, in the major urban areas there are plenty of service providers to choose from at a number of price points, and this would not be the case without sharing having been mandated. And, reflective of the chart at the top, and the latest subscriber situation regarding broadband in France, the plan is working.

Next up, the impacts of government policies that encourage inclusive/social offers.

Edited by Maurice Nagle
The PAK-DA, which is being developed by Tupolev, is expected to be a subsonic flying-wing aircraft that is roughly analogous to the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit and the US Air Forces forthcoming Long Range Strike-Bomber.

The PAK-DA is likely to feature many of the technologies that are expected to be incorporated into the new Tu-160M2 version.

In a break from previous Russian and Soviet bombers, which focused on using a combination of speed and long-range cruise missiles to deliver their payloads, the PAK-DA is the first Russian bomber optimized for stealth.

That said, the PAK-DA will probably not be a small aircraft, close in size to a Boeing 757.

It is expected to have a range of 6,740 nautical miles. It will also be able to carry 30 tons of weapons.

PAK-DA will serve as a launch platform for long-range nuclear and conventional cruise missiles and a host of precision-guided munitions. It might also eventually be armed with hypersonic missiles, National Interest wrote.

The new bomber is expected to make its first flight sometime before 2021, with the first deliveries starting in 2023.

The PAK-DA will be a unique project in the history of Russian aviation since it will be a flying wing aircraft, a design never used before by Russian engineers. It will fly at subsonic speeds and the large wingspan and design features will provide the jet with reduced visibility to radar.

Russias 3M22 Zircon hypersonic cruise missile is expected to enter into production in 2018. The new weapon-which is capable of speeds of around Mach 5.0-Mach 6.0 is currently in testing

The hypersonic missile-which is a component of the 3K22 Zircon system-will be incorporated into the nuclear-powered Project 11442 Orlan -class battle cruiser Pyotr Veliky When it completes its overhaul in late 2022. Sister ship Admiral Nakhimov -which is currently being modernized-will likely be the first Russian warship equipped with the new missile When it returns to service in 2018. Zircon will be built in air and submarine-launched versions. The Russians are expected to use hypersonic missiles onboard the both the new production Tupolev Tu-160M2 Blackjack and the developmental Tupolev PAK DA stealth bomber. The combination of a long-range bomber and hypersonic cruise missiles would be a dangerous threat to the US and its allies.

General Anatoly Zhikharev has said that an unmanned strategic bomber may follow the PAK DA after 2040

Russias existing bomber fleet will also be modernized with advanced avionics and electronic warfare systems. 2 of 13 Tu-160s have undergone this overhaul as of December 2013 and the intermediate-range Tu-22M will be included in the program. 63 Tu-95 bombers will be upgraded and the Tu-95MS is to remain in service until 2040

SOURCES  National Interest, Sputnik News, Wikipedia
In an unprecedented effort to stymie Republican front-runner Donald Trump, his two remaining rivals, Sen.

On the Republican side of things, Senator Ted Cruz and Governor John Kasich will be trying to stay afloat until July's convention in Cleveland, hoping to keep Trump's momentum at a minimum.

Cruz, who has prided himself on defying the party's leaders in the name of conservative purity, bridled at the prospect of being labeled now as a creature of the Republican establishment as it tries to obstruct Trump.

The Associated Press asked voters in Indiana, Oregon and New Mexico how they felt about Cruz and Kasich striking an extraordinary accord to avoid competing with each other in an effort to block Trump's relentless - but not yet successful - march toward the Republican nomination. Many delegate candidates have said they will vote for whoever wins the state or their district, at least on the first ballot at the convention.

Orlando's renamed stadium to host early-season games

Also, the 2019 season opener will be the seventh game between the two schools played at a neutral site - the second in Orlando. ET on Monday, Sept. 5, as the day's only game and will be televised nationally on ESPN.

But the problem with the Cruz-Kasich duo cant stop Trump if he sweeps tonights five states then the nomination is well within his grasp.

Kasich's chief strategist, John Weaver, said his campaign is "very comfortable with our delegate position in IN already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign's resources West and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in IN". Cruz will do the same for Kasich in subsequent contests in OR and New Mexico. Marco Rubio's campaign. Kasich didn't stop campaigning in Florida, and Rubio lost his home state, while the OH governor won his. A Fox News poll suggests Kasich supporters are, in fact, nearly as likely to prefer Trump (33 per cent) as Cruz (41 per cent) for their second choice. For that reason, Trump and his rivals are putting forth a slate of delegates who will be supportive of their candidacy at the party convention.

The deal was announced as a handful of mid-Atlantic states prepared for primary elections on Tuesday.

With dramatic flair, he compared his plight to a champion boxer whom Trump said he once warned not to go into unfriendly territory because the judges could rule against him.

Thunderstorm, hail is possible later in day on Sunday

Even this is conditional though, and there's some potential that the severe threat will wind up being east of the Ozarks. Remember you can always download our First Alert Weather App for the latest information at the palm of your hand.

They'll also choose the delegates who will personally pick who the Pennsylvania delegation supports at the GOP convention.

Pennsylvania and other states holding primaries on Tuesday - Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island and CT - are favorable terrain for Trump.

Voter said they supported Trump over Cruz, 41 to 33, with Kasich trailing at just 16 percent support, despite the Indiana's shared border with the state he runs. Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard, co-chair of Kasich's IN campaign, told the IndyStar the candidate canceled all IN events. "It's not a big deal".

"They did a great job with my boys", Trump told the crowd. But come on. Both candidates have trouble getting across the message "Vote for me".

Next Call of Duty Title Leaked; Full Reveal Coming Soon

The rumour appeared in the form of an image posted on Twitter by popular YouTuber and games journalist Jim Sterling . That doesn't happen with codenames and the like, meaning we could have a Call of Duty reveal just around the corner.

Cruz said the deal with Kasich was aimed at preventing a Trump nomination that he argues would assure victory for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the November 8 presidential election.
The deal highlights the urgency the anti-Trump forces feel in IN, where a strong Cruz performance in the May 3 primary could deny the Manhattan billionaire 57 of the delegates he needs to reach a majority before the Republican National Convention convenes in July.

Here are five key questions about this arrangement, answered.

Trump's path to the nomination is narrow.

Cruz' campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said in a statement that the Texas senator will concentrate his efforts in IN, which holds a primary next week, while Kasich would take OR and New Mexico, which vote later in May and in early June. They are doing this two ways. The first is self-explanatory: they will avoid campaigning on each other's turf. They instructed allies to follow their lead.

"I'm not campaigning in IN and he's not campaigning in these other states, that's all". This sends these groups a clear message: No advertisements against one another in selected states.

It's all about keeping Trump from reaching the magic number: 1,237. Their only hope is to block him and force a contested national convention in July, with no candidate arriving with a majority. It is going to be close.

Authorities: Evidence of pot, cockfighting at killing scenes

Authorities remained tight-lipped Sunday about details of the investigation, any suspects or motives for the crime. Attorney General Mike DeWine said at a news conference Sunday that the killings were "a sophisticated operation".

Cruz and Kasich are focusing on states where they can be successful, thus preventing Trump from clinching the nomination. A key wildcard is Indiana. All the 30 statewide delegates go to the victor, but the remaining 27 delegates are allotted based on the results of their corresponding congressional district. And almost half those IN delegates are winner-take-all, meaning they are awarded en masse to whoever finishes No. 1.

A Quinnipiac University poll released last week showed Trump with 48 percent support from likely Republican voters in Connecticut; Kasich has 28 percent and Cruz, 19 percent. IN offers 57 delegates, and a sweep of them would make it much easier for Trump to get to the 1,237 required to clinch the nomination - provided he'd also win states including delegate-rich California on June 7.

The Kasich campaign later confirmed to Fox News that it had canceled two campaign events in IN scheduled for Tuesday as part of the deal. The plan wasn't even a day old Monday, and several cracks had already appeared. Even now, it's doubtful Kasich voters will act as a bloc. As of now, neither Ted Cruz nor Donald Trump has planned any stops in Oregon. With such percentages, Trump would nearly certainly squeak by.

But Kasich said the agreement was not a "big deal".

Trump campaigned Sunday in Maryland, which will vote on Tuesday along with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Cruz, to reporters Monday: "We're all in on Indiana".

Champions League: Real faces Man City in semi

Atletico is a two-time runner-up after giving up last-minute equalizing goals both times , including against Real Madrid in 2014. He said: "It's time to really show the world what we can do and go out there and give a good performance against Real Madrid ".

"It is abundantly clear that nobody is getting to 1,237, we are heading to a contested convention, and at a contested convention, Donald Trump is in real trouble", Cruz said. Donald has been a minority candidate - a fringe candidate - (who) benefited early in the race by having a multitude of opponents where the opposition to Donald was diffuse.

Well, in the context of that room, that's what I said and that's what was understood. That's what he does.

"I don't doubt that Donald Trump is going to scream and yell and curse and insult and probably cry and whine as well".

"I've never told them not to vote for me", Kasich told reporters at a Philadelphia diner, when asked about his IN supporters.

I was dealing with members of the Republican National Committee who have a different role from a organizational standpoint and they wanted to know about things like is he going to be giving speeches on policies, is he going to be involved in settings that are not rally-oriented, and that was the context I was talking about. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., center right, greets people in the crowd at the conclusion of a campaign rally in Roger Williams Park, Sunday, April 24, 2016, in Providence, R.I. We'll do well, so we applied our resources there. I don't have a Daddy Warbucks pouring billions into my campaign or millions into my campaign.

"What's the big deal?" "But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude". Because it shows how weak they are.

Tony Stewart: Top-20 Finish in Return

The Driver Council, in its second season, meets with NASCAR to discuss any issues pertaining to the sport. Earlier this week, Stewart's doctors cleared him to return to competition.

"It takes two guys, long time politicians to try to get together to try to beat Trump and yet they're way behind", Trump said, adding that's "pretty bad", calling them insiders and part of the "establishment".
Indiana, as a winner-take-all state at the district level and overall, is a must-win for the #NeverTrump camp.

Republican presidential candidate John Kasich defended his deal with rival Ted Cruzto divide up three state primary contests, in an attempt to block front-runner Donald Trump from winning the Republican Party's presidential nomination. "I think if we go to an open convention, they're going to look at who can win and who can actually run the country".

"They had to team up because they can't beat him individually", Julian said. Some would-be Cruz supporters in IN agreed with Trump's criticism.

Asked what IN voters should do next week, the OH governor just 13 hours after the arrangement was announced urged them to vote for him.

Dipa Karmakar caps golden run in Rio

Hailing from Agartala, she was initiated into the sport by her father, but cried while attending those drills. Karmakar has also become known for her ability to complete the very challenging Produnova vault.

But it was his comparing the Indiana Primary to the Indy 500 that drew some laughter and applause and begged the question; will this strategy with Kasich earn him the checkered flag in the Crossroads State or leave him too damaged to finish at the Republican convention? Kasich promises to not compete in IN to give Cruz a shot beating Trump there and Cruz will not compete in New Mexico and OR to help Kasich there.

The Cruz-Kasich pact is shaking up the Republican race a day before voters go to the polls in Rhode Island, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

Despite the alliance, Trump fans are confident he'll still pull off a win in Indiana. Kasich told reporters in a news conference that was broadcast nationally on MSNBC that it was "not a big deal" in the Republican primaries.

The statement says that Ohio Gov. John Kasich would not be campaigning in IN to instead focus their efforts and resources in New Mexico and Oregon. He also said that colluding in business gets people jailed, but colluding in politics is okay as the government is a corrupt enterprise.

Main points of Saudi economic reform plan

It is also to include major structural reforms, privatisations and efforts to increase government efficiency, the prince said. It's meant to let the country "live without oil by 2020".

Both Kasich and Cruz are mathematically eliminated from securing the Republican nomination ahead of the GOP convention.

"Cruz, Kasich and the rest of the Stop Trump extremists are trying to turn the democratic process into a bad board game".

Grossmann does say, Trump's candidacy is a wild card like no other, and in the end, whichever Republican candidate prevails, they will have the party's support. "I don't care. I want it, '" Trump said during a Monday rally in Rhode Island.

How many delegates are needed to win the nomination? USA Today reported that Trump said, "I've never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion".
"I have millions of votes more than each one of them", said Trump. On the question of which of the presidential candidates would do the most to address that, both Clinton and Sanders far outpaced the GOP candidates - but men favored Clinton by nine percentage points, while women favored Sanders by four percentage points. Superdelegates - party leaders who can switch their votes at a whim - overwhelmingly favor Sanders' opponent, Hillary Clinton, with 519 supporting her, and only 39 supporting Sanders.

The candidate said she is "winning because of what I stand for and what I've done and what our ideas are".

"If you come out to vote tomorrow and drag your friends and your aunts and your uncles and your co-workers, we're going to win here in Pennsylvania", Sanders declared at a rally at Drexel University where he was greeted with boisterous cheers by a crowd of more than 3,000 people as he promised to fight a "rigged economy" and take on a "corrupt" campaign finance system.

"We've got lyin' Ted and crooked Hillary", Trump said, using his moniker for the Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Still, Sanders aides say they see a path to the nomination and plan on a huge victory in California on June 7.

Five states - Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Rhode Island - hold primaries today, which means big delegate hauls for both the Democrats and Republicans.

Thunderstorm, hail is possible later in day on Sunday

Even this is conditional though, and there's some potential that the severe threat will wind up being east of the Ozarks. Remember you can always download our First Alert Weather App for the latest information at the palm of your hand.

Sanders had a clear message, that political revolution - meaning his supporters need to show up in droves - is the only way his agenda can be accomplished.

While the statewide Republican victor gets 17 delegates, the other 54 are directly elected by voters and can support any candidate at a convention. And by the way, this is not just talking off the top of my head virtually every poll that's out there as you know shows that Bernie Sanders does better against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton does better against other Republican candidates.

Even in the event they sweep those three states - taking 109 delegates off the board - Trump would still be on pace to finish the primary season fewer than 50 votes shy of the magic number.

Billionaire Charles Koch, a mega-funder for conservative causes, said in an interview Sunday with ABC's "This Week" that the Republican candidates were "terrible role models" and did not see how he could support them.

The newfound allies acknowledge their only hope of success lies in blocking Trump from reaching 1,237 delegates before the convention. Maryland has a total of 38 delegates. I don't think so, I don't think so.

Thomson Reuters Corp (TRI) Stock Rating Reaffirmed by RBC Capital

Earnings excluding some items rose to 48 cents a share, the New York-based company said Tuesday in a statement. Thomson Reuters Corp (NYSE:TRI) is scheduled to announce its Q116 earnings results on Tuesday, April 26th.

How many delegates are needed to win the nomination? According to the poll, Trump is the favorite of 55 percent of likely GOP primary voters in the state; Kasich gets 18 percent; and U.S. Sen. While she can't win enough delegates to officially knock Sanders out of the race this week, she can erase any lingering doubts about her standing.

"This is not a presidential person", Trump said, mimicking the OH governor attempting to put too much food in his mouth.

Trump supporter Michael Scott is 26-years-old and lives in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

But first, Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania Tuesday. This is perhaps Sanders's best chance to pull out a win, with the most recent poll showing him in the lead.
As authorities investigated that scene, they received a second call about another shooting at 8:32 p.m.at another location less than a mile down the road. They say the suspect was later found dead in his own garage.

In the AP interview, Shedd said: "I've been with the Columbia County Sheriff's office for 26 years, and this is the largest shooting in terms of victims that I've ever encountered". Lauren Hawes did not say which of the victims was her grandmother or her cousin.

According to the Augusta Chronicle, three males and two females were involved in a shooting that authorities said may have been domestic-related.

VW to buy back over 500 000 cars

Volkswagen Group said it has now set aside 16.2 billion euros ($18.2 billion) to deal with the cost of the scandal. The cars which have been recalled include brands like Mercedes, Audi, Porsche , Opel and Volkswagen .

SHERIFF'S OFFICE/EPA Georgia shooting suspect Wayne Anthony Hawes was a 'ticking time bomb, ' his daughter said.

On Friday night the county coroner confirmed that five people were killed in a pair shootings in two locations. "And there we had two victims". Hawes killed five people on Friday in retaliation for his wife moving out and declaring that she planned to file for divorce.

Hawes killed five people at two addresses before he killed himself inside his home, Columbia County Sheriff Captain Andy Shedd said.

12-year-old Dima Al-Wawai served nearly five months

The girl has served more than two months in prison after she was found carrying a knife and convicted of attempted manslaughter. According to the prison report , in February five children in jail were under 14, while seven were detained without charges.

The victims from the first shooting were identified as Roosevelt Burns, 75; Rheba Mae Dent, 85; and Kelia Clark, 31.

They did not want to go on camera, but they say that the tipping point came when his wife told him last weekend that she was leaving him. Evidence suggests that most of the victims were asleep at the time that they were shot, including a young mother who was cradling her four-day-old baby. She said she thought Hawes was a nice person, but he made a "stupid" decision.
The attacks on Kasich come after he and Ted Cruz announced they are joining forces to stop Trump from winning the Republican presidential nomination.

There has been a recent flurry of allegations within the Mississippi Republican Party that it is getting ready to "delegate stack" for or against either of the three candidates.

Mr Trump campaigned in Maryland on Sunday, which will vote tomorrow along with four other states, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Now he is going to change because he needs to appeal to leaders in the Republican Party.

But he is not there yet.

Celtics down Hawks in OT, even series

Boston feasted on those miscues, as the extra chances were the only reason the C's entered the second half down only two points. While the Celtics have not been awful in this department, they have certainly not been as strong as they should be.

In an interview Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation, Kasich said the conservative organization known as the Club for Growth is "working aggressively against me because they are for somebody else", a reference to the organization's endorsement of Cruz.

Both candidates are looking to prevent Trump from securing a majority of delegates - 1,237 - on the first ballot at the GOP convention that starts July 18 in Cleveland.

Trump is already ahead in the delegate race with 845, followed by Cruz with 559 and Kasich with 147, according to the Associated Press. Ted Cruz won't campaign in New Mexico or Oregon.

Donald Trump strategist Paul J. Manafort, left, chats with former presidential candidate Ben Carson as they head to a Trump for president reception at the Republican National Committee Spring Meeting, Thursday, April 21, 2016, in Hollywood, Fla.

"Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans", Cruz's campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said in a statement explaining the new plans.

Spotify slams Tidal's Beyonce exclusive

Rachel posted a photo captioned, "Good hair don't care but we will take good lighting for selfies or self-truths always". The availability of " Lemonade " so soon on iTunes may dampen new subscriptions for Tidal in the coming days.

"Marco Rubio, as an example, has more delegates than Kasich and yet suspended his campaign one month ago. It takes two guys _ longtime politicians - to try and get together to try and beat Trump". "But in politics, because it's a rigged system - because it's a corrupt enterprise - in politics, you're allowed to collude", he said. Both campaigns have announced that they would cede states to the stronger of the two in some of the forthcoming contests. If Donald Trump is the nominee, Hillary Clinton wins and Indiana's coal industry will be bankrupted.

"Let me make this real, real simple for the folks in the media who find this conversation very confusing", he said, pausing for effect. That's hard to say because Trump, while winning plenty of primaries, is having a hard time lining up delegate support, even in states he has won.

"I've never told them not to vote for me", Kasich told reporters at a Philadelphia diner, when asked about his IN supporters.

The deal gives Mr. Cruz a better chance of consolidating the anti-Trump vote in IN the way he did in Wisconsin. Cruz will focus on IN, the campaign said, while Kasich would devote his efforts to OR and New Mexico. If Mr Trump does not win the nomination in the first ballot, delegates are then free to vote as they please. Kasich is pulling back in IN, telling his supporters to vote for Cruz in next week's primary.
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The Libyan UN-backed unity government is steadily asserting itself as the sole central administration of the war-torn country as it announced Monday it took control of the foreign ministry in Tripoli once in the hands of rival and staunch opposed Islamist administration.

The takeover of the foreign ministry adds up to six other ministries already in the hands of the unity government hashed out in December after lengthy and arduous talks held in Morocco under the aegis of the UN.

The new Libyan authority is expected to take over other ministries in the near future heralding thus the seating of its authority in the Libyan capital that was one month ago still controlled by the self-imposed Salvation Government.

The cabinet Ministers will begin working as soon as they take oath even though they are still unvested by the countrys Tobruk-based legislature which needs to endorse the proposed cabinet before it takes office.

Lawmakers in the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR) failed on Monday April 18 for the sixth time to vote on the UN-backed unity government after a handful of anti-unity government members of the House managed to head off the meeting even though a majority of members were in favor of nominal Prime Minister Faiez Serrajs GNA.

The following Thursday, 102 MPs signed a declaration backing the GNA and expressing their desire to meet in a different location free of intimidation and threats to conduct the vote.

In a separate report, Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi on Monday told media that the US is ready to support the NATO-backed Italian naval operation meant to cut off migrant routes to Europe from Libyan coasts.

Barack Obama said he was willing to commit NATO assets to block the traffic in human beings and the people smugglers that we refer to as modern slavers, he said after meeting with US President in the German city of Hanover Monday.

Italy which has been main destination of migrants setting off from the Libyan coast has launched with support of the NATO a naval operation aiming at stemming the waves of boasts washing its coasts. Italian authorities are looking to expand the plan to Libyan borders.

The re-structured plan aiming at stopping people using Libya as a launch pad for reaching Europe, will include flying migrants with no claim to asylum back to their home countries, which will be paid to set up reception centers to reintegrate them, the New Arab says.

Germany has also reportedly stood by the plan but wants the operation to be led by the EU and not by the NATO.

British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond said on Sunday in an interview with the Telegraph that all options are on the table for a military intervention in Libya to defeat IS which he said can send militants across the Mediterranean to mount attacks in Europe and the UK.
Egyptian security forces Monday fiercely broke out the protests that were planned to vent frustration against President al-Sisis recent decision to surrender two Red Sea strategic islands to Saudi Arabia.

Hours before the start of the protest called for by leftists, seculars and Islamists, police forces took positions at strategic locations in the Egyptian capital and blocked access to the Tahrir square, the epicenter of 2011 protests.

Police forces atop of armored vehicles also raided strategic positions in the Dokki district and took position at the Press syndicate headquarters in central Cairo asking pedestrians IDs.

The Dokki district was the scene of cat-and-mouse game between security forces and protestors who managed to hold gatherings into side streets.

Elsewhere at Mesaha square, a group of protesters estimated at 500 led by prominent pro-democracy activists managed to gather chanting the anti-al-Sis slogans. They were soon after dispersed by vans of security forces in full riot gear. The careered forces shot tear gas and birdshots and arrested several protesters.

According to press reports, 11 local and foreign journalists were arrested but were later on released. Only one journalist remained in custody.

The Monday protest was the second major demonstration since President al-Sisi came to power in 2014 after winning presidential election. On April 15, around 2,000 people took to the streets to condemn the secret maritime demarcation deal with Saudi Arabia relinquishing the Tiran and Sanafir strategic islands situated at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba off the coast of Sinai to Saudi Arabia as part of multi-billion-deals signed the Saudi kings visit to Cairo earlier this month.

The cabinet said the islands belong to Saudi Arabia which in 1950 left them under Egypts protection for fear that Israel would attack them.

Millions of Egyptian criticized the deal accusing al-Sisi of selling off the islands for Saudi aid.
Tunisian President revealed that though he has been opposed to military action in Libya to help crash IS militants, he is for targeted air strikes against IS jihadists whose actions still pose a big threat to Tunisias stability.

Caid Essebsi told Italian paper La Stampa of his determination to combat IS which he said is not a religious movement but a political group seeking to seize power.

Daech combatants are not Muslims and do not represent Islam, Essebsi said.

Tunisia has borne the brunt of the chaos in Libya where the IS militants have taken refuge, setting up their training camps from where they launch attacks in the region.

Three terrorist attacks all of them claimed by IS hit the country last year killing dozens of people including foreign tourists.

Tunisian forces have been on alert as authorities struggle to stem the flow of IS militants across the lengthy and porous border between the country and Libya.

The border town of Ben Guerdane was theatre of clashes between militants and military forces early March. An army of jihadists attacked a military barrack and National Guards positions killing several military and civilian persons while more than 50 terrorists were also reportedly killed after several days of military push-backs.

Also In February more than 40 terrorists the majority of whom were Tunisians were killed in an US air raid in the town of Sabratha, West of Tripoli.

To combat the jihadist movement the Tunisian President argues that government should tackle it from cultural and social angles by creating jobs for youth and developing impoverished regions.

Re-iterating his support to the Libyan nominal Prime Minister Serraj, Essebsi indicated that it is urgent for Tunisia to see the Libyan unity government taking control of affairs and tackling issues because Tunisia was the most affected by the instability that followed the revolution.
Ways of enhancing security and intelligence cooperation ties between Morocco and Gabon were reviewed Monday in Libreville at a meeting between president Ali Bongo Ondimba and Moroccan interior minister Mohamed Hassad.

The meeting was attended by Head of the Moroccan Intelligence agency Mohamed Yassine Mansouri and Head of Moroccos secret services Abdellatif Hammouchi, who is also Chief of General Directorate of National Security (DGSN) and Gabons top security officials.

The visit of Hassad to Gabon comes few days after the trip made last Friday to Brussels at the invitation of Belgian peer Jan Jambon. The fight against terror, organized crime and illegal immigration were at the center of Moroccan-Belgian talks.

Following the breakthrough made by the Moroccan intelligence services which helped the French police to pinpoint the hideout of the terrorists responsible for the Paris deadly attacks, several European countries reached out to Morocco seeking assistance and cooperation in the fight against Islamic militants and extremists.

Spain, Belgium and other European countries have indeed stepped up their security cooperation with the North African kingdom following the Paris attacks, acknowledging that the Moroccan intelligence input was vital and helped foil further terror plots and save lives.

In Ivory Coast, which was targeted lately by Islamic terrorists, Moroccan intelligence services have also helped local security authorities to identify the mastermind of the March 13 massacre which left 19 dead.

Following the Grand-Bassam attacks, Morocco offered this African country intelligence assistance in investigations into the deadly terror act claimed by AQIM, Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

In a phone call with President Alassan Ouattara, King Mohammed VI offered to send a team to support Ivorian authorities in the probe and later in the day a top Moroccan security delegation arrived in Abidjan.

The delegation members, which included namely Interior Minister Mohamed Hassad and Head of secret services Abdellatif Hammouchi, were received in person by President Alassan Ouattara.

According to a UN report, the Moroccan Intelligence is the most powerful intelligence agency in the Middle East and North Africa because of its ability to ensure national security and prevent terrorism.

Moroccos counter-terrorism has proven its efficiency in thwarting terror threats at home and overseas. It is based on a global approach including prevention, anticipation, education, rehabilitation, eradication of terrorism roots and international cooperation.

Moroccan intelligence services have been guarding against terrorist attacks since 2011, when 15 people were killed in a bombing targeting a cafe in Marrakesh, one of the worlds popular tourist destinations.

The Moroccans are waging tireless war against Islamic extremists and fanatics as shown by the numerous Isis cells disrupted in the country.

According to newly set up Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation (BCIJ), dubbed Moroccos FBI, nearly thirty deadly terror plots were foiled in the past year alone.

Such results are highly rated and recognized worldwide. Intelligence sharing combined with regional and international cooperation are the key of success in the field.

At a time a growing number of European and African countries are reaching out to Moroccans to benefit from their security experience, their Algerian neighbors are unfortunately still ducking and snubbing.

Needless to say that terrorism is an international phenomenon which needs international response.
A visiting delegation of French Senators Monday lauded the Mohammed VI Institute for Imams training as a role-model centre for collective peace.

The delegation which is on an information mission to get informed on the Moroccan experience in the training of religious officers, preachers, Imams and counsellors, visited Monday afternoon the Rabat-based Mohammed VI Institute for Imams Training.

The delegation members said they were impressed by the role and mission played by this institution and wished that more French imams would benefit from the training cycle provided by the center.

The delegation members, led by Corinne Feret, chairwoman of the Information Mission on the organization, place and funding of Islam in France, met with French as well as African students involved in the peace building program sponsored entirely by Morocco.

The senators hailed Morocco for its efforts to preach a moderate Islam, deeming the Moroccan experience worth replicating in other places around the world.

Senator Corinne Feret said in a statement to MAP that this magnificent Training Institute stands out as a very interesting and inspiring model as it offers future imams both religious and professional training to enable them to have the necessary skills to perform their job right at the end of their training.

She said further that cohabitation between the 1,200 students from different countries sheds light on the centres approach of vivre ensemble.

Other members of the delegation, including Senator Nathalie Meriem Goulet and Senator Andre Reichardt, co-rapporteurs of the mission, praised Morocco for what they described as a huge investment for the benefit of our collective security. They underlined that the young African and French imams trained in this Institute will promote moderate Islam, peace, tolerance and the fight against extremism.

The Mohammed VI Institute awards scholarships to young Muslim men and women from around the world who enrol for training on moderate Islam and tolerance as upheld by the Maliki rite.

The Institute which is part of Moroccos relentless efforts to promote moderate Islam as a means to counter extremism and fanaticism and to foster security and stability at home and beyond has been often hailed as a shield against radical Islamism as it seeks to inculcate in Imams the precepts of a tolerant and non-violent form of Islam and teach them how to fight extremism and religious radicalization through sound argumentation and dialog.

The importance of dialog was once again underlined by King Mohammed VI last week in the speech he delivered during the first Morocco-GCC summit held last week in Riyadh.

The King had then called on Islamic scholars from different jurisprudence schools and rites to engage in an in-depth dialogue to correct misrepresentations, convey the true image of Islam and uphold the tolerant values of this religion.

The Kings call mirrors the North African countrys deep conviction that the best war against terrorism is the war of ideas. Actually, explaining to would-be jihadists the true message of Islam, disseminating the doctrine of the Islam of the middle path and propagating a vision of religion based on tolerance, intercultural dialogue and respect of other faiths is the best means to counter fanatical propaganda.
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Kasich cant even collude properly. Photo: Alex Wong/2016 Getty Images

The temporary alliance between Ted Cruz and John Kasich, which was announced on Sunday with much fanfare, is already full of holes. In an effort to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump from winning still more delegates (he currently holds 845 to Cruzs 559 and Kasichs 148), the Kasich campaign said it would effectively stop campaigning in Indiana to clear the way for a Cruz victory there, while Cruz would do the same for Kasich in New Mexico and Oregon. But it seems both candidates are reluctant to back down.

I never told them not to vote for me  they should vote for me, Kasich said of his Indiana supporters during a press meeting in Philadelphia on Monday. He clarified that, just because hes not spending resources in Indiana doesnt mean hes given up there. We have limited resources, he said. Mine is like the peoples campaign; weve been outspent basically 50 to 1. Kasich also reportedly plans to keep raising money in Indiana and to meet with the states governor on Tuesday.

But a few hours earlier, Kasichs Indiana co-chair said the opposite: Kasich is asking his supporters in Indiana to vote for Cruz so Trump does not win Indiana.

Cruz also seems to believe Kasich is giving up his bid for Indiana; at a rally in Borden, Cruz said it was big news that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana to give us a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump and that the deal to split up resources in the three states made sense from both campaigns. But the Trusted Leadership super-pac, which supports the Texas senator, will reportedly continue to air an anti-Kasich ad there, hinting that Cruz might not be as confident in Kasichs deference as he claims.

Meanwhile, Cruzs campaign reportedly discouraged voters from engaging in tactical voting, a.k.a. voting for Kasich just to keep votes from Trump. We never tell voters who to vote for, read a suggested Cruz talking point, according to the New York Times. Were simply letting folks know where we will be focusing our time and resources.

Trump, for his part, is using the confusion to his advantage. Honestly, it shows such total weakness, he said of the deal at a rally in Rhode Island. Its pathetic when two longtime insider politicians  Establishment guys, whether you like it or not  have to collude, have to get together to try to beat a guy that really speaks what the people want. From the looks of things, though, Cruz and Kasich might not be able to keep it together long enough for their collusion to work.
Donald Trumps new BFF. Photo: Mike Coppola/2016 Getty Images

Fox viewers will once more have the chance to see Megyn Kelly and Donald Trump fight on television. After an unannounced meeting at Trump Tower earlier this month during which the pair cleared the air, Trump has agreed to be interviewed by Kelly for a prime-time special that will air May 17, with extended clips appearing on Kellys show, The Kelly File, the next day.

Mr. Trump and I sat down together for a meeting earlier this month at my request, Kelly said in a statement. He was gracious with his time and I asked him to consider an interview. I am happy to announce he has agreed, and I look forward to a fascinating exchange  our first sit-down interview together in nearly a year.

And for good reason  this is the first time in nearly a year that hostilities between Kelly and Trump have cooled. Their feud began during the first Republican debate last August when Kelly called Trump out for the way he publicly refers to women. Afterwards, Trump declared hed been treated very unfairly and suggested this was because Kelly had blood coming out of her wherever. Trump then declined to appear at two subsequent events in which Kelly was involved, and hes attacked her so viciously on Twitter that Fox was forced to come to her defense.

According to a statement from Fox, the special wont shy away from the whole feud thing, either. Kelly will explore how events unfolded with Trump after the August debate as one of the most prominent voices covering the 2016 presidential campaign of the front-runner, the network said. She will also examine Trumps successful campaign for the White House to date and his role in one of the most historic presidential runs in modern times.

Offering Trump an olive branch was a strategic move for Kelly. By negotiating with Trump without the help of her boss, Fox CEO Roger Ailes, Kelly  who is in the final year of her Fox contract  proved her worth as a network commodity. Her interview with Trump will be beneficial for both parties: Trump will get to show off his presidential side, and Kelly will appear in rare form just before competing networks are expected to shower her with offers.

Even better, the draw of Trump and Kelly in a room together is bound to jump-start Foxs ratings. The art of the deal is alive and well.
Maryland eighth-district congressional candidate Will Jawando greets members of the Rockville/Midcounty Democratic Breakfast Club on January 18, 2016, in Rockville, Maryland. Photo: Kate Patterson/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Will Jawando, a candidate for Congress in Marylands eighth congressional district, is visiting Millennium Salon, an elegant little barbershop located in a small house in downtown Silver Spring. Jawandos been getting his hair cut here for years, but today hes got a different purpose: convincing a few more people to vote for him in the Democratic primary.

There arent any here, though  its early afternoon, exactly a week ahead of the April 26 primary and the only patron in the shop, Reverend Jean Robinson-Casey, tells Jawando that she and her husband already voted for him. Not that he can afford to leave anything to chance in the last days of the race. In just about any other congressional district in the country, Will Jawando would be a Democratic dream recruit. He has the life story that fans of the president might love: The son of an African immigrant dad and a white mom from Kansas (sound familiar?), Jawando grew up in a working-class family in the district, where he still lives with his wife, Michele, a lawyer, and their three young daughters. Jawando, who started his political career working for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and later served in the White House as the associate director of the Office of Public Engagement, has what Josh Kurtz, a journalist and longtime observer of Maryland politics, calls just about the perfect pedigree for an aspiring young politician, and far and away the most natural political talent in his race. Hes young, charismatic, and fluent in public policy, and has racked up an impressive list of high-profile endorsers hoping he makes it to Congress, including the legendary Georgia representative John Lewis, well-liked Maryland Democrat representative Elijah Cummings, former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, and former NAACP president Ben Jealous, to name a few.

But Jawando isnt running in any other congressional district in the country. Hes running in the Washington suburbs  a district that, like Washington itself, is a heady mix of inequality and contradictions  home to immigrants and working-class families but also to the posh enclaves where official Washington goes to raise a family. The result is that Democrats have, depending on your view of things, an embarrassment of riches, or just a plain old embarrassment: There are nine people running on the Democratic side alone, several of whom are promising candidates, but the campaign has already turned into the most expensive House race in the country, even as its candidates complain about the outsized role of money in politics. One of them, a millionaire businessman named David J. Trone, is running as a self-described underdog, even as hes blown past the record for biggest self-funder in the history of House races. Ive spent $9.1 million to date on my campaign. Campaigns shouldnt be this expensive, Trone wrote in a large ad he placed in the Washington Post earlier this month, before giving himself another $2.5 million last week. But they are, especially when youre a big underdog in a fragmented media market.

And hes not the only one spending loads of money: Kathleen Matthews, a hyperpolished, Clinton-esque former news anchor and corporate executive married to MSNBCs Chris Matthews, has raised more than $2.5 million, including a $500,000 contribution she made herself, and State Senator Jamie Raskin  husband of Sarah Bloom Raskin, the U.S. deputy secretary of the Treasury  has brought in more than $1.8 million.

Thats made it tough for someone like Jawando  long on charisma and talent but short on the money needed to keep up with his better-funded competitors  to break through. Internal polling released by the Matthews campaign last month had him at 2 percent, and the race mostly looks like a three-way competition between the three candidates who spent the most: Trone, Matthews, and Raskin. One of the core arguments for Jawandos candidacy, as the only Millennial and only black candidate in the race, is that Congress needs to better reflect the diversity of the people they represent. When you keep sending the same people, from the same backgrounds, from the same schools, and from the same communities to Congress and expect different results, thats the definition of insanity. Theres a reason 80 percent of our Congress is white and 51 percent are millionaires. Its not a coincidence, he likes to tell voters. But effectively making the case in this kind of political environment, without millions to spend on advertising, can feel a little bit like shouting into the wind.

So in the final week of his campaign, hes doing it the old-fashioned way: waking up early every morning to head to the metro at 7 a.m. and ask for votes. He sees reasons to be hopeful: At the end of the last candidate forum (Jawando went to 25 similar events in the primary, he says), a 92-year-old woman approached him and told him she was supporting him because he represented the future. Its hard, he says, of the long hours, but this is how I know Im supposed to be doing it  I get energy from talking to people.

Confident hes earned the support of the lone voter at Millennium Salon, Jawando makes his way over to another barbershop near the Silver Spring metro called Afrikutz. Theyre having a slow afternoon, too, but its owner, Oscar Masuku, lives in the district and tells Jawando that hes supporting him because none of the other candidates in the race bothered to come to the shop and ask for his vote. Jawando continues to make his way through the neighborhood, greeting local restaurant owners and wary passersby, landing finally at his last stop of the tour, Ebony Barbers. Norman Jones, one of the co-owners of the shop, eyes him up. Are you running for office or something? he asks.

Jawando tells Jones hes running for Congress, and a woman named Reverend Mary Graham, whos having her hair cut in Joness chair, asks him to spin her around so she can take a look. What seat are you running for? she asks. Jawando explains that hes running to replace Congressman Chris Van Hollen (who is pursuing a U.S. Senate seat), and Grahams eyes go wide. She begins to tell him, at length, how she first met the congressman at a fund-raiser years ago.

Jawando senses an opening, so he gives the capsule summary of his resume. Graham seems impressed, so he keeps going: I grew up here. Dads from Nigeria, moms from Kansas, he says.

Graham, whos now taken a pamphlet from Jawando and is looking it over, emits a long, effusive: Wowww.

We need some new people, we need some new blood in this race, he says.

Who are you running against? Jones asks.

Jawando picks up a huge stack of David Trone booklets sitting near the front desk of the shop. This is one of them, he says, laughing, so Im going to make sure I take these with me!

You can definitely take them with you, Jones says.

Youd be co-workers with Elijah? Graham asks, referring to Elijah Cummings, the Maryland Democrat.

He just endorsed me yesterday, Jawando says. One of the biggest honors Ive received is being endorsed by him and John Lewis.

Jawando has clearly won Graham over. Oh my God, he endorsed you too? John Lewis?! she says. Jawando notes that Lewis has only endorsed two people this cycle: Hillary Clinton and him. Are you serious? she says. Wow, that means a lot! Im very proud of you.

This would be a perfect time to ask for her vote. But then she offers something that no congressional candidate wants to hear after hes pitched himself so successfully to a voter.

Im sad I cant vote for you, she says. But I live in D.C.

Still, the visit isnt a waste. Jones agrees to let Jawando put a sign in his window. And just before he leaves, a 21-year-old named Deandre Roberts comes up to shake his hand. I knew I was going to vote but didnt know I was going to vote for him, he says. But he actually came to a place I come to a good amount, so it means that he actually talks to the people, and that means a lot.

Thats one vote down. Only a few thousand more to go.
Voters cast their ballots in Chicago. Photo: Scott Olson/2016 Getty Images

The controversy over North Carolina legislation continues as a federal judge on Monday upheld a series of Republican-backed changes to the states voting laws. Opponents maintain that the sweeping changes leave minority voters at a disadvantage  a fact thats likely to impact the upcoming election, as North Carolina is traditionally a swing state. But District Judge Thomas Schroeder found that the plaintiffs, which included the U.S. Department of Justice and the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, failed to show that such disparities will have materially adverse effects on the ability of minority voters to cast a ballot.

The changes will prohibit people from registering and voting on the same day, end the early voting period seven days early, end preregistration (which allowed underage voters to register if theyd turn 18 by the date of the election), and prohibit ballots from being counted if theyre cast outside a voters home precinct. Schroeder also left intact a provision requiring North Carolina voters to have a photo ID.

Opponents of the changes say they disenfranchise minorities. By meticulously targeting measures that were most used by people of color, the legislature sought to disturb the levers of power in North Carolina, ensuring only a select few could participate in the democratic process, Penda D. Hair, co-director of the Advancement Project, said in a statement to the New York Times. A spokesperson for the Justice Department told the Times theyre reviewing the decision carefully and evaluating [their] options.

But Schroeder said the Justice Departments argument was made more difficult after black voter turnout increased in 2004, the Associated Press writes. And although he acknowledged the significant, shameful past discrimination in North Carolinas history, he also said that for the last quarter century, there is little official discrimination to consider.

Unsurprisingly, North Carolina governor Pat McCrory came out in support of the ruling.
Like? Photo: David Ramos/Getty Images

The American people have lost faith in their government. Decades of wage stagnation and political dysfunction have driven millions of voters into the anti-Establishment campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. But countless others survey the 2016 landscape and despair at all of their options: Must they choose between a Washington insider, a potty-mouthed reality star, or some half-dead Bolshevik? This silent majority puts down the newspaper each morning and sighs, Who will speak out for the normal, salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar folks who want to see their political system disrupted by socially liberal, fiscally moderate innovators from Silicon Valley?

In Tuesdays Wall Street Journal, former Politico CEO Jim VandeHei heeds their call. VandeHei brings a unique perspective to the 2016 race, as he explains in his op-eds opening paragraph. While hes spent most of his adult life ensconced in the Washington, D.C. bubble, he also owns property in Lincoln, Maine, a blue collar town in the heart of Normal America. Drawing on his insights from decades of political reporting and occasional grocery-store conversations with unexceptional white people, VandeHei lays out his vision for how to unite America and reinvigorate its Establishment at the same time. In short, he calls on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to mount a third-party challenge, running as the nominee of the Innovation Party, on a platform of Social Security cuts, killer apps, and military rule.

The appeal of such a campaign is so intuitive, it seems hardly necessary to sweat the details of VandeHeis pitch. But those details are well worth examining, as they overflow with the reporters uncanny insights into the national psyche.

Normal America is right that Establishment America has grown fat, lazy, conventional and deserving of radical disruption, VandeHei begins. And the best, perhaps only way to disrupt the establishment is by stealing a lot of Donald Trumps and Bernie Sanderss tricks and electing a third-party candidate.

Specifically, VandeHei suggests that in order to win over Americas heartland, this candidate will need to engage voters daily on social media, with fun and flare. (Think Trump with impulse control and better spelling.). The candidate should also draw on Sanderss populist shtick, by forcing the wealthy to forfeit their entitlement benefits. Medicare cuts for some, miniature American-flag emoji for others!

Next, VandeHei observes that there has been far too much nuance  and far too little fearmongering  in Americas debate about terrorism.

Exploit the fear factor. The candidate should be from the military or immediately announce someone with modern-warfare expertise or experience as running mate, he writes. A third-party candidate could build on death-by-drones by outlining the type of modern weapons, troops and war powers needed to keep America safe. And make plain when he or she will use said power. Do it with very muscular languagethere is no market for nuance in the terror debate.

Normal America wants a candidate who is less impulsive than Trump when using Twitter, but more impulsive when using military force. Also, theyd like to see the U.S. president introduce an app that makes it easier for children to meet strangers online.

We have breathtaking technology to find a ride or a date with the swipe of a screen. Those same innovators could help create a National App to match every kid who needs a mentor with a mentor, he writes.

Any candidate who followed VandeHeis advice to the letter would be extremely competitive in November. But the right standard-bearer could ensure a landslide for the Innovation Party. In one of the most well-reasoned paragraphs youll read this year, VandeHei lays out a dream team:

Right now, millions of young people are turned on by a 74-old-year socialist scolding Wall Street; millions of others by a reality-TV star with a 1950s view of women. Why not recruit Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg to head a third-party movement? Maybe we can convince Michael Bloomberg to help fund the movement with the billions he planned to spend on his own campaignand then recruit him to run Treasury and advise the president.

A lot of Americans hate plutocracy and enjoy misogyny. Therefore, they would love to vote for Facebooks top executives, in a campaign bankrolled by a Wall Street titan. This argument is so brilliant, you cant stare directly into it without frying your retinas.

After all, Zuckerberg, Sandberg, and Bloomberg all support free trade and open immigration  and if theres anything that unites Sanders and Trump supporters, its their enthusiasm for globalization. Furthermore, Zuckerberg is uniquely positioned to fulfill these voters desire for an outsider candidate  who is more of an outsider than a billionaire who isnt even old enough to constitutionally serve as president?

Upon finishing VandeHeis column, the reader cant help but be awed by its profundity. Still, after some hours of reflection, a single flaw in his argument becomes apparent: Why outsource this perfect platform to some big-name entrepreneur or army general? Wouldnt it be more authentic, disruptive, and innovative for the visionary himself to throw his hat in the ring? VandeHei is planning to leave Politico by years end, so hes clearly available.

Please, Jim VandeHei, do not hoard your brilliance in the private sector. Now more than ever, our fragile republic needs a practitioner of D.C. access journalism, with a fetish for preemptive wars, Silicon Valley CEOs, and grand bargains, to tell it what to do.
Photo-Illustration: Daily Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images

Five northeastern states (Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island) hold presidential primaries for both parties today; in Maryland and Pennsylvania, state primaries are held at the same time. The polls close at 8 p.m. in all five states.

On the Republican side, the April 26 primaries have almost been overshadowed by the shaky deal struck by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns to give each other some leeway in three later primaries (Cruz in Indiana on May 3; Kasich in Oregon on May 17 and New Mexico on June 7), where one, but not both of them, might have a chance to defeat Donald Trump. And indeed, significant parts of the northeastern GOP primaries are rather cut and dried. Delawares 16 delegates are awarded winner-take-all, and Trump has been far ahead in the polls there. Rhode Islands 19 delegates are awarded proportionately, and the only real drama there is whether Cruz falls short of the 10 percent threshold for winning any of them. Seventeen delegates are awarded to the statewide winner in Pennsylvania and 14 to the statewide winner in Maryland; thats very likely to be Trump in both cases.

That leaves Connecticut and the congressional-district winners in Maryland and Pennsylvania up in the air.

Connecticuts 13 statewide delegates are awarded much like New Yorks: A majority of the vote takes them all (and Trumps been running just over 50 percent in most recent polls), but otherwise they are awarded proportionately with a 20 percent minimum threshold for any of them. Its winner-take-all for the three delegates awarded in each of the states five congressional districts. Trumps strongly favored in all but one.

Maryland awards three delegates to the winner in each of its congressional districts, and theres a chance Kasich can win a couple of districts in the D.C. suburbs and that Cruz could win in western Maryland.

Pennsylvania is the real puzzler, since the 54 congressional-district delegates (three for each district) run individually by name rather than candidate preference, and will go to the convention unbound no matter what they say before or after the primary. The Cruz campaign has been boasting about the number of CD delegates it thinks it will win, though a fair number of delegate candidates are indicating theyll vote for whoever carries the state or their district. Pennsylvanias unbound delegates are very likely to be a constant source of speculation before and after Cleveland, particularly if Trump gets close to, but not across, the 1,237 delegate threshold to nail down the nomination on June 7.

All in all, Trump will probably earn the headlines tomorrow night unless Kasich does unusually well in Connecticut and Maryland and benefits from some of the new alternative to Trump hype.

As always, the drama on the Democratic side is limited by those boring proportional delegate-allocation rules, which means Hillary Clinton isnt going to officially nail down the nomination until (probably) June 7, and Bernie Sanders wont be able to deny her the nomination until June, either. But by all accounts, April 26 should be a pretty good day for the front-runner. Clinton has double-digit leads in the polls in Maryland and Pennsylvania, two states where her bastion of support among African-Americans should matter. She has more modest leads in under-polled Delaware and in Connecticut, and shes in a virtual tie with Sanders in Rhode Island.

Even if Sanders were to pull upsets in Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island to win three of five contests, Clinton is likely to add to her pledged-delegate lead overall, which again means Sanders is going to need an improbably big win in California to catch her. You will likely hear more complaining about participation rules from the Sanders camp tomorrow night: Rhode Island is the only state that allows independents to vote in party primaries (either of them, actually), and the four other states do not have liberal (i.e. late or primary-day) allowances for re-registration to change party affiliation.

As noted above, Maryland and Pennsylvania are holding down-ballot primaries as well. There are red-hot Democratic Senate primaries in both states, with representatives Chris van Hollen and Donna Edwards battling for the nomination to succeed Barbara Mikulski in Maryland, and former representative Joe Sestak trying to fend off White Housebacked Katie McGinty for the chance to face Republican senator Pat Toomey.
Charter is buying Time Warner Cable for $78 billion. Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Time Warner Cable  the company New Yorkers love to curse when their internet goes out at the absolute worst possible time  is set to get a new owner. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has recommended approval for Charter Communications $78 billion acquisition of the company, and the Department of Justice, which had been looking into whether the deal would violate antitrust laws, has signed off, as well. The DOJ agreement also covers Charters $10.4 billion takeover of Bright House Networks, and the new combined company would be the countrys second-largest cable and internet service provider.

The approvals, however, come with some conditions for the new mega-company. Charter, for instance, has agreed to build out broadband service to 2 million more homes, half of which will be in markets where Charter competes with another high-speed internet provider. The company also agreed not to implement data caps and usage-based billing for as long as seven years. Charter also agreed to refrain from telling its content providers that they cannot also sell shows online. Said the DOJ in a court filing: Continued growth of OVDs (online video) promises to deliver more competitive choices and a greater ability for consumers to customize their consumption of video content to their individual viewing preferences and budgets.

Charter began pursuing Time Warner Cable as far back as 2013. The following year, Time Warner Cable rejected those attempts, and Comcast (the nations largest cable provider) instead attempted to buy the company for $45 billion. That deal fell through as regulators raised anti-trust concerns, and last year, Charter and Time Warner Cable resumed talks.



No word yet on the future of NY1.
Berning man.

Bernie Sanders has become allergic to the words I will support Hillary Clinton if she wins the nomination. While the Vermont senator has already pledged to support the Democratic nominee in the general election, he refused to reiterate that pledge in three separate interviews over the past 24 hours. In all three appearances, the Vermont senator argued that he couldnt deliver his supporters to Clinton even if he tried. Rather, Sanders suggested that the Democratic front-runner will need to earn their support  by adopting all of his policy positions.







Speaking at an MSNBC town hall in Philadelphia Tuesday night, the democratic socialist gave Clinton the following instructions for stealing the hearts of Sandernistas:

It is incumbent upon her to tell millions of people who right now do not believe in Establishment politics or Establishment economics, who have serious misgivings about a candidate who has received millions of dollars from Wall Street and other special interests, she has got to go out to you and to millions of other people and say, you know, I think the United States should join the rest of the industrialized world and take on the private insurance companies and the greed of the drug companies and pass Medicare for all.

Sanders repeated this point on MSNBCs Morning Joe Tuesday, dismissing the idea that he could snap his fingers and get all of his supporters to back Clinton.

That same morning, CNNs Chris Cuomo asked Sanders if he would commit to supporting Clinton unconditionally, even if his preferred policies on health care and climate change did not make it into the Democratic platform.

Well, then, well see what happens. Were going to have a lot of delegates there, fighting the fight, Sanders said. The winner, whether it is Secretary Clinton or myself, our job is then to go out to the American people on a platform that makes sense to the working families in this country.

Assuming Clinton doesnt spontaneously combust between now and July, she will be the Democratic nominee. But Sanders has maintained a firm grip on the partys millennial voters, winning the cohort by 30 points in last weeks New York primary. The senators overwhelming popularity with one of the Obama coalitions key demographics has heightened the stakes of when and how he makes his eventual endorsement. In media interviews and opinion polls, a substantial minority of Sanders supporters express deep reservations about casting their ballots for Clinton in November.

Sanders hopes to leverage his influence with these skeptical lefties for all its worth  which is to say, for some symbolic platform concessions. But if the Republican Party nominates its pseudo-fascist front-runner, Clinton may feel less pressure to throw Bernie-lovers a bone: In a race where Charles Koch is a swing voter, Clinton might not need the #BernieorBust crowd to carry her into the Oval Office.
Emilio and Gloria Estefan at the Actors Fund gala. Photo: Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images

Gloria and Emilio Estefan are happy that Karl Lagerfeld will show his Chanel cruise collection in Havana. Thats wonderful, Gloria said at the Actors Fund gala on Monday, where the two were honored. The more people that go there and show them the free world, thats great for the Cuban people, Emilio said, even though they still fiercely oppose the Castro regime.

Despite the fact that the clothing is inaccessible to all but the wealthiest Cubans, they still see the Chanel show as a good thing.

Listen, it doesnt matter, its there, the image is there, theyre seeing beautiful clothes, theyre seeing fashion, Gloria said. And by the way, Cuba was huge in the fashion world. In Cuba B.C.  before Castro  the fashion would come out in Paris, and it would be in Cuba the same day. And it was a very, very elegant country; people dressed to the nines there. If you look at the fashions of Cuba in the 30s, 40s, 50s, it was always cutting edge of fashion. So one day again it shall be. Right now, theyre just trying to find something that they can wear, and its tough.

She added that when planning their Broadway musical On Your Feet, she and Emilio based some of the costumes on old photos of her mother, who, she says, dressed beautifully when she lived in Cuba. Cuban women would not leave the house unless they were put together. Whether they were going to the supermarket or wherever it was, they were very well dressed, and we wanted to capture that here in the play.
Photo: Ferenc Wagner/EyeEm/Getty Images

Despite the implication of photo euphemisms, not all vulvas look like symmetrical coin purses or pretty orchids. Yet teen girls are increasingly asking gynecologists and plastic surgeons to trim their labia minora, or the inner lips. The requests are mostly for cosmetic reasons, though some girls do deal with pain or irritation during exercise or sex.

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons said it does not track labiaplasty numbers in teens or adults but the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery says that 400 girls 18 and younger had the procedure in 2015, up 80 percent from the 222 in 2014. Those are not huge numbers, but they dont include procedures done by gynecologists, if any.

Still, interest in teen labiaplasty is enough of a trend that it prompted the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to release new guidelines that address the procedure for the first time, and say that theres no consensus definition for enlarged labia (a.k.a. labial hypertrophy) or for surgical treatment thereof.

As Julie Strickland, MD, the chairwoman of ACOGs committee on adolescent health care, told the New York Times, labiaplasty isnt a minor surgery: It can lead to numbness, pain, scarring, or decreased sexual sensation. ACOG advises that doctors first assure patients that variation is normal  akin to the mission of the Tumblr-based Large Labia Project  and offer nonsurgical treatment options in addition to screening patients for body dysmorphic disorder.

The guidelines dont rule out cosmetic labiaplasty or recommend waiting until a specific age (like 18 for breast reduction or augmentation). Rather, Dr. Strickland said, consideration of surgery should wait until growth and development is complete. That sounds to us like waiting until 18. ACOG has already advised against labiaplasty in adults, saying it hasnt been proven to be safe or effective and can cause complications.

The gyno group doesnt claim to know exactly why interest in labiaplasty has increased, but they think its a combination of awareness of the procedure itself, the fact that there are idealized images of vulvas online, the trend in pubic-hair removal, and, public enemy No. 1, tight pants. (For what its worth, Debby Herbenick, a professor and researcher at the Kinsey Institute at the University of Indiana, previously told the Cut that she thinks the opposite might happen in adult women when it comes to pubes  perhaps removing hair helps women like their genitals more.)

These guidelines are certainly helpful but there will still be women and girls who head directly to a plastic surgeon before talking to their gyno  or after getting an answer they dont want to hear.
Katie Holmes and Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys Photo: Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

Are you okay? I asked my 22-year-old smart, pretty student Debbie last spring during office hours. She often had questions about class or the ambitious book she was working on. But tonight shed rushed over  still in a minidress, high heels, heavy eyeliner, and lipstick  upset about a bad experience shed just had with a famous older novelist now teaching at my alma mater, whom shed befriended on Facebook. What happened? I asked, worried.

She nervously combed her long, dark hair behind her ears. He wanted me to be his date for this fancy award ceremony tonight. I was excited, got all dressed up. It was fun. But then he asked me to go home with him. Gross. I said no way.

What did he do?

Nothing. I got the hell out of there. It was creepy. There was another girl there he was flirting with.

All the harassment, sexual-assault, roofie, and rape cases in colleges across the country were not distant news. Many of my students had shared similar sordid encounters, which scared me. Id sent several distraught women to school authorities, to the police to report crimes, to therapists, and to editors whod published their stories. Because I was a female professor and outspoken womens-rights advocate whod championed Debbies work, I knew she wanted me to be angry on her behalf, toe the conventional feminist line, take her side, see her as an innocent victim, and call the guy a harasser  or worse. Yet this time, I couldnt.

Im confused, I said. Why go on a date if you werent attracted to him?

I admire his writing. And I hoped hed blurb my book, she admitted. But that doesnt mean I was going to bed with him.

Of course not, I told her. Yet his proposition  and taking no for an answer  sounds fair. We dont have to vilify every man on the planet with a functioning libido.

Wow, she said. Youre taking this so personally.

She was right. It wasnt her actions that troubled me. I feared Id done what I was accusing Debbie of doing when I was her age. She didnt know that Id had an affair with an older professor and tried to make him the villain. The truth turned out to be more complex.

Decades earlier, as an overeager graduate student in Manhattan, Id dressed up for orientation, excited to introduce myself to the head of my program  a brilliant, acclaimed author.

Its such an honor to meet you, I said, shaking his hand.

Planning to finish your PhD by the end of the mixer? he quipped. He must have seen my application and knew that I was only 20, having skipped two grades.

Why? Are you threatened by fast women? Id asked, not catching my double entendre.

Maybe I am, he said, smiling, pulling his hand free from my grip.

He was about twice my age and academically dashing in his beige jacket and corduroys. Id admired his dark, hilarious books, which seemed like Philip Roth put to poetry.

I was a tall, thin-skinned Michigan girl with a big mouth, a big appetite, and big feet. Although my conservative parents didnt know what a masters in creative writing was, theyd reluctantly let me sell my orange Cutlass to help fund three terms in the big city. The minute I got to Greenwich Village, I never wanted to leave. I dreamed of becoming a famous author with bylines in magazines and books, just like my professor.

Showing up to his every office hour, Id hand him stacks of poems Id been revising until four in the morning.

Just one, hed say, then unleash his full, throaty laugh.

I morphed into a downtown New Yorker. I lost weight, donned thick, black eyeliner, low-cut, tight black clothes, and spiked black boots. My professor noticed, I could tell. At a holiday party at his apartment, he stood close to me, pointed to my heels, and joked, Youre trying to tower over me. I removed them to help clean up afterward. Then we sat on the wooden floor of his dusty one-bedroom, drinking cheap Chardonnay from paper cups, me barefoot, chattering anxiously.

You talk too much, too loud, too quickly, he cut me off. Noticing me blush, he said, Dont be nervous, were not having an affair or anything.

I wondered if I wanted to. Did he ever think of me outside of class, the way I thought of him? From his work I knew he was single, straight, and lonely. I wasnt sure if the spark I felt between us was my imagination.

Will you look at my latest rewrite? I begged, taking a revised poem from my purse.

He pulled out a pen and marked my page with squiggles and arrows. You have too many words, not enough music. I loved how honestly he critiqued me, our intellectual and erotic energy entangling.

I think Im falling for you, I blurted out, avoiding his eyes.

He cracked up. Humiliated, I couldnt hold back my tears.

Im sorry. His voice grew softer. Its just that everybody falls for the person who fixes their work.

Thats not why, I insisted.

Listen, I would never date a student, he said. I was crushed. Until he added, If only I werent your teacher. Hope!

After that, he invited me to book events, introducing me to his colleagues as a talented newcomer, elevating me socially  and creatively. Having his ear and his eyes on my work felt magical, mystical, enthralling. I was honored when he asked what I thought of his first drafts, thrilled when he took my suggestion to retitle a poem.

Before I completed my degree, he recommended me for a coveted position at The New Yorker, which I took, finishing my thesis by night. I told myself Id landed the full-time gig because Id aced their editorial test and hit it off with my fascinating female boss, whod been there since World War II. But without my professors referral, I may have landed next to my classmate as an assistant at Soap Opera Digest.

That May, I graduated and decided to stay in New York. Released from the confines of academia, my former professor took me to dinner. At a local Chinese dive, he told me how beautiful I was. Finally we kissed. Our connection intensified. It was awkward and scary, but switching from protegee to girlfriend made me feel special. His crowd embraced me. Friends my age were a little skeptical, perhaps because Id disappeared into his much more intellectually stimulating world. He was the oldest, wisest man Id ever dated. He said I was the only student hed ever touched. I believed him.

Yet the fantasy of having my professor fall for me was more exhilarating than the reality. With our feelings for each other no longer illicit, I found I was more comfortable in his classroom than his bedroom. Hearing him kvetch about his lower-back pain and receding hair was a turnoff. He didnt like that the job hed found me became my priority. He rolled his eyes when I exalted Gloria Steinem and analyzed different waves of feminism. I tired of him correcting my grammar and making fun of me when I read tabloids or watched TV talk shows. I nicknamed him Henry Higgins. He called my new short haircut too butch.

Youre too controlling, I argued. Id once imagined us as Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. Were we closer to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes?

I started smoking, toking, and drinking, all of which bothered him. He recommended I see a therapist. I refused, insisting hed been on the couch so long, I got analyzed by osmosis.

Rushing home from a meeting one day, he announced that hed been awarded a one-year fellowship in Israel and wanted me to accompany him. Although I was flattered, I couldnt afford it, I confessed.

Ill pay for everything.

I already have a job that you got me. I cant gallivant around as an appendage to a boyfriend.

We can get married, he said.

Two female students I knew had wed their former professors. Yet I felt rushed and overwhelmed. I wasnt sure I even wanted to get married. Or whether I was in love with him or the idea of him. Rather than take vows so young, I was yearning more for a mentor, a father figure. Im nowhere near ready for this, I told him, honestly.

Wounded by my cold response, he took off, refusing to return my calls. He was mortified. While Id put the brakes on a serious commitment, I hadnt meant to end everything. I was confused. If he saw me in our shared neighborhood, hed rush to cross the street. I felt guilty and grief-stricken. Yet completely ghosting me  not even returning a phone call  seemed cruel. Wasnt he supposed to be the mature one? Id never felt more alone or vulnerable. Breakups were bad enough, but I was afraid this split would exile me from my newfound colleagues and the literati crowd.

Indeed, when I later became a teacher, two students reported that hed badmouthed me, telling them not to take my class, claiming I had no idea what I was talking about. I couldnt believe hed publicly maligned me. I felt powerless and persecuted by an angry ex who could ruin my reputation. Freaked out, I finally did call a shrink. She reassured me that nobody would take his word over mine at this point. Then she asked what had originally drawn me to my professor. I said, He had this great apartment overstuffed with books, and brilliant writer friends, and smart editors publishing his work 

So you didnt want to marry him, you wanted to be him? she asked.

I nodded yes, awed by the distinction.

Amid debates of older men harassing, seducing, and manipulating female students and subordinates, it was tempting to see myself as the innocent prey and injured party, another young, impressionable protegee manipulated by a powerful man. Yet as easy as that narrative would be on my ego, it wouldnt be psychologically accurate.

I realized this after my husband, a scriptwriter, spoke to my writing class about TV and film. The next day, an envelope came from one of my undergrads. Assuming shed dropped off a late assignment, I opened it, taken aback to find her sexy headshots, body shots, and a note to my husband about how brilliant his talk had been and how shed love to buy him a beer to discuss career options in our biz.

She just wants me to help her get a job on Saturday Night Live, he tried to reassure me.

She was sharp and talented. Yet from the vantage point of being her writing professor and his wife, it seemed to me she was blatantly flaunting her sexuality to further her career. It reminded me of the way my student Debbie had posted half-naked pictures of herself on social media, probably what had lured the acclaimed novelist. She felt I was being prudish. I thought I was being protective.

I wasnt always so conservative, of course. We each harness whatever power we have to get ahead, whether overtly or subconsciously. Id once been a hot 22-year-old using my looks to fuel my ambition. Yet here I was, wishing my students would own their roles in this cliched, coquettish game while I hadnt been honest either. I suddenly saw how Id deceived myself years earlier. If my professor was drawn to my youth and beauty, Id been enticed by his experience and status, which I wound up usurping. It was a trade-off Id chosen, a barter that launched me, benefitting me most in the long-run.

Seeing him at a crowded soiree not long ago, our eyes met. I went over to say hello. He pretended not to remember who I was, turning away as I approached. I was shocked. Then I wondered if hed intentionally shunned me because he was still angry. I was actually flattered to think I could elicit so much emotion all these years later.

Had he spoken to me that night, I would have thanked him. He had, after all, improved my life, teaching me to be an incisive reader and critic. Hed helped me land an awesome first job in the city. Hed inspired me to write books and teach, demystifying the process. I might have even apologized, not sure if Id been immature back then or just a typically self-involved single player in my 20s.

Now, after two decades in a happy union, Ive learned I can be a feminist who loves men and marriage. This involves not lumping all men into the enemy camp, or labeling someone sexist or predatory just because they express desire.

In retrospect, my professor was not a Svengali seducing an innocent rube  or a skirt chaser abusing his position, like other infamous men in the news. I was never victimized. He was a gentleman whod postponed our romance until I was no longer in his class. Id been a consenting adult whod actually initiated the relationship. Id wanted him, went for him, got him  and his connections. When hed pushed for more, I set the limits I needed to, and not all that gently. Then I published a book telling my side of the story.

Ultimately, he might have been more of a victim than I was.

Susan Shapiro is author of the novel Whats Never Said, about an illicit affair between a professor and student that has haunted them both for 30 years, now out in paperback.
Lol nah. She'd sooner adopt Queen Lexie. <3



Edited at 2016-04-26 05:57 pm (UTC)

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Madonna is prob not the best person to consult about Malawi given her history of...being terrible about it and fucking people over with promises she didn't keep

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ya wasn't her foundation under suspicion of corruption or closed down? what's the story?

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madonna kidnapped those children and was supporting a fake Kabbalah cult charity that left many poor Malawi residents without a roof over their head.

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sure, except for the fact that Madonna has given millions of dollars to raise Malawi and build lots of schools there

keep on being delusional

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this feels kind of fucked up for them to say, considering I doubt anyone under a mental health conservatorship, who doesn't have primary custody of her own kids, could even adopt if she wanted to?

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honestly tho- no one cares about making jokes like this about britney for some reason. it's awful.

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yeah would not ask madonna about adopting considering her history

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As if they would let her adopt a child when legally she is still a child, too.



She is utterly delusional. Time to ramp up her meds.

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LOL



I actually came into this post to see what you would say

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Speaking of meds, have you taken yours? I hadn't seen you around much lately and I thought maybe they'd given you a stronger dose or something.

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lol that video of Demi is killing me

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omg i know, she is gettin ha LIFE on

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No way she should be allowed to adopt.

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How can someone with the legal rights of a toddler even entertain the thought of adopting?

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National Enquirer though? Okay. LOL





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I know she already got kids but is she ok to handle another given all the stuff with personal life still an issue with the conservatorship etc?

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I feel bad, I know she always wanted a girl, and it's sad that she's still under her conservatorship after all these years.

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Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ

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LMAO



What judge would allow a mentally challenged meth whore to adopt a child?

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the good thing abou this topic is that some psychophobes can finally show themselves

i wished she could adopat a child :(the good thing abou this topic is that some psychophobes can finally show themselves

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Semi OT, but I was on that Britney forum because I was curious and omgggg Lemonade is gettin dragged to the pits of hell, what's wrong with them? They think it's generic, stale, not catchy, simple lyrics, poor production, try hard, will flop etc etc, too many black people in the videos, ITZ is better, Beyonce wishes she had Primeney' success.



I'm dying right now.

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went to her show last Friday and had SO MUCH FUCKING FUN, she's so damn cute ugh love her

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why isn't Sprite Zero on my apple music (UK) tho. sis..

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I just bought a bottle of Sprite Zero. Never had it before.

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oops adding it now! i was too shocked that don cheadle has no tag

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I remember when ONTD had this big issue with the Black Celebs tag. We've come so far.

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That was a big deal. I'm glad we kept the tag.

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I loved the single mum DOC she did.though I felt so bad for her about how awful she had felt about becoming a single mum and how scared she was for the taboo and possibly ruining her children. Glad she started to Love herself as a single mum eventually.

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"Piers Morgan, you don't like Beyonce in Lemonade because her blackness isn't white enough for you any more."



oop dragging from the title!

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ikr, she really captured the crux of it with that one statement.

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Dead @ pitchfork for giving another best new music review for Beyonce. They better STAN!!



I like the album but it's so self indulgent at times.



4>>>Beyonce>>>> lemonade >>>> the rest

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4 > LEMONADE > BEYONCE > B'Day > DIL >> shit >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I am.. Sasha Fierce

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Man.... I love the songs on Sasha Fierce....

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I would rank Lemonade higher if it weren't for the whole forgiveness at any cost theme, but honestly, I think it rivals self-titled pretty hard.

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ia with your ranking

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Is ONTD trying to run the term Becky into the ground now?



On topic... Piers is scum! sky blue etc...

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needs more (cow)becky

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lol ^^

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I love Jamelia and ofc Don. Piers is a fucking twat and people need to stop giving his terrible views attention though.

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This is Pierce. Ugh. He is an awful awful troll. He is like me multiplied by a 1,000,000. I hate him.

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Piers is so garbage. It's fine not to like the musical direction Beyonce is going in now, but that's not what this is about. When people like him express their distaste for what she's doing now it's obvious that it's not about the actual music and I'm so tired of her being accused of trying to make a dollar. She'd make the most dollars by not doing this. He can fuck off.

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right she would make more if she made another dangerously in love/safe bops

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I find this argument so stupid. Like making any kind of personal statement/creative expression is such a sacrosanct thing that never can or should be something you do as part of your career. Like professional musicians have never used music as a form of protest or self-expression before while still charging people for the 45. Like he doesn't make money off of spouting off about issues that he deems important to him (in all his lack of priority or basic sense).



It's just typically Piers, hypocritical and dumb as fuck.





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Speaking of absolute trash, the comment section of every news article about Bey and Lemonade posted on FB is making me filled with so much rage. People REALLY hate her for no fucking reason. I find myself going and trying to say something defending her but I get too angry to form a complete sentence.

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especially black men, or at least that's I'm getting from my fb. I've deleted so many men in the last week and idgaf

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ditto. there's really no point. those people are morons.

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Piers Morgan remains the worst

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They are afraid of the power a huge popstar like Beyonce can hold. They'd rather hear her sing about love and shaking booty. That's nice and nonthreatening and doesn't give girls ideas. Lol, people who complain about her being "too political" are just...They are afraid of the power a huge popstar like Beyonce can hold. They'd rather hear her sing about love and shaking booty. That's nice and nonthreatening and doesn't give girls ideas.

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reminds me of

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lmao omg

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Lol

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Exactly. For 3 years my co-worker has been telling me how she hates Beyonce & JayZ because they're "too political" of course she means too liberal and Obama supporters, who she also hates. She was telling me today she likes to get her news from the Drudge Report because they are unbiased and only report facts. And I'm thinking oh dear god.

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Does anyone have a link to download the full visual album?

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piers would say the sky is green if it would garner the attention he desperately craves. his nonsense still needs to be called out though.

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Gonna use this post to complain about the racist bullshit it was that Jamelia was always in the bottom two during Strictly even though she was almost never the worst dancer and was way better than so many mediocre middle aged white men and women i haven't even heard of

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Yes! Katie something? Some boring classical music presenter?? Always fucking terrible but people loved how "elegant" or whatever she was. icu

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This whole essay is so good, but one thing:



Panther-style Afros (Babe, weve had these afros growing out of our heads since the beginning of time)



YASSSSSSSSSSSSS. Black hair is still so politicized, no matter how many cornrow-wearing white girls want to whine about "it's just a hairstyle"!



Also, the literal nerve of Piers basically complaining that Beyonce is black, made a video about being black, and trying to police what she can and cannot say about her blackness and complaining that she reminded him she was black instead of keeping her head bowed and bent so he didn't have to have his pop culture poisoned by "the race card". Like who the fuck are you?



And bless the ignorant people...I cannot with all these "white women get cheated on/heartbroken/have kids too!!!" Is it possible...just slightly possible...that black women might get cheated on for different reasons, their beauty derided for different reasons, that black women might be expected to act different in regards to getting cheated, and that they concerns they have for their black children and the realities those children will face might be from those of white women! Ugh, pull your head out of your ass and think beyond yourself, ffs.

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a+++ mte. it is so transparent

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great comment, ita

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Hidden among the ballyhoo about a collaborative freeze in production growth, a less visible but far more effective dynamic has affected, and likely will affect, oil supply and price: military intervention.

There have always been three routes out of the unsustainably low prices: natural decline/growth of supply/demand, collaboration constraints on supply, and military conflict. Since January, while the talk of a growth freeze had no effect whatsoever on actual supply, the natural decline/growth did reduce the overhang by a couple of hundred thousand barrels of oil per day. Meanwhile, two little-discussed and less-understood military interventions took a combined 900,000 bopd out of supply in a virtual instant.

In February, a military type explosive charge detonated on a subsea pipeline in Nigeria, taking out up to 300,000 bopd. The attack was characterized as sophisticated and highly skilled, not least because it was executed by divers under 20 feet of water. One source reported, The people who did this knew what they were doing and they wanted maximum damage. Related: Can Oil Continue To Rally Like This?

The history of attacks by rebels on oil infrastructure in the Niger Delta and the coincident prosecution of a former rebel superficially suggested that this attack was another in protest. On the other hand, responsibility for the attack was first claimed two months after the fact and by a group not previously known to exist, namely the Niger Delta Avengers. Moreover, the sophistication of the attack diverges from the historical airboat-and-AK style of rebels in the region.

A similarly mysterious outage affected 600,000 bopd out of northern Iraq. Located in a region of multi-lateral conflict and poor transparency, this interruption could be easily dismissed. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the exact cause of this major supply interruption was not publicly claimed or understood by any of the parties.

The collapse of oil price over the last 18 months has been catastrophic on the income of many nations, most of which have been helpless price-takers. While Saudi Arabia has pricing power, it has chosen and enforced lower prices. On the other side of the equation, two nations have the need, the national character and the capability to pursue military intervention in prices: Russia and Iran. Related: ExxonMobil Loses AAA Credit Rating For First Time Since 1930

Perhaps the attacks in Nigeria and Kurdistan were covert sabotage to increase oil price. Even if they were not, such attacks are likely to continue or even increase. Niger Delta Avengers has pledged more attacks, and the conflict around Kurdistan, Syria and Turkey is likely to continue. Nigeria provides about 1.8 million bopd to the world while Iraq supplies about 4.4 million bopd.

What is more, other oil-producing locations present similar conflicts and similar opportunities for covert, or even overt, military action which would affect supply. Libya, Algeria, northern Nigeria and the Sinai Peninsula all have concentrations of ISIS activity.

Libya currently supplies only about 0.4 million bopd to the world, but Algeria, with a lesser concentration of ISIS, provides 1.1 million bopd. Egypt does not export oil, but several million bopd of supply move through the Suez Canal in the region of active ISIS attacks. Any of these, or a few other locations, could host an attack on oil infrastructure, even one overtly conducted by Russia as part of its campaign against ISIS. Related: Chesapeake Has Bought Itself Time But Can It Survive?

Also looming, of course, is the remote but catastrophic possibility that Russia and/or Iran could take a fight directly to Saudi Arabia. Russia has formed an alliance with the axis of Shiite countries and against the Saudi-backed Sunni forces in Syria, and the animosity between Iran and Saudi has blistered in recent months.

Silently but effectively, military intervention has actually been the largest driver of oil supply and, perhaps, of oil price in the last few months. The failing of other means of price support and the repair of the Nigerian and Kurdish interruptions could keep prices from rising further in the short run. But then again, there is always the possibility that more military actions on oil supply occur in the near future.

By Dwayne Purvis for Oilprice.com

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A cargo of 650,000 barrels of crude left the Libyan port of Hariga yesterday, in the eastern part of the conflict-torn country, sparking what promises to be another phase in the conflict as the Islamic-leaning government in Tripoli vows to block the maneuver.

This premature attempt at crude oil exports could have huge implications for international efforts to unite the country under the new Government of National Accord (GNA), which was formed with UN support, because eastern Libya is controlled by a government based in Tobruk, which has not yet recognized the GNA of Fayez Serraj. Related: Coal And Steel May Have Been Given A Lifeline By China

The eastern government works with an eastern division of the Libyan National Oil Company (NOC). The western division of the NOC also has international backing and recognition as the original NOC, while the eastern one is considered a breakaway formation. The latter has been trying for a while to start its own oil exports but has not been successful so far, thanks to resistance from NOCs international oil trading partners, including majors such as Glencore and Vitol Group.

Now, it seems, the breakaway NOC has managed to find a buyer in the face of another trading firm, UAE-based DSA Consultancy FZC.

The export attempt drew international attention at the end of last week, when the first reports started coming in that an Indian tanker, the Distya Ameya, had docked at Hariga port and was waiting to be loaded before heading to Malta. Related: China Stockpiling Oil At Highest Rate In Over A Decade

Several Libyan and foreign officials expressed concern about the possibility of an illegal oil cargo leaving Libyas eastern port, but this concern has not been enough to put a spoke in the eastern NOCs wheels.

Now that the cargo has sailed, the only thing that is certain is that the road to Libyas unification will be an extremely tough one. And its unclear whether this cargo will ever reach Malta. So far, as of the time of writing, it hasnt. The Tripoli-based National Oil Co., which is controlled by the rival government in Tripoli, said it had taken steps to block the exports.

Italian media reports now say that the Maltese authorities are keeping the cargo from making port in Malta, but other reports say that the tanker has not yet made any attempt to dock in Malta.

If it does dock in Malta, all bets are likely off for a unity government. Related: Why The Saudi Aramco IPO Will Not Be Enough

The core of the problem seems to be the legitimacy of the eastern government and the GNA. Both have international recognition, and even though the UN and the European Unionas well as the U.S.have most recently thrown their support behind the GNA, the government in Tobruk still claims legitimacy. Since it was also recognized internationally, there isnt much that one could say to that right now without igniting further hostility between the two governments. The wild card here is the so-called third government, also based in Tripoli and with clear Islamist leanings, which just last week reneged on its promise to resign after the arrival of the GNA.

Lack of oil export revenues could have been used as a lever against the eastern government but now that shippers and buyers for its oil have been found, this lever is gone. The eastern NOC considers the Tobruk government legal and it is very likely that after this initial success, it will continue to seek ways to export crude without the approval of the western NOC, the GNA, and the group of countries usually comprising the international community. Despite efforts from the U.S. and Europe, it is evident that there are some willing buyers of eastern Libyan oil.

This will considerably hamper the return of Libya to a unified state and the restoration of its oil output to pre-civil war levels. Bad as this is for Libya, the strife is putting upward pressure on global crude oil prices.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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The Saudi Arabian sale of Saudi Aramco is already starting to attract widespread attention after Mohammad bin Salman, deputy crown prince of the Kingdom, indicated that an IPO for the state owned giant will proceed next year. That IPO, likely to be for less than 5 percent of the company, is being talked about as a way for Saudi Arabia to raise funds in a time of continued low oil prices. While the additional funding would be a welcome boon  Saudi Aramco would likely be valued at over $2 trillion dollars  the reality is that the IPO only distracts from the Kingdoms deep well of future challenges.

Saudi Arabia has run its own state-owned oil company for decades now, which should lead prudent investors to question why the country would be interested in giving up even a piece of the firm now. There are only two possible answers. Either Saudi Arabia needs the funding and sees profits from Saudi Aramco being depressed for years to come, or the Kingdom is looking to diversify its holdings. Related: The Real Reason Saudi Arabia Killed Doha

The timing of the IPO certainly suggests that the Kingdom expects persistent low oil prices for years to come, which should make buyers of the IPO wary. In addition, while the company is highly profitable and controls vast swaths of lucrative resources, only a portion of those assets will be up for sale. Specifically, its oil reserves are unlikely to be included in the IPO. Instead the IPO will probably be for a subsidiary, which includes downstream assets of Saudi Aramco.

Given that Saudi Arabia is not looking to sell its unproven reserves and the fact that it is selling less than 5 percent of the biggest national assets, the view that the Kingdom is trying to exit oil before a long period of depressed profits doesnt seem to hold much water.

Instead Saudi Arabia is probably looking to diversify its holdings and sees the success of the Norwegian national Public Investment Fund as a model. Related: The Worst Is Yet To Come For Oilfield Services

Countries with large amounts of natural resources relative to their size have always struggled with growing their economies in a consistent manner and ensuring the prosperity of their citizens. Thats particularly true with oil rich economies. Only Norway has managed to avoid this issue. The problem is so endemic it even has its own name; the paradox of plenty.

Despite having vast wealth in the form of oil, Saudi Arabia is still economically far behind developed economies, and its economy is essentially focused only on oil  a situation that is proving challenging at present. To get beyond this reality, the Kingdom needs to diversify its assets.

That wont be easy. While Saudi Arabia is gearing up to hire investment professionals around the world to help with asset evaluation and investment, the reality is that diversification will prove very difficult. Significant diversification would also require selling a lot more than 5 percent of Saudi Aramco as well. Related: Oil Crash Creates Glut Of Petroleum Engineers  More Layoffs Coming

To truly support its economy in the absence of oil revenues, Saudi Arabia would need trillions of dollars of ownership in international businesses outside its borders. To get that much exposure to overseas firms will require deep capital markets capable of absorbing significant Saudi investments and an extraordinarily efficient oversight process. Investing even $500 billion into most capital markets around the world simply has too much of a distortionary effect on asset prices to ever lead to profitable investments.

Perhaps the only exception to this rule is the U.S. The U.S. stock market value fluctuates routinely, but is worth roughly $20 trillion these days. Thus to invest $1 trillion would require that the Saudis buy 5 percent of all stocks. Thats a difficult hurdle to meet in an efficient way, especially given the Kingdoms lack of experience in large-scale investments across potentially hundreds of firms. In summary then, the Saudi Aramco IPO may make headlines, but dont expect it to solve the Kingdoms future economic challenges any time soon.

By Michael McDonald of Oilprice.com

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Oil speculators are growing more confident that prices are gaining ground on the back of rising demand and shrinking supply.

U.S. gasoline demand is at a record high for this time of year, with the four-week consumption rate for gasoline above 9.3 million barrels per day (mb/d). That is important because the summer months typically see higher consumption than in the spring, so demand could continue to rise.

(Click to enlarge)

At the same time, production is falling. Weekly EIA data shows that output has declined to 8.95 mb/d, sharply down from a peak of nearly 9.7 mb/d in April 2015. Related: Oil Up As Quarterly Earnings Season Kicks Off

(Click to enlarge)

The converging of supply and demand has speculators increasing their bullish bets on crude oil. Net-long positions for the week ending on April 19 rose to their highest level since May 2015. Short positions fell for the week and long positions jumped. Investors are looking for larger exposure to crude oil and showing a continuing willingness to buy on the dips, Tim Evans, an energy analyst at Citi Futures Perspective, told Bloomberg. Related: Why The Saudi Aramco IPO Will Not Be Enough

Not everyone is convinced. A group of investment banks cautioned not to get too excited about the rally. Barclays said in a report on Monday that it is not yet convinced that prices will remain here or go even higher. Morgan Stanley said the rally had more to do with macro factors as well as speculators trying to profit. There are some temporary production outages in several OPEC countries that could be resolved in the coming months, bringing some supply back to the market. The outage in Kuwait from a workers strike was short-lived, and the Kuwait state-owned oil company hopes to boost production to above 3 mb/d by June. Iran has also added around 1 mb/d to production since January when western sanctions were removed.

Speculators could be overextending themselves. Any time there is a run up in bullish bets, the chances that long positions could start to be trimmed rises. Speculators could realize that the rally has run out of steam and then decide to pocket their profits. The liquidation could then spark a correction, forcing prices back down. As Morgan Stanley put it, a macro unwind could cause severe selling given positioning and the nature of the players in this rally.

The potential for a correction is mirrored by the fact that the fundamentals still look rather grim, with possible bearish indicators looming on the horizon. Oil storage levels set a new record last week at 538 million barrels in the United States and many analysts expect that figure has room to grow. "Still-elevated inventory levels, the return of some disrupted supply, further boosts to Saudi and Iranian supply, and increased non-OECD product exports all have the potential to move prices lower over the next several months, especially if broader macro sentiment shifts," Barclays wrote. Related: China Stockpiling Oil At Highest Rate In Over A Decade

Then there is the possibility that some U.S. shale companies bring production back online as oil prices inch higher. The backlog of drilled but uncompleted wells, colloquially known as the fracklog, could start to be worked through as they become profitable again. Once we start approaching $45 and above, the risk of a much sharper pullback starts to increase as a lot of shale becomes profitable again, Angus Nicholson, an analyst at IG in Melbourne, told Bloomberg. Itll bring more supply back into the market. This happened last year when a swathe of output hit the market after a price gain and subsequently led to oil dropping to record lows. There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the exact price level that starts to trigger completions, and some analysts believe the price threshold could be much higher. Still, the fracklog will weigh on any price rally.

Oil companies themselves are not convinced that prices could move higher. The Wall Street Journal reported on several producers that have decided to lock in some of their production at hedged prices, foreclosing the opportunity to profit if prices rise but protecting themselves from another downturn. Energen Corp., for example, locked in around half of its 2016 production at about $45 per barrel recently, even though it spurned the chance to hedge its output last year as it waited for a stronger rebound. The story is the same for EV Energy Partners, a company that recently secured hedges at $40 per barrel even though a year ago it refused to do so at $50 per barrel. A range of other companies are following suit. Similarly, airlines are stepping up their hedges, locking in oil at around $40 per barrel.

As usual, the oil markets are rife with confusion and uncertainty. The longer-term looks a little clearer  supply is falling and demand is rising. The market will have to balance out; the only debate is over how quickly that happens. In the short-term, though, there is no consensus on whether prices move up or down.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

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One hundred seventy one nations signed the UNs Paris agreement on climate change on April 22. But before that, the European Commission on Climate Action recommended that by 2050 countries reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent.

In the UK, the Committee on Climate Change will require that the carbon intensity of electricity production be limited to 50 grams of carbon emitted for every kilowatt-hour of energy produced (50gCO2/kwh) starting in 2030. The European and UK targets and limits, attainable or not, are aimed at electric utilities as they emit close to 40 percent of global carbon output. And the only technologies capable of complying with these carbon limits are the unlikely twins renewables and nuclear.

Few countries have attained these emissions targets. Paraguay and Norway, with large hydroelectric resources, have, but even Frances electric grid, with its large nuclear fleet, emits about 80g CO2/kwh. Germany despite all its focus on renewables, emits more. The U.S. electric grid, with its reliance on coal for about 40 percent of its generating needs, emits almost 200g CO2/kwh. China and India, both of whose electrical systems still rely even more extensively on coal, emit over 400 grams of CO2 per kWh.



Related: China Stockpiling Oil At Highest Rate In Over A Decade

Looking at transitions underway in the U.S. and the UK, we see natural gas displacing coal and to an extent smaller, aging nuclear facilities. The CO2 intensity of gas in the production of electricity is half that of coal. The faster the transition away from coal, the deeper the reduction in carbon emissions. Even without governmental prodding, electric grids are moving in this fashion to emit significantly less carbon. Why? Because a dramatic cheapening of natural gas has made it economically attractive to do so. We are not free market purists. We simply point out that right now utility economics already favors a lower carbon alternative for electricity production and at an attractive price.

We can divide electric production into three groups based on carbon intensity. At the high end are lignite and coal fired power stations emitting 1,000 grams of CO2/kwh or more. Natural gas plants, in the middle, emit about 500gCO2/kwh. At the low end, nuclear power and renewables emit from 10gCO2/kwh for large hydroelectric dams to perhaps 50gCO2/kwh for new nuclear plants, and more for offshore wind taking into account incremental transmission to bring that far away power to markets.

These numbers come from a body of academic literature devoted to life cycle analysis (LCA) of energy systems. The LCA method of analysis measures the energy usage and carbon intensity of each of the five phases of a power plants life: construction, mining and fuel preparation (for coal or uranium for example), operation, spent fuel storage, long term disposal/dismantlement. These criteria result in a carbon emissions report card for every electric generating system.



Related: Oil Up As Quarterly Earnings Season Kicks Off

A large hydroelectric dam, for example, incurs its worst carbon emissions score during construction, which involves years of use of energy intensive materials like cement and steel and energy intensive, often diesel powered, machines. As a result, the construction phase is highly energy/carbon intensive. But after that the other four life cycle phases of hydro, notably the electricity production or operations phase, is virtually carbon free. (Purists might argue for some additional carbon emissions potential in the event of a dam dismantlement or retirement.)

Wind power has a similar life cycle profile. Its fairly carbon intensive during construction with the fabrication of steel towers and turbines blades and moving towers, blades and turbines into place. However, after that its also a carbon free operation with some back end emissions at dismantlement and disposal. Solar power has a fairly similar carbon life cycle profile with considerable energy/carbon intensity related to fabrication and installation and then a carbon free operating phase with very modest back end CO2 emissions potential.

Nuclear power has a slightly different carbon life cycle. Apart from the considerable energy/carbon expenditure involved in large construction projects, some of carbon emissions can occur during fuel procurement. Uranium is mined like coal. Then, also like coal, it is crushed but then undergoes a chemical extraction and refinement process. These are energy/carbon intensive processes.



Related: The Real Reason Saudi Arabia Killed Doha

Nuclear power resembles renewables, and excels in its carbon LCA, during plant operation and electricity production, virtually carbon free except for fuel procurement. Nuclears carbon emissions are front end and somewhat back end loaded. After its useful operating life there are energy/carbon inputs for fuel storage (typically on site), dismantlement and geological disposal.

In the U.S. and UK, carbon emissions from electricity production are in decline as coal plants retire. Near term, the industry will choose between nuclear and natural gas for base load generating additions. Electricity from the former may cost almost ten times as much but emit 90 percent less carbon. Thats the tradeoff policy makers claim they face. As a result nuclear technology enjoys a modest resurgence as a source of ample electricity and low carbon.

The way we see it, the pace of carbon emission reductions in the U.S. and Europe depends on the pace at which the industry retires coal-fired electric generation. As nuclear remains at best a high priced option, it is more likely that the industry will opt for more gas fired power stations. These may be viewed by their owners as more explicitly transitional, just a placeholder for the next mode of power generation whatever form that takes. An industry lacking in growth with large capital needs is likely to move cautiously.

By William Tilles and Leonard Hyman for Oilprice.com

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Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, 30, the deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia laid out his vision for Saudi Arabia on Monday in a plan called Vision 2030. He wants to get Saudi Arabia off its oil dependence in only 4 years, by 2020, and wants to diversify the economy into manufacturing and mining.

In an interview with Al Arabiya, the prince said the future of the kingdom would be based on:

1. Its possession of the Muslim shrine cities of Mecca and Medina and the Arab and Muslim depth that position gave the kingdom

2. The kingdoms geographical centrality to world commerce, with 30 percent of global trade passing through the 3 major sea routes that Saudi Arabia bestrides (not sure what the third is, after the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf).

3. The creation of a $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund through a sale of 5 percent of shares in Aramco, the worlds largest oil company.

Prince Muhammad said Monday that he thought these assets would allow the kingdom to cease its dependence on petroleum in the very near future.

CNBC summarized other planks of his platform this way:

The planned economic diversification also involved localizing renewable energy and industrial equipment sectors and creating high-quality tourism attractions. It also plans to make it easier to apply for visas and hoped to create 90,000 job opportunities in its mining sector.



Related: Despite Claims, Ukraine Not Free Of Russian Energy Dependence

Saudi Arabias citizen population is probably only about 20 million, so it is a small country without a big domestic market. It is surrounded in the general region by huge countries like Egypt (pop. 85 million), Iran (pop. 75 million) and Turkey (75 million), not to mention Ethiopia (pop. 90 million) Without petroleum, it is difficult to see what would be distinctive about Saudi Arabia economically.

The excruciatingly young prince, who was born in 1985, has a BA in Law from a local Saudi university and his way of speaking about the elements of the economy is not reassuring. Take his emphasis on the maritime trade routes that flow around the Arabian Peninsula. How exactly does Saudi Arabia derive a dime from them? The only tolls I can think of are collected by Egypt for passage through the Suez Canal. By far the most important container port in the region is Jebel Ali in the UAE, which dwarfs Jedda. His estimate of 30 percent of world trade going through these bodies of water strikes me as exaggerated. Only about 10 percent of world trade goes through the Suez Canal.

As for tourism, in a country where alcohol is forbidden and religious police report to the police unmarried couples on dates, that seems to me a non-starter outside the religious tourism of pilgrimage to Mecca. The annual pilgrimage brought in $16.5 billion or 3 percent of the Saudi GDP four years ago, but that number appears to be way down the last couple of years. Unless the prince plans to highly increase the 2-3 million pilgrims annually, religious tourism will remain a relatively small part of the economy.

He also spoke about the new bridge planned from Saudi Arabia to Egypt as likely to drive trade to the kingdom and to make it a crossroads. But the road would go through the Sinai Peninsula, which is highly insecure and in the midst of an insurrection. And where do you drive to on the other side? You could maybe take fruits and vegetables by truck from Egypt to countries such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Would Saudi Arabia collect tariffs on these transit goods? I cant see how that generates all that much money. The big opportunity for overland transport would be to link Egypt to a major market like Iran (pop. 77 million), and via Iran, Pakistan and India. But Prince Muhammad and his circle are hardliners against Iran and unlikely to foster trade with it.



Related: It Isnt Just ISIS that Is Destabilizing Iraq

Saudi Arabia suffers from the Dutch disease, i.e. its currency is artificially hardened by its valuable petroleum assets. They may eventually not be worth anything if hydrocarbons are replaced by green energy or even outlawed. But in 2016, they are still valuable, and they make the riyal expensive versus other currencies. The result is that anything made in Saudi Arabia would be unaffordably expensive in India (the rupee is still a soft currency). As long as Saudi Arabia produces so much petroleum, it is unclear how it can industrialize in the sense of making secondary goods.

As for the sovereign wealth fund, lets say the ARAMCO partial IPO actually realizes $2 trillion. Lets say it gets 5 percent on its investments after overhead and that all $2 trillion are invested around the world. That would be $100 billion a year, or 1/6 of Saudi Arabias GDP last year. It doesnt replace the oil.

Saudi Arabias Gross Domestic Product in 2014 was $746 bn., of which probably 70 percent was petroleum sales. In 2015 it was only $653 bn., causing it to fall behind Turkey, the Netherlands and Switzerland. It will be smaller yet in 2016 because of the continued low oil prices.

All this is not to reckon with the profligate spending in which the kingdom is engaged, with a direct war in Yemen and a proxy war in Syria, neither cheap. (Both wars are pet projects of Prince Muhammad bin Salman). It also has a lot of big weapons purchases in the pipeline, one of the reasons for President Obamas humiliating visit last week. It ran a $100 bn. budget deficit in 2015. Saudi Arabia has big currency reserves, but I doubt it can go on like this more than five or six years.



Related: China Stockpiling Oil At Highest Rate In Over A Decade

Yemen in particular has proved to be a quagmire, and the Houthi rebels still hold the capital of Sanaa. The only new initiative is that Saudi and local forces have kicked al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula out of the port of Mukalla. This campaign shows a sudden interest in defeating al-Qaeda, which had been allowed to grow in Yemen while the main target was the Shiite Houthis, which Riyadh says are allied with Iran (the links seem minor).

So it seems to me that the Vision for 2030 is mostly smoke and mirrors. As the electric car and better public transport replace gasoline-driven automobiles and trucks, the demand for petroleum will collapse over the next 20 years. A really big extreme global warming event, like a glacier plopping into the ocean and suddenly raising sea level by a foot, e.g., would spread panic and accelerate the abandonment of oil. Saudi Arabia probably cannot replace the money it will lose if oil goes out of style and so is doomed to downward mobility and very possibly significant instability. It has been a great party since the 1940s; it is going to be a hell of a hangover.

By Juan Cole via Juancole.com

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From September 1962 until September 1966, Milwaukee musician Gary Myers  who now lives in California  spent a number of years playing in many Brew City clubs with his bands The Night Beats, The Darnells and The Cashmeres (Mojo Men, later The Portraits).

You can read about Myers' impressive musical career here. Fortunately, he also took photographs of the places where he performed.

1. Athena

Myers recalls that the Mojo Men played this place at 3507 W. Burleigh St. in April 1965. The house band, he recalls, was Junior and the Classics, fronted by future Fabulous Thunderbirds keyboardist Junior Brantley. In a few months the Mojo Men would relocate to California and later, signing with Mike Curb's Sidewalk label, would change their name to The Portraits.

2. The Attic

Read more about The Attic, located at 641 N. 2nd St., here. Myers remembers the Mojo Men played there in April '65 and again in September '66, when the band had returned home for a stint from Los Angeles.

3. Catalina Club

The Catalina Club, 900 S. 16th St. (at Walker), was a block from Monreal's (see below) and, says Myers, "many of the same people came in." The Mojo Men played there from May to August of 1965, just before leaving town.

4. Claude's

The Mojo Men played at Claude's, 5048 N. 35th St. (at Villard), in December 1964. "The house band was Paul Stefan & the Apollos," says Myers. "Paul later joined our band out in SoCal." Later, it was the Cheetah Club. You can get a peek inside via this video, sent in by Ron Faiola of MilwaukeeRockPosters.com.



5. Galaxie

Galaxie, 3876 E. Squire Ave. in Cudahy, goes back a bit earlier. Myers recalls playing there with The Darnells in November 1963. These days the building's gone from red to pink and appears to be a private residence.



6. Gallagher's

Read more about Gallagher's, 829 N. 3rd St., here. "The Cashmeres played a one-nighter in early 64 and then again in November '64," says Myers, "after we had changed our name to the Mojo Men."

7. Giuseppe's

The Cashmeres played in early 1964 at Giuseppe's Wagon Wheel, 5353 N. Port Washington Rd. in Glendale. I can't help but notice Art Richter's Milky Way Drive-In  the inspiration for Arnold's on "Happy Days"  next door. Now the site of Kopp's.

8. Korn Krib

The awesomely named Korn Krib, 3314 W. North Ave., featured country AND western but also dabbled in rock 'n' roll. "Mojo Men might have been their first attempt in that direction, for two weeks in September 1964," says Myers.

9. Monreal's

Myers says Monreal's, 1566 W. National Ave., was "one of the hottest spots in town at the time, (and) booked guest stars in the Skyroom on weekends. Over the course of my various Monreals gigs I backed Del Shannon, Gene Pitney, Dick & DeeDee, Tommy Roe, Johnny Tillotson and Chuck Berry. The Darnells played a few nights there in December 1963 and then I played a weekend with Terry Gale in January '64, alternating sets with Jerry Lee Lewis. I then joined the Cashmeres and we were there from Jan. 27, 1964 to Sept. 12, 1964. We changed our name to the Mojo Men in April 1964."

10. O'Brad's

Read more about O'Brad's, 827 E. Locust St., here. "Mojo Men played a one-nighter in October 1964 and then back for a steady gig from December '64 to February '65. Back again for two nights in April 1965 and then again in September 1966 during our visit back to Milwaukee after being in SoCal," Myers recalls.

11. Papa Joe's

The Skunks were the house band at Papa Joe's, 16600 W. Bluemound Rd. in Brookfield, just east of where Marty's Pizza is located. Myers remembers playing there in late 1964.

12. The Penthouse

Read more about The Penthouse, 502 W. Wisconsin Ave., here. This was a later and larger incarnation of the Milwaukee Spa (see below). Myers says the Mojo Men played there in 1966 during the band's summer back in Milwaukee. Later, the spot became the Voom Voom Room strip club.

13. Roy's Lounge

Unusually, the stage was behind the bar at Roy's Lounge, 4905 S. Packard Ave. "The place was so small that we had put amps on the liquor shelves next to the stage for our Darnells one-nighter," Myers recalls, making me think of setting up my drums atop the bar and leaning back against a wall of liquor bottles for gigs at Hooligan's in the 1980s and '90s.

Apparently, though, this wasn't unique back then. "In the early '60s there were many clubs with the stage behind the bar," Myers says. "I guess that may have begun in the '50s ... they called them show bars. The stage at the Spa was also behind the bar. Even as late as '69 our group played a large show bar in Orlando."



14. The Spa

Read more about The Spa, 502 W. Wisconsin Ave., here. "I first played there with the Night Beats in September 1962," Myers says. "That was a Florida band that was booking through Milwaukees ACA (no connection to El Rey & the Night Beats) and it brought me back to my hometown after completing my high school yrs in Florida. I was still underage for clubs. I played there again with The Cashmeres on Feb. 9, 1964, the night the Beatles were on (the Ed) Sullivan (Show). We watched on the clubs big screen TV."
Reprinted from www.huffingtonpost.com

Americans are not used to reading investigative pieces of journalism. We like to tweet and text in small bites. But here's the thing. Sometimes, the most important things can't be explained in 15 bites or less. Sometimes, it takes more space and time. And so I ask everyone who is reading this blog to please read it in its entirety -- especially the bold parts. And, if you care about our country, if you care about peace, and keeping American lives safe from terrorists, pay attention to what is being said here -- and never forget it.

The time has come to clarify some inaccuracies and misleading statements being made in the media regarding the 28 pages, the 9/11 attacks, the investigation of the 9/11 attacks, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). In doing so, perhaps the American public will come to understand the importance of passing JASTA(Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act) and releasing the 28 pages in their entirety.

The 9/11 Commission's mandate was to not replicate, but rather to expand upon the investigation of the JICI. The JICI was the Joint Intelligence Committee's Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, headed by Senator Bob Graham and Congressman Porter Goss. The JICI is where the 28 pages originated. Furthermore, the JICI made a finding of fact and final recommendation that further investigation into the role of KSA and the 9/11 attacks needed to be done, immediately. Therefore, the 9/11 Commission should have carried out this further investigation of the KSA and 9/11. But, they did not. It is only the 9/11 families and intrepid journalists who have continued to investigate the Saudi role for the past twelve years.



Staff Director of the 9/11 Commission, Phil Zelikow, actively worked against any thorough investigation into the KSA and its role in the 9/11 attacks.



So, when two JICI staffers were brought over to the 9/11 Commission to continue their work on the links between the KSA and the 9/11 attacks, they were blocked by Zelikow. Zelikow fired one investigator when she tried to access the 28 pages as part of her further investigation and work for the commission. And, the second staffer (who was the person responsible for writing the 28 pages in the first place when he worked on the JICI) was actively thwarted from his investigation by Zelikow, as well. In fact, once the 9/11 Commission report was in its final draft form, Zelikow "re-wrote" the entire section that dealt with the Saudis--leaving out vital, highly pertinent, and extremely damning information.



Thus, when a person says the 9/11 Commission, "found no evidence linking the Saudis," be wary of the cute context of the words. The 9/11 commission "found no evidence" because they were either never allowed to look for any evidence or whatever evidence they did find was conveniently written out of the final report, compliments of Phil Zelikow.



Why would Zelikow block his own investigation? No one knows for sure, but for starters, Zelikow was taking regular phone calls from Karl Rove whose job at the time was to ramp up the drumbeat for the war in Iraq--not a war with Saudi Arabia. As reported and documented in The New York Time's national security correspondent Philip Shenon's book , "The Commission,"So, when two JICI staffers were brought over to the 9/11 Commission to continue their work on the links between the KSA and the 9/11 attacks, they were blocked by Zelikow. Zelikow fired one investigator when she tried to access the 28 pages as part of her further investigation and work for the commission. And, the second staffer (who was the person responsible for writing the 28 pages in the first place when he worked on the JICI) was actively thwarted from his investigation by Zelikow, as well. In fact, once the 9/11 Commission report was in its final draft form, Zelikow "re-wrote" the entire section that dealt with the Saudis--leaving out vital, highly pertinent, and extremely damning information.Why would Zelikow block his own investigation? No one knows for sure, but for starters, Zelikow was taking regular phone calls from Karl Rove whose job at the time was to ramp up the drumbeat for the war in Iraq--not a war with Saudi Arabia.

In addition, Zelikow was part of the Bush transition team and good friends with Condoleeza Rice. In fact, it was Zelikow's job to brief the incoming Bush Administration about national security issues. It's safe to say that the "sleeper cells" living inside the U.S., and the other facets of the Saudi nexus of help for the 9/11 hijackers was not something Zelikow was eager to delve into while on the Bush transition team or as Staff Director of the 9/11 Commission.



Had the information regarding the Saudis and 9/11 been properly and fully investigated by the 9/11 Commission, and had that investigation continued thereafter, the facts surrounding the FBI and CIA and their collective failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks, would have certainly come to further light. Let's not forget the Director of the FBI's unacceptable "handling" and "covering up" of several Saudi accomplices before and after the 9/11 attacks by permitting them to leave the country, evade arrest, and prosecution.



Suffice it to say, both the JICI and the 9/11 Commission clearly document that prior to the 9/11 attacks, the KSA was not as helpful as it could be with regard to providing access to al Qaeda prisoners, stopping the flow of money to UBL, and/or sharing information with regard to UBL.
In the American police state, the price to be paid for speaking truth to power (also increasingly viewed as an act of treason) is surveillance, censorship, jail, and ultimately death.

However, where many Americans go wrong is in assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or challenging the government's authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state, and locked up like a dangerous criminal.

In fact, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all you really need to do is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, question government authority, or generally live in the United States.

With the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior-sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, flagged "words," and "suspicious" activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.

It's the American police state's take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Philip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought-crime package.

What's more, the technocrats who run the surveillance state don't even have to break a sweat while monitoring what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, how much you spend, whom you support, and with whom you communicate. Computers now do the tedious work of trolling social media, the internet, text messages and phone calls for potentially anti-government remarks--all of which is carefully recorded, documented, and stored to be used against you someday at a time and place of the government's choosing.

While this may sound like a riff on a bad joke, it's a bad joke with "we the people" as the punchline.

The following activities are guaranteed to get you censored, surveilled, eventually placed on a government watch list, possibly detained and potentially killed.

Laugh at your own peril.

Use harmless trigger words like cloud, pork and pirates: The Department of Homeland Security has an expansive list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats such as SWAT, lockdown, police, cloud, food poisoning, pork, flu, Subway, smart, delays, cancelled, la familia, pirates, hurricane, forest fire, storm, flood, help, ice, snow, worm, warning or social media.

Use a cell phone: Simply by using a cell phone, you make yourself an easy target for government agents--working closely with corporations--who can listen in on your phone calls, read your text messages and emails, and track your movements based on the data transferred from, received by, and stored in your cell phone. Mention any of the so-called "trigger" words in a conversation or text message, and you'll get flagged for sure.

Drive a car: Unless you've got an old junkyard heap without any of the gadgets and gizmos that are so attractive to today's car buyers (GPS, satellite radio, electrical everything, smart systems, etc.), driving a car today is like wearing a homing device: you'll be tracked from the moment you open that car door thanks to black-box recorders and vehicle-to-vehicle communications systems that can monitor your speed, direction, location, the number of miles traveled, and even your seatbelt use. Once you add satellites, GPS devices, license-plate readers, and real-time traffic cameras to the mix, there's nowhere you can go on our nation's highways and byways that you can't be followed.

Attend a political rally: Enacted in the wake of 9/11, the Patriot Act redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations, and civil disobedience were considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment-expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

Express yourself on social media: The FBI, CIA, NSA, and other government agencies are investing in and relying on corporate-surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior.

Serve in the military: Operation Vigilant Eagle, the brainchild of the Department of Homeland Security, calls for surveillance of military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be "disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war."

Disagree with a law-enforcement official: A growing number of government programs are aimed at identifying, monitoring, and locking up anyone considered potentially "dangerous" or mentally ill (according to government standards, of course). For instance, a homeless man in New York City who reportedly had a history of violence but no signs of mental illness was forcibly detained in a psych ward for a week after arguing with shelter police.

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Reprinted from Reader Supported News

It started with Democracy Spring. Gathering at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, 150 people set out on a 10-day, 140-mile march to Washington DC. The group then held a week of direct action at the United States Capitol, where over 1,000 people were arrested. It was the largest civil disobedience action ever to take place at the US Capitol. Actress and big Bernie Sanders supporter Rosario Dawson was among those arrested during Democracy Spring.





Democracy Spring flowed into Democracy Awakening for a mass rally and march before a closing day of action when another 300 were arrested, including Ben and Jerry, and Cornell Brooks, the convener of Democracy Awakening and president of the NAACP.

With the leaders of some of the largest political organizations in the country getting arrested at the Capitol, you would have thought the corporate media would be there hoping for a bloodbath. The truth is they were missing in action. Why?

On day 1 of the civil disobedience, Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks explained that the reason the media is ignoring Democracy Spring is that they are part of the establishment. Uygur said the media doesn't want money out of politics because they depend on that money when it is used to buy campaign ads. Uygur declared that while this is just the beginning, they are no longer coming for us, but we are coming for them.

Democracy Spring founder Kai Newkirk told the crowd: "We want a government that is of, by, and for the people -- not the one percent.... And we stood up and sent a message that we are going to win that, one way or another." Newkirk founded the organization 99rise and garnered attention after rising during a Supreme Court session and telling the justices: "I rise on behalf of the vast majority of the American people who believe money is not speech, corporations are not people, and government should not be for sale to the highest bidder. We demand that you overturn Citizens United, keep the cap in McCutcheon, and put an end to corruption. We demand free and fair elections and a real democracy now." Newark also recorded that Supreme Court hearing and illegally posted it online.

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Bernie Sanders in Philadelphia 4/16

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Bernie can get a lot done without the support of the House of Representatives, and it's almost certain that his coattails will help down ticket Senate candidates to take back the senate and reduce the Republican advantage in the House.



That means that Bernie will have a majority advantage to get appointees authorized through the Senate.

Debunking Hillary's Stickiest Memes-- Tried & Tested, and Gets Things Done . This section is adapted and expanded from another article I wrote,

As president, Bernie will be able to do things that Hillary would never do. He can replace agency heads who Obama appointed who have deep ties to big corporations with genuine advocates for reform. For example, he can get rid of former big Pharma, Monsanto and other corporate lobbyists and executives currently running agencies, and replace them with heads of organizations that seek to make the environment safer or who advocate for consumers. Hillary will not do this. She'll walk in Obama's footsteps and appoint lobbyists and executives from the companies she is indebted to for campaign contributions. Bernie can appoint finance advisors like Paul Sachs, who also advises Pope Francis, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, or visionary economics thinkers like Gar Alperovitz, David Korten and Richard Wolff. He might even appoint public Banking advocates Ellen Brown or Mike Krause, who have been working to get states and cities to do what North Dakota has had for almost a century. Bernie can get a lot done-- a lot of meaningful changes done-- very quickly, putting together a circle of advisors and appointing people who don't need confirmation right away. It is very likely that Bernie's coattails, with his strong youth, independent and even Republican support, will broadly carry down ticket candidates, far better than high-negative Hillary. He'll very likely have a Democrat controlled senate, so he'll be able to get his agency appointees quickly through congress. They'll be able to start cleaning up the agencies that have been lobbyist influenced for 16 years. Hillary will owe all those lobbyists. (If there's another debate, I'd like to see questions about appointing lobbyists and past corporate execs posed to both candidates.) Can Bernie make a difference for Black Lives Matter right away. Absolutely. He can appoint a DOJ Attorney General who sets policies that protect people from rogue police. He can pardon people from federal prisons. I don't know. Can he pardon anyone in jail? If so, he could pardon thousands in jail for Marijuana possession. Can Bernie get Medicare for all? I doubt it will happen at once. But he can facilitate it. In Canada, it started with one province. In the US, marriage equality started with one state, then another, until a critical mass was reached. The same will probably be the case for single payer, medicare for all healthcare. It could start with one state, maybe Vermont, or Colorado or California. Knowing that the president WANTS IT, and will help in any way he can may increase the motivation for some state legislatures and governors to try. And Bernie may be able to use other executive powers or powers of agencies he controls. Can Bernie get free tuition for public colleges and universities? It might take two more years into his presidency for the Bernie revolution to win the House. Then, anything is possible. But he can also use his veto power to pressure key members of congress.

Bernie routinely talks about implementing a fifty state strategy, which is what Howard Dean when he was running the DNC, until Obama replaced him with hacks Tim Kaine and Debra Wasserman Schultz, whose DNC leadership led to the disastrous elections of 2010 and 2012. That strategy will help take congressional seats away from Republicans in gerrymandered districts. If the Bernie revolution makes it to the White House and Bernie keeps the revolution going, unlike Obama, who totally threw away the powerful bottom up base he'd built (probably taking the advice of Rahm Emanuel, who hated and vilified progressives.)

When Hillary and her reptilian surrogates lie and defame Bernie, saying he can't get things done, they are really projecting their expectations of what Hillary can or can't do. And that's realistic. Hillary doesn't have the coattails to win the senate, and could cost the Democrats the White House as well.
Billionaire businessman Charles Koch said in an interview airing Sunday that "it's possible" another Clinton in the White House could be better than having a Republican president. Koch, the CEO of Koch industries, made the comment to ABC News' Jonathan Karl for an interview airing on ABC's This Week. Koch and his brother, David, and their associated groups plan to spend nearly $900 million on the 2016 elections. The comment came after Karl asked about former President Bill Clinton's term, to which Koch said Clinton was "in some ways" better than George W. Bush.

Charles and his brother David, it is said, plan to spend almost a billion dollars on the 2016 elections.



But on whom?





"Humans are not causing a climate crisis on God's Green Earth -- in fact, they are fulfilling their Biblical duty to protect and use it for the benefit of humanity. Though Pope Francis's heart is surely in the right place, he would do his flock and the world a disservice by putting his moral authority behind the United Nations' unscientific agenda on the climate." (Wonkette)

Concerned about Hillary Clinton's rhetoric, Charles Koch fails to see how his beneficent rhetoric contradicts his erase-it-all actions and support for the politicians he has bought and paid for to do just that: erase it all - Medicare, Social Security, Affordable Care Act, all government regulations, EPA, you name it, and Koch Brothers really want it obliterated from the country.





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Bernie Sanders for President

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On the Democratic side stands Hillary Clinton, a neo-con with the backing of the likes of Robert Kagan, co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and more recently The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI). PNAC provided the blueprint for the war in Iraq in 2000 with its publication of Rebuilding America's Defenses. In this document, PNAC advocated the transformation of the U.S. into a war machine that needed to flex its military muscle by fighting multiple wars to spread U.S. "democratic" values, including wars in Iraq and Iran. No wonder Hillary Clinton advocated war with both of these Middle Eastern nations. Now, PNAC is back in action with the founding of the FPI in 2014, and Kagan's recent backing of Hillary Clinton.

On the Republican side stands Donald Trump, a man who would wall off the U.S. from the rest of the world, declare war on the press, monitor Muslims, and use religion as a basis for prohibiting entry in the U.S. Here stands a man who always gets back at his rivals and would not hesitate to use waterboarding and "even worse" on those he suspects might be terrorists.

So the American people are now likely to face a choice between an imperialistic neo-con on a mission to embroil us in multiple wars, on the one hand, and a fascistic oppressor, on the other. This goes beyond choosing between the evils because it is difficult to choose which poison is less lethal. Death, oppression, and the loss of U.S. dignity worldwide are likely to be the result, either way we turn.

This is why Bernie Sanders cannot sit on the sidelines. He has started a "revolution" and he needs to see it through. Bowing out at this juncture is to turn his back on all of us who have looked forward to the revitalization of the democratic spirit wherein the people, not the top one percent, wield the power. Sanders needs to be steadfast in taking his vision to its logical conclusion.

What is this conclusion? THE FOUNDING OF A THIRD PARTY! The present party system is fractured. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have morphed into nightmarish oppressors of human rights. There is no real choice without Sanders establishing himself as a viable alternative.

Sanders needs to run as an independent. This will set a valuable precedent for American politics. Whether or not Sanders wins the election, he will emerge as the leader of this new party. There is presently no choice without Sanders running as a third party candidate. Sanders will not be seen as a formidable opponent of the establishment unless he takes it on now--not in a diminished capacity after the election, but now when he has the bully pulpit.

But without the voices of his millions of supporters up to concert pitch, Sanders is not likely to heed the call and will instead bow out gracefully after the California primary. Like Puff the Magic Dragon, he will retreat into his cave, and the U.S. will sink deeper and deeper into the wasteland of the politics of power and oppression.

There is now still time for Sanders to declare himself as a third party candidate and to get his name on the ballot. But we need to let him know that we NEED him to run. Otherwise there is no choice, not even between the least of the two evils.

This is why this call to action NEEDS TO GO VIRAL. PLEASE SHARE THIS ARTICLE WITH AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN AND ASK THEM TO DO THE SAME. That way, we will muster the support we need for the establishing of a third party candidate who can give us a real choice.
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Iran's Notorious Evin Political Prison on Fire The notorious Evin prison caught on fire yesterday. The site of huge fire in the prison which is known to be hell on earth was tariffing. The prison system of the entire country is badly overpopulated. However, Evin is known for horrible methods of torture and sadistic staff. Sunday, October 16, 2022The notorious Evin prison caught on fire yesterday. The site of huge fire in the prison which is known to be hell on earth was tariffing. The prison system of the entire country is badly overpopulated. However, Evin is known for horrible methods of torture and sadistic staff.

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Women, Life, Freedom It would be insulting to Iranian people to call the recent uprising anything except a revolution. The dead are getting piled up by hundreds, but no one is backing off. The Ayatollah's have all of their thugs and mercenaries on the street, and they are losing. 43 years of oppression, poverty, and humilation has done the job. Wednesday, October 12, 2022It would be insulting to Iranian people to call the recent uprising anything except a revolution. The dead are getting piled up by hundreds, but no one is backing off. The Ayatollah's have all of their thugs and mercenaries on the street, and they are losing. 43 years of oppression, poverty, and humilation has done the job.

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Iranian Government Losing Control. Today Iranian people were supposed to be beat up and destroyed today. It all worked the other way around. The Iranian people have lost their fear of Revolutionary guards and are fighting like hell. The clergy have authorized all forces to be used against people to avoid the collapse of the government. It looks like it is too little too late. Saturday, October 8, 2022Today Iranian people were supposed to be beat up and destroyed today. It all worked the other way around. The Iranian people have lost their fear of Revolutionary guards and are fighting like hell. The clergy have authorized all forces to be used against people to avoid the collapse of the government. It looks like it is too little too late.

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The New Uprising in Iran Expands to 200 Cities It looks like that our dreams are coming true. Iranian people Have revolted against the Iranian cleric government. Millions of people without any leadership are unified in chanting "death to the dictator". The government has proved not to have the competence to intimidate nor sequester such a large uprising. While we had lost all hopes of seeing a real change in the country, it looks like victory is in the air. Wednesday, October 5, 2022It looks like that our dreams are coming true. Iranian people Have revolted against the Iranian cleric government. Millions of people without any leadership are unified in chanting "death to the dictator". The government has proved not to have the competence to intimidate nor sequester such a large uprising. While we had lost all hopes of seeing a real change in the country, it looks like victory is in the air.

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All Towns and Cities Join the Rebellion in Iran The rebellion in Iran is expanding, while government has lost its control over hundreds of towns and cities. After 44 years of waiting for a day like this, it finally is happening. All people are unified in Iran, asking for a regime change. Saturday, October 1, 2022The rebellion in Iran is expanding, while government has lost its control over hundreds of towns and cities. After 44 years of waiting for a day like this, it finally is happening. All people are unified in Iran, asking for a regime change.

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Rebellion of the Youth in Iran Iranian youth have surprised everyone in the country. The most astonishing part of this rebellion is participation of women, asking for regime change. After forty-four years of oppression, humiliation, discrimination and put downs they are chanting "Mahsa, life and freedom" Wednesday, September 28, 2022Iranian youth have surprised everyone in the country. The most astonishing part of this rebellion is participation of women, asking for regime change. After forty-four years of oppression, humiliation, discrimination and put downs they are chanting "Mahsa, life and freedom"

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Serious General Uprising in Iran The uprising in Iran is spreading like wildfire. The government is using military weapons and they have the entire antiriot police on the streets. They are killing, injuring and arresting people but looks like they have lost control and people are not backing off. Sunday, September 25, 2022The uprising in Iran is spreading like wildfire. The government is using military weapons and they have the entire antiriot police on the streets. They are killing, injuring and arresting people but looks like they have lost control and people are not backing off.

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Demonstrations, chaos and signs of a new revolution in Iran Demonstrations in Iran are getting out of hands of the Iranian government. Killing a 22-year-old lady who was not guilty of anything, has caused people to pour in the streets and demand government change. Tuesday, September 20, 2022Demonstrations in Iran are getting out of hands of the Iranian government. Killing a 22-year-old lady who was not guilty of anything, has caused people to pour in the streets and demand government change.

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The pains of being a neighbor to Russia living close by Russia can be bad for your health. They have this bad habit of invading their Neighbours for fun. There is not a country bordering Russia who has not tasted their extreme desire for new adventures in other countries. They come in plunder whatever they can, then leave their neighbors with a lot of dead bodies. Saturday, April 9, 2022living close by Russia can be bad for your health. They have this bad habit of invading their Neighbours for fun. There is not a country bordering Russia who has not tasted their extreme desire for new adventures in other countries. They come in plunder whatever they can, then leave their neighbors with a lot of dead bodies.

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KGB Lieutenant Colonel Fouled Up. It looks like the battle for Ukraine is coming to an ugly end with usual genocides of Russian army. This war started with the expectation of being done in a couple of weeks. However, the tanks and Russian generals are out of fuel for additional fighting. Monday, April 4, 2022It looks like the battle for Ukraine is coming to an ugly end with usual genocides of Russian army. This war started with the expectation of being done in a couple of weeks. However, the tanks and Russian generals are out of fuel for additional fighting.

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What does that KGB lieutenant colonel want? The greatest invasion of century turned out to the worst military disaster of Russian history. They fell apart once because of a similar adventure in Afghanistan. What is going to happen this time? Sunday, March 20, 2022The greatest invasion of century turned out to the worst military disaster of Russian history. They fell apart once because of a similar adventure in Afghanistan. What is going to happen this time?

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Vladimir the Conquerer on Attack Our distinguished neighbor from the east is high in heaven. He proved to the world that he is somebody. After many years of infrequent orders to kill. He got the chance to order people to kill and to be killed. He is drinking good Russian vodka, not knowing that many people who took this rout had a miserable death. Sunday, February 27, 2022Our distinguished neighbor from the east is high in heaven. He proved to the world that he is somebody. After many years of infrequent orders to kill. He got the chance to order people to kill and to be killed. He is drinking good Russian vodka, not knowing that many people who took this rout had a miserable death.

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Living Under the Guns and Missles It is difficult to feel the feelings of The people who are living under arial bombardment. But these are real people, and those explosives are real killers. It is easy to order other people to go to war or cheer for your side, but these explosions cause real death of innocent people. Friday, February 25, 2022It is difficult to feel the feelings of The people who are living under arial bombardment. But these are real people, and those explosives are real killers. It is easy to order other people to go to war or cheer for your side, but these explosions cause real death of innocent people.

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Colonel Putin's Peace keeping Forces are Keeping the Peace It just turned out that all American Military intelligence officials were right. Putin ordered his troops to get inside Ukrainian mainland and hang in there for a little while. sirens are going off telling people of Kiev that Russian Helicopters are welcoming themselves to Ukraine. Thursday, February 24, 2022It just turned out that all American Military intelligence officials were right. Putin ordered his troops to get inside Ukrainian mainland and hang in there for a little while. sirens are going off telling people of Kiev that Russian Helicopters are welcoming themselves to Ukraine.

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Tsar Putin Misses being a Tsar Our half naked KGB agent is tired of just showing his muscles. He is Putin them to work. He declares his intentions on the world T.V and gives the green light to his generals to move. We have another Stalin on our hand. It was finally time for the world to see it. Tuesday, February 22, 2022Our half naked KGB agent is tired of just showing his muscles. He is Putin them to work. He declares his intentions on the world T.V and gives the green light to his generals to move. We have another Stalin on our hand. It was finally time for the world to see it.

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Iran Refusing to Pay for shooting Down Ukrainian Jet of 2020 Iran is refusing to participate in negotiations with Canada, Germany, Ukraine and the U.K. to compensate the families of the downed Ukrainian passenger jet in Iran in 2020. The four countries have complained to the UN secretary general about Iran's refusal to participate in the negotiations for compensations. Friday, February 11, 2022Iran is refusing to participate in negotiations with Canada, Germany, Ukraine and the U.K. to compensate the families of the downed Ukrainian passenger jet in Iran in 2020. The four countries have complained to the UN secretary general about Iran's refusal to participate in the negotiations for compensations.

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Is Putin Overestimating His Power? The news from all American authorities contains the unpleasant smell of bloodshed. Putin might be involved in a show of force. or he might be really going for it. All indications are that it is getting closer and closer for an all-out, nasty full invasion of Ukraine. Is he laughing for fooling us, or are we the fools just watching something similar to invasion of Poland in WWII? Friday, February 11, 2022The news from all American authorities contains the unpleasant smell of bloodshed. Putin might be involved in a show of force. or he might be really going for it. All indications are that it is getting closer and closer for an all-out, nasty full invasion of Ukraine. Is he laughing for fooling us, or are we the fools just watching something similar to invasion of Poland in WWII?

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Panama Leaks Gathering Storm 26 April, 2016 By Asif Haroon Raja

Related News Govt finalises draft of national security policy: Nisar Govt okays targeted action in Karachi Related Articles Horde of Enemies surrounding Pakistan

By By Asif Haroon Raja Dirty role of International NGOs in Pakistan

By By Asif Haroon Raja Related Speakout More on this View All Govt determined to transform Pakistan into truly democratic society: Rasheed

Govt finalises draft of national security policy: Nisar

Govt okays targeted action in Karachi

Karachi violence: 10 more killed

Int'l aid can help Pakistan be anchor of stability: FoDP

Pakistan's existence not jeopardised at all: FM Qureshi

Pakistani state is not going to collapse, says Zardari Related News Poll Are you in support of amending the law to raise the strength of the Supreme Court to 27 from 17? 11.5 million files leaked by a whistle blower from an offshore company in Panama and published by a German newspaper has created ripples in the world. These are just the first batch released and many more are likely to be made public. Leaks are not a new phenomenon when seen in context with WikiLeaks and Snowdens revelations. Nothing came out of the two earthshaking exposures and those have been consigned to the dustbin of history, while the two whistle blowers Assange and Snowden are in hiding. Panama leaks have however exposed the racket of the rich and resulted in resignations of some top figures in Iceland, Ukraine and Spain and has put many others in trouble.



Offshore companies are in existence since long and it is a well-known fact that the worlds rich and famous stash their wealth in safe havens to either whiten their black money, or hide their wealth, or evade/ avoid tax. About $105 trillion stashed in offshore companies around the world are considered legal. Possibility of conspiracy cannot be altogether ruled out since among the culprits, not a single American has been named, whereas the elite of USA are the biggest tax thieves. Main targets appear to be resurgent Russia, rising China and nuclear Pakistan.



Another view is that the US is under massive debt of $19 trillion and China is the biggest donor of debt to USA, while Eurozone debt has risen to $16 trillion. The US is extremely worried over the fast paced development of CPEC which when commissioned will free China of the Malacca dilemma and China may not lend more loan to the US. The US intends to loot the looters by passing laws and then first freezing and then seizing over $100 trillion stashed in offshore companies and making it their property and thus resolving their financial crisis for times to come. Europe will also partake its share of the loot.



Among the 260 Pakistani politicians and businessmen holding accounts in offshore companies, two sons and daughter of PM Nawaz Sharif (NS) have also been named. These news have come as a God sent opportunity for the NS haters and their aggressive posturing has given rise to the political temperature in Pakistan. Imran Khan (IK) is leading the assault brigade wanting his head. IK want him to resign before the inquest and rejected the judicial commission under retired judges suggested by the PM since he wants that who so ever holds the inquiry should give verdict of his choice.



He and other opposition parties demanded formation of high powered commission under Chief Justice (CJ) of Supreme Court to head the probe and also forensic audit. IK threatened that in case his demand is not met he will lead the long march and stage a sit-in at Jati Umra in Raiwind, which will continue till NSs exit. He showed his strength on April 24 while celebrating his partys 20th anniversary at F-9 Park Islamabad and availed the occasion to badger NS. Media gladly bought the bellicose stance taken by IK since it is ripe with sensationalism, and has gone bonkers over the issue of Panama Leaks.



While NS has asserted that no illegality has been committed by him or any of his family member, IK and his like-minded politicians are not prepared to buy the idea that NS is not directly involved in offshore company scandal, and that his son Hussain Nawaz purchased properties (two flats) in London legally. However, it is a fact that Nawazs two sons Hussain and Hasan are residing in London since 1992. Hussain has admitted owning offshore company and two flats in London. He stated that since he took residence in London in 1992, he is not obligated to file tax return or declare assets in Pakistan.



It is also true that Sharif family went through rigorous investigations thrice in the past but no case of corruption was proved against them. It also cannot be denied that Sharif family prospered because of the hard work of their father Mian Muhamad Sharif and that their business recovered despite deliberate attempts made by ZA Bhutto, Benazir and Musharraf to bludgeon Ittefaq Foundry.



What is required to be probed is whether the amount deposited by Hussain Nawaz in Mossac Fonseca Company was legally earned, or stolen from Pakistan national kitty, and whether it was transferred legally, and whether it was his earning from steel factories in Saudi Arabia, and whether he purchased London property lawfully or from unlawful sources; and whether Marium Nawaz is a trustee in the Mossac Fonseca offshore company or owner/shareholder; and whether NS had any connection.



Taking into account IKs old habit of distrusting everyone and casting aspersions, the retired judges refused to head the investigation. Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani declined to head a parliamentary committee as suggested by opposition leader Khurshid Shah to conduct the probe. He remarked that protests being staged could have interest of non-political forces who have their own axe to grind.



In the backdrop of heat generated by the politicians and media over Panama Papers and the demand for ruthless accountability, Gen Raheel Sharifs statement that terrorism cannot be rooted out unless corruption is eliminated through across the board accountability upped the ante. NS haters took it for granted that the jibe was meant for none else but NS. The media and opponents of NS went crazy once the news of sacking of six senior Army officers on corruption charges were broken and gave them a chance to fire their salvos on NS with full intensity and shame him.



Whirling under pressure, NS addressed the nation for the second time in a month and agreed to form an inquiry commission under CJ as demanded by the opposition. The terms of reference (TORs) however sought probe of all the 260 persons mentioned in Panama Papers as well as other account holders in all offshore companies/banks/firms, owners of properties abroad, loan defaulters and those who had got their loans written off. The commission has been given wide powers to investigate and assured of full support of the government. Logically this step should have defused the hysteria but it didnt. IK and other political parties are now objecting to the TORs and the scope of the investigation that has been widened. They want the inquiry to be confined to NS and his family only since in their view the wide ranged TORs are mala fide in intentions and meant to buy time. The Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI) and Jamaat-e-Islami have decided to launch a campaign against corruption, while major political parties in opposition will be getting together on May 2 to decide the future course of action. The purpose of opposition is to build pressure and force NS to quit.



Involvement of CJ and serving judges will be at the cost of their judicial work which is already painfully slow due to heavy workload. More so, what is the guarantee that the verdict given by CJ would be accepted? Its been sounded by the apex court that investigation falls in the domain of executive and not of judiciary and that the Judiciary adjucate and doesnt investigate. It is to be seen how CJ responds when he returns from abroad on May 2. He will decide what is doable and what is not.



After the unproductive six months sit-in in 2014, which caused huge economic loss to Pakistan and immense inconvenience to the residents of twin cities, preparations are underway for another sit-in on account of Panama leaks. IK is kicking up dust to slur the image of NS as much as possible, create another political crisis and force Gen Raheel to step in as a referee, the way former chief Gen Waheed Kakar had acted in 1993, and facilitate mid-term elections. IKs fans on social media as well as electronic and print



media are frenetically heating up the temperature and subjecting NS and his family to media trial. In their exuberance they have lost sight of norms of decency and ethics. Oddly, they have no strategy to execute their wish but are merely firing slings of hate aimlessly and blindly. If they are doing so to fight the menace of corruption and to fortify the process of accountability, I am afraid that is not the case since their guns are aimed at NS and his family only and none else. They are least bothered about 257 people whose names have been mentioned in Panama Papers but want immediate accountability of NS, whose name has not been mentioned, and his three children.



IK also carries a baggage and he is still an untried horse. In case IK is spotless as claimed, what about the turncoats in his party from other parties with dubious background who call all the shots? One of their leading lights Aleem Khan has an offshore company and he has 9 flats in UK while he has declared only 4 flats in his tax returns the value of which is shown as Rupees 29 lacs only. Jahangir Tareen and Faisal Wadia of PTI own dozens of flats in UK. Tareen and Aleem meet the expenses of PTI public meetings and sit-ins. If Jati Umra is an empire, what about Bani Gala? If patients have benefited from Shaukat Khanum hospital, large numbers have benefited from the mills and factories owned by Sharif brothers.



Hypothetically, even if their wish come true, what next? If they think that IK will be crowned is nothing more than wishful thinking since he has no standing in Sindh and Baluchistan, his political power in KP has waned and he hasnt dented PML-N strength in Punjab. He does not have the political strength to win and that too with a heavy mandate, or the political acumen to deal with complex socio-politico-economic and security matters, or the astuteness to deal with anti-Pakistan foreign agenda. His own party is rived in infighting, PTIs performance in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is far from satisfactory and ministers are involved in corruption.



PML-N in league with JUI-F could have easily dethroned PTI in KP if it wanted to but didnt. PML-N bailed out PTIs legislators who had resigned during dharna by restoring their membership. PML-N strength has further increased in Punjab as was evident in by-elections and local bodies elections and has also gained space in other provinces. Popularity graph of the Sharif brothers has not declined.



In case by stroke of luck, IK manages to topple the present regime and the country heads for mid-term elections, given the political polarization and presence of foreign network inside Pakistan, will it be peaceful? Will the Army be able to spare troops for national and provincial elections? Elections will be held without electoral reforms and the losers will again level the charge of rigging. There will be chaos and all development works and ongoing operations in northwest, Baluchistan, Karachi and Punjab will come to a standstill. It will certainly impact CPEC since China is already a bit upset because of the deleterious role of certain political forces in Pakistan finding faults in the project. Iran and India will step up their efforts to convince China to change the direction of economic corridor to Chahbahar.



For arguments sake, even if PTI wins with a narrow margin and IK sits in the coveted chair of PM, he will find himself besieged by his opponents and it will be a miracle if he survives for a year. With all around pulls and pushes one wonders how he will be able to cure all the chronic diseases of Pakistan and make it a malaise-free Pakistan and an Asian tiger. He can do so if he has a magic wand but not otherwise. Why does he overlook that Pakistan is the most difficult country of the world to govern? One of the key reasons why Pakistan lurches from one crisis to another is the Indian factor which does not want Pakistan to become stable and prosperous. India is strategic partner of the sole super power and darling of the west and Israel. The three conniving partners are anti-CPEC and against Pakistans nuclear program.



IKs authoritarian behavior will impel all the political and religious forces to gang up and go for a big sit-in and force him to abdicate. He will be left with no option but to become a dictator and use force ruthlessly. His opponents will demand national government (collection of thieves from all parties) or military takeover. All this will result in instability and mayhem. None else but enemies of Pakistan will benefit from the chaos. It is one of the favored strategy of the CIA to foment chaos in the target country to affect a regime change.



Let us cast away our prejudices for a moment and see things with an open mind and compare the state of affairs that had existed during the previous regime and that of the present one. I reckon, even the blind and deaf will admit that there is a world of difference in all the fields. Had things gone from bad to worse, one was morally justified to raise hue and cry. If we could put up with the black deeds of PPP-MQM-ANP coalition for 5 years when Pakistan was fast sinking, why cant we put up with PML-N regime for another 2 years that has rescued the ship from collapsing and shown better results? Why cant IK wait for his turn in May 2018 and after all, what is the hurry and why so? Why the entire focus on Sharif family and not on the whole lot of 260 persons named in leaks as well as other notorious corrupt big shots? Will the cancer of corruption be cured by removing Nawaz? Why so much of uproar on investigation commission and distrust in all institutions? God forbid, if we again venture to seek foreign investigators, we must not fail to recall the zero outcome of UN team and Scotland Yard investigating Benazir murder case and foot dragging over Dr. Imran Farooq murder and money laundering cases pending since 2010.



Nervousness of India and the US and their great hurry to torpedo the progress of Pakistan is comprehensible because of the fast track development of CPEC and other mega development works, control over terrorism and accomplishment of Full Spectrum Deterrence. Having tried out all possible covert and overt methods to derail Pakistan, or to roll back CPEC and tactical nuclear capability, could the agitation planned by PTI and others including Tahirul Qadri (who has again got active) be another tool employed to dislocate Pakistans accomplishments?



We must not turn a blind eye to the recently concluded Indo-US defence agreements on logistics, maritime security, military communication networking and satellite communication/information sharing to further cement their strategic partnership. These agreements will allow both militaries to utilise the facilities of each others military bases, ensure deeper collaboration between the two navies in Indian and Pacific Oceans, allow the commanders of two armed forces to talk on hotline, and to use satellites for controlling ballistic missiles. Indian armed forces have been made part of the US plan to strategically encircle China but this will also enable India to encircle Pakistan by virtue of its foothold in Afghanistan and Iran and deepening ties with Gulf States. This is an alarming development when seen in context with US-Iran burgeoning relationship and the US coldness with Saudi Arabia. Above all, the existence of foreign agencies network stretching from one end of the country to another.



Possible reason behind IKs impetuosity could be that he knows that given the pace of progress made by PML-N, his chance of winning in 2018 elections will become dim. His recklessness to de-seat PM by hook or crook is puzzling. Have we forgotten ZA Bhuttos mindless sabre rattling against his mentor Field Marshal Ayub Khan which forced Ayub to resign and his departure ended Pakistans golden period? And later Bhutto-Mujibur Rahmans pigheadedness which led to breakup of Pakistan? Bhutto was rated as the most charismatic and popular leader after Quaid-e-Azam, but what did he give to Pakistan? How can we forget the unstable democratic era from 1988 to 1999 which saw four changeovers and then takeover by the military? We also saw the disgraceful exit of Gen Musharraf when all and sundry yelled in unison that



worst democracy is better than military dictatorship and that the military has impeded the growth of democracy. Everyone praised Zardari. So why the military is being sought and what is the guarantee that Gen Raheel will be treated with love and affection? Chronic Army bashers who stick to their falsehood that the armed forces eat up 80% of national budget and that Army is a white elephant which must be cut to size are keeping mum momentarily. In reality the Armys budget is not more than 17%. They will get activated and so will the media and political forces in case the Army seize power.



What is urgently required is an unbiased and honest probe by the Commission under Supreme Court CJ as was vigorously demanded by the opposition to find answers to the allegations made in Panama leaks and if there is veracity in the charges, it should pin the blame and recommend punishment. Hue and cry and politics of agitation at a time when the country is passing through critical times will be counterproductive. If nothing is found in the probe and it is ascertained that a wicked agenda was behind the leaks, those subscribing to foreign inspired agenda should be taken to task. Restricting the scope of investigation to Panama Papers and that too to NS and his family will be similar to Hamoodur Rahman Commission whose mandate was limited to the role of military in East Pakistan only.



There is definitely a need to launch a vigorous campaign against corruption which is eating into the vitals of the country and is a major cause of immorality, crime and terrorism. Corruption cannot be possibly rooted out in few months or one year. Security forces are fighting the cancer of terrorism since 2003 and have yet not got rid of it. The suggested Commission should confine its investigation to the ones named in Panama Leaks as well as those possessing properties abroad and holding accounts in various offshore companies/banks/firms so as to recover $ 200 billion stashed by Pakistanis abroad. At the same time, another national action plan should be devised to fight corruption on war footing so as to rid the country of the cancer of corruption. For this, the system of accountability needs to be strengthened. Duly restructured NAB, FIA and anti-corruption department should carry out across the board accountability of all and sundry to recover every penny of looted money of the nation.



The writer is a retired Brig, war veteran, defence analyst, columnist, author of five books, director Measac Research Centre, Director Board of Governors Thinkers Forum Pakistan. He delivers talks and takes part in TV talk shows. asifharoonraja@gmail.com
Bioreactor design varies, but they are typically large trenches filled with wood chips. Credit: Brandon C. Goeller, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Last summer, the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone" spanned more than 6,400 square miles, more than three times the size it should have been, according to the Gulf Hypoxia Task Force. Nitrogen runoff from farms along the Mississippi River winds up in the Gulf, feeding algae but depriving other marine life of oxygen when the algae decomposes. The 12 states that border the Mississippi have been mandated to develop nutrient reduction strategies, but one especially effective strategy has not been adopted widely: bioreactors.

Bioreactors are passive filtration systems that capitalize on a bacterial process known as denitrification to remove from 25 to 45 percent of the nitrate in water draining from farm fields. Research on and installation of bioreactors has accelerated in the past decade, but University of Illinois assistant professor of water quality Laura Christianson and her colleagues are urging a move past proof-of-concept toward large-scale deployment.

"Bioreactors are one of the most effective edge-of-field practices, but until now, they haven't been rolled out on a large scale," Christianson says.

Designs vary, but the typical arrangement for a 40- to 80-acre field is a large (100 x 20 foot) pit situated just ahead of where drainage pipes flow into ditches or streams. The pit is filled with carbon-rich organic material: usually wood chips, but sometimes corn cobs, biochar, or other matter. Denitrifying bacteria make their homes in the organic material and utilize its carbon as an energy source to convert nitrate in the water to the harmless nitrogen gas that makes up 78 percent of our atmosphere.

A benefit of bioreactors as a nitrogen management strategy is their cost-benefit ratio. Bioreactors can cost approximately $10,000 to install, but cost-sharing is available through the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service for approximately half of that. Importantly, bioreactors typically operate for 10 years before wood chips need to be replaced.

"It's a big up-front cost compared to a cover crop, but then you're 'one and done' for 10 years," Christianson notes.

Christianson put together a special issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality focusing on bioreactors. Fifteen articles in the issue summarize the state-of-the-art of bioreactor technology, confirming that bioreactors could be an effective part of an integrated approach to nitrate management.

A large component to bioreactor efficiency is design.

According to Christianson and other experts contributing to the special issue, flow rates can significantly affect the efficiency of bioreactors. During low-flow periods, water can be held in bioreactors for too long, setting up conditions for different bacteria that create noxious hydrogen sulfide gas. Likewise, in high-flow periods, water may move through too quickly for efficient nitrogen removal.

"Tile drainage systems never flow at a consistent rate," Christianson explains. "Bioreactors have to be designed strategically to optimize retention time and maximize nitrate removal without undesirable byproducts."

Temperature and seasonal changes also affect how well bioreactors work.

"The critical period for nitrate loss is early spring, before plants are growing and taking up nitrogen," Christianson says. "Snowmelt puts a significant amount of water through a bioreactor, depending on where you are. And because snowmelt and early spring drainage water is cooler, the bacteria aren't as efficient."

Christianson and her colleagues are calling for more field-scale research to optimize design for the set of conditions unique to each field.

"That's where my interest is for research: coming up with better designs. But on the other side of that coin, we don't want to become so advanced in the design that it becomes really complicated. There's a beauty in the simplicity of a trench full of woodchips," Christianson says.

The article introducing the special issue, "Moving denitrifying bioreactors beyond proof of concept: Introduction to the special section," appears in the Journal of Environmental Quality along with 14 additional articles on the topic. Christianson co-authored the introductory article with Louis Schipper of the University of Waikato in New Zealand.

Explore further Wetlands continue to reduce nitrates

More information: Laura E. Christianson et al, Moving Denitrifying Bioreactors beyond Proof of Concept: Introduction to the Special Section, Journal of Environment Quality (2016). Journal information: Journal of Environmental Quality Laura E. Christianson et al, Moving Denitrifying Bioreactors beyond Proof of Concept: Introduction to the Special Section,(2016). DOI: 10.2134/jeq2016.01.0013

Provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Tim Mousseau, director of the Chernobyl + Fukushima Research Initiative, joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina in 1991 after earning a Ph.D. at McGill University and completing a postdoctoral fellowship at The University of California, Davis. Credit: University of South Carolina

It was 30 years ago that a meltdown at the V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station in the former Soviet Union released radioactive contaminants into the surroundings in northern Ukraine. Airborne contamination from what is now generally termed the Chernobyl disaster spread well beyond the immediate environs of the power plant, and a roughly 1000-square-mile region in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia remains cordoned off, an exclusion zone where human habitation is forbidden.

The radiation spill was a disaster for the environment and its biological inhabitants, but it also created a unique radio-ecological laboratory. University of South Carolina professor of biological sciences Tim Mousseau and longtime collaborator Anders Mller of the CNRS (France) recognized that the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which comprises areas with a wide range of background radiation levels, was essentially the first place in the world where it would be possible to study the effects of ionizing radiation on animals living in the wild.

Since the atomic bomb was developed during WWII, laboratory testing has been used to assess toxicological effects of ionizing radiation on life, but Mousseau and Mller wanted to examine the effects on free-ranging organisms. In contrast to their laboratory brethren, wild animals have to forage for food and fend for themselves, likely leaving them more vulnerable to new stressors. With that in mind, Mousseau and Mller began studying the natural inhabitants of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in 2000. Their scope expanded after Japan's Fukushima disaster in 2011, and they have established the USC Chernobyl + Fukushima Initiative, through which they and colleagues have now published more than 90 peer-reviewed papers.

Their work has shown a wide range of damaging effects to wildlife that result from chronic radiation exposure, even when the exposure is at low levels.

"As a starting point for our studies of animal populations, we took our cue from the medical literatureone of the first effects observed was the presence of cataracts in the eyes of people exposed to energy from atomic bombs," Mousseau says. "And we found that both birds and rodents show elevated frequencies and degree of cataracts in their eyes in the more radioactive areas. Nowadays, we see higher rates of cataracts in flight crews who spend a lot of time in airplanes, which expose them to extra radiation. And people who work in radiology fields are more likely to show increased prevalence and degree of cataract formation in their eyes."

The team also showed that radiation in Chernobyl diminished brain size, increased incidence of tumor formation, affected fertility and increased the prevalence of developmental abnormalities in birds. And the effects on individuals propagated through groups as well. Populations of barn swallows, for example, which were particularly hard hit in Chernobyl, were lower in areas of higher contamination, and Mousseau thinks they likely would have died off without immigration of new individuals from uncontaminated areas.

"That's something we tested. Using an isotopic method that shows geographic origin, we compared feathers of barn swallows in the contaminated areas with museum specimens from before the accident and found much more heterogeneity after the accident," Mousseau says. "Most populations are in some kind of equilibrium, teetering on this balance between the effects of birth and death. If the environment changes for the worse, it pushes them toward extinction, and with all of these negative fitness consequences, that's what we see: the populations pushed to smaller sizes because the deaths were outweighing the births. But secondarily, in many of these populations what we're probably seeing is actually a reflection of births, deaths, and immigration. These populations would be locally extinct if it were not for constant immigration."

And in a recently published paper in Science of the Total Environment, Mousseau and colleagues presented a meta-analysis of oxidative damage resulting from ionizing radiation. Radioactive contamination can have direct effects on, say, chromosomes or DNA, but its energy can also ionize other species in the biological milieu, such as ubiquitous water to form peroxide. The resulting oxidative stress can cause a range of biochemical effects.

"One of the messages coming through our research is that this secondary mechanism through oxidative stress appears to be fairly commonly observed," Mousseau says. "We have many examples now, both from other people's research and our own, that shows that there does appear to be some sort of tradeoff between the quantity of antioxidants in the organism's body and its ability to defend itself against the effects of ionizing radiation."

The protectiveness of antioxidants in the face of ionizing radiation might part of the explanation for why some populations are less susceptible to radioactive contamination than others, Mousseau adds. "Species that can somehow adjust the use of antioxidants may be using this as a means to reduce genetic damage."

Explore further Viewing Fukushima in the cold light of Chernobyl

More information: D. Einor et al, Ionizing radiation, antioxidant response and oxidative damage: A meta-analysis, Science of The Total Environment (2016). Journal information: Science of the Total Environment D. Einor et al, Ionizing radiation, antioxidant response and oxidative damage: A meta-analysis,(2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.01.027

Provided by University of South Carolina
The report highlights the situation in 70 countries for 2015 as known by January 2016, analysed in terms of number of people in state of food insecurity.

In 2016, 240 million people across 45 low-income and/or conflict-affected countries are assessed as being in a 'food stress' situation. Within this number, 80 million people are in the more serious condition of "food crisis" with 41.7 million being located in countries affected by El Nino.

A new European Commission report led by JRC scientists and compiled in cooperation with the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) identifies crucial countries and regions where assistance should be prioritised to bridge the gap between emergency and development operations. Moreover, it allows programmatic planning for the short-medium-long term with the aim to strengthen resilience.

The analysis covers food crises in the period January 2015-January 2016. These are caused by extreme weather events triggered by the El Nino climate phenomenon, and also by armed conflicts and political turmoil. The report is presented during a high level Commission event "Innovative Ways for Sustainable Nutrition, Food Security and Inclusive Agricultural Growth" in Brussels, which focuses on better funding to address global food crises.

Hotspots

The hotspots of severe food crisis that emerge are mainly in Africa; the Horn of Africa, in particular Ethiopia and Southern Africa (Zimbabwe, Malawi, Lesotho, Angola, Mozambique and Namibia) due to the El-Nino related drought. Countries in Central America and the Caribbean as well as the Pacific Islands have been also badly affected by the drought.

Population in IPC Phase2 (Stress) or higher. Credit: EU, 2016

In addition to climate events, armed conflicts that have intensified recently have put millions of people into extremely vulnerable situations and triggered severe food crises in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Central African Republic.

In a number of countries in West Africa food insecurity remains a major concern because of chronic vulnerability despite good crop production in 2015.

Background information

Before 2015, FAO, WFP and the EU were carrying out their own food security analyses. In early 2016, given the magnitude of food crises all over the world the Commission with the technical support of WFP and FAO undertook a global assessment that led to the publication of a common report. In this way a common assessment could be used to respond to current food crises bringing together both development and humanitarian stakeholders and the differing elements involved.

Population in IPC Phase 3 (Crisis) or higher. Credit: EU, 2016

Initially intended to inform the allocation process for 2016 under the EU Pro-Resilience Action (PRO-ACT) programme, the report became instrumental for an EU global consolidated proposition of response.

The report highlights the situation in 70 countries for 2015 as known by January 2016, analysed in terms of number of people in state of food insecurity on the basis of the Integrated food security Phase Classification (IPC) and other relevant available information. A maximum effort has been put into harmonising the approaches across countries in order to use comparable data.

Unlike existing food and nutrition analysis tools, the report allows the identification of countries and regions where the assistance should be prioritised to bridge the gap between emergency and development operations. Moreover, it allows programmatic planning for the short-medium-long term with the aiming of strengthening resilience.

Explore further Malawi president declares national disaster after drought

More information: Global analysis of food and nutrition security situation in food crisis hotspots: Global analysis of food and nutrition security situation in food crisis hotspots: ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publicatio  food-crisis-hotspots Press release: El Nino - EU plans to step up funding in new approach to address global food crises: europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1513_en.htm MEMO: europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-16-1514_en.htm El Nino - devastating impact on southern Africa's harvests and food security: ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/news/el-ni  ts-and-food-security

Provided by European Commission, Joint Research Centre
Ferocious lightning storms millions of times more powerful than those on Earth could be responsible for unexplained radio signals from planets orbiting other stars.

That is the finding of researchers from the University of St Andrews School of Physics and Astronomy in a piece of work published today (25 April 2016).

In 2009 French astronomers observed what was thought to be a weak radio signal coming from the exoplanet HAT-P-11b, a "mini-Neptune" about five times bigger in size than the Earth and 26 times more massive. The following year the French team made an attempt to locate the signal again, but was unsuccessful leaving the phenomenon unexplained.

The St Andrews team set out to solve the mystery. Gabriella Hodosan, the Life, Electricity, Atmosphere, Planets (LEAP) Project PhD student leading the study said: "We assumed that this signal was real and was coming from the planet. Then we asked the question: could such a radio signal be produced by lightning in the planet's atmosphere, and if yes, how many lightning flashes would be needed for it?"

Assuming that the underlying physics of lighting is the same for all Solar System planets, like Earth and Saturn, as well as on HAT-P-11b, the researchers found that 53 lightning flashes of Saturnian lightning-strength in a km2 per hour would explain the observed radio signal on HAT-P-11b.

Dr Paul Rimmer, LEAP researcher and co-author of the paper, said: "Imagine the biggest lightning storm you've ever been caught in. Now imagine that this storm is happening everywhere over the surface of the planet. A storm like that would produce a radio signal approaching 1% the strength of the signal that was observed in 2009 on the exoplanet HAT-P-11b."

Miss Hodosan continued: "Such enormous thunderstorms are not unreasonable.

"Studies conducted by our group have also shown that exoplanets orbiting really close to their host star have very dynamic atmospheres, meaning that they change continuously, producing clouds of different sizes, even whole cloud systems, all over the planet's surface.

"HAT-P-11b, being so close to the star, is likely to have such a dynamic, cloudy atmosphere, which would allow the formations of huge thunderclouds, focusing the lightning activity to a certain regime of the planetary surface, such as the face of the planet, which was observed in 2009."

The team hoped that this intensity of lightning could be observed with optical telescopes but were thwarted by the powerful light emissions from the star around which HAT-P-11b orbits.

The process of lightning discharges involves plasma processes at very high temperatures and the release of a large amount of energy. This results in chemical reactions in the atmosphere that otherwise would not occur. These reactions produce molecules that can be used as lighting tracers.

The team considered whether such enormous thunderstorm clouds produce these tracer molecules, which then could be observed by Earth-telescopes, and suggested hydrogen cyanide (HCN) to be such a potential fingerprint of lightning. This molecule could be observable in the infrared spectral band, even years after the huge storm on HAT-P-11b would have occurred.

Miss Hodosan said: "In the future, combined radio and infrared observations may lead to the first detection of lightning on an extrasolar planet.

"The importance of the study is not just this prediction, but it shows an original scenario for the explanation of radio emission observable on extrasolar planets."

Dr Christiane Helling, the LEAP Project principal investigator, said: "With all necessary caution, linking extraterrestrial lightning and radio emissions will open a new window to prove the presence of atmospheres and of clouds on extrasolar planets, both being essential for the existence of life as we know it."

Explore further The science of lightning in extrasolar planets

More information: Lightning as a possible source of the radio emission on HAT-P-11b. MNRAS, mnras.oxfordjournals.org/conte  jkey=4QdkEO09yQk8Mzg Journal information: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Lightning as a possible source of the radio emission on HAT-P-11b.

Provided by University of St Andrews
The probability future climate will move beyond range of present day forest tolerance to drought. Credit: Jean Lienard, Nikolay Strigul

Drought could render the U.S. Northeast's mixed forests unsustainable after 2050 while Washington's Cascade Mountains may require tropical and subtropical forest species, according to researchers using a new type of mathematical model at Washington State University.

The Tolerance Distribution Model (TDM) is the first to use the tolerances of different types of forests to drought, flood and shade to determine how the forests may respond to future climate change. In contrast to existing methods, the new approach can be applied at a continental scale while maintaining a direct link to ecologically relevant stressors.

Details of the WSU team's work are available online in Global Change Biology.

Changes in Northeast, Rockies, Texas, Gulf

WSU Vancouver mathematicians Jean Lienard and Nikolay Strigul, and ecologist John Harrison, predict the Pacific Northwest's climate may be warmer and wetter, requiring the establishment of forest types seen in places like southeastern China, southern Brazil or sub-Saharan Africa.

In the northeastern U.S., the model projects forests of maple/beech/birch, spruce/fir and white/red/jack pine combinations will be ill-suited to withstand predicted drought conditions by the latter half of the 21st century. Other forested areas that were identified as being at risk from drought included the northern Great Plains and the higher elevations of the Rocky Mountains.

A visualization of the minimal drought tolerance US forests will require to withstand projected climate change through 2070. Credit: Nikolay Strigul, Jean Lienard

Meanwhile, low altitude areas of Texas may eventually host tropical dry forests similar to regions of eastern Mexico. Moist, deciduous forests found in locations like Cuba could one day thrive along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

"Until now, our ability to predict exactly how and where forest characteristics and distributions are likely to be altered as a result of climate change has been rather limited," said Lienard, a postdoctoral researcher and the paper's first author. "With our model, it is possible to identify which forests are at the greatest risk from future environmental stressors. Forest managers and private landowners could then take steps like planting drought tolerant seedlings and saplings to prepare."

Minimal forest drought tolerance required to withstand future climate is shown. Credit: Nikolay Strigul, Jean Lienard

Other continents, ecosystems to be modeled

To create the forest tolerance model, the researchers collected physiological data on the abilities of U.S. tree species to cope with drought, varying levels of sunlight and flooding. They assigned tolerance rankings to each of the 400,000 forest plots in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forestry Inventory and Analysis Program based on the composition of the trees in each plot and their corresponding physiological characteristics.

They integrated data on the projected changes in annual U.S. temperature and precipitation from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to determine how each plot is likely to fare in response to changing climatic conditions through the end of the century.

The researchers plan to develop versions of the TDM that can be applied to agricultural systems as well as other terrestrial and aquatic ecological systems.

"We are working on modeling other continents and have already gained access to European and Asian forest data," Strigul said. "Our work is really just getting started."

Explore further Researchers grow cyberforests to predict climate change

More information: US forest response to projected climate-related stress: a tolerance perspective, Global Change Biology, DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13291 Journal information: Global Change Biology US forest response to projected climate-related stress: a tolerance perspective,

Provided by Washington State University
Hyla femoralis. Credit: Jeromi Hefner, USGS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Invasive species can wreak havoc on ecosystems. Most research has focused on how introduced species negatively impact biodiversity through predation, competition for food and shelter, and disease transmission. But invasives can harm native species in a less obvious way: edging them out of their acoustic space.

Acoustic space is the environment in which a sound is sent and received. It's made up of many different parameters, including the time of day or year, pitch, loudness, duration, and call rate.

"Acoustic space is a limited resource, just like shelter or food," says Jennifer Tennessen of Western Washington University. "Just as species compete for shelter or food, they compete for acoustic space."

In established ecosystems, species divvy up the acoustic space so they can all be heard. For instance, birds tend to call at dusk and dawn, while frog choruses tend to be nighttime affairs.

But if an invasive species is introduced into an ecosystem, its calls can modify the soundscape and interfere with the ability of native species to send and receive signals. Native and non-native animals may end up competing acoustically for their signals to be heard. Since many animals use acoustic signals to attract mates and assess rivals, the effects of such acoustic invasions could be dire for survival.

Many species modify their calls in the presence of noise. In response to increased noise from human activities such as traffic, animals such as frogs have demonstrated the ability to compensate by altering the duration, loudness, pitch, or rate of their calls. But can the noise made by another animal also prompt such changes?

Osteopilus septentrionalis. Credit: Thomas Brown, via Wikimedia Commons. Distributed under a CC BY 2.0 license

Acoustic Space Invaders

Tennessen, along with colleagues from Syracuse University and Pennsylvania State University, investigated the effect of acoustic invaders on native frog calls.

The Cuban treefrog (Osteopilus septentrionalis) is an invasive species that arrived in southern Florida by the 1930s and spread rapidly throughout the southeastern U.S. Its mating call has been described as a "grating squawk."

Tennessen and colleagues conducted a field playback experiment with two native frog species, one whose calls are similar in pitch and timing to Cuban treefrogs (green treefrogs, Hyla cinerea) and one whose calls are dissimilar (pine woods treefrogs, Hyla femoralis).

The researchers found evidence that the invasive treefrogs compete acoustically with native treefrogs with similar calls: Green treefrogs modified their calls in response to playback of Cuban treefrog calls, but pine woods treefrogs did not. Green treefrogs made shorter, louder, and more frequent calls during Cuban treefrog call playback.

By modifying their calls, green treefrogs may be able to up the chances that potential mates can detect them amidst the noise. However, there may also be costs to changing their mating calls.

"Modifying calls could be bad for native frogs," says Tennessen. "Certainly, altering the signal with which you attract mates could have some negative effects on mate attraction. But on the flip side, the benefits could outweigh the costs  if, by modifying their calls, green treefrogs are able to convey their calls more effectively so they are not masked by Cuban treefrog noise, it could be the lesser of two evils."

Tennessen and her colleagues say more research on the effects of acoustic competition between native and invasive species is needed. At this early stage in the research, not much is known about the consequences of call modification. But these results suggest that competition for acoustic space is yet another way invasive species are putting pressure on native species.

Explore further Croaking chorus of Cuban frogs make noisy new neighbors

More information: Jennifer B. Tennessen et al. Raising a racket: invasive species compete acoustically with native treefrogs, Animal Behaviour (2016). Journal information: Animal Behaviour Jennifer B. Tennessen et al. Raising a racket: invasive species compete acoustically with native treefrogs,(2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2016.01.021
April 25, 2016

PHR responded to Brian P. McKeons letter and called for the disciplinary process to include consideration of criminal liability up the chain of command; that an analysis of compliance with international humanitarian law and the U.S. Military Code of Justice assessing criminal liability be made public; and that the victims and their families be provided full and effective reparation including guarantees of non-repetition as well as a full opportunity to present their claims for compensation beyond the narrow claims they have been directed to. Read the full letter here.

March 7, 2016

The U.S. Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Brian P. McKeon, responded to PHRs letter. Read the full response here.

January 16, 2016

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) sent a letter to President Barack Obama expressing grave concern about the increased frequency of attacks on hospitals and medical personnel across the globe, including the devastating October airstrikes by the U.S. military on a Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. PHR urged the president to ensure that the U.S. government thoroughly address what happened in accordance with its obligations under domestic and international law, and to take action on the following recommendations:

(1) To ensure that the initial report produced by the Department of Defense as a result of its probe into the Kunduz hospital bombing be made available to the public promptly and to ensure that the recommendations resulting from the DoDs full investigation are forthcoming and transparent, contain active pursuit of criminal liability  including at the command level  and are communicated to the public in a timely manner;

(2) To publicly assert the United States commitment to universally-recognized principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), which afford hospitals and medical personnel heightened protections during armed conflict and respect the obligation of medical personnel to treat the sick and wounded without interference, regardless of their identity or affiliation; and

(3) To convene a Court of Inquiry, utilizing your general court-martial convening authority under Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) art. 135(a), 10 U.S.C.  935(a) and UCMJ art. 22(a)(1), 10 U.S.C.  822(a)(1), charged with examining and inquiring into the incident and directed to offer findings, opinions and recommendations including coverage of punitive and corrective phases of the matter under investigation.

Read the full letter here.
Raleys Launches New Digital Customer Experience

Partnership with Unata moves forward as new eCommerce platform goes live

WEST SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA  April 26, 2016  Raleys Family of Fine Stores has partnered with Unata, the award-winning leader in 1-to-1 Omni-Commerce solutions, to launch an improved web and mobile eCommerce platform, E-Cart. The new system will replace Raleys current online order and curbside pickup solutions across all existing eCommerce-enabled locations.

The new eCommerce platform is part of Raleys commitment to making customers lives easier by delivering a personalized shopping experience. Raleys E-Cart allows shoppers, in select locations, to order groceries online and pick up at a local Raleys, Bel Air Market or Nob Hill Foods. With the partnership, Raleys is launching both a new eCommerce website and an improved mobile application. The launch features an enhanced user interface that allows customers to move seamlessly between a mobile device and a desktop computer.

The way Raleys delivers groceries is evolving. Our new revamp of E-Cart will better serve our customers by providing a personalized online shopping experience, said Kevin Curry, Senior Vice President Sales & Merchandising at Raleys. Unata has been invaluable in helping Raleys build this brand new online experience that will elevate our customer service.

Through a solid partnership and collaboration with the Raleys team, we have been able to build a state-of-the-art eCommerce mobile application that delivers a 1-to-1 personalized experience for both Raleys and their customersthe first of its kind for Unata. said Brandon Carlos, Senior Director of Client Services. Were excited to be going to market in partnership with Raleys as they have a history of leading the charge in the eCommerce space. With Unatas personalization engine at the core of this product, I believe were introducing something that Raleys customers are really going to enjoy.

To view Raleys mobile experience, simply head to www.raleys.com/shop.

About Raleys Family of Fine Stores

Raleys is a privately owned, family operated supermarket chain with headquarters in West Sacramento, CA. The company operates 122 stores in Northern California and Nevada under four banners: Raleys Supermarkets, Bel Air Markets, Nob Hill Foods and Food Source. Raleys was founded in 1935 by Tom Raley and is a major grocery chain best known for high quality products, fresh produce, fine meats and outstanding customer service. Raleys strives to make its customers lives easier and better by delivering a personalized food shopping experience. For more information, visit www.raleys.com.

About Unata

Unata powers the future of grocery shopping by interconnecting all digital retail touchpoints and delivering personalized, seamless and intuitive customer experiences across the path to purchase. Unata enables 1-to-1 eCommerce, eCircular and eLoyalty through its cloud-based, machine learning personalization engine. The award-winning platform is designed specifically for the grocery industry, supports delivery and click-and-collect, and has lead Unata to rapidly expand as the leading 1-to-1 omni-commerce solutions provider for grocery retailers.

Unata currently works with leading regional grocers throughout Canada and the U.S. like Longos, Grocery Gateway, Lowes Foods, Raleys and more. To learn more, visit www.unata.com or follow Unata on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Other news from Pointofsale.com
(This post was updated at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday to add reference to precedent.)

U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, will not attend the Republican National Convention July 18-21 in Cleveland, Lenny Alcivar, her campaign spokesman, said Tuesday.

"She will be in the district working for her constituents," said Alcivar, in response to an inquiry from The Post-Star.

Stefanik is running for re-election in the 21st Congressional District against Democrat Mike Derrick, a retired Army colonel from Peru, in Clinton County, and Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello, a bread company owner and political activist from Hudson Falls.

Click here to read a 2012 post about then Rep. Bill Owens, D-Plattsburgh, not attending the Democratic National Convention that year.
We dont oppose the establishment in our area of residential centers for troubled youths, where young people who have struggled in public school or at home, or both, can work within a more structured academic and social setting.

Sometimes, youths in these centers have also gotten in trouble with the law and can be referred by the courts. Shipping them off to prison, even if its a juvenile detention center, often does nothing but make the problems worse. Early, constructive intervention in the lives of troubled youths improves the chances that they will grow up to be productive adults.

We dont oppose the establishment of these centers in our area, but we do oppose the haphazard implementation of half-baked plans, and from what we have seen so far from Andrew and Jesse Brand, that is a fair description of their project.

The Brands would buy a former summer camp in Hebron and transform it into an institution for youthful offenders who would attend Salem public school. They would start with 14 boys and eight girls, 13 to 18 years old. These would be youths with some interaction with the criminal justice system  for alcohol and drug issues, fire-setting behaviors or sexual-offending behaviors.

Adding 22 troubled teens to Salems school system, which has 286 students in grades 7 through 12, would be significant but not overwhelming. With proper screening and support from the center, which the Brands intend to call Brand New Beginnings Youth Center, it would be a challenge that the school and the broader community could meet.

But the Brands, who are from Long Island and are cousins, have not shown they are capable of providing proper screening and support. The few presentations they have made to local officials have not inspired confidence.

They didnt really have anything ready, said Hebron Supervisor Brian Campbell, describing a meeting between the Brands and local officials.

The Brands have not worked professionally in this sort of facility, although they have done volunteer work with troubled youths, Jesse Brand said. They both have served in the military. Jesse Brand spent time himself in a center for troubled youths when he was a teen, which is how his interest in the work arose.

Were trying to help kids out, Jesse Brand said.

That is admirable, and we do not doubt his sincerity.

We are skeptical, however, whether the Brands are prepared for this large undertaking and capable of carrying it out.

Jesse Brand said he and his cousin have the money to buy the property in Hebron. They have a Facebook page with a photo of the property. They have a Gofundme account that has raised $155 of their $100,000 goal.

They have a page on the startup website gust.com that includes the following company summary:

We are two ex military personal that have seen adults being denied a chance to chase their dreams because of their actions as a youth and thought this had to stop. After my aunt whos Andrews mother passed away we started up this process in her memory. We have to this day closed our first 3 meetings to secure 40 of the 48 youth we can house. The rate we have been given is $610 dollars a day Per youth.

None of this inspires confidence, nor did our conversation with Jesse Brand, despite his sincerity.

A residential center for troubled youths has operated for decades in Lake Placid. It used to be called Camelot, and its residents attended the local public school. Now it is called Mountain Lake Academy and its residents  about 40 boys and young men, 12 to 20  attend classes at the Mountain Lake campus. Its academic and social offerings are structured and targeted to the needs of its residents. A registered nurse oversees its medical department. A psychiatrist consults on campus, and therapists develop treatment plans for each resident. The academy partners with St. Josephs Addiction, Treatment and Recovery Center, which is licensed by the state to provide substance abuse services. In addition to academic classes, the academy runs vocational and community volunteer programs.

Not every residential center for troubled youths has to run its own private school, but in every case, opening such a center is a complex and ambitious undertaking for which good intentions are not sufficient.

For local people concerned about the impact of a residential center, the disorganized state of the Brands project could be a relief. The cousins appear to be far from making anything happen.

But if they do buy the property, get state approvals and bring in residents, then we hope they have, by then, a more coherent and comprehensive plan. If they do, and they present it to the community, they may win some of the local support that, so far, is in short supply. For such a project to succeed, the local community has to be a partner and not an adversary.

Local editorials represent the opinion of The Post-Star editorial board, which consists of Publisher Terry Coomes, Editor Ken Tingley, Projects Editor Will Doolittle, Controller/Operations Director Brian Corcoran and citizen representative Tom Portuese.
Inventory needs to be managed and managed well, or you are going to get in recurring trouble, and lose your credibility and hard-earned conversions, whether 

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With less than a week to go, 435 independent bookstores around the country are preparing to celebrate their roles as community hubs on the second national Independent Bookstore Day on Saturday, April 30. Bookstores are planning to make it a party with music, food, drinks, scavenger hunts, and several exclusive items, including The Neil Gaiman Coloring Book.

I am always amazed at the creativity and enthusiasm of the stores and booksellers in planning their parties, IBD program director Samantha Schoech told PW. I just hope everyone has a great time and a huge sales boost."

At least one bookstore, Fireside Books in Palmer, Alaska, will kick off its party with free fly-fishing lessons. The Kings English in Salt Lake City and a number of other stores will participate in Litographss Worlds Longest Tattoo Chain, a project launched on Kickstarter in July 2014 to retell Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass via 5,258 temporary tattoos.

Washington, D.C.s East City Book Shop will hold its grand opening on IBD. Stories in Brooklyn will offer a sneak peak prior to its May opening, and Atomic Books in Baltimore will hold a 15th anniversary celebration on IBD.

And, while it may not have a space yet, much less an opening date, Queens Bookshop in New York City will participate in IBD with outdoor events at the Russell Sage Playground in the Forest Hills section of Queens. Novels & Novelties in Hendersonville, N.C., which recently changed its name from Fountainhead Bookstore, is using the day to unveil its new logo.

IBD 2016 Author Ambassador Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies) will appear with other authors at her local bookstore, Wild Iris in Gainesville, Fla. Mary Roach (Gulp) volunteered for an hour-long Ask Mary Anything session at Pegasus Books in downtown Berkeley, Calif. Harvard Book Store in Cambridge is holding an after-hours ghost story reading with Samantha Hunt (Mr. Splitfoot) and Kelly Link (Get in Trouble).

Several booksellers have once again worked to set up city-wide programs for IBD. Seattle-area bookstores, for the second year in a row, are honoring Indie Bookstore Champions who spend the day visiting all 17 participating bookstores with a 25% discount at each store all year. In the Twin Cities, those who visit 10 participating bookstores on IBD will receive a $10 gift card to each store.

Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, N.J., has worked on a state-wide effort, spearheading the creation of a New Jersey Independent Bookstore Map bookmark, which will be handed out at more than 20 indie stores. The bookmark is intended to dispel the notion that the state lacks great independent bookstores.

In Canada, booksellers will also be celebrating on April 30, as they enjoy the second annual Canadian Authors for Indies Day. The day more closely resembles Indies First Day, which is held over Thanksgiving weekend in the U.S. During both events, hundreds of authors volunteer as guest booksellers. Like IBD and Indies First Day, Authors for Indies Day focuses on the importance of indies to their communities.
We are embarking on a demonstration because government is obliged to recruit us immediately after we complete our service. We have served successfully. In August 2015 we finished our service. Per the bond terms, immediately you complete, government is to recruit you. That has not been done and we see that it is a violation of our rights and so we believe that we have to fight for that, the President of the coalition, Adam Masahudu made this known at a press conference on Monday.

The unemployed nurses have also refused government's offer to enroll them on the YEA.

We are trained as registered general nurses, midwives and not youth employment nurses. We are not going to the youth employment thing that they are talking of. We are even not qualified to go for that We want to get to our various hospitals to practice as staff nurses. Nothing less, nothing more, the president of the coalition said.
Registered in 2013, CEO and Co founder of Meqasa.com, Kelvin Nyame and his two co-founders set out to create a real estate platform that makes it easier for individuals to find suitable accommodation in Ghana at the right price and according to their tastes and preferences.

It was a big deal because MeQasa, at that point, was one of the few tech startups to actually attract such financial validation, at a time where everyone was wondering if Ghanaian tech startups were actually financially viable models.

CEO and Co founder Kelvin Nyame tells us, a good entrepreneurial foundation from the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology had a major role to play in how their product was structured and the value it provided for the market.

Above all, lots of the onus were on the team, four at the time, to build a very investment-friendly business and a discipline to stick to its values even in the face of financial constraints.

I think there were great ideas around before we came, but it is important for entrepreneurs to choose their fields properly. Because a careful observation will reveal the sectors that are attracting investments lately and position your business well.

Kelvin, in sharing a few more tips on how other Ghanaian startups especially, tech startups can attract needed funding, charged startups to properly understand the market in order to grow quickly.

 It is important for startups to understand the needs of their customers. They need to practically learn how customers react to their products and see how to better satisfy them. That is one of the ways to grow customer base quickly, and strengthen your business. All these things work together to make you attractive to a prospective investor, he said.

A little background to Ghanas real estate and housing sector will help you appreciate the solution Meqasa is providing.

Getting suitable accommodation in Ghana can be a difficult, frustrating process. Though the methods differ depending on your income level, they are ridden with long-standing bottlenecks. For the vast majority, renting is the option, whereas the middle-class will prefer to build their own homes by buying land, and undertaking full construction themselves. Others will prefer to buy or take a mortgage.

Again, no matter the process you choose, there are deep-seated bottlenecks of fraud, gross time wasting, and a big chance of a raw deal from agents.

Here is how MeQasa takes care of all these challenges:

They make available to you all the accommodation and properties available in any location by the click of a button. No need to take time off work or your busy schedule to scout un-end for a place to live. They facilitate a meaningful, trusted engagement between customers and agents, by segregating agents into classes based on level of experience, customer service, and price.

MeQasa provides same convenience for corporate bodies in search of office space and commercial buildings.

From their beginnings in the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, an innovations lab in Ghana, Kelvin and his team have kept an eye on the most effective trends for building a successful startup in an unpredictable economy like Ghanas.

 It all started in Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, with my co-founders and I, and the whole plan was to understand the tech and software space. We worked on several projects and then finally settled on MeQasa as a product to go to market with Kelvin revealed.

After the Minimum Viable product was developed, management of MEST invested $90,000 as seed capital for the group to start.

 The business was viable, and had a lot of potential at that time. And MEST was happy to invest. So they gave us $90,000. We however realized quickly enough that competition got keener with other foreign platforms coming into the market with huge marketing budgets. At the same time, real estate agents who would have ordinarily enlisted their property on our site, were going to other e-commerce websites who were not necessarily into real estate but made it possible for anybody to post any photograph and get customers. So we found agents enlisting their property on Google Trader at the time. They didnt last, but they were indirect competitors at a point.

MeQasa realized that they needed some more investment to be able to compete on the marketing front. The $90,000 from MEST was fast running out, and the business had not started making money. Kelvin and his team turned their attention to the Venture Capital Firm, Frontier. And with their strong results over the one and a half years of running MeQasa, Frontier gave them $500,000.

This pushed MeQasa to the next level in terms of capital liquidity, and resources to pursue more audacious marketing strategies.

Today, the company is growing steadily and sturdily, staying above competition and employing some of the trendiest marketing strategies, modelled around valuable real estate content in the form of a weekly newsletter, content on partner online news platforms, and a blog.

The team was happy to announce to Meet The Boss, the launch of the first ever comprehensive housing guide.

Additionally, MeQasa has been reaching out to other market segments in the real estate sector, the diaspora who wish to own a home in Africa and even plan on having a long business stay on the continent.
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"We gave that member the opportunity to react since he is the communications director of the NPP in the region. Just as he was reacting, I was informed by one of my colleagues that some macho men are just forcing their way into the studio."Before he could conclude what he was telling me, they had forced the studio doors opened and one of them hit me on the chest; so I quickly manoeuvred my way out of the studio. When the police came in they had already escaped and I was later told by my producers that Baah Acheamfuor was beaten. "But no one needs to tell you because if you look at him, he has a red and swollen eye so he was indeed attacked in the studio," the host of the programme said.
According to him, the leadership of the party has failed to stay in touch with the grassroots, a situation he believes could spell doom for the president who hails from the region.

"If care is not taken as we speak Northern Region where the president comes from is going to be a disaster.

"After Volta Region I think Northern Region is the second world bank of the NDC but now if care is not taken Northern Region will the worse," the Constituency Organiser for Savelugu in the Northern Region Abdul Rauf Abubakar told Accra-based Joy FM.

Rauf Abubakar had arrived in Accra with other party regional executives to register their displeasure about current happenings in the North to the NDC Parliamentary caucus but Parliament had gone on recess.

According to him, all attempts to get in touch with the national executives have proved futile and was therefore compelled to make his views known to the public.

But the Regional Secretary of the NDC, Halid Abdul Rauf said the constituency organiser was wrong for not using internal channels to address his grievances.
We will play our part to ask our people to make it as peaceful as possible but I guess what will ensure the peace is to make sure that we all remain vigilant and lets hope the law enforcement agencies will also be impartial, Rawlings said.

We are not unknown for ensuring peaceful elections but this years might prove to be a little complex; that is why we are all praying, President Rawlings added.

On his part, Pohamba said it was his prayer that the elections will be peaceful and the winner will be accepted by all Ghanaians.

He also hailed his countrys special relationship with Rawlings and Ghanaians, adding that he feels honoured to lecture at a university Rawlings initiated.

I am informed you initiated the establishment of the University of Development Studies and I feel greatly honoured to be selected to deliver lectures at such an important university.

READ MORE: Rawlings warns against indecent language on airwaves

Pohamba will deliver the fourth in the Africa Leadership Lecture series of the UDS under the theme Genesis and Trajectory of Contemporary Africa Leadership, on April 27, 28, and 29.
The whole identity represents a unified common purpose and vision and demonstrates our independence as an institution, the Commission explained in the brochure.

The logo, which comes with blue-black background with what appears to be eight abstract humans with their hands up.

It later came up that the new logo looks like that of a Turkish educational institution; something that caused a section of Ghanaians to demand an explanation from the designers on whether the logo is original, copied or modified for the EC.

Many interpretations were given to the controversial logo with some claiming it is an embodiment a wheel of fortune and that the colours represent the various political parties.

According to the document;

OUR DEMOCRACY

EQUALLY

DEMONSTRATES

INDEPENDENCE

However, the Commission has given a different interpretation of the new logo, which approval is unclear.

The EC explains that the circles in the logo represents unity, singular and unified in its purpose which it said is our democracy, adding the blue of the circle also represents the stability and independence of the Commission.

The inward moving arrows reflect all the people of Ghana and equally coming together for the common purpose- the right to select their political leadership, the Commission added.

The red, gold and green colours, it said, represents Ghana.
Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Mrs Charlotte Osei at an event to outdoor a strategic plan, new logo and website ahead of the electionssaid, the Coat of Arms was taken off because having it in the Commission's logo undermines the legal and functional independence of the Commission.

We removed the Coat of Arms because we do not represent the authority of the state. We are more than the ballot box And we believe that the Coat of Arms does not speak to the legal and functional independence of the commission, she said.

But speaking on Joy News on Tuesday, Dr Gyampo said no logo better represents the state than the Coat of Arms.

Maybe the EC boss meant to say that the EC does not represent the authority of government. State and government are different The EC is an independent body created by the state, which has the backing and authority of the state. And so for me, the best logo of the state is the Coat of Arms, he said.

Indeed, when Justice Atuguba was hearing the 2012 election petition, he made reference to an instance where he had to pass a ruling and he looked at the Coat of Arms to let him feel that he is an independent agency of the state carrying out its specific duty Government will come and go but the state will still be there, he added.

The Electoral Commissions new logo stirred controversy after pictures of a similar logo popped up.

The EC has rejected claims that it has plagiarized the logo of a Turkish educational institute, Yedi Sistem and has asked the institution to take legal actions if it feels its artistic work has been plagiarized.

The logo comes with blue-black background with what appears to be eight abstract humans with their hands up while the Turkish logo has a white background inside the circle.

According to a document from the EC:
Speaking at the launch of the ECs five-year development plan in Accra on April 26, Charlotte Osei said: We are expecting to register about 1.2 million people that is the maximum. On average, if we get good turnout, we should be looking at 38 people per registration centre per day.

We are pretty well prepared and we are confident that it will be successful. We have deliberately structured it for the two week period, weve captured about three weekends so that for people who have to go to work, it gives them as much time as possible over the weekend and it wont be affected by people having to go to work.

Charlotte Osei added that the EC has position itself to be the benchmark for credible elections in Africa by leveraging technology, integrating best practice and building a highly skilled organisation we will become the benchmark in election management in Africa.

She said the commission will also establish a world class training centre, which will be responsible for not only local electoral training, but with a view to providing a venue for the entire region to be effectively trained in electoral processes.

This, she adds, will develop a depth of knowledge, skills and resources, which will enable the EC to be a source of information and expertise on best practice election management across Africa.

Touching on the November 7 elections, Charlotte Osei promised to deliver free, fair and credible elections.

She appealed to Ghanaians to participate in cleaning up the voters register during exhibition.

Meanwhile the opposition New Patriotic Party boycotted the launch of the five-year strategic plan even though they were invited.

Representatives of the various political parties showed up at the event which the EC says is a roadmap towards enhancing the operations of the Commission for the years ahead.

It is however unclear why the NPP which has been at loggerheads with the EC over the Voters register failed to show up.

The Electoral Commission of Ghana has indicated that its new logo represents its unified purpose, vision and ultimately demonstrates the Commissions independence.

The logo, which comes with blue-black background with what appears to be eight abstract humans with their hands up.

In an address at the event, the chairperson of the commission Charlotte Osei said the logo represents the independence of the election management body.
Our president wields so much power than the American president or the British prime minister, Dr. Nduom said, adding that there is nowhere in the advanced countries where a president is more powerful than everybody including state institutions.The PPP flagbearer made these known when he addressed political science students of the University of Ghana, Legon, including the leadership of the Students Representative Council (SRC) on Friday, April 22, 2016, in Accra.

According to him, the legislature has also failed to check the excesses of the executive.

The legislature has become ineffective because those who have to scrutinise the president and his ministers are the same people sitting in Parliament, approving anything from the executive, he said.

He believed that a complete separation of powers where MPs will not be made ministers of state, will improve governance in the country.

Dr. Nduom further called on the youth to acquire more knowledge and study the 1992 Constitution, especially Chapter Six, and other relevant sections.

He said that is the only way young people can compel leaders to bring about the change the country needed.
Farmer Bojor Atangba has been spraying his trees to protect cocoa flowers from insects and clearing weeds to boost output since the rains started, adding that he wanted to produce enough to sell at record high prices in Nigeria.

"We're hopeful that the harvest this year will be better than last year," said Atangba, who owns a 15-hectare cocoa farm in the southeast producing region of Cross Rivers state.

A mix of rainfall and sunshine in the two main cocoa areas of Ondo state and Cross Rivers this year have helped pod formation but there are fears that too much rain may allow disease to spread, hurting bean quality, farmers say.

Farmers expect the late rains to affect bean weight for the mid-crop which could be around 270-280 grammes, compared with average weight of around 300 grammes.

Harvesting for the mid-crop could start around June or July, farmers say, as cocoa trees were still flowering in April. The late rains could see the main-crop extend to November.

Last year dry weather caused a poor harvest, forcing the Cocoa Association of Nigeria to cut its output forecast by 7 percent to 260,000 tonnes. However, the government expects cocoa output of up to 350,000 tonnes this year.

Adhuse said farmers in Ondo state were still receiving free seeds from the government to boost output. But they were waiting for promised policies aimed at the sector, whose growth is seen as vital to offset a slump in oil revenue, one year after President Muhammadu Buhari took office.

However, farmers have invested in inputs and agricultural practices, Adhuse said, because farmgate prices in Africa's biggest economy have been rising. They hit an all-time high of 900,000 naira per tonne this month against 450,000 naira a year ago, thanks also to a weaker naira.

Most raw beans are usually destined for Asia and Europe, with only a small portion consumed at home. Now high prices is putting domestic demand at risk as local processors, fighting for survival as working capital needs rise, store only what they can grind immediately, analysts say.
It was reported that the king of Rumbasuffered an attack while performing at Festival des Musiques Urbaines dAnoumabo (FEMUA) and due to lack of emergency health service at the venue of the concert, he died before he was rushed to the hospital.

In reaction to the tragic event, Collins Enebeli, father of music producer, Don Jazzy, took to Facebook to share his thoughts and advise on the need to provide healthcare service at concert venues.

"The sad news of the death of Papa Wemba is a wake up call for artists and their managers to see reason why promoters and event organisers need the services of healthcare service providers for artists while on engagement for their events to avoid preventable fatalities as this.

Most artists due to their busy schedules are known not to be paying enough attention to their health and listening to their bodies which may have been under pressure and stretched to breaking point without them knowing it. Artiste managers need to insist that the services of a trained health personnel who specializes in handling celebrities is factored into their performance contract to ensure that artists are well monitored and looked after when on professional engagement anywhere in the world.

That way, risks such as this will be detected early enough and efforts made to seek help before it is too late. In the past, The King of soul music James Brown died while on a series of shows lined up for him. The same thing happened to the King of pop Michael Jackson who died while also under pressure from preparations for his mother of all shows This is it.

ALSO READ: Papa Wemba 7 interesting facts about late singer

We are yet to recover from the shocking news of the demise of the purple rain crooner Prince earlier this week and now it is our own dear Papa Wemba. This is the reason we must all see the need to engage the services of professionals. May the soul of Papa Wemba rest in perfect peace.
A graduate of business administration from the University of Bath, UK and the second son of the present minister of petroleum Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, he is well known for his great punch lines and lit performance.

He had his music debut in May 2014 with the release of his mix tape titled, 'After Hours' followed by 'Tension' and 'Get up' both produced by Sarz.

Pioneering the fusion genre Afro-Trap, his recent single 'Odana' has taken over the Nigerian air waves and is currently rocking the country.

The new rave of the moment will be kicking off his club tour on Thursday, April 28, 2016 at Club Royale, Ikeja, Lagos and ending at Quilox on the 7th of May, 2016.
Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected!
Kamilu Suleiman, who is according to reports, a graduate of Electrical Electronics from Kaduna Polytechnic has decided to sell one of his kidneys to further his education.

Premium Times reports that Suleiman who had completed his Youth Service Corps in 2014, revealed that frustration had brought about the idea of putting up his kidneys for sale.

Mr. Suleiman explained:

Frustration is what brought the idea of my readiness to sell one of my kidneys just to get money to sponsor my education. I really want to be useful to the society. I dont want the effort of my parents to go in vein."

Mr Suleiman who is an indigene of Ilobu in Osun State, was born the second of 7 children and bred in Kaduna State.

Speaking on the how he had lost his sight, Suleiman explained that he had been diagnosed with Glaucoma at the National Eye Centre Kaduna in 2009, but had lost his sight completely in 2012.

I was supposed to graduate in 2012 but because of a carryover (C.O) I got in one subject, I went for my NYSC in year 2013 and finished in year 2014.

I was posted to Plateau State but requested for redeployment back to Kaduna due to my condition. After I became completely blind I decided to live with a friend to avoid my parents seeing me in this condition because I dont like seeing them worried.

Mr. Suleiman adds that his goal is to study courses and programs which will enable him maximise his present situation.

So Im appealing to well meaning Nigerians to help me with a job or scholarship to further my education. I have applied to various media organizations seeking for job but I didnt hear anything positive.

My effort to look for somebody to sponsor my Masters program didnt yield result. I just want to further my education so as to be useful to society and help others in my condition too.

My parents dont have the money and I dont to be a burden on them."

Mr Suleiman also explains some of the steps he has taken to seek support from influential Nigerians in the country, saying:

I got a letter from Jamaatul Nasril Islam (JNI) to my governor, Rauf Aregbesola, in 2014. Another letter to Chief Imam of Yorubaland, Mustapha Ajibade, and to the Chief Imam of my home town seeking for assistance but Im yet to hear from them.

The letter to the governor I gave it to his personal Assistant, Alhaji Sikiru. I also spoke to Deputy Speaker House of Representatives who is from my home town, Lasun Sulaiman Yusuf, who also promised to help me but as I speak to you he has stopped picking my calls."
China is pushing ambitious healthcare reforms to improve its home-made medicines, but the vaccine scandal underscores the challenge facing the world's second-largest drug market in regulating its fragmented supply chain.

The new rules, signed by Premier Li Keqiang and adopted on Saturday, toughen requirements for distribution of non-compulsory vaccines, the official Xinhua news agency said.

They require county health officials to get the vaccines directly from manufacturers before sending them to hospitals, instead of going through wholesalers, it added.

Hospitals, clinics and government health authorities must also keep better records of purchases and inventory, with regular monitoring of vaccine temperatures, records of which hospitals must request upon receiving the vaccines.

The rules hike fines for improper handling of vaccines, and prescribe the sacking of government officials guilty of violations, Xinhua said.

The government plans to set up an electronic vaccine tracking system, it added, but gave no details.

The vaccines, including ones against meningitis, rabies and other illnesses, are suspected of being sold around China since 2011. They were all "category 2" vaccines, meaning they were sold on the private market.

China's drug regulator said on its website on Monday that it has passed the cases of two firms, Hebei Shanggu Shengwu Technology and Shaanxi Bangxin Shengwu, to the police after suspecting them of illegal behaviour.
1.45 million Dollars toward assisting internally displaced women and children in Adamawa, Bauchi and Gombe states.

Information about the assistance is contained in a statement issued by Mr John Nwankwo, the Senior Assistant/Advisor on General Affairs, Information and Culture of the Japanese Embassy in Abuja.

He stated that the project, tagged "Emergency Assistance to Internally Displaced Women/Girls and Survivors of Boko Haram Terrorism Attacks in Nigeria'' was in partnership with the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).

According to him, the project is a one-year initiative spanning 2016-2017, targeting selected areas in Adamawa, Bauchi and Gombe states.

He said that the aim of the project was to strengthen emergency assistance initiatives to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), especially women and girls and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in the target areas.

It was also aimed at improving the economic capacity and social rehabilitation of women affected by crisis for peaceful cohabitation in target areas.

The project is further targeted at strengthening humanitarian coordination mechanisms for a more comprehensive and gender-responsive approach in Nigeria, the Embassy official stated.

He added that the humanitarian response project would complement an ongoing Women Peace and Security Programme in Northern Nigeria, being implemented by UN Women and other partners.

It would also enhance collaborative interventions between the governments of Japan and Nigeria.

He noted that "gender mainstreaming in humanitarian response is undoubtedly central to an inclusive, effective, efficient and sustainable support and recovery programme for IDPs in Nigeria.
Dogara was however present at the meeting which held behind closed doors at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, and bordered on the issues affecting the 2016 budget.

Buhari had returned the unsigned budget details to the National Assembly having identified some "grey areas" in the document.

Also present at the meeting were the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari; and the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Ita Enag.

It was not immediately ascertained why Saraki was absent.

According to Vanguard, Dogara dodged reporters after the meeting because he could not comment on the outcome of the meeting alone.

Kyari who spoke to newsmen said that the Speaker could not have spoken as it was only him that attended the meeting.
Over 30 per cent of (fuel) supply is diverted. For example, in the last five days, we have pumped 400 trucks of product into Lagos State. The total consumption (in the state) at the maximum is 250 trucks; most of those trucks are diverted from Lagos to the hinterland of Chad and Cameroon, he said according to Punch.
The comment was made by the groups Secretary General, Dr Joe Nwaorgu following an attack in Enugu which reportedly left 40 people dead.

We are very sad and very disappointed that all over the country, not just the South-East, these killings by Fulani herdsmen have continued unabated and nothing concrete is being done by the Federal Government, he said according to Vanguard.

The first act of governance is protection of lives and property. It is complete failure of governance. There has been no response from the Federal Government and this is allowing the Fulani herdsmen to continue the killing spree.

Everybody is worried about the poor attitude of the Federal Government to this massacre across the country. Boko Haram is operating in the North-East and Fulani herdsmen are killing people all over the country. It is not the herdsmen that should be held responsible, but owners of the cattle.

The herdsmen are under the instruction of highly-placed Fulani people who own the cattle. They are heavily armed. How many cows can the herdsmen buy? Federal Government should stop this nonsense before it causes a catastrophe, he added.

The herdsmen recently also killed hundreds of people during a February 2016 attack in Agatu, Benue State.

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The information is contained in a statement issued by Mr Samuel Olowookere, the Deputy Director of Press, Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, in Abuja on Monday.

The document will be launched by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, as part of activities to mark 2016 World Day for Safety and Health at Work celebrated on April 28 every year.

It stated that the checklist would help to strengthen the National Occupational Safety and Health Inspection system in accordance to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) standard.

"According to the ILO convention C187, National Occupational Safety and Health culture was one in which the right to a safe and healthy working environment is respected at all levels."

It said the OSH Inspection Checklist was meant to ensure uniformity and effective OSH Inspection System as well as provide a useful tool for self-evaluation at enterprise level.

The minister will also declare open a symposium to mark the annual international campaign to promote safety, health and decent work, the statement said.

World Day for Safety and Health at Work is an annual international campaign against millions of workers losing their lives through accidents and diseases linked to their work.

The theme for the 2016 celebration is '`Workplace Stress: A collective Challenge, to reflect on the pressure faced by workers in relation to the conditions and demands of their work.

"Beyond psychosocial risk factors, the workplace is becoming more stressful and work-related stress is generally acknowledged as a global issue, affecting all countries, the professions and workers, the statement said.
Anenih, who met Governor Oshimhole at the 10th anniversary of the Catholic Archbishop of Benin, Most Rev. Augustine Akubeze on Friday, April 22, 2016, said I was in St. Pauls Church in Benin and as my son, Comrade Adams, said, we were all there to appreciate the efforts of the archbishop. I want to say this; it is not because Adams is here.

Last (Friday) night, I was telling my wife that I met Adams in the church and, with my immediate medical experience, I have decided to forgive all those who offended me. And I specifically mentioned Adams.

Adams, without you saying it, I have forgiven you. As you said, when you were in the labour president, you were my son and you know it. You came into politics and you remain my son. So, the common cook that used to cook ogbono soup for us is still there.

Chief Tony Anenih has was accused of collecting N260m from the National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, who has been on trial for allegedly diverting the sum of $2.1b meant for the purchase of arms for the military to prosecute the war against Boko Haram.

See Pulse Photo-News gallery below.
The attack is said to have occurred on Monday, April 25, 2016, in the Uzo- Uwani Local Government Area of the state, according to Vanguard.

The herdsmen also reportedly burnt 10 houses and a church, Christ Holy Church International during the invasion.

I was coming out from the house when I heard the community bell ringing. I was going with a friend to know what the bell was all about, only to see about 40 Fulani herdsmen armed with sophisticated guns and machetes, a victim, Kingsley Ezugwu, said.

They pursued us, killed my friend and shot at me several times but missed. They caught up with me and used machetes on me until I lost consciousness, he added.

The incident has also been confirmed by Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Ebere Amaraizu.

We moved in to ensure that the situation did not degenerate beyond control and right now everything is under control. The Commissioner of Police is there with other officers and men and the area is being secured, he told Punch.

We cant give the total number of casualties yet, it is when the operation is concluded that we will collate figures and give a definite number, he added.

The herdsmen were said to have earlier disagreed with the villagers over their use of farmlands as grazing fields.

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Navy Cpt. Simon Dogo, Commandant of the Nigerian Naval Base in Badagry said that the seizures were made along the coast at Tongeji Island in Badagry after a tip off.

"Over the weekend, the officials of the Navy seized 300 bags of rice from smugglers at the Tongeji Island.

"The seizure was made possible through intelligence gathering and a tip-off the officials got.

"The moment we got the information, we laid ambush for them on both ways and they easily fell into our hands and no casualty was recorded.

"The smugglers tried to bribe the officials who made the interception, but they resisted because we are determined to eradicate all adaptors that would affect the economy of the country.

"Due to the synergy that exists between the Customs and the Navy, we have handed over the seized items so that the Customs can carry out further investigations, he said.

The Customs Controller, Seme Command, Mr Victor Dimka, commended the efforts of the Navy and promised to maintain the synergy between them.

He said that suspects and the rice would be handed over to the Marine Unit of customs, responsible for combating smuggling along waterways.
According to The Nation, Metuh was about sitting down on the chair when it rolled backward, and he landed on the floor.

It was gathered that following the impact of the fall, he sprained his waist. He was said to have been carried out of the National Working Committee hall, venue of inauguration ceremony of the Borno and Kebbi states caretaker committees of the PDP.

Report said two policemen carried him into a waiting car to the hospital.

Alhaji Rilwan Dauda was sworn-in as caretaker committee chairman for Borno state while the Kebbi state chapter had Honourable Ibrahim Shehu Gusau as chairman.
The suspect, Mr. Don-Evarada, was picked up on Monday, April 25, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital for allegedly offering the EFCCs Zonal Head, Ishaq Salihu, a N10 million bribe.

He was alleged to have offered Salihu the bribe in favour of the Senior Special Assistant to the Bayelsas state governor on Millennium Development Goals, Apere Embelakpo and his wife, Fiene Beauty.

Embelakpo is being investigated for alleged diversion of N800 million meant for MDGs, while his wife is being investigated for alleged money laundering, forgery and suspicious transactions to the tune of N200 million.

Salihu was believed to have turned down the bribe and arrested the former aide of Dickson.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Sani, who is also the Senate Committee Chairman, Foreign Loans/ Debts, also announced the distribution of 250 Solar Panels to over 100 communities.

"I am committed to facilitating the provision of power to our urban and remote communities in the district I represent."

Sani said that the intervention was to empower the poor by boosting small and medium businesses.

He said the solar panels would be installed in public facilities including hospitals and worship centres to facilitate their activities.

According to the Senator, the solar power project is in line with his vision to promote the use of alternative energy that are cleaner and safer.

He said that he would use "all legal means to make sure this is subsidised to the barest minimum, even in the area of importation of solar panels and other equipment that cannot be manufactured locally.

"This will support independent investors and individuals who have interest in the energy source and further development of Kaduna Central Senatorial Zone."
Shiites said Army accused Human Right Watch of being biased, hasty and intruding into the internal affairs of Nigeria, among others, without providing any proofs to counter those that informed Amnesty's report.

Not long after that a mushroom group sprang up casting aspersions on the person of the country Director of Amnesty International, Ambassador M.K. Ibrahim. The Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) believes that what the Army ought to do is to discuss issues and not personalities. They should have addressed the facts Amnesty Report brought forward using rigorous methodology and meticulous attention to details.

They should be addressing the scores of pages containing proofs obtained after an extensive field investigation, which also contain pictures and satellite images. Thus instead of the Army to use superlatives in describing what Amnesty International is not, it should have disputed the incontrovertible facts brandished by the organization to the world espousing the enormity of the war crimes of the Army, the group said.

While the Nigerian Army labels the Amnesty Report that took months to be prepared as being hasty, Shiites said it forgot that its own attempt to hide its crime and cover its tracks was more appropriate to be so labeled.

Its warped logic would not let them realize that it was dishing out baseless allegations against the IMN without proofs or awaiting the JCI to conclude its work. Probably that is why the Army in the said press released. Nothing was mentioned on the rebellious attitude and the violations of human rights by the IMN. Neither did they [Amnesty] bother to ask why the IMN attempted to assassinate the Chief of Army Staff. If they saw no wrong in maligning IMN without proofs, why should they be irked by solid facts brought up by the internationally acclaimed Rights group, the group said.

The group said by now, the army should be able to tell the Nigerian public how many civilians it murdered in Zaria.

From the highest ranking officer, COAS to the Major who appeared before the Kaduna state judicial commission, they were all incoherent in their testimonies of how many they gunned down in December. If they dont have skeletons in their cupboards, why is the army economical with the truth? Information of great importance to Nigerians is the question of whether the army was involved in a mass grave as elucidated by Kaduna state government.

This is a straightforward question, which the army is not doing itself good by shying away from. The army should have addressed this issue, but as usual with those accused of crime against humanity, it rather chose not to talk about that. Even the officers who appeared before the judicial commission in Kaduna were just quibbling, the statement added.
Justice Lateef Lawal-Akapo said the accused, Oladele Ogundeji and Akinbela Fatiregun, should be returned to Kirikiri prison till May, 3, 2016, when their bail applications would he heard.

The court had fixed Tuesday, April 26, 2016, to rule on their bail applications but Justice reserved ruling till May 3. This followed their arraignment and detention last week for offences ranging from manslaughter and negligence.Fatiregun's counsel, Titi Akinlawon (SAN), in her application dated April 19, 2016 brought pursuant to Section 115 of Section 2 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Law, argued that the "offences committed by the defendant is bailable.

"He has been charged before for the same offences at the magistrate court and did not jump bail. So if granted bail now, he will also not jump bail, she argued.

Olalekan Ojo, Counsel to Ogundeji, also told the court that "granting him bail will put him (defendant) in best position to prepare for his trial."

In a counter argument, the Director of Public Prosecution(DPP), Idowu Alakija however urged the court not to grant the defendants bail.

She argued that while the court has the discretion to grant bail or not, the 4th defendant (Ogundeji) does not have an address within the jurisdiction of the court and therefore may jump bail if granted.
We must also be committed to that plan to drive success and development and that is what we must do together as a nation. But we, as Nigerians, must persevere, endure and have a pain now in order to have a better tomorrow. Let us turn our challenge of today to prosperity of the future. We can achieve it, he added.
Heyward Mafuyai's tenure was terminated on April 21.

In a statement on Friday, April 23, Principal Assistant Registrar in charge of Information and Publication of the university, Abdullahi Abdullahi said that this decision was finalized at the 12th Governing Council meeting of the university.

He is Professor Sebastian Seddi Maimako, who is the Dean, Faculty of Management Sciences, University of Jos, he said.

The statement said Mr. Maimakos appointment takes effect from Friday April 22 for a five-year single term.

According to the statement, the new vice chancellor is a professor of Accounting and Finance.

It said Mr. Maimako had served the university as Dean, Faculty of Management Sciences; Deputy Dean, Faculty of Management Sciences; Deputy Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences; and Head and Acting Head, Department of Management Sciences.
With the major exception of language, both countries share a number of similarities by way of culture and lifestyle.

Inspite of said similarities however, there are more than a few things that could catch a Nigerian travelling to Benin for the first time off guard.

Here are a few important things to keep in mind when travelling to Benin Republic, especially if you're travelling by road.

1. Have an ID card: Ideally you must have your passport on you, and some other form of identification (ID) card. Don't make the mistake of travelling without a passport simply because you're going next door to Benin, this will only cause you unnecessary delay and expenses paying off border officials.

2. Carry loose cash: Anyone who's been through Seme border will know it's virtually impossible to pass through the border without parting with some money. There are a dozen and one things to pay for, not to mention border officials looking to extort from unsuspecting novices. Stay sharp.

3. Basic knowledge of French: Dig out that primary or secondary school French text book, and if you never had one, make Google your friend. It's very advisable to at least have a basic knowledge of French.

4. Know where you're going: Don't just go in blind, have a very good idea of where you're going and/or will be staying for your own safety. It will also minimise your chances of getting scammed by seemingly 'helpful' strangers.
The custom made Alexander McQueen gown was made for the Duchess of Cambridge by Creative Director Sarah Burton and now another designer has filed a lawsuit claiming that the design was taken from one of hers.

Christine Kendall - a bridal designer from Hertfordshire filed a claim against the fashion brand at the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court in London, International Business Times reports.

The designer claims 'she presented Kate Middleton with her sketches before the Royal wedding which she believes served as inspiration for Burton's final product', reports say.

However, Kendall made clear that the lawsuit doesn't involve the Duchess of Cambridge. "This claim is not against the duchess and there is no allegation of wrongdoing against the palace, her solicitor told the International Business Times.

A spokesperson for the Royal family says Middleton herself never saw the sketches, either.

Reports say this isn't the first time Kendall has made such claims, in 2013 she reached out to McQueen over the similarity in design of the wedding dress. She also has serious of YouTube videos regarding her original design.

Following the lawsuit, a statement has been released by Alexander McQueen:

"We are utterly baffled by this legal claim. Christine Kendall first approached us at Alexander McQueen almost four years ago, when we were clear with her that any suggestion Sarah Burton's design of the royal wedding dress was copied from her designs was nonsense. Sarah Burton never saw any of Ms Kendall's designs or sketches and did not know of Ms Kendall before Ms Kendall got in touch with us  some 13 months after the wedding. We do not know why Ms Kendall has raised this again, but there are no ifs, buts or maybes here: this claim is ridiculous", their solicitors said.
Abdiasis Abu Musab, the group's military operations spokesman, said it had ambushed a truck carrying troops to reinforce the base, killed 11 soldiers and seized seven guns. "We exploded the truck using a planted bomb and then ambushed," he told Reuters.

It was not possible to verify the death toll independently. Al Shabaab has inflated casualty figures in the past.

The Islamist group, which wants to topple Somalia's Western-backed government, carries out frequent attacks on military targets and civilian facilities like hotels and restaurants, mostly in the capital Mogadishu.
Brigadier general Athanase Kararuza, who was a military adviser in the office of the vice president, was dropping his child at a school in a neighbourhood of the capital Bujumbura on Monday when his car was attacked by rocket and gun fire, army spokesman Gaspard Baratuza told reporters.

Kararuza has previously worked as a deputy commander of an international peace force in the Central African Republic (CAR).

"He energetically fought against the coup plotters last year and exceptionally contributed in strengthening peace and security during and after elections," Nkurunziza said in a statement late on Monday.

"We humbly pray that with the help of God perpetrators of the shameful acts are arrested and quickly punished according to the law."

Tit-for-tat attacks between Nkurunziza's security forces and his opponents have escalated since April 2015 when he announced a disputed bid for a third term as president and won re-election in July.

The U.N. says more than 400 people have been killed and over 250,000 have fled.

On Monday, the international war crimes court said it will investigate the rising violence in Burundi.
The verdict was delivered by a court in Nevers, in central France , where local media relayed gory tales, some from old-aged pensioners who spoke of having as many as eight teeth pulled out in one sitting, infections and bills of tens of thousands of euros.

"This is a massive relief. We must be very careful from now on when we get practitioners from abroad," said Nicole Martin, the head of a group of patients who took legal action against Mark Van Nierop, who had fled to Canada but was extradited back to France.
John Anderson joked that the first person who bought one of his pizzas would get a high-five. But when the time came, the high-five morphed into a big, tackle-like, bear hug. He couldnt contain the excitement.

It was long embrace, and it was a little bit awkward, Anderson said. It felt good to hug him, and it felt really good to sell that pizza.

For Anderson, who is 36, that first purchase was an early indicator that his crazy dream might actually work.

And 5,000 pizzas later, he now has full-blown proof.

At farmers markets, parking lots and even some weddings, customers show up in droves for pizza from Streets of Italy, Andersons food cart serving handcrafted pies on-the-go.

You worry at first that no one is going to show up, he said. But no matter where we go, people find us and wait in line, because theres nothing really like this here.

The thin-crust pizza is blazed inside a dome oven with a temperature of about 800 degrees. It cooks in less than two minutes and is topped with fresh ingredients  you can pick your own or go simple.

Its a style of pizza-making that Anderson, fittingly, borrowed from the real streets of Italy.

While he and his wife, Angie, were living in Germany during a three-year civilian assignment for the U.S. Army, Anderson wasn't shy about exploring via local foods.

"I tried everything I saw pretty much, because the way they viewed food was so different," he said. "It was more based on small mom-and-pops and less on chains, and it created all these unique flavors."

Nothing stood out more than the authentic Neapolitan wood-fired pizza he tried on a weekend trip to Italy. He was hooked.

I immediately wrote the idea down for a business, said Anderson, who now works full-time at the Rock Island Arsenal as a contracting officer. It became a crazy dream.

Even so, his friend Mike Schaefer came alongside for a piece of the pie. They opened the food cart together in 2013.

This kind of thing, working with the outdoor element and the truck, is never dull, said Schaefer, who also has a full-time job at UPS. You learn to always have a backup plan and another backup plan to make sure you can still serve the same quality pizzas.

In their third year of business, they say the quality is what keeps customers standing in line.

Options include breakfast pizzas, with eggs and ham and sausage, as well as weekly specialty pizzas, such as barbecue chicken and a Mediterranean style. The dough is Anderson's recipe but prepared ahead of time by Momma Bossa, a Quad-City based pizza company.

Not all pizza is the same, even though its so common, Anderson said. People can order a cheap pizza or store-bought all the time, but they choose to buy from us.

And customers often have to seek their pizza out. Sometimes, the food cart is parked outside Dunn Brothers Coffee in Bettendorf, but it's often a mystery.

"We don't always know our plan depending on weather and wind and who will let us park," Anderson said. "There's a little bit of mystique with that."

During the summer, count on a slice at the Freight House Farmers Market, where you can throw on fresh vegetables from area vendors and create your own pizzas. At the farmers markets, theyll easily make a few hundred pizzas in a few hours.

It gets pretty intense, Schaefer said. A lot of people will just kind of stand back and watch the fire because its like dinner and a show; its pretty theatrical the way we do it.

In the future, Anderson hopes to keep his dream cooking. They just purchased a second mobile oven and have plans to set up the cart more often and outside more businesses. They'll soon be outside the Daiquiri Factory in Rock Island on weekend nights. And, maybe one day, theyll open a storefront.

"We haven't left any dreams out," Anderson said.

But in the meantime, Anderson will keep handing out quality pizzas and quality hugs.

"For me, it's about loving people and serving them," he said. I dont want you leaving here without you feeling like youre my best friend and with your stomach happy."
Davenport police have arrested a 16-year-old Central High School student in connection with two robberies this month, including the Advance America payday loan store that was robbed Tuesday.

Daviaonta Duax is charged with two counts of second-degree robbery in connection with the robbery of Advance America, 1801 E. Kimberly Road, and with the April 9 robbery of the Gas America, 3205 Brady St.

Davenport Police Capt. Brent Biggs said that after releasing a photo of a possible suspect in the Advance America robbery, investigators received several tips that led them to obtain a search warrant for Duaxs residence.

Second-degree robbery is a Class C felony under Iowa law that carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

Duax was being held Thursday night in Scott County Jail on a $20,000 bond.
SPRINGFIELD  Gov. Bruce Rauner's administration and a union representing 38,000 state workers began a legal showdown Monday over whether contract talks have reached an impasse.

Lawyers for the state and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 are arguing their cases before Sarah Kerley, an administrative law judge for the Illinois Labor Relations Board. The parties began bargaining over a new contract in February 2015, and the Rauner administration in January moved to have an impasse declared, which could ultimately clear the way for the state to impose its contract terms on the union.

The state and the union have reached tentative agreements on many issues, but wages and health care benefits remain major sticking points.

The administration argues that the union has stuck to unreasonable demands in a time of unprecedented financial difficulties for the state, while AFSCME argues that the contract talks have been mired by Rauner's hostility toward the collective bargaining rights of public employees. Each side accuses the other of bargaining in bad faith.

Tom Bradley, an attorney for the state, said in his opening statement Monday that the AFSCME has repeatedly refused the administration's proposal to freeze wages and institute a merit-based bonus system that would reward employees for their job performance. Those measures and proposals to have employees cover a greater share of their health insurance costs are necessary as the state grapples with its fiscal challenges, Bradley said.

"The state was not negotiating in a vacuum," he said. "To the contrary, the state was negotiating under the very heavy weight of the worst fiscal crisis in the state's history, a fiscal crisis in which the state's very best fiscal experts projected that the state would, over the (four-year) life of the contract, incur budget deficits in excess of $20 billion."

Although the state made numerous concessions, Bradley said, the sides were unable to reach agreements on a dozen issues, including wages and health benefits.

AFSCME attorney Steve Yokich argued in his opening statement that the union was still willing to negotiate when the state walked away from the bargaining table in early January.

Contract talks have been slowed because the state sought in its initial proposal to throw out provisions that have been in place for 30 years or more, he said, illustrating his point by tearing pages out of the previous agreement.

The governor "has a well-known hostility toward collective bargaining by government unions," Yokich said, pointing out numerous anti-union statements Rauner made before being elected.

"You have two situations at work here," Yokich said. "One situation is that you have a chief executive who despises the idea of government employee collective bargaining, and you have an original proposal that shreds the contract."

The administration's public pronouncements on issues such as merit pay tied negotiators' hands and prevented them from making serious concession, he said.

As for the state's fiscal crisis, Yokich called it "a self-inflicted wound."

Rauner refused to back an extension of the state's temporary income tax increase, which in January 2015 rolled back from 5 percent to 3.75 percent, taking an estimated $5 billion in annual revenue with it.

Several more days of hearings are scheduled, and a final decision from Kerley is not expected for some time.

Meanwhile, Rauner has yet to act on a bill that's been sitting on his desk since mid-March that would send the stalled contract talks to binding arbitration. He vetoed similar legislation last year.
Davenport commuters and businesses are about to get another shake up this summer as work repair on Brady Street is set to begin in about a month.

The City Council is expected Wednesday to approve the contract for the sewer repair and resurfacing project to Langman Construction Inc. of Rock Island. The company will repair sewers underneath Brady this year and replace the asphalt road surface next year from River Drive to Lombard Street.

Last year, Davenport closed Harrison Street from 5th to 12th streets for a similar sewer and surface repair project. Several local store owners complained that the Harrison project significantly hurt their businesses.

1. Start date

The city has not given an exact start date as of Monday.

The project is set to begin in mid-to-late May, Brian Schadt, deputy public works director, said. Substantial completion of all underground work is supposed to be done by June 16 in time for the first Bix at Six training run.

Work could continue farther north on Brady away from the Bix at Six training route, Schadt said.

The contractor is also supposed to shut down the project for the weekend of the Quad-City Times Bix 7 road race in late July and clear the course of any construction-related equipment, Schadt said.

He said the city will know more details about the start date and timeline by the end of this week or next week.

2. Closures

Schadt said that unlike last year's Harrison project, two lanes of Brady will remain open throughout construction this summer.

Also unlike Harrison, Brady is being repaired in sections that each are one to two blocks long, Schadt said, adding that the effect on traffic should be minimal.

"There will be localized, construction-related slowdowns during peak hours," he said.

The city is not planning to detour traffic off Brady Street.

Schadt said the city will maintain access to all businesses along Brady.

Last year, Jimmys King Gyros, 1008 N. Harrison St., was reimbursed for lost profits by the city because the four-month Harrison closure shut off access to the restaurant.

3. Communication

Schadt said contact with the public on major road projects will be "early, often and complete."

He said he is still waiting to hear details from the Iowa Department of Transportation and the contractor, but as soon as he does, he will notify the public.

Notification about the Brady project will happen in coming weeks in the form of mailers sent out to every business and residence. City staff also will knock on doors, utilize Nextdoor and other social media, update the city's own website and send out news releases to area media to get the word out.

Questions or concerns also can be directed to public works at 563-326-7923 from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

4. Businesses react

Several business owners said they have received no information from the city on the project.

"No one reached us," said Ahmad Saad, owner of Brady Home Furniture, 1129 Brady St. "I don't have any idea."

Kelly Wallace, owner of The Estate Sale Shop, 1326 Brady St., said she is concerned because last year's Harrison project, which detoured traffic to Brady, disrupted her business.

"Harrison put a big hurt on us," she said. "I have no idea when this project is supposed to start. I have heard nothing from the city."

5. Cost

The project will cost $6.3 million.

Just more than half of the funding for the project is expected to come from the city in the form of $1.8 million in sewer bonds and $1.5 million in general obligation bonds, according to city documents.

The remaining $3 million is from the Iowa Department of Transportation.

The council is expected on Wednesday to approve the contract with Langman for $3.6 million. The council meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 226 W. 4th St.
DES MOINES  A last-second plan to address school funding inequities by allowing the Davenport Community School District to use its cash reserves for one year has been included in a budget bill under consideration by state lawmakers.

The plan would permit Davenport schools to use their cash reserves for one year to add budget spending up to the maximum per-pupil allowed in other school districts across the state. The district would have to replenish that reserve fund in the next fiscal year.

Davenport Superintendent Arthur Tate said the proposal offers no help at all.

Since the bill requires that reserves used in that way have to be paid back eventually out of the general fund, the only effect is to make me legal for one more year, Tate said in an emailed response to the Times Des Moines Bureau. It does not address the moral imperative to make every student worth the same in Iowa.

Davenport School Board President Ralph Johanson did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

The proposal split Scott County legislators along party lines during a sometimes tense House floor debate.

Democrats decried it as a shell game.

This is not a solution. It does not give them any more spending authority, said Rep. Cindy Winckler, D-Davenport. "It does not give them any more resources. It punishes them for bringing an issue to the state Legislature on funding inequity."

Rep. Phyllis Thede, D-Bettendorf, said she preferred a proposal made earlier in the year that gave schools below the states top per-pupil spending authority to use their cash reserves over three years.

School districts are asking for our help on this inequity piece, Thede said of the one-year proposal debated Monday. "Theyre asking for us to do something responsible. This is not responsible."

Rep. Ross Paustian, R-Walcott, implored his Democratic colleagues to support the proposal, which he said allows Davenport schools to address its budget issues for one year without raising property taxes.

This is what we come up with now, Paustian said. And I do want to work with you (Rep. Winckler) next year to find a permanent solution.  This is just a one-year deal.

Leaders in the Davenport school district seek to close a budget hole by using its cash reserves, which is not permitted by law. The district is constrained by law to spend less per student than other districts; the disparity reaches as much as $175 per student.

Tate and the school board have pledged to use the districts cash reserves in the 2017-18 school year, which would place them in violation of state law.

The one-year spending proposal was included in the Legislatures standing appropriations bill, which is headed for negotiations between leaders in the Republican-led House and Democratic-led Senate as state lawmakers inch close to completing their work for 2016.
Manasa Pagadala, a junior at Rivermont Collegiate, Bettendorf, was among 600 students, teachers and experts from across Iowa coming together for the World Food Prize Iowa Youth Institute, or IYI.

The IYI engages hundreds of young people from across Iowa in hunger-related topics and discussions. Students discuss various elements of global hunger, interact with experts in different hunger-related fields, and propose solutions to key issues.

Manasa's paper, "Improving Food Security through Efficient Energy Production in India," addresses the widespread issue of food insecurity in India and looks for a solution to the many problems that contribute to it.
On a dull afternoon last week, the heavy brass doors were wide open. They were still shiny entries to the building I will always call Davenport Bank. So I walked in. The vast hollow cathedral of the last bank to use this place was whisper-empty. I could hear my footsteps on the satiny marble floor.

It was a feeling of ghosts and great money past. I imagined that I could hear the stern voice of V.O. Figge  patriarch for nearly 60 years  giving an order to Vic Quinn, one of his vice presidents. I stood in awe in this magnificent empty lobby. I stared at the ceiling festoon of spirals, swans and masks and rosettes.

ONCE, THIS magnificent shell at 3rd and Main housed the biggest and soundest bank in Iowa. Davenport Bank & Trust Co. was its best-known tenant, followed by several successors. The last, Wells Fargo Bank, opened Monday in a swishy new downtown spot. Sentimentally, I remembered that here is where I got a mortgage for our first home 64 years ago.

I looked down the long, empty teller line. At the banks peak, there were 28 teller windows. Now, big lobbies and teller lines are no longer needed in the maze of drive-throughs and electronic banking.

Long-legged desktops, for filling out deposit slips or endorsing checks, are anchored to the marble floor. I leaned on one. It didnt wiggle. Its claimed those stands with their iron legs have been intact since the bank went up. The little chains on the stands, that once held pens, still dangle. But the pens are gone.

Along the wall are a few leather benches. I thought of the day when Joe Whitty waited on one of those benches to get a loan from V.O. To get his attention, Joe kept pumping one of those bulbous horns he used in his first pizza joint.

Give that guy whatever he wants, but get that damned noise out of here, V.O. yelled. Joe got his loan.

THE OLD DAVENPORT Bank was a big place. Vic Quinn remembers, In 1992, the bank had 825 employees. Around the place were offices of community icons like Ed Carmody and J.M. Hutchinson. Theyve long stood empty. Tucked away somewhere, surely, was the piano on which Tommy Keefe, an employee, played ragtime when there was a need for cheery music.

Standing in the lobby, I arched my neck, up to the 20-foot chandeliers that look to be at home in an old theater palace. When Davenport Bank was locked on a Saturday afternoon during the holiday season, selected officers climbed scaffolding to decorate those ornate chandeliers with Christmas roping and baubles and bangles. We decorated the whole big, darned bank, says Tom Otting. It was an honor to be a decorator. When the job was done, they all adjourned to the Italian Village to celebrate their work.

Once more, I was boggled by the artistic ceiling swirls and murals of local history. One is nine by 14 feet, the signing of the Black Hawk Treaty. I wondered how that ever could be moved. But the buildings owner promises the lobby will remain intact.

A FRIENDLY young woman approached. Can I help you? she asked. My companion volunteered that I was a friend of V.O. Figge. The woman invited us to visit his old office. Yet today, it is a polished alcove of butternut panels. It was a chill to stand behind V.O.s desk where million-dollar deals were hashed out. I remembered the wall that once held a pair of elephant tusks from one of his hunting expeditions. I peeked inside his private restroom, shimmering from floor to ceiling in light green tile.

I left, with an eerie feeling of banking ghosts at my side. And I chuckled to recall the day when Clem Werner, a Davenport attorney who almost became mayor, stood before V.O. in the lobby. You have everything else of mine; you might as well have these, he said, emptying his pockets of change. Nickels and dimes and quartered tinkled to the floor in front of a startled V.O.

The shiny marble floor smiled.
The Pennington County Sheriffs Office and the Rapid City Police Department are inviting the public to participate in a "Denim Day Walk" at the Sioux Park track on Wednesday to show support for survivors of sexual assault. The event will run 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the park at 100 Sheridan Lake Road.

Denim Day, an annual event in which people wear denim to combat sexual assault, came about after the Italian Supreme Court in 1998 overturned a rape conviction, saying the victim was wearing such tight jeans when the crime happened that she must have helped her attacker remove her pants, thereby consenting to sex.

Enraged by the verdict, women showed up at the Italian Parliament in jeans to show solidarity for the victim and to bring attention to destructive attitudes about sexual assault. Since then Denim Day has been marked internationally every April, during Sexual Violence Awareness Month.
Even as Rapid City school buildings wear out over time, shoring up crumbling foundations and renovating aging classrooms may fall to the wayside as the local school board begins to weigh its spending priorities for the coming year.

If it comes to a choice between fixing buildings or raising wages for district employees with the limited dollars available, School Board President Jim Hansen said during Monday nights meeting that he would choose higher salaries every time.

Our buildings are in pretty good shape, Hansen said, and if the community wants to improve them, they need to work on getting a bond.

A study released in February by consultant MGT of America called for the district to replace some existing school buildings with brand new ones, while recommending millions be spent on upkeep and facility improvements. In total, the price tag for all of MGTs recommendations comes to $333 million spread out over 10 years.

The district doesnt have enough money to pay for all that, and would likely need to take out a general obligation bond to hit the mark, as Hansen suggested. However, a proposed local "opt out" that would have created a new local tax revenue stream for schools was rejected handily by voters last year.

Assistant Superintendent Dave Janak, district finance official, doesnt think a voter-approved bond issue is likely now, either.

Realistically, Janak said, we dont believe the community is ready to say 'yes' to a bond issue.

Janak said a bond issue would result in in a tax hike that would come on top of a half-cent sales tax increase for teacher pay passed by lawmakers this year. Even if the district only tried to pay for $100 million worth of MGTs recommended improvements, the tax bill would still rise considerably.

That equates to about $1 in additional taxes per $1,000 of valuation, Janak said, and far more if the full plan is implemented.

If a general obligation bond is off the table, the alternative is to tap into capital outlay, which is the fund designated for facility improvements.

In 2009, the state legislature allowed school districts to flexibly use 45 percent of capital outlay dollars for a set list of expenses outside facilities. This year, the legislature said that 45 percent can be spent on anything even beyond the original sunset date of 2018.

Replenished by its own tax levy, at $3 per $1,000 of property valuation, the capital outlay fund generates about $19 million every year. Most of that money is already committed to paying for curriculum, past debts, and teacher pay. But the capital outlay fund has $25 million in reserves, stockpiled over the years as some projects came in under projected costs.

Without a bond to pay for school improvements, the alternative, Janak said, is to use the reserve that he said would only buy one new elementary school or a few smaller projects. But not for other items, such as the report's suggested $6 million in playground improvements alone.

Unfortunately, theres $333 million worth of priorities in that report, and not all of thats going to get done, Janak said after the meeting. So what is?

For now, Hansen prioritizes employee pay, which the capital outlay fund is already contributing $3.6 million toward teacher salaries. Meanwhile, wages have been frozen for non-teaching employees for several years, and the temptation is there for the School Board to use more of its capital outlay flexibility to scratch that need off its priority list.

My whole thing is, lets go for the staff, the entire staff, Hansen said. Everybody needs to be taken care of.

School Board Member Sheryl Kirkeby urged caution when it comes time for the board to decide how it wants to spend its capital outlay dollars, and in what amount.

I think we have to be careful tying much that has to do with salaries to capital outlay flexibility, Kirkeby said, because its uncertain how the state legislatures disposition toward district use of the fund will change in years to come.

For his part, Janak shares Kirkebys caution.

Going deeper into (capital outlay) makes it harder at some point to get out of it when you need that money to spend on facilities, Janak said.
Andrea Cook brought the grit and unwavering determination gleaned from her upbringing on the unforgiving South Dakota prairie to her life as a ranch wife, mother, grandmother and friend, and to a longtime career as a firm yet fair journalist.

Cook, 66, died Saturday at the Hans P. Peterson Memorial Hospital in Philip after a long battle against cancer that she fought with the same stoic resolve she brought to her news reporting, first for small weekly newspapers based near her Jackson County home and later for the Rapid City Journal for 14 years.

I don't know whether it was her years in rural weekly newspapers or her rural upbringing, but she had a good sense of South Dakota values, said Steve Miller, former Journal news editor who worked with Cook. Even in the past few months as she battled cancer, she still hoped to get back to work covering the news. She had that rare combination of compassion and mental toughness, Miller said.

That toughness was also apparent to current Journal editor Bart Pfankuch, who said that in 25 years in the news business, he has rarely seen a reporter who was so gruff on the outside, yet so thoughtful and caring on the inside, particularly about her work, her community and her family.

Pfankuch recalled a recent winter in which Cook slipped on a patch of ice and struck her head outside the Pennington County Courthouse while covering judicial proceedings.

Cook was taken to Rapid City Regional and was quickly wrapped in blankets on all but her face in order to get warm.

I visited her in the emergency room just to make sure she was all right, because I was worried she had a concussion, Pfankuch recalled. She was in pain, and was all wrapped up. But even in that state, Andrea asked how she could still file her stories for the paper, even offering to dictate verbally what had happened in court. She was just that committed to her work.

After working 27 years as a reporter and editor with the Pioneer Review and later Ravellette Publications based in Philip, Cook began her stint with the daily Journal in April 2002, putting a wealth of knowledge about western South Dakota and its people to good use covering general assignment, agriculture, education and law enforcement stories for the Journal.

Cook quickly established a reputation as a tough reporter for the stories she covered. Editors and fellow reporters marveled at her ability to churn out multiple bylined stories  all clearly written, fair and concise  on a daily basis.

Meade County Times-Tribune editor Deb Holland recalled working with Cook on a package of stories about the impact on area ranchers of a devastating blizzard which killed thousands of cattle in western South Dakota in October 2013.

She and I talked throughout the week about the tragedy and what information we should include. I was impressed at her insight and caring approach to writing about those affected,"Holland said. "After all, these were her neighbors."

Journal staffers remember Cooks newsroom desk overflowing with stacks of court files, news releases and notepads crowding out her family photos and competing for attention with a few live plants she continued to nurture.

Former Journal Managing Editor Jim Stasiowski, who retired earlier this month after a 40-year newspaper career, said said Cook made a lasting impression on him in the 20 months he worked in Rapid City.

Andrea and I spent many late nights honing stories until we got them exactly right, then we'd talk for hours about how to do our jobs better. In the short time we worked together, we became close colleagues, then very close friends, Stasiowski said.

Rapid City Police Capt. James Johns said Cook was one of the very few people outside the police department to call him by his nickname, J.J.

They spent as much time talking about deer hunting and taxidermy as about law enforcement matters, Johns said.

She was always fair. She would call you on something when what you were saying went against the information she had. She never misquoted me, never took me out of context. She took her role seriously. She made sure the truth was the story being told, Johns said.

I never cringed or was concerned when I heard Andrea needed to talk to me, he said.

He added: "Shes going to be missed. She could teach a new upcoming reporter so much. Not just about writing, but how to talk to people and develop relationships."

Current Pennington County States Attorney Mark Vargo said he respected Cooks efforts to gather background on a story in a strive for accuracy. But she would also own her mistakes and correct them, he said.

"She put the time in to get the full importance of what was going on. She got the big picture, Vargo said.

A statement from the Rapid City Fire Department described Cook as an outstanding journalist and an incredible person.

The description 'tough but fair' is quite certainly an accurate description. Andrea was excellent at writing a balanced piece with all sides of the issue being taken into account. Interviews with Andrea seemed more like conversations rather than interviews. She definitely showed a passion for what she did and a passion for telling the story, the fire department statement said.

Pfankuch also noted that Andrea was the driving force behind the continued awarding of the Peg Sagen Memorial Scholarship, a scholarship given annually to a college student and aspiring journalist in honor of the former Journal editor, who also died of cancer in 2006.

Andrea felt strongly that we needed to continue to develop home-grown journalists to cover South Dakota and Rapid City, said Pfankuch, who often referred to Cook by the nickname Cookie.

Her knowledge of this state, its issues and its people will be sorely missed. And Ill miss her as a friend, he said.

While Cook could be gruff at times, she lit up whenever any members of her family would visit the Journal newsroom, particularly her husband Jerald and grandson Josh.

Stasiowski said Cook had the gift of gaining the trust of both news sources and readers, and possessed the strength of character never to betray either.

"In their terrible loss, her family members should take comfort in knowing how highly her colleagues, her sources and her readers valued her, Stasiowski said.

Visitation will be 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on April 29, at the Rush Funeral Home in Philip; memorial services will be held 11 a.m. on April 30, at the American Legion Hall in Philip. She will be buried at the Cottonwood Cemetery, her family said.
Five Russians had their right to freedom of expression violated  ECHR

MOSCOW, April 26 (RAPSI)  The European Court on Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday published its judgement in favor of five applicants from Russia claiming violation of their rights under several articles of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (the Convention).

The Court decided to rule in favor of five applications on the grounds of their factual and legal similarities and held that there had been a violation of Article 10 of the Convention (freedom of expression) in respect of each applicant.

The Court also held that there was no need to examine the complaints under Article 5 [right to liberty and security  ed.] of the Convention and Article 2 of Protocol No. 4 [freedom of movement] to the Convention and to make separate findings under Article 11 [freedom of assembly and association] of the Convention.

ECHR dismissed the remainder of the applicants claim for just satisfaction.

The applicants, Marina Novikova, Yuriy Matsnev, Viktor Savchenko, Valeriy Romakhin and Aleksandr Kirpichev are Russian nationals living in Moscow, Kaliningrad, Astrakhan and village of Platonovo-Petrovka in the Rostov Region respectively.

The case concerns the applicants complaints about how the authorities responded to demonstrations each of them held, in particular, arrests, and detention at police stations. Three applicants received convictions of administrative offences.

ECHR judges unanimously held that Russia is to pay 7,500 euros in respect of non-pecuniary damage to Novikova, Kirpichev and Romakhin as well as 6,000 euros to Savchenko on the same grounds. The Court judgement granted Kirpichev 120 euros as a compensation for pecuniary damage to him. These amounts should be paid to the applicants in full, notwithstanding possible taxes and charges, within three months of the date the judgement becomes final.

The Court also held to compensate costs and expenditures incurred by Kirpichev and Romakhin in amount of 6,000 euros, making no award to Matsnev, since his lawyer failed to make a claim for just satisfaction within the necessary time-limit.

In its judgement, ECHR pointed out that after the end of the three months period and until settlement simple interest shall be payable on the granted amounts of compensation at a rate equal to the marginal lending rate of the European Central Bank during the default period plus three percentage points.
Crimean Tatar Majlis banned by republics Supreme Court

MOSCOW, April 26 (RAPSI)  The Supreme Court of Crimea on Tuesday granted a lawsuit filed by republics Prosecutor Natalia Poklonskaya and banned the Majlis of Crimean Tatars as extremist organization, RIA Novosti reported.

Poklonskaya stated that members of the Majlis of Crimean Tatars public association are focused on anti-Russian activity. According to Prosecutor, the Majlis leaders, Refat Chubarov and Mustafa Dzhemilev have organized food and energy blockade of the peninsula. They allegedly cooperate with various terrorist organizations as well.

After Crimea reunited with Russia in 2014, both Dzhemilev and Chubarov were banned from entering the republic for five years. The regional officials claim that the Tatar leaders activity incited inter-ethnic hatred.

In May 2015, a criminal case has been opened in Crimea against Refat Chubarov over public calls for extremist activity.

Chubarov has been president of the World Congress of Crimean Tatars since 2009. In November 2013, he replaced Mustafa Dzhemilev as head of Crimean Tatar Majlis (parliament), an organization not registered under Russian law.
Ukrainian billionaire accused of tax evasion in Russia arrested in absentia

MOSCOW, April 26 (RAPSI)  Moscows Basmanny District Court on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant in absentia for Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Grigorishin who stands charged with tax evasion amounting to 674 million rubles ($10.2 million), RAPSI reported from the courtroom.

Judge Artur Karpov ruled to place Grigorishin in detention for two months immediately after his extradition or arrest in Russia.

Earlier, the businessman has been put on the international wanted list.

Russian investigators claim that from 2009 to 2010, Grigorishin failed to pay taxes worth 674 million rubles on "PIK Sozidanie", the company he owns.

In 2015, Forbes ranked Grigorishin as leading river ship owner in Ukraine with a $1.1 billion fortune. According to the magazine, despite the fact that the billionaire was born in Zaporozhye and most of his assets are in Ukraine, he is a Cyprus national and does not have a Ukrainian passport.
Putin prohibits sales of more than 20 cigarettes in one pack

MOSCOW, April 26 (RAPSI)  Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a bill that would prohibit selling more than 20 cigarettes in one pack into law, according to the Kremlins official website.

The legislation will take effect on July 1, 2016.

The lawmakers behind the initiative claim that large packs containing more cigarettes seem more attractive to consumers because they give an opportunity to save money.

The price per cigarette in large packs is lower by 10-25 % than in the conventional packs containing 20 cigarettes. The authors believe that this practice violates the prohibition of discounts for tobacco products.
Sagarmatha Network Pvt. Ltd. is the organization dedicated in the field of printing, publishing service since 2001. As part of media, we've been publishing Review Nepal, an English medium weekly registered at District Administration Office (DAO) Kathmandu with registration number 130-162-163 and reviewnepal.com as an online digital newspaper, with registration number 849-075-076 at Department of Informational and Broadcasting (DIB) from Kathmandu, Nepal since 2003.
The Nation (Pakistan), April 21, 2016

Saying aterrorism has nothing to do with Islama is as problematic as saying aall Muslims are terroristsa. Both these statements provide sweeping generalization for a complex issue

by Umer Ali

In a recent exam, I was asked a mind-boggling question: How to save Pakistan from secularism? It could have been phrased differently but the author of this question had already taken a position that secularism was bad for Pakistan.

During his lectures, the author of this question had insisted upon the deficiencies found in modern political and economic systems due to their status of abeing formulated by mena. Equating these political ideologies with Islam, he argued how catastrophic the effect of these ideologies have been on human beings. Caliphate, he asserted, was the only solution for the issues people in 21st century face.

One of the many groups claiming to be proponents of Islamic Caliphate, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the Lahore blast which killed 73 people, while injuring more than 300 a most of whom were children.

A day before Lahore blast, an Ahmadi man was stabbed to death in Glasgow. One of the most hated sects of Islam, Ahmadis face severe persecution in Muslim countries a especially Pakistan where they have been apostatized by the Constitution.

On April 7, another Bangladeshi secularist blogger was hacked to death by the Islamist terrorists. A couple of days after the incident, 3 Shias were shot dead in Karachi in a sectarian attack, apparently carried out by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

All these attacks were carries out by Islamists who, one way or another, refuted the right to live for those who differed from theirworldview. All these attacks were planned and executed in an attempt to impose a specific ideology on others.

Earlier this year, Mumtaz Qadri a the murderer of Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer a was hanged to death. Thousands came out to pay him tribute for ahis services to Islama and abeing a true lover of Prophet Muhammada.

They came out to protest against the punishment for killing someone in the name of Islam.

Meanwhile, my instructor a the author of the above question, explained the benefits of Islamic Caliphate.

Many in Pakistan have been apologetic towards the actions and ideas of Islamist terrorists. Imran Khan a a populist leader said in 2012 that Pakistan didnat face any threat from Talibanas ideology. Former chief of a popular religious party in Pakistan, while paying tribute to him, said Osama bin Laden was still alive in the hearts of people.

On the other hand, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina responded to the issue of atheist bloggers being killed in the following words:

aEveryone has to hold their tongue, has to maintain a level of decency in what they write. If they write something provocative and something bad happens, the government will not take responsibility.a

She went on to ask:

aIf someone writes filthy things about my religion, why should we tolerate it?a Basically, Prime Minister of a country was acquitting herself of being responsible for some citizens having difference of opinion with her.

While all this has been happening in Islamic countries, many in the West, who claim to be standing left of the center, fail to realize the gravity of the Islamism problem.

Living in open societies, where there is absolute freedom of expression, this section of the left fail to realize that closed Muslim societies like ours donat tolerate such aluxuriesa. For example, in a country like Pakistan, you cannot declare yourself an atheist and expect to live on. You cannot criticize religious dogma publicly, unless you really have had enough with your life.

Even those Muslims who claim to be moderate in societies like ours donat go too well with the idea of freethinking or LGBT right for example.

Chanting slogans like aterrorism has no religiona to athis is not true Islama a unapologetically and nonsensically, this regressive part of the Western left has unintentionally provided a space for Islamism to bloom. Being far away from offering a viable solution, these chants comprise more of guilt-ridden, sympathetic attitudes towards Muslim minorities and barely touch upon the realities of Muslim world.

Either ISIS terrorists throwing homosexuals off the roofs or Bangladeshi mob beating secularists to death aboth have a religion and it is Islam. They are motivated by verses of Quran and hadith. They are driven by the motive of enforcing the rule of god on the planet Earth. No matter how flawed their interpretation of Islam is, they do have an Islamic connection and to deny it is to live in ignorance.

Saying ISIS or Taliban donat follow true Islam is as ridiculous as it sounds. Anybody having a fair knowledge of Islam would know that it consists of several sects, having different and at times, opposite interpretations. In Sunni Islam, for instance, Muslims have 4 major school of thoughts aHanafi, Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali. Even in Hanafi school of thought, there are sub-sects like Deobandi and Barelvi. Deobandis, for instance, are further divided into various groups.

Not all of these sects and their sub-sects are essentially violent and not all of them can be acquitted of links with Islamist terrorism. These groups range from being totally non-violent and apolitical to being extremely violent and having political ambitions.

Saying aterrorism has nothing to do with Islama is as problematic as saying aall Muslims are terroristsa. Both these statements provide sweeping generalization for a complex issue.

While thousands are actually taking part in jihad, hundreds of thousands are one step behind the action. There consist a large section of Muslim population which is apologetic towards jihadists and their ideology.

That said, there are millions of Muslims who want to live peacefully, according to the modern norms so labelling the followers of a whole religion as terrorists is not going to get us anywhere.

The real task that the Western left must be spending its energy on is to come out of the denial, identify the Islamism problem and then try to solve it. Turning a blind eye towards this grave issue is an insult to those whohave suffered from this menace and keep on living to resist the oppression of Islamists in Muslim countries.

More by Umer Ali

Umer Ali is an Islamabad-based journalist who reads and writes about Pakistan and its history. He aspires to see a tolerant and progressive Pakistan. Follow him on Twitter
sacw.net - 26 April 2016

The aspirations of the people of Jammu and KashmirA point the way toward a workable democratic pluralism in the state  where the reigning principle is discussion leading to free elections, not autocratic decision-making either by elected legislators or separatists.

I state very clearly, at the outset, that I am greatly interested in the revival of Kashmiri society, in the constructive rebuilding of that society, and in the growth and burgeoning of our younger generation. I do not want the people of Kashmir to wallow in grief for eternity, and I will not build my castle on the agonies of those who have suffered tremendous losses in the past twenty-six years. We cannot restore our state or our national identity on unquenchable hate for either India or Pakistan and certainly not on cashing in on the pain and grief of our Kashmiri people. A nation that lives in limbo remains in a vegetative state while the rest of the world moves on. We require a viable solution, and we require it now.

I emphasize that a political movement that pays insufficient attention to the welfare of the populace, good governance, and rebuilding democratic institutions ends up leaving irreparable destruction in its wake. While focusing on the building and legitimization of a collective political identity, some political and militant nationalist movements make the grave error of turning a blind eye to the vitriol of corruption and inefficiency in the administrative set-up and educational institutions, which is exactly what the political movement of the past quarter of a century has done.

The translation of a political vision into reality requires an efficacious administrative set-up and vibrant educational institutions, which produce dynamic citizens. The insurgency or militant nationalist movement in Kashmir clearly lacked such a vision and, so, it was bound to falter. It is imperative, without further delay and further ado, for state (members of the Legislative Assembly of J & K and those representing J & K in the Indian Parliament) as well as non-state actors (those representing the Hurriyat Conference; members of non-governmental organizations; members of community based organizations; members of religious organizations; trade unionists, etc.) to forge connections between their agendas and strategies for conflict resolution and reconstruction of society with the strategies and agendas of other sections of the populace impacted by the conflict. The internal dialogue process, which I am suggesting, would entail making political compromises in order to accommodate different points of view for the growth of J & K.

The Kashmir movement is a dynamic one, which requires internal critique to evolve and grow. The critique of violence, not just of the oppressor but of the oppressed as well came from within the resistance movement in the late 1990s and early 2000s with Abdul Gani Lones denunciation of the role played by aforeign militantsa in Kashmir. A few years ago at a seminar on the role of the intellectual in the freedom / resistance, Professor Abdul Gani Bhat and the Mirwaiz reinforced that internal critique by challenging the hegemonic order within the resistance movement. Yes, it isnt just mainstream politics that has a hegemonic structure. They also pointed out that Abdul Gani Lone had to pay a high price for his dissidence, which, they condemned. They were also critical of the inability of the resistance movement to capitalize on the protests of 2010 to make political headway. Any organization, whether mainstream or separatist, requires an internal critique to maintain its dynamism. The Kashmiri struggle for identity and autonomy for some, self-determination for others, has, historically, been a political one. There has been a critique, from within the resistance movement, of attempts to reconstruct historical and cultural discourses in order to inspire the kind of cultural nationalism that fundamentalist politics require. Some leaders of the resistance movements are reaching out to the Kashmiri Pandit community, because the movement seeks to be inclusive and seeks to define itself within a political framework. Contrary to what the some separatist organizations believe, Kashmiri culture is not homogeneous and nor is Kashmiri identity. I have been just as critical of the insensitivity in reactionary organizations as well as in current regional and national administrations to the diverse interpretations of religious laws and to the heterogeneity of cultural traditions.

The objectives of peace and merging a popular politics of mass mobilization with institutional politics of governance promoting demilitarization and democracy must be pursued by all stake holders. The belated effort underway in the Republic of Mali, a landlocked country in Western Africa, could serve as an object lesson in neglecting the inquiry to how to empower people to resist violent radicalization and restore pluralism.

.I would also like to underscore that I am not opposed to electoral politics, because I dont see electoral process and establishment of a government as not ultimate goals or ends in themselves but I do see them as means to nation-building and societal reconstruction. Even religious and political rhetoric of mainstream and separatist organizations remains simply rhetorical without a stable and representative government. Not every MLA of a mainstream organization is elitist. Not every mainstream politician lives in an ivory tower. We cannot underestimate the importance of standing up and being counted.

Before I go any further, I examine the historical and political roots of the Kashmir conflict. The nation-states of India and Pakistan have employed aggressive strategies in the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir and overtly imperialist methods since the inception of independence in 1947. The partition of India legitimized the forces of masculinist nationalism and enabled virile hatred for the aothera to irreparably mutilate a shared anti-colonial legacy and cultural heritage so systematically that the wounds inflicted by the partition are yet to heal. The geographical borders, political animosities, and religious hatreds dividing the two sides were not orchestrated just by British imperial cartographers but were ignited by nationalists of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League as well. As historian Uma Kaura (1977) keenly observes, the partition of India was orchestrated not just be the machinations and quiet diplomacy of the British Viceroy, but by the egregious mistakes made by the leadership of the Indian National Congress as well as by the acrimony and belligerence of the Muslim League (170). Ever since the inception, in 1885, of pro-independence political activity in pre-partition India, the Muslim leadership insisted on the necessity for a distinct Muslim identity (Kaura 1977: 164). Kaura also underlines the inability of the nationalist leadership to accommodate Muslim aspirations because its primary concern was to ingratiate itself with the militant Hindu faction, which would have created ruptures within the Congress. The creation of India and Pakistan were pyrrhic victories for their denizens because the political, socioeconomic, psychological, and culture havoc wreaked by that momentous event is reflected in those pogroms, ethnic cleansing, proliferation of nuclear weapons, poverty, and riots that continue to cause seismic tremors in the Indian subcontinent. aThe fundamental character of this relationship [between India and Pakistan] has been one of strategic hostility, unchanged and essentially unquestioned since the birth of the two as independent countriesa (Chenoy and Vanaik 2001: 125).

For India, Kashmir lends credibility to its secular nationalist image. For Pakistan, Kashmir represents the infeasibility of secular nationalism and validates the rationale of the partition, which occurred along religious lines. Once the Kashmir issue took an ideological turn, Mahatma Gandhi remarked, aMuslims all over the world are watching the experiment in Kashmir. . . . Kashmir is the real test of secularism in India.a

The governments of India and Pakistan have been pursuing autocratic policies vis-A -vis Kashmir and have been accelerating the political, economic, and social impairment of the state. The unwillingness and inability of the two governments to enable the emergence of Kashmir as a bastion of democracy, secularism, and development speaks volumes about the disfigurement of the public diplomacy of the two nation-states. Josef Korbel (2002: 304) wrote with foresight that awhatever the future may have in store, the free world shares with India and Pakistan common responsibility for the fate of democracy and it awaits with trepidation the solution of the Kashmir problem. Its own security may depend on such a settlement.a

Ethnic, Religious, and Religious Divisions in Indian-Administered Jammu and Kashmir:

The various ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups in Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir, Kashmiri Muslims, Kashmiri Pundits, Dogra Hindus, and Ladakhi Buddhists and Shiite Muslims, have been unable to construct a shared cultural and historical legacy that would enable them to fashion a cultural alterity to that of the Indian nationalist one. But due to the regional sentiments that are becoming increasingly religionized, the ideology and rhetoric of a shared cultural and historical past have been unable to garner public support and mobilization for reconstruction and nation-building. The signifiers of nationhood in Jammu and Kashmir, flag, anthem, and constitution, have thus far not been able to move beyond a nebulous nationalist self-imagining. Regional political forces have sabotaged attempts made to construct a unitary identity. The political acts of demanding the right of self-determination and autonomy for J & K have not been able to nurture a unity amongst all socioeconomic classes, but, on the contrary, are threatening to create unbridgeable gulfs (Rahman 1996: 148-9; Ganguly 1997: 78-9). Now more than ever, the three regions of the state of J & K are at daggers drawn about the future political configuration of the state. This doleful truth was forcefully brought home to me at the Conference organize by the Government of India selected Interlocutors for Jammu and Kashmir on aPluralism and Diversity in Jammu and Kashmir,a held in Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, July 11, 2011. At this intraregional conference, I was a member of the Kashmir delegation and I presented a paper on the restoration and revitalization of the autonomous status of J & K.

The province of Jammu sees its unbreachable assimilation into the Indian Union as the only way to safeguard its future. However, of the original six districts of Jammu, the three predominantly Muslim ones, Poonch, Rajouri, and Doda, would undoubtedly align themselves with the predominantly Muslim Kashmir Valley. In the Ladakh region of the state, predominantly Buddhist Leh, which has always been critical of the perceived discrimination against it, has zealously been demanding its political severance from the rest of the state and pushing its demand for Union Territory status within the Indian Union, where-as the predominantly Shiite Kargil district in the Ladakh region does not perceive a jeopardized cultural and linguistic identity and advocates retention of its political alignment with the rest of the state. The resounding slogan of self-determination resonates loudest in the Kashmir Valley. Among the Dogra Hindu populace of Jammu and the Buddhist populace of Ladakh, this slogan is perceived as exclusionary and insensitive to the diversities and divergences in the state. The political instability that has ensued in the wake of the rekindling of this slogan in 1989 is perceived as detrimental to the germination and evolvement of developmental projects, institutionalization of political processes that would enable the devolution of powers to the grassroots cadres by the aforementioned populaces of Jammu and Ladakh. That perception, however, is not shared by the Muslims of the Kashmir Valley, who live in the toxicity of a trust deficit between the state and the Government of India.

The political asphyxiation of a viable trajectory for Kashmir has further vitiated the political space, mainstream and separatist, of Kashmir. There is a plethora of opinions about the political, cultural, religious, and social complexity of Kashmir. Indian- and Pakistani-administered Jammu and Kashmir is a space in which conflicting discourses have been written and read. For more than sixty years the Kashmir conflict has remained like a long pending case in a court of law between the two nuclear giants in the Indian subcontinent, India and Pakistan: aKashmir has been an enduring and intractable problem. For decades the greatest barrier to eliminating nuclear tension in South Asia was Indias unwillingness to give up its nuclear option because of its more ambitious self-perceptions. . . . A new dimension---the possibility of a nuclear outbreak between the two countries---has been added to an already conflict-filled situationa (Chenoy and Vanaik 2001: 127) The Kashmir imbroglio has worsened partly out of disillusionment that was generated by perceiving the hollowness of Indian secularism, partly out of the ignominy that Kashmiris felt in being tied to a government and a polity that is getting increasingly religionized: aThe self-perceptions that have led to India taking up the nuclear option have everything to do with the rising popularity of a belligerent and aggressive form of nationalism among a frustrated and increasingly insecure elite. This is embodied in the rise of Hindu communalism and of the various cultural and political forces associated with it (Ibid.: 127).

The insurgency in Kashmir, which surfaced in 1989, grew into a low intensity warfare made lethal by the firepower of India, accompanied by killings, assassinations, plunder, pillage, violations, taking of hostages, counterinsurgencies, ambushes, and the duplicitous politics of Pakistan. The initial response of the Indian military and paramilitary forces to the armed insurgency in Kashmir was belligerent and repressive. The history of the past twenty-six years has degenerated into statistics and data: number of land mines, number of ambushes, number of suicide attacks, number of abductions and rapes. Although in the highly militarized sociocultural ethos of Kashmir, rape was construed as a weapon of war in the then burgeoning discourse of armed insurgency and the corollary discourse of human rights violations, adishonoreda women retained their status as familial and cultural chattels lacking control over their bodies, unable to play a constructive role in the process of conflict mitigation. Custodial disappearances, custodial deaths, and summary executions in Kashmir have been documented by several human rights activists, social scientists, and writers.

Since the onset of armed insurgency and counter insurgency in 1989, more than 50,000 Kashmiris have been killed by Indian troops, paramilitary forces, paramilitary and militia divisions of the J & K police, and some militant groups; more than 100, 000 Kashmiri Hindus have migrated to other parts of India for fear of religious persecution, loss of lives and properties; more than 8,000 Kashmiris have been victims of custodial disappearances; and by a conservative estimate more than 5000 women have been raped (Amnesty International, 1995). According to an official statement made by the Director General of Police, J & K, of the 3,500 militants active in the state, 2,275 were foreign militants and 1, 225 were local militants.

Given this reality, it is time the people of the state, of whatever political, religious, and ideological leanings, work in collaboration with one another to focus on the rebuilding of a greatly fragmented social fabric to ensure the redress of inadequate political participation, reconstruction of the infrastructure of the productive capacity of Kashmir, and resumption of access to basic social services, of which I would underscore quality education, health services, the environment, and encouraging women to play an important role in establishing a more inclusive democracy and new forums for citizen cooperation. How can we increase the purchasing capacity of our people and ensure that they enjoy basic amenities and necessities if we continue to insist on the politics of ahartalsa ? Political autonomy devoid of economic autonomy remains lop-sided.

There must be redress for previous violations of human rights for all groups within the state of Jammu and Kashmir. In addition, everyone needs to be open to diplomacy and peaceful negotiations to further the India-Pakistan peace process. The aims of that process should be withdrawal of forces from both sides of the Line of Control dividing Kashmir as well as the decommissioning of militants, the rehabilitation of detained prisoners, and repair of the frayed ethnic fabric in all parts of civil society. We have the resilience and the wherewithal to forge ahead.

Works Consulted

Chenoy, Anuradha Mitra and Achin Vanaik. aPromoting Peace, Security and Conflict

Resolution: Gender Balance in Decision Making.a In Gender, Peace and

Conflict. Edited by Inger SkjelsbAk and Dan Smith. London: Sage Publications, 2001: 122-138.

Ganguly, Sumit. The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Hopes of Peace.New York: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1997.

Kaura, Uma. Muslims and Indian Nationalism: The Emergence of the Demand for Indias Partition 192840. Columbia: South Asia Books, 1977.

Khan, Nyla Ali. Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir: Between India and Pakistan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

 -, ed. The Parchment of Kashmir: History, Society, and Polity. New York: Palgave Macmillan, 2012. Forthcoming.

Korbel, Josef. Danger in Kashmir. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954. Reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. (Page references are to the 2002

edition.)

Rahman, Mushtaqur. Divided Kashmir: Old Problems, New Opportunities for India, Pakistan, and the Kashmiri People. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1996.

(Nyla Ali Khan is a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma, and member of Scholars Strategy Network. She is the author of Fiction of Nationality in an Era of Transnationalism, Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir, The Life of a Kashmiri Woman, and the editor of The Parchment of Kashmir. She is editor of the Oxford Islamic Studiesa special issue on Jammu and Kashmir. She can be reached at nylakhan[at]aol.com)
In the last decade, ecotourism has exploded as a travel trend, now accounting for an astonishing 11.4 percent of consumer spending worldwide [source: GDRC]. Ecotourism is short for "ecological tourism," and it's a type and style of travel that has two primary, related goals: to minimize the environmental cost of tourism in general, and to actually provide ecological benefit to the travel destination.

Imagine, for example, a two-week African safari. An ecotourist might choose a housing destination that uses "green energy," recycles trash, has access to a water-treatment facility so it can reuse wastewater, uses only locally grown food (so it doesn't have to be shipped in from far away) and perhaps even donates a certain percentage of tourism profits to community-improvement projects. That would reduce the environmental cost of a typical African vacation. Going a step further, into benefiting the destination community, that ecotourist might choose to participate in those very community-improvement projects as part of the vacation.

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There's an inherent problem with even this high-level type of ecotourism: power requirements. Even with partially green-powered lodging, planes still fly on greenhouse-gas-emitting fuel. And the round trip flight from, say, New York to Tanzania is very long -- about 15,000 miles (24,000 kilometers). Then add in the gas-powered Jeep rides from the airport into the jungle and then from spot to spot within that huge tract of land, seeking out zebras and giraffes. We're talking about a whole lot of carbon dioxide emissions during that two-week trip.

This is where travel green tags come in. Green tags are carbon offsets -- the same thing you can buy from your power company to help reduce the environmental effects of your household power consumption. In the last five years or so, more and more travel companies have gotten in on the green tag trend to help travelers reduce the ecological effects of their trips.

In this article, we'll take a look at how green tags work and how they fit in with ecotourism. What exactly are you buying when you buy a carbon credit, anyway? And can they really make a gas-guzzling, 15,000-mile trip to Africa "carbon neutral?"
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 Deep thoughts about sentencing, sentencing rules, and sentencing rule-making | Main | Virginia Gov explains his big decision to use his clemency power to restore franchise 

The title of this post is the title of this new programming publication from the US Department of Justice. Here is part of its "Overview":

Each year, more than 600,000 citizens return to neighborhoods across America after serving time in federal and state prisons. Another 11.4 million individuals cycle through local jails. And nearly one in three Americans of working age have had an encounter with the criminal justice system  mostly for relatively minor, non-violent offenses, and sometimes from decades in the past. Federal prisoners are held at the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), a law enforcement agency of the U.S. Department of Justice and the countrys largest and most complex prison system  housing nearly 200,000 prisoners in 122 federally-operated correctional institutions, 13 privately-operated secure correctional facilities, and a network of more than 175 community-based centers around the country....

The long-term impact of a criminal record prevents many people from obtaining employment, housing, higher education, and credit  and these barriers affect returning individuals even if they have turned their lives around and are unlikely to reoffend. These often-crippling barriers can contribute to a cycle of incarceration that makes it difficult for even the most wellintentioned individuals to stay on the right path and stay out of the criminal justice system. This cycle of criminality increases victimization, squanders our precious public safety resources, and wastes the potential of people who could be supporting their families, contributing to the economy, and helping to move our country forward.

Under the Obama Administration, the Department of Justice has already taken major steps to make our criminal justice system more fair, more efficient, and more effective at reducing recidivism and helping formerly incarcerated individuals return to their communities. In 2011, the Department established the Federal Interagency Reentry Council, a unique Cabinet-level effort to remove barriers to successful reentry. The Reentry Council, which now includes more than 20 federal departments and agencies, has developed significant policies and initiatives that aim not only to reduce recidivism, but also to improve public health, child welfare, employment, education, housing, and other key reintegration outcomes.

To ensure that all justice-involved individuals are able to fulfill their potential when they come home, Attorney General Lynch has launched a major effort to support and strengthen reentry programs and resources at BOP. These principles of reform  known as the Roadmap to Reentry  will be implemented throughout BOP, deepening and further institutionalizing the Departments commitment to reentry. These efforts will help those who have paid their debt to society prepare for substantive opportunities beyond the prison gates; promoting family unity, contributing to the health of our economy, and sustaining the strength of our nation.

The Department has also established full-time positions to promote reentry work at BOP, the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, and the Office of Justice Programs; this includes hiring the first-ever Second Chance Fellow  a formerly incarcerated individual with deep expertise in the reentry field  to assist in development of reentry policy initiatives. BOP established a new Reentry Services Division to better equip inmates with the tools needed for success outside the prison walls, including expanded mental health and substance abuse treatment programs and improved work and educational opportunities. Through the community of U.S. Attorneys, the Department participates in reentry and diversion courts in more than 50 judicial districts nationwide. And the Department supports state, local, and tribal reentry efforts by providing resources under the Second Chance Act of 2007: the Departments Office of Justice Programs has made nearly 750 Second Chance Act grants totaling more than $400 million, and established a National Reentry Resource Center that serves as a one-stop resource for returning citizens, advocates, and stakeholders.
The once gold-painted rock on Bernal Hill has seemingly stepped right into the Hillary versus Bernie debate, and thankfully for all of us one SFist tipster was there to document the vacillating boulder as it tried to come to terms with just which candidate would best represent its sedimentary interests.

"This past Thursday: the gold painted rock becomes blue," wrote Karen Celia Heil of the above picture. "Saturday AM: 2 women spotted adorning the blue with 'Bernie Rocks,'" she then noted of the following.





And sure, as we learned in March, San Francisco ranks the second highest of any city in the US for per-capita campaign contributions to Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign  so it makes sense Berners would seize the opportunity to show some love (and also make a pun). But as we know, there is a lot of local passion for Hillary Clinton as well  a fact which the rock made very clear by the next day.



Photo by Karen Celia Heil.

Reading "WOMEN R THE REVOLUTION / HiLLARY!," the rock appeared to have come to doubt its convictions of the day prior. But this newfound support was not long for this world, and later that very day a new message adorned the boulder. "WOMEN R THE REVOLUTION / HiLLARY! is OWNED BY GOLDMAN SACHS," read the freshly painted chunk.



Photo by Karen Celia Heil.

According to Heil, that is how it remained Sunday evening. No word yet on whether or not the rock is now considering Trump, as its original gold color indicated.

Related: Video: Protest Of Hillary Clinton Fundraiser Gets NSFW With Topless Flasher


"So much has changed in San Francisco since we first opened the bar in 2000," says chef-owner Gayle Pirie of Laszlo, the interconnected sibling bar that faces the street next to the entrance of Foreign Cinema, which has been shuttered for a makeover since mid-February. "We knew it was time to modernize Laszlo so it could continue to serve its community in the best way possible," she says, adding that the main goal has been "to warm up the overall atmosphere," but still maintaining aspects that Missionites have always loved about the place, including that retro-red television.

The new Laszlo, which reopens to the public on May 12, will have a renewed emphasis on its DJ programming, with longtime residents including Felix the Dog, Saurus, and Delon spinning alongside young up-and-comers. Adding to their talents will be the vintage sounds from "Gayles own vinyl compendium, which spans over 50 years and includes much inherited from her grandfather."

With a brand new DJ booth now built in at the rear of the space, the DJ's won't be perched at the front of the bar where drinks came sometimes dangerously close to those turntables.

Also, there will be a new "film-inspired" cocktail list, as the team tells us in a release, as well as a new menu of bar bites that includes Madras curry fried chicken sandwiches, fried pickled mushrooms, and sea bass ceviche spoons.

As you can see in the photo above, the high-ceilinged loft aesthetic remains but with the addition of warm wood paneling. And the vintage movie posters adorning the walls will, of course, return, as will, projected movies.

The bar's name, after all, comes from the alias used by an iconic character in French cinema, Michel in Jean-Luc Goddard's Breathless.

Laszlo - 2526 Mission Street - Reopening May 12 - Hours will be Monday through Wednesday 5 p.m. to midnight, Thursday 5:30 p.m. to 2 a.m., Friday from 3 p.m. to 2 a.m., Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to midnight
Leaving the courthouse last Friday, 33-year-old advertising technology mogul Gurbaksh "G" Chahal was surrounded by family and bodyguards, shielding his appearance from the eye of the media, as ABC 7 nonetheless reported. Also, his appearance in the courtroom was "stonefaced," according to the Examiner.

The occasion was a hearing on a motion to revoke Chahal's probation. While accusations that Chahal, who once faced felony charges of domestic assault, had abused another woman  news that leaked nearly a year ago  they've finally been brought to court by prosecutors. Chahal could face jail time  something he has heretofore avoided  if his probation is revoked.

Three years ago, that probation was a godsend for Chahal, who nonetheless lost control of (if not stake in) his company, RadiumOne, just before a planned IPO. The founder and CEO rose to fame after selling two companies for a total of $340 million before his 25th birthday, success coupled with good looks that lead to appearances on Oprah and beyond.

Then, in 2013, Chahal was arrested on 45 felony counts of domestic abuse. Video from his San Francisco penthouse allegedly showed him hitting and kicking his then-girlfriend 117 times in a brief window of time. Only, that evidence was later deemed unlawfully seized and inadmissible. Thus, in 2014, Chahal plead guilty to just two misdemeanor charges, skirting jail time with a domestic violence program, community service, and three years probation.

Some time later, in 2015, former mayor and practicing attorney Willie Brown admitted to counseling Chahal for a steep fee. While Brown disputed that the sum was, as had been speculated, a million dollars, he won''t argue that it was after his involvement in the matter that the key video was deemed inadmissible.

That likely swayed the case, and with it, Chahal's fate. "Had the video been allowed as evidence with 117 slaps and kicks, I think we'd be in a different place," ABC7 quotes Beverly Upton, executive director of the San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium.

Then, accusations that Chahal beat another woman, one he met in Las Vegas during his initial trial, surfaced last year. That woman, whose full name is not known to the media, says he kicked her repeatedly in his South Beach apartment: Now, prosecutors say Chahal's probation should be revoked as a result.

A non-US citizen, the alleged victim has expressed concern about her immigration status as well as her safety, and was not present at the hearing. She told me Mr. Chahal told her not to report the incident otherwise he would report her to the immigration authorities, an SFPD officer who spoke with the alleged victim when she called 911 told the court.

Meanwhile, as Chahal fights to remain a free man, he's decided to take on a new tactic: Accusing District Attorney George Gascon of racism. As Chahal walked by, according to KRON 4, nearly 20 supporters were outside the Hall of Justice, holding signs that made similar claims.

Gascon has a hidden agenda, and that hidden agenda is that hes prejudice, said one protestor who also claimed he had d never met Chahal. It appears [Gascon] is making a scapegoat out of Gurbaksh Chahal for his own political wishes. The Examiner also writes also writes that Chahal's father held signs that read Stop prejudice against minorities and Stop using Gurbaksh for political ambitions. "

Rich or poor, we will aggressively pursue #domesticviolence. https://t.co/4WYJ8g2s30  SF DISTRICT ATTORNEY (@SFDAOffice) April 23, 2016

Further, SF Weekly speculates that Chahal himself is behind a broader campaign accusing Gascon of racism. Posts from the active Facebook figure show a mix of anti-Gascon sentiment and self-praise. Observe:

In the years since the first trial, Chahal has launched another company, a similar endeavor to RadiumOne called Gravity4. Incidentally, that company was slammed with a gender discrimination lawsuit, one brought by a former staffer who says she was harassed and spied upon. Later, she says she was told disparagingly that she was only hired to rehab Chahal's tarnished image.

Proceedings in Chahal's new case will continue in May.

Previously: Tech CEO Gurbaksh Chahal Reportedly Paid Willie Brown To Make Domestic Violence Charges 'Go Away'

'G' Chahal, The Worst Bad Man In Silicon Valley, Charged With Abusing Another Girlfriend
Hunger strike in front of Mission police statiom led by @EQUIPTO continues. 5 ppl on hour 170. pic.twitter.com/2Iy02pmGNo  Chris Roberts (@cbloggy) April 26, 2016

A hunger strike began late last week outside Mission Police Station calling for the resignation of Chief Greg Suhr and demanding that the SFPD "stop the execution of our people." The strike was initially organized by vocal Ed Lee critic Equipto, a.k.a. Ilych Sato, a local rapper who's previously organized heckling sessions of the Mayor related both to gentrification and to the shooting of Mario Woods in December. It began with just a handful of people on Friday, who say they are only consuming water, coconut water, and ginger tea, and grew larger over the weekend before shrinking back a bit  Bay City News quotes Equipto as saying there were 24 people striking on Saturday, with one who fainted, and Mission Local put the number Monday at 10. (48 Hills has the number of strikers as six, as of Monday.)

The strike comes in the wake of the fatal shooting by police of homeless man Luis Gongora earlier this month, and the controversial police shootings of three other men of color in the last two years.

There were reportedly a couple of confrontations Monday night, as the strike went into its fifth night, as protesters sought access to bathrooms and other public space at the station. Cops told them the bathrooms were out of order Monday, and demanded the removal of several tents that had appeared on the sidewalk. Also, protesters tell Mission Local that power in the public areas of the station that they had been using to charge phones and others devices was shut off temporarily on Monday.

The protesters include District 9 supervisor candidate Edwin Lindo, who tells CBS 5 that the ambulances will likely come before anyone actually dies of starvation, but he says they're out there because "Weve exhausted every option to seek justice for the black and brown community here in San Francisco."

Public Defender Jeff Adachi on hunger strikers threatened with arrest: "It looks like people just hanging out" pic.twitter.com/ImDgQdUmus  Michael Barba (@mdbarba) April 26, 2016

Strikers also include Equipto's mom, Maria-Cristina Gutierrez, 66, executive director of the Companeros del Barrio preschool; local hip-hop artist Sellassie Blackwell, who you can hear speaking through the brutal wind on Sunday afternoon; and preschool teacher Ike Pinkston, who works with Gutierrez. The hunger strike was reportedly Gutierrez's idea, and something she had been suggesting since the 2014 shooting of Alex Nieto. According to a spokesperson for the group talking to SF Mag, Gutierrez said, "Enough is enough. I cannot live in this city anymore. I will not eat until the chief of police is gone."

Gutierrez said there would be a rally outside Mission Station today, Tuesday, and about 100 people were gathered around the protesters Monday night, as the Examiner reports, playing music and keeping the mood light.

The activists are still waiting for some acknowledgement by Mayor Ed Lee, who said last week, "Whether they call it a demonstration, a hunger strike or a march, were going to respect that. And weve heard. I take police reform seriously, and so does the chief."

Mayoral spokesperson Christine Falvey simply told SF Mag, "If the purpose is to draw attention to police reforms, the issue is clearly front and center in the Mayors Administration, the Police Commission, and the entire community and it will continue to be."

Previously: Two SFPD Officers Named In Shooting Of Luis Gongora
Colorado police are seeking Bay Area residents who might have had interactions with a San Francisco man on the dating app Tinder, after he was arrested for allegedly killing his ex-girlfriend and stashing her body in a storage unit.

The body of 33-year-old Colorado Springs woman Julie Tureson was discovered Friday in a storage unit belonging to 38-year-old San Francisco resident James Woo, NBC Bay Area reports, just hours after she was reported missing.

Police say that Tureson was found in a van that she owned, parked inside a storage unit rented by Woo. A man that El Paso County Sheriff's investigators say is Woo was caught on camera at the storage facility, and a search for him began.

That search ended later Friday, when investigators tracked Woo to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. He was detained by Homeland Security as he waited for a flight to Hong Kong, the Denver Post reports, in an apparent attempt to flee the country. He has since been booked on suspicion of first-degree murder.

Woo and Tureson "had a relationship for several years," El Paso County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Jacqueline Kirby told the Denver Post. She declined to say how long Tureson had been dead, and said that they were still waiting on a toxicology report to confirm how she was killed.

It's unclear how Tureson and Woo met, as Woo lives in San Francisco, "where he has a job and family," Kirby says. According to NBC Bay Area, "San Francisco police said officers served a search warrant at [his] apartment on Saturday." Neighbors, who were "stunned to learn the man they described as quiet is accused of murder" say that "police were in his apartment all weekend."

Though Kirby says that at present police don't believe that Woo had other victims, she says that he was very active on Tinder, and believe that his matches will help police "form a complete background" on the suspect. El Paso County Sheriff's detectives are very eager to speak with all of those (dating app users and otherwise) in the Bay Area who had any interactions with Woo, and ask that anyone who recognizes him contact them at 719-520-6666 or 719-520-7777.
A man with a "multistate criminal history" has another item for his rap sheet, after he allegedly took a huge piss on the cabin floor of a plane shortly after it left San Francisco International Airport.

Officials don't know what 28-year-old Ludlow, Kentucky resident Jordan Robert Gardner (that's him on the right, in what looks like a casting shot for Justified, but is actually an undated booking photo provided by the North Carolina's Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department) was doing in the Bay Area last week, but it's clear that he ended his visit with a bang!

After what he described as "only" two double shots of vodka at a bar at SFO, Gardner boarded a Charlotte-bound plane Saturday night. That's when the trouble began. According to an affidavit filed by the FBI and reported by the Charlotte Observer, about an hour later Gardner "pulled his pants down, arched his back, and urinated on the floor of the airplane."

"The passenger sitting next to Gardner summoned a flight attendant, who saw Gardner pulling up his pants." Even though the deed had clearly been done, she sent him to the bathroom, where she found him passed out on its floor 15 minutes later.

"The flight attendant tried to clean the urine with club soda, but it still smelled when the plane landed at Charlotte Douglas," the Observer reports.

When the plane landed at 7:45 a.m. local time on Sunday, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police were there to greet him, and reported that they "could still smell alcohol on his breath 11 hours after the flight took off."

Then again, maybe it wasn't booze after all, as the FBI says that Gardner blamed the alcohol smell on "the gum he was chewing." Ah, yes, "Violent Vodka" Hubba Bubba! I know it well.

According to the FBI, Gardner has charges and arrests in multiple states "for things such as battery, trespassing, auto theft, passing bad checks, being under the influence and vandalism." And now he has a new one: A criminal complaint of destruction of aircraft, for which he will appear in Mecklenburg County court on Thursday.
While one nook of Market Street, basically an area from Market to Mission between Valencia and 11th Streets, has been included in 2008's Market and Octavia Area Plan, now the Planning Department is exploring raised height allowances on certain buildings there, separating it out with its own plan. The Hub, as the area is being called, is according to Planning's website, an out-of-circulation nickname for the area. From the 1880s through the 1950s, however, they say the area was known by the name because it was an area where cable car lines converged.

To envision the changes that the creation of the Hub plan would allow for, Planning went ahead and created this interactive website, a chance to compare the skyline as it appears today, as it would appear under current plans, and as it might appear under the Hub plan. Renderings are from all different vantage points: Upper Market, Jefferson Square Park, Corona Heights, and McKinley Square.





The Chronicle delved into the Hub idea earlier this month, calling the area "historically neglected." The "tangled web of asphalt where South Van Ness Avenue, 12th Street, Mission Street, McCoppin Street, Gough Street, Otis Street and Brady Street all come together," in their words, perhaps the "most dismal intersection in San Francisco."



View from Jefferson Square Park with proposed Hub height limits. Rendering via Planning.

As construction continues to boom, however, that could change: 3,700 planned housing units are headed to the area, and Planning thinks, according to Hoodline's coverage, that taller buildings allowed for under a Hub plan could add another 1,200 units.

That could be done, they say, with increased height limits for developments at 10 South Van Ness, which could gain 500 feet; 30 Van Ness, which could add 520 feet; and 1 South Van Ness, which could perhaps add as many as 600 feet.



View from Corona Heights with proposed Hub height limits. Rendering via Planning.

However, the Chronicle finds much of this unlikely as those major projects are already underway.

In a perfect world, we would have done this work before we had these applications  so now its a bit of a dance, Lily Langlois of the Planning Department told the Chron. There are a number that are moving forward under existing zoning. There are others that could move forward or could wait and take advantage of the plan. For example, two projects are already approved as is and ready to break ground this year. Will they really wait around? The paper speculates that the three city-related projects, where San Francisco owns the property or will be a future tenant, will get onboard with the Hub plan. Those are the Goodwill site, 33 Gough, and 30 Van Ness.
SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa | A man is in custody after leading police in a car chase Tuesday morning, authorities said.

The Spirit Lake Police Department began a traffic stop of a Nissan Altima that was driven by Zachary Hayes, 19, of Spirit Lake near 12th Street and Ithaca Avenue.

Hayes sped off, and after a short chase he was arrested for not having a valid drivers license, police said.

Hayes was charged with possession of meth with intent to deliver, introducing contraband into a jail facility  a felony, possession of marijuana third offense, eluding law enforcement and several traffic infractions.

He was booked into the Dickinson County Jail.
SIOUX CITY | The pedestrian bridge on the Clark Elementary property damaged by the 2014 flooding will be replaced later this year.

The Sioux City School Board on Monday unanimously voted to approved a $626,178.50 bid to Dixon Construction Company, of Correctionville, Iowa.

The replacement project is an effort between the school district and the City of Sioux City. The district will pay $584,818.54 for the bridge portion of the project while the city will pay approximately $41,360 to replace the storm sewer.

Brian Fahrendholz, operations and maintenance director for the district, said the replacement is a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) eligible project and both entities would get considerable reimbursement as a result.

After reimbursement, the district will have paid a total of $87,722 and the city will have paid around $6,500.

Fahrendholz said the high waters of 2014 damaged the storm sewer underneath the west side of the bridge and took out the west abutment and eroded the pilings of the bridge.

With approval, Fahrendholz said the bridge is expected to be repaired by Sept. 23.

Additionally, the board unanimously approved a bid of $102,165.00 to replace all the seats in the West High School auditorium. The low bid was awarded to Iowa Direct Equipment of Cedar Falls.

Fahrendholz said the majority of the 700 seats are original from the buildings construction in 1972. The seats on the lower level, he said, will be numbered so the school can sell specific seating tickets for some events.

Its time to clean up that auditorium and give the West High students the auditorium they deserve, he said.
ORANGE CITY, Iowa | A Hawarden, Iowa, man was sentenced Monday to 10 years for thefts and drug possession in Sioux County.

Jeremy Langley, 30, pleaded guilty in Sioux County District Court to third-degree burglary, second-degree theft and possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine.

According to a Sioux County Attorney's Office news release, Langley was arrested Oct. 19 when police, responding to a Hawarden 911 call hangup, found Langley lying in a field. Officers caught him after he tried to flee. A backpack Langley was wearing contained marijuana, meth and $5,600 in cash police later learned was stolen from a Sioux Falls casino.

While that case was pending, Langley was arrested for a Jan. 31 burglary in Hawarden, Sioux County Attorney Thomas Kunstle said in the news release.

Langley must serve one-third of his sentence before he's eligible for parole. He also must pay $2,300 in restitution.
SIOUX CITY | Both of Iowa's Republican U.S. senators now back 4th District Rep. Steve King in his bid to fend off the first GOP challenge in his 14-year congressional career.

Hours after Ernst's announcement, Republican Gov. Terry Branstad said he would stay neutral in the 4th District GOP race.

"Its up to the voters to decide in each of these instances. Ive always had confidence in the voters of Iowa to make a thoughtful and good decision... I don't think endorsements make a huge difference," Branstad said.

"Im going to try to do all I can to help all of the candidates and let the primary voters decide who they think should be the nominee."

Ernst, of Red Oak, served with Bertrand in the Iowa Senate, prior to winning the 2014 U.S. Senate race for the seat vacated by the retiring Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin.

Steve is a friend to small businesses in our Iowa towns and the agriculture industry that helps drive our state, Ernst said in a news release Monday from King's campaign.

Ernst also spoke about a key issue in the campaign, citing King for his support of renewable fuels. Bertrand came into the race in March in part out of concern for agriculture interests after King in late 2015 endorsed Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas.

Cruz doesn't support an extension to the federal Renewable Fuel Standard for corn-based ethanol. That caused Branstad and others to publicly criticize King's pick, with the Republican governor saying Cruz shouldn't be supported by Iowans after his knock on an industry that is so important to the state.

Bertrand dismissed the latest endorsement from a Republican office holder for King, who earlier won the backing of Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey of Spirit Lake.

"At the end of the day this vote is going to come down to Rick Bertrand or Steve King. A fresh new vision for Iowa or the status quo of Washington. I'm out working for votes, not political endorsements, Bertrand said in a statement Monday to the Journal.

King said he's been glad to know Ernst since meeting her on an overseas military stop.

"Then-Capt. Ernst commanded the 1168th Transportation Company tasked with hauling supplies overland from Kuwait to Baghdad. I quickly learned Capt. Ernst's first concern was for her troops. I have seen Joni progress through the ranks all the way to United States senator," King said.

Branstad, who actively worked to defeat Cruz during the Iowa caucuses because of his ethanol views, said Monday he doesn't have anything to patch up with King.

"I would just say that weve been friends for a long time. I encouraged a couple of members of my staff, when he had a strong challenge from (Democratic congressional candidate) Christie Vilsack, to work for him and help on his campaign," Branstad said.

-- Erin Murphy of the Journal Des Moines Bureau contributed to this article.
CARROLL, Iowa | One woman is dead and two others injured following a traffic accident Monday afternoon on U.S. Highway 71 and 180th Street.

At about 1:53 p.m. the Iowa State Patrol responded to the scene of the accident.

A Chevy Malibu, driven by Kera Ann Shriver of Jefferson, Iowa, was driving southbound on Highway 71 when it collided with a northbound Honda Civic, driven by Debra Kay Clausen, of Carroll.

Carol Jane Roetker, 56, of Carroll, was a passenger in Clausens car. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Shriver, 23, and Clausen, 39, suffered injuries and were taken to St. Anthonys Hospital. All three were wearing their seatbelts.

The crash is currently under investigation. The Iowa State Patrol was assisted at the scene by the Carroll County Sheriffs Office.
Todays top picks from our online calendar. Find more events at siouxcityjournal.com/calendar.

Hike the Wild: Come explore Kettleson Hogsback to look at signs of spring, including woodland flowers. Meet at the Dickinson County Nature Center, 2279 170th St., Okoboji, Iowa, at 9:30 a.m. All ages are invited. Visit www.dickinsoncountynaturecenter.com or call 712-336-6352 for more information.

Northwest Iowa Sierra Group: Leslie Goss Erickson will discuss the John Muir Trail and its namesake and her experience hiking it. Come as early as 5:30 p.m. for potluck and conversation; program will begin at 6:30 p.m. at First Unitarian Church, 2508 Jackson St. Visit http://www.sierraclub.org/iowa/northwest-iowa for more information.

Native Soul Tribal Art: Growing up north of Fort Thompson, S.D., on the Crow Creek Reservation, Jerry Fogg was presented with many cultural opportunities to observe and experience the openness of the country. His works are on display at Pearson Lakes Art Center, 2201 Highway 71 N., Okoboji, Iowa. Visit www.lakesart.org or call 712-332-7013 for more information.
SPENCER, Iowa | Clay County deputies found an intoxicated Spencer man driving a tractor in rural Clay County last Tuesday night after he had wrecked the Jeep he was driving away from the scene of a domestic assault.

Clay County deputies, Iowa State Patrol troopers and a member of the Spencer Police Department reported to the home of David Maurer, 4110 225th Ave. in Spencer, around 11 p.m. April 19 on reports that he had assaulted his wife and fired a shot before leaving the residence in a 2005 Jeep, according to a Clay County Sheriff news release.

Law enforcement diverted Maurer's wife to a safe location, secured the residence and seized all firearms and ammunition, the release said.

Maurer, after leaving the residence, drove the Jeep about eight miles northeast before crashing it upside-down in a creek. After escaping the vehicle, Maurer found a 1988 Caterpillar tractor on some of his property and began driving it back to his residence.

A Clay County deputy soon found Maurer driving the tractor in the 2200 block of 410th Street. Maurer was arrested and treated for his injuries. He was found to be intoxicated.

Dep. Brad Hawley with the Clay County Sheriffs Office said deputies later recovered a handgun inside Maurer's Jeep.

Maurer was taken to the Clay County Jail and charged with operating while intoxicated, reckless use of a firearm and domestic assault impeding airflow.

Maurer was being held on $2,000 bond. He posted bond Wednesday.
DES MOINES | It will take time to iron out the differences between Iowa lawmakers  Democrats and Republicans, representative and senators, but legislators remain optimistic theyll finish their work this week.

Thats my hope, absolutely to be done this week, Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said Tuesday as House-Senate conference committees worked on reaching agreements on a host of budget bills.

Among them are the $3.4 billion standings bill that includes school aid as well as a laundry list of funding provisions. Rep. Ken Rizer, R-Cedar Rapids, said the policy issues in the bill had been pared from about 100 last year to around 30. The Senate had added nine items, he said, and the House added a few.

So I guess theres room for horse-trading, he said after the House approved House File 2459 51-3 on its way to a conference committee.

A conference committee on the $1.9 billion health and human services budget met in a public session for a minute, but Sen. Amanda Ragan, D-Mason City, said she expected conferees to meet privately throughout the day to discuss significant differences.

Weve casually had conversations all along this year so there are issues we will find agreement on fast and others that we just have to see how we can resolve everything, Ragan said. Nobodys going home until this budget is resolved.

Sooner rather than later is the preference of most lawmakers. Their daily expense money ended April 19 and the Statehouse cafeteria closed Friday. If the session doesnt end this week, many will be further inconvenienced because leases on their Des Moines housing will expire at the end of the month.

I think the members of the conference committees know the speakers and the majority leaders druthers, Gronstal said.

The Senate has been operating with a skeleton crew so far this week, but Gronstal expects to have all senators on hand Wednesday to begin the shutdown process that could take a day or two.

Well measure that as it happens, he said, explaining that once agreements are made, the tough part is transferring those agreements to paper and going through all the due diligence.

Moving the paper takes some significant time, the veteran of 33 years in the House and Senate said.

The major sticking points in the HHS budget are Senate Democrats insistence on more extensive oversight of privately delivered Medicaid services, which began April 1, and House Republicans insistence on not funding Planned Parenthood.

Ragan predicted it will take time to go through the oversight details because private management of Medicaid is new.

Theres such detail. In the weeds, she said.

Resolving the differences on funding family planning services also will take time because the Senate wants Planned Parenthood funding in Medicaid, but the House funds womens health services from a different source.

Theres lots of positives in this bill that we agree on, Ragan said. The art of compromise is somewhere in here.
DES MOINES | Debate at the Iowa Capitol over whether and how to expand Iowas limited medical cannabis law went deep into Monday evening and also spilled into Tuesday.

Advocates calling for expanded access to cannabidiol, a medicinal byproduct of the marijuana plant, expressed their disappointment with a proposal introduced Monday night by House Republicans that would have increased the number of ailments permitted for cannabidiol treatments and attempted to establish partnerships with other states that, unlike Iowa, produce and sell the product.

Opponents of the proposal, including those who would use cannabidiol to treat illnesses like epilepsy and cancer, say it would have done nothing to help them.

The legislation was voted down, 63-31, with only Republicans supporting and a mixture of Republicans and Democrats opposing.

Im disappointed. I feel misled by members of the Iowa House, said Sally Gaer, of West Des Moines, co-founder of the advocacy group Iowans 4 Medical Cannabis that has advocated for expanded cannabidiol access and held a press conference Tuesday at the Capitol. Weve been working on this for months and what they did (Monday) night showed they have no conscience, pure and simple. They decided not to help.

Robert Lewis, of Windsor Heights, fought back tears as he expressed his disappointment in the proposal.

I have lived in pain for 43 years. It hurts deeply today. Not so much the pain, because I have a patch on it. But the emotional pain, just knowing that there is something out there that I can use that takes that pain away, Lewis said.

Legislative leaders who support expanding Iowas medical cannabis program by legalizing the production and sale of cannabidiol in the state say they will continue to look for avenues to introduce legislation, but acknowledge those opportunities are becoming scarce as lawmakers close in on finishing their work for the 2016 session.

Rep. Bob Kressig, D-Cedar Falls, said his colleagues hope to introduce their plan, but conceded there are few bills remaining to provide such an avenue. Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, said the same, and added attaching controversial legislation to any would threaten bills that he said have to get done.

Bolkcom said it would take a signal from Republican House leaders that they would accept Democrats expansion plan before Senate Democrats would attach their plan to legislation.

I think people on our side will measure whether theres any opportunity and have that discussion, said Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs.

Gov. Terry Branstad said he has tried to keep an open mind on the issue, but as he has in the past declined to weigh in on any of the proposals. Branstad says he wants to be empathetic to individuals who feel they need cannabidiol to treat their ailments, but also wants to guard against the unintended consequences of medical cannabis getting into the wrong hands.

Meantime, advocates like Laura Jumper continue to hope for medical cannabis expansion. Jumper, a 36-year-old with ulcerative colitis and arthritis, said she has moved from Mason City to Ankeny in order to live with family who can help with her children.

Jumper, who believes medical cannabis would ease the pain from her arthritis, said she gets her treatments at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, but that doctors there are struggling to ease her suffering. She said the proposal introduced Monday night would not have helped her because of the great lengths it would take to acquire cannabidiol.
DES MOINES | A proposal to expand Iowas limited medical cannabis law, offered by Republicans in charge of the Iowa House, was voted down late Monday evening.

During roughly 3 hours of debate, Democrats said the proposal did not do nearly enough to help ailing Iowans, and some Republicans said they remain opposed to any legislation that legalizes medicinal cannabis.

The final vote, taken at just before 11 p.m., defeated the measure, 61-36, with six members absent or not voting.

The House Republican proposal would have expanded the number of ailments Iowans could treat with cannabidiol, a medicinal byproduct of the marijuana plant, and would have permitted Iowans to obtain cannabidiol from states that produce and sell the product.

But opponents of the bill said it provided no immediate help for Iowans who seek cannabidiol to ease the suffering of themselves or loved ones from ailments like epilepsy and cancer.

This bill at the end of the day is going to do absolutely nothing, said Rep. Bob Kressig, D-Cedar Falls, echoing a common sentiment among his colleagues. No House Democrat voted in favor of the proposal.

Similarly disappointed was Rep. Peter Cownie, R-West Des Moines, who earlier this session introduced a bill that would have allowed for the production and sale of cannabidiol in Iowa. His proposal was similar to a measure approved last year by Democrats in control of the Senate, although Cownies bill permitted cannabidiol for treatment of fewer ailments and permitted fewer dispensaries.

In brief remarks on the proposal offered Monday night, Cownie addressed advocates who attended the debate in the House chamber, saying to them, Im very sorry we arent able to pass a comprehensive bill.

Advocates have spent months pushing state lawmakers to expand Iowas medical cannabis program, which permits Iowans to possess cannabidiol but does not provide access to cannabidiol in the state. They, too, called the House Republicans proposal inadequate.

Were pleased that (Iowa House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake) is interested in helping Iowans that need medical cannabis. However, suggesting we look to another state to solve Iowas problem is counter-productive at this stage in the session, Steve Gaer, co-founder of the advocacy group Iowans 4 Medical Cannabis and parent of a daughter who suffers from epileptic seizures, said in a statement. We need the comprehensive solution that Rep. Cownie and a large, bipartisan group of legislators have been advocating for since the beginning of this session to become law.

The Iowa Epilepsy Foundation issued a statement Monday night saying it could not support the House Republicans proposal.

This bill gives false hope and provides hypothetical solutions to the critical issue in front of Iowans, Dale Todd, legislative chair of the foundation, said in an emailed statement. We had no input on this bill nor did we see it until (Monday). This is coming from those that we thought two years ago were going to help fix the bad bill that was passed in the wee hours of the session. The trust is simply not there.

Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Bondurant, defended the proposal as a big step forward, and lamented its failure to gain passage, saying he was extremely disappointed.

Nunn, who said he has been in contact with state legislators from Minnesota in hopes of forming a partnership with that states medical cannabis program, said it would be not be cost-effective to permit cannabidiol dispensaries in Iowa, which he says has fewer than 1,000 residents that would be aided by an expanded medical cannabis program.

House Democrats hoped Monday night to offer their medical cannabis expansion proposal, which would have been similar to the Senate Democrats plan. But Republican leaders declined Monday night to debate the bill to which Democrats offered their plan as an amendment.
DES MOINES | Officials with the Iowa Insurance Division confirmed on Monday that UnitedHealthcare no longer would sell subsidy-eligible insurance plans on the states exchange in 2017  withdrawing from the state after one year of participation.

The Minneapolis-based insurer announced last week that it would operate only in a handful of health insurance exchanges in the upcoming enrollment season, down from 34 states this year. The insurer sighted financial losses as the driving reason for the move.

Were obviously disappointed about UnitedHealthcares decision as thousands of Iowans are now forced to make changes, Iowa Insurance Commissioner Nick Gerhart said in a news release. However, we understand that the companys decision to withdraw is a business decision. The decision seems more national in scope, but thankfully we anticipate having other offerings around the state.

This decision will affect approximately 8,700 Iowans insured by UnitedHealthcare of the Midlands Inc. and 328 individuals insured by UnitedHealthcare Life Insurance Co.

UnitedHealthcare Insurance Co. will not continue its participation in the SHOP Exchange, however, the carrier will continue to offer small group products outside of the SHOP Exchange in Iowa, according to the insurance division.

About 55,000 Iowans are enrolled in a marketplace plan and UnitedHealthcare offered one of the lowest-cost silver plans in 71 of the 76 Iowa counties in which it sold plans, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis.

Consumers affected by this decision will receive notice from the carrier and must switch to another insurer to continue their coverage for 2017 when the next open enrollment period begins Nov. 1.

Insurers have until May 11 to submit forms and rates for Affordable Care Act-compliant plans to the Iowa Insurance Division.

Coventry Health Care of Iowa and Minneapolis-based Medica also sold plans during the 2016 enrollment season. Medica has confirmed it will sell plans again this year.

Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, the states dominant insurer announced last fall it would participate in the 2017 enrollment season.

Although other carriers are choosing to exit this distribution channel, we believe that this is a critical time for us to be on the exchange as our members seek access to subsidies to help reduce the cost of their health insurance premiums for themselves and their families, said Wellmark spokeswoman Traci McBee in an email.
Pizza is always in demand with consumers, which means it provides plenty of thriving franchises. Todays best pizza franchises range from traditional delivery outlets to trendy build-your-own pie restaurants.

Get your slice of the thriving pizza market with our best pizza franchise list topped with the finest advice in the business.

Pizza Hut and Dominos may be the largest restaurant franchises, but you are not limited to them. Here are 30 of the best pizza franchises.

1. Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut operates the most pizza franchises in terms of locations. The company enjoys a 58 year history of success, from its founding by brothers Dan and Frank Carney. Aside from the brand recognition, Pizza Hut pioneered innovations including having a variety of formats from family-style dine-in to carry-out franchises. The company offers a few different types of franchise opportunities. However, the initial investment usually ranges from $297,000 to $563,000. The initial fee for a franchise is $25,000.

2. Dominos

Dominos puts a unique twist on its franchise for pizza with a focus on customer convenience. The company has been around for more than 50 years and has more than 17,000 franchises. This makes it the largest pizza company in the world. It has other offerings including chicken wings. Dominos Pizza utilizes a simple tech platform to facilitate online ordering with a streamlined customer experience from all its locations. Most franchisees start by learning the ropes at a current Dominos before purchasing their own store. The franchise fee is $10,000 and the initial investment ranges from $100,000 to about $600,000.

3. Papa Johns

Papa Johns remains one of the more popular nationwide brands and among the largest pizza franchise opportunities available. The name refers to founder John Schnatter. The company offers both traditional and non-traditional franchise opportunities, so even those with access to unique venues or locations can consider it as an option. Initial costs for an average-sized location range from about $250,000 to $300,000. The franchise fee for a U.S. store is $25,000.

4. Little Caesars

Little Caesars has been in business a long time. Entrepreneur Mike Ilitch founded the pizza chain with just one pizzeria in Metro Detroit in 1959. That modest shop grew into an internationally recognized brand in 24 countries, making it one of the largest franchises in this niche. The company prides itself on unique offerings, like its $5 Hot-N-Ready food and online ordering portals on the company website . The initial investment can range from $250,000 to $335,500. And the franchise fee is $20,000.

5. Marcos Pizza

Marcos Pizza currently has hundreds of franchises throughout the United States, with even more opportunities for growth in select markets. Both single and multi-unit franchises for a pizza restaurant are available. Youll need to spend between $223,535 and $586,410 to get started with a traditional franchise location. The initial franchise fee is $25,000.

6. Sam & Louies

Sam & Louies specializes in New York-style franchise of pizza. Originally launched in Oklahoma, this franchise quickly spread across nearby states and is now expanding throughout the U.S. and Canada. The company offers flexible design options to adapt its franchises to various communities. The total initial investment ranges from $331,500 to $474,700. And the franchising fee is 25,000.

7. MOD Pizza

MOD Pizza offers fast, simple, and customizable pies. The company owns and operates most of its own stores. But it does collaborate with select franchise partners who are interested in developing multiple units. The franchise fee is $30,000. The initial investment ranges from $714,000 to $985,000.

8. RedBrick Pizza

Red Brick Pizza specializes in brick oven pizzas made with quality ingredients. The fast-casual restaurant chain provides several different franchises to suit your community and customer base. You can also choose between single and multi-unit franchises. The initial fee is $30,000 for a traditional cafe. Initial costs range from $316,400 to $548,200.

9. Hungry Howies

Hungry Howies currently has more than 550 franchises across the U.S. The company provides opportunities for both single and multi-unit franchises. The company offers training, a nationwide distribution network, mobile and online platforms, and marketing assistance. Costs to launch a Hungry Howies franchise falls between $200,000 and $375,000. The franchise fee for Hungry Howies is $25,000.

10. The Pizza Press

The Pizza Press is a restaurant chain that uses the concept publish your own pizza. Guests get to create their own custom pies and can finish their meal with ice cream treats. So franchises create a real experience for the customers in their area. The company is currently seeking out developers seeking multi-unit franchises and those who are willing to expand internationally. The fee for one franchise is $35,000 and $28,000 for any subsequent units. Total costs to get going range from $300,000 to $645,000.

11. Pizza Ranch

Pizza Ranch has a dine-in / carryout restaurant model for its franchises with a focus on creating a welcoming environment for guests. In addition to their pizza offerings, they also serve fried chicken among other items. These franchises are equipped with FunZone arcades. The company provides training, marketing assistance and ongoing support to franchisees. The total initial investment ranges from $1.3 to $3.4 million, with a $30,000 franchising fee. Single and multi-unit franchises are available.

12. CiCis

CiCis is a buffet chain with 430 franchises across more than 30 states. The company provides marketing support, training and distribution. Incentives are available to veterans to make the initial investment easier. The upfront investment ranges from $686,445 to $1,033,180. The franchising fee is $30,000 with incentives available to bring that cost down.

13. East of Chicago Pizza Company

East of Chicago Pizza Company is a Midwester pizza chain in business for more than 20 years. The company has a proven business model and a dedication to creating pizzas and other food items with quality ingredients. The initial fee is $20,000. Upfront costs range from $162,000 to $463,000.

14. Uno Pizzeria & Grill

Unos is one of the best pizza franchises in the Chicago style. It offers full service franchises. Each restaurant has a casual theme, but offers numerous profit opportunities including salads, other menu items, and bar options. The franchise fee is $40,000. Initial costs for these franchises range from $850,000 to $2.5 million.

15. Happys Pizza

Happys Pizza chain provides delivery, carry-out, dine-in and catering options for customers. The company provides its franchises with help in training, real estate acquisition, marketing and more. Happys currently has franchises in Michigan, Ohio, Nevada, and California, and is looking for even more expansion opportunities. The initial fee is $25,000, with discounts available for those opening multiple franchises. Total upfront costs range from $336,500 to $608,000. Additionally, the company charges a flat monthly fee instead of collecting royalties.

16. My Pie

My Pie is part of the growing custom market. But the company specializes in New York style. Franchise opportunities are currently available nationwide. Youll need between $190,000 and $545,000 in build-out costs depending on the number and type of franchises. The initial franchising fee is $35,000.

17. Pieology

Pieology offers personalized pies right from its online platform. The company currently has 130 franchises in 22 states. And they offer exclusive territories for new franchises. The initial fee required is $25,000. Upfront costs range from $458,500 to $874,500.

18. LaRosas Family Pizzeria

LaRosas is known for its family recipe and inviting atmosphere. With more than 60 years in business, the company currently has franchises in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. They offer delivery, dine-in, and even catering services, which provides diverse profit potential. The initial fee is $35,000. Startup costs range from $400,000 to $950,000, again depending on the number and type of franchises you plan to operate.

19. Papa Murphys

Papa Murphys has over 1,300 franchises in the United States, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates that serve take n bake pizza. The company provides training and support to franchisees. And there are current and future markets open to expansion around the country. The initial fee is $25,000. And startup costs range from $286,919 to $524,205.

20. Russos New York Pizzeria

Russos New York Pizzeria brands itself as an upscale casual pizzeria. The restaurant uses fresh ingredients and family recipes brought to the forefront by Chef Anthony Russo. Franchises offer sit down, takeout, delivery, and catering service. Theres a $39,500 initial fee. Total costs to start in one of these franchises range from $450,000 to $750,000.

21. Ledo Pizza

Ledo Pizza is a Maryland based company that is currently offering franchises in select markets around the U.S. The pizzeria offers a varied menu and online ordering options to increase customer loyalty. The initial fee is $30,000. Costs to start range from $126,000 to $442,000.

22. Pizza Factory

Pizza Factory is known for its fresh ingredients and community involvement. The company boasts a strong family oriented culture, and offers discounts for veterans interested in operating franchises. The initial fee is $30,000. Costs to start range from $372,000 to $562,000.

23. Rosatis Pizza

Rosatis is another of the franchises specializing in authentic Chicago style offerings. The family owned company provides training and assistance with site selection and various other aspects of running your franchise. The initial fee is $35,000. And startup costs range from $136,200 to $1,241,000.

24. Mountain Mikes

Mountain Mikes has been in operation for more than four decades. Originally opened in Northern California, the company looks to sell franchises throughout Southern California, Utah, Nevada, and Oregon. The franchise is known for its quality ingredients and ties to the communities it serves. The franchise fee is $30,000. The upfront costs range from $208,020 to $593,520.

25. Vocelli Pizza

Vocelli Pizza specializes in artisan pizzas and other classic Italian dishes. The company has been around for more than 25 years and falls into the growing fast casual segment of franchises. Your initial costs can range from $156,000 to $330,900. The franchising fee is $30,000.

26. Kono Pizza

Kono offers a unique take. The Kono Cone changes the entire shape of traditional pies in an effort to make it easier to eat. The company offers food truck franchises with low overhead and mobile business opportunities. The initial investment ranges from $25,000 to $150,000 depending on which model you choose. Theres also a $25,000 fee for a single unit.

27. Foxs Pizza Den

Foxs Pizza Den is a family owned business that prides itself on being accessible to potential franchisees. The companys $10,000 franchise fee and flat $300 per month royalty rate make it a fairly affordable option compared to other pizza franchises. Total upfront costs range from $93,550 to $115,550.

28. Jets

Jets is a Detroit style pizza restaurant that provides carryout and delivery. The company provides training, opening assistance and ongoing support to franchisees. Jets charges a $25,000 franchise fee. And total upfront costs range from $437,500 to $631,000. The company is also open to those who want to convert existing restaurants into franchises.

29. Round Table Pizza

Round Table Pizza offers both dine-in and carryout and delivery franchise models. The company is known for its authentic ingredients and flexible business models. The franchise fee for both options is $25,000. For dine-in locations, total upfront costs range from $471,500 to $1,061,250. For carryout/delivery locations, those costs range from $327,300 to $510,250.

30. Blaze Pizza

Blaze Pizza offers fast service and wood-fired pizzas with quality ingredients at all its locations. Restaurants also offer convenient features like online and mobile ordering and contactless pickup. The total initial costs range from $319,800 to $858,000. The franchise fee is $30,000 per restaurant, or $20,000 for certified training stores.

Some pizza chains were left off our list like Toppers Pizza which includes many company owned stores and Donatos Pizza founded by Jim Grote.

FAQs About Pizza Franchises

These frequently asked questions summarize key points about pizza franchise opportunities.
As the battle continues between National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the International Franchise Association (IFA)  a battle that started in August last year  Virginia is still struggling to push back a major NLRB ruling that redefined how the relationship between a corporation and its franchisees is viewed.

On August 27 last year, the NLRB issued a ruling which clearly stated that anyone who exerts indirect control over a workers terms and conditions of employment  even if that worker is an independent contractor  is essentially an employer. In making this decision, the NLRB is departing from previous definitions of what constitutes a joint employer.

The original case in reference to which this landmark ruling was passed concerned Browning-Ferris Industries of California Inc., which was considered a joint-employer with Leadpoint, the company supplying many of its contract employees.

Since then, there has been contradicting thoughts from various pockets of the political landscape. While some believe that the ruling will threaten the survival of small business in America and, some like Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe beg to differ.

Virginia Governor Vetoed House Bill 18

On April 8, McAuliffe exercised his veto against House Bill 18, legislation which would have protected Virginias nearly 25,000 franchise businesses that support 287,000 jobs in the Commonwealth. In his veto explanation, McAuliffe said the bill created a categorical prohibition that would force small businesses to shoulder responsibilities that ought to fall to the larger franchising company.

He further added, As proponents of this legislation have acknowledged, franchisees and their employees are not considered employees of the franchisor in typical franchisor/franchisee relationships.

However, the nature of that relationship is subject to a particularized fact-based inquiry, and in situations of dominant franchisors, the franchisees and their employees are de facto employees of the franchisors. House Bill 18 would relieve these dominant franchisor/employers of the obligations and responsibilities an employer owes to its employees. As a result, it would fall to the dominated franchisees  usually small, Virginia-based businesses  to shoulder the burdens more appropriately placed on the dominant franchisor.

His comments received tremendous resistance from International Franchise Association, who view this as a major disappointment that McAuliffe has chosen to side with labor bosses in Washington rather than his constituent small business owners in Virginia.

HB 18 was introduced in the wake of a decision by the NLRB to change 50 years of federal labor law and legal precedent. The bill would have reinstated that a franchisee nor any employee of it shall be deemed to be an employee of the franchisor for any purpose under Virginia law.

IFA is the worlds oldest and largest organization representing franchising worldwide. Today IFA protects, enhances and promotes franchising through more than 800,000 franchise establishments that support nearly 9.1 million direct jobs, $994 billion of economic output for the U.S. economy and 3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

In a comment in response to McAuliffes veto, the IFAs head of Media Relations and Public Affairs Matt Haller said, We are interested to see and understand the Governors reasoning to veto legislation that has passed in seven other states. We hope that the legislature will put the interest of franchising first and override the Governors veto.
As much as we all love the digital world we currently live in, the issue of security is an annoyance we could all do without.

One of the latest security risks was announced by the Department of Homeland Securitys United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) with an alert urging customers to uninstall QuickTime from Windows.

QuickTime is a video player that can no longer compete with all the new players in the marketplace for Windows, which explains why Apple has stopped updating it. And in the digital world, not updating ones application means it will quickly become vulnerable to security breaches.

Why You Should Uninstall QuickTime from Windows

As first reported by Trend Micro, Apple deprecated QuickTime for Microsoft Windows, which in computer lingo means it will still be available, but will no longer be developed or supported. The report also said the Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative released advisories detailing two new serious vulnerabilities affecting QuickTime for Windows.

The two vulnerabilities are:

ZDI-16-241  Which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable installations of Apple QuickTime. In order for this vulnerability to be exploited, the user has to interact by visiting a malicious page or open a malicious file. The flaw specifically resides within the moov atom, which can be leveraged by an attacker to execute the codes under the context of the QuickTime player.

ZDI-16-242  This vulnerability has the same flaws, but it exists within the atom processing. An attacker can write data outside of an allocated heap buffer by providing an invalid index.

Apple will no longer be providing security updates, so these vulnerabilities are never going to be patched.

According to Trend Micro, there are no active attacks against these vulnerabilities (as of April 14, 2016). But since it was made public, there are probably many exploits being introduced in the ecosystem that will eventually take advantage of these flaws.

All software products have a lifecycle. Since Apple will no longer be providing security updates for QuickTime for Windows, US-CERT said computer systems running unsupported software will be exposed to increased risks of malicious attacks or electronic data loss. According to the organization, the only mitigation available is to uninstall QuickTime for Windows.

If you have QuickTime on Windows systems, uninstall it right away. Go to the Control Panel and click on Programs. Once you are there find QuickTime and right click and uninstall. You can also visit this Apple page for information on how to uninstall the player. It is important to note, this only affects Windows, Apple still supports QuickTime on Mac OS X.
There are many fitness goals out there that we desire. Some of us want to be leaner and others wish to put on muscle mass. The thing is, for you to achieve your fitness goals, you need to
United Kingdom travelers may be advised to avoid some parts of the U.S. this year.

Last week, the British Foreign Office released an advisory to warn LGBT travelers concerning the discrimination laws currently underway in North Carolina and Mississippi, according to the Washington Blade.

"The US is an extremely diverse society and attitudes towards LGBT people differ hugely across the country, reads the advisory. LGBT travelers may be affected by legislation passed recently in the states of North Carolina and Mississippi..

Last month, North Carolina Governor Pat McCroy signed in House Bill 2, forcing trans people to only use bathrooms that correspond to their gender assigned at birth, not their chosen gender. Similarly this month, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed House Bill 1523, which would allow discrimination  for moral or religious reasons  in the workplace due to gender identity and sexual orientation.

"It is both frightening and embarrassing that one of our nations staunchest allies has warned its citizens of the risks of traveling to North Carolina and Mississippi because of anti-LGBT laws passed by their elected officials, said Director of HRC Global Ty Cobb in a statement. It is now more clear than ever that these terrible measures are not only harming individuals and taking an economic toll on the states, but are also causing serious damage to our nations reputation, and the perceived safety of LGBT people who travel here.
The lane reduction of Wilton Drive has been approved by the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization Board [MPO].

The Florida Department of Transportation [FDOT] will still have to approve the project but Commissioner Tom Green, who is also a member of the MPO, is glad support for the reduction has finally reached this level.

I was thrilled to be able to very quickly motion to adopt it, Green said. On April 14 after unanimous support from the city commission, the MPO approved the lane reduction of Wilton Drive and Northeast 4 Avenue in Fort Lauderdale. Previous city commissions were hesitant to take over Wilton Drive and reduce the number of lanes, from four to two, because of cost. But the state will now fund the project with the use of some federal dollars.

Proponents of the reduction say it will improve pedestrian safety, add more parking and make Wilton Drive better for business owners. They want the street to look more like Las Olas Boulevard.

On Facebook, Doug Blevins, chair of the Wilton Drive Business Improvement District and longtime advocate of the reduction, called it an amazing historical day for the city. He thanked the volunteers of the former Main Street group and commissioners. We have lost far too many lives to tragic pedestrian/vehicular incidents. Greg Futchi was the last person killed on Wilton Drive last year and a personal friend to many. These lives lost are not lost in vain. Here's to a Brighter, Safer and More Beautiful WILTON DRIVE.

At the April 12 commission meeting where officials reiterated their support for the project, Commissioner Tom Green called it a once in a lifetime chance. Green also said the lane reduction would force drivers to slow down and pay more attention to the businesses on Wilton Drive. This is good for business. You might even stop and shop.

Opponents of the reduction have cited the adverse impact it could have on traffic.

In a report issued to the MPO for its April 14 meeting, Florida Department of Transportation officials say theyve reviewed a preliminary analysis of the traffic impact by the City of Fort Lauderdale and they do not anticipate adverse impacts to vehicular capacity on Northeast 4 Avenue and Wilton Drive.

Commissioner Justin Flippen said the city is also capable of handling any traffic problems that might arise. We are fully capable to address those issues as they come.

Resident Paul Kuta said the issue should have been put to voters through a referendum. But commissioners said they are confident they have enough input from the public. Before the regular commission meeting on April 14, the city held a special meeting to let the public express its support or opposition. Mayor Gary Resnick said the issue has been discussed for many, many years and that the public would have the opportunity to influence the design of the lane reduction.
The coffee doesnt come first at Seattles General Porpoise, but its hardly an afterthought. The five-month-old doughnut-centric shop from much-laureled Seattle chef Renee Erickson is also a bustling multiroaster cafe.

General Porpoise is part of a trio of neighboring projects spanning one block in Seattles Capitol Hill neighborhood. In order to break up the oversize space, Erickson and her Sea Creatures business partners hatched three concepts: steakhouse Bateau (not your grandpas wood-paneled prime-rib den; Bateau is bright, airy, and decidedly Francophile); French-Atlantic-hued Bar Melusine, andinspired by her experience eating one of Justin Gellatlys beloved doughnuts at St. John in LondonGeneral Porpoise.

Its a given that if you serve doughnuts, youre going to pair them with coffee. And, why the hell not, champagne. At General Porpoise, brut, dAsti, and sparkling rose are sold by the glass or bottle, with customers mostly indulging on the weekends.

General Manager Jeff Butler came to General Porpoise from Milstead & Co., one of Seattles first multiroaster cafes. Hes built a simple menu centered on coffee fast, coffee slow offerings. Batch brew is always available for fast service, or slow via Modbar. Splitting the drink menu into speeds has become an icebreaker: Butler estimates that customers inquire about the fast/slow menu split about 20 times a day.

General Porpoises roaster list may change, but current offerings are from four: Portlands Heart Roasters and Dapper & Wise Roasters; Californias De La Paz; and Brooklyns Tobys Estate. Youll find no Seattle roasters on the roster, which Butler says was determined by cupping blind. We pulled in tons of stuff over the summer to taste; we did a blind cupping, and none of the names really mattered to [the owners], Butler says. They picked their favorites, so thats what we opened the doors with.

Pastry chef Clare Gordon landed at General Porpoise by way of Ava Genes in Portland, the Italian restaurant owned by Stumptown founder Duane Sorenson, and, most recently, Seattles Mamnoon. Gordon prepares the filled-and-sugared style of doughnuts using eggs from Ericksons Whidbey Island farm and pipes them with lemon curd, chocolate marshmallow, and seasonal fruit jams. Theyre a departure from other Seattle doughnut offerings and consistently drum up nostalgia from well-traveled patrons.

There are tons of people who come in and have these recollections of doughnuts theyve had in some other placeIran, Peru, Italy, Germany, Butler says. They all have different names or fillings, but theres something thats reminiscent.

General Porpoise is built on an uncommon cafe business model, and is an experiment into largely uncharted territory: The shop tacks on 10 percent gratuity to all sales and, matching staff at all of Ericksons businesses, baristas are paid a flat $15 per hour. They also qualify for health care and retirement benefits.

The practice of adding a flat percentage gratuity to checks is being implemented at an increasing number of Seattle restaurants, and Erickson was an early adopter. Renee wanted to make it work in a cafe setting too, because if it didnt, it meant there was something flawed about the idea in and of itself, Butler says.

Seattle passed a $15 wage law in 2015; when enforced, it will make the citys minimum wage more than twice the current federal level. Seattle businesses with fewer than 500 employees still have a few years until theyre legally required to hit $15, but in order to remain competitive and/or close the wage gap in an increasingly expensive city experiencing an affordable-housing crisis, some restaurants like Ericksons are ahead of the curve.

General Porpoise opened with a higher rate, adding 20 percent gratuity to sales to match the tip rate at other Sea Creatures restaurants. But after running with it for the first week, it felt like too much to me, Butler says. Ten percent fit the cafe. Theres no cash jar or things to sign. The cleanliness of the customer transaction benefits both of us and is faster for everybody.

But can a barista earn a competitive wage with a flat service charge but no tips? Every cafe Ive worked at is different, so its difficult to compare tips with certainty, Butler says. He says that staff may earn slightly less than baristas at a busy cafe, but the benefit is that all earned income is shown on check stubs, making getting loans, etc. easier. Add to that health insurance and 401k after a few months of employment as well, making the working experience feel more like a career than a job. Butler notes that in Seattle, paper stability also helps with securing rent in a competitive and overpriced housing market.

Now several months in, Butler is full of praise for the flat tipping model. Were part of a restaurant group, so theres absolutely a restaurant-service mentality overarching this whole service model. Our 10 percent gratuity is split with pastry chef Clare Gordon and her team, the same as the servers and chefs [do] at all of the other restaurants, Butler says. The equality between front of house and back of house is whats important. Were all one team working together for a common goal of making the best doughnuts and coffee we can, and served with a little warmth and kindness, so that our customers truly enjoy their experience. Happy, well-cared-for employees feel vested in that ideal.

Sara Billups (@hellobillups) is a freelance journalist based in Seattle. Read more Sara Billups on Sprudge.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, Machar returned to the African republics capital after nearly 28 months of absence from Juba.

"Now that Dr. Riek has come and has taken the oath of office as the First Vice President of the Republic of South Sudan we will immediately proceed to establish the Transitional Government of National Unity. This shall restore the confidence of our people and that of our international partners in our abilities as the leaders of this country to implement the agreement," President Salva Kiir stated after the swearing-in of Machar, as cited by Radio Tamazuj.

South Sudan has been engaged in an armed ethnic conflict since December 2013, when Kiir said that a military coup had been planned in the country, pointing the blame at Machar.
"Im not sure its going to damage Donald Trump as much as they might think," Cedarville Universitys Director of Political Studies Mark Smith said on Monday.

In exchange, Cruz will cede the states of New Mexico and Oregon to Kasich. With most US states having already voted, neither Cruz nor Kasich can win the party nomination on a first ballot.
Almeida continued that such strategy, if applied, will further depress gas prices and in particular undermine the economics of US LNG exports to Europe.

Most impact from the US LNG is likely to be felt in Europe in 2018 and onward, when US producers might have captured a significant market share.

Stuart Elliott, Platts analyst on European gas and LNG, also notes that the traditional gas suppliers are boosting the output as a reaction to the US firms entering the EU market.

"US LNG gives gas buyers in Europe an alternative to their traditional suppliers such as Russia, Norway and Algeria The response from those producers so far has been strong  Russia has promised more flexibility in its long-term contracts and has been pumping gas to Europe at full blast, while Norway and Algeria have been pushing as much gas onto European markets as they can," Elliott told Sputnik.

At the moment, buying LNG from the United States is costly for Europe. Those companies that buy US LNG are now fulfilling previous long-term contract obligations, Viren Doshi, analyst at PwC's Strategy& oil and gas leader, said.

"Gas prices are linked to oil. And oil prices come down. As a consequence, gas prices are coming down already. It makes it very unprofitable to pay LNG shipping costs, as well as liquefaction costs. It looks very uneconomical for Europe, but at the time they signed contracts, they didnt know that oil price was going to decline to 30-40 US dollars," Doshi told Sputnik.

European gas markets will continue to be dominated over the next years by defined or inflexible supply (long term contracts and domestic production) at 70-80 percent range of total supply, according to PwC experts.

Washington has long been arguing for the geopolitical importance of LNG exports to Europe, saying it would help European allies decrease dependence on Russian energy imports. The cost of shipping natural gas from the United States to Europe remains high and requires sizable infrastructure investments.
TOKYO (Sputnik)  On April 14, North Korea deployed one or two Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles on its eastern coast, according to the South Koreas Yonhap news agency. The following day, the South Korean military said the North appeared to have tried a missile launch, which ended in a failure.

"Signs have been detected that North Korea is trying to launch another Musudan missile after their failed launch that took place earlier on the birthday of (North Korean former president) Kim Il-sung," the source said Tuesday, as quoted by the Yonhap news agency.

According to the source, the new missile is ready to be launched from the same site where the Musudan missiles were allegedly deployed last week, an area near North Korea's eastern port city of Wonsan.
ABC broadcaster reported that PNG's Supreme Court ruled that the detention in the camp violated the right to personal liberty in the country's constitution.

The broadcaster added that the court ordered Canberra and Port Moresby to end the detention of the asylum applicants on the PNG territory.
According to the circular accessed by Sputnik, apart from cooking, limitations have also been imposed on practicing religious rituals that involves fire. Farmers have been advised not to set fire to wheat stalks after harvesting.

Bihar is currently reeling under an intense heat wave, causing ponds and other natural sources of water to dry up, adding to the difficulties of fire fighters.

According to official figures, Bihar reported 3,000 incidences of fire in the last two months. At least 53 people lost their lives and thousands of houses have been destroyed. In the last two days alone, almost a thousand houses were destroyed by fire in Darbhanga district, 800 in Saran, over 100 in Vaishali, 160 in Gopalgunj, 150 in East Champaran, 200 in West Champaran and 100 in Samastipur.
The JASDF recorded the most Chinese activity in the East China Sea (Sea of Japan) near the group of uninhabited islands, known in Japan as the Senkaku and in China as the Diaoyu and claimed by both countries, according to The Japan Times.

There has reportedly been increase in the Chinese presence between the islands of Okinawa and Miyako.

Earlier, China expressed concerns over new security legislation that gives green light to Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to engage in armed conflicts overseas for the first time since the end of WWII.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Uzbek President Islam Karimov on Tuesday warned against the involvement of members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in a military-political standoff in Afghanistan.

"In light of the current difficult situation in Afghanistan and considering the lessons from recent history, it is imperative to prevent the SCO involvement in the military-political processes in that country," Karimov said at a news conference following talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Some 500 people in Tokyo and 200 in Fukushima filed the suit in the Tokyo District Court alleging that the new laws violate article 9 of the Japanese constitution , according to the NHK broadcaster.

Another 1,500 people across the country were planning to file similar suits with local courts, including in Osaka, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the outlet added.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Daesh jihadist group wants to expand its operations in Bangladesh to boost its image among local radicals, the US-based intelligence assessment company Stratfor said in a report on Tuesday.

"The Islamic State will attempt more sensational attacks in Bangladesh to gain the support of extremists in the country," the report stated.

Daesh militants have published their goals for expansion in the latest edition of their magazine Dabiq, according to Stratfor. Daesh head of operations in Bangladesh Sheikh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif said the group wants to target Christian missionaries and foreigners, along with Hindu and Shiite figures.
GENEVA (Sputnik)  He said that many Sunni refugees had remained in Kurdish provinces as they were afraid of crossing into Turkey.

"Over the past three months, Turkish armed forces have killed 17 refugees trying to cross the border with Syria. Another 20 people were injured by police forces We are closely monitoring what is happening on the Turkish-Syrian border," Ozturk Turkdogan told RIA Novosti.
I am discouraged that Shell wont be drilling up there in the near future, Papp said at a Monday Brookings Institution conference in Washington, DC. He added that Shells initial decision to drill in the Arctic was something that provided attention and urgency to act.

The decision to end the project removes one of those incentives to invest in much-needed Arctic infrastructure, Papp said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On April 22, Galp Energia confirmed to Sputnik having purchased LNG cargo that is currently en route from the United States to Portugal. The US cargo ship was reportedly expected to reach the Portuguese Port of Sines on Tuesday.

We still dont know the exact time when the Creole Spirit will arrive. It may be at the end of today or really early tomorrow morning. Im expecting that information any time, Pedro Marques Pereira said.

The delivery will be enough to cover one week of Portugals domestic consumption, according to the spokesman.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Viktor Kladov, head of the International Cooperation Department of Russias state technology corporation Rostec, told RIA Novosti last week that Myanmar and a range of Latin American and North African states expressed interest in the Yak-130 aircraft.

"The plan provides for the transfer of three aircraft to them [Myanmar] in 2016," one of the Russian Kommersant dailys two sources told the publication.

Additionally, Russian experts reportedly plan to set up a specialized combat flight simulator in Myanmar before the end of 2017.
DAMASCUS (Sputnik)  The gas extraction fields will be routed to Furqlus, one of the largest Syrian gas plant in the Homs province, the official said.

"Before the end of the year, it is planned to put into operation three gas fields: Deir Atiyah, Qara and El Breidj in the north of the province of Damascus, all of them are currently under development," Ghassan Tarraf told RIA Novosti.

SGC is a state-owned company founded in 2003, which has been under the umbrella of the General Petroleum Corporation (GPC) since 2009.
According to the National Iranian Oil Company's managing director, Roknodin Javadi, there are no legal restrictions on conducting business with overseas companies, especially US ones, in the oil sphere, as quoted by the publication.

Iran began stepping up international trade and investment cooperation after reaching a historic deal on its nuclear program to ensure its peaceful nature in exchange for the suspension of international anti-Iran sanctions, in particular on its oil sector, in July 2015.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On Monday, the 13th round of talks between the United States and the European Union on the TTIP deal, aimed at reducing barriers to trade in goods and services between Europe and the North America, started in New York. The same day, US President Barack Obama said, while on a visit to Germany, that TTIP should be finalized by the end of this year.

"The BMWi [Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy] supports TTIP and we still hope to finalize the TTIP negotiations in 2016. But quality is more important than finalizing the treaty as fast as possible. We want a treaty of high quality and we will only accept TTIP, if that is achieved," Andreas Audretsch said.

In his words, German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel made it clear that "he won't accept TTIP with a private investor-state-dispute-settlement-mechanism (ISDS)," which grants an investor the right to use dispute settlement proceedings against a foreign government.
Brushing aside all speculations, India's Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar has made it clear that negotiations on the much hyped Rafale deal with France is nowhere near completion and that many more things remain to be sorted out.

Replying to a query in Parliament, the Minister said, "The meetings of the Indian Negotiations Team with the French side are underway. Details regarding the terms and conditions including total cost, actual delivery timelines and guarantee period will emerge once the negotiations are completed."

This is the second clarification within a week by the Indian Defense Minister; whose own political party, the Bharatiya Janta Party, recently claimed that the Government deserved credit for saving $3.2 billion of tax payers' money by clinching the deal at a cheaper cost of $8.8 billion.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Russian and Turkish experts met earlier in the day to discuss continuing phytosanitary violations.

"Rosselkhoznadzor is concerned about the continued detection of organisms considered quarantine in Russia and calls on the Turkish side to adopt the measures that would effectively guarantee the supply of products, fully compliant with the standards and requirements stipulated by the legislation of Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union. This will allow avoiding the introduction of temporarily restrictions on the new types of Turkish vegetable products," the federal service said in a statement.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The first European-bound shipment of US LNG is expected to arrive in Spain on Tuesday, according to media reports. The US gas will be sold at a competitive $4.30 per million British thermal units (Btu). Russias Gazprom is able to export natural gas to Europe at a cost of around $3.50.

"The decisions about [LNG] exports are commercial decisions that companies make," former White House energy and climate advisor Jason Bordoff said of US energy exports to Europe.

Bordoff added that he is not aware of any discussion about subsidizing US gas to offset the low Russian prices, "other than just letting the market work."
Lermen said that while Augsburg has thankfully not faced such a tragedy, there have been several frightening cases of pedestrians not paying enough attention at crossings, and the town's authorities chose to pilot the new technology at two crossings by a set of tram stops where this happens particularly often.

"These LED lights are embedded in the pavement along the curb. When a tram approaches the ordinary traffic light switches to red and the floor light flashes red too," she explained.

"They are placed along the whole crossing 40 centimeters from each other, so that a pedestrian who is concentrating on their smartphone display will notice the flashing lights in their peripheral vision."

"It seems that this (technology) has not been used anywhere in this form before. The technical possibility gave us the idea, because LED lights can now be built into the road surface since they don't need a wired power supply. This technology is quite new and works like a charged-up smartphone. We simply used it for traffic lights  it's a logical step," Lermen said.

The local authorities in Augsburg are now going to monitor the impact of the new traffic lights on pedestrians and drivers, the spokeswoman explained.

"Pedestrians need about two weeks to get used to the system and understand what it means when the LED lights are flashing, and after that we can observe their behavior. With that in mind we are going to carry out observations at the crossings, and also analyze the (impact on) tram drivers," Lermen said.
On Monday, David Lepeska, an American reporter who has written for the Guardian, Al Jazeera, and Foreign Affairs became the latest journalist singled out by Ankara.

While passing through Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, Lepeska was stopped by immigration officers who informed him that an "entry ban" had been placed on his visa. The journalist waited for clearance for 20 hours but was ultimately told to return to the United States or Italy, from where he had arrived.

 David Lepeska (@dlepeska) April 25, 2016

"Ive been given no reason for the entry ban nor confirmation that this status is lasting or permanent," he said, according to Raw Story.

When reached for comment, a senior Turkish official said that Lepeska did not have the proper press credentials and was not employed by a media company.

 David Lepeska (@dlepeska) April 25, 2016

"Individuals who go through the proper legal channels do not face similar problems," the official said.
"We understand the embassy is not going to like the petition, but we think the best way to keep everyone safe [at the May 2 memorial demonstration in Odessa] and allow them to exercise their democratic rights is to shed light on it," Lombardo said on Monday.

UNAC called on the United States and Ukraine to ensure the protection of demonstrators after fascist groups in Odessa publicly declared they will not allow the memorial to take place. The organization explained that right-wing groups regularly target similar demonstrations.
Pripyat is now an eerie lifeless shadow of the ghastly nuclear catastrophe, one of only two rated at a 7 on the International Atomic Energy Agency scale of nuclear disasters.

On the night of April 25 1986, a group of engineers at Chernobyls number four reactor began an experiment to test new equipment. The operators needed to reduce the reactors power capacity, but as the result of a miscalculation the output dropped to a critical level, triggering an almost complete shutdown.

A decision was taken immediately to increase the power level. The reactor started to overheat, and a few seconds later two large explosions occurred.

The explosions partly destroyed the reactor core, igniting a fire that continued to burn for nine days.

Radioactive gases, aerosols and dust immediately shot into the air above the reactor. A giant radioactive cloud moved toward European countries.

One hundred ninety tons of highly radioactive material were expelled into the atmosphere, exposing people to radioactivity 90 times greater than that from the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

Vast areas estimated at 50,000 square kilometers, mainly in the three then-Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, were contaminated by the fallout from the critical nuclear meltdown.

Evacuation measures began on April 27 and lasted for about 3 hours. About 45,000 people were relocated and some 116,000 were forced to leave the area and neighboring regions. About 600,000 people from all of the former Soviet republics assisted in the evacuation.

Thirty-one people were reported dead in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear disaster and the 600,000 "liquidators" received high doses of radiation, averaging around 100 millisieverts. The highest doses were received by about a thousand emergency workers during the first day of the catastrophe.

In total, about 8.4 million citizens of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine were exposed to radiation.

According to the Union Chernobyl of Ukraine, about 9,000 Russian liquidators died and over 55,000 were disabled as a result of the Chernobyl tragedy.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Swedish Security Service (SAPO) is examining new information about a potential terrorist threat, its press service said Tuesday.

"We are currently collecting information and intelligence and have taken some measures. We collaborate with partners, both nationally and internationally," SAPO's press service said, adding that this information could not have been dismissed.
STOCKHOLM (Sputnik)  Swedens Expressen newspaper reported, citing own sources that the Iraqi secret service had provided the Swedish Security Service (SAPO) with this information.

The newspaper added that the potential terror attack was expected to target civilians.

The SAPO issued a statement, saying that it was examining new information about a potential terrorist threat but did not provide any details regarding the threat's character.
Poulsen welcomed the approach to start a debate about how government allocates its resources in the refugee crises,

"We have a finance minister who said that the influx of migrants costs the economy 11 billion kroner (1,7 billion dollars) this year alone. It would have made a difference if we could use that money on welfare. I want to have a debate about the ways to spend the money on. This is as a way to generate debate on immigration, and it's fine by me," Poulsen told Ekstra Bladet.

According to the Danish Road Administration, the signs had no legal grounds to be installed.

"If you want a sign up on state roads, you must apply for it. This was not the case here," Sren Kjemtrup, the Head of the Danish Road Directorate, told Ekstra Bladet.

In the Facebook group "Welcome to refugees  No to the inhumane refugee policy," users were enraged by the signs, wrote the local newspaper Nordjyske.

"What an outrage! They should get a beating" was one of the comments.

Furthermore, the two women who took down the signs, Signe Ronn and Stine Holm of Thisted, were reported to have received death threats.

"In my world, it is so distasteful, degrading, humiliating and as racist as anything can be," Signe Rnn earlier told Limford Update, defending her stance.

Denmark remains one of the top destinations for asylum seekers. More than 20,000 refugees have claimed asylum in the country last year and some 25,000 are expected to arrive in 2016.
Sylvi Listhaug said she hoped that the money offered and a promised extension of the scheme would encourage more asylum seekers to return home but added that the full amount of this compensation would be paid only to those who managed to leave Norway before the proposed deadline.

A total of 35,358 asylum seekers arrived in Norway in 2015, compared with 11,480 in 2014, the Norwegian Immigration Directorate said in December 2015. Under an EU-Turkey deal, the country agreed to take 1,500 asylum seekers in 2015 and 2016. It also agreed to take 1,500 more asylum seekers coming from Turkey.

Europe is now facing the biggest refugee crisis since WWII with more than one million asylum seekers entering Europe in 2015.

Most of them are arriving from Syria, where a civil war has taken the lives of 250,000 people and displaced 12 million since 2011, according to UN figures.


Aeroflot's new sales manager in Norway, Gonzalo Peluffo, is proud of the accomplishment.

"This is very nice for Aeroflot, and our new stardom' will hopefully make it easier for us to sell more tickets in the Norwegian market. In particular we would like to attract more business travelers. I know many are still flinching when travel agencies propose flights with Aeroflot. This probably reflects the fact that the company is still struggling with a bad reputation of old. Now we hope things will take a turn for the better," Peluffo told Aftenposten.

Earlier he abandoned his job on Air France-KLM to join the Russian company on the upswing and has no regrets.

"Aeroflot has undergone major changes, gradually over many years. We have considerably upgraded the service on board and have a growing global route network. Besides, Aeroflot always serves food, and baggage and seat reservation also included in the ticket fare," said Peluffo, stating that Aeroflot has not had a single accident in over 20 years.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Beginning from Monday, UDI promised extra 10,000 kroner ($1,215) on top of the already offered $2,431 to the first 500 asylum seekers who apply for voluntary return to their home countries. The program will run for six weeks. To qualify for the additional 10,000 kroner to cover travel costs, an asylum seeker must have arrived in Norway prior to April 1 and must not have overstayed their legal length of stay.

"No, its a bit early. The campaign started yesterday [Monday, April 25]," John Olav Kroken said, when asked whether UDI received any applicants so far.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  He said that Daesh affiliates operating in the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy were similar to those that were behind the attacks in Paris and Brussels.

"Yes, they do. That is a concern, obviously, of ours and our European allies.. We continue to see evidence of plotting on the part of ISIL in the countries you named," James Robert Clapper told reporters when asked if the jihadist group was running clandestine operations in the three EU countries, as quoted by The New York Times.

Daesh, which is outlawed in Russia and many other countries, claimed responsibility for the recent terrorist attacks on Europe  the November 13 Paris attacks, which killed 130 people, and the March 22 series of blasts in Brussels, which claimed the lives of 35 people.
"We have only a month on us, because the only time gap more or less safe from low pressure areas and strong winds is in May. Then you have a good chance to cross safely," Ahlander said.

Despite being followed by a safety boat, the crew of 33 men and women are in for a pernicious journey.

"We'll take us through the world's most dangerous waters, including the southern tip of Greenland, with plenty of ice floes and the mighty cold. We have no protection, it is an open ship. If something happened, this would be no joke," Ahlander said.

Get ready to see a real Viking ship from Norway stateside soon  Follow @drakenhh 's voyage https://t.co/OJW5pRTYWF pic.twitter.com/20rBmnxczc  Visitnorway USA (@VisitnorwayUSA) March 28, 2016

Dragon Harald Fairhair is equipped with modern navigation instruments, but also with the historical tools such as mariner's logs as well as magnetic compasses.

"We are very conscious that everything may be switched off for good, as electronics and salt water are not world's best buddies. So we do rely on navigation methods of the Vikings, from those of the Middle Ages and 2016 alike," said Bjorn Ahlander.

After crossing the Atlantic, the crew plans visiting Canada's Quebec and Toronto. In the US, Dragon Harald Fairhair is set to cast anchor in the Twin Ports (Duluth and Superior), Chicago and New York.

We almost can't believe it There will be a Norwegian Viking Ship at #TallShipsDuluth! @drakenhh @MNVikingsTix pic.twitter.com/0AGLLTEOwe  Tall Ships Duluth (@tallshipsduluth) February 5, 2016

Dragon Harald Fairhair's hull is made of oak, measuring 35 meters (115 feet) from bow to stern. The ship has a width of 8 meters (26 feet), a mast height of 24 meters (78 feet) and a sail consisting of 260 square meters of silk.
"It is more than worrying that a leading member of the AfD, which famously employs scorn against refugees and Islam is now getting an important position."

Ms Demir, has not been the only one to express concerns at his appointment  many immigration campaigners and charities have also voiced their worries.

However, with every negative view there have been those who are in favor of Reusch and his controversial promotion.

Martin Steltner, a Berlin prosecutor, defended the appointment saying, in a recent interview:

"Reusch has done an outstanding job, he is not a member of a banned organization, he has the right to be politically engaged."

Further support for the promotion came from Reusch's very own party.

"I don't understand it, Mr Reusch is clearly a reliable official, and his superiors have the authority to decide his professional career. If he is being promoted, then that is in accord with the normal regulations of civil service law. The fact he belongs to AfD plays no role in that," said Alexander Gauland, a leading AfD politician.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Jan Boehmermann is investigated under article 103 of the German criminal code, prescribing a fine and a prison term of up to 3 years for insulting foreign leaders. On April 11, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan requested Germany to prosecute the comedian under the rarely used law for reciting a poem on late night TV suggesting sexual transgressions on the Turkish leader to emphasize the difference between freedom of speech and the media in the two countries.

"The accused, for whom so far no defender has been appointed, is to be granted a hearing," lead prosecutor Andreas Keller said in a statement published on the Rhineland-Palatinate state government website.

Keller added that prosecutors would decide after the interview whether the case merits further investigation.
Meanwhile in the UK, junior doctors in hospitals in England took the unprecedented action of walking out for two days, leaving critical areas  such as Casualty, Maternity and Pediatric departments  without junior doctor cover. After a series of strikes in recent months, this is the first time they have withdrawn all cover.

The dispute is over the UK Government's election commitment to commit to seven day working within the UK National Health Service. The government wants to extend the hours that are paid at the basic rate by two hours weekdays and to include Saturday daytime. The doctors are currently paid extra for working weekday nights and both days at the weekend.

Nein!

In Germany state carrier Lufthansa has said The Verdi union has called for token strikes in the areas of ground handling, passenger checks and (partly) airport fire services at Frankfurt, Munich, Dusseldorf, Cologne/Bonn, Dortmund and Hanover airports on Wednesday (April 27).

@suzelknight Sorry that your flight was cancelled due to the Verdi workers union. My colleagues are doing their best to assist. /Adam  Lufthansa (@lufthansa) 26 April 2016

"The strike called by the Verdi union confirms once again the urgent need for certain 'rules of play' on industrial action in the aviation field. We want to see binding mediation or conciliation procedures here before such strike action can be taken," said Dr Bettina Volkens, Chief Officer Corporate Human Resources & Legal Affairs of Deutsche Lufthansa AG.

"Once again, our travelers will be affected by industrial action that is being taken in connection with collective bargaining negotiations in which Lufthansa is totally uninvolved. This is a clear case of using aviation for token strikes because of its high media profile, and even though the associated negotiations will be continued the very next day."
An amendment to the Immigration Bill, tabled in the House of Lords allowing the youngsters to seek sanctuary in Britain had been proposed by Labour's Lord Dubs, who came to the UK as a child refugee 70 years ago.

"History will judge how we respond to this historic crisis, which is of proportions that have not been seen since the Second World War," shadow immigration minister Kier Starmer said during the debate.

But MPs voted against the amendment by 294 to 276. Both sides of the debate argued that allowing in or rejecting the 3,000 children would prevent more cases of modern slavery.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Tuesday that Ankara must pay 1 million euros ($1.1 million) to the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) in compensation for violating the principle of freedom of assembly.

"In todays Chamber judgment in the case of Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi v. Turkey the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been: a violation of Article 11 (freedom of assembly and association) of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court held that Turkey was to pay the applicant party 1,085,800 euros (EUR) in respect of pecuniary damage and EUR 5,000 for costs and expenses," the ECHR said in a press release.

Judgment Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi v. Turkey  law governing inspection of political partieshttps://t.co/CuCZhfTIJQ#ECHR  ECHR Press (@ECHR_Press) 26  2016 .

According to the statement, the case concerned the confiscation of a substantial part of the assets of Turkeys main opposition party CHP, by the Constitutional Court following an inspection of its accounts for the years 2007 to 2009.
STOCKHOLM (Sputnik)  The appeal would argue that Breiviks imprisonment does not constitute "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" under article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The statement added that the Norwegian state disagrees with the Oslo district courts application of the law and evidence evaluation.

"After professional advice from the attorney and in consultation with the Correctional Service, I have today asked the Attorney General to appeal the ruling," Minister of Justice Anders Anundsen said in a statement published on the Norwegian government website.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The European Commission will allocate about 20 million euros ($22.5 million) to the Nuclear Safety Account (NSA) fund, it said in a press release issued on Tuesday to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

"The European Commission pledged around 20 million to the Nuclear Safety Account fund as part of the 45 million expected from the G7 and the European Commission in addition to the existing support," the press release reads.

Ahead of 30th anniversary of the #Chornobyl nuclear disaster the EU steps up its contribution to #NuclearSafety: https://t.co/4rGeWQAJy2  European Commission (@EU_Commission) 25  2016 .

Among other stated goals, the fund currently grants financial resources for the decommissioning of the three remaining Chernobyl units, the last of which was closed in 2000, it added.
GENEVA (Sputnik)  A report with footage of mass killing of the Kurds in the town of Cizre in Turkeys southeastern Sirnak province has been submitted to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), a Turkish rights watchdog said Tuesday.

"I spoke to the head of the OHCHR about the Russian position and what is happening in Cizre. We have a report of what has happened there, with testimonies of eyewitnesses who survived. We submitted it to the High Commissioner [for Human Rights]," President of the Human Rights Association Ozturk Turkdogan told RIA Novosti in an interview.

In March, the RT television channel launched a petition calling on the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate reported mass killing of Kurds in southeastern Turkey. The broadcaster sent footage of mass killings of Kurds in Cizre to several human rights organizations, including the OHCHR, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Amnesty International, but the institutions either refused to comment or stated they would not be able to launch an investigation.
Gerd Battrup, researcher in cross-border crime at the University of Southern Denmark, blames the present situation on the growing number of migrants, both legitimate and illegal , choosing Denmark as their destination.

"Copenhagen has become a center for crime because this is where people congregate. And with more foreigners flowing in, some of them will turn out to be criminals. At the same time there is much wealth and many tourists around, which could open the door to theft and burglary," he said.

Meanwhile, the figures from the Copenhagen City Police have made the Danish People's Party's spokesman furious. Peter Kofod Poulsen called the numbers insane.'

"The foreigners are clearly over-represented, which is very alarming," he said.
"We want to alert the public about the need to preserve and strengthen this public service," environmental worker Patrick Chopin told Le Figaro newspaper, adding that this action was a protest.

"You can't say ecology is the priority of the country when we see that our resources are down 10 percent."

The move is was an attempt to draw public attention to the severely underfunded environmental protection sector.
His theory said particles could rob black holes of their energy, making them disappear at a minuscule rate as they release everything they had once swallowed in a trickle of dust.

For years scientists have been plagued by the existence of black holes and have questioned whether Professor Hawking's theory is in fact true.

Now for the first time, one scientist in Israel may have proven that what Professor Hawking has been saying for many years is right.

Professor Jeff Steinhauer, who teaches Physics at the Technion University in Haifa, has created something similar to a "black hole" in his laboratory.

In a paper published on the physics pre-print website arXiv, Professor Steinhauer describes how he cooled helium close to zero, roughly minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit  and moved it around so quickly that a sound barrier was created and no sound could pass through it  much like light in a black hole.

Professor Steinhauer says the phonons  the energy that makes up sound waves  were escaping from the "sound black hole," much like in Hawking's theory.

If this proves to be correct, Professor Hawking could finally win a Nobel peace prize for his work.

However, Professor Steinhauer's work has been met with slight skeptism amongst the scientist community, who are currently looking for alternative reasons as to why the particles may have leaked.

At packed Sanders Theatre, Stephen Hawking tackles contradictory qualities of black holes https://t.co/qpNpUA8VFu pic.twitter.com/k9OSI782Xg  Harvard Alumni Assoc (@HarvardAlumni) April 20, 2016

Nevertheless, the development could open up a bizarre vision of the universe in which black holes can cough themselves into nothingness, Hawking said during his recent lectures at Harvard.

"This raises a serious problem that strikes at the heart of our understanding of science If determinism, the predictability of the universe, breaks down with black holes, it could break down in other situations," Hawking said.

"Even worse, if determinism breaks down, we can't be sure of our past history, either. The history books and our memories could just be illusions."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, an inquest jury ruled that the Hillsborough disaster, which resulted in the death of 96 people, was caused by police failures, with the victims being unlawfully killed.

"As I have said before, I want to apologise unreservedly to the families and all those affected," Crompton said, as quoted by the ITV News broadcaster.

The jury affirmed that police errors and omissions, specifically citing errors made by commanding officers, had been the main reason for the human crush at the stadium. The jury also rejected that the fans were in any way responsible for the deaths.
"It is essential that the International [Committee of the] Red Cross sends a delegation to Turkey or a mission that will report on major damage and civil war underway in Turkey. It is essential that the international community notices the war crimes that the Turkish authorities commit in Turkish Kurdistan," President of the Human Rights Association Ozturk Turkdogan told RIA Novosti in an interview.

Turkdogan expressed his intention to meet the ICRC leadership later on Tuesday and raise the issue of sending the monitoring mission to Turkey, adding that a special mission on investigation from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was likely to be discussed as well.
Both Austria and Italy have started to control their own boarder, with Austria erecting a 250-meter fence . They have been criticized for this by the Italian officials who said this would only exacerbate the humanitarian situation in southern Europe.

In a further move to curb the influx of migrants, Austria reintroduced strict border controls on the border with Hungary this week.

The Austrian National Police Director-Deputy Werner Fasching said:

"We have to react to this situation weekly to prevent criminality and smuggling of immigrants. In the coming weeks we are going to support our Hungarian colleagues."

The move by EU countries to control their borders and stop refugees from entering is the latest in a demonstration against the way the EU has handled the crisis.

Austria has seen the rise of right-wing FPO politician Norbert Hofer, who has actively voiced his concern at the influx of refugees.
According to Mayor Christian Estrosi, the owner of the mosque, Saudi Minister of Islamic Affairs Sheikh Saleh bin Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh "advocates Sharia law and destroyed all the churches on the Arabian Peninsula," RTL said.

"Our intelligence agencies are worried about this place of worship," the mayor said referring to the Saudi-funded mosque and warned about "unregulated foreign funding," according to the French source.

On Monday, Estrosi received an approval document from a council in Nice to take the central government's representative, Prefect Adolphe Colrat, to court and fight to not allow the opening of the Saudi-funded mosque.
In an hour-long program (to be broadcast April 28 on SVT1 channel) King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden addressed a number of problems, such as his grandchildren, environment and the refugee situation. However, perhaps, the most outspoken replies dealt with the Swedish media's unsolicited focus on his own person. King Carl XVI Gustaf claims to see a tendency for journalists to make fun at his expense, which both hurts and burdens him.

"If you always get ridiculed in the media, it becomes very difficult to work. I have worked as hard as I have been able as regards my abilities and my power, says the King of Sweden, who claims to "feel it with his heart."

"You have to be able to imagine how another person feels, as you do not always understand. It's like any contact whatsoever: when you meet a person, you treat him or her with respect," Carl Gustaf argued, stating that the media's bias against the Royal family makes him "angry, irritated and sad."
Among the articles included in the ECHR are the right to liberty, the right to family life and the right to privacy. However, the UK government's surveillance powers and the potential erosion of personal privacy is already under legal scrutiny by the ECtHR.

Theresa May:

 let's stay in the EU but leave the ECHR

Everyone:

 but you have to be in the ECHR to be in the EU

Theresa May:

 ..?#brexit  Alex Deane (@ajcdeane) 25 April 2016

Snoopers' Charter

The Investigatory Powers Bill, which would allow sweeping new surveillance powers for the security services and police forces. Meanwhile, the European Court of Human Rights has called on the British government to justify how GCHQ's practices and oversight comply with the right to privacy under "Article eight"  the right to privacy  of the European Convention.

The ECtHR will soon rule on the legality of UK mass surveillance, defended by Theresa May. Who wants out. https://t.co/iHpl88oRcX #IPBill  Jim Killock (@jimkillock) 25 April 2016

"Theresa May will be defending mass surveillance at the ECtHR over the next weeks, as they examine what we learnt about huge programs gathering everyone's data," Jim Killock, executive director of Open Rights Group said.

"The government built GCHQ's programs without discussion in parliament. The ECtHR has provided a way for impartial judges to examine what our government has done, even when they preferred to bypass democratic procedure."

Parliament Should Prioritize Privacy

Open Rights Group, Big Brother Watch, English PEN and Internet campaigner Constanze Kurz are asking the European Court of Human Rights to rule on whether UK surveillance and oversight comply with the right to privacy under "Article eight" of the European Convention.

The groups claim that GCHQ has infringed the privacy of British and European citizens.

"This legal challenge is an essential part of getting to the bottom of why the public and Parliament have not been properly informed about the scale of surveillance and why our privacy has been subverted on an industrial scale," Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch said.

According to campaign group Privacy Not Prism:

"It is believed to be the first international law challenge based on the Snowden disclosures."

The British government must respond to the European Court of Human Rights over claims GCHQ has infringed the privacy of British and European citizens by May 2 2016.

"This is the same court that Theresa May believes she should not have to answer to," Jim Killock, executive director of Open Rights Group said, not long after the Home Secretary reiterated her desire to withdraw from the ECHR whilst espousing her support for the European Union.
Her admission supports views by critics of the deal that negotiations have been held behind closed doors. Pritzker also said the deal was a chance to do away with "rules and regulations that are standing in the way of doing more business together"  confirming the worst fear of those opposed to the deal.

The TTIP negotiations are due to create the biggest trade pact in the world, between the European Union and the United States. However, the talks have been branded secretive, with lawmakers fighting to access key documents and allegations of mass lobbying by big corporates keen to push a commercial agenda.

TTIP Interview with US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker  SPIEGEL ONLINE https://t.co/gzkr5kfQGZ  David Goalstone (@ghostwriterREAL) 26 April 2016

In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine Pritzker said:
Ams spent one month in a detention camp near the country's capital of Sofia. The living conditions there were so terrible that he was forced to spend the last of his savings to escape that nightmare.

"We were given almost no food and water. It was awful," the man said.

The EU countries have made some progress in reducing the number of refugee boats in the Aegean Sea. However, it doesn't mean that the smuggling business is over, Radosh Djurovic, Director of the Belgrade Center for protection of asylum seekers, said.

"The Balkan route is not closed, smuggling business networks have resumed once more," the expert stated. According to him, refugees are arriving more slowly and not in such large waves as before, "but again, thousands of people are heading to the north through Serbia," Djurovic stressed.

In late March, Turkey and the European Union reached an agreement to put an end to the so-called Balkan route used by migrants to travel through Greece and Macedonia to wealthier EU states. Under the deal, Turkey pledged to take back all illegal migrants that arrive to the European Union through its border and in their place send legal Syrian refugees to the bloc on a one-for-one basis.

The initiative has reduced the influx of migrants, but has not stopped it completely. With the help of smugglers, refugees find new ways to reach Europe and spend their last money to reach the desired "safe haven".
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Schindler, who has been the head of the only German foreign intelligence service since 2012, is expected to be replaced by administrative official Bruno Kahl, a confidant of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

Chief of Staff of the German Chancellery Peter Altmaier is expected to officially announce the BND management change on Wednesday.

BND was pushed into the global spotlight last year when German media discovered the US National Security Agency had used its monitoring station in Bavarias Bad Aibling to eavesdrop on numerous EU officials and European businesses.
While Washington and its allies continue to accuse Russia of military aggression, its hard to ignore the fact that NATO has been steadily inching toward the Russian border. Earlier on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated his concern with the alliances growing military presence in eastern Europe.

"In regard to who is a threat to whom, it should not be forgotten what has been constantly heard over the last few years both from Brussels and from the members of the leadership of this organization, I mean NATO, concerning statements that it is Russia that they consider to be a threat," he said.

"And these statements are not limited by words alone, but also we see steps being made in boosting military potential and military expansion toward Russias borders, so here in this case its enough to take into account facts that are obvious."

Despite their peace mission, the F-22 pilots arent unaware of the potential for conflict.

"Until youre in that situation, I dont know if you really know what it feels like," Barina said. "If its got to be done, its got to be done. Im not sure Id think about a whole lot elseIts the job we all signed up for."
LONDON (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, the inquest jury ruled that the Hillsborough disaster, which resulted in the death of 96 people, was caused by police failures, with the victims being unlawfully killed. The jury also rejected the outcomes of an initial investigation claiming that the fans were in any way responsible for the deaths.

"Today is a landmark moment in the quest for justice for the 96 Liverpool fans who died on that dreadful day in April 1989. All families and survivors now have official confirmation of what they always knew was the case, that the Liverpool fans were utterly blameless in the disaster that unfolded at Hillsborough," Cameron said as quoted by the statement published on the UK government's website.

The jury ruling will reportedly allow for criminal investigations to be opened against a group of officials suspected of gross negligence and manslaughter in connection with the incident.
On Tuesday, French police arrested a 45-year-old woman after she entered the police station with three bags of cocaine and requested that the officers on duty test its quality. The incident occurred at around 5:00 AM in the southwestern city of Toulouse.

Much to the amusement of the French police, the woman wanted to test two bags of pure cocaine and one bag of crack cocaine to ensure the substances safety.

French police have refused to comment on whether the woman was charged for simple possession or the more severe charge of possession with intent to sell.
Police stepped in following the attack on Mouzalas and was subsequently pelted with stones. Unrest spread throughout the camp, and police forces are trying to stop the clashes and prevent them from going beyond the camp.

Representatives of non-governmental organizations have been evacuated from the camp, and police special forces are preparing to carry out an operation to restore order, the newspaper reported.
MEXICO CITY (Sputnik)  On April 17, two-thirds of Brazil's lower house lawmakers voted in favor of impeaching Rousseff, sending the vote to the Federal Senate.

The upper house created a commission of 21 senators, who will have 10 days to debate the issue, TeleSUR broadcaster reported on Monday.
In February last year, the Daesh insurgents reportedly destroyed the clock on top of the church building, looting the entire contents of the church.

The Daesh has damaged multiple historic sites, as well as Christian and Muslim shrines and places of worship, after taking over the city in June 2014. The city has since served as the terror groups stronghold.
The Jabisah oil field was under Daesh control for a couple of years, until it was liberated by Kurdish militia and members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in February.

"When we came, [Daesh] were here. They destroyed everything, stole oil and gasoline," SDF fighter Matin Karzero told RT.

According to locals, Daesh used oil tankers they acquired after capturing Mosul to transport illegal oil.

"All the tankers were from Iraq. They were filled with Syrian oil. The oil was taken to Raqqa and then to Turkey," Amir Al Hajj, another resident of Hasakah province told RT.

Local residents also added that the terrorists were smuggling ancient Syrian artifacts using the same Turkish route. Many of the artifacts, some worth thousands of dollars apiece, have been turning up in antique markets in Europe and the United States.

Daesh controls large areas in oil-rich Syria, Iraq and Libya. Russia has repeatedly stated that Turkey is the main procurer of illegal oil from Syria and Iraq, accusing President Erdogan and his family of direct involvement in the Daesh oil business.
MOSCO (Sputnik)  France is prepared to contribute to Libyan maritime security, in particular, with regards to the EU operation against migrant smuggling, he added.

"We must wait for [Libyan] Prime Minister [Fayez Sarraj] to tell us what security measures should be taken and what he intends to get from the international community to ensure the maritime security of Libya," Le Drian said in an interview with Europe 1 radio.
According to a military source, Turkish authorities have sent 13 trailers with military equipment to the southeastern regions of the country in order to strengthen its military capacities on the Syrian border, Anadolu agency reported

Earlier, Ankara and Washington struck a deal to deploy American light multiple rocket launchers (MRL) on the Turkish border with Syria in order to fight against Daesh, according to the head of the Turkish Foreign Ministry Mevlut Cavusoglu.

The missile systems are expected to be installed in the border area in May.
ROME (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported, citing "the latest operational plans" that Italy was planning to sent up to 900 service personnel to Libya, to protect a number of crucial sites, including oil wells, and to train the local army.

According to the government sources, the claims about Italy's plans to send troops to Libya are "groundless," the Agenzia Giornalistica Italia (AGI) reported.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Coalition forces in Syria launched seven airstrikes near two cities hitting a terrorist tactical unit, as well as several fighting positions and vehicles, according to the Central Command.

Meanwhile in Iraq, the coalition carried out 18 airstrikes in and around 10 Iraqi cities targeting supply caches, heavy machine guns, tactical units, mortar positions, bridges, a bunker, a command and control node and assembly areas.

"In Syria, coalition military forces conducted seven strikes using attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft against ISIL [Daesh] targets," the release said on Tuesday. "Additionally in Iraq, Coalition military forces conducted 18 strikes coordinated with and in support of the Government of Iraq using bomber, ground-attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft against ISIL targets."
"The definition of the word "insult" depends on the cultural envrionment in which it's viewed. That's why, honestly, I don't understand what I'm even accused of," Umar told Sputnik.

Umar added that Turkey doesn't have freedom of speech and she isn't the first journalist who was detained for speaking up against the tyranny of Erdogan.

"Many journalists in Turkey are arrested, the number of court proceedings against members of the press is around 2,000. It looks like some sort of a bad joke! Turkey doesn't have freedom of the press," Umar said.

The Dutch journalist also criticized other European countries, which despite numerous violations of basic human rights in Turkey, conitnue to have diplomatic relations with Ankara, purely for their own interests.

On Monday, another foreign journalist, David Lepeska, was denied entry to Turkey and without any explanation was forced to leave the country immediately. Lepeska, a US journalist who wrote for the Guardian, Al Jazeera and Foreign Affairs, was stopped at the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul because his visa had an entry ban.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Afghan Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassador of neighboring Pakistan over claims of deadly cross-border shelling, Afghan media cited the ministry as saying in a statement Tuesday.

"Pakistan's ambassador to Kabul, Abrar Hussain, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday and a formal protest was lodged over cross-border shelling by the Pakistani forces," the TOLONews broadcaster reported.

It added that Afghan Foreign Minister of Administrative Affairs Nasir Ahmad Andisha condemned and demanded an immediate stop of the cross-border shelling in Lal Pur and Goshta districts of Nangarhar province.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Gersten also noted the coalition has observed that Daesh has difficulties paying the foreign fighters and has resorted to trading vehicles as payment or not compensating them at all.

"We're seeing the morale of the enemy beginning to deteriorate at a fairly increasing way," Gersten stated. "As we went further out the Euphrates river valley we've seen Daesh trying to defect coming into playing themselves dressed as refugees playing themselves dressed as women."

In February, US National Intelligence Director James Clapper estimated that more than 36,000 foreign fighters from 120 countries have joined Daesh in Syria and Iraq since 2012. Of those, about 6,600 Islamist volunteers came from western countries.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees are huddled together as they take shelter in rundown tents along the muddy row of the fertile Bekaa Valley.

The land of this valley produces most of the food that is consumed by the local population. Hence, both men and women work in the fields using shovels, rakes and knives for land cultivation.

The work begins at dawn and ends at sunset. Usually this kind of work pays them around 20 thousand Lebanese pounds which is 13 dollars.
Will the deployment help in the fight against Daesh?

"This announcement raises a number of questions," said Chaer. "First of all, is there a failure of the present tactic the US has employed to tackle Daesh in Syria? Raising the [total] number from 50 to 300 raises the question of what the existing 50 Special Forces have been doing for years  are they there for surveillance or are they working with groups on the ground?"

Chaer argues that the plan to dispatch additional US Special Forces troops will likely be counterproductive, as the US has not given any indication of collaborating with the groups presently combating Daesh, including the Syrian-Arab Army and Kurdish fighters.

Are Obama and the Assad government in agreement on a strategy to end the five-year civil war?

"No, we have heard no reports coming from Syria or other parties working with the Syrian government that the White House has reached out to the Assad government to coordinate activities," said Chaer. "I think it is a mistake to do, but I think the US is protecting the opposition to the Syrian government to the benefit of Daesh. They are protecting the Saudi, Qatari, and Turkish interests."
The main domestic program launched after the 2001 USA Patriot Act and passed by Congress already had developed "tap points" that allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor or record most communications carried out by AT&T system at least from 2004, Binney recalled.

"The main program doing the domestic collection remains the Fairview program, which is AT&T cooperation allowing taps directly on the fibers to collect all the data on those lines But, of course, it has grown since then."

Additional comprehensive programs tapped into other communications system both within the United States and throughout the world, Binney added.

"The Upstream program does not go into the unilateral taps on the fiber line in the United States and around the world which also have no oversight."

Anther NSA system called Stormbrew had tap points of its own into the Verizon system across the United States, Binney pointed out.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and its Court of Appeals, which were set up maintain constitutional and legal oversight on US domestic intelligence operations, had any significant effect in restraining them, Binney observed.

"In short, the government is lying to everyone, even the courts, which means that this is all for public show to document the idea that they are doing the right thing. If you believe that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you."

The FISC oversees requests for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Moreover, she expressed concern about Canada selling any military equipment to Saudi Arabia in light of Riyadhs year-long bombardment of Yemen that has killed and injured thousands of civilians.

In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners began launching airstrikes against Houthi rebel fighters in Yemen. The United Nations has recorded more than 3,200 civilian deaths during the conflict, 60 percent of which it attributes to coalition airstrikes, but Yemeni media has claimed the number is several-fold greater.

Human Rights Watch has documented 15 Saudi airstrikes in Yemen that involved cluster munitions, which are banned under international law.
"Our future submarines, 12 regionally superior submarines, will be built here at Osborne, in South Australia. They will be designed in partnership with DCNS, the French naval shipbuilding company," Turnbull said during a press conference, broadcast by the Sky News Australia channel.

He added that the next-generation submarines would be "the most sophisticated naval vessels being built in the world."
"Despite the previously reached deal on ceasefire on the line of contact in Karabakh, the Armenian side violated the regime along the line, using howitzer D-30 and mortars, 113 times over the last 24 hours," the press service said.

The Azerbaijani forces responded with 114 fire strikes, according to the ministry.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  According to the US president, the expanstion of NATO's military presence along the Russian border is not a reason for Moscow to worry.

"[Russian President Vladimir] Putin has generally viewed NATO, EU, trans-Atlantic unity, as a threat to Russian power <> Now, I think he's mistaken about that," Obama told CBS News in an interview on Monday.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to the poll commissioned by the Bertelsmann foundation and the Warsaw Institute of Public Affairs, some 56 percent of Germans surveyed do not consider Russia as a threat to their country, with 49 percent of respondents opposing the idea of permanent deployment of NATO forces in Poland or the Baltic states.

Meanwhile, each fourth German citizen out of 10 answering the poll expressed support for the alliance's presence in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara had reached an agreement with Washington for US-manufactured High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to be deployed near the Turkish-Syrian border in May.

"I think it will later turn out to be false," Ali said, commenting on Cavusoglu's statement.

Ali pointed out that Turkey had made many statements about the situation in Syria which subsequently turned out to be incorrect  for example, the Turkish authorities said that the United States was going to supply them with tanks, which never materialized.
"We are focused on expanding [our] contact with the ASEAN counties in a bilateral format. For this purpose, a series of meetings with the defense ministers of the Association member states have been scheduled, during which military and military-technical cooperation will be discussed in particular," Shoigu said at the first ever meeting of the ASEAN defense ministers in Moscow.

The meeting was timed to take place ahead of the Russia-ASEAN summit that is scheduled to be held in the southern Russian resort city of Sochi on May 19-20.
"The cooperation relationships between our two countries have always been excellent," Arsenault pointed out.

The primary focus of the Canadian instructors in Ukraine is to provide tactical training to soldiers, including to military police, but also medical training and activities to counter improvised explosive devices, according to the Canadas Department of National Defense.

Kiev is responsible for screening the participants in Canadas military training program in Ukraine, Arsenault added.

"The screening process for recruits is conducted by our Ukrainian partners," Arsenault stated when asked how the Canadian authorities ensure that members of radicalized groups do not participate in the training.

Arsenault noted that he has been very impressed with the professionalism and dedication of Ukrainian soldiers.

He added that the Canadian and Ukrainian militaries have enjoyed a mutually-beneficial relationship for more than 20 years, and Kiev has been well aware of Ottawas requirements.
The new device "would use infrared lasers to measure the signature of chemical agents and different molecules so that its much safer and a more practical way of interrogating a surface like the bottom of someones shoe," said Kevin Kelly, CEO of LGS Innovations which was awarded $11 million over four years by the SILMARILS project, DefenseOne reported.

Additional technical challenges facing development teams include ensuring that the laser remains eye-safe and visually unobservable, in addition to building a device that is "human-portable size."

US officials hope that the device could be developed to the extent that law enforcement, national security personnel and airport security could use it in a drive-by fashion to secure areas around crowds, including public events, airport departure lines and train stations.
Russian, US and former Soviet Union states delegations laid wreaths at the Spirit of the Elbe memorial at the Arlington National Cemetery on Monday.

The US delegation was headed by Director of Russian Affairs at the US State Department Eric Green.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is an organization within the Pentagon whose mission is provide the accounting for missing US personnel from past conflicts, including World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Gulf Wars, and other recent conflicts.
"The Security Council expresses its strong concern about intensified terrorist attacks, including by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant [Daesh]," the statement, unanimously endorsed by all 15 nations on the Council, said on Monday.

The Security Council also encouraged "all Yemeni parties to avoid any security vacuums that can be exploited by terrorists," the statement added.

On Monday, the Saudi-led coalition claimed to have killed more than 800 al-Qaeda militants, including a number of leaders.
"President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has met with President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is on a working visit in the country The presidents also exchanged views on bilateral relations and other issues of mutual interest," the statement published Monday reads.

The UNAOC was established in 2005 as the political initiative of former UN Secretary-General and co-sponsored by Spain and Turkey. The organization aims to reduce polarization at local and global levels, as well as to boost understanding and cooperation among nations and different cultures.
"These events are important because they remind us that when we are apart, we are not able to resolve major world problems," Toktogulov stated on Monday. "The kind of evil we had to face during World War II would have been impossible to defeat, if we had not cooperated."

The Kyrgyz ambassador explained that without cooperation between all the Soviet Republics, the Americans and the Europeans, the allies would have never won World War II.
Other major challenges addressed were related to energy prices and the Syrian conflict, he said, adding that the increasing likelihood of Syrian President Bashar Assads survival is a mutual US-Saudi frustration.

In terms of the energy situation, Jordan explained, Obama probably does not worry about low oil prices except as it encourages further hydrocarbon consumption and discourages alternative investment.

"US support for Saudi development of a non-oil economy would be welcome if it is meaningful."

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has been warning US lawmakers about the economic fallout that could follow if Congress goes forward with legislation that would allow families of victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On Friday, Vote Leave co-chairman Gisela Stuart addressed May in an official letter, urging the home secretary to refuse Le Pen admission into the country over her "divisive and inflammatory comments" on immigration.

"We've asked for her to be banned but the home secretary has refused to do it. She won't do it," Duncan Smith told the ITV broadcaster in an interview on Monday.

The politician clarified that May would not ban the French Eurosceptic because of EU rules prohibiting her to refuse entry to Le Pen.
"This is not true. First, President Assad has never asked us for political asylum nor has he ever wished to leave his country," Hossein Sheikholeslam, a foreign policy adviser to Irans parliamentary speaker said.

He added that Qatars Emir and the leaders of several other countries had previously offered the Syrian leader billions of dollars in exchange for his agreement to leave the country and seek political asylum abroad, but Assad rejected all those offers and said that he would stay with his people and fight to the bitter end.

"This means that Bashar Assad will not go anywhere, will not abandon his people, and this only adds to his popularity in the country," Hossein Sheikholeslam emphasized.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier in April, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said that Renzi was expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the SPIEF 2016.

According to the source cited by Izvestia newspaper, the Russia-imposed food embargo significantly affects Italian producers who have suffered heavy losses since its introduction. Moscow's sanctions in 2014 alone cost Italy an estimated 3.6 billion euros ($4 billion).
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On March 1, Russia called for a convention to cover the issue of chemical terrorism at the UN Disarmament Conference in the Swiss city of Geneva. Later during the conference, Rome and Beijing proposed to expand the convention to include biological terrorism.

Lavrov said that he hopes to discuss "the strict execution of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) by all states, as well as the recent Russian initiative on the development of a new convention to fight against acts of chemical terrorism" with Uzumcu.

Uzumcu arrived in Moscow to meet with the Russian leadership and to visit one of country's sites for the disposal of chemical weapons under Russia's international obligations.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  During Obamas visit to Hanover, Germany, on Monday, he said the expansion of NATO's military presence along the Russian border is not a reason for Moscow to worry.

"In regard to who is a threat to whom, it should not be forgotten what has been constantly heard over the last few years both from Brussels and from the members of the leadership of this organization, I mean NATO, concerning statements that it is Russia that they consider to be a threat. And these statements are not limited by words alone, but also we see steps being made in boosting military potential and military expansion toward Russia's borders, so here in this case its enough to take into account facts that are obvious," Peskov told journalists.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Turkish media reported over the weekend that the Russian agricultural watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor invited Turkish food agriculture and livestock experts to discuss "technical issues" on Tuesday, April 26.

"In fact, the case in question is technical inter-ministerial consultations at an expert level to discuss the multiple phytosanitary violations occurring in agricultural product deliveries from Turkey to Russia, which are not subject to the restrictive measures applied by Russia," Zakharova said.

She voiced "surprise" that the meeting has been portrayed as a conciliatory measure in Turkish media outlets.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Gandur has criticized the United States for denying visas to the countrys delegates to attend a UN event in New York for a special session on the global drug problem.

The United States does not have the right to refuse visas to Sudanese officials who had received an invitation to participate in UN activities. This is not in accordance with international law, Gandur told Sputnik.

The United States earlier denied visas to Sudanese Interior Minister Asmuth Rahman and the delegation escorting him. Gandur said the United States also refused to grant the ministers of health and education visas.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The US Supreme Court earlier refused to return $2 billion in frozen assets to the Iranian Central Bank, ruling that this amount was allocated for the American families whose relatives became victims in the explosions in Beirut in 1983, as well as other terrorist acts.

According to Tasnim, the Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned the Swiss ambassador to hand over two documents with an official protest against the US Supreme Court ruling.

The United States and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since 1979 after the US Embassy in Tehran was taken over by radicals.
"The Geneva talks must continue, must stay on track, and that is the best assistance that can be given to the Syrian people," Jamil told reporters at a media stakeout on day 10 of the second round of talks in Geneva.

He backed UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Misturas plan to continue the talks "with whomever is present."

Jamil addressed the Saudi-backed HNC opposition group's walkout last week, saying that the Moscow-Cairo platform does not believe in excluding parties to the talks, "but if anybody wants to exclude themselves, that is their choice."

"They should not have, by their own exclusion, veto over the talks. Nobody should force the talks to be stopped," he underscored.

Jamil said he anticipated de Mistura to "very shortly" announce a new round of intra-Syrian talks, with the latest round expected to wrap up on Wednesday.

The indirect Geneva talks on Syrias reconciliation with the participation of the Damascus delegation as well as three opposition groups  the Riyadh-formed High Negotiations Committee, the Moscow-Cairo and the Hmeimim groups  focus on the topics of political transition, governance, and the constitution in the Middle Eastern country.
It seems Merkel wanted to kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, Merkel desperately wants to keep her relationship healthy with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan; but on the other hand, she can't afford an outrage by the German public, the magazine said.

"Erdogan's complaint put Merkel in a big embarrassing situation. If she rejected the demand of the Turkish president, she might have lost a key ally in controlling the flow of refugee to Europe. If she chose to agree [with Erdogan] she became an easy target for those blaming her for accommodating an authoritarian leader who repressing individual liberties and waging war against Kurds in his country," Slate Magazine said.

On March 31, German political satirist Jan Bohmermann broadcast an explicit poem about Erdogan during his comedy show on German public broadcaster ZDF.
BRUSSELS (Sputnik)  The United States, the European Union, as well as their allies in the Middle Eastern region consider Syrian President Bashar Assad to be illegitimate and call for his resignation, while Russia and Iran insist that it was up to Syrian people to decide the fate of their country and leadership.

"Acceptance of the dictator's role, who wages a civil war against his own people, is not considered," Mogherini told the France Inter radio station, when asked about the prospects for Assad's political future.

At the same time, she underscored that the problem lies not only in the fate of one person.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The United States views China's control over various islands in the South China Sea, which are also claimed by Taiwan and Vietnam, as illegal. Earlier in April, a contingent of 200 US Air Force personnel deployed in the Philippines conducted a series of exercises with their Filipino counterparts patrolling air and sea lanes in the region.

"So with respect to the South China Sea, rather than operate under international norms and rules, their attitude is, 'We're the biggest kids around here. And we're gonna push aside the Philippines or the Vietnamese.'<> But it doesn't mean that we're trying to act against China. We just want them to be partners with us," Obama told the CBS broadcaster during his recent visit to Europe.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  A Russian Parliament committee held a meeting with the British Parliaments House of Commons committee on security to discuss the situation in Syria and Ukraine, the Russian State Duma committee announced Tuesday.

The Russian parliamentarians discussed key issues on the agenda of the situation in Syria and Ukraine with their British colleagues, as well as Russias increased activity in the Arctic. The parties noted the need to create a united international front in the fight against the Islamic State, which is prohibited in Russia, the committee said in a release.
GENEVA (Sputnik)  Early April, an unnamed diplomat from the US Embassy in Bern told representatives from Switzerland's State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) that Washington expected the Swiss government to dissuade the country's business leaders from visiting SPIEF "as usual," Le Matin Dimanche newspaper reported.

The US diplomat stressed the need to reject the idea of conducting business with Russia, the newspaper added.

The Swiss Foreign Ministry confirmed the topic of the meeting, according to the publication, while the US embassy refused to provide the details of the meeting, while noting that it maintains permanent contact with SECO.
ATHENS (Sputnik)  Greece will oppose extending sanctions against Russia at EU talks in June, Alternate Foreign Minister for European Affairs Nikos Xydakis said Tuesday.

"The Greek stance is that mutual sanctions hurt Europe-Russia relations and do not benefit anyone, A tense atmosphere is just being preserved. Our belief is that sanctions should be lifted," Xydakis told RIA Novosti.

In 2014, the United States and the EU states imposed a series of economic sanctions targeting key Russian sectors as well as a number of individuals and entities over Russias reunification with Crimea and its alleged interference in the conflict between Kiev and independence supporters in eastern Ukraine.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, the Damascus delegation met with UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura to discuss amendments to the proposals on the political settlement.

"We also noted our concern regarding the attempts by terrorism-sponsoring states and the terrorist organizations that work for them, their attempts to undermine the political solution by violating the cessation of hostilities through the commission of terrorist acts," Jaafari said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The anti-Russian stance taken on by Turkey makes the normalization of bilateral relations impossible in the foreseeable future, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

"The anti-Russian stance taken on by the Turkish leadership does not allow to expect the normalization of bilateral relations in the foreseeable future," the ministry said in a review of Russian foreign policy and diplomatic activity in 2015.

The countries' relations deteriorated following the downing of a Russian Su-24 jet by a Turkish F-16 fighter over Syria on November 24, 2015. In response to this "stab in the back," as it was described by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow imposed a number of restrictive measures on Turkey.
A day after the HNC demarche Lavrov called attention to the fact that besides the HNC there are also the Moscow and Cairo groups, Hmeymim group and the group of independent opposition members which express their willingness to continue the dialogue with Damascus over the situation in Syria.

"Some people have already left [the Syrian opposition's] High Negotiations Committee [HNC]. They disagreed that radicals ruled the committee, including Jaysh al-Islam leaders. This fact confirms that we were right while proposing to include it in the list of terrorist groups This group, as well as Ahrar ash-Sham are actively proving in action that they fully support those anti-humane, brutal approaches used by Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra [al-Nusra Front]," the Russian Foreign Minister underscored.

According to Elena Suponina, President of the Center for Asia and the Middle East at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, John Kerry's offer to divide Syria into spheres of influence with Russia means that Washington now regards Moscow as an equal player in the Middle East.

In her Op-Ed for RIA Novosti Suponina recalls, that four years ago the Obama administration did not even bother to take Russia's interests in the region into consideration.

However, in general, the White House continues to demonstrate a double-standard approach toward Syria and other regional players, according to the expert.

"It looks as if the colonial epoch and the times of re-division of the world by global powers have returned" Suponina writes, calling attention to the fact that Western policy-makers (most notably John Kerry himself) have repeatedly claimed that it is highly inappropriate to behave "in 19th-century fashion" in the 21st century.

And now Kerry proposes to draw "absolute lines" across the Middle Eastern region, she remarks, warning that Syria is "only the beginning."

Kerry's "fair game" in Syria will most likely prompt more destruction and devastation. Is Washington ready to take responsibility for chaos in the region?

On the other hand, Kerry's proposal looks rather controversial since it was Russia, not the US that was invited to Syria by the legitimate Syrian government.
UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, Machar returned to the African republics capital after more than two years of absence from Juba.

"The Secretary-General welcomes the return of Riek Machar to Juba and his swearing in as the First Vice President which marks a new phase in the implementation of the peace agreement. The Secretary-General calls for the immediate formation of the Transitional Government of National Unity," the statement read.

The UN chief also appealed to the UN Security Council to cooperate with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) to mobilize all the required support for the peace process, the statement added.
According to the CFR, China's claims "threaten sea lines of communication, which are important maritime passages that facilitate trade and the movement of naval forces."

In its turn, the United States "maintains important interests in ensuring freedom of navigation and securing sea lines of communication" and "has a role in preventing military escalation resulting from the territorial dispute," the think tank states.

But what is really going on in the region? What do US analysts and thought leaders prefer not to focus on?

First of all, it is not only China who is busy with building artificial islands and deploying its naval forces in the region.

The Spratlys  a grouping of 230 islands, reefs and cays  have long been the focus of worldwide attention. However, it remains largely unspoken that "of the six countries claiming an interest in the Spratlys, only Brunei has failed to construct structures, mostly on stilts, on more than 40 of these islets and reefs," O'Neill writes.
On Monday, Turkish Parliament speaker Ismail Kahraman said that the predominantly Muslim country "must have a religious constitution". However, the head of the parliament's constitution commission, Mustafa Sentop, rebutted the statement, saying there were no discussions on the removal of secularism.

"We cannot accept it [Islamization of the country]. There will be a civil war," Gunersel said.

According to him, most Turks are moderate Muslims and, generally, secular.

"The problem is that those who do not want violence do not know how to stop this aggression," the expert concluded.

Turkey's first constitution was adopted in 1921 under the influence of the first president of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who abolished the Sultanate and adopted principles of secularization and modernization. The constitution was modified in 1924, and later in 1961, before the current constitution was adopted in 1982.

In its founding principles, the 1982 constitution asserts that Turkey is secular, democratic and is a republic. The constitution's Article 4 bans any modifications to these founding principles.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to the Rudaw news agency, the parliament approved Hasan Janabi as Minister for Water, Wafa Mahdawi as Minister for Labour, Alaa Ghani as Minister for Health, Abdulrazaq Eisa as Minister for Higher Education, Alaa Dishr as Minister for Electricity and Aqeel Mahdi as Minister for Culture who had earlier been nominated by Abadi under increasing pressure from demonstrators.

A number of other officials, including oil, finance and foreign affairs ministers among others, are to be voted on Thursday.

In mid-April, the legislature rejected Abadi's proposal for 15 cabinet nominations while dozens of Iraqi lawmakers rallied in the parliament urging the nations president, prime minister and parliamentary speaker to step down.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  On May 2, 2014, pro-Kiev demonstrators blocked anti-government protesters in Odessa's House of Trade Unions and set the building on fire by hurling Molotov cocktails inside. Forty-eight people died in the incident and more than 250 were injured.

"It was a horrific event, and in any kind of event like this there needs to be a resolution. There needs to be closure, and thats what an investigation and bringing those who carried out this act to justice would bring," Toner told reporters.
UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik)  In Damascus, the Jaysh al-Islam group, linked to al-Nusra Front and not subject to the ceasefire, shelled residential areas. Another group not subject to the ceasefire, Ahrar al-Sham, is also active in the area.

"On April 26, the Russian mission submitted a request to the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee to include Ahrar ash-Sham and Jaish al-Islam organizations in the Islamic State and al-Qaeda Sanctions List," Churkin told reporters.

The Daesh terrorist group not subject to the ceasefire also continued assaults in the Hama province and the eastern Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor.
"We are very concerned with the tensions in Nagorno-Karabakh because it can destabilize not only Armenia and Azerbaijan, but it can destabilize the whole region and even the wider Caucasus," Kvirikashvili said in a Tuesday speech at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC.

On April 2, ethnic tensions in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani breakaway region with a predominantly Armenian population, escalated. A tenuous ceasefire agreement was reached on April 5, but has reportedly been violated on a nearly daily basis.
"Thats the issue we are working on," Chizhov told Russian journalist in Brussels. "As it is known, Russia and the European Union have agreed to make an inventory of our relations to identify the promising areas of cooperation and formats that meet the interests of both sides. This work is carried out in parallel by each of the parties. On the Russian side, it is nearing completion. We will see what kind of success our EU colleagues will achieve on this track."

Relations between Russia and the West have deteriorated amid the Ukrainian crisis. The European Union and the United States have been accusing Moscow of meddling in Ukraines internal affairs, although no factual evidence has been provided to back the claims that Russia has consistently denied.
She says the scheme, which includes Kasich pulling campaign resources out of Indiana in exchange for Cruz pulling resources out of New Mexico and Oregon, doesn't even include telling their own voters to vote for the other guy in those states. "They're not even going that far. That's how dumb this plan is. They're not taking their name off the ballot or doing anything that might actually cause anyone to change their vote. They're just not campaigning in each other's chosen states."

Marcotte believes the move is even likely to help Trump. "For weeks now, Donald Trump has been running around the country claiming that he's a victim of an elite conspiracy to shut him out of his rightful nominationAnd here they have come out with great fanfare and announce they are conspiring against him!"

She also tells me about what she sees as "a complete tornado of incompetence" in the Republican Party in general, including from its great white hope in Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan. "The Republican Party has a bunch of ideologues, but they don't have anybody who knows how to do anything. Like basic politics, basic governance," Marcotte explains. "Donald Trump is one of the luckiest people alive because he just sort of wandered into this situation where everyone else is so bad he looks good in comparison."

But is all of this GOP dysfunction and a crumbling Republican Party actually good for Democrats and progressives? Tune in for that discussion and more. Finally, as voters head to the polls on Tuesday in PA, MD, CT, DE and RI, a closing thought on Democrats "thinking big" about progressive policy, as shared by both Bernie Sanders and Vice President Joe Biden.

You can find Brads previous editions here.

And tune in to Radio Sputnik one hour a day, five days a week.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  A total 20 out of 26 Daesh terrorist group affiliate leaders in Russia have been neutralized in 2015, Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika said.

"A total of 156 militants, including 36 ring leaders, some of whom led the Imarat Kavkaz [Caucasus Emirate] international terrorist organization, have been eliminated in counter-terrorist operations and combat operations. A total of 20 out of 26 leaders of militant groups that have pledged allegiance to the IS have been neutralized," Chaika said in a report due to be presented to Russia's Federation Council on Wednesday.

As a result of the operations, organized underground militant groups have been paralyzed, while their growth has been stunted, according to the report.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Chemical Weapons Convention came into effect in April 1997. The OPCW implemented the multilateral agreement, which bans chemical weapons and demands their destruction.

At present, the convention has 192 parties, including the United States, Russia, Syria and Iraq.

"Russia is among those countries which play the leading role in the implementation of its obligations under the Convention Now, concerning the disposition of chemical weapons, 93 percent has already been destructed, and we expect that in the coming years this program will be completed," Uzumcu said at a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.
SIMFEROPOL (Sputnik)  Earlier, the Russian Justice Ministry suspended Mejlis after it was accused of links to terror groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir and Turkeys neo-Nazi Grey Wolves.

Earlier in the day, Crimean Attorney General Natalia Poklonskaya, advocating the Mejlis ban in the Court, underscored that the Crimean Tatar group "exists only to fuel hatred and hostility."

Crimea held a referendum in March 2014, in which 96 percent of people in the region backed cessation from Ukraine and reunification with Russia.
They were greeted by the worker, the effects of the preserved drink already very much visible on his face.

As a top wine taster I have to tell you that the wine, rum and brandy are in in perfect shape and ready for consumption! he proudly announced.

Going through the contents of the Nazi cellar the diggers found huge amounts of German schnapps and chocolate stored inside.

Looks like the Krauts completely forgot about all this wine as they took to their heels running for their life, Tretyakov said adding, somewhat enigmatically, that the German finds are currently being tested for their possible consumption.

He said that the Nazi booze would be destroyed on Victory Day exactly just the way it was destroyed by the worker who had found it.

The grandchildren of the victorious soldiers of WW2 promise to pour some for anyone who shows up with his own glass in hand.

A couple of bottles will be preserved and displayed at the diggers own museum, Igor promised.
The German Defense Ministry has denied media reports about it building an airbase in Turkey to fight Daesh terrorists in Syria.

But overall, the West has stuck firmly to its original goals in Syria.

They may also be planning a ground invasion from Turkey, thats why our American 'partners' keep saying that the truce is not happening, that it is constantly being violated by Assads forces, while radical Islamists have no intention to hold their fire.

Genuine peace still looks a way off and it looks like the Western nations still hope to implement the Libyan scenario in Syria, Kamkin said.

They use the war with Daesh as just a means of building large coalitions, but if you look at the previous such campaigns you will see that our American 'partners' rarely practice what they preach, Alexander Kamkin said in conclusion.

Earlier Spiegel Online wrote that the German Bundeswehr was staking on a protracted aerial war against Daesh in Syria from Turkish territory and was mulling the construction of a base of its own at Turkeys Incirlik airbase for its Tornado jets.
Most recently, authorities arrested Ekaterina Zaborskikh this month for allegedly stealing some $2 million from apartment buyers in St. Petersburg. Most of that money was then donated to the Church of Scientology.

The money was obtained between 2012 and 2014 by selling apartments through Zaborskikhs construction company, Olimp. Though the company promised the construction of "affordable castles," the apartments were never built, and, instead, the money was redirected through the Church as donations.

The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs investigated the incident in 2014, ultimately raiding the Churchs Moscow headquarters in search of financial records.

"Detectives in St. Petersburg found that some of the stolen funds had been transferred to the account of this religious organization in Moscow," said a spokesman for the Ministry. "The suspect is a member of this organization. The investigation does not exclude possible involvement in this crime on the part of officials and coordinators of this religious organization."

Scientology spokeswoman Natalya Alekseeva denied that the Church was involved in the scheme.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Xiamen Airlines was founded in 1984 as Chinas first joint venture between the nations Civil Aviation Administration and a municipal government, the release explained.

"The 737-800 is the best-selling version of the highly successful Next-Generation 737 family," Boeing Senior Vice President for Northeast Asia Sales Ihssane Mounir said in the release. "We are pleased to see the 737-800 continues to play an important role in Xiamen Airlines' fleet expansion."

Xiamen Airlines now operates a fleet of 135 airliners, including six 787-8 Dreamliners, according to the release.
Then, without any evidence to support his wild claims, Jones asserts that her widely celebrated artistic album is CIA propaganda.

Again, this is admitted high-level  it turns out basically everything they put on the Super Bowl or out on Viacom is run by CIA propaganda because thats their domestic job. Beyonce invokes urban terrorism in new video, and this is just to get people to act like total morons so that they can then be basically arrested, set-up, put in jail. I mean, this is  I mean look at the look on her face in the whole anti-police deal, Jones states.

This is how she ran around like, you [inaudible] with the cops, theyre the enemy, and that itll fix everything. And then shes funded by the very government and the very platform, the very establishment system puts her out there.
While Hillary Clinton called offshore tax loopholes a "perversion" this March and also promised to crack down on "outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting in Panama and elsewhere," the Delaware corporate structures are completely legal under US law.

But what's so special about having a company in Delaware?

"Here's how the scheme works," writes Eric Epstein of Rock the Capital, "Under the corporate fiction of the Delaware tax loophole, local outlets of large national chain stores pay royalties to sister companies in other states, claiming the payments as business expenses, and then deduct them from their Pennsylvania state income taxes." In other words, companies shift their income from other states to Delaware and pay revenues there where state corporate income taxes are lower.

This tax scheme only affects US taxes at the state level, no company can use any scheme to exempt federal taxes. Different states such as Delaware have a lower corporate income tax than other states such as Pennsylvania. Delaware corporate income tax is set at a flat 8.7% and the state's personal income tax rate varies from 2.2% to 6.75%. Conversely, across state lines in Pennsylvania, the corporate income tax rate is 9.99% and the personal rate is 3.07%.

Delaware collected roughly $860 million in taxes and fees from its absentee corporate residents in 2011. That money accounted for a quarter of the state's total budget. According to the New York Times estimation, this resulted in $9.5 billion in lost tax revenue for other states over the course of the preceding decade.

In contrast to Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump widely used Delaware companies to pay as little tax as possible as allowed under US state laws and has several hundred of companies registered in Delaware. In his own words, "We have 378 entities registered in the state of Delaware, meaning I pay you a lot of money, folks. I don't feel at all guilty, OK?"
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  According to an NBC News/SurveyMonkey weekly poll, 50 percent of Republican and Republican leaning voters say they support the New York real estate tycoon for the GOP nomination, while 52 percent of Democratic and Democratic leaning voters say they would choose the former US secretary of state to be their partys nominee.

When Republicans were asked how likely it would be that they would vote for the candidate they support 57 percent said that they were "absolutely certain," while 65 percent gave the same response on the Democratic side.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The A321 passenger jet that crashed over the Sinai on October 31 en route from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, killing all 224 people on board, was reportedly leased to Russias Kogalymavia (Metrojet) airline by Dublin-based AerCap. Russias Federal Security Service said a terrorist attack had caused the tragedy.

"Ribbeck Law Chartered has filed a petition for disclosure in the Chicago court (Illinois, USA) against the leading international leasing company AerCap Holdings N.V.  AerCap presumably was the owner and lessor of the crashed Kogalymavia aircraft at the time of the tragedy," Ribbeck said in a Russian-language statement delivered to RIA Novosti.

He added that "we will request additional evidence, including of CCTV recordings, as soon as we determine who was responsible for the safety of the aircraft."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The House committee is scheduled to vote on the text of the defense spending bill on Wednesday, which could authorize a total of $610 billion in US defense spending in the 2017 fiscal year, including $150 million for Ukraine.

"[The House Armed Services] committee is aware that the Government of Ukraine's request for sniper training was denied by the United States because it is considered offensive training. The committee believes that such a distinction is irrelevant for training focused on building basic soldier skills, and urges the US Government to revisit this issue," the draft bill states.
This is nothing new, this number has been brought up before, 3.4 billion dollars with which they want to put a brigade in Europe which will be rotated. This all has been in the public domain for quite some time so therefore, one would expect that it did go through because it doesnt seem like there is much opposition to it because it has been well talked about, McCauley said.

The analyst further said that, the feeling in Washington among the military, which is part of the military industrial complex, is that they want more money for defense every year and therefore they have to ground this in threat and the threat is viewed coming from Moscow.

In the American military doctrine for this year Russia comes top from the point of view of a security threat. Everyone knows that it is China but they put Russia in the top making it seem that America has to respond to that and every time America responds to that, Russia has to respond as well.
A day before the case was due in court; the FBI admitted paying a third party US$1.2 million to unlock the phone for them and withdrew its application.

The latest example of the FBI backing off away from legal action came just days before it was due in court in Brooklyn, New York to argue its case for forcing Apple to unlock another iPhone belonging to an alleged drug dealer.
Stealth technology relies on the reshaping and coating of aircraft to deflect radar pulses away from the sender, rendering an object "invisible." But while these techniques may work against high-frequency radars, it does nothing against low-frequency devices.

"Every Battle of Britain radar would be able to see every stealth airplane today, loud and clear," Sprey says, describing how low-frequency radar was used during the 1940 air battle over the UK. "Thats the irony. Stealth is supposed to be the latest hook that obsoletes everything that came before it, but WWII radar sees it perfectly."

While the US military moved away from low-frequency radar after World War II, many of Americas adversaries did not.

"Other countries did not walk away from the long-wave [low-frequency] radar, [including] notably, Russia, which from World War II on to this day, and every generation, has produced radars of increasing sophistication and increasing ability in that range."

But the effectiveness of the F-35s stealth may be immaterial, since the true goal of the program is to funnel government money to Lockheed Martin.
"She is friends with the Klan. A lot of people dont realize that. Shes friends with Senator Byrd. Hes been an Exulted Cyclops in the Klan," said Will Quigg, a Grand Dragon of the KKK, according to Vocativ.

Robert Byrd, a senator from West Virginia who served as a leader with the hate group in the 1940s, who later came to regret his involvement, was referred to by Hillary Clinton as a "friend and mentor," at the time of his death in 2010.

"In the Bible, it says when you pray, pray in a closed, dark place by yourself," Quigg said. "Do not pray on the street corners where people can see youthats why I got $20,000 together and sent it to Hillary Clintons campaign anonymously."

Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin told Vocativ that the campaign fiercely rejects the endorsement from any group with ties to the KKK.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  German media cited Iraqi sources saying that the Russian national who serviced warplanes at the airbase 100 miles southeast of Baghdad was found dead in his room on Monday.

"Yes, we can confirm this information," First Secretary of the Embassy in Baghdad Aleksander Kozin told RIA Novosti, ruling out a violent cause of death.

The diplomat added that the embassy was in "close coordination" with local authorities investigating the causes of the unnamed engineers death.
An early battle took its toll on the leaders in $11,000 Preferred 2 Handicap for horse and gelding pacers at The Raceway at Western Fair District, and that was just fine for Londons reigning Older Pacing Horse of the Year.

Kendal Gustav is his name, and mowing down tired leaders was his game in the Monday evening feature on the half-mile oval.

Lorne House got away fifth in the six-horse field with Kendal Gustav, while Topcornerterror sprinted to the lead and roughed up the parked out tandem of The Wayfaring Man and Mckinney in the first turn. Topcornerterror eventually got them lined up, but in the process he sped to the quarter pole in :26.4. He got the speed backed off coming to the grandstand, but as he passed by the half in :56.4 he had race favourite Mckinney coming at him once again.

Topcornerterror and Mckinney battled to the three-quarter pole in 1:25.4, and just before reaching that marker House had Kendal Gustav on the three-wide hustle. He worked his way to gain a short lead at the top of the stretch, and his :29.1 closing panel earned him the win by 2-3/4 lengths over Tero in 1:55.1. Topcornerterror had to settle for third prize.

Trainer Scott McNiven co-owns the seven-year-old son of Life Sign-City Of Dreams, who was sent off at odds of 6-1, with Thomas Brodhurst of London and Shirley Griffin of St. Thomas, Ont. The gelding won for the fourth time this season for the 37th time in his career. The $5,500 payday lifted his lifetime earnings over $260,000.

Alfie Carroll enjoyed a banner night at the office thanks to a five-win performance on the 10-race card.

Carroll was shutout in the first three races before capturing Race 4 with Thebestofme (1:57.4). He came right back in Race 5 with Bearly A Secret (2:01.3) before registering the natural hat trick after scoring in Race 6 with Logans Fury (1:57). He then swept the Late Double with R U Machin Me (1:56.2) in Race 9 followed by his triumph with Crafty Master (1:56.1) in Race 10.

Carroll is light years ahead of the competition when it comes to winning races in Canada this season. His five-bagger in London lifted this years win total to 215. Bob McClure holds down second spot with 144 wins so far this season.

To view results for Monday's card of harness racing, click the following link: Monday Results  The Raceway at Western Fair District.
Buffalo Raceway will be holding a Chicken BBQ on Friday, May 6 from noon until 8 p.m. in the clubhouse with all proceeds from the dinner going to the Food Bank of Western New York.

"We are pleased to work with the Food Bank of Western New York for this event," Buffalo Raceway Operations Manager Jon Cramer said. "The Food Bank has a great relationship with the people from the Erie County Fair, too. The Food Bank benefits so many people in western New York, including the counties of Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Erie and Niagara."

The Weidner Chicken BBQ will include a half chicken, salt potatoes, coleslaw and a roll. The price is $10 per person and can be eaten in the clubhouse or taken out.

Tickets can be purchased now at Buffalo Raceway Guest Services or on the day of the event in the clubhouse. Also, everyone purchasing a dinner will receive $5 in free play at Hamburg Gaming.

There will be advanced wagering on the Kentucky Derby available during the day along with the running of the Kentucky Oaks from Churchill Downs. Buffalo Raceway will have live racing that begins at 5 p.m. The doors for simulcasting on this day will open at 10 a.m.

(Buffalo Raceway)
Although gas prices have risen in the past couple months, consumers will enjoy the lowest summer gas prices in a decade, AAA announced Monday.

Gas prices bottomed out in Washington at an average of about $2 a gallon in late February, and Monday they had reached $2.33 a gallon. A year ago the state average was $2.70 per gallon.

The cheapest gas in Longview Monday afternoon could be found at the Tennant Way Arco, which was selling for $2.09 a gallon, according GasBuddy.com. Three months ago, gas was selling for $1.99 a gallon in the Longview area.

Marie Dodds, spokesperson for AAA Oregon, said cheaper gas is boosting demand, and the travel group projects that Americans will set records this year for miles traveled and gas consumption.

In February, travel was up by 5.6 percent compared to last year, according to the Federal Highway Administration, and those trends are expected to continue. Yet growing demand isnt strong enough to boost prices significantly, especially as oil prices remain relatively low.

Analysts are projecting continued oversupply in the oil markets, but production cuts could influence those projections, according to AAA.

The price for a barrel of oil was $43 Monday, about $14 than a year ago.
Two small fires on 15th Avenue Friday appear to have been started intentionally, Longview fire officials said Monday.

Longview police Friday arrested Ernest Ervin Haulk, 58, of Longview on suspicion of second-degree arson and reckless burning.

Haulk is suspected of starting two fires on 15th Avenue Friday morning, including one near House of Smoke, 1054 15th Ave., about 4 a.m. and one at Goodwill, 1030 15th Ave., at 6 a.m., said Longview Capt. Robert Huhta.

At House of Smoke, Haulk allegedly lit a garbage receptacle on fire. It took about 15 minutes to squash the flames, according to Longview Fire. There was no significant damage to the building, but the container had melted to the ground, according to Longview Fire.

Later, police responded to a second call of a fire at Goodwill where Haulk was reportedly igniting pieces of paper near benches outside the store, Huhta said.
A handful of Castle Rock residents spoke critically of the citys moratorium on marijuana at a public hearing Monday.

The City Council approved the one-year moratorium March 14. It prohibits the production, processing and retailing of marijuana, both medicinal and recreational.

City Planner Deborah Johnson said the moratorium is in place while the city takes time to address a new state law that takes effect in July. It mandates that medical marijuana be sold in recreational stores that carry a medical-marijuana endorsement.

Before the moratorium Castle Rock allowed recreational retail marijuana sales but prohibited medical dispensaries. Johnson said the city needs time to discuss possible amendments to the current ordinance.

She said the moratorium has been set at one year, because the city has a large workload and limited staffing.

Nancy Chennault, a Castle Rock resident and volunteer coordinator for the Castle Rock America in Bloom, spoke at Mondays meeting.

She told the council that her mother, who suffers from dementia and osteoporosis, has benefited from medical marijuana. Her mother began taking oxycodone and hydrocodone after breaking her leg. However, the medications worsened her dementia, and she began hallucinating. Chennault said marijuana relaxed her mother and helped her sleep without exacerbating her dementia.

She actually acts like my mother again, Chennault said, adding that its also helped her two sisters. One suffers from multiple sclerosis and the other is battling ovarian cancer.

They could not exist without it, she said.

Shawna Cronk, 32, of Castle Rock said she supports any way of getting money into our town.

Why not open a business that could give us quite a bit more money back? she asked.

Dallas Carroll, 38, of Castle Rock said a one-year moratorium is too long.

He said he worries that by the time the moratorium ends, there wont be licenses available for Castle Rock dispensaries. Washington state caps marijuana retail licenses at 556.
Twenty years ago, Secrets Hair Design opened in a space decorated with white resin chairs, two sawhorses and a piece of plywood.

Owners Joan Gabrielson, Angie Chamberlain and Marilyn Patterson remember their first day of business, which they celebrated by popping a bottle of Champagne.

Today, the salon looks much different. It has plush seating, a glass table stacked with magazines and soft-green walls decorated with long mirrors.

Its also moved from its former location in the Park Plaza building on the Longview Civic Circle. In January, the business relocated to 1432 16th Ave. Gabrielson said they moved because Happy Kids Dental  which owns the Park Plaza building  was expanding and needed more space.

The new location is slightly smaller. They spent about $4,000 remodeling the place, which included adding new flooring.

Gabrielson said the move hasnt hurt the womens business or love for styling hair.

We love our clientele and love our work, Gabrielson said.

Gabrielson said she, Chamberlain and Patterson always planned to keep their business small and simple. Gabrielson and Patterson had each owned salons previously and didnt want anything too big.

We wanted a job that was secure, Gabrielson said. We discovered that doing hair was the part we liked the best.

Gabrielson said the business has thrived since opening, and clients have become like family.

When you have an established clientele, your best advertising is word of mouth, she said.

She said their reputation for good service also helps. Chamberlain said the trio accommodates their customers, often working extra hours in response to clients schedules.

Its just a comfortable spot for our clients, and they can count on us to go the extra mile for them, Gabrielson said. What Ive always believed is our job is to do our very best to make people look and feel their very best.
tech2 News Staff

Daimler and BMW have reportedly ended talks with Apple over a cooperation deal on an electric car, which could have been named, unsurprisingly, "iCar."

According to Handelsblatt, the US tech firm is looking for a partner that could lend it expertise in manufacturing an electric iCar. The favorite is believed to be Canadian-Austrian firm Magna. Apparently, talks with both German carmakers collapsed over the key questions of who would lead the project and, above all, which company would have ownership of the data.

Apple is primarily looking for German technology and specialists for the project, for which, the search is being conducted out of an office in Berlin. The company wants the car to closely integrate with its own cloud software.

(Also Read: The electric car is the future; but for now its just Apple and Tesla battling it out)

A recent report indicates that technology companies have increasingly set their eyes on the next technology wave. After mobile devices and wearables, it takes no prize for guessing that the next wave is indeed expected in cars. Apple has also hired former VP of Engineering at Tesla, and former Aston Martin Chief Engineer, Chris Porritt. It is believed that Porritt will work on special projects at Apple.

Project Titan is a secret project at Apple that is widely believed to house efforts on the electric and potentially self-driven car project. Recently, Steve Zadesky, who has been leading Apples electric car project, was reported to have quit the company. Earlier this month, Tesla announced the Model 3, which has been priced at $35,000 and would also be available for pre-order in India. The Model 3 surprised the industry with pre-orders totalling $14 billion at last count.
tech2 News Staff

Facebook is developing a stand-alone camera app, similar to disappearing photo app Snapchat, to increase user engagement, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The app, being developed by Facebook's "friend-sharing" team in London, is in its early stages and may never come to fruition, according to the report.

The company is also planning a feature that allows a user to record video through the app to begin live streaming, the newspaper reported.

Facebook declined to comment on the report.

This isn't the first time that Facebook is planning to take on Snapchat as we've already seen the failed attempt at building Slingshot. Late last year, Facebook had announced to shutter down its Creative Labs division that is responsible for apps such as Slingshot, Riff and Rooms. Moreover, the company has also pulled out all three apps from the Play Store.

Slingshot allowed users to sign up for the service with their mobile phone number and connect with friends in their phones contact list or, if they want, by finding their Facebook friends.

Photos on Slingshot disappeared from users phones shortly after they are viewed, reflecting a growing anxiety about privacy in the age of Internet social networking.

With input from Reuters
tech2 News Staff

Google just announced in its app updates blog that Microsoft Exchange support is coming to the Android Gmail app. Gmail currently allowed Yahoo mail, Outlook and other email service providers through IMAP or POP protocols. Microsoft Exchange was supported by Gmail, but only on Nexus devices. This update announces a gradual roll out over three days to all Android devices using the Gmail app.

Exchange is Microsoft's business email service. This update allows users to have their personal accounts and business accounts inside one app. The Gmail app also supports syncing of mail, contacts and calendar data with Exchange. To add the Exchange account in Gmail, go to settings, then navigate to Add Account, and choose Exchange from the list of available options. After that, enter the login details and the device should be good to go.

The timing of the announcement is suspiciously close on the heels of both Google, and Microsoft agreeing to drop regulatory complaints against each other. Those using Gmail on Apple devices, will not have the feature.
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Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, among others, have reportedly pledged to form a foundation in the name of legendary Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Russian billionaire and founder Yuri Milner held a screening of director Matthew Brown's "The Man Who Knew Infinity", a biopic on Ramanujam, over the weekend at the Silicon Valley, which was attended by the Who's Who of US super-elite, according to a source close to the film's unit.

"Sundar Pichai (CEO, Google), Sergey Brin (founder, Google), Mark Zuckerberg (founder, Facebook), Brendan Iribe (CEO of Oculus VR), and some other fifty other '1 percenters' of Silicon Valley were at Yuri Milner's house in Los Altos. Yuri hosted a very private screening and dinner for the film and they came out with tears," said the source.

Some of those, including Zuckerberg and Pichai, who saw this deeply moving film on the life of mathematician who journeyed from anonymity in his village in Tamil Nadu to everlasting fame in England have pledged to form a foundation in Ramanujan's name.

In the film, set in 1913, actor Dev Patel essays Ramanujan, a 25-year-old shipping clerk and self-taught genius, who failed out of college due to his near-obsessive, solitary study of mathematics.

Though Ramanujan had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made extraordinary contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions.

He passed away at the age of 32 in 1920.

"The Man Who Knew Infinity", which also stars Jeremy Irons, Devika Bhise, Stephen Fry, Toby Jones and Arundhati Nag, is slated to release in India on Friday.

IANS
Sheldon Pinto

Everyone is building, or planning on building, an electric car these days. Oddly, this list includes software giants such as Google. And as much as they would like to deny it, Apple as well. And of course you have car manufacturers such as GM and Tesla who have have been finding out long terms plans to monetise the same.

Of course there's also the popular ride-sharing service Uber that many are concerned about. Close competitor Lyft is also in the news. Recently, GM pumped in $500 million into Lyft to help it take on Uber and obviously get something in return.

After Tesla's recent show of power and dominance in the electric car space with a stunning 400,000 preorders, all eyes are on now on Apple who seems to surfacing in the news time and again. After breaking ties with automotive giant Daimler we now also know that Apple has broken ties with BMW over a data-sharing dispute.

Apple wanted the data coming from its car to be integrated with its iCloud service while BMW and Daimler wanted a make data protection the key element in its offering. What this resulted in a 'secret car lab' in Berlin where Apple is said to have hired 15-20 "top class" automotive experts to think openly, without boundaries, as opposed to the limited and conservative outlook (profit-oriented) most automotive companies have.

Apple is also said to have a long term plan to monetise its electric car platform in the form of what BMW has achieved with its Drive Now electric car-sharing service. Austrian contract manufacturer Magna Steyr is expected to build the vehicles for Apple.

While a majority of the attention is garnered by European and American brands, a recent showcase by Chinese Internet conglomerate, LeEco, seems to have take things to the far east. LeEco who has also partnered with luxury automaker Aston Martin and US-based, Chinese-backed Faraday Future, showcased its Super Car LeSEE concept and they seem to have a long term plan as well.

As reported earlier, LeEco plans to bank on its content and software offerings to make money off its electric car business. In fact, founder Jia Yueting also claimed that he would not mind offering his electric car for free and that they would make their business when customers used Le Ecos software products. The radical LeSEE concept indeed seems like fancy version (all concepts are) and the actual electric vehicle could look a bit more down to earth and humble.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk also hinted in Norway that he has a plan, that is similar to ride-sharing model similar to that of Uber. This one may not necessarily involve the the Model 3, but a simpler mode of urban transport that could carry a lot more people. Uber as we all know and often forget is a software company. It makes its monies based on the idea that people do not need to drive their own cars and even own them for that matter. Clearly, Musk wants to sell more cars so this may not necessarily be the right outlook.

GM's investment in Lift will have not have anything to do with its own plans more of secondary initiative to prevent Uber from growing into a bigger giant. It acquired Sidecar for that and out here its taking baby steps like everyone else. Its been a few years now and everyone's jumping onto the electric car and autonomous car bandwagon. In short, electric cars always have been a means to put on a if you can do it, I can do it better attitude. And so far for most it remains at that.

However, these are smaller risk free investments at the moment and the only company that has plenty banking on it is Apple due to its now dying hero product the iPhone. Moreover, with Apple expected to reveal a less than impressive quarterly report at its upcoming quarterly earnings call, the company may have to go all in and "re-invent" or "revolutionize" (like it usually claims it does) the electric car altogether to save itself.
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Snapdeal-backed PepperTap has decided to shut down its cash-burning grocery delivery operations and instead focus on expanding its logistics business. Citing issues like high customer acquisition costs and poor app integration with partner stores, PepperTap CEO Navneet Singh said the company was "losing cash on every order" and has decided to "preserve a large amount of the investor capital" than "be at the bottom of the abyss".

"We couldn't shake off the feeling that we were walking (not racing like some other companies) towards the edge of a cliff hoping that things will get better before we reach the abyss... The unique challenges of this business are not solvable in the short term and certainly not solvable without massive injections of capital. We would have to confront this issue sooner or later," Singh said.

PepperTap, which is controlled by Nuvo Logistics, has raised USD 40 million so far and counts e-commerce major Snapdeal, Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Ru-Net, Beenext and JAFCO Asia among its investors. Last year, it had also acquired Bengaluru-based delivery startup Jiffstore for an undisclosed amount.

When contacted, a Snapdeal spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.

The decision to shut operations will result in about 150 job losses. "We have about 200 people. While about 50 are being absorbed in the logistics business, we will have to let go of the others. We are offering compensation packages with upto three months of salary depending on the seniority and tenure of the employee," he said.

The company will now focus on expanding the logistics business. "We are already working with many e-commerce firms and have a strong reverse logistics operations. In the next few months, we will focus on strengthening our forward logistics," Singh said.

Nuvo has a presence in 32 cities in the country and works with e-commerce players like Snapdeal, Patym and Shopclues.

According to industry analysts, hyperlocal delivery startups like PepperTap, BigBasket and Grofers have been

feeling the heat of a slowdown in investment as they operate on wafer-thin margins and end up losing money on every delivery.

PepperTap was already scaling down operations in certain cities. "The most logical thing to do to solve all three of these problems simultaneously, was to halt operations in some cities. We decided on this list by looking at the size of our customer base in each city, and the pain we would cause to all stakeholders by shutting them down. Relatively new cities with a small customer base were selected for closure," he said.

In a blog, Singh said described his journey as "a roller-coaster with ups and downs in equal measure".

Set up in September 2014, the company was processing about 20,000 orders on an average daily by October 2015 and was the "only business in town to be operating on a 100 per cent inventory-less model".

"We were going to revolutionise grocery shopping. No more queues, no more parking hassles, no more bickering with sabzi-wallahs. We would bring the existing inventory of local stores online to our app and then deliver customer orders through our super-optimal, well-trained delivery fleet for a minimal charge," Singh said in the blog. He added that customers also seemed to love the app with local stores on its platform witnessing improving sales by an average of 30-40 per cent.

"In the race to pepper the whole country with PepperTap, we had brought too many stores online far too quickly.... To keep enticing customers to buy from our platform, we were spending a lot of time and energy to devise clever sales and discount schemes... This was not hugely problematic in itself, we had money in the bank and investors were on board with this plan," Singh wrote. However, the "harshness of a pessimistic funding environment globally also started creeping in", which Singh said found the company at "the toughest node in the decision tree yet".

"At this point, we were forced to ask ourselves whether our continuing to operate in the grocery delivery space was not, in fact, doing a massive disservice to our current investors and employees," he added.

PTI
Ex-air hostess found dead in city house

A former Qatar Airways air hostess was found dead at her West Rajabazar residence in the city on Tuesday. Police recovered the decomposed body of Humaira Zahan Sifti alias Sukhi, 35, from her 2nd floor residence of a six-storey building at 44/8 West Rajabazar in the afternoon, said officer-in-charge of Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Police Station GG Biswas. He said neighbours smelt bad adour coming out of the flat where Humaira had been living, and informed police. Later, a police team went to the flat around 4pm and recovered the decomposed body after breaking open its main door. Humaira was a former flight attendant of Qatar Airways, the OC said, adding that the reason behind the death is still not clear. -- Dhaka, Apr 26 (UNB)
CPA to construct monument of Liberation War, Muktijoddah Museum in port area : Shipping Minister

Shipping Minister Md. Shahjahan Khan MP said , Port workers will get Tk.35000 each as incentive bonus from this year. He remarked Chittagong Port is a golden gate of the country and the port workers irrespective of status rendering untried services to the smooth functioning of the country.

He disclosed it while addressing the reception function to the freedom fighters and their family members on the occasion of the 129th founding anniversary of Chittagong Port Authority at Port Bhaban premises as chief guest. The minister also said the proposal for intensive was sent to the concerned ministry .

He further disclosed that following the handling of 20 lakh TEUs containers in 2015 , this incentives will be given.

He mentioned that earlier on the 125th founding anniversary , Tk.25000 was given as incentives to the employees of the port. Port chairman Rear Admiral M. Khaled Iqbal presided over the function while the member of the Parliamentary Standing C ommittee on Shipping Ministry MA Latif MP wasthe special guest in it.

The minister in his brief deliberations disclosed that 254 successors of the freedom fighters were employed in CPA under FF Quota and this process will continue further.

Port chairman also said CPA will construct a monument of Liberation war and a Muktijoddah Museum in port area. Among others , Deputy conservator of CP Nazmul Alam, FF Wahidullah Sarker also addressed the reception function.


Municipal employees demand pension, salaries from govt

Jessore Correspondent :

Municipal officials and workers in Jessore demanded salary, pension and other benefits from government revenue division. To press the demands, the employees of different municipalities in Jessore submitted a memorandum to the prime minister via deputy commissioner, Jessore under the banner of Bangladesh Municipal Officers Workers Association. The association also held a press conference at Jessore Press Club on Monday. Afzal Hossain, president, Jessore district unit of the association read out the written statement in the press conference..
Bumper yield of maize in Rangpur Divn expected

The farmers of Rangpur division are expecting a bumper yield of maize during the current season due to conducive climatic condition and timely supply of necessary agri-inputs. Disappointed over the repeated price fall of paddy during last few years many farmers of the region have turned to maize cultivation this season instead of Boro cultivation, sources said. Satisfactory price and huge demand for maize in the country as well as abroad are also encouraging the farmers of the region to grow it on a large scale in their fields.

According to the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) Rangpur sources, maize has been cultivated on about 1,69,300 hectares of land in 8 districts under Rangpur division this year and the farmers are optimistic of achieving a bumper production of the crop. According to DAE sources, the farmers of the region have cultivated NK-40, PACIFIC-984, BRAC-60, BRAC-984, POLLEN etc varieties abundantly.

DAE sources said like in the mainland, the landless and river eroded char people have also brought more char lands under maize farming this year. It is learnt that maize corn is mainly used for poultry, fish and cattle feed. Therefore, its demand is rising gradually.Nazrul Miah (52), a farmer of Char Nazirdaho village under Kawnia upazila in Rangpur district told The Financial Express, "This year I have cultivated the crop on two bighas of land spending Tk 10,000 and am hopeful of earning at least Tk 60,000 to Tk 650,000 as profit from the produce", he also said. Shahin (43), a maize grower of Balua Mashimpur area under Mithapukur upazila in Rangpur said that he cultivated maize on 3 bighas of land this year and he is expecting a bumper yield of the crop.

Deputy Director of DAE Rangpur,said adequate water supply, agri-inputs and congenial weather condition enhanced maize cultivation in the region this year which made the farmers hopeful of attaining a bumper output of the crop during the current season. Encouraged by good profit farmers of the region are getting more interested in maize cultivation than the cultivation of the paddy in recent years, he added.

Less water consuming Aus rice cultivation stressed

Experts at a regional workshop have stressed on enchaining farming of less irrigation water consuming Aus, drought- and other stress tolerant rice to gradually reduce Boro cultivation and lessen pressure on underground water.

They also put emphasis on innovation of time-befitting scientific technologies, skills and stress-tolerant rice varieties along with farmers' endevours to increase rice production for ensuring sustainable national food security despite climate change impacts.

Regional Station of Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) organised the workshop with the Integrated Agriculture Productivity Project (IAPP) funding on IAPP activities at conference room of the Department of Agricultural Marketing here on Monday.

Director General of BRRI Dr Jiban Krishna Biswas attended the regional workshop as the chief guest with Principal Scientific Officer of BRRI and Head of its Rangpur Regional Station Dr Shahidul Islam in the chair.

Director (Research) of BRRI Dr Ansar Ali, Acting Rangpur Regional Additional Director of the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) SM Ashraf Ali and Project Manager (North Part) of the IAPP Mohammad Ali attended as the special guests.

Officials, experts, scientists and researchers of BRRI, DAE, Bangladesh Betar, Department of Agricultural Marketing, Agriculture Information Service, Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI) and farmers' representatives participated.

The experts, scientist and researchers related with the IAPP project presented 13 keynote papers citing results of their research activities on managements of cold, drought, pests' attacks and soil managements during crop cultivation.

They elaborately discussed the project activities being conducted at Rangpur BRRI Regional Station and success achieved in innovating cold-, drought-, submergence- and other stress tolerant rice varieties, disseminating innovated technologies and cropping patterns among farmers.

The experts said the IAPP activities are being conducted in Rangpur region since 2012 with financial assistance of the 'Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme' and under supervision of World Bank to improve livelihoods and enhance food output.

The main objective of IAPP is to increase rice production through enhancing cultivation of stress- tolerant rice adopting latest scientific technologies, crop management methods evolved by BRRI in the flood-, drought- and cold-prone areas of Rangpur region.

The chief guest asked the scientists and researchers for innovating newer stress- and disease- tolerant rice varieties and technologies to keep rice production increasing for ensuring food security despite climate change impacts due to global warming.

He called for reducing cultivation of the maximum irrigation water consuming Boro rice and enchaining farming of less irrigation water consuming Aus rice varieties evolved by BRRI to boost rice output for meeting food demand of the growing population.
UCBL signs agreement with Le Meridien Dhaka

United Commercial Bank Limited (UCB) has sign an agreement with Le MAridien Dhaka recently. Mohammad Shafiqur Rahman, Acting Head of Retail Business of UCB and Ashwani Nayar, General Manager of Le MAridien Dhaka signed the agreement on behalf of the

Economic Reporter :

United Commercial Bank Limited (UCB) has signed an agreement with Le Meridien Dhaka in the city recently.

Under the agreement, UCB Platinum & Gold Credit Card holders and UCB Imperial Customers will enjoy 15 percent discount on Best Available Rate of room, 15 percent on dine-in food consumption at any of the restaurant outlets, 15 percent on celebration cake, 12 percent on take away pizza at Favola, 15 percent in Fitness Center membership, 12 percent discount on laundry services and special privileges at banquet and events.

Mohammad Shafiqur Rahman, Acting Head of Retail Business of UCB and Ashwani Nayar, General Manager of Le Meridien Dhaka signed the agreement on behalf of their organizations.

Among others, Nehal A Huda, Head of Cards Business of UCB, Anwar Hossain, Director of Sales & Marketing of Le Meridien Dhaka and other senior officials of both the organizations were present at the event.


Deepa Khondaker again pairs up with Rawnak Hasan

Sheikh Arif Bulbon :

Viewers choice popular TV actress Deepa Khondaker worked with Rawnak Hasan in a fraction play two years ago for last time. After two years break, they again performed together in a serial titled Megh O Porir Golpo.

Directing by Ali Sujon story of the serial was written by Ahona Nasrin. Last Saturday shooting of the serial began in a residence in the citys Uttara area. Producing under the banner of Ahona Multimedia the serial is being made to telecast on Bangladesh Television (BTV).

Story of the serial revolves with a speech impaired girl. In the serial, Rawnak is acting in role of Sujon, while Deepa is playing in role of Naima.

While talking about the serial Rawnak Hasan told this correspondent, It is really an exceptional story based serial. Basically any serial is not made by this type of story. Story of the serial is focused on a speech impaired girl in the serial. After hearing the story I was really impressed and also agreed to work in the serial. As an actress, Deepa Khondaker is a talented. After reading the script for one time she can easily perform without seeing that script. It is always really enjoyable to work with her.

Deepa Khondaker shared her feelings by this way, I work a little bit now because if I do not like story and my role I do not agree to work. I most of the time give my time to family now. I have liked story of Megh O Porir Golpo for this I have agreed to work in the serial. As an actor, Rawnak always respect me. He is such a person by whom I can tell about everything of my family.

Director Sujon informed that the serial will be aired on BTV soon. Besides Deepa and Rawnak, Alvi, Joyraz, Fazlur Rahman Babu, Rifat Chowdhury, Fahmida Sharmin Fahmi, child actress Mohona, among others, also acting in different roles in the serial.


JUST closed after students' demo

Jessore Correspondent :

At least 10 students were injured when the police charged batons on them and other students of Jessore University of Science and Technology (JUST) on Tuesday to free the confined Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr Abdus Sattar. The administration, meanwhile, closed the university till May 11, police and university sources said, calling it summer vacation.

The police went for action to restore discipline and to free the confined VC, said Ilias Hossain, Officer in-Charge of Kotwali police station around 6pm.

Twenty-seven students were taken to the Kotwali police station after freeing the vice-chancellor from confinement. But no case was lodged, the OC added.

The agitating students kept the vice-chancellor under confinement in his office for four hours from 9am.

When phone call was given to the vice-chancellor, Kamrul Hasan, personal secretary (PS) to the VC told that he (VC) was in a meeting. The PS, however, told that the authority of the university had declared the varsity closed till May 11 from April 27.

The male students of the university have been asked to leave the hall-Shahid Mashiur Rahman Hall by 6pm on Tuesday, while the females have been asked to leave the hall-Sheikh Hasina Hall by 9am on Wednesday, he said.


Sher-e-Bangla : A focus on his leadership role

Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque :

Sher-e-Bangla was a force to be reckoned with so far as ordinary in Bengal concerned. In fact 'his soul was with them'. His endeavour to build up a grassroot platform as a countervailing force against exploitation and persecution was a clear 'indication of the nature of his political heartbeat than anything else he sought to do in life.' He established a meaningful link with the rural masses in the gangatic plain in order to impoverish their emancipation. Using his institutional capacity being the Chief Minister A.K. Fazlul Huq set up the Floud Commission in November1938 putting interests of the rural peasants first.

There was so much enthusiasm that Sher-e- Bangla sparked among the peasants. He was an icon among the Bengali peasants and rising jotdars who joined him in his institutional mission-all for the ordinary peasants. Being 'a full blooded Bengali, the friend of peasantry' he was frustrated to see the termination of the Floud Commission without any commensurate results and had to 'wait until 1950 to see his dream of ending landlord elitism-feudal over lordship in other words.

Bengal under colonial rule presented a desolate scene. From the very start of the colonial rule the peasants were seen to have been protesting colonial intervention affecting peasantry. Due to rack-renting and persecution of peasants by the rent receiving agents of East India Company and money lenders there happened to be the fast deterioration of the peasant economy. Bengal was treated as the hot-bed of anti-British rebellion with rising militancy of peasant movements against the oppression of the Hindu landed class. As a result of the periodic peasant eruption against the landlords and money lenders in the wake of abysmal poverty a handful of Muslim leaders 'started flirting with the Muslim peasantry vigorously promising land reform and pro-peasant measures projecting the Hindu zamindar-bhadralok-mahajan triumvirate as the sole enemy of both the Hindu and Muslim peasants.' 'Eventually Muslim leaders successfully organised Muslim peasants in the region and formed a government under the leadership of Fazlul Huq, who in 1937 became the Chief Minister of Bengal.' He and his Krisak-Praja Party 'committed to an anti-zamindar and anti-mahajan economic programme, as reflected in the election manifesto of Krisak-Praja Party that formed a government in April 1937 with Muslim league. Sher-e-Bangla represented the upper peasantry (jotdars). Several Muslim jotdars joined him to Espouse a peasant and anti-landlord programmes on the eve of 1937 election.

Bravery and intelligence were the characteristic traits of his leadership. His charisma enabled him to earn tremendous popularity. The way he demonstrated indomitable courage no other Bengali could do it to become the tiger of Bengal . "He was very close to Ashtosh Mukherjee (who was also known as Tiger of Bengal), father of Shyamaprasad Mukherjee (a Bengali politician who supported him as Prime Minister.)

After being alienated from the Congress party where he served as its General Secretary in 1916-1918, in 1929, he launched the Nikhil Proja Samiti. "Nazimuddin was so afraid of Haque that he even arranged grand feasts in several places. A peasant came to that and prayed for Haque. When asked why, he replied "It was Huq Saab who intimidated you, so you are arrenging such party, so we are getting this meal."In this election Abul Kashem Fazlul-Huq launched famous slogan still popular : Who gives the sweat should get the value. Who holds the plough should own the land.

He served as the Premier of Bengal. "His reign was unstable as it was marred by controversies. In 1938, the Independent Scheduled Castes seceded and the K.P.P. slowly started disintegrating. Following the betrayal by Indian National Congress, he also moved the Lahore resolution in 1940. In 1941, The Viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow nominated him to the Defence Council. But M.A Jinnah who headed the All-India Muslim League asked him to resign. He obeyed but, to demonstrate his unhappiness, resigned from the League Working Committee. As a result of Huqs' reluctance to obey the League ministers resigned.In 1945, he contested elections successfully on two seats. But his party was trounced badly by the All India Muslim League. In 1947,he joined the League campaign to include Calcutta in Pakistan. The other prominent supporters included Husseyn Shaheed Suhrwardy and Sarat Chandra Bose. The opposition of the Congress, however, ensured a partition of the province. Later on he accused Jinnah of not working hard enough for the cause. This time he managed to lead a fragile short lived alliance with Right wing-Hindutwa leader Shyamaprasad Mukherjee.

He was an admirer of Netaji, but he was very angry on him as Netaji started hunger strike on demand of removing Hallwell Monument, and Huq needed stability to discuss the land reform.

In fact Sher-e-Bangla occupies the foremost place among the leaders ceaselessly fighting for the emancipation of Bengali peasants. Indeed he was matchless and had only a few equals well known in history as humanists and philanthropists. By dint of his extraordinary genius, he created an era. In fact he was a versatile talent making remarkable marks in public life as politician, peasant leader, teacher, lawyer, administrator, statesman, freedom fighter and a person with incredible physical strength and guts.

He was an well-known Bengali politician having a large following especially amongst the ordinary masses in East Bengal. He was one of the tallest leaders of the Krishak Praja Party, a political party which was one of the major three players in the Bengal province of British India (along with the Congress and the Muslim League.")

He was also pro-active in politics after partition of India in 1947. He, with Bangabandhu, Maulana Bhasani and Shaheed Suhrawardy fought for democratic rights of Banglalis. "On 9 July, Mujib was elected General Secretary of East Pakistan Awami League at its council session. Efforts were made to forge unity among Maulana Bhashani, A.K. Fazlul Huq and Shaheed Suhrawardy with the objective of taking on the Muslim League at the general elections. To achieve this goal, a special council session of the party was called on 14 November, when a resolution to form the Jukta Front (United Front) was approved. The first general election was held on 10 March. The United Front won 223 seats out of a total of 237, including 143 captured by the Awami League."



(Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque, professor, department of Public administration, Chittagong University)
Take legal steps to get back stolen money

BD envoy's message to govt

Kazi Zahidul Hasan :

Bangladesh Ambassador in Manila has urged the Bangladesh government to initiate immediate legal steps to retrieve Bangladesh Bank's $81 million heist fund.

The fund was allegedly stolen by Chinese hackers from Bangladesh Bank (BB) account maintained with the US Federal Reserve Bank and deposited to four fictitious accounts maintained with the Philippines Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC).

The Bangladesh envoy to the Philippines John Gomes recently wrote a letter to the Foreign Ministry seeking legal steps as per the laws of Philippines to recover the fund from the country, foreign office sources said.

Gomes had several meetings with the Filipino authorities regarding the return of the fund and his counterpart asked him to follow legal steps as per their laws.

"It will take several more procedures before the money is turned over to Bangladeshi authorities. The authorities will first lodge a formal appeal to the Philippines Department of Justice (DOJ) through the Bangladesh's Attorney General's Office for the mutual legal assistance to retrieve the fund," read the letter.

It will also need to file a case against the respondent banks with a Manila court for their unlawful activity of "hacking or cracking" under the E-Commerce Act, an offense under the Anti-Money Laundering Act.

"The Bangladesh government will also have to formally enrol in the case as a party to claim the money and it the rightful owner of the fund. These are the procedures, among others, which that the authorities must be followed before the money is turned over to them," he added.

The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMCL) of Philippines earlier filed a civil forfeiture case before a Manila court, paving the way for formal proceedings to return part of the $81 million stolen from BB.

The Bangladesh envoy in the letter also said that the Bangladesh authorities will have to submit all supportive documents and evidences regarding the account hacking and illegal fund transfer and later it landed to the Philippines financial system.

"We will soon start legal procedures that needed to return the money from the Philippines. The Attorney General's Office and the BB have been given the task," Secretary to the Bank and Financial Institutions Division (BFID) of the Finance Ministry Md Eunusur Rahman told The New Nation on Tuesday.

Rahman is also leading the seven-member government task force formed to expedite the process of recovering the $81million BB fund which fraudulently channelled to the Philippines.

"We have already established communication with the countries where the stolen money was siphoned off and coordinating with various international organisations to bring back the fund," he added.

Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Ambassador in Manila on Tuesday visited the DOJ officials to discuss about the return of BB fund.

"We have assured the Bangladesh envoy that the money stolen by hackers from the Bangladesh Bank will be returned to its government as soon as possible but procedures have to be followed," acting Justice Secretary Emmanuel Caparas told media after the Ambassador from the Bangladeshi government visited the DOJ.

Caparas said the Bangladeshi government is concerned about the return of the money stolen from that country.

"The visit of the Bangladesh Ambassador was just to make sure and essentially to ask not just for our support or help but something could be done as soon as possible," Caparas said.

"We did assure them that that is being done. The legal process which involves making sure it goes as quickly as possible," he added.

Last February, instructions to steal $951 million from Bangladesh Bank, the Central Bank of Bangladesh, were issued. Five transactions issued by hackers or insiders worth $101 million from a Bangladesh Bank account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York succeeded, with $20 million traced to Sri Lanka and $81 million to the Philippines. The funds in Sri Lanka have since been recovered.

The international transfer desk of the intermediate bank, Deutsche Bank, further blocked $850 million in 35 transactions.
AQIS claims responsibility

Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) has reportedly taken responsibility for killing Bangladeshi gay-rights activist Xulhaz Mannan and his friend Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy. SITE, a US-based intelligence site, published a report on Tuesday, a day after the two were hacked to death in Dhaka's Kolabagan. Earlier, a Twitter post by Mufti Abdullah Ashraf, spokesperson for Ansar Al Islam, AQIS's Bangladesh unit, said their 'mujahidins' assassinated the two for being 'pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh'. "They were working day and night to promote homosexuality among the people of this land since 1998 with the help of their masters, the US crusaders and its Indian allies," read the announcement. It said further details will be added.

An editor of Bangladesh's only LGBT-rights magazine 'Roopbaan', Xulhaz also worked as a programme officer for USAID. Police said the assailants pretending to be delivery men entered his flat to hack both Mannan and Tonoy in their heads and necks, a method followed in earlier attacks on secular writers, bloggers and teachers. Witnesses said the attackers, clad in T-shirts and jeans, fled while firing from their guns and shouting 'Allahu Akbar'.
Imam, madrasa teacher held

Protesting killing of Prof Rezaul Karim Siddique students of Rajshahi University blocked the Dhaka-Rajshahi Highway on Tuesday.

Two more people have been arrested over the murder of Rajshahi University teacher Prof AFM Rezaul Karim Siddiquee.

Police have identified them as Raihan Ali, 32, the imam of a mosque in Siddiquee's village Dargamarhia, and Munsur Rahman, 48, a teacher of Gopalpur Madrasa - both under Bagmara of Rajshahi district.

Rajshahi Metropolitan Police Commissioner Md Shamsuddin said they detained the two during raids in the early hours of Tuesday. Raihan hails from Talgharia village and Munsur from Khajaparha village under Bagmara. Earlier, Hafizur Rahman, a leader of Rajshahi metropolitan ward unit of Islami Chhatra Shibir, was arrested over the murder of the English Department professor. The police commissioner said Raihan had opposed the establishment of a music school in Dargamarhia by Prof Rezaul.

"That's why Raihan has been picked up for interrogation," he said.

Shamsuddin said Munsur is a suspect in the killing. Hafizur, in his second year doing bachelor's in public administration at the university, was nabbed on Saturday night.

Prof Rezaul was hacked to death within 50 metres of his residence in Shalbagan of Rajshahi city on Saturday.
Airhostess found dead at her flat

Staff Reporter :

In the wake of secret killings one after another across the country, the police on Tuesday recovered the decomposed body of a former airhostess from her residence at West Rajabazar in capital city Dhaka.

The victim was identified as Humaira Zahan Chowdhury, 35. She was a former flight attendant of Qatar Airways, police said.

Local sources said the victim was a divorcee. She had been staying single in that house since separation from her husband in 2008.

Police suspected that she was killed three to four days ago. Police also said they have got information about frequent visits of her male friends in the house.

When contacted, Officer-in-Charge of Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Police Station GG Biswas said, "Getting information from the neighbours, we recovered the victim's decomposed body from her second floor flat of a six-storey building at 44/8 West Rajabazar at about 4:00pm."

The neibours phoned to police station after they got bad smell that coming out of the flat where Humaira had been living. After hectic effort for half-an hour, a team of police recovered the body by breaking open the door of the flat.

"The door was locked from inside. Initially, we didn't find any mark of injury in victim's body. A few drops of blood were found dried at the nostrils. We've launched an intensive investigation to know the real reason behind the death. The body was sent to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) morgue for post mortem," the OC said. About the process of investigation, Inspector [Investigation] of Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Police Station Sabbir Ahmed said they will wait for the post mortem report. "The reason behind the death will be cleared after getting the autopsy report."

Apart from local police station, different investigation teams of law enforcement agencies, including Crime Scene Unit of Criminal Investigation Department [CID], homicide squad of Rapid Action Battalion [RAB] and Detective Branch [DB] went to the spot to collect evidence.

Meanwhile, the recovery of decomposed body of a female flight attendant from her residence created high sensation among the residents of the capital when 'target killings and planned murders' have been threatening normal civic life in recent days.

Several persons, including Rajshahi University teacher, Chief Jail Guard of Kashimpur High Security Prison and ex-official of US embassy in Dhaka, were killed in the last few days by the professional killers in planned way.

In every case, the killers managed to accomplish their assignments by dodging security surveillance of police and other law enforcement agencies.


Anti-skimming device in ATM booths

A NEWS report on Tuesday said private banks are yet to install anti-skimming devices in their ATMs to defeat any move to steal cash by breaking the identity of users credit cards. We know that the Central Bank has asked all private commercial banks to install the anti-skimming devices following the stealing of over Tk 20 lakhs from several ATM booths of four commercial banks in early February this year. Cyber thieves broke the secrets of the credit cards putting a skimming device in the taller machine on that occasion. They copied the secret personal information number (PIN) of the cardholders and then created duplicate cards and used them to withdraw money from the ATM while the actual cardholders remained uninformed. The disclosure has already made the e-banking highly vulnerable using ATM facilities in street corners. Banks have been therefore asked to put the anti-skimming device to ensure security of all taller machines against cyber theft. We are appalled by the disclosure that most banks are yet to install the device at their ATMs, apparently not paying serious attention to the measure. We know that the cost of the new technology is not too much and whatever be that the most important thing is that depositors' money in the banks must be protected at any cost. The consequences of such neglect may be easily figured out from the big money heist that hackers had committed recently from Bangladesh Bank's account with Federal Reserve Bank in New York. Neglect and lack of operational safety at the Central Bank caused the Central Bank to lose US$ 101 million while it overcame the bigger risk of losing around US$ 1.0 billion on the occasion that hackers had only narrowly missed. Amidst such background, Bangladesh Bank asked all banks on February 15 to install the anti-skimming devices in their ATMs in one month time. But lack of progress in this respect is quite unjustified and upsetting as the continued vulnerability may probe quite catastrophic again any time. It is unthinkable that cyber thieves were able to break the highly secretive information on SWIFT machine, which gives foolproof protection to global money transfer from one bank to another. Nobody can ignore the technological risk now and we must say all banks must quickly install the anti-skimming device in their ATMs before such incident repeats itself again. The BB order is mandatory to all banks, because technology based money heist works unnoticed while perpetrators can rob the cash and spend it locally or move out it to any other destination.
Enough allocation for human development

LACK of enough budgetary allocation in transforming the demographic dividend into human capital stymies the country setback to attaining higher growth. While Bangladesh needs to get robust policies in place to best utilise the youthful populace and prepare for the imminent challenges to accelerate growth, the best tools which are education and training are becoming substandard. In expert view, 20 percent of budgetary allocation and six percent of the national GDP should be invested for quality education but in Bangladesh, it has been around 12 percent and 2 percent. Bangladesh cannot graduate to a middle-income country without increasing the resource allocation by 1 percent to 8 percent of the GDP.

When a country has more people to work, save and pay taxes, there is an opportunity to step up growth and development. Until 2030, the percentage of youths in terms of the total population will increase. So, the nation should reshape the education system from the primary to tertiary, and vocational in the line of moulding the future and must create not only more jobs but also better jobs ensuring higher wages and productivity. But, in the name of creative exam methods, introduction of MCQ pattern of questions, rampant high grades in public exams, lack of proper educational facilities, mushrooming of kindergartens and universities without quality checking and misgovernance in the sector have alarmingly deteriorated the education sector.

Meanwhile, a CPD research finding showed that the total expenditure on education was 1.6 percent of the GDP in 1990 which increased to about 2 percent in 2000, and since then it has been around that level. Among the South Asian countries, it is 5.6 percent in Bhutan, 4.6 in Afghanistan, 4.1 in Nepal, 3.9 in India and 2.5 percent in Pakistan. Educationists said the government made a global commitment that it would increase the allocation on education to 4 percent of the GDP and 15 percent of the national budget. It is not understandable how Bangladesh can achieve the other 16 goals of SDG without achieving the SDG goal on education.

Increasing expenditure on education is a must for quality education in keeping with the 7th five-year-plan and SDG, but it requires an efficient plan. And to utilise the demographic dividend, the country needs, as per the UNDP report, to create 25 million jobs between 2016 and 2030, which means 16 lakh new jobs should be available every year. To stimulate the job market, the government needs to improve the business environment to encourage new businesses as well as foreign investments. Under a proper leadership, establishing the rule of law, moulding the education sector to increase efficiency and enabling equity in the judicial system can enable Bangladesh to reach its desired goal. For all the changes, investment in education should be the first step.
The face is one of the first places that shows signs of aging. Fine lines and wrinkles can appear as early as your twenties, and by the time you reach your forties, you may start to see more pronounced changes such as sagging skin and deeper creases. But did you know that the face shape can also affect how you age?

How Face Shape Affects the Aging Process

The shape of your face can impact the aging process in a few different ways. First, certain face shapes are more susceptible to sagging skin and wrinkles due to gravity. Second, the thickness of your skin can also affect how quickly fine lines and wrinkles appear. And finally, the placement of your features can also play a role in the aging process.

Different Face Shapes and How They Age

There are seven different face shapes: oval, round, square, oblong, heart, diamond, and pear. Each face shape ages differently due to the inherent characteristics of that particular shape.

Oval

Oval faces are considered to be the ideal face shape because they are well-proportioned and tend to age very well. The skin on oval faces is of medium thickness, which allows it to retain its elasticity and resist wrinkles and sagging skin for a longer period of time.

Round

Round faces tend to age a bit quicker than oval faces because the skin on round faces is thinner and not as resistant to gravity. Additionally, round faces tend to have fuller cheeks, which can sag over time.

Square

Square faces are similar to round faces in that they also have thinner skin that tends to age quicker. However, square faces are less susceptible to sagging cheeks since the cheekbones are more pronounced. Instead, square faces tend to develop wrinkles around the mouth and eyes.

Oblong

Oblong faces have a longer shape with less width, which can cause the skin to sag and wrinkles to form around the mouth and eyes. Additionally, the thinner skin on oblong faces makes them more susceptible to sun damage, which can further accelerate the aging process.

Heart

Heart-shaped faces are characterized by a wide forehead and narrow chin. This face shape ages well overall, but the skin around the chin is thinner and can sag over time.

Diamond

Diamond-shaped faces have a narrow forehead and chin with wider cheekbones. This face shape also has thinner skin, which can cause wrinkles to form around the mouth and eyes. Additionally, the thinner skin around the chin can cause it to sag over time.

Pear

Pear-shaped faces are characterized by a narrow forehead and wide chin. This face shape is similar to diamond-shaped faces in that it has thinner skin and can experience wrinkles around the mouth and eyes. However, pear-shaped faces are less susceptible to sagging skin since the chin is not as pronounced.

So, which face shape ages the worst? While there is no definitive answer, square, oblong, and diamond-shaped faces tend to show signs of aging sooner than other face shapes. This is due to the thinner skin and less pronounced features of these face shapes.

However, all face shapes will eventually show signs of aging. The best way to combat the aging process is to take care of your skin by cleansing, exfoliating, and moisturizing on a regular basis. You should also wear sunscreen every day to protect your skin from the harmful rays of the sun. By following these simple steps, you can help keep your skin looking its best no matter what face shape you have.
Pre-purchase property inspection is a relatively new thing in the United Kingdom. Its not something that most people have heard about, but it has become increasingly popular over the last few years with the rise in property prices and increased demand for high quality homes.

What are the benefits of pre-purchase building inspection? What can you expect to find out when you pay someone else to inspect your home before you buy it? And what should you look for during an inspection?

Many people want to know if theyre buying a house thats been well maintained or if its had any serious problems. If youve found a place on the market that seems attractive, but then discover some issues after moving in, you may not be as excited about buying it as you thought you were.

Its important to do your due diligence when looking at properties. A lot goes into making a property appealing to potential buyers, from the landscaping to the flooring to the kitchen appliances. The same applies when inspecting a property  there are many things that need checking over to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Here are some of the benefits of performing a pre-purchase inspection:

You get to see exactly what will happen to your money

When you go shopping for a new car, youll probably be shown several different models. You might even be shown one that looks like a great value, but doesnt fit around all of the extra features that you want. When it comes time to actually buy the vehicle, however, you wont have seen how your money will be spent on it once you drive it off the showroom floor.

Likewise, when you shop for a new home, you dont really know what youre getting yourself into until you move in. In order to get a feel for whether the home youre considering is what you want, you normally have to spend quite a bit of time inside it. This allows you to learn more about everything that youre going to be spending your hard-earned cash on.

A pre-purchase building inspection gives you much the same kind of experience without having to spend thousands of dollars. Since youre paying for the service, you can expect to see exactly what youre paying for, instead of just seeing a vague idea of what you might end up with.

You find out about potential major repairs

Some buildings are very expensive to maintain, which means that owners often neglect them for the sake of saving money. While youre paying for a building inspection, youre also paying for a professional who knows how to spot signs of trouble and repair work that needs doing.

If you notice that a particular area of your new home needs fixing right away, you can call in an expert to take care of it quickly. If you find that theres something wrong with your boiler, you wont have to wait weeks for a plumber to come over and fix it. Instead, youll have access to a solution immediately.

You can save hundreds of pounds by finding out about potential problems early on

One of the biggest expenses when you first buy a home is the cost of moving in. Many people dont realize this until its too late. Buying a home involves not only paying for the actual house, but also for moving costs, furniture, and other items that have to be moved along with the home.

Having a good idea ahead of time of what youre likely to encounter can help you avoid these kinds of costs. If you know youll need to replace the plumbing system, for example, youll be able to put together a budget for the expense and plan accordingly.

You can protect your investment by finding out if the homes been well cared for

While there are plenty of people who think that houses always look better when theyre newly built, youd be surprised at how well maintained older residences can still look nice. Sometimes, though, those homes need some additional maintenance to keep them looking their best.

This could involve repairs that arent so noticeable or small improvements that you wouldnt consider otherwise. Even worse, some houses have fallen into disrepair without anyone noticing. This is why having a professional perform a building inspection prior to purchasing a home is such a big benefit.

Not only will it give you insight into the state of the property, but it will also give you peace of mind knowing youre not getting taken advantage of. As long as youre aware of the potential pitfalls, youll have less reason to worry about the state of your new home.

You can use information gathered during a building inspection to negotiate a lower price

If youre worried about buying a home because you suspect that it may need extensive renovation work, you may already have a rough idea of how much work youll need to do to bring it up to scratch. That knowledge can come in handy if you decide to buy the home.

You can use all of the details that you gather during a building inspection to present a realistic picture of what the home is worth to prospective buyers. If a potential buyer thinks that the home is worth more than what you paid for it, you can try negotiating a lower price.

You can sell your home faster and for more money

If you decide to list your home on the market soon after buying it, youll need to price it accurately in order to attract buyers. But if youve already done a thorough building inspection, youll know exactly what work is needed and what the current market conditions are.

In other words, youll be able to make a more accurate estimate of the amount of money youve invested in the home and how much its worth. If you find that youre selling your house for close to its full market value, you can use this information to convince the potential buyer that your home is worth the asking price.

Even if youre planning to stay in the home for a while before you decide to sell, the fact that you did a thorough building inspection will give you more confidence when listing it. Prospective buyers will know exactly what theyre paying for.

Your home will hold its value longer

As mentioned earlier, the value of a home depends heavily upon the condition of the building itself. If your home is in bad shape, potential buyers wont be interested in buying it. On the other hand, if youve performed a thorough building inspection and know what sort of repairs are necessary, you can offer your prospective buyer a compelling reason to invest in your property.

When you buy a home, youre essentially agreeing to have it inspected periodically to ensure that it stays in top shape. Not only does this allow you to avoid expensive repairs down the road, but it can also increase the value of your home.

You can make smart decisions about property investments

Buying real estate isnt as simple as just driving a couple of minutes to pick up a house. There are lots of considerations involved, ranging from location to cost. The same is true when youre investing in property.

If you find a house that meets all of your requirements, youll want to make sure that you have a solid understanding of where it stands with regards to the rest of the market. If you havent spent enough time researching the area, you could inadvertently end up with a bad deal.

There are lots of resources available online that can help you determine the overall level of competition in your area. They can also help you figure out if there are any properties that meet your requirements that you didnt know about.

If you own rental property, you can use the information to identify tenants who might cause damage

If you own rental property and youve noticed that certain tenants consistently cause damage, you can use the results of a building inspection to identify them. You can then contact them directly to let them know that youre watching them closely and that you dont appreciate the problem theyre causing.

They might start taking better care of their homes, which would be good news for everyone. It could also be the case that youll find out that theyre responsible for previous damages that werent caught during a previous visit.

You can make smarter decisions about hiring contractors

If youve hired contractors to build or repair your home, you might want to ask them for references. However, unless you perform a thorough building inspection, you might not know exactly what to look for.

For instance, maybe you only checked the roof for leaks or the walls for cracks. You might not have looked underneath the foundation for anything that could cause a future issue. By performing a building inspection, you can ensure that you hire reputable contractors who will be trustworthy with your money.

You can avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition

Of course, the main benefit of structural inspections perth is that it helps you avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition. Before you make the decision to buy a home, you should do whatever you can to find out about the state of the building.

You can also ask your realtor about what sorts of inspections are typically recommended. Some agents say that its standard practice to check the heating system, the roof, the electrical wiring, and the floors. Others will tell you that they recommend that you check the entire structure.

Either way, if you choose to hire an inspector, youll find out exactly what needs to be fixed and how much it will cost to do so.

As a result, it can be concluded that a pre-purchase building inspection is highly important for the buyers because it provides transparency regarding the current conditions of the structure. Additionally, the building owner is made aware of any upgrades or repairs that are required, which could lead to a fair deal throughout the purchasing and selling process.
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The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now.

Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market.

In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender.

India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex.

Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted.

But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted?

Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner.

If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems.

I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now.

I want more variation in masturbation

I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own.

If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end.

What is sex toys for Indian?

Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation.

It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms.

They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable.

Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner.

The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner.

It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past.

In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping.

Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order.

In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing.

Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome.

Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own.

But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance.

More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around.

Sextoy situation in India

Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years.

In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India.

Mumbai

Kolkata

Bangalore

Delhi

Chennai

Hyderabad

These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India.

In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well.

If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too.

If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it.

What are Sextoys for beginner?

Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms.

Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy.

I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion.

I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy.

If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma.

Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it.

Advantages of using sextoy for Indians

There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians

You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways.

Can have stimulating sex

Can develop new sexual zones

If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern.

However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways.

You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation.

Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever.

There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure.

This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it.

When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems.

It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms).

For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles

[Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou...

Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India.

Sextoy for beginner men in India

So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners.

For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men!

The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men

Masturbator

Cock rings

Love Doll

Sex Lubricants

Toys for the prostate

Lets check each one in detail.

Masturbator

The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products.

It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands.

Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands.

They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.)

Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much.

Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! !

Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa   SEXToys India PR  (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018

Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood.

If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here

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Cock Ring

A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis.

It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow.

It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber.

In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection.

Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction.

It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it.

Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time.

Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function.

Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy.

You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect.

[Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat...

Love Doll

Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex.

There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women.

Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price.

The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true.

You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste.

There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice.

You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls.

If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here

Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to...

Sex lubricants

Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules.

It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution.

Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse.

There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent.

Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent.

If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here.

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Toys for the Prostate

Another sextoy for men is prostate toys.

The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line.

Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men.

Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men.

What is the prostate?

The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm.

You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus.

By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms.

Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.)

The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation.

Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure.

sextoy for beinner women in India

The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy.

The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy.

Vibrator.

Dildo

Electric Masserger

Lets check out what each one is in detail.

If you want to check out womens toys, click here.

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Vibrators

A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator.

Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy.

It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy.

Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women.

For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators.

Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex.

Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself.

This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual.

Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men.

When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons.

Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most...

Dildo

A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis.

It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass.

A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it.

They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well.

It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device.

A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo.

Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands.

For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis.

This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one.

To learn more about dildo, please click here.

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Electric Masserger

A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores.

It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low.

Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels.

Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation.

It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure.

For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm.

It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out.

If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager?

To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here.

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How to choose a sextoy for Indian

Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one.

Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points:  Does the size fit you (the partner)?

Does the size fit you (your partner)?

Is the environment able to produce sound without problems?

Price range

First of all, the choice of size is quite important.

Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women.

For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage.

Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems.

Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise.

If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level.

Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it.

Finally, there is the price range.

The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest.

Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy.

Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy?

I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance.

For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics.

If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out.

How to buy sextoys in India

The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping.

For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below.

Sextoy is one of them.

Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping.

SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India.

They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry.

Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card.

To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy.

ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal.

Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on.

Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture.

Cautions for Indians using sextoy

When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind

Keep sex toys clean

Watch out for electrical leakage

Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy

As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone.

Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there.

It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case.

In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness.

Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful.

If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it.

You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly.

Summary

What did you think?

In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India.

The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future.

As India is a rather closed-minded country, it can be difficult to be open about ones sexual habits and values.

However, being faithful to ones desires by properly dissolving ones sexual desire is very effective for ones physical and mental health.

If this is your first time to learn about sextoy, or if you are interested in using sextoy, why not give it a try?

Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women.

I want to read more! If you think its a great idea, please bookmark it.
Throughout the next three days, six different county high school programs will host three different trade shows to present the public what students have been working up all year long.

The Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities, or CEO, Program will host a series of trade shows  Tuesday in Harrisburg, and Thursday with one in Marion and another in Carbondale.

The shows kick off from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. tonight at the Bonan Business Center, 540 N. Commercial St. in Harrisburg. This show will highlight the businesses from the Saline County CEO Program.

On Thursday, students from the Williamson County CEO program will meet from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the The Pavilion of the City of Marion at 1602 Sioux Drive. Facilitator Brandi Bradley said there will be 12 students showcasing 11 businesses. Two students have decided to partner together.

She said the trade show is where the community can see how hard the students have been working all year.

The community should look at them as future entrepreneurs. They are not just students, they are entrepreneurs, Bradley said. This is a business, not a class.

Individuals attending the shows will have the opportunity to buy products, sign up for services and book appointment times with the students at each business.

Jackson County CEO Facilitator Ken Stoner said this is like a typical trade show.

These are registered businesses that will be charging sales tax, he said. The knowledge that they received over the year will be put into that one night.

The Jackson County Program, along with the Union, Perry and Randolph CEO programs, will host from 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Dunn-Richmond Economic Development Center, 1740 Innovation Drive in Carbondale.

Stoner said there will be 31 businesses at the event and they will be grouped by the type of product or service the business owners are marketing, not by county.

He said there isnt anything else he can do to prepare the students for the trade show, saying that every event up to this point, the students have exceeded his expectation.

Its about having faith in them and trusting that everything will go fine, Stoner said. There isnt a whole lot I can do to make sure this runs smoothly. This is all on them.
BENTON  A Buckner man was arrested shortly after midnight Tuesday for an alleged burglary and arson, Franklin County Sheriff Don Jones said in a news release Tuesday.

Robert E. Hartley, 39, was taken into custody for for a Friday incident in rural Benton. Jones said more charges are pending as the investigation continues into the incident and others also reported in the same area that are believed related.

Hartley is being held in the Franklin County Jail without bond. The arrest in rural Orient is under review by the states attorneys office.

The investigation is being conducted by the sheriffs office, the state fire marshal and Illinois State Police.

-- Nick Mariano
The Orangeburg Department of Public Utilities wants its customers to beware of a phone call scam.

The caller threatens to cut off power unless the person sends money.

DPU spokesman Randy Etters said individuals are being called by someone identifying themselves as South Carolina Electric & Gas and telling people that their power is about to be disconnected within a short time unless they pay their bill.

Please be advised that they are trying to steal your money, Etters said. Do not offer to pay them anything at all, and if you have any questions, please call 803-268-4100.

Etters said the scammer will ask you for your address and tell you that you owe money.

If there are any questions about their account, people should call DPU directly, Etters said. We are not going to call them as representing SCE&G. Our customers know the way our structure works. We dont do courtesy calls, we dont call them with threats to disconnect within 30 minutes. We take our customer service very seriously.

SC&G recently warned about such a scam.

The utility said customers have reported instances of individuals portraying themselves as SCE&G employees over the phone, warning of a late utility bill. Scammers will often threaten to turn a customers service off if the customer doesnt make a payment immediately. In some cases, the scammer instructs the customer to purchase a prepaid debit card, or the scammer may ask for the customers credit card information.

Other common elements of these scams may include:

 The scammer often targets small businesses, such as restaurants, hoping to create a higher sense of urgency.

 The scammer suggests a specific store from which the customer can purchase a prepaid card. Scammers like prepaid debit cards because they can obtain the money on the card without showing a photo ID.

 The scammer uses the practice of caller ID "spoofing," which causes the customer's phone to display a false caller ID. Often, the scammer will "spoof" a local number, perhaps even using the utility's standard customer service number.

SCE&G may call a customer about an overdue account balance, but we will ask the customer to provide information that only the customer and SCE&G would know, to validate that the call is legitimate, said Sam Dozier, vice president of customer service for SCE&G. "If customers have any doubt whatsoever about the legitimacy of a caller, they should hang up and call our customer service line at 1-800-251-7234."

Dozier said bill payments are accepted at SCE&G business offices, by mail, authorized payment agencies, online or through SCE&G's phone payment provider, BillMatrix, by calling 1-800-450-9160.

If you think you may be a victim of a scam, notify your local law enforcement agency immediately, Dozier said.

The South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs also has a phone line for reporting consumer scams: 800-922-1594 or 803-734-4200.

For more information about how to safeguard against scams, watch the SCE&G video at http://ow.ly/yuyou. Follow the company's social media channels: Twitter.com/@scegnews; Facebook.com/scegnews; and YouTube.com/scegnews for the latest updates regarding this issue.
Bamberg resident Brittany Barnwell has been hired as the new Bamberg County emergency services director.

Barnwell is a former employee of the Emergency Services Department. She returns to the county after departing her position with the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, where she served as the regional emergency coordinator.

Barnwell will be responsible for directing and coordinating the countys emergency preparedness and emergency services communications personnel by planning, directing, managing and overseeing all the activities and operations of the countys Enhanced 911 system and ensuring all emergency services revenues and expenditures are handled according to state law and funding guidelines.

Barnwells state grant-writing experience is expected to be beneficial to Bamberg County and the Emergency Services Division in their ongoing efforts to identify and secure grant funding for the county.

My past jobs gave me the knowledge and training needed for this position. Just seeing how much I could help the community makes me want to work even harder for Bamberg County, Barnwell stated in a recent interview.

Barnwell said her goals are centered on what is best for the future of Bamberg County Emergency Services and the citizens of Bamberg County.

Barnwell added, Im so happy to be able to give back to my community, and I look forward to making Bamberg a better-prepared and aware county.

Bamberg County Administrator Joey R. Preston stated, Bamberg County is fortunate to have Brittany join its team. She brings an exciting attitude and work ethic to one of the most important positions in county government.
Officials hope to open Orangeburg County up to new agribusiness investments by offering economic development incentives, according to Councilman Harry Wimberly.

Wimberly was approached in December by the S.C. Department of Agriculture to see if the county would support incentives to attract agribusiness.

As a farmer, Wimberly said he is always supportive of ag-related business coming into the county.

Anytime we can bring new industry into Orangeburg County is a plus, he said. I am glad they entertained us first before any other county.

Earlier this month, the county became the first in the state to approve a resolution supporting incentives for agribusiness development.

Agribusiness includes agrichemicals, breeding, crop production, distribution, farm machinery, processing, seed supply, marketing and retail sales.

Agribusiness is listed as the number one industry in the state with a $42 billion impact annually.

Wimberly says the resolution helps level the playing field so agribusiness can more readily locate in the area.

Until now, agribusiness has been treated like large manufacturers, Wimberly said. Typically, an industry would have to invest between $10 million and $20 million, depending on the number of employees, to qualify for incentives.

Under the resolution approved by County Council, an agribusiness investing at least $5 million in brick and mortar within Orangeburg County could qualify for incentives such as the fee-in-lieu of tax agreement, the multi-county business park or special source revenue credits.

Wimberly said the county would like to see perhaps a peanut shelling plant or maybe a soybean or poultry processing plant come here.

He says the resolution is the first step. County Council will later consider an ordinance approving the change.

Wimberly said the incentives are completely separate from the ag-land tax exemption currently in place for growers.

Agricultural land is taxed at a 4 percent assessment ratio. The value of the land is based on the soils ability to produce, which is typically less than market value.

The agricultural assessment is available for South Carolina landowners who grow crops or timber on their land. The property must be at least five acres to qualify for an agricultural assessment or, if under five acres, be owned in combination of other tracts.

The Orangeburg County resolution states that the relative lack of manufacturing, warehouse and distribution facilities has led millage rates in rural counties to be higher than the South Carolina average. That, in turn, has made it difficult to attract industries.

It also says the real property tax revenue created as a result of an agribusiness incentive would produce the highest margin real property tax revenue possible due to the low-impact use and low cost of service nature of the agribusiness developments.

Orangeburg County already has an agribusiness presence within its borders.

About 14 agribusiness companies have found a home and success in the county, including: Cactus Farms, Dempsey Wood Products, Cox Industries, Bimbo Bakeries, Carolina Fresh Farms, Orangeburg Pecan, Mars Petcare, Lees Sausage and Super-Sod.

The county has also sought to attract other agribusiness-related projects such as German-based Klausner Holding USA.

Four years ago, the company announced its plans to build a lumber mill in Orangeburg County on Rowesville Road that would produce more than 700 million board feet annually of dried lumber and by-products, such as bark, wood chips, sawdust and dry shavings.

County officials said this month they were still pursuing the project, although nothing has been finalized.

Bamberg County

Agribusiness is also a significant sector in Bamberg County.

Some of the agribusiness industries in Bamberg include Masonite, Green Link Industries, Denmark Lumber, Blackwater Barrels, Lowcountry Wood Preserving and Kinard Wood Processing.

These are all in the forest products side of agribusiness, and the list does not include the many jobs from farming, SouthernCarolina Alliance Vice President of Marketing Kay Maxwell said.

Maxwell says the county has, been very supportive in terms of incentivizing agribusiness manufacturing jobs, which are just as valuable as jobs in other manufacturing sectors.

Incentives are generally based on the number of jobs created, wages and capital investment, and the incentives would depend more on the wage and salary ranges rather than industrial sector, Maxwell said.

Maxwell said the SouthernCarolina Alliance has been engaged in a specific agribusiness lead generation effort for the last two years.

We have made agribusiness recruitment a priority, Maxwell said.

Maxwell said the alliance has focused on processing and manufacturing in the agribusiness sector, which will provide better-paying jobs.

However, we are also recruiting distribution operations as well, she said. With the growth of markets in the Southeast United States, as well as South America, our opportunities in food processing and distribution are growing in South Carolina.

As the economy picks up, construction is expected to grow as well. When this happens, the forest products sector also grows.

Calhoun County

Calhoun County Development Commission Executive Director Pat Black said the county has not considered specialized agribusiness incentives, but it is supportive of agriculture.

Agriculture in Calhoun County has always been a mainstay, Black said. It is a large segment of our economy in Calhoun County. We want to do all we can to promote it and help it.

Black said Calhoun County will look at agribusiness and incentives on a case-by-case basis.

The county does have some large industries that have received incentives, such as sausage-casing manufacturer Devro, the Starbucks coffee-roasting plant and Southeast Frozen Foods.

Other agribusiness operations are Wannamaker Seed, Blanchard Farm Equipment, Hi Cotton Greenhouses, Helena Chemical Company and Golden Kernel Pecan Company.

If you eat, wear clothes or live in a house, you are involved in agriculture, Black said.

Calhoun County Administrator Lee Prickett said in the past, the county has looked for at least a $5 million capital investment for a fee-in-lieu incentive. It would do the same for any future agribusiness company.

Agribusiness is very important to Calhoun County, Prickett said. He said in Calhoun County alone, there are about 1,287 jobs and $251 million in direct agribusiness output in the county.

As to whether or not Calhoun County would follow in the heels of Orangeburg County, Prickett said, We are not opposed to something like that. It just has not come up.
Chen's Empty and Full uses both painting and sculputure to show the crossover between new and traditional in art. Rheagan's Pieces, Parts, Place is a series of photographs abstracting urban architecture.

Empty and Full, a selection of paintings and an installation by Albuquerque-based artist Xuan Chen. Empty and Full comprises three bodies of work with flowing color combinations, hard-edged patterns and hybrid forms of painting and sculpture. These series of vivid abstract works show the crossover between new technologies of image making and traditional painterly practice.

Chen begins each process by constructing colorful 3D drawings on her computer. Based on digital drawings, Chens Light Threads paintings explore transparency and luminosity. These dimensional acrylic paintings made with bright embroidery threads capture and reflect light. Empty and Full is a series of paintings created by meticulously arranging strips of poured vinyl paint on wood panels. Her large-scale installation incorporates sewn fabrics, mylar film, felt, wood and paint.

Born in Qingyang, China, Chen moved to the United States to complete a PhD in materials science and engineering at the University of California in Berkeley. She then received her MFA in studio art from the University of New Mexico. Chen has won the Miami University Young Painters Competition, the Reggie Gammon Memorial Award from the Harwood Art Center in Albuquerque, and a WorkingArtist.org grant.

In the project room is Pieces, Parts, Place, a series of photographs by Hayley Rheagan, who plays with abstracting urban architecture by using the cameras tendency to flatten space. With her keen eye for symmetry and color, Rheagan transforms naturally found geometric patterns into vibrant compositions. Originally from New Mexico, Rheagan currently lives and works in St. Petersburg, FL.
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SINGAPORE  Thomson Reuters, the worlds leading news and information provider, and the Thomson Reuters Foundation will host the second Trust Forum Asia conference in Singapore on April 28. Building on the strengths of the Trust Women Conference, the worlds leading anti-trafficking forum, Trust Forum Asia will bring together more than 200 business and thought leaders, together with human rights advocates and legal experts to explore real solutions to fight human trafficking and modern-day slavery across the region.

According to leading anti-slavery NGO Walk Free, approximately 36 million people around the world are enslaved, driving a growing industry that the International Labour Organisation believes to be worth over US$150 billion a year. With 60% of the worlds slaves in Asia, Trust Forum Asia aims to shed light on key issues affecting the Asia-Pacific region, from protecting migrant workers trapped in servitude, to achieving justice for those victims of trafficking, abuse and exploitation in the multi-billion dollar fishing industry. The event will also feature stories of survival and look at the key challenges and opportunities for corporations tackling the issue of forced labour in the supply chain.

Through dedicated Action to Impact circles, Trust Forum Asia delegates will be encouraged to forge tangible commitments and create actionable initiatives to address specific challenges posed by human trafficking and forced labour across the Asia-Pacific region.

Kevin Hyland, the United Kingdoms first Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and Andrew Goledzinowski, Australian Ambassador for People Smuggling and Human Trafficking, will provide keynote remarks.

Speakers at the Forum will include:

Longdy Chhap , Intern Counselor, Flame Ministries Student Center (Flame)

, Intern Counselor, Flame Ministries Student Center (Flame) Nick Grono , CEO, Freedom Fund

, CEO, Freedom Fund Andy Hall , International Affairs Advisor, Migrant Worker Rights Network (MWRN)

, International Affairs Advisor, Migrant Worker Rights Network (MWRN) Andrew Jones, CEO, Asia Pacific, Barclays

CEO, Asia Pacific, Barclays Sridevi Kalavakolanu , Senior Director, Responsible Sourcing, Walmart

, Senior Director, Responsible Sourcing, Walmart Archana Kotecha, Head of Legal, Liberty Asia

Head of Legal, Liberty Asia Darian Mcbain, Group Director of Sustainable Development, Thai Union Group

Group Director of Sustainable Development, Thai Union Group Piya Muqit , Executive Director, Justice Centre Hong Kong

, Executive Director, Justice Centre Hong Kong Cecilia Oebanda , Director, Visayan Forum

, Director, Visayan Forum Jelita Pandjaitan , Partner, Linklaters

, Partner, Linklaters Mas Achmad Santosa , Head of IUU Fishing Task Force, Indonesia

, Head of IUU Fishing Task Force, Indonesia Scott Stiles, General Manager, Fair Employment Agency (FEA)

General Manager, Fair Employment Agency (FEA) Steve Trent , Executive Director, Environmental Justice Foundation

, Executive Director, Environmental Justice Foundation Mimi Vu , Director of Advocacy & Strategic Partnerships, Pacific Links Foundation

, Director of Advocacy & Strategic Partnerships, Pacific Links Foundation Jolovan Wham, Executive Director, Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics

Slavery is the ultimate human rights abuse. Across Asia, millions of men, women and children are caught in forced labour and sex trafficking, said Monique Villa, CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Trust Forum Asia is a powerful platform to engage business leaders in the fight against this odious and lucrative crime. At a time when shareholders are increasingly vigilant over the socio-economic footprint of many corporations, this conference makes an important contribution to ensure that the fight against slavery is perceived both as a human rights priority, and a business imperative.

Last month, the Thomson Reuters Foundation launched the Stop Slavery Award to honor businesses going above and beyond in their effort to clean supply chains from forced labour. In the form of artwork by Anish Kapoor, the Award aims to spark a virtuous cycle that will trigger more corporations to take action to investigate, improve, and eradicate unfair and illegal labour practices in their supply chains. The first Stop Slavery Awards will be presented on November 30 at the Trust Women Conference in London.

The nature and complexity of slavery requires governments, regulators, corporations, and NGOs to take action to bring an end to trafficking which preys on Asias most vulnerable individuals. Trafficking and modern-day slavery remains highly lucrative. Blocking access to the financial system, using data and looking deep into supply chains are needed to end the exploitation of people for profit. Asia needs a strategy to fight this crime, said Kimberley Cole, Head of Sales Specialists, Asia, Financial & Risk, Thomson Reuters.

For more information about the Forum or event tickets, please visit: www.asiaforum.trustwomenconf.com. Follow the Forum on #TFAsia /@TrustForumAsia and Trust Forum Asia Facebook.

Barclays is the headline sponsor of Trust Forum Asia. Other sponsors include Linklaters, Hubbis, and Beath Chapman. Event partners include Ruder Finn Asia, Reuters, Asian Legal Business, Liberty Asia and Quintessentially Events.

About Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters is the worlds leading source of news and information for professional markets. Our customers rely on us to deliver the intelligence, technology and expertise they need to find trusted answers. The business has operated in more than 100 countries for more than 100 years. Thomson Reuters shares are listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges (symbol: TRI). For more information, visit www.thomsonreuters.com.

About Thomson Reuters Foundation

The Thomson Reuters Foundation acts to promote socio-economic progress and the rule of law worldwide. The organization runs initiatives that inform, connect and ultimately empower people around the world: access to free legal assistance, media development and training, editorial coverage of the worlds under-reported stories, and the Trust Women conference. For more information go to trust.org.
/By Azernews/

By Fatma Babayeva

Italy was the main importer of the Azerbaijani oil in 2015, Kamran Mammadzade, the deputy manager of Crude Oil and Oil Products Export Department at SOCAR said on April 25.

Mammadzade emphasized that Italy imported about 25 percent of Azerbaijans total oil exports in 2015.

The volume of Azerbaijani oil exports totaled 35 million tons in 2015, he said. Among the biggest importers of Azerbaijans oil were Italy (25 percent), Germany (13 percent), Indonesia (10 percent), Israel (9 per cent) and France (8 percent).

Moreover, the geography of Azerbaijans oil deliveries has grown significantly during recent years. Currently, Azerbaijans state owned energy company SOCAR supplies oil to more than 30 countries in Europe, Asia and America, the deputy manager added.

Meanwhile, SOCAR's share in the total volume of Azerbaijani oil export amounted to 22.1 million tons. Azerbaijan exported 1.9 million tons of oil products and 241,000 tons of petrochemical products in 2015.

Mammadzade further added that 25 percent of SOCARs oil products exported to Malta, and 16 percent to Turkey last year. In addition, the volume of the oil product supplies to Georgia increased by14 percent. The top five importers of Azerbaijans oil products include Gibraltar with 10 percent and Italy with 9 percent.

The Netherlands (with 22 percent), China (19 percent), Turkey and Russia (16 and 15 percent respectively) became the main importers of petrochemicals.

The country's largest hydrocarbon basins are located offshore in the Caspian Sea, particularly the Azeri Chirag Guneshli (ACG) field. Similar to its share of total production, ACG also holds over 70% of Azerbaijan's total reserves, with about 5 billion barrels located in this field.

SOCAR produces about 20% of the country's oil output. The remaining 80% of Azerbaijan's output comes from the ACG oil fields by the BP-operated Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) and at the BP-operated Shah Deniz field (which produces oil condensate).

Azerbaijan exports oil through four routes  the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Supsa (western route) and Baku-Novorossiysk (northern route), as well as by rail.
A scientific and practical conference marking the 100th anniversary of outstanding scholar, Professor Lola Barsuk has been held at Azerbaijan University of Languages. The event was supported by the Ministry of Education.





The conference was attended by Deputy Minister of Education Firudin Gurbanov, Azerbaijani Ambassador to Russia Polad Bulbuloglu, First Deputy Director General of TASS, Lola Barsuks son Mikhail Gusman, Director General of AZERTAC Aslan Aslanov, students and teachers. Speakers at the event highlighted Lola Barsuks achievements in education science, her outstanding research in the field of bilingualism. Head of the department of linguistics Gulnar Huseynzade, Associate Professor Amrali Shiraliyev, PhD in Educational Sciences Gunay Shiraliyeva spoke about the role of Barsuk in educational and social activities in Azerbaijan.





Lola Barsuk was a renowned scholar, not only in Azerbaijan but also across the former Soviet Union. She worked as a Head of the Department of foreign languages at the Institute of Foreign Languages (now Azerbaijan University of Languages), and Vice-rector of the University for 17 years.





Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Russia Polad Bulbuloglu said: "Lola Badgers two sons Yuli and Mikhail have been friends of mine for many years. They are true patriots of Azerbaijan, they are proud of having been born in Azerbaijan."





Director General of AZERTAC Aslan Aslanov spoke about Lola Barsuks role in developing science in Azerbaijan. He said that Lola Barsuk is an author of dozens of works.





Today Yuli and Mikhail Gusmans continue traditions of their family. This intelligent family has made a great contribution to the scientific and social life of Azerbaijan. As a well-known journalist, Deputy Director General of TASS, one of the largest media structures of the world, Mikhail Gusman has always supported his homeland Azerbaijan. He is the Secretary General of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA), a board member of the World Congress of News Agencies. Mikhail Gusman is an author of numerous interviews with the heads of state and government, Aslanov said.





Aslan Aslanov presented Mikhail Gusman a photo-album prepared by AZERTAC. The album contains archival photographs of the Gusmans.





Addressing the event, Mikhail Gusman thanked the Ministry of Education of Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan University of Languages for the organization of this conference. "My parents loved Azerbaijan very much and were patriots of their country. I love my homeland too. I am happy to have been born in this country. Representatives of different nationalities have always lived in Azerbaijan in an atmosphere of friendship. My son, who had a chance to become a citizen of the United States, chose the citizenship of Azerbaijan," said Gusman.





Deputy Education Minister Firudin Gurbanov conveyed the greetings of Education Minister Mikail Jabbarov to the event participants. Former students of Lola Barsuk shared memories about their teacher.
Baku is an ideal place for holding the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations, Spain's former prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, said during the forum Apr.26.

Zapatero said that on behalf of Spain, he proposed to create this alliance in 2005.

The alliance was created jointly with Turkey and the goal is to develop the dialogue and ensure mutual understanding, according to the former prime minister.

No culture, religion, race, flag stands above others, Zapatero said, adding that joint work is needed to create this alliance of civilizations.
Azerbaijan`s Defense Minister, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov is visiting Tartar district located on the frontline.





Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov and the Ministry`s leadership first visited a monument to national leader Heydar Aliyev in the city of Tartar, and put flowers at it.





Accompanied by head of the Tartar District Executive Authority Mustagim Mammadov, the Defense Minister reviewed the houses of residents, which were damaged as a result of shelling by the Armenian armed forces on the night of April 26. The Minister met with local residents, listened to them, and inquired about their concerns and problems.





The Minister gave relevant instructions on the situation in the district.




President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev met with President of the Republic of Malta Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca April 26.

President Aliyev thanked the Maltese counterpart for her participation in the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in Baku. The president also described this visit as a good opportunity for discussing the bilateral relations, adding the ties between the two countries were developing.

President Aliyev noted that areas of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Malta were based on mutual interest. Noting that Azerbaijan successfully hosts such prestigious international events, the president expressed hope that the visit of President Coleiro Preca to Baku would be fruitful.

Expressing gratitude for the warm reception and hospitality, President Coleiro Preca highlighted the importance and the high-level organization of the Forum, and hailed President Aliyev`s speech at the opening ceremony.

Stressing the importance of reciprocal visits in terms of developing the bilateral ties, the Maltese president also touched upon prospects for fruitful cooperation between the two countries in political, economic, trade, tourism and other areas.
President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has met with Minister for Foreign Affairs of Spain Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo.





Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo recalled his previous visits to Azerbaijan.





President Ilham Aliyev stressed the successful activity of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, which was established on the joint initiative of Turkey and Spain, and hailed Spain`s support for the Alliance. The head of state described the Spanish Foreign Minister`s participation in the Baku forum as an example of this support.





They noted the importance of the Forum in discussing outstanding tasks in complicated international situation and against the background of international relations. The sides expressed confidence that this important event would give a strong positive message to the international community.





During the conversation, the parties exchanged views over Azerbaijan-European Union cooperation, and the ways of settling the Armenian-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.




/By Azernews/

By Aynur Karimova

Turkey has expressed hope in normalization of relations with Russia both in political and economic spheres.

Commenting on recent developments in the Ankara-Moscow ties, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said on April 26 that the visit of a Turkish delegation to Russia to hold talks in the agricultural sector is a step towards this purpose.

"Hopefully, it will bring positive results," he added.

Turkey's Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock told Trend on April 25 that Ankara and Moscow will discuss the prospects for resuming the supply of Turkish agricultural products to Russia.

The discussions will be held during the visit of a delegation of Turkey's Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock to Russia on April 26.

The relations between Russia and Turkey have deteriorated since last November over the Su-24 incident, which took a life of a Russian soldier.

Following the jet crisis, Russia imposed an embargo on visas on Turkish travelers, as well as banned the sale of tour packages and charter flights to Turkey.

In December, Russian President Vladimir Putin also signed an order to extend Russian economic sanctions against Turkey.

The sanctions include a ban on Russian firms importing a range of Turkish foodstuffs, as well as canceling a visa-free regime and restricting Turkish companies from working in certain Russian business sectors, including tourism.

Also, since January 1, 2016, Russia banned the import of several fruits and vegetables from Turkey.

After these sanctions, economic relations between the two countries saw decline. In particular, statistics show that before the jet incident, about 1,500 Turkish companies operated in Russia in businesses ranging from construction and tourism to imports of Turkish fruit, vegetables and textiles. However, currently, only about 200 Turkish firms are operating in Russia, according to non-official statistics.

Also, statistics show that Turkish exports to Russia fell to around $108 million in January, down two-thirds on the previous year. Russian exports to Turkey, mainly of energy, were 30 percent lower at $1.3 billion, reflecting weak oil prices.

Therefore, rapprochement of relations is important both for Russia and Turkey. Experts believe that recent developments in the two countries' ties show that Russia and Turkey may restore their once warm relations.

In particular, the first visit of a Russian military delegation to Izmir on March 29, as well as the two countries' recent agreement on the observation flights that were cancelled since February 4, can be considered as Ankara and Moscow's desire to open a new page in the bilateral ties.

Experts say that the arrest of Alparslan Celik, who shot at the second Russian pilot who catapulted after the destruction of the Russian Su-24 bomber, is a step towards warming relations with Russia as well.

Celik, who shot at the second Russian pilot who catapulted after the destruction of the Russian Su-24 bomber, has been arrested in Turkeys Izmir province, Hurriyet newspaper reported on March 31.

Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a speech in Washington, and voiced the importance of resuming the bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

While speaking at the Brookings Institution as part of his visit to the U.S., Erdogan stressed the importance to resume the Russian-Turkish cooperation to resolve the regional problems.

Russian officials also say that the breakdown in relations between Turkey and Russia is temporary.

Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman of Russian Foreign Ministry, while responding to a question whether the row between Moscow and Ankara was temporary, said certainly."
Taqeef, a regional leader in air-conditioning solutions, has partnered with Fujitsu General to launch the variable refrigerant flow (VRF) V-III tropical series in Dubai, UAE.



VRF is a revolutionary refrigerant-based technology that effectively air conditions a wide variety of spaces from large buildings to personal residences.



The latest in VRF technology from Fujitsu General, the V-III tropical series, offers several advantages over the conventional HVAC system, such as high performance, minimised energy loss, design flexibility, easy installation and centralised maintenance, said a statement from Taqeef.



Fujitsu General is also well known for its knowledge and understanding of the regional climate and environment. They are the first and only manufacturer to introduce a full portfolio of products, which not only comply with the latest Green building regulations for EER and environmentally-friendly refrigerant (R410A), but are also tailored specifically to our regions harsh climate.



Focused on providing either high performance combinations or space saving ones, the Air stage V-III Tropical Model offers an extended line up of outdoor units, ranging from small systems of 8HP for limited residential and commercial spaces, to large systems of 54 HP for cooling large building areas.



With the flexibility to assemble in 39 system combinations, the V-III series can connect up to 55 indoor units, which can be selected from 12 types and 84 models.



"At Taqeef, we strive to bring the latest in air-conditioning technology to our customers in the region. While it has been a long wait for the V-III tropical series, we believe that innovative excellence cannot be rushed," remarked CEO Tariq Al Ghussein.



"Today, we are launching an exceptional air-conditioning solution based on Fujitsu Generals unique technical capabilities and our extensive research and testing exercises over the last two years  the Air stage V-III tropical series," said Al Ghussein.



"We are confident that the VRF system lineup will exceed regional customer expectations by providing important competitive advantages, such as energy efficiency, design flexibility and high reliability,resulting in a clear, comparable return on investment while being compliant with UAEs ESMA and QCC regulations," he added.



Al Ghussein said Taqeef has been defining the AC market since its inception in 1972, when it introduced the worlds first cooling application especially designed for desert conditions to the region.



Speaking at the launch Esturo Saito, the president of Fujitsu General Limited, said: "We were quite early to the Middle East market in 1970, and have worked with our partner, Taqeef, since then to provide quality, innovative solutions starting from the first tropical model."



"This model was designed to endure the Middle Easts severe climate challenges, and established our position as a trusted brand and the preferred choice in the region's air conditioning market," noted Saito.



"With the V-III tropical series, we look forward to answering the cost saving and reliability needs of the commercial sectorand we have adapted some of our special specs, especially for the region. Through our commitmentand innovation we are confident this new VRF will become the most trusted and well-regarded air conditioner for the commercial market," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Gudaibiya Building Construction Company (GBC) is hosting a seminar on Pre-fabricated Solutions for Energy Resolution in the Construction Sector" on the sidelines of the Gulf Property Show in Bahrain.



The seminar aims to introduce the latest comprehensive solutions to preserve energy consumption and benefit all real estate stakeholders including: real estate developers, regulators, investors and consumers.



GBC has invited industry experts Jochen de Maat and Chiel Boonstra from Netherlands to deliver the seminar at the Bahrain Exhibition Centre on Wednesday (April 27) at 12:15 pm and on Thursday at 5pm.



It is expected that key individuals from government and private sector organizations and companies including real estate developers and investors will participate in the seminar to discuss the latest developments and solutions to preserve the consumption of energy in Residential and Commercial properties.



GBC is a leading A grade construction company founded by Ghaleb Mahmood Al Mahmood in 1986.

It has driven construction works and delivered many residential and commercial projects over the last 30 years to government organizations, private companies and individual investors, said a statement from the company.



In addition, GBC has related companies that provide property management, maintenance and real estate development consultancy services.



Over the years, GBC has built & developed the relevant technical knowledge and expertise to manage all aspects of project construction & works including initial design, interior design, acquiring permits, scheduling construction and undertaking field operations to fulfil the client expectations and deliver projects effectively and efficiently with high quality standards, it added.-TradeArabia News Service
Global developer Emaar Properties said its hospitality and leisure subsidiary has marked its ambitious expansion into Saudi Arabia with the unveiling of its first hotel and serviced residence property in Jeddah Gate.



Emaar Hospitality Group said the 14-storey Vida Jeddah Gate hotel tower and the 25-storey Vida Residences Jeddah Gate tower are centrally located in Jeddah Gate, a master-planned community by Emaar Middle East.



The hotel and serviced residences offer sweeping views of Jeddah Gate and beyond, and are effortlessly accessible from the city centre, said the developer in its statement.



Family-friendly, Shariah-compliant and environmentally responsible, Vida Jeddah Gate and Vida Residences Jeddah Gate are refreshingly-unique hotel and serviced residences concept for the new generation of business executives, entrepreneurs and leisure travellers, said the statement from Emaar.



There are 202 thoughtfully designed hotel rooms and suites in addition to the 162 serviced residences, which will be for sale, available in one-, two-, three- and four-bedrooms. The residences are ideal for families and professionals and will benefit from being served by dedicated Vida Hotels and Resorts staff members, it stated.



The development takes design cues from Islamic heritage and the facade and textures will be reminiscent of Saudi architectural styles. It is envisaged as an exceptional hospitality offering that stands for upscale boutique style ambience, sophisticated energy and cultural inspiration.



Only five minutes away from the Al Haramain Express Train Station, Vida Jeddah Gate Hotel and Vida Residences Jeddah Gate are located near the headquarters of major banking institutions and the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce & Industry.



The development is also in close proximity to the main railroad linking the city of Makkah, only 30 minutes away, and Madinah, only three hours away.



Chris Newman, the corporate director of Operations at Emaar Hospitality Group, said the first expansion of the companys operations into Saudi Arabia is underpinned by the renewed focus of the kingdom to strengthen its tourism sector and the reputation of Jeddah as a hub for business and commerce.



"The new generation of Saudi entrepreneurs and professionals will find that the design, service, quality and facilities we offer will more than meet their expectations. Guests will enjoy the fact we have integrated technology into everything we do and offer fast connectivity," remarked Newman.



"As a young brand for Emaar Hospitality Group, Vida Hotels and Resorts offers something new and different in terms of hotel experiences and Vida Jeddah Gate and Vida Residences Jeddah Gate will deliver exceptional experiences and value to our guests and residents for the first time in the Kingdom," he added.



Vida Jeddah Gate will offer guests a wide breadth of amenities including an all-day dining restaurant, lobby lounge for quick bites, a signature restaurant and a bistro. It will have a dedicated events space that can host up to 120 people, ideal for corporate and social events.



A fully-fledged spa and fitness centre, podium level pool, kids club and pool lounge will further celebrate a relaxed lifestyle. All these facilities are also accessible for Vida Residences Jeddah Gate residents.



With a total gross floor area of 519,204 sq ft, nearly equally split between the hotel and serviced residences, the new hospitality project is deploying the latest advances in green building design and construction to reduce the projects energy footprint.



Vida Jeddah Gate and Vida Residences Jeddah Gate will contribute to the focus of the Saudi Commission for Tourism & National Heritage to strengthen the Kingdoms tourism sector. Saudi Arabia recorded a 25 per cent increase in tourist arrivals in the first half of 2015.-TradeArabia News Service
Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) has announced the launch of Gate Avenue at DIFC, a first-of-its-kind urban living development that will create a unique cultural experience in the region.



Convening the worlds most coveted retail brands, culinary concepts and art events, Gate Avenue at DIFC is an integrated and vibrant lifestyle community that enhances synergies to create a uniquely-curated mix of experiences, said a statement from DIFC.



Located in the heart of Dubai, the development will connect the entire financial district, which will aesthetically and artistically link all building podiums within DIFC.



Incomparable to any project in the region, Gate Avenue at DIFC will offer 660,000 sq ft of built-up area, incorporating all aspects of living, including business, leisure and residential, it stated.



A continuation of the DIFCs success story, which has already positioned the centre as a premium business destination, the new retail offering will add a new dimension to the district, creating a holistic experience for professionals, residents and visitors alike, said the statement.



The new destination will integrate the essential elements that make DIFC a remarkably rich international environment, and boast more than 150 of the regions most distinctive and sophisticated dining, shopping and cultural experiences - all encapsulated in one iconic setting, it added.



According to DIFC, the project is set to emerge as a premium lifestyle destination offering vibrant and world-class amenities to the financial centres diverse community of professionals, residents and visitors.

Gate Avenue at DIFC will also provide seamless connectivity to all building podiums within the district.



Speaking on the launch, Essa Kazim, the DIFC governor, said: "The announcement of Gate Avenue at DIFC is a significant step towards accomplishing our 2024 growth strategy that paves the way for the sustained development of the Centre."



"The project will be a significant value-add for professionals and residents currently working and living in the district, and create an even more attractive proposition for prospective clients and tenants, as we build on our already world-class infrastructure platform," stated Kazim.



"This, in turn will elevate DIFCs status as one of the most sought-after destinations in the world," he added.



Gate Avenue at DIFC will amplify the financial centres lifestyle offering with its aesthetic appeal that seamlessly connects three integrated zones. Each zone will feature distinctive elements, connected by an open-air Promenade Level.



The North Zone will offer access from DIFCs popular Marble Walk at the Gate Building, and serve as a meeting point for professionals within the district, featuring exclusive retail offerings, high-end stores and luxury outlets.



Transitioning from the North Zone, the Central Zone will feature a plethora of high-street brands, a variety of beautiful indoor restaurants as well as sumptuous al fresco eateries. With easy connections to the Financial Centre metro station, the Central Zone will also comprise convenience retail stores to cater to the metro traffic.



Primarily tailored to the residents of the financial district, South Zone will focus on the community within DIFC and feature family amenities that help foster the community-living experience. Visitors can experience kids edutainment and leisure activities, or enjoy family-friendly dining areas, said the top official.



Providing the ideal platform for Dubais art and culture scene, Gate Avenue at DIFC will host a series of art and design installations, live music performances, visual activations and festivals  ensuring a whole new experience at every visit,. he added.



According to DIFC, the project will link a network of residential and commercial buildings across the 110-acre financial district.



Visitors and residents will be able to enjoy a leisurely walk across the refreshing walkway on the Promenade Level, or through the beautifully-designed air-conditioned avenue that bridges the district.



In addition, the development will bring together a diverse, multicultural community, as well as leading retail brands, culinary concepts and art events.



The central location, in the heart of Dubai, will allow visitors ease of access by public transport  supported by a convenient link to the Financial Centre metro station  or by car. The development will provide additional parking spaces around Gate Avenue at DIFC, to accommodate high volumes of visitors to the district, said the statement.



Central to the Promenade Level will be an emblematic mosque, a beacon of modern Islamic design that will host a total of 500 worshippers daily and for Friday prayers, it added.



An integration of aesthetics and functionality, lush greenery will adorn the facades of niche retail outlets located along the approximately 1km Promenade Level pathway.



The unique parkland setting of the Promenade Level will also reflect a rising crescendo of energy levels  from the premium, sophisticated vibe of the North Zone to the vibrant, social setting of the Central Zone, through to the high-tempo, family-friendly environment of the South Zone.



Miniature Gates, built in the image of the iconic Gate Building will be located along the walkway, framing unique aspects of the Dubai skyline and serving as a canvas for digital projections.



With construction expected to begin this year and set for completion by the end of 2017, Gate Avenue at DIFC is set to become the much sought-after destination for businesses, professionals, residents and visitors.-TradeArabia News Service
Laboratoires Kosmeto, an international manufacturer of cosmetic, hair and body-care products and made-to-order packaging, will present its expertise at the Beautyworld Middle East 2016 in Dubai, UAE, next month.



The event is will take place from May 15 to 17, at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre.



The French company is able to offer a broad range of full service private label manufacturing solutions, as well as marketing support services  creation of brand, logo and visual identity, said a statement from the company.



From conception to manufacture, and from filling to preparation and quality assurance, the company is renowned for its contract packaging capabilities: since 1986, its research laboratory has developed several hundreds of formulas, it added.



Its packaging units are equipped with fully automated, high-performance machines capable of handling small, medium and large production runs in accordance with quality standards (ISO9001/BPF): wax cooling tunnel, automatic tube filler; different types of packaging in sizes ranging from 10 to 5,000 ml; automatic filling, sealing, labelling and packaging. Its highly responsive printing workshop provides product decoration services on request, it said.



Thus company is able to manufacture and package all types of professional products: liquids (shampoos, lotions); sprays; waxes, gel emulsions; creams, foams; phials; tubes. From design to manufacture, its chemists are attuned to the needs of customers all over the world, and use state-of-the art-technology to make sure those needs are met, said the statement.



The company also uses carefully selected raw materials and performs numerous quality checks to deliver the most perfectly adapted products and ensure flawless manufacturing execution, it stated.



The demand for French-made cosmetic products in the Middle East is high, and the company is responding to the rise in demand with technical product ranges such as Barbster and Ethnique, further added the statement.



Customisation options can be adapted for specially requested small and medium production runs, it said.



Jean-Michel Moll, manager of Kosmeto, said: Thanks to the enthusiasm and expertise of our staff, we have a very fast turnaround time for new product ranges. Full service is essential because it guarantees that the customer gets a top-quality product, both from a technical perspective (formula, packaging) and a regulatory perspective (cosmetic product information file, monitoring, poison control centre, export legislation).



We exercise strict control to ensure that our products comply with quality standards and customer specifications, and that they are delivered on time in accordance with confidentiality requirements, he added.  TradeArabia News Service
Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), one of the world's largest aluminium smelters, has highlighted its commitment to safety and health by sponsoring the ongoing 3rd National Occupation Health and Safety Conference and Exhibition, at the Gulf Hotel, Bahrain.



The event which kicked off today (April 26) will conclude tomorrow (April 27).



Held under the patronage of Bahrains Deputy Premier Shaikh Khalid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, this event is organised by the Ministry of Labour and Social Development in collaboration with the Occupational Safety and Health Council.



Albas acting chief operations officer Amin Sultan and acting manager of safety, health and environment Mohd. Khalil Saeed attended the opening ceremony, said a statement from the company.



The event, currently in its third edition, promotes awareness of vocational safety and health through its exhibition and conference. It also showcases products by local and foreign companies with regards to occupational safety, it said.



Additionally, Alba will be launching its new safety campaign in May as a part of its ongoing drive to keep safety as our number one priority.



Sultan said: At Alba, we have elevated our commitment towards occupational safety and health, which goes hand in hand with our strategic plans and expectations for 2016.



We believe that we can do more than necessary when it comes to safety, health and environment. Through our participation in this important event, we look forward to gaining more knowledge and expertise from the presenters and speakers, he added.  TradeArabia News Service
Strata Manufacturing (Strata), an advanced composite aero-structures manufacturing company wholly owned by Mubadala Development, is showcasing the UAEs aerospace ambitions at the ongoing Hannover Messe event, in Hannover, Germany.



The event which kicked off yesterday (April 25), will run until April 29.



Hannover Messe is a leading international trade fair that promotes key technologies and core areas of industry, including research and development, industrial automation, IT, industrial supply, production technologies, and services to energy and mobility technologies.



Strata was among 10 UAE government bodies and 30 UAE companies that participated at the international event, which attracts more than 250,000 visitors each year. During the fair, the company highlighted its contribution towards building a diversified and sustainable knowledge-based economy for Abu Dhabi, said a statement from the company.



Guided by Abu Dhabis Economic Vision 2030, Strata was established in the Nibras Al Ain Aerospace Park to manufacture composite aircraft parts for the worlds leading aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing and Airbus, it added.



The companys vision is to become one of the top three composite aero-structure manufacturing companies globally, and it was proud to share its success to date with an international audience at the event, it said.



Badr Al Olama, CEO of Strata, said: Hannover Messe is one of the most important fairs within the manufacturing industry, and attracts key players from across the globe. Our participation was key to demonstrate the importance of manufacturing companies in the UAE and their impact on the global supply chain.



We have spent the past five years developing our capabilities to become a global competitor in the aerospace sector. Its been an incredible journey so far, both in terms of our growth and our global reach, he said.



We are producing aircraft parts on an international scale by partnering with leading aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing and Airbus. We are also training and developing our local workforce to join the thriving aerospace industry, he added.



Strata, among other national companies in the aerospace industry, strives to embody the vision articulated in the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030. It aims to build a diversified and sustainable knowledge-based economy along with a qualified Emirati workforce.  TradeArabia News Service
Abu Dhabis Higher Corporation for Specialized Economic Zones (ZonesCorp) is participating at the ongoing Hannover Messe event in Germany, with a delegation of 19 industrial manufacturing companies.



The event which kicked off yesterday (April 25), will run until April 29.



The Hannover Messe, a leading international trade fair that promotes key technologies, is attended by the worlds leading industrial companies and typically attracts around 250,000 visitors with around 6,500 companies exhibiting.



All the companies taking part in the delegation have established operational manufacturing facilities in various ZonesCorps industrial cities in Abu Dhabi. The purpose of the delegation is to showcase the high quality international companies that have facilities in the ZonesCorp acreage, said a statement from the zone.



Alongside its partners, ZonesCorp will also highlight the benefits of its cluster-based industrial model that supports growth, creates value chain benefits and enhance efficiencies between its investors, it added.



In recent years the economic zone has drawn a steady stream of world class manufacturing companies to its extensive acreage and now contributes over 50 per cent of the manufacturing gross domestic product (GDP) of Abu Dhabi. In the last two years alone, it has attracted over Dh4 billion ($1 billion) in new investments in 62 new industrial and manufacturing projects covering an area of 1,755,000 sq m. This is largely thanks to the combination of its attractive operating model, world class infrastructure, highly competitive utilities and its business friendly tax free environment.



Another significant factor contributing to ZonesCorps rapid growth is Abu Dhabis appealing strategic location geographically, which is vital for companies wishing to expand their reach and bridge the gap between markets in the east and west. All these elements have cemented its position as a destination of choice for industrial investments in the region.



The delegation will be located in the UAE Pavilion headed by the Department of Economic Development and will also be taking part in the UAE Investment forum lead by Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansouri, Minister of Economy in the UAE and Ali Majed Al Mansoori, chairman of Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development.



Saeed Eisa Al Khyeli, acting chief executive officer for ZonesCorp, said: We are delighted to be participating in the event and to be showcasing the UAE manufacturing success story to the world.



The companies making up the delegation represent an impressive cross section of the leading regional and international industrial players and are a testament to the progress we have made towards diversifying the Abu Dhabi economy and turning the Emirate into a regional manufacturing hub, he added.  TradeArabia News Service
Downtown Rotana, the newly-opened five-star hotel located in the heart of Bahrains capital Manama, has launched its new signature restaurant Teatro Downtown.

Teatro Downtown is the hotels premiere restaurant venue offering an East-meets-West concept cuisine, embraced by warm design motifs and ultra-chic interiors.

Guests at the opening event were treated to an exclusive dinner of culinary delights from the restaurants award-winning menu.

This is the third Teatro in the region to be opened by Rotana following the chains success in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, reflected in the winning of numerous awards over the years, the most recent being Best International Restaurant 2015 at the TimeOut Awards.

The quality and diversity of Bahrains gastronomic offerings is one of the countrys main attractions. The kingdom has a lot to offer in terms of variety, creativity and innovation in international cuisines, which makes it a magnet for food lovers, and there has been a surge in investment from both the private and public sector in enhancing Bahrains position as a hub of culinary excellence in the region, said Lilian Roger, general manager of Downtown Rotana.

Teatro Downtown is the groups prized gem. The restaurant has an established reputation in the region for its ambience, its gourmet fusion menu and of course the exceptional service. We are glad to be bringing this concept to the heart of Manama and throwing a bit of epicurean spotlight on this part of town which is increasingly becoming an attractive destination for quality dining.

Our aim is to create a memorable gastronomic experience for our guests within a vibrant setting and we are confident the food will speak for itself, he added

Teatro Downtown offers an array of authentic dishes inspired by five of the most well-known and popular cuisines  Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Italian and South East Asian.

Distinctive in both flavours and setting, Teatro Downtown features an extensive menu selection to suit even the most demanding of palates, spread across three separate areas comprising a trendy lounge, open-faced kitchens with full view of the chefs in action, multiple food stations and a wide-ranging collection of beverages.

Priyantha Sanjeewa, Teatro Downtowns specialty outlet chef said: I am extremely happy to open Teatro in Bahrain which will become without doubt one of the citys hotspots. We specialise in five different cuisines serving 130 dishes within a contemporary setting and our focus is on the quality of ingredients we serve and the lingering after-taste that we create.  TradeArabia News Service
A total of eight major international engineering firms have been prequalified by Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority (Adwea) for a 350-megawatt (MW) solar park in the UAE capital.



The Abu Dhabi utility plans to build the project in Sweihan, about an hours drive east of the capital, reported the state news agency Wam.



This will be Adweas first foray into the solar sector, and many companies are lining up to get a chunk of the project, including regional firms such as Masdar and the Saudi company Acwa Power, stated the report.



The pre-qualified bidders are Acciona/Swicorp (as consortium), Acme, Acwa Power, Adani, Alfanar / Building Energy (as consortium), Canadian Solar, China State Construction Engineering Corporation, EDF Energies Nouvelles, Elecnor, Enel, Engie, Equis, First Solar, Fotowatio FRV, Golden Concord Holdings / PAL Technology (as consortium), Hindustan Clean Energy, Intecsa / Cobra (as consortium); JGC, Jinko Solar, Kepco/GS Engineering & Construction/Hanwha Q Cells (as consortium); Mainstream, Marubeni, Masdar, Mitsui, Phelan Energy Group, ReNew Solar Power/Japan Renewable Energy (as consortium); RWE/Belectric (as consortium); Sojitz, Solar Reserve, Spectrum/Maessa/Leighton Contracting (as consortium); Stumpf/Mena Infrastructure Fund (as consortium), Tenaga, Total / Sunpower (as consortium),TSK.



The winning developer or developer consortium will get to own up to 40 per cent of the project company, while the remaining 60 per cent equity will be held, directly or indirectly, by Adwea.



The scope of work includes development, financing, construction, operation, maintenance and ownership of the greenfield renewable power generation plant with a 350 MW power generation capacity, together with associated infrastructure.



Over 90 companies had originally responded to the Abu Dhabi utilitys request for an expression of interest anf following a comprehensive review process, it got shrunk to 34 companies (including local companies).



Out of these companies, eight have been pre-qualified on a sole stand-alone basis, or as part of an already formed consortium, said the report.



These companies are free to submit a proposal on such basis without the need to form or join a consortium.



The remaining 26 companies have been pre-qualified on a conditional basis and have been advised that within 28 days they are required to join, or form a consortium, subject to certain specified conditions, before they are formally pre-qualified to submit a proposal, it added.



Based on the specific conditions governing the formation of consortia defined by the procurer a maximum of 15 bids can be received. The deadline for bid submission has been set in the RFP for September 19.
Sofitel Abu Dhabi Corniche, a luxurious property in the UAE capital, will be participating at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM), the region's leading travel and tourism industry exhibition which is set to take place from in Dubai this month.



Nael El-Waary, general manager of Sofitel Abu Dhabi Corniche, said: At the ATM we will promote Abu Dhabi summer season offers, early bird Ramadan promotion and Gourmet Catering project that we launched recently. Sofitel Abu Dhabi will be represented at Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority (ADTCA) stand.



Arabian Travel Market is the place to meet with our business partners, key clients, regional and international buyers. We look forward to 23rd edition of ATM, El-Waary said.



ATM is the Middle East's leading international travel and tourism event for inbound and outbound tourism professionals.Taking place from April 25 to 28, tourism destinations from around the world will showcase a diverse range of accommodation options, breathtaking tourism attractions, travel technology and key airline routes. This year ATM will host over 2,800 exhibitors from 87 countries and attract over 26,000 travel trade visitors from 133 countries. - TradeArabia News Service
Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach has appointed Marco Corallo as new bar manager of Hendricks Bar.



The Italian native boasts exceptional experience in some of the best cocktail bars around the world, and has received numerous accolades from international competitions.



Corallo first started his career in hospitality working in cocktail bars in his hometown of Lecce, southern Italy. His natural talent saw him quickly rise to bar manager for one of the top bars in the city. Keen to challenge the development of his skills, Corallo moved to Dubai for an opportunity to work in Atmosphere, the highest restaurant in the world. Despite speaking little English, he continued to hone his skills in this position. In 2012 he took on a new role as senior sommelier at The Savoy in London, where he oversaw the pre-opening of a new restaurant.



Returning to the Middle East in 2013, Corallo joined Jumeirah at Etihad Towers as hotel sommelier and assistant restaurant manager, where he was responsible for the beverage programme across all 12 fod and beverage outlets. The following year he was appointed bar supervisor in Zuma Abu Dhabi, before going back to Jumeirah at Etihad Towers in 2015 to take charge of the luxurious cocktail bar Rays Bar, overseeing all operational activity.



In his new role at Hendricks Bar, Corallo is responsible for ensuring high standards of customer service are maintained in the cigar bar, as well as meeting key targets and planning events. Fluent in Italian, Spanish, and English, with a natural flair for cocktails and wine list creations, Corallo has already proved to be a valuable asset to the resort team.



Speaking of his recent appointment Corallo said: Im delighted to be joining the team at Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach. Hendricks Bar has established itself as an exceptional destination in the city for the finer things in life. Im looking forward to sharing my knowledge and experience with the team. I already have several new activations planned including the launch of an innovative new beverage menu, which will continue to delight our loyal patrons as well as encourage new visitors.



Corallo holds a degree in Financial Account and Business Management from A. Olivetti 2006 and several certificates including the Wine Spirits Education Trust (WSET) second Level 2012, Italian Sommelier Association (AIS) 2011, and Italian Bartending Association (AIBES) 2011. He partakes regularly in competitions and recently was awarded second place in the World Class Diageo UAE 2014. - TradeArabia News Service
Dubai-based Emirates airline is expected to carry about 55 million passengers this year, an increase from 51 million passengers last year, the airline's chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum said.



The airline's load factor would rise slightly to 80-81 percent from 79 percent in the last calendar year, he told reporters at the Arabian Travel Market 2016 (ATM) in Dubai.



Emirates has put up a cutting-edge stand named Infinite Possibilities at the ATM. The stand was visited by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and chairman of Dubai Executive Council.



Sheikh Ahmed welcomed the royal visitors and gave a personal tour of the three-storey Emirates stand. He also gave a demonstration of Emirates First Class Private Suite and the airlines enhanced Boeing 777 Business Class seat which will be introduced on board from November 2016.



Speaking to reporters, Sheikh Ahmed said European planemaker Airbus should do a better job selling its A380 superjumbo, according to Emirates, the aircraft's biggest buyer and most vocal supporter within the airline industry.



Sheikh Ahmed's comments follow a Reuters report last week that revealed Airbus plans to reduce the production rate for the world's largest passenger jet.



Airbus, facing a shortage of sales, is increasingly focused on a potential new version of its smaller A350 and has shelved a plan to put new engines on the A380.



Emirates has ordered 142 of the A380s, of which 75 are in operation, and has used the aircraft to ease runway constraints at its Dubai hub.



"It's their (Airbus's) decision ... I think they will continue producing this aircraft," Sheikh Ahmed told reporters at a travel conference in Dubai.



"They have really to push their sales team to do much better, especially now the aircraft has been in the market for the last eight years. We should be making it easier for them to sell it to the others."



Abu Dhabi-owned rival Etihad has bought stakes in several other airlines including India's Jet Airways, Air Berlin and Alitalia, but Sheikh Ahmed said Emirates had no plans to do anything similar.



"No, we would always want to work solely," he said.



"You've got to understand that with the number of aircraft we receive per year, it would be very difficult for me to manage the airline business ... also solving someone else's problem because we bought equity."



A plane operated by Flydubai, Emirates' sister low-cost carrier of which Sheikh Ahmed is also chairman, crashed in Russia last month. Initial investigations indicated pilot error was a likely cause.



"When it comes to safety, there is no cutting costs," added Sheikh Ahmed. "We have a risk management fatigue department where they look all the time at issues, things we hear about. We try to mitigate any risk that can happen." - Reuters and TradeArabia News Service
Scarface is dead.

No, not the character from the 1983 movie starring Al Pacino. This Scarface was the real deal  a 25-year-old Yellowstone National Park grizzly bear who received his nickname from the extensive scarring on the right side of his head.

Scarface the bear and Scarface the movie character do have one other thing in common besides their name, though: They both died of gunshot wounds.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks confirmed in a Monday press release that the male grizzly bear shot in late November north of Gardiner, Montana, was the bear known to researchers as No. 211  Scarface.

No. 211 was killed in the Little Trail Creek drainage north of Gardiner on the Gallatin National Forest, an incident under investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency doesnt comment about ongoing investigations.

Scarface was well known in Yellowstone by biologists and photographers. He was first collared after being captured when he was 3 years old and had been recaptured 16 times after that, unprecedented for the average grizzly.

In his prime he was about 600 pounds, said Kerry Gunther, a bear management biologist in the park. Thats about as big as they get in Yellowstone.

Wyoming photographer Sandy Sisti remembers seeing him for the first time in 2011. After that she photographed the bear or saw him at least once a year, not surprising since male grizzlies have an average home range of 338 square miles and that Scarface spent most of his long life inside Yellowstone.

I saw him along Yellowstone Lake in October, she said. I was concerned about him. He looked terrible and was very thin.

Sisti was upset that Scarface had been shot instead of dying a natural death, especially since it was evident that his health was declining.

Im just really kind of choked up, she said. He was an icon in the park. There was just something about him. He had so much character and, oh my gosh, hed been in the park since before the wolves were introduced.

No. 211 probably got his scars from fights with other male grizzlies for females during mating season or when claiming deer, elk or bison carcasses. The scars were first noted by bear researchers in 2000 when he was 11 years old  which is the average age at which most male grizzlies in Yellowstone die, Gunther said.

If youve ever seen bears fighting they bite to the head and neck a lot, Gunther said. His scarring was more severe than many others.

At his last capture in 2015 Scarface had lost nearly half of his body weight, weighing in at only 338 pounds. His weakened condition was probably linked to his advanced age, although even at 25 he isnt the oldest bear ever documented in Yellowstone. That went to a 31-year-old. Less than 5 percent of male bears born in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem survive to 25 years.

Grizzly bears are protected by the federal government and the state of Montana as a threatened species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service routinely investigates incidents affecting threatened and endangered species and is conducting an investigation with the assistance of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Even when I would only see him cross the street I would get so excited, Sisti said. To live all of that time in Yellowstone is pretty amazing.
A Casper man is charged with sexual abuse for allegedly touching a girl inappropriately, according to court documents.

Michael Lambert Andrews is charged with two counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor. Andrews, 39, was being held in the Natrona County Detention Center as of Monday afternoon.

Police began investigating Andrews on Wednesday after being contacted by the Wyoming Department of Family Services, the documents state.

The victim, who was born in 2003, was interviewed at the Childrens Advocacy Project, according to the documents. She said Andrews had touched her inappropriately on three different occasions between 2008 and 2009

Andrews underwent a polygraph test at the Casper Police Department, the documents state. Following the test, Andrews admitted to touching the girl inappropriately once, but said it did not happen again.

When asked if he wanted to make a statement, Andrews said he was sorry I knowingly did something to her and didnt talk to her about it, according to the documents.

A Natrona County Circuit judge set Andrews bond at $50,000 Monday during his initial court appearance.
Midwest School will likely go to a four-day academic week this fall, after the Natrona County School Board approved the calendar exception at its meeting Monday.

Proponents in the crowd, including Principal Chris Tobin and Midwest teachers, sighed with relief and joy when the decision was announced.

Tobin has said at earlier meetings that officials hope the four-day school week will raise academic performance at the rural school 40 minutes northeast of Casper.

If approved by the Wyoming State Board of Education, Midwest will have traditional academic days Monday through Thursday and use Fridays for additional small group tutoring, extra-curricular activities and sports. A final decision should be reached by mid-June.

The state grants schedule requests for a two-year period. Midwest officials will make regular reports to the Natrona County School Board on the progress of their students during those two years.
Editor:

An open letter to the Wyoming congressional delegation:

According to author Ron Chernow, in his biography of founding father Alexander Hamilton, in 1791, Hamilton wrote a prospectus for The Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures, writing that "Both theory and experiences conspire to prove that a nation... cannot possess much active wealth but as a result of active manufactures." The U.S. House of Representatives asked Hamilton to prepare a report on how America might promote manufacturing. In response, Hamilton submitted his Report on Manufactures, envisioning the many ways that the federal government could invigorate economic activity in America. Clearly, the founding fathers, with little experience at running a country, understood the importance of manufacturing.

Contrast that with today. After two hundred years of experience, Congress has ignored the wisdom of the founding fathers. Through the failed so-called free trade deals, Congress has actually promoted manufacturing in China, a communist country, while destroying much U.S. manufacturing and jobs. Because of this system's imbalance, we buy 365 billion dollars of good from them, that American workers used to make. They now have those jobs and we don't.

If the U.S. required all manufactured goods sold in the U.S. to be manufactured in this country, we would no longer be sending our wealth and jobs overseas. Free-trade is a myth, what we need is fair trade. Both U.S. and foreign companies could compete here, but on a level playing field, promoting true competition. The country would no longer be saddled with the convoluted system of tariffs and foreign manipulation that we currently have. If we had this system now, Wyoming might actually have some manufacturing jobs to diversify our state's economy.
The government has denied any wrongdoing in its initial answer to a lawsuit alleging the Air Force illegally approved expansion of training for visiting aircraft at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

Three Tucson residents filed a federal lawsuit in January, alleging the Air Force failed to follow federal law and Pentagon policy in finding that the expansion of the Total Force Training program would have no significant impact on the community.

The plaintiffs, represented by the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, want the court to rule the expansion plan illegal and order the Air Force to conduct a more complex analysis and an environmental impact statement.

In its answer in the U.S. District Court in Tucson, the government denied any violations of the National Environmental Policy Act or any other law, and said the plaintiffs arent entitled to any relief. No hearings have been set in the case.

The plaintiffs allege they have suffered physical and emotional injuries and loss of home values from military jet overflights, that the Air Force failed to adequately study noise and health effects of increased overflights, and that lower-income residents were not properly informed of the expansion plans.

The plan approved by the Air Force in April 2015 would allow training sorties to increase up to 65 percent from a 2009 baseline, to 2,326 annually, with some aircraft that are louder than those regularly flown from D-M. One sortie is a flight operation by a single plane, from takeoff to final landing.

D-M officials have noted that even if the base reached the new cap on sorties, they would constitute about 6 percent of D-Ms overall flight operations.
PHOENIX  A judge on Monday ruled its legal to challenge last months presidential preference election.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David Gass said it remains to be seen whether the Tucson man, John Brakey, contesting the election  and seeking to void the results  can prove his case that the things that went wrong merit voiding the vote.

During the first day of hearings Monday, Assistant Attorney General James Driscoll Maceachron, defending Secretary of State Michele Reagan, told the judge that Arizona law allows someone to contest the outcome of a political primaries between candidates. Ditto, he said, if the issue is something like an initiative or bond election.

But he said there is no authority to challenge the states presidential preference election, which is neither a primary in the traditional sense nor a ballot measure.

But the judge wasnt buying it.

I cant find ... that this statute excludes the presidential preference election, he said. Gass said if hes wrong, hes sure the Court of Appeals will tell me differently, because thats their job.

That paved the way for attorney Michael Kielsky to try to convince Gass the irregularities of the March 22 vote were enough to declare the election void.

One key witness was Dianne Post. A retired lawyer, she worked at a polling place in South Phoenix, a district with a large minority voting population.

Post told Gass how her polling place had run out of ballots for several congressional districts and was giving voters ballots from other districts. Democrats allocate delegates in part based on who wins each of the nine districts.

More significant, Post detailed how the electronic poll books listed people as being registered in parties different than they said they were registered. She said it wasnt simply voters being confused, pointing out many of them had county-issued voter registration cards.

I did not keep track by race, and I should have, Post told the court.

But many of them were blacks who were told they were Republicans, she continued. And their response was unkind.

Post said she is convinced the problem was with the countys records and not with the voters.

I had a woman who was 76 who assured me that she had been voting Democratic since she was old enough to vote and she had never registered Republican and she was not going to vote Republican, Post said.

Kielsky also told Gass its a matter of public record that many people did not get to vote, either because they were deterred by long lines or because there were foul-ups in their party registrations.

Even if Gass finds their testimony credible, none of that means any laws were violated, at least not to the point of upsetting the results that gave victories to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

And theres one more issue : Should Gass void the tally if hes not convinced that the results would have been any different without the irregularities?

Kielsky conceded the point.

Mere irregularities will not allow an election contest absent allegations of a different result, he told the judge. But he told Gass thats not the case here.

What we have alleged is something amounting to fraud, Kielsky said. Were talking about the disenfranchisement of potentially 100,000 people or more who were either denied the ability to cast a vote, or when they attempted to cast a vote whose provisional ballot ended up not being counted.

While Kielsky argued the election should be overturned because some voters were disenfranchised, Driscoll Maceachron told Gass that voiding the election would have the reverse effect.

His relief is not about enfranchising voters, he said. He will invalidate the entire election and leave all Arizona voters without a vote in the presidential preference election.

What happens if Gass voids the vote is unclear.

The lawsuit does not seek a new state-run election.

One scenario is that it would be up to each partys officials to decide how to allocate delegates to their national conventions. There is nothing to preclude the parties from doing that according to the results of the March 22 election.
A controversial adult treatment center proposed in South Tucson violated citys zoning rules, a judge has ruled.

Pima County Superior Court Judge Jeffery Bergin ruled the former Arizonas Children Association home thats now owned by the Pasadera Behavioral Health Network has been closed for too long for the nonprofit to qualify for a grandfathered clause of South Tucsons zoning rules.

Those rules require the noncomforming business, which had been operating for years in a residential area, operate continuously. The center is directly across the street from Mission View Elementary School.

The facility had been closed for over a year when South Tucson refused to approve permits sought by Pasadera. The city allows nonconforming businesses to cease activities for no more than six months.

Pasadera sued in an attempt to reverse the zoning decisions by the South Tucson City Council.

Chuck Burbank, the chief executive officer of Pasadera Behavioral , said he was disappointed in the judges ruling but wouldnt discuss future plans for the facility.

We are weighing what our next steps should be. We are not interested in any further litigation and would love to resolve this issue with the city, but we are keeping our options open, he said.

South Tucson officials did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment about the ruling.
PHOENIX  Republican lawmakers are closing in on a $9.58 billion spending plan for the coming year, including $26 million in tax cuts.

But the lions share of that is for business.

The plan set to be introduced this morning also includes:

Restoring, at least indirectly, some of the money being taken from public schools due to a change in funding formulas;

Providing the Department of Child Safety with most of the money it requested, but with some safeguards to ensure its director spends the cash as lawmakers want;

Putting $96 million into the Highway User Revenue Fund for road construction and repair, though just for the coming year.

The plan also includes about $32 million for the states universities, a partial restoration of the $100 million taken out of their funding last year.

But not all that university funding is going to general academics.

Lawmakers are earmarking $5 million of that for so-called free-enterprise programs at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University. Those programs started with seed money from charities run by financier Charles Koch.

Senate Majority Leader Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, was unapologetic about the earmark.

These are schools within the universities, well-regarded as far as I know, he said. And there is a sentiment to see those schools be as effective and productive as possible.

Yarbrough said he sees these centers as providing valuable research. Some of it appears to have a particular slant.

For example, the head of the ASU Center for the Study of Economic Liberty put out a report last fall urging the state to spend more of its trust-fund dollars on schools now rather than hoard them for future generations. In doing so, Scott Beaulier backed the essence of what became Proposition 123 to speed withdrawals for education.

But Yarbrough said he did not see the schools  and the public funding they are getting  as simply promoting the fiscal libertarian ideals of the Koch brothers.

I certainly would not describe it that way, he said.

Most of the new money for public schools is actually just restoring some of what lawmakers voted last year to cut  sort of.

That policy change, set to take effect this year, bases state aid to schools on so-called current-year funding.

Thats the number of students they anticipate having. The old system used the prior years enrollment as a starting point. Some modeling done last year by the state Department of Education showed the overall net loss to schools in making the change at $32 million.

Yarbrough said the state will put back about half of that, not directly to schools but into a classroom site fund administered by state education officials. Those dollars can be used for everything from reducing classroom size and boosting teacher pay to dropout-prevention programs.

On the income side is that $26 million set aside for tax cuts. The largest share of that, about $8 million, is for bonus depreciation.

Right now, an Arizona business can immediately deduct up to $25,000 a year in new equipment. Anything beyond that is carried forward into future years.

The push is to have Arizona law conform with current federal law that allows an immediate $500,000 deduction. The other big break is set aside to exempt manufacturers and smelters from having to pay the same sales tax on their electricity that is charged to other customers.

Yarbrough acknowledged neither one helps the average Arizonan.

But if youre in business, even a very small business, youre going to be able to depreciate more rapidly that stuff you buy, he said, even as he conceded most small businesses are not buying $500,000 worth of equipment in any one year. But Yarbrough said there is at least an indirect benefit from such business tax cuts.

If a manufacturers having to pay less for its electricity, I think there is ultimately a benefit that accrues to all of us, he said.

And if theyre giving it to their shareholders?

Well, you could be one, Yarbrough responded.

There is one tax change that could affect those at much lower income levels.

Current law provides a dollar-for-dollar state tax credit, up to $200 for individuals and $400 for couples, for donations to organizations that do charity work for the needy. The change doubles both those amounts.

One thing not in the current plan, but that may result in a floor fight, is restoration of the KidsCare program to provide health care to the children of the working poor.

That is defined as families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid  about $27,700 a year for a family of three  but less than about $40,000 for the same-sized family.

Despite the 3-1 federal-state funding, Arizona stopped enrolling children in that program in a budget-cutting move in 2010. The result is enrollment went from 45,000 then to less than 1,000 now.

Congress has agreed to provide full funding for at least this year and next. But Gov. Doug Ducey has been cool to the idea for fear there would be political pressure to keep the program alive  with state dollars  if federal dollars were reduced.

The House has approved restoration on a 3-1 margin.
Help India!

By TCN News,

Kozhikode: The US consulate officer for political and economic affairs Matthew Beh visited Markaz, the head office of Kanthapuram AP faction of Sunnis yesterday. It is believed that the visit is part of the US decision to keep cordial relations with selected Muslim factions all across the globe, especially after the recent blasphemy conducted against Prophet Mohammed [SAW] through the film Innocence of Muslims.

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On reaching Markaz he had a detailed discussion with Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musalyar and a few other Saqafis and scholars of the AP faction including Prof AK Abdul Hameed and C Muhammed Faisy. Matthew Beh assured that America wont support any sought of blasphemous works against Prophet Mohammed and he invited AP Abubacker Musalyar to visit America.





Matthew Beh talking with Kanthapuram AP Abubacker Musalyar and other AP Sunni leaders



Earlier the recorded cables sent from the US Consulate in Chennai to Washington in mid-2006 leaked by the Wikileaks had mentioned in detail about the Muslim organisations, their social, political, economic and media participation in the state. The cables revealed that Kerala Muslims are keen on vehemently opposing American policies in the Muslim world.

The leaks mentioned the names of Minister and Muslim League leader Dr MK Muneer, Indian Islahi Movement leader Dr Hussain Madavoor [Founder of Mujahid Madavoor faction in Kerala], journalist Baburaj and former police Commissioners of Kozhikode city Neera Ravat and Balram Upadhyaya as having close links with the US Consulate on various matters. The cables while addressing the names of MK Muneer and Hussain Madavoor went on to the extent of glorifying them as their close friends in Kerala. Interestingly, the cables sent also ask to keep the names of Muneer, Hussain Madavoor and Baburaj as confidential.

Earlier the US had arranged free trips to their country for selected leaders from the community as well. The leaders of the Madavoor faction of Mujahids [Nadvathul Mujahideen]  Hussain Madavoor and Mujeeb Rahman Kinaloor were earlier found attending Iftar meets organised by the Chennai American consulate at Thrissur in Central Kerala and after the Wikileaks revelations the Kerala Muslims had kept a doubtful eye over these leaders and their organisational activities. It is quite usual in Kerala that the public conscience  especially Muslim organisations and the Left are so vigilant and doubtful about any American influence in the religious, social or political realms of the state and so as expected the credibility of these leaders were under question before the Kerala Muslim community.

It was since then that the Nadvathul Mujahideen took care to stay away from programmes organised by the US consulate and this way they even refrained from attending the last years Iftar meet. A seminar organised at Kerala University by the Chennai American Consulate too went poorly attended as the invitees feared of being branded as American agents.

It is in this context the Chennai American consulate has decided to strengthen their relationship with the AP faction of Sunnis  well renowned for their anti-Mujahid [Salafi] stands. Though silent until now, after this news there exists rumours in the Muslim circles like the AP faction of Sunnis have replaced the earlier position enjoyed by the Madavoor faction of Mujahids because these section of Sunnis are so insistent on keeping away from anything and everything associated to Mujahid [Salafist ideologies] and so it is very unlikely that they would cooperate with the US consulate until and unless they have detached all their links from the earlier comrades.
On July 27, Rijiju said in the Lok Sabha that the BJPs ideology on the uniform civil code should be taken as the country's ideology on the same. Basil Islam | TwoCircles.net NEW DELHI  Union Minister Kiren Rijijus recent remarks on implementing the uniform civil code have re-ignited the debate on the viability of a uniform civil code and its possible...
Help India!

By Mubasshir Mushtaq for TwoCircles.net

I just finished reading the 33 page ruling on Malegaon 2006. First impressions:

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1. ATS shamelessly tried to build a fictitious case against the accused but failed miserably. Unlike CBI, which took an honourable exit from the case by remaining absent, the ATS argued for framing of charges against the accused despite the fact that NIAs investigation had an overriding effect on the investigation carried by the ATS and the CBI.

2. Justice VV Patil legally demolished each legal contention or case law cited by the ATS and Hindu terror accused. Judge Patil minutely went through each citation and demonstrated how ATS and the Hindu accused were taking wrong legal inference. Patil successfully showed them how to interpret a case law. The judge comes across a legal luminary.

3. The judge debunked ATS theory that the Muslim accused wanted to disturb the communal harmony of Malegaon and Maharashtra by targeting fellow Muslims. The judge says the best time to conduct such an activity could have been during Ganesh immersion which went peacefully in town. The judge, I must admit, very well knows how Hindu-Muslim relationship works in society.

4. The entire ruling is based on legal reasoning and evidence placed before the court. I dont think this ruling will, in any way, benefit the Hindu accused of 2006 and 2008. On the contrary, 2006 Hindu accused have been clearly identified as potential perpetrators of the blasts. The ruling indirectly points a finger towards them.

5. The only problematic part of the judgement is on page 31 where the judge seems to have been carried away without actually knowing the ATS officers. It says, However, it should be mentioned here that the ATS Officers who conducted the investigation were having no animosity with these accused persons to book them in the crime, therefore, in my view as they discharged their public duty but in a wrong way, so they may not be blamed for it.
Help India!

By Zaidul Haque, Twocircles.net

Kolkata: Deganga is the largest Muslim-dominated constituency in the North 24 Parganas district, with over 60% Muslim voters, but the main battle for the seat has put locals against outsiders.

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Deganga, which was a bastion for the All India Forward Bloc between 1991 and 2006, is currently under TMC leadership. However, this year the party has nominated Rahima Mondal, a resident of Bangaon of the same district. Interestingly, All India Fordward Block, which won this constituency between 1991 and 2006, has also brought in a candidate from outside: Hasanoor Zaman Chowdhury is residing of Central Kolkata.

In 20111, Dr M Nuruzzaman from TMC won by a margin of 17,000, but many believe that this time around, it may not be a cakewalk as the party is facing a number of issues.

After TMC announced their candidate for Deganga constituency, the supporters of block level TMC leader Mintu Sahaji blocked roads to protest, but such protests have largely fallen out now. However, local residents are quick to point that supporters of Mintu Sahaji are campaigning against Rahima Mondal.

Forward Bloc is in the same boat as TMCm having changed its candidate from the last time. By not announcing the name of last Assembly elections runner-up and former Minister Dr Mortaza Hossain name, it has irked its voter base.

Lack of higher education in area a major concern for locals

According to Farid Ahmed, a local primary school teacher of Ula, near Kadambakachi under the Deganga constituency, TMC has missed a trick by not nominating Dr M Nuruzzaman who is a doctor by profession. We need qualified Muslim MLAs more in number so that our concerns are raised. MLA Nuruzzaman was very much active in this area and worked towards addressing the problems of Muslims and other backward people, he said.

He said that the only advantage that Rahima, who will be the first woman MLA from the area if she wins, had was that Mamata Banerjee had campaigned for her and considers her an important candidate. That may not be enough. After the alliance between the Left Front and the Congress, it will not be easy to retain this seat in favour of TMC, he added.

But according to Maulana Amir Hossain, a kindergarten school teacher, the backwardness of the area is a far bigger problem than who is a local and who is an outside. There have been no development initiatives taken by either the Left Front or the TMC, he said. Hossain believes that if the winning candidate gets a ministry, then they can expect proper development in this area. There is lack of Higher Secondary school for the Science stream, but government is still silent on the matter. Regardless of who wins, we want to see progress, he added.
Help India!

By TwoCircles.net, Staff Reporter

Washington: The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) , a US based advocacy group dedicated to safeguarding Indias pluralist and tolerant ethos, joined millions of Indians and other people around the world in strongly condemning the barbaric attack on a Christian pastor and his wife in Chhattisgarh.

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The incident which took place on Sunday, April 17, was reported in the media a few days thereafter.

Two attackers had stormed into the church in Bastar district, set ablaze a Bible and other articles, before viciously assaulting the pastor Dinbandhu Sameli and his 7-month pregnant wife and daughter Roushni Vidya, according to news reports.

Instead of filing charges of attempted murder, causing grievous injury, etc, the police have filed lesser charges such as house trespass, dacoity, and commit mischief by fire and injuring or defiling a place of worship. This brutal assault represents an escalation of attacks on minorities in India since the government of Narendra Modi came to power, said a statement issued by IAMC.

Around 15-20 men with saffron bands on their forehead entered the church while Sunday prayer was under way at around 12 pm, and started vandalising the premises and started breaking everything, Pannalal said and claimed that the Bajrang Dal youth indulged in sloganeering and were raising Jai Shree Ram slogans.

They started damaging chairs and fans. They did not spare women and even tore up their clothes. They also thrashed an infant, Arun Pannalal, the President of Chhattisgarhs Christian Forum was quoted as saying in some news reports by IAMC.

The increasing attacks on minorities and lower castes in recent years are consistent with the extremism and intolerance (that) Modi and his party have espoused, reads the statement.

The hate and venom spewed by the RSS and its affiliates and echoed by prominent members of Modis administration are directly responsible for this barbaric attack on Pastor Sameli and his family said Umar Malick, President of Indian American Muslim Council.

The IAMC also echoed the apprehensions raised by global human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International over the worsening situation of religious minorities in India.

Prime Minister Modis government, failed to address increasing attacks on free expression and against religious minorities, Human Rights Watch had stated in its recent 659-page World Report.

We demand not only that the perpetrators be held accountable, but also those who are engaging in a cover-up of the gruesome episode, and those that are enabling the sectarian hate that leads to such crimes, said Khalid Ansari, Vice-President of IAMC.
Ministry: Military will safeguard state sovereignty and security Updated: 2016-04-25 22:13 By Zhang Yunbi(chinadaily.com.cn)

Huangyan Island is China's inherent territory, and the Chinese military will "take all of any necessary measures to safeguard state sovereignty and security", the Ministry of National Defense said on Monday.

Beijing made the response after media reports said six aircraft with the US Air Force embarked on a flying mission in the so-called "international airspace" near the island in the South China Sea on April 19.

"We have taken notice of the relevant report," the ministry said on Monday evening in a written reply to a media request.

The ministry said: "It needs to be pointed out that the US side, in the name of 'freedom of navigation and overflight', is actually advancing the militarization of the South China Sea."

Such actions "pose a threat to sovereignty and security of countries along the sea and sabotage regional peace and stability", the ministry said.

"We express concerns and opposition to this," the ministry added.
China can be model for climate fight, say experts Updated: 2016-04-25 09:03 By Wang Yanfei(China Daily USA)

Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli signs the Paris Agreement on climate change at United Nations Headquarters in New York on April 22. XINHUA

China's strong commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is vital to fully implement the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which was signed by 175 countries late on Friday, experts say.

"China has made great contributions to tackling climate change in recent years and can set an example for other countries," said Su Wei, director of the National Development and Reform Commission's Climate Change Department.

His comments come after Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli, the special envoy of President Xi Jinping, signed the agreement on Friday in New York, where he said that China aims to finalize legal procedures to ratify the pact before the G20 summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, in September.

Several countries have yet to sign the agreement brokered in December that binds voluntary pledges from 187 countries to cut emissions. The Paris pact will be open for signatures until April 21 next year.

To fulfill its commitment, China will have to cut carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 60 to 65 percent of 2005 levels by 2030, increase nonfossil fuel sources in its primary energy consumption to about 20 percent, and peak carbon emissions by 2030.

Hu Angang, an economist at Tsinghua University, said China has made the right decision to shift toward a greener and more sustainable model after 30 years of high-speed growth based on smokestack industries.

"We have witnessed how economic growth in China has gradually decoupled with consumption of primary energy since 2014. More stringent targets set for the next five years will ensure China takes further steps to cut emissions," he said, referring to the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20).

He said the central government has made unprecedented efforts by making all 10 environmental targets binding for all industry administrations and local authorities, including energy consumption and carbon emission per unit of GDP.

China's commitment in the five-year plan and its significant role in the adoption of the Paris Agreement point to more opportunities to enhance international cooperation on green development and to demonstrate leadership, Hu added.

wangyanfei@chinadaily.com.cn
Li calls for integrated innovation Updated: 2016-04-26 07:59 By Hu Yongqi In Chengdu(China Daily)

Premier Li Keqiang encouraged Chinese engineers on Monday to develop integrated innovations by going abroad to absorb advanced technologies.

"Engineers should go to developed countries to see applications of new technologies and develop insights from them," Li said during a visit to Sichuan province.

While visiting Dongfang Electric Corp, a leading manufacturer of hydropower and nuclear power in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, Li inspected the company's labs for developing fuel cells to store electricity and new forms of energy.

The company showed the premier its technologies and products for hydropower, nuclear power, gas turbines and batteries using new forms of energy. Li said it was the first time he had seen Chinese-made equipment for fuel cells and gas turbines.

However, on seeing the company's vanadium redox battery, a rechargeable battery that uses vanadium ions to store potential chemical energy, he told the engineers of a smaller, more efficient VRB that he saw in the UK. He also shared his knowledge of German hydrogen battery stations when engineers showed their latest achievements in this field.

The premier found that few engineers had visited counterpart companies in developed economies, and most of Dongfang's engineers rely on online sources to gain information on leading global manufacturers and new achievements in their fields.

They told the premier they haven't had a chance to see how technologies have been applied more efficiently in other countries.

"China has made innovations based on absorbing foreign technologies for years, and now our engineers have to promote integrated innovation and original ideas," Li told the company's employees. "That's why our researchers and engineers have to go out to see and learn.

"China will continue to learn the most advanced achievements of the human race, but also has to promote original technologies," he added.

Li Hang, an engineer at Dongfang, said a close look at technologies or processes would help scientists and engineers gain a broader idea and develop new products with the insights gained from overseas visits.

huyongqi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 04/26/2016 page3)
A UK 'Brexit' could weigh on China: experts Updated: 2016-04-26 11:06 By Hua Shengdun in Washington(China Daily)

The possibility of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union has been troubling its member states since a referendum was put forth in 2015 in the British Parliament, but the prospect holds broader implications that stretch beyond Western nations, experts believe.

"If Brexit (Britain's exit) takes place in June, China will certainly reconsider some of its long-term investments, because it will not have the access to EU markets as if the UK was a full member of the EU," said Philippe Le Corre, visiting fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.

Le Corre spoke at a panel discussion on China's overseas investments in Europe at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Monday.

"Particularly, the nuclear project might be questionable," said Le Corre, referring to the Hinkley Point nuclear deal between China and the UK, which President Xi Jinping and British Prime Minister David Cameron signed in October 2015.

Hinkley Point would be China's largest inward investment in the history of the UK, with plans to construct at least one nuclear power plant on the Somerset coast and the possibility of two more.

Construction of the first power station, Hinkley Point C, is expected to cost stakeholders $26 billion, create 25,000 jobs and provide enough energy to power 6 million British homes when up and running. China is expected to cover about a third of the cost.

Vital though this nuclear project may be to Chinese outbound foreign direct investment (OFDI), China has various other interests in the region, with OFDI to Europe reaching record highs in 2015.

"If recent trends continue, China will replace Japan as the largest net creditor in the world in the next five years," said David Dollar, senior fellow at Brookings.

According to the Rhodium Group, China has expanded its investments in Europe.

The increasing growth of Chinese OFDI may result in more structured negotiations between China and its European investment targets in the future, something that the US has been keen to establish.

Le Corre said this business of FDI from China is going to take a new step, probably this year, with the signature of a bilateral investment treaty, which is also something that is going on in the US.

Allan Fong in Washington contributed to this story.
Not too early for EU and China to start FTA talks Updated: 2016-04-26 07:42 By Fu Jing(China Daily)

The Centre of European Policy Studies, the European Union's leading think tank, issued a report recently outlining reasons why Beijing and Brussels should launch free trade agreement talks.

The opinion of most experts is in line with that of the team led by Senior Research Fellow Jacques Pelkmans at the CEPS.

However, there have been voices claiming that although it would benefit both sides to reach a deep and comprehensive free trade deal, it is too early to take action right now.

Their arguments range from whether to give China market economy status to dealing with terrorism and the migrant crisis and economic challenges.

Apart from that, they say Brussels is busy talking with Beijing to reach bilateral investment agreement and it is more willing to conclude and ratify this agreement first before entering into free trade talks.

Compared with Brussels' reaction, Beijing has been more proactive and it has been actively pushing for such talks.

When President Xi Jinping paid his first visit to European Union headquarters in Brussels as Chinese president two years ago, he raised the idea that both sides should do feasibility study for talks on a free trade agreement.

And when Xi visited the United Kingdom last year, China and the UK agreed to push such talks at the Beijing-Brussels level.

Pelkmans' team says in its report that Brussels has slowly got used to China's urgency, which stated in its recent foreign policy update that entering free trade agreements with its partners tops its agenda.

Is it really too early for Brussels to engage with Beijing and kick off free trade talks?

The answer is no.
DPRK seems set to launch Musudan ballistic missile: S.Korean media Updated: 2016-04-26 13:33 (Xinhua)

SEOUL - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) seems set to launch another Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile after its estimated failure 11 days ago, Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday citing South Korean government officials.

An unidentified official was quoted as saying that signs emerged for the DPRK to launch another Musudan missile, with which Pyongyang failed in its test-firing on April 15.

Among the two Musudan missiles, which the DPRK forces put in place for the test-firing, the remaining one seems to have been on standby for another launch after the first one failed, the official said.

On April 15, the DPRK launched a Musudan missile, capable of targeting part of the US territory such as Guam and the outer reaches of Alaska, from a mobile launcher.

The launch was estimated by the Republic of Korea's military to have failed as the missile disappeared from a radar screen several seconds after liftoff, indicating an explosion in mid-air.

It marked the first time that the DPRK test-fired the mobile Musudan ballistic missile though it was an abortive launch. Pyongyang has allegedly deployed the missiles since 2007.

Another government official was quoted as saying that the military authorities are seeing a high possibility for the DPRK to conduct the test-firing again of the Musudan missile in the near future.

Concerns spread here about the DPRK's another nuclear test and ballistic missile launch since top DPRK leader Kim Jong-un gave orders on March 15 to test a nuclear warhead and ballistic rockets capable of carrying the warhead.

The DPRK's official news agency reported on Sunday about the successful launch of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The ROK's military said that the missile, launched on Saturday, flew about 30 km and has partially advanced in its technology.

The DPRK is feared to carry out its fifth nuclear test or another ballistic missile launch ahead of the historic ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) congress scheduled for early May, the first since 1980.

Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Kyun told a press briefing that the DPRK can conduct another nuclear test at any time when its leadership determines, saying Pyongyang can stage a surprise nuclear test at any time to implement Kim's order on March 15.

The ROK's military has been closely monitoring the moves at a main DPRK nuclear test site in Punggye-ri in northeastern DPRK where all of the country's four nuclear tests were conducted. The latest one happened in January this year.

The movement of personnel and vehicles at the Punggye-ri test site has recently increased two to three times more than last month, indicating a preparation for another nuclear test. Some local media reported that the DPRK had already completed preparations for another test.
China urges not to granting visa to Uygur terrorist Updated: 2016-04-26 17:06 By Mo Jingxi(chinadaily.com.cn)

China asked relevant countries to keep its concerns about certain individuals in mind when responding to a media report that the Indian government has cancelled a visa to an exiled Uygur terrorist.

"We've noticed related reports. China has already expressed its concern when it noticed that the Indian government was granting a tourist visa to Dolkun Isa," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular news conference on Tuesday.

Dolkun Isa, executive chairman of the Munich-based World Uygur Congress, is branded by China as a terrorist. It is reported that the Indian government has withdrawn his tourist visa on Saturday.

"Isa is wanted by Interpol and we call for other countries to keep our concerns in mind," Hua said.
British court jury rules 96 Liverpool fans unlawfully killed in 1989 Updated: 2016-04-26 20:52 (Xinhua)

Liverpool fans arrive to hear the jury deliver its verdict at the new inquests into the Hillsborough disaster, in Warrington, Britain April 26, 2016.[Photo/Agencies]

LONDON -- The 96 Liverpool supporters who died in the 1989 disaster at Hillsborough Stadium were unlawfully killed, a British court jury ruled Tuesday.

There was applause from the public gallery as the jurywoman read out their verdict after a two-year inquest hearing into the deaths.

The jurywoman said the decision was by a majority verdict of seven of the nine jury members.

Liverpool fans attending the FA Cup semi-final were cleared of any blame for the crush that left the 96 people dead and more than 700 fans injured.

Initially blame was heaped on the fans, but after a lengthy campaign and a formal inquiry, new inquests were ordered. It concluded with the announcement of the verdicts on Tuesday.

The jury blamed police omissions, particularly by police commanders in charge of crowd control on the day of the watch at Hillsborough, home ground of Sheffield Wednesday.

There were emotional scenes in the courtroom at Warrington in Cheshire, with many of the families of those killed in tears.

In Liverpool city center, lanterns were placed on the steps of St George's Hall as people in the city awaited the decisions.
IFAW steps up anti-poaching strategy in Kenya Updated: 2016-04-26 21:03 By Lucie Morangi(chinadaily.com.cn)

Azzedine Downed is president and CEO of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. [Photo by Lucie Morangi/ chinadaily.com.cn]

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) on Monday launched an anti-poaching campaign that takes the fight back to the criminals.

Dubbed 'tenboma', it employs counterintelligence tactics that rope in local communities that are required to share information with security agencies to protect elephants.

The concept was borrowed from another initiative, Nyumba Kumi, or "10 homes", which was launched by the Kenyan government two years ago in response to rising terrorism attacks. Tenboma hopes to gain the trust of communities living around trust lands that have become homes to wildlife. The locals will be required to report any incident, no matter how minute, on the grounds that previously was deemed unrelated to poaching.

Azzedine Downes , IFAW's president and CEO, said that the idea was born after he realized that heavy resources have concentrated on the illegal trade and use of ivory.

"However, this does not stop the killing of elephants. We therefore have brought in consultants who were actively involved in disarming roadside bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq to help us put a stop to the killing before it happens," Downes said.

The whole strategy hinges on collating vital information from the ground on poachers' movements.

"Remote incidences, such as an armed robbery at a little shop for basic supplies that poachers use while lying in wait in the bush is important for wildlife rangers. This allows them to preempt the crime, something that I think is important but has been neglected in this fight," Downes said. He spoke in Nairobi five days before the historic destruction of about 105 tons of confiscated ivory. The haul was the biggest since Kenya burned its first pile in 1989.

Meanwhile, the IFAW president said the organization is using $20 million in pro bono advertising to boost awareness campaigns in China.

"China is definitely moving in the right direction. The government is on board and has shown its commitment to complement Kenya's anti-poaching campaigns by recent bans on illegal ivory imports, destroying more than 662 kilograms of ivory last year and boosting security checks at entry ports in China," he said.
South Sudan's Machar returns to Juba Updated: 2016-04-26 22:04 (Xinhua)

South Sudan's rebel leader Riek Machar talks on the phone in his field office in a rebel-controlled territory in Jonglei State, South Sudan, February 1, 2014.[Photo/Agencies]

JUBA -- South Sudan's rebel leader Dr. Riek Machar arrived in Juba on Tuesday, to take up the post of Vice-President as part of the August 2015 peace deal to end more than two years of civil war.

Machar who arrived aboard UN plane amid tight security from the government and opposition forces is expected to be sworn-in later Tuesday to mark the beginning of a 30-month transitional period.

The rebel leader had been expected to return on Monday but instead his Chief of General Staff General Simon Gatwech Dual returned with 195 troops including arsenal of weapons.

Analysts said the return of Machar who is due to form the unity government with President Salva Kiir would not end days of uncertainty over the implementation of the peace deal.

Information Minister Michael Makuei who termed Machar's arrival as a landmark in the implementation of the peace agreement signed last year between him and President Salva Kiir.

Machar's advance team and 1,370 protection troops have arrived in Juba despite continued clashes between his troops with the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in Bahr el Ghazal and Equatoria regions.

Civil war erupted in December 2013 when President Kiir accused his former deputy Machar of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings that have split the country along ethnic lines.

The conflict has reopened deep ethnic tensions in the world's youngest country, which only won independence from Sudan in 2011.
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Hanoi, April 25 (VNA)  Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and Lao Party chief and President Bounnhang Volachith underscored the significance of the traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Laos during their talks in Hanoi on April 25.



Their talks took place right after the welcome ceremony of the highest rituals for the statesman.



Party chief Trong said Bounnhang Volachiths choosing Vietnam as the first destination after his election reflects the appreciation of the Lao Party and State and he himself for fostering the great friendship, special and pure solidarity, and all-around cooperation between Vietnam and Laos.



He believed that the visit, which took place following the success of each National Party Congress and the election of deputies to the Lao National Assembly (eighth tenure), would further contribute to lifting ties between the two Parties and countries to a greater height.



The Party, State and people of Vietnam strongly and fully support the renewal, national construction and defence of Laos, he stated, expressing his belief that under the leadership of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party led by Bounnhang Volachith, the fraternal Lao people will successfully realise the resolution set by the 10 th National Party Congress and the 2016-2020 socio-economic development scheme, building a Laos of peace, independence, democracy, unification and prosperity according to their socialism goals.



Host and guest affirmed that under any circumstance, the two Parties and peoples will do their best to maintain and nurture the everlasting Vietnam  Laos ties.



They vowed to intensify the bilateral comprehensive partnership on the basis of upholding the spirit of independence, self-reliance, fair and mutually beneficial cooperation while giving priority to each other for the sake of each countrys prosperity, and for peace, stability, cooperation and development in Southeast Asia and the world.



The two leaders agreed to further improve the quality of ideological exchange and the realities of Party building, State and socio-economic management while raising public awareness of the bilateral special relationship, and working closely together to celebrate the 55 th anniversary of diplomatic ties and the 40 th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation next year.



Both sides pledged close collaboration in regional and global issues and at multilateral forums, contributing to a strong ASEAN. They also committed to the sustainable and effective use and management of Mekong River water resources, and effectively carrying out projects in the LaosVietnamCambodia development triangle.



Vietnam actively supports and shares its experience to help Laos fulfill its role as ASEAN Chair 2016, the host said.



On the East Sea issue, the leaders stressed the significance of maintaining peace, stability, security and safety in the East Sea.



They consented to accelerating the settlement of disputes in the East Sea by peaceful means and in line with international law, as well as fully and effectively abiding by the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea and soon reaching a Code of Conduct in the East Sea.



On the occasion, the Vietnamese leader also accepted his guests invitation to visit Laos in the foreseeable future.



In the evening the same day, he hosted a banquet in honour of the Lao leader and his entourage.

VNA/VNP
Third times a charm for third wife?

The Thanh Nien online newspaper reported that a man posted an advertisement to find a wife on a social network last week.

In his announcement, he wrote that he needs a gentle wife who can read, write and listen. He also requires a good-looking woman who can attract many people at first sight. And he added that he would be willing to marry immediately.

The announcement included his phone number and home address. The post attracted the attention of many users of the social network.

Many people thought it was an advertisement to promote his business because the announcement was also placed in front of a shop selling stainless steel and aluminum.

Newspaper reporters phoned him at his posted phone number, and he admitted that he was the author of the announcement.

The man, named Vong, lives in Ha Nois ong a District.

During the phone call, he said, I dont want to say much. You should bring your record to my house if you want to be my wife. I dont use Facebook or email, but you can send your photo to my phone if you have one.

He added, I am married already and I still live with my wife, but I want to have another wife because my current wife is an unsatisfying woman.

He affirmed that he and his wife already have an arrangement to resolve any issues if someone applies to become his new wife.

You can ask my wife if you have any questions, he said and hung up the phone abruptly.

The reporters then called his wife. She cried and said, "It is true, and just happened yesterday after we argued.

She said she married him 16 years ago and they have a 14-year-old son together.

"I felt very ashamed when he posted this announcement. And Im afraid that my son will feel ashamed too if his friends find out," she said.

She said he had previously been married before marrying her.

She said she tries her best to care for her family, but her husband is still unsatisfied.

In 2004, he posted the same announcement, but she ignored it, she said. But this time, she cannot accept it anymore, she added.

She said she hoped that media and local authorities will help her and other women in the same situation to obtain justice.

Opposite of a hero

A primary-secondary school in Phu uc Commune in the southern province of ong Thap recently built a memorial house in the school to help students learn more about national heroes.

In the house, there are many photos and introductions of heroes.

Le Van Tam, a hero in the French resistance war, was among heroes photos displayed at the memorial house.

But the photo with Le Van Tams name was not actually of him, a charity team discovered while visiting the school one day, said Le Phuoc Hau, the head of the Education Department in Tam Nong District.

They reported the mistake to school leaders.

After verifying that the photo was not of Le Van Tam, the man in the photo was identified as a murderer in 1997 who was sentenced to death.

The murder occurred in Tan Phuoc District in the southern province of Tien Giang.

The school leaders admitted their fault. They did not verify the photo of the hero before using it, officials said.

Hau asked the leaders of Phu Xuan Primary-Secondary School to remove the photo and determine what caused the mistake.

The education department also asked local schools to check all photos in the memorial houses.

Through careful inspection, two more schools learned they also had used the wrong photos of Le Van Tam, but the actual identity of the men in those photos has not yet been determined.  VNS
The members of The Viet Nam Macadamia Association's (VMA's) executive board at the first congress held in the Central Highland province of Lam ong's a Lat City on April 22.  Photo tintaynguyen.com

Viet Nam News -HA NOI  The Viet Nam Macadamia Association (VMA) held its first congress in the Central Highland province of Lam ongs a Lat City on Sunday.

The VMA convened the congress to elect a 13-member executive board with Lien Viet Post Bank Chairman Duong Cong Minh as Chairman.

The congress agreed on an agenda that focuses on sustainably developing a modern macadamia sector where business gains bring prosperity to farmers.

According to a plan approved by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the northwest and Central Highlands regions will plant macadamias on 9,940 hectares of land and develop 12 processing units by 2020. By 2030, there will be 34,500 hectares of plantations nationwide, and the number of processing units in the two regions will reach 30.

The VMA was established in February under Decision No124/Q-BNV issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).

The MHA approved the plan proposed by Lien Viet Post Bank and Him Lam Real Estate Joint Stock Company to establish the association to bolster product quality, trade promotion and branding. It also aims to represent enterprises, organisations and individuals in the macadamia business.

Viet Nam started planting macadamia trees about 10 years ago and is currently growing about 2,000 ha, with an average output of three tonnes per hectare.

Macadamia cultivation is expected to reap considerable benefits for farmers in the Central Highlands region, where conditions are best suited for the plant.

The macadamia nut is dubbed the "Queen of Nuts" for its outstanding nutritional value. Experts point out that compared with other common edible seeds, such as almonds and cashews, macadamias is high in fat and low in protein. It also has the highest amount of mono-unsaturated fats among any known seed.

Because of the great benefits it brings, farmers in the Central Highlands provinces have been aggressively planting macadamias, hoping to earn big profits, which has allowed the plantations to get out of control.

Creating new plantations without a proper roadmap and a secure consumption market can lead to bad economic consequences. Therefore, there should be a master plan for macadamia development, and policymakers as well as the VMA need to develop a detailed strategy for growing the nut, local media reported.  VNS
Viet Nam's exports dropped during the first half of April compared to the second half of March, due to declines in the export of major articles.  Photo vietstock.vn

Viet Nam News -HA NOI  The national balance of trade saw a surplus of about US$1.48 billion this year, reported Hai quan, the online newspaper of the Viet Nam Customs.

The figure nearly doubled the US$750 million trade surplus recorded by the General Statistics Office late last month, for the first quarter of 2016.

Between the beginning of the year and April 15, Viet Nam exported goods worth US$46.11 billion, up 7.7 per cent over the same period last year.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) enterprises contributed US$32.4 billion to the total export value, accounting for 70 per cent of all exports.

Viet Nams exports dropped during the first half of April compared to the second half of March, due to declines in the export of major articles.

For example, telephones and components fell by $298 million, crude oil was down US$99.7 million, and garment and textile products decreased US$86 million.

Machinery and spare parts also fell by more than $60 million, iron and steel dropped by $50 million, and footware contracted by $29 million.

Some products saw an increase in exports, such as handbags, wallets, hats and umbrellas (up $19.2 million), coffee (up $18 million) and cashew nuts (up US$17 million).

Meanwhile, Viet Nams imports totalled US$44.63 billion as of April 15 this year, down 3.1 per cent over the same period last year.

FDI firms contributed $26.72 billion to the total import value, or 60 per cent of all imports.

With regard to Aprils imports, computers, electronic products and components fell by $272 million, iron and steel dropped by $53 million, telephones and components were down US$41 million, and machinery and equipment decreased $36 million.

A few products witnessed an increase in imports, such as animal feed and materials (up $61.4 million), cloth (up $50 million) and pharmaceuticals (up $22 million).

Overall, Viet Nams foreign trade totalled $90.74 billion as of April 15 this year, an increase of 2.1 per cent over the same period last year.  VNS
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc yesterday chairs the first meeting with ministerial and sector leaders in Ha Noi yesterday.  Photo VNA

Viet Nam News -HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc yesterday chaired the first meeting with ministerial and sector leaders in Ha Noi seeking to remove obstacles to the enforcement of Laws on Enterprises and Investment.

Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung reported that the two laws came into effect on July 1, 2015.

Under the new laws, the time required for fresh business registrations was slashed to 2.9 days on average while the time required for adjustment of business license took 2.7 days on average.

The reform of the two laws was welcomed by international organisations, especially the Word Bank.

The outcomes showed that the business environment improved right after the Law on Enterprises and the Law on Investment took effect, said Minister Dung.

However, problems still lie ahead during the implementation of the two laws, he added.

The MPI pointed out the top 3 problems included differences and inappropriate regulations between the Law on Investment, Decree 118/2015/ND-CP and related laws and documents on investment procedures, difficulties in collecting, reviewing and reforming investment conditions in accordance with the Law on Investment and obstacles in conducting investment and business registration.

Phuc underlined the necessity to enforce the two laws with the Governments Resolution 19/NQ-CP, dated March 12, 2015 on key duties and solutions to improve the business environment and national competitiveness in 2015-2016.

Phuc also pledged to uphold the role of the Task Force on Implementation of the Enterprise Law and Investment Law.

Public servants need to serve citizens and enterprises, the Government leader said.

He also agreed to issue guiding documents on the implementation of the two laws before July 1, 2016 and assigned the MoPI to work with the Office of the Government and relevant ministries and agencies to implement the new regulations. VNS
HA NOI  Vietnamese shares yesterday pulled back on both local exchanges after rising sharply over the past two days as investors sought profits from property developers.

The benchmark VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange inched down 0.2 per cent to close at 591.58 points. The southern index jumped 4.3 per cent in the previous two days.

The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange ended slightly lower at 80.92 points after rising 2 per cent during the same period.

The property sector was the factor that drove markets down yesterday as property firms declined from their recent gains.

Vingroup JSC (VIC) slumped 3.7 per cent after VIC surged 9.7 per cent in the previous three sessions.

Thu uc Housing Development Corp (TDH) was down 0.7 per cent from a two-day gain of 3.7 per cent.

Additionally, local energy stocks suffered losses from a fall in oil prices on concerns that a global glut will be prolonged as Middle East players boost production to maintain current market shares.

US crude West Texas Intermediate (WTI) retreated 1.2 per cent from a four-day jump of 9.9 per cent last week to trade at US$43.19 a barrel, and London-traded Brent crude slid 1 per cent to trade at $44.66 a barrel.

Energy stocks that saw declines included PetroVietnam Gas Corp (GAS), PetroVietnam Coating Corp (PVB) and PetroVietnam Technical Service Corp (PVS).

Those stocks fell 2.4 per cent, 6.5 per cent and 1.7 per cent, respectively.

Two blue chips in the food and beverage industry, dairy firm Vinamilk (VNM) and food producer Masan Group (MSN), also declined.

MSN was down 0.7 per cent, extending a loss of 2.1 per cent for a second day. VNM also lost 0.7 per cent after gaining 2.9 per cent in the previous two days.

On the other hand, financial firms boosted both markets as foreign investment continued to focus on these stocks.

Vietcombank (VCB), Vietinbank (CTG), Sacombank (STB) and the Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BID) lifted the banking industry with gains of 0.4 per cent, 1 per cent, 1.8 per cent and 2.9 per cent, respectively.

Insurer Bao Viet Holdings (BVH) added 0.9 per cent and BIDV Insurance Corp (BIC) was up 0.5 per cent after the company announced it will allow foreign investors to own more stakes in the capital.

Two companies in the agricultural sector, Hoang Anh Gia Lai JSC (HAG) and HAGL Agricultural JSC (HNG), surged 5.7 per cent and 5.8 per cent, respectively, after they received positive support from creditors in dealing with the companies total debts.

Both local markets exchanged more than 210 million shares worth VN3.77 trillion ($167.8 million), an increase of nearly one-third from last weeks daily trading value.  VNS
SSI's new business will cover derivative securities brokerage, proprietary trading, consultancy as well as clearing and settlement service.  Photo cafef.vn

Viet Nam News -HCM CITY  Shareholders of Saigon Securities Inc yesterday approved the companys expansion into derivatives trading, which has yet to begin in Viet Nam, however.

A circular issued by the Ministry of Finance in January stipulates that a securities company must obtain approval from its shareholders to begin derivative trading.

SSI derivative trading will cover broking, proprietary trading, consultancy and clearance and settlement services.

The company will also issue covered warrants once legal regulations are in place.

The shareholders meeting where approval for derivatives trading was obtained also agreed on a revenue target of VN1.43 trillion (US$64 million) this year and pre-tax profit of VN950 billion.

Last year they were respectively VN1.33 trillion and VN1.06 trillion.

The company had the highest market share on both the HCM City and Ha Noi exchanges with a combined 12.13 per cent.

Company chairman Nguyen Duy Hung highlighted the success of its investment banking services, with its clients including property developer Novaland, which raised VN1 trillion in the stock market, Digiworld (VN250 billion) and Quang Ngai Sugar Company, which sold almost VN300 billion worth of stakes to foreign investors.

Its investment banking services fetched revenues of VN57 billion, up 125 per cent from 2014.

Its SSI Asset Management Company was the first domestic fund to raise money from European institutional investors, using the undisclosed sum to establish the Andbank Investment SIF  Vietnam Value and Income Portfolio.

It also raised $32 million in co-operation with Japanese partner Daiwa Securities Company for the DAIWA-SSIAM Vietnam Growth Fund II LP, which focuses on private companies operating in the agriculture, aquaculture and consumer goods sectors.  VNS
NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan said the session will focus on reviewing and assessing outcomes of the 11th and also the last session of the 13th NA and discussing preparations for the first meeting of the 14th NA.  VNA/VNS Photo An ang

Viet Nam News -HA NOI  Members of the National Assembly Standing Committee started their 47th session yesterday in Ha Noi.

NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan said the session will focus on reviewing and assessing outcomes of the 11th and also the last session of the 13th NA and discussing preparations for the first meeting of the 14th NA.

They will also discuss the issuance of the Resolution on benefits and other conditions to ensure effective activities of members of the Peoples Councils, the appointment of Vietnamese ambassadors for the 2016  2019 tenure and draft resolutions on the classification of administrative divisions.

During the morning session, deputies discussed a Resolution on benefits and other conditions to ensure activities of members of the Peoples Councils.

They agreed with the need to issue the Resolution to help increase the effectiveness of Peoples Councils members to recover shortcomings that hinder operation of the deputies.

NA Vice Chairman Uong Chu Luu said according to the Law on Local Government Organisation and the Constitution, the role and positions of the Peoples Councils members was improved so it was necessary to adjust policies and conditions relating to their operation such as minimum wage and allowance levels.

It was unreasonable for the benefits and working conditions for Peoples Council members to be the same as 10 years ago. Amendments are necessary, he said.

Some deputies suggested clarifying shortcomings in regulations relating to policies and conditions of the Peoples Council deputies and reviewing all related legal documents at all localities nationwide to ensure transparency and equality in implementing policies for members of the Peoples Councils.

After discussions, the NA Standing Committee approved a draft resolution on the problem.

On the same day, deputies discussed a proposal submitted by Chief Justice of the Supreme Peoples Court Nguyen Hoa Binh on costumes worn by judges, which said that the costume worn by the judges should be black robes to deliver the most profound image of the court and be in conformity with international practice.

Most of the members of the NAs Committee for Judicial Affairs agreed with the Chief Justice.

Their costume at court must show formality while being in accordance with international norms, they said. At present, the costume of judges during trials is still similar to that of other agencies and organisations, the justice committee members noted.  VNS
HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc hosted a reception in Ha Noi yesterday for US Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack, during which he expressed his hope that the US would step up support for Viet Nam in agricultural production and climate change response.

The Government leader spoke highly of the secretarys talks with Vietnamese Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao uc Phat, where they agreed to boost bilateral trade in agriculture, fishery and forestry.

He told the guest that agriculture was a large part of the countrys economic structure with more than half of the population involved in this field. Viet Nam wants US assistance in improving food quarantines and clean production.

Phuc asked the US to allow the import of Vietnamese mangos and starfruits soon and continue supporting the export of Viet Nams tra and basa fish to the US market.

The Vietnamese Government submitted the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement to the National Assembly for ratification, he said, believing that the agreement, once effective, will facilitate more co-operation between the two countries.

He also said that the Vietnamese Government and people are expecting to welcome US President Barack Obama to Viet Nam in May.

The guest said he was impressed by Viet Nams development achievements.

Sympathising with the losses caused by drought and saltwater, he affirmed that his country was willing to send experts to Viet Nam to exchange experience in adapting to climate change and dealing with drought and saline intrusion.

Vilsack continued by saying that the US would create favourable conditions to expand its market for Vietnamese agricultural products.

He suggested both sides consider removing more trade barriers to improve the effectiveness of bilateral co-operation.

Agro-forestry-fisheries co-operation

Earlier yesterday, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao uc Phat and US Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack held talks in Ha Noi to enhance collaboration in agriculture, forestry and seafood between the two countries.

According to the Vietnamese ministry, the countrys agro-forestry-fisheries exports to the US still face a number of difficulties and unfair treatment. The procedures to grant an export licence for Vietnamese fruit to the market are complicated, costly and time-consuming. So far, only four kinds of Vietnamese fruit, namely dragon fruit, rambutan, longan and lychee are licensed to enter the US, but with high export costs.

Viet Nam has sent a draft report on the probable risk assessment (PRA) of mango and star apple to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and proposed APHIS hand over the inspection of fruit irradiation to the Vietnamese ministrys Plant Protection Department. Viet Nam has effectively coordinated with the US in this field since 2008.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are imposing zero maximum residue limits (MRL) for some unregistered drugs in the US, though these drugs are allowed for use in other countries. This has caused difficulties for Vietnamese exporters. Also, Vietnamese farm producers have to follow the food safety regulations from different US states.

Regarding seafood, Vietnamese shrimp and tra fish exported to the US last year received unfair treatment and continuously experienced anti-dumping and anti-subsidy lawsuits, which significantly affected the trade ties between the two countries as well as the jobs and income of millions of Vietnamese farmers and businesses.

The USDA has ruled for the establishment of an inspection programme for Siluriformes fish, including Vietnamese tra and basa fish, which came into effect on March 1, 2016. Accordingly, the export countries have a transitional period of 18 months (until August 31, 2017) to adjust their production systems in line with the new US regulations.

The implementation of the programme within 18 months is difficult for Viet Nam due to the countrys significant difference from the US in production conditions and level of development. This might interrupt trade activities and affect millions of Vietnamese farmers and exporters. Therefore, Vietnam proposed the US extend the time limit for the country to meet the programmes regulations.

The Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development hopes to strengthen co-operation with the US in smart agriculture to cope with climate change, Phat said, adding that the US was expected to help the Southeast Asian country enhance capacity in the fields of biological and hi-tech agriculture, food hygiene and safety, and flora and fauna inspection.

He asked the US to support Viet Nam in evaluating aquatic resources and realising commitments in the environment programme under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement  to which both nations are members.

Currently, the US is the second most important farm produce market for Viet Nam, after China, with an export turnover of US$5.69 billion and imports of US$1.4 billion in 2015.  VNS
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (Right) shakes hand with World Economic Forum Executive Director Philipp Rosler, who is on a working visit to Viet Nam.  VNA/VNS Thong Nhat

Viet Nam News -HA NOI  Viet Nam considers the private sector an important driving force of development, said Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc during a reception in Ha Noi yesterday for World Economic Forum (WEF) Managing Director Philipp Rosler.

The Prime Minister lauded the WEFs support for Viet Nam during the countrys development.

He thanked the Managing Directors invitation for the WEF-ASEAN meeting scheduled in this June and said the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry would make the necessary arrangements.

Highlighting the WEF-Mekong Conference to be held in Viet Nam this year, the PM suggested the WEF leader closely collaborate with the Foreign Ministry to contribute to organising the meeting.

Rosler expressed his hope that the Vietnamese PM would boost co-operation with the WEF.

He said he believed that under the leadership of the PM, the Vietnamese private sector would play a more important role in the countrys development.

The WEF was willing to help Viet Nam in implementing its socio-economic goals, Rosler said.  VNS
HA NOI  Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and Lao Party chief and President Bounnhang Volachith underscored the significance of traditional friendship and co-operation between Viet Nam and Laos during their talks in Ha Noi yesterday.

Their talks took place after a welcome ceremony of the highest rituals for the statesman.

Trong said Bounnhang Volachiths choosing Viet Nam as his first destination after his election reflected the appreciation that himself and Viet Nam have for the Lao Party and State for fostering friendship, solidarity and co-operation between Viet Nam and Laos.

He believed that the visit, which took place following each National Party Congress and the election of deputies to the Lao National Assembly (eighth tenure), would contribute to strengthening ties between the two Parties and countries.

The Party, State and people of Viet Nam fully support the renewal, national construction and defence of Laos, he stated, expressing his belief that under the leadership of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party led by Bounnhang Volachith, the Lao people will successfully realise the resolution set by the 10th National Party Congress and the 2016-20 socio-economic development scheme, building a Laos of peace, independence, democracy, unification and prosperity.

The host and guest affirmed that the two Parties and peoples will do their best to maintain and nurture Viet Nam  Laos ties.

They vowed to intensify the bilateral comprehensive partnership while giving priority to each other for the sake of each countrys prosperity, and for peace, stability, co-operation and development.

The two leaders agreed to further improve the quality of ideological exchange and the realities of Party building, State and socio-economic management while raising public awareness of the bilateral relationship and working closely together to celebrate the 55th anniversary of diplomatic ties and the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation next year.

Both sides pledged collaboration in regional and global issues and at multilateral forums, contributing to a strong ASEAN. They also committed to the sustainable and effective use and management of Mekong River water resources, and effectively carrying out projects in the LaosViet NamCambodia development triangle.

Viet Nam supported and shared its experience to help Laos fulfil its role as ASEAN Chair 2016, the host said.

The leaders also stressed the significance of maintaining peace, stability, security and safety in the East Sea.

They consented to accelerating the settlement of disputes in the East Sea by peaceful means and in line with international law, as well as fully and effectively abiding by the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea and soon reaching a Code of Conduct in the East Sea.

The Vietnamese leader also accepted his guests invitation to visit Laos in the future.

On the evening of the same day, he hosted a banquet in honour of the Lao leader and his entourage.

Meeting PM and NA head

At his meeting with the Lao guest yesterday, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc confirmed that the Vietnamese Government would continue doing its utmost to co-ordinate with the Lao side in nurturing the two countries friendship and co-operation.

Phuc lauded Laos socio-economic development achievements, believing that under the sound leadership of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party, the country would make further progress.

He suggested the two sides carry out co-operative mechanisms approved by their high-level leaders, with the priority given to the 2016 Viet Nam-Laos bilateral co-operation agreement, as well as speeding up the implementation of Viet Nams investment projects in Laos and completing the establishment of a project on connectivity between the two economies soon.

The Vietnamese Government leader also asked both sides to intensify solidarity and co-operation at regional and global forums, especially within the ASEAN co-operative framework, and contribute to peace and stability.

The Lao leader affirmed that Laos will exert extra efforts, together with the Vietnamese side, to lift bilateral relations to a new height.

He requested the two Governments strengthen co-ordination to implement co-operation projects to further develop the economic, trade and investment ties between Laos and Viet Nam.

On the same day, the Lao guest was received by National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan who said that in her new position, she would work to boost collaboration between the two legislative bodies and nurture the Viet Nam-Laos friendship.

Regarding the relationship between the two bodies, she stressed the need for them to intensify the sharing of information and experience in legislative affairs, supervision and decision making.

Sharing the same opinion, the Lao Party and State leader suggested the two National Assemblies maintain co-operation in fields of mutual concern.  VNS
MOSCOW (VNS)  Viet Nams Minister of National Defence, General Ngo Xuan Lich and his Russian counterpart General Sergey Shoigu emphasised the need for the two countries to realise defence co-operation agreements they have reached while increasing mutual support at international forums.

During their talks in Moscow on Monday, the two ministers said co-operation in military training plays a key role in bilateral ties, adding that many Vietnamese officers are studying in Russia.

The Russian side said they are considering sending officers to Viet Nam for training.

They affirmed their resolve to consolidate and strengthen cooperation between the two countries.

Shoigu appreciated Lichs first visit to Russia in his capacity as the Vietnamese Defence Minister, stressing that Russia regards Viet Nam as an important partner.

Russia is willing to enhance its collaboration with Viet Nam in national defence, he noted.

Lich said Viet Nam considers Russia a close friend and places bilateral ties among its top foreign policy priorities.

Viet Nam always remembers the support of the Government and people of the former Soviet Union, including present-day Russia, in the countrys struggle for independence as well in national construction.

Viet Nam will continue cooperating with Russia to meet the interests of the two countries people and contribute to peace and stability in each region, he said.

The minister reiterated Viet Nams stance on disputes in the South China Sea (East Sea), which, he said, should be settled by peaceful measures and on the basis of international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea, and towards reaching a Code of Conduct in the East Sea.

Lich used the occasion to invite his Russian counterpart to visit Viet Nam at a suitable time. Shoigu accepted the invitation with pleasure.

On Sunday, Minister Lich paid floral tribute to President Ho Chi Minh at his statue in Moscow and visited the Vietnamese Military Attache Office in Russia.  VNS
The local procuracy apologised to a cafe-owner in HCM Citys Binh Chanh District for a baseless prosecution against him while four officials involved were suspended from work. Photo phapluatso.com

HCM CITY  The local procuracy apologised to a cafe-owner in HCM Citys Binh Chanh District for a baseless prosecution against him while four officials involved were suspended from work.

Binh Chanh Peoples Procuracy Vice Prosecutor General Vo Gia Binh on Sunday informed Nguyen Van Tan of the decision to call off the case against him and to end his house arrest.

The case against the 50-year-old became widely known early this month when several media outlets reported on a decision by district police last September to prosecute the Xin chao cafe owner for alleged illegal business. It was later proved that the police made procedural mistakes as well as faulty interpretations of the law.

On August 8, 2015, Tan opened the cafe without registering a business certificate. He was fined by local police a total of VN17 million (US$790), though some legal faults regarding witnesses in the report were detected later which could make the fines ineligible.

He finished the paper work and was granted the certificate on August 19, yet decided to take food off the menu and sell drinks only.

However, nearly one month later  on September 10, the police - without officers specialising in food quality in the inspection team as law regulates - visited the cafe again and reported supposed violations such as using sub-standard water for food processing or having insects in the cooking area.

The owner received the prosecution decision two weeks later, justified by the police to be based on Article 159 of the Criminal Code saying any businesses without particular certificates might be subject to criminal charges. Yet such particular certificates were not specified and in this case, the police interpreted the certificate in need as the one on food safety and hygiene.

As the court date on April 28 was nearing, pressure from the media and the citizens on the case made Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc speak out about Tans case, asking HCM City Peoples Committee to look into the charge against the owner.

The Supreme Peoples Procuracy on Saturday ordered the suspension of the case, saying a certificate on food safety and hygiene was unnecessary in Tans case and the polices prosecution was baseless.

No words can describe my joy now, said Tan. Im so grateful to the leaders, the residents and the media who have cared for and supported me.

I wont ask for compensation. But if it is ok, please hand me back the fines as it is a big amount for me.

I just want to have peace to do business now, he said.

Officers suspended

HCM City Police yesterday decided to temporarily suspend two police officers involved in the Xin chao cafe case for further investigation.

The two included Binh Chanh Police Head Colonel Nguyen Van Quy  who directly signed the prosecution proposal against Tan and Major Nguyen Hoang Tuan, Deputy Head of the Economic and Positions Investigation team.

This move brought the number of officers disciplined so far to four.

On Saturday, HCM City Peoples Procuracy suspended District 6 Vice Prosecutor General Le Thanh Tong  then-Binh Chanh Vice Prosecutor General who signed the decision to approve Tans prosecution. Another one was Ho Van Son, a prosecutor of Binh Chanh District directly in charge of the notorious case.  VNS
HA NOI  Experts have proposed the construction of five to seven dams along the Hong (Red) River to raise the water level, thus serving agricultural production and water transport without affecting flood drainage.

Tran inh Hoa, deputy director of the Viet Nam Academy for Water Resources, said many studies on ways to prevent droughts in the Red River basin have been conducted, but the dam proposal might be the best solution. It was sent to the Government for approval. The Viet Nam Academy for Water Resources was authorised to implement the study.

Hoa, who is leading the research, said many sections of the Red River that cross Ha Noi have run dry over the past 10 years.

The amount of alluvium in the river has declined substantially. The over-exploitation of sand would not only affect waterway transport, but it also polluted the environment, Hoa said. In addition, hydro-agricultural projects dont have enough water for irrigation.

To cope with the situation, every year, when the dry season comes, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development asks the Ministry of Industry and Trade and Electricity of Viet Nam to discharge water for agricultural production. It is estimated that up to 5 billion cubic metres of water have been discharged every year for this purpose.

However, only 20 per cent of that water is used by the irrigation system, while the remaining water flows into the sea. Worse still, after the discharge, the Red River ran dry again.

Its a big waste. Hydropower plants can store water to produce more electricity instead of releasing the water, Hoa said.

Pham Hong Giang, chairman of the Viet Nam National Committee on Large Dams and Water Resource Development, said the depletion of the Red Rivers downstream waters during the dry season is a serious issue. Therefore, it is necessary to build weirs or adjustable dams to increase the water level in the Red River downstream from Viet Tri city to the seas mouth, he said.

These dams will have height restrictions and water can still flow through when needed.

However, Giang said, the number of dams and their locations should carefully take into account economic, population, landscape and environmental factors.

The dams are useful in regulating the water level during the dry season, but do not affect the water current like hydropower plants do, Hoa said.

Initially, the research group suggested building two dams downstream of Long Tuu Sluice on the uong River and Xuan Quan Sluice on Bac Hung Hai River. The two dams would help the agricultural sector take enough water for big hydro-agricultural infrastructure like Bac Hung Hai and Nhue River.

Professor Ha Van Khoi, an expert from Water Resources University, said that despite the differing opinions on the study, it was a necessary project.

ao Trong Tu, another expert, said building dams on the Red River was not a good solution. Some countries have built dams to control the water flow, but it should be considered carefully, Tu said.

The research will end in 2018, but this year, the team will indicate the locations of the works as well as suggest solutions, Hoa said, adding that the research group would organise seminars and collect comments from experts and localities to utilise water resources and respond to climate change.  VNS
The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources has warned of more mass fish deaths in the central coastal area of Viet Nam due to the impending hot weather. Photo danviet.vn

HA NOI (VNS)  The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources has warned of more mass fish deaths in the central coastal area of Viet Nam due to the impending hot weather.

The increase in the temperature of seawater near the shore will result in the growth of noxious seaweed, spread of disease and toxic substances contained in the water. Additionally, the danger of reduced oxygen in deep-water layers, will result in the fish dying en masse.

Fish have been dying at Ky Anh Town in central Ha Tinh Province since early this month, and the Formosa Industrial Zone and Vung Ang 1 Thermopower Plant, which are located nearby, have been blamed for discharging untreated wastewater into the sea.

The ministry has sent documents to all peoples committees of coastal cities and provinces, asking them to continuously implement urgent measures to prevent and reduce harmful effects of pollutants that are resulting in the death of the fish.

The ministry asked provincial and city authorities to collect and treat waste in the coastal areas, and stop all forms of garbage from being thrown into the river and coastal areas.

To address the problem, the ministry has asked the authorised agencies to inspect the wastewater treatment systems and environmental protection works of all processing factories and companies in coastal areas.

Violations must be punished in a timely manner, the ministry document said.

Investigations to find the cause of the deaths in central Ha Tinh Province are still underway. The ministry has asked peoples committees of Ha Tinh and three neighbouring coastal provinces of Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue to initiate urgent steps to help fishermen control the damage and clean coastal environment in areas where the deaths occurred.

Provincial authorities have disseminated information about the real situation and latest reports to local fishermen.

The ministry has asked provincial peoples committees to inform them if they discover any unusual phenomena in the sea.VNS
HA NOI (VNS) The National Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion (NIHBT) today announced it would officially apply nucleic acid testing (NAT) in the blood screening process.

NAT techniques will reduce the risk of HIV, hepatitis infections and increase safety in blood transfusions.

Institute director Nguyen Anh Tri said NAT techniques would help shorten the window periods in HIV, Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and Hepatitis C virus (HCV) detection.

It helps detect the HCV virus after 30-40 days of exposure (down from 90 days). The HBV virus can be detected in 20-30 days (saving 30 days) and the HIV virus can be detected in 11 days (saving 11 days), Tri said.

NAT technique helps provide accurate results and contributes to shortening the window periods in virus detection. The technique will ensure blood transfusion safety and provide a timely and safe blood source to hospitals, the institutes director said.

The director said NIHBT was the first medical facility in Viet Nam to provide all blood products screened by NAT techniques in 2015. The technique was also applied at the HCM City Haematology and Blood Transfusion and the Cho Ray and Can Tho hospitals in the south.

In 2018, NAT techniques will be expanded to all hospitals and medical units nationwide that receive donated blood to ensure a safe blood source for the entire population.

The institutes statistics revealed Viet Nam received over 1.16 million units of blood from donors in 2015. NAT techniques helped detect 442 infected samples from among nearly 418,000 samples that showed negative results through serological techniques.  VNS
HA NOI  Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Hong Truong yesterday urged relevant parties to speed up work on the Cat Linh-Ha ongelevated railway project.

The Ha Nois Cat Linh-Ha ong urban train project, which began in 2011, was expected to be completed last year.

Work on the project was reported to be behind schedule since the project has been delayed thrice due to work accidents and a shortage of funds.

The date of completion was pushed to the end of June 2016.

However, at a meeting with leaders of the transport ministry yesterday, the project management board and the China Railway Sixth Group, an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor, reported many items were incomplete because funds and project designs were unavailable. Many completed items were also removed for not following the approved designs.

The main contractor was still seeking partners for parts of the project, they said.

Deputy Minister Truong said the project had a major advantage -- complete land clearance.

He blamed the delay on ineffective co-operation among relevant parties.

The main contractor failed to provide technical designs, leading sub-contractors to make inadequate efforts to mobilise staff and equipment and to work in moderation.

Truong said all designs and contracts must be completed next month so that the Project Management Board and the main contractor could open bidding for the purchase of equipment.

In September, equipment must be available for installation, Truong said.

Co-operation should be sought from the Finance Ministry and the States Treasury to tackle the shortage of funds, he suggested.

The Cat Linh-Ha ong elevated railway, which will stretch over 13km, will have 12 stations and a depot linking ong a Districts Cat Linh Street and Ha ong Districts Yen Nghia bus station. The investment cost of this project increased from $552 million in 2008 to $892 million in 2014. The project has suffered from delays and several deadly accidents.

Once completed, the trains, which are being manufactured by Chinas Beijing Subway Rolling Stock Equipment Ltd., will serve up to 2,110 passengers, with an average speed of 35km per hour and a maximum speed of 80km per hour.

Trains with six to eight carriages each will run every two minutes from 5am to 11pm every day.  VNS
CARACAS  Venezuelas Supreme Court on Monday rejected the oppositions latest bid to cut short the term of President Nicolas Maduro, whose opponents blame him for a severe economic crisis.

The court ruled that a constitutional amendment proposed by opposition lawmakers could not be applied retroactively or immediately to Maduros current term as the bill proposed.

It said that would violate "the will of the people" who elected him.

The opposition vowed to oust Maduro when it took control of the legislature in January after winning elections.

Lower house lawmakers last week approved on a first reading a bill proposing to reduce presidential terms from six years to four. That bill would also have to be approved in a referendum to enter into force.

The court said in its ruling on Monday that "trying to use a constitutional amendment to cut short immediately a term of office of someone popularly elected, such as the president of the republic, is an act of fraud against the constitution."

Maduro has successfully blocked previous bills in the National Assembly by appealing to the Supreme Court. -- AFP
The attackers who stole $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank probably hacked into software from the SWIFT financial platform that is at the heart of the global financial system, said security researchers at British defence contractor BAE Systems.

SWIFT, a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions, confirmed to Reuters that it was aware of malware targeting its client software. Its spokeswoman Natasha Deteran said SWIFT would release on Monday a software update to thwart the malware, along with a special warning for financial institutions to scrutinise their security procedures.

The new developments now coming to light in the unprecedented cyber-heist suggest that an essential linchpin of the global financial system could be more vulnerable than previously understood to hacking attacks, due to the vulnerabilities that enabled attackers to modify SWIFTs client software.

Deteran told Reuters on Sunday it was issuing the software update to assist customers in enhancing their security and to spot inconsistencies in their local database records.



The software update and warning from Brussels-based SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, come after researchers at BAE, which has a large cyber-security business, told Reuters they believe they discovered malware that the Bangladesh Bank attackers used to manipulate SWIFT client software known as Alliance Access.

BAE said it plans to go public on Monday with a blog post about its findings concerning the malware, which the thieves used to cover their tracks and delay discovery of the heist.

The cyber criminals tried to make fraudulent transfers totalling $951 million from the Bangladesh central banks account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in February.

Investigators probing the heist had previously said the still-unidentified hackers had broken into Bangladesh Bank computers and taken control of credentials that were used to log into the SWIFT system. But, the BAE research shows the SWIFT software on the bank computers was probably compromised in order to erase records of illicit transfers.

Deteran reiterated on Sunday the malware has no impact on SWIFTs network or core messaging services.



The SWIFT messaging platform is used by 11,000 banks and other institutions around the world, though only some use the Alliance Access software, Deteran said.

SWIFT may release additional updates as it learns more about the attack in Bangladesh and other potential threats, Deteran said.

SWIFT is also reiterating a warning to banks that they should review internal security.

Whilst we keep all our interface products under continual review and recommend that other vendors do the same, the key defence against such attack scenarios is that users implement appropriate security measures in their local environments to safeguard their systems, Deteran said.

Adrian Nish, BAEs head of threat intelligence, said he had never seen such an elaborate scheme from criminal hackers.

I cant think of a case where we have seen a criminal go to the level of effort to customise it for the environment they were operating in, he said. I guess it was the realisation that the potential payoff made that effort worthwhile.



A Bangladesh Bank spokesman declined comment on BAE's findings. A senior official with the Bangladesh Polices Criminal Investigation Department said that investigators had not found the specific malware described by BAE, but that forensics experts had not finished their probe.

Bangladesh police investigators said last week that the bank's computer security measures were seriously deficient, lacking even basic precautions like firewalls and relying on used, $10 switches in its local networks.

Still, police investigators told Reuters in an interview that both the bank and SWIFT should take the blame for the problems.

It was their responsibility to point it out but we haven't found any evidence that they advised before the heist, said Mohammad Shah Alamo, head of the Forensic Training Institute of the Bangladesh police's criminal investigation department, referring to SWIFT.

THWARTING FUTURE ATTACKS



The BAE alert to be published on Monday includes some technical indicators that the firm said it hopes banks could use to thwart similar attacks. Those indicators include the IPaddress of a server in Egypt the attackers used to monitor use of the SWIFT system by Bangladesh Bank staff.

The malware, named evtdiag.exe, was designed to hide the hacker's tracks by changing information on a SWIFT database at Bangladesh Bank that tracks information about transfer requests, according to BAE.

BAE said that evtdiag.exe was likely part of a broader attack toolkit that was installed after the attackers obtained administrator credentials.

It is still not clear exactly how the hackers ordered the money transfers.

Nish said that BAE found evtdiag.exe on a malware repository and had not directly analyzed the infected servers. Such repositories collect millions of new samples a day from researchers, businesses, government agencies and members of the public who upload files to see if they are recognized as malicious and help thwart future attacks.

Nish said he was highly confident the malware was used in the attack because it was compiled close to the date of the heist, contained detailed information about the bank's operations and was uploaded from Bangladesh.

While that malware was specifically written to attack Bangladesh Bank, the general tools, techniques and procedures used in the attack may allow the gang to strike again, according to a draft of the warning that BAE shared with Reuters.

The malware was designed to make a slight change to code of the Access Alliance software installed at Bangladesh Bank, giving attackers the ability to modify a database that logged the bank's activity over the SWIFT network, Nish said.

Once it had established a foothold, the malware could delete records of outgoing transfer requests altogether from the database and also intercept incoming messages confirming transfers ordered by the hackers, Nish said.

It was able to then manipulate account balances on logs to prevent the heist from being discovered until after the funds had been laundered.

It also manipulated a printer that produced hard copies of transfer requests so that the bank would not identify the attack through those printouts, he said.
Venezuela's Supreme Court has rejected a proposed constitutional reform to cut short the term of President Nicolas Maduro, according to a written judgement.

The court ruled yesterday that such an amendment could not be applied retroactively or immediately to Maduro's current term, as proposed in a bill by opposition lawmakers who blame him for a crippling economic crisis.

It said that would violate "the will of the people" who elected him.

The opposition vowed to oust Maduro when it took control of the legislature in January after winning elections.

Lower house lawmakers last week approved a bill proposing to reduce presidential terms from six years to four. That bill would also have to be approved in a referendum to enter into force.

The court said in its ruling yesterday that "trying to use a constitutional amendment to cut short immediately a term of office of someone popularly elected, such as the president of the republic, is an act of fraud against the constitution."



Maduro has successfully blocked previous bills in the National Assembly by appealing to the Supreme Court, which critics say he controls.

Attacking Maduro on another front, the opposition has also tried to call a direct referendum on whether to remove him from office. Electoral authorities have blocked that bid, too. Maduro's critics say he also controls the electoral board.

Maduro has vowed to hold on to power and press on with the socialist "revolution" launched by his late predecessor Hugo Chavez.

Venezuela's economy has plunged along with the price of the oil on which it relies for foreign revenues. Citizens are suffering shortages of medicines and goods such as toilet paper and cooking oil.
Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry will hold talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar in New Delhi on Tuesday, on the margins of a global conference on Afghanistan. It will be the first meeting between the two after the January Pathankot terror attack derailed the India-Pakistan bilateral dialogue.

A Pakistan High Commission spokesperson here confirmed Chaudhry's day-long trip for the Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process meeting.

The Pakistan delegation will "also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting".

While the spokesperson was silent about talks between Chaudhry and Jaishankar, an informed source said that the the two foreign secretaries were likely to meet.

Chaudhry "will have bilateral meetings with other delegations, including Jaishankar", the source said.

The meeting will be the first contact between the two countries at the foreign secretary level after the January 2 attack on the IAF base at Pathankot killed seven Indian security personnel. India blamed Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) for the attack.

The meeting comes after the two sides recently declared that they were in contact to hold a meeting of their foreign secretaries, who will draw up the modalities for holding a Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue.

The development comes after Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit created a flutter when he said here that the peace talks between Islamabad and New Delhi have been "suspended".

The Afghanistan conference in Delhi follows the 5th Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had visited Islamabad to attend the conference that adopted the Islamabad declaration for enhanced regional cooperation to countering security threats.
Under attack over deployment of central forces inside NIT in Srinagar, the government today said in Lok Sabha that it was not a suo moto or unilateral decision but it was done following requests from the institute authorities.

"It was not our decision, not a suo moto decision. There was a request from the NIT authorities and hence the decision was taken to deploy central forces in the campus. It was not a unilateral decision of the central government," Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said.

Rijiju's remarks during Question Hour came after Congress chief whip Jyotiraditya Scindia alleged that by deploying the central forces in the NIT campus, the central government had undermined the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

The NIT in Srinagar had witnessed clashes between local and outstation students after India lost to West Indies in World T-20 semi final match on March 31, following which paramilitary forces were deployed at the campus.

Scindia accused the Jammu and Kashmir Police of "brutally" attacking the protesting students of NIT, claiming that they resorted to lathicharge on those students who were shouting slogans like 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.

The Congress leader's comments invited strong protests from treasury benches, particularly from BJP MP and former Union Home Secretary R K Singh, who said Jammu and Kashmir Police is known for its sacrifices for the country's unity and integrity and such comments are unwarranted.

Rijiju said it is a known fact that it is the state police which takes action wherever necessary and the central forces only help the local authorities.

He said three companies of paramilitary personnel were deployed inside the NIT campus while outside is being guarded by the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

A company of central forces comprises of around 100 personnel.

AIMIM member Asaduddin Owaisi also disapproved of



Scidia's comments saying 3,000 personnel of Jammu and Kashmir Police have laid down their lives serving the nation.

Owaisi said after deployment of central forces, there was a perception that non-locals can be protected only by central forces, which was not good.

"Alienation of youth has been increasing and if we do not take action to stop alienation of youth, there will be problems," he said.

Rijiju said the reports of HRD Ministry's fact-finding team, Jammu and Kashmir government-appointed Magisterial Inquiry and an internal committee were yet to come and action will be taken as per their recommendations.

Intervening in the debate, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said when the non-local students had requested to go home, the state government made all arrangements and many of them now have returned to the campus.

Singh said those students who missed their examination will now be given opportunity to appear in the tests between May 26-29.

Tension started brewing inside the NIT campus, located on the banks of Dal lake, after some local students burst crackers to celebrate Indian team's defeat in the T-20 match. This was protested by the outstation students resulting in clashes.
Labor warned energy prices to rise by up to 50 per cent in 2023 A source told Sky News Australia in the lead-up to Tuesday's federal budget the conflict in Ukraine was "99 per cent" responsible for the looming increases in the cost of energy.

Sydney soaked by wettest October ever recorded A Sky News Australia meteorologist has predicted how much rain Sydneysiders can expect for the rest of 2022 as two weather systems lash almost every inch of New South Wales.

Jurors in rape trial make request amid ongoing deliberations The 12-member jury of the Bruce Lehrmann rape trial have requested extra time to come to a unanimous decision on whether the former Liberal staffer sexually assaulted Brittany Higgins.

Lambie prays for Netball Australia after sponsorship mess Senator Jacqui Lambie has thrown her support behind Gina Rinehart as she slammed Netball Australia for losing a major sponsor while local sports clubs struggle to stay alive.
WATERLOO  The Northeast Iowa Food Bank in Waterloo is the recipient of current and recent donations from automobile dealers in the area.

During November and December 2015, Subaru and C&S Car Co. donated to national and local organizations for the Subaru Share the Love Event. C&S chose the Northeast Iowa Food Bank as it s charitable organization. Customers who purchased a new Subaru during this period had the option to donate all or some of the proceeds to the organizations of their choice. During this time period enough Subarus were purchased to raise $12,625 for the food bank.

During April, Bill Colwell Ford in Hudson is hosting Fill a 50 and is collecting items for the food bank. The dealer is asking the Cedar Valley community to bring in non-perishable items and help them fill the bed of an F-150, or Fill a 50. For each item donated, donors will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a free auto detail and The Works vehicle checkup package at Bill Colwell Ford. The winner will be announced May 2. The goal is to collect 300 items.

The list of needed items includes canned meats, canned fruits, peanut butter, bar soap, toilet paper, canned vegetables, canned soups, crackers, pasta or noodles, or toothpaste. Due to the length of this event, they cannot accept homemade or home canned products, frozen items, perishables and produce.

Bill Colwell Ford has a Facebook page on which visitors can monitor the progress of the drive.
CEDAR FALLS -- Sandy and Chelsea probably couldnt care less about their honorary status. They live in the moment and are just happy and excited to spend time with someone they love.

Jim Roberts, on the other hand, is pretty humbled by his selection as the honorary cancer survivor for Saturdays third annual Bark for Life. Along with his wife, Rhonda, Roberts will hold the lead to one or the other of his canine companions, Sandy, a blue-eyed husky, and Chelsea, a black Labrador retriever.

Sandy is 7 or 8, Chelsea is 4. Chelsea is very needy. My wife says shes your dog, Roberts says, laughing. Sandy clings to her. Theyre both really good dogs and very loving and fun, and enjoy the occasional treat.

Five years ago, Roberts was diagnosed with prostate cancer through routine blood screening and a biopsy. Honestly, in the back of my mind, I thought theres no way, never going to happen to me  what a lot of people think. The reality was, the cancer was right in front of me. I was in shock, he recalls.

Because he was on the young side for prostate cancer, his doctors recommended surgery. He underwent radical prostatectomy in which the prostate gland is removed. It was a success, and there was no need for radiation or chemotherapy.

Roberts now undergoes the prostate-specific antigen blood test every year. Theyre thinking they got all the cancer, but you never know. It can return, so Ill have to get checked the rest of my life.

The American Cancer Society hosts the Bark for Life fundraising event to honor dogs like Sandy and Chelsea for their life-long contributions as canine caregivers. Every family, co-worker, friend or community member who has been close to a cancer experience and has a dog in their life can participate in the walk.

Dogs, really all pets, are soothing, regardless of whats going on in your life. They want to be with you and go places with you. They want to go along because they love you  and just in case youre going to do something fun, says Roberts, 56, who is employed at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids.

The dogs have the run of four acres, much of it protected by Invisible Fence, Roberts says, so walking on a leash is something different in their day  just a good time for all of us.

Jim, Rhonda, Sandy and Chelsea have participated in previous Bark for Life events. We like doing it because its a really good fundraiser and lots of fun. The Roberts also serve on Relay for Life committees, and Jim Roberts will be emceeing this years event.

He is happy to bring along the dogs for a morning walk at Gateway Park. Yeah, the dogs get to have me in their life a while longer, and Im grateful. After my cancer surgery, I decided Im going to experience life to the fullest. I want to spend time with my wife, my grown children and three granddaughters and my dogs. This time I may not get a second chance, he adds.
WATERLOO  Waterloo police said DNA from inside a glove helped them solve a $40,000 burglary.

Officers have been investigating a break-in at a Howard Avenue home since May 2015 when the resident reported someone had taken $40,000 in cash  stapled in the corner in $1,000 stacks  along with jewelry, Abraham Lincoln gold coins and about $100 in $2 bills.

A single glove was found on the stairs inside the house, and its mate was discovered on a swing in the backyard.

On Sunday, Robbie Allen Siemens, 40, of Waterloo, was arrested for first-degree theft and third-degree burglary in the case.

Court records allege agents with the Iowa Division of Investigation became suspicious of Siemens after observing him at the Isle Hotel Casino on the day following the burglary, and the agent determined Siemens had an outstanding arrest warrant.

A day later, the agent stopped Siemens in a Waterloo parking lot and arrested him on the warrant. Siemens was carrying $25,200 in cash in his shorts pocket, and some of the bills were stapled in the corner. Officers also found $102 in $2 bills, court records state.

Siemens initially told investigators his girlfriend had obtained the money in a back injury settlement, court records state. He then said he had earned the cash as a male prostitute, records state.

A test at the DCI lab later determined that DNA found in one of the gloves recovered at the Howard Avenue home matched Siemens profile, court records state.
MAYNARD --- Early Tuesday, Fayette County sheriff's deputies went to a residence in Maynard to attempt to locate Jenna McLaury, 23, who had escaped from the Waterloo Residential Facility and had two warrants for her arrest.

McLaury was located inside the residence and taken into custody on the arrest warrants and also charged with interference with official acts.

The property owner, identified as Bruce Werden, 50, was also arrested and charged with accessory after the fact. Both are being held at the Fayette County Jail awaiting an initial appearance.
NEVADA (AP)  After deliberating for less than two hours on Monday, jurors convicted a man of first-degree murder in the shooting death of a woman in a Coralville mall.

Alexander Kozak, 23, was found guilty of killing 20-year-old Andrea Farrington, concluding a two-week trial that included testimony from witnesses who saw Kozak shoot the woman and flee the crowded Coral Ridge Mall and experts who reviewed Kozak's mental health. Sentencing has been set for June 6.

Prosecutors said Farrington was shot in the back three times June 12 while working at an Iowa Children's Museum information kiosk. Police say Kozak, who worked as a mall security guard, told officers he "snapped" after Farrington texted him to say she was breaking off their relationship.

The trial was moved to Story County because of media attention.

Johnson County Attorney Janet Lyness said during closing arguments that the shooting was deliberate and planned.

"He chose to pull the trigger a second time, and then again he chose to pull the trigger a third time. That's premeditation. That's what he intended," Lyness said.

The defense did not dispute that Kozak killed Farrington but argued his level of responsibility was diminished and asked for a voluntary manslaughter verdict. Kozak's lawyer, Alfredo Parrish, called the shooting a "crime of passion," citing an extensive texting relationship between Kozak and Farrington.

He said the texts between the two showed they loved each other and that "she had led him on." Parrish also said Kozak was pushed to a breaking point in his "hot and cold" relationship with Farrington.

A psychiatrist called on by the defense previously testified that Kozak may have borderline personality disorder and intermittent explosive disorder, making him prone to "explosive outbursts." But Lyness argued Monday that mental health experts called by the state found no evidence that Kozak had those disorders, adding that they would not have prevented Kozak from planning the shooting.

"This wasn't a mistake. This wasn't because of some mental defect or mental illness. He did it because he wanted to. He did it because he was jealous and he was mad," she said.
WATERLOO  A Waterloo man has been arrested for allegedly taking items from a school and a supermarket earlier this year.

Charles Earl Horton, 61, of 1627 Mount Carmel Drive, was arrested for second-degree theft in connection with tools taken from East High School and third-degree theft for taking food from Hy-Vee on Logan Avenue.

He was also arrested for interference for allegedly running from police when they attempted to detain him on Sunday. His bond was set at $12,000.

According to Waterloo police reports, East High Schools security cameras recorded Horton riding up to the school and entering at about 7 p.m. on Jan. 15. He was recorded walking around and then leaving with a large bag on the bikes handle bars, records state. School officials reported that a bag containing more than $1,000 worth of tools had been stolen.

Then on March 30, Horton allegedly took $90 worth of baby back ribs from Hy-Vee, placed them in a gym bag and left the store without paying. Parts of the incident were also captured on video, according to police.

On Sunday, Waterloo police went to his home on Mount Carmel Drive while a dispatcher called a phone number to that address. The person who answered the phone said Horton wasnt there, but a short time later Horton left through the back door and ran a short distance before he was arrested.

This isnt the first time Horton has been accused of stealing from East High. In 2007, he was arrested for burglary to allegedly taking a computer and a stereo from the school and a DVD player from First Presbyterian School on Franklin Street. In 2003, police found Horton hiding in a classroom at Logan Intermediate School while responding to an alarm.
WATERLOO  An Anamosa man who was shot during a November police chase has been arrested after allegedly failing to meet a court deadline to post bond.

Brandon Ryan Seeley, 24, is awaiting trial for eluding, assault on an officer and possession of meth with intent to deliver in connection with the Nov. 3 pursuit in Waterloo where he was shot after allegedly driving at an officer on foot.

Seeley had been allowed to remain free without posting bond, but that changed on Thursday when his probation officer alleged Seeley had recently tested positive for meth and marijuana and had left Jones County without permission to gamble at the Waterloo casino.

Judge George Stigler imposed a $5,000 bond and gave Seeley until Friday morning to post the bond or surrender to jail.

When Seeley failed to post bond or arrive at the jail on Friday, Stigler issued a warrant on a contempt of court charge.

Waterloo police arrested Seeley during a traffic stop on Highway 218 on Monday afternoon. Bond was set at $75,000.

The Nov. 3 chase stemmed from a traffic stop where Waterloo police attempted to detain Seeley on a probation warrant out of Jones County where he had been convicted of possession of marijuana with intent to deliver.

During the pursuit, Seeley pulled into a parking lot in the area of West Fourth and Wellington streets and attempted to back around a squad car. He was shot after he allegedly drove at a plain clothes officer who was ordering him to stop, according to an Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation synopsis of the incident. Despite the gunshot wounds, Seeley continued driving to a home on Hackett Road where he was arrested.

The Iowa Attorney Generals Office issued a finding in December that the officers actions were justified.
DES MOINES -- About 60 soldiers from the Iowa Army National Guards 185th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion are being mobilized as part of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

The guardsmen will travel to their mobilization station at Fort Hood, Texas, for additional training before deploying to the Central Command theater of operations, Guard officials said Monday. It is anticipated the duration of this deployment will be for approximately one year.

A community send-off ceremony for the Iowa Army National Guard unit will be held at 11:30 a.m. May 8 at the Iowa National Guards Des Moines Airbase at 3100 McKinley Ave.

Based at Camp Dodge in Johnston, the 188th battalions mission is to command and control logistics units and to provide logistical support in an area of operations. Logistical support could include transportation, maintenance, supplies, water purification and distribution and fuel distribution.

Disaster funding

The Iowa Executive Council agreed Monday to release nearly $1.27 million and allocate another $2 million in approved disaster aid in areas of Iowa involved in weather-related damages that prompted presidential disaster declarations.

Pat Hall, recovery division administrator for the Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management Department, provided an update on disasters dating back nearly a decade that have been authorized to receive federal and state assistance. He said Iowas 23 presidential disaster declarations since 2006 rank the state fourth-most nationwide, following Oklahoma with 38, Missouri with 31 and New York with 26.

Along with the additional expenditures approved Monday, executive council members approved the return of $826,367 that was part of a $1.1 million allocation to deal with the highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak that began in April 2015. The state expended $273,633 beyond what was received from federal sources to deal with the deadly bird flu outbreak.

Abortion funding

Lobbyists for the Family Leader organization issued an alert Monday to its members urging them to contact GOP House members to stand strong for biblical values over the issue of providing taxpayer dollars to family-planning clinics that offer abortion services.

A House-Senate conference committee is expected to hammer out a compromise over a $1.8 billion budget bills that includes the abortion-related issue.

Please urge House Republicans to stand with the governor, Iowa taxpayers and women and children alike to reject a Senate amendment that reintroduces money for abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, according to an Action Alert email from Family Leader vice president Chuck Hurley.

Sen. Amanda Ragan, D-Mason City, said legislators get a lot of alerts from a lot of people on a lot of topics at this point in a legislative session.

House language to bar taxpayer funding from going to womens health-care providers that perform abortions was removed by majority Democrats in the Senate and efforts to amend similar language into House File 2460 last week filed by a 25-25 vote.

During his weekly news conference Monday, Gov. Terry Branstad called the House approach a fair and reasonable proposal that provides for family planning for people that need it without providing funding for abortion providers.

The Family Leader alert also asked its organizations members to House Republicans to accept a Senate proposal for $200,000 to fund Iowa's anti-human-trafficking office.

Ternus to retire

Marsha Ternus, former chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, has announced plans to retire June 1 after nearly three years as director of The Harkin Institute for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement in Des Moines.

Ternus, a 1977 Drake Law School alumna, was appointed to the part-time directorship Aug. 1, 2013, shortly after now-retired Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin and Drake University partnered to create the Institute. As institute director, she oversaw more than $7.6 million in philanthropic contributions to the institute.

Harkin Institute officials said a search would begin immediately for a full-time director who can advance the Institute's mission and enhance its image, reputation, and impact as a leading citizen engagement and public policy organization.

Ternus is a native Iowan who served as chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court from 1993 to 2010. She plans to continue to serve the Harkin Institute as chair of the Institutes National Advisory Council while continuing to practice law in Des Moines with a focus on appellate and trial case consulting and arbitration.
WATERLOO  An out-of-state job has forced David Jones to give up his Waterloo City Council seat.

Jones, who has represented Ward 1 in the southwest quadrant of the city since 2010, announced his resignation, effective immediately, at Mondays council meeting.

Ive accepted a position at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester (Minn.), which will not allow me to fulfill the remainder of my council term, Jones said.

I want to thank the residents of Ward 1 for allowing me to represent you for the last six years and four months, he added. I wish the city continued success in moving forward in a positive direction.

Jones said he will continue to live in Waterloo while his wife works locally but will be unable to meet his council obligations while spending weeks in Rochester.

His departure sets up a political battle for control of the council, which now is clearly and sharply divided into two distinct three-man voting blocks.

Jones voted on several key issues, including the budget adopted in March, with councilmen Ron Welper, Pat Morrissey and Jerome Amos Jr. Councilmen Steve Schmitt, Tom Lind and Bruce Jacobs were on the other side of those decisions.

An effort to fill a key position at the Waterloo Center for the Arts failed Monday when Jones was absent from the human resources committee and the vote deadlocked 3-3.

While Iowa law gives the remaining City Council the option to call for a special election or to appoint a someone to fill the vacancy, it may be difficult to find a replacement both voting blocs could agree to support.

Council members could simply call for a special election among Ward 1 voters to fill out the term, which expires at the end of 2017. Even if they do appoint a replacement, voters still could petition for a special election.

Jones moved to Waterloo from Southern California in 2007 and won his first bid for public office in 2009, defeating former Councilman John Murphy for the Ward 1 seat. He was re-elected in November 2013 running unopposed.

Mayor Quentin Hart gave Jones a certificate of appreciation for his service.

You came from another state, but you have made yourself at home in the city of Waterloo, Hart said. You are a person that was always level-headed, that citizens can talk to. Whether or not we agree or disagree on a particular point, you are also always a gentleman about it.

Councilman Pat Morrissey also wished Jones well in his new career.

Youre a thoughtful, intelligent and sometimes very pointed person when it comes to getting your point across, Morrissey said. I appreciated that, and Ive learned from you.
CORRECTION: This story has been correctly to accurately reflect the date of the Iowa Public Television debate.

DES MOINES  Plans have solidified for a series of forums and debates, including at least one broadcast on live television, featuring the four Democratic candidates running for Iowas U.S. Senate seat.

Former state ag secretary and lieutenant governor Patty Judge, current state legislator Rob Hogg, and former state legislators Tom Fiegen and Bob Krause are running to earn the Democratic nomination to challenge longtime incumbent Charles Grassley this fall.

At least one televised debate and four forums have been scheduled ahead of the June 7 primary election, Lee Newspapers Des Moines Bureau has confirmed.

Iowa Public Television will host a debate to be televised live at 7 p.m. May 26 from the networks studio in Johnston. The station expects all four candidates to participate.

Multiple candidates campaigns said another debate hosted jointly by Des Moines TV station KCCI and The Des Moines Register is being planned for June 1, was unable to confirm that with officials from KCCI or The Register.
DES MOINES  It will take time to iron out the differences between Iowa lawmakers  Democrats and Republicans, representative and senators  but legislators remain optimistic theyll finish their work this week.

Thats my hope, absolutely, Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said Tuesday as House-Senate conference committees worked on a host of budget bills.

Among them are the $3.4 billion standings bill that includes school aid as well as a laundry list of funding provisions. Rep. Ken Rizer, R-Cedar Rapids, said the policy issues in the bill had been pared from about 100 last year to around 30. The Senate had added nine items, he said, and the House added a few.

So I guess theres room for horse-trading, he said after the House approved the bill 51-39 on its way to a conference committee.

A conference committee on the $1.9 billion health and human services budget met in a public session for a minute, but Sen. Amanda Ragan, D-Mason City, said conferees would meet privately throughout the day to discuss significant differences.

Weve casually had conversations all along this year so there are issues we will find agreement on fast and others that we just have to see how we can resolve everything, Ragan said. Nobodys going home until this budget is resolved.

Sooner rather than later is the preference of most lawmakers. Their daily expense money ended April 19 and the Statehouse cafeteria closed Friday. If the session doesnt end this week, many will be further inconvenienced because leases on their Des Moines housing expire at the end of the month.

I think the members of the conference committees know the speakers and the majority leaders druthers, Gronstal said.

The Senate has been operating with a skeleton crew this week, but Gronstal expects to have all senators on hand today to begin the shutdown process that could take a day or two.

Well measure that as it happens, he said. Once agreements are reached, the tough part is transferring those agreements to paper and going through all the due diligence.

Moving the paper takes some significant time, the veteran of 33 years in the House and Senate said.

The major sticking points in the HHS budget are Senate Democrats insistence on more extensive oversight of privately delivered Medicaid services that began April 1, and House Republicans insistence on not funding Planned Parenthood.

Ragan predicted it will take time to go through the oversight details because private management of Medicaid is new.

Theres such detail. In the weeds, she said.

Resolving the differences on funding family planning services also will take time because the Senate wants Planned Parenthood funding in Medicaid, but the House funds womens health services from a different source.

Theres lots of positives in this bill that we agree on, Ragan said. The art of compromise is somewhere in here.
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Chernobyl Accident 1986

(Updated April 2022)

In February 2022, Russia launched a military offensive against Ukraine. For further information see page on Russia-Ukraine War and Nuclear Energy.

The Chernobyl accident in 1986 was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel.

The resulting steam explosion and fires released at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the environment, with the deposition of radioactive materials in many parts of Europe.

Two Chernobyl plant workers died due to the explosion on the night of the accident, and a further 28 people died within a few weeks as a result of acute radiation syndrome.

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has concluded that, apart from some 5000 thyroid cancers (resulting in 15 fatalities), "there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident."

Some 350,000 people were evacuated as a result of the accident, but resettlement of areas from which people were relocated is ongoing.

On 24 February Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that Russian forces had taken control of all facilities at Chernobyl (see below).

On 9 March the Chernobyl nuclear plant was disconnected from the electricity grid. The IAEA stated that it did not see a critical impact on safety as a result.

The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyla nuclear power plant in Ukraine was the product of a flawed Soviet reactor design coupled with serious mistakes made by the plant operatorsb. It was a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture.

The accident destroyed the Chernobyl 4 reactor, killing 30 operators and firemen within three months and several further deaths later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Another person is reported to have died at the time from a coronary thrombosisc. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was originally diagnosed in 237 people onsite and involved with the clean-up and it was later confirmed in 134 cases. Of these, 28 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more workers subsequently died between 1987 and 2004, but their deaths cannot necessarily be attributed to radiation exposured. Nobody offsite suffered from acute radiation effects although a significant, but uncertain, fraction of the thyroid cancers diagnosed since the accident in patients who were children at the time are likely to be due to intake of radioactive iodine falloutm,9. Furthermore, large areas of Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and beyond were contaminated in varying degrees. See also sections below and Chernobyl Accident Appendix 2: Health Impacts.

The Chernobyl disaster was a unique event and the only accident in the history of commercial nuclear power where radiation-related fatalities occurrede. The design of the reactor is unique and in that respect the accident is thus of little relevance to the rest of the nuclear industry outside the then Eastern Bloc. However, it led to major changes in safety culture and in industry cooperation, particularly between East and West before the end of the Soviet Union. Former President Gorbachev said that the Chernobyl accident was a more important factor in the fall of the Soviet Union than Perestroika  his program of liberal reform.

The Chernobyl site and plant

The Chernobyl Power Complex, lying about 130 km north of Kiev, Ukraine, and about 20 km south of the border with Belarus, consisted of four nuclear reactors of the RBMK-1000 design (see information page on RBMK Reactors). Units 1 and 2 were constructed between 1970 and 1977, while units 3 and 4 of the same design were completed in 1983. Two more RBMK reactors were under construction at the site at the time of the accident. To the southeast of the plant, an artificial lake of some 22 square kilometres, situated beside the river Pripyat, a tributary of the Dniepr, was constructed to provide cooling water for the reactors.

This area of Ukraine is described as Belarussian-type woodland with a low population density. About 3 km away from the reactor, in the new city, Pripyat, there were 49,000 inhabitants. The old town of Chornobyl, which had a population of 12,500, is about 15 km to the southeast of the complex. Within a 30 km radius of the power plant, the total population was between 115,000 and 135,000 at the time of the accident.



Source: OECD NEA

The RBMK-1000 is a Soviet-designed and built graphite moderated pressure tube type reactor, using slightly enriched (2% U-235) uranium dioxide fuel. It is a boiling light water reactor, with two loops feeding steam directly to the turbines, without an intervening heat exchanger. Water pumped to the bottom of the fuel channels boils as it progresses up the pressure tubes, producing steam which feeds two 500 MWe turbines. The water acts as a coolant and also provides the steam used to drive the turbines. The vertical pressure tubes contain the zirconium alloy clad uranium dioxide fuel around which the cooling water flows. The extensions of the fuel channels penetrate the lower plate and the cover plate of the core and are welded to each. A specially designed refuelling machine allows fuel bundles to be changed without shutting down the reactor.

The moderator, the function of which is to slow down neutrons to make them more efficient in producing fission in the fuel, is graphite, surrounding the pressure tubes. A mixture of nitrogen and helium is circulated between the graphite blocks to prevent oxidation of the graphite and to improve the transmission of the heat produced by neutron interactions in the graphite to the fuel channel. The core itself is about 7 m high and about 12 m in diameter. In each of the two loops, there are four main coolant circulating pumps, one of which is always on standby. The reactivity or power of the reactor is controlled by raising or lowering 211 control rods, which, when lowered into the moderator, absorb neutrons and reduce the fission rate. The power output of this reactor is 3200 MW thermal, or 1000 MWe. Various safety systems, such as an emergency core cooling system, were incorporated into the reactor design.

One of the most important characteristics of the RBMK reactor is that it can possess a 'positive void coefficient', where an increase in steam bubbles ('voids') is accompanied by an increase in core reactivity (see information page on RBMK Reactors). As steam production in the fuel channels increases, the neutrons that would have been absorbed by the denser water now produce increased fission in the fuel. There are other components that contribute to the overall power coefficient of reactivity, but the void coefficient is the dominant one in RBMK reactors. The void coefficient depends on the composition of the core  a new RBMK core will have a negative void coefficient. However, at the time of the accident at Chernobyl 4, the reactor's fuel burn-up, control rod configuration, and power level led to a positive void coefficient large enough to overwhelm all other influences on the power coefficient.

The 1986 Chernobyl accident

On 25 April, prior to a routine shutdown, the reactor crew at Chernobyl 4 began preparing for a test to determine how long turbines would spin and supply power to the main circulating pumps following a loss of main electrical power supply. This test had been carried out at Chernobyl the previous year, but the power from the turbine ran down too rapidly, so new voltage regulator designs were to be tested.

A series of operator actions, including the disabling of automatic shutdown mechanisms, preceded the attempted test early on 26 April. By the time that the operator moved to shut down the reactor, the reactor was in an extremely unstable condition. A peculiarity of the design of the control rods caused a dramatic power surge as they were inserted into the reactor (see Chernobyl Accident Appendix 1: Sequence of Events).

The interaction of very hot fuel with the cooling water led to fuel fragmentation along with rapid steam production and an increase in pressure. The design characteristics of the reactor were such that substantial damage to even three or four fuel assemblies would  and did  result in the destruction of the reactor. The overpressure caused the 1000 t cover plate of the reactor to become partially detached, rupturing the fuel channels and jamming all the control rods, which by that time were only halfway down. Intense steam generation then spread throughout the whole core (fed by water dumped into the core due to the rupture of the emergency cooling circuit) causing a steam explosion and releasing fission products to the atmosphere. About two to three seconds later, a second explosion threw out fragments from the fuel channels and hot graphite. There is some dispute among experts about the character of this second explosion, but it is likely to have been caused by the production of hydrogen from zirconium-steam reactions.

Two workers died as a result of these explosions. The graphite (about a quarter of the 1200 tonnes of it was estimated to have been ejected) and fuel became incandescent and started a number of firesf, causing the main release of radioactivity into the environment. A total of about 14 EBq (14 x 1018 Bq) of radioactivity was released, over half of it being from biologically-inert noble gases.*

* The figure of 5.2 EBq is also quoted, this being "iodine-131 equivalent" - 1.8 EBq iodine and 85 PBq Cs-137 multiplied by 40 due its longevity, and ignoring the 6.5 EBq xenon-33 and some minor or short-lived nuclides.

About 200-300 tonnes of water per hour was injected into the intact half of the reactor using the auxiliary feedwater pumps but this was stopped after half a day owing to the danger of it flowing into and flooding units 1 and 2. From the second to tenth day after the accident, some 5000 tonnes of boron, dolomite, sand, clay, and lead were dropped on to the burning core by helicopter in an effort to extinguish the blaze and limit the release of radioactive particles.

The damaged Chernobyl unit 4 reactor building

The 1991 report by the State Committee on the Supervision of Safety in Industry and Nuclear Power on the root cause of the accident looked past the operator actions. It said that while it was certainly true the operators placed their reactor in a dangerously unstable condition (in fact in a condition which virtually guaranteed an accident) it was also true that in doing so they had not in fact violated a number of vital operating policies and principles, since no such policies and principles had been articulated. Additionally, the operating organization had not been made aware either of the specific vital safety significance of maintaining a minimum operating reactivity margin, or the general reactivity characteristics of the RBMK which made low power operation extremely hazardous.

Immediate impact of the Chernobyl accident

The accident caused the largest uncontrolled radioactive release into the environment ever recorded for any civilian operation, and large quantities of radioactive substances were released into the air for about 10 days. This caused serious social and economic disruption for large populations in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Two radionuclides, the short-lived iodine-131 and the long-lived caesium-137, were particularly significant for the radiation dose they delivered to members of the public.

It is estimated that all of the xenon gas, about half of the iodine and caesium, and at least 5% of the remaining radioactive material in the Chernobyl 4 reactor core (which had 192 tonnes of fuel) was released in the accident. Most of the released material was deposited close by as dust and debris, but the lighter material was carried by wind over Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and to some extent over Scandinavia and Europe.

The casualties included firefighters who attended the initial fires on the roof of the turbine building. All these were put out in a few hours, but radiation doses on the first day caused 28 deaths  six of which were firemen  by the end of July 1986. The doses received by the firefighters and power plant workers were high enough to result in acute radiation syndrome (ARS), which occurs if a person is exposed to more than 700 milligrays (mGy) within a short time frame (usually minutes). Common ARS symptoms include gastrointestinal problems (e.g. nausea, vomiting), headaches, burns and fever. Whole body doses between 4000 mGy and 5000 mGv within a short time frame would kill 50% of those exposed, with 8000-10,000 mGy universally fatal. The doses received by the firefighters who died were estimated to range up to 20,000 mGy.

The next task was cleaning up the radioactivity at the site so that the remaining three reactors could be restarted, and the damaged reactor shielded more permanently. About 200,000 people ('liquidators') from all over the Soviet Union were involved in the recovery and clean-up during 1986 and 1987. They received high doses of radiation, averaging around 100 millisieverts (mSv). Some 20,000 liquidators received about 250 mSv, with a few receiving approximately 500 mSv. Later, the number of liquidators swelled to over 600,000, but most of these received only low radiation doses. The highest doses were received by about 1000 emergency workers and onsite personnel during the first day of the accident.

According to the most up-to-date estimate provided by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), the average radiation dose due to the accident received by inhabitants of 'strict radiation control' areas (population 216,000) in the years 1986 to 2005 was 31 mSv (over the 20-year period), and in the 'contaminated' areas (population 6.4 million) it averaged 9 mSv, a minor increase over the dose due to background radiation over the same period (about 50 mSv)4.

Initial radiation exposure in contaminated areas was due to short-lived iodine-131; later caesium-137 was the main hazard. (Both are fission products dispersed from the reactor core, with half lives of 8 days and 30 years, respectively. 1.8 EBq of I-131 and 0.085 EBq of Cs-137 were released.) About five million people lived in areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine contaminated (above 37 kBq/m2 Cs-137 in soil) and about 400,000 lived in more contaminated areas of strict control by authorities (above 555 kBq/m2 Cs-137). A total of 29,400 km2 was contaminated above 180 kBq/m2.

The plant operators' town of Pripyat was evacuated on 27 April (45,000 residents). By 14 May, some 116,000 people that had been living within a 30-kilometre radius had been evacuated and later relocated. About 1000 of these returned unofficially to live within the contaminated zone. Most of those evacuated received radiation doses of less than 50 mSv, although a few received 100 mSv or more.

In the years following the accident, a further 220,000 people were resettled into less contaminated areas, and the initial 30 km radius exclusion zone (2800 km2) was modified and extended to cover 4300 square kilometres. This resettlement was due to application of a criterion of 350 mSv projected lifetime radiation dose, though in fact radiation in most of the affected area (apart from half a square kilometre close to the reactor) fell rapidly so that average doses were less than 50% above normal background of 2.5 mSv/yr. See also following section on Resettlement of contaminated areas.

Long-term health effects of the Chernobyl accident



Video: Experts talk about the health effects of Chernobyl (Recorded 2011)

Several organizations have reported on the impacts of the Chernobyl accident, but all have had problems assessing the significance of their observations because of the lack of reliable public health information before 1986.

In 1989, the World Health Organization (WHO) first raised concerns that local medical scientists had incorrectly attributed various biological and health effects to radiation exposureg. Following this, the Government of the USSR requested the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to coordinate an international experts' assessment of accident's radiological, environmental and health consequences in selected towns of the most heavily contaminated areas in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Between March 1990 and June 1991, a total of 50 field missions were conducted by 200 experts from 25 countries (including the USSR), seven organizations, and 11 laboratories3. In the absence of pre-1986 data, it compared a control population with those exposed to radiation. Significant health disorders were evident in both control and exposed groups, but, at that stage, none was radiation related.

Paths of radiation exposureh

In February 2003, the IAEA established the Chernobyl Forum, in cooperation with seven other UN organisations as well as the competent authorities of Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine. In April 2005, the reports prepared by two expert groups  "Environment", coordinated by the IAEA, and "Health", coordinated by WHO  were intensively discussed by the Forum and eventually approved by consensus. The conclusions of this 2005 Chernobyl Forum study (revised version published 2006i) are in line with earlier expert studies, notably the UNSCEAR 2000 reportj which said that "apart from this [thyroid cancer] increase, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 14 years after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality or in non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure." There is little evidence of any increase in leukaemia, even among clean-up workers where it might be most expected. Radiation-induced leukemia has a latency period of 5-7 years, so any potential leukemia cases due to the accident would already have developed. A low number of the clean-up workers, who received the highest doses, may have a slightly increased risk of developing solid cancers in the long term. To date, however, there is no evidence of any such cancers having developed. Apart from these, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) said: "The great majority of the population is not likely to experience serious health consequences as a result of radiation from the Chernobyl accident. Many other health problems have been noted in the populations that are not related to radiation exposure."

The Chernobyl Forum report says that people in the area have suffered a paralysing fatalism due to myths and misperceptions about the threat of radiation, which has contributed to a culture of chronic dependency. Some "took on the role of invalids." Mental health coupled with smoking and alcohol abuse is a very much greater problem than radiation, but worst of all at the time was the underlying level of health and nutrition. Apart from the initial 116,000, relocations of people were very traumatic and did little to reduce radiation exposure, which was low anyway. Psycho-social effects among those affected by the accident are similar to those arising from other major disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and fires.

A particularly sad effect of the misconceptions surrounding the accident was that some physicians in Europe advised pregnant women to undergo abortions on account of radiation exposure, even though the levels concerned were vastly below those likely to have teratogenic effects. Robert Gale, a hematologist who treated radiation victims after the accident, estimated that more than 1 million abortions were undertaken in the Soviet Union and Europe as a result of incorrect advice from their doctors about radiation exposure and birth defects following the accident.

Some exaggerated figures have been published regarding the death toll attributable to the Chernobyl disaster, including a publication by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)6. However, the Chairman of UNSCEAR made it clear that "this report is full of unsubstantiated statements that have no support in scientific assessments"k, and the Chernobyl Forum report also repudiates these claims.

The number of deaths resulting from the accident are covered most fully in the account of health effects provided by an annex to the UNSCEAR 2008 report, released in 2011. The report concluded: "In summary, the effects of the Chernobyl accident are many and varied. Early deterministic effects can be attributed to radiation with a high degree of certainty, while for other medical conditions, radiation almost certainly was not the cause. In between, there was a wide spectrum of conditions. It is necessary to evaluate carefully each specific condition and the surrounding circumstances before attributing a cause."5

According to an UNSCEAR report in 2018, about 20,000 cases of thyroid cancer were diagnosed 1991-2015 in patients who were 18 and under at the time of the accident. The report states that a quarter of the cases (5000 cases) were "probably" due to high doses of radiation, and that this fraction was likely to have been higher in earlier years, and lower in later years. However, it also states that the uncertainty around the attributed fraction is very significant  at least 0.07 to 0.5  and that the influence of annual screenings and active follow-up make comparisons with the general population problematic. Thyroid cancer is usually not fatal if diagnosed and treated early; the report states that of the diagnoses made between 1991 and 2005, 15 proved to be fatal9.

Progressive closure of the Chernobyl plant

In the early 1990s, some $400 million was spent on improvements to the remaining reactors at Chernobyl, considerably enhancing their safety. Energy shortages necessitated the continued operation of one of them (unit 3) until December 2000. (Unit 2 was shut down after a turbine hall fire in 1991, and unit 1 at the end of 1997.) Almost 6000 people worked at the plant every day, and their radiation dose has been within internationally accepted limits. A small team of scientists works within the wrecked reactor building itself, inside the shelterl.

Workers and their families now live in a new town, Slavutich, 30 km from the plant. This was built following the evacuation of Pripyat, which was just 3 km away.

Ukraine depends upon, and is deeply in debt to, Russia for energy supplies, particularly oil and gas, but also nuclear fuel. Although this dependence is gradually being reduced, continued operation of nuclear power stations, which supply half of total electricity, is now even more important than in 1986.

When it was announced in 1995 that the two operating reactors at Chernobyl would be closed by 2000, a memorandum of understanding was signed by Ukraine and G7 nations to progress this, but its implementation was conspicuously delayed. Alternative generating capacity was needed, either gas-fired, which has ongoing fuel cost and supply implications, or nuclear, by completing Khmelnitski unit 2 and Rovno unit 4 ('K2R4') in Ukraine. Construction of these was halted in 1989 but then resumed, and both reactors came online late in 2004, financed by Ukraine rather than international grants as expected on the basis of Chernobyl's closure.

Chernobyl today

Russian military operation 2022

On 24 February 2022, Russian forces took control of all facilities of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Control levels of gamma radiation dose rates in the Chernobyl exclusion zone were exceeded. The SNRIU said that the rise in radiation levels was likely due to disturbance of the top layer of soil from movement of a large number of heavy military machinery through the exclusion zone and increase of air pollution. It added: The condition of Chernobyl nuclear facilities and other facilities is unchanged." Radiation readings from the site were assessed by the IAEA to be low and in line with near background levels.

On 9 March at 11.22 the Chernobyl plant lost connection to the grid. The SNRIU said that backup diesel generators were running and had 48 hours of fuel. The IAEA stated that, based on the heat load of spent fuel in the ISF-1 storage pool, and the volume of cooling water it contained, there would be sufficient heat removal without electrical supply. It said that it saw no critical impact on safety as a result of the loss of power, but said that the loss of power would likely create additional stress for the about 210 staff who have not been able to rotate for the past two weeks.

Professor Geraldine Thomas, director of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank, said: "They [the used fuel bundles] will not be producing significant amounts of heat, making a release of radiation very unlikely. In the unlikely event of a release of any radiation, this would be only to the immediate local area, and therefore not pose any threat to western Europe  there would be no radioactive cloud."

On 13 March Energoatom reported that transmission system operator Ukrenergo had succeeded in repairing a power line needed to restore external electricity supplies to Chernobyl. The site was due to be reconnected to the grid a day later, but Ukrenergo reported in the morning of 14 March that the line had sustained further damage "by the occupying forces". Later on 14 March Ukrenergo said that external power had been restored at 13.10 local time, and at 16.45 the plant was reconnected to Ukraine's electricity grid.

On 31 March control of the site was returned to Ukrainian personnel.

For more detailed information, see page on Russia-Ukraine War and Nuclear Energy.

Unit 4 containment

Chernobyl unit 4 was enclosed in a large concrete shelter which was erected quickly (by October 1986) to allow continuing operation of the other reactors at the plant. However, the structure is neither strong nor durable. The international Shelter Implementation Plan in the 1990s involved raising money for remedial work including removal of the fuel-containing materials. Some major work on the shelter was carried out in 1998 and 1999. About 200 tonnes of highly radioactive material remains deep within it, and this poses an environmental hazard until it is better contained.

The New Safe Confinement (NSC) structure was completed in 2017, having been built adjacent and then moved into place on rails. It is an arch 110 metres high, 165 metres long and spanning 260 metres, covering both unit 4 and the hastily-built 1986 structure. The arch frame is a lattice construction of tubular steel members, equipped with internal cranes. The design and construction contract for this was signed in 2007 with the Novarka consortium and preparatory work onsite was completed in 2010. Construction started in April 2012. The first half, weighing 12,800 tonnes, was moved 112 metres to a holding area in front of unit 4 in April 2014. The second half was completed by the end of 2014 and was joined to the first in July 2015. Cladding, cranes, and remote handling equipment were fitted in 2015. The entire 36,000 tonne structure was pushed 327 metres into position over the reactor building in November 2016, over two weeks, and the end walls completed. The NSC is the largest moveable land-based structure ever built.

The hermetically sealed building will allow engineers to remotely dismantle the 1986 structure that has shielded the remains of the reactor from the weather since the weeks after the accident. It will enable the eventual removal of the fuel-containing materials (FCM) in the bottom of the reactor building and accommodate their characterization, compaction, and packing for disposal. This task represents the most important step in eliminating nuclear hazard at the site  and the real start of dismantling. The NSC will facilitate remote handling of these dangerous materials, using as few personnel as possible. During peak construction of the NSC some 1200 workers were onsite.

The Chernobyl Shelter Fund, set up in 1997, had received 864 million from international donors by early 2011 towards this project and previous work. It and the Nuclear Safety Account (NSA), set up in 1993, are managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The total cost of the new shelter was in 2011 estimated to be 1.5 billion. In November 2014 the EBRD said the overall 2.15 billion Shelter Implementation Plan including the NSC had received contributions from 43 governments but still had a funding shortfall of 615 million. The following month the EBRD made an additional contribution of 350 million in anticipation of a 165 million contribution by the G7/European Commission, which was confirmed in April 2015. This left a balance of 100 million to come from non-G7 donors, and 15 million of this was confirmed in April 2015.

Chernobyl New Safe Confinement under construction and before being moved into place (Image: EBRD)

Funding other Chernobyl work

The Nuclear Safety Account (NSA), had received 321 million by early 2011 for Chernobyl decommissioning and also for projects in other ex-Soviet countries. At Chernobyl it funds the construction of used fuel and waste storage (notably ISF-2, see below) and decommissioning units 1-3. In April 2016 the European Commission pledged 20 million to the NSA, the largest part of 45 million expected from the G7 and the European Commission. A further 40 million was expected from the EBRD in May 2016.

In total, the European Commission has committed around 730 million so far to Chernobyl projects in four ways. First, 550 million for assistance projects, out of which 470 million were channelled through international funds, and 80 million implemented directly by the European Commission. Secondly, power generation support of 65 million. Thirdly, 15 million for social projects. And finally, 100 million for research projects.

Chernobyl used fuel: ISF-1 & ISF-2

Used fuel from units 1-3 was stored in each unit's cooling pond, and in an interim spent fuel storage facility pond (ISF-1). A few damaged assemblies remained in units 1&2 in 2013, with the last of these removed in June 2016. ISF-1 now holds most of the spent fuel from units 1-3, allowing those reactors to be decommissioned under less restrictive licence conditions. Most of the fuel assemblies were straightforward to handle, but about 50 are damaged and required special handling.

In 1999, a contract was signed with Framatome (now Areva) for construction of the ISF-2 radioactive waste management facility to store 25,000 used fuel assemblies from units 1-3 and other operational waste long-term, as well as material from decommissioning units 1-3 (which are the first RBMK units decommissioned anywhere). However, after a significant part of the dry storage facility had been built, technical deficiencies in the concept emerged in 2003, and the contract was terminated amicably in 2007.

Holtec International became the contractor in September 2007 for the new interim spent nuclear fuel storage facility (ISF-2 or SNF SF-2) for the state-owned Chernobyl NPP. Design approval and funding from the NSA was confirmed in October 2010, and the final 87.5 million of 400 million cost was pledged in April 2016. Construction was completed in January 2020. Hot and cold tests took place during 2020, and the facility received an operating licence in April 2021.

ISF-2 is the worlds largest dry used fuel storage facility, accommodating 21,217 RBMK fuel assemblies in dry storage for at least a 100-year service life.

The project includes a processing facility, able to cut the RBMK fuel assemblies* and to put the material in double-walled canisters, which are then filled with inert gas and welded shut. They will then be transported to concrete dry storage vaults in which the fuel containers will be enclosed for up to 100 years. This facility, treating 2500 fuel assemblies per year, is the first of its kind for RBMK fuel.

* According to Holtec: Unique features of the Chernobyl dry storage facility include the world's largest 'hot cell' for dismembering the conjugated RBMK fuel assembly and a (Holtec patented) forced gas dehydrator designed to run on nitrogen.

Other Chernobyl radwaste

Industrial Complex for Radwaste Management (ICSRM): In April 2009, Nukem handed over this turnkey waste treatment centre for solid radioactive waste. In May 2010, the State Nuclear Regulatory Committee licensed the commissioning of this facility, where solid low- and intermediate-level wastes accumulated from the power plant operations and the decommissioning of reactor blocks 1-3 is conditioned. The wastes are processed in three steps. First, the solid radioactive wastes temporarily stored in bunkers is removed for treatment. In the next step, these wastes, as well as those from decommissioning reactor blocks 1-3, are processed into a form suitable for permanent safe disposal. Low- and intermediate-level wastes are separated into combustible, compactable, and non-compactable categories. These are then subject to incineration, high-force compaction, and cementation respectively. In addition, highly radioactive and long-lived solid waste is sorted out for temporary separate storage. In the third step, the conditioned solid waste materials are transferred to containers suitable for permanent safe storage.

As part of this project, at the end of 2007, Nukem handed over an Engineered Near Surface Disposal Facility for storage of short-lived radioactive waste after prior conditioning. It is 17 km away from the power plant, at the Vektor complex within the 30-km zone. The storage area is designed to hold 55,000 m3 of treated waste which will be subject to radiological monitoring for 300 years, by when the radioactivity will have decayed to such an extent that monitoring is no longer required.

Another contract has been let for a Liquid Radioactive Waste Treatment Plant (LRTP), to handle some 35,000 cubic metres of low- and intermediate-level liquid wastes at the site. This will be solidified and eventually buried along with solid wastes on site. Construction of the plant has been completed and the start of operations was due late in 2015. LRTP is also funded through EBRDs Nuclear Safety Account (NSA).

Non-Chernobyl used fuel

The Central Spent Fuel Storage Facility (CSFSF) Project for Ukraines VVER reactors is being built by Holtec International within the Chernobyl exclusion area, between the resettled villages Staraya Krasnitsa, Buryakovka, Chistogalovka, and Stechanka, southeast of Chernobyl and not far from ISF-2. This will not take any Chernobyl fuel, though it will become a part of the common spent nuclear fuel management complex of the state-owned company Chernobyl NPP.

Decommissioning units 1-3

After the last Chernobyl reactor shut down in December 2000, in mid-2001 a new enterprise, SSE ChNPP was set up to take over management of the site and decommissioning from Energoatom. (Its remit includes eventual decommissioning of all Ukraine nuclear plants.)

In January 2008, the Ukraine government announced a four-stage decommissioning plan which incorporated the above waste activities and progresses towards a cleared site.

In February 2014 a new stage of this was approved for units 1-3, involving dismantling some equipment and putting them into safstor condition by 2028. Then, to 2046, further equipment will be removed, and by 2064 they will be demolished.

See also official website.

Resettlement of contaminated areas

In the last two decades there has been some resettlement of the areas evacuated in 1986 and subsequently. Recently the main resettlement project has been in Belarus.

In July 2010, the Belarus government announced that it had decided to settle back thousands of people in the 'contaminated areas' covered by the Chernobyl fallout, from which 24 years ago they and their forbears were hastily relocated. Compared with the list of contaminated areas in 2005, some 211 villages and hamlets had been reclassified with fewer restrictions on resettlement. The decision by the Belarus Council of Ministers resulted in a new national program over 2011-15 and up to 2020 to alleviate the Chernobyl impact and return the areas to normal use with minimal restrictions. The focus of the project is on the development of economic and industrial potential of the Gomel and Mogilev regions from which 137,000 people were relocated.

The main priority is agriculture and forestry, together with attracting qualified people and housing them. Initial infrastructure requirements will mean the refurbishment of gas, potable water and power supplies, while the use of local wood will be banned. Schools and housing will be provided for specialist workers and their families ahead of wider socio-economic development. Overall, some 21,484 dwellings are slated for connection to gas networks in the period 2011-2015, while about 5600 contaminated or broken down buildings are demolished. Over 1300 kilometres of road will be laid, and ten new sewerage works and 15 pumping stations are planned. The cost of the work was put at BYR 6.6 trillion ($2.2 billion), split fairly evenly across the years 2011 to 2015 inclusive.

The feasibility of agriculture will be examined in areas where the presence of caesium-137 and strontium-90 is low, "to acquire new knowledge in the fields of radiobiology and radioecology in order to clarify the principles of safe life in the contaminated territories." Land found to have too high a concentration of radionuclides will be reforested and managed. A suite of protective measures was set up to allow a new forestry industry whose products would meet national and international safety standards. In April 2009, specialists in Belarus stressed that it is safe to eat all foods cultivated in the contaminated territories, though intake of some wild food was restricted.

Protective measures will be put in place for 498 settlements in the contaminated areas where average radiation dose may exceed 1 mSv per year. There were also 1904 villages with annual average effective doses from the pollution between 0.1 mSv and 1 mSv. The goal for these areas is to allow their re-use with minimal restrictions, although already radiation doses there from the caesium are lower than background levels anywhere in the world.

The Belarus government decision was an important political landmark in an ongoing process. Studies reviewed by UNSCEAR show that the Chernobyl disaster caused little risk for the general population. A UN Development Program report in 2002 said that much of the aid and effort applied to mitigate the effects of the Chernobyl accident did more harm than good, and it seems that this, along with the Chernobyl Forum report, finally persuaded the Belarus authorities. In 2004 President Lukashenko announced a priority to repopulate much of the Chernobyl-affected regions of Belarus, and then in 2009 he said that he wants to repopulate Chernobyls zone quickly.

In 2011 Chernobyl was officially declared a tourist attraction, with many visitors.

In 2015 the published results of a major scientific study showed that the mammal population of the exclusion zone (including the 2162 sq km Polessian State Radiation-Ecological Reserve  PSRER in Belarus) was thriving, despite land contamination. The long-term empirical data showed no evidence of a negative influence of radiation on mammal abundance. The data represent unique evidence of wildlife's resilience in the face of chronic radiation stress. (Current Biology, Elsevier8) . Other studies have concluded that the net environmental effect of the accident has been much greater biodiversity and abundance of species, with the exclusion zone having become a unique sanctuary for wildlife due to the absence of humans.

What has been learned from the Chernobyl disaster?

Leaving aside the verdict of history on its role in melting the Soviet 'Iron Curtain', some very tangible practical benefits have resulted from the Chernobyl accident. The main ones concern reactor safety, notably in eastern Europe. (The US Three Mile Island accident in 1979 had a significant effect on Western reactor design and operating procedures. While that reactor was destroyed, all radioactivity was contained  as designed  and there were no deaths or injuries.)

While no-one in the West was under any illusion about the safety of early Soviet reactor designs, some lessons learned have also been applicable to Western plants. Certainly the safety of all Soviet-designed reactors has improved vastly. This is due largely to the development of a culture of safety encouraged by increased collaboration between East and West, and substantial investment in improving the reactors.

Modifications have been made to overcome deficiencies in all the RBMK reactors still operating. In these, originally the nuclear chain reaction and power output could increase if cooling water were lost or turned to steam, in contrast to most Western designs. It was this effect which led to the uncontrolled power surge that led to the destruction of Chernobyl 4 (see Positive void coefficient section in the information page on RBMK Reactors). All of the RBMK reactors have now been modified by changes in the control rods, adding neutron absorbers and consequently increasing the fuel enrichment from 1.8 to 2.4% U-235, making them very much more stable at low power (see Post accident changes to the RBMK section in the information page on RBMK Reactors). Automatic shut-down mechanisms now operate faster, and other safety mechanisms have been improved. Automated inspection equipment has also been installed. A repetition of the 1986 Chernobyl accident is now virtually impossible, according to a German nuclear safety agency report7.

Since 1989, over 1000 nuclear engineers from the former Soviet Union have visited Western nuclear power plants and there have been many reciprocal visits. Over 50 twinning arrangements between East and West nuclear plants have been put in place. Most of this has been under the auspices of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), a body formed in 1989 which links 130 operators of nuclear power plants in more than 30 countries (see also information page on Cooperation in the Nuclear Power Industry).

Many other international programmes were initiated following Chernobyl. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safety review projects for each particular type of Soviet reactor are noteworthy, bringing together operators and Western engineers to focus on safety improvements. These initiatives are backed by funding arrangements. The Nuclear Safety Assistance Coordination Centre database lists Western aid totalling almost US$1 billion for more than 700 safety-related projects in former Eastern Bloc countries. The Convention on Nuclear Safety adopted in Vienna in June 1994 is another outcome.

The Chernobyl Forum report said that some seven million people are now receiving or eligible for benefits as 'Chernobyl victims', which means that resources are not targeting those most in need. Remedying this presents daunting political problems however.

Notes & references

Notes

a. Chernobyl is the well-known Russian name for the site; Chornobyl is preferred by Ukraine. [Back]

b. Much has been made of the role of the operators in the Chernobyl accident. The 1986 Summary Report on the Post-Accident Review Meeting on the Chernobyl Accident (INSAG-1) of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA's) International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group accepted the view of the Soviet experts that "the accident was caused by a remarkable range of human errors and violations of operating rules in combination with specific reactor features which compounded and amplified the effects of the errors and led to the reactivity excursion." In particular, according to the INSAG-1 report: "The operators deliberately and in violation of rules withdrew most control and safety rods from the core and switched off some important safety systems."

However, the IAEA's 1992 INSAG-7 report, The Chernobyl Accident: Updating of INSAG-1, was less critical of the operators, with the emphasis shifted towards "the contributions of particular design features, including the design of the control rods and safety systems, and arrangements for presenting important safety information to the operators. The accident is now seen to have been the result of the concurrence of the following major factors: specific physical characteristics of the reactor; specific design features of the reactor control elements; and the fact that the reactor was brought to a state not specified by procedures or investigated by an independent safety body. Most importantly, the physical characteristics of the reactor made possible its unstable behaviour." But the report goes on to say that the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group "remains of the opinion that critical actions of the operators were most ill judged. As pointed out in INSAG-1, the human factor has still to be considered as a major element in causing the accident."

It is certainly true that the operators placed the reactor in a dangerous condition, in particular by removing too many of the control rods, resulting in the lowering of the reactor's operating reactivity margin (ORM, see information page on RBMK Reactors). However, the operating procedures did not emphasize the vital safety significance of the ORM but rather treated the ORM as a way of controlling reactor power. It could therefore be argued that the actions of the operators were more a symptom of the prevailing safety culture of the Soviet era rather than the result of recklessness or a lack of competence on the part of the operators.

In what is referred to as his Testament  which was published soon after his suicide two years after the accident  Valery Legasov, who had led the Soviet delegation to the IAEA Post-Accident Review Meeting, wrote: "After I had visited Chernobyl NPP I came to the conclusion that the accident was the inevitable apotheosis of the economic system which had been developed in the USSR over many decades. Neglect by the scientific management and the designers was everywhere with no attention being paid to the condition of instruments or of equipment... When one considers the chain of events leading up to the Chernobyl accident, why one person behaved in such a way and why another person behaved in another etc, it is impossible to find a single culprit, a single initiator of events, because it was like a closed circle." [Back]

c. The initial death toll was officially given as two initial deaths plus 28 from acute radiation syndrome. One further victim, due to coronary thrombosis, is widely reported, but does not appear on official lists of the initial deaths. The 2006 report of the UN Chernobyl Forum Expert Group "Health", Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident and Special Health Care Programmes, states: "The Chernobyl accident caused the deaths of 30 power plant employees and firemen within a few days or weeks (including 28 deaths that were due to radiation exposure)." [Back]

d. Apart from the initial 31 deaths (two from the explosions, one reportedly from coronary thrombosis  see Note c above  and 28 firemen and plant personnel from acute radiation syndrome), the number of deaths resulting from the accident is unclear and a subject of considerable controversy. According to the 2006 report of the UN Chernobyl Forum's 'Health' Expert Group1: "The actual number of deaths caused by this accident is unlikely ever to be precisely known."

On the number of deaths due to acute radiation syndrome (ARS), the Expert Group report states: "Among the 134 emergency workers involved in the immediate mitigation of the Chernobyl accident, severely exposed workers and fireman during the first days, 28 persons died in 1986 due to ARS, and 19 more persons died in 1987-2004 from different causes. Among the general population affected by the Chernobyl radioactive fallout, the much lower exposures meant that ARS cases did not occur."

According to the report: "With the exception of thyroid cancer, direct radiation-epidemiological studies performed in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine since 1986 have not revealed any statistically significant increase in either cancer morbidity or mortality induced by radiation." The report does however attribute a large proportion of child thyroid cancer fatalities to radiation, with nine deaths being recorded during 1986-2002 as a result of progression of thyroid cancer. [Back]

e. There have been fatalities in military and research reactor contexts, e.g. Tokai-mura. [Back]

f. Although most reports on the Chernobyl accident refer to a number of graphite fires, it is highly unlikely that the graphite itself burned. Information on the General Atomics website (but now deleted) stated: "It is often incorrectly assumed that the combustion behavior of graphite is similar to that of charcoal and coal. Numerous tests and calculations have shown that it is virtually impossible to burn high-purity, nuclear-grade graphites." On Chernobyl, the same source stated: "Graphite played little or no role in the progression or consequences of the accident. The red glow observed during the Chernobyl accident was the expected color of luminescence for graphite at 700C and not a large-scale graphite fire, as some have incorrectly assumed."

A 2006 Electric Power Research Institute Technical Report states that the International Atomic Energy Agency's INSAG-1 report is

...potentially misleading through the use of imprecise words in relation to graphite behaviour. The report discusses the fire-fighting activities and repeatedly refers to burning graphite blocks and the graphite fire. Most of the actual fires involving graphite which were approached by fire-fighters involved ejected material on bitumen-covered roofs, and the fires also involved the bitumen. It is stated: The fire teams experienced no unusual problems in using their fire-fighting techniques, except that it took a considerable time to extinguish the graphite fire. These descriptions are not consistent with the later considered opinions of senior Russian specialists... There is however no question that extremely hot graphite was ejected from the core and at a temperature sufficient to ignite adjacent combustible materials.

There are also several referrals to a graphite fire occurring during the October 1957 accident at Windscale Pile No. 1 in the UK. However, images obtained from inside the Pile several decades after the accident showed that the graphite was relatively undamaged. [Back]

g. The International Chernobyl Project, 1990-91 - Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Measures, Summary Brochure, published by the International Atomic Energy Agency, reports that, in June 1989, the World Health Organization (WHO) sent a team of experts to help address the health impacts of radioactive contamination resulting from the accident. One of the conclusions from this mission was that "scientists who are not well versed in radiation effects have attributed various biological and health effects to radiation exposure. These changes cannot be attributed to radiation exposure, especially when the normal incidence is unknown, and are much more likely to be due to psychological factors and stress.Attributing these effects to radiation not only increases the psychological pressure in the population and provokes additional stress-related health problems, it also undermines confidence in the competence of the radiation specialists." [Back]

h. Image taken from page 31 of The International Chernobyl Project Technical Report, Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Measures, Report by an International Advisory Committee, IAEA, 1991 (ISBN: 9201291914) [Back]

i. A 55-page summary version the revised report, Chernobyls Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts and Recommendations to the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, The Chernobyl Forum: 20032005, Second revised version, as well as the Report of the UN Chernobyl Forum Expert Group Environment and the Report of the UN Chernobyl Forum Expert Group Health are available through the IAEA's webpage on the Chernobyl accident (https://www.iaea.org/topics/chornobyl) [Back]

j. The United Nations Scientific Commission on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) is the UN body with a mandate from the General Assembly to assess and report levels and health effects of exposure to ionizing radiation. Exposures and effects of the Chernobyl accident , Annex J to Volume II of the 2000 United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation Report to the General Assembly, is available at the UNSCEAR 2000 Report Vol. II webpage (www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/2000_2.html). It is also available (along with other reports) on the webpage for UNSCEAR's assessments of the radiation effects of The Chernobyl accident (www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html). The conclusions from Annex J of the UNSCEAR 2000 report are in Chernobyl Accident Appendix: Health Impacts [ Back ]

k. The quoted comment comes from a 6 June 2000 letter from Lars-Erik Holm, Chairman of UNSCEAR and Director-General of the Swedish Radiation Protection Institute, to Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations. [ Back ]

l. A reinforced concrete casing was built around the ruined reactor building over the seven months following the accident. This shelter  often referred to as the sarcophagus  was intended to contain the remaining fuel and act as a radiation shield. As it was designed for a lifetime of around 20 to 30 years, as well as being hastily constructed, a second shelter  known as the New Safe Confinement  with a 100-year design lifetime is planned to be placed over the existing structure. See also ASE keeps the lid on Chernobyl , World Nuclear News (19 August 2008). [ Back ]

m. The UNSCEAR committee in 20189 estimated that the fraction of the incidence of thyroid cancer attributable to radiation exposure among non-evacuated residents of Belarus, Ukraine and the four most contaminated oblasts of the Russian Federation, who were under 18 at the time of the accident, is in the order of 0.25 . The committee states that the uncertainty range of the fraction is large, at least from 0.07 to 0.5. [Back]

References

1. Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident and Special Health Care Programmes, Report of the UN Chernobyl Forum, Expert Group "Health", World Health Organization, 2006 (ISBN: 9789241594172)

2. Appendix D, Graphite Decommissioning: Options for Graphite Treatment, Recycling, or Disposal, including a discussion of Safety-Related Issues , EPRI, Palo Alto, CA, 1013091 (March 2006)

3. The International Chernobyl Project, 1990-91 - Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Measures, Summary Brochure , International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA/PI/A32E, 1991; The International Chernobyl Project, An Overview , Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Measures, Report by an International Advisory Committee , IAEA, 1991 (ISBN: 9201290918); The International Chernobyl Project Technical Report , Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Measures, Report by an International Advisory Committee , IAEA, 1991 (ISBN: 9201291914) [ Back ]

4. Mikhail Balonov, Malcolm Crick and Didier Louvat, Update of Impacts of the Chernobyl Accident: Assessments of the Chernobyl Forum (2003-2005) and UNSCEAR (2005-2008) , Proceedings of the Third European IRPA (International Radiation Protection Association) Congress held in Helsinki, Finland (14-18 June 2010) [ Back ]

5. UNSCEAR, 2011, Health Effects due to Radiation from the Chernobyl Accident, UNSCEAR 2008 Report, vol II, annex D (lead author: M. Balanov) [ Back ]

6. Chernobyl - A Continuing Catastrophe, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 2000 [ Back ]

7. The Accident and the Safety of RBMK-Reactors, Gesellschaft fur Anlagen und Reaktorsicherheit (GRS) mbH, GRS-121 (February 1996) [Back]

8. Deryabina, T.G. et al. , Long-term census data reveal abundant wildlife populations at Chernobyl , Current Biology, Volume 25, Issue 19, pR824R826, Elsevier (5 October 2015) [ Back ]

9. Evaluation of data on thyroid cancer in regions affected by the Chernobyl accident, UNSCEAR (2018) [Back]

General sources

INSAG-7, The Chernobyl Accident: Updating of INSAG-1, A report by the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group, International Atomic Energy Agency, Safety Series No. 75-INSAG-7, 1992, (ISBN: 9201046928)

Chernobyls Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts and Recommendations to the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, The Chernobyl Forum: 20032005, Second revised version, International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA/PI/A.87 Rev.2/06-09181 (April 2006)

Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and their Remediation: Twenty Years of Experience, Report of the Chernobyl Forum Expert Group Environment, International Atomic Energy Agency, 2006 (ISBN 9201147058)

Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident and Special Health Care Programmes, Report of the UN Chernobyl Forum Expert Group "Health", World Health Organization, 2006 (ISBN: 9789241594172)

The Chernobyl accident, UNSCEAR's assessments of the radiation effects on the UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) radiation website

Exposures and effects of the Chernobyl accident, Annex J of Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation, UNSCEAR 2000 Report to the General Assembly Vol. II

Ten Years after Chernobyl: what do we really know? (based on the proceedings of the IAEA/WHO/EC International Conference, Vienna, April 1996), International Atomic Energy Agency

Chernobyl: Assessment of Radiological and Health Impacts - 2002 Update of Chernobyl: Ten Years On, OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (2002).

Zbigniew Jaworowski, Lessons of Chernobyl with particular reference to thyroid cancer, Australasian Radiation Protection Society Newsletter No. 30 (April 2004). The same article appeared in Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), Volume 31, Number 18 (7 May 2004). An extended version of this paper was published as Radiation folly, Chapter 4 of Environment & Health: Myths & Realities, Edited by Kendra Okonski and Julian Morris, International Policy Press (a division of International Policy Network), June 2004 (ISBN 1905041004). See also Chernobyl Accident Appendix 2: Health Impacts

The chernobyl.info website www.chernobyl.info  out of date but some useful information

Chernobyl Forum information on IAEA website

Mikhail Balonov, The Chernobyl Forum: Major Findings and Recommendations, presented at the Public Information Materials Exchange meeting held in Vienna, Austria on 12-16 February 2006

GreenFacts webpage on Scientific Facts on the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident (www.greenfacts.org/en/chernobyl)

European Centre of Technological Safety's Chernobyl website (www.tesec-int.org/Chernobyl) and its webpage on Sarcophagus and Decommissioning of the Chernobyl NPP

Chernobyl Legacy website (www.chernobyllegacy.com)

David Mosey, Looking Beyond the Operator, Nuclear Engineering International, 26 Nov 2014

Chernobyl 25th anniversary, Frequently Asked Questions, World Health Organization (23 April 2011)

Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and their Remediation: Twenty Years of Experience, Report of the UN Chernobyl Forum Expert Group "Environment", STI/PUB/1239, International Atomic Energy Agency (2006)
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Col. Erich C. Novak, 302nd Airlift Wing vice commander briefs local community and military leaders during the April 20, 2016 Colorado Springs Regional Business Alliance Military Affairs Council Area Chiefs of Staff meeting. The organization's April meeting was held in an aircraft maintenance hangar at the 302nd Airlift Wing allowing the Reserve wings leader to share the airlift mission of the Peterson-based wing first hand. After the meeting, attendees were given an opportunity to tour the C-130 and learn more about the aircraft maintenance, airlift, airdrop, Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System and aeromedical evacuation operations from Air Force Reservists representing those missions. (U.S. Air Force photo/Daniel Butterfield)
Apr 25, 2016 | By Benedict

3D printing has once again proved the purr-fect solution for cats in need, with veterinary specialists from the Polish city of odz using the technology to create prototype prosthetic paws for a handicapped cat named atkaPatch, in English. The operation was the first of its kind in Poland.

Fall 2015 was a difficult time for three-year-old Patch the cat. One fateful night, while going about its usual business, the adorable black-and-white mog suffered a terribly injury, having both its hind paws crushed by an unknown assailant. Incredibly, the wounded animal managed to make its way home, with its distraught owners taking it to the vet at the earliest possible opportunity.

Vets in the Silesian town of Legnica had a good look at Patch, but could only offer bad news for the kitty and its owners: both affected paws would have to be amputated. The crushed paws were removed, leaving Patch with a pair of barely functional hind legs. Help, however, was at hand: inspired by similar cases around the world, Wroclaw-based vet Dariusz Niedzielski took a series of MRI and CAT scans of Patch, before passing them on to experts at the Laboratory of Veterinary Implants, a facility at the Technopark in odz, where a solution to Patchs problem could be found.

The Laboratory of Veterinary Implants, as its name suggests, specializes in the design and production of custom-made implants and prostheses for animals. When the specialists received the scans of Patch from Niedzielski, they agreed that 3D printing could be used to create prototypes for a new set of hind paws for the cat. After some careful CAD trickery, the experts 3D printed the test paws for Patch. which proved to be a perfect fit. Then, once they had confirmation that the implants were of a suitable shape and size, they sent the design to a factory in nearby Pabianice, where the final set of implants were made out of titanium.

The titanium implants were attached to a sedated Patch during an operation on Thursday, coordinated by vet Michal Nowicki. To attach the implants, the veterinary team had to attach long titanium rods into the cavities of the animals bones. Nowicki expressed his pride at the operations success, given the small size of both Patch and the implants required. Never before had an operation of such complexity been performed in Poland.

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Apr 26, 2016 | By Benedict

Desktop Metal, a 3D printing startup based in Lexington, Massachusetts, has raised $33.76 million in equity funding, taking its total investment to more than $47 million in the space of a year. The company plans to create a desktop 3D printer capable of printing with metals.

Although it is still early days for Desktop Metal, everything appears to be in place for the startup to make significant progress over the next few yearsthat is, if it can achieve its lofty aim of producing an affordable, consumer-level 3D printer which can print with metals. The company has now raised almost $50 million in equity funding, and boasts a highly talented team of developers, designers, and engineers, including a number of MIT professors. Back in October 2015, the company completed its first round of funding, in which Statasys, New Enterprise Associates, Lux Capital, and others invested around $14 million.

According to a recent regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Desktop Metal has now raised a further $33.76 million in equity funding. The names of the six investors have not yet been disclosed but the filing, which surfaced on Monday, lists Dayna Grayson, partner at New Enterprise Associates, and Bilal Zuberi, partner at Lux Capital, amongst the directors and executives, suggesting that NEA and Lux Capital represent two of the six investors. Whether the total $50 million of equity funding proves sufficient for the development of the potentially game-changing metal 3D printer remains to be seen.

Desktop Metal is yet to provide any concrete details regarding its forthcoming metal 3D printers, but the companys website claims that the family of 3D printers will build complex parts beautifully and at a price that makes it attainable by every design and manufacturing team. The website describes the company as a highly capable team of experts in the fields of material science and metallurgy, mechanical engineering, robotics, industrial design, software, 3D printing and Computer Aided Design (CAD).

After Desktop Metals initial round of fundraising last year, co-founder and CEO Ric Fulop explained the motivations behind the companys business plan: Metal 3D printing has been out of the reach of most companies because its very expensive and slow. Were developing a system thats very fast and more accessible.

Other members of the Desktop Metal team include co-founder Chris Schuh, an MIT professor and Chairman of the universitys Department of Material Science and Engineering; co-founder Yet Ming Chiang, an MIT Professor in the Material Science Department; co-founder John Hart, an MIT Professor who leads the Mechanosynthesis Lab; and co-founder Ely Sachs, an MIT Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

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Apr 26, 2016 | By Alec

The ability to 3D print spare parts in a moments notice is exactly why NASA is experimenting with zero-gravity 3D printing, but this application can also be a huge advantage down here on earth. German national railway company Deutsche Bahn has also recognized the advantages of low storage costs and custom-fitting production, and is hoping to apply that to their own rail network in the near future. To realize this, they have just set up a collaboration of companies, startups and research institutes called Mobility goes Additive, which will explore possibilities and promote end-product 3D printing.

The existence of Mobility goes Additive has recently been confirmed by Deutsche Bahns innovation manager Stefanie Bricwede, who talked about their plans and ambitions during the 3D Druck fur Automotive conference in Ettlingen, Germany. As she explained at the event, they decided to set up a separate cluster of partners to increase the focus on ground-based mobility. 3D printing innovations, she says, are currently mostly being driven by the aviation industry and therefore dictated by an obsession with weight. But companies like Deutsche Bahn focus on completely different advantages, and therefore require a different approach.

So what is this Mobility goes Additive cluster focusing on? Initially, they are setting their sights on 3D printing spare parts for trains. Initially especially on metal parts, but we will also be looking at carbon fiber in the future, she explained. The cluster has already completed various tests with the 3D printing of molds, which can be used for parts that do not exist in CAD form. That is one of the challenges, Bricwede explains, faced by the railway industry. As trains are made to last, some German trains are still in perfect working order despite being in operation for more than four decades. 3D printing non-existent replacement parts for these trains can be a huge achievement for Deutsche Bahn.

As Bricwede explains, the cluster is therefore currently focusing on proving the viability of those spare parts and showing exactly what 3D printing can add to their maintenance procedures. Its all about how we can set up the supply chain for these spare parts, Bricwede says. This process logically also includes the development of quality standards and part standardization.

And so far they have assembled a diverse team of partners. Included in the collaboration are, among others, Materialise, engineering giants Siemens, and 3D printer manufacturers EOS. VDMA, the German branch organization for machine and installation manufacturers is also looking to join. Right now, the cluster is also open for other interested (international) partners. Bricwede is especially hoping to attract the attention of startups, and added that the all foreign parties interested in ground-based mobility manufacturing are also welcome.

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Apr 26, 2016 | By Alec

Nearly a year ago, Chinese consumer electronics giant Lenovo shared some big news at the very first Lenovo Tech World Conference in Beijing on May 28 2015: they would become the first top line Chinese brand to enter the consumer 3D printing market. Fast forward eleven months, and that is exactly what Lenovo has done. At a new event in Beijing, they have just introduced their very own XiaoXin L20 line of smart 3D printers aimed at consumers.

You might wonder why a developer of laptops, smartphones and tablets is interested in the consumer 3D printing market, which is a lot smaller than Lenovos usual target customer base. But as Lenovos 3D printing business manager Mu Zhen explained, 3D printing has become big business in China and is set to expand enormously. According to Mu Zhen, the Chinese 3D printing market has become the third largest in the world. It accounts for 13 percent of the international markets revenue, and for about 8 percent of all sales. Whats more, the domestic market is blossoming. Market specialists are predicting a steady high growth speed of 100 percent over the coming years, while the Chinese government is strongly backing 3D printing development. This market could become the next flashpoint in the Chinese economy, the manager said.

Lenovo might thus have become the first top-line brand to enter the 3D printing market, they will probably not be the last. Whats more, they are doing so with an impressive 3D printer. At the announcement a year ago, the company showed off several da Vinci 3D printers by Chinese partners XYZPrinting, and they have doubtlessly learnt a lot from those successful consumer models during the development of the XiaoXin L20 3D printer.

For starters, it looks very good for a consumer model. Featuring very smooth, Apple-like panels with metallic silver-colored frames, the whole XiaoXin L20 structure is actually made from sturdy aluminum. This ensures a very stable 3D printer that weighs as little as 8.8 kg. Whats more, the L20 features a very open design to allow users to closely monitor 3D printing on the 20 x 18 x 16 cm build platform and change materials very easily. However, all bearings and tracks have been completely packed away to ensure user safety.

While no exact specifications have been revealed yet, Lenovo did already showcase the 3D printers most important selling point: smart and user-friendly 3D printing. While the previous generation of desktop 3D printers call for a lot of manual work in regards to leveling and calibration, the Lenovo XiaoXin L20 3D printer features intelligent automatic leveling options. With that smart module, automatic corrections are even possible during 3D printing to ensure optimal results. Furthermore, the L20 also features high level temperature control for systematic 3D printing.

The machines user-friendliness is further reflected in its openness to a very wide variety of 3D printing materials, including polylactic acid, flexible rubber, wax, wood, and rubber, alongside other more common filaments. This means users wont have to worry about whether or not something is 3D printable. Moreover, the XiaoXin L20 is particularly easy to set up and install, with e-mail notifications keeping the user informed about 3D print status, power protection and the state of pause and resume orders. Finally, Lenovo has already revealed that they will be supporting the XiaoXin L20 with a cloud-based online public 3D printing service. This is intended to form a seamless closed-loop system to provide complete customer services.

Lenovo, it seems, are not working on some weak attempt to sell a few more products, as the XiaoXin L20 3D printer is looking very promising indeed. Instead, their product seems to match the companys ambition to establish a leading position in Chinas fiercely competitive 3D printing market. We will doubtlessly hear more about this remarkable 3D printing move in the near future.

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The Gee k wrote at 4/27/2016 2:08:22 PM:Hey Alec, Interesting article but it is missing a few details. Why doesn't it describe how this 3D printer is actually a Mostfun Pro with Lenovo's name on it? Why doesn't it mention that Mostfun and Lenovo decided that profits were more important than the Kickstarter backers that made this printer possible? I know that 3ders.org has to pay the bills but don't you think your readers would like to know the full story here and not just gloss? You were actually the one who wrote the piece on the Mostfun Pro when they announced the launch of their Kickstarter Campaign found here: http://www.3ders.org/articles/20150810-mostfun-pro-first-ever-intel-inside-desktop-3d-printer-soon-to-launch-on-kickstarter.html Don't they look exactly the same to you? Read the comments section of the Kickstarter Campaign and check out how the companies involved here are focused on profits as opposed to the backers that made the profits possible. How about doing a follow up article about the Mostfun Pro?Erickson wrote at 4/27/2016 12:31:39 PM:Makerbot got nothin' on these guys.ropesh jalali wrote at 4/27/2016 6:52:21 AM:nice technology




Apr 26, 2016 | By Andre

In the early years desktop 3D printing, Makerbot Industries was seen as a beacon of strength to both the open-source maker community and promoters of local manufacturing. Co-founder and former Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis preached a philosophy that design schematics and manufacturing blueprints should be shared and modified freely within the maker community. But then, with the release of the Replicator 2 3D printer in 2012 that all changed. They were closing source, citing copycat overseas manufacturers infringing on their ability to grow as a company and ultimately the necessity to compensate their hard-working employees.

While this closure angered much of the maker community, an opening of another kind delighted advocates committed to the Made in America manufacturing principles. The company was expanding and in 2013 they announced a 50,000 square foot factory in the Sunset park district of Brooklyn New York and then two years later a massive 170,000 square foot production space. Then CEO Bre Pettis was cited as saying its important to celebrate the last ten years and it is exciting to be launching new initiatives and opportunities for Brooklyn to thrive so we can add more jobs and opportunities for Brooklyners to make it in Brooklyn.

Unfortunately, less than a year later and on the heels of an overzealous acquisition by Stratasys, falling stock prices and across-the-board company layoffs, that once enthusiastic tone for local manufacture quickly started to wane.

Makerbot has just made it official that the company will be outsourcing the production of its Replicator series of 3D printers to overseas facilities and closing its Brooklyn production space.

US based design and manufacturing solutions provider Jabil has been announced as their partner during this transition in manufacturing. In the companys announcement memo, current Makerbot CEO Jonathan Jaglom writes that working with Jabil will position us to better manage the rapid change in our industry and reduce our manufacturing costs to compete more effectively in a global marketplace. We expect that adopting a flexible manufacturing model will allow us to quickly scale production up or down based on market demands, without the fixed costs associated with maintaining a factory in New York City.

While no concrete dates are set, the move to an overseas production facility will take place in the coming months and further layoffs are scheduled in the process.

In many ways, the writing was on the walls for years now, and while the closure is a shame in many regards, the company pushed long and hard for local manufacture while staying competitive in the fast-growing 3D printer space for quite some time. And while the idealist in me is saddened by the news, I cant help but understand it.

Jaglom continued that, weve done a lot of great things here in Brooklyn, but we are really following a global trend, which has been around for many years now, whereby were stepping away from manufacturing in Brooklyn.

As a company (or, at least a subsidiary of a company), Makerbot will continue to be headquartered in New York from a product development and growth strategy perspective. Jaglom states that our DNA and our culture very much remains a Brooklyn one, were very proud to be here in Brooklyn.

From a personal perspective, Ive been using Makerbot 3D printers for years, Ive visited their headquarters in New York and have always kept positive relations with some of its staff. This shift, while disheartening, does allow for a competitive edge while still maintaining a leadership role in the consumer grade desktop 3D printing space (even while their badly received 5th generation line of 3D printers still run the show). I can only be optimistic that moves such as this will not be part of a decline in the consumer 3D printing space but instead, as the company hopes, a necessary step to remain lean, competitive and innovative for years to come.

Posted in 3D Printer Company

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Jason wrote at 4/27/2016 1:58:43 AM:Makerbot needs to just be shut down, anyone who has bought one of their printers, and has owned other brands to compare it to, knows how horribely overhyped and under supported makerbot products are, and honestly they have done more harm than good to the printing community in the last couple years (with the exception of thingiverse)crank wrote at 4/26/2016 8:30:01 PM:KARMA!!!!!!!!! While I hate to see US production shift overseas with any product, a part of me finds it satisfying that this is another nail in the coffin of Makerbot. When they built their products and brand on the sweat and labor of the community and for them to simply turn their backs on the very community was the beginning of the end. They forgot what made them great..... I have no love for Makerbot or Bre Pettis. He fleeced the community and Stratasys for his fortune.Peeved wrote at 4/26/2016 5:43:28 PM:Holy COW! Makerbot is choosing their needs over that of the customer. Who would have thought it possible?Andreas wrote at 4/26/2016 5:25:26 PM:As an early supporter of the open source Makerbot movement (owner of a CupCake CNC) i get a feeling that they really screwed up on too many fronts now to stay ahead of the game. Innovation from Makerbot is basically on a stand still since they have cut the community off. Mechanical/electrical/electronics/software engineering are all subpar compared to a lot of new (and older) competitors. QA, product design and support are still stuck in low gear. Only the prices seem to have climbed on a steady pace over the years... Now, they want to shift production overseas? That could very well be the killing blow to Makerbot then, because enshuring product quality in a supply chain like that is at least 2X as difficult now, and quality was not really a forte of MB before. Well, congratz to Stratasys for effectively buying and then crushing a competitor out of the market.Erickson wrote at 4/26/2016 4:24:21 PM:I knew Stratasys would get tired of Shillbot sooner or later. Headquarters in NY will essentially mean a part-time sales office run by two guys. Happy trails.Jonas wrote at 4/26/2016 2:42:53 PM:As far as I know, Makerbot was producing at least some of the Replicator 2 and 2x at the Flextronics Aguascalientes, Mexico plant. I don't know if they were only testing Flextronics, but I know first hand they produced machines here were I live.Gumby wrote at 4/26/2016 10:44:51 AM:If they hadn't screwed the very community that gave them their start this maybe a different story. As it is, Karma's a bitch.




Naomi Zeveloff in Forward:

Naomi Zeveloff: You said you had not dealt with the topic of occupation in your writing until now. You have a large Jewish readership. Are you concerned about alienating them?

Michael Chabon: Im not so worried about that. All Im really doing is going to try to see for myself. Once you see for yourself, it is pretty obvious, I think, to any human being with a heart and a mind, it is pretty clear what to feel about it. It is the most grievous injustice I have ever seen in my life. I have seen bad things in my own country in America. There is plenty of horrifying injustice in the U.S. prison system, the second Jim Crow it is often called. Our drug laws in the United States are grotesquely unjust. I know to some degree what I am talking about. This is the worst thing I have ever seen, just purely in terms of injustice. If saying that is going to lose me readers, I dont want those readers. They can go away and never come back.

More here.
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- Air Force officials held a KC-46A scoping meeting April 21 in Midwest City, Oklahoma, where the public and interested state and federal agencies were invited to ask questions and provide feedback regarding the process of choosing a Reserve-led KC-46A third main operating base, or MOB 3.

The preferred alternative location for the KC-46A MOB 3 mission is Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, while the three reasonable alternative locations are Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, Grissom Air Reserve Base, Indiana, and Westover ARB, Massachusetts.

The Air Force is projected to receive up to 179 KC-46A aircraft between 2017 and 2028, with the possibility of 12 tankers coming to one of the four Air Force Reserve Command unit locations. This is part of an effort to replace the Air Forces aging tanker fleet to maintain the services global reach for the future.

This scoping meeting is not about presenting results or findings, said Tom Daues, a contractor working for the Air Force. We are here to solicit feedback from citizens in the local community tonight to be placed in the draft Environmental Impact Statement for consideration.

The environmental impact analysis process, or EIAP, is the Air Force's program for complying with the National Environmental Protection Act. As part of process, an EIS assesses the potential environmental consequences of basing and operating the KC-46A tanker aircraft, associated infrastructure and manpower at any location. The purpose of the MOB 3 bed down is to provide a fully capable, combat operational AFRC and Air Mobility Command KC-46A air refueling squadron to accomplish aerial refueling and related missions. The KC46A MOB 3 bed down is needed to support the recapitalization of the Air Forces aging refueling aircraft fleet.

Contractors and representatives from the Air Force Reserve and Tinker AFB were on hand to explain the EIAP process. They presented large posters explaining each step of the process, as well as information on the KC-46 Pegasus.

Hamid Kamalpour, Air Force program manager of the KC-46 MOB 3 EIS from the Air Force Civil Engineer Center at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, said the draft EIS is scheduled to be completed at the end of the summer and will be published online and sent to local libraries in the four communities near the bases.

Its important to note that the opportunity to provide feedback about the impact to Tinker and the surrounding area is not just limited to this time, said Mr. Kamalpour, a federal employee with 25 years of service.

According to Kamalpour, the team will return to Tinker and the other bases selected as reasonable alternatives in the fall to hold public hearings, where a general analysis of EIS results will be available.

Although the preferred alternative base is Seymour Johnson, the Air Force is in the early stages of the EIS process, and no decision has been made as to the final MOB 3 bed down location, according to Air Force officials. During the environmental impact analysis process, all areas need to be analyzed.

After the hearing in the fall, comments made by the public will be included in the final impact statement to be reviewed by the secretary of the Air Force.

The final decision concerning the location of the third main operating base will be made in the spring of 2017 in the Record of Decision.

Members of the public are encouraged to visit https://www.kc-46a-beddown.com for more information on the KC-46A bed down and to submit comments.
Its a little after 7:30 a.m. and the stampede has finally cleared the hallways. Finally, a moment of silence, the first since arriving to work three hours prior. The five-story building is nearly desolate now, but a multitude of paperwork and tasks remain to be done before the 800-plus military students return from class in the afternoon.



Such is the life of a military training leader at the 59th Training Group, the Air Force component at METC, the Defense Departments Medical Education and Training Campus. The tri-service campus offers more than 50 medical programs, and graduates about 21,000 enlisted students annually.



These MTLs provide administrative care and Air Force instruction to the second largest group of technical training students in Air Education and Training Command, second only to security forces. Nearly all Air Force enlisted medics come through the unit. Some stay only a month, while others may be assigned here up to a year.



The group houses three squadrons with up to 1,200 Airmen, all students from 16 different Air Force career specialties. Remarkably, there are only 24 MTLs in the unit, and they are responsible for the more than 5,500 Airmen who navigate the hallways every year.



Most of us never had to supervise a large number of Airmen before, so coming here is a new challenge, said Staff Sgt. Britni Hill, a MTL with the 59th TRG.



Particularly because the tri-service training environment makes it extremely important to instill military bearing, and customs and courtesies early on in these Airmens careers, said Hill.



Hill, who was a security forces specialist before taking on the special duty assignment as an MTL, said being in this unique training environment is very different from her previous experience.



Oftentimes, its necessary to explain why things differ between the services instead of just barking orders, she said.



Another MTL, a native of the Philippines, said before his Air Force career began, he had to work hard to meet standards.



I was in the delayed enlistment program for more than six months because I had to lose weight before going to basic training, said Staff Sgt. Mark Visita. Later, I dropped another 60 pounds. Since then, fitness has been a huge part of my life.



Visita now leads physical training sessions and promotes exceeding the standards among the students.



Its a rewarding experience; I wouldnt trade it for the world, Visita said. But even when enforcing standards, its important to be aware of factors that might be causing someone to deviate. You have to be mindful that even as a disciplinary figure, youre also the mentor.



Its not uncommon to be counseling someone when they mention that they are going through tough times, like the loss of a parent or sibling. Some may even be going through a divorce, he added.



Its late in the afternoon now. Dozens of counseling sessions have been administered and stacks of paperwork have been tended to. As the lights go off, other MTLs get ready for the night shift. At this 24-hour operation, there are always MTLs  always available to tend to the next generation of warrior medics.
Seventh and last in a series.As the climate changes, so too do attitudes of people living in Florida.Today, more than four in five Floridians are very or somewhat concerned about climate change, according to findings recently released by the Saint Leo University Polling Institute . That reflects a significant jump from last year, when just two in three Floridians answered the same way, according to Leo Ondrovic, one of the surveys designers.Drawing on 1,015 online survey responses, plus another 540 from the Sunshine State, the Polling Institutes latest annual environment survey compares how Floridians understanding of climate change and other environmental issues stacks up against that of their national peers.According to Ondrovic, the new results suggest that Floridians are more concerned about climate change, perhaps in part because specific environmental issues -- like rising sea levels and coastal flooding -- may be more visible here.I think it is the everyday man and woman who are acknowledging that changes are occurring, as these are apparent to careful observers, says Ondrovic, Associate Professor of Biology and Physics at Saint Leo.About 62 percent of Floridians think climate change is the result of a mix of human and natural factors, according to the poll results. Roughly 19 percent believe humans are entirely to blame, while slightly fewer than 9 percent say climate change is caused by natural causes alone.Only 3.7 percent of Floridians responded that they dont believe climate change is happening. Thats down from 8 percent last year.While the results suggest that recognition of climate change is growing at both the Florida and national scale, the issue still ranks relatively low on most respondents lists of priorities. Just 4.1 percent of Floridians and 4.7 percent of Americans listed climate change as the most important issue facing the nation today, well below perennial issues like jobs and the economy, government spending, healthcare, and terrorism and security.Short-term economic interests currently drive political decisions, suggests Ondrovic, when asked to reflect on why climate change presents itself as a less urgent issue.Although Ondrovic joined the polling institute in 2015, after the environment and climate change poll was launched, he wanted to better understand the willingness of individuals to act on climate change. So this year, the poll included a question about which activities respondents would be willing to do in order to help reduce carbon pollution. Poll choices ranged from small actions, like planting a tree, up to major investments and lifestyle changes, like buying an electric car or paying higher taxes to build mass transit infrastructure.Unfortunately, one of our secondary findings was that people were more likely to actually do the things that are not costly, and reluctant to do the things that are costly, even when the stakes are high, he says. If there is a cost associated to making changes, there is tremendous resistance to that cost. Until our leaders realize this is a real threat, which is much more important than lost revenues, climate change is not going to be satisfactorily addressed.The poll also posed a series of three related questions about who is most able, effective and responsible to deal with climate change, respectively. Across the board, the responses gravitated toward larger, national and international institutions, like the U.S. government and United Nations. Notably, local governments finished last across the three questions, with just 4.8 percent of Floridians seeing them as most able to address climate change.But the results also show that Floridians and their national counterparts are uncertain about who has been -- or could be -- most effective at addressing climate change, be it at a particular level of government or in the private sector. Roughly half of all respondents say they dont know who has had the most success at dealing with climate change to date.In the Florida case, a great deal of climate change action may be taking place at the city and regional level. Ondrovic says that Floridas statewide political leadership has abdicated responsibility, perhaps prompting local governments to step up. Here, he points to various adaptation projects across the Tampa Bay region as examples, including the climate vulnerability analyses currently underway in Pinellas County.The idea that cities and regions may be in a particularly strong position to lead on climate change issues is taking root across the globe -- and inspiring tangible action. In 2005, for example, Londons then-Mayor Ken Livingstone brought together leaders from 18 of the worlds largest cities to see how they might take collaborative steps to reduce their carbon emissions. That initial network evolved into an international nonprofit organization called the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group . (The name takes its cue from G8, or Group of Eight, a key global political forum.)Today, that international network is chaired by Mayor Eduardo Paes of Rio de Janeiro and has grown to 83 cities, in which 1 in 12 people live. Past leaders of the network include media magnate Michael Bloomberg, New York Citys three-term mayor.C40 is an organization of cities. Thats our bottom line. Were there to support and elevate the work of cities around the world, who are collaborating to accelerate action on climate change, says Laura Jay, who manages one of C40s seven thematic professional development networks. She works directly with city planning officials around the world to help them learn from other cities as a means to help advance their own climate goals.Jay argues that cities play a decisive role in addressing climate change. If were talking about reducing carbon emissions, for example, that work happens at the local level, because thats where decisions are made about land use, transportation, and so on.Most of C40s work focuses on megacities -- that is, the biggest of the worlds largest cities. Unlike many other large metropolitan areas, however, the Tampa Bay region isnt dominated by a single large city. While the City of Tampa is the regions most populous city, only about 8 percent of the regions estimated 4.3 million residents live within the citys formal jurisdiction. And Pinellas County alone has 24 unique municipalities. That heavy degree of political decentralization is in many ways reinforced by both the natural and urban character of the region, with sprawling communities ringing the vast water body known as Tampa Bay. These features make it harder to imagine -- let alone institutionalize -- a one size, singular city approach to the regions climate change challenges.Although no city in the Tampa Bay area (or in Florida) is a member of the C40 network, Jay is quick to draw parallels between this region and others, insisting, Tampa is not alone.Jay says many cities facing similar regional challenges are fast learning that they cant go it alone. Regional planning is so important for climate change. Without regional coordination, its hard to get that long-term vision for what a city and region can be, and to get there.Closer to home, the Miami area has been focused on building regional capacity to address climate change. In 2009, 108 South Florida municipalities voluntarily formed the Southeast Florida Regional Compact for Climate Change . Three years later, that regional group produced a plan with 110 different measures cities could take to offset their carbon emissions and manage their exposure to sea level rise and other climate change impacts.Today, a great deal of the Compacts work focuses on helping people go from zero to 60 on climate change planning, says Katherine Hagemann, who helps support the work of the Compact in her role as the Sustainability Initiatives Coordinator for Miami-Dade County. The Compact works through the efforts of several thematic working groups, and facilitates regular workshops on specific capacity building topics, she explains. To date, the workshops have been popular. In April (2016), for example, the Compact hosted a half-day workshop on the economics of climate risk management that was targeted specifically for city managers, budget and finance managers and economic development staff. That workshop designed for a room of 100, was fully booked and had a waitlist nearly as long, Hagemann adds.Outside of her work with the Compact, Hagemann says her work is all about ensuring that climate change considerations get woven into Miami-Dade Countys projects. That entails building capacity and partnerships both within the county and within the community, by facilitating those partnerships and projects to ensure were working together, she explains. Her team meets with stakeholders far and wide to look for smart ways to address climate change , from building manager associations to university students, chambers of commerce to global insurance professionals.While Tampa Bay leaders might find ideas and inspiration in the Miami story, Frank Orlando, Director of Saint Leos Polling Institute, is quick to emphasize the diversity of political interests at play across the state, even as more conservative Florida politicians have spoken in favor of climate change planning in recent months.While Republicans in South Florida are more likely to feel the impact of climate change, those in Central and North Florida are a lot less likely. Furthermore, the issue has become so politicized that it's difficult for anyone to act without incurring the electoral wrath of climate change skeptics down the line, Orlando says.Comparing the differences between adaptation efforts in the Tampa Bay area and metro Miami, Maya Burke, Senior Environmental Planner at the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, offers a similar perspective. The politics in the Tampa Bay region are very different from those in Southeast Florida -- the Interstate 4 corridor is known as a national bellwether and generally reflects a moderate, pragmatic brand of politics.Over the course of the last seven weeks, 83 Degrees Media has worked to shed light on what that unique brand of leadership looks like, as individuals and institutions across the Tampa Bay region today grapple with climate change. To do so, weve turned to both the private sector and government, and across thematic issues ranging from insurance and real estate development to environmental planning and water management Several key themes and insights have emerged through these conversations and reflections, arguably leaving us with more questions and ideas than clear answers or sound solutions. In that spirit, by way of conclusion, here are four provocations to keep the conversation moving forward across Tampa Bay:Climate adaptation has to happen at all levels. Here, in Florida, there has been a lot more action at the local level. Well need more active partnerships with state and federal government moving forward, says Katherine Hagemann.As we look at adaptation on the ground, at neighborhoods that are most impacted, some of that planning needs to happen at the block scale, she continues, pointing out that even the span of a single street can make the difference when it comes to climate vulnerabilities, which will shift over time as sea level rise and other environmental variables change.The City of Tampas own online inventory of redlined properties -- that is, those prone to recurrent flooding  bring this property-scale view into sharp relief. Tampa is not alone in holding a long -- and expensive -- to-do list when it comes to retrofitting its storm water infrastructure to meet the demands of a growing population and changing climate.At the same time, as debates over Go Hillsborough, Tampa Bay Express, and other proposed fixes for Tampa Bays transportation challenges unfold today, theres a need to further develop the capacity for more regional leadership and action where it makes sense. Tampa Bay Water and other regional institutions and efforts featured over the course of this series model what regional climate leadership can look like.From Downtown Tampa to coastal Clearwater Beach, construction cranes once again mark the Tampa Bay skyline. Theres no doubt that the region will continue to grow -- and grow in high-risk, low-lying coastal areas, even as sea levels rise. Sand and sun, real estate and tourism are Floridas largest economic sectors.But managing how and where that growth happens -- through building codes that encourage sustainability and resilience, by reducing the regions dependence on emissions-heavy cars, and through the protection critical coastal habitats -- may require a change of mindset for the region. Pointing to New York City after Superstorm Sandy, Laura Jay says that the conversation has become less of were not going to build here, and more of a were going to build here in a smarter way.What might that smarter path look like in Tampa Bay? Will new growth further strain the regions infrastructure, both natural and manmade, or be the basis for rethinking and retrofitting it?Growth then remains the manifest challenge to Tampans. Assimilating the endless streams of new migrants into an embattled environment will tax future generations. Efforts to clean up wastewater, air pollution and jammed expressways will supersede questions of urban promotion and Superbowls.Although that quote could be attributed to a contemporary op-ed, it comes from a little-known 1983 essay by local historian Gary Mormino. Many of the very institutions and new planning regulations that emerged after the Tampa Bay regions overnight population boom after World War II play an important role in shaping todays climate change conversation. One of the greatest examples takes lies in the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, which was established to help offset the effects of pollution on the areas waters. Today, that organization has added climate change to its long-term environmental research and planning efforts. History has a powerful way of reminding us of what has changed, and what hasnt.Every city that has had success has had strong vision, strong political leadership, and strong collaboration between public and private sector, says Jay.The more you can make climate change a local issue, the more you can get people in office who can address it. Its a full circle issue: it may take awhile, but outreach and engagement is key in every city.Even without strong state support, its clear that climate action is increasingly becoming a priority in the Tampa Bay region, across a wide range of communities and sectors.In Andrew Rosss recent book about Phoenix, Arizonas turn towards sustainability, the New York University professor says, the greening of cities is a grand act of improvisation.Today, those words probably hold true for the Tampa Bay area, too. And so, for now, the region evolves, new ideas and practices emerge, and the climate continues to change.Part 1 -- Tampa Bay Area scientists, policymakers plan for rising sea levels Part 2 -- Preparing for climate change: Pinellas County, local towns take steps to get ready Part 3 -- Is the global reinsurance industry making Florida more resilient to climate change, hurricanes? Part 4 -- Tampa Bay real estate boom and climate change: 5 big insights Part 5 -- Climate change: Across Tampa Bay, environmental organizations mobilize around sea level rise Part 6 -- Rethinking Tampa Bay's water resources as the climate changes Part 7 -- Retrofitting Tampa Bay for climate change: From understanding to action
If youve had a stellar experience with the health care system, chances are it involved a nurse. We celebrate National Nurses Week (May 6  May 12) as a time to recognize nurses for their incredible and invaluable service in providing care, but also to bring attention to their expanding role in delivering health care and the need to expand the pipeline for bringing more nurses into the system.

Nurses are the largest portion of the health care workforce. They are its front lines and its backbone. They are consistently ranked among the most trusted professionals, with honesty and ethical standards rated even higher than those of the clergy, doctors and police officers in Gallups annual poll.

Nurses spend more time with patients than any other health care provider, and they have unique insights about the interplay among the factors that affect patient care. They bring an important voice and point of view to management and policy discussions. They are in a perfect position to empower families to perform the caretakers role, and they are strong patient advocates.

Nurses have huge contributions to make in improving health care quality, safety, access and value. But, too often, they are not given the chance. Whats to blame? Old habits. Old prejudices. Blocked pathways. All are huge barriers.

Historically, nurses have been left out of most policy debates, and few have had places at the table when the big decisions about health care reform are made. In many states nurses are prevented from practicing to the full extent of their education and training. They are scarce on hospital boards.

And their supply is dwindling. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by 2018 the country will need nurses to fill 581,500 new positions and will have to replace hundreds of thousands in positions that will open as experienced nurses leave the profession.

In the best interest of improving the health care system, we need to change all of this  especially with the size of the 65+ population expected to double in the coming years.

Five years ago, the Institute of Medicine issued a report calling for more nurse leaders to play an expanded role to improve health care in the United States. Today, the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is putting sustained emphasis on the reports recommendations.

Were going to need every nurse we can find, among legions of new, richly skilled, well-educated nurses to provide the primary and preventive care, chronic care management and care coordination that are going to be the core of a smooth-functioning, cost-effective, equitable health care system.

AARP has been a long-time advocate for expanding the role of nurses to be allowed to contribute to the full extent of their capabilities. We want to help ensure that everyone in America has access to a highly skilled nurse, when and where they need one.

So, this National Nurses Week, all of us at AARP celebrate their skill, respect their experience and continue our work to enhance their presence in the world of medicine.

Jo Ann Jenkins is CEO of AARP.
Northern football player donates hair to Wigs for Kids

Zach Bohnenkamp has been growing his hair out since he arrived at Northern. Thursday he had 12 inches of hair cut and donated to Wigs for Kids.
ACAs library of educational tools help members improve their business practices. ACA also holds the most popular industry conferences and offers credentialing for collectors, attorneys, and more. ACAs Training Zone subscription gives agencies access to almost all of our education for one low cost.
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Last Friday, the Illinois CPA Society (ICPAS)held their annualJumpstart to Accounting event, in which students representing 25 colleges and universities got to learn more about the transition to the professional world with the help of some of Chicago's biggest firms.

Now in its second year, the day-long Jumpstart program was created to show soon-to-be graduates what exactly they can expect in the first couple of years of their careers, as told by a panel of recent accounting professionals.

This is really a risk-free environment to ask questions in a setting thats not like a job interview, said Scott Steffens, partner with Grant Thornton's Chicago office and ICPAS Board Chair, per a statement.

Attendees also split into groups and visited local firms and businesses to learn how each business hires and trains new graduates, as well as how work-life balance will affect those frequently traveling and working with out-of-state clients.

Program attendees also took time to network with one another, as well as reviewing the upcoming changes to being made to the Uniform CPA Exam.

For more on the Jumpstart event and the ICPAS, head to the Society'ssite here.
The Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants said Tuesday that Carla McCall was elected the chairman of the board of directors for the 2016-2017 fiscal year.

McCall is the co-managing partner of AAFCPAs in Westborough, Mass., and has been serving clients since 1995. AAFCPA provides assurance, tax, business consulting, and information technology advisory solutions to nonprofit organizations, commercial companies, wealthy individuals, and estates. The firm donates 10 percent of its net profits each year to nonprofit organizations.

It is an honor to be elected by the MSCPA members as chair of the board of directors, said McCall in a statement. The Society provides a wide range of services, from education to networking to volunteer opportunities, and I hope to be highly involved in shaping a successful year for the organization.

McCall specializes in providing assurance, tax, and business consulting services to nonprofit organizations and closely held companies. Her client base includes health care, arts and cultural, affordable housing, manufacturing and distribution companies.

She is involved in social causes, including the Jordan Matthew Porco Memorial Foundation, SheGives Boston, and the United Way. She is also active in the business community as a member of the Womens Network Advisory Board of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and a former board member of the Smaller Business Association of New England.

Carla has long been an asset to the Society and the community, and we are really looking forward to her leadership this year, said MSCPA president and CEO Amy Pitter.

The MSCPA board of directors is a group of 19 elected members that sets policies, manages programs and oversees activities that benefit the 11,000-member organization and accounting profession in Massachusetts. The board members will be sworn in at the MSCPA's Annual Meeting and Recognition Reception in May.
CPAs are in a race - a race against algorithms, against automation and against computing power. In this age of smart machines increasing at exponential rates, we simply cannot win the race against the machines, states Tom Hood of the Maryland Association of CPAs. Instead we need to learn how to race with the machines and focus on the skills that they cant do, like collaboration, creativity, anticipation, empathy and trust. These success skills are increasingly the differentiators for CPAs.

However, these skills are not natural or traditional for many CPAs. The key to CPAs thriving in the brave new world will be developing competencies in the above interpersonal skills.

I ask CPA audiences, What business are you in? I hear, We provide attest services or consulting services. I respond by asking them to try again. I will continue to ask until I feel their frustration, as I now have their full attention. I state that they are in the people business. Without people you have no business. You have no clients, no customers, no employees, no suppliers and no profits. Everything else is secondary. If you agree that this a true statement, we must ask ourselves when we are going to start investing in acquiring this knowledge. We need to build strong relationships with our clients, customers and the people that we employ. This requires us to leave our desks and venture into the operations of the business.

In Geoff Colvins book, Humans Are Underrated, he discusses how the rapid advancement in technology will have a major effect on those professions and jobs that are highly repetitive. He states, The overall message is a sobering one: The machines are now able to copy or even improve on a lot of human skills, and thus they are encroaching on jobs. We wont all have to join the bread line, but not everyone will prosper in this new world.

Geoff continues, The second and more original message is a take on which human abilities will remain important in light of growing computer efficacy. In a nutshell, those abilities are empathy, interpersonal skills and who we are, rather than what we do.

MEET THE FUTURE

Have you noticed that there are more IBM Watson commercials on TV today? IBM refers to this as cognitive computing. In the article Computing, Cognition and the Future of Knowing, by Dr. John Kelley, he states that, Cognitive systems are probabilistic. They generate not just answers to numerical problems, but hypotheses, reasoned arguments and recommendations about more complex  and meaningful  bodies of data.

It is my belief that cognitive computing will affect the accounting profession in significant ways. Projects will require less number-crunching and more proficiency in communicating and relationship-building. Is it crazy to think that Microsoft Excel may be extinct in less than 10 years?

In the March 7, 2016, CFO.com article, Will Machines Take Over Finance?, author John Parkinson states, A lot of knowledge work today is really just the routine application of a set of rules, with some ability to identify situational errors (and fix them if possible) or exceptions (circumstances the rules cant handle and which need to be routed to better qualified people to address). Were getting close to the point where the various forms of artificial intelligence can take over the more routine aspects of knowledge work  and in many cases do a better job of identifying (if not yet fixing or handling) errors and exceptions.

Parkinson goes on to say, The corporate worlds endless drive for productivity will discover and adopt much of this sooner or later  looking to replace knowledge workers with software wherever they can. There will still be a need for both relationship or interaction skills that only humans, so far, can demonstrate.

If you dont want to be extinct, now is the time to invest in interpersonal skills. Get out from behind your desk, and get to know your client or business better. This can help your career. A close personal friend began her career many years ago at Limited Brands, in the human resources department. She did not have a college degree but because of a unique strategy she employed, she rose up to the level of executive vice president of human resources for all the divisions of Limited Brands and reported directly to the CEO. When asked about her strategy, she replied, I got away from my office and learned the business firsthand. She would sit and discuss the business perspective from all departments, even the accounting/finance department. Over time, she became a valued and trusted advisor to a multi-billion-dollar business.

Recently, I taught a course, How To Identify, Explain, and Present Pertinent Financial Information to Non-Accountants, to members of the Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs. I asked the CFOs in the class if they were considered trusted advisors in their organizations. A few said that they were, but it took time for other departments to trust them because of the perceived accounting stereotype. They broke through this stereotype by leaving their office and learning all aspects of the business.

We are in a race. It will not be easy, but you have time and you can win. If you want to be perceived as a trusted advisor  get away from your office, be curious, and ask a lot of good questions.

Lets take the approach that Geoff Colvin recommends: Rather than ask what computers cant do, its much more useful to ask what people are compelled to do. And what we are compelled to do is to contact other humans and seek value from them.

Peter A. Margaritis, CPA, is a speaker, educator, trainer, humorist, and self-proclaimed chief edutainment officer for The Accidental Accountant, as well as the author of Improv Is No Joke: Using Improvisation to Create Positive Results in Leadership and Life.
A Georgia couple have pleaded guilty to participating in a identity theft-related tax fraud scheme in which they used the Internal Revenue Services online Get Transcript application to steal other taxpayers refunds.

Anthony Alika, 42, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and his wife Sonia Alika, 27, of Austell, Ga., pleaded guilty to one count of illegally structuring cash withdrawals to evade bank reporting requirements, the Justice Department said last Friday. They were charged in January with laundering the proceeds from a stolen identity refund fraud scheme.

The indictment alleged that Anthony Alika, along with Rapheal Atebefia, 33, of Austell, Ga., obtained means of identification of actual individuals, including their names and Social Security numbers, and used this information to access the IRS Get Transcript database.

Anthony Alika, Atebefia, and others allegedly got prepaid debit cards from stores located in multiple states, registered the cards in the names of the stolen identities, filed false income tax returns using the stolen identities and information obtained from the Get Transcript database, and directed the IRS to deposit the tax refunds onto these cards.

To hide their fraud, Anthony Alika, Atebefia and others allegedly used the prepaid debit cards to purchase money orders, which Anthony and Sonia Alika and Atebefia deposited into bank accounts and then structured cash withdrawals of the proceeds in order to prevent the bank from filing Currency Transaction Reports.

As part of his guilty plea, Anthony Alika admitted that during 2015 he received money orders from several individuals and deposited those money orders into bank accounts in his name or had his wife deposit them into bank accounts in her name. Anthony Alika would then structure out cash withdrawals from his bank accounts in amounts less than $10,000 to evade the bank reporting requirements.

Anthony Alika admitted that the funds used to purchase the money orders were the proceeds of illegal activity, including the filing of fraudulent tax returns using stolen identities. Sonia Alika admitted as part of her guilty plea that between February and June 2015, she withdrew more than $250,000 from multiple bank accounts she controlled in amounts less than $10,000 to prevent the bank from filing Currency Transaction Reports.

With the number of stolen identity refund fraud victims increasing at an alarming rate, the Justice Department, working with the Internal Revenue Service and its other federal, state and local law enforcement partners, remains committed to investigating these abusive schemes and criminal networks, prosecuting these offenders, and seeking lengthy prison terms and monetary penalties, said Acting Assistant Attorney General Caroline D. Ciraolo of the Justice Departments Tax Division in a statement. The guilty pleas of Anthony Alika, Sonia Alika and Rapheal Atebefia in connection with their attempt to infiltrate and abuse the Get Transcript database are yet another example of these continued efforts. The investigation and successful prosecution of these defendants sends a clear message to those individuals engaged in, or considering, this criminal conduct that the Department will bring all available resources to bear to hold them accountable.

The IRS was forced to shut down the Get Transcript app last year after discovering that criminals had been able to use it to access the tax returns of hundreds of thousands of taxpayers (see IRS Finds Get Transcript Data Breach Was More Widespread). The IRS has not fully restored the Get Transcript app since last year. To get a transcript of a prior-year return, a taxpayer or their tax practitioner needs to order it online and the IRS will send it by mail rather than allowing it to be accessed online.

The IRS is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to pursue identity thieves, and we continue to make important progress in Georgia as well as elsewhere across the country, said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. The IRS is also continuing to strengthen its operations and working with state revenue departments and the tax industry to provide further protections for taxpayers against identity theft.

U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash, Jr. set sentencing for July 27. Anthony Alika faces up to 20 years in prison and Sonia Alika faces up to 10 years in prison. They also face substantial monetary penalties, restitution and forfeiture. In March, Atebefia pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering for his role in this scheme. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 22.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has proposed to simplify the complicated capital depreciation rules for businesses.

Wyden, who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, offered a discussion draft of legislation to simplify one of the most complex areas of the tax codecapital depreciation rulesmaking it easier for businesses to invest in everything from trucks to computers, as his committee held a hearing Tuesday on business tax reform.

Investing in capital is critical for companies looking to grow their business and helps drive overall economic development, with more than $40 trillion in capital assets in the U.S. economy, Wydens office noted. Currently companies have to navigate the high costs and complexity imposed by the tax code every time they want to buy or sell a piece of equipment. Small businesses are at a disadvantage as they invest in basic items to run their companies when needed, rather than when it makes the most sense from a tax perspective. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office has found that the existing rules, written in the 1980s, create bias between different industries and hit high-tech companies the hardest.

To address this complexity, the Wyden proposal would condense the 100 existing depreciation rules into six pools, while maintaining accelerated depreciation. The proposal would simplify the amount of math a business has to do, eliminating unnecessary rules requiring three complex calculations per asset every year. It would also significantly simplify and expand tax-free reinvestment rules to help business owners focus on growing their operations.

You shouldnt need a PhD in advanced mathematics to navigate the tax code when deciding to invest in a new computer or pick-up truck, said Wyden in a statement. This proposal addresses the lopsided rules and complexity, putting the tax code to work for small businesses and growing industries.

The draft would also modernize the tax rules to remove existing barriers for investment in high-tech industries and infrastructure.

Last year, Wyden and Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, asked members of their committee to participate in various Tax Reform Working Groups to help identify issues and develop some consensus, if possible, around tax policy proposals. Tuesdays hearing focused on business tax reform issues, including topics that were covered in the report issued by the Bipartisan Business Income Tax Working Group.

Rather than the depreciation rules, Hatch focused on tax reform in the context of corporate integration. In very general terms, corporate integration means eliminating double taxation of certain corporate business earnings, said Hatch during his opening statement. Under current law, a corporations earnings are taxed once at the corporate entity level and then again at the shareholder level when those earnings are distributed to shareholders as dividends. In other words, under our system, if a business is organized as a C corporation, we tax the earnings of the corporation itself and those same earnings when paid out to the individual owners of the business. This creates a number of inequities and distortions, and my staff and I have been working for a few years now to develop a proposal to address this problem.

Hatch said he was glad to see that the business tax working group addressed corporate integration in its report. Depending on its design, corporate integration could have the effect of reducing the effective corporate tax rate and help address some of the strong incentives we are seeing today for companies to relocate their headquarters outside of the United States, said Hatch. It would also have the likely effect of making the United States a more attractive place to invest and do business.

The American Institute of CPAs sent a letter to Hatch and Wyden in conjunction with the hearing on business tax reform, stressing the need to maintain the availability of the cash method of accounting for tax purposes.

In a letter submitted for the record of the hearing, AICPA president and CEO Barry C. Melancon wrote, As the Committee drafts its proposals, we urge maintaining the current availability to use the cash method of accounting for pass-through entities and personal service corporations, such as accounting firms. Determining taxable income under the cash basis is simple in application, is a method of accounting which the service industry has used for decades, and must remain an option for these businesses.

The letter explained that under the accrual method, many accounting and other service-type firms would need to accelerate a significant amount of income into the current taxable year despite not receiving the actual payment from their clients. This increase in tax liability could have a significant negative impact on a new owners ability to finance entrance into a partnership. Additionally, limiting the use of the cash method may result in the requirement of a CPA to take out a personal bank loan for the sole purpose of paying his/her increased tax liability. In addition to income tax consequences, some partners would also pay more self-employment taxes under the accrual method. Further, the AICPA believes a gross receipts restriction on the use of the cash method would unfairly impact accounting firms and could threaten their ability to expand.

The AICPA has consistently supported tax reform efforts that promote simplicity and economic growth and do not create unnecessary administrative and financial burdens on taxpayers, Melancon wrote. An accrual method mandate falls short in that regard. We strongly urge retaining use of the cash method of accounting.

Thomas Barthold, chief of staff of Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation, testified about how there may be conflicting goals in tax reform. Policy design to promote economic neutrality may conflict with goals of fairness, he said in his written testimony. Policy design to promote fairness may lead to complexity and increased compliance costs. Additional constraints that may also shape reform include: maintaining budget neutrality as conventionally estimated, maintaining the current distribution of tax burdens across income groups, and not achieving low tax rates on C corporate business income at the expense of higher taxes on passthrough business income. There are always tradeoffs. Many business tax reform proposals are the result of such tradeoffs.

Some proposals, he noted, undertake comprehensive tax reform by broadening the tax base and lowering tax rates. Other proposals seek to maintain parity between corporate and pass-through entities. Other proposals involve corporate integration and dealing with patents.

James R. Hines, Jr., an economics professor at the University of Michigan, pointed to the need to lower taxes on businesses. Heavy tax burdens threaten the vitality of U.S. businesses by discouraging business investments and reducing funds available for business expansions, he said. A tax system that imposes undue burdens on U.S. businesses reduces the productivity of the U.S. economy, and in so doing reduces the wages and employment opportunities of Americans. Given the economic challenges facing the country now and in the future, it is important that U.S. businesses operate in a tax environment that does not excessively discourage investment and that is conducive to normal business operations.

Eric J. Toder, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, noted that while corporate tax rates in the U.S. are comparatively high, the actual taxes paid by corporations are relatively low.

No one is satisfied with the current rules for taxing income of corporations, he said. The U.S. corporate tax system discourages investment in the United States, encourages U.S. multinational corporations to report income in low-tax foreign jurisdictions, places some U.S.-based multinationals at a competitive disadvantage compared with foreign-based firms, and has encouraged U.S. companies to accumulate over $2 trillion in assets overseas. At the same time, the U.S. corporate tax raises less revenue as a share of gross domestic product than the corporate taxes of most of our major trading partners.

Toder pointed out that corporate receipts have been fairly steady at about 2 percent of GDP for most of the past three decades, but the Congressional Budget Office is now projecting that corporate receipts will decline to 1.6 percent of GDP in 2026, as U.S. multinationals continue to shift reported profits to low-tax foreign countries and more U.S. corporations re-domicile themselves as foreign-based corporations.

The current corporate tax system is outdated because it has failed to adjust for four major developments: the increased globalization of economic activity, the reduction in corporate tax rates in other major countries and their shifts to territorial tax systems, the increased share of business wealth in the form of intangible property, and the increased share of economic activity in the United States by businesses that are not subject to corporate income tax, he added.
By Claire Bernish

It could easily be said 2016 has been the year so-called conspiracy theorists were vindicated  and we arent yet five months in.

Before explaining why that is the case, make no mistake  the term conspiracy theorist originated with the CIA as an effort to discredit viable theories from credible people who chanced upon the truth.

First revealed by the New York Times in 1976, pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request, the CIA had written a dispatch of its psychological operations  disinformation  specifically to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries and to employ propaganda assets to refute the attacks of the critics.

That said, 2016 thus far has proven remarkable for the sheer volume of information brought to light by people, events, and the general crumbling of the deep-seated establishment narrative  and its no small matter for those whose claims had previously been met with scorn and derision.

Following are just eight items of erstwhile contention, which 2016 has confirmed for posterity  and perhaps to the ultimate detriment of the establishment paradigm.

1. Though trading a pinch of liberty for an ounce of security has never panned out for anyone but government, people continue to allow the fuzzy blanket feel of increased protection from terrorism to cloud their perception of possible future outcomes. Such has been the case with the insidious PATRIOT Act, whose repercussions from blanket, indiscriminate surveillance culminated this year in a gloriously horrible way.

In March, it was divulged that domestic law enforcement will now have access to information swept up by the National Security Agencys broad net of data collection performed on all Americans. Shocking though that may be, global tumult in recent years  which naturally has begun to sweep the U.S.  evidences a paranoid and increasingly fascistic government in decline. Its imperative need at this point wholly comprises self-preservation.

What better way to effect and maintain control than to have its every enforcement arm keen to those who might organize sufficiently to oust said government from its pedestal of power. Of course, when Edward Snowden first revealed the NSAs dubiously extensive program, privacy rights advocates suspected there would be more to follow  and now we know.

What does this rule change mean for you? queried the ACLU. In short, domestic law enforcement officials now have access to huge troves of American communications, obtained without warrants, that they can use to put people in cages.

2. While its entirely likely eyes will roll at first mention of the name Rothschild, 2016 saw substantiation of theories the notorious banking family claims nearly direct ties with the government  in particular, Hillary Clinton.

Ongoing, sporadic disclosures of Clintons ostensible personal email account have been indexed and made searchable by WikiLeaks  and thankfully so, considering the files comprise thousands of documents. An arbitrary search performed by The Free Thought Project for some conspiracy theorists favorite family names revealed a doting relationship between Clinton and Lynn Forester de Rothschild.

I remain your loyal adoring pal, Rothschild penned in one email. Another graciously thanks Clinton for personally reaching out to us, and adds, You are the best, and we remain your biggest fans. Clinton signs one response to Rothschild, Much love, H.

Though, as reported, nothing overtly nefarious jumps out from this search, its worth recalling this gushing friendliness was found in mostly non-redacted and unclassified emails  its a matter of conjecture what may have been secreted by the government.

3. Mainstream media inarguably functions as the de facto propaganda arm of the State, but recent revelations divulged the Associated Press had capitulated to Hitlers Nazi Party in the 1930s to maintain its ability to report from Germany.

According to findings by a German historian, the New York-based AP had agreed to report news from a pro-Nazi slant in return for permission to remain in the country while other outlets had been forced to vacate German operations. This comfortable arrangement, The Free Thought Project reported, created a paradigm in which the AP became virtually the sole hub of information about Nazi Germany being disseminated to the rest of the world.

Once those other news organizations fled, the APs exclusive lock on information held little value other than serving as Hitlers mouthpiece. As the Guardian noted, the AP was required to hire reporters who also worked for the Nazi Partys propaganda division. One of the four photographers employed by the Associated Press in the 1930s, Franz Roth, was a member of the SS paramilitary units propaganda division, whose photographs were personally chosen by Hitler.

4. Building on voluminous anecdotal reports of cannabis success in treating epilepsy in children, three official studies in the last five months have declared cannabidiol oil (CBD) enormously beneficial for curtailing  and in some cases halting  seizures in afflicted youth.

Of countless victims of the States insidious and utterly failed war on drugs, perhaps the most inexcusable victims are children living in cannabis prohibition states who suffer dozens, if not hundreds, of seizures daily. CBD, the three studies (of many) found, often halt symptoms in their tracks  and can allow children to live comparatively healthy, typical lives similar to their peers.

Many parents have turned to CBD after myriad pharmaceuticals proved useless to treat their childrens epileptic seizures and  according to just one of these three studies  fully 45 percent experienced a significant reduction in frequency.

5. In another ostensible conspiracy theory now validated, Deutsche Bank settled a lawsuit for its part in rigging the gold and silver markets  and agreed to turn on co-conspirators as part of the settlement.

Since 2007, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Societe Generale, and Bank of Nova Scotia allegedly harbored no compunctions in taking opportunistic advantage of their position in the daily silver price fix, and, as Bloomberg described, reaped illegitimate profit from trading, hurting other investors in the silver market who use the benchmark in billions of dollars of transactions. UBS later found itself added to the list of culpable financial institutions for its role in the silver fix.

As The Free Thought Project pointed out, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the government agency that is supposed to regulate these banks, initiated its own investigation in 2008 and found no wrongdoing.

6. January saw the revelation, previously touted only in fringe circles, that Western nations had wielded NATO as a tool to oust Libyas Muammar al-Gaddafi  because he sought to abandon the petrodollar in favor of the gold-based Libyan dinar.

While likely a stunning disclosure to mainstream society, conspiracy theorists everywhere sighed a collective I told you so, when Hillary Clintons notorious emails provided the information equivalent to a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow  bad pun intended. Falsely premised as a humanitarian mission, the Western nations-backed Libyan intervention, it turns out, had been fueled by French President Nicolas Sarkozys insecurity over losing influence in what some consider Francophone Africa.

As the West pulled the collective wool of saving lives over the woefully gullible eyes of the American public, a NATO-led military operation quashed Gaddafis attempt to bring monetary independence to African nations via his pan-African currency.

7. Perhaps no other subject in recent years has been as widely dubbed a conspiracy theory as the massive effort to reveal the truth behind the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Now, vindication for those deemed tinfoil-hat wearing nutjobs has partly culminated in national media attention to Saudi Arabias virtually indisputable complicity in the attacks  albeit to an extent or capacity as yet unknown.

In the course of just two weeks, The New York Times revealed Saudi Arabia threatened to pull its nearly $775 trillion in U.S. investments should Pres. Obama decide to allow passage of a bill designed to aid 9/11 victims families in seeking justice. Obama then appeared to side with the Saudis in announcing his plan to veto the bill under the guise of protecting Americans abroad  though, in actuality, it appears his motives lie elsewhere.

Should Obama remove the Saudis immunity from prosecution for potential complicity that day, the move would also give breadth to those seeking justice for any U.S. role in both 9/11 as well as any involvement in any terrorist acts worldwide. Appearing to succumb to the pressure of economic and political blackmail, Obamas veto promise might more accurately amount to a cover your ass maneuver. Obama then found himself royally snubbed by the kingdom over the controversy, when King Salman refused to greet his plane upon arrival in Riyadh for an international summit. This story, of course, is still unfolding.

8. Perhaps the only positive outcome of the 2016 electoral chaos has been the sweeping realization the system is, in fact, rigged to install only establishment candidates.

Tumultuous most aptly, if mildly, describes the ongoing primary season, which thus far has found the New York City Board of Elections the subject of an audit.

In fact, in state after state, eligible voters encounter chaos and incompetence at polling sites, if not outright removal from voter rolls. Finally, the American public familiarized itself with the function of superdelegates, contested conventions, winner-take-all states, and closed primaries.

Relative absurdities have been exposed in platitudes such as your vote counts, as well as in the futility of supporting an anti-establishment candidate. America, it optimistically appears, may finally have a collective epiphany over elections  it matters not one iota for whom you cast your vote.

The State always wins.

Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared.
By Derrick Broze

A new report highlights the lack of oversight and exponential growth in the number of Americans placed on domestic intelligence watchlists.

A new analysis from the American Civil Liberties Union and a clinic at the Yale Law School is calling attention to the hundreds of thousands of individuals who have been placed on a variety of domestic terror watchlists. The report, Trapped in a Black Box: Growing Terrorist Watchlisting in Everyday Policing, details how the ACLU and the clinic at Yale Law School view this expansion of domestic watchlists as a potential threat to privacy and liberty.

The researchers reviewed 13,000 pages of information, including pages released from the Federal Bureau of Investigations via a Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit by the ACLU and the Civil Liberties and the Civil Liberties and National Security Clinic at the law school. The team also studied information obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the governments Watchlisting Guidance.

They found that there were less than 10,000 entries in 2003 as part of the Violent Gangs and Terrorist Organizations File, but by 2008 that number grown to 272,198 individuals under a successor category, the Known or Suspected Terrorist File. The report states that the KST list, is part of a vast system of domestic surveillance of people whom law enforcement labels suspect based on vague and loose criteria, with serious constitutional and privacy implications for those who are included in the file.

Such individuals may be stigmatized as potential terrorists and are vulnerable to increased law enforcement scrutiny, often without knowing that they are on a secret watchlist, and without a meaningful way to confirm or contest their inclusion, the report said.

Alice Wang, a third-year Yale Law School student and an author of the report, said the report highlights the shift made by the FBI from law enforcement to domestic intelligence gathering. Wang said although it may be appropriate to have a file of people with arrest warrants, she said those numbers only make up a small portion of the list.

Wang told the NH Register that the authors were not taking a position on the watchlists in general, but rather focusing on the due process rights of individuals on the list. The report does state there is a lack of oversight and the list utilizes a low reasonable suspicion evidentiary standard in adding a name to the list. The report concludes that the primary purpose of the list is the surveillance and tracking of individuals for indefinite periods.

Dave S. Joly, terrorist screening center spokesman in Washington, D.C., told the NH Register that, The Terrorist Screening Center does not publicly confirm nor deny whether any individual may be included in the U.S. Governments Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) or a subset list.

The expansion of domestic terror watchlists has received scant media attention in the past. Even the two leaks (one, two) related to government watchlists were mostly ignored by the corporate media during the summer of 2014. The first leak dealt with a 2013 document from the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) which details the rules for placing individuals on terrorism watchlists, including the no-fly list.

The 166-page document covers two lists: the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), and the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). Chapters of the document include information on what triggers placement on the lists, and what type of information officials are to collect when encountering suspected individuals.

While that document details the vague and broad language used to ensnare individuals as possible terrorists, the latest leak covers another document from the NCTC: the Directorate of Terrorist Identities (DTI) Strategic Accomplishments 2013. DTI is a counterterrorism unit within the NCTC responsible for maintaining the TIDE. The document is essentially a highlight of what the NCTC deems as accomplishments by the DTI in their pursuit of counterterrorism goals.

As the Intercept notes, at the time of the document the TSDB listed 680,000 known or suspected terrorists. However, a whopping 280,000 are described as no recognized terrorist group affiliation. The groups listed alongside no recognized terrorist group affiliation include more well-known groups deemed terrorists by the U.S. government. Namely, Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. The documents show that under the Obama administration the number of people placed on the no-fly list has grown more than ten times.

The leading agencies behind placing individuals on the watchlists include the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The document also lists five cities where known or suspected terrorists are reportedly in large numbers. These include New York; Dearborn, Mich.; Houston; San Diego; and Chicago.

As the government continues to operate these lists in the cover of dark, the American people are left to wonder if they are yet another number being observed by the watchful eyes of Big Brother. Only by exposing the public to this information and choosing to speak boldly and courageously will we ensure that America does not succumb to tyranny.

Derrick Broze is an investigative journalist and liberty activist. He is the Lead Investigative Reporter for ActivistPost.com and the founder of the TheConsciousResistance.com. Follow him on Twitter.

Derrick is available for interviews.

This article may be freely reposted in part or in full with author attribution and source link.
Everyone gets a little nervous when the doctor reaches for his prescription pad and rips off a sheet to prescribe ADHD medication. So many questions, and so little time.

How long will you have to take it? How will you know that it is working? Are ADHD medicines safe? What about side effects? Will you feel like a zombie, or will it put a spring in your step and give you the ability to manage symptoms? How does ADHD medication work, anyway? Asking those questions about your child raises your worries to a serious level. Here are straightforward answers  so settle back and be informed.

Will Meds Work for Me?

How can you know, or at what point do you know, that you are part of the 20 percent of people for whom meds dont work?

The first-line stimulant medications for ADHD are among the most effective treatments in all of medicine. Unfortunately, as many as one in five people do not respond to the two standard stimulants, methylphenidate and amphetamine.

We measure effectiveness through a statistical calculation called effect size. Just about every medicine falls within an effect size of 0.4 (barely but consistently detectable) to 1.0 (robust therapeutic response). The effect size of the optimal molecule and optimal dose of stimulant can be as high as 2.1. Simply put, the benefits of medication will be nothing short of life-changing.

[Free Download: The Ultimate Guide to ADHD Medication]

The most common problem in achieving the optimal dose is that physicians stop increasing the dosage at the first sign of positive benefit in their patients, fearing that the development of side effects at higher doses will cause the patient to stop taking the medication altogether.

If you have tried both methylphenidate and amphetamine at adequate dosages, and have seen neither benefits nor side effects, it is possible that you are in the 3 percent of people who just do not absorb these medications orally. The formulation to try at this point is the transdermal delivery system, Daytrana,* also known as the patch.

ODD and ADHD

My son has been diagnosed with ADHD, but he seems to have oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). Will stimulants help ODD?

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) coexists with ADHD in up to 40 percent of children. ODD is very rare in people who do not have ADHD. Medication wont help specifically with ODD, but it can help your child reign in ADHD behaviors and feel more in control, which can be useful for accessing behavioral therapy techniques that have been proven effective for ODD. In these cases, the medication of choice for the treatment of ODD has been either methylphenidate or amphetamine.

[Share This With Your Physician! 11 Steps to Prescribing and Using ADHD Medication Effectively]

Having ODD, a child is hardwired to defeat the authority figure  typically, a parent. I find that kids with ODD tuck the ADHD medication in their cheek and spit it out later. Thats why I prefer the amphetamine Vyvanse, which can be dissolved in water. A liquid form of methylphenidate, Quillivant XR, is another way to get medication into a recalcitrant child.

The Problems with Vitamin C

I heard that vitamin C affects stimulant medication adversely.

You shouldnt take ascorbic acid or vitamin C an hour before and after you take medication. ADHD stimulants are strongly alkaline and cannot be absorbed into the bloodstream if these organic acids are present at the same time. High doses of vitamin C (1000 mg.), in pill or juice form, can also accelerate the excretion of amphetamine in the urine and act like an off switch on the med.

Are There Withdrawal Symptoms?

Will you notice withdrawal side effects from Concerta after missing several doses? Also, is a flat, dull expression common?

There is little cumulative effect from the stimulant medications. If you stop taking them, the benefits dissipate quickly, usually in a matter of hours rather than days. Luckily, these medications work for a lifetime without the development of tolerance, but they need to be taken reasonably consistently in order to get full benefits.

A flat, dull, unemotional expression, known as Zombie Syndrome, almost always suggests that the medication dose is too high. Talk with your doctor about lowering the dosage.

When Do Side Effects Decrease?

Dont some of the initial ADHD medication side effects smooth out after a short period? Is there an adjustment period? How long should I endure side effects before I change meds?

Most side effects of stimulant medications should resolve in three to five days (with the exception of appetite suppression). Side effects that the patient finds intolerable, or those that last longer than three to five days, warrant a call to your clinician. It is vital that neither the patient nor the parent has a bad experience when starting ADHD medication in order to ensure long-term use and success. As a result, I always recommend that side effects be addressed and managed promptly.

When Do Meds Start Working?

How long does it take for an ADHD medication to have an effect? Is there an adjustment period, or do you know right away that it is a good option for managing symptoms?

There are two classes of medication for ADHD that treat symptoms: stimulants and non-stimulants.

The stimulant medications are effective as soon as they cross the blood-brain barrier, which takes 45 to 60 minutes. Consequently, in adults, it is possible to change the dose of stimulant medication every day to determine the optimal molecule and dose in less than a week. Schoolchildren, however, often lack the ability to tell the clinician how the medication is affecting their functioning and mood. For patients under the age of 15, the medication dose can be raised only once a week, to allow time for parents and teachers to assess the effect on symptoms.

The non-stimulant medications, like Strattera, Wellbutrin, Intuniv (guanfacine) and Kapvay (clonidine), are different. It often takes five to seven days after a dosage change to assess their benefits. As a result, it may take weeks to determine the optimal dose for these medications.

Losing Appetite

Does appetite suppression suggest that my son is taking too high a dose of stimulant?

Not necessarily. Appetite suppression is the only side effect of stimulants that is not necessarily dose-related. More predictive of appetite suppression is the child who is already thin and a picky eater. You can try a lower dose of stimulant medication while youre waiting for the next appointment with the pediatrician, but this usually results in loss of benefits for your childs ADHD. Although no one likes to take several medications, additional medication is often required for children who have appetite suppression lasting longer than two months, or who continue to lose body mass. Talk with your doctor.

ADHD and Mood Disorders

How do you treat ADHD in a person who has been diagnosed with a mood disorder?

Seventy percent of people with ADHD will have another major psychiatric condition at some time in their life. Psychological mood disorders and dysthymia are the most common conditions that coexist with ADHD. Most clinicians determine which condition is of most concern to the patient and proceed to treat that condition first. If the patient has suicidal thoughts, is unable to get out of bed, or is manic, the clinician will treat the mood disorder first and then reassess the symptoms of ADHD. Most clinicians will treat the ADHD first.

Time for a Higher Dosage?

How do you know when it is time to go up in dosage? Will increasing my medications dosage help  or is trying a new medication the way to go?

It is important to remember that with both stimulant medications and non-stimulants there is a therapeutic window. Doses that are too low or too high are ineffective. Since there is no factor that predicts either the optimal class of medication or the optimal dose in a given individual, dosing needs to be determined on the basis of target symptoms  determining the impairments the person is experiencing that they would like medication to manage. There are many things about ADHD that most people would like to keep  cleverness, high IQ, problem-solving ability, and relentless determination. Each person will have his or her own list.

Start with the lowest dose of stimulant medication, increasing it periodically. Continue to increase the dose, as long as the target symptoms improve without the development of side effects. At some point, however, youll increase the dose and wont see further improvement. At that point, the previous dose is the optimal dose. When working with small children who have difficulty giving feedback, clinicians use scales (the Connor global index scale, for instance), which compare the patient to children without ADHD of the same gender and age.

*FDA is warning that permanent loss of skin color may occur with use of the Daytrana patch (methylphenidate transdermal system) for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). FDA added a new warning to the drug label to describe this skin condition, which is known as chemical leukoderma. See the FDA Drug Safety Communication for more information.

[The 5 Most Common Med Side Effects  and Their Fixes]

William Dodson, M.D., is a member of ADDitudes ADHD Medical Review Panel.

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The rise of Asian economies over the past 15 years has led to an associated rise of Asian MNCs, many of whom looked to international customers for their next wave of expansion. This in turn led to a growing interest in, and need for, a rich and varied global perspective among executives responsible for taking these businesses to the world.



India has been and will be part of this move to globalization. The Economist with its focus on global economic, financial and technological analysis has seen its circulation in India more than double over this period along with a huge increase in readership via digital channels and social media.



As Indian companies look to new markets overseas they require access to and engagement with, audiences to build brands and drive sales. Again the Economist with a highly engaged audience of global decision makers and affluent consumers is well placed to deliver this. Initially this audience was provided via print advertising and economist.com, however increasingly companies require content that they can use on both their own and third party platforms and for all these media channels to be integrated in one seamless communication.



The Economist Group is therefore pleased to announce that it will be extending its current partnership with Zirca media to include representation for all Economist media products and services in India. Zirca will be setting up a dedicated 12 person team to represent these products and services in India.



Tim Pinnegar, Managing Director, The Economist Group Asia commented We see a huge potential amongst Indian MNCs looking to build their business overseas. However, being highly captivated by Zircas performance over the past 5 years, we could only ruminate on Zirca as the most reliable choice for The Economist in India. We have immense confidence in the integrated service provided by Zirca that is led by Neena Dasgupta. We believe Zirca is the fitting face for The Economist for both our existing and future clients in India



Neena Dasgupta, CEO, Zirca, commented Zirca has been handling the digital media mandate of The Economist Group since 2011. We have always taken pride in Zircas association with The Economist and this extended partnership is evidence in itself of Zircas provision potential in the digital space. With the sturdy & aggressive team already working diligently on the existing digital platform of The Economist, we are sanguine about a prolific business relationship going ahead.



Very recently, The Economist and Zirca had worked closely with DIPP to reach out to decision makers globally.


English news channel Times Now expanded to the UK last year. To create excitement back in India, the channel had planned an engagement programme at media buying agencies in Mumbai and Delhi. For this, the channel partnered with Bollywood actress Ameesha Patel, who gratified the winner of the activation with a UK return ticket.

As part of the activation, Times Now placed a royal guard at the entrances of the media agencies, including GroupM, Lodestar UM, Madison, Lintas and Starcom. All that the employees had to do was click a selfie with the guard and upload it on Twitter with the hashtag #timesnowinuk or Instagram with the message I like TIMES NOW in UK because.



The best selfie along with the quirky message has been given the free ticket to London. Times Now had more than 60 people participating in this contest and the best selfie with a caption were shortlisted and the final winner was picked up through a lucky draw.


The Do you Vespa campaign has been conceptualised and brought to India in June 2014 to celebrate Vespa as an icon and its unique personality, that makes Vespa the classy and irreverent side of urban mobility. It is not just a scooter; its a brand with real attitude one that looks at the world with fresh, optimistic and playful eyes. The same strong personality is expressed by the Vespa drivers, something that non Vespa-riders will aspire for. The inspiration for the commercial comes from existing Vespa riders who are not followers but trendsetters in their own leagues. These Vespa riders stand out in the crowd because of their unconventional path through life. The commercial is a preview into their lives and celebrates the spirit of those Vespa riders who dare to ask questions and challenge the daily conventions of life by doing their own thing, which triggers the question Do You Vespa? The TVC presents the new feature-loaded powerful 150 cc Vespa and showcases the joy of riding experienced by a Vespa rider as he zips through city traffic with effortless ease.

Shedding light on the television commercial in India, Stefano Pelle, CEO, Piaggio India said, Vespa is an iconic brand with its very own ideology which depicts a way of life. The new TVC takes this ideology further by displaying the joy of riding experienced with the new, feature-loaded, powerful 150 CC Vespa in a distinct Do You Vespa ? setting. 



Commercial details 

Youtube link  https://youtu.be/a5vMVorM0bo

Advertising agency  BBH India
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Lakenheath strengthens royal ties during Joint Warrior

Airmen from Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, recently completed three weeks of intense threat-reaction training missions during Joint Warrior 2016 in Scotland.



Joint Warrior is a NATO exercise, which prepares rescue coalition force units for potential real-world scenarios that could be encountered in deployed environments.



"This training has been incredibility valuable to us," said Lt. Col. Bernard Smith, the 56th Rescue Squadron commander. "It gave us the chance to get out of the crawl phase and go straight into the run phase when it comes pushing our limits and learning new skills that could ultimately save the lives of the people who need our help."



Integrating with NATO allies, the 56th and 57th Rescue Squadrons were able to simulate various situations and execute successful combat search and rescue operations of crew members and allied forces caught in a high threat environment. Joint Warrior also helped enable the CSAR task force to formulate solutions that resulted in extraction for the downed personnel.



"Exercises like these really bring us out of our comfort zone," said Capt. Michael Bush, the 56th RQS director of staff. "It puts us in an environment where we have to work expeditionary and pick up on the go. This helps because it puts a healthy stress on the crews to pick up on the local surroundings and apply tactics to advance the recovery process."



Bush participated as a survivor during a simulated hostile environment scenario, where he needed to alert NATO allies of his location, who then notified the 56th RQS of his position for recovery.



"I've learned a lot from these last three weeks of training," said Capt. Garrett Wilson, a 56th RQS co-pilot. "Since I'm still a young guy in the unit, this training gives me the chance to fly more frequently and really focus on the tactical side of our job in different terrain."



Aside from providing better range opportunities for the rescue units, Joint Warrior prepared the squadrons for future taskings. The squadron must be highly trained and ready to perform at a moment's notice.



"The overall training at Joint Warrior 2016 has been amazing," Smith said. "Our NATO allies have provided us with scenarios that deliver a sense of realism for aircrews to adapt and find the best way of completing the mission. These are opportunities that we usually don't get, even in the States."
(This feature is part of the "Through Airmen's Eyes" series. These stories focus on individual Airmen, highlighting their Air Force story.)An Airmans cell phone rings, but he doesnt answer because for him personal calls can wait until after work. It rings again; he lets it go to voicemail. On the third call he finally answers and is shocked to discover Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III on the line.During the call, Senior Airman Markese Buckholtz, the 58th Fighter Squadron aviation resource manager, learned he would become an officer through the Senior Leader Enlisted Commissioning Program, putting him on track to become a Mustang, an enlisted member who commissions into the officer corps.(Gen. Welsh) asked me if I still wanted to be an officer and a pilot, and I immediately answered, yes sir, Buckholtz said. He explained to me that I was his nomination (for the program) and that he wanted me to keep exceling as I moved forward in the Air Force.SLECP is an Air Force program designed to provide the opportunity for senior leaders to select exceptional members from the enlisted tier to attend an accredited college while on active-duty status. Program participants are required to complete a degree within three years before attending Officer Training School to earn their commission.Last year, Buckholtz represented his career field when Welsh visited the 33rd Fighter Wing, which gave him the opportunity to share his desire to commission and his struggle to find the right program with the general.The two-year Airman explained that he was looking for a program that would allow him to keep his wife and two children financially stable while he commissioned.Welsh recommended Buckholtz investigate the Air Forces newest commissioning program as an alternative solution.To be competitive for SLECP, an individual must be enlisted and a U.S. citizen between the ages of 18 and 35. They must also have completed 24 semester hours by the end of the selection window. The school of choice must be associated or affiliated with a ROTC program for accountability and administrative oversight.Buckholtzs supervisor, Master Sgt. Latoya Cleveland, the 58th FS superintendent, said his character, work ethic and exemplary records made him a perfect candidate for the program.Senior Airman Buckholtz is a stellar Airman who truly embodies the Air Force's core values, Cleveland said. I have no doubt that the next chapter of his life will further mold him into becoming a phenomenal Airman.More than a year since his first talk with the general, Buckholtz is on track to become an officer.In August, he and his family will move to Prescott, Arizona, where hell begin classes at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, where he previously received an associates degree.Although he admits the idea of moving west with his family is nerve-racking, the soon-to-be Mustang said he is ultimately excited to start the program.It feels amazing and almost unreal, Buckholtz said. I hope this program will allow me to be able to fly the mighty F-35 (Lightning II) one day. However, no matter what happens down the line, I will be excited to serve as an officer in the United States Air Force.
Pentagon spokesman: Up to 250 more U.S. forces to deploy to Syria

Up to 250 additional U.S. personnel are being deployed to Syria to support local forces on the ground and build on successes of U.S. forces already deployed there in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Pentagon's press secretary said April 25.



The additional personnel include special operations forces and medical and logistics personnel, Peter Cook told reporters at the Pentagon. The forces are to build on the gains of 50 previously deployed special operators in Syria, he said.



During a speech in Germany on the same day, President Barack Obama announced the deployment of the additional forces. He said the expertise of the special operations forces already on the ground in Syria has been critical as local forces drive ISIL out of key areas.



Important connections



The 50 special operators have improved the picture of the battlefield and made important connections with local, capable forces, Cook said, and they have enhanced the military's targeting efforts in Syria.



The extra personnel will be establishing connections with capable forces on the ground, working on getting a better picture of the battlespace, and improving the intelligence and targeting assessment, Cook said.



"They will help our partners on the ground capitalize on their progress and increase the pressure on ISIL at this critical time," Cook said, adding Defense Secretary Ash Carter believes this deployment will make a "tangible" difference in the campaign to defeat ISIL.



The intent is not to have the forces on the front lines or engaged in direct combat, Cook said. Rather, he explained, they will be enabling and supporting local forces who have made gains against ISIL, and meeting with other capable forces to build on the momentum.



The spokesman added the U.S. forces will be in harm's way and will be able to defend themselves if they come under fire.


US, Central American firefighters train together in Honduras

Joint Task Force-Bravo hosted firefighters from Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama for the Central America Sharing Mutual Operational Knowledge and Experience exercise April 18-22 at Soto Cano Air Base.



The latest iteration of CENTAM SMOKE included 34 firefighters participating in strenuous and challenging firefighting activities next to their U.S. counterparts from the 612th Air Base Squadron Fire Department.



The purpose of this exercise is to conduct joint training with cross-functional development between all participating countries, to aid and improve humanitarian and civic assistance operations, promoting regional cooperation that will improve collective capabilities and strengthen partnerships.



"We have learned new things and also to coordinate between neighboring countries, so that in the future we can assist each other in any emergency and work the same way," said Alejandro Blanco, a firefighter from El Salvador.



These teamwork capabilities can be easily put to test in the wildfire-prone Central American region. Recently, Joint Task Force-Bravo was called to action when local efforts alone were unable to fight forest fires that emerged in protected and inaccessible areas of Honduras and Panama, necessitating the use of U.S. Army UH-60 Blackhawk and CH-47 Chinook helicopters to help contain the blazes.



"We know there are countries that don't have the same assets that we have in the U.S., so what we do is we bring those countries in to train with our aircraft," said Master Sgt. Mario Gonzalez, the 612th ABS Fire Department assistant chief of training. "We teach them what might happen and help them improve their skills for battling fires."



CENTAM SMOKE provides hands-on training with U.S. air assets, preparing participants to act as a team and to be familiar with coordinating ground and aerial firefighting operations.



"It was very interesting to learn new things and to develop a friendship with the other countries," said Katheryn Bravo, a firefighter from Panama. "Once we finish the training we share what we learned in our own units back home."



Sharing these experiences and bringing back the acquired knowledge from exercises such as CENTAM SMOKE have helped keep firefighters in the region prepared, as was the case with the recent fires in the Darien province in Panama and Jeanette Kawas National Park in Honduras, where the U.S. and Central American countries worked together to contain large wildfires.



During the week, participants combined classroom lessons with scenarios in the field using structural, automobile and aircraft live fires, first response medical procedures, patient loading for medical evacuations, familiarization with personal protective gear and the Jaws of Life extraction tool. The lessons and scenarios demonstrated the importance of teamwork for such operations.



After graduation, Arnulfo Jimenez, of the Costa Rican Fire Brigade, said, "It is important to know that we are firefighters anywhere in the world; that we work for the same mission, which is to protect life, protect private property and protect the environment. No matter where we are, we are one, we are firefighters."



Since 2005, Soldiers and Airmen from Joint Task Force-Bravo have facilitated the training of more than 850 firefighters from across the region, providing an opportunity for U.S. and Central American firefighters to work as one, building collaborative relationships as partner nations and allowing those involved to take valuable lessons back to their countries.
Specialized team delivers life-saving medical care across the globe

The nature of military operations dictates the need for immediate, professional health care thats available globally at any time. When that needed care is more extreme, the 59th Medical Wings Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation team stands ready.



A mission exclusive to the wing, headquartered at the Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center, the ECMO team is bedded down at the San Antonio Military Medical Center on nearby Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston. Together, the integrated team of Air Force and Army medical professionals delivers unique life-saving procedures both on the ground and in the skies.



The ECMO process circulates blood through a machine that removes carbon dioxide and adds oxygen back, reducing stress on a patients damaged lungs. This technique allows diseased or injured lungs to heal. Its this capability that gives an ECMO team the ability to transport critically ill patients around the world.



We work to keep the patients alive, keep their other organs going," said Lt. Col. Phillip Mason, the ECMO team lead. Typically, we can reduce a patient's chance of dying from 80 to 90 percent down to 30 to 40 percent. When you're talking about people this sick, the difference is actually a major victory.



Kathryn Naagard, the 59th MDWs extracorporeal life support program manager and senior team member, was a nurse for seven years at the wings neonatal intensive care unit. Initially, the adult ECMO program started as an extension of the neonatal program that was still operating at Wilford Hall, she explained.



In 2011, the wing took the adult ECMO program to SAMMC. Today, the team is capable of providing 24-hour care to two patients simultaneously, both at their facility and aboard military transport planes.



At a minimum, the ECLS has 10 medics always on standby. Within 12 hours, the team can be airborne with all of the equipment necessary for aeromedical patient care.



From Landstuhl to the 59th MDW



In 2005, a group of Air Force critical care transport specialists operating out of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, first explored a technique to transfer patients in pulmonary failure using a Novalung membrane device.



The Novalung membrane ventilator was successful early on, and enhancements in medical technology led to using ECMO in 2010. With a decreased patient stream from Operation Enduring Freedom, there was no longer a significant need for this process. Eventually, the mission capability was phased out at Landstuhl. The 59th MDW revived the technique soon after.



Since then, the team has been building on those concepts to improve the capability.



The good news about ECMO is that there is no one way of doing it. Depending on the situation and patient needs, optional equipment and setups can be incorporated into the system, said Maj. James Lantry, the ECMO transport team vice director.



The ECMO program has expanded rapidly since the late 1990s when the 59th MDW only provided this air transport capability with the neonatal unit.



Were the only full-fledged medical team in the (Defense Department) that can go all over the world, Naagard said. There are a few other EMCO transport teams out there but they have limited capabilities. Some can only travel 60 miles from their home base, or can only transport patients by ground.



The 59th MDW continues to secure its place as the DODs only ECMO hub by expanding training opportunities for those who chose to deliver military health care across the globe.



We train 10 new specialists every year, Naagard said. The ECMO program will only continue to grow and save lives around the world.
Pave Hawks get check-ups

Staff Sgt. Matthew Thompson, 455th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron electronic countermeasures journeyman, cleans the windorws during a pre-flight inspection for a HH-60G Pave Hawk before takeoff at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, April 25, 2016. The HH-60G is the main aircraft used for Air Force search and rescue teams but also carries out civil search and rescue, medical evactuation, disaster response, and humanitarian assistance. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Justyn M. Freeman)
The Air Force Bands Airmen of Note took time out of its nine-day spring tour to perform a concert April 19 for more than 600 students and faculty at W.E. Boswell High School in Fort Worth, Texas.



While on a tour through North Texas, 18 Airmen performed a concert and collaborated with 17 high school musicians on two musical arrangements as part of their Advancing Innovation through Music (AIM) program.



The bands level of experience blew me away, said Arthur Salinas, a Boswell student and bassist, after performing with the Airmen. The advice they gave when approaching new pieces of music is experiment. If you need to step out of your comfort zone, its just a rehearsal and anything goes. I mean, the heart of your music comes from rehearsal.



Designed to build positive relationships with local and nationwide educational communities, the AIM program gives Air Force Band members the chance to work side-by-side with students of all ages, in small clinics and in large scale assemblies. With this program, they are able to reach student audiences throughout the nation. In 2015 alone, the AIM program reached nearly 23,000 school students in more than 113 events across 20 states and the District of Columbia.



Senior Master Sgt. Tyler Kuebler, Airmen of Notes music director and lead alto saxophone player, expressed that these interactions help the Air Force Band program continue to give back to the community.



AIM is one of the most impactful programs we have because of the direct contact and communication with students all over the country, Kuebler said. Within this program, we encounter a number of skill levels and maturity that give us an opportunity to showcase what we are about in the Air Force first, and target them musically to see where theyre at [second], and then incorporate the Air Forces core values in our interactions. We take that responsibility very seriously.



With 12 years as a band director under his belt, Kevin Fallon, associate director for Boswells bands and director for the jazz band ensemble, saw a change in his students.



I noticed Dave Post, our drummer, look over the Airmans shoulder while playing Cat Race, his eyes got wide as he saw choices he was making on how to fill or how to create space and time as a soloist, Fallon said. Anytime students at this level are surrounded by professionals, it provides inspiration to work harder to get to a new level. The students have been listening to the Airmen of Notes recordings and they were impressed. But theres a difference between hearing them through speakers and experiencing them live.



In addition to performing Cat Race, the band and Boswell students performed a piece written by Airmen of Note trumpeter, Master Sgt. Alan Baylock.



It was a real thrill to hear the students perform my arrangement of One Mint Julep," said Baylock. "Once a piece of music of mine is published I never know what happens to it - and it's nice to know that in Fort Worth, it's in very good hands."



These Airmen take AIMs educational outreach program to heart.



"No matter what career theyre interested in, said Kuebler. The opportunities are limitless if they have dedication, apply themselves as both professionals, good students and follow their dreams. Hopefully we can show them no matter what their goals are, they can achieve them through hard work and dedication.

Airmen of Note will continue to Hewitt, Austin, Houston and Beaumont, Texas before traveling to Louisiana as part of its spring tour.
USSTRATCOM detects, tracks North Korean submarine missile launch

U.S. Strategic Command systems detected and tracked what was assessed as a North Korean submarine missile launch from the Sea of Japan at 4:29 a.m. CDT on April 23.



According to North American Aerospace Defense Command, the missile launched from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America. The men and women of USSTRATCOM, NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, and U.S. Pacific Command remain vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and are fully committed to working closely with South Korean and Japanese allies to maintain security.



USSTRATCOM's mission is to conduct global operations in synchronization with other combatant commands and appropriate U.S. government agencies to detect, deter and prevent strategic attacks against the U.S., its allies, and partners and to be prepared to deliver warfighting capability to defend the nation.


F-22 Raptors arrive in Romania

Two F-22 Raptors and one KC-135 Stratotanker arrived at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base on April 22.



The F-22s and approximately 20 supporting Airmen are from the 95th Fighter Squadron at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida. The KC-135 is from the 916th Air Refueling Wing deployed from Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina.



"Today, I would like to highlight this deployment as a demonstration of our promise to support Romania and the rest of our NATO allies," Lt. Gen. Timothy Ray, the Third Air Force commander, said during a press conference. "Romania is one of our strongest allies."



This is the largest F-22 deployment to Europe to date and is partially funded by the European Reassurance Initiative, which provides support to bolster the security of our NATO allies and partners in Europe while demonstrating the U.S. commitment to regional and global security. The F-22s will remain at Mihail Kogalniceanu AB for a brief period of time before returning to Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, to continue their training deployment.



"Today, we rapidly deployed these aircraft, along with a KC-135 Stratotanker, here to showcase our flexible response and our range of capabilities," Ray said. "These aircraft have the ability to project air dominance quickly, at great distances, to defeat any possible threat."



The F-22 deployments to RAF Lakenheath and Mihail Kogalniceanu AB prove that European bases and other NATO installations can host fifth-generation fighters while also affording the chance for familiarization flight training within the European theater.



"It's important we test our infrastructure, aircraft capabilities, and the talented Airmen and allies who will host these aircraft in Europe," said Gen. Frank Gorenc, the U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa commander. "This deployment advances our airpower evolution and demonstrates our resolve and commitment to European safety and security."



This F-22 forward deployment is conducted in coordination with Romanian allies and is a demonstration of the United States continued commitment to the collective security of NATO and dedication to the enduring peace and stability of the region.
King Mohammed VI, accompanied by Prince Moulay Rachid, held, on Monday in the Sakhir palace (Southern Governorate of Bahrain), talks with King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

Bahrain News Agency (BNA) said the two leaders discussed ways of further bolstering bilateral ties and expanding joint cooperation, and reviewed the developments in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya.

The two sides hailed the positive results of the GCC-Moroccan Summit, which was held in Riyadh last week, affirming strong relations between the GCC countries and the Kingdom of Morocco, it added.

The BNA added that they stressed the need to muster all Arab and international efforts to combat the scourge of terrorism which is destabilizing countries and threatening international security and stability.

The two leaders attended the signing of two protocols and an executive cooperation between the two countries,

The first protocol is amending the agreement of non-double taxation and the fight against tax evasion (income tax), signed on April 7, 2000.

The second protocol is an implementation program of the cooperation agreement in the field of Endowments and Islamic Affairs 2016-2017-2018.

And then an executive cooperation in the Area of Justice
Morocco has called for a meeting with Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates) at level of Ambassadors on Monday morning, a source from inside the United Nations told Morocco World News.

The meeting comes to discuss the latest developments concerning the draft resolution that will be submitted to the Security Council for consideration on Tuesday.

The same sources told Morocco World News that the United States, the penholder of resolutions on the Western Sahara has submitted the draft resolution it prepared over the weekend to the Group of Friends of the Western Sahara without informing Morocco of its content.

In addition to the United States, the Group of Friend of Western Sahara includes France, the United Kingdom, Russia and Spain.

In the past, the US had by practice previously consulted with Morocco before submitting the draft resolution to the other members of the Security Council.

An UN expert who has been following negotiations on the draft resolution told MWN the US move might signal they text it prepared might include provisions that are not in favor of Morocco, such as the call for the return of the civilian component of the UN mission in the Sahara, MINURSO.

The same said Moroccos decision to request a meeting with GCC countries responds to the need to mobilize these countries and urge them to put on pressure on the influential members of the Security Council to avoid the adoption of any resolution that might go against Moroccos interests.

During the first Morocco-GCC summit last Wednesday, the six members of this regional block expressed their full support for Moroccos sovereignty on the Western Sahara.

We stress our support to all political and security causes that are important for your brotherly country, mainly the Western Sahara, King Salman of Saudi Arabia said during the opening speech of the Morocco-GCC summit.
China has proposed a free trade agreement with Morocco, according to a report by the local news source Les Eco.

The state-run press agency of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) said the two countries are on track to conclude a series of strategic agreements covering the economy, trade, and investments in Africa.

News of the proposal comes less than a week after King Mohammed VI gave a speech at the joint Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit in Riyadh, during which he said Morocco was looking to diversify its economic and political relationships by seeking stronger partnerships with major Asian countries, such as China and India.

China has been developing its relationship with many African countries in recent years, causing leaders from the United States and European states to be concerned about the communist countrys influence in the continent.
The Mumbai Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) on Tuesday arrested dreaded Indian Mujahideen (IM) terrorist Zain-ul-Abedin, from Mumbai airport. Abedin has been wanted by the National Investigative Agency (NIA) in relation with the July 13, 2011 blast at three locations in Zaveri Bazaar, Opera House and Dadar between 6.52 pm and 7.05 pm. Though a fourth bomb was planted at the Dadar Phool Market under a police van, it did not go off.

This comes as an important development in the case, in which the last arrest was made in July 2014, when Abdul Mateen Fakki- another accused in the blasts case- was arrested by the Mumbai ATS.

ATS sources said the accused, Zain-ul-Abedin, was picked up from the Mumbai airport. The twelfth person to be arrested in the case, he was earlier detained in Saudi Arabia in 2015.

The accused was allegedly involved in supplying the explosives used in the Mumbai triple blasts. The bombings were executed by Yasin Bhatkal, who also planted one of the explosives.

Abedin, who had close links with Indian Mujahideens founder leader Riyaz Bhatkal, was also wanted in connection with blasts in Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Bangalore and he is also belongs to Bhatkal village in Karnataka.

We had received information that Abedin would be coming to India to visit his native Bhatkal, and that he would be going there via Mumbai. Accordingly, we laid a trap and arrested him, an ATS officer said.

In 2014, 50-year-old Fakki, who was also believed to a Mujahideen activist, was nabbed in relation with the serial blasts case, from the Goa airport, when he had arrived from a Dubai flight. Fakki had played a key role in the triple blasts conspiracy and had also transferred huge amounts of money from Dubai to India which was used towards financing the terror operation. Fakki was also believed to have financed the operation by passing money through hawala sources to Indian Mujahideen co-founder Yasin Bhatkal.
Australias detention of asylum-seekers on Papua New Guineas Manus Island is unconstitutional and illegal, a court ruled on Tuesday, prompting some refugee advocates to call for the camp to be shut down.

Canberra has come under international criticism for sending asylum seekers who attempt to enter the country by boat to remote processing centres on Manus or the tiny Pacific island of Nauru but said the finding would not change its policies.

Papua New Guineas then opposition leader Belden Namah challenged the Manus arrangement in court, claiming it violated the rights of asylum seekers.

In its 34-page finding on Tuesday, Papua New Guineas Supreme Court found that detaining asylum-seekers on the island was contrary to their constitutional right of personal liberty.

The detention of the asylum-seekers on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea  is unconstitutional and illegal, it said.

The court ordered the Australian and Papua New Guinean governments to take all steps necessary to cease and prevent the continued detention of the asylum seekers and transferees on Manus.

It was not immediately clear how the ruling would impact the around 850 men held at the centre. Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said the courts decision does not alter Australias border protection policies  they remain unchanged.

No one who attempts to travel to Australia illegally by boat will settle in Australia, he said in a statement.

PNGs immigration minister Rimbink Pato told Fairfax Media he would make a statement after digesting the decision and obtaining legal advice.

Under a policy accepted by both sides of politics in Canberra, asylum seekers found to be genuine refugees are denied resettlement in Australia. They are instead urged to return home or be resettled in PNG or Cambodia under a policy designed to stop people-smuggling boats.

Australia has long defended its policy, saying it has prevented the deaths of asylum seekers at sea and secured its borders. Under the previous Labor government, at least 1,200 people died trying to reach Australia by boat between 2008 and 2013.

Rights campaigners welcomed the courts decision, saying it was time for the Manus detention centre to be shut.

PNGs Supreme Court has recognised that detaining people who have committed no crime is wrong, said Elaine Pearson, director of Human Rights Watch in Australia. For these men, their only mistake was to try to seek sanctuary in Australia  that doesnt deserve years in limbo locked up in a remote island prison. Its time for the Manus detention centre to be closed once and for all.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday questioned the Congress over the AgustaWestland scam and the loopholes in investigations in the alleged staged encounter of Ishrat Jahan in 2004, as it in turn faced criticism over the political crisis in Uttarakhand on day two of the second half of the Budget Session.

BJPs Ravi Shanker Prasad demanded to know from former Defence Minister AK Antony on whether any members of his party were involved in the corruption scam involving purchase of choppers for VVIPs.

Corruption and lack of probity became integral with the UPA, Prasad said.

Congress has always dismissed corruption as an unnecessary issue, he said.

The BJP decided to question the Congress over the two issues at a Parliamentary party meeting held before the days Parliament session began.

The party also discussed the ongoing crisis and the subsequent Presidents rule in Uttarakhand.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the Congress and former Home Minister P Chidambaram deliberately hid facts that confirmed Jahan was a militant of the Laskhar-e-Toiba (LeT), Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told the press after the meeting.

This was the first time that a Home Minister was trying to prove a terrorist as a nationalist. The Home Minister appeared to be working with LeT, he claimed, adding it was an attempt to finish Narendra Modi, who was then the chief minister of Gujarat, and Amit Shah, then a minister in the state government.

The national would not have seen something as abhorrent and shameful as this, he said, adding that there would be a discussion on this in Parliament.

BJP has also issued a whip asking all its members to be present in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

Last year, the Central Bureau of Investigations estimated that European businessmen James, Gerosa and Haschke had paid some 58 million euros (Rs 423 crore) to have a deal to buy 12 advance helicopters for Indian VVIPs manipulated in favour of AgustaWestland, a UK subsidiary of an Italian company, Finmeccanica.

Sanjeev alias Julie, Rajeev alias Docsa and Sandeep  cousins of former Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi, also a suspect in the case  were accused of accepting bribes of Rs 10.5 million euros (Rs 7.68 crore) from some middlemen in two installments  first through bank transfers and then through cash.

The deal was cancelled after allegations of corruption flew thick and fast.

Italian defence and aerospace major Finmeccanicas former chief Giuseppe Orsi was recently sentenced by the Milan appeals court to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption over the sale of 12 VVIP choppers to India for Rs 3,600 crore.

The court also sentenced Bruno Spagnolini, former CEO of Finmeccanicas helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland, to four years in jail.
In a head-to-head match-up, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has a three per cent advantage nationally over her Republican rival Donald Trump, according to a new poll.

The latest George Washington University Battleground (GW Battleground) poll puts her ahead at 46 to 43, with 11 per cent of the voters undecided.

Interestingly, though, Senator Bernie Sanders, who has mounted a spirited but now seemingly futile challenge against Clinton, fares much better against Trump nationally, with an 11 per cent advantage at 51 to 40, with the rest undecided.

The bipartisan poll, conducted in partnership with The Tarrance Group and Lake Research Partners, found that among likely voters an overwhelming 89 per cent have been following the nomination process of the two parties closely  and that they have negative views of almost all major candidates.

The poll found that of the five candidates still in the race for the highest office, only two  Vermont Senator Sanders and Ohio governor John Kasich  have an unfavourable rating below 50 per cent, at 44 and 29, respectively.

The three others  former Secretary of State Clinton (56 percent), Texas Senator Ted Cruz (55 per cent) and businessman Trump (65 per cent)  are all mostly disliked, with a majority of voters saying they would not consider voting for them for president.

Interestingly, the poll found that former president Bill Clinton, who has been campaigning for his wife, has a higher favourability rating than four of the five contenders: with 54 per cent favourable and 41 per cent unfavourable.

The current president, too, fared better than the candidates. President Barack Obamas job approval rating was at 51 per cent. This is the first time since December 2012 that the GW Battleground Poll found a higher approval than disapproval rating for President Obama.

There is bad news aplenty here for both parties. Voters are disheartened, discouraged about the future and disdainful of the leading candidates in both parties, Christopher Arterton, founding dean of the GW Graduate School of Political Management was quoted as saying in a release.

On many important issues, the public seems to lean toward the Republican party But since the two candidates with the best chance of receiving the Republican nomination are viewed even more unfavorably at this point than Secretary Clinton, theres a good chance we are headed into an election where voters will see their choice as between the lesser of two unhappy options.

The poll surveyed 1,000 likely voters nationwide from April 17 to 20. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhary arrived in New Delhi on Tuesday for bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar and to attend the senior officials meeting of the Heart of Asia-Istanbul process conference.

According to spokesman of the Pakistan High Commission in India, All outstanding issues including Kashmir came under discussion between the two foreign secretaries.

The Foreign Secretary emphasized that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution, in accordance with United Nations resolutions and wishes of the Kashmiri people.

In a move that earned sharp criticism from the opposition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sanctioned a visit to the base by a team of investigators from Islamabad so they could inspect evidence offered by Delhi as proof that the terror strike was planned and executed by Pakistanis.

Pakistans foreign secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry on Tuesday also expressed concern about RAWs alleged involvement in subversive activities in Karachi and the matter of the capture of alleged RAW officer, Kulbushan Jadev, the Pakistan High Commission statement said. He reportedly said such involvement undermines efforts to normalize relations between the two countries.

Even as he underscored his countrys commitment to friendly ties with India, Chaudhry reportedly insisted in the meeting that Kashmir required a just solution in accordance with the United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Pakistan has sought to provide fresh thrust to the J&K issue in the recent past and it was made obvious further with the manner in which Islamabad declared that Kashmir was its main topic of discussion even before the meeting between the foreign secretaries was over.

The meeting provided a useful opportunity to exchange views on recent developments in a bilateral context, Chaudhry said. India is expected to react shortly to what transpired in the meeting

The bilateral talks had got stalled following the attack on the Pathankot air base in which seven security personnel were killed by militants of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed.

The attack derailed the dialogue process which had kick-started with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swarajs visit to Islamabad last October for a Heart of Asia ministerial meeting jointly hosted by Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Both the sides had agreed on resumption of the bilateral dialogue, naming it Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue.
Dr. Martha Herbert, Pediatric Neurologist, Harvard University Topic: How environ. toxins can alter brain development and degrade ongoing brain function

Mr. Juwang Zhu, Director of the Division for Sustainable Development, UNDESA (INVITED)

H.E. Amb. Volodymyr Yelchenko, Permanent Rep. of Ukraine to the United Nations

Moderator: Dr. Christine K. Durbak, Conference Chair and Founder, World Information Transfer, Inc.

World Information Transfer's 25th International Conference on Health and Environment: Global Partners for Global Solutions on the theme of "Chernobyl: 30th Anniversary". The Conference will be held at the United Nations Headquarters in Conference Room 1 on April 26, 2016 from 10a.m. to 1p.m. and from 3p.m. to 6p.m. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Martha Herbert and Mary Holland, JD are presenting at the afternoon session on Global Toxicity. Many of us will be attending, and we'll update you.

Video Presentation

Little Things Matter: The Impact of Toxins on the Developing Brain

Dr. Leonardo Trasande,

Professor of Pediatrics, Environmental Medicine and Population Health, NYU School of Medicine

Topic: Unraveling the environmental causes of developmental disabilities

KEYNOTE:

Mr. Robert F. Kennedy,

Jr., Environmental Lawyer & Activist

Topic: Mercury in the environment  its effect on childrens health

Ms. Mary Holland, Esq.

Research Scholar, NYU School of Law

Topic: Vaccination policies and human rights

Closing

Dr. Bernard D. Goldstein,

former Dean, Univ. of Pittsburgh, School of Public Health

Remarks:

H.E. Amb. Volodymyr Yelchenko,

Permanent Rep. of Ukraine to the United Nations

Dr. Christine K. Durbak,

Conference Chair and Founder, World Information Transfer, Inc.

Discussion and Questions
April 25, 2016

After protests by Air Frances female flight attendants over having to wear the obligatory veil on Iranian soil, the company announced that it will no longer be mandatory for them to serve on flights to Iran. Meanwhile, this issue has reignited discussion in Iranian media and social networks.

Ever since the early days of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iranian women who oppose the veil have protested it in many ways. However, this matter has yet to become one of the main demands of women's rights activists inside Iran. Indeed, it can perhaps be argued that the ideological, traditional and religious origins of the veil have made it difficult for womens rights activists to fight it.

Nonetheless, considering that Iranian authorities have come up with a definition of mal-veiling, increased monitoring of the women's dress code and passed new legislation involving the veil and chastity, the veil has spawned widespread debate among Iranian women. In the eyes of some, this debate is itself a form of resistance.

Media and social networks have facilitated the publicizing of this discussion, making it global. Women in Iran who oppose the mandatory veil now send pictures of themselves without it in public to the Facebook page My Stealthy Freedom, which has been widely covered by international media. Indeed, as soon as the news of the Air France flight attendants surfaced, the campaign further called on female tourists visiting Iran to also send pictures of themselves not wearing the mandatory veil.

However, considering the challenges and sensitivities of the current debate on the veil among Iranian women, how can the French stewardesses objections be analyzed? Can these types of protests aid Iranian women in their quest to gain the right to determine their own dress code? Do womens rights activists inside Iran agree with these types of protests?

Womens dress code has always been a sensitive and problematic issue under the Islamic Republic. In 1981, by the orders of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the veil became mandatory in government offices. The very first protests by Iranian women against the mandatory veil also go back to that time, albeit evidently unsuccessfully, since the Iranian parliament in 1984 passed legislation making the veil mandatory. Punishments for violating this law can include imprisonment, flogging or a fine, depending on the verdict issued by the judge who is dealing with the case. All women, regardless of nationality and religion, are required to observe the veil inside Iran.

Al-Monitor spoke with Minoo Mortazi Langroudi, a womens rights activist and member of the Council of Nationalist-Religious Activists of Iran. She said the Air France stewardesses were, more than anything, targeting the laws of the Islamic Republic. Iranian citizens, as well as foreign citizens who travel to Iran, must respect the laws of Iran even if those laws are problematic. For example, the French law that prohibits citizens from using religious symbols in public schools, which led to the veil being banned in public schools, is a very problematic law, but Muslim women are still forced to observe this law.

Langroudi, who is a religious intellectual and has nationalist-religious views, insists that Islam does not make the veil mandatory for either Muslim or non-Muslim women. Yet she told Al-Monitor, The Islamic Republic has laws which are derived from the Sharia. In my opinion, the Sharia is against mandatory veil. This is what I believe, but I dont have any political power in Iran or in France. Therefore, I cannot turn my beliefs into law.

In contrast, Zohreh Assadpour, a left-wing Iranian womens rights activist, praised the Air France employees in an interview with Al-Monitor. She said, Resistance against what is considered the official interpretation of the veil has always existed in Iran. This resistance has forced the establishment to show more flexibility. Naturally, the presence of foreign women without veils inside Iran threatens the self-evident nature of the veil and makes it more difficult for the establishment to force its official interpretation on Iranian women.

Another Iranian womens rights activist, Mahdis Pooya, told Al-Monitor that religious and social factors used to justify the mandatory veil in one society cannot be used to impose that law on individuals who are citizens of another country. She explained to Al-Monitor, This [mandatory veil] law even goes beyond the geographical borders of Iran; a lot of Iranian tourists or eco-tourists have been prosecuted and fined because they did not observe the proper veil when they traveled abroad. Nonetheless, Pooya said she believes that if foreign women refuse to wear headscarves and thus force Iranian authorities to make an exception for them, the relevant institutions will be faced with the question: If foreigners have a choice, then why isnt the same right extended to Iranians?

Iranian womens rights activist Najmeh Vahedi told Al-Monitor that she believes the Air France stewardesses refusal to observe the veil is not an example of lawlessness or disrespecting the culture of Iran. Instead, Vahedi said, it is a conscious action against a form of womens rights violation. However, she added that the protest is not necessarily a positive step toward abolishing "the forced veil" for Iranian women.

Vahedi herself took part in protests against Iranian women being barred from entering stadiums to watch volleyball. Referring to how foreign women, in contrast, are allowed to enter Iranian stadium, she told Al-Monitor, We witnessed discrimination between Iranian and non-Iranian women when it comes to entering stadiums. This is why I think that even if foreign women are not forced to observe the veil, it will only deepen the divide between Iranian women and other women. Once again, Iranian women will be left alone with the law, which does not support them."

Vahedi told Al-Monitor that in the decades since the official re-veiling in Iran, Iranian women have come up with "group and individual" methods of avoiding being damaged by this discrimination, There are so many Iranian women who are upset that female tourists are forced to endure the same discriminatory laws that they have to endure inside Iran. A large number of Iranians sympathize with the foreign women who travel to Iran as part of political delegations and are forced to wear the veil. Naturally, we hope that in the near future, these restrictions imposed on foreign women traveling to Iran are removed. However, we are also hoping that amending the law in their favor will not create a new set of discriminatory laws against Iranian women.
April 25, 2016

CAIRO  Egyptian human rights organizations are facing a major crisis that threatens their very existence. A number of those affiliated with these organizations are being prosecuted for their criticism of the current regimes policies, and the government is using various measures to limit their work. Chief among these is reopening probes into accusations that nongovernmental organizations received foreign funding to destabilize the country  knowing that such charges can incur penalties up to life imprisonment  and bringing legal proceedings, including ones that can impose travel bans and asset freezes, against prominent human rights activists.

Gamal Eid, a prominent rights activist and executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), has been banned from traveling and his assets were frozen, along with the assets of his wife and his minor daughter. Eid spoke to Al-Monitor about his concerns over the escalating campaign led by the state against civil society organizations, and expressed his apprehension regarding the unknown future that awaits them in Egypt.

The text of the interview follows:

Al-Monitor: Do you expect the Egyptian regime will continue with its campaign targeting civil society organizations for the foreseeable future, or are they just the authorities "target du jour"?

Eid: I wish I knew the answer. I wish there was some sign from the regime that would let us predict what will happen next. We unfortunately do not know who exactly is attacking us or managing this sharp attack against us.

Al-Monitor: Some believe that reopening the issue of foreign funding  i.e., clamping down on NGOs that receive such funding  is being used by Cairo as a way to pressure the West in negotiations. What is your take on this?

Eid: Several reasons have led the regime to reopen the issue. It could be either because the regime wants to use the case as a bargaining chip or because it wants to get rid of criticism targeting it. It could also be a campaign of pressure from remnants of the Mubarak regime to take revenge on those who participated in the overthrow of former President Hosni Mubarak. Also, some believe that the regime is heeding Saudi Arabias advice, knowing that Riyadh antagonizes human rights organizations. Others believe that civil society is a card in the conflict between the different apparatuses. In other words, there are several possible reasons.

Al-Monitor: Have you been questioned by the body investigating these cases?

Eid: I have neither been summoned nor questioned since 2011. I was not even informed of being accused. The things I know concerning my case are things I learned from the media. I believe that the present case is a punitive action taken as a result of my recent political and human rights positions.

Al-Monitor: Are you being investigated only as a result of accusations related to receiving foreign funding, or did they question the overall legality of the NGO you head, ANHRI?

Eid: The information I have about this case is from the media. During the preliminary hearing, the judge asked us about the relationship between the money freeze and the travel ban on the one hand and what is stated in the case on the other. My answer was that I was not accused to begin with and that I was not questioned regarding any issue.

Unfortunately, the investigating judge relied on a statement sent by a national security officer, and when they went to the bank to ask about whether I was getting personal funding, the bank assured them that I was not. This confirms that their accusations are not based on legal grounds and that they are only seeking to harm human rights defenders.

Al-Monitor: Why are many Egyptian civil society organizations  ANHRI included  registered as limited liability companies instead of as human rights organizations in accordance with Egyptian law?

Eid: Many of us tried to register as associations, but the state security apparatus control during the rule of the dictator Mubarak to date meant [our requests] were denied. Therefore, we registered under other legal forms. Today, Law 84 of 2002 has become unconstitutional.

Al-Monitor: Does being registered under the Law on Association protect these organizations from being pursued by the authorities?

Eid: The political case currently in question has nothing to do with the nature or form of any human rights organizations registration. It is rather related to the nature of their work and credibility. Many organizations conspiring [with the regime] were registered as companies but not mentioned, while others were registered in compliance with Law No. 84 and prosecuted. The bottom line is: Are the organizations colluding with [the regime] or not?

Al-Monitor: Former Justice Minister Ahmed al-Zend said in a televised interview Jan. 28 that prosecution in cases of those accused of receiving foreign funding would start moving forward soon.  Do you think hes one of the ones involved in stirring this issue?

Eid: Yes, but he does not stand alone in this. As I said, many remnants of Mubaraks regime are enemies of independent human rights associations.

Al-Monitor: To what extent can civil society NGOs rely on local funding alone, given that the state is demonizing foreign funding and could potentially ban it in the near future?

Eid: In 2011, we submitted a draft law on organizations to the military council, back when we thought that the council was protecting the revolution. The drafts aim was to primarily rely on local funding and businessmens support and to secondly rely on international NGOs, provided each organization announces the source and size of the funding it receives and the way it spends the money. However, the military council, in cooperation with Faiza Abou el-Naga, the former minister of planning and international cooperation and current presidential adviser on national security, expressed its strong opposition to civil society. With all due respect, we cannot forget the [US] military aircraft that transported those accused in the fabricated case out of Egypt [in 2012], knowing that there were verdicts issued against them. In brief, the issue is not about the funding, but about the confiscation of public space. It is about asking civil society to embellish the image of the regime, which is something we totally refuse.

Al-Monitor: What are the main challenges facing human rights NGOs under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi?

Eid: President Sisis regime is a mixture of the Mubarak regime and the military, both of whom are hostile to human rights and the rule of law, which is what makes the work of human rights organizations very difficult.

Al-Monitor: What are the drawbacks to the new draft law on NGOs, which the government is planning to submit to the parliament in the coming period?

Eid: Unfortunately, we learned that there are three draft laws that have been submitted by the Ministry of Solidarity, the state security apparatus and the national security apparatus. These three draft laws are competing over the control and domination of civil society. They want to turn civil society into a government division rather than for it to be an independent party cooperating with the state for the benefit of citizens.

Al-Monitor: How is the relationship between the ruling political regime and human rights organizations different from what it was during the period of former President Hosni Mubarak?

Eid: Unfortunately, and despite my strong opposition to the Mubarak regime, there used to be some space for service provision, and there were even areas, albeit marginal, where civil society was allowed to work. Faiza Abou al-Naga was not in control back then, whereas she has the upper hand now. They have the power, but right is on our side.
April 26, 2016

After a US Supreme Court ruling that would allow families of victims of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut access to nearly $2 billion in frozen Iranian funds in the United States, Irans Ministry of Foreign Affairs filed a formal complaint to the Swiss Embassy in Iran, which provides consular services to the United States.

The April 26 complaint called the US top court ruling an "explicit violation" of previous agreements between the two countries, US international legal commitments, judicial immunity and immunity of assets and property of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran also officially filed a complaint about a March ruling in a federal court in New York that Iran must pay victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington $10 billion. The complaint said that linking Iran to these attacks was baseless and ridiculous and that no Iranian national had participated in the attack. It also said the ruling violates accepted international legal procedures based on the judicial immunity of governments.

The nearly $2 billion in Iranian funds in question belong to Bank Markazi and are currently frozen in a Citibank branch in New York. The April 20 ruling by the US Supreme Court upheld a 2012 law by the US Congress that would allow the more than 1,000 families access to the funds. The families had previously won a lawsuit against Iran in 2007.

Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy adviser to Irans supreme leader, called the ruling against Iran international stealing. During a meeting with reporters April 26, Velayati said that this ruling shows the contradictions of American officials in which on one side they tell the Iranian foreign minister that they are committed to their responsibilities in removing sanctions and from the other side in a different way they apply new sanctions and create obstacles of freedom of trade between Iran and other countries. Velayatis references to the obstacles is a reference to the remaining US banking sanctions that have prevented third countries from doing business with Iran following the nuclear deal.

Velayati has been the staunchest supporter of the nuclear deal among all of the advisers of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on foreign policy issues. His strong criticism of the United States does not bode well for those within the country who had hoped for better US-Iranian relations following the nuclear deal. Velayati said this ruling would be a new front in the US-Iran conflict and compared it to the decadelong nuclear negotiations, saying, Iran will be insistent on its rights and will get its rights from the Americans, just like how the last time after many years, with resistance we were able to get our demands met. He added, The path to countering the Americans is endurance and resistance against their greediness.

It is not clear what recourse Iranian officials have. In an interview with The New Yorker published April 25, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called the Supreme Court ruling a huge theft and said of the money, We will get it back. Iranian news agencies reported April 26 that Ali Tayebnia, Irans minister of economic affairs and finance, will form and lead a working group consisting of the ministers of intelligence and justice and the head of the central bank. The group will review the case against Iran and present recommendations at the next Cabinet meeting.
April 25, 2016

Irans judiciary spokesman Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei rejected calls for the release of political prisoner Omid Kokabee from prison after he had his right kidney removed. Kokabee, a graduate student in physics at the University of Texas at Austin who was arrested in Iran, convicted of collaboration with an enemy government and illegal earnings and sentenced to 10 years in prison, was diagnosed with renal cancer after reportedly being denied treatment for a kidney illness for years.

Referring to Kokabee, Mohseni-Ejei said April 24, This offender has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. If someone commits treason against their country they should be punished. On Kokabees illness, he said, People in prison can become sick like other people, and if they can be treated in prison it will be done. Otherwise they will be transferred to a hospital for treatment. Mohseni-Ejei said that if a medical doctor says prison will worsen the condition of the prisoner, then it is up to the prison officials to provide another facility.

Kokabee has been in prison since 2011. In an open letter from Evin prison, he wrote that he was imprisoned for refusing to work on military-related research in Iran. Ever since his arrest and sentence there have been numerous calls for his release including from 31 Nobel Prize laureates in physics and the Committee of Concerned Scientists. Kokabee's case made the news again in January 2015, when an appeals court ignored a Supreme Court ruling that could have potentially set him free. Iran's Supreme Court ruled that while Iran and the United States had severed diplomatic relations, they were not in a state of war and therefore the United States was not technically a "hostile" government. After the surgery to remove his kidney, a number of Iranians shared pictures on social media of a bandaged Kokabee in a hospital bed and renewed calls for his release.

In other judiciary-related news, an appellate court has reduced the sentence of Iranian cartoonist Atena Farghadani from 12 years to 18 months, according to her lawyer, Mohammad Moghimi. Farghadani was originally arrested after she drew a cartoon depicting Iranian parliamentarians with animal heads in protest of legislation to restrict access to birth control. Moghimi said that with time served, Farghadani should be released on May 11.

Nazak Afshar is the latest dual citizen to be sentenced to prison in Iran. An Iranian court sentenced the French-Iranian citizen and former employee of the French Embassy to six years in prison for activities related to the 2009 post-election protests. Afshar, who had been living in France, returned to Iran on March 12 to visit her ill mother and was arrested at the airport.

Mohseni-Ejei also discussed the case of a 6-year-old Afghan girl who was raped and killed by her 16-year-old neighbor in April in a Tehran suburb. Mohseni-Ejei assured reporters that the authorities are intently pursuing the case. He added that Iranian officials, institutions and the government have all been in contact with the victims family and have expressed their sympathies. When the case first became public, some activists complained of a lack of attention due to the victim being an Afghan refugee.

Mohseni-Ejei warned that those calling for the punishment of the boy today will turn around and decry the human rights situation in Iran once he is punished. Iran has one of the highest execution rates in the world, and the execution of juveniles has been a concern for human rights organizations. According to Amnesty International, there are currently 137 cases of juveniles awaiting execution Iran and 43 juveniles have been executed since 1990.
April 26, 2016

BAGHDAD  Covered in dust, Iraqi stage actor Alawi Hussein carried logs in a race against time. He and some of his fellow actors rushed to open Al-Rashid Theater in the heart of Baghdad on March 27, World Theater Day.

Hussein and his friends succeeded in renovating and reopening one floor of the theater on time to produce artistic and theatrical pieces and perform them on stage.

While watching a musical performance that night, prominent young stage director and actor Alaa Qahtan told Al-Monitor, Our dream has finally come true. Al-Rashid Theater has come back to life and we can now perform our plays in it. A concert, poetry readings and a theatrical performance were held to mark the opening night. Rain poured from the ceiling over the heads of spectators and actors alike. Qahtan told Al-Monitor, The theater was not properly and professionally renovated, and it requires more efforts and money.

Al-Rashid Theater, built in 1984, fell victim to the successive Iraqi governments negligence of cultural infrastructure after 2003. The theater was shelled during the invasion of Baghdad in April 2003, and the building was left in ruins. When local artists could wait no longer for government support, they decided to renovate it privately.

Hussein started the renovation initiative in February. But security and administrative approval was required to enter the theater and remove the rubble, given its location near the protected Green Zone, where Iraqi officials live. Also, the theater is the property of the Iraqi government, necessitating official approval for the renovation work. Hussein collected 260 signatures from Iraqi intellectuals to obtain the approval of the Culture Ministry's Cinema and Theater Department, which owns the theater.

Hussein told Al-Monitor, Intellectuals responded to the idea of renovating the theater and everybody was willing to embrace it.

On March 17, one month after the signatures were collected, Iraqi youths and artists volunteered to haul out the rubble and clean the premises. Hussein noted that they have been able to clear only one floor out of nine for use. He said, Around $9,000 was collected from intellectuals and Iraqi parliamentarians to renovate the theater. We also received qualitative aid such as lighting and sound installations.

Hussein spoke to Al-Monitor in the center of Baghdad, where he was urging young cinematographers to screen their movies in the theater.

Hussein said he wished the theater would keep showing artistic works daily, as it has a deep-seated history and has shown global performances in the past, like the German Ruhr theatrical troupe in the 1980s.

Ahmad Moussa, a stage director and volunteer, said that he is scheduling meetings with telecommunications firms like Zain Company to collect donations for the lighting and sound systems and the central air conditioning. He told Al-Monitor, The Ministry of Culture and government are complaining about their inability to pay to renovate the theater. We must find donors and solutions to complete the job.

Moussa listed huge challenges facing the volunteers, saying, We wanted to renovate the theaters floor, but the other nine floors need huge amounts of money, which we cannot collect from donations. He does not have an estimate of the funds needed for the total restoration of the theaters nine floors, but noted that what has been collected from donors is far from enough.

Moussa complained about the bureaucratic manner that the Iraqi government and Ministry of Culture specifically adopt while dealing with the volunteers to renovate the theater," explaining, We proposed to the Ministry of Culture to rebuild the theater through the ticket proceeds of artistic performances that will be shown on stage. But the ministry refused.

He added, This refusal stems from the bureaucratic system, which channels all theatrical proceeds to the Ministry of Finance, and then to the account of the Ministry of Culture.

Moussa went on sadly, This bureaucracy will never help rebuild the theater because it is a complicated network of governmental financial transactions.

Qahtan doubts that the governments failure to renovate the theater was due to its lack of funding. He said, Perhaps Caliph Harun al-Rashid, who ruled during the Abbasid era and toppled Shiite imams, is a reason behind not renovating the eponymous theater. Shiite parties prevail over the Iraqi government.

Still, the artists initiative is a positive sign of a new tendency in Iraqs social and cultural circles: to free oneself from reliance on the government and its bureaucracy that delay development and neglect cultural matters like the theater.
April 26, 2016

Israel and Hamas have been escalating their war of words, which observers on both sides fear could turn into violence.

Gaza has yet to recover from the destruction of the last war with Israel in the summer of 2014, when more than 178,000 houses were destroyed or damaged, which makes any upcoming war between Israel and the Palestinians seem too early and premature.

After a flurry of contentious statements in February, the situation calmed in March as both Hamas and Israel stopped talking about a possible fourth Israeli-Gaza war, and both showed a desire to quiet their people and reassure them that no confrontation would break out anytime soon.

But on April 14, an anonymous senior Israeli officer made an unprecedented statement about Israel Defense Forces (IDF) plans for the next potential military confrontation with Hamas in Gaza. Israeli media reported that the official was a prominent source from the IDF leadership in the southern area.

The Israeli plan for a potential war against Hamas in Gaza received wide media coverage in the Palestinian and Israeli press. It calls for each Israeli battalion to kill as many Hamas members as possible and thwart the movements moves and goals. The IDF has developed a strong defense and attack system capable of protecting the Gaza envelope and minimizing the threat of mortar shells, while the Israeli air force would launch an extraordinary and efficient offensive.

Abu Mujahid, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, told Al-Monitor, The resistance in Gaza is preparing itself for the worst in its upcoming confrontation with the Israeli army. We take the IDF threats to launch a new war against Gaza very seriously. We have growing speculations that the Israeli enemy has begun the countdown for a new aggression against Gaza, and the resistance is getting prepared around the clock in order not to give the Israeli army a chance to launch a sudden attack.

Israel announced April 18 that it had discovered a new tunnel east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, noting that the tunnel is 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) long, 30 meters (almost 100 feet) deep and extends inside Israel.

On the same day, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military wing, issued a statement saying Israels supposed "discovery" was designed to distract the public's attention away from criticism targeting Israeli leaders for stalling the process of eliminating the Gaza tunnels and as a way to reassure the Israeli settlers in the Gaza envelope.

Then Hamas noted that it has more in store for Israel than a tunnel. On the same day as well, al-Qassam Brigades revealed for the first time its R 160 missile, which has a range of 160 kilometers (100 miles), meaning it could reach Haifa.

Yousef Rizqa, former Hamas minister of information and a political adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, the deputy head of Hamas political bureau, told Al-Monitor, Israels announcement of discovering the tunnel aims at reassuring the Israeli population that the government is making great efforts to maintain the security of the settlers, confront Hamas and gain international support for Israel, by illustrating the offensive cross-border tunnels as a threat posed by Hamas.

"The more Israel increases its calls to seek out support, the more the expectations for a future war against Gaza increase. Although the resistance in Gaza does not call for a new war and does not want to carry out attacks to break the truce, it has the right to prepare itself on the field, despite the lack of military balance between the resistance and Israel.

In conjunction with all these security developments, both sides carried out field maneuvers.

On April 18, the Israeli army launched large-scale military maneuvers in the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley that included field forces and aircraft. Even before that, on April 10, the Israeli army had its largest military training since the 2014 war in Gaza, with the participation of thousands of soldiers, near the Gaza border to simulate the incursion of Hamas inside Israeli settlements and the detention of Israeli hostages.

On April 19, the Ministry of Interior and National Security in Gaza ended the fifth maneuver of its security services, which it had started in Gaza during recent weeks. The maneuver included evacuating all headquarters and increasing security apparatuses, while explosions and weapons firing were heard. Ambulances, civil defense vehicles and the police practiced their movements in a drill that resembled the outbreak of a new war with Israel.

Meanwhile, retired Palestinian Maj. Gen. Wassef Erekat told Al-Monitor, Decision-makers within the resistance leadership in Gaza must be alert of the possibility of Israel launching a [surprise] attack, as it did in the three previous wars in 2008, 2012 and 2014, since the Israeli government is known for being extreme and risk-taking. Perhaps [the Israeli army] is being pressured by the Israeli public to carry out a bloody military operation against Gaza, despite the misleading statements about not wanting this war.

Remarkably enough, Israeli Housing Minister Yoav Galant called April 18 for the Israeli army to prepare for a wide-scale confrontation with Hamas in Gaza by the beginning of summer. Perhaps this call seems dangerous because Galant is a former IDF commander and military general who led the war on Gaza in 2014 and is also a member of Israels political-security Cabinet.

A Palestinian security official in Gaza told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, "Hamas and Israels declaration of their unwillingness to go into a military confrontation anytime soon might face three factors that may eventually lead to an outbreak of this confrontation. The first is the misunderstanding from both parties due to their field efforts on the Gaza-Israel borders; the second is the increased escalation in the West Bank, most recently the operation in Jerusalem on April 18, which wounded 20 Israelis; and the third is the resistance in Gaza feeling that the blockade is tightening with no alleviation initiatives in sight.

Meanwhile on April 23, Hamas warned about the continued tightening of the Israeli blockade on Gaza and called regional and international parties to shoulder their responsibilities in the deteriorating situation.

Despite the growing mutual warnings between Hamas and Israel about an imminent confrontation, a number of factors might prevent its outbreak, at least for now. The Israeli army is preoccupied with the growing unrest in the West Bank that began in October. Also, Israelis seem to doubt how much the IDF could actually achieve in Gaza  in terms of completely eliminating the Palestinian factions missiles and toppling Hamas  except for killing and wounding thousands of Palestinians. The Israelis must wonder whether it is worth getting pulled back into the Gaza quagmire.
April 24, 2016

An old Jerusalem story tells of a Jew who invited a friend for Passover dinner and hosted him lavishly  in his kitchen. During dinner, the guest questioned his host discreetly as to why the festive dinner was not being served in the dining room. The dining room, the host explained, was filled to capacity with sacks of potatoes.

The story illustrates the amusing, sometimes absurd situation that precedes the Passover holiday every year in April, when the homes of many needy families are filled to overflowing with massive amounts of food products donated to help them celebrate the seven-day holiday.

Kimcha DePischa (Aramaic for flour for Passover) is an ancient Jewish tradition dating to Talmudic times of giving out food to the poor to help them celebrate Passover with dignity. The mitzvah (commandment) of extra charity also applies to other holidays, such as Purim, Sukkot and Rosh Hashana (Jewish new year), but in recent years it seems that aiding the poor on Passover is more than just a mitzvah. The tradition has turned into a massive charitable enterprise handing out hundreds of millions of shekels in (relatively) unprecedented quantities of food and assistance. On Passover, by the way, food is also distributed to those not strictly defined as poor but to any family that is unable to comfortably celebrate the holiday.

Many organizations throughout the country say that Kimcha DePischa is their largest outlay of the year. Yad Eliezer, for example, considered a relatively large charitable organization, has a Passover budget of 15 million Israeli shekels ($4 million). Dozens of other local, communal or regional organizations operate countrywide, distributing food baskets and vouchers for electrical appliances, clothing, eyeglasses, household products and more.

One of the biggest distributions in Israel, conducted in Jerusalem by Rabbi Efraim Stern of the Oneg Shabbat and Yom Tov charity, is so huge that several streets have to be closed to traffic on distribution days. Each street is dedicated to a different product, with forklifts moving around, bringing in more and more. The organization says that this year it is giving out  for free  50 tons of meat, 30 tons of handmade matzah bread (flatbread), 1.5 million eggs, 90,000 bottles of grape juice, 25,000 bottles of oil and almost 800 tons of fruit and vegetables. This charitable enterprise feeds some 10,000 families, with each getting a food package worth 1,500 shekels ($400).

Each family gets a voucher that they bring to me. The voucher indicates how many sacks of carrots I have to give them, Yohanan Weiss, an 18-year-old volunteer in charge of carrot street, told Al-Monitor. He added, Everything is very organized. I have 15 volunteers working under me and a forklift that is in constant operation.

Yehoshua Vind, a father of eight from the town of Beit Shemesh, is not ashamed of the fact that this is the eighth year he is getting food donations for Passover from Sterns outfit. My wife and I work in education and we arent able to celebrate the holiday without help, he told Al-Monitor. We have tremendous expenses to buy clothing and [thanks to the assistance] at least I dont have to worry about buying food. Without this help, I would crash.

The assistance grows in accordance with the needs of the family, he said. Eight years ago I was getting a third of what Im getting today. Its not only that the family has grown, there are also many organizations and they all want to give. They beg you to take. These products last me until the middle of the summer.

Sara, a widowed mother of four from Jerusalem who asked her last name not to be used, told Al-Monitor, Over the past month I have been dealing with endless offers of help. Her husband passed away two years ago after an illness. She said, Im not at home during the holiday, but I still agreed to take products that I can use in the spring and summer. Some of the stuff has already arrived and Im thinking of calling the other organizations and telling them not to come. I have no place to store such quantities. I already put the chicken and meat in my neighbors deep freezer because I have run out of room. I also got four trays of 30 eggs each, a crate of wine, four kilos [roughly 9 pounds] of matzah bread, eight kilos of sugar, tons of disposable dishes and dozens of kilos of vegetables.

Despite the extensive generosity, there has been growing criticism in recent years of this phenomenon, mainly directed at public attitudes toward the food handouts. It appears that the hallowed Jewish principle of matan beseter  anonymous charitable giving in order to protect the recipients dignity  has been completely abolished.

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon blasted this form of charitable giving when he served as welfare minister in 2012. I oppose this method of throwing boxes [of food] at people, taking pictures of them, getting them to stand in line and soliciting donations at the expense of these unfortunate people. The directors of these organizations make tens of thousands of shekels [in pay] at the expense of the poor, Kahlon said at the time.

Ultra-Orthodox journalist and storyteller Yisrael Gellis had even harsher criticism for the pre-Passover handouts, which he described as contemptible, a disgrace in an April 15 column he published on the Kol Hai site.

Why does a [married] rabbinical college student with two kids need a sack of carrots or a huge sack of potatoes or a crate of beets, and a crate of apples and a crate of bananas? Gellis wrote. This is enough for an entire institution; half of it will already get thrown away during the holiday.

In many respects, the critics are right. It seems that the Kimcha DePischa tradition has spun out of control. From a small, modest enterprise that started out in neighborhood charitable organizations it has turned into giant, extensive projects of charity corporations. Nonetheless, one must not forget that Israel is one of the poorest countries among the member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. For the 22% of Israels population defined as being poor according to the organizations January 2016 poverty report, the camera crews and public relations conducted at their expense in the run-up to Passover probably bother them less than the shortages or hunger they experience the rest of the year.
April 25, 2016

On April 12, the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, the Prisoners Club and the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) launched an international campaign to nominate Marwan Barghouti, who is a member of the Fatah Central Committee, for the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. The campaign was launched in front of the councils headquarters in Ramallah, on the 15th anniversary of Barghoutis arrest on April 15, 2002. Barghouti, who had served as Fatah's secretary-general in the West Bank, was sentenced to five life terms and 40 additional years by Israel that accused him of being behind terrorist attacks by Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatahs armed branch. This award would be the first prestigious accolade for Barghouti, should he win.

Barghouti had announced his candidacy for the presidency of the Palestinian Authortiy (PA) in the elections of 2005, only to withdraw on Nov. 27, 2004, following his meeting with Qaddoura Fares at Ohli Kedar Beersheba prison, who convinced him of the need to preserve the unity of the movement and to support Mahmoud Abbas instead. According to the law, Barghouti is entitled to run for the PA presidency despite being detained by Israel. According to Article 9 of Law No. 13 of 1995, in regard to the elections, the presidential candidate should be Palestinian, at least 35 years of age, registered in the voters list, have permanent residency in the region (by owning or leasing property) and fulfill the required conditions to exercise the right to vote. The candidate ought to also submit his candidacy application to the Central Elections Commission through a partisan body registered with the Elections Commission or any person whose name is on the voters list and fulfills these criteria.

The nomination campaign was launched March 5 after the Argentinian 1980 Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel handed Hosni Abdel Wahed, the Palestinian ambassador to Argentina, a copy of the petition to nominate Barghouti.

Three years earlier, Esquivel had participated  along with Palestinian, South African and international figures  in launching an international campaign to release Barghouti and Palestinian detainees on Oct. 27, 2013, from the cell on Robben Island of the late South African President Nelson Mandela.

Head of the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Issa Karake told Al-Monitor, The people in charge of the campaign to nominate Barghouti for the Nobel Peace Prize are making contacts with dozens of parliaments entitled to nominate any person who fits the Nobel Peace Prize profile around the world, and with Nobel Prize winners to support Barghoutis nomination with the help of the PLC, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its embassies."

The campaign that started its work before declaring its official launching received the support of the Arab Parliament on April 17 for the nomination of Barghouti for the Nobel Peace Prize. On April 7, the Tunisian parliament also voiced its support for the nomination, while Tunisian civil society organizations declared full support for Barghoutis nomination on April 4. Director of the Tunisian Human Rights League Fadhel Moussa handed the Nobel Prize, which the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet had won, to Barghouti's wife, Fadwa, on April 5 in support of Barghoutis nomination.

Egypts foreign minister announced April 16, in the wake of his meeting with Fadwa Barghouti in Cairo, that the ministry will continue its efforts and endeavors to release Barghouti and the Palestinian detainees.

The nomination campaign launched a website in Arabic and English under the name Barghouti for Nobel, to get the message out to a global audience.

Member of Fatahs Revolutionary Council and a friend of Barghouti, Qaddoura Fares, told Al-Monitor, The nomination of Barghouti for the Nobel Peace Prize offers a Palestinian story that contradicts the Israeli one, which claims that Palestinian fighters are murderers and terrorists. The campaign shows Palestinian detainees as fighters for freedom and independence.

Fares added, The fact that a prominent international figure like Esquivel nominated Barghouti will turn the attention to the Palestinian cause and to the issue of detainees in Israels prisons. The nomination is like an international recognition that the Palestinian detainees are fighters for freedom rather than terrorists, as Israel claims.

Barghoutis eldest son, Qassam, told Al-Monitor, My fathers nomination for the prize is part of the 2013 international campaigns activities for his release launched from South Africa. Qassam believes his fathers nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize would add pressure on Israel to release him.

In this context Karake, who is also close to Barghouti, said, Barghoutis nomination for the Nobel Prize will pressure Israel to release him because this creates a supporting international public opinion at the popular, parliamentary and institutional levels, and will show that Israel is detaining a fighter who is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and who should not remain behind bars.

Barghouti is one of the main nominees to succeed President Abbas, as he enjoys great popularity within Fatah and among Palestinians, according to the various polls. To the question whether this campaign could be linked to a political line that Barghouti might take to handle the presidency, Karake said, When we launched the campaign, we did not link it to a political issue or to the presidency. We wanted to shed light on the detainees issue and garner international support for it. Still Barghouti has always been a prominent political leader due to his membership in Fatahs Central Committee and since he is a member of parliament. But it reverts to him to set his own political options.

Fares refused to give the matter too much importance, saying, Barghoutis nomination must remain in its context instead of being overanalyzed and interpreted in other ways.

Yet, it seems that Barghouti will play an important role that is yet to be determined in Palestinian political life. Qassam agrees. He has wide popularity, thanks to his struggle. But any political issues will be discussed in good time, not now, he said.

Director of the Palestinian Center for Policy Studies and Strategic Research Hani al-Masri told Al-Monitor, Barghoutis nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize is due to his struggle for freedom and liberty from detention.

Masri refused to consider this nomination a step that paves the way for Barghoutis taking over the PAs presidency in the future. We should not overanalyze the nomination. This assumption is inaccurate because there arent any presidential elections around the corner. Abbas will not resign and Fatah leaders are not unanimously nominating Barghouti for that position, even though he enjoys their support, he said.

Palestinians hope that Barghouti will win the Nobel Peace Prize. They will try to bring the detainees issue back to the forefront in the international arena with his nomination and will seek to garner political and legal support in parliaments, associations and among legal and political elites to pressure Israel and refute its story.
April 26, 2016

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  On April 3, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a presidential decree establishing the first Palestinian High Constitutional Court, to follow up on the rules and regulations as well as the constitutionality of laws and define the powers of the three authorities.

The new court's president is Judge Mohammad Abdul-Ghani Ahmad al-Haj Kassem, and the vice president is Judge Asaad Boutros. The other members of the court are Judges Abdul-Rahman Abu Nasr, Fathi Abdul-Nabi al-Wahidi, Fathi Hammouda Abu Srour, Hatem Abbas Salahuddin, Rafiq Isa Abu Ayyash, Adnan Mutlaq Abu Layla and Fawwaz Taysir Sayme.

Abbas legal adviser Hasan al-Ouri told Al-Monitor from Ramallah, The consultations preceding the establishment of this court started in 2006, but the Palestinian division in 2007 between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after Hamas took over Gaza delayed the process. Today, President Abbas had to rise to the challenge for two main reasons: first, the difficulty of examining the appeals and constitutional issues that require decisions and legislations  brought before the High Court  which acted as a temporary constitutional court according to Article 104 of the Palestinian Basic Law, which stipulates that the temporary High Court shall handle all cases brought before the administrative courts and the Supreme Constitutional Court until they are formed; and second, the implementation of Article 103 of the Palestinian Basic Law.

Ouri explained that Article 103 specifies that a High Constitutional Court shall be established to examine the constitutionality of laws, regulations and other enacted rules, and to settle jurisdictional disputes that might arise between judicial entities and administrative entities having judicial jurisdiction.

The High Constitutional Court was established based on accurate consultation, Ouri said.

All of the judges of the new Constitutional Court were sworn in April 10 by Abbas at the presidential headquarters in Ramallah, while Abu Nasr and Wahidi took the legal oath via videoconference from Gaza after Hamas banned them from traveling to Ramallah.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Zuhair al-Masri, a political analyst and history professor at Azhar University in Gaza, said, The establishment of the Constitutional Court now is in the Palestinians best interest, as it will strengthen the rule of law and fill the gap created by the Palestinian Legislative Councils [PLC] suspension of powers.

At the same time, he stressed the need for consensus and consultation with all parliamentary blocs before issuing such decree, to spare Palestinians further discord and conflict that may result from monopolizing the national decision.

Hamas member of parliament Mohammad Faraj al-Ghoul told Al-Monitor from Gaza, The president issued a decree establishing the Constitutional Court without consulting anybody and without referring to the parliamentary blocs in the legislature again or completing the consultations that had started in 2006. He also issued another decree that re-establishes a new electoral committee and appointed a new deputy general, thus violating the Palestinian Basic Law.

He said, By doing so, Abu Mazen [Abbas] left no room for reconciliation. Moreover, the meager chances at a breakthrough in reaching a settlement led the president to plan for a new phase where he continues to hold on to his post and suspend the PLC."

Abdul-Sattar Ibrahim, a professor of political philosophy, spoke to Al-Monitor from Ramallah, saying, The establishment of the Constitutional Court at this specific time reveals Abbas political motives, as he is aiming to stay in power and monopolize all political decisions. Abbas vested wide powers in the new court to help him strengthen his post and influence. The Constitutional Court will have jurisdiction to rule on the appeals against the eligibility of the Palestinian Authoritys president, oversee the constitutionality of laws and regulations, and have the power to abolish or amend them.

The decision to establish the Constitutional Court was met with widespread criticism by Palestinians, with several social and political bodies expressing their concern that the president is stepping up his efforts to establish a political rule that only serves the interests of a small group with exclusive powers in decision-making.

Following the promulgation of the presidential decree, the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), along with several other rights organizations, addressed a memo to Abbas explaining that legal and political reforms should take priority over the establishment of the court. The reforms, according to the memo, include activating the PLC as a prelude to further political reforms and holding general elections that would restore legitimacy to all Palestinian institutions. The memo also addressed the amendments Abbas introduced to the Constitutional Courts law, considering that they aim to expand the presidents authority and powers in appointing the members of the court, as well as interfering with and overruling the courts decisions.

Speaking to Al-Monitor from Gaza, Vice President of the ICHR Hamdi Shaqoura said, Restoring the Palestinian judiciarys credibility and dignity cannot be achieved by issuing more decrees and decisions that may lead to further deterioration of the political situation and that of the judiciary. This is rather achieved by consolidating the legal system, restituting the PLCs powers, ensuring the judiciarys independence by not subjecting it to political agendas and re-establishing a sole supreme judicial council in the West Bank and Gaza tasked with overseeing the judiciary in a way that guarantees its integrity.

In a statement issued April 4, Fatah member of parliament Majed Abu Shamala argued that the decree establishing the Constitutional Court is fraught with multiple legal inconsistencies as it was issued amid ongoing political division among Palestinians. The appointed judges were not assigned by the judicial council nor by any other general assembly. Furthermore, the appointments were not the product of consultations with the president of the judicial council, experts, human rights organizations, bar association or the justice minister.

Abbas may have finally found what he is looking for in the Palestinian legislation to face the accusations against him after forming the new court at such a time, as a pro-active step to establish and expand his control over the PAs institutions and intervene in the courts work and references, by referring to Article 103 of the Basic Law that stipulates that the establishment of the Constitutional Court shall be by virtue of a law or decree. This is what Abbas did when he issued a decree to establish the court. He also based his decision on Article 104 that stipulates that the High Court shall temporarily assume all duties assigned to administrative courts until they are established; all these duties shall fall within the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court directly after it is established, and the High Court shall no longer be able to follow up on them.
April 24, 2016

On the eve of the Passover holiday, effusive holiday greetings from a senior Fatah official landed in the inboxes of Israeli peace activists. In the April 21 email, Fatah Central Committee member Mohammed al-Madani hoped, On this festival of freedom, the Palestinian people will also get to realize their freedom and we will establish our state next to the State of Israel and peace will reign in our region. Madani, who also heads the Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society, signed off, And let us say Amen. Unfortunately, the Israelis who are authorized to say Amen to his prayer of peace and to make it a reality are the ones who worship land. Ahead of the Jewish holidays, they usually show their respect for Madani and his friends by imposing a closure on the West Bank and its Palestinian residents.

On April 17, Uri Savir reported for Al-Monitor that Israel has made it clear to King Abdullah II of Jordan that it opposes a proposal calling for a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation whose western boundary would be based on the 1967 border between Jordan and Israel. Meanwhile, the Israeli government is busy planning the 50th anniversary celebrations of the liberation of Jerusalem  that is, its capture from Jordanian control in the 1967 war. If it were up to him, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have issued a gag order for the interview in which Israeli President Reuven Ruvi Rivlin challenged this status quo.

On Channel 20 April 12, Rivlin spoke in favor of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation without referring to a Jordanian component. When you have two political entities, the Palestinian entity and the Hebrew Zionist one, said Israel's first citizen, we may well have to live in a confederation, with each side running its affairs in one way or another, and global issues managed by the system as a whole.

The president understands that, sadly for him, the vision of his hero, the revisionist Zionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky, set out in Two Banks to the Jordan is no longer valid:

From the wealth of our land there shall prosper The Arab, the Christian and the Jew For our flag is a pure and just one It will illuminate both sides of my Jordan

Rivlin, the progeny of the right-wing, nationalist Herut movement, is adapting his humanistic views to the grim reality of the Jewish publics attitude toward such values as democracy, equality and tolerance of minorities. He understands that the beautiful Israel of yore  Israel in its first years  is on a slippery slope, and if no one is found who can stop it, Israel will plummet into an abyss.

Rivlin sees confederacy as an alternative to a binational state, which he regards as an unfeasible solution that would result in an apartheid state and eventually lead to Israels division. An announcement by his office in December 2015, on the eve of his departure for a meeting with US President Barack Obama, said that Rivlin proposes the establishment of a Palestinian entity in the territories, next to the State of Israel, within the framework of a joint confederation. Of note, Rivlin, although speaking of an entity, stands by his opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state. For him, only Israel and the Israeli army can be sovereign over the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. On this issue, it would seem, he has a big obstacle to overcome.

Rivlin is not one of those politicians who floats trial balloons to make headlines. He grew up in the home of a wise scholar, Yosef Yoel Rivlin. The 10th president does not make do with reading only the news clippings placed on his desk each morning. Rivlin devotes long hours to reading peace plans, among them the regional peace plan promoted by the Israeli Peace Initiative and the Two States, One Homeland plan. The presidential residence is open to Israelis seeking a way through the doors that are slowly closing on the two-state solution. Al-Monitor has learned that Rivlin occasionally leaves his office for discreet meeting places to hear the views of Palestinian experts.

In 2005, as a Likud Knesset member, Rivlin had led a group of legislators demanding that the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon remove the roadblock from Area E1, linking Jerusalem and the settlement town of Maale Adumim. He claimed that by refusing to authorize construction of a new neighborhood effectively linking Maaleh Adumim to Jerusalem, Sharon is dividing Jerusalem. Rivlin opposed Sharons plan to pull out of Gaza in 2005 and evacuate the Jewish Gush Katif settlements, dubbing it an expulsion of Jews. On a visit to the Gush Katif museum in Jerusalem on the fourth anniversary of the Gaza disengagement, Rivlin, then Knesset speaker, said, We must adhere to our belief that the Land of Israel in its entirety is ours and that the expulsion from Gush Katif did not provide any advantage.

The move into the presidents residence did not alter Rivlin's belief in the right of Jews to settle every corner of the Land of Israel. Almost a year ago, in February 2015, Rivlin took part in the inauguration of the Hebron Heritage Museum. On the occasion, he said, There's no way to go back down the path through which our people's consciousness was created without going to Hebron. Indeed, Rivlins confederation plan is designed to enable continued Jewish settlement on all the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. There is as yet no indication of whether he has formulated a position on the political status of the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and their right to settle in Jaffa.

The man who used to start every radio interview with the words Good morning/Good evening from Jerusalem no longer appears repelled by proposals to give up Israeli control over peripheral Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, such as the Shuafat refugee camp. He takes seriously a blueprint that would turn the Temple Mount from a regional problem into a regional solution, as proposed in some of the peace initiatives he has studied. Perhaps it is maturity, or perhaps the move from the Knesset to the presidency that has transformed him. As US President Gerald Ford said in 1974 to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in explaining why he had violated a promise he had made while in Congress to promote the move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, In the Oval Office you view things differently than from the House of Representatives.

The president of the State of Israel does not have an iota of the official authority held by the president of the United States, but Rivlins moral authority is priceless. Run, Ruvi, run. The Israeli people are behind you.
April 25, 2016

The Feb. 26 cessation of hostilities in Syria, which were followed by a conference in Geneva between warring parties on March 14, gave a glimmer of hope to the Syrian peace negotiations. This hope is now fading, with the resumption of clashes this month between President Bashar al-Assad's regime and the opposition in Aleppo conflating with the stalling of the ongoing peace process in the Swiss city. What are the various scenarios that might play out in Syria, and can a more realist median solution arise from the rubble?

Despite multiple breaches, the level of violence across Syria dropped dramatically over the last few months. There is a feeling of normalcy in Daraa in spite of clashes with the Yarmouk Brigade, which is affiliated with the Islamic State [IS], says a fighter from Ahrar al-Sham, who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.

The fragile cease-fire seems to be now collapsing, nonetheless. Syrian opposition factions including the groups Salafist Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam declared a counteroffensive on the regime forces on April 18 dubbed Rad al-Mazalem (Facing Oppression). Aleppo also witnessed an escalation in fighting in the last few weeks around mid-April, as Syrian forces backed by the Russian air force continued their offensive on the city. The area was also the scene of intense clashes between rebels and IS, according to Free Syrian Army Lt. Hassan Hamadeh, who spoke to Al-Monitor. The rebels are under pressure both from the regime and IS, he added. The recent fighting between the rebels and the regime has already allowed IS to recapture areas it had lost in northern Aleppo around al-Rai. In addition, a regime airstrike in the area of Maarat al-Numan killed around 40 people this week.

The situation appears to also be devolving on the political side. In Geneva, a source within the opposition told Syrian newswire Alsourianet that it had asked UN special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura to postpone the current round of negotiations. The regime has not taken seriously the negotiations; they are creating diversions to avoid speaking of the transition phase, Syrian opposition delegate to the UN Najib Ghadban told Al-Monitor. Independently of the UN-led peace negotiations in Geneva, the regime also held parliamentary elections on April 13.

The regime believes that whatever happens, it will not lose the support of Russia and Iran, says Fabrice Balanche, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. In parallel, the Syrian opposition and its Gulf backers will not accept any power-sharing agreement with Assad. On April 16, a source close to the opposition told Al-Monitor that Assad envoy Riad Daoudi had suggested to de Mistura that Assad was willing to share executive powers with three vice presidents from the opposition  a leak later confirmed by the media and that, according to the source, had been devised by a Washington think tank.

With the cease-fire and negotiations taking a turn for the worse every day, the conflict in Syria appears to be for the long haul, further devastating a country where more than 470,000 people have already died from the fighting over the last five years and half the population has been displaced.

Three possible scenarios appear to be emerging in the wake of the recent breakdown in the peace process. The first  and gloomiest  would entail the conflict regaining full intensity. While Saudi Arabia and Turkey are not in the best financial condition, they may still beef up their support to the Syrian opposition brigades; they will also want Secretary of State John Kerry to make good on his promise to train and equip rebels if negotiations fail, Sinan Hatahet, a researcher at the Turkey-based Omran Dirasat, told Al-Monitor.

The second scenario would be maintaining a relative freeze of most demarcation lines, with the exception of a few  including Aleppo. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would remain in control of Damascus, the Latakia belt and large urban hubs falling in his turf. The rebels would maintain control over southern Syria, the northwest of the country, and pockets around Aleppo and Damascus, while the Kurds would secure the northern areas, explains Balanche. In such a framework, international and local military offensives would be maintained against IS areas, according to Balanche. Such a scenario is highly probable given the manpower problem faced by regime forces, which are stretched thin and have to be moved from one battle front to the other.

The last and most positive scenario would entail realism prevailing on the Syrian political scene: the absence of a clear victory in favor of any of the warring sides, the manpower issue the regime is facing, combined with the end of Barack Obama's presidency next November, who could be replaced by a more hawkish contender, opening a window of opportunities for a compromise. There is no balance of power in Syria; it is a balance of weaknesses. No one can win, says Hatahet.

Local and international parties also have their own calculations. President Assad would prefer to have a solution on Syria this summer, because they know that a deal under President Barack Obama would be in their favor [as opposed to] the next administration, says Balanche. Europe is also pressed by time with the refugee crisis with more than 1 million people reaching the shores of the European Union in 2015 and around 4,000 people dying while crossing the Mediterranean.

Europe is also keen on stabilizing Syria, the war there and in Iraq, reverberating across countries with a multiplication of terror attacks in various European capitals, the latest of which injured over 300 people and killed 35 in Brussels.

Ultimately, the cease-fire and the second round of Geneva conferences have demonstrated the leverage that external players such as Russia and the United States  which backed both initiatives  have on Syrian protagonists. We need to keep an eye on the Russian-US talks," advises Ghadban.

Moscow remains the joker in this game of cards, showing its ability to reign in the regime's ambitions when needed while continuing, at least officially, to show support for a negotiated solution. Such a solution may be far from a full-fledged peace deal and could entail re-establishing a cease-fire and power-sharing agreement by region while working toward an exit strategy, where the divisive issue of Assads departure would be the last phase to be tackled by the political track. A final option would be the application of the power sharing agreement suggested by de Mistura last week, allowing for Assad to be stripped of executive powers, which would be transferred to a transitional body. It remains to be seen if Assads powerful backers Russia and Iran would agree to such a deal and if it could be implemented in real terms, given that the preservation of the security apparatus would allow Assad to still wield significant power, more specically on his political ennemies.
April 25, 2016

The Ergenekon case, with 275 defendants, began in 2007 when hand grenades were found in a squatter house in Istanbul after an anonymous phone tip. Hundreds of civilians and military personnel were detained on charges that they were involved with an alleged terrorist group called Ergenekon that planned to topple the government.

The first hearing was Oct. 20, 2008, and eventually the trial became the largest of the past decade when 23 indictment sheets were consolidated into one. In the trial process, which lasted about 6 years, 600 hearings were held. Eight defendants died during that time. Among them were three military officers who reportedly committed suicide because they couldnt live with what they felt was the indignity of the trial process. Istanbul's 13th High Criminal Court rendered its verdict Aug. 5, 2013, sentencing many to life imprisonment and others to heavy imprisonment for 12 to 34 years.

The following day, newspapers supportive of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and the Gulenist movement came out with banner headlines reading Ergenekon terror organization smashed, End of military tutelage, Junta punished severely and Crime and punishment.

Almost three years later, on April 21, the High Court of Appeals overturned the convictions because of procedural flaws and their lack of merit.

In its 231-page decision, the appeals court ruled that the Ergenekon case should have been split off from those about an attack against the Council of State in Ankara and the bombing of the Cumhuriyet newspaper, and the case against former Chief of General Staff Gen. Ilker Basbug. The court said there was unwarranted consolidation of cases, a prolonged trial process and unlawful searches of offices and homes, and said some evidence had even been fabricated.

Lt. Mehmet Ali Celebi had come to symbolize the case because he was the first serving officer to be detained and was imprisoned for 41 months. From the outset, I knew I was facing a conspiracy," he told Al-Monitor. "The Ergenekon case was aimed at weakening the Ataturkist, modern, secular and anti-imperialist forces in Turkey. It caused major damage to the Turkish armed forces.  There were purges."

For Celebi, the biggest loser of this case was the rule of law. He said there is a lot of political responsibility that hasn't been discussed yet. Our struggle will not cease until those legally and politically responsible for these fabricated cases, including the prosecutors and judges implicated, give an account of their actions.

Retired Maj. Gen. Ahmet Yavuz, who was a defendant in the earlier Sledgehammer coup case, told Al-Monitor, "These cases, above all the Ergenekon file, sought to take over control of the TSK [Turkish Armed Forces] through anti-democratic means and then to transform the regime. But the power struggle between the Gulenists and political rule enabled us to see the discrepancies and flaws in these cases more clearly. This also enabled the nation to suspect these cases.

According to Yavuz, with the appeals court's decision, the Ergenekon case is definitely closed. This is a golden opportunity for legality to restore its standing. It is a significant decision that exonerates the judiciary and the Court of Appeals in the public conscience, he added.

Retired Col. Ali Bilgin Varlik of the Ankara-based Central Strategy Institute said, There is a common thread in all these cases of consolidating myriad unrelated [events and people], and trying them with irregular, flawed methods and fabricated evidence, he said. Varlik believes that initially the political rule was galvanized in thinking that military tutelage was collapsing. But in time, when the fault lines and lapses began to emerge, a crisis of confidence took over the process.

He thinks these trials are good lessons for all segments of the society, in particular the political institution. Varlik added, This is how the political rule became aware of the importance of the sensitive balance between the civilian control of the military and the security of the state. The weaknesses revealed by the trials and difficulties encountered showed to all of us that security is not a concept that can be implemented easily.

How did this case affect Turkeys institutions?

It is true that in the eight years from 2007 to 2015, Ergenekon and other court cases caused major concern in the TSK, but this concern did not become institutional trauma and weakness. With these cases, TSK personnel understood that supremacy of law is more important than absolute obedience to orders. Although Basbug, who was the chief of general staff from 2008 to 2010, did not handle the process wisely with his extremely stiff approach, most agree that his two predecessors, Gen. Isik Kosaner (2010-2011) and Gen. Necdet Ozel (2011-2015), handled the process deftly. These cases taught the TSK the importance of an independent civilian judiciary and democracy. During the detention and imprisonment process, not a single retired or serving official attempted to escape or defy the judicial process, but continued to express confidence in democracy and the supremacy of law, thus displaying clearly the militarys confidence in law and democracy.

What about civilian politics? Both the launching of the Ergenekon case and then its final dismissal resulted from the political climate rather than legal norms. But it is too early to say yet how much of a lesson the civilian politicians have learned from the Ergenekon case.

One of the major losers of the Ergenekon case is no doubt the media. Turkish media, with its excessively politicized approach throughout the trial process, gave striking examples that it can deviate from appropriate, ethical and impartial reporting.

No doubt the biggest loser in the Ergenekon case is the Gulenist movement. The case showed that the Gulenist movement, instead of acting as a civil society organization, penetrated the state organs with its so-called "parallel structure" and manipulated, in a Machiavellian manner, the state organs and judiciary to achieve political power. The Gulenist movement did not offer an iota of self-criticism of the rights violations during the Ergenekon process. Of course, Ergenekon and other cases had negatively affected the TSK's national prestige. But the armys reputation is again on the rise because of its combat against the Kurdistan Workers Party and the Islamic State, and the measures it has taken to improve border security and handle developments in Syria.

Now the critical question to ask is whether the Turkish army will use this resurging prestige to strengthen democracy and the judicial system in Turkey, or use it to accumulate power for a possible intervention in civilian politics.

A new critical process awaits the military in Turkey. Ergenekon and similar cases have proven that the TSK has successfully passed its test of respecting the law. We will now have to wait and see how it will perform in preserving and reinforcing pluralist democracy in the coming days.

Will the soldiers who gave breathing space to the rule of law in Turkey with its handling of the Ergenekon case now provide breathing space to a pluralist democracy with its handling of civilian politics?
April 25, 2016

The closing session of the recent 13th summit of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), held in Istanbul, experienced a diplomatic scandal, set in motion by the host's economic finger-pointing. The proverbial shoe would soon, however, be on the other foot.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, chairing the summit April 15, referred to the widely discussed financial problems of the OIC as the cause of the organization's passivity and ineffectiveness. He went on to declare that Turkey would be donating $2 million to help make the OIC the influential organization suggestive of its name. Erdogan then began to read the names of member states that had not paid their dues. But Saudi Arabian Finance Minister Ibrahim Abdulaziz al-Assaf stated that Such issues are solved inside the organization. It is not proper to expose the countries that have not paid their dues.

By coincidence, just as Erdogan revealed delinquent OIC member states, the World Bank in a report April 19 exposed Turkey to the world as one of the countries that had not fulfilled their pledges to help with the reconstruction and development of Gaza after Israels intense bombardment in July 2014. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, which frequently invoke the Palestine issue and the plight of Gaza for domestic political advantage, were embarrassed by the disclosure.

Since 2013, Erdogan has been expressing his intention to visit Gaza, but he has been unable to do so because of tensions in Israeli-Turkish relations. Karel Valansi, foreign affairs writer for Istanbuls Hebrew-language newspaper Shalom, noted that Erdogan could only go to Gaza "only with the knowledge and approval of Israel, but that was not likely to happen any time soon." Valansi also pointed out that Erdogan couldnt go to Gaza via Egypt because of problems between Ankara and Cairo and therefore would have to travel via Israel. Of course, it would be up to the Israeli government to approve any such journey.

A donor conference for Gaza's reconstruction had been held in October 2014 in Cairo. Some 50 countries agreed to set up a fund to repair Gazas infrastructure and rebuild destroyed houses, schools and other buildings. Turkey pledged $200 million to the fund, which recorded $3.5 billion in promises.

The World Bank regularly releases figures on the ratio of pledges paid, and its report dated April 19, 2016, covering the period ending March 31, noted that only 40% of the $3.5 billion has been delivered. Turkey has paid $64 million, or 32% of its $200 million pledge, while Saudi Arabia, which pledged $500 million, has so far disbursed only $51 million.

Qatar made the biggest pledge, at $1 billion, but has only paid $152 million thus far. The United Arab Emirates pledged $200 million and has provided $29 million. Kuwait, which promised $200 million, is yet to make good on a single dollar of its pledge. Meanwhile, the United States, Netherlands, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Australia, Russia, India, France and Algeria have paid their pledges in full, and Sweden has provided more than it pledged.

The World Bank report reveals that the majority of the countries that have not delivered on their pledge are, strangely enough, Muslim countries, including, as cited, the oil-rich Gulf states. The bank has since called on these countries, including Turkey, to keep their promises. According to the report, only 9% of the destroyed houses have been rebuilt, and 75,000 Gaza residents remain homeless.

President Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu frequently refer in their election campaigns to the assistance Ankara provides to Gaza and other support to the Palestinians. People remember how Davutoglu, in response to main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who had called for improving relations with Israel, had said in 2015, You dont know about the Mavi Marmara flotilla, of the children massacred in Gaza. We cant be friends with those [Israeli soldiers] who have entered Al-Aqsa Mosque with their boots on.

There is also Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who in a TV interview on April 9 asserted, Until today, we gave much assistance to Gaza and Palestine, totaling about $500 million. At the Cairo donors' conference, we pledged an additional $200 million. Looking at the projects we have on hand, we will go above that amount.

Alas, the World Bank report has exposed that the foreign minister's remarks do not reflect the current reality. His words are not backed up by deeds.
April 26, 2016

Kilis, with 130,000 inhabitants, is the Turkish town closest to the northern Syria region controlled by the Islamic State (IS). In Kilis, which hosts more Syrian refugees than its own population, 17 people have been killed and 62 wounded since January by rockets fired from Katyusha multiple-rocket launchers from Syria. The latest fatality was April 24.

Daily life in Kilis is now at a standstill because of the unpredictable attacks. Economic and educational activities have halted, albeit unofficially.

The people of Kilis are upset with continuing rocket attacks that have paralyzed their lives  and with what they see as the governments nonchalant response. After the latest attack, inhabitants marched in the streets to demand that the governor resign and to protest the government's perceived passivity.

Ankara is having trouble explaining the rocket attacks, primarily because it is not used to them. Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said the attacks could have been made by mistake. Asked whether the attacks suggest weak security, Kalin said, There is chaos in Syria. He added that there is no firm information that the attacks were intentional.

According to daily Hurriyet writer Abdulkadir Selvi, after the April 24 attack Ankara asked the United States to send its Incirlik-based A-10 Warthogs to hit the IS positions firing at Kilis. The old Warthogs, still the most favored air-to-ground attackers, destroyed the IS targets.

Stung by unusually heavy media questioning and angry public reactions to what is seen as a feeble military response by a major military force to a group of militiamen, Turkish military sources said that in the past 3 months, they have fired 5,330 artillery rounds at IS positions. Sources claimed the rounds killed 370 IS militants.

Nevertheless, these responses are not sufficient for Turkey, which is just beginning to cope with the Katyusha threat. Katyusha calibers range from 107 mm to 122 mm. The rockets, developed by the Soviet Union during World War II, are still widely used because they are cheap, easy to use and have long ranges.

According to Arda Mevlutoglu, a military technology consultant, there are several reasons why terror organizations prefer Katyusha rockets to conventional artillery: The rockets can be assembled, mounted on trucks and fired quickly, saturating an area with fire and disappearing before the enemy hits back. These Katyushas are easier and cheaper to manufacture and use. Many organizations such as IS and Hezbollah manufacture them in their own workshops, Mevlutoglu said.

He added that it is expensive and difficult to defend against the weapons.

Katyushas do not offer enough time for the enemy to retaliate quickly because they can be fired from short distances without detection," he said. Civilian-type pickups and trucks carrying Katyusha launchers are quick to change locations after firing and conceal themselves much better than military-type transport. An effective counterattack is not easy.

This is why Patriots and similar air defense systems developed for use against classic ballistic missile threats are not effective against Katyushas. Israel has been working on systems to counter the rockets; its Iron Dome is one example. There is also work going on to adapt high-energy laser systems to shoot down Katyushas in flight. But a former United Nations official who has observed Katyushas in action for years from Lebanon to Israel says no system has been developed yet that can shoot down the 40 rockets that can be fired simultaneously from a single truck-mounted launcher.

For Mevlutoglu, the most effective way of preventing Katyusha attacks is a strong reconnaissance-surveillance and intelligence system to detect and destroy them before they are fired.

These attacks are dragging Turkey inside Syria. The Turkish army has moved its own multiple rocket launchers to the Kilis area, while sources in the government are increasingly referring to the option of carving out a 30-kilometer zone south of Kilis that would be secured by the Turkish army to put an end to Katyusha attacks. This would require immense efforts by Turkeys national intelligence service MIT to persuade its Syrian allies and US officials. Another option that is much discussed is to reinforce the Turkish 155 mm howitzers with the US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). Some observers expect that in coming months HIMARS batteries with a range of 90 kilometers (56 miles) will be deployed on the Turkish border.

Rockets that used to land in empty fields around Kilis are now hitting the town's center. In the April 24 attack, one rocket hit about 100 yards from the governors office, striking a mosque in the town's center and indicating increasing accuracy. Intelligence reports reaching Ankara say IS is aware of Turkey's reluctance to use its air force over Syria because of potential Russian payback for one of its jets that Turkey downed in November. That is why IS mounts its launchers on pickup trucks, moves about freely, fires and immediately disappears before Turkish artillery can pinpoint them.

Meanwhile, there are discussions on how to prevent the Katyusha attacks from the air. Ismail Demir, undersecretary for the defense industry, says the most effective measure against Katyushas is to deploy armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to monitor the area, detect the threat and react immediately. That, of course, means Turkey urgently needs its own armed UAVs.

There are reports in Ankara that Turkey has asked the United States to beef up its air defense of Kilis. If the United States agrees, then we are likely to see the four Predator UAVs armed with Hellfire missiles that are currently stationed at Incirlik Air Base in action against IS targets.

There are also unconfirmed but persistent rumors in Ankara that Turkey may get Russia's blessing to fly over Syria.

If the situation continues, Turkey may ask NATO to implement its collective defense policy, which states that an attack against one NATO member constitutes an attack on all members.

Turkey, which has been a member of NATO since 1952, is under deliberate armed attack from outside of its borders, which unequivocally calls for invoking the Article 5 commitments of its allies," said Mustafa Kibaroglu, chairman of the international relations department at MEF University in Istanbul.

Should IS continue to fire rockets from within Syria targeting Turkish towns and killing Turkish citizens, it will be extremely difficult for the government to stand still and simply watch the situation, as public discontent will grow excessively and that may force the authorities to take unilateral action and launch a military operation into Syrian territory  which may very well result in a confrontation with Russian units, Kibaroglu said.

For such a risky scenario not to become a reality, NATO must take swift action by, first of all, deploying proper air-defense systems in Turkey again and then launching air raids, if and when necessary, to destroy highly mobile IS rocket launch pads. I think that despite some rhetorical statements to the contrary, Russians cannot dare to confront NATO assets whose targets will be clearly IS. If NATO cannot deliver even this much under these circumstances, how can one convince Turks that the assurances provided by the alliance to its members can be trusted against much bigger threats on the horizon?

In the coming days, what happens at Kilis and how the town and its people are defended will be a test for the Turkish government and its armed forces in appeasing the nation, and will measure the sincerity of the United States and NATO toward Turkey.
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Dining Out For Life takes place on Thursday, April 28, 2016, at 37 restaurants in Birmingham, Ala. (Image courtesy of Dining Out For Life)

Thirty-seven Birmingham-area restaurants are teaming up to "make one meal matter" Thursday during the seventh annual Dining Out For Life charity event, which benefits the nonprofit AIDS Alabama.

The participating restaurants will donate a percentage of their breakfast, lunch and/or dinner sales on Thursday, April 28, to raise money for AIDS Alabama's HIV services and prevention programs.

For the second year in a row, one of those restaurants, The J. Clyde at 1312 Cobb Lane in Five Points South, is donating 100 percent of its Thursday dinner sales to AIDS Alabama, which provides housing, transportation and other support for low-income people affected by HIV and AIDS and which works to prevent the spread of HIV through its confidential screening and education services.

The J. Clyde has participated in Dining Out For Life since the one-day event started in Birmingham in 2010.

Another original Dining Out For Life supporter, Silvertron Cafe at 3813 Clairmont Ave. South in Forest Park, will donate 35 percent of its Thursday lunch and dinner, as will Slice Pizza & Brew at 725 29th St. South in the Lakeview district.

"We are so grateful to our partnering restaurants who are generously donating at least 25 percent of their proceeds from at least one meal to our efforts," Caroline Bundy, director of development for AIDS Alabama, said in a media release.

"Though Dining Out for Life takes place in 60 cities in the U.S. and Canada, all the money that is raised here stays here, helping people living with HIV and their families in our community."

Here are the Birmingham-area restaurants participating in Dining Out For Life 2016:

Donating 100%

The J. Clyde, dinner.

Donating 35%

Silvertron Cafe, lunch and dinner.

Slice Pizza & Brew, lunch and dinner.

Donating 25%

5 Point Public House Oyster Bar, lunch and dinner.

Avo, dinner.

Bamboo on 2nd, dinner.

Bistro V, lunch.

Bottega Cafe, lunch and dinner.

Bottle & Bone, lunch.

BYOB, lunch and dinner.

Cantina Tortilla Grill, lunch.

Carrigan's Public House, lunch.

Chez Fonfon, lunch and dinner.

Chez Lulu, lunch and dinner.

Chris Z's, breakfast.

Crestwood Coffee Company, lunch.

DeVinci's Pizza, lunch and dinner.

Dram Whiskey Bar, dinner.

El Barrio Restaurante Y Bar, lunch.

Full Moon Bar-B-Q, Southside, lunch.

Jackson's Bar & Bistro, lunch and dinner.

Little Donkey, lunch.

Little Savannah Restaurant & Bar, dinner.

Melt, lunch and dinner.

Moe's Original Bar B Q, Lakeview, lunch.

Mugshot's Grill and Bar, Inverness, dinner.

Ocean, dinner.

Paramount, lunch.

Rojo, lunch and dinner.

Rogue Tavern, dinner.

Ted's Restaurant, lunch.

Todd English P.U.B., breakfast and lunch.

The Filling Station, lunch.

The Grill at Iron City, lunch and dinner.

Urban Standard, lunch.

Vecchia Pizzeria & Mercato, lunch and dinner.

Vino, dinner.

Dining Out For Life began in Philadelphia in 1991 and has since grown to include more than 60 cities and 3,500-plus restaurants across North America. The one-day event raises about $4 million annually to help pay for care, prevention, education, testing, counseling and other HIV/AIDS services.

Currently, more than 13,000 Alabamians are living with HIV/AIDS, according to AIDS Alabama, and Birmingham ranks 17th in the nation for new HIV infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

To find out more about Dining Out For Life in Birmingham, go here.
PURPLE RAIN, Prince, 1984

"Purple Rain," a 1984 album by Prince and the Revolution, was the soundtrack to a movie with the same name. Both were hugely successful. (Photo courtesy of Everett Collection)

((c)Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection)

Black Jacket Symphony will pay tribute to Prince with a May 15 performance of his "Purple Rain" album at the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham

Tickets are $35-$50 for the 8 p.m. show, on sale now through Ticketmaster.

The tribute ensemble will cover all nine tracks of "Purple Rain" -- including the title track, "When Doves Cry," "Let's Go Crazy" and "I Would Die 4 U" -- during its first set at the theater, 1817 Third Ave. North. The second set will feature a selection of Prince's greatest hits.

Black Jacket Symphony, which is based in Birmingham, has played "Purple Rain" here before, on Dec. 27, 2014, at Iron City and on March 8-9, 2013, at the WorkPlay theater.

This new show was planned to celebrate the life and work of the groundbreaking music star, who died on April 21 at age 57.

"More than an artist, he was a legend ... an icon ... otherworldly," Black Jacket says on its Facebook page. "His music transcended boundaries that nobody knew existed. While he has left this earth, his music will live on forever."

Meanwhile, the Saturn concert venue in Avondale has announced a Prince tribute night on May 14. Admission is free for the 7 p.m. show, which will feature covers of Prince songs performed by area musicians.

"Prince just seemed like one of the timeless untouchables and the whole thing, in fact this whole year of so many great musicians passing away -- big and small, weighs heavy on the concept of overall mortality to me," Saturn's owner, Brian Teasley, said in a Facebook post. "That said, the sheer amount of both musicians and fans in town hitting me up to play their respects has been really astounding, and I really appreciate the community element to all of that. ... It's about folks within the Birmingham music community's love of a legendary musician."
Three people are being held in two different jails in connection with a burglary and chase.

Etowah County Todd Entrekin said Brandi Sprayberry Holliday, 35, of Hokes Bluff; Michael Anthony Sprayberry, 34, and Justin Edward Davis, 24, both of Piedmont, were arrested and charged with one count of third degree burglary and two counts of second degree theft of property.

Investigators believe the three burglarized a residence on Croft Ferry Road East. They apparently entered the house by breaking a glass door with a brick. A laptop computer and handgun were stolen. The laptop has been recovered.

Holliday is currently being held in the Etowah County Detention Center on a $10,000 bond.

Sprayberry and Davis are currently being held in the Cherokee County Detention Center. The two Cherokee County deputies on a brief chase that ended in Etowah County. The stolen laptop was found inside the vehicle they were driving.

Both men will be brought to the Etowah County Detention Center after their release from Cherokee County. They face a $25,000 bond in Etowah County.
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atthew Shane Wester, 38, and Amy Cox, then 18, married shorty after she graduated from Cleveland High School where Wester taught. (Facebook)

Carol Robinson reported Monday that Matthew Wester -- a former teacher who is set to go to trial on a charge that he had sexual contact with a student, whom he later married -- is challenging the constitutionality of the state's law banning school employee sex with students under the age of 19.

Attorneys have filed a challenge to the school employee law and requested dismissal of the charge.

Wester was indicted in 2015 on one count of a school employee having sexual contact with a student under the age of 19. Five months later, Wester married that student, Amy Nicole Cox, who was 18 at the time.

We asked our Facebook community if they believed that Alabama's teacher-student sex law in unconstitutional.

What are your thoughts on the state's teacher-student sex law? Share your thoughts below or on Facebook.
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Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and Rebekah Caldwell Mason, the woman who served as the governor's senior adviser and his long-rumored love interest, are being asked by lawyers in the on-going legal fight for control of Alabama One Credit Union to reveal who or what is funding a private non-profit "dark money" group that paid part of Mason's salary.

Bentley, Mason, and the governor's legal adviser David B. Byrne Jr., however, are fighting the issuance of subpoenas that would require them to turn over documents and provide depositions about Alabama Council for Excellent Government - or ACEGOV - and any discussions the three had about the credit union.

Lawyers who represent former Alabama One Credit Union officers state in court documents that the depositions and documents they seek are necessary to prove that the state's takeover of the credit union "was the result of an agenda of and pressure directly from Gov. Robert Bentley and his top advisors."

As for the ACEGOV documents, the lawyers state in their request for the subpoenas to be issued that Bentley and "Mason, with whom he was engaging in an inappropriate relationship, directed other agencies of state government to attempt to punish persons who these two considered to be opponents of the governor."

"There have been press reports that a party might obtain and audience with the Governor or favorable treatment from him if they made a contribution to his 501(c)(4) 'Dark Money' entity, the Alabama Council for Excellent Government, or ACEGOV," according to the subpoena request. "The Governor and Mason have admitted that she was paid through ACEGOV."

Efforts to reach attorneys for Bentley, Byrne and Mason were unsuccessful Monday.

Bentley, Byrne and Mason, however, in court filings last week denied the allegations they pressured anyone or were involved in the state takeover of the credit union. Attorneys for Bentley and Byrne wrote in their court filing that they seek improper discovery of documents that are unduly burdensome and patently irrelevant."

Bentley, Byrne, and Mason were served notices of intent to serve subpoenas on them earlier this month. Byrne was asked to show up for a deposition at the law office of Turner & Turner P.C. in Tuscaloosa on April 28 and for Bentley to appear for a deposition the next day. Mason was asked to appear April 28 for a deposition.

Because of their opposition, the subpoenas have not been served and a judge must decide whether they can be issued. The judge in the Alabama One Credit Union case, Circuit Judge Charles Malone, however, retired in February and the governor has not yet announced his choice for a replacement among three candidates submitted by a local committee in Tuscaloosa.

"Based on Gov. Bentley's behavior, it would not be surprising if he attempted to delay the process as long as he could if it kept him and his advisors from being forced to respond to questions under oath," Paul Toppins, one of the attorneys for former officers and board members of the credit union stated in an email to Al.com.

"We know that regulatory actions were taken against Alabama One Credit Union based on pressure from the Governor and David Byrne on the then-Administrator of the ACUA, Larry Morgan," Toppins stated. "We want to know more about what instructions were given by Gov. Bentley and David Byrne to Larry Morgan's replacement, Sarah Moore."

Moore was the Chief Financial Officer of Colonial Bank when it failed in 2009 and worked alongside Colonial Bank's Chief Legal Counsel at the time, David Byrne, Toppins wrote. "It seems strange that the Governor appointed as the chief regulator of Alabama credit unions a failed banker who was the CFO of a bank that caused a multi-billion dollar loss to the FDIC unless he also had some other agenda," he stated.

The Alabama Credit Union Administration, the state regulatory agency that took control of Alabama One, and Moore, have also filed objections to the subpoenas.

In its objection the ACUA states that Byrne had provided counsel to that agency during a period of August 2014 to October 2014 and any communications or documents by and between the ACUA, its officers, directors, and employees, and Byrne during that time is also attorney-client privilege and can't be disclosed.

ACUA also objects to the subpoena to Byrne to the extent it seeks to obtain any communications, documents or information that Judge Malone had previously designated in December "Regulatory Materials" that can't be produced.

The notices of intent to serve the subpoenas asked Bentley, Mason and Byrne to produce the following at the depositions:

"Any and all documents, writings, letters, emails, text messages, recordings, photographs, and communications of any nature or description, whether printed, typed, handwritten, digital, or electronic, that in any way record, memorialize, deal with, concern, mention, or involve payments made to the Alabama Council for Excellent Government, or ACEGOV.

Any and all of your appointment calendars, of any nature or description, whether printed, typed, handwritten, digital, or electronic, including any document, writing, letters, emails, text messages, and communications of any nature or description, whether printed typed, handwritten, digital, or electronic, that in anyway record, memorialize, deal with, concern, mention, or involve meetings between contributors to ACEGOV and Gov. Bentley, or Rebekah Mason, or David Byrne, or any other person."

The notices also ask that Bentley, Mason and Byrne produce any documents that relate to any effort by the three to "investigate, punish, retaliate against, or cause harm to any other person who was or is in any way associated with Alabama One Credit Union, including, but not limit to, any officers, employees, or third-party service providers of Alabama One, whether past or present."

The notices also seek any information about current or former members of the Alabama Credit Union Administration, which is the state's credit union regulatory agency.

Bentley, among other arguments, also invokes executive privilege and attorney-client privilege with Byrne. Bentley and Byrne also claim that they have no authority to place a credit union into conservatorship. But even if there was a factual foundation for the issuance of the subpoenas they would still violate a previous order by the judge.

Mason also objected to being issued a subpoena. She states that she had no involvement in the matters being litigated in the Alabama One lawsuit "and the effort to depose her is harassing and abusive," according to Mason's opposition filed by her attorney Bobby Segall.

Bentley told the Associated Press just before his re-election in 2014 that we was forming ACEGov as a channel to funnel left-over campaign money to charitable efforts such as helping foster children and restoring the governor's mansion.

ACEGov was formed as a non-profit 501(c)(4), which is not required to publicly release who donates to it. Because of its non-public nature, ACEGov has been referred to as a dark money group. While the source of the money may be private, it has become public that part of the money spent by ACEGov went to help pay Mason's salary.

The former head of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, on the day he was fired last month, said that Bentley and Mason had an affair. Sexually-charged audio recordings between Bentley, and purportedly Mason, were also released around that same time. Bentley and Mason have both denied a physical relationship but Bentley has apologized for explicit comments he made to Mason.

Former Alabama One officers and board members filed the lawsuit Sept. 8, 2015 asking the judge to stop the state from continuing the conservatorship by the Alabama Credit Union Administration and to reinstate the board of directors and officers and return possession and control of the credit union to board.

"Given the strength of the credit union, conservatorship did not come about as a result of Alabama One's financial condition or operations, which remain strong and are getting stronger," according to the lawsuit filed by the former credit union board and its officers.

"Rather, the conservatorship imposed on Alabama One is the culmination of the efforts of a few plaintiff's attorneys and politicians to impose their will on the Credit Union," the lawsuit claims. "It is, unfortunately, a power play and a rush to judgment, not an act which will serve the members of Alabama One."
A Limestone County man has been arrested and charged with enticing a child for sexual purposes, Sheriff Mike Blakely said.

Patrick Allen Kelley, 22, of McCormack Lane in Athens, was charged in the incident that took place in May 2015 in Limestone County, Blakely said in an announcement.

According to Blakely, Kelley lured a 3-year-old into a bathroom and asked the child to perform oral sex on him. Kelley is free on $5,000 bond.

Further allegations against Kelley are still under investigation, Blakely said.
A man injured over the weekend in a fire at the Albertville gas station where he worked has died.

Mayank Patel, 28, died Tuesday in the burn unit at UAB Hospital in Birmingham, confirmed Stephen Holmes, a spokesman for the Alabama State Fire Marshal's Office. Patel was airlifted to the hospital Sunday after suffering second- and third-degree burns in the blaze.

The fire broke out just before noon at the Citgo located at 1736 Highway 67 North. Patel, who was working inside the building when the fire began, was found near the doorway into the store.

Holmes said the cause of the fire remains under investigation.
On April 26, 1986, one of the four reactors of the Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded as a result of what was meant to be a routine systems test. The explosion and the fire that continued for 10 days afterwards discharged a large amount of radioactive substances into the atmosphere, dramatically increasing the level of radiation in the local area. The quantity of radioactive isotopes released into the atmosphere was 300 times greater than Hiroshima; in some places, the level of radiation was almost 77,000 times higher than the average background norm and 40 times the maximum permissible.

Over 100 radioactive elements released during the explosion contaminated substantial amounts of soil and waterways in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Many other neighbouring countries  Austria, Finland, Germany, Norway, Romania and Sweden  suffered radioactive contamination as well. The fallout from Chernobyl reached as far as Canada and the United States.

To this day, there is no agreement on the scale of human suffering and loss. Official data projected only 4,000 deaths related to the explosion, including the immediate radiation burn injuries and the deaths of over 30 plant workers and firemen. Alternative studies find that the death toll is likely to be over 200,000 for the population of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, and up to 6 million people globally.

Such a discrepancy reveals how politicised this topic remains even decades after the explosion. One of the worst nuclear accidents in history and one of only two level seven events on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale had a profound political and social impact which lasts until today.

Political after-effects

It was claimed that life was divided into before and after Chernobyl. Ulrich Beck, followed by many others, described Chernobyl as an anthropological shock. The name of a small town in Ukraine that gave its name to a nearby nuclear power plant became a globally recognised symbol and a significant element of political transformations.

My experience as a volunteer in the Chernobyl-effected territories in Ukraine helped me understand that remembering Chernobyl is not only a commemoration of the immediate victims of the disaster but also a recognition of the experience of the hundreds of thousands that this event has displaced, condemning them to the life of refugees in their own country.

Along with other risks and disasters of recent decades, Chernobyl contributed to the re-arrangement of relationships between the state, communities and individuals in affected countries and beyond. Citizens around the world were demanding of their states to take responsibility for the ecological safety of their populations, to restrict and control health damaging industries and to bring environmental issues into the centre of political debates and actions. Mass protests against nuclear programmes took place in Italy, Germany, Hungary and many other countries.

The most profound political changes occurred in such post-Soviet countries as Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Armenia and Russia and eventually in the USSR itself. The environmental field of Chernobyl provided a safe, non-political umbrella for citizens mobilisation and encompassed all sorts of political projects, including nation-building ones. The latter created an important platform for political alternatives to the Soviet Union.

Anti-nuclear activism spread across Russia, Lithuania and Ukraine. Public reaction was so fierce that the Soviet authorities had to abandon construction of nuclear plants near the Black Sea. The same happened in Belarus with the plan to build a Belarusian power plant. The Chernobyl disaster was formative for one of the first national parties in Belarus  Belarusian Popular Front  and is still kept on the partys political agenda. The Belarusian Popular Front initiated the Chernobyl Way Rally in 1989, and it remains one of the largest annual opposition events in Belarus.

Social after-effects

My experience as a volunteer in the Chernobyl-effected territories in Ukraine  and further research  helped me understand that remembering Chernobyl is not only a commemoration of the immediate victims of the disaster but also a recognition of the experience of the hundreds of thousands that this event has displaced, condemning them to a life of refugees in their own country.

The level of radioactive contamination caused the evacuation of 135,000 people residing in nearly 100 towns and villages within 30km of the reactor soon after the explosion and the resettlement of over 335,000 people later. The effected areas were overwhelmingly rural with tight social connections and a strong attachment to the land.

Leaving their homes, pets, family graves and belongings accumulated over generations was a personal tragedy for many of those resettled. This refugee experience was reminiscent of how World War II devastated these areas a little over 40 years prior to Chernobyl. Compulsory relocation to new and often unfamiliar areas broke previous support networks, while some received rather alienating reception from non-affected populations.

If refugees received a warm and supportive welcome from the population in the days after the disaster, it changed as information about the danger of radiation spread, spiced with rumours and fears of unknown and invisible threats that can come from contact with contaminated objects.

The relationship between affected and non-affected groups grew even colder as welfare benefits were introduced for the effected groups; changing laws about the status of the survivors complicated the relationship within some effected communities. Survivors often had to face integration problems usual for refugees, including social isolation, fear, homesickness, breakdown of their familiar lifestyle, cultural clashes (in this case often between rural and urban cultures) and the discourse of welfare dependency.

Those who were given the option to remain in their homes faced and continue to face unemployment and poverty. The collapse of the USSR and following economic decline, as well as the withdrawal of all Union Chernobyl funds, adversely affected overall quality of life and the subsequent management of the disasters after-effects.

Monetary income in these areas, as in many other rural regions, is low and there are not many employment opportunities outside agriculture. Labelling goods as Produced in Chernobyl, even if they formally meet the safety standards, does not help any industry, especially agriculture. Protective legislation in Ukraine provides welfare support but the accompanying ban on new buildings in the area does not help to create jobs. Belarus took a somewhat different approach by reducing welfare support and declaring some affected land recovered and fully suitable for agriculture. Whether these areas are truly safe is not often discussed in public.

Today Chernobyl continues to have social, economic, and cultural impacts on many communities and these effects are likely to last beyond the upcoming 30th anniversary. With Ukraine facing serious political problems, Belarus building its own nuclear plant despite citizens protests, Russia being one of the largest producers of nuclear energy, we are yet to see how these countries are going to respond to the broad social, economic and political challenges prompted by Chernobyl over the last 28 years.

Evgenia Ivanova is the editor-in-chief of a new Russian-language feminist journal Women in Politics. She is a doctoral student in Political Theory at the University of Oxford.
A peace agreement in Yemen will be impossible without an innovative form of inclusive local power sharing.

Professor in Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at Qatar Foundations Hamad Bin Khalifa University and an Honorary Professor of the University of York

After a year of the Saudi-led coalitions war in Yemen, parties to the conflict have been meeting in Kuwait this week, in the latest effort to resolve the conflict. Despite sporadic violations, a fragile truce brokered by United Nations envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed that went into effect on April 10 seems to be holding.

This is good news for Yemenis and the region, as it seems there is a growing appreciation that maintaining violence as the means to achieve political goals in Yemen is simply not feasible.

Despite the lack of progress, the fact that talks are taking place outside Riyadh is in itself a positive compromise and an important step by the Saudis. For the talks to be effective, Saudi Arabia needs to revisit its overall strategy now that its year-long military campaign has not solved Yemens protracted crisis.





Furthermore, to improve upon the failed ceasefires of July and December 2015, the delegations should consider the following factors, which may provide a degree of common ground on which to build a lasting peace in Yemen.

Mutually hurting stalemate

First, the conflict has become a mutually hurting stalemate. Yemen is facing a humanitarian catastrophe that will haunt the region for years to come.

In addition to the 6,000 people killed and 30,000 wounded, more than 2.5 million people remain internally displaced and 14.4 million are affected by food insecurity, with many of the countrys governorates on the verge of famine.

ALSO READ: Yemen: Is a political deal on the horizon?

Most Yemenis lack access to clean water and proper sanitation. Meanwhile, with the military campaign costing an estimated $200 million a day, the coalition supportingPresident Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi against the Houthis will find it increasingly difficult to afford as a result of the falling price of oil.

Furthermore, having announced its developmental Vision 2030, it is in Saudi Arabias interest to put an end to its war in Yemen as soon as possible.

Mistakenly viewed by many observers as a two-sided conflict between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebels, Yemen's war is actually a multifaceted predicament... by

Second, it will be almost impossible to advance a peace agreement in Yemen without an innovative form of inclusive local power sharing that addresses the concerns of all parties.

Mistakenly viewed by many observers as a two-sided conflict between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebels, Yemens war is actually a multifaceted predicament involving a volatile combination of local, regional, and international actors, all of them armed and having major and competing interests in the countrys future.

The political transition process set out by the Gulf Cooperation Ccouncil back in 2011 failed to incorporate key sections of Yemeni society into the decision-making process, such as the southern separatist Hirak movement, the Houthis, and Yemeni youth and women.

As a result, Hadis transitional government was increasingly viewed as illegitimate and unrepresentative of the demands and concerns of the Yemeni people.

Power-sharing agreement

Constructing a truly all-inclusive decision-making process to pick up where the National Dialogue Conference left off will be key to reaching any power-sharing agreement.

Relatedly, the Houthis continue to harbour grievances against the Hadi government. They associate Hadi with the corrupt Saleh regime that exacerbated political problems in Yemen for decades. They protested the exclusive way in which he oversaw Yemens transition process, leading to unilateral decisions on major national issues and the drafting and implementation of a new constitution.

It seems that the Saudis too, do not have full confidence in Hadi and his cabinet. According to a private conversation with a senior member of Hadis government, the Saudis have yet to approve his proposed operational budget for governing in Aden and elsewhere.

As a compromise, the Saudis should consider working with the Houthis in order to reach an understanding on how to cease hostilities and resolve political disagreements with an open mind as to who should be in the leading seat. This may be another point of convergence that is rising fast.

Fourth, the six-region federalism plan endorsed by Hadi must be re-examined and evaluated more thoroughly if an effective power-sharing agreement is to be reached. Without proper consensus from factions such as Hirak and the Houthis, these divisions will put at risk any prospect of lasting peace in Yemen.

One of the major concerns is that federalism may exacerbate calls for secession in the future.

ALSO READ: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Great Game in Yemen

Among Hirak supporters, certain factions say they will accept nothing less than complete secession of the South, while others have hailed the six-federation outline as a step towards possible secession in the near future.

Access to sea

Apprehension over access to the sea and possession of natural resources has dominated debates over the regional boundaries. Ironically, this is an issue that may unite Houthis and Southern Yemenis as they both reject the federal system as currently structured.

Finally, Yemens war has already strengthened the presence of al-Qaeda and other extremist groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). Today, al-Qaeda controls large swaths of territory and has penetrated the very structure of the Yemeni state, becoming a recognised partner in raising taxes locally, allocating central expenditures, and paying local salaries.

Since the enemies of al-Qaeda and ISIL  the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition  are busy fighting each other, extremist organisations can now operate with impunity. It is in the interest of all parties heading to Kuwait to ensure that this situation does not continue.

The peace talks in Kuwait will provide the Saudis with an opportunity to present a strategy for ceasing hostilities in Yemen without necessarily sacrificing their political goals.

Yemen and its people deserve to have their humanitarian issues improved and find a peace settlement that encourages the formation of an inclusive political system.

Failure to do so would perpetuate moral insolvency on the part of the Saudis and their coalition partners, threaten to further destabilise Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula, and enable al-Qaeda and ISIL to continue to flourish.

Sultan Barakat is professor at the University of York and director of research at the Brookings Doha Center. He is a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Yemen could have been spared all this misery if armed groups werent blinded by their greed and ego.

I was heading to the Yemeni peace talks in Kuwait last week when I received a message from a young lady that read: Please dont come back without peace.

Later, this demand became a trend on social media that Yemenis launched to demonstrate their need to end the war. It is about time that we Yemenis realised how much we have lost in this terrible war. People have been suffering in silence for more than a year now; some lost their lives, some lost their homes, some lost their prospects, but they didnt lose hope.





For hope, good faith and strong will is what brought us here. It is about time that we, Yemenis, realise how much we have lost and will lose if this war continues.

In a little over a year, this war has managed to unravel a massive humanitarian catastrophe. It killed thousands of people and forced roughly 1.5 million people to flee their homes and embark on a journey of misery and despair.

The vulnerable groups are the ones paying the heaviest price; women and children. Damages to infrastructure, water supply systems, health facilities, electricity and schools are beyond recognition and beyond any common sense.

A golden opportunity

The peace talks that commenced this week in Kuwait offer a golden opportunity for all parties to end the peoples struggle and end the cirsis. This could be achieved by the return to the agreed mechanisms: the Gulf Cooperation Council initiative, the National Dialogue outcomes and the UN Security Council Resolution 2216 (2015).

READ MORE: US-GCC summit  Whats next?

All of which have provided the guiding principles for the Yemeni transition and the restoration of a functioning state.

The peace talks that commenced this week in Kuwait offer a golden opportunity for all parties to end the people's struggle and end the crisis. by

The Security Council Resolution laid out the plan for the new solution, namely an end to the use of violence, withdrawal of Houthi forces from all areas they have seized, including the capital Sanaa, relinquishing all arms seized from military and security institutions, including missile systems, halting all actions that are exclusively within the authority of the legitimate government of Yemen and the safe release of all political prisoners, and all individuals under house arrest or arbitrarily detained.

Before the coup that spiralled into a full-fledged war and triggered the regional intervention, Yemenis had come very close to successfully completing the political transition.

The constitution drafting process had completed its first phase by submitting a draft constitution to the national body which was supposed to convene and revise it.

The draft constitution was exclusively based on the National Dialogue outcomes. It included progressive texts on rights and freedoms and ground-breaking provisions for the reinforcement of democracy and good governance.

Indeed, it was a true victory for all the advocates of human rights and participatory and engaging government. The draft empowered women and the youth and set out guarantees to bring the government closer to the people through the federal system.

But this came to the dissatisfaction of certain parties that sought not to maintain the status quo, but to drag Yemen backwards and throw it in the abyss instead of fulfilling the peoples aspirations for change.

Force and intimidation

The Houthi movement was engaged in all the political processes since 2011 although it is not a formal party. Indeed, it had endorsed the outcomes like everyone else. But all of a sudden, it decided that an inclusive government was not its thing and a peaceful approach was not the means.

So it stormed the capital and forced the president to once again opt for peace and sign an agreement that gave Houthis a share in government and state institutions.

READ MORE: Yemen  is a political deal on the horizon?

They didnt stop there and they continued to march south and west, conquering one province at a time until they swallowed half the country by force and intimidation.

Looking back at the choices the government of Yemen was forced to make to address this enormous predicament, it seems that it was left with no option but to act. The decision was to stop a bloodthirsty militia from undermining the state and suppressing rights and freedoms.

The decision was to prevent Yemen from sliding back half a century in time just to please a group that thought it had a divine right to rule. This is a group that had no problem blowing up homes, shelling heavily populated areas, kidnapping people, shutting down the media and putting cities under siege.

Nevertheless, the government continued to show willingness to engage in peaceful solutions. It sent high-level delegations to Switzerland in June 2015 and then again in December 2015. It was agreed that a number of confidence-building measures will be applied to pave the way for future talks.

These measures included the release of prisoners, the end of siege and the implementation of a ceasefire. Weeks and months went by and the Houthis/Saleh loyalists showed no sign of positivity.

Today, the Yemeni government goes to another round of dialogue without any true guarantees regarding the Houthis/Saleh positions. It goes armed with only good intentions and determination to end the peoples sufferings.

Many things have changed since the last round, including major developments on the ground in favour of the government, beside the successful military campaign against AQAP (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) in Lahj, Abyan and Al Mukalla.

There have been notable understandings on the borders between the Houthis and the Saudis that may mark the beginning of a series of other understandings.

The government is the Yemeni people's tool to achieve what they want. by

An elusive peace

What does the government want? The government is the Yemeni peoples tool to achieve what they want. It is the end of war, the safety and stability, the respect for human rights and the implementation of the National Dialogue outcomes.

We cant afford to let the people down once again. But we cant also afford to trick them with an elusive peace or an unfair settlement. For that, we need guarantees that whatever is agreed in Kuwait will be implemented fully and comprehensively.

We also need to reach a comprehensive negotiated agreement on a number of issues, listed in the UNSCR 2216, in the correct sequence so as to prevent the process from collapsing because of delays or poorly planned transition.

If these peace talks ended with an agreement on a future plan, Yemenis will still have much work to do. Internally, the Yemeni communities will need to learn how to forgive and move forward.

The damage to the social fabric has been unprecedented, so the healing process will take time and we hope it wont consume Yemenis and frustrate them even more. There is, of course, the reconstruction and recovery processes that will require the support of our friends in the international community.

With hindsight, Yemen could have been spared all this misery if armed groups werent blinded by their greed and ego. Yemen is a beautiful country that deserves a strong, responsive and inclusive government  and that is what we will always work for.

Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak is Yemens ambassador to Washington DC. He is also the secretary general of the National Dialogue Conference on Yemen.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
President Pierre Nkurunziza says killing of top general was shameful and that attackers will be hunted down.

Burundis President Pierre Nkurunziza has condemned the killing of a senior army officer in the capital Bujumbura as violence that began a year ago appeared to intensify.

Brigadier General Athanase Kararuza, who was also a military adviser in the office of the vice president, was shot along with his wife and bodyguard on Monday in an attack that wounded their child.

The generals car came under rocket and gunfire as he was on his way to drop his child at school, army spokesman Gaspard Baratuza told the Reuters news agency.

IN PICTURES: A year of turmoil

He energetically fought against the coup plotters last year and contributed exceptionally in strengthening peace and security during and after elections, Nkurunziza said in a statement.

We humbly pray that with the help of God perpetrators of the shameful acts are arrested and quickly punished according to the law.

Kararuza previously worked as a deputy commander of an international peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic.

Tit-for-tat attacks between Nkurunzizas security forces and his opponents have escalated since April 2015 when he announced plans to change the consititution to allow him to run for a third term as president.

He went on to win re-election three months later in a poll fiercely disputed by the opposition.

The UN says that more than 400 people have been killed and more than 250,000 have fled since the violence broke out.

READ MORE: ICC to investigate Burundi political violence

Also on Monday, the International Criminal Court said it would investigate alleged war crimes in the country during the period and that it had received complaints detailing acts of killing, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as cases of enforced disappearances.

Nkurunzizas opponents said his third term bid broke a peace agreement that ended a previous civil war, while the government said a third term was legal, citing a constitutional court ruling.

Three armed groups, including one led by officers that attempted a coup in May 2015, have launched rebellions against the government.
Iraqis reflect on how the US invasion and occupation changed their lives for ever.

As Iraq marks 13 years since the US invasion and occupation, the costs of the war continue to accrue, generation after generation.

While Iraqis continue to live with the legacies of the war, this is not the Iraq that so many of its people once knew. Here, Iraqis reflect on the indelible marks this conflict has left on their lives.

I do not know what my daughter looks like now



Shaimaa, 46, could not hold back tears as she recounted how her life changed after the United States-led occupation of Iraq in 2003. She lost many loved ones and has not seen her daughter for years.

Shaimaa, who currently lives in Erbil, met her husband, Ismail, in 1998. Within a few months, they were married. Our life was simple, but we were happy, she recalls. Not in my worst nightmares could I have imagined that everything would change within a few years.

My husband was a good man before the war, but the militia changed him. He became a cruel husband. He took my child away, and he wouldnt let me see her.

Shortly after the US invasion of Iraq, Ismail, a Shia Muslim, decided to join a militia. At first, he kept it a secret, but one day he came back home wearing a uniform.

Shaimaa could do nothing to convince him to defect. My daughter, Yasmine, was three at the time. It was hard for me to see Ismail become a fighter, but I had to accept that fact; I could not leave him, she said.

The couple went through three turbulent years of family disputes. In 2006, events took a dramatic turn for Shaimaa when her brother, Mustafa, was abducted. Three days later, he was found dead on a deserted road in Baghdad.

We could barely recognise him. His body was [swollen], with holes in it. It was obvious that he was tortured, then killed, she said. Shaimaa mourned the loss of her younger brother for days on end. They were very close.

At the time, Iraq was hit by a wave of sectarian violence in which thousands of people were killed.

Barely three weeks after her brothers death, Ismael told her that her brother deserved no mercy. Torturing and killing him was meant to set an example for all Iraqis who oppose the government, he said.

I realised then that my husband had something to do with the murder of Mustafa, Shaimaa said, noting the realisation led her to have a nervous breakdown. I was locked [by my husband] in a room with neither food nor water for days, but the worst part was when Ismael took Yasmine, who was six at the time, to live with his mother and father.

Shaimaa begged her husband to bring Yasmine back home. I promised to say nothing about what he did. He threatened to take Yasmine away from me. I couldnt leave her. In 2008, Ismael ended the marriage and forced Shaimaa out of the house, but kept their daughter.

Shaimaa said the lives of many Iraqis changed greatly after the invasion, before which little attention was paid to who was Sunni and who was Shia, and mixed marriages among Sunni and Shia Muslims were common.

My husband was a good man before the war, but the militia changed him, she said. He became a cruel husband. He took my child away, and he wouldnt let me see her.

It has been eight years since Shaimaa last saw her daughter. I dont even have a picture of her. I dont know what she looks like now. She is 16 years old.

At times, Shaimaa imagines talking to Yasmine: I have missed your childhood; I was not there for you when you needed me most. I have tried to see you and I will keep trying, and if we meet again, I hope that you will forgive me.
Soldiers shot and killed in fire from Azerbaijan early on Tuesday, Nagorno-Karabakh defence ministry says.

Two soldiers from the Armenian-backed Nagorno-Karabakh were killed by gunfire from Azerbaijan in the early hours of Tuesday, the defence ministry of the breakaway region said.

There was no immediate response from Azerbaijani authorities.

An earlier bout of violence erupted earlier this month  the worst since a war that ended in 1994, leaving the region under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military.
Fifteen bodies of alleged Palestinian attackers have been stuck in limbo, preventing their families from grieving.

Jerusalem  We have always demanded the release of Palestinian political prisoners; it is hard to imagine that we are now forced to demand the release of Palestinian corpses too, muttered Khaled Manasra, the father of Hassan Manasra, whose body has been withheld by Israel since last October.

Hassan, a 15-year-old tenth grader from the neighbourhood of Beit Hanina in occupied East Jerusalem, was killed by Israeli police after allegedly trying to stab Israeli teenagers along with his cousin, Ahmed Manasra. While Ahmed languishes behind bars after enduring severe interrogation, Hassans body sits in an Israeli morgue.

Im not even calling for investigation into my sons killing. All Im asking for is the right to bury my son in peace, without restrictions, Khaled told Al Jazeera. If Israeli courts were indeed concerned with achieving justice, they would have ordered the release of my sons body immediately.

INTERACTIVE: Building the occupation

To quell the unrest engulfing Jerusalem and much of the occupied West Bank last October, the Israeli security cabinet approved a series of repressive measures, including punitive home demolitions of families of suspected Palestinian assailants and the withholding of their bodies.

The decision revived a decades-long Israeli policy, unofficially halted in 2004, of withholding bodies of suspected Palestinian attackers. The Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center said that in recent decades, at least 268 Palestinian combatants had been buried in so-called cemeteries of numbers, designated by Israel as closed military zones. The Palestinians buried there are identified by numbers etched on metal plates.

When Israel withholds the body of a slain Palestinian, it kind of kills him twice, Salwa Hammad, coordinator of the Palestinian National Campaign to Retrieve Martyrs Bodies, told Al Jazeera. It is impossible to overestimate the psychological impact this [has] on the families, who are deprived of bidding their loved ones a final goodbye.

Last November, Israeli defence minister Moshe Yaalon denied that the purpose of withholding bodies was to punish families, and promised the bodies would be released if families met certain conditions, including to hold modest and private funerals, with a limited number of attendees and ceremonies held late at night, ostensibly to deter protests and clashes.

Since October, Israel has withheld more than 85 Palestinian bodies, Hammad said, but most have been gradually released amid mass protests. Fifteen bodies remain in Israeli morgues, including 11 belonging to youths who hold Jerusalem residency. Palestinian human rights groups Addameer and Adalah have issued a petition challenging the legality of Israels policy in this regard.

Withholding the bodies constitutes a flagrant violation of international law, but Israel legitimises it under the guise of security, Mohammad Mahmoud, a lawyer with Addameer, told Al Jazeera.

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly ordered his defence minister not to release the bodies until further notice. A hearing to discuss the petition from Addameer and Adalah was held at Israels high court last week, but the verdict was postponed until after the Passover holidays. The delay has done little to comfort Palestinian families or alleviate their suffering.

I am still waiting to kiss him for one last time, to tell him how much we all miss him, to give him warmth. by Hanan Abu Kharroub, mother of slain Palestinian man

I am still waiting to kiss him for one last time, to tell him how much we all miss him, to give him warmth, Hanan Abu Kharroub, the mother of Abdel Malik Abu Kharroub, told Al Jazeera.

Abdel Malik, a resident of Kufr Aqab who worked as a plumber and was eventually planning to study law, was killed on March 9 after allegedly shooting an Israeli soldier in Jerusalems Old City.

READ MORE: Portraits of Palestinian knife attackers

Meanwhile, lawyer and father Mohammed Allyan, 61, says he never counted on the Israeli courts to bring justice.

We submitted the petition not out of faith in the Israeli legal system, but because we wanted to draw greater attention to the case of withheld bodies, Allyan told Al Jazeera.

Allyans own son, Bahaa, was killed on October 13, 2015, shot dead by Israeli police after an alleged stabbing and shooting attack on a bus in a Jewish settlement built on the lands of Jabal Mukaber in occupied East Jerusalem. Bahaas body had been withheld ever since.

A graphic designer and local Scout leader, Bahaa was strongly involved in community organising, promoting cultural activities and reinforcing Palestinian identity. Israeli occupation forces demolished the Allyans home at the start of this year in retaliation for Bahaas alleged attack.

Despite his desperate need to bury his son, Mohammed has rejected the conditions imposed by the Israeli intelligence agency, the Shin Bet.

I will not agree to limiting the number of participants in his funeral. I want to bury him in broad daylight, and I want to conduct an autopsy on his body, Mohammed said, lamenting the lack of support from the Palestinian Authority, whom he believes has largely ignored the plight of these families.

The case of withheld bodies is not the private battle of their families, Mohammed said. We need the support of all sectors of the Palestinian society to remain steadfast.
Tit-for-tat attacks between Syria government and rebels increase as hopes of lasting ceasefire fade.

At least 35 people, including eight children and five rescue workers have been killed in the Syrian city of Aleppo and its outskirts in attacks carried out by the government forces and the rebels, a monitoring group said.

The rebel shelling killed at least 19 people and the government air strikes killed at least 11 on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Five civil defence workers  known as White Helmets  were also killed by the air strikes and a rocket attack on their centre in a separate incident in the rebel-held town of Atarib, on the outskirts of Aleppo.

The observatory and civil defence officials said the attack appeared to have deliberately targeted them.



Exclusive: Inside the world of Syrias life-savers

The targeting was very precise, Radi Saad, a civil defence worker, told the Reuters news agency.

They were in the centre and ready to respond. When they heard warplanes in the area they did not think they would be the target.

Two people were also seriously wounded and ambulances and cars belonging to doctors were destroyed, another civil defence member, Ahmad Sheikho, said.

It was unclear whether Syrian or Russian warplanes had launched the raids. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.

It is a messy situation, Zouhir Al Shimale, a journalist, told Al Jazeera by telephone from Aleppo.

From 8am, the aircraft were flying low and the sounds were very loud. They were flying over the [rebel-held area] in Aleppo. There is a feeling among most people that they should stay inside their houses right now.

Several shops and businesses were closed on both sides of the city on Monday and Tuesday, while schools were closed in the rebel-held part of the city, al-Shimale said.

The schools were closed  so that they could not be targeted by air strikes.

READ MORE: Here is what school is like in Syrias Aleppo

The strikes came one day after rebel shelling killed at least 19 civilians and injured 120 in attacks on government-held parts of the city, the observatory and local activists said.

On Monday, the observatory said that at least 60 people were killed between Friday and Sunday in tit-for-tat attacks between government forces and opposition groups in Aleppo.

The Syrian civil war started as a largely unarmed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, but quickly developed into a full-on armed conflict.

United Nations special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, estimated last week that more than 400,000 Syrians had been killed, though he said that number was not an official UN statistic.

The opposition cited the dire humanitarian situation and ongoing Syrian army attacks when it walked out of negotiations in Geneva last week, saying it needed a pause. The future of Assad also proved a major sticking point.

READ MORE: Inside Aleppos fight for water and electricity

The already shaky ceasefire between the government and some rebels has given way to renewed violence across the country, as government forces carried out air strikes in the Damascus countryside, Homs and other areas.

US President Barack Obama said on Monday that he planned to send 250 more troops to Syria, a sharp increase in the number of Americans working with local Syrian forces.
The Abu Sayyaf armed group killed one of four hostages after a ransom deadline expired on Monday.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the killing of a Canadian hostage by the Abu Sayyaf armed group in the Philippines, calling it an act of cold-blooded murder.

Trudeau made the remarks on Monday after the severed head of 68-year-old John Ridsdel was found dumped in a plastic bag on a remote island.

Ridsdels remains were found five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by the group, who had threatened to execute one of four captives, according to the army.



Philippines army steps up offensive against rebels

Ridsdel, 68, a former mining executive, was snatched by Abu Sayyaf along with three other people in September 2015 while on holiday.

Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers and this unnecessary death. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage, Trudeau said.

The government of Canada is committed to working with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act.

Trudeau did not respond when asked whether the Canadian government had tried to negotiate with the captors or pay a ransom, or whether it was trying to secure the release of another Canadian being held, Robert Hall.

READ MORE: Philippines celebrates 30th anniversary of revolution

Obviously there was talk of money involved, but not by the government of Canada or by the government of Norway, but certainly by the families attempting to do what they could to free the four, Bob Rae, a former federal politician and longtime Ridsdel friend, told Canadian television.

But its been an awful process, just horrendous.

In a statement, Ridsdels family said they were devastated that his life had been cut tragically short by this senseless act of violence despite us doing everything within our power to bring him home.

Ridsdel, Hall and the other captives, a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman, had appealed in a March video for their families and governments to secure their release.

Residents found the head in the centre of Jolo town. An army spokesman said two men on a motorcycle were seen dropping a plastic bag containing it.

The army said the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf had threatened to behead one of the captives if a 300m-peso ($6.4m) ransom for each of them was not paid by 3pm local time.

The initial demand was one billion pesos each for the detainees, who were taken hostage at an upscale resort on Samal Island on September 21.

READ MORE: Abu Sayyaf frees ex-Italian priest in the Philippines

Ridsdels former employer described him as gregarious, adventurous and warm.

We are in profound shock, disbelief and sorrow to have lost our former colleague and close friend, Calgary-based mining company TVI Pacific said in a statement.

Abu Sayyaf is a small but highly active group known for beheading, kidnapping, bombing and extortion in the south of the country.

It emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a separatist rebellion by minority Moro Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nations south.

It decapitated a hostage from Malaysia in November last year on the same day that countrys prime minister arrived in Manila for an international summit. Philippine President Benigno Aquino has ordered troops to step up their fight against the group.

Security is precarious in the southern Philippines, despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict.

Abu Sayyaf is also holding other foreigners, including one from the Netherlands, one from Japan, four Malaysians and 14 Indonesian tugboat crew.
From the use of armed drones to social media blackouts, the past year has been one of firsts for warfare.
TheTrio: new names one and all in this neighborhood save for the gentleman who makes the trio a quartet, guitarist. As it turns out, pianist Manasia, a native of Staten Island, has been a mainstay on the New York jazz scene since he returned from Europe in 1997, and Metamorphosis is his sixth recording as leader of his own groups. While bassistand drummerround out the trio, Bernstein appears on every one of the album's half-dozen tracks, so the ensemble really is a quartet masquerading as a trio.That's a good thing, however, as Bernstein lends color and substance to the group as accompanist or soloist. Speaking of the latter, Manasia is no slouch in that department either, displaying his unassuming tastefulness and agility throughout the session. Even though called on less often, Mori and Ruggiero unsheathe splendid chops as well, rewarding Manasia's confidence in them with a number of well-crafted solos. As for the music, it consists of Bernstein's "Metamorphosis,"'s "Wheatleigh Hall," the standard "Nancy with the Laughing Face" and three of Manasia's original compositions ("Witchery," "Over Easy," "Sweet Child"), which together close the album."Nancy" is a highlight, thanks largely to a pleasing tempo that never lags, Bernstein's unerring musicality and a dapper solo by Manasia. "Wheatleigh Hall," a bright swinger that should be heard more often, enfolds more of the same, plus unflagging rhythmic support and an emphatic statement by Ruggiero. "Witchery" slows the pace, albeit most agreeably, as does "Sweet Child," which floats smoothly on the wings of Manasia's lyrical introduction. Between them is the Caribbean-tinged "Over Easy," which gives Bernstein another chance to swing, which he does with adeptness and aplomb. Trio or quartet, Metamorphosis is admirable and easy on the ears, even though marred to some degree by its modest forty-five minute running time.
           2005     ..        




AR's Editor Joe Shea Talks About Elections On Iranian TV Bear Stearns Saved By Fed As Lehman Bros. Falters; Major Bank

Failure Looms Over Wall Street, Sends Markets Into 200-Pt. Dive Lie Upon Lie Five Years Into the Iraq War

The Administration Still Churns Out Lies by Randolph Holhut A Small Tragedy Even at 90, As Friends Turn Cool

She Knows the Show Must Go On by Joyce Marcel I'll Take Me Imagine John Wayne or Arnold

In Heels, Silk and a Girdle by Elizabeth Andrews Sen. Nelson Calls For New Fla. Primary; Gov Crist Backs 'Do-Over' Who'll Win? Ask Spock Spock.com Engine Predicts Winners

By Site Searches; It Can be Wrong by Jay Bhatti Chatting Up The Cat God Gave Me Dominion Over Him

But I Think He's a Non-Believer by Constance Daley Death of a Thug The Life and Horrors of Suharto by Andreas Harsono ___________________________ This Just In Sierra Club: McCain Ducked All 15 Key Votes On Green Laws (AR) A Work By AR's T.S. Kerrigan Is Chosen As 'Best Poem' By Wordpress Site Murder At Mile 63

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AFTER 5 YEARS, WE'RE STILL LIED TO ABOUT IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Next week is the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And it is likely that sometime in the next couple of weeks, the 4,000th American soldier will die in Iraq. [MORE] Momentum

OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - It's 1931, and a 14-year-old girl is standing alone on a stage. She's small and lively with dark curly hair, widespread hazel eyes, slender wrists and an open, eager face filled with the wonder of performing. Her name is Rose, and one day she will be my mother. But now she is performing an Eugene O'Neill monologue called "Before Breakfast" for a ladies' club in a wealthy suburb of Long Island. [MORE] One Woman's World

COMFORTABLE WITH MYSELF by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- I'm not sure but I think I may be socially incorrect. [MORE] On Native Ground

ENOUGH FOR A WAR, NOT FOR A PEOPLE by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Last week, the National Governors Assn. met in Washington, D.C. One of the tasks the NGA had on its agenda was to ask President Bush to increase federal spending on roads, bridges and other public works projects as a way to stimulate the economy. He rejected their pleas out of hand, claiming that infrastructure projects wouldn't offer any short-term economic boost. [MORE] Brasch Words

BEWARE THE SELF-REVERENTIAL PRESS by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Shortly before the primary votes this past week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter called Sen. Barack Obama's surge to the Democratic nomination "inevitable." It also called for Hillary Clinton to "start her campaign for Senate majority leader." [MORE] Constance

A CONVERSATION WITH MY CAT Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- Normally, when the cat starts his evening rant of meowing continuously until he makes his point, I just take it as long as I can, pick him up, and put him in the garage for the night. He doesn't want to go, but the meowing stops and I don't care if he likes it or not. [MORE] Momentum

OUT OF STRUGGLE, ART by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Here we are again at the crossroads of art and social change, having the opportunity to watch good and great films about the lives of women in support of the Women's Crisis Center. [MORE] Campaign 2008

HOW TO PREDICT SUPER TUESDAY II WINNERS? ONLINE SEARCH by Jay Bhatti NEW YORK, March 4, 2008, 7:00PM ET -- With the outcomes of the Texas, Vermont, Ohio and Rhode Island primaries to be decided tonight, how possible is it that online searching can predict who will win tonight's primaries? [MORE] One Woman's World

DON'T VOTE; IT ENCOURAGES THEM by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Call me angry and disgusted but don't call me un-American because I won't be voting come November. [MORE] On Native Ground

BUSH AND THE KEYBOARD COMMANDOS by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- As the days tick down toward the eventual departure of President George W. Bush from the White House, it's a hopeful sign that most Americans are no longer moved by his Administration's constant exploitation of terrorism for political gain. [MORE] Momentum

WHICH AMERICA DO YOU LIVE IN? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- It's a little confusing. [MORE] Make My Dat

THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] On Native Ground

FIDEL RETIRES: NOW THE COLD WAR IS REALLY OVER by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Maybe now, we can finally say the Cold War is over. [MORE] Make My Dat

THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] One Woman's World

POLITICS IS NO PARTY by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Are you having a hard time focusing your eyes? Do you have faint red spots all over your body? Is there a ringing in your ears and do you see wavy lines when you look at your television set? Do your hands shake when you try to hold a cup of coffee? And have you recently been forgetting what day of the week it is - or what year? [MORE] Make My Day

FOR BETTER OR WORSE ... A LOT WORSE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- "Marriage: It's Only Going to Get Worse." [MORE] Constance

YOU CALL THESE RIGHTS? by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- When you express an opinion you hope to persuade others to your point of view. It doesn't always happen but still, opinion writers try. [MORE] Momentum

THE BRIDGE WOMAN by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - Out there in America - yes, still - is a generation of women who were born in the 1940s, raised in the 1950s, and who came to radical consciousness in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I am one of them. Hillary Clinton is one of them. [MORE] On Native Ground

OBAMA AND MY GENERATION by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- I originally planned on voting for Dennis Kucinich in the Vermont Primary on March 4. [MORE] The Willies:

WARNING: THIS MEDICATION MAY MURDER YOUR FRIENDS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla. -- You've heard the warnings, haven't you? Stop Prozac and you may take a shotgun, an Uzi or an AK-47 and mow down your family and friends, or even a whole classroom full of your fellow students. You didn't? Well, that warning is not on the bottle, but like countless mass-murder incidents before it, Friday's shootings at Northern Illinois University, as well as the Virginia Tech shootings that killed 32 last year, was probably precipitated by the effect of stopping medications that suppress anger and other powerful emotions but do not relieve the underlying cause. Isn't it time we started warning people - or stopped prescribing these medicines? [MORE] One Woman's World

DON'T KNOCK ON MY DOOR by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- I wish I could feel delight in my poet's mansion being like Grand Central Station all the time, but I can't. And I wish my place was such a place that someone would one day write: "Her door was always open and she always made you feel all fuzzy and warm in her presence. She could make a cup of coffee seem like a banquet." [MORE] Reporting: Panama

PANAMA'S VIOLENT LABOR UNREST INTENSIFIES Mark Scheinbaum PANAMA CITY, Panama, Feb, 15, 2008 -- After just one day of relative calm, wildcat construction strikes by some members of Panama's largest union flared up again Friday morning, four days after a police sniper shot one worker. More than 140 demonstrators have been injured and at least 500 arrested, authorities say. [MORE] Brasch Words

TO STIMULATE ECONOMY, BUY A CHINESE-MADE U.S. FLAG by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Walking down Main Street, pushing a grocery cart loaded with clothes, toys, and appliances was Marshbaum. Fastened to the right front corner of the cart was an American flag tied onto a three-foot ruler. [MORE] Make My Day

THE TOOTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- To commemorate the death of noted shark exploder Roy Scheider, and the "Jaws" movies that resulted in Erik never setting foot in the ocean again, we are reprinting this column from 2003. Shark Experts 0, Sharks 1 [MORE] Momentum

THE WINTER OF MY DISCONTENT by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - As I write this, it's raining ice. Maybe a half a foot of snow and ice has already landed up here in the woods of Dummerston. Our cars are encased in it, and the door to the house is blocked. The satellite dish that brings in our Internet service quit about 20 minutes ago - frozen solid. [MORE] The Willies

AMERICA TO HILLARY: GET OUT! by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 13, 2008 -- Sen. Hillary Clinton has adopted the Rudy Giuliani strategy, and it's working - for Sen. Barack Obama. It turns out to be the strategy all Democrats are seeking - an exit strategy. But it's not for Iraq. It's for her exit from the race for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. [MORE] Constance

CONFESSIONS OF A DISAPPOINTED VOTER by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- A week ago at just about this time, I completed an article and was about to submit it as scheduled to The American Reporter. I was feeling rather elated, ready to show up on Super Tuesday morning, firmly touch the X next to Rudy Giuliani's name and get on with my day. He was my choice; he would get my vote. [MORE] Reporting: Florida

SIERRA CLUB SET TO SUSPEND FLA. CHAPTER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 10, 2008 -- The national Sierra Club is set to suspend its Florida chapter after years of divisive infighting, the president of the national club told Florida members in a letter delivered to some this weekend. It is the first time in its 116-year history that such a step has been considered by the club, according to news reports. [MORE] One Woman's World

PLANT A NEW WORLD THIS SPRING by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- For a little while, the men will just have to toss and turn in their fear-free-women beds. For a small space of time Hillary Clinton will just have to trudge on toward the White House without my faint applause in the background. [MORE] On Native Ground

VERMONT AND THE 5 STAGES OF CONSERVATIVE GRIEF by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- First, Vermont tried to convince the nation to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. [MORE] Make My Day

REBEL WITHOUT A TONGUE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- Kids' brains work in amazing ways. At times, they can grasp complex concepts and make impressive discoveries. Other times, you have to wonder how we ever survived as a species. [MORE] The Willies

FOR DEMOCRATS, NOW IT'S ABOUT RACE, INCOME AND GENDER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Feb. 6, 2008 -- It's not a good time to be a Democrat. As the Super Tuesday results demonstrated, the presidential race between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has divided the partly along clear racial, income and gender lines - the very distinctions the party has sought to erase in principle but has emphasized in its pursuit of diversity. [MORE] Momentum

SUPER TUESDAY BLUES by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Super Tuesday has come and gone and I still can't get excited about the upcoming presidential elections. [MORE] The Willies

ON THE BRINK OF HISTORY, YOUR PUSH IS NEEDED by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 5. 2008 -- I'm expecting a sea change tonight. I believe that for the first time in this nation's history we will once and forever banish racism as the deciding factor in the destiny of African-Americans, and indeed adopt diversity as our path to the future. [MORE] Campaign 2008

AT 88, EVERY VOTE REALLY COUNTS by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 5, 2008 -- Pearl Turner will caucus for Mitt Romney tonight in Denver. [MORE] One Woman's World

STAND BY YOUR WOMAN by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- The black vote. The gay vote. The fundamentalist vote. The Hispanic vote. [MORE] An AR Special

SUSPECTS IN BENAZIR ASSASSINATION HAVE TIES TO MUSHARRAF by Ahmar Mustikhan WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When Gordon Brown this past Monday feted coup-leader-turned-President Pervez Musharraf at 10 Downing Street, Britain's new prime minister probably didn't ask the Pakistani dictator a question that is now on many minds: Did you order the murder of Benazir Bhutto? [MORE] Momentum

TO THE VERMONT DELEGATION: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR US LATELY? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt.  Back when President George W. Bush and Dick Vice President Dick Cheney were building up to their loathsome war in Iraq, very few people were brave enough to call the bullies' bluff. [MORE] On Native Ground

IF BUSH HAS HIS WAY, WE'LL NEVER LEAVE IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. - In his final State of the Union address on Jan. 28, President Bush cautioned against accelerating U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq, saying that it would endanger the process that has been made over the past year. [MORE] Campaign 2008

CLASH OF COMMENTS AND PROTESTORS AT CLINTON, OBAMA RALLIES IN DENVER by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 1, 2008 -- At least four presidential campaigns of both partiers rolled into in Denver this week ahead of the Feb. 5 "Super Tuesday" primaries in 22 states, but it was the Democratic presidential contenders who drew the big crowds and duked it out Wednesday. If sheer numbers are any indication, Sen. Barack Obama - preceded by a buoyant and beautiful Caroline Kennedy - won the round handily. He is the overwhelming favorite to win the Colorado primary next Tuesday. [MORE] The Willies

WHY THE FLORIDA PRIMARY STINKS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Jan. 30, 2008 -- I was with my wife and daughter driving the back way from Miami home to Bradenton when we stopped at a McDonald's in Clewiston, the only big town along the vast shore of Lake Okeechobee, the state's precious freshwater reservoir. The McDonald's had three televisions at a central seating area, each tuned to a different network, and our table was in front of CNN as the very first election results started to pour in around 7:30PM. With them, almost as counterpoint, suddenly came such an overwhelming odor of cow plop that my wife started to throw up as we all ran to the parking lot. [MORE] Passings: Suharto

DEATH OF A KEMUSU THUG by Andreas Harsono JAKARTA - A few minutes after hearing that former president Suharto had died in his hospital bed, Marco, a militia leader in downtown Jakarta, raced to Suhartos house, wearing his jungle camouflage and began guarding the Suhartos residence on Cendana Street. [MORE] Constance

I REMEMBER YOU by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga.. -- It seems to be more often lately that the sentiment is spoken but it's always been out there: "You never get over the death of your child." This is true. But the heartfelt expressions come from some who cannot fathom the notion of losing a child; their own child is who is in their mind, not another mother's child. [MORE]
The limits of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's power is now a question for the courts in at least two widely-reported cases. In one, PHH Mortgage has called into question the agency's structure and authority while appealing a CFPB fine over alleged kickbacks. And just last week, a District Court judge dismissed a CFPB suit against a for-profit college accreditor, ruling that the bureau lacked the authority to investigate the firm.

The new judicial scrutiny should not come as a surprise considering the aggressive steps the CFPB, and its sole director, Richard Cordray, have taken after the Dodd-Frank created the bureau. It is also the result of lawmakers, in drafting the 2010 law, failing to place necessary checks on the agency head by subjecting CFPB decisions to a five-member commission, rather than in one director.

Had the architects of the CFPB pursued a commission structure, we would not have had to contemplate the questions now before the courts. A commission could have provided for a more measured approach and balance of power in the execution of the agency's mandate. As these cases bring new attention to the CFPB's reach, they will likely also fuel the push for legislative reform to install a commission  doing what Congress failed to do almost six years ago.

The PHH appeal, in particular, which was heard earlier this month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, shines the spotlight on the CFPB's authority and structure. That focus was clear even before the hearing, when the court took the rare step of issuing an order asking parties to prepare to address certain questions on the historical precedence for independent agencies to be led by single directors and proposed remedies for single-director structures that do not meet a legal test.

Dodd-Frank states that the CFPB is to be led by a director appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The director has a five-year term, and prior to expiration of that term, the president may only remove the director for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. Dodd-Frank also places the power of investigation, enforcement, rule promulgation, and staffing with the director with no oversight or accountability. Additionally, the bureau's budget is derived from a fixed percentage of the Federal Reserve's operating expenses. These funds only have to be requested by the CFPB's director.

PHH attorney Ted Olson, the former solicitor general, told the court that concerns about checks and balances in the CFPB's current structure include that the president lacks the power to remove the director without cause. Asked by the panel what remedy PHH sought, Olson said, "The only remedy is that this agency is unconstitutional and the decisions of this director in this case have to be overturned and the decision has to be vacated."

He continued: "If I was in your shoes I would be very tempted to write an opinion that Congress cannot create an agency like this that ignores all the rules of separation of powers. The separation of powers is what protects our liberties as individuals in this country."

While some have cast doubt on the likelihood of the court overturning CFPB policies, the outcome of the case could still have a dramatic impact on the financial services industry. Following the hearing, experts have weighed in on the potential of the court removing the "for cause" provision  meaning a new administration could remove Cordray or any other director simply because they wanted to appoint someone else.

If the court goes further, and rules the CFPB structure to be unconstitutional, the impact could be dramatic. What happens with all the rules the bureau promulgated? Untold sums have been spent on industry compliance with the CFPB's rules. Would those rules still apply? What about the enforcement actions that have already been finalized or the monies paid out under various consent orders?

Had Congress originally established a five-member CFPB commission, it likely would have quieted much of the concern about the agency's structure. Regardless of the outcome in the courts, lawmakers are still attempting to reform the structure.

The court in the PHH case is expected to issue a decision by the end of the summer, but we are likely far from over. If the court takes issue with the structure of the CFPB, either by finding it unconstitutional or by striking the tenure and for-cause provisions of Dodd-Frank, the CFPB may request en banc review. If granted, the case would be heard before all the judges on the D.C. Circuit. Not all of the court's members are likely to share the panel's skepticism about the CFPB's structure. Whatever the outcome at the D.C. Circuit, a further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court seems likely.

Craig Nazzaro is of counsel in Baker Donelson's Atlanta office and is a member of the Consumer Finance Litigation and Compliance Group. Before joining Baker Donelson, he was a vice president and assistant general counsel with JPMorgan Chase. He can be reached at cnazzaro@bakerdonelson.com.
If anyone can figure out how banks can serve marijuana and other cash-intensive businesses and stay out of trouble, it should be John Vardaman.

Until recently, Vardaman was an assistant deputy chief for policy in the asset forfeiture and money laundering division of the Department of Justice. He is now the general counsel of Hypur, a startup that offers technology to banks looking to work with marijuana dispensaries, check cashers, pawnshops and other industries that the mainstream financial system has treated as lepers.

"We've seen large financial institutions exiting what have been deemed high-risk areas categorically. The effect is that whole swaths of legitimate businesses have been frozen out of banking," Vardaman said in a recent interview. "That is creating an opportunity for an institution that is willing to take on those customers  the key is to be able to have a sufficient level of transparency in those businesses. You can bank them if you have sufficient knowledge to be compliant."

While the company is broadly offering services for financial institutions that want to bank businesses handling large amounts of cash  a category that also includes restaurants  marijuana businesses are one of the areas in the most need for solutions. Since the drug is illegal at the federal level, but sanctioned to various degrees for medical and/or recreational use in several states, it is a particularly difficult industry to bank.

In the bigger picture, following the cleanup of safety-and-soundness concerns in the industry after the 2008 financial crisis, regulators began looking more intensely at compliance. The increased scrutiny of Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money-laundering compliance has delayed acquisitions and spurred banks to sever relationships with industries and geographic regions, a global phenomenon known as de-risking.

Vardaman said his role at the Phoenix-based Hypur will likely be a mix of traditional general counsel duties and working on the business strategy  meeting with regulators and banks and using his background to inform the business.

In 2014, government agencies including the DOJ laid a foundation that allows banks to work with these businesses under tight guidelines. Vardaman says he was part of the group who wrote the Feb. 14, 2014, memo describing that department's expectations for banks. (The Justice Department didn't respond to requests to verify Vardaman's role in the drafting of the guidance.)

In the years since, marijuana businesses have had an easier time getting banked, but industry experts say it is still tough. Although most pot businesses have deposit accounts now, the options are still limited both in the number of institutions and the range of services  for instance, loans are still tough to get.

"The majority of licensed cannabis businesses have a bank account. It was one of the biggest concerns our members had, but more recently I haven't heard many people talking about it," said Mike Elliott, the executive director of the Marijuana Industry Group, which is based in Denver. "They are making it work, but it is not a perfect solution. There are very few options and it is unstable."

Hypur offers a suite of products designed to help banks vet marijuana businesses and other cash-intensive companies for anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer compliance. Its signature product, which is being beta tested, is an electronic payments solution that would take the cash out of the equation.

Called Hypur Commerce, the solution would allow individuals to download an app and create an account that is linked with their bank account. With their Hypur account, customers could buy goods from merchants on the Hypur network. The bank would have real-time access to transaction data, such as purchase details and location information. The idea is that such high-level information would allow a bank to have granular data about its customers' customers.

While the marijuana industry could be the practical place for Hypur Commerce, the solution or its underlying technology could be used for other businesses, such as check cashers and online retailers.

Vardaman says that bringing cash-intensive businesses into  or back into  the banking world is important because their essential exile has the potential to breed crimes like tax fraud.

"Some of the high-risk, cash-intensive businesses play an important role, and if they can't get banking services, there are all sorts of policy repercussions that can arise," Vardaman said.


Hundreds of security threat reports come out every year from security vendors. We see at least two a month. Most focus on the single type of threat that the sponsoring vendor happens to offer protection against and are thinly veiled marketing pieces.

Verizon's Data Breach Investigation Report is different. The telecom giant creates it in concert with more than 67 organizations, government agencies among them. Notable contributors include the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Emergency Computer Readiness Team, the Anti-Phishing Working Group, the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, Kaspersky Lab, Cisco Security Services and EMC. The 85-page treatise covers many areas of security for which Verizon doesn't sell products.

This year's report covers more than 64,199 incidents, of which 2,260 were confirmed data breaches. About 1,368 of the incidents and 795 of the confirmed breaches occurred in the financial services industry.

The report doesn't include every security incident that occurred in 2015, but it's the broadest, most thorough look at breaches we've seen. Here are the key takeaways for banks:

The motives for data breaches are increasingly financial. This obviously makes banks more of a target than ever. The report found that 89% of breaches in 2015 were motivated by greed or espionage rather than, say, getting back at a former employer or sticking it to the Establishment.

"This year's report is more weighted toward financial motivation than ever before," said Chris Novak, director of investigative response at Verizon Enterprise Solutions. "We've looked at different motivations  financial, espionage, and other categories like fun, ideology, or grudge. You've seen a lot of those other categories die down."

Banks are getting hit hardest in their web applications. Forty-eight percent of bank data security incidents in 2015 involved compromised web applications, the Verizon report found.

Some apps are compromised through code injections. GozNym malware, for instance, typically inserts code into banks' websites that creates pop-up screens asking for personal information. Through SQL injection, malware can access sensitive information in databases or gain access to other parts of a network through a web app.

Web app attacks are hard to detect since banks have thousands, sometimes millions of legitimate users accessing their sites. Finding the bad behavior in the noise is difficult, especially if the cybercriminals use multiple proxy servers and space their attacks over minutes or days.

The best defense? Two-factor authentication, Novak said. "We still see a lot of financial institutions using single-factor username and password," he said. According to the report, 63% of confirmed data breaches in 2015 involved weak, default or stolen passwords.

Hacktivism has died down; distributed denial-of-service attacks have not. The second most common security incident for banks in 2015  34% of their total  is the distributed denial-of-service attack. Banks have not been hit with a wave of activist DDoS attacks like the one we saw in 2012, when the Al Qassam Cyber Fighters relentlessly targeted dozens of bank websites to protest a video on YouTube.

Yet DDoS attacks, those malicious streams of traffic aimed at websites to shut them down or at least cause slow performance and embarrassment, continue to increase, partly because they're easy and cheap to do. The attackers typically use compromised systems organized in botnets to carry out their attacks.

"Because it's inexpensive and occasionally they manage to hit something, they just keep doing it, and every now and then it works," Novak said.

Financial institutions continue to get better at deflecting DDoS attacks. After the 2012 attacks, many bought better mitigation tools.

The starting point for breaches is usually phishing, the sending of emails with malicious attachments or links that allow malware to be downloaded to the user's computer, or that fool users with their message to share sensitive data. In 2015, 9,576 security incidents involved phishing, and 916 of them had confirmed data disclosure.

The report states that in tests, 13% of people clicked on a phishing attachment. The median time for the first target of a phishing campaign to open a malicious email was one minute and 40 seconds; the median time to the first click on an attachment in that phishing email was three minutes and 45 seconds.

Do people need to just slow down?

"A lot of the problem is the speed," Novak said. "You look at an email and almost click on it because there's a sense of urgency and you're probably like everybody else wearing five hats."

Email filters are of limited use because the malicious attachments usually appear to be normal Word, PowerPoint, Excel or PDF documents. "If you were to filter out all PDFs, most organizations wouldn't be able to function," Novak said.

The report recommends protecting networks from compromised machines by segmenting the network and implementing strong authentication to prevent hackers from going from phishing to full-scale reconnaissance of the bank's network.

Hackers are getting faster at break-ins; responders are much slower. The time it takes hackers to break in to a company network keeps dropping  in 2015, 84% of the time it was days or less. Less than 25% of breaches were caught within days.

"On average there could be a six or seven-month gap between the time to compromise and time to discover for a lot of victims," Novak said. "That's a big problem. The threat actors are collaborating and sharing information. They're buying, selling and creating tools, techniques and procedures, selling credentials, sharing information about vulnerable apps."

Victims are not as good at sharing information and collaborating. "The financial services sector is by far the best, but it's all relative," Novak said.

The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, the top threat sharing group in banking, has thousands of bank members.

"The challenge I often find is lots of organizations participate in order to collect information," Novak said. "But a lot of organizations struggle with contributing."

Speed of threat data sharing is also critical. Many organizations that suffer massive breaches will only talk about it a year or two later, after all the litigation has been settled. By that time, intel that would have protected others from being victimized has probably gone a little stale.

Companies' internal fraud detection methods have become a lagging indicator. In 2005, 80% of breaches were discovered through internal fraud detection. In 2015, less than one in five were caught that way, but the number of breaches caught by law enforcement and third parties has grown.

"Law enforcement has gotten better and more aware. It's put more resources toward cybersecurity investigations, detection, and litigation," Novak said. "The FBI, the Secret Service and other agencies have all stepped up their game significantly."

Hackers are successfully exploiting old vulnerabilities. Some of the most successful hacks are exploiting vulnerabilities discovered in 2007.

"In financial institutions, we see a lot of cybercriminals taking advantage of well-known older vulnerabilities," Novak said. Having one computer on the network with a five-year-old vulnerability that someone forgot to fix puts an organization at risk.

Insider fraud is down. In financial services, insider privilege misuse accounted for only 3% of security incidents. "Because of a lot of regulation, there's generally a higher degree of background checks, auditing of logging, compliance, that drive a lot of validation of what people are doing and should be doing" in banks, Novak said. People who work in banks know they're being closely monitored, which is a deterrent in and of itself, like a security camera in a store, he said.

Novak noted that banks need to prioritize their security efforts according to the likelihood of an attack happening.

"The approach of security by boiling the ocean is not going to work," he said. "A lot of organizations try to tackle stuff that makes the biggest headlines. Often the stuff that makes the headlines is not the most common stuff that happens [but] it's the most elaborate, exotic stuff that's interesting to talk about."

In an earlier data breach case study report Verizon published, what got the most attention was a story about pirates overtaking ships on the ocean. "That blew our mind  85% of activity about the report was around the pirate story," Novak said. "The rest of the stuff happened thousands of times to everybody all over the world. But everyone wanted to talk about the pirate attack."

Who could blame them? Pirates are way more fun than web-app-mutilating malware. But the wise path is to focus banks' cybersecurity resources in the areas where they'll make a difference.

Editor at Large Penny Crosman welcomes feedback at penny.crosman@sourcemedia.com.


U.S. Century Bank in Miami has been freed from a regulatory consent order that had restricted its activities for nearly five years.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. notified U.S. Century's executives earlier this month that it had lifted the order, the $1 billion-asset bank said in a news release Saturday. In June 2011 federal and state regulators ordered the then-struggling bank to bolster capital, overhaul management and get regulatory approval for strategic moves such as the hiring of senior officers or taking steps to significantly increase assets.

Early last year the bank raised $65 million from a private-equity firm as part of its efforts to pay back money it received from the Troubled Asset Relief Program and strengthen its balance sheet after two previous deals had hit dead ends.

Its Tier 1 risk-based capital rose to 10.83% at the end of 2015 from 5.57% a year earlier, and its total risk-based capital rose to 11.87% from 6.60% during that same time period, according to the FDIC website. The consent order had required Tier 1 capital of at least 8% and total risk-based capital of at least 12%.

"Having the regulatory consent order lifted is a very positive and significant step for U.S. Century Bank," Luis de la Aguilera, who took over as chief executive of the bank in December, said in a news release. Its employees and directors "have worked tirelessly over the past few years to remedy the issues addressed in the order."

Established in 2012, U.S. Century Bank is promoted as one of the nation's largest Hispanic-owned banks.


The monitor of the Bank of America mortgage settlement distributed roughly $89 million Tuesday to legal assistance groups in nine states from a fund for federal tax assistance.

The distributions were made to groups in Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Washington, Arizona, Virginia, Missouri, New Jersey and Oregon, according to a press release from the settlement's monitor, Eric Green. The money came from $490 million allocated as part of the bank's post-crisis agreement, three-quarters of which must be disbursed to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories and possessions.

The recipient groups are state-based Interest on Lawyers Trust Account organizations and state bar association affiliated intermediaries that provide resources to legal aid organizations. The remaining 25% of the funds, roughly $122.5 million, was already distributed to NeighborWorks America, a congressionally chartered nonprofit geared toward community-based redevelopment programs.

President Obama set the distribution process in motion in December when he signed into law legislation that provided tax relief through this year to homeowners who could incur income-tax liability due to mortgage debt forgiveness received as part of the settlement's consumer-relief provisions. The $490 million had previously been set aside in a fund created in case Congress did not extend the tax relief to provide federal assistance.

The settlement set up the distributions so that the 56 state-based legal assistance organizations initially get $200,000 from the fund. The remaining balance is then apportioned among the states and other jurisdictions based on U.S. Census Bureau-collected poverty population data.

Already this month, approximately $31 million in distributions was made to groups in North Carolina, South Carolina, Massachusetts and Indiana. The remaining distributions are expected to be in the near future, pending completion of documentation by the recipient organizations.
WASHINGTON  Financial technology companies should be examined for safety and soundness just like banks and credit unions, top executives from the Independent Community Bankers of America said Tuesday.

Everybody should be playing in the same ballpark, Camden Fine, the ICBA's president and chief executive, said during a press conference here. I think all stakeholders that are making loans  should be playing by the same rules.

Fines remarks keyed in on a growing concern in Washington about the explosion of fintech companies that are making both personal and business loans. Last week a group of Democratic senators requested that the Government Accountability Office update a report on fintech regulation.

Fine likened the lack of oversight to the run-up to the financial crisis and the bursting of the mortgage bubble, saying risk can concentrate in areas where you dont want that risk to concentrate.

Not only are they not subject to some of the other regulations of other participants whether they are credit unions or banks, there also is no supervisory body that is going into those firms and saying, Are you applying by the rules that you are subject to? and if you have no one that is checking up on you it is easy to start cutting corners, Fine said.

Karen Thomas, the group's senior executive vice president, said she believes that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will increase its scrutiny of fintech companies, but that it would be focused only on consumer protection and not safety and soundness.

What type of capital should they maintain? What type of risk management do they have? Thomas asked.


CommonBond, an online lender that specializes in student loan refinancing, announced Monday that it has sold $150 million of bundled loans to investors.

The securitization deal comes at a time when many online lenders are having trouble finding buyers for their loans as investors have become more concerned about credit quality across the industry.

CommonBond has a substantially different business model than many other online lenders. The New York firm, founded in 2013, focuses on refinancing debt for relatively low-risk borrowers and boasts that no customers have ever defaulted on its loans.

The assets in the deal were purchased by insurance companies, banks, credit funds and asset managers, CommonBond said in a press release.

The transaction was rated by DBRS. Barclays and Goldman Sachs served as co-lead managers on the deal, according to the press release.


Sanford Weill's reputation as a philanthropic heavyweight continues to grow.

The retired chairman and chief executive of Citigroup and his wife, Joan, have pledged $185 million to the University of California at San Francisco to create a new research center, the university announced in a press release Monday. The hefty donation, the largest financial gift in the school's history, is earmarked for a new 270,000-square-foot building at UCSF's Mission Bay campus. The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences will include neuroscience research laboratories and clinics for patients with brain and nervous system disorders. The gift will also help support students at the school who are working to combat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, ALS and Parkinson's.

Sanford Weill's mother died of Alzheimer's disease; his father suffered from symptoms of depression before he died.

"We were inspired to make this gift because we recognized the potential of UCSF physicians and scientists to significantly advance our understanding of brain diseases and lay the groundwork for new therapies," Sanford Weill said in the release.

The couple's Weill Family Foundation has made more than $1 billion in charitable donations to educational, medical and cultural and arts institutions over the past four decades, including $600 million to Cornell University, Sanford Weill's alma mater. The donation to UCSF is part of Sanford Weill's signing of the Giving Pledge, a commitment by some of the world's wealthiest individuals and families, including founders Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, to donate most of their wealth to charitable causes. "Now is the moment for the neurosciences to begin making a real difference in the lives of patients and their families, and the Weills' unprecedented generosity will help make this possible," UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood said in a statement.

Sanford Weill became chairman of the California university's executive council last year, according to The New York Times.
Wells Fargo Chief Executive John Stumpf can keep his chairmanship at least another year  and even then there might not be much mystery.

About 17% of shareholders voted in favor of the proposal to separate the chairman and CEO roles at Wells, which was submitted by Denver investor Gerald Armstrong. It won't be known what portions of the rest voted against it or how many abstained until the bank files an 8-K later with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Lara Palles, who spoke at Wells' annual meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., on behalf of Armstrong, pointed out that Wells was one of three large banks that flunked its living will submission to regulators this month.

"Mr. Armstrong believes this is alarming," Palles said.

Palles also criticized Stumpf's service on the board of Target, citing the May 2014 termination of its former chairman and CEO, Gregg Steinhafel.

"If Stumpf could not see the weaknesses at Target, is he blind to it at Wells Fargo?" Palles said.

No other shareholders spoke in favor of the proposal.

Palles spoke before shareholders voted on the question. As soon as she stopped speaking to the audience, Stumpf told shareholders that "there are a number of inaccuracies in that statement, but we will address those later."

Stumpf did not specify what was inaccurate, and the company did not raise the issue again later in the meeting.


A psychological warfare principle that was once equated with magic says that the power to name a thing is the power to control or destroy it. The Allies, for example, named the German general Fedor von Bock "Der Sterber," or "Let's go get killed," for his statement that the function of the German soldier was to die gloriously for the Fatherland. They doubtless did their best to ensure that every soldier under von Bock's command knew it, too.

The ability of a name to convey an entire idea in less than a second is consistent with Sally Hogshead's presentation on fascination, worth watching. The key principle is that when you introduce yourself (or an idea) to another person, you have nine or fewer seconds to fascinate that person and keep his or her attention. This, in fact, prompted me to redesign my business card. Everybody's business card includes contact information along with a short description of what he or she does. I changed mine to a two-sided design to feature a portrait of Henry Ford and the caption "What Would Henry Ford Do?" to convey my expertise on Ford's manufacturing and business system.

#pigsandcrackers

Hogshead stresses that while you can't find true romance, land a job, or by implication sell an idea in nine seconds, you have roughly this long to earn the chance to make your case. The most effective psychological warfare material recognizes this fact and uses sensationalistic pictures to fascinate the Propaganda Man, or the person we wish to persuade. Today's internet meme and hashtag embody the same principle, and the hashtag #pigsandcrackers will destroy Hillary Clinton's candidacy through its brutal simplicity and honesty.

"Pigs and crackers" was inspired, of course, by the popular cheese and crackers snack, but it worked out amazingly well. A Google search on "pigs and crackers," or even #pigsandcrackers, comes up exclusively with links to Sharpton's racist and anti-police tirade on the first page of the results.

This brings us to a second principle of effective propaganda. The propaganda must first fascinate the viewer, but it must also assure the Propaganda Man of its honesty. The instant we lie to the Propaganda Man, we deserve to lose his trust and his respect, and I personally resent dishonest memes that attack even political figures I dislike. The memes seek to get me to make myself look foolish by forwarding them, and thus making myself a party to the falsehoods.

In this case, however, the Google search on the slogan or hashtag allows the Propaganda Man to verify for himself that Al Sharpton did indeed tell his listeners, "I don't believe in marching! I believe in offing the pigs! Well, they got pigs out here! You ain't offed one of them!" and "I'll off the man. Well, off him! Plenty of crackers walking around here tonight!"

The Propaganda Man can also verify independently that Hillary Clinton has made at least two appearances at Sharpton's National Action Network, where she praised Sharpton and essentially solicited his support for her candidacy. This puts Clinton squarely in the camp of a racist and anti-Semite who has openly advocated the murder of law enforcement officers. She cannot appear with him without legitimizing and mainstreaming him, and therefore "I believe in offing the pigs."

Hillary's Own Anti-Semitic Slur

We can take Clinton's ongoing association with Al Sharpton even farther. It is alleged that she used an anti-Semitic slur herself by calling her husband's campaign manager a "fornicating Jew bastard," and "fornicating" was not the word she used. There is, in contrast to audio of her friend Al Sharpton calling for the murder of police officers and white people, and also using slurs like "punk faggot," "Greek homos," and "Chinamen," no way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clinton made this remark.

Suppose however, that somebody allegedly calls a black person the N-word, but there is no way to prove it. If the person then attends no fewer than two Ku Klux Klan rallies, and poses arm in arm with a Grand Wizard who often uses the N-word, we can conclude that it is more likely than not that the original person also called a black person the N-word. In light of Clinton's association with an individual and an organization that use language like "diamond merchants," "bloodsucking Jew," "burn the Jew store down," and "don't give the Jew bastard a dime," we can similarly conclude that it is more likely than not that she used the anti-Semitic slur in question. Her embrace of Suha Arafat, the wife of the terrorist who helped orchestrate the Munich Massacre, reinforces further the perception that Hillary Clinton has a problem with Jews.

In any event, this is the Republican Party's opportunity to pay the Democrats back for the infamous Daisy Girl ad that cost Barry Goldwater the 1964 election. This 1-minute ad used the power of fascination along with the menace of nuclear war to depict Goldwater as a maniac who was likely to start World War III. My understanding is that the Democrats ran it only once, but it was sufficiently effective to win the election.

I used Windows Movie Maker to splice together brief excerpts of Hillary Clinton's appearance at the National Action Network  specifically the parts where she praises the organization and Sharpton, with Sharpton's incitement to murder white people and police officers along audio of his remarks about "punk faggots" and "Greek homos," and printed quotes of his and the NAN's commentary on Jews and "Chinamen." The result was roughly 50 seconds, or 17 percent shorter than the Daisy Girl commercial. In addition, while the Daisy Girl commercial presented unfounded speculation about Goldwater, my product delivers incontrovertible proof that (1) Al Sharpton is a racist, anti-Semite, advocate of violence against police, and homophobe, and (2) Hillary Clinton is enabling and legitimizing him.

If the Republican nominee acts on this, we will have a landslide that rivals what Ronald Reagan did to Jimmy Carter in 1980.

William A. Levinson is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.
Since the world is commemorating the 400th anniversary of the birth of Shakespeare, it was not surprising that Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European Commission, should on April 23, 2016, quote the Bard of Avon. Timmermans, together with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Donald Tusk, president of the EU Council, was in southern Turkey to inaugurate the new EU aid program for Syrians in the country.

Visiting a new refugee camp near the Turkish-Syrian border, before visiting a child protection center, Timmermans, correctly quoted Portias speech on mercy in the Merchant of Venice, It blesses the one that gives and it blesses the one who takes, but he was incorrect in his conclusion that in that sense the Turkish people are really blessed.

Contrary to the tribute of Timmermans, the Turkish people are not blessed, nor can its present rulers be greeted with rapture. By his remark he was reinforcing the blunder that the EU had made on March 18, 2016 in reaching an agreement with Turkey on the difficult migrant issue. The EU has agreed to give Turkey 6 billion euros over the next few years in return for Turkey readmitting all irregular migrants, asylum seekers deported from Turkey to Greece. For its part, the EU agrees that for each Syrian returned to Turkey, the EU has promised to resettle a Syrian migrant in the EU.

In 2015, more than 850,000 migrants entered Europe from Turkey, most of them interested in going to Germany. The EU hopes the number in 2016 will be reduced.

But for the EU, the agreement is less an equitable arrangement than acquiescence in political blackmail. Already disbursement of the promised money for Turkey has started. Now, the EU has to deal with its promises both to loosen the visa restriction for the 75 million Turks wanting to visit the EU, and to accelerate negotiations over Turkeys ambition to become a member of EU.

The Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has insisted that this visa liberalization for Turks is a precondition for Turkish agreement to readmit migrants, and that the process of providing access for Turks to enter the Schengen passport-free zone must be completed by June 2016. If this is not done he said, no one can expect Turkey to adhere to its commitments. Apart from his undiplomatic behavior, Davutoglu ignored the fact that a number of problems remain, such as security chips in passports, efficient border patrols, and ending discrimination by Turkey against minority groups.

The EU should have been more careful for at least two reasons: whether Turkey will abide by the number of migrants it is supposed to readmit; and Turkish undemocratic and authoritarian behavior. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on April 20, 2016 issued a report doubting that Turkey can satisfy the EUs strict laws for the return of asylum seekers. The rapporteur of the report, Tineke Strick, a Dutch politician, said that the agreement raises many serious questions of Turkeys compatibility with basic norms on the rights of migrants and refugees.

Questions have long been raised about Turkeys actions. It has been dealing severely with political opponents. It has been supplying arms to Syrian rebels. It has been treating poorly most of the 2.7 million Syrians it has been housing since the civil war began in Syria five years ago. Most of the Syrians there live in poverty, being unable to find a job, unless they operate on the black market.

According to Amnesty International, some refugees have been sent back to Syria. Turkey has illegally forced thousands to return to Syria. About one hundred refugees a day have been so sent to Syria since January 2016, even though a state is prohibited from deporting individuals to a war zone. According to Human Rights Watch, there has been an increase in the number of Syrians who have been shot while trying to cross into Turkey which is evidently not a safe country for asylum.

The problem remains. So far in 2016, only 325 have been returned from Greece to Turkey while more than 140,000 migrants arrived by boat into Greece and the Greek islands from Turkey. Turkey has done little to halt the main migrant route into Europe via the Aegean. Greece is home to 54,000 stranded migrants, and there are as many as 10,000 refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border, near the village of Idomeni. The sight of Macedonian police using tear gas against those trying to break through the fence that was built to prevent people coming from Greece is distressing.

The EU is aware of the humanitarian migrant crisis, not only in terms of numbers but also in behavior of some of the migrants. Among the more unpleasant aspects of this are narcotics smuggling and trafficking, including heroin, and crime networks, as well as the entrance of ISIS Jihadists as pretended refugees. The burden on the EU, in finance, logistics, and internal tension among the countries, may become too heavy to bear. Since Turkey is not fully reliable, the burden must be shared and largely carried by the Middle Eastern Arab and Muslim states, especially the wealthy oil states who now have a seat at the international table.

The EU must change its policy in three ways. It should stop disbursing money to Turkey unless Turkey carries out its obligation to readmit migrants. It should not entertain the idea of admitting Turkey to the EU unless it stops its attack on free speech and expression. And it should insist that Turkey end its unacknowledged war against the Kurds and begin to grant them, as a minimum, some form of autonomy or self-determination.

Shakespeare had some words for EU policy: There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.
President Obama has doubled the national debt and added an additional $4.2 trillion to debt through the Quantitative Easing program. Both of these actions are unprecedented. The issue that needs to be discussed is the extent to which Federal debt, at any level, is allowed by the Constitution.

As Scotus expands personal rights, rights not clearly delineated in the Constitution such as same-sex marriage, the rights of American citizens to exercise choice in other areas are being severely limited by Federal debt.

Debt limits choice since it constrains future spending by Congress on people programs. Since most of the U.S. budget is also committed to funding social programs such as social security and Medicare future expenditures on these, as well as other new programs such as clean energy, are being restricted by the debt and interest payments on the debt.

Just as household budgets are squeezed by increasing sales, gasoline, and property taxes, Federal debt limits choices. And this is the issue: if limiting future choices is a violation of the Constitution. This discussion seems to be very abstract but in reality debt is more concrete than the concept of a right and the boundaries of rights are always being used to justify Scotus rulings.

National debt is not debt in the common understanding of debt. A debt is created when one person borrows something, usually money, from another and agrees to pay it back in a certain period of time. Its difficult to see how the Federal government is borrowing money since the money doesnt exist today, it isnt borrowed from anybody, and there is no time frame in paying it back. President Obama never stated when the QE money or trillions of national debt would be paid back. In reality it is only using the concept of debt to enable, without a vote of Congress, future appropriations.

Where this becomes a constitutional issue is where it interferes with the programs future voters may wish to pass through their congressional representatives. Federal debt limits the rights of future voters. Two of the most fundamental concepts of the Constitution as expressed through the Declaration of Independence are equality and consent of the governed. If todays president orders the Treasury Department. to create debt for the future he is not only taking Executive Action today, he is forcing the Executive Action to persist for many years. This violates the Constitution since it denies tomorrows voters the right to give their consent to how their taxes are spent. Their values and needs cannot be expressed through their congressional representatives.

The website usdebtclock.org ticks off the national debt every instant, as well as the debts created by states. Its interesting to note that the debt tracked by usdebtclock.org is the debt the public have to pay, not the government employees. Public sector union debt, which is over $5 trillion today and rising by the second, is not separately listed. This is hidden from the public. The government only wants to remind voters of the debts the government is creating for them to pay and refuses to acknowledge the wealth transfer to government union employees in the future.

Curious voters may wonder how the government can seize their earnings without telling them the details. This is another gray area; the right government has to tax Americans to pay for their excessive public pensions. Or even to create separate pensions for government workers while forcing all Americans into social security. This is another manifestation of the violations of the Constitution created by government debt.

President Obama, through his executive actions on illegal immigration, literally created billions of dollars of debt for every current and future taxpayer without a single voter giving him permission.

All bills of appropriations originate in Congress, the Constitution says. So when President Obama issues executive orders he is violating the Constitution in two ways: one by spending without the consent of Congress, and secondly by creating future debt without the consent of the Congress or voters of the future.

Federal debt is an affront to voters rights. It is a denial of the right to be represented, of the right to choose how ones government spends ones taxes. If a president can, through Executive Action, violate the 1996 Immigration Act and by so doing deny the voters the right, through their representatives, to appropriate money on legitimate programs, the government is no longer a government of the people. If all persons regardless of race or sex have the right to vote for the person who best represents their interests, they have the right to have their interests realized through the appropriation of their taxes. Right now they dont.

This is the effect of liberalism: to violate the rights of voters, to force programs on the nation without the consent of the people, and to replace consent with the rule of an elite few, a liberal oligarchy. National debt, created by agencies of the Federal government, is a method by which liberals have seized control of the nation; have replaced constitutional government with an oligarchy. The strategy was to force policy through czars and bureaucrats, then pay for it through debt, by violating the appropriations process. Those who attempt to argue that both parties do this can only do so by ignoring the fact that the national budget had surpluses in three years under a Republican Congress.

It would be very interesting, and revealing, to see how Scotus would address a lawsuit, filed in a Federal district court, which claimed that a persons constitutional right to congressional representation is being violated by Obamas executive actions and Federal national debt. After all, if Scotus sees same-sex marriage as a right, and the right to have a cake baked for a gay wedding as a right, it would seem that the liberal justices would be very anxious to protect the rights of individual Americans to have a say in how their current and future taxes are spent by the Federal government.

Scotus must be presented with the issue of appropriation rights: whether voters have the right to determine how their tax money is spent by legitimate appropriations made through Congress, not through unconstitutional Executive Actions and QE debt creation. This would seem to be an easy decision for Scotus to make, since they have ruled to create a right to same-sex marriage even though marriage is not in the Constitution. But since bureaucratic policy mandates and debt are the most powerful and fundamental tools liberalism uses to seize control of government and override the consent of the people, it is doubtful liberal Scotus Justices will reassert the supremacy of the Constitutions Bill of Rights.

If Scotus can force communities to spend money on liberal education programs it can force Congress to pass a balanced budget. It has forced Congress to pass numerous laws in the past. This is the only way to disarm liberalisms efforts to seize control of voters rights. Once the economy is growing at a healthy pace, households will have more choices in how to appropriate their own family incomes.
For the past month, a media narrative has taken hold that something must be done to reform, simplify, streamline, and democratize the delegate selection system of the Republican presidential nomination process.

Is our GOP presidential primary system rigged, meaning it is corrupt because it favors the establishment? Is it convoluted, arbitrary, arcane...and too often "voteless"? Is it wrong to allow "Trojan horse" delegates to change their vote on the second ballot of the national convention? Why do we have a separate election for delegates after we vote for candidates?

The system is not rigged, convoluted, arbitrary, arcane, or voteless. It is a system that encourages the grassroots to participate in party platform issues, the selection of candidates, the choosing of a candidate winner, and the allocation of party resources. The system is designed to keep the party alive and well by allowing current ideas and candidates to be tested and new ideas and candidates to be heard.

Here is what I mean. If you think the primary system we have now is no good, try imagining this: each state and territory holds an open election, the delegates are assigned proportionally to reflect the vote, and those delegates are committed to hold to that candidate for, say, the first 10 ballots. That way you have a pure vote, a fairly precise correlation between how the people vote and how the delegates vote, and no double-crossing on the subsequent ballots. Simple, clean, and easily explained to the voters by the news media.

Under this imagined Pure-Vote system, you would have chaos. In this 2016 cycle, Trump would have 20% fewer delegates as of today, with little chance of getting a majority, ever  unless he were to negotiate for Kasich's and Rubio's delegates before the convention. And Cruz would be doing the exact same negotiating, also prior to the convention. This means all this horse-trading would be done in secret between the candidates and their staffs, not among the delegates. The delegates would have no say, as they are bound by the proportionality of the vote.

Imagine if the presidential candidates could choose their own delegates, rather than allowing delegates to be nominated and voted on. A complete bribe-fest would take place. This is what you would call voter disenfranchisement by elites in smoke-filled rooms. No one would work hard to become a delegate, because the delegates would be robots of the elite, accused of selling their vote to the highest bidder, behind closed doors.

If you would like to see what a Pure-Vote system looks like in real life, in a reasonably corruption-free country, try Singapore. Your vote will be counted, and your vote will count. But there won't be a precinct-level meeting a la Colorado to choose delegates to the Congressional District level. So if you and your like-minded political buddies want to go to a neighborhood meeting to show some strength for your candidate, you're out of luck. In fact, you may not even know who the candidates are.

The point is that voting without the freedom to assemble and push your political agenda is not a very satisfying experience. Participation at the grassroots is what allowed Sarah Palin to climb the GOP ladder in her state. Think of Dave Brat of Virginia. He used Tea Party organizations in his state  the types of people who become delegates to the national conventions  to overcome a 40:1 spending disadvantage and win the nomination.

The delegate selection process that we have encourages civic-minded people to take ownership in the presidential nominating conventions. Without all of the local meetings, discussions, and votes, we would not have a participatory democracy. Any country can have elections. But great republics like ours encourage citizens to willingly accept the responsibility to present and argue their points of view.

It is depressing to see media talking heads moan about our democracy. "Why does it have to be so complicated?" they ask. The most positive spin you hear on TV is "the rules are the rules," as if we live as hapless subjects in an authoritarian state.

New people and new ideas are needed in the GOP. Many Republicans believe that the party has abandoned them and gone over to the Dark Side. We have a grassroots system to incorporate fresh winds, and support outsiders. Ignore the TV. Use the system.
A federal judge has upheld the North Carolina voter ID law, saying there was no evidence that minorities would be harmed and that challengers of the law "have not established that  African Americans or Hispanics have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.

Wall Street Journal:

Republican state lawmakers passed the voting restrictions shortly after a 2013 Supreme Court ruling upended a long-standing piece of the Voting Rights Act that required a group of states, mostly in the South, to obtain approval before changing electoral practices because of their history of discrimination.

Critics said there was no actual evidence of voter fraud and the real motivation for the rules was to make it harder for voters that lean Democratic to cast a ballot. The state says it has appropriate voting safeguards in place and argued there was no evidence that the photo-ID requirement would burden voters.

The voter-id requirement went into effect this year and was used for the states primary on March 15.

Among other voting changes, North Carolina eliminated same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting and reduced the number of days in which citizens could vote early.

Judge Schroeder said the voter-id requirement contained ample exceptions that would prevent burdens on voters. He also said the state, even with the more restrictive voting rules, had many convenient registration and voting mechanisms in place. There are simply very many easy ways for North Carolinians to register and vote, he wrote.

Most North Carolina voters now need to show identification such as a drivers license, passport, or military or veterans identification card. Some types of identification, like student IDs, arent accepted. There are exceptions to the law for people who declare they have reasonable impediment that prevents them from obtaining an acceptable photo ID.

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, said, Common practices like boarding an airplane and purchasing Sudafed require photo ID and thankfully a federal court has ensured our citizens will have the same protection for their basic right to vote.
California's Democrat attorney general, Kamala Harris, was recently slapped down by a federal judge for violating the First Amendment in a donor privacy case brought by conservative nonprofit Americans for Prosperity Foundation. The Internal Revenue Service needs to shoulder a substantial part of the blame for that case, because the IRS could and should have prevented Harris's lawlessness.

AFPF was granted an injunction against Ms. Harris on April 21 prohibiting her from demanding the nonprofit organization's donor names and addresses listed on confidential federal tax return "Schedule B." At trial, AFPF presented "ample evidence" that its donors received "threats, harassment, intimidation, and retaliation" for their private association with the organization. The right of private association is constitutionally guaranteed as expressed in the 1958 landmark civil rights case NAACP v. Alabama.

General Harris is acquiring confidential Schedule B donor names using a dragnet registration method for charities that communicate with fundraising appeals to Californians. The injunction order noted that Harris's claims for needing Schedule B donor information for law enforcement purposes was not credible, given the lack of an enforcement track record and the availability of such information from other sources on a case-by-case basis.

The injunction, unfortunately, is limited to AFPF despite the fact that Harris's office was caught posting over 1,700 confidential Schedule Bs on its website. Harris is now ducking a Freedom of Information Act request to identify which organizations were affected by her unlawful public disclosure.

Judge Manuel Real's order was blunt, noting that "the amount of careless mistakes by the Attorney General's registry is shocking," and "[t]he pervasive, recurring pattern of uncontained Schedule B disclosures [is] irreconcilable with the Attorney General's assurances and contentions as to the confidentiality of Schedule Bs collected by the Registry."

In other words, California's lawlessness is compounded by its efforts to mislead the court, which raises serious questions about the ethics and professionalism under which Ms. Harris's office operates.

What hasn't been reported is how the IRS could have prevented this mess. The federal tax code gives the IRS control over the flow of confidential federal tax return to state officials, who may actually need it to enforce laws. By its own interpretations of the law, the IRS requires states to enter into confidentiality agreements and establish protocols to prevent precisely what California did in accessing and publicly disclosing Schedule Bs.

A letter to IRS Exempt Organizations director Tamera Ripperda explains these laws and protocols that the IRS failed to enforce on Ms. Harris. The letter cites a 1999 Government Accountability Office report to Congress about how the IRS "has overall responsibility for safeguard reviews to assess whether taxpayer information is properly protected from unauthorized use or access as required by the [Internal Revenue Code]."

Government agencies "are required to advise the IRS how they intend to use the information and to provide the IRS with a detailed safeguard plan that describes the procedures" to ensure confidentiality. These plans must be updated, and state agencies must submit annual reports to the IRS. The IRS is also supposed to conduct "on-site reviews to ensure that agencies' safeguard procedures fulfill IRS requirements for protecting taxpayer information," according to the GAO report.

It is dereliction by the IRS to even allow California to use the dragnet registration process to obtain Schedule B donor information. The tax code authorizes state officials to submit requests for such information to the IRS, which requests may be denied. The IRS has previously taken the correct position that unless expressly allowed under the tax code, inspection and disclosure by state officials is unauthorized, subjecting those officials to civil and even criminal penalties. In the California situation, the IRS was and remains asleep at the switch.

Officials in Harris's office have been active in the National Association of State Charity Officials (NASCO). NASCO once described itself as "partner in the regulation of charities" with the infamous Lois Lerner, who was a predecessor to Tamera Ripperda as director of exempt organizations at the IRS.

The IRS's failure to act to protect confidential donor information on Schedule Bs means it may be treated as an "indispensable party" in litigation brought by other charities. Also, Congress should investigate why the IRS was derelict in protecting the confidentiality of donors, and whether Ms. Harris is acting as an Obama IRS surrogate in hampering First Amendment rights of conservative organizations such as AFPF and others.
Lena Dunham, the talentless, plain, corpulent exhibitionist whose low-rated HBO show keeps getting renewed, is offering Americans an incentive to vote for Donald Trump. Caitlin Yilek of The Hill reports:

Lena Dunham is the latest celebrity to say shell hightail it out of the country if Donald Trump is elected president. I know a lot of people have been threatening to do this, but I really will, Dunham told Andy Cohen at the Matrix Awards on Monday. I know a lovely place in Vancouver and I can get my work done from there.

Vancouver is a scenic, if rainy, city with a substantial film industry, so I strongly encourage Dunham. I am sure the stratospheric housing prices there will be no obstacle to her. For around $2 million, she could get this fire-damaged house that went on the market recently, though it will take considerable work before it is safe to enter:

If Dunham considers herself pretty enough to merit nude scenes, perhaps this is what she means by a "lovely" place.

Donald Trump appreciates the irony of Dunhams commitment, as reported by Nick Gass of Politico:

Not only would Donald Trump not mind if certain celebrities flee the United States upon his election, the Republican front-runner said Tuesday that their opposition to his candidacy only increases his will to win. During a telephone interview with "Fox & Friends," Trump was asked about a tweet from Lena Dunham on Monday in which she vowed to leave the U.S. for Vancouver if he is elected president. Trump's response: "Well, she's a B-actor. You know, she has no  you know, no mojo." "I heard Whoopi Goldberg too. That would be a great thing for our country," Trump said, as the show flashed a graphic of celebrities who it said would leave the U.S. for Canada, including Dunham, Jon Stewart, and Rosie O'Donnell, with whom the Manhattan real-estate mogul has feuded for years. When co-host Steve Doocy pointed out that O'Donnell's name on the list, Trump remarked, "Now I have to get elected."

On the other hand, what has Canada ever done to us (aside from the War of 1812) to merit such treatment?
University of Missouri students had better head for their safe spaces immediately. Their former professor, Melissa Click, just went off the diversity reservation.

You remember Click. She's the teacher who, during a demonstration, tried to throttle the media and keep it from covering the event, asking students for "muscle" to help.

This incident led to her firing. But now Click maintains that the reason she was fired was because...wait for it...she's white.

Washington Times:

Melissa Click, the former University of Missouri assistant professor who was fired after she tried to block a student journalist from covering a campus protest, suggested in a recent interview that her public termination was a matter of racial politics. This is all about racial politics, she told The Chronicle of Higher Education in an interview published Sunday. Im a white lady. Im an easy target. Ms. Click said Missouris Board of Curators fired her to send a message that the university and the state wouldnt tolerate black people standing up to white people, the Chronicle reported. Ms. Click didnt elaborate on how that would explain the termination of a white woman. The Chronicle reported that Ms. Clicks nerves are perpetually on edge since her firing in February, when she began moving out of her office in the dark so she wouldnt run into anyone. She was suspended and eventually fired by the university after a now-viral video showed her trying to grab a camera from student Mark Schierbecker and calling for some muscle to remove him from an encampment of black student protesters. An assault charge against Ms. Click was dropped when she agreed to perform 20 hours of community service. While Ms. Click acknowledges that she was certainly frustrated that day, she says she was simply trying to protect the black student protesters, The Chronicle reported. Everything she has come to stand for since the video came out  intolerance, anger, mouthiness, and dismissiveness  is exactly the opposite of who she says she really is. Focusing on her behavior, she says, is a way to take attention away from the demands of Concerned Student 1950, the group of protesters. Im not a superhero, Ms. Click told the newspaper. I wasnt in charge. [But] when it got out of control, she added, I was the one held accountable. I am a woman who made some mistakes trying to do what she thought was right, she said.

She should have been fired for incoherence. She was fired because she's a white woman and because the school administration didn't want black people standing up to white people? Two entirely opposing trains of thought coming out of the mouth of a confused, clueless leftist.

I suppose that bit about "being on edge" and cleaning out her office in the dead of night so she wouldn't run into anybody is meant to elicit feelings of sympathy. As far as most of us are concerned, she is getting off easy. True justice would be visited upon her if she failed to teach another class ever again.
Evidently, irony is not appreciated very much by the so-called migrants in Paris who are demanding better free housing than the emergency shelters they have been living in as they seek asylum. One of them told the France-24 television network:

We ask to be given a bit of consideration and respect, that is why we have decided to come to the school.

In a euphemism-laden article in the U.K. Daily Express, Laura Mowat explains:

The 150 migrants have taken over the building of Jean-Jaures school since Friday as they seek shelter, electricity, gas and water. Authorities have labelled the takeover of the school in Paris's 19th quarter a "savage occupation". The school is under renovation, and scheduled to re-open, but unless the seizure of the property ends, the children will have to find other quarters. No respect for them.

You have to love the circumspection found here:

Neighbours and the local authority are concerned that the illegal occupation could lead to a possible deterioration of the area and lead to social issues.

Social issues? Does this mean crime? Or maybe enforcement of sharia? Well never know, because there are no details at all about the migrants, but my guess is that they are not Norwegians seeking the gaiety of life on Paris.

Hat tip: Open Blogger at AOSHQ
Wait a minute! I thought vote fraud was virtually nonexistent. Thats what Democrats have been telling us for years, in even the face of 100-plus-percent turnout in some urban districts. Thats why we dont need voter ID, after all. It is an article of faith on the left that photo ID for voting is a racist plot by the GOP.

But now prominent Hollywood Sanders supporter Tim Robbins is charging that Hillarys forces are stealing the election.

Caitlyn Yailek of The Hill reports:

Actor Tim Robbins is alleging the election is being stolen from Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. In a tweet Monday afternoon, the actor called out The New York Times and CNN, suggesting the media is tipping the scales in favor of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Hey NYTimes, CNN. Are you saying that 2+2=5? Are you really OK supporting a candidate with these numbers?#VoterFraud pic.twitter.com/LrxqLTaKbC  Tim Robbins (@TimRobbins1) April 25, 2016

The more bitterness on the part of Sanders supporters, the better for the ultimate GOP nominee. And the dawning of suspicion about election integrity is a welcome sign. Lets hope this suspicion stays alive and helps institute federal anti-vote fraud legislation. The potential for a fusion of outsiders from the left and the right to undo the dominance of the political establishment has more potential than generally recognized.
Bernie Sanders loves to denounce the tax dodges of the wealthy (even as he pays 13.4% income tax on a $200K+ income), so it would be interesting to hear what he has to say about John Kerry, the current secretary of state and former Democratic Party nominee for president. An analysis of public documents by the Daily Caller News Foundation indicates that Kerry and his wife liberally use offshore tax havens. Richard Pollock writes:

 a DCNF investigation has confirmed that the former Massachusetts Democratic senator and his billionaire wife, using an elaborate set of Heinz family trusts, have invested more than $1 million each into 11 separate offshore accounts  mainly hedge funds in the Cayman Islands. The investments were made during both Kerrys tenure in the Senate and in his present position as the nations chief diplomat. The trusts funneled millions of dollars over the years into various offshore investment vehicles through a Heinz trust called the Heinz Family Commingled Alternative Investment Fund.

The hypocrisy is as pointed as any Republican family values figure caught with a mistress, though of course the media have no interest in pointing it out. And Kerrys spokesman naturally makes excuses:

State Department Spokesman Adm. John Kirby told TheDCNF Kerry is not a beneficiary of the investments and does not own them. Secretary Kerry has no offshore investments. He is not, nor has he ever been a beneficiary of Heinz Family and Marital Trusts and he has no decision-making power over them since they are entirely controlled by independent trustees, said Kirby. Heinz is a beneficiary, Kirby said, but he emphasized that the investments are entirely controlled by independent trustees. He declined to say who controls the trust and makes investment decisions.

Kerry comes by his vast fortune by marriage. In fact, he has the rare distinction of having married two heiresses in sequence. Quite a coincidence that his heart is drawn exclusively to women who have inherited hundreds of millions of dollars of unearned income.

But he is a champion of the little guy. Just like all the Democrats.

Hat tip: Clarice Feldman
Most Americans  at least, it is to be hoped most Americans  are still okay with the commonsense idea of biological males and biological females using separate and distinct restrooms. Not so okay with it, apparently, is one Donald J. Trump, currently undergoing a personality transplant to make himself look more presidential.

Trump, who began his campaign railing against political correctness as he warned of rapists and other undesirables pouring across our borders, has embraced one of the most egregious politically correct tenets of the liberal and loony left  that distinctions between sexes are an artificial and discriminatory construct, that gender is an ambiguous concept, and that individuals should be free to determine their own sexual identity and which restroom to use. As Politico reports, Trump embraced P.C. restrooms when asked about North Carolinas restroom privacy law:

Transgender people should be able to use whatever bathroom they want, Donald Trump said Thursday. "Oh, I had a feeling that question was going to come up, I will tell you. North Carolina did something that was very strong. And they're paying a big price. There's a lot of problems," the Republican presidential candidate said during a town hall event on NBC's "Today.". "There have been very few complaints the way it is. People go. They use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate," Trump said. "There has been so little trouble. And the problem with what happened in North Carolina is the strife and the economic -- I mean, the economic punishment that they're taking." Matt Lauer then asked whether Trump has any transgender people working for his company. "I really don't know. I probably do. I really don't know," Trump said, answering that he would allow, say, transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner to use whatever bathroom she wanted at Trump Tower.

So the allegedly anti-P.C. Trump does not want to protect the borders of our restrooms for our little girls but claims he will protect the borders of the United States? According to Trump, it should be okay for any sexual predator in a dress to follow a teen into the ladies room at the mall. Let us hope Trump is not serious and that this is just another issue Trump has not thought through thoroughly, having missed it on the Sunday morning (or is it Saturday morning?) shows he says he regularly watches.

Breitbart.com has compiled a list from daily news accounts giving a preview of what will become the norm if P.C. restrooms are forced upon us. A few examples:

Palmdale man arrested for videotaping in womens bathroom PALMDALE  A 33-year-old Palmdale man who allegedly dressed as a woman while secretly videotaping females using a department store bathroom was charged with several misdemeanor counts Tuesday, authorities said. Jason Pomare was charged with six counts of unlawful use of a concealed camera for the purposes of sexual gratification, according to Sergeant Brian Hudson of the Los Angeles Sheriffs Departments Special Victims Bureau. Sexual predator jailed after claiming to be transgender to assault women in shelter A biological man claiming to be transgender so as to gain access to and prey on women at two Toronto shelters was jailed indefinitely last week after being declared by a judge a dangerous offender. Pro-family leaders are pointing out that this is exactly the type of incident they warned of as the Ontario government passed its gender identity bill, dubbed the bathroom bill, in 2012.

There will be sexual assaults among these incidents, to be sure. No responsible parent lets his child use a public restroom without accompanying him. Free-for-all restrooms only make the vulnerable more so, and if some people want their daughters or wives to use the stall next to a potential predator, they can go to Trump Tower. For the rest of us, unconfused about our gender and anatomy, such nonsense should not be forced upon us.

Okay, not all transgendered people are predators. But when did surgically altering your body bestow upon anyone an alleged constitutional right to use the other genders restroom?

The whole concept of someone being trapped in the wrong body is nonsense. Evangelical Christians such as Sen. Ted Cruz believe that the Almighty does not make such mistakes. If someone is confused about his sexual identity, he should just drop his drawers and take a wild guess. It is ironic that liberals who insisted we stay out of the bedrooms of homosexuals and lesbians now insist that transgendered people should not stay out of the wrong bathroom.

Senator Ted Cruz rightly slammed Trumps comments, saying:

Donald Trump is no different from politically correct leftist elites. Today, he joined them in calling for grown men to be allowed to use little girls public restrooms. As the dad of young daughters, I dread what this will mean for our daughters -- and for our sisters and our wives. It is a reckless policy that will endanger our loved ones. Yet Donald stands up for this irresponsible policy while at the same time caving in on defending individual freedoms and religious liberty. He has succumbed to the Lefts agenda, which is to force Americans to leave God out of public life while paying lip service to false tolerance. This is not real tolerance. The Left wants to force its belief system onto Americans across the country and silence people of faith in the public square Trump will not defeat political correctness. Today he bowed to it. As the Solicitor General of Texas for five and a half years, Cruz also explained: I handled case after case after case of child molesters, of pedophiles, of people who abused little kids. These are serious issues and when you deal with people who are repulsive perverts and criminals there are some bad people in the world and we shouldnt be facilitating putting little girls alone in a bathroom with grown adult men. That is just a bad, bad, bad idea.

A candidate who has such bad ideas should never even get close to the White House  or any of its restrooms.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investors Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.
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China is the largest smartphone market in the world, as many of you know. Many well-known smartphone manufacturing companies are located in China, like Xiaomi, Huawei, ZTE, OnePlus and Meizu, for example. The Chinese smartphone market has been growing immensely for years, it has basically been doubling in size year after year, up until a few years ago, when the growth started to slow down. The Chinese smartphone market is quite saturated at this point, and analysts have been predicting that this will happen for quite some time now. A ton of new companies have opened up their doors in China in the last couple of years after theyve seen how successful Xiaomi turned out to be in such a short period of time.

Let me put things into perspective, there are approximately 300 smartphone manufacturers currently active in China, so no wonder the market is quite saturated. Analysts actually predict that half of those companies will shut their door in 12 months time due to competition. The mobile-phone industry changed more quickly and brutally than expected. As a startup, we couldnt find more strategies and methods to break through, said Dakele Chief Executive Officer, Ding Xiuhong. In case you havent heard of Dakele, that is a former China-based Chinese smartphone manufacturer which was quite successful for a while, they were well-known for manufacturing high-quality iPhone clones back when the Chinese smartphone market was doubling in size annually, but the company had to shut down last month due to competition, so Mr. Xiuhong definitely has some experience in this regard.

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Shipments of smartphones in China more than doubled 2010 and 2011 according to Canalys, and such incredible growth basically stopped there. The vast majority of smartphone manufacturers in China feel the saturation consequences at this point, and are looking to sell their devices elsewhere, at least the largest companies like Xiaomi and Huawei. Those two smartphone OEMs have been pushing their products intensively to India for quite some time now considering India is the second largest smartphone market in the world, and its far from being saturated. India is basically where China was a couple of years ago, theres plenty more room for progress. Chinese smartphone OEMs are also aiming for other developing markets, like Africa for example, smartphone sales have been growing on that continent as well.

Unfortunately, such situation in the Chinese smartphone market will be the end of a number of smaller companies, as already mentioned. It will be interesting to see what happens in China in a year or two, but the situation sure is interesting. Last years growth was the slowest since 1990, smartphone sales grew by 2%, which is the lowest ever rate recorded by Canalys. For comparisons sake, the growth rate was 150% in 2011. Its becoming a tough market even for tier-one players like Huawei or Xiaomi because its hitting saturation. In order to face that market saturation, theyre expanding into the lower tiers that were owned by the smaller brands, said CK Lu, a Taiwan-based analyst at Gartner Inc. In addition to all this, it is worth mentioning that the companies who do manage to survive in China will have to look for a way to export their smartphones, or even manufacture them abroad.
Microsoft has an interesting relationship with mobile operating systems and to cut to the point, it has failed to extend its dominance of the desktop and server operating system market into the mobile world, despite trying for two decades and almost as many different platforms as we have seen versions of Android. Weve seen Windows CE, PocketPC, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone and now Windows Mobile 10. Microsoft even bought their very own mobile device manufacturer, Nokia, in a transaction that looked like it was designed to ensure at least one company sold Windows Phone devices. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Googles Android and Apples iOS have dominated the mobile operating system universe. Microsoft has almost pulled the plug on Windows Phone and Windows Mobile 10; a shame as things were getting interesting with Microsofts software engineers working on some innovative technologies designed to bridge the so-called app gap between Windows Mobile 10 and Android.

This is not to write that Microsoft dislikes Android: we are seeing more and more evidence that Microsoft is contemplating forking Android and releasing a variant of this operating system, but using Microsoft Services rather than Google Play Services. Weve seen Microsoft working with Cyanogen, the company trying to wrestle control of Android from Google, and weve also see Microsoft steadily improve their applications and service access on the Android platform. And let us not forget Microsofts licensing deal with several manufacturers who sell Android-based devices, such as Samsung and HTC. At least in the case of Samsung, Microsoft and Samsung are believed to have signed a deal to end a lawsuit whereby Samsung promotes Microsoft applications and services on its mobile products and Microsoft doesnt sue Samsung. The modern Microsoft has stopped trying to persuade customers to use their mobile operating system, but instead to access their products and services such as Office 365 on whatever mobile platform he or she wishes.

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Microsoft have never properly disclosed how much money they make from these licensing deals with Android manufacturers, but it has been estimated to be as much as $2 billion. Whilst this is small change compared with its other operating system revenue, $2 billion is still a lot of money. And last week, during an investor briefing, Microsoft announced that its patent licensing revenue had fallen by 26% compared with this time last year. 26% of $2 billion is a little over half a billion dollars. The difference is believed to be down to a change in the Android marketplace, where we are seeing cheaper and cheaper devices being sold around the world and especially in the emerging markets, such as India and China. One of the reasons why these devices are less expensive is because some manufacturers  Microsoft did not namedrop  are somewhat less bothered about paying American companies their licensing fees. It may only be a few dollars per device sold, but these savings are being passed on to the customer and not to line Microsofts pockets.

The drop in revenue is not significant to Microsoft, and we wouldnt expect it to be, but it may encourage executives to support their own forked version of Android with a distinctive Microsoft flavor. And we can expect ongoing changes to the market as more customers opt for cheaper devices, too. Microsoft are probably thinking that if they cant beat Android, they will make do with joining them.
This year more companies have jumped on the 360-degree camera bandwagon, including LG, Samsung, and even Facebook, but while the products offered by these companies are aimed at consumers, other tech giants have joined the 360-degree camera market in a quest to facilitate the movie industry. Such is the case with the Nokia Ozo 360-degree virtual reality camera unveiled last year, which will apparently be used by the Walt Disney Studios for specially-created VR content.

Chances are that you havent heard any news regarding the Nokia Ozo camera since last year, but this is largely due to the fact that the product is not intended for the consumer market. The Nokia Ozo was announced in July 2015 and pricing was revealed in December 2015, along with a tentative release date set for the second quarter of 2016. The Nokia Ozo costs a whopping $60,000, and apparently the Walt Disney Studios will be among the first filmmakers to use Nokias 360-degree camera for creating virtual reality content. The studios chief technology officer, Jamie Voris, announced that the studio will collaborate with Nokia Technologies to help explore the creation of VR content for our theatrical releases, adding that the studio aims to bring extraordinary experiences to audiences around the world. Its interesting to note that the deal between Disney and Nokia covers other studios owned by the Walt Disney Studios, including Lucasfilm and Marvel. This could mean that Disney could use the Nokia Ozo to create 360-degree virtual reality content for Marvel superhero movies and even the Star Wars saga. In fact, according to Nokia Technologies president, Ramzi Haidamus, the Nokia Ozo is already being used by Disney for shooting behind-the-scenes footage for an upcoming (unspecified) title.

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While it seems that the Walt Disney Studios will use the Nokia Ozo for creating more exciting virtual reality content, the company already used the 360-degree camera for promoting The Jungle Book 2016 movie released earlier this month. Two 360-degree clips have been already published; one inviting viewers to a 360-degree roundtable interview with the films director, Jon Favreau, and the second 360-degree video allowing viewers to experience the films premiere on the red carpet.
The advent of smartphones has led to a lot of technological advances and new uses for technology. Thanks to the popularity of smartphones, the computing and tech worlds have exploded and trends like virtual reality are taking consumers by storm. Unfortunately, smartphones havent been without their issues. One of the bigger issues with them is that people tend to bury themselves in them, leading to awkward social gatherings, car accidents and a lot of cracked screens from people tripping over things walking because their eyes are on a screen, rather than the turf. While some parts of the United States are looking to illegalize the use of a mobile device while walking, the city of Augsburger in Germany is taking a different approach.

In the wake of a 15 year old girl being killed by a train that she didnt see coming because she was too busy with her phone, the city has decided to help smartphone addicts instead of punishing them. As pictured above, lights that show the status of an intersection are being embedded into the streets of Augsburger. The way they work is quite simple, even more so than a normal crossing light; when the lights are on, its unsafe to cross. Its a simple system indeed, and should be quite effective. When your concentration is on a smartphone screen, most details on the street dont truly register, glossed over as a normal part of what you see as you walk. Light sources, however, will stick out a bit more, allowing users to pick them up in their peripheral vision.

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While this solution may not stop mobile users who are mobile themselves from antics like crashing into other people, dropping their phones or walking face-first into street lights, it will curb, if not outright buck, the trend of smartphone users being hit by cars and trains or having near-misses, saving a good number of lives in the process by mirroring the attitude of the Chinese, who have begun to lay down a separate sidewalk for those whose travels on foot are accompanied by a smartphone.
If you are an online video steamer, then there is a significantly good chance that you already use Netflix as your preferred online video content provider. In fact, it seems no matter where you are, Netflix is there or planning on being there soon enough. Back in January, the company announced they were expanding the service to another 130 countries and that was also while confirming that their current subscriber base already stands at around 75 million. That is quite the number of subscribers who pay monthly to make use of the service.

Well, if you are one of those who have yet to sign up to the service and are thinking about it, but dont want to have to deal with another sign up and another payment service that you have to individually pay for, then it looks like a new update to the Netflix app might hold just the solution  Google Play billing.

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An update rolling out to the Netflix app comes with a very limited changelog. However, one of those noted changes reads Subscribe for Netflix via Google Play Billing (new permission required). Needless to say, the Netflix app is about to let those interested, pay for their Netflix subscription through Google Play billing. Much in the same way as you might already pay for your Play Music All Access subscription or anything else you order through Google Play. While this might not seem like a massive change, it is one which will likely help those who are more interested in paying through Google Play a streamlined way to pay for the service. Which in the grand scale of things does mean one less additional site that you have to load your credit card details on to. That is, providing you have already loaded your card details to Google Play billing in the first place. In terms of when the new payment method is going to be active, that is a little less clear. Along with the noted details, the changelog does specifically state that this particular feature is coming soon. As the update includes the feature, it seems reasonable to assume the feature is ready to go and will just Netflix to flick the switch to start proceedings. Either way, you will have to be running the latest updated version before you can make use of the feature when it does eventually go live.
It seems painfully obvious that virtual reality (or more simply, VR) is the next big thing in technology. Almost a day rarely goes past without some form of news on VR coming through. Not to mention that the leading companies in the field are pushing very hard to cement their position as the go-to company for virtual reality. In terms of the well-known mobile-related companies, Samsung has had quite the substantial legroom in the market, as they were one of the first to bring to market a viable VR headset in the form of the Gear VR and since then, they have been pushing forward with helping to create content and expand the platform. However, HTC has now very much arrived with the HTC Vive and while this is a far higher-priced product, it is also a far more powerful one as well. And it now looks like HTC is keen to push forward with its own platform expansion.

HTC has today announced the launch of Vive X. This is a global accelerator program which looks to help startups who are focused on virtual reality bring their content to the market, quicker. From the start up perspective, the program will offer help, support and most importantly, funding. While from HTCs perspective, the program will go a long way to expanding the current number of Vive-related content that is available.

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The announcement comes with HTC confirming an initial investment in the program of $100 million. It has not been fully disclosed as to where or who the funding is coming from although it does seem to be an amount which is being led by HTC. In terms of the program, although this is designed to roll out globally in time, the program will first commence in three specific cities, Beijing, Taipei and San Francisco. The program will look to make sure approved startups will receive all the backing and support they need to essentially fast-track their progress in development. According to HTCs Cher Wang, Through HTC Vive, we look forward to enabling global talent to create interesting and compelling content and to help shape the future of this industry. The Beijing arm of the program will start in May while there are no firm details provided for start dates in Taipei or San Francisco. Although, it is presumed they are unlikely to be too far behind. Those interested in finding out more about Vive X can do so by heading through the source link below.
Chinese manufacturers have been building smartphones and tablets running the Android operating system for a number of years now. Because the majority of Googles Services are unavailable in China, in some cases the manufacturers have redesigned Android to work without Googles core applications and have provided their own services: Xiaomi is one example of this, where the company considers itself to be an Internet business that also makes smartphones. In other cases, the manufacturer has forked Android to make it their own operating system, which does not include the Google Play Store as standard. Other manufacturers include the stock Google applications in their Android software builds. As far as the devices go, a small number of years ago, Chinese smartphones were considered to be poor quality, sourced using locally manufactured, poor quality components  although they were cheap. Today, many Chinese devices are well made from good quality, locally manufactured components and perform as well as the big name devices available for sale around the world  but are often considerably cheaper to buy.

Sales growth into Chinese smartphone market has been slowing down as more and more people already have a device. To support their businesses, many Chinese manufacturers are now looking to build smartphones for other countries: India is seen as one of the next significant markets. Here, the country is enjoying rapidly growing Internet use, carriers are rapidly expanding their networks and device prices are cheap enough to be accessible. The Indian Government recognised this and has put into place a number of policies designed to support the Indian economy rather than other economies and the chief one here is Make In India. In simple terms, the Make In India policy encourages companies to build factories in India, employ Indian workers and build the device for at least the Indian market. And now the Indian Government has made another announcement whereby it is banning the sale of all mobile phones that do not include an IMEI number and security features.

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Unfortunately, the impact of this announcement is unknown as the Indian Government previously banned the import of devices from Chinese manufacturers that lacked a valid IMEI back in 2010. The Indian Air Force has banned Xiaomi devices after it was discovered these communicated with servers based in China. It could prevent manufacturers from building devices without IMEIs under the Make In India scheme to be sold to local customers. The latest available data shows that the total bilateral trade between Chine and India is over $65 billion, but the Indian trade deficit is almost $49 billion. The Make In India policy has increased import taxes for foreign goods, such as Chinese smartphones, and this is encouraging foreign companies to invest into India  but too many policy changes could disrupt things.
T-Mobile USA, Americas third largest carrier, is acquiring customers at a high rate. According to the latest earnings report, the Uncarrier acquired 2.2 million customers in the first quarter of 2016  beating market expectations of around 1.7 million. In the earnings call, Chief Executive Officer, John Legere, said this on the number of new customers: We have had three full years of positive post-paid porting against the whole industry, and nine quarters of positive porting against everybody. Theyre all donating. Dumb and dumber are donating at record rates. By dumb and dumber, John is referring to the two largest national carriers in the United States, AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Over the last few years, T-Mobile USA has trolled its cellular carrier competition as it works to disrupt the industry. Sometimes, T-Mobiles behavior, especially that of the Chief Executive, is over the top but theres no doubting that the carrier is not playing the mobile market the same way that the competition is. And it is being successful, too.

T-Mobile USA has come a long way from potentially being bought by AT&T or merged into Sprint. Instead, the business has sought to undermine the traditional way of doing business by the cellular carriers, such as applying data caps and high costs when customers go over their allowances. Instead, T-Mobile now exclude many music and video streaming services from customers data allowances, which can translate into real savings at the bill. T-Mobile USA also offer free international roaming across much of the world together and were amongst the first carrier to introduce equipment installation plans. T-Mobiles aggressive marketing has caught the attention of the other carriers, who are changing their ways to combat the Uncarrier.

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In comments today, John Legere remarked that he believes Verizon Wireless will make a stupid acquisition which could mean the struggling Yahoo! internet business although he was not specific. In the detail, John told CNBC: Verizons about to take over as dumber from AT&T. I make that prediction. In [the] next six months, theyre going to do some stupid acquisition. In 2015, Verizon bought AOL for $4.4 billion in order to use AOLs digital and video advertising business. Yahoo!s internet traffic could be used to boost these online streaming numbers. John has also been critical of Verizons attempts, in his eyes, to be in a different business. T-Mobile USA are not shy about admitting that they are simply in the mobile phone business. John sees Verizons investing into mobile video business as a distraction, however Verizon do not see it this way  instead their spokesperson offered the shareholder-friendly canned response of: Our goal is long-term shareholder value, based on a diverse and healthy cash flow. We use that cash to re-invest more than $17 billion in capital each year to provide customers with great networks, and great new services that take advantage of those networks. To some industry observers, Verizon is trying to drum up a reason for customers to use their network and T-Mobile USA is simply enabling customers to use it.
Nokia was once the number one cellphone manufacturer in the world, but over the years the company has failed to adapt to the smartphone industry, and after a number of failed attempts at utilizing their very own smartphone OS, the company signed an exclusivity agreement with Microsoft to manufacture Windows Phone devices. The sales were poor and the company had to sell their Devices and Services business to Microsoft, which made them significantly weaker. Despite all that, Nokia managed to release an Android-powered tablet, and theyve even purchased Alcatel-Lucent, which opens all sorts of doors for them. Well, it seems like Nokia is about to splash out more cash soon, read on.

The company has announced that they plan to spend $191 million in order to purchase the French fitness gadget maker Withings. Now, Withings manufacturers fitness-tracking wearables and wi-fi connected scales, amongst other things, and these sure are interesting news. We have said consistently that digital health was an area of strategic interest to Nokia, and we are now taking concrete action to tap the opportunity in this large and important market. With this acquisition, Nokia is strengthening its position in the Internet of Things in a way that leverages the power of our trusted brand, fits with our company purpose of expanding the human possibilities of the connected world, and puts us at the heart of a very large addressable market where we can make a meaningful difference in peoples lives, said Nokias CEO, Rajeev Suri.

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Now, according to Mr. Suris statement, and pure logic, Nokia is looking to expand into the IoT sector. This opens all sorts of doors for them, and maybe even gives them a way to manufacture a smartwatch in the near future. We almost owe it to ourselves to go experiment in the consumer area, said Mr. Suri back in February, so Nokia obviously has big plans for the future. Judging by the companys latest acquisitions, it seems like we can expect to see Nokias branding on quite a few products in the future. The company has already confirmed that theyre interested in manufacturing all sorts of devices, and it seems like smartphones and smartwatches are in tow, well see.
The US President, Mr. Barack Obama, has been touring Europe over the past week, visiting countries like the UK and Germany. In the UK last week on an invitation from the countrys Prime Minister, Mr. David Cameron, he spoke out against the BREXIT campaign that has been advocating for Britains exit from the European Union. Once that part of his European sojourn was taken care of, the President hopped over to Germany over the weekend, where alongside Chancellor Angela Merkel, he defended and advanced the cause of the proposed TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) free trade deal between the EU and the US, even in the face of stiff opposition to the trade agreement both at home and in Europe, especially in his host country.

Meanwhile, even as the President was talking larger economic issues, he found some time for a technology trade show in the city of Hannover, where he got to try out a VR headset from German tech company, PMD Technologies AG, which is known mostly as a developer of CMOS semiconductor components. The VR headset was paired up with a Samsung Galaxy S7 and hooked up to an external 3D camera. This was apparently the very first time that President Obama had experienced VR, and by all accounts, was suitably pleased at what he saw. However, the President reportedly did not get the opportunity to try out the interesting stuff like games or other sophisticated applications, but looked at his own hands through the 3D camera with the headset on, experiencing a program that identifies individual fingers and marks them with color highlights.

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Of course, virtual reality is already one of the most interesting sectors of consumer technology these days, and is expected to be the next big thing now that the global smartphone market is reaching its saturation point and the wearables industry, in general, is yet to take off the way stakeholders would have wanted it to. Interestingly though, even basic VR devices like the Google Cardboard are slowly but surely transcending consumer-related applications and are being increasingly used in medical and commercial fields. Meanwhile, even though this was said to be President Obamas first tryst with VR, it is unlikely to be his last. Mr. Obama has always been a vocal supporter of technology, and now that his term as the US President is set to expire next February, hes likely to have more time on his hands to try out fun stuff like VR that has come up during his time at the White House.
Mobile payments have been around for a long time now, and theyre far from something new. The problem with mobile payments however  as Google found out with the roll out of Google Wallet  is that big, entrenched, industries are unlikely to change quickly. With the rise of Apple Pay and Samsung Pay however, many retailers, banks and card issuers have been given no choice but to give in to consumer demand, and so mobile payments have steadily become available in more parts of the globe. In South Korea, Samsungs home turf, it appears as though Samsung Pay has become the countrys most popular mobile payments system, according to a new report.

A South Korean mobile app and trend ranker, WiseApp, has put Samsung Pay in the lead with a reported 2.59 Million users in the region, beating second place app card from Shinhan with 1.5 Million users and Hyundai Card with 1.23 Million users. These are small numbers, to be sure, but considering the service only launched less than a year or so ago now in South Korea, this isnt bad going, but the service was still only used 41 times per user on average during the month of March. This goes to show that while theres certainly room for improvement, Samsung sure have the upper-hand in South Korea. Whats interesting to note however, is that iOS was exempt from this report by WiseApp due to its low portion of market share in South Korea.

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Samsung Pay is now available in North America, China and soon Singapore as well as South Korea, but has yet to expand to Europe. A launch in Europe is scheduled for some time soon, and hopefully Samsung will be able to offer the same sort of promotion and push that it did in North America. Android Pay has recently become available as well, but it appears that, for right now at least, Samsung Pay is the one payments service thats growing the quickest and could become one of the largest in the world before long. Apple Pay will continue to be Samsungs main rival in this emerging sector, but it doesnt appear as though theres too much for them to worry about just yet.
Samsung Electronics will host a new developer conference (SDC 2016) at the Moscone West Center in San Francisco starting April 27th. The event will end one day later on April 28, and throughout the day, Samsung will discuss various aspects of the industry, exchange ideas, and explore new possibilities. Excitingly enough, the company recently announced that its innovation program known as C-Lab will also unveil a number of prototype products at the event, including the LiCon application and a new version of the Entrim 4D headset for VR users.

Samsung Electronics C-Lab is an innovation program that allows the companys employees to explore new concepts, think outside the box, and come up with creative business ideas. Excitingly enough, Samsungs C-Lab branch will unveil some of its latest prototypes at the upcoming Samsung Developer Conference, and according to a new press release, at least five interesting and unique products will be detailed by April 28. This includes LiCon  an application that allows users to connect to, and gain control of multiple Internet of Things (IoT) devices via a smartphones camera. Users can take pictures of an IoT device and the application will then utilize vision-based recognition to identify the product and connect it to the smartphone. Another prototype product will be Ahead, which takes the form of a communication device for bikers, skiers, and generally speaking, people who wear helmets. The device uses oscillators to create a surround sound effect, so unlike conventional earbuds or headphones, it doesnt block background noise. Moving on, Samsung also announced that a new version of the Entrim 4D headset will be showcased at SDC 2016. Its called the Entrim 4D+, and much like the Entrim 4D unveiled at the South by Southwest festival, the headset uses Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation to send electric messages to a specific nerve in the ear, synchronizing the wearers body with movements in virtual reality environments and thus minimizing motion sickness.

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Last but not least, Samsungs C-Lab will also showcase AMe  a necklace wearable equipped with three individual cameras capable of recording 360-degree videos in 4K resolution  and a smartwatch application for kids, called ItsyWatch, designed to make daily activities, such as exercising or brushing teeth, more enjoyable. Until the prototypes hit the spotlight, you can get a sense of what they are all about from the image gallery below.
Earlier this month a new rumor emerged, suggesting that Sony is planning the release of an Xperia X Premium smartphone to replace the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium released last year. More to the point at hand, the rumors claimed that the fabled Sony Xperia X Premium will feature a new display supporting HDR technology, which would have been a first in the world of smartphones. However, Sony Taiwan seems to have recently addressed the rumors, and according to the Japanese manufacturer, the so-called Sony Xperia X Premium is just a product of the rumor mill.

Sony unveiled its latest smartphone series at Mobile World Congress in February, and as some of you know, the lineup consists of three smartphones, namely the Sony Xperia X, the Xperia XA, and the Sony Xperia X Performance. In February, there have also been reports that the new series will replace the Sony Xperia Z lineup, and more recent reports suggested that the successor to the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium will be a new, unannounced device called the Sony Xperia X Premium. What made this rumored handset particularly interesting was the idea that it will become the worlds first smartphone to feature a display supporting HDR playback. This made a certain amount of sense considering the fact that the Sony Xperia X Performance introduced at MWC features only a Full HD (1080 x 1920) display, and especially given the fact that last years Sony Xperia Z5 Premium pushed the limits of smartphone display technology by introducing a 4K panel with a resolution of 2160 x 3840 and a pixel density of ~806 pixels per inch. Rumors had it that the Sony Xperia X Premium will replace the Xperia Z5 Premium and thus continue the tradition of pushing display technology to new heights, but according to a recent report citing Sony Taiwan, the fabled Sony Xperia X Premium is a made up terminal and a product of the rumor mill. It doesnt exist, apparently, and Sony has no plans to create and release it.

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The now-debunked rumors also claimed that the Sony Xperia X Premiums 5.5-inch display would have been capable of delivering up to 1300 nits of brightness and that it would have been powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC, an Adreno 530 graphics chip, and 3 GB of RAM.
UKs Tesco Mobile has announced that it is doing away with roaming charges in 31 Home from Home countries within Europe, including major tourist hotspots like Spain, France and Germany, among others. The offer will come into effect on May 23rd and stay in force till September 3rd, which is when many Brits are expected to take their summer vacations. While the European Commission has already mandated the scrapping of all roaming charges by next June, EU regulations that stipulate lower roaming charges within the continent is slated to come into force from the 30th of this month itself. That being the case, Tesco has now decided to do away with roaming charges altogether  albeit temporarily  for both its Pay Monthly as well as its pay-as-you-go customers.

What this means in essence is that Tesco customers calling UK numbers while in Europe, will be charged from their allocation of UK minutes, texts and data, without having to worry about the exorbitant charges that often accompany international roaming. In case the allocated quota is exhausted, additional usage will be charged at 4p per minute for calls and 1p per text, which are standard UK rates for Tesco. The company has also announced that all incoming calls and texts will be free for users during the period as long as its customers are in any one of the 31 so-called Home from Home countries. The complete list of countries can be found at the source link below.

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The decision from Tesco to temporarily scrap roaming charges in select European countries comes at a time when the BREXIT debate is raging within the UK. Whether the country continues to be a part of the European Union when the dust settles remains to be seen, but in case the country does exit the union, it will be interesting to note what will happen to roaming charges going forward. Either way, for now, tourists and business travelers alike will be able to enjoy free roaming in as many as 31 countries, provided theyre on Tesco. It remains to be seen whether other UK carriers will follow suit and reduce their roaming charges before the EU regulations come into effect next year or if theyll adopt a wait-and-watch policy for now.
(ANSA) - Rome, April 26 - The family of Giulio Regeni, the Italian researcher tortured and murdered in Cairo earlier this year, said Tuesday that they were "anxious" over the arrest in Egypt of a consultant who was helping their legal team. The family named the arrested person as Ahmed Abdallah, president of the board of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedom (ECRF), an NGO that is providing consultancy work for the Regeni's lawyers.

Amnesty International confirmed Abdallah was arrested along with activist Sanaa Seif and lawyer Malek Adly. Egyptian special forces took Abdallah from his home on the night of April 24 and he stands accused of instigation to violence in order to overthrow the government, adhering to a terrorist group, and promotion of terrorism, Amnesty said.

In light of Amnesty's communique, the Regeni family expressed "concern over the recent wave of arrests in Egypt (of) human rights activists, lawyers and journalists, some of them directly engaged in the search for the truth about the abduction, torture and murder of Giulio", their statement said.

Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge doctoral student researching Egyptian trade unions, disappeared on January 25, the heavily policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that toppled former strongman Hosni Mubarak. His beaten, burned, slashed, and mutilated body turned up in a ditch on the city's outskirts on February 3.

Italy has complained of a lack of cooperation from Cairo in getting to the bottom of the case and recently recalled its ambassador to Egypt for consultations after the investigation into Regeni's death stalled, with Egypt proffering unlikely versions of his death that included a car crash, a gay lovers' quarrel, and a kidnapping for ransom gone wrong.

On Monday, which was a national holiday in Italy, Lower House Speaker Laura Boldrini reiterated the call for truth and justice for Regeni.

"We will never tire of calling for the truth. A democracy does not compromise," she said during celebrations to mark Italy's liberation from the Nazi occupation in World War II. Meanwhile in the Egyptian capital, a journalist who interviewed the relatives of the criminal gang allegedly found to be in possession of Regeni's documents was among numerous people detained following anti-government protests coinciding with the anniversary of the end of the Israeli occupation of the Sinai peninsula on Monday. Basma Mostafa was one of six local and six foreign journalists be to detained. Also on Monday, an Egyptian television presenter drew criticism after saying Regeni could 'go to hell'. "What's all the fuss about?" asked Rania Yassin on the Saudi television channel Al Hadath Al Arabiya. "Is it the first time that someone has been killed? Initially we sympathised, a young person had been killed. But now you have pushed us into saying 'go to hell', we've had enough of this story!" Journalists in Cairo said Yassin's remarks were "out of place and not to be publicised".


(see related)(ANSA) - Brussels, April 26 - United Nations Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson said Tuesday a UN presence in Libya is still "a long way off" because any such mission requires a UN Security Council resolution.

"First of all we must establish a civilian presence there," Eliasson told RAI public broadcaster in an interview.

"Representatives from the UN and UNHCR must be there to deal with the refugee and migrant situation, and conditions must be sufficiently secure," he said.

"Should this be the case and should the Libyan government want a different kind of presence - say to protect oil wells or anything else - it would have to be discussed by the Security Council," he continued. "But this is still a long way off." His comments came the day after Libyan Premier Fayez al-Sarraj called on the United Nations, European countries and neighbouring African countries to help Libya protect its oil resources from so called Islamic State (ISIS) fundamentalist terrorists.


(ANSA) - Rome, April 26 - ISIS has sleeper cells that are preparing terrorist attacks in Italy, Germany and Britain, not just in France and Belgium, James Clapper, the United States director of national intelligence, told reporters at an encounter organised on Monday by the Christian Science Monitor. Clapper said the United States was calling for more sharing of information between intelligence agencies as a result and warned that ISIS was exploiting the crisis linked to the arrival of waves of asylum seekers in Europe.

He said there was a "conflict" between EU rules on free movement of people and goods and on privacy and nation states' responsibility to "protect frontiers and the security of their people". According to the New York Times, when asked if ISIS was conducting secret operations in Italy, Germany and Britain, Clapper said: "yes, it has done. And, naturally, this worries us and our European allies. We continue to see plots by ISIS in the countries that you have mentioned".

However, Italian intelligence sources told ANSA on Tuesday that there is no new terror alarm or concrete indicators that ISIS is planning attacks in Italy when asked about Clapper's comments.

The sources said that Italy was, nevertheless, highly exposed to the risk of attacks, in part because it is the home of the Vatican.


(ANSA) - Rome, April 26 - The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) will be protected by anywhere from 200 to 300 international troops and Italy will likely contribute the greatest number, defence sources told ANSA on Tuesday. The troops will be sent when UN Libya envoy Martin Kobler moves to Tripoli along with UNSMIL staff, the sources said. However it is still premature to talk about numbers because the UN has requested troops from the entire international community and it is still not known how many the other countries will contribute, they said. The government earlier denied reports Italy has offered to send 900 soldiers to Libya, with the general defence staff describing the reports as "groundless". On Tuesday, daily newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that Italy was preparing to send a contingent of between 600 and 900 soldiers and carabinieri to Libya to help guard sensitive sites including oil wells and train local security forces there.

The reports came the day after Libyan premier Fayez al-Sarraj called on the UN, Europe, and neighbouring African countries to help Libya protect its oil resources from so called Islamic State (ISIS) fundamentalist terrorists.


ROME - The family of Giulio Regeni, the Italian researcher tortured and murdered in Cairo earlier this year, said Tuesday that they were "anxious" over the arrest in Egypt of a consultant who was helping their legal team. The family named the arrested person as Ahmed Abdallah, president of the board of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedom (ECRF), an NGO that is providing consultancy work for the Regeni's lawyers.



Amnesty International confirmed Abdallah was arrested along with activist Sanaa Seif and lawyer Malek Adly. Egyptian special forces took Abdallah from his home on the night of April 24 and he stands accused of instigation to violence in order to overthrow the government, adhering to a terrorist group, and promotion of terrorism, Amnesty said.



In light of Amnesty's communique, the Regeni family expressed "concern over the recent wave of arrests in Egypt (of) human rights activists, lawyers and journalists, some of them directly engaged in the search for the truth about the abduction, torture and murder of Giulio", their statement said.



Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge doctoral student researching Egyptian trade unions, disappeared on January 25, the heavily policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that toppled former strongman Hosni Mubarak. His beaten, burned, slashed, and mutilated body turned up in a ditch on the city's outskirts on February 3.



Italy has complained of a lack of cooperation from Cairo in getting to the bottom of the case and recently recalled its ambassador to Egypt for consultations after the investigation into Regeni's death stalled, with Egypt proffering unlikely versions of his death that included a car crash, a gay lovers' quarrel, and a kidnapping for ransom gone wrong.



Meanwhile in the Egyptian capital, a journalist who interviewed the relatives of the criminal gang allegedly found to be in possession of Regeni's documents was among numerous people detained following anti-government protests coinciding with the anniversary of the end of the Israeli occupation of the Sinai peninsula on Monday.
ROME - ISIS has sleeper cells that are preparing terrorist attacks in Italy, Germany and Britain, not just in France and Belgium, James Clapper, the United States director of national intelligence, told reporters at an encounter organised on Monday by the Christian Science Monitor. Clapper said the United States was calling for more sharing of information between intelligence agencies as a result and warned that ISIS was exploiting the crisis linked to the arrival of waves of asylum seekers in Europe.



He said there was a "conflict" between EU rules on free movement of people and goods and on privacy and nation states' responsibility to "protect frontiers and the security of their people". According to the New York Times, when asked if ISIS was conducting secret operations in Italy, Germany and Britain, Clapper said: "yes, it has done. And, naturally, this worries us and our European allies. We continue to see plots by ISIS in the countries that you have mentioned".



However, Italian intelligence sources told ANSA on Tuesday that there is no new terror alarm or concrete indicators that ISIS is planning attacks in Italy when asked about Clapper's comments.



The sources said that Italy was, nevertheless, highly exposed to the risk of attacks, in part because it is the home of the Vatican.


TUNIS - Tunisian Interior Minister Hedi Majdoub called on countries within the Arab Maghreb Union (Uma) to establish a common strategy for fighting religious extremism at the sixth meeting of the council of interior ministers of the organisation in Tunis.



The meeting is dealing with issues such as security in Uma countries, which include Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. The region faces growing threats from terror groups, organised crime, illegal migration and arms and drugs trafficking. Uma was created in Marrakech in 1989 during a meeting of heads of state, aiming to guarantee cooperation between members and safeguard their assets.



A similar will to collaborate on security was expressed by the vice president of the Presidential Council of the Libyan national unity government, Abdessalem Kajmen. He said closer cooperation between Uma countries is needed to face the challenges awaiting the Maghreb, above all terrorism.



To do this it is essential to identify threats and develop a common approach based on collaboration and information exchange, said Algerian Interior Minister Noureddine Bedoui. The secretary-general of Uma also called for greater coordination and the development of common security strategies to win the fight against terrorism. (ANSAmed).
UN Libya resolution 'a long way off' Eliasson tells RAI Civilian UN presence first says UN deputy chief

(ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, APRIl 26 - United Nations Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson said Tuesday a UN presence in Libya is still "a long way off" because any such mission requires a UN Security Council resolution.



"First of all we must establish a civilian presence there," Eliasson told RAI public broadcaster in an interview. "Representatives from the UN and UNHCR must be there to deal with the refugee and migrant situation, and conditions must be sufficiently secure," he said. "Should this be the case and should the Libyan government want a different kind of presence - say to protect oil wells or anything else - it would have to be discussed by the Security Council," he continued. "But this is still a long way off." His comments came the day after Libyan Premier Fayez al-Sarraj called on the United Nations, European countries and neighbouring African countries to help Libya protect its oil resources from so called Islamic State (ISIS) fundamentalist terrorists. (ANSAmed).




Terrorism: Maghreb Union calls for common security strategy Meeting of interior ministers from UMA in Tunis

(ANSAmed) - TUNIS, APRIL 26 - Tunisian Interior Minister Hedi Majdoub called on countries within the Arab Maghreb Union (Uma) to establish a common strategy for fighting religious extremism at the sixth meeting of the council of interior ministers of the organisation in Tunis.



The meeting is dealing with issues such as security in Uma countries, which include Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. The region faces growing threats from terror groups, organised crime, illegal migration and arms and drugs trafficking. Uma was created in Marrakech in 1989 during a meeting of heads of state, aiming to guarantee cooperation between members and safeguard their assets.



A similar will to collaborate on security was expressed by the vice president of the Presidential Council of the Libyan national unity government, Abdessalem Kajmen. He said closer cooperation between Uma countries is needed to face the challenges awaiting the Maghreb, above all terrorism.



To do this it is essential to identify threats and develop a common approach based on collaboration and information exchange, said Algerian Interior Minister Noureddine Bedoui. The secretary-general of Uma also called for greater coordination and the development of common security strategies to win the fight against terrorism. (ANSAmed).




Brussels: lawyer says Abdeslam to be in France in 2-3 weeks To have new French lawyer. Explosive belt was working

(ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, APRIL 26 - The extradition of Salah Abdeslam from Belgium to France to face judgement for the Paris terror attacks is "imminent" and a "question of two to three weeks" said lawyer Sven Mary in an interview with Belgian daily L'Echo.



Mary said Abdeslam planned to change his legal representative and will find a French lawyer once he has crossed the border. Mary also affirmed that according to the first assessments, the explosive belt that Abdeslam threw away instead of activating during the attacks "was capable of functioning". This will be taken into account during his trial, he said.



Abdeslam is also accused of attempted murder during the police shoot-out in the Forest area of Brussels which took place three days before his capture and a week before the attacks in the capital of Belgium. (ANSAmed).




Migrants: 304 rescued by Greece in past week Athens coast guard arrests smuggler and seizes 4 boats

(ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, APRIL 26 - The Greek coast guard has rescued 304 refugees and migrants in the past week in eight separate operations in the Aegean Sea, Athens' maritime authority said.



The authority said it had also arrested a suspected people smuggler and seized four boats used to transport migrants from the Turkish coast to Greek islands. The number of people that cross the Aegean Sea has fallen significantly since the March 20 launch of a deal between the European Union and Turkey over handling the migrant crisis.



(ANSAmed).




ANSAmed - Weekly diary from April 26 to May 1

(ANSAmed) - ROME, APRIL 26 - The following are the main events scheduled in the Euro-Mediterranean area between April 26 and May 1: TUESDAY, APRIL 26 BRUSSELS - European Commission vice president Frans Timmermans will be taking part in the conference 'European Muslims, Radicalization and the Challenge of De-Radicalization' NAPLES - three-day event entitled 'Tales from the World City: Words, Visions and Steps. A journey into stories, places and cities' on urban transformations and the value that migrations bring with them organized by Migrantour with the writer of Algerian origins Tahar Lamri (until 28/4) ROME - inauguration of the collective exhibition 'Bursa Artists in Rome' at the Turkish embassy (until 2/5) WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27 BRUSSELS - European Parliament plenary session (also 28/4) BRUSSELS - European Commissioner Carlos Moedas will be receiving Amal Al-Qubaisi, head of the UAE Federal National Council ABU DHABI - the 16th Abu Dhabi International Book Fair (ADIBF) will begin, with Italy as country guest of honor (until 3/5) ROME - Gregorian Pontifical University seminar on 'The Unbearable Lightness of Perception' on public views of refugees and migrants in Europe CATANIA - European immigration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos will be taking part in the inauguration of the new headquarters of the European Regional Task Force (EU-RTF), along with Interior Minister Angelino Alfano and Fabrice Leggeri, executive director of Frontex VATICAN CITY - anniversary of the canonization of Pope Jean Paul II and Pope John XXIII THURSDAY, APRIL 28 BRUSSELS - European Commissioner Marianne Thyssen will be receiving a Caritas delegation PARMA - European commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis will be taking part in a meeting of the European Food Safety Authority board TUNIS - conference entitled 'EDILE: Invest for Local Impact in the Mediterranean', organized by the ANIMA Investment Network and the Agence de Promotion de l'Industrie et de l'Innovation de Tunisie with EU support FRIDAY, APRIL 29 BRUSSELS - European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker will be receiving the presidents of the EU's Outermost Regions DACHAU (GERMANY) - anniversary of the liberation of the former Nazi concentration camp SATURDAY, APRIL 30 NO MAJOR EVENT SCHEDULED SUNDAY, MAY 1 VARIOUS CITIES - International Workers Day.



(ANSAmed).




ROME - The road to European Union membership for Bosnia-Herzegovina still seems long, "but something has changed: the way in which the United States and the EU view us, just like the atmosphere and air that we breath in our country and in the region. I believe that today there are good possibilities for going forward," said Foreign Minister Igor Crnadak, who gave a speech on Tuesday at the Sioi (Italian Society for International Organisation).



The country still has several issues to resolve nevertheless, including corruption, political stalemate, lacking constitutional reform, unemployment, radicalisation and Islamic extremism.



"Up to now we have not made the progress that everyone expected," Crnadak said. "We concentrated too much on constitutional changes that haven't been approved yet," he said, adding "20 years after the signing of the Dayton accords, it's time to reach a true reconciliation and build real trust between us." He said it was time to find solutions for the problems facing the area: a state divided in two entities - the Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina - a district (Brcko) and three peoples (Serbs, Bosniaks or Bosnian Muslims, and Croats), an institutional paralysis and an unprecedented economic crisis.



The future of Bosnia-Herzegovina is in the big European family, Crnadak said, adding that this required the reforms that Brussels is asking for, including real centralisation.



More Europe also means more European funding to support economic development in the country, he said. Economic cooperation is progressing thanks to instruments such as WB6 (Western Balkan Six, an initiative aimed at institutionalising cooperation between Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia in the context of EU accession) and the Berlin Process (which designated Germany as a key player in European foreign policy towards the Balkans).



A high level of corruption, however, is putting the main brake on investments and economic development.



"What the government is trying to do is improve the investment climate, to change norms on labour and taxation," said Crnadak, adding that Bosnia was looking to Italy's example.



"With 1.5 billion euros worth of trade, Italy is positioned as our second commercial partner. Our relations are excellent," he said.
ROME - The closure of the Brenner Pass on the Italy-Austria border would cause "very serious damage" to the European Union, Italian Transport and Infrastructure Minister Graziano Delrio said on Tuesday.



"The closure of the Brenner Pass would cause very serious damage to the economy and transport, but also to the European Union because the Brenner Pass is the symbol of European integration," Delrio said.



Austria has begun building a barrier along its side of the Brenner Pass at the border with Italy, which it says is letting too many asylum seekers through.
ROME - Government sources on Tuesday denied media reports that Italy has offered to send 900 soldiers to Libya.



Separately the Italian general defence staff also described the reports as "groundless". On Tuesday daily newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that Italy was preparing to send a contingent of between 600 and 900 soldiers and carabinieri to Libya to help guard sensitive sites including oil wells and train local security forces there.



The reports came the day after Libyan premier Fayez al Sarraj called on the United Nations, European countries and neighbouring African countries to help Libya protect its oil resources from ISIS militants.


Libya asks for help for oil wells. G5 shows support Renzi speaks to Sarraj: 'Italy ready to lend a hand'

(ANSAmed) - ROME, APRIL 26 - Libya's government has asked for foreign help to protect its oil wells from the threat posed by the Islamic State (ISIS) militant group and the international community has shown signs of support.



From Hanover, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi guaranteed the 'unanimous support' of the G5 for Fayez al Sarraj's government and that Italy would be 'sensitive' to its requests when they are formalised.



In Tripoli, the presidential council led by Sarraj continues to make small steps forward to establish some order within the country. On Monday it sent a request for help to the United Nations, to European countries and to African states on its border to ask them to help protects its oil resources. This followed a warning of possible attacks on installations on land and at sea. ISIS militants also recently launched a new offensive against the wells in Brega, in the east of the country.



The Libyan dossier was on the table at a meeting of the G5 in Herrenhausen castle, Lower Saxony. Renzi, who spoke to Sarraj before the meeting, explained at the end of the meeting that the G5 (USA, France, Britain, Germany and Italy) expressed "unanimous support" for Sarraj's work and agreed that "everything needs to be done to ensure its success". He reaffirmed however that all initiatives "will have to be requested" by Tripoli. And he said when they are "formalised, and not just announced, Italy will be a sensitive partner, ready to lend a hand within the overall project". He also specified that the wells in question are not those owned by Italian oil major Eni.



No concrete measures were agreed in Hanover, while specific requests from Tripoli are awaited. But Renzi noted a "change in direction of the international community compared to what was happening a year ago, when the Libyan and immigration questions were not European priorities". He said that on the immigration front, an agreement with Libya like the deal the EU has made with Turkey could "reduce the number of migrants leaving from Africa".



The real obstacle up to this point is the fragility of Sarraj's executive, which has not yet received support from the part of the country led by the parliament of Tobruk, and is opposed by General Khalifa Haftar.



Haftar is focused on preparing an offensive against ISIS in its stronghold, Sirte, counting on the support of Egypt. This impasse is causing concern for the international community and the U.N., whose special envoy Martin Kobler on Monday asked Tobruk to show support for the national unity government within 10 days.



In the absence of an executive with full support of the whole territory, any potential military intervention, including peacekeeping, is considered premature by western governments.



Undercover European and American forces have nevertheless been actively helping local troops to fight ISIS. According to British media, UK forces are preparing to launch an attack against jihadists in Sirte along with American and French troops. (ANSAmed).




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According to the report, the rate of mishandled bags was 6.5 bags per thousand passengers in 2015, down 10.5% from the previous year and less than half the rate in 2003.

This improvement comes despite an 85% rise in passenger numbers since 2003. Increasing passenger volumes put pressure on the industry's infrastructure, resources and baggage handling systems. The SITA report said.

Last year more than 3.5 billion passengers travelled and with no sign that this growth will slow down, the industry is making a clear focus on how it handles baggage.

IATA Resolution 753, which will be implemented by airlines by June 2018, demands airlines should track each bag throughout its entire journey.

SITAs CEO, Francesco Violante, said: Over the next three years bag tracking will be in the spotlight as airlines ready themselves to implement IATAs resolution. This increase in visibility will provide more control and drive further improvements in bag handling.

It also means that passengers will be able track their bag, just like a parcel, which will reduce anxiety and allow them to take fast action if flights are disrupted and their bags are delayed.

Another area of change identified in SITAs report is the growth of self-service bag services. Around 40% of airlines and airports now provide self-bag-tag printing at kiosks and more than three quarters are expected to do so by 2018. Almost a third of passengers expect to be using bag-drop  either a dedicated staffed station or fully self-service  in 2016.
This years ATM is another great panel for EgyptAir and its group to showcase to a global audience how we continue to redefine travel experience through our latest services and tailor-made travel packages and offers that would meet all tastes of customers all over the world, said Safwat Musallam, EgyptAir ,CEO.

The carrier is at the exhibition with a Phataonic-designed travel stand to showcase the carriers leading products and services. One visitor to the stand won two free Cairo-Dubai tickets during a draw held at the stand.

ATM is one of the most important events on the travel exhibition calendar and an ideal platform to showcase the business developments at EgyptAir to the travel and tourism industry, said Musallam.
Le CBD, cette molecule active du cannabis a aujourdhui le vent en poupe. Et cela est en grande partie du au fait quil permet...
In 1575, after fighting in military campaigns against the Turks in the Mediterranean, the Spaniard was captured by Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers. There, he was kept as a slave for five years.  Cervantes told and retold his own account of enslavement: in plays, poetry and novellas  [and in] the tale told by a captive in Part 1 of Don Quixote.
To be or not to be, said Hamlet, prince of Denmark, that is the question. Yesterday, Hamlets creator was; today, he is not. Of that there is no question. The poet, playwright, actor and theatrical-company shareholder William Shakespeare (sometimes spelled Shakspeare, Shagspere, Shaxpere, Shaxberd or any number of blessed ways) died today, April 23, 1616, at home in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was, more or less, 52.
All the latest Ashbourne news. Ashbourne is an historic market town in Derbyshire. Situated on the southern edge of the Peak District, it is known as the 'Gateway to Dovedale' and the 'Gateway to the Peak District'. Ashbourne is famous for the annual Royal Shrovetide Football Match, which has been played since at least 1667, although its origins may date back centuries earlier. Ashbourne became a Fairtrade town in March 2005. The popular Tissington Trail, which follows the route of the former Ashbourne to Buxton railway, starts on the edge of town. Keep up to date with the latest news from the town by signing up for our newsletter.
by Kamran Chaudhry

According to the annual report on persecution against the group, 248 Ahmadis were murdered last year, with another 323 victims of attempted murder. Scores of their places of worship have either been seized or illegally disposed. Many of their tombs have been desecrated. Since 1974, Ahmadis have been treated as non-Muslims and a government ordinance bans them from using Islamic greetings and prayers, or to refer to their places of worship as mosques.

Lahore (AsiaNews)  The rights of Ahmadi Muslims are increasingly violated in Pakistan, this according to a recently released annual report.

There is a significant increase in hate propaganda against the Ahmadiyya community, said Saleem-ud-din, an Ahmadi community spokesperson, in a press statement released yesterday.

Government agencies responsible for implementing the laws are being manipulated by opponents of the community, he explained. Instead of upholding the law, they continue to cave into the demands of extremists.

Speaking to AsiaNews, he said that an equal playing ground is needed for a peaceful society.

The annual report on the persecution against Ahmadis in Pakistan shows that 248 Ahmadis were murdered from 1984 to December 31, 2015; 323 were victims of attempted murder, 27 worship places were demolished, 32 were sealed by the authorities and 16 illegally appropriated, 39 graves were desecrated and the bodies of 65 were refused burial in joint cemeteries.

In Pakistan, the Ahmadi Muslim community has about four million members. Founded in the late 19th century in what was then British India, the Ahmadi community and its doctrine are considered "heretical" by most Sunnis and Shias because, among others, it honours its founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and holds to beliefs related to other religions.

In 1974, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, then prime minister of Pakistan, deemed the Ahmadis as "non-Muslims".

Later the situation got even worse under General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who pushed through Ordinance XX, which bans Ahmadis from using Islamic greetings and prayers or referring to their places of worship as mosques.

Together with the Christian community, Ahmadis are the most persecuted group in Pakistan, especially under the countrys blasphemy law, which is frequently used to persecuted minorities.

As a result, Ahmadis face insecurity in both life and death, Saleem-ud-din noted. Hate literature against Ahmadis is being distributed throughout the country, specifically in Punjab and Sindh, where a socio-economic boycott is encouraged at a grass-roots level and goes as far as to incite their murder. Sectarianism, murder and social or political discontent are at their peak in the country.

For the Ahmadi spokesman, Tolerance is needed, people must have the courage to speak [up] and listen. Everybody must be given a platform to share his point of view. Also, the government should end discriminatory laws and [instead] ensure religious freedom for all.

The Peaceful citizens of the country, especially civil society, must encourage the government to end religious bigotry.
by Sumon Corraya

Dhaka (AsiaNews) - Xulhaz Mannan, an official of the US government, and his companion Tonoy Majumder were murdered last night in Dhaka because they belong to the gay community and are activists in favor of gay rights in Bangladesh.

Unknown criminals broke into Xulhazs apartment and hacked the two men to death with machetes. Marcia Bernicat, US Ambassador in Bangladesh, condemned the murder: "I am devastated by the brutal murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another young Bangladeshi this evening in Dhaka. Xulhaz was more than a colleague to those of us fortunate to work with him at the U.S. Embassy. He was a dear friend. Our prayers are with Xulhaz, the other victim, and those injured in the attack. We abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the Government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders".



The aggressions against the two activists of the LGBT community took place last night. Parvez Mollah, the security guard who monitored entry into the building, said six men presented themselves, dressed in the uniforms of a courier company. The men carried bags, and told the guard they had to deliver a pack to Xulhazs apartment. On gaining entry to the building, they broke into the apartment and killed the two men with an ax to the head and neck. The security man tried to stop the attack, and was attacked in turn.



Xulhaz was a well-known face of the homosexual community of Bangladesh. He was the director of "Roopban", the first newspaper in the country in favor of the LGBT community. Tonoy instead worked for a year at the same newspaper, and had previously worked for "Boy of Bangladesh", the gay community platform.



In the Muslim majority Asian country, relations with persons of the same sex are illegal. Unofficial figures speak of 1.6 million lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. Other estimates bring the number up to 4.8 million people.



Activists complain that members of the community have no social, religious rights or legal support. A gay resident of Dhaka, speaking anonymously to AsiaNews says: "In Bangladesh we live like the dumb. We can not raise our voice for the public and the radicals persecute us. We want to live in peace. We do not create problems for anyone. "



The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, has strongly condemned the two killings and offered help in the investigation. John Kirby, his spokesman, said they did not know the motives of the attack, but has also defined the US official as a "courageous defender" of LGBT rights, which "are human rights. The killing is beyond words, it is not justifiable.
by Nirmala Carvalho

The leaders of the Indian Catholic Church asked the prime minister to lead a government delegation to Rome for the canonisation of Mother Teresa. The bishops praised the government's involvement in trying to get the release of Fr. Tom Uzhunnalil, who was abducted in Yemen. Modi pledged support for Ranchi hospital for the poor and Tribals, an initiative of local Catholics.

New Delhi (AsiaNews)  Leaders of the Catholic Church met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asked him to invite Pope Francis to India. They made their request at a meeting last night in the prime ministers office in parliament, in New Delhi.

Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI), met with Modi. He was accompanied by Mgr Theodore Mascarenhas, the CBCI secretary general, and Fr Joseph Chinnayyan, CBCI deputy secretary general.

The bishops thanked the prime minister for his governments involvement in trying to get the release of Fr Tom Uzhunnalil, a Salesian who is still held hostage in Yemen. They also invited him to travel to Rome on 4 September for the canonisation of Mother Teresa.

Prime Minister Modi told the prelates that he would vet their invitation to lead a government delegation to Rome and discuss with his aides the best way to plan a papal trip to India.

"It was a cordial meeting, Mgr Mascarenhas, archbishop of Ranchi (in the State of Jharkhand), told AsiaNews. The prime minister mentioned the Catholic Churchs good services in Baroda* in the field of education and assured his support for the construction of the hospital in Ranchi."

The CBCI secretary general is the main backer of the hospital in the Archdiocese of Ranchi, which will offer medical care to the poor and Tribals.

The archbishop of Ranchi spoke at lengths with AsiaNews about this "monument of mercy" under construction, which still requires a lot of money.

The delegation of bishops praised the Indian government for improving the living conditions of millions of farmers in rural areas.

Lastly, the prelates offered their support and "full cooperation and participation in all of the government initiatives to build a better India".

* Baroda, now called Vadodara, is located in the State of Gujarat, where Prime Minister Modi served as chief minister from 2001 to 2014.
by John Ai

Beijing (AsiaNews) - A 14 year old boy, forced to work as a laborer in a textile factory because of the poverty of his family, died in his sleep after working 11 hours a day for several weeks in a row. Wang Pan lived with his mother in Foshan, in the rich southern province of Guangdong: On the morning of April 10 he never awoke again. The doctors, who arrived in an ambulance, were unable to revive him.



Wang and his mother came from Hunan province. Forced to move to the south of the country two months ago, they were employed in the same factory. The shifts were an average of 11 or 12 hours, with frequent overtime to cover production needs. According to the woman, the boy came home and played on his computer. The family said that it was the exhausting shifts that killed him. According to the Yangcheng Evening News, after Wang's death, the factory laid off all child laborers.



The authorities have opened an investigation into the incident and fined the factory 10 thousand yuan (1,367 euro). Investigators said they "they found no evidence" of overtime. The public protested defining the punishment "too mild", but the investigators only response was that they had acted "according to the law." Some sources speak of an agreement between the factory owners and the family, for a value of 150 thousand yuan (20 thousand euro).
For Mina Magdy, a spokesman for the Maspero Youth Union, people want "stability, growth and jobs". There is resentment over the cession of islands to Saudi Arabia, and concern over close links with Riyadh. Most are against Islamic extremists, who led yesterdays protest. The Giulio Regeni affair is being used against country.

Cairo (AsiaNews)  Egyptians have taken to the streets to protest. Most of them are protesting against the countrys difficult economic situation and demanding "social and civil rights" in a "democratic" way, certainly not with the aim of "triggering another revolution, said Mina Magdy, 30, general coordinator and spokesman for the Maspero Youth Union.

Speaking to AsiaNews, he said people want "stability, growth, and jobs" as well as "the defence of the countrys territory and sovereignty." For this reason, the cession of two islands to Saudi Arabia has created resentment."

Yet, despite dissatisfaction among many Egyptians against President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi and his administration, no one wants to "bring the Muslim Brotherhood back to power."

Tensions have bene running high between protesters and Egyptian security forces in recent days. In Cairo, Egyptian police fired tear gas at those who defied government warnings and held a rally on Monday calling for the "downfall" of the regime.

Hundreds of people also gathered in Mesaha Square in Cairos el Dokki district in defiance of the warnings against unauthorised demonstrations.

Security forces and the military were deployed in several Egyptian cities, including Cairo and Alexandria, in key areas like Tahrir Square.

A judge in Giza issued detention orders for four 6 April movement leaders, who played a major role in the 2011 revolution.

Egyptian media slammed the detention of scores of journalists covering the protests at different sites against the return to Saudi Arabia of two islands  Tiran and Sanafir  in the Gulf of Aqaba.

Egyptian troops have occupied the islands since 1950 at the request of Saudi Arabia against possible Israeli attacks.

For Mina Magdy it is important to clarify certain things. A leader of the Christian group that emerged following a massacre of Copts in October 2011 in front of the Maspero building, he contributed to the fall of the pro-Islamist President Morsi in 2013.

"Last week, he said, many Egyptians took to the streets, including Coptic Christians, to challenge the cession of the islands." Conversely, yesterday's protest is unclear. It was not broadly patriotic, but involved extremist Islamic movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood. For this reason, it did not have a big following".

Given its clearly political nature, it was more an "open protest against the government and the president. Security forces responded by arresting hundreds.

"The fact is that the Muslim Brotherhood is not very popular. Most people do not want another revolution, but rather stability, economic growth and recovery in tourism by means of democratic struggle".

They also do not want to be closely tied to Saudi Arabia, because we risk giving up freedom and rights for money". Being subjugated to an "oppressive culture is a real danger for us."

Meanwhile, media and the al Sisis government are at loggerheads over the investigation into the death of Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old Italian researcher who was tortured and killed in Cairo earlier this year.

Regeni was a PhD student at Girton College, Cambridge, researching Egypt's independent trade unions. He went missing on 25 January. His body was found alongside the Cairo-Alexandria highway on the outskirts of Cairo on February 3, 2016. Italian investigators said the corpse showed signs of inhumane treatment.

Recently, the Reuters news agency cited six anonymous Egyptian security officials, all confirming that Regeni was in fact in police custody the day he disappeared, held at a police station. This contradicts Egypts official story.

The day the story broke, Egypt's Interior Ministry released a statement describing it as false news. President el Sisi slammed the report and social media for undermining the countrys stability. Egyptian authorities are looking into possible legal action.

For Mina Magdy, The picture is confused and things have not changed [since January]. There are many opinions, views, investigations, and conflicting versions. The fact remains that the government had no interest in killing a foreign researcher. Moreover, cases of disappearances and violence have occurred in the past without much ado."

For the Christian activist, although there is no evidence, many are under the impression that someone is taking advantage of the situation to attack Egypt from the outside.
Explosions also in Yerevan and Karabakh. The Aleppo Armenians accuse the "Islamic terrorists" backed by Turkey, of using raids to "commemorate" the anniversary of the genocide. Fires in the districts of Suleymaniye and Ashrafieh. 17 Armenians killed, including three children and a woman. For the first time, in Yerevan, a bus packed with explosives is detonated .

Aleppo (AsiaNews) - Islamic terrorists have launched a series of heavey bomb attacks from areas not under government control on Armenian districts of Aleppo, in clear violation of the ceasefire. The bombs killed 17 Armenians including 3 children and a woman, and have sparked a series of fires that are still raging due to the lack of water, causing extensive destruction and damage to property.



The inhabitants of Suleymaniye and Ashrafieh, the Armenian districts of Aleppo bombed yesterday, have no doubt: These attacks are "Turkeys direct response to the 101th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide", marked the day before, on April 24, in the churches of Aleppo, already battered by more than four years of war.

Speaking to AsiaNews over the phone from Aleppo, Armenian Sevag Tashdjian, said the "Islamic terrorist groups supported by Turkey," who "cross Turkish-Syrian border trafficking arms, ammunition and stolen goods" are responsible.



"We woke up under the bombs, it is Turkeys gift" he added, "entire neighborhoods have caught fire and we went under the bombs to bring relief to sick and elderly trapped in their homes and take them to safety, to safer underground shelters".



The few open shopkeepers closed their doors, and for the first time in five years of conflict, "anger has overcome fear". It must be said that the Aleppo Armenians are the group who paid the highest price so far in the war, with the destruction of the ancient churches (including the church of the 40 martyrs, a seventeenth century architectural jewel). The churches were destroyed by explosives placed in underground tunnels carved from areas controlled by pro-Turkish Islamic terrorists). But this time, for the first time, the Armenians are angry with President Bashar Assad.

"Where are you Bashar? You claim to protect Christians, why have you forsaken our neighborhoods at the mercy of Islamic terrorists for 4 years now? ". "Syrian troops are freeing areas controlled by 'Isis all over the country, even in the desert so why not here?" asks Tashdjian.



A Syrian television station sent a reporter to cover the news, but she was abruptly interrupted by the Armenian inhabitants who vented their rage live on television, speaking directly to Bashar Assad shouting "Enough! Do something that goes beyond the words of support and promises to defend the Christians! We are Armenians, Turkey is continuing the genocide of our people here in Aleppo! Why not sweep away these terrorists from our neighborhood? It's been four years, you do nothing but talk about it! If the Syrian army cannot, or will not save us, give us weapons and we will. " The voices and the loud cries prevented the journalist from continuing the news report.



Confirming the suspicions expressed by Aleppo Armenians of Turkish involvement in these crimes, there were two more explosions: one in Armenia, in the center in the capital Yerevan, on the street named after Aleppo; the other in Nagorno Karabakh, always after the celebration of the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide by the Turkish government in 1915.

In fact yesterday in Yerevan a bus packed with explosives exploded causing deaths and injuries. It is a sad first for the Armenian capital: it had never been the scene of attacks, which closely resemble the attacks in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Another explosion occurred in Karabakh. This was reported by the Russian broadcaster Russia Today, without giving further details on damage to persons and property. (PB)
The number of young Palestinians in Israeli prisons for security-related offenses has increased from 170 in September 2015 to 438 in February. At least five inmates under 14 years. More than half will remain in prison until the end of their trial. In 75% of cases, young people are subjected to physical violence; almost all are interrogated without the assistance of a lawyer or parent.

Jerusalem (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The number of young Palestinians held in Israeli prisons has more than doubled in recent months, coinciding with the outbreak of the third intifada knives, characterized by attacks on Israeli citizens and security forces.

According to statistics released by the Penitentiary Department, obtained exclusively by Haaretz, the Palestinian children detained for security-related crimes in Israel and the West Bank increased from 170 in September 2015 to 438 in February.

The report shows a clear "change" in the increase in prisoners according to various age groups. Among those under 14 years, the number has risen from zero in September to 5 in February; one of them is a girl, Dima Al-Wawi, recently released. Detainees aged between 14 and 16 years have passed from 27 to 98; those between 16 and 18 years from 143 to 324 in February.



More than half of the prisoners (54%) will remain in jail until the conclusion of the trial. The Israeli authorities have yet to formulate precise charges against seven young inmates (out of 438); the total of those arrested, 12 are underage girls (in September there was only one Palestinian girl in jail).



In reference to the areas where there have been arrests, 106 were in the city of Hebron (West Bank), divided between Arabs and Israelis. Another 104 in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as the capital of the future state; finally, a further 86 were in Ramallah, again in the West Bank.

According to reports from the NGO Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP), a group that fights for the rights of arrested Palestinian children, about 75% of the 429 young men arrested by Israel between 2012 and 2015 has experienced physical violence after their detention by the Israeli police.

In 97% of cases they have not benefited from the presence of a parent or official during interrogation; 84% were not read their rights upon arrest.

Ivan Karakashian, DCIP coordinator, said that by "targeting the most vulnerable fringe of the Palestinian population, namely young people," Israel "can nip any outbreak in the bud and keep control of a population that lives in a perpetual state of occupation".



Since last October, after a series of provocations by ultra-Orthodox Jews who went to pray on the Temple Mount, incidents and riots have increased in Israel and the Palestinian territories, in the context of the so-called "intifada of knives". So far over 200 Palestinians, 29 Israelis, two Americans, a Sudanese and one Eritrean have been killed.



Most Palestinians were killed as they tried to stab passers-by or soldiers. Others were killed during demonstrations or clashes with the military.
John Ridsdel was held since September 2015 had been kidnapped along with another Canadian, his Filipina girlfriend and a Norwegian. Ottawa condemns "a cold-blooded murder, for which responsibility falls on the head of those who did it". In the same area it the former PIME missionary Rolando Del Torchio was released a few days ago.

Manila (AsiaNews) - The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the "brutal cold-blooded murder" of his countryman, John Ridsdel, hostage of the Filipino Islamist group Abu Sayyaf since September 2015.

The man, a former executive of a mining company , was beheaded yesterday: the fundamentalists had demanded a ransom of 80 million dollars for him and three other hostages, including a Filipino woman.



Authorities have found the severed head of a foreign man on the island of Jolo. Ridsdel had been brought there after the kidnapping, which occurred in a tourist resort near the city of Davao. Also kidnapped with him were another Canadian, Robert Hall, together with his Philippine girlfriend Marites Flor, and the Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad.



In a video sent by the kidnappers to the authorities in November 2015, Ridsdel sought help from his government and made it clear that he would be killed on April 25 if the ransom was not paid. The Canadian government has long had a "zero tolerance" policy towards abduction, and will not pay money to terrorists.



Canada, stated Prime Minister Trudeau, "Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers, and this unnecessary death. This was an act of cold blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage". The deceased, according to Canadian media, was semi-retired and worked sometimes as a freelance journalist.



According to some sources, the group that kidnapped him could be the same that a few days ago released the former PIME missionary Rolando Del Torchio, which is part of some autonomous extremist groups. Among them, the most formidable is Abu Sayyaf - "sword-bearing" in Arabic  it is one of the bloodiest Islamist groups in the galaxy, who split from the Moro National Liberation Front in 1991 to pursue an even more aggressive fundamentalist politics . The stated purpose is to create an independent Islamic Caliphate in the southern Philippines from the rest of the nation, for the vast majority of Catholic faith.
New Captain America Civil War TV Spot Reveals New Spider-Man Footage

Trending News: Watch Spider-Man Crack Jokes In New Spot For Civil War

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Because we were already counting down the days until we could see Captain America: Civil War before we saw Spider-Man in action.

Long Story Short

The excitement is building ahead of the May 6th release of Captain America: Civil War and a new TV trailer has upped the ante, including a hilarious line from Spider-Man in his first entrance to the Marvels Cinematic Universe.

Long Story

Spider-Man is just days away from making his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the latest Captain America: Civil War trailer suggests hes going to be at home there.

The trailers keep coming thick and fast for Civil War, which is released in the US on May 6th, and after some very favorable reviews (read: maybe the best superhero movie ever) the excitement is growing.

Sony and Marvel have agreed a deal for Spider-Man to enter the fray and in this latest tantalizing snippet aired on TV, he pops up with a golden one-liner.







Tom Holland, playing Spider-Man, catches a bionic punch from the Winter Solider (played by Sebastian Stan) and says: You have a metal arm? That is awesome dude!

While theres not too much you can glean from this 30-second teaser, it suggests that the writers are going to have their fun with Peter Parkers transfer to the MCU.

The plot of Captain America: Civil War revolves around the governments attempts to make the Avengers more accountable for what happens while they are saving the day. The Avengers split into two factions, one led by Steve Rogers who doesnt want to be answerable to the government and another under Tony Starks influence who disagree.

It remains to be seen how much screen-time Spidey gets but these are exciting times for his fans as there are also rumors that he could be involved in the next Deadpool film, which would be an awesome combination. The two have already met in the comics, but whether the studios can agree on terms remains to be seen.

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By Hans J. Ohff, Visiting Fellow

DCNS

France will be awarded the contract to partner with Australia to build the next generation of submarines to replace the Collins-class, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced today.

But what was at stake in this A$50 billion program? What were the real technological differences between the submarines on offer?

In early 2015, the Department of Defence issued invitations to Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) of Germany, Direction des Constructions Navales Services (DCNS) of France, and the Japanese government  represented through Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI)  to submit concepts for a submarine design by November 30, 2015.

The proposal was also to address the construction and managing of Australias most complex defence project ever undertaken. Sidestepping competitive tendering, the government opted for a competitive evaluation process (CEP) to determine its overseas partner(s) for the future submarine program (FSP) project SEA1000.

Headed by Rear Admiral Gregory John Sammut, the Commonwealths CEP evaluation team was scheduled to submit its recommendation to an expert advisory panel by early June 2016.

This process has been brought forward in order for the government to announce the overseas submarine design house and, importantly, where FSP will be built before the Senate and the House of Representatives are dissolved for a double-dissolution election.

The French option

DCNSs Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A, a derivative of its Barracuda nuclear-powered attack submarine currently under construction in France, has turned out to be the winner.

Because of the endurance and long range stipulated by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), the French have selected the Barracuda as their design reference. The Shortfin Barracuda will be equipped with four diesel alternators to generate electricity, a >7 megawatt permanent magnet motor and ample battery storage.

These should allow it to meet or exceed the RANs requirements of range, endurance and indiscretion rate, which is the time the submarine spends exposed while recharging its batteries.









The Shortfin Barracuda uses a pump-jet propulsor that combines a rotor and stator within a duct to significantly reduce the level of radiated noise and avoids cavitation.

The aftcontrol surfaces on a single propeller submarine are likely to disturb the water flowing into the rotating blades. This, according to DCNS, will generate cavitation, which is best mitigated by the introduction of a propulsor where the rotor and stator are shrouded.

DCNS also claims it has incorporated the most sensitive passive sonar ever offered with a conventional submarine. Matched to the US AN/BYG-1 combat system requirements and equipped with sophisticated above-water sensors, the French claim that the Shortfin Barracuda will offer operational capability beyond the RANs requirements..

The Japanese option

Buttressed by a handshake between then-prime minister Tony Abbott and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Japanese were sure that MHI/KHI would secure Australias largest-ever defence contract. The companies began to work on their evolved Soryu-class submarine for the RAN, called the Goryu-class, or Australian Dragon.

The agreement signed on July 8, 2014, by the governments of Australia and Japan for the joint development of submarine technology, and more specifically the Marine Hydrodynamics Project, provided the Japanese with the requisite peace of mind to work on an optimal Australian submarine submission.

The introduction of the CEP in early 2015 did not unsettle the Abe government unduly as long as Abbott was in charge in Canberra. However, the ousting of Abbott and the appointment of a new defence minister, Marise Payne, meant Japan could no longer be assured of automatic selection. The CEP for the FSP became thoroughly and hotly contested.









United States Navy





Caught by surprise when Germany and France were invited to compete for the coveted submarine contract, the Japanese government countered by agreeing to build all 12 submarines in Australia and use the construction facilities in Adelaide as a future base for a major innovation centre.

In a further move, it indicated its preparedness to share its most secret submarine stealth technology with the RAN. And to demonstrate the unique capabilities of the Soryu-class, the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force was sending the JS Hakuryu to take part in Exercise Nichi Gou Trident with the RAN and RAAF off the Sydney coast.

Not to be distracted by this move, the opponents of the Japanese option let it be known that the RAN would not attain regional superiority even with the evolved Soryu-class.

Critics asserted that the lack of Japanese submarine technology and know-how meant that the Soryu offered less capability than the existing Collins-class. It was a deficiency so fundamental, they claimed, that the lengthening of the Soryu by six-to-eight metres for improved crew habitability and increased range made little difference to the Goryu-class when matched against the submarine designs of the French and the Germans.

The Japanese had planned to install proven high-tech lithium-ion battery technology in numbers 11 and 12 of their current class, and claim that their submarines are quieter and dive deeper than any other conventional submarine in service.

The German option

Arguably the German Navys submarines are among the worlds stealthiest underwater platforms. Aside from their traditional combat roles, they are employed as vehicles of position that gather intelligence, perform surveillance and reconnaissance at maritime choke points, shipping lanes and harbours.

The design philosophy of as small as possible and as large as necessary has so dictated the Type 212A submarines of the German and Italian navies. It also uses air-independent propulsion, which is quieter in operation than conventional diesel-electric.

The latest submarine of the worlds most prolific submarine builder remains small at 1,660 tonnes submerged displacement. Yet the new class is more than three times larger than its predecessor, the Type 206A.









United States Navy





With this successful upsizing, TKMS answered the sceptics who claimed that the Germans would have found it difficult to evolve their existing submarines designs to the >3,810 tonnes Type 216 Australian variant.

In conjunction with Siemens, TKMS also offered the integrated 3D Digital Shipyard. The application of simulation software was to ensure issues that could affect construction were identified before the first steel is cut. They claimed it is a risk mitigator in the evolution and up-scaling of an existing design.

In this regard, the Germans were countering DCNS propulsor with Siemens Permasyn propulsion motor and MTUs proven submarine diesels. While the drive train on the Type 216 required up-scaling of the main motor to over 6MW, Siemens believed that this would have been accomplished without undue difficulty.

Strategic outcome

All three companies have proven track records in submarine design and construction. Building overseas would have seen the Japanese leave their comfort zone. However, they brought defence and geostrategic advantages to the negotiation table. Offering the RAN supply and repair bases in Japan was one of their most persuasive arguments.

The Germans pushed their vast submarine design and building experience  more than 160 submarines delivered to 20 navies over the past 50 years. This experience, TKMS claimed, would have put the FSP in a safe pair of hands.

The French Navy operates submarines across the five oceans. DCNS argued that the experience and propulsion technology they transferred from their conventional and nuclear submarines made them the preferred candidate for the FSP. And they turned out to be right.

Hans J. Ohff is the former CEO of the Australian Submarine Corporation.

Originally published in The Conversation.
Hi to ALL Moscow Applicants/SponsorsWe would like to run a poll to get your opinion, whether your an agent or lodged yourself or you are the sponsor, We are told by one agent....." Just prior to a partner /or Prospective Marriage Visa being granted the embassy will ask for more information prior to making a decision".Our Question....Would you wait for them to ask for more evidence?....or would you upload more & more as time passes by (eg 13months) & alot more info becomes available to send?If possible please state whether your an agent, sponsor or applicant?Kind Regards
Hyundai Creta 1.6 petrol automatic comes only in the SX+ trim; dual-airbags now standard on all variants.

Hyundai has added an automatic petrol variant to its popular Creta SUV line-up. The Creta 1.6 petrol automatic is available in the fully loaded SX+ trim only, and like its diesel counterpart, uses a six-speed torque converter automatic gearbox. The SUV is priced at Rs 12.86 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi), and you can book one now for a booking fee of Rs 25,000.

The Hyundai Creta 1.6 petrol SX+ comes with projector headlamps, LED daytime running lights, a rear parking camera and sensors, push-button start and a touchscreen infotainment system with navigation. It also gets a leather wrapped steering wheel, automatic climate control and 17-inch alloy wheels.

The SUV is already in huge demand and has a long waiting period regardless of the variant selected. Dealers are informing customers to expect deliveries around the festive season if they book right now. Hyundai has sold 63,836 units till now since the Creta's launch in July 2015  13,184 of those were petrol cars and 50,652 were diesel.

With the addition of the petrol automatic option, the Creta is uniquely positioned in its segment, being the only SUV in this price range to offer both, petrol as well as diesel engines with automatic gearboxes; the only other cars to do so in this price range are the VW Vento and Skoda Rapid. The only other petrol automatic small SUV is the Ford EcoSport, but the Honda BR-V, which will be launched soon, is likely to get such an option too.

Hyundai has also taken this opportunity to update the entire Creta range, making dual airbags a standard fit on all models. Additionally, the company is also planning to launch a lower-spec S+ version of the popular Creta 1.6-litre diesel automatic, to make it accessible to more people. In addition to this, the carmaker is considering bringing back the i20 petrol automatic with the inclusion of a four-speed gearbox. This will make it better equipped to compete with the Jazz and Baleno  both of which offer the option of a CVT automatic gearbox.
HP

Before I move any further, Ill let Jim Farley, chief executive office at Ford of Europe, explain whats what: Fords EcoBoost created a new standard for petrol engines - smaller, more efficient with surprising performance. That same obsession to innovate for the customer is behind our new Ford EcoBlue diesel engine range. This new engine lifts fuel efficiency and reduces CO2 by over 10 per cent in Transit, part of Europes best-selling commercial vehicle line-up, lowering costs for our customers. Thats not enough info, so lets go deeper.Based on a clean-sheet design, the Ford EcoBlue has been developed with three things in mind: fuel efficiency, performance, and refinement. Of course, it goes without saying that FoMoCo promises reduced carbon dioxide and NOx emissions. To be offered in outputs ranging from 100 PS to 240 PS (98.6to 236.7 HP), the EcoBlue will first debut in the Transit and Transit Custom vans. The four-cylinder 2.0-liter diesel engine delivers 20 percent more torque at 1,250 rpm compared to the 2.2 TDCi, which translates into better off-the-line and in-gear acceleration. In any case, more low-end torque is always better, full stop.Some of the tech that went into the making of the 2.0 Ford EcoBlue diesel includes: low-inertia turbocharger that features rocket engine materials, mirror-image porting for better engine breathing, high-pressure fuel injection system, modular camshafts, off-set crank, belt-in-oil design for the camshaft and oil pump drive belts, as well as standard selective catalytic reduction emissions after-treatment.Soon enough, a 1.5 EcoBlue diesel will follow and will be used by smaller passenger cars such as the Ford Fiesta. On an ending note, FoMoCo highlights that the engine meets durability standards for extreme usage in markets as diverse as Europe, the U.S., and China. Does this mean that Ford will bring the EcoBlue in the United States of America and Canada at some point in the future? Only time will tell that.For more elaborate information on the 2.0 Ford EcoBlue diesel engine, please refer to the release below.
Even though it isnt as wildly stylized as the concept, the production model packs a visual punch. The exclusive photograph published by Motorgraph.com shows how ambitious Kia is in its quest to deliver a coupe-like four-door sedan, one to compete with the likes of the BMW 4 Series Gran Coupe and Audi A5.Despite the camouflage, the GT looks the part, doesnt it? The Kammback-type rear end, the intricate shape of the C-pillar, the quad exhaust tips protruding out of the rear valance, everything is blending together quite nicely. The chrome finish gills located where the front fenders meet the front doors arent bad either.On the oily bits front, the platform of the 2018 Kia GT will be shared with the 2018 Genesis G70 compact executive sedan, itself previewed by a concept. To put it bluntly, youre looking at a rear-wheel-drive chassis that may be propelled by a 3.3-liter turbocharged V6 with 389 horsepower and 394 lb-ft (534 Nm) of torque. Selecting ratios will be the duty of an eight-speed automatic transmission as used by the 2017 Kia Cadenza full-size sedan and 2017 Genesis G90 full-size sedan.Rumor has it a hybrid could also be offered, combining a 4-cylinder engine and an electric motor. The rumor mill also points out that the 2016 Paris Motor Show is where the Kia GT will make its first public outing. Production is due in early 2017, which means that America will get the GT for the 2018 model year.This being Kia, the most important question to pose about the GT four-door coupe is whether it will undercut its German rivals from BMW and Audi regarding pricing. Common sense inclines me to reply yes, that assumption is spot on.
The limited edition version was unveiled along with other unique cars from Crewe. However, first, lets talk about the Mulsanne First Edition, a version which will only be built in 50 examples.Considering that the first-ever First Edition model from Bentley, a version of the Bentayga, was produced in 608 units, the new variant of the Mulsanne is significantly more exclusive.Customers can order a Mulsanne First edition in whichever version of Bentleys flagship they want, from the standard saloon to the Mulsanne Speed or Mulsanne Extended Wheelbase.Since only 50 cars will be made in total, whatever you choose will be a very notable example of the Mulsanne, which might be worth more than its sticker price at the time of purchase.The First Edition Mulsanne has an engraved hood ornament, which is in the form of the Flying B, a traditional icon of the British brand.Secondly, the car comes with First Edition ornaments and motifs inside, and the rear passengers get a luxury vanity kit inserted into the rear picnic table. The latter is a bespoke set made from sterling silver by Asprey of London.In the case of the Beijing exhibit, the showcased Mulsanne First Edition was an Extended Wheelbase model, as Chinese customers appreciate more the idea of cars with longer wheelbases than standard.We must note that the example showcased at the Beijing Auto Show had a special ripple-patterned veneer. As Bentley explains, it is a Fulbeck veneer, obtained from a 350-year-old English walnut tree, which Bentley acquired at an auction for an undisclosed record price. The British brand has just enough wood to create a small number of cars. All other Mulsanne First Edition models will be available with a unique veneer called Antique Ash.The other two exhibits of Bentleys Beijing stand were the Flying Spur V8 S and a Bentayga customized by the brands Mulliner department, which specializes in bespoke vehicles. The latter is a showcase of the companys veneer skills, which you can notice in the images of the dash that you can find in the picture gallery below. Meanwhile, the Flying Spur V8 S made its local debut in China, without any additional surprises.
SUV

About the only thing the outside world knows about Trumpchi is that Top Gear once went to China and made fun of one. In reality, it's an automotive marque owned by GAC Group and has a very short history, being launched as recently as December 2010. So far, their biggest model has been the GS5 Super, anwith a 2-liter engine. However, once it's ready for production, the GS8 will inevitably overshadow it.Two models will be derived from the same all-new platform, GAC says. The first will be this 7-seat SUV model, followed by the GA8 mid-size luxury sedan.It seems the number 8 is supposed to bring the vehicle luck, as there are eight LEDs per headlight and the 8-symbol also appears in the taillights once you step on the brake. The front fascia is dominant, built using a mixture of geometric shapes. Meanwhile, the rear is a lot like the Range Rover.The interior features a simple multi-functional steering wheel and a large LCD screen. The air vents that flank it are designed to look like wings. Lastly, the GS8 SUV is equipped with blue dials and push-button start.Details regarding the engines will only be available towards the end of the year. However, the rumor mill tells us there will be a 2-liter turbo with 190 hp and 300 Nm of torque, followed by a 1.8-liter turbo with 177 hp and 240 Nm of torque. Both will be matched as standard to a 7-speed twin-clutch gearbox developed in China.In September 2012, GAC announced that exports of Trumpchi cars to regions including Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South America and Southeast Asia would begin the following year. But we still don't see the GS8 taking all the market share from the BMW X5.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

After Nakao made the announcement on Tuesday morning, Mitsubishi Motors Corporation shares took a 10 percent dive. Since the MPGgate scandal erupted on April 20, Mitsubishi shares have lost 50 percent of their value in the stock market. Without a shadow of a doubt, this is a messy situation for a carmaker thats not as powerful or as well-to-do as Volkswagen Group.Tetsuro Aikawa, the head honcho of Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, has told the media that an inquiry is continuing into the matter. This suggests that more irregularities will be discovered by the so-called Special Investigation Committee in the next three months, as highlighted in the press release below.Whatever the outcome, the problem at hand is best described by Keiichi Ishii, the Transport Minister of Japan: extremely serious. As in Mitsubishi could bite the dust in the near future if investors have had enough of this scandal. The Mitsubishi Group has bailed out Mitsubishi Motors Corporation on two occasions in the past, but the third time around may not happen because enough is enough.To boot, additional tens of thousands of sub-standard cars will prove to be a burden for an already burdened Mitsubishi Motors, a company that has rigged the fuel economy on 625,000 kei cars sold under the Mitsubishi and Nissan brands. According to Japanese media, Mitsubishi has submitted misleading fuel economy data on a plethora of other models, including the i-MiEV electric car, Pajero, Outlander, and RVR.As if the problems in its domestic market werent bad enough for business, thehas also asked Mitsubishi Motors for more information on this sensible subject.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

NHTSA

SUV

Elon Musk, the company's CEO, has made it very clear that the Model S has earned top marks from the. In fact, he's gone a little over the top saying it received 5.4 stars, which was probably a joke as themade it very clear that they don't rate cars beyond the maximum five stars, nor do they differentiate between equally starred models. So, ignoring Musk's little outburst, it's pretty clear the Tesla Model S is a safe car.Obviously, it all has to do with its powertrain. The absence of a large and heavy engine up front means that the engineers are free to design the crumple zones as efficiently as possible. It also means that in the case of a frontal collision, the risk of having the engine pushed towards the passenger cell is null. Then there's the battery pack which is located under the floor, providing the car with a very low center of gravity, excellent stability and a very high tolerance to flipping over. So much so, in fact, that the Model X, for example, was deemed virtually impossible to roll over.Yesterday, around 15:00, the old and the new had a less friendly encounter on a road near Luxembourg. A red Tesla Model S and a yet unidentified black compact car (hard to tell the make and model when there are flames all over) were involved in a collision that ended with the vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine catching fire. The local website 5minutes.rtl.lu reported the accident, but didn't have other information regarding what (or who) caused it and whether everyone involved was alright.Judging by what we see in the picture, we'd say that either one or both vehicles were traveling dangerously close to the center of the road, if not beyond it, and they clipped each other as they went by. The wet road surface might have played a role, too. The extra weight of the Model S came in handy as it looks as though it remained on course, while the smaller compact was turned sideways. A fuel leak led to a fierce fire, but the open driver's door gives us hope that everyone got out of it OK. Plus, considering how close the cars remained after the crash, it's possible they weren't going all that fast.Funnily enough, this comes just a few days after Elon Musk talked about how the Autopilot function reduces the chances of being involved in a crash by 50 percent. We doubt the Tesla Model S driver was using the feature on a narrow road such as this, so assuming everyone was OK, this will surely add to the Autopilot's favorable statistics.
During a talk with the Norwegian Minister of Transport and Communications (the same meeting where he mentioned something about a potential future rival for Uber that uses autonomous vehicles), the CEO of Tesla Motors also mentioned something quite interesting and important. He seemed to suggest that, after analyzing the Autopilot data compiled from all the Tesla cars out there using the feature, they've concluded you are 50 percent less likely to be involved in an accident than if you were driving yourself.Here is a transcript of his ideas on the subject: The probability of having an accident is 50% lower if you have Autopilot on. Even with our first version. So we can see basically whats the average number of kilometers to an accident - accident defined by airbag deployment. Even with this early version, its almost twice as good as a person.We've seen the Autopilot in action, we've seen people letting go of the steering wheel without any sign of concern and there is no doubt that the system works. But Mr. Musk doesn't make it very clear whether he's taking one very important aspect into account: the fact that people use the Autopilot when out on the open road, on marked, multi-lane highways where the chances of any type of incident occurring are significantly reduced. Is he comparing apples with oranges or not?Whatever the case, the numbers presented by Musk sound excellent, and he expects even greater achievements from the second generation of the Autopilot. This improved version (which is said to offer autonomous driving) should be ready in less than two years - about the same time as the Model 3, you might say. It wasn't so long ago that Musk spoke of around 47 million miles (75 million kilometers) covered with the Autopilot on, so the company has plenty of data to work with - a lot more than any other company working towards an autonomous vehicle.Musk knows very well that the problem doesn't lie with the technology, but with the regulations and the infrastructure. He's confident that the lawmakers will take into account the encouraging results recorded by the Autopilot project and speed up the laws concerning autonomous driving. One thing is certain: quickly, slowly or just at an average pace, we are getting there - there are just too many entities pulling towards the same direction.
Photo of 2017 Chrysler Pacifica courtesy of FCA US.

FCA US is giving fleet managers in 15 cities a chance to drive its 2017 model-year lineup starting with two events in Boston and Phoenix on April 26.

The 15-city tour for commercial, government, and daily rental fleet customers concluded in Orlando on June 1.

The 2017 Chrysler Pacifica minivan is expected to be the centerpiece of the events with its EPA-rated 28 mpg on the highway, a 12% improvement over the outgoing Town & Country.

At each event, FCA representatives will offer a Pacifica Experiential Drive to demonstrate the new minivans capabilities, including ParkSense Parallel/Perpendicular Park Assist.

Each half-day event will provide in-depth fleet product overviews, product walk-arounds, service presentations, driving routes and ample time to talk with the FCA Fleet team. The vehicles on tour include several that have been upfitted for specific vocations.

Tour dates are as follows:

Boston: April 26

Phoenix: April 26

Philadelphia: April 28

Los Angeles: April 28

Minneapolis: May 3

San Francisco: May 5

Chicago: May 5

St. Louis: May 17

Dallas: May 17

Houston: May 19

Cincinnati: May 23

Atlanta: May 24

Detroit: May 25

Charlotte: May 26

Orlando: June 1

Fleet representatives interested in attending a regional event in the tour can register at FCA's event website.
The 2015 Professional Fleet Manager of the Year Brenda Davis, fleet manager for Baker Hughes, accepts the award from Dan Frank of Wheels Inc. Photo: Chris Wolski

Automotive Fleet magazine is now accepting nominations for the 2015 Professional Fleet Manager of the Year Award. Submissions are due by Friday, May 27. The Professional Fleet Manager of the Year award is sponsored by Wheels Inc. and the Automotive Fleet & Leasing Association (AFLA).

The Professional Fleet Manager of the Year Award was created to recognize an experienced and proficient fleet manager who has demonstrated special business acumen in developing and executing key management policies in all areas.

Qualified nominees are full-time commercial fleet managers, control a company-owned or leased fleet in excess of 100 cars and light trucks combined, and who are recognized nationally among their peers for their unique abilities and accomplishments are eligible.

Please fill out this brief questionnaire to submit your nomination: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2016_PFMOY

Please note, only two nominations are allowed per company.

The Professional Fleet Manager of the Year and Fleet Executive of the Year awards will be announced at the 2016 AFLA conference,Sept. 18-21, 2016, at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina, San Diego, Calif.

The winner of the Professional Fleet Manager of the Year Award will be profiled in the November issue of Automotive Fleet.
The verdict has finally been given and it is geared in favor of Honda. The US government has finally closed the doors on the issues that have tangled Honda's name. With the decision, notions of Honda resuming on marketing stance to strengthen their profit returns arise.

It is undeniable that Honda's name was marked with much controversy when the carmaker was tangled in the controversy. However, as the decision gave rise to clarity, Honda can once again regain back the lost shares, profits and revenues. In a given statement by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as cited in Charlotte Observer says, "In documents posted on its website Monday, Honda paid a $70 million fine and took steps needed to make sure similar failures don't happen again."

Moreover, it stands out that the US government has ensured that Honda compensates for the vehicles that had issues. It stands to reason that Honda knew of the complaints but since they failed to inform the authorities, the outcomes are the civil case penned against them.

According to the same report, Honda did not reveal the 1,729 complaints as well as the report warranty on claims given the fact that some cases led to lost lives and unprecedented deaths. In addition, it has been taken into account that it has taken Honda 3 years to implement counter measures regarding omission issues that have begun in 2011 as well.

Although the US government has fined Honda for the crisis, the process was not an easy one. Honda had to accomplish certain requirements and have them passed on before the given timeframe.

Nevertheless, Honda has successfully submitted the needed documents to close the investigation and the probe. From written procedures that shed light to deaths and injuries up to the needed training for its personnel and even the early warning system were all complied by Honda.

On a different note, as Honda closed its doors on the safety controversy, it has set forth its plans to dominate the Chinese market for 2016 and it aims at selling 1.07 million vehicles in China, reports Channel News Asia.

As the US government closed the probe on Honda's security issues, it has also begun its marketing stance to dominate and increase profits in China by selling 1.07 million vehicles for 2016.
Driverless race cars are slated to be the next big thing. Yes, it's happening!

Russian businessman Denis Sverdlov, who founded London investment firm Kinetik, has made headlines recently after announcing a prototype similar to an F1 race car, Auto News reported. However, this time, the lime-green vehicle is less a driver.

Apart from this latest venture in driverless technology, Sverdlov is already introducing Roborace, which is a car racing series without a human driver behind the wheel to maneuver the track. Just like the Formula E e-drive speed-racing competition, drivers outrun each other via software which controls the cars in all effort to win.

Not only does Sverdlov think of human safety in using the Roborace series for an adrenaline kick, he aims to push technology's limits and erase the anxiety behind the arrival of self-driving vehicles.

Nvidia suministrara cerebros RoboCar para Roborace Formula E Series https://t.co/bxNFO83hDb pic.twitter.com/SMoYg7pklK  ESIME Azcapotzalco (@esimeazc) April 25, 2016





At a conference held by Nvidia Corp., Sverdlov said that he considers the company's engineers as its heroes. He has Daniel Simon, an ex-Volkswagen auto designer responsible for the Disney reboot of the sci-fi film "Tron", a part of his design team for the Roborace prototype. Sverdlov added that when the public sees how these virtual drivers perform during extreme conditions, he is optimistic that it would be easier for people to be with them on public roads altogether.

The Roborace series is expected to launch at next year's Formula E season, yet critics are not entirely convinced of Sverdlov's driverless racing series. Experts are still waiting on Sverdlov's announcement as to how the company would arrive at its target speeds (at 180 mph) or where the cars are coming from, according to the publication.

In other news, Formula E feels it is alright for Kinetik's Roborace to join in the highly anticipated competition, in a PC Authority post. Formula E said in media statement that over ten teams would be competing for the one-hour race using driverless cars, as well as AI systems at the same time.
The Pagani Huayra BC officially debuted at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show. However, a special event was held in New York City in April 2016 to pay tribute the car designers close friend, who died in 2010.

The BC features several enhancements on the standard Pagani Huayra. Many of the features and components have either been changed completely or redesigned.

Road and Track reveals that Horacio Pagani created the BC as a tribute to his friend Benny Caiola, who died of cancer in 2010. The BC are actually the initials of the late friend whom the founder of Pagani Automobili loved so much. Caiola himself was a huge collector of Italian cars and was Paganis very first customer. At the New York City event, Pagani invited Bennys wife, Bettina, on the stage to remove the cover from the new Pagani Huayra BC.

Pagani said via a translator that it was difficult for him to return to New York after Benny died.

"I decided to come back here to talk to Bettina, his wife, and his children, and I wanted to talk to him about this new car, so I went to see him at the cemetery, and it was very moving, said Horacio.





Pagani also talked about his close friendship with Benny in the past several years and shared that the man inspired the many variants of the Pagan iZonda. It was revealed that Benny provided the idea for the Zonda R. The Pagani Huayra BC has the same mold as the Zonda R but was made for both street and track use. The Zonda R was designed for track use only.

The appearance of the BC did not change much compared to the standard version, but there were several alterations that significantly improved its performance, according to another Road and Track feature. Horacio reduced 291lbs of weight from the original, bringing down the total to 2,685lbs. the car will also feature a 6.0-liter AMG-built V12 engine with 800 horsepower after development.

Pagani collaborated with Dallara experts to build a new aerodynamic setup that will fuse the active aerodynamics of the standard version with a new fixed rear wing, front flicks and front and rear splitters. All the body panels are new, while the roof and carbon fiber tub are the same as the original. The front and rear subframes were also redesigned to become lighter and stiffer. XTrac created a seven-speed automated manual transmission for the BC. The interior of the BC has also been redesigned to show how special the man was to Horacio.

More updates and details on the Pagani Huayra BC are expected soon.
The 2016 Beijing Auto Show is every car enthusiasts' haven for the newest and brightest in the latest cars and car technology. One of the latest releases would be French auto maker Citroen's version of its Chinese electric car.

Dongfeng Citroen , which is the brand's partner in China, is expected to show off the electrified version of the C-Elysee at the prestigious Chinese auto show, in a CarScoops report. Offering a driving range for a total of 250 km/h, the E-Elysee would be fitted with the same body style as its stylish French counterpart.

The 4-door E-Elysee would also have a fast-charging lithium-ion battery pack and would take about 30 minutes to charge on a fast charger or up tot 6 hours on a standard home socket. The e-sedan is set to be offered with another of the brand's EV called e-Mehari. Further details on the e-Mehari are going to be announced during the event.

Dongfeng Citroen would also unveil the C6, which is a high-end saloon measuring about 5 meters in length, and was designed by the company's Shanghai and Paris teams. The flagship vehicle would only be available in the Asian market, and unlikely to be sold overseas, according to the publication.

Auto Car UK also mentioned in a previous post that Dongfeng Citroen would be introducing new tech called Citroen Advance Comfort. The software would be geared towards air and road noise reduction, aside from improving cabin space and run quality.

The expanded cabin space would also feature high-end lighting and material in line with the brand's efforts to provide a more comfortable and relaxed atmosphere for its passengers. The company says that the advances being offered in the E-Elysee and its other new releases would certainly appeal to its Chinese buyers, as per the publication.
With the success of the British brand's 100 years in the automotive industry and new model releases, the company is setting its sights on joining the car-sharing trend. Owners of BMW Minis can now take advantage of the brand's latest initiative.

The BMW AG Mini line is set to help its car owners earn extra cash by having it rented out, rather than letting it stay idle for hours when not in use, according to a BMWBlog post. The company has announced that it plans to evolve its Minis by adding devices which would allow its owners to use it like "AirBnb on wheels."

Features which would accept payments as well as vehicle tracking are going to installed in the new BMW Minis to give the owner peace of mind when rented out. BMW executive Peter Schwarzenbauer, who's in-charge of the project, said that Mini owners would either love the idea of saving on the car's lease or be wary of letting strangers use their cars.

Schwarzenbauer also added that should the BMW Mini-AirBnb concept go well, the company hopes to extend the same service to its luxury vehicles. He further stated that the technology would be easily installed and at no added expense to BMW owner.

BMW's quest to adapt to sustainable mobility and car sharing services led the company to study the success of ride-sharing services such as Uber, Lyft, and still others and see it as another alternative to owning a car. Although the brand has its own share of car sharing services in some European cities, the company is in the process of adding more mobile-based transport options, as per the publication.

Bloomberg also reported that BMW is also eyeing introducing in Seattle a taxi-like chauffeur and vehicle delivery service this month. The chauffeur service would include training and certification to maintain the brand's premium service.
A stealth fighter jet called the X-2, which has been in development in Japan since 2009, flew for the first time on Friday, CNN has reported. The jet, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, is not a production design or prototype, but a technology demonstrator, which is meant as a test bed for future designs. The Japanese will fly the jet for a couple of years before deciding if they want to continue into production, according to the Japan Times. They could produce a production version by the late 2020s. Japan already is buying copies of the F-35 stealth jet from the United States, which could be cheaper than developing their own.

The maiden flight was significant to secure the necessary capability for a next-generation fighter jet, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters in Tokyo after the flight. We can expect technological innovation in the aerospace industry as well as application of that technology in different fields. The U.S. has been flying airplanes equipped with stealth technology since the 1980s.
26 April 2016 09:54 (UTC+04:00)

The Armenian armed forces have shelled Azerbaijan's Terter district, including its Gapanli village on April 26 from 01:05 to 04:25 (UTC/GMT +4 hours), by using 82-mm and 120-mm mortars, 122-mm howitzers D-30 and D-21 multiple rocket launchers, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry reported on April 26.

In response, Azerbaijani armed forces inflicted strikes only on Armenian military facilities.

Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said that the criminal military and political leadership of Armenia bears responsibility for any incident that can occur on the line of contact between Armenian and Azerbaijani armies.

On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements.

Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

---

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26 April 2016 10:59 (UTC+04:00)

By Nazrin Gadimova

After Russia-brokered ceasefire agreement was reached on April 5, the situation on the contact line of troops of the Armenian and Azerbaijani armies has again aggravated.

The Defense Ministry reported that the Armenian military units have shelled Azerbaijans Terter district, including Gapanli village on April 26 from 01:05 to 04:25 (UTC/GMT +4 hours). The enemy used 82-mm and 120-mm mortars, 122-mm howitzers D-30 and D-21 multiple rocket launchers. Given the situation, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces inflicted strikes on enemys positions, according to the ministry.

The criminal military and political leadership of Armenia bears responsibility for any incident that can occur on the frontline, the ministry believes.

Yerevan launched military operations shortly after Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan's statement on impossibility of resolving the long-lasting Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through the peaceful process. "The war can break out at any moment and there is a little prospect of talks to resolve the conflict," he said in his interview with Bloomberg.

Baku has repeatedly accused Yerevan of violating truce and targeting civilians ever since the ceasefire agreement was reached between the parties to the conflict that emerged as a result of Armenias aggressive policy towards Azerbaijan.

Despite Azerbaijan has urged the Armenian side to sit at the negotiations table, Yerevan has constantly refused to act in a sensible way. Armenia has once again shown its true face after Sargsyan said that it is unreasonable for Armenia to resume peace talks with Azerbaijan over the disputed territory, which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.

Emerged as a result of Armenian provocations on April 2, the so-called four-day-war led to numerous causalities from the both sides. Immediately after the escalation of the crisis, Russia, as the co-chairing country of the OSCE Minsk Group, has resumed negotiations over the conflict.

However, despite Moscow's numerous efforts, Yerevan stated that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who is closely cooperating with the both sides, has not offered any new proposals. That succeeded a promising statement by the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Minister Maria Zakharova, saying Lavrov has prepared some new groundwork. "The minister never sits at the negotiation table empty-handed," she emphasized.

This progress with the peace processes over Nagorno-Karabakh conflict clearly demonstrates that the Armenian leadership does not want the conflict to be settled at all. Sargsyan in particular stressed there is no place for Russian peacekeepers in the conflict zone to separate the two sides.

Russia, in turn, believes that the situation in the region is unstable.

The situation around Nagorno-Karabakh is very fragile, Dmitry Peskov, the spokesperson for the Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters at a conference on April 24.

However, Moscow ejects any military solution to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Moscow stands for the strict observance of agreements on permanent ceasefire from 1994 and 1995 on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Lavrov said as part of his visit to Yerevan.

--

Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

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26 April 2016 11:06 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov once again emphasized the necessity of ending the military occupation of Azerbaijani territories.

To resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenia should withdraw its armed forces from Azerbaijani lands and start a comprehensive political process, Azerbaijan's foreign minister said during his meeting with his Spanish counterpart Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo y Marfil on April 26.

Mammadyarov further briefed his Spanish counterpart about the recent developments on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies, as well as the provocations staged by Armenian armed forces and the shelling of civilians.

Spain's foreign minister, for his part, noted that his country supports Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and sovereignty.

On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements.

Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

---

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26 April 2016 12:08 (UTC+04:00)

The situation in Terter direction of the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies is currently stable, said Vagif Dergahli, spokesperson for Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry.

About 20 houses have been damaged in Azerbaijans Terter district as a result of the shelling by Armenian armed units over the night on April 26, he told Trend.

No causalities were reported, the spokesman said, noting that Azerbaijans armed forces control the operational situation on the contact line.

Azerbaijani army also inflicted retaliatory strikes on enemys firing points and military facilities, Dargahli added.

Armenia captured 20 percent of Azerbaijans internationally recognized territories as a result of 1992-94 war. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations and signing of another agreement on truce in 1995. However, Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

Heavy fighting erupted between Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region on April 2 following the Armenian provocation.

Military operations launched by Armenia were stopped on April 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides and mediation of Russia. However, ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side started violating the ceasefire on the same day.

---

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26 April 2016 13:26 (UTC+04:00)

A cameraman of ATV television channel has been wounded after the Armenian armed forces violated ceasefire with Azerbaijan, local media reports.

Vijay Valiyev, a cameraman of the channel`s Qarabagh bureau, was wounded in his leg when the Armenian units shelled the city of Terter and the village of Qapanli from 82mm- and 120mm-mortars, 122-mm D-30 howitzers and M-21 field rocket systems. Other employees of the channel and the car belonging to ATV`s bureau escaped the shelling.

A total of 20 houses were damaged after the Armenians shelled Terter throughout the night. No locals were reportedly killed or injured.

The Azerbaijani armed forces took retaliatory action, targeting the enemy`s military facilities.

On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements.

Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

---

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26 April 2016 18:18 (UTC+04:00)

By Nazrin Gadimova

Mass protests have gained a pace in Armenias capital city Yerevan, on the background of recent skirmishes the Armenian military leadership staged in the occupied lands of Azerbaijan.

Fierce fighting in the front-line areas emerged as a result of aggressive policy of the Armenian leadership led by Serzh Sargsyan, provoking a strong response in the Armenian society. Some participants of the mass rally protested over Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovs visit to Yerevan, while another demanded retirement of countrys FM Edward Nalbandian, Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan and Chief of the General Staff Yuri Khatchaturov.

Moreover, protesters urged to force oligarchs to pay large amounts to the state budget, as well as to pay $30,000 in compensation to the families of the dead soldiers and $5,000 to families of the wounded.

Yerevan remained loyal to its 'principles" as the police detained 42 people, including two camera operators of one of the Armenian news websites, as well as one journalist.

Arman Babajanyan, the Editor-in-Chief of the 1in.am website, said that he will fight for bringing those engaged in violence against media representatives to the proceedings. He further added that as a result of clashes some equipment was damaged.

Some observers, who attended the rally, were shocked by the behavior of the guards.

It was impossible to talk to them [police representatives], they acted rudely, they absolutely did not take into account whether it was the observer or a journalist, the situation was terrible, said Avetik Ishkhanyan, Armenias Chairman at the Helsinki Committee. Ishkhanyan believes that it was a striking phenomenon, which showed that police in Armenia does not work according to the law, but on orders from the authorities.

Cruel treatment of the police representatives towards protesters and journalists is high on the agenda of the local media, as well some international organizations.

Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, expressed concern about the safety of journalists in Armenia after the recent enforcement action by the police against members of the media.



I reiterate my call on the authorities to ensure journalists rights to safe reporting at all times, Mijatovic said. The use of violence against the media, especially by law enforcement representatives, is unacceptable.

--

Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

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26 April 2016 15:51 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan`s Defense Minister, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov is visiting Tartar region located on the frontline.

Accompanied by head of the Tartar District Executive Authority Mustagim Mammadov, the Defense minister and the Ministry`s leadership reviewed the houses of residents, which were damaged as a result of shelling by the Armenian armed forces on the night of April 26.

The minister met with local residents, listened to them, and inquired about their concerns and problems. The minister gave relevant instructions on the situation in the district.

About 20 houses have been damaged in Azerbaijans Terter district as a result of the shelling by Armenian armed units over the night on April 26. No causalities were reported.

The Azerbaijani army inflicted retaliatory strikes on enemys firing points and military facilities. Currently, Azerbaijans armed forces control the operational situation on the contact line.

Armenia captured 20 percent of Azerbaijans internationally recognized territories as a result of 1992-94 war. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations and signing of another agreement on truce in 1995. However, Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

Heavy fighting erupted between Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region on April 2 following the Armenian provocation.

Military operations launched by Armenia were stopped on April 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides and mediation of Russia. However, ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side started violating the ceasefire on the same day.

---

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26 April 2016 18:01 (UTC+04:00)

By Nazrin Gadimova

The mediators of the OSCE Minsk Group - the United States, Russia and France are working to keep the truce on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops.

James Warlick, the OSCE MG co-chair from the U.S., announced about this while talking to Armenian media. He further added that the co-chairs are also working to resume negotiation process over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution under the MG auspices.

The mediators are now trying to expand those means that will reduce the risk of clashes on the contact line, in particular by working towards the expansion of the OSCE monitoring mission, Warlick stressed.

Warlick believes that instability on the contact line and the Armenian-Azerbaijani border clearly shows why it is necessary that the parties immediately start the negotiations around the conflict settlement.

The OSCE MG remains concerned about the current tension and ongoing ceasefire violations on the contact line between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops, he concluded.

The situation on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops has again aggravated despite the ceasefire agreement that was reached with the mediation of Russia on April 5. Thus, the Armenian military units have shelled Azerbaijans Terter district, including Gapanli village on April 26 from 01:05 to 04:25 (UTC/GMT +4 hours).

The long-lasting Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict remains unresolved due to the continuation of Armenias occupant policy. Yerevan has not yet implemented the UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

The OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, proceeding talks based on the renewed Madrid principles. However, the statements promising a sincere contribution to the peaceful resolution of the conflict have become frequent, but declarative in essence.

--

Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

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26 April 2016 11:09 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's initiative to proclaim 2016 as the Year of Multiculturalism is widely acclaimed as an important step aimed at strengthening relations among the world's peoples, says the UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser.

He was addressing the opening session of the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), being held in Baku Apr. 26.

In the opening of his remarks, Al-Nasser expressed deep appreciation and gratitude to President Ilham Aliyev and the government of Azerbaijan for hosting the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations on the theme 'Living together in inclusive societies: a challenge and a goal'.

"President Aliyev's leadership on this issue is especially noteworthy," added the UN official. "His initiative proclaiming 2016 as a Year of Multiculturalism is widely acclaimed as an important step that aims at strengthening relations among the peoples of the world."

"In that respect, we could not dream of a better venue than the city of Baku to hold this Forum," noted Al-Nasser.

"In the past few years I have had the privilege to promote multiculturalism and tolerance," he further said.

Al-Nasser said the Alliance of Civilizations is the soft power tool established to contribute to a more peaceful world by countering radicalization and polarization, by encouraging greater intercultural understanding and engaging in projects and programs that advance these goals.

"And today we all have the opportunity to explore the gains we have made, the challenges that we face and the possibilities that lie before us," he added.

Al-Nasser also said the Forum's theme this year - "Living together in inclusive societies: a challenge and a goal" - converges with the four pillars of the UN: peace and security, human rights, rule of law, and development.

"More directly, it converges with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Specifically, Sustainable Development Goal 16 calls upon us to 'Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels'," he said.

Al-Nasser added that sustainable development cannot be realized without peace and security, and at the same time, peace and security will be at risk without sustainable development.

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26 April 2016 11:28 (UTC+04:00)

Division and exclusion only play into the hands of the extremists, but what they really want to destroy is our common ground, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in his video message to the participants of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.

"I appreciate the hospitality of President Ilham Aliyev, government of Azerbaijan and the city of Baku," he said. "I applaud the team of this forum."

"We live at a time of great crises. Record numbers of people have forced to flee their homes. Many escaped violence, extremism and prosecution," Ban Ki-moon added.

"We are walking around the world to resolve disputes, conflicts and consolidate peace," said the UN secretary general. "We are focusing on prevention by tackling the root causes of conflicts."

Further, Ban Ki-moon noted that the General Assembly has welcomed the UN plan of action to prevent violence and extremism.

This phenomenon is not rooted in any single religion, vision or nationality, he said, adding that stereotyping is dangerous and destabilizing.

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26 April 2016 11:40 (UTC+04:00)

More than 140 countries support the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Apr. 26 in Baku.

He was addressing the opening session of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.

Holding the UNAOC Global Forum in Baku is of great importance, since Azerbaijan is the historical center of civilizations, said Erdogan.

Unfortunately, despite all efforts, the world is still unable to confront the growing radicalism and terrorism, he noted.

"Terror and terrorism have nothing in common with Islam," said the president adding that terrorists don't have religious affiliation and national identity.

Erdogan went on to add that Islam is the religion of peace, which calls for brotherhood.

None of the world's countries is insured from terrorism, and therefore, states should work together to fight terrorism, according to him.

Turkey is fighting terrorism for 35 years, said the Turkish president adding that currently, the number of cases of terrorism is also growing in neighboring Syria.

The main reason of terrorism's growth in Syria is the country's authorities that support terrorism, said Erdogan.

Civilians lose their lives in Syria every day, noted the president adding that currently, there are more than three million refugees from Syria and Iraq in Turkey's territory and the country has spent $15-20 billion.

Erdogan added that Turkey didn't close its border for refugees from Syria and Iraq, as a number of European countries did.

Turkey's president believes that considering the situation in the world, it is important to hold the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations in Baku.

"Today the whole world is following the Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations that is being held in Baku," added Erdogan.

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations will last until Apr.27.

The Youth Forum was held on the first day of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum on Apr.25.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum.

The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the forum.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on July 24, 2015 to create an organizing committee for holding the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.

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26 April 2016 12:30 (UTC+04:00)

Today, Baku is once again a venue where many people, many ideas and cultures meet again, said Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo y Marfil Apr. 26, addressing the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC).

The UNAOC 7th Global Forum is today underway in Baku on Apr. 26 under the topic "Living Together In Inclusive Societies: A Challenge and A Goal".

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26 April 2016 14:11 (UTC+04:00)

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations in Baku is a very important forum, because many cultures, many civilizations, many countries are meeting together, Jean-Luc Reitzer, member of French National Assembly, told Trend April 26.

It demonstrates once again that tolerance is the symbol of Azerbaijan, he said on the sidelines of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum.

Reitzer said he is always very happy to be in Azerbaijan, adding that people who have never been here, don't know the real situation, that Azerbaijan is a place of stability.

Touching upon the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, he said that it is injustice that Armenia has occupied Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia has to respect the decisions of the UN, said Reitzer, adding that the OSCE Minsk Group has to work further to bring peace.

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations is being held in Baku Apr.26.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and his spouse Mehriban Aliyeva are attending the opening of the forum.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Malta's President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, Chairman of the Council of the Republic of Belarusian National Assembly Mikhail Myasnikovich, Chairman of the Senate of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and other high-ranking officials are also participating in the event.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum. The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the forum.

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26 April 2016 15:39 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan is a unique example of peaceful coexistence of peoples and it explains why Baku was chosen as the venue for the Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), Nasharudin Mat Isa, chief executive officer of the Global Movement of Moderates Foundation (Malaysia), told Trend on April 26.

He expressed his hope that the Forum's participants will find solutions to the global challenges that the world faces today.

This Forum will help to build a better future, especially for young people, noted Nasharudin Mat Isa.

"Azerbaijan is a very diverse society, which lives in friendship and peace," said the Forum's participant.

"We, Malaysia, in particular, would like to learn a lot from Azerbaijan's experience," he added.

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations will last until April 27. The Youth Forum was held on the first day of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum on April 25.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum.

The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the forum.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on July 24, 2015 to create an organizing committee for holding the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.

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26 April 2016 16:42 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

The 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) on the theme Living Together in Inclusive Societies: A Challenge and A Goal kicked off in Baku on April 26.

Following the opening ceremony attended by the Azerbaijani President and First Lady, the event continued with the panel discussions.

Addressing the plenary session on the "Platform against violent extremism and partnership" Spanish former prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said that Baku is an ideal place for holding the UN Alliance of Civilizations.

Zapatero said that on behalf of Spain, he proposed to create this alliance in 2005. The alliance was created jointly with Turkey and the goal is to develop the dialogue and ensure mutual understanding, according to the former prime minister.

No culture, religion, race, flag stands above others, Zapatero further said, adding that joint work is needed to create this alliance of civilizations.

The UN is one of the leading institutions which can assist in resolving these problems, he believes.

Representative of UNESCO in Africa, participant of the Forums Youth Event Winnie Kinaro, in turn, said such an event plays an important role in bringing together people and countries.

I think the issues discussed at the forum are of vital significance in addressing many global problems and building an inclusive society. When looking at Azerbaijan, I understand that we are moving on the right track, she told Azertac.

Another participant of the Forum, Gatien Aba Mbabe from Cameroon noted that the Baku Forum opens up good opportunities to discuss important issues as it brings together influential people from many countries.

He also hailed the Forums importance to Azerbaijan, saying the country was rapidly developing. The presence of representatives from a large number of countries in this prestigious event is a striking example of Azerbaijans growing influence in the region and in the world.

Tunisian novelist, founder and director of the Center for Dialogues: Islamic World-US/The West based at New York University, Mustapha Tlili, for his part, emphasized that the forum provides ideas to better integrate into the international community.

Azerbaijan is a perfect place for holding this forum because the country brings together different cultures and religions, and all the nations live here in peace, believes Iraqi participant of the Youth Event Mohammed Rebaz.

This forum is of particular importance to me because my country was torn apart by religious and ethnic wars. I wish my country would follow the example of peace in Azerbaijan. May peace come to Iraq, he added.

Professor of journalism at the Middle Tennessee State University Sanjay Asthana, in turn, hailed what the UN is doing for young people.

I think it is very crucial what the UN is doing for young people, he told AzerTac. Particularly Azerbaijan for me is very crucial because it has a mix of different religions because backgrounds of people Christians and Muslims and also it is like a bridge between Europe and Asia and the rest of the world.

Malick Lingani of Burkina Faso noted that such events should become a tradition.

"One of the most positive aspects of the forum, which is excellently organized, is to introduce Azerbaijan to foreign participants," he said.

The three-day Forum targeting to make a contribution to solution of many important global conflicts plans to hold about 30 sessions.



The forum to last until April 27 is also expected to adopt the Baku Declaration. The Youth Forum was held on the first day of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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26 April 2016 16:54 (UTC+04:00)

Baku Declaration was adopted during a ministerial meeting held as part of the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations in Baku on April 26.

The support of Azerbaijani government suggests that the 7th UNAOC Global Forum will bring successful results, the UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser said during the ministerial meeting.

The purpose of holding the UNAOC Global Forum is to counteract global problems, he added.

Addressing the event, Azerbaijan's Minister of Culture and Tourism Abulfas Garayev said that Azerbaijan is committed to promotion of the international dialogue.

"We make every effort to create an intercultural dialogue and an inclusive society," said the minister.

Further, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Azerbaijan is the best example of tolerance.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo y Marfil, for his part, said that currently, all countries should work on resolving the conflicts.

It is necessary to intensify the dialogue between Muslims and Christians, he said, adding that the youth, as well as media outlets should be involved in fighting extremism and xenophobia.

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations kicked off in Baku on April 25.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum which will last till April 27.

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26 April 2016 18:41 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijan is an exemplary country in terms of the relationship between state and religion.



CMO Chairman Sheikh-ul-Islam Allahshukur Pashazade made a remark at the Religious leaders and violent extremism: difficulties in connection with preventive measures " session within the framework of 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC).

He said Azerbaijan does not experience religious discrimination.

Azerbaijan is a country, where representatives of all religions live in mutual respect and understanding. There is no confrontation between the representatives of various Muslim scholars, he noted.

Over the centuries people practicing different religions lived in peace in Azerbaijan and today nothing has changed in this regard.

Sheikh-ul-Islam underlined that the cases of use of Islam for political purposes has been increased in the world.

We are concerned about the terror attacks in Pakistan, Turkey and other countries, Pashazade said.

He further spoke about the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan adding that Armenians occupied the Azerbaijani lands, committing genocide against Azerbaijanis and destroying historical monuments in the occupied territories.

We are committed to resolve the conflict. Sustained stability in Azerbaijan allows to work in this direction. We intend to solve this problem within the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, the CMO Chairman emphasized.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

The three-day Forum targeting to make a contribution to solution of many important global conflicts plans to hold about 30 sessions.



The forum to last until April 27 also adopted the Baku Declaration during the ministerial meeting of the Forum on April 26. The Youth Forum was held on the first day of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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26 April 2016 18:14 (UTC+04:00)

By Nazrin Gadimova

Turkey fully supports Azerbaijan in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkeys Foreign Minister, made the remark as part of his visit to Baku on April 26.

The long-lasting Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict must be resolved by diplomatic means within Azerbaijans territorial integrity, Cavusoglu added.

Cavusoglu believes that the OSCE Minsk Group, which is the sole negotiator between the parties, has a great responsibility in resolving the conflict. If the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk group want, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be resolved in the near future," he stressed.

Armenia does not want the conflict to be solved through political means, and therefore, Yerevan aggravates the situation on the line of contact of the troops, the official said.

While announcing the ceasefire regime unilaterally, Azerbaijan has once again proved to the world that the country stands for peaceful settlement of the conflict, Cavusoglu concluded.

Earlier, Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that his country, being a member of the OSCE Minsk Group, stands for the peaceful settlement of the long lasting Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.

He believes that the developments on the contact line of the Armenian and Azerbaijani troops has once again shown that the status quo in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is unacceptable.

The situation on the contact line of troops of the Armenian and Azerbaijani armies has again aggravated despite the ceasefire agreement that was reached with the mediation of Russia on April 5. Thus, the Armenian military units have shelled Azerbaijans Terter district, including Gapanli village on April 26 from 01:05 to 04:25 (UTC/GMT +4 hours).

Given the situation, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces inflicted strikes on enemys positions, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry said, adding that Armenia bears responsibility for any incident that can occur on the frontline.

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Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

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26 April 2016 22:20 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with President of the Republic of Malta Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca in Baku on April 26.

President Aliyev thanked President Preca for her participation in the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in Baku. The head of state also described this visit as a good opportunity for discussing the bilateral relations, adding the ties between the two countries were developing.

President Aliyev noted that areas of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Malta were based on mutual interest. Noting that Azerbaijan successfully hosts such prestigious international events, the head of state expressed hope that the visit of Madame President to Baku would be fruitful.

Expressing gratitude for the warm reception and hospitality, the Maltese president highlighted the importance and the high-level organization of the Forum, and hailed President Aliyev`s speech at the opening ceremony.

Stressing the importance of reciprocal visits in terms of developing the bilateral ties, the Maltese president also touched upon prospects for fruitful cooperation between the two countries in political, economic, trade, tourism and other areas.

They exchanged views over the relations between Azerbaijan and the European Union.

Later, President Aliyev met with Minister for Foreign Affairs of Spain Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo.

Garcia-Margallo recalled his previous visits to Azerbaijan.

President Aliyev stressed the successful activity of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, which was established on the joint initiative of Turkey and Spain, and hailed Spain`s support for the Alliance.

The head of state described the Minister`s participation in the Baku forum as an example of this support.

They noted the importance of the Forum in discussing outstanding tasks in complicated international situation and against the background of international relations. The sides expressed confidence that this important event would give a strong positive message to the international community.

During the conversation, the parties exchanged views over Azerbaijan-European Union cooperation, and the ways of settling the Armenian-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

President Aliyev also met with Minister of State for European Affairs of France Harlem Desir.

Desir conveyed French President Francois Hollande`s greetings and good memories about Azerbaijan to the head of state.

President Aliyev thanked for the greetings of President Francois Hollande, and asked the Minister of State to extend his greetings to the French President.

Recalling that President Hollande visited Azerbaijan twice, President Aliyev said this demonstrates the high-level of relations between the two countries.

President Aliyev thanked Harlem Desir for his participation in the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in Baku, adding the visit was a good opportunity for discussing the bilateral and regional issues.

Expressing gratitude for the warm reception, the French Minister of State for European Affairs congratulated President Aliyev on the excellent organization of the Forum.

They had a broad exchange of views over the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the latest processes.
27 April 2016 10:12 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijans First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva met with Minister of State for Tolerance of the United Arab Emirates Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi on April 26, Azertac reports.

Mrs. Aliyeva said the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) addressed an important theme of Living Together in Inclusive Societies: A Challenge and A Goal. She thanked Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi for attending the event.

Mehriban Aliyeva praised relations between the two countries in all fields.

Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi said she was honored to attend the 7th Global Forum of UNAOC. She said she felt herself in Baku at home.

Cooperation between Azerbaijan and France is based on friendship and mutual respect, said Mehriban Aliyeva as she met with a French delegation led by member of the National Assembly, President of the Association of Friends of Azerbaijan in France Jean-Francois Mancel.

Mehriban Aliyeva, who also heads the Working Group on Azerbaijani-French Inter-Parliamentary ties, said discussions at the UNAOC Global Forum in Baku focused on the themes that are of global importance.

The first lady expressed confidence that the Forum would provide a crucial platform for addressing the issues that concern the international community and finding mechanisms of solving the existing problems.

During the day, Mrs. Aliyeva also met with Chairman of the Senate of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev who is attending the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations.

The first lady stressed the importance of the Global Forum. Mrs. Aliyeva hailed the holding of such an important event in Baku as a sign of respect for Azerbaijan and recognition of its contribution to the development and promotion of dialogue among civilizations.

They praised relations between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, particularly inter-parliamentary cooperation.

Furthermore, Azerbaijan`s first lady met with Undersecretary of State of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism of Italy Dorina Bianchi.

They praised cooperation between the two countries, and highlighted the development of the bilateral relations in various fields.

The projects carried out by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation in Italy were hailed, and Dorina Bianchi said these projects made a significant contribution to the development of Azerbaijani-Italian cooperation.

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26 April 2016 11:54 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Issues related to finding solution to the global economic problems have been discussed during the business symposium held in Baku within the framework of 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC).

The project on creating inclusive society in Azerbaijan was one of the discussion topics during the symposium held on April 26.

Azerbaijans Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev, addressing the event, said an inclusive society is one of the major challenges facing humanity.

The minister reminded that inclusive society means providing social services and improving the welfare of the poor people with limited mental or physical abilities and other vulnerable social groups.

Mustafayev went on to add that currently, the biggest obstacle to the development of the South Caucasus region is the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict , reminding that Armenia has occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijans territory.

Facing the task to provide normal living conditions for more than one million refugees and internally displaced people, Azerbaijan understands how complex is this issue and how much efforts its solution requires, Mustafayev emphasized.

The government of Azerbaijan directs huge funds to solve problems of refugees and IDPs, and the country is also working on this issue with the international organizations.

The minister further informed about projects implemented with the support of UN agencies in Azerbaijan which aimed at establishing inclusive society in Azerbaijan including increasing welfare of refugees and IDPs, disabled, women and other vulnerable groups of the population.

Mustafayev stressed the importance of the private sector in creating decent jobs as an effective way to eliminate poverty.

Reports of the international organizations show that 90 percent of the jobs, particularly in developing countries, are provided by the private sector. Therefore, to ensure that the private sector could perform this function, the government should create a favorable investment and business environment and apply various incentive measures for the development of entrepreneurship. International assistance programs are also usually aimed at creating a favorable business environment, Mustafayev said.

Azerbaijan enjoys successful experience in improving business environment, ensuring transparency of administrative regulations, and application of support mechanisms, joint financing of the projects and sharing risks etc, according to the minister.

Over the past decade, Azerbaijan created 1.5 million jobs, the unemployment rate within the country fell to 5 percent, while the poverty rate fell to 4.9 percent by decreasing about eight times, he said, adding that Azerbaijan is happy to share its experience.

As for the activities of the private sector in this area, he believes that the projects should be mainly directed at providing employment to the people with less income and in need of social protection. Huge investment projects should be implemented in the territories where the most poor population live and serve to improve their well-being, added Mustafayev.

High Representative of the UN Alliance of Civilizations Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, adressing the event, noted that it is impossible to resolve the global economic problems and eliminate poverty by the efforts of a single country.

He believes that the contribution to the private sector can help in solving the problems.Various international organizations and the UN provide lots of support to the private sector, Al-Nasser further added.

The UN is responsibly aware of the seriousness of its role and the symposium allowed to speak about this issue, he said, voicing hope that important decisions will be made at the result of the symposium.

He believes that the organization must do everything possible to implement the program on ground -breaking development.

Abdulaziz Al-Nasser further added that currently, migration crises rein the world and this is one of the most important challenges that the world has ever faced after World War II.

The solution of the problems cannot be delayed, the wars must be stopped, he highlighted. Political and economic problems of the world must find a solution in universal and civilized way.

The 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations will last untill April 27.

The Youth Forum was held on the first day of the 7th UNAOC Global Forum on April 25.

Meetings with high-ranking officials, about 30 sessions are planned to be held during the forum. The Baku Declaration is expected to be adopted during the forum.

President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on July 24, 2015 to create an organizing committee for holding the 7th UNAOC Global Forum in Baku.

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Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

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26 April 2016 11:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijans ancient and beautiful city of Sheki, which was honored to be the capital of the Turkic World in 2016, will hold a number of events in conjunction with the event.



The solemn opening ceremony is scheduled for April 28 in the Yuxari Bash State Historical-Architectural Reserve -- near the Gala walls.

The event will be accompanied with Eastern Bazaar, interesting exhibitions and colorful fairs.

The ceremony will see folk and music collectives and craftsman, who will demonstrate their talents and traditions of the city to the Turkish world.

Sheki is the fifth city chosen as the capital of TURKSOY under one of the successful projects in the selection of Turkic world capital that has been started since 2012.

TURKSOY, which is considered UNESCO of Turkic World, has been operating for more than 20 years in order to create friendship and fraternal relations between the Turkish nations, as well as to deliver the common Turkic culture to the future generation.

Located on the picturesque hillsides of the Caucasus Mountains in the background of snowy peaks, Sheki is one of the country's main tourist destinations, hosting more than 100,000 tourists every year.

The city is a real natural wonder with its beautiful landscapes, mineral water springs, forests and rivers.

For centuries this ancient city has long been a famous silk center and an important stop on the Great Silk Route. Caravanserais, mosques, minarets, houses, walls, bridges and architecture talk about the antiquity of Sheki.

Beautiful Sheki can also be called the architectural reserve of the country, since the city has 84 historical and cultural monuments. Archaeological findings suggest that the city might be one of the oldest settlements in the Caucasus. Pieces dating 2,500 years were unearthed here.

Modern Sheki was actually rebuilt in 1772 after the city was destroyed by mud streams - River Kish. Annually, Sheki becomes a place for international and local festivals which attract many people.

The city can boast many historical and architectural places of interest, but its pride is the ancient majestic royal palace of Sheki Khans erected in the 18th century without a single nail with magnificent wall paintings and tracery windows in the stone citadel.

Being a major center of crafts, has many shops, where, one can buy jewels and engravings by local craftsmen.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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26 April 2016 10:28 (UTC+04:00)

Famous Kazakh poet Olzhas Suleimenov has been awarded the title of Honorary Doctor of Nizami Institute of Literature in Azerbaijan, Azertac reports.

Addressing the award ceremony, vice-president of Azerbaijans National Academy of Sciences, director of Nizami Institute, academician Isa Habibbeyli Named Olzhas Suleimenov a pride of the entire Turkic world.

Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan Beibit Isabaev emphasized outstanding achievements and the role of Olzhas Suleimenov in developing modern Kazakh literature.

Speakers at the ceremony highlighted SuleImenov`s contribution to the cultural heritage of Turkic people.

Olzhas Suleimenov expressed gratitude for such a high award.

"I heard so many good and sincere words here, and I am really excited. I realized that I am strongly attached to Azerbaijan, Olzhas Suleimenov said.

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26 April 2016 13:45 (UTC+04:00)

Baku City Circuit Operations Company has announced the results of its Through the Journalists Eyes writing contest held in support of the growth of Formula 1 journalism in Azerbaijan in advance of the 2016 FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX OF EUROPE.



The winners were awarded their prizes and certificates at the ceremony held at Baku City Circuits Headquarters.



First place in the competition contest went to Aysel Ganbarova for an article called, Formula 1  The speed is higher, in the Land of Fire. Sanan Abdullayev earned second place with the article Real Lifes First Formulapublished on the website of Xezerxeber.com. Elchin Zodorov took third place for the article on F-1.az , titled Baku City Circuit: Turns and Grandstands.http://www.f-1.az/ozumuzunkuler/koshe/baki-seher-halqasi-dongeler-ve-tribunalar/



All submissions were evaluated by Nigar Arpadarai, National Press Officer of the FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX OF EUROPE, Samaya Mammadova, Press Secretary of the Ministry of Youth and Sport and Rahim Aliyev, Ambassador of the FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX OF EUROPE. The articles were evaluated based on their creativity, style, topicality and other significant criteria.



The competitions winner received two tickets to the 2016 FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX OF EUROPE. The second and third placed entries were respectively awarded 100 and 50 AZN Music Gallery gift cards.



Addressing the event, Arpadarai congratulated the winners and thanked all participants on behalf of BCC for their great entries and levels of engagement in the competition: We are so proud to host the inaugural 2016 FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX OF EUROPE in Baku, and to see this fabulous event depicted in writing through your eyes. On behalf of the entire BCC team, we appreciate media representatives efforts in promoting the 2016 Formula 1 Grand Prix of Europe among the Azerbaijani public. We wish to wholeheartedly thank all of you. We strongly believe that your articles and enthusiasm for our inaugural F1 race have raised a lot of interest amongst the domestic audience for this major event.



The authors of the top 10 articles were each awarded a variety of gifts and certificates, while many entrants were also presented with tickets to a concert by the 2016 Formula 1 Grand Prix of Europe VIP Ambassador, Tunzale Aghayeva, to be held on 27th May in the Green Theatre as well as with tickets to the Baku Aquatics Centre.



Links to the top 3 winning articles:



1st place: http://friday.az/ru/blog.php?id=1664

2nd place: http://www.xezerxeber.com/idman/139384/real-heyatin-1-ci-formulasi

3rd place: http://www.f-1.az/ozumuzunkuler/koshe/baki-seher-halqasi-dongeler-ve-tribunalar/

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26 April 2016 13:06 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Italy was the main importer of the Azerbaijani oil in 2015, Kamran Mammadzade, the deputy manager of Crude Oil and Oil Products Export Department at SOCAR said on April 25.

Mammadzade emphasized that Italy imported about 25 percent of Azerbaijans total oil exports in 2015.

The volume of Azerbaijani oil exports totaled 35 million tons in 2015, he said. Among the biggest importers of Azerbaijans oil were Italy (25 percent), Germany (13 percent), Indonesia (10 percent), Israel (9 per cent) and France (8 percent).

Moreover, the geography of Azerbaijans oil deliveries has grown significantly during recent years. Currently, Azerbaijans state owned energy company SOCAR supplies oil to more than 30 countries in Europe, Asia and America, the deputy manager added.

Meanwhile, SOCAR's share in the total volume of Azerbaijani oil export amounted to 22.1 million tons. Azerbaijan exported 1.9 million tons of oil products and 241,000 tons of petrochemical products in 2015.

Mammadzade further added that 25 percent of SOCARs oil products exported to Malta, and 16 percent to Turkey last year. In addition, the volume of the oil product supplies to Georgia increased by14 percent. The top five importers of Azerbaijans oil products include Gibraltar with 10 percent and Italy with 9 percent.

The Netherlands (with 22 percent), China (19 percent), Turkey and Russia (16 and 15 percent respectively) became the main importers of petrochemicals.

The country's largest hydrocarbon basins are located offshore in the Caspian Sea, particularly the Azeri Chirag Guneshli (ACG) field. Similar to its share of total production, ACG also holds over 70% of Azerbaijan's total reserves, with about 5 billion barrels located in this field.

SOCAR produces about 20% of the country's oil output. The remaining 80% of Azerbaijan's output comes from the ACG oil fields by the BP-operated Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) and at the BP-operated Shah Deniz field (which produces oil condensate).

Azerbaijan exports oil through four routes  the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Supsa (western route) and Baku-Novorossiysk (northern route), as well as by rail.

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Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

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26 April 2016 12:29 (UTC+04:00)

By Gulgiz Dadashova

British Amec Foster Wheeler has been awarded a front-end engineering design (FEED) contract to modernize the Baku Oil Refinery Plant named after Heydar Aliyev .

The company announced that the contract, awarded by Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR, is part of a major investment to increase the refinerys capacity and improve the quality of the fuel produced.

Amec Foster Wheeler in alliance with SOCAR Foster Wheeler Engineering won the contract and will execute it in Azerbaijan. The company has had a joint venture in Azerbaijan with SOCAR since 2011.

The scope of work is for the development of a number of facilities and the integration of technologies by other providers at HAOR. This will include new facilities for diesel hydro-treatment, isomerisation, methyl tertiary-butyl ether, fluid catalytic cracking gasoline treatment, sour water stripper, amine treatment and sulphur recovery. A number of existing facilities will also be revamped, including those for crude and vacuum distillation, fluid catalytic cracking and continuous catalytic reforming.

Roberto Penno, Amec Foster Wheelers Group President for Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Southern Europe, commenting on the issue, said that the company has successfully delivered a number of projects for SOCAR, both in Azerbaijan and in other countries.

We look forward to continuing our partnership with this contract for the Heydar Aliyev Oil Refinery, a particularly important facility for the country, he said.

Amec Foster Wheelers scope of work is scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 2017, while the process of modernization of the refinery is expected to be completed within several phases till early 2020.

Amec Foster Wheeler designs, delivers and maintains strategic and complex assets for its customers across the global energy and related sectors. The company offers full life-cycle services to offshore and onshore oil and gas projects (conventional and unconventional, upstream, midstream and downstream) for greenfield, brownfield and asset support projects, plus leading refining technology.

Amec Foster Wheeler became the first British-listed engineering and construction services contractor to establish a permanent presence in Baku, Azerbaijan, responding to the growing market need for engineering services in the Caspian region. The company has had a presence in Azerbaijan since 1997.

In January 2015, SOCAR announced the elimination of the Azneftyag refinery and its merger with the Baku Oil Refinery named after Heydar Aliyev. This decision was made as part of works to improve and optimize the structure of the State Oil Company. Once completed, the capacity of the Oil Refinery Plant will increase from 6 million to 7.5 million tons of oil a year.

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26 April 2016 14:28 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Iran, which is ambitious to become a car production hub in the Middle East region and regards the car making industry as the biggest field of non-oil sector, has set new conditions for foreign car making companies operating in the country.

In a bid to support national auto parts making industry, the country's Industry, Mines and Trade Ministry has obliged foreign carmakers to allocate a 20-percent share for Iranian-made car parts if they want to operate in the country's market, Arash Mohebbinejad said.

The ministry has also obliged the Iranian car makers to purchase 40 percent of the parts used in production from domestic market, ILNA news agency reported on April 25.

In accordance with Iran's major economic development plan, the country has set a goal to boost car output to three million per year by 2025. Furthermore, Iranian car part makers are obliged to produce $6 billion worth of car parts by 2025.

Earlier, Mohammad Baqer Rejal, the Head of the Iranian Car Parts Manufacturers Association, said that the country's auto manufacturers owe $2.3 billion to the factories that manufacture car parts.

A great part of the debt was accumulated in the past few months as only four months ago the debt stood at $1.6 billion.

Today, only 15-20 percent of car parts cannot be produced in Iran, and this is due to the fact that launching their production lines is not economically beneficial - they mostly include electronic parts.

Iran's car output during the last fiscal year (ended on March 20) decreased by 13.7 percent compared to the same period of the preceding year, and stood at 976,836.

Iran produced 989,110 cars in 2012, which made the country Asia's eighth largest car manufacturer. Iran also stood at the world's 18th place in the mentioned year. The Islamic Republic's car output faced a 40-percent decrease in 2012 following sanctions.

Now after the removal of international sanctions, the Islamic Republic plans to revive the car making industry as cooperation between Iranian carmakers and foreign car manufacturers has revived.

Today, the race has tightened for access to Irans auto market. European automakers, which were forced to leave the Iranian market after international sanctions on the Islamic Republic for its nuclear program, are now attempting to restore their previous shares of Irans vast car market.

Deputy Minister of Industry, Mines and Trade Mohsen Salehinia earlier noted that the country plans to manufacture 1.35 million cars in current fiscal year (started on March 20), and to boost its auto export. Also, the Iranian market will be supplied with joint venture products from early 2017.

Experts believe that the Islamic Republic is capable of turning into a car making hub in the region given the countrys geopolitical situation and its high security.

James Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, earlier told Azernews that initially, the car industry is likely to focus on the country's domestic market.

"Beyond the fact that Iran has a substantial domestic market in its own right and a long-standing industry with local models, the car industry needs significant upgrading to erase the effects of years of international sanctions," he said.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has already urged international companies to cooperate with Iran to develop the countrys auto making industry. He said Iran welcomes foreign carmakers to come, do research and produce as Rouhani believes that Iran "cannot close the doors and make people buy home-made cars."

Meanwhile, economists claim that Iran's car making industry needs modernization after years of sanctions, while its car part manufacturing industry needs to absorb $8 billion worth of foreign investment in a long-term period.

The government sees fully privatization of the car industry as a tool for achieving its development. Officials say privatization, being a key strategy for rehabilitation of the Iranian economy, will facilitate upgrading the Iranian car industry, as well as its growth.

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Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter @Aynur_Karimova

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26 April 2016 14:59 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Turkey has expressed hope in normalization of relations with Russia both in political and economic spheres.

Commenting on recent developments in the Ankara-Moscow ties, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said on April 26 that the visit of a Turkish delegation to Russia to hold talks in the agricultural sector is a step towards this purpose.

"Hopefully, it will bring positive results," he added.

Turkey's Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock told Trend on April 25 that Ankara and Moscow will discuss the prospects for resuming the supply of Turkish agricultural products to Russia.

The discussions will be held during the visit of a delegation of Turkey's Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock to Russia on April 26.

The relations between Russia and Turkey have deteriorated since last November over the Su-24 incident, which took a life of a Russian soldier.

Following the jet crisis, Russia imposed an embargo on visas on Turkish travelers, as well as banned the sale of tour packages and charter flights to Turkey.

In December, Russian President Vladimir Putin also signed an order to extend Russian economic sanctions against Turkey.

The sanctions include a ban on Russian firms importing a range of Turkish foodstuffs, as well as canceling a visa-free regime and restricting Turkish companies from working in certain Russian business sectors, including tourism.

Also, since January 1, 2016, Russia banned the import of several fruits and vegetables from Turkey.

After these sanctions, economic relations between the two countries saw decline. In particular, statistics show that before the jet incident, about 1,500 Turkish companies operated in Russia in businesses ranging from construction and tourism to imports of Turkish fruit, vegetables and textiles. However, currently, only about 200 Turkish firms are operating in Russia, according to non-official statistics.

Also, statistics show that Turkish exports to Russia fell to around $108 million in January, down two-thirds on the previous year. Russian exports to Turkey, mainly of energy, were 30 percent lower at $1.3 billion, reflecting weak oil prices.

Therefore, rapprochement of relations is important both for Russia and Turkey. Experts believe that recent developments in the two countries' ties show that Russia and Turkey may restore their once warm relations.

In particular, the first visit of a Russian military delegation to Izmir on March 29, as well as the two countries' recent agreement on the observation flights that were cancelled since February 4, can be considered as Ankara and Moscow's desire to open a new page in the bilateral ties.

Experts say that the arrest of Alparslan Celik, who shot at the second Russian pilot who catapulted after the destruction of the Russian Su-24 bomber, is a step towards warming relations with Russia as well.

Celik, who shot at the second Russian pilot who catapulted after the destruction of the Russian Su-24 bomber, has been arrested in Turkeys Izmir province, Hurriyet newspaper reported on March 31.

Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a speech in Washington, and voiced the importance of resuming the bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

While speaking at the Brookings Institution as part of his visit to the U.S., Erdogan stressed the importance to resume the Russian-Turkish cooperation to resolve the regional problems.

Russian officials also say that the breakdown in relations between Turkey and Russia is temporary.

Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman of Russian Foreign Ministry, while responding to a question whether the row between Moscow and Ankara was temporary, said certainly."

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Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter @Aynur_Karimova

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26 April 2016 14:56 (UTC+04:00)

The visa-free regime between the European Union and Turkey is a belated decision, according to Turkey's former minister for the EU affairs Egemen Bagis.

The expected cancellation of the visa regime between Turkey and the EU is the achievement of Turkey's policy, Bagis told Trend Apr.26 in Baku.

"I have repeatedly said that if Turkey becomes a strong country from the political and economic point of view, it will overcome all obstacles sooner of later," said the former minister.

Earlier, Turkish Ministry for EU Affairs told Trend that Ankara has fulfilled 55 out of 72 commitments to the EU for achieving the visa-free regime.

It is expected that the remaining commitments will be fulfilled soon, said the ministry.

After cancelling the visa regime, Turkish citizens will be able to stay without visa for three months in the following countries: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Iceland, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Hungary, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Greece.

Earlier, President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said that the EU may introduce a visa-free regime with Turkey in the autumn of 2016, if Ankara implements all the necessary requirements.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said that full membership in the EU continues to remain a priority for Turkey.

The Association Agreement between the EU and Turkey was signed in 1963. Ankara filed an application for the EU membership in 1987, but the negotiations on Ankara's accession to the EU started only in 2005.

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26 April 2016 16:23 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Turkmenistan will be able to increase gas supply to China in the near future with the construction of a gas booster station, the Turkmen Ministry of Oil and Gas announced on April 25.

The gas booster station, which is under construction at Malai gas field, in Turkmenistan will have the capacity of 30 billion cubic meters of gas a year. The field is currently operated by Turkmengaz state concern.

Turkmenistan's Turkmennebitgazgurlushyk state concern has been involved in the construction of the facility, the report said.

Earlier, Turkmengaz signed an agreement with Chinese national petroleum cooperation- CNPC on providing 65 billion cubic meters of gas annually to China by the end of 2021.

Malai field is among the sources for the Central Asia- China gas pipeline, also known as Turkmenistan China gas pipeline, which was commissioned in 2009.

The gas booster station is designed to improve the technical and economic indicators of the initial section of the main gas pipeline.

Installations will fulfill gas pumping functions that will facilitate its supply and transport and increase the production levels at low pressure in the field.

Turkmenistan enjoys the world's fourth largest natural gas reserves after Russia, Iran, and Qatar It produces about 70-80 billion cubic meters of gas annually. The country is one of the key players in the energy market in the resource-rich Caspian region.

Moreover, the country plans to construct the world's largest gas-chemical complex in the Derveze district of Turkmenistan's Akhal province.

Turkmenistan is a major strategic partner of China in natural gas provision. Roughly 35 percent of Chinas gas import accounts for the Turkmen gas.

Earlier this year, Russian energy giant Gazproms refused to purchase Turkmen natural gas. It left Turkmenistan with just two big customers  China and Iran.

---

Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
26 April 2016 15:44 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Energy-rich Iran, which is the fourth country in the world for its proven oil reserves of 158 billion barrels, has discovered shale oil reserves in the Lorestan Province.

This was announced by the Director of Center for Exploration and Production at the country's Oil Ministry, Mohammad Reza Kamali on April 25.

The project of studying the shale reserves is completed by 47 percent, he said, adding that the studies, conducted in cooperation with German RWTH Aachen University prove the existence of significant reserves of shale oil in Lorestan Province.

However, Kamali did not disclose whether Iran plans to extract shale oil or not, only pointing to huge potential for producing unconventional oil in Iran.

Earlier, Iran announced about the discovery of shale oil in southeast Kerman and northern Semnan provinces.

In July 2015, the official IRNA news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying that shale reserves have already been confirmed in Irans Zagros Basin and near Aligudarz in the Lorestan province.

Preliminary explorations have found three or four oil shale horizons with signs of kerogen near Kerman and southern Semnan. The Garoo formation in Lorestan contains the biggest shale reserves yet and the Kajdomi formation in Gachsaran also holds a significant capacity, the source said.

Experts claim that the countrys abundance in conventional resources gives ground to expect that shale exploration in Iran will not go beyond exploration and identification, with no plans for production. This is supported by the fact that each barrel of conventional crude oil in the Persian Gulf costs Iran about $5-$10, compared to $40-80 for the shale oil.

The oil production of Iran, once the second-largest producer in OPEC after Saudi Arabia, reduced to 2.8 million barrels a day from 3.6 million barrels in 2011, following the EU and the U.S. sanctions.

Oil shale, also known as kerogen shale, is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen from which liquid hydrocarbons called shale oil can be produced.

Unlike natural gas and crude produced from shale deposits using hydraulic fracturing, shale oil is produced from oil shale rock fragments by pyrolysis, hydrogenation, or thermal dissolution. These processes convert the organic matter within the rock (kerogen) into synthetic oil and gas.

The resulting oil can be used immediately as a fuel or upgraded to meet refinery feedstock specifications by adding hydrogen and removing impurities such as sulfur and nitrogen. The refined products can be used for the same purposes as those derived from crude oil.

Gas hydrates

Kamali went on to add that the studies for extraction of gas hydrates from Gulf of Oman are underway.

The first phase of studies of the gas hydrates in the depth of 2,000 meters of Gulf of Oman has been completed and the second phase of explorations would start soon.

Iran has not yet discovered any field in the Gulf of Oman. However, the country has drilled two wells for the exploration of gas hydrates there.

Gas hydrate has a very high concentration of methane. A cubic meter block of methane hydrate can release an energy equals to about 160 cubic meters of gaseous methane.

The Iranian Oil Ministry hopes to find huge deposits of gas hydrate in the Gulf of Oman. Iran's conventional oil and gas reserves stand at 138 billion barrels and 34 trillion cubic meters.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
26 April 2016 13:22 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Russian tour operators have observed a significant increase in booking of tours to Transcaucasia, while the resorts of Turkey and Egypt stand to see less Russian tourists this year.



Azerbaijan was visited by about 50,000 Russian tourists in 2015, according to the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR).

Tourists usually go to see Baku and relax on the coast, as well as for the medical treatment with mud. Besides tourists interested in local cuisine, ATORs Vice-President Alexander Kurnosov said.

One of the main advantages of Azerbaijan, besides the captivating beauty of the country and hospitable population, is the fact that many people here know Russian and English.

Also, the prices in the tourism facilities of the country have not risen and after the double devaluation of the national currency, the prices are more affordable.

Director of Rayda tourism agency Fuad Heydar believes that after the recent tensions between Russia and Turkey, Russian tourists will prefer Azerbaijan. He said that the development of Baku, as well as construction and improvement of certain tourism infrastructures and hotels in the countrys regions also contribute to the tourist flow.

The statistics show that in previous years the number of tourists in Azerbaijan varied between 1-2 million, who mainly accumulated in the capital. However, now we see that tourists show interest in the countrys region, he told AzerTac state news agency.

He reminded that the Shahdag Winter and Summer Tourism Complex, entered the top ten ski resorts of the CIS countries, is the favorite winter destination of many foreign tourists, while in summer travelers prefer to rest in Gabala, Gakh, Ilisu and Naftalan, known for its therapeutic oil.

Recently, popular Russian tourist service Travel.ru placed Bakus blue Caspian Sea among Top 5 most popular tourist resort destinations in the CIS countries.

However, ATOR claims that its early to say that Caucasus can fully replace resorts in Turkey or Egypt for Russian tourists. Specialists explain this by the lack of "all inclusive" system in the Caucasus resorts.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
 

       3.0 (      -       -         ): editor [at] bahrainmirror.com
After trying to come to terms for six months, Kern Health Systems has let Bakersfield officials know it is no longer interested in buying 5  
RedBlack Software has appointed Brett Jones to the position of account manager. Based in Bristol, he will have particular responsibility for the south of England and Wales.

RedBlack, creator of the popular CyBake range of bakery management systems, has appointed Jones to the role with immediate effect.

Jones has spent his entire career in the food industry, and his first job was managing a Somerfield instore bakery.

He has worked with some of British bakerys biggest brands including Bristols Hobbs House and Penzance-headquartered Warrens Bakery.

Jones says: My background gives RedBlack someone with comprehensive experience of planning and implementing traceability systems that meet established standards like BRC and SALSA. I also have experience of the food industry outside baking.

At Foodex this month, RedBlack launched CyBake Instore, and announced it has become the exclusive UK reseller of weighing, ingredient control and traceability solutions from North American specialist, SG Systems.
Pie lovers in Chell, Stoke-on-Trent, can now visit Wrights the pie maker, following the opening of a new retail shop in the town.

The new Stoke-on-Trent investment takes the total number of Wrights stores to 19, and has created eight new jobs.

Wrights chairman and chief executive Peter Wright said: Were delighted to be able to invest in Chell and provide our valued customers with a modern and convenient new shop.

A new layout concept will also see customers benefit from a breakfast bar and seating area.

Eddie Hall, Britains Strongest Man, who is sponsored by Wrights, attended the official opening to meet customers, and enjoy one of his favourite meat and potato pies.

The shop sells Wrights usual range of pies and slices, including their meat and potato pie; sandwiches, rolls and wraps; cakes; a full range of breakfast products and a fresh salad bar.

The Crewe-based pie-maker currently employs around 150 staff across its retail stores in Crewe and Stoke-on-Trent.

Earlier this month (April) the food group announced that it is to stage a series of celebratory events throughout 2016, to mark the companys 90th anniversary.
A major shareholder has accused Premier Foods of arrogance in its handling of US suitor McCormick.

As reported by City A.M., US hedge fund manager Paulson & Co followed up a previous attack on the Mr Kipling-owners failure to secure a deal with another singeing attack - this time going as far as saying it would support the idea of the companys chairman, David Beever, resigning over the matter.

US spice brand McCormick recently made three offers for Premier Foods, at 52p, 60p and 65p respectively, the latter of which valued the company at an enterprise value of 1.5bn. However, Premier Foods rejected all the offers, leading to McCormick walking away from the deal.

A spokesman for Paulson & Co said: McCormick, after making three offers, understandably decided to withdraw rather than proceed without a recommendation. Now, the shareholders are left with a price of 39p with the same management making the same promises as it did two years ago when it sold stock at 81p on a blended basis.

It added that Premiers failure to recommend an offer at a 106% premium on the pre-announcement price was a record for corporate arrogance and, on the subject of whether Beever should resign, said: We have not written a letter asking for his resignation, but would certainly support the idea.
A Pinellas County judge has ruled that the man accused of dropping his daughter off a Bay area bridge is still not competent to stand trial.

Pinellas County Circuit Judge Chris Helinger ruled Tuesday morning that John Jonchuck Jr. is still not competent.



John Jonchuck was back in court Monday

If ruled competent, he will stand trial

Phoebe Jonchuck, 5, died Jan. 8, 2015 when she was dropped from the approach to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.

Previous stories on Phoebe Jonchuck



Jonchuck, 26, was not in the courtroom for the brief hearing, but his mother Michele Jonchuck was in attendance. Another hearing has been set for Oct. 18 to discuss John Jonchuck's competency.

Jonchuck is accused of dropping his daughter Phoebe Jonchuck 62 feet from the Sunshine Skyway southbound approach on Jan. 8, 2015 just after midnight. He is facing charges of murder, aggravated fleeing and eluding and aggravated assault with a motor vehicle on a law enforcement officer.

Last week, attorneys for Jonchuck said their client is having some issues in jail but declined to put a deputy on the stand to testify about specifics. Attorneys said they saw him this morning and have concerns about Jonchuck's stability and that he is not taking all his medication.

That's when Helinger ordered another doctor's evaluation to whether Jonchuck can be ruled competent.

Jonchuck has already been found incompetent once in this case - in February when a judge ruled on a psychological evaluation.

During that unusually cold and windy January 2015 night, a St. Petersburg police officer spotted John Jonchuck speeding by in his car early that morning onto the bridge and then the officer said he witnessed Jonchuck drop Phoebe.

Phoebe lived with her father in Tampa, and in the last day of her life, he made comments that frightened his lawyer so much she called authorities and frantically wondered aloud if she should have kept the girl at her office.

Since then, Jonchuck has been ruled incompetent and sent to a state hospital for treatment.

If Jonchuck is ultimately ruled competent, stands trial and is found guilty, prosecutors have indicated they plan to seek the death penalty.

Jonchuck has had a long history of treatment for mental health issues, including schizophrenia, bipolar issues and an attention deficit disorder.
Police are conducting a homicide investigation after a man was found dead Monday night at an east Tampa home.

James Simmons Jr. found dead late Monday night

Death ruled homicide

No further information released

According to Tampa Police, James Simmons Jr., 48, was found dead in a home at 3805 E. Curtis St.

Investigators say his mother found his body at 7:48 p.m. and called police. Officers determined his death was a homicide.

Tampa Police have released this photo of Simmons' car, which they said is missing. They are asking anyone with information on its whereabouts to contact Crime Stoppers.

Police are now looking for Simmons' car, which is missing. The car is described as a 2005 blue Chevrolet Cobalt with Florida tag X981JA. Anyone with information about his car is asked to call Crime Stoppers of Tampa Bay.



Detectives are also working to establish a time frame during which Simmons died.

Crime Stoppers of Tampa Bay is offering a reward of up to $3,000 for information leading to the identification and arrest of suspects in this case. To remain anonymous and be eligible for a cash reward, call 1-800-873-TIPS (8477) or visit crimestopperstb.com.


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High-flying aerobatic and pyrotechnical acts could perform over Jefferson County skies as early as April 2017 in a revived air show being proposed by a local military group.

The last time the county hosted an air show was May 2001.

Joe Beck, commandant of the Marine Corps League's 1st Sgt. Joyce Venable Detachment - the group proposing the show - said all proceeds would benefit Southeast Texas veterans.

Alex Rupp, the county's manager of the Jack Brooks Regional Airport, outlined a plan on Monday to Commissioners Court for a possible show at the airport next spring.

The date would have to fit the schedule of "acts" that travel the country, he said. It would likely take a year to line up some acts, which could include an Air Force flyover.

Chances are pretty slim for a visit by the Navy's Blue Angels or the Air Force's Thunderbirds.

But we could possibly get "FiFi."

The Commemorative Air Force keeps a full schedule to bring in the world's only airworthy B-29 Superfortress, called "FiFi."

The B-29 is the type of plane that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan 70 years ago.

Beck said a professional air show producer could arrange to bring in aerobatics acts.

Rupp said other examples of attractions could include parachutists and pyrotechnical displays such as simulated strafing by a World War II-era fighter.

Other attractions could include classic cars, food vendors and crafts booths, Rupp said.

The county would not make any money from the sponsors or take any of the gate, Rupp said. The bulk of the money earned would go to the Marine Corps League, a non-profit operated by volunteers and led by a board of directors.

The local group formed four years ago and was named for Joyce Venable, who served in the Marine Corps for 27 years, beginning in the Korean conflict and in the reserves until June 1980. He worked for 32 years at Texaco, Beck said.

The air show idea appealed to the group's members because of its military connection and because it would attract families, Beck said.

Lufkin, for example, in October revived its AirFest after 25 years, drawing large crowds. It was such a success, organizers are already planning a second one for this fall.

AirFest featured planes like the Ford Tri-Motor, which dates to the 1920s; a P51 Mustang fighter from World War II; a Waco biplane; the F4U Corsair, another World War II fighter; and a Russian MiG 17.

Chris Lamson, the commandant before Beck, said he thought a Jefferson County air show would "generate great community participation."

But, he said, "We're at the beginning stages of this. We don't have a lot of detail yet."

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Dr. Lonnie L. Howard will succeed Lamar Institute of Technology President Paul Szuch this summer after being named the lone finalist for the position on Tuesday by Texas State University System Chancellor Brian McCall

Howard, currently president and CEO of Clover Park Technical College in Lakewood, Washington, was selected from a field of nearly 40 candidates, according to a news release from McCall's office.

Howard will replace Szuch, who is retiring after a decade at LIT's helm.

"Dr. Howard brings more than 20 years of experience in higher education to LIT, but he also brings a wealth of life experience-as a first-generation college student and the beneficiary of a technical college education-that make him an outstanding fit for the institution," said McCall in prepared remarks.

Howard, whose appointment must be confirmed by the TSUS Board of Regents, is expected to start his new position before the fall semester, according to the news release.

"By law, a candidate for president of a public college or university in Texas must remain the sole finalist for 21 days before a governing board can confirm the appointment," the release said.

Howard said in prepared remarks that he is "humbled by this opportunity."

"LIT is an important educational asset in Southeast Texas," he said. "I'm excited about the opportunity to build on the positive changes that Dr. Szuch achieved during his tenure so that LIT can offer more students the kind of life-changing opportunities I experienced as a student."
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The Texas Army National Guard rolled into some of the neighborhoods hardest hit by last weeks storms. Using some hefty military vehicles, the Texas Guardsmen contributed to a couple hundred of the more than 1,000 water rescues that occurred during the floods.

WATCH: Drone footage shows some of Houstons most flooded areas

In one area of Brookshire, personnel filmed the aftermath of the heavy rainfall from a drone. The city in western Harris County experienced some of the worst flooding during the Tax Day storms. These aerial images show the hazardous situation that residents faced.

Streets and driveways have vanished completely beneath murky floodwaters in the town of 4,000 residents. The houses and grassy backyards look like little islands among the rain waters. Some residents can be seen wading, biking or even boating through the waters. The storm shut down local roadways.

Parts of Houston received 15 to 20 inches of rainfall during the recent rains, with northwest and west Harris County receiving the highest precipitation totals.

See drone images from the flood in the gallery above,.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed House Bill 1175, which seeks to create more transparency about healthcare costs, according to jacksonville.com.

Here are five highlights:

1. State Sen. Rob Bradley (R-Fleming Island) and state Rep. Chris Sprowls (R-Palm Harbor) sponsored the bill.

2. Effective July 1, the bill creates a website that allows consumers to obtain a price estimate for the entire episode of care at an ASC or hospital.

3. The legislation gives consumers the right to receive a written price estimate from ASCs, hospitals, physicians and medical equipment providers within seven days.

4. In addition to House Bill 1175, Gov. Scott signed other healthcare bills including House Bill 7087, which creates the Telehealth Advisory Council within the Agency for Health Care Administration.

5. Gov. Scott vetoed a bill which provides dentists financial incentives, ranging between $10,000 and $100,000, to practice in Florida's underserved areas.

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The nation is losing its independent physicians. Compared to 57 percent in 2000, only 33 percent of U.S. physicians are independent today. In a tumultuous healthcare environment, independent physicians are struggling to stay afloat in an industry controlled by the government, payers and hospitals.

These independent physicians need a unified voice.

"We're turning up the heat slowly and we're hitting the boiling point," says Marni Jameson, executive director of the Association of Independent Doctors. In the past 18 months, she has seen a fire among independent physician organizations, strategizing ways to return control back to physicians. "We're all up against the same issues; we're just tackling them from different angles, and now, more and more, we're collaborating. We have this cross-pollination."

Ms. Jameson has worked closely with Elaina George, MD, host of Medicine on Call; Mike Strickland, MD, a founding member of Let My Doctor Practice; and Tom LaGrelius, MD, founder of American College of Private Physicians.

"I have noticed that there is something afoot," says Ms. Jameson. "Unlike other membership associations in other industries, which tend to elbow each other out of the way, we are linking arms and we are excited to find one another."

Why independent physicians are a necessity  AID's mission

Composed of nearly 1,000 members in 14 states, AID emphasizes the crucial need for independent physicians in the U.S. healthcare system because they keep down costs.

"We need hospitals and we need really good hospitals, but they don't need to own everything. When monopoly happens, the prices soar," explains Ms. Jameson.

Pay inequity is a major frustration among independent physicians, says Ms. Jameson. Independent physicians receive less pay for the same procedures employed physicians perform.

Independent physicians also express frustration about the amount of data the government expects them to gather and deliver. "Doing the government's bidding cuts into their face time with patients," she says.

Taking out the middleman  Dr. Elaina George's strategy

Dr. George, a board-certified otolaryngologist at Atlanta-based Peachtree Ear, Nose and Throat Center, decided to cut out payers from the patient care equation: "Our job as physicians are to be advocates for our patients. Insurance companies have inserted themselves between us and are dictating care."

Dr. George felt working with payers proved restrictive and that she is able to offer her patients higher quality care delivered to fit their needs.

She promotes her payer-free strategy, such as medical cost sharing, on her weekly radio show, "Medicine on Call." Dr. George uses the platform to inform patients and physicians that there is another way to practice medicine.

"Data analytics is metadata gathering and it is taking away from a doctor-patient relationship and patient privacy is being stepped on," says Dr. George. "It has a chilling effect on a doctor-patient relationship."

Because she doesn't believe data analytics is making any physician more efficient, she stepped away from the process entirely. Dr. George believes independent physicians represent the final wall that protects patients and their privacy. She joined AID and AAPS because she feels the organizations help independent physicians advocate for their patients.

"[AID] really has our backs, and is doing a wonderful job educating patients about why they should seek care from an independent doctor," says Dr. George.

Unity is power  Dr. Mike Strickland's viewpoint

In the current healthcare landscape, Cincinnati internist Dr. Strickland believes physicians are able to solve simple problems, but their hands are tied when it comes to treating complex problems. While working for the VA, he felt his lack of autonomy prohibited him from successfully carrying out his role as a physician.

"I supported reform initially, because our patients were falling through the cracks," says Dr. Strickland. "I never in my wildest dreams imagined that someone would reform the healthcare industry without significant input from healthcare professionals."

Dr. Strickland and other physicians formed United Physicians and Surgeons of America, which created the Let My Doctor Practice, a forum to connect various independent physician organizations.

"There's no one representing American physicians, overall (AMA membership has declined to about 15 percent of U.S. doctors,)" says Dr. Strickland. "Doctors are extremely powerful, but we don't have an effective central nervous system." Let My Doctor Practice tries to connect physicians and their organizations so they may harness this power to take back control of their own profession.

"We have more than enough power to get this back under control if we can get some unity," says Dr. Strickland. "We don't know about policy and government, but we know medicine and surgery and how it needs to be practiced, according to the science and our art."

Strength in numbers  Dr. Tom LaGrelius' belief

In the eyes of Dr. LaGrelius, the only way to save American medicine is by practicing concierge medicine.

"It doesn't work when you work for the third party. You're not happy, the patient is not happy," says Dr. LaGrelius, who practices concierge medicine as a primary care physician at Torrance, Calif.-based Skypark Preferred Family Care.

In 1997, he founded the Independent Doctors of Traditional Practice Association of the South Bay for physicians who didn't belong to HMOs. The organization is now a chapter of AID, as he wanted to connect with a national movement.

"There is strength in numbers," he says. "If we can get all of these organizations together, maybe we can have some clout."

In 2015, he founded American College of Private Physicians as a professional society for concierge medicine physicians. "We serve the established doctors walking the walk of direct practice and concierge medicine. No other such organization exists," he says.

Concierge medicine represents reverting back to a time when primary care physicians had fewer patients and developed direct relationships with them.

"Corporate care is fragmented and ineffective care," says Dr. LaGrelius. "Medicine is a relationship between a physician and patient; it is not a corporate activity." He believes American medicine is collapsing, and the industry is swamped with physicians who are miserable.

"Insurance companies are in league with the government under the ACA," says Dr. LaGrelius. "Primary care is not an insurable event. My ongoing relationship with my patients is not insurable."

Pictured from left to right: Marni Jameson, Dr. Elaina George, Dr. Mike Strickland and Dr. Tom LaGrelius

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New York City officials are proposing an overhaul of the city's cash-strapped public hospital system, which includes a restructuring and an infusion of $2 billion in subsidies, according to The New York Times.

Here are eight things to know about the issue.

1. Plans for the public hospital system, New York City Health + Hospitals, will be proposed in a report Tuesday as part of Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio's budget.

2. The goal with the overhaul is to improve the hospital system's financial picture, the report states. Health + Hospitals faces a projected $600 million operating gap in fiscal year 2016, which is expected to increase to $1.8 billion by FY 2020.

3. The city attributed the system's financial struggles to multiple factors, such as declines in usage and federal funding.

4. The overhaul is expected to turn inpatient centers into outpatient centers and focus less on emergency rooms, a person familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. Specifically, the city proposes building more community care clinics while closing some underused and vacant portions of Health + Hospitals campuses.

5. The overhaul will include retraining some employees and adding billions to Health + Hospital's budget as changes are made, The Wall Street Journal reports.

6. City officials are also proposing relocating social services help into hospitals, with the hope of getting patients linked to services after they leave the hospital so they won't return as often, according to The Wall Street Journal.

7. Mayor de Blasio said the overhaul will not close hospitals or include layoffs, but "expand comprehensive healthcare, especially in high-need communities."

8. Still, the city acknowledged a decrease in hospital-based jobs is likely as existing hospital staff move to community-based health centers and clinics.

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Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health will close Alta Bates Summit Medical Center's campus in south Berkeley, Calif., sometime between 2018 and 2030, according to the East Bay Times.

The acute care and emergency services offered at the hospital will be consolidated at the Alta Bates campus in Oakland, Calif.

Sutter is consolidating services to comply with a California law that requires hospitals to meet certain seismic standards by Jan. 1, 2030. The Berkeley hospital currently does not meet the required standards and Sutter does not have plans to retrofit the campus.

Rumors have swirled about the possible closure of the hospital for years, according to the report. In an October 2015 memo to staff, Sutter CEO Chuck Prosper indicated shutting down the hospital makes sense even without the seismic standards compliance issue.

"Regardless of the seismic deadline, we must adapt to changes in healthcare if we are to survive in today's world," he wrote, according to the report. "Operating two full service hospitals less than three miles apart is inefficient. In today's hypercompetitive environment, employers and consumers are choosing health services based on costs as much as quality. To excel we must be competitive."

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The larger world didn't start paying much attention to bitcoin until 2013. That was the year mainstream companies like Microsoft, Expedia and Dell, among others, began to accept the alternative, electronic payment method. That was also the year the Department of Homeland Security shut down the Silk Road, a "dark web" hub for illegal activity, and began to investigate the Tokyo-based digital exchange Mt. Gox, seizing millions of dollars in bitcoin in the process.

Bitcoin an electronic currency that exists but can't be touched, that operates above banks with no central authority and is issued by collective action. It promises extensive control over capital for businesses and individuals and enables efficient transfer worldwide with no limitations or surcharges.

The currency's site puts it simply  "bitcoins are digital coins you can send through the internet." Bitcoin supporters and detractors alike have touted the system as having the potential to upend economics as we know it. As might be expected, bitcoin has faced pushback at nearly every turn.

However, now that more eyes are trained on bitcoin, some argue the real magic behind the coin is being overlooked: a code, called blockchain, which acts as the unbreakable security backbone of all bitcoin transactions.

"It helps to think about a blockchain kind of like a global computer," says Micah Winkelspecht, founder and CEO of Gem, a blockchain technology company. "It's a giant machine that allows us to interoperate with each other and to do that in a very trusted way. Economists call it the global trust machine  a giant network of connected computers all operating together to come to a consensus on what is true."

Mr. Winkelspecht founded Venice, Calif.-based Gem after working to build a community of bitcoin users in Los Angeles around the same time the term "bitcoin" became more familiar. He began writing an open source library to help build security tools for the currency and, by his own admission, went down the rabbit hole and never came back.

Gem began as a way to offer those open source tools to other developers, so they wouldn't have to start from scratch when designing applications for bitcoin. Then Mr. Winkelspecht began to notice a lot of interest from large financial institutions who were hyped on the fervor with which smaller, younger companies were moving toward bitcoin and its related technologies. After a time it became apparent that healthcare, in its relentless search for better interoperability and cybersecurity, stood to benefit from blockchain.

Every time a patient sees their physician, they create a wake of digital activity, Mr. Winkelspecht says. That wake ripples through the care continuum, from the pharmacist who fills a prescription to the pharmaceutical firms from which they order drugs.

"What the blockchain allows us to do is create a new type of fabric for the underlying infrastructure of the entire healthcare industry," Mr. Winkelspecht said. "It would allow all parties  from insurers to providers  to connect in real-time and share information essentially instantly, without having to pass paper or even data back and forth."

Two of the primary components that make up a blockchain are identity and historical record, which Mr. Winkelspecht compares to a giant log of events, each of which is attributed to a proof in the real world. The log is unchangeable, so it provides a secure record of exactly who did what, where and when. This "integrity layer" provides a guarantee that no data contained in a blockchain has been modified or changed. These guarantees are strong enough that the blockchain enables users to track activity across an industry, or across countries. This is one of the reasons the financial sector, which is global in nature, was the first to become enamored by the technology and first to adopt it.

"It allows you to move data from point A to point B anywhere in the world with strong guarantees around the integrity and confidentiality of that data, so only the right person at the right time has access to it," Mr. Winkelspecht says.

In March 2016, Estonia's e-Health Authority partnered with Guardtime, a blockchain company, to help secure and facilitate interoperability for its nationwide EHR system.

Mr. Winkelspecht sees the most promising places for blockchain to be used in healthcare at the connecting points between stakeholders, like insurers and providers. The blockchain would allow the appropriate parties to view, edit and find the data in the exact same place, without the middlemen, routers and third companies that handle not only the data but the network connections parties use to pass sensitive information back and forth.

Blockchain is often viewed as a financial technology, which may be why its place in healthcare has been slow-moving. But the pattern that the financial sector established with bitcoin and blockchain will probably play out the same way for hospitals and health systems, according to Mr. Winkelspecht.

"It took about a year and a half for the financial industry to go from looking at bitcoin and saying, 'This will never work,' to where it is now, where essentially every major financial institution in the world is either exploring blockchain or has active teams devoted to building projects using it," Mr. Winkelspecht says.

Currently, Mr. Winkelspecht says he doesn't know of any healthcare organizations in the U.S. actively using the technology. Part of the reason may be related to cost  for many, upgrading to blockchain could require gutting antiquated systems. But once the perception around blockchain dissipates and healthcare stakeholders begin to understand not only how the technology works, but its implications, it could take off much in the same way it did in finance.

"This year already we're seeing major healthcare organizations beginning to explore it and we're working to help them start building prototypes and pilot programs," Mr. Winkelspecht says. "It's on a very short time horizon."
Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems has promoted two executives, effective May 1.

Here are 11 things to know about the executives.

Tim L. Hingtgen will be promoted to executive vice president of operations.

1. Mr. Hingtgen has more than two decades of executive level healthcare management experience.

2. He joined CHS in 2008 as a vice president of operations and was promoted to president of division IV operations in 2014.

3. During his tenure at CHS, he has successfully overseen the operations of affiliated hospitals in Alaska, Arizona, California, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, officials said. They said Mr. Hingtgen has also worked with some of the system's most successful affiliated hospitals and demonstrated he is able to help turn around underperforming facilities.

4. Prior to joining CHS, Mr. Hingtgen was COO or CEO of healthcare facilities in Arizona, Indiana and Nevada.

5. He earned a master's degree in business administration from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

John W. McClellan will be appointed president of division IV operations.

6. Mr. McClellan has two decades of healthcare management experience.

7. He joined CHS in 2009 as a vice president of operations.

8. At CHS, he has worked to successfully acquire and integrate affiliated hospitals in Indiana and Pennsylvania, officials said. They said he also has been a leader in the system's effort to establish clinically integrated networks in key markets.

9. Prior to joining CHS, he was CEO of hospitals in Florida, Missouri and North Carolina.

10. In his role, Mr. McClellan will have management responsibility for 31 affiliated hospitals in New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.

11. He earned a master's degree in healthcare administration from the University of Kentucky, based in Lexington.

In addition to the executive promotions, CHS will realign its operating divisions, effective May 1, reducing the number of divisions from six to five and reorganizing its portfolio in advance of the planned spin-off of Quorum Health Corp. The spin-off is expected to be completed on April 29.

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Many companies generously practice corporate giving, but few take advantage of their connections in the community to inspire employees. According to research into Fortune's "50 Best Workplaces for Giving Back" list, encouraging employees to guide charitable efforts enhances commitment and pride among teams.

Among the winning companies, those that promoted volunteering for a cause yielded the most positive results among employees.

"When employees are actively involved in giving back it can lead to a deeper commitment and connection work," Elizabeth Stocker, a consultant for Fortune's Great Place to Work list, told the magazine. "It doesn't surprise me that the sentiment was much higher when people are actually involved in the work, rather than a corporate donation being made."

Of the thousands of employee surveys Fortune analysts examined to compile the "50 Best Workplaces for Giving Back" list, they found employees of the best workplaces were more than four times more likely to discuss their companies' charitable undertakings compared to those only certified by Great Place to Work. Additionally, analysis of employees' anonymous feedback found the ways a company engages in philanthropy has as much of an impact on culture as the amount of money that is donated.
As the 2017 budget season nears, the American Academy of Family Physicians submitted testimony to the House and Senate pushing for more support for federal programs that are essential to primary care.

In the testimony, which the AAFP submitted to the Appropriations Committee in each chamber, the academy warned legislators that the current primary care physician shortage could grow even greater as the nation's population ages. The AFFP cited studies that found more than two-thirds of community health centers are searching for at least one family physician, and an additional 33,000 primary care physicians will be needed by 2035.

In its letter, the AFFP recommended legislators support the training of family physicians through the Primary Care Training and Enhancement Program, which aims to strengthen the primary care workforce by supporting expanded training for future primary care physicians, teachers and researchers, and by promoting primary care practice in rural and underserved areas. The AFFP asked Congress to increase the program's funding from $39 million to $59 million for 2017. Without additional funding, the program cannot afford to offer new grants for four more years, according to the AFFP.

The academy also asked for an additional $70 million for the National Health Service Corps, which would raise its total funding to $380 million. The program offers tuition reimbursement to help recruit medical students to serve in medically underserved areas and continue careers in primary care.

Finally, the AFFP asked for a least $365 million to support the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's research, which focuses on clinical decision making and treatment for chronic care patients.
Some hospitals  such as Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center in New York and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston  are starting to enlist mental health providers in their medical units, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

These leading hospitals have found psychiatrists are able to help address mental and behavioral health issues that impact patients' physical condition and contribute to length of stay during episodes of care. For example, mental health professionals can help stabilize patients in the intensive care unit sooner by identifying and reducing medication-induced delirium early, according to the report.

Some hospitals like NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center embed the psychiatrist in morning rounds. Others, like Brigham and Women's, assign a psychiatrist to staff the ICU. Johns Hopkins began testing a mental health care model this month that creates a small team dedicated to mental health, similar to Hartford, Conn.-based Yale-New Haven Hospital's behavioral intervention team. The BIT is led by a psychiatrist and includes a social worker, nurse practitioner and other mental health provider. Hochang Lee, MD, chief of psychological medicine at Yale-New Haven, told The Wall Street Journal the hospital's BIT model helped reduce length of stay by "a little more than half a day," on average, according to the report.

Other studies reaffirm that mental health professionals can help reduce length of stay, which helps offset the costs of hiring an additional provider. Read the full report here.

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Data from England's National Health Service shows 78 percent of its junior physicians did not report for duty Tuesday, including those in emergency care, according to The Guardian.

This means more than 21,600 physicians were absent, and though the count includes sick workers, most were on strike, protesting a contract proposed by Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt. At issue in the contract is a downward adjustment on the number of hours a junior physician can receive overtime pay for. However, the contract does increase general pay. The physicians have threatened to strike many times over the past several months during contract negotiations and after Mr. Hunt attempted to impose the contract on the junior physicians.

Early Tuesday, British Prime Minister backed Mr. Hunt and condemned the strikes.

"There is a good contract on the table with a 13.5% increase in basic pay  75 percent of doctors will be better off with this contract," he said on ITV News, according to The Guardian. "It's the wrong thing to do to go ahead with this strike, and particularly to go ahead with the withdrawal of emergency care  that is not right."

Johann Malawana, chair of the British Medical Association's junior physicians committee, said it was the "saddest day in NHS history," and that it was "entirely avoidable" if NHS was willing to negotiate, according to the report. Public support remains with the physicians.

Nonetheless, Mr. Hunt does not seem ready to budge. He said his current position will likely be his last in politics and he is determined to "do the right thing to help make the NHS one of the safest, highest quality health services in the world," according to the report.

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Pastoral medicine, or "Bible-based" healthcare providers, have watchdog organizations' attention, according to NPR.

Organizations like the Texas Medical Board and Quackwatch.org are concerned patients may have difficulty distinguishing that the credentials many pastoral providers boast, such as PSCD or DPSc, are not actual medical credentials, especially when the providers tout themselves as "doctors" of pastoral medicine.

According to NPR, the Texas Medical Board has ordered roughly one dozen pastoral providers to ceases and desist using their certification in recent years.

"Folks are purporting to treat and diagnose illness using that term," Mari Robinson, president of the Texas Medical Board, told NPR. "It's not a degree; it's not a license."

However, the Pastoral Medicine Association that issues the certifications based on undisclosed "rigid standards" argues pastoral providers hold licenses. Certified pastoral providers pay annual and processing fees for certification, according to the report.

NPR notes that pastoral medicine does have a lot of supporters who seek out alternative treatment options when they can't find the answers they need in traditional medicine alone. The key for patients is to note the difference between a pastoral provider and a medical provider and consider that difference when evaluating medical advice.

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The following healthcare mergers, acquisitions and general partnerships took place or were announced since April 11.

1. Kaiser inks lease agreement with Hawaii Health Systems Corp.

Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente is one step closer to taking over three hospitals from Hawaii Health Systems Corp., a state-funded hospital network based in Honolulu.

2. Texas Health Resources makes $112M bid for bankrupt hospital

Dallas-based Forest Park Medical Center secured a $112 million purchase offer for its campus in Forth Worth from Arlington-based Texas Health Resources.

3. Schuylkill Health System, Lehigh Valley Health Network ink merger agreement: 6 things to know

Pottsville, Pa.-based Schuylkill Health System and Allentown, Pa.-based Lehigh Valley Health Network signed a definitive agreement to merge.

4. Details emerge on proposed Athens Regional, Piedmont partnership: 4 quick facts

New details were released about a proposed affiliation between Athens (Ga.) Regional Health system and Atlanta-based Piedmont Healthcare.

5. Adventist Health to acquire rural health clinics from closing Colusa hospital

Roseville, Calif.-based Adventist Health agreed to acquire three rural clinics from Colusa (Calif.) Regional Medical Center, which closed Friday.

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Downers Grove, Ill.-based Advocate Health Care has filed a lawsuit to block Palos Heights, Ill.-based Palos Community Hospital from gaining access to Advocate's trade secrets.

As part of a pending 2013 lawsuit against Advocate and Humana, Palos has requested the managed care agreements held by all 12 Advocate hospitals for a six-year period.

In response, Advocate filed a lawsuit April 11, claiming it was wrongfully sued and should not have to hand over the requested information, including methods for collecting reimbursements from third-party payers and payment rates, according to a Cook County Record report.

"Palos should have never been in a position to request Advocates rate information in discoveryand it is so highly confidential and so valuable as trade secrets that any compelled disclosure would irreparably harm Advocate," the complaint states.

Advocate is requesting an inunction against Palos to prevent it from gaining access to the information.

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Terry Mohr, president of Health First Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Rockledge, Fla.-based Health First, was arrested April 20 on charges of soliciting prostitution, according to Florida Today.

Mr. Mohr, 69, was one of 11 men charged in a prostitution sting operation put together by the Brevard Sheriff's Office Special Investigations Unit. He allegedly called a phone number the sheriff's office posted on a website and was recorded agreeing to pay $80 for 30 minutes of sex. Mr. Mohr agreed to meet what turned out to be an undercover officer at a hotel near Palm Shores, Fla., according to the report.

Mr. Mohr was arrested after he entered the hotel room and placed $80 on the counter. The arrest occurred just before 2:30 a.m.

After his arrest, Mr. Mohr resigned from his position at Health First Foundation. He has served as the Foundation's president since February 2014.

"We received Mr. Mohr's resignation from his position within our Foundation," Matt Gerrell, Health First's vice president of public relations told Florida Today. "We respect the privacy of his family during this difficult time."

Health First is a four-hospital system, its largest and flagship hospital being Holmes Regional Medical Center.

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The number of hospitals that earned a failing grade in Leapfrog's spring Hospital Safety Scores release dropped from 34 in the fall to 15 this spring.

Leapfrog's Hospital Safety Score assigns A through F letter grades to more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals each spring and fall. The peer-reviewed grades are calculated by patient safety experts and based on patient safety, infection and patient experience metrics.

This spring, hospitals with a failing grade are spread across seven states and the District of Columbia.



California

Downey (Calif.) Regional Medical Center

Methodist Hospital of Southern California (Arcadia)

Tulare (Calif.) Regional Medical Center

Victor Valley Community Hospital (Victorville)

Whittier (Calif.) Hospital Medical Center

Washington, D.C.

Providence Hospital of Washington

Kansas

Western Plains Medical Complex (Dodge City)

Michigan

UP Health System-Portage (Hancock)

New Jersey

Saint Michael's Medical Center (Newark)

New York

St. Joseph's Medical Center of Yonkers (N.Y.)

Stony Brook (N.Y.) University Hospital

The Brooklyn (N.Y.) Hospital Center

Wyckoff Heights Medical Center (Brooklyn)

Oklahoma

McAlester (Okla.) Regional Health Center

Pennsylvania

Clarion (Pa.) Hospital
Joan and Sanford Weill donated $185 million to the University of California San Francisco, according to University of California San Francisco New Center.

Here are six highlights:

1. The donation is the largest gift to the university to date.

2. It will establish the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences.

3. The institute will focus on developing new therapies for brain and nervous system diseases.

4. The new 270,000-square-foot institute will include research laboratories and clinics.

5. Also, a UCSF Weill Innovation Fund will fund research projects focused on developing treatments for neurological and psychiatric illnesses.

6. The donation will also establish a UCSF Weill Fellows program, offering additional funding to neuroscience doctorate students.
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According to the Nevin Economic Research Institute (Neri), Northern Ireland would be worst hit of all UK regions if there is a vote to leave the EU

Northern Ireland would make no net gain and its finances would only just break even in the event of Brexit, a think tank has said.

According to the Nevin Economic Research Institute (Neri), Northern Ireland would be worst hit of all UK regions if there is a vote to leave the EU.

Problem areas could include "further strain" on Northern Ireland's public finances, through the loss of farm payments from the EU.

It also says that the "attractiveness of Northern Ireland as a destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) poses a unique challenge".

The economic think tank has also estimated that Northern Ireland proportionally contributes as little as 270m each year to the EU.

But Neri says that between single farm payments, fisheries, business investment funding and money under the Peace scheme, Northern Ireland receives back around 370m each year.

"In the next five years Northern Ireland would on conservative estimates only 'break even' in the event of a Brexit," it says. However, it says the discussion around this is "clearly hypothetical".

Addressing concerns over manufacturing here, the report on the impact of a Brexit says "Northern Ireland is skewed towards sectors that have greater trade with the EU and are therefore more vulnerable to disruption from Brexit".

It also adds: "The wholesale and retail sector is Northern Ireland's largest employer and along with the tourism sector it could see the largest labour market impact."

It says the retail sector "provides employment to a large section of the population and it is likely that a disruption to EU trade, particularly with the Republic of Ireland, may cause significant uncertainty and possible job losses in the sector".

The report, written by Neri economist Paul MacFlynn, says that Newry, Armagh, Fermanagh and south Tyrone could also face a "disproportionate hit as they are border constituencies".

But while fears have been raised over the potential negative impact a Brexit could have on tourism here, the Neri report says as the industry is "quite domestically focused" the threat of disruption to visitor numbers "can be overstated".

Speaking about foreign direct investment, the report says there is "little doubt as well that this is an area of economic development that will be significantly impacted by Northern Ireland's continuing relationship with the EU".

"An exit from the EU could deprive Northern Ireland of inward investment by boosting the attractiveness of the Republic of Ireland as a location and reinforcing the peripheral position of Northern Ireland within the UK."

But it adds that leaving the EU could "lift existing restrictions on State aid".

Following an exit from the EU, the report says Northern Ireland is particularly vulnerable to disruption in agriculture, food production and "many areas of manufacturing".

It concludes by saying this "represents a disproportionate risk for Northern Ireland in the short to medium term".

"In the next five years Northern Ireland would on conservative estimates only 'break even' in the event of a Brexit," it adds.
BHS has four stores in Northern Ireland, including an outlet in the heart of Belfast city centre

The collapse of retail giant BHS - which could see up to 300 jobs go at its stores in Northern Ireland - has been blamed on the chain's long-running failure to meet the demands of "21st-century customers".

A total of 11,000 jobs are at risk across BHS's 164 stores in the UK, after the firm entered administration.

BHS has four stores in Northern Ireland - a large outlet in the heart of Belfast city centre, along with three others in Newtownabbey, Holywood and Lisburn. The 88-year-old retailer's potential closure could be the biggest failure on the high street since the demise of Woolworths in 2008.

The stores are now in the hands of administrators Duff & Phelps, and will continue to trade for now.

The collapse of the business has been attributed to BHS's "failure to change quickly enough to reflect changes in the tastes and preferences of today's highly discerning, demanding and discriminating consumers".

That's according to Donald McFetridge, retail analyst at Ulster University.

"This has resulted in the tragic news that they will no longer be a feature of our high streets," he said. "The four stores in this geographic region will undoubtedly suffer the same fate as their counterparts in other parts of the country.

"The sad answer is that consumers were not shopping in BHS in sufficient numbers to drive the volume, footfall and spending power required for the company to continue to operate, in what has become one of the most competitive retail markets in the world."

He also warned that BHS is "not the last store group" which is failing to change to meet customer demands, and therefore, others could face a similar fate in future.

"There are other operators pitching for consumer loyalty in the same product category, at the same price point, who will, unfortunately, follow in their wake if they too fail to keep abreast of changes."

The possible loss of the four stores here will have a detrimental affect on businesses in the same vicinity, according to Glyn Roberts of the Northern Ireland Independent Retail Trade Association.

"The potential closure of the four local BHS stores will not just have an impact on their staff but also result in less footfall for surrounding retailers.

"Change is the only constant in retail and it does seem that BHS did not keep up with the marketplace and the expectations of 21st-century consumers."

BHS, formerly branded British Home Stores, sells a range of furniture, clothing and lighting, as well as convenience groceries.

Despite failing to keep up with changing markets over the decades, it's troubles have stirred up old memories from some customers.

Broadcaster and presenter Eamonn Holmes said on Twitter: "I remember BHS best for lighting," while he said Sky News colleague Sarah-Jane Mee "remembers getting her school uniform there".

Retail experts Which? have advised anyone with a BHS voucher or gift card to "spend it as quickly as possible".

BHS was bought last year by a consortium called Retail Acquisitions, headed by Dominic Chappell, for 1 from entrepreneur Sir Philip Green, the owner of the Arcadia retail empire.

The retailer has debts of more than 1.3bn, including a pension fund deficit of 571m.

Yesterday the owners of BHS were accused of sucking 30m in cash out of the company in a single year of ownership.

Last month BHS asked its creditors to agree to a CVA - a form of insolvency which allows businesses to change and alter their lease arrangements in order to reach financial compromise with creditors.

Sports Direct is understood to want some of BHS's 164 stores, but will only do so if it does not have to take on any pension liabilities. The pensions watchdog said it has launched a probe into the arrangements at the troubled department chain.
A Co Down heating and renewable energy installer is hoping to add 50 new jobs in the next year after already doubling its workforce in just 18 months.

CTS Projects in Warrenpoint has added 32 new jobs to its business, bringing staff numbers to 70, after landing fresh contracts worth 14m. But boss Connaire McGreevy, who also owns and runs Mourne Mountains Brewery, says he's now looking at setting up a base in Dublin, and expanding his workforce by a further 50.

CTS now handles 40% of Northern Ireland's social housing heating maintenance and upgrades.

But former SDLP councillor Mr McGreevy says he wants that number to grow further still.

The newest roles created at CTS include contract management and gas engineers, with salaries of around 25,000.

"We are still looking for a few more roles, and are putting out an advert soon for additional staff," Mr McGreevy said.

"We have 40% of social housing heating and maintenance contracts. We are aiming to increase that percentage. And we are also moving into the south, and have two small contracts in around Dublin, and are branching out there too, and looking for a new office."

He said that could be "potentially an additional 50 jobs in the next 12 months".

Mr McGreevy, who last week was named Young Businessperson of the Year at this year's Belfast Telegraph Business Awards, said his business success was down strong investment in IT, which offers customers instant reports on a range of "key performance indicators".

"In terms of business, the first five years is trying to establish your name, to clients and potential employees," he said.

"There has been a bit of growth in five years, but it gets easier once you win one [contract], you demonstrate what you are capable of.

"We have had exponential growth, and I'm looking to maintain that. I'm not stopping."

The latest contracts CTS has won include four housing associations, Alpha Housing, Fold Housing, Habinteg Housing and Triangle Housing and existing contracts with several other associations.

And Mr McGreevy's other business, craft beer maker Mourne Mountains Brewery, is also celebrating a year in business.

"It's going well. We have five people now and have grown our outlets to 70," he added.

"We are in talks with distributors to take it right across the UK.

"We are hoping to secure contracts with them to expand our reach, and we are developing new beers, too."

The brewery can produce up to 1,600 litres at a time, and sells a range of core beers, including a red ale and golden ale, along with several specials.

That's included a pumpkin beer, Christmas ale and a Belgian chocolate brew.
ScottishPower 'failed to treat its customers fairly' when handling calls, dealing with complaints and billing, Ofgem said.

ScottishPower has been fined 18 million by regulator Ofgem for customer service failings.

The energy firm "failed to treat its customers fairly" when handling calls, dealing with complaints and billing, the watchdog said.

Dermot Nolan, Ofgem chief executive, said: "Scottish Power let its customers down during the implementation of a new IT system. When things went wrong, it didn't act quickly enough to fix them.

"This created frustration and worry for many customers, who also wasted a lot of time trying to contact the supplier by phone."

ScottishPower was blasted for "unacceptably long call waiting times", with the company receiving more than one million complaints between June 2013 and December 2015.

Ofgem added that thousands of Ombudsman rulings were not implemented within the required 28 days and ScottishPower's failures resulted in more than 300,000 customers receiving late final bills. This meant many customers did not receive money they were owed.

However, the regulator also said that, since it opened the investigation, ScottishPower has improved its customer service.

Up to 15 million of the fine will be paid out to ScottishPower customers affected by customer service issues and the remainder will go to charity.

Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, which provided evidence to Ofgem's investigation, said: "ScottishPower failed its customers not once but twice. Not only did the firm struggle to get people's bills right first time, it also failed to sort out the problems when customers tried to complain.

"Time and again we're seeing big companies introduce new billing systems which leave customers in limbo - with the wrong bill and no way to sort it out.

"Ofgem is right to hand ScottishPower such a large fine. We also need the industry to start learning the lessons from issues which have caused such misery for consumers."
Turnover at Quinn Industrial Holdings - the packaging and construction business formerly owned by Sean Quinn - has grown 25% to 203m (158m) in the last year, according to its latest results.

And the company, which employs around 700 people in Cavan and Fermanagh, also recorded pre-profits of 5.9m (4.6m) - up from a loss of 14.6m (11m).

It's the first full year of results for the company, which bought over parts of the Quinn business two years ago.

The business has been battling attacks on its property and on the property of some of its officials in recent weeks.

QIHL is led by Liam McCaffrey - a former close associate of Sean Quinn. But relationships have soured over Mr Quinn's desire to win back a share of the businesses.

Mr Quinn is neither a director nor shareholder in the business but is paid 500,000 (388,000) as a consultant.

Speaking about the results, Mr McCaffrey said 2015 had been a "transformative year... stabilising and growing business and employment and restoring pride and confidence for the future".

A spokesman added: "The group is well positioned to take advantage of the recovering Irish economy as well as the strong and continued demand from the UK construction market."

QIHL was formed in 2014 and with the backing of American investors, bought Quinn's packaging and construction businesses from Aventas.

Aventas was the name given to the Quinn group of businesses after it was taken over by lender, Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC).

Quinn Industrial Holdings is 88% owned by the US investors through a Luxembourg firm and 22% by QBRC - the entity set up by businessmen John 'Bosco' O'Hagan from Co Londonderry, Ernie Fisher and John McCartin, a Fine Gael councillor.

The three jointly recently sent an internal email appealing for recent incidents of criminal damage to stop.

It follows a resurgence in attacks on businesses in Cavan and Fermanagh that used to be owned by Mr Quinn.

Workers at a wind farm have received a number of death threats, while cross-border police investigations are continuing into threats against Liam McCaffrey.

The email, which was signed by Mr Fisher, Mr O'Hagan and Cllr McCartin, implored "all parties to focus on rebuilding broken reputations, desist from criminal damage threats and defamation and look to a productive future".
Premium

Margaret Canning Opinion Conservatives have gone back to traditional territory with a mini-budget that just might cost the party the next election

Many of the measures in Kwasi Kwartengs first big statement as Chancellor had been trailed in advance  changes to stamp duty, the cancellation of both the rise in National Insurance and the rise in corporation tax, and bringing forward a cut in the basic rate of income tax to 19 pence.
Belsonic will add five more acts, including The Corrs, to their summer festival line-up due to "huge demand".

Madness, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Catfish and the Bottlemen, Disclosure and Fatboy Slim will also play in August, following on from the nine shows that had already been announced for June.

The August shows will take place over five nights between August 18 and 27 and organisers say that this is now the biggest outdoor music event in Northern Ireland.

The festival, now in its ninth year, will move to the Titanic Belfast site from its previous home at Custom House Square due to the need for a bigger location.

The festival had previously taken place in August but organisers had initially moved the shows to early June. They have now said that due to the demand for tickets, they have decided to add the extra shows later in the summer.

In June, The Chemical Brothers, Ellie Goulding, David Guetta, Faithless, Foals, Tiesto, Biffy Clyro, Stereophonics, Bring Me The Horizon, Oliver Heldens & Robin Schulz will appear at the new, larger site which will include an improved VIP area, enhanced staging, sound and lighting.

Belsonic promoter Alan Simms said the new site will mean more people can attend the festival than ever before.

"The new site also means there is more space for us to lay it out in a more user-friendly fashion," he said. "In previous years we found that a large portion, around 50% of the show was sold out, leaving a lot of fans not being able to see their favourite acts so we have been keeping an eye out for somewhere bigger but that is also a landmark site.

"The Titanic site ticks a lot of boxes with us, particularly the fact that it's possibly Belfast's most iconic building now. This capacity means we can really go to town with production, we can put a bigger stage in and more lighting and bigger screens.

"Having this site lay-out means having stuff for people to do when they are there, like bigger and better food stalls. We are now in our ninth year so I felt it's about time to shake it up."

The Corrs will play on August 18; Madness will play August 20; Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Catfish & The Bottlemen and Pleasure Beach will play on August 23; Disclosure, Kano and SG Lewis will play on August 24 and Fatboy Slim on August 27.

Tickets for the August events go on sale on Friday, April 29 at 9am from Ticketmaster outlets.

Remaining tickets for the June events at Belsonic 2016 are on-sale now from Ticketmaster outlets.
A charity has called for prison officers at young offenders' centres in Northern Ireland to have mandatory training to help spot and understand attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). File image

A charity has called for prison officers at young offenders' centres in Northern Ireland to have mandatory training to help spot and understand attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

It comes after ADD-NI said at least 70% of young people in Hydebank Young Offenders Unit have the behavioural disorder.

Sarah Salters from the charity says she believes a lot of the crimes committed by inmates are "impulsive acts" where the young person does not properly engage their brain beforehand.

"They carry out the act and it's too late," she said.

ADHD is usually diagnosed in childhood, but the impairing symptoms persist into adulthood in up to 70% of cases. Undiagnosed and untreated adults often have problems holding down a job or staying in a relationship.

According to the NHS website, common symptoms of ADHD include a short attention span, restlessness, constant fidgeting, over-activity and being impulsive.

In Sweden, where criminal, health and social care records are linked, researchers have found people convicted of crimes are much more likely to have ADHD than the rest of the population.

Estimates suggest between 7% and 40% of people in the criminal justice system may have it or other similar disorders, though many won't have a formal diagnosis.

Ms Salters has now called for prison officers to receive mandatory training to spot ADHD among young people in order to improve their understanding of the condition.

ADD-NI was established in 1997 as a support network for children, young people and the families of those affected by ADHD. Dr Matt McConkey, an expert in ADHD, said the figures are consistent with other young offenders centres across the UK.

He said assessing children who are involved in a first criminal offence would be a positive step in treating the condition at the earliest stage.

"Whenever you first enter the criminal justice system, that could be a unique opportunity to diagnose these children and follow on comprehensive treatment," he told the BBC.

He said having ADHD does not mean the child will automatically have a criminal record, however, early assessment could help reduce repeat offending.

Dr McConkey also supported the calls for prison officers to be trained in early recognition of the condition.

He added that both teachers and parents are becoming more aware in spotting the potential signs of ADHD and this provides better outcomes for the child.
Sinn Fein will demand an early referendum on Irish unity if the UK votes to leave the European Union, the ard fheis was told.

Former South Down MLA Chris Hazzard said a Brexit would challenge the integrity of the Good Friday Agreement, which put the future of Ireland in the hands of the Irish people.

"We would have been dragged out of Europe against our will," he told the gathering.

Former Executive minister Michelle Gildernew argued partition had generated division and inequality. "All because of a line on a map. We are working to get rid of it," she added.

Culture and Arts Minister Caral Ni Chuilin also hit out at the DUP for blocking planned legislation on the Irish language.
The Government is determined to conceal the role it played during the Troubles, Martin McGuinness told the Sinn Fein annual conference.

The Deputy First Minister said Londons insistence it cannot breach national security was the last obstacle remaining to an agreement to deal with the legacy of the conflict.

The only blockage is the British Governments veto on disclosure of information about the policies of the British State and its agencies, he said.

This British Government is determined to conceal its role in the conflict and the actions of its agents, agencies and their proxies in the loyalist death squads.

The on-going issue was also referred to by party president Gerry Adams in his keynote address, and by several other speakers over the two-day event.

Mr Adams said the Government would have to honour international human rights obligations, and Dublin TD Mary Lou McDonald said Tory refusals to reveal the truth on discovery, recovery and reconciliation are not acceptable.

National chairperson Declan Kearney  a candidate for the Assembly election in South Antrim  said the blockage was holding back the potential of the peace process from being realised.

A new policy document endorsed by the delegates said Londons national security veto relates to the disclosure of information to families which is core to both the investigative and informational recovery legacy mechanisms. Their stonewalling and obstructionist approach is a continuing violation of the rights of families seeking truth and justice.

Mr McGuinness attacked the relentless negativity of the UUP and SDLP at Stormont, which he said remained unable to tell voters whether or not they will go into the next Executive or will form an Opposition.

He said the next Assembly term would be hugely important, and the aim was to build on the Fresh Start agreement reached with the DUP to move beyond crisis and instability.

Referring to the recent abortion pills controversy, the Foyle candidate also said: The recent criminalisation of a young woman in the North was absolutely wrong. While I would caution against anyone using medication accessed on the internet, women facing difficult personal circumstances as a result of pregnancies must be treated with compassion and sympathy.

And the law in the North must change to allow the option of termination in the traumatic circumstances of fatal foetal abnormalities and sexual crimes.
Ciaran Lavery, a songwriter and guitarist, performed earlier this year at the South By South West Festival in Texas

Northern Ireland's music industry is worth more than 61 million to the economy every year, analysts said.

It employs almost 4,000 people and has been showcased around the world.

Last month Aghagallon-born Spotify sensation Ciaran Lavery was invited by country legend Willie Nelson to play as a guest artist at his ranch event just outside Austin, Texas.

A spokesman for Generator Northern Ireland, the government-funded music business support body, said: " The next few months look equally exciting - five leading Northern Ireland artists will be showcasing at Europe's biggest industry event - The Great Escape.

"Ciaran Lavery, Pleasure Beach, Ex Magician, REWS, and online sensation Bry make up the Northern Ireland show.

"This line-up promises to be one of the strongest international showcases at the Brighton based event.

"Belfast's biggest electronic music festival and conference, AVA Festival, returns for a second year to the Titanic Quarter in June, with a global online live music broadcast on the market leading Boiler Room network to hundreds of thousands of fans around the world."

He said the music industry in Northern Ireland contributes 61.5 million to the local economy per year, and employs more than 3,820 people.

Ciaran Lavery, a songwriter and guitarist, performed earlier this year at the South By South West Festival in Texas.

A torrential and potentially fatal storm was brewing as the festival was in full swing, organisers said.

He was forced to cancel his slot when state troopers arrived at the farm to close it down immediately as the fierce storm was due to hit the festival within 10 minutes. Winds had whipped up to 80 mph (nearly 130 kph).

Shelter was sought in the band's tour bus - which had to be covered in duvets and blankets to prevent huge hailstones from shattering the glass.
Nigel Murphy was found in the yard of his farm after being gored by bull

A farmer gored to death by his own bull has been described as a happy-go-lucky man who treated his cows like family.

Nigel Murray (54) was found in the yard of his Aughnacloy farm on Saturday after being attacked by the bull, which had been brought in from a field.

Police who attended the scene shot the bull after consultation with a vet and members of Mr Murray's family.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSENI) is now investigating the death and the office of the Police Ombudsman has also been notified.

An HSENI spokesman said: "Our thoughts are with the family involved at this difficult time."

Mr Murray was a single man who ran the farm with his brother Wilfred. He was described by his cousin Alison McMullan as a cheerful, happy-go-lucky man with an outgoing personality.

"Farming was his life," she said. "He enjoyed being in the outdoors, out with nature. He enjoyed his work so much, it wasn't a job to him. Nobody knows for sure what happened. He was bringing the cows in and the bull was with the cows, and we can only guess what happened.

Neighbours rallied on Saturday to carry out tasks on the farm such as milking the cows of which Mr Murray was so proud.

"He was very willing to help out any neighbours who were in trouble or need and that was reciprocated over the last few days by the amount of support and help we have had from the community," Ms McMullan said.

"We would like to thank the people of the local community for all their support. As a family we really appreciate it."

Reverend Ian McKee of Aughnacloy Presbyterian Church said Mr Murray lived for his farm and was very proud of his Ayrshire herd. "He spent his time with his Ayrshire cows," he said. "He told me he's named them all. He talked to them - they were his family. He would have gone out and told them all his woes.

"On Saturday night when he died, the gate was just crowded with local farmers waiting to come in and help.

"The cows hadn't been milked when he was killed and they were waiting for HSE to arrive and the police wouldn't let anybody in. When they did, the local people mucked in and helped."

Mr Murray was a committee member at Aughnacloy Presbyterian Church and a member of Ballygawley RBP and Lisgenny Flute Band.

"Everybody is devastated, Rev McKee said. "People talked about him being a good neighbour and friend. There could be as many folk from the Roman Catholic community as the Protestant community at the funeral."

PSNI Inspector Keith Jamieson said: "A man has died following an incident involving a bull in a field in the Aughnacloy area on Saturday, April 23.

"Police attended and after consultation with the vet and members of the family, police shot the bull as it posed a risk. The office of the Police Ombudsman has been informed of the incident."

A spokesman for the Ulster Farmers' Union said: "The UFU regrets all farm deaths and know the impact they have on farm families. Regardless of circumstances, they are a reminder of the risks the industry has committed itself to tackle. Animals are one of the four key risks identified by the Farm Safety Partnership. This underlines why they rank with slurry, falls and machinery as a risk."

Councillor Robert Mulligan described the death as most unfortunate and said his sympathy was with Mr Murray's family.

Mr Murray's funeral will take place at Aughnacloy Presbyterian Church at 2pm today.

Last week it emerged that a woman originally from Londonderry died in England after being attacked by a cow while out on a walk with her family. Marian Clode (61) was on a holiday with her family in Belford, Northumberland on April 3 when she was charged at by a herd of cattle, which included several calves.
Members of Republican Sinn Fein parading from Dublin's Garden of Remembrance to the GPO (General Post Office)

Members of Republican Sinn Fein parading from Dublin's Garden of Remembrance to the GPO (General Post Office)

Members of Republican Sinn Fein parading from Dublin's Garden of Remembrance to the GPO (General Post Office)

Masked men at the Easter Rising parade in west Belfast

The PSNI is examining footage of masked republicans parading openly in west Belfast.

The force launched the probe after images emerged of around 30 people dressed in paramilitary-style outfits with sunglasses and scarves covering their faces.

On their heads were black berets with a five-point star - a symbol commonly associated with the INLA.

The parade was held to commemorate the centenary of the Easter Rising in 1916.

Those in paramilitary garb are believed to have paraded up the Falls Road and onto Milltown Cemetery on the same day that a number of marches to commemorate the uprising were held across Belfast.

The parade was organised by the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), which complained on its Facebook page that the PSNI had warned the party that its march constituted an illegal gathering.

The Parades Commission was notified about the parade, but it is understood that the paramilitary-style uniforms represented a breach of the organisation's code of conduct.

The PSNI said it was pursuing evidence of potential offences or breaches of parading rules.

The IRSP described the masked people as "a Citizen's Army colour party", and said the parade stopped to lower flags at the graves of several INLA and IRA members before moving to the republican socialist plot at Milltown Cemetery.

The event came after a number of incidents involving masked people on parade over the Easter period, including in Ardoyne, Lurgan, Coalisland and Londonderry.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close The National Republican Commemoration Committee held an Easter Rising dedication parade in Coalisland on Easter Sunday amid heavy Police presence. The National Republican Commemoration Committee held an Easter Rising dedication parade in Coalisland on Easter Sunday amid heavy Police presence. The National Republican Commemoration Committee held an Easter Rising dedication parade in Coalisland on Easter Sunday amid heavy Police presence. A masked youth throws stones at police in Lurgan. Presseye A masked youth throws stones at police in Lurgan. Presseye A masked youth throws stones at police in Lurgan. Presseye / Facebook

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Whatsapp The National Republican Commemoration Committee held an Easter Rising dedication parade in Coalisland on Easter Sunday amid heavy Police presence.

A speech given at the Lurgan event contained a threat against the lives of those who serve in the security services. DUP Assembly candidate Nelson McCausland condemned the latest masked parade.

"This was organised by the Republican Socialist Commemoration Committee, but it was not really a commemoration of the 1916 Easter rebellion," he said.

"The presence of masked men in modern paramilitary uniforms was an affirmation of what was probably the deadliest of all the republican terrorist organisations, the INLA."

Members of the Protestant Coalition also questioned why police did not challenge those on the ground.

A spokesman for the PSNI said the force was in the process of reviewing all evidence gathered.

He added that police would pursue "all relevant lines of inquiry relating to any offences or breaches of the Parades Commission determinations."

A number of parades took place across Ireland on Sunday to mark the date of the rising.

The main displays in Belfast took place in the north and west of the city.

A loyalist protest took place at the same time as one of the republican parades, which travelled along Royal Avenue in the city centre.

The INLA is believed to have been responsible for an estimated 120 murders throughout the course of the Troubles.

Among its most high-profile victims was the Conservative MP Airey Neave, a close ally of Margaret Thatcher, in 1979. It declared a ceasefire in 1998.
Henderson Group launched the Heart of our Community campaign in October 2015 with the full backing of Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS) and Dr Michael McBride, Northern Irelands Chief Medical Officer (pictured left with Bronagh Luke and Paddy Doody from Henderson Group). Since then, over 300 stores have fundraised and will have their defibrillator installed in 2016. Over 100 have already been installed so far this year.

More than 100 life-saving defibrillators have been installed outside shops across Northern Ireland thanks to a public fundraising campaign.

In October 2015 Henderson Group which own Spar, EUROSPAR and VIVO launched a campaign with the public to install the equipment, which can shock the heart back to life, outside over 300 stores.

Installation of the Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) began in January and now more than 100 are in place and are fully accessible 24/7.

The first batch of over 20 devices were installed throughout Counties Tyrone, Fermanagh, Londonderry, Antrim, Armagh and Down in January.

Since then, a further 80 were installed in February and March in towns including Killylea, Moy, Artigarvan, Holywood, Greyabbey and Magherafelt

And in cities including Lisburn, Newry, Armagh, Londonderry and Belfast.

The initiative was backed by the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety and Northern Ireland's Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride.

During the three months of fundraising at the end of 2015, stores raised 1,500 for each defibrillator and its special temperature controlled cabinet.

Henderson Group also set up a dedicated website with important procedures to follow in the event of a cardiac arrest and provided training at conferences and staff training days.

Individual stores worked with their local CPR training groups ensuring a majority of store staff are trained in the life-saving technique.

With around 1,400 cardiac arrests occurring each year in the province outside of hospitals, of which fewer than 10% of people will survive, it is vital bystanders perform CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and make use of an AED if readily available.

It has been proven that early CPR and defibrillator shock are vital to a person's chances of surviving a cardiac arrest.

Head of corporate marketing at the Henderson Group Bronagh Luke said: I also cannot thank the public enough for helping us make Northern Ireland safer with these devices, especially the more rural areas where ambulance waiting times can be longer.

Thanks to these efforts, we now have 100 defibrillators in place externally and available for use to the public 24/7. To know that one of these defibrillators could save a life makes a huge difference.

Bronagh added: The defibrillators that have been installed are automatic, so no training is required for use. As soon as one is activated, the user will be talked through the process by the machine accompanied by visual aids whilst the Ambulance Service operator remains on the phone throughout the incident.

The next 100 devices will be installed over the summer, with the remainder of the devices being installed by the end of the year.

What to do:

If a member of the public witnesses somebody taking a cardiac arrest, which means that their heart has stopped beating and they are not breathing, it is essential that they phone 999 immediately and begin CPR compressions, while calling for a member of the public to fetch a defibrillator if one is in the area.
The family of an undercover soldier killed by the IRA have launched a legal challenge against his apparent exclusion from a police investigation into the controversial Army unit he worked for.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland's (PSNI) Legacy Investigations Branch (LIB) is examining the actions of the secretive Military Reaction Force (MRF) amid claims it carried out random and unjustified shootings during the Troubles.

Officers are currently investigating the killings of west Belfast men Patrick McVeigh, 44, and Daniel Rooney, 18, in separate incidents in 1972 and a series of other shootings in Belfast in that year.

Relatives of Sapper Ted Stuart, 20, insist his murder should be brought into the wider investigation and have mounted a court bid against the PSNI.

Mr Stuart, from Strabane, Co Tyrone, was working undercover for the MRF in the republican Twinbrook area of west Belfast in October 1972 posing as a laundry van driver.

He was shot and killed by the IRA when his cover was blown.

On Tuesday, an initial hearing at Belfast High Court to seek a judicial review into the PSNI's approach was adjourned until September, when the substantive arguments will be laid before court.

The investigation into the MRF by the LIB was triggered after a referral by Northern Ireland's Director of Public Prosecutions Barra McGrory.

Kevin Winters, representing the Stuart family, said it was important relatives of British soldiers killed in the conflict were properly acknowledged in legacy investigations.

"There can be no hierarchy of victims and this application is an important marker in the rights of the families of British soldiers - the right to have the deaths of their loved ones investigated and the right to have their employers - in this instance the MoD - held to account for any failure to protect those in its employ," he said.

"The murder of Ted Stuart in circumstances which are contested requires investigation.

"The referral by the DPP to the PSNI regarding the activities of the unit in which Ted Stuart was serving - the MRF - is important and we maintain that Ted Stuart's murder must be part of that investigation."
Francis Rowntree died after he was struck on the head by a rubber bullet while walking through the Divis Flats complex

A soldier who fired a rubber bullet that killed a Northern Ireland schoolboy more than 40 years ago has told an inquest he has no regrets.

The former sergeant major, whose identity is protected, told Belfast Coroner's Court he had no concerns about his conduct that day, insisting he was simply doing his job.

Giving evidence by videolink from an undisclosed location, the man known only as Soldier B said: "I have nothing to be reproachful about."

Eleven-year-old Francis Rowntree died on April 22 1972 - two days after he was struck on the head by a rubber bullet while walking through the Divis Flats complex close to Belfast's Falls Road.

The case is mired in controversy with disputed claims on whether the boy was hit directly or injured by a ricochet, and if the bullet had been doctored to make it potentially cause more harm.

Soldier B, who served with the Royal Anglian Regiment, had 17 years of experience in 1972 and was on his first tour of duty in Northern Ireland, the court was told.

He says he has no memory of the incident involving Francis but raised doubts that he fired the fatal shot.

Asked if he had anything to say to the boy's family, Soldier B added: "There is nothing to say that the round I fired hit their son.

"If it did, for that I am very, very sorry. But there's no proof, to me, that's what happened.

"It was certainly not fired at somebody not rioting. Everybody there was deeply intent on making life deeply uncomfortable."

Fiona Doherty QC, representing the Rowntree family, said the evidence available to the court, including Ministry of Defence (MoD) documents, identified Soldier B as the person who fired the rubber bullet that hit Francis.

During cross-examination by an MoD barrister, Soldier B, who has suffered heart and memory problems for years, said he feels victimised.

"After 44 years I find it almost impossible to remember any incident. I feel as though, for whatever reason, I am being targeted and I don't fully understand why."

In a statement given to Royal Military Police on April 24 1972, Soldier B said he fired two baton rounds -- one of which struck an unidentified person who may have been taken to hospital by ambulance.

He said he had not picked a particular target but fired into a crowd during an escalating riot situation because of fears that petrol or blast bombs could be thrown inside or underneath his armoured Humber Pig vehicle.

Although he could not remember any specific instructions or orders, Soldier B was confident he would have acted in accordance with the Army rules of engagement.

"I do not have any concerns," he said. "I was doing my job as we did all the time."

The court has previously heard how Francis suffered extensive head injuries and never regained consciousness. Civilian witnesses said he was not carrying anything or acting aggressively when he was hit and a report by the now defunct Historical Enquiries Unit also concluded he was an innocent bystander.

According to his statement, Soldier B's company fired 24 baton rounds in the Divis Street area on the day in question.

Warnings were rarely given and it was difficult to distinguish between rioters and onlookers like women and children, it was claimed.

"Virtually everybody you see were the target," said Soldier B.

"The fact we are being pelted by just about every kind of missile, you are not really looking round to see if this person is innocent. I did not see a distinction."

The retired soldier was also unable to say when he became aware a child had died.

He said: "There was talk of a child being injured and the name rings in my mind.

"I am not wanting to be evasive or anything of that nature. In my case this was one incident of many, many, many incidents over a four-month period.

"There were many other concerning incidents I was involved in during that period."

Soldier B rejected suggestions that his statement to the RMP was a "concocted story" designed to conceal what really happened.

"I am not denying I hit somebody," he added. "Quite the reverse. I cannot say who I hit."

He also said he had not encountered anyone doctoring rubber bullets and had never engaged in such a practice.

Outside the court, Francis's older brother Jim Rowntree expressed disappointment that Soldier B had been screened from view.

He added: "He said he feels persecuted but a child died and there has been 44 years of false allegations made against that child."

The hearing was adjourned.
Peter Tatchell called for same-sex marriage to be an election issue

Prominent gay human rights activist Peter Tatchell has called on the next Stormont Assembly to overturn Northern Ireland's ban on same sex marriage.

The Love Equality campaign is lobbying candidates ahead of the May 5 poll.

Same sex marriage has been rejected five times by members of the devolved legislature.

Mr Tatchell said: "Marriage equality is now an election issue."

Last summer about 20,000 campaigners marched through Belfast city centre demanding a change in the law.

Following the Yes vote in last May's referendum on marriage equality in the Irish Republic, Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK or Ireland where civil marriage is denied to same-sex couples.

However, the largest party, the Democratic Unionists, argued that the issue did not command sufficient cross-community support.

Although the majority of Assembly members voted in favour of introducing gay marriage when it was debated for a fifth time last year, the proposal fell because unionists who opposed the move deployed a controversial voting mechanism to veto it.

The DUP has in the past been heavily influenced by socially conservative evangelical Christians including its founder the Rev Ian Paisley but has been under the leadership of modernisers for some years.

Mr Tatchell added: "Successive DUP health ministers have maintained a lifetime ban on gay and bisexual blood donors; acting against the medical advice that led to the easing of the ban in England, Wales and Scotland.

"For many years the DUP opposed the right of same-sex couples to adopt children, the introduction of civil partnerships and the holding of LGBT Pride parades in cities like Belfast.

"It is currently the main obstacle to the legalisation of same-sex marriage."

John O'Doherty, head of the Rainbow Project gay rights organisation in Belfast, said since the Yes vote in the Republic marriage equality has become a major political issue for many voters - straight and gay - in Northern Ireland.

"Last summer, 20,000 people marched through Belfast demanding marriage equality - one of the biggest political demonstrations Northern Ireland has seen in years. Those people haven't gone away.

"On May 5th they will be looking for candidates who promise to deliver equality for everyone. Marriage equality is now an election issue."
Concerned parents at the troubled De La Salle College have been informed that a second associate principal, John Wilkinson - former principal of Dromore High School - has now been appointed.

He will work along with Imelda Jordan and to provide cover while she is on a period of leave.

Weekend reports have also confirmed the absence of the principal Claire White

The parents have announced a temporary halt to their protests, but they warned they were keeping a close eye on the situation.

They have been protesting outside the school for a number of months over concerns of a catastrophic breakdown in relations between staff and senior management.

Last week the parents won a minor victory when Education Minister John O'Dowd granted their wish for an independent review of the situation at the school.

The minister was previously reluctant to order the probe, but changed his mind last week and explained this was because of new information he had received.

The investigation will look at staff relationships, the role of senior leadership, governance of the school and the impact of the ongoing disputes at the school on pupils. It is due to report back in the summer.

The parents warned that this would only be a temporary measure and that they planned to monitor the situation.

"We will be watching very closely all that is going on and will undoubtedly respond promptly to any disruption to our children's education in the school," they said.

"We welcome any parent to contact us should they have any concerns."

The concerned parents' committee said they would continue to hold regular meetings as they wait for the outcome of the investigation.

"We will continue to meet with those in authority," they added. "We hope that these next few weeks will be a calm time for all those who are preparing to sit exams.

The Irish National Teachers' Organisation has said it will "carefully study" the minister's announcement before deciding on engagement with the inquiry.
Leona Reid, wrote of her experiences even when seriously ill

Friends have paid tribute to a "beautiful, intelligent, kind and fun" Londonderry woman who has died from cancer aged 22.

Leona Reid, from Drumahoe, passed away on April 15 after tragically losing her battle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The student was diagnosed last summer, just before she was due to start her final year of a degree in law and Spanish at the University of Dundee.

Before her illness, Leona was heavily involved in student life and worked as the fashion editor and later deputy editor for the university's student magazine, the Magdalen.

The former Foyle and Londonderry College pupil kept writing throughout her illness, publishing her thoughts and feelings on a blog called Leona Elizabeth: A girl with a passion for life and all things beautiful.

She took some time away from university to receive treatment for her cancer, but she posted on her website that she was determined to return to her studies, and thanked her parents, Janice and Stephen, brother Craig and boyfriend Jordon for their invaluable support.

"I've been extremely blessed throughout my life with friends and family, they are the most important thing to me," the brave student wrote.

"I have an amazing boyfriend Jordon who has been crazy supportive throughout everything and basically I just count myself very lucky."

In January, even when she was seriously ill, Leona was determined to remain positive, posting a photo from her hospital bed with the words: "All you need is a wig and a touch of lipstick."

In her final blog post, at the end of February, she described her joy at being allowed to leave hospital to return to her Drumahoe home.

"Day to day life isn't always the easiest, but I have to attest to the truth in the saying 'there's no place like home'," Leona wrote.

"Of course I am beyond grateful for all the help and support I received in the ward, but being at home has done wonders for my stress levels.

"In hospital I would find myself descending into panic mode for no apparent reason - it would just come out of nowhere.

"Obviously I still have my moments where I feel vulnerable and helpless, but they are soon overridden by the sense of safety I have being in my own environment and most importantly, being with my family."

In a funeral announcement, Leona's family said she would be "missed more than words can say".

Following the student's death, friends paid tribute on social media and shared their memories of her life.

Lucy Ellen McGonigle posted: "Such a beautiful, intelligent, kind and fun young lady. She was an absolute credit to the love from both her Mum and Dad. May she rest in peace now that her suffering is over."

Shirley McCabe added: "My heartfelt sympathy to Leona's family and friends. She was a very brave and admirable young lady."

Dominic Younger, Dundee University Students Association vice-president of communications and campaigns, said: "As her own blog stated, Leona was a girl with a passion for life and all things beautiful.

"She was a truly gifted student, and through her time as fashion editor and then deputy editor of our sister publication, the Magdalen, she brought endless fun and wit to her peers.

"She was heartbreakingly taken before her time.

"Leona will be terribly missed by all who had the pleasure to know her.

"She was an incredible soul and a wise sage when it came to writing. She will forever be a source of inspiration."

Leona's friends and family came together to remember her life at a service at Ebrington Presbyterian Church last week after a cremation ceremony at Roselawn cemetery.

Leonas blog: The chemo may or may not work, but we live in hope

Today is the day Ive decided to take a little piece of the world wide web and make it my own...

I am currently typing from the sublime comfort of the hospital bed where Ive been residing for quite some time now.

Long story short, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in September and after countless complications and difficult decisions, I have been switched to a different type of chemotherapy. It may or may not work but we continue to live in hope.

You may think now an odd time to begin such an endeavour as a blog, but theres no time like the present and this is something Ive wanted to do for quite a while now.
A Syrian refugee, who lives in Lebanon, cries while waiting for some of her relatives to board a bus to Beirut International Airport (AP)

Refugees burned by explosions are among 57 Syrians arriving in Northern Ireland on Thursday.

Others are disabled or in a wheelchair. Some could die if left to languish in Turkish camps near the border with their war-torn homeland, officials said.

They include 20 children.

Some were plumbers or bakers in their native home - forced by conflict to flee to new houses in Londonderry with barely a word of English.

Denise Wright, a coordinator for the Refugee and Asylum Forum, said: "Most in the camps don't want to go to Europe. They want to go back to their homes again.

"This is a last resort for many. They are deciding they may never see other members of their family again.

"If they stay in camps they may not make it."

This is the second group accepted in Northern Ireland as part of the UK-wide Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme to resettle around 20,000 by 2020.

The last intake was accepted from a camp near Beirut in Lebanon on December 15, before the snows of winter in Belfast.

One said: "When it snows in camps, children start to die."

A lot of the men had been abducted for ransom by combatants and beaten while being held; one victim did not know who kidnapped him.

The most needy have been targeted for the resettlement programme, women and children, torture victims, those with significant medical needs.

Thursday's new arrivals are a mixture of Arabs, Kurds and Circassians, all Muslim.

The youngest is two and the oldest aged mid-50s. Several have university-level education.

They include 14 family groups and 20 children, three quarters school-aged.

All bar one family will be housed by the Housing Executive in Derry - one will go to the Greater Belfast area because a wheelchair user needs accessible accommodation.

On Thursday, they will be taken to a welcome centre in Belfast where they will be given legal advice and registered with the social security system.

They will spend five days there in an effort to introduce them to an alien environment gradually.

In December some were driving down the motorway from the airport towards Belfast before they realised they were in Northern Ireland rather than London.

This time more information has been sent to the group before their arrival.

All families will be permitted to remain in the UK for five years with the opportunity of attaining citizenship. They have passed all Home Office screening tests for criminality.

The Home Office has provided at least 11,120 per refugee to cover the first year's cost.

Members of the group are not allowed to stray across the border into the Republic. They will be eligible to claim benefits but will have to make the same efforts to find work as everybody else.

None in the last intake have yet found work. The intention is to match them with jobs fitting their skill levels rather than simply taking low paid service industry posts.

They can apply for dependent family members to join them in Northern Ireland but have not yet done so.
Gardai at the scene of a fatal shooting at the Sunset House pub in north Dublin last night

A Co Tyrone man has been shot dead at the Sunset House pub near Croke Park in Dublin's north inner city.

The incident happened at around 9.35pm on Monday in the Ballybough area. The victim is believed to be a 34-year-old who is originally from Co Tyrone but was living in Ballymun, North Dublin.

A silver coloured Audi A6 car, partial registration 04C, was later found burnt out on Walsh Road in Drumcondra.

Prior to this car being recovered it is believed that three men left Walsh Road in the direction of Home Farm Road in another silver coloured saloon car.

The victim was reportedly known to the Gardai for involvement with dissident republicanism. He had been before the courts on IRA membership charges in the past and was a known associate of senior members of the Hutch crime gang.

Dublin councillor Nial Ring said the victim was "a nice guy doing his job" and the shooting has left the community "devastated".

"Apparently, a guy came into the bar and there were three shots. Instantly, people were in shock. There was a special needs chap in the place having a pint and he's in a terrible state. The shock of it.

"And a lot of young mothers were there and there was a big match on the television and it was nearly over when this happened.

"It's unacceptable what has happened in this area tonight. I was borned and reared within 100 yards of this spot and it's appalling what happened.

"Obviously, we're praying for him. He was a nice guy," he said.

"He was from Tyrone and he lived locally. He was a barman in The Sunset House and he took over the pub fairly recently.

"He had been attracting new customers and was doing up the place. Yesterday, we had a huge celebration around here for the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. The pub was well done up in Irish and celebratory colours as was the whole area.

"He would have been part of that. He lived locally and had a girlfriend living locally. We're just devastated," he said.

Temporary CCTV installed just days ago may have captured the shooters' escape, according to a TD who lives nearby.

North Dublin TD Noel Rock (FG): "Another gangland shooting goes to show that we urgently need new recruitment and we urgently need the temporary overtime measures extended.

"The car, which was dumped at the foot of Walsh Road, yards from my home, is in an area which is currently covered by temporary CCTV which was erected in recent days by coincidence. I trust Gardai will seek this footage as soon as possible from Dublin City Council and use every avenue possible.

"In the interim, I strongly urge Minister Fitzgerald to extend the overtime measures as it's clear that - with this being yet another incident ending in a normally quiet part of the northside, that we badly need further resources right now"

Local Labour TD Aodhan O Riordain appealed for calm.

"Seriously concerned at reports of another shooting. Calm needed now at all costs," he said.

Local councillor Gary Gannon (Social Democrats) explained that the victim was known only by his first name in the area and people were unaware of his past.

"He was known from the pub. This bar is a couple of minutes from my house so I would see him fairly regularly.

"He was always very friendly and affable."

Mr Gannon said the "political elite" in the country were not taking the gangland crisis seriously.

"The Acting Minister for Justice is too busy talking about local Cumann meetings to get up and do something about this."

Investigating Gardai are appealing for witnesses, particularly those people who were in the Sunset House public house on Monday evening from 9pm onwards or who may have observed a silver coloured Audi A6 car, partial registration 04C prior to this incident or its discovery on Walsh Road, to contact them at Mountjoy Garda Station on 01 6668600, The Garda Confidential Line, 1800 666111 or any Garda Station.
An apprentice jockey who admitted falsely imprisoning a young woman whom he sexually assaulted had Googled 'girl', 'tape' and 'gagged' on the day before the offences occurred, a court has heard.

Maurice Fitzgerald (22), of Abbeyview, Buttevant, Co Cork, admitted possessing weapons - scissors and duct tape - and was on bail for the alleged sexual assault of another woman when the offences occurred on September 20, 2015.

He also pleaded guilty to assaulting the woman, causing her harm, at Dan Spring Road in Tralee, Co Kerry on that date.

The sexual assault charge related to an incident that occurred at an address at Cherry Court, Ashleigh Downs, Tralee, where he had enticed her on the pretext that there was a party.

Tralee Circuit Criminal Court heard Fitzgerald made "startling admissions" to gardai when interviewed that he was "into bondage" and was "sick in the head".

He told gardai he had got angry and was lying in bed fighting the urge to hurt the woman before he followed her after she had left his house.

In her victim-impact statement, the woman, who was 18 at the time, said: "I honestly believed I was going to die."

The court heard that she had become separated from her friends on a night out when she met the accused, who invited her back to his house.

The woman went to bed fully clothed but Fitzgerald got into the bed beside her and made sexual advances towards her.

She got up to leave but he assured her that it wouldn't happen again. However, he became more forceful and pulled down her clothing.

The woman left the house and had walked over a mile when she became aware of someone following her. The man caught her in a headlock and knocked her to the ground.

He put his hands around her neck and told her to put her hands in front of her, telling her that if she didn't: "I will kill you f***ing now."

Sgt Gary Carroll said the outcome would have been far more serious except for the intervention of two men who came on the scene. Sentencing was adjourned to July.

Irish Independent
Prime Minister David Cameron visited the Tata Steel works at Port Talbot in south Wales to assure workers, unions and bosses of the Government's commitment to support the future of steel-making at the under-threat plant.

Unions welcomed the recent offer of state support for potential buyers of Tata Steel's loss-making UK assets, but stressed that any action must cover plants across the whole country and not just in Wales.

The general secretary of the Community union, Roy Rickhuss, said the Prime Minister had "looked proud steelworkers in the eye and promised to do all he could to protect their jobs", and said his union would "hold him at his word".

The PM's surprise visit came as a director at the plant seeks to put together a management buyout of the firm's UK business, which was put up for sale last month.

Mr Cameron was joined by Wales Secretary Alun Cairns for a tour of the plant, which employs more than 4,000 workers. But Business Secretary Sajid Javid - who earlier this month flew to India for talks with Tata's Mumbai-based bosses - was not present.

Downing Street said that the PM and Welsh Secretary spoke to workers in the Port Talbot blast furnace control room and finishing lines before holding round-table discussions with unions and managers, including the chief executive of Tata Steel Europe Hans Fischer.

Mr Cameron's official spokeswoman said that talks focused on "the action the Government has taken to support the steel industry", adding: "The Prime Minister underlined our commitment to working with Tata to support the future of steel-making in Port Talbot and emphasised the need for the Tata sales process to cover the whole business and for there to be sufficient time for that process to run.

"The Prime Minister has been clear throughout that the Government should do all it can to support the sustainable future of steel-making in Port Talbot."

The PM's spokeswoman said it was his first visit to the plant, though other ministers, including Mr Javid, had visited on a number of occasions and Mr Cameron had been involved in top-level discussions ever since Tata announced its decision to sell.

Mr Rickhuss, who was joined by union representatives from Port Talbot and Llanwern, said: "David Cameron has now joined the growing list of senior politicians who have visited Port Talbot, but today we made it clear that steelworks throughout England and Wales are also under threat. This is a national industrial crisis and the Prime Minister needs to act nationally, and indeed globally, to secure a sustainable future for the UK steel industry.

"Steelworkers will now be watching and waiting for the Prime Minister to match his words with real action. We need immediate action to save the industry but also a long-term plan to give UK steel-making a fair chance to compete.

"The Prime Minister has now seen first-hand the great blast furnaces of Port Talbot, both of which will be vital to any future success of the business. He looked proud steelworkers in the eye and promised to do all he could to protect their jobs. Our Save Our Steel campaign will continue as we hold him to his word."

Dai Bowyer, steelworker and Unite executive committee member, described the meeting as "constructive" and said unions had urged the PM to ensure that UK steelworkers have "a level playing field on which to compete with our global competitors", including by tackling energy costs and the dumping of cheap Chinese steel, as well as help with high business rates.

"During the conversation we welcomed the recent commitment by his Government to take a public stake in the UK steel industry, stressing the importance of steel to Britain's manufacturing base," said Mr Bowyer. "Clearly impressed by what he saw, we trust that David Cameron will keep his word in doing everything he can to support steel in Port Talbot and the rest of the UK."

Shadow business secretary Angela Eagle said: "Workers at Port Talbot and across the UK steel industry will be relieved that the Tory Government at long last seem to be treating this crisis with the seriousness it deserves. Labour has been warning of the escalating crisis facing steel for months, raising the issue over 200 times in Parliament.

"After this visit I hope the Prime Minister will see the need to preserve the blast furnaces at Port Talbot and appreciate the need for Tata to sell these assets as an integrated business. The Government now needs to roll up its sleeves and be proactive in these crucial few weeks to ensure a viable future for the UK steel industry.

"Steel is a foundation industry. The life chances of entire communities depend on these jobs. And it is a cyclical industry; if the Government takes decisive action, steel can have a bright future. Labour has a four point plan to save our steel; we will continue pushing for action on energy, on business rates, on procurement, and - most importantly - on trade protection from Chinese dumping."
Labour voters should use the European Union (EU) referendum to give the Government a "punch in the nose", Frank Field said as senior Opposition figures clashed over the referendum.

The ex-minister, one of a handful of Labour MPs backing the "Leave" camp, warned the party leadership's pro-EU stance was pushing supporters who wanted to put "our people" first into the hands of Ukip.

He also appealed to all Labour voters to use the June 23 vote to topple David Cameron from power, arguing the Prime Minister and other senior figures could not remain in charge if they lost.

"Labour voters will know that voting to leave will also result in a change of the leadership of the Government. The two are actually linked," he said after a speech in London.

"If you want to have a pop at the Government, you don't have to wait for the general election.

"We increasingly see that the Remain campaign is the Government's campaign and I think that would be another reason why good old Labour voters will come out and give them a nice friendly punch on the nose."

He criticised Jeremy Corbyn's public "conversion" after years of Euroscepticism and dismissed as laughable Alan Johnson's claim a Yes vote on June 23 could be more important than the election of the 1945 Attlee government.

Mr Johnson - who is leading the Labour Remain campaign - issued a rallying call to unions to support EU membership as the best way of protecting workers' rights.

In a speech to the Usdaw union conference, he said it would "keep the swivel-eyed alliance of the right of the Tory Party and Ukip off our rights at work".

Mr Field responded: "We now have what is surely the most attractive figure on the Remain side trying to tickle us into submission by proposing something that if you asked pollsters to look at it ... the laughter would be so great."

He said he believed Mr Corbyn - who had a long record of Euroscepticism - had come out for Remain because he wrongly feared a challenge to his leadership if he declared for Leave.

"Jeremy's leadership is totally safe because we have no credible alternative," he said.

The position meant large swathes of Labour voters were being made to feel it was not "respectable" to want to leave the EU over concerns about immigration - meaning they would be lost to Ukip.

It was vital to convince voters who had been "on the receiving end" of the impact of increased migration from eastern Europe that they go to the polls voting "Leave" as Labour voters, not as renegades to Ukip", he said.

"Do politicians - enough of us - clearly represent views that see that our people should be first in the queue, and not others? It is around that issue that many people will actually vote," he asked.

"Unless the minority in the Labour Party of MPs who support the leave campaign are able to convince Labour voters that their views are a totally legitimate set of views to hold and - while represented by few in the Parliamentary Labour Party at the moment - it is totally respectable not only to express those votes but to deliver those votes on referendum day, we will deliver to Ukip the next tranche of Labour voters to such an extent that come 2020 our base of support in the electorate will not be strong enough for us credibly to make an appeal for power."

Mr Johnson - and shadow business secretary Angela Eagle - visited BAE Systems in Samlesbury, Lancashire, to highlight industry support for remaining in the EU.

BAE chair Sir Roger Carr was among business leaders who signed a letter in support of remaining in the EU in February.

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: "What's at stake with this referendum is huge. It is the biggest vote we have faced and will determine this country's future.

"So when leading manufacturers are on the side of remaining as a full and engaged member of the EU, we listen.

Mr Johnson told the conference the party was "united" behind the Remain cause, with unions representing four million workers now signed up.

Post-war Labour politicians " rose to the challenge of their age and they secured a peace in Europe that has lasted for over 70 years", he said.

"It's our job to ensure that the great post-war vision of our predecessors is not diminished and undermined by those whose vision of Britain is as an offshore, regulation free, anything goes economy engaged in a race to the bottom.

"I believe that the referendum on June 23 is every bit as important as that election in July 1945. Perhaps more so.

"It is a vote about whether Britain remains in or leaves the EU, and there will be immense consequences for everyone here, and for every family in the land.

"But it's about more than that. For me, it's about what kind of country we are, what kind of society we want to be."

The vision of pro-Brexit campaigners such as Michael Gove and Boris Johnson was of " a small state with few, if any, workplace rights" - removing protections secured via Brussels.

"They know the EU protects workers' interests, and it's one of the principal reasons why they want to leave".

MPs have agreed to formally discuss a petition, backed by more than 200,000 signatures, that was launched in protest over the Government's decision to spend more than 9 million on sending a pro-EU leaflet to all UK households.

A debate will be held in Westminster Hall on May 9, the Petitions Committee announced.
Cape Verde: Eleven people have been shot dead at the Monte Tchota military barracks. Image: Google

Eleven people have been shot dead at the Monte Tchota military barracks on Santiago island, Cape Verde.

Victims reportedly include eight soldiers, a local civilian and two Spanish citizens.

The barracks, off West Africa, house soldiers protecting a communications hub.

The government placed security forces on red alert at the international airport in Praia, the capital, and at the island's ports after the apparent attack, the online service of Expresso das Ilhas said.

A policeman came across the bodies around midday, Cape Verde Television said. It said police later found an abandoned car containing eight Kalashnikovs and ammunition.

Authorities say they believe a disgruntled missing soldier may have been behind the killings.

A government statement said the deaths were not an attempted coup or connected to the drugs trade.

The Cape Verde archipelago, some 370 miles off Senegal, is a former Portuguese colony made up of 10 islands. Around 500,000 people live there.

The country has recently been fighting international drug rings attempting to smuggle cocaine into the country.

Last week police seized 280kg of cocaine from a yacht, and officials have linked two recent armed attacks against public figures to that battle.

A new government took office last Friday following an election in March. It has promised a zero tolerance approach to crime.

Authorities in Cape Verde, which is classified as a developing nation, have received praise and financial aid from international bodies for their commitment to democracy and economic development.
A cruise ship operated by Disney picked up the wanted men

A Walt Disney cruise ship has rescued three men off the coast of Cuba who were wanted in the US.

The Disney Fantasy cruise ship found the fugitives clinging to a capsized boat last Thursday, US Marshal Amos Rojas Jr said.

In a press release, he said all three were wanted in New Orleans for violating their supervised release on federal credit card fraud charges.

Twenty-six-year-old Luis Rivera-Garcia, 23-year-old Juliet Estrada-Perez and 23-year-old Enrique Gonzalez-Torres were turned over to authorities in Florida.

The fugitives were Cuban nationals who were from the US. Marshal Rojas says authorities believe the three may have been fleeing to Cuba to avoid prosecution.

They have been charged with violation of supervised release. It is unclear if they have lawyers.
Monday's planned demonstrations would be the second wave of protests this month

Egyptian riot police have stifled plans for mass demonstrations against President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's rule.

Police used tear gas to disperse flash protests by hundreds in what turned into a day of cat-and-mouse games across parts of Cairo.

Police took over Cairo locations designated by organisers as gathering points, checking IDs and turning potential protesters away under the threat of arrest.

At least 100 protesters had been arrested by nightfall, mostly in the Dokki district in Cairo's twin city of Giza, according to activists and rights lawyers.

A total of 11 journalists were arrested during the course of the day and all but one were released hours later, according to reports.

"We have been running back and forth. Every time we gather in one place, they attack us," said one female protester.

"The minute we started gathering they attacked us and we fled," said another protester from the impoverished and densely populated Cairo district of Nahya.

Determined to prevent the protests, police took up positions in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the 2011 uprising, and deployed on the city's ring road and at a suburban square where hundreds of Islamist protesters were killed when security forces broke up their sit-in in August 2013.

The sheer number of policemen on the streets and fear of arrest prevented protesters from gathering, often forcing them to trickle out from designated gathering points to assemble elsewhere.

The arrests followed the detention in recent days of scores of activists in pre-dawn raids as authorities sought to derail plans for the demonstrations. Rights groups say as many as 100 have been arrested since late last week, with some picked up by police just hours before the protests were due to start.

The most serious violence took place at a residential square in Dokki, where some 500 protesters led by prominent activists gathered. Masked policemen in armoured vehicles and wearing riot gear arrived 10 minutes later and fired tear gas.

Elsewhere in Dokki, dozens of riot and special forces policemen laid siege to the headquarters of the Karama, or Dignity, party founded by opposition leader Hamdeen Sabahi, the only candidate who ran against Mr el-Sissi in the 2014 presidential election and who filed a lawsuit against Mr el-Sissi for surrendering the islands.

"We denounce the violations of our constitutional rights of peaceful assembly. We are holding a sit-in here until they withdraw, and we demand the release of all those who were captured today and in previous days," senior party member Masoum Marzouk told the Associated Press.

"If they raid these offices it would be a big mistake, but they are capable of anything these days. We are a city under occupation by the army and police."

The central issue of the protests was Egypt's recent decision to surrender to Saudi Arabia control of two strategic Red Sea islands in a surprise deal. Egypt says the islands of Tiran and Sanafir at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba off the coast of Sinai belong to Saudi Arabia, which placed them under Cairo's protection in 1950 because it feared Israel might attack them.

The announcement came during a visit to Egypt this month by the Saudi monarch, King Salman, as the kingdom announced a multi-billion-dollar package of aid and investment to Egypt, fueling charges that the islands were sold off.

Already, the issue of the islands has sparked the largest protests since Mr el-Sissi assumed power in June 2014, when on April 15 some 2,000 protesters gathered in Cairo to demonstrate against el-Sissi for giving up the islands, calling on him to step down.

Mr el-Sissi has dismissed the controversy and insists Egypt has not surrendered an "inch" of its territory.
Al Qaida's affiliate in Yemen is viewed by the US as the group's most dangerous off-shoot

Forces loyal to Yemen's internationally recognised government have retaken the coastal city of Mukalla, driving out al Qaida militants a year after they captured it, security officials said.

The Yemeni forces entered the city late on Monday, following days of heavy air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition fighting on the side of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi's government.

The air strikes targeted al Qaida positions in and outside Mukalla, the officials said.

Al Qaida's local branch captured Mukalla last year amid the chaos caused by Yemen's civil war, which pits forces loyal to Mr Hadi's government against Shiite rebels known as Houthis and their allies.

The offensive to retake the city started on Saturday, the latest operation against al Qaida in southern Yemen.

Security officials and witnesses said earlier that many of al Qaida's fighters in Mukalla left the city to escape the heavy Saudi-led coalition air strikes and shelling by government forces.

Troops loyal to Mr Hadi also advanced over the weekend in the town of Koud in southern Abyan province, according to the province's governor, killing 25 militants from the group in heavy clashes.

The coalition has also carried out air strikes against al Qaida positions in the area.

The pro-Hadi troops had been preparing for the offensive for months with the coalition's support.

Heavy fighting is continuing with al Qaida militants in Abyan, near the cities of Zinjibar and Jaar.

Al Qaida's affiliate in Yemen, viewed by the US as the group's most dangerous offshoot, has exploited the conflict between the Houthis and the government forces to expand its footprint, mostly across southern Yemen.
Although there is no record of Him having gone missing, apparently God has been found by Greysteel murderer Torrens Knight, who is - as we say in these parts - "born again". The man whose hate-contorted face became an abiding image of sectarian bile says that he regrets being part of a UFF gang that murdered 12 people in cold blood in 1993: eight men and women at the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel and four men in Castlerock. He now knows that this was wrong.

While we can't dismiss the possibility that Knight has indeed repented of his crimes or that the deity may be inclined to extend His forgiveness (if you believe in Him), one can't help but say: "So what, Torrens?"

It's a bit late to discover that ending the life of an 81-year-old man in a hail of bullets is "wrong". The vast majority of us knew - even at the height of the Troubles - that killing people was "wrong".

Many of us will give a weary shrug and say that Knight is just a murderer forgiving himself - as is their wont. After all, where is the desire for restitution? Knight took his freedom under the Good Friday Agreement, serving only seven years for murdering 12 people. Why isn't he demanding to be properly punished and to be put back in jail? Why doesn't he face the relatives of those he killed to beg for their forgiveness? His testimony, uploaded to the website of Set Free Prisons Bangor, seems very much about how hard life has been for Knight, of his own wrong turnings, with scant mention of those whom he hurt most deeply. According to reports in Sunday Life, he doesn't talk about how his sleep is tormented by nightmare flashes of what took place in the Rising Sun bar. There is no soul-searching about what he might say to those whose lives he helped snuff out should he meet them in Heaven. The faces of the dead don't haunt him.

Still, at least Knight publicly has acknowledged his wrongdoings. And we should do well to remember that the UDA and UFF aren't the only paramilitary groupings in our midst prone to giving themselves, by hook or by crook, a bye-ball. On the contrary, we have a cottage industry of people who have committed the vilest of deeds seeking to explain themselves. Some reach for theology. Others reach for history - or a simpleton's view of social determinism.

But through it all killers like Knight still find ways to inveigle themselves into our public awareness. They seek not to be victimised, stigmatised, stereotyped or caricatured, but rather understood. And through it all the killers still occupy centre stage, once more strolling into our world and spraying us with their dramatic view of themselves.

We are all familiar with the poly-syllabic mumblings and fumblings of IRA killers such as Brighton bomber Patrick Magee, with their spiel about how things having to be "viewed in context". They are not "sorry" about the things they did, as individuals, but they do "regret" the social and political pressures that drove them to do those things. It is the mood music of sorrow without the actual, you know, sorrow.

The killings at Greysteel were part of a particularly vicious cycle of murder and mayhem following the Shankill Road bombing. So what of Shankill bomber Sean Kelly, also happily walking the streets due to early release? He turns up at the unveiling of a plaque to honour fellow bomber Thomas Begley, who died in the blast - and he's sorry too, in his case for ending the lives of nine people, including two children. Speaking after his release in 2000 Kelly said: "The fact innocent people died is something I will have to live with for the rest of my life. While we did go out to kill the leadership of the UDA, we never intended for innocent people to die. But it honestly was an accident and if I could do anything to change what happened, believe me I would do it." Sixteen years later he hasn't progressed this. No cross-community work. No atonement through good deeds. No visible sign of a man wracked by guilt.

Let's be blunt. We're used to this tone - the self-pitying whinge (accepts that some will hate him), the apparent cod-heroic acceptance of hard facts which turns out to be nothing but self-serving gibberish. God. History. Context. Culture. Accident. All convenient soaps that wash whiter than white.

And why wouldn't they reach for the easy excuse? Our polity makes it very easy for them. We are in the middle of an election and what have we heard? Keep the other ones out... abortion... keep the other ones out... same-sex marriage... keep the other ones out.

One word you won't hear is "victims". They are the wound that dare not speak their name. Indeed, we almost make it incumbent upon them to stifle their screams of pain in case they rock the boat. What happened to their stories, their views? Why doesn't there seem to be the political will to recognise their trauma? Where is the recognition of 40 years of innocent suffering in our culture? Where is the publicly subsidised memorial at Belfast City Hall, or for that matter Stormont? The victims I know, such as Ann Travers, epitomise the sort of grace that Knight will never have.

No, it seems that the only people who are allowed to testify - either theologically or politically - are the killers who terrorised us for a generation. And the only acts of public commemoration will be murals celebrating the "patriotism" and bravery of our self-appointed heroes.

I don't know if Knight's repentance is genuine. But who actually cares? What I do know is that most people are tired of hearing the excuses and equivocations on the lips of men and women who have done terrible things. Perhaps we will hear yet more as the evil they have done weighs more heavily on their consciences - and they get jittery about what lies beyond this world. I am not alone in feeling little sympathy for their psycho-dramas.

But it is remarkable that not one out of all the perpetrators offers themselves up for appropriate retribution. They all make off with the good fortune of their community notoriety on the one hand and their freedom to live on the other.

And then there are those anonymous perpetrators of unsolved atrocities. How refreshing it would be if the many hundreds of killers who were never brought to justice at all were suddenly to step forward and stake a claim to their murder!

Then we all might take regret and sorrow and understanding and context much more seriously.

Gail Walker is CIPR Columnist of the Year. Follow her @GWalker9
Mother Teresa of Calcutta with local children during a visit to the cross-community Corrymeela Centre in Ballycastle in 1981

A chapter in the life of the woman about to be canonised a saint by the Vatican and long since lost in the annals of the Troubles finds Mother Teresa of Calcutta living and working in Ballymurphy in west Belfast back in 1971.

With the help of local people, she and four of her fellow Sisters of Charity set up a small mission at 123 Springhill Avenue. But, as quiet as her coming was to Northern Ireland, Mother Teresa's departure some 18 months later was equally so.

Perhaps because, back then, she had not quite achieved the notoriety that surrounds her today. But, 40-odd years on, her sudden exit from Northern Ireland is the subject of debate among those still around who remember the diminutive nun working amid the poverty and violence that marked much of Ulster in the early-1970s.

Mother Teresa had been invited to Ireland by Fr Des Wilson, who felt "something needed to be done" to help the people of west Belfast.

However, it is believed her arrival did not go down well with the late Canon Murphy and that the Catholic Church eventually forced her to leave, apparently without even saying goodbye to those she had worked among during her tenure.

If true - though Fr Wilson and fellow cleric Fr Edward Magee have always strongly contested this - it is ironic, given the Catholic Church may be about to bestow a sainthood on the woman born Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Macedonia in August 1910 and who died in 1997.

Some might wonder why her call to sainthood has taken nearly 20 years - she was beatified (the prerequisite to sainthood) by Pope John Paul II in 2003 - for, after all, most Catholics have grown up with tales of her fight against poverty in India and her saintly demeanour of "goodness" and "humility".

It may well be the reason is that the Catholic Church thinks in centuries, not in years; the argument being that it is good for Rome to test the enthusiasm of the day, to wait awhile, to discern whether one seen as a saint today will stand the test of time.

One of her strongest advocates, Archbishop Henry D'Souza of Calcutta, says Mother Teresa's tomb "remains a shrine where people are praying and from which many are receiving grace and strength". But then even he said recently: "The Church must be sure that someone who is declared to be a saint is truly such."

The formal investigation, which began back in 2001, has scrutinised and documented details of Mother Teresa's life, elements of which may have gone unnoticed to the general Catholic congregation.

D'Souza, though, a longtime friend of Mother Teresa's, expressed little doubt that "God would provide the miracles" to prove her cause.

"Teresa's single-mindedness, her simplicity and consistency captured the world's imagination," he said. "We computer-dependent citizens of the 20th century long for simplicity; Mother Teresa of Calcutta lived it."

Increasingly, however, since the Vatican investigation began the woman-who-would-be-saint has garnered more detractors - not least the woman at the centre of one of her acclaimed miracles, such being one of the "qualifications" for sainthood. Monica Besra became an overnight celebrity in September 1998 when she reported that she had been cured of a tumour after praying to the by-then-dead Mother Teresa while pressing a medallion bearing the nun's image to her side.

The "miracle" was claimed as Mother Teresa's first posthumous act of healing and was cited at the ceremony in October 2003 in which the nun was beatified.

But Besra now says that she has since been abandoned by the nuns who escorted her to Rome in 2003 as living proof of their Mother Superior's healing powers.

Squatting on the floor of her thatched and mud house in the village of Dangram, 460 miles north east of Calcutta, she told reporters: "They made of lot of promises to me and assured me of financial help for my livelihood and my children's education. After that they forgot me. I have been living in penury since.

"My husband has been gravely ill. My children stopped going to school as I had no money. I have had to work in the fields to feed my husband and five children."

At Mother House, the global headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity that now has more than 750 homes for the destitute around the world, news of Besra's complaints was naturally greeted with concern. Her claim was being "looked at", a statement indicated.

Meanwhile, academics at the University of Montreal suggest things are not as they seem.

After analysing a "vast amount of papers" about the Macedonian nun, Serge Larivee and Genevieve Chenard concluded that Teresa was "anything but a saint", with "her rather dubious way of caring for the sick, her questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her overly dogmatic views regarding, in particular, divorce, contraception and abortion."

Of the latter, she said: "If we can accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?"

They are far from the first to criticise the saint-in-waiting's works.

The late, respected academic, historian and commentator Christopher Hitchens published The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory And Practice in 1995, two years before her death, and to say he held negative views about his subject is an understatement. Hitchens wrote: "She was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious 'Papa Doc' Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating, of the American giant mortgage company Lincoln Savings and Loan (prevalent in the Eighties US Savings and Loans scandal).

"Where did that money - and all the other donations - go?

"The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as rundown when she died as it always had been - she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself - and her order always refused to publish any audit.

"But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than 100 countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?"

Hitchens died in 2011 convinced the nun was more sinner than saint.

There are other, well-documented remarks attributed to her, such as her views on the poor she was living among. She said: "There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ's Passion. The world gains much from their suffering." Yet, when she required palliative care Mother Teresa received it in a modern American hospital.

The renowned Indian-born physician Aroup Chatterjee's book, Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict, also makes surprising reading for those who see the missionary as the epitome of goodness.

In it he explains that Mother Teresa's friendship with Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party was widely believed to have been behind such assertions as: "People are happier. There are more jobs. There are no strikes." These were made after the suspension of civil liberties in 1975.

He likewise asserts that Mother Teresa was generous with her prayers but rather miserly with her foundation's millions when it came to humanity's suffering.

"During numerous floods in India, or following the explosion of a pesticide plant in Bhopal, she offered numerous prayers and medallions of the Virgin Mary, but no direct or monetary aid," he said.

In an increasingly secular world - and a world where Roman Catholicism no longer holds sway as it once did - perhaps even Pope Francis, despite all the indicators that Teresa will be made a saint before the year is out, has reason for considering her "case for sainthood".

And he may well consider that, like us all, she too has sinned and is, perhaps, no saint after all.
Ward Solutions offers companies an all round service

INFORMATION security is a very real concern for companies of all sizes, in all sectors.

A breach of security presents a serious danger to a companys reputation and even its future viability, not to mention potentially jeopardising the precious data of customers. But Ward Solutions, which is based in Belfast, is hoping to bring a new era of security of information to companies in Northern Ireland.

Its an information security consultancy, security integrations and managed security Services Company, originally founded in Dublin in 1999.

Ward Solutions has already built up an impressive customer base here over the past two years, with customers across the public and private sectors, and also in manufacturing sectors such as aviation. Co-founder and chief executive Pat Larkin told the Belfast Telegraph that the company has wider ambitions for Northern Ireland  and believes it's bringing a new offering to customers here.

It has been growing at a rate of around 20% per annum since it was founded. Its security analysts, engineers and consultants can offer cyber-security testing, security solutions, managed security services and cyber-incident management. Pat Larkin said its services can be engaged proactively. "Typically a lot of our services would be face-to-face or on-site consulting, engaging with the business and key stakeholders on work processes and procedures.

"That can be around information security, infrastructure or on-site customer data, while security auditing may be done remotely.

"Overall, we help organisations protect their brand, people, assets, intellectual property and profits by identifying the threats, and minimising the risks that they face. He believes that Wards' offering is the broadest possible in information security, and that they provide a comprehensive service where other companies offer more fragmented services.

I would see our unique selling point as the breadth of our capability. It's rare to find organisations offering complete information security services that will flow through the entire life cycle. Normally it might take two to three organisations, whereas we provide the full life cycle." He added: We employ only the highest qualified experienced people to develop professional long term client relationships, improving your security posture across your entire business. We strive to add value in everything, working to specification, time and budget.

He said the company prides itself on a face-to-face service. "With us, you know that we are local to the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland,  and we can engage with our customers on site, face to face  or remotely. And I think customers find it reassuring that we deliver that face to face service. There are larger enterprises that operate globally and work on a 'follow the sun basis'. The challenge we see for customers is that those types of services never really understand in detail what they are dealing with, but from the Ward Solutions perspective, we understand the customer's business and the specific risks there are to it.

Earning customer loyalty is crucial, he said. We build really good customer loyalty and have a 98% customer retention rate, and we know that high quality service is what every customer values. If we are with a customer at every stage of the life cycle, we are able to build up that loyalty over time. "We have had that customer retention since the start and many of those customers who joined us at the start are still with us.

The company's birth and growth has coincided with the growing dominance of the internet and digital media in our lives.

Pat said: The biggest change since we started has been growing digital dependence. At the beginning, the people we were working with were the very early adopters, the dot.com companies who were born on the internet, or those companies who had to quickly and urgently move to the internet, such as e-commerce or e-learning companies.

"But other categories of company  have since had to embrace an online presence. "Suddenly they are very exposed to the risks that digital dependency puts on them, the threats to information security and their infrastructure." Banks are one sector which he cites as needing protection. "Banks will have used guards in the past, and physical, armoured trucks, when they've been moving large sums of cash between their physical premises. "But they've decreased that high street spend  but instead now need to spend on their digital security."

Alan McVey, a Northern Ireland native and the company's NI business development manager, has over a decade of experience in information security and information management. And he said it's approaching the Northern Ireland market with confidence. "We anticipate that there's a market worth 3.5m available to us in the short to medium term, over the next three to five years. "And we very much see Northern Ireland as opening us up into the rest of the UK market, where we also have growth ambitions.

Were offering a range of new information security services that we believe are unmatched in this market, such as our ISO 27001 accreditation consultancy service, and we believe this will set us apart. And one of the biggest selling points to us is also the availability of talent, and that's thanks to the large numbers of cyber-security companies operating here, such as Rapid 7, WhiteHat and Proofpoint and organisations such as the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) at Queen's University.
Getting a man to talk about depression is tricky. Guys are as emotional as women. Really, they are. Being human means emotions are the same for all genders. Its social and cultural conditioning that separates the guys from the gals. Manhood is image. Its about swagger, toughness, and invulnerability. Theres a lot of time and effort dedicated to achieving a certain masculinity, a polished look of invincibility and male prowess. Depression is a chip in the polish, a character flaw, something that makes him broken goods.

Getting a man to talk about depression

Men suck at talking about depression. Theyre even worse at asking for help. Suicide is the number one cause of death for men under 50. According to GQ, only 25 per cent of men in the UK seek help for depression but the number of depressed men is about 50 per cent. Suicide is sometimes seen as the only way out if the guy believes hes failing to be a man in a bad situation.

Getting a man to talk. A man needs a person he can really connect with, face-to-face. Its about finding a person he can trust when it comes to talking openly and honestly about his pain. Instead of using the word depressed, its easier for him to talk about being stressed or being overly tired. Code words for depression. Talking about the stress or whats making him tired can help him open up. Dont rush it. Hes taking a big step by telling you how he feels. For some men, this is as far as asking for help goes. You can point out that youve noticed his behaviour has changed. Dont be critical. Just mention it factually, like You always seem to get stomach pains before work, or You havent gone to the gym for months. You dont need to ask if anythings wrong.

A man needs a person he can really connect with, face-to-face. Its about finding a person he can trust when it comes to talking openly and honestly about his pain. Instead of using the word depressed, its easier for him to talk about being stressed or being overly tired. Code words for depression. Talking about the stress or whats making him tired can help him open up. Dont rush it. Hes taking a big step by telling you how he feels. For some men, this is as far as asking for help goes. You can point out that youve noticed his behaviour has changed. Dont be critical. Just mention it factually, like You always seem to get stomach pains before work, or You havent gone to the gym for months. You dont need to ask if anythings wrong. Listen. Listening is a skill. You need to listen to and understand what hes saying. Dont add in your thoughts or insecurities to his message. Dont assume hes really talking about something else when hes really talking about feeling listless. Men will complain more about physical pain

Listening is a skill. You need to listen to and understand what hes saying. Dont add in your thoughts or insecurities to his message. Dont assume hes really talking about something else when hes really talking about feeling listless. Men will complain more about Dont go into fix it mode. Guys will mask depression with unhelpful or destructive behaviour and attitude. Guys turn to food, sex, drugs, alcohol or work because it makes them happy. They can become obsessed and addicted to the high that comes with that happiness. Some guys turn to the gym and become fitness addicts. Be understanding of the behaviour but know when to hold him accountable. Dont try to fix his behaviour by telling him to see a counsellor. Hell only withdraw, blaming you as the reason for his behaviour.

Guys will mask depression with unhelpful or destructive behaviour and attitude. Guys turn to food, sex, drugs, alcohol or work because it makes them happy. They can become obsessed and addicted to the high that comes with that happiness. Some guys turn to the gym and become fitness addicts. Be understanding of the behaviour but know when to hold him accountable. Dont try to fix his behaviour by telling him to see a counsellor. Hell only withdraw, blaming you as the reason for his behaviour. Dont shame the guy. Depression has lots of stigma. Even though theres more talk about depression and what it is and means to be depressed, most people hear the word and they think crazy, or worse. A man doesnt want his boss or co-workers to know hes depressed. It takes away from his status, affects the work load hes given, and makes him look like broken goods in front of the world. A man might not even want his friends to know hes depressed. Dont belittle what hes told you or shame him for sharing his feelings. Dont take away all of his responsibilities and make him feel useless. Hell know how much he can or cant do. Offering to help him is okay.

Depression has lots of stigma. Even though theres more talk about depression and what it is and means to be depressed, most people hear the word and they think crazy, or worse. A man doesnt want his boss or co-workers to know hes depressed. It takes away from his status, affects the work load hes given, and makes him look like broken goods in front of the world. A man might not even want his friends to know hes depressed. Dont belittle what hes told you or shame him for sharing his feelings. Dont take away all of his responsibilities and make him feel useless. Hell know how much he can or cant do. Offering to help him is okay. Dont ignore anything said about suicide. Death, dying, ending it  these words might pop up in a conversation. You need to acknowledge that you heard the words by repeating them to him. Ask if he has a plan for suicide, or what hed consider doing to kill himself. Men tend to choose lethal and quick methods for suicide. If the man is working in an environment with access to highly lethal means, hell choose that as a way to end his life. Assess if hes at immediate risk. If hes not, make sure theres a commitment by him to check in with you. But dont just leave it at that. Call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.

Depression is one of those illnesses that doesnt discriminate. Like cancer, it can get anyone. Depressions brutality, victimization and abuse hit men and women equally hard. But guys have this image of what a man should be like, and how he should behave and feel. To get a man to talk about depression means you have to wait for him to open up about it.

Twitter: @tereziafarkas #MensHealth #selfcare #suicideprevention

* Click here to find out more about Terezia Farkas and Depression help

If youre struggling reach out. Heres a few good places.

www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

www.activeminds.org

www.thetrevorproject.org
On April 25, the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) carried out its latest beheading in the southern Philippines, making good on its threat 10 days earlier to kill hostages if ransom demands were not met. Canadian John Ridsdel, 68, was killed and his head was dumped in a plastic bag near City Hall in Jolo, Sulu province.

Ridsdel had been taken hostage with Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian, Kjartan Sekkingstad, and Filipina Marites Flor from a tourist resort in Samal Island, Davao, in September 2015. Those three remain with the ASG, along with at least 18 other hostages, among them 14 Indonesians and four Malaysians.

Threat groups in Southeast Asia carried out beheadings before the advent of the so-called Islamic State. But as groups in the region affiliate with IS, they are emulating IS-style beheadings.

With the declaration of a Wilayat in the southern Philippines, the region is likely to witness more IS rulings, codes and practices. Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Totoni Hapilon  based in Basilan, an island-province that lies off Mindanao  has been appointed leader of an IS branch in the Philippines.

Other IS and IS support groups and groupings in southern Philippines are as follows: in northern Mindanao, The Islamic State of Lanao (ISL); in Southern Mindanao, Ansar Khilafah Mindanao (AKM); and in Western Mindanao, Al Harakatul al Islamiyah, Basilan (IS Philippines). All three groups engage in beheadings, and all three have pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.

Philippines

In the contemporary period, ASG founder Abdurrajak Janjalani introduced beheadings to Southeast Asia, after being educated in Saudi Arabia and Libya. The ASG rank and file was instructed on the Battle of Badr (March 13, 624), where 70 prisoners were captured and two were executed upon the order of Prophet Muhammad.

Although the execution of the two captives is disputed and the prisoners were well treated, ASG literature ignored this aspect and took out of context the following two Quranic verses, highlighting them to justify beheadings.

Chapter 8 verse 12: Remember when your Lord inspired to the Angels, I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike upon their necks and strike from them every fingertip.

Chapter 47 verse 4: When you meet the disbelievers in battle, strike them in the neck, and once theyre defeated, bind any captives firmly  later you can release them by grace or by ransom  until the toils of war have ended.

Before and after the formation of ASG in 1992, Janjalanis Majlis Shura (consultative council) ordered the beheading of spies in 1991 and 1992. Subsequently, when the military was encircling the group, the ASG took hostages and beheaded several Christians.

In 2001, as ASG deputy leader, Isnilon Hapilon supervised the beheading of Guillermo Sobero, the first foreigner beheaded in Southeast Asia in the contemporary period. Sobero was kidnapped together with fellow U.S. citizens Martin and Gracia Burnham from Dos Palmas in Palawan province.

Indonesia

Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) was the first threat group to carry out beheadings in contemporary Indonesia, in 2005. The JI team responsible had returned from a training course in the Philippines and wanted to seek revenge on the Christian community for killings and counter-killings under way at that time in Central Sulawesi.

The operational leader Hasanuddin planned the beheading as an act of Muslim charity to coincide with Lebaran (Idul Fitri), the festival that ends with the holy month of Ramadan.

At 6:30 a.m. Oct. 29, 2005, six attackers approached Theresia Morangke, 15, Alfita Poliwo, 17, and Yarni Sambue, 17, walking through a cocoa plantation in Gebong Rejo on their way to the Central Sulawesi Christian Church High School. Clad in black masks, they beheaded the girls with machetes. Noviana Malewa, 15, who suffered an injury to the neck and face, ran and shared the ordeal with the authorities.

One of the heads was left outside a newly built church. Two others were delivered to their village with the note: Wanted: 100 more heads, teenaged or adult, male or female; blood shall be answered with blood, soul with soul, head with head.

Hasanuddin eventually was sentenced to 20 years in prison; two other men were sentenced to 14 years each. Others implicated in the act fled.

Hasanuddins associate, Santoso, later recruited some of the attackers in the beheading. They now form the rank and file of the Poso-based Eastern Indonesia Mujahideen (MIT), which conducted half a dozen beheadings after Santoso pledged allegiance to the IS leader.

Thailand

Insurgents in Pattani in Southern Thailand have beheaded about a dozen civilians, both men and women. However, the beheadings in Thailand are post-mortem. That is, after the enemy is killed, he or she is beheaded. In a number of cases the body is either burned or mutilated.

Although Islam explicitly forbids the mutilation of the dead, it is practiced by the threat groups both in Thailand and the Philippines.

Crafting a Response

The state and societal response to this scourge should be two pronged. Militarily, IS groups and support groups in Southeast Asia should be contained, isolated, and eliminated. Ideologically, Muslim leaders, teachers and other influencers in the region should defend their faith and protect the faithful to counter IS practices from taking root. Already, some Muslims believe that IS is propagating authentic Islam and beheading is in accordance with Islamic jurisprudence.

To counter IS beheadings, clerics can develop the content from the Quran and classical books of jurisprudence.

Surah Muhammad, 47:4: NOW WHEN you meet [in war] those who are bent on denying the truth, smite their necks until you overcome them fully, and then tighten their bonds; but thereafter [set them free,] either by an act of grace or against ransom, so that the burden of war may be lifted: thus [shall it be].

The Prophet of Islam guided Muslims to treat their prisoners well. In The Life of Mahomet, William Muir wrote: In pursuance of Mahomets commands, the citizens of Medina, and such of the refugees as possessed houses, received the prisoners, and treated them with much consideration. Blessings be on the men of Medina! said one of these prisoners in later days; they made us ride, while they themselves walked: they gave us wheaten bread to eat when there was little of it, contenting themselves with dates. It is not surprising that when, sometime afterwards, their friends came to ransom them, several of the prisoners who had been thus received declared themselves adherents of Islam. ... Their kindly treatment was thus prolonged, and left a favorable impression on the minds even of those who did not at once go over to Islam.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and not of BenarNews.
Bangladeshi authorities Tuesday rejected a claim by the local branch of al-Qaedas regional affiliate that its members hacked to death two men in Dhaka, including a gay rights activist who edited Bangladeshs first LGBT magazine.

Ansar al-Islam, the Bangladeshi wing of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), claimed responsibility for killing Roopbaan editor Xulhaz Mannan and K. Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy inside Mannans Dhaka apartment on Monday afternoon.

In a message posted on Twitter, the militant group said the Mujahideen of Ansar al-Islam killed the pair because they had been promoting homosexuality.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sarder dismissed AQISs claim of responsibility in Mondays killings.

In the past, we saw such claims for murder in social media, but those were fake. The killers used brands to add value to their name, Sarder told BenarNews.

The double- homicide brought to four the number of people killed in machete attacks on liberal-minded people in Bangladesh in the month of April. The killings followed a series of attacks by suspected militants last year that claimed the lives of four secular writers and a publisher.

Although the police rejected the AQIS claim, Bangladeshi authorities in 2015 had pinned blame for the murders of bloggers on Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), which is also known as Ansar al-Islam.

On Tuesday, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told reporters that no arrests had been made in connection with the killings of Mannan, who worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and Tonoy, a dramatist who worked for an association of Bangladeshi playwrights.

Meanwhile, the general secretary of the ruling Awami League party vowed that the government would catch the perpetrators of the killings.

The bloggers and the cultural activists have been made targets of attacks. The government is not taking the attacks lightly. Legal actions will follow against the perpetrators; none of them can escape, Syed Ashraful Islam told a news conference Tuesday.

In northwestern Bangladesh, officials said they had caught two suspects in connection with Saturdays machete-killing of A.F.M. Rezaul Karim Siddique, an English professor at Rajshahi University.

We have arrested two jihadists for their link with the murder of Professor Siddique. We will not disclose their names formally now. We will finish the investigation in the next seven days and we will let you know, Nahidul Islam, deputy commissioner of the Rajshahi detective branch detective branch, told BenarNews.

The two suspects were linked to Islami Chhatra Shibir, a student group affiliated with faith-based opposition party Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), according to officials.

Siddiques killing followed the April 7 machete-murder in Dhaka of Nazimuddin Samad, a law student and secular activist.

Culture of blame

When news of the latest killings came out, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday accused leaders of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)  Jamaats ally in the opposition  of being behind them.

A BNP leader shot back on Tuesday, saying that the ruling Awami League party had fostered a culture of blaming the opposition for all bad things in the country.

The government blames us for every criminal activity. They say IS or al-Qaeda is not present and the local militants have been doing it. If that be the case, you catch them and prove that the local criminals are using IS and al-Qaeda brands, BNP standing committee member Mahbubur Rahman told BenarNews.

Expanded targets

According to a security analyst, Brig. Gen. Sakhawat Hossain, the people carrying out the machete killings are taking advantage of this bickering between the ruling and opposition parties.

What I can say is those who have been carrying out such killings bear the extremist views like [those espoused by] IS and al-Qaeda. The perpetrators have been exploiting the political blame game among the parties, Hossain told BenarNews.

The silence of a majority of the Bangladeshi public in pressing the government to stop the killings has also allowed this bloodshed to occur, he said.

First they targeted the bloggers and online activists whom they branded [as being] against Islam. Now, the list of the targets has been expanded to all minorities, cultural activists and homosexuals. We have to stop it. People must speak against these killings. There must be political space for all parties to fight the militants, Hossain said.

Ameena Mohsin, a professor at Dhaka University, echoed Hossains comments.

You see rival political parties accusing each other for the killings. Instead they should talk to each other to curb the threat of militancy. Is it acceptable that a professor would be hacked along the roadside or killers would force themselves into a house and kill people? Mohsin told BenarNews.

She said citizen groups should initiate a national discussion about the killings.

Why are people mum? They are in fear now and the common people are getting used to day-to-day violence and killings. This is a dangerous syndrome for our society, Mohsin said.

A beloved friend

Elsewhere, international condemnation over the recent killings kept spilling in.

Violent and brutal acts that we have witnessed over the last few days need to be condemned by all political and religious leaders, Robert Watkins, the U.N.s resident coordinator in Bangladesh, said in a statement.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry praised Mannan as a beloved friend and advocate for human rights and dignity.

We offer our full support to the government of Bangladesh as they investigate these murders and bring the perpetrators to justice. We remain committed to the principles that were so important to Xulhaz, and we promise to support all those who work on behalf of tolerance and human rights in Bangladesh, Kerry said.

However, a U.S.-based global rights watchdog criticized Sheikh Hasinas government for not doing enough to bring the perpetrators of the spate of killings to justice.

The slaughter of two men advocating the basic rights of Bangladeshs beleaguered LGBT community should prompt a thorough investigation, aimed at prosecuting those responsible, Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

The government needs to protect activists and to call a halt to the impunity that links this chain of vicious murders.
Dangerous Words At least 10 people have been hacked to death by violent extremists in Bangladesh since February 2013: writers, publishers, a professor, an actor, a gay rights activist. The so-called Islamic State has claimed responsibility for some of the attacks; local authorities say Ansaralluh Bangla Team, the Bangladeshi affiliate of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), is to blame.
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The Bible has been under attack in the western world for over 200 years but never more intensely than today. These attacks have taken different forms and have come from many different corners of the academic world, from philosophers, to scientists, to textual critics. In the specialized world of archaeology the attacks have increased dramatically in the past 50 years. Once a specialization filled with Bible believing individuals, the field of archaeology is now overrun with atheists and skeptics, agnostics and those committed to the destruction of the Bible as a source of true historical information.

These attacks on the Bible are a part of a sweeping movement in western culture. Spearheaded by academic elitists in the university and the public educational system, the news and popular media, and the entertainment industry, these revisionists cloak themselves with supposed objectivity, purity of motives, and the superiority of science over the "uninformed", "unscientific", religious community.

They regularly mock those who question their world-view and their conclusions by name-calling and the worst forms of anti-Bible and anti-Christian propaganda. They have powerfully infected the church by turning Bible believing Christians against the very Scripture which is the foundation of truth and life in this world. Instead of contending for the Bible, Christian academics, pastors, and lay-persons are making egregious accommodations to these destroyers of faith and truth.

In these days of intense spiritual battle, God has called ABR to step into the gap to contend for the truth and to assist the church in this critical hour. ABR is a non-profit ministry dedicated to demonstrating the historical reliability of the Bible and to give answers to questions being asked by believers and non-believers alike. We do this by using original archaeological fieldwork and research along with studies in other apologetic disciplines. We take on the bold claims of skeptics and critics. We challenge the bizarre anti-biblical propaganda that is purveyed upon the public as gospel through television and print media. We uphold the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is God's message for the salvation of all mankind!




First up, Joe Biden is thinking about dropping tariffs against China. But theres a spy in prison this morning that helps us understand why he shouldnt. Ill explain.





Your second brief, If youre looking for a good paying job, you might consider being a CEO for a health insurance company. One executive made $142M dollars last year. Let's talk about that.





And as always, Im keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Mexican cartels are grooming American kids online and paying them cash to traffic illegals or run drugs across the border. Ill share details.





If you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief, remember to subscribe and listen daily at podfollow.com/pdb.

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For Immediate Release, April 26, 2016 Contacts: Rebecca Bowe, Earthjustice, (415) 217-2093, rbowe@earthjustice.org

Steve Parker, Endangered Wolf Center, (636) 938-5900, sparker@endangeredwolfcenter.org

Michael Robinson, Center for Biological Diversity, (575) 313-7017, michaelr@biologicaldiversity.org

Maggie Howell, Wolf Conservation Center, (914) 763-2373, Maggie@nywolf.org

Catalina Tresky, Defenders of Wildlife, (202) 772-0253, ctresky@defenders.org

Preguntas de prensa en Espanol: Betsy Lopez-Wagner, (415) 217-2159, blopez-wagner@earthjustice.org Court Settlement Provides Hope for Mexican Gray Wolves Forty Years After Endangered Species Act Protection, Government to Prepare Recovery Plan TUCSON, Ariz. A coalition of wolf-conservation groups, environmental organizations and a retired federal wolf biologist today announced a court settlement requiring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to prepare a long-delayed recovery plan for Mexican gray wolves by November 2017. With only 97 individuals existing in the wild at the end of 2015, and fewer than 25 in Mexico, the Mexican gray wolf is one of the most endangered mammals in North America and faces a serious risk of extinction. Thanks to the courts, the Service is finally required to meet its legal obligation of completing a legally sufficient recovery plan, with the ultimate goal of a healthy, sustainable population of Mexican gray wolves in the wild. The settlement announced today provides hope that the lobo can be a living, breathing part of the southwestern landscape instead of just a long-lost frontier legend, said Tim Preso, an Earthjustice attorney. But to realize that hope, federal officials must take up the challenge of developing a legitimate, science-based recovery plan for the Mexican wolf rather than yielding to political pressure. Earthjustice filed a lawsuit in November 2014 to challenge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services multi-decade delay in completing a recovery plan for the Mexican wolf. Earthjustice represents Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity, retired Fish and Wildlife Service Mexican Wolf Recovery Coordinator David R. Parsons, the Endangered Wolf Center and the Wolf Conservation Center in the case. Todays announcement of a settlement agreement follows a September 2015 ruling by a federal judge in Tucson that rejected the governments effort to dismiss the case. Wolves love to follow paths, said former Mexican wolf recovery leader David Parsons. Now, finally, the path to recovery for the critically endangered lobos of the Southwest will be blazed. After four decades of delay, a scientific roadmap for recovery of the Mexican gray wolf will finally be reality, said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. The recovery plan should trigger new releases of captive-bred wolves into the wild and establish new Mexican wolf populations in the Grand Canyon and southern Rocky Mountain ecosystems. The Service developed a document it labeled a recovery plan for the Mexican wolf in 1982  but the Service itself admits that this document was incomplete, intended for only short-term application, and did not contain objective and measurable recovery criteria for delisting as required by [the Endangered Species Act]. Most importantly, the 34-year-old document did not provide the necessary science-based guidance to move the Mexican gray wolf toward recovery. Without a recovery plan in place, the Services Mexican gray wolf conservation efforts have been hobbled by insufficient releases of captive wolves into the wild population, excessive removals of wolves from the wild, and arbitrary geographic restrictions on wolf occupancy of promising recovery habitat. The Service in 2010 admitted that the wild Mexican gray wolf population is not thriving and remains at risk of failure, and further admitted that failure to develop an up-to-date recovery plan results in inadequate guidance for the reintroduction and recovery effort. We are racing extinction on the Mexican gray wolf, said Eva Sargent, senior Southwest representative for Defenders of Wildlife. The best available science, not political pressure, should lead the recovery planning for the Mexican gray wolf. We need more wolves and less politics. The plaintiffs joining todays settlement agreement include two environmental education organizations that operate captive-breeding facilities that have supported recovery efforts by providing Mexican gray wolves for release into the wild. Despite their efforts, Mexican gray wolf survival continues to be threatened by the lack of a recovery plan to ensure that wolf releases are sufficient to establish a viable population. Failing to plan is planning to fail, said Maggie Howell, executive director of the Wolf Conservation Center in New York. And for these iconic and imperiled wolves, failure means extinction. This settlement represents a necessary and long overdue step toward recovering Americas most endangered gray wolf and preventing an irrevocable loss from happening on our watch. Education is a key component to the recovery of a species, especially for an animal that has been historically misunderstood and misrepresented. Equally important is an active, up-to-date recovery plan for the species in the wild, said Virginia Busch, executive director of the Endangered Wolf Center in St. Louis, Mo. The genetic variability that organizations like the Endangered Wolf Center hold with the Mexican wolf population is hugely valuable for releases and cross-fostering opportunities in the wild. We are pleased to hear that the Service will be taking an active role in developing a recovery plan in a timely manner. Report Resources

Background on Mexican gray wolves and photos for media use: http://earthjustice.org/features/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-mexican-gray-wolf

Read the settlement document: http://biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/Mexican_gray_wolf/pdfs/16-04-26_Settlement_Agreement.pdf

Read the release online: http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2016/court-settlement-provides-hope-for-mexican-gray-wolves

Version en linea: http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2016/dictamen-judicial-brinda-esperanzas-para-los-lobos-grises-mexicanos Background

The Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi)  the lobo of southwestern lore  is the most genetically distinct lineage of wolves in the western hemisphere, and one of the most endangered mammals in North America. By the mid-1980s, hunting, trapping, and poisoning caused the extinction of lobos in the wild, with only a handful remaining in captivity. In 1998 the wolves were reintroduced into the wild as part of a federal reintroduction program under the Endangered Species Act. Today, in the United States, there is a single wild population in the Blue Range area of Arizona and New Mexico comprising only 97 individuals, all descendants of just seven wild founders of a captive-breeding program. These wolves are threatened by illegal killings, legal removals due to conflicts with livestock, and a lack of genetic diversity. Within the past year alone, escalating mortalities and illegal killing, along with reduced pup survival, reduced the wild population from 110 to 97 individuals. The Service has never written or implemented a legally sufficient Mexican gray wolf recovery plan. Its most recent recovery team has done extensive, rigorous work to determine what needs to be done to save the Mexican gray wolf. Recovery team scientists agreed that, in order to survive, lobos require the establishment of at least three linked populations. Habitat capable of supporting the two additional populations exists in the Grand Canyon ecoregion and in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. The recovery team drafted a plan in 2012 that called for establishing three interconnected Mexican gray wolf populations totaling at least 750 animals in these areas, but the plan has never been finalized. The settlement today requires the Service to complete a valid recovery plan by November 2017 and requires peer review of the recovery plan to ensure its scientific integrity. The settlement has been presented to the federal judge overseeing the case, who must approve it before the settlement becomes binding on the parties.


For Immediate Release, April 26, 2016 Contact: Greer Ryan, (812) 345-8571, gryan@biologicaldiversity.org New Report: Rooftop Solar Power Blocked by Sunny States With Bad Policy Analysis IDs 10 States That Must Adopt Rooftop Solar-friendly Policies to

Reduce Emissions, Transition to Renewable Energy LOS ANGELES Some of the sunniest states in the country are actively blocking rooftop-solar development through overtly lacking and destructive policy landscapes, according to a Center for Biological Diversity report released today. The 10 states highlighted in Throwing Shade: 10 Sunny States Blocking Distributed Solar Development  Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin  account for more than 35 percent of the total rooftop-solar technical potential in the contiguous United States, but only 6 percent of total installed capacity. Thanks to weak and nonexistent policies, the distributed-solar markets in these states have never been given a chance to shine, said Greer Ryan, sustainability research associate with the Center and author of the report. Theres room for improvement in solar policies across all 50 states, but its especially shameful to see the sunniest states fail to lead the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy. The report assigned a policy grade to all 50 states based on the presence and strength of key policies that have aided solar expansion in the countrys leading solar markets, as well as policy and regulatory barriers that are used to hinder the distributed-solar industries. These grades, along with the technical potential for distributed-solar expansion in each state (based on the latest findings from National Renewable Energy Laboratory), determined which states were the countrys worst offenders. This analysis follows recent high-profile net-metering policy fights in Nevada and California, two leading solar states. More than half of all states with net-metering programs in place saw efforts to weaken or eliminate these programs in 2015, despite the fact that it was the hottest year on record. These solar-policy fights are becoming more common at a time when we should be expanding rooftop solar as quickly as possible, said Ryan. By blocking solar expansion, states threaten the swift transition to a just and fully renewable energy system thats needed to stave off the worst impacts of climate change and protect the health of communities, wildlife and the planet. The Center for Biological Diversity advocates for a swift transition to a fully renewable, just and wildlife-friendly energy system through ending all new fossil fuel development on public lands and waters and maximizing distributed-solar potential. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Jem's Birding & Ringing Exploits in the Eastern Province and elsewhere in Saudi Arabia
A new Australian online service allows you to easily turn a website into an Android app for free. Creating an iOS app costs a low monthly fee.

There's no denying that some people prefer to use apps rather than visit web sites on their phones and tablets. But until now, the cost of a custom app has been way beyond the budget for many small businesses.

What's changed is that Melbourne-based AppsWiz has developed technology that can automatically generate an app based on a website.

"We believe we are the first to do this," said AppsWiz marketing and communications manager Lisa Chapman. "We've tried to make it incredibly easy," she said, explaining that the company is targeting sole traders and other small businesses.

Because the app is based on a business's website, very little other input is required beyond a few clicks.

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What you get for free

My Mobile App is completely free if you only want an Android app and you don't want to send more than one push alert per month.

The ability to send alerts (such as sales, pre-Christmas late-night openings, new products or services, and so on) is a key benefit of an app. Used carefully, they are an effective and very low-cost way of getting your message across. But if you send too many alerts  especially if they are not relevant to the recipient  there's a real risk that your app will be discarded.

The paid tier of My Mobile App costs $US9.99 a month as an introductory special (the regular price has yet to be set). For that you also get apps for iPhone and iPad, unlimited push alerts with targeting ability based on users' preferences, and more comprehensive statistics.

My Mobile App has been beta tested in conjunction with the Shopify ecommerce platform, Chapman said, but integrations with other services are at an advanced stage and My Mobile App will work with a wider range of sites within a month or two.

Preparing and creating an app

Eventually it will be the case that "anyone with a website can have a My Mobile App", she said. However, best results are achieved when the site has a responsive web design  meaning the site is coded so that it automatically adapts its layout and presentation according to the size of the screen and other limitations, accommodating both desktop and mobile users without the need to duplicate content in different formats.

The generated app is sent to Google Play and subject to Google's approval process is normally available for download the same day.

With the paid plan, the iOS app is also submitted to Apple's App Store, with approval typically taking seven days.

Any changes to the web site  whether that's as small as a price change on a single item or as large as a completely new section  is automatically reflected in the app, although in some cases the change may not appear until the app is restarted.

My Mobile App in action

One Australian business that has already taken advantage of My Mobile App is Melbourne-based jewellery and accessories retailer Erstwilder. If you're curious about the relationship between a website and the corresponding My Mobile App, download the Erstwilder app from Google Play or Apples App Store and see for yourself. (Erstwilder's site serves as an example of responsive design  try changing the width of your browser window.)
What is the strongest attribute of a successful global brand? Longevity. The longer you go on, the better you get - as long as you realise you have to care for and nurture your brand and its icons.

Coca-Cola is the worlds biggest brand, and one of the main reasons it got there was because it was always driven by marketers and not accountants. Even in the bad times, the company kept on advertising and, even now, does not sit back on its laurels. Granted, there was a glitch in the 1980s, when some young clevers decided that old  as in old Coke  wasnt cool and that there had to be a new formula. That almost brought the company to its knees and remains a textbook case study in the new is not always sexy marketing manual. If you are going to do new, then you do it while retaining your essence and, most importantly, your history. A global brand that pays close attention to looking after its icons is Ford. Since 17 April 1964, it has been selling millions of examples of its Mustang car. Each successive generation  bar a few new Coke-type aberrations in the 1980s  has built subtly on its predecessor and seen the car become one of the most recognised automotive symbols on the planet. Ford never lets an opportunity slip to burnish the Mustang brand. In South Africa, they issued a statement last week hailing Mustang Day  the 62nd anniversary of the launch of the car.

The well-crafted and interesting press release caught my attention  noteworthy, considering that, despite being a petrolhead, I have a jaded view of most car industry communication. But what was interesting was the fact that Ford is not selling Mustangs in this country at present  at least not new ones. South Africas entire, limited allocation of the cars has been sold out for the next two years. So, why bother? Well, its an icon and you look after it. Looking after it means keeping it in the public eye, even if there is no direct benefit to the bottom line. Of course, the indirect benefit to Ford the brand is that Mustang makes all who see it positive towards Ford as a whole  because this is a manufacturer that does interesting things. Thats perhaps something some people will remember when they walk into a Ford showroom. So, a long-life Orchid to Ford.

Another way you nurture a brand is through clever use of design and symbols. I remarked a few years ago that Cell Cs office in Woodmead gave visitors and passers-by a sense of a go-ahead company with a clear vision and mission. Architecture was used as a brand builder. But an even better example is the new building for Cruises International in Joburg. Just look at the picture below and tell me you dont immediately get a sense of a cruise liner in motion. Its exciting, its enticing and it gets across the message of what the company does. There is also a subtle romance about it  which is the essence of cruising. So a marketing Orchid to Cruises International for style, inside and out.

Cruises International says it with architecture.

I am not the only one who is getting grated by the latest radio ads for Nedbanks 32-day call accounts. A friend of mine in the marketing business was fuming about the one using an idiotic male, talking and acting in a way which doesnt really make sense. Its awful, she says. I will take her word for it  but would be interested to hear if any of you out there get the same feeling when you hear it. I, on the other hand, change channels when the one using mom comes on, leaving a message for her daughter. In a silly , simpering voice (please tell me youre not like that, parents and grandparents  I know I am not and nor is my wife, who is equally annoyed by the ad), the woman starts extolling the virtues of the 32-day call offering, especially as the money being saved is available at short notice for a surprise simper, simper. Whether she hoping for her offspring to get married or to have grandchildren is not something which stuck in my mind  I was too irritated by the tone and the simple script. Although I did notice your product, Nedbank  and we do, in fact, have such an account with you  please dont try to sell me something via a simpleton because I wouldnt want to be seen as one. You get an Onion  and you can collect right now you dont have to wait 32 days.

*Note that Bizcommunity staff and management do not necessarily share the views of its contributors - the opinions and statements expressed herein are solely those of the author.*
South Africa still counts among 10 countries worldwide with the highest number of unvaccinated children.

Along with South Africa - the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Uganda are home to the more than 60% of children who are not immunised against preventable diseases.

Access to vaccines in all places at all times

Although the World Health Organisation (WHO) has had a measure of success in the global fight against diseases requiring immunisation, they were isolated, with only one out of six targets in the Global Vaccine Action Plan 2011 2020 on track. The plan aims to ensure that no one misses out on vital immunisations.

Access to vaccines in all places at all times is one of the key factors identified by the WHO for achieving significant results in immunisation coverage. This while most of the vaccines needed are freely available from pharmacies and clinics.

Achieving this goal is within reach as South African pharmacies are fully geared to deliver vaccination services, and can assist the public sector in achieving its target.

Community pharmacies often act a primary healthcare clinic

Trained pharmacists and other healthcare professionals, such as nursing sisters, are legally authorised to administer vaccines in South African pharmacies, says Lorraine Osman, head of public affairs at the Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa (PSSA).

Furthermore, many community pharmacies operate a primary healthcare clinic as part of their services. Either the pharmacist or a nursing sister performs a number of services, including administration of vaccines and the checking of vaccine records to determine which are still outstanding. This is a crucial function, since by keeping appropriate records, the pharmacist can help determine a childs vaccination status and may remind parents when the next vaccination is due

Advocating paediatric immunisation

Pharmacists should assist in ensuring access to such services, In South Africa, pharmacists perform a number of crucial functions to help improve vaccination rates, not least educating and advising the public and other healthcare professionals about immunisation.

Other activities include advocating paediatric immunisation, alerting travellers about immunisation before international travel and identification of high-risk patient groups, she says.

Individual pharmacists in both community pharmacy and the public sector periodically take part in mass immunisation campaigns to ensure maximum coverage during sporadic outbreaks of communicable diseases, she concludes.
PARIS - French retailer Fnac raised its offer for Darty on Monday to about 900m ($1.3bn) in a final bid to win Europe's largest electronics retailer in a battle with SA's Steinhoff.

People walk past the logo of electrical goods retailer Darty shop in La Defense near Paris, France, last week. Image credit: Reuters

Steinhoff, which has amassed a 20.4% stake in Darty, said in the immediate aftermath of Fnacs offer that it was considering its options.

Fnac, declaring the offer its last, said it would pay 170p per Darty share in cash, up from 153 pence previously, and that it had the backing of shareholders accounting for 40.38% of Dartys capital.

Steinhoffs latest offer was 160p a share in cash, valuing Darty at about 860m.

Darty shares were up 8% at 171p by midafternoon, suggesting some investors still expect more. The stock earlier touched 173p, the highest since 2010.

Fnac fell 1.5% to 53.80 at 3pm in Paris. Steinhoff gained 0.7% to 5.27 in Frankfurt.

Darty said on April 21 its board would carefully consider offers and provide further advice to shareholders in due course.

Last week, the rival bidders entered into an hectic showdown with five new offers in less than 24 hours that lifted Darty shares by more than 23% on 21 April.

Darty shares have now more than doubled in value from about 81p before Fnac first approached Darty in September.

Darty earns 70% of its revenue in France but has 400 stores across Europe and competes with Media-Saturn, owned by Germanys Metro, and Britains Dixons.

Darty would help Fnac to reduce its reliance on declining or highly competitive markets, such as CDs and books.

Fnacs offer includes an option for Darty shareholders to receive Fnac shares if they prefer.

For Steinhoff, Darty would help it bulk up in Europe, where it makes more than two-thirds of its 9.8bn ($11bn) of annual sales, as its domestic market deteriorates.

Steinhoffs European brands include Conforama in France, Bensons for Beds and Harveys in Britain, and Abra in Poland.

Darty trade unions said on 22 April they backed Steinhoffs offer which they saw as more positive for jobs than Fnacs.

Steinhoff, which counts billionaire entrepreneur Christo Wiese as an investor and board member, is valued at 21bn on Frankfurts stock market.

Fnac has fresh firepower after Vivendi, which is led by French billionaire Vincent Bollore, said it would buy 15% of the company, boosting its capital by 159m.

Reuters
LONDON - BHS, the owner of department stores across Britain, has called in outside help to rescue the struggling firm from potential closure and the loss of around 11,000 jobs, administrators said on Monday.

Pedestrians walk past the entrance to a BHS store on Oxford Street in central London on 25 April 2016. AFP / Niklad Halle'n

The 88-year-old chain has failed to keep pace with rivals such as Marks and Spencer selling clothing and homeware in stores and online, resulting in a significant loss of market share.

"The group will continue to trade as usual whilst the administrators seek to sell it as a going concern," administrators Duff & Phelps said in a statement.

BHS, which also sells food, has been undergoing restructuring but has been unsuccessful in negotiations to find a buyer, while property sales have not materialised as expected, Duff & Phelps added.

"Consequently, as a result of a lower than expected cash balance, the group is very unlikely to meet all contractual payments," the administrators said.

"The directors therefore have no alternative but to put the group into administration to protect it for all creditors."

Owner Dominic Chappell, whose consortium Retail Acquisitions purchased BHS last year from retail entrepreneur Philip Green for just one pound ($1.4, 1.3 euros), said no-one was to blame.

The current situation "was a combination of bad trading and not being able to raise enough money from the property portfolio", he added.

Neil Saunders, head of retail consultancy Conlumino, said Monday's announcement ends "a long period of decline which has seen the chain fall out of favour with British shoppers thanks to its failure to respond to changing tastes and the intensification of competition (from rival stores) on the high street".

He added: "Fifteen years ago... BHS attracted some 13.4 percent of all clothing shoppers through its (British) doors.

"Although not all of these visitors would use BHS as their main store, many would buy one or two products -- helping BHS attain a respectable 2.3-percent share of the clothing market.

Saunders said that last year, BHS pulled in only 8.2 percent of all clothing shoppers, handing it a 1.4-percent share of the clothing market.

Starting in 1928 with a chain in London, BHS has grown to stand at 164 stores and 74 franchise operations across 18 countries.

Julie Palmer, partner at insolvency firm Begbies Traynor, said it looked "increasingly unlikely that any buyer will be brave enough to salvage the business in anything like its current form".
The declining currency in South Africa has effects on all facets of the South African economy, especially on businesses. Some of these effects are positive and some are negative; however, over the years, Oscar Grobler, chairman of flooring company Nouwens Carpets, has learnt that a declining currency indicates that planning ahead is of importance to keep businesses afloat and to survive the economic storms.

South Africas currency decline will change in the future, but the question is when. Some economists and traders predict that the rand will stabilise this year and that it could even appreciate in value. Some are saying that it will decline further, quoting figures of R18 or even R20 to the US dollar by calendar year end 2016. All agree it will reverse, but at different times, and all agree the level to which it will appreciate is speculation. Using the 'Big Mac' price index, the rand is 66% undervalued to the US dollar without taking differences in labour costs into consideration (GDP per capita index) and 39% undervalued when taking the aforementioned into account.

Consistency

The flooring industry (like many other industries) has to plan and strategise on the way forward. The one component businesses all seek is consistency. So when the rand has a sudden 10% or more depreciation in the space of 24 hours, businesses seek a solution to the problem. Forward cover, foreign currency options and the like offer temporary reprieve as working capital requirements have a maximum duration of six months.

Capex plans take on a different meaning as the models did not take into account such violent moves. Payback periods are extended, cost of capital escalate and shareholders say risk-reward scenarios do not compel them to invest. Another option is looking for alternative products to sell, but in many cases these, too, need to be imported.

So where to from here? There are several scenarios that can be spelt out, but two words come to mind: Plan and Strategise. That is what needs to be done and these two words call for understanding the risks the soft flooring industry faces and to evaluate the strategic importance of importing machinery so as to manufacture locally and to evaluate this against the advantages/disadvantages of importing the finished product against the backdrop of a volatile and declining exchange rate.

Cost of sales

Therefore, the effect of the declining exchange rate is to force business to understand that the risk becomes untenable if you are not in adequate control of your cost of sales. The models that were formulated to show the worst case scenarios have to be rewritten to show the new-found variables. The forex exchange variables now used in all cost models have levels that have not been seen before and hence the confidence of business people to predict what the year ahead looks like is at a record low.

Again it is the unknown that worries business and although it is said where there is risk there is reward, the quantum of what is acceptable risk is now up for debate. The sudden decline the country has experienced with its currency is not an acceptable risk. As chairman of a proudly South African established firm that has been successfully operating for 54 years, my advice and solution to this risk profile is to manufacture and buy locally. In this way the country keeps its workforce employed, we grow the economy and we pay our taxes. Surely Local is Lekker?
In March a team of Cape Union Mart employees set off to climb Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. With its peak at 5895 metres above sea level, Kilimanjaro is a high-altitude mountain with snow, ice, wind and sub-zero temperatures.

The team of eight, dressed head-to-toe in K-Way gear, spent five days on Kilimanjaro and successfully summited on day 5. Left to right: Bernadette Wagner, Geneve van Heerden, Warwick Wragg, Clive Meyer, Simone Sulcas, Grizelle Grobbelaar, Deon Barnard and Ryan Weideman.

The team of eight, dressed head-to-toe in Cape Union Mart's K-Way gear, spent five days on Kilimanjaro. They hiked through the natural forests and changing vegetation of the steep slopes to the summit. Coming from desks and stores, they got to experience the full capability of the products they bring to market on Africa's highest peak.

"We often test gear in the cold room at our Canal Walk Adventure Centre, but out there in the elements is where we really know that our products are of superior quality," said Odile Hufkie, marketing manager of Cape Union Mart. She tracked the team's progress through their day-by-day updates on #TeamKili2016.

The team was led by Ryan Weideman, outdoor apparel buyer of Cape Union Mart.

Testing in extreme conditions

"We are very serious about gear testing our products in extreme conditions. In testing we assess weight, volume and durability as well as the effectiveness of products in a variety of applications and conditions. We trust our products to perform," he said.

Weideman wore K-Way Kilimanjaro Boots, putting them on straight-out-of-the-box for this expedition.

"Not one single blister," he reported.

Employee benefits systems administrator Clive Meyer gave his vote to the K-Way Kilimanjaro Shell Jacket.

On summit day, it was well below zero degrees and a blizzard hit shortly before we reached the top. The rain just could not penetrate this excellent jacket," he recalled.

Other team members highlighted products that attributed to their summit successes. Bernadette Wagner, a data analyst, relied on her K-Way Compact Trekking Poles for the ascent and descent and appreciated their strength, light weight and collapsible design. Assistant buyer of footwear, Geneve van Heerden, noted the K-Way Swan Down Jacket as her Kilimanjaro necessity. Light and warm, it even folds into its own pocket. For Simone Sulcas (legal advisor), getting into her K-Way Kilimanjaro II Thermashift Sleeping Bag at the end of a long, icy day was the ultimate reward. It kept her warm even when the temperature dropped to -6C overnight.

After this high-altitude mountaineering experience, the eight-man team of Ryan Weideman, Bernadette Wagner, Clive Meyer, Simone Sulcas, Geneve van Heerden, Deon Barnard (Cape Union Mart, Irene), Grizelle Grobbelaar (Operations Gauteng) and Warwick Wragg (Cape Union Mart, Constantia) stand wholeheartedly behind the products they bring to market and would again entrust their lives and comfort to K-Way gear.

Regular customer events

Cape Union Mart hosts regular customer events on Kilimanjaro, presented by K-Way Ambassador Robby Kojetin and Wild Frontiers. Kojetin has climbed and trekked all over the world and has climbed six of the seven summits. He has stood on top of Mt Everest as well as nine times on Mt Kilimanjaro. Discover all you need to know about climbing Mt Kilimanjaro through Kojetin's inspiring and entertaining presentation.

Dates for Kojetin's talks include:

Thursday, 5 May: Cape Union Mart, Illanga (Nelspruit);



Thursday, 2 June: Cape Union Mart, Canal Walk Adventure Centre (Cape Town);



Wednesday, 8 June: Cape Union Mart, Eastgate Adventure Centre (Joburg); and



Thursday, 18 August: Cape Union Mart, Cresta (Joburg).

For more dates and Customer Event listings, go to www.capeunionmart.co.za/events. These events are free, but booking is essential. RSVP to moc.sreitnorfdliw@snoitavreser.
The overhaul of the Mining Charter could not come at a worse time for the industry.

Commodity prices are depressed; China is no longer growing as fast as everyone needs it to; and demand in the post-2008 global economy has not fully recovered.

In SA, these issues feel magnified, because it comes with the added complications of large electricity-price hikes, rising labour costs, and fractious industrial relations.

Jobs lost

Between 2012 and last year, the industry cut 47,000 jobs.

With the industry trying to respond to the current downturn, at least another 32,000 jobs are at stake.

Mining costs have risen 20% each year in the past five years, the biggest contributor to which has been electricity. Two months ago, the cost of power in platinum production was 80%, and for coal and gold mining, it was 50%.

The sector remains a leading employer, employing about 440,000 people directly, and as many again indirectly.

The panic being expressed by the industry is familiar. Each of the past iterations of the Mining Charter has elicited predictions of doom, and dire warnings about sterilising SA's investment environment.

But there is still investment in the mining sector. Mineral resources minister, Mosebenzi Zwane, delivered his budget last week, and said that about 7,000 jobs could be created out of social and labour programmes being run in mining towns.

In the past three years, the department had issued 84 mining licences and it was expecting that 20,000 new jobs could be created as a result.

Once empowered, always empowered

The changes that are being demanded in the draft Mining Charter, which was published for a 30-day comment period on April 15, are wide-ranging, and have serious implications for black economic empowerment (BEE) deals.

The government is now legislating to disallow lapsed BEE deals to count in mining companies' favour. The principle of "once empowered, always empowered" has been sidelined entirely.

This makes it plain that while there may now be a court challenge brought by the mining industry to seek legal clarity on recognition of past BEE deals, the department is clear that in future, this question does not arise.

Commenting on the Chamber of Mines' application for legal clarity, analysts at Deutsche Bank say the "new Mining Charter would supercede this (court process), and render it a moot point".

It is clear that the state is frustrated with the levels of compliance in the industry, and the spirit in which empowerment deals have been conducted, despite the gains that have already been made.

Mining companies have disbursed structured deals worth R200bn, that, according to the Chamber of Mines, has delivered R159bn in value to deal beneficiaries.

Direct response from the industry has been muted so far, with most companies choosing to be cautious. They are relying instead on the chamber, whose president, Mike Teke, said the release of the new proposal was just the beginning of a consultative process.

"We look forward to constructive interaction with (the) government and the other stakeholders. It is in all of our interests that a mutually acceptable version of the revised charter is finalised at the earliest opportunity."

No consultation

Neal Froneman, an industry veteran and CEO of SA's biggest gold-mining company, Sibanye Gold, did, however, criticise the department openly for not consulting with the industry before releasing the draft.

He said aspects of the new charter were not acceptable to the industry if they were implemented retrospectively.

"It is disappointing that the draft Mining Charter was published without extensive consultation, and while court procedures seeking to clarify elements of the previous Mining Charter are still in process," he said.

Analysts at CIBC were of a similar opinion. It told investors SA remained a "tough jurisdiction", because of the proposed changes to regulation.

The new charter's goal of keeping black mine ownership at 26%, "even if those stakes are subsequently sold. It is an unreasonable request in our view," CIBC says.

BEE issues won't go away

Commenting on the developments last week, Citi's mining analysts said that from past experience, the final outcome was never as bad as initially feared. "However, that is not to say that it will be a good outcome for the SA mining producers either. Investors in South African mining equities simply have to accept that the issues around BEE in the domestic mining industry are not going to go away."

It said investors had to realise the cost "of empowerment will likely increase rather than decrease over time".

"While the concept of 'once empowered, always empowered' will rage in legal circles for some time to come, politically we can never see this concept being acceptable to the government or its electorate. This point is made very clear in the 2016 draft Mining Charter," Citi says.

What will complicate the matter further are the new restrictions that the department wants to place on empowerment structures. There is to be a ban on financing the BEE trusts using all of their dividend income to pay for the financing of transactions.

The Mining Charter was always going to come up for review, and the state's plans for economic transformation have intensified as the economy has struggled. It is possible that, while this is the worst time, it may also be a good time to have this discussion. The government knows what has been happening in the mining industry and in mining towns. The industry is in a precarious state.

Negotiating new targets at a time when the industry it as its weakest may win the industry some reprieve from the department's more aggressive targets. But this will only be a reprieve.

Unstoppable train

Empowerment and the transformation programme is an unstoppable train. At no point in the future is it likely that the government will sit back and admire how far the fundamental change in ownership patterns has come.

Change and ever-growing BEE targets in areas of the economy where it can exert pressure to comply - the mining sector is specifically handy because of the licensing leverage the state has - will continue be an evergreen economic programme of the state.
Ouagadougou: Burkina Faso, Africa's top cotton producer and the sole West African nation to venture into biotech farming, is dropping genetically modified (GM) cotton on quality grounds.

KKB via Wikimedia Commons _Burkina Faso: cotton harvest in Dourtenga

The world's 10th largest cotton producer, with four of its 19 million people dependent on the "white gold", Burkina Faso earlier this month said it was giving up Monsanto's GM Bt cotton because it had proved uneconomical.

Drop in quality

Burkina took up GM cotton in the 2000s in the hopes of bumping up returns on what was then its top export product, surpassed in 2009 by gold. But the country's association of cotton producers now say GM cotton, though producing higher yields, has caused a drop in crop quality.

"The cotton fibre we are producing today is short," Burkina Faso's new president Roch Marc Christian Kabore told AFP this month. Fibre length is key in textiles with longer ones tending to produce stronger yarns because they allow fibres to twist around each other more times, also enabling higher spinning speeds. But the shorter fibres now being produced from Burkina's GM cotton "means that in market terms it's an activity which is no longer very attractive for us," the president said.

The government, he added, has taken steps "to underpin the sector... and help producers." Those measures include tens of thousands of dollars worth of seed and fertiliser subsidies as well as price controls for producers to offset market falls.

Back to conventional production

Burkina's Inter-professional Cotton Association (AICB), grouping the country's main producers and the national cotton farmers' union, is now targeting "100 percent conventional" production, Wilfried Yameogo, director of Sofitex, Burkina Faso's main cotton company, said earlier this month.

"It's a battle won," added Christian Legay of the national council of organic food processors, an umbrella organisation of consumer groups and farm workers which want a five-to-10 year moratorium on transgenic cotton in Burkina Faso.

But qualms over GM products and "frankenfoods" played no role in the about-face. With Burkinabe cotton once prized for its purity and length of fibre, it was the fall in quality that weighed in favour of a return to conventional cotton.

Producers say this resulted in the sector incurring losses between 2011 and 2016 of some 48.3 billion CFA francs ($82.4 million). They insist these must come back to them in the form of compensation.

GM gave hope for greater production

In the 2000s, the emergence of GM had fuelled hopes of greater production and also reduced the need for fertiliser. This was a key issue in a region prone to drought and where cotton pests had grown resistant to eradication by pesticides. Insecticide-resistant caterpillars - the 'Helicoverpa armigera known as the cotton bollworm or Old World (African) bollworm - wreaked havoc on crops and producers' livelihoods in 1991, 1996 and 2000.

GM crops were supposed to be a win-win solution - reducing the number of pesticide treatments as well as boosting yields by as much as 90 percent, boosting per hectare profits. Celestin Dala, a producer in Nayala in the west of the country, said that "with GM cotton two treatments are required - six with conventional."

In 2003, Burkina authorised experimental planting by US seed giant Monsanto and Swiss multinational Syngenta. Then in 2007, Burkina launched large-scale production of transgenic cotton. Two years later, the authorities ordered farmers to seed up to 80 percent of their crop with the GM variant, leading to a reduction in labour time and facilitating the backbreaking work involved.

Tactical withdrawal or timely warning

Researchers, political and community leaders were critical of the move to launch GM crops from the outset. "The principle of precaution was not respected," says Jean-Didier Zongo, a geneticist from the University of Ouagadougou, who accuses Monsanto of "criminal" acts. He alleges the firm provided insufficiently tested seed varieties.

"These allegations are false," fired back Monsanto spokesman Billy Brennan. He said Monsanto seeds have brought about "better yields, lower pesticide dosage and greater export volumes" to produce a "positive impact on 350,000 producer farms." President Kabore told AFP that Burkina Faso's authorities are "pursuing talks with Monsanto".

Though the country's producers are demanding redress for the loss of income they say they can think again in the future. "If in three, four or five years they (Monsanto) find a solution, there is no reason why we would not go back to towards GM", said Yameogo of Sofitex. "What we have here is a tactical withdrawal - not a total rejection of GM."

But organic activist Legay says Burkina Faso's decision to step back from transgenic cotton is "a timely warning for other African countries".

Source: AFP
The total number of tourists grew 18% to 803,770 in February compared with the same month last year, Statistics SA reported on Monday.

Ulrich Mueller via 123RF - O.R Tambo International Airport

Of these, about 30% were overseas visitors and 70% from other African countries, of which virtually all (97.3%) were from Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries.

UK tourists accounted for 22.3% of the total number of overseas tourists, followed by Germany, which accounted for 15.2%, the US was third with 9.5% and France fourth with 6.2%.

China, which ranked sixth, showed the biggest year-on-year growth with tourist numbers rising nearly 60% to 12,370.

UK tourists grew 14% to 52,280 and German tourists were up 22% to 35,779.

Source: Business Day
Thanks to the emergence of visual interactive response technology, the frustration of listening to numerous menu options before eventually being able to speak to an agent at a call centre is no longer the case.

Bruce Von Maltiz

Whether it is an insurer, a bank, or even a pay TV provider, consumers can easily get lost in the complicated hierarchical menu structure of a traditional interactive voice response (IVR) system. These are often poorly designed and can be incredibly frustrating to customers. Just think of how many times you have to enter your ID number or medical aid number only to have to repeat it when you are eventually able to speak to an agent, says Bruce von Maltitz, co-founder at 1Stream.

With people having access to virtually any information on their mobile device, the digital age has created a consumer expectation of being more in control of the service experience. This shift to a self-service environment is resulting in more call centres rethinking their strategies.

Customers are used to navigating through websites and using applications on smartphones, creating a perfect entry point for visual IVR. As the name suggests, with visual IVR, a list is displayed showing easy-to-use menu options for customers to select on their device of choice before even making a phone call. The system can also show the expected wait time before an agent is available so a customer can decide to either click the 'dial now' option or have the company contact them on a platform of their choice, says Von Maltitz.

Hongqi Zhang via 123RF

Access to choices

This means that if there are, for example, ten calls in the queue ahead of the customer, the call me option will save their position. So the call centre agent will contact them when they get to the front. With visual IVR, it is all about offering people the ability to access the choices and information that have traditionally been handled by legacy IVR systems.

It creates an incredibly efficient way of managing customer queries and saves time for both the end-user and the agent. Thanks to the ubiquity of technology such as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephony, companies do not even have to rely on telephone numbers. Simply provide a 'call now' button on the website and a customer can instantly chat to an agent.

Von Maltitz admits that visual IVR is still slow on the uptake in South Africa, but believes it is only a matter of time before momentum shifts. In an ultra-competitive market facing challenging economic conditions, companies can ill afford not to be seen as customer champions. Visual IVR gives them the platform to do so. The business case for moving to this environment becomes a difficult one to ignore for too long, he concludes.
From the beginning of May there will be a new presenter on the Daron Mann Breakfast Show (DMB) on Algoa FM.

Lee Duru, who started her early radio career in Port Elizabeth as a presenter on Ubuntu Radio Station, and is now a recognised actress, voice-over artist and filmmaker, has decided to return to her radio roots in Port Elizabeth as a co-host on Algoa FMs Daron Mann Breakfast Show.

Duru has a successful background in the South African film and TV industry, working across numerous broadcast mediums. Best known for her roles in Leon Schusters Mama Jack (2005), Home Affairs (2007) and Zambezia (2012), she was also the director of popular SABC 2 sitcom, Stokvel, and held various behind-the-scenes positions for Penguin Films productions.

She has worked in various corporate roles in communications, marketing and change management at institutions such as Transnet Port Terminals, Transnet SOC Ltd, NMMU Business School and General Motors SA. She is fluent in isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans, and is passionate about the city and province as a whole.

Bubbly and opinionated coupled with a depth of experience in the media industry and corporate world, makes Lee a good fit for our team and a huge asset to Algoa FM, says Algoa FMs operations director, Alfie Jay.

I am really looking forward to being on air with Daron and Charlton, two consummate professionals with whom Ive spent the last month in studio, learning the ropes and getting to know their quirky sense of humour. Im now eagerly awaiting the opportunity to add my voice to the successful team and connect with the listeners across Algoa Country, says Duru.

Lee has fitted in quickly and we are eager to see how the chemistry between the three of us develops once she gets behind the microphone, says Mann.

One thing is for sure, the DMB will never be the same again, he says.




The Loeries' next round of ' How to Enter' workshops will take place in both Cape Town and Johannesburg on Wednesday, 4 May.

Aimed at agencies and brands alike, the sessions offer helpful tips to hone your 2016 Loeries entries, whether youve entered before or not. Attendees will gain insight into the entry process, how the judging works, as well as how best to prepare your entries, along with a heads-up on what to look forward to from Loeries Creative Week, such as this year's MasterClasses, the DStv Seminar of Creativity, this year's networking sessions and the awards ceremonies themselves.

Cape Town

Time: 8:30am for 9am (ends at 10:30am) on Wednesday, 4 May.

Venue: Southern Sun The Cullinan, 1 Cullinan St, Cape Town City Centre.

Johannesburg

Time: 7am for 7:30am (ends at 9am) on Wednesday, 4 May.

Venue: Loeries Office: 24 7th Avenue, Parktown North, 2193.

While entry is free (along with tea and coffee), attendance is limited, so be sure to secure your spot by emailing moc.seireol@retne.
WASHINGTON - Gannett on Monday announced a bid for Tribune Publishing for $815 million, in a deal that would consolidate the owner of USA Today with the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.

The plan would bring together two large newspaper groups which have been spun off from larger media conglomerates amid ongoing woes in the print sector.

The plan "would deliver substantial strategic and financial benefits for the combined company," said Gannett chairman John Jeffry Louis.

"A combination with Tribune would rapidly advance Gannett's strategy to grow the USA Today network, the largest local to national network of journalists in the country, to include more local markets and new platforms, which we believe will benefit readers and result in significant and sustained value creation for Gannett stockholders."

Gannett chief executive Robert Dickey said the deal "would bring together two highly complementary organizations with a shared goal of providing trusted, premium content for the readers and communities we serve."

Gannett, spun off from its parent group last year, operates more than 100 newspapers but the deal would give it major metropolitan dailies in Los Angeles, Chicago and Baltimore.

Tribune Publishing said in a statement it had received the proposal and would respond "as quickly as feasible."

The group was spun off the larger Tribune Co. in 2014, and has been examining options such as the sale of the coveted Los Angeles daily.

Source: AFP
Over 40 journalists and media experts have assessed the state of media freedom and expression, access to information and media pluralism and diversity in sub-Saharan Africa - providing all articles for publication to all media at no charge on World Press Freedom Day.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) has advised all print, online and broadcasting media editors, as well as specialist media publications, newsletters and journalism initiatives, that a portfolio of over 40 quality articles and video content on free media, free expression and access to information in sub-Saharan Africa, are available to them for print and online publication or broadcasting.

The articles, written by journalists and media experts from West, East and Southern Africa, are being made available by MISA in order to celebrate the 25th anniversary of UNESCOs 1991 Windhoek Declaration on an Independent and Pluralistic African Press.

The UN proclaimed the date of adoption of this ground-breaking Declaration, 3 May as World Press Freedom Day (WPFD). The articles, accompanying pictures and short video messages can be accessed online for immediate use in the run up to, on or after WPFD 3 May 2016, at whk25.misa.org (select WHK25 MEDIA KIT).

The articles are being made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Regional director of MISA, Zoe Titus, said from the organisations regional headquarters in Windhoek, Namibia: MISA decided in consultation with a range of other African media freedom NGOs and experts to publish a special newspaper with broad popular appeal to general readers on WPFD this year, under the title of the African Free Press.

We will distribute the newspaper on 3 May at various WPFD events across Africa in partnership with other media freedom organisations, but are also making the articles and audio-visual content accesible online on MISAs website. In this way we hope to extend their reach as a public information service to citizens in Africa and to provide African media with a range of stimulating content from which to choose.

However, any media, NGOs and other organisations in the world are also free to make use of any of this content and are not restricted to publishing these only on WPFD 2016.

The two co-editors of the African Free Press, Jeanette Minnie and Hendrik Bussiek  both experts on media freedom challenges in sub-Saharan Africa, have commissioned articles on a wide range of topics pertinent to the African media environment.

Online editor, Kyle James, commissioned a series of video messages asking an important question: 'What do young people want from their media?' James also adapted the written articles for online publication. (Those versions are available on MISAs website.)

The articles and other Declaration-related information will be featured on various social media channels in the run-up to WPFD.

Throughout the project MISA was supported by its long-term partner - DW Akademie (Germany's leading organisation for international media development); the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida); fesmedia Africa - the Africa media project of (Germanys) Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES); and the Namibia Media Trust through The Namibian newspaper and WordPress Namibia.

*Additional source: www.MISA.org and www.DW-Akademie.de.
More than a thousand people demonstrated in Prague against neo-Nazism and hate speech

25. 4. 2016

cas cteni 1 minuta





More than a thousand people demonstrated in Prague on Monday afternoon under the banner "Prague is not afraid". The demonstrators protested against neo-Nazi slogans which had been daubed on several shop fronts and a number of other places in Prague.

"We do not want to live in a city where people would have to be afraid. We do not want to live in a country where equality is regarded as an extremist view. I want to tell those people who spread hatred: We will stand up against you because solidarity is stronger," said one of the participants.

Many demonstrators have also criticised Czech President Milos Zeman who, as they said, uses his official spokesperson to tell people that a civil war is raging in the Czech Republic. The demonstrators disagree with this view. "Hatred has no place in the Czech Republic. Hatred does not suit us," said one of the organisers of the demonstration.

Source in Czech HERE

There are stories like this in the Czech Republic every day that never make it to the outside world because of a lack of translation. You can support us and help reveal what's happening in Central Europe today. Please make a contribution today on www.paypal.com and send your donation to redakce@blisty.cz. We fully rely on crowdfunding in our work. Thank you.

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U Gambira was arrested on January 19th this year while visiting Burma from his home in Thailand to obtain a new passport.

U Gambira is in Obo prison while his trial continues, and was refused bail. Burma Campaign UK stated that he suffers from physical and mental illness, which requires him to take regular medication, and should therefore have been granted bail.

The charges against U Gambira are politically motivated because of his political activities in the past, Wai Hnin, Campaigns Officer at Burma Campaign UK, said.

He was a leader of the Saffron Revolution and he has been through several arrests and horrific torture. He should be released immediately so that he can continue his medical treatment. I hope that the NLD-led government will work to release U Gambira and the remaining political prisoners in Burma.

He is currently being detained in Obo prison while his trial continues. He was refused bail despite the fact that he is suffering from physical and mental illness, which requires him to take regular medication.

The charges against U Gambira are politically motivated because of his political activities in the past, said Wai Hnin, Campaigns Officer at Burma Campaign UK. He was a leader of the Saffron Revolution and he has been through several arrests and horrific torture, Wai Hnin added.

U Gambira is connected with the All-Burma Monks Alliance, which was part of the 2007 Saffron Revolution  a series of public demonstrations by monks in Burma calling for democratic reform which was brutally crushed by the military.
It was initially reported that the factory, based on the Thai-Burma border, lost as much as 100 million Baht since all of its wood logs, the building, the crane and the sawmill were incinerated. However, various media outlets are reporting that it was only one million Baht.

on.

The fire started from cooking rice with a gas-oven at the factory, near Quarter No.1. It was a factory worker that was cooking the rice. He is a Bamar ethnic and now facing arson charges, said a local of the TPP.

Three firefighter trucks from the TPP town (Burma side) and six firefighter trucks from Thailand side attended the scene. Due to the amount of timber and sawdust, the fire raged and eventually died down around 6 AM. The embers were extinguished at noon.

It was reportedly stated that the factory is owned by a Thai businessman but the land plot belongs to an officer from the Karen National Union (KNU).

Factories of wood products and furniture products on prevalent on Burma sides of TPP town and are exported daily to Thailand sides of TPP Town.
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Kansas Governor Sam Brownback evidently became bored with making Kansas a worse place to live so he's taking his talents worldwide.

Governor Brownback has announced today that the state will stop cooperating with the federal government in its effort to resettle Syrian refugees.

Why? In so many words, the governor has basically implied that the Obama administration has not sufficiently reassured him that they aren't resettling terrorists.

"Because the federal government has failed to provide adequate assurances regarding refugees it is settling in Kansas, we have no option but to end our cooperation with and participation in the federal refugee resettlement program," Brownback said. [...] Brownback did not say in his announcement how many Syrian refugees were slated to be settled in Kansas and his press office could not immediately provide the number.

The great irony of Brownback's decision is that he is ceding more power to the federal government. The state has the option of cooperating with the federal government in a joint program, but if the state backs out of the agreement, as Brownback has done, the federal government still has the authority to resettle refugees in Kansas.

Refugees may still be settled in Kansas by the diabolical Obama administration, but Kansas will have no influence in how it's done.

If you're Sam Brownback and you're purportedly concerned about security, how does this help?
(Cartoonist - David Fitzsimmons)

In other news, state employees in Alabama had the day off today for Slavery Day I mean Treason Day err... Confederate Memorial Day.

Meanwhile, the RNC says it will not participate in the doomed-to-failed Kasich/Cruz alliance against Donald Trump. Here comes the Trump nomination!

And finally, Charter is now the official owner of Time Warner Cable after reaching an agreement with the Department of Justice.

Under the seven-year settlement, Charter is prohibited from entering into or enforcing any agreement with a programmer that forbids or limits the provision of content to streaming sites. Charter also cant retaliate against programmers for licensing to those services. [...] The agreement, which imposes a monitor to ensure compliance by Charter, also prohibits the company from charging fees for online video providers to connect to its network, Wheeler said.

Canceling my cable TV is one of the best decisions I've ever made. I now use Sling TV.
While Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid tries and fails to persuade Republicans to fully fund the fight against the Zika virus, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has found time to fast-track a pair of bills that would serve as back-door cuts to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The bills fast-tracked by McConnell wouldn't necessarily cut the agency's budget but it would prevent them from hiring or spending money.

It's the manner in which the legislation would accomplish this that's truly ridiculous.

One proposal would prevent the IRS from hiring new employees until the Treasury Department either certifies that no agency employees have seriously delinquent tax debt or issues a report explaining why it cannot make that certification. Democrats argue the legislation would undermine customer service by making it more difficult for the agency to hire new employees. [...] The second proposal would block the IRS from spending the user fees it collects without approval from Congress.

Are we certain that no members of Congress or their staff have outstanding debt?

How exactly is the IRS suppose to perform a roto-rooter on its employees and/or replace them if they can't hire new employees? How is the IRS suppose to collect that debt if it cannot hire and cannot spend the fees it collects?

"Bueller?"

The White House has stated that President Obama will veto these bills if they reach his desk.
1 It starts with a booking It starts with a booking The only way to leave a review is to first make a booking. That's how we know our reviews come from real guests who have stayed at the property.

2 Followed by a trip Followed by a trip When guests stay at the property they check out how quiet the room is, how friendly the staff are and more.
Located in the Namdaemun area of Myeongdong, Hotel Gracery Seoul offers an accommodation with a city view near popular tourist destinations. Guests can use free WiFi at this newly built hotel.

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Offering free WiFi in all areas and on-site parking, Shilla Stay Mapo of Samsung Group is located only a 2-minute walk from Exit 1 and 9 of Gongdeok Subway Station (Line 5 and 6, Airport Railroad Line...

LOTTE City Hotel Mapo is located above five levels of shops and clinics, and offers an indoor pool, a fitness centre and a car park.

Shilla Stay Seocho is located in Gangnanm, on Baengbaeng Sageori, and houses an on-site restaurant and a bar. The hotel offers free WiFi in all areas as well as 24-hour front desk services.

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Located in the Guro Digital Complex that offers a variety of shops and restaurants, LOTTE City Hotel Guro is a luxurious hotel.

Offering a restaurant and a fitness centre, Four Points by Sheraton Josun, Seoul Station is directly connected to Seoul Station via an underground passage.

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This is a Preferred Partner property. It is committed to providing guests with a positive experience thanks to its commendable service and good value. This property may pay Booking.com a bit more to be in this Programme.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. Armenpress presents on the air of LRATVAKAN radio all that you will read, hear and see in todays news.

Armenian Healthcare Minister Armen Muradyan will meet WHO European office director Zsuzsanna Jakab today. Jakab will introduce the new WHO Yerevan Office director and will discuss upcoming joint projects.

Discussions on the Electoral Code will continue. The Building consensus on the new Electoral Code discussion will begin today. It is organized by the EU Eastern Partnerships Civil Society Forums Armenian national platform and the Friedrich Naumann For Freedom Foundation.

Deputy Director of the Caucasus Institute Sergey Minasyan, Advisor of the NKR permanent representation in Armenia Garnik Isagulyan, SDHP Armenian representation chairman Narek Galstyan, Director of the Institute of Eastern Studies Ruben Safrastyan and others will discuss the 4-day April war of NKR, its consequences, effects on the negotiations, and the internal and external challenges.

Psychologist Karine Nalchajyan, Head of the Internet Society NGO Grigor Saghyan and sociologist Aharon Adibekyan will discuss the societys trend of change regarding perception of the Genocide and its reflection in the internet.

Write Hovsep Hayreni has arrived in Armenia from Belgium. Today he will present 2 of his books, which are about the relations of Armenians and Kurds in the years of the Armenian Genocide and about the deportations of Armenians of Dersim.

The annual award ceremony of the Tekeyan Cultural Union will take place today. 2015 laureates are:

Literature: Davit Hovhannes  New Alarms

Music: Robert Amirkhanyan  Life of the Poet

Arts: Paravon Mirzoyan  Mass

Childrens poetry: Circus school after Ara Maral  Gevorg Ginosyan

Peoples friendship international childrens Contest-Festival is taking place. The festival encompasses different age groups in dance, singing and chorus. Representatives of minorities living in Armenia are also taking part in the contest-festival. Today, details will be presented during a press conference.

You can read about these and other topics on armenpress.am and listen to the news on the air of LRATVAKAN radio. Follow us on TWITTER and FACEBOOK.
YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS. The details of the explosion of the bus N63 on Halabyan Street of Yerevan are being clarified. Armenpress reports head of the press service of the Police of Armenia Ashot Aharonyan told the reporters at the scene. Answering the remark of a reporter that the version of a terror act is circulated on the social networks, Aharonyan answered, It is early to speak about it yet, I gave you all the information I possess at the moment.

Ashot Aharonyan added that traffic will be stopped for a while in that street.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. The explosion of the bus that took place in Yerevans Halabyan Street is not conditioned by gas or fuel, Armenpress reports Police Chief of the Republic of Armenia Vladimir Gasparyan told the reporters. He confirmed that there was no gas explosion as the bus operated by diesel fuel.

The explosion was not fragmentary, but wavy, the Police Chief said. To the question about a possible terror act, Gasparyan answered that this not the proper moment to confirm or deny, as all the data is preliminary. All the circulated versions can change 10 minutes later. Let me not to tell you anything about this now, the Police Chief added. He also added that in two hours some details will be available.

Vladimir Gasparyan added that 7 people were hospitalized after the explosion, one of which has already been discharged.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. 2 people died and 7 received injuries of different severity as a result of a bus explosion in Yerevans Halabyan Street on April 25. As Armenpress was informed from the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Armenia, one of the injured has been already discharged from hospital, two others are in critical health condition. Works are underway to identify the two victims.

Police Chief of Armenia Vladimir Gasparyan informed the reporters that the explosion has been fixed by traffic cameras. According to him, the explosion occurred on the second seat of the right wing of the bus. The Police Chief did not rule out the possibility that the explosive substance was with the person sitting on that seat. Works are underway to identify that person.

The Police Chief told that more detailed information will be available in the morning.

Immediately after the incident Vladimir Hakobyan, Press Secretary of Armenias President, issued a statement over the rescue and investigative activities conducted at the scene of the bus explosion. The statement mentioned that the President of the Republic is regularly briefed on the works. President Sargsyan has instructed the Police of the Republic of Armenia to reinforce patrol service.

The Ministry of Health takes all necessary measures to provide the injured with adequate medical aid. We call on the public to avoid spreading unconfirmed information, says the statement.

According to the statement of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic of Armenia, a criminal case has been initiated in relation to the explosion, under the proceeding of the Special Investigative Service of the Republic of Armenia. An investigative group of experts conducts a crime scene examination; urgent investigative, procedural and operational intelligence operations are underway.
YEREVAN, 26 APRIL, ARMENPRESS: Armenia urges the Co-Chair countries, the international community to immediately undertake all necessary measures to oblige Azerbaijan to strictly abide to the 1994 ceasefire agreement and to implement its international commitments to refrain from the threat or use of force. As Armenpress was informed from the Press Service of the Armenian MFA, the Ministry issued a statement on April 25, reacting to the provocative behavior of Azerbaijan.

The statement runs as follows : Today at the UN General Assembly and Security Council Azerbaijan has disseminated yet another provocative letter dated April 14, 2016, where, striving to put the blame on Armenia, it unilaterally denounced May 12, 1994 trilateral ceasefire agreement signed between Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia without time limitations.

Armenia strongly condemns this step whereby Azerbaijan grossly breaches May 1994 ceasefire agreement, as well as casts doubt on the July 1994 agreement on the reinforcement of ceasefire and the February 1995 agreement on the consolidation of ceasefire. Notably, the July 1994 agreement requires Azerbaijan to maintain the ceasefire regime until signing of the big political agreement.

In this regard the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs already have expressed their position to Azerbaijan, including at the OSCE, in particular stating that 1994 and 1995 agreements, whose terms do not expire, as before, make up the foundation of the cessation of hostilities in the conflict zone. The Co-Chairs called on to strictly adhere to the above-mentioned agreements and not to permit their violation. Disregarding this call, Azerbaijan resorted to this provocative step.

It is necessary to underline that the oral arrangement reached in Moscow on April 5, 2016, to which Azerbaijan refers in its letter, was directed at the cessation of aggressive actions unleashed by Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh and, as the Co-Chairs have stated, to restore the ceasefire regime. It is obvious, that the mentioned oral arrangement cannot replace the May 12, 1994 ceasefire agreement.

The 1994 and 1995 trilateral ceasefire agreements have for years served as a basis for preserving the fragile ceasefire. Any harm to these agreements is a serious obstacle for the peace process, hinders the efforts of the Co-Chairs and the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman in Office and undermines regional security.

Armenia urges the Co-Chair countries, the international community to immediately undertake all necessary measures to oblige Azerbaijan to strictly abide to the 1994 ceasefire agreement and to implement its international commitments to refrain from the threat or use of force.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia states that, taking into consideration the possible dangerous consequences emanating from this irresponsible step of Azerbaijan, and as a signatory party to 1994 and 1995 existing agreements on the ceasefire and the consolidation of the ceasefire, Armenia will exert every possible effort and carry out all necessary steps to guarantee the security of Nagorno-Karabakh and its population.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. 8 people are wounded as a result of the passenger bus explosion on April 26, 04:20 in the crossroad of Halabyan-Arzumanyan streets in Yerevan. The wounded are : Hasmik S. Melkonyan born 1963, Anush A. Eghikyan born 1979, Harutyun N. Terzyan born 1971, Edgar A. Gasparyan born 2002, Anahit S. Mikayelyan born 2001, Roland S. Khojayan born 2001, Aregnaz S. Dalechyan born 1955, Artur V. Margaryan born 1994. The wounded have been hospitalized in the Armenia Medical Center. All of the wounded are citizens of Armenia.

2 people have died. Their identities are being clarified.

A criminal case has been filed at the Investigative Committee of Armenia in connection with the April 25 passenger bus explosion in Yerevan.

Police Chief Vladimir Gasparyan told reporters the explosion has been recorded by traffic cameras. According to the Police Chief, the explosion happened on the right side of the bus, 2nd seat of the front.

The Police Chief did not exclude the possibility that the explosive device might have been carried aboard the bus by the passenger of that seat, whose identity is being clarified.

Press Secretary of the President Vladimir Hakobyan issued a statement immediately after the incident. The statement reads that the President is regularly being briefed on the situation. President Sargsyan has instructed the Police to reinforce patrol.


A file photo.

NEW DELHI (PTI): Army chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag on Monday asked his top commanders to maintain a very high degree of vigil and operational preparedness along "disputed" borders.



Addressing the three-day Army Commanders' Conference which started here on Monday, he also stressed on the necessity of speeding up army's modernisation and capability development initiatives.



The conference comes in the backdrop of the recently concluded exercise 'Shatrujeet', in which about 30,000 soldiers took part, led by the elite Mathura-based Strike Corp in Rajasthan.



The soldiers honed their skills to counter chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) warfare among other attacks.



Singh stressed on the necessity to maintain a very high degree of vigil and operational preparedness along "disputed" borders, a statement by the Army said.



He complimented the commanders and troops for "successfully executing recent counter-terrorism operations while displaying due restraint".



He emphasised on all commanders to continuously monitor and maintain internal health, values and ethics in all formation and units, it said.



The conference is the highest level army meet held to discuss the current internal and external strategic issues, review of operational preparedness of Indian Army and aspects pertaining to training, administration, military technology and force modernisation.



Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar also addressed the conference, among othes.




A file photo.

WASHINGTON (PTI): Observing that the bilateral trade between India and the US has plateaued, two top American Senators on Monday called for jump-starting the economic ties by fast-tracking bilateral investment treaty (BIT) with special emphasis in the defence sector.



Speaking at the launch of India-US Trade Initiative by Atlantic Council, a top US think-tank, American Senators John Cornyn and Mark Warner called for a special focus in the defence sector and new areas for co-development and co-production.



"We can do a lot better. The defence industry can be and should be a major piece for this...especially for security and economic reasons," Cornyn said in his address.



Cornyn along with Warner are the Co-Chairs of the Senate India Caucus, which is the only India specific caucus in the US Senate.



Noting that India-US bilateral trade has plateaued now, Cornyn called for taking up steps and initiatives that kick start the bilateral trade.



One of them, he said is the US working to make India a member of APEC. A legislation in this regard is pending in the US Senate and the House of Representatives.



In his address, Senator Warner called for a focused approach in the defence sector.



Praising the Defence Trade and Technology Initiative (DTTI), a brainchild of the Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter in his previous capacity at the Pentagon, Warner called for new areas for co-development and co-production.



"The amount of bilateral visits (in recent months) in the defence sector is very encouraging," he said as he identified armed drones, aircraft and missile systems as areas for co-development and co-production in the defence sectors.



Measures like this he said would help achieve the goal of USD 500 billion in bilateral trade, which has been set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama.



Speaking on the occasion, India's Ambassador to the US, Arun K Singh, identified digital economy as one of the most important area of co-operation between India and the US.



India, he said, is on a massive infrastructure modernisation drive and has made appropriate changes in its policies to attract foreign direct investment, which has paid huge dividends in the last two years.



The Atlantic Council US-India Trade Initiative aims to generate American support for continued economic engagement in India and to forge collaboration on issues of trade and commerce, a media release said.



In an effort to leverage, sustain and promote the positive developments in trade relations between the two countries, the initiative will develop policy briefs and strategy papers, convene US-India trade workshops, and host a flagship US-India Trade Conference with policymakers, practitioners and private-sector leaders, it said.



The initiative will address seven of the most crucial areas of the US-India trade relationship, including smart cities, infrastructure, defence, financial institutions, insurance, trade agreements, and intellectual property rights, the Council said.




A file photo.

WASHINGTON (PTI): The US military conducted "freedom of navigation" operations against 13 countries last year, including India and China, according to an annual Pentagon report.



In the report for the period October 1, 2014 to September 30, 2015, the Pentagon said it exercised its right of freedom of navigation multiple times against China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Oman, the Philippines and Vietnam.



However, it did not give any further details in its two-page report.



The US military carried out single operations against Argentina, Nicaragua and Taiwan, the report said.



"Prior consent required for military exercises or maneuvers in the EEZ (exclusive economic zone)," the Pentagon report said on India.



On China, it said excessive maritime claims included excessive straight baselines; jurisdiction over airspace above the EEZ, restriction on foreign aircraft flying through an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) without the intent to enter national airspace; domestic law criminalizing survey activity by foreign entities in the EEZ; prior permission required for innocent passage of foreign military ships through the territorial seas (TTS).



In 2014, the US had challenged territorial claims of 18 countries including India, China and Brazil.



While China claims that the US is unnecessarily targeting it, the Pentagon says it conducts freedom of navigation operations around the world.



Such operations involve sending navy ships and military aircraft into areas where other countries have tried to limit access.






KAZAN (BNS): Russia has completed the construction of a Gepard-3.9-class frigate for the Vietnamese Navy. The vessel will be floated out on April 27, a news report said.



Russian Zelenodolsk Shipyard in the Volga area has built the third Project 11661 Gepard-3.9-class frigate for the Vietnamese Navy, a TASS report quoting the shipyard spokesman Andrey Spiridonov said.



The frigate will be put afloat on April 27 to undergo running trials, the spokesman said adding the ceremony of floating out the frigate will be attended by a delegation of the Vietnamese Navy.



The Vietnamese Navy received the first two Gepard-3.9-class frigates from Zelenodolsk Shipyard in 2011. Vietnam also signed a new contract for another two Project 11661 frigates.



The construction of the fourth Project 11661 frigate is nearing completion at the Zelenodolsk Shipyard, the report said.


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This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO  It cant be assumed that Allen Chan, the former CEO of Sino-Forest Corp., knew everything that was going on within the forestry company before its collapse, Chans lawyer told a securities tribunal Tuesday.

Emily Cole began delivering closing arguments in the Ontario Securities Commission case against five former Sino-Forest executives including Chan who stand accused of perpetrating fraud before the firms demise in 2012.

Cole said Chan relied heavily on the companys directors with regards to the companys finances, adding that it was reasonable for him to do so given that their knowledge of Canadian accounting and disclosure rules surpassed his own.

As a non-Canadian CEO with no North American training and no formal education in finance, corporate governance and other related matters, Chan often deferred to Canadians who sat on the companys board, said Cole.

He has an undergraduate sociology degree, said Cole.

During board meetings, Chans role was to comment on business matters and not the companys finances, Cole added.

Coles submissions contrast with those of Hugh Craig, the lawyer representing the OSC, who argued last week that Chan was a hands-on CEO and the controlling mind behind several frauds that robbed shareholders of value.

Sino-Forest, which was established in 1994, was the first and largest foreign-owned forestry company in China. The company conducted most of its business in that country even though it was based in Ontario.

At its peak, Sino-Forest was the most valuable forestry company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, with a market capitalization of $6 billion.

From June 2005 to March 2011, the companys shares rose by 340 per cent from $5.75 per share to $25.30 per share.

In addition to Chan, the OSC has accused former top executives Albert Ip, Alfred Hung, George Ho and Simon Yeung of lying to investors and misleading investigators by inflating the companys assets and revenue.

The OSC alleges the five men took part in deceitful conduct that included the fabrication of assets and revenue, undisclosed relationships with suppliers and customers and providing misleading documentation to support the alleged fraud.

The securities watchdog claims the executives misled investors by issuing false financial statements in every quarter from 2007 to 2010.

Cole argued on Tuesday that the avalanche of documents submitted by the securities watchdog should bear little weight in the case because unless the authors of those documents testify, they are merely hearsay.

In addition, many of the documents were written in Chinese, a language that is subject to interpretation, Cole said.

Also, many of the companys business practices, which may seem strange to North Americans, were a necessary prerequisite to doing business in China, said Cole.

In that country, business is premised on trust and relationships and is less legalistic, and people are less skilled and more likely to make mistakes, she said.

(OSC) staff would have you believe that what is odd is fraud, said Cole. That is not the law.

The OSC has previously argued that because Sino-Forest was headquartered in Ontario and traded on the Toronto stock market, it should abide by Canadian rules, regardless of the fact that its operations were in China, where business customs may differ.

Follow @alexposadzki on Twitter.
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MONTREAL  The National Energy Boards final report on the Energy East pipeline project should be completed by March 2018, the federal regulator announced Tuesday.

Consultations with communities along the proposed pipeline route will begin this August and a preliminary timeline has the report being issued 19 months later.

The fate of the pipeline ultimately rests with the federal government, which will take the NEBs final report into account before announcing a decision on the project.

Ottawa will also be presented with Quebecs ruling on the pipeline, which is scheduled to come down in June 2018.

The Quebec government recently announced a revised schedule of hearings into the portion of the pipeline that travels over its territory, telling the company promoting the pipeline in a letter that public consultations should resume in October.

Quebecs BAPE (the French-language acronym for the environment review body) should have its report on the project ready by February, the letter stated, followed by another review of the project by the provincial Environment Department in March 2018.

The letter to TransCanada (TSX:TRP) states the Quebec government could have its decision ready a few months after that.

Hearings into the Quebec portion of the project were scheduled to resume this week but were suspended after TransCanada agreed to the provincial governments request to provide more detailed information about the pipeline.

Energy East would bring 1.1 million barrels of oil a day from Alberta and Saskatchewan through Quebec and into New Brunswick for overseas shipping.

The first hearings before the BAPE wrapped up in March with citizens from across the province grilling TransCanada executives on the risks and costs associated with the pipeline.

Energy East is popular in Western Canada but has encountered stiff opposition in Quebec, with politicians, citizens and ecologists arguing the environmental risks outweigh the economic rewards.
STEPANAKERT, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. Two Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army soldiers have been killed as a result of Azerbaijani ceasefire violations overnight April 25-26 in the NKR-Azerbaijan line of contact. The NKR Defense Ministry issued a statement, as Armenpress reports, the statement reads:

Overnight April 25-26 Azerbaijan violated the ceasefire agreement in the NKR-Azerbaijan line of contact more than 80 times. Azerbaijan used almost every artillery and armored equipment of its arsenal, in particular 60mm (26 shells), 82 mm (75 shells) mortars, RPG -7 (7 grenades), SPG-9 (2 grenades) and AGS-17 (3 grenades) grenade launchers, ZU-23-2 (200 shots) antiaircraft weapon system, TR-107 rocket system and a tank. In addition to targeting military positions, Azerbaijan shelled the Martakert civilian settlement by firing 14 rockets from MM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers. Mataghis was also shelled by artillery fire (8 shells).

As a result of the Azerbaijani ceasefire violations, Defense Army soldiers Tigran M. Poghosyan (born 1992) and Aram N. Arushanyan (born 1972) were mortally wounded.

The NKR Defense Army shares the grief of loss and expresses its support to the family, relatives and co-servicemen of the killed soldiers.

The NKR Army took countermeasure to suppress the Azerbaijani aggression and targeted Azerbaijani frontline positions and artillery bases, causing significant manpower and equipment loss.

Currently the situation is relatively calm along the border.
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(Special)  While the Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) has become a pillar of financial retirement planning in Canada since it was introduced almost 50 years ago, the popular savings vehicle can have both positive and negative tax consequences.

The main advantage of an RRSP is tax deferral. The money can grow and is not taxed until it is withdrawn when the account is converted into a Registered Retirement Income Fund at age 71. Tax deferral is a benefit because no tax is paid on the annual earnings so more money is available to continue to grow.

Another advantage is the tax deduction aspect of RRSPs. This means your taxable income is reduced by the amount you contribute up to a certain limit. In theory the money will be taxed when your income and marginal tax rate tend to be lower in retirement that in your peak earning years when you can claim the tax deduction.

The maximum contribution room generated annually is 18 per cent of your previous years income up to a maximum of $24,930 in 2015 and $25,370 in 2016 minus any pension plan adjustment if you are a member of a pension plan.

The RRSP has an added benefit of allowing you to carry forward unused contribution room indefinitely. Canadians currently have an estimated $700 billion in unused RRSP contribution room.

New changes in the federal tax rate for middle and high-income earners announced by the Liberal government in Ottawa may provide some planning opportunities for taxpayer who contributed to their RRSPs in 2015 or in the first 60 days of 2016.

The federal tax rate on earnings between $45,282 and $90,563 will drop to 20.5 per cent from 22 per cent, putting a maximum of $679.22 more a year in the pockets of many Canadians when the reform is implemented in the 2016 income tax year.

Its not a huge amount but people could use it to pay off debt or reinvest in their RRSPs or other accounts, says Aurele Courcelles, vice president of tax and estate planning with Investors Group. The important thing is to get the maximum value out of what is available.

The new government also raised the federal tax rate on earnings over $200,000 to 33 per cent from 29 per cent. Some provinces such as Alberta have recently raised their tax rates on high incomes as well.

The changing tax rates can offer some planning opportunities, says Courcelles. If Canadians contributed to their RRSP for 2015 those with income in the tax bracket with a rate reduction should likely deduct their RRSP contributions on their 2015 tax return. Those who expect their table income to be in excess of $200,000 in 2016 may want to consider deferring some or all of the RRSP deduction and claim their contribution in 2016 against the higher rates.

Perhaps the biggest no-no associated with RRSPs is to withdraw money early.

If you withdraw up to $5,000 you pay a 21 per cent withholding tax in Quebec and 10 per cent in all other provinces. Withdrawals between $5,001 and $15,000 are taxed at 26 per cent in Quebec and 20 per cent in other provinces and early withdrawals over $15,000 are taxed at 31 per cent in Quebec and 30 per cent in all other provinces.

And there are other penalties.

Once you withdraw the money it is considered income and will be added to your total income and you are taxed on that as well. Once youve withdrawn the money it is removed from the contribution room available to you and you cannot re-contribute it later, once the money is out you have to start over again to save it and you lose the compounding growth that you could have gotten if it had stayed in.

Two exceptions are withdrawing funds and investing in the first time home buyers and the lifelong learning plans, which allow you to withdraw certain amounts from your RRSP to buy your first home or go back to school and repay it within a certain time without paying tax.

Making an RRSP withdrawal to free up funds should only be considered as a last resort because there are tax consequences, so check with a financial professional to see if you have any other options.

Talbot Boggs is a Toronto-based business communications professional who has worked with national news organizations, magazines and corporations in the finance, retail, manufacturing and other industrial sectors.

Copyright 2016 Talbot Boggs
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This article was published 25/04/2016 (2373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LETHBRIDGE, Alta.  A jury has found David and Collet Stephan guilty of failing to provide the necessaries of life for their 19-month-old son Ezekiel. A medical examiner ruled the boy died of bacterial meningitis. Here are some key dates court heard about in the last days of the boys life:

August 20, 2010: Ezekiel Stephan is born at home with the assistance of birthing assistant Terry Meynders, who is also a registered nurse.

February 27, 2012: Ezekiel takes ill at the family home in Glenwood, Alta. His mother describes him as having a cold, stuffy nose and trouble breathing. The sound he was making was heartwrenching. This isnt the kind of sound you want to hear from your child, she testifies later at the trial.

February 28-March 5, 2012: Ezekiel is treated for what his parents believed to be croup, an upper airway infection that leads to a barking cough. In addition to regular smoothies, they give the boy olive leaf extract, garlic, hot peppers and horseradish. They also attempt to help his breathing with cool air and a humidifier.

March 5, 2012: Ezekiel seems to improve. His father says the boy is not 100 per cent, but he no longer has any difficulty breathing and is able to go to preschool. He plays with his toys and manages to eat some solid food.

March 6, 2012: Ezekiel suffers a setback. He is unusually lethargic, lays in bed the entire day and his only response is to moan unhappily. He doesnt eat or drink and is exhibiting unusual neurological symptoms.

March 7, 2012: Ezekiel seems to improve again. His abnormal movements stop and he can watch TV, but still isnt playing normally.

March 8-10, 2012: Ezekiels parents note he seems to be gradually improving. He regains a bit of his appetite, but is not active or playful.

March 11, 2012: Ezekiels symptoms worsen again. He refuses to eat or drink and is lethargic. His parents notice his body is very stiff.

March 12, 2012: Ezekiels body is so stiff that his back is arched. He is getting fluids through an eyedropper because he will not drink on his own. Meynders comes to the home and checks his vitals. She suggests he could possibly have viral meningitis and says she tells the mother she should take the boy to a doctor. It did not jump out at me that he was that seriously ill, Meynders testifies.

March 13, 2012: The Stephans head to Lethbridge to pick up an echinacea mixture from a naturopath. Ezekiel is too stiff to sit in his car seat and has to lie on a mattress in the vehicle. Back at home that evening, the boy stops breathing on a couple of occasions before his parents leave home to meet an ambulance. The breathing equipment in the ambulance it too large to properly help a small child. The boy is taken to hospital in Cardston and then to Lethbridge for transport to Calgary by air.

March 14, 2012: Ezekiel arrives at Alberta Childrens Hospital in Calgary where doctors tell the parents the boy is showing very little brain activity and the prognosis is bleak. He is put on life support.

March 16, 2012: Ezekiel dies.
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LETHBRIDGE, Alta.  The guilt or innocence of an Alberta couple accused of culpability in the meningitis death of their toddler is now in the hands of a jury.

David Stephan, 32, and Collet Stephan, 35, are charged with failing to provide the necessaries of life to nearly 19-month-old Ezekiel in March 2012.

The couple testified they believed that Ezekiel was suffering from croup or flu, so they treated him with remedies that included hot peppers, garlic, onions and horseradish over 2 1/2 weeks before he stopped breathing and was rushed to a nearby hospital.

David and Collet Stephan come out of the courthouse in Lethbridge, Alta. at the conclusion of closing arguments on Saturday, April 23, 2016. The couple is charged with failing to provide the necessaries of life for their son who died in 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Bill Graveland

The boy was then taken to the Alberta Childrens Hospital in Calgary where doctors detected little brain activity and he died a couple of days later.

The defence argues the couple were loving, responsible parents who simply didnt realize how sick the little boy was. The Crown says they didnt do enough to ensure Ezekiel received the medical treatment he required, noting they had been warned by a friend who was a registered nurse that the boy likely had meningitis.

The jury deliberated for several hours on Monday before retiring for the night; they will resume on Tuesday morning.

The case has drawn international attention, due in part because of the societal divide between those who do and dont believe in the natural medicine movement.

A website called Stand 4 Truth has been providing daily updates on the trial and comes with a link allowing people to donate to a fund for the couple.

In the event of a guilty verdict, the Stephans children will likely be separated from them for up to five years, said one recent post.

They will have permanent criminal records and will likely never have the opportunity to provide adequately for their family when they do get out of prison.

David Stephan declined comment Monday, but he told The Canadian Press in an interview before the trial that he believed he and his wife were charged because they didnt vaccinate their children and, in part, because his family helped start a nutritional supplements company.

His father, Anthony Stephan, co-founded Truehope Nutritional Support in Raymond, Alta., in 1996 after his wife committed suicide.

The companys website says the woman and some of the couples 10 children had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, so Anthony Stephan formed the company with a friend to find a natural treatment.

The company says one of their products, EMPowerplus, helps treat bipolar disorder, depression and even autism.

Truehope fought to be able to sell EMPowerplus for more than a decade before an Alberta judge ruled that it could be sold here as a drug. Its now shipped to more than 100 countries.

David Stephan, a Truehope vice-president, said he heard so many stories from parents about vaccinations causing autism in their children that he and his wife decided they wouldnt vaccinate their own kids.

He said that still held true for their three remaining boys  eight-year-old Ezra, three-year-old Ephraim and one-year-old Enoch.

Were actually more adamant than we ever were, he said in the pre-trial interview, adding they are a typical, loving family  not criminals.

If everybody could see it from exactly how we saw it, they would have a full understanding and be like, Oh wow, you were basically blindsided and didnt understand what was really going on. 

Justice Rodney Jerke spent two hours Monday in his charge to the jury, cautioning the four men and eight women that they had to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt to find the couple guilty.

You must not make your decisions based on sympathy, prejudice or fear, said Jerke. You are the judges of the facts. You must not use your own ideas about what the law should be.

As has been over the course of the six-week trial, the courtroom was full on Monday. More than 60 supporters filed in, many with crying children in tow, and sat behind the Stephans. Several gave Collet Stephan a hug during the break.

It was clear how emotional the issue was for many. Collet Stephan cried through much of her testimony and was joined in her grief by some supporters and at least two members of the jury who cried along with her.

Several times the couples supporters laughed at some of the questions from the prosecution or at answers from Crown witnesses. Jerke sent out the jury after some particularly loud outbursts and lectured spectators to maintain a sense of decorum, saying their disruptions were a distraction to both the lawyers and the jury.

The jurors will be sequestered until a verdict is reached.

The maximum penalty for failing to provide the necessaries of life is five years in prison.

 Follow @BillGraveland on Twitter
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PORTLAND, Ore.  Terminally ill Oregon patients with less than six months to live have been able to request lethal medication to end their lives since 1997. Heres how the state legalized aid in dying and how the law works.

How did the law come about?

Sen. Frank Roberts introduced a bill for medical aid in dying in the state legislature three times: in 1989, 1991 and 1993. The bill never passed, but a group of citizens circulated an initiative petition, which allows residents to place legislation on the popular ballot if they gather enough signatures.

In 1994, Oregon voters passed the Death with Dignity Act with 51 per cent in favour. The law languished amid court challenges until 1997, when legislators placed a measure on the ballot asking residents to repeal the act. That time, citizens voted 60 per cent in favour of keeping the law.

How does the law work?

Two doctors must diagnose a patient with a terminal illness that would cause death within six months. The patients request must be voluntary and confirmed by two witnesses, at least one of whom cannot be a family member. If doctors thinks a patients judgment is impaired, such as by mental illness, they must refer them to a psychiatrist for approval.

The patient must make two oral requests 15 days apart, and one written request. Once this process is complete, a doctor writes a prescription for a lethal dose of medication. The patient must physically take the medication. No one else can administer it.

What kind of medication is it?

Doctors most frequently prescribe Seconal or secobarbital, a barbiturate originally developed as a sleeping medication. Patients must take 10 grams of the drug, or about 100 capsules. After Quebec-based Valeant Pharmaceuticals doubled the price last year to about $3,000 for 100 pills, some doctors have begun searching for alternative medications.

What happens when a patient takes the medication?

The person typically falls asleep within a few minutes and dies within hours. The median time between ingestion and death in 2015 was 25 minutes, but at least one death took 36 hours. Critics say complications such as vomiting or people waking up are more common than reported, but advocates and family members describe the deaths as peaceful and gentle.

Do doctors and pharmacists have to participate?

No, participation is voluntary for all health-care workers. Doctors can refuse requests and do not have to refer patients, while pharmacists can refuse to fill prescriptions.

How many people have used aid in dying?

A total of 1,545 people have received prescriptions, and 991 patients have died from ingesting the medication. The number of users remains low but has increased in recent years. During 2014 and 2015, the number of annual prescriptions increased by an average of 24.4 per cent. Still, the rate of deaths using aid in dying last year was 38.6 per 10,000 total deaths.

What kind of people use aid in dying?

Cancer patients are by far the most common users of the law, comprising 77 per cent of those who have taken the medications. Eight per cent of users are ALS patients. Nearly all patients  96 per cent  are white. Most are over 65 and educated, with 45 per cent holding a bachelors degree or higher. The split between men and women is about even.

What are the controversies surrounding the law?

The debate surrounding aid in dying is mostly settled in Oregon, but a vocal minority continues to oppose it. Dr. William Toffler argues the law has corrupted the medical profession. He says some patients fear death doctors who push assisted death, while doctors have lost touch with their roles as healers and seekers of medical advances.

Research by psychiatrist Linda Ganzini has also shown that some terminally ill patients suffering from depression have been able to get prescriptions, despite safeguards meant to prevent that from happening. Of 18 people who used aid in dying to end their lives during her study, three met the clinical definition of depression when they were prescribed the pills.

What has been the impact of the law?

Advocates say there have been no documented complaints about exploitation or coercion, and no referrals have been made to Oregons Medical Board for failure to comply with the act. Opponents have catalogued a handful of cases where they allege people with early dementia or under financial pressure have used the law.

Former Oregon Hospice Association director Ann Jackson says the state had high-quality palliative care prior to the law and continues to rank highly among U.S. states. Ninety per cent of patients who use aid in dying are in hospice care and only 25 per cent report inadequate pain control.

Dr. Peter Reagan, a retired doctor and spokesman for advocacy group Compassion and Choices, says the law has resulted in more open communication with patients about all end-of-life options.

 Follow @ellekane on Twitter.
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HALIFAX  The sluggish pace of an upgrade to Nova Scotias prescription drug monitoring system drew a rebuke from the auditor general on Tuesday, who claimed the delays posed real risks to the provinces citizens.

Michael Pickup pointed to a recent criminal case, in which a doctor is alleged to have prescribed 50,000 pills to a patient who never received them, as an illustration of the importance of following up on safety recommendations in a timely manner.

He made the comments while releasing a review showing that only 60 per cent of about 400 auditor recommendations made in 2012 and 2013 had been completed, according to an analysis by his staff.

Nova Scotia Auditor General Michael Pickup addresses a news conference regarding his latest report in Halifax on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

Those included a failure by the education department to set up outcome standards for home schools, a lack of inventory control for Transport Department maintenance garages, and the failure to bring in the prescription monitoring system in a timely way.

The department agreed to put in a new drug utilization review process and framework by 2014  Were now in 2016 and the recommendations are still not done, said the auditor.

Pickup said the consequence of not moving more quickly has been to expose Nova Scotians to the potential abuse and misuse of prescriptions.

The report noted the case of Dr. Sarah Dawn Jones, who Bridgewater police arrested in February and accused of writing multiple prescriptions for oxycodone and oxyneo pills over a one-year period.

Health Minister Leo Glavine said the plan to bring in a monitoring system didnt occur as quickly as originally hoped, but promised that by June the auditors original recommendations would all be completed.

He said it took more time than expected to create a system that would monitor and flag problems in real time across the province.

We had a 30-day lag period before information could be entered into the system, which was certainly too long, he said outside the legislature.

The minister said it took a lot of time to send department staff to each pharmacy across the province and set up the information system. He added that the prescription drug monitoring system did assist police in some respects in the investigation of the Jones case.

The IWK Health Centre and the Nova Scotia Health Authority also faced some criticism in the auditors report for not moving more quickly to avoid breaches of computer systems that may contain personal health information.

Glavine said hes reviewing the auditors recommendations in this area.

Pickup also said in his report that the Department of Education still hasnt set clear and measurable learning objectives, for home schooling programs.

Education Minister Karen Casey said her department wont make that change because the rights of parents of about 1,000 children who are home schooled make it difficult to comply with the auditors recommendation.

We can work with parents to make the Nova Scotia curriculum available to them, she said.

But as far as imposing on parents who have chosen to home school a set of standards that are particular to the Nova Scotia curriculums, the Education Act doesnt allow us to do that.

Tim Houston, a Progressive Conservative member of the legislature, said the government could have moved more quickly on a number of files.

The ministers are saying, Yeah we should do that, and then theyre walking out of the room and theyre not doing anything, he said.

Four of the original 17 recommendations to upgrade the monitoring of how prescription drugs are handed out werent completed, according to Tuesdays report.

Those included the offices call for the department to change the system so there would be less manual review of the prescriptions and more automated flagging of potential problems.

Pickup wouldnt categorically state whether the case currently before the courts might have been detected sooner.

But he said his auditors warned four years ago that not moving on the recommendations meant there was a real risk, of the abuse and misuse of prescriptions occurring in the province.
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The Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation thinks it may have a better way to move Brandon high school students to and from school.

A letter penned by BNRC energy efficiency co-ordinator Hope Switzer was presented to Brandon School Division trustees recently.

Switzer proposes that the BSD discontinue the use of school buses to transport the divisions close to 2,700 high school students in favour of an arrangement that takes advantage of Brandon Transits city buses.

Its something Switzer says she has been considering for a long time.

I just recently started thinking about this idea again and how it could be paid for. Thats why I wrote the letter, she said.

The letter suggests such an arrangement would increase flexibility, decrease the use of greenhouse gases, increases access to the community.

Switzer notes that both Brandon University and Assiniboine Community College students pay about $20 annually for an all-access bus pass. The ACC and BU student unions facilitated their respective agreements with Brandon Transit.

Switzer is offering to help fill that role to bring high schoolers on board.

Our goal is to say, Listen, we have this idea, we think it could work. Were willing to act as a go-between or not but we think its a good idea and were willing to help with it, said BNRC general manager Carly Gasparini.

BNRC is not interested in downloading the $20 cost to the high school students, Gasparini added.

We want to be creative in how we find funding for it. There may be funding opportunities our there from different environmental sources. We havent done research in those areas yet.

The division already uses public transit to shuttle Grade 7 and 8 students to and from home economics and industrial arts classes.

Some students, even in elementary school, are taking the bus to school right now  Ive seen them myself, Switzer said.

I cant see there being issues at the higher grade levels unless theres a child with special needs or something. In that case, the BSD is required to provide busing for them anyway.

Switzer said Brandon Transit confirmed theyd be able to accommodate the influx of students. Last years BSD annual education results report pegged BSDs senior high population at 2,705.

In an emailed statement, City of Brandon transportation services director Carla Richardson stressed that Brandon Transit isnt driving the proposal, but is always open to partnerships.

The notion isnt entirely new. Brandon Transits 2007 Operating Strategy suggested a way to boost ridership is a partnership with Brandon School Division to transport in city senior students.

The report says a 2002 joint study suggested a circular route be developed by Brandon Transit, which was done in 2003, but an agreement wasnt established.

In discussions with the division, they have cited safety of their students as being one of their concerns in implementing the change, the report says. We believe that the cost of our current passes may also be a contributing issue and we would be willing to look at options with the division to resolve this as a barrier.

The BSD board referred the BNRC proposal to a facilities and transportation meeting on May 17. Along with Switzer, Brandon Transit officials will also attend the meeting.

BSD media liaison Terri Curtis said it was too early for the division to comment on the notion.

We see our role as facilitators in the community for a wide range of programs. This is just an example of us trying to get a conversation started about empowering youth by providing access to reliable transportation and a piece around trying to make our community more green than it is, Gasparini said.

BNRC is happy to start conversations.

 tbateman@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @tombatemann
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First Nations groups will be involved in monitoring a pipeline replacement project that cuts through Westman, according to a decision made by the National Energy Board on Monday.

The NEB gave the go-ahead to Enbridge Pipeline Inc.s Line 3 Replacement Project, a $7.5-billion project that will make the existing 1,067-kilometre Line 3 pipeline safer and more efficient for crude oil transfer.

But to complete the project, Enbridge has to comply with 89 conditions, including direct and collaborative consultation with indigenous groups affected. The two specific conditions are developing and getting approval for consultation plans with indigenous groups, and creating and getting approval for an Aboriginal Monitoring Plan for the construction phase.

The plan will not only need approval, but will be evaluated by the NEB for future improvement.

The NEB reported mixed feedback from indigenous groups during the hearing process, according to decision documents. Enbridge engaged with 150 indigenous communities, and some opposed while others supported the project.

Some common concerns from indigenous communities included safeguarding the land to keep it healthy for future generations, the importance of the land to indigenous culture, spirituality and history and concerns of poor efforts to consult when the original pipeline was built.

The worry was that once this project is approved, Enbridge will repeat history and cast indigenous groups out of the picture.

Because Line 3 runs through both Treaty 1 and Treaty 2 territories, about a dozen Manitoba First Nations will be affected by the replacement project.

Swan Lake First Nation Chief Francine Meeches said she remembers feeling left out of the decision when the pipeline was originally built through her community.

Back in those days, we didnt have a say in what they did with our land, she said. But things are changing. Its about time.

Line 3 runs right through Swan Lake First Nation. If the project is approved by the federal government, Meeches said she might consider seeking financial compensation for the construction effects.

Im sure we could negotiate something, she said. We work well with Enbridge. We do encourage them to provide open houses and information sessions so that our people can attend and ask questions.

The project will also affect Peguis First Nation, which is hosting a series of community workshops in southern Manitoba this week to discuss what the replacement project means for indigenous land, identity and practices.

The first meeting was Monday afternoon in Brandon. No community members came to that meeting and members there declined to speak to media. One source did say, however, that the workshops werent focused around consultation, but engagement.

NEB documents show Enbridge engaged with 150 indigenous communities since the replacement project was announced, including Peguis.

Enbridge continues to work hard to help ensure communities along the right of way realize economic benefits that will come with the construction of the project, including indigenous business opportunities, employment and training programs in all three Prairie provinces, Enbridge spokesperson Todd Nogier wrote in an email.

We remain committed to maintaining strong, mutually beneficial relationships with indigenous and other communities.

In the Peguis First Nation workshops, which continue until Tuesday, May 3, members will learn about the project, will have the chance to ask any questions and will be given a survey on their concerns.

The new completion date of the project should be 2019, pending U.S. and Canadian government approval.

For Meeches, she said its not about supporting or opposing the pipeline, but whats best for her community.

Even if we opposed the pipeline, its still there, she said. So its a damned if you do, damned if you dont situation that were in.

When I meet with Enbridge, I bring my concerns forth. A lot of that is the concern of safety if theres a leak of some sort. Theres nothing thats going to replace damage to water. Imagine the chaos it would cause in our community. I dont think I could ever handle a catastrophe like that.

The next step is for the federal government to make a decision on the project.

A representative from Peguis First Nation could not be reached for comment on Monday.

 ssamson@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @samanthassamson
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Were on track, but the train to rail safety hasnt completely arrived.

Operation Lifesaver released its past years safety statistics for train incidents on Monday as part of its Rail Safety Week 2016. Manitobas serious injury count went from eight to two between 2014 and 2015  the largest decrease in Canada.

But thats not good enough, according to Mike Regimbal, Operation Lifesavers national director.

According to the groups monthly statistics, Manitoba already had five accidents, one fatality and one serious injury by the end of March 2016.

Even though were happy our numbers are improving, Im seeing a slight spike in early 2016, Regimbal said. Last year was a good number, but we still had 164 crossing accidents across Canada, which was significant. Manitoba overall was fairly good, but there were still 19 crossing accidents and there was a trespasser incident and a fatality.

Regimbal said although people in Westman might not use railway transit as often as people in larger centres, freight trains travelling at speeds close to 100 km/h can be dangerous.

Even if the locomotive engineer and the train crew sees you on the tracks or near the tracks, it could be up to a couple kilometres to get the train stopped, he said.

If youre within a relatively close range, no matter what the locomotive engineer does, he cant get his train stopped in time. Trains can stop, but they just cant stop quickly.

There are events happening in the Westman area to increase awareness around rail safety, which can be checked out at Operation Lifesavers website.

Brandon has seen the effects of train fatalities. Following the death of Craig Kutcher, who was run over along the CPR tracks on First Street in 2012, the community knows the pain of a railway death.

Thats what Operation Lifesaver works to avoid.

Each incident that happens  it affects 200 people in the community, Regimbal said. Some people think its just the victim and the immediate family, but theres the train crew and the first responders. And if its a small community, people know each other, so it can be very devastating and have long-term effects.

Rail Safety Week runs until Sunday.

 ssamson@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @samanthassamson
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KANANASKIS, Alta.  Justin Trudeau is taking an uncompromising stance against terrorist kidnappers, vowing that Canada will never pay ransom for the release of hostages.

Moreover, hes promising to press other countries to adopt the same unyielding approach.

The prime minister took the hard line Tuesday as he wrapped up a three-day cabinet retreat that was overshadowed by the death of Canadian John Ridsdel, who was beheaded Monday by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines after seven months of captivity.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, centre, speaks to the media with his cabinet following the Liberal Party cabinet retreat in Kananaskis, Alta., Tuesday, April 26, 2016.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Amid speculation about whether the government might pay ransom to release two others still being held captive  Canadian citizen Robert Hall and Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad, whom a government official confirmed is a permanent resident of Canada  Trudeau said he wanted to make one thing perfectly, crystal clear.

Canada does not and will not pay ransom to terrorists, directly or indirectly, he told a news conference at the conclusion of the retreat in this luxury mountain resort.

Paying ransom is a significant source of funds for terrorist organizations that then allow them to continue to perpetrate deadly acts of violence against innocents around the world, Trudeau said.

But more importantly, he said it would encourage terrorists to kidnap more Canadians.

Paying ransom for Canadians would endanger the lives of every single one of the millions of Canadians who live work and travel around the world every single year.

Ridsdel, 68, of Calgary, was one of four tourists  including Hall, Sekkingstad and a Filipino woman  who were kidnapped last Sept. 21 by Abu Sayyaf militants from a marina on southern Samal Island.

Asked whether and to what extent the Canadian government was involved in high-level negotiations to effect Ridsdels release, Trudeau said hed seen a number of those media reports, which he then dismissed as wrong and false.

Some of Canadas allies, notably France and Italy, have been willing to pay ransom for release of their citizens. Trudeau said he spoke Tuesday with British Prime Minister David Cameron , whose country adheres to the same no-ransom policy as Canada, and they agreed to press others to do the same.

We need to make sure that terrorists understand that they cannot continue to fund their crimes and their violence from taking innocents hostage, Trudeau said.

Abu Sayyaf  the name means bearer of the sword in Arabic  sprang up in the early 1990s as an offshoot of another, larger Islamic insurgent group. The federal government considers Abu Sayyaf to be a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaida.

Trudeau reiterated that Canada will work with the Philippines and other allies to bring these terrorist criminals to justice.

The issue of whether governments acquiesce to the demands of terror groups has long been murky, and is likely to remain an open question regardless of what Trudeau and his fellow leaders decide.

An al-Qaida letter obtained by The Associated Press three years ago suggests about $1 million was paid for the release of Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler in Niger in 2009. It was unclear who paid the ransom.

A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable from February 2010 lent credence to the notion Canada makes payments, quoting Washingtons then-ambassador to Mali as saying it is difficult to level criticism on countries like Mali and Burkina Faso for facilitating negotiations when the countries that pay ransom, like Austria and Canada, are given a pass.

The issue dominated the wrap-up of the retreat, which Trudeau said focused on global economic forces and taking stock of the governments progress after six months in power.

He called the retreat an important exercise in getting out of the Ottawa bubble and familiarizing ministers with the economic challenges facing Alberta, which is reeling from the collapse in oil prices.

But Trudeau had nothing new to offer the hard-hit province by way of federal assistance.

He gave no hint as to whether his government would relax restrictions on state-owned companies investing in the oilpatch. And he seemed to douse speculation that hed reconsider the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to carry oilsands crude to tidewater, if the route was changed to avoid the ecologically sensitive northern British Columbia coast.

Im not going to speculate on hypothetical routes, Trudeau said.

I will say that the Great Bear rainforest is no place for a pipeline, for a crude pipeline.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. 15 incidents of ceasefire violations occurred overnight April 25-26 in the northeastern part of the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border. Azerbaijani forces opened irregular fire from various caliber weapons and sniper rifles at Armenian positions.

As Armenpress was informed by the department of Information and Public Relations of the Armenian Defense Ministry, the Armenian Armed Forces exercised restraint, took countermeasures only in case of strict necessity and confidently continue monitoring the border.

According to data received from the NKR Defense Army, overnight April 25-26 Azerbaijan violated the ceasefire agreement in the NKR-Azerbaijan line of contact more than 80 times. Azerbaijan used almost every artillery and armored equipment of its arsenal, in particular 60mm (26 shells), 82 mm (75 shells) mortars, RPG -7 (7 grenades), SPG-9 (2 grenades) and AGS-17 (3 grenades) grenade launchers, ZU-23-2 (200 shots) antiaircraft weapon system, TR-107 rocket system and a tank. In addition to targeting military positions, Azerbaijan shelled the Martakert civilian settlement by firing 14 rockets from MM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers. Mataghis was also shelled by artillery fire (8 shells).

As a result of the Azerbaijani ceasefire violations, Defense Army soldiers Tigran M. Poghosyan (born 1992) and Aram N. Arushanyan (born 1972) were mortally wounded.

The NKR Army took countermeasure to suppress the Azerbaijani aggression and targeted Azerbaijani frontline positions and artillery bases, causing significant manpower and equipment loss.

Currently the situation is relatively calm along the border.

The Defense Ministry shares the grief of loss and expresses its support to the family, relatives and co-servicemen of the killed soldiers.
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WASHINGTON  Donald Trump has a message for some of the celebrities musing about leaving for Canada if hes elected president: Dont let the door hit you on the way out.

The billionaire candidate expressed delight Tuesday when asked about the phenomenon of famous Americans talking about becoming political exiles if hes elected.

He said hed be glad to make it a reality.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump campaigns during a rally on Monday, April 25, 2016, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Trump has a message for some of the celebrities musing about leaving for Canada if he's elected president: Don't let the door hit you on the way out. (Jake Danna Stevens/The Times-Tribune via AP) WILKES-BARRE TIMES-LEADER OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

Well, now I have to get elected, Trump told the morning show Fox and Friends.

Ill be doing a great service to our country. I have to (win). Now, its much more important. In fact, Ill immediately get off this call and start campaigning right now.

He was appearing on the Fox show on the morning of five northeastern primaries, which hes expected to dominate, although they wont clinch the Republican nomination for him.

Trump was asked specifically about actress Lena Dunham. The star of the show, Girls, said she is serious about leaving. She said she knows a lovely place in Vancouver and could work from there.

The candidates reply: Well, shes a B-actor. And you know, has no mojo. You know, I heard Whoopi Goldberg said that too. That would be a great, great thing for our country.

The show put up pictures of other famous Americans who promised to leave if their country elects the Mexican-wall-building, import-tax-threatening, Muslim-travel-banning celebrity.

They included actress Rosie ODonnell and comedians Goldberg and Jon Stewart. Trump has had a long-running feud with some of them.

Stewart had actually joked about going far beyond the land next door: I would consider getting in a rocket and going to another planet, he said earlier this year. Because clearly, this planets gone bonkers.

Americans would have several options, should they seek to immigrate: Study in Canada, marry a Canadian, invest in a business, or apply through the regular points program.

Otherwise, Canada only allows them to spend six months as tourists.

Trumps platform doesnt specifically mention Canada often  certainly nowhere nearly as much as Mexico. However, he has repeatedly mused about ripping up the NAFTA trade deal.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been asked during recent trips to the United States about talk of a Trump-triggered exodus.

He has downplayed it, noting that threats to leave the U.S. emerge in every election  yet the Canada-U.S. population gap remains intact.

Hes correct that the phenomenon goes way back.

The day after George W. Bushs re-election in 2004, Canadas immigration website smashed its then-record for single-day visits.
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Five stories in the news today from The Canadian Press:



PRIME MINISTER TRUDEAU CONDEMNS MURDER OF CANADIAN HOSTAGE

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returns to meetings at a Liberal Party cabinet retreat in Kananaskis, Alta., Monday, April 25, 2016.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the cold-blooded murder of a 68-year-old Canadian who was beheaded by terrorists in the Philippines after being held hostage for seven months. John Ridsdel of Calgary was one of four tourists  including fellow Canadian Robert Hall, a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman  who were kidnapped last Sept. 21 by Abu Sayyaf militants from a marina on southern Samal Island.



PM TRUDEAU TO MEET WITH FIRST NATIONS LEADERS

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will meet with First Nations leaders in Saskatchewan today when he visits with the File Hills QuAppelle Tribal Council. He is scheduled to have a private discussion with tribal council leadership in Fort QuAppelle. Trudeau is then slated to meet with Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall in Saskatoon on Wednesday.



PETITION ATTEMPTS TO RESURRECT AFGHAN ABUSE CASE

Prime Minister Trudeaus Liberals have been put on the spot by an e-petition, spearheaded by a former New Democrat MP, which demands an inquiry into unresolved questions surrounding the treatment of prisoners during the Afghan war. Craig Scott, who represented Toronto-Danforth until the Oct. 19 election, has gathered 750 names  well over the threshold of 500 individuals that compels a reply.



JURY TO RESUME DELIBERATIONS IN CHILD DEATH CASE

The jury in the case of an Alberta couple charged in the meningitis death of their toddler son will begin a second day of deliberations today. David Stephan, 32, and Collet Stephan, 35, are charged with failing to provide the necessaries of life to 19-month-old Ezekiel in 2012. The couple testified they believed Ezekiel had croup or flu, so they treated him for 2 1/2 weeks with remedies that included hot peppers, garlic, onions and horseradish.



ACCUSED IN HOTEL KILLING FOUND GUILTY OF MURDER

A man accused in the grisly slaying and dismemberment of a friend in an Ontario hotel room has been found guilty of first-degree murder by a jury in London, Ont. The panel also found James McCullough guilty of offering an indignity to a dead body. McCullough, 22, had pleaded not guilty to both charges in the bloody death of 20-year-old Alex Fraser. The Crown argued McCullough was a calculated predator but the defence suggested he only stabbed his friend in a rage after an abrupt and troubling sexual advance.



ALSO IN THE NEWS TODAY:

 Nova Scotia Auditor General Michael Pickup will hold a news conference to discuss his latest report.

 Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz delivers a speech at securities conference in New York.

 AeroMontreal hosts an aerospace conference in Montreal. Participants include Bombardier, Airbus, Pratt & Whitney.

 CN Rail will hold its annual meeting in Montreal.

 Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci will address the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto.

 Companies reporting quarterly results today include Sherritt International, Barrick Gold, Husky Energy, West Fraser Timber and Teck Resources.
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OTTAWA  Stephen Harpers lawyer says Sen. Mike Duffys acquittal should be a wake-up call to public institutions and authorities that can hold politicians to live up to their duty and punish actions that are questionable, even if theyre not criminal.

But both the auditor general and the Senate say theres nothing more for them to do in Duffys case.

The office of federal auditor general Michael Ferguson says it wont audit Duffys spending or other senators expenses unless the Senate makes a specific request.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper walks away following a television interview with Mike Duffy in Ottawa Feb. 20, 2007. Harper's lawyer says the former prime minister played no role in the decision by the RCMP and Crown attorneys to charge and prosecute Sen. Duffy.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tom Hanson

As for the Senate, it has already punished Duffy. He faced an audit, his expenses were repaid and then he was suspended without pay for two years, forfeiting more than $250,000.

In a statement, Conservative Sen. Leo Housakos and Liberal Sen. Jane Cordy, the chair and vice-chair of the Senate committee that oversees spending, said Duffy, senators Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau were audited by Deloitte and were dealt with accordingly, including reimbursement of funds and suspension.

In an op-ed written for Postmedia newspapers, Harpers lawyer Robert Staley wrote that Harper stood to account for the ethical behaviour in his office and government, adding it is hard to imagine how this responsibility could have been borne more acutely.

He argued that other authorities that can hold individuals to account must live up to their duty and define the consequence of behaviour that falls short of criminal.

Staley wrote that the former prime minister played no role in the decision by the RCMP and Crown attorneys to charge and prosecute Duffy.

He said its impossible to believe Harpers interests were well-served by a raft of criminal charges that culminated in a politically charged, high-profile trial during an election year.

The trial peeled away the veil of secrecy around the Prime Ministers Office and revealed how much power and influence the officials of Harpers PMO wielded in the halls of Parliament.

Hundreds of emails presented as evidence detailed how much energy the PMO invested in dealing with Duffys politically problematic expense claims.

Justice Charles Vaillancourt said the PMO forced the Prince Edward Island senator to go along with their repayment scheme, even though Duffy maintained he had done nothing wrong.

Staley said Harper never asserted that Duffy had been engaged in criminal wrongdoing  only that his spending habits were politically unacceptable.

It was, and is, my clients view that public office demands a higher standard than conduct that falls short of criminality, Staley wrote.

The public has a reasonable expectation and indeed a right, to the responsible stewardship of its purse by public institutions and actors.

Justice Vaillancourt acquitted Duffy of all 31 fraud, breach of trust and bribery charges last week, saying the Crown failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Vaillancourt said that Duffys actions werent criminal, even if they raised eyebrows, including a consulting contract provided to Duffys one-time personal trainer.

After the acquittal, the Senate restored Duffy to full standing, giving him access to all the resources of his office.

Staley said he didnt expect the Crown to win a conviction on the bribery charge, which stemmed from a controversial $90,000 payment on Duffys behalf from Harpers former chief of staff Nigel Wright. Staley wrote that his private views on the matter were shared only with my client.

In an email to The Canadian Press, Staley declined to comment further, saying he wanted the op-ed to stand as his only comments.

The Conservatives fell to official Opposition status in the October election after almost a decade in power, with Harper stepping down as leader but not as an MP.
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WASHINGTON  Justin Trudeaus gender-equal cabinet could soon be replicated in the United States, depending on the outcome of the current American election.

The poll-leading presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, appeared to indicate her intention to follow suit when asked about it in a televised event on the eve of Tuesdays five northeastern primaries.

A moderator had asked about the federal cabinet to the north: Canada has a new prime minister, Justin Trudeau. He promised when he took office that he would have a cabinet that was 50 per cent women, and then he did it. He made good on his promise. Would you make that same pledge?

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton arrives for a during a campaign stop, Monday, April 25, 2016, at City Hall in Philadelphia. Justin Trudeau's gender-equal cabinet could soon be replicated in the United States, depending on the outcome of the current American election.The poll-leading presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, appeared to indicate her intention to follow suit when asked about it in a televised event on the eve of Tuesday's five northeastern primaries. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Clinton suggested she would: I am going to have a cabinet that looks like America, and 50 per cent of America is women, right? That prompted the MSNBC moderator, Rachel Maddow, to conclude, So thats a yes?

Canadas gender-balanced cabinet has gotten a fair bit of attention in the U.S., fuelled partly by how the prime minister responded to a question about it with a shoulder shrug and the sound bite: Because its 2015.

But in reality, Canada didnt blaze that particular trail.

Finlands cabinet is 62 per cent female; Cape Verdes is 53 per cent; Swedens is 52 per cent; and Frances is 50 per cent, according to last years statistics from the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Even within Canada, the first gender-parity cabinet was created not by Trudeau  but by the former premier in Trudeaus home province of Quebec, Jean Charest.

Clinton remains the U.S. presidential front-runner, despite a tougher-than-expected primary challenge.

She retains a significant lead over her more progressive challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and is expected to add to it Tuesday in primaries in Maryland, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Delaware.

She has also consistently led general-election polls against the two Republican front-runners  Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz  although she has performed far more poorly against less-successful Republican candidates like Ohio Gov. John Kasich and the dropped-out Marco Rubio.

Trump has also been asked about the Canadian cabinet  and he wont commit to copying the Trudeau formula.
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KANANASKIS, Alta.  Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould says she has the utmost confidence in the advice her officials have given on medically assisted dying, even though the same officials spent years insisting suffering Canadians should have no right to seek a doctors help to die.

In any event, Wilson-Raybould says Justice officials were not the ones who decided on the restrictive measures included in a proposed new law on assisted death.

Those decisions were made by her and her cabinet colleagues.

Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press files Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Jody Wilson-Raybould

I have a tremendous amount of confidence in my officials, Wilson-Raybould said Monday outside a cabinet retreat.

This was not a decision of officials within my department, she added.

This was a decision of cabinet and we put forward what we believe to be a substantive piece of legislation that finds balance between personal autonomy and ensuring that we protect the vulnerable and put in the necessary safeguards.

Some advocates of a more permissive approach to assisted death have denounced the proposed law for disregarding the Supreme Courts ruling on the issue and disrespecting the charter of rights.

And theyve suggested the reason the bill falls short is because it was drafted by justice officials who spent six years arguing in court that the ban on medical assistance in dying was a justifiable limitation on Canadians charter rights.

The Supreme Court last year struck down the ban as a violation of the right to life, liberty and security of the person. It ruled that medical help in dying should be available to clearly consenting adults with grievous and irremediable medical conditions who are enduring physical or mental suffering that they find intolerable.

In response to that ruling, the federal government has introduced its proposed law but it has taken a more restrictive approach. It would allow assisted death only for consenting adults, at least 18 years of age, who are in an advanced stage of irreversible decline from a serious and incurable disease, illness or disability and for whom a natural death is reasonably foreseeable.

It would also exclude mature minors and those suffering only from mental illnesses from the right to an assisted death. And it would not allow those diagnosed with competence-eroding conditions like dementia to make advance requests for medical assistance to die.

In a Justice Department analysis last week outlining the reasoning behind the bill, officials acknowledged that various provisions could violate the charter of rights. In particular, excluding those who are intolerably suffering but not near death, could violate their right to life, liberty and security of the person.

However, the analysis argued that the bill strikes an appropriate balance that respects autonomy during the passage to death while otherwise prioritizing respect for life. It also furthers the objective of suicide prevention and the protection of the vulnerable.

But Josh Paterson, executive director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association  which was a plaintiff in the court case  said Justice officials are making the same kinds of arguments they made throughout six years of court battles on the issue.

These kinds of arguments were tried by federal lawyers in court and failed, he said.

A total ban on assisted death for Canadians who are intolerably suffering but not close to death is a disproportionate response to the governments desire to protect the vulnerable and is, therefore, unconstitutional, Paterson added.

Jocelyn Downie, a professor of law and medicine at Dalhousie University, said its reasonable to assume cabinet made its decision about the proposed law based on the analysis provided by Justice officials  unless they were given additional or different information that hasnt been provided to the public.

Unfortunately, that document is deeply flawed and, therefore, albeit unintentionally, so too is their decision.

Justice officials have maintained that the proposed law would have allowed Kay Carter, a central figure in the court case, to seek medical help to die. Paterson and Carters own children have said she wouldnt have been eligible because, while she was suffering intolerably from spinal stenosis, she was not near death.

With great respect, government lawyers have been wrong on assisted dying for the last six years and theyre wrong today when they say that, Patterson told a news conference last week with two of Carters children.
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OTTAWA  Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz is recommending pension funds get ready for a new normal: neutral interest rates lower than they were before the financial crisis.

Poloz told a Wall Street audience Tuesday that the fate of neutral rates  the levels he said will prevail once the world economy recovers  remain unknown, but they will almost certainly be lower than previously thought.

The central banker made the comment during a question-and-answer period that followed his speech on global trade growth.

Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz waits to appear before the House of Commons Finance committee on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Tuesday, April 19, 2016. Poloz is recommending pension funds get ready for a new normal: neutral interest rates lower than they were before the financial crisis.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Among the reasons, Poloz pointed to the more-pessimistic outlook for potential long-term global growth. The forecast was lowered to 3.2 per cent from four per cent, he said.

That downgrade means the neutral rate of interest will be lower for sure  for a very long time, said Poloz, who added it could go even lower if economic headwinds continue.

Those in the pension business need to get used to it. They need to adapt to it.

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, pension funds around the world have had to contend with market uncertainty, feeble growth and record-low interest rates.

Pension funds use long-term interest rates to calculate their liabilities. The lower the rates, the more money plans need to have to ensure they will be able to pay future benefits.

A December report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said the conditions have cast doubts on the ability of defined-contribution systems and annuity schemes to deliver adequate pensions.

To cushion the Canadian economy from the shock of lower commodity prices, Poloz lowered the central banks key rate twice last year to 0.5 per cent  just above its historic low of 0.25.

Poloz linked the higher neutral interest rates of the past to the baby boom, which he described as a 50-year period of higher labour-force participation and better growth.

Well, thats behind us, Poloz told the meeting of the Investment Industry Association of Canada and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

We dont have numbers for all this, but you need to be scenario-testing those pension plans and the needs of your clients because the returns simply wont be there.

But with all the unpredictability Poloz said it remains possible current headwinds could convert into positive forces that would push interest rates back to more-normal levels seen prior to the crisis.

Earlier Tuesday, Polozs speech touched on another aspect of the post-crisis world.

He told the crowd they shouldnt expect to see a return of the rapid pace of trade growth the world saw for the two decades before the crisis.

Poloz was optimistic, however, that the striking weakness in international trade wasnt a sign of a looming global recession.

He said the renewed slowdown in global exports is more likely a result of the fact that big opportunities to boost global trade have already been largely exploited.

As an example, he noted China could only join the World Trade Organization once.

Poloz expressed confidence that most of the trade slump will be reversed as the global economy recovers  even if its a slow process.

The weakness in trade weve seen is not a warning of an impending recession, said Poloz, a former president and CEO of Export Development Canada.

Rather, I see it as a sign that trade has reached a new balance point in the global economy  and one that we have the ability to nudge forward.

He said theres still room to boost global trade through efficiency improvements to international supply chains, the signing of major treaties such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the creation of brand new companies.

Polozs speech came a day after Export Development Canada downgraded its outlook for the growth of exports.

EDC chief economist Peter Hall predicted overall Canadian exports of goods and services to expand two per cent in 2016, down from a projection last fall of seven per cent.

Follow @AndyBlatchford on Twitter
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VICTORIA  Homeless campers living on the grounds of Victorias courthouse say British Columbias government should take the blame for the shanty-town conditions that have neighbours complaining about the eyesore and the province concerned about safety.

Together Against Poverty Society spokesman Stephen Portman said Tuesday that more than a decade of inadequate government funding for social programs has forced hundreds of people to live on the streets in Victoria.

Living next to a tent city with 100 homeless people is certainly not what every neighbourhood is prepared to deal with, he said. I dont think there are very many people who agree that an economic refugee camp in the middle of Victoria makes a lot of sense.

A resident walks down a path at the homeless camp in Victoria, B.C., Tuesday, April 5, 2016. An anti-poverty activist says the provincial government is to blame for the homeless camp on the grounds of Victoria's courthouse. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

The B.C. Supreme Court refused to grant the government an interim injunction to dismantle the camp earlier this month.

Neighbours living near the site say it is an urban ghetto. An organization calling itself Mad as Hell has formed to represent area residents and businesspeople.

One man who works near the camp said he has picked up discarded needles, human feces and other waste left in the area by the campers.

Portman said the neighbours concerns are very real, but can sometimes be inflated.

Its up to the people who are actually experiencing these complaints to come and talk to this community. TAPS would be happy to facilitate that, he said.

The camp has grown from one tent last spring to a crowded, tarp-covered area that includes pallet board fences and a central communal area with a ceremonial fire.

Portman says the society, which speaks for the homeless group, is preparing to make the governments social-services policies the highlight of a court case set for September 7, where the province is applying for a permanent injunction to shut down the camp.

The salient point here is that this government has underestimated the number of people who are homeless and the factors contributing to that homelessness, he said.

Portman said the society estimates there are about 700 homeless in Victoria.

B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman said the government has provided housing options for 180 people connected to the camp, but others who may not be homeless continue to live at the site.

Its frustrating, he said. There are people down there who are not homeless.

The government recently enlisted the services of the Portland Hotel Society, a non-profit advocacy organization working in Vancouvers Downtown Eastside, to help connect Victoria campers with housing options.

Portman disputed Colemans figures, saying the government has provided 38 housing units for people, but the remaining spaces are temporary.

Theyve come online with 38 houses, or housing for 38 people, he said. Between five and seven of those people are actually from the tent city. He doesnt understand the depth of homelessness in this community.

The province purchased a seniors care home to provide housing and has created temporary shelter space at a former youth jail and a downtown Boys and Girls Club. It has also offered rent supplement payments to others.

Coleman said he has ongoing safety concerns about the camp and the government is considering going back to court before the September injunction application.

My biggest concern with any one of these camps is always fire, open flames, he said.

Victoria Police released a letter this week dated last November warning the B.C. government that allowing entrenchment of campers in an open area that has not been designed for permanent camping leads to numerous public-safety and public-order issues.

Coleman said the government has experience dealing with homeless camps in other B.C. communities and decided to work with all parties involved to ensure a supportive and co-ordinated response.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 26/04/2016 (2372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As producers in the Assiniboine Valley stare down yet another destructive spring flood thanks to increased outflows from the Shellmouth Reservoir, the incoming Progressive Conservative government will inherit a watery mess of unfulfilled compensation promises, unchallenged drainage practices in Saskatchewan, and questionable management of the Shellmouth Dam.

Whomever premier-designate Brian Pallister tasks with this file will have their work cut out for them  its a situation riddled with government dissembling and worthless assurances that have destroyed the trust between the province and affected landowners.

We only have to look to last summers announcement by the NDP government that farmers affected by flooding caused by high water levels at the Shellmouth Dam and reservoir in 2014 would be compensated.

There will be no money, dont worry about that, Oak Lake-area producer Stan Cochrane said at the time. Its very typical with the way its been handled in the past. They know that the (current compensation) program doesnt work and it needs to be changed.

That much is perfectly obvious to anyone paying attention.

Back in 2011, Manitoba enacted legislation that requires the province to pay compensation for business losses and property damage caused by the artificial  or man-made  flooding of dams. Artificial flooding occurs when water flows controlled by the dam rise above what the water levels would be if the dam did not exist. Last summer, a study conducted by Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation concluded that there were periods of artificial flooding caused by the operation of the Shellmouth Dam in 2014.

Thus far, Cochranes prediction has come true. Producers like Cliff Trinder, who owns a ranch along the Assiniboine River between Russell and Binscarth, have yet to be compensated from the artificial flooding that occurred in 2014. Trinder has lost productive land to flooding in 10 of the last 12 years due to the operation of the Shellmouth Dam.

Its like Groundhog Day, Trinder told the Sun last week. Im not happy. The anger and the animosity that is out here is thick.

Over the years, the province under the NDP government seemed more concerned about the level of the reservoir  which essentially doubles as a recreational lake for cottage owners and campers  than operating the dam as a means to keep reservoir levels manageable. But draining the reservoir early, as could and should have been done this past March, would likely have triggered legislation that would force the province to compensate a small number of affected producers downstream.

By waiting until inflow from water runoff enters the river basin, the province can call this a natural flood, and therefore avoid having to pay compensation. Based on the evidence, its not difficult to see why many producers believe the provinces legislation was never designed to actually hand out money.

The province also said last year that a compensation process for those affected would be implemented within a few months of that announcement, and that it would be reviewing operating guidelines for the Shellmouth Dam last fall. Based on this years renewed flooding, none of this ever came to pass.

And that gives the incoming Tory government a golden opportunity to step up and do precisely what Opposition critics have called upon the government to do for more than a decade.

Last July, following the provincial announcement, Brandon West Progressive Conservative MLA Reg Helwer called for the province to talk with Saskatchewan about its water drainage policy because it is coming into Manitoba faster than before.

And the former Tory MLA for Russell, Len Derkach, called for more small dams along the upper Assiniboine and one large dam built on the Shell River  just as Duff Roblin originally intended when the late premier devised Manitobas flood protection plan, according to a 2011 Winnipeg Free Press report.

Will there be new rules for the dams operation? And will Saskatchewan  which is a member of the New West Partnership, the same organization that Pallister wants Manitoba to join  be taken to task over rampant flooding?

Floodwaters are already affecting area producers, and their anger will not dissipate merely with the changing of the guard. Very clearly, Pallisters new government will have to do some quick thinking right out of the flood gate.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. 7 people are currently being treated in the Armenia Medical Center who were injured in the bus explosion in the evening of April 25 on Halabyan Street, Yerevan. One of the injured has been transported to the hospital at 04:00 in the morning. According to the 65 year old woman, she was also injured as a result of the explosion. According to her, she left the scene on her own, but called an ambulance later on because her health worsened. Authorities are clarifying her identity: Armenpress was informed by the Healthcare Ministry.

As of 10:00 in the morning, the conditions of all the injured was stable. The treatment is personally being coordinated by Healthcare Minister Armen Muradyan. Immediately after the incident, Muradyan organized all necessary procedures at the scene.

Positive change is observed in the conditions of the 14 and 15 year old injured teenagers. Surgery was performed on the teenagers earlier. As a result of a complicated surgical intervention, it was possible to save the limb of one of the teens. Post-surgical tests are constantly done. Their condition is assessed as stable but serious. Both are conscious, but are still breathing via mechanical ventilation. According to doctors, the teenagers will need recovery-plastic surgery in the future.

Other injured have fractures and shrapnel wounds. Their condition is stable. One of them is a 37 year old pregnant woman. Both she and the fetus are out of danger.
Unions have welcomed a report on the treament of staff during the sudden closure of Clerys in Dublin last year.

The report by experts Kevin Duffy and Nessa Cahill is recommending changes to employment law.
Nine-year-old Tristan Jacobson from Missouri was left on the door of a homeless shelter during winter four years ago. Donnie Davis had known Tristan for most of his life so she didn't hesitate to take him in and he has been part of her family ever since.

Now, she and her husband Jimmy want to make it official and adopt Tristan. To begin that process, they needed to raise $5,000 for legal fees.
Firefighters from the Oklahoma City Fire Department received a rather unusual call out yesterday.

While it is not out of the ordinary for them to have to rescue a family, however the siblings they had to save yesterday were of the fluffy variety.

It seems a family of tiny ducklings had become trapped in a storm drain and needed rescuing to be reunited with their mother.

The Oklahoma City Fire Department posted the video of the rescue on their Facebook page and it shows them ever so gently fishing the ducklings, one-by-one, out of the drain to safety.

The clip ends in an adorable reunion with the mother duck as they leave the scene together in train.

Keep up the good work guys.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. The European Ombudsman Institute (EOI) has posted on its official website the NKR Ombudsmans reports on the Azerbaijani atrocities committed in NKR during April 2-5 against civilians and soldiers; Armenpress was informed by the NKR Ombudsmans office.

The EOI has also officially condemned the Azerbaijani cruelty and atrocities against Armenian civilian settlements and peaceful civilians. The EOI expressed its concern that the NKR civilians have been subject to humiliation and inhuman actions.

The EOI also addressed the attacks on civilian settlements, schools and kindergartens, by noting that these actions are violating the European values of human rights and principles of international rights.

The EOI is one of the most important institutions of human rights in Europe. The NKR Ombudsmans Office is a member of the EOI since 2009.
A mountain bike rider had a fortunate escape from what he describes as a barbed wire booby trap on a trail in Co Wicklow.

The cyclist, who wishes to remain anonymous, was taking on the trail at Downs Hill, Willow Grove, near Delganey when he came across barbed wire stretched between two trees at neck height earlier this month.
Gardai are investigating two murders in Dublin in the latest spate of violence in the city.

The first victim, who has been named as Michael Barr, was gunned down in the Sunset House bar in the Summerhill area of Dublin's north inner city at around 9.30pm last night.

Crime Correspondent Paul Reynolds with the latest following the fatal shooting of a man in a Dublin pub tonight https://t.co/ulNzbt7GFv  RTE News (@rtenews) April 25, 2016

He was in his mid-30s and lived nearby in Ballybough. He was from Tyrone but had moved to Dublin in recent years, and is believed to have had links to the Real IRA and New IRA.

Little over two hours later, another man in his 30s was shot dead in the Kilcronan area of Clondalkin in the west of Dublin.

It is feared the first shooting was part of a bloody feud involving associates of the Kinahan and Hutch families and their allies.

The victim had connections with the Hutch outfit. He died at the scene.

It is yet unclear whether the second gangland murder had a direct link to the Kinahan-Hutch feud.

Gardai investigating the first shooting said two men entered the Sunset House, with one firing a gun.

Detectives said a silver-coloured Audi A6 car, partial registration 04C, was later recovered in Walsh Road, Drumcondra, and has been seized for technical examination.

Prior to the car being recovered, it is believed three men left Walsh Road in the direction of Home Farm Road in another silver-coloured saloon car.

Read: Read More: Gangland crime set to dominate agenda at Garda conference after Dublin shootings

The two sides in the murderous Kinahan-Hutch feud have carried out a series of attacks in Spain and Dublin which have claimed the lives of at least five people since late last year.

The Sunset Bar is about a mile from where Martin O'Rourke, an innocent father and former drug user, was shot dead just over a week ago.

He was caught in the crossfire in Sheriff Street as another murder bid linked to the feud was launched.

That in turn was a mile or so from where taxi driver Eddie Hutch, brother of Gerry "The Monk" Hutch, was shot dead at his home off North Strand in February.

The Kinahan-Hutch feud spiralled into a killing spree when Gary Hutch was shot dead in an apartment complex near Marbella on Spain's Costa del Sol last September.

His killing is believed to have been avenged in the Regency Hotel attack, an audacious shooting spree with assault rifles in early February which claimed the life of David Byrne, an associate of the Kinahan family.

Within days, Eddie Hutch was dead, and, at the end of last month, Noel Duggan, an old friend of suspected armed robber Gerry "The Monk" Hutch, was shot dead at his home in Ratoath.
The issue of gangland crime will be high on the agenda at today's conference of the Garda Representative Association in Kerry.

Update 10.38am: Detective Garda Darren Martin says criminals are getting their hands on similar weapons to elite gardai.

The types of firearms that are available to criminals these days are almost on par with what is available to the guards as well, he said.

We dont want situations where we are engaged in firefights and engaged in armed confrontations, but if that situation arises, then obviously we want our members armed with the best equipment thats available to them to deal with those situations.

Earlier: Two men were shot dead in seemingly unrelated attacks in Summerhill and Clondalkin last night.

Crime Correspondent Paul Reynolds with the latest following the fatal shooting of a man in a Dublin pub tonight https://t.co/ulNzbt7GFv  RTE News (@rtenews) April 25, 2016

Rank and file gardai say unarmed officers should not be sent to situations involving firearms.

The GRA also said it is unacceptable they have not had tactical training in eight years.

GRA president Dermot OBrien said that it is unacceptable to have unarmed officers responding to the Regency Hotel shooting in February.

"A 500-metre perimeter would be set up around an incident like that, where unarmed officers would not enter - they would cordon off the area, deal with people leaving that area, and let armed members go in and deal with it," he said.

"But the difficulty we have is - we don't have enough members to go in.

"That's what the issue is - that's why you had unarmed members attending the scene at the Regency Hotel. And that's just not acceptable in this day and age.

"So we will be urging the commissioner to re-instate tactical training, because tactical training comes on both sides, for both armed and unarmed members."
Acting Minister for Public Reform Brendan Howlin has said that Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein discuss a coalition, as they have similar positions on Irish Water.

The possibility of suspending the fees and the setting up of a commission to assess the utility are being discussed as talks between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are set to resume this morning
Fears are growing among local residents after a suspected dissident republican was murdered in his pub in the first of two gun killings in Dublin within hours of each other last night.

Dublin City Councillor Nial Ring was about 300 yards from the pub taking down 1916 posters on the street when the attackers struck.

Deputy Commissioner Operations John Twomey says gardai are working hard to stamp out gang-related shootings.https://t.co/t7watWlq5k  RTE News (@rtenews) April 26, 2016

"It was utter chaos, people out on the street," he said.

A man with special needs who had been in the pub had to be carried away from the scene by locals after suffering severe shock.

"No-one understands gangland feuds, least of all him, he just went into shock and had to be carried home. It was horrible," Mr Ring said.

Micky Barr, believed to be from Strabane, Co Tyrone originally, was shot dead in the Sunset House bar in the Summerhill area of the north inner city shortly before 9.30pm last night.

Crime Correspondent Paul Reynolds with the latest following the fatal shooting of a man in a Dublin pub tonight https://t.co/ulNzbt7GFv  RTE News (@rtenews) April 25, 2016

About two hours later another man, aged in his 30s, was gunned down in a separate gangland-style killing in the Kilcronan area of Clondalkin in the west of the city.

After the first shooting speculation immediately centred on Barr being targeted as part of the bloody underworld feud between the Kinahan and Hutch families and their associates.

But there have been conflicting reports as to whether he was the intended target or if a member of the Hutch family was in the pub at the time.

Witnesses reported hearing three shots after a three man gang, at least one of whom was armed, turned up at the pub where more than a dozen people were inside.

The Tottenham Hotspur-West Bromwich Albion Premier League match was half way through the second half when the shooting took place.

Gardai talk to members of the public beside the scene of a shooting at the Sunset House Pub in Ballybough, Dublin. Photo: Gareth Chaney Collins

Barr, who was in his mid 30s, was living in nearby Ballybough and was due to be sentenced on Thursday at the Special Criminal Court for handling stolen electrical equipment.

Earlier this month he pleaded guilty to the offence at Finnstown House Hotel, Newcastle Road, Lucan, Co Dublin on July 18, 2014.

Two months earlier at the same hotel a bomb was found in the boot of a car.

Barr was not facing any charges in relation to that.

He lived in Poppintree in the Ballymun area and also in Finglas before moving to the north inner city since taking over the pub some time in the last year.

"One life after another is not going to solve anything" - Assistant Garda Commissioner John O'Mahonyhttps://t.co/FlijCj8GY7  RTE News (@rtenews) April 26, 2016

In November 2014, when charged with the offence, Barr was also charged with IRA membership but the charge was later dropped.

The second shooting is not known to be a gangland incident but the victim was shot a number of times and died at the scene.

At least one bullet hit the front door of the semi-detached house on Kilcronan Close where the attack took place.

A large area of the cul-de-sac in front of the home was sealed off as well as a stretch of the nearby Grand Canal.

Underwater searches are planned as efforts continue to find a murder weapon.

Organised crime units investigating the first shooting said they believed men entered the Sunset House pub and one of them opened fire.

Detectives said a silver-coloured Audi A6 car, partial registration 04C, was later recovered in Walsh Road, Drumcondra, and has been seized for technical examination.

Prior to the car being recovered, it is believed three men left Walsh Road in the direction of Home Farm Road in another silver-coloured saloon car.

The two sides in the murderous Kinahan-Hutch feud have carried out a series of attacks in Spain and Dublin which have claimed the lives of at least five people since late last year.

The Sunset Bar is about a mile from where Martin O'Rourke, an innocent father and former drug user, was shot dead just over a week ago.

He was caught in the crossfire in Sheriff Street as another murder bid linked to the feud was launched.

That in turn was a mile or so from where taxi driver Eddie Hutch, brother of Gerry "The Monk" Hutch, was shot dead at his home off North Strand in February.

The Kinahan-Hutch feud spiralled into a killing spree when Gary Hutch was shot dead in an apartment complex near Marbella on Spain's Costa del Sol last September.

His killing is believed to have been avenged in the Regency Hotel attack, an audacious shooting spree with assault rifles in early February which claimed the life of David Byrne, an associate of the Kinahan family.

Within days, Eddie Hutch was dead, and, at the end of last month, Noel Duggan, an old friend of suspected armed robber Gerry "The Monk" Hutch, was shot dead at his home in Ratoath.

Mr Ring said: "People are now talking about a guy shot at work, a guy shot in his home and a guy shot on the street - nowhere is safe.

"That level of frustration and fear is turning to anger when people read about the the politicians holding days and days of talks trying to form a government."

Fianna Fail pledged to raise the issue of Garda resources when talks on a minority government resume.

The party's justice spokesman Niall Collins condemned the killings but questioned if promised resources were being seen on the ground.

"Back in February, the Minister for Justice (Frances Fitzgerald) announced five million euro for a task force to tackle organised crime. Since then we have seen more violent killings as the war between feuding gangs escalates," he said.

"This raises serious questions about the resources promised by Minister Fitzgerald. Has this money been drawn down, and, if so, where is it being spent?"

The leader of the Catholic church in Dublin has called on the city's people to break the chain of hate and evil which has led to another two gun murders.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said a strong alliance was needed to prevent parts of the inner city being abandoned by its good and honest men, women and children.

He urged people to brand those behind the spiralling gangland violence and killings as "despicable" and "evil".

"Dublin needs a courageous coalition of strong people who are not afraid to call violence what it is: evil," he said.

"Dublin needs a coalition of strong people who are not afraid to call the sponsors of this violence what they are: despicable and evil.

"Hatred and evil easily become a chain and those who resort to such violence feel that they are the strong ones. We need to form a strong alliance of all those who oppose violence on our streets.

"We cannot abandon the good honest men, women and children of parts of our inner city."
Update 4.30pm: In the wake of an announcement today that the Department of Education is accepting applications for the patronage of nine new secondary schools, Educate Togather said it was "delighted" the patronage process was now open for these schools.

Educate Together has said it is gathering expressions of interest from parents in the following areas: Limerick City and Environs (South West), Malahide/Portmarnock, Co. Dublin, Portlaoise and Swords, Co. Dublin to open in 2017; Limerick City and Environs (East), Dublin South City Centre and Firhouse, Dublin 24 to open in 2018.
Fianna Fail has been accused of having "no passion" in its bid to suspend water charges.

The claim comes from the Anti-Austerity Alliance, which says the future of charges should be decided in the Dail - and not in private talks between the two largest parties.
Update 2pm: David Mahons trial has heard there were photos of his missing stepdaughter on the floor of his apartment on the night he is accused of murdering her brother.

The 46-year-old denies stabbing Dean Fitzpatrick after confronting him about stealing a water bottle from his bike.

Jurors were sent out for an early after David Mahons wife Audrey Fitzpatrick stormed out of the courtroom during the evidence of one of the States key witnesses.

Her husbands friend, Karl OToole, said he called over to Daves apartment at Northern Cross in Malahide, north Dublin on the night of May 25, 2013 after he told him hed broken up with Audrey.

He said his friend was drunk and seemed agitated.

Inside the apartment, he noticed pictures of Daves stepdaughter Amy and his mother.

Amy hasnt been seen since she went missing in Spain in 2008  four years after they moved over there.

He said he thought that was strange.

Update 1.05pm: The girlfriend of an alleged murder victim has told his stepfathers trial that she received a threatening call from the accused on the day in question.

David Mahon denies stabbing Dean Fitzpatrick following an altercation outside his apartment at Northern Cross near Malahide in May 2013.

Sarah ORourke said she was frightened after receiving a phone call from David Mahon on May 25, 2013.

She said he wanted to know where his stepson Dean Fitzpatrick was.

He kept asking her to put him on the phone and when she told him he wasnt there, she claims he threatened to put a knife in her neck.

Paul Whyte, who opened up the Ben Dunne gym in Santry the day before, gave evidence of taking a complaint from Mahon the day before.

David Mahon and Dean Fitzpatrick were both members, and he was called back from his break around 11am to deal with a complaint.

Mr. Mahon told him his bike, which had been parked outside, had been tampered with and a water bottle was missing.

The duty manager said the accused tried to put pressure on him to tell him who it was. He said he mentioned Deans name and said he was a bike thief.

Earlier: The trial of a Dublin man accused of murdering his stepson has heard he tried to get him barred from their gym the day before the alleged murder.

David Mahon denies stabbing Dean Fitzpatrick following an altercation outside his apartment at Northern Cross in Malahide in May 2013.

The prosecution claims it happened after the 23-year-old admitted interfering with his bike outside the gym to annoy him.

A manager at their gym said Mr Mahon repeatedly asked for Dean Fitzpatrick to be barred.

He said he wasnt angry, but seemed agitated.

The 46-year-old denies the charge and the court heard yesterday that he told Gardai the young father-of-one ran into the blade after he took it from him.
Bangladesh's prime minister has pledged to hunt down and prosecute the attackers who fatally stabbed a gay rights activist and his friend in Dhaka.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina blamed the main opposition party and allied militants for last night's killings.

However, today a different group of radical Islamists claimed responsibility for the attack, raising doubts about her repeated assurances that authorities have the security situation under control.

The stabbings in Bangladesh's capital were the latest in a series of deadly attacks against outspoken atheists, moderates and foreigners.

The victims of the most recent attack were identified as US Agency for International Development employee Xulhaz Mannan, who previously worked as a US Embassy protocol officer, and his friend, actor Tanay Majumder.

Mr Mannan, a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni of the governing party, was also an editor of Bangladesh's first gay rights magazine, Roopbaan. Mr Majumder sometimes helped with the publishing, local media said.

Ansar-al Islam, the Bangladeshi branch of al Qaida on the Indian subcontinent, claimed responsibility in a Twitter message for what it called a "blessed attack".

It said the two were killed because they were "pioneers of practising and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh" and were "working day and night to promote homosexuality ... with the help of their masters, the US crusaders and its Indian allies".

US Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the "barbaric" murders in a statement on Monday and said the US government would support Bangladeshi efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Police said no arrests have been made in the attack, which involved at least five young men who posed as courier service employees to gain access to Mr Mannan's apartment building.

After the attack, a crowd in the area and patrolling police chased the attackers, senior police official Shibli Norman said.

"Some people chased the attackers, thinking they were robbers," but did not catch anyone, Mr Norman said.

A policeman briefly caught one of the attackers but was injured when the man hit him with a sharp weapon and fled, he added.

A security guard working at the building said he was injured when one of the men hit him with a knife while fleeing.

Crime scene investigators recovered a mobile phone and bag apparently left by the attackers.

The national police chief, AKM Shahidul Hoque, expressed confidence the group would be caught.

"We have found some evidence," he said.

Sheikh Hasina quickly blamed the radical Jamaat-e-Islami group and its political ally, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

"Everybody knows who is behind these killings," she told party MPs in a meeting on Monday night after the attacks, which came just days after a professor of English was hacked to death on the street of a north-western city.

Repeating the government's usual accusations, Sheikh Hasina said the opposition was orchestrating the attacks to destabilise the country and upset her secular rule, while also retaliating against the government's efforts to prosecute war crimes committed during the country's 1971 war of independence.

The opposition denies the allegations, saying they are being made into scapegoats for her failure to maintain security and placate the country's desire for Islamic rule.

The US government and numerous rights groups have lambasted Sheikh Hasina's government for failing to keep civil society safe.

Earlier this month, the US said it was considering granting refuge to a select number of secular bloggers facing imminent danger in Bangladesh.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said that remained an option, while describing Mr Mannan as a "beloved member of our embassy family and a courageous advocate" for gay rights, and pledging US support to Bangladeshi authorities "to ensure that the cowards who did this are held accountable".

Amnesty International noted that Bangladesh considers homosexual relations a crime, making it harder for gay activists to report any threats against them.

The group's South Asia director, Champa Patel, said the attack "underscores the appalling lack of protection being afforded to a range of peaceful activists in the country".
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. The prime minister of Georgia vowed that his country would continue moving on a pro-Western course and pledged to hold an honest parliamentary election this fall, Armenpress reports citing ABC News.

In an interview with The Associated Press on April 25, Giorgi Kvirikashvili said that the future of this post-Soviet nation lies with the European Union and NATO.

"There is a very clear will of (the) Georgian people ... to be pro-Western, pro-European," Kvirikashvili told the AP.

"This does not mean that we do not need to try to normalize relations with Russia, with our neighbor, but not at the expense of Georgia's territorial integrity and sovereign decisions," Kvirikashvili said. "The sovereign decision of (the) Georgian people is to be pro-European."

Kvirikashvili said the government is committed to holding a clean parliamentary vote in October, in which his Georgian Dream Party will have to battle falling support ratings and face off with Saakashvili's supporters and other parties. Saakashvili himself left Georgia in the face of corruption charges and is now serving as a regional governor in Ukraine.

"Our aim is to have one of the freest and fairest elections in the recent history of Georgia," he said.

Kvirikashvili sought to dismiss criticism that Ivanishvili, a reclusive tycoon who served as prime minister for a year until he stepped down in 2013, was still governing this small South Caucasus nation behind the scenes.

"Ivanishvili is (the) founder of the party Georgian Dream. He is an important person," Kvirikashvili said. "But in our major decisions, in our daily work, the government is absolutely independent."

Ivanishvili's name figured in the so-called Panama Papers revelations, a leak of millions of documents detailing the offshore accounts of people and companies. According to the investigation, Ivanishvili owned a company based in the British Virgin Islands, though it is unclear what the company was used for.

Kvirikashvili said the Georgian government needs additional information to look into this matter.

"Mr. Ivanishvili was always inclined to have transparent business and to comply with all the requirements of transparency," Kvirikashvili added.
A French court has found a Dutch dentist guilty of assault and fraud and sentenced him to eight years in prison.

Jacobus Van Nierop, 51, showed no signs of emotion when the court in the central town of Nevers returned its verdict.

The court also barred him from practising dentistry for life.

Around 100 people had issued complaints against Van Nierop, ranging from having multiple healthy teeth removed, pieces of drills left in their gums and teeth, or abscesses and misshapen mouths after he carried out work on patients.

Van Nierop, dubbed the "horror dentist" by the French media, was accused of causing "mutilations" or "permanent disabilities" to scores of patients from 2009 to 2012, of overcharging patients and billing them for imaginary procedures and of illegally practising dentistry in France.

In their 130-page ruling, the judges convicted the Dutchman of 85 counts of assault, including 45 counts of mutilation, and of 61 counts of fraud against patients, their health insurance companies and the local social security agency.

They fined him 10,500 and said they will decide the amount of damages due to 62 plaintiffs in June.

The court acquitted the defendant of six counts of assault and some counts of fraud.

Van Nierop has 10 days to file an appeal. He has been detained in a French prison since January 2015.

Marie-Jo Lemoine, a victim of Van Nierop, celebrated the verdict.

She said: "It's silly to say that but I say it: It feels good. He will have time to think about us. But, as for the rest, nothing has changed regarding what we'll be given in terms of compensation. It won't be enough to repair the harm he caused. "

In her closing speech last month, prosecutor Lucile Jaillon-Bru said that in Van Nierop "there was only greed, indifference to another, even some enjoyment in making others suffer" and that for the victims "the price of pain is enormous".

The dentist's goal "was to always make more money", she said.

Delphine Morin-Meneghel, the lawyer for Van Nierop, acknowledged her client was responsible for some bad procedures but she insisted he committed no intentional or premeditated violence towards any of his patients.

One patient, Sylviane Boulesteix, 65, told the court she was unexpectedly summoned to the Dutchman's dental office in May 2012.

Without warning, the dentist pulled eight of her teeth out and immediately fixed dentures on her raw gums. For hours, the woman said she sat "gushing blood".

In the following days, she said Van Nierop refused to relieve her pain.

A judicial expert described the dentist as a "cruel and perverse" man whose incompetence made Ms Boulesteix lose several healthy teeth, go through a trauma and suffer irreversible damage to her mouth.

When the dentist opened his office in late 2008, he was first welcomed by residents in Chateau-Chinon, a small town located in a rural and remote part of France's Burgundy region known as a "medical desert" because of a lack of medical professionals.

Van Nierop provided false documents to practise dentistry in France and concealed that he was the subject of disciplinary proceedings in his own country.

While living in an imposing home with a swimming pool, driving expensive cars and visiting luxurious hotels, the Dutchman had debts of nearly 1m, according to court documents.

He may be insolvent, which worries the plaintiffs who had claimed more than 3m overall in damages.

In late 2013, the Dutchman fled to Canada before being extradited to the Netherlands and then deported to France.

Psychiatric experts said Van Nierop shows a narcissistic pervert personality with an absence of all moral sense and that he does not feel any compassion.

During the trial, the lawyer for one patient told the dentist his client was just waiting for apologies.

Van Nierop replied: "I have no feelings anymore. So, if I was offering my apologies today, I would be lying."
A large storm capable of producing "significant" tornadoes and grapefruit-sized hail could be heading for north Texas, forecasters said.

The most dangerous weather - heavy winds, tornadoes and giant hail - are likely to take aim at a 102,000sq mile area stretching from central Texas to southern Nebraska, including the Dallas, Oklahoma City and Wichita, Kansas, areas, according to the Storm Prediction Centre in Oklahoma.

Severe thunderstorms and strong wind gusts are also predicted for Mid-Atlantic states where voters are casting ballots in primary elections.

George Eischen, 51, spent Tuesday morning moving vehicles off the forecourt at his Chevrolet dealership in the small town of Fairview, about 100 miles north west of Oklahoma City. Mr Eischen said he has been lining the new vehicles "bumper to bumper" in the shop to protect them from the hail.

"We've never been hit by a tornado here in town, amazingly," Mr Eischen said. "But yeah, we've had hail. And that's the real enemy of the car dealer."

In all, more than 53 million people from the Rio Grande in south Texas to Omaha, Nebraska, and parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky are at a slight risk or higher of experiencing severe weather.

That tally also includes Washington, DC, Philadelphia and Baltimore, where a separate storm system could bring strong winds and thunderstorms to Mid-Atlantic states.

"We shouldn't assume that we're going to have a lot of information - you know, a lot of lead time," Storm Prediction Centre meteorologist Matt Mosier said. "We may or we may not."

Winds gusting up to 60mph downed trees, damaged buildings and knocked out power in parts of northern and central Missouri.

The National Weather Service reported that storms early on Tuesday brought torrential rains and hail ranging from 1in to 1.5in in Kansas City and other north-west Missouri towns.

Storms are expected in Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania, where voters are casting ballots in primary elections, though forecasters are not expecting a severe weather outbreak there.

Some schools in the Oklahoma City area called off classes on Tuesday, while others said students would be sent home early to avoid the worst of the weather.

Mid-Del Public Schools, in the Oklahoma City suburb of Midwest City, cancelled classes late on Monday. It said in a statement that the safety of students and staff is a priority, noting that it reworked its tornado safety plan three years ago after a storm killed seven schoolchildren in the neighbouring suburb of Moore.

In recent years, authorities have been able to predict storm conditions like these several days in advance with greater confidence, Mr Mosier said, though he noted that the weather does not always pan out as expected.

"It's never straightforward when you're sitting here talking about (predicting) large tornadoes," Mr Mosier said. "We're trying to be as confident or as accurate as we can."

Residents of affected areas should develop a plan to take shelter from a quick-forming storm without driving in severe conditions, Mr Mosier said.
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NEW YORK: Gold prices rose more than 1% on Friday, on track for a weekly rise, as the dollar turned negative, with...
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. Meydan TV, an independent digital news platform that has brought straightforward and revelatory accounts to a growing audience inside Azerbaijan, announced on April 21 that prosecutors there opened a criminal investigation for alleged illegal business activities, abuse of power and tax evasion. These are the standard charges used to harass and silence Aliyevs critics, Armenpress reports citing The Washington Post.

Meydan TV reported on its website that the investigation has named 15 of its journalists. None is yet formally charged, but some have been told they cannot leave the country, and they are subject to home searches and equipment confiscations without a warrant. We consider this as a declaration of war against independent journalism in Azerbaijan, Emin Milli, Meydan TVs founder, who had served 16 months in prison on trumped-up charges, told EurasiaNet.org.

Aliyev is always jittery in the face of criticism. He jailed the journalist Khadija Ismayilova , who first exposed the ownership of lucrative gold mines by Aliyevs daughters, later revealed in the Panama Papers to be even larger than thought. Ten other journalists, bloggers and activists also remain imprisoned. Ismayilovas plight and that of others have been thoroughly documented by Meydan TV, which does not shy from stories that unsettle the regime. Most recently it challenged the official count of casualties suffered by Azerbaijan in a four-day conflict with Armenia. Using citizen journalists and interviews with the families of servicemen, Meydan TV calculated that the government had underreported the casualties by a factor of three. Meydan TV closed its newsroom in Baku in 2014 and moved the operation to Berlin after Mr. Milli was repeatedly harassed. Using reporters and contributors in Azerbaijan, Meydan TV reaches its audience by Facebook , YouTube and a website.

The experience of Meydan TV teaches that the digital byways can enable free information to reach closed societies and bypass tyrants. Aliyev seems to think he can fight back with secret police and prosecutors. Perhaps Aliyev inherited these inclinations from his father, Heydar, a career KGB man who was appointed to the Soviet Politburo. While KGB methods can be painful for those targeted, they cant seal out the truth, nor stop criticism, as Meydan TV and Ms. Ismayilova have courageously demonstrated. Aliyev should free all political prisoners, drop the prosecution of Meydan TV and sit down to watch the channel himself. He might learn something about the values a nation needs to succeed in the modern age.
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YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. Member of the European Parliament Frank Engel urged the international community and in particular the European Union to stop equalizing the aggressor and victim in the NKR conflict. As Armenpress reports, Engel posted the following via Facebook:

 With the Azerbaijani efforts to have the Karabakh ceasefire repealed - after it refused to have it monitored by the OSCE - and two Karabakhi soldiers dead during the night, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt what's going on there. Azerbaijan is out for open war of aggression and conquest. How long will the international community - the EU included - continue its cowardly appeals "to both sides to refrain from" making the situation worse, instead of cracking down on the aggressor??, Engel wrote.
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YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. Deputy Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Eduard Sharmazanov discussed the NKR contact line situation with NKR Deputy PM Ara Harutyunyan and NKR Parliament Speaker Ashot Ghulyan.

As Armenpress reports, at the beginning of the Parliament session Sharmazanov said that currently the situation in the line of contact is relatively calm.

The situation in the NKR-Azerbaijan line of contact was tense yesterday evening and during the night. Maliciously violating the Moscow ceasefire agreement, Azerbaijan used almost its entire artillery measures to bombard NKR, which resulted in two deaths. I would like to express my condolences to the families of the killed servicemen. I have talked to PM Arayik Harutyunyan and Parliament Speaker Ashot Ghulyan. Now the NKR army is in full control of the situation. The situation is relatively calm, Sharmazanov said.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. Deputy Parliament Speaker Eduard Sharmazanov announced during the Parliament session that the Parliament is in constant communication with law enforcement agencies in connection with the bus explosion in Yerevan.

As Armenpress reports, Sharmazanov assured to provide information to the MPs as soon as concrete information is received.

Two citizens died as a result of yesterdays bus explosion on Halabyan Street in Yerevan. On behalf of everyone here I would like to express condolences to the families of the victims and wish speedy recovery to the injured.

I have talked to Healthcare Minister Armen Muradyan. He said that the injured are recovering. We are in contact with law enforcement agencies. If nessecary we will provide you with information.

Sharmazanov said that Police Chief Vladimir Gasparyan, Prosecutor General Gevorg Kostanyan, Investigative Committee Chairman Aghvan Hovsepyan were at the scene during the night.
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YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. President Serzh Sargsyan signed a decree on April 26 dismissing Arshak Karapetyan from the post of Intelligence Department Head of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. As Armenpress was informed by the department of Public Relations and Mass Media of the Presidential Administration, the decree states:



Guided by the 2005 amendments to paragraph 12 of Article 55 of the Constitution of the Republic Armenia and based on the Article 52 of the Military Service Law - I decide:

Dismiss Major-General Arshak KARAPETYAN from the post of Head of Intelligence Department of the General Staff of Armenian Armed Forces.
Developers have paid more than $12 million in purchases along the Sydenham to Bankstown urban renewal project line.

CBRE's manager, capital markets, Nick Tuxworth said the future rezoning possibilities would create up to 36,000 new homes along the rail corridor.

Dulwich Hill Train Station is near where developers are looking for sites. Credit:Christopher Pearce

Recent sales include four lots at 1-7 Cleary Avenue in Belmore, for $8.4 million and 14-16 Dudley Street in Marrickville for $4 million. Both were purchased by local developers.

CBRE also has two significant parcels of land currently on the market including 129-133 Ninth Avenue in Belfield which has a development approval lodged for 15 townhouses and 548 Canterbury Road in Campsie with DA for 460 units.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan signed a decree on April 26 dismissing Komitas Muradyan from the post of Head of the Communications and ACS Department of the Defense Ministry.

As Armenpress was informed by the department of Public Relations and Mass Media, the decree states:

Guided by the 2005 amendments of article 12 paragraph 55 of the Constitution of Armenia and based on the 1st point of the Military Service Law paragraph 52  I decide:

Dismiss Major-General Komitas MURADYAN from the post of Head of Communications and ACS Department of the Defense Ministry.
A 16-year-old boy from suburban Sydney with no criminal record has been charged with an offence whose maximum penalty is life imprisonment. He was charged for an offence of planning or preparing to commit a terrorist act.

Apparently the boy was planning an attack on an Anzac Day gathering.

Around 12 months before being charged, the boy was being monitored by NSW and Federal Police. Debra Killalea reported on news.com.au that the boy had been referred to a deradicalisation program run by police in conjunction with psychologists, religious leaders, mentors and work placements.

Killalea also expressed the opinion that "it appears clear the program has now failed". Perhaps there are others in the community who believe that the arrest of the boy means taxpayer funds are being wasted on wasteful preventative programs.

Yet such diversionary programs are nothing new in conventional criminal law. All too often have I had clients referred to all kinds of courses and programs from anger management to safe driving as well as more serious programs designed to prevent more serious crimes. Often a magistrate will order a special report from the probation and parole office on whether the accused is an appropriate person for such a program.
Nuclear tests in Pacific

"The United States set off an intermediate-sized nuclear explosion at dawn yesterday near Christmas Island, in the Central Pacific," the Herald reported. "The device was the first to be exploded by the United States since October 30, 1958. In Tokyo, police prepared for possible violence at the U.S. Embassy today as Japanese Leftist and ultra-Rightist groups gathered forces for demonstrations over the tests."

Headline from SMH front page, April 27, 1962 Credit:Fairfax Archives

Ringing all the bells

The Herald's New York correspondent spoke with Miss Neil Litvak, director of public information for the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. "We have simply got to keep on ringing all the emotional bells. We are planning peace-mobiles, trucks and trailers plastered with pictures of Hiroshima and contrast shots of happy children in a world of peace. We're going to demonstrate. We're going to move."
Whether you think Sally Faulkner was right or wrong in trying to snatch back her children, the one thing nobody has considered is whether parental alienation was at play.

This is where one parent tries to isolate their children from the other, and ultimately deprives them of contact altogether.

Whether you think Sally Faulkner was right or wrong, parental alienation was at play. Credit:Angela Wylie

I know a bit about the subject, because I saw it first hand when I was in parliament.

The last thing one of my constituents did before she took her life was to call my office to thank us for helping her. She hung up the phone, and killed herself.
It is now thirty years since radiation monitoring stations in Sweden detected a massive surge in airborne contaminants and Western intelligence satellite images showed something unusual happing at a Ukrainian nuclear complex.

Not long after an ashen faced Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of an increasingly disunited Soviet Union, introduced the world to a new name with confirmation of an uncontrolled fire, nuclear meltdown and massive radiation release at Chernobyl.

Chernobyl remains a ghost town 30 years after the nuclear meltdown. Credit:Jan Villalon

Without a hint of irony the Australian government is marking this anniversary with a plan to open up uranium sales to the country that hosted this continuing warning about the dangers of the nuclear industry.

Globally nuclear accidents are ranked on a sliding scale of severity from one to seven. Chernobyl was the first time that scale reached the highest warning signal of seven, Fukushima was the next.
No-one could accuse former Human Services minister Stuart Robert of impeccable judgement. After all, the reason the previous sentence contains the word "former" is that ol' Robsy was forced to resign earlier this year over a perceived conflict of interest after being revealed to have spoken in an official-looking capacity at the 2014 launch of a friend (and Liberal donor's) project launch in China, while also being an investor in one of said friend's businesses. But even so, choosing to use Anzac Day - a day, it's fair to say, that has a fair level of significance and solemnity attached to it - to frame the government's support for negative gearing as an act of support for the military does seem a little gauche, even by Stu's standards. It's hard to know exactly why one would think that tweeting "there are more defence force personnel who use negative gearing than surgeons, judges, anaesthetists and psychiatrists combined" was making a necessary and timely contribution to the national discussion, but Robert clearly did. He did, admittedly, delete the tweet a couple of hours later after it garnered a less-than-supportive response online, but even so really, Stu? You couldn't maybe wait for a day when the entire nation wasn't paying tribute to the fallen?

Dive! Dive! Dive! Rejoice, South Australia, for you are the fortunate recipients of a mighty submarine contract! Sort of! More specifically, French firm DCNS will do the actual designing and building of the spaceships of the ocean, which Australia reportedly needs for military reasons that are not entirely clear. However, the building of said spaceships will happen at Port Adelaide, with the first set to launch in the 2030s. Defence Minister Marise Payne declared that the subs would form a "vital part of our naval capability to 2060 and beyond, well beyond the lifespan of most of us who are standing here today."

Just for context, the Collins-class submarines that the new subs are set to replace were built in the 1990s (the first complete sub hit the water in 1994, which is well inside the lifespan of most of us standing here today), so the idea that our new subs will be serving in 2060 and beyond seems ambitious. Still, neat! And while this is great news for the local maritime engineering biz, it's even better news for some very, very nervous SA MPs who were looking at losing their seats to the Nick Xenophon team - like Science Minister Christopher "I'm a fixer, honest!" Pyne. Of course, that's not to suggest that the current government would ever take electoral considerations into account when deciding spending priorities. After all, it's not as though the government apparently withheld $10 million in hospital spending after their MP was dumped in Indi, right? Teamwork

There's a lot to be said about leaders having access to good, timely advice. Indeed, one of the greatest weaknesses in our political system is that most ministers have little if any direct involvement in the area of their responsibility. Political appointments are, by definition, political rather than because of expertise - which is why current treasurer Scott Morrison holds a Bachelor of Science (honours) degree from the University of NSW rather than, say, any actual economic qualifications. So on the one hand one should applaud Barnaby Joyce, leader of the National Party and deputy prime minister of Australia, for building a "support unit" within his portfolio in order to answer questions of government-wide policy that aren't agriculture-based. On the other hand um, shouldn't the leader of a party already know stuff? Indeed, more specifically, shouldn't the very act of knowing stuff be a prerequisite for a person whose role is to be the nation's spare PM? As an internal government memo revealed, "The Deputy Prime Minister Support Unit's role is to assist Minister Joyce by looking at the 'big picture' and forming strategic links within the department and across government to respond to whole-of-government policy issues and broader government initiatives."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the diminutive 83-year-old US Supreme Court Justice, champion of women's rights, and feminist icon, is often asked when there will be "enough" women on America's highest court.

Ginsburg was only the second woman appointed to the bench in 1993, and was such a novelty that lawyers frequently called her by the name of the only other woman judge, Sandra O'Connor, according to her biography Notorious RBG.

Today women fill three out of the nine positions on the Supreme Court, a historic high. But when Ginsburg is asked this strange question about how many women judges will be "enough" - her answer is always the same.

"Nine," she says.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. The US Embassy in Armenia expressed its condolences to the families of those killed during the bus explosion in Halabyan street, Yerevan on the night of April 25.

As Armenpress reports, the US Embassys statement reads: The U.S. Embassy in Armenia offers its sincere condolences to the families of those killed in last nights tragic bus explosion. The injured remain in our thoughts as they recover. We stand ready to offer whatever assistance we can to help the Armenian authorities investigate this incident. We praise the police for their calm, professional investigation.
The Turnbull government has escalated its attack on Labor's plans to reform negative gearing, insisting the reforms would wipe out property investors and rubbishing a contrary report by the Grattan Institute.

One third of property buyers were investors and Labor's changes would "take all or almost all of them out of the market", Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull claimed on Tuesday.

"If you take a third of the buyers out of the market, prices [and] values will fall. That's common sense," he told the ABC's 730. Pressed for modelling to substantiate his claim, the PM said it was a function of "the laws of supply and demand".

Grattan Institute chief John Daley said the Prime Minister's claim did not pass basic macroeconomic scrutiny.
So, do we get the canoe, too? For all the serious and weighty talk of national security, there must surely be a better way for Australia to decide to spend $50 billion on a dozen submarines and not upset a close friend.

France might well be a deserving winner on the technical specs, but this tortuous saga has resulted in one very definite loser, Australia's "best friend in Asia" - Japan.

It's bad enough that Bill Shorten almost but not quite invoked the "Yellow Peril" in an overly zealous demand to build the subs locally, only for a Coalition Defence minister to declare he wouldn't trust Australia's shipmaker to "build a canoe".
Serhij Bucharenko still bears the scars. Many of his colleagues are long dead. He labours under constant pain. Several cancers have been cut out. One of his eyes no longer works. Former Chenobyl liquidator Serhij Bucharenko, was one of many charged months later with the responsibility of stopping the leaks at the reactor. Credit:Justin McManus He is one of Chernobyl's survivors. Thirty years ago, on a Saturday, the reactor's breached carcass spewed radioactive particles into the air, where they silently floated over the nearby town of Pripyat, and then on via the atmospheric currents to scatter across Belarus, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Austria and untold other places.

Sehij Bucharenko is a former Chernobyl liquidator, who was charged with stopping the leaks at the reactor. Mr Bucharenko, who is in Australia to visit his daughter, clambered on top of reactor three in the months after the explosion and helped to seal it. He and those he worked with probably saved untold lives. In exchange, they gave their own. Mr Bucharenko worked without protective equipment, sometimes without even gloves to cover his hands. "We must not allow the world to forget," he said.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. The Press Service of the NKR Defense Army informed Armenpress that Defense Army has presented photos of Azerbaijani attacks at civilian settlement overnight April 25-26, which prove that Azerbaijan is committing atrocities and war crimes.

Earlier the NKR Defense Army released a statement which reads: Overnight April 25-26 Azerbaijan violated the ceasefire agreement in the NKR-Azerbaijan line of contact more than 80 times. Azerbaijan used almost every artillery and armored equipment of its arsenal, in particular 60mm (26 shells), 82 mm (75 shells) mortars, RPG -7 (7 grenades), SPG-9 (2 grenades) and AGS-17 (3 grenades) grenade launchers, ZU-23-2 (200 shots) antiaircraft weapon system, TR-107 rocket system and a tank. In addition to targeting military positions, Azerbaijan shelled the Martakert civilian settlement by firing 14 rockets from MM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers. Mataghis was also shelled by artillery fire (8 shells).

As a result of the Azerbaijani ceasefire violations, Defense Army soldiers Tigran M. Poghosyan (born 1992) and Aram N. Arushanyan (born 1972) were mortally wounded.

The NKR Army took countermeasure to suppress the Azerbaijani aggression and targeted Azerbaijani frontline positions and artillery bases, causing significant manpower and equipment loss.

Currently the situation is relatively calm along the border.

vvvvvv
Some stories speak across generations and oceans, linking the past with the present.

In an amazing twist of fate, a bible dropped by an Australian soldier when he was wounded at Gallipoli has now been returned to his family, the Goulburn Post reports.

A bible dropped by an injured soldier in Gallipoli in 1915 has been returned to his family in Australia.

It took just over 100 years for the treasured "lucky" bible to come back to the Rottenbury family.

Goulburn man Peter Rottenbury, the great-grandson of the soldier who dropped the bible Sapper Arthur Edwin Cooper, said he was "overwhelmed with emotion" when he learnt the bible would be returning to Australia.
A Brisbane woman allegedly bankrupted by the financial wheelings and dealings of her partner is taking on one of Australia's big four banks, alleging its failed to properly handle her banking needs.

But in what is shaping up as a David and Goliath style battle in the Supreme Court of Queensland, the National Australia Bank has denied any culpability in the financial fall of Paddington's Leith Anne Williamson, saying she has only herself to blame for her monetary woes.

A Brisbane woman allegedly bankrupted by the financial wheelings and dealings of her partner is taking on one of Australia's big four banks. Credit:Glenn Hunt

"(NAB) denies ...that any alleged loss was caused by the financial accommodation provided by NAB and further says that if any loss has been suffered, such loss was caused or contributed to by the actions of Ms Williamson," the bank said in a statement of defence lodged on April 14, in response to a statement of claim lodged by Ms Williamson in January.

The 58-year-old is suing both the bank and her former real estate agent partner of 20 years, Phillip James Waight, for an undisclosed sum, saying both were equally complicit for her financial downfall.
A Gold Coast police officer has pleaded not guilty to using excessive or unnecessary force on three different suspects.

The hearing of Senior Constable Aaron Minns, who has been charged with four counts of common assault and was suspended from duty in September 2015, began at the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

A Gold Coast cop allegedly used unnecessary force on four separate occasions. Credit:Tom Threadingham

The court heard Minns allegedly used unnecessary force on four separate occasions, including while apprehending a man at Mudgeeraba after a car chase.

AAP
After 135 years, four generations and countless shoes, the last handmade dance shoe shop in Australia is closing its doors.

Salvio's Shoes, founded by Enrico Salvio, has become a familiar part of the arts community in Australia, supplying everyone from The Wiggles to the Australian Ballet to Sigrid Thornton and King Kong.

Salvio's Shoes are the latest victim among many smaller bricks-and-mortar stores faced with the power of online shopping. Credit:James Brickwood

But cheap foreign imports and the rise of internet sales have hit the business hard, according to Enrico's great-granddaughter Cathy Lennox, and her husband Philip.

"This hasn't just happened in a few weeks, this has happened over the last five years. The whole family is gutted. We're not happy that it's happening," Philip said.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian delegation to the PACE has been fully engaged in the works of the plenary session and tried to increase the awareness of European delegates on the four-day war in Nagorno Karabakh unleashed by Azerbaijan. As Armenpress reports, the head of the delegation, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Hermineh Naghdalyan stated that the Armenian delegation did everything not to let Azerbaijan, as usual, spread false information.

We made speeches during the all question discussions of the session and following the agenda tried to release factual information on April events and Azerbaijans policy, the MP said adding that the Armenian delegates provided information both verbally, in the form of brochures and other information materials.

We hold special meetings with more than 10 national delegations and explained them the reality with factual materials and photos, the MP said. She added that they tried to answer several key questions: who started the attack, what was the aim of that, which kind of banned weapons were used, how many victims were recorded among civilians and serviceman, and about the violations of international norms.

Hermineh Naghdalyan also stated that one of their main works in the PACE was to spread the policy of that organization on the Nagorno Karabakh. The MP elaborated this stating that they want the Council of Europe, being an organizing and supervising body of the process providing the human rights conventions in its area, to apply its mission also on the Nagorno Karabakh. Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjrn Jagland put a special emphasis on the April events. In particular, he stated that there should not be black areas in the Europe where the European Convention on Human Rights doesnt work or human rights are not protected, in this speech he also included the right to life of Nagorno Karabakh people, said the Armenian MP.
Esmatullah Hakimi emerges from the kitchen about 3pm, just as the lunchtime rush is starting to slow. He sits at the table near the window, gathers his thoughts, and hunches forward to check his phone.

Mr Hakimi has a lot on his mind. His wife is nine months pregnant and due any time  it could be this afternoon, he thinks; definitely this week. He has been up since the early hours, working at home, before racing into the shop to pull up the shutters and prepare for the first customers by 11am.

Refugee Esmattulah Hakimi's newly opened diner is across the road from the Ford factory, which closes down next year. Credit:Justin McManus

As the owner of a new restaurant, his first small business venture, Mr Hakimi is quickly learning there is no rest for the weary.

"It is the beginning of a business and we have to stay strong," he says, as a waitress produces a plate of flatbread and his favourite meats  shami, tikka and murgh kebabs. "We are not saving enough money yet, but still I am happy."
A young Chinese national has been charged by Homicide Squad detectives over a fatal assault in Melbourne's CBD earlier this month.

Shengliang Wan, 22, has been charged with the murder of 19-year-old Long Xiang Hu, who died in hospital on Saturday.

Shengliang Wan, 22, has been charged with the murder of 19-year-old Long Xiang Hu. Credit:Penny Stephens

Detective Leading Senior Constable Vic Anastasiadis said the alleged assault took place at La Trobe Place in Melbourne's Chinatown on Friday, April 15th.

He said Mr Hu was taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital the following day where he was put on life support, but died as a result of his injuries eight days later.
The wife of a man missing in Victoria's alpine region says his disappearance is completely out of character.

The air and land search resumed on Wednesday morning for Taddeo Haigh - better known as Ted - who was holidaying with wife Elizabeth in Sawmill Settlement at Merrijig for the long weekend when he decided to go for a walk about 9.30pm on Sunday.

Missing bushwalker: Taddeo Haigh.

The German-born marine engineer has been missing for three nights, having not been since he walked out the door of their holiday cottage.

"He stopped to grab his grey hooded woollen jumper and that was it, he didn't say when he was coming back, but I wasn't expecting him to be longer than maybe half an hour or so," Ms Haigh told radio station 3AW.
A former Melbourne Grammar student - who believed he was the son of a werewolf - will spend up to 25 years in the state's maximum security psychiatric hospital after being found not guilty of murdering a homeless man due to mental impairment.

Easton Woodhead, 21, has spent the past five months in prison waiting for a bed to become available at the Thomas Embling psychiatric hospital.

In November a Supreme Court jury accepted he did not know that what he was doing was wrong when he stabbed to death Morgan Wayne 'Mouse' Perry.

Justice Jane Dixon on Tuesday formally ordered Woodhead - who had had an eye tattooed on the back of his shaved head to mark the spot where he believed he would be shot - to be held at Thomas Embling for a nominal 25 years under a custodial supervision order.
A Perth boy accused of murder has had his bail application delayed for a fourth time after the 11-year-old's lawyer indicated his older brother would be his guardian if he was released.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, appeared in Perth Children's Court via video link from Banksia Hill Detention Centre with his mother, brother and a family friend by his side.

The boy is one of seven people accused of murdering Patrick 'Paddy' Slater outside the Esplanade bus station in a post-Australia Day brawl on January 27.

The court had previously heard the 11-year-old was living at his brother's home with his mother when he is alleged to have murdered Mr Slater, and allegedly committed a separate offence of aggravated burglary in October.
Bangkok: One of Australia's longest-held kidnap victims has dismissed claims the beheading of a Canadian hostage by Islamic militants in the southern Philippines was an act of terrorism.

Warren Rodwell told Fairfax Media the hostage-takers who recently declared allegiance to Islamic State killed 68 year-old John Ridsdel because a deadline to pay a ransom was not met.

"After having issued a final ultimatum all credibility would have been lost if the decapitation was not carried out," said Mr Rodwell, who was held captive for almost 15 months by the Abu Sayyaf, the same group that had been holding Mr Ridsdel and three other hostages captive since September.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. Armenian-Czech business forum and session of the Armenian-Czech Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation were held in Prague. The business forum was attended by 15 companies from Armenia and over 50 companies from the Czech Republic.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Ministry of Economy of Armenia, the business forum was organized within the framework of the 2nd Armenian-Czech intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation, held on April 26.



The delegation headed by the first Deputy Minister of Economy of Armenia Geregin Melkonyan on April 25 paid two-day visit to Prague to take part at the 2nd Armenian-Czech intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation, as well as the business forum.



The forum aims to expand and strengthen bilateral trade and economic ties. During the forum were discussed investment proposals of entrepreneurs between two countries.



The Development Foundation of Armenia organized a presentation on business and investment environment of Armenia for the participants of the forum.



The scope of activities of companies presented Armenia consists of construction, information technologies, light industry, trade and other sectors.



Several meetings on mutual interests were organized for the entrepreneurs participating in the event.

The second session of the Armenian-Czech Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation was also held in Prague on April 26.



The Co-Chairmen of the Commission were the First Deputy Minister of Economy of Armenia Garegin Melkonyan and the Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic Vladimir Bartl.



From the Armenian side the meetings were attended by the representatives of the Ministry of Economy of Armenia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, Ministry of Transport and Communication, Development Foundation of Armenia, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Republic of Armenia and also by the representatives of other organizations.



Issues on the cooperation between Armenia and the Czech Republic in the fields of trade and economy, finance, investments, agriculture, healthcare, education and science, culture, standardization, transport, information technologies, tourism, energy have been discussed during the meeting.



The Commission protocol was signed during the meeting and further cooperation opportunities have been discussed.



Within the framework of the second session of the Armenian-Czech Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation a memorandum of understanding has been signed between the National Institute of Metrology of the Republic of Armenia and Institute of Metrology of the Czech Republic.



The First Deputy Minister of Economy of the Republic of Armenia Garegin Melkonyan had meetings with the Minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic Jan Mladek, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic Vladimir Bartl, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic for Economic and Development Cooperation Martin Tlapa.





Armenian-Czech Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation was formed in January 30, 2014, in accordance with the Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Armenia and the Government of the Czech Republic on Economic and Industrial Cooperation.

The delegation of the Armenian-Czech Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation was formed by June 20, 2014, N 576A decree of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia.

The first session of the Armenian-Czech Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation was held in Yerevan, on September 11, 2014.
As it happened: Trump sweeps 5 states, Clinton strides toward nomination

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The trolls were horrid to her while she was alive. And they continued to be awful after her death.

Firefighter Nicole Mittendorff, 31, killed herself in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park, the state medical examiner concluded. But even after the search for her was over, after her body was identified and memorial candles began to burn, the cyberbullies - who claimed they were her fellow firefighters - kept scorching Mittendorff online.

If these trolls are actually members of her firehouse family, then Mittendorff becomes another example of a new form of workplace harassment. Instead of happening in the office, it happens publicly online.

There is an investigation at Mittendorff's firehouse to find out who posted the vicious online attacks and whether they played a role in her suicide.
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. The OSCE Minsk Group is working upon organizing a meeting between the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev, Armenpress reports, citing Ria Novosti, the French Co-chair Pierre Andrieu told the reporters in Baku.

We have held meetings with the Presidents of both countries. Now we are trying to organize a meeting between the Presidents, Andrieu said, adding that at the moment the Co-chairs have no plans to pay a visit to the region.

The ceasefire regime must be respected and it is necessary to resume the negotiation process as soon as possible, the French Co-chair said.
Australian Broker

Investment fund manager Clarence Property has announced the launch of a $50 million mortgage fund, offering retail investors access to either a pooled fund of mortgages or an option to invest in a specific mortgage, for properties worth up to $5 million.It is Ballina-based Clarence Propertys first mortgage fund, while the company also manages $320 million worth of funds through Westlawn Property Trust and a number of other syndicates.Chief Executive of Clarence Property, Peter Fahey, said the group is seeking to raise an initial $50 million for its LFP (loan for property) Investment Fund, which will provide investment and development loans on properties listed at between $200,000 and $5 million.Fahey said, We aren't in any hurry. We are experiencing a high level of demand for loans but we are very picky on what we choose  we are only looking at the best quality."Our aim in the current market is to achieve a return of 5 per cent to 6 per cent per annum for investors, with quarterly distributions."The Westlawn Trust ownes a $200 million portfolio of 16 commercial and retail properties between Port Macquarie and the Gold Coast with the new fund set to be popular in the same region.Locally based mortgage broker Julian Packshaw told, Its indicative of whats happening in the area, theres a lot going on and its a good place to invest your money, the Northern Rivers. Theres a lot of development opportunities, residential opportunities and I think [the Clarence Property LFP Investment Fund] will do well.
Latest News NAB reveals six market megatrends for brokers More opportunities for investors, first home buyers

Firstmac shifts up a gear on auto loans National sales manager appointed to pursue growing market

A new report from non-major bank ING Direct has put paid to any assumptions that younger generations prefer digital communication via electronic means, and actually want a face-to-face relationship when it comes to seeking financial advice.The study, which surveyed 1,000 people between the ages of 22 and 52, found that while less than 5% of Generation X or Y currently have a financial advisor, these demographics do recognise the importance of such advice, with more than half saying they will seek advice in the future. Mark Woolnough , Head of Third Party Distribution at ING Direct, said, Relationships have always been the cornerstone of successful and sustainable advice partnerships and its refreshing to see that the more digitally-savvy younger Australians recognise the value of face-to-face financial advice.This shows that while there is a place for online solutions, they should complement personal advice relationships and not be at their expense.For Sydney mortgage broker Graeme Salt of Origin Finance, the research bears out the fact that trust and transparency are still the overriding factors in the relationship between broker and client.He told Australian Broker, People will only do business with people they trust and it is difficult to build trust via a Twitter feed. Sure, digital communication is effective, but it must be built on solid foundations that can only be built via face-face communication.Salt added that Origins business remains predominantly Generation X but clearly Generation Y is coming through.However, as Woolnough suggests, digital channels are still vital to a broker both sustaining and procuring business.Facebook is no longer the preserve of pimply 14-year-olds, said Salt. I use social media many times a day and have learnt that there are heaps of middle-aged professionals posting photographs of their kids. Social media is a perfect medium to reiterate to them what services you offer, backing up real human communication.
Latest News NAB reveals six market megatrends for brokers More opportunities for investors, first home buyers

Firstmac shifts up a gear on auto loans National sales manager appointed to pursue growing market

High borrowing rates and the impact of the debate surrounding the Royal Commission are leading to customers becoming less and less happy with the major banks, according to a new survey by Roy Morgan Research.The monthly report found that customer satisfaction in relation to Australias big four banks had decreased by 50 basis points to 80% in March, marking the third consecutive decline.Norman Morris, Communications Director at Roy Morgan Research, said, The home-loan rate increase announced by the big four banks in October appears to be negatively impacting customer satisfaction even now, months later.Furthermore, any adverse publicity regarding rate increases and the current high-profile speculation about the prospect of a Royal Commission into banking is likely to affect satisfaction with the big four in particular.John Flavell, CEO of Mortgage Choice , believes the flagging of consumer confidence is largely down to negative press, but believes levels of customer satisfaction will bounce back.Australias major banks have received a fair bit of negative press in the last few weeks. This negative press could be contributing to their recent slip in customer satisfaction levels, he told Australian Broker.Moving forward, it is likely the governments decision to increase ASICs surveillance powers through greater funding together with the Australian Bankers Association recent announcement, will help to lift consumer confidence levels.Jeremy Fisher of Sydneys 1Street Home Loans agreed that the survey does not indicate a terminal falling away of consumer satisfaction with the majors.He told Australian Broker, We have more clients are questioning whether to support the big banks however once we educate the clients with the pros and cons of both options, we find the majority of clients feel more confident remaining with the big banks.However, Fisher warned that, The big banks need to improve on the post-settlement support of existing clients. Existing clients deserve to be treated equally to new to bank customers.
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The dazzling dozen!

Community News Group is making its own headlines after its chain of family glossies broke records at a prestigious, inter-continental media competition, winning 12 awards for keeping mom, dad, kids, and parenting advocates informed and entertained.

New York Parenting received two golds, four silver, and six bronze medals  enough for a hand of pinochle  in Parenting Media Associations annual Editorial and Design Awards Competition that celebrates excellence in journalism, design, and photography in parenting media around the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

The sensational sweep from 645 entries was an all-time record high for the MetroTech-based syndicate that has been a contest winner for the last 15 years, and publishes Manhattan Family, Brooklyn Family, Bronx-Riverdale Family, Staten Island Family, New York Special Child, and NYPar entin g.com .

Were so proud, said Susan Weiss, publisher and editor, who accepted the plaudits at the P.M.A. Annual Convention in Indiana earlier this month. Columns, articles, covers! Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island, all five magazines won, and one of our silver award-winning articles created a tremendous buzz on the internet.

Among the columns singled out for honors were New & Noteworthy by Lisa Jean Curtis, Healthy Living by Danielle Sullivan, Divorce & Separation by Lee Chabin; and Fabulyss Finds by Lyss Stern. The accolade-worthy articles included Misty Copeland  Breaking Down Barriers by Shnieka L. Johnson, Tammy Scileppis Telling Their Stories  Healing Scars (Teens and Domestic Violence) series, and Sullivans Teen Disease Youve Never Heard About, an investigative feature on Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome that went viral online.

Weiss and art director Leah Mitch  a perennial winner  clinched the gold for their Super Dads front cover featuring a cute tot, and a cover illustration on a holiday issue of a gold star directing readers eyes to children.

This simple yet effective illustration tells the story of holiday traditions, determined the judges.

New York Parentings own birth was an entrepreneurial conception.

The chain grew from a single magazine Weiss  a globe-trotting former actress and restaurateur  created after moving to Brooklyn from Manhattan 25 years ago with her baby and discovering Brooklyn was a parenting-magazine desert.

There was only one magazine and I thought it was provincial, she says. I wanted a quality parenting publication that was sophisticated, had quality content and design, and excellent distribution, and thus 17 years ago Brooklyn Family was born.

Weisss string of victories are a huge win for the entire CNG family, said CNGs president and publisher.

I am thrilled to see the hard work and dedication Susan and her team bring to creating our family magazines each month recognized with 12 awards, said Jennifer Goodstein. The variety of awards shows that the magazines are hitting the right notes.
Media Advisory: UB medical students to share their experiences providing patient care  and more  in Haiti and Honduras

Some patients in a Haitian village rely on medical visits from the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences for all their medical care

UB students and faculty have basically become the primary care physicians for the people of Fontaine and surrounding villages. 

BUFFALO, N.Y.  It sounds improbable but some residents of Fontaine, a poor, medically underserved village in rural Haiti, have come to view University at Buffalo medical students and faculty as their primary care providers.

Thats a result of medical missions that students and faculty from the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences have been making. Earlier this month, they made their fifth trip to Fontaine led by David Holmes MD, clinical associate professor of family medicine and director of global health education, where they treated 540 patients. A second team, led by Jennifer Corliss, MD, clinical assistant professor of family medicine, went to Honduras, providing care for about 450 patients.

Students and faculty from both teams will share their experiences on April 27 at noon in Butler Auditorium in Farber Hall on the UB South Campus.

Free and open to the public, the event is aimed toward promoting volunteer medical opportunities available to UB students. Media are invited to attend. For press arrangements, contact Ellen Goldbaum at 716-645-4605 or on-site at 716-771-9255.

Fontaine is about five hours north of Port-au-Prince and while a clinic is less than a 30-minute drive away, most people in the village have no way to get there. When students and faculty from the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo arrived in town earlier this month, they managed to see some patients they had previously treated.

Continuity of Care

I really liked this trip because I got to see a number of patients that I had treated on earlier trips there, said Vinny Polsinelli, a third-year medical student who started the UB medical trips to Haiti.

While an undergraduate at Siena College, he started traveling to Haiti with Friends of Fontaine, the nonprofit organization that built the first school in the village. He now serves on its board.

There was a day on this trip where every patient I saw was a follow-up patient, said Polsinelli. I knew them and their medical histories.

UB students and faculty have basically become the primary care physicians for the people of Fontaine and surrounding villages, Polsinelli said. We go to the same village twice a year and do our best to meet the primary care needs of the people during the limited amount of time that we are there, so we manage to provide some continuity of care.

Seventeen medical students, one UB medical resident, three UB faculty members, a UB office manager and an ultrasound technician from Women & Childrens Hospital of Buffalo who brought a portable ultrasound machine, went on the Haiti trip.

The ultrasound assistance was very helpful, allowing us to do prenatal checks and to evaluate abdominal pain, genitourinary problems and other conditions, said Holmes.

The UB team also brought eyeglasses for near-sighted and far-sighted patients.

Our students really enjoyed seeing the smiles on patients faces when they realized how much better they could see, Holmes said.

In Honduras, the UB team partnered with Shoulder to Shoulder, a non-governmental organization that works toward improving the regions sustainability in health, education and nutrition.

Patrick Salemme, a first-year student at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, said that many of the patients they saw throughout the week had problems that originated in poverty, such as the lack of transportation, cultural and language barriers and apathy from the government.

The biggest thing that surprised me was how difficult it is to truly understand poverty and how it affects someone's overall health, he said. For example, the team saw babies suffering from spina bifida, in which the spinal cord doesnt develop properly. Spina bifida is something that you would not typically see in someone with proper prenatal care. In regions with little access to care, these diseases will develop and cause more suffering among the poor.

His classmate, Grace Trompeter, made a similar observation. Almost all of the children I examined complained of headaches, particularly when walking home from school, uphill, in the afternoon, in 100 degree heat. Inquiring how much water they consumed, we quickly realized most of these kids were chronically dehydrated.

She added that while the team did its best to impress upon parents and children the importance of drinking water, they also were aware that getting access to clean, safe drinking water was going to be problematic.

New roofs overhead

And while health care was the primary goal, members of the UB team provided other kinds of assistance through a home repair project the village leaders had begun.

Many people in the village live in homes that are falling into disrepair, said Holmes. Among other things, their thatched roofs leak, a big problem in the rainy season. Our students did some fundraising before the trip, which helped pay for two homes to get new metal roofs. We also paid for a new roof on the one-room school house in a nearby village. Some of our students took some time off from the medical mission to help the Haitian workers with these repairs.

Holmes directs the Department of Family medicines Global Health Education Program, which facilitates experiences for medical students and graduate trainees who want to work with patients in medically underserved areas of the world or with refugees in Buffalo. He also oversees the departments focused global health scholars track for select residents.
Research News

UB establishes Center for Microbiome Research

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM

UB is establishing a new center to conduct research on the human microbiome, the collective microorganisms that live on and in the human body. The goal of research conducted at the center is to develop a base of knowledge about the human microbiome and its role in health and disease.

The multidisciplinary UB Center for Microbiome Research will be directed by Robert J. Genco, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Oral Biology, School of Dental Medicine, who also has appointments in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB and the Department of Immunology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

Effective May 1, Genco will leave his post as director of the Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach (STOR) to head the center.

Bob is stepping down from STOR to pursue research, his first passion, said Venu Govindaraju, vice president for research and economic development, but those of us who have worked with him over the past 14 years that he has directed STOR know that guiding UB innovations toward commercialization has always been close to his heart as well.

His robust understanding of the often unpredictable trajectory of scientific research has made him an outstanding advocate for our faculty innovators, Govindaraju. Over the years, Bob has instilled in this university a dynamic climate in which faculty entrepreneurs are increasingly successful.

Formerly chair of the Department of Oral Biology for 25 years, current director of the Periodontal Disease Clinical Research Center and a member of the National Academy of Medicine, Genco is an expert in the microbiome and a pioneer in the study of the impact that oral health has on overall health. He and his colleagues were among the first to report a connection between gum disease and heart disease and stroke, and led studies relating periodontitis to diabetes and obesity.

Under Dr. Gencos leadership, UBs new Center for Microbiome Research clearly leverages the rich resources our investigators have already developed here in the School of Dental Medicine and throughout the entire university in order to explore the microbiome and its extraordinary implications for human health and disease, said Joseph J. Zambon, interim dean and SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor, School of Dental Medicine.

Genco said studies of the microbiome promise to transform life sciences, leading to new approaches to controlling disease and maintaining health.

Some of the areas he and his colleagues will focus on include why people with diabetes are at higher risk for periodontal disease.

We will be asking if the oral and intestinal microbiomes are different in patients with diabetes and, if so, should that signal a different approach to managing these patients? Genco said. Well also look at the microbiome in pregnant women to better understand the role of the placental and fetal microbiome in the health and disease of the fetus. Were interested in the periodontal status of pregnant women who have gestational diabetes and how what we know about the microbiome might help develop new treatments for them.

The new center will focus, in part, on the oral microbiome, which has been a key interest of UB researchers, and its relationship to the microbiome in other sites in the body.

Genco and his colleagues will have access to thousands of samples of periodontal disease and extensive health information from 4,000 postmenopausal women who participated in the Buffalo OsteoPerio study, led by Jean Wactawski-Wende, dean of the School of Public Health and Health Professions, as well as from 1,600 subjects in the Buffalo Myocardial Infarction Periodontal Study.

The new center will collaborate with researchers in the Genome, the Environment and the Microbiome (GEM), one of UBs Communities of Excellence, as well as with those conducting research under Wactawski-Wende, principal investigator on a $3.9 million National Institutes of Health grant, a prospective study of the oral microbiome and periodontitis in postmenopausal women.

The establishment of the Center for Microbiome Research at UB provides the university with the ability to pursue so many opportunities in this exciting field, which has such deep roots at UB, said Wactawski-Wende. The ability of this new center to support UB research on the microbiome will be entirely complementary to avenues we are pursuing on the NIH grant.

According to Genco, the explosion of interest in studying the microbiome is partly a result of new technologies that are making the study of the microbiome far more feasible and less expensive than they had been in the past.

Previously, if you wanted to study bacteria in the mouth, you had to grow them in culture, he explained, but roughly half the oral bacteria cannot be cultured. Now, powerful methods like nucleic acid sequencing techniques allow us to identify and determine the relative abundance of most, if not all, of the organisms at that and other sites in nature. These techniques have revolutionized the study of microbes, including viruses and fungi, since all of them can be studied using these sequencing techniques.

These analytical techniques tailored for study of the microbiome are already available at UBs New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, Genomics Core and Specialized Bioinformatics, where much of the new centers research will be conducted.

Clinical studies will be carried out in the Periodontal Disease Research Center in the School of Dental Medicine, as well as the Center for Preventive Medicine in the School of Public Health and Health Professions, and the Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC). Laboratory studies will take place in the School of Dental Medicine and the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

UB faculty involved in the Center for Microbiome Research are:
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, ARMENPRESS. On April 25, GEICO Skytypers issued "An Apology"for the Armenian Genocide denial skywriting that occurred over New York City last week.

Armenian Assembly of America Florida Chair and South Florida Armenian Genocide Commemoration, Inc. Chair Arsine Kaloustian designed a campaign to contact the GEICO Skytypers and educate them on their own message. The image featured the GEICO Gecko with the following text: "GEICO Skytypers, sponsored by GEICO was the company that put a sky message above NYC denying Turkey's 1915 Genocide of 1.5 Million Armenians. Tell GEICO Skytypers that rewriting history in the sky IS NOT ACCEPTABLE." People were encouraged to contact the flight lead for Skytypers who approved the message. This image went viral and generated hundreds of responses to GEICO Skytypers.

"This formal apology from GEICO Skytypers should be encouraging to all Armenians who were disturbed in the face of the rampant genocide denial propaganda that has occurred nationwide over the last month," Kaloustian said. "No voice is too small when raised in unison with others who speak out for what is morally right. We hope this will serve as a message to other publicly held companies who may be ignorant on the subject of the Armenian Genocide. We are here. We are numerous. And we remember. Educate yourselves BEFORE running ads such as these."

As Armenpress was informed from the Armenian Assembly of America, the text of the apology runs as follows,

To those who have been offended by our recent skytyped messages, please accept our most humble and sincere apologies. Below is a recap of how we became involved with the messages. Please understand, we were hired by a third-party agency to promote an event. We clearly did not understand what we were promoting. Had we taken the time to further investigate references made, we would not have accepted the project.

At the onset, please note that GEICO sponsors the Skytypers for air shows. They are in no way involved with the promotional advertising side of the Skytypers organization. GEICO works in conjunction with the team and air show organizers regarding messages during air shows only.

Please also note the Skytypers only type messages on the east coast. We do not offer banner towing or other aerial forms of advertising. We were not involved in any of the activities on the western coast of the U.S. that took place on April 23-24. In fact, after realizing our own mistake, we encouraged the west coast skytyping team to forego their scheduled involvement with these activities".

Established in 1972, the Armenian Assembly of America is the largest Washington-based nationwide organization promoting public understanding and awareness of Armenian issues. The Assembly is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt membership organization.
Research News

Students design inflatable heat shield for NASA Mars mission contest

From left to right, Levi Li, Henry Kwan and Samuel Tedesco  all senior mechanical engineering majors at UB  are among the finalists for a NASA-sponsored contest to design a heat shield for future missions to Mars. Credit: Douglas Levere

By CORY NEALON

To have NASA and the National Institute of Aerospace evaluate our plan is really an honor. 

The path for humans to Mars could be paved by UB students.

A team of five UB student engineers have developed plans for a massive inflatable heat shield designed to protect spacecraft  and potentially astronauts  from the white-hot heat that objects encounter upon entering the red planets atmosphere.

The teams work impressed NASA and partner organization, the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA), which last fall called upon college students nationwide to submit proposals for a contest called the Breakthrough, Innovate, and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge.

Earlier this spring, NASA and NIA chose the top four plans, which came from students at UB, Georgia Tech, Purdue University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Now, competition organizers are flying the teams to NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, where they will present their plans to a panel of judges on April 25-26.

The winning team will be offered paid summer internships at NASA Langley and, potentially, the chance to flight test their concept.
Lagan Products has appointed Darren Johnson as area sales manager for the East Midlands, Yorkshire and the North West of England.

Mr Johnson, who joins a team of four other area sales managers across the UK has over 28 years experience in the construction industry and has built strong relationships in the marketplace.

Commenting on his new role, Mr Johnson, said: Im excited to join the Lagan team, my background is in brick and a key focus of my role within Lagan will be to develop and promote the fantastic new range of clay bricks from our Kingscourt Plant.

Mark Morris, commercial director at Lagan Products in the UK, added: Its great to have Darren join the team. He knows bricks inside out and will be a key driver in developing our brick sales and also supporting our customers.

Picture caption: Darren Johnson has joined Lagan Products as an area sales manager.
HIPPO, the adhesives, sealants and decorating sundries brand, is supporting Children with Cancer UK this year as its chosen charity. For every promotional pack of HIPPO Heavy Duty Trade Wipes sold, HIPPO will make a donation of 50p to Children with Cancer UK.

Children with Cancer UK is the leading national childrens charity dedicated to the fight against childhood cancer. Funding life-saving research into the causes, prevention and treatment of childhood cancer and working to protect young lives through essential welfare programmes.

Guy Malam, managing director of HIPPO parent company Tembe DIY & Building Products said: Cancer is the biggest child-killing disease in the UK. Almost 4,000 children and young people are diagnosed with cancer in the UK every year and the incidence has been on the increase. There are more than 50 types of childhood cancer. Thanks to research funded by Children with Cancer UK survival rates for the most common form of childhood cancer, leukaemia, have increased dramatically over the past 50 years, but for some rare types of cancer survival rates remain at zero. Tembe are proud to continue doing its part to help raise money for a cure.
Minster is set to open a brand new branch in Dundee on 3 May 2016, a move that will strengthen its offering and service in Scotland.

Previously the only branch in Scotland, Minster Glasgow will now concentrate on servicing Scotlands central belt, while Minster Dundee will serve everywhere north of Perth, Fife, Aberdeen and all the way up to Inverness.

This latest expansion follows the relocation to bigger sites for other Minster branches, with Didcot moving to Challow, and Cambridge to Royston. These developments signal Minsters intention towards increasing operational productivity and better servicing customers throughout the country.

The Minster Dundee site, previously a Jewson branch for 20 years, will be headed up by Iain Mudie who said: I am very excited to be starting this new venture with Minster. There are a lot of opportunities in Dundee and the team here are a fantastic bunch who cannot wait to get going.

Strong customer service will be key to our success and our aim is to provide just that to the customers in our area. This is a huge investment from Minster that demonstrates real ambition.

The Dundee team will collectively bring decades of experience in sales, operations and customer service. The new branch is centrally located close to the A90 and Tay Bridge and will provide excellent access to the main transport links for Scotland.

With a large site to operate from, the Dundee branch will stock an extensive range of specialist solutions such as insulation, drylining, ceilings and roofing, all under one roof.
My son Ismael met Annie at the International Training Institute (ITI). Annie has a mixed parentage of Gulf, Western and Central provinces. Annies grandmother was from Daru and she married a man from Rigo. They raised nine children and Annies mother was their seventh child.

But all this is changing rapidly in the modern era. It is now possible for young people to marry people from distant places who they met at school, at work or in the church.

Our ancestors always thought people living beyond the mountain ranges were cannibals or masalais (spirits) and never ventured far. They did not have any clue that there was a big ocean and people were living along its coasts.

IN THE olden days it was not possible to marry a woman from another part of the highlands region let alone to find a wife from the coast.

Unfortunately Annies mothers parents got divorced and she returned to Daru and remarried. But she took three of her children with her  one of whom was Annies mother. She grew up in Daru, met Jimmy Aku and married him. He is from Orokolo in the Gulf Province. He works as the revenue manager with the Fly River Provincial Government.

They have four children and my daughter-in law, Annie, is the second born. Unfortunately, Annies mother died from a long illness and Jimmy Aku remarried and had three more children bringing the total number of children in the family to seven  five brothers and two sisters.

Annie grew up in Daru, went to school there and left for Port Moresby to attend the International Training Institute. Thats where she met Ismael, my son.

Both of them were far away from parents and relatives and on their own for the first time. They were lonely and needed each other for support and companionship. Soon Annie was pregnant and found it difficult to continue her studies. So she went back to Daru.

When her parents found out that she was made pregnant by an Engan man, they were furious. They forced her to live with a fisherman. But the man left her when he found that Annie was pregnant. Annie was forced to return to her parents house.

But her parents still had grudges against her for finding a Highlands man especially an Engan because Jimmys nephew, Archie, had been murdered at Sabama in Port Moresby during an ethnic clash in 1979between people from Enga and Kerema.

Jimmy thought he would never associate with Engans, let alone his own daughter getting pregnant from a man from that province.

When the baby was four months old, Annies parents did not want to look after them. They decided to send her to find the childs father in Port Moresby. But before they left they gave the child a name, saying We name this baby boy Archie in remembrance of our own Archie who was killed in Port Moresby by some Engans in 1979. You take him to his father but if he rejects you then come back here and he will take Archies place in the village.

Annie rang Ismael from Daru to tell him of her predicament. She told him she was nursing a baby boy and that Ismael was the father. Ismael did not believe her. So Annie was compelled to go to Port Moresby in a mission to find the childs father.

As soon as Annie arrived at Sabama in Port Moresby, she asked some of the girls from Sabama to go with her to the International Training Institute to see Ismael. Annie is a shy girl and needed the company of her friends.

She left the baby with the girls at the gate and went inside the school premises to search for Ismael. When Annie told him about the baby, he still did not believe her. But at the school gate Ismael was left speechless when the girls showed him the baby.

He took the baby boy and hugged him. Ismael was sorry for them when he realised how far they had travelled from Daru to come to the city. He immediately took them to our relatives house at Waigani Police Barracks. Shirley Yakinam rang to inform me that Ismael had just brought in a young mother with a baby boy. It was news to us because Ismael never told us about his involvement with a girl.

Shirley is my cousin sister and she is married to David Yagen, a police officer from Lengi village in Wabag, Enga Province.

I asked Shirley to tell Ismael to take the baby to the hospital for a DNA test because the child might not be Ismaels. But Shirley said that would be a waste of time because the small boy looked exactly like Ismael and other family members. Ismaels uncle and aunt also confirmed that the small baby had the undeniable features of the Kundal family.

They convinced me to accept the baby as Ismaels so I told my son to bring the girl and the baby to Wabag so I could arrange bride price payment. Ismael had to marry this girl who already had his baby. The infant was a boy and I was happy to welcome them to my house.

To my surprise Ismael came home first. He wanted to get prior approval to marry a second wife from the highlands. He wanted to do that before Annie came to Wabag with the baby boy. We rebuked him.

We told him of our Christian faith, that we were leading a Christian church community and that it was against church rules and teachings to have multiple wives.

So we did not support his idea and wanted him to marry the childs mother in church like we had done. But he refused. The argument went on for a month because we could not come to a compromise.

Then Shirleys husband, Daniel Yangen the police officer, brought the now five month old baby boy to Wabag without Annie. Daniel left the baby in my house with its clothes in a plastic bag and gone to his village at Lenki. He had done this to show me the baby which looked like Ismael and the rest of the Kundal family.

When I came home from work, I was deeply sorry to see the small infant alone. I could tell the baby was Ismaels and decided Annie should come to Wabag immediately and look after him

When I was contemplating my next course of action, the telephone rang and I picked it up. On the other end, a soft voice said, How is my baby? I could sense she was crying. My heart broke. This affected me greatly because taking a five months old baby away from its young mother was inhuman. I am a veteran health worker and I knew that treating the mother and the infant in this manner was criminal. My heart cried out for the baby and its mother.

I was particularly upset with my son because, before he went to attend school at ITI, we asked him if he had a girlfriend so we could give approval. But he had told us in Tok Pisin, Maski toktok long meri, mi laik traut ya (Dont talk about girls, I might vomit.)

I thought this was a good trait because we did not want him to think about girls but concentrate on his studies. So how come a baby was in our house when the mother was in Port Moresby. No matter if the babys mother was tall or short, healthy or had deformities, pretty or ugly, she was his choice and the mother had to come to Wabag.

So without further ado, I sent Annie some money through Salim Money Kuik at Boroko Post Office to purchase her plane ticket to fly to Wabag.

We had never seen her before and Ismael was not cooperating to meet her on arrival, so we went our separate ways to Wapenamanda Airport. The Air Niugini aircraft landed and all the passengers filed out. There was no sign of Ismael and Rose and I stood at the gate with the baby in our arms so the mother could recognise it.

One by one the passengers came through the gate with their luggage. None of the young women who came through recognised the baby. Soon there was nobody left inside the terminal building. We wondered what had happened to Annie.

Then someone came up to us and said there was a woman in a vehicle with Ismael parked nearby. It was Annie. She had seen Ismael as she disembarked from the plane and had gone straight up to him without seeing Archie in our arms at the gate.

We went to the car and greeted Annie warmly, drove home and threw a big party to welcome her to the Kundal family.

But as the days went by, Annie did not talk much. She was reserved and afraid of our loud voices and rough behaviour. She saw everything we did as aggressive. Most of the time, she took Archie in her hands and went into the room and cried.

We tried to explain to her that this was our way of life and whatever we discussed had nothing to do with her but she kept on crying. She wanted to go back to Port Moresby with Archie.

But, as time went by, Annie coped. In the future I want to tell you how I paid bride price to Annies people the Engan way.
MANUFACTURING

The India Way

Sharmila Kantha (Ed)

Confederation of Indian Industry

134 pages; Rs 2,100



The "Make in India" programme has been one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's most prominent messages to the international and Indian business communities. It was one of the issues he singled out for his soaring rhetoric in his first Independence Day speech in 2014. "I want to appeal [to] all the people [the] world over, from the ramparts of the Red Fort, 'Come, make in India'Sell in any country of the world but manufacture here. We have got skill, talent, discipline, and determination to do something. We want to give the world a favourable opportunity ," he said.

How does the policy encourage entrepreneurs to take advantage of this "favourable opportunity"? If that answer is unclear still, this coffee-table book does a reasonably competent job in providing a SWOT analysis of Indian manufacturing as seen by businessmen with long experience of making in India.

This is probably not the intention of the publisher, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), which counts some of India's largest manufacturing conglomerates among its members. As an industry chamber, this offering is more about an opportunity, taken at the flood. CII rarely criticises governments and suffered some uncomfortable moments when a senior representative ventured to censure Mr Modi during his tenure as chief minister of Gujarat. Understandably, then, this book has tactfully refrained from analysing the policy (or lack thereof) in any depth. It seeks to provide instead what Sumit Mazumder, who was president when the book was published, has described as "a valuable guidepost to those interested in the aspirations of India to emerge as a manufacturing hub of the world".

The valuable guideposts may not be immediately visible because the general tone of the book is politely upbeat, encouraging and, above all, relentlessly aspirational. Anyone looking for the real issues and insights about Indian manufacturing will need to read between the lines of these 16 pieces.

For instance, Naushad Forbes, CII's current president, sets out the seven principles defining the new Indian manufacturing enterprise or, to put it in the kind of language that Narendra Modi has made popular, "the India Way of Manufacturing". These principles contain all the key words and phrases - "customer-driven system", "world-class", "integrating technology", "innovation", "crowdsourcing", "next-generation visionary leadership" and "inclusive practices". All of these will be among attributes for a Make in India award that CII has instituted.

Perhaps the most significant of these attributes is listed on point 7 of Mr Forbes' article: "Taking forward the agility and adaptability gained from operating in sub-optimal environments at home (poor connectivity, unreliable power) as a strength in dealing with an uncertain world". In fact, Mr Forbes has mentioned just two of the "sub-optimal environments". Any manufacturer can add several more to the list - the restrictive labour legislation, corrosive official corruption at every level, the skills shortage, uncertain policy being just a few. The essay by Sunil Kant Munjal, joint managing director, HeroMotoCorp, gallantly titled "Make India Proud of Herself Again" is one of the few to mention some of these issues - including the insidious "Inspector Raj" - but others do not emulate his candour.

It is true, though, that infrastructure remains the biggest constraint, and its development is closely tied in a chicken-and-egg relationship with the expansion of manufacturing. Feedback Ventures' Vinayak Chatterjee, whose brightly optimistic piece belies his deep knowledge of the real state of Indian infrastructure, makes a neat point when he says, "While 'Make in India' is an invitation to the manufacturing sector, we must seize every opportunity we can to 'make India' in the process."



C Narasimhan, former president of Sundaram Clayton, who chairs the CII Cluster Programme, probably came closest to the truth when he bluntly and insightfully lists out why, despite steady progress of over 50 years, India is in not a position to excel in manufacturing. Among his arguments he suggests that our tendency to adapt British, European and Japanese systems may not be entirely suitable for India ("Such adopted systems do offer improvements but not excellence," he writes). He offers in their stead the vision of an Indian Production System, which is interesting but there are no examples to suggest how this theory works in practice.

The inclusion of hard examples of "manufacturing in action" would have added some heft to this book as would comparisons with China or East Asian models. Mr Munjal and T V Narendran, managing director, Tata Steel India and South East Asia, make brief references to those competitive challenges, but they are too inadequate to provide meaningful information for prospective investors.

Finally, a word on the production. In an attempt to provide different voices, the designers have come up with a crowded layout that reduces the book to a brochure. It is good that they have desisted from using the childishly constructed lion that constitutes the official "Make in India" symbol. But the decision to repeat the cogwheel motif and combine it with a text vaguely resembling the Devanagiri script gives the book a clunky feel that unwittingly reflects the real state of Indian manufacturing instead of the sophisticated, futuristic vision to which we aspire.
India stands to gain from the strict implementation of environmental norms and safety standards on Chinese firms, which resulted in the closure of several unorganised and small units in that country.

Over the past decade, China saw blind industrial expansion, led by government facilitation and easy financing. This, coupled with the countrys lax regulations, contributed to serious environmental problems. To crack down on polluters, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection enforced strict penalties with effect from January 2015. This resulted in numerous plant shutdowns and softening of the global leaders exports.

As a consequence, import of speciality chemicals from China to India has declined. Besides, Indian manufacturers have started steadily capturing markets in China and in other markets.

There has been a phenomenal change in the structural dynamics of Indian speciality chemicals industry over the past year. Until a year ago, India was not having the extra edge in speciality chemicals compared to China. But now, with more stringent environment control regulations being implemented in China, it is no more has the extra edge. We have started exporting to China as Chinese manufacturers have lost the price advantages they used to enjoy till a year ago in the world of specialty chemicals market, said Ashok G Rajani, chairman and managing director, Seya Industries Ltd, a specialty chemicals manufacturer based in Mumbai.

According to industry sources, this opportunity has come Indias way after many decades as the cost of production of Indias specialty chemicals works out to 10-15 per cent lower than that in China after investment in environmental protection.

Seya is planning to invest Rs 600-700 crore over the next two years to increase its existing production capacity.

About a third of our proposed investment would be met through internal accruals, while the remaining would be funded through equity and term loans as we have enough room to expand our loan book position, said Amrit Rajani, chief operating officer, Seya Industries.

The other companies in specialty chemicals manufacturing have also proposed huge investment to expand capacity. After investing Rs 738 crore for three years ending 2014, Aarti Industries plans to invest additional capital expenditure of Rs 300 crore in the next two years.

The $25-billion Indian specialty chemicals sector is growing at 12 per cent annually despite economic slowdown in global markets. The sector is now expected to achieve $33.2 billion by 2019. Specialty chemicals find application across various industries and their growth is driven by exports as well as domestic consumption.

Traditionally, low-cost labour and raw material availability have been key success factors for Indian companies. However, factors such as product innovation, branding and distribution are becoming increasingly important.

The specialty chemicals market is witnessing tightening import norms in developed nations due to environmental concerns. This is making it difficult for smaller players to stay cost competitive and compliant. The world is also seeing a shift in production from the west to Asia. Multinational companies are focusing on Asia thanks to lower cost of production, availability of low-cost skilled manpower and increasingly stringent environmental regulations in their home markets, HDFC Securities said in a recent report. Under the new policy framework, China is expected to cleanse its environment by shutting down or shifting 1,000 plants to a green belt. While China saw softer exports in 2015, we expect more of the same in 2016, Surya Patra, an analyst with PhillipCapital. Over the past five years, the Indian specialty chemicals market saw faster growth (13 per cent annual average) against global growth of around seven per cent. More than exports, steadily rising local demand supported its growth momentum. We expect India to emerge as a strategic alternate source for manufacturing of speciality chemicals for multi-national companies. The implementation of new environmental laws in China has already caused a decline in its chemicals exports and the trend is likely to sustain in 2016-17. The emerging trade gap due to softening Chinese exports offers huge opportunities for Indian chemical players, particularly for manufacturers of polymers, dyes & pigments, textile chemicals, and agro chemicals, said Patra.

Preet Mohan Singh, executive director of Avendus Capital, believes India is fast becoming an important manufacturing hub and exporter for speciality chemicals.

GREEN RULES
British media giant the Economist Group has extended its ad sales partnership with media agency Zirca to cover all Economist group products and services in India.

The current partnership will see Zirca setting up a 12-member squad for the Economist Group in India with the sole task of representating its media products and services to advertisers in the country, Zirca said in a statement.

In a statement, Tim Pinnegar, MD, The Economist Group Asia, said, that the group saw huge potential in India, especially among Indian multinationals looking to build their businesses overseas.

Zirca's earlier partnership with the British group saw it providing ad sales support to the Economist's digital platform - economist.com.

The move by the Economist Group, incidentally, to introduce all its media products and services in India comes at a time when foreign media entities are showing greater interest in the domestic media sector. In November 2015, the government announced relaxation of foreign direct investment limit in news channels from 26 per cent to 49 per cent, prompting a flurry of activity this year.
The quarter ended March has been one of the best for Renault India. Among global markets, Renault registrations in India were one of the largest, with about 200 per cent growth, thanks to their new small car, the Kwid.

The company adds that while the industry expects to grow in single digits this year, its own growth will be in double digits. Since the Kwid was launched, the group has booked 120,000 orders and registered nearly 23,000 unit sales since the beginning of the year.

Renault India's contribution to the group's global revenue has also jumped sharply, with the country among its top five in the world. Renault India's market share was up to 2.17 per cent in 2015-16 from 0.2 per cent in 2014-15. Company sales rose to 43,859 units from 4,006 units, respectively, according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers.

Sumit Sawhney, managing director at Renault India, said they now had the sixth largest brand (January-March 2016 sales) in India as compared to eighth last year. Apart from the Kwid, this was also driven by its SUV, the Duster, followed by the Lodgy.

The biggest numbers are coming from the Kwid, which has already overtaken Duster's volume, since the Duster segment is smaller as compared to the Kwid's, he said. The segment in which Kwid operates accounts for nearly 25 per cent of the market.

Renault has brought down the Kwid's waiting period from the earlier six months to four months, by increasing monthly production from 2,500 units to 5,000 and then to 7,500 units; it is now close to 10,000 units.

Our intention is to bring it down further. This will be the fastest ramp-up for Renault in India, said Sawhney. He added, if the company keeps giving 10,000 units a month, the waiting period will come down to around three months. It has commenced a third shift at its factory near this city.

In March, Renault sold around 9,800 units of the Kwid and will do a similar number this month. The Kwid is now among the top 10 selling cars. "For any manufacturer, their smallest car is the volume driver and it is going to be the same for Renault," said the MD.

The company says it plans to launch at least one new model every year for the next few years in India. It is in the process of launching a new Duster, an automated version, followed by a one-litre engine for the Kwid this year.
Tata Steel UK's financial woes are only one of the many headaches of Tata Sons. The Tata Group's holding company has been aggressive in supporting the growth ventures of various companies in the group but the returns from its incremental equity investments in the past decade have been negligible.

The only exception has been Tata Consultancy Services, funding Tata Sons' investment in the group's various listed and unlisted ventures.

Read more from our special coverage on "TATA SONS" Swamy demands cancellation of permit

In the past 10 years, Tata Sons' equity investment in key listed group companies (excluding TCS) grew at a compounded annual rate (CAGR) of 22 per cent - from Rs 3,183 crore in FY04-05 to Rs 23,237 crore at the end of March 2015. In comparison, its dividend income from this investment grew at a CAGR of only 5.7 per cent - from Rs 339 crore in FY05 to Rs 591 crore in the past financial year. ( Click here for graphic's This gives Tata Sons an investment yield of 2.5 per cent (at cost) on its equity investment in the group's listed companies. The ratios have declined steadily over the years, thanks to the poor profitability of major group companies. But, including TCS, investment yield has shot up to 51 per cent.

Market returns are even poorer. Tata Sons' equity stake in listed companies (excluding TCS) is currently valued at Rs 77,000 crore translating into a dividend yield of 0.7 per cent. In comparison, the BSE Sensex 30 companies currently offer a dividend yield of 1.5 per cent. Including TCS, Tata Sons' equity investments in listed companies is valued at Rs 4.4 lakh crore.

In the past 10 years, Tata Sons made incremental capital infusion in many key group companies, and only three out of 13 companies in the sample were self-financed and didn't require equity infusion during the period. The analysis is based on the investment schedule of Tata Sons as reported in its annual report. Its dividend income is based on the payouts by various group companies and Tata Sons' fiscal-year end stake in the companies.

The actual dividend income may vary from this estimate to difference in the date of accrual. For example, Tata Steel's dividend for FY15 will accrue to Tata Sons partly in FY16.

The saviour has been TCS, which accounted for 95 per cent of Tata Sons' dividend income from 14 listed group companies in FY15 - up from 57 per cent in FY05, when TCS reported its first annual results after listing on the bourses.

Tata Sons, however, said its investments in group companies were done with a long-term rationale and financial returns would clearly vary across sectors and across periods of time, and were usually dependent on industry cycles. "That is why Tata companies are able to pursue sustainable profitable growth over decades - some close to a century - through changing economic and market cycles," a Tata Sons spokesperson said, in a detailed response to a questionnaire. Tata Sons did not comment on questions relating to dividend yield.

The spokesperson said "TCS is an integral part of the group and operated as a division of Tata Sons for nearly 40 years before it got listed. Removing a very successful firm like TCS from the mix, and then comparing our group numbers against say the BSE portfolio would yield an unfair comparison of portfolios."



The spokesperson said even then on a 10 year basis, the market capitalisation of Tata group portfolio minus TCS had grown at 8.4 per cent per annum which exactly matched that of the BSE Sensex.

He also blamed the financial headwinds on external factors and secular industrial slowdown beyond company's control. "It is also well known that in sectors like power and steel, there have been serious structural challenges in recent years," he said, adding the share price of listed Tata equities such as Titan, TCS, Trent, Tata Motors, and Voltas beat the broader market in the last 10 years.

In the same period, listed Tata equities like Titan, TCS, Trent, Tata Motors, and Voltas grew by 23.9 per cent, 18.1 per cent, 15 per cent, 12.1 per cent, and 10.7 per cent per annum. "Clearly, our branded plays did significantly better than some of our commodity plays, something in sync with the overall movement of the market," the spokesperson said.

Also, the market capitalisation of Tata group listed entities collectively grew at a CAGR of 13.7 per cent compared to the Sensex growth of 8.4 per cent over a 10 year period; 11 per cent compared to the Sensex growth of 5.4 per cent over a five year period; 15.1 per cent compared to the Sensex growth of 10.4 per cent over a three-year period; and finally, a 6.5 per cent decline compared to the Sensex' decline of 9.4 per cent over a one-year period. As you can observe, in every time frame, the Tata group portfolio has outperformed the BSE Sensex, Tata Sons said.

Analysts, however, worry about the poor financial health of the majority of Tata listed companies and the group's over-dependence on TCS to fund the growth plans. Eight out of 14 listed Tata companies in the sample reported either negative or single digit return on equity (RoE) in FY15.

In the last decade, Tata Sons has pumped in Rs 2,000 crore per annum on an average in listed companies and around Rs 1,500 crore in unlisted ventures. During the same period, the listed companies (ex-TCS) yielded annual dividend income of Rs 650 crore per annum on average.

The gap was filled by TCS, which came from behind to become India's largest dividend paying company in the private sector. During the 11 years ending FY15, Tata Sons cumulatively earned dividend income of around Rs 31,500 crore from TCS. This excludes Tata Sons' share of around Rs 6,280 crore from TCS dividend pay-out for FY16.

The differentiated performance has created a huge gap between Tata Sons' equity investment and various companies and their market value.

For Tata Motors, the ratio is 15 per cent (investment) and 8 per cent (value) respectively. For Indian Hotels, it's 6 per cent and 0.7 per cent, respectively.
Advocate Rahul Mehra, appearing for the Delhi government told the High Court today that it would consider exempting lawyers in the next if implemented again in the future.

"The Delhi government said that since the ongoing is about to expire on April 30, the petitioner's contentions will be considered in case the scheme is implemented again," the bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice Jayant Shah said after recording the submission of the government.

The Delhi High Court had on Monday asked the government to see whether lawyers could be exempted from the current implemented by the government between April 15-30 and asked the government to furnish their reply in court today.

The April 11 notification of the odd-even scheme was challenged by Advocate Rajiv Khosla, president of the Delhi High Court Bar Association, requesting exemption of lawyers from the scheme as the fraternity assisted the courts in promoting civil rights and personal liberties of citizens.

The petition also challenged the 2000-rupee fine imposed by the government claiming it to be arbitrary, illegal and unreasonable in nature.
Is India's most wanted criminal suffering from gangrene?

CNN-News18 reported on Monday that the dreaded Mumbai mafia boss-turned-terrorist has advanced gangrene at a stage where it is life-threatening, and that he might have to undergo an amputation.

Additionally, the report cites doctors, who are treating Dawood, as saying that the gangrene is at such an advanced stage that Dawood is immobile and an amputation might be required.

It adds that Dawood is being treated at his residence in the "upscale Clifton neighbourhood of Karachi". According to the report, the doctors attending to him are from the Liaquat Hospital, Karachi, and the Combined Military Hospital, Karachi.

The report is specific on Dawoods medical condition, quoting the doctors treating the don as saying that high blood pressure and blood sugar are the causes behind the gangrene.

The Times of India, on the other hand, on Tuesday reported that senior intelligence officials and the gangster's deputy Chhota Shakeel have confirmed that Dawood is "fit".

The ToI report quotes Shakeel saying that the reports of a gangrene infection are results of rumours being floated to hinder Dawood's business.

If Dawood is indeed suffering from gangrene, and if the condition is indeed life-threatening, then it will have serious consequences for India's pursuit of justice for the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993 that were exacted by Dawood and his gang in return for the communal riots in the city that followed the December 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.

Bringing Dawood back to India to stand trial for his role in the blasts has been a longstanding objective of Indian politicians and intelligence agencies, but one that has been met with little success, thanks to stonewalling by the Pakistani establishment.

In fact, the Pakistani government has consistently denied Dawoods presence in that country, despite the fact that India claims it even knows the exact address of his residence in Karachi.

However, there have been reports of Indian intelligence having had at least four opportunities to nab Dawood in Pakistan, none of which worked out.

1) Dawood allegedly wanted to surrender in 1994:



According to a Hindustan Times report, a little over a year after the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, Dawood was willing to surrender and "even spoke thrice to the then CBI DIG Neeraj Kumar".

According to the report, the agency, for unknown reasons, "didnt take him (Dawood) up on his offer".

Speaking to HT, Kumar said: I spoke to a jittery Dawood three times in June 1994 He seemed to be toying with the idea of surrendering but had one worry  his rival gangs could finish him off if he returned to India. I told him his safety would be the responsibility of the CBI.

However, according to the report, Kumar's seniors abruptly ordered him to avoid any further contact with the gangster.

2) Aborted assassination attempt:



According to India TV, an year after the Mumbai blasts, Indias external and counter-intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) decided to eliminate Dawood.

According to the report, a team of highly-trained assassins were to be sent to Karachi to kill Dawood at his residence.

The report adds that the PV Narasimha Rao government put the operation on hold at the last moment.

3) India also reportedly ignored a South African plan to capture Dawood in 1994:

According to a 2015 Hindustan Times report, India rejected South Africa's help in capturing the gangster.

Speaking to HT, Vappala Balachandran, former special secretary with the cabinet secretariat, said that there had been a plan to help South African intelligence authorities capture Dawood in 1994, but, after discussions at various levels, the plan was discarded.

According to the report, Balachandran had flown to South Africa to meet his counterparts in South African intelligence to discuss Nelson Mandelas impending visit to India.

Balachandran told HT that he was given an "exhaustive presentation on a mandrax smuggling racket and his gang ran across Africa" by South African intelligence officers.

According to the report, Balachandran was also shown a list of 18 passports that Dawood used.

Balachandran said that the South Africans wanted India's help in the matter. According to the report, Balachandran firmed up an operational plan to capture Dawood and it was sent to the the P V Narasimha Rao government. However, despite repeated discussions, it was never approved.

4) Pulling the plug on the 'Super Boys':



According to a India TV report, in September of 2013, Indian operatives entered Pakistan covertly and were in place to eliminate Dawood, but a "last-minute phone call aborted the operation".

India TV, citing media reports, said that nine operatives had been selected for the operation by R&AW and the team operated under the code name 'Super Boys'.

According to the reports cited by India TV, Dawood used to travel from his Clifton Road home in Karachi to the Defence Housing Society every day.

The report added that the 'Super Boys' had decided to target Dawood during his daily transit and that "a dargah on the way was chosen as the spot" for the act.

On September 13, 2013, the nine operatives, according to the report, took their positions but the entire operation was aborted over a single phone call, which came minutes before the operation was executed.

According to the report, no details have emerged about the call or who made it.
An Italian court has turned the focus of a bribery probe on former Indian Air Force chief S P Tyagi, saying that there was "reasonable belief that corruption took (place)" in the 2010 VVIP chopper scandal, The Economic Times newspaper reported on Tuesday.

According to the report, the court said that a part of $10 million - $15 million in illicit funds had made their way to Indian officials. The 225-page judgement by the Milan Court of Appeals reportedly has a 17-page long chapter on Tyagi, which points out the various grounds on which the former Indian Air Force chief has been accused of corruption.

"The destination  at least partial  of the illicit funding to the payment of the price of corruption of Marshal Shashi Tyagi for his intervention in favour of AgustaWestland for the VVIP helicopters competition is validly proven," the court reportedly observed.

The text in the judgement, accessed by Economic Times, was translated from the original Italian.

Tyagi, who was contacted by the newspaper, did not comment on the allegations, instead saying it was imperative to wait for the full translated document before reacting. In India, he is currently facing investigations by the Central Bureau of Investigation as well as the Enforcement Directorate.

The Italian court order further said that payments to Tyagi and his family - including three of his cousins, were made in cash and through wire transfers.

The court order, which relied on tapped conversations involving the alleged middlemen for the deal Carlo Gerosa and Guido Haschke, ruled that attempts were made to not only hide Tyagi's connection in the case, but to also destroy potential evidence.

"From the analysed conversations we can get unequivocal indications about the corruption of an Indian public officer, identified as the cousin of the Tyagi brothers. In this regard, the explicit content of the dialogue is sufficient to establish the 'reasonable belief that corruption took place'," the court order was quoted as saying.

BJP yesterday raked up the VVIP chopper scandal in Lok Sabha following Italian court's reported observation that the UPA government showed "substantial disregard" in arriving at the full truth behind the multi-crore scam.

Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Meenakshi Lekhi said that the observations of the Italian court that found corruption in the Rs 3,565 crore AgustaWestland deal, were serious.

Seeking a statement from the Defence Ministry, she said Italy had requested India in April 2013 to get full documentation in the case but was provided only three documents and that, in 2014.

She also demanded a thorough probe in the matter as well as a discussion in Parliament.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu assured the member that he would bring the matter to the notice of the Defence Minister.


Intelligence inputs suggest that illegal are being pumped into Jammu and Kashmir through various channels, Lok Sabha was informed Tuesday.

Minister of State for Home Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said as per inputs, there are reports of illegal inflow of through hawala and inward remittances.

"There are also inputs that fake Indian currency notes predominantly produced in Pakistan are being smuggled into India through various international routes via Dubai, Nepal and Bangladesh," he said replying to a written question.

Chaudhary said the matter was raised with Pakistani authorities on several occasions under the bilateral composite and resumed dialogues.
India on Tuesday told Islamabad that its former Naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav was abducted by Pakistani agencies and sought immediate consular access to him, while the Pakistani side claimed the capturing of Jadhav was evidence of the involvement of Indian agencies in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi.

Both, however, stressed the need to keep alive the renewed bilateral dialogue.

Foreign Secretary of India S Jaishankar on Tuesday met his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry for about 90 minutes on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia conference to discuss bilateral issues. The two sides stuck to their known stands on issues from Kashmir, terrorism, the 26/11 terror attack trial, probes into the Pathankot terror attack and Samjhauta Express bomb blast.

For the first time, India said Jadhav was abducted. India has maintained that Jadhav was in Iran and denies that he worked for its intelligence agencies. In its statement, Pakistan expressed serious concern over the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)'s alleged involvement in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi. India denies the charge.

Jaishankar emphasised the need for early and visible progress on the Pathankot terrorist attack investigation as well as the Mumbai case trial in Pakistan. He also brought up the listing of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) leader Masood Azhar in the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee. The Indian Foreign Secretary told Chaudhry that Pakistan cannot be in denial of the impact of terrorism on the bilateral relationship.

Terrorist groups based in Pakistan targeting India must not be allowed to operate with impunity, a statement by the external affairs ministry (MEA) said after the talks.

Chaudhry brought up Kashmir, terming it the core issue that requires a just solution in accordance with UNSC resolutions and wishes of Kashmiri people. Interestingly, the Pakistani side released the talking points while the meeting between the two foreign secretaries was still on.

On the Samjhauta Express blast, Chaudhry conveyed concerns over efforts by Indian authorities for the release of the prime suspects.



"The Foreign Secretary further pointed out that, despite repeated requests India has not shared investigation reports in which 42 Pakistanis had lost their lives."



The two Foreign Secretaries agreed to remain in touch, the MEA said. This was the first time the two were meeting after the announcement of the resumed comprehensive bilateral dialogue in December. Jaishankar was scheduled to travel to Islamabad to hold talks with Chaudhary on January 15 but both the countries had announced deferment of the talks with "mutual consent" in the wake of the Pathankot attack.

Jaishankar also met Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Hekmat Karzai, in Delhi to attend the Heart of Asia conference, to review progress on Chabahar port project in Iran.
Our institutions are politicised and are no longer working to achieve their intended purposes.

Our media are continuously attacked by our leaders to ensure there is no investigative and objective reporting.

Our judiciarys powers have been undermined by our leaders, trying to twist and bend them in any way possible to favour their own interests.

Using the power vested in them, they seem to have no care for the rule of law which everyone is expected to follow.

Our educated elites and university students are silent, denying their historical role and failing to educate and lead ordinary citizens to protest against the corrupt actions of our leaders.

There is a minority of our countrymen who are trying to do their constitutional duties diligently in the interests of PNG and these people are singled out, intimidated and personally attacked.

Our illiterate population in the remote areas is confused with this series of events and silently shoulders increasing costs and poor living conditions because of irrational decisions made by our elected leaders.

I thought democracy was something that would serve the people but it seems otherwise due to the unjustified and unprincipled actions of our leaders who fail to uphold the rule of law of this country.

It is truer than ever that democracy is something that must be demanded by every citizen of PNG instead of waiting to be served.

If politicians continue to undermine the rule of law and our people continue to remain silent and fail to take to the streets to demand their rights, the democracy on which we have built our institutions and principles for greater good and humanity may soon vanish into thin air.
A suspected Indian Mujahideen operative wanted by Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat Police forces for various acts of terror, including the triple blasts in Mumbai in July 2011, was on Tuesday arrested in Mumbai, an official said.

Zain-ul Abedin was nabbed by the Maharashtra Anti Squad (ATS) on Tuesday morning at the Chhattrapati Shivaji International Airport where the agency had laid a trap for him, said ATS Special Inspector General of Police Niket Kaushik.

Billed as an active IM member, Abedin was later presented before a Mumbai court which sent him to 10 days' custody of the ATS till May 6, Kaushik said.

The triple blasts of July 13, 2011, at Dadar, Opera House and Zaveri Bazar during the evening peak hours had killed 26 people besides injuring 130 others.

The ATS will grill him for his role in the blasts to understand the conspiracy and planning behind that attack.

Among other things, the investigators believe that the explosives used in that attack were procured and supplied by Abedin to the banned IM. A Red Corner Notice was also issued against Abedin.

Besides Maharashtra, Abedin is wanted for terror attacks in Karnataka and Gujarat and by the Intelligence Agency.
JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya today said the decision to rusticate them from the varsity was "unacceptable" and termed as "farce" the inquiry by a high-level committee even as the students' union threatened a countrywide campaign on the matter. The union is also likely to hold a protest today.

In his reaction, JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who has been slapped with a fine of Rs 10,000 by the varsity administration, said the punitive action handed down on the basis of a "farcical" probe was "simply unacceptable" and that the Union rejects it.

"JNUSU rejects the punishment handed down by the administration on the basis of a farcical committee!" Kanhaiya tweeted.

Terming the decision against them as "unacceptable", Anirban and Umar alleged the authority's action amounted to a "witch-hunt" under the "diktats" of RSS.

"The JNU administration declares its allegiance to RSS, once again! After allowing police to enter campus to unleash the worst repression...Now the JNU admin has come down with its own list of punishments.

"A farce is what this inquiry has been from day one, made to witch-hunt and punish students by hook or crook. Do we need to remind you, Mr Jagdish Kumar (JNU VC) that unlike you the students and teachers of this campus are not pliant stooges of the RSS," Umar posted on Facebook.

He said Hyderabad Central University's deceased Dalit student Rohith Vemula was their "inspiration", urging the students for a "fight back".

JNUSU vice president Shehla Rashid Shora said, "We will launch a countrywide campaign to expose this government's anti-student, anti-Dalit character."



Shehla said the action against the students was based on "sheer vendetta and a biased inquiry" and "one-sided" statements from ABVP members.

"The VC is taking directions from the Central govt. He should have acted first as an academician and then as an RSS loyalist. Rakesh Bhatnagar, the head of the committee, is the treasurer of anti-reservationist Youth for Equality, and most students who have been punished belong to Dalit, Muslim and backward castes," she said.

JNU today slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on JNUSU president Kumar and rusticated PhD scholars Umar and Anirban for varying duration in connection with the controversial February 9 event for which they were charged with sedition, an action which had triggered widespread outrage and protests.

Based on the findings of a committee, Umar has been rusticated for one semester and slapped with a fine of Rs 20,000, Anirban has been rusticated till July 15.
Emphasising on the need for swift progress in the Pathankot terror attack probe, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishanker on Tuesday told his Pakistan counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhary that Islamabad cannot be in denial on the impact of on the bilateral relationship while asserting that the terrorist groups operating from their soil 'must not be allowed to operate with impunity'.

Describing the meeting between the two Foreign Secretaries as 'frank and constructive', Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) official spokesperson Vikas Swarup said that the issue of listing Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar under the UN Security Council committee established under resolution 1267 was also brought up during the meeting.

"India's Foreign Secretary emphasised the need for early and visible progress on the Pathankot terrorist attack investigation as well as the Mumbai case trial in Pakistan. He also brought up the listing of Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Masood Azhar in the UN 1267 sanction committee," Swarup told the media here.

"FS Jaishankar clearly conveyed that Pakistan cannot be in denial on the impact of on the bilateral relationship. Terrorist groups based in Pakistan targeting India must not be allowed to operate with impunity," he added.

Swarup said that Jaishankar also brought up the issue of India seeking consular access to former naval officer Kulbhushan Yadav, presently in a Pakistani prison on allegations of being a RAW operative.

"We pressed for immediate consular access of Kulbhushan Yadav, the former Naval officer, abducted and taken to Pakistan. The discussion also covered humanitarian issues, including those pertaining to fishermen and prisoners, people-to-people contact including religious tourism. The two FSs exchanged ideas on taking the relationship forward and agreed to remain in touch," he said.

Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry today held bilateral talks in New Delhi focusing on a range of issues.

The two Foreign Secretaries are also believed to have deliberated on ways to take forward the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue (CBD) between both sides.

India has been pressing for action against terrorists responsible for the audacious attack on the premier IAF base to move ahead in the talks.

During the meeting, the Pakistan Foreign Secretary emphasized that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution, in accordance with UNSC resolutions and wishes of the Kashmiri people.

The Pakistan Foreign Secretary is in New Delhi on a day-long visit to attend the senior officials meeting of the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process.

It was the first such formal meeting between the two top diplomats after the talks were deferred in January following the strike by Pakistani terrorists at the Pathankot Airbase.
The Supreme Court today dismissed beleagured Vijay Mallya's prayer for protection from disclosure of his assets and those of his family, in India and abroad, to Kingfisher Airlines' lenders, saying "no tangible" grounds have been raised to maintain secrecy of information.

"We don't find any tangible objection in disclosing the assets (of Mallya, his wife and children) to banks," a bench comprising Justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman said.

The bench directed the apex court registry to furnish to the lenders, a consortium of banks, the details of assets, both domestic and foreign, declared by the former liquor baron of himself and his family members, in sealed cover to the apex court.

The top court, which said Mallya has not complied with its April 7 order in its letter and spirit, observed that "the whole purpose of asking for disclosure was to give a fair idea to banks for entering into a meaningful and viable settlement."



It asked the Debt Recovery Tribunal in Bengaluru to "expeditiously decide" within two months, the pleas of banks and financial institutions for recovery of their loans.

The direction was issued after Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi submitted that there was "total non-compliance" with the apex court's April 7 order as Mallya was neither indicating the date of his return to the country to make an appearance before the court nor was he showing his bonafide for reaching a settlement with the lenders by not showing willingness to deposit a substantial part of the amount he owed them.

"He is a fugitive from justice in India," the Attorney General said, adding the embattled businessman was playing "hide and seek" and cooking "cock and bull story". Rohatgi said Mallya was "deliberately concealing something from the court" as he had "no intention to come back".

However, senior advocates C S Vaidyanathan and Parag Tripathi, appearing for Mallya and his companies respectively, submitted that he was a "defaulter but not a wilful defaulter" and "here this is a case of business failure and not that of wilful default".

Vaidyanathan submitted the accumulated loans of Kingfisher Airlines stood at Rs 16,000 crore in 2013 and all loans were given on the basis of personal assets of Mallya which is in the records of the banks. That being the case the liabilities cannot be attached to his estranged wife living abroad and NRI children who are protected under the law from disclosing their overseas assets, he contended.

Mallya has defaulted on repayment of loans of Rs 9,400 crore to a State Bank of India-led consortium.
Distilleries and breweries in the drought-hit Marathwada region of Maharashtra will face a cut in water allocation cut between April 27 and June 10.

The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court gave this direction to the state government on Tuesday, on a petition from local activists and lawyers. The court has asked the government to introduce a 50 per cent cut from April 27 and another 10 per cent from May 10.

Also, to impose a 20 per cent cut from April 27 and another five per cent from May 10, to June 10, for other industries. The court said the water saved from the cuts are to be exclusively used for drinking purposes. It will review the situation on June 10.

Last week, the Aurangabad divisional commissioner had ordered a cut in water supply to distilleries and breweries by 25 per cent and to other industries by 20 per cent.

This was after a protest by farmers and political parties. Differences between the ruling partners in the state government, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena, had then surfaced over the cut. Sena president Uddhav Thackeray made a strong pitch for the cut on distilleries and breweries but rural development minister Pankaja Munde of the BJP argued in favour of continuation of supply to the segment.
The plan to expand the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is proposed to be shelved by the government. In 2014, the government had mooted a draft cabinet note for a Rs 1,750 crore-central scheme for strengthening of FSSAI, e-governance, food safety surveillance and expansion of states capacity.

In contrast, a note written by the chairperson of FSSAI, Ashish Bahuguna on January 6, this year to his staff has suggested that the would wind up its regional offices and leave enforcement of safety laws to state governments. With the Rs 800 crore support to states under the central scheme being shelved, Bahuguna has also recommended that regulations be amended, allowing state officials to monitor food safety as an additional duty and not necessarily on a full-time basis. He has also recommended that instead of setting up government labs to test food samples, as was previously planned, should depend on private labs.

Bahugunas note comes after meetings in the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) to assess the functioning of the Authority which functions under the health and family welfare ministry. had faced pressure and flak from some quarters within the government for its battle with Nestle over the ban on Maggi noodles..

.

In the January 2016 note, Bahuguna states, It is understood that we are required to revisit our proposal for strengthening the food regulatory system in the country.



He goes on to say, We could transfer all powers of enforcement to state governments and not keep any machinery centrally. The power to act upon violations of central licensing conditions etc could also be passed on to the state governments through appropriate provisions in the regulations.



In an interview to Business Standard, he initially suggested that he had not made such recommendations but later said the note was more of a brainstorming thing. He described it as a shock and awe tactic to provoke out of box ideas in his team and not a final decision. He, however, also had several changes that have already been put in place. I think what we have done is to rethink things through and look at whether those instruments are appropriate or not, he said.

Pointing to weakness of existing food safety law, he also idisclosed that a government committee had already made recommendations to amend it, though he personally recommended a wholesale rewrite of the legislation.

At the moment, under the food safety law, certain functions of licensing and enforcement of food safety in the states are reserved only for central government officers posted either at Delhi or the regional offices. This, Bahuguna recommends, could be done away with. Since the note was authored, two sub-regional offices of FSSAI (in UP and Punjab) have been shut down. Some other changes that were recommended by Bahuguna have also been acted upon  the powers of inspection of imported food products have been handed over to customs officers in more than 50 locations, instead of enhancing presence of food safety experts of the authority.

In the note, he wrote, Provisions for building infrastructure for the enforcement machinery at the state level could be best left to the state governments. We could, however, amend the regulations so as to provide scope for state government personnel to do food safety related work on additional charge basis.



When asked, Bahuguna said, in many states food safety work was already being done by officers as an additional charge, despite the law providing otherwise.

He has asked that the work of state-level tribunals, specifically meant for food safety regulations, also be passed on to the consumer disputes redressal forums.

The scheme earlier mooted by the NDA government earmarked Rs 800 crore for upgradation of manpower at the state-level, strengthening of food safety infrastructure at state-level, strengthening of state-level laboratories and setting up a robust surveillance system apart from capacity building activities.

FSSAI chairmans note also indicates that government has decided to revisit the proposal to build its laboratory network for testing food products. Our efforts for the expansion of laboratory network should focus on the private sector. The regulations could be amended so that only failed samples from the private sector are sent to government labs for referral and final analysis. This too could be provided through amendment of the regulations, Bahuguna wrote.

The FSSAI had earlier mentioned in its Result Framework Document of 2012-13 that its strategy was to Build infrastructure for food testing through a network of reliable food testing laboratories.



In the aftermath of losing the case against Nestle in Mumbai High Court, the FSSAI had also decided to seek time from the courts to enhance and accredit its laboratory network.

The draft cabinet note of 2014 for the centrally-sponsored scheme too mentioned that the funds would be used for strengthening of central-level laboratories and establishment of National Food Science and Risk Assessment Centre.



Bahugunas note concludes, We would then be left with the freedom to perform our primary duty of risk analysis, standard setting, product approvals and generation of consumer awareness.



During the interview, Bahuguna reiterated that he sees setting standards as the first priority of the FSSAI.

He said, in wake of greater devolution of funds to states under the finance commission, they could now build their own infrastructure.

Since the note was written, the FSSAI has eased the product approval regime for proprietary food  which did not have already set product-specific standards. It has moved away from setting standards for each new proprietary product. It also shut down two of its regional offices through an order on February 9, 2016  in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. The offices were asked to wind up operations by March 31, 2016. At the time of closure of these two offices, Pawan Agarwal, the CEO of FSSAI told the Times of India, The decision to close down the two offices was carefully considered. They had limited staff and were not adding value. Our attempt is to downsize and rationalise our resources. We don't want food safety officials to be a nuisance to businesses. Rather we want citizens to have confidence in them.



He told the agency, PTI, These (sub-regional offices) were aberration. Most of the licensing work is done online. On careful analysis, it was found that these two sub-regional offices were not contributing much.



When asked if the regional offices of FSSAI could have done better enforcement if their staff and infrastructure was boosted up as previously planned, instead of shutting them down, Bahuguna said, Yes if my aunt had moustaches she would be my uncle. That is no logic. The point is that there is no particular gain  and it is only the north zone that has these sub-regional offices (the two shut down). There is something unique about the north zone. But, he reiterated that enforcement would not be side-lined. He also said he believed the focus of the FSSAIs work should be more on other traditional foods rather than processed food industry.
Ashish Bahuguna, Chairperson of FSSAI tells Nitin Sethi that government has dropped the Rs 1,750 crore plan for expanding the authoritys reach across the country. He explains his internal note recommending that FSSAI move away from enforcement of food safety law, leaving it to states.

Earlier, the government was considering a central scheme investing Rs 1,750 crore in expanding the enforcement and other capabilities of FSSAI and states across the country. But now you have been instructed to revise that proposal and relook at the role of FSSAI with enforcement being left to states.

Well there is no final decision at this stage. At the moment it is not final, it is still at a proposal stage.

Read more from our special coverage on "FSSAI"

So you are saying it is still a proposal

Yes. You see, if you look at it from another point of view. I mean the idea is to realise certain objectives. And whatever we strategize as plans of actions or whatever we plan to use as instruments to use for those objectives  I think what we have done is to rethink things through and look at whether those instruments are appropriate or not. Or whether, they would amount to, in lots of cases, re-inventing the wheels. So the objectives have not been compromised or changed. The instruments that we are using to fulfil those objectives have been changed.

For instance, we are mandated by law basically to ensure that safe and wholesome food is available to people of this country and to that end frame standards for this purpose. Framing of standards is

One essential part of the

Is probably the first step in some sense. That of course has to be done centrally.

Which is why section 2 of the law says food safety is being taken under central powers in public interest

Yes, so there the strengthening of FSSAI would remain the same. We would need a strong central organisation here that can draw upon talent from within and from outside academia, industry and so on so forth and frame standards that are appropriate for the country. The second is to get people to implement those standards and then if necessary to enforce them. We are still to a large extent in the first stage of setting standards. A fair bit of work has been done over recent past but we still have way to go on that. That would remain our number one priority and will remain within the ambit of FSSAI. Now the other two, of how to get the message across to stakeholders and how to enforce, what are the instrumentalities to be used, on that we can have differing opinions. Now the earlier CCEA note set a lot of store by

...expanding the reach of FSSAI

Yes, putting more investment to this, which is one way of looking at it.

Tremendous amounts actually. The CCEA note said Rs 1750 crore for FSSAI and states

But that is one way. The other way is to that the existing structures can be used to do the same work. For instance for imports do we need to have a separate set of officers or can we use the custom authorities to do the same work as long as we get our message across. So that would mean enhancing their capacities and capabilities to deal with safety of food articles.

Again in regard to testing and analysis, whether to use government labs or private accredited labs as long as the sanctity of the testing procedure is maintained. A person is at liberty to chose whichever option there is.

We have now, after putting a lot of thought in this issue, we have though that we should try make use of the available structures rather than try reinvent the wheels

expand?

Expand in a way so as to cover everything  that is not what we plan to do now. While, we shall definitely expand and enter into areas where there is little likelihood of other structures either being available or coming in the near future, there we will have to step in. Otherwise, we have taken a conscious decision of using the existing infrastructure.

So my understanding is the note (of CCEA on expansion of FSSAI and state food safety infra) is to be revised and at the moment this is a proposal. Somewhere in mid January you discussed these issues internally of the revision of the route  focusing on three areas  that private labs can be used, enforcement being given over to states and FSSAI looking at standard setting as primary objective.

In any case, enforcement even now and even at the time was the mandate of the state

No, both the state and the centre

Centre was marginal to the enforcement issue

But under the regulations you have clear list of enforcement and other activities that only central FSSAI can implement

There are two different issues. One is, the issue relating to central licensing, where only central government can give licences to certain kind of food businesses. The other is, central enforcement.

On that there has been a rethinking

There certainly has been a rethinking because enforcement cannot take place in a vaccum, it can either take place in a state or a union territory where there already ought to be a structure for enforcement. So duplication can create confusion. What is more necessary is to get all of us, that is the states food regulators and state food authorities and us on the same board so we are thinking along the same lines and what to look for what not to look for rather than things which are not necessarily..

Procedurely

Please let me complete.

Sure..

So, licensing also when we are conducting most of our transactions electronically there is really not much purpose in having offices outside except for actual visual inspection. And actual visual inspection if you look at the data, for the past, they have never been the forte of this organisation  that is not what they have been doing..

But one would argue that if there was more staff and better infrastructure for the regional offices they would do so

So therefore, the focus of these offices needs to shift to actual site inspections so if there is a problem it is corrected at site.

But if you shut down your regional offices 

I am not saying we need to shut them down. We need to rethink the role of these offices.

But in your January 6 note you say that FSSAI should consider shutting down the regional offices and leave enforcement to states

No, I dont think that has been ever suggested. In fact that note doesnt really touch upon that. What really we would like to do is refocus our enforcement  and when we say our it is not just ours but also states  on manufacturing facilities rather than retail facilities.

So less testing and sampling 

It is not about less testing at all. See, at the retail outlet what is the bang you get for your buck?

You get a Maggie kind of situation

No you go to a shop that something is out of place so you seize it. The source of contaminationwe are into this to ensure safety of food. How do you ensure it  at the manufacturing level where the maximum possibility of contamination lies. So that is where we ought to be focussing. We ought to be relating to standards relating to storage, to transportation

As well as random sampling and testing, which is part of the law, I presume

Random sampling can be will continue to take place but it cannot be the focus. If you are looking at public safety, you have to look at the manufacturing units. Let me give you an outlandish example, you buy a car which has some defect  individual defect you can go to the nearest garage and get it repaired but if it is endemic we have to go down back to the factory. The focus we would like to shift to those places. And that all these places follow all the standards.

So if I am not mistaken Mr Bahuguna, there have been several reviews at the PMO level of the workings of FSSAI since last year. Initially they were agreeable to the CCEA note for expansion of FSSAI but at some point the PMO changed its views on where it needs to go and you were instructed to look at where FSSAI needs to go and consequently in January you sent the note to your officers talking about the changing you propose. The three prongs in that  private labs instead of expanding public labs, two withdraw central FSSAI from enforcement and leave it to states and three focus more on standard setting in Delhi. Till a year ago we were still saying there is not enough manpower at central and state level  we need to invest Rs 800 crores for states alone

The earlier proposal was to provide for infrastructure for various people populating their food regulatory system

But now you have suggested the state officials can do this as an additional duty and not full time.

We are not suggesting anything of the kind

In your note you suggested that

We are not suggesting anything of the kind. Our experience suggests that officers in most of the states looking at food related work are actually in additional chargesin a large number of states

But legally they are supposed to be full time officers, if I am not mistaken?

That does not happen and it is wishful thinking that this would happen overnight. Also this staff is housed under different departments in different states, somewhere in the medical department, somewhere in the food department, some states are progressive to have separate departments. It all depends on the kind of emphasis that state governments are giving. Just to give money to construct an office building will not necessarily result in either of two things  adequate personnel would be posted for food regulation or even a building will be exclusively used for food regulatory purposes. It doesnt work that way. That, couple with the fact, post the finance commission devolution larger monies are going to the state governments its really for the state governments to invest in their own infrastructure.

But at the moment, if you now consider allowing states to do the food safety work as additional duties and you also withdraw the central regional offices from enforcement  does that create a lack of enforcement in the states till the states now invest on their own because both are withdrawing?

No, no, who suggested that I am withdrawing,

Your note suggested that regional offices of FSSAI be shut down and you have shut down two sub-regional offices already.

Those are sub-regional offices. The Lucknow office had three people, one officer, one clerk and one peon.

But instead of expanding it 

No no one second, what work can that office do?

But instead the office could have been expanded which was the original plan

Yes if my aunt had moustaches she would be my uncle. That is no logic. The point is that there is no particular gain  and it is only the north zone that has these sub-regional offices. There is something unique about the north zone.

In your note you suggest that other regional offices also be closed

No we havent suggested that.

Your note specifically talks about it.

The point we are making it the functions of the regional offices need to be revisited to make them more oriented towards actual field level inspection and monitoring of systems, rather than

Sorry for cutting in but..

I dont know what note you are talking of

January 6 note that you circulated to your officers here which suggested that one way to go ahead is to shut down the regional offices of FSSAI

One second, one second, the note circulated - I dont know whether it was by me or the CEO

By you

It does not mean that that becomes the policy. That becomes the basis for brainstorming. The point is you can either go for incremental improvements or you can shock and awe. You shock the system so much so as to compel people to think out of the box.

So this was your shock and awe option?

So if I provoke you it is not necessary that I provoking you to merely irritate you or get you angry. It is to illicit some kind of response.

So this was your shock and awe option 

What my strategy is, is my strategy but these kind ofno person is infallible or all-knowing so you have to draw in ideas from all quarters to the extent possible. So that was one of the ideas. So the point is.

So how long will it take to have a revised cabinet note now?

You dont necessarily need to do that. There is a certain amount above which it goes to the CCEA. Also that is merely a procedural aspect of who approves. Before that, what is more important for FSSAI to understand what it wants to do and why and what it hopes to get out of it.

So, you are saying from the point that you wrote the note in January till today you have revised ideas of not shutting down the regional offices?

I am not saying it was an idea in the first place

It was in your note...

Like I said, it was a brainstorming thing. That is not the point. The point is, we need to discuss to come up with an acceptable framework.

So, it would be fair to say 

One second, there can be a lot of things that need to be done. Theoretically I can think of a lot of things that I can do at present. But I also need to understand the practicality of it. What is possible and what is not. You have to take everyone aboard. It is not the central government alone. The state governments have to be co-opted as equal members of this mission. It is not a question of getting an idea and ramming it down someones throat. It is throwing up an idea, seeing a flower bloom and then taking everyone along.

How long before this revised strategy, if I might call it that, will be ready for the road for FSSAI because the PMO always asks for time bound action to its instructions.

You see, that may well be so but and we can give responses regarding the time-limits within which we perform the science related works.

Setting standards etc

On for instance just the labs. Just by mandating private labs it will not happen. The state governments also have to understand  some state governments might well say we have a lab here and it is good enough and well equipped and we will continue to use it and they shall be free to do so. So you cannot  I mean the age of dictates is over  all we can do is to provide platforms and options for people.

Now for imports I am in discussion with the industry if industry can set up labs within the port premises on a PPP basis with us.

Instead of sending the samples.

outside because the time taken to get the stuff out of the port to the lab, there is a whole lot of problems attached to that especially in case of perishable food products. So therefore, where you can and everyone sees advantage in this we are implementing it straight away provided everything else falls in place. In this case the industry is ready, I am ready, but we need to get the land from the port authority and after getting the land you have to set it up and it still takes time. That is one part of it. But where the state governments are involved it is really for them to exercise

So out of the reforms that are possible, which you think are more in your domain and control, what are the ones that can be done faster and which are the ones which shall take bit longer.

The first and foremost are the regarding the entire process of approvals of various products. That is entirely in our hands so this is something that will be certainly done and framing the requisite standards and regulations to facilitate we have done a little bit and we need to do a lot more. Second is anything governing imports is in our hand and there also we can straight away we can implement what we have in mind. Enforcement is a tricky subject, which we have to take the state governments on board. But where we can actually start doing a lot of work is on dissemination on information. Enforcement comes at a later stage to my mind.

It is all very well to say that theoretically everyone should know the law and should comply with it but the fact remains with the level of literacy being what it is, the level of awareness being what it is, most people are not aware of a lot of requirements that the law mandates upon them. So what we are trying to do  and some effort has been made in Delhi at least  get in touch with state governments and hold campaigns so as to both, one generate some kind of demand from consumers  at the end of the day if consumers want something that will happen  and secondly make the food business operators of what they should be doing and lots of times most of us tend to think of this sector as the packaged food industry.

The proprietary food industryhow much would that be, 10%?

Maybe even less, no one really knows. But that accounts for a very small fraction of the total food industry.

But that is what involves a lot of money and safety against junk food etc arise?

No, junk food is not necessarily only in the packaged food sector. A lot of our traditional foods are also junk food. That debate can go on a separate tangent all together. What I am trying to say is there is a whole eco-system out there that is untouched. At least 90% is untouched by the organised food industry in that sense and which is where a lot of people feel that is more prone to contamination and lacks the usual health and hygiene and sanitation practices.

Do you agree with that?

I am not sure I agree, there are certain segments of it. The point I am trying to make is slightly different. Just last month we held and have been holding campaign in Delhi for street food in which we are giving among other things, training to the street food vendors along with a little bit of help with aprons and other things. Nobody can argue against the fact that there can be better health and hygiene standards especially given to the consumers passing through the hands of somebody. Now there are small things that can be done and their practice will make a huge difference and the consumers then start expecting it.

So this is where FSSAIs focus will increase?

It will certainly increase

Less on process food and more on this segment.

No, we will certainly look at the processed food sector as well but yes, but this is where the major food sector lies in the unorganised area and this is where we need to be more proactive because what the general people of the country eat is of more concern to eat than what a very small minority eat.

How much would be the volume of processed food industry be roughly?

It is difficult to say, the ministry of food processing would have an idea.

Thank you this has helped bring some clarity. Would you say this is the post Maggie episode phase of FSSAI?

The Maggie case is still in the courts. See, what problem the FSSAI faced at that time was that the law does not have any clarity and is open to multiple interpretations. The same phraseology can be interpreted by different people in different ways depending upon the kind of positions we occupy, the ideology we have and the baggage we carry. Now that will always create problems of inconsistency and that is something that the industry wants is not necessarily concurrence to all their demands. It wants a climate of consistency - whatever is the law is applied to everyone uniformly and in all regions of the country equally.

Would you look at amendments to the law to rectify these problems?

I am nobody to look at the amendments.

But would you propose so?

Certainly the law needs to be changed. There is no doubt in my mind at all the law needs to be changed...but what we shall do is when the regulations come out (under the law) we shall try to put the logic of the regulations together with the regulations so that it becomes more comprehensible to all concerned of why we have gone the way we have.

But presumably, a lot can be done through amendment to regulations and rules but somethings will require amendment to the law?

Rules and regulations can only take place as per the law.

The food safety law is being amended?

Yes, the law certainly has to be sharpened.

Has the process for amending the law started?

The process started some time back. There is a committee constituted by the government and they have made some suggestions. I personally feel that it requires not amendments but it needs complete replacement of the law.

But I guess that is a decision to be taken at a higher level in the government

Yes.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday has decided to share liquor baron Vijay Mallyas and his family members assets, including those in other countries, to the consortium of his lenders.

The promoter of the failed Kingfisher Airlines, Mallya, has consistently argued that a non-resident Indian like him was not obliged to disclose information about his assets abroad, even for tax purposes. He, nevertheless, had disclosed the assets only to the court in a sealed envelope, which the judges have read.

However, he did not want to disclose this information to banks, arguing that his foreign assets did not fall under the ambit of the Indian financial institutions that lent to the failed airlines.

Mallya owes 17 banks about Rs 9,400 crore in dues. He has argued that the loan was given to a limited liability company, even as he extended his personal guarantee for the money borrowed.

He had also told banks to back off from their scrutiny of the overseas assets of his family as Mallyas personal guarantee should not extend up to others. In any case the members, claims Mallya, by virtue of being adults and foreign citizens, had the right to keep information private.

The Supreme Courts verdict is a major boost for banks in their recovery effort as they can now get a total picture of Mallyas finances and how much more can be recovered from the flamboyant billionaire, who so far have had offered banks about Rs 6,000 crore in instalments, with riders that his record be put straight and he be freed from all charges.

Banks have promptly rejected the offer and wanted Mallya to be present for the proceedings. However, bankers said they were open to settle with Mallya if he came up with a reasonable offer.

Since then, Mallya has left the country but is under pressure after India revoked his passport. A Mumbai court has also issued a non-bailable arrest warrant for not cooperating with the investigators. Mallya is also facing expulsion from the Rajya Sabha.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court disposed off banks plea that Mallya should be present in the country and his passport be revoked. The court then directed the debt recovery tribunal, where the recovery proceedings were being heard, to dispose the suits within two months.

To recover their dues, banks wanted to attach gains from sale of Mallyas liquor holdings to UK-based Diageo. Whether they could do so was being challenged in the tribunal in Bengaluru, where Mallyas corporate empire was headquartered.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court bench consisting of Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice Rohington Nariman heard Mallyas senior counsel C S Vaidyanathan and Attorney General Mukul Rohtagi for two hours.

Vaidyanathan contended that the demand for the presence of Mallya could only be to put him behind bars and that settlement talks could be conducted from abroad also. However, he complained, that the banks have not shown any real interest in settling the issues. Mallya had pegged his own domestic assets at Rs 2,014 crore and overseas assets worth Rs 748 crore, his lawyer said.

Attorney General Mukul Rohtagi contended that all the three orders of the court passed earlier have been flouted by Mallya. For example, Mallya was asked to disclose all assets, but he had been resisting the demand raising various objections. He was also asked to deposit a substantial amount to show his bona fide in arriving at a settlement, but he had not done it. The third demand, to indicate when he would be able to be present in the court, had also been sidelined on technical grounds.
As a step to garner capital for business growth, government-owned Bank of Baroda (BoB) plans to hire an advisory firm to value its properties and prepare a plan to monetise some of these.

BoB owns 268 properties, with a total value of at least Rs 4,800 crore. Various owned buildings are also in construction stage, a senior BoB official said.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently changed the rules for revaluing of assets. Revaluation of a banks property is to be part of common equity tier-1 (CET1) capital, at a discount of 55 per cent. Earlier, this was treated as part of tier-2 capital. Based on the existing position, the management has told the government it does not require additional subscription to equity capital. The central government holds 59.2 per cent stake. The capital adequacy ratio was 12.18 per cent, with tier-I at 9.57 per cent at end-December 2015.

The priority would be to generate capital through efficient use of assets and operations, over issuing fresh equity, managing director P Jayakumar had said.

State Bank of India is also using the RBI change to do a realty revaluation. They say it would allow adding Rs 9,000 crore to the capital adequacy calculation. According to rating agency ICRA, such announcements by a few large government banks could lead to recognition of banks CET1 by Rs 20,000-25,000 crore. In most public sector banks (PSBs), valuation was done some years earlier and theyd look to be revaluing on the basis of current market values.

MANDATE FOR REALTY ADVISOR
GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA | Edited extracts

THE Papua New Guinea Supreme Court has ruled that the detention of asylum seekers and refugees on Manus Island is illegal, finding it to be in breach of the PNG Constitution.

The full bench of the court ruled the incarceration of asylum seekers and refugees was in breach of their personal liberty, the ABC has reported, and ordered both the PNG and Australian governments to immediately begin making arrangements to move people out of detention.

The challenge to the offshore detention regime, brought by Port Moresby lawyer Ben Lomai on behalf of more than 300 detainees, argued that the mens detention was in breach of Section 46 of the PNG Constitution.
Insurance companies are tying up with cooperative banks, microfinance institutions and small finance banks to widen their reach.

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) had in recent meetings with the industry pointed to a concentration of insurers and their touch points in urban areas.

State-owned insurers dominate rural markets with their strong branch presence. The IRDAI has allowed banks to act as agents for multiple insurers.

Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance has signed an agreement with Vakrangee to distribute its policies through 23,000 kendras that provide banking, insurance, e-governance, e-commerce and ATM services to rural customers. We will reach more rural customers, said Anuj Agarwal, MD and CEO, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance.

Bajaj Allianz also has an agreement with the Gujarat-headquartered Kalupur Commercial Co-operative Bank to distribute microinsurance.

Birla Sun Life Insurance has a distribution tie-up with the Peerless group. Jayanta Roy, MD and CEO, The Peerless General Finance & Investment, his group would gain access to a range of financial services for its customers.

HDFC Life has a deal with Indiabulls Housing Finance to distribute insurance. "This will help us widen our reach," said Amitabh Chaudhry, MD and CEO, HDFC Life.

Future Generali India Insurance has tied up with 10 medium and small banks in the Kolhapur and Sangli districts to sell rural and micro-insurance.

Cigna TTK Health Insurance has an agreement with the countrys largest urban co-operative bank, Saraswat Bank. This will strengthen Cigna TTKs presence in six states.
High Court of Delhi vide its order dated 22.03.2016 passed in Writ Petition (C) No. 7927/2012 Court on its Own Motion Vs Union of India & Anr. has directed to file an affidavit indicating the status along with specific timelines of the proposals of the Ministry of Home Affairs as well as of the Ministry of Finance demonstrating an integrated plan of action with regard to improving policing in Delhi and thereby reducing the instances of crime, particularly, with regard to crime against women, children and senior citizens. .

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Proposals from Delhi Police for creation of posts for various units and for different purposes are being received time to time. Ministry of Home Affairs, in consultation with Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance scrutinizes these proposals within available resources. Ministry of Home Affairs, with the approval of Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance has recently sanctioned creation of 4227 additional posts in Delhi Police for the purpose of separation of crime investigation from law & order functions.

A High Level Committee (HLC) has been constituted with the following Terms of Reference to ensure holistic assessment of the manpower requirement of Delhi Police: .

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(i) To assess the present set up/strength of Delhi Police vis-?-vis the proposed demand for additional manpower. .

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(ii) To assess leveraging latest technology to reduce the requirement of manpower. .

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(iii) To assess the future requirement of manpower for the next 10 years. .

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(iv) To deliberate on the norms for creation of posts. .

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(v) To make comparative analysis with Police Forces of other Metro Cities. .

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The HLC in its meeting held on 18th March, 2016 observed that as per the Delhi Police Act, the constitution of the Police Force in Delhi is the responsibility of the Administrator i.e. Lt. Governor (LG) of Delhi and what can be the number of police in the various ranks has also to be determined by the Administrator. Accordingly, Delhi Police was requested to get all manpower proposals that are at present under consideration of High Level Committee simultaneously vetted/ recommended by the LG, Delhi. .

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This was stated by the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Shri Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary in a written reply to a question by Shri Harish Meena in the Lok Sabha today. .

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Union Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Sushri Uma Bharti has stressed the need for comprehensive water resources management plan for the entire nation. Chairing the 2nd meeting of the Advisory Board of National Water Mission in New Delhi today, the Minister said that such a plan is very much necessary to meet the challenges of drought and should be finalized in consultations with state governments. Sushri Bharti said that public participation is a prerequisite for the success of any such plan. The Minister also launched the web portal (nationalwatermission.gov.in) of National Water Mission on the occasion. .

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Union Minister of state for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Prof. Sanwar Lal Jat said that farmer has to be told about the alternatives for excessive use of ground water for irrigation purpose. He said while recommending change in pattern of crops it is necessary to understand its economics. Prof. Jat also launched the logo of NWM on the occasion. .

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The website of NWM will be a one point source for providing comprehensive information on water resources as well as various activities being under taken by the NWM. The website has integrated information on water sector (surface water, ground water and waste water) in the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, other central Ministries/organizations and state governments concerned. This site also provides the link to the India-WRIS, Central Water Commission, Central Ground Water Board and other Central/State government organizations. The contents have been grouped systematically under drop down menu bars, allowing for easy navigation. Policy intervention, State Specific Action Plan (SSAP), Demonstration projects, vulnerable and over-exploited areas. Integrated water resources management, study and research, New initiatives, MoWR organization, other Ministries, State Water Resources Departments and collaborations are some of the important sub heads. .

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Shri Nikhilesh Jha, Mission Director, NWM gave a detailed account of the website and efforts made in designing it by NIC. He appreciated the efforts of NWM and NIC officials in the development of website. .

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Samir/jk
The Border Security Force (BSF) has informed that nothing has so far come to the notice to conclude any route adopted by the terrorists through the Area of Responsibility (AOR). However, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is investigating the terror attack on Pathankot Airbase, has informed that the terrorists had infiltrated from Pakistan side crossing the border. .

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The exact mode and route taken by them are still under investigation. .

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The following steps have been taken to strengthen security at the Indo-Pakistan border to meet the shortage/lapses in border security: .

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i. In order to strengthen border domination, one more Battalion has been inducted in Gurdaspur sector on Punjab Border. .

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ii. One pilot project for deploying technological solutions in 2 patches of 5-6 kilometers of riverine gaps and sensitive areas of Jammu Frontier has been sanctioned. .

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iii. Introduction of Force Multipliers and Hi-tech surveillance equipments to reduce stress level of troops and to enhance the surveillance of border. .

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iv. Upgradation of Intelligence Network and coordination. .

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v.

Conduct of special operations along the Border and in-depth areas. .

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vi. Review of vulnerability mapping of BOPs along Indo Pak Border from time to time. .

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vii. Approval of four Pilot Projects of approx 30-40 kilometers each in different terrains and sensitive riverine gaps in Jammu, Punjab, Gujarat and West Bengal States. .

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viii. Forty five more laser / IR Intrusion detection system are being fabricated and being installed in Punjab (eight have already been fabricated and installed). This was stated by the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Shri Kiren Rijiju in a written reply to a question by Smt Kavitha Kalvakuntla, Shri Rahul Kaswan and Dr. K. Gopal in the Lok Sabha today. .

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Since health is a State subject, no such information is maintained centrally and it is the responsibility of the respective State Government/Union Territory to make provision in this regard. There is no proposal under consideration of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare at this stage to ask all the State Government to make at least one hospital in a district fully equipped with to handle any natural disaster. .

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However, on the requests of the State Government, the Central Government sends teams of experts/doctors, equipment, medicines etc. at the time of disaster to help the State Government to handle any medical emergencies. .

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As far as the Central Government Hospitals namely, Safdarjung Hospital, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital and Lady Hardinge Medical College & associated hospitals are concerned, they are fully prepared to face any natural disaster. .

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The Health Minister, Shri J P Nadda stated this in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha here today. .

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No specific inputs are available to indicate that the Maoists/ Left Wing Extremists are getting backing from foreign agency/ country in India. However, the CPI (Maoist) party have close links with foreign Maoist organizations in Philippines, Turkey etc. The outfit is also a member of the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA). The Maoist parties of South Asian countries are members of this conglomerate.

Besides, Left Wing Extremist (LWE) groups have participated in conferences/ seminars conducted in Belgium and Germany. The so-called Peoples War being waged by the CPI(Maoist) against the Indian State has also drawn support from several Maoist fringe organisations located in Germany, France, Holland, Turkey, Italy etc. .

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The recovery of arms and ammunitions of foreign origin from the Left Wing Extremists in different encounters / operations is an indication of the fact that they are procuring weapons from different sources. Inputs indicate that some senior cadres of the Communist Party of the Philippines imparted training to the cadres of CPI(Maoist) in 2005 and 2011. .

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The Government is closely monitoring the situation and taking appropriate action as required. Such matters, as and when they come to the notice of this Ministry, are taken up with the countries concerned at the diplomatic level. .

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This was stated by the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Shri Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary in a written reply to a question by Shri Janardan Singh Sigriwal in the Lok Sabha today. .

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No license is required for setting up of Machine Tools manufacturing unit in the country. Presently 100% Foreign Direct Investment is allowed through automatic route in Machine Tools Industry. Further, keeping in view the strategic nature of Capital Goods which includes Machine Tools Industry as a very important sub-sector, a Scheme for enhancement of competitiveness in the Indian Capital Goods Industry has been launched by the Department of Heavy Industry. Under the said Scheme there is a component of setting up Integrated Industrial Infrastructural facilities (IIFC) for Machine Tools Industry and the proposal of Karnataka Government for setting up the Machine Tools Park near Tumkur has been approved by the Government. This is expected to augment the capacity of machine tool industry in India. .

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In addition to IIFC, there is a component of Setting up Centre of Excellence for technology development (CoE) under which setting up of a COE at IIT Madras with six industry partners for development of 11 Machine Tool technologies has also been approved by the Government. Development of advance technology is likely to result in import substitution and increased capacity in domestic manufacturing of Machine Tools. .

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Details of the Scheme and its components are available in the Department of Heavy Industry website at dhi.nic.in. .

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Government of India has signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 5th October, 2015 with M/s. Fraunhofer Society, Germany an applied research organization of global repute, on technology collaboration in the field of manufacturing including capital goods industry. Machine Tools industry is an important sub-sector of capital goods sector. Under the component of technology acquisition fund programme of the Scheme on Enhancement of the Competitiveness in the Indian Capital Goods Sector" a proposal from HMT Machine Tools Ltd. for joint research and development in the Machine Tool sector with M/s. Fraunhofer Socitey, Germany, has been approved. Two project namely (a) Upgradation of four Guideway CNC Lathe and (b) Acquisition of higher C Axis accuracy of Turn mill Centre in collaboration with M/s. Fraunhofer Socitey, Germany, with project outlays of Rs. 4.4 Crore and Rs. 1.1 Crore respectively have been approved. .

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This information was given by Minister of State in the Ministry Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Shri G.M. Siddeshwara in a written reply in Lok Sabha today. .

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ST
The medical stores procured for service personnel and Ex-Servicemen Contributory Health Scheme (ECHS) beneficiaries are required to be accounted for separately by the service hospitals. In situations where some medicines / stores are essentially required for combating the disease and salvaging precious lives of both serving personnel and ECHS beneficiaries, separate inventory for serving personnel and ECHS beneficiaries is not maintained. However, directions have been issued by the Directorate General Armed Forces Medical Services to all concerned to ensure that ECHS funds allotted to hospitals, depots and other medical units should be used for management of ECHS beneficiaries only. .

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There have been shortfalls in supply of medicines by the Armed Forces Medical Store Depots (AFMSDs) Mumbai and Delhi to the dependent medical units as well as to ECHS polyclinics. However, measures have been undertaken to improve the availability of medicines at all echelons including ECHS Polyclinics, which, inter-alia, include enhanced coverage of Central Rate Contracts and Price Agreements of medicines at Senior Executive Medical Officer (SEMO) / Formation / Station level, augmentation of manpower for effective supply chain and inventory management of medicines, correct projection and analysis of Monthly Maintenance Figures (MMF) by ECHS Polyclinics and boost in the supply of Essential Drug List (EDL) for ECHS and Common Drug List (CDL) medicines by the AFMSDs. Directions have also been issued to the AFMSDs to make concerted efforts so that the state of compliance of indents made by the medical units including ECHS polyclinic is maximum. .

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As per the CAG report, there is a mismatch of 7431 smart cards in the data furnished by Central Organisation ECHS and the details obtained by the audit team directly from the card making company. .

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This information was given by Defence Minister Shri Manohar Parrikar in a written reply to Shri Paul Manoj Pandian in Rajya Sabha today. .

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DM/NAMPI/RAJ
NITI Aayog to launch Urban Management Program for Capacity Building in States and Urban Local Bodies

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NITI Aayog in collaboration with Singapore Cooperation Enterprise (SCE) and Temasek Foundation, Singapore is organizing an Urban Management Programme for Capacity Building of officials of State Governments and ULBs in implementing the Urban Rejuvenation Mission. Officials from 7 States (Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh & Assam) would be participating in this Programme. The Programme would cover areas of Urban Planning & Governance, Water, Waste Water & Solid Waste Management and Public Financing (PPP) of Urban Infrastructure. The Launch of the Programme is scheduled from 10:20 A.M. on 27 April, 2016 at Hall No. 4, Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. The Programme Launch would be followed by a two day Workshop on 28 & 29 April, 2016 on Urban Planning & Governance in Vigyan Bhawan. .

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Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog, Dr Arvind Panagariya will chair the Launch Programme which will be attended by the Member NITI Aayog, Dr Bibek Debroy, High Commissioner of Singapore, the CEO of Singapore co-operation Enterprise, SCE and the CEO of Temasek Foundation and senior officials from State Governments of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Assam, the Union Ministry of Urban Development, Ministry of Housing and Poverty Alleviation, NITI Aayog, academic institutions like School of Planning & Architecture, Delhi etc would attend the meet. The state participation is at the level of Secretaries of Urban Development, Municipal Commissioners and other senior officials of State Government and parastatal bodies. .

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The Programme has been designed by NITI Aayog, Temasek Foundation and Singapore Cooperation Enterprise (SCE) under the platform of the Memorandum of Understanding signed between NITI Aayog and the Singapore Cooperation Enterprise (SCE) to tap the expertise of Singapore in urban sector to build capacities in State Governments and ULBs. During the program, experts from Singapore would impart training in highly interactive workshops and share Singapore's and international experiences with the participants. The workshops and advisory sessions would be highly interactive and focus on Urban Planning & Governance, Water and Wastewater Management, Solid Waste Management and bringing in private sector efficiencies in urban infrastructure. Towards the end of the Progaramme, Strategic Base line Frameworks will be developed in this areas of Urban Management .

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Background: .

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Urbanisation offers an opportunity to India to achieve higher economic growth as cities provide economies of agglomeration. Urbanisation level in India, which was around 31 per cent in census 2011 is estimated to increase and reach 40 per cent by 2030 in percentage terms, the urbanisation level may appear to be modest, however in absolute numbers it is very large. Urban population of India is more than the entire population of United States of America or Brazil. The urban economy has also witnessed significant growth and is contributing to around 60 per cent of GDP. However, to reap the full benefits of urbanisation, it is important that it is efficient and sustainable. .

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Rapid urbanisation is increasing the pressure on provision of basic services to citizens like water, sanitation and mobility in the urban areas in the country. Infrastructure deficit is increasing the coping costs as well as leading to loss of productivity in the cities. It is also adversely affecting the ability of cities in attracting investment in this globalized world. Governance in urban centres is also emerging as a major challenge particularly with the increasing number of census towns. Further, with the increasing pressure on natural resources, sustainability of cities is emerging as a major concern. A deficiency in processing and scientific disposal of urban waste is resulting in a situation where Indian cities are polluting water bodies, degrading soil and environment at a much larger scale than they use these resources. Environmental sustainability of Indian cities is therefore becoming a major imperative for guiding efficient urbanisation. .

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Therefore it is necessary to take measures to ensure that the urbanisation is efficient. It is imperative to improve the provisioning of basic infrastructure and governance in our cities so that the cities enable better living and drive economic growth and emerge as Engines of Economic Growth and moreover do so in a sustainable manner. The urban centres have to become areas of intense mobility, socio-economic activity and hope for a large number of population. To transform the urban landscape in the country, the Government has recently launched the Urban Rejuvenation Mission (URM) comprising of Atal Mission for Urban Rejuvenation and Transformation (AMRUT), Smart Cities Mission and Housing for All. .

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The 74th Constitutional Amendment accorded constitutional status to the municipal bodies by initiating a process of democratic decentralisation with the objective of making urban governance more responsive. In order to meet the growing aspirations and expectations of people, and to meet the challenges of urbanisation, governance in the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) needs to become more efficient, effective, responsive, citizen friendly, transparent and accountable. Currently, many Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) do not have sufficient capacity to plan, finance and implement efficient, smart and sustainable solutions for urban problems. .

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In order to effectively realise the vision of urban transformation, one of the key objectives is to build sufficient capacities in the Urban Local Bodies and State Government in urban management and provide greater financial and functional autonomy to the ULBs. In this backdrop, NITI Aayog has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with Singapore Cooperation Enterprise (SCE) to tap the expertise of Singapore in urban sector to build capacities in State Governments and ULBs to facilitate in implementation of the Urban Rejuvenation Mission. .

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The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh said here today that the Nuclear collaboration with Canada has proved mutually beneficial for the two countries and is bound to grow further in the years to come. .

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Dr Jitendra Singh was speaking to Canadian High Commissioner to India, Mr Nadir Patel, who called on him to brief him about the current status of collaboration between India and Canada in nuclear science/power and other areas of bilateral interest. .

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Dr Jitendra Singh said that there has been a consistent, comfortable and compatible relationship between India and Canada, as a result of which, even today, a large number of youth migrating overseas from India, prefer to choose Canada as their destination. He also recalled the meeting between the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and the Canadian Prime Minister during Shri Modis visit to Canada last year.

As a follow up of an agreement finalised during that visit, the Uranium collaboration between the two countries has shown significant rise, he said. .

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Canadian High Commissioner to India, Mr Nadir Patel also discussed with Dr Jitendra Singh, the possible timing and dates of the visit of Canadian Prime Minister, Mr Justin Trudeau to New Delhi later this year. He also referred to the meeting that a delegation of Nuclear physicists from Canada had with Dr Jitendra Singh in Mumbai recently. .

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Mr. Patel also offered to provide inputs to boost various developmental activities going on in the North Eastern States of India and said that he may like to undertake an exploratory visit to Northeast in the months to come. .

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When the White House sought nominees to recognize as "Champions of Change for Expanding Fair Chance Opportunities," they turned to Dr. Rob Scott, executive director of the Cornell University Prison Education Program.

Scott, who works with several college-in-prison programs throughout the country, shared the call for nominations with 500 people. He nominated someone for the award and "walked away," he said in a phone interview Tuesday.

"Then I get a call from the White House telling me, 'Well, you're the winner,'" he said.

The White House will hold a ceremony Wednesday honoring Scott and nine other recipients of the Champions of Change awards. A press release says the individuals were selected "for their leadership and tireless work to remove barriers to a second chance for those with a criminal record."

As director of the Cornell Prison Education Program, Scott oversees an initiative that offers college courses in three central New York prisons  Auburn Correctional Facility and Cayuga Correctional Facility in Cayuga County and Five Points Correctional Facility in Seneca County.

The program will expand to Elmira Correctional Facility in 2017.

Scott said there are 165 inmates in the program today, but they anticipate there will be up to 200 students enrolled in classes by the end of the year.

Approximately 100 educators and volunteers from Cornell help support the college-in-prison initiative at Auburn, Cayuga and Five Points correctional facilities, Scott said.

"The administration at these correctional facilities has been receptive," he said.

Along with his work leading Cornell's effort, Scott has advocated for expanding college-in-prison programs.

In 2014, he came out in support of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan to offer college courses in 10 New York prisons. Cuomo's proposal was criticized by state Senate Republicans who said taxpayer dollars shouldn't be used to fund higher education classes for inmates.

Some opponents of the concept questioned why inmates should receive access to college courses, even if it's not paid for using public dollars.

Scott, though, noted that there are more than 70 million Americans who have criminal records. He disputed the notion that inmates shouldn't be allowed to become contributors to society.

"We all know a criminal somewhere," he said. "We all know someone who has stolen something. We all know someone who has perhaps driven while having had a few beers. Do you throw away these people for life or do you think about balancing their punishment against rehabilitation?"

The Champions for Change award presentation will be held at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the White House. The event will be streamed online at whitehouse.gov/live.

Featured speakers will include U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to President Barack Obama.
The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee has extended his greetings and felicitations to the Government and people of the Republic of South Africa on the eve of the Freedom Day of South Africa (April 27, 2016). .

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In his message to His Excellency Mr. Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, the President of the Republic of South Africa, the President has said, On behalf of the Government and the people of India and on my own behalf, it gives me great pleasure to extend to the friendly people of South Africa warm greetings and felicitations on the occasion of your Freedom Day. .

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India and South Africa share a longstanding friendship that is rooted in history and our shared values. Our cooperation has evolved into a strategic partnership-nurtured by our multifaceted and vibrant engagement covering diverse sectors of our mutual interest. Our initiative under the aegis of IBSA, BRICS and BASIC have added even greater value and substance to our engagement. Your Excellencys participation in the Third India Africa Forum Summit held in New Delhi in October, 2015 contributed substantially to the efforts of this forum and will serve to reinforce the ties between India and Africa in the coming years. I look forward to working closely with you to further strengthen our bilateral cooperation for the benefit of our two peoples. .

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Please accept, Excellency, my good wishes for your personal well-being, as well as for the progress and prosperity of the friendly people of South Africa". .

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The Government has drawn up a plan for capacity augmentation of the existing berths in Kolkata Port and Haldia Dock, setting up of new berths and jetties based on viability, as well as by way of encouraging port based investment on the land belonging to Kolkata Port. .

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This information was given by Minister of State for Shipping, Shri Pon Radhakrishnan in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today. .

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A drug banned / restricted in one country may continue to be marketed in other countries as the respective Governments examine the usage, doses, indications permitted, etc. along with the overall risk-benefit ratio and take decisions on the continued marketing of any drug in that country. In India, safety issues concerning drug formulations are, as and when noted, assessed in consultation with the experts. Safety and efficacy issues relating to certain drugs which have been banned in some countries have been examined and some of these have been allowed for continued marketing subject to stipulated condition/restrictions. These include: .

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I. Nimesulide:- The manufacture, sale and distribution of Nimesulide formulation for human use in children below 12 years of age has been prohibited in the country. .

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II. Analgin:- The manufacture for sale, sale and distribution of Analgin and its formulations containing Analgin for human use was initially suspended in the country w.e.f. 18.06.2013. Subsequently, DTAB examined the issue of suspension of manufacture and sale of the said drug on 25.11.2013 in its 65th meeting and on the basis of the recommendations of the DTAB, the ban was revoked subject to the condition that manufacturers will be required to mention the following on their package insert and promotional literature of the drug:- .

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The drug is indicated for severe pain and pain due to tumour and also for bringing down temperature in refractory cases when other antipyretics fail to do so". .

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III Pioglitazone:- The manufacture for sale, sale and distribution of the drug Pioglitazone and formulations containing Pioglitazone for human use was initially suspended w.e.f. 18.06.2013. Subsequently, DTAB, after examination, recommended for revocation of the suspension of the manufacture and sale of the drug subject to certain conditions and accordingly, the suspension was revoked subject to the condition that the manufacturer shall mention on the package insert and promotional literature of the drug the following:- .

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a) The drug should not be used as first line of therapy for diabetes. .

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b) The manufacturer should clearly mention the following box warning in bold red. .

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Advice for healthcare professionals: .

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I. Patients with active bladder cancer or with a history of bladder cancer, and those with uninvestigated haematuria, should not receive pioglitazone. .

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II. Prescribers should review the safety and efficacy of pioglitazone in individuals after 36 months of treatment to ensure that only patients who are deriving benefit continue to be treated. Pioglitazone should be stopped in patients who do not respond adequately to treatment (e.g. reduction in glycosylated haemoglobin, HbA1c). .

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III. Before starting pioglitazone, the following known risk factors for development of bladder cancer should be assessed in individuals: age; current or past history of smoking; exposure to some occupational or chemotherapy agents such as cyclophosphamide; or previous irradiation of the pelvic region. .

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IV. Use in elderly patients should be considered carefully before and during treatment because the risk of bladder cancer increases with age. Elderly patients should start on the lowest possible dose and be regularly monitored because of the risks of bladder cancer and heart failure associated with pioglitazone." .

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V. The Central Government has banned 344 Fixed Dose Combinations on 10.03.2016, as these combinations lacked therapeutic rationality/ justification. .

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The Health Minister, Shri J P Nadda stated this in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha here today. .

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The Minister for Road Transport & Highways & Shipping Shri Nitin Gadkari has emphasized that a positive attitude, transparent working system and prompt decision making are essential for the Ministry to realize its objective of facilitating safe and seamless travel across the country . He was inaugurating a conference of Regional Officers of NHAI in New Delhi today. Shri Gadkari said that officials should try to solve problems in a proactive and positive manner within the ambit of applicable rules and regulations, and avoid unnecessary delays. He said that negative approach only leads to delay in the completion of project, and delays cause avoidable cost overruns and harassment to all stakeholders. The Minister emphasized on cooperation, coordination and communication as the key to find solutions. He stressed that there should be proper delegation of work in conformity with management best practices and effort should be on proper utilization of resources so that both time and cost of road construction can be brought down. At the outset Shri Gadkari also thanked all the officials for having contributed immensely to the countrys progress in the last two years. He added that while it was not possible to be perfect he wanted everyone to work upon their weaknesses and move forward. .

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While speaking about the problem of land acquisition, he said that following the Land Acquisition Act of 2013 , though the cost of land had gone up it had made the process of acquiring land smoother due to adequate compensation. He called upon states to streamline the process of giving compensation . .

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With regard to managerial skills, he emphasised to need to have appropriate persons for the appropriate job. He also said that to speed up projects, it was necessary to increase the power of R.O.s and PDs. But, he added that while he was in favour of delegating powers there was an utmost need for performance audit at various levels to check delays. .

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The Minister for Road Transport also felt that there was a need to work on reducing accidents and road fatalities. The rectification work at identified black spots need to be done urgently. Shri Gadkari also said that he would like to speed up the work on road side amenities on waste lands. .

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The Minister for State Shri Pon Radhakrishnan who also spoke during the inauguration said that roads are the second biggest infrastructure after power and that the hybrid annuity model could take development further. He also said that non-disbursement of funds and lack of updation of revenue records leads to delay in land acquisition. .

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The Secretary for Ministry of Road Transport and Highways Shri Sanjay Mitra while addressing the gathering said that his Ministry would work hard to achieve the steep targets set for the year 2016-17. He said that efforts would be made to delegate powers so that projects could be speeded up. Besides, attention would be given to streamlining processes but only after necessary consultation. .

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The Chairman for NHAI, Shri Raghav Chandra informed that during the year 2015-16, 9,285 hectares of land had been acquired. He also proposed to provide incentives to Competent Authority for Land Acquisition (CALA) and District authorities to incentivize them to speed up the process of land acquisition. .

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On the occasion the Minister also released an online project monitoring system. A Compendium of Land Acquisition Circulars : Provisions and Guidelines has also been prepared and was made available to all participants of the conference. .

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UM/NP/AC/RS
The National Food Security Act, 2013 (NFSA) is already being implemented in 33 States/UTs. Out of the remaining three States, Tamil Nadu had, in September, 2015, requested to extend the process of implementation of NFSA in the State by at least one year. The Government of Kerala has informed that the State Government will be able to implement NFSA only after conclusion of the ongoing State Assembly Election process. Government of Nagaland has indicated implementation of the Act from June-July, 2016. These remaining States are required to implement the Act at the earliest. This information was given by the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Shri Ram Vilas Paswan in a written reply in Lok Sabha today. .

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The Minister said that the State Government of Tamil Nadu had requested for a provision to assure that the existing allocation of foodgrains is not reduced. The Act already provides that if annual allocation of foodgrains to any State, on the basis of coverage for the State and foodgrains entitlement under the Act, is less than the average annual offtake of foodgrains during 2010-11 to 2012-13, under normal Targeted Public Distribution System, the same shall be protected at prices as determined by the Central Government. .

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The terrorist outfit Tuesday claimed responsibility for the brutal killings of Bangladesh's first gay magazine editor along with a friend in Dhaka, saying they were executed for "pioneering" homosexuality in the Muslim-majority country.

Julhash Mannan, the editor of 'Roopban' - the only magazine in Bangladesh advocating gay rights - and his friend Tanay Fahim were killed on Monday by armed assailants who entered the flat impersonating as courier company officials, police said.

Read more from our special coverage on "AL QAEDA" Al Qaeda hacks Indian Railways website; encourages Muslims to join Jihad

"The mujahidin of Ansar al-Islam (AQIS, Bangladesh branch) were able to assassin Julhash Mannan and his associate Tanay Fahim. They were the pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh," the AQIS said in a Twitter post.

"They were working day and night to promote homosexuality among the people of this land with the help of their masters, the US crusaders and its Indian allies," it was quoted as saying by Dhaka Tribune.

Mannan, 35, a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni and ex-protocol officer of the US embassy, was known for his gay rights activism.

Fahim, the other victim, was also a LGBT activist.

The assailants barged into Mannan's flat on the second floor and stabbed him and his friend indiscriminately, Abdul Bari, a sub-inspector of Special Branch (SB) of police, was quoted as saying by the Daily Star.

The two died immediately on the spot.

Mannan's body was found lying at the entrance of the house while Fahim's body was found inside.

The killings came two days after the grisly murder of liberal university professor Rezaul Karim Siddiquee in the northern Rajshahi city. The attack was claimed by the ISIS.
Already home to the world's biggest skyscraper, Dubai has another tall order to fill: By 2030, its leader wants 25% of all trips on its roads to be done by driverless vehicles.

Tuesday's announcement by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum came without warning and with few details, as is sometimes the case with the many aspirations of the leadership of the United Arab Emirates.

Read more from our special coverage on "DRIVERLESS CARS" Chinese driverless cars complete 2000-km road test

In this car-crazed city-state of over 1.5 million registered vehicles, it's not unusual to see Ferraris idling alongside Lamborghinis at traffic lights. And Dubai already is home to a driverless Metro rail system, which carried 178 million riders in 2015.

Smart-car technology is being used in some of the world's luxury vehicles, and it is advancing rapidly enough for the plan to become a reality or a nightmare for the thousands of taxi drivers who now plying the streets among the sleek skyscrapers in the UAE's commercial capital.

In a statement carried by the state-run WAM news agency, Sheikh Mohammed said the plan would cut down on costs and traffic accidents. The project would be a joint venture by Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority and the Dubai Future Foundation, he said, without offering how it would be funded in the oil-rich nation.

"Today, we lay down a clear strategy with specific goals for smart transportation to form one of the key drivers for achieving sustainable economy in the UAE," Sheikh Mohammed said, who can be seen driving himself around Dubai in his white Mercedes-Benz G-Class SUV, license plate No 1.

Dubai boasts the world's tallest building with the 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa, which opened in 2010. In 2020, it will host the World Expo, a world's fair that is held every five years.

Mattar al-Tayer, the director-general and chairman of the Roads and Transport Authority, said his agency has contacted a number of driverless vehicle sellers and "plans to conduct live test-runs for these vehicles in Dubai."



His agency already has signed a deal with Toulouse, France-based driverless vehicle manufacturer EasyMile to conduct tests on their box-shaped EZ10, which carries up to 10 passengers, according to a statement from al-Tayer.

EasyMile referred questions to its Emirati partner Omnix, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mitsubishi Motors Corp said it has improperly tested the fuel economy of its cars for the past quarter century, deepening a crisis that's already wiped out half its market value. The automaker formed a panel of three former prosecutors to investigate improper testing that goes back as far back as 1991, including the falsification of fuel efficiency data, according to a statement Tuesday. The company said last week it hadn't been complying with Japanese testing standards since 2002. "Customers bought our cars based on incorrect fuel-economy data," President Tetsuro Aikawa ...
has moved higher by 3% to Rs 817, recovering 4% from intra-days low on the National Stock Exchange (NSE), after the company said that it has been awarded a contract from Boeing for supply of 777X titanium forging.

The company has entered into a contract with Boeing for developing and manufacturing 777X titanium forging, said in a release.

has started supplying titanium forged flap tracks for the Boeing Next Generation 737 airplane earlier this year. The company will also supply forgings for the 737 MAX, scheduled to enter service in 2017, it added.

The stock hit an intra-day low of Rs 786 on the BSE. A combined 650,000 shares changed hands on the counter on the BSE and NSE.
After the blockbuster debut of peer Equitas Holdings on the bourses last week, expectations are high on Ujjivan Financial Services' initial public offering (IPO) of equity. The issue which opens for subscription on Thursday and aims to garner up to Rs 882 crore, including a fresh issue of shares worth Rs 358 crore. The rest is an offer for sale by some foreign shareholders.

The proceeds from issue of new shares will be used to augment the capital base. Given the strong track record, healthy financials and reasonable valuations, investors with a long-term horizon could subscribe.

Given the similarities and timing, comparing Ujjivan and Equitas would be helpful. Both derive a significant part of their portfolios from the micro finance segment and both have bagged a Small Finance Bank (SFB) licence. Ujjivan is fourth largest among the country's micro finance institutions (MFIs) in terms of assets under management (AUM). Its market share was seven per cent as on March 2015, Equitas being close at five per cent, shows data from CRISIL Research.

The difference between the two, albeit minor, is in the business model and return ratios. On the latter, Ujjivan is ahead. For the nine months ending December 2015, its average return on equity was 19.1 per cent, as against 13 per cent in the case of Equitas. Its business model explains the difference. Ujjivan derives a larger part of its portfolio (88 per cent) from the traditional group-lending MFI business; this is 53 per cent for Equitas (the rest comes from vehicle financing, home loans, etc). Since the MFI business yields higher margins, Ujjivan scores well in return ratios.

Ujjivan also has a more diversified geographical presence; Equitas has strong concentration in Tamil Nadu, from which comes 60 per cent of its AUM. In comparison, Ujjivan has presence in 24 states and Union Territories (through 470 branches). The east, west, north and south each account for 20-34 per cent of its AUM.

Ujjivan has started lending to the (individual micro) small and medium enterprises segment in the past three years. This, with the home loan segment, is 12 per cent of its overall portfolio. The company believes this portfolio will grow faster than the group lending business. While this is a positive, given the higher ticket sizes, this segment also carries higher credit risk and the company has started providing for this. Coupled with early recognition of bad and doubtful loans (from 150 days currently to 90 days), this will push up its credit costs in the coming quarters.

Positively, the company aims to garner about 40 per cent of deposits from existing customers and tap newer ones in the low-middle class salaried and micro entrepreneur segments. Cost of funds will come down, as it can tap inter-bank funding and borrow from Nabard and MUDRA, among others. This, in turn, will support the margins. The actual impact will depend on the company's ability to quickly build a strong retail deposit base, as well as grow its loan book.

The valuations, however, more than capture the downside risk. On a post issue basis, the IPO is priced at 1.8 times the FY16 estimated book value, much lower than Equitas which trades at 2.8 times. SKS Microfinance, though a much larger entity, trades at about 5.5 times the FY16 estimated book.
A prominent national women's group is backing Colleen Deacon in the 24th Congressional District race.

The National Organization for Women endorsed Deacon, D-Syracuse, as she vies for the Democratic nomination against Eric Kingson, a Syracuse University professor and Social Security expert, and Steve Williams, a Baldwinsville attorney.

"Colleen is strong on the issues that are important to women," said Ann Jamison, president of NOW's central New York chapter. "She is an advocate for equal pay and reproductive freedom, and we need to elect more women like her to Congress."

Deacon said she's pleased to have NOW's support.

"Their work advancing women's rights and improving the lives of women is crucial, and I look forward to working with them to continue the fight for women and families not only here in New York but all across the country," she said.

It's the latest endorsement for Deacon, who raised $161,723.44 in the first quarter and is viewed as the front-runner in the Democratic primary.

Other groups have endorsed Deacon, most notably EMILY's List, an organization that supports pro-choice Democratic women candidates, and the Democratic Women of Cayuga County.

The Democratic primary is Tuesday, June 28. The winner of the party's nomination will face U.S. Rep. John Katko, a Republican who is running for his second term in Congress.
Holding the former UPA regime responsible for the flip-flops on the Agusta Westland deal, Union Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday asked former defence minister A.K. Antony to disclose if any Congress leader was involved in this scam or not.

"If A.K. Antony in March 2013 said that corruption took place and money was exchanged in the Rs. 3,600 crore Agusta Westland deal.He is a senior leader of the Congress Party and his honesty is always portrayed as an example then he should clearly say if any Congress leader is involved in this scam or not," Prasad told the media here.

"The larger issue in this case is if the bribe givers have been convicted, would you (Antony) reflect something on the bribe takers. and are they from your own party or not, please come out clean," he added.

Prasad also said that his party would like to ask if the bribe givers have been convicted after trial in the appellant court.

"Why are the bribe takers silent? The BJP would like to ask from A.K. Antony when he publicly said that money was taken and corruption did take place. so now when the conviction has been ordered, he must come out clean and say it publicly whether any Congress leader was involved or not," he added.

The Union Minister further said the government expects the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to prosecute the matter vigorously.

"Now that the order of the appellant court has come so the secrecy clause of the investigation would also not be enforced. It is for the CBI to address those concerns. We would also expect the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to undertake a speedy probe into the money laundering charge," he said.

The ruling BJP has decided to corner the Congress Party over the Agusta Westland VVIP chopper case in the second leg of the Budget Session of Parliament.

AgustaWestland's Rs 3,600 crore contract for supplying 12 VVIP choppers to the Indian Air Force had been scrapped by the Indian Government over charges of paying kickbacks to Indian agents.

In January 2013, India cancelled the deal and the CBI was assigned to investigate whether kickbacks were paid to Indian officials.
New Delhi, Apr. 26 (ANI): Jackie Shroff, who has successfully created his niche in Bollywood, had his share of struggles before he tasted stardom and that's why his newbie actor son Tiger feels it would be a herculean task to pull off his father on the silver screen.

Tiger, who will next be seen in 'Baaghi-A Rebel For Love' opposite Shraddha Kapoor, feels it's a challenge to act like his father.

When asked whether he would like to do a biopic on his father, Tiger initially hesitated but later said that he did not know if he was the apt person to pay tribute to the senior Shroff.

"I have so much respect for my father and the work he has done so far. I would love to pay tribute to him but I don't know if I am the right person to do that. Just because I am his son, it does not mean I can pull off something like that. Being Jackie Shroff is not easy," the 26-year-old actor told ANI in an exclusive interview.

"It is going to be very challenging. I can't even speak like him. So, I would really have to think about it but thank you for bringing that into consideration," he added.

Director Sabbir Khan, however, showed full trust on Tiger's acting skills.

"I think Tiger is a great actor. He is a director man. The director has to guide him and he can do anything," he said.

To stay true to the 'Baaghi' plot, Tiger has also learnt a form of martial art called kalaripayattu for which he took training and worked out for six to seven hours each day.

Shraddha Kapoor will also be seen doing some action-packed sequences in the film that will hit the theatres on April 29.
First Pasteurized Human Milk Bank, 'Amaara' is launched in Delhi-NCR today by Fortis La Femme in collaboration with the Breast Milk Foundation.

This non-profit center recognises that breast milk is the best nutritional food source for infants and should be available to babies deprived of their mother's milk.

This initiative is in line with the World Organizations (WHO) Millennium Development Goals to reduce the Infant Mortality rate.

The WHO and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) recommend that the best feed for a baby who cannot be breastfed, is milk expressed from their own mother or from another healthy mother.

Bhavdeep Singh, CEO, Fortis Healthcare, said, "India faces its own set of unique challenges, one of them being the high vulnerability associated with pre-term babies who are significantly under-weight. Providing human breast milk to these fragile neonates can substantially cut the risk of infection and help save their lives. Keeping in mind the physiological inability of the mother in many cases to breastfeed, human milk banks assume great importance.

"The Amaara Milk Bank at Fortis La Femme is Delhi-NCR's first Milk Bank that will make available- Pasteurized Human Milk to infants hospitalized in our neonatal intensive care units as well as those admitted in other hospitals," he added.

Although, globally, human milk banking is a common practice, in India, the progress has been slow and only 14 such banks exist, as per the Indian Academy of Paediatrics.

Key reasons for this are lack of awareness among the public and promotion of formula milk. At the 'Amaara' Milk Bank at Fortis La Femme, milk once donated will be tested, pasteurized and frozen (for a period of six months) and made available to needy newborns. It is a public milk bank and, therefore, accessible to all mothers who need it.

The Breast Milk Foundation in collaboration with Fortis La Femme's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit also endeavours to spread awareness on the concept of Human Milk Banking through educational programs amongst potential donors as well as receivers.

India has the highest number of low birth weight babies and Neo-natal Mortality Rate (NMR), stands at 28 per 1,000 live births as recorded in 2013. India also has one of the highest infant mortality rates amongst its neighbours (Sri Lanka 12 per 1000, China 31 per 1000, Nepal 31 per 1000) which is 40 per 1000 live births according to the Annual Report, Ministry of and Family Welfare, GOI.

Feeding these babies with donor breast milk through human milk banks can have significant impact on reducing neo-natal mortality, one of the key goals of the National Health Mission, Government of India.
Parent company to India's top auto portals such as CarDekho.com, Gaadi.com and Zigwheels.com, GirnarSoft announced its appointment of new Associate Vice President, Mayank Batheja for car owners' .

Mayank will be responsible for planning and implementing new initiatives for CarDekho.com's Car Owners' vertical.

A commerce graduate from Delhi University, Mayank has held leadership positions in various startups as well as established companies. He co-founded LetsIntern.com, which was acquired by Aspiring Minds, an online skills assessment company.

Speaking on the announcement, Co-founder and CEO GirnarSoft, Amit Jain said, "We are excited to welcome Mayank aboard. We earlier launched services related to auto insurance, roadside assistance, accessory shopping and tyre to provide solutions to ease car ownership. With his appointment, we are adding another valuable and vital resource that will power our drive for greater scale in this division."

"CarDekho.com has established itself as one of the most innovative companies in the Indian startup ecosystem. The car owner's opportunity is both unique and very exciting. I'm keen to add value to the company and its millions of users," said Mayank.

CarDekho.com has scaled the car owners division organically and through acquisition and tie-ups. Recently, it acquired Help on Wheels to provide high quality roadside assistance service and has tied up with CoverFox to provide insurance to car owners.

Mayank is the new member in the league of entrepreneurs hired by GirnarSoft. Earlier, the company hired Founder of Mind Cafe India, Umesh Hora, Abhishek Shah, Co-Founder of Fetise.com amongst others.
If flu vaccinations are administered in the morning, they turn out to be more effective.

The findings from the study conducted by the University of Birmingham suggest that administering vaccinations in the morning, rather than the afternoon, could induce greater and thus more protective antibody responses.

24 general practices in the West Midlands, UK, were analysed between 2011 and 2013 in a cluster-randomised trial during the annual UK influenza vaccination programme.

276 adults aged over 65 were vaccinated against three strains of influenza, either in morning surgeries (9-11am) or afternoon surgeries (3-5pm).

Dr Anna Phillips said that they know that there are fluctuations in immune responses throughout the day and wanted to examine whether this would extend to the antibody response to vaccination. Being able to see that morning vaccinations yield a more efficient response will not only help in strategies for flu vaccination, but might provide clues to improve vaccination strategies more generally.

Co-investigator Janet Lord said that a significant amount of resource is used to try and prevent flu infection each year, particularly in older adults, but less than half make enough antibody to be fully protected.

Lord added that their results suggest that by shifting the time of those vaccinations to the morning one can improve their efficiency with no extra cost to the service.

The study appears in the journal Vaccine.
The Council of Ministers has recommended Nepal President Bidya Devi Bhandari to begin Budget Session of the Parliament from May 3.

The recommendation in this regard was made during a Cabinet meeting held today at Singhadarbar.

The President is recommended to call the Parliament meeting on May 3, reports The Himalayan Times.

Meanwhile, the meeting also promoted Acting Inspector General of Armed Police Force Durja Kumar Rai to the post of the APF IG.

The meeting also scrapped Nepali citizenship to three Indians namely Mahendra Kumar Mishra, Anil Kumar Mishra and Satish Kumar Mishra, who acquired the citizenship from the Rupandehi District Administration Office by furnishing fake personal information.

The Cabinet also fixed workplaces of 12 Joint Secretaries.
Established in 1996, Noble Travels, one of the most innovative and reputed independent corporate travel management companies in India, launched Visaforsure.in, a portal that enables and facilitates visa information and processes for any Indian passport holder.

With personal service at the very core of the business, Visaforsure.in assists travellers for tourist, and transient visas too. With a personalized and friendly approach, each applicant is also assigned a personal visa expert who handles individual visa cases with care and detail. What's more, users can even track their visa status online 24x7, if applied through Visaforsure.in.

Visa information for all embassies in India is available at the click of a button on Visaforsure.in, where travellers can download or e-mail visa forms and checklists to themselves or their family and friends.

Keeping convenience is at the heart of everything in the . Customers are also offered a free call centre for more information (8800-883595), along with a door-to-door pickup and delivery service of passport.

Visaforsure.in works with reputed names in the that includes clients like Cleartrip, Jones Lang LaSalle and Organic India amongst many others.

With industry experts in the field with over two decades of rich experience in the travel industry, your passports are secure and safe with Visaforsure.in.

This means, the next time you're looking for visa assistance for any destination around the globe, be sure to visit Visaforsure.in - a visa service built by experts, for a holiday unique only to you.
Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) Dr. Jitendra Singh today said the nuclear collaboration with Canada has proved mutually beneficial for the two countries and is bound to grow further in the years to come.

Dr. Singh was speaking to Canadian High Commissioner to India, Nadir Patel, who called on him to brief him about the current status of collaboration between India and Canada in nuclear science/power and other areas of bilateral interest.

"There has been a consistent, comfortable and compatible relationship between India and Canada, as a result of which, even today, a large number of youth migrating overseas from India, prefer to choose Canada as their destination," he said.

The Minister of State for DoNER also recalled the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau during the former's visit to Canada last year.

"As a follow up of an agreement finalised during that visit, the Uranium collaboration between the two countries has shown significant rise," he said.

The Canadian High Commissioner to India, Mr Nadir Patel also discussed the possible timing and dates of the visit of Prime Minister Trudeau to New Delhi later this year with the Minister of State for DoNER.

Patel also offered to provide inputs to boost various developmental activities going on in the north-eastern states of India and said he may like to undertake an exploratory visit to north-east in the months to come.
The Shiv Sena on Tuesday said the outcome of the meeting between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan on the sidelines of the 'Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process' conference in New Delhi, would be futile.

"We have become tired speaking on this issue (Indo-Pak talks). What would be the benefit of these talks? The two prime ministers met in Lahore. But then what happened? We had the Pathankot terror attack," Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut told ANI.

"There is no use of these stop-start talks. We know the outcome, it's futile. The people of this country have been bored with such moves by the government," he added.

Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry, who is leading his country's delegation to the Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process, will meet his Indian counterpart Subramaniam J Shankar around 11:00 a.m. today.

The meeting between the Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries to restart the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue (CBD) was derailed after the January 2 Pathankot terror attack.

Since then, no date for talks between the foreign secretaries was decided, but both sides have been in touch.

India is expected raise the issue of investigation of the Pathankot attack, apart from discussing modalities of resuming the CBD.

Foreign ministers of both nations had last met on the sidelines of the SAARC ministerial meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal in November last year.
Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhary arrived in New Delhi on Tuesday for bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar and to attend the senior officials meeting of the 'Heart of Asia'-Istanbul process conference.

Foreign Secretary Chaudhary was received by Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

According to a statement issued by the Pakistan Foreign Office, since its inception in 2011, Pakistan has continued to play an active role in the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process.

The Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process is a platform to discuss regional issues, including security, economic cooperation and connectivity among Afghanistan, its neighbours and regional countries with a view to promote lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Pakistan and Afghanistan jointly hosted the fifth 'Heart of Asia' ministerial meeting in December 2015.

The conference adopted a forward looking Islamabad Declaration entitled "Emphasizing Enhanced Cooperation for Countering Security Threats and Promoting Regional Connectivity".

It is being speculated that Pakistan's agenda for the forthcoming event is promotion of long term peace and stability in Afghanistan.

The Pakistan delegation is also scheduled to hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting.

A meeting between the Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries to restart the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue (CBD) was derailed after the Pathankot terror attack.

Since then no date for talks between the foreign secretaries were decided, but both sides have been in touch regarding the matter.

India is expected raise the issue of investigation the Pathankot attack, apart from discussing modalities of resuming the CBD.

The foreign ministers of both the nation had met during SAARC summit in Nepal in November last year. But then the Pathankot attack acted as a speed-breaker in the talks process.
Emphasizing its commitment for peace in Afghanistan, Pakistan on Tuesday said it wasn't solely responsible for bringing the Afghan-Taliban on the dialogue table.

Asserting that peace in Afghanistan is the best interest of Pakistan, Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria today said the country condemns terrorism in all forms and does not differentiate between terrorist groups, reports Dawn.

The response was apparently made after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's speech yesterday in which he said Afghanistan "no longer expects Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table".

Zakria reminded that Pakistan itself was the biggest victim of terrorism as thousands of its citizens and security forces personnel lost their lives in the war against terror.

He also maintained that a quadrilateral group was formed in an effort to bring peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan should not be held solely responsible for the failure of talks.

The statement comes after Afghan President in a new hard line stance threatened diplomatic reprisals against Pakistan if it did not take action against the Taliban in wake of the recent Kabul attack.
Pakistan and Tajikistan are going to start direct flights next month ahead of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's visit to Dushanbe for inaugurating the Central Asia-South Asia 1,000 power import project.

The flights, beginning from May 6, are aimed at improving and strengthening bilateral trade and economic relations between the two countries, reports Dawn.

Tajikistan allows workforce hiring from Pakistan.

Tajikistan would be the first among Central Asian states to commence direct flights to Pakistan.

About 100 passengers go to Tajikistan via indirect flights and land routes through Afghanistan every month.

The first flight is scheduled to depart from Lahore to Dushanbe. There will be two flights per week on this route.

An official of the Tajik embassy said that Lahore to Dushanbe would be the first phase, adding direct flights would be operated from Karachi to Dushanbe in the second phase.

Tajik Ambassador Jononov Sherali said that direct flights would increase economic ties and people-to-people contact between the two countries.

Comparing the cost of direct and indirect flights, Jononov said that an indirect flight costs Rs. 1,20,000 while the direct flight will cost only Rs. 35,000.

At present, no direct flights are operated between Pakistan and Russia.

Pakistan and Tajikistan are actively working on increasing the ground and air links as they are keen on boosting the bilateral trade and economic relations.

During his visit to Islamabad in November last year, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon had stressed the need for enhancing people-to-people contacts between the two countries.

Prime Minister Sharif and President Rahmon also held one-on-one meeting and discussed ways to further strengthen bilateral relations in diverse fields.

Bilateral trade has steadily risen from $15 million dollars in 2011 to 89 million dollars in 2014.
An Afghan Taliban delegation based in Qatar is in Karachi for direct talks with the Afghan government.

The Dawn reports that the Foreign Office has denied knowledge of the delegation's visit.

Following a deadly insurgent attack targeting a security services office in the heart of Kabul, observers have said that Pakistan is pressuring the Taliban to join peace talks, BBC Urdu reported.

Taliban representatives in Pakistan will join the Afghan government at the table during the negotiating process.

The development comes as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani threatened diplomatic reprisals against Pakistan if it refuses to take action against the Taliban.

Ghani's remarks reflect his frustration after he expended substantial political capital since coming to power in 2014 in courting Pakistan in the hope of pressuring the militants to the negotiating table.

"I want to make it clear that we no longer expect Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table"Ghani said in a sombre address to both houses of the Afghan Parliament.

"But we want Pakistan to fulfil its promises and take military action against their sanctuaries and leadership based on its soil" added Ghani.

"Despite our sincere efforts for regional cooperation, we will be forced to turn to the UN Security Council and start serious diplomatic effort," Ghani said.

The Afghan president vowed a tough military response against the insurgents and pledged to enforce legal punishments, including executions of convicted militants.
United States Secretary of State John Kerry has said that he would visit Nepal by the end of this year.

US Secretary Kerry gave this statement during a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Kamal Thapa at the US State Department on Monday, reports The Himalayan Times.

On the occasion, Thapa briefed Kerry about the current political situation in the country, Constitution promulgation and its amendment in detail as well as reconstruction and rehabilitation works undertaken by the Government of Nepal in the aftermath of the recent earthquake.

Thapa appreciated the US Government for the continual financial and economic cooperation to Nepal and hoped the enhanced level of support and cooperation in the future, a statement issued by the Washington DC-based Embassy of Nepal today.

Thapa underscored the importance of exchange of high-level visits between the two countries in further strengthening bilateral relations.

While welcoming Thapa, Kerry congratulated the Government of Nepal for the tremendous job of the promulgation of the Constitution.

US Secretary of State assured all sorts of moral, political and financial support for the peace, stability and economic development of Nepal and in the maintenance of international peace and security.

During the meeting, Thapa was accompanied by Ambassador of Nepal to the US Dr. Arjun Kumar Karki and other officials from the Ministry and the Embassy.

Thapa was also scheduled to address a talk programme as a key- note speaker on the theme of 'Consolidation of Peace, Stability and Democracy in Nepal and Nepal-US Partnership for Enhanced Prosperity' organised by the US Institute of Peace.
Bharat Forge rose 2.17% to Rs 813.65 at 11:52 IST on BSE after the company said it has entered into a contract with Boeing for developing and manufacturing 777X titanium forgings.

The announcement was made during market hours today, 26 April 2016.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 7.43 points or 0.03% at 25,686.36.

On BSE, so far 78,000 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 75,075 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 816.65 and a low of Rs 785.50 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 1,332 on 20 May 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 720.65 on 12 February 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 25 April 2016, sliding 10.2% compared with Sensex's 1.35% rise. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, declining 2.09% as against Sensex's 4.87% rise.

The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 46.56 crore. Face value per share is Rs 2.

The titanium forgings will be developed and manufactured by Bharat Forge using a closed die forging process, the company said. The first two forgings are scheduled to begin shipping to Boeing in late 2016, and will be followed by two more forgings in early 2017, the company said. Bharat Forge said it has started supplying titanium forged flap tracks for the Boeing Next Generation 737 airplane earlier this year. The company will also supply forgings for the 737 MAX, scheduled to enter service in 2017.

Bharat Forge's net profit fell 15.4% to Rs 166.16 crore on 9.9% decline in net sales to Rs 1029.35 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014.

Bharat Forge is the flagship company of the $3 billion Kalyani Group and a global provider of high performance, innovative, safety & critical components and solutions to various industrial sectors including automotive, oil & gas, power, construction & mining, aerospace and rail & marine.

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Hindalco Industries announced that it has communicated to Aditya Birla Minerals (ABML) its intention to accept the offer by Metal X to acquire shares of ABML subject to receiving the approval of the Reserve Bank of India and no bona fide superior proposal being announced by a third party within 5 business days of Metals X announcing its intention to make the aforesaid offer. Metal X, a listed company in Australia has made an announcement regarding its intention to improve its ongoing takeover offer for acquiring shares of ABML under the relevant laws of Australia. ABML is a subsidiary of Hindalco Industries and listed on Australian Stock Exchange. Metal X has offered 1 fully paid ordinary share in Metals X for every 4.5 ABML shares and A$0.08 in cash for every ABML share held. The offer is conditional upon Hindalco's acceptance and confirmation that it has obtained the requisite approval of Reserve Bank of India in this regard. The announcement was made before market hours today, 26 April 2016.

Sun Pharmaceutical Industries announced that Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MOHFW), Govt. of India, Govt. of Madhya Pradesh and Sun Pharma entered into a public-private-partnership agreement for Malaria Free India and other innovation in preventive health. This was announced by Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Director General - ICMR, Principal Secretary Health Mrs. Gauri Singh Govt of Madhya Pradesh and Dilip Shanghvi, Managing Director, Sun Pharma as a unique effort to draw public - private sector collaboration in promoting preventive health measures. The public private-partnership stakeholders will jointly undertake malaria control & elimination programme by setting-up Management & Technical Committees to provide oversight for disease surveillance & elimination. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 25 April 2016.

Under the aegis of this unique public-private-partnership, ICMR, MOHFW, Govt. of India, Govt of Madhya Pradesh and Sun Pharma will establish a malaria elimination demonstration project titled Malaria Free India, to support the national framework for elimination of malaria in India. The demonstration project will be launched in one of the most malaria endemic districts of Madhya Pradesh and implemented in a phased manner, beginning with Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh. The public-private-partnership stakeholders will execute the malaria elimination programme over a span of 3 to 5 years covering over 1,200 villages in Mandla district

ABB India's net profit rose 30.74% to Rs 70.98 crore on 11% rise in total income to Rs 2015.08 crore in Q1 March 2016 over Q1 March 2015. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 25 April 2016.

Indiabulls Housing Finance's consolidated net profit rose 22.58% to Rs 675.50 crore on 25.01% rise in total income to Rs 2647.18 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 25 April 2016.

Axis Bank and Maruti Suzuki India will announce their Q4 results today, 26 April 2016.

Tata Chemicals said that operations at the company's fertiliser plant at Babrala, Uttar Pradesh have resumed after temporary shutdown for scheduled maintenance. It may be recalled that the company had on 22 March 2016 informed about temporary shutdown of Babrala plant. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 25 April 2016.

Uttam Galva Steels (UGSL) said that India Ratings and Research (IndRa) has downgraded the company's LongTermIssuer Rating to 'IND D' from 'IND BBB+' while resolving the Rating Watch Negative (RWN). The agency has also downgraded the ratings on UGSL's various bank facilities to 'IND D' from 'IND BBB+'/RWN and 'IND A2'/RWN. The downgrade is driven by UGSL's ongoing delays in debt servicing since February 2016. The delays are a result of the liquidity stress currently being faced by the company given the challenging operating environment and its inability to refinance its longterm borrowings according to its earlier proposed refinancing scheme. The agency has taken a consolidated view of UGSL and its subsidiaries. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 25 April 2016.

Astra Microwave Products said that CRISIL has reaffirmed and assigned CRISIL A+/ Stable for the long-Term bank facilities and reaffirmed CRISIL A1 for the Short-Term bank facilities of the company. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 25 April 2016.

Vakrangee announced corporate agency tie up with Reliance General Insurance Company to distribute general insurance products through Vakrangee's distribution network. Citizens, especially in un-served and underserved areas shall be able to access quality general insurance products and services offered/to be offered by Reliance General Insurance Company, Vakrangee said. The announcement was made at fag end of the day's trading session yesterday, 25 April 2016.

Shoppers Stop announced that the company has opened its "Shoppers Stop" store at Logix City Centre Mall, Noida. With this, the company has now 79 "Shoppers Stop", (including five airport stores) stores under its operations. The announcement was made before market hours today, 26 April 2016.

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Maruti Suzuki India jumped 4.17% to Rs 3,889 at 13:30 IST on BSE after the company announced its Q4 results.

Maruti Suzuki India's net profit dropped 11.72% to Rs 1133.60 crore on 10.62% rise in total income to Rs 15426.90 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced during market hours today, 26 April 2016. Maruti's other income dropped 62.11% to Rs 121.20 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 301.94 points or 1.18% at 25,980.87.

More than normal volumes were witnessed on the counter. On BSE, so far 2.18 lakh shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 96,516 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 3,890 and a low of Rs 3,691 so far during the day. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 4,789 on 23 November 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 3,202.10 on 29 February 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 25 April 2016, dropping 0.04% compared with 1.35% rise in the Sensex. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, dropping 8.6% as against Sensex's 4.87% rise.

The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 151.04 crore. Face value per share is Rs 5.

Japanese parent Suzuki Motor Corporation held 56.21% stake in Maruti Suzuki India (as per the shareholding pattern as on 31 March 2016).

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Steps to contain the prices of pulses

The recent rise in prices of pulses is mainly on account of shortfall in domestic production due to adverse weather conditions and increase in demand because of rise in population and per capita income and change in food habits. As speculation, cartelization, black-marketing/hoarding also put pressure on prices, domestic searches and surveys have been conducted on a number of importers, traders and financiers engaged in the pulses trade.

The Government has advised States/UTs to put in place a mechanism for regular collection of data/information on stocks of pulses being held by dealers for effective implementation of Stock limits.

The Government has regularly issued advisories to States/UTs for strict enforcement of the Essential Commodities (EC) Act, 1955 and the Prevention of Black-marketing and Maintenance of Supplies of Essential Commodities (PBMMSEC) Act, 1980. States/UTs have been conducting raids and seized pulses are being disposed, as per the provisions under the EC Act, 1955.

Following steps have been taken by the Government to contain prices of pulses:

Export of all pulses is banned except kabuli channa and up to 10,000 MTs in organic pulses and lentils.

Import of pulses are allowed at zero import duty.

Stock limit on pulses extended till 30.9.2016.

Government imported 5000 MT of Tur from Malawi/Mozambique and allocated it to States for retail sale to consumers to improve availability and to moderate prices.

MSP (including bonus) raised for kharif pulses for Tur and Urad and Moong. MSP also raised for Rabi pulses for Gram and Masoor.

Government has approved creation of buffer stock of 1.5 lakh MT of pulses for effective market intervention.

Government has decided to immediately release 10,000 MT of pulses from the buffer stock (consisting of 8,000 MT of Tur and 2,000 MT of Urad) to States/UTs at subsidized rates for retailing by them at not more than Rs 120/- per kg to improve availability and stabilise prices.

Regulatory measures by Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Chana contracts including increase in the margin requirement to discourage speculation and to moderate the price volatility in forward market and close monitoring by SEBI

Strict vigilance by Directorate of Revenue Intelligence to prevent importers from mis-using the facilities of Customs Bonded Warehouse facility

Setting up of a Group of Officers for regular monitoring and exchange of information on hoarding, cartelization etc.

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Held on 26 April 2016

Magnum Ventures announced that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on 26 April 2016, has:

1. Took note of exit of the Company from CDR Scheme.

2. Approved the cancellation of the non-convertible debenture of Rs. 34.12 crore issued under the CDR package.

3. Discussed and took note of not pledging promoters' share to make 100% pledge as per CDR package.

4. Discussed and took note of the expected contingent liability on account of notional interest.

5. Discussed and took note of the assignment / takeover of Oriental Bank of Commerce outstanding by Alchemist Asset Reconstruction Company (AARC) and its treatment in accounts of the Company.

6. Discussed and took note of the assignment / takeover of Allahabad Bank outstanding by Alchemist Asset Reconstruction Company (AARC) and its treatment in accounts of the Company.

7. Took note of disclosure of interest by directors under Section 184 and 164(2) of the Companies Act, 2013.

8. Took note of affirmation to code of conduct from Directors.

9. Took note of affirmation to code of conduct from Senior Management Personnel.

10. Took note of affirmation to code of conduct for Prohibition of Insider Trading.

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After more than five years of planning and design work, Environmental Engineer Bruce Natale said he thinks Cayuga County is ready to start the construction part of the Owasco Flats restoration project.

Well, almost. There's still some permits to be approved and the Environmental Facilities Corporation, the state agency which awarded the county with over $700,000 for the project, is in the process of reviewing the final designs. But, it's moving along.

The flats make up about 2,800 acres of wetland that sit at the south end of Owasco Lake. Zoom in to about a mile and a half south of Southshore Marina, and that's where the majority of the work will take place.

About five acres, which are currently pasture and look hardly like wetland, will be turned into a kind of filtration system for water flowing into the lake. Currently, muddy, nutrient-rich water from stream bank erosion, urban run-off and agricultural run-off all flow through the flats, into the Owasco Inlet and into Owasco Lake.

"The basic design is we're building basins that whenever the flow of the inland is high and dirty, we'll be able to open them up, and the water will be treated in the basin," Natale said.

The design includes various plants and vegetation along the basins, which suck up the unwanted nutrients, such as phosphorous and nitrogen. Once the water is treated in the basins, it is discharged either through a grass waterway back into the Owasco Inlet, or discharged back into the larger swath of wetlands. Natale said some of it will also infiltrate into the ground.

The design creates about 2 1/2 new acres of wetlands and additional flood plain storage for the area. The basins can be used to help lower the height of the Owasco Inlet should it flood after a storm.

In addition to cleaning up the water going into Owasco Lake, the design includes the creation of five new vernal pools, which provide temporary habitat for local creatures, including salamanders.

Natale said after completing wildlife surveys with the students from the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry, they discovered some rare species calling the flats home including the northern two-lined salamander, the northern slimy salamander and the spotted salamander.

The temporary nature of vernal pools prevents fish from settling down in the area, giving salamander eggs a fighting chance to hatch without getting gobbled up.

"The flats, it's one of the most diverse areas for reptiles and amphibians north of the Catskills," Natale said.

There are nearly 30 species of reptiles and amphibians that have been documented in the area.

Some other sightings, besides salamanders, have included the northern leopard frog, red-bellied snake and northern water snake. Turtles have also been found in the flats, including painted and snapping turtles.

While this whole design process has taken longer than expected, Natale said he hopes construction will begin by the fall and be done in about 15 months, factoring in the weather. He said delineating the wetland is finished, the surveying is finished and so is the engineering.

"I'll be very glad to actually see the basins getting dug," he said. "It's been a slow process, but sometimes it's just the way it goes."
For joint stakeholding in Wood Coat

The Board of Directors of Pidilite Industries has approved execution of definitive agreements with Industria Chimica Adriatica Spa (ICA), a leading wood finish manufacturer based in Italy.

Wood Coat is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company and was incorporated in November 2015. As part of the joint venture, the Company along with its wholly owned subsidiary, Fevicol Company, will hold 50% of the shareholding in Wood Coat and the remaining 50% of the shareholding will be held by ICA and Italcoats, a partnership firm and distributor of ICA wood finished in India. The joint venture company will initially engage in high technology wood finish business in India and other select countries.

The joint venture company will acquire the current wood finish distribution business of Italcoats and will be exclusive distributor of ICA wood finished in India and other select countries (Distribution Agreement).

The joint venture company will also acquire technology and knowhow for manufacture of select wood finish products from ICA and shall be entitled to manufacture ICA wood finishes for marketing, distribution and sales in India and other select countries. The Board has approved an equity investment of up to Rs 63.75 crore on or before 15 May 2016 and a further investment of upto Rs 62.5 crore in accordance with the business requirement of the joint venture company.

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State Bank of Travancore fell 2.48% to Rs 390 at 12:35 IST on BSE after net profit declined 67.6% to Rs 62.14 crore on 3.6% growth in total income to Rs 2801.70 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015.

The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 25 April 2016.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 119.52 points or 0.47% at 25,798.45.

On BSE, so far 1,445 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 1,315 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 395 and a low of Rs 385 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 360 on 1 March 2016. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 487 on 6 May 2015.

The small-cap public sector bank has equity capital of Rs 71.10 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10.

State Bank of Travancore's (SBT) provisions and contingencies jumped 217.3% to Rs 449.69 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015.

The bank's ratio of gross non-performing assets (NPA) to gross advances stood at 4.78% as on 31 March 2016 compared with 3.87% as on 31 December 2015 and 3.37% as on 31 March 2015. The ratio of net NPA to net advances stood at 2.77% as on 31 March 2016 compared with 2.46% as on 31 December 2015 and 2.04% as on 31 March 2015.

State Bank of India (SBI) held 79.09% stake in SBT (as per the shareholding pattern as on 31 March 2016). SBT is an associate bank of SBI.

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The AAP will launch a statewide agitation against the "irrational and steep" hike in fees in private schools, a party spokesman said on Tuesday.

The steep and "unexplained" fee hike in various private schools of Uttar Pradesh was like "open extortion", said Aam Aadmi Party national spokesman Dileep Pandey.

"These are not schools but are expensive shops that are fleecing helpless parents in the name of facilities and education," he said at a press conference.

He criticised the Akhilesh Yadav government over its failure to rein in such elements.

Accusing the state government of patronising such schools, state AAP spokesman Vaibhav Maheshwari said a roadmap for the agitation was being readied.

"Our government in Delhi has shown how such schools can be brought to task and by allocating Rs.10,690 crore for in the budget has shown its commitment to improve the system," he said.

The AAP leaders said that in contrast, Uttar Pradesh allocated only Rs.9,977 crore for in a state of 25 crore people.

--IANS

md/pm/bg
"Bajrangi Bhaijaan" director Kabir Khan flew into Karachi on Tuesday, saying he was happy to be in the port city.

"I've just landed, so I haven't been able to see the city," Dawn quoted him as telling reporters at a private dinner.

"But it's lovely (to be here). I was in Lahore some months back, and that was my first time in Pakistan. Now, it's my first time in Karachi, and I'm really looking forward to it.

"Unfortunately, I'm here only for a day, but I hope to come back again," he added.

Dawn said Kabir Khan's no-fuss entry into Pakistan meant that only the celebrities got the opportunity to take selfies with him.

He is set to speak at the Marketing Association of Pakistan's annual marketing conference.

Dawn quoted him as saying that the conference was just an excuse to visit Pakistan and that he hoped to create some long-lasting relationships.

"I haven't had a concrete conversation about making films together (with Pakistanis), but if we collaborate and do co-productions, it will have a great impact on politics," he said.

"Our people-to-people contact will sideline the politics."

"Bajrangi Bhaijaan" had a Pakistani character, played by Harshali Malhotra. "Phantom" was based on the 2008 Mumbai terror attack which was blamed on Pakistani terrorists.

"The purpose of 'Phantom' was to show that there are some factions in both countries that will always try to prevent people-to-people contact," he said.

"I strongly believe that whenever terrorist attacks occur, the media of both our countries create a ruckus, which colours the perception of the people.

"But when a Chand Nawab and a Bajrangi meet, there will always be friendship," the director said, referring to the characters from "Bajrangi Bhaijaan".

--IANS

mr/nn/
Yoga guru Ramdev on Tuesday said he believes in non-violence and sought to play down his beheading remark, saying it was in response to remarks by AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi.

"I believe in non-violence, coexistence and oneness of society. I take pride in my religion but that does not give me the right to insult other religions," Ramdev said on the sidelines of a press conference here.

Ramdev had stirred a controversy last month with his remarks that if not for the law, "we would have decapitated lakhs" for refusing to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' (Hail Mother India)."

The yoga guru said he had reacted to Owaisi's statement where he had stated that he "would not chant 'Bharat mata ki jai' even if someone put a knife to his throat.

"I responded in a rustic language," Ramdev said, adding "No one needs to be scared of me."

On the issue of bringing back black money to the country, Ramdev said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was looking into the matter.

--IANS

mm-vin/ps/bg
Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday dared the Congress to come clean on the VVIP chopper deal with AgustaWestland deal after an Italian court observed that it was "proven" that illegal money had made their way to Indian officials.

"Now that bribe-givers have been convicted, what should happen to the bribe-takers? Will Mr. (former defence minister A.K.) Antony publicly give a statement on this? Will he accept that his partymen are involved in the scam?" he said.

Senior Congress leader Antony was defence minister when the VVIP helicopter deal with Italy-based firm AgustaWestland was being finalised and sealed in February 2010 during the United Progressive Alliance government.

In a 225-page judgment, a judge at the Milan Court of Appeals found that bribe was paid by the firm to Indian officials to get the $530 million contract for the supply of 12 AW101 choppers.

The Indian government, however, cancelled the deal in 2013 when a controversy over the deal emerged with the arrest of Agusta's parent organisation Finmeccanica CEO Giuseppe Orsi by Italian authorities.
Global aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing on Tuesday awarded a titanium forging contract for its 777X aircraft to Bharat Forge, recognising the technical expertise of the Indian company.

"They (Bharat Forge) have demonstrated not only a high level of technical expertise, but also an understanding of the need to meet market requirements for affordability," said a statement from Boeing, citing its India president Pratyush Kumar.

The Pune-headquartered Bharat Forge has already been supplying titanium forged flap tracks to Boeing Next Generation 737 aircraft.

There is also an arrangement between the two companies to supply forgings for Boeing 737 Max aircraft scheduled to enter service in 2017, the statement said.

Using a closed die forging process, Bharat Forge will develop and manufacture the titanium forgings, first two of which have been scheduled to be shipped to Boeing late in 2016, followed by two more in early 2017, the statement said.

"This second contract is the result of our successful partnership with Boeing and brings to forefront our capabilities in precision manufacturing techniques to offer high end technology and value in the aerospace sector," the statement said, citing Subodh Tandale, executive director, Bharat Forge.

Bharat Forge will be supplying critical wing components for one of the most advanced Boeing aircrafts, added Tandale.

Committing to make India a part of its global aerospace supply chain, Boeing India, along with Bharat Forge, also wants to realise the full potential of 'Make in India' initiative.

Operating in India for the past 75 years, Boeing has forging contracts with suppliers in Asia, Europe, Russia and North America.

--IANS

sth/kb/dg
The BJP on Tuesday asked former defence minister A.K. Antony to clarify if any Congress leader was involved in accepting bribe in the $750 million AgustaWestland VVIP helicopter deal.

BJP leader and union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Antony had confirmed corruption in the deal.

"If he (Antony) said clearly that bribe has been given, he should tell if any Congress leader is involved," Prasad said.

"Bribe-givers have been convicted; why are the bribe-takers silent?" he asked.

He alleged that a Central Bureau of Investigation probe in the case was hindered by the then United Progressive Alliance government.

The CBI probe in the helicopter deal is on.

"The government expects the CBI to pursue the matter vigorously," the minister said, adding that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) too should probe the money laundering charges.

Italian group Finmeccanica's former chief Giuseppe Orsi and AgustaWestland's former head Bruno Spagnolini were sentenced by a Milan appeals court to jail terms for false accounting and corruption in the sale of the firm's 12 VVIP choppers to India.

While Orsi was given four and a half years in jail, Spagnolini was awarded a four-year jail term.

Three of the helicopters were delivered to the Indian Air Force before the contract -- signed in February 2010 -- was cancelled.

The IAF sought the AgustaWestland choppers as a replacement for its Mi-17 cargo helicopters that have been modified for VVIP deployment.

The Comptroller and Auditor General had made adverse comments, saying it was a waste of resources.

--IANS

ao/tsb/vt
Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, chairman and CEO of Emirates Airlines, said he expects a 10 percent passenger increase in 2016.

He made the remarks at a media briefing of the ongoing, four-day tourism fair Arabian Travel Market (ATM) on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We are still growing and we expect a 10 percent passenger increase year-on-year in 2016 which translates into over 55 million passengers," he said, adding that he is confident that the airlines will reach a seat load factor of over 80 percent in 2016, considered high in civil aviation.

Unlike Qatar Airways CEO, Akbar Albaker, who said on Monday at the tourism fair that there was "definitely a negative impact on business travel due to declining oil prices," Sheikh Ahmed said Emirates Airlines will continue to grow as it constantly increases its destinations worldwide and offers a "unique service" inflight.

--IANS

pgh/
A massive fire on Tuesday morning destroyed the National Museum of Natural History located on the sixth floor of the Ficci auditorium in central Delhi.

According the officials, almost everything including the collection and documents on display in the museum, was destroyed.

"Important documents and property has been destroyed. We are yet to audit the damage," an official said.

Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar visited the site and ordered an energy and fire audit of all the establishments under his ministry throughout the country.

"The museum was on the Ficci property, we will assess the damage as soon as we are handed it over and see how we can restore it," Javadekar said here.

The blaze which broke out around 1.48 a.m., was controlled by 6 a.m. Parts of the Ficci auditorium were also destroyed.

"The fire had been completely doused. However, the operation is still on since smoke is still rising from the museum," a fire bridage officer said.

Five fire brigade officers were rushed to hospital as they were injured while trying to contain the blaze.

As many as 35 fire tenders were pressed into services.

The cause of the fire, according to the officials, was yet unclear.

--IANS

rak-kd/py/vm
We are nearly four full months into the legislative session, and nothing has been done to address corruption in Albany. In a few short weeks, former legislative leaders Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos will be sentenced on felony corruption crimes.

The arrests, trials and convictions of two of Albanys most powerful officials have done nothing to inspire change at the Capitol. As a result, its becoming increasingly difficult to believe even prison terms would cause any seismic shift.

PRIORITIES ARE OUT OF FOCUS

The state Assembly has passed 305 bills thus far in 2016. Among them, you will not find anything related to implementing term limits on leadership positions, stripping pensions from convicted public officials, limiting the influence of special interests, or creating an ethics panel independent from political ties and favors.

Not only is it unconscionable that we have accomplished nothing on ethics reform, its equally as troubling that recent events present an image of Albany heading even deeper into the abyss. For example:

This week, voters in the 65th Assembly District allowed Mr. Silver to effectively hand-pick his successor in Tuesdays special election. They chose to send to Albany a candidate fully supported by Silvers surrogates and who referred to the disgraced former Speaker and convicted felon as a hero.

In January, one of the governors closest advisors left state employment to work for a private-sector company with business before the state. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, he maintains an active role in the operations of the governors office and is a fixture with the governor at public appearances. Its hard to imagine optics that exhibit a more obvious conflict of interest.

Despite calls for greater transparency from every corner, state budget negotiations were even more secretive this year. Meetings were moved away from the Capitol, discussions failed to include all legislative leaders, and even the fact that negotiations occurred was kept hidden from media and the public.

NO ETHICS. NO COMMITMENT

The institution of government in New York is badly wounded. Public officials have a core responsibility to facilitate change if the peoples trust is ever going to be restored. With the budget complete, we must devote our collective efforts to delivering meaningful legislative reforms that prohibit the abuses of office weve seen. Im proud that for years, the Assembly Minority Conference has proposed reforms in the Public Officers Accountability Act  a legislative package designed to root out corruption, change the status quo, and end Albany practices that enable the accumulation and abuse of power.

After the convictions of Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos, I said that those who lack the conviction to change the culture in Albany should be held accountable. If there are no comprehensive reforms by June, New York voters should ensure accountability is delivered in November.

What do you think? I want to hear from you. Send me your feedback, suggestions and ideas regarding this or any other issue facing New York State. You can always contact my district office at (315) 781-2030, email me at kolbb@assembly.state.ny.us, find me by searching for Assemblyman Brian Kolb on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter.
Actor Robert Downey Jr, best known as Hollywood's Iron Man, says he can't imagine anyone else playing the role of Captain America other than Chris Evans as he is "just the right guy for the job".

Asked about Evans playing the role of the American superhero, Downey Jr said he "couldn't imagine anyone else in that role from the first outing itself".

"I couldn't imagine anyone else in that role from the first outing itself. Also, I think it is probably the highest degree of difficulty of all the superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to get right.

"I think there is a certain degree of confidence and humility you need to have going in. Chris has gotten more and more detached from his neurosis and judgment as the years have gone by," Downey Jr said in a statement.

In his characteristically witty way, Downey Jr added: "To look good in that helmet! They should have done a random facial pattern search. He's just the right guy for the job."

Both the superheroes - Iron Man and Captain America - will be seen in "Captain America: Civil War", which is scheduled to release in the US and India on May 6. Downey Jr expressed his views in the video of the making of the Disney and Marvel film.

Referring to Evans's directorial venture "Before We Go", Downey Jr said: "It has also afforded him the opportunity to do a lot of other stuff he wants."

--IANS

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Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has asked Pakistan to take military action against the Taliban militant group.

Ghani on Monday threatened diplomatic reprisals against Pakistan if it does not take an action against the Taliban.

"I want to make it clear that we no longer expect Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table," Ghani said.

"But we want Pakistan to fulfil its promises ... and take military action against their sanctuaries and leadership based on its soil. If they can't target them, they should hand them over to our judiciary," he said.

"If we do not see a change, despite our sincere efforts for regional cooperation, we will be forced to turn to the UN Security Council and start serious diplomatic efforts," he added.

Ghani made the statement in a new hard-line stance after a brazen insurgent attack last Tuesday left 64 people dead in Afghanistan, Dawn online reported.

The attack on a security services office in Kabul was the deadliest since the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001.

It cast a pall over international efforts in recent months to jumpstart Pakistan-brokered peace talks, which stalled last summer after the Taliban belatedly confirmed the death of their leader Mullah Omar.

Ghani's remarks reflect his frustration after he expended substantial political capital since coming to power in 2014 in courting Pakistan in the hope of pressuring the militants to the negotiating table.

The Pakistani government recently admitted, after years of official denial, that the Afghan Taliban leadership enjoys safe haven inside the country.

Ghani vowed a tough military response against the insurgents and pledged to enforce legal punishments, including executions of convicted militants.

"The time for amnesty is over," he said. "For the Taliban who are ready to end bloodshed, we have left the door open for talks. But the door will not be open forever."

Ghani stopped short of declaring a state of national emergency, pledging war against radical groups like the militant Islamic State group, usually known in Afghanistan as Daesh, or the Haqqani network while suggesting there was still some hope of compromise with at least some Taliban.

"The enemies of Afghanistan are Daesh, Al-Qaeda, the murderous Haqqani network and some of the Taliban who enjoy shedding the blood of countrymen," he said.

Ghani said Taliban leaders sheltering in Peshawar and Quetta were "slaves and enemies of Afghanistan who shed the blood of their countrymen".

He did not mention whose slaves he thought the Taliban were. "There are no good or bad terrorists ... Pakistan should act on them as a responsible government," Ghani said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid rebuffed Ghani's remarks, reiterating the group would press on with their jihad until the "foreign occupation" of Afghanistan ends.

"The nation is not blind, people understand who the slave is and who works for the interest of others," he said in a tweet.

The Taliban earlier this month announced the start of their annual spring offensive, vowing "large-scale attacks" across Afghanistan.

The announcement came even after a four-country group comprising Afghanistan, the US, China and Pakistan held meetings since January aimed at ending the drawn-out conflict.

--IANS

py/vm
In a head-to-head match-up, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has a 3% advantage nationally over her Republican rival Donald Trump, according to a new poll.

The latest George Washington University Battleground (GW Battleground) poll puts her ahead at 46 to 43, with 11% of the voters undecided.

Interestingly, though, Senator Bernie Sanders, who has mounted a spirited but now seemingly futile challenge against Clinton, fares much better against Trump nationally, with an 11% advantage at 51 to 40, with the rest undecided.

The bipartisan poll, conducted in partnership with The Tarrance Group and Lake Research Partners, found that among "likely voters" an overwhelming 89% have been following the nomination process of the two parties closely - and that they have "negative views of almost all major candidates".

The poll found that of the five candidates still in the race for the highest office, only two - Vermont Senator Sanders and Ohio governor John Kasich - have an unfavourable rating below 50%, at 44 and 29, respectively.

The three others - former Secretary of State Clinton (56%), Texas Senator Ted Cruz (55%) and businessman Trump (65%) - are all mostly disliked, with a majority of voters saying they would not consider voting for them for president.

Interestingly, the poll found that former president Bill Clinton, who has been campaigning for his wife, has a higher favourability rating than four of the five contenders: with 54% favourable and 41% unfavourable.

The current president, too, fared better than the candidates. President Barack Obama's job approval rating was at 51%. This is the first time since December 2012 that the GW Battleground Poll found a higher approval than disapproval rating for President Obama.

"There is bad news aplenty here for both parties. Voters are disheartened, discouraged about the future and disdainful of the leading candidates in both parties," Christopher Arterton, founding dean of the GW Graduate School of Political Management was quoted as saying in a release.

"On many important issues, the public seems to lean toward the Republican party... But since the two candidates with the best chance of receiving the Republican nomination are viewed even more unfavorably at this point than Secretary Clinton, there's a good chance we are headed into an election where voters will see their choice as between the lesser of two unhappy options."

The poll surveyed 1,000 "likely voters" nationwide from April 17 to 20. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
A huge fire broke out at Duvvada Special Economic Zone (SEZ) near this Andhra Pradesh port city on Tuesday night, police said.

The fire erupted in Biomax company around 7.30 p.m and the flames could not be contained till 11 p.m.

According to eye witnesses, six oil tankers exploded due to the fire even as several fire engines rushed to bring the flames under control.

The fire, the cause of which is not yet known, is believed to have caused huge financial loss.

Human Resources Development Minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao rushed to the scene to monitor the situation. He requested HPCL to send more fire tenders.

Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu also spoke to top district civil and police officials and also with naval authorities.

--IANS

ms/vd
After Salman Khan, superstar Shah Rukh Khan has come forward to root for the success of Manoj Bajpayee's "Traffic". He says he has learnt a lot form Manoj and wished him "all the luck" for the film.

In fact, SRK took out time from the shooting of "Raees" and surprised Manoj, who was giving interviews for the forthcoming film, by personally visiting him at Mehboob Studio here and expressing his views about the film.

"I have learnt so much from Manoj Bajpayee. I felt the proudest when his last film ('Aligarh') became a hit. I wish 'Traffic' goes on to become a big hit too. I wish all the luck to Manoj Bajpayee on this one," Shah Rukh said in a statement.

"Traffic" is based on a road trip from Mumbai to Pune. The story revolves around transportation of a harvested heart for a heart transplant case, chasing a strict deadline. During the mission, the characters face numerous difficulties and obstacles, traffic being one of them.

Manoj plays a traffic constable in the film who decides to spearhead a situation where a heart has to be delivered to a patient in another location, amidst the heavy traffic in Mumbai.

Earlier, Salman had also tweeted about the film, saying he is "looking forward to this film".

Directed by late Rajesh Pillai, produced by Deepak Dhar of Endemol India and presented by Foxstar Studios, "Traffic" also stars Jimmy Shergill, Divya Dutta and Sachin Khedekar. It hits theatres on May 6.

--IANS

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Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar on Tuesday discussed Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Karzai the situation in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the April 19 terror attack in Kabul that left 64 people dead.

Jaishankar and Karzai met here to discuss the agenda ahead of co-chairing later in the day the senior officials' meeting of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process conference aimed at bringing peace and stability in Afghanistan.

"They also discussed the situation in Afghanistan in the context of the deadly terrorist attack in Kabul on April 19 and the response of the international community to the continuing violence in Afghanistan," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said.

"Developments regarding the Chahbahar project (in Iran) and Salma Dam were discussed, as also India's various other development assistance and support to Afghanistan," he added.

--IANS

ab/vt
The Lok Sabha secretariat on Tuesday turned down the offer of Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) for its buses to be plied for MPs during the odd-even traffic rationing and said it will run its own vehicles besides regular ferry services for them.

"DTC made available six low-floor AC buses to the Lok Sabha secretariat for extending transport services to members. The DTC buses, however, could not gain entry in the Parliament complex on account of the security gadgets installed at various places in Parliament House estate and could not provide transport facilities to members. The buses were, accordingly released and returned to DTC authorities," said a Lok Sabha secretariat press release.

It said that the additional vehicles had been engaged in the morning of April 26 for ferrying members of parliament from their residences to the parliament".

Moreover, additional vehicles will be plied "to ensure smooth and hassle free" transport facilities to the members.

Additionally, the security ferry vehicles have also been put in service for ferrying members from their residences in the capital to Parliament House.

The much-talked about odd-even traffic system in Delhi figured in the Lok Sabha on Monday during zero hour with Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, expelled from the RJD, stating that the measure has only added to people's problems.

The issue of odd-even had figured at an all-party meeting on Sunday too and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan announcing that she has directed parliament officials to arrange additional vehicles for members.

During last two days, parliament members including Paresh Rawal (Lok Sabha) and Vijay Goel (Rajya Sabha were fined for violating traffic rationing norms being conducted by the city government from April 15 to April 30.

--IANS

nd/vd
Severe drought conditions and the resultant water crisis, especially in Latur region of Maharashtra, figured prominently in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said 'bhayankar' (serious) conditions prevailed in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra, but hastened to add that both the state and the central governments were doing their best to tackle the situation.

Singh said the Maharashtra government had declared drought in eight districts, adding that serious conditions prevailed in 2,306 villages.

The drought in the western state has particularly hit Aurangabad, Latur, Beed, Osmanabad, Parbhani, Hingoli, Nanded and Jalna districts, agriculture ministry officials later told IANS.

Congress member M. Veerappa Moily said ad hocism was no answer to drought and water crisis.

The former union minister suggested that the government could ponder over bringing about changes in the national disaster manual in view of the water crisis in the country.

Biju Janata Dal member Kalikesh Singh Deo said the central assistance in most cases was meagre compared with demands made by various states.

This shortfall was creating hurdles for the Odisha government in giving relief, compensation and other assistance to the affected people, Deo said.

Minister Radha Mohan Singh said drought relief allocations to all states had seen a quantum leap since the Narendra Modi government took over.

"We have made higher allocations to Karnataka, Odisha and other states compared with the central assistance given in 2011-12," he said.

The treasury and opposition members also clashed when the minister said that big dams in Maharashtra were built only to help sugar mills.

"Mein bhi maang karta hoon, is pe charcha honi chahiye (I also demand that there should be a detailed discussion on the issue)," the minister said during Question Hour.

He said: "Big dams in the state only helped sugar factories and there was no concern for farmers."

This provoked opposition members like Nationalist Congress Party's Supriya Sule and several Congress members.

"That means you all do not have the courage to face facts," Singh said.

--IANS

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Odisha Youth Congress president Rajat Choudhury on Tuesday resigned from his post after he was interrogated by the CBI over the chit fund scam in the state.

His resignation came at a time when the party on Tuesday held a massive rally here demanding resignation of food supplies and consumer welfare minister Sanjay Dasburma for his alleged involvement in the scam.

"I received the resignation letter of Rajat, who put in his papers on moral grounds," said Congress leader Lalatendu Bidyadhar Mohapatra.

The CBI questioned Choudhury for the second consecutive day on Tuesday over his alleged involvement with chit fund firm Artha Tatwa Group.

State Congress president Prasad Harichandan said he has not received any letter as the Youth Congress leaders send resignation letters directly to the All India Youth Congress president.

Choudhury put in his papers a day after Harichandan said the party would not spare anyone involved in the chit fund scam.

--IANS

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FLEMING  Each and every day, employees, volunteers and patrons of Unity House celebrate in small ways their work within the community. But once a year they come together in an informal setting to celebrate the people who create the good that comes from being associated with Unity House.

On Monday evening, the organization held its annual board and awards banquet at the Springside Inn.

"Tonight's dinner is not only for the board members to come together but also for all of us to come together in a celebration of how the Unity House not only has a positive impact on the people we serve but also the positive impact we have on the entire community as a whole," said board president, Cindy Wilcox. "It's really all about the Unity House and its people ."

As part of the annual dinner several awards are given to members of the organization as well as to a community member who has impacted the lives of people throughout the county.

The 2016 Atkins Community Service Award, given to such a community member, was presented to Susan Marteney.

"Susan has volunteered for several places throughout the many years of her devotion to helping others," Wilcox said. "She is very deserving of this fine accomplishment."

Another award received by Brenda Barbaglia is selected by board members for service to Unity House itself.

Barbaglia trains Unity House members to work at the Auburn Wal-Mart.

"She plays a very supportive and special role to those we serve here at the Unity House," Wilcox said. "She treats them with dignity and respect. She is kind, supportive and patient while these people learn the job."
Pakistan was making serious efforts for peace in Afghanistan but the country was not solely responsible for bringing the Afghan Taliban on negotiation table for dialogue, foreign office said on Tuesday.

Foreign office spokesman Nafees Zakaria made the statement in an apparent response to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's comment in a speech on Monday that Afghanistan "no longer expects Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table".

Zakaria said Pakistan condemns terrorism in all forms and does not differentiate between terrorist groups.

He also said peace in Afghanistan was in the best interest of Pakistan, Dawn online reported.

Zakaria said Pakistan itself was the biggest victim of terrorism as thousands of its citizens and security forces personnel have been killed in the war against terror.

He said a quadrilateral group was formed to streamline the efforts directed towards bringing peace in Afghanistan so Pakistan cannot solely be held responsible for failure of the talks.

The statement comes after Ghani on Monday threatened diplomatic reprisals against Pakistan if it refused to take action against the Taliban, in a new hard-line stance after the Kabul attack left 64 people dead last Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a BBC Urdu service report citing diplomatic sources said an Afghan Taliban delegation based in Qatar was in Karachi for direct talks with the Afghan government.

Pakistan hosted a meeting between the Afghan government and Taliban representatives in Murree in July 2015 along with the representatives from China and the US.

The second round of the talks scheduled to be held in Pakistan on July 31, 2015, was cancelled in view of the reports about the death of Taliban chief Mullah Omar and the leadership crisis in the outfit.

--IANS

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Beleaguered liquor baron Vijay Mallya on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that he won't come to India to be arrested, leading to the apex court directing that details of his, his estranged wife, and children's overseas assets be given to the consortium of 13 banks, seeking the recovery of the over Rs.9,000 crore loaned to his now-grounded Kingfisher Airlines.

A bench of Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman directed its registry to furnish the contents of the overseas assets furnished to the court in a sealed cover to the banks, after counsel for Mallya said if his client came back, he "will be taken to Tihar Jail" and when his "liberty is at stake", how can he be expected to return.

Mallya's response, made by senior counsel C.A. Vaidyanathan appearing for him, came in response to the court's query about when he intended to return to India.

"He does not have a passport," said Vaidyanathan. "The moment he will come, he will be arrested. Then no purpose would be served."

The court direction came to the registry came as it noted that the beleaguered liquor baron had not complied with its April 7 order.

"The point is that you have not complied with out April 7 order both in letter and spirit," it observed, pointing from that date to Tuesday, there was no plea for the review or the modification of the April 7 order.

Asking Mallya to indicate the amount he is prepared to deposit before the top court to show his bonafide for a meaningful negotiation with the bank consortium, headed by the State Bank of India, the apex court by its April 7 order had asked him to disclose the details of all his properties - movable, immovable, tangible, intangible, shareholdings - held by him, his wife and children.

Asking if the consortium was interested in the recovery of the amount or putting him in jail, Mallya told the court that "he did not have free money" for making an upfront offer of an amount to begin with for a negotiated settlement of the outstanding dues as all his bank accounts are attached.

"Do you expect this court to act as your recovery officer," the bench asked as it was told that most of the money that Mallya could deposit with the bank to prove his bonafides would become available if it passed orders for their release of money locked in different financial dealings.

Telling the court that the banks could not insist on the disclosure of the overseas assets of Mallya as the same were barred under the Income Tax Act, senior counsel Parag Tripathi told the court that none of the money advanced by the banks including IDBI was misused by him.

Tripathi who had appeared for the United Breweries (Holding) Limited and Kingfisher Finvest (India) Ltd., told the court that all the overseas assets of Mallya, his estranged wife and children were from the money they got from the trust set up by his father Vittal Mallya.

Opposing the disclosure of the information given to the court as sought by Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, he said that it would be used by Enforcement Directorate to launch a probe.

Refusing to make any commitment as sought by Tripathi, Rohatgi said that Mallya be asked to furnish all the details of his assets including that of his estranged wife and children in an affidavit so that banks could make an assessment for the settlement of dues.

Noting the statement by Vaidyanathan that Mallya would not come back, Rohatgi said: "We shall see what we have to do."

As Vaidyanathan said that the overseas assets of Mallyas were not covered under the "personal guarantee" given by Vijay Mallya, Rohatgi told the court to record this right to refute their claim.

Asking the banks to act in accordance with law on the information being made available to them by the court, the bench asked the debts recovery tribunal at Bengaluru to dispose of the matter pending before it expeditiously, possibly within two months.

--IANS

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Two specific files, including one from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose are missing, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

He also informed the house that Japan has agreed to declassify two files related to Netaji by end of the year.

"Despite attempts being made, one file is missing from the ministry of home affairs also," Rijiju said during question hour.

The file that's missing from the PMO relates to the "proposal" to bring back the ashes of Netaji from Tokyo and on building a national memorial in his honour at the Red Fort, he said.

Replying to supplementary questions from members, including Bhrutihari Mahtab of Biju Janata Dal, the minister said efforts have been made by the Narendra Modi government to procure records, files and documents from various countries, including Russia and Japan.

"Japan has agreed to declassify two files out of five by the end of this year," he said.

Rijiju said that Japan has not given any assurance about the other three files.

He said the government has decided to declassify 25 files every month.

--IANS

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The dismissal of the Congress government and imposition of President's Rule in Uttarakhand continued to stall the Rajya Sabha for a second day on Tuesday. But the Lok Sabha, where the government has a majority, saw normal business.

The lower house also took up the demand for grants for railways for 2016-17. Members cutting across party lines enthusiastically took part in the proceedings up to 7 p.m. Opposition members also took part in debates and question hour.

But the show was different in the upper house, where the opposition has more members than the treasury benches.

It witnessed repeated disruptions over Uttarakhand. The chair finally adjourned the house for the day around 3 p.m. after repeated requests for peace went unheeded.

Soon after newly nominated members including Mary Kom, Narendra Jadhav, Subramanian Swamy and Swapan Dasgupta were administered oath, the Congress and other opposition members started raising slogans against the Narendra Modi government and sought a debate on Uttarakhand.

The Congress demanded an apology from the central government for what it said was the destabilization of the Harish Rawat government.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the opposition was not interested in what the government had to say on the issue.

Opposition leader Ghulam Nabi Azad charged Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with trying to set a wrong precedent by accusing Uttarakhand assembly Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal of "turning a minority government into a majority government" in the hill state.

Jaitley defended the imposition of President's Rule and said it can be discussed in parliament only when the proclamation is laid in both houses. "But the Congress is not interested (in letting the proclamation to be placed in parliament)."

Congress members massed in front of the chairman's podium more than once shouting slogans like "Modi teri tanashahi nahi chalegi" (Modi, your dictatorship won't be tolerated).

The Rajya Sabha has failed to transact any official business since parliament convened on Monday.

In the Lok Sabha, the demand for grants for railways was passed after Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu's reply.

Earlier, initiating a debate, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge criticized the government for indulging in gimmicks.

Among others, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, Yogi Adityanath (BJP), Tapas Mandal (Trinamool Congress), and Shrirang Appe Barne (Shiv Sena) spoke.

During the question hour, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said that two files related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, including one from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), were missing.

Members posed questions on the severe drought and water crisis in parts of the country, especially in Latur region in Maharashtra.

Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh admitted that "bhayankar" (terrible) conditions prevailed in the Marathwada region. He said big dams there did not help farmers and were built only to help big sugar mills.

This provoked angry reactions from opposition members including Supriya Suley of NCP.

The government also asserted that the deployment of central forces at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) in Srinagar would not alienate the Kashmiri youth.

"Even Jammu and Kashmir Police are outside the campus. So I don't think there will be any alienation," Rijiju added.

--IANS

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Effective management of land erosion and water and promoting organic farming are some of the key features in sustainable development and ecological protection agenda showcased in manifestos by political parties, perhaps for the first time, in the fray for assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and the union territory of Puducherry.

Corresponding with the diversity of the pressing problems seen in these states - from the eastern Himalayas to the Western Ghats down south - the manifestos offer variety in terms of a wishlist for balancing development goals and impacts on the environment.

In Assam, home to the endangered one-horned rhino, the ruling Congress highlighted recovery through scientific research of land eaten away by the mighty Brahmaputra so that these areas could be used for industry and other purposes.

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (in an alliance with the Asom Gana Parishad and the Bodo People's Front) has in its vision document advocated enacting legislation to ensure protection of all water bodies in the state as well as preventing poaching of rhinos using latest technologies of electronic monitoring and preventing water pollution.

In West Bengal, cradling the Indian side of the Sundarbans mangroves under threat from climate change, the ruling Trinamool Congress has dedicated merely one line to environmental issues. It says in its manifesto: "Environmental issues will be tackled". It goes on to say "in-situ water preservation and regulated use of underground water would be looked into."

Pitted against it is the BJP and a tie-up of the Left Front and the Congress.

The Left Front talks about conserving biodiversity and tackling effluents from factories in its manifesto. It also focusses on generating awareness among the public on reducing use of plastic and non-biodegradables that impact environment and human health.

While stressing on encouraging organic farming, the BJP also harps on its pet aspiration to "actively implement the National Solar Mission thereby providing cheap and clean alternate energy to consumers".

In Kerala, plagued with pollution of the Periyar river, that originates in the remote forests of the famed Periyar Tiger Reserve, the ruling Congress-led United Democratic Front's manifesto has sought to bring the spotlight back on the rampant reclamation of water bodies, paddy fields and wetlands and the destruction of mangroves.

It has promised to implement a special package for environment protection of ecologically-sensitive areas, including paddy fields and wetlands. Subsidies for organic farming is also on its agenda.

In Tamil Nadu, the DMK, the leading opposition party, plans to bring to the table a proposal to prevent floods and provide training in organic farming under a scheme to be launched in the name of the late popular green crusader Nammazhvar.

According to Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director (Research and Advocacy) at New Delhi's Centre For Science and Environment (CSE), there is an increasing political articulation of environmental concerns and that, in many ways, is a reflection of what kind of mobilization has happened across the country on certain issues.

"It is also about how sharp public opinion is on these issues to which there has to be a political response. Water management has a very strong popular appeal because states are water stressed today and there is a recognition coming in.

"There is also the other side, of whether there is a move on the part of the political party itself to bring this on the agenda even if public opinion is not sharp enough," Roychowdhury told IANS.

(Sahana Ghosh can be contacted at sahana.g@ians.in)
In the Westminster system of government, the Speaker of the legislature has considerable power and independence. This is a cherished product of a long process to secure the legislature's independence and fairness. However, as recent events in this country show, this important independence depends crucially on the occupants of the office staying carefully within their traditionally highly circumscribed role. The considerable discretion they enjoy comes with the assumption that it will be used sparingly or wisely.
Another horrific mosquito-borne disease, Zika, is now decimating South and Central America. It leads to brain-damaged babies; the World Health Organization claims it is now "spreading explosively", and will proliferate to every continent and become widely and deeply embedded in populations. There is no known cure for it and it could take decades to find one. It now joins malaria, dengue and chikungunya as another scourge spread by mosquitoes. The only solution is to exterminate the mosquitoes that spread these diseases by pesticides.
The current judges-to-population ratio in India is estimated at 17 judges for every million citizens far lower than most developed and even developing countries in the world.
With reference to the report, "MPs find odd-even scheme insulting" (April 26), it was interesting to see near unanimity among parliamentarians - a rare occurrence - on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's vehicle rationing initiative. They alleged that it would generate corruption and was intended to insult them, as they sought exemption from it to attend Parliament.

Moreover, Lok Sabha member Rajesh Ranjan quipped sarcastically that Kejriwal had introduced the scheme to gain "cheap publicity". Naresh Agrawal, a Samajwadi Party member of Parliament, went to the extent of asking why the Centre was silent on the issue. While seeking exemption for MPs, Janata Dal-United (JD-U) Rajya Sabha member K C Tyagi did praise the odd-even scheme.

Amid the criticism to the scheme, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said in a lighter vein in the Rajya Sabha that the Opposition should first allow Parliament to function. This prompted Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman P J Kurien to say, "Even if they have to disrupt, they will have to come here."In all fairness, the MPs could have made use of the special DTC bus arranged by the Delhi government exclusively for their commute. Perhaps, they could have given some tips to the state government to effectively tackle the menace of alarming pollution levels in the national capital.

One wishes that instead of seeking exemption, the representatives of the people had walked in the shoes of ordinary Delhiites, who too have daily jobs. They should have followed the example of the Delhi Cabinet ministers and Assembly members who are following the scheme. But then, some people happen to be more equal than others in India.

Kumar Gupt, Panchkula



Letters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201  E-mail: letters@bsmail.in All letters must have a postal address and telephone number
With reference to the editorial, "Fixing judicial delays" (April 26), tragic is a small word to describe what happened at the joint conference of chief ministers and chief justices of high courts.

If Chief Justice of India T S Thakur became emotional during his speech, he had all the reason to do so. The issue of millions of pending cases putting enormous pressure on the judiciary is an extremely serious one. We cannot criticise judges for inaction or delays in delivering judgements when the judiciary is not sufficiently manned.

If something has not been done since 1987, when the Law Commission recommended having 40,000 judges, it means past governments are to blame. If Thakur has said that judges from abroad have been impressed with Indian judges' performance under so much stress, it is not an exaggeration. Obviously, these judges would be shocked to find that there are only 17 judges per million in India, while in the USA the figure is almost 10 times for every million.

It is not only the judiciary, but also convicts, victims and their families who suffer when justice is delayed. Hopefully, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has understood the gravity of the situation and will take corrective measures soon.

Bal Govind, Noida



Letters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201  E-mail: letters@bsmail.in All letters must have a postal address and telephone number
Alibaba's dealmaking in Hong Kong is in poor health. The city's regulators say that the e-commerce group broke takeover rules when it first invested in a health care firm in 2014. Details are scarce and Alibaba does not have to compensate shareholders. Yet this latest run-in is another reason for investors to be wary of the company's dealmaking.

Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has reprimanded the $198-billion giant over its initial investment in Hong Kong-listed CITIC 21CN, now known as Ali Health, which gave the e-commerce group a 38 per cent stake. Alibaba took control of the unit a year later in a deal worth $2.5 billion. Now, the regulator has ruled that Alibaba's first transaction offered favourable terms to only some shareholders, a "clear breach" of the city's takeover code.

The specific details of the violation are not yet clear. And despite the breach the SFC concluded that Alibaba was still exempt from having to launch a general offer to all investors, mainly because Ali Health's shares have performed strongly since the takeover. Alibaba is also considering an appeal. Nevertheless shares in the $5.9-billion health business fell six per cent on the news.

Of course, this isn't the first time the New York-listed Alibaba has clashed with Hong Kong's powerful regulators. A dispute over the company's governance structure - a partnership that effectively grants control to a handful of executives and co-founders - prompted Alibaba to shift its planned initial public offering from Hong Kong to New York in 2014.

Local investors still recall chairman Jack Ma's 2010 decision to shift Alibaba's payments unit - a business now valued at around $60 billion - into a vehicle he controls. More recently, Alibaba has continued to invest in Hong Kong, snapping up a newspaper, an lottery firm and a movie production company in the former British colony.

The Ali Health ruling gives outsiders another reason to be cautious when dealing with Alibaba.
The usually reticent Jual Oram, Union minister for tribal affairs, revealed his funny side while addressing a gathering after the Centre, the Madhya Pradesh government and Sun Pharma signed an agreement for malaria eradication. Oram said that due to the heavy use of chemicals and fertilisers, all the mosquitoes had flown away from rural to urban areas.

"Whenever the malaria inspector and other officials came to spread DDT in our village, we would chop up the murgas (chicken) and cook them for these people," he said. "After all, they are working for us. They are like doctors to us." He suggested the public-private partnership stakeholders use the weekly market in tribal areas to spread their message.

"You people have stopped the weekly market bhattis (place where tribals prepare and drink indigenous alcoholic beverages), but more and more clubs are opening up in the cities," he joked.
Dividend yield funds, a class of defensive equity funds (they are also regarded as a subset of value funds), have done well during the recent market downturn. All the funds in this category, barring one, have declined less than their benchmarks in the past year. They have also excelled over longer time horizons: all the funds in this category have outperformed their benchmarks over the three-and five-year horizons. Since these funds have provided sound downside protection and also outperformed across market cycles, they should find a place in the conservative equity investors portfolio.

Dividend yield funds tend to be resilient during a downturn. In a weak market, when stock prices are falling, a company that has a consistent track record of dividend payouts usually maintains its level of payout. Stocks of such companies do not fall as much as the rest of the market because the dividend they pay sets a floor to their prices, says Rupesh Patel, fund manager, Tata Dividend Yield Fund.

The longer-term outperformance of these funds can be explained by the fact that the stocks they invest in have strong business fundamentals. These companies generate so much cash flow that they are not only able to meet their reinvestment needs but also distribute surpluses to their shareholders. Says Shreyas Devalkar, fund manager, BNP Paribas Dividend Yield Fund: These are stocks with high return on equity (RoE). Such stocks tend to outperform over the long term. Patel adds that if a fund is able to protect the downside in a volatile market, its chances of doing well over the long term improve.

ALSO READ: Are Prashant Jain's funds out of the woods?



Investors should, however, be warned that these funds could underperform in certain market conditions. When markets are witnessing a bull run and most investors are betting on growth stocks, dividend yield funds will underperform because they do not have those stocks in their portfolios. In such conditions, investors will have to display patience and confidence in this investment style.

When selecting a dividend yield fund, look at past performance, giving greater weight to longer-term returns. In addition, look up a few other criteria. One, check how the fund defines high dividend yield. In Tata Dividend Yield Fund, we define a stock as having high yield if it is higher than the last reported dividend yield of the Sensex, says Patel. If a fund sets the minimum dividend yield criterion too low, it will give the fund manager the leeway to invest in virtually any stock. Such a fund will not remain true to its mandate.

ALSO READ: Limit your exposure to global gold funds



Another aspect that you should examine is the funds mid- and small-cap exposure. Investors who put their money in such a fund want low volatility. "If dividend yield funds diversify across different market segments, they will be as volatile as the other diversified equity funds," says Renu Pothen, research head, Fundsupermart.com. Make sure that the fund you invest in has at least a 70-75 per cent exposure to large-cap stocks.

While investors with a high risk appetite may avoid these funds or have a 10 per cent allocation to them, conservative investors may allocate 20-25 per cent of their equity portfolio.
A day after Reserve Bank Of India governor Raghuram Rajan urged property developers to cut home prices, developers have rejected the call, saying it is unviable for them to reduce prices.

Getamber Anand, managing director at Delhi based ATS Infrastructure and president of realtor body CREDAI, said 90 per cent of the home supply in the country has already shown price correction.

If prices fall further, it will lead to NPAs and non delivery of projects, Anand said.

Read more from our special coverage on "REAL ESTATE"

Rajiv Talwar, chief executive at DLF, said home prices have already come down by 35 to 40 per cent.

Public figures are only talking about prices in prime locations. Those prices are high because they are prized locations. All over, prices are between Rs 3000 to Rs 5000 a square feet and between Rs 5000 to Rs 8000 a square feet in good locations. Its bare minimum given cost of land and cost of construction., Talwar said.

He said all parties including developers, Reserve Bank of India and commercial banks have a role to play in boosting housing demand.

Everybody is doing a blame game. But I feel developers need to offer low prices. RBI should keep rates low and banks should offer lower rates for two years to encourage people to buy homes, said Talwar.

 has seen a eight year slump and everyone has to make efforts to lift the situation, he said.

Added Amit Bhagat, CEO at ASK Property Investment Advsiors: Developers are in a dilemma. If they reduce prices in an already launched project, they have to face cancellations from those who booked earlier. That is why they are not cutting rack rates but negotiate and reduce rates on individual basis,

Bhagat said developers have aleady started cutting prices through schemes and offers.




The Ethics Committee of the Rajya Sabha has decided to expel industrialist from the House. While it is rare, it will not be the first time a House of Parliament will move to expel a member.

Most famously, Subramanian Swamy, who took oath on Tuesday as a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, was expelled during the Emergency from the same House. Swamy, then a Jan Sangh leader, was expelled from the Rajya Sabha in 1976. During the subsequent Janata Party government, Indira Gandhi herself was expelled, but the Lok Sabha rescinded its decision later.

In India, legislatures power to punish a member by suspending or expelling him or her from the legislative is derived from Article 194 (3) in the case of State legislatures and Article 105 (3) in case of Parliament.

In 2006, 11 members of Parliament (MPs) (10 of the Lok Sabha and one of Rajya Sabha), who were expelled after the cash-for-query sting operation by a private television channel, moved Supreme Court (SC) to challenge their expulsion. They were expelled for accepting money as consideration for raising questions in Parliament.

MPs cannot be punished for such misdemeanours in a court of law, as whatever members do within the House is beyond the jurisdiction of the courts. The two Houses constituted special committees for the purpose, sent them notices, asking them for their defence and eventually found them guilty. The respective Houses then expelled the MPs by a simple majority. These MPs appealed in the SC. They argued that Article 105 (3) does not specifically spell out Parliaments powers to expel a member. The SC examined the powers of the House of Commons and held that Indian legislatures had the power to expel members found unfit.

Article 102 of the Constitution, however, does specify the grounds for disqualification of an MP. These are: if the member of unsound mind, holds an office of profit other than an office declared by Parliament by law not to disqualify its holder, if s/he is an un-discharged insolvent, not a citizen of India, etc.

LEGACY LIST

Sep 25, 1951:

Nov 15, 1976:

Nov 18, 1977:

Dec 2005:

expelled from Lok Sabha (LS) for accepting money for favours in (provisional) Parliamentexpelled from Rajya Sabha (RS) after a House panel found his conduct derogatory to the dignity of the Houseexpelled from LS for obstruction, intimidation, harassment and instituting false cases by her against certain officials, who were collecting information to answer a certain question in the House . On December 19, 1978 the House rescinded the motion of expulsion by a resolutionCash-for- votes -, including, expelled
With the Congress-led opposition attempting to put the government on the mat in Parliament over the Uttarakhand issue, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lined up its counter-offensive, targeting the Congress over the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper scam and the Ishrat Jahan issue.By afternoon, the Congress hit back, questioning the government on why it had removed AgustaWestland from the list of blacklisted entities. Proceedings in the Rajya Sabha again fell victim to the Congress obstructionist tactic, with no business being transacted. The only exception the Congress made was to allow and support the Left parties in raising the issue of action against Jawaharlal Nehru University students.At the first BJP parliamentary party meeting of this session, the line was clear, the Congress was to be cornered on Ishrat Jahan and the Westland issue. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu instructed party members on Uttarakhand, the VIP chopper scam and how the previous Congress-led government stood with terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyeba to prove Ishrat, who was a terrorist, as a nationalist. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also attended.Jaitley reportedly said the entire world knew Ishrat was a terrorist and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative but the Congress and then Home MinisterP Chidambaram tried to whitewash the case. The home minister appeared to be working with LeT, Jaitley said. The minister added it was part of a conspiracy to politically finish Modi, the then Gujarat chief minister, and Amit Shah, now BJP president and then a minister in the state government. The nation would not have seen something as abhorrent and shameful as this, he said, adding that there would be a discussion in Parliament.The Westland issue was also taken up and the new revelations, he said, had exposed the Congress and proved it was all about scams. Senior minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, while addressing the media, demanded to know from A K Antony, the defence minister during Congress rule, to name the politicians allegedly involved. Bribe givers have been convicted. Why are bribe takers silent? Antony should answer if leaders of the Congress are involved in it or not.The Congress reacted with counter-questions.

Deputy Leader of the Rajya Sabha and Congress leader Anand Sharma asked, Why was AugustaWestland removed from the blacklisted list of firms and instead invited to participate in bids for naval contracts? Why wasnt the probe initiated under (our) government brought to its logical conclusion? The breach between the ruling and opposition benches, especially in the Rajya Sabha, has become so wide that the two sides are constantly trying to garner ammunition to target each other both in and outside the house. Legislative business is stuck. The BJP issued a whip, asking all its members to be present in both houses. The party is in a minority in the Rajya Sabha and worries that it might lose the vote on ratification of the presidential proclamation of central rule in Uttarakhand. The Lok Sabha took up a discussion on Demands for Grants (Railways) for 2016-17. During Question Hour in the House, a question on drought led to Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh attacking Congress-led governments in Maharashtra. He alleged these governments got dams constructed to serve the sugar industry, not farmers. A question from Congress member Jyotiraditya Scindia on deployment of central forces in Srinagars National Institute of Technology also led to a heated exchange. In the Rajya Sabha when Law minister Sadanand Gowda tried to move the Appropriation Acts (Repeal) Bill, 2015 and The Repealing and Amending (Third) Bill, 2015, amid the din, opposition members protested. With the din shoing no signs of abating, the house was adjourned for the day. The Rajya Sabha is to take up a discussion on Wednesday on drought in the country.
Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan today held bilateral talks focusing on a range of sticky issues including Pathankot terror attack probe, the first such formal meeting between the two top diplomats after talks were deferred in January following the strike by Pakistani terrorists. .

The Foreign Secretaries of the two nations also discussed Kashmir, as Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry said that Kashmir remains the "core issue" with India.

A statement from the Pakistan High Commission said "all outstanding issues, including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, were discussed".

"The Foreign Secretary (Chaudhry) emphasised (in his meeting with Jaishankar) that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution, in accordance with UN resolution and wishes of the Kashmiri people," the statement said.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry are also believed to have deliberated on ways to take forward the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue (CBD) which has been stagnant.

India has been pressing for action against terrorists responsible for the audacious attack on the premier IAF base, to move ahead in the talks.

"Another important bilateral for Foreign Secretary as he meets with his Pakistan counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry," tweeted External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup.

The Pakistan Foreign Secretary is here on a day-long visit to attend the 'Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process'.

Jaishankar is understood to have raised the issue of investigation into the Pathankot terror strike.

This is also the first formal meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry after the announcement of CBD by the Foreign Ministers in Islamabad last December. The two secretaries had a informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March this year.

The efforts to resume CBD at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase in January that India said was carried out by militants from Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group.

Jaishankar was scheduled to travel to Islamabad to hold talks with Chaudhary on January 15 but both the countries had announced deferment of the talks with "mutual consent" in the wake of the Pathankot attack.

Todays's meeting comes in the backdrop of Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit's recent comments that the bilateral peace process was suspended, evoking a sharp reaction by Indian side.

India has been maintaining that communication channels were on at various levels but also made it clear it wants to see action on terror and Pathankot first before the dialogue could be resumed.

Earlier, Jaishankar met Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Karzai and discussed issues of mutual interests.
A Nigerian national has been sentenced to 12 years rigorous imprisonment by a Delhi court for possessing 120 gramsofcocaine and living in India without a valid visa or permit.

Special NDPS Judge Shail Jain handed down the jail term to 35-year-old OkoyeJhonboscoUchenna, a native of Nigeria, and also imposed a fine of Rs 1.15 lakh on him while holding him guilty of offences under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and Foreigners Act. "Theconvicthasbeenconvictedfortheoffencepunishable under NDPSAct,1985ashe wasfoundinconscious possession of 120 grams of cocaine, coupledwiththefactthat he was stayinginIndia withouthavingvalidvisa/permit,hencehe is sentencedto rigorous imprisonment of 12years..." the judge said.

According to prosecution, crime branch of Delhi Police acted on a tip-off and conducted a raid which led to the arrest of Uchenna, whowasfoundpossessing 120 gramscocaine onDecember 5, 2012 near DelhiUniversity north campus here.

He was also found living in India without a valid visa/ permit and was arrested for the offences punishable under provisions of the NDPS Act and Foreigners Act. His visa had expired in June 2012.

Seeking leniency from the court, the convict's counsel contended that the Nigerian was the sole bread earner of his family and has already remained in custody since his arrest in December 2012.
16 children, allegedly working as "bonded labourers" in bangle making units in Rein Bazar here, were today rescued and three persons, who employed them were nabbed, police said.

Sleuths of Commissioner's Task Force (South Zone) Team nabbed three accused - Mohd Akram, Mohd Saddam (both child labour contractors) and Mohd Azghar (a bangle maker) - after rescuing 16 children who were working as bonded labours, Commissioner's Task Force Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police N Koti Reddy said.

"All the rescued children, are in the age group of nine years and 16 years and they belong to Bihar," he said.

Akram is a native of Gaya district of Bihar, Saddam is hails from Jaunpur district in Uttar Pradesh while Azghar also belongs to Gaya and all of them were staying in Yakatpura area here.

The accused were bringing children from Patna and others parts of Bihar and made them to do hazardous works, Reddy added.

The trio was handed over to the to SHO Rein Bazar Police Station for further investigation.
In a rare find, three sets of well- preserved coffins made of cypress wood, believed to be buried 3,000 years ago, have been discovered in China's central Henan Province, state media reported today.

They were unearthed yesterday and taken to a museum in Anyang city, according to local archaeological officials.

Last month, a villager in Anshang's Neihuang County discovered ancient tombs while digging in a brick kiln. He uncovered bronze items as well as human and animal bones 10 meters deep underground.

Following a preliminary excavation, experts from the Anyang institute of cultural relics and archeology found 22 tombs from the late Shang Dynasty (1600 BC-1046 BC), the second in China's history.

They retrieved three sets of inner and outer coffins made of cypress wood from the tombs, as well as a single coffin.

In ancient times, Chinese people used an outer coffin to protect the inner coffin.

Kong Deming, head of the institute, told the state-run Xinhua agency that it is rare to see such well-preserved coffins from the Shang Dynasty.

"It is a family burial place. The owners were affluent people, possibly aristocrats," he said.

He noted that the discovery might help archaeologists learn more about Shang Dynasty burial customs and understand cultural development.

The excavation could also be helpful in geological studies since the coffins were buried so deep, Kong said.

The Shang Dynasty capital was once in Shangqiu, Henan and later moved to Anyang, where ruins of the old city were discovered in the early 1900s in one of China's oldest and largest archaeological sites.
Hersheys invests in meat bars as Americans eat less chocolate, says Quartz

Could dried meat bars be just as popular as chocolate bars?

The Hershey Company is hoping this will be the case revealing this month that it will be launching a new line of jerky bars under its recently acquired Krave Jerky brand, according to a recent report by the US-based Quartz newsletter.

According to Quartz, the bars will come in a variety of unique flavours and they are being launched at a time when Americans are eating less chocolate.

Using Euromonitor International data, Americans in 2005 were consuming over 12kgs of chocolate but were eating just under 12kgs in 2014.

Hersheys turns to health

Hersheys first decided to expand its products beyond sweet treats in January 2015 when it acquired the Krave Jerky brand.

Krave Jerky was established in 2009 and has since targeted Americans looking for healthy, high-protein snacks. Prior to the Hersheys acquisition, popular American celebrity fitness instructor, Jillian Michaels, invested in Krave Jerky and promotes its product as a healthy food option.

Krave Jerky is a great fit to our portfolio and overall snacks and adjacencies strategy, Michele G. Buck, North American President at the Hersey Company said at the time of the acquisition.

The power of protein

The Hersheys Company believes in the rising popularity of meat snacks. According to its research the overall meat snacks category is growing at a double digit pace with a compounded annual growth rate of approximately 10 per cent from 2010  2014.

The better-for-you, premium subset of the category, where Krave participates, increased at a rate of almost four times greater than mainstream brands, The Hersheys Company said when it acquired Krave Jerky.

Australian Food News has already previously reported on the growing US meat snack market. In March 2016, the Americas Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies identified meat and snack products as the two biggest areas of growth for the US food industry.

In July 2015, Innova Market Insights revealed that the meat snacks industry globally was benefitting from an increasing consumer interest in high-protein snacks.
With over 3.8 lakh children falling prey to pneumonia annually in the country, India tops a list of 15 countries in terms of total under-five deaths due to the disease, the government said today.

"As per the pneumonia and diarrhoea progress report 2014 of the International Vaccine Access Centre (IVAC), India tops the list of 15 countries in terms of total burden of under- five deaths due to pneumonia," Health Minister J P Nadda told the Rajya Sabha.

In a written reply, Nadda said that as per the report of child health epidemiological reference group 2012, it is estimated that 23 per cent of all under-five child deaths are caused by pneumonia which accounts for over 3.8 lakh deaths in the country annually.

Nadda said the government has taken a decision to provide free vaccination of pneumococcal conjugate (PCV) to children.

Besides India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Angola, China, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Kenya, Sudan, Bangladesh, Niger, Chad, and Uganda comprised the 15-nation list in the IVAC report.

"The National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) has recommended introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in Universal Immunisation Programme in three doses at six weeks, 14 weeks and booster at nine months.

"The 'mission steering group' of national health mission has approved phased introduction of PCV. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) has agreed to support PCV introduction by providing PCV for 20 per cent cohort for three years," Nadda said.
Four police officials were injured in attack by a group of locals when they raided a locality in northeast Delhi's Shahdara area to nab a gang of robbers, police said today.

The incident took place on Sunday when a textile merchant in Shahdara approached police complaining that he had been robbed of Rs 4 lakh by a gang of four, including a woman. The gang was traced to a building in Shahdara.

A police team was sent to nab them, an official said.

When the police team reached there, a large group of locals surrounded them and allegedly started pelting stones.

The officers then had to call for reinforcement and the entire area was cordoned off, the official said.

During the confrontation, four constables sustained injuries and a police vehicle was partially damaged.

The police team later had to resort to tear gas shelling to bring the situation under control.

The officials managed to arrest three of the robbers, of which one turned out to be a history-sheeter, but the woman, suspected to be their leader, managed to escape.

A case of rioting and assaulting public servant has been registered in connection with the attack on the police team.

Around a dozen locals who attacked the policemen have been identified and efforts are on to nab them, the official added.
Rapper 50 Cent says his son Davian is "smarter" than him, and the star took to social media to showcase his multiple talents.

The 40-year-old rapper is surprised by Davian's multiple talents, which led him share a string of photographs of his third child on his social media, including a positive performance note he received from his teacher, reported Femalefirst.

The "In Da Club" hitmaker took to Instagram with a picture of an email he received, which read: "I am emailing you to give you an update in reference to Davian's behaviour as well as his test scores. We are overly satisfied with Davian's behavioural development as well as classroom improvement.

"As we've discussed previously, Davian is one of if not our top student for the entire fifth grade. He excels academically and performs well above what is expected for his grade level. Upon review, Davian obtained a perfect score on the citywide ELA English exam. We have not received the math scores back as of yet.

"He is the only child to receive a perfect score on that particular exam. He has been more focused in the daily classroom processes as well as maintained level green on the classroom behaviour chart.

"Upon speaking with the school guidance counsellor Ms. Harvel we would like to recommend Davian to the Hunter College Summer Intensive Program. It's a program offered to some of the city's highest scoring students grades 5-10. We think Davian would be a perfect candidate for this.
Seven Indians, allegedly working in hostile conditions in a Sri Lanka factory, were rescued and reached home today at Sujru village here, police said.

According to SSP KB Singh, a complaint was lodged by Tohid Ahmed, a family member of one of the bonded labourers, against Asif and Mehbood, the two contractors accused of cheating the workers by sending them to Sri Lanka with fake promises of better pay, accommodation and food.

A case was registered at kotwali police station here against the accused duo under section 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 406 (Punishment for criminal breach of trust), 323 (Punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (Intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, on April 22.

The rescued people were working as bonded labourers in Indo Coal Steel Factory in Colombo since February 9 in extreme hostile conditions with poor food and little money, police said.

The seven workers were freed yesterday with the efforts of the External Affairs Ministry, said Akhil Rana, a social worker and president of Rashtriya Sangharsh Morcha who pursued the case before the Indian government.

The accused contractors are absconding, police said, adding efforts are on to nab them.
Himachal Pradesh government has approved 79 proposalsenvisaging investment of Rs 3,300.16 crore out of total 117 proposals received in recent investor meets, state Industries Minister Mukesh Agnihotri said today.

The minister said as many as 117 Industrial proposals with estimated investment of Rs 6,031.37 crore were received as a result of "investors meets" organised by the government at Mumbai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and New Delhi last year.

"79 proposalswith investment of Rs 3300.16 crore and employment potential for 9093 persons had been cleared by State Level Single Window Clearance and monitoring Authority (SLSWC and MA)," he said.

While presiding over the review of Industries department, Agnihotri asked the officers to ensure maximum liaison with potential entrepreneurs to attract investment to the state and proactively follow the axiom 'industries by invitation' of the state.

Industrial areas with modern facilities are being developed to provide "world class" infrastructural facilities to entrepreneurs and Work has been started on Industrial areas at Pandoga in Una and Kandrori in Kangra district to be developed at a cost of Rs 140 crore and Rs 122 crore respectively.

Further, land had also been identified for setting up new Industrial areas at Dhabota and Nalagarh in Solan district, he added.

He also directed the officers of the Mining department to ensure that full transparency and fairness was adopted while going for auction of mining sites.
Continuing the trend of over 80 per cent voter turnout, the fourth phase of West Bengal assembly election in 49 seats recorded 81.25 per cent turnout, the Election Commission said today.

In North 24 Parganas district 82.03 per cent voters exercised their franchise, while the figure in Howrah was 79.67 per cent.

The overall average in the two districts adjoining Kolkata was 81.25 per cent, the EC said, as it released the final voter turnout figures after polling ended at 6 PM last evening.

Among all the 49 seats that went to poll yesterday, the lowest percentage was in Howrah north seat (67.83 per cent) and Bidhannagar (67.92 per cent).

Basirhat North recorded the highest with 89.51 per cent, the EC said.

The third phase had recorded 82.28 per cent voter turnout, while in the second phase it was 83.05 per cent.

In the first two parts of phase I of polling held on April 4 and April 11, the final turnout was 84.22 per cent and 83.73 per cent, respectively, it said.
Opposition leader in the Kerala Assembly, V S Achutanandan today said he stood by the corruption allegations levelled against Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and other cabinet members.

Addressing an election rally at Thrissur, an unfazed Achutanandan listed out the various scams including solar, bar bribery and Palmolive case during the UDF rule.

"I will continue my fight against corruption till the corrupt are ousted," he said.

Meanwhile, Chandy, who was in Kasaragod today, said he had already approached the Election Commission and would soon launch legal proceedings against the CPI(M) veteran, who had levelled "blatantly false charges" against him and some of his ministers.

The Chief Minister had said yesterday that if Achutanandan does not retract his charges within two days, he would launch legal proceedings.
A fierce duel between two debutants is on the cards in Kollam constituency as popular Malayalam film actor Mukesh of CPI(M)-led LDF is taking on Congress- headed UDF's Sooraj Ravi for the May 16 Assembly polls.

54-year-old Mukesh fielded by CPI(M) will be looking to retain the seat won by Left veteran P K Gurudasan with a margin of over 8,000 votes in the 2011 polls.

Gurudasan has opted out this time due to old-age.

UDF has fielded 40-year-old KPCC executive member and DCC vice president Sooraj Ravi, son of late Congress leader Thoppil Ravi, to wrest the seat.

Kollam segment comprises the city corporation and two panchayats - Thrikaruva and Panayam, both held by LDF after the recent civic polls.

Of the 23 wards in city corporation, 13 are held by LDF, seven by UDF and two by BJP. One seat is held by Social Democratic Party of India, a Muslim community backed outfit.

Though Kollam is considered to be a Left bastion, a worrying factor for CPI(M) is the fact that the Revolutionary Socialist Party, which has a strong base in Kollam, is with the UDF camp after it quit the LDF following differences over seat sharing in the Lok Sabha polls.

CPI(M) politburo member M A Baby was defeated by RSP's N K Premachandran in the Lok Sabha polls.

Mukesh, hailing from a communist family, began his acting career in 1982 and has acted in more than 250 films.

The actor is not leaving anything to chance and he is busy meeting voters directly.

Ganesh, a local tea-shop vendor, said the constituency is a highly politically conscious one. "It is not going to be easy for the actor," he said.

Though the main battle is considered to be between UDF and LDF, NDA has fielded Prof K Sasikumar, a nominee of Janadhipathya Samrakashana Samithi of Rajan Babu faction, a minor partner in the NDA.

Sooraj expressed confidence that he would be able to wrest the seat held by LDF for the past one decade.

"Congress workers are with me and I am confident that I will be able to seize it from CPI(M)," he said.

On the candidature of Mukesh, the Congress leader said he was not worried about the actor's glamour.

With the campaign hotting up, it seems that it would not be a cakewalk for any of the candidates in Kollam.
Jharkhand Additional Director (Food) Sanjay Kumar will probe the ration distribution system in Sahibganj and Pakur districts to look into the allegations of smuggling of grains to Bangladesh through West Bengal.

Kumar was entrusted with the responsibility of investigation by Food, Public Distribution and Consumer Affairs Minister Saryu Roy today, an official release said.

The probe was ordered a day after two officials of the Jharkhand State Food Corporation (JSFC) were suspended for their alleged nexus with a racket involved in smuggling of grains to Bangladesh from Sahibganj.

During a review meeting of his department, Roy also instructed the officials to make calls to random beneficiaries in Sahibganj to ascertain whether they received their quota of ration as the department has their mobile numbers, the release said here.

He also asked for a detailed list of lapse of grains between October, 2015 and March, 2016 to verify whether black market was the reason behind the lapse during that period.

JSFC's Sahibganj district Manager Bhudev Mandal and Lifting Incharge Gurupad Sutradhar had been suspended yesterday after four trucks carrying grains were intercepted in Sahibganj last week. Two trucks, however, managed to escape.
Senior police officer Prabodh Kumar, who recently re-joined the state police after a 14-year stint with CBI, was today entrusted with the responsibilty of supervising investigation into six major cases, including the Dinanagar terror attack.

Kumar, ADGP, Internal Vigilance Cell & Human Rights, was also appointed as the Nodal Officer from Punjab Police for necessary liaison with National Investigation Agency (NIA) regarding the Pathankot airbase terrorist attack, an official spokesman said.

Besides the Dinanagar terrorist attack case, other cases include recovery of explosives from railway track in Gurdaspur, attack on an RSS Shakha in Ludhiana, recent murder of Durga Gupta in Khanna, and two other cases of attacks on Shiv Sena activists.
McCain pizza commercial breaches Advertiser Code of Ethics, ASB releases it decision

The Australian Advertising Standards Board (ASB) has decided a McCain pizza advertisement is in breach of the Advertiser Code of Ethics.

The ASB said the television advertisement is in breach of Section 2.6 of the Code as it could be interpreted as condoning stealing.

The 30 second commercial sees a man steal a pizza from a delivery driver so he can conduct a blind test taste against McCains new Takeaway frozen pizza range. The pizza is stolen from the back of the delivery vehicle whilst an accomplice distracts the driver by dancing in front of him.

The complainant further objected to a later part in the advertisement which sees one of the men attempt to high-five another man after the taste-test. He misses and his hand connects with the mans face instead. The complainant interpreted this incident as punching and portraying punching as acceptable behaviour.

ASB dismissed this part of the complaint saying there was no harm portrayed and the advertisement was using humour.

Section 2.6 complaint upheld despite the use of slapstick humour

McCain initially responded to the complaint saying the advertisement did not condone stealing. It said the advertisement used slapstick humour and it believed the majority of people would find it humorous rather than offensive.

The ASB however upheld the complaint saying that stealing from a delivery person is a realistic event and the majority of people would view the scene in question as breaking the law

As this particular activity  stealing from a pizza delivery person  is an actual crime, this portrayal in the advertisement may be seen to condone stealing, the ASB said.

In response to the ASBs decision McCain said it can confirm the commercial is no longer scheduled for free-to-air television and will not appear again in its current form. It said a 15 second version of the advertisement which did not breach the code would continue to air.
Marking a milestone inmaritime security along the Karnataka coast, Indian CoastGuard's advanced ship 'Shoor', commissioned two weeks ago, arrived at its base port here today.

The ship, commissioned by Union Minister Nitin Gadkari in Goa on April 11, was accorded a grand welcomeby officials in the presence of Karnataka Coast GuardCommander K R Suresh.

New Mangalore Port Trust (NMPT) chairman P C Paridawas the chief guest at the function where Dakshina Kannada deputy commissioner A B Ibrahim and various central and state government officials were present.

The 105-metre long offshore patrol vessel is the fifth Coast Guard ship to be berthed in Mangaluru port.

'Shoor', commanded by deputy inspector generalSurendra Singh Dasila, is designed and built by Goa ShipyardLimited.

The ship has advanced navigation and communication equipment, sensors and machinery and is designed to carry a twin-engine light helicopter and five high-speed boats for fast boarding operations, search and rescue, law enforcement and maritime patrol.

It is also capable of carrying pollutionresponse equipment to combat oil spill contamination at sea. It has a maximum speed of 23 knots and 6000 nauticalmile endurance.

'Shoor', meaning 'valiant,' is capable of performingthe role of a command platform and accomplish all Coast Guard charter of duties.

The commissioning of this state-of-the-art offshore patrol vessel will give an impetusto the maritime protection of vast coastline on westernseaboard especially Karnataka, a Coast Guard release heresaid.
Determination of total volume of money that has been evaded by Indian citizens in violation of laws is subject matter of investigation and other follow-up actions, Parliament was informed today.

"Determination of total volume of money that has been evaded by Indian persons in violation of laws regulations is subject matter of investigation and other follow-up actions, which is an ongoing process," Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

He was replying to a question whether it is a fact that several Indian citizens have been named as indulging in money laundering and tax evasion under recent Panama Papers leaks.

Sinha further said such follow-up actions under direct tax law include assessment of income, lax, interest and penalty and filing of prosecution complaints before criminal courts, wherever applicable.

The Minister said other law enforcing agencies such as Enforcement Directorate, Central Bureau of Investigation etc also take action in relevant cases under respective laws administered through them, depending upon facts of each case.

Sinha, however, noted that details regarding the amount of money involved in all such cases are not maintained centrally.

In a separate written reply, the Minister said that government constituted a Multi-Agency Group on April 4 with a view to facilitate coordinated and speedy investigation in the Panama Papers leaks cases of Indian persons.

"The group consists of officers of Investigative Division of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Foreign Tax and Tax Research Division of CBDT, Enforcement Directorate (ED), Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and Reserve Bank of India, and its Convener is member (Investigation) CBDT," he said.

Besides, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money, already constituted by government under the Chairmanship and Vice-Chairmanship of two former Judges of Supreme Court in May 2014, is also looking into the matter.
Sri Lanka's debt-ridden flag carrier is seeking an investor or a partner to manage it, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said today calling it a "landmine" for the economy.

The government will be taking over some of SriLankan Airlines' debt and cancel the four aircraft ordered from Airbus in 2014, he said.

Wickremesinghe said the airline had become a "landmine" for the economy as it has total debts of USD 3.2 billion.

Formed in 1979 as a successor to Air Ceylon and named Air Lanka, the airline was later rebranded by the then management partner Emirates as SriLankan in 1998.

The previous government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa retook the airline ending Emirates' partnership in 2007.
One of Britain's iconic tailoring brand Austin Reed hascollapsed into administration, putting more than 1,000 jobs at risk.

The 116-year-old tailoring brand, which once counted former British prime minister Winston Churchill and Elizabeth Taylor among its customers, appointed AlixPartners todayto explore options for the business after it ran out of cash.

It becomes the second high street retailer in two days to appoint administrators after British Home Stores (BHS) suffered the same fate yesterday, leaving 11,000 jobs hanging in the balance.

AlixPartners said the retailer would continue to trade while it explored possible options to secure a future for Austin Reed, including a sale of all or parts of the business.

"Our priority now is to work with all stakeholders and determine the optimum route forward for the business as we continue to serve customers throughout the UK and Ireland.

"Austin Reed is a well regarded and iconic brand, and therefore we are confident that it is an attractive proposition for a range of potential buyers; as such, we expect, and welcome, contact from interested third parties," said Joint administrator Peter Saville.

The Austin Reed Group, which includes the Country Casuals brand, has 100 standalone stores and 50 concessions throughout the UK and Ireland.

It employs a total of 1,184 staff.
Beijing told the European Union (EU) today to stay out of its internal affairs in response to criticism that China's investigation of five Hong Kong booksellers undermined the territory's autonomy and damaged its rule of law.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular briefing that the matter is an internal affair and the EU should refrain from interfering in matters concerning the former British colony.

"Matters related to Hong Kong are purely China's internal affairs. No external forces should interfere," Hua said. "We urge the European side to watch their words and acts and to halt immediately the interference in Hong Kong affairs."



The EU yesterday released its annual report on the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in which it said the investigation by Chinese authorities of five men linked to a Hong Kong publisher and bookshop had raised concerns about respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law.

The case is "the most serious challenge" to Hong Kong's political autonomy, the report said.

Chinese authorities have been investigating the booksellers for selling banned politically themed books to customers in mainland China.

Two of them, Gui Minhai and Lee Bo, may have been abducted and taken to mainland China for investigation, raising concerns that Chinese agents might have overstepped in law enforcement.

Both Gui and Lee, however, have said they returned to mainland China voluntarily, although there are suspicions they might have made such statements under coercion.
Vigilance slueths today caught Khagaria Block Education Officer (BEO) red-handed while allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 1 lakh in Bihar's Khagaria district.

Vigilance Investigation Bureau officials arrested Khagaria Block Education Officer (BEO) Vijay Kumar Paswan, also holding an dditional charge of Alauli block, while accepting a bribe of Rs 1 lakh from a complainant for releasing the salary, a vigilance department release said.

One Chittranjan Kumar, a resident of Sonihar village under Alauli police station of the district, had filed a complaint with Vigilance stating that Paswan, the BEO, demanded a bribe of Rs 1.50 lakh for releasing the salary of his wife Sadhna Sinha, acting Principal of Sonihar middle school of Alauli block, it said.

The officer later agreed to get his work done after taking Rs 1 lakh from the complainant.

After verifying the complaint, Vigilance personnel constituted a flying squad headed by Dy SP Munna Prasad who arrested Paswan while accepting a bribe of Rs 1 lakh from the Block Education Office, Khagaria.

The accused would be produced before a Special Vigilance Court (II), Patna after interrogating him, the release said.

A total of 43 persons have been arrested in 39 trap cases laid by the Vigilance so far in 2016.
The Central Election Committee of the BJP today rejected a proposal by the state leaders to contest in the Tura by-poll in Meghalaya in view of the National People's Party being an ally of the NDA government.

The state BJP had forwarded the names of three candidates to the Central leadership for consideration and approval but the central committee refused to field any contestant, state BJP President Shibun Lyngdoh said.

He said the central leadership asked the party leaders to drop the idea of contesting in the by-elections in view of the NPP being an ally of the NDA government at the Centre.

The by-poll for Tura MP constituency was necessitated following the death of former Lok Sabha Speaker and founding President of the NPP, Purno A Sangma.

Lyngdoh said the party is supporting the NPP candidate Conrad K Sangma, the youngest son of P A Sangma.

"The BJP had in 2012 supported P A Sangma when he contested the Presidential elections and the party will support his son this time," Lyngdoh said.

The Opposition United Democratic Party today met Conrad K Sangma and senior party leaders at Baksalpara in the Garo Hills expressing their open support to the NPP.

UDP President and Leader of Opposition Donkupar Roy besides other senior leaders of the party campaigned for Conrad.

Both the NPP candidate, Conrad K Sangma and the Congress nominee, Chief Minister's wife Dikkanchi D Shira, are likely to file their papers tomorrow.
BJP plans to target Sonia Gandhi and other Congress leaders on the issue of bribes in the AugustaWestland chopper deal during the UPA regime in a bid to corner the main opposition party which has been paralysing Rajya Sabha on the Uttarakhand affair.

The top brass of the BJP including its President Amit Shah and parliamentary leaders including Finance Minister Arun Jaitley met here to chalk out a strategy following media reports that an Italian court, which has convicted AugustaWestland chief Giuseppe Orsi, has reportedly described how the firm paid bribes to top Congress leaders to bag the Rs.3,600 crore deal.

The issue also figured in the BJP Parliamentary Party where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also present. Congress would also be targeted on the controversial Aircel Maxis deal and the affidavits in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case.

According to media reports, the Italian court judgement states how the firm lobbied with Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her close aides besides the then NSA M K Narayanan and the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Gandhi was described as the "driving force" by the judge behind the deal.

Subramanian Swamy, who took oath as the newly-nominated member of Rajya Sabha today and the bete noire of Congress' first family, will rake up the chopper deal issue in the Rajya Sabha for which notice has been given. Meenakshi Lekhi is expected to do the job in the Lok Sabha tomorrow.

A top BJP leader said it is significant that for the first time the bribe giver has been convicted but still people do not know who the bribe-taker is.

The Aircel Maxis issue is likely to be raked up by



Anurag Thakur in the Lok Sabha while in the upper house it may be raised by Bhupender Yadav.

Similarly, the Ishrat Jahan case pot will be stirred by Kirit Somayya in the Lok Sabha.

To specific questions whether Sonia Gandhi's name would be taken up in connection with the chopper scam, a top leader refused to give a direct reply but party leaders indicated she would be targeted.

For the record, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was fielded by the BJP to attack Congress on the chopper deal. He asked the defence minister in the Manmohan Singh government A K Antony to name the party leaders allegedly involved in the scandal.

"Bribe-givers have been convicted. Why are bribe-takers silent? Antony should answer if leaders of Congress are involved in it or not. Are they from your party or not? Please come clean," he told a press conference.

The Congress hit back and said rejected any allegations against Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh saying "we reject it with the contempt they deserve".

"No one should be making loose comments. The Congress President and the former PM, whose integrity and intellect was never in question," party deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma told the media.

He said the BJP has been making irresponsible statements and wild allegations and the Congress was not going to accept this.

Sharma also claimed that a businessman "close to" Modi has entered into an MoU with AugustaWestland. But he refused to name him.

He also questioned the government why it removed AugustaWestland from the blacklist in which the UPA government had put it in.

On his part, Antony asked the Modi government to fast track the probe into the chopper scam and find out the truth as the UPA government had cancelled the contract and ordered a CBI investigation into it.

"When the primary allegation came out in the media, we immediately ordered a CBI inquiry. We cancelled the contract and fought the case in the Milan court. We won the case and got back all the money we paid in advance by bank guarantee," he told reporters.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money today held a meeting and reviewed some important tax evasion and money laundering probe cases like the recent 'Panama Papers' disclosures and those related to bank frauds.

Officials said the meeting here chaired by SIT Chairman Justice (retd) M B Shah also reviewed the reports submitted to it by the Income Tax department, FIU and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the 'Panama Papers' list case in which at least 500 Indian names have been published.

The full-fledged meeting of the multiple agencies working in the panel took place after a long gap.

The participating agencies also submitted a record and status of their important probes following which it was decided to initiate "prompt" action in cases like Panama, the Bank of Baroda (Delhi branch) case of alleged illegal remittances and those related to trade based money laundering and tax evasion through offshore locations and shell companies.

The SIT, in the wake of the Panama list, had earlier asked agencies like the IT department, ED and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) to investigate and gather intelligence inputs about the disclosures made in this regard by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and a national daily.

"Apart from investigating the tax evasion and money laundering angle in the Panama Papers case, the agencies have also been asked to ascertain the volume of total funds held by the said about 500 Indians on the list made public recently," the officials said.

A multi-agency group of these departments is already looking into this case.

The SIT also reviewed the cases being jointly probed by agencies like the Rs 6,000 crore Bank of Baroda illegal remittances case and few others, under scanner by both the CBI and ED.

During the meeting, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) also informed the panel about the assistance it has rendered to investigative and enforcement agencies in taking their respective probes forward.

A new format developed by the elite snoop wing, under the Union Finance Ministry, to collect and disseminate classified data was also shared with the SIT, the officials said.

The panel also was briefed about the progress in IT department cases against overseas black money holders like in the HSBC and few others.

The SIT was notified by the central government in May 2014 on the directions of the Supreme Court and has submitted at least four reports to the apex court in this context till now.

Headed by Justice (retd) Shah, Justice (retd) Arijit Pasayat is its Vice Chairman with eleven agencies working under it.
Italian police have arrested a former British professional boxer of Pakistani-origin in Rome on suspicion of delivering funds to Islamic State sleeper cells in Italy.

Hussain Shamshir was found to be travelling on a false British passport, according to British media reports.

The 34-year-old was arrested on Saturday while driving in Rome's suburb of Torpignattara with three other men in a German-registered car.

Described by Italian police as a former professional boxer who worked as a pizza baker in a London suburb, Shamshir was carrying 5,000 euros in cash when he was stopped for questioning by anti-terrorist police who had been tailing his vehicle, The Daily Telegraph reported quoting Corriere della Sera' newspaper in Italy.

Shamshir was quoted as saying the cash was for buying clothing for relatives in Belgium.

The three men travelling with him, two Pakistanis and a Kurd, were released after questioning.

Italian police investigators believe the money was brought to Rome to finance terrorist sleeper cells or terrorist attacks in the country.

Police sources told the Italian newspaper that the Belgian connection was one of the reasons Shamshir was arrested as well as the false passport, large amount of cash and criminal record in the UK.

"We are in contact with Italian authorities following the arrest of a British national in Rome," a British Foreign Office spokesperson said.
Murray Goulburn undertakes ASX trading halt

Murray Goulburn is in the middle of an Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) trading halt as requested by the company itself.

The halt is expected to last until Wednesday 27 April with Murray Goulburn saying it needs to review the impact of market conditions on its profits outlook.

Murray Goulburn debuted strongly on the ASX in July 2015 despite a global oversupply in milk driving milk solid prices down.

In February 2016, Murray Goulburn announced a net profit of AUD$10 million for the six months ended 31 December 2015. This was a 34.1 per cent drop on the previous 2014 corresponding period.

At the time, Murray Goulburn Managing Director, Gary Helou, attributed the profit drop to a number of factors including low milk prices, a decline in Chinese imports of commodity dairy ingredients and the Russian embargo on dairy imports.

Murray Goulburn owns the Devondale brand which is used to sell milk, butter and other dairy products in Australian supermarkets.
A Pakistani-origin woman Labour MP today resigned from the shadow cabinet in the UK over an anti-Jewish Facebook post that called for relocation of Israel to the US to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Naz Shah stepped down as the parliamentary private secretary to Labour's shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, over anti-semitic remarks she made two years ago.

Shah has since apologised, saying: "I deeply regret the hurt I have caused.

"This post from two years ago was made before I was an MP, does not reflect my views and I apologise for any offence it has caused."



In a second statement, she added: "I made these posts at the height of the Gaza conflict in 2014, when emotions were running high around the Middle East conflict.

"But that is no excuse for the offence I have given, for which I unreservedly apologise."



Among a series of messages on social media, she had said that the "solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict - Relocate Israel into United States", with the comment "problem solved".

Alongside the post, Shah added a smiley-face emoji and suggested she would lobby the prime minister to adopt the plan.

The Labour party confirmed that she had stepped down as Parliamentary Private Secretary, an unpaid backbench assistant.

The post was highlighted by the Guido Fawkes political website.

"I will be seeking to expand my existing engagement and dialogue with Jewish community organisations, and will be stepping up my efforts to combat all forms of racism, including anti-semitism," said Shah, who is also a member of the House of Commons home affairs select committee which is conducting an inquiry into the rise of anti-semitism in the UK.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism has warned that it would not be able to take the committee's inquiry seriously if Shah remains part of it.

"We have offered to assist the select committee in its work investigating antisemitism. However, if Naz Shah remains on the committee it will be hard for those of us giving evidence to take the inquiry seriously," a spokesperson said.
The cancellation of Chinese dissident Dolkun Isa's visa by India will contribute to healthy development of relations between the two countries and shows their common views in fighting terrorism and separatism, a Chinese expert on South Asian affairs has said.

"India has made a cogitative decision, and shows the common views of China and India in fighting terrorism and separatism, and the determination of further cooperation," Fu Xiaoqiang, an expert on South Asian studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times.

It will contribute to the healthy development of relations between China and India, Fu said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry is yet to comment on India's decision to revoke visa to Isa, a leader of World Uyghur Congress (WUC).

India's decision last week to allow WUC leaders whom China regards as backers of terrorism in its volatile Muslim- dominated Xinjiang province had come in the backdrop of Beijing blocking India's bid to get Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar designated as a terrorist by the UN.

China's unhappiness about reports that Isa has been given the visa was reflected in Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying saying, "What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries."



Isa also allegedly provided funding and training to the terrorist organisation East Turkistan Islamic Movement and East Turkistan militants to facilitate their terrorist activities, another spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hong Lei said earlier this month.

Xinjiang, which has over 10 million Uyghur population of Turkik origin Muslims, was on the boil for several years over Uyghur protests against the large-scale settlements of Hans from different part of the country.

China blames East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a militant Islamist group, for terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of the country.
Actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan feels that Cannes Film Festival would be the perfect platform to showcase her upcoming film "Sarbjit".

The film is a biopic on Sarabjit Singh, an Indian farmer who was convicted of terrorism and spying in Pakistan and was sentenced to death.

It narrates the story from the point of view of Dalbir Kaur, Sarabjit's sister played by Aishwarya, who endured severe hardships in trying to get her brother released.

After 22 years on death row, Sarabjit was attacked by fellow inmates in jail and died in a Lahore hospital in May 2013.

The title role is played by Randeep Hooda, while the role of his wife has been played by Richa Chadha.

There have been reports that "Sarbjit" will be screened at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

"It's (film) releasing on May 20. I don't know if we will be able to make the opportunity possible on that (Cannes Film Festival) platform as well. In the last week (of film release) we meet you (media). So given the time line if it's possible the team will use that opportunity," Aishwarya, 42, told reporters here.

"However there are many deadlines to be met. We will wait for the team to announce if there is an opportunity. It (Cannes) would be the perfect platform to share it, but it is coinciding with the release of the film," said Aishwarya, who was here to unveil the L'Oreal Paris Cannes 2016 Collection ahead of her trip to the festival as its brand amabassador.

The Omung Kumar-directed film is set to be screened in theatres on May 20.
Cars are universally targeted for causing pollution as they represent "the well off section of the society" and environmentalist lobby would like production to be stopped or reduced without considering data that say these are not significant polluters in the Capital, according to Maruti Suzuki Chairman R C Bhargava.

The auto industry leader also said the Supreme Court's ban on diesel cars and SUVs of engine above 2,000 cc in the Capital and NCR is "totally arbitrary" as it does not address the issue of pollution by old vehicles.

Citing the findings of a study by IIT-Kanpur, he said cars contributed to only around 2 per cent of pollution in the Capital.

"The cars, I think, universally are the target as they represent the well off section of the society and despite facts and numbers which we give, people don't look at those numbers," Bhargava told reporters here during the company's earnings conference.

On the Supreme Court's ban on big diesel cars and SUVs. he said: "Our view is that this ban is totally arbitrary."



While new BS IV cars are banned nothing has been done about the pre BS 1 cars, which are even more polluting, he added.

Lakhs of old cars, which are not even BS I standard compliant, two-wheelers and trucks pollute more than the new Euro IV compliant diesel vehicles which have been banned by the Supreme Court, he added.

"There are 5.7 million two-wheelers, they cause three times more pollution than cars, trucks cause 4.5 times more pollution than cars but nobody talks about them," Bhargava lamented.

In Delhi there are 6 lakh diesel cars, one third of which are not even BS I compliant. Pollution from these cars is 5.5 times more than the new car.

"You are banning the new 2-litre engine cars and not doing anything about these old cars," he said.

Hitting out at the "environmental lobby", Bhargava said such groups have been against diesel cars for a long time.

"We have off course environmentalist lobby which would like our production to be stopped or reduced, despite all the data that points that cars in Delhi are not the significant polluters at all, they are very minor polluters as compared to other sources that are polluting in Delhi," he added.

Bhargava also said the auto industry was not in favour of an environment cess which has been considered by the apex court.

"As part of the automobile industry we feel that such a cess has already been imposed by the government in the Budget, it has already been done so the second cess on top of that the logic of that we are unable to support at all," he said.

He, however, added: "At the moment we don't know what the Supreme Court will do and what it has in mind, if that cess would be for cars above two litres or less than two litres or all diesel cars."



Last year, Supreme Court had banned registration of diesel-run SUVs and cars having engine capacity beyond 2,000 cc in Delhi and NCR till March 31, as it unveiled a slew of measures to curb the alarming rise in pollution levels in the city.

On March 31 this year, the Supreme Court extended the ban till April 30.
A special CBI court in Mumbai has issued judicial requests to Singapore, Hong Kong and the US in the Sheena Bora murder case seeking details of financial transactions done by main accused Indrani Mukerjea and her husband Peter.

CBI sources said the Letters Rogatory will be sent through diplomatic channels to judicial authorities of Singapore, Hong Kong and the US with a request to provide desired information.

The agency which has named in the charge sheet Sheena's mother Indrani, her ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna and driver Shyamvar Rai for allegedly murdering her has now focused its attention on money as possible motive behind the killing.

24-year-old Bora, Indrani's daughter from her first marriage, was allegedly murdered in April 2012. Peter was also arrested in the case.

Earlier, the agency had told the court that it has sought Interpol's help for access to overseas bank accounts of the Mukerjeas.

CBI had claimed that investments of crores of rupees were allegedly made by the Mukerjea couple and that "Indrani and Peter had formed various companies during 2006-07 and invested Rs 900 crore in them".

The agency had alleged that the "money siphoned off from INX (in which Peter and Indrani were partners) dealings was routed to Sheena Bora's HSBC account in Singapore".

CBI also told the court that a woman working in DBS Bank Singapore allegedly helped Indrani open an account in HSBC Singapore in the name of Sheena.

During investigations, Peter had allegedly told CBI that accounts might have been opened in the name of Sheena (by Indrani) in HSBC and other banks in Hong Kong and Singapore.

According to CBI, the couple's company 9X Media Pvt Ltd allegedly carried out its internal audit in which nine companies having shareholding as on March 2009 were found to have instances of alleged misallocation and siphoning off substantial amounts of funds by Peter and Indrani.

(Reopens DEL 60)



During its arguments, the CBI drew a parallel between former media baron Peter and mob boss Dawood Ibrahim.

Special public prosecutors Bharat Badami and Kavita Patil told the court the defence while arguing for Peter's bail has been saying that the latter was not in India at the time of Sheena's murder and was not involved in conspiracy.

"... But so is Dawood. He is also not present in India when so many blasts took place in the city," Badami told the court.

Prosecution will continue its arguments tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Peter's lawyer Aabad Ponda concluded his arguments seeking bail, saying his client is not guilty of murder.

"At the most CBI can charge Peter for being an incapable husband and for not controlling his wife (Indrani)," Ponda told the court.

"Is CBI expecting Peter to lose 21 kg like former Maharashtra minister Chhagan Bhujbal (an accused in a money laundering case who was recently discharged from hospital). Am I not supposed to see the sunlight. It's a classic example that on mere imaginary circumstances Peter has been put behind bars," he said.
CBI has approached External Affairs Ministry seeking help of diplomatic channels to get a copy of an Italian court's order in the AgustaWestland helicopter deal.

Sources said the agency has completed domestic portion of its investigation in the case but judicial requests sent to eight countries are still pending.

They said the agency cannot react on the basis of media reports and any action will be possible after it gets the copy of the order issued by Milan Courts of Appeal--equivalent of high courts in the Indian legal system.

The sources said once the order, in Italian, is received, the agency will get an authentic translation done before taking note of the observations made by the court there.

The Milan Court of Appeals, which overturned lower court's order, sentenced Finmeccanica's former chief Giuseppe Orsi to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption in the deal of 12 VVIP choppers to India for over Rs 3,600 crore while former CEO of Finmeccanica's helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland, Bruno Spagnolini, has been handed over four year sentence.

On January 1, 2014, India scrapped the contract with AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW101 VVIP choppers to the Indian Air Force (IAF) over allegations of kickbacks by it for securing the deal.

The then UPA government had also barred Finmeccanica and its group companies from participating in any new programme of the defence ministry.

A case was registered by CBI against former IAF chief S P Tyagi and 12 others, including his cousins, for alleged cheating, corruption and criminal conspiracy in the Rs 3,600 crore VVIP helicopter deal, in which Rs 360 crore is alleged to have been paid as kickbacks.

The former IAF chief had strongly refuted the allegations against him.

CBI has alleged in its FIR that middleman Guido Haschke, through his Tunisia-based company, Gordian Services Sarl, entered into several consultancy contracts with AgustaWestland from 2004-05 onwards and, "almost on a back-to-back basis he also made consultancy contracts with the Tyagi brothers".

Under the cover of these contracts, Haschke is alleged to have sent Euro 1.26 lakh (about Rs 1.06 crore) and Euro 2 lakh (about Rs.1.68 crore) to the Tyagi brothers.

The allegation against the former IAF chief is that he reduced the height of the VVIP helicopters so that AgustaWestland could be included in the bids.
Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal today said both the Centre as well as the Aam Aadmi Party government are "keen" on addressing the problem of women's safety in Delhi.

"We are trying that both the Centre as well as the Delhi government work together. Because the Centre controls the Delhi Police and there are many other things which come under the Delhi government.

"It's not the case that I don't see the Centre is not keen on this issue. I see that the Centre is keen and the state government is also very keen to resolve the issue. I am working to see that everyone works together," she said.

Interestingly, Maliwal's remark is in variance with the AAP government's stand that the Centre is not serious in addressing the problem of security of women in the national capital.

She was addressing a students' function organised by Bharat Ahshara Social Organisation (BASO), an NGO working to build 'mohalla libraries'.

Maliwal said in 2014 around 11,000 cases were registered by Delhi Police pertaining to crime against women, but only nine persons were convicted.

"There is no fear among people in Delhi that they will be punished if they commit any crime. The DCW is working on this so that an action is taken and it is taken at the earliest. We are working (so) that any girl or woman can walk fearlessly on road even at midnight," she added.

The AAP has been at loggerheads with the Delhi Police and has often blamed the Centre for crime against women.

In the past, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has also demanded handing over the control of Delhi Police to the state government after instances of crime against women.
The Centre today strongly opposed the plea seeking setting up of National Court of Appeal with regional benches in major cities for deciding cases arising from high courts, saying that it is a "fruitless endeavour" and will not lessen the burden of two crore cases pending in trial courts.

"The idea is to grant justice at lower level. What the court of appeal will do as there are two crore cases pending in the lower court in comparison to fifty thousand cases at the Supreme Court," Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told a bench headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur.

"We will only be adding to lawyers' pockets. The Supreme Court should not consider this when it's own dockets are full," he said to the bench also comprising Justices R Banumathi and U U Lalit.

Rohatgi termed the hearing as "fruitless endeavour" on various grounds including the fact that the Constitution does not permit it.

At the outset, the bench asked the Attorney General to look into the suggestions advanced by senior advocate K K Venugopal, who has been appointed as an amicus curiae, on the issue.

"We will refer the matter to a larger bench...We will examine this as to whether this court has power to issue directions or recommendations on this," the bench said.

The apex court had earlier said it may refer to a five-judge constitution bench the plea seeking setting up of National Court of Appeal.

The court had also asked Rohatgi to assist Venugopal in formulating "suggestions and points" for its consideration in the case.

The apex court was hearing a PIL by Puducherry-based V Vasanthakumar pressing for setting up of a National Court of appeal at Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata and quashing of the government order rejecting his proposal on the issue.

In February 2014, Kumar had moved the apex court with the same prayer when it had disposed of the matter directing the Centre to respond to his suggestion within six months.

Later, the Centre rejected his suggestion on the ground that it would require an amendment in Article 130 of the Constitution which "is impermissible as this would change the constitution of the Supreme Court completely."



Vasanthakumar has now approached the apex court again seeking quashing of this decision of the central government.
The ChhattisgarhHigh Court has granted permission for 72 model schools to be run under the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) mode.

The High Court yesterday revoked its earlier stay to the state Government's decision to adopt PPP mode for 72 schools running under the Mukhyamantri Adarsh Vidyalaya Yojna.

The stay had been granted in response to a PIL objecting to the PPP mode, an official of Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Mission (Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan) said in statement today.

During the hearing yesterday, the High Court at Bilaspur withdrew its earlier stay and allowed to run schools under PPP mode in the development blockswhich are backward in terms of education, he said.

The HC also directed the School Education Department to ensure compliance of Rights of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act so that chidren from underprivileged sections too could get into the model schools, he said.

These schools will have CBSE curriculum with English as the medium of instruction.
With poll results of Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation ending in a tie today, senior Congress leader Shankersinh Vaghela flagged concern on possible "horse trading" and proposed the strength of civic bodies should be in "odd numbers" to avoid such a situation.

Both the BJP and the Congress won 16 each of the total 32 seats in the civic body polls. Now a Mayor and other office-bearers will be elected through a draw of lots.

Taking reference from the Delhi government's odd-even policy for vehicles, Vaghela said Gujarat government should initiate a process to make all civic bodies have strength in odd numbers.

"Just like the odd-even formula of Arvind Kejrival (Delhi CM), Gujarat government is having this 'even' formula here. Just because the GMC board comprise 32 seats, which is an even number, the poll ended in a tie. This could have been avoided," Vaghela told reporters.

In the previous GMC election, Congress had won 18 seats while BJP secured 15. However, the saffron party later snatched power after three Congress councillors switched sides.

"I believe that all local bodies in the state should be having odd number seats, such as 31, 45, 67, etc. We could have a clear mandate in Gandhinagar today if the seats were odd-numbered. This system of odd number would have automatically avoided the tie," said Vaghela.

He said the tie usually prompts parties to engage in horse trading.

"In case of a tie, money and muscle power steps in. Many get attracted to offers while weak people succumbs to muscle power. Before this polls, tie took place in district and taluka panchayat polls a few months back. Government should think about introducing only odd-number formula," he said.
Nearly seven years after the infamous peephole videos of Erin Andrews surfaced on the web, her nightmare may now be finally over.

The Fox broadcaster has reached a settlement in her lawsuit against the hotel owner and operator who allowed a stalker to film her through a peephole in 2008. A Nashville jury initially awarded Andrews a $55 million in March, $28 million from her stalker Michael David Barrett, and $27 million from West End Hotel Partners and Windsor Capital Group  although it was unlikely Andrews would ever see the full amount awarded.

Andrews lawyer Randall Kinnard said Andrews was satisfied with the confidential settlement.

This litigation is over, Kinnard told Stacey Barchenger of the Tennessean. Erin Andrews is satisfied with the settlement, the terms of which are confidential.

The Tennessean reports the hotel companies could have been responsible for the entire $55 million after Andrews lawyers asked the judge to apply rules of joint and several liability. Given that amount, its no surprise the hotel companies opted to quickly settle the case.

When there is uncertainty, thats oftentimes a driver of settlements, said Mark Chalos, a lawyer who analyzed the case for The Tennessean . That could have played a factor.

The settlement adds closure to what had to have been a horrifying ordeal for Andrews. The initial trial and subsequent ruling was fairly high profile and included many cringeworthy moments that reflected very poorly on hotel management, their legal representation, ESPN, and the individual who orchestrated the video. It was believed that because of an ongoing appeals process and the main defendants lack of resources to pay the ruling, Andrew was only going to be able to collect a fraction of the initial ruling. Its likely all parties involved were motivated to put this incident behind them given how ugly the actual trial was for everyone involved. Hopefully the settlement allows for Andrews to put this incident behind her and allow for a return to normalcy to her career and personal life.

[The Tennessean]
Online tax filing portal ClearTax today said it has secured investment of USD 1.3 million (about Rs 8.5 crore) from Silicon Valley-based angel investors.

The investment will be used to further of simplify the process of tax filing through technology, the company said in a statement here.

The investors include PayPal Co-founder Max Levchin who marks his first India-focused investment with ClearTax's latest funding round, the Bengaluru-based firm said.

Scott and Cyan Banister, serial investors in ventures such as Uber and SpaceX, WhatsApp's Business Head Neeraj Arora, AngelList Founder and CEO Naval Ravikant, Dropbox Vice President Ruchi Sanghvi also participated in the funding round, it said.

"We are absolutely thrilled to be chosen for angel investment by some of the most renowned names in the global start-up ecosystem today," a ClearTax spokesman said.

ClearTax helps in e-file of tax returns. It was founded by Y Combinator for the Indian tax payers, it said.
Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton has ridiculed her Republican counterpart Donald Trump for his lavish lifestyle, campaigning from a "big jet" and being out of touch from the ground realities.

In a speech to her supporters in Delaware, Clinton also said that the Republican frontrunner should come out of his towers and spend time with Americans.

"I have said, 'Come out of those towers named for yourself and actually talk and listen to people.' You know, at some point, if you want to be president of the United States, you gotta get familiar with the United States. You gotta spend time with Americans of all sorts and backgrounds in every part of our country," Clinton said.

The former secretary of state is eyeing to become the first woman president of the United States.

A real estate billionaire from New York, Trump is the only presidential candidate to have his own jet and has been flying with it to campaign across the country.

Clinton said her fellow New Yorker is out of touch with everyday Americans.

"Don't just fly that big jet in and land it, go make a big speech and insult everybody you can think of and then go back, get on that big jet, and go back to you know your country club house in Florida or your penthouse in New York," she said.

"I somehow don't think that kind of puts you in touch with what's going on. I have spent now more than a year talking and listening to people, and I can tell you there's a lot of concern.

"People are having a hard time," Clinton said.

"I intend to do everything I can to be the nominee. I am clearly focused on that. But at the same time, I want to start drawing the starkest distinctions, between what I know America stands for... And what Donald Trump is standing for," she said.
BJP MP Anurag Thakur today attacked Congress President Sonia Gandhi over her party leaders' alleged involvement in the AugustaWestland chopper deal "scam" alleging "the party and corruption have deep roots".

Citing an appeals court order in Milan, Italy, he said that "in 2013, the (UPA-2) defence ministry had shown lax attitude towards submitting required documents and extensive delay led to an ineffective trial in the matter."



Congress should answer whom it was trying to protect in the scam by not submitting the document, he said.

Thakur requested the Defence Minister to find out the facts and reasons for delay in submitting the documents.

Thakur claimed handwritten documents seized from "middleman" involved in finalising the VVIP choppers deal mention bribes to be given to each of the involved "players".

"These allegedly included FAM - 16 mn Euros, and AP - 3 mn Euros. Who are these FAM and AP?" he said.

"Congress and corruption have deep roots but they have achieved newer heights of shamelessness when they earned a bad name for the country by an international court," he said.

Thakur asked Congress to name the "beneficiaries" of alleged scam.

He also asked the government to take stringent action against all involved in "destroying" evidences in the case.
A Congress MLA in Bihar has landed in trouble after a sting operation caught the legislator on camera purportedly offering liquor to his guests, despite total prohibition imposed in the state by the Nitish Kumar government.

The man caught in the booze sting is Congress MLA from Narkatiaganj in West Champaran district Vinay Verma.

Sub Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Aman Kumar said that the MLA had arrived at Sikarpur police station this morning to give a petition for registration of case against unknown journalists behind the sting operation.

As the police was deliberating on his request, the MLA's supporters smelling trouble, created ruckus to help the legislator get away.

The SDPO said the police and Excise Superintendent Rakesh Kumar are deliberating on further action against the MLA after his vanishing act from the police station.

The sting showing the Congress MLA allegedly offering booze to guests at a posh hotel in Patna has created a major embarrassment for the grand secular alliance headed by Kumar in which Congress is a partner.

However, the embattled Congress MLA claimed "conspiracy" behind the sting.

He claimed that he is a vegetarian and a teetotaler and any talk of offering liquor to guests was not true.

A few persons claiming to be journalists came to me at a hotel in Patna and after talking on various subjects came to liquor ban on which he said the step has been appreciated by people particularly women in rural areas in particular.

He claimed the questioners falsely put words in his mouth in the sting as part of a conspiracy to tarnish his image as well as that of the JD(U), RJD and Congress grand secular alliance.

State Congress President and Education minister in Nitish



Kumar ministry, Ashok Choudhary said in Patna that they had come to know about the episode through media reports and the party would issue a show cause to the concerned MLA in this regard.

"We will seek explanation from the MLA about the incident and accordingly intimate high command with it," Choudhary said.

The MLA's sting surfaced yesterday, a day when Chief Minister Nitish Kumar held a comprehensive meeting of officials of six districts of Patna division to take stock of execution of complete ban on liquor.

Following this up, Kumar today conducted a review meeting at Bhagalpur.

The episode showing violation of complete ban on liquor by the grand secular alliance, provided opportunity to opposition BJP to attack the government.

Leader of Opposition in State Legislative Assembly Prem Kumar said the incident poses a question mark on the effectiveness of prohibition announced by the Chief Minister.

He demanded annulment of membership of the MLA from Assembly for violating oath taken by Legislators against liquor.

Senior JD(U) leader Shyam Rajak said the Congress party would definitely go into details of the unsavoury incident and initiate action if allegation against the MLA was found true.

Bihar has been witnessing complete prohibition since April 5. As per the announcement sale and consumption of country, spiced liquor as well Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) are prohibited in the state with a stringent provision of arrest and penal action against the violators.

(REOPENS CES6)



Meanwhile, a case has been registered against Congress MLA Vinay Verma in Patliputra police station in Patna.

Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj told
Congress in Punjab has decided to go ahead with its prescheduled programmes in Canada, which were to be addressed by PCC president Amarinder Singh.

Amarinder will address some of these programmes, slated to be held in different cities, including Toronto and Vancouver, through Skype.

"The party has also hired a battery of lawyers here to legally fight the complaint filed by Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), an anti-India splinter group, against Amarinder. We are confident that the complaint will be dismissed as it had no merit at all," Kapurthala MLA Rana Gurjit Singh said.

Singh, who was in charge for the programmes in Canada, said that all the programmes will go on according to the schedule and Amarinder will address through Skype.

He said the party may also organise a function in the US near the Canadian border so that people can meet Amarinder personally.

He has already addressed one such public meeting through Skype.

On why Amarinder cancelled his Canada visit, the Congress leaders said that he had only rescheduled it and will be visiting the country sooner rather than later.

Rana Gurjit also alleged that since some legal impediments were created by the "vested interests and anti-India forces, apparently to help and support Aam Aadmi Party, Amarinder decided to get the issue resolved before going there to avoid any untoward situation".

"It is a tragic irony that the leader who put his political career at stake, not once but several times to safeguard the rights of Punjabis, was being accused of violating their rights," Rana Gurjeet said.
A Delhi court today fixed May 4 for hearing final arguments in a case of alleged gangrape of a 52-year-old Danish woman by nine persons, including three juveniles, in 2014 here.

The case has been put for the next date as Additional Sessions Judge Ramesh Kumar was on leave today.

The court had earlier dismissed a plea seeking to examine several doctors on the issue of potency of 55-year-old accused Shyam Lal in the case, who had died in jail two months ago.

Proceedings against Lal were abated in the case of gangrape of a 52-year-old Danish woman here in 2014.

According to the prosecution, the nine accused, all vagabonds, had allegedly robbed and gangraped the Danish tourist at knife-point on the night of January 14, 2014, after leading her to a secluded spot close to the Divisional Railway Officers' Club near New Delhi Railway Station.

All nine accused were arrested. The five adult accused - Mahendra alias Ganja (26), Mohd Raja (22), Raju (23), Arjun 21), Raju Chakka (22) - are in judicial custody and facing trial. Lal, who was in judicial custody, died in February.

Three other accused were juveniles against whom inquiry before the Juvenile Justice Board is in progress.

The court had earlier allowed prosecution's plea to place on record the original medical and potency test report of Lal, who had claimed to be impotent, and examine three doctors in this regard.
Delhi government today decided to discontinue 'MP Special' bus service after receiving "poor response" from Parliamentarians over the last two consecutive days.

Yesterday, the AAP government withdrew four out of six air-conditioned buses when only three-four MPs had availed the service. Today as well, a few Parliamentarians travelled in these buses to reach the House.

"Government has decided to discontinue 'MP Special' bus service as we were not getting a good response from them.

"If demand arises to introduce the service again, we will then come up with such buses to facilitate Parliamentarians." Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai said.

Delhi government had launched 'MP Special' bus service on Monday to ferry them to Parliament in view of implementation of the Odd-Even scheme and run six-airconditioned buses for lawmakers.

The 'MP Special' buses were to ply from 9 AM to 11 AM and 5.30 PM to 8 PM.

The Transport Minister has already ruled out exempting MPs from the scheme but the AAP dispensation will work to address their issues through public conveyance.

Yesterday, Rai met Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari and discussed how MPs would reach Parliament.

After the meeting, the minister had said there were just four days left and by the time any change in the notification is effected, the scheme would itself end.
Continuing its crackdown on private schools which have been raising fees arbitrarily, Delhi government today ordered another prominent school to roll back the fee hike and refund the excess amount collected.

The directives to KR Manglam School, Vikaspuri were issued after 228 parents had written to Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia complaining about the hike.

Other allegations raised by parents in the letter to Sisodia included improper water facility, maintenance of hygiene in washrooms, threatening guardians of striking off names of students if the hiked fee is not paid, among others.

"In view of the violation of various provisions of the Delhi School Education Act 1973, the management committee of KR Mangalam World school is directed to refund the alleged enhanced fee to parents collected so far, not to enhance any fee without prior approval from government and create sufficient infrastructure facilities in the school," Directorate of Education (DoE) said in a letter to the school principal.

"The school is also directed to appoint special educators. The authorities should not compel parents to buy books, uniform or stationary from the school's shop/counter," the letter further said.

Citing rules, the order said all private unaided recognised schools built on land alloted by DDA or other government agencies on concessional rates or otherwise shall not increase tuition fee without prior permission of the Directorate.

The management committees of the school have also been directed to send compliance reports within seven days and warned of action under Delhi School Education Act and Rules, 1973.

Meanwhile, the school authorities could not be reached for their comments on the issue.

The government has so far issued orders to Rohini and Mathura Road branches of Delhi Public School and GD Salwan Public School, Rajender Nagar directing them to rollback the fee hike and refund the excess amount collected.

The private schools in the national capital have been asked to submit their proposals of fee hike to DoE for prior sanction latest by May 7.

Key documents including details of receipts and payment account, income and expenditure account, balance sheet for the years 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 along with budget estimates for the ensuing year, statement of salary disbursed to staff, and detail of all funds-- reserve, general and gratuity, also need to be submitted by the schools.
Criticizing the Mumbai Port Trust's (MbPT) "steep" hike in its residential rent and the "forcible eviction" of tenants, former Union Minister Milind Deora today accused the Centre of trying to "scrap" the protection given to them.

Deora, who was the Minister of State for the Ministry of Shipping during the erstwhile Congress regime, addressed the affected MbPT tenants, at a public meeting held in south Mumbai.

"When I was a Shipping Minister, I ensured that injustice is not done to a single family in the process of giving ownership. However, since May 2014...Ever since the new government took over, suddenly the government has started considering tenants as encroachers," he said.

"Therefore, we are here to discuss to form an umbrella organisation to fight with steep, unaffordable and retrospective rent fixation at market rates and to mitigate the implications of possible eviction of these aggrieved tenants," Deora added.

"I don't believe in politicising this issue, but the bitter truth is that the Union Government wants to scrap the protection given to the tenants across the country. We need to fight against this injustice in the same fashion that we fought to protest land acquisition ordinance last year," Deora added.

Deora later tweeted about the development saying, "Formed an umbrella organisation of tenants who are being forcibly & illegally evicted by MbPT & the government."



MbPT owns 1800 acres of land stretching from Sassoon Dock Colaba to Sewri in suburban Wadala on the eastern sea front of the mega city and large chunk of the land has been leased to more that 2,500 tenants. The MbPT has decided to levy new rental rates.

Terming the revised rates as "steep, unaffordable and arbitrary", advocate Viren Asar, counsel of the MbPT lessees and tenants, said, "MbPT is in violation of the Supreme Court order when it revised rent in 2006 and due to its unwarranted act, lakhs of middle class people may be evicted for the proposed smart city and thousands may lose their long business."



Thirty-three writ petitions have been filed in the Bombay High Court to address the problem of leases not being renewed or regularized despite a 2004 SC judgement.

Parvej Kooper, a tenant who was allegedly evicted from his house by the MbPT citing the reason that his lease was expired, vented out his aggression and said, "This new (union) government is following the divide-and-rule policy and selectively evicting the tenants on baseless grounds.
Gearing up for mega spectrum auction, DoT has written to the Defence Ministry for release of spectrum under the harmonisation process as well as 3G radiowaves under the swapping pact.

"The DoT has written to Defence Ministry for releasing spectrum that were to be freed under harmonisation process and 3G spectrum under swapping agreement," an official told PTI.

Around 200 megahertz of spectrum across the country is to be released by the Defence as also 15 Mhz of 3G spectrum which Department of Telecom plans to put up for auction that is being planned for July.

Another telecom ministry official said that DoT has requested the Defence to release the spectrum by May.

"Things have already been resolved among all ministries. The communication is just part of formal process," the official said.

Telecom ministry had proposed to exchange 15 Mhz spectrum it holds in the 1900 Mhz band with same quantum of radiowaves held by the Defence in 2100 Mhz. The 2100 Mhz band is currently used for 3G services.

The Cabinet had approved swapping of spectrum between Ministries of Telecom and Defence in January 2015 and process was to be completed in a year as part of harmonisation of all radiowaves among all ministries.

All ministries and departments like Aviation, Space, Prasar Bharti, Defence, Telecom etc that are holding spectrum were asked to harmonise radiowaves among themselves, identify timeline by when will they be able to vacate spectrum not marked for them in 4-5 years.

DoT expects to get about 200 mhz of spectrum freed from Defence under harmonization process.

For 3G spectrum in 2100 band, Trai suggested pan-India base price of Rs 3,746 crore.

The Defence Ministry and the DoT had signed a pact in 2009-10 under which the former had agreed to vacate 25 megahertz (MHz) of 3G spectrum and 20 MHz of 2G in phases.

In return, DoT had committed to set up an exclusive defence network for its communication services.

The Defence Ministry had vacated 15 MHz of 3G spectrum which was auctioned in 2010. It had also vacated 15 MHz of 2G spectrum, which was allocated to new operators in 2008. Under the pact, the remaining spectrum - 10 MHz in 3G and 5MHz in 2G - was to be vacated only after alternative communication network is completed.

Though alternative communication network for Defence is yet to be completed, it provided 5 Mhz of 3G spectrum which was auctioned across 17 circles in 2015 fetching bids worth Rs 10,115 crore as against the estimate of Rs 17,555 crore.

The inter-ministerial panel Telecom Commission is expected to meet on April 30 to discuss spectrum auction modalities. It is expected suggest a final base price for spectrum to be auctioned which will need the Cabinet approval.

The auction is scheduled for July and has potential to fetch Rs 5.36 lakh crore to the Exchequer.

Asked about concerns on tariff war hitting profitability



of telecom companies, Deepak said, "Telecom is scale business...With scale-up of business, even with low tariffs it is possible to make profits as companies have demonstrated. While profits may not happen immediately but those who stay on for the long-term, will make profits."



Also, with spectrum harmonisation, the sector's efficiencies are likely to go up and reduce cost, which in turn will help companies, he added.

It may be recalled that the government received commitment of Rs 65,789 crore by selling 964.80 MHz of spectrum in an auction in October last year.

The Telecom Department undertook a slew of reforms in 2016 aimed at facilitating ease of doing business. This included formulating the right of way rules for faster telecom network roll-out, spectrum harmonisation, increasing the availability of spectrum through auction and introduction of Aadhaar-based eKYC for new mobile connections.
Ahead of the penultimate phase of election to the West Bengal Assembly on April 30, the Election Commission today held a review meeting with observers of the poll-bound districts.

Officials said the review meet was attended by all general, police and expenditure observers of 53 constituencies in Kolkata, South 24-Parganas and Hooghly.

Besides taking a feedback of poll preparedness, the poll panel also gave instructions for the polling day.

The nodal officer for the CRPF was also present in the meeting, officials said.

The sixth and last phase of polling will be held on May 5, while the results will be out on May 19.
An Egyptian coalition of rights groups said today that police arrested at least 237 people during the previous day's protests in Cairo against a government decision to hand over to Saudi Arabia control of two strategic Red Sea islands.

Amnesty International condemned the arrests, the latest criticism levelled by the leading international advocacy group over human rights abuses in Egypt.

Rights lawyers Gamal Eid and Mohammed Abdel-Aziz both members of the Front for the Defense of Egyptian Protesters said that all those detained were in custody by midnight Monday when the front made its last tally.

The number of those still held could be lower since police have been intermittently releasing the detainees, they said. It's unclear if anyone has been referred to prosecutors.

Thousands of police were deployed across much of Cairo on Monday to stifle plans for mass demonstrations called to protest the government's decision to surrender the islands of Tiran and Sanafir.

Faced with the police's overwhelming numbers, protesters resorted to staging flash demonstrations in Cairo, drawing tear gas and birdshot from the riot police.

The arrest of 237 people, mostly in Cairo but also some in the Egyptian capital's twin city of Giza, followed the detention of nearly 100 in pre-dawn house raids and roundups at cafes in downtown Cairo, a popular hangout for young, pro-democracy activists. Those arrests mainly targeted rights activists and journalists.

Amnesty criticized the arrests and the use of violence against protesters in a statement Tuesday.

"The Egyptian authorities appear to have orchestrated a heavy-handed and ruthlessly efficient campaign to squash this protest before it even began," said Magdalena Mughrabi of the group's Middle East and North Africa section. "Mass arrests, road blocks and huge deployments of security forces made it impossible for peaceful demonstrations to take place."



Authorities say the objective of the large deployment of police was to protect vital installations and Egyptians celebrating a holiday marking the final Israeli pullout from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982.

Egypt says the islands of Tiran and Sanafir at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba off the southern coast of Sinai belong to Saudi Arabia, which placed them under Cairo's protection in 1950 because it feared Israel might attack them.
US Secretary of State John Kerry met Nepal's Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa and asked him to ensure that the country's new Constitution meets all the aspirations of the Nepalese people.

"While recognising the significance of Nepal's constitution, he (Kerry) urged Nepal to continue working to ensure it meets all the aspirations of the Nepali people," State Department Spokesman John Kirby said.

Nepal had been in political turmoil as the Indian-origin Madhesi people are opposing the seven-province model of federalism which was introduced in the country through the promulgation of the new Constitution.

Madhesis led a nearly six-month-long violent protest over better representation in the Parliament and the federal structure of the new Constitution.

Newly-elected Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba this month said "flaws" in the new Constitution could be rectified as he appealed to Madhesis and other stakeholders to resolve the statute-related issues through dialogue.

During the meeting yesterday, Thapa also briefed Kerry about reconstruction works undertaken by Nepalese government in the aftermath of the April 25, 2015 devastating earthquake.

Kirby said the Secretary and the Under-Secretary encouraged Nepal to keep up the pace on earthquake reconstructions.

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people, displaced tens of thousands and caused widespread devastation.

"On this anniversary we commend the courage of the many individuals who provided assistance to those in need and we pay tribute especially to those who lost their lives doing so, including the six US marines and their Nepali counterparts that were killed in a helicopter crash while trying to help victims," Kirby said.

"The American people continue to offer our sympathy to the families of all of those who perished in the earthquake and we continue to stand right beside the people of Nepal," he said.

Since the earthquake, the US has provided approximately USD 130 million for relief, recovery and reconstruction operations, which include search and rescue deployments, emergency shelter, drinking water, food, aid and support to protect survivors against gender-based violence and human trafficking, Kirby said.
A company run by the ousted former boss of Barclays said today that it was mulling a bid for the troubled British bank's African operations.

As part of a major restructuring, Barclays announced last month that it will sell down its 62.3-per cent interest in Barclays Africa to 20 per cent over the next two to three years.

Atlas Mara, a finance company co-founded by ex-Barclays chief Bob Diamond said in a statement that it has held talks with investors over the possible acquisition.

"Atlas Mara Limited acknowledges that it has had discussions with a consortium of investors that is exploring an acquisition of Barclays' stake in Barclays Africa and a potential combination of Atlas Mara with Barclays Africa," read the statement.

The consortium includes private equity vehicle Atlas Merchant Capital, which was established by Diamond, and the Mara Group that was founded by Ugandan businessman Ashish J. Thakkar.

Diamond and Thakkar formed Atlas Mara in 2013 with the aim of consolidating financial services companies in Africa.

The company has so far made acquisitions in seven sub-Saharan countries from Botswana to Nigeria, with plans to expand that to 10 to 15 markets over the next few years.

Diamond was forced to resign as Barclays chief executive in July 2012 when the bank was plagued by the damaging Libor rate-fixing scandal.
Portugal's Constitutional Court has rejected a former CIA operative's appeal against extradition to Italy to serve a six-year sentence for her part in the US extraordinary renditions program, a court official said today.

A judge ruled there were no constitutional grounds to reverse a decision by a lower court and the Supreme Court to send Sabrina de Sousa, who was born in India and holds both US and Portuguese passports, back to Italy, the official told the AP.

He spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with the Constitutional Court's rules.

De Sousa was among 26 Americans convicted in absentia for the 2003 kidnapping in Milan of terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr. She was arrested last October at Lisbon Airport on a European warrant.

It was not immediately clear whether the court's rejection of her appeal was final.

De Sousa's Portuguese lawyer, Manuel Magalhaes e Silva, was not immediately available for comment. Lisbon court officials could not be contacted to provide the date when an extradition might take place.

Her Italian lawyer has said he is hopeful of obtaining clemency from Italy's head of state. President Sergio Mattarella has granted clemency to other defendants convicted in the case.

The extraordinary rendition program was part of the anti-terrorism strategy of the U.S. Administration following the September 11, 2001, attacks. President Barack Obama ended the program years later.

A lower Lisbon court ruled in January that De Sousa should be turned over to Italy. The Supreme Court earlier this month rejected her appeal against that ruling.

De Sousa was on her way to visit her elderly mother in India with a roundtrip ticket when she was detained.
Availability of agriculture loan tops the priority list for rural voters in Tamil Nadu, while for the people in urban areas the most important issue is better job opportunity, a new survey showed today.

"Rural voters still form the bulk of people in the state. When asked for their top three priorities, they said agriculture loans, employment and electricity for agriculture were the top priorities," a report by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) said today.

Around 24.75 per cent of voters said that agriculture loan availability was one of the top three priorities for them, followed by better employment opportunities for 22.88 per cent and electricity for agriculture for 20.72 per cent people.

On the other hand, reservation for jobs, education, terrorism, strong military, corruption, law and order did not feature on the top of the priority list for voters, the report said.

A survey of over 16,000 respondents was done in every constituency of Tamil Nadu before February 2016, ADR said.

On the rural performance rating of government, the worst rated performance was on agriculture loan availability and better employment opportunities. Electricity for agriculture also did poorly according to voters.

There were a total of 31 issues for which they gave priorities and rated government's performance.

Agriculture loan availability performance was ranked 27th out of 31, better employment opportunities 26th and electricity for agriculture 20th.

The issue of agriculture loan availability was chosen by 22.79 per cent of voters as one of the two issues on which they wanted to rate the government.

The priority issues where the government performance was considered relatively good were hospitals and PHCs, water for agriculture and sand stone quarrying and mining.

The last may be an environmental hazard but people may have supported it due to the employment generated, it said.

For urban voters, employment was given the highest priority, followed by noise pollution and drinking water.

Better employment opportunities was opted by 23.59 per cent urban voters, followed by noise pollution (21.82 per cent), drinking water (20.69 per cent).
The Commerce and Industry Ministry is expected to approach the Cabinet soon on the proposal to permit 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in the food processing sector.

"It has to come sooner," Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters here when asked about the proposal.

She also said that the Union Cabinet would soon take a decision on the new national IPR (intellectual property rights) policy.

The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) is in the process of finalising the details on allowing 100 per cent FDI in marketing and processing of foods products. This proposal was announced in the Budget.

The government has said that the move will benefit farmers, reduce wastage of fruits and vegetables, give impetus to the food processing industry and create vast employment opportunities.

During April-December, FDI into the country grew by 40 per cent to USD 29.44 billion.

Commenting on the free trade agreement (FTA) with Australia, the minister said talks are going on.

"With Australia, we are very close to getting to an agreement. Hopefully, it should be done soon," she said.

Talks for a comprehensive economic cooperation agreement (CECA), also known as FTA, between India and Australia were started in 2011 to provide fillip to trade and investments between the two countries.

The bilateral trade stood at USD 13 billion in 2014-15 as against USD 12.12 billion in the previous fiscal.
A barrage of air strikes and shelling on Syria's second city Aleppo and a town to its west have killed 25 civilians, emergency workers and a monitoring group said today.

The attacks are the latest in a surge of violence in and around the city that has severely tested a February 27 ceasefire.

At least two male civilians died in rebel rocket fire on government-controlled areas in the west of the city today afternoon, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In the rebel-held eastern parts, the air strikes and shelling came down "like rain", one resident told AFP.

15 civilians were killed in air strikes on several rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo city, the civil defence, known as White Helmets, said.

Another three civilians -- two women and a child -- were killed in government artillery shelling on another eastern neighbourhood, they said.

"The planes are bombing markets, residential areas... We're exhausted, we can't keep up," a civil defence worker said.

Five of their own were killed when the White Helmets headquarters in the town of Al-Atarib, controlled by Islamist rebels, was hit by an overnight air strike, the group said on Twitter.

It was not immediately clear whether the strike on Al-Atarib, 35 kilometres from Aleppo, was carried out by the Syrian air force or its Russian ally.

An ambulance and a fire truck, both damaged, were parked in the bombed-out headquarters, surrounded by rubble and twisted metal frames.

A civil defence worker in Aleppo city said he and his colleagues were afraid their local headquarters would also be targeted.

Fighting has surged on several fronts in Aleppo province, which is criss-crossed with supply routes that are strategic for practically all of Syria's warring sides.

Once Syria's commercial hub, Aleppo has been divided between rebel control in the east and government forces in the west since 2012.

In the rebel-held Fardos neighbourhood, an AFP correspondent saw a youth being helped down a rubble-strewn street with blood streaming from his head and leg.

Violence has rocked the city since Friday, with at least 100 civilians killed by artillery or rocket fire and air strikes.

Yesterday, rebel shelling killed at least 19 civilians in government-held districts, the Observatory said.
French naval contractor DCNS today was picked ahead of Germany and Japan for a 50 billion dollars (USD39 billion) contract to design and build Australia's next generation of submarines in the country's biggest ever defence procurement programme.

The announcement by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull culminates years of planning to replace Australia's ageing diesel and electric-powered Collins Class submarines, which are due to leave service from around 2026.

Turnbull said the 12 new subs "will be the most sophisticated naval vessels being built in the world".

"The recommendation of our competitive evaluation process... Was unequivocal, that the French offer represented the capabilities best able to meet Australia's unique needs," he added at an Adelaide shipyard, where the submarines will be constructed.

"This is a momentous national endeavour. This is securing together with our commitment to surface vessel construction, this is securing the future of Australia's navy, over decades to come."



French President Francois Hollande hailed the decision as historic.

"It marks a decisive advance in the strategic partnership between the two countries who will cooperate over 50 years," his office said in a statement.

"This new success will create jobs and development in France as in Australia."



A Japanese government-backed consortium led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and German group ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems were also in the running, but DCNS was considered "best to meet all of our unique capability requirements".

Besides matching the range and endurance of the Collins Class, the new generation needed to offer superior sensor performance and stealth capabilities.

DCNS has said it planned to build a 4,500-tonne conventionally-powered version of its 4,700 tonne Barracuda, to be named Shortfin Barracuda, described by the company as "the most technically complex artefact in Australia".

It said on its website that the new vessel would be "the recipient of France's most sensitive and protected submarine technology and will be the most lethal conventional submarine ever contemplated".

"Pump jet propulsion means the Shortfin Barracuda can move more quietly than submarines with obsolete propeller technology," DCNS said.

"In a confrontation between two otherwise identical submarines, the one with pump jet propulsion always has the tactical advantage."



It added that the sonar suite performance "will be the best available ever for a submarine this size".
A six-metre statue of former South African president Nelson Mandela has been unveiled in Palestine, the first such sculpture of the anti-apartheid icon outside the country.

The statue was unveiled by Parks Tau, the Executive Mayor of the City of Johannesburg, which sponsored it as part of a twin city arrangement signed two years ago.

The unveiling took place yesterday, a day before South Africa celebrates the annual public holiday of Freedom Day on April 27 to mark Mandela's installation in 1994 as the first democratically-elected president of the country after decades of white minority apartheid rule.

Palestine also declared April 26 a national day as large crowds gathered at a square in Ramallah named after Mandela, who had repeatedly compared the struggle against apartheid in South Africa to that of the Palestinian fight against oppression by Israel.

In 1997, Mandela declared: "Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians".

"The statue produced in South Africa and recently shipped to the Palestinian shores is a donation from Johannesburg to Ramallah as a symbol of solidarity with the people of Palestine amidst their ongoing struggles," the City of Johannesburg said in a statement.

But the project was not without controversy as Israeli customs authority allegedly delayed its delivery for several weeks, demanding huge customs duties before intervention by high-level government officials led to its release, according to informed sources who wished to remain anonymous.

Speaking from Ramallah, Tau told the South African media: "We see the statue as a symbol of friendship, as a symbol of demonstrating our solidarity but also hopefully as an inspiration to the people of Palestine that they indeed would be able to achieve their freedom."



Ramallah Mayor Musa Hadid, was quoted in the Jerusalem Post as saying: "The erection of Mandela's sculpture in Ramallah carries a symbolic significance, since he was an international symbol of peace and a torch to people striving for freedom and liberty".
Drug arrest

Flagstaff police arrested a man on drug charges last week after he called 911 during an apparent hallucination.

According to the Flagstaff Police Department report, officers were dispatched to the 5300 block of North Thornton Place at about 9 p.m. Thursday when a man claimed there were people outside his home threatening to kill him. He said the people may be armed. Another officer had already been to the home twice on the same day for the same reason but never saw anyone suspicious.

The second officer searched outside the residence for about 15 minutes without seeing anyone. When the officer questioned the reporting party, he said he had also experienced hallucinations about a year earlier. The man later admitted to snorting "speed" the previous night because he "needed to get a lot of stuff done." The suspect turned over the rest of his methamphetamine to the police.

Fred Casmir, 59, was arrested and charged with possession or use of narcotic drugs. He was booked into the Coconino County Detention Facility.

Grand theft auto

A Flagstaff hotel guest reported her car stolen last week.

According to the police report, the victim noticed the vehicle missing at about 8:15 a.m. Thursday. She told officers she went downtown to have a few drinks Wednesday night and then drove herself back to her hotel, located at 1400 N. Country Club Drive, at about 1 a.m. When she woke up that morning, the car was gone. The victim still had her keys.

The stolen vehicle was a gray 2015 Honda Civic with Arizona license plate number BRH3282. It has been entered into the FBI's National Crime Information Center database as stolen.

The investigation is ongoing.

City and county residents who want to report a crime but wish to remain anonymous may call Silent Witness at 774-6111 or (877) 29-CRIME, submit a tip online at www.coconinosilentwitness.org, or text the word Flagtip along with your information to 274637 (CRIMES). Rewards of up to $2,000 are given for information that leads to an arrest.
In the wake of frequent disruptions in Rajya Sabha over the political crisis in Uttarakhand, government today expressed readiness to discuss all issues, including the use of Article 356, and appealed to Opposition parties to allow Parliament to function.

"Government has no problem in discussing the Uttarakhand issue. The only problem is that the Supreme Court is hearing the case. The matter is sub-judice. It has never been the practice to discuss such a matter in the House. As far as the issue of Article 356 is concerned, there can be an opportunity because the Presidential proclamation has been placed on the table of the House.

"The Presiding Officer of the House will take a call on when to discuss it. Why such noisy scenes are being created? I am not able to understand it. Lok Sabha is functioning but Rajya Sabha is not functioning at all. It is giving a wrong message," Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.

Naidu's assertion is significant amid indications that the government has decided to take rivals head-on on the issue, citing instances of states being placed under central rule when Congress, Janata Party and United Front were in power.

On a day when BJP used the conviction of Italian officials linked to the VVIP chopper scam to target Congress and asked the then Defence Minister A K Antony to name the party leaders allegedly involved in the scandal, Naidu said the government is ready to discuss all issues, including the VVIP chopper deal.

"A notice has been received to discuss the AgustaWestland helicopter scam and some other issues. Government is ready to discuss each and every issue. We have nothing to hide. Please allow the Parliament to function," the minister said.

Naidu hoped that Opposition parties, particularly Congress and the Left, realise that "this (disrupting House) is not going to help the system or the people. There are lot of other issues, including demands for grants of various ministries, which are to be discussed. Otherwise there will be guillotine. That is in nobody's interest.

"We are discussing so many other subjects. If you obstruct Parliament not allow Parliament to function, the casualty will be people's interest," he said.

Refusing to be drawn into the details of the AgustaWestland issue, Naidu said as the Parliamentary Affairs Minister he was only interested in the House discussing issue and "the government has no problem in accepting discussion on any issue".
has returned another 49 migrants to Turkey under a controversial EU-Turkey deal to reduce the influx, a police source said, three weeks after the first deportations.

The latest expulsions came as tensions flared at a migrants' camp on the Greek island of Lesbos during a visit by Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas.

Read more from our special coverage on "GREECE" Greece negotiation plan good distance away: Christine Lagarde to Alexis Tripras

A government source yesterday said that a "misunderstanding" triggered a disturbance at the Moria camp on Lesbos, one of several Greek islands that have seen a massive influx of migrants setting sail from nearby Turkey.

The unaccompanied minors section of the camp was particularly affected by the unrest, the source said.

Images posted on Twitter showed burning rubbish and parts of the camp being evacuated. Other posts suggested that a police officer had struck a young male in the camp, although this could not immediately be verified.

The Moria camp became a closed detention camp when the EU-Turkey deal came into force on March 20. Around 3,000 people are currently being held there awaiting news of their fate.

"They are anxious and frustrated, not knowing what is going to happen to them," said Boris Cheshirkov, spokesman for the UN refugee agency on Lesbos.

"Tension has risen in the camp in recent days, with a surge in violence," he said, adding that the unrest had calmed down by the afternoon.

Under the EU deal, migrants who do not qualify for asylum face deportation back to Turkey.

Two sets of deportations expelling some 325 migrants from took place three weeks ago, mostly from Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The 49 sent back yesterday -- taken from the islands of Kos, Lesbos and Chios to the Turkish ports of Dikili and Cesme -- included 18 Bangladeshis and 12 Afghans.

The group, who were accompanied by officers from EU border agency Frontex, also included nine people from Myanmar, five Iranians, four Pakistanis and a Jordanian.

Critics have accused the EU of sacrificing its values and overlooking Turkey's growing crackdown on free speech in order to secure the deal, which will see Turkey receive billions of euros in aid, visa-free travel for its citizens, and accelerated talks on its EU membership bid.

The deal has already sharply reduced the number of people crossing from Turkey to Greece, though the Organisation for Migration last week warned that the numbers are "once again ticking up".
Rajasthan Governor Kalyan Singh today appealed to doctors to treat poor patients for free if needed.

Addressing the 3rd convocation of the Rajasthan University of Health Sciences, during which he conferred degrees to students, he said, "Do not forget empathy. This profession has high regard in the society and doctors are next to the God for patients. Be associated with social and moral values and ethics in your profession."



The Governor suggested the VC of the University to make arrangements for medical students to visit rural areas to understand the needs of patients and their problems.

"In your profession, you will come across such patients who are poor and cannot pay fee. Though the number of such patients may not be high, but you should treat them for free. Whenever you find an opportunity to help such patients, do it," he said.

He also noted that of the 8 gold medallists, 6 were female candidates and congratulated them. He said that boys should also try to excel.

The Governor conferred degrees of DM, Mch, Phd, MD/MS, PG diplomas, M Sc (medical), MBBS in the presence of vice chancellor of the university.
The Kerala High Court Tuesday granted permission to Muslim girls to wear hijab, a customary religious dress, for the All India Pre-Medical Test-2016 but on condition that they should be present at the hall half an hour before the exam for frisking if necessary.

The order was issued by Justice Muhammed Mushtaq while hearing a writ petition by one Amnah Bint Basheer challenging the dress code prescribed for the candidates by CBSE in the bulletin relating to conduct of AIPMET-2016.

The judge allowed the plea on condition that the girls shall be present at the hall half an hour before the exam and, if required, the invigilator can search the body.

The petitioner contended that the instructions contained in the AIPMET-2016 bulletin regarding dress code, as per her religious beliefs and practises, would amount to violative of exercise of religious freedom.

The court issued directions to CBSE to permit Muslim girl students to wear for attending the AIPMET. Last year, a single Judge of the Kerala High Court had allowed two Muslim girl students to wear while appearing for the CBSE AIPMT-2015.
The Allahabad High Court today sought to know from Uttar Pradesh government as to what steps were being taken for ensuring foolproof security arrangements at the High Court here, its Bench at Lucknow and lower courts across the state in the backdrop of the recent incident in Varanasi where a hand grenade was found outside a court room. A special seven judges' bench, headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, which has been reviewing security in courts across the state for some time, asked the state government to file its reply by the next date of hearing on May 6. The court also pulled up the Chief Secretary, who had appeared in person in pursuance of the previous order dated April 7, for stating in his affidavit that the post of Principal Secretary (Law) has been lying vacant for long on account of "several letters and reminders by the state government to the High Court" remaining unanswered.

The court admonished the Chief Secretary, pointing out that as per records, the response to a letter from the state government suggesting names of judicial officers for the aforesaid posts was received by the top bureaucrat himself who had also made his endorsements on the note.

The court also issued notices to the Kanpur Bar Association and the SSP of Kanpur Nagar seeking replies on the incidents of April 4 last when a group of lawyers had gone on the rampage inside the district court and vandalized chambers of a number of judicial officers, including the district judge.
"Harry Potter" star Daniel Radcliffe says he is glad Hollywood is talking about gender inequality more than ever now.

The debate surrounding differing pay for actors and actresses hit headlines following the leak of Sony emails back in 2014 which revealed the female stars of American Hustle were on a seven per cent pay deal, while their male co-stars were on a nine per cent deal.

Jennifer Lawrence, who appeared in the film, and pal Lena Dunham have since spoken out about the lack of equality in Hollywood, but Radcliffe admits he had been unaware of the issue until the email leak, reported Daily Telegraph.

"It is nuts to me. I'm incredibly glad it (gender equality) has come up because I had just naively thought this was not an issue any more because how can this still be happening?



"It's crazy. It is definitely the time for our industry to step up. Especially if we want to pride ourselves on being a liberal, progressive industry then you can't be doing that."



Radcliffe, 26, added he finds it baffling that "American Hustle" bosses had made a decision to pay the film's stars unequally.

"What I found shocking about the whole 'American Hustle' thing, and please correct me if Im' wrong - but if I have this right, they had all the boys on one deal and all the girls on another deal," he said.

"That, to me, is shocking... Stuff like that is crazy and the thing I can't help but think is 'Who? Who's doing that? What guy is sitting in a studio somewhere thinking let's keep the girls out of some money'?"



The actor said there are amazing actresses in the world right now and the film industry needs to write better troles for them and pay them well too.
Hong Kong's Beijing-friendly leader warned today the city will lose investment and job opportunities if residents continue to seek independence, painting a bleak economic picture of the former British colony without Chinese support.

Unpopular leader Leung Chun-ying's remarks come as political divisions in the semi-autonomous city widen, with young campaigners pushing for self-determination or outright independence from China.

Hong Kong is self-governing and retains many freedoms not seen on the mainland, but Beijing sees the concept of eventual independence as unthinkable.

"The city's seven million residents would bear the political and economic consequences with those pushing for independence or self-determination," Leung told reporters at the government's headquarters.

"Investors would lose confidence in Hong Kong. People would lose opportunities to develop and to obtain employment," he said.

"Hong Kong would lose the trust and the support of Chinese authorities," Leung, elected in 2012 by a 1,200-strong committee packed with members of pro-Beijing elites, said.

Last month saw the launch of multiple political parties pushing for independence or self-determination.

Student leaders behind the city's 2014 mass pro-democracy rallies have launched Demosisto, a party campaigning for a referendum to decide the city's future.

And the newly-formed pro-independence Hong Kong National Party, made up of 30 to 50 students and young professionals, said independence was the only path of survival for the city.

Chinese media called on the government to take action against the movement.

"The Hong Kong government cannot continue to be tolerant," an editorial in the overseas edition of the People's Daily said on Saturday, warning the movement had brought the city to a "dangerous" place.

The city's government said it was looking into the issue.

"Advocating independence of Hong Kong is totally contrary ... To the legal status of Hong Kong," secretary for justice Rimsky Yuen said on Saturday.

Hong Kong's freedoms are protected by a 50-year agreement signed when Britain handed the city back to China in 1997.

The British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond dismissed calls for independence or a referendum during a trip to the city early this month.
Huge cache of arms and explosives belonging to a militant groups were recovered today in the South Garo Hills and East Jaintian Hills district during twin raids, police said.

The arms and ammunition seizure at South Garo Hills were suspected to belong to little known militant group United People's Revolutionary Alliance (UPRA), police said.

Acting on a tip-off a commando team launched a Counter-Insurgency operation in the early hours today and recovered the items from Khalu-Rongcheng area along the South Garo Hills - West Khasi Hills Border, police spokesman GHP Raju said.

The seized items included country-made arms, ammunition, VHF sets, documents and some other materials, he said.

An SRL Rifle, three .303 sniper riffles, an AK Magazine, two SLR Magazine, two .303 Magazines, three Chinese grenades, seven VHF Sets, 52live AK ammo, a letter-pad of the United People's Revolutionary Alliance and some other documents including medicines were among the weapons and materials seized, Raju said.

The recoveries were made following the arrest of former ANVC-B militant identified as Tengrak K Sangma and subsequent recovery of an AK 47 rifle, two SBBL guns, 2 AK magazines and 36 live ammunition from the same area recently.

The materials are suspected to be hidden by militants with the motive of either selling them to other militant groups or using them for committing crimes later, the spokesman said.

In another raid, huge consignment of explosives and electrical detonators were today recovered from an abandoned coal mine in East Jaintia Hills District, he said.

The district police conducted a raid at Umthe areas under Sutnga Elaka and seized huge cache of explosives and electrical detonators from a labour camp located near the abandoned coal mine, Raju said.

A total of 98 gelatin sticks and 703 electric detonators were recovered and seized during raid, he said.
Import of rose 26 per cent to 5.79 million tonnes (mt) last financial year to meet rising domestic demand, Parliament was informed on Tuesday. India had imported 4.58 mt during 2014-15.

"There has been a gap between the demand and supply of in the country during the last year and the current year as the domestic demand for is higher than the domestic production," Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

The production of pulses is estimated to have risen to 17.33 MT in 2015-16, as against 17.15 MT in the previous year.

According to data, the gap between demand and supply was 0.8 MT in 2015-16. The demand was estimated at 23.66 MT as against the total availability of 22.86 MT.

"The shortfall in domestic production has been due to adverse weather conditions and the rise in demand on account of rise in population, rise in per capita income and change in food habits among others," Paswan said.

"Black-marketing/hoarding has also put pressure on prices of pulses," he said.

In order to check the rise in prices of pulses as well as protect the interest of farmers, Paswan said the government has initiated Price Support Scheme.

The minimum support price (MSP) of pulses has also been increased to encourage farmers to grow more pulses. Further, a buffer stock of pulses has been built with support from Price Stabilisation Fund (PSF) both through domestic procurement directly from farmers as well as imports.

"All these initiatives will increase availability of pulses, thereby stabilising their prices," he added.
Asserting that automobiles and wines continue to be the sticking points in the long-stalled negotiations for the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) with India, the European Union (EU) on Tuesday said the two sides should restart talks only after they have "something meaningful" to deliberate upon.

"We cannot allow ourselves to go back to the negotiating table and not being able to bring some real progress into this process. So it is better if necessary to keep on preparing on a more backstage level so that when we sit in front of each other, we have something meaningful to deliver," Daniel Rosario, spokesperson trade, director-general communication  European Commission, told visiting Indian journalists here.

He said it does not make sense to raise expectations if both the sides are not able to deliver.

Read more from our special coverage on "FTA"

Both the sides needs to ensure that when they sit together, "we have something to move ahead," he said.

Asked about Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's letter to EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom seeking from her dates for chief negotiators to meet, Rosario said, "we are preparing the answer".

"For the EU and the European Commission, India is and remains an important partner and also when it comes to the trade policy we were engaged for a long period of time with India in negotiations for a free trade agreement but unfortunately the process came to a standstill a few years ago and since 2013 there was no further movement in this process," he added.

At the India-EU Summit in March, for which Prime Minister Narendra Modi travelled to Brussels, both sides failed to make the much-awaited announcement on resumption of long stalled negotiations for a free trade agreement as many bottlenecks still remain.

Asked which sectors were the sticking points for the EU in the negotiations, Rosario pointed out that it was mainly the car and car parts and the wine and spirits sector.

Expressing disappointment and concern over the EU banning sale of around 700 pharmaceutical products clinically tested by GVK Biosciences, India had deferred the talks with the 28-member bloc in August last year.

On the issue, he said India's decision to defer the talks was "not justified".

"For us this (the ban) was a step that was not really justified back at the time and we explained it why. But that is something that we will need to sort out during this process but we cannot simply ignore all the work that has been done so far," he added.

He said the GVK decision "has nothing to do with the negotiations of the trade agreement".

"It never had a link it, doesn't have a link. It was a decision taken by the EU regulators on its own merits and the decision we respect and we don't see any link whatsoever with the negotiation of the trade agreement," he said.

"What we expect again is that fortunately we are happy to see our chief negotiators were able to meet again, since then other technical meetings were held, summit was an important moment for both sides to show their commitment in reengaging in this process, lets take it from there," he added.

On the automobile sector, he argued that the EU exporters face duties of up to 100%.

"We proposed the elimination of these tariffs on both sides and at the same time acknowledging that this poses a challenge to the Indian side as well. And then we suggested long-transitional period of elimination or even going as far as asymmetric elimination of these duties in favour of India," Rosario said.

He said that the same goes for wine and spirits where the European exporters face duties of up to 150% and the proposals made in 2013 were for a gradual if not complete elimination of these duties again taking account of the Indian sensitivities.

Rosario also stated that it was not possible yet to establish the exact format for this followup of the talks but stressed that they were working on it and contacts were ongoing between the two sides to see when and how it can be done.

"The point being that there is no point meeting for the sake of meeting. If we are going to meet, let's turn these meetings into something meaningful and into something deliverable. Because the expectations are high on both sides among our stakeholders, specially after all these years of standstill," he said.

He added that it was not the EU that last year suspended attempts of moving the talks forward.

"So you have to be able to deliver in the end a deal that is both ambitious but at the same time takes into account what are the interests of both sides. I will not go into too many detail on how these ambitions and caution will be translated but we know what are the outstanding points raised by both sides," he said.

Allaying concerns over pharmaceuticals sector, he said the pact will not undermine India's right to produce generic drugs for domestic and foreign consumption.

He said that it was known on what sides the EU would like to see India move in order to translate the willingness into something more palpable for both sides and for those who are waiting for an outcome of those negotiations.

"We always try to take into account the sensitivity of our partners. The EU is used to negotiating with different type of partners," Rosario said.
The Arizona Trail, completed in 2011, winds 800 miles from the states northern line to the Arizona-Mexico border. While parts near Flagstaff are generally well signed and easy to follow, many of the trails more remote stretches are so overgrown by vegetation that the path nearly disappears.

There were a couple places where its just hard to find. Its not really hard to navigate, its just that maybe its covered with grass so we had to spend time figuring out where it actually went, said Carl Brown, a resident of southern California who hiked the entire trail last fall. He recalled hiking through thorny wild raspberry and acacia that reached 6 feet high in some places.

The Arizona Trail Association is hoping that a new program will provide a way for hikers themselves to prune some of the most egregious trail-blocking plants as they traverse the state.

People who sign up for the Remote Trail Maintenance Task Force will be mailed a pair of pruning shears or a pro hand saw as well as a pair of work gloves. They will also receive a guide on pruning and cutting vegetation encroaching on the trail corridor.

When theyre done with the trail, they can keep the gloves and mail the tool back to the ATA for reuse by another hiker.

The goal is to have hundreds of people helping out a little bit as they make their way along the trail, said Matthew Nelson, executive director of the Arizona Trail Association.

Its more of a snip and go, Nelson said. He also described it as a critical mass approach.

If we could get the majority of people who are hiking or biking with a tool and information about how to trim, it will really help us keep remote areas in good condition, he said.

Theres also a hope that the task force will appeal to another segment of hikers.

Its engaging hopefully a new group of volunteers as opposed to somebody committed to helping out a few weekends a year long-term, Nelson said.

Because plants must be trimmed every year, a constant stream of people that prune along the way help tremendously, he said.

So far, the association has mailed out tools to 22 hikers, the majority of whom have already started their trip. Deep into the Mazatzal Wilderness Area and the Superstition Mountains are places where it tends to get most overgrown -- the biggest problem plants are acacia and locus, Nelson said.

Brian Stultz, who is an experienced backcountry hiker, said he got lost through the Mazatzal mountains when he completed the trail last spring.

You'll be hiking along and next thing you know the trail is like gone, he said.

While both Stultz and Brown said they liked the idea of the remote trail maintenance task force, they werent sure whether they would have volunteered to take a tool along with them on the trail. They thought the concept might be more appealing to people hiking sections of the trail, which Nelson said is another promising demographic for the program.

In addition to the new trail maintenance task force, the association also has a trail steward program in which people adopt sections of the trail and maintain them every few months. However, more remote lengths that are far from access points seldom see maintenance, Nelson said. He also noted that many times trail maintenance efforts are focused on bigger issues like erosion or dead trees that have fallen across the trail and may not address plants creeping onto the trail.

The fact the trail is still under the radar for most people means that it doesnt get a lot of foot traffic, which would help clear the way, Brown added.

But the trail is gaining in popularity with through-hikers. Nelson estimated that 70 people will hike the northbound route this spring, which is double the number that made the trek last year.

He attributed the increase to films like Wild and A Walk in the Woods, which are raising awareness about long-distance hiking. Compared to longer routes like the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail, which are multi-month endeavors, the Arizona Trails 800 miles are more manageable and can be completed in a couple of months, he said.

Nelson also emphasized that another goal of the new remote trail maintenance program is broader and, it is hoped, more long-lasting.

Its about helping to educate people that trails don't just happen, they aren't just maintained, he said. It takes a concerted effort from every individual who uses the trail to keep it open and accessible, and people dont realize that. Once they participate in trail maintenance and see how labor-intensive it is, they say, Now I get it.

Added Nelson: Were trying to educate and inspire generations of trail stewards.
Vice President Hamid Ansari, who has often flagged issues relating to pluralism, today said India's experience of a large Muslim minority living in secular polity having a composite culture could be a model for others to emulate.

"The Indian experience of a large Muslim minority living in secular polity having a composite culture could even be a model for others to emulate," he said.

Quoting Algerian-French philosopher Mohammed Arkoun, the Vice President said "it was the challenge of our times to rethink modernity" so that, critical thought, anchored in modernity but criticising modernity itself and contributing to its enrichment through recourse to the Islamic example could open up a new era in social movements.

Ansari also suggested that thinking minds should look beyond questions of identity and dignity in a defensive mode and explore how both can be furthered in a changing India and a changing world.

He was speaking at a function to releasing the book 'Fikr' brought out by National Institute of Faith Leadership.

Ansari said the book is an effort to remove the popular and prejudiced impressions about Islam as a faith and Muslims as a people.

He said that he felt that there is a crying need to look at the unexplored or inadequately explored requirements of all segments of the community particularly women, youth, and non-elite sections who together constitute the overwhelming majority and remain trapped in a "vicious circle of a culturally defensive posture that hinders self advancement and well-being."



"This would necessitate sustained and candid interaction with fellow citizens without a syndrome of superiority or inferiority and can be fruitful only in the actual implementation of the principles of justice, equality and fraternity inscribed in the Preamble of the Constitution and the totality of fundamental rights," he said.

Lauding the National Institute of Faith Leadership, Ansari said it has undertaken this, to reiterate traditional values which are of contemporary relevance and reposition them in a secular, plural and national context.

"It seeks to mould the students-clerics and scholars into faith leaders of tomorrow by providing them with the required guidance, tools and technology. The aim is to celebrate Islam, rooted in its core values and expressing them in their inherent flexibility, progression, reception and interaction," he said.

Stating that libraries continue to play a central role



in providing open and free access to information and ideas, the Vice President said explosion of information now being produced in digital format has dramatically changed expectations about the production as well as the use of knowledge.

"By providing equitable and affordable access to knowledge and information to larger numbers in society, they can allow a larger proportion of society to participate in the knowledge driven growth," he said.

"Social networks and social media have become more important in people's learning strategies. Changing paradigms of knowledge production, expanding sources and modes of dissemination, faster and broader accessibility to a growing range of information - also have the ring of opportunity," he said.

Libraries must transform and avail these opportunities to remain vital forces of knowledge dissemination in the years ahead, Ansari added.

"We are living in the information age and this implies that the main sector of economic productivity is changing from agriculture and manufacturing to creation and processing of information and knowledge", he said.

The Vice President also pointed out that in the present context libraries have the obligation to act as equalisers.
The Indian private defence industry is divided over the issue of the government's proposed "strategic partnership" agreement with entities in critical projects, with some big players batting for it while others pushing to delay it by at least five years.

The differences came out during a meeting of representatives from various industry chambers and Defence Minister Minister Manohar Parrikar last evening.

Parrikar had met members from CII, FICCI, ASSOCHAM and PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, besides small and medium defence enterprises' grouping Defence Innovators and Industry Association (DIIA), to take their views on the partnership agreement that the government plans to enter into with private firms in critical defence projects like manufacturing of submarines and fighter planes.

Defence sources said the meeting went off "very well" and it was "very positive".

The minister was of the view that since it was only the first meeting, more meetings would be required over the next two months before some sort of decision is firmed up.

Parrikar will now meet individual companies, sector- wise over the next few weeks and try to allay any apprehensions and get fresh inputs.

Industry sources said the minister was "very keen" to get the feedback and has told them to give strong arguments for or against the strategic partnership.

The sources said Parrikar was of the view that he will do what is needed in the interest of the country.

They said two companies wanted strategic partnership to be pushed fast especially in two critical sectors.

However, some were of the view that the whole process should be pushed back by five years so that Indian companies are able to understand and bring out their core strength and stop creation of any monopoly.

"There are so many Indian companies that are rearing to go. If we limit specific projects to only a handful of companies, nobody would even try to get into that sector because strategic partnership would be for 20 years. It can be done in acutely critical projects but rest should be delayed by at least five year," a source said.

The feeling among several private industry players is that only the big firms will benefit out of this move.

However, many large firms are not open to the idea since they feel they would be restricted to just specific fields and, therefore, their overall investment and plans will get affected.

The issue of a consortium approach to big defence projects was also discussed, sources said, adding, the majority view was to give the newly introduced IDDM (indigenously designed, developed and manufactured) norm in the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) time to materialise.

Captain (Retd) Amrinder Singh, a member of the



Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, had recently written to Parrikar against the proposed step saying this would only lead to "crony capitalism".

At the recently held Defexpo in Goa, various industry leaders had expressed their reservation against the move to create strategic partnership.

Industrialist Anil Ambani, who is eyeing the defence sector through his newly set up Reliance Defence, had welcomed the concept of strategic partners, but said, there needs to be competition in inter and intra segments.

The big players are concerned over a clause that would restrict one company each to the ten broad areas of manufacturing like warships, land systems and submarines.

This means if one company goes into a strategic partnership for projects like submarines, it cannot go in for surface projects like making ships.

A top executive of another defence firm had left everyone surprised with his strong remarks against the concept of strategic partnership.

His argument was that "strategic partnership will lead to a new caste system within the defence sector" and only few companies will benefit.

Former DRDO chief V K Aatre had earlier this year submitted a report to the Defence Ministry recommending guidelines for selecting domestic private firms for strategic partnership.

The Aatre Committee was set up by Parrikar following recommendation by the Dhirendra Singh Committee, which had come out with a report detailing the changes needed for the new Defence Procurement Procedure.

The committee had recommended that for 'Make in India' initiative to become wider in the defence sector, the government should adopt a strategic partnership model, whereby a private firm is chosen for the development of a specific identified platform.
A 28-year-old prisoner lodged in a high-security British jail has topped his class in a Masters course in criminology at the elite Cambridge University.

Gareth, whose last name and details are being withheld by the UK's Ministry of Justice, was one of the 22 inmates at Her Majesty's Prison (HMP) Grendon in Buckinghamshire, south-east England.

He studied alongside nearly a dozen criminology students at Cambridge in one of their Master of Philosophy modules.

Gareth, who is five years into his sentence, is serving an undisclosed prison term, The Times reported.

"What makes Gareth great is his eloquence, his passion for social justice issues, his high capacity to process and probe complex ideas... And his deep humanity and humility. He loves ideas, was ready to challenge himself and put in the hard work necessary," Dr Amy Ludlow, law lecturer at Gonville and Caius College, and Ruth Armstrong, research associate at St John's College of the university, told the newspaper.

The inmate described the eight-week course as "transformational".

"Talking to Cambridge students was very different to talking to other prisoners. Prison means that you are isolated from the rest of the world not just physically, but socially too. But we had more in common than I thought we would. Then I found I could grasp theories and models quickly and keep them in my head. I did work hard. I always did my pre-reading and was known as diligent," he said.

Gareth now hopes to complete his MPhil at Pembroke College, Cambridge, when he finishes his sentence, the time- frame for which is not being revealed. He has been made a conditional offer and has had two papers accepted by academic journals, to be published next month.

Gareth will secure his place at Pembroke if he obtains a first in the Open University degree in social science for which he is now studying.

HMP Grendon is referred to as a "therapeutic" prison, the only one of its kind in Europe. Inmates apply to go there from elsewhere in the UK prison system and undergo intensive psychotherapy as part of their sentence.

The distance learning project was designed to offer high- end education in the prison and enable Cambridge University students to leave the campus and gain a deeper understanding of the UK criminal justice system and those who commit crime. It was structured and organised by Dr Ludlow.
Iranian state TV is reporting that the country's foreign ministry has summoned Switzerland's ambassador to Tehran over a recent ruling by the US Supreme Court against Iran.

The report aired today says the Swiss ambassador was summoned over a US Supreme Court decision to permit the families of victims of a 1983 bombing in Lebanon and other attacks linked to Iran to collect nearly USD 2 billion of frozen funds from Iran.

Iran and the US have not had diplomatic relations since 1979, when Iranian students stormed the embassy and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The Swiss diplomat was summoned to convey Iran's protest to the Americans.

Iran said the US court decision violated international obligations between the two countries, such as a 1955 economic treaty.
Some of the crucial equipment used by Islamic State to assemble deadly Improvised Explosive Devices were manufactured by seven Indian companies, according to an investigation report by independent group 'Conflict Armament Research', Lok Sabha was informed today.

Responding to a question, Minister of State for Home Affairs Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said, "All such components documented by CAR were legally exported from India to business entities in Lebanon and Turkey.

He said, "As per CAR reports, there is no evidence to suggest any direct transfer of goods to IS forces by the countries and companies mentioned in the report."



Chaudhary said, the 'Conflict Armament Research', claiming to be an independent organisation mandated by European Union to investigate the supply of weapons into the areas of armed conflicts, released an online document titled "tracing the supply of component used in Islamic State (IS) IED".

He said, "The CAR examined nearly 700 components used by IS to manufacture IEDs between 2014 to February 2016. The report indicates that some of the components procured by the IS operatives included detonators, detonating cards and safety fuses, which, in addition to other countries, were also supplied by seven Indian companies.
The dreaded Islamic State terror group will attempt more sensational attacks on minorities and foreigners in Bangladesh to gain the support of local extremists in the Muslim-majority country as part of its global expansion plan, US-based intelligence assessment company Stratfor said in a report today.

In the latest edition of its magazine, Dabiq, the head of Islamic State operations in Bangladesh, Sheikh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif, discussed the group's "goals" for Bangladesh.

Quoting al-Hanif, the report said, "Bangladesh is strategically important for several reasons as it provides a location from which to expand future operations into eastern India and Myanmar."



"The group has carried out some small attacks in Bangladesh, but it wants to conduct a large attack to boost its credentials among local jihadists and promote the interests of the larger organisation," the report said.

As has been the case elsewhere, however, established jihadist groups in Bangladesh pose a challenge to the Islamic State's ambitions, it said.

In the interview that appeared in the April 13 edition of Dabiq, al-Hanif listed a range of potential targets, including some the group has already hit in Bangladesh: Christian missionaries, Hindu figures, Shiites and foreigners in general, according to the report.

"In a sign of things to come, he indicated that the group intends to also target the military and other radical Islamist groups," it said.

Bangladeshi nationals and foreign extremists of Bangladeshi descent fighting in Iraq and Syria will provide the Islamic State with skilled bombmakers and operational planners in Bangladesh, it said.

However, it also said that more established jihadist groups in the country will fight back against the Islamic State's "power grab".

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the gruesome April 23 murder of English professor Rezaul Karim Siddique, who was hacked to death at a bus stop in northwest Bangladesh.

Since September 2015, the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for eight attacks in Bangladesh.

There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months especially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners.

Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home.

In February, a head priest was killed at a Hindu temple in an area bordering India, the first attack by the ISIS targeting the community.
Islamic in the Philippines have beheaded a Canadian hostage, sparking fears for more than 20 they are holding on remote islands, with security forces vowing today to hunt down the extremists.

The man's head was found yesterday dumped outside city hall on Jolo, a mountainous and jungle-clad island in the far south of the Philippines that is a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf Islamist group.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Filipino authorities identified the victim as John Ridsdel, a retiree in his late 60s who was kidnapped seven months ago from aboard a yacht, along with another Canadian man, a Norwegian and a Filipina woman.

"This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau said in Ottawa.

The four were abducted at a marina near the major city of Davao, more than 500 kilometres from Jolo, as part of a wave of abductions by the Abu Sayyaf, a loose network of who for more than two decades have run a lucrative kidnapping- for-ransom business.

The other three were fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Hall's girlfriend Marites Flor, and Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad.

Six weeks after the abduction, gunmen released a video of their hostages held in a jungle setting, demanding the equivalent of $21 million each for the safe release of the three foreigners.

The men were forced to beg for their lives on camera, and similar videos posted over several months showed the hostages looking increasingly frail.

In the most recent video, Ridsdel said his captors would kill him on April 25 if a ransom of $6.4 million was not paid.

Hours after the deadline passed, police in the Philippines said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, which is about 1,000 kilometres from Manila.

Ridsdel, a former journalist, oil executive and sailing enthusiast, had moved to the Philippines to manage a gold mine prior to retiring.

Trudeau said Canada was working with the Philippines to pursue and prosecute the killers, and that efforts were under way to obtain the release of the other hostages.

In the Philippines, security forces said they were setting up checkpoints across Jolo in an effort to block the movements of the gunmen.

"There will be no let up in the determined efforts of the joint task group's intensive military and law enforcement operations to neutralise these lawless elements," said a statement released today by the national police and military forces.

However, Philippine security forces have made similar statements many times against the Abu Sayyaf and often failed to achieve their objectives.
Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front today condoled the death of Amanullah Khan, one of the founders of the separatist group that led a violent campaign for independent Kashmir, describing it as an "irreparable loss" to the ongoing "freedom struggle".

The 82-year-old leader was suffering from chronic lung disease for the last one year and breathed his last in a Rawalpindi hospital this morning, a JKLF spokesman said here.

He said the funeral prayers would be held at Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi tomorrow at 11 am and later his body will be laid to rest at his ancestral graveyard at Astor in Gilgit.

Khan is survived by daughter Asma Khan, who is married to separatist-turned-politician Sajjad Ghani Lone.

Asma had flown to Pakistan last week to attend to her ailing father. Lone, who is chairman of a Peoples Conference faction and minister in the PDP-led government in Jammu and Kashmir, is unlikely to attend the last rites, party sources said.

Expressing grief over the demise of the JKLF leader, moderate Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said, "Khan was a great nationalist leader and his passing away has left a deep void which is very hard to fill in the future."



General Secretary of hardline Hurriyat Conference, Shabir Ahmad Shah also expressed sorrow over the demise of "a great resistance leader".

"Khan rendered meritorious service for the cause of freedom and his services will be written in golden letters," he said.

A prominent Kashmiri leader, who was based in London before being deported to Pakistan in 1986, Khan was believed to have masterminded the killing of Ravindra Mhatre, the number two in the Indian Consulate in Birmingham in 1984.

Though Khan had set up JKLF in 1977, he was relegated to the background after militant groups established their dominance in Kashmir with a bloody campaign that began in the late 80s.

He has written two books Free Kashmir (English) and My Autobiography (in Urdu) and about three dozen booklets and pamphlets in English and Urdu highlighting different aspects of the Kashmir issue.

"Khan visited over 20 countries to lobby for the Kashmir cause including attending the UN General Assembly," the spokesman said.
Uttar Pradesh-based journalist Jagendra Singh, who was killed allegedly for his exposes on illegal sand mining and other misdemeanours, was today honoured posthumously with "RedInk Veer Patrakar Puraskar" by Mumbai Press Club here.

Singh's daughter Diksha Singh received the award on behalf of her father.

Singh used to run a Facebook page, Shahjahanpur Samachar, wherein he exposed the "corrupt" practices of an Uttar Pradesh minister. One of the issues taken up was illegal sand mining.

He was allegedly set on fire on June 1 last year by some local policemen and criminals for the expose. Singh had worked for Hindi language media for 15 years.

The UP government has claimed that the journalist had set himself on fire. A writ petition was filed by journalist Mudit Mathur from Lucknow, which is pending before the Supreme Court.

Besides Singh, 25 other journalists were awarded for their commendable work at the function.

T N Ninan, Chairman and Editorial Director of Business Standard, was bestowed upon the Lifetime Achievement award while NDTV India's senior Executive Editor Ravish Kumar got the 'journalist of the year' award.

The others winners included Gunjan Sharma (The Week), Pallava Bagla (NDTV), Aniruddha Ghosal (Indian Express) and Meher Ali (The Wire).

The Mumbai Press Club for the first time had included the 'start-up of the year' category. The award was won by thewire.In.

Maharashtra Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao was the chief guest on the occasion while Union minister Piyush Goyal the guest of honour.

A number of journalists and personalities from various fields attended the event.
Two crucial files relating to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose will be declassified by Japan this year-end, but the country has given no assurance regarding three more such files in its custody, government said today.

Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju told Lok Sabha that these five files, which are with Japan, could be "crucial" to resolve the mystery over the fate of Bose.

"Japan has conveyed to us that they will declassify two of the five files by the end of this year but no commitment has been given to the rest of the three files. But we are hopeful that they will declassify the remaining three files too," he said during Question Hour.

Rijiju said two files relating to Netaji which were with the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Home Affairs continue to be missing and efforts were on to trace them.

While the file, which was with the PMO, related to bringing back the ashes believed to be of Netaji from Renkoji temple in Japan to India and installation of his statue at Red Fort, the file which was with the MHA too related to the ashes, he said, adding efforts were on to find these two files.

Rijiju said India has approached a number of countries to retrieve any documents related to Netaji and they have responded to the requests.

While Austria, Russia and the United States have conveyed to the Indian government that they do not have any file or document relating to Netaji, the United Kingdom said that all 62 files under their possession were given to British Library and are available for public.

Germany too has said that the files relating to Netaji were archived after declassifying them, he said.

Rijiju said the first two inquiry commissions had suggested that Bose died in a plane crash in Taihoku (now Taipei) on August 18, 1945, but the Mukherjee commission had rejected the conclusions of the previous two inquiry commissions.

"We are not in a position to say actually what had happened to Netaji," he said.

The Minister said around 150 Netaji files have been declassified so far and were available online, while 25 more files each are being uploaded online every month.

In October last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met the family members of Netaji and announced that the government would declassify the files relating to the leader whose disappearance 70 years ago remains a mystery.

While two commissions of inquiry had concluded that Netaji had died in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945, a third probe panel, headed by Justice M K Mukherjee, had contested it and suggested that no such aircrash had taken place.
AIADMK supremo and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa today reeled out statistics to show how her announcements in the Tamil Nadu Assembly over new projects have progressed in several departments.

She gave information on the status of announcements related to revenue, information technology and labour departments in an AIADMK release here.

Her response comes in the wake continuous attacks by DMK chief Karunanidhi and treasurer M K Stalin that the announcements made in Assembly under Rule 110 (suo motu announcements) by Jayalalithaa were allegedly non-starters.

Stating that steps were being taken to procure hardware and software to provide Internet Protocol Television-IPTV, she said 70.52 lakh households have been provided cable TV connections at a cost of Rs 70 per month.

The connections were provided through TN Arasu Cable TV Corporation and each household was getting 90-100 television channels, she said.

Under the Farmers Protection Scheme, in the past five years, 37.68 lakh farmers have benefited and 58,719 farm ponds were set up. About 45 per cent of work has been completed at a cost of Rs 695 crore in the Rs 1,481 crore Coastal Disaster Risk Reduction Project (CDRRP).

As many as 34 new revenue taluks were created to cater to local needs in several districts, she added.

Students were being given certificates like community certificates right in their schools and 42.10 lakh students have benefited.

New government industrial training centres have been set up in five districts including Villupuram and 744 students were benefited, she said.
A mother-of-three in the UK who was funded by "jihadists" to take her children to strife-torn Syria has lost custody of her kids under a court order.

The family, who cannot be identified, were stopped at Birmingham Airport moments before boarding a plane for Germany.

Her mobile phone was found with so-called Islamic State images and pictures of masked children with guns, the BBC reported today.

After Leicester City Council brought care proceedings, the High Court ordered the youngsters live with their grandparents but with supervision.

The children's father is believed to have fled Britain in 2013 and is now in Chechnya with a terrorist group, Justice Keehan said.

Specialist officers from the Counter Terrorism Unit swooped on the family in July last year as they were about to leave for Munich.

The mother claimed they were heading off on holiday but a search of their nine cases found a travel itinerary to Turkey.

Hidden inside a pack of painkillers were telephone numbers including a suspected Islamic State militant based in Syria.

The family home appeared to have been abandoned and a search found a second mobile phone, which showed the mother had been in regular contact with a "prominent member" of IS.

Justice Keehan concluded that the mother lied "almost throughout the entirety of her evidence" and that links to Syria and IS had been proved.

He added that money the mother was found with "had come from jihadist supporters".

"The intention to cross into Syria was driven by religious ideology and placed the children at risk of suffering significant harm and probable radicalisation.

"That included the real possibility of the children being drawn into the war and being placed at risk of death", he said.

He said that it was understandable that the children wanted to live with their mother but that it was in their best interests they live with the grandparents.

They will be supervised by the council.

Justice Keehan's decision was made in January but has only just been published, the report said.

So far the numbers of women and girls travelling to join Islamic State from Britian are relatively low. Figures are not exact, but it is thought around 10 to 20 per cent of Europeans joining IS are women, with some 50 cases from the UK, according to media reports.
Amanullah Khan, one of the founders of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front that led a violent campaign for independent Kashmir, including the killing of an Indian diplomat in the UK in the mid-80s and hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Lahore, died today in Pakistan, which he made his home for three decades.

Khan, 80, died in a hospital in the garrison city of Rawalpindi after suffering health complications linked to a lung disease. He was hospitalised about three weeks ago.

A prominent Kashmiri leader, who was based in London before being deported to Pakistan in 1986, Khan was believed to have been the mastermind in the killing of Ravindra Mhatre, the number two in the Indian Consulate in Birmingham in 1984.

Mhatre was abducted and killed in an attempt to secure the release from prison of the group's founder Maqbool Bhat who was hanged to death in 1984 in Tihar jail.

In 1971, Bhat was accused of masterminding the hijacking of a passenger Airline to Lahore and the hijackers declared affiliation with JKLF under the leadership of Bhat. After arrest and release in Pakistan, Bhat sneaked into India where he was soon captured.

Though Khan had set up JKLF in 1977, he was relegated to the background after militant groups established their dominance in Kashmir with a bloody campaign that began in the late 80s.

Khan was born in Astore area of Kashmir's Gilgit region,



currently known as Gilgit-Baltistan.

His funeral prayer will be offered tomorrow in the historic Liaquat Bagh park of Rawalpindi. It is not clear where he will be buried.

Khan is survived by his only daughter Asma, who is married to a Kashmiri separatist leader Sajjad Ghani Lone.

So far his death has not been reported widely in the local media. There is also conspicuous silence as far as condolence messages on such occasion by Pakistani politicians are concerned.

It could be due to the fact that Khan was believed to be not in the good books of Pakistan for his refusal to follow the official policy on Kashmir.
For the first time, some 50,000 junior doctors today began an all-out strike across England to protest a new contract, with the government admitting that it was a "very bleak day" for the country's health service.

The all-out strike is the first in the history of the National Health Service (NHS) as the doctors have also withdrawn emergency services cover, which had been provided in the previous walkouts over the past few months.

UK health secretary Jeremy Hunt described it as a "very, very bleak day" for the NHS, one of Britain's most respected institutions which largely provides free medical care. But Hunt said no union had the right to stop a government trying to act on a manifesto promise.

"The reason this has happened is because the government has been unable to negotiate sensibly and reasonably with the BMA (British Medical Association)," he said.

NHS England said "military level" contingency planning had been carried out to protect urgent and emergency care.

Talks between the UK government and British Medical Association (BMA) broke down in January, prompting the government to announce in February that it would be imposing the new contract by force.

Currently junior doctors are paid more for working "anti-social hours" at night or at the weekend, but under the imposed new contract the Saturday day shift will be paid at a normal rate in return for a rise in basic pay.

The doctors have also warned that the new contract creates unsafe shift patterns as the existing number of doctors within the NHS will have to work extra and longer shifts, which would ultimately risk patient safety.

"No doctor wants to take any action. They want to be in work, treating patients, but by refusing to get back around the negotiating table the government has left them with no choice but to take short-term action to protect patient care in the long term," said BMA junior doctor leader Johann Malawana.

There is a wide public support for the strikers, with passers-by stopping to shake hands with picketing doctors and wishing them luck.

Further all-out strike action is due to take place tomorrow, between the same hours of 8 am and 5 pm local time.

Prime Minister David Cameron's government argues that reforms to junior doctors' contracts are necessary to ensure that the quality of care for patients is as high at weekends as it is during the week.
A key operative of terror outfit Indian Mujahideen (IM) was arrested today in connection with the July 2011 triple bomb blasts in the metropolis, Maharashtra ATS said.

Zainul Abedin, a resident of Bhatkal town in Karnataka, was apprehended by Anti-Terrorism Squad from the international airport here at around 5.30 am, Niket Kaushik, Inspector General (ATS), said at a press conference.

Sleuths from Kalachowki unit of ATS waited for him at the airport after receiving information he would be arriving from abroad, police said.

Abedin, the 11th accused to be held in the case, "is a key member of IM and his arrest will help in covering the conspiracy behind the blasts," said the officer.

Last year, the ATS had issued a red corner notice (RCN) against Abedin, who had been in touch with several key figures of the banned terror group, especially its founder Riyaz Bhatkat, police said.

They said Abedin was responsible for supplying explosives for terror operations of the home-grown outfit, blamed in the past for a string of terror attacks in various parts of the country.

Besides, Maharashtra ATS, Abedin was wanted by the anti-terror wings of Karnataka and Gujarat Police, and also NIA, police said.

Abedin was produced before a local court, which sent him in 10-day ATS custody, an ATS officer said.

Three co-ordinated bomb explosions rocked Opera House, Zaveri Bazaar and Dadar West areas of the metropolis on July 13, 2011, killing 26 people and injuring nearly 130 others.

(REOPENS BOM17)



Meanwhile, an ATS statement said Naquee Shaikh, Nadeem Shaikh, Kawalnayan Pathrija, Haroon Naik, Kafeel Ansari, Yasin Bhatkal, Asadulla Akhtar, Ajaz Shaikh, Sayed Lanka and Sadham Khan are the other accused arrested in 2011 triple blasts case.

During the course of probe of these accused, the role of Abedin was disclosed, it added.
The 108-carat famed Koh-i-Noor diamond cannot be brought back to Pakistan as it was handed over to the UK under the 'Treaty of Lahore' in 1849, provincial Punjab government today told the high court here.

"Maharaja Ranjeet Singh had inked the agreement with the East India Company in 1849 under which the precious diamond was given to the UK. Therefore, the UK government cannot be approached for return of the diamond," a law officer of the provincial government told the court during the hearing of a plea seeking direction for the Pakistan government to bring back Koh-i-Noor, which India has also been trying to get from the UK for years.

Petitioner Barrister Javed Iqbal Jaffrey, however, opposed the government's plea, arguing, "both governments were not authorised under the law of the land to sign such an agreement."



LHC Justice Khalid Mahmood Khan directed the government's counsel to submit a copy of the agreement between then Maharaja Ranjit Singh and the East India Company on the next hearing on May 2.

In his plea, Barrister Jaffrey has alleged that Britain had snatched the diamond from Daleep Singh, grandson of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh and took it to the United Kingdom.

"The diamond became part of the crown of incumbent Queen Elizabeth-II at the time of her crowing in 1953. Queen Elizabeth has no right on the Koh-i-Noor diamond, which weighs 105 carats and worth billions of rupees," he said.

He claimed that Koh-i-Noor diamond was "cultural heritage" of Punjab province and its citizens owned it in fact, it said and prayed to the court to direct the federal government to bring the diamond back to Pakistan from the British government.

The Indian Government had recently said that it will make all efforts to bring back the valued diamond, even as it had earlier told the Supreme Court that the diamond was neither stolen nor "forcibly" taken by British rulers but given to East India Company by erstwhile rulers of Punjab 167 years back as compensation for helping them in the Sikh wars.
The Kuwaiti emir met with Yemen's peace negotiators today and urged them to forge ahead with a peace agreement to end 13 months of war in the impoverished Arab nation.

A source close to the talks in Kuwait City meanwhile said the two sides finally approved a general framework for the talks and were set to start looking into the central issues.

More than 6,800 people have been killed and around 2.8 million displaced since a Saudi-led Arab coalition began operations in March 2015 against the Iran-backed Huthi Shiite rebels who have seized swathes of territory, including the capital Sanaa.

State-run KUNA agency said Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah met with the rebel and government delegations separately and also received UN special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, but provided no details.

"We heard from the emir of Kuwait clear assurances with regards to supporting the political process to reach a settlement," said Mohammed Abdulsalam, head of the Huthi delegation.

The emir warned that war can only lead to more devastation and bloodshed, Abdulsalam wrote on Facebook.

A source close to the government delegation said Sheikh Sabah "urged the two sides to reach a political settlement."



Following the meeting with the emir, a new session of talks was held, a UN spokesman told AFP.

The UN Security Council yesterday urged all sides in the negotiations to be constructive.

The 15-member council stressed the importance of agreeing on a "roadmap" to implement security measures including the withdrawal of heavy weapons.

Ould Cheikh Ahmed yesterday welcomed "tangible progress" to end hostilities in the war-torn country.

"Reports indicate real improvement in the situation which reflects the parties' commitment to the cessation of hostilities," he said in a statement at the end of the fifth day of negotiations.

The negotiations represent the best hope in months for a settlement to the conflict.

But since the delayed talks began on Thursday, the two delegations have been unable to reach a common understanding on how to firm up a ceasefire that went into effect on April 11.

The rebels have insisted that no ceasefire can be established without an end to coalition air strikes and sorties.
"Girls" star Lena Dunham was honoured at the Matrix Awards, which recognises accomplished women in the communications industry.

Bonnie Hammer, George Lucas, Katie Couric, Gloria Steinem and Jamie Gangel gathered to honour eight ladies, also including Mellody Hobson, Nancy Gibbs, Carol Hamilton, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

To kick off the ceremony, host Andy Cohen played a question-based Watch What Happens Live game with the New York Women in Communications luncheon's honorees.

He asked 29-year-old Dunham what she would do if she suddenly woke up one day as a man. She instantly responded with laughter: "Kill myself!"



In all seriousness, Dunham instinctively responded that way "because I feel so passionately to be doing the work of being female right now. I feel so lucky to be among these women and to be redefining what that means for us, to be continuing the work of Gloria [Steinem] and her peers, and to be looking ahead at what needs to be done to preserve rights that should already be intact, and to also carve out new areas that we never even imagined were possible for us," she explained during her acceptance speech.

The annual awards ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City presented 22 students with more than USD 136,000 in scholarships.
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is recruiting Pakistani youths for carrying out terrorist acts in India and training them in terror camps in Pakistan- occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Lok Sabha was informed today.

Terrorist training camps continue to function in Pakistan -occupied Jammu and Kashmir. As per reports, there are several terrorist training camps of LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Hizbul Mujahideen in PoK, Minister of State for Home Affairs Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said in response to a query.

"There are inputs that LeT is recruiting vulnerable Pakistani youths for carrying out terrorist acts in India and pushing such trained youths into Indian territory," the Minister said.

Chaudhary said the government has consistently emphasised the need for Pakistan to put an end to cross-border infiltration into India and terrorism, and dismantle the infrastructure of support to terrorism in that country on a permanent basis.

"In the joint statement of January 6, 2004, the Government of Pakistan assured India that it would not permit any territory under Pakistan's control to be used to support terrorism in any manner. India has consistently emphasised to Pakistan the need to implement its solemn assurances of January 6, 2004," he said.
Three Frenchmen went on trial in Luxembourg today accused of an "incredible" document leak that exposed huge tax breaks for major global companies, in an issue brought sharply into focus by the Panama Papers scandal.

Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet, two former employees at services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and French journalist Edouard Perrin face charges over the theft of thousands of confidential files in the so-called LuxLeaks scandal.

The opening of the trial brought an unusual intervention by France in fellow EU-member Luxembourg's legal affairs, with Finance Minister Michel Sapin saying that he "would like to offer (Deltour) all our solidarity."



Around 50 supporters shouted "Thank you, Antoine, thank you Antoine!" as the defendants arrived at the courtroom in Luxembourg for the start of the trial, which is expected to last until May 4.

If found guilty, they face jail terms of up to 10 years.

The eruption of the Luxleaks affair in November 2014 exposed "sweetheart" deals that saved firms including Apple, IKEA and Pepsi billions of dollars in taxes while European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was Luxembourg's prime minister.

A series of global outlets examined 28,000 pages of documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), revealing the full scale of the tax breaks won by 340 companies.

LuxLeaks was the biggest expose of its kind until this month's publication of the Panama Papers, which revealed links between a number of international leaders and offshore shell companies that can be used to hide or launder wealth.

Former auditor Deltour, 31, told the court today he "recognises the substance" of the facts of the case while Halet, 40, and Perrin, 45, both dispute the charges.

"I feel very calm, I acted in the public interest," Halet told AFP as he arrived for the trial.

Deltour is accused of stealing documents from the database of the accounting firm before he left in 2010, revealing business secrets, violation of professional secrets and money laundering.

The documents later became the basis of a 2012 story by Perrin on state-owned France 2 television but it stayed under the international radar until the LuxLeaks document dump.

Perrin is charged with being an accomplice in all the offences, while Halet -- who is accused of being behind a separate leak -- faces the same charges as Deltour.
Observing that moral values are more important than other values, the Madras High Court today directed the state government to take appropriate action on inclusion of 108 chapters of Tamil treatise Thirukkural in the curriculum of class VI-XII from next academic year.

Justice R Mahadevan of the court's Madurai bench was hearing a plea filed by retired government official S Rajarathinam, who sought a direction to government to reframe the syllabus from the next academic year so as to ensure that students studied all the 1330 couplets of Thirukkural.

Special government pleader informed the court that the syllabus is determined by a committee appointed by the government.

"If Thirukkural is taught with all its avenues and dimensions elaborately, students would be equipped with all the facets of life, the probable problems and the solutions. The couplets about friendship, hard work, good character, patience, tolerance and confidence will guide them through, even the most difficult of times. Thirukkural will give them the inner strength to withstand any storm," the judge said.

The judge, who allowed the petition, said various adaptations and stories are associated with Thirukkural in the form of 'Thirukkural kathaigal'.

"Therefore, it can be taught to the students without causing burden. Moral values are more important than other values. Once, the moral values are lost, it is only a matter of time before the person falls, despite possessing all other qualities, which may earn in name, fame, power and money."



"Therefore, this court commends that appropriate action must be taken by the government through the committee which decides the syllabus, considering the noble objective and the demanding situation and finalise syllabus for next academic year by including 108 chapters/adhigarams of Thirukkural (Arathupal and Porutpal) in curriculum of students between VI to XII standard, keeping in mind that the purpose of education must be to build a nation with moral values," the judge said.

"Once a policy is framed, then it is a matter of accommodation. If there is a will, there would be a way. It will be the greatest contribution to the society and to the language itself by the government," the court said.

According to the petitioner, in recent times, moral values have declined in society and need of the day is to inculcate moral values and ethics by way of education and one way of bringing about this change is by making them follow the principles in Thirukkural, authored by great saint Thiruvalluvar.
In view of the sky-rocketing prices of pulses, Maharashtra cabinet today approved the draft of 'Maharashtra Pulses Price Regulatory Act', whereby traders will have to sell the pulses at the government-approved prices for a period of six months after it comes into operation.

A jail term ranging from three months to one year or fine or both will be awarded to the traders, stockists, importers, middlemen, cooperative consumer societies, etc., who sell the pulses at a rate higher than the approved one.

Consumer Affairs Minister Girish Bapat said the prices of pulses will be regulated under the section 3 of Maharashtra Essential Commodities Act.

These prices will vary from place to place, and vary at different points of the production and supply, to account for transportation, labour and production costs, he said.

The proposed law makes it mandatory for the traders to give receipt of the pulses sold. Price will have to be mentioned on packed pulses.

"If any company, cooperative consumers' society or any organisation is found guilty, then its manger, secretary, middlemen, officer or any other person who has links with the management will be held responsible," Bapat said.

Police officials not below the rank of sub-inspector or any officer from the Food and Civil Supplies department or Rationing Inspector from Revenue Department shall have the power to undertake inspection of shops, godowns, etc., for enforcing the law.

The draft will be sent to the President of India for approval, and till then the state Government will promulgate an ordinance or will introduce the bill in the monsoon session of the state legislature, Bapat said.
Mahindra Lifespace Developers today reported 59 per cent increase in consolidated net profit to Rs 48.63 crore for the March quarter.

Its net profit stood at Rs 30.62 crore in the year-ago period, the real estate and infrastructure development business of the Mahindra Group said in a regulatory filing.

Income from operations rose marginally to Rs 266.29 crore during the January-March period of the 2015-16 fiscal, compared with Rs 259.11 crore in the same period of 2014-15.

For entire 2015-16, Mahindra Lifespace reported 65 per cent decline in its profit at Rs 93.09 crore as against Rs 266.20 crore in the previous fiscal.

Income from operations also fell to Rs 826.16 crore last fiscal from Rs 1,086.10 crore in 2014-15.

The company's Board has recommended a dividend of 60 per cent.

"Residential sales demonstrated strong q-o-q performance across projects, resulting in a 17 per cent growth in FY16 sales over the previous year.

"Execution performance was also strong during the quarter, resulting in a total of 0.3 million sq metre (3.3 mn sq ft) getting completed in FY16 as against 0.1 mn sq metre (1.2 mn sq ft) in FY15," said Anita Arjundas, MD and CEO, Mahindra Lifespace Developers.

"Our joint venture with Sumitomo Corporation, for a new industrial cluster in North Chennai, saw fruition during the quarter with a 40% stake being taken up by them. A recovery in economic indicators will help drive demand in both our business segments," she added.

Mahindra Lifespace Developers has presence across nine Indian cities - Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Jaipur, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

The company's residential and commercial development footprint includes over 1.20 million sq metre (12.94 million sq ft) of completed projects and over 0.88 million sq metre (9.44 million sq ft) of ongoing and forthcoming projects.

It has pioneered the concept of an integrated business city through 'Mahindra World City' developments in Chennai and Jaipur.
A massive fire broke out at Limited (BFL), a bio-diesel manufacturing unit in the Visakhapatnam Special Economic Zone (VSEZ), Duvvada area in the city, on Tuesday night, officials said.

No casualties were reported in the incident, they said.

Ltd has a manufacturing capacity of five lakh tonnes of bio-diesel from multi-feedstock at VSEZ. There are about 15 storage tanks and the blaze spread to the 11 of them.

"Eight fire engines reached the spot and two fire engines with chemical foam were requisitioned from HPCL and Eastern Naval Command to put off the fire," District Fire Officer J M Rao said.

The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained and the fire tenders were unable to reach the storage area, Rao said.

District Collector N Yuvaraj and other rushed to the spot and examined the operations.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
States like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have contributed nothing to implement the National Food Security Act but try to claim credit for the scheme, Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said today.

While the central government provides subsidised wheat and rice to the poor under the Act, there is no contribution of many states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to the scheme, he said in Lok Sabha during Question Hour.

Many state governments, including Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, have zero contribution to the scheme but try to claim credit for it, Paswan said.

If the price of a kilo of rice is Rs 30, the central government gives a subsidy of Rs 28 and the beneficiary has to pay just Rs 2, the Minister said.

However, all states have now implemented the Act, thus facilitating subsidised foodgrains to the beneficiaries through the Public Distribution System, he said.
With problems continuing in using the MCA21 portal, the Corporate Affairs Ministry might deduct payments to IT major Infosys, which expects the situation to be normal in the next few weeks.

Infosys, which is managing MCA21, has been facing flak from different quarters on the woes pertaining to the portal, which is used by stakeholders to make electronic filings under the Companies Act.

Sources said problems being faced in using the portal after its upgradation last month are being sorted out and would take some more time.

There are provisions for deducting payments that are due to Infosys with regard to managing the portal in case there are problems and the ministry might look at that also, sources added.

The system was upgraded to SAP platform and went live on March 27, and since then, there have been some glitches such as difficulty in uploading documents.

"We will continue to monitor the situation and work closely with the ministry. We expect the situation to come back to normal in the next few weeks," an Infosys spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement late Monday while responding to queries related to MCA21 problems.

To a query on whether the ministry has told the company that payment could be withheld if the problems in MCA21 are not resolved, the spokesperson said "it is speculative".

The continuing woes with regard to using MCA21 have attracted flak for Infosys from various quarters.

In reference to the MCA21 problems, a few days back, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant had tweeted that "as service provider Infosys has let down the country".

Infosys did not comment on Kant's remark.

Subsequent to the new Companies Act, it has upgraded the MCA21 system to run on the SAP platform.

"Post the go-live, as on April 22, over 1,183 Indian companies have been incorporated and 1,647 Limited Liability Partnerships have been registered on the system.

"In addition, since March 27, 2016, there have been more than two lakh filings. Looking at the data for the week gone by in 2015 during the same week, we have had an average of 8,013 filings per day (excluding the weekends) while the current average is around 9,759, an increase of more than 20 per cent," the company said on Monday.

Further, Infosys said that during the first couple of weeks, after migrating to the new system, there were some issues which by and large have been sorted out.

"There were some delays in the incorporation of some companies due to holidays. The ministry has made arrangements to clear the pendency by deploying additional Assessment Officers," it had said.

Against the backdrop of MCA21 glitches, the ministry has extended the deadline for submitting filings without additional fee till May 10.

We believe that these awards will ignite the spirit of



'making' in India and celebrate excellence in innovation. Through these awards, we aim to inculcate and foster an ecosystem of forward-thinking makers. Infosys intends to steadily empower and reward such makers in India across communities and organizations."



Congratulating the winners on their achievement, Vandana Sikka, Chairperson, Infosys Foundation USA said, "The Infy Maker Awards program celebrates the spirit of making that is innate to all of us. These awards seek to recognize and reward the creative excellence of makers throughout India whose ideas and solutions have the potential to address the various challenges facing our world today.

We believe that this initiative will spark thinking, ignite curiosity and fuel the spirit of innovation across the maker community in India. Building on the success of this awards program in the U.S., the Infy Maker Awards program in India is a reaffirmation of our commitment to contribute significantly to the larger global community and inspire the next generation of makers. The future is, and has always been, shaped by those who make."



In the first Indian edition, 20 winners were selected from more than 280 entries and more than 2,500 registrations. The winners were selected by a panel of distinguished judges representing technology, academia and the business community.

The jury, comprising Ms. Kiran Mazumder Shaw, Chairperson & Managing Director, Biocon; Ms. Rama Bijapurkar, Author; Mr. Mohandas Pai, Chairman, Aarin Capital Partners; and Mr. Pravin Rao, Chief Operating Officer, Infosys, evaluated and selected the winning entries that were relevant to real-world problems, used technology in an innovative way, displayed originality of ideas and brought forward quality presentations.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today sought the support of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in skill development of the youth.

She said the government is committed to creating an investor-friendly environment in the state and meeting the requirement of high-end venture firms in terms of skilled manpower and 'ease of doing business'.

"Our youth are tailor-made for entrepreneurship. There is a need though for an institutional linkup between CII, Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI), colleges, and the universities to harness this talent," she said.

The Chief Minister made these observations during an interaction with a CII delegation, headed by Rumjhum Chatterjee, who is the first Chairperson of CII's Northern Regional Council, at the Civil Secretariat.

The CM said employment avenues will grow if J&K is able to attract major investors. For this, she said, the government will make efforts in enhancing competitiveness.

"The CII must focus on orientation courses in colleges and universities on a much larger scale to bolster levels of awareness in entrepreneurship," she stated.

She expressed hopes that CII would also focus on harnessing the talent of young female entrepreneurs.

"I think floriculture, in which the state has a huge potential, can become starting point for CII," she said, adding the government will partner with CII in its endeavour.

The Chief Minister was briefed by Chatterjee about J&K emerging as a possible destination for start-ups.

The CII delegation also invited the Chief Minister to participate in conferences on Invest North and AgroTech, scheduled in September and November.

Chatterjee presented a copy of a proposal about easing bottlenecks so that business-friendly environment in the state is improved on 35 important parameters, where India lags as per a recently-published report of the World Bank.

Meanwhile, a delegation of Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI), Jammu, led by its President Rakesh Gupta, called on the Chief Minister this afternoon.

The delegation submitted a memorandum to her and apprised her about their demands relating to tourism, health and infrastructure projects.

This was the first meeting the Chief Minister had with



the Prime minister after the violence broke out in the valley on July 8.

Taking Pakistan head on, Mufti said "our Prime Minister took bold initiatives of inviting Nawaz Sharif for oath-taking ceremony and later flew to Lahore. This was unfortunately followed by the Pathankot terror attack.

"Lately, when the situation was bad and Pakistan was fuelling the ongoing crisis in Kashmir, our Home Minister Rajnath Singhji went to Lahore, but again, unfortunately, Pakistan let go this golden opportunity and did not extend the courtesy that needs to be given to a guest," she said.

Observing that the basis of the PDP-BJP alliance was on the foundations of Vajpayee's Kashmir policy and to carry forward from where it had stopped, she recalled the words of her father and former Chief Minster Mufti Mohammed Sayeed who had said that if Kashmir can be resolved, it can only be by the Prime Minister who enjoys two-thirds majority.

"If things don't happen during his tenure, it won't happen ever. I believe that Modiji, who took a bold step of going there, today again says we need to talk to our own people, because people are dying," she said.

"I am sure that the Prime Minister will not forget to find a lasting solution to the Kashmir issue like the UPA did," she said.

The Chief Minister said she told the Prime Minister to



hold talks with all the stakeholders in the state and this could be possible through an institutionalised mechanism.

"Please appoint a group of individuals on whom people of Kashmir have trust, that whatever they are saying will reach to people at the helm of affairs in Delhi," she said.

She said a peaceful resolution, as discussed with the Prime Minister, will ensure that the people in the state will live their life with dignity and peace.

Mehbooba said an all-party delegation will reach Srinagar and make efforts to reach out to the people in the state.

"Similarly, I will ask Pakistan if they have some concern for the people of Kashmir they should stop supporting the people who are instigating the youth in the Valley," she said.

She also advised Islamabad to take a leaf out if its former President Pervez Musharraf's Kashmir policy who had opined that the UN resolution on Kashmir had no space in the present world.

Asked about talks with Hurriyat, she said a dialogue should be held with all those who want talks. But "those who are instigating the people for carrying out attacks on camps and police stations are not interested in talks," she said.

She also appealed to the separatist leaders to come and help her government in breaking "this cycle of violence" in the state.

So far 68 people have died in the protests that started from July 8 after Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was killed in an encounter on July 8.
Delhi High Court today said that the Centre's February 5 notification providing minimum import price (MIP) on specified iron and steel products for a period of six months is in public interest to "stabilise the domestic market".

"We are prima facie satisfied that the notification is nothing but a policy decision taken by the Government of India in the interest of public and to stabilise the domestic market of steel," a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath said.

"Hence, we find force in the submissions of respondents (Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Ministry of Finance and Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT)) that staying the notification pending the writ petition would be against public interest," it added.

The court's observation came on pleas filed by Steel Wire Manufacturers Association of India and other firms seeking to declare the notification of February 5, 2016, imposing MIP for various steel products by government as "illegal, arbitrary and unconstitutional" and a direction to restrain government from implementing it.

The court, however, in its interim order said, "In facts and circumstances of the case, we consider it appropriate to direct the goods shipped by the foreign suppliers shall be cleared by the port authorities subject to the condition of the petitioners depositing with the Commissioner of Customs (Import) of concerned port the difference of the price between MIP and the agreed contractual price. Such deposit shall be subject to the outcome of the writ petition."



The bench has now listed the matter for further hearing on July 27.

The association, established in 1968, is an apex body of steel wire and steel rope manufacturers in India and is recognised by the Government.

In its petition, it has said that the Centre, through Ministry of Steel, had issued a notification on December 15 last year in which prohibition regarding manufacture, storage, sale, distribution etc were imposed on specific steel products which did not conform with the specific standards and did not have the BIS mark on it.

The association has alleged that later, the government,



through Ministry of Commerce and Industry, had issued a notification on February 5 providing MIP on specified iron and steel products.

It has claimed that the February 5 notification was "arbitrary and contrary to the provisions of the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act 1992."



"Being aggrieved by the issuance of notification dated February 5, 2016 which aim to restrict the fair trade practice and adversely affect the downstream steel industry being against the government of India policy 'Make in India', the petitioner is filing the present writ petition," it said.

The association has claimed that the "imposition of MIP on the iron and steel product will cause irretrievable damages as the members of petitioner' association will now be forced to purchase/import steel products at price more than or equal to the MIP prescribed vide notification dated February 5, despite having an agreed contracted price with the seller which may be less than the MIP imposed by the respondents."



"Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution provides freedom of trade and profession. Any provision restraining any trade is violation of Article 14. Imposition of MIP amounts to restrain by which importers/users, manufacturers can not carry of business/trade in India in terms of the ordinary economic principles," it has added.

The plea has further alleged that the government has failed to demonstrate as to how the MIP is in the interest of general public.
To check minors taking control of the wheels, a ministerial panel will decide on stricter penalties for the underage drivers and their custodians in the proposed new road safety bill.

A Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by Yunus Khan, Minister for Transport, Rajasthan and comprising state transport ministers will decide on penalties for driving by minors, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari today said.

The GoM which is scheduled to meet here on April 29 will deliberate on all aspects and will propose penalties for such offences and subsequently a wider consultation will be done, he said.

The development assumes significance as minor drivers had caused over 19,000 road accidents in 2014.

The number of accidents by such drivers was 21,496 in 2013 and 20,110 in 2012.

The new road safety bill could not be introduced in Parliament as some states have opposed it saying it encroached on their financial rights.

In order to address this concern as also to bring in a stricter road safety regime, a meeting of state transport secretaries and stakeholders was held here on April 22 to provide inputs for the April 29 meeting.

"All states are on board as far as issues like preventing minors from driving vehicles, curbing drunken driving and simplification of forms for transfer of vehicles are concerned. The bone of contention is taxation. The meeting today decided to concentrate on road safety issues," an official told PTI.

A final decision on the new safety bill will be taken in the meeting and based on that, consent from states will be sought as the issue falls under concurrent list.

Gadkari recently said: "Despite our best efforts, the Bill (Road Transport and Safety Bill, 2015) which we made could not be introduced in Parliament. This is a difficult problem for us. It falls in the purview of concurrent list and both state governments and the Centre have rights. Different lobbies are there who are opposing the Bill."



India accounts for 5 lakh road accidents annually in which 1.5 lakh people die and another 3 lakh are crippled.

The 2015 Bill seeks to come down heavily on traffic offenders and proposes steep penalties of up to Rs 3 lakh along with a minimum 7-year imprisonment for death of a child in certain circumstances, besides huge fines for driving violations.

As a signatory to Brasilia Declaration, India has expressed its commitment to reduce the number of road accidents and fatalities by 50 per cent by 2020.
A minor girl was allegedly gangraped by a group of unidentified men who broke into her house in Dadasiya village here and made away with cash, jewellery and cattle, while holding the family members hostage, police said.

According to police, around a dozen men broke into the house of Gurnam Singh last night. Singh lives with his family in the farm house belonging to Vedprakash Yadav.

The accused looted the valuables, while holding the members hostage and made away with two animals, police said, adding they escaped after gangraping the 13-year-old girl.

Police teams rushed to the spot after getting information and further probe in the case is on with efforts to nab the absconding accused.
Unidentified assailants today shot at and injured a murder accused in police custody here, police said.

Chandan Singh, lodged in the district jail, was being brought out after a hearing from the district court this afternoon when the assailants opened fire at him and escaped, SP Ram Kishore Verma said.

He suffered injury in the back and was taken to Varanasi for treatment, the SP said, adding efforts are on to identify the attackers.

Chandan Singh is lodged in the jail in connection with a murder case of July 2015, the SP added.
A day after inaugurating the interim government complex at Velagapudi village in the state's new capital region Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu symbolically held two meetings in his chambers in the fourth block today.

The campus has been named as 'AP Government Transitional Headquarters'.

With six blocks under construction on a war footing, the government hopes to shift its functional base to Velagapudi from Hyderabad by June 15.

One of the blocks will be for the state legislature and its next session will be held in the new capital only.

Since no auspicious date is available in the next few months, Naidu formally inaugurated the complex early yesterday morning.

As a sentiment, he went to Velagapudi for the second day today and held a meeting with representatives of Indo-UK Institute of Health on the proposed health care facility to be set up in Amaravati.

Naidu later conducted a meeting with officials from the Japan International Cooperation Agency for expediting the lending process for the Amaravati Metro Rail project to be taken up in Vijayawada city.
Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH) is eyeing trebling the number of passengers from India on its cruise liners to about 20,000 in two years, a senior company executive said today.

"Asia is an increasingly important market for NCLH. Cruise tourism in the region is growing at double-digit rates, the demand is increasing from both cruise passengers from India and the rest of Asia, and international travellers are seeking to experience Asian destinations," NCLH Senior Vice President and Managing Director Asia Pacific Steve Odell told PTI here.

"The total cruise market in India is 90,000 passengers annually, of which we have 10 per cent market share," Odell added.

In 2015, NCLH hosted 6,000 passengers from India, which the company is aiming to treble by end of 2018 to about 20,000, he added.

Indians mostly prefer the Miami, Alaska and Mediterranean cruise, NCLH Executive Vice President, International Business Development, Harry Sommer said.

"India is an important source market for us and we initially want to focus on the existing cruise holiday experiences and strengthen them.

"The company has opened offices in the country to expand its local operations, and looks to further strengthen its presence in Asia - which includes offices in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo," Sommer said.

The opening of the offices has coincided with the company's contemporary premium brand, NCL, returning to Asia for the first time since 2002.

Norwegian Star will make Mumbai a seasonal home port with its maiden call in November 2016 and offer two sailings till March 2017.

With Mumbai's position as a popular tourist destination, India is a leading choice for cruise passengers and strategically located for short and long voyage itineraries, Sommer said, adding Japan, China and India are the three big market for NCLH in Asia.

Going forward, NCLH is also planning to add Singapore and Hong Kong as boarding points for cruise holidays.

"After launching Singapore and Hong Kong as boarding points, we expect the Asian market to pick up faster," he added.

Further, he said, NCLH will introduce five new ships across its three iconic brands over the next four years.

It will also invest USD 525 million on fleet enhancements to further elevate the on-board experience for its passengers.

It currently operates 23 ships, that comprise approximately 45,800 lower berths, which visit over 510 destinations around the world.
NIA team today reached Hazaribagh to examine the circumstances behind the April 17 Ram Navami violence and the subsequent bomb blast at Habibinagar Colony that killed six persons and injured two.

Officials of the team visited the place soon after arrival and would like to stay in Hazaribagh in connection with the inquiry, Superintendent of Police, Akhilesh Kumar Jha, said here.

Senior BJP leader and former External Affairs minister Yashwant Sinha had on April 21 demanded NIA probe into the blast.

Meanwhile, another person was arrested today at Marhetta under Hazaribagh Mufassil police station area after the police came to know that he was also injured in the blast and now under treatment at his in-laws' place, Jha said.

He has since been shifted to Hazaribagh Sadar Hospital, the police officer said.

Sinha added that interrogation of the accused was on to ascertain how many people were involved in the making of the bomb that resulted in the blast.

Earlier, the police got information from one of the injured persons and accused that seven persons had allegedly been involved in the bomb making when the blast took place and that the dead were buried.

Subsequently, the police moved the court and exhumed five bodies yesterday.

After autopsy, the bodies were again buried here today in the presence of their relatives, the police said.

The April 17 violence during Ram Navami procession had led imposition of curfew in Hazaribagh town and its surrounding areas for a week.

Altogether six persons had been killed and two others were injured in the bomb blast, the SP said. One body was recovered on April 20.

Both the injured have been arrested and being treated for their wounds.
Mocking the Congress-Left Front alliance in West Bengal, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee today said no alliance "will survive in Bengal" and both CPI(M) and Congress will turn into "sign boards" after the Assembly elections.

"Let them (Cong-LF combine) win 20 seats. No alliance will survive here in Bengal. Both CPI(M) and Congress will turn into sign boards," Banerjee said in response to CPI(M) state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra's comments that after the fourth phase of polling in the state, the alliance was on its way of winning 200 seats.

"Have faith on us. Since we came to power in 2011, we have tried our best to serve people and fulfil their requirement. People are now living peacefully. A decision has already been taken to create Sundarban a new district," she said while addressing an election rally here.

Alerting people against possible rigging by the opposition, the West Bengal Chief Minister said "I have information that a plan has been chalked out by the opposition CPI(M) to rig polls at Raidighi. Booths have also been identified for the purpose. Remain alert and prevent any such attempt."



Campaigning for Trinamool candidate Debashree Roy, who is contesting against former minister and CPI(M) leader Kanti Ganguly from Raidighi, Banerjee said TMC is confident of winning the seat despite removal of SP, DM and a host of other officers from the district by the EC.

She also assured people to "Re-elect our candidate Debashree Roy and we shall take care of you. I will visit again after the win."



Commenting on the fourth phase of polls held yesterday, she alleged that people in many places were not allowed by the opposition and central force to cast their votes and said "Many issues will come up from this election."



"Many development works have taken place in South 24-Parganas district. No riots broke out anywhere in the state or people were not cheated during our tenure," she said.

After the results are declared, nobody has to request for protection, she said adding "We will protect everybody and all. People will get everything from the Ma, Mati and Manush government."



Banerjee is scheduled to address election rallies in Baruipur and Bhangor constituencies in the same district where polling will be held on April 30 in the fifth phase.
Nearly 170 firefighters braved infernal heat for over four hours to douse the massive blaze at the National Museum of Natural History in the wee hours today that gutted its huge collection of exhibits.

The fire broke out at around 1.45 PM on the top floor of six-storeyed FICCI building in central Delhi's Mandi House area.

Initially eight fire tenders from the Connaught Place Fire Station were rushed to the spot and a team of 12 fire officials went inside the building to assess the situation.

In no time, they rang the alarm bells and a dozen more firetenders were rushed from Safdarjung and the headquaters fire stations, Deputy Director of Delhi Fire Services Atul Garg said, adding, 35 fire tenders in total and two skylifts were pressed into service in the operation that lasted for over four hours.

In such scnarios, firefighters have to brave extreme heat and temperature that may exceed 800 degrees Celsius and can even touch 1000 degrees Celisus. They are dressed in proper uniform and equipped with tecniques to meet the challenges. However, it never stops being a difficult task, he said.

Around 170 firefighters joined the operation and they went inside the building that was virtually turned into a burning furnace, by turns, in teams comprising 8-12 officials, said former fire chief A K Sharma who was also supervising the operation.

The operation hit a critical point when six firefighters -- including an Assistant Divisional Officer, a station officer and a sub-officer -- were stuck on the fourth floor of the building.

The fire, that originated from the fifth floor, had spread till the fourth. The aim was to do damage control there. What the officers could not assess well was the rate at which the flame were spreading, Sharma said.

When they were trying to control the situation on the fourth floor dodging burning fibre ceilings which was falling down in pieces, the fire made its way to the third floor too. They tried to retreat but the approach zone towards both staircases were blocked by burning material.

The officials gave visual signals with their flash lights and one of them managed to make an SOS call through his wireless, following which a rescue operation was launched immediately.

While two of them were rescued with the help of the skylift, the others came down using scaffoldings that was installed outside the building, part of which is undergoing repair.

They were all rushed to a hospital after having inhaled excessive smoke, and discharged later by this evening, Sharma said.

The cause of the fire is still to be ascertained and Delhi Fire Services have started preparing a report on the incident, a senior official said.

The main factors which caused the fire to spread fast



included the fibre ceilings, plyboard partitions, use of plastics to cover the exhibits and the scaffolding.

Things turned worse when the fire reached the AC plant room and the audio-visual room. Adding to the woes, the fire safety mechanism of the building was not functioning.

"The fire safety systems were there but they were not functioning at the time when we tried to operate them. Had they been working, the fire would have been controlled at the earliest time," Deputy Chief Fire Officer Rajesh Panwar said.

Over 3 lakh litres of water were used for firefighting, a senior fire official said.

All exhibits, mostly herpetological specimen and taxidermied animals, were gutted in the fire, except for the ones on the ground floor where the fire could not spread. The building also had a library, an auditorium and several office chambers.

The fire was controlled at around 6 AM, following which a cooling operation was launched, which went on for several hours. Even in the evening, smoke could be seen billowing from the top floor of the blackened structure that once used to be a favourite summer retreat for school-goers.

Established in 1978, the National Museum of Natural History in New Delhi is one of two museums focusing on nature in India. It functions under the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, who visited the spot, ordered a safety audit of all museums under his ministry.

A senior official at the museum said the last fire audit in the museum was conducted around two months ago. Most of the exhibits have been lost but they can be restored, except for the fossils. The fifth floor had research work and art work of prominent artistes.
More than 3,600 Indian women married to Nepalese men since the promulgation of the new Constitution in September last year have acquired naturalised citizenship of Nepal, a home ministry official said today, dismissing allegations that the statute was "discriminatory".

As many as 3,672 foreign women, mostly Indians, acquired naturalised citizenship of the country, acting home secretary Binod K C said.

A few of them are of other nationalities.

The issue of citizenship to Indians married to Nepalese nationals was a major issue during the six-month-long Terai/Madhes agitation launched after the promulgation of new Constitution.

The distribution of citizenship certificate to the Indian women shows that the new Constitution is not discriminatory, he said.

"It proves that the constitution is an inclusive one, and there was misinformation about it being discriminatory," he added.

India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Sawraj had on September 7 last year said in parliament that Indian girls married in Nepal were granted naturalised citizenship through matrimony.

"But the new Constitution has erased the provision of naturalised citizenship through matrimony," she had added.

According to the official, Indian girls married to Nepali citizens from 20 districts of the Terai/Madhes region were among the top recipients of naturalised citizenship.

"The new Constitution does not discriminate against any foreign woman married to a Nepali," he added.

Article 11(6) of the new Constitution has a provision that says: "A foreign woman married to a Nepali man can acquire naturalised citizenship in line with the federal law, if she so desires.
A Pakistani radio journalist in the US is among 18 budding journalists selected for the prestigious annual scholarship of the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA).

"Misha Euceph of Rawalpindi is the recipient of a USD 5,000 grant through the WHCA to help finance a post-graduate degree for a student in the Government and Public Affairs reporting track," according to a statement by WHCA.

The scholarship would be presented by US President Barack Obama and the First Lady Michelle during the annual WHCA dinner here on Saturday.

Misha, Chicago-based radio broadcast journalist, is pursuing a Masters of Science in journalism at Medill where she specialises in social justice, political and investigative reporting.

She also works for the podcast, The City, part of WNYC, the media release said.
Chiefs of financial sector regulators, including that of RBI and SEBI, along with senior officials at the finance ministry today took stock of the major developments on the global and domestic fronts that impinge on the financial stability of the country.

The group, headed by Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan, is one of the sub-committees of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC), the apex inter-regulatory body headed by the finance minister.

The sub-committee discussed issues related to need for having a stewardship code, constitution of a working group on gold, peer review of India by Financial Stability Board, Financial Sector Assessment Programme, the need to keep abreast of Fintech and digital innovations and peer-to-peer lending, the RBI said in a statement.

The subcommittee also discussed need to regulate credit guarantee schemes, concerns regarding deposit raising by multi-state co-operative societies, the state of regulation of collective investment schemes, transparency in private placement of debt securities, constitution of a committee on household finance, it added.

The meeting was attended by Sebi Chairman U K Sinha, insurance regulator T S Vijayan and pension fund regulator Hemant G Contractor, RBI Deputy Governors, Urjit R Patel, R Gandhi and S S Mundra, member secretary of the sub-committee Deepak Mohanty, among others.
The parents of 43 missing students who disappeared in September 2014 have accused Mexico's government of lying to them, planting evidence and not adequately investigating the case.

The parents' comments yesterday came a day after a group of international experts issued a report criticising the investigation, saying suspects appear to have been tortured and key pieces of evidence related to the supposed burning of the students' bodies were not correctly investigated.

The 43 students at the radical teachers' college of Ayotzinapa have not been heard from since they were taken by local police in late 2014 in the city of Iguala in southern Guerrero state. The government says corrupt police turned them over to a drug gang, which killed them and burned their remains in a dump in the town of Cocula. Parents reject that conclusion and experts say there is no proof of it.

Yesterday, parent Mario Cesar Gonzalez said prosecutors had lied and planted a bag of charred bone fragments in a river near the garbage dump where the students were allegedly burned. Tests have linked the fragments to only one of the students, with a possible link to another.

The group of experts said the bags of bone fragments were found at a different spot and time than authorities had said, and that outside experts weren't immediately allowed access to the site.

"They were the ones who planted the evidence in the San Juan river," said Gonzalez, the father of missing student Cesar Manuel Gonzalez.

Cristina Bautista, whose son Benjamin Ascencio is among the missing students, said the "government started lying to us from the start."



The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expert group says that a study of 17 of the approximately 123 suspects arrested in the case showed signs of beatings, including, in some cases, dozens of bruises, cuts and scrapes.

Human rights activist Mario Patron of the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez center said the torture allegations "endanger efforts to find the truth."



The Mexican government recently released documents suggesting investigations had been opened against police and military personnel, but authorities have not answered requests about whether anyone has been arrested or charged.

Mexico's deputy attorney general for human rights, Eber Betanzos, said authorities were investigating complaints filed by 31 people who said they had been tortured; he said six criminal cases had been opened, and had that three involved employees of the attorney general's office.

Betanzos called the case "the most exhaustive investigation in the history of Mexican law enforcement.
Lauding Parsis for their role in India's freedom struggle and post-independence nation building, Indian High Commissioner to the UK Navtej Sarna has said the community has made immense contributions to the country.

Sarna was speaking at an event held yesterday under the aegis of Zoroastrian All Party Parliamentary Group, in association with the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe (ZTFE), at the British Parliament.

It was chaired by Cobra Beer chief Lord Karan Bilimoria, the first Zoroastrian Parsi to sit in the House of Lords.

Sarna was the special guest speaker alongside Dr David Landsman, head of Tata in the UK, and Sir Mominic Cadbury, former chairman of Cadbury and Schweppes, on the topic 'Faith based ethics in Business: The Cadbury and The Tata Way'.

"A handful of people from Iran had landed on Indian shores seeking a place where they could freely profess and pursue their religion more than a thousand years ago.

"The Zoarastrians or Parsis, as they came to be known had been absorbed into India's patchwork quilt of religions and ethnicities," Sarna said.

He noted that maintaining their strong sense of identity and culture, Parsis had contributed to India richly over the centuries through personalities like Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, Dr Homi Bhaba, Field Marshall Sam Maneckshaw and maestro Zubin Mehta, who had all played a great role in various fields in modern Indian history.
The Patna High Court today upheld the Bihar Legislative Council chairman's decision to disqualify Narendra Singh from the membership of the Upper House.

"There is no reason to interfere with the order passed by the Chairman of Bihar Legislative Council and hence the petition is dismissed," a bench of Justice K K Mandal said.

The court passed the judgement on a petition filed by Narendra Singh challenging the Bihar Legislative Council chairman's decision to disqualify him from the membership of the upper house.

Singh was a JD(U) MLC who campaigned for former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi led Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) in 2015 assembly polls.

It may be noted that Legislative Council chairman Awadesh Narayan Singh had on January 6 this year disqualified the rebel JD(U) MLC Narendra Singh under 10th schedule of the Constitution.

The JD(U) chief whip in the Legislative Council Sanjay Kumar Singh alias Sanjay Gandhi had petitioned the chairman of the Upper House for disqualification of five rebel party MLCs on charge of their involvement in anti-party activities during Assembly polls.

Appearing for JD(U), senior advocate P K Shahi contended that Narendra Singh was a JD(U) MLC but he was a star campaigner for HAM(S) in the Assembly polls of 2015 and hence Singh's actions amounted to no trust in the party and voluntarily giving up the party.

Singh's counsel S B K Mangalam, who was assisted by advocate Ravi Ranjan, countered the allegations levelled by the party for disqualifying his membership.

Mangalam submitted that Singh was not given proper opportunity for putting his side.

The documents collected from Election Commission by the Council secretariat was handed over to him in the afternoon of January 5 while the interim order disqualifying him from the membership of the house was passed the very next day in the evening, Singh's lawyer said.

The allegations levelled against Singh- that he was the member of HAM(S) or he was instrumental in getting the party registered- were not supported by evidence, Mangalam said.
Pearls Group, allegedly owns two entire sectors - 100 and 104 - in Mohali and about half of two others - sectors 96 and 99, an analysis by CBI into the assets of the group, which is accused of duping over five crore investors of about Rs 51,000 crore, has claimed.

CBI sources said the group was planning to develop the sectors as residential townships, by naming it Pearls City, which its website claims is spread over 500 acres.

They said the agency is looking into the assets of the company which has allegedly duped over five crore investors to the tune of about Rs 51,000 crore by luring them to provide land in return for their investment.

CBI has found that in addition to the alleged ownership of the land of Mohali, the group also owns 750 acres in Banur near Chandigarh which is emerging as a new property hub in Punjab, the sources said.

The sources said the group also owns 400 acres of land in Ludhiana besides vast lands in Zirakpur in Punjab on which it is developing Nirmal Chaya residential colony. Zirakpur in Punjab is fast emerging as satellite town near Chandigarh.

The agency had earlier found 66 offices of the company in posh Connaught Circus area here besides huge swathes of land spread around the national capital.

They said the properties could run into thousands of crores as per the present market rates prevailing in the area.

The agency is giving details of the properties to the Justice R M Lodha committee which has been entrusted by the Supreme Court to work on steps to return the money collected from the investors.

The apex court had directed the agency to hand over all the records related to properties of PACL to Sebi which was asked to take steps to sell the land for the purpose of refunding money to the investors.

Pearls group Chairman Nirmal Singh Bhangoo and three other executives were arrested by CBI on January 8 in connection with the alleged swindling of depositors' money.
The issue of rustication of three Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students and slapping of fine on students union leader Kanhaiya Kumar was raised in Rajya Sabha today by the Left parties, which termed the action as vindictive and vengeful.

When the House started proceedings after some new members took oath and the listed papers were laid on the table, Tapan Kumar Sen (CPI-M) said he had given notice under rule 267 seeking suspension of business to raise the "serious issue" of "arrogant" and "anti-democratic" actions by JNU authorities.

He termed the rustication of Umar Khalid for one semester, Anirban Bhattacharya till July 15 and Kashmir student Mujeeb Gattoo for two semesters as well as the Rs 10,000 fine on Kanhaiya Kumar as "vindictive and vengeful" action taken in an "unjust manner".

"This is part of government's project to tamper with the rights of citizens... In the name of Constitution, they are tampering with the Constitution itself," Sen said.

The students were penalised for taking part at an event in JNU where slogans were raised in support of 2001 attack convict Afzal Guru, who was hanged in February 2013.

D Raja (CPI) said cannot remain a mute spectator to the university rusticating students in a vindictive manner on the basis of "doctored and false" videos.

Deputy Chairman P J Kurien expunged certain remarks of Raja against the university saying since its representatives cannot defend themselves, such harsh words should not be used.

Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "We totally support whatever our colleagues have said."



Anand Sharma (Congress) said "We are worried how the atmosphere in one after the other university is being vitiated."



The Chair could not give a ruling on the notice, as Congress members disrupted proceedings over dismissal of their party's government in Uttrakhand, leading to adjournment of the House.
At least 37 wild monkeys held in captivity by a drug addict in a south China city were rescued by the police when they raided his home.

Dongxing city Police in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region received a phone call from a woman, who told them her husband was with his mistress and taking drugs.

When police arrived at the scene, Jiang, who is reportedly engaged in trading wild animals, was armed with a knife. Police took him into custody and seized several grams of ice.

While they were searching the house, they were drawn to an unusual smell coming from a utility room. Upon checking, they found 37 monkeys including 20 A-class protected slow lorises and 17 B-class protected macaques.

A police officer told the state-run Xinhua agency that the monkeys were listless as a result of being held in captivity for a long period of time, and many had scars on their bodies. They also found dead monkeys in the trash.

Jiang said he knew nothing about the monkeys but police discovered several notebooks with sales records of wild animals, which allegedly show that the monkeys were mostly sold to Anhui in east China and Liaoning in the northeast, for several thousand yuan each.
What is there in a colour, some may wonder, but not the bosses of the two leading parties in Tamil Nadu for whom green and yellow are the hues of the election season.

For Chief Minister and AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa, starting from her saree colour, the backdrop of the stage at party election meetings and the ornamental decorations in the venue, it is the suffusion of green everywhere.

Interestingly, even shawls used by players of traditional music instruments like 'Chendaimelam' in AIADMK election meetings and the colour of sarees of her several supporters are green. Add to this the colour of the pen used by her, the party website's backdrop, important headlines in party Tamil daily Dr Namadhu MGR -- all hued green.

AIADMK's love for green, a senior party functionary says, "springs from the fact that it symbolises prosperity, peace and progress, which is also the party's tagline and the party symbol two-leaves also means the same."



As for as Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, yellow best beholds the eye of party chief and former chief minister Karunanidhi, who for many years now has been wearing a shawl of the same hue.

The yellow link only begins there and could be seen everywhere else in DMK, especially in the party meetings.

Yellow was the colour of the stage's backdrop in Karunanidhi's grand election meetings, be it in Tiruvaur or Cuddalore. Against the bright yellow backdrop, party's red and black --flag colours-- take the rest of importance.

Interestingly, the party's symbol, the 'rising sun', too is invariably in yellow and the colour has often been used for key headings and backdrops in DMK Tamil daily "Murasoli".

On the DMK's yellow link, a party leader, said, "it is strange that media looks into all these things. We are a party of rationalists." However, Karunanidhi's choice of yellow shawl had invited barbs from his political rivals in the past.

Tamil Nadu's Dravidian parties and their leaders have a very long association with shawls stretching to over seven decades. AIADMK founder and former Chief Minister M G Ramachandran too used to wear a short shawl on his shoulder.

The practice of wearing a shawl by Dravidian party leaders began as part of efforts to end inequalities and discrimination as early as in 1940's. In those days, when upper caste men claimed exclusive right to wear shawls or 'angavasthiram', reformist leader and ideological fountain of Dravidian parties Thanthai Periyar EVR encouraged all men to wear it.

Tamil Nadu goes for Assembly polls on May 16.
Government is considering reviving three closed fertiliser plants through joint ventures of profit making PSUs under various ministries.

The likely cost of setting up of a 1.27 million tonnes urea plant is about Rs 6,000 crore and the revival process will start after formation of joint ventures and on receipt of all necessary approvals, Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers Hansraj Gangaram Ahir said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

Earlier, the government had invited bids from private players for revival of Fertiliser Corporation of India's closed plants at Gorakhpur (UP) and Sindri (Jharkhand), and Hindustan Fertilisers and Chemicals' plant at Barauni (Bihar).

"In view of poor response from bidders for request for qualifications (RFQ) for Gorakhpur and Sindri units of FCIL and keeping in view current market scenario, it is under consideration to revive Sindri and Gorakhpur units of FCIL and Barauni unit of HFCL through joint ventures of profit making and financially strong PSUs of Ministries of Power, Coal and Petroleum & Natural Gas respectively," Ahir said.

In a separate reply, the Minister informed that Chambal Fertilisers and Chemicals Ltd is setting up 1.34 million tonnes urea plant at Kota in Rajasthan with an estimated investment of Rs 5,940 crore.

Another urea plant at Ramagundam will also be established by the Ramagundam Fertilisers & Chemicals, a joint venture between NFL, EIL and FCIL, with an estimated investment of Rs 5,254.28 crore.
A three-day Collector-SP conference will be held here between May 4 and 6 to discuss and review various issues pertaining to the districts.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Rajendra Rathore informed the conference was finalised in the Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.

The DCs will make presentation about the issues, problems and make their suggestions and new initiatives taken by them will also be discussed, he told reporters after the meeting.

He said the DCs will also present a report on their action plan to address water crisis in summers, and also a progress report on various government schemes and programmes like clean India mission, skill development, among others.

Five groups of collectors chaired by ministerswill be formed to hold discussion on water, Bhamashah Scheme, direct benefit transfer, health insurance, relief works and others.

He said the Cabinet also gave in-principle nod to set up a private medical college with an investment of Rs 150 crore.

Besides, proposals for providing facilities to cement companies were also cleared in the cabinet meeting.
The two al Qaeda operatives, remanded in police custody by a local court today, were involved in radicalisation of youths during their frequent visits to Jamshedpur, a top police official said.

Abdul Rehman Katki, who was arrested by STF team of Delhi from Cuttack in December last and Abdul Sami, arrested from Haryana in January last, were taken on seven days' remand today, East Singhbhum district SSP Anoop T Mathew said today.

The duo will be interrogated about their possible network in the steel city as well as in the entire Jharkhand, he said.

Sami had already confessed that he had received training in Pakistan.

Mathew said both of them were involved in motivating youths here to join their organisation.

Mathew, who was accompanied by Superintendent of Police (City), Chandan Jha, said in January the district police had apprehended two other suspected operatives - Ahmed Masood Akram Sheikh alias Masood alias Monu from Dhatkidih and Nasim Akhtar alias Raju from Road number 6, Zakirnagar.

"We will question the accused from all possible angles including the information of sleeper cells functioning in the steel city, about their active members, their network in the city as well as Jharkhand," Mathew said.

Police will also probe whether any of their member in the network had procured training abroad, he said.

If required, we will also take Masood and Raju on remand and question in the presence of the other two, he said, admitting that an ATS team from Delhi may also visit the city to interrogate them.

Both Katki and Sami were taken to Ghaghidih Jail amid tight security arrangements.
Saying that Mumbaikars have a habit of suffering silently and ignoring traffic jams and potholes, the Bombay High Court today asked the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) to ensure that potholes on roads are filled up before the onset of monsoon.

A division bench of Justices V M Kanade and M S Karnik was hearing a public interest litigation taken up suo motu (on its own) by the court following a letter written by Justice Gautam Patel of the High Court about increasing number of potholes on city roads and the fatalities caused by them.

"The major problem which the city faces during every monsoon is potholes...Various agencies dig up the roads but do not restore it properly...Mumbaikars suffer silently and they ignore the traffic jams and potholes," the High Court said.

MCGM counsel Anil Sakhare informed the court today that the website started for citizens to lodge complaints about potholes was shut down temporarily due to technical snag. "Citizens can file complaints on the civic body's Facebook page," he said.

Repair works were being carried out to ensure potholes do not resurface during the monsoon and the major roads would be repaired by May 30, he said.

The court has posted the PIL for further hearing in June and directed the corporation to file a compliance report.

In May last year the High Court had observed that citizens have the fundamental right to good roads and it is the state government's statutory obligation to provide roads which are pothole-free.
Diversified group Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), which is also into synthetic fibre manufacturing, has entered into a pact with Bhilwara-based Star Cotspin Ltd.

As per the agreement, Reliance's Recron SHT will be the basic substrate for polyester sewing threads manufactured by Star Cotspin. This yarn will then be sold, cobranded with Recron SHT.

Apart from branding the products, RIL will also provide marketing and technical support to Star Cotspin.

RIL and Star Cotspin will jointly conduct research and development work to further enhance Recron SHT sewing thread's quality, and will also explore new business opportunities.

"We believe this will accelerate our future growth through further penetration in our customer base of rewinder manufactured products," S K Chhajer, CEO, Star Cotspin said.

Reliance will also support Star Cotspin in creating awareness about standardised high quality sewing thread products among key stakeholders, especially spoolers and apparel manufacturers.

Star Cotspin is planning to undertake a 12,000 spindles expansion project. Six thousand spindles each is expected to be allocated to optical white and black yarn. The company expects to double the consumption of Recron SHT fibre by the end of 2017.

To the AP Shah Committee, RIL cited the D&M's comments



that independent development of resources in ONGC's block would be 'cost prohibitive' to state that they were "not commercially viable" on a standalone basis.

This implied that to produce them, they had to be necessary produced with neighbouring fields.

RIL in its submission stated that the 2003 appraisal report provided "very little from a technical perspective and nothing that is helpful in any joint development consideration" of the adjacent blocks.

"The Appraisal Report comprised of a simplistic consideration of seismic data and very limited well data confined to discover wells in Block KG-DWN-98/3, with no modelling but rather with a reliance on D&M's general experience in geology," it said.

It went on to state that seismic data may suggest continuity of channels across block boundaries, but is entirely insufficient in conclusively establishing presence of reservoir and reservoir connectivity.

"Well data from the ONGC blocks was only available to RIL in late 2013 and post-production pressure values from ONGC blocks were obtained by ONGC in the early 2015 through MDT survey in three of their wells," it said.

The 2003 Appraisal Report, RIL said, "relates to wells A1, B1, B2, and C1 of D1-D3 reservoir; it does not give consideration to wells A5, A9, A13 or B8 i.E., the wells which ONGC (wrongfully) claim have caused the alleged drainage and which it made specific complaint of in its Writ Petition (in the Delhi High) that lead to the Terms of Reference (of the AP Shah Committee)."



The company went on to add that it at all times confined its Petroleum Operations to its Contract Area and its exploration and development activities were approved by the Management Committee headed by DGH.
UK-based Research and Analytics firm, RocSearch today said it has appointed Amit Sondhi as Business Development head for the North American market.

Sondhi's appointment as Director, Business Development and Client Management for the North American market, is in line with RocSearch's recent investment into its global expansion strategy, said the company release.

"Amit's depth of experience will help us accelerate our growth plans in the North American Market and take the company to the next level," RocSearch CEO Russel Fischer said.

Earlier, Sondhi played leading roles at Amba Research and Adventity, which were acquired by Moodys and Sutherland Global Services respectively. He spent the early part of his career in Wall Street as an investment banker at Credit Suisse and as an Analyst at Caxton International, a global macro hedge fund.

"When bidding for work against its competitors, RocSearch historically succeeds due to the superior quality of its capabilities and output. I am excited for the opportunity to drive RocSearch's further growth across North America," Sondhi said.

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A delegation from Russia today met Delhi Transport minister Gopal Rai and discussed the ongoing odd-even scheme aimed at curbing pollution and traffic congestion.

"The delegation discussed Delhi's public transport system and the second phase of odd-even scheme as there is also traffic problem in capital Moscow of Russia," Rai said.

The delegation headed by Sergey Andreykin, the first Deputy Head of the Department for Transport and Development of Transport Infrastructure, Government of Moscow, visited DTC Headquarters and observed the operation of CNG-run buses there.

"The problems in operation of urban transport - metro, rail and buses were discussed and the experiences of both the countries as to how to overcome these problems, were discussed at length," a senior official said.
North Korea has completed preparations for a fifth nuclear test, South Korean President Park Geun-Hye said today, amid reports that Pyongyang has also readied a powerful, new mid-range missile for an imminent flight test.

Concern has been growing for weeks that the North is building up to a fifth nuclear test ahead of a rare, ruling party congress to be held early next month.

"We assess that they have completed preparations for a fifth nuclear test and can conduct it whenever they decide to," Park said during a meeting with editors of domestic media organisations.

If North Korea does go ahead, it would constitute a dramatic act of defiance in the face of tough UN sanctions imposed after its most recent nuclear test in January.

Some analysts have suggested that, by carrying out a fifth test so soon after the fourth, the North might hope to avoid a heavy package of additional sanctions -- but Park insisted that the international community's response would be swift and severe.

"North Korea's miscalculation is that by ignoring warnings from the international community and continuing to launch provocations, it will not defend its security but only speed up its own collapse," she added.

In recent months, the North has claimed a series of breakthroughs in developing what it sees as the ultimate goal of its nuclear weapons programme -- an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets across the continental United States.

These have included success in miniaturising a nuclear warhead to fit on a missile, developing a warhead that can withstand atmospheric re-entry and building a solid-fuel missile engine.

Earlier this month, leader Kim Jong-Un monitored the test of an engine specifically designed for an ICBM that he said would "guarantee" an eventual strike on the US mainland.

The South's Yonhap agency today quoted unidentified government sources as saying the North had readied a medium-range Musudan missile for an imminent test launch.

Existing UN resolutions forbid North Korea from the use of any ballistic missile-related technology.

The Musudan is believed to have an estimated range of anywhere between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometres (1,550 to 2,500 miles). The lower range covers the whole of South Korea and Japan, while the upper range would include US military bases on Guam.

The missile has never been successfully flight-tested. An earlier test firing on April 15 ended in what the Pentagon described as "fiery, catastrophic" failure -- apparently exploding seconds after launch.
South Sudan rebel chief Riek Machar finally returned to Juba today and was sworn in as vice-president of the world's newest country, calling for "unity" after more than two years of ferocious civil war.

"We need to bring our people together so they can unite and heal the wounds," said Machar, who was greeted by ministers and diplomats as he stepped out of his plane after a week-long delay that had threatened a long-negotiated peace deal.

Machar, who was originally due back on April 18, headed immediately to the presidential palace to be sworn in alongside his longtime arch rival, President Salva Kiir.

"I am very committed to implement this agreement so that the process of national reconciliation and healing is started as soon as possible so that the people can have faith in the country that they fought for, for so long," he said on being sworn in.

South Sudan declared independence in July 2011 after decades of conflict with Sudan's authorities in Khartoum, with Machar serving as vice-president from then until July 2014 when he was sacked by Kiir.

His delay in returning to Juba under the terms of a 2015 peace deal had infuriated the international community after months of negotiations spent on getting the rivals to return to the city and share power.

Ensuring they work together in a unity government, and that the thousands of rival armed forces now in separate camps inside the capital keep their guns quiet, will be an even bigger challenge.

"The return of the designated first vice president should open a new chapter for the country. It should allow the real transition to begin," UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told the Security Council.

Both sides remain deeply suspicious, and fighting continues with multiple militia forces unleashed who now pay no heed to either Kiir or Machar.

Machar's return had been stalled by arguments that at one point, in a country awash with weapons, came down to a dispute about just over two dozen rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns that the force guarding him were allowed to have.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than two million driven from their homes in the conflict, which has reignited ethnic divisions and been characterised by gross human rights abuses.

The economy is in ruins, over five million people need aid and over 180,000 people are crammed into UN peacekeeping camps, too terrified to venture outside the razor wire fences for fear of being killed.

Tensions are high, and the days ahead will be critical.
Six houses were damaged and a shop was set on fire in stray incidents of post poll violence in West Bengal's Howrah district today.

The two main parties - ruling TMC and opposition CPI-M blamed each other for the incidents, which took place just a day after the assembly polls were held in Howrah district.

Police said six houses were damaged at Antapur area and CPI-M alleged that those belonged to its supporters. The party also claimed that the damage to the houses was the handiwork of TMC workers.

Police rushed to the area but none was arrested.

In another incident at Panitras a shop allegedly belonging to a TMC worker was set on fire.

Locals doused the fire, police said adding no arrests were made in this case too.
Leading European bourse SIX Swiss Exchange is courting Indian life sciences and specialty chemical firms to get listed on its platform and has reached out to over 200 firms in the country for their IPOs.

"We are targeting players from pharmaceutical, biotech, health care and medtech for listing on our platform. Besides, we are focusing on companies which provide services to these sectors," SIX Swiss Exchange Head Issuer Relations Marco Estermann told PTI here.

He is in India to interact with prospective firms in Delhi and Mumbai.

The Swiss financial centre and SIX Swiss Exchange hold a strong appeal for life sciences and specialty chemical companies.

"We have zeroed in on 200-250 companies from these sectors. Some of these firms have just begun operations and will take them 2-3 years to come out with an initial public offering. We are making sure we are here for these firms," Estermann said.

The exchange with over USD 1.2 trillion of free float market capitalisation has many benefits to offer to Indian companies.

For one, for Indian companies looking to raise money in Europe, SIX Swiss Exchange provides access to an experienced pool of Swiss and international investors. It will also enable them to gain visibility and trading liquidity.

Asked about the exchange finding it difficult to attract Indian firms as Switzerland is perceived as a tax haven, Estermann said, "I do not think, it's coming in our way to attract an Indian issuer. It has been a topic in some of the discussions we have had. Switzerland is adhering to all OECD standards."



He added: "It is an FATF (Financial Action Task Force) approved jurisdiction. Now, the new norms have come in, any Indian unlisted company can list overseas on any of the 34 FATF-approved jurisdiction. Switzerland is an FATF approved jurisdiction. We have not faced any challenges in terms of attracting Indian issue."



Also, SIX Swiss Exchange allows confidential filing and a maximum four-week documentation review process, thus facilitating a quick listing.

Apart from equity, the Zurich-headquartered bourse is eyeing participation from Indian companies in bond issuance and depository receipts (equity side) too.

A total of eight Indian firms had mobilised USD 2 billion in debt on the SIX Swiss Exchange in the last four years.
Six policemen of Uttar Pradesh were today dismissed from service after a murder accused fled from the custody at Gautam Buddha Nagar.

"6 cops whose unprofessionalism allowed a dreaded criminal to escape from custody yesterday, dismissed from service. Lesson for others (sic)," DGP Javeed Ahmad tweeted.

Ankit Gujjar, carrying reward of Rs 50,000 on his head in western Uttar Pradesh region, fled from the police custody in Greater Noida yesterday.

Ankit was lodged in Maharajganj district jail and was taken to Greater Noida for a hearing.

Six police personnel of Maharajganj district were booked in Greater Noida police station over their "apathy".

Police said Ankit, a resident of Narvali village of Jarcha in Greater Noida, is accused of killing Narender Pradhan in Faridabad, BJP leader Vijay Pandit in Dadari, Vinay Joshi, a transporter in Jarcha, and a Shahibabad businessman.

He was arrested by Noida police and Special Task Force (STF) on November 23, 2014 from Sector-58 police station area and was lodged in jail in Mahrajganj district.
Traffic department in Mumbai today created a green corridor for transporting a harvested heart of a Surat-based teenager for an emergency heart transplant surgery of a 43-year-old man at a hospital in Mulund in the district.

The heart, that set out its journey from Surat reached the operation theatre in Fortis Hospital in a matter of 1.15 hours covering a distance of 269 kms. From Mumbai airport the heart reached the hospital in less than half-an-hour.

Surgeons at the Fortis Hospital in Mulund successfully conducted the heart transplant surgery on the patient from Alwar, Rajasthan, who suffered from dilated cardiomyopathy.

The transplant became possible when a 17-year-old boy was declared brain dead at Sunshine Global Hospital in Surat, following a head injury during a road accident. The youth's family consented to donate their his organs to save lives of four deserving recipients by donating his heart, kidneys and liver.

"Airport and Traffic authorities of both cities came together to swiftly lay the green corridor between Surat and Mumbai for the transportation of the heart. The road map and the flight map was immediately put in place and the donor heart left Sunshine Global Hospital, Surat at 10.33 AM reaching Surat Airport at 10.38 AM," an official statement said.

The heart landed at Mumbai Airport at 11.20 AM in a chartered flight, heading out in the stand-by ambulance at 11.31 AM. The green corridor from Domestic Airport (Gate No. 8) to Military Road-Santacruz-Chembur Link Road-Chedda Nagar to Eastern Express Highway-Airoli Junction and finally to Fortis Hospital, helped the heart reach the hospital at 11.47 AM and into the OT at 11.48 AM, the statement said.

"With the successful surgery, the life of the patient was saved from a rapidly deteriorating condition," an official release from Fortis Hospital stated.

Dr Anvay Mulay, Head of the Cardiac Transplant Team, Fortis Hospital, who conducted the transplant surgery, said "The donor's family deserves to be applauded and appreciated for having saved four lives through this noble gesture. The recipient of the heart is now stable and has been moved to the Intensive Care Unit.

"Next 48-72 hours will be critical and we will monitor the patient's condition round the clock," it said.

Following the necessary tests to validate an adequate



match, the doctors undertook a successful harvest and transplant of this vital organ, Dr Basu said.

Chakraborty's corneas have also been harvested by a team from Disha Eye Hospitals and will be transplanted shortly to deliver the gift of light and sight to visually challenged individuals, she said.

The kidneys of the donor however, could not be harvested as Chakraborty was a known diabetic and was on regular maintenance haemodialysis, Dr Basu said.

A significantly low ejection fraction, compounded by his medical history, ruled out his heart from being suitable for a successful transplant, she said.

"We are grateful for the prompt and comprehensive support extended by relevant government departments and officials, without which we would not have been able to restore the gift of life to the recipients of the organs.

"While our heart goes out to the family of the donor in their hour of loss, we salute and honour their courage in taking this socially-relevant decision," Dr Basu said.

"I am happy that my brother's organs can be donated. We have definitely suffered a loss in our family, but that his organs are helping others to survive will make us feel he is around us in this world," Samar's brother Sujit Chakraborty said.
Concerned over the growing problems due to climate change, a BJP member today made a strong plea for bringing urgent changes in the pattern of agriculture to save the farmer.

Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Feroze Varun Gandhi said that day by day, India is being subjected to the ill effects of the climate change.

He said only last year, 10 million tonnes of Rabi crop was damaged at the last minute due to unseasonal rains causing a loss of Rs 20,000 crore to the farmer.

Noting that the magnitude of the problem is huge, he said the benefits of the green revolution are being bought to a nought by climate change.

Making a strong plea for setting up of a network of weather stations in the country, he said the farmers needed to be guided on how best to face the issue of climate change which has drastically reduced farm productivity.

Raising another issue, Tathagata Satpathy (BJD) cautioned that Modi government's overdrive for industrialisation could result in severe problems for the environment.

The member was also critical of the Environment Ministry for granting permission for constructing national highways through Pench and Kanha forests in Madhya Pradesh.

S P Muddahanumegowda (Cong) made a strong plea for raising the MSP of copra saying that coconut growers in Karnataka are committing suicide due to failure to repay loans.
Admitting that the programme to eradicate tuberculosis from the country had become "sluggish" for a while, Government today claimed it has made several new interventions and will be able contain the disease very soon.

"Government of India has signed an agreement with the International Development Association (IDA) to support components under the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) for USD 100 million for the period between April 2014 and April 2017 for procurement of drugs, diagnostics and services.

"The sanctioned funds have been spent only on recommended activities and as per norms. The booked expenditure up to March 2016 is 14.42 million USD," Health Minister Jagat Prasad Nadda said in a reply in Rajya Sabha amid noisy scenes in the House over the Uttarakhand issue.

The minister said that upon reviewing the pace of expenditure and utilisation of the sanctioned amount, it was decided by the Department of Health and Family Welfare in 2015-16 to restrucutre the disbursement mechanism under a hybrid model where only a portion of the loan is linked to procurement and the balance is linked with other programme- based indicators for disbursement of funds.

He said this restructuring has been approved by the government and World Bank recently and under the hybrid model and the claims of reimbursement of another USD 22 million have been processed.

Replying to a question about the impact of the tuberculosis programme and how long will it continue, Nadda said "this continuous programme is running. We have made new interventions. The programme had got a big sluggish in between. We have tried to rectify it. Many new interventions have been made and very soon, we will be able to curb tuberculosis."



Nadda said that 90 per cent of budget on this programme was now to be spent on procurement of drugs, five per cent on procurement of commodities and five per cent for services.

"We have made a vibrant programme where we have restructured the whole system and the fund is being utilised," he said.
A Thai court today granted a foreign same-sex couple full custody of their surrogate baby following a high-profile legal battle with the mother who refused to hand her over after giving birth.

Manuel Valero, from Spain, and his American husband Gordon Lake were blocked from leaving Thailand with their daughter Carmen after the surrogate declined to sign necessary paperwork following the birth in January 2015.

They accused the mother, Patidta Kusonsrang, of reneging on the surrogacy once she discovered the couple were gay.

Rachapol Sirikulchit, the couple's lawyer, told reporters the court had granted "sole custody to Gordon Allan Lake" after the court ruling in Bangkok.

Reporters were not allowed inside to hear the ruling. The court is expected to release a written statement later today.

"We are really happy that this nightmare is going to end soon," a tearful Valero told reporters outside court.

"After 15 months Carmen will fly to Spain. We don't know when but it will be soon," he added.

The two men, who live in Spain but are currently caring for the child in Bangkok, have spent more than a year fighting a custody battle.

It was complicated by recent changes to Thailand's surrogacy laws and the fact that the kingdom does not legally recognise same-sex marriage.

Their other child, a son, has spent the past year living with Valero's sister in Spain.

The surrogate mother Patidta denied in local press interviews when the row surfaced that she refused permission because the couple were gay.

She has since shied away from the media and has yet to explain what motivated her decision.

Thailand for years hosted a thriving yet largely unregulated international surrogacy industry popular with same-sex couples. But a string of scandals in 2014 spurred the military government to ban foreigners from using Thai surrogates.

One high-profile case saw an Australian couple accused of abandoning a baby with Down's syndrome carried by a Thai surrogate while taking the baby's healthy twin sister.

In another case a Japanese man was controversially found to have fostered at least 15 babies with surrogates.

The ban came into force after Carmen was born.
Police have arrested three persons and seized Rs 2.25 crore in cash from their possession, police said.

Acting on a tip-off, police yesterday stopped a car on GT road in Etah police station area and seized Rs 2.25 crore in cash, they said.

The accused has been identified as Anil Kumar and Rakesh of Gujarat, and Godhan Lal of Varanasi, SSP Ashok Kumar Tripathi said.

The SSP claimed that the accused confessed to making such trips over ten times in a month and have disclosed the names of other persons involved.

Teams from Income Tax and Crime Branch are investigating the matter, he added.
The election to Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation (GMC) has resulted in a tie as both the BJP and Congress won 16 seats each out of the total 32 in the counting held today.

A lottery system will now decide which party will rule over the GMC.

"The poll result ended in a tie as both the parties won 16 seats each. Congress was ahead with 15 seats after the counting on 28 seats while BJP had 13 seats. In the last lap of counting for eighth and final ward, BJP won on three seats while Congress won one seat, creating a tie," Gandhinagar Collector Ravi Shankar said.

"In case of a tie, mayor and other office bearers will be chosen through a lottery system by pulling out chits from a box," he said.

As the counting progressed during morning, both the parties were neck and neck. The picture became clear only after the declaration of results for ward number 8.

The tie comes as a relief to BJP and Chief Minister Anandiben Patel who is facing many odds in the state in the form of Patel quota agitation, water scarcity and allegations of corruption.

However, Congress is upbeat as after sweeping the rural local body polls last year, it is claiming that urban voters are also warming up to the party, in the run-up to the 2017 state Assembly elections.

"We welcome the verdict given by the people of Gandhinagar. Our support is intact in the GMC as in the last elections Congress had won 18 seats but we have managed to contain them on 16 seats despite the adverse situation," state BJP unit president Vijay Rupani said.

The Congress also said it accepts people's verdict.

"We accept the verdict of people of Gandhinagar," Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi said, adding that a tie was recorded in the urban area, which is generally considered to be the stronghold of BJP.

This is the second election of GMC after it was declared



a municipal corporation in 2011. In the first poll, Congress had won with 18 seats out of 33, while 15 seats went to BJP.

However, in 2012, BJP snatched power from Congress after three of the latter's councillors switched over to the saffron party. Since then, the BJP was ruling over the GMC.

Gandhinagar has a large number of government employees as voters.

After the recent delimitation, the number of wards have decreased from 10 to 8, while the number of seats have gone down to 32 (4 each in ward) from the previous 33.

Polling was held on Sunday when 52 per cent voters out of total 1.5 lakh registered electorate of the capital city exercised their franchise.

In 2011, the voting percentage was around 59 per cent.

Earlier in December last year, BJP had won the elections of six municipal corporations and gained majority in municipalities, while the Congress had swept taluka panchayat and district panchayat elections.

The state Assembly polls are slated to be held at the end of 2017.
Scientists have developed micro-scale, liquid-metal particles that can be used for heat-free soldering and fabricating, repairing and processing of metals - all at room temperature.

The project started as a search for a way to stop liquid metal from returning to a solid - even below the metal's melting point.

This is called 'undercooling' and it has been widely studied for insights into metal structure and metal processing. However, it had been a challenge to produce large and stable quantities of undercooled metals.

Researchers from Iowa State University in the US thought if tiny droplets of liquid metal could be covered with a thin, uniform coating, they could form stable particles of undercooled liquid metal.

They experimented with a new technique that uses a high-speed rotary tool to sheer liquid metal into droplets within an acidic liquid.

The particles were exposed to oxygen and then an oxidation layer was allowed to cover the particles, essentially creating a capsule containing the liquid metal. The layer was then polished until it was thin and smooth.

The researchers proved the concept by creating liquid-metal particles containing Field's metal (an alloy of bismuth, indium and tin) and particles containing an alloy of bismuth and tin.

The particles are 10 micrometres in diameter, about the size of a red blood cell.

"We wanted to make sure the metals don't turn into solids," said Martin Thuo, an assistant professor at Iowa State University.

"And so we engineered the surface of the particles so there is no pathway for liquid metal to turn to a solid. We've trapped it in a state it doesn't want to be in," said Thuo, who is also an associate of the US Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory.

Those liquid metal particles could have significant implications for manufacturing, researchers said.

"We demonstrated healing of damaged surfaces and soldering/joining of metals at room temperature without requiring high-tech instrumentation, complex material preparation or a high-temperature process," they said.

The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
A three-year-old girl, who had fallen into an over 100-ft deep borewell at Juna Ghanshyamgadh village in Surendranagar district, died today soon after being rescued after a nearly eight-hour long operation, district officials said.

"The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team involved in rescue operation informed us that when the girl was pulled out at round 2.45 AM, she was alive. She was then rushed to a CHC (Community Health Centre) where she was declared brought dead," District Collector Udit Agarwal said.

The toddler had fallen last evening into the borewell that was dug by a local villager to draw ground water at around 7 PM in Dhrangadhra taluka of the district.

The borewell was around 100-125 feet deep and the girl was believed to be stuck at a depth of 100 feet.

NDRF and fire department teams from Ahmedabad were called in by the district administration which carried out a rescue operation that lasted for nearly eight hours, before the girl could be pulled out.

The girl was given oxygen as soon as she was brought out of the borewell but died on her way to a CHC.
The total expenditure on health as percentage to GDP for India in 2012 was merely 4 per cent compared to poorest countries like Burundi which had around nine per cent, Rajya Sabha was informed today.

Health Minister J P Nadda in a written reply said the per capita government expenditure on health in India was USD 18 in 2012 as compared to developed countries like Germany which had USD 3,618.

"As per world health statistics 2015 published by WHO, total expenditure on health as percentage of GDP in 2012 for India is 3.8 per cent as compared to Burundi 8.2 per cent, Central African Republic 3.8 per cent, Democratic Republic of Congo 3.6 per cent, Malawi 9.2 per cent and Niger 6.1 per cent," Nadda said.

He said according to National Health Profile (NHP) of India 2015, published by the Central Bureau of Health Intelligence under the Health Ministry, the average population served per government hospital and per government hospital bed as on January 1, 2015 in India are 61,011 and 1,833 respectively.

"As per world health statistics 2015 published by WHO, the per capita government expenditure on health (at average exchange rate) in India was USD 18 in 2012 as compared to the select developed countries like Germany (USD3,618), France (USD 3,592), Japan (USD 3,932), UK (USD 3,019) and US (USD 4,153)," Nadda said.

He maintained that according to the publication titled 'health in India'- NSS 71st round brought out by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) under Ministry of Statistics, the average total medical expenditure per hospitalisation case for all quintile class of Usual Monthly per capita consumer expenditure (UMPCE) stood at Rs 14,935 and Rs 24,436 for rural and urban household respectively.

"The average total medical expenditure for non hospitalised treatment per ailment person of all quintile class of UMPCE stood at Rs 509 and Rs 639 for rural and urban sector respectively," he said while replying to two separate questions.
A tourist whose desire to do yoga on a plane led to his arrest is being allowed to leave Hawaii and return home to South Korea.

US Magistrate Judge Kevin Chang previously allowed Hyongtae Pae to be released on bond, but prevented him from leaving the state because of concerns about him being on a plane again.

Yesterday, Chang made the modification after Pae's defense attorney asked that Pae return to the Honolulu Federal Detention Center Jin Tae "JT" Kim said his client can't afford to keep staying in a bed and breakfast or to pay to see a doctor for more medication.

Pae and his wife were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary with a Hawaii vacation and the couple was headed home when he was arrested.

According to court records, Pae didn't want to sit in his seat during the meal service on last month's flight from Honolulu to Tokyo, so he went to the back of the plane to do yoga and meditate.

Authorities say he refused to return to his seat, threatened crew members and passengers and shoved his wife.The pilot turned the plane around and returned to Honolulu. Pae told authorities after his arrest that he hadn't slept in 11 days.

He pleaded guilty last week to interfering with a flight crew. As part of a plea agreement, he's expected to be sentenced to time served, which was about 12 days in jail and to pay about USD 43,600 restitution to United Airlines.

Medication has improved Pae's mental state and he's well-rested, Kim said last week.

Through an interpreter, Pae promised that he will return for his sentence, which is scheduled for July. He must also pay USD 1,250 cash as a deposit before he leaves Honolulu. "I swear to God," he said, pledging to return.

Assistant US Attorney Darren Ching objected to the arrangement, saying it provides little incentive for Pae to return. He said that once Pae leaves, "that will be the last we ever see of Mr Pae."



Chang noted that Pae is 72 years old, doesn't speak English and has no family or friends in Hawaii. Returning him to incarceration because of his financial and medication problems wouldn't be appropriate, Chang said.
For the first time, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has crossed 50 per cent popularity mark, according to a latest opinion poll released today, ahead of primaries in five delegate-rich East Coast states.

This is the first after the New York-based real estate mogul joined politics last summer from the crowded 17-person Republican race to the White House.

"This milestone is significant as the 2016 primary heads into its final few weeks of contests, as there has been intense speculation that Trump's support has a ceiling. Though his support has hovered in the high 40s since mid-March, the front-runner had yet to secure half of Republican voters," NBC said.

According to the latest opinion poll carried by NBC News/Survey Monkey Weekly tracking poll, Trump, 69, has reached 50 per cent support from Republicans and Republican- leaners nationally. This is an increase of four per cent since the last opinion poll.

On the other hand, the popularity of Trump's nearest Republican rival Texas Senator Ted Cruz, 45, has dropped slightly by two percentage points to 26 per cent. Ohio Governor John Kasich, 63, has 17 per cent support.

The NBC News/SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking poll was conducted online April 18 through April 24 among a national sample of 10,707 adults aged 18 and over, including 9,405 who say they are registered to vote.

With 845 delegates in his kitty, Trump is leading in the delegate count against his nearest rival Cruz (559) and Kasich (148). To become the party's presidential nominee, Trump is still 392 delegates behind to reach the magical figure of 1,237 delegates.

As many as 172 delegates are in fray for the five State East Coast primaries being held today in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Turkish police today fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators who had gathered outside Parliament to protest a call for the country to adopt a religious constitution.

Police broke up a group of more than 100 protesters, preventing them from making a press declaration outside the Parliament in Ankara, an AFP photographer reported. The group chanted the slogan "Turkey will remain secular".

Several protesters were detained by police. Similar protests were also expected in other cities.

Parliament Speaker Ismail Kahraman said yesterday the predominantly Muslim country "must have a religious constitution", adding to concerns of creeping Islamisation under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

"Why should we be in a situation where we are in retreat from religion," he said.

But the head of Parliament's constitution commission, AKP member Mustafa Sentop, said no discussions were underway to remove secularism from the constitution. The speaker was "not speaking on behalf of his party," he said.

The leader of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), Kemal Kilicdaroglu, said a secular constitution was essential to guarantee freedom of religion.

"Secularism is a guarantor of all faiths. It means freedom of religion and conscience. Look at the Middle East. You still haven't learnt the lesson," he said in comments addressed to Kahraman.

"Secularism also means religion not being exploited politically," he said.

The Speaker's comments were booed by MPs from the CHP, the party founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who transformed the former Ottoman Empire into a secular nation-state, separating Islamic law from secular law.

Since the AKP's re-election in November, the government has said it wants to revamp Turkey's 1982 constitution, drafted by the military junta which took power after a 1980 coup.

Several attempts so far have fallen flat -- with opposition parties rejecting a move which would give President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sweeping powers.

Over the past two years, the government has lifted bans on women and girls wearing the Islamic headscarf in schools and civil service. It has also limited alcohol sales and made efforts to ban mixed-sex dorms at state universities.
Turkey has struck a deal with the US to deploy American light multiple rocket launchers on its border with Syria to combat the Islamic State (IS) group, according to the foreign ministry.

The High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) "will be deployed on the Turkish border in May as part of an agreement" with Washington, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview published today.

The system is being brought in "so we will be able to hit Daesh targets more effectively," he told the Haberturk newspaper, using an acronym for IS.

Turkey, a member of the US-led coalition against the IS group, has increased its strikes in Syria after a series of deadly attacks on its soil was blamed on the jihadists.

Ankara also allows US jets to use its airbase in southern Turkey for air bombardments on the extremist group.

In recent weeks, the Turkish border town of Kilis has come under frequent attack from rockets fired across the border, prompting the army to respond with howitzer fire.

Cavusoglu said HIMARS would allow Turkey to hit IS positions within a 90-kilometre range, while Turkish artillery has a more limited range of 40 kilometres.

The aim is to gain control of the so-called Manbij Gap, a backdoor border route favoured by IS for smuggling jihadists into Syria.

Turkey wants to establish a safe zone in the 98-kilometre stretch between Manbij and the border in which to shelter Syrian refugees, the Foreign Minister said.

Ankara has long pressed for the creation of safe zones in the war-torn country. German Chancellor Angela Merkel this weekend said the zones were "of the utmost immediate importance also in our negotiations for a ceasefire" in Syria.

But, Washington is set against the idea, saying it would require a no-fly zone, something that could lead to conflicts with Russian planes flying over Syria.

"As a practical matter, sadly, it is very difficult to see, how it would operate short of us essentially being willing to militarily take over a big chunk of that country," US President Barack Obama said during a visit to Germany at the weekend.
Two ethnic Armenian soldiers have been killed in a new upsurge in fighting between Azerbaijani forces and separatists from the breakaway region of Nagorny Karabakh, the separatist statelet said today.

"On the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Karabakh forces, the enemy violated a ceasefire 80 times using all types of artillery and armoured vehicles," said the defence ministry of the breakaway region, claiming it had also inflicted casualties on Azerbaijani forces.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have for decades been at loggerheads over the breakaway region of Nagorny Karabakh and have not signed a peace deal despite a 1994 ceasefire, with Armenian-backed separatists seizing the territory from Azerbaijan.

Earlier this month, more than 100 people died in the worst violence to hit Nagorny Karabakh since the inconclusive ceasefire deal in 1994 halted a war that left some 30,000 people dead.

A Moscow-mediated truce went into effect earlier this month but clashes have continued since then.

The latest surge in violence sparked fears that a wider conflict in the key strategic region could drag in regional powers Russia and Turkey.
Ukraine's most prominent political talk show host was stripped of his work permit today in what he described as a politically-charged case.

The incident created an instant political uproar in Kiev that eventually forced Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to step in and defend his record on media rights.

Savik Shuster -- a 63-year-old Canadian citizen who was born in the Soviet Union and had previously worked for the US-funded Radio Liberty station -- accused Kiev's pro-Western leaders of being thin-skinned and unwilling to support free speech.

"The problem is that, as it turn out, this government does not tolerate any criticism," he said on his 3S.Tv satellite television channel.

He later announced he was going on hunger strike "until the moment when my right to work in Ukraine is restored".

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's press freedom representative Dunja Mijatovic said the case raised "a number of concerns and questions" about Ukraine.

Shuster was told by the employment office today that his Ukrainian work permit was being revoked because he had failed to notify registration authorities that he was the subject of a disputed tax evasion claim.

He has produced his political talk show, now called "Shuster Live", for a number of years on various Ukrainian channels prior to launching his own channel.

Shuster, one of Ukraine's most recognised television personalities, promised to continue his work despite lack of permit.

Prior to moving to Ukraine, Shuster had developed a reputation in Russia for providing a venue for voices critical of the government.

The Kremlin's seizure of most media assets under President Vladimir Putin saw him blacklisted in Russia and forced to relocate to Kiev in 2005 -- the year Ukraine enjoyed its first pro-Western government.

But the most recent EU-backed leadership in Ukraine -- now riven by a pro-Moscow insurgency in the east -- has been criticised heavily for banning Russian movies and television programmes on political grounds.

Ukraine ranked 107th out of 180 countries on this year's Press Freedom Index prepared by the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) media advocacy group, up from 129 the year before.

Shuster's case created immediate controversy that saw Poroshenko step in and reaffirm his commitment to basic rights.
The UN special envoy to Yemen said today that warring parties have agreed to a framework for talks that will open the way for extensive negotiations to end the conflict.

The announcement came after Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, whose country is hosting the talks, met with the two delegations separately and urged them to reach a peaceful solution.

It also came a day after the UN Security Council urged all sides in the negotiations to be constructive.

The two delegations "agreed to an agenda for negotiations which is a framework for discussing security, economic and political issues," UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed told a press conference.

He said "comprehensive negotiations" would start tomorrow in line with UN Security Council resolution 2216, which is seen as a basis for any peace plan.

It states that the rebels must withdraw from seized territories and disarm before talks can progress.

But Ould Cheikh Ahmed said the UN wants all the main issues to be discussed in parallel by joint committees.

He said no timeframe has been set for the talks which should continue as necessary to achieve a "comprehensive peaceful settlement."



"We don't want to go back to Yemen without a peaceful settlement," Ould Cheikh Ahmed said.

More than 6,800 people have been killed and around 2.8 million displaced since a Saudi-led Arab coalition began operations in March 2015 against the Iran-backed Huthi Shiite rebels who have seized swathes of territory, including the capital Sanaa.

Since the delayed peace talks started on Thursday, the two delegations have struggled to reach an accord on ways to firm up a ceasefire that went into effect on April 11.

The negotiations represent the best hope in months for a settlement to the conflict.

The 15-member UN Security Council yesterday stressed the importance of agreeing on a "roadmap" to implement security measures including the withdrawal of heavy weapons.

The rebels have insisted that no ceasefire can be established without an end to coalition air strikes and sorties.

The government side wants the rebels to lift the siege on cities, open humanitarian passages and release prisoners.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a new unity government to be immediately set up in South Sudan after rebel leader Riek Machar returned to Juba today and was sworn in as vice president.

Machar's return on a UN plane marked an important step in the international effort to force the rebel and government sides to implement a peace accord that was signed in August but has yet to take hold.

Ban said the rebel leader's arrival in Juba opened up "a new phase in the implementation of the peace agreement" and called "for the immediate formation of the transitional government of national unity," said a statement from his spokesman.

Under the agreement aimed at ending South Sudan's brutal war, Machar will serve alongside President Salva Kiir in a new 30-month transitional government leading to elections.

UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told a Security Council meeting that Machar's return "should open a new chapter" and "allow the real transition to begin."



South Sudan Deputy UN Ambassador Joseph Moum Malok said the new transitional government should be formed "in a day or two after consultations with the different parties in the country."



"It's vital that the parties take this opportunity to show their genuine determination to move forward with the peace process," said Ladsous.

US Ambassador Samantha Power said that while Machar's return marked an important step, international powers remained "clear-eyed" about the challenges ahead.

The new government will have to tackle security sector reform to end fighting, corruption and in particular, pick up the pace on plans to set up a special African Union court to try war crimes suspects, said Power.

The Security Council is determined to keep the pressure on Machar and Kiir to implement the peace accord, she added.

"When things are going to happen in South Sudan, it tends not to happen because of gravity. It happens because the international community unites and turns up the heat," she said.

South Sudan's war began in December 2013, when Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup.

The conflict has torn open ethnic divisions and been characterized by horrific rights abuses, including gang rapes, the wholesale burning of villages and cannibalism.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than two million have been driven from their homes in the violence that erupted just two years after South Sudan won independence.
The military conducted "freedom of navigation" operations against 13 countries last year, including India and China, according to an annual Pentagon report.

In the report for the period October 1, 2014 to September 30, 2015, the Pentagon said it exercised its right of freedom of navigation multiple times against China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Oman, the Philippines and Vietnam.

However, it did not give any further details in its two-page report.

The military carried out single operations against Argentina, Nicaragua and Taiwan, the report said.

"Prior consent required for military exercises or maneuvers in the EEZ (exclusive economic zone)," the Pentagon report said on India.

On China, it said excessive maritime claims included excessive straight baselines; jurisdiction over airspace above the EEZ, restriction on foreign aircraft flying through an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) without the intent to enter national airspace; domestic law criminalizing survey activity by foreign entities in the EEZ; prior permission required for innocent passage of foreign military ships through the territorial seas (TTS).

In 2014, the had challenged territorial claims of 18 countries including India, China and Brazil.

While China claims that the US is unnecessarily targeting it, the Pentagon says it conducts freedom of navigation operations around the world.

Such operations involve sending navy ships and military aircraft into areas where other countries have tried to limit access.
The annual strategic dialogue between China and the US focusing on challenges and opportunities faced by the two countries on a wide range of bilateral, regional and global areas will be held in Beijing in June.

The US delegation would be led by Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jocob Lew, who would co-chair the meeting in June with their Chinese counterpart Vice Premier Wang Yang and State Councilor Yang Jiechi.

"The Dialogue will focus on the challenges and opportunities that both countries face on a wide range of bilateral, regional, and global areas of immediate and long-term economic and strategic interest," the Treasury said in a statement.
The US today condemned the brutal killing of Bangladesh's first gay magazine editor Xulhaz Mannan, who also worked for the USAID, saying Bangladesh government should engage in a serious criminal investigation to determine who was responsible and bring those individuals to justice.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest took note of Mannan's advocacy for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender causes and said there were "reports that indicate that he was targeted because of his advocacy for these human rights and that makes his death even more tragic than it seems."



"At this point, our expectation is that the government of Bangladesh should engage in a serious criminal investigation to determine who was responsible and to bring those individuals to justice. They have committed a heinous crime and they should be held accountable for it," Earnest told reporters at his daily conference.

He said the US government had been in touch with the government of Bangladesh to make clear that a thorough criminal investigation should be a priority.

Earnest said Mannan served the US embassy in Dhaka with distinction and "he worked on behalf of his fellow Bangladeshis as a voice for justice, equality of human rights for all, including for the local LGBT community."



"While his death is obviously a significant tragedy, there are also reports that indicate that he was targeted because of his advocacy for these human rights, and that makes his death even more tragic than it seems," he said.

"Mannan set an example of dignity, courage and selflessness, and his legacy will live on in the causes that he championed," Earnest said.

"We strongly urge the government of Bangladesh to ensure that the perpetrators of this senseless crime are brought to justice," he said.

Mannan, the editor of 'Roopban' - the only magazine in Bangladesh advocating gay rights - and his friend Tanay Majumder were killed yesterday by armed assailants in his flat in Dhaka impersonating as courier company officials.

The Al-Qaeda in the Indian Sub continent (AQIS) has claimed responsibility for killing the duo, saying that the two were because they were "pioneers of promoting and practicing homosexuality.
Expressing concern over latest reports saying China supplied nuclear weapons technology and design to Pakistan, two influential US lawmakers have wrote a letter to the Obama administration, seeking to know what has been done to halt such cooperation which represents a threat to the national security of America and its allies.

Congressmen Mike Rogers, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Ted Poe, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-proliferation and Trade sent the strongly- worded letter dated April 25 to the Obama Administration, seeking more information on report that China has enabled a Pakistani nuclear missile capability.

The two-page letter was sent to Secretary of State John Kerry and Defence Secretary Ashton Carter along with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper after a well-known Chinese military technology expert Richard Fisher wrote to the two lawmakers in this regard.

In his research paper, Fisher noted the design similarities between the Shaheen III TEL (transporter erector launcher), the Sanjiang Special Vehicle Corporation of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) WS51200 TEL, and a Chinese provided TEL North Korea's new KN- 08 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

This led Fisher to conclude, "CASIC has again enabled a Pakistani nuclear missile capability," the Congressmen wrote in their letter, a copy of which has been obtained by PTI.

"We are deeply concerned that the TEL displayed in Pakistan was acquired from China," Rogers and Poe said.

The transfer of an item as advanced and significant as a TEL, even if only transferred as a truck chassis known to be capable of modification to a TEL, would require the approval from the highest levels of China's government if not also the People's Liberation Army, they noted.

"Such cooperation between the governments of Pakistan and China would represent a threat to the national security of the United States and its allies," Rogers and Poe said as they asked a set of six questions to the Obama Administration.

"What, if anything, has the administration done to ensure China halts such cooperation and demands the return of these TELs?," read one of the six questions the lawmakers asked.

The lawmakers sought to know if there is any other evidence of Chinese entity support for Pakistan's ballistic missile program or nuclear weapons program, whether technology transfer or otherwise.

"Would such cooperation be in violation of any United Nations Security Council resolutions or any US sanction laws? If so, will the Administration levy any sanctions against China for this apparent support for the Pakistani ballistic missile program?," they asked.

"How does the presence of Pakistani road-mobile MRBMs with possible nuclear warheads change US, Israel and other allies' security posture? What are the impacts for US and allied (again, including Israeli) missile defenses?," they said.

Where proliferation occurs, that threatens the national security of the US and its allies, it must be countered quickly and forcefully, the Congressmen added.

"So, my questions about military exchanges are not



towards the desire to use viewing India as some sort of surrogate counterbalance to China in the region, but rather one that recognises what I think is their potential, and ultimately their rightful role in South Asia and across the world," Rubio said.

Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said he is heartened by the ongoing work that's being done in defence sector.

Referring to his visit to India in October 2014 wherein he went to the Mazgaon Docks in Mumbai to see India's ship building industry, he said he has encouraged the defence ministry to send a delegation here.

"And I think that has happened, maybe last summer. And then, there's ongoing work in these various defence spaces. (Defense) Secretary (Ashton) Carter has been really good about it," he said.

"It's good that as we think about that part of the world even we're changing our vocabulary to reflect the fact that the relationship with India is of growing strategic importance. I believe that it is. And I just want to encourage that we continue in that way," he said.
A 31-year-old US man has been charged with suffocating his two-year-old daughter to death for distracting him from his computer games, a media report said.

Anthony Michael Sanders was charged with capital murder in the December death of Ellie Sanders at the family's suburban home in the US state of Texas, Watauga police said.

He is accused of suffocating his daughter while caring for her and his five-year-old son.

Investigators believe an enraged Sanders bruised Ellie all over her body, bit her on her back and murdered her by holding her down with his hand over her face, police officials said.

"He was very involved in computer gaming... That is something he did constantly. She may have interrupted him somehow. His day may have been interrupted," police officer Babcock was quoted as saying by the Star-Telegram newspaper.

Tarrant County medical examiners ruled earlier this month that the infant's death was a homicide by asphyxiation.

Sanders was asked to take care of Ellie and his son while his wife went to an art show, according to an arrest affidavit cited by the newspaper.

The boy discovered his sister in a bedroom and "tried to wake her up and she would not wake up", Babcock said.

Detectives suspected foul play as doctors found fresh injuries when they examined the infant. They found bruises around her eyes, blood behind her ear and two adult bite marks on her back, according to the affidavit.

Sanders could not explain her injuries and claimed he had changed Ellie's diaper about a half hour before his wife came home, according to investigators.
Congress-led protests over imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand today led to wastage of the second consecutive day of Rajya Sabha which saw repeated adjournments and early termination of the day's proceedings.

As the Upper House met for the day, five new members including Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, Swapan Dasgupta and Subramanian Swamy, Olympic medalist boxer M C Mary Kom and Narendra Jadhav, member of erstwhile National Advisory Council (NAC) took oath.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was present, greeted them.

However soon after the oath, Congress members trooped into the Well of the House and shouted slogans, after government rejected their demand for a discussion on a motion on dismissal of the Harish Rawat led government in Uttarakhand.

The ruckus led to repeated adjournments of the House and it was finally adjourned for the day just minutes after 3 pm.

Earlier, Leader of the House and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said no discussion other than on proclamation of President's Rule in Uttarakhand can take place.

The Minister said discussion will take place when the proclamation for President's Rule is placed before the House.

"There is no procedure of having pre-proclamation discussion," he said.

Justifying imposition of central rule in the state, Jaitley said the "real breakdown of constitutional machinery" happened in Uttarakhand when the presiding officer (Speaker) "ignored" the vote of 35 out of 67 members against the appropriation bill to declare it passed.

After Jaitley said no discussion can take place, Congress members raised anti-government slogans "Modi teri taanashahi nahi chalegi, nahi chalegi (dictatorship of Narendra Modi will not be tolerated)," forcing the House to adjourn till 1200 hours.

Deputy Chairman P J Kurien's pleading that the Chair was in favour of a discussion and the protestors should allow the House to function went unheeded.

Congress leaders Anand Sharma, Pramod Tiwari, Naresh Agrawal of SP had given notices under rule 267 seeking suspension of business to take up discussion on use of Article 356 in Uttrakhand. The demand was supported by BSP leader Mayawati.

Jaitley, while referring to the developments in Uttarakhand Assembly, contended that it had never happened in the history of Independent India that a presiding officer of a state assembly has converted majority into minority and vice versa.

Congress leader Anand Sharma attacked the government



saying that it "cannot hide under rules to cover what they have done in Uttarakhand."



He said Rule 267 as well as Rule 176 for short duration discussion do not provide any condition for initiating a debate on any issue and there have been umpteen precedents when sub-judice matters have been debated in the House.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi raised questions asking if Congress actually wanted a discussion or was looking for disrupting proceedings.

Throughout the day, acrimonious scenes were witnessed but the government managed to move two Bills - The Appropriation Acts (Repeal) Bill and The Repealing and Amending (Third) Bill amid din for consideration.

Because of the pandemonium, the House was first adjourned at around 11.30 am till 12 pm.

The opposition protests continued when the House re-assembled and Chairman Hamid Ansari took up Question Hour.

With slogan-shouting by Congress members in the Well continuing unabated, he adjourned the House for 30 minutes.

When the House met again at 1235 hours, Congress members again entered the Well and raised slogans, as pleas by Ansari to allow the Question Hour went unheeded in the din.

Amid slogans like "Loktantra ki hatya band karo" (stop the murder of democracy) and "halla bol" being, Ansari adjourned the House till 2 PM.

At 2 PM, members of the Congress raised objections to the remarks of Jaitley which, they said, questioned the action of the Speaker of Uttarakhand Assembly.

Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said he respected Jaitley a lot because he has always spoken out for the dignity and position of the Speaker.

He said the Congress has always listened to Jaitley's contention regarding the decisions of Speaker being supreme even when they had raised questions about the Lok Sabha Speaker's decision to bring in a bill through the Money Bill route.

"He (Jaitley) has always said the Speaker's decision is final and cannot be challenged. But then he questions the decision of the Speaker of (Uttarakhand) Assembly. We cannot accept two understandings," he said.

Jaitley hit back, saying that when the proclamation for President's Rule is discussed, the government will justify each clause and reason why the Rule was imposed.

He again questioned how the Appropriation Bill was passed in the state Assembly. "It is for the first time in 70 years that a defeated government was allowed to continue," Jaitley claimed.

Azad retorted that the NDA-led Centre had not even waited for 24 hours before declaring President's Rule even when the Governor had given time till March 28 to prove majority following consultation between him, the Speaker and the government.
With a view to improve 'ease of doing business,' National Monuments Authority (NMA) today launched a portal that would help applicants get no-objection certificates within six working days for construction-related works near the 3,686 protected monuments in the country.

The current time limit is 90 days. The applicant can track the progress of the application online.

"The initiative is part of the government's commitment to provide good governance, transparency and ease of doing business. Now people can get no-objection certificate from NMA within six working days for construction works in the periphery of 100-300 metre of protected monuments," Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma said after launching the portal.

Hundred meters around the monument is a "prohibited zone", while areas between 100 to 300 metres is "regulated zone" for which no-objection certificate is needed for construction-related works.

With the launch of the portal called 'NOC Online Application and Processing System (NOAPS),' the applicant needs to apply online at the local municipality website from where the request will be forwarded to NMA for its no-objection certificate.

The NMA on its part will communicate its decision to the local body within six working days, bringing down the current time limit of 90 days.

The portal uses the technology of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for mapping-related service.

A mobile app has also been developed to upload the geo-coordinates of the plot which falls within the prohibited areas of the monuments.

The service will be currently available in Delhi and Mumbai as the NMA web portal is integrated with the online portal of local bodies of NDMC, Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and MCDs (South MCD, North MCD, East MCD) to facilitate single window clearance.

However, a release said, large projects involving construction of building beyond 2000 sq mt have been kept out of the purview of single window clearance System, keeping in view the possible impact on the monument or the site.
British Prime Minister David Cameron will visit the steel plant in the Welsh town of Port Talbot on Tuesday to discuss the future of its operations, his spokeswoman said.

"The prime minister will shortly be arriving in Wales where he will visit the Port Talbot steel works and will have meetings with the management, staff and the unions there," she told reporters.

"It is an opportunity for the prime minister to hear first-hand their views and discuss the way forward." she added.

The British government is searching for a way to save Port Talbot, the country's largest steel works, after owner, India's Tata Steel, put all its operations up for sale.
By Aditi Shah

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's biggest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India is conducting a feasibility study for a new assembly plant in Africa, a top executive said after the company posted its first fall in quarterly net profit in two years.

A push into Africa, where there is high demand for small, inexpensive cars, makes sense for the likes of Maruti Suzuki, analysts have said. Establishment of it own plant in the region could also help it to contend with stricter rules on local sourcing, which have weighed on its exports to the region.

Maruti is evaluating the suitability of different African markets for an assembly plant, managing director Kenichi Ayukawa told reporters on Tuesday, adding that the study is in its early stages.

Exports to African countries including Algeria, Egypt and South Africa made up about 8 percent of Maruti's exports of 123,897 vehicles in the year to March 31. Maruti would need to sell more than 50,000 vehicles a year in Africa to justify setting up an assembly plant, Ayukawa said.

Increased revenue from overseas markets would not go amiss for Maruti, which is owned by Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp. Its exports grew 2 percent in the past financial year, against domestic sales up 11.5 percent.

Maruti expects the current financial year, which runs to the end of March 2017, to be tough on many counts, with foreign exchange looking even less favourable and commodity prices rising in India, Chairman R C Bhargava said after the company posted an 11.7 percent fall in fourth-quarter net profit.

Even so, strong sales and lower costs in the previous nine months helped Maruti to a record annual profit of 45.71 billion rupees.

The carmaker is targeting double-digit sales growth in India in the 2016/17 financial year and has earmarked 44 billion rupees ($661 million) for capital expenditure, versus 25 billion rupees the previous year, Bhargava said.

Shares in Maruti ended 3.85 percent higher, outperforming a 1.3 percent gain for the wider market.

Higher expenses and a one-off production loss because of civil unrest near one of its factories lowered Maruti's fourth-quarter profit to 11.34 billion rupees. That was down from 12.8 billion rupees a year ago but in line with analyst expectations, Thomson data showed.

The company, which sells about one in every two cars in India, said that net sales rose 12.5 percent to 149.3 billion rupees.

Analysts said the earnings were strong considering the company offset the impact of a weaker rupee versus the yen with a better product mix and reduced imports of parts from Japan.

($1 = 66.5592 Indian rupees)

(Additional reporting by Gaurav Dogra in Bengaluru; Editing by Christopher Cushing and David Goodman)
Eyeing Rs 56,500 crore from disinvestment this fiscal, the government has identified some PSEs in sectors like oil, energy and capital goods for selling its stake, Parliament was informed on Tuesday.

As part of the strategy to keep stocks readily available for transaction to take advantage of market conditions without any loss of time, the government has identified some CPSEs for disinvestment during the year in sectors like mineral and metal, oil, energy, capital goods as well as some mid-size and small stocks, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.

In line with the Budget 2015-16, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has approved the structure for 'strategic disinvestment' of Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs), he said.

Requisite instructions in this regard have been issued in February to all departments and ministries concerned, including NITI Aayog, which has been mandated to advise the government to identify CPSEs for strategic disinvestment.

The Budget Estimate for disinvestment for 2016-17 is Rs 56,500 crore. This comprises Rs 36,000 crore as disinvestment receipts from CPSEs and Rs 20,500 crore from strategic disinvestment.

Replying to another question related to taping of idle cash of PSUs, Sinha said they have the option of capital restructuring and adopts such practices as a part of their professional financial management.

In view of such offers, the government may agree to tender/offer equity, if a CPSE decides to buy-back its own shares in the process, he said. The CPSEs take a view on the possible buy-back as a part of their financial management in their Board meetings, he said.

They follow a defined procedure and time-frame for buy-back process in terms of the extant provisions of Indian Companies Act and SEBI guidelines/regulations, Sinha said.

The government considers these offers for buy-back by the CPSEs on merits on a case to case basis and may participate in the process as an investor, he said.


In order to make the pension disbursal system corruption-free and transparent, Delhi government is going to link social security scheme beneficiaries with their Aadhaar card and make their names public in mohallah sabha and on online platforms.

AAP government will also use Public Financial Management System (PFMS), an online platform that enables real-time tracking of fund disbursement, for transferring money to the beneficiatries' bank accounts.

According to a senior official, the move was taken after several discrepancies like duplicity, ghost accounts and ineligible account holders were found by the department of social welfare.

"We are trying to end duplicity by linking pension beneficiaries with Aadhar card. The similar process has shown its result in LPG connection, where ghost beneficiaries are now almost negligible. This will bring an end to duplicity and ghost beneficiaries drawing government's money," the senior officer said adding that the process of linking accounts have begun, as one-third beneficiaries have furnished their details and rest will be completed soon.

In another path-breaking move AAP government will make the names of all beneficiaries public through their mohalla sabha and online platform and common people will help in keeping a check on the ineligible holders.

"We will also attempt putting a new cross-checking system in place by making names of pension holders public during each mohalla sabha. If a sabha is being held in Patparganj then a list of all the pensioners will be on display. The public will help in checking the authenticity of holders. In case of any dispute, documents will be checked and if found invalid, then accounts will be cancelled," the officer explained.

Data of beneficiaries will be also available online in the public domain.

MAIL TODAY recently reported that the Delhi government's Public Grievance Commission (PGC) asked department of social welfare to file a status report, which stated that a pensioner, Murti Devi, was receiving old-age financial assistance since 2008 but it was stopped as she was found to be under age as per the details of her voter ID on the Chief Electoral Office website.

After finding cases where old-age pensions were being drawn wrongly, the PGC has directed Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) to investigate these cases and directed the social welfare departments to take strict measures to check such frauds.

Representatives of the department stated that more such cases have already been unearthed and in over 800 pensions have been stopped.

(In association with Mail Today Bureau)


The clause that online marketplaces cannot influence the pricing of products sold on their platforms as per the recent FDI guidelines for e-commerce retail, is giving sleepless nights to the $11-billion online retail industry. In laymans terms, not being able to influence pricing would mean the end of attractive discounts on online marketplaces such as Flipkart and Snapdeal. Can e-commerce companies afford to completely do away with discounts?

As per a report by the Boston Consulting Group, 45 per cent of Indians shop online to avail discounts. Marketplaces buy merchandise from brands at regular prices and sell at huge discounts to the consumers. So, a pair of Nike shoes that a customer buys from an online marketplace for a cool 20 per cent off, may have actually been given to the online store at a 10 per cent discount. The online marketplace would have discounted it further to lure customers.

It is this deep discounting strategy that has led to the exponential growth of online retail in India, albeit at the expense of physical retail. In fact, brands selling on these marketplaces have, since the past year, mandated that discounts are offered only on their older merchandise. Attractive discounts, ability to compare brands, the convenience of cash on delivery and an easy return policy have wooed Indian consumers to these platforms.

Much before the FDI guidelines came through, marketplaces were beginning to reduce their discounts as they were burning huge amounts of funds, with profitability being nowhere in sight. Most of these marketplaces, be it Flipkart (raised $3.4 billion) or Snapdeal (raised $2 billion) have raised huge amounts of money from foreign investors and, hence, come under the FDI purview.

Online marketplaces, as per the new guidelines, are merely IT platforms that act as facilitators between the buyer and seller, and have no say in influencing pricing. But discounting remains an integral feature for Indian e-commerce entities. G.T. Thomas Phillippe, Partner at law firm Khaitan & Co., is confident that marketplaces will come up with ways to pass on discounts to consumers. "For instance, marketplaces may look at incentivising sellers to discount their products by offering them discounts on the listing price (which is anywhere between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of the product) or discounting the warehousing charges. Discounting on marketplaces will not go away," he says.

Pinaki Ranjan Mishra, Partner and Head, Retail Practice, at consulting firm EY, agrees that e-commerce marketplaces will leverage loopholes in the system to offer discounts, which will not be as attractive as before. "Even if they give sellers discounts on listing price, and concessions to use their warehousing and logistic services, the discount they will ultimately pass on to the consumers won't be more than 4-5 per cent."

Among other tactics to survive in an environment of no discounts, e-commerce companies could offer discounts through digital wallets, according to Govind Shrikhande, MD, Shoppers Stop. All big marketplaces have their own e-wallets - Flipkart has FX Mart and Snapdeal has Freecharge - and Shrikhande expects most of the discounting activities to happen through these. "India has an Internet penetration of 400 million, out of which 100 million shop online, and adoption of digital wallets is steadily increasing. With aspects such as payment on delivery becoming increasingly unprofitable, I see more and more e-commerce platforms resorting to wallets and offering discounts through them."

"Marketplaces may incentivise sellers to discount their products by offering them discounts on the listing price"

While the industry thinks aloud on how the online retail sector will cope with the guidelines, online retailers prefer not to comment on the subject. But one thing is certain, says Abheek Singhi, Senior Partner and Director, Boston Consulting Group, "Online retail will potentially slow down, at least in the short term." One can even expect a fair bit of consolidation, but it could set the ball rolling for sustainable growth. "The e-commerce sector has been going through a phase of harming itself. All of them have been over-discounting, which hasn't benefited them," says Peyush Bansal, Founder, Lenskart.

A section of the industry feels that the guidelines are uncalled for. "The stand on pricing cant be mandated by the government. No government department has the right to monitor the right level of discounts; it should only be bothered about predatory pricing," remarks Arvind Singhal, Chairman and MD of retail consultancy Technopak. According to him, reduction of discounts should be a function of market forces. "If a company wants to give discounts and run itself to the ground, I don't know why the government of a country should be worried about it. It's a business choice," adds Debashish Mukherjee, Head, Consumer Practice, A.T. Kearney.

Emergence of New Models The FDI guidelines also do not allow online marketplaces to own inventory, which means that marketplaces cannot have private brands. This again would be a setback as private brands contribute anywhere between 15 and 20 per cent to the revenues of most marketplaces.

Flipkart and Amazon have created seller entities W.S. Retail and Cloudtail, respectively, under which their private brands are housed. Phillippe of Khaitan & Co expects the emergence of more such seller entities. The guideline also does not allow more than 25 per cent sales from a particular seller. But the likes of W.S. Retail supposedly account for close to 40 per cent of Flipkart's sales. "The marketplaces would now set up multiple seller entities and ensure that neither of them exceeds 25 per cent of sales," Phillippe adds.

The definition of the marketplace model as per the new guidelines debars e-commerce platforms from having a say in after-sales services. If the consumer has an issue with a product, he/she has to directly get in touch with the seller. Singhal of Technopak perceives this as "ridiculous and consumer-unfriendly" and believes that the onus should be on the marketplace. Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retail Association of India (RAI), believes that this will put an end to fly-by-night operators who sell fake products and vanish. "Now you have to clearly state who the seller is. Currently, neither the marketplace nor the seller is accountable, and this has resulted in a lot of frauds."

"No government department has the right to monitor the right level of discounts; it should only be bothered about predatory pricing"

In such a scenario, Shrikhande of Shoppers Stop expects online marketplaces to create an Alipay kind of model that Alibaba has created in China. Consumers shopping on Alibaba make the payment to Alipay, a third-party payment solutions company, and Alibaba releases the payment to the seller only after the consumer is satisfied with the product. "Alipay took away the problem of trust," he states.

The FDI guidelines have sprung up umpteen challenges for online retailers, leaving them with little choice but to reinvent, unless they succeed in lobbying with the government to turn the guidelines in their favour. Rajagopalan of RAI believes that the guidelines are a step towards creating a level-playing field for online and offline retailers. "The healthiest thing to do is collaborate with various brands or retailers of this country and truly behave like a marketplace. They should behave like malls online," he advises. He expects that a lot of new online brands will be created, just as the mall culture, a decade ago, had created a number of homegrown brands.

Mishra of EY expects smaller brands, which churn out revenues of Rs 50 crore to Rs 250 crore, to create their omnichannel presence, approaching the marketplaces to take care of their online business. Manish Mandhana, Joint Managing Director of Mandhana Industries, which operates the Being Human franchise owned by actor Salman Khan, concurs. "I would rather concentrate on building my brand, allowing marketplaces to take care of my online retail business as they are specialists."

The FDI guidelines are expected to bring in fair play into the highly competitive retail space. With billions of dollars at stake, e-commerce players are toiling away to up their game.


Crude oil futures dipped on Tuesday as analysts warned of an intensifying producer race between Saudi Arabia and Iran, wiping out earlier price gains that came from a weaker dollar and a flood of new cash into the market.

Front-month Brent crude futures were trading at $44.37 per barrel at 0639 GMT, down 11 cents from their last settlement.

US crude futures were down 12 cents at $42.52 per barrel.

The dips erased earlier gains on Tuesday from a weaker dollar and by a rush of new investment into crude futures.

And while BP's chief executive Bob Dudley said on Tuesday that "robust demand and weak supply growth will move global oil markets closer into balance by the end of the year," analysts warned of a deeper glut as Saudi Arabia and Iran seemingly ramp up output in a race for customers.

"The biggest bear risk to the oil market right now is that Iran's ramp-up accelerates and then that Saudi Arabia does the same," Citi said in a note to clients.

"If anyone had a doubt about Saudi Aramco's ability to use its logistical system and spot sales to increase market share, its recent 730,000 barrel sale of a cargo to a Chinese teapot refiner in Shandong should lay any doubts to rest," it added.

The cargo will be lifted in June from Aramco's storage in Japan's Okinawa prefecture and shipped to China's eastern province of Shandong, Reuters reported on Monday.

Citi said it was likely that Saudi Arabia was targeting 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) in new sales to bring its production up to at least 11 million bpd or higher.

BMI Research said that it had upgraded its Saudi Arabian crude production forecast, "reflecting the failure of the meeting at Doha, planned increases in output capacity and the creeping politicization of oil under Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman."

The company said that it expected Saudi output to average 10.3 million bpd, up from a previous estimate of 10.2 million bpd.

Iran wants to get back to pre-sanction production of 4 million bpd.

Traders said that a looming gasoline glut in Asia also threatened the recent rise in prices as refiners flood the market with unwanted products.
The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,043.29 million at the end of January 2016 to 1,051.88 million at the end of February 2016, showing a monthly growth rate of 0.82 per cent, according to data released by telecom regulator TRAI on Tuesday.

The urban subscription increased from 603.85 million at the end of January to 608.42 million at the end of February and the rural subscription increased from 439.43 million to 443.46 million during the same period, said the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

The monthly growth rates of urban and rural subscription were 0.76 per cent and 0.91 per cent respectively during the month of February, while the overall tele-density in India increased from 82.30 at the end of January to 82.89 at the end of February.

The total wireless subscriber base increased from 1,017.97 million at the end of January to 1,026.66 million at the end of February, registering a monthly growth rate of 0.85 per cent, while wireless tele-density in India increased from 80.30 at the end of January to 80.91 at the end of February.

Wireline subscriber base declined from 25.32 million at the end of January to 25.22 million at the end of February. Net reduction in the wireline subscriber base was 0.10 million with a monthly decline rate of 0.41 per cent.

"In the month of February, a total of 5.10 million requests were received for mobile number portability (MNP). With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 199.62 million at the end of January to 204.73 million at the end of February, since the implementation of MNP," the TRAI said.

"As per the reports received from the service providers, the number of broadband subscribers increased from 140.10 million at the end of January to 144.87 million at the end of February with a monthly growth rate of 3.40 per cent," it added.


It was announced today that a new three year Innovation Partnership programme in food quality and safety has been signed between Enterprise Ireland and University College Dublin (UCD) today.



The 1.7 million Enterprise Ireland and industry funded programme, Sequencing Alliance for Food Environments (SAFE), aims to develop a new predictive software toolbox to enhance food quality and safety approaches, nationally and with global reach using environmental intelligence data.



It is a unique partnership between the UCD Centre for Food Safety and six leading food and nutrition companies including Dairygold, Dawn Farm Foods, Glanbia, Kerry, Mead Johnson Nutrition and Nutrition Supplies. Also included will be Creme Global, experts in predictive intake modelling software.



The SAFE programme aims to develop a new state-of-the-art food safety and quality decision making software toolbox to mitigate against the risk of bacterial contamination in the food supply chain in a smarter, faster and in a more specific and sustainable way.

During a 2-year period researchers at UCD will track the environments in a number of food manufacturing plants in Ireland belonging to the industry partners. These plants include infant formula grade ingredient plants, a cooked and fermented meat processing plant and a precision vitamin and mineral pre-mix manufacturing facility.



Director of Research and Innovation at Enterprise Ireland, Gearoid Mooney said, "By developing a state of the art safety and quality decision making toolset to mitigate the risk of contamination in the food supply chain, this project demonstrates a new level of partnership, collaboration and joined up thinking between our client companies and our research institutes."



UCD Professor of Food Safety, Professor Seamus Fanning added, "I am excited about the possibilities of what this research can deliver. This programme positions UCD researchers and our Irish food industry and software research collaborators at the forefront of surveillance with the potential to use this data to control their production environments and protect their consumers."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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The global glass and metal packaging conglomerate Ardagh Group yesterday announced that it has entered into an agreement with Ball Corporation and Rexam PLC to buy metal beverage can manufacturing assets and support locations in Europe, Brazil and the United States for an enterprise value of $3.42 billion.

Ardagh will acquire ten beverage can manufacturing plants and two end plants in Europe, seven beverage can manufacturing plants and one end plant in the United States, two beverage can manufacturing plants in Brazil and certain innovation and support functions in Germany, the UK, Switzerland and the United States.

Ardagh's Chairman, Paul Coulson, said that "We are pleased to expand our consumer packaging business with the addition of a leading beverage can business. Whilst we do not currently operate in the beverage can market, the business we are acquiring is highly complementary to our existing metal and glass businesses. The acquired business has an excellent management team and strong customer relationships."

As part of the financing for the buyouts Ardagh Group announced yesterday that it has launched a bond offering for a total financing of US$2,850 million. The proceeds from the issue and sale will be used to pay part of the cash consideration for the acquisition of Ball and Rexam.

Following completion of the transactions Ardagh Group will operate 110 facilities in 22 countries, employing over 23,000 people, with global sales exceeding US$8.8 billion.

Source; www.businessworld.ie
A new study launched by Global technology company, EMC, has found that seven in ten Irish and British IT workers looked for new job last year.



The Great Skills Exodus report based on research of 500 IT and cybersecurity workers in Ireland and the UK reveals that 71% have looked for a job elsewhere with almost half (49%) highlighting restrictions on career progression as a key driver.

Across many industries, the report also highlighted that a lack of career progression outweighed a poor pay package as the priority for considering alternative roles.



Company culture is highlighted as a barrier for many with 26% citing their organisation as unwilling to change the way that things have always been done, 23% revealing a lack of understanding of ITs role and nearly a third (30%) stating that there are few opportunities to demonstrate their ability.



EMC Ireland Country Manager, Gerry Murray said, "This research puts in clear terms the challenges that businesses across Ireland and the UK are facing when hiring and retaining IT talent. For these businesses to retain their tech talent, senior management must embrace the role IT plays in business development. In addition to competitive pay and career progression, management must delegate more creative control to IT teams, allowing for greater innovation and efficiency within the business."

He added, "In Ireland, a real shortage of tech skills, particularly in new fields like cloud computing and data analytics, means IT professionals are free to pick and choose who they work for and in what field. With national and global demand for these skills on the rise and tens of thousands of jobs either directly or indirectly linked to tech set to be created in the coming years, companies must act now to create a working culture that is friendly to IT."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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China's biggest e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's affiliate Ant Financial Services Group has closed a $4.5 billion funding round, paving the way for a long-expected initial public offering (IPO).

Ant Financial offers services such as online payment, wealth management products and insurance. Its core Alipay online payment business was founded in 2004.

China Investment Corp Capital and CCB Trust, a subsidiary of China Construction Bank Corp , participated in the Series B fundraising, Ant Financial said in a statement on Tuesday.

Ant Financial did not disclose what its valuation was after the round closed, but a person familiar with the fundraising said it is now valued at close to $60 billion.

The Alibaba affiliate's latest fundraising is the biggest ever for a private Internet company. But the company is also much older than its fundraising peers, and is only now gearing up for an IPO after 12 years and a rebranding in 2014.

Ant Financial is among a series of financial technology companies tapping investors for pre-IPO financing to fund expansion as Chinese consumers move more of their banking, payments and investing online.

The company has confirmed plans for an IPO but has previously said it does not have a timeline for the process. It did not comment on the IPO on Tuesday.

"The capital raised in Series B will allow us to invest in the infrastructure, such as cloud computing and risk control, that will underpin our long-term growth in rural and international markets," said Eric Jing, Ant Financial's president, in Tuesday's statement.

Those risk control measures include biometric verification technologies. This could help Ant Financial's private banking venture, MYbank, overcome blocks set by regulators on taking deposits, with authorities concerned about keeping transactions above-board.

Existing Ant Financial shareholders China Life Insurance Co Ltd , China Post Group, the parent of Postal Savings Bank of China, China Development Bank Capital and Primavera Capital Group also took part in the round, the online finance firm said.

The company, though, is now facing strong competition in the form of Alibaba arch-rival Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat Payment, which has quietly become one of the world's largest payments systems.(Reuters)



Source; www.businessworld.ie
Crude futures edged up on Tuesday due to a weaker dollar and hopes for an easing of the global oil glut, although gains were capped by concerns that a battle for market share between Saudi Arabia and Iran could intensify further.

Front-month Brent crude futures traded at $44.75 per barrel at 0815 GMT, up 27 cents from their last settlement. U.S. crude futures were also up 27 cents, at $42.91 a barrel.

"Market fundamentals continue to suggest that the combination of robust demand and weak supply growth will move global oil markets closer into balance by the end of the year," BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley said in a statement after the firm reported stronger-than-expected results.

Also helping prices were a weaker dollar and a rush of new investment into crude futures.

However, some analysts warned it was too early to call an end to the crude glut as Saudi Arabia and Iran could ramp up output further in a race for customers.

"The biggest bear risk to the oil market right now is that Iran's ramp-up accelerates and then that Saudi Arabia does the same," Citi said in a note to clients.

"If anyone had a doubt about Saudi Aramco's ability to use its logistical system and spot sales to increase market share, its recent 730,000-barrel sale of a cargo to a Chinese teapot refiner in Shandong should lay any doubts to rest," it added.

The cargo will be lifted in June from Aramco's storage in Japan's Okinawa prefecture and shipped to China's eastern province of Shandong, Reuters reported.

Citi said it was likely that Saudi Arabia was targeting 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) in new sales to bring its production up to at least 11 million bpd.

BMI Research said it had upgraded its Saudi crude production forecast, "reflecting the failure of the meeting at Doha, planned increases in output capacity and the creeping politicization of oil under Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman".

On April 17, a deal to freeze oil output by OPEC and non-OPEC producers fell apart after Saudi Arabia, during talks in the Qatari capital of Doha, demanded Iran join in.

BMI said it expected Saudi output to average 10.3 million bpd, up from a previous estimate of 10.2 million bpd.

Iran wants to get back to pre-sanctions production of 4 million bpd.

Traders said a looming gasoline glut in Asia also threatened the recent rise in prices. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Book Launch /

The Captioning Seance, with Wayne Koestenbaum

Date: Saturday, 7 May 2016, 12:301 pm

Location: Frieze New York Art Fair, Randalls Island, New York (map and directions here)

Free with Frieze New York pass

Please join us at Frieze New York for a launch event with poet and cultural critic Wayne Koestenbaum on the occasion of the release of his new book Notes on Glaze (Cabinet Books, 2016).

In 2010, Koestenbaum began a regular column in Cabinet magazine. Entitled Legend, the columns premise was that Koestenbaum would write one or more extended captions for a photograph that the editors had sent him. These imagesdrawn from vernacular, commercial, and scientific sourceswere all unfamiliar to the author. Notes on Glaze features all eighteen columns alongside a new introductory essay.

For this event at Frieze New York, Koestenbaum invites visitors to bring a photo and receive from him a spontaneous, individualized caption. The performance will be a form of drop-by clairvoyance, with each caption based on Koestenbaums instant interpretation of the visitors aura.

More information on the book is available here.

About the Author

Wayne Koestenbaum is a poet, critic, painter, and musician. He has previously published seventeen books of poetry, criticism, and fiction, including The Pink Trance Notebooks (Nightboat Books, 2015), My 1980s & Other Essays (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013), Hotel Theory (Soft Skull Press, 2007), and The Queens Throat (Poseidon Press, 1993), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Koestenbaums first solo exhibition took place at White Columns in New York in 2012; a survey of his paintings appeared at the University of Kentucky Art Museum in 2015. He has given musical performances at the Kitchen, New York; REDCAT, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles. Koestenbaum has taught at Yale University, both in the English Department and as a visiting member of the painting faculty of the School of Art, and is a Distinguished Professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.
The summer season is the biggest tourist season according to Julie Hollist, executive director of the Cache Valley Visitors Bureau. She says events that bring the most tourists into the valley will soon be opening their doors and, in fact, tickets for the Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theatre Company went on sale Monday.

In the past, I think, theyve had their season tickets, but now you can buy single tickets to all of their events, says Hollist. You can get that taken care of while you choose your best seats. Same with the (Old) Lyric (Theater). Theyve got some great shows.

I know tickets are available for those as well. We just have got great theater going on. We are anticipating, also (hopefully, with fingers crossed) the Utah Theater this summer as well. So we can really define ourselves as the heart of the arts.

She says that is the way she refers to Cache Valley among her counterparts in the tourist industry. Hollist says you can call 750-0300 for tickets to the Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theatre or pick them up at the Dansante Building at 59 South 100 West in Logan.

For the 2016 season, Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theatre will showcase <em>Ragtime: the Musical</em>, <em>Porgy and Bess</em>, <em>Showboat</em>, <em>Puccinis Trilogy</em>, and <em>Peter Pan</em>. Meanwhile, the Old Lyric Repertory Company will present <em>Arsenic and Old Lace</em>, <em>Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery</em>, <em>Singin in the Rain</em>, and <em>You Cant Take it With You</em>.
A recent sexual assault at Brigham Young University has risen the awareness of sexual assaults on college campuses in Utah.

An event at Utah State University recently, called Walk a Mile In Her Shoes, was hosted by the USU SAAVI office, which stands for Sexual Assault and Anti-Violance. The event aimed to bring more awareness to the problem of sexual assault and violence.

On <a href=http://610kvnu.com/assets/podcaster/324/2016_04_23_324_44104_2867.mp3 target=_blank>KVNUs For the People program Friday</a>, SAAVI coordinator Jenny Erazo said that men wore high heel shoes to identify with a female who may be the victim of sexual or other type of assault.

Erazo says sexual assault is often hard to talk about but the SAAVI office is there to offer help.

We are a free and confidential reporting source on campus and as they come in we talk about what their options are for the situation they are in, said Erazo. We let them know legal reporting options, university reporting options, we are able to connect with professors.

Really, we have an incredibly supportive campus. If I could say anything, it would be to just reach out for help, contact our office so we can provide you with support.

She said SAAVI works closely with CAPSA and social organizations. To report an incident call 797-RAPE, thats 797-7273.
The True Cost: Fashion at what price? (2/2)

Published on April 26, 2016

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In response to the imminent opening of Belgium's fifth branch of Primark  and seeing as H&M owns 3,900 branches across 61 countries  the European Greens held a screening and post-film debate of the documentary "The True Cost" on the 2nd of March.

Read the first part of this article here.

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Through fast-fashion, we're contributing to an unprecedented increase in the quantity of clothes being disposed of. The average American citizen is responsible for 37 kilogrammes per year. Donating clothes to charity is not necessarily a good solution; only 10% of items are sold in-store and the rest are sent to developing countries. The majority of clothing items are not reusable and tonnes of non-biodegradable material are accumulating in huge open air landfills, emitting toxic gases that are, over the course of decades, contributing to global warming.

People Tree: A utopia in a capitalist system?

The year following the collapse at Rana Plaza was the most profitable of all time for the fashion industry. The enormous profits of these major brands can be attributed to the work of millions of labourers, who themselves dont receive any of said profits.

According to the economist Richard Wolf, the problem stems from the capitalist system, which is based on profit motives. Everything else is ignored and disregarded by the producer. Human rights violations, destitution, the destruction of nature and the deterioration of health  this is the real price of our clothing.

Alternatives are however emerging. Safia Minney created "People Tree" 25 years ago, to show that other business models were feasible. Today, the brand is sold in 1,000 shops and employs more than 7,000 people. "People Tree" works with a network of 4,500 artisans in countries such as the Philippines, Nepal or Bangladesh. These partners consider female empowerment, the social development of workers and the protection of the environment to be of utmost importance.

During his speech at the European Parliament, Safia Minney explained the impact of his organisation in more detail: 75% of their workers are female and assume 56% of management roles. "Women are the largest consumer base for fashion," he said, "and it's wonderful to see that the industry can also be a way of giving women who are economically marginalised the means to be autonomous."

The production of cotton plants can reduce the consumption of water by up to 60% in some areas. Cotton sold at a fair price enables small farmers to escape the poverty trap and develop their communities  by building wells and schools for example.

Consumers of the world, unite!

The majority of people choose their clothes according to price or style. Why shouldn't the conditions of production also be a deciding factor? An increasing number of consumers already consider this in other fields by choosing Fairtrade branded coffee and other products.

Yet such responsibilities do not rest exclusively with the consumer. Political leaders must begin legislating, including at the European level, to regulate the production practices of businesses. If brands choose to relocate their production centres, they shouldnt have any possibility of shirking their social and environmental responsibilities.

It's by lobbying major brands that politicians and consumers will bring a change to this unjust and dangerous system. Politicians must put top-down pressure on businesses through law-making, while consumers should take a bottom-up approach. How exactly? By reading up on the practices of your favourite labels, by standing up for the rights of textile workers and by demanding a decent salary for those who we would quite literally be naked without. The Clean Clothes Campaign and its national members are doing great work on these issues.

Consumers have both great responsibility and great power. Without our money, these labels would collapse. Let's use our power to demand that they produce clean clothes. Let's tell them that we want to buy fashion without being complicit in perpetuating mental illness, cancer and suicide among labourers. They will have no choice but to listen to us.

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This article was published by our local team at cafebabel Brussels.

Story by Helena Van Aelst

Translated from The True Cost : la mode a quel prix ? (2/2)
Q: What causes businesses to fail?

A: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) made a study of why publicly traded companies fail and identified six criteria that determine long term success or failure. The group found the average age of publicly traded companies was 31.6 years, down from about 55 years in 1970. A simplified version of the five criteria would apply also to small businesses. The group concluded the reason for increased failure was a harsher less predictable business environment, more rapid change due to technological innovation and businesses being more interconnected than ever before.

The group says businesses operate in what they call complex adaptive systems often nested in broader systems. Small businesses have suppliers, employees and customers and operate in a group of competitive businesses and also within a larger system including the community and government entities. Businesses can't control what goes on outside the business, but must monitor and adapt to survive.

The first criterion is heterogeneity, meaning a diversity of employees, ideas, innovations and endeavors that help the business adapt to the changing environment. The business must encourage employees to take calculated risk and create new ideas. It's learning results from failure.

The second criterion is modularity. Separate modules could be separate business sites in separate markets each operating autonomously. For a retailer that could mean having multiple lines of merchandise not just one. Failure in one wouldn't cause failure in others.

The third criterion is redundancy. For a small business that could mean cross training employees to fill key critical positions. Loss of one key employee wouldn't cause a business failure. Redundancy means having multiple suppliers and customers so that the business can survive a loss of one or two. Redundancy could result in less efficiency, but could save the business.

The fourth criterion is managers should expect surprises and try to reduce uncertainty. Managers can't predict future changes in the business environment but they should collect signals, information, intelligence and look for change patterns. When change is identified prepare contingency plans to cope with it or to mitigate the consequences. A new competitor in the market doing things differently should be a red flag signaling change.

The fifth criterion is to create feedback loops and adaptive mechanisms when changes are identified. The feedback should trigger ways to adapt to change.

The sixth criterion is to foster trust and reciprocity with the system of suppliers, customers, competitors, community and government that the business operates in. Cooperation with those entities is beneficial, but those entities often have opposite interests. Therefore, cooperation requires building trust.

Ralph Coker, a retired refinery manager, volunteers with the local chapter of SCORE, counselors to small businesses.
City Hall

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By Matt Woolbright of the Caller-Times

A planned video conference with city officials from a slate of Texas cities was scrapped, but the City Council is still on track to vote on an ordinance regulating the growing ride-hailing industry next month.

The council had planned to talk with representatives from Austin, College Station, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, but those cities either declined to partake in a live discussion or did not respond as of Tuesday morning, City Manager Ron Olson told the Caller-Times.

Instead, members discussed recent events surrounding the ride-hailing company and industry, heard from a smaller company willing to operate in Corpus Christi under the pivotal fingerprint-based background check requirement and gave city staff instruction ahead of the May 10 discussion, which is expected to produce a first draft of a regulatory ordinance.

City Councilman Rudy Garza previously supported a motion stating any future ordinance would not include mandatory fingerprint-based background checks, but now he's re-evaluating that stance, he said.

Uber's ability to surge the number of available drivers ahead of major events and the formation of a women-only ride-hailing app to combat safety concerns has him worried the San Francisco-based company isn't doing all the background checks it claims, he explained.

"When we took the seven-to-two vote for direction, we didn't have all the information we have now," Garza said.

The global company also settled another lawsuit in the time since that vote. On the heels of a $28.5 million settlement related to the safety claims by the company, Uber agreed to pay up to $100 million to settle a suit that claimed drivers should be employees instead of independent contractors.

Still, the recent settlement and other information the council has gathered in the past several weeks isn't swaying all the members. City Councilman Mark Scott scoffed at the idea of reconsidering the fingerprint-based background check requirement for a third time.

"I'm not sure why we're having this conversation  I thought we already had it," Scott said. "We gave a motion of direction on what to bring back."

Uber and Lyft, which previously operated in Corpus Christi before a regulatory ordinance existed, ended operations here last month after the council approved an ordinance that mandated fingerprint-based background checks. Supporters have said smaller companies, such as Get Me or Tride, would help locally, but do little for tourists coming to the city expecting the more popular services to be available.

A group of citizens has since mobilized and is planning to put an initiative on the November ballot for an ordinance friendly to the ride-hailing companies if the council fails to approve regulations that bring Uber specifically back to town.

The council is expected to consider an ordinance on May 17, and a final vote could happen May 24.

Twitter: @reportermatt

In other business

The City Council:

Advanced an item that would put up to 112 foreclosed properties up for a public auction on June 4.

Approved on first reading a midyear budget adjustment that shifts spending to account for an $8 million shortfall in revenue this fiscal year.
When is hurricane season? Here's what you need to know in South Texas
Arguijo

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By Natalia Contreras of the Caller-Times

The San Patricio County Sheriff's Office along with the Texas Rangers arrested two men in connection with a 2015 homicide in Mathis, officials said.

Investigators obtained information that led to the arrests of 24-year-old Alexis Arguijo of Mathis and 23-year-old Robert Ray Perez of Robstown on suspicion of murder, according to a San Patricio County Sheriff's office news release.

The two men are accused of killing Lou Anthony Guitierrez. The 26-year-old was found dead on March 4, 2015, from multiple gunshot wounds on Private Road 1080 south of Mathis.

According to the news release, the U.S. Marshals of Corpus Christi assisted in locating the two men.

Arguijo remained in San Patricio County Jail and Perez at Nueces County Jail Tuesday. Their bail was each set at $500,000 each, jail officials said.

Twitter: @CallerNatalia
CAMEROUN :: Cameroon Embassy Frustrates General Schwarzkopf 2018 Presidential Ambitions

US-based Cameroonian born Dr. Corantin Talla, aka General Schwarzkopf, who has declared his candidature for the 2018 Presidential Election has been refused travelling documents to enter the country by the Cameroon Embassy in Washington.

Talla, who was co-founder of the famous Le Parlement of the Yaounde University in the 90s, and has been living in the United States since 1995, said he has been without a Cameroonian passport since 1993. According to him, his passport was stolen by an agent from the Cameroon Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria, who was sent to assassinate him in his room at the Lagos University.

He was speaking in an exclusive interview he granted to the French language weekly, Forum Libre, an interview which the Publisher and Editorin-Chief of Forum, Prince Aristide Ngueukam, shared with The Post.

Talla said he left Nigeria for the United States of America as a political refugee under the protection of the United Nations. According to him, he entered the US with a document that was issued by the US Embassy in Lagos, within the framework of a programme of reinstallation of refugees under the US Service of Immigration and Naturalisation. But Talla insisted that he remains a Cameroonian.

Dr. Talla, who has been living as a political refugee in the US for 24 years said he wanted to visit Cameroon for the first time since he fled the country in 1992, following serious threats on his life.

According to him, after compiling the required documents for an entry ticket to Cameroon and paid all the charges, his file was sent via FEDEX to the Cameroon Embassy in Washington. My file was received at the Cameroon Embassy in Washington at 10:18am on March 17, 2016, and a paper was duly signed by the receptionist to acknowledge that the file has been received (tracking number: 7826297355176). On March 31, 2016, at 9:57am, I received through FEDEX a mail from the Cameroon Embassy, duly signed to acknowledge receipt. But I was embarrassed when I opened the file and discovered part of the documents, including the money order I had sent to the Embassy. The paper I requested to enable me travel to Cameroon was not inside and no reason was advanced why I had been refused the document to travel to my own country. No reason was also given as to why a part of the documents I sent to the Embassy was withheld. Talla said he tried to call the Embassy a number of times, but got no concrete response as to why he was refused the document to travel to Cameroon. After this, each time I call and the receptionist identify my voice, she would drop the call. The former students leader did not explain why he did not go to the Embassy to find out what was happening.

To him, the action of the Cameroon Embassy in Washington is a glaring indication that the Biya regime is still scared of General Schwarzkopf. Talla said he has not given up his determination to visit the land of his birth and that even the dictatorial regime will not be able to stop him.

The ex-students leader averred that one of the things he wants to do in Cameroon is to lay a wreath on the grave of his younger brother who died in 2010. Another aim of his visit is to begin political consultation on the ground, in preparation for the 2018 Presidential Election.

Dr. Talla had already declared his candidature for the 2018 Presidential election. On why he wants to run for the 2018 Presidential, Talla asserted that Biyas 33 years in power has ruined and plunged the country into misery and desolation. He accused the Biya regime of corruption, tribalisation of the administration, marginalisation of Cameroonians in the Diaspora, gross human rights violation, embezzlement of public funds, among other ills.

Talla says he made a tour of Europe last year to present his candidature to his compatriots and received massive support. I have obtained an education, an expertise and professional experience, which coupled with my political experience, will enable me to lead a team of Cameroonian men and women capable of ameliorating the conditions of living, as well as the transformation of our country into a real emerging economy.

Though I have been in exile, I have remained active in the fight for a veritable democracy in Cameroon through lobbying, organisation of manifestations to denounce the ills of the Biya regime and so on.

On how he intends to be candidate, given that the conditions for independent candidates are challenging, couple with the fact he has no political party, General Schwarzkopf said he has two options either transforming the NGO, Conscience du Cameroun into a political party or vying as candidate in one of the numerous legalised political parties.

He disclosed that he has already been contacted by a number of young men who are Presidents of legalised political parties, inviting him to join and be their Presidential candidate.
It is understood that Zaim's new job responsibilities include continuing to serve core client Mondelez out of the US as well as setting up an e-commerce offering for the market.

No successor has been named, but Carat Asia-Pacific CEO Sean O'Brien will temporarily take over. Zaim indicated the company is in the final stages of a decision.

Zaim told Campaign Asia-Pacific in an exclusive interview that Carat has been looking for a replacement while he travelled back and forth between New York and Shanghai during an ongoing transition period that started early this year.

"I actually have two jobs now, and personally it's very taxing on me," he said. "My China job ends at 6 pm and my New York one starts then."

Having been in the mainland Chinese market for nearly 10 years, Zaim said he initiated his own career advancement in January 2015. "I need to move out now, not later, to benefit my career," he said. The condition was to look for his own successor before leaving China.

Zaim became CEO of Carat China in March 2012. The business has grown by 120 percent since then, he claimed, adding that China is now Carat's third largest revenue-contributor globally.

Last July, Carat China lost a decade-long client, BMW China, said to be worth US$450 million in billings, to Starcom China. Clients remaining on the roster include Adidas, British Airways, Disney Shanghai, Ferrero, Lego, Mondelez, Nippon Paint, Pernod Ricard, Red Star Macalline, Wyeth, Pfizer and Tinghsin International Group.

Given the market's importance, filling Zaim's shoes is crucial. "Ill be honest, the CEO task is more challenging than in 2012 since we are now growing from a larger base than before," he said.

Carat's management team is not in favour of hiring a "typical media-agency person who holds a traditional mindset", he said. However, existing second-in-commands at Carat China seem to fall into that category and are not a good fit, he said.

"The talent in the market is still very traditional," he said. "The first option, after looking internally as a rule of thumb, was to look for senior agency leaders from other media agencies, which we quickly decided within the first six months, this is not the route to take. The second option is to bring in someone with a slightly different background who will be more suitable for Carat."

The way Carat structures its operations is different from other international media agencies, Zaim said. "None of the other big media agencies have e-commerce divisions like us," he said. "When we set it up, we took a different wheel. E-commerce to us is still media: transactional media. So we went ahead and hired people from Taobao and other e-commerce platforms for this division."

"Our guys in our various specialisms have never been in a media agency before," he added. "They are not media guys rebatched to be a social or e-commerce specialist, for example, otherwise you can only talk superficially about it; the moment you deep-dive, you crash."

Carat's management will be receptive to a new person who may take exception to the conventions of running a media agency, he predicted. Except that Zaim doesn't want his successor to call Carat a media agency anymore. "We need to set ourselves up as a solutions company delivering convergence with the objective of driving business for clients," he said. "We must think about convergence for the next 10 years."
The move is positioned as promoting programmatic digital advertising, a fast-growing but still under-developed area in Japan.

The service will use a2x, a programmatic audio advertising exchange owned by Triton Digital2, an audio industry supplier. According to Dentsu, it will enable advertisers to deliver targeted, contextual and behavioural audio ads in real-time.

Dentsu will package the new service in The Dentsu Private Marketplace, which it describes as a large-scale invitation-only marketplace that facilitates automated transactions between publishers and buyers. Around 230 publishers are involved, Dentsu said.

In a statement, Dentsu notes that online radio and music-streaming services are gaining popularity. Spotify is expected to launch in Japan this year.



At the same time, the Japanese market remains nascent, with no single established or widely accepted method to serve digital audio ads.

The launch follows that of an equivalent for online video, the Premium Video Series.
Over the years, online payment has gone from security passwords to thumbprints and biometrics. To help illustrate Alibaba Alipay's latest face-recognition technology, the agency created Who Art You. It's a mobile game where users can log into the Alipay App, take a selfie, and have the system identify, wthin three seconds, three famous paintings out of 2,000 that closely match the person's face.

Ad Nut is curious what famous painting would most closely match this squirrel's face? However, Ad Nut also fears an accurate match would be unlikely and that further questions of identity would lead to an existential crisis. Why is Ad Nut writing a blog? Why does Ad Nut only eat walnuts? Why does Ad Nut only write in the third person?

Quotes:

Chen Jidong, head of biometric technology, Alipay:

Compared with other verification methods, face recognition is more convenient.

DDB China has turned technology into art that engages consumers. This is not a traditional app, its a sophisticated piece of art.

Twelve Tong, vice president, DDB China Group:

Biological identification will change the way we interact and transact. We

wanted to explore what the future of mobile platforms look like. Face recognition

provides strong multifactor security with a seamless user experience. Who Art

You shows how we can use technology and art to engage consumers in a

clever and relevant way.

CREDITS

Chief Creative Officer: Tim Cheng

Executive Creative Director: Adams Fan

Senior Copywriter: Jana Chen

Group Head: Rebecca Liang

Senior Art Director: Allen Wang

Designer: Zhang Lei

Account Director: Hu Lei
| BY Ricki Green |

Ardmona and Leo Burnett Melbourne are giving more meaning to a song weve heard a thousand times before, yet probably dont even remember the words to  the Australian National Anthem.

Theyve produced a heartfelt film featuring Aussie tomato growers and their families that modernises Advance Australia Fair, giving the words renewed relevance. It uses the lyrics poignantly to highlight the superb quality of our home-grown produce and encourage shoppers to be more patriotic at the shelf by choosing home-grown tomatoes over cheaper imports.

Says Jason Williams, chief creative officer, Leo Burnett Melbourne: As consumers, were a lot more powerful than we think. The decisions we make at the supermarket shelf can have a profound effect on products and, in this case, the lives of the families who produce them. We want to ignite patriotism in consumers so they think twice next time theyre at the shelf.

The campaign comes at a time when the quality and integrity of imported produce has been seriously called into question. Reports have shown that the gross exploitation of migrant workers is still rife in the Italian tomato industry and just recently, Ardmona won its anti-dumping case against 105 Italian producers, which proved they had been illegally dumping excess product in Australia, undercutting Ardmona on price.

Says Mark Connolly, GM marketing and innovation, Ardmona: In light of recent events, we set out to highlight our Australian provenance in a provocative way and we think the commercial definitely achieves that. It also reflects SPCs end-to-end, paddock-to-plate investment and commitment to Australian tomatoes  from partnering with our fantastic, dedicated growers, to investing in a new state-of-the-art tomato processing plant at our Shepparton factory.

Filmed in and around Rochester, in Victorias Fruit Bowl, the launch follows Leo Burnetts hugely successful #MyFamilyCan campaign, which saw SPC and Ardmona cans re-labelled to feature Aussie farmers and their families. The commercial will be integrated into home-grown content and supported by PR and social media, which has already generated a significant amount of passionate conversation from patriotic Australians.

Agency: Leo Burnett Melbourne

Chief Creative Officer: Jason Williams

Creative Director: Michelle Walsh

Senior Art Director: Mike Fritz

Chief Executive Officer: Melinda Geertz

Group Account Director: Ari Sztal

Account Manager: Kenneth Chow

Producer: Cinnamon Darvall

Director of Integrated Strategy: Ilona Janashvili

Strategy Planner: Emily Gould

Head of Social: Chris Steele

Associate Digital CD: Tim Shelley

Production Company: Studio Pancho

Director: Lizzy Bailey

Producer: Francesca DOrazio

DOP: Aaron Farrugia

Editor: Chris Ward

Sound: Sound Lounge

Client: SPC Ardmona

GM Marketing & Innovation: Mark Connolly

Head of Brand Marketing: Anand Surujpal
| BY Ricki Green |

Cha time Australia, part of a global iced tea chain operating in 26 countries around the world with over 1,100 locations, has just launched a new TVC via The Sphere Agency.

The TVC is the latest element of Cha time Australias new brand platform, Youve never had iced tea like this before. The development of the brand platform was led by Cha times desire to broaden the appeal of the brand by educating audiences that Cha time is simply iced tea with a fun twist.

Called Fresh, fun and flavour in every cup, the TVC shows how even the worlds most hard-to-please characters are won over by the taste of Cha time. In the ad a very familiar-looking dictator transforms from evil tyrant to a fun-loving nice guy through the joy of drinking Cha time (well until the drink runs out anyway).

Says Carlos Antonius, general manager, Cha time: Cha time isnt your typical iced tea  its a fun twist on iced tea that appeals to people with a sense of adventure. We wanted to bring that sense of adventure and fun to the fore with a TVC far removed from what youd expect from an iced tea brand.

Says Michael Abdel, executive creative director and founder, The Sphere Agency: Its been a joy to work with Cha time. They have a very clear understanding of their brand and are brave enough to embrace their target markets bold, fun-loving attitude.
| BY Ricki Green |

oOh!media has today announced it has secured long term rights to Brisbane Airports Domestic Terminal Virgin Australia area, giving the Out Of Home company exclusive rights to what has been voted Australias best airport.

The agreement, which will see oOh! assume rights from the incumbent on 1 July, 2016, sees it now hold exclusive advertising rights across the entire Brisbane Domestic Terminal (including the Qantas, Central and now Virgin Australia areas), the International Terminal and on Brisbane Airport Corporations 2700 hectares of land.

Says Andrew Brodie, Brisbane Airport corporation general manager for aviation and retail management, said the decision to appoint oOh! was based on the shared vision both companies have for continued innovation in delivering products that aligned with its commitment to a quality passenger experience.

Says Brodie: At Brisbane Airport, we are committed to providing travellers with the best airport service standards  as demonstrated by being named the Best Airport (Australia/Pacific) in the 2016 Skytrax World Airport Awards.

We had received a number of strong proposals from the Out Of Home industry, but oOh! hasdemonstrated to us over the years that its audience led approach and digital innovation is well aligned to our customer-centric commitment.

oOh! group director of fly, Robbie Dery, said the contract cemented oOh!s leadership position in the important airport environment and continued to enhance the national offering which covers 10 cities, 15 terminals and 17 business lounges.

Says Dery: Out Of Home media in airports gives brands an unmissable presence among the high-spend travel audience in an environment where they are more likely to engage with the advertising around them.

We have invested significantly to expand that engagement beyond just rolling out digital screens, by building our offering around enhancing the passenger experience to deliver deeper and more meaningful engagement.

We look forward to expanding our world leading innovation  supported by our digital, content and data strategy  throughout Brisbane Airport in the coming months, to help advertisers connect with all of the more than 22.8 million passengers who travel through the airport each year.

The addition of Brisbane Airports Domestic Virgin Australia Terminal to our fly portfolio will provide advertisers even greater ease when wanting to reach the unique and growing flyer audience.
| BY Ricki Green |

Save the Children is launching a three-year campaign, to ensure millions of children worldwide have an equal opportunity to survive and benefit from access to healthcare and education regardless of who they are or where they live.

The global campaign will be launched with a TV ad created by adam&eveDDB and media planned by 7Stars, which shows the gritty reality faced by Save the Children workers as they help children around the world who are in desperate need.

The film, which breaks today, is shot entirely from behind or from the POV of the aid worker, putting the children as the main focus and shows the lengths that Save the Children will go and the dangers they face down to reach every last child.

Locations include Jordan, Mexico, Bangladesh, Kenya and an Emergency Treatment Centre for Ebola in Sierra Leone  reflecting just some of the countries where Save the Children work on the ground.

The campaign is being launched with a new Save the Children report, Every Last Child, that warns while progress has been made in reaching the worlds poorest children, those from discriminated groups are consistently overlooked, despite being the most at risk.

Says Tanya Steele, chief executive, Save the Children: Our new TV ad, created by adam&eveDDB, kick starts the launch of our three year campaign, Every Last Child, which highlights that millions of the worlds poorest children are being denied life-saving services because of who they are and where they live.

As well as hoping to bring in essential income, we want to engage and attract new audiences with this TV ad, so weve taken quite a fresh, bold and authentic approach to storytelling. By offering a first-person perspective on the work we do, we are putting the viewers in our shoes and demonstrating what life is like for Save the Children staff. We work in the toughest places at the toughest times and we will do whatever it takes to reach the worlds most vulnerable children to ensure that millions of the hardest-to-reach children get an equal opportunity to survive and thrive.

Says Mat Goff, joint managing director, adam&eveDDB: This film is gritty and breathless because its real. The work Save the Children does on the ground is dangerous, hard and frightening but that is what it takes to reach the children ignored by governments, ostracised by society and stuck in extreme poverty. Save the Children workers are out there right now doing all of this in countries over the world.

Project name: Every Last Child

Client: Kate Hewitt, Deputy Director of Brand Marketing; Jess Crombie, Deputy Director of Creative

Chief Creative Officer Ben Priest

Executive Creative Directors: Ben Tollett, Richard Brim

Copywriter: John Long

Art director: Matt Gay

Agency producer: Matt Craigie

Planner: Toby Harrison

Managing Director: Mat Goff

Account Director: Sam Brown

Account Manager: Max Sullivan

Designer/Typographer: King Henry

Media agency: the 7stars

Media planner: Patricia Stevens

Production company: HLA

Executive Producer: Mike Wells

Producer: see above

Director: Simon Ratigan

Cinematographer: Bob Pendar Hughes/Karl Oskarsson/Catherine Derry

D.O.P: see above

Editing Company: The Playroom

Editor: Adam Spivey

Post Production: Finish

Post Producer: Vittorio Giannini

VFX Supervisor: Judy Roberts

Colourist: Paul Harrison
| BY Ricki Green |

PETA has released a shocking new ad calling on farmers and lawmakers to take heed of the risks to animal welfare and human health when drug use by wool industry workers goes unchecked.

The ad  which features the gaunt face of a man beside the words Dave has been up on ice for three days and Shearing and drugs dont mix  has been seen by almost 25,000 people through a Facebook campaign specifically targeting farmers.

Says Claire Fryer, PETA Australia campaign coordinator: When workers shear sheep under the influence of drugs, human health is at risk and animals can be injured or even die. The Facebook ad links to a page that allows people to write directly to their local MP. PETA is letting farmers and lawmakers know what they can do to address the issue now: support the introduction of mandatory drug testing for shearers.

Liberal Party delegate and wool producer Robert Lawrence has said that one shearer [broke] 14 legs [of sheep] during two days shearing and that drug use is one of the top three issues facing the wool industry. His fellow delegates agreed and called for mandatory drug testing. PETA US  whose motto reads, in part, that animals are not ours to wear  revealed in an international expose of the wool industry that workers beat sheep and jabbed them in the face with electric clippers and a hammer.
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Monday, April 25, 2016 at 9:40PM

Bringing together the future scientists of the nation, the 55th Canada-Wide Science Festival is coming to Montreals McGill University on May 14th to 21st. Over 500 young scientists (between ages 12 and 20) from all over the country have been invited to share their scientific projects to 350 judges. There are almost one million dollars in cash awards, prizes, and scholarships up for grabs at the only national science festival in Canada. Other things you can see on the grounds include conferences and a Discovery Zone for visitors to get hands-on experience with projects revolving around science, technology, engineering, and math programming. The event will be open to the public from May 18th to 20th. You can check here for the schedule.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at 11:15AM

Nokia is reportedly in talks to buy French fitness gadget and wearable company Withings who made some waves a few years ago with its Activite fitness trackers which resembled classic timepieces. Nokia is apparently interested in investing into the health tracking aspect of the company, similar to Apple's HealthKit initiative.

Withings was founded in 2008 and has brought to market various connected health appliances, including smart watches, fitness trackers, thermometers, and baby monitors, among other gadgets. Nokia, who famously sold their phone business to Microsoft as well as their Here maps to a consortium of carmakers, is focused on Internet of Things and connected lifestyle products and ecosystems.

"We have said consistently that digital health was an area of strategic interest to Nokia, and we are now taking concrete action to tap the opportunity in this large and important market," said Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri.

Source: Nokia
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"Governments put things out to contract because they think things can be managed better from the private sector and they think there's going to be some savings. But what they fail to recognise is that contract management takes a lot of resources in its own right," she said. "Unless you're prepared to resource the management of contracts very heavily it's very, very difficult to manage them."
"But we can't have the staff standing at the toilets and keeping an eye on people all night, there's just really no way for us to patrol that."
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Excitement combined with grit and nerves.

The 2016 4-H Public Speaking Contest featured 30 entries in Radio PSA and Speech divisions. Outstanding judge for the event was Mr. Dave Barnard, Beatrice. Winners received awards from News Channel Nebraska.

PSA Junior Division: Austin March, champion; Andrew Harvey, reserve champion.

PSA Intermediate Division: Ashtyn Humphreys, champion; Emily Rempel, reserve champion.

PSA Senior Division: Melina Kostal, champion, Jetta Harvey, reserve champion.

Speech Novice Division: Andrew Harvey, champion; Lynsie Lancaster, reserve champion.

Speech Junior Divisoin: Faith Oldemeyer, champion; Kate Kostal, reserve champion.

Speech Intermediate Division: Margee Jane Havey, champion; Shelby March, reserve champion.

Speech Senior Division: Jetta Harvey, champion; Melina Kostal, reserve champion.

Gage County Fair & Expo

Only 92 days till the Gage County Fair & Expo, July 27-31, one of the premier events in Gage County. Together we Let the Good Times Grow at the Gage County Fair.

The fairbook is printed; pick up your copy at the Extension Office. We showcase 4-H clubs, volunteers, exhibits, livestock, and special projects, along with sponsors, entertainers, races, special acts, fair food and more. Whats our favorite season of the year? Fair season!

Arbor Day - April 29

Trees are simply amazing. They clean air and water, slow climate change, ease poverty and hunger, prevent species loss, and feed the human soul. All we need to do is plant and care for them.

The first Arbor Day was celebrated in Nebraska in 1872, the brainchild of Julius Sterling Morton, a Nebraska journalist originally from Michigan. He lead pioneers in planting over 1 million trees that year in orchards, windbreaks and homesteads.

We continue the legacy planting trees to give shade, improve the environment, reduce noise, hold the soil, color our world, and give the birds a place to live. Website: http://www.arbor-day.net.

Lets work together and make it happen around the world. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today.

4-H Grows Here

From small beginnings grow great kids, adult volunteers, families and communities. 4-H grows happy, healthy, strong, skilled kids. 4-H grows character, respect, responsibility, confidence and leadership. 4-H is making Gage County a great place to live and work. Let the good times grow. Join 4-H today. Call 402-223-1384.

Online 4-H enrollment deadline is May 1; website: http://ne.4honline.com. Yearly $100 dues are paid to the Extension Office.

New this year is online 4-H volunteer registration at the same website. We hope to get all 4-H volunteers registered by the May 1 deadline.

Congratulations Scholarship Winners

We are proud to announce the winners of scholarships awarded through Gage County 4-H. The future is bright for these students and the world they are creating for the future. As Dr. Seuss said, Will you succeed? Yes you will indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!

Gage County 4-H Council Youth Character Scholarship: Cheyenne Gerlach of DeWitt, Jonathan Acton of Holmesville, Sophia Lentfer of Firth, Bailey Schroeder of Beatrice.

Gage County Ag Society Scholarship: Cheyenne Gerlach of DeWitt, Jonathan Acton fo Holmesville, Bailey Schroeder of Beatrice, Kaylee Ames of Wymore.

Kenneth Reed Scholarship: Cheyenne Gerlach of DeWitt

Merlyn Anderson 4-H Scholarship: Bailey Schroeder of Beatrice, Jonathan Acton of Holmesville, Cheyenne Gerlach of DeWitt, Sophia Lentfer of Firth.

Camp Counselors Guide the Fun

What youth doesnt have fond memories of camp? Teen counselors are part of the reason youth learn and have fun at camp. 4-H teens have the opportunity this summer to volunteer as counselors at Camp Renegade, June 22-23. Application deadline is May 1. Contact the Extension Office.

Quote of Note: 4-H: Growing Great Kids, Families, Volunteers, Communities
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Term limits  tell me again why that seemed like a good idea  is forcing 11 veteran lawmakers to step down at the end of the year. OK, so veteran doesnt carry the weight it once did. But you have to hope that a senator with eight years of experience has at least started to learn his or her way around.

This voter-approved turnover is taking away six committee chairs and one of the better Speakers of the Legislature. Left behind will be four veteran senators with six years of experience and a whole lot with four or less. In fact, 19 of the 49 will have only two years  one session  under their belts. Thats not enough time to know whats going on, even though some of these true freshmen would like you to think they do.

Gone next session (terms officially end when the replacements are sworn in): Dave Bloomfield of Hoskins; Kathy Campbell, Health and Human Services Chair, Lincoln; Colby Coash, Lincoln; Tanya Cook, Omaha; Mike Gloor, Revenue Committee Chair, Grand Island; Ken Haar, Malcolm; Galen Hadley, Speaker, Kearney; Beau McCoy, Committee on Committees Chair, Omaha; Heath Mello, Appropriations Chair, Omaha; Ken Schilz, Natural Resources Chair, Ogallala; Kate Sullivan, Education Committee Chair, Cedar Rapids.

Voters in the odd-numbered districts, 1 through 49, will go to the polls to elect replacements for the 11 term-limited senators and 14 incumbents. One District (Campbells 25 in Lincoln) has five people running. In Sullivans District (41) only one person is running. Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman John Murante of Gretna (District 49) is also running unopposed.

The top two candidates advance from the primary. In races with only two people running, the primary is often a valid litmus test for what lies ahead in November. Pundits predict a large turnout for that election because of the presidential race and what could be multiple ballot initiatives in Nebraska. In addition to a vote to re-instate the death penalty in Nebraska, voters might also get a chance to weigh in on legalization of medical marijuana or one of several gambling issues.

But, back to the Legislature. Campbell is only the third senator in Lincolns District 25 in 54 years. The venerable Senator Jerome Warner, a Waverly farmer, started serving the mostly east and southeast Lincoln district in 1962 and held the seat until his death 35 years later. He was a longtime chair of the Appropriations Committee. He was followed by the late Senator Ron Raikes, who also served as Appropriations Chair before Campbell was elected in 2008.

Five people are vying for the seat. Lincoln attorney Jim Gordon  a lobbyist, son of nationally famous legislative sergeant-at-arms Sally Gordon who served and lived to be 103, and husband of former state Senator Karen Kilgarin  is in the race. He faces Dale Michels, Leslie Spry, David D. Tagart and Suzanne Geist in that crowded field. Geist was a University of Nebraska-Lincoln broadcast journalism student who had classes with Kilgarin.

In Omahas District 11, which has had only two senators in the last 45 years, Ernie Chambers  hey, wasnt he the reason people wanted term limits?  is running against two challengers, Fonte Hamilton and John Sciara. Chambers has been in the Legislature for 41 years. The 78-year-old sat out the mandatory one term because of term limits, but came back to defeat his replacement, Brenda Council.

In South Omahas District 7  a Democratic stronghold represented by Senator Jeremy Nordquist who resigned to go to Washington, D.C., where he works for U.S. Representative Brad Ashford  Governor Pete Ricketts Republican appointee, Nicole Fox, is running against two Democrats. One is former Senator John Synowiecki who served from 2002 to 2008. The other is Tony Vargas, a member of the Omaha Public Schools Board.

In the Panhandles District 47, where Sen. Ken Schilz has been term-limited, two city council members and a county commissioner are running for the seat. Ogallala economic developer and council member Karl Elmshaeuser faces Bayard farmer and county commissioner Steve Erdman. Erdmans son Phil represented the district from 2001-2009. Also running is Sidney pharmacist Wendall F. Gaston, a three-term mayor and current city council member.

There you have plenty of reasons to vote in the May 10 primary. Who knows, maybe some of the newbies will have the courage to do away with term limits so governance in Nebraska can be done by experienced senators.
Three college students who first met while attending a Catholic high school in Florida have launched a scholarship fund to help others experience faithful Catholic education at a Newman Guide college. As we went off to different colleges, we kept in touch and found time to catch up whenever we returned []
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More than $77,000 in scholarships was awarded to 26 Beatrice High School seniors and two University of Nebraska-Lincoln students on Sunday.

Recipients, their families and friends, scholarship donors and Beatrice Educational Foundation board members filled the BHS commons at the Beatrice Educational Foundation 2016 Scholarship and Hall of Fame Presentation.

Scholarships ranged from $100 each to $7,000 each and were donated by various individuals, families and groups native to the Beatrice area.

We got a letter in the mail two weeks ago telling us we were invited to the banquet, but we didnt know what scholarship we were getting until it was announced today, said BHS senior Megan Plessel, recipient of the Harold Deitemeyer Scholarship, which she said is focused on citizenship and leadership. Im really excited to know that people appreciate leadership in the community. And Im thankful for everyone that donates money for scholarships for kids who want to go to college.

Board member Kay McKinzie related the ceremony and time of year for the seniors to the Dr. Seuss book, Oh, the Places Youll Go!, reading on stage a short excerpt of the book.

As parents at this time of year, we tend to think, OK, Ive gotten them this far, its time to take them on to the next step, McKinzie said. This is a time to celebrate the success of our students as they move forward and the success of our former students as they excel in their chosen careers.

Beatrice Educational Foundation president Lisa Pieper was also a keynote speaker and presented the awards to the 28 individuals.

This event is the crowning glory of our year. It truly is one of the highlights for the foundations year, Pieper said.

Pieper said a goal of the foundation is to provide a permanent source of financial support for the expansion and enrichment of learning opportunities for students of the Beatrice School District.

The board of trustees and selected Beatrice High School students work together to promote academic achievement and civic involvement through the encouragement and support of quality school programs and innovative education that encourages excellence, Pieper said.

The foundation manages a $1.9 million endowment fund.

I have come to a greater understanding and appreciation of what it takes to keep the Beatrice Public Schools District relevant in the 21st century, Pieper said. We must continue to champion our schools efforts to provide and create educational experiences that allow all of our students to participate in and excel in their chosen academic and extracurricular endeavors as well as expand their understanding of their future roles in our global society.

McKinzie said the ceremony is important because the students work hard all through high school and the awards and recognition serve as a positive consequence for their behavior. Plus, the ceremony allows students to connect face-to-face with their scholarship donors.

Donors of scholarships were recognized as well.

Also recognized and awarded were three BHS alumni, who are now a part of the BHS Hall of Fame in the school. Their names are Don Fitzwater, Karen Dusenbery and Sarah Morris.
When we originally spotted the new Corolla partially covered outside the Beijing Auto Show last week, we were under the impression that Toyota would only offer this version in China, but as it turns out, the Japanese carmaker has plans to sell two Corolla sedans.

The first one is the regular Corolla produced by Toyotas join-venture partner in China, FAW, and which is more or less identical to the European-specification version of the car , while the second one, is the more upscale Levin Corolla that combines a unique face with other cues borrowed from both the Euro and North American models , and will be made in partnership with Chinas GAC.

Speaking to the press at the Beijing Auto Show, Toyota Executive Vice President Yasumori Ihara confirmed the launch of hybrid editions of both models next year.

The Corolla and Levin models to be unveiled shortly will, from next year, be available as hybrid models with major hybrid components produced in China he said

This will be the first-time ever that Toyota will make hybrid cars with hybrid components produced outside Japan.

Ihara also expressed his hope that one day, Toyota will sell 2 million vehicles annually in China.

By John Halas

PHOTO GALLERY
Part of Fords plan to introduce 12 new performance vehicles globally by 2020, the F-150 Raptor has made its China debut.



Sitting near the all-new Ford GT supercar and the Focus RS hot hatch, Bthe pickup truck will be launched in the Peoples Republic in 2017, for the first time in its history, imported from the Dearborn Truck Plant in North America.

With the introduction of the F-150 Raptor, Ford is giving its customers in China the chance to experience unprecedented levels of off-road capability. The new Raptor exemplifies superior off-road ability, from rock-crawling to sand running, said the Ford Motor China Chairman and CEO, John Lawler.

Ford will offer the F-150 Raptor SuperCrew variant in China. It is powered by the 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 engine, which is more powerful than the previous 6.2-liter V8, producing 411 HP and 434 lb-ft (588 Nm) of torque. The 10-speed auto gearbox, torque-on-demand transfer case with easy-to-use off-road mode driver-assist technology, improved four-wheel drive system, purpose built suspension and chassis should enable it to handle any surface and road condition with ease.

PHOTO GALLERY
Three new faces were added to the Beatrice High School Hall of Fame on Sunday.

The Beatrice Educational Foundation 2016 Scholarship and Hall of Fame Presentation was held in the high school commons.

BHS 1949 graduate Don Fitzwater was recognized as a man of many talents who used them to give back to his profession and his community.

Fitzwater, a pilot, was the manager of the Beatrice Municipal Airport for 46 years. He was instrumental in adding the Air Force jet on the airport property. Later, he became the first president of the Beatrice Airport Foundation. Over the course of several years, Fitzwater earned Nebraska and national awards relating to airport operation and his performance as a pilot.

The Beatrice Airport is the front door to Beatrice, Fitzwater was known for saying.

Fitzwater was a member of several clubs and was instrumental in forming the Gage County Historical Society. He also invented and patented the Fitzhook to tie down airplanes and the Evarin, a vegetation protector around runway lights.

Don Fitzwater passed away last June. His wife, Evelyn, accepted the award on his behalf. Evelyn thanked the foundation and said Don would have been proud to receive the award.

Karen Dusenbery is also a new Hall of Fame member. Dusenbery continues to change the world one pant leg at a time, her biography states. She designs outfits for celebrities. Her past clients include Ringo Starr, Areosmith, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Madonna, Cher, Sheryl Crow, Tina Turner, Kate Hudson and Rod Stewart.

Dusenbery is a 1971 BHS graduate and founder of Duse Productions. Two of her designs are on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum. Dusenbery was not present to accept her award.

Sarah Morris was also inducted into the Hall of Fame. Morris continues to hold her position as registrar at the high school after 44 years. Among other responsibilities, Morris keeps track of honor roll and scholarship records.

The program for the event said Morris has her work down to a fine art and rarely misses a beat or becomes flustered.

Im honored to receive this award, Im humbled by it and Im totally overwhelmed, Morris said on stage. No doubt about it, its the kids that keep me here, so, thanks, you guys.

After the ceremony, Morris said this is her favorite time of year as she watches students who work hard be rewarded.

I love my job as much as I did 44 years ago, and its because of the kids, Morris said.

The ceremony also recognized 28 students who received more than $77,000 in scholarships.

Beatrice Educational Foundation board member Kay McKinzie said one reason the ceremony is important is because it honors past BHS graduates and friends of the district.

"It shows our students down the road, the places they'll go," McKinzie said. "Take Karen for example. Who would have guessed a student from Beatrice would be designing clothes for Cher and Bon Jovi?"

The awards and reception were sponsored by the Beatrice Sertoma Club.
The new Lagonda Taraf is one of the most exclusive four-door luxury models that money can buy, but exactly how good is it?



Aston Martin brought back the Lagonda nameplate with the Taraf, which was originally destined for Middle East only, but (very) rich customers in the US, Europe, Singapore and South Africa can now get one if they want to.

Underneath its special carbon bodyshell, the Lagonda Taraf is using the same components with the Aston Martin Rapide, including the throaty 550hp V12 engine mated to an eight-speed ZF automatic gearbox. The wheelbase has been lengthened by eight inches, giving the British super saloon not only acres of space for the rear passengers, but also turned it into a much different driving experience than the car its based on.

Motor Trend visited Britain to find out if the Lagonda Taraf lives up to its mythical price tag. Dont forget, with only 200 of them made at over a million dollars a pop, this huge and strange limousine needs to be really special.

VIDEO
The increased global demand for crossovers and SUVs has made Skoda rethink its strategy for the near future by adding new vehicles to its lineup.



One of the first to hit the market is a large SUV, previewed by the VisionS last month in Geneva that could wear the Kodiak moniker. Development of the brands SUV family will include a second body style of the Kodiak, along with a new CUV (crossover utility vehicle), which will be introduced in China.

The launch of Skodas large SUV is planned for the first half of 2017. In addition, another body variant of the large SUV is under development. Furthermore, the brand also intends to bring out a crossover utility vehicle (CUV) for Skodas strongest global sales market, Skoda said.

The automakers model range expansion in the Peoples Republic is part of the SAIC Volkswagen Automotive Company Limited joint venture, which plans to invest around 2 billion ($2,27 billion) in the Asian country, over the next five years.

At the 2016 Beijing Auto Show, Skodas display includes the VisionS Concept, with a 225hp plug-in hybrid powertrain offering the ability to run up to 50 km (31 miles) on pure electric power. The brand also rolled out the Octavia Ambition Plus and Style, with upgrades for the 2017 MY, joined by the Superb, Rapid and Fabia.

PHOTO GALLERY
The X1 long wheelbase wasnt BMWs only premiere at the 2016 Beijing Auto Show, as the Germans have an entire fleet of vehicles present at the event.



With 5 to 18 cm (2-7 in) increased knee room for the rear passengers, depending on the position of the rear seat, the stretched compact SUV was joined by the BMW Concept Compact Sedan, which represents the approach to life of a generation of youth in China, as the manufacturer explains. The study was initially displayed in Guangzhou, last November, and it previews the upcoming 1-Series/2-Series sedan.

A batch of M cars, including the new M2 and its larger and more extreme sibling, the M4 GTS, are also on display in Beijing, breathing the same air with the range-topping X4, the M40i, celebrating its local premiere after it was presented in Detroit, earlier this year. The sporty SUV uses a straight-six 3.0-liter engine, producing 355 HP and 343 lb-ft (465 Nm) of torque, enough for a zero to sixty time in 4.7 seconds and a top speed capped out at 155 mph (250 km/h).

Another high-performance vehicle, the M760Li xDrive, is also found at the brands stand in China. It gets a twin-turbo 6.6-liter V12, churning out 592 HP and 590 lb-ft (800 Nm) of torque, enough to propel the full-size luxury sedan from 0 to 60 mph (96 km/h) in less than 4 seconds.

In order to highlight its Beijing Auto Show presence, BMW has released a video, revealing its entire range of vehicles that are currently on display.

VIDEO
Two mass-market PHEVs based on the Corolla and Levin models are due for the Chinese market in two years time.



The announcement was made at the Beijing Motor Show, showing Toyotas long-term local commitment after selecting China as the first location outside Japan for the production of the Prius.

The two plug-in hybrids will complement the locally developed Corolla Hybrid and Levin Hybrid, which managed to sell approximately 40,000 units since last years debut. Toyota said it will also develop the plug-in hybrid powertrains for these models locally.

The Japanese company also announced the introduction of their turbocharged 1.2-litre direct-injection petrol engine, set to go on sale later this year across China, with models in Europe and Japan already using it since April 2015.

Also new for China will be the Toyota Safety Sense array of electronic safety systems. After its successful introduction in Europe and USA, Toyotas Safety Sense will become available in local models, with the system specifically adapted for the Chinese roads.

PHOTO GALLERY
Photo: Interior Health

Jackson Brown-John loves living in Horsefly, a rural community located about an hour east of Williams Lake. He was born there, works there, and loves spending time there with his partner, Dianna MacQueen, amid the abundance of hills, forests and clear lake waters.

Jackson, 59, is also a kidney patient. His kidneys have failed and he had been travelling three times a week to Williams Lake for life-sustaining dialysis to replace his kidneys function. Now, though, Jackson can access care right in his own bedroom, thanks to Interior Healths home hemodialysis program.

It has made it a lot nicer, the fact that I dont have to travel anymore, Jackson says. I just do it in bed, where Im comfortable, watching TV, or falling asleep.

Kidneys play an important role in the human body; they produce hormones, absorb minerals, filter blood and produce urine. Those with kidney dysfunction must undergo regular treatment to cleanse their body of toxins that would otherwise be fatal. This is usually done through conventional hemodialysis in a hospital or community dialysis unit; or through peritoneal dialysis, in which patients can have their treatments at home by instilling special fluids into their abdomen to remove toxins from the kidneys. The right treatment for the patient depends on the individuals needs and the stability of his or her illness.

But not every patient lives near a kidney dialysis unit or can tolerate peritoneal dialysis. In addition, for those people that have to drive, the cost of time and travel can also be a barrier to their care. However, for those whose health is stable and who are willing to take a greater role in their own care, there is the additional option that Jackson chose: hemodialysis in his own home. Its a great option for patients, who appreciate the flexibility home hemodialysis gives them to schedule their own treatment  whether its at night while they sleep, or every other day, or during short daily treatments.

The treatment time varies, depending on the patients needs and lifestyle choices, says Corinne Gable, one of four regional home hemodialysis nurses in IH. Usually, the more dialysis time people do, the better they feel. Its also easier on the body to take off excess fluids over a greater timeframe.

Recognizing that Interior Health covers many remote areas, the IH Renal Program, with the support of the BC Provincial Renal Agency, launched a new regional project in May 2015 focused on providing home hemodialysis training to willing patients who reside in rural communities. All home hemodialysis patients are provided comprehensive training, follow-up care and ongoing support, but normally this training is performed in a major renal centre. With the IH Renal initiative, this training was instead provided directly in a patients community and home, as opposed to a major centre  a first for B.C.

It was ideal for Jackson, whose journey to kidney dysfunction was actually no journey at all  it was a roadblock, the result of a rare autoimmune disease that caused his kidneys to abruptly fail in August 2014. He tried conventional hemodialysis, which worked well but was restrictive, given that he needed to travel so far to receive his four-hour treatment  two hours round trip each time. He tried peritoneal dialysis, but his body didnt tolerate it well.

Then Jackson was recommended for home hemodialysis. He and Dianna spent six weeks training in Williams Lake and then in their home to perform the treatment, including instruction on how to weigh Jackson and take his blood pressure; how much fluid should be removed on each run; and, how to hook up, take down and disinfect the hemodialysis machine that is permanently located in their home. The couple was also taught how to handle unexpected situations, which would otherwise be addressed by nurses if Jackson was dialyzing in a health-care facility.

There is the freedom and flexibility of being in your own home and your own bed. The whole experience has been wonderful, says Dianna.

Jackson says it took time to learn and understand it.

But it seems quite simple now that Ive done it, says Jackson, who is now doing his treatments four times a week, overnight while he sleeps. I am overwhelmed by all the help. There are probably six people we could call  the technicians who run the machines, the clinic in Kamloops or Williams Lake. They bend over backwards to help you.

These kinds of sentiments are music to Lauren Kembels ears. Today, 22 home hemodialysis patients are supported across the Interior Health region. Lauren, who oversees the home hemodialysis program, is thrilled to see people take ownership of their health again.

Its giving someone their independence back, she says.

The provincial home hemodialysis program was established in 2004 by the BC Renal Agency in collaboration with health authority renal programs. Funding is provided by BC Renal for all aspects of care, including care teams, home hemodialysis machines, supplies and initial renovations to the home for plumbing and electricity if needed. Approximately 160 patients across the province manage their home hemodialysis treatments independently.
The high stream-flow advisory put in place Friday for the southern Interior has ended, but residents are still being warned to use caution around local rivers.

Last weeks unseasonably warm temperatures, hitting 30 C in some areas, led to the rapid melt of high-elevation snow packs. The River Forecast Centre issued the advisory after snow-melt rates increased with daily melt rates in the 15 millimetres to 40 millimetres range.

However, since temperatures returned to normal over the weekend, stream-flows have subsided.

According to Dave McAllister, with FortisBC emergency management, most rivers and streams peaked on Saturday for highs.

During the spring snow melt season there is always caution around rivers  particularly when they are flowing high, the banks are unstable, he said, adding while the rivers might look impressive to watch during spring run-off, waters can be unpredictable.

While the advisory has ended for the southern Interior, McAllister said the River Forecast Centre could re-issue a statement in the coming weeks.

Because its an El Nino year, for some reason the spring snow melt comes one month early, which is what it did this year, he explained. Environment Canada also forecast a warmer than average spring and summer, so streams and rivers could rise again.

McAllister said there is no particular river or stream in the southern Interior that is of current concern.

Still, on Sunday the Similkameen News Leader reported the Similkameen River to be running high and fast through the area.

They warned residents along Old Hedley Road, east of Princeton, to be cautious if walking along the bank of the river. The beach at Bromley Rock Provincial Park is also under water because of the high streamflow.

Although levels are high right now, they are not out of whats normal for this time of year, McAllister said. According to data on the River Forecast Centre the rivers have dropped several centimetres since Saturday.

For those in the Princeton area or other low-lying flood zones, McAllister suggests families have an emergency preparedness plan.

If youre given a warning we recommend you actually disconnect your gas appliances and move them away from where the water might get to them, he said. Homeowners should turn electricity off at the panel, but for gas you will need a licenced gas fitter to turn on and off the gas, because it can be dangerous.

For more information on flood safety check out PreparedBC and FortisBC.
It's a field trip gone wrong, as a group of high school students were trapped inside the Kelowna courthouse elevator.

The group of seven George Elliot Secondary School Grade 12 law-class students, along with their teacher, were stuck in the elevator between second and third floor for about an hour.

They overloaded the elevator, explains fellow student Quinn Hubscher at the time. On the way down it just stopped in-between floors. They are just trying to survive I guess.

Everyone in the elevator is reportedly fine.

They are light-hearted about it, they understand it is a process, said Hubscher.

The Kelowna Fire Department was on the scene and worked with the elevator company to lower the elevator and retrieve the students.

 With files from Jen Zielinski
Photo: alexacel

Minimum wage has a long way to go if families in Kamloops are going to make it.

Minimum wage in B.C. sits at less than $11, but a recent report stated the wage needed to cover the costs of raising a family in Kamloops is $17.21 an hour.

This living wage rate reflects the hourly wage in 2016 that two working parents with two young children must earn to meet their basic expenses, including rent, child care, food and transportation, once government taxes, credits, deductions and subsidies have been taken into account.

This rate is a decrease of 74 cents from the 2012 figure, despite the increase in child care, shelter and food expenses.

According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC and the Living Wage for Families Campaign, the decrease is entirely due to the expansion of the Canada Child Benefit announced in this years federal budget. The Canada Child Benefit was introduced in the 2016 federal budget and is a targeted benefit that is aimed at lifting low-income families with children out of poverty.

The Kamloops living wage rate demonstrates good public policy can have a positive impact on the lives of families, says Louise Richards of the Kamloops and District Elizabeth Fry Society. However, we need commitment from all levels of government in order to do more than balance out rising costs. A poverty reduction plan for B.C. would make a difference to families in need in this area.

It is important to remember the living wage rate reflects the role of public policy to ensure affordability and a decent quality of life for all families, says Iglika Ivanova, CCPA economist and co-author of the report. Investing in universal affordable child care would significantly reduce the costs of raising a family and lower the living wage. For example, the proposed $10/Day Child Care Plan would reduce the Metro Vancouver living wage by $3.90 per hour, bringing it to $16.70.

One in five children in B.C. are poor and the story of child poverty is a story of low wages.

In 2011 (the last year data was compiled), one out of every three poor children lived in families where at least one adult had a full-time, full-year job and a majority lived in families with some paid work (part-year or part-time).

Local small business owner of Image Masters, Bill McQuarrie, understands that paying employees a living wage is not all economics.

There is an interconnected social responsibility involving both my employees and the community I live in and perpetuating poverty through low wages is not one of those responsibilities.

However, I am a businessman and I need to earn a profit in order to stay in business. But by paying more, I can attract the best staff, which leads to higher productivity and quality, and improved loyalty and decreased sick time. The end result and without sounding like a boring class in economics and marketing, I sell more stuff.
Photo: Wikipedia

The Justice Department asked a federal court to appoint a third party to operate the long-troubled New Orleans jail, saying new leadership is essential because the city's sheriff has for years failed to improve conditions that endanger inmates.

The government, which was joined in the filing Monday by lawyers for inmates, also sought to place Sheriff Marlin Gusman in contempt over what it called his noncompliance with overhauls mandated in a settlement agreement involving the jail and the Justice Department and inmates.

"Although there is no question that receivership is an extraordinary remedy, so too is the level of harm that continues to plague the jail, with no apparent end in sight," the Justice Department said.

Gusman, elected in 2004, said in a brief news release that the motion "contains numerous inaccuracies and misleading statements." He said his office will prove in court that "substantial strides" have been made toward compliance with the reform agreement.

"We recognize there is more work to be done but will not allow this move by the Plaintiffs to undermine the accomplishments and sacrifices of the hard working deputies and staff at the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office," Gusman said.

Gusman has repeatedly said he is making progress and faulted the city for not providing enough money.

The reaction from Mayor Mitch Landrieu's office, long at odds with Gusman over management at the jail, was brief and subdued. "The Justice Department's filing speaks for itself," the news release said. "It is in the best interests of our taxpayers and our public safety that the jail is run competently and constitutionally."

Inmates were moved from aging, deteriorating jail buildings to a new, more modern facility last September  a move that Gusman said would greatly contribute to reform. But a court-appointed monitor said in March that violence continues to be a problem and a recent inmate suicide brought renewed attention to the jail's troubles.

The proposed third-party group would have the authority to run the jail, fire and promote jail employees, enter into contracts for jail services and decide how the budget should be spent, the Justice Department said.

"This is a sad day for our city and it's unfortunate that this had to happen," said Katie Schwartzmann, an attorney for inmates and co-director of the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center. "The jail has been under federal scrutiny since 2008 and in that time there have been dozens of deaths and scandals and various lawsuits. The consent decree has been in place since 2012 and the sheriff clearly can't or won't fix the problems at the jail."

A March report from jail monitors said continued disagreements between Gusman and Landrieu's administration over jail funding and management are part of the problem. But it also cited a "negative internal culture" under Gusman's leadership.

"The day-to-day crisis environment observed by the monitors in the agency's operations does not evidence a professional, competent, or informed leadership," said the report.

The jail agreement was reached in 2012 and formally approved by a federal judge in 2013. Landrieu had objected, raising doubts about Gusman's ability to run the jail while noting that the city would have to cover the costs.

Prior to the judge's final approval, a series of hearings included testimony from inmate victims of violence and sexual abuse and the discovery of an inmate-made video  shown in court  displaying blatant intravenous drug use, drinking and the brandishing of a loaded gun. The video had been made in a section of the jail complex that had been closed by the time the hearing took place.

Gusman is a veteran of New Orleans politics who served on the City Council before he was elected sheriff. He was elected to his third term in 2014 despite the jail's notorious reputation for violence. But he has faced repeated bad political news recently. His chief deputy resigned earlier this month after an audit indicated the deputy spent time on duty working for a company that was paid $2 million to provide off-duty officers for private security.

In March, New Orleans pastors and an inmate advocacy group demanded Gusman's resignation, citing continued violence at the jail.
Photo: CTV A Syrian refugee family arrives in Toronto earlier this year.

A Syrian refugee family is safe and sound in Vernon.

The family arrived in the North Okanagan three weeks ago after not being able to find permanent accommodations in the Lower Mainland.

Carol Wutzke, with the Vernon and District Immigrants Services Society, said the family of seven includes a father, mother and five children  from teens to pre-schoolers.

We are pleased that they are here, said Wutzke, adding six more groups are still in the process of bringing families to Vernon.

The response has been incredible. People want to be involved, said Wutzke, of the efforts to bring refugee families to safety.

One of the biggest challenges facing refugees is housing, but Wutzke said a sponsorship group had already secured a home so the family was able to move into that one.

The older children are in the local school system and ESL teachers and local interpreters are working with the family.

Vernon joins Salmon Arm, Kelowna, Penticton, Kamloops and other interior centres that have welcomed refugee families.

An Iraqi refugee family has been approved for Armstrong and a Syrian family will soon be in Revelstoke.

Wutzke said Vernon is ready and able to bring in more people.

We have had the capacity for some time, but they have not been sent here yet, she said.

The family that did come to Vernon was through a government-private sponsorship combination.
Photo: RCMP

UPDATE: 7 p.m.

A Kelowna RCMP officer has found Lincoln Strong, 8, in good health.

Police put out an alert Monday evening after he couldn't be located.

"Thank you to the media and the public for their help," said Kelowna RCMP Const. Jesse O'Donaghey.

ORIGINAL

Kelowna RCMP are looking for your assistance in locating a missing eight-year-old boy.

Lincoln Strong was last seen on Kelglen Crescent about 4 p.m. this afternoon when he went for a bike ride.

RCMP say there is nothing to indicate foul play at this time.

Lincoln is described as:

Caucasian male;

4 ft 0 in

78 lbs

Dirty blonde hair

Bown eyes

Scar on forehead above left eye

He was last seen wearing:

Black sweat pants

Royal blue t-shirt

Black and neon green Champion runners

Black Swiss Army back pack

Riding a blue BMX bike

Wearing blue and grey helmet

Possibly has a hoody grey and black hoodie with skull

Police are hoping to locate Lincoln before nightfall.

If you have seen Lincoln Strong, or know of his whereabouts, you're asked to contact the Kelowna detachment of the RCMP at 250-762-3300.

Remain anonymous by calling Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477, leaving a tip online at www.crimestoppers.net or by texting your tip to CRIMES (274637) ktown.
Photo: CTV

UPDATE: 4:45 p.m.

Considered an act of hate by university officials, the burning of the rainbow Pride flag was actually a statement in support of inclusion, says the woman charged.

Brooklyn Fink was charged in connection with the incident during UBCs OUTWeek, which she does not deny.

The woman spoke to reporters outside Richmond court Tuesday morning.

She told CTV Vancouver she is a media artist who is hoping to have the mischief charge of $5,000 thrown out.

"I intended on burning the flag only to illustrate my displeasure at the university's failure to come to an agreement about the flag's offensiveness, said Fink. Its just really tragic that were still fighting with identity politics.

Fink said she believes the flag represents an LGBTQ movement that has become too politicized and that the UBC crest thats normally atop the flagpole is more inclusive.

We took (the UBC) flag down and put up a false flag that was just invented by someone from San Francisco, said Fink.

What are we going to do, surrender the flag 52 times a year? Who's next? Is it going to be pro-life campus? Do they get to fly a flag?

During Tuesdays court proceedings Finks request to throw out the case was denied. She was also suspended by UBC but Fink hopes the issue will eventually be dismissed.

After my non-academic misconduct hearing, we will see if we can summarily dismiss this as a professional issue among a student and the school, Fink said.

She also come out in disagreement with what the Pride flag stands for, and wants the T in LGBTQ to stand for transvestite, not transgendered.

She will be back in court on May 17.

 with files from CTV Vancouver

ORIGINAL

A charge of mischief under $5,000 has been laid following the burning of a rainbow Pride flag at the University of British Columbia.

Court documents show Brooklyn Marie Fink was charged last Monday in connection with the Feb. 6 incident at the Point Grey campus.

Fink is slated to appear in provincial court in Richmond on Tuesday.

The flag burning sparked outrage in February, during the university's annual OUTweek celebrating gender and sexual diversity.

University officials condemned the vandalism as an act of hate violating the school's deeply held values of equality, inclusion and respect.

Concern for participants' safety prompted OUTweek organizers to cancel a march just days after the burning, but other events went ahead as planned and no further violence occurred.
Photo: Google Maps

A commercial truck driver died in a crash south of Kamloops in the early morning hours Tuesday.

Police were called to Cardu Hill in the Knutsford area for the single vehicle crash at 3:15 a.m.

A southbound commercial transport truck hauling lumber had gone off the road and down a steep embankment.

Kamloops RCMP are still on the scene Tuesday morning attempting to determine the cause and circumstances around the crash.
Photo: RCMP

A 25-year-old man has been arrested in Abbotsford following an attack on an 89-year-old woman.

Const. Ian MacDonald says tips poured in Monday after police in that Fraser Valley city released a photo of the suspect accused of grabbing the woman's purse earlier this month, knocking her to the ground.

Those tips led investigators to the man, who was taken into custody Monday night, following a brief foot chase.

MacDonald says the suspect, who has previous criminal convictions, won't be named until after a Tuesday court appearance.

The victim and her daughter had just left a bank in Abbotsford on April 14 and were getting into a car when the purse snatching occurred.

The 89-year-old suffered various scrapes and bruises when she fell, but has recovered.
Photo: David Ogilvie

Linda MacDonald is thankful to be alive.

She was a passenger on a Harley Davidson motorcycle that crashed on the Westside Sunday evening when gusty winds pushed the bike into the curb, causing the crash.

"It was very scary," she said.

MacDonald said if she and her husband, Jim, weren't wearing the proper motorcycle gear, their injuries would have been far worse. She said they were travelling about 25 km/h when they lost control.

"We're OK  we have no broken bones," she said. "If we hadn't been wearing the correct gear, we would be dead."

MacDonald, who was taken to hospital in an ambulance, said a man and woman who stopped to help after the crash were a godsend.

"The woman called 911 right away," said MacDonald. "He was an amazing young man. He would not let go of my hand. I kept trying to sit up because I was in shock and he was saying I can't do that."

"He was calm and had a very calming effect on me," she said.

MacDonald said she was thankful for all the people who stopped to help.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Vancouver medical marijuana businesses that are operating without a licence must close by Friday.

The city says inspectors will start enforcing regulations on compassion clubs and retail stores that have not complied with the rules but were allowed to remain open past a six-month grace period.

Regulation began last year when the shops started popping up across Vancouver, but the city refused to grant permits to 140 dispensaries because they didn't comply with rules such as being too close to schools or community centres.

The city says seven businesses have been issued development permits under regulations adopted in June, and 13 applications are being reviewed.

Successful applicants then move on to the final approval stage to get a business licence, and the city says it's currently processing three such applications.

The cost of a business licence is $1,000 for compassion clubs and $30,000 for medical marijuana stores.
Photo: Google Maps

The names of the two people shot to death by police last week in northern B.C. were released today by the BC Coroners Service.

Jovan (Joe) Williams, 39, and his mother, Shirley Beatrice Williams, 73, were killed in the altercation on April 21.

Police responded just before 1:30 p.m. to the residence in Granisle, 63 kilometres east of Smithers, for reports of a dispute.

Police say the dispute involved a handgun.

Two people reportedly left the home at 2:50 p.m., confronted police, and shots were fired, leaving the two dead.

The Independent Investigations Office, which looks into all incidents of death or serious injury involving police, is investigating the incident.
Photo: CTV

Homeless campers living in tents outside of Victoria's courthouse say they blame British Columbia's provincial government for creating the shanty-town conditions in a downtown neighbourhood.

Together Against Poverty Society spokesman Stephen Portman says more than a decade of inadequate government funding for social programs has forced hundreds of people to live on the streets in Victoria.

Earlier this month, the B.C. Supreme Court refused to grant the government an interim injunction to dismantle the camp, where about 100 people have been living in tents since last spring.

Portman says the society, which speaks for the homeless group, is preparing to make the government's social services policies the highlight of a court case set for September, where the province is applying for a permanent injunction to shut down the camp.

Housing Minister Rich Coleman says the government has provided housing options for 180 people at the camp, but others who may not be homeless continue to live at the site.

Neighbours to the camp say they are living beside an urban ghetto.
I question just how stupid Toursim Kelowna thinks the people of Kelowna are?

The argument that the visitor centre needs to be on the lakefront to showcase the beauty of the area and entice visitors to stay and do more is pathetic. In case the folks from Tourism Kelowna havent noticed, unless you come into the city blind folded, you cant miss the beauty of the area long before you ever reach their preferred location.



Short of heavy fog, when flying into YWL its kind of hard to miss the scenery of the mountains and the lake. After all, the lake is what, 135 km long? Id imagine it looks pretty darn impressive from up there too. Once you get in the terminal they have a kiosk with brochures on all the things to do in the area. I seem to remember the odd shop with locally made or themed gift items too.



Driving in from 33, you get past that pesky hairpin and around the next corner what do you see? Oh theres that lake and a pretty good view of the city. Driving up from Penticton you drive right beside the lake and cant help but take in the beautiful scenery. Coming in from Vancouver, off the connector and what the first thing you see... theres that lake again! Coming in from the north? If youre feeling adventurous you can take Westside Rd., where if one is not careful while taking in the beauty of the lake you might wind up in it. Or for the less adventurous you can take Hwy 97 where you pass three other beautiful lakes on the way in.



I can understand the desire to have a visitor centre in close proximity to the downtown core to allow for foot traffic. Are you kidding me that there isnt any other vacant or soon to be vacant locations remotely near downtown? Last I checked there is still a boarded up former fast food restaurant right on the highway, the RCMP will be moving into a new location and couldnt space for this have been accommodated for in the Central Green development?



Tourism Kelownas proposal to put the new visitor centre right on the lake is nothing more than a ploy to have the city hand them a prime spot on the lake for a shiny new building. With a towering new hotel planned for the area we dont need more buildings right on the lakefront, we cant make more open public space on the lakefront.



I see now that Tourism Kelownas proposal could contradict the terms of the Simpson covenant. How much money is the city going to pour into trying to side step it this time? I ask city council to do whats right. Respect the covenant, dont throw away our lakefront for future generations and put the visitor centre somewhere else.

Brian Parke
If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,...
US cement shipments up 26% YoY in February

ICR Newsroom By 26 April 2016

Preliminary data from the US Geological Survey shows that Portland and blended cement shipments in February 2016 amounted to 6.0Mt, including 630,000t of imports. These figures are both up on February 2015, with overall shipments being 26 per cent higher and imports 29 per cent higher.

Shipment volumes for February 2016 were well above the 4.5Mt average over the previous five years (2011-15), being 34 per cent higher. Clinker production was 5.1Mt, 13 per cent higher than in February 2015.

Strong demand from Florida and northern Texas, where shipments increased by 29.9 and 25.9 per cent respectively, contributed most to Februarys YoY gains. Taken together, additional consumption from these two regions accounted for 240,000t  19 per cent  of the YoY rise.

Other regions showed even faster growth, but from a lower base. Delaware, Connecticut, metropolitan New York and Massachusetts each saw shipments more than double over February 2015 levels, although absolute figures were small.

At the opposite end of the scale, North Dakota saw shipments fall by 58 per cent.

Published under
Germany: thyssenkrupp to install new kiln line at Schelklingen

ICR Newsroom By 26 April 2016

Engineering firm thyssenkrupp has signed a deal with HeidelbergCement to install a new 4500tpd kiln line at the latter's Schelklingen plant in Baden-Wurttemberg. The new line is set to come into operation in spring 2018.

Lothar Jungemann, CEO of the Cement operating unit in the Resource Technologies business unit of thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions: Although most of the cement contracts we have been awarded recently have been to build new production capacities in growth regions, this order shows that there is also demand in Europe to modernize and expand existing facilities. Our highly efficient technologies, which we continually improve together with our customers, guarantee maximum reliability and allow producing innovative products in an economical and environmentally friendly way.

For the new kiln line thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions will supply state-of-the-art components including a 5-stage, single-strand DOPOL preheater, a POLRO rotary kiln with a POLGUIDE drive system and a POLYTRACK clinker cooler with roll crusher. The innovative design of the calciner used in the preheater will ensure outstanding fuel burnout with low nitrogen oxide emissions. The POLYTRACK cooler also features a highly efficient heat recovery system that minimizes fuel input.

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Cementos Molins plans US$189mn investment in Argentina

26 April 2016

Cementos Molins SA, Spain, the main stakeholder in Argentina's Cementos Avellaneda, said on Monday it plans to invest US$189mn to expand production at the company's local facilities.



The company currently operates a 0.3Mta capacity plant in San Luis province which will be expanded to 1Mta after the upgrade.



The investment comes after moves by President Mauricio Macri to reconcile Argentina with global capital markets and improve the level of foreign investment in an effort to revive the flagging economy.

Published under
CRH faces investor opposition over CEO pay

26 April 2016

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has told investors in CRH to vote against the remuneration plan for Albert Manifold, the firms chief executive, according to reports by thisismoney.

The remuneration package will be voted on by shareholders at the companys annual general meeting (AGM) on Thursday (28 April).

Mr Manifold, who is Irelands best-paid corporate leader, saw his pay rise to EUR5.53m (US$6.25m) in 2015. Thisismoney reports that his basic pay is set to rise by a further 8.5 per cent in 2016.

Under new plans to be voted on at the AGM, Mr Manifold will also see his bonus ceiling raised to 225 per cent of salary, with a further 365 per cent of basic pay coming from CRHs performance share plan.

Unlike the recent vote against BP chief executive Bob Dudleys pay package, a defeat for the CRH remuneration plan would be binding. The proposals put forward above are not part of Mr Manifolds current pay package, which expires in 2017.

ISS said: This is a considerable year-on-year increase. In addition, the short and long-term performance targets have not been made significantly more challenging than what applied previously to reflect the higher awards.

As a consequence, a vote against the remuneration policy is considered warranted.

Published under


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Luxury hotels in the historic center for a Catholic family. Only luxury hotels can provide a paradisiacal vacation for a big Catholic family. A high-level vacation for families, children and not only. The gorgeous views, divine service, and the best location are all luxury hotels. Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, and more. Everyone will find their place in this corner of paradise.

Popular destinations

Breckenridge, CO, United States

In Breckenridge, Colorado, there are plenty of places to visit, whether you're a nature lover or thrill seeker. For nature lovers, the Blue River runs right through town and there are plenty of trails to explore. If you're looking for a thrill, Breckenridge is home to some of the best skiing and snowboarding in the country. There's also plenty of shopping and dining options in town, so you'll never run out of things to do.

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Savannah, GA, United States

Savannah, Georgia is a beautiful city with lots of places to visit, including Forsyth Park, River Street, and the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace. Another place to visit is the Savannah History Museum, which is jam-packed with interesting exhibits on the history of the city.

Savannah Luxury Hotels

Naples, FL, United States

Naples is known for its stunning white sand beaches and crystal-clear waters. Its also home to a wide variety of attractions, including world-class golf courses, vibrant nightlife, and interesting cultural experiences. Here are five places to visit in Naples, Florida:  Naples Pier: Stroll along the pier and enjoy panoramic views of the Gulf of Mexico.  Fifth Avenue South: This popular shopping and dining district is home to eclectic boutiques, award-winning restaurants, and lively bars.  The Ritz-Carlton, Naples: This luxurious resort is set on 26 acres of pristine waterfront property and offers superb amenities, including a world-class spa and championship golf course.  The Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens: This zoological park is home to more than 700 animals representing 150 species, including flamingos, lemurs, and tigers.  Tin City: This eclectic shopping and dining district is housed in a series of restored waterfront warehouses and features eclectic shops, galleries, and award-winning restaurants.

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Louisville, KY, United States

Louisville is in the heart of Kentucky and is known for being the home of the Kentucky Derby. There are a lot of great places to visit in Louisville, including the Louisville Zoo, the Muhammad Ali Center, and the Frazier History Museum. There are also a lot of great restaurants and bars in Louisville, and it's a great place to visit for a weekend getaway.

Louisville Luxury Hotels

Galveston, TX, United States

Galveston is a Texas coastal town that is rich in history and offers visitors a variety of places to visit and things to do. Some of the most popular attractions include the Moody Gardens, Schlitterbahn Waterpark, and Historic Downtown. There are also a number of museums and other historical landmarks, as well as plenty of shopping and dining options.

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Omaha, NE, United States

The birthplace of Warren Buffett, Omaha, Nebraska, is a great place to visit. There are plenty of things to see and do in Omaha, from touring the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium to visiting the Durham Western Heritage Museum. Other popular tourist destinations in Omaha include the Joslyn Art Museum, the Ak-Sar-Ben Aquarium, and TD Ameritrade Park.

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Columbus, GA, United States

Columbus is a charming small town in Georgia that is worth a visit. There are several places to visit in Columbus, including the Riverwalk, the Chattahoochee River, the National Infantry Museum, and the Coca-Cola Space Science Center. The Riverwalk is a beautiful walkway along the Chattahoochee River that is perfect for a relaxing stroll or a bike ride. The Chattahoochee River is a great place to go fishing, swimming, or kayaking. The National Infantry Museum is a museum dedicated to the infantry of the United States Army. It is a must-see for history buffs. The Coca-Cola Space Science Center is a museum dedicated to space science. It is perfect for kids and adults alike.

Columbus Luxury Hotels

Anchorage, AK, United States

Anchorage is a great place to visit if you're looking for an adrenaline rush. From skiing and snowboarding in the winter to rafting and fishing in the summer, Anchorage has something to offer everyone. In addition to its outdoor activities, Anchorage also has a variety of cultural and historical attractions, including the Anchorage Museum and the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail.

Anchorage Luxury Hotels

Portland, OR, United States

Portland is a city that is located in the US state of Oregon and it is known for its art scene, food, and coffee. There are a lot of interesting places to visit in Portland, such as the Portland Art Museum, where you can see a variety of art from all over the world. Another place to visit is the Powell's City of Books, the largest independent bookstore in the world. If you're looking for a place to eat, Portland has no shortage of amazing restaurants, such as Pok Pok, which serves Thai cuisine, and Le Pigeon, which serves French cuisine. And, of course, no trip to Portland would be complete without trying some of the city's famous coffee, such as Stumptown Coffee Roasters.

Portland Luxury Hotels

Florence, Italy

No trip to Italy is complete without a visit to Florence. This historic city is home to some of the country's most famous attractions, including the Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, and Michelangelo's David. There's also plenty to see and do outside of the city center, including the picturesque Tuscan countryside and the vibrant university town of Arezzo.

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Asheville, NC, United States

Asheville is a city in western North Carolina. It is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the county seat of Buncombe County. Asheville is home to the Biltmore Estate, the largest private home in the United States. The city of Asheville proper had a population of 84,236 in 2010. The city is known for its art deco architecture, mountain scenery and outdoor activities, and as the birthplace of American novelist Thomas Wolfe. It is also home to the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, the second largest craft brewery in the United States.

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Long Beach, CA, United States

There's plenty to do in Long Beach, California without ever having to leave the city limits. If you're looking for a little adventure, head to the Aquarium of the Pacific for a glimpse of the ocean's creatures or take a walk on the boardwalk at Rainbow Harbor. If you're more of a history buff, the Queen Mary is a must-see. This retired ocean liner is now a hotel and museum with plenty of stories to tell. And no trip to Long Beach is complete without a visit to the iconic Vincent Thomas Bridge.

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Cincinnati, OH, United States

Cincinnati is a city located on the Ohio River in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Ohio. The city was founded in 1788 and named after the Society of the Cincinnati, an organization of Revolutionary War officers. Cincinnati is a major U.S. city and the metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million people. The city is well-known for its German heritage, Oktoberfest celebration, and its variety of chili dishes. Cincinnati is home to three major sports teams: the NFL's Cincinnati Bengals, MLB's Cincinnati Reds, and the NBA's Cincinnati Cavaliers. The city is also home to the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University. The city's historic neighborhoods include Over-the-Rhine, Mount Auburn, and Hyde Park. Cincinnati is a popular tourist destination and offers a variety of attractions and places to visit, including the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, the Newport Aquarium, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

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Laughlin, NV, United States

Laughlin, Nevada is a great place to visit if you're looking for a fun and affordable vacation. There are plenty of casinos and resorts to choose from, as well as plenty of outdoor activities and attractions. Be sure to check out the local nightlife, and don't forget to take a trip down the mighty Colorado River.

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Anaheim, CA, United States

Anaheim, California is home to both Disneyland and California Adventure Park. The parks are just a short walk away from each other, and make for a great day of exploration. Anaheim is also home to the Anaheim Angels and the Anaheim Ducks, so there's always a game to catch. If you're looking for something a little more low-key, Anaheim has a great shopping district and a variety of restaurants to choose from.

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Santa Cruz, CA, United States

Santa Cruz is a great place to visit! There are so many places to see and things to do. Some of my favorite places to visit are the Boardwalk, the wharf, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. The Boardwalk is a great place to go for a walk, ride on the amusement park rides, and eat some of the delicious food. The wharf is a great place to go for a walk, eat some seafood, and listen to the street performers. The University of California, Santa Cruz is a great place to visit to learn about the history of the area and to see some of the beautiful architecture. I highly recommend visiting Santa Cruz if you are looking for a fun and interesting place to visit!.

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Eugene, OR, United States

Eugene, Oregon is a great city to visit with a lot of places to see and things to do. One of the most popular attractions is the University of Oregon campus, which is home to a number of museums and a large football stadium. The city also has a vibrant arts scene, with a number of theaters and art galleries. Outdoor enthusiasts will enjoy the dozens of parks and hiking trails in the area, and there are also a number of wineries and breweries in the area.

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Branson, MO, United States

There's plenty to see and do in Branson, Missouri, from state parks and amusement parks to theaters and shopping. Here are some of the most popular places to visit: Silver Dollar City is a theme park with rides, shows, and craftsmen demonstrations. is a theme park with rides, shows, and craftsmen demonstrations. The Shepherd of the Hills Outdoor Theatre puts on a variety of shows, including "The Legend of the Shepherd of the Hills" and "The Catfish Fry." puts on a variety of shows, including "The Legend of the Shepherd of the Hills" and "The Catfish Fry." Table Rock State Park has fishing, swimming, and hiking trails, as well as a nature center. has fishing, swimming, and hiking trails, as well as a nature center. The Titanic Museum features a half-sized replica of the ship, along with exhibits about the history of the Titanic. features a half-sized replica of the ship, along with exhibits about the history of the Titanic. Branson Landing is a shopping and entertainment complex on the waterfront. There's something for everyone in Branson, Missouri  come visit and see for yourself!.

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Panama City Beach, FL, United States

The white sand beaches and emerald waters of Panama City Beach, Florida, are a popular tourist destination. The city is home to numerous hotels, resorts, and restaurants, as well as amusement and water parks. Visitors can also enjoy fishing, kayaking, and surfing.

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Monterey, CA, United States

Monterey is a coastal city in Monterey County, California, United States. It stands at the southern end of Monterey Bay, on the Pacific coast. The city is also the home of the Naval Postgraduate School. Monterey is the largest city in the Central Coast region of California. The main attractions in Monterey are the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Fisherman's Wharf, Cannery Row, and the downtown area.

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Norfolk, VA, United States

Norfolk, Virginia is a great place to visit for its historical places and military bases. Some places to visit in Norfolk are the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk Botanical Garden, and the Norfolk Naval Station.

Norfolk Luxury Hotels

Palm Springs, CA, United States

Palm Springs is a vibrant city located in the Coachella Valley and is known for its year-round sunshine, resort atmosphere and Mid-Century Modern architecture. Top places to visit include the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, Palm Springs Art Museum, Indian Canyons and Moorten Botanical Garden. For a truly unique experience, be sure to check out the Palm Springs Modernism Show & Sale  the worlds largest vintage furniture and design event.

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Rochester, NY, United States

Rochester is a city in western New York State and is the county seat of Monroe County. Rochester is known for its annual festivals, including the Rochester International Jazz Festival, the Rochester Fringe Festival, and the Holiday Folk Fair International. Places to visit in Rochester include the George Eastman Museum, the Strong National Museum of Play, the Rochester Museum and Science Center, and the Seneca Park Zoo.

Rochester Luxury Hotels

Pigeon Forge, TN, United States

Visit the Titanic Museum in Pigeon Forge for a unique experience. This museum is dedicated to the Titanic, one of the most infamous ships in history. Tour the ship and learn about the passengers and crew who were on board. You can even see the actual artifacts recovered from the shipwreck. If you're looking for a little more excitement, head to Dollywood. This amusement park is home to roller coasters, a water park, and plenty of other rides and attractions. Plus, the park is themed around the life and music of Dolly Parton. No trip to Pigeon Forge is complete without a visit to the Great Smoky Mountains. These mountains offer a variety of activities, including hiking, fishing, and horseback riding. Plus, the natural beauty of the area is simply breathtaking.

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Jacksonville, FL, United States

Jacksonville is less than an hour's drive from the beaches of Amelia Island and St. Augustine, and a little more than two hours from Orlando. The city has a lot to offer visitors, including a riverwalk, museums, and a vibrant arts scene. Jacksonville is also home to the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team.

Jacksonville Luxury Hotels

Minsk, Belarus

Minsk, the capital of Belarus, is a city that has something for everyone. If you're looking for a little history, Minsk has plenty of it, with churches and monuments dating back to the 12th century. If you're looking for a lively nightlife, Minsk has that, too, with plenty of bars, clubs, and restaurants. And if you're looking for a little nature, Minsk has parks and gardens to enjoy. Here are just a few of the places you can visit in Minsk: The Holy Spirit Cathedral, one of the oldest churches in Minsk, is a must-visit for history buffs. The National Library of Belarus is a huge library with more than 18 million items in its collection. The Opera and Ballet Theatre is a beautiful building that hosts performances of both opera and ballet. The Victory Park is a large park with a war memorial, a children's playground, and a lake. And for a little bit of nature in the heart of the city, the Botanical Garden is a great place to relax and take a break from the hustle and bustle of Minsk.

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Jaipur, India

Jaipur is one of the most popular tourist destinations in India. It is the capital of the state of Rajasthan and is known for its palaces, forts and temples. Some of the places to visit in Jaipur include the Amber Fort, the City Palace, the Jantar Mantar Observatory and the Hawa Mahal. Jaipur is also a great place to shop for traditional Indian handicrafts.

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Chicago, IL, United States

Chicago is a city full of culture and history. There are plenty of places to visit, such as the Willis Tower, Buckingham Fountain, and the Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicago is also home to many restaurants and bars, so there is something for everyone.

Chicago Luxury Hotels

Auckland, New Zealand

Auckland is a beautiful city located on the north island of New Zealand. There are many places to visit in Auckland, including the Sky Tower, the Auckland War Memorial Museum, and the Auckland Domain. The beaches in Auckland are also worth visiting, especially Karekare and Piha. Auckland is a great place to visit, and I highly recommend it!.

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Auckland Luxury Villas

Amsterdam, Netherlands

If you're looking for a city that's got it all, Amsterdam should be your go-to destination. From the city's lively and vibrant nightlife to its charming and quiet neighborhoods, Amsterdam has something for everyone. Be sure to check out the Anne Frank Huis, the Rijksmuseum, and the Van Gogh Museum, as these are some of the most popular attractions in the city. And if you're looking for a little bit of nature, be sure to take a walk or bike ride through Amsterdam's many parks.

Amsterdam Luxury Hotels

Berlin, Germany

There are so many great places to visit in Berlin that it can be hard to know where to start. From the iconic Brandenburg Gate to the fascinating Reichstag Building, there's something for everyone in this vibrant city. If you're looking for a bit of history, make sure to check out the Berlin Wall Memorial or the DDR Museum. And for those looking for a bit more fun, there's always the Alexanderplatz Christmas Market or the Zoologischer Garten. No matter what your interests, Berlin is a city you won't want to miss.

Berlin Luxury Hotels

Bangkok, Thailand

Bangkok is a city of contrasts with its gleaming temples and skyscrapers, chaotic markets and tranquil canals. While it's a popular tourist destination, Bangkok is a city that can be enjoyed by visitors of all ages. Some of the top places to visit in Bangkok include the Grand Palace, Wat Arun, the floating markets and the Chatuchak Weekend Market.

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Bruges, Belgium

Bruges is a city in Belgium that is worth visiting. It is full of medieval charm and there are a lot of things to see and do. Some of the places to visit include the Markt, the Belfry, and the Begijnhof.

Bruges Luxury Hotels

Brussels, Belgium

Brussels is a city in Belgium that is best known for its chocolate, waffles, and beer. But there is much more to see and do in Brussels than just indulge in the local cuisine. There are a number of interesting historical landmarks to visit, such as the Grand Place and the Atomium, as well as a variety of parks and gardens. And, of course, Brussels is also a great city to explore on foot.

Brussels Luxury Hotels

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest, Hungary's capital, is a city of thermal baths and medival, baroque and art nouveau architecture. Crowded with tourists, the city is bisected by the Danube River into the hilly Buda and the more developed and flat Pest. Among the main places of interest are the neo-Gothic Parliament, the Chain Bridge linking Buda and Pest, the Matthias Church and Fisherman's Bastion on the Buda bank, and the State Opera House and Heroes' Square on the Pest side.

Budapest Luxury Hotels

Playa del Carmen, Mexico

Home to some of the best beaches in Mexico, Playa del Carmen is a favorite tourist destination for visitors from all over the world. With its lively nightlife, gorgeous coastline and ample shopping opportunities, there's something for everyone in this tropical paradise. Don't miss the opportunity to visit some of the area's most popular attractions, such as the ancient Mayan ruins of Tulum and Coba, or the eco-friendly Turtle Beach. With its friendly people, delicious food and stunning scenery, Playa del Carmen is a place you'll never want to leave.

Playa del Carmen Luxury Hotels

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Denver, CO, United States

Denver is a great city for visitors. There are so many places to see and things to do. Some of the top places to visit include the 16th Street Mall, the Denver Botanic Gardens, the Denver Art Museum, and the Colorado State Capitol. There are also plenty of great restaurants and shops to explore. Denver is definitely a city worth visiting!.

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Dublin, Ireland

Dublin is a city located in Ireland. It's a city full of culture, with plenty of places to visit. Some popular tourist spots are the Guinness Storehouse, Trinity College, and the Dublin Castle. There are also plenty of pubs and restaurants to discover.

Dublin Luxury Hotels

Dusseldorf, Germany

Dusseldorf, Germany is a city with many different places to visit. The city has a mix of old and new buildings, and a variety of activities to do. The best places to visit in Dusseldorf are the Konigsallee, the Rhine Tower, and the Oktoberfest. The Konigsallee is an open-air shopping mall that has many high-end stores. The Rhine Tower is the tallest building in the city and offers great views of Dusseldorf. The Oktoberfest is a week-long festival that celebrates German culture and food.

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Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Edinburgh, Scotland is a beautiful city to visit. The architecture is very old and unique, and there are plenty of historical places to visit, like Edinburgh Castle. There are also plenty of parks and gardens, and lots of shops and restaurants.

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Rome, Italy

Rome is a city rich in history and filled with beautiful places to visit. Make sure to stop by the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and the Pantheon. Also be sure to visit St. Peters Basilica and the Sistine Chapel while in Rome. If youre looking for a little more nature in your trip, head to the Villa Borghese gardens or the Janiculum Hill for some wonderful views of the city. And of course, no trip to Rome is complete without a gelato!.

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New York, NY, United States

There are many amazing places to visit in New York State. Some of my favorites are the Niagara Falls, the Adirondack Mountains, and the Finger Lakes. If you're looking for a city break, New York City is definitely worth a visit. There's endless things to see and do, from touring the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island to visiting world-famous museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History. No matter what your interests are, you'll be able to find something to enjoy in New York State.

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London, United Kingdom

London is a city rich in history and full of amazing places to visit. Some of my favorite places are Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and the Tower of London. There is so much to see and do in London, you could spend weeks here and never run out of things to do. If you're looking for a city full of culture and history, London is the place for you.

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Madrid, Spain

Madrid is one of the most beautiful and culturally rich cities in the world. From the Royal Palace to the Prado Museum, theres plenty to see and do in Madrid. If youre looking for a little bit of nature, Madrid has plenty of parks, like the Buen Retiro Park, to relax in. And dont forget to try some of the delicious tapas and wine while youre in town.

Madrid Luxury Hotels

Memphis, TN, United States

The birthplace of rock 'n' roll, Memphis is a city rich in history and culture. From Graceland to Beale Street, there are plenty of places to visit in Memphis. Be sure to check out Sun Studio, where rock 'n' roll was born, and the National Civil Rights Museum, which tells the story of the African-American civil rights movement. Memphis is also home to some amazing food, so be sure to try some of the city's famous barbecue and soul food.

Memphis Luxury Hotels

Miami Beach, FL, United States

There is much to explore in Miami Beach, from the famous Art Deco district to the vast beaches and crystal-clear waters. Outdoor enthusiasts will love the opportunities for fishing, kayaking, and paddleboarding, while history buffs can explore the ancient burial mounds at Miami Beach. Shoppers and foodies will find plenty to keep them busy, with vibrant neighborhoods like Lincoln Road and Ocean Drive offering unique boutiques and award-winning restaurants. And of course, no trip to Miami Beach is complete without a visit to world-famous South Beach.

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Miami Beach Luxury Resorts

New Orleans, LA, United States

You can't visit New Orleans without trying some of the local food. Beignets, Po' Boys, and gumbo are just a few of the must-try dishes. While you're in town, be sure to check out the French Quarter, Jackson Square, and St. Louis Cathedral. If you're looking for some nightlife, Bourbon Street is the place to be. And, of course, no trip to New Orleans is complete without a visit to Mardi Gras!.

New Orleans Luxury Hotels

Milan, Italy

Milan is a city located in the Lombardy region of Italy. It is a popular tourist destination because of its historical and artistic heritage. Some of the places you should visit while in Milan are the Duomo, La Scala, and Castello Sforzesco.

Milan Luxury Hotels

Naples, Italy

Naples is one of the most beautiful and historic cities in Italy. There are countless places to visit, such as the Royal Palace, the Museum of San Martino, and the Church of Gesu Nuovo. Naples is also home to excellent shopping and dining options. Be sure to enjoy a cup of coffee at one of the city's many cafes and take a stroll through the picturesque streets.

Naples Luxury Hotels

Paris, France

Paris is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. It's home to iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre Museum, as well as a thriving nightlife and restaurant scene. If you're looking to explore all that Paris has to offer, here are some of the top places to visit: The Eiffel Tower: This iconic landmark is a must-see in Paris. Climb to the top for stunning views of the city, or take a ride on the elevator to the bottom for a closer look at the structure. The Louvre Museum: This world-famous museum is home to some of the most famous works of art in the world, including the Mona Lisa. The Notre Dame Cathedral: This beautiful cathedral is one of the most famous landmarks in Paris. Make sure to climb to the top for some amazing views of the city. The Champs-Elysees: This famous avenue is a popular destination for shopping and dining. Be sure to wander down the street and take in all the sights and sounds. The Arc de Triomphe: This towering arch is another iconic landmark in Paris. Climb to the top for some amazing views of the city.

Paris Luxury Hotels

Paris Luxury Villas

Prague, Czech Republic

Prague is a city rich in history and culture. There are plenty of places to visit, including the Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, and the Old Town Square. There are also plenty of restaurants and bars to enjoy, and the nightlife is vibrant. Prague is a truly unique city and a must-visit for anyone traveling to the Czech Republic.

Prague Luxury Hotels

Punta Cana, Dominican Republic

Located on the easternmost tip of the Dominican Republic, Punta Cana is known for its beautiful beaches and turquoise waters. This paradise is a favorite destination for travelers looking for a Caribbean getaway. Punta Cana is home to a wide variety of resorts and activities, from enjoying the sand and surf to golfing, spas, and shopping. Nature lovers can also explore the areas jungles, caves, and waterfalls.

Punta Cana Luxury Hotels

Punta Cana Luxury Resorts

Punta Cana Luxury Villas

Marbella, Spain

If you're looking for an idyllic and luxurious Spanish escape, look no further than Marbella. Located on the country's Costa del Sol, Marbella is home to stunning beaches, top-notch resorts, world-class golfing, and much more. A visit to Marbella is the perfect way to experience all that Spain has to offer.

Marbella Luxury Hotels

Marbella Luxury Villas

Marrakesh, Morocco

Marrakesh is a city in Morocco that is full of culture and history. There are several places to visit in Marrakesh, including the Palace of the Bahia, the Ben Youssef Madrasa, and the Saadian Tombs. The souks (markets) are also a must-see, where you can find everything from souvenirs to spices to traditional clothing. Be sure to enjoy a meal in one of the many restaurants or cafes in Marrakesh; the food is delicious and the atmosphere is always lively. Marrakesh is a wonderful city to explore and definitely worth a visit!.

Marrakesh Luxury Hotels

San Francisco, CA, United States

San Francisco is a popular tourist destination, and for good reason. There are plenty of things to see and do in this vibrant city. Here are some of the top places to visit: 1. Fisherman's Wharf: This neighborhood is home to a variety of shops and restaurants, as well as a popular pier where you can enjoy views of the bay. 2. The Golden Gate Bridge: This iconic bridge is a must-see for any visitor to San Francisco. 3. Alcatraz Island: This former federal prison is now a popular tourist attraction. It's a must-see for fans of history and crime dramas. 4. Chinatown: This colorful neighborhood is home to some of the best food in San Francisco. Be sure to check out the Dragon Gate entrance. 5. The Mission District: This trendy neighborhood is home to hip restaurants, bars, and art galleries.

San Francisco Luxury Hotels

Moscow, Russia

Moscow, Russia is a beautiful city with plenty of places to visit. Some of the most popular tourist attractions are the Kremlin, Red Square, and Saint Basil's Cathedral. Other great places to see include the Bolshoi Theatre, Gorky Park, and the Tretyakov Gallery. There are also many churches and other historical buildings to explore. Moscow is a lively city with a lot of culture and nightlife. There is something for everyone to enjoy in Moscow.

Moscow Luxury Hotels

Venice, Italy

Venice is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The city is built on a lagoon in northeast Italy and is known for its canals and gondolas. There are many places to visit in Venice, including the Grand Canal, St. Marks Square, and the Rialto Bridge. Venice is also home to many museums, including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Venice Luxury Hotels

Vienna, Austria

Vienna, Austria is a city with a long and rich history. There are many places to visit in Vienna, including the Hofburg Palace, the Ringstrasse, and St. Stephen's Cathedral. Vienna is also home to some of the world's best shopping, including the Karntner Strasse and the Graben. Finally, no visit to Vienna is complete without experiencing the city's world-famous nightlife.

Vienna Luxury Hotels

Zurich, Switzerland

Zurich is a marvelous city located in the heart of Switzerland. It is a city that has something to offer for everyone. From amazing restaurants and beautiful architecture to exciting nightlife and gorgeous parks, Zurich has something for everyone. Some of the most popular places to visit in Zurich include the Bahnhofstrasse, which is the city's most famous shopping street, the Lindenhof, which is a beautiful park with amazing views of the city, and Grossmunster, which is a stunning Romanesque church. Zurich is also home to some of the best museums in the world, including the famed Museum of Art and the Swiss National Museum. With its mix of old-world charm and modern amenities, Zurich is a city that is definitely worth exploring.

Zurich Luxury Hotels

Acapulco, Mexico

If you're looking for a Mexican vacation spot with plenty of history and culture to explore, Acapulco is a great option. From the archeological wonders of the ancient city to the stunning coastal views, there's something for everyone in Acapulco. Plus, with its temperate climate, it's a great escape from colder winter weather.

Acapulco Luxury Hotels

Acapulco Luxury Resorts

Acapulco Luxury Villas

Nashville, TN, United States

One of the United States' most interesting places to visit is Nashville, Tennessee. There's plenty to see and do there, from the Grand Ole Opry to the Country Music Hall of Fame. Music is a big part of the city's history and culture, so be sure to catch a show while you're in town. Other popular attractions include the Ryman Auditorium, the Parthenon, and the Jack Daniel's Distillery. Nashville is also a great place to eat, with a wide variety of restaurants serving up everything from barbecue to Mexican food. So if you're looking for an exciting and diverse city to visit, be sure to add Nashville to your list.

Nashville Luxury Hotels

Nashville Luxury Villas

Atlanta, GA, United States

What's not to love about Atlanta? From the iconic Georgia Aquarium to the World of Coke, from the Fox Theatre to Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta offers a wealth of destinations for tourists. Sports fans will want to check out the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and history buffs will enjoy the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. Braves fans can take a tour of SunTrust Park, and shoppers will enjoy the many boutiques and malls in the city. There's also a great restaurant scene in Atlanta, and music lovers will want to check out the many venues offering live music. Whether you're looking for a fun family vacation spot or a place to explore on your own, Atlanta is a great choice!.

Atlanta Luxury Hotels

Miami, FL, United States

The Magic City is a top tourist destination for a reasonthere are endless things to do in Miami! From exploring the trendy neighborhoods and dazzling beaches to soaking up the Latin culture and nightlife, Miami is jam-packed with amazing places to visit. Here are a few of our favorites: 1. Wynwood Walls: This outdoor art exhibit is a must-see for any art lover. The colorful murals are awe-inspiring and definitely Instagram-worthy. 2. Vizcaya Museum and Gardens: This estate is dripping with luxury and opulence, from the grandiose architecture to the expansive gardens. It's the perfect place for a day of relaxation. 3. South Beach: This world-famous beach is a must-visit for any sun-seeker. The crystal-clear water and soft sand make for the perfect day-long beach getaway. 4. Little Havana: Experience Cuban culture at its best in Little Havana. From delicious food to lively music and dance, there's something for everyone in this vibrant district. 5. Art Deco District: This district is home to Miami's most iconic architecture. Take a stroll down the charming streets and admire the colorful buildings that make Miami so unique.

Miami Luxury Hotels

Miami Luxury Villas

Tokyo, Japan

Tokyo is a must-see destination in Japan. There are endless places to explore in this city - temples, shrines, gardens, and more. The Shinjuku district is a great place to start, with its neon-lit streets and myriad shops and restaurants. For a taste of traditional Japan, visit the Sensoji Temple in Asakusa or the Imperial Palace. Nature lovers will enjoy the Hamarikyu Gardens or the Hama-rikyu Teien Garden. And for a unique experience, take a trip to Mount Fuji.

Tokyo Luxury Hotels

Tokyo Luxury Villas

Buenos Aires, Argentina

There are plenty of places to visit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Some popular tourist destinations include the obelisk, the Casa Rosada, and the Puerto Madero district. Every barrio (neighborhood) has its own unique culture and flavor. San Telmo, La Boca, and Palermo are some of the most popular barrios. There are also many parks and plazas, such as Plaza de Mayo and Plaza de la Republica, that are worth checking out.

Buenos Aires Luxury Hotels

Hamburg, Germany

One of the most popular tourist destinations in Germany is Hamburg. From the lively and colorful harbor district to the grandiose City Hall, there is plenty to see and do in Hamburg. Some of the other popular places to visit include the Reeperbahn district with its pubs and nightlife, the Planten un Blomen botanical gardens, and the architecturally stunning Rathausmarkt square.

Hamburg Luxury Hotels

Lisbon, Portugal

The capital of Portugal, Lisbon is a city of fascinating contrasts. From its coastal location, visitors can enjoy stunning ocean views, while its hilly, narrow streets are home to a maze of charming traditional homes and lively nightlife. A city of 7 hills, Lisbon is a bustling metropolis with something for everyone. Here are some of the top places to visit: The Belem Tower, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is one of Lisbons most iconic landmarks. This 16th-century fortress and lighthouse is a must-see for visitors. The Alfama district, with its winding streets and tile-roofed homes, is the oldest district in Lisbon. This is the perfect place to get lost and explore the citys history. The Lisbon Zoo is a great place to enjoy a day out with the family, with over 2,000 animals from around the world. The Christ the King statue, located atop a hill in the suburb of Almada, offers impressive views of Lisbon and the river Tagus. The Lisbon Oceanarium, located in the Parque das Nacoes district, is home to more than 12,000 marine creatures and is one of the largest aquariums in Europe.

Lisbon Luxury Hotels

Lisbon Luxury Villas

Malaga, Spain

Malaga is an attractive seaside city in southern Spain with a long history. There are many places to visit in Malaga, including the Gibralfaro Castle, the Alcazaba fortress, and the Malaga Cathedral. Malaga is also home to a variety of museums, including the Picasso Museum. The city is well known for its beaches, and there are many delightful places to relax and enjoy the sun and the sea.

Malaga Luxury Hotels

Malaga Luxury Villas

Munich, Germany

When planning a vacation to Munich, Germany, be sure to include these top places to visit: The Marienplatz is a must-see square in the city center, featuring a beautiful Glockenspiel show and the Old and New Town Halls. The Englisher Garten, Europes largest city park, is a great place for a relaxing stroll or a picnic. OlympiaPark is home to the famous 1972 Olympic Stadium as well as a huge amusement park. The Frauenkirche is a stunning church in the old town with a Glockenspiel of its own. Beer lovers will want to visit the Hofbrauhaus, the worlds most famous beer hall. For a bit of history and culture, check out the LudwigMaximilians-University and the Deutsches Museum. There is so much to see and do in Munich  these are just a few highlights!.

Munich Luxury Hotels

Granada, Spain

Granada is a city in southern Spain that is known for its Moorish architecture and history. The city is home to the Alhambra, a palace and fortress that was constructed in the late 1300s. Visitors can also enjoy the citys many churches, including the Cathedral of Granada. Granada is also a convenient base for exploring the other cities and towns in Andalusia.

Granada Luxury Hotels

Bucharest, Romania

Bucharest is a city full of history and culture. There are many places to visit, such as the Palace of Parliament, which is the world's largest civilian building. Other places to visit include the old city center, which is full of charming streets and buildings, and the Botanical Garden, which is the largest botanical garden in Romania.

Bucharest Luxury Hotels

Bologna, Italy

Bologna, Italy is a beautiful city with plenty of places to visit. Some popular tourist destinations include the Piazza Maggiore, the Tower of Asinelli, and the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca. There are also plenty of museums and churches to explore, and the city is full of charming restaurants and cafes. Bologna is an excellent destination for a vacation, and there is something for everyone to enjoy in this amazing city.

Bologna Luxury Hotels

Porto, Portugal

Porto is a port city in Portugal that is well known for its wine. It's also a city with a long and rich history. There are many places to visit in Porto, including the old city center, the Dom Luis I Bridge, and the Clerigos Tower. Porto is also home to the famous Port wine caves, which are a must-visit for wine lovers.

Porto Luxury Hotels

Cologne, Germany

Cologne, located on the Rhine River in western Germany, is a city well worth visiting. The city has a long and rich history, dating back to the time of the Roman Empire. Some of the city's most popular tourist attractions include the Cologne Cathedral, Hohenzollern Bridge, and the RheinEnergieStadion. Additionally, Cologne is home to a wide variety of museums, shops, and restaurants. In fact, the city has been ranked as one of the best places to live in Germany. So, if you're looking for a great European city to visit, be sure to add Cologne to your list.

Cologne Luxury Hotels

Istanbul, Turkey

If you're looking for an exotic and affordable vacation destination, look no further than Istanbul, Turkey. Filled with historical places to visit and bargains to be found, Istanbul offers something for everyone. Be sure to visit the Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, and the Blue Mosque while you're there. Don't forget to bargain for the best prices when shopping in the bazaars, and enjoy some delicious Turkish cuisine while you're at it. Istanbul is sure to leave you with a lasting impression.

Istanbul Luxury Hotels

Istanbul Luxury Villas

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Dubai is a fascinating and exotic city that offers visitors a mix of traditional Middle Eastern culture and modern, cosmopolitan life. There are plenty of places to visit in Dubai, from the towering skyscrapers of Downtown Dubai to the luxury shopping malls and luxurious hotels of the Palm Jumeirah. Don't miss a chance to experience an Arabian night out on an epic dhow cruise, or take a trip out into the Arabian Desert to see the stunning sand dunes.

Dubai Luxury Hotels

Dubai Luxury Resorts

Dubai Luxury Villas

Antwerp, Belgium

Antwerp is a city located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital of the province of Antwerp and has a population of over half a million people. Antwerp is a popular tourist destination due to its many historical buildings, museums, and art galleries. Some of the most popular places to visit in Antwerp are the Cathedral of Our Lady, the City Hall, the Rubenshuis, and the Antwerp Zoo.

Antwerp Luxury Hotels

Lyon, France

Lyon is a beautiful city in the south of France that is full of culture and places to visit. Some of the most popular places to visit in Lyon are the Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourviere, the Place Bellecour, and the Vieux Lyon. The Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourviere is a beautiful cathedral that is a must-see when visiting Lyon. The Place Bellecour is a large square in the heart of Lyon that is full of restaurants and cafes. The Vieux Lyon is a district in Lyon that is full of old buildings and is a great place to wander around and take in the sights.

Lyon Luxury Hotels

Athens, Greece

If you find yourself in Athens, there are definitely some spots you won't want to miss. The Acropolis, Parthenon, and Olympic Stadium are all essential stops, but there are plenty of others, too. If you're looking for a bit of history, the National Archaeological Museum is a must-see, while nature lovers will enjoy a visit to the botanical gardens. If you're looking to relax, take a walk along the beach in Glyfada or head to the Plaka district for a charming and picturesque setting. No matter what you're interested in, Athens has something for you.

Athens Luxury Hotels

Athens Luxury Villas

Helsinki, Finland

While in Helsinki, make sure to visit these popular tourist destinations: The Senate Square and Lutheran Cathedral The Sibelius Monument Ateneum Art Museum Market Square Helsinki Zoo.

Helsinki Luxury Hotels

Vilnius, Lithuania

The capital of Lithuania, Vilnius, is a picturesque city with a rich history. The old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is full of charming churches, narrow streets, and pretty squares. There are also lots of museums and other places of interest to visit, including the Hill of Crosses, Gediminas Tower, and the Presidential Palace. Vilnius is a great city to explore on foot, and there are plenty of cafes, restaurants, and bars to enjoy in the evening.

Vilnius Luxury Hotels

Reykjavik, Iceland

A city of remote beauty, Reykjavik is teeming with interesting places to visit. One of the worlds most northern capitals, Reykjavik offers stunning landscapes and a wealth of cultural experiences. From the iconic Hallgrimskirkja church to the popular Golden Circle tour, theres plenty to see and do in Reykjavik. Be sure to check out the citys lively nightlife scene, too  you wont be disappointed!.

Reykjavik Luxury Hotels

Glasgow, United Kingdom

Some of the most popular places to visit in Glasgow include the Gallery of Modern Art, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, the Riverside Museum, and the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre. There are also many wonderful parks and gardens to explore, including the Botanic Gardens and Glasgow Green. For those interested in history and architecture, there are many fascinating old buildings to see, such as the Glasgow Cathedral and the University of Glasgow. And for those looking for a lively nightlife, Glasgow has no shortage of pubs, clubs, and restaurants.

Glasgow Luxury Hotels

Los Angeles, CA, United States

As the birthplace of Hollywood and home to some of the world's most recognisable landmarks, there's no shortage of places to visit in Los Angeles. Start by exploring the city's iconic neighbourhoods like Beverly Hills and Hollywood, then venture out to attractions like the Griffith Observatory, Venice Beach and Disneyland. And don't forget to savour the city's world-famous cultural scene, with its abundance of museums, theatres and restaurants.

Los Angeles Luxury Hotels

Los Angeles Luxury Villas

San Diego, CA, United States

San Diego is a city located in California and is a major tourist destination. One of the main reasons people visit the city is for its many beaches. Coronado Beach, Mission Beach, and Pacific Beach are some of the most popular and are all within close proximity to the city center. Other attractions in San Diego include the San Diego Zoo, SeaWorld San Diego, and the USS Midway Museum. Restaurants, bars, and shopping can be found throughout the city, and world-renowned museums, like the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, are also located in San Diego.

San Diego Luxury Hotels

San Diego Luxury Resorts

San Diego Luxury Villas

Washington, DC, United States

Washington, D.C. is a city full of history and places to visit. Some popular places to visit are the Lincoln Memorial, the White House, and the Smithsonian. D.C. is also home to a number of monuments and memorials, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Korean War Veterans Memorial. There are also a number of museums in D.C., like the American History Museum and the National Air and Space Museum.

Washington Luxury Hotels

Cancun, Mexico

Cancun is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Mexico. Aside from its beautiful beaches, there are plenty of places to visit and things to do in Cancun. Some of the most popular attractions include the ancient ruins of Chichen Itza, the eco-park Xcaret, and the nightclubs and bars in the resort district.

Cancun Luxury Hotels

Cancun Luxury Resorts

Cancun Luxury Villas

Virginia Beach, VA, United States

Virginia Beach is one of the top tourist destinations on the East Coast. From the Virginia Beach Boardwalk to the miles of sandy beaches, there's something for everyone to enjoy. There are also plenty of restaurants, shops, and other attractions to keep visitors busy. Some of the most popular places to visit in Virginia Beach include: The Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center : This aquarium is home to more than 20,000 animals, including sharks, dolphins, and rays. : This aquarium is home to more than 20,000 animals, including sharks, dolphins, and rays. The Virginia Beach Boardwalk: This 3.5-mile boardwalk is one of the most popular attractions in Virginia Beach. It features a wide variety of shops, restaurants, and amusements. This 3.5-mile boardwalk is one of the most popular attractions in Virginia Beach. It features a wide variety of shops, restaurants, and amusements. First Landing State Park: This park offers miles of hiking and biking trails, as well as a beachfront area for swimming and sunbathing. This park offers miles of hiking and biking trails, as well as a beachfront area for swimming and sunbathing. Cape Henry Lighthouse: This lighthouse is one of the oldest in the country and offers stunning views of the Chesapeake Bay. There are plenty of other things to do in Virginia Beach, including dolphin and whale watching tours, kayaking, and golfing. Whether you're looking for a fun family vacation or a romantic getaway, Virginia Beach is sure to please.

Virginia Beach Luxury Hotels

Virginia Beach Luxury Resorts

Beijing, China

If you're looking for an amazing cultural experience, be sure to add Beijing, China to your travel bucket list! With beautiful temples, charming hutongs (traditional alleyways), and a lively food scene, there's something for everyone in this bustling city. Plus, Beijing is home to some of the most iconic attractions in China, like the Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City. So if you're looking for an unforgettable East Asian adventure, be sure to add Beijing to your list!.

Beijing Luxury Hotels

Seoul, South Korea

Seoul is a metropolitan city that is home to over 10 million people. It is a city full of culture, history, and a vibrant nightlife. There are plenty of places to visit in Seoul, including the Gyeongbokgung Palace, Changdeokgung Palace, and N Seoul Tower. The Jeongdongne district is a must-see for anyone interested in art and culture, and the Itaewon district is a great place to go for a night on the town.

Seoul Luxury Hotels

South Lake Tahoe, CA, United States

Known for its dramatic lake and mountain scenery, South Lake Tahoe offers visitors plenty of places to visit and things to do. Some of the most popular attractions include floating down the river on a tube, hiking the trails in the summer and skiing or snowboarding the slopes in the winter. The city also has a variety of restaurants and nightlife options, as well as casinos for those looking to try their luck.

South Lake Tahoe Luxury Hotels

South Lake Tahoe Luxury Resorts

Daytona Beach, FL, United States

Daytona Beach is a city in Volusia County, Florida, United States. It is approximately 40 miles northeast of Orlando, and 85 miles southeast of Jacksonville. The city is known as "The World's Most Famous Beach." Daytona Beach is a principal city of the Fun Coast region of Florida. The Daytona Beach area is a popular tourist destination. It is well known for its beaches, sports events, and motorsports. Daytona Beach was the birthplace of NASCAR and home to its first track, Daytona International Speedway. Dayton Beach also features a large number of tourist-oriented businesses, such as motels, restaurants, and bars.

Daytona Beach Luxury Hotels

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The coastline of Rio de Janeiro is breathtaking, and the views from Christ the Redeemer and Sugar Loaf Mountain are unforgettable. Rio's world-famous beaches are the perfect place to relax and enjoy the sun and the surf. The city's rich culture and history can be experienced in its many museums and in the lively nightlife. Rio is also a great place to shop for souvenirs.

Rio de Janeiro Luxury Hotels

Rio de Janeiro Luxury Villas

Jaco, Costa Rica

Jaco is a town on the Central Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. It's about an hour drive from San Jose and is a popular spot for surfers, sunbathers, and tourists. There are a number of beaches in the area, as well as restaurants, bars, and hotels. If you're looking for a place to relax and enjoy the Costa Rican sun and beaches, Jaco is a great option.

Jaco Luxury Hotels

Oslo, Norway

Oslo, Norway is a city with plenty of places to visit. You can find the peace and tranquility of nature parks and green spaces, experience the city's vibrant nightlife, or take in the historical and cultural sights. Here are a few of the top places to visit in Oslo: The Royal Palace: Oslo's Royal Palace is the official residence of Norway's king and queen. The palace is open to the public year-round, and offers a glimpse into the lives of the royal family. Oslo's Royal Palace is the official residence of Norway's king and queen. The palace is open to the public year-round, and offers a glimpse into the lives of the royal family. Vigeland Park: Considered one of Oslo's most popular tourist destinations, Vigeland Park is home to over 200 sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. The park is a great place to spend a sunny day outdoors. Considered one of Oslo's most popular tourist destinations, Vigeland Park is home to over 200 sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. The park is a great place to spend a sunny day outdoors. The Maritime Museum: This museum is home to a variety of exhibits on Norway's maritime history. Visitors can explore everything from Viking ships to modern submarines. This museum is home to a variety of exhibits on Norway's maritime history. Visitors can explore everything from Viking ships to modern submarines. The National Gallery: The National Gallery is Norway's largest art museum, and home to a vast collection of paintings and sculptures from the country's most famous artists. The National Gallery is Norway's largest art museum, and home to a vast collection of paintings and sculptures from the country's most famous artists. Aker Brygge: Aker Brygge is a popular waterfront district in Oslo, home to a variety of bars, restaurants, and shops. The area is a great place to people watch and enjoy the view of the Oslo Fjord.

Oslo Luxury Hotels

Lima, Peru

If you're looking for a city that's bursting with culture and flavor, Lima, Peru is the place for you! This vibrant destination is home to some of the most amazing places to visit in all of South America. From ancient ruins to lush rainforests, there's something for everyone in Lima. Here are just a few of the must-see attractions in this amazing city: The Larco Museum is one of Lima's top tourist destinations. This incredible museum is home to one of the largest collections of pre-Columbian art in the world. The Historic Center of Lima is a must-see for any history lover. This vibrant area is home to some of the oldest architecture in Lima, including the iconic San Francisco Monastery. If you're looking for a little bit of jungle in the city, head to the Parque de la Reserva. This lush park is home to beautiful gardens, a zoo, and even a butterfly farm! No trip to Lima would be complete without a visit to Machu Picchu. This ancient Inca citadel is one of the most iconic sites in all of South America.

Lima Luxury Hotels

Ankara, Turkey

Ankara is the cultural and political center of Turkey. The city is home to many museums, including the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, and is a popular destination for tourists. The Citadel, the Ataturk Mausoleum, and the War of Independence Museum are all popular tourist destinations in Ankara. The city is also home to a vibrant nightlife and is a popular destination for students.

Ankara Luxury Hotels

Birmingham, United Kingdom

There are plenty of great places to visit in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Some of the most popular places to go include the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and the Black Country Living Museum. These places are all great for tourists, as they offer a variety of attractions, including beautiful gardens, interesting art, and a recreation of an old-fashioned town. Additionally, there are plenty of other great places to visit in Birmingham, such as the Jewellery Quarter and the German Christmas Market.

Birmingham Luxury Hotels

York, United Kingdom

With a rich history that spans back over 1,000 years, York is a must-visit destination in the United Kingdom. Explore the city's medieval architecture and narrow cobblestone streets, or enjoy a leisurely walk along the River Ouse. Visitors can also enjoy a variety of cultural experiences, such as the York Minster cathedral, the Jorvik Viking Centre, and the National Railway Museum. There are also plenty of shops and restaurants to enjoy in York.

York Luxury Hotels

Inverness, United Kingdom

Inverness, Scotland is a must-see destination on any traveler's list. Filled with rolling green hills, historical sites, and plenty of outdoor activities, there's something for everyone in this charming town. Start by exploring the city center, which is home to a variety of shops and restaurants. Make sure to check out the Inverness Castle, which offers commanding views of the area, and the Inverness Cathedral, a beautiful example of medieval architecture. Outside of the city center, there are plenty of other attractions to explore. The Loch Ness Monster is said to make its home in the loch here, and visitors can take boat tours to hunt for the mythical creature. If you're looking for a more active adventure, take a hike in the hills or go fishing on the loch. No matter what you choose to do, Inverness is a beautiful and welcoming town that is sure to charm you.

Inverness Luxury Hotels

Marseille, France

The Vieux Port (Old Harbor) is the oldest port in France. It is a beautiful place to visit with its sailboats, restaurants, and cafes. The Notre Dame de la Garde Basilica is also worth a visit. It offers stunning views of the city. If you're looking for a more lively atmosphere, head to the La Canebiere. It's a wide avenue with plenty of shops and restaurants.

Marseille Luxury Hotels

Marseille Luxury Villas

Honolulu, HI, United States

Honolulu is a city located on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, United States. It is the most populous city in the state of Hawaii and the county seat of the City and County of Honolulu. Honolulu is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Hawaii. Waikiki Beach is one of the most famous beaches in the world and is located in Honolulu. Other places to visit in Honolulu include Diamond Head, the USS Arizona Memorial, and Hanauma Bay.

Honolulu Luxury Hotels

Honolulu Luxury Resorts

Honolulu Luxury Villas

Bar Harbor, ME, United States

Famous for lobster and stunning ocean views, Bar Harbor is a popular destination in Maine. There are plenty of things to do in the town and its surroundings, including hiking, biking, whale watching, and exploring Acadia National Park.

Bar Harbor Luxury Hotels

Colorado Springs, CO, United States

There are many places to visit in Colorado Springs. Garden of the Gods is a popular park with beautiful rock formations. Pike's Peak is a 14,115 foot mountain that offers great views and outdoor activities. The Broadmoor is a world-renowned resort with lovely gardens and a championship golf course. Royal Gorge Bridge is the world's highest suspension bridge and a popular tourist spot.

Colorado Springs Luxury Hotels

Fort Myers Beach, FL, United States

Just an hours drive from the Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach is a popular tourist spot, especially in the winter when the snowbirds migrate down. The seven-mile-long beach is known for its white sand and clear water and is a popular spot for swimming, sunbathing, fishing, and kayaking. There are also a number of restaurants and bars in the area, as well as a few stores.

Fort Myers Beach Luxury Hotels

Biloxi, MS, United States

There are plenty of places to explore in Biloxi, Mississippi  from the citys iconic Beaches to the picturesque Bay Saint Louis. Venture into the citys downtown area to check out the many shops and restaurants, or take a walk along the shoreline. No matter what you choose to do, youre sure to have a great time in Biloxi.

Biloxi Luxury Hotels

Palermo, Italy

If you're looking for a city with a rich and diverse history, Palermo is the place for you. This coastal city in Italy is teeming with medieval architecture, churches, and cathedrals. Be sure to check out the Teatro Massimo, the largest opera house in Europe, and the Palazzo dei Normanni, the seat of the Sicilian government. Don't miss out on the city's vibrant nightlife and vast array of restaurants that serve up some of the best food in the country.

Palermo Luxury Hotels

Palermo Luxury Villas

Manila, Philippines

The capital of the Philippines, Manila is a fascinating city with a rich history and a vibrant culture. There are plenty of places to visit in Manila, including the walled city of Intramuros, the Rizal Park, and the Manila Bay. The city is also home to a large number of churches, including the Manila Cathedral and the San Agustin Church. Manila is a great city to explore on foot, and there are plenty of restaurants and shops to enjoy.

Manila Luxury Hotels

Zermatt, Switzerland

Zermatt is an alpine village in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It is famous for its ski resort, mountaineering and hiking trails. The views of the Matterhorn from Zermatt are iconic. The village is car-free, making it a cyclists' and pedestrians' paradise. There are many places to visit in Zermatt, including the village's beautiful churches, impressive museums, and great restaurants.

Zermatt Luxury Hotels

Basel, Switzerland

Basel is a city located in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine. Basel has a population of about 176,000 and is the third most populous city in Switzerland. Basel has many interesting places to visit, including the Basel Munster, the Basel Rathaus (town hall), the Basel Zoo, and the Munsterhof, the old town square. Basel also has a number of art museums, including the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Fondation Beyeler, and the Schaulager. Basel is a great city to visit, and I highly recommend it!.

Basel Luxury Hotels

Copenhagen, Denmark

There are a number of places to visit in Copenhagen, Denmark. Some of the most popular tourist destinations include Tivoli Gardens, Nyhavn, and the Rosenborg Castle Gardens. Tivoli Gardens is a beautiful amusement park that has something for everyone. It is perfect for a day of fun with family or friends. Nyhavn is a charming canal district that is popular for its brightly colored houses and lively atmosphere. Visitors can enjoy a relaxing cruise down the canal or take a seat in one of the many cafes and restaurants. The Rosenborg Castle Gardens are home to a majestic castle as well as beautifully landscaped gardens. There is plenty to see and do in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Copenhagen Luxury Hotels

Steamboat Springs, CO, United States

Steamboat Springs is located in northwestern Colorado. The town is named for the steamboats that traveled up the Yampa River in the 1800s. Today, the town is a popular tourist destination, known for its skiing, snowboarding, hiking, and rafting.

Steamboat Springs Luxury Hotels

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Abu Dhabi is the capital of the United Arab Emirates and is home to many tourist attractions. Some popular places to visit in Abu Dhabi include the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, the Ferrari World Theme Park, and the Yas Island Waterpark. There are also a number of museums and shopping malls in Abu Dhabi, making it a great destination for those looking for a mix of culture and leisure.

Abu Dhabi Luxury Hotels

Abu Dhabi Luxury Resorts

Abu Dhabi Luxury Villas

Bogota, Colombia

There's a lot to see and do in Bogota. Some of the top places to visit include the historical La Candelaria district, the cobblestone streets of Plaza de Bolivar, the Monserrate mountain, the Bogota Botanical Garden, and the Gold Museum. La Candelaria is home to many brightly-colored colonial buildings, churches, and plazas. Plaza de Bolivar is the center of Bogota and is surrounded by important landmarks like the Presidential Palace and the National Capitol. The Monserrate mountain is a popular tourist destination due to its stunning views of Bogota. The Bogota Botanical Garden is the largest in Colombia and features a wide variety of plants and trees. The Gold Museum is home to the largest collection of Pre-Columbian gold artifacts in the world.

Bogota Luxury Hotels

Cebu, Philippines

Due to its location and its rich history, there are plenty of places to visit in Cebu. Some of the most popular tourist destinations include the Cebu Taoist Temple, the Fort San Pedro, the Yap-San Diego Ancestral House, and the Magellan's Cross.

Cebu Luxury Hotels

Cebu Luxury Resorts

Lagos, Portugal

Lagos is a small town in Portugal with a population of around 22,000. It's located in the Algarve region and is a popular tourist destination. Some of the places to visit in Lagos are the beaches, the old town, and the Marina. The beaches are beautiful and there are a lot of them to choose from. The old town is a maze of narrow streets and alleyways with lots of shops and restaurants. The Marina is a great place to walk around and watch the boats.

Lagos Luxury Hotels

Medellin, Colombia

Some places to visit in Medellin, Colombia are: the Botanical Garden, the Ethnographic Museum, the Jardin Botanico, the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Park of Lights, and the San Pedro Claver Church.

Medellin Luxury Hotels

Genoa, Italy

While there are many places to visit in Genoa, one of the must-sees is the city's cathedral. Dedicated to San Lorenzo, the church features an intricate Gothic facade and a Renaissance interior. If you're looking for a place to take in some stunning views, head to the Genoa Aquarium, which is located on the promenade stretching along the city's harbor.

Genoa Luxury Hotels

Hoi An, Vietnam

Hoi An is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Vietnam. Its a bridge town thats best explored on foot. The narrow streets are a mix of Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese architecture. There are tailors, artisans, and lantern shops galore. The food is also some of the best in Vietnam. Be sure to try the local specialties, like Cao Lau and White Rose dumplings.

Hoi An Luxury Hotels

Hoi An Luxury Resorts

Baku, Azerbaijan

Baku, Azerbaijan is a city with a lot of culture and history. There are a lot of places to visit, like the Palace of the Shirvanshahs and the Maiden Tower. There are also a lot of great restaurants, like the Flame Club, which has a great atmosphere and delicious food.

Baku Luxury Hotels

San Luis Obispo, CA, United States

San Luis Obispo is a city located in the central coast of California. It's known for its natural beauty, relaxed vibe, and abundance of things to do. Some of the top places to visit in San Luis Obispo include the Madonna Inn, Hearst Castle, and the Paso Robles wine country. The city is also home to a variety of beaches, parks, and other attractions. In addition, San Luis Obispo is a great place to live, with plenty of restaurants, shops, and other amenities.

San Luis Obispo Luxury Hotels

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Colombo is the largest city and commercial capital of Sri Lanka. The city is located on the west coast of the island and is the administrative, commercial, and industrial center of Sri Lanka. Colombo is also the center of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, with numerous Buddhist temples. There are a number of places to visit in Colombo, including the Galle Face Green, the Dutch fort, the Pettah Bazaar, and the Sri Lankan National Museum.

Colombo Luxury Hotels

Yogyakarta, Indonesia

The city of Yogyakarta in Indonesia is home to some of the most stunning temples and historical landmarks in the country. The city is also a great place to enjoy traditional Javanese culture and cuisine. Some of the must-see places in Yogyakarta include the Borobudur Temple, the Prambanan Temple, and the Sultan's Palace.

Yogyakarta Luxury Hotels

Cefalu, Italy

Looking for a beautiful and historic place to visit in Italy? Look no further than Cefalu. This town is teeming with history and stunning architecture, and its location on the coast makes it the perfect place to relax and take in the stunning scenery. Don't miss the Duomo di Cefalu, a 12th century Norman church that is definitely worth a visit, or the Palazzo dei Normanni, a former royal palace.

Cefalu Luxury Hotels

San Jose, CA, United States

San Jose, California, is home to a variety of tourist destinations. Some popular places to visit include the Winchester Mystery House, the Tech Museum of Innovation, and the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. There are also a number of lovely parks, such as Kelley Park and Plaza de Cesar Chavez, that are well worth a visit. San Jose is also home to a number of great restaurants, so be sure to check out the local cuisine. Whatever your interests, San Jose has something to offer visitors.

San Jose Luxury Hotels

Hong Kong, China

Hong Kong is one of the most popular destinations for tourists in China. There are many places to visit in Hong Kong, including the Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, Victoria Peak, and the Temple Street Night Market. Hong Kong is also a great place to shop, with many high-end malls and markets.

Hong Kong Luxury Hotels

Hong Kong Luxury Resorts

Orlando, FL, United States

Orlando is a city in the central region of Florida, in the United States. The city is the county seat of Orange County, and the center of the metropolitan area also known as Greater Orlando. Orlando is well known for its theme parks, including Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando Resort, and SeaWorld Orlando. Other tourist destinations in Orlando include the Holy Land Experience, the Orlando Science Center, and the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art. Orlando is also home to the University of Central Florida, one of the largest universities in the United States.

Orlando Luxury Hotels

Orlando Luxury Resorts

Orlando Luxury Villas

Philadelphia, PA, United States

If youre looking for a place thats rich in history and culture, Philadelphia is the place for you. The city is home to numerous iconic landmarks, including the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. Theres also a great variety of museums and other attractions to explore, such as the Philadelphia Zoo and the Please Touch Museum. And, of course, Philly is the birthplace of Americas favorite sandwich, the cheesesteak. So why not visit Americas most historic city and see for yourself what all the fuss is about?.

Philadelphia Luxury Hotels

Nice, France

France is known for its many beautiful places to visit, and Nice is no exception. With its stunning coastline and mild climate, Nice is a popular tourist destination. Some of the most popular places to visit in Nice include the Promenade des Anglais, the Castle Hill, and the Old Town. There is also a wide variety of shops and restaurants to enjoy in Nice. If you're looking for a beautiful and relaxing place to visit in France, Nice is definitely worth considering.

Nice Luxury Hotels

Nice Luxury Villas

Singapore, Singapore

Singapore is a popular tourist destination, brimming with cultural and natural attractions. From award-winning restaurants to serene gardens and pristine beaches, there is much to explore in this diverse city-state. Here are some of the top places to visit in Singapore: 1. Marina Bay: This iconic waterfront district is home to stunning architecture, world-class landmarks, and a vibrant nightlife. 2. Gardens by the Bay: These stunning gardens feature a mix of plants from around the world, as well as towering sculptures and a biodome. 3. Chinatown: This lively district is home to traditional Chinese shops and restaurants, as well as vibrant street markets. 4. Little India: This neighborhood is known for its vibrant culture and colorful temples. 5. Sentosa Island: This resort island is home to sandy beaches, lush rainforests, and a variety of entertainment options.

Singapore Luxury Hotels

Singapore Luxury Resorts

Nottingham, United Kingdom

Nottingham is a city in the East Midlands of England. It is one of the United Kingdom's major cities, with a population of over 321,000. The city is home to two universities, Queen's Medical Centre, and seven football grounds. Nottingham is known for its lace-making and bicycle manufacturing. The city has a rich history, dating back to the Bronze Age. There are plenty of places to visit in Nottingham, including the Nottingham Castle, the Sherwood Forest, and the National Ice Centre. The city also has a lively nightlife, with a variety of pubs and bars.

Nottingham Luxury Hotels

Cannes, France

Cannes is a city located in the south of France. Some of the places to visit in Cannes are the Palais des Festivals et des Congres, the Boulevard de la Croisette, and Le Suquet.

Cannes Luxury Hotels

Cannes Luxury Villas

Park City, UT, United States

Park City, Utah, offers visitors a wealth of places to visit and things to do. Main Street, with its charming shops and restaurants, is a must-see. The Park City Museum tells the town's fascinating history, and the Park City Utah Temple is a beautiful sight. For outdoor enthusiasts, there's plenty of skiing and snowboarding in the winter and hiking and mountain biking in the summer. And don't forget to visit the Olympic Park, where the 2002 Winter Olympics were held.

Park City Luxury Hotels

Park City Luxury Resorts

Port Angeles, WA, United States

If you're looking for a quaint, small town to visit in the US, Port Angeles is worth a stop. Located in the state of Washington, it's right on the Pacific coast with stunning views of the Olympic Mountains. There's plenty of things to do in the area, from hiking and fishing to whale watching and enjoying the local restaurants and breweries.

Port Angeles Luxury Hotels

Fort Lauderdale, FL, United States

If you're looking for a fun-filled Florida getaway, look no further than Fort Lauderdale! With its miles of pristine beaches, world-famous shopping and vibrant nightlife, there's something for everyone in this seaside city. Here are some of the top places to visit in Fort Lauderdale:  Las Olas Boulevard: This popular shopping and dining district is home to some of Fort Lauderdale's most upscale boutiques and restaurants.  The Beach: With its wide, sandy beaches and crystal-clear waters, Fort Lauderdale's beach is a major draw for visitors.  The Everglades: Just a short drive from Fort Lauderdale, the Everglades are home to an abundance of wildlife, including alligators, bald eagles and manatees.  The Broward Center for the Performing Arts: This world-class performing arts center is home to a variety of theater, dance and music performances. So what are you waiting for? Book your trip to Fort Lauderdale today!.

Fort Lauderdale Luxury Hotels

Fort Lauderdale Luxury Resorts

Myrtle Beach, SC, United States

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is a popular tourist destination. There are plenty of places to visit in the area, including amusement parks, beaches, and golf courses. Myrtle Beach also has a lively nightlife, with plenty of bars and restaurants.

Myrtle Beach Luxury Hotels

Myrtle Beach Luxury Resorts

Salzburg, Austria

Salzburg is one of the most visited places in Austria. It is a city rich in history and culture. There are many places to visit, such as the Hohensalzburg Fortress, the Mirabell Palace, and the Salzburg Cathedral. There are also many hiking trails and parks to enjoy.

Salzburg Luxury Hotels

Pattaya, Thailand

Pattaya is an amazing city with plenty of places to visit and things to do. One of the most popular tourist destinations in Thailand, Pattaya offers something for everyone. There are lovely beaches, interesting temples, great shopping, and exciting nightlife. With its moderate climate and affordable prices, it's no wonder Pattaya is a favorite destination for tourists from all over the world.

Pattaya Luxury Hotels

Pattaya Luxury Resorts

Pattaya Luxury Villas

Dallas, TX, United States

Dallas is a city located in the U.S. state of Texas. It is the ninth most populous city in the United States and the third most populous city in the state of Texas. Dallas is also the main city of the fourth most populous metropolitan area in the United States. The city's prominence arose from its historical importance as a center for the oil and cotton industries, and its position as a major transportation hub for the South. Dallas is home to the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League and the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association. The city's economy is primarily based on banking, commerce, telecommunications, technology, energy, healthcare and medical research, and transportation. The city is home to the world's largest airline hub and the third largest cargo airport in the United States.

Dallas Luxury Hotels

Kolkata, India

Kolkata, also known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. The city is located on the east bank of the Hooghly River. It is the second most populous city in India, after Mumbai, and the third most populous metropolitan area in India, after Mumbai and Delhi. The city is notable for its colonial architecture, art and culture, and for its overwhelming poverty. Kolkata is home to the Indian Museum, the Calcutta Stock Exchange, the National Library of India, and the Indian Statistical Institute.

Kolkata Luxury Hotels

San Antonio, TX, United States

San Antonio is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Texas. There are plenty of places to visit in this city, from the well-known River Walk to the exquisite Spanish missions. If you're looking for a fun place to spend the day, you can't go wrong with San Antonio.

San Antonio Luxury Hotels

Seattle, WA, United States

There are many wonderful places to visit in Seattle, Washington. Some of the most popular attractions include Pike Place Market, the Seattle Space Needle, and the Museum of Pop Culture. There are also many parks and gardens, such as Volunteer Park and Seattle Chinese Garden, as well as plenty of restaurants and shops. Located on the other side of the world, Western Australia is a great place to visit for those looking for something different. Some of the most popular attractions include Rottnest Island, the Margaret River region, and Monkey Mia. There are also plenty of beautiful parks and gardens, such as Kings Park and Botanic Garden, as well as restaurants and shops.

Seattle Luxury Hotels

Liverpool, United Kingdom

Liverpool is a city located in North West England and is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom. The city is known for its football teams Liverpool and Everton, The Beatles, and its maritime history. Liverpool is a popular tourist destination and is home to various tourist attractions including Mersey Ferry, Liverpool Cathedral, and Albert Dock.

Liverpool Luxury Hotels

Malmo, Sweden

Malmo is Sweden's third largest city with a population of over 310,000. It is located in the province of Scania on the country's southern tip. Malmo is a vibrant city with a strong arts and cultural scene. There are plenty of places to visit in Malmo, including the Malmo Castle, the Botanical Gardens, and the Turning Torso skyscraper. Malmo is also home to a large shopping district and a lively nightlife.

Malmo Luxury Hotels

Gothenburg, Sweden

Goteborg, Sweden's second largest city, is a major port on the country's west coast. It's a popular tourist destination, known for its lively nightlife, beautiful architecture and delicious seafood. Some of the city's highlights include the Liseberg amusement park, the Botanical Garden, and the charming old town district. Goteborg is also home to a large number of museums, including the Volvo Museum, the Maritime Museum and the Universeum science center.

Gothenburg Luxury Hotels

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Ljubljana is the capital city of Slovenia and is a city full of culture and history. There are many places to visit in Ljubljana, such as the castle, the old town, and the cathedral. The city is also home to many museums, art galleries, and parks. Ljubljana is a great city to explore on foot, and there are many restaurants and cafes to enjoy.

Ljubljana Luxury Hotels

Sydney, NSW, Australia

Australia is a vast country with plenty of stunning places to visit, but Sydney is undoubtedly one of the most popular tourist destinations on the continent. From the iconic Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge to the beautiful beaches and lush national parks, there's something for everyone in this lively city. There's also a thriving food and nightlife scene, so you'll never run out of things to do in Sydney.

Sydney Luxury Hotels

Sydney Luxury Villas

Melbourne, VIC, Australia

There's a lot to love about Melbourne  its lively arts and culture scene, its parks and gardens, its diverse range of restaurants and cafes, and its stunning architecture. Here are some of the best places to visit in Melbourne: - Federation Square: This iconic square is a great place to people-watch and take in the city's impressive architecture. It's also home to a number of museums and galleries, including the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and the National Gallery of Victoria. - Queen Victoria Market: This vibrant market is a must-visit for foodies and shoppers alike. It's the largest open-air market in the Southern Hemisphere, and offers a vast array of fresh produce, meat, seafood, and souvenirs. - Melbourne Cricket Ground: If you're a sports fan, be sure to check out the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which is the largest cricket stadium in the world. It's also home to the Australian Football League, and has hosted a number of major sporting events, including the Commonwealth Games and the Rugby Union World Cup. - Royal Botanic Gardens: These beautiful gardens are a great place to relax and take in some of Melbourne's natural beauty. They're home to a number of different gardens, including the Australian Garden, the Sculpture Garden, and the Japanese Garden.

Melbourne Luxury Hotels

Melbourne Luxury Villas

Vancouver, BC, Canada

The top places to visit in Vancouver are Stanley Park, Granville Island, Gastown, and Chinatown. These are all must-see attractions that offer an array of activities, scenery, and history. Stanley Park is a world-famous urban park that features greenery, beaches, gardens, and a stunning view of the North Shore Mountains. Granville Island is a vibrant neighbourhood with unique shops, restaurants, and art galleries. Gastown is the city's oldest neighbourhood and is home to charming cobblestone streets and funky boutiques. Chinatown is one of the largest and most vibrant Chinatowns in North America and offers delicious food, interesting history, and vibrant culture.

Vancouver Luxury Hotels

Toronto, ON, Canada

From the CN Tower and Hockey Hall of Fame to the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Distillery District, there are plenty of amazing places to visit in Toronto, Canada. With something for everyone, Toronto is a great city to explore. So what are you waiting for? Start planning your trip today!.

Toronto Luxury Hotels

Montreal, QC, Canada

Montreal is a vibrant city with something for everyone. There are plenty of places to visit, including the Notre Dame Basilica, the Olympic Stadium, and Mount Royal. The city is also home to a lively arts and culture scene, with theatres, art galleries, and music venues. Montreal is a great place to visit year-round, with festivals and events happening throughout the year.

Montreal Luxury Hotels

Seville, Spain

Seville is one of the most visited places in Spain for a plethora of reasons: its stunning architecture, tapas bars, flamenco and great weather. The Giralda Tower is a must-see when in Seville as is the Plaza de Espana. Andalusian culture is heavily present in the city and is best experienced by wandering the narrow streets and alleyways, popping into a lively tapas bar for a drink and some snacks or enjoying a flamenco show.

Seville Luxury Hotels

Seville Luxury Villas

Ocean City, MD, United States

Ocean City is a seaside resort town in Worcester County, Maryland, on the Atlantic coast. It is well known for its long promenade, its fishing, and its crab cuisine. There are plenty of places to visit in Ocean City, including the boardwalk, amusement rides, shopping, and restaurants. You can also visit the Assateague Island National Seashore, which is home to wild horses, or head to the nearby town of Berlin for more shopping and dining options.

Ocean City Luxury Hotels

Cambridge, MA, United States

If you're looking for a quintessential New England town to visit, Cambridge, Massachusetts is the place for you. With its elaborate architecture and Colonial history, Cambridge is a lively town with plenty of things to see and do - perfect for a weekend getaway. Some of the places you won't want to miss include the Harvard University campus, the charming and lively shops and restaurants in Harvard Square, and the leafy paths of the Cambridge Common.

Cambridge Luxury Hotels

Laguna Beach, CA, United States

Laguna Beach, California is a place known for its stunningly beautiful coastline, excellent restaurants, and art galleries. But there's more to Laguna Beach than meets the eye. Here are some of the best places to visit in Laguna Beach: Crystal Cove State Park: This state park is known for its coves, tidepools, and bluffs. It's a great place to go hiking, swimming, and snorkeling. Heisler Park: This park is a great place for a walk or a picnic. It's also home to some of the best views of the Pacific Coast. Downtown Laguna Beach: This charming downtown area is home to art galleries, boutique shops, and excellent restaurants. Aliso Beach: This beach is known for its excellent surfing and swimming conditions. It's also a great place to take a walk or enjoy a picnic.

Laguna Beach Luxury Hotels

Hot Springs, AR, United States

In downtown Hot Springs, Arkansas, you'll find historic buildings, antique shops, and art galleries. For nature lovers, there are also plenty of places to visit, including the Garland County Arboretum, Ouachita National Forest, and Hot Springs National Park. Spa enthusiasts can enjoy a relaxing day in one of the area's hot springs. And no trip to Hot Springs is complete without a visit to the world-famous Bathhouse Row.

Hot Springs Luxury Hotels

Sedona, AZ, United States

There are many places to visit in Sedona, Arizona. Among the most popular are the Chapel of the Holy Cross, Bell Rock, Cathedral Rock, and Boynton Canyon. The town's unique red-rock formations and ancient ruins offer plenty of photo opportunities. Visitors can also enjoy hiking, biking, and horseback riding. Sedona is a great place to relax and take in the natural beauty of the Southwest.

Sedona Luxury Hotels

Sedona Luxury Resorts

Boulder, CO, United States

Boulder, Colorado is a breathtaking city nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The city is home to stunning views, ample outdoor recreation, and a lively arts scene. Outdoor enthusiasts will love exploring the city's many trails, parks, and open spaces. History buffs will enjoy checking out the city's museums and historic sites. Culture seekers will appreciate the city's many theaters, art galleries, and restaurants. No matter what your interests, you'll find something to love in Boulder.

Boulder Luxury Hotels

Key West, FL, United States

Key West is a small island off the coast of Florida that is filled with history, charm, and fun places to visit. Its lush tropical setting and the laid-back vibe of the island make it a popular destination for those looking for a relaxing getaway. There are plenty of places to explore in Key West, from the charming historic district to the crystal-clear waters of the Florida Keys. Here are some of the top places to visit in Key West: -The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum: This iconic museum is dedicated to the life and work of Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway, who lived in Key West for over 20 years. -Duval Street: This lively street is the heart of Key West's nightlife and is home to many bars and restaurants. -The Southernmost Point: This landmark is located at the end of Duval Street and is the southernmost point in the continental United States. -The Key West Lighthouse: This picturesque lighthouse is a popular spot for tourists and offers stunning views of the island. -The African American Heritage House: This museum is dedicated to the history and culture of African Americans in Key West. -The Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory: This attraction is home to over 2,000 butterflies and a variety of other tropical plants and animals.

Key West Luxury Hotels

Key West Luxury Resorts

Key West Luxury Cottages

Key West Luxury Villas

Stockholm, Sweden

Stockholm, Sweden is a city with many places to visit. One place is the Vasa Museum, which is home to a ship that sunk in 1628 and was raised from the ocean floor 333 years later. The ship is preserved and on display in the museum. Another place to visit is the Royal Palace, the official residence of the Swedish monarch. The palace is open for tours, and visitors can see the royal apartments, the throne room, and the Hall of State.

Stockholm Luxury Hotels

Destin, FL, United States

Looking for a place to visit in Florida? Look no further than Destin! This city is home to beautiful beaches, wonderful restaurants, and plenty of places to shop. No matter what you're looking for, you can find it in Destin. Be sure to check out the Destin Harbor and the fishing pier for amazing views and plenty of things to do. If you're looking for a place to relax, head to the beach and enjoy the sun and sand. There's something for everyone in Destin, so be sure to visit this amazing city!.

Destin Luxury Hotels

Destin Luxury Resorts

Ashland, OR, United States

There are many places to visit in Ashland, Oregon. Some of the most popular places are the Shakespeare Festival, Lithia Park, and Mt. Ashland. The Shakespeare Festival is a great place to see some of the best plays in the world. Lithia Park is a beautiful park with a river running through it. Mt. Ashland is a great place to go skiing in the winter.

Ashland Luxury Hotels

Seaside, OR, United States

One of the most beautiful places on the Oregon Coast is Seaside. With its wide, sandy beach and majestic promenade, Seaside is a popular tourist destination. There are plenty of places to eat and shop, and the Seaside Aquarium is a must-see. Visitors can also enjoy fishing, whale watching, or just taking a leisurely stroll along the beach.

Seaside Luxury Hotels

Newport, RI, United States

Newport is a picturesque town located in southern Rhode Island that is home to some of the most visited tourist destinations in the United States. The city is known for its miles of beaches and historic mansions that line the coast. Some popular places to visit in Newport include the Cliff Walk, the Breakers Mansion, the Museum of Yachting, and the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

Newport Luxury Hotels

Siena, Italy

Siena, Italy is a popular tourist destination, thanks to its well-preserved medieval city center. The city is famous for its art, food, and wine. Siena is located in the heart of Tuscany, making it the perfect base for exploring this beautiful region of Italy. Don't miss the Duomo (cathedral), the Piazza del Campo, and the Torre del Mangia.

Siena Luxury Hotels

Reno, NV, United States

Home to the University of Nevada, Reno and a wide variety of cultural and natural attractions, Reno is a great place to visit. Some of the top places to see in Reno include the Nevada Museum of Art, the Fleischmann Planetarium and Science Center, and the Reno Events Center. Outdoor enthusiasts will enjoy hiking and skiing at Lake Tahoe and biking and kayaking on the Truckee River. In addition, Reno is home to a diverse array of restaurants and nightlife venues.

Reno Luxury Hotels

Atlantic City, NJ, United States

Atlantic City is a popular East Coast tourist destination, known for its boardwalks, beaches and casinos. There are plenty of places to visit in Atlantic City, from the Boardwalk Hall and the Absecon Lighthouse to the Atlantic City Aquarium and Lucy the Elephant. For a more thrilling experience, head to one of the city's casinos, where you can try your hand at blackjack, slots, roulette and more. Atlantic City also offers a wide variety of restaurants, from seafood spots to pizza places, so you're sure to find something to your taste. And if you're looking for some nightlife action, the city has you covered there too. Atlantic City is definitely a place worth visiting!.

Atlantic City Luxury Hotels

Atlantic City Luxury Resorts

Lake George, NY, United States

Looking for a place to visit in upstate New York? Look no further than the stunning Lake George. This picturesque locale is located in the heart of the Adirondacks and is known for its pristine beauty and terrific recreational opportunities. Visitors can enjoy hiking, biking, boating, fishing, and skiing, among other activities. Don't miss the chance to take in the spectacular views from the summit of Prospect Mountain or from the water's edge.

Lake George Luxury Hotels

Buffalo, NY, United States

If you're looking for a city that has it all, Buffalo is the place to be. From its vibrant downtown district to its abundance of parks and nature preserves, there's something for everyone in Buffalo. Here are some of the top places to visit in Buffalo: 1. The Buffalo Zoo - One of the top zoos in the country, the Buffalo Zoo is a must-visit for animal lovers of all ages. 2. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery - Buffalo's answer to the Louvre, the Albright-Knox is home to some of the world's most famous paintings and sculptures. 3. The Buffalo-Niagara Heritage Village - This living history museum offers a glimpse into what life was like in Buffalo in the 1800s. 4. The Buffalo River - Take a walk or bike ride along the Buffalo River, one of the city's most picturesque areas. 5. Delaware Park - This large park is home to a variety of attractions, including a zoo, a golf course, and a nature preserve.

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Rochester, MN, United States

Rochester, Minnesota is a city with plenty of places to visit. There's the Mayo Clinic, the Apache Mall, and several other shopping areas, as well as a variety of restaurants. There are also a few parks and golf courses. For those who love the outdoors, Rochester is also close to several state parks and the Mississippi River.

Rochester Luxury Hotels

Duluth, MN, United States

If you're looking for an amazing place to visit, Duluth, Minnesota should definitely be at the top of your list. This city is home to some of the most beautiful scenery in the United States, and there are plenty of things to do here that will keep you entertained for days on end. Some of the most popular places to visit in Duluth include the Aerial Lift Bridge, the Glensheen Mansion, and Chester Creek Park. Additionally, there are a number of excellent restaurants and shopping areas in the city, so be sure to explore everything that Duluth has to offer.

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Maputo, Mozambique

Maputo is the capital of Mozambique and a city full of culture and history. There are many places to visit in Maputo, such as the Jose Eduardo dos Santos Museum, the Maputo Cathedral, and the Rua da Independencia. Maputo is also home to the Maputo Bay, which offers beautiful beaches and great seafood.

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Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona, located on the northeast coast of Spain, is a renowned tourist destination and one of the most popular cities in the world. There are plenty of places to visit in Barcelona, such as the Gothic Quarter, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Parc Guell, La Sagrada Familia, and more. The city is also home to a lively nightlife and some of the best restaurants in the country.

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Barcelona Luxury Villas

Split, Croatia

Split is a city on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea. It is the second-largest city in Croatia and the largest city in Dalmatia. It has a population of over 200,000 inhabitants. The metropolitan area, which includes the City of Split and the surrounding towns, has a population of over 330,000. Split is a popular tourist destination and is the home of the Diocletian's Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Other popular tourist destinations include the Riva, the Peristyle, the Cathedral of Saint Domnius, and Sustipan.

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Split Luxury Villas

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Dubrovnik is a city on the Adriatic Sea in Croatia. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations in the Mediterranean Sea, a seaport and the administrative center of Dubrovnik-Neretva County. Dubrovnik is nicknamed "The Pearl of the Adriatic".

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Dubrovnik Luxury Villas

Byron Bay, NSW, Australia

Byron Bay is a magical place. It's no wonder that it's one of the most popular destinations in Australia. The town is set in a beautiful location, surrounded by rolling green hills and the bright blue ocean. There's plenty to do in Byron Bay, whether you're looking for a relaxing beach holiday or an adventure-filled trip. Some of the top places to visit in Byron Bay include the iconic lighthouse, the stunning beaches, and the lush rainforest. There's also a great nightlife and plenty of restaurants and cafes to enjoy. If you're looking for an amazing Australian getaway, be sure to add Byron Bay to your list!.

Byron Bay Luxury Hotels

Wellington, New Zealand

If you're looking for a little slice of heaven on earth, look no further than Wellington, New Zealand. With its gorgeous landscape and plethora of activities, there's something for everyone here. Whether you're a nature lover or a city slicker, Wellington has something special to offer. Top Wellington attractions include the Zealandia eco-sanctuary, the cable car up to the Botanic Gardens, and the sprawling Te Papa museum. For those who love getting out into the great outdoors, there are plenty of hiking and biking trails, as well as lovely seaside towns and villages to explore. And of course, no trip to Wellington would be complete without trying some of the delicious local cuisine  be sure to sample a traditional Maori hangi feast! So what are you waiting for? Book your flight to Wellington today and start planning your perfect holiday!.

Wellington Luxury Hotels

Saint Louis, MO, United States

If you're looking for a fun place to visit with a rich history and plenty of things to see and do, look no further than Saint Louis, Missouri. This vibrant city is home to a variety of interesting attractions, including the Gateway Arch, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Anheuser-Busch Brewery. There's also no shortage of restaurants and shopping options in Saint Louis. So, whether you're looking for a place to explore new cultures and cuisines or you're just looking for a place to have some fun, Saint Louis is a great option.

Saint Louis Luxury Hotels

Bloomington, IN, United States

The city of Bloomington, Indiana is home to a variety of attractions and places to visit. The Indiana University campus is a popular destination, as is the city's historic downtown district. Monroe County Courthouse
More than 200 bald eagle nests have been documented in Georgia for the second straight year, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.

Aerial surveys started in January and finished this month counted 201 occupied nesting territories, 149 successful nests and 240 young fledged. Those totals are slightly lower than last years 210 territories, 170 successful nests and 270 fledglings, survey leader Bob Sargent said.

Yet 2015 marked the first time since surveys began that the statewide nest count topped 200, and Mr. Sargent, a DNR Nongame Conservation Section program manager, suggested that the difference between 201 and 210 nesting territories is negligible. We have data since 1978, and there were several years where the upward trend briefly leveled out or dropped slightly.

Despite this years dip, the overall trend still points upward for the national bird in Georgia.

Mirroring a comeback across the species range, bald eagles have rebounded in Georgia, going from no known nests in 1970 to nests this year in at least 63 counties, from Camden to Walker. Factors feeding the recovery included a U.S. ban on DDT use in 1972, habitat improvements following enactment of the federal Clean Water and Clean Air acts, protection through the Endangered Species Act, increased public awareness, restoration of local populations through release programs, and forest regrowth.

Parts of the state have nests where you wouldnt expect them, Mr. Sargent said, referring to sites far from the coast, reservoirs or rivers where the fish-eating raptors tend to concentrate.

But there are areas of concern, he said. Along the Savannah River reservoirs, for example, nest totals are lower than expected. A likely culprit is avian vacuolar myelinopathy, or AVM, a neurological disease deadly to coots and bald eagles. Research led by the University of Georgia is trying to assess the impact at Clarks Hill Lake, or J. Strom Thurmond Reservoir, an AVM hotspot. As recently as 1998 there were 8 nesting territories recorded at this reservoir.

Mr. Sargent also noted the unexpected downside of an increased eagle population, such as more birds being hit by cars as the eagles, mostly sub-adults, eat roadkill, and incidents of eagles being shot. Although de-listed from the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 2007, bald eagles are protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and state law.

The public is encouraged to let DNR know about any eagle nests they find by reporting them online (www.georgiawildlife.com/ conservation/eaglenest ), by phone (478-994-1438) or by email (bob.sargent@dnr.ga.gov). These reports often lead to undocumented nests. DNR works with landowners to help protect those on private property. One tip: Ospreys and their nests are sometimes confused with eagles, so if not sure, check out the differences online.

Mr. Sargent also explained that eagle nesting pairs and their young do not represent an actual count of all bald eagles in Georgia. Considering that it takes eagles at least five years to reach adulthood, and even then many wont nest for one to three years, There are likely at least twice that many more eagles in the state, especially in the late-fall and early winter months when northern birds migrate south, he said.

The surveys are part of the DNR Nongame Conservation Sections mission to conserve nongame wildlife  native animals not legally hunted or fished for  and native plants and natural habitats.

The resurgence of bald eagles is supported in part by Georgians who buy or renew a wildlife license plate  the bald eagle and ruby-throated hummingbird designs. These plates cost only $25 more than a standard state license plate and $19 of each purchase and $20 of each annual renewal goes to conserve the hundreds of Georgia plant and animal species listed as species of conservation concern. Learn more at www.georgiawildlife.com/ conservation/support . See how that support is put to work www.georgiawildlife.com/ conservation/AnnualReport .




BASF has signed an agreement to sell its global Polyolefin Catalysts business to W.R. Grace & Co. Currently, the Polyolefin Catalysts business is part of BASFs Catalysts division. BASF and Grace intend to complete the transaction in the third quarter of 2016.

The targeted transaction includes technologies, patents, trademarks and the transfer of BASFs production plants in Pasadena, Texas, and Tarragona, Spain. It is intended that approximately 170 employees globally will also transfer to Grace.

The planned divestiture remains subject to the required consultation with employee representatives and certain regulatory approvals.

This sale was the best course of action for both the Catalysts division and for the long-term interests of the Polyolefin Catalysts business and its employees, said Kenneth Lane, President, Catalysts division, BASF.

With this divestiture, we will continue to sharpen our focus on key growth areas, including our Chemical Catalysts and Refinery Catalysts businesses, said Lane.
Neutron scattering and computational modeling have revealed unique and unexpected behavior of water molecules under extreme confinement that is unmatched by any known gas, liquid or solid states.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory describe a new tunneling state of water molecules confined in hexagonal ultra-small channels - 5 angstrom across - of the mineral beryl. An angstrom is 1/10-billionth of a meter, and individual atoms are typically about 1 angstrom in diameter.

The discovery, made possible with experiments at ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom, demonstrates features of water under ultra confinement in rocks, soil and cell walls, which scientists predict will be of interest across many disciplines.

"At low temperatures, this tunneling water exhibits quantum motion through the separating potential walls, which is forbidden in the classical world," said lead author Alexander Kolesnikov of ORNL's Chemical and Engineering Materials Division. "This means that the oxygen and hydrogen atoms of the water molecule are 'delocalized' and therefore simultaneously present in all six symmetrically equivalent positions in the channel at the same time. It's one of those phenomena that only occur in quantum mechanics and has no parallel in our everyday experience."

The existence of the tunneling state of water shown in ORNL's study should help scientists better describe the thermodynamic properties and behavior of water in highly confined environments such as water diffusion and transport in the channels of cell membranes, in carbon nanotubes and along grain boundaries and at mineral interfaces in a host of geological environments.

ORNL co-author Lawrence Anovitz noted that the discovery is apt to spark discussions among materials, biological, geological and computational scientists as they attempt to explain the mechanism behind this phenomenon and understand how it applies to their materials.

"This discovery represents a new fundamental understanding of the behavior of water and the way water utilizes energy," Anovitz said. "It's also interesting to think that those water molecules in your aquamarine or emerald ring - blue and green varieties of beryl - are undergoing the same quantum tunneling we've seen in our experiments."

While previous studies have observed tunneling of atomic hydrogen in other systems, the ORNL discovery that water exhibits such tunneling behavior is unprecedented. The neutron scattering and computational chemistry experiments showed that, in the tunneling state, the water molecules are delocalized around a ring so the water molecule assumes an unusual double top-like shape.

"The average kinetic energy of the water protons directly obtained from the neutron experiment is a measure of their motion at almost absolute zero temperature and is about 30 percent less than it is in bulk liquid or solid water," Kolesnikov said. "This is in complete disagreement with accepted models based on the energies of its vibrational modes."

First principle simulations made by Narayani Choudhury of Lake Washington Institute of Technology and University of Washington-Bothell showed that the tunneling behavior is coupled to the vibrational dynamics of the beryl structure.
Parade steps off Audio Article For the first time since 2019, marching bands, classic cars, dance troupes, scouts and politicians made their way along Midlothian Turnpike for the annual Midlothian Day Parade on Saturday, Oct....
Menswear brand Bonobos wanted a high-profile spot for its second Chicago location, which opened at 900 North Michigan Shops last week.

Although the company's Lincoln Park store brings in the most sales of any location outside New York City, CEO Andy Dunn estimates about 70 percent of the company's target market in Chicago isn't yet familiar with the brand.

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"We hope it will help us get to know a lot of new people," Dunn said.

The Chicago store will be the retailer's 21st "guideshop," where customers can try on samples of products that can be shipped to their homes. The guideshops don't have an inventory of items like a traditional retail store. Bonobos plans to have 30 locations by the end of the year.

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When the company launched in 2007, it was aggressively online-only.

"I really thought stores were going away at that time," Dunn said.

He changed his mind after the company, working on developing a line of better-fitting dress shirts, had customers come in to try on samples. They wanted to try on other products, too, and started "buying like crazy," said Dunn.

By letting customers try out products but not stocking apparel for sale, Bonobos can cut costs with smaller stores, offer a wider selection of styles and fits, and focus on customer service rather than inventory management, Dunn said.

He declined to comment on the company's growth or revenues but said the guideshops are profitable, drawing customers who tend to spend a little more and buy more tailored items, like suits, dress shirts and wool pants, than online-only shoppers, who gravitate to casual wear.

The vast majority of customers don't seem to mind not having instant access to their purchases, he said. The company estimates its free shipping will get packages to the Chicago area in two days, and the rest of Illinois in three. In the rare cases where customers really do need it now, guideshop employees will try to help out, he said.

But other retailers are competing on speed, with some malls and stores like Macy's and American Apparel  not to mention Amazon  offering same-day or one-hour delivery in certain markets.

Bonobos orders are shipped from the company's Massachusetts warehouse.

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Dunn said he can't see Bonobos shifting from guideshops to a more traditional retail model but has toyed with the idea of having a small number of larger stores that could stock apparel and serve as fulfillment centers to offer similarly quick delivery.

"If you had 100 guideshops and 10 with stock that have the ability to be fulfillment centers to fill that same-day need? That kind of fascinates me," he said.

lzumbach@tribpub.com

Twitter @laurenzumbach
Village officials were surprised when they received a bill for the Grand Avenue underpass last year.

The project was completed eight years ago, and as far as the village knew, had been paid for in full. But the Illinois Department of Transportation had recently completed an audit and sent Franklin Park officials a $2.9 million bill for the project in December 2015. After working with state officials, the village will owe about $800,000, Franklin Park Mayor Barrett Pedersen said.

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Fifty years ago, the Franklin Park Women's Club began lobbying to have an underpass installed on Grand Avenue, village engineer Dave Talbott said. As the years went by, different entities took on the task of getting the project off the ground.

By 1999, state legislators approved an act to create the Grand Avenue Relocation Authority, a special district, so the major railroad rights of way that cut through Grand Avenue in Franklin Park would be relocated in order "to further and enhance growth throughout the region." Members of the group, made up of appointed officials from Franklin Park and neighboring communities, had the power to acquire, by gift, purchase, legacy, or by the exercise of eminent domain powers, the properties within the special district's boundaries in the service of the underpass on Grand Avenue.

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By 2007, the project was completed at a cost of about $44 million. Funding had come from a variety of sources, including $14,000 from the ICC grade crossing protection fund, $11.5 million from a Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grant and $4 million from the 2005 Federal Transportation Appropriation, according to records from the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program.

Once the project was completed, the village had to figure out how to dissolve the Grand Avenue Relocation Authority and turn over its remaining assets, mostly construction materials, to Franklin Park's government.

"Creating a special unit of government is pretty straightforward," said John Schneider, the village's director of community development. "Dissolving them is the hard part."

GARA was officially dissolved on July 7, 2015, and its remaining assets were transferred to the village. Six months later, a bill from IDOT arrived, saying that the village had exceeded its $15 million limit for the Grand Avenue underpass project. In the mix of grants that were signed to complete it, village officials had been unaware that they had exceeded that limit and now owed IDOT $2.9 million, Talbott said.

Complicating matters was the fact that IDOT and other government entities involved in the project had already closed out their paperwork for the project in 2012, so they didn't have the authorization to give out additional funds to cover the amount owed.

Alex V. Hernandez is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press. Freelance reporter Maryann Pisano contributed to this report.
The box of historic Menuhin recordings also is packed with treasures. Along with the complete "official" recordings the violinist and Furtwaengler made together (including the most searing of the violinist's three recordings of the Bartok Second Concerto), you get the landmark 1932 recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto that the teenage Menuhin made under the baton of the septuagenarian composer; his pioneering 1930s recording of the Bach solo Sonatas and Partitas; all the recordings he made with his beloved mentor, composer and conductor George Enescu; and fragments of an emotional concert given in newly liberated Paris in 1944.
Ted Cruz and John Kasich at the March 10 debate in Florida. The two this week struck a deal to try to block Donald Trump from the Republican nomination. (Cristobal Herrera / European Pressphoto Agency)

Ted Cruz and John Kasich may well have been forced by money problems and desperation into an alliance divvying upcoming states in a move to block Donald Trump from the Republican presidential nomination.

The problem? That same sort of insider deal-cutting is what spawned revulsion with the political class that has in turn propelled Trump's campaign. The deal now risks inspiring even more rage within the voters he has energized in this electoral cycle.

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Perhaps the plan, in which Sen. Cruz of Texas will campaign in Indiana and Ohio Gov. Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico, will drive one of them to the party's nomination after a wild convention in Cleveland this summer. But from the outset, some odds are stacked against it.

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Trump already has hundreds more delegates than second-place Cruz, and Kasich has only a few outside of his home state. The campaign is only six weeks from its end, with only 10 states waiting to vote after Tuesday's primaries, when odds are Trump will record huge victories.

It's not certain that abandoned voters in the upcoming states would turn instead to the other non-Trump candidate. And it was not even clear the two candidates would ask their voters to do that. Kasich, for one, said he hoped his voters would continue to side with him in Indiana, which seemed to negate much of the point.

Trump wasted no time Monday in reminding Republicans yet to vote  and the delegates that he hopes to win over before the convention  that insider tactics are part of the political environment they so hate.

Voters casting ballots in Republican races this year have had a strong affinity for sending an outsider to the White House, exit polls have shown, and that has been a huge benefit to Trump in places as different as New York, Florida and the Southern states.

In last week's New York primary, 64% of Republican voters said they wanted an outsider as president rather than an experienced politician. Among the outsider voters, Trump won 85%.

In a state Trump didn't win  Cruz's home state of Texas  45% wanted an outsider, higher than the percentage favoring an experienced politician. Trump won 61% of those voters.

The same dynamic was true in Alabama and Georgia in the South, Massachusetts and Vermont to the north, and traditional general-election swing states like Nevada and Virginia. In Florida, always a general-election target, 52% of Republicans wanted an outsider, and Trump won 74%.

The stakes involved in doing anything that further upsets Trump's voters were made clear in a Suffolk University/USA Today national poll released Monday. In it, Trump led among Republicans with 45%, to 29% for Cruz and 17% for Kasich.

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About 7 in 10 Trump voters said the candidate who has the most delegates at the end of the primaries should get the nomination  and that is the position that Trump is likely to be in regardless of the Cruz-Kasich deal.

By a 2-1 margin, Trump's voters said they would support a third-party effort by the New York businessman if he did not get the nomination. Trump may decide against that dramatic gesture, of course, but the results suggested the depths of anger that the GOP would face if the nomination process didn't go his way.

Deals like the one struck by Cruz and Kasich, though long desired by establishment Republicans this year as Trump tallied victories, are not typical of presidential campaigns.

Both Cruz and Kasich had reached the point of urgency: Both want a convention fight in which pledged delegates will eventually be relieved of their promise to support a specific candidate  and, both think, switch to them.

But getting there would mean fighting not only with Trump but also with each other. Some of that will ease with the deal.

Both of them also lack the money to compete in every remaining contest as the campaign season drags on longer than anticipated. At the end of March, Kasich's campaign had just over $1 million in the bank, while Cruz's had less than $9 million. In California, which votes June 7, a week of television ads can cost $3 million to $4 million.

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The two had to make their alliance public partly to alert their allies in super PACs and independent organizations. But that let voters know too, creating some early discomfort.

Tom John, an Indiana party official named to Kasich's Indiana steering committee only Wednesday, looked distinctly uneasy Monday when asked during a CNN interview whether he now planned to vote for Cruz.

He ended up quoting an old proverb: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. But he also said he wouldn't decide for sure whether to switch to Cruz until he got into the voting booth next week.

The Cruz-Kasich deal seems likely to put the final flourish to an odd recalibration in the public images of the Republican candidates.

Cruz came into the race the enemy of official Washington, having intensely angered Republicans with his efforts to shut down the government and his willingness to impugn party major-domos like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whom he labeled a liar.

But in a year in which Trump, the businessman-turned-entertainer, has thwarted political normalcy to the extreme and redefined authenticity with his often angry denunciations, Cruz has looked more a part of the establishment than he has ever actually been.

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Cruz's and Kasich's insider standing was reinforced Monday. Just days removed from assailing each other, Cruz and Kasich spoke in stilted language about the deal's communal effect on their "resources"  a word they both used  even as their aides and associates spoke from agreed-to talking points about the wisdom of it all.

Cruz and Kasich also played down the agreement; "What's the big deal?" a testy Kasich said during a visit to a Philadelphia diner.

Trump, in contrast, was up to his usual tricks of hyperbole, the ones that have worked so well for him among so many Republican voters this year. He went in for the kill, saying in a Rhode Island speech that the two were colluding  a legally loaded term  and calling their attempt to take him down "pathetic."

If his effort to cast it as one of political expediency works, the deal could prove to be a costly one for two candidates with few additional cards to play.

cathleen.decker@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter: @cathleendecker. For more on politics, go to latimes.com/decker.

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Dusty DeVinney sets up a polling station in Bellefonte, Pa. Exit polls in the diverse state could indicate what will happen in the general election across the country. (Nabil K. Mark / Centre Daily Times)

Reporting from KENNETT SQUARE, Pa.  Some are calling Tuesday's batch of elections the "Acela primary," after the high-speed train route that runs through all five states holding contests: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island. There's good reason the name hasn't caught on, however; these states vote so late in the primary season that they seldom attract much attention.

Not so this year, especially on the Republican side, which remains unsettled. Any of the states could play a crucial role in deciding whether front-runner Donald Trump gets his party's nomination. Here are a few things to look out for:

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The Cruz-Kasich merger debuts.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich pulled a Sunday night surprise, announcing that they were teaming up to prevent Trump from winning the nomination.

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Kasich has agreed to stop campaigning in Indiana's May 3 contest to give Cruz a chance to beat Trump there. Cruz has ceded Oregon and New Mexico, which vote later, to aid Kasich.

The pact does not include the states voting Tuesday. But it is a tacit admission that neither Cruz nor Kasich has much of a chance to notch any wins among them. Polls show Trump with a huge advantage in these states, and another thumping could further diminish the chance that the pact succeeds in preventing Trump from securing the nomination before the Republican National Convention this summer.

Bernie Sanders' dwindling rationale.

For quite some time, the senator from Vermont has lacked a mathematical case that he can win enough pledged delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. What he has had is a rhetorical rationale, fueled by a string of victories in Wisconsin, Washington and elsewhere in recent weeks.

Then came New York. Hillary Clinton won there decisively last week, and Democrats intensified pressure on Sanders to ease his attacks on her, while stopping short of asking him to leave the race. Polls show Clinton ahead in Tuesday's two largest states, Pennsylvania and Maryland. The three smaller states have not been polled as much, and results are tighter in the few surveys that have been taken. But even if Sanders wins one or two, he will endure more insistence from party leaders that he tamp down the fight against Clinton and perhaps even withdraw.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

Pennsylvania, the laboratory.

The biggest prize of the night will be a great place to examine exit polls for general-election hints.

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The large swing state has almost every type of voter: diverse urban populations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh where Democrats tend to rack up huge tallies; white working-class voters in the old manufacturing centers of Bethlehem, Erie and York being targeted by Trump and Sanders; conservative Christians in Lancaster and other rural communities who could give Cruz an opening; moderate suburban communities around Philadelphia that often decide statewide elections.

The state is also home to the much-discussed Reagan Democrats, Rust Belt whites who began voting for Republicans in 1980. Trump is already being partly credited for a 145,000 increase in new Republican registrations in the state since fall, including 61,500 Democrats who switched parties.

Despite the increase in GOP interest, Democrats continue to hold a registration advantage of nearly 1 million votes.

It's the delegates, stupid. (OK, even smart people have trouble figuring it out.)

Pennsylvania's Republican delegate process is among the most confusing in the country.

Of the 71 delegates at stake Tuesday, just 17 will be required to vote for the winner of the statewide Republican presidential primary on the first ballot of the national convention in Cleveland this summer.

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The rest of the delegates, elected by district, are free to support whomever they want. It could take hours, if not days, after the results are announced to figure out which candidate those delegates plan to support in Cleveland. And their loyalties may change over time as they face competing pressures from voters, candidates and party insiders.

In other words, Tuesday's vote does not really settle who wins the primary. That could give the state's delegates unusual power in a contested convention.

The general election begins?

For weeks, political analysts have insisted that this or that primary could finally signal the beginning of the general election.

But it appears to be happening this time. After Trump's and Clinton's big New York victories last week, both front-runners began shifting into general-election mode, spending more time attacking each other than their respective primary opponents.

Neither candidate is likely to emerge from Tuesday's primaries without a challenger. Trump still faces the threat that he will not secure enough delegates to win the nomination without a convention fight. Sanders has enough money and enthusiasm among his supporters to keep pushing his populist message.

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Still, strong showings from Trump and Clinton on Tuesday could allow both candidates to spend even more time, money and rhetoric on the general election.

noah.bierman@latimes.com

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Kamala Harris in driver's seat at California's first U.S. Senate debate

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Will Trump Democrats play a role in the 2016 presidential race?
"A huge cultural shift is needed," she told me Monday. "Part of it has to be around workplaces, and the recognition that if you want productive, healthy employees, you can't expect them to be always on. But we all have our own decisions to make too, because we have more discretionary time than we acknowledge."
Chicago State University ends its spring term this week with an eleventh-hour infusion of cash but no clear road map for its financial future.

Like many state universities and community colleges, the Far South Side school has sputtered along this year with no state funding. Chicago State declared a financial crisis in February and warned hundreds of employees they were at risk of being laid off. Officials shortened this semester by two weeks to enable students to finish classes  and degrees  without interruption.

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Then, on Friday, Illinois lawmakers who have been unable to agree on a state budget for 10 months set aside their differences long enough to release emergency funding for higher education. Chicago State's share, $20.1 million, should arrive in its account any day, according to state officials.

But university officials warn that the sudden cash infusion does not eliminate problems caused by going so long without state money. The appropriation is less than two-thirds of what the school expected for the year  essentially kicking the emergency down the road.

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"Even though 60 percent of something is better than nothing, we also know there is no budget in place for 2016-17," Chicago State senior Darren Martin said. "So it seems like are we preparing ourselves for another battle. We don't know what the future will hold and what will happen next year."

Lawmakers agreed Friday to spend $600 million to keep colleges operating through the summer. That includes $356 million for universities, $74 million for community colleges and $170 million for Monetary Award Program scholarships for low-income students. Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the bill Monday.

Illinois Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger's office began processing payments Monday. Universities send vouchers to the comptroller's office, which cuts the checks, spokesman Rich Carter said.

Any claims sent to Munger's office Monday will appear in university accounts by Wednesday, Carter said. Schools with the most immediate need are at the front of the line, including Chicago State, Eastern Illinois University, Western Illinois University, Northern Illinois University, Governors State University and Northeastern Illinois University.

The comptroller released $17.1 million to Chicago State on Tuesday, Carter said. The remaining $3 million will be sent when the comptroller receives those vouchers from the university.

"We're turning those around immediately because we know they've been waiting a long time for that money," Carter said.

Not all the money earmarked in the bill is available now, however. The $600 million comes out of the state's Education Assistance Fund, which is funded by state income tax. The fund has only $354 million now, according to Munger, but the comptroller's office will make more payments as more money becomes available.

Chicago State officials said if funding arrives soon, the university will be able to continue operations and meet payroll through the end of the summer.

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That would be a massive shift from just a few days ago, when the finances were so dire that Chicago State would not have been able to cut paychecks by May.

In an email to university employees in mid-April, Chicago State President Thomas Calhoun Jr. instructed administrators and civil employees not to return to work after April 30 unless specifically told otherwise. He told faculty members to work until May 15, the day their annual contracts end.

For the moment, those instructions stand, though they could change once emergency dollars arrive.

University officials said the school still will have to cut staff and costs.But Calhoun insisted that Chicago State will remain open.

"In spite of our current challenges, we will rededicate Chicago State University to our primary responsibility, which is to ensure that we continue providing a great education to our students," Calhoun wrote in the email to staff. "Going forward, the university will give close examination to all aspects of our institution including academics, finances, personnel and operations."

Calhoun said school officials "will continue to seek alternative" funding sources. "We intend to remain a vibrant part of our city, state and nation for generations to come," he wrote.

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Robert Bionaz, president of Chicago State's faculty union, said "everyone is sort of waiting for the ax to fall." As of Tuesday, Bionaz said faculty had received no further information about who will be laid off or when.

"It is obvious that they are going to (bring back) a number of people" after potential layoffs, Bionaz said. "The problem is that nobody seems to know or be willing to say how many people are not going to be recalled."

He said the university depleted its cash reserves just to get through this year. So if no other money is forthcoming, the school will not have much of a safety net once the emergency money is gone.

"If we don't get additional funding, we're completely dependent on tuition revenue, which I expect to be reduced because enrollment will be reduced," Bionaz said. "I think we're going to be back in this position pretty quickly, at least by the end of August."

Meanwhile, students and community members say it remains important to advocate for Chicago State. Local organizers who have protested police violence in recent months also have popularized the Twitter hashtag #SaveCSU and rallied at City Hall last week to voice a broader message about discrimination against, and disenfranchisement of, black communities.

"The city of Chicago and the state of Illinois are proving that they do not value black lives," said Joan Fadayiro, an organizer with Black Youth Project 100. "Police officers are enabled to kill black women with impunity while black community assets such as Chicago State University are divested from."

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Community members on the South Side formed the Black Committee to Save Chicago State University and went ahead with a Tuesday rally planned before the funding bill was signed.

More than 50 people showed up to Haven of Rest Missionary Baptist Church for the rally.

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"We are here tonight because we're demanding justice, fairness and respect," the Rev. Paul Jakes Jr. said. "We demand full funding for Chicago State University and all other educational institutions."

Despite Friday's unexpected handshake across the aisle, deep partisan rifts remain over the state budget. Some lawmakers have hinted this could be the only money universities can expect from the state for the 2015-16 school year.

Michael Weigand, a graduate student, said some students are holding out hope that a long-term funding plan must be forthcoming, even as they grapple with the reality of the school creeping perilously close to a disaster.

"There's really nothing we can do. It's the definition of being in limbo," Weigand said. "I think everyone's just trying to keep faith in the state politicians. Surely it cannot be so dysfunctional that an accredited state university is going to close simply because politicians ... can't cooperate to keep a state functioning."

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Chicago Tribune's Grace Wong contributed.

cdrhodes@tribpub.com

jscohen@tribpub.com
Rev. Leon Finney, right, speaks April 26, 2016, at McCormick Place Lakeside Center in Chicago, calling for that part of the building to be demolished and the proposed Lucas Museum of Narrative Art built on the site. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

More than 50 African-American leaders of churches, businesses and community associations announced Tuesday they were forming a coalition to support the city's proposed plan to build the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art at McCormick Place.

The group said replacing the convention center's Lakeside Center building with "Star Wars" creator George Lucas' museum would help revitalize nearby South Side neighborhoods, and provide job opportunities for young people and construction contracts for minority-owned businesses.

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"We do understand that eventually at the end of this rainbow there needs to be a job," Gerald Morrow, principal of Dunbar Vocational High School, said at the news conference. "And the Lucas Museum is one of those avenues  to make sure that those jobs are there."

Morrow said he hopes to see his students graduate and find a "direct conduit" through apprentice programs to eventual employment at the museum. The proposed site is minutes away from the Bronzeville school.

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Mayor Rahm Emanuel detailed last week a proposal to build the museum housing Lucas' collection of traditional and digital artworks at the Lakeside Center, a shift south from the original site, which the nonprofit group Friends of the Parks targeted with a lawsuit. The new plan requires the borrowing of nearly $1.2 billion, extending five taxes beyond their expiration date and state approval. The museum would be funded by Lucas at a cost of $743 million.

Friends of the Parks federal lawsuit against the original Lucas Museum site between Soldier Field and Lakeside Center was the last remaining barrier to the project. The lawsuit argues the proposal violates the state's public trust doctrine, benefits a private party more than the public and will tarnish the lakefront. Friends of the Parks has not announced a decision on its next step.

Coalition members said creating jobs is just one of many ways the museum could help the city's economically depressed neighborhoods.

Bob McGee, president of II in One Contractors, spoke about the difficulties faced by minority contractors and suggested the construction project could provide sustained employment for local workers, which could reduce violence and launch "many people's careers and futures."

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 15 A draft rendering of the Lucas Museum on McCormick Place's Lakeside Center site near Chicago's lakefront. (Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)

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A Lucas Museum spokeswoman said in a statement that the museum is estimated to spend $60 million to $95 million on construction contracts with minority-owned businesses.

The coalition estimated building the museum will create about 8,000 construction jobs.

Leon Finney, pastor of the Metropolitan Apostolic Community Church and organizer of the coalition, said the museum will also bring in tax revenue that can be reinvested in the city.

"If you can make something happen even if it costs a little, but for the long-term gain of 8,000 jobs and the opportunity to influence positively our young people and influence the neighborhoods that are around here, it's a long-term investment in the future of Chicago," Finney said.

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The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which oversees McCormick Place, also released a statement Tuesday supporting the museum's proposed relocation to Lakeside Center.

jkuang@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @jeannekuang
Clyde Reighard held a number of senior positions at Northern Trust during his 37-year career there, including head of international banking. (Family photo)

Clyde Reighard had a long and distinguished career as an executive with Northern Trust Co. in Chicago and also put his leadership skills to work with the Chicago Zoological Society and its Brookfield Zoo as a member and chairman of the board of trustees.

Former Northern Trust Chairman and CEO David Fox said Reighard deftly handled many tasks at the bank.

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"Clyde took on a number of assignments for Northern and did an exceptional job in all of them, from international banking to heading up our credit policy area to human resources  you name it, Clyde did it and always did it well," Fox said.

Reighard was equally valued at Brookfield Zoo, according to Stuart Strahl, the Zoological Society's president and CEO. Strahl said Reighard, who chaired the board from 1992 to 1999, provided leadership at an important time for the society and the zoo.

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"Clyde was a tremendous leader for the society and the Brookfield Zoo through some of the most productive times in our history," Strahl said.

Reighard, 87, died of cancer April 18 in JourneyCare in Glenview, according to his wife of 60 years, Louise. The couple had lived in Glenview since 2002.

Reighard grew up in Williamsport, Pa., and was awarded a scholarship to attend the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. At Penn, Warren Buffett was his roommate and fraternity brother, and they remained lifelong friends, Reighard's wife said.

Reighard interrupted his undergraduate studies to spend two years in the Army during the Korean conflict, serving as a warrant officer in Germany.

He returned to Penn to finish his undergraduate studies with a degree in economics. While working for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, he went on to earn an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

After graduating in 1955 he joined Northern Trust, where he worked until his retirement in 1992. He held a number of senior management positions at Northern, including director of human resources, head of international banking and executive vice president/chairman of credit policy.

"You could count on the fact that if he was going to do something, it was going to be done right," Fox said.

At Brookfield, Strahl said Reighard helped lead the organization at a formative time as the zoological society and the zoo focused both on conservation and on engaging the community with that mission.

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He was a member of the society's board of trustees from May 1984 to May 2005, after which he became a life trustee. He was board chairman from 1992 to 1999.

"A lot of things we're doing now had their beginnings during those times," Strahl said. That work included what Strahl called "conservation psychology," efforts through exhibit and program design to motivate people "to care more about conservation and nature."

Reighard with his wife established the Clyde and Louise Reighard Cancer Research Fund at Rush University Medical Center.

In addition to his wife, Reighard is survived by a daughter, Barbara; sons Scott and Alan; and eight grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 11a.m. Saturday in the Church of the Holy Comforter, 222 Kenilworth Ave., Kenilworth.

Graydon Megan is a freelance reporter.
In 2002, two years before the blockbuster 9/11 Commission Report provoked by the events of that day, a bipartisan congressional task force published an 838-page report on how terrorists attacked America. But the account as released wasn't complete: A 28-page passage that may describe possible Saudi Arabian official connections to the terrorists was kept secret.

President George W. Bush ordered those pages be withheld, purportedly for fear that their release could jeopardize America's intelligence sources and methods. But there probably was another reason: to preserve official Washington's relations with a longtime ally in the Middle East.

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After the attacks, there was widespread suspicion that the Saudis had somehow aided al-Qaida kingpin Osama bin Laden and the plotters, possibly with financing. There were ample reasons for that suspicion. Among them: 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. So was bin Laden.

Now, under pressure from Congress, the Obama administration says it soon may release at least part of the report. The Saudis have said they would welcome the release of the chapter because it would "allow us to respond to any allegations in a clear and credible manner."

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 8 President Barack Obama and Saudi Arabia's King Salman walk together to a meeting at Erga Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, April 20, 2016. (Carolyn Kaster / AP)

We say, release the entire passage. Let all the facts come out. Free of selective editing by the Obama administration.

The Saudis have long denied any involvement in 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report in 2004 did not expose any direct Saudi government links to the attackers. But check this curious passage from page 171:

"It does not appear that any government other than the Taliban financially supported al-Qaida before 9/11, although some governments may have contained al-Qaida sympathizers who turned a blind eye to al-Qaida's fundraising activities," the report said. "Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al-Qaida funding, but we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization. (This conclusion does not exclude the likelihood that charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship diverted funds to al-Qaida.)"

That's not exactly an ringing exoneration.

Former U.S. Rep. Tim Roemer of Indiana, a Democrat who was a member of the 9/11 Commission, described the 28-page section of the earlier congressional document as a "preliminary police report": "There were clues. There were allegations. There were witness reports. There was evidence about the hijackers, about people they met with  all kinds of different things that the 9/11 Commission was then tasked with reviewing and investigating."

The 28-page secret passage may not be conclusive. But it could shed more light on the Saudi government's connections, if any, to the attackers. At the very least, releasing it will dispel the notion that Riyadh and Washington have something terrible to hide.

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has read the secret pages and wants them declassified, even though he thinks doing so won't resolve every question: "As is often the case, the reality is less damaging than the uncertainty."

Fourteen years after the 2002 report, however, the Saudis are still on the defensive over suspicions that their country had a role in the Sept. 11 attacks. Case in point: The New York Times reports that Saudi Arabia has warned the Obama administration that it will sell off up to $750 billion in Treasury securities and other assets in the U.S. if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the 9/11 attacks. Sure sounds like someone is nervous about being sued by U.S. plaintiffs.

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The release of the secret pages may or may not spur efforts by families of Sept. 11 victims to hold members of the Saudi royal family, Saudi banks and Saudi charities liable for alleged financial support of terrorism. It all depends on what's in those pages.

But that isn't our primary reason for urging release of the passage. This is:

American intelligence agencies famously failed to connect the dots to prevent the attacks. The 9/11 Commission blamed the FBI, the CIA and other federal agencies for disastrous lapses. The missing chapter should help Americans learn if congressional investigators connected any other dots.

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
When the owners of Maine Plastics in Zion received a recent property tax bill, they felt their property was not being fairly assessed. Instead of just accepting their fate, they contacted Lake County Appeal for an assessment review. After careful analysis and preparation of a case, an appeal was filed. The effort was successful, saving the company more than $120,000 in one year. This was not a lucky break. It was an honest questioning of a property tax assessment.

A common misconception among residential and commercial property owners is that property tax assessments and their resulting bills are impossible to question. Lake County Appeal, a Lake Forest law firm, reminds everyone that they have the right to appeal their property tax assessment to seek what they term as "property tax justice." There is no reason to fear that taxes will be raised or other punishments will occur as a form of retaliation for questioning taxing authorities.

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Mistakes can and often are made in the assessment process. Basically, the assessment amount should be one-third of the property's fair market value (except in Cook County and except for farmland and other unusual properties). So if you multiply the assessment by three and come up with a figure you feel is far beyond your property's value, it is time to contact Lake County Appeal to find out what steps need to be taken.

"Property taxes aren't out of your control," says Ron Kingsley, tax attorney and owner of Lake County Appeal. Having a team of professionals helping with an appeal increases the possibility of success. Lake County Appeal offers experienced legal advisers and real estate brokers who have access to proprietary databases. Since 2007, the firm has been collecting data to use in appeals. In Lake County, the success rate for all appeals filed averaged 20 percent, while the success rate for appeals filed through Lake County Appeal is close to 60 percent.

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"There is a very minimal upfront cost compared to the amount that could be saved each year. Therefore, the risk is very low," says Kingsley.

Illinois has the second-highest property tax rate in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation, so questioning your assessment is even more critical. One of the keys to success is to act quickly. After receiving a tax assessment notice, property owners have less than 30 days to file an appeal. The professionals at Lake County Appeal can complete an accurate assessment review and promptly determine whether an appeal is appropriate.

Kingsley has more than 30 years of experience as a tax attorney and works with an experienced staff with deep roots in the community. The Lake County team has formed working relationships with the officials handling appeals, so there is good communication. They are also aware of the process and will line up the correct evidence to help move each appeal forward.

The rules governing the assessment of commercial, industrial and multifamily properties can be difficult to grasp, so it is imperative to have experienced professionals who can save time, frustration and money. When the property is not owned by an individual (e.g., it is owned by a corporation), these property tax appeals often require an attorney. Be sure to have a proven advocate on your side and contact Lake County Appeal.
A volunteer helps Courtney Biery of Sugar Grove put the finishing touches on her ensemble at the prom dress sale in Batavia recently. (Denise Linke / The Beacon-News)

Racks of newly-cleaned evening gowns filled the basement recreation room at Congregational Church of Batavia recently.

Dress shoes, jewelry and accessories waited on nearby tables, just as five Community Helpers Impacting People in Need volunteers waited to help high school girls find the perfect free dress for prom.

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All they lacked was girls looking for those perfect dresses.

"We're not sure what's going on this year," said Joanne Spitz, co-chairman of the group that works to help Batavia students in need.

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"Last year we gave away more than 100 dresses, and we gave away at least 50 dresses the year before that, which was our first year doing this," she said during the sale. "So far, we've had maybe 30 girls come in over the last three days and we've given or sold 19 dresses."

The gown selection couldn't have discouraged girls with limited prom budgets from attending the third annual sale. Many of the 200 or so dresses were new clothes donated by area bridal shops and formalwear boutiques, while the rest were in "like-new" condition. Sizes ranged from 0 to XXL, and the styles included knee length and ankle length, slinky with spaghetti straps, strapless with poufy skirts and just about everything in between. In fact, the donation haul was so good this year that event organizers decided to advertise it throughout the Fox Valley and to invite girls who didn't meet Illinois' "low-income family" criteria to buy gowns for either $25 or $50, as compared to the $100 to $400 they'd pay in a retail store, said event co-chairman Melinda Kintz.

Proceeds from dress sales will pay for prom ticket subsidies and tuxedo rentals for low-income boys, she added.

"We don't care about making money from this," Spitz said. "We just want every student to be able to go to prom even if money is tight at home."

Sugar Grove resident Stephanie Biery and her daughter, Courtney, brought exchange student Katrin Hunger to find a dress for Kaneland High School's prom.

"I did not save money for a prom dress because we don't have proms in Germany," said Hunger, who hails from Chemnitz, which was once behind the Iron Curtain. "There is a dance for seniors when they graduate, but it is just for seniors and it is not formal. I'm very excited to go to a prom here, and I'm very surprised to get a dress for free. In Germany we have places where poor people can go to get clothes, but they don't have dresses like this. This is a princess dress!"

Not all the dresses claimed at the event will grace a prom dance floor. Rotolo Middle School counselors chose about 20 age-appropriate knee-length dresses to give to eighth-graders for the school's dinner dance, Spitz said, while a few girls picked out gowns for other occasions.

Courtney Biery, a Kaneland sophomore, picked out a few dresses to try on and had a hard time deciding which one she wanted to buy.

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"I wasn't expecting to even try anything on, much less get anything, but these dresses are all really nice," she observed.

Meanwhile, volunteers were brainstorming ways to better publicize and position next year's prom dress extravaganza. Some ideas they're considering include partnering with an area library, holding the event earlier in the spring and promoting it at Batavia High School events like Rock the Runway, a fashion show for student designers in which all the clothing must be made of non-textile materials.

"We are still making a difference here," Kintz asserted. "... A girl came in, found a beautiful dress and started to cry because she was so happy. She went around and shook every volunteer's hand and thanked her, while her mother kept asking, 'Are you sure it's free?' That's when I knew we have to do this again next year, because helping even one girl go to prom who couldn't otherwise afford it makes all this worthwhile."

Denise Linke is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News
A man convicted of a 1976 murder in Chicago has been illegally staying at Kendall County homeless shelters, according to the county sheriff's office.

Jerome Trosclair, 61, has been required by state law to live at his registered address in Springfield, Illinois, since he was released from prison in 2009, but Kendall County sheriff's deputies received a tip April 13 that he had been staying at various county PADS shelters.

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Deputies then began an investigation. On April 15, Trosclair was charged with violating the Murder and Violent Offender Against Youth Registration Act, a class 2 felony. Since then, Trosclair has been in custody at the Kendall County Jail, with bond set at $75,000.

Trosclair was convicted of one count of murder, one count of attempted murder and armed robbery in 1977 in Cook County. The incident involved Trosclair and three other men who took part in the shooting of two people - one fatally - during an armed robbery in Chicago where children were present, according to court documents.

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The incident occurred in the 2000 block of Chicago's East 70th Street, in a third-floor apartment where a man and a woman lived with their children and another woman. On Jan. 12, 1976, they were all home, and they had at least nine guests over, according to court documents. At about 10:30 p.m., someone knocked on the apartment door, and the man who lived there answered it to find Trosclair and three other men.

Trosclair told the man they wanted someone named "junior" to come outside or they were going in. The man said he didn't have any visitors and the group left the building. About 20 minutes later, the man and a guest left to go to a liquor store, according to court documents.

At 11:30 p.m., one of the guests answered another knock on the apartment door. Trosclair asked for the man who had opened the door the first time, but the guest said he was not there. Trosclair grabbed the guest around the neck and put a gun to his head. The other men he was with then entered the apartment, according to court documents. Three of the guests ran out the back door, while three others hid in the pantry.

Trosclair dragged the guest who had answered the door into the kitchen, gathered the remaining guests who weren't hiding and ordered them into the living room, where he made them lie on their backs on the floor, according to court documents. One guest was passed out drunk and sleeping nearby.

While in the kitchen, Trosclair had given one of the other robbers his gun. In the living room, the robber took money, jewelry and clothing from the three guests who where awake. He kicked the sleeping guest twice but couldn't wake him up, court documents state.

Then, Trosclair said, "Kill them all," according to court documents.

One of the women pleaded for their lives. Trosclair said not to shoot her because she was pregnant. While the man with the gun and Trosclair talked, the other two robbers took the stereo set out the front door of the apartment, according to court documents.

The gunman then shot two of the men in the apartment. Trosclair watched him shoot the men, then the two fled the apartment together, according to court documents.

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One of the men shot died while the other was in the hospital for nine months.

Trosclair was sentenced to five concurrent terms: 40 to 80 years for murder, 25 to 50 years for attempted murder, and three terms of 25 to 30 years for armed robbery, according to court documents. However, he was released on parole in June 2009 and his sentence was discharged in June 2012, according to information provided by Illinois Department of Corrections spokeswoman Nicole Wilson.

hleone@tribpub.com
Ryan Block, 13, of Dyer, Indiana, with his grandfather, Bob Block, of Dyer, Indiana, at the annual Lions Clubs Helen Keller 5k at Richards High School in Oak Lawn. (Kelly White / Daily Southtown)

Bob Block, of Dyer, holds 42 years of Lions Club membership under his belt.

A member of the Calumet City Lions Club, Block was originally drawn to join the club because of its dedication of helping the visually impaired.

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So, for the third year in a row, Block continued to help the organization by joining about 300 others Sunday at the Lions Clubs District 1-A Helen Keller 5k Fun Run/Walk.

This year, Block brought along his 13-year-old grandson, Ryan Block, also of Dyer, for the charity event at Richard's High School, 10601 Central Ave., Oak Lawn.

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"This is my first time doing the 5k with my grandpa," Ryan said. "I am excited to support his organization."

For nearly 100 years, Lions Clubs have provided resources for individuals who are blind or hearing loss worldwide.

The District 1-A is a part of Lions Clubs International, a network of volunteers who work together to answer the needs that challenge local communities. There are 72 clubs in District 1-A, said to District 1-A Lions Support Coordinator Judy Toft.

In an address to Lions Clubs International in 1925 by Helen Keller, she asked the clubs to foster and sponsor the work of the American Foundation for the Blind.

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"We aim to help both the younger and older people in our local communities, especially regarding issues with being visually impaired," Burbank Lions Club member Chris Coleman said.

At Sunday's event, Oak Lawn Mayor Sandra Bury kicked off the race and thanked participants who were charged $30. Officials of the event also accepted donations.

Last year, the event raised $16,000 and this year officials expected to raise a similar amount of money. As of the Daily Southtown's deadline, officials were unable to say how much money was raised.

Some proceeds will go to the Chicago Lighthouse to support people who are blind or visually impaired. Among the many services the Lighthouse offers, is a school for children with multi-disabilities; job training and placement; a low vision clinic and a manufacturing facility that supplies clocks to the U.S. government.

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Proceeds also will go to the Lions of Illinois Foundation, which operates 14 programs serving the visually and hearing impaired. Organizers of groups, such as the Boy and Girl scouts, booster clubs and churches, were able to keep a portion of the funds that their respective organizations raised.

"It is really nice to be able to get together with Lions Club members from other areas for such a great cause," Block said.

Kelly White is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
At least two organizations have reached out to Lincoln-Way officials about leasing North high school when it closes. (Daily Southtown / Gary Middendorf)

Just last week, Lincoln-Way High School District 210 Board President Dee Molinare wrote a resident and said, "There is no organization, business or school interested in leasing Lincoln-Way North," according to an email.

But recently released records show that the district has fielded at least two previously undisclosed inquiries from south suburban institutions interested in leasing space at North: Southland College Preparatory Charter High School and Joliet Junior College.

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District officials acknowledged Tuesday that they did not present the inquiries about leasing North to the public because, they said, those deals were not viable.

"If and when a viable option for renting becomes available, we will present it to the public," said Taryn Atwell, the district's community relations director, in an emailed statement. "Before the board could consider action, we must ensure the logistics and cost structure are practical."

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Neither Southland nor Joliet Junior College was willing to pay enough rent to "cover the cost of the operation or usage of that area of the building," Atwell said.

Some in the community say they feel the district is withholding information from taxpayers and not being transparent about the future of Lincoln-Way North.

This week, Southland College Prep's CEO Blondean Davis reiterated in an interview her school's interest in leasing athletic space at North if the school closes. Southland was previously interested in also using the fine arts center. Southland College Prep opened in 2010 in Richton Park and has about 500 students.

"We are definitely (still) interested, if there's a closure  in renting the gym during basketball season, volleyball season, and their indoor track facility," Davis said.

Davis said she toured North in November and was told Lincoln-Way would get back to her in January, but the school district has yet to do so.

Atwell acknowledged that Superintendent Scott Tingley had been in touch with Davis, but said, "It became apparent that our cost to operate was more than they were willing to pay."

Judy Mitchell, who at the time was the Joliet Junior College vice president of administrative services, also wrote Tingley in January to say the college is "very interested" in Lincoln-Way North.

Mitchell's letter asked Tingley to consider three options, including leasing Lincoln-Way North's second-floor academic wing to Joliet Junior College for five years for $100,000 a year.

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That was Joliet Junior College's "preferred option," Mitchell's letter said.

A month later, Joliet Junior College wrote Tingley again to reiterate the its interest in the school, but said JJC had decided "not to pursue this new lease due to the timing of our class scheduling, and the uncertainty of the state budget."

Mitchell, who is now Joliet Junior College's interim president, said this week she "cannot comment on the future of any lease at this time. Given the continued state budget crisis, it is very difficult for the college to make a commitment in the near future."

In the statement acknowledging interest from Southland and Joliet Junior College, Atwell said the district "would anticipate revisiting rental discussions in fall of 2016 for summer of 2017."

Some in the community are irked by the lack of disclosure, including Frankfort resident Susan McMann, who said the district is, "not being transparent about anything."

"You're trying to be transparent. You're trying to regain trust. Why don't you just say what's going on?" said McMann, whose family includes a 2008 East graduate, a West graduate, and two students currently at North.

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Asked about Molinare's email saying there's "no organization, business or school interested in leasing Lincoln-Way North," Atwell said the statement is accurate but, "She would like to clarify in that no organization, business, or school has expressed a viable intent of leasing Lincoln-Way North."

Last year, Lincoln-Way landed on the state's financial watch list, where it remains, after years of deficit spending. As a cost-saving measure, Lincoln-Way's board voted to shutter North, which is less than 10 years old  a move that's generated tremendous controversy in the community.

The school district's financial decline shocked many in the south suburbs, as Lincoln-Way had previously been seen as a model school district. A community group is currently suing to prevent North's closure.

In recent months, the Daily Southtown has reported extensively on questionable financial practices, private uses of public resources and deals benefiting district insiders at Lincoln-Way.

Many of those stories have also raised questions about the school board's oversight of former Superintendent Lawrence Wyllie, who retired in 2013.

Late last week, Lincoln-Way's board released a statement that said the district's "true financial condition" had been "masked by improper accounting."

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The board also said that it's "working to improve transparency and restore the confidence of the community."

Lincoln-Way attorney John Izzo read a resolution at the April 14 board meeting saying that from March 2010-October 2012, $4,340,713.74 in bond money was used to fund noncapital expenditures that were originally presented to the board as being part of an operations fund. But the expenses ended up being characterized as capital funds, Izzo said.

The district also spent $306,649.77 to fund noncapital expenditures that were originally presented to the board as being from the transportation fund, Izzo said.

"How did this happen? The superintendent at the time, without the board's knowledge or approval, directed the bookkeeping department to record fund journal entries reclassifying the original expenditures as capital expenditures in those two amounts (totaling $4,647,363.51)," Izzo said at the April 14 meeting.

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Wyllie also authorized nearly $45,000 to build the Superdog dog obedience school at North, which is currently used by a trainer who's worked with Wyllie and his Australian shepherds, records and interviews show. The school board said it did not know of the program, and Tingley has said that Superdog had "no student benefit."

Months before retiring, Wyllie signed a no-bid 10-year contract extension with Frankfort-based Aunt Nancy's day care, which uses space at each of the district's four schools rent-free, records show. The school board never formally approved the deal, Tingley previously said, but records show Lincoln-Way bought at least $90,000 worth of playground equipment for Aunt Nancy's to use.

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Records also show the school district has also paid $368,148 into an annuity account for Wyllie, creating a second taxpayer-funded retirement for Wyllie, who is currently collecting the state's largest teachers' pension  $312,000.

Lincoln-Way first bought the annuity in June 2004, and the agent on the policy was Wyllie's son, Christopher Wyllie, records show. Meeting minutes show no public discussion of the annuity, which was not formally written into Wyllie's contract until 2010, raising transparency concerns from the public.

In 2007, Lincoln-Way also bought $5 million worth of farmland in Manhattan Township, apparently without an appraisal, in a deal that benefited the Lincoln-Way Foundation president's firm, according to records and interviews.

gpratt@tribpub.com

Twitter: @royalpratt
A blog post appears to have helped at least temporarily break the long stalemate at the Illinois Statehouse.

Rep. Mike Fortner, R-West Chicago, wrote up a story and I posted it on my blog, Capitol Fax, about a way to provide some funding for higher education. Universities and community colleges haven't received a dollar from the state since June of last year because the government has no budget. Some are on the verge of actually going under.

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Fortner's idea wasn't new. Some other folks, particularly at the endangered Eastern Illinois University, have been saying for a while now that money is just sitting in a state account and isn't being used for its intended purpose. Budget negotiators have also been eyeing the fund.

But, for whatever reason, Fortner's proposal took off like a rocket. It probably helped that the Republican legislator devised the plan with a Democrat from the Senate, Pat McGuire of Joliet.

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The governor's folks almost immediately embraced Fortner's concept, which gives higher education hundreds of millions of dollars to tide the schools over until tuition money starts coming in. The money comes from the Education Assistance Fund, which receives dedicated tax revenues and is split between K-12 and higher education.

Rep. Fortner's proposal also included giving universities "relief from some of the procurement code." Gov. Bruce Rauner has said he wants to redo some of the reforms enacted after Rod Blagojevich's impeachment, and has made it part of his otherwise controversial "Turnaround Agenda." But while those earlier procurement reforms have, indeed created problems at universities and in state government, House Speaker Michael Madigan has resisted changing them. Legitimate fears of history repeating itself after the Blagojevich scandals is cited as the main reason.

Rauner won't negotiate a budget until he passes his Turnaround Agenda. So, good news came when Rauner decided not to tie his procurement reform demands to the passage of Fortner's funding plan. And then more good news came when top Democrats started openly talking about "building a bridge" to next fiscal year, which begins July 1. They can't pay the state's obligations without a lot more revenue, and they can't raise taxes without an agreement on the Turnaround Agenda. So, they wanted to try and prevent a systemic meltdown in the meantime.

The imminent closure of Chicago State University at the end of April, the severe problems faced by several social service providers (including Catholic Charities), the possibility that the legislature might not fund K-12 schools this year, the state comptroller's decision to delay issuing legislative paychecks for two months and the looming week-long legislative Passover break, all combined to create an extreme sense of urgency.

So, Fortner's op-ed came just at the right time.

And things are starting to look up elsewhere, too.

Democratic state Rep. Jack Franks' proposed constitutional amendment to reform the redistricting process sailed out of committee last week. Franks pledged to include some changes suggested by (who else?) Rep. Fortner, and the Illinois Chamber supports it, which possibly indicates where the Rauner folks are.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Ending gerrymandering is part of the governor's Turnaround Agenda. Speaker Madigan once called redistricting reform a "plot" by Republicans. Yet, he's supporting Franks' proposal.

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Meanwhile, significant progress is being made in negotiations behind the scenes on workers' compensation reform, one of Gov. Rauner's top priorities. People close to Madigan admitted late last week that some reasonable procurement reforms could be achieved.

Last week, rank-and-file legislators in both parties became so disgusted with the impasse that they forced their warring leaders just far enough apart to get something done. Fortner helped that process along by shining a bright, focused light on a solution.

We're not out of the woods yet. Finding a way to finally end this disgraceful impasse will be far more difficult than tapping an unused state fund. And, heck, even that wasn't easy. Negotiations were heated, attempts were made at the 11th hour to pry even more spending out of Rauner, things broke down time and time again and Speaker Madigan ended the week with a nasty shot across Rauner's bow.

"Time will tell," Madigan said via press release, "if Governor Rauner has further intentions of destroying our state institutions and human service providers, or if he will begin working with us to craft a full-year budget that is not contingent on passage of his demands that will destroy the middle class."

Rauner is almost always quick to respond in kind to these sorts of statements by Madigan. This time, though, he let it go.

Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.
Right side of table: Frankfort artist Pam Biesen (foreground) and volunteer Louise Sanderson help Anna Bath, 9, (foreground) choose from recycled objects for a robot she plans to create as her mother Emily Bath looks over the supplies. (Ginger Brashinger / Daily Southtown)

The work of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso was a big hit recently with Frankfort School District 157-C students.

Picasso was the featured artist at the district-wide Annual Arts Showcase sponsored by the district's Family School Partnership. Reproductions on banners of Picasso's work were on display at the school.

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"Picasso is fun," said Lisa Podlesak, co-chair of the event for the second year with Corrie Gleason.

"Last year, we decided to have an artist theme for the first time."

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Podlesak said Picasso, one of the creators of the Cubism style of painting, inspired projects quite different from those of last year's artist, Claude Monet, the creator of Impressionism.

"Monet was a lot of paint," Podlesak said. "Picasso is a lot of glue."

Painting was only one of several fine arts showcased April 22 at Grand Prairie Elementary School, 10480 W. Nebraska St., Frankfort, the site of this year's event.

Performing arts were represented by Street of Dreams dancers, and live music could be heard throughout the school all evening.

Musical performances, included a violin duo by students Jennifer Kluchenik and Claire Podlesak; the Hickory Creek Middle School Show Choir and Chorus, led by music teacher Leslie Walton; the Lincoln-Way Youth Strings, and individual performances by 14 young musicians.

Other performances were more spontaneous, reflecting the interactive nature of the event.

"Instrument Exploration with Mrs.(Brooke) Turnbough" offered younger students an opportunity to play instruments as Turnbough read them a story, and Steve Haberichter, owner of Down Home Guitars in Frankfort, brought a variety of instruments to the library for potential young musicians to try. Haberichter said he could barely keep up with the demand.

"There wasn't even a breathing moment," Haberichter said. "That's what we want."

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He said children waited to try instruments such as the banjo and guitar throughout the nearly three-hour evening event.

Frankfort artist Pam Biesen said her experience was very similar to Haberichter's. For four years, Biesen has been bringing a variety of discarded objects for students to recycle into art  everything from tin cans to bird feathers and enough to fill nearly 20 containers of supplies.

"It is the most fun I have all year long," Biesen said of the experience. "I learn so many cool tricks from these youngsters."

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Adults also were encouraged to participate during the evening, or just to be a spectator if they chose. At a display of 3-D artwork submitted by students across the district, sixth grade student Jack Delage, 11, showed his father, Saul, the ceramic mug he made in art class in the shape of a penguin. Jack generously complimented the artistic "genius" of another student's work while downplaying his own. Saul Delage, who brought his daughter Lia, 9, to perform with the Street of Dreams dancers, said he was impressed by all the young artists.

"It's interesting because (the event) shows talent from all ages  and  from across the district," Saul Delage said.

Children with special needs also were part of the artistic experience. Adaptive art projects were offered by Ephraim's House, a Christian-based organization that offers adaptive art to individuals with disabilities for the purpose of self-expression, creativity and problem solving.

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While Romeoville artist Amy Belonio worked at re-creating one of Picasso's paintings on her own blank canvas, she discussed the benefits to everyone of community events like the Creative Arts Showcase.

"I love this because arts are always pushed to the side, it seems," Belonio said. She said it is important for young people to view art as "more than a hobby."

Gleason said while it was encouraging to have more than 200 students attend the event, the goal for the evening was the enjoyment of art for those who did attend.

"We heard from the volunteers that the kids were really into the art projects," Gleason said. "They wanted to complete all of them from start to finish. We were excited about that because we take the time to pick out all of the right things for all ages."
An Irish restaurant is headed to East Dundee's downtown after all.

Construction on the mixed-use development containing restaurants, a nanobrewery and loft-style apartments planned for 311 Barrington Ave., the former site of Dundee Lumber Co., is expected to break ground in the next few weeks. Initially, two restaurants slated for the building included Joe's Cantina and Matt O'Shay's Irish Pub. But in February, Shay Clarke and Matt Rafferty pulled out of the project. Instead, Clarke reopened McNally's Traditional Irish Pub in St. Charles.

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At Monday's board meeting, East Dundee Village President Lael Miller said another Irish pub is set to go into the site. Due to pending lease negotiations he declined to give specifics.

"There's a group that has three or four other locations that do really well so they have a great track record," he said.

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Investors from 311 Barrington Ave LLC had hoped to break ground on the more than $4 million project last month but were delayed due to engineering issues with the site.

"In my conversation with the developer and other people, once they start construction they could be up and running in 120 days," Miller said.

The development will include one parking space for each residential apartment. The village is also creating a public parking lot on the site that will provide space for about 60 vehicles.

In February, a more than 100-year-old vacant building on the corner of Barrington Avenue and Fourth Street came down to make way for the new development. Built in 1900, the building itself had been home to several businesses over the years, but for at least the past decade had been vacant, village officials said.

Erin Sauder is a freelance reporter.
Talulah, a year-old turkey at the Fox Valley Wildlife Center in Elburn, is nesting on duck eggs brought in by workers from Advocate Sherman Hospital in Elgin. (Fox Valley Wildlife Center / HANDOUT)

A turkey hen residing at Fox Valley Wildlife Center in Elburn is sitting on her first clutch of eggs.

But Talulah, a year-old turkey, isn't minding her own offspring. Instead, she is incubating mallard eggs, rescued after a hawk apparently killed the mother outside Elgin's Advocate Sherman Hospital.

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"A big hawk had taken off with a mother duck and left these eggs," said Jean Lowe, patient care coordinator and a registered nurse at the hospital's emergency room.

The unusual pairing of a turkey with mallard eggs began April 14, Lowe said.

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The nest was just outside the ER's west-facing windows, on the other side of a fence. But the drama of the hawk picking up the mallard hen was seen by several people in the ER.

That is when the nest was discovered, too.

"One of the nurses told me to come out," to see the eggs, Lowe said.

"I was in charge (in the ER) and people know my family is a bunch of animal lovers," she said.

They waited a few hours to make sure the mother duck was really gone  or if the drake would take over incubating duties.

Lowe then called her sister and co-worker Donna Kruse.

Just a few weeks earlier, Kruse and her daughter became aware of the Elburn animal rescue when they found a possum that had been hit by a car.

"We checked the pouch and her six babies were alive," Kruse said. They kept the babies warm overnight and then delivered them the next day to the wildlife rescue.

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That story had gotten around Sherman, Kruse said  which is part of the reason her sister called her to help with the now-orphaned eggs.

Hassan John, a patient care technician, climbed over the fence and retrieved the eggs  18 in all.

"All lives are precious," John said. "That really touched my heart so I jumped at it," he said, placing the eggs in a padded bowl.

Lowe kept the eggs in a warm location overnight, and Kruse brought them to the center the next morning.

Having Talulah sit on a clutch of duck eggs is sort of an experiment for the center, said Donna Tate, education coordinator.

Talulah was brought in the fall of 2104 at just a month old, Tate said. She had come from a nearby property and had an injury that made it impossible for her to fly.

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As wild turkeys roost in trees at night, Talulah's injury makes it impossible for her to get into a tree  and easy prey for a coyote. She can never be released back into the wild, Tate said.

Instead, Talulah has been harness trained  walking on a leash so she can go to schools and libraries to educate residents about wild animals.

She is the only harness-trained wild turkey Tate has ever heard of, she said.

Beginning last fall, Talulah has been laying eggs  just one here or there.

But since the eggs are not fertilized, they cannot hatch. And the change has affected her personality.

"She's been very hormonal," and not her usual sweet self, Tate said.

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When Talulah has an egg, she sits on it and doesn't leave to eat  as she would do in the wild, Tate said.

Giving her a clutch of eggs  13 of which were found to be viable  has relieved some of that stress, she added.

Once the eggs hatch, the ducklings can probably stay with Talulah for about 10 days, Tate said. After that, they will be moved to a brooding box at the center.

The hope is that Talulah's hormones will then regulate and not attempt to lay more eggs, she said.

If the plan works, Talulah could be the foster mother for future duck eggs brought in to the center.

It isn't uncommon for area residents to bring in duck eggs  but it is uncommon that the eggs are still viable when found, Tate said.

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In the case of Canada goose eggs, the goslings can be released in the wild and introduced to other Canada geese. The geese will usually adopt an extra gosling or two, she said.

Mallards are much more territorial and will kill unknown ducklings, so any mallards that hatch from these eggs will be released as adults.

The eggs are expected to hatch in the next few days.

"She has been herself and so sweet," since she got the eggs, Tate said.

Tate said that if eggs are found and they are warm, the mother was there recently and will be back. She suggests that anyone who finds eggs, watch the nest area before taking the eggs and call the Fox Valley Wildlife Center.

Janelle Walker is a freelance reporter.
Stop bending over backward for religions: I'm getting so tired of hearing my religion this and my religion that. Now when some guys join the Army, they want to keep their beards and turbans. What are we coming to? We can't let some religion tell us what to do or how our armed forces are supposed to look. We are fed up with this bending over backward for these different groups. This is America. Everybody pull together in one direction and not in 12 different directions. Get religion out of state and politics.

Fight Zika virus: I want to say they finally approved money to fight against the Zika virus. President Barack Obama has been trying to secure funds for this virus for quite some time. Now that the virus is getting more dangerous and spreading, finally we are getting things moving. This is the kind of the thing that we need to work together on and be bipartisan instead of fighting everything that the president asks for. We shouldn't have lagged on this. Babies are going to be affected by this disease, and people will be hospitalized. Let's not let our petty differences get in the way of things.

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Desire for higher wages: This is a comment about the minimum wage worries. Well, $15 an hour is no money for a family to live on. I own my own business. I pay my laborers a minimum of $15 an hour, and that has been going on for a few years. It's still not enough, but it's all I can afford. People tend to work and stay at their jobs if you pay them better. They tend to want to make things work because they know they will get more money. If I was paid $5 an hour, I would work like I was making $5 an hour. If I was paid $20 an hour, I would definitely do a better job and do everything I could do to keep my job. Don't tell me that everyone needs a college education. If everyone had a college education, you would have a person with a college degree flipping burgers at Burger King.

Companies fail due to foreign trade: This is about Donald Trump. I am voting for him because of companies failing in this country due to foreign trade and cheap labor like in Mexico. Look at Haeger Potteries in East Dundee. It's gone because of foreign trade. They can't keep up with the foreign competition. We drive a Volkswagen Beetle. Guess where it's made? It's a German car made in Mexico. Now Ford Motor Co. is talking about taking one of their plants to Mexico. People better wake up and smell the coffee. A lot of jobs are gone because of the computer.

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Concern about Ecker Center loan: This is about the Ecker Center and how they need a loan for $175,000 from the city of Elgin to keep them going until November. What will happen after November if the state doesn't get their act together? They obviously rely on money from the state. What happens if Ecker Center doesn't pay the loan back? That would be another pile of money that Elgin is throwing away. Elgin just raised their budget this year to raise taxes on the homeowners because of the shortfall of the riverboat. I understand how the council feels because Ecker Center is a good organization, but if you have a boat going under in the ocean, you shouldn't put money in a sinking boat. As a resident of Elgin, it ticks me off. Councilman John Prigge is the only one who says no. Who do we vote for in the next election? Hey John, do you have any brothers or sisters? Please tell them to run.

Fanfare for Farm & Fleet: How fantastic that the Elgin City Council was able to bring Farm & Fleet to Elgin and utilize a vacant building. We would love to also see a Trader Joe's in Elgin.

Editor's note

Speak Out is a reader-generated column of opinions. If you see something you disagree with or think is incorrect, please tell us. Call us at 312-222-2460 or email couriernews@tribpub.com. Please include "speak out" in the subject line.
Once Elmhurst sets rules for where firearms sales will be allowed, a public safety equipment store in the 500 block of North York Street could become the citys first store selling guns under the new rules. (Graydon Megan / Pioneer Press)

The three aldermen on the city's Development, Planning and Zoning Committee don't agree on exactly where in Elmhurst firearm sales ought to be allowed, but they did agree this week to send the question to the Zoning and Planning Commission for public hearings.

They are also in agreement that the sales have to be allowed someplace in town.

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"There's no designated area where firearm sales can occur," committee chairman Ald. Scott Levin said April 11, when his committee first took up the question. "We do have to allow them to be sold somewhere."

Committee members expect that somewhere to be in city's four areas zoned commercial, and possibly in the city's industrial district.

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Zoning Commission hearings and deliberations are expected to determine which areas and whether retail sales will be by right under revised zoning or as conditional uses.

"I have a strong feeling that (firearms) should be sold in retail areas," committee member Ald. Mark Mulliner said. "I don't have a problem with the C-4 zoning district right downtown."

The C-4 district covers most of the city's central business district. Other commercial zoning districts run along York Street from downtown north to Grand Avenue, along Lake Street from York to Route 83 and in patches along Spring Road north and south of the Illinois Prairie Path, around York and Vallette Street and around York and Butterfield Road.

Most of the industrial zoning district straddles Interstate 290 in the northwest corner of the city.

Levin said there are two or three federally licensed gun dealers in town who operate out of their homes.

At present there are no retail firearm sales operations in town. But that could change with the opening of Glenbard Uniform Inc., a public safety uniform and equipment business set to open in the 500 block of North York.

Owner Eric Haimann told committee members he hopes eventually to be able to sell firearms, but will open in mid-May and operate without gun sales until the city determines where and how sales will be allowed.

Levin has said he doesn't see gun sales as any threat to public safety.

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"To me the only real danger of a gun shop is 'is someone going to break in and steal firearms?'" he said.

Haimann said federal requirements for dealers and local police requirements will ensure adequate alarms and protections for licensed stores.

Assistant city manager Mike Kopp said recently that firing ranges are already allowed by right in the city's C-3 and industrial zoning districts, although related sales are not presently allowed.

Zoning and planning administrator Than Werner said after this week's meeting that the matter would likely go to the Zoning and Planning Commission for a public hearing June 9.

Graydon Megan is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
Six Glencoe teenagers received the Boy Scouts of America's highest honor, the Eagle Scout Award, on April 24 at the Takiff Center. They are, from left: Chris Temple, Stephen Schneider, Nicky Kacena, Jacob Mehlman, Julius Shapiro and Drew Suchsland. (Karie Angell Luc / Pioneer Press)

Six Glencoe teenagers were recognized at the Takiff Center on April 24 as they earned the Boy Scouts of America's highest honor, the Eagle Scout Award.

The six honorees  all seniors at New Trier High School - told stories of the service projects they performed to earn their Eagle Scout Awards. They also discussed what Scouting has meant to them.

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Jacob Mehlman

Jacob Mehlman has been involved with the Scouts since the fifth grade, as he worked to achieve the necessary 21 merit badges to become an Eagle Scout, according to the Boy Scouts.

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"It's been years and years of work," he said.

But he wanted that final honor, and in 2014, he oversaw the demolition of a dilapidated gazebo at the Little House of Glencoe near the Skokie Lagoons, which, according to its website, depends on private donations to keep it open.

Mehlman led a crew that demolished the crumbling gazebo.

"It is a marker on the journey," Mehlman said of Scouting. "It takes a lot of dedication to have earned this, and there were times I wasn't sure if I could finish everything. It is a very large undertaking, and it is not something you can do overnight or (in) a month. It takes years."

But Mehlman, who will attend the University of Illinois next fall, said the hard work was worth it.

"Scouting has definitely given me a deep sense of detail and preparation to make sure things are done," he said. "I think that carried over to many aspects of my life, including school. Even when sending emails to adults, I always make sure there are no typos and it (is) something very formal. That is something I learned in Scouting."

Chris Temple, right, looks on as his mother, Susan Temple, pins his Eagle Scout Award during a Court of Honor ceremony April 24 at the Takiff Center in Glencoe, while his father, Tom Temple, looks on. Temple is one of six Glencoe teenagers who earned the Boy Scouts of America's top honor on Sunday. (Karie Angell Luc / Pioneer Press)

Christopher Temple

Once the Little House gazebo was demolished, an ugly concrete slab remained. That's where Christopher Temple came in.

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In October 2015, he led the effort to demolish the approximately 20-ton foundation, and removed buckthorn and made landscape improvements.

"We removed the concrete from the ground, and so now there is extra parking there and it looks a lot better," said Temple, who is planning to attend the University of Boulder.

"Before, I questioned my actions a lot more and now I am more confident in the actions I take," Temple said of Scouting. "It gives you the tools to succeed in life. Everybody should try to go down this path."

From left, Tom Temple, Nicky Kacena and Julius Shapiro, all of Glencoe, salute during an April 24 Eagle Scout Court of Honor ceremony at the Takiff Center in Glencoe. (Karie Angell Luc / Pioneer Press)

Julius Shapiro

The work at Little House continued with the efforts of Julius Shapiro.

Overseeing a group of 11, Shapiro and his team installed two barbecue grills at Little House in the spring of 2015 and also cleared out buckthorn and removed tree stumps.

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Shapiro's inspiration came from a walk on the beach.

"Seeing those charcoal grills there, I noticed the appeal they had for the community, and I wanted to mirror that at Little House and give back in a way that was useful," Shapiro said.

Shapiro, who also is headed to the University of Illinois, said he was happy with the path he took in terms of Scouting.

"Scouting has been an idyllic sort of thing," he said. "Growing up, I saw the usefulness that it could have in my life with social skills, planning, leadership. These are skills that aren't gained at school or any other place, so that is why I did Scouting."

Right, Peter Kacena looks on proudly as his wife, Radka Kacena, embraces their son, Nicky Kacena, 17, during the Boy Scout Troop 28 Eagle Scout ceremony on April 24 at the Takiff Center in Glencoe. (Karie Angell Luc / Pioneer Press)

Nicky Kacena

For many years, Nicky Kacena had been active at Glencoe's North Shore United Methodist Church. But he noticed a problem.

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"There was no seating there, so when people were waiting to be picked up  especially elderly people  there was nowhere for them to sit, which is not very good for them," he said.

Kacena, a youth representative at the church, decided to install two stone benches and plant shrubs over the course of a year, with the assistance of 20 to 25 others. The work had a twofold effect.

"It created some seating for people when they were waiting to be picked up, as well as creating a more inviting entrance," Kacena said.

Kacena, who plans to attend Cornell University, said this project piggybacked on his years in Scouting.

"It shows how much I learned through Boy Scouts, because of all the ideals of leadership and working with others," he said.

Right, Drew Suchsland, 18, of Glencoe has a pin placed on his uniform by his mother, Joyce Suchsland, during the Boy Scout Troop 28 Eagle Scout Court of Honor ceremony on April 24 at the Takiff Center in Glencoe. (Karie Angell Luc / Pioneer Press)

Drew Suchsland

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Drew Suchsland's project focused on Glencoe's portion of the Green Bay Trail.

Suchsland led an effort to construct five birdhouses, add plants and bushes around them and put food out for the birds.

"I'm a distance runner at New Trier, and we are running on the Green Bay Trail all the time," he said. "So when I was looking for a project, I wanted to have something more personal."

Now when he is on the trail, Suchsland, who has not decided on a college yet, said he is thrilled.

"I run by it all time in practice, so I feel a lot of pride every time I see my project and effort come to fruition," he said. "Being an Eagle Scout, for me, is the opportunity to give back to the community. This is my chance to turn around and design a project and help give something back to the community."

Stephen Schneider of Glencoe was among six teens who earned the Boy Scouts of America's Eagle Scout Award at an April 24 ceremony at the Takiff Center in Glencoe. (Karie Angell Luc / Pioneer Press)

Stephen Schneider

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Over the years, Stephen Schneider noticed a patch of the Green Bay Trail near Shelton Park that was filled with buckthorn, to the point it was hard for bikers to navigate around it.

He led an effort to take it out, and added a bike repair station.

"It is for any type of routine maintenance, or if you need to pump up your bike tires, you can do that, too," Schneider said.

Schneider will attend the University of Rochester this fall, and said he has happy memories of Scouting.

"I feel very proud, because it shows...I can accomplish whatever I put my mind to, so it was a very empowering thing for me," he said. "If I see people going through the trail, and they are safe and there is no risk of collision due to a lack of visibility, I feel very proud."

Daniel I. Dorfman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press
Fifth grade teacher Amanda Martinsen, left, works with a student at Glen Grove School in Glenview. Earlier this month, the Illinois Education Association presented Martinsen with its Human and Civil Rights Award. (Glen Grove School / Handout)

When her cousin's baby, Nora, suffered severe brain damage during emergency surgery, Amanda Martinsen knew there was nothing she could say to make her best friend feel better.

"She called me, hysterical," Martinsen said. "I had no words to console her because you can't console a mother in that much pain. I said, 'What can I do?' She said, 'Please teach your kids to be accepting of kids like Nora. I don't want them to be afraid of Nora.'"

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The light bulb that went on in Martinsen's head led her to her fellow fifth-grade teachers at Glen Grove School in Glenview. The Nora Project would introduce mainstream students to students with physical disabilities and social challenges, she told them.

"They were all wonderful and jumped on board," Martinsen said. "They all committed to the project. There would be no Nora Project without them."

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Earlier this month, the Illinois Education Association presented Martinsen with its Human and Civil Rights Award for her school-wide, year-long project in which Glen Grove students have interviewed and learned the personal stories of students with various special needs.

"Amanda Martinsen is a first-rate educator and an inspiration to us all," IEA President Cinda Klickna said in a prepared statement. "Her creation of the Nora Project has been life-changing for students with conditions that sometimes make it difficult for them to connect with others. Teachers like Amanda make us all proud to be educators."

Earlier this month, the Illinois Education Association presented Glen Grove School teacher Amanda Martinsen with its Human and Civil Rights Award. Provided by Glen Grove (Glen Grove School / Handout)

Martinsen was recognized for the award at the annual Representative Assembly of the IEA on April 14. Some 1,200 delegates, guests and state officials attended the event in Rosemont.

"They had such wonderful things to say about it," she said. "It made me feel really great about the project and what we're doing."

The Nora Project grew out of Martinsen's concern that students like her cousin's daughter who have Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism and a host of other medical conditions often experience difficulty making connections and friendships with other students in school.

Martinsen said she agreed that the project has been "life-changing" for many students, but not just those with special needs.

"The change we've seen from students is they're so much more aware of kids with special needs that are different from them," she said. "They are so much more accepting."

One student said she had heard the term Down syndrome, but didn't know what it was, Martinsen said.

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"She said she never thought she would have been friends with someone with Down syndrome, and now she is," she said. "I see them interacting with many kids. They're high-fiving each other, asking how their day is."

The interaction is invaluable to many students who face physical and emotional challenges, Martinsen said.

"For example, someone with cerebral palsy's brain functions normally, but they can't speak or move easily," she said. "It might just make their day by saying hi."

The Nora Program is offered in all six fifth grade classrooms at Glen Grove and two rooms with a mix of fourth and fifth graders, Martinsen said.

"We pretty much responded to what my cousin asked for," she said. "We backwards-designed the program and asked, what do we want to get out of this at the end? We want kids to build friendship with kids with special needs."

When Glen Grove teachers examined the possibilities for achieving the desired result, they discovered a number of educational units were already in place that could facilitate the process, Martinsen said.

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"We looked where it could fit in," she said. "It was not like changing the curriculum. It was just embedding into what we already do."

Eventually school officials sent a letter to the families of students with special needs asking if they would let their children work with other students and let those other students interview their children's family members and loved ones, Martinsen said.

Currently, 21 families have agreed to participate in the Nora Project, she said. Each special needs student is spread among the eight classrooms and assigned a Nora friend, Martinsen said.

"Students are conducting interviews with parents and family members -- anybody the parents wanted to include," she said. "We also have activity days where we do team-building activities. For example, we had a field trip where we brought each Nora friend to be in a setting where we could focus on fun and building relationships."

Throughout the process, students are using iPads to record video of their interviews and interactions, Martinsen said. Students plan to use the video to create a documentary that will be presented to fellow students on June 6 and to the community at 6 p.m. on June 7 at Glen Grove, she said.

Phil Rockrohr is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
A class of students from the Green Bay Early Childhood Center arrive at the spot in Sunset Woods Park where they will plant a new oak tree for Arbor Day.

"Is this a baby tree, or is this an adult tree?," asks Liz Ettelson, volunteer coordinator for the Park District of Highland Park, pointing to the two-foot tree still sitting in its black plastic pot.

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"Baby tree!," the youngsters blurt out in near unison.

"Can somebody point out an adult tree?," Ettelson asks, as heads craned upward at the towering, 40-foot-tall trees all around. "Right there," shouted one boy as he pointed to a mature tree nearby.

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Guided by Liz Ettelson, Alexander Rosendo, 5, takes a turn moving soil as students from the Green Bay Early Childhood Center plant trees in Sunset Woods Park. (Brian O'Mahoney / Pioneer Press)

The oak tree was one of a dozen new trees planted in the park April 25 by classes at the Green Bay Early Childhood Center. A look at the green tags on many of the older trees underscored the need for such reforestation projects. The tags meant the trees would soon be coming down due to emerald ash borer disease or other conditions.

With the lesson on tree growth completed, Ettelson and Ross Crawford, a naturalist with the park district, set the new tree into a hole that was dug earlier. Each of the youngsters took a turn shoveling a scoop of dirt around the edges.

Before starting the walk back to their classroom, they placed a painted purple rock alongside the tree, so they'd remember which was their oak tree when they returned to visit.

"No matter where you go, you will always have a tree here in Sunset Park," teacher Mindy Berman told the class.

Colleague Sheri Offenbach said many of the youngsters in the class are from military families and would be moving away.

"They have left their mark," Offenbach said. "They will always have something by which to remember Green Bay School and Sunset Park."

The Arbor Day tree planting represented a collaboration between the park district, the City of Highland Park and North Shore School District 112. The city provided the trees, a contribution that helps the city keep its standing as a Tree City USA.

Also in honor of Arbor Day, students from the Latin School of Chicago and Lake Forest Academy will plant approximately 20 pine trees on April 28 at the Heller Nature Center in Highland Park. The trees will be planted within an existing stand of evergreens along a popular hiking trail.

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kberkowitz@pioneerlocal.com

@KarenABerkowitz
There were cheers and even a few tears from residents as the Munster Town Council passed a long-awaited human rights ordinance Monday, joining at least a dozen municipalities in Indiana with similar laws.

With cheers for residents who spoke in favor of the ordinance and colorful "We Are Munster" signs in the packed council chambers, We Are Munster community group leader Paul Rotatori was thrilled with the outcome.

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"The council listened to its residents and saw the benefit to the town, ensuring people can live life without fear and discrimination," he said. "This puts a huge welcome sign on Munster."

It is now illegal in Munster to obstruct someone from entering a business, entering into a contract, obtaining and maintaining employment or participating in any type of program or service available to the general public on the basis of race, sexual preference, disability or gender identity.

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Hammond passed a similar ordinance a year ago, about two weeks after Gov. Mike Pence signed the controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law.

Munster resident Amy Sandler, who had been turned down for a family membership at a local health club because it did not recognize her same-sex marriage under its definition of a family, approached the council a year ago about protecting the rights of residents against discrimination by a business.

"Please do what's best for Munster," she said, urging the council to pass the ordinance.

She got her wish. The Council voted 4-1 in favor of the ordinance.

Anyone found in violation are subject to a $500 fine  a sticking point for Councilman Joe Simonetto who was the lone vote against the ordinance.

Simonetto said he was "very concerned" about due process if the town identifies a violation of the ordinance. He said he could support the human rights ordinance if the town hires a human resources director with the experience to administrate the law. He also expressed concern over language involving gender identity specific to restrooms.

Council President John Reed said the ordinance is not ambiguous relative to restrooms or locker rooms in that they are still gender specific.

"This ordinance ensure no one receives special treatment because everyone will be treated equally," he said.

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Reed praised the spirited debate among Munster residents on all sides of the issue as it was contemplated and debated over the past year.

"Munster has a sophisticated population where we can do that," he said, adding that a legal challenge to the law is a possibility.

"Let's put our money where our mouth is," he said.

Matt Maloney, a local Realtor, told town officials that showing the world Munster values the rights of all people will build economic momentum. He noted that he has sold $3.5 million worth of property in Munster recently, mostly young professionals who work in Chicago, and didn't want to see that momentum lost if the ordinance failed to pass.

As the owner of a local dental practice, Councilman Andy Koultourides echoed the potential economic gain, saying, "We need to do everything to support the growth of the local economy."

A number of local businesses have publicly supported the ordinance, including Munster's largest employer, Community Hospital, and its top tourist draw, Three Floyds Brewery.

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A pair of residents spoke against the ordinance, offering opinions that an individual's religious liberties should be respected and that the U.S. Constitution already provides sufficient protections to individuals and groups who may be subject of discrimination

Councilman David Nellans said there should be uniformity to such laws, but is simply not the case, so Munster had to act. He described the human rights ordinance as a "living, breathing, document" created in the best interest of the community.

Last week, the Valparaiso Human Relations Commission sent a proposed human rights ordinance to the Valparaiso City Council for its consideration.

Jim Masters is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.

Municipalities

Indiana municipalities with sexual orientation and gender identity protections

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Indianapolis/Marian County

Bloomington/Monroe County

Evansville

West Lafayette

South Bend

New Albany

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Muncie

Hammond

Zionsville

Terre Haute

Columbus

Kokomo

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Goshen*

*By mayor's executive order

Source: Indianapolis Star
Additions and improvements to Valparaiso High School should begin in late August to early September and be wrapped up by December 2018.

The first steps will be constructing four additions that will increase the school's size by about 40,000 square feet, according to project manager Dion Katsouros of the Skillman Corp. of Merrillville.

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After those additions are in place, workers will begin reconstruction of the rest of the school, while classes move temporarily into the additions.

"We're just going to hopscotch around the building," said Skillman site manager Terry Allsop.

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The classroom space addition will go on the west side of the building, requiring the school district to move a sewer line.

An addition for the band room will go on the southeast side of the school, while administrative and office space additions will go on the east side and northeast side.

The Skillman team, Donald Torrenga of Torrenga Engineering of Munster and school Superintendent Ric Frataccia presented plans for the high school project at Tuesday's Site Review Committee meeting.

Torrenga said he and the Skillman group have been working with the city on what changes should be made to the school's 1992 storm water retention pond that empties into Beauty Creek.

The city also wants the Valparaiso Community Schools district to install a pathway sidewalk along Vale Park Road on the north side of the high school.

City Engineer Tim Burkman said it would connect to a planned path for hikers and bikers west of the school.

There is also a path on Vale Park east of the school it could connect to.

The improvements are being funded by the $148 million capital projects referendum passed May 5.

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On Thursday, the district broke ground for the new elementary school south of U.S. 30 at 2450 Heavilin Road, to be completed August 2017.

In February, the Skillman, Torrenga and Frataccia team presented plans for improvements to Cooks Corners and Memorial elementary schools.

Those improvements should be finished by August 2017, they said.

James D. Wolf Jr. is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
By Samuel Wrest

The fallout from Chinas abolishment of its one-child policy has taken new and unexpected turns in recent weeks. Following protests from parents affected by the 36 year old policy  most by having a single disabled or severely ill child unable to support them in their old age  the government stated that it would increase the monthly subsidy for families whose only child is disabled. The announcement has been widely reported in Western media and has helped reenergize discussion of the role that the disabled have in Chinese society, particularly in the workforce.

When China hosted the Paralympic games in 2008, then president Hu Jintao promised that the country would strive to make its disabled citizens equal members of society, a statement that presaged a string of national and provincial policies aimed squarely at incentivizing businesses to hire disabled workers. Awareness of these incentives among foreign companies, however, has remained generally low since their implementation, and many domestic companies choose not to use them  two factors in many that have seen a low employment rate for Chinas disabled citizens.

What incentives exist for hiring disabled employees?

The preferential policies that exist for disabled workers in China mainly revolve around tax breaks or exemptions. However, the ease with which companies can qualify for these benefits varies, with eligibility often hinging on either the size or the location of the company. Below, we take a closer look at the three main preferential policies.

Corporate income tax

The way in which the CIT exemption for disabled employees functions is noteworthy. In China, companies can deduct a non-disabled employees annual salary from the profits that they pay CIT on. For disabled employees, this amount is doubled. If a disabled employees annual salary is RMB 100,000, for instance, then the company will be able to deduct RMB 200,000 from the amount that it pays CIT on.

In order to qualify for this benefit, companies must meet all of the following requirements:

The disabled employee must have a minimum one year labor contract or service agreement with the company;

The company must pay the monthly social security costs for the disabled employee;

The disabled employees salary cannot be any less than the lowest salary paid to a non-disabled employee in the company.

RELATED: Payroll and Human Resource Services

Individual Income Tax

While disabled persons employed anywhere in China are eligible for IIT deduction, Chinas tax authorities have yet to implement a nationwide standard. The deduction amount therefore varies from region to region, with the countrys more affluent areas tending to provide greater deductions. Below, we provide an example in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

VAT

The requirements to qualify for VAT exemption are extensive. Not only must 25 percent of a companys workforce be disabled, but the company must also have a minimum of ten disabled employees. In practice, this means that the exemption is only available to larger companies. If the workforce of a small startup with 16 staff were 50 percent disabled, for example, they would still be ineligible for the VAT exemption.

In addition to this provision, the conditions for qualifying for CIT exemption also apply for VAT exemption.

Quota for hiring disabled employees

The Chinese government has actually set a minimum quota of disabled employees that a company must hire. The national average is 1.5 percent of a firms workforce, but the rate can differ by province. The quota does not apply to companies under three years old and with a workforce of less than 20.

Companies that dont meet this quota have to pay into a fund called the Baozhang Jin (). The necessary amount again varies according to location, but the majority of companies choose to pay into the fund rather than employ the requisite amount of disabled workers that would absolve them from paying. Reluctance to train disabled staff and integrate them into the company structure is a commonly cited reason for this, but the fact that few companies choose to take advantage of the Baozhang Jins exemption is one of the root causes of Chinas low disabled employment rate.

How is disability defined in China?

The Law on the Protection of Disabled Persons (LPDP) is Chinas primary piece of legislation on disability rights. In its second Article, the Law describes a disabled person as someone who suffers from abnormalities or loss of a certain organ or function, psychologically or physiologically, or in anatomical structure and has lost wholly or in part the ability to perform an activity in the way considered normal. The law further states that the term disabled person refers to those with visual, hearing, speech or physical disabilities, mental retardation, mental disorder, multiple disabilities and/or other disabilities. Importantly, it notes that the criteria for classification of disabilities shall be established by the State Council.

Looking ahead

The incentive framework that China has put in place for hiring disabled employees has been incremental since Hu Jintaos speech at the Paralympic games. Policies such as the Baozhang Jin have been revised and implemented as recently as October 2015, and China is still catching up with some of its international commitments regarding disabled employment, such as those contained in the International Labor Organizations conventions on employment and education for the disabled that China ratified in 1985.

This suggests that more change can be expected in both the short and long term future, with China developing a policy framework that supports its public and international backing for disabled employment and further incentivizes China-based businesses to hire disabled workers.



About Us Asia Briefing Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. Dezan Shira is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in China, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the rest of ASEAN. For further information, please email china@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com. Stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends in Asia by subscribing to our complimentary update service featuring news, commentary and regulatory insight. 

Human Resources and Payroll in China 2015

This edition of Human Resources and Payroll in China, updated for 2015, provides a firm understanding of Chinas laws and regulations related to human resources and payroll management  essential information for foreign investors looking to establish or already running a foreign-invested entity in China, local managers, and HR professionals needing to explain complex points of Chinas labor policies.



Establishing & Operating a Business in China 2016

Establishing & Operating a Business in China 2016, produced in collaboration with the experts at Dezan Shira & Associates, explores the establishment procedures and related considerations of the Representative Office (RO), and two types of Limited Liability Companies: the Wholly Foreign-owned Enterprise (WFOE) and the Sino-foreign Joint Venture (JV). The guide also includes issues specific to Hong Kong and Singapore holding companies, and details how foreign investors can close a foreign-invested enterprise smoothly in China.

Labor Dispute Management in China

In this issue of China Briefing, we discuss how best to manage HR disputes in China. We begin by highlighting how Chinas labor arbitration process  and its legal system in general  widely differs from the West, and then detail the labor disputes that foreign entities are likely to encounter when restructuring their China business. We conclude with a special feature from Business Advisory Manager Allan Xu, who explains the risks and procedures for terminating senior management in China.
A poster of animation "Rock Dog" [China.org.cn]

Rock veteran Zheng Jun has helped create animated feature "Rock Dog," whose Chinese release is scheduled for July.

"Rock Dog" is a 3D animated film adapted from an original comic book by Zheng Jun, which was originally written for his daughter. The director of this film is famous American animator Ash Brannon, who also co-directed "Toy Story 2."

The Hollywood team-supported animated film will integrate animal characters with Tibetan elements. Zheng Jun, who wrote the script, and the crew of the film had "Rock Dog" in production for 6 years, said its distributor and producer Huayi Brothers Media Corp.

The movie tells the story of a Tibetan mastiff named Bodi, who becomes an orphan and grows up in Tibet. By chance, he is brought to Beijing by a pub owner. Bodi becomes more and more interested in rock music and begins to pursue his dream of rock & roll, enduring many hardships along the way.

Zheng said the comic book has some autobiographic elements and the soul of the animation is about dreams and how to keep dreams alive in different phases of life.

The film will have English and Chinese versions, with Academy Award-winning actor J.K. Simmons alongside Luke Wilson, Eddie Izzard and Lewis Black. The Chinese dubbing cast has not been revealed.

The film will hit Chinese theaters on July 8, 2016.
William Li isn't your typical, boundlessly optimistic Chinese tech entrepreneur. Yes, the founder of startup NextEV Inc has big plans to disrupt China's electric-car market and the financial backing of venture capital powerhouses Sequoia Capital and Hillhouse Capital, and considers Tesla Motors Inc founder Elon Musk an inspiration.

That said, he rates his chance of succeeding in China's fast-moving car market at a whopping 5 percent. He also thinks most of the new business models for electric cars being bandied about by tech companies will end up in the junk yard.

"There's an exponential gulf between creating a concept car and mass production, and then to actually sell them," Li said. "Tesla has broken a lot of new ground and inspired a raft of internet companies to follow, but most have no idea what they're facing."

Such hard-nosed realism is probably wise. As global auto executives gather for the 2016 Beijing Auto Show, a torrent of money is pouring into the nation's alternative energy vehicle market, which includes electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell cars. In a country with a rapidly urbanizing populace, the market's upside potential seems big to conventional car companies and tech startups jumping in.

The Chinese government is promoting what it considers a strategic industry with big subsidies for companies and consumers. It wants new-energy vehicle sales to top 3 million units a year by 2025, versus 330,000 in 2015. Premier Li Keqiang in February urged local government and industry players to speed up construction of charging facilities to accommodate 5 million electric vehicles by 2020.

Right now, the electric-car business is dominated by BYD Co, a Shenzhen-based automaker, 9 percent owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc, that has an 18 percent share of China's new-energy vehicle market. At the Beijing show, BYD will be touting its new entry-level sport-utility vehicle called The Yuan, as in the 13th-century Chinese dynasty, that starts from 209,800 yuan ($32,360) for the hybrid version.

Tesla is a player, too, in China. It sells its Model S and Model X, though the Palo Alto, California-based electric-car maker would like to be a far bigger one. For the first three quarters of 2015, the company sold 3,025 vehicles in China, which compared to 11,477 units of delivery by BYD. The Chinese company also sells its electrics in the United States, Germany and Japan, and surpassed Tesla in May to become the world's biggest maker of new energy vehicles.

The success of Tesla in the US and the development of driverless car technologies by Apple Inc and Google Inc are also attracting all manner of technology companies into the Chinese auto market, the world's biggest. Some envision cars developing into "mobility service platforms", in which passengers receive data and services in addition to being moved from point A to B. That could play to the strengths of technology companies. And the huge and growing Chinese auto market could be the perfect laboratory in which to experiment with new services and business models, according to Bill Russo, managing director at Shanghai-based auto consultant Gao Feng Advisory.

Russo compared today's autos to the mobile phones of a decade ago, when apps started to gain in popularity. "As cars become mobility service platforms, the technology on board will become more sophisticated," he said. Technology companies could contract out auto production to make vehicles, but then earn recurring revenue by providing car owners with data products and internet services. "Apple makes money not just on the device, but on all the services that flow through it," he said.

Several technology companies are already in the fray. Electronics contract manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group, internet service portal Tencent Holings Ltd and China Harmony New Energy Auto Ltd have set up a joint venture to build alternative energy cars. The partnership is designed to leverage different strengths: Foxconn's component supply chain, Tencent's infotainment and telematics systems that could improve vehicle's connectivity and Harmony Auto's after-sales network for electric vehicles. In January, Daniel Kirchert, head of Infiniti Motor Co in China, joined the alliance.

Chinese tech billionaire Jia Yueting also has automotive ambitions. The chairman and founder of LeEco Holdings Co, which makes web-enabled televisions and smartphones and offers cloud and e-commerce services, is a major investor in Los Angeles-based Faraday Future Inc, which is building a 900-acre factory near Las Vegas, Nevada. LeEco, which has developed its own electric vehicles, is preparing to apply for a production license in China and also plans to manufacture its cars overseas.

Given all the new entrants, it is easy to understand why NextEV founder Li is wary of the competition, even with financial backers like Sequoia. Li has hired former Cisco Systems Inc chief technology officer Padmasree Warrior to lead development and US operations, and has inked a deal to outsource production to Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Co.

"They're realistic, they're seasoned, smart people with a lot of money and they're unafraid of the challenge," Michael Dunne, head of strategy and investment advisory firm Dunne Automotive Ltd, said of NextEV. "In fact, they seem to be embracing it."

Li said NextEV is an opportunity to rethink the electric car as not just as a transportation vehicle but as a digital platform. "Traditional auto manufacturers treat the car as 95 percent transportation tool," Li said. "Tesla's cars have perhaps 20 to 30 percent content that are not related to transportation," he said, referring to such things as mobile connectivity and touch-screens that access car maintenance services. "My aim is to boost that to more than 50 percent."

NextEV has produced an electric Formula E series racer, but hasn't yet disclosed its plans for launching an electric car aimed at the consumer market.
Huangyan Island. [File photo]

China's Ministry of National Defense on Monday voiced objection to the flights of six U.S. Air Force planes in "international airspace" in the vicinity of Huangyan Island in the South China Sea on April 19.

"We have noticed such reports, and it should be pointed out that the U.S. is pushing militarization of the South China Sea in the name of 'Freedom of Navigation,'" the ministry's Information Bureau said in a statement.

China is concerned about and opposed to such actions which threaten the sovereignty and security of countries around the South China Sea and undermine regional peace and stability, it stressed.

Chinas Foreign Ministry also accused the US of "hyping up" recent military flights around Huangyan Island.

Asked about a South China Morning Post report on Monday that said China will start constructing an outpost on Huangyan Island this year, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had not heard of the case.

"However, I saw media reports that military planes from the US and the Philippines flew over the sea around Huangyan Island," Hua said.

She said China has always respected the right to normal and legal flights.

"But such high-profile hyping (of the flights concerned) is abnormal, and the motivation questionable."

She also said that Huangyan Island is China's inherent territory, and Beijing will "take necessary measures to protect its sovereignty and justified rights and interests".

Hua said China does not want to see further provocation by the countries concerned and hopes they will show restraint.
Chinese lawmakers on Monday started to deliberate a draft law on national defense transport, covering the use of railways, waterways and air routes for defense purposes.

The new law is expected to regulate the planning, construction, management and use of resources in transportation sectors such as railways, roads, waterways, aviation, pipelines and mail services, for national defense. The draft was submitted to the bi-monthly session of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, which runs from Monday to Thursday.

Drafters followed a concept of integrating military and civilian resources and stressed that national defense transport should be compatible with market and economic development, Zhao Keshi, head of the Logistical Support Department of the Central Military Commission, told the top legislature.

According to the draft, a national authority will be tasked with overseeing the national defense transport network and local governments, military departments and the military's theater commands will also be responsible.

A consultation mechanism will be established between local governments and military departments and to disseminate and discuss information on construction plans, ongoing projects and demands.

Out of national defense needs, transport vehicles, facilities and materials for civilian use may be pressed into service.

The national defense transport should consider the needs of both peace and war times.

The draft further stipulates that national defense consideration should also be included in technical standards and codes for transport facilities and equipments.

No organization or individual is allowed to undermine the proper use and safety of national defense transport projects and facilities, it says.

Relying primarily on large and medium-sized transport enterprises, the country will set up a strategic projection support force to facilitate efficient organization of long-distance and large-scale national defense transport, according to the draft.

The bill also makes it clear that the expenses for defense transportation missions should be born by their users and the criteria should not be lower than the market price.

During wartime or under special circumstances of peacetime, such as armed conflicts that endanger national sovereignty, the central authorities should establish a joint command organization for national defense transport if necessary, it stipulates.

The joint command will be used to coordinate national or regional resources, organize transport operations as well as rush repairs and protection of transport infrastructure and facilities.

The reserve materials of national defense transport could be allocated for disaster relief and rescue, according to the draft.

Under the draft, those who embezzle defense transport funds or whose dereliction of duty results in severe losses shall be punished in accordance with laws.

Those who use the reserve materials of national defense transport or divert related facilities for other use without authorization shall face a fine up to five times of their illegal gains, the draft reads.
President Xi Jinping has called for the comprehensive detection of internet risks to ensure online security.

Xi made the remarks at a symposium on cybersecurity and informatization on April 19, during which he called for enhanced cybersecurity and told officials to use the internet to understand public opinion. The full text of his speech was made public on Monday.

In his speech, Xi stressed the "correct outlook on cybersecurity" and called for the establishment of a system to protect information infrastructure in industries including finance, energy, telecommunications and transportation.

He urged authorities to establish unified and effective mechanisms to report risks and share information.

Internet defense capabilities should be enhanced and the roles of governments and market forces should be clearly defined, the president said.

"The competition between major countries on internet security not only depends on technology but also on concepts and public opinions," Xi said, adding that China's proposals on cyber-sovereignty and a community of common destiny in cyberspace have won the support of the majority of countries.

To safeguard cybersecurity, Xi called on the industry to undertake more research into core internet technology, which he identified as being the "key to China's internet development" and warned that, "having other countries holding the key is our biggest threat."

Blocking internet access is not the right way to manage the internet, he said, stressing that, "China can not and will not shut its door to the world."

"We welcome foreign internet enterprises as long as they abide by Chinese laws and regulations," said the president.

During the symposium, Xi said R&D investment should target technology that the country needs the most, and the industrialization of the technology should be improved.

"Unlike Microsoft, Intel, Google and Apple, Chinese internet enterprises do not cooperate well with each other on research, which is one of the reasons why there is a huge gap between China and other countries," Xi added.

He suggested establishing alliances between academic and research institutions and enterprises to enhance coordination.

The president also stressed the role of the internet in directing and representing public opinion.

Xi ordered officials to use the internet to engage with the people, learning about their concerns and wishes and engaging with them online.

"Internet users come from many places, each with their own experiences, and opinions. Therefore, it is too much to ask them to be right on every topic," said Xi.

There should be greater tolerance and patience to internet users, Xi said, adding officials need to draw sincere suggestions and feedback from the internet, help clarify public misconception or their fuzzy ideas about certain matters, dissolve public grudges and grievances, and correct their wrong perceptions.

A clean and healthy cyberspace is in the interests of the people, while a foul and unhealthy one serves no one, said Xi.

No country will allow cyberspace to be used to go against the regime, incite religious extremism, national separatism and violence, or to be filled with pornography and hate, Xi noted.

China must improve the management of cyberspace and work to ensure high quality content, he said, with positive voices creating a healthy, positive culture that is a force for good.

The president suggested that the cyberspace be imbued with positive energy and mainstream values, in the hope of creating a clean and righteous environment.

However, rather than all people holding the same opinion, a positive public opinion environment in cyberspace means no slanders, rumors, crimes and other violations of the Constitution and laws, said Xi.

For well-meant criticism raised on the internet, be it at the overall work of the Party and the state, or at individual officials, be it gentle or harsh-sounding, Xi said, "we will not only welcome it, but also study it for future reference."

In his speech, the president stressed the responsibility of internet firms, saying that only by accepting their social responsibility can they be competitive and enjoy better development.

"Web entrepreneurs should not regard clicks as their only goal. Online shop owners should not sell counterfeit or substandard products. Social media organizers should not spread rumors. Search engines should not decide the position of websites in results just based on how much they pay," said Xi.

Concerned by online fraud, the president urged authorities to speed up legislation on the internet and enhance supervision over cyberspace to deal with cyber risks.

Moreover, Xi called for enhanced management of big data. Internet enterprises must attach great importance to the security of data, as they may involve national interests and security, said Xi.

He also stressed the importance of talents in developing the internet, calling on authorities at all levels to attract and keep skilled employees.

The flow of talents among governments, enterprises and think tanks should be encouraged, he added.

A talent system with global competitiveness should be established, said Xi, adding all talents are welcome to China, no matter where they are from.

The Chinese people should be provided with information services that are accessible, affordable and of a high standard, Xi told the symposium.

China, although a latecomer to the internet, has made remarkable achievements in the development of internet networks and services, Xi said, adding that 700 million Chinese netizens use the internet to study, work, and access public services.

The president stressed that the development of the internet in China should meet the people's expectations and demands. He called for more investment in internet infrastructure, especially in rural areas, saying online tools and services should be used to support poverty alleviation campaigns.

"More people in poverty should have access to the internet. They can use it to sell their agricultural products and their children can receive a high-quality education," Xi said.

Moreover, the internet should serve as a new growth driver for the Chinese economy, he said.

The "internetPlus" strategy has boosted innovation and entrepreneurship in China, and the information-based economy accounts for an increasingly larger share of China's GDP.

"In the process of informatization, no progress, or even slower progress, means regression. China must improve its information infrastructure and the integration of information resources," Xi said.
A file photo of heavy-lift Long March-5 carrier rocket. [Photo: weibo.com]

China has started to assemble a new generation of the heavy-lift Long March-5 rocket, said its deputy chief designer Yang Hujun.

Using non-toxic and pollution-free propellant, the 60-meter-long rocket with a liftoff weight of over 800 tons will be equipped with 4 thrusters. It is scheduled for launch later this year.

"After the assembly is finished in the first half of this year, it will take a little more than a month to test it to ensure that the product is in good shape. The first launch will be made after it is out of the plant in the latter half of the year, " Yang added.

The new generation of rockets will come in 6 slightly different models - for manned space travel, as well as for the lunar and Martian exploration programs.

Among planned missions, is the Chang'e-5 lunar probe, which will be launched by the high-thrust carrier rocket to collect samples of moon soil by the end of 2017.

China also plans to launch a medium-sized rocket Long March-7 into low Earth orbit this year, in a bid to transport cargo for the planned space station.

The announcement coincided with China's first "Space Day" on April 24, which marks the date in 1970 when China's first satellite, the "Dongfanghong-1" was put into orbit.

It also comes hard on the heels of China releasing details of a series of ambitious plans for space exploration in the coming years.

They include the country's Mars mission probe set to be launched around 2020, as well as the completion of China's space station in 2022.
Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces have all denied the alleged leak of the provincial civil service exam and said the exams followed compliance procedures.

Photo taken on April 23, 2016 shows candidates entering the exam room in Jinan, east Chinas Shandong Province. Local civil servant exams were held in twenty-five provinces of China on April 23, 2016, and over 140 thousand candidates have registered for provincial civil servant exams. [Photo: Chinanews.com]

Some suspect the training institutions are fabricating their stories as the institution's test papers were almost the same as those used in the civil service exam. One famous education and training institution who is suspected of leaking the test paper said it is impossible that they leaked the exam because they have no chance of accessing the papers. They added that the civil service exam is kept absolutely secret.

The human resources department of east China's Jiangxi Province said on Saturday that it has started investigating the alleged leak of the provincial civil service exam.

The annual exams kicked off on Saturday in several provinces across China including Jiangxi. However, some people posted on their social network accounts suggesting the exam information might have been leaked because the questions were the same as on their practice materials.

In addition, a few people were spotted distributing the answers for the tests outside the exams after the first test in the morning concluded.

As the exam is conducted jointly, several provinces are involved.

Meanwhile Anhui Province announced on April 25, 2016 that 31 candidates were found to have cheated in the 2015 national entrance exam for postgraduate study. The Education Department of Anhui Province said that 25 candidates have had their subject scores canceled because of alleged cheating, while 6 candidates had their scores in one subject canceled.

China's revised criminal laws shows zero-tolerance to exam-related misconduct and has defined cheating on major national exams as a criminal crime.

People found guilty of cheating face up to seven years in jail.
China has become a major market for foreign enterprises to develop intellectual property innovation, according to a senior judge from China's top court.

With more frequent economic and trade exchanges, IP disputes involving foreign litigants nationwide rose from 2,840 in 2013 to 5,675 last year.

The figures were disclosed by Song Xiaoming, chief judge of a civil tribunal for IP cases under the Supreme People's Court.

"Foreign-related IP cases are a key area for IP tribunals in courts, especially administrative ones," Song told China Daily in an exclusive interview ahead of IP Day, which falls on Tuesday.

In 2013, 1,143 foreign IP administrative cases were heard by Chinese courts, with the number rising to 4,383 last year, according to the top court. In such lawsuits, government agencies  such as copyright administrations at all levels  are usually the defendants accused of improper official rulings.

Of the IP administrative cases involving foreigners, most were related to patents and trademarks, Song said, adding that those involving business secrets have also risen rapidly in recent years.

A report by IP House, a third-party IP institute that analyzed 5,022 verdicts from 5,432 IP cases heard by the Beijing IP Court recently, found that 1,095 were related to foreign litigants.

Of the foreign cases, 395 involved US enterprises, 2.7 times more than those from Germany, which was second on the list, the institute said.

Among those involving US businesses, 346 were administrative IP cases concerning, for example, trademarks and patents.

"The boom in IP disputes should be attributed to our country's strategy of China going global' and bringing in foreign business', as well as to a strong awareness by foreign enterprises, especially those in the US, to protecting their IP rights in China," Song said.

He said many US companies have applied to Chinese IP authorities for protection of their patents and trademarks, which is why a large number of disputes concern them.

Chen Jinchuan, vice-president of the Beijing IP Court, said the US invests heavily in innovation and applies for patent protection in China the most often.

Song said that with more Chinese companies expanding their business overseas, they should pay more attention to protecting their intellectual property in the countries concerned.

He said very few Chinese enterprises apply for patent or trademark protection overseas, adding, "As China is calling for the development of high-grade, precise and advanced technology, such innovations should be protected both at home and abroad."

Mao Mingqiang, an IP judge from Ningbo Intermediate People's Court in Zhejiang province, said the increase in foreign-related IP disputes is not necessarily a bad thing.

"Some Chinese companies have learned a lot from such lawsuits or have later cooperated on business with their foreign litigants," Mao said.
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South Sudan's top rebel chief of staff Simon Gatwech Dual returned to Juba on Monday ahead of the much-anticipated arrival of First Vice President Designate Riek Machar.

Dual, the South Sudan People's Liberation Movement In-Opposition (SPLM-IO), arrived in Juba with additional 195 troops, paving way for Machar's grand arrival and formation of the transitional government.

Machar, who thrice called off his arrival to Juba, had planned to come after Dual had arrived ahead of him.

"We are here to implement the peace agreement," said Dual, who was welcomed by top government military commanders, and heavily-armed troops from both the government and rebels.

Dual arrived with troops aboard a UN plane to Juba.

The Secretary General of the SPLM-IO, Dhieu Mathok, said Dual's return showed their commitment to implement the signed August 2015 peace deal that ends more than two years of civil war.

"Now we are coming to implement the peace agreement that we have signed. We thank all South Sudanese and the UN for taking over transportation of the SPLA-IO Chief of Staff," Mathok said.

However, Mathok did not confirm Machar's expected arrival to Juba on Tuesday.

Machar's advance team and 1,370 protection troops have arrived in Juba.

Civil war erupted in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Machar of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings that have split the country along ethnic lines.

The conflict has reopened deep ethnic tensions in the world's youngest country, which only won independence from Sudan in 2011.

Peace talks between Kiir and Machar stalled several times, but the two leaders eventually signed peace agreement in August last year, paving way for the formation of government of national unity.
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Belarus and the United States are ready to fully normalize bilateral relations, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei told reporters on Monday.

The top diplomat said that both parties are working on reopening the dialogue between Minsk and Washington at the ambassadorial level.

"We should not look at each other through the rifle scope, rather we should talk and find compromises in the resolution of problems, which might seem unsolvable," Makei said.

Charge d'Affaires of the United States in Belarus Scott Rauland said that the United States and Belarus may discuss the prospective return of ambassadors as early as this year.

He said it would be a very good step forward for the development of relations between Minsk and Washington.

U.S. Ambassador to Belarus Karen Stewart left the country in March 2008during a row over sanctions. Belarusian Ambassador to Washington Mikhail Khvostov was recalled shortly afterwards.
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Rebel rocket fire killed at least 16 people in government-controlled areas in the northern city of Aleppo, state news agency SANA reported.

The rocket fire targeted the town of al-Zahra' and other residential areas controlled by the government in Aleppo, said the report, adding that over 86 others were wounded.

The rebels have intensified their attacks against government areas for the past three days, leaving tens of civilians killed.

A day earlier, Syrian army foiled a massive infiltration attempt by opposition militants in the western part of Aleppo, killing many of them, a military source told Xinhua.

The armed militants attempted to infiltrate the al-Assad Suburb west of Aleppo at dawn Sunday, but the Syrian army repelled the attack, after carrying out air strikes against the attackers' positions and shelling them with rockets and artillery, the source said on condition of anonymity.

He said the infiltrators were sneaking into the area through the sewage system.

The rebels, mainly the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, in the eastern part of Aleppo city, has repeatedly attempted to infiltrate government-controlled areas in the western Aleppo in recent weeks.

The rebels' attempts to attack government areas have also been coupled with mortar shelling.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed Monday that Moscow and Washington have approved a system to monitor the cessation of combat actions in Syria.

"It is practically being implemented daily, during the regular contacts between the authorities of the Russian military base in Hmeimim and the U.S. soldiers in Amman (Jordanian capital)," Lavrov told reporters.

During a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Lavrov said that moderate Syrian opposition forces should leave the positions controlled by terrorist groups.

According to the minister, the early pullout of opposition forces could block the channels for extremists trying to reinforce themselves.

"We have agreed with the Americans that they would use their influence on these 'good opposition members' and withdraw them, so that no one could impede to destroy Jabhat al-Nusra," Lavrov said in a transcript on the ministry's website.

He warned that the terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra was trying to subdue the groups that seemed to have joined the ceasefire.

On the ongoing intra-Syrian talks in Geneva, Lavrov said they would continue, although some representatives of the Saudi-backed Syrian opposition, the Riyadh group, have left.

"The situation during the talks in Geneva could have been much better if one delegation of the opposition had not left Geneva, as they say, temporarily," Lavrov said.

The minister called on all Syrian forces not to "slam the door and strike an attitude" with regard to the drafting of a new constitution and other political issues aimed at resolving the Syrian crisis.

Earlier in the day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed concern over the deterioration of the intra-Syrian talks in Geneva, which are still continuing despite the pullout of a delegation of Syria's main opposition, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), from formal negotiations.

The failure of reaching common political ground between the Syrian government and the opposition has sparked a new wave of violence, threatening the already-shaky truce imposed on Syria in February.
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China accused the US on Monday of "hyping up" recent military flights around a Chinese island in the South China Sea.

It said Washington's motivation was questionable and urged countries concerned to show "restraint" over the territorial issue.

Observers said the US is apparently using the timing to expand military deployment in the area.

Washington's comments came ahead of a ruling by an international arbitration body in a process launched unilaterally by the Philippines against China's territorial claim in the South China Sea.

Asked about a South China Morning Post report on Monday that said China will start constructing an outpost on Huangyan Island this year, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had not heard of the case.

"However, I saw media reports that military planes from the US and the Philippines flew over the sea around Huangyan Island," Hua said.

She said China has always respected the right to normal and legal flights.

"But such high-profile hyping (of the flights concerned) is abnormal, and the motivation questionable."

She also said that Huangyan Island is China's inherent territory, and Beijing will "take necessary measures to protect its sovereignty and justified rights and interests".

Hua said China does not want to see further provocation by the countries concerned and hopes they will show restraint.

The Defense Ministry on Monday also voiced objection to the flights, saying they were being staged under the guise of navigation and flight freedom, but they were actually pushing forward militarization in the South China Sea.

The Philippines claims Huangyan Island, which belongs to and is controlled by China.

The Japan Times reported on Saturday that six US military aircraft left Clark Air Base in the Philippines on Tuesday last week and conducted "air and maritime situational awareness flights" near Huangyan Island.

The aircraft remained in the Philippines after a recent exercise by the two countries that included island-taking scenarios that were apparently targeted at China.

The US Pacific Command said in a statement on Friday that six military planes flew last Tuesday through international airspace near Huangyan Island.

US warships have stepped up operations around Chinese islands in the South China Sea, including one in October and another in January.

Teng Jianqun, a researcher at the China Institute of International Studies, said: "The US military wants to use the Philippine bases to monitor and threaten Chinese islands, including Huangyan Island. This shows that the US is updating its military deployment in the South China Sea."

Tao Wenzhao, a researcher of US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the US hyping of the flights is "definitely related to the ruling by the arbitration body", which is expected within weeks.

During a Southeast Asian tour by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, which ended on Sunday, China agreed with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos that the South China Sea territorial dispute should not affect relations between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The countries also called on nations outside the region to play a constructive role in the area.
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The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) is in talks with the Russian officials to sell parts of its heavy water to its northern neighbor, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari announced on Monday.

According to the decisions made by the AEOI, Iran will sell 70 metric tons, out of its existing 200 metric tons of heavy water reserves, in the international market, Jaber Ansari said.

This has been recognized in the nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers, he said, adding that Iran's presence in the international markets pertaining to heavy water transactions is part of the country's plan for peaceful use of atomic technology.

Iran had already made technical negotiations with the United States and reached an agreement for selling its heavy water and is currently engaged in the same negotiations with the Russians, the spokesman said.

On Saturday, senior Iranian nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi confirmed that the AEOI and a U.S. company have signed an agreement to sell 32 metric tons of heavy water produced in its Arak Reactor to the American side.

The agreement, signed following three months of negotiations, was worth 8.6 million U.S. dollars and would be delivered to the American side in the following week, Araqchi said on the sidelines of a joint commission meeting between Iran and the P5+1 group, namely Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States, and Germany.

The transaction of the heavy water was a part of the nuclear agreement signed last July between Iran and the P5+1 group. Iran has also agreed to ship its supply of enriched uranium to Russia.
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Syrian government delegation head Bashar Al-Jaafari said Monday that he and UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan De Mistura discussed modifications made to a UN paper submitted in the earlier stages of talks striving to broker a political end to the Syrian conflict.

"Today we submitted constitutional amendments to the paper that was submitted to us by the special envoy and we consider such amendments to be an integral part of this paper," Al-Jaafari said.

The changes are believed to reflect at least in part the government's desire to set up a broad-based national unity government.

Though the main opposition faction represented by the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) withdrew from formal proximity talks last week, UN-mediated negotiations are pushing on in a bid to make tangible progress by Wednesday.

This may prove difficult, however, given the deep-seated differences dividing factions at war since 2011 and the fact that the HNC pulled out from formal talks having accused the regime of avoiding the issue of political transition amid a worsening humanitarian and security situation on the ground.

While the Syrian government seeks to establish a broad-based national unity government to include members who reject terrorism as well as opponents in the national opposition who are not subject to foreign agendas, the HNC backs the creation of a transitional governing body with full executive powers which has no place for incumbent Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The question of terrorism remains particularly controversial, with Al-Jaafari insisting that some of the groups represented by the HNC are in fact terrorists.

He blamed recent attacks in Aleppo and Damascus on two groups in particular, Ahrar ash-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam.

"The government of Syria has sent two identical messages to the Secretary General and the president of the Security Council to clarify the situation and asked the Security Council to take immediate measures to help the government fight terrorism in accordance with relevant Security resolutions," he said.

"In all honesty the escalation of terrorism in Syria has a political background through foreign intervention," Al-Jaafari added.

The Syrian government delegation is scheduled to meet again with the UN envoy on Tuesday.
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The UN Security Council on Monday welcomed the start of a nationwide cessation of hostilities in Yemen and the launch of Yemeni-Yemeni peace talks in Kuwait.

In a statement by Liu Jieyi, China's permanent representative to the UN, the council reiterated its call to all parties to "engage in peace talks in a flexible and constructive manner without preconditions, and in good faith."

China holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council for April.

The Security Council called on all Yemeni parties to develop a roadmap for the implementation of interim security measures, especially at the local level, withdrawals, handover of heavy weapons, restoration of state institutions, and the resumption of political dialogue in line with relevant Security Council decisions, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Initiative and Implementation Mechanism, and the outcome of the comprehensive National Dialogue conference.

The nationwide cessation of hostilities started in Yemen at midnight on April 10, and the peace talks were launched on April 21 in Kuwait, facilitated by the special envoy of the UN secretary-general for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed.

"The Council urges the parties to comply fully with the cessation of hostilities and exercise restraint in response to any reports of violations," the statement said. "The Security Council further notes the importance of reaching agreement on a framework of principles, mechanisms and processes for the conclusion of a comprehensive agreement which will bring about a permanent end to the conflict."

The Security Council also expressed its strong concern about intensified terrorist attacks, including by Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (also known as Da'esh), and encouraged all Yemeni parties to avoid any security vacuums that can be exploited by terrorists or other violent groups.

"The Security Council stresses that a political solution to the crisis is essential to address, in a durable and comprehensive manner, the threat of terrorism in Yemen," the statement said. "The Security Council stresses the importance of the restoration of government control over all state institutions, including respect for the legally established lines of authority in state institutions; removal of any hindrance or obstructions to proper functioning of state institutions; and changes to ensure inclusivity in political institutions."

The Houthi group and militias in support of ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh stormed the Yemeni capital Sanaa in September 2014, and forced incumbent President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and his government into exile.

Last March, Hadi's government authorized a Saudi-led coalition to enforce the resolution and bring Sanaa back to the control of the internationally recognized government.

The civil war has so far killed more than 6,000 Yemenis, mostly civilians, and injured around 35,000 and displaced more than two million others, according to the latest UN statistics.
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Three UN agencies have said that they are "deeply concerned at funding shortfalls" which could affect the assistance provided to South Sudanese refugees in Sudan, a UN spokesman told reporters Monday.

The agencies, including the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP), are together appealing for additional funding to meet the greater needs created by the rapidly increasing number of South Sudanese fleeing into Sudan, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

More than 50,000 South Sudanese have crossed into Sudan since the beginning of 2016, surpassing the planning figure set for the entire year, he said.

"The agencies added that the funding shortages coincide with a period of heightened food insecurity in part of South Sudan," he said. "This, in addition to the ongoing violence, is driving rapidly increasing numbers of South Sudanese into Sudan."

South Sudan plunged into violence in December 2013, when fighting erupted between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and defectors led by his former deputy Riek Machar.

The conflict soon turned into an all-out war, with the violence taking on an ethnic dimension that pitted the president's Dinka tribe against Machar's Nuer ethnic group.

The clashes have left thousands of South Sudanese dead and forced around 1.9 million people to flee their homes.
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Khartoum on Monday described as "unjust" the U.S administration's refusal to issue entry visa for a Sudanese government official.

Earlier, the United States refused to issue an entry visa to Sudanese Interior Minister Ismat Abdel Rahman to participate in meetings of the UN General Assembly on drugs problem.

"This is an unjust act and does not go in line with the international laws which some claim to be defending them," Sudan's foreign minister Ibrahim Ghandour told reporters Monday.

"America has no right to refuse to issue entry visas for Sudanese officials who receive invitations to participate in United Nations activities," he noted.

He went on saying that "the U.S administration has previously refused to issue entry visas for Sudan's education minister and the state minister for health."

In September 2013, the U.S administration refused to issue an entry visa for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to attend the meetings of the UN General Assembly.

The Sudanese-U.S. ties have been characterized by continuing tensions as the United States has imposed sanctions on Sudan since 1997, declaring the country as a sponsor of terrorism.

Since then, Washington has been renewing its sanctions on Sudan due to the continuing war in Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan regions.

According to economic reports, Sudan's losses due to the U.S. sanctions amounted to over four billion U.S. dollars annually besides the halt of important industries in the country.

Sudan has also been witnessing an escalating economic crisis since the secession of South Sudan in 2011, which has greatly affected the Sudanese economy as the country lost around 70 percent of its oil revenues.

The separation has also affected the revenues of the state budget, which dropped to around 50 percent.

In September 2013, the Sudanese government adopted a package of economic measures to revive the economy including an increase in the oil prices, which then prompted wide protests across the country.
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"Aleppo is being slaughtered" and "Save Aleppo" are new hashtags sweeping local social network websites in Syria, as the rebels have been on a relentless campaign of shelling over the past three days, leaving hundreds of people either killed or wounded.

The whining, and whistling of the mortar shells as well as their deep rumbling sound upon impact, followed by the wailing sirens of ambulances and fire engines, were everything the people in Aleppo have been hearing for the last three days, since the rebels in eastern Aleppo went on a spree of shelling, targeting government-controlled neighborhoods.

The state of fear, resentment and grief has eclipsed Aleppo, Syria's second largest city and once an economic hub.

Over 1,100 mortar shells and improvised rockets slammed into Aleppo during the last three days, killing at least 50 people and wounding 400 others, not to mention the property losses of the Aleppans, who are among the most affected in the Syrian war.

Firefighters haven't found a minute of rest, as they are moving from one district to another trying to save as many as possible, especially those stuck under the rubble.

The blind shelling has targeted over 30 districts with different kinds of artillery, mainly the mortar shells and the "Hell Cannon," which is a general name used to describe a class of mortar-like improvised firearms in-use by insurgent forces during the war, mainly in the Aleppo area. It was first noted in 2013 and a number of home-made cannon variants have appeared in Syria since.

ANGRY PEOPLE

The people in Aleppo are boiling with anger, vehemently urging the government to quickly act to put an end to the deadly attacks that have added to the woes of the locals.

On Monday, the state-run Sama TV aired interviews with the angry people of Aleppo, just as a mortar shell slammed nearby.

The amount of anger exploding on a national TV was the first of its kind in the whole coverage of the official Syrian media.

One man came running from a cross the street, interrupting the reporter who was on a live coverage.

"Talk to me, talk to me, aren't you going to rid us of the terrorists before they eliminate us. It's enough, It's enough... Oh the government, oh the army, oh the president help us they just burnt my car. It's enough, they want to eliminate us," the angry man said, shouting his head off.

His wife came following him, also screaming on the camera: "It's enough destroy Bani Zaid and let's get done with this."

Bani Zaid as well as the Bustan al-Basha and Bab al-Hadid are districts in eastern Aleppo controlled by the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and other rebel brigades, and are the source of the mortar shells and the Hell Cannon.

Such areas have become a living nightmare for the people in western Aleppo, which has started suffering the frequent shelling in late 2012, before heavily intensifying in recent days.

"I have lost my wife, house and car... look at the destruction they have left. They killed us and destroyed our properties... there everything is burning and the firefighters haven't come yet," another angry man shouted.

"TRUCE OF DEATH"

The Truce of Death was another hashtag that was created during the last two days in Aleppo, referring the shaky truce that has been backed by the United States and Russia and went into effect in Syria last February.

The truce has excluded the Nusra Front and the Islamic State (IS) group, but the problem was that there are small groups that have pledged alliance to either group and those made applying the truce in Aleppo a difficult thing.

The people in Aleppo called the truce a truce of death because for them nothing has really changed, especially with the recent flared up attacks.

While the Syrian army said it had committed to the truce, which wasn't acknowledged by the rebels, the Nusra group and allied militants unleashed three wide-scale offensive on Syrian military positions in Aleppo over the past couple of weeks.

The army units have reportedly repelled the attacks, and engaged in more battles against the assailants.

As part of the old-new tactic, the insurgents started showering Aleppo with rockets to wobble the government's grip on power, and to turn the people in government-held areas against the government.

On Sunday, the Syrian army foiled a massive infiltration attempt by opposition militants in the western part of Aleppo, killing many of them, a military source told Xinhua.

The armed militants attempted to infiltrate the al-Assad Suburb west of Aleppo at dawn Sunday, but the Syrian army repelled the attack, after carrying out air strikes against the attackers' positions and shelling them with rockets and artillery, the source said on condition of anonymity.

He said the infiltrators were sneaking into the area through the sewage system.

The government forces backed by the Lebanese Hezbollah group and the Russian air force are trying to isolate the rebels in Aleppo and cut their supply lines from neighboring Turkey and other rebel-held areas in northern Syria, while the rebels are fighting to keep such lines opened.
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Eight militants of the Islamic State (IS) were killed in Syria on Monday when Turkish artillery units shelled a missile launcher, said a Turkish military statement.

The Turkish artillery units destroyed a missile launcher belonging to the IS group in a region north of Aleppo, six kilometers from the border and 21 kilometers from the center of the province of Kilis in southeastern Turkey, said the statement issued by the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces.

The Turkish military responded to the IS group that has fired 45 rockets hitting the province of Kilis and killing at least 16 people since Jan. 18 of this year.

Meanwhile, eight suspected IS members were apprehended on Monday in the Oguzeli town of the southeastern province of Gaziantep, a statement released by Gaziantep governor's office said, following the second IS attempt to infiltrate the town in the last week.

The Turkish security forces at the border detained the eight foreign IS suspects while they were trying to enter the country from Syria.

Turkey has recently been on high alert as the country has been rocked by a series of suicide and car bomb attacks which claimed many lives and wounded hundreds.
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A year after a series of major earthquakes devastated large areas of Nepal, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and partners are continuing to support green and sustainable post-disaster recovery in the country.

"As the reconstruction effort continues, UNEP will promote a green, resource-efficient and sustainable reconstruction process in the country, focused on environmental recovery, restoration of life- and livelihood-supporting ecosystems, and promoting resource efficiency," said Isabelle Louis, Regional Director and Representative, UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, in a press release.

"The aim is to ensure that the rebuilding results in enhanced environmental resilience of the people of Nepal and its ecosystems," she added.

The 25 April 2015 earthquake and its aftershocks killed more than 8,700 people, injured more than 22,000, and destroyed and damaged more than 250,000 houses. While 8.1 million people were directly affected, millions across the mainly rural nation were exposed to increased landslides. Major life-supporting ecosystems were also severely damaged.

UNEP said that a rapid environmental assessment undertaken by the Government of Nepal following the earthquake revealed significant destruction of forests and protected areas as well as damage to ecotourism infrastructure such as nature trails, trekking routes and camping sites.

The earthquake also destroyed renewable rural energy technology solutions such as improved cooking and biogas stoves. Water sources shifted in some areas, with reduced or no flows in places, and new sources starting to flow in others.

Freshwater ecosystems were also affected by increased sedimentation and some rivers were temporarily blocked by landslides. The economic cost of loss of ecosystems services from landslides has been estimated at nearly $328 million, according to the agency.

Following the earthquake, UNEP worked with the Government of Nepal to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts of the disaster. This included the development of a comprehensive waste management strategy at national and sub-national levels to manage the estimated 3.9 million tons of earthquake debris, which included hazardous material.

With landslides becoming three times more frequent following the earthquake, UNEP facilitated the sharing of best global practices on landslide management. Working with the Government and development partners, UNEP also identified opportunities to green the reconstruction process.

The Asia and Pacific region accounts for nearly half of the world's natural disasters. The five biggest disasters to strike Asia Pacific in 2013 caused some $100 billion in economic loss and killed more than 19,000 people.

UN calls for more investment in resilient infrastructure

In related news, the head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), Robert Glasser, today marked the anniversary of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal this past year with a call for greater investment in resilient infrastructure if the death toll from future earthquakes is to be reduced.

"The Nepal Earthquake was long forecast and worse could happen in the future," Mr. Glasser said. "As the rebuilding effort is now set to get under way in earnest, every support must be extended to the 3 million or more people who lost their homes a year ago so they build back better to earthquake-resistant standards."

Mr. Glasser said that UN Member States have recognized that reducing earthquake risk is a priority given that about 750,000 people have died in earthquakes and tsunamis over the past 20 years.

Nepal and recent earthquakes in Ecuador and Japan are a reminder of the urgent need to invest in disaster-resilient infrastructure as agreed in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. A major part of urban resilience is ensuring compliance with building codes and planning laws.

"Building back better cannot be done overnight," Mr. Glasser stressed.

"Nepal is a textbook example of how difficult and long drawn out the process can become when risk governance is complicated by the overall political context, including major gaps at the level of local government. The socio-economic impact of this disaster is enormous and it will have a long-term impact on the countrys development and the welfare of its people," he added.

Health sector partners review earthquake response

Along those lines, health sector partners recently reviewed lessons learned from the earthquake, and recommended strengthening and expanding emergency preparedness and response capacities beyond the national capital, and testing them periodically, to prepare better for future emergencies.

"We must learn from the Nepal earthquake, just as we did from the Indian Ocean tsunami. Applying lessons learned from such events can help strengthen our efforts for preventing emergencies from becoming disasters," said Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director for WHO South-East Asia.

Ms. Khetrapal Singh was addressing a two-day conference organized by the Ministry of Health, Nepal and WHO, in Kathmandu on 20-21 April. Priority lessons identified in the meeting will be consolidated into a road map for further action.

Among the key lessons highlighted at the conference was the need for extending emergency preparedness and response measures beyond the national capital, to the districts.

As more than 80 per cent of health facilities in the affected districts were either damaged or destroyed in the 2015 earthquake, the injured had to be rushed to hospitals in Kathmandu, which remained functional as they had been retrofitted, their staff trained in mass casualty management and they had emergency plans in place that were immediately activated.

"The preparations that were done in Kathmandu hospitals helped saved many lives. Similar preparations need to be put in place at all other levels too, so that in the event of an emergency, everyone throughout the health system is prepared and knows what to do," said Ms. Khetrapal Singh.

"As health facilities are being reconstructed, there is an opportunity to build better, and put more risk reduction measures in place," she added.

She stressed that stronger policies will be needed for ensuring that disaster risk reduction measures are implemented and emergency preparedness and response capacities are built at all levels, with all cadres of health staff trained.

"Strengthening emergency preparedness and response capacity should be an ongoing process in Nepal and in all other countries. With WHO South-East Asia Region prone to natural calamities, the lessons learnt from the Nepal earthquake are important for the entire region to prepare better to respond to emergencies," Ms. Khetrapal Singh concluded.
LAGOS - Nigeria's Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah, says Nigeria is open to long-term investments from China and called for deeper trade relations between the two nations.

Speaking on Monday at a town hall meeting in Lagos, Nigeria's economic hub, Enelamah said President Muhammadu Buhari brought the message to China during his recent visit.

"The message the president and our delegation took to China was that we are open for business; we want to collaborate with you and come and partner with us," the minister told his audience, adding the two sides signed several agreements during Buhari's visit.

"It should be pointed out that both countries make a lot of economic importance, not just to the world, but also to their respective continent," he added.

The Nigerian government also acknowledges that there's much Nigeria can learn from China, Enelamah said.

"For example, we view with admiration, what China has accomplished by lifting hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty over the cause of just one generation," he said.

Enelamah said the government aimed to create an "industrial revolution" in Nigeria and make it easier to do business in the country.

"We also want to address the trade deficit which means that we want long-term investment... which China is by the way open to," he said.

Organized by the Ministry of Information, the town hall meeting was attended by six federal government ministers, state officials, representatives of industries, diplomats, traditional rulers, and students.

On his part, Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Ameachi said Nigeria was proud of its partnership with China, especially in the area of rail construction and other infrastructure projects.

He said the government would embark on different railway projects across the country immediately the 2016 budget is signed, including the Lagos-Calabar line.
HANGZHOU - Police in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou are hunting the boss of a wealth management company who disappeared with about a billion yuan ($153 million) of investors' money.

Investors in Wangzhou Fortune have been reporting problems with the company's cash flow since April 18. More than 20,000 people have invested a total of about 2.2 billion yuan in the company, which has dozens of branches in major Chinese cities, Hangzhou police told Xinhua.

The conglomerate Wangzhou Group, parent of Wangzhou Fortune, confirmed its chairman Yang Weiguo's disappearance on Thursday. Wangzhou Group also closed its shopping mall in Hangzhou after the scandal emerged.

To repay investors, Wangzhou Group will retrieve about a billion yuan after receiving principal and interest payments from its lending. It will try to cover the 1.2 billion yuan gap by selling properties, according to a statement from the company.

Wangzhou Group has more than 200 subsidiaries in commerce, automobiles, health and wealth management, including Wangzhou Fortune. It employs some 7,000 people in 70 cities.
A man looks at an Airbus plane model during the Beijing International Aviation Expo in Beijing. BOC Aviation owned and managed 270 aircraft at the end of 2015, with narrow-body planes from Airbus Group SE and Boeing Co making up 79 percent of the total.[Photo/Agencies] BOC Aviation Ltd begins assessing demand for its listing in Hong Kong

BOC Aviation Ltd, Asia's biggest aircraft-leasing company by asset value, has begun gauging demand for a Hong Kong initial public offering that could raise as much as $1.5 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said on Monday.

The Singapore-based company, owned by Bank of China Ltd, expects to start taking investor orders in mid-May, according to the people, who asked not to be identified as the information is private. It plans to start trading at the end of May.

The BOC said in a written statement sent to China Daily: "Seeking the spinoff and listing will help BOC Aviation realize its actual value and enhance the brand image of the BOC Group."

According to the statement, BOC Aviation filed an application for listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on March 4. After BOC Aviation gets listed, BOC will keep a controlling share of the subsidiary whose financial statistics will appear on the financial statements of the group.

At the end of 2015, BOC Aviation posted a $343 million profit after tax. Its total assets reached $12.5 billion. The company has a portfolio of 270 owned and managed aircraft leased to 62 airlines in 30 countries.

Asian leasing companies are boosting fleets as the region is set to overtake the United States as the world's largest market for aircraft in two decades. Economic growth in China, India and Southeast Asia is spurring air travel and encouraging more companies such as billionaire Li Ka-shing's CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd to enter the plane-leasing market, whose returns can exceed those of airlines and are usually locked in through multiyear contracts.

"This is a good buy," said Shukor Yusof, founder of aviation consultancy Endau Analytics in Malaysia. "It's a lucrative and attractive investment. Return on investment is more than 10 percent in this business, more than investing in airlines."

BOC Aviation is planning to list at a time when Hong Kong equities are approaching a bull market, with the benchmark Hang Seng Index rising 17 percent from its low this year in February. First-time share sales in the city have raised $4.1 billion this year, down from $7.1 billion the same period in 2015, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

The company plans to use the proceeds from the IPO to fund pre-delivery payments for new aircraft, as well as future plane purchases, according to terms for the deal obtained by Bloomberg on Monday.

"Our core business model is focused on purchasing new, fuel-efficient, in-demand aircraft at competitive prices directly from manufacturers," BOC Aviation said in the prospectus.
Chen Shengyu, general manager of Philips's healthcare information solution and service in China.

Royal Philips NV will deploy more healthcare solutions in a number of areas in China this year as the country copes with a surge in chronic diseases brought on by an aging population, company executives said.

The Dutch company will mainly focus on heart diseases, cancers, respiratory illnesses and fertility issues under its new plan.

Philips will also introduce new medical products and devices such as the latest expectoration and X-ray machines, color Dopplers and diagnostics sets as the company competes with established rivals.

Andy Ho, chief executive officer of Philips China, said China's hospital service system is under pressure by the growing number of senior citizens, patients with chronic diseases and shortage of available healthcare resources.

"Many Chinese consumers therefore are keen to manage their families' health on their own with the assistances of doctors, healthcare devices and services," said Ho.

"This trend has pushed healthcare industry to shift the developing focus from hospital care to low-cost family care."

As a part of the company's strategic transformation, Philips has also introduced a big data- and internet-based HealthSuite Digital Platform to establish a new clinical ecosystem in China this month.

"Its aim is to gradually provide complete medical information system solutions through data analyzing, application and integration, which can effectively provide predictable solutions for both patients and hospitals, as well as cutting patients' travel costs and make their symptoms more comparable," said Chen Shengyu, general manager of Philips's healthcare information solution and service in China.

"Healthcare big data can be used to improve management efficiency and innovate business models, giving a new impetus for the industry, which would be fairly useful to battle various chronic diseases as China's large demographic of elderly people grow older," Chen said.

Chronic diseases, which typically last more than three months, caused 85 percent of deaths in China, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

Expenditure in treating these diseases accounted for more than 70 percent of the country's total healthcare costs in 2015. Common chronic diseases include cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

About 10 million people in China have suffered from chronic diseases every year since 2002. Prevention and the control of chronic diseases are one of China's major healthcare reform tasks leading up to 2020.
BEIJING - Outstanding loans extended by China's micro-credit companies amounted to 938 billion yuan ($144 billion) by the end of March, data from the central bank showed on Monday.

The volume was down 3.2 billion yuan from the end of 2015.

By the end of March, the number of micro-credit companies in China came in at 8,867, the People's Bank of China said in a statement on its website.

Micro-lenders largely target small companies and low-income groups in need of capital. In recent years, micro-lending companies have become an important channel for medium- and small-sized firms as well as individuals to access funds.

The central bank report showed East China's Jiangsu province had 637 small-credit companies by September, the most of any provincial-level region, followed by Liaoning province and Hebei province.
A general view of the event 'Chianti Classic Collection', a preview of new vintages and productions that will go on the market, whose theme this year is 'The 300th anniversary of the first wine-making region', Florence, Italy, 15 February 2016.[Photo/IC]

ROME - Young consumers in China showed a strong purchase power in wine consumption while Italian wine seemed to have earned a reputation among them, a recent survey has said.

According to the survey conducted by Italian Wine Monitor of Nomisma institute on a sample of 1,200 Chinese, some 32 percent of young Chinese involved in the study saw wine as the flagship of Made in Italy, ahead of other traditional industries such as fashion, interior design and food.

About 68 percent of them considered wine from Italy and France as equal in quality.

Young Chinese "are developing a growing interest in wine consumption, and this is a relevant signal for Italy's wine industry," Business Strategies CEO Silvana Ballotta told Xinhua.

The firm assists some 400 Italian wine companies in their internationalization process.

Chinese consumption behavior is drawing increasing attention from Italian winemakers and sector analysts. The study believes that more and more Chinese consumers join the force of enjoying wine.

Nomisma Wine Monitor survey coordinator Silvia Zucconi told Xinhua,"This is a great opportunity which Italian winemakers still have to take fully."

The recent survey offered hope."We have found out Italian wine has a strong reputation among Chinese young generations, and suffers no qualitative gap compared to French wine in their perception," Zucconi said.

When asked to compare Italy and France's wine, some 68 percent of the Chinese in the study said they considered them equal in terms of quality, and 22 percent considered Italian wine superior.

"We also asked them to define the characteristics of Italian wine, and the two most-used terms by Chinese were elegance and quality,"said the analyst, adding that "it means our products have earned a very good brand image."
GUANGZHOU - Vice-Premier Wang Yang called for more to be done to promote foreign trade while visiting Shenzhen on Monday, as foreign trade will continue to propel economic growth.

"More must be done to mobilize the enthusiasm and creativity of enterprises to make foreign trade more stable and stronger," Wang said.

Wang visited companies including Huawei, drone-maker DJI-Innovations and mobile phone manufacturer Transsion Holdings. He said China still has competitive advantages in foreign trade thanks to the emergence of innovation-driven growth engines, while traditional drivers are still functional.

"Foreign trade should be put in a prominent position in our economic work at present," he said, adding that targeted supportive measures should be carried out and protection of intellectual property rights enhanced.

Tepid global demand and slowing domestic economy have dealt a blow to China's foreign trade. It fell 7 percent year on year in 2015, with exports down 1.8 percent and imports down 13.2 percent.

Data in March provided some relief. Exports surged 18.7 percent year on year, the first increase since December, compared with falls of 20.6 percent in February and 6.6 percent in January. Imports dipped 1.7 percent, an improvement from February's 8-percent drop.
Lang Jing, secretary general of Chinese Returned Overseas Scholars Entrepreneur Parks' Alliance, speaks at the launching ceremony of 'Returnee Entrepreneurship Park' in Beijing on April 26, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A 'Returnee Entrepreneurship Park' was launched at a ceremony in Beijing on Tuesday in a bid to help returnees start businesses and incubate programs for long term development.

Hosted by Chinese Returned Overseas Scholars Entrepreneur Parks' Alliance and Haidian District's Bureau of Forestry, the park aims to encourage mass entrepreneurship and innovation as well as look for methods to combine forestry resources with technology to deepen eco-innovation.

More than 80 representatives including investment institutions, entrepreneurs and returnees joined the ceremony and witnessed the opening of the parks training camp as well as road show of potential start-up programs.

The park will host lectures and road shows for returnees and also provide returnees with policy interpretation and opportunities to share their experiences.

Lang Jing, secretary general of Chinese Returned Overseas Scholars Entrepreneur Parks' Alliance, said the park serves as a platform which includes training, communication and incubation. "We aim to build a demonstration base and a mature model that can be promoted nationwide and form a network for returnee entrepreneurs," he said.
Adrian van Hooydonk (center), head of BMW Group Design, and other executive designers discuss the design of the Vision Next 100 concept car. PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

The BMW Group's Vision Next 100 concept car unveiled at the Centenary Event in March in Munich presented a glimpse into the future: comprehensive mobility tailored to every customer's preferences.

The Vision Next 100 underpins the BMW Group's four strategies for the future: being driver-focused, merging artificial intelligence and intuitive technology, employing new materials to open up opportunities, and putting emotion into mobility.

"As a designer, if you are able to imagine something, there's a good chance it could one day become reality," said Adrian van Hooydonk, head of BMW Group Design. "Our objective with the BMW Vision Next 100 was to develop a future scenario that people would engage with."

The luxury carmaker's concept car combines coupe-type sportiness with the dynamic elegance of a sedan. It is a highly customized vehicle that is tailored to suit the driver's changing needs.

The automaker said driver-vehicle interactions would be managed by its Alive Geometry system, while the Boost and Ease systems offer a choice of driver-controlled or vehicle-controlled operations. The car would allow changes to the interior depending on the mode of travel, the company said.

Artistic rendering of the two modes of the concept car. PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

The design team took into account trends and technological developments that will be most relevant to BMW in the decades ahead. They also took many of their cues from innovations and designs of the past.

In developing the concept vehicle, the main objective was to create a highly personalized car fully geared to meet the driver's every need that also can build an emotional connection between BMW and its driver.

"Technology should be as intuitive as possible to operate and experience so that future interactions between human, machine and surroundings become seamless," said Van Hooydonk. "The BMW Vision Next 100 shows how we intend to shape this future."

A key factor in the BMW Group's vision of tomorrow's world has always been typical of the BMW brand: The desire to be uncompromising in its future focus on technologies and customer value.

The concept car will go on a global tour that starts this May entitled "Iconic Impulses", with stops in China, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The exhibition is to present the view of future individual mobility - a perspective that sees the BMW Group and its brands continuing to create positive, emotional and personal experiences for its customers.

To mark its centenary year in 2016, the group is looking further ahead than usual with a series of Vision Vehicles designed to anticipate and respond to people's future mobility demands.

After Vision Next 100's Asian premiere in Beijing from May 6 to 15, it will travel to London, where the Vision Vehicles of the British MINI and Rolls-Royce brands will be unveiled. It will then stop in Los Angeles, where BMW Motorrad will add its Vision Vehicle to the collection to complete the quartet of brands.
Visitors look at a new-energy vehicle at a recent auto exhibition in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. [Su Yang / For China Daily]

Convergence digitalization and car sharing services expected to boost the sale of NEVs

The 2016 Beijing Auto Show, much like other recent shows held in Detroit, New York and Geneva, is expected to feature a range of sport utility vehicles and luxury models.

But for those with an interest in China's automotive industry, the auto show will be interesting for the domestically produced electric vehicles.

China's new energy vehicle market grew spectacularly in the last year. According to statistics from Gasgoo, an automotive intelligence survey covering the Chinese market, the number of NEV units sold last year reached 331,000, a 340 percent increase on the previous year.

China has now surpassed the United States as the largest NEV market globally, and the total cumulative number of NEV units sold in China exceeds the rest of the top eight countries combined. As well as the US, these are the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan.

This is the result of heavy levels of support from the central and provincial governments, including subsidies and tax relief, as well as other policy initiatives such as a recent stipulation from the State Council that electric vehicles should make up half of all public institutions' annual vehicle purchases.

The government's attempts to spur the NEV market are aimed at achieving the twin objectives of developing a domestic car industry to compete with foreign manufacturers - beit in a certain segment of the market - d helping to mitigate some of the environmental problems associated with the country's rapid urbanization.

Two trends spur market

In spite of the industry's current reliance on State support, there are two related developments that suggest that NEVs will catch on. The first is the emergence of a cluster of carsharing start-ups in several major Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Hangzhou.

Following on from the example of other successful car-sharing companies in a number of major Western cities including New York, London, Paris and Berlin, these companies are seeking to tap into the growing sharing economy.

Whereas previously customers opted for traditional vehicle ownership regardless of how frequently the car was used, more urban residents are demonstrating an increasing preference for mobility on demand due to the flexibility and reduced total cost of ownership.

Chinese consumers opting for car sharing often demonstrate a stronger preference for environmentally friendly vehicles including NEVS. As the number of car-sharing companies grows in China, this will have a knock-on effect on demand for NEVs.

Another trend that will be on display at the Beijing show is the growing convergence between the technology and automotive industries, a development often referred to as digitalization. Consumers have shown an increasing demand for digital products and services, which has prompted a number of technology companies such as Apple and Google to start making in-roads into the automotive industry. These companies are seeking to establish themselves as the main facilitators of the new customer-car interface.

KPMG's 2016 Global Automotive Executive Survey showed how disruptive this development could be. Over half of the executives canvassed cited connectivity and digitalization as the biggest industry disruptor over the next decade, surpassing growth from emerging markets, which was seen as the most important trend in the previous year's survey.

This is especially applicable to China as the country's industry is far younger and more flexible than mature markets. Over 90 percent of Chinese executives surveyed by KPMG said they expect disruption triggered by connectivity to affect automotive companies across all segments compared with a global average of 74 percent. Since most customers of car sharing services use smartphones to hire vehicles, this too is expected to have a knock-on effect on the sale of NEVs.

China's automotive industry is one of the fastest-growing globally and it is also one of the most rapidly changing. The convergence of two trends in the automotive industry - gitalization and car sharing services - expected to boost the sale of NEVs, which is a trend the Chinese government is actively encouraging.

In 2015, the government introduced subsidies of 31,500 yuan ($4,847) to 54,000 yuan per vehicle depending on the range of the car.

Although these are projected to fall to 28,800 yuan to 49,500 yuan by 2017 and then to 25,920 yuan to 44,550 yuan in 2019, according to Automotive Foresight, a Shanghai-based research firm covering the automotive industry, China's electric vehicle market should continue to grow provided battery costs continue to fall.

The lack of charging infrastructure and the need for improvements in battery range are the biggest barriers to mass adoption of electric cars.

But China's commitment to fostering the use of NEVs and the vast sums spent on research and development suggest that these obstacles will be overcome. For anyone interested in the future of not just the Chinese automotive industry but the global automotive industry, the Beijing auto show should be an interesting event to observe.

The author is head of Automotive Sector China, KPMG China.

(China Daily 04/25/2016 page36)




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The Boyue, a sport utility vehicle by Geely that incorporates many Chinese elements in its design, on display at an auto show in Hainan province. [Provided To China Daily]

Car buyers are becoming more diverse, demanding product options that let them remain connected

The Beijing international motor show sees a number of domestic and international automakers incorporating Chinese features into their design.

Geely is only one of several Chinese manufacturers leveraging their international expertise to cultivate their own design DNA and develop their own brands.

On March 26, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, might have been the happiest leader of an automaker, as he witnessed the launch of the Emgrand Boyue after four years' development.

The event drew wide attention, not only because the car's base price of 94,800 yuan ($14,590), including manufacturer's subsidy, is much below market expectations, but because the compact SUV, designed by Peter Horbury, Volvo senior vice-president, was hailed as the most beautiful SUV in China by the media.

With more than 20 years' design experience for Aston Martin, Jaguar and Volvo, Horbury came up with a bold and sharp design for the vehicle featuring "a leaping cheetah" sideline and "floating" roof.

The Boyue contains a lot of Chinese elements in its design, such as the front in the shape of a bird's wing, the grill frame styled like a wave, and the lines of the instrument panel, which resemble an ancient Chinese bridge.

Geely is hoping the Boyue will achieve monthly sales of 10,000 units upon maturity.

However, with the Chinese market contributing nearly 30 percent of their global sales in total, international automakers are also working hard to better tailor their cars to the Chinese market.

The most common adaptations are longer wheelbases and smaller displacement turbo engines. The all-new Mercedes-Benz E class, the Audi A4L, the Jaguar XFL, as well as the VW New Magotan and Citoren C6, all feature wheelbases that are extended 100 mm or 150 mm over the original to provide more legroom.

Likewise the 1.4-liter engine of the Audi A4L and VW New Magotan, the 1.2L engine of the Nissan Tiida, the 1.5L engine of the 10th generation Honda Civic, and the 1.4L engine of the Jeep Renegade have all been specially calibrated for Chinese consumers so they can enjoy the government subsidies on engines smaller than 1.6 liters.

When purchasing a car, Chinese consumers are primarily concerned about safety (72 percent) and telematics functionality (45 percent), according to a Nielsen survey.

They see better equipped models as a reward and a means of self-expression.

Both Chinese and foreign automakers have responded to this by adding more active safety and infortainment and driver assistance features such as lane assistance, blind spot monitoring, adaptive cruise control and auto parking.

April's Beijing auto show will not only feature models with LCD screens enlarged from 7 inches to 10 inches or even 12.3 inches, but also more innovative interactive features such as voice control, mobile mapping and WiFi connection.

New group of buyers

Still, car manufacturers have to do more if they hope to win Chinese consumers.

Currently car buyers are mainly from middle class families in the first- and second-tier cities, whose monthly incomes are around 10,000 to 30,000 yuan, and well-off families in the third- and fourth-tier cities, whose monthly income is from 3,000 to 8,000 yuan.

However, a third group of buyers, new city immigrants, is fast growing. Every year, China's urbanization drive sees millions of people migrate from rural to urban areas, from inland smaller cities to large cities along the affluent eastern coastal regions and in the Yangtze River Delta region.

This population is projected to grow from the current 253 million to 291 million in 2020. As they become more stabilized and affluent, with extended families, their desire to own a private car drives them to dealers' showrooms.

Nielsen research indicates the car purchase budgets of new city immigrants' ranges from 80,000 yuan to 180,000 yuan. Their preferred types are sedans, hatchbacks and smallsized SUVs. Most of them are exposed to international car brands every day from which they learn about design and technologies. Their primary requirements are for a safe and quality product at an affordable price, as well as one that offers trouble-free service. Therefore they have no strong brand or body type preference as long as their needs are fulfilled.

Winning formula

However, this emerging consumer group is the rule-changer. Simply copying designs from best-selling car models and offering them at a lower price will not be enough to please these buyers.

When it comes to cars, the winning formula is for the product to meet the needs of consumers and delivers distinctive benefits. However, to achieve distinctive benefits is far from easy. According to a recent testing of 24,654 new product launches in the food, beverages and personal care categories, only 15 new products succeeded in meeting the three key criteria: relevant, enduring and distinctive. That's a success rate of less than 0.1 percent.

But these 15 products not only received breakthrough innovation awards from Nielsen, they were rewarded by the market, as their prices were 250 percent higher than the average in the categories they belonged to.

Car buyers are becoming more diverse, and they want more personalized products that let them stay connected.

Auto manufacturers now need to look beyond the bestselling body types and come up with versatile vehicle designs with more consumer-centric telematics. They have to forget the traditional definitions of premium or mass features, and package the most desirable technologies and equipment to maximize customer benefits.

The author is director of Auto vertical, Nielsen China.

(China Daily 04/25/2016 page38)
Lincoln presents its vehicles at the ongoing Auto China 2016 at the China International Exhibition Center in Beijing. Photo provided to China Daily

Ford Motor's luxury arm is gaining traction in the Chinese market after a fruitful 2015 thanks to its stellar car ownership standards, an increasing lineup of vehicles and a growing network of dealers.

The iconic automotive brand sold 5,484 vehicles during the first quarter, a 240 percent surge year-on-year. It delivered 11,630 cars to Chinese customers in 2015, the brand's first full year in the country.

Much of that strong performance is due to the positive market reception of Lincoln's SUVs, specifically the medium-large premium utility Lincoln MKX that launched in October 2015.

It is currently offering the MKX, the MKC and the Navigator in China's SUV segment, the fastest growing sector in the Chinese auto market.

According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, 1.96 million SUVs were sold in the first quarter, a 51.5 percent surge year-on-year and a continuation of the sales momentum seen last year.

"Our performance in the first quarter demonstrates the strength of the customer reception for our products and the unique one-size-fits-one-customer experience of The Lincoln Way," said Robert Parker, president of Lincoln China. "Our commitment to understanding these new luxury customers is gaining momentum and we will continue our pursuit to deliver personalized experiences through world class dealers."

By the end of March, Chinese customers could access The Lincoln Way in 37 dealerships across the country. The automaker said it is on track to expand its presence to 60 stores in 50 cities by year's end.

The staff will be trained at The Lincoln Institute to deliver a personally crafted experience at dealerships.

The Lincoln Institute is maintained by a five-star hospitality team. Staff employees of dealerships learn how to deliver high-quality personalized service with an understanding of luxury retail and high-end hospitality from colleges of hospitality, core competency, tech and engineering and human resources management and support.

"Lincoln has always been known for its personalized service. Now, the institute will ensure each staff member personifies The Lincoln Way by shedding the traditional mindset of the detached, sales-centric approach," Parker said.

The experience has also been made available online through a project called The Virtual Lincoln Way, an industry-first initiative that allows customers to manage their automotive purchases and ownership online.

Customers can schedule a test drive with a Lincoln store at a convenient time and location, including at their own homes in select cities.

Through the online platforms, they can also completely build a vehicle's exterior and interior, check dealer inventory and receive credit approval for a new car through tablets provided by Lincoln Hosts in less than an hour.

The initiative will broaden its functions in the future so customers can manage their vehicle purchase and ownership conveniently.

Lincoln is enriching its portfolio with another two new vehicles this year, the new Lincoln Continental, a full-size luxury sedan, and the updated Lincoln MKZ, a midsize premium sedan.

Both models feature Lincoln's new signature grille and incorporate the Lincoln philosophy of "Quiet Luxury", which offers a personally tailored level of sophistication.

The full-size sedan is designed to appeal to culturally progressive clients who define luxury on their own terms, craving superior quality, craftsmanship and safety.

Once dubbed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright as "the most beautiful car in the world", the Lincoln Continental is a legend in the automotive industry.

Elegant, effortlessly powerful and serene, the all-new Lincoln Continental revitalizes the brand's heritage and pushes Lincoln's innovations and craftsmanship to a higher level.

"The Lincoln Continental marks the arrival of Lincoln's fifth product introduction in the last two years," said Parker. "As we expand our lineup, we are making every Lincoln an expression of individuality that connects emotionally with our customers."

Lincoln currently has four products available in the Chinese market. It introduced its midsize sedan MKZ and medium-sized utility MKC in 2014. The medium-large sized SUV Lincoln MKX hit the market last October and the full-size Navigator was unveiled a month later at the Guangzhou auto show.

The Navigator strengthens Lincoln's position in the SUV segment by retaining its loyal following in the segment that is more than a decade old.

Lincoln presents its vehicles at the ongoing Auto China 2016 at the China International Exhibition Center in Beijing.

Kumar Galhotra, president of Lincoln. [Photo provided to China Daily] Q+A: KUMAR GALHOTRA Q+A: KUMAR GALHOTRA

How do you see Lincoln's relationship with dealers?

As a new brand coming to China, our relationship with dealerships is crucial and we consider them our partners. Our dealer partners are fantastic. Relations with the entire dealership body are very, very strong, and that is a key part of our growth plan in China.

What is Lincoln's strategy in China?

In terms of the overall strategy for the Lincoln brand in the country, it is really threefold: products, experiences and brand strengths. And products and experiences are actually what create the brand strengths. Our brand is highly regarded in China. But we are not taking that for granted. We are deploying a very broad product portfolio to meet all our Chinese customers' needs. And we have developed a fantastic experience called The Lincoln Way.

What is your understanding of China's position in luxury markets?

Speaking of luxury markets, globally there are three geographic regions. They are Americas, Europe and China. At the moment, the US is the largest luxury market and we believe China is a very close second and very soon it will become the largest global luxury market. So it is one of the most important markets for Lincoln.

Milestones

2014

April 17

The US luxury brand announces in Beijing that it will be launching "personally crafted luxury" called The Lincoln Way in China. The new MKC and MKZ are presented to Chinese customers.

April 20

The Lincoln MKX concept car makes its world debut at Auto China in Beijing.

June 27-Oct 10

The Lincoln Space China Tour sets out from Shanxi province. It travels to Chengdu, Sichuan province; Guangzhou, Guangdong province; Shanghai; Hangzhou, Zhejiang province; and Qingdao, Shandong province.

Oct 23

Lincoln officially launches in China and announces the retail pricing for the MKZ and MKC.

Nov 6

The first three Lincoln stores open in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou.

2015

March 26

Pricing of the MKZ and MKC Lincoln Presidential Series is announced to Chinese customers.

April 20

The newly expanded Lincoln lineup is presented at Auto Shanghai 2015 with the debut of three new models - the Lincoln Continental Concept, MKX and Navigator. Presale prices for the new Lincoln MKX are announced.

Sept 14

The first phase of The Virtual Lincoln Way is unveiled. The project is designed to satisfy growing customer demand for different ways to shop, buy and deliver vehicles online.

Oct 20

The medium-large sized SUV MKX hits the market in Beijing.

Nov 20

The prices for the full-size SUV Lincoln Navigator are announced at Auto Guangzhou 2015, and phase two of the Virtual Lincoln Way is unveiled at the event.

2016

Jan 8

Lincoln announced it sold 11,630 cars in 2015, the first full year for the US premium brand in China.

April 25

The third phase of the Virtual Lincoln Way is unveiled and another two cars, the Lincoln Continental and the 2017 new Lincoln MKZ, are showcased at the Beijing auto show.
JTACO Ltd, a leading Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) manufacture, makes its debut at the 14th Beijing International Automotive Exhibition in 2016 (Auto China 2016) started in Beijing on April 25 and become a focus of media attention.

The JATCO booth exhibits the "Jatco CVT7 Wide Range (W/R) " that was into the Chinese market last year and comes with the Nissan LANNIA, as well as the "Jatco CVT7", "Jatco CVT8", "Jatco CVT8 HYBRID" that account for 90 percent of JATCOs global CVT sales volume, and step ATs, hybrid transmissions.

In addition, a CVT virtual driving experience area based on virtual reality technologies will be available at the booth, allowing visitors to experience CVT driving in person, and understand that the transmission transmits the power of the engine or motor through optimum control, and plays a vital role in realizing automotive dynamics and fuel economy.

At the debut at Auto China 2016, Teruaki Nakatsuka, President and CEO, said, "JATCO aims to contribute to the satisfaction of Chinese customers and the Chinese automotive industry with its high-technology and high-quality automatic transmissions backed with its long cultivated technological capabilities and market acceptance over the years."

An automotive transmission is a speed change device used to coordinate engine speed with actual wheel driving speed, transmit engine power in an optimum manner so that the vehicle can run as intended by the driver. If the engine is compared to the heart of the human body, then the automotive transmission is the brain.

In expanding 2 pedal transmissions market in China, CVTs with its excellent environmental and driving performance, are also increasing. One of every five 2 pedal vehicles sold in the Chinese market comes with a CVT in 2015. Also the CVT was included in the Catalogue of Industries for Guiding Foreign Investment as an encouraged product in 2015.

JATCO (Guangzhou) Automatic Transmission Ltd was funded in 2007 and put into operation in 2009, specializing in the production of key serial products like the "Jatco CVT7 W/R", "Jatco CVT7" and "Jatco CVT8", with an annual production capacity of 1 million units.

As a specialized manufacturer of automatic transmissions, JATCO has industrialized a number of "the worlds first" technologies, and always has led the industrys development. In particular in the CVT field, JATCO has always been the global market share leader of the whole CVT series from mini-, small vehicles to 3.5L-class vehicles as the worlds sole manufacturer.

In the global CVT output of 2015, JATCO held the highest share of 41 precent in the industry. By the end of March 2016, JATCO was also the worlds first and only manufacturer that had made 30 million CVTs.
A child attends an Earth Hour activity in Shanghai in March calling for environmental protection. The event was started in 2007 by the WorldWide Fund for Nature, an environmental NGO. CHINA DAILY

Rapid expansion has made the new provisions for certain groups 'necessary', lawmaker says

A draft law to regulate NGOs from outside the Chinese mainland eases restrictions on their operations and activities.

The bill was submitted for its third reading to the bimonthly session of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, which runs from Monday to Thursday.

Xu Xianming, deputy head of the NPC Law Committee, said the bill regulates the activities of overseas NGOs in China and protects their rights and interests.

Many overseas NGOs have engaged in charity and academic exchanges in China and have played a positive role since the reform and opening-up drive started in the late 1970s.

"Since their number has grown quickly and their activities have intensified, it is necessary to have a law to regulate and guide them," Xu said.

Exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and overseas colleges, hospitals and research institutes of science and engineering will follow existing regulations.

The bill removes the restriction of only one office for NGOs on the Chinese mainland, though their number and locations must be approved by the regulatory authority.

The five-year limit on operations of representative offices in China will also be deleted.

Representative offices of overseas NGOs and overseas NGOs carrying out temporary activities in China are forbidden from recruiting members on the mainland without the permission of the State Council.

The restrictions on staff and volunteers will be removed, but tougher rules would be imposed on finances, including sources of funds and expenses. They should have their financial reports audited and published.

The proposed new law stipulates that overseas NGOs should report to the regulator 15 days before their program begins, and their Chinese partners should obtain approval.

The bill allows the police to interview chief representatives and senior executives of overseas NGOs, and force the Chinese partner to terminate a cooperation program if it is considered to undermine State security.

Overseas NGOs that engage in illegal activities, including those to subvert the State and split the nation, will be blacklisted and banned from operating on the mainland.

Other drafts to be discussed

Public cultural services

A draft law to protect public cultural services was handed to the NPC Standing Committee for discussion on Monday. It clarifies requirements for building public culture facilities and improving cultural products and activities, in a move to satisfy demand and push related industries' development. Facilities identified in the draft include a library, technology museum and stadium. Where to build such facilities should be subject to public opinion, the draft said, and no one should change or occupy such places.

Wildlife protection

The revised draft Law on Protection of Wildlife was presented to top legislature for second reading on Monday. If passed, it would be the first revision of the law since it took effect in 1989. The revised draft has so far incorporated five amendments based on public concerns about wildlife protection.

National defense

The draft Law on National Defense Transportation was submitted to the top legislature on Monday. The draft is the first legislation made for the military since November 2012. It aims at regulating the People's Liberation Army's transportation and improving the military's strategic projection capability, according to experts.




A Shanghai Disney-themed airplane has made its debut in Shanghai on April 25, 2016. The plane, operated by China Eastern Airlines, is painted blue across the body with two giant Mickey and Minnie Mouse figures. More Disney-themed planes will meet visitors in the near future. The Shanghai Disneyland opens on June 16. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

Shanghai has made full preparations for the June opening of the Shanghai Disney Resort, Disney's first theme park in the Chinese mainland. The resort is scheduled to open on June 16.

A Shanghai Disney-themed airplane has made its debut in Shanghai on April 25, 2016. The plane, operated by China Eastern Airlines, is painted blue across the body with two giant Mickey and Minnie Mouse figures. More Disney-themed planes will meet visitors in the near future.

Meanwhile, the Disney resort station on the subway line 11 in Shanghai has also been decorated with Disney cartoon figures, and it will start a trial operation on Tuesday morning.

The Shanghai Disney Resort is Disney's sixth resort worldwide. Construction began in 2011 in Pudong New District. The resort is expected to attract 10 million visits each year, according to Shanghai Shendi Group, Disney's Chinese partner.




Premier Li Keqiang encouraged Chinese engineers on Monday to develop integrated innovations by going abroad to absorb advanced technologies.

"Engineers should go to developed countries to see applications of new technologies and develop insights from them," Li said during a visit to Sichuan province.

While visiting Dongfang Electric Corp, a leading manufacturer of hydropower and nuclear power in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, Li inspected the company's labs for developing fuel cells to store electricity and new forms of energy.

The company showed the premier its technologies and products for hydropower, nuclear power, gas turbines and batteries using new forms of energy. Li said it was the first time he had seen Chinese-made equipment for fuel cells and gas turbines.

However, on seeing the company's vanadium redox battery, a rechargeable battery that uses vanadium ions to store potential chemical energy, he told the engineers of a smaller, more efficient VRB that he saw in the UK. He also shared his knowledge of German hydrogen battery stations when engineers showed their latest achievements in this field.

The premier found that few engineers had visited counterpart companies in developed economies, and most of Dongfang's engineers rely on online sources to gain information on leading global manufacturers and new achievements in their fields.

They told the premier they haven't had a chance to see how technologies have been applied more efficiently in other countries.

"China has made innovations based on absorbing foreign technologies for years, and now our engineers have to promote integrated innovation and original ideas," Li told the company's employees. "That's why our researchers and engineers have to go out to see and learn.

"China will continue to learn the most advanced achievements of the human race, but also has to promote original technologies," he added.

Li Hang, an engineer at Dongfang, said a close look at technologies or processes would help scientists and engineers gain a broader idea and develop new products with the insights gained from overseas visits.
A rising number of foreigners have been held accountable for intellectual property infringement in Shanghai, a senior official with the city's prosecuting agency said on Monday while reviewing cases from the past four years.

Some foreign violators secretly purchased and transported counterfeit versions of products with registered trademarks to foreign countries and then sold them to dealers overseas, said Zhou Yongnian, vice-president of the Shanghai People's Procuratorate. Zhou made the remarks during a media briefing on Monday, one day ahead of World Intellectual Property Day.

Xiao Kai, head of the department of financial cases at the procuratorate, said, "The number of such cases that were planned by foreigners who organized Chinese to manufacture counterfeit products in China has risen in the past years." He declined to give a number.

A British man, whom the prosecuting agency identified only as L, together with a Chinese accomplice surnamed Xu, purchased counterfeit UGG boots, Hunter rain boots, Chanel sunglasses and Ray-Ban eyeglasses, and shipped them to the United Kingdom by giving false information to customs about the items.

L was responsible for seeking clients in the UK, and Xu followed up on orders, made payments and kept accounts, authorities said. From May 2010 to February 2013, the two made more than 4.25 million yuan ($654,000) from counterfeit products.

Their criminal practice was exposed in February 2013, when customs officials discovered more than 12,300 pairs of Ray-Ban eyeglasses and more than 2,800 Chanel sunglasses in their package bound for the UK. All the products were identified as counterfeit by the trademark holders.

L was sentenced to one year and six months in prison, fined 500,000 yuan and ordered deported from China by a Shanghai court in January. Xu was sentenced to one year in prison with a one-year reprieve and fined 20,000 yuan.
The sudden death of a 14-year-old boy at a factory in Foshan city, Guangdong province, has triggered a citywide campaign against the exploitation of child laborers in the Pearl River Delta hub.

The campaign, which started on Monday, was launched by the Foshan bureau of human resources and social security and aims to protect young workers in the densely populated production base in the southern province.

Labor-intensive manufacturing industries - including the garment, shoe, food and metal industries - plus hotels and restaurants will be the major targets of the special campaign, according to a statement from the bureau.

"Those who violate laws and regulations will be seriously punished," it said.

Under the current law, it is illegal to employ a worker under the age of 16.

The crackdown follows the April 11 death of 14-year-old Wang Pan, who died suddenly at home after having been employed by a local lingerie factory for more than a month in Foshan's Nanhai district.

At about 6 am on April 11, Wang lost consciousness at the home his mother rents. He was pronounced dead after being taken to a nearby hospital.

Wang's mother, who is surnamed Kuang, said she believes her son may have died of overwork.

"Wang used to work at the lingerie factory for 11 or 12 hours a day," said Kuang, a migrant worker from Qidong county in Hunan province.

Wang's employer, Foshan Accor, has admitted employing an underage worker and reached an agreement with Kuang to pay compensation of 150,000 yuan ($23,000).

Local police are also conducting their own investigation.

Part of that probe will be to determine the cause of death.
The heavy-ion medical accelerator in Gansu. [Photo/IC]

An advanced piece of medical equipment that is used in cutting-edge cancer treatments has been developed in China, making it the fourth country in the world to possess such technology.

The heavy-ion medical accelerator generates particles for a type of radiotherapy that aims to cure malignant tumors by bombarding them with high-energy charged heavy-ion beams.

Currently, only Japan, Germany and the United States have the capacity to produce such medical accelerators.

Developed by the Modern Physics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Science and a subsidiary company in northwest Gansu province, the new accelerator is now undergoing quality assessment tests and will have to pass a clinical trial before it is approved by the drug authority, according to Xiao Guoqing, the institute director.

"It's a great milestone as it marks an end of China's long term dependence on imported large-scale radiotherapy equipment," he said.

According to Xiao, the accelerator is the result of six decades of related research, with development on the technology itself starting in 2012.

About 30 patients will be recruited in Gansu for the clinical trials and "if everything runs smoothly it's expected to formally receive patients by the end of the year," said Ye Yancheng, head of the Wuwei Cancer Hospital, which is one of three hospitals conducting the trials.

The public hospital in Wuwei, a small city about three hours' drive from Lanzhou, bought the first machine under a joint development and technology transfer contract with the developer for a price of 550 million yuan ($84 million). Local governments and several other private companies have also contributed to the investment.

A 1,600-bed subsidiary hospital called Gansu Heavy Ion Cancer Center is now under construction, where the accelerator will be placed and receive at least 2,000 patients each year, Ye said.

"Cancer patients from abroad are welcome as well," he said.
Czech National Symphony Orchestra concert on April 22, which marks the debut of Hongqiao CBD's business, tourism and culture plan.[Photo bu Tang Zhihao/chinadaily.com.cn]

Shanghai Hongqiao Central Business District (CBD) will launch a business, tourism and culture event and travel routes to show its appeal to visitors on May 1.

"The business, tourism and culture demonstration event will showcase Hongqiao CBD's achievements in reducing carbon emission, smart development, traffic hub construction, trading promotion and cultural development," said Chen Weili, deputy director of the Shanghai Hongqiao CBD Administrative Committee.

"The debut of demonstration zone and travel routes mark the mass construction of Hongqiao CBD is approach an end. We will pay more attention on Hongqiao CBD's functionality development in upcoming years," Chen said.

Zhao Jun, deputy director of Development and Construction Department of Hongqiao CBD, said that the zone will introduce a series of promotion activities in the next few months so visitors can have better understanding about the businesses, functions, development concept and culture of the Hongqiao CBD.

Zhao said some leading companies in the zone will open offices to the public so people have better knowledge about the business model and business environment that features smart and low carbon emission. There will also have food festivals, art exhibitions and street performances so ordinary people can participate in their spare time.

"We hope the culture, tourism and business can perfectly merge with each other to support the development of the Hongqiao CBD," Zhao said.

The Hongqiao CBD, situated in the western part of Shanghai, covers 86.6 suqare kilometers. It has a 27-square-kilometer main function area and a 59-square-kilometer expansion area. Its core zone covers 4.7-square-kilometers and will focus on developing a headquarters economy and high-end businesses.

The world's largest exhibition center named National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) is in the Hongqiao CBD. Zhao said the expo center will host over 30 exhibitions that cover 4.2 million square meters in 2016.

Travel time on foot from Hongqiao CBD to Hongqiao High-speed Railway Station andHongqiao Airport ranges between 7 and 15 minutes, which allow business people to travel between cities very conveniently.
A Shanghai Disney-themed airplane has made its debut in Shanghai on April 25, 2016. The plane, operated by China Eastern Airlines, is painted blue across the body with two giant Mickey and Minnie Mouse figures. More Disney-themed planes will meet visitors in the near future. The Shanghai Disneyland opens on June 16. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

SHANGHAI -- A new subway station serving Shanghai's new Disney resort opened on Tuesday.The station on line 11 has a floor space of 40,000 square meters, about four to five times the size of an ordinary station. It is so far the only metro station serving the international tourist resort, according to operator Shanghai Shentong Metro Group.The station is located in the core Disney Resort area, with the north end of the station connected to the park's north entrance.The station is decorated with a mix of Disney and traditional Chinese elements."Two three-meter tall Mickey and Minnie mouse sculptures stand at the center of the station hall. We incorporated elements of traditional Chinese paper cutting into the two sculptures," said interior designer Ma Lingying.The station also has a mother-and-baby room for breast feeding and changing diapers.
NANNING -- A restaurant in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region has been fined 500,000 yuan ($77,000 dollars) for its outrageously-priced giant salamander.

The restaurant also had its business and service licenses revoked, according to Guilin government.

A tourist, identified as Wang, last week was left up in arms after she was charged a staggering 5,000 yuan for a giant salamander weighing 1.65 kg.

"I was taken to the restaurant by a taxi driver," she said. "The waiter recommended the giant salamander, but they did not specify the price."

"It was not until after the cook had killed the animal that they told me it would cost 3,200 yuan a kilo, and offered a discount if I didn't request an invoice," Wang said. "It's ridiculous! The highest price I have heard people paying for a giant salamander in Guilin was 1,400 yuan per kilo."

Wang informed the police, who helped her barter the price down to 1,500 yuan.

The restaurant, however, offered a very different story.

"Every dish is clearly labeled with a specific price," said a waiter, who declined to be named. "The salamander was not killed until she accepted the weight and price."

The restaurant manager told Xinhua that they bought the giant salamanders at a local vegetable market for around 700 yuan per kilo. He added that all prices were set within the restaurant's rights.

According to the Pricing Law, restaurants must not over-price their products. Another regulation also stipulates that the price of a certain commodity or service must not exceed the average price for the same area.

It transpires that the restaurant has form in this regard. Customers last year complained about its prices, so it changed its name, according to investigators.

Authorities in Guilin issued all resturants with a "warning letter," which requests that they avoid "damaging the interests of customers." Anyone found violating laws and regulations will be severely punished, according to the letter.

It is not the first time that pricey food in scenic areas have made headlines in China.

Last year, a restaurant and local officials in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao were given tough punishments after a diner ordered a prawn dish marked as 38 yuan on the menu. He was then given a bill for 1,520 yuan because the price was per prawn, a fact stated in small print on the menu.

Similar price scandals usually happen in scenic areas, and mostly happened to tourists from other localities, said Liu Simin, a tourism expert with China Society for Futures Studies.

"Customers are typically forced to accept the high prices due to the costs of safeguarding their legal rights," Liu said.

The frequent emergence of such scandals have highlighted loose market supervision in China, experts say.

A government official in Hangzhou, requesting anonymity, said government officials and law enforcement officers often pass the buck when dealing with disputes in order to save themselves the trouble.

"Similar market disputes usually involve several government bodies like the administrations for commodity prices and the industrial and commercial bureaus, making handling such disputes very complicated," he said.

Hangzhou's law expert Cheng Xuelin said the process of handling market disputes is usually quite long. Without media attention, the incidents usually go unnoticed.

While government bodies should increase supervision, credit systems being built across China should be further promoted, according to Wang Xukun, a government official on the rights and interests of consumers in the northeastern city of Harbin.

"Only with the introduction of a credit system will businesses truly abide by the law," Wang said.
The Taiwan business community has contributed to the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations and will remain committed to the 1992 Consensus of one China, despite the changing political and economic situation, top political adviser Yu Zhengsheng said on Monday.

Yu, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, commented after meeting with a delegation from the Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on the Mainland at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

"The mutual acknowledgment of the 1992 Consensus is the foundation of economic cooperation across the Straits," said Yu. He added that the association, as a bridge connecting the mainland and the island, has benefited from the peaceful development and should convey this spirit to more people in Taiwan.
Cavalia is a multimedia spectacle which combines equestrian arts, dramatic visual effects, live music, dance and acrobatics.[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

Cavalia, which combines horses, riders, acrobats and musicians in a multimedia spectacle, is set to unveil in Beijing this week. Chen Nan reports.

On a recent afternoon in downtown Beijing's Chaoyang Park, Canadian choreographer Alain Gauthier finishes a preview performance of Cavalia and takes a break.

He says he has been doing shows since the age of 15, and is "approaching" 45 now.

"Cavalia is special to me. I feel grateful to have it in my life," says the artist, looking at two Spanish horses near him.

At a distance from them, a stage is covered in sand and has a giant digital screen behind it.

With dozens of horses, riders, acrobats, dancers and musicians, Gauthier is here with his multimedia spectacle, Cavalia, which will debut in Beijing on Thursday.

At the outdoor venue, a white tent known as the "big top", covering more than 2,000 square meters is pitched at a height of 35 meters. It is part of the show.

Created by one of the co-founders of Canadian company Cirque du Soleil, Normand Latourelle, Cavalia, which combines equestrian arts, dramatic visual effects, live music, dance and acrobatics, debuted in Quebec in 2003, touring the world since. It has been watched by an estimated 6 million people, according to Latourelle.

In 2003, Latourelle floated a new company, Cavalia Inc, to host the show worldwide.

Cavalia follows a storyline about the evolution of the horse and its important place in human history.

Gauthier says the process of training horses also reflects the relationship between horses and people.
The UK heavy metal band Iron Maiden plays in Beijing and Shanghai as part of its The Book of Souls tour.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Iron Maiden debuted on the Chinese mainland on Sunday, four decades after it was founded.

Having performed the show in Beijing, the British heavy-metal band now prepares to hit Shanghai on Tuesday.

As part of their ongoing The Book of Souls global tour that started in February, the band's musicians flew into the Chinese capital on Ed Force One, a customized Boeing jumbo jet piloted by lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson.

The Sunday concert was held at LeTV Sport, a large indoor space in Beijing, where fans in the thousands turned up, including young children and the elderly. Many wore the band's T-shirts and screamed in excitement as they heard some of their favorite songs being played live for nearly two hours.

"We are very excited about this tour because we play in 35 countries across six continents, especially places like China, where we have never performed before," band guitarist Adrian Smith, 59, told China Daily in an interview ahead of the Beijing gig.

Founded in Leyton, east of London, in December 1975, the band has so far sold more than 90 million albums worldwide, with hits such as Two Minutes to Midnight and The Trooper, landing their first Grammy in 2011 for the song El Dorado.

The ongoing tour is in support of the band's 16th album, The Book of Souls, which was released in September. It is the band's first double CD album and comes five years after its previous album, The Final Frontier. The latest album also climbed to the top of the ch arts both in Britain and the United States.

"We didn't have much material before going to the studio. You never know where you are going once you start working," says Smith, who co-wrote Speed of Light and Death of Glory, among other songs in the latest album. "We love to work on spontaneity."
Abstract ink artist Zheng Chongbin at work.[Photo provided to China Daily]

When accessing ink artist Zheng Chongbin's website, you see an animated front page on which ink is poured over a sheet of white paper, achieving the three-dimensional effect of Chinese ink-and-wash painting.

For four decades, the Chinese-American artist, 55, who divides his time between his native Shanghai and California, has used ink as his main object to create art. But he was not satisfied with limiting his vision to ink merely as a painting material.

His current solo exhibition, Zheng Chongbin: Structures, at a Sotheby's space in Hong Kong shows how he has gone beyond classical Chinese ink art, pushing its boundaries.

In his abstract ink paintings, Zheng uses white acrylic paint and creates an uneven surface on a piece of paper, engaging ink in a play of light and space.

Zheng was trained in a traditional way: He learned calligraphy in childhood and was imparted the discipline of classical Chinese painting in his college, China Academy of Art, in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province.

"It is a process in which one gets to understand how to control oneself and then how to let go," he says.

"When one is able to achieve that state, the inner feelings and the external embodiment of consciousness finally fuse together," he adds.

After graduation he joined the teaching staff of his alma mater and began experimenting with ink art. He first got rid of the traditionally delicate, detailed lines he had perfected for years, looking instead for an abstract presentation that emphasized how the texture and the structure of ink could vary.

Looking for more breakthroughs, Zheng then went to San Francisco Art Institute in the late 1980s, when he began studying performance art, installations and video.

The Californian sunlight and the "light and space" movement of the 1970s both influenced him greatly, enabling him to introduce the exploration of light and space in his ink creations.
The latest Forbes report, according to New World Wealth and LIO Global, says about 91,000 high net worth individuals from the Chinese mainland have settled overseas in the last 14 years. The report categorizes the rich on the mainland as anyone with net assets of $1 million, not counting their primary residence, and says most of the mainland's rich are heading to the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore or the United Kingdom.

Why are wealthy Chinese so eager to leave the mainland? Hurun Consultancy, together with the Visas Consulting Group, did some digging and found that the main reasons are quite apolitical. The top three factors driving the millionaires' desire for emigration, with each accounting for 20 percent, were concerns over their children's education, pollution and food safety.

It is believed that some individuals are making exit plans to escape the recent crackdown on corruption targeting those with ill-gotten wealth. No one in China will miss them but the authorities need to stop them.

Americans whose anger at the super-rich is growing because of rising inequality might feel the same about millionaires fleeing higher taxes in the US - unlike their Chinese counterparts, rich Americans migrate mainly to ease their tax burdens.

But most of China's wealthy wannabe expatriates, especially the first-generation rich, made their fortunes honestly by dint of their ability and hard work. These individuals form an invaluable pool of entrepreneurial/business talent that China can ill-afford to lose as it seeks to make markets more important in its economic growth model.

To be sure, not all of those expressing a desire to leave will actually do so. Liam Bailey, a researcher with Knight Frank LLP says in a Barclays Report: "Most ultra-high net worth individuals are probably making money in China now. So for business reasons, they need to be relatively close."

While such people may stay put, they could transfer more of their wealth overseas. Hurun estimates that from 2012 to 2014, rich Chinese invested 16-19 percent of their wealth abroad.

In 2014, China had a service trade deficit of $198 billion, which was widely regarded as new channel of capital outflow. And it is estimated that $300-400 billion of capital outflow this year might hinder China's ability to prop up its economy.

China does have huge foreign exchange reserves, $3.7 trillion to be precise. But Victor Shih, an economist, has noted that the top 1 percent of China's wealthiest households controls assets equivalent to at least two-thirds of China's foreign exchange reserves and, he warns, if they moved 30-40 percent of their wealth overseas, they would deplete the country's reserves by $1 trillion.

Improving the environment and education system in China, two of the three main reasons why millionaires wish to leave China, is a difficult and long-term task. But in the meantime, the Chinese government ought to build upon its earlier efforts to boost the safety net for ordinary people in order to increase their incomes and thus expenditure, and lessen inequality. Reducing the concentration of wealth in China would go some way toward making the country less vulnerable to the whims of its restless and footloose rich.

The author is a research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization.
China is to tighten management of vaccines to ensure people's health and safety, especially young children and juveniles.

The move comes after a scandal in which a large quantity of improperly stored or expired vaccines have allegedly been sold nationwide since 2011.

Reports on the scandal were submitted on Wednesday to an executive meeting of the State Council presided over by Premier Li Keqiang.

Revisions were made to update the regulation on vaccines, aimed at imposing stricter management nationwide and to prevent further violations.

For the first time, violators of the regulation will be forbidden from entering the vaccine business and officials in charge must resign.

Last month, police in Shandong province cracked a case in which 25 vaccines for children and adults worth 570 million yuan ($88 million) were not stored properly.

A mother and her daughter are alleged to have bought the vaccines illegally and sold them to 24 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions since 2011.

The State Council set up a special team to investigate the scandal and the regulatory system that failed to prevent the distribution of substandard vaccines.

Police have arrested 202 suspects nationwide and 357 officials in 17 provincial-level regions had been removed from their posts or demoted as of Wednesday.

Under the old regulation covering distribution and vaccination, which took effect in June 2005, some vaccines were provided by the government free of charge to people, while others were bought by people for optional vaccination.

With reduced supervision by disease control authorities, affordable vaccines could be bought freely, increasing the risk of contamination after improper storage and transportation.

The new regulation requires these vaccines to be incorporated into the provincial-level procurement platform for public resources such as free vaccines.

It also prohibits pharmaceutical wholesale enterprises from trading in vaccines. A new system will be set up to trace vaccines from production to use, with particular requirements for refrigerated storage and transportation.

Harsher penalties will be imposed on those who illegally trade in and improperly store and transport vaccines.

Jia Xijin, a professor of public management at Tsinghua University, said: "The revision shows the central government's concern for the healthcare and safety of people, especially children. ... If the new regulation is implemented strictly, the quality of vaccines will be improved."

huyongqi@chinadaily.com.cn
Protesters support former New York Police Officer Peter Liang outside a Brooklyn courthouse before his sentencing for manslaughter in the killing of Akai Gurley, in New York, April 19, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

At his sentencing, the charge against former New York City police officer Peter Liang, the rookie cop convicted of the fatal shooting of a black man, Akai Gurley, in a Brooklyn housing project, was reduced from manslaughter to criminally negligent homicide; as a result he was sentenced to five years probation and 800 hours of community service.

The final developments of the case are yet to be known, but the polarized reactions it has sparked between the Asian-American and African-American communities reflects the deep schisms in US society as a result of its prevailing political and cultural practices.

For a long time, different ethnic groups in the United States have been given different labels, although all of them have made huge contributions to the US economic and social development. For example, those of Asian origin, including those from China and India, are labeled as "model minorities". Such a "good label" does not result from a lack of prejudice, it is the result of comparing Asian-Americans with other minorities.

Such comparisons have to some extent widened the psychological distance between the two communities. While consolidating the "superiority complex" of white Americans, such an artificial division has weakened the mutual identification and integration among different minorities, and aggravated the discrepancies between their perceptions of the same events.

As far as Liang's case is concerned, Chinese-Americans believe they are an alien group and so they felt they needed to take the initiative to promote a fair trial. However, African-Americans believe they are in a much weaker position and so they felt they needed to make efforts to defend their rights and interests during the trial.

Liang's case and other high-profile officer-involved shootings will increase the sense of insecurity among ethnic groups in the US and exacerbate the divides that already exist in US society.

--Beijing News
DPRK leader Kim Jong Un watches the ballistic rocket launch drill of the Strategic Force of the Korean People's Army (KPA) at an unknown location, in this undated file photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang on March 11, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

Calling it "yet another serious violation" of its resolutions, the United Nations Security Council "strongly condemned" the latest test firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

But tough as it sounded, a verbal warning like this is unlikely to bring to a halt Pyongyang's nuclear-missile program.

Unless all stakeholders work in genuine solidarity and make the UN-authorized sanctions truly bite, there is little chance Pyongyang will change course. Previous warnings have always been a compromise due to the disagreements between and among stakeholding countries over the best approach to denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, and they have failed to stop Pyongyang from making progress in its nuclear-missile program.

Instead of heeding the latest warning, Pyongyang is likely to soon take another provocative step by conducting a fifth nuclear test. That is precisely how Pyongyang's nuclear-missile programs have grown from nothing to be a clear and present danger for the region.

Unfortunately, even today, some people continue to refuse to take seriously the threat Pyongyang's nuclear-missile program represents. Some dismiss what the DPRK has achieved technology-wise, believing it constitutes little threat. The latest missile, which reportedly flew only 19 miles, did not even qualify as a successful launch, they insist.

But while Pyongyang's rhetoric, which hailed the missile as a "dagger of destruction", may be overblown, there can be no denying it showed clear technological progress.

As US President Barack Obama said: "Although, more often than not, they fail in many of these tests, they gain knowledge each time."

It has been the rest of the world's collective underestimation and inaction regarding such minor advancements that has brought us to where we are today.

Since the latest missile test is in clear violation of multiple UN resolutions and since proven submarine-launched ballistic missile capability may raise the security threat of Pyongyang's nuclear pursuit to a whole new level, the UN Security Council should do everything in its capacity to make sure that does not happen.

That being said, sanctions by themselves will not solve the Korean Peninsula issue. Only through talks can all parties secure an appropriate settlement to the issue.

To blame each other for escalating tensions, as Pyongyang and Washington are doing now, has become a self-defeating cycle in attempts to peacefully resolve the issue.

In that sense, China's call for constructive efforts to facilitate an early return to the negotiation table while earnestly implementing sanctions should be heeded by all parties as only peace and stability of the peninsula conform to the interests of all.
Chinese students pose for a photo at a graduation ceremony in Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia on Feb 11, 2012.[Photo/IC]

Two students from the mainland studying at Pace University in New York, sell "authentic" Beijing pancakes from a bright yellow food truck on Broadway outside Columbia University every Monday and Tuesday. They sell the pancakes for $8, ten times the price in Beijing, and they can sell 150 pancakes a day. A comment in Southern Metropolis Daily said on Monday:

Overseas Chinese students starting a pancake business, like graduates from top Chinese universities selling pork in a market, make a good story.

To be honest, I quite admire the two women for successfully running their pancake business. First, it is comparatively difficult to get a license for such a business in New York, many are on the waiting list for a long time. Second, Chinese students in US universities often have to read through pages and pages of handouts every day as part of their studies. It cannot have been easy for the two students to study and run their business.

But even so, I suggest that the parents of the two students call them to stop them, as their studies must take priority. Even if they take the business as a project for their business management theories, it is not a project of high quality. And it is not fitting for the students to sell pancakes and be appraised for that, when they are yet to complete their study requirements.
Ying Chunxi, who lives with his 80-year-old grandmother in the Wumeng area of Guizhou, has to do the cooking himself and go up the mountain to collect plants every day. [Photo provided to China daily]

A 14-year-old child in Foshan, South China's Guangdong province, died working in a local underwear factory. The local authorities fined the factory 10,000 yuan ($1,537) for employing children. But Qianjiang Evening News said on Monday that it is loopholes in the legal system that caused the tragedy:

Even though middle school textbooks repeatedly tell us that child labor is a phenomenon of the early stages of global capitalism, the fact is children are still found to work in domestic factories of the mainland.

China ratified the Convention Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor in June 2002. Before that China had already promised that workers had to be aged at least 16. That's a promise to the hundreds of millions of domestic children as well as to the world.

However, the domestic laws have rather light punishments for those employers who exploit children.

The nation's Labor Law says those employing children below 16 should be fined, and only if their wrongdoings are "serious" will their business licenses be confiscated, while the Law on Protection of Minors says only those employing minors for heavy, dangerous, or detrimental labor should be fined.

Thanks to the weak wording of the laws, those employers exploiting children face almost negligible penalties, which are far from enough to end the practice.

Such light penalties are like a straw man in the rice field and cannot protect children efficiently. Legislatures need to do their job and honor their promise to children by increasing the punishments for law breakers.

Most child laborers are poor and they work to support their families.

It is thus the lack of social welfare that forces these poor children into factories. Instead of trying to legalize child labor as some claim, what is needed is better social welfare so that children from poor families no longer need to work.
A Chinese medical worker prepares to vaccinate a young kid at a hospital in Shanghai, China, March 20, 2016. [Photo/IC]

Editor's note: After an investigation into the vaccine scandal in Shandong province, the State Council, China's Cabinet, held a meeting on April 13 and decided to punish hundreds of government employees, and pass a regulation aimed at strengthening vaccine management. The punishments meted out to government employees included dismissals and demotions. Following are some media reports in response to the decision:

guancha.gmw.cn:

Thanks to the vaccine scandal, people are wondering how the country can have a bright future if even the safety and authenticity of vaccines, especially those meant for children, cannot be guaranteed. Despite the generally safe, reliable and credible use of vaccines in China, the scandal in Shandong has exposed the loopholes in the vaccine management system.

The investigation has revealed the lack of effective supervision, failure to discover and punish those responsible for illegal activities, dereliction of duty by officials and the absence of a sound mechanism against risks led to the distribution of expired and substandard vaccines. Had relevant departments fulfilled their duties and accorded the highest priority to people's health, they would have been able to prevent the scandal.

The regulation passed by the State Council, which is aimed at strengthening the vaccine distribution management, setting up a "from-production-to-use" traceability system and improving the punitive and accountability mechanism, is expected to help establish a long-term vaccine safety management regime to protect public health.
By Tan Zhixin, associate researcher of Rural Economy Research Center, China's Ministry of Agriculture, comics drawn by Chi Ying

On April 24, President Xi Jinping paid a visit to Jinzhai County in Dabie Mountains, Anhui Province, a key target for China's poverty alleviation campaign. Xi spoke with local leaders and farmers.

He stressed stable poverty alleviation measures with perseverance. Hard-working laborers deserve a better life. Eradicating poverty can bring about national dignity too.

Xi shows care for the living conditions of the people in need and has paid several visits to poverty-stricken areas. He urged governments at all levels to carry out more targeted and precise measures to ensure the poor people in rural areas have access to food, clothes, basic education, medical care, and safe home. China has vowed to lift all of its people out of poverty by 2020, when each citizen should benefit from a comprehensive well-off society.

More than 55 million rural Chinese are living in poverty. They are struggling with high development costs, especially those residing in frontier areas and ethnic areas. To avoid a poverty-returning phenomenon is a formidable goal.

We need to strengthen policy support and take innovative poverty alleviation approaches, such as upgrading public services, helping those who are poor of illnesses in order to create a happier China.

( The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Panview or CCTV.com. )
A view of the new campus of Changzhou Foreign Languages School near a toxic site in Changzhou city, east China's Jiangsu province, 18 April 2016.[Photo/IC]

The Changzhou scandal, in which over 900 students were diagnosed with health problems after their school moved to a piece of land near where there used to be chemical plants, continues to make headlines. The local authorities have issued a report concluding the schools water and environmental conditions meet State standards. However, the report uses rather vague words and expressions, according to Zhang Tiankan, a former research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences:

An official report is supposed to answer questions, but the one issued by Changzhou officials only raises new ones.

For example, they said that 35 students suffer from superficial lymphadenectasis, mostly caused by infection. Many things, such as bacteria, virus, parasites, fungus, mycoplasma, cause infection; without pointing out which is the true cause, the report cannot lead to any valuable conclusion about whether the students health problems are the result of contaminated land. Saying the students are infected is like saying they are ill, which does not pinpoint the cause of the problem.

Besides, the official report contains the conclusion that the health conditions and drinking water of the school meet State standards. Can they be any vaguer than that? Take drinking water for example. Currently the State standards include 106 tests, which include the quantity of microorganisms, the concentration of inorganic poisonous chemicals, as well as organic poisonous chemicals.

Only when samples of drinking water meet all the standards, do we say the water meets State standards. The official report does not contain any data about the tests so its conclusion is hardly persuasive.

In particular, it has been claimed that the level of chlorobenzene in the underground water where the school is located is 94,799 times higher than the permitted level. Yet the official report fails to list the concentration of this highly toxic chemical. How can such a report win trust from the public?

More astonishingly, the report is based on materials provided by local officials. Yet such materials might be outdated and their symptoms might change with time. If the local government hopes to restore public trust, instead of creating more panic among the public, they need to be transparent and reveal all the facts.
Just to show that the new Zhuhai website is for you, cityofzhuhai.com will put you up overnight at an exotic hot springs resort, or in elegant hotels around Guangdong, or provide other gifts just for doing a great job telling your story: Zhuhai Through My Eyes.

Thats right; all that is required is that you have been to, lived in or worked in Zhuhai and have something humorous or captivating to write about. Who doesnt? All the Zhuhai English website asks in return is for your awareness that this is the place to go for information on investment, travel, news and living in the delightful coastal city of romance.

Dong'ao Island, Zhuhai [Photo from cityofzhuhai.com]

Cityofzhuhai.com debuted on April 22, superseding the former Weekly News page of the Zhuhai Daily newspaper. Now, Zhuhai news and events and other must-have information is available daily, or even sooner. This essay contest is being held by chinadaily.com.cn and sponsored by deltabridges.com for overseas friends and local expatriates.

Language: English

Length: No word limit

Form: Feel free to write whatever you think, in travelogue, narrative prose, or poetic form.

Deadline: May 31, 2016.

Email: Zhuhai@chinadaily.com.cn

China Daily will select one 1st place, three 2nd, five 3rd, and 10 excellent award winners at the beginning of June. The essays will appear on chinadaily.com.cn, deltabridges.com, and the new Zhuhai English website cityofzhuhai.com on June 15 under the writers bylines.

Zhuhai Hengqin Chimelong International Ocean Tourist Resort [Photo from cityofzhuhai.com]

Prizes

1st place

One deluxe room at Imperial Hot Springs with breakfast, lunch and massage Imperial Hot Springs is a 5-star Japanese-style hot springs resort in the Zhuhai suburbs and an ideal place for a romantic getaway, with quiet, comfortable rooms and a private courtyard just outside the door.

2nd place

One superior room at Swissotel Foshan Hotel

Swissotel caters to discerning business and leisure travelers in Foshans business community. This international luxury 5-star hotel exemplifies exclusivity, elegance, and impeccable Swiss hospitality and service. Swissotel Foshan is the tallest building and a prominent landmark in Foshan.

One deluxe room at the Pullman Dongguan Forum

The Pullman Dongguan Forum is in the heart of town next to Qifeng Mt, with a peaceful setting and resort-style atmosphere, and yet it is a renowned 5-star business hotel.

One deluxe room at Crowne Plaza Foshan

Crowne Plaza Foshan is in the city center, close to the shopping hub and Ceramic Exhibition Center. It is 25 km southwest of Guangzhou and a 10-minute drive from Foshan train stations or a 50-minute drive from Guangzhou Baiyun Airport. There are 410 spacious guest rooms, six restaurants, 12 meeting rooms, a business center, swimming pool and gym.

Cantonese congee [Photo from cityofzhuhai.com]

3rd place

Mobile battery for smart phones and U-key with a chinadaily.com.cn logo

Provided by chinadaily.com.cn

Excellent

U-key with a chinadaily.com.cn logo

Provided by chinadaily.com.cn

The Zhuhai English Website cityofzhuhai.com is undertaken by chinadaily.com.cn, the largest English news website in China. Deltabridges.com is a public and media relations company based in Zhuhai and covering the Pearl River Delta area.

Website: www.cityofzhuhai.com

QR code of Zhuhais English website
Presidential candidates Alexander van der Bellen (L) and Norbert Hofer react during a TV debate in Vienna, Austria, April 24, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

VIENNA - Austria's far right won more than a third of the vote in the presidential election on Sunday and will face an independent in next month's run-off, dumping out the country's two main parties from the post for the first time.

It was the Freedom Party's best result in a national election after a campaign that focused on the impact of the migrant crisis, which has seen around 100,000 asylum seekers arrive in Austria since last summer.

Norbert Hofer, who ran on an anti-immigrant and anti-Europe platform, won 36.4 percent of the vote to become head of state. He will face Alexander van der Bellen, a former Green Party figurehead, who won 20.4 percent, according to official preliminary results.

While the presidency is largely only a ceremonial role, the fact that neither of the main ruling parties will be battling for the post on May 22 marks a major change in Austrian politics - as well as the rising role of the far right in Europe.

Members of the center-left Social Democrats and the conservative People's Party have filled the job since it was first put to a popular vote in 1951. The two parties have ruled the nation of 8.7 million in tandem for most of the postwar era.

The president is head of state, swears in the chancellor, has the authority to dismiss the cabinet and is commander in chief of the military.

The election outcome was "a resounding slap in the face" for the government coalition, said Wolfgang Bachmayer, who founded the OGM market research institute.

His comments were echoed by political analyst Peter Filzmaier. "Only those who are satisfied vote for a government party or its candidate," he said. "This time, the annoyed voted for Norbert Hofer."
Azzedine Downed is president and CEO of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. [Photo by Lucie Morangi/ chinadaily.com.cn]

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) on Monday launched an anti-poaching campaign that takes the fight back to the criminals.

Dubbed 'tenboma', it employs counterintelligence tactics that rope in local communities that are required to share information with security agencies to protect elephants.

The concept was borrowed from another initiative, Nyumba Kumi, or "10 homes", which was launched by the Kenyan government two years ago in response to rising terrorism attacks. Tenboma hopes to gain the trust of communities living around trust lands that have become homes to wildlife. The locals will be required to report any incident, no matter how minute, on the grounds that previously was deemed unrelated to poaching.

Azzedine Downes , IFAW's president and CEO, said that the idea was born after he realized that heavy resources have concentrated on the illegal trade and use of ivory.

"However, this does not stop the killing of elephants. We therefore have brought in consultants who were actively involved in disarming roadside bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq to help us put a stop to the killing before it happens," Downes said.

The whole strategy hinges on collating vital information from the ground on poachers' movements.

"Remote incidences, such as an armed robbery at a little shop for basic supplies that poachers use while lying in wait in the bush is important for wildlife rangers. This allows them to preempt the crime, something that I think is important but has been neglected in this fight," Downes said. He spoke in Nairobi five days before the historic destruction of about 105 tons of confiscated ivory. The haul was the biggest since Kenya burned its first pile in 1989.

Meanwhile, the IFAW president said the organization is using $20 million in pro bono advertising to boost awareness campaigns in China.

"China is definitely moving in the right direction. The government is on board and has shown its commitment to complement Kenya's anti-poaching campaigns by recent bans on illegal ivory imports, destroying more than 662 kilograms of ivory last year and boosting security checks at entry ports in China," he said.
BEIJING -- China on Tuesday called on Japan to follow through with its intentions to advance relations and make concrete actions to improve bilateral relationship.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida delivered a speech on Sino-Japanese relations on April 25, making positive comments about improving and developing the relations in the future. Issues like China's military growth and maritime activities also figured in the speech.

"We have noted the positive signals sent by Foreign Minister Kishida in his speech. It is hoped the Japanese side would walk the talk and make concrete efforts to improve and develop bilateral relationships," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a regular news briefing.

"However, it is regrettable that the Japanese side continues to point fingers at China on some issues," Hua said.

She said China sticks to a path of peaceful development and pursues a defense policy that is defensive in nature, and that China's strategic intentions are transparent.

China's activities in the East China Sea and South China Sea are justified and legitimate, and thus beyond reproach, Hua said, specifically telling Japan to not to meddle in the South China Sea issue.
South Sudan's rebel leader Riek Machar talks on the phone in his field office in a rebel-controlled territory in Jonglei State, South Sudan, February 1, 2014.[Photo/Agencies]

JUBA -- South Sudan's rebel leader Dr. Riek Machar arrived in Juba on Tuesday, to take up the post of Vice-President as part of the August 2015 peace deal to end more than two years of civil war.

Machar who arrived aboard UN plane amid tight security from the government and opposition forces is expected to be sworn-in later Tuesday to mark the beginning of a 30-month transitional period.

The rebel leader had been expected to return on Monday but instead his Chief of General Staff General Simon Gatwech Dual returned with 195 troops including arsenal of weapons.

Analysts said the return of Machar who is due to form the unity government with President Salva Kiir would not end days of uncertainty over the implementation of the peace deal.

Information Minister Michael Makuei who termed Machar's arrival as a landmark in the implementation of the peace agreement signed last year between him and President Salva Kiir.

Machar's advance team and 1,370 protection troops have arrived in Juba despite continued clashes between his troops with the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in Bahr el Ghazal and Equatoria regions.

Civil war erupted in December 2013 when President Kiir accused his former deputy Machar of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings that have split the country along ethnic lines.

The conflict has reopened deep ethnic tensions in the world's youngest country, which only won independence from Sudan in 2011.
There is a right way and a wrong way

I meet a lot of foreigners skipping through China on business. Many of them are delegates on trade missions or attendees at festivals or summits. They frequently allow their Chinese friends to pressure them to sign little documents while theyre in town. The foreigners think there cant be much harm in signing short, informal documents with harmless sounding names like LOI, MOU or HOA. The artificial deadline tactic always seems to work for the Chinese whenever they try it on. Often theres a kind of ceremony with officials in attendance and some nice banners in the background. Lots of photo opps. There may even be a banquet or two with the obligatory over-consumption of baijiu. More photo opps. Its lots of fun and the foreigner goes home with a sense of achievement. They signed a deal in China!

Then we get two types of calls.

In the first type of call, the foreigner is shocked to find that their Chinese friends are resisting a long-form document by which the foreigner wishes to replace that harmless little LOI. The long-form is invariably written entirely in English and is full of common law irrelevancies and foreign standards that make it entirely unsuitable for China, not to mention disrespectful. Even if it ever gets signed it will take ages  ages during which there is good reason for the Chinese to stall in making any expected payments. Or the Chinese may even threaten to take action based on the foreigners negligence in the contracting process. But thats all beside the point. The point is that the Chinese got what they wanted in their first pass so theres no need for them to sign another document. The foreigner gave too much away in the beginning. My favorite examples in the film industry are the foreign producers who give away Greater China distribution rights without any mention of distribution costs and an appropriate waterfall. There are many more such examples across all industries.

Then theres the second type of call.

The foreigner is disappointed that six months have gone by and nothing has happened since that harmless little LOI was signed. Emails are going unanswered. Phone calls unreturned. Suddenly, nobody speaks English any more. What the foreigner didnt grasp was that the ceremony, with its banners and officials and photographs, was all the Chinese ever wanted from the relationship. There was no deal. The Chinese hit all their KPIs for that quarter by holding a little ceremony. The higher ups are happy and everyone in China has long ago moved on.

So, you need to decide from the outset whether you want an enforceable agreement or an unenforceable document. Do you want a real deal or do you just want to be able to tell people about some ceremony you attended.

If you want an enforceable agreement there is no reason why you cant enter a proper agreement covering everything right from the start. Agreements in China tend to be shorter and less complicated in any case. Thats not to say that they cant cover everything.

If all you want is an unenforceable document then youve got to wonder why you should sign anything at all. Theres an art to signing meaningless and unenforceable documents just as there is an art to signing something enforceable.

But is it really worth it?
(Photo : Getty Images) CCB inked deal with IE Singapore to develop One Belt, One Initiative infrastructure projects.

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China Construction Bank (CCB) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with International Enterprise (IE) Singapore on Monday to provide financial support to both Singapore and Chinese companies in the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) infrastructure projects.



Under the new agreement, CCB pledged to provide 144 billion yuan ($22.2 billion) of financing services to support domestic and Chinese firms to invest in the OBOR projects via Singapore. The recently signed MOU marked the first instance a Chinese bank signed with a Southeast Asian country.



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In addition, CCB also plans to establish a center in Singapore to provide a common ground for financial and professional services needed in infrastructure investments, according to Today Online.



"As the regional infrastructure hub, Singapore's know-how and networks with China and Southeast Asia gives Singapore-based companies a further advantage of OBOR projects," Lee Boon Ark, IE chief executive, said.



Singaporean firms, on the other hand, can also tap the bank's network which is available in 25 countries. The bank, which currently has nearly 180 major projects under the OBOR, has a total investment amounting as much as 2 billion yuan ($300 billion). The fund is allocated to different sectors such as power generation, transportation, and mining.



"Our partnership with CCB is strategic, strengthening the critical financing element and bringing more projects to fruition," Lee said.



The OBOR is an initiative proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013 and aims to connect the country to 65 nations in three continents including Africa, Asia, and Europe via the continental Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.



CCB also signed an MOU with Singapore Exchange to develop Singapore's capital market. Both companies will work together to increase the number of Chinese companies floating in Singapore stock markets, particularly through SGX's Direct Listing Framework.



"SGX and CCB will highlight opportunities for Chinese companies to issue offshore (yuan) bond, undertake mergers and acquisitions, establish cross-border asset management services and other capital market activities in Singapore," the companies said in a joint statement.



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TagsChina Construction Bank, memorandum of understanding, International Enterprise Singapore, One Belt One Road, Singapore Exchange, China Silk Road Economic Belt, Maritime Silk Road Project
(Photo : Reuters) Nokia will help Disney to explore the creation of VR content for its movie releases with the use of Ozo camera.

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Walt Disney Studios has announced its deal with Nokia Technologies in using the new OZO virtual reality camera of the latter to take the audience behind the scenes of future movies.



The partnership started when The Jungle Book movie released earlier this month, which featured two 360-degree videos focused on the Red Carpet premiere and an interview with the cast. Nokia president Ramzi Haidamus pointed out that this is just the beginning because the deal also covers the other studios that Disney owns like Marvel and Lucasfilm. In short, the Ozo could potentially show up being used for 360-degree VR content for Star Wars, Marvel, and Pixar properties.



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The Nokia Ozo is a 360-degree camera, one of several recent cameras that were designed specifically with VR filmmaking. The high-dollar device is capable of spherical and stereoscopic video capture, with a spatial audio array because of the eight built-in, synchronized 2000 x 2000 sensors. The video sensors feature a progressive scan with global stutter, and the lenses have an angle view of 195 degrees each. The cameras minimum imaging distance is 20 feet.



It has a base sensitivity of ISO 400, a relative aperture of f/2.4, and a base color temperature of 5000 degrees Kelvin. The solid state audio sensor is omni-directional, providing a full 360-degree soundtrack. The camera also utilizes a 500GB solid state drive to record media in a MOV format that contains 8-channel raw video and 8-channel PCM audio. The SSDs can record 45 minutes of this type of media locked at 30 frames per second.



Its tag price $60,000 includes camera itself, a digital cartridge, a camera mount, a docking station, and a power supply, all of which comes in a rugged shipping case.



Disney said that Nokia will be there to help them explore the creation of VR content for its theatrical releases. Nokia will be the instrument to bring Disney film properties to life in a new and unique way.



"We aim to bring extraordinary experiences to audiences around the world, and specially created VR content is one more way we can transport people even further into the worlds our filmmakers create, said Jamie Voris, Chief Technology Officer for The Walt Disney Studios, in a statement.



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TagsWalt Disney, Nokia Ozo VR camera, Virtual Reality, Nokia Ozo Disney, Disney VR content
(Photo : Getty Images) These are the top 5 key cars that made their debut at the Beijing Auto Show this year.

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For many car lovers, the Beijing Auto Show is very significant as different car makers from around the world come together at this event to unveil the best that they have to offer in the Chinese market.



In case you missed it, below are the top five cars presented at this year's auto show.



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The 2017 Porsche 718 Cayman



After German car maker released its 718 Boxster this year, Porsche has unveiled its mechanically identical twins - the 2017 Porsche 718 Cayman and 718 Cayman S. The new models come with a fresh new style, turbocharged engines, and, most notably, a more affordable price tag. Prices for 718 Cayman start at 375,000 yuan ($57,700), while 718 Cayman S at nearly 460,000 yuan ($71,000).



The new car boasts of an optional 7-speed dual clutch and Sport Chrono Package, which gives drivers four steering choices - Normal, Sport, Sport Plus and Individual modes.



Faraday Future FFZero1



Faraday Future, which seems to be a crossbreed of Corvette and Batmobile, received a warmer welcome at the Beijing auto show than at the Las Vegas' Consumers Electronics Show this year, according to Car News China.



The FFZero1's concept has a 1000 HP capacity that could run as fast as 200 mph and accelerate from zero to 60 mph in just three seconds, or less. It is also equipped with aero tunnels that minimize drag and cools the batteries.



Audi TT RS



Audi's TT RS was unveiled both with coupe and convertible body style. It boasts of a 400 HP capacity, which propels the RS to as fast as 62 miles per hour from a standstill of just merely 3.7 seconds, according to Autoblog. Furthermore, the new addition to the RS lineup comes with a newly developed 5-cylinder engine, organic LED taillights, and all-wheel drive.



Mazda CX4



The sleeker and more stylish Mazda CX4, which is based on the Koeru concept car in 2015, will remain a Chinaexclusive model, the Autocar revealed. It has been designed to give its potential buyers the feeling of "Jinbaittai," which means "horse and rider as one" in Japanese. Mazda said the vehicle has "excelling handling thanks to its low centre of gravity."



Volkswagen T-Prime Concept



German automaker Volkswagen unveiled its T-Prime Concept an all-wheel drive equipped with a plug-in hybrid powertrain. The power train can produce as high as 375 HP and 516 pound-feet of torque, getting the car running to 60 in 6 seconds with a top speed of 139 mph.



It will run 87 miles per gallon and up to 31 miles on electric power through its 14.1 kWh battery. To regain power again, the battery should be plugged into a 220-volt outlet for eight hours from flat, or just two and a half when using a charging station with at least 7.2 KW.



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TagsBeijing auto show, Porsche, 718 Cayman, 718 Cayman S, Faraday Future, FFZero1, audi, Audi TT RS, Mazda CX4, volkswagen
(Photo : Getty Images) A former ASEAN official accused Laos and Cambodia of meddling in its affairs following their pact with China on how to resolve the South China Sea dispute.

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A former high-ranking official of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) accused Cambodia and Laos of interfering in domestic affairs of the organization. The two countries made a pact with China on how to settle its disputes with claimant-countries in the South China Sea.



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Former ASEAN Secretary-General Ong Keng Yong, who spoke at the ASEAN Community forum in Jakarta on Monday, said he was surprised that Cambodia and Laos both entered into an agreement with China despite the former's non-claimant status in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.



Ong said the two non-ASEAN claimant states' covenant with China amounted to an interference with the internal affairs of the ASEAN group, especially after making it appear that the pact was made in the name of the entire organization.



Four-point consensus



Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced on Saturday that it has reached a four-point agreement with Laos, Cambodia, and Brunei in dealing with the South China Sea dispute.



Under the four-point consensus, the four countries agreed that the South China Sea territorial disputes were "not an issue between China and the ASEAN as a whole."



Only four ASEAN countries--Vietnam, Brunei, Philippines, and Malaysia--have overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea with China.



"It has always been in the parameter of the ASEAN-China declaration on the conduct of parties in the South China Sea," Ong said.



"So, for this kind of announcement that two of the non-ASEAN claimant states have said certain things about ASEAN's position, I think it's very surprising," he added.



Bilateral approach



Ong said that over the years, ASEAN member-states have agreed that the disputes in the South China Sea must be resolved bilaterally with China.



"China-Philippines, China-Brunei, China-Vietnam and so on and so forth but since Laos is the chairman this year, maybe it has decided to say something in behalf of the group," he emphasized.



For Ong, although disputes between rival claims with China should be resolved bilaterally, the organization has always taken the position that ASEAN and China must be involved in it and manage it to prevent further escalation of conflicts in the region.



ASEAN's Secretary-General Le Luong Minh said that although ASEAN claimant-countries in the South China Sea may take their case with China bilaterally, it is also allowed that several countries may engage China as a group in resolving the dispute.



"An ASEAN country cannot negotiate with China on disputes that involve also other ASEAN countries," said Le Luong.



Common position



Le has reiterated that ASEAN member-states should come together and stick to its common position on the South China Sea dispute contained in an agreement which was adopted in 2012.



The ASEAN official said member-states should continue to uphold ASEAN's six-point principles which include maintaining a regional code of conduct in the disputed waters and the exercise of self-restraint by claimant-states.



Ten countries comprise the ASEAN which include Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.



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TagsASEAN, non-ASEAN claimant-states, Laos, Cambodia, china, Former ASEAN Secretary General Ong Keng Yong, ASEAN internal affairs, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi
(Photo : Getty Images) China's tallest building also has the world's fastest elevators.

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The soon-to-be tallest skyscraper in China is bound to break records with its ultrafast lifts.



Dubbed as the second tallest structure in the world next to Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the skyscraper boasts of elevators that "shoot 119 floors in under a minute," the South China Morning Post reported.



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The Shanghai Tower, designed and created by state-owned Shanghai Construction Group and California-based Gensler, is standing at a 632 meter height above Lujiazui Central Business District in Pudong, Shanghai.



The project took more than seven years to complete its exterior alone and is estimated to be worth nearly 16 billion yuan ($2.5 billion).



Although the building is still undergoing some interior revamps, there are currently three elevators (out of the 154) available for visitors. Snatching the title as the world's fastest elevator at 18 meters per second, Shanghai Tower's lifts could shoot its passengers up to the 119th deck in just 55 seconds, the Liberation Daily newspaper reported.



"Even a coin can stand on its edge steadily inside the running lifts," the newspaper said. The skyscraper's elevators surpassed the Taipei 101 building, which holds the title for the world's fastest lift at 16.83 meters per second.



Shanghai Tower has 270 wind turbines 580 meters above the ground and can generate 1.2 gigawatt-hours of power.



Visitors may also enjoy the splendid view from the skyscraper's atrium where concerts will be held. It stands on the 125th and 126th floors with a capacity of up to 300 people.



Shanghai Tower's floor plans cover commercial spaces, public viewing area, hotels, and retail stores, among others.



Following the completion of the Shanghai Tower, Chicago's Willis Tower will be scrapped off the list of the world's top 10 tallest buildings.



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TagsShanghai, Shanghai Tower, skyscrapers, Shanghai Construction Group, Gensler, Lujiazui Central Business District, Burj Khalifa
(Photo : Getty Images) Mitsubishi Motors President Tetsuro Aikawa apologized to all people affected by the fuel emission test scandal.

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Japanese car maker Mitsubishi Motors Corp. has acknowledged that it has been falsifying its fuel economy tests since 1991.



"For the domestic market, we have been using that method since 1991," Ryugo Nakao, Mitsubishi's vice president, said during a press conference in Tokyo on Tuesday. At the moment, the number of affected Mitsubishi units is unknown yet.



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The automobile company's president Tetsuro Aikawa admitted that an investigation is ongoing, and more irregularities could be discovered. He also said he does not know what possible reasons might have pushed the employees to falsify the fuel economy tests to ensure better mileage figures.



"We don't know the whole picture and we are in the process of trying to determine that. I feel a great responsibility," he said.



Mitsubishi announced that it has already organized a three-member committee composed of external lawyers to separately investigate the issue for about three months. After that, it will formally create a report and will notify the public about the results in a "timely manner."



Meanwhile, the automobile company's executives apologized over the matter, saying "[Mitsubishi] expresses its most sincere apologies to all of our customers, shareholders and stakeholders for any convenience or concern caused by this occasion."



According to the International Business Times, Mitsubishi posted a nearly $4 billion loss and shares plunged to nearly 50 percent after the scandal was exposed last week.



Japanese officials raided Mitsubishi's office last Thursday and asked the company to submit its full report over the issue.



The inaccurate test also affected 157,000 units of eK Wagon and eK space and 468,000 Dayz and Dayz Roox vehicles manufactured for Nissan Motor Co.



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TagsMitsubishi, emission scandal, Tetsuro Aikawa, automobile industry
(Photo : Kevin Frayer/Getty Images) Smuggled macaques (like the ones pictured) and red slender loris were found in the home of a drug-influenced man reported by his own wife.

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Police who responded to the call of a woman on the account of her husband monkeying around with a mistress were surprised to find another monkey business instead: nearly 40 smuggled primates were kept inside a room in the couples residence, reports say.



The Chinese woman, a resident of Dongxing city in Guangxi province, called the police to report that her husband had been using drugs, reports Qq.com. She also reported that her husband was unfaithful, and had brought her other woman to their home.



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True enough, when police arrived at about 3 a.m. Sunday, they discovered that the husband was influenced by drugs  he was the one who faced the police, albeit not politely but with threats and a knife in hand, reports NetEase. After some backup arrived, the police were able to apprehend the man. They also discovered small amounts of methamphetamine, commonly known as ice, on him. A mistress, however, was nowhere to be found.



Prompted by the drugs they seized, police then further investigated the suspects home and found another monkey business hidden inside one of the rooms: a strange odor led them to discover 37 protected monkeys (20 red slender loris and 17 macaques) that were kept inside cages. They also found a dead monkey inside one of the trash bins in the residence.



Police also found some notebooks containing details of the husbands smuggling activities. The man, however, said he had no idea where the monkeys came from. He was arrested and is now under questioning.



The monkeys were said to be arranged to be sold for thousands of yuan each, and will be sold to buyers from Chinese provinces Anhui and Liaoning.



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Tagsred slender lori, macaque, Mistress, monkey business, methamphetamine
End of the legal road? Colorado baker who refused service to same-sex wedding loses again 26 April, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

DENVER (Christian Examiner)  A Lakewood, Colo., baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding because same-sex marriage violated his religious beliefs will not have his case heard before the Colorado Supreme Court.

Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, was found guilty by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission of having discriminated against Charlie Craig and David Mullins in 2012 when the two planned to wed in Massachusetts, but then hold a post-wedding celebration in Colorado. They asked Phillips' shop to bake a cake, but he refused.

That refusal led to a court case in which Colorado Judge Robert Spencer ordered the baker in 2013 to "cease and desist" discrimination against same-sex couples, an act he said was illegal under state law.

Spencer also said the act of baking the cake for the men did not prohibit Phillips from exercising his religion.

That wasn't enough for the state, however. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission soon piled on, requiring the baker to submit quarterly reports (for two years) which detailed the name of any person he refused to bake a cake for and on what grounds the refusal was made. The reports were also supposed to document steps Phillips had made to end what the Commission deemed a discriminatory practice.

Phillips then took his case before the Colorado Court of Appeals. The appellate court found that the ruling by the lower court and the Commission were appropriate. That court said in its ruling Phillips could not cite his religious beliefs as an excuse to not provide services to the male couple because "neutral laws of general applicability do not offend the Free Exercise Clause."

Phillips, however, argued that the commission's ruling was not neutral, but biased in favor of the same-sex couple and against religious belief. Therefore, he appealed again  this time to the state's highest court.

The high court's refusal to hear the case on Colorado law may not be the end of the legal road for Phillips. He could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to have it hear the case, but the court has already refused to hear a similar New Mexico case.

In that case, the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission found photographer Elaine Hugeunin and her husband Jonathan guilty of discrimination for refusing to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony. The state's high court upheld the finding, even though the U.S. Supreme Court had not yet created the right of same-sex marriage.

Importantly, the Hugeunins did not refuse to take portraits of same-sex couples. They only refused to photograph a ceremony solemnizing a same-sex commitment ceremony (like a wedding), a practice they said violated their religious beliefs.

Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, which has represented Phillips in the Colorado case, said after the Colorado Supreme Court issued its ruling yesterday that Phillips has a right to follow his beliefs whether at home, at church or at work. No one, he said, should be asked to violate their beliefs "as the price of earning a living."

The American Civil Liberties Union, however, was happy with the ruling. It issued a statement following the court's announcement and said it believed the court's decision would serve as a "lesson for others" who dare oppose gay rights.

"The highest court in Colorado today affirmed that no one should be turned away from a public-facing business because of who they are or who they love," Ria Tabacco Mar, a staff attorney for the ACLU's LGBT Project, said. Mar argued the case on behalf of the ACLU.

"We all have a right to our personal beliefs, but we do not have a right to impose those beliefs on others and harm them. We hope today's win will serve as a lesson for others that equality and fairness should be our guiding principles and that discrimination has no place at the table, or the bakery as the case may be," Mar said.

Ironically, Colorado bakers who are gay are allowed to refuse service to Christians. In April 2015, the Civil Rights Division of the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies ruled Azucar Bakery in Denver did not violate the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act when owner Marjorie Silva refused to bake a cake decorated with Bible verses about sin and homosexuality.

Conservatives claimed the decision set a double standard because the same regulatory body ruled against Phillips.

In 2013, William Jack, founder of the Christian ministry Worldview Academy, requested the local confectionary bake two cakes with an open Bible on each  decorating the facing pages on one cake with "God hates sin - Psalm 45:7" and "Homosexuality is a detestable sin - Lev. 18:22" and doing similarly on the other with "God loves sinners" and "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us - Rom. 5:8."

Jack also requested a depiction of two men holding hands with a red "prohibited" symbol (circle and slash) over the couple.
One year ago Nepal was struck by a devastating earthquake which killed over 8,000 lives and wounded 21,000 others. The international community had pledged billions of dollars in relief and reconstruction work, but still, some the worst-hit areas lie torn down, according to reports.

Some people are working from damaged buildings that can collapse any time, like Punya Gajurel, who manages a school.

"We have to have somewhere to keep working," Punya Gajurel told Deutsche Welle from third floor of a building which has completely damaged lower floors sagging from the weight of upper rooms. "This is the only room we have left."

The Nepalese government has not yet rebuilt the area, and the efforts seem so slow that British officials, one of the international donors, are disbursing money directly to construction as the local authorities seem to be lagging behind in implementing the disaster-relief plan.

"We really need to see actual reconstruction start to happen, and start to happen fast. I think many donor agencies are getting very frustrated with the pace of progress," said Kenichi Yokoyama, Nepal head of Asia Development Bank which has contributed towards the relief fund.

Thousands of people continue to live in temporary shelters which have no electricity, where it gets too hot in summer and too cold in winters. With the approaching monsoon season, they are left vulnerable to heavy rains and floods in their makeshift accommodations.

The United Nations Nepal country team expressed their solidarity with the Nepalese people, and also raised concerns about the upcoming monsoon season.

Nepal's tourism industry is one of the main sources of the country's income, and has suffered the most after the earthquake.

After one year, travelers have returned, but in far less numbers compared to before.

"There are no sales at all. We don't have time to stay this idle at this very peak season," said Bishnu Sapkota, a mountaineering shopkeeper.

World Expeditions, a company that has organized trekking in Nepal for the last 40 years, is running a "Re-Build Nepal" project and has sent over 1,000 travelers to the country since the quake struck.

"Nepal is 'open for business' but trekking is down, which has had a knock-on effect - from porters in small villages to taxi drivers in Kathmandu and restaurants seeing less business. Now, more than ever, the people of Nepal need something back from us. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises that it is safe to travel throughout the country and we encourage travelers to consider visiting sooner rather than later," Gordon Steer, company manager in UK, was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

A group of students from Cambridge University have been working with the Helambu Education and Livelihood Project for the last one year to raise money and awareness for the rebuilding efforts in Nepal.

Imogen Buxton, former president of the society said: "It was overwhelming to receive such an incredible response to our earthquake appeal last year. We knew just how urgently emergency relief was needed by our friends in the rural Helambu region. It's fantastic to raise money for a charity like Helambu Education and Livelihood Partnership, because we know that they will work ceaselessly with the affected communities to support a sustainable rebuilding process, and to continue to improve educational provision in the long term."
The Council of Korean Southern Baptist Churches in America (CKSBCA) will be holding its 35th annual meeting from June 20 to 23 at Tacoma First Baptist Church. The CKSBCAs meeting comes soon after the denomination-wide annual meeting, which will be taking place from June 14 to 15 in St. Louis.

This years meeting will focus on the theme, The Great Commission: All Together, based on Matthew 28:19-20, and is set to feature speakers such as David Platt, president of the SBC's International Mission Board, Randy Adams, the executive director of the Northwest Baptist Convention, and Kaehyek Kim of the Global Baptist Church in Seoul, according to Baptist Press.

The annual meeting will feature sessions for ministry reports, financial reports, election of officers, and amendments to the bylaws, among others, but will also feature sessions aiming to recharge and rejuvenate pastors exploring topics such as spiritual and physical health.

Organizers expressed that they hope the annual meeting will be a time of enjoyable fellowship, and that through the conference, pastors would find rest and be recharged.

Tacoma First Baptist Church has been preparing to assist and host all of the pastors and their families during the upcoming annual meeting, which is fast approaching, the organizers stated. We hope and pray that all who plan on attending would come with the expectation that the fragrance of Jesus would be abundant in the Seattle area, and that the annual meeting would be pleasing to him.
Thousands of Armenian Christians rallied in different countries around the world including in Armenia, and in the United States to commemorate the 101st anniversary of Armenian genocide at the hands of Ottoman Empire in 1915 during World War I, which killed 1.5 million people.

On April 24, protestors marched with torchlights towards a hilltop memorial complex in capital city Yerevan. One of the marches was led by Hollywood star and human rights activist George Clooney, who is a steadfast advocate of the massacre's recognition as genocide.

Tens of thousands also gathered at the Turkish Consulate in Los Angeles, wearing purple shirts, and waving flags, according to LA Times.

"We want to show the youth what April 24 is about," US Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said at the rally. "Obviously, we want justice. If we don't do this, it will be forgotten."

Refugees and supporters also assembled at City Park in Idaho to lay flowers in the memory of people slain in the massacre.

"It affects everybody when we have a sort of tragedy like this so it's important that we come together and make remembrance of such events," said Father Michael Habib of St. Ignatius of Antioch Church.

"Forget culture, forget religion. As people we need to support one another. Especially in times like this," he added.

The Archdiocese of Boston commemorated the event for the first time, which was attended by over 800 people.

"It is so important that we do not allow the events of the genocide to slip into oblivion," said Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley. "The one and a half million lives are not forgotten. . . . One of the fruits of their martyrdom is the accumulation of love that unites us."

The Vatican also recognized the first genocide of 20th century by holding a special mass, presided over by Pope Francis. The pope gave a message saying that everyone is obliged to not forget the "senseless slaughter," during the First World War.

"Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it," the pope said.

Many stores in Los Angeles put up signs in English and Armenian informing closure of shops in remembrance of the genocide.

In 2015, Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue intersection was designated as Armenian Genocide Memorial Square, while in March, Glendale Unified became the first school district in United States to set apart April 24 as a day of remembrance of the genocide.

Up to 1.5 million Armenian Christians were murdered in Eastern Turkey through systematic killings and starvations between 1915 and 1923.

Similar protests were held in Jerusalem, Beirut, Iran, Canada, and Australia.
The Colorado Supreme Court declined to hear the case of a baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple on religious grounds, upholding a lower court ruling that deemed his refusal an act of discrimination.

In 2012, same-sex couple David Mullins and Charlie Craig was denied their request for a cake by Master Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips who had cited his religious beliefs as the basis for his rejection.

The couple, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado, filed a complaint to the Civil Rights Commission against Phillips, who was found guilty by the Commission of violating Colorados Anti-Discrimination Act in May 2014.

"We all have a right to our personal beliefs, but we do not have a right to impose those beliefs on others and discriminate against them," ACLU staff attorney Ria Tabacco Mar said in a statement.

In August 2015, the Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of the Civil Rights Commission.

Masterpiece remains free to continue espousing its religious beliefs, including its opposition to same-sex marriage. However, if it wishes to operate as a public accommodation and conduct its business within the State of Colorado, CADA (the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act) prohibits it from picking and choosing its customers based on their sexual orientation," the decision states.

Phillips, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, was prompted to file a petition to appeal with the Colorado Supreme Court in October 2015.

We asked the Colorado Supreme Court to take this case to ensure that government understands that its duty is to protect the peoples freedom to follow their beliefs personally and professionally, not force them to violate those beliefs as the price of earning a living, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Jeremy Tedesco said in a statement.

Jack, who has happily served people of all backgrounds for years, simply exercised the long-cherished American freedom to decline to use his artistic talents to promote a message and event with which he disagrees, and that freedom shouldnt be placed in jeopardy for anyone.
In response to new laws and countermeasures related to restroom usage and gender identity, Target has taken a stand saying it will allow customers and employees to use restrooms that best relate to ones perceived gender. In other words, biological males who identify as women can be in the restroom with women and vice versa.

Social media lit up with opinions on both ends of the spectrum. From the side Im on, one social call to action has stood above the rest: Boycott. The American Family Associations online petition to boycott Target has garnered nearly 600,000 signatures, and the petition continues to circulate on social media.

I understand the sentiment and appeal of such an action. Hit board members where it hurts  their wallets. Stand up for truth. Click a few petition links and play a part in being the salt of the earth. It sounds like an easy and impactful way to take a stand, but is boycotting a corporation the best way to reflect Christ in light of the issues at stake? I worry that a strategy of cultural engagement centered around boycotts is doomed to undermine the true effectiveness of biblical evangelism.

Lets Focus on the Real Problem

Boycotting typically focuses its efforts on reducing the ripple effects of the real problem. Think of it like this: You have a leak in your basement. Instead of fixing the dripping pipe, the plumber sets up various containers and buckets to contain it. But its only a provisional fix. Because the source of your leak hasnt been addressed, your new bucket will eventually fill again. The plumber has only disguised the root problem.

Similarly, boycotts may make a statement, but often fail to trigger lasting change. We see the problem, in this ...

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home World Al-Qaeda affiliated Islamist group in Syria bombs town in Hama, pushed back by ISIS in Yarmouk

A town in Hama, Syria was bombed Sunday by an Islamist group affiliated with the Al-Qaeda militant organization.

"Nusra fighters, backed by rebels of the Ahrar al-Sham, shelled Sqelbiya with at least 14 mortars on Sunday," Abboud Sarkis, a media activist, told ARA News.

According to the report, four civilians died and nine other were injured when the bombers attacked the residential area in the town of Sqelbiya.

"Also, the bombardment has caused mass destruction in residential buildings, and rescue teams are still looking for victims under the rubble," Sarkis said.

Christians comprise the majority of residents in the town, which is under the control of the Syrian government. Islamists have reportedly been trying to take hold of the town because of its strategic location.

Meanwhile, in Damascus, the Nusra Front and its rival jidahist group Islamic State have been fighting over the Yarmouk refugee camp, which, according to The Long War Journal, once served as home to at least 100,000 Palestinian and Syrian refugees. Amaq News Agency, IS's propaganda media outlet, said on April 14 through an infographic that they control 30 percent of Yarmouk and 70 percent of what it called the nearby "Palestine Camp."

While it's difficult to ascertain if Amaq's claims are accurate, Newsweek reported Friday that IS's 2,000 to 3,000 fighters outnumber those of Nusra, estimated to be in the hundreds. Both camps reportedly behead their rivals.

Anwar Abdel Hadi, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Damascus, told Agence France-Presse, "Daesh [Islamic State] has chased Al Nusra[h], its former ally in the Yarmouk camp, from 90 percent of the territory it controlled."

Elsewhere, Al Qaeda has lost a strategic location. On Monday, Yemeni forces and its United Arab Emirates allies took back an oil export terminal in Ash Ishir, the largest one in Yemen. According to The New York Times, the day before, the government troops first took control of the seaport and airport in Al Mukalla, 42 miles from Ash Ishir.
home US Bill amending International Religious Freedom Act passes U.S. House Foreign Affairs committtee

The Foreign Affairs committee of the United States House of Representatives has, on Wednesday, unanimously adopted a bill that would improve the country's ability to advance global religious freedom.

House Resolution 1150, titled the "Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act of 2015," aims to amend the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. Should it become law, the U.S. would be able to improve its efforts in advancing religious freedom on an international scale by means of "stronger and more flexible political responses to religious freedom violations and violent extremism worldwide," as well as through better diplomacy, counterterrorism, training, and foreign assistance efforts.

"The bill we passed almost 18 years ago needs to be updated to match the challenges of the 21st century," said U.S. representative Chris Smith, who authored H.R. 1150. "The world is experiencing an unprecedented crisis of international religious freedom, a crisis that continues to create millions of victims; a crisis that undermines liberty, prosperity and peace; a crisis that poses a direct challenge to the U.S. interests in the Middle East, Russia, China and sub-Saharan Africa."

Smith also said that there is a need for "a robust religious freedom diplomacy," in order for the country to advance its interest in economic development, security, and stability. He also said that more religious freedom results to less terrorism but more political stability, freedom of speech, economic freedom, and women empowerment.

Among the numerous items included in the bill are the establishment of a Commission on International Religious Freedom, promotion of religious freedom, presidential action in response to violations, and matters on refugees and asylum.

According to Smith's website, the full House of Representatives is expected to consider H.R. 1150 in the next few weeks. The bill has gained the support of religious groups, ethnic minority representatives, and non-government organizations.
home World Dilma Rousseff impeachment: Brazilian president says move is sexist; shows increasing presence of evangelical Christians in the country?

Brazil's lower house has voted to impeach president Dilma Rousseff for allegedly manipulating government funds, and this is seen as a rising influence of evangelical Christians in a dominantly Catholic country.

"During the last roll call vote for the continuation of the process of impeachment in the lower house ... several politicians dedicated their vote 'for God,'" said Karina Bellotti, professor of contemporary history at the Federal University of ParanA in Brazil, as quoted by The Christian Science Monitor. "Some of them were Catholic a but most were Evangelical, from the Pentecostal churches."

The impeachment was led by lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha, a Pentecostal Christian. He is the second in line to the presidency next to Vice President Michel Temer, a Maronite Christian, should Rousseff be ousted from office.

Belloti said that in the past 30 years, the presence of evangelicals in the Brazilian government has increased. The president's impeachment shows what the CSM report calls "a coming-of-age for Evangelical Christians," although it does not mean that there will be change in how they live in the country.

"People usually don't feel represented by these politicians once they take their positions, and there is the sensation that there's 'nothing we can do,'" Bellotti explained. "But in the everyday life ... Evangelicals are on the rise (at least for now) in the society because of lay and clerical efforts of evangelization and social insertion."

According to the CIA World Factbook, 64.6 percent of the population in Brazil identify themselves as Roman Catholic while Protestants comprise 22.2 percent of the population.

However, Rousseff sees the impeachment as sexist. According to Newsweek, the president said that the male-dominated lower house has singled her out partly because she's a woman. There are only 45 women in the Chamber of Deputies out of 513.

"There has been, mixed in all of this, a large amount of prejudice against women," Rousseff said at a news conference, as quoted by Newsweek. "There are attitudes toward me that there would not be with a male president."

Rousseff is accused of misusing government funds, but she pointed out that many of her political opponents are facing criminal charges for corruption. She reportedly named Cunha, who is facing charges for money laundering and corruption; while Temer, she said, was conspiring against her. According to watchdog Congresso em Foco, more than 50 percent of those who voted to have her impeached are under investigation for electoral crimes, graft, or fraud.

Rouseff called the impeachment a "coup" and said, "This is an attempt to have an indirect presidential election by a group of people who would otherwise never be elected."

Following the decision of the Congress, the impeachment now moves on the Senate. If the opposition gets a majority vote, Rousseff will be suspended and a trial will start.
home US Fragments of what could be 16th century giant cross found in Arkansas

A fragment of wood from what could be a 16th century cross was found this week in Arkansas.

The remains of the wood, measuring 12 inches in length with a diamter of 18 inches, was unearthed Tuesday by the Arkansas Archeological Survey at the Parkin Archaeological State Park in northeastern Arkansas. The charred piece is believed to have been part of the cross that Hernando de Soto, a Spanish conquistador, had had erected in 1541. The excavation site is presumed to be where a Native American village called Casqui used to be.

"This is a very exciting development," said Dr. Jeffrey Mitchem, the Parkin site archaeologist for the Arkansas Archeological Survey, as quoted by The Archeological Conservancy. "The combination of the wooden post segment and the undisturbed large post hole both point to a strong presumption that this is de Soto's cross from 1541. Hopefully the dating studies, especially the tree rings, will confirm it."

In 1539, De Soto -- with his ships, horses, and more than 600 men including around 12 Dominican priests -- landed in modern-day Florida. They moved inland in search of gold and other treasures, and about two years later, after their crossing of the Mississippi River, they arrived in today's Arkansas and came upon the village of Casqui. There was an extended drought in the area and the natives asked the European gods for help; so a huge cross built from the "tallest, straightest tree" -- which reportedly took a hundred men to raise -- was erected on the largest mound in the village.

In the '60s, archeologists from the University of Arkansas have discovered in the mound what looked like the top of a large wooden post. After taking samples, they covered it with plastic and refilled the hole, which was earlier dug by looters. In 1992, these samples were found by Mitchem and were carbon dated to between AD 1515 and 1663. While digs were conducted in other areas, it was only in 2015, when they received funds from the Elfrieda Frank Foundation to search for the cross, that they looked for Soto's cross in earnest.

On Monday, Mitchem and his team of archeologists used modern survey equipment to look for the spot that the '60s team found, and they began excavating on Tuesday. With further digging after the burnt piece was removed, they discovered a large pit that looks to be like where a large post was standing. Rotted wood was also found on the sides of hole. With this, Mitchem surmises that the base of the post or cross decayed over time while the discovered piece was preserved because it had been burnt. Some broken pieces of Indian pottery were also found.

Ten samples will be carbon dated, and the piece of charred wood will be taken to David Stehle, a cypress tree ring expert at the University of Arkansas, to attempt to date the artifact via the growth rings.
home World Muslims destroy Christian church, livestock in Uganda

Muslims destroyed a church building and killed the livestock of Christians in Nalugondo village in Uganda earlier this month.

A group of Muslims reportedly attacked and killed the pigs of Samuel Kijali, one of the lay leaders of the Nalugondo Church of Uganda, while singing praises to Allah and Muhammad. The pigs were an important source of income for Kijali and his family.

Sources claimed that Kijali had received text messages a few weeks before his livestock was attacked, warning him he should stop raising pigs because these are unholy.

"Let this be known to your church members that pigs are extremely unholy and an abomination before Allah, very outrageous and shameful. They are haram [forbidden] and unlawful as our holy Quran does prohibit them," a text message read.

Two days after the slaughter of Kijali's pigs, some Muslims again attacked at midnight and demolished the church building. Witnesses who saw the destruction of the church building said the Muslims were shouting that they were fighting "for the cause of Allah" and they could not tolerate living together "with neighbors who are infidels," according to Morning Star News.

Although there are a lot more Christians than Muslims in Uganda in general, the opposite is true in Nalugondo village, where Muslims have outnumbered the Christians.

"It is quite difficult to resist these militant Muslims, because they have outnumbered us the Christians and are accusing us that we are defiling their faith," Kijali lamented.

The Nalugondo church has 450 members. With their church building gone, many of them are left without shelter.

According to the East African Center for Law and Justice, Muslims in Uganda comprise approximately 12 percent of the population. However, persecution of Christians still occur in the country.
home Faith Retired bishop, pastor defy United Methodist Church, officiates gay wedding

A bishop and a pastor could face disciplinary measures from the United Methodist Church for having officiated a same-sex wedding over the weekend.

"We are aware of the wedding at First United Methodist Church on Saturday," a spokesperson told The Charlotte Observer. "Bishop Goodpaster will follow the procedures in The Book of Discipline if a formal complaint is filed."

Bishop Larry Goodpaster leads the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Same-sex marriages are prohibited based on the UMC Book of Discipline, but the leadership board reportedly voted in August that, regardless of whether it breaks the rules or not, any member of the church could get married. Many UMC ministers in the United States are said to be tolerant or even amenable to same-sex unions, but in more conservative congregations in many parts of the world, it is not accepted, and proposed changes to the rules are strongly opposed.

Bishop Melvin Talbert and senior pastor Val Rosenquist officiated the wedding of Jim Wilborne and John Romano on Saturday, because both believe that doing otherwise would be an act of discrimination.

"Discrimination is discrimination, no matter where it is, and it's wrong. I hope that what we did here yesterday will be an act of evangelism for people ... who are looking for safe places to come because they don't want to be identified with anti-gay [sentiment]."

The 81-year-old retired bishop, who shared three days and nights of jail time with Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1960, has campaigned against discrimination for a long time. His stance on same-sex marriage, he said, is an act of "biblical obedience."

Acknowledging what could happen to them, he said on Sunday to the congregation at the First United Methodist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina: "Your pastor could have complaints filed against her, and I could, too. ... But it's the right thing to do. If it costs us, if there are consequences, so let it be."

Rosenquist, meanwhile, said that Book of Discipline has "institutionalized oppression and discrimination."

"These folks are our brothers and sisters," she said, referring to the members of the LGBT community. "It's just a matter of obeying our covenant with one another throughout the church, that we are to minister to all and to treat all the same. I'm just following what I was ordained to do, what I was baptised to do."

The United Methodist Church, along with the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Church do not allow same-sex marriages, but the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., as well as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have already allowed such unions.

The General Conference in Portland, Oregon could be the venue for changes in the UMC rules.
home US Target's LGBT-friendly bathroom policy: Christian group urges consumers to boycott store

A Christian group is encouraging people to boycott retail giant Target for its LGBT-friendly restroom/fitting room policy.

"The American Family Association is calling for a boycott of Target after the retail giant said it would allow men to use the women's restrooms and dressing rooms in their stores," the fundamentalist non-profit Christian organization says in its website.

The policy was announced by Target on April 19, saying that the company continues to stand for inclusivity and for "equality and equity."

"Consistent with this belief, Target supports the federal Equality Act, which provides protections to LGBT individuals, and opposes action that enables discrimination," reads their official statement.

The Christian group, however, is firm in their belief that allowing men to enter and frequent women's facilities endangers women and children, and they deem that many would agree to boycott the store until it prioritizes the protection of women and children. Thus far, the pledge has garnered more than 650,000 signatures.

"Target's policy is exactly how sexual predators get access to their victims," the group says. "And with Target publicly boasting that men can enter women's bathrooms, where do you think predators are going to go?"

The Christian Post op-ed contributor Carmen Fowler Laberge, however, thinks that "the boycott war is neither persuasive nor effective." She suggests that rather than boycotting, Target ought to be given an opportunity to provide specific plans ensuring that the women and girls in their stores are safe -- given the probable risk of their policy -- while still accommodating the needs of transgender people.

The AFA did pose a solution for Target to consider: a unisex bathroom. They are suggesting that the reasonable answer to this issue would be to keep men's and women's facilties separate, but another one for single occupancy can be put up for use of those belonging to LGBT community or for those who wish to not be in the company of others.
home US Teen girl dies after violent fight with other girls in Delaware high school bathroom

Residents of Wilmington, Delaware have been shocked by the death of a sixteen-year-old girl who died on Thursday morning, April 21, after a fight with a group of girls in a high school bathroom.

Amy Joyner-Francis reportedly had a confrontation with three girls in the main bathroom of Howard High School of Technology before classes started. Sources say the argument was about a boy, although Joyner-Francis' friend Shytera Dawkins said this was not true.

Dawkins said Joyner-Francis had told her Wednesday night that she would meet with the girls the following morning to "settle the beef."

"This was like the first time that someone died over a fight," Dawkins told Delaware Online. "Amy is a good girl who gets good grades who stays out of trouble. For them to fight, it's just wow, a shocker for everybody," he added.

Joyner-Francis sustained serious injuries from the violent confrontation. She was airlifted to A.I. duPont Hospital, where she eventually died.

Authorities said no weapon was used during the fight. However, they have not disclosed Joyner-Francis' cause of death. Three girls are being questioned about the incident.

Wilmington Mayor Dennis Williams said the girls "could spend a substantial amount of time in prison" if proven guilty.

"I'm a retired police officer. If the physical evidence shows that they are the perpetrators and a person loses their life, absolutely," he told CBS News.

Williams reminded parents that they should take charge over their children's affairs. "Parents need to step it up," he said.

Students were dismissed Thursday morning after news of the incident broke out.

Meanwhile, superintendent Victoria Gehrt from the New Castle County Vocational Technical School District, assured students and parents that Howard High School is not an unsafe place.

"I'd like to reinforce to all that Howard [High School of Technology] is a safe school for our students," ABC News quoted Gehrt as saying.
'At least 8 children dead' as Christian neighbourhoods attacked in Aleppo

Christian and Kurdish neighbourhoods in Aleppo have come under attack and a number of children have been killed as Syria continues to struggle with intensified fighting, more than five years into its civil war.

On Monday the Christian neighbourhood of Sulaymaniyah in Aleppo, the largest city in Syria and populated mainly by Armenians and Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriacs, was attacked.

A Demand for Action (ADFA), a group working for the protection of minorities in the Middle East, said in an update on Facebook that Sulaymaniyah came under fire from "terrorists".

"It was only weeks after photos had been circulated all over the world, depicting the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch His Holiness Ignatius Aphrem II celebrating with the inhabitants of Aleppo, that Christians were finally safe. Now, they are under heavy attack again. Many children were killed today," ADFA said.

It posted a video clip by Inews, in which Aleppo residents "are begging the world not to forget them. They cry out: 'They want to exterminate us. Enough is enough. We have been forgotten, why... why... we are begging...'"

ADFA's founder Nuri Kino, an Assyrian, confirmed to Christian Today that Kurdish and Christian children had been killed in the fighting.

"Turkish forces fighting together with the so-called opposition have been fighting the regime's army for a couple of days now, heavy fighting. But what people could not see coming was the attacks against Christian neighbourhoods," he said. "Kurdish neighbourhoods have also been attacked. Both the Christians and the Kurdish are seen as the enemy, it's a mess."

A cousin of Kino's mother is currently in Aleppo. She told him this morning: "We were praying that we could get some rest from the war, that it is over, just weeks ago we started to get normal life back. Now, we have lost all hope, we just want out of here, there is no one to protect us. I can't take it any more, I can't see more friends, relatives or neighbours lose their children from the bombs of the terrorists.

"We are all dead, in a way or another, life came back to us as for a vacation but now dead has taken over again. We are begging the world to find a solution to stop this war, please, please, no more children suffering, tell them Nuri, tell them".

Spokeswoman for ADFA, Diana Yaqco, said: "All I can say on this situation [is] that it is incredibly sad and it's not a surprise either. We are being hunted all the time, not just for being a minority people but for our religion also... This week was the commemoration [of] 101 years since the genocide of Armenians, Assyrians at the hands of Ottoman Empire.

"This genocide I feel will continue to follow us, world leaders can recognise it, stamp it onto papers, but what's the use when we are still being killed for the same reasons we were being killed 101 years ago?"

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights today said that at least 30 people, including at least eight children, had been killed in Aleppo in the last 24 hours.

Fighting between the Syrian government's forces and rebels across the city also injured dozens more, the monitoring group said.

According to Reuters, fighting has intensified in Aleppo over the last few days after a partial truce agreed in February almost collapsed.
Christian author Jen Hatmaker calls for full inclusion of LGBT community in church

Bestselling Christian author Jen Hatmaker has called for Christians to welcome the LGBT community with open arms.

"It is high time Christians opened wide their arms, wide their churches, wide their tables wide their homes to the LGBT community," wrote the popular Christian speaker in a Facebook post.

Hatmaker has previously held a more conservative position on LGBT, writing in 2014 that she believed "God's original creation is how we were crafted to thrive: in marriage, in family, and in community, which has borne out for millennia in Scripture, interpretation, practice, and society (within and without church)."

In a Facebook post on April 23, the author of 7 and For the Love mourned the fact that "so great has our condemnation and exclusion been, that gay Christian teens are SEVEN TIMES more likely to commit suicide.

"Nope. No. No ma'am. Not on my watch. No more. This is so far outside the gospel of Jesus that I don't even recognize its reflection. I can't. I won't. I refuse."

Hatmaker said she believed it is time to fully include the LGBT community in churches:

"So whatever the cost and loss, this is where I am: gay teens? Gay adults? Mamas and daddies of precious gaybees? Friends and beloved neighbors of very dear LGBT folks?

"Here are my arms open wide. So wide that every last one of you can jump inside. You are so dear, so beloved, so precious and important. You matter so desperately and your life is worthy and beautiful."

She continued that there "is nothing 'wrong with you,' or in any case nothing more right or wrong than any of us, which is to say we are all hopelessly screwed up but Jesus still loves us beyond all reason and lives to make us all new, restored, whole."

The Facebook post, which finishes "My message to you today is simple, LGBT gang and all those who love you: You are loved and special and wanted and needed. The end", has received 35,000 likes and almost 7,000 shares.

In a comment on the post, Hatmaker condemns structural racism, saying that she stands "beside my minority brothers and condemn white supremacy, challenge white fragility, and fight alongside their long battle for equality, justice and dignity".
Christian church website hacked by militant Islamist cyber terrorists

Islamist terrorists have hacked a Christian church website with the statement: "We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses and enslave your women by the permission of Allah, the Exalted."

The website hack of Lamont Christian Reformed Church in Michigan was discovered by a Elizabeth Storteboom, aged 15, when she was searching the site in order to put the church number on a form.

Instead she saw the words: "You have been hacked by the United Cyber Caliphate." A YouTube video featuring Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad Al-adnani also played automatically.

She told Fox 17: "I clicked on the website and all of the sudden this video pops up, and I'm like, what is going on? It just started playing, and I was reading the bottom, and it was talking about crazy things. I called my dad in, and said he needs to see this. I covered the camera, because I was super scared there for a second.

"It was just talking about hating Christians and how Allah was God and everything. I was just confused. They were talking about taking women and children and stuff."

The group has been hacking websites for at least two years.

Storteboom and her father were able to alert the church. The FBI was also notified.

United Cyber Caliphate, a group of ISIS cyber terrorists, also distributed a "kill list" that appeared to include US government personnel.
Citizens' initiative launched to ban abortion without exceptions in predominantly Catholic Poland

A people's initiative has been launched in Poland seeking to ban abortion without exceptions following a public uproar sparked by the much publicised botched abortion at a hospital in Warsaw in which a 24-week-old child, who had been diagnosed with Down Syndrome, was left unattended to die.

"The scream of this child was so traumatic for the personnel that they declared that they will never forget it," Polish reporter Anna Wiejak told the news outlet Church Militant.

A citizens' initiative, spearheaded by pro-life group Fundacja Pro (Pro Foundation), is seeking to collect the required 100,000 signatures for the proposed total ban on abortion to be considered for hearing in the country's legislature, Christian News reports.

"The proposed draft ensures that all children, before and after birth, have equal rights and protection of life and health," states the legal group Ordo Iuris, which wrote the proposed language of the citizens' bill, on its website.

"It removes the three existing circumstances under which an abortion is currently permitted. The initiative requires the state to support families raising handicapped children or children conceived in circumstances related to the commission of an offence."

Poland's Catholic bishops are urging lawmakers to support the proposed ban while setting up "programmes to ensure concrete help for parents of sick and handicapped children and those conceived through rape," the Catholic Herald reports.

They said a permanent ban on abortion will be a fitting occasion to mark the anniversary of their country's Christian conversion in AD 966.

"Each person's life is protected by the Fifth Commandment: Do not kill. So the attitude of Catholics is clear and unchanging," the Polish bishops' conference said in a March 30 statement.

"In this jubilee year of Poland's baptism, we urge all people of goodwill, believers and nonbelievers, to take action to ensure full legal protection of unborn lives," the bishops' statement said.

The proposed law mandates government to provide material assistance and care to families raising children who are seriously handicapped or who suffer from a life-threatening illness, as well as to mothers and their children when there are reasons to suspect that the pregnancy is a result of an unlawful act.

While physicians who violate the proposed law would face between three months and three years of imprisonment, the proposed legislation will not punish mothers who obtain an abortion illegally.

The existing regulation allows abortion in instances when the woman is impregnated in the commission of a crime, when the life and health of the mother is at risk, and for foetal handicaps and abnormalities up to 25 weeks of gestation. About 200 abortions are performed in the country yearly under these exceptions.

Feminists and abortion advocates have protested the move, as well as former first ladies Danuta Waesa, Jolanta Kwasniewska and Anna Komorowska.

"Every abortion is a tragedy, but we should not aggravate women's tragedy by forcing them to give birth to children of rape or forcing them to risk their own life or health or that of their child," they wrote in an open letter.

Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo told Polish Radio on March 31 that the statement "has clearly pointed us in the right direction ... Each of us must now decide according to conscience. But it will certainly be bad if such a sensitive, important issue becomes the object of a political struggle."

Over 90 percent of Polish citizens identify as Roman Catholic.
Councils join Christian MP as pressure mounts on government over gambling regulation

Pressure was heaped on the government over betting regulations on Tuesday after local councils joined Christian MP Jim Shannon to call for a clamp down on the "crack-cocaine of gambling".

Fixed-odd betting terminals (FOBTs) were targeted by Shannon in his parliamentary debate on Tuesday morning as he called for the maximum stake to be reduced from 100 to 2.

The local government association (LGA), which represents 373 councils in England and Wales, also waded into the debate over the controversial machines. The fast-paced games take stakes of up to 100 per 'spin' lasting 20 seconds. Players can lose up to 300 per minute and 18,000 per hour leading to growing calls for the maximum stake to be cut.

Councillor Simon Blackburn, chair of the LGA's safer and stronger communities board said the "harm and anti-social behaviour they can cause has become an issue of growing national concern.

"Someone playing on a machine can lose 100 in a matter of seconds in a single play on an FOBT. This is money many people can't afford to lose and needs to be looked at again."

Shannon, the DUP MP for Strangford in Northern Ireland, said the "simple answer" was to reduce the stake. He added that the machines have "clustered in areas of high social deprivation" and "prey on the young and vulnerable".

He said regulation and a limit on the maximum stake to 2 was "the only way effectively to tackle the growing problems that these machines are inflicting on our communities and on those who can least afford it".

FOBTs have been a prominent issue for Christians, with CARE, a Christian public policy charity, among a number of campaigners calling for a 2 maximum stake. Nola Leach, chief executive of the charity, said the rise of FOBTs "cannot be ignored". She added the way they had been shown to proliferate in poorer areas was a "huge cause for concern".

She said: "People are losing vast sums of money on these machines which often leads to further problems such as job losses and family breakdown and tragically, some players even commit suicide.

"FOBTs are causing social devastation across the country and the unique combination of high speed play and a high maximum stake means problem gamblers are especially at risk.

"The government should stop stalling because the longer it takes to act, the more devastation these toxic machines will cause."

However in his response the minister responsible for gambling, David Evennett, said he "recognised the concerns" around FOBTs but offered no assurances on reducing the stake.

The debate and the LGA's intervention comes after a poll revealed 72 per cent of MPs want tougher regulations on FOBTs. The poll also showed 81 per cent also say FOBTs are having a negative effect on society and 67 per cent say the current maximum stake is too high.
Customers hit Target for allowing staff and customers to use restrooms of their choice, saying policy endangers women and kids

In defiance of a recent law passed in North Carolina prohibiting people from using public bathrooms that do not correspond to their biological sex, retail giant Target has decided to "stand for inclusivity" by allowing customers and staff to use whatever bathroom they feel most comfortable in.

However, Target's decision to accommodate its LGBT customers appeared to have backfired as many customers reacted angrily to the action it took, with some even threatening to boycott the company.

The American Family Association, a conservative Christian advocacy group, started a petition urging people to boycott Target until the bathroom policy is changed, according to Fortune. The group reasoned that Target's reasoning is wrong because it "endangers women and children by allowing men to frequent women's facilities."

Over 383,000 people have already signed the petition since it was first launched. When sought for a comment regarding the issue, Target failed to provide any.

"Inclusivity is a core belief at Target. It's something we celebrate," the company earlier said in a statement. "We stand for equality and equity, and strive to make our guests and team members feel accepted, respected and welcomed in our stores and workplaces every day."

Target said it supports the federal Equality Act, which provides protections to members of the LGBT community and opposes anything that would discriminate against them. The company believes that it has a responsibility of making sure that everyonefrom its staff, customers, and members of the communitywill be treated equally in its stores.

"In our stores, we demonstrate our commitment to an inclusive experience in many ways. Most relevant for the conversations currently underway, we welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity," the company said.

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said the state's legislature passed House Bill 2, also dubbed as "anti-LGBT law," because the lawmakers wanted to protect their children from sexual predators.

If the law offended the LGBT community, this was not intended, he added.

"I have come to the conclusion that there is a great deal of misinformation, misinterpretation, confusion, a lot of passion and frankly, selective outrage and hypocrisy, especially against the great state of North Carolina," McCrory said. "I know these actions will not totally satisfy everyone, but the vast majority of our citizens want common sense solutions to complex issues."

McCrory said having a "women's facility and a men's facility" has worked out pretty well over the past years, and he does not see any reason why the government should interfere with that.
Does the Bible need a good edit?

In my role as editor of Preach Magazine, I occasionally get angry letters. Two weeks ago, Mr H wrote in to complain about an article that referred to the siege of Jericho in Joshua 6: "In the world we are now in, we must be much more radical in our approach to the Old Testament," he argued. "Why are Christians so ready to use ghastly Old Testament events, often involving ethnic cleansing, child murder, child sacrifice and massive slaughter to tell people about our 'loving God'?" His letter concluded with the strong recommendation that we distance ourselves (and God) from these stories.

Two days later I had another chap, Mr P, spluttering over the phone with outrage over a piece about Paul's teaching on allegiance to rulers. Mr P is not a fan of the writings of Paul and if he had his way they wouldn't feature in the Good Book at all.

Mr H and Mr P are not alone in their dismay, disgust and embarrassment about our sacred text. Is it time we gave it a good edit? Would it be a good idea to bring it up to date and into line with our enlightened understanding of the principles of diversity, tolerance and hygiene? Are there some passages we can and should disregard as being written by horrible humans, most likely hungover and possibly not entirely mentally healthy when they took up their chisels on that Monday afternoon in 140 BC? Or is every 'jot and tittle' of the 66 books (73 if you are a Catholic) in the canon God-breathed, an eternally relevant and literally true revelation of the divine mind?

There is nothing like a discussion about the Bible to bring out the worst in Christians. We love to come up with labels that make those who hold our position sound good and others sound like idiots with no morals - progressives vs fundamentalists, woolly liberals vs orthodox believers, dogmatists vs radical disciples. We caricature each other's positions in passive aggressive blog posts, and only read books that will reinforce our position. People, this is not good! Jesus specifically asked us to be a community known for the way we love each other.

I am of the 'keep the scissors away from the Bible' school of thought. I'd argue - and probably cry in the middle of my argument because that's how much I hate conflict - that we shouldn't edit the Bible. But I have a few provisos:

God is the only hero

The point of biblical narratives is never that we should blindly emulate the behaviour of any of the protagonists simply because they are in the Bible. Judges 11 tells of Jephthah the mighty warrior who vowed to sacrifice the first thing to leave his house if he defeated the Ammonites, presumably assuming this would be something expendable like a chicken. Unfortunately he won the battle, and more unfortunately it was his daughter who burst out the door to meet him on his return. The point of this story is not to go thou and make stupid vows also.

True doesn't mean literal

The Bible contains many genres - poetry, history, letters, prophecy and so on. We wouldn't read a cook book in the way we read a novel, we don't search the front page of The Times for instructions on how to live, and we wouldn't fight to the death over whether Blake's tiger burning bright was actually combusting.

Always consider the original intent of the text

Historical and geographical context shines light on meaning - we'll read better if we let it illuminate for us. When Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman at the well, it helps to know that Samaritans were descended from the tribes of Ephraim and Manassah but had split from the rest of Israel and intermingled with the peoples around them. Jews considered them sinful and unclean. And it was unusual for a woman to draw water at midday when it was hot. This tells us this woman was a social outcast, and Jesus was flouting convention to talk to her.

'Divinely inspired' doesn't mean God held the pen or dictated the words

The beauty of the Bible is that God has revealed himself in and through his broken, flawed creation. There is mystery here, but only the most arrogant would claim to have understood all there is to understand about God and how he communicates.

If every generation had edited the Bible, adapting it to their perspective on who God is and what values He ought to hold, we would probably be left with something tweetable about love. And I'm sure our grandchildren would have a different take on what love means. So no, we shouldn't edit it.

But we should read it carefully, prayerfully and humbly.

Jo Swinney is an author, speaker and editor of Preach Magazine. She has a Masters in Theology from Regent College, Vancouver, and lives in South West London with her vicar husband and their two little girls.
Former bishop on Christian persecution in China: 'If we keep silent, we are accomplices'

The retired Bishop of Hong Kong has urged China to end the persecution of Christians in the country, according to UCA news.

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun lead a prayer service in front of China's Hong Kong liaison office in Beijing, where around had 100 people gathered on April 24.

"Facing all this persecution, we cannot take it for granted. We cannot stand idly. If we keep silent, we are accomplices," he said.

The service coincided with the conclusion of a petition campaigning for Pope Francis to pray for religious freedom and an end to religious persecution in China.

The campaign, headed by Hong Kong's diocesan Justice and Peace Commission (JPC), which was asking Francis to urge the Chinese government to stop removing crosses, had gained 800 signatures.

"We hope the Pope can include the cross-removal campaign and the two missing bishops in his prayers on the prayer day," Or Yan-yan, project officer at JPC, told ucanews.com.

The prayer day for China was established by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.

The petition also asks Pope Francis to "inquire about the situation of... two bishops in your communications with the Chinese authorities".

The two bishops Or referred to are Bishop James Su Zhimin, 84, and Bishop Cosmas Shi Enxiang, 95.

"These two bishops... have been imprisoned for over half of their lives. They have been forcibly disappeared for 18 and 15 years," the petition states.

The Communist Party is believed to be becoming progressively more suspicious of the influence of Christianity, which is experiencing significant growth in the country. Up to 1,700 churches have been demolished or had their crosses removed in Zhejiang province, and a number of church leaders and their lawyers have been arrested and detained.
Islamist militants behead Canadian hostage John Ridsdel

Islamist terrorists have beheaded the Canadian hostage John Ridsdel, 68.

Justine Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, condemned the killing as an act of "cold-blooded murder".

Ridsdel, a former mining executive, was seized with three others from a popular holiday resort in the Philippines.

The Abu Sayyaf group kidnapped Ridsdel, along with fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Hall's Philippine girlfriend Maritest Flor and a Norwegian, Kjartan Sekkingstad, in September last year.

The Islamists then released a video last November demanding a 55 million ransom for all four.

Ridsdel's severed head was found on Jolo, a remote island, soon after the ransom deadline expired yesterday.

Trudeau said it was a "heinous act".

He said: "Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers, and this unnecessary death. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage."

Bob Rae, a friend of Ridsdel, told CBC News: "It's hard, it's just very hard. I've been involved behind the scenes for the last six months trying to find a solution and it's been very painful."

Abu Sayyaf is a small ultra-extremist separatist group from the southern Philippines, and gets some funding from Al Qaeda.

The Philippines are mainly Catholic.

The group was responsible for a 2004 ferry bombing in Manila Bay which killed 100 people.
'Justice must follow' Hillsborough ruling, says Bishop of Liverpool

"Justice must follow" the Hillsborough jury's verdict the Bishop of Liverpool has said after the court ruled the 96 who died in a stadium crush in 1989 were unlawfully killed.

The jury found match commander David Duckenfield "responsible for manslaughter by gross negligence" and said police errors added to the dangerous situation. Rt Rev Paul Bayes paid tribute to the families of the victims who have "stood for truth and justice" since the disaster in the FA cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.

"We have waited a long time for these determinations and today was bound to be a difficult day," he said after the verdict.

"It brings raw emotions and painful memories to the surface once again, for the families and for our city region. But there is also real comfort today, because the accusations at the time that Liverpool's fans contributed to this tragedy have finally been proven to be false.

"The steady journey continues. The families have always said that they seek truth and justice, and the inquests have worked longer than any in British legal history to uncover the truth. Now justice must follow."

The home secretary Theresa May is expected to make a statement on the verdict to the House of Commons tomorrow. Christian Today understands the former Bishop of Liverpool James Jones will be praised for his role as the chair of the independent panel into the disaster that led to new inquests. Bayes also praised his predecessor in his work to "get us to this point".

He said: "Together with my colleagues from all the churches, I commit myself to support those who hurt, help those who grieve and show God's love and compassion for all...This story continues because that pain continues, but we will walk forward with hope in our hearts. And as Christians we believe that the God of all love and strength will walk alongside us into the future."

Bayes was joined by the Bishop of Leeds, Nick Baines, who praised Jones' "courage, clarity and committed impartiality" in search of the truth.

Baines continued in an article for the Yorkshire Post: "The police and others now deemed to be in some way responsible for the tragedy must address their personal and collective response. This will not be easy for them. Justice must in the end be liberating for everyone, even those for whom the truth is painful."

Several MPs have added their tributes. Birkenhead MP Frank Field, who is a Catholic, said: "I hope this clearest of conclusions from the inquest goes some way in helping the families who lost loved ones to know that there is justice in this world and that the terrible gnawing feeling they had, that they were unable to win this judgement for their loved ones, is now assuaged."

There will be vigil in Liverpool on Wednesday evening after Tuesday's ruling. The Dean of Liverpool, Dr Pete Wilcox, will attend to represent the Church of England.
Labour MP resigns over anti-Semitic Facebook post

A Labour MP has stepped down as a ministerial aide to John McDonnell over anti-Semitic comments she posted on Facebook.

Naz Shah, the MP for Bradford, shared a graphic in August 2014 before she became an MP that suggested Israel should be relocated to the United States as a "solution" for conflict in Israel-Palestine. She added a comment: "problem solved" and suggested the plan could "save them some pocket money".

The image suggested Israeli people would be welcome in the US and "transportation cost" would amount to less than three years' of Washington's support for Israel's defence spending.

Shah has apologised and resigned from her role as parliamentary private secretary to the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell.

However Shah has remained a member of the House of Commons select committee that is currently investigating the rise of anti-semitism.

In a statement released by the Labour party she said: "I deeply regret the hurt I have caused by comments made on social media before I was elected as an MP.

"I made these posts at the height of the Gaza conflict in 2014, when emotions were running high around the Middle East conflict. But that is no excuse for the offence I have given, for which I unreservedly apologise.

"In recognition of that offence I have stepped down from my role as PPS to the shadow chancellor John McDonnell. I will be seeking to expand my existing engagement and dialogue with Jewish community organisations, and will be stepping up my efforts to combat all forms of racism, including antisemitism."

The scandal was revealed by the political website Guide Fawkes and comes as the latest in a line of exposures of anti-Semitic remarks made by Labour members.

A number of Conservative MPs have said Shah should be expelled as a Labour MP.
MPs reject call to rescue refugee children abandoned in Europe

MPs have rejected an attempt to make the government allow 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees to enter the UK from Europe.

Labour had tabled an amendment to the Immigration bill, backed by the Liberal Democrats and the SNP. Campaigners including Save the Children had called for the children to be allowed in, arguing there was an urgent need to protect them.

However, despite receiving some Conservative suppport the amendment was rejected by 294 to 276.

In arguments rejected by Lib Dem leader Tim Farron as "bogus", ministers said offering sanctuary to children who had already reached Europe could mean more fell into the hands of traffickers.

Speaking in favour of the amendment, Conservative backbencher Stephen Phillips said "exceptional times call for exceptional measures".

He said: "These children are already in Europe. They are alone, far from their families, they are cold, frightened, hungry, frequently without help or access to those who might help or protect them."

Shadow immigration minister Keir Starmer said the argument that admitting the children would create a "pull factor" for more refugees was "flimsy".

He told Radio 4's Today programme that children were sleeping rough with no possessions and nowhere to go and were slipping into sexual exploitation and trafficking.

Labour peers said they would propose an alternative amendment in the House of Lords today. If it succeeds there the matter could be debated again in the House of Commons.

In reponse to Monday's vote, Help Refugees UK, a charity working in the Calais refugee camp where hundreds of unaccompanied minors are living, said: "The children we work with daily have fled terror and conflict in the hope of finding safety on Europe's shores. We are deeply disappointed that Britain's politicians have voted against offering protection to 3000 of these youngsters and that they remain vulnerable to exploitation and inhumane living conditions.

"We will continue to fight for their safeguarding and do everything possible to ensure they do not join the ranks of the 10000 unaccompanied minors that Europol have charted as missing in Europe."

Kirsty McNeill, director of advocacy and campaigns at Save the Children, branded the decision "deeply disappointing."

"Tonight, across Europe, thousands of these children are alone and frightened as they go to sleep on roadsides, in police cells and in informal camps. Some are as young as ten and many of them have fled war and persecution to seek refuge in Europe  they need our help," she said.

"This problem isn't going away, it is getting worse. The government has not yet responded to the groundswell of public support and MPs of all parties who have called for the UK to offer safety to lone children in Europe. As this legislation returns to the House of Lords, parliament still has a chance to live up to Britain's proud history of reaching out a hand to the most vulnerable children who need our help."

The government's stance was criticised before the vote, with campaigners accusing it of failing to take the needs of lone refugee children seriously. Writing for Christian Today on Friday, Krish Kandiah, founder of the Home for Good adoption and fostering charity, said: "The government is refusing to engage with the unaccompanied child refugee crisis in Europe. This may relate to the political hot potato that Europe is at the moment because of the European referendum. But just because we are considering our political and economic ties to Europe, this does not mean that we can neglect our undisputed moral ties with our neighbours."
Pakistan: Christian woman kidnapped, forced to marry and convert to Islam

A Christian woman in Pakistan has been kidnapped, forced to marry and convert to Islam, according to a leading human rights lawyer.

Sardar Mushtaq Gill, who runs the Legal Evangelical Association Development, which provides free legal assistance and advocacy to victims of religious discrimination, sexual and domestic violence, said 23-year-old Laveeza Bibi was kidnapped on 14 April.

Two Muslims, armed with guns, forcibly entered the family home in Kasur, Punjab and threatened Bibi's mother and father before kidnapping the young woman.

One of them, Muhammad Talib, then forced her to marry him.

The young woman's father, Sarwar Masih, went to the police but struggled to get them to act. They claimed Laveeza had married the abductor and accepted Islam.

The family's pastor, Saleem Masih, and Gill then intervened and persuaded the police to take the case.

About 1,000 similar cases are registered in Pakistan each year and many more go unreported.
Should Ten Commandments monument return to Oklahoma State Capitol grounds? Now, it's up to the voters

The Oklahoma Senate has approved a resolution that would ask voters to decide on whether they agree or not to return a Ten Commandments monument to the State Capitol grounds.

Voting 39-5, the Senate passed Senate Joint Resolution 72 that will put on the November ballot an amendment of Oklahoma's Constitution that prohibits public money or property to be used to benefit a church or religion.

That section was used by the Oklahoma Supreme Court as the basis of its order issued last June for the removal of the monument from the capitol grounds.

The resolution by state Republican Rep. John Paul Jordan aims to remove the section stating that "public money or property cannot be used directly or indirectly for any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion."

"Since the Oklahoma Supreme Court's decision in June regarding the Ten Commandments monument, my constituents wanted to know what could be done," he said. "I knew it would be a difficult proposition to undo the ruling, so we looked at giving voters the opportunity to remove the basis for the ruling."

House Speaker Jeffrey Hickman said the voters should be heard.

"Oklahomans overwhelmingly supported the placement of the Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the state Capitol and they will now be given the opportunity to address the issue in our Constitution which the Supreme Court cited in ordering the removal of the Ten Commandments monument," he said.

The monument was removed last October as directed by the Supreme Court. Rep. Mike Ritze proposed the monument in 2009, using his own funds to pay for it.

The monument was placed at the capitol grounds in 2012.

Baptist Separatist minister Bruce Prescott and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the monument last year.

"I sincerely believe it is not the place of the government to co-opt this sacred scripture for political purposes," said Prescott, according to CBN News.

Ryan Kiesel, ACLU's executive director, said even if voters agree to amend the state Constitution and return the monument, it will be challenged in court under the U.S. Constitution.
Transgender and Christian: How Caitlyn Jenner challenges the Church

On April 24, all-American sporting superstar Bruce Jenner, who won gold for the decathlon in Montreal in 1972, announced that he was transsexual and that for all intents and purposes, "I'm a woman".

On Monday she revealed that her new name was Caitlyn. The shock was seismic: Jenner is not only a sporting hero but also features in the reality TV series Keeping up with the Kardashians, as until recently she was married to Kris and stepfather to her children.

What really perplexed evangelicals however, was that she was both a Christian and a Republican  neither of which really seemed to fit with her new identity. She said in her interview with Diane Sawyer: "I would sit in church and always wonder, 'In God's eyes, how does he see me?'"

Jenner's revelations made headlines because of who she is. But there are more and more people, and not just in the US, who identify themselves as transsexuals  generally used for people who transition from one sex to another  or transgender, whose sense of their gender differs from their physical sex. In a sign of how what was once rare is now becoming mainstream, a few days ago the vicar of Lancaster Priory, Rev Chris Newlands, proposed that the General Synod of the Church of England debate a new service to mark people's transition to a different gender.

For some Christians, helping people to transition from one gender to another is a compassionate response to a deeply-felt need. Others are profoundly uncomfortable about the theological implications of such interventions. So what are the issues, and how should Christians approach them?

The questions arise when someone suffers from a condition known as "gender dysphoria"  simply put, when a person suffers because their physical gender is at odds with what they believe is their real gender. The NHS describes it as "a condition where a person experiences discomfort or distress because there is a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity". So someone might have male genitalia and may even be married and father children  as Jenner did  but still feel that they're really a woman, and vice versa.

In some cases, the person's conviction is so deeply rooted that surgery and hormone treatment are judged to be justified in order to transform their appearance as far as possible to fit their chosen gender. In these cases, medical professionals believe that it helps them lead fuller and happier lives. Others choose to live as far as possible according to their felt 'real' identity without surgery.

The causes of gender dysphoria are debated. For many years it was believed to be purely psychological in origin. However, more recent studies appear to show that it may have a physiological basis and may be caused by the development of gender identity before birth, with the hormones that control the body and the brain not working in harmony during the development of the foetus in the womb. So hormones might determine that a child has male reproductive organs but a 'female' brain.

Treatments for the condition span the full range from counselling to full-scale gender reassignment surgery. People who don't choose that or aren't suitable candidates might have speech therapy, hair removal or hormone therapy. If they do want to make a full transition they'd be expected to live in their chosen gender identity for at least a year beforehand. The rigorous process of assessment generally seems to 'work': according to the NHS, after surgery most transsexuals are happy with their new sex and feel comfortable with their gender identity. One review of studies carried out over a 20-year period found that 96 per cent of people who had gender reassignment surgery were satisfied (though a 2011 Swedish survey found "considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population").

However, many evangelical Christians have serious theological doubts about the procedures, and about the increasing normalisation of the 'transgendered' identity.

They argue that gender is fixed at birth and just can't be changed. So leading US conservative commentator Russell Moore says in connection with Jenner: "We should stand for God's good design, including around what Jesus says has been true 'from the beginning'  that we are created male and female, not as self-willed designations but as part of God's creative act".

An Evangelical Alliance report in 2000, Transexuality, says: "We affirm God's love and concern for all humanity, but believe that God creates human beings as either male or female. Authentic change from a person's given sex is not possible and an ongoing transsexual lifestyle is incompatible with God's will as revealed in Scripture and in creation. We would oppose recourse to gender reassignment surgery as a normal valid option for people suffering from gender dysphoria on a biblical basis."

It called for the medical profession to investigate the "root psychological, social, spiritual and physical causes of transsexuality". While it recommends "gentleness and restraint", it says that transsexual people need to "reorientate their lifestyle in accordance with biblical principles and orthodox Church teaching".

One of the report's authors, EA head of public affairs Dr Don Horrocks, spoke to Christian Today. He's clear that this is still the formal position of the Alliance and is sceptical of the view that gender dysphoria has a biological basis.

"We would describe it as a psychological condition that usually involves someone rejecting themselves in some way. It's an overwhelming psychological belief that they will feel better and be more able to accept themselves if they were of the opposite sex."

The causes are complex, he believes, and may include a genetic predisposition. However, he says we should look for explanations in terms of a combination of factors, notably genetic and environmental, together with life experiences, early sexual experiences and environmental factors.

"We object fundamentally to the premise of treating psychological conditions with surgery," he says.

He believes there is a serious theological problem with accepting that people can change their gender.

"We live in an age where people think they can construct their own identity and demand that the rest of the world goes along with it," he says. Transgender Christians "construct a mythology" that they are "really, for example, a man trapped in a woman's body" as a result of an accident of birth. So their 'real' identity is what their mind tells them rather than their body  and so the brain is privileged over the body.

"This is contrary to the Judeo-Christian belief that sexuality is a given, to be blessed and welcomed," he says. It's akin to the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, in which the body is effectively despised and what really counts is mind or spirit.

For Horrocks, the key to understanding sexuality is in the Genesis creation stories, where "humanity is created unambiguously binary: gender is not constructed, it's given". So the Christian's approach should be about accepting ourselves as God created us. "How can it be right to disfigure our bodies and do radical and invasive things to them, and spend a lifetime on hormone therapy and other treatments?"

Horrocks believes that gender dysphoric people can be helped through holistic psychotherapy if motivated. He's adamant that the Church should never reject them but welcome them as they would anyone else, and recounts stories of how he's helped churches integrate transgendered people into their congregations. "They need to be accepted as they are, though ultimately wise Christian pastoral care would be seeking to help people come to accept themselves as God created them. We can't expect it to happen overnight. You might have to spend years of showing love and pastoral support, but we hope and pray that the underlying causes of unhappiness and rejection can be addressed pastorally through the restorative power of God."

Horrocks presents a clear and passionate case against seeing a change of gender as anything like a positive step. However, the EA's position is not without its critics. The Church of England, for instance, has coped with priests who have 'transitioned'; the first, Carol Stone  who died last year  in 2000.

Another transgender priest is Rev Rachel Mann. Unsurprisingly, she's critical of the idea that "someone like me is essentially delusional". "The Bible is not interested in biology, and modern biology is much more complex than just male and female," she tells Christian Today.

She is comfortable with her gender as a woman. However, perhaps more surprisingly, she's wary of the idea that surgery can simply 'cure' people with gender dysphoria. "Most medical professionals involved in this area acknowledge that they aren't seeking to provide cures, but options to enable different situations become more liveable," she says. These can literally be life-saving: it's dangerous to be trans, even in our enlightened society. But "receiving support to transition will not take away a person's problems", though it might make them feel more at ease with who they are.

She speaks of being in what she calls the "broken middle". "In a profound sense, I am absolutely a woman. But it would be absurd if I didn't recognise that part of my history is that I was raised as a boy. I've lived most of my life as a woman, but there is still a brokenness there, an absence. For a Christian that's really important, because there's something holy about brokenness."

She's also aware of the advantages possessed by people like Caitlyn Jenner, who is acceptable because she conforms to the stereotypical image of what a woman looks like. Jenner appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair in a glamorous pose looking every inch a woman. But not everyone who transitions from male to female can do that. "All of us, trans and non-trans, carry around stereotypes of what a woman is and what a man is," Mann says.

I'm so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self. Welcome to the world Caitlyn. Can't wait for you to get to know her/me.  Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) June 1, 2015

That's a point also made by Horrocks, who says that many transgendered people struggle to fit in to their new identify because they simply don't look the part. For Mann, however, "that can lead to profound questions about what we mean by gender in the first place". She adds: "I hope we reach the point where someone who's transitioned doesn't have to look like a woman."

There's no doubt that there is a fundamental divide between Horrocks and Mann and the schools of thought they represent. For Horrocks and many in the wider evangelical world, gender dysphoria is a psychological aberration which needs to be corrected, not encouraged and expressed. It is a caricature of their position to say that it rests on a single proof-text ("Male and female he created them", Genesis 1:27), but they do claim that the 'binary' character of the early chapters of Genesis is not just descriptive, but normative.

For others  including most medical professionals  gender is not prescribed. It is negotiable, and a change of gender  whether aided by surgery or not  to alleviate the extreme mental distress suffered by those with gender dysphoria is entirely appropriate.

The extent of this distress shouldn't be underestimated. Very few people would actually choose to be transgendered. People with gender dysphoria have higher rates of depression and face bullying, rejection and intimidation. A 2007 study found that 34 per cent had considered suicide  far higher than the general population. It poses an enormous strain on relationships and many marriages just don't survive the revelation that a spouse feels that s/he is in the wrong body. Christian transgendered people can find themselves rejected by the Church, as well, which adds another weight to what can be an unbearable load.

When all the arguments have been heard  and there is more to say on both sides  there are three things that might cautiously be said. The first is that with all due respect to Horrocks, there doesn't seem to be a knock-down argument against people seeking to change their gender. In her PhD thesis Changing Sex?: transexuality and Christian theology, Helen Savage writes rather waspishly: "Although such an appeal to biblical truth is complicated by the stark reality that the Bible has nothing whatsoever to say about transsexuality, this does not seem to persuade the Evangelical Alliance and allied groups that they should, perhaps, be a little more tentative in their interpretation of biblical material."

While the appeal to the 'binary' nature of Genesis 1-3 is fair enough, it could very easily be argued that these stories were simply never intended to address such issues and are based on general observed realities; using them to address such a complex question is not really appropriate. Neither does it seem entirely convincing to argue that surgery is never appropriate to treat a psychological condition; someone with a facial disfigurement, for instance, is a prime candidate.

However, it's also surely right to be concerned about the way changing patterns of sexual relations and sexual identity are becoming normalised and given a validity that owes little if anything to Christian theology or tradition (like polyamory and group marriages). Having said that, though, it may not be wise to make gender dysphoria a test case. It isn't about libertarianism or self-indulgence, but often about life and death.

Second, Horrocks is surely right to warn against the dangers of believing we have a technological 'fix' for everything. There's something very powerful about believing we can change the world to suit ourselves, but it won't always be true. Caitlyn Jenner can celebrate her new identity, but most are less fortunately placed. If we lose the sense of our identity as a gift, we're arguably losing something very precious. Some transgender people might say that the gift is the ultimate poisoned chalice, and that they don't want it; others might come to a measure of acceptance, particularly if they are in a social context where they're met with love and understanding. It would be good to think that a church could be that place.

Third, non-transgendered people have to recognise our own difficulties. We're conditioned to react to people as male or female from the very start of our lives. There's a whole set of assumptions and expectations that goes along with that and people who don't fit those pre-set categories throw us completely off-balance. The danger is that we blame them for it. But it's not their fault if we feel uncomfortable; we need to learn to deal with it.

Both those who believe that gender reassignment therapy can be right and those who believe it's always wrong agree that transgendered people should be treated with absolute love and compassion. Like everyone else, they are made in the image of God  and for whatever reason, they have a particularly hard road to walk. Theological responses might be widely different; pastoral responses might look surprisingly similar.
Uganda: Christian church attacked and 'unholy' pigs slaughtered

Christians in a village in Uganda have in the last few days seen their pigs slaughtered and their church demolished.

They have also been told not to raise any more pigs because the animals are "extremely unholy".

The perpetrators are believed to be local Muslims.

The Nalugondo village Church of Uganda, which served about 450 Christians, was demolished in the middle of the night earlier this month. The church's chairs and musical instruments were destroyed in the attack.

The attackers were heard shouting: "We cannot live together with neighbours who are infidels. We have to fight for the cause of Allah."

Nalugondo is near Bugade in Mayuge District, east of Kampala. Muslims outnumber Christians in the village.

Sources told the not-for-profit organisation Morning Star News that a group of Muslims slaughtered a church lay leader's pigs while singing praises to Allah and shouting: "Allah only is to be worshipped, and Muhammad is his prophet."

Some days before the attack, the lay leader, Samuel Kijali, had received text messages warning him against raising the pigs.

One text read: "Let this be known to your church members that pigs are extremely unholy and an abomination before Allah, very outrageous and shameful. They are haram and unlawful as our holy Quran does prohibit them."

Muslims also sent a text message to another church member warning: "We are soon coming for the heads of your pigs." They then killed eight of his pigs.

About 85 per cent of people in Uganda are Christian and 11 per cent are Muslim.

Kijali said: "It is quite difficult to resist these militant Muslims, because they have outnumbered us the Christians and are accusing us that we are defiling their faith."
Trade through the port remains steady even as much of Houston's economy struggles with low oil prices, executive director of the Port of Houston Authority Roger Guenther said during Tuesday's Port Commission meeting.

He said bulk cargo is up 19 percent from a year ago and cars shipped through Port Authority docks are up 17 percent. Container trade has been down 3 percent from a year ago, but, "I really say that proudly," Guenther said. Last spring labor disruptions at West Coast ports sent a surge of cargo to Houston as shippers avoided the delays in California. The Port Authority has retained some of the diverted shipments, though some has returned to the west coast.
THE LEAD: Todays Northeastern contests

-- Donald Trump is aiming for a sweep of all five Northeastern states holding primaries Tuesday, including Pennsylvania, leaving his rivals pinning their hopes of stopping the Republican front-runner on a fragile coordination strategy in the next rounds of voting.

For Democratic leader Hillary Clinton, wins in most of Tuesday's contests would leave little doubt that she'll be her party's nominee. Rival Bernie Sanders' team has sent mixed signals about his standing in the race, with one top adviser suggesting a tough night would push the Vermont senator to reassess his bid and another vowing to fight all the way to the convention, per the APs Julie Pace and Catherine Lucey.

-- Cruz-Kasich alliance against Trump appears to falter early, by WashPosts Sean Sullivan and David Weigel . But less than 12 hours after the pact was announced, Kasich undercut the idea by declaring Monday that his supporters in Indiana should still vote for him. The Ohio governor also plans to keep raising money in the state and to meet Tuesday with Republican Gov. Mike Pence.

Cruz, meanwhile, said that Kasich was pulling out of the state. A super PAC supporting the senator from Texas also said it would continue to air an anti-Kasich ad in the state  a sign the Cruz camp fears Kasich could still peel away enough support to sink Cruzs chances here.

The tumult fueled doubts about the arrangement among voters and Republican elites, who worried that Cruz and Kasich have handed Trump a ready-made argument that the party establishment is plotting against him. The mogul said as much in a series of stump speeches on the eve of primary voting on Tuesday, when Trump is poised to rack up delegates in five Eastern states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

-- Second ex-staffer for Paxton still getting paid, but mums the word, by The Dallas Morning News Lauren McGaughy.Attorney General Ken Paxton is still paying a former top staffer more than a month after she left the agency, and aides refuse to answer questions about a special payment arrangement for her and Paxtons former deputy amid a staff shake-up.

Paxtons office has not responded to several questions about why Allison Castle, the attorney generals former communications director who was replaced on March 9, remains on the states payroll at a rate of nearly $13,000 a month. The Dallas Morning News submitted several questions about Castles status via email on April 18. Five days later, Castles replacement, Marc Rylander, told The News to resubmit the questions through the agencys public records division, an unusual response to a request for basic staffing information.

-- Quorum Report exclusive: Buckingham under scrutiny for ties to for-profit college, by QRs Scott Braddock. Some longtime advocates for veterans are raising serious questions about a Texas Senate candidates ties to a for-profit university thats been accused of predatory practices when recruiting students, particularly students who have served in the United States Armed Forces.

Austin-area physician Dawn Buckingham, who is in a GOP runoff with Rep. Susan King for the seat being vacated by Sen. Troy Fraser, has served on the Board of Governors of National American University and has received significant income from the company.

CAPITOL DAYBOOK

THE HOUSE

9:00 a.m.:

Business & Industry [Brownsville, TX]

International Trade & Intergovernmental Affairs [Brownsville, TX]

9:30 a.m.:

Natural Resources [Brownsville, Texas]

THE SENATE

9:00 a.m.:

Higher Education [E1.012]

SPEED READ

Texas Take: Stopping Trump is a GOP family affair -- finally, Houston Chronicle

Capitol portrait of Perry to be unveiled May 6, Houston Chronicle

Texas Dems file FEC complaint over Ted Cruz fundraiser, Houston Chronicle

Collin Taxpayers to pay another $82,000 in legal fees related to Paxton case, The Dallas Morning News

Cruz vetting Fiorina for VP, Politico

Eroding Latino support for GOP benefits Dems in Harris County, Houston Chronicle

Tomlinson: Blame all our problems on the weather, Houston Chronicle

Barnett Shale rig count hits a new low: zero, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

DPS boosts training on how to deal with drivers with autism, Houston Chronicle

Obama declares disaster in 4 Texas counties, Associated Press

Officials seek to address growing homeless population near UT, Austin American-Statesman

QUOTE TO NOTE

Ken Paxton has not been audited or investigated by the IRS, as you can clearly see by his remarks below wherein he states that he has not been audited or investigated. Further, he has not had any bank or retirement accounts shut down.

-- Bill Mateja, Paxtons attorney, said in a statement Monday.

RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE

-- Sanders supporters consider where to turn if his bid fails, by NYTs Yamiche Alcindor. The increasing frequency of questions about whether and when Mr. Sanders might concede to Mrs. Clinton  or at least tone down his attacks on her  frustrates not only the senator but also many of his fans. As enthusiastic as ever, Mr. Sanders repeatedly tells packed crowds that they should encourage family and friends to cast votes for him and that his political revolution counts on their ability to get others involved. But a bleaker reality about the candidates prospects is beginning to settle in among even his most ardent supporters.

-- SIREN:  For the first time in the election cycle, Donald Trump has the support of half of Republican and Republican-leaning voters nationwide, according to the results of the latest NBC News/SurveyMonkey online weekly tracking poll released Tuesday. Ted Cruz and John Kasich, meanwhile, are stagnant or losing ground, per Politico.

-- Trump goes for 5-state sweep, by Politicos Patrick Reis. That means navigating a thicket of complicated formulas that the states use to dole out delegates. Theres only one winner-take-all state on Tuesday: Delaware. The other four  Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island  use some combination of statewide results, district-level results and proportional allocation to dole out delegates. And Pennsylvania, the days biggest prize with 71 delegates, also has the most complex rules, which will leave many delegates up for grabs all the way up to this summers convention.
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A downtown property owner is taking a neighbor to court over demolition plans it says will impede its ability to connect into the downtown tunnel system.

Theater Square LP, an entity affiliated with the Linbeck construction family, filed a lawsuit against an entity controlled by the Hines development firm, owner of the former Houston Chronicle building at 801 Texas, and Hearst Newspapers, the Chronicle's parent company.

Hearst sold its downtown building to Hines last year, and the Houston developer is planning to tear it down. The Linbeck entity is asking a judge to stop the demolition, which it says will affect its ability to connect a future building to a portion of the tunnel system that currently ends beneath 801 Texas. Linbeck's property is directly north of the former Chronicle site. It is bounded by Preston, Prairie, Milam and Travis.

Hines declined to comment. Hearst officials were unavailable for comment.

In the lawsuit, the Linbeck entity said it has an agreement stating that it owns easements through the basement of the former Chronicle building for purposes of constructing a tunnel. The agreement, it said, was put in place in late 2007 with Hearst, and it remains binding with subsequent owners.

Since the sale, Hines has "disregarded" the easement rights and "induced Hearst to breach its obligations" by denying access and failing to help Linbeck obtain permits and related rights to build the tunnel as part of the agreement, according to the suit filed last week in state district court.

It also said the companies intentionally interfered with its rights by "unreasonably denying, delaying and conditioning" access to its easement area.

The Linbeck entity said it is in the initial phase of developing its site, which will include a retail and parking structure on the southern half of the block. The city has approved its foundation permit.

The Linbeck entity wants a court to keep Hines from demolishing or damaging the passageways or basement areas of the Chronicle building. The company is also seeking damages and attorney fees.
Restaurateur Lee Ellis announced Tuesday afternoon he has formed a new company, Cherry Pie Hospitality, under which he is developing a number of restaurant concepts in Houston.

The news comes after months of restaurant industry speculation of Ellis' involvement with F.E.E.D TX Restaurant Group of which he was a founding partner. Ellis had no comment when asked about F.E.E.D TX except to say he is no longer with the hospitality group that includes the Liberty Kitchen restaurant brands as well as BRC Gastropub.
No injuries were reported when a medical helicopter made a hard landing Monday evening outside a hospital in west Houston.

The chopper had just lifted off about 6:45 p.m. from the helipad at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center, 921 Gessner, when it appeared to have a tail rotor malfunction, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The helicopter landed hard in a grassy area near the helipad.

No patients were aboard the aircraft, which held the pilot, a nurse and a medic.

The FAA was investigating the incident.
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A killer is on the run after the body of a woman from Humble was found on the weekend near Interstate 10 in Louisiana.

Elizabeth Ann Ferrell's nude body was spotted by a fisherman about 9:45 a.m. Saturday in Whiskey Bay beneath the Interstate 10 bridge near the Atchafalaya Swamp, said Iberville Parish Sheriff Brett Stassi. The area is about 50 miles west of Baton Rouge.
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Texans drive over them, sometimes looking over the railing to check out the water levels, but with heavy storms that drenched much of the state last week, residents are realizing just how important dams are.

RELATED: With Highway 6 closed due to flooding, here are the routes drivers can take

Stormwater from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs continued to be released on Tuesday in an effort to reduce flood levels from Buffalo Bayou and protect the city of Houston's west side. Houston officials have announced Texas 6 will be closed for three to four weeks as they wait for water on the flooded roadway near Addicks reservoir to recede.

The gates were originally closed April 17 before the severe storms hit the area to hold water that began quickly draining into the reservoirs. Horsepen, South Mayde, Bear and Langham creeks all flow into Addicks reservoir while upper Buffalo Bayou and Mason Creek flow into Barker reservoir.

RELATED: Two Houston dams among 'extremely high risk'

The two dams are among six in the nation deemed "extremely high risk" by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in March.

"We have seepage that's occurring under the conduits themselves," Richard Long, the on-site manager for the Corps of Engineers told Houton Public Media. "It can get worse and worse and worse."

The dams are just two of the 7,000 Texas dams listed as "hazardous," according to DamSafetyAction.org.

RELATED: Houston readers share photos of neighborhood flooding, destruction

The water released from the reservoirs into Buffalo Bayou is not impacting neighborhood streets located behind the reservoirs, Corps officials said in a news release Tuesday. The water seeping into those streets was the result of water rising in the reservoirs themselves.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will determine if the gates need to be closed before any storms hit the area. It's a balancing act, Corps officials say.

On Monday in Austin, heavy rainfall also forced the Lower Colorado River Authority to open the floodgates on Mansfield dam for the first time since 2007. Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan were filled beyond what they could hold. The video above, filmed by Christopher Sherman of Over Austin with special permission from the river authority, shows the Mansfield gates opened Monday.

>> Click the gallery above to learn more about dams
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the U.S. National Park Service. PBS is airing a six-part Ken Burns documentary on the history of the parks.

Though most Americans have heard only of the big wilderness parks, there are 407 national parks in total.
Some longtime advocates for veterans are raising serious questions about a Texas Senate candidates ties to a for-profit university thats been accused of predatory practices when recruiting students, particularly students who have served in the United States Armed Forces.

Austin-area physician Dawn Buckingham, who is in a GOP runoff with Rep. Susan King for the seat being vacated by Sen. Troy Fraser, has served on the Board of Governors of National American University and has received significant income from the company.

The school, where Dr. Buckinghams father-in-law Robert Buckingham is Chairman, was named in a 2012 US Senate committee report as one of the for-profit colleges where there was evidence of exorbitant tuition, aggressive recruiting practices, abysmal student outcomes, taxpayer dollars spent on marketing and pocketed as profit, and regulatory evasion and manipulation. Some veterans have called the school a scam to steal student money.

Buckinghams campaign has not commented on the issue, which was first raised with her late last week.

The Senate report, which you can see here, said most students at these institutions were left without a degree and in major debt.

One of the ways National American University and others would recruit students was through a website called GIBill.com, according to the Senate report. On that site, operated by a company calledQuinStreet, veterans seeking ways to wisely use their benefits would enter their personal information while under the impression they were being guided by the Veterans Administration.

But that was not the case.

The site, which was subsequently shut down after 20 attorneys general filed suit, sent that personal information to companies like National American University and others. After complaints of misleading veterans, QuinStreet paid $2.5 million in a settlement and surrendered the site to the government.

Jim Brennan, Legislative Director for the Texas Coalition of Veterans Organizations, said Buckingham's ties to a predatory higher education institution are deeply troubling. "These universities go in and target veterans and market this as a path for your educational benefits," Brennan said. "We are very, very concerned about it."

"Any time you have an association with an entity that has that kind of track record involving veterans, that's a red flag," Brennan said, and added that he has shared his concerns with Buckingham.

Brennan was in the audience last Thursday morning at the Austin Club when Buckingham was interviewed by Evan Smith, CEO of the Texas Tribune. After the interview had concluded, Brennan approached Buckingham as she was exiting the stage. They politely and briefly spoke about the issue.

She said she didnt know anything about the Senate report naming National American University as a predatory operator, Brennan said. "It seems unlikely that you could be oblivious to that if you're on the board of governors," Brennan told Quorum Report. "It's pretty clear what took place."

In fairness to Dr. Buckingham, Brennan said the candidate assured him that she would try to address his concerns, hopefully by the middle of this week.

Buckinghams campaign did not have a comment about this as of late Monday. A spokesman for Buckingham, Matt Langston, said on Thursday he was looking into it. If and when there is a comment, this story will be updated.

Dr. Buckingham is a fresh face in Texas politics but is known to some in the legislative community because of her service on the Sunset Commission as an appointee of then-Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

Personal Financial Statements Buckingham filed as part of her Sunset appointment show that in 2014 and 2015, she held more than 10,000 shares of stock in National American University and was on the Board of Governors  the for-profit schools equivalent to a Board of Regents  and was compensated to the tune of $25,000 or more in each of those years. In her 2016 statement, Buckingham reported that she is still receiving the same kind of compensation from NAU but is no longer serving on the companys board.

The venture is largely making her campaign for Senate financially possible, records show.

According to Texas Ethics Commission filings, it appears a full 72 percent of Buckinghams political contributions or loans came from National American University stockholders and board members, which of course includes herself. That total was roughly $950,000 out of her $1.3 million in contributions or loans.

Copyright April 26 2016, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved. This story is presented as part of the Houston Chronicle's collaboration with Quorum Report. For inside information on Texas politics and government and to sign up for real-time updates, go here.
With the new 385-acre Exxon Mobil Corp. campus and a newly opened segment of the Grand Parkway between Tomball and The Woodlands, developers are looking to attract new homebuyers.

After a couple years of buying up land in Tomball next to The Woodlands' Village of Creekside Park, J. Alan Kent Development is developing a 286-acre community called Lakes at Creekside. The first model homes opened last month at Lakes at Creekside, which is off Kuykendahl and Hufsmith and is zoned for the Tomball Independent School District.

"We play off The Woodlands. We abut The Woodlands on most of our developments that we do in the north part of town. There are a lot of people who love The Woodlands; it's a great community. But there are a lot of people who don't want to necessarily live in The Woodlands, so we give them an alternative," said Alan Kent, founder of the development company.

The company completed its first phase of development last year when it developed and sold 148 lots to three homebuilders, M/I Homes, Trendmaker Homes and Village Builders. The price point for a home at Lakes at Creekside varies greatly, ranging from $300,000 to more than $1 million.

More Information Want to know more? What: Lakes at Creekside is a 286-acre development in Tomball. Where: The community is off Kuykendahl and Hufsmith. Featured builders: Trendmaker Homes, M/I Homes and Village Builders are the three homebuilders selected for the first phase of development. Development schedule: The community, which is being developed by J. Alan Kent Development, is expected to be built out within four years. Details: http://www.lakesatcreekside.com/ See More Collapse

At the master-planned community's completion, Lakes at Creekside will feature 600 single-family homes, eight lakes, a recreation center, a park, trails, sidewalks, splash pad and a pool. The development is strictly residential with no mixed-use or commercial real estate planned. Residents will be close to amenities in The Woodlands' Creekside, which features several restaurants, a new H-E-B and a Walgreens off Kuykendahl.

The community is expected to be fully developed within four years, Kent said.

"We've seen a great uptick in our traffic, especially for the last quarter for our homes that are $1 million and up. We had two or three lookers a weekend. Now, we have 14 or 15 people who are real buyers that are looking to buy a house," Kent said. "If you've driven the Grand Parkway to get to here, it makes it a lot easier for someone from the Katy area or literally any area to get north of town now."

For Will Holder, president of Trendmaker Homes and a homebuilder in The Woodlands, the decision to build in the community of Lakes at Creekside was easy. The importance of the Grand Parkway, the Exxon Mobil move to Springwoods and the economic growth in south Montgomery County can't be understated in the decision to develop Lakes at Creekside, the plans for which were set in motion less than four years ago. Increased mobility in and out of the area and jobs were highly attractive, and offering residents high-end amenities via The Woodlands just a stone's throw away was also a major selling point.

Trendmaker expects to build 23 homes during the first phase of Lakes at Creekside's development. Its first model home will open in April, and homes will sit in the $500,000 range.

"Wherever transportation corridors have been developed in Houston, these are the lifeblood of residential communities," Holder said. "People will migrate to these areas where they have great access. Additionally, The Woodlands itself has its own gravitational pull - the retail, the job base, dining - every component of what you want for a place to live."

With The Woodlands nearing residential build-out, selling off the last few hundred lots to homebuilders by 2017 or 2018, developers and homebuilders on the outskirts of The Woodlands feel like they can finally take a breath and work on other projects.

"The Woodlands has, for a very long time, sucked the oxygen out of the area, and projects like Lakes at Creekside are just a natural process for projects around a master-planned community," Holder said. "When (The Woodlands Development Co.) winds down and that mantle is picked up by surrounding projects, we have to take a long-term look and we want to be up there and have a presence."

Economic uncertainty has shrouded much of the greater Houston area, named the top single-family housing market in the county according to Metrostudy, due to the sharp drop in oil prices, going from more than $100 a barrel in mid-2014 to right around $30 a barrel for the West Texas Intermediate crude benchmark throughout February. The slump has caused even The Woodlands Development Co. to put its high-end condominium development, Treviso at Waterway Square, on hold.

But the oil slump isn't enough to slow down home construction for Holder, who has been in the business for 35 years.

Both Holder and Kent have seen the booms and busts in their decades of professional home development experience, and they think the pendulum will swing again. Even if the greater Houston area starts to feel the pinch from oil and falls from its throne as the No. 1 single-family home market in the country, Kent and homebuilders like Holder are betting that Lakes at Creekside will be a success.

"I've thought the sky was falling over the last 35 years, but now I realize that the market never stays the same. If it feels bad, get ready. It's fixing to feel good," Holder said.
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Bill Little remembers when life in Sugar Land revolved around the Imperial Sugar Co.

In 1957, the Ohio native, then 26, moved to Sugar Land to work in Imperial Sugar's accounting department and soon learned that the company provided much more than a paycheck.

Constable services, low-cost housing, the community's shops and a quality high school were provided by the company and Sugarland Industries, the entity that operated Imperial Sugar's farm, ranch and mercantile interests.

Until 1959, Sugar Land was a company town of 2,000 residents and four square miles, surrounded by fields of cotton, alfalfa and maize.

"It was a benevolent company town, similar to Hershey, Pennsylvania and some of the major company towns in the East," said Little, who became Sugar Land's second mayor in 1961. "We knew everybody and everybody knew each other, and you never had to think about locking the doors or anything like that. It was just a friendly place."

Come fall, this period will be showcased in the first museum exclusively about the city's history.

Called the Sugar Land Heritage Museum, it will be at the site of the Imperial Sugar Refinery off U.S. 90A where Little and his neighbors worked in the 1950s.

The museum will give a full scope of Sugar Land's history, dividing it into periods covering from prehistoric time through plantation days to master-planned developments, said Dennis Parmer, executive director for the Sugar Land Heritage Foundation, the nonprofit group behind the museum.

The "company town" period, 1908-1959, will take up over a third of the roughly 4,000 square feet of exhibit space, which is fitting because that period distinguishes Sugar Land from other Fort Bend County cities, said Claire Rogers, executive director of the Fort Bend County Museum Association in Richmond.

The Sugar Land museum will be part of a new mixed-use development on the site of the former refinery, which will include a hotel, shopping center and housing.

The museum will be on the second floor of a brick building that dates to the 1950s. When the refinery was still in use, the building was where workers kept containers used in the packaging process.

Until the company closed in 2003, the site was used as a refinery for more than 100 years.

Right now, construction is underway for the Heritage Museum and a children's museum that will be on the ground floor of the same building.

In the museum's temporary office and exhibit space on the Imperial Sugar site, Parmer combs through artifacts donated by families or taken from the refinery site before construction started.

Parmer has some temporary exhibits on display in the foundation's current office space, including photos dating to the turn of the century and one of the stainless steel Imperial Sugar crowns that used to be on gateposts at the entrance to the refinery.

In a back room are hundreds of photographs and maps that Parmer and volunteers are sorting and plan to record in digital form on a computer. In a side room is a collection of railroad tracks that Parmer will use as part of an exhibit on the role of the railroad in Sugar Land.

On one wall is an aerial photograph of what was Sugar Land's downtown area in the 1950s.

That's what Sugar Land looked like when Little arrived: U.S. 90A bordered a commercial area containing a shopping center, offices, movie theater and two restaurants, all across from the refinery and owned by Imperial Sugar and Sugarland Industries.

"You could buy everything from a John Deere tractor to a bail of cotton to a sack full of groceries to a prescription drug, and it would come out at one bill at the end of the month," Little said.

The photo shows the neighborhood called "the Hill" where Little and his wife rented a six-room frame house from the company. The house was two stop signs and a stoplight away from the refinery.

Behind the refinery is another neighborhood, now called Mayfield Park, where black and Hispanic families lived in wooden homes without indoor plumbing. Sugar Land was segregated through the end of the company town period.

The Sugar Land museum came about because of a developer's agreement written by the city's elected officials after the Imperial Sugar refinery closed.

"When the refinery closed in 2003, there was anxiety within the community of how this area was going to redevelop," said Parmer, who was on City Council from 2003-09. "As a resident I had concern. As a council member I had concern."

The agreement Parmer and other council members wrote was that the property's future developer had to preserve three buildings: the water tower, the eight-story brick char house and the three-bay warehouse. The developer would also have to make space for a museum on the site.

In 2008, the Sugar Land Heritage Foundation was created to oversee the museum and continue preservation of history and heritage in the area.

Johnson Development, which is responsible for the infrastructure for the site, ended up preserving several more buildings, including the two-story container building that will house the museum.

Sugar Land's legacy as a company town continues to affect development. Unlike other Fort Bend County cities, where land was divided into parcels, the fact that one company, Imperial Sugar, owned huge swaths of acreage meant it had larger and more master-planned communities such as First Colony than other areas, Rogers said.

Sugar Land's main shopping district has shifted from the shopping center by the refinery - now an empty building - to Town Square and First Colony Mall. But Little hopes the Imperial Sugar development, including new housing and the Heritage Museum, will make the area around U.S. 90 A a Fort Bend County destination again.

"It will make (Sugar Land) a more complete city," Little said.
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Issues driving this year's election campaigns for Sugar Land City Council include opposing views on development and debate over if requirements should be changed for citizen petitions.

Challenging at-large Position 1 incumbent Himesh Gandhi, 39, in the May 7 election is Diana Miller, 60, a spokeswoman for Sugar Land Votes, a grassroots group that led an unsuccessful petition drive to repeal the city's recently revised development code and that opposes construction of more apartments.

Running for at-large Position 2 are: Mary Joyce, 56; Peter Simons, 55; Ron Block, 72, and Naomi Lam, 72, who is also associated with Sugar Land Votes.

Miller and Lam object to two proposed amendments to the city charter that are on the ballot, propositions 7 and 8, which would change the city charter to increase the number of signatures needed for citizen petitions.

The charter requires signatures equaling "30 percent of those voting in the last city election." The proposed changes would set the bar at "15 percent of qualified registered voters of the city as of the initial petition date," with Proposition 7 related to petitions for initiatives or referendums and Proposition 8 pertaining to petitions for a recall election.

Sugar Land Votes believes that the spread of apartments could spell crowding for local schools and alter the residential atmosphere of Sugar Land. The group collected more than 3,000 signatures in a petition against Newland Community's request to build up to 900 multifamily units at the intersection of University Boulevard and U.S. 59.

That petition was declared invalid because city zoning regulations, according to state law, are not subject to repeal by public referendum.

Also up for election is the mayor's post, being vacated by James Thompson, who is term-limited. The mayoral candidates are: City Council members Harish Jajoo, 61, and Joe Zimmerman, 62, along with political newcomers Sarwar Khan, 62, Kyle Stanley, 29, and Myatt Hancock, 65.

Information on the candidates in the council races is as follows:

Block

Block, an attorney who has lived in the city for 16 years, is not affiliated with Sugar Land Votes but said he also has concerns about the potential proliferation of apartments and believes the council needs to be more responsive.

"They have blocked themselves in and separated themselves from the people they represent," Block said of the council. "I am against the proliferation of apartments and believe we need greater transparency and the ability to more easily approach City Council."

He objects to the council practice of limiting public comments at meetings to agenda items. He also believes that city taxes can be lowered and that the city budget "needs to be looked at."

Block said that if elected, he would push for an ordinance to ban texting or use of cell phones while driving. He said he has observed distracted motorists on cell phones who drive too slowly, swerve or drive too fast. He would include an exception for hands-free technology.

Block served as a trustee on Fort Bend ISD from 1990-95. His experience as an attorney in the oil-and-gas industry, he said, has enhanced his analytical skills.

Joyce

A city resident for 25 years, Joyce believes her background in finance, contract negotiations and project management will help her be an effective leader.

"The development code is an issue that requires clarity, and we need leadership to do that. I have spoken to citizens who are confused by the statements from community members and the city," she said.

Joyce said that if elected, she will make it a priority to listen to residents and ensure they are informed.

She believes the city is headed in a positive direction. "Given the good Sugar Land tax rate and the city's AAA bond rating, I would say from a financial standpoint that something is being done correctly," she said. "Also, in the most recent survey of city residents, 99 percent gave the city an excellent or good rating as a place to raise children."

The city's tax rate is almost 31.6 cents per $100 valuation.

Joyce has served on various boards, including as co-chair of the city's Land Use Advisory Committee and as board member of the Imperial Redevelopment District.

Lam

"I've been fighting against apartments for a long time," said Lam, a certified public accountant who is a 30-year city resident and a tax consultant for corporations. "The proliferation of apartments would affect our area negatively.

"We moved to Sugar Land because of the good planning but the City Council has changed that direction," said Lam, who served on the Fort Bend Independent School District board from 2001-03. "They need to listen to the citizens. Someone needs to stand up and speak for the citizens."

Miller

Miller has lived in Sugar Land for more than 31 years and has owned the real estate firm, Fort Bend Homes, since 2001.

If she wins, this would be Miller's first time in elected office.

Miller sees the idea to raise the threshold for petition signatures as a threat to residents' ability to influence change, calling it a move "to protect the city from any future public challenge."

Miller joined Lam is arguing that the council has a conflict of interest since its members make up the board of the Sugar Land Development Corp., an entity of the city which negotiates incentive programs with developers.

Gandhi

Gandhi dismissed Miller and Lam's claims about conflict of interest on the corporation board.

"Claims of a lack of transparency, conflicts of interest and ulterior motives have no veracity," he said. "All of the Sugar Land Development Corp. meetings are conducted in the open. All contracts are considered in an open process."

He said that no underhanded deals are being made by the council or the corporation. Gandhi believes his service as a council member and on past city boards and commissions, including the planning and zoning commission, demonstrates a long-term investment in the city's success. He works as a corporate attorney and is board certified in commercial real estate by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.

Simons

Simons worked for the city at the Sugar Land Regional Airport for six years, supervising 15 employees as the manager of lines services. He believes the current council is doing a good job overall and that the city is headed in a positive direction. He, like Block, would like to take a closer look at the city budget. "I would like to see us increase fiscal responsibility," he said. "I would like for us to look more closely at how the city budget is structured.

"There is a tendency among cities (Sugar Land included), where at the end of the year you try to spend your budget in order to head off budget cuts for the coming year. No company runs its budget like that," Simons said.

He said his experience as a city employee enabled him to gain an insider's perspective of how the city budget is run and helped him develop ideas for how it can be improved.

Simons' background includes traveling the world from 1992 to 2001 with the charity organization Orbis International, which trains doctors on how to perform eye surgeries.

He started as a mechanic and worked his way up to the position of director in the charity's New York office, supervising 20 employees.

Early voting ends May 3. Visit sugarlandtx.gov under the "Government" tab by clicking "Elections" for more information.
A Cullen Middle School student was arrested and charged on Tuesday with possession of a prohibited weapon, the Houston Independent School District confirmed.

The weapon was a loaded gun, according to KTRK.
A judge has awarded the city of Conroe temporary custody of a tiger found wandering through neighborhoods last week.

After a 30-minute hearing on Tuesday, Conroe Municipal Court Judge Michael Davis issued the order with the understanding that the city will send the tiger to the International Exotic Animal Sanctuary near Fort Worth.
SAN ANTONIO  A man who died in an apparent double murder-suicide on the West Side Monday afternoon was on the phone with police moments before his death, according to preliminary details released by the San Antonio Police Department.

The shooting, which happened around 4:30 p.m. at a home in the 9500 block of Bertram Street, resulted in the death of the man and his wife, both 67, and their 43 year-old son, who police believe was the shooter.
WLKY-TV

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WLKY-TV) A woman was killed Saturday evening when she was struck by a train in far eastern Jefferson County.

It happened in the 3100 block of South Pope Lick Road, which is off Taylorsville Road, according to Metro Safe.
More than half of Harris County residents lean Democratic for the first time in over three decades, propelled by plummeting support for Republicans among Latinos, according to a survey released Monday by Rice University's Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

The finding, in the midst of a divisive presidential campaign, could signal an important shift in arguably the nation's largest swing county, which narrowly went to President Barack Obama in 2012 by about 970 votes.

"Frankly, I'm not all that surprised," said Jim McGrath, a Republican political consultant in Houston and spokesman for former President George H. W. Bush. "These are the fears realized by those on the Republican side who are worried about the irresponsible rhetoric surrounding the illegal immigration issue."

According to the annual survey, which was conducted between January and March, 52 percent of Harris County residents said they identify more with the Democratic Party, compared to 46 percent in 2012. Only 30 percent of residents lean Republican, about the same as in 2012, meaning that it is the share of undecided and new potential voters that has swung largely Democratic.

More Harris County residents have leaned Democratic than Republican since 2006, but until this year, no party could claim the support of more than half of residents in the more than three decades the survey has been conducted.

Stephen Klineberg, co-director of the institute and author of the report, said the county had been pretty evenly divided among those who said they aligned more with Democrats and those leaning Republican.

Though the survey has a margin of error of 3 percentage points, the increase in Democratic support from 2012 to this year is "really remarkable," he said. "The big change is among Latinos."

The survey is conducted by land line and cell phone calls among a statistically representative sample of 808 residents in Harris County. Among 521 Harris County survey respondents who were eligible to vote in 2016, 52 percent leaned Democrat and 37 percent Republican. Among those ineligible to vote in this year's survey, 62 percent were Democrat and 20 percent Republican.

To read the entire story, visit houstonchronicle.com.
A newly-debuted fruity cocktail at the Grand Prize dive bar in Montrose comes garnished with a splattering of lingonberry "blood" and a plastic machete stuck down the side.

Its name: "Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer."

Few would expect drinks named for Republican politicians in the dim bar with a penchant for loud classic punk music  fewer would expect associations drawn between the unidentified serial killer who claimed to have murdered up to 37 people in California from 1968-1969 and Cruz, who was born in 1970.

To be clear: the Zodiac Killer line is a joke. But it's a prolific joke, and one you can find printed on bumper stickers and a variety of black metal tees across the country. For Cruz, the Baptist senator for Texas and right-wing Republican presidential candidate, it's an unexpected foray into popular culture.

RELATED: Top picks for Houston's bars and lounges

Julie Lozano, the Grand Prize bar tender who named and created the Cruz cocktail, said she first encountered the internet joke  or meme, as they say  on a Facebook page called "Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash" around the turn of the year.

Essentially, it's supposed to mean that Cruz is evil  kind of a wacky take on saying "Ted Cruz is Satan."

"It's not really about believing whether he could secretly murder people, it's more about demonizing his character," Lozano wrote in an email. "Ted Cruz is a dangerous zealot, so naturally I was in favor of painting him for the Humanoid goblin phony he is."

And it has a following. A Facebook group named for the meme has more than 27,000 members. A Google search turns up 621,000 hits, including exploratory articles by some of the biggest news publications on the web.

And the meme is now a cocktail's namesake at a popular Houston bar. The drink itself is a variation on a classic tiki cocktail called a Painkiller, but a little less sweet and a little more tart than the original. Lozano concocted a mix of rum, coconut cream, fruit juices and a fruit garnish to suit her tastes.

But it was a freshly discovered surplus of plastic machetes behind the bar that really brought the drink together.
The summers final Live on the Waterfront concert was held Wednesday evening at Prince Arthurs Landing. The popular series in Thunder Bay has completed nine weekly shows that began on July 13. Wednesdays concert was unique as it was held one hour later in the evening to mesh with the 10 p.
Did New York City mayor Bill de Blasio run a pay-to-play money laundering operation out of City Hall? Its looking that way. Corruption-busting U.S. attorney Preet Bharara is probing the progressive icons political fundraising to determine whether those seeking something from city government were expected to pony up substantial sums that were then funneled to the mayors political allies.

The clearest example of these machinations was the mayors 2014 effort to win the New York state senate for the Democrats. The mayoror his advisersallegedly circumvented limits on individual campaign contributions by having wealthy real-estate developers and powerful public-employee unions make major contributions to upstate county Democratic committees. Bhararas office is now investigating claims that those committees passed the money they received directly to designated local candidates, in violation of state law. The candidates were supposedly informed that they had to spend the money through specific New York City strategic consultants, all closely tied to the de Blasio administration and, just as important, to the Working Families Partythe political engine that launched de Blasios unlikely rise in 2013. The only surprise is that it has taken this long for these schemes to come to light.

The Working Families Party was a late-nineties creation of labor unions and the now-defunct Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.) Taking advantage of New Yorks fusion-voting system that allows candidates to run on multiple ballot lines, the WFP gained traction in the 2000s by endorsing liberal up-ballot Democrats, and then encouraging people to vote the WFP line in order to maintain ballot position. Its goal, even then, was to wrest the state senate from Republicans decades-long control. The WFP leveraged its expertise in door-to-door campaigning to develop a superb political field operation that excelled at identifying likely voters and turning them out on Election Day. Funded heavily by public-sector labor unions such as DC 37 (municipal workers), the UFT (teachers), and SEIU 1199 (hospital workers), the WFP has become a major force in New York politics. It now has branches in New Jersey, Connecticut, and other states.

In 2008, after Democrats briefly took control of the state senate, the WFP decided to spin off its field and electoral operations into a subsidiary, Data and Field Services (DFS), which could hire itself out on a for-profit basis to WFP-backed campaigns. DFSs actual purpose seems to have been the reallocation of resources and personnel among the WFPs candidates, and to enable coordination between campaignsall of which is illegal, according to New York Citys campaign-finance laws.

De Blasios involvement with the WFP and Acorn is longstanding. Without exaggeration, Acorns long-range plan since 2001 was to elect de Blasio mayor, an anonymous Democrat told the New York Post in 2013. In 2006, then-city councilman de Blasio hired himself out for $33,000 to a group called Progressive America Foundation for some obscure lobbying services. The foundation operated out of the WFPs offices. And, in 2009, de Blasio was DFSs biggest client, paying the organization nearly $200,000 during his run for public advocate.

Even as the WFP expanded its reach, operatives from Acorn and the New York state senate Democratic political organization went into business for themselves. Acorn veterans Jonathan Rosen and Valerie Berlinchief of staff to then-state senator, now-attorney general Eric Schneidermanformed consulting firm BerlinRosen. Doug Forand, Marc Lapidus, and Nathan Smith, the senate Democrats brain trust, formed Red Horse Strategies. These firms have prospered richly under the WFP/de Blasio ascendancy, together booking more than $6 million in consulting fees for the 2013 municipal elections alone. But these outfits dont limit themselves to helping politicians get elected: they also serve as consultants to labor unions, real-estate development corporations, and issue-based organizationsall seeking access to the halls of power. Neither BerlinRosen nor Red Horse is obligated to disclose the fees it collects, since neither calls itself a lobbyist. De Blasio reportedly spends hours per day talking to Rosen, who was also Sheldon Silvers longtime adviser. Both claim that they never mix business with politics.

Four out of the citys five district attorneys, as well as the state attorney general, are clients of these same consulting firms, so it is no surprise that this web of interconnections has become a federal matter. Consultants have turned New Yorks political system inside out. They control the flow of money from their private clients to candidates who are forced to hire them, with the mayors office allegedly acting as a go-between. The mayors spokesperson insists that the letter of the law has been observed. Such legalistic language will be cold comfort to New Yorkers who expect the mayor to aspire to more than staying just inside the border of criminalityassuming he has done so.

Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images
Researchers in Nebraska tested a new tool on Friday that could eventually help in fighting grass fires  drones.

A team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln flew an unmanned aircraft over the prairie at the Homestead National Monument of America on Friday, dropping ping pong-like balls filled with a chemical mixture to ignite brush-clearing grass fires.

Local and federal officials are interested in the technology because it could help clear overgrown vegetation in rugged, hard-to-reach terrain, said Michael Johnson, a spokesman for the National Park Service.

The balls are filled with a chemical powder, potassium permanganate, before theyre loaded into the drone. During flight, the aircraft pierces the ball with a needle and injects it with another chemical, glycol, before releasing it. The mixture ignites one to two minutes later. The technology is already used by helicopters to start controlled burns, but researchers note that the drone is cheaper and more portable.

You could afford one of these on the back of your fire truck, whereas you probably cant afford to have a full-sized helicopter parked at your fire station, said Carrick Detweiler, a member of the Nebraska research team.

The drone, which is about two feet wide with six rotors  is programmed to drop the balls in a preset pattern to control how the fire spreads. On Friday, the unmanned aircraft rose out of the grass and hummed toward the horizon through a smoky haze. Minutes later, it released the balls one at a time, sparking a series of small fires that quickly grew and merged into one.

Researchers hope the technology eventually could be used to set controlled fires in hard-to-reach places that would clear out brush and small trees and make it more difficult for wildfires to sweep through an area.

The drone is the fourth prototype created by the universitys Nebraska Intelligent Mobile Unmanned Systems Laboratory. It carries up to 13 balls and drops them from roughly 65 feet in the air, and carries a little more than one pound of cargo. Depending on the software used, the drones developed so far have cost between $6,000 and $8,000 apiece, said Jim Higgins, an engineering graduate student who has helped with the project. Universities in Colorado, Pennsylvania and Switzerland are exploring similar technology.

Higgins said researchers have had to work out some kinks. In earlier tests, the balls exploded. Another time, one caught fire before it was released from the drone. Another limiting factor is the wind. The lightweight drone could not be used in high winds, which sometimes stoke wildfires.

Sebastian Elbaum, a computer science and engineering professor, said firefighters also could eventually use drones to find hotspots and gather other key information about wildfires.

Its very, very exciting stuff, Elbaum said. Today, firefighters have maybe a shovel, maybe their gloves and their helmets. Imagine them having this in their backpack, pulling it out and telling it, `Hey, go scout out there. Check whether its hot. Check whether its safe.

The project began two years ago as a new way to prevent wildfires in Nebraska and other Plains and western states. During a severe drought in 2012, Nebraska saw 1,570 wildfires that burned a total of 786 square miles  an expanse nearly seven times the size of Omaha. The combined costs of ground-level firefighting, aerial suppression and assistance from other states cost Nebraska more than $11 million that year.

Researchers will use Fridays test to examine how fire crews might use drones in the future, said Brittany Duncan, an assistant computer science professor and member of the Nebraska team.

We want to know how we could display information to firefighters better, she said.

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The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) was given exclusive access to a 1981 Ferrari GTSI recovered at the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach earlier this month.

The car, one of 1,743 of that model made in 1981, was stolen in 1987 from Newport Beach, Calif., while on consignment at a dealership. The vehicle identification number (VIN) was later switched to the VIN of a 1982 Ferrari that had already been exported to Norway in 2005. When the vehicle arrived at the port, it was headed from Texas to Poland.

Working with Customs and Border Protection, the California Highway Patrol and Ferrari representatives, NICB was able to determine the true identity of the car and to recover the original theft report filed with Newport Beach Police in 1987. NICB records showed only 12 stolen red Ferraris still unrecovered at this time.

The original owner, who was paid some $37,000 for the insurance theft claim in 1987, has been contacted. The insurance company now owns the car, which will be offered to the original owner to purchase or likely sold at auction. The current value is estimated between $50,000 and $90,000.

Source: NICB
Authorities say flooding thats claimed eight lives and displaced thousands of people in the Houston area has caused more than $14 million in damage and inundated more than 1,700 homes.

They said Friday the damage figures from unincorporated areas of Harris County will increase significantly as floodwaters recede and inspectors get a closer look at ravaged neighborhoods.

The damage estimates do not include a tally for the city of Houston, which did not immediately return a message Friday seeking details.

Jeff Waters, a meteorologist and manager of Model Product Management at RMS, reported that Houston Intercontinental Airport recorded 9.92 inches of rain, the second wettest day on record in the Houston area going back to 1889.

Houston and nearby counties have been hit with more than a foot of rain since Sunday night, straining reservoirs and pushing rivers over their banks.

Southwest of Houston, the Colorado River swelled to more than 48 feet, well past the flood stage of 39 feet, before slowly starting to recede.

According to NOAA National Climatic, the April 2015-March 2016 time period ranks as the second wettest on record for the state of Texas.

Meanwhile, a tugboat that capsized and sank on the flood-swollen San Jacinto River near Houston has been located but high water from recent rains have delayed raising the vessel.

A Coast Guard spokesman said Friday that the agency has approved a salvage plan for the Ricky J Leboeuf, which flipped on Tuesday while working with some barges. One crewmember was killed while four others survived being dumped into the water.

Petty Officer 1st Class Andrew Kendrick says swift currents from recent rains have prevented divers from attaching equipment to raise the tug. An anchor has been placed on the submerged tugboat to prevent fast-moving water from sending the vessel into the Houston Ship Channel.

Kendrick says barges fitted with cranes will raise the tugboat when the water is calmer.

The Texas Department of Insurance has determined the storms that occurred between April 11, 2016, through April 13, 2016, in Bexar, Collin, Denton, Dallas, Guadalupe, Montague, Rockwall, Wise, Medina and Gonzales counties are a catastrophe for the purpose of claims processing.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thanks to an arcane state law, Florida could enter hurricane season with no one firmly in charge of the state agency responsible for regulating the states at-times fragile insurance industry.

The reason? The two Republican elected officials responsible for picking a new commissioner are locked in a stalemate over who should be hired to replace outgoing Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty.

Gov. Rick Scott and Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater have been backing rival candidates for the job, which has delayed a final decision. The governor and the three members of the Cabinet must vote on the position, but state law allows Scott and Atwater to individually veto the choice.

When you think of the consequences of this choice every Floridian would want us to be thoughtful, said Atwater. It may take a bit longer and thats ok.

The job of insurance commissioner in Florida is crucial because the person regulates an important industry in a hurricane-prone state. The selection of a new commissioner has triggered a furious behind-the-scenes lobbying effort among those aligned with various parts of the industry. The final pick could earn as much as $200,000 a year.

McCarty has been on the job for 13 years, including a time when the homeowners insurance market nearly collapsed following the state getting hit with eight storms over a two-year period. Right after being re-elected in 2014 Scott said he wanted to replace McCarty, but Atwater didnt support the move at the time.

McCarty finally announced his resignation in January of this year and was supposed to leave on May 2. But last week he offered to stay on the job until 45 days after a new commissioner is picked. Hurricane season begins June 1.

At a recent meeting of the Cabinet, Atwater suggested the state hire State Rep. Bill Hager, a GOP legislator from Boca Raton and a former Iowa insurance commissioner. But Scott refused to go along and has instead touted Jeffrey Bragg, who worked for the U.S. Treasury for 11 years as the executive director of the terrorism risk insurance program.

Jackie Schutz, a spokeswoman for Scott, said recently that Braggs public and private sector experience make him an ideal candidate to serve Floridians.

But criticism has been aimed at both candidates.

Hager sponsored legislation that would have reduced the size of Floridas state-created fund that provides financial backing to insurance companies. The bill failed amid concerns it could have resulted in rate hikes for consumers.

Braggs record, meanwhile, has also come under scrutiny after the Palm Beach Post reported that he had been accused of misleading investors in a flood insurance venture. Bragg blamed the lawsuit on investors being upset that a stock had not performed as well as they expected.

Scott and the Cabinet are expected to interview both Bragg and Hager a second time this week. Atwater also asked two other candidates, including McCartys current chief of staff, Belinda Miller, to also be considered at the same meeting.

Atwater conceded hes not sure if a new commissioner will be selected, but he added he doesnt want the process to drag out much longer.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The employee vs. contractor debate has the potential to have a major impact on the insurance industry, according to a pair of experts speaking on the topic on last week at the annual Risk Management Society conference held in San Diego, Calif.

Its estimated there are 10 million independent contractors in the U.S. and that 10 percent of those people are misclassified, according to John Zeigler, an attorney with Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin.

Thats a huge number of people out there who are working as independent contractors but likely are misclassified, he said, noting that federal and state governments could swoop in with new rules and regulations. The reality is the pressure on the government is becoming that much greater.

Zeigler and Stephanie Watts, resolution manager at Gallagher Bassett, held an education session titled The War on Employee Misclassification: Risks and Costs to Employers and Insurers, at the annual RIMS conference for risk management and insurance professionals.

Planners of this years conference said more than 10,000 people are in attendance at the conference, with more expected to register in coming days. That would make it the largest conference since 2003, they say.

In the session held by Zeigler and Watts, the employer vs. contractor cloud that has arisen by way of the gig economy explosion has created an uneven playing field where one company does things one way and the other company another way.

Its also made protections for benefits, including workers compensation, uneven for workers, and has created uncertain risks and exposures for insurers, they said.

They also outlined several tests federal and state governments are using to determine whether a worker is an employee or a contractor.

One such test was the U.S. Department of Labors economic realities test, which includes the consideration of the following factors:

The extent to which the work performed is integral to the employers business;

Whether the workers managerial skills affect his or her opportunity for loss;

The relative investments in facilities and equipment by the worker and employer;

The workers skill and initiative;

The permanency of the workers relationship with the employer;

The nature and degree of control by the employer.

The last one has been key in many legal battles that unfolded in many states.

Ultimately when the courts are looking at this they are looking at the right to control and the actual control exercise, Zeigler said. That really, in many respects, is the absolute key factor.

Other federal government entities with independent contractor tests include the Internal Revenue Service, which includes behavior control, financial control and the relationship of the parties, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Many states have their own tests.

A popular test for many states uses three factors:

Is the employee free from directions and controls?

Is the work performed outside the usual course of business?

Is the individual customarily engaged in independently established trade, occupation, profession or business as the involved service performed?

The presenters cited Alexander Vs. FedEx Ground in which the California 9th Circuit Court ruled in 2014 that drivers were not independent contractors despite drivers owning their own vans and being allowed to set their own routes.

The court in its ruling used several factors, most notably control.

The drivers must wear FedEx uniforms, drive FedEx-approved vehicles, and groom themselves according to FedExs appearance standards, the ruling states. FedEx tells its drivers what packages to deliver, on what days, and at what times. Although drivers may operate multiple delivery routes and hire third parties to help perform their work, they may do so only with FedExs consent.

At the end of the day FedEx took a big hit here, Zeigler said.

With decisions like this being made all over the U.S., vigilance is becoming increasingly important, Watts said.

It starts at the bottom, Watts said. It starts with the agents and brokers writing these policies incorrectly.

Zeigler advised paying close attention to a topic that he believes will only become more important to businesses and insurance professionals in the future.

The best you can say is you need to be on top of it, Zeigler said. You can look at the patterns, you can look at the trends, you need to look and see where its going.

At the conference RIMS and American International Group Inc. announced that William H. McGannon and David Mikulina are the 2016 inductees to the Risk Management Hall of Fame.

The hall of fame serves as a means to maintain the history of the field of risk management and recognizes risk practitioners who have made significant contributions to advancing the discipline, according to RIMS.

McGannon was considered a risk management pioneer, according to those who bestowed the award on him.

He is considered one of the first Canadian risk managers to establish a full-service risk management department that included loss prevention and statistical support at NOVA Chemical Corp. in Alberta. McGannon frequently lectured at the University of Calgary, where he was instrumental in setting up the Chair of Risk Management position and served as executive in residence from 1998 to 2000. He died in 2015.

Mikulina is a retired vice president of risk management for Hyatt Hotels Corp., and was a member of the risk management profession for nearly 35 years. He headed the risk management department at Hyatt for 23 years as the organization grew from 130 hotels to 350 hotels worldwide
Greenlands massive ice sheet this week started melting freakishly early thanks to a weather system that brought unseasonably warm temperatures and rain, scientists say.

While this record early melt is mostly from natural weather on top of overall global warming, scientists say they are concerned about what it means when the melt season kicks in this summer. This however could be temporary.

On Monday and Tuesday, about 12 percent of the ice sheet surface area  656,000 square miles or 1.7 million square kilometers  showed signs of melting ice, according to Peter Langen, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute. It smashed record for early melting by more than three weeks.

Thats normal for late May not mid-April, Langen said.

Normally, no ice should be melting in Greenland at this time of year. Before now, the earliest Greenland had more than 10 percent surface area melting was on May 5, back in 1990. Even in 2012, when 97 percent of Greenland experienced melt, it didnt have such an early and extensive melt.

Langen said the amount of melt now is not the issue, timing is: Its nothing for July, its huge for April.

Its disturbing, Langen said. Something like this wipes out all kinds of records, you cant help but go this could be a sign of things were going to see more often in the future.

Whats causing this weeks unusual melt is a weather system that is bringing warm temperatures to Greenland and funneling lots of warmer-than-normal rain up from the south, Langen said. The rain and the above freezing temperatures help melt the ice.

Greenlands capital, Nuuk, reached 62 degrees (16.6 degrees Celsius) on Monday, smashing the April record high temperature by 6.5 degrees. Inland at Kangerlussuaq, it was 64 degrees (17.8 degrees Celsius), warmer than St. Louis and San Francisco.

Langen and other scientists said this is part of a natural weather system, but man-made climate change has worsened this. Tom Mote of the University of Georgia said had this natural event happened 20 or 30 years ago it wouldnt have been as bad as it is now because the air is warmer overall and carries more rain that melts the ice faster.

Things are getting more extreme and theyre getting more common, said NASA ice scientist Walt Meier. Were seeing that with Greenland and this is an indication of that.

This kind of freakish warm spell is another piece in the puzzle, Meier said. One freakish thing every once in a while you might expect. But were getting these things more often and thats an indication of climate change.

Langen said the measurements are based on scores of observations from monitors on the ice fed into a computer simulation. NASA normally measures melt with a satellite, but there are problems with the instruments, Meier said. Still, Mote said the satellite, if correct, showed on Monday conditions similar to what Denmark is reporting.

Greenland ice sheet melting is one of the more visible and key signs of man-made global warming from the burning of fossil fuels because it is causing seas to rise, putting coastal areas at risk, Meier said.

If the entire Greenland ice sheet melted, which would take centuries, it could add 20 feet or more to global sea level, Meier said. But within the next century, Greenland ice melt alone could raise sea level by a couple feet, he said.

The concern is things are moving faster than we thought, Meier said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The first time Jason Ebert needed an air ambulance, it saved his life. The second time, it nearly broke the bank.

Both times, Montana doctors ordered Ebert flown 150 miles from Bozeman to Billings for treatment. But while insurance covered the first flight, the hospital called a for-profit service the second time, and Ebert got stuck with a more than $27,000 bill.

I cant even fathom the difference in price, said Eberts wife, Mandy.

As the air ambulance industry has grown, so too have complaints about costs and the lack of regulations. States that try to set rules are met with lawsuits that argue air ambulances  specially equipped aircraft, usually helicopters, used to ferry sick or injured people in emergencies  fall under the Airline Deregulation Act, which prevents states from interfering with fares, routes and services.

Last year, North Dakota lawmakers passed legislation that required air ambulance services to be participating providers with insurance companies that cover at least 75 percent of the states population for inclusion on a primary call list. But last month, a federal judge ruled the Airline Deregulation Act preempted North Dakotas law.

The 1978 act was meant to increase competition, reduce rates and improve airline passenger service. But competition among air ambulance providers has the opposite effect. The industry has high fixed costs, including aircraft, pilots and trained medical staff. With increased competition, those costs must be recouped from among a smaller number of flights, leading to higher prices.

In Jason Eberts case, his first trip for treatment involved a torn aorta, and he took the flight in a hospital-based air ambulance. Insurance picked up the entire $12,000 tab.

The second trip came months later when Ebert felt dizzy, and the Bozeman hospital called a for-profit air ambulance service. That bill came to nearly $40,000, and the Eberts were left responsible for more than half of it.

Earlier this month, U.S. Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and John Hoeven of North Dakota sought to amend the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization legislation to allow states to decide if they want to create rules governing air ambulance rates and services.

That effort failed, but Tester will continue to work on the issue, his spokeswoman Marnee Banks said.

Patients sometimes dont realize they should ask or might not be capable of asking whether their transportation is in network or how much their insurance will cover. The result can be whopping bills. Some Montana residents have received balance bills of up to $90,000, said Jesse Laslovich, chief counsel for the Montana Auditor and Insurance Commissioners Office.

Don Wharton, director of business development for REACH Medical Services, said the large bills are a product of commercial insurance carriers and payers being unwilling to pay the fair market value for the service.

Insurance companies and employee benefit managers say air ambulance companies wont reveal actual costs, preventing them from determining a fair payment.

Affordability has a huge role in patient access to health care services, said Clare Krusing, spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based Americas Health Insurance Plans. There needs to be much greater focus on whether the charges for these services are fair and appropriate.

Some private air ambulance companies are offering annual memberships for their services  for as little as $65. But critics note theres no guarantee the company that sells the membership will be the one that actually transports the covered patient.

For-profit companies argue the federal governments Medicare reimbursements are woefully lacking and state Medicaid reimbursements can be even less, meaning they have to charge some patients more to stay in business.

The companies say they respond to calls without regard to whether the patient has insurance and write off millions of dollars yearly as uncollectable

Rick Sherlock, CEO of the Virginia-based Association of Air Medical Services, said his group supports bills introduced in Congress last year that would require Medicare to pay closer attention to the actual cost of services. The bill also would require companies to disclose their costs.

Montana is among the states seeking its own solution.

The Montana Legislatures economic affairs interim committee is studying the issue and intends to introduce a bill during its 2017 session. But state legislation likely will be limited in its effectiveness, Laslovich said.

We can teeter around the edges, but in dealing with the substance of the problem, were going to need an act of Congress to say air ambulances dont fall under the aviation deregulation act, Laslovich said.

Meanwhile, consumers are urged to educate themselves. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners recently issued a statement advising people to make sure they understand what, if any, air ambulance coverage they have.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham announced it has developed the first SUV driving simulator laboratory in the world.

In the development of this lab, UAB partnered with Honda Manufacturing of Alabama, which provided a full-bodied 2016 Honda Pilot built at their factory in Lincoln, Ala., to be retrofitted with state-of-the-art simulator technology funded by the Alabama Department of Transportation. The technology gives UAB researchers the opportunity to conduct important safety studies involving distracted driving practices.

Representatives from Honda, ALDOT and Alabamas Office of the Attorney General joined the UAB team to announce the new initiative at a grand opening this week.

The goal of this effort is to facilitate solutions and best practices in motor vehicle-related safety and crash prevention, addressing the major public health problem of highway and traffic-related injuries and death.

Data tell us that distracted driving is a factor in nearly 50 percent of car crashes, which translates to one million injury-producing crashes each year, said Despina Stavrinos, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology in UABs College of Arts and Sciences and director of the UAB Translational Research for Injury Prevention Laboratory. Ten percent of those crashes result in a fatality. Understanding which factors influence an individuals likelihood to engage in distracted driving is essential to being able to purposefully address this growing problem. With this new simulator, we will be able to gain new information about how drivers participate in distracted behavior, giving us valuable insight that can increase the effectiveness of educational campaigns and improve driving safety.

The core of Stavrinos work is the prevention of injury, particularly unintentional injuries like those that result from distracted driving behaviors. She will lead her TRIP Lab in conducting studies with the new simulator.

The first study, set to begin in a couple of weeks, will focus on teens and adults over 65, two of the most vulnerable populations when it comes to distracted driving.

The simulator is intended to be available to researchers from all appropriate disciplines throughout UAB, other universities in the state and even throughout the southeast. In addition, non-university research scientists will be afforded access to its use and its associated support services.

Source: UAB
Fiat Chrysler said Friday its recalling more than 1.1 million cars and midsize SUVs worldwide because drivers cant tell if theyve put the vehicles in park.

The confusion can increase the risk of a rollaway accident.

The recall covers the 2012-2014 Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300 sedans and the 2014-2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV.

FCA is recalling 811,586 vehicles in the U.S.; 52,144 vehicles in Canada; 16,805 in Mexico; and 248,667 outside North America.

The vehicles have an electronic shift lever that moves forward or backward to let the driver select the gear instead of moving along a track. A light shows which gear is selected, but to get from drive to park, drivers must push the lever forward three times.

The vehicles sound a chime and issue a dashboard warning if the drivers door is opened while they arent in park. But the push-button ignition doesnt shut off the engine, increasing the risk of the vehicles rolling away after drivers have exited.

FCA said its aware of 41 injuries potentially related to the problem.

The U.S. government opened an investigation into the vehicles in February after getting reports that they were rolling away when they were supposed to be parked.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that the shift lever is not intuitive and provides poor tactile feedback to the driver, according to documents posted on the agencys website. The agency had at least 121 reports of crashes related to the issue.

Owners will be notified. Dealers will update the shifters so the vehicles wont move once the driver has exited. They will also add enhanced warning signals. FCA says customers should carefully follow the instructions for operating their shifters until their vehicles are repaired.

FCA changed the shifter design on the Charger and the 300 in the 2015 model year. It changed the Grand Cherokees shifter in the 2016 model year.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
AKRON, Ohio -- A Lakemore woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to sending nude photos and videos to her daughter's 14-year-old ex-boyfriend.

Dodi Wade, 47, pleaded guilty to four counts of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles and one count of importuning. Summit County Common Pleas Judge Todd McKenney will sentence Wade on May 31.

Wade will have to register as a Tier I sex offender, meaning she will have to report her address to the county sheriff annually for 15 years.

Wade sent numerous sexually explicit videos to the boy's cellphone between Nov. 22 and Dec. 25.

She also asked for the boy to have sex with her several times during text-message exchanges. She also asked the boy to take nude photos of himself and send them to her.

The boy's mother searched his old cellphone Jan. 5 and found sexually-charged text messages and graphic videos.

The mother reported the incident to police. She turned over her son's old cellphone to investigators.

If you want to comment on this story, visit today's crime and courts comments page.
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Bay High School's Model UN group discussing the Syrian refugee problem at the Lake Erie Nature & Science Center. (Photo courtesy of David B. Adams)

BAY VILLAGE, Ohio - Considering teenagers often claim to know it all, there's a club tapping into their energy and excitement to help solve some of the world's biggest issues.

Bay High School's Model UN group spent April 15 addressing the Syrian refugee problem in a conference held at the Lake Erie Nature & Science Center. The extracurricular club's 38 students represented 17 countries.

"It was a rousing success," said Ernst & Young Innovation & Commercialization Assistant Director David B. Adams, the Bay High School Model UN Club advisor. "We asked the kids to learn and understand their country's history and politics. Basically they had to advocate on behalf of their country.

"It's a challenge for some kids to divorce themselves from their own thoughts and to try to own the perspectives of the country they inherit. So somebody who is Arabic might get Israel. Someone who is Jewish might get Saudi Arabia. And it challenges them to think differently about their own perspectives."

Adams said the Model UN group boasts numerous objectives, including teaching students about geopolitics, world history, the nuance of global interaction and trying to resolve conflict in a peaceful means. A secondary goal of the club is for students to sharpen their leadership and presentation skills.

"The students have to resolve conflict and negotiate," Adams said. "They need to find consensus and build their group, so as to gain more support for your measures. These are the kind of business and workplace skills they'll need as they move through high school on to college and into the workplace."

Adams said Bay High School's Model UN group missed a deadline to take part in a larger Greater Cleveland conference; however, next year the outfit plans on partaking regionally, as well as possibly traveling out of state.

"What makes the group so relevant is it's dealing with world issues that are fresh and ripped from the headlines," Adams said. "Also, the students had to have enough knowledge to move on a moment's notice.

"One of the kids from an Eastern Europe country said, 'Why not have the refugees on these sparsely inhabited Greek islands?' Of course Greece said, 'We're not doing that. We don't have the infrastructure.'"

The Model UN Syrian refugee conference ended with two resolutions: One provided food, clothes and shelter through non-government organizations, while the other recommended the use of UN ground troops.

One of the participants was Adam's son, Charlie, 14, who represented the Romanian view of the Syrian refugee crisis.

"During the conference, there were infinite possibilities to learn, to teach and solve problems that we read about," said Charlie, a Bay Village High School freshman. "We were finding solutions to global problems that are changing the world everyday."
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Two developers want to build a senior-housing development at the southeast corner of Brecksville Road and Parkview Drive in Brecksville.

(Bob Sandrick, special to cleveland.com)

BRECKSVILLE, Ohio - Two developers want to build a $35 million senior housing complex on 48 acres at Brecksville Road and Parkview Drive.

Omni Property Cos. in Cleveland would construct 100 independent-living, assisted-living and memory-care units under one roof. Redwood Living in Beachwood would add 122 single-story, side-by-side luxury apartments.

Patrick Finley, Omni's managing partner - when asked by the Brecksville Planning Commission last week whether the senior housing market is already oversaturated - said demand for senior housing will only increase as baby-boomers age.

"It's going to sound like I'm sensationalizing, but it's a crisis," Finley said. "It's going to be a serious problem that we're all going to have to face and deal with over the next 10 years."

It was just last month that Petros Homes, a Broadview Heights developer, proposed 59 cluster houses for empty-nesters near the northeast corner of Brecksville and Snowville roads. Meanwhile, Jennings Center for Older Adults in Garfield Heights is building an assistant-living center on Brecksville just north of Ohio Route 82.

In Broadview Heights, Lemmon and Lemmon Inc. in North Canton recently opened Danbury Woods - an independent-living, assisted-living and memory-care community - on Broadview Road across from City Hall. In Strongsville, voters in March approved a rezoning that will allow Altenheim Senior Living, which includes a nursing home and assisted-living and independent-living units, to build a rehab center.

Omni and Redwood, to follow through on their plans, would need Brecksville voters to rezone the proposed 48 acre-site, which is at the southeast corner of Brecksville and Parkview. Now, the land, just north of the Lubrizol Corp., is zoned for offices and laboratories.

Dominic Sciria, a planning commission member, said he would not rule out placing a rezoning issue on the ballot for Omni and Redwood. However, he first wants to see if other Brecksville senior-living communities, including Jennings, fill their beds.

Commission Chairman Robert Hotaling said he hopes the proposed senior living community would complement redevelopment of the former U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital on Brecksville across from Parkview. The problem is that no redevelopment plans have been announced for the VA property.

"It's a big question mark across the street," Hotaling said.

Nuts & bolts

Omni Property Companies would model its Brecksville senior housing development after one the firm is now building in Hudson. This rendering was provided by Omni.

Finley said Omni has an option to buy the 48 acres from United Technologies - a designer and maker of aircraft engines, elevators and escalators, and a supplier of aerospace and defense products - which has headquarters in Farmington, Conn.

Omni would model the development after one the company is now building in Hudson. Rents in the independent-living, assisted-living, memory-care building would range from $1,800-$7,000 a month, depending on the level of care.

The senior development would not accept government assistance. Residents would have to pay entirely out-of-pocket.

John Lateulere, senior vice president of development with Redwood, said his firm would own and operate the ranch-style apartments, which would measure between 1,300-1,400 square feet. Rents would start at $1,500 a month.

Lateulere said Redwood was established 25 years ago and has built about 4,600 units in 10-12 Northeast Ohio communities.

Finley said Omni, historically an office developer, has eyed the 48-acre Brecksville site for about five years. He said demand for new offices is not expected to grow, so the firm has been building senior housing on former office sites, after rezoning.

Apartments versus condos

Mayor Jerry Hruby said the city might have to create a new zoning classification to accommodate the proposed apartments.

Hruby said Brecksville years ago removed apartment zoning from municipal code because the city has no more vacant land zoned for apartments. Two former apartment complexes - Brecksville West and Carriage Hill - converted to condominiums in the 1990's. The only apartment complex left is Grand Bay of Brecksville.

Hruby added that residents might vote down a rezoning if they knew the development would include rental properties. He asked if Redwood would consider building condos in instead.

Finley said it's hard to obtain loans for condo developments, and they are hard to sell.

Lateulere said condos become rundown after 20 years, while Redwood keeps its rental units in top shape. Also, Redwood can evict troublesome tenants, while all condo neighbors can do is call police, he said.

Lateulere said the city would not have to create a new zoning classification for Redwood's apartments because they would fit under the single-family-detached-unit section of Brecksville's zoning code.
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Pison Stream Solutions in Brentwood, Tenn. hopes to open a manufacturing plant in this Brecksville building.

(Bob Sandrick, special to cleveland.com)

BRECKSVILLE, Ohio - A Brentwood, Tenn. research-and-development firm plans to open a manufacturing plant this year on West Snowville Road.

Pison Stream Solutions would bring about 150 jobs to Brecksville over three years, starting in 2016. Annual payroll would reach at least $8.5 million by 2018, which translates to an estimated $170,000 a year in income taxes for the city, according to Mayor Jerry Hruby.

Last week, Brecksville City Council awarded Pison a $680,000 grant that would help the company pay for startup and relocation costs, provided that it stays in Brecksville at least 10 years.

The city would pay the grant in three installments, one for $340,000 when Pison receives a municipal occupancy permit for an existing 42,500-square-foot building at 6101 West Snowville. Two $170,000 installments would follow in 2017 and 2018.

Everything depends on Pison working out a deal for the vacant West Snowville building.

Joseph James, president and CEO of Pison, told cleveland.com that the company would like to purchase the building. Negotiations are ongoing.

The Brecksville site isn't the first Greater Cleveland location that Pison, founded in 2010, has considered for a new facility.

In 2014, the city of Independence awarded Pison a $65,000 jobs-creation grant to open a branch on East Pleasant Valley Road. The company had planned to bring up to 75 workers to town, along with an estimated payroll of $2.8 million.

Jeremy Rowan, Independence's economic development director, said Pison wanted to buy a building on East Pleasant Valley but the deal fell through. The city never gave the grant money to Pison.

James said Pison simply could not find a suitable property in Independence.

Pison is looking to expand into Northeast Ohio because Cleveland is an "up-and-coming" city with a deep and diverse pool of talent, James said. He said the Cleveland area "fits our needs well."

According to its website, Pison is a global research and development firm specializing in chemical coatings, antimicrobial technologies, renewable energy solutions and communication system designs.

James said Pison, in addition to its Tennessee headquarters, has offices in New York City and Dallas. The company has decided to start manufacturing some of its patented technology and hopes to open two plants, including one in Brecksville. Pison has not decided where to establish its second plant.
NORTH CANTON, Ohio -- Diebold Inc. on Monday welcomed a delegation from Inspur Group Co. Ltd., an $8 billion Chinese cloud-computing and information technology company that wants to bring the latest ATMs and banking innovations to the world's most populous country.

The two companies on Dec. 18, 2015, announced a joint venture between Diebold and a subsidiary of Inspur Group to develop, manufacture and distribute a variety of financial self-service solutions in China, including ATMs.

Inspur Group Chairman and Chief Executive Pishu Peter Sun, who has been talking to Diebold President and Chief Executive Andy W. Mattes for three years, including twice in China, visited Diebold's world headquarters in North Canton for the first time Monday.

He said that when Inspur set out to find a partner, he was impressed by Diebold's global scope, its strength as "the biggest ATM vendor in the whole world," and its nearly 160-year longevity in the market and long history of innovation. "We're very fortunate to find a partner like Diebold," Sun said.

"We're extremely excited about the joint venture, and we're now putting the finishing touches on the venture this summer," said Diebold President and CEO Andy W. Mattes, beaming.

Sun agreed, saying through a translator that "with your support, the joint venture will develop well in China and other countries."

Inspur, based in Jinan, Shandong, China, will hold a 51-percent majority stake in the company, which will be called Inspur Financial Information Systems Ltd.

"During the first stage, we'll start with the Chinese market. We want to increase the market share of Diebold in China," Peter Sun said.

Because many Chinese people still conduct most of their transactions via cash, not all Chinese consumers know what an ATM does or why they might need one. As China's rural areas develop, "we want to sell ATMs to those areas," Sun said.

Sun noted that while the U.S. has 1,000 ATMs per 1 million people, China has only 600 units per 1 million, within a total population that has 1 billion people more than the U.S.

And while Americans regularly swipe credit cards and write checks, Chinese consumers still prefer carrying around cash, Sun said, pulling a wad of dollars from his pocket to demonstrate.

Inspur, which specializes in IT hardware and software and is a leading self-service kiosk manufacturer for major financial institutions in China, will also acquire a minority share of Diebold's existing China joint venture, focusing on services such as installation, maintenance, professional and managed services related to ATMs, and other automated transaction solutions.

On Monday, Sun and six Inspur associates toured Diebold's showroom of prototypes and nodded at the futuristic technology, such as remotely activated, touch-enabled ATMs, and a computer-generated bank teller inside a Star Trek-like capsule that can be activated via smartphone.

Inspur Group Chairman and CEO Pishu Peter Sun tries on a LeBron James CAVS jersey, at Diebold in North Canton on Monday, April, 25, 2016. (Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer)

To commemorate Sun's visit, Mattes told him that "the best player in the world comes from Northeast Ohio," and gave him a gold LeBron James' replica Cavs jersey, which Sun quickly slipped out of his suit jacket to try on. He noted that it bore the same number as the Chicago Bulls' Michael Jordan, whose 12-foot-tall statue he had seen outside the United Center in Chicago the night before, and who still has a huge following in China.

In return, Sun gave Mattes a hand-painted traditional Chinese scroll depicting his hometown in Shandong Province.

Sun also introduced Chengtong Thomas Sun, vice president of the Inspur Group and general manager of Inspur Financial, who will oversee the joint venture. Before joining Inspur 16 years ago, he worked for the Bank of China.

"We've heard nothing but great things about Thomas in the market," Mattes said.

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Robert Rouzaud, a Cleveland dentist, was charged Monday with healthcare fraud.

(Eric Heisig/cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- An Cleveland dentist was charged in federal court Monday with billing Medicaid for filling teeth for patients who never actually had the work done.

Robert Rouzaud, the owner of Five Points Dental Centre on East 152nd Street in the Collinwood neighborhood, submitted false claims worth nearly $408,000 between 2009 and last year, according to charging documents. He was paid more than $343,000 for those services.

The charging documents say he billed for several fillings on the same teeth, even though he never provided them. Some of the fillings were for teeth that had previously been pulled, and others were for patients who had dentures.

Rouzaud, 59, of Willoughby faces one count of healthcare fraud. The charge was filed in a criminal information, which usually means a plea agreement is forthcoming.

The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Benita Pearson in Youngstown.

This is not the first time Rouzaud has been accused of illegal billing practices. He settled a 2003 lawsuit brought by the U.S. Justice Department for $15,000 after he was accused of billing Medicaid for unnecessary teeth restorations.

Subodh Chandra, Rouzaud's attorney, did not return a phone call. He later sent an emailed statement that said his client has fully cooperated since he became aware of the investigation.

"He accepts full responsibility for billing improprieties," the statement says. "Notably, there is no allegation of patient harm in this matter, because Dr. Rouzaud cares deeply about his patients -- and they respect and trust him for their care."

Rouzaud, who graduated from Case Western Reserve University in 1984, obtained his dental license in Ohio in 1989. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been investigating him since 2014. Agents raided his office in June, taking billing statements and other paperwork.

According to the search warrant, a patient interviewed by agents described Rouzaud's office as "ragged." Another patient said it was difficult to get appointments with Rouzaud and that his office was dirty and that none of the instruments he used were sterile. The patient's husband, who also got services, said his office was "not organized, not clean, and not professional."

The female patient also said that it was "common for Rouzaud to leave [her] with open wounds following the partial completion of a bridge and these wounds became infected," the warrant says. She took medication, but it didn't work and she developed gum disease.

Rouzaud's license is currently active. His license was suspended for 30 days in August 2002 because he was not properly sterilizing his dental instruments and did not wear a chin-length face shield mask and eyewear.

He was also suspended for 120 days in 2005 because of issues surrounding the diagnoses of problems and billing Medicaid for services.

If you want to comment on this story, visit Tuesday's crime and courts comments page.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland man is charged with kidnapping his family after police say he screwed the doors to their home shut and kept them trapped inside for four days.

Jonathan Torres Rodriguez, 26, faces several charges of kidnapping, domestic violence and child endangerment after his girlfriend told her social worker that the family was trapped inside their home, according to court records.

Rodriguez slapped his girlfriend and smashed her cellphone during an April 1 fight at their home, court records say. He pulled a pistol from his waistband and fired a shot through the ceiling.

As she tried to escape, Rodgriguez grabbed her by the hair and dragged her back inside the home as his children watched, police say. When the family woke up the next day, the home's front door was screwed shut, according to court filings.

Rodriguez threatened them and forced his girlfriend and four children to stay inside the house telling his girlfriend and children he would kill them and then commit suicide, court filings say.

Four days later, Rodriguez allowed his girlfriend to attend a meeting with her social worker. The social worker called police and Rodriguez was arrested that afternoon.

Rodriguez faces five counts of felony kidnapping, one count of carrying a concealed weapon, one count of interfering with public services, one count of domestic violence and four counts of endangering children.

He remains in the Cuyahoga County Jail on $150,000 bond and is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday morning.

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Michael O'Malley and Timothy McGinty neck and neck in race for county prosecutor

Cuyahoga county prosecutor hopeful Michael O'Malley acknowledges some cheers during an election party at The Harp in Cleveland.

(Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Michael O'Malley defeated incumbent Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty in the Democratic primary despite being out fund-raised and outspent two-to-one.

McGinty outraised O'Malley $162,120 to $87,940 leading up to the March 15 election that picked the county's new prosecutor since no Republicans filed to run in the November general election. McGinty outspent O'Malley as well, $208,198 to $89,491.

While the incumbent prosecutor raised more cash, O'Malley's campaign garnered contributions from nearly three times as many individual donors as well as a host of Democratic party insiders, according to unofficial campaign finance reports released Friday.

Analysis found that black voters, who expressed widespread discontent after McGinty advised a grand jury against criminal charges against the police officer who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice, turned on McGinty in the election.

Several major contributions from business leaders buoyed McGinty's campaign, but O'Malley benefited from a steady trickle of smaller donations, as well as support from unions.

O'Malley benefits from PACs, local politicians, even a candidate for judge

O'Malley also drew support from several other candidates for office, including Democratic Cuyahoga Common Pleas judge candidate Michael Shaughnessy, who chipped in $200 on two separate occasions.

Parma mayoral candidate Tom Procuk's political action committee gave O'Malley's campaign $500. State Rep. Nicholas Celebrezze's PAC also gave $500, while state Rep. Martin J. Sweeney's campaign gave $400. North Royalton Council President Larry Antoskiewicz's campaign gave $50.

Unions largely supported a new prosecutor

Unions, including the Cleveland Firefighters Association Local 93, the Ohio Association of Professional Firefighters, the Cleveland Building and Construction Trades Council, Plumbers Local 55 and Sheet Metal Workers No. 33, donated a total of $10,200 to O'Malley's campaign.

The Laborers Local 860 and gave McGinty's campaign $2,000, while the Heat, Frost Insulators Union gave the incumbent prosecutor $1,000.

The union representing Cleveland's rank-and-file police officers was notably absent from fundraising efforts. The Cleveland Police Patrolmens Association declined to endorse either candidate in the race.

Business barons boost McGinty

McGinty's campaign benefited from two major donations by Robert Kanner, president of printer supplies manufacturer Pubco. Kanner gave McGinty a $40,000 check on Jan. 4, a second $10,000 check the same day and a $15,000 check on March 3, the reports show.

McGinty's campaign also took in $10,000 from Forest City Enterprises Co-Chairman Sam Miller, as well as $10,000 from Cleveland Clinic Trustee Dan Moore.

Local attorneys put their hat in the ring

Local attorneys contributed at least $20,000 to both campaigns, but the contributions were split evenly. Cleveland.com is still analyzing the Ohio Supreme Court's attorney database to finalize figures on attorney contributions.

There were no hedged bets in the prosecutor's race, according to the preliminary reports. Not a single contributor crossed lines to give money to both candidates.

Tamir Rice effect

The race, in part, was a referendum on McGinty's recommendation to a grand jury not to indict officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, the Cleveland police officers involved in the November 2014 shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

O'Malley swept all majority African-American precincts during the election, while McGinty's strongest support came from Cleveland's outlying suburbs.

U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge led a Democratic critique of McGinty's handling of the prosecution, and other local Democrats fell in line to support O'Malley.
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China moved to clamp down on excessive speculation in commodities on Monday after weeks of frenzied trading boosted prices and ignited fears of another bubble in its domestic markets. Activity on China's largest commodity exchanges has surged in recent days with turnover in key steel contracts exceeding the combined volume of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges on one day last week. Investors around the world have zeroed in on the latest trading binge as the prices of many commodities have risen sharply, with iron ore gaining almost a third in just two weeks. Cash has started to flow into raw materials in part because Chinese officials imposed curbs on equities trading last year. "China's latest speculative spike has stunned global markets," said Tom Price, a Morgan Stanley analyst.



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Shanghai steel futures have risen more than 50 per cent this year and more than a fifth this month. Iron ore traded on the Dalian Commodity Exchange hit its highest level since September 2014 last week. The surge led the country's largest commodity trading venues  the Shanghai Futures Exchange, Dalian Commodity Exchange and Zhengzhou Commodities Exchange  to curb activity by lifting transaction costs, margins and daily trading limits on some contracts. Pricing power for the world's most important raw materials has shifted east during a decade of economic growth that has transformed China into the largest importer of almost every major commodity. Almost half of the world's most active commodity derivatives are now traded on Chinese exchanges. More from the Financial Times :



China's debt-shrinking machine loses its magical power

China debt load reaches record high as risk to economy mounts

Goldman's retail move follows the money Analysts said the trigger for increased speculative interest in commodities was a credit surge engineered by Chinese policymakers this year to prop up the economy and its currency. This led to a pick-up in construction activity and stoked investor appetite for ways to bet on the Chinese economy. Beijing imposed draconian rules on equities last year as fears of a slowing economy triggered a sell-off that threatened stability.
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Manitowoc , a leading crane manufacturer, is up more than 30 percent since its spinoff in March. Jim Cramer was left wondering how this market laggard has suddenly caught fire. Many assume that Manitowoc is simply another cyclical machinery stock that has roared along with the rest of the cohort in anticipation of a stronger global economy. However, Manitowoc has managed to leave the likes of Cummins, Caterpillar and United Rentals in the dust. "That means this move isn't just about the prospect of a better global economy, it is also about a company-specific turnaround that is still in its early innings," Cramer said. For those investors who believe the recent rebound in oil, metals and minerals signals a strengthening global economy, Cramer this Manitowoc is absolutely worth buying. However, for those who are skeptical about a worldwide economic recovery, it is time to ring the register. "If we get a pullback going into the company's earnings report next Wednesday, I would snap up some shares and then wait to process the results before buying any more," Cramer said.



Tom Grill | Getty Images

Earnings season thus far has been filled with stories of bountiful bottom-line numbers, with top-line revenues failing to impress. When earnings resume on Tuesday, Cramer expects to see the earnings winning spree continue. "It is worth pointing out though, they are winning in a pretty heartless way  through massive layoffs," the "Mad Money" host said. Cramer pointed out that the stocks that are the strongest this earnings season are the same companies firing most aggressively. The real conundrum for Cramer is that despite these layoffs, jobless claims in the U.S. hit a four-decade low last week. The last time there was a figure lower than Thursday's 247,000 claims was on Nov. 24, 1973. Ultimately, these job cuts serve investors who want to see higher gross margins and expense reductions. This will prompt stronger cash flow, which can then be returned to shareholders in the form of dividends and buybacks. Read More Cramer: Heartless 'massive layoffs' the main theme of earnings season so far

Cramer tends to think of airlines as a group that trades together in lockstep; either they all thrive or all struggle together. But this earnings season has completely flipped that notion on its head. As the market enters the third week of earnings season, all of the major U.S. based airlines have reported. Somehow Southwest Airlines is crushing it, while Delta is doing OK, and American Airlines and United Continental are in hot water. "A rising tide lifts all ships, but once the tide goes out, that is when you find out who the real winners are. And in the airline space, Southwest is the undisputed champion," the "Mad Money" host said. Read More Cramer: The undisputed champion of insanely cheap airline stocks



Greg Bajor | Getty Images
It might have been a rough day on the tape Monday, but Jim Cramer says the world is getting better.

He noted that even as Europe is finally turning around, both China and oil have bottomed.

"These two threads are important to keep in mind as we go through the height of earnings season this week because they are very contrary to conventional wisdom. But it is unmistakable," the "Mad Money" host said.

On the Caterpillar conference call, management stated three times that China was getting better, and Asia was up year over year. Caterpillar added that it has already seen a gain from the recent change in commodity prices and was generally positive about the rest of the world.

The key signal within that statement to Cramer was that China is coming back.
Ahead of the Federal Reserve's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, experts aren't looking for rate hikes.

Stephen Gallagher, managing director and head of research at Societe Generale, told CNBC's "Closing Bell" that economists can expect "some signaling and maybe less dovishness."

What investors want to know is when they can expect the Fed to start hiking and how gradual that process will be, Gallagher noted. "Everyone thinks it's a very gradual, but [the Fed] thinks that's twice this year and the market is 'no rate hikes' this year," he said.
People visit on October 28, 2014 the DCNS stand at the Euronaval naval defense equipment fair in le Bourget, south of Paris.

France's state-controlled naval contractor DCNS Group has won a A$50 billion ($40 billion) contract to build Australia's new fleet of submarines, beating out bids from Germany and Japan.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Tuesday that DCNS had been chosen to build 12 new submarines at shipyards in Adelaide, South Australia.

The purchase is the centerpiece of the Liberal government's defense strategy, unveiled in February, which called for an increase in military spending of nearly A$30 billion over the next 10 years to protect strategic and trade interests in the Asia-Pacific.

DCNS's bid proposed a diesel-electric version of its 5,000-tonne Barracuda nuclear-powered submarine.

Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Germany's ThyssenKrupp had also been in the running for the contract, one of the most lucrative global defense deals on offer.

America's Raytheon, which built the system for Australia's aging Collins-class subs, is vying for a separate combat system contract, in contest with Lockheed Martin, which supplies combat systems to the U.S. navy's submarine fleet.

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at a news conference on April 22, 2016 in New York City. The leader denounced the beheading of Canadian John Ridsdel by the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the Philippines on Monday April 25, 2016. Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the execution of a Canadian hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines, calling it "an act of cold-blooded murder." John Ridsdel, 68, a former mining executive, was captured by Islamist militants along with three other people in September 2015 while on vacation on a Philippine island. The Philippine army said a severed head was found on a remote island on Monday, five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by militants who had threatened to execute one of four captives. "Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers and this unnecessary death. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting.

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"The government of Canada is committed to working with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act." Trudeau declined to respond when asked whether the Canadian government had tried to negotiate with the captors or pay a ransom, or whether it was trying to secure the release of the other Canadian being held, Robert Hall. The captives included Ridsdel and Hall, along with one Norwegian man and a Filipino woman, who had appealed in a video for their families and governments to secure their release. Residents found the head in the center of Jolo town. An army spokesman said two men on a motorcycle were seen dropping a plastic bag containing the severed head. A Philippine army spokesman said al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of four captives on Monday if the 300 million pesos ($6.4 million) ransom for each of them was not paid by 3 p.m. local time. The initial demand was one billion pesos each for the detainees, who were taken hostage at an upscale resort on Samal Island on Sept. 21.
Ahead of a string of quarterly results this week, "Fast Money" traders picked their best bets for earnings.

Apple and Twitter are set to report Tuesday. Facebook and Exxon Mobil , among others, follow later in the week.

Despite broader pessimism about Apple's results, traders Karen Finerman and Pete Najarian, who both own Apple shares, said they would stick with the tech giant. The stock has fallen nearly 20 percent in the last year, the selling driven partly by concerns about iPhone sales.
High street retailer British Home Stores (BHS) is filing for administration Monday April 25, 2016, threatening almost 11,000 jobs. Julian Herbert | Getty Images

British department stores group BHS was placed into administration on Monday, putting the 88-year-old retailer in danger of disappearing from the high street and placing 11,000 jobs at risk. Once a mainstay of the British high street, BHS has been in decline for years, unable to keep up with demand for fast fashion, online sales and improved customer services. BHS employs about 8,000 people, while a further 3,000 contractors work with the company's 164 stores. Going into administration, a form of creditor protection, means it is Britain's most high-profile retail casualty since Phones4U in 2014 and Woolworths in 2008. It could also increase scrutiny of BHS's former owner Philip Green, the billionaire retail boss who sold the firm for one pound last year to a collection of little known investors called Retail Acquisitions. He bought it for 200 million pounds in 2000. With a pension deficit of 571 million pounds ($828 million), the pensions regulator is investigating whether BHS's previous owners sought to avoid their obligations.

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"The group will continue to trade as usual whilst the administrators seek to sell it as a going concern," said Philip Duffy and Benjamin Wiles, managing directors of restructuring firm Duff & Phelps who have been appointed joint administrators. Analysts see little prospect of a buyer emerging for the whole of BHS, given the difficulty Green had in finding suitors. They say the most likely scenario is that BHS's assets will be sold off piecemeal and a source close to the administration process said more than 30 expressions of interest for various parts of the business had already been received. Ultimately, analysts think it likely that the BHS name, like Woolworths before it, will depart from Britain's shopping districts. "Serious questions" BHS had in March won the support of its creditors for a rescue plan that gave it big cuts to its rent bill.

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However, saddled with over 1 billion pounds of debt, including the pension deficit, BHS failed to raise the additional funds it required, particularly from planned asset sales, to meet all its contractual payments, prompting the administration process.

The regulator has said it now wants to investigate how the pension scheme was run. BHS had been engaged in a 23-year recovery plan to pay down the deficit, a plan that has been criticised by pension consultants for being too long. "Let us see what conclusions the regulator comes to ... If there's any suggestions of impropriety we will come after people," Business Minister Anna Soubry told parliament. Angela Eagle, business spokeswoman for the opposition Labor party, said Green had "serious questions to answer".


A vote by U.K. citizens to leave the European Union (EU) may prove beneficial for U.K. telecommunication companies, but could create headaches for consumers, according to industry watchers.

Specifically, the U.K. might find itself exempt from new EU rules that will cut the cost of using mobile phones when abroad, if its citizens vote to leave the union in the referendum on June 23.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

The European Commission (the executive arm of the EU) has ruled that mobile roaming charges must be abolished by June 2017  but in the event of a "Brexit," telecom providers might continue to levy these charges on U.K. customers and benefit from the additional revenue.

"If the U.K. does not join the European Economic Area (after leaving the EU), the issue of ensuring free roaming for British customers in Europe would appear to be more complicated and may well depend on individual negotiation between mobile operators," a report by U.K. law firm Shepherd and Wedderburn said.

However, some telecom companies may opt to reduce or abolish roaming charges for U.K. customers irrespective of whether the country remains a member of the EU.

"International groups such as Vodafone and 3 will seek to continue to compete on package arrangements across their core operating companies to retain high-value roaming customers," Gordon Moir, a partner at Shepherd and Wedderburn, told CNBC via email.

A Brexit could result in another independence referendum in Scotland. Should Scots then vote to leave the U.K., phoning Scotland from England would count as an international call, according to Dave Millett from telecoms brokerage Equinox.
Ant Financial, the affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba that runs Alipay, confirmed on Tuesday that it had raised $4.5 billion in what is the world's largest single private funding round for an internet company.

The funding round values the company at roughly $60 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter, as previously reported by CNBC.

Chinese sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation together with China Construction Bank led the round. They were joined by existing Ant Financial shareholders which include China Life; China Post Group, the parent company of Postal Savings Bank of China; China Development Bank Capital and Primavera Capital Group.

The round makes Ant Financial the second-most valuable private technology firm behind U.S. ride hailing app Uber, which is worth over $62 billion, and ahead of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, which has a valuation of $45 billion.
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Apple's sales in China tumbled in the second quarter after currency headwinds hurt Hong Kong sales, the company said in Tuesday's earnings. "The vast majority of the weakness sits in Hong Kong," Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts in an earnings call. "The Hong Kong dollar being pegged to the U.S. dollar, and therefore it carries the burden of strength of U.S. dollar. And that has driven tourism, trade and international shopping down significantly compared to what it was in the year ago."

The company reported quarterly earnings and revenue that missed analysts' expectations, with revenue declining year-over-year in every region. But China saw the biggest share of declines: Greater China sales, once the tech giant's fastest growing market, fell to $12.49 billion in the second quarter, the company said, a 26 percent year-over-year decline.

Excluding Hong Kong and Taiwan, mainland China saw sales decline 11 percent on a reported basis, and 7 percent on a constant currency basis, Cook said. But people need to look under the numbers, Cook said, as LTE adoption increases and more Apple stores open in the region. "When I look at the larger picture, I think China is not weak as is talked about," Cook said. "I see China as ... a lot more stable than what I think is the common view of it. We remain really optimistic about China." Chief financial officer Luca Maestri said the business in China was "better than the numbers might suggest."

"We had significant inventory channel reductions and currency weakness which affected our reported revenue," Maestri said in an earnings call. "Keep in mind that we were up against an extremely difficult year-ago compare when our mainland China revenue grew 81 percent. We remain very optimistic about the China market over the long-term, and we are committed to investing there for the long run." But speaking in January, Cook warned that the company had seen "some signs of economic softness" in the Greater China region. That business segment, which includes mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, is a key area of growth for the U.S. tech giant, but Cook acknowledged in January that it had been something of a "turbulent environment." China has seen its pace of economic expansion slowing in recent quarters, and its stock markets have taken investors on a roller coaster ride during that time.

"Something's wrong in China," Gene Munster, managing director and senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, wrote in a research note after the earnings. "Guidance appear negatively impacted by a sharp deceleration in China ... Overall we see few bright spots in the March report and June guide." Beyond macroeconomic factors, Apple's position in China is under fire by domestic firms, and it could even see the government in Beijing crack down on its success in the country. Speaking with CNBC earlier this week, billionaire Chinese entrepreneur Jia Yueting said Apple is "outdated," and charged that it has not been innovating at a sufficient pace. "One of the most important reasons [for slowing sales] is that Apple's innovation has become extremely slow," he said. "For example, a month ago Apple launched the iPhone SE. From an industry insider's perspective, this is a product with a very low level of technology...We think this is something they just shouldn't have done."

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Energy companies are offering "unsustainable" dividends for which they are wrongly rewarded by the market, the CEO of an energy-focused hedge fund told CNBC. Oil companies have largely guarded their dividends, despite the collapse in crude prices since 2014. The industry has a tradition of providing steady dividends and has tended to opt for spending cuts rather than reducing payouts to investors. For instance, BP announce a pretax loss of $865 million for the first quarter of 2016 on Tuesday, but held its dividend unchanged at 10 cents per ordinary share. Nearly 80 percent of energy companies maintained or increased their dividend payments in 2015, according to a post on the Research Centre for Energy Management website. That was despite companies struggling to generate cash in the face of depressed oil prices. In March, Chevron chief executive John Watson reiterated the importance of dividend growth, even as he announced new spending cuts. The company has hiked dividends for 28 consecutive years.



dgdimension | Getty Images

Royal Dutch Shell has not cut its dividend since 1945 and ExxonMobil has increased its dividend each year for more than three decades, according to Schroders, an asset management company.

"A lot of companies have adopted dividend policies that are unsustainable and have been rewarded by the financial markets that don't sufficiently question the sustainability," Harald Otterhaug, the head of Oslo Asset Management, told CNBC last week in London. "A lot of that unsustainable dividend has been financed by easy access to credit markets and equity markets and last year when the credit and equity markets shut down for a lot of these companies, it became pretty quickly evident the dividends were unsustainable and investors realized that a lot of the dividend they were receiving in recent years had been return of capital rather than return on capital and there wasn't much capital left," he added. "We believe that longer term, in order for production to be economical, oil prices need to go significantly higher, but it is a big question mark when and how that happens," Otterhaug told CNBC.

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Luxembourg has granted a license to bitcoin exchange Bitstamp making it Europe's first fully regulated payment institution for the cryptocurrency with expectations high that an extra layer of legitimacy could lead more people to trade bitcoin. Bitstamp received the license, which goes into effect on July 1st, as part of a two-year application process that tested its security and customer protection systems. "We have put a lot of time and resources into the regulatory process with the goal of ensuring customers feel more confident in using Bitstamp's exchange and products across the European Union," said Nejc Kodric, co-founder and CEO of Bitstamp, in a press release. "We are proud to have taken this important step for our customers and the digital currency/blockchain industry globally."

Bitcoin with QR code Benoit Tessier | Reuters

The decision may go some way to make a bitcoin exchange safer and more secure. According to Vijay Michalik, research analyst for consultancy firm Frost & Sullivan, bitcoin exchanges had been fraught with danger. "There have been lots of people trying to start exchanges and sometimes getting a serious amount of volume before people realise that, while they had that beautiful front end, they didn't have the background security that people really should expect from a financial institution," he told CNBC during a phone interview. "What [the Bitstamp decision] signals is that this is an exchange, at least within Europe, that has been inspected by the regulator and actually meets some of those requirements." Michalik also thought the decision would encourage some new customers to buy and trade bitcoin.


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Scientists are one step closer in harnessing the power of whole-genome sequencing to solve the mysteries of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a condition that is affecting more than 3 million individuals in the United States and costing our economy an estimated $268 billion annually. In April the advocacy organization Autism Speaks announced that its project to create the world's largest genomic database on autism is more than halfway complete. Known as MSSNG and pronounced "missing," in reference to the many unanswered questions about the disorder, the project calls for sequencing the DNA of 10,000 families where one or more members is affected by autism. It is an open-source research project, meaning that any qualified researcher anywhere in the world can access the data, which was developed in conjunction with Google and Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. The internet giant is housing research data in an open cloud database, allowing scientists worldwide to mine the massive amount of data on the genome and collaborate and share their findings. The timing of this initiative is critical, considering that the national economic cost of autism  including direct medical, direct non-medical and productivity costs  is skyrocketing. That number is expected to rise to $461 billion by 2025, according to a study funded in part by Autism Speaks.



Since it began last year, MSSNG has sequenced the genomes of more than 5,000 individuals affected by autism, which is characterized by irregularity in brain development, in varying degrees, by social, communication and behavioral challenges. It may take years to fully unlock the many pieces of the autism puzzle. But scientists have already begun to identify subtypes of ASD associated with health problems, such as seizures, gastrointestinal issues and schizophrenia. The hope is that genetic mapping will one day revolutionize treatment of ASD through personalized medicine tailored to the individual. That prospect "is something that has us all pretty excited," said Mat Pletcher, interim chief science officer and head of Genomic Discovery for Autism Speaks, who represented the MSSNG Project at a recent White House summit on precision medicine. "There's still so much we don't know about autism. But our hope is that genome mapping will soon allow us to improve the lives of people affected by autism based on what their genome tells us."

The Mojica family is hoping genetic research will help their 17 year-old son Adam who suffers from autism. Source: Mojica family

That's heartening news for Jesse Mojica and his wife, Ana, whose son Adam was diagnosed with autism at age 2. "Adam was always a very happy little boy with a brilliant smile, a joyful little boy," said Jesse. "We first knew something was wrong when the sparkle in his eye started to go away. He had a few words but lost those words and never regained them." Jesse said Adam, now 17, has grown into a remarkable young man, despite having always lived in a world to which he must struggle to adapt. "He loves his family, and he loves music, which is one of his greatest joys. For us the MSSNG initiative is all about finding answers  answers to how we can help Adam, how can we support him and continue to make life better for him. We want to open the window into Adam's world."

By identifying genetic targets, we may one day be able to help people on the autism spectrum do a lot better. Dr. Stephen Scherer director, Centre for Applied Genomics, Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children

Data for the MSSNG project comes from individuals and families who participate in genetic research studies at autism centers around the country, such as Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Vanderbilt University Medical School. Each participant is administered a simple blood test, and the DNA is sent to a sequencing company for processing. The processed data is stored in the Google Cloud platform, which can be accessed by qualified researchers. In the future, Autism Speaks plans to build a community portal where test subjects can access the data as well. "Families will be able to see their own genetic information by simply logging on to the portal," said Pletcher. As more treatments become available, they'll be able to share the genetic data for use by their private physicians.

Creating precision medicine treatments for autism may well be a complex process, however. The first set of data from the MSSNG scientists revealed just how heterogeneous the disorder is. A team led by Dr. Stephen Scherer, director of the Centre for Applied Genomics at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, sequenced 340 whole genomes from 85 families. Each family had two children with an autism spectrum disorder. The data showed that even though autism often runs in families, most siblings who have autism spectrum disorder have different autism-linked genes. The findings flew in the face of conventional wisdom that most siblings with the disorder inherit the same autism-linked genes from their parents. Rather, the researchers found that the siblings shared the same autism-predisposing gene changes only 31 percent of the time.

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T-Mobile USA President and CEO John Legere has long referred to rivals Verizon and AT&T as "dumb and dumber," respectively. On Tuesday, he said their roles are about to reverse.

"Verizon's about to take over as dumber from AT&T. I make that prediction," he told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." "In next six months, they're going to do some stupid acquisition. Millennials still will hate them."

Legere said he believes Verizon has invested billions to acquire "junk."

The telecom giant purchased AOL last year for $4.4 billion, saying the acquisition would further its strategy to build out its LTE wireless video and streaming video strategy. AOL's advertising unit, which has outpaced revenue growth among its content brands, is also seen as a valuable asset.

Verizon is also believed to be on the shortlist of potential buyers of beleaguered internet portal Yahoo . Like AOL, Yahoo not only produces content, but is also a significant player in digital advertising.



"Verizon makes no excuses for investing in future growth," Bob Varettoni, executive director of media relations at Verizon, told CNBC. "Our goal is long-term shareholder value, based on a diverse and healthy cash flow. We use that cash to re-invest more than $17 billion in capital each year to provide customers with great networks, and great new services that take advantage of those networks."


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In the desert climate of Scottsdale, Arizona, rest 147 brains and bodies, all frozen in liquid nitrogen with the goal of being revived one day. It's not science fiction  to some it might not even be science  yet thousands of people around the world have put their trust, lives and fortunes into the promise of cryonics, the practice of preserving a body with antifreeze shortly after death in hopes future medicine might be able to bring the deceased back. "If you think back half a century or so, if somebody stopped breathing and their heart stopped beating we would've checked them and said they're dead," said Max More, CEO of the Scottsdale-based Alcor. "Our view is that when we call someone dead it's a bit of an arbitrary line. In fact they are in need of a rescue." That "rescue" begins the moment a doctor declares a patient dead. Alcor's team then prepares an ice bath and begins administering 16 medications and variations of antifreeze until the patient's temperature drops to near freezing.

Alcor CEO Max More poses in front of the dewars that house his 147 cryopreserved patients. Qin Chen | CNBC

"The critical thing is how fast we get to someone and how quickly we start the cooling process," More said. In order to ensure that can happen, Alcor stations equipped teams in the U.K., Canada and Germany and offers members a $10,000 incentive to legally die in Scottsdale, where the record for getting a patient cooled down and prepped for an operation is 35 minutes. Next, a contracted surgeon removes a patient's head if the member selected Alcor's "Neuro" option, as it's euphemistically called, in hopes that a new body can be grown with a member's DNA once it comes time to be thawed out. It's also the much cheaper route. At a price tag of $80,000, it's less than half the cost of preserving your whole body. "That requires a minimum of $200,000, which isn't as much as it sounds, because most people pay with life insurance," More said. In fact, such a business model is pretty consistent in the nonprofit cryonics community. Michigan-based Cryonics Institute offers a similar payment structure, albeit at the more affordable cost of just $28,000 for whole-body preservation. Which begs the question: Why the price discrepancy? "We've been very conservative in the way we plan the financing," More said. "Of that $200,000, about $115,000 of it goes into the patient care trust fund," which is meant to cover eventual costs and is controlled by a board of trustees (a certain number of which is required to have loved ones currently in cryopreservation). More says the trust currently boasts a total of over $10 million, which is supported by Alcor's most recent nonprofit 990 filings.

Who is doing this?

When More came to the U.S. in 1986 from Britain to train at Alcor, it was run by volunteers and he signed up as Alcor's 67th member. Since then, the company has hired a full-time staff of eight employees, boosted its membership to more than 1,000, and is looking into doubling the size of its patient care bay.



And while Alcor said its membership includes billionaire investor Peter Thiel and Google Chief Engineer Ray Kurzweil, high-profile names have led to scrutiny in the past. The company found itself at the center of a media firestorm after a former employee raised allegations that Alcor mistreated the remains of baseball great Ted Williams. The company's subsequent defamation suit, which challenged the ex-employee's account, was dismissed but Alcor has sought to reinstate it. Still, Alcor's membership continues to grow, and it's not all due to billionaires. Elaine Walker, 47, is a single mother and part-time college instructor at Scottsdale Community College who signed up to have her head frozen at Alcor nine years ago, after discovering cryonics in an online newsgroup back in the pre-Google days of the 1990s.



Alcor member Elaine Walker plans to be cryopreserved after death. Qin Chen | CNBC

Having just come out of college, she initially saw the cost of Alcor's services as prohibitive, until the company allowed front-funding requirements with life insurance policies. All that was left after $14 a month in life insurance payments was worrying about the nearly $600 in Alcor's annual membership fees, which she covered by canceling her cellphone plan. "I have a cellphone now, but at the time it's all I had to do," she said. Nine years later, she still worries about saving for the eternal future but she's less concerned about what it might look like. "I actually spend zero time worrying about that," she said. "It's not that I want to be alive again so I can live out some lifetime or do something I didn't get a chance to do. It's really just because I want to see what happens." When asked, she said she would even prefer coming back as a cyborg slave laborer on a distant planet to dying on Earth. "I mean unless it's extremely physically painful or something, and I'll ask the cyborg next to me, 'what happened, did we make it to Mars?'"

Can cryonics work?

In the eyes of the law, Alcor is under no commitment to deliver life after death. In fact, after legal death has been declared the government views Alcor's 147 "patients" as nothing more than bodies and organs donated to science under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, which means even though Alcor signs a contract with its members saying it will deliver its cryonics services, it is under loose obligations to do so. "It would be a very bad idea not to follow through," More told CNBC. "But we're actually very aggressive in following through  we will if necessary go to court to get possession of our patients, or file an injunction to stop an autopsy for instance, and we've done that many times." But apart from the legal hurdles of suing those who try to interfere in the handling of a patient, there are laws of science that cryonics must face.
Spain's traditional political establishment was largely fractured by the rise in popularity of three smaller parties including the anti-austerity Podemos, centrist Cuidadanos and Communist Party-led United Left.

Since an inconclusive election four months ago which resulted in a hung parliament, Spain has been left in political limbo with the main parties, the conservative People's Party (PP) and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), unable and unwilling to form a coalition government.

Spain's King Felipe is meeting with the country's political parties Tuesday in a last-ditch bid to end a political impasse that has left Spain without a government since December.

King Felipe is due to meet with leaders of all the parties, excluding the United Left (whose leader the king met on Monday), in his third attempt to unblock the situation, Reuters reported. He will then meet caretaker Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who heads the PP, later in the day. The talks are widely seen as the last chance to form a government before a May 2 deadline but analysts think new elections on June 26 are now the most likely scenario.

"The king's last round of consultations with political parties will not lead to a government formation deal," Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of risk advisory Teneo Intelligence, said in a note on Monday.

"Once the meetings conclude, (King Felipe VI) will probably confirm that new elections will have to be held on 26 June, as parties are not expected to make any last-minute efforts to form a government," he said.

Not boding well for any forthcoming election, opinion polls currently suggest a "very similar picture to the one that emerged after the 20 December elections, with the PP dominating the new vote and, crucially, an equally fragmented parliament," Piccoli noted.

"Whether the results of the new vote will substantially differ from those of the last election will depend on: a) how parties manage to tag each other with the blame for the failure to form a government; b) the ability of Podemos to cut a deal with the United Left and; c) potential internal turmoil within the main parties."

Further political stalemate is the last thing that Spain's recovering economy needs with unemployment still high at 20.4 percent in February, according to Eurostat, although the rate is steadily improving.

So far, however, the economy has shown "surprisingly few signs that Spain's political uncertainty has dented economic activity," Pantheon Macroeconomics' Chief euro zone economist Claus Vistesen said in a note on Monday.

"Real gross domestic product (GDP) likely rose 0.7 percent quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter, down only slightly from 0.8 percent in Q4, and still far stronger than the other major euro zone economies," he noted.

Another election was Pantheon's base-case scenario and that "an increase in Spanish bond yields is a good bet in the coming months." Over the last week, Spanish 10-year bond yields have risen from 1.535 percent to 1.645 percent, showing market nerves over the drawn-out talks.
Nokia has announced plans on Tuesday to buy French wearables maker Withings for 170 million euros ($191.8 million) as the Finnish network equipment maker jumps back into the consumer market with digital health technology. "We have identified digital health as a key for us. It fits the company, not just strategy of playing in the internet of things (IoT) space, but of connecting people to health and guiding them to healthier and happier lifestyle," Ramzi Haidamus, president of Nokia Technologies, a division of the company, told CNBC by phone. "What Withings provide us is with is an accelerated pace into the market, an outstanding team, a great product portfolioand great insight."



Integration

The deal comes two years after Nokia sold its device division to Microsoft, effectively taking it out of the consumer market. Since then it has focused on its networks business, which forms the bulk of its revenues, and its licensing business. Nokia still has a large patent of portfolios that it can license to to other companies. But the deal with Withings, which makes products ranging from activity-tracking smartwatches to smart security cameras for the home, brings Nokia back into the consumer goods space.



Withings

Cedric Hutchings, the chief executive of Withings, will lead the business within Nokia to try and "integrate the Nokia capabilities into theirs" and grow the products' footprint globally, according to Haidamus. The Nokia Technologies president said the company has two teams  one in Silicon Valley and one in Finland. The team in the U.S. is focusing on "preventative healthcare", focusing on analytics and building apps. In Finland, Nokia's employees are working on technology for patient care in hospitals. The company is hoping to integrate some of this tech with Withing's devices.



Nokia brand devices?

Haidamus also revealed that Nokia is looking into the branding strategy of the Withings devices, and did not rule out the Finnish company's names ending up on the devices. "The Nokia brand is one of the most recognizable, the Withings brands has deep expertise in health which Nokia doesn't have. What we have started today is a research project which should conclude before the close of the deal to tell us what the banding strategy will be. It's a work in progress," Haidamus told CNBC. Nokia's acquisition is expected to close in the early part of the third quarter of 2016, subject to regulatory approvals.



Aggressive patent filing
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As an artist, Prince was fiercely protective of his music. "If you don't own your masters, your master owns you," he said in a 1996 interview with Rolling Stone. Prince, however, demonstrated a lot less clarity in terms of estate planning. His sister, Tyka Nelson, filed court documents Tuesday asking for a special administrator for the artist's estate, stating that she had no knowledge of a will and had no reason to believe Prince created one. If that is the case, whoever inherits the estate may find themselves with the autonomy to do as they please with the late artist's assets. So control over Prince's music, including a rumored trove of unpublished material, could die with him. "Any intent that he may have had to control his publicity and likeness is moot if he didn't document that in a legal estate planning forum," said Richard Behrendt, director of estate planning at Annex Wealth Management and a former estate tax attorney with the IRS. "That's the ultimate irony," he added.

Losing control of his music is just the start, however. If Prince did not have a will, he is unlikely to have done much in the way of estate planning, said Michael Kosnitzky, head of the tax practice at Boies, Schiller & Flexner. That means his estate will owe taxes on whatever the IRS and the administrators agree on as its value. Various estimates place that figure around $300 million, not including the unpublished music. And with a federal estate tax rate of 40 percent and a Minnesota tax rate of 16 percent, roughly half the estate could go to the government. (State taxes would be deductible against the federal tax bill.) With forethought, there are steps Prince could have taken to reduce that enormous tax bite, Kosnitzky said. For example, if Prince had placed his unreleased music in a dynasty trust, he would have paid a gift tax on the value of the music at the time of the transfer. But after that, the value could increase with no tax implications, and the trust assets would not count as part of his estate upon his death. "If you have assets with value that will accrue substantially after your death, you should be engaged in estate planning strategies that take that into account now, especially for someone who is not married," he said.



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An absence of good estate planning also means Prince's estate could be embroiled in legal disputes for years to come. (In Tyka Nelson's filing, she named five other siblings or half siblings as heirs, in addition to herself.) Michael Jackson left a will when he died in 2009, and even so, the wrangling over his estate is continuing even now. The court case on Jackson's estate is on the docket for early 2017 and the parties are far apart: Jackson's heirs are valuing his likeness at just over $2,000, but the IRS argues that the figure is more like $430 million. Without a will, the fight over Prince's estate could also be a doozy. "His situation is just going to be a hot mess of litigation and legal fees," Behrendt said. Behrendt used to work as an estate tax attorney for the IRS, and he said the agency has been surprised in the past when the value of an artist's work shot up past where it was valued. As a result, they are loathe to leave money on the table again, he said.

Prince Matt Kent | WireImage | Getty Images

The key takeaway, experts said, is that (with apologies to Prince) you don't have to be rich to do a better job of estate planning. Step one is a will, said David Mendels, director of planning at Creative Financial Concepts. "I will go ballistic on clients and even fire clients if they have children and won't do that," Mendels said. A will is the only way to name a guardian for young children, he explained.

You can also consider creating a revocable trust for your assets. If you go that route, it can work like a will but your estate will not be probated, Behrendt said.


Bernie Sanders may not drop out by the end of the day but he's going to be close to the exit, even if he wins Rhode Island. All that's left now is negotiating terms of the Sanders surrender. And Hillary Clinton does not sound like someone inclined to give much ground to Sanders beyond perhaps a prominent spot at the Democratic convention.

Voters headed to the polls on Tuesday in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The results are likely to effectively end the Democratic race and push Donald Trump closer to the magic number of 1,237 delegates he needs to lock down the Republican nomination before the GOP convention in Cleveland.

Here's what Clinton had to say on MSNBC on Monday night about whether she felt the need to move closer to Sanders' positions on Wall Street reform and other issues to appease the Vermont senator and his liberal legions: "I've got 10.4 million votes. I have 2.7 million more folks, real people, showing up to cast their vote, to express their opinion, than Senator Sanders. I have a bigger lead in pledged delegates than Senator Obama when I ran against him in 2008 ever had over me. I am winning."

Translation: You think I'm going to kowtow to you Bernie? Think again.

On the Republican side, the big question Tuesday will be what happens in Pennsylvania, where 54 of 71 delegates will be unbound at the GOP convention. Pennsylvania awards just 17 bound delegates to the statewide winner.

Both Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have released the names of delegates in each of the state's 18 congressional districts they say will support them in Cleveland. But it will be up to voters to arm themselves with that information before going into the voting booth.

Even if Trump rolls on Tuesday night, a big part of the story will still be the Cruz-John Kasich pact to divvy up Indiana (Cruz) and New Mexico and Oregon (Kasich). The one that matters is Indiana. If Cruz can win there on May 3, Trump's path to 1,237 delegates gets quite difficult. But to do that, Cruz probably needs Kasich to specifically direct his supporters in the state to vote for Cruz, something Kasich so far seems unwilling to do, which could render the deal essentially meaningless.

The other key on Tuesday is Trump's margins. If he wins big across the board, his delegate math will get much easier. And if he tops 50 percent in multiple states, the argument for a contested convention will get weaker. It's already looking pretty flimsy with Trump hitting 50 percent for the first time in the NBC news tracking poll.

The other major development heading into Tuesday's voting: Trump's revolt against new adviser Paul Manafort's efforts to make him seem "presidential" by toning down his rhetoric and cozying up to GOP elites in Washington. As Politico reports, Trump is bristling at the changes and is not happy with Manafort's high-profile media role. The GOP front-runner is returning some power to top campaign aide Corey Lewandowski.

As I wrote here last week, the idea of a more polished and presidential "Trump 2.0" was always ridiculous and doomed to failure. Trump is who he is, a loudmouthed, unfiltered rage machine who trashes anyone and anything that gets in his way. And his supporters love it. Trump can be magnanimous in short doses following a victory. But within hours, the real Trump always re-emerges.
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Saudi Arabia's plans to diversify its economy were welcomed by the International Monetary Fund's Middle East chief on Tuesday but he told CNBC that Saudi also needed to focus on attracting private investment. Masood Ahmed, director of the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia department, told CNBC Tuesday that he welcomed Saudi Arabia's announcement the previous day of a plan to diversify its economy away from oil. However, he added that he hoped the kingdom and its Gulf neighbors would seek more private investment. "I think it is the right approach in the sense of the level of ambition and also in terms of the comprehensive scope because, really, Saudi Arabia's economy is facing major challenges."



"They've got budget deficits that are going to be unsustainable at current and projected oil prices and they have a growth model primarily driven by oil so diversifying the economy and trying to balance the budget are the right objectives."

On Monday, major oil producer Saudi Arabia announced an economic plan designed to shift the kingdom away from oil production over the next 15 years. The plan included regulatory, budget and policy changes which aimed to create a "prosperous and sustainable economic future." In addition, the kingdom announced privatization measures and the creation of what it called the "largest sovereign wealth fund in the world."



Saudi officials and businessmen attend the Euromoney conference, on May 6, 2014 in Riyadh. FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images

The plan was unveiled by Saudi Arabia's increasingly influential Deputy Crown Prince who told CNBC that the new sovereign wealth fund could top $3 trillion. Earlier yesterday, Saudi confirmed that it planned to sell a stake of its state oil giant Saudi Aramco which was expected to be valued at more than $2 trillion.



Saudi needs private money

The IMF's Ahmed said on Tuesday that the "key issue" facing Saudi now was "how to make sure this gets implemented and building the institutional capacity to deliver on these objectives." He also hoped that the country and its neighbors would gradually look to attract more private investment.

"I think a lot of the growth has to come not from the investment of public money but from the attraction of private money because the growth model in Saudi Arabia and many of the Gulf countries has been one where the state has been playing a big role in terms of investment and being an economic agent," he noted. "Going forward, more and more, that economic activity funding has to come from private companies with the state playing more of a traditional role of regulator."

Lost oil revenues
A major obstacle holding back economic reform in Saudi Arabia has been removed. And with it goes one of the main barriers to a rising oil price. Saudi's cabinet approved an economic reform plan on April 25 aimed at ending the country's addiction to crude. The plan's author, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, could plausibly argue that after the price of oil had fallen 60 percent in two years, it was time to radically overhaul the economy and open up new sources of non-oil income. Now that his strategy has won official backing, the 31-year-old prince has a chance to get the best of both worlds by moving ahead with reforms while letting oil prices - which Saudi effectively drives as the swing producer - climb at the same time. Central to Prince Mohammed's reforms is the creation of a giant sovereign wealth fund, which could manage up to $3 trillion of assets. Income from the fund would make a significant contribution to the goal of increasing non-oil revenues to 1 trillion riyals ($267 billion) by 2030, up from 163.5 billion riyals last year. But higher earnings from oil sales would be a big help. The sale of a stake in prized oil producer Saudi Aramco would also be helped by a bounce in the oil price. The state-run producer is the world's largest oil company by both production and valuation, the latter of which is estimated by the prince to be at least $2 trillion. The higher the oil price, the higher that number could go. More from Breakingviews : Hong Kong finds Alibaba dealmaking in poor health Cheap oil has been a cure for some of Saudi's bad habits. Prince Mohammed has cut subsidies on energy, for example, which Saudis had grown accustomed to. In the longer term though, higher prices are in the country's interest too. Now that the young monarch has got his way over diversifying the economy, the price war Saudi has fought against its rival producers no longer looks so essential. For more independent commentary and analysis from Reuters Breakingviews, visit breakingviews.com

A man stands near gas burning off from a well in Saudi Arabia. Eye Ubiquitous | UIG | Getty Images
Whether you've written a check to the taxman or are waiting for a refund that's all too skimpy, you may well have a sour taste in your mouth after filing your 2015 tax return. How can you make next year's experience better? By starting now rather than waiting until the end of the year or, even worse, procrastinating until next spring. With two-thirds of the year left, there's ample time to rejigger your finances to trim taxable income and maximize deductions. And your investment portfolio offers some key opportunities, especially if you've been paying tax on big year-end mutual fund distributions.

Larryhw | Getty Images

One option: Trade your actively managed funds for passively managed exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, which can help investors avoid annual taxes on earnings. In fact, to minimize tax risk, you might even favor ETFs over ordinary index-style mutual funds, which are already pretty efficient. "ETFs do not issue capital gains distributions, and index funds almost never do," said Crystal Stranger, president of 1st Tax, a nationwide tax advisory firm for small business owners. "This essentially creates a deferral of taxes on capital gains that active funds would create." The issue involves funds held in taxable accounts rather than tax-favored accounts, like IRAs and 401(k)s, which postpone taxes until funds are withdrawn. With taxable holdings, investors pay tax every year on payouts, such as interest, dividends and year-end distributions, even if this income is reinvested in more shares of the fund. For most investors, maximum tax on dividends and long-term capital gains (for assets the fund held for longer than a year) is 15 percent, while the rates for interest and short-term capital gains can be as high as 39.6 percent. Wealthy investors can pay even more.

Taxing issues

Tax on interest and dividends is virtually unavoidable, but year-end distributions offer a lot of maneuvering room. These are net profits earned by the fund on holdings that were sold during the year, and they can be big if the fund has had a winning streak. Selling a winner happens when the fund manager thinks stock A's prospects have dimmed and stock B looks more promising. In addition, the manager may be forced to sell simply to raise cash for investors who want to redeem or sell their shares. The realized gains from sales must be evenly apportioned to every share and paid out, resulting in distributions for everyone. In other words, those who sell shares can create distributions; tax bills are generated for those who do not. "If a fund has to sell appreciated stocks to pay redemptions, it realizes capital gains that can ultimately be passed along to investors even if they did not sell their holdings," said John Correia, founder of Madison Asset Advisors in New York City. Unfortunately, receiving the distribution, which usually comes in December, does not make you any richer than you were the day before, explained Nancy D. Butler, a certified financial planner and author of "Above All Else, Success in Life and Business." She notes that "although you may receive a large payout, you do not have an increased balance in your account, since the price per share will drop equal to the amount paid out." A $10-per-share fund that pays out $1 per share will become a $9-per-share fund.

You can assess the risk of receiving a big distribution by looking at the fund's "potential capital gains exposure," the percentage of share price attributed to capital gains that could be realized by sales. The higher the percentage, the greater the risk. Morningstar provides this figure under the Tax tab on its fund data page. Key the fund's ticker symbol into the quote space atop the home page. One way to minimize this problem is to invest in index-style funds, which track standard market gauges, like the . Because index funds use a buy-and-hold strategy, they don't have as many sales to produce distributions. They can, however, be forced to realize gains if significant numbers of investors redeem shares. This is where ETFs have an edge. Like index funds, most ETFs use a buy-and-hold indexing strategy that does not involve realizing gains on winners. But there's a difference: Once created, ETFs trade like stocks. So when an investor wants to pull out, he or she simply sells the shares to someone else, just as if they were selling her shares of Google or General Motors. The ETF managers therefore do not have to sell stocks owned by the ETF to raise cash. Hence, the redemption does not cause gains to be realized, so there is no distribution to tax. (The small number of actively managed ETFs do have taxable distributions.)



That doesn't mean there is never any tax. ETF gains are reflected in the share price  basically, the assets in the ETF fund divided by the number of shares. As the value of assets like stocks rises, the share price goes up. When the investor sells her ETF shares, she will be taxed on the capital gain, the difference between the sales price and original purchase price. But this tax can be postponed for decades, and the investor is blessedly free from annual tax in the meantime, leaving more money in the account to compound. Distributions by actively managed funds vary considerably, of course, but can be big. John M. Scherer, founder of Trinity Financial Planning in Middleton, Wisconsin, offers the example of American Funds Growth Fund of America (AGTHX) , a large capitalization growth fund. It paid a $3.391 per-share long-term capital gains distribution last December, equal to 8.24 percent of the $41.12 share price, according to Morningstar, the fund-tracking firm. Over the past 10 years the Growth Fund of America has slightly trailed the S&P 500, which also holds large-company stocks. So why not invest in the S&P 500 instead? The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY ), which tracks that index, had no capital gains distributions last year. Nor the year before. Or the year before that. For most investors, the tax efficiency offered by ordinary index mutual funds is good enough. The granddaddy of index mutual funds, Vanguard 500 Index fund (VFINX ), which also tracks the S&P 500, also had no capital gains distributions last year. But since index funds, as opposed to ETFs, can in theory have distributions caused by redemptions, most experts give ETFs the tax-efficiency edge. And ETFs have some other benefits. Because they require little management, their fees, expressed in the expense ratio, are all but nonexistent. SPY charges a mere 0.09 percent a year, compared to 0.16 percent for VFINX and 0.65 percent for the Growth Fund of America, a fairly typical charge for an actively managed stock fund. That difference adds up over the years.

ABCs of ETFs
The chairman of a Chinese e-financing firm suspected of having fled with 1 billion yuan ($153 million) of investors' money has emerged to say he has not absconded but was merely meditating in the Gobi Desert over the firm's direction. Yang Weiguo, chairman of peer-to-peer online lending platform Wangzhou Fortune, on Monday said he would be "right back" after staff and clients failed to contact him for several days. Local media reported that he was in Xinjiang. Yang is at the center of the latest saga concerning China's shadow banking and e-finance sector. Wangzhou Fortune revealed last Thursday that it had lost contact with Yang and reported the matter to Shanghai police.

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It said the firm had collected 2.2 billion yuan in all from its investors, and that Yang had taken 1 billion yuan with him. Yang is also chairman of Wangzhou Group, the parent company of Wangzhou Fortune.

But in a six-second video posted on 21st Century Business Herald's website on Monday, Yang said: "Hello everyone, it's me. No need to be worried, I will be right back." Yang also posted a letter on WeChat telling his staff that he would go to the local police station to cooperate with their investigations, the newspaper said. "I decided to clear my mind by travelling for 10 days, cutting all telecommunications contact and being undisturbed ... to think over strategies and rebuild confidence," the letter read, adding that he was shocked and angered over the accusation that he had fled with investors' money.
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Regulators have been tightening up the financials sector, but former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill told CNBC that he hopes this changes when a new president is elected. "Everybody is shooting at the banks," he said in an interview with "Closing Bell." "Hopefully that ends when the campaigns end, because the banking system is really, incredibly important to the vibrance and the future of our economy." The former executive contends that the American bank system has mobilized "over a billion people from abject poverty to the middle class."

The expert's comments come as Vermont Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been advocating for breaking up the big banks. Weill said that big financial institutions should only be broken up if "the regulators really don't let them do the job that they are capable of doing and should be doing, to create vibrant capital markets." He added on Tuesday that the Dodd-Frank Act is very complicated and should be simplified. "I think that we can write rules to regulate the banks and protect the banks from having problems with 10 different rules on one piece of paper, rather than 1,200 pages of Dodd-Frank," he said. "I don't know anybody that's read the whole thing."

Conversely, Richard Ketchum, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's chairman and CEO recently told CNBC that the goals of Dodd-Frank are the right goals. Ketchum's comments came as some market watchers contended that the law, which places major regulations on the financial industry, was too onerous on the banks, as five major banks failed the living will test.
According to the latest CNBC Fed Survey , 80 percent of respondents see Clinton winning the presidency this November, with no other candidate even close. Just 13 percent of the 48 respondents believe Trump will win the White House.

The feeling on Wall Street that Republican Donald Trump would have no chance of winning the presidential election against Democrat Hillary Clinton shows the disconnect with Main Street, said Gary Emineth, an unbound delegate from North Dakota who supports the billionaire businessman.

"The people are behind Donald Trump. You're going to see a rally behind him when he wins the convention in July in Cleveland," Emineth told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Tuesday, as Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island held primaries.

Pennsylvania represents the biggest prize with 71 delegates up for grabs.

Despite expectations to the contrary, Emineth said he does not see a contested convention beyond one ballot, expressing confidence that Trump will amass the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

Ahead of Tuesday's contests, Trump has 845 delegates, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has 559, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich has 147, according to NBC News.

Emineth, formerly head of the North Dakota Republican National Committee, estimates about 300 to 450 unbound delegates are going into the convention because of the different rules in various states.

"[Even] if Donald Trump is 50 to 100 [delegates] short going into it, he will get his fair share of [the unbounds] and that's why he'll win on the first ballot," Emineth said. "People want to elect a winner."

Trump hasn't even started focusing on Clinton yet, Emineth said.
AUBURN, N.Y.  Cayuga Centers president and CEO Edward Myers Hayes announced that he has promoted Nathaniel Spieker to chief quality officer on the nonprofit agencys executive team.

The move is part of a restructuring of the agencys management, according to a news release from Cayuga Centers, which is based in Auburn and serves children and families throughout New York state, southeast Florida, and Delaware.

Spieker will oversee the agencys compliance, outcome and performance measurements, and investigations, and will supervise its effort to bring the electronic consumer record system online.

As we have grown our programs we have added structure as well as resources to our organization. Mr. Spiekers new role will help maintain the high quality of our interventions and services, which differentiates us from other organizations, Hayes said in the release.

Spieker has worked at Cayuga Centers since 2002 in multiple positions, including group care worker, overnight supervisor, case manager, and home finder, and vice president of CQI. He received his bachelors degree in sociology with a concentration in criminal justice from Keuka College, and his masters degree in management from Keuka College in 2014.

Cayuga Centers says it offers a variety of evidence-based programs, residential and foster care treatment, and services for persons with developmental disabilities. Cayuga Centers employs more than 500 people and has a $50 million budget.

Contact The Business Journal News Network at news@cnybj.com
DeWITT, N.Y.  Thousands of New Yorkers have yet to cash more than $2.36 million in checks that Excellus BlueCross BlueShield and its parent company issued them in 2012.

The possible claimants include hundreds of people and companies in Central New York, Excellus said in a news release issued Monday.

Rochesterbased Excellus is the largest health insurer in Central New York.

If the claimants dont cash the checks by the end of August, Excellus is required to turn the money over to New York, the nonprofit said.

Excellus has set up an unclaimed funds web page (excellusbcbs.com/unclaimedfunds) where people can search by their last name to see if they have any uncashed checks with the company. It also offers instructions on how to claim and receive the funds.

This is money that was paid for claims or refunded premiums, Jim Reed, regional president of Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, said in the release. We want to make sure that our members and providers have one more chance to claim it before it goes to the state.

The health insurer speculates that it allocated most of the uncashed checks to members and providers who may have forgotten to cash the check, moved and not left a forwarding address, or died.

To claim a check prior to Aug. 31, current Excellus BlueCross BlueShield members can call the phone number listed on their member-identification card. Former members, or those calling on behalf of the estate of a family member, can call Excellus at (877) 757-3850.

The health insurer will mail checks to claimants after Aug. 31.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
After almost nine years of planning, the future of a high-voltage transmission line is still up in the air. Some city officials are worried that waiting on electric upgrades will affect the city's electric capacity and relationship with the federal government. Others see this time as an opportunity to explore non-transmission alternatives such as solar power and smart grid technology.
The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form
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SHARE Senate Democrats tried Tuesday to force a confirmation vote on nearly a dozen judicial nominees, including Edward Stanton III of Memphis, but Republicans quickly shut them down.

By Michael Collins of The Commercial Appeal

WASHINGTON  Senate Democrats tried Tuesday to force a confirmation vote on nearly a dozen judicial nominees, including Edward Stanton III of Memphis, but Republicans quickly shut them down.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, and other Senate Democrats called for a vote on 11 non-controversial nominees, including some who have been waiting for more than a year. Schumer charged the GOP has unnecessarily delayed the votes and has brought the judicial confirmation process to a standstill.

Twenty nominees, including Stanton, already have won the approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee and are awaiting a final vote on the Senate floor.

"We are urging our colleagues to do their jobs," Schumer said from the Senate floor.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, objected to giving the nominees a vote, thwarting the Democrats' efforts.

The fight over President Barack Obama's judicial nominees has become an election-year flashpoint between Republicans and Democrats.

The most high-profile battle involves the GOP-controlled Senate's refusal to even give a hearing to Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. But more than three dozen seats on federal appellate and district courts also have sat vacant while nominees await confirmation.

Stanton, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, was nominated last May by Obama for a U.S. District Court judgeship. He has the support of both of the state's senators, Republicans Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, and was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last October.

Stanton is fourth in line for a confirmation vote, right behind nominees from Maryland, New Jersey and Nebraska. He is the last of three Tennessee nominees awaiting a vote.

The Senate voted two weeks ago to confirm Nashville attorney Waverly Crenshaw Jr. to a U.S. District Court judgeship in Middle Tennessee. Travis McDonough of Chattanooga was confirmed last December to a U.S. District Court judgeship in East Tennessee.

McConnell challenged the Democrats' argument the GOP is failing to do its constitutional duty and give the pending nominees an up-or-down vote. Republicans are confirming Obama's judicial nominees at a faster pace than Democrats approved nominees under President George W. Bush, McConnell said.

The Senate has confirmed 324 of Obama's nominees  21 more than had been confirmed under Bush at this point in his presidency, McConnell said.

"President Obama has been treated fairly," he said.

Democrats and their allies argue those numbers are misleading. Obama has faced more vacancies than Bush, which is why his overall number of confirmations is slightly higher, according to the liberal advocacy group Alliance for Justice.

Republicans have confirmed just 17 judges in Obama's final two years, the slowest pace in more than half a century, Democrats say. By comparison, Senate Democrats confirmed 68 Bush judges in his final two years in office.

After Senate Republicans refused to let Obama's judicial nominees go forward on Tuesday, both Corker and Alexander reiterated their support for Stanton.

"While Senator Corker does not control the floor schedule and which judicial nominees are brought up for confirmation, he remains supportive of Mr. Stanton," Corker's office said. "The senator, who is not a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced Mr. Stanton to the committee when it met to consider his nomination last September and has encouraged his colleagues to support his confirmation."

Alexander's office also noted that he told the Judiciary Committee that Tennessee "is fortunate to have such a well-qualified nominee" and that he would vote to confirm Stanton "if Majority Leader McConnell brings him to the floor for a vote."
President Barack Obama speaks at Pellissippi State Community College, Friday, Jan. 9, 2015, in Knoxville, Tenn., about new initiatives to help more Americans go to college and get the skills they need to succeed. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

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By Michael Collins of The Commercial Appeal

WASHINGTON  The White House said Monday it is launching a new $100 million grant program to expand worker training as the administration works to make good on President Barack Obama's offer of two years of tuition-free community college.

The grants will be administered by the Department of Labor and will be used to expand partnerships between community colleges and job-training providers and employers. The goal is to make sure that workers are equipped with the skills they will need to pursue careers in high-demand jobs such as technology, manufacturing and health care.

Obama's plan, called America's College Promise, was patterned after Gov. Bill Haslam's Tennessee Promise scholarship program and is projected to cost $60 billion over the next 10 years.

Grant recipients must offer free tuition for unemployed, underemployed and low-income workers to enter skilled occupations and industries. Employers who partner with the colleges must offer work-based learning through registered apprenticeship, paid-work experience and paid internships.

"These programs work," said Vice President Joe Biden, who announced the grants Monday during a speech at the Community College of Philadelphia. The school has modeled a free community college program after tuition-free program the administration proposed last year.

Biden said the $100 million in grants will enable community colleges to work with local companies or industries to find out what jobs skills they need. The schools then will design a program that prepares students for those jobs.

The grants will enable students to attend the programs tuition-free, which will mean they can use Pell grants and other student financial aid to pay for books, school supplies, child care or other living expenses.

"This is not rocket science," Biden said, arguing the grants will help build and grow the economy while "changing people's lives."

The grants are the latest push by the Obama administration to put a college degree within reach for anyone who wants it.

Obama kicked off the campaign last year when he traveled to Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville and proposed that as many as 9 million students should have access to two years of tuition-free community college. He also pitched the proposal during his State of the Union address a couple of weeks later.

Since Obama's announcement, 27 new free community college programs have launched in states, communities and community colleges. Collectively, the programs have added more than $70 million in new public and private investments to serve nearly 40,000 students at community colleges, the White House said.

In the GOP-controlled Congress, however, the program has generated little enthusiasm.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate committee over education issues, has said the way to offer free community college is not through a federal program, but with a state-by-state approach.

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Memphis Democrat, praised the Obama administration's new push to train workers for high-skilled jobs.

"In Tennessee, we achieved this through state lottery funds, over $3 billion of which have been distributed to achieving students to assist in paying for college and have done so much for education in the state," he said.

Cohen supports Obama's free community college initiative but has been critical of Tennessee's statewide plan because its source of funding comes at the expense of the Hope lottery scholarship, which he championed as a state senator.
The Commercial Appeal files April 27, 1953  Volunteers spend the day on April 27, 1953, packing clothes donated by Memphians for needy Korean civilians with 75 to 100 tons pouring in from collection stations around the city. Thousands of women assisted by Boy Scouts canvassed neighborhoods for clothes which will be sent to Korea immediately. The packing center is in the Woman's Building at the Fairgrounds. Canvassing has ended but collections will continue as the city's laundries will pick up clothes for Korea as a public service.

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April 26

25 years ago: 1991

The largest cut in state arts funding since the early 1980s will hit Tennessee arts groups hard next year, especially in rural areas and small towns served by a $1 million program due to be eliminated. Under cuts recommended this week by Gov. Ned McWherter, the Tennessee Arts Commission would receive about $1.3 million, lower than the commission's budget three years ago. Earlier, McWherter had proposed a $3.4 million commission budget for 1991-92.

50 years ago: 1966

Washington  The automobile industry has reversed its position and decided to accept mandatory Federal safety standards in the manufacture of cars, it was learned Monday night. The turnabout marks the first time the industry has agreed to go along with imposed Federal safety standards. Heretofore manufacturers have urged that the safety problem be worked out voluntarily within the industry. It was learned that the only provision the industry will seek is that the states be given an active role in setting and enforcing the standards.

75 years ago: 1941

Ways to racial understanding will be pointed out tomorrow afternoon by Rev. Marshall Winfield of First Congregational Church in the second of the series of interracial good will services sponsored by the Memphis Commission for Inter-racial Co-operation and the Council of the mayor of Beale Street.

100 years ago: 1916

The Tennessee Club has on many occasions been the scene of very elaborate and brilliant affairs, but never a more attractive and thoroughly enjoyable event than the bachelors' ball last evening.

125 years ago: 1891

The society people of Memphis have attended the races faithfully, and parties, other than regular cub parties and tallyho parties, have been very few. The coming week promises livelier days in the social whirl.
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By Jonathan Bernstein

Here are three things to know about the nonaggression pact between Ted Cruz and John Kasich, who have now vowed to work together to defeat Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. Kasich will cede the opposition to Trump in Indiana to Cruz, while Cruz will give Kasich a chance to win in New Mexico and Oregon.

1) Even though this deal is unlikely to change the eventual allocation of delegates by much, a small swing could have a huge effect. As noted by NBC's Mark Murray, at least one poll shows that if Kasich is removed from the Indiana competition, Trump's lead of 8 percentage points drops to 2 points ahead of Cruz. Indiana has some statewide winner-take-all delegates and some delegates who are winner-take-all by congressional district, so finishing first (statewide and in congressional districts) is what matters, not the margin of victory.

In the primaries that remain, Indiana is second in importance only to California when measured by the number of delegates up for grabs, according to current polling. Anti-Trump forces have to stop him in those two states to have any hope of preventing him from reaching 1,237 bound delegates  the number needed for the nomination. Indiana votes May 3; California's election is June 7, the last day of the primaries.

2)No one should be shocked when politicians act strategically. What has been surprising about the Kasich campaign so far is that he hasn't appeared to be acting as a strategic politician. He skipped the Iowa caucuses, for example, never a successful decision for any presidential candidate, and has emphasized his moderate credentials instead of positioning himself as a mainstream conservative. He has run hard in primaries where he had no chance, even in states (such as Utah) where the delegate rules meant that votes for him would throw more delegates to Trump, making Kasich's goal  an open convention  more difficult to reach. Most perplexing of all, he has remained an active candidate despite having no chance to win ever since his disappointing distant second-place finish in New Hampshire.

If the Ohio governor acts to boost the anti-Trump camp, it's still hard to see any possibility that he will be nominated, but if he cares about the opinion of his party's actors going forward, he'll work hard to deny Trump the nomination.

3) As for Trump's continuing whine about the unfairness of it all: No, the system isn't rigged against him. Of course, candidates whom the party likes have advantages in winning party nominations. It isn't unfair to Trump that the other candidates are trying to do the best they can under the well-established rules.

The two fundamental problems for Trump are that Republican Party actors don't trust him to be a strong general-election candidate, or to be loyal to the party if he were to become president. Indeed, right now, Trump's polling numbers point to disaster for Republicans in November.

Unless Trump manages to change those numbers, and the perception that he would be an unreliable ally in the Oval Office if he somehow managed to win, his opponents are going to try to find ways to block him. Complaining about the unfairness of having to face opposition and play by the established rules may appeal to swing voters in the remaining Republican primaries, but it's not going to erase the challenges he faces.

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg View columnist. Contact him at jbernstein62@bloomberg.net.
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By Lewis Diuguid

Just when people thought this presidential election year couldn't get any more bizarre, the political floor shifted and dropped again to a lower level of unbelievable.

The news came from conservative Charles Koch in an ABC News interview Sunday. He said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" that Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton would be a better president than Republican White House contenders Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Keep in mind that Koch last year, with his brother David and others, announced plans to dump $900 million to influence the outcome of the presidential and congressional elections in favor of conservative candidates.

To turn away from the Republican field toward Clinton is a radical shift for Charles Koch, a billionaire from Wichita, Kansas. Yet he said Bill Clinton was better than George W. Bush as president in controlling government growth.

Today, voters go to the polls for primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The outcome is expected to add to the White House hopes of Clinton over democratic socialist Bernie Sanders and Trump over Cruz and Kasich.

Koch said he hasn't, and probably won't, support any GOP candidate in the remaining weeks of the primary campaign because of their divisive rhetoric. He told ABC: "We said, 'Here are the issues: You've got to be like Ronald Reagan and compete on making the country better rather than tearing down your opponents.'"

Koch lambasted Trump's proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States as "antithetical to our approach, but what was worse was this 'we'll have them register (notion).' That's reminiscent of Nazi Germany. I mean that's monstrous, as I said at the time."

Trump had said, and then backed away from a proposed database to track Muslims in the U.S.

Koch also criticized Cruz's notion of "carpet-bombing" the Islamic State militant fighters.

It makes sense that Koch is retreating from the outrageous, outlandish, overbearing behavior of Trump. The New York billionaire continues to defy political gravity with his candidacy flying high despite negative things he has said and done concerning women, minorities, immigrants, people with disabilities and people of different faiths.

And if the Koch reaction to the GOP presidential field isn't weird enough, now Cruz and Kasich plan to collaborate against Trump.

Kansas City political operative Jeff Roe, who is Cruz's campaign manager, said in a statement: "To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead."

Kasich's campaign on Sunday said: "Keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland."

Again, unbelievable.

Lewis Diuguid is a columnist for the Kansas City Star. Contact him at ldiuguid@kcstar.com.
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The European Commission plans to invest a billion euros in quantum computing as part of a larger initiative to strengthen Europe's competitiveness in the digital economy.

The investment, about US $1.1 billion, will be made through an effort called Quantum Flagship, akin to existing "flagship" projects in the European Union focused on graphene and on the human brain. It is expected to be partly funded by EU research and innovation programs.

The aim is "to place Europe at the forefront of the second quantum revolution, bringing transformative advances to science, industry and society," said Nathalie Vandystadt, an EC spokesperson.

Scheduled to launch in 2018, the quantum computing project will be described in more detail at the Quantum Europe Conference in Amsterdam next month.

Quantum computing is widely anticipated for its potential to deliver huge performance gains. Whereas todays computers rely on transistors to process bits of information in the form of binary 0s or 1s, quantum computing relies on atomic-scale qubits that can be simultaneously 0 and 1 -- a state known as a superposition that's far more efficient.

Realizing it in a working system, however, remains a challenge.

The first quantum revolution entailed "understanding and applying physical laws of the microscopic realm," resulting in groundbreaking technologies such as the transistor and laser, explains an EC staff working document on quantum technologies. Now, "our growing ability to manipulate quantum effects in customized systems and materials is paving the way for a second quantum revolution," the document explains. "Its industrial and societal impact is likely to be again radically transformative."

The Quantum Flagship was announced as part of a European Cloud Initiative that will give Europe's 1.7 million researchers and 70 million science and technology professionals a virtual environment to store, manage, analyze and re-use a big amount of research data. The EU says it has already supported quantum technologies for almost 20 years with funding investments totaling about 550 million euros.

A Quantum Manifesto published earlier this year by a team of EU researchers identified the need for a large-scale initiative to move forward in the field.

Harry Buhrman, executive director of Dutch quantum research center QuSoft, helped to initiate the new investment proposal.

"It is essential that we do not only invest in the development of the quantum computer, but also in quantum algorithms and software," Buhrman said. "At the moment, nobody really understands how to apply the spectacular possibilities of quantum hardware. Large-scale research is necessary, and the Quantum Flagship enables this.
Mozilla has identified potential homes for its Thunderbird email client, the long-time project it decided last year to cut loose, according to a published document and a supporting post by the open-source foundation's executive director.

The top two landing places for Thunderbird: The Software Freedom Conservatory, a U.S.-based nonprofit that centralizes funding and provides infrastructure for more than three-dozen open-source projects; and the Document Foundation, a German nonprofit whose best-known project is the LibreOffice productivity suite.

The Mozilla Foundation was a third possibility, according to Simon Phipps, a noted open-source expert, who was hired to identify the best organizational destinations for Thunderbird.

Phipps' report, which was released Monday by Mozilla, was one result of the decision in December 2015 to untangle Thunderbird's and Firefox's development, under-the-hood technologies and hosting infrastructure.

Mozilla stopped directly supporting Thunderbird in 2012, when the foundation shut down the email client's parent, Mozilla Messaging, and handed coding responsibilities to a group of volunteers. But it wanted to separate the two even further.

"Firefox and Thunderbird have diverging needs," said Mitchell Baker, the chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation, in December. "Firefox needs to move at the speed of the Web ... [and] Thunderbird is a valuable and respected open source project, with different parameters."

Since then, Mozilla split the separation process into two parts: Finding an organizational home for Thunderbird and dealing with the technical aspects of the divorce.

Phipps' report also discussed other groups as potential homes for Thunderbird, including the Apache Software Foundation and the GNOME Foundation, but he pointed out that the former may be unsuitable because of its funding practices and that the latter had passed on the idea.

The Software Freedom Conservatory was willing to host Thunderbird, Phipps said, but the Document Foundation has deferred a decision.

Mozilla has also made progress on the technical half of cutting the cord to Thunderbird, including advertising for a technical architect, who will identify issues and make recommendation to the Thunderbird volunteers on how to migrate from Mozilla to a new home.

In a post to his personal blog, Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, offered a bit more information on why the organization was searching for a new Thunderbird abode. His explanation: Thunderbird was holding back Firefox.

"If we want Firefox to continue to have an impact on how developers and consumers interact with the Internet, we need to move much more quickly to innovate on mobile and in the cloud," Surman wrote. "In contrast, success for Thunderbird means remaining a reliable and stable open source desktop email client."

The job description for the technical architect was even clearer, and also hinted at other changes Mozilla may make to its browser, including switching to the Chromium rendering engine, which powers Google's Chrome. "Thunderbird has tried to maintain its practice of being based on the latest version of the shared Gecko codebase," the listing stated. "However, in 2016 we find this is both putting pressure on Thunderbird's limited resources and slowing down Firefox -- and this problem is going to increase in the short term as Firefox prepares to make some larger breaking changes."

Thunderbird, which runs on Windows, OS X and Linux, can be downloaded from Mozilla's website.
SWIFT, the international banking transactions network, has warned customers of "a number" of recent incidents in which criminals sent fraudulent messages through its system.

The warning from SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) suggests that a February attack on the Bangladesh Bank, in which thieves got away with US $81 million, was not an isolated incident.

SWIFT is aware of malware that "aims to reduce financial institutions abilities" to find evidence of fraudulent transactions on their local systems, the organization said Tuesday. The malware has "no impact on SWIFTs network or core messaging services," it added.

SWIFT has informed customers that "there are other instances in which customers internal vulnerabilities have been exploited," the organization added. SWIFT is calling on customers to take steps to secure their systems and has issued a mandatory software update.

Attackers in these incidents have compromised bank systems and obtained valid credentials for creating and submitting messages on the network, SWIFT said. "The malware is designed to hide the traces of fraudulent payments from customers local database applications and can only be installed on users local systems by attackers that have successfully identified and exploited weaknesses in their local security," the organization said.

The hackers, who attacked the Bangladesh Bank, appeared to use custom malware designed to interfere with SWIFT's transaction software, researchers said this week.

SWIFT is now aware of "a number of recent cyber incidents in which malicious insiders or external attackers have managed to submit SWIFT messages from financial institutions' back-offices, PCs or workstations" connected to the SWIFT network, said a confidential notice seen by Reuters, according to a news story posted Tuesday.

SWIFT did not name any victims or disclose the amount of losses related to the recent cyberattacks.

The organization has issued a security update on Monday aimed at the malware that researchers identified as used in the Bangladesh attack. The likely Bangladesh malware, identified by researchers from BAE Systems, appears to be a custom attack toolkit, they said. The malware was designed to monitor, delete and alter transaction records in the database used by the SWIFT client software.
Extorting money from companies under the threat of launching distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) against their online properties has proven lucrative for cybercriminals. So much so that one group has managed to earn over $100,000 without any evidence that it's even capable of mounting attacks.

Since early March, hundreds of businesses have received threatening emails from a group calling itself the Armada Collective, asking to be paid between 10 and 50 bitcoins -- $4,600 to $23,000 -- as a "protection fee" or face DDoS attacks exceeding 1Tbps.

While many of them did not comply, some did; the group's bitcoin wallet address shows incoming payments of over $100,000 in total. Yet none of the companies who declined to pay the protection fee were attacked, website protection firm CloudFlare found.

The company talked with more than 100 current and prospective customers who received an extortion email from the Armada Collective, as well as with other DDoS mitigation providers whose customers have been threatened by the group.

"Our conclusion was a bit of a surprise: we've been unable to find a single incident where the current incarnation of the Armada Collective has actually launched a DDoS attack," said Matthew Prince, the CEO of CloudFlare, in a blog post. "In fact, because the extortion emails reuse Bitcoin addresses, there's no way the Armada Collective can tell who has paid and who has not."

The conclusion is that whoever is behind the latest Armada Collective DDoS threats is just reusing the name of a previous group that did attack companies last year, but whose activity ended in November.

According to Prince, researchers suspect that Armada Collective was one of the names originally used by a DDoS extortion group that later became known as DD4BC. Suspected members of that group were arrested in January following an international law enforcement action called Operation Pleiades, which was coordinated by Europol.

Even DD4BC, which gained notoriety for its extortion attempts and attacks, did not fully delivered on its threats. According to Prince, DD4BC claimed that it was capable of generating attacks of over 500Gbps, yet the attacks that CloudFlare saw never exceeded 60Gbps.

That's still too much traffic for most companies to handle on their own, but 60Gbps is well below what DDoS mitigation providers like CloudFlare can successfully block.

At this point it's clear that someone else is trying to capitalize on the original group's notoriety. In fact, the latest threats encourage victims to search for "Armada Collective" on Google, supposedly so they can find the old reports about the group's activities.

"It's important to note that not all DDoS extortion threats are empty," Prince said. "There are several groups currently sending out extortion emails that actually do follow through on their threats."

Companies should be prepared to handle DDoS attacks, but giving into extortion is never recommended, because it encourages more cybercriminals to engage in this type of activity. And there's no guarantee that once you pay one group, another one won't come knocking.
Junot Diaz: Art never betrays

Junot Diaz (Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

Speaking to a standing room-only crowd on an unseasonably warm Friday afternoon in April, Pulitzer prize-winning author Junot Diaz said art is his salvation.

Growing up the way that I did, dealing with the things I didreligious leaders werent much help. Business people werent much help. I didnt always have great teachers. But I was never betrayed by artists, said Diaz, who was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated with his family to New Jersey when he was a child.

I grew up a person of color with no people of color on TV, no people of color in positions of power. Art opened up a world where I existed.

Diaz is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, for which he won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. A recipient of a MacArthur Genius Fellowship, Diaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In what was mostly an informal Q&AYou came here instead of enjoying the weather; lets talk about what you want to talk about, he told the studentsDiaz touched on everything from imperial masculinity to white supremacy to rape culture.

The event reminded me of how much I repress and silence myself. It reminded me of why I need to be angry every day, said Kevin Zevallos '16, who sat in the front row and shook hands with Diaz after the event.

Diaz also read a powerful passage from his fiction piece Wildwood, about a complicated relationship between a young girl and her mother, and touched briefly on the political climate in America today.

Every time I try to write some weird dystopian shit, our politicians out-do me, he said.

Diazs talk was sponsored by the Departments of History, English and Hispanic Studies; the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity; the Office of the President; the LGBTQ Center; and the Toor Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts; and organized by Blaustein Assistant Professor of History Sheetal Chhabria.

He speaks to a lot of relevant issues affecting our campus and our country, Chhabria said of Diaz. I hope his visit will have an effect on the campus climate.

April 26, 2016
Gareth Bacon is the Leader of the Conservative Group on the London Assembly.

As many of you will know, Londons population is booming. Current estimates suggest that the population of the city is expected to exceed nine million by 2020 and ten million a decade later  giving it the status of mega-city. This unavoidable surge in population will put a strain on the capitals transport infrastructure and impose a burden felt by no other city in Europe.

In recognition of this threat, very early in his first term Boris Johnson recognised the importance of transport infrastructure to the success of the city. During his mayoralty, a significant number of crucial infrastructure projects have been commissioned. This includes Crossrail 1, one of Europes biggest infrastructure projects; the extension of the Northern Line to Battersea, thereby opening up South London to the Tube network; and the completion of the London Overground orbital network, which now connects the disparate parts of Outer London.

Despite this success, Sadiq Khan winning the mayoral race would jeopardise Boris Johnsons transport legacy. In order to cope with a surging population, London needs to push ahead with multiple transport projects and simply cannot delay. As a bare minimum, it needs to receive the final go-head for Crossrail 2, which would connect North to South London; it needs to get a green light for the construction of the Silvertown Tunnel to ease congestion in the East End; and it needs to deliver an extension to the Bakerloo Line that would give South East London access to the Tube network.

All of this would be put at risk if Sadiq Khan were to win the mayoral election. Jeremy Corbyns candidate for Mayor has irresponsibly pledged to freeze tube fares in cash terms, not in real terms as Boris Johnson has done over the last few years. Mike Brown, the Chief Executive of Transport for London, has already said that such a move would cost the Capital 1.9 billion in lost fare revenues. This would endanger TfLs ability to invest in infrastructure, which at a time of a booming population, would mean that Londons crowded Tube network would become even more congested.

In contrast to Labour profligacy, our candidate for mayor, Zac Goldsmith, has put forward fully-costed plans for improving Londons transport network. Zac would continue on Boris legacy to invest in transport infrastructure and unlock new homes for development in the process. Zac has set himself an ambitious, but vital, requirement of starting 50,000 homes every year during his term. It we are to hit this target, delivering transport connections to where people actually want to live is crucial.

By continuing to invest in transport and to commission projects such as Crossrail 2, the Sutton Tramlink and extensions to both the Northern and Bakerloo Lines, an extra 270,000 new homes could be built and 250,000 jobs supported. Rather than over-seeing the creation of a vast black hole in the citys finances as Sadiq Khan would do, Zac Goldsmith would continue to invest in transport infrastructure to improve the network, support the economy and build the homes London desperately needs.

The very prospect of Corbyns man winning the key to City Hall should be a prospect terrifying to all. As Conservatives, we simply cannot let Labour experiment with London and undermine the citys current levels of transport investment. We need our man Zac Goldsmith as Mayor of the greatest city on earth. I implore all London conservatives to support Zac on the campaign trail in the closing stages of the race. Because, in a close election like this one, every vote counts. Lets do our bit to keep Corbyns man out of City Hall and Londons transport network safe.
James Berry is MP for Kingston and Surbiton.

As well the day-to-day job of keeping London moving, the Mayor of London needs to be a master-planner, anticipating the capitals transport needs ten or twenty years into the future. Thats why the battle between jam-today fare-freezer Khan and jam-tomorrow transport infrastructure investor, Zac Goldsmith is so important, and why Zac has to win in May.

In the closing weeks of Boriss tenure in City Hall, its worth reflecting on what his transport infrastructure legacy will be. My forecast is that, in years to come, the Johnson Mayoralty will be remembered for three major infrastructure projects: one he delivered, one he kick-started and one he prevented.

Although he has delivered it, Crossrail (now the Elizabeth Line) wasnt Boriss idea. The Crossrail Act received Royal assent in July 2008, two months he won the Mayoralty. But since then, Boris has worked with three successive governments to keep the tunnel boring machines grinding. When Crossrail is fully completed in 2019, it will have been delivered on time and on budget. With predicted annual passenger numbers of 200 million, Crossrail will increase central Londons rail capacity by ten per cent  the largest increase since World War Two. Crossrail will run over 62 miles from Reading and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east, travelling through 26 miles of new tunnels and stopping at 40 stations, ten of which are new. At its peak, Crossrail was the biggest construction project in Europe, employing 10,000 people including 400 apprentices and supporting thousands of jobs on the largely British supply side.

When another Mayor opens Crossrail 2 in around 2033, there will be no doubt that Boris Johnson kickstarted it. The latest plans for Crossrail 2 stretch from Hertfordshire to Surrey. The new service will allow 270,000 more people to travel into London in peak periods every weekday and free up space on National Rail lines from commuter towns in the South of England. For commuters in South West London, Crossrail 2 is vital because it is Network Rails only solution to alleviating the terrible overcrowding we experience on a daily basis. But Crossrail 2 is much more than a transport project, and is designed to tackle Londons growing housing crisis. New stations and links into central London will unlock land for 200,000 new homes and regeneration, particularly in north east London.

Boriss tireless advocacy for Crossrail 2 culminated in the new National Infrastructure Commission giving the project the Green Light and the Chancellor following suit with 80 million of funding for pre-legislative work in last months budget.

With the overall cost estimated at an eye watering 27 billion, it will take a Mayor of Boriss stature to keep Crossrail 2 on the tracks in a time of austerity and countless other pressures on the Treasury. Boris held the line for Londoners when Crossrail came under fire in the aftermath of the financial crash. With a track record of working with government to deliver for his constituents and for Londoners, Zac Goldsmith is the Mayoral candidate who has shown that he will step up to the mark when the big funding for Crossrail 2 has to be secured.

Most Mayors would want to be remembered for enabling rather than preventing large infrastructure projects. But Im sure Boris would be delighted to go down in the history books as the Mayor who stopped a third runway at Heathrow. Opposed to a third runway from the get-go on grounds of noise and air pollution, Boris has fought tooth and nail against Heathrows plans ever since. For the 750,000 people living under the existing flight paths, the prospect of noise from 250,000 additional flights from a third runway is unimaginable. And thats before you factor in the people living under the new flight paths and the huge increase in polluting surface traffic at a time when Londoners list air quality as one of their main concerns.

Boris has always recognised that we need extra airport capacity in the South East to ensure our airports remain competitive with European rivals, and came up with proposals for a new hub airport off the North Kent coast. Boris Island was not shortlisted by the Davies Commission, which eventually recommended a third runway at Heathrow last year. Boris immediately formed an effective double act with Zac Goldsmith to convince the government that Heathrows third runway plans needed re-examining because Heathrow would simply be unable to meet the legal air quality limits they are already in breach of. It was fortunate the government acquiesced, because Boris had promised to lie down in front of the bulldozers to stop the construction of a third runway. When the third runway at Heathrow is finally killed off, hundreds of thousands of Londoners will know that bulldozer-blocking Boris is owed much of the credit.

Were it not for these three massive undertakings, the many other infrastructure projects Boris has committed to would of themselves be an admirable track record. When works are completed, commuters will feel the benefits of better access at Tottenham Court Road (2016), Bond Street (2017) and Victoria (2018), new stations at Nine Elms and Battersea Power Station (2020) and improvements at Bank / Monument (2021). All in all, a nice set of ribbons for Londons next Mayor or two to cut on projects commissioned by Boris Johnson, a Mayor who will be remembered as a master-planner who invested in Londons transport future.
Ruth Davidson is the leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party.

There is a tried and trusted way to ask for peoples consent at an election. You put things in a manifesto and ask voters to back them.

However, the SNP last week unveiled a new method. Nicola Sturgeon published her manifesto at a New Labouresque extravaganza in Edinburgh. Missing was an upfront commitment to hold a second referendum on independence. Instead, the SNP is proposing the political equivalent of reserving a parking space. It wants to call referendum if and when Nicola Sturgeon thinks theres been a material change in Scotland. In other words, if and when it thinks it can win one.

Ms Sturgeons reasons for doing this are pretty cynical. She knows a referendum is unpopular but she also wants to keep the independence bandwagon rolling. It is a squalid compromise. More importantly it absolutely isnt a mandate for another referendum. As I made clear last week, Ill be advising David Cameron against agreeing one should the SNP win another majority next week.

Unfortunately, that wont take it off the table. And my concern after this election is that the SNPs flirtation with a referendum just leaves Scotland mired in uncertainty. Only on Sunday, Ms Sturgeon was talking up the prospect of holding a snap referendum later this year should Scotland vote to remain part of the EU, if the rest of the UK votes to leave. And this is the concern for the next five years: that a re-elected SNP government continually raises the prospect of a return to the uncertainty and division of a second referendum whenever the opportunity arises. This summer, the reason will be the EU referendum; by autumn, no doubt it will be Trident renewal; this time next year, who knows?

This requires a firm response from opposition parties which support the Union. We face five years of attritional tactics from the SNP  both in Edinburgh and London  during which time they will seek to slowly tease the United Kingdom apart and grind down opposition. As tempting as it is, our response cannot simply be to ignore it cross our fingers and hope for the best. I believe we need a clear response.

That is why, at my own manifesto launch two weeks ago, I announced plans for a fresh, positive drive to promote the benefits of the Union to us all. This is not to repeat the arguments of the independence referendum campaign  indeed, I believe it is time to dump the so-called Project Fear tactics altogether. The case for the Union cannot rely on the flaws of the case for independence  easy though that argument is to make. It needs to win over heads and hearts and speak directly to people who voted Yes in 2014 that their ambitions and aspirations can be met as part of a United Kingdom. That is the task I want to lead in opposition over the next five years. I believe that the new Union we are forging is the best solution for all of us in the UK. It represents increasing autonomy for our nations and regions, backed up by the strength and security of one United Kingdom. We need to start making the case for it.

Clearly this is not a task that should be taken on by one political party  even one with the word Unionist in its title. But I believe, from the evidence of this election campaign, that the Scottish Conservatives currently offer the only clear plan to lead it. That is because, on this most vital of issues, the Labour party is in a state of complete confusion. The leader of Scottish Labour, Kezia Dugdale, insists she is for the Union and would vote No in a future referendum  and I have no reason to disbelieve her. Yet, pressed at the weekend, she refused to close down the fact that her candidates, MPs and MSPs are free to support separation should they so wish. There is a reason for this: at this election, Scottish Labour is chasing many people who voted Yes in the referendum in 2014 and who are now likely to back the SNP. Rather than stick to its principles, the leadership has softened its position on independence in the hope of winning people back. With nine days to go, it has left Scottish Labour in an increasingly awkward position: beating the Unionist drum to appeal to No voters, at the same time as candidates are able to speak freely in favour of independence, as some are doing.

The facts are these. The SNP is on course to win the election next week. And once back in, it will continue to try and tease apart the bonds that bind the UK together. Their case is as weak as ever but, armed with both plenty of time and the biggest megaphone in Scotland, it will continue to pose a grave threat to our unity as a nation. We need a positive, uplifting response to this  which demonstrates how our Union is working for us all. We need to set out how, if the Union didnt exist, it would have been necessary to invent it. We need to understand why so many Scots decided they wanted to leave the UK and patiently seek to make the case that the Union can work for them.

That requires a firm resolve over the coming years to back the decision Scotland made in 2014  and not an attempt to be all things to all people.
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People these days don't get their periodic flu shots as recommended by professionals since most people think it isn't necessary until they start sneezing and stay sick at bed for over a week. But if you are one of them who skip flu shots for money matters, you should know that you pay nothing for flu shot, according to Medicare policies of 2016.

"In 2016, you pay nothing for a flu shot if the doctor or other qualified health care provider accepts assignment for giving the shot" reported Your Medicare Benefits' official statement.

The official government guide has information on the health care services and supplies covered in Medicare through two different plans. The Medicare Plan A is designed especially for hospital insurance and Medicare Plan B covers Medical insurance.

The information in the guide is specific for Original Medicare plan and not applicable for Medicare Advantage Plans like an HMO or PPO or any other Medicare specific plan. Though people with Medicare Advantage Plans can claim the Original Medicare benefits, the rules may vary according to the chosen plan.

While all of us know that flu is not a serious illness, it can be also be fatal in rare cases. Influenza infection varies with season and every infection is different and affects people differently every time. Flu season in the US begin in early October and ends late May. According to CDC, an annual seasonal flu vaccine, either nasal spray flu vaccine or a flu shot will help a lot in keeping the illness at bay.

"It's rare but it still happens," said Richard Watkins, M.D., an infectious-disease specialist at Cleveland Clinic Akron General Hospital in Ohio, about possibility of fatalities due to influenza infection, according to SELF. "Sometimes people who die have underlying health conditions that leave them compromised, but that's not always the case," he added.

Watkins also noted that flu shot doesn't prevent infection all the time that but when the shot is taken the severity of the illness would be relatively low. Though flu doesn't kill a person, prolonged infection makes the body weak and on the other hand might make it prone for other fatal infections.

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Quitting smoking is something hard for most who have grown accustomed to it though pharmaceuticals have tried to come up with some form of pill help out. Among the well known pills tied up to it include Chantix and Zyban from Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline respectively.

While the pills aim to help people kick the habit, there are medical concerns such as the side effects they carry. With the lack of study to back them up, they have been categorized under the black box warning label which was a result of claims that they pose serious psychiatric side effects.

That was until experts came out to reveal that both pills are safe though it remains to be seen when such would convince the Food and Drug Administration to life the dreaded black box warning.

Both Zyban and Chantix are still available in the market and if the black box label is lifted, a spike in sales could materialize for both that is until other brands start showing up. Chantix has patent protection until 2020 in the U.S. and up to 2021 in Europe.

We believe the available scientific information doesnt support a boxed warning, Dr. Freda C. Lewis-Hall, a psychiatrist and Pfizers chief medical officer via CBS.

For their part, Pfizer plans to sit down with regulators globally to discuss the results. There is no clue on how they plan to go about it though the bottom line here is that the pills have shown that there were no hints of possible suicidal intentions aside from the other noted side effects found. That included nausea, insomnia, abnormal dreams and headaches instead.

The FDA will review the findings of this study along with additional scientific evidence as we continue to evaluate this issue, as well as take follow-up action and update the public as appropriate, in a statement issued to the Associated Press.

If successful, doctors may eventually prescribe pills like Chantix to smokers who have been having trouble kicking the habit without worrying about potential psychiatric risks. Chantrix has been singled out as the most effective pill to help quit smoking with about 22% of those taking it found to be no longer smoking after the six months.

It could be a breakthrough of sorts with the known fact of smoking claiming about 440,000 American lives (alone) annually.

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
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Back pain can originate from a lot of things such as exercise or improper posture. Age would normally have something to do with it but the underlying factor of it all is that it is something that can imminently affect anyone.

For the benefit of those who are unaware, back pain is considered the fifth most common reason that a person would visit a doctor, especially when the pain becomes intolerable.

The type of lower back pain could range from dull aches to sharp ones usually a result of accidental injuries or medical conditions like arthritis, fibromyalgia or spinal stenosis. Being overweight or sedentary could also be a cause, showing how such can be caused by anyone at any time.

With no telling when lower back pain can strike, the best that people can do is to take necessary precautions to avoid it. Here are some ways to try to avoid back pain via WebMD:

Stretch. In any sport or activity that would require heavy use of muscles and extremities, it is best to do some stretching so as to loosen up. Watch your weight. Big stomachs have a bearing on the center of gravity in the human body thus a reason why some people could be incurring lower back pains. Best way to go about it is to stay within 10 pounds of your ideal weight. Stop smoking. Smoking has been known to cut off nutrient-containing blood to the spinal discs and such leaves one vulnerable to potential back pain. Sleep positions. Sleeping positions can be critical hence it would be best to seek advice from your doctor. Pillows can be of good use, something you can place under your knees or lower back. Proper postures. Sitting can contribute to lower back pains, a reason why some recommend ergonomically approved seats. Keep your knees a bit higher than your hips while seated. Prop your feet on a stool if you need to. No Wallets on your back pocket. It has been customary for some people to place wallets at their back pockets. One can imagine the discomfort of a bulging wallet and that could radiate as far as the back if one is not careful. Avoid the fit clothing. Wardrobes contribute to back pains to so be careful. Bending will be affected and such could lead to a bad back. Back supports are temporary relievers. For some, using back braces are an alternative. Be mindful that such is only a temporary reprieve meaning it will totally allude the dreaded pain you may feel afterwards.

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Editor Of LGBT Magazine And Friend Killed In Bangladesh

By Countercurrents.org

26 April, 2016

Countercurrents.org

Xulhaz Mannan, an editor at LGBT magazine Roopbaan, was killed alongside another victim, when unidentified attackers came to their apartment in Dhaka yesterday, posing as couriers. Another person was also injured in the attack

The killings come just two days after a university professor, 58-year-old Rezaul Karim Siddique, was hacked to death near his home in the northern Bangladesh district of Rajshahi, on his way to the citys public university where he taught.

Earlier this month Nazimuddin Samad, a Bangladeshi law student who had expressed secular views online, died when he was attacked with machetes and then shot in the capital, Dhaka.

Last year, suspected militants killed five secular writers including Avijit Roy, a U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin and his publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan.

Avijit Roy was hacked to death near a book fair in the capital Dhaka in February last year  the first in a series of attacks that targeted atheist and secular bloggers in Bangladesh. Avijit Roy was a also a prolific writer and had penned down a dozen books, mostly about science, philosophy and materialism. His last books Obisshahser Dorshon (The Philosophy of Disbelief) and Biswasher Virus (The Virus of Faith), were well received around the world. In the Virus of Faith his main argument was that "faith-based terrorism will wreak havoc on society in epidemic proportions". He also edited a popular blog Mukto-Mona.








A Seven-Month Pregnant Christian Lady Drenched With Petrol By Bajrang Dal In Chattisgarh

By Shubhda Chaudhary

26 April, 2016

Countercurrents.org

The continuous vitriolic communal polarization in India can be analyzed with the orchestrated manner in which the religious minorities are being vandalized and assaulted in the country. The recent victim of Bajrang Dal, the militant Hindu Organization, has been the Christian minority in Chattisgarh. On 23rd March, a church in Raipur had been vandalized by the members of Bajrang Dal where a couple as well as women and children present were attacked.

Pastor Dinbandhu Sameli along with his seven-month pregnant wife and daughter Roushni Vidya were attacked by the members, who were carrying pistols, knives and rods. They also wanted to set the church on fire. Arun Pannalal who is the President of Chhattisgarhs Christian Forum stated that the attacks were carried out by the members of Bajrang Dal and the police is playing a pivotal role in covering the incident and not carrying out any legal action against it.

The manner in which the police is treating this incident reveals that how state is acting in tandem with the Hindu fundamentalists and the Christian Community is being assaulted.

Also, even if the attackers are arrested, there are still loopholes on the charges on which they would be punished. Certainly, the police cannot charge them with criminal conspiracy or attempt to murder but there are no sections in the penal code which can match the gravity of setting a seven-month pregnant mother to fire. Thus, the police has current registered FIR on the basis of sections like 452 which deal with house trespassing, 395 which involves dacoity and 435 which deals with causing damage by committing mischief by fire.

The Chhattisgarh Evangelical Foundation reveals that over the period of time, the attacks on Christian community have increased. The attacks, along with being physical in nature are also consolidated by the state-sponsored coordination of people who are in power. Along with it, there are even villages in Chattisgarh, amounting to 150 or more, which from 2013 had banned the entry of non-Hindus within their premises. Though, this resolution was struck down by the court as they were considered unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, Chattisgarh is one of the five states in the country which has passed the anti-conversion law. Though interestingly, those who want to return to their original faith can once again convert back and there is no such restriction on them. This reveals the hidden agenda of the Hindutva fanatics who have been trying to co-opt various ways of garnering militant and political momentum to their defined idea of Hinduism.

Adding to all this, the churches in Bastar particularly have been ordered to put pictures of Hindu Goddess Saraswati if they want to be protected. The Hindu fundamentalists are also forcing the churches to have an idol of the Goddess in their premises. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has also banned the distribution of sweets by Santa Claus on the pious celebration of Christmas day.

Unfortunately, such news, in spite of being very tormenting and heart-wrenching are not able to make news and the Christian community of Chattisgarh are being ignored from the media. It is a threat to their privacy, security and life. Definitely, such attacks against them would increase if not checked by the state administration in time.

Shubhda Chaudhary is a PhD scholar at JNU. She can be reached at shubhda.chaudhary@gmail.com










RSPO Orders Palm Oil Company To Stop Work In Shipibo Territory In The Peruvian Amazon

By Forest Peoples Programme

26 April, 2016

Countercurrents.org

LONDON, 26th April 2016: On the 25th April the complaints panel of the RSPO (Round table on Sustainable Palm Oil) issued a preliminary Stop work order to Plantaciones de Pucallpa, one of its Peruvian members, whose operations are affecting the territory of the Shipibo community of Santa Clara de Uchunya in the Ucayali region of the Peruvian Amazon.

The order was issued after the community of Santa Clara de Uchunya filed a formal complaint in December 2015 against Plantaciones de Pucallpa for the destruction of over 5000 hectares of their ancestral forest lands. The complaint cites the devastating impacts on the rivers and forest ecology on which their subsistence livelihood depends, the destruction of community dwellings and the restrictions on community members who wish to access the forest.

The complaints panel focused on five key areas where RSPO principles may have been contravened. These include the failure to respect customary land rights which it notes is a legal obligation in Peru and under international law, the clearance of primary forest that is strictly prohibited by both Peruvian law and RSPO procedures, and deforestation without any of the permits required by Peruvian law.

Furthermore, the complaints panel also highlighted that Plantaciones de Pucallpa has clearly violated its New Planting Procedure (NPP) which requires notification prior to the development of new plantations. The NPPs also require that companies conduct assessments of Environmental Impact and High Conservation Value (HCV) areas as well as initiate FPIC processes with affected communities. The complaint makes very clear that no attempt was made by Plantaciones de Pucallpa to secure the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) of Santa Clara de Uchunya.

The complaints panel also issued a reminder to Plantaciones de Pucallpa that the intimidation of communities is strictly prohibited. This final point is welcome given that community leaders are facing multiple and unfounded legal denunciations by Plantaciones de Pucallpa. Meanwhile, other local activists have been issued with anonymous death threats in recent months for their outspoken opposition to the operations.

The complaints panel gave Plantaciones de Pucallpa a 14 day time frame in which to demonstrate that it has complied with these obligations including: 1. Demonstrate that it has satisfied all legal requirements in the acquisition, clearance and planting of the concession area and 2. Demonstrate that in establishing the plantation it has not cleared any primary forest or any other HCV area...In the meantime, the Panel prohibits Plantaciones from carrying out any further land clearance and planting activities pending the resolution of this complaint.

Just a few days earlier, in a further letter to the RSPO, the community authorities of Santa Clara had reiterated the substance of their complaint and explained that: Since we filed the complaint, the company Plantaciones de Pucallpa SAC continue to occupy the area in question which is now encircled by a barbed wire fence and watched over by a control post thereby preventing the entry of our community members in our territory. In addition, our own authorities and community members are being legally denounced by the operators of this company for simply opposing the deforestation and defending our territory. In no way will we renounce our rights to life and territory.

Community leaders were in the field conducting patrols of their territory when the decision was released by the RSPO. Mr Robert Guimaraes, President of FECONAU said: We welcome this initial decision of the RSPO but we will be vigilant to ensure that the RSPO conducts adequate follow up. Only in September last year the Ministry of Agriculture also ordered the suspension of operations in yet the company continues to operate. It is also clear to us that the Peruvian state has failed to comply with its international human rights obligations. Not only has it failed to title and secure these lands but it has continued in corrupt fashion to sell and hand over community lands to third parties. It is this defective land allocation system that is generating these conflicts, not only in Santa Clara but throughout the Peruvian Amazon where there are more than 1200 communities whose lands remain untitled. We are demanding that the Peruvian state meet this obligation and title the communitys territory of over 38,000 hectares.

Dr Tom Griffiths, Coordinator of FPPs Responsible Finance Programme welcomed the decision by the Complaints panel but highlighted that: It is vital that the ruling of the RSPO complaints panel is fully complied with by the company and properly monitored. Crucially, there must be sustained follow up by the RSPO to ensure effective sanction for company violations. Voluntary certification schemes have a role to play, but there needs to be much more robust regulatory control of palm oil supply chains at the local, national and global levels. In the case of Peru, without effective state regulation, law enforcement and reform of unjust land allocation systems in the Amazon, Perus ambitious commitments to protect forests and secure indigenous land rights are likely to fail.



Press Contacts:

UK: Conrad Feather, FPP conrad@forestpeoples.org, 00 44 7792979817

Peru: Robert Guimaraes FECONAU, rgv_sh@yahoo.com, 00 51 961598323

Peru: Juan Carlos Ruiz Molleda, IDL, jruiz@idl.org.pe, 00 51 997521685

To schedule interviews with Peruvian delegates currently on tour in the EU contact Suzanne Dhaliwal:

suzannedhaliwal@googlemail.com, 00 44 7772694327 for interviews.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is a not-for-profit association composed of stakeholders from seven sectors of the palm oil industry - oil palm producers, palm oil processors or traders, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, banks and investors, environmental or nature conservation NGOs and social or developmental NGOs - to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil. It was formed in 2004 in response to the urgent and pressing global call for sustainably produced palm oil. Producers of palm oil who are members must comply with its Principles, criteria and procedures and can subsequently secure certification of their product. There is a complaints panel that processes complaints presented by those affected by the actions of its members. For more information see http://www.forestpeoples.org/topics/responsible-finance/private-sector/palm-oil-rspo and http://www.rspo.org/about

The complaint is the first of its kind to be presented in Peru where currently there are only four RSPO members including Plantaciones de Pucallpa.

Plantaciones de Pucallpa is one of many companies registered in Peru with links to a complex corporate network apparently controlled by US businessman Dennis Melka and known collectively in Peru as the Melka group. Mr Melka founded the Malaysian agribusiness company Asian Plantations. Melka group companies in Peru including Cacao del Peru Norte SAC and Plantaciones de Ucayali SAC and their parent companies United Cacao Ltd and United Oils Ltd have attracted similar accusations of illegal deforestation and land conflict.

The initial complaint was filed on 5th December 2015 by the village of Santa Clara de Uchunya and supported by the Federation of native communities of the river Ucayali (FECONAU), the Institute of Legal Defense (IDL), a Peruvian human rights organization, and the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP).

The Peruvian government ordered the suspension of Plantaciones de Pucallpas operations on the 2nd of September 2015 but to date this resolution remains unenforced.

Representatives of FECONAU are part of an international delegation of indigenous leaders currently visiting Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and the UK. The delegations aims to highlight the embodied deforestation and human rights abuses that are part of many agricultural commodities imported to the EU and are financed by EU investors including United Cacao Ltd that is registered on Londons Alternative Investment Market.

Peru has made ambitious commitments to tackle deforestation and the insecure legal status of indigenous lands in the Amazon as part of its commitments to address climate change. These in turn are supported by a variety of bilateral and multilateral programmes including the governments of Norway and Germany. Read this article for more information.

Read this report for more information about the palm oil sector in Peru and the operations of the Melka group in Peru and Malaysia.












Marilyn Monroe In Bendigo

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

26 April, 2016

Countercurrents.org

There she was, being drooled over in a provincial Australian town with mesmeric effect, a cipher of lifes choices rather than a substantive being; a motif more than person. We were told on arriving at the Bendigo Art Gallery that the Marilyn Monroe Exhibition was packed till 3.30 in the afternoon. Only then would be able to have a peek at what were, essentially, her items.

The rural Australian town of Bendigo is, in its own way, a creation of image. It was crafted from gold discoveries, cutting adventures into the despoiled earth, and the commodity plunderers that made Australia grand and degraded. The citys neo-gothic structures poke towards the skies with purpose. The city itself seeps full of sunshine, and from the summit, one can see the most beautiful array of vegetation in Rosalind Park. In it are figures of commemoration: to Australias distant ill-thought out wars; to quartz kings who cut and dug the earth.

At the entrance to the leafy glory that is Rosalind Park spies a huge Gulliver-like figure. It is on that scale as we, Lilliputian fools, gaze at to ponder. This is Seward Johnsons eight-metre Forever Marilyn, her William Travilla white dress billowing from the grate in The Seven Year Itch (1955), and her lipstick smile crafted on with manufactured detail. Shes got knickers on, marvelled a couple in unison, stealing a glance under the huge creation.

This is Marilyn Monroe as stressed fabrication, tortured image and a permanent project of envisaging. She is there to be used, and the good people of Bendigo in Australia have been capitalising. In a rather stately museum, the knickknacks of her life are displayed. There are timelines for the chronologically challenged. There are re-runs of films, shots, cuts, and Happy Birthday Mr President.

The visitors go straight for the Marilyn they want. On the issue of suicide, narratives are running wild, few sympathetic to the coroners view that barbiturates were to blame. Kennedy, suggests one visitor drawing on the old Margolis-Buskin version, was about to spill the beans  hence the need to do away with her in the bedroom of her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles in August 1962. She does not say which Kennedy, though the less than holy brothers Jack and Bobby were certainly keen on the actress.

The saints of old were the heroines and heroes of a controlled divinity factory known as the Catholic Church. Relics were everywhere: the sixteenth finger of St. John the Baptist; a soiled bit of earth from some lost detail regarding the wounds of Jesus. The Cult of saints with their miracles was the cult of pre-modern celebrity.

In the modern, falsely desecularised world, those without moorings seek their stability in other forms. The spirit world shall always have its spokespeople. Escapist manna is everywhere, and the Hollywood starlet is as good as any. The rudder shall be found, the ground shall be struck, and the hourglass figure with lips and voice shall fill the need.

Monroes image, crafted by the media, stylised by fashion industries, inflated, deflated and mauled by theorists and active dream merchants, made her stimulating candy, eye-stopping idol and ambitious business woman. She has even fallen to the speculative stratagems of Gloria Steinem, who insisted on the inevitable theme of victimhood. (Famous as one becomes, one a victim remains.) Sociologists in turn have attacked this babbling. What would Steinem know, counters Graham McCann, whose accused Steinem of unnecessary pop psychology?

McCann is happy to do just that, suggesting that Marilyn had the sort of intelligence that would have deterred her from perishing to an overdose. How he knows about what his clever subject ever thought is never obvious. This ignores the obvious point that intelligent people have made it a habit to do away with their lives for good reason. The black dog of depression, the pressures of a tyrant, or just a sense of being fed up, have all had their fair share.

A line from LaWanda Walters in Ploughshares, which remains insightfully banal, has some value. I didnt know much about Marilyn/Monroe the day she died. Id heard her name. Many had, as they do the modern celebrity who wafts in like a purchased deodoriser, or who manages to be a stand-in excuse for lifes own difficulties. This is Marilyn as medium, escape and retreat, a point amplified by the magazine supplements in the exhibition, with such featured publications as Modern Screens Marilyn Monroes Life as a Divorcee, Foto Parade (Is Sex Your Escape?) and Photoplay.

There are some poignant images in this collection, though most show her as subordinated to the medium and the marshalling dictates of the photographer. Prior to the rot setting in, there are the raw images of Monroe with her first boyfriend Lester Bolender, aged 5. Then come fresh images of a young woman  before Hollywood seeps into her veins and screws with her mind.

Richard Avedons shots from 1958 indicate how MM had made the big show only to be something, or someone else. In these carefully staged shots, she is everybody else but Marilyn, photographed as Clara Bow, Lillian Russell, Jean Harlow and Theda Bara.

A snippet of inner life might be gleaned from books in her collection, though these are hardly conclusive. She left behind a copy of F. Matthias Alexanders Mans Supreme Inheritance (originally published in 1910), a forerunner to the self-help testaments that have become a modern pop staple.

Astronomer Harlow Shapleys Of Stars and Men (1959) is a touching possession that outlines the human aim, told from a childs perspective, to find its role in the universe. In Shapleys own words, it was written to tell in simple language what man is and where he is in the universe of atoms, protoplasms, stars and galaxies.

Even the exhibition captions provide a sense of the elusive Marilyn. This is despite an admission that, The definitive truth about the life, loves and personal motivations of Marilyn Monroe will perhaps never be revealed.

Hence the pure sadism and voyeurism here: Monroe in a dress (or selected dresses) that women can adore with admiring fancy and men can remove with lust-driven eyes; Monroe in a role that is a prison before the camera and a prison after the photoshot.

Marilyn Monroe at the Bendigo Art Gallery runs from March 5 to July 10, 2016.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com








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By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press

The Evansville-based AIDS Resource Group recently got a $10,000 grant from a national group to raise the public profile of hepatitis C and encourage people who are at risk for the virus to get tested.

The money came from the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable's hepatitis C Project Booster mini-grant program. The AIDS Resource Group, which offers free hepatitis C testing, serves 11 Southwestern Indiana counties, and is located in the Old Courthouse in Downtown Evansville.

Three grants were awarded by the Roundtable.

"It is very exciting to receive this grant to be able to start doing this work," said Sarah Miller, executive director of the AIDS Resource Group. "We provide free HIV and free hep C testing, but this will really be able to help us supplement the educational and the awareness components  to get the word out of how important it is for people to get tested for hepatitis C, especially (those in) the baby boomer generation."

The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention encourages all people born between 1945 and 1965 to be tested for hepatitis C at least once. The most common way for the blood-borne virus to spread is through intravenous drug use, but any transfer of blood can transmit the virus to another person.

Anyone who thinks they could have been exposed to the virus should get tested as well. According to the CDC, hepatitis C is a sexually-transmitted disease, but the risk of it being spread through sexual contact is thought to be low. Vanderburgh County had 213 new cases of confirmed hepatitis C in 2014 the highest amount of new cases in a five-year-period in the state, according to the Indiana Department of Health. Statistics for 2015 have not been released.

People can be affected with hepatitis and not have any symptoms of the virus for years. About 75-85 percent of people who get infected will develop a chronic form of the virus, according to the CDC. Both forms of the virus are treatable, but treating chronic hepatitis C is expensive, Miller said. Chronic hepatitis C often leads to liver issues as well.

The first grant-funded program is a free support group for those infected, or at risk of being infected. That group's first meeting is scheduled for Wednesday at 6 p.m., and will meet on a monthly basis at the AIDS Resource Group office, Miller said. Pre-registration by calling the AIDS Resource Group at 812-421-0059 is encouraged but not required.

"It's a support group," Miller said, "but we also going to be bringing in some speakers if (people) have medical related questions. ... We're going to try to have people in to talk about treatment options in the community."

Some of the grant money will be used for advertising, of course, and Miller said she also plans on using funds to host multiple community forums that address the benefits of starting a needle exchange for drug users. Miller said needle exchange programs can serve as an avenue for health officials and advocates to reach addicts, but said it's important for the community to support the idea before one is put in place.

No such forum has been scheduled yet, but Miller said she envisions hosting officials from places that have exchanges. Currently, the resource group can provide so-called "harm reduction kits,"which include supplies to clean needles. The CDC encourages all current and former drug users to be tested for hepatitis C, even if they only used a shared needle once.

"Syringe exchange programs have been shown to be very effective in communities," Miller said. "Our ultimate goal is to reduce the spread of these virus. They're very expensive to treat  both HIV and hepatitis C. There's obviously a health cost, but there's also an economic cost ... but the community does need to be comfortable with whatever gets implemented. ... It's important that community understands what they are about."
By SCOTT BAUER, Associated Press WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press

BORDEN, Ind. (AP)  Ted Cruz, looking for a rebound to keep his presidential hopes alive and block Donald Trump from capturing the Republican nomination, said Monday he's "all in on Indiana," a crucial test for the Texas senator especially now that another rival is getting out of his way in the state.

Cruz is returning to much of the same game plan  but with a new trick play involving Ohio Gov. John Kasich  that led him to victory in nearby Midwest states for what could be a make or break vote May 3 in Indiana. Cruz is counting on outside groups that plan to spend heavily on his behalf, courting conservative Gov. Mike Pence for an endorsement, and spending almost all his time in Indiana before the vote.

"Indiana is a crossroads," he told reporters Monday.

Cruz's campaign is putting about $700,000 into TV and radio advertising in Indiana, according to advertising tracker Kantar Media's CMAG. Anti-Trump forces are back in action in this state, after sitting out New York last week. Club for Growth and Our Principles PAC are spending about $2 million, and a pro-Cruz super PAC is chipping in $610,000.

All of that is pitted against the Trump campaign's $1 million paid media investment in Indiana.

In addition to all the outside money, Cruz operatives have been working in Indiana for weeks. The campaign set up its first "Camp Cruz" to house volunteers since before Wisconsin's primary on April 5. Cruz met Pence last week in search of an endorsement. Whether Cruz scores that or not, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said Monday he may travel to Indiana over the weekend to help Cruz.

Cruz is counting on support from Indiana's many evangelical voters, who helped Pence win in 2012, just as evangelicals lifted the Texas senator in the Iowa caucuses. A 2014 Pew Research Center study identified 31 percent of Indiana's adult population as evangelical, compared with 28 percent in Iowa.

"It's a must-win for both Cruz and Trump to pursue their plans," said David McIntosh, president of the conservative Club for Growth and a former Indiana congressman. "Indiana gets to decide, do we want to have an open convention?"

Cruz and Kasich on Sunday night announced they were coordinating in an effort to stop Trump from getting the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the nomination before the GOP convention in Cleveland in July. Neither Cruz nor Kasich can win a majority of delegates before then, so they are hoping to capture the nomination on a second or subsequent round of voting.

Kasich agreed not to campaign in Indiana, while Cruz said he would "clear the path" for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico.

"I don't see Cruz as trying to stop Trump; I see it more about Cruz trying to get his people out," said Chris Yaney, a 31-year-old truck driver and preacher from Lexington, Indiana, who came to see Cruz on Monday. "I think he has enough ground game that he doesn't need any help. I understand why they would say something like this, but I don't think it will change anything."

Trump is expected to add to his delegate lead on Tuesday when five Northeastern states vote. Looking ahead to Indiana's vote next week, Trump's senior aide, Paul Manafort, said if Cruz doesn't win there he should quit the race. But Manafort said Trump has several other paths to 1,237.

"Certainly Indiana makes it easier, but it's not a must-win state" for Trump, he said.

Indiana has 57 delegates. The statewide winner gets 30. The winner in each of nine congressional districts gets three apiece.

"It's a conservative state," said Cruz adviser Saul Anuzis. "We share their values, we represent the issues that are important to them.

"It's hard to say what's going to happen now," he said. "We're down to the last couple states and every one of them is going to be a battleground."

___

Associated Press writer Steve Peoples in Florida, Jill Colvin in New York, Julie Bykowicz in Washington and Brian Slodysko in Indianapolis contributed to this report. Bauer reported from Madison, Wisconsin.
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By Jill Disis, USA TODAY NETWORK The Indianapolis Star

With a week left before Indiana's critical May 3 primary, Gov. Mike Pence says he has yet to decide whom he'll endorse or even whether he'll endorse a candidate in the Republican race for president.

Speaking with reporters outside a luncheon at the JW Marriott in Downtown Indianapolis on Tuesday, Pence offered little in the way of a definitive answer on the matter. Instead, he said he has "faith in the people of Indiana that they will choose wisely."

"I've made no decision yet on whether or not I'll weigh in," Pence said. "It's not been my practice to endorse in primaries."

The governor has faced criticism in recent days by some establishment Republicans who say a decision to remain on the sidelines could harm the the party should Donald Trump emerge as the GOP nominee. They see Indiana as one of the last chances to prevent front-runner Trump, who has a slight lead in recent polls here, from getting enough delegates to win the nomination outright.

A recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll placing Trump in a head-to-head match-up with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton showed Clinton besting the real estate mogul by 11 percentage points in a November general election contest.

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, columnist Jonah Goldberg said what Pence "may not have considered is that when Trump loses in a landslide (against Clinton), the recriminations will be ferocious."

"The postmortems will undoubtedly focus on who had a chance to stop Trump when it was possible," Goldberg wrote. "Among the first in the dock: the Hamlet of the Hoosiers."

Pence, meanwhile, said he continues to meet with each of the candidates. Last week, he met with both Trump and Ted Cruz ahead of their respective campaign events.

Pence also cited plans Tuesday to sit down with Ohio Gov. John Kasich in Indianapolis  a candidate who on Sunday said he's pulling his resources out of Indiana so rival Cruz can have a better chance of overtaking Trump next week. Both campaigns hope their unusual pact can force a contested convention in Cleveland this summer.
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Gun rights which, you may note, remain unfuckingchanged.

So yeah, picture the craziest person you've ever met, multiply their insanity by 10, and then imagine that they've been cloned to build a small army. That's what Pozner deals with daily. Search for "Sandy Hook conspiracy" on YouTube and you'll get 244,000 results. One 20-minute "documentary" has three million views. Popular talk radio personalities like Alex Jones quickly jumped on board, rallying his fans to the noble "All These Dead Children Are Phony And Their Grieving Parents Are Actors" cause. It's a rabbit hole without end, and Pozner threw himself into it just weeks after the shooting.

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And when has Alex Jones ever been wrong about anything?

"I was outraged by what I was seeing unfold, particularly by someone like Alex Jones, who has a sizable audience. So I emailed him in January and called him out for suggesting that this was a staged event and that we were all so-called 'crisis actors' faking our grief. He invited me on his show, but I would have nothing to do with him. It was barely a month after my son was murdered, and I was still in a fog of grief and denial. The last thing I wanted to do was deal with the press."

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If conspiracy theorists could name a king without immediately beginning to suspect that their monarch was a reptilian Illuminati stooge, Alex Jones would be that king. His radio show gets two million listeners a week, and his websites and videos pull millions of views. In an article written five days after the shooting, Jones' site said "it would take a fool not to question the motive behind it all: Is this all part of an evil pre-conditioning program?" And that was just the start of their coverage.
A lawsuit filed on 14 April by US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharra gives an insider's view on how frighteningly easy it is for a company to be duped out of a huge sum of money. In this case almost US$100 million (AU$128 million).

The civil forfeiture lawsuit was filed in federal court in New York City and is being brought on behalf of an unidentified American company that was suckered out of $98.9 million over a four-week period late last northern summer.

Luckily, the majority of the money has already been recovered and this suit is specifically going after the remaining US$25 million that is being held in at least 20 overseas banks, according to court documents.

This is more than twice as large as any reported loss that we have seen, Ryan Kalember, senior vice president of Cybersecurity Strategy, told SCMagazine.com in an email Friday US time.

What this case perfectly illustrates is the step-by-step process a criminal can take implementing such a scam and all of the warnings that were ignored by the victim.

The scam

Considering the massive pile of money involved, the scheme itself was extremely simple and used by cybercriminals every day, albeit to normally steal smaller amounts of plain old data. It was a classic spearphishing attack.

According to Bharra's suit, the scam was initiated around 10 August 2015, when the victimised company received an email purportedly from an Asian-based vendor with which it has frequently done business in the past.

The email in question contained the name D Talan, AR and was not picked up not by the victim company itself. Instead it came to an email address set up and monitored by an outside firm hired by the victim to deal with its vendors and other payees.

The initial email from Talan simply asked for some background information regarding its billing history with the victim. This information was supplied on 11 August and then that same day a follow up email was received by the vendor's partner from Talan informing the company that the vendor's banking information would be changing and they wished to know who to contact at the victim company to make the change so any payments would go to the correct account. On 17 August Talan gave the victim's payment partner the new account information and it was placed into the victim's system.

Starting around 21 August the payment partner began sending a series of 16 payments to the new, fraudulent account, as part of its usual business. All appeared to be going well when on 14 September both the victim and its payment company received word from the real vendor that it had not received any payments starting 22 August, or the day after Talan's account information was input into the system.

Warning signs

A quick investigation ensued and when Talan's email was studied it was quickly discovered to have several irregularities, including a @mail.md domain instead of the vendor's corporate domain name. In addition, it indicated that the domain was hosted in Moldova, far from the vendor's true location in Asia.

The final indicator that something was amiss was that the funds were deposited into a Eurobank facility in Cyprus, and not at a bank in the vendor's home nation.

If any of these indicators had been flagged from the start the entire scam would have been stopped in its tracks.

Employees should be suspicious if they receive a request for unusual information or a wire transfer via email, even if it appears to come from a high-level executive. Check the reply-to email address and always call to confirm. If a vendor changes their wiring instructions over email, call them to confirm. If the CEO requests a significant transfer that is unusual, call him or her to confirm it. If the email header has a warning from your email security system, such as a subject like [BULK] or [SUSPICIOUS], then contact the vendor directly on the phone, do not enter the invoice for payment, Kalember said.

Lucky

A US magistrate working with Eurobank quickly froze the Cypriot account stopping about US$74 million of the stolen money from moving out.

This was an extremely lucky and somewhat rare occurrence as most wire transfers one completed are tough to reverse.

Recovering money can be difficult if sent by wire. As the transaction may be irreversible within a short time window. There have been many variations of these scams in the past and they have been going on for some time. Luckily, international law enforcement has been taking note of these scams to better monitor, mitigate the financial losses and arrest the criminals responsible, Terrence Gareau, chief scientist of Nexusguard, told SCMagazine.com in an email.

The victim was not so lucky with its remaining funds because the bad guys had almost immediately moved them from Eurobank and spread them around to 19 other banks to help duck authorities.

The court document did indicate that US authorities know where those accounts are located with one being in Estonia.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineus.com
Check Point Software Technologies is continuing its push toward a recurring revenue model with its software blades - a push that chief executive Gil Shwed said is starting to gain traction with customers.

"We are going in the right direction, in terms of moving more and more revenue into an annuity business," Shwed said on the Tel Aviv, Israel-based security company's first-quarter earnings call Wednesday.

Software blade subscriptions for the quarter were up more than 18 percent over the same period last year, to 88 million. That growth brings software blade subscriptions to more than 21 percent of the company's total revenue for the quarter, up from 19 percent in the same quarter last year, the remainder coming from products and licenses.

"I think the blade strategy has been very successful for us... I think we are doing very well," Shwed said. "All of that is new business and new technology and new annuities."

Total revenue for the quarter, which ended 31 March, were US$404 million, up 9 percent year over year. Net income for the quarter was US$167 million, up nearly 4 percent from US$161 million in the first quarter of last year.

Chief financial officer Tal Payne highlighted the launch of multiple new products in the quarter as a big driver for the company's revenue growth. Most recently, in January, Check Point launched its 15000 Series and 23000 Series appliances, which focus on providing advanced threat protection and platform security to data center and high-end enterprise clients.

Check Point has also recently launched new threat-prevention appliances for small businesses and branch offices, the 1400, 3000 and 5000 series, as well as a new security management platform called Check Point R80.

The new appliances are bundled with the company's next-generation threat-prevention capabilities, which Payne said have "great potential to increase customer security and renewals." Shwed said the products are currently seeing a "small percentage of adoption."

"I think, overall, I'm very happy with the strategy," he said. "The nice thing about the strategy is that it has evolved. Every year we bring new blades to the marketplace, and there's different opportunities to grow with these blades."

Check Point will continue to expand its portfolio in the coming months and years, Shwed said. In particular, he said, the company will look to expand into "nontraditional markets," including critical infrastructure security, the internet of things and national security.

"All of these areas present significant security challenges and opportunities," Shwed said.

These new launches present the opportunity for Check Point to engage with new customers, Shwed said, an area that is normally "outside our comfort zone." That push is a big focus for the security vendor going forward, Shwed said, with big investments in sales and marketing expected to continue as the company looks to add new customers and new projects.

"We will do more of that, but it takes time," Shwed said.

Check Point said it expects revenue for the second quarter to be between US$405 million and US$435 million. It said it expects Non-GAAP earnings per share between US$1.02 and US$1.09 per share. These numbers take into account that the launch of new products will affect buying patterns and changes in security spending overall that make the market difficult to predict, Shwed said.

This article originally appeared at crn.com
Microsoft has launched a new partner Windows competency aimed at growing partners' Windows 10 businesses.

The new Windows and Devices competency focuses on partners with expertise in Windows 10 and mobility. Partners can choose from four skill assessment paths: system builder, deployment partner, internet of things device builders or application builders.

Details on paths for a certified IP and performance are expected to be announced later this year.

Microsoft will waive the fee for silver competency for partners who sign up before 30 June 2016. The gold competency usually costs partners $6,100 per year.

Silver partners have access to 50 additional product licences for internal use, while gold partners get another 100 licences.

The new competency will somewhat replace the 12 competencies Microsoft plans to retire over the next 18 months. These outgoing competencies include Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Devices and Deployment, Digital Advertising, Distributor, Hosting, Identity and Access, Intelligent Systems, Learning, Midmarket Solutions Provider, OEM, Software Asset Management and Volume Licensing.

Microsoft general manager, worldwide partner group Gavriella Schuster said in a blog post that the competency was designed to help partners take advantage of the demand for Windows 10 and mobility.

There is a need for a rich ecosystem of partners from application developers to deployment services, device sellers to experts in the internet of things, said Schuster.

If you focus on or around Windows 10, having this competency will help you market yourself and take advantage of the demand.
Networking News

Sources: Arista CEO Makes Channel Cuts, Channel Chief Steps Aside

Mark Haranas

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Arista Networks CEO Jayshree Ullal has made channel field reps and inside channel sales team cuts in North America as part of a shift to place a greater emphasis on outbound direct sales, multiple sources told CRN.

"It's coming from the top, [CEO] Jayshree Ullal. She really doesn't believe in the channel," said an executive at an Elite Arista solution provider, who asked not to be identified. "The channel person that we had was doing double duty managing the channel. Eventually they said, 'Don't worry about the channel.' "

Todd Dalton, channel sales lead and sales executive at Arista, the leading channel advocate for Arista in North America, recently left the company in the wake of the strategic shift, sources said. An Arista spokesperson declined to comment on "personnel questions." However, when CRN contacted Arista headquarters, a representative confirmed Dalton no longer works at the company. Sources told CRN that Arista does not plan to replace Dalton.

[Related: Juniper's New 100-Gbps Firewall Is 'Absolutely Ridiculous -- In A Good Way']

Dalton managed a North American channel team consisting of eight channel field sales reps and eight inside channel sales reps, according to data Arista submitted to the 2014 CRN Partner Program Guide, the most recent year for which data is available. It's unclear how many remain.

"Arista is very customer-driven and views the channel as an important enabler," said Mark Foss, senior vice president of global marketing and operations for Arista, in a statement provided to CRN. "Internationally we are mostly channel focused while domestically, it's a hybrid model of both. Our sales strategy and go-to-market remains unchanged and steadfast for several years."

A spokesperson declined to comment directly on whether Santa Clara, Calif.-based Arista cut its channel and inside sales teams to place a greater emphasis on direct sales. The fast-growing networking vendor has 100-plus partners who add "significant value" for Arista, the spokesperson said.

Another channel partner executive from a CRN Solution Provider 500 company who did not want to be identified said he was not surprised by the shift to place a greater emphasis on direct sales.

"They have a partner program in place, but it's really just a contract saying we have the ability to resell their technology. There's no marketing team in place to support the channel," said the executive.

Solution providers said Mark Smith, Arista senior vice president of worldwide sales operations, who is still with the company, has been a channel proponent but has run into opposition from Ullal.

"Mark is a great channel guy, but he's got no power," said the Elite Arista partner executive. "He thought he would be able to develop the partner program, but he's getting a lot of pushback from the CEO."

An Authorized Arista partner, who did not want to be identified, said he expects a strategic shift to negatively impact Arista's enterprise networking ambitions. "This would be extremely bad," he said.

Solution providers say Arista has been hobbled by channel conflict, with direct sales teams attempting to take larger deals direct.

"Knowing what the situation is over there, we really have to pick our spots on who we work with, what type of customers we go after, and really protect ourselves," said the Elite Arista partner executive. "Any time we do a [commercial] deal with them and it's a non-named account -- $0 to 250,000 bucks -- no problem, we make good margins, no one bugs us over there. But if it gets bigger than that, then they start sticking their nose in it. "

Arista also deters partners from selling to anyone the vendor deems as an alliance technology partner, he said.

"Any one of their alliance partners, like a Palo Alto Networks -- someone with a complementary technology that they can partner with and have some sort of marketing agreement with -- they dont let anybody [in the channel] sell to those companies, or they really try to deter you from selling to those companies even if you find a net new opportunity in that company," he said.

Arista posted sales of $837.6 million for 2015, up more than 43 percent from 2014, and a profit of $121.1 million, up 39 percent from the year before.

Research firm Gartner said Arista is "by far" the fastest-growing vendor in the data center networking space, ranking Arista as one of only two companies in 2015, alongside Cisco, as "leaders" in the market. Arista made its public trading debut on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2014 with great success.

"They have great technology, really kick-ass products -- terrible channel program," said the executive listed on the CRN SP500 list.

Many of Arista's top executives previously worked at Cisco, including Ullal, who spent 15 years at the San Jose, Calif.-based networking leader before taking over the helm at Arista in 2008.

The two companies have also been battling in court since December 2014 after Cisco filed two patent lawsuits against Arista, saying the company infringed on a number of its patents and had stolen Cisco-copyrighted material.

Several Cisco channel partners told CRN they rarely see competition from Arista solution providers in the sales trenches.

"The only time I ever see them is in some very specific use cases, like high-frequency trading floor or very-low-latency-type requirements," said Ethan Simmons, vice president, East, for Dallas-based Lumenate, a Cisco partner ranked No. 145 on the CRN 2015 Solution Provider 500. "But in the traditional Fortune 1000 data centers, I don't see Arista a whole lot."
Security News

AlienVault Loses Its Worldwide Channel Chief

Sarah Kuranda

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Less than four months after joining AlienVault, Worldwide Channel Chief Anthony D'Angelo is leaving the unified threat management and threat intelligence vendor, CRN has learned.

D'Angelo's last day at AlienVault will be Friday. He has taken a new role at another company and will start at the beginning of May.

"[AlienVault] has a ton of potential and I have no doubt that they will continue to build out their channel and develop their channel culture. It's terrible timing and I feel bad about that, but it was simply an opportunity I could not pass up," D'Angelo said in an email comment to CRN about the move.

[Related: 2016 Security 100: 20 Coolest SIEM And Threat Detection Vendors]

D'Angelo joined AlienVault in January as the company's first worldwide channel chief, a move he said at the time reinforced the security vendor's commitment to growing its channel reach. In particular, he was brought on board to build more collaboration with the San Mateo, Calif.-based company's approximately 70 channel partners and help accelerate partner recruitment.

Prior to AlienVault he served as vice president of global partner management and emerging technologies at Westcon, Tarrytown, N.Y., but also held a position as vice president of worldwide channel sales at Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, Calif., from 2009 to 2013.

AlienVault has tapped Mike LaPeters, vice president of North American channel sales, to assume the worldwide channel responsibilities, starting immediately, the company said.

We were recently made aware that Anthony DAngelo has decided to leave AlienVault, and we wish him well. The channel is a top priority for AlienVault and we have significantly increased our investment in both our channel program and personnel over the last few quarters. We are fortunate to have Mike LaPeters on board  to step in immediately and oversee our worldwide channel program," Justin Endres, senior vice president of worldwide sales at AlienVault, said in an email statement to CRN.

D'Angelo had been brought on board to revamp and accelerate the security vendor's channel strategy and one executive at an AlienVault partner, who did not want to be named, said the company needs to reinvigorate its focus on the channel or risk alienating its partners.

"AlienVault has amazing products. They just need to be more price-aggressive and loyal to the channel," the partner executive said. The executive also said she hoped AlienVault will appoint a "really super channel veteran" to help "get them in the right direction."
Experts say that the digital universe will double in size every 2 years and that by 2020 will reach 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes, containing nearly as many digital bits as there are stars in the universe (Source: IDC). With advanced analytics, this Big Data is being transformed into smart data, revolutionizing business models across all industries, including energy. As this digital revolution magnifies, Siemens is driving pioneering new digital services and expanding its current service solutions for its global customers.

The Siemens Power Generation Services Division has been advancing the development of digital trends, building upon its more than 20 years of experience collecting and analyzing data as part of its power diagnostics services. The company is deploying projects and devoting significant resources to unlock the full potential of this transformation. Siemens has developed a number of advanced, data-driven service offerings that combine big data with the companys comprehensive domain expertise to support its industrial, oil and gas, electric utility and wind power customers. "Siemens Digital Services for Energy powered by Sinalytics," was officially unveiled this week at the Hannover Messe industrial fair in Hannover, Germany.

Siemens Digital Services for Energy are "intelligent knowledge systems" that are enabled by advanced algorithms, sophisticated data analytics and pioneering machine-learning, combined with domain know-how, to create new business models that are continuously fed by as-operated and as-maintained fleet and unit-specific data. This approach facilitates tailored service solutions designed to meet customer needs for operational flexibility, plant performance, condition-based maintenance, and more. These data analytics also contribute to the development of new and improved processes and provide valuable insights that can be used in future technology design.

"Big data is transforming our industry into a digitally driven, intelligent ecosystem," said Randy Zwirn, CEO of Siemens Power Generation Services. "Siemens is investing significant resources across its various businesses to successfully marry the physical and virtual worlds. With more than 300,000 devices already connected via our powerful Sinalytics platform architecture, we are able to put to work our vast experience and deep know-how to pioneer digital services that create game-changing value for our customers."

These advanced data-driven service solutions are enabled by Sinalytics, Siemens secure, scalable, industrial-strength analytics platform architecture, capable of integrating huge volumes of complex data. Over 300,000 devices are connected company-wide through Sinalytics. Beyond simply collecting this data or providing customers with a standalone software platform, Siemens is integrating valuable, insight-driven analytics with field service data, global fleet performance data, as well as data from other diverse sources (e.g. weather, fuel prices, etc.).

A vitally important element of Sinalytics is Siemens cyber security-by-design approach that not only allows confidential data to be collected, transmitted, and analyzed in a secure way but also means that cyber security is consistently integrated throughout all lifecycle phases. Cyber security is a critical business driver at Siemens and is thoroughly implemented into the architecture of Sinalytics. Key aspects of cyber security in Sinalytics are the provision of confidentiality and the integrity and availability of infrastructure and data as well as processes. Supporting concepts include the configuration of hardware and software systems using state-of-the-art cyber protection technologies, explicit proof of identity of all kinds of users, strong authentication, strong confidentiality protection of data at rest and data in transit, secure execution of analytical jobs, and auditing of all security-related events.

Real world outcomes with Siemens Digital Services for Energy are resulting from projects across the globe that are designed to support unique customer needs with innovative, data-supported service offerings. In South America, Profertil, an Argentine petrochemical company, operates a large and successful fertilizer plant in Bahia Blanca. To help ensure continued peak operational performance, Profertil conducts a major overhaul of its manufacturing and related components at the facility every 3 years, shutting down the entire plant to conduct repairs and maintenance. By applying advanced data-driven analytics and using Siemens condition-based monitoring, Profertil and Siemens are working together to align the required major servicing of the gas turbines to match this 3-year interval. This alignment means increased uptime of the assets, which can then translate into increased productivity for Profertil.

Digitalization projects continue to drive results for Siemens wind service customers. Remote diagnostics services are the genesis of these digital offerings as the company closely monitors more than 10,000 wind turbines globally. Advanced analytics are constantly evolving and expanding at Siemens Remote Diagnostic Center in Brande, Denmark, with new developments in areas such as vibration diagnostics and 24/7 alarms notification and management. Siemens is able to remotely address 85% of alarms coming into its Remote Diagnostic Center without the need for a visit to the turbines, which translates into higher availability and operational efficiency. Additionally, data-driven upgrades such as Siemens High Wind Ride Through, which is a software performance upgrade designed to allow turbines to continue operating at reduced power in higher wind speeds, are also providing measurable results. At the West Wind wind farm in New Zealand, the upgrade was installed on all 62 wind turbines at the site, and has resulted in a marked improvement of two percent in annual energy generation and a reduction in high-wind speed losses of 80 percent.

In the U.S. Siemens is working side-by-side with a major utility to support their initiative targeted to mitigate unplanned outage time of its steam turbines and generators when the units are required to be available to generate power. The project involves engineering evaluation of Siemens and the customers fleets and then installing special sensors on steam turbines and generators as needed to provide additional data for analysis that can then be turned into valuable insights for advance planning and avoidance of costly unplanned outages. Through advanced engineering analysis, increased data collection and analysis, and remote monitoring and diagnostics, Siemens Digital Services is providing the unique insights that will help the customer better predict operational and maintenance performance for cost-effective and flexible operations.

Original content can be found at Oil and Gas Engineering.

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Would you hand your house keys to a total stranger and then go away on vacation for two weeks? Probably not, but thats precisely what some businesses do when they move applications and data to the public cloud.

Security has long been the principal fear that weighs on cloud investments. While perceptions are improving, Intel Securitys recent State of Cloud Adoption study found that data breaches remain the biggest concern of companies deploying Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and even private cloud models. A 2015 survey by Crowd Research Partners found that nine in 10 security professionals worry about cloud security.

These concerns, however, are not stopping enterprises from investing in the cloud. The Intel Security study found that

While the survey shows that confidence in cloud security is increasing, only one-third of respondents believe their senior executives understand the security risks.

Investments in cloud security should be commensurate with the level of migration to cloud services. But budgeting for security in the public cloud is distinctly different than planning for on-premise prevention. One fundamental shift is that cloud providers use a shared responsibility model that spreads risks between vendor and customer. Another difference: Customers dont buy the same mix of products and equipment to secure the cloud that they do in the data center.

Budgeting for security in the public cloud begins by considering which applications and infrastructure components will live there. Some, like website hosting and document serving, are of relatively low risk and dont demand the most stringent safeguards. Also consider the consumption models youll use. SaaS providers generally assume responsibility for security and the application and system levels. However, IaaS providers tend to cede those responsibilities to the customer. Whats more, no public cloud provider is likely to assume responsibility for user access and data protection, although there are measures they can take to support your own efforts.

There are three levels of security to consider as you build out your public cloud strategy:

System-level security for IaaS

This is secured plumbing: systems-level components such as operating systems, networks, virtual machines, management utilities and containers. Here, you want to invest in cloud providers that make it easy for you to keep your systems current with the latest patches and updates. The service provider should also provide thorough visibility into your cloud instances so that you can see all instances that are running. One of the challenges of public cloud is that its so convenient to spin up new VMs and containers that you may forget to shut them down later. These so-called zombies are latent security threats because they present potential attack vectors into more business or mission critical systems.

If you plan to use containers, as a growing number of enterprises are, be diligent about the level of security protection they offer. The market for containers is still immature, and security  while improving  is considered one of the technologys weakest areas.

Remember, you are responsible for system-level security in your Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Server (PaaS) instances. Integrating these security controls and reporting in with your on-premises systems will create efficiencies. Be sure to include the appropriate controls for the type of server employed. These may include tools such as intrusion prevention, application control, advanced antimalware solutions and threat detection. These should be all be centrally managed for visibility and compliance in addition to policy and threat intelligence sharing with your on-premises infrastructure.

Application-level security

This level is primarily about identity and access management. Your best investment here isnt financial; its a policy that limits the ability of users to deploy cloud applications without ITs knowledge.

After ensuring policies are in place that offer IT visibility, the next step is to invest in multifactor authentication and identity management. The first approach uses two or more devices or applications to permit access. For example, a verification code can be sent to a phone or email address to ensure that a stolen password isnt a critical failure point.

Identify management locks down application access by requiring users to authenticate through a secure resource such as LDAP or Active Directory. If your organization already uses a directory, consider investing in cloud brokering software that supports single sign-on so that users can authenticate to all their cloud services through their local directory. This gives IT complete visibility and shifts access control from the cloud service to your own IT organization. Consider also investing in a secure VPN tunnel so sessions are never exposed to the public Internet.

Data-level security

This level of protection involves securing the data itself. No cloud provider will take responsibility for your data, but there are solutions you can purchase to help.

Many cloud providers, for example, offer encryption as a standard option, but you may be surprised at how many do not, or who encrypt data only part of the time. Anything less than 256-bit encryption is considered inadequate these days.

More important is that you have full control of the encryption keys. If a cloud provider insists on owning them, you have no guarantees that your data will be safe. Seek another provider.

In addition, make sure your data is unencrypted only when in use. Some providers require that data be transmitted to their facilities in plain-text format. Thats a security risk.

As noted in the Cloud Security Primer, none of these levels should be secured in isolation. Cloud security, the primer states, is an end-to-end challenge whereby the solutions must be built into the overall IT environment and not tacked on as an afterthought.

Whatever cloud provider you adopt, make sure their security guarantees spelled out in their contract and SLA. A good contract should spell out exactly what procedures will be employed, along with any penalties the provider will face for non-compliance, how they will report upon it, and how you can audit to ensure your contractual terms are being met. A strong SLA ensures that you dont simply toss the keys to your cloud provider as youre walking out the door.
There's a website on the Dark Web offering to store Dox and accept a ransom payment to have it removed; provided the person responsible for uploading the information pays a commission and a processing fee to the website for services rendered.

In addition, it also provides a Doxing-as-a-Service platform, which promises to collect a complete profile on a person for $150.

The website is Ran$umBin (Ransom Bin). Designed to be friendly, easy to use extortion service, its existence was brought to Salted Hash's attention by Cymmetria's head of threat intelligence research, Nitsan Saddan. For those not familiar, Cymmetria is a cyber deception startup founded by Gadi Evron and Dean Sysman.

"It is unknown who runs this operation, but their language and lingo, and the service's structure, suggest that these are American players. They try to promote Ran$umBin using a designated Twitter account, and have already gained some traction among cybercriminals; the service has been recommended on different forums, Dark Web and listed sites alike," Saddan said.

So what is Ran$umBin?





To understand Ran$umBin, you should first understand what Doxing is, and why it can frighten some people. Briefly, Doxing is the collection of sensitive personal information, and the publication of said information, with malicious intent.

If someone publishes a person's Dox to the Internet, there's the potential for harassment, financial fraud, and identity theft. No matter how public a someone is, having Dox posted to the Internet isn't a pleasant experience in most cases.

What Ran$umBin has done is turn Dox collection and publication into a business. According to the website, the minimum required amount of Dox accepted is "full name, address, online profiles, and at least one identifying number that cannot be publicly found such as an SSN, DLN, Credit Card info, etc."

The way the website works is simple, someone uploads Dox, the information is verified, and if it's proven to be credible (at the administrator's discretion)  it will be posted to the public.

The victim can then pay a ransom to have their information removed, but the cost depends on the category assigned to the Dox by the person who uploaded it. The categories are rather basic: miscellaneous, revenge, alleged pedophiles, famous people, and law enforcement.

A breakdown of the ransom fees and the commission paid to the person who uploaded the information is below:



After posting the information, the extortionist is responsible for informing the victim. If needed, a template is provided by the website, which is produced in part below:

"Dear Identity Theft Victim, We regret to inform you that your identity has been stolen. This may include (but is not limited to) your SSN, DOB, Tax IDs, email logins, mother's maiden name, etc. [...] In order to remove your DOX from the site, you must pay the ransom. The longer the fee remains unpaid, the longer your identity will be public, leaving it open for people to establish bank accounts and other lines of credit with your identity...."

So far, there are only a handful of records posted to the website, but that's still far too many.

There are five people alleged to be pedophiles; four people listed under revenge (including two high school students); ten people under miscellaneous (including the CEO of Securi.net); two law enforcement officials; and two people under the famous category  Donald Trump and President Obama.

The Dox on Trump can be obtained via his tax records, and President Obama's Dox contains his Social Security Number and nothing else.

"If a person does not pay to remove their Dox it will remain there until it is paid. Any Dox, which remains unpaid for an extended period, will have its validity checked. If valid, it will remain on the site. We only delete Dox's which had the ransom paid in Bitcoin," Ran$umBin's founders explained.

Doxing-as-a-Service:





Ran$umBin offers a Doxing service that has three different options, depending on the type of Dox that's to be collected. The lowest amount ($40) will get a person's name, date of birth, phone number, and address. For $80, the Dox will include all of that information, plus a bit more.

However, paying $150 will result in a complete profile on an individual, from personal information on them and their relatives, to email addresses and ISP information, known passwords, banking and credit card data, driver's license number, as well as education, medical history, court, and property records.

It's worth noting that the Bitcoin wallet used to process payments for this service has received no transactions.

"The ability to sell Dox with minimal risk might appeal to many criminals, especially newcomers who don't have the right connections and can't tell who to trust. If Ran$umBin's operators are indeed Americans, their initiative might not hold for long; the North American underground market is less secretive than similar markets in Russia, Brazil or the Far East. Therefore, websites are taken down more often by authorities. For the victims' sake, let's hope that this one will suffer a similar fate," Saddan said.

Services like this are going to become more common in the future, given that information has value and holding it for ransom has become a turnkey business for criminals of all skill levels.

Fortunately, it's possible Ran$umBin will die off, as there has been little traction on the website since it was first viewed by Salted Hash, and the website's twitter feed has sat idle since February.

But sadly, that doesn't help the victims who have already had their personal details published.
The ninth annual Verizon Data Breach Report came out this morning with bad news on multiple fronts, including click-through rates on phishing messages, how long it takes companies to detect breaches, and even whether companies spot the breaches at all.

Phishing emails continued to be a primary starting point for attacks, said Bryan Sartin, executive director, global security services at Verizon.

The number of phishing email messages that were opened hit 30 percent in this year's report, up from 23 percent last year.

In addition, 12 percent of users don't just open the email but open the attachment as well, while 11 percent follow links in the email to online forms where they then input sensitive data such as login credentials.

[ MORE FROM VERIZON: Verizon provides a behind the scenes look at data breaches ]

The median time for the first user of a phishing campaign to open the malicious email was 1 minute, 40 seconds and the median time to the first click on the attachment was 3 minutes, 45 seconds.

The vast majority of the attacks, or 89 percent, were by financially-motivated crime syndicates, and the other 9 percent by state-affiliated actors.

Another problem that continues to plague enterprises is the lack of basic two-factor authentication, said Sartin. "It would mitigate an entire swathe of these breaches."

In fact, 63 percent of all breaches included the use of stolen credentials, up from 51 percent in last year's report.

Sartin suggested that enterprises might be getting buried in all the complexity of operational security management, or be too driven by compliance.

"Sometimes people get lost and can't see the forest through the trees," he said.

Then, once the attacker is in the system, enterprises are actually getting worse at detecting the problem.

In 92 percent of breaches, it took attackers just minutes to get into a company after the first attempt, with 30 percent able to exfiltrate the first data within hours, and another 68 percent able to get data out within days. But the number of enterprises that were able to spot a breach as it was happening in "days or less" was less than 25 percent.

In fact, the gap between the time to compromise and the time to discovery rose from 62 percent in last year's report to 84 percent this year.

In fact, the number of breaches detected internally, or via fraud detection mechanisms such as those in the credit card industry, have also fallen. Instead, most breaches are now detected by law enforcement authorities or other third parties.

"Third-party detection and law enforcement collaboration is getting better," said Sartin.

Once security experts take down one command and control server, for example, they may find that the same infrastructure was used to go after a number of victims. They also spot sensitive information as it shows up for sale on the dark web, he said.
Extorting money from companies under the threat of launching distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) against their online properties has proven lucrative for cybercriminals. So much so that one group has managed to earn over $100,000 without any evidence that it's even capable of mounting attacks.

Since early March, hundreds of businesses have received threatening emails from a group calling itself the Armada Collective, asking to be paid between 10 and 50 bitcoins -- US$4,600 to $23,000 -- as a "protection fee" or face DDoS attacks exceeding 1Tbps.

While many of them did not comply, some did; the group's bitcoin wallet address shows incoming payments of over $100,000 in total. Yet none of the companies who declined to pay the protection fee were attacked, website protection firm CloudFlare found.

The company talked with more than 100 current and prospective customers who received an extortion email from the Armada Collective, as well as with other DDoS mitigation providers whose customers have been threatened by the group.

"Our conclusion was a bit of a surprise: we've been unable to find a single incident where the current incarnation of the Armada Collective has actually launched a DDoS attack," said Matthew Prince, the CEO of CloudFlare, in a blog post. "In fact, because the extortion emails reuse Bitcoin addresses, there's no way the Armada Collective can tell who has paid and who has not."

The conclusion is that whoever is behind the latest Armada Collective DDoS threats is just reusing the name of a previous group that did attack companies last year, but whose activity ended in November.

According to Prince, researchers suspect that Armada Collective was one of the names originally used by a DDoS extortion group that later became known as DD4BC. Suspected members of that group were arrested in January following an international law enforcement action called Operation Pleiades, which was coordinated by Europol.

Even DD4BC, which gained notoriety for its extortion attempts and attacks, did not fully delivered on its threats. According to Prince, DD4BC claimed that it was capable of generating attacks of over 500Gbps, yet the attacks that CloudFlare saw never exceeded 60Gbps.

That's still too much traffic for most companies to handle on their own, but 60Gbps is well below what DDoS mitigation providers like CloudFlare can successfully block.

At this point it's clear that someone else is trying to capitalize on the original group's notoriety. In fact, the latest threats encourage victims to search for "Armada Collective" on Google, supposedly so they can find the old reports about the group's activities.

"It's important to note that not all DDoS extortion threats are empty," Prince said. "There are several groups currently sending out extortion emails that actually do follow through on their threats."

Companies should be prepared to handle DDoS attacks, but giving into extortion is never recommended, because it encourages more cybercriminals to engage in this type of activity. And there's no guarantee that once you pay one group, another one won't come knocking.
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Blockchain for entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector: challenges and opportunities - May 15, 2020 4:00 PM CEST

Blockchain for Agriculture webinar

Are you an entrepreneur in African, the Caribbean and Pacific countries and interested in blockchain? Do you want to know if and in which conditions you can leverage on blockchain to offer meaningful services to potential clients in the agricultural sector and beyond? This webinar organised by the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) in the framework its AgriHack and Blockchain projects, and in partnership with Blockchain Workspace in the Netherlands will discuss these questions. Apart from insights from three invited experts, experiences of an ACP entrepreneur investing in Blockchain will be shared. Other entrepreneurs from the audience may have the opportunity to briefly share their experiences as well. The session will be held in English only. With George Maina, founder of Shamba Records & Once Sync Limited (Kenya); Henk van Cann and Erwin Overstegen, both co-founder of the training firm Blockchain Workspace (bcws.io); and Ken Lohento (CTA)
BRIDGEPORT  The mayor and his staff have started setting an example in the hopes of wresting $5 million in concessions from the citys dozen unions.

About 40 non-union employees, including Mayor Joe Ganim, have begun taking ten unpaid furlough days, for an estimated savings of $112,000.

It was also done to set a tone (and) to start a conversation with our partners in organized labor, said Av Harris, Mayor Joe Ganims head of communications.

The mayor is hoping to convince unionized city workers to agree to ten unpaid furlough days and wage freezes. It is a big ask considering it took a few years for former Mayor Bill Finch and the City Council to obtain $2 million worth of givebacks they built into the 2013-14 budget.

And some unions are just now taking those old furlough days because they wound up built into recently approved contracts.

A pay freeze and ten furlough days? said one member of the supervisors union who did not want to be identified. Thats going to be a hard sell because were already working off four furlough days right now.

If the unions do not deal?

The trump hand is layoffs, Janene Hawkins, Ganims director of labor relations, recently told the City Councils budget committee.

The mayor, sworn in Dec. 1 after having run the city from 1991 to 2003, has already laid off a few dozen union and non-union staff.

But, Hawkins added, It is the desire of the mayor to keep as many personnel as we can.

The unaffiliated staffers have been ordered to take five furlough days before the fiscal year ends June 30, and an additional five next fiscal year. But City Hall is not waiting for those people to decide when they want to take the days off. According to a memorandum from Hawkins, unless employees make other arrangements, the time will be automatically deducted each week.

You have a little bit taken out of each paycheck, Harris said. And then take your time (off).

Harris said in some cases non-union employees are taking more than ten furlough days. He estimated Ganim will have taken 20 total when all is said and done. Harris plans on taking 15 unpaid days over the summer.

According to the administrations estimates, if every employee takes ten furlough days, the city would save $357,000 each of those days.

Its not an insignificant sum, Harris said. And if you take the furloughs and wage freeze we get to a number very close to $5 million. But its lot to ask, and these are hardworking people.

Spreading the pain

Dwayne Harrison, president of the 700-plus member National Association of Government Employees, said many of the unaffiliated city workers are new mayoral appointees who just joined the government workforce. As such, Harrison said, they, unlike his members, have not already given back.

These people who are just walking in the door were not part of the 3.5 furlough days we gave last year, Harrison said.

And, he added, many enjoy six figure salaries. Ganim and his staff inherited higher wage parameters because the non-union salaries are tied to the supervisors contract. One of Finchs final acts was to broker a contract with the supervisors that included raises and concessions.

Ganim and the City Council tried to cancel the agreement, but lost that fight in court last month.

No offense, Harrison said, But salaries that are $130,000, you give up two weeks of pay, youre still okay.

Ganims concessions calculations also count on support from the 800-person-strong American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. But that group is already at odds with the administration over a new contract negotiated under Finch that, like the supervisors pact, Ganim sought to scuttle.

AFSCME filed a grievance and the matter is pending before the state Board of Labor Relations.

Larry Dorman, an AFSCME spokesman, in a statement for this story said, We know the mayor faces great challenges.

We want to identify solutions other than harming public servants who have sacrificed time and again to protect vital services that have been cut to the bone, Dorman said.
Contributed / Contributed

Dr. Edward Pinto of Westport, was recognized as Physician of the Year during Bridgeport Hospitals April 20 Physician Leadership Summit at the Fairfield Museum and History Center.

Pinto, a cardiologist and internal medicine physician, and member of Northeast Medical Group, was cited for his outstanding patient satisfaction performance, which includes being the physician leader in inspiring philanthropic giving to the hospital through the Bridgeport Hospital Foundation Honor Your Caregiver Program.
FAIRFIELD  A Fairfield University student told police that she was punched in the face and sexually assaulted as she walked on campus Monday night.

The woman is receiving medical treatment at St. Vincents Medical Center and Fairfield police detectives are on campus, securing the scene and investigating, said Lt. James Perez, the department spokesman.

We received a 911 call at 10:50 p.m. from a female student who was crying, who told us that shed been attacked by a middle-aged male as she walked from the library to Bannow Hall. Perez said.

Students received text alerts and other communications from the university, according to an official statement released by spokeswoman Teddy DeRosa. The university is working closely with police to confirm details of the incident and advises students to exercise caution and use the buddy system when walking at night.

The safety and protection of our students, faculty and staff remains a top priority for us. Security and safety programs at Fairfield University are continuously updated to meet the University's ever changing needs, the official statement reads.

Fairfield Universitys department of public safety has 27 full-time members and uses vehicle, foot and bicycle patrol,s and offers 24-hour escort service.

University counselors have been with the victim and her family since last evening, the statement reads. The University will continue to support the victim and her familys needs throughout her recovery.

Out of protection and privacy for the victim, we will not release any additional details. All other details remain under investigation and cannot be commented on at this time.

The Bannow Science Center and the DiMenna-Nyselius Library are a short distance apart, connected by a sidewalk. There are adjoining parking lots behind both buildings.
The USS Toledo returned to Connecticut on Monday after months at sea.

The Los Angeles-class submarine spent half a year away from its homeport in Groton, having been deployed to the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf, and making stops in Bahrain, France, Spain and Greece.
When Dan Kan was a senior in college, he applied for about 35 jobs, most of them in finance. By the time he graduated in 2009 from Claremont McKenna college, Kan had been rejected from all but two of those jobs.

I remember distinctly when I was graduating that I was going to go into finance. Like, Oh! This is the path. Everyone goes into finance. You make a lot of money, says Kan, 29, during a phone conversation with Entrepreneur.

With hands full of rejections from the finance world, Kan had two opportunities: teach English in Korea or work at a startup in San Francisco called UserVoice, a platform which helps companies collect user feedback. I went for the startup, says Kan.

Image credit: Daniel Kan

Today, about seven years later, Kan is the co-founder of Cruise Automation, a startup that General Motors bought in March for $1 billion in a cash and stock deal.

So how does a wannabe finance college grad land at the top of one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley? A bit of luck, the right connections, a healthy appetite for risk and a remarkably unflappable demeanor. Kan knows he has pulled a lucky hand, but hes also played his cards right.

Startup juju runs in the family.

Kan grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. His mother started her own real estate and mortgage broker business in Seattle in the 1990s, when Kan was a young kid, around 10 years old, before the days of Google Maps. Dan and his brothers would scan and photocopy pages from giant map books, tape them together and plan out routes for his mom to take to all of the houses on her routes.

Related: How Squarespace Went From a Dorm-Room Project to a $100 Million Web Publishing Platform

Dans older brother, Justin, is also an entrepreneur. Justin moved to San Francisco after graduating college and started the online video platform Justin.tv in 2006, which later became Twitch. Throughout his life, the family unit has always been a source of inspiration and support to Dan. Even now that he is a co-founder of a unicorn that just inked a $1 billion deal, Dan still shares an apartment with one of his two brothers in an adjoining apartment with their third brother.

Image credit: Daniel Kan

Dan says, quite modestly, that his connections helped him get his foot in the door of Silicon Valley. I wouldnt be here without my brother or the other guys at Twitch. Thats probably the most important thing, he says. "Not just having an idea or executing on an idea -- its all about the connections that you have and the people you know and the people who support you.

Cruise wasnt Dans first at-bat.

A network of support will get you to the starting line, but you dont build a billion-dollar-startup without some serious determination. Dan is persistent. Tenacious, even.

Dan has a fearlessness that is such a critical component to a startup being successful. People think of startups as risky, but often inside of them there is a lot of fear of failure. Dan is that voice in the room that says, What if? to challenge everyone to reach a little higher, says Nabeel Hyatt, a partner at Spark Capital, which led Cruises series A investment, in an email with Entrepreneur.

Image credit: Daniel Kan

Hes not just a dreamer, though, says Hyatt. Hes also willing to do the work. Dan also just has amazing follow-through skills, he makes sure things get done, which is what enables him to be fearless with the team," Hyatt says. "He has the follow through to back up his ambitions for himself and the people he works with.

After a couple of years at UserVoice and encouraged by his older brother, Dan started his own company -- a couple of times.

Related: How a Former Social Worker Took a Nights-and-Weekends Hobby and Turned It Into a Tech Startup

First, in 2011, Dan launched Appetizely, a company that built iPhone apps for restaurants that pushed coupons to attract customers at periods of low traffic. Dan had built about 30 apps before Apple called saying that all the Appetizely iPhone apps had to be combined into one because the functionality was so similar. Dan decided that if he couldnt offer each restaurant its own app, it wasnt going to be attractive to restaurants. Within a few months of launching, he shut Appetizely down.

Later that year, Dan launched Exec, an on-demand personal assistant service. Customers almost exclusively used the Exec app for house cleaning. Dan pivoted his San Francisco-based startup to focus on house-cleaning on-demand services. That was more successful, but Dans heart wasnt in it.

Image credit: Daniel Kan

We started off as a service that would allow you to do anything, with the push of a button, have someone run your errands or do your laundry or whatever," says Dan. "And we slowly turned into a house cleaning business. For me, that wasnt really what I was passionate about. In 2014, he sold the startup to San Francisco-based on-demand service company Handy, which has since become a leader in the space.

Throughout the stops and starts, Dans commitment to see a project through never wavers. At Exec, he was willing to scrub toilets for clients. At Cruise, he was willing to go out on mapping car runs in the middle of the night. He's a hard worker through and through, says Tristan Zier, the current head of mapping operations at Cruise who also used to work with Dan at Exec, in an email with Entrepreneur. He's got the grit required for early stage startups.

Zier isnt alone in his observations of Dans startup savviness. Daniel has always been a guy with a ton of bold ideas, and a lot of confidence in being able to execute on those ideas and bring them into existence. He's always thinking about ways to make products and experiences better than they already are, says Amir Ghazvinian, a lifelong friend of Dan who was also part of the Exec founding team, in an email with Entrepreneur. You always know that when he is working on some aspect of a project that it's going to not only get done, but to be very well executed.

Image credit: Daniel Kan

When Dan decides to do something, he does it. Dan is one of the only people I've been around who will say let's do it and actually take the necessary steps to carry out the idea, says Emma Jones, a friend from Claremont McKenna College who later worked with Dan at Exec, in an email with Entrepreneur.

After selling Exec, Dan was looking for his next move. He had known Kyle Vogt for years because Vogt was part of the founding team for Justin Kan's Justin.tv and Twitch. Dan interned with his brother and Vogt for a summer when he was still in college.

Image credit: Daniel Kan

Vogt had been obsessed with the concept of autonomous driving since he was a teenager: This is his actual passion, says Dan, who got excited about autonomous driving by association and joined Vogt to begin working on Cruise Automation in 2014.

A unicorn is born.

Shortly after GM agreed to buy Cruise Automation for a cool $1 billion, the San Francisco-based startup that specializes in autonomous driving technology took down most of the information about the company and its technology from its website, other than a dozen or so job postings now that its part of the Detroit automaker's umbrella. And Dan, for his part, says he has to stay mum about the technology now that Cruise Automation is part of General Motors. But the technology must have been pretty hot for GM to write such a giant check.

Related: How These Entrepreneurs Found Success in an Industry They Knew Nothing About

The $1 billion gets split between Dan, his better known co-founder and the CEO of Cruise Automation, Kyle Vogt, the other 40 Cruise Automation employees working at the startup when it was acquired and the early investors. (Jeremy Guillory and Vogt have sued each other over the former's involvement in the founding of the company.) Still, its a flush deal. Dan is leaps ahead of where he would have been seven years out of college if he had taken a job hustling spreadsheets at even the most prestigious Wall Street bank.

Image credit: Daniel Kan

Dans also something of a mini celebrity, at least in the entrepreneur community. This reporter caught Dan, the first time, on the phone before he was about to go on stage to speak at Penn States College of Information Sciences and Technology Startup Week. The kid who couldnt land the job he wanted at the end of college is now the touted, glamorized success story.

Radical pragmatism and perpetual chill.

Dan is unruffled by the spotlight. Thats because hes exactingly practical. Throughout the exceptional highs and lows of Silicon Valley startup life, Dan stays rational. He says that stress just adds another problem. Dans combination of appetite for risk and built-in zen is the ideal business suit for Silicon Valley startup life.

I would definitely say that I am risk seeking a lot of things, says Dan. His surgical pragmatism is disarming in its simplicity: when he encounters a problem, he isnt dissuaded. He just finds a solution. The way that I approach it is that every problem, or every situation that can give you stress, is just another problem that you have to solve. So if you can think about it rationally, step back and say, OK, what can I do to make this work? That is how we approach everything at Cruise and how I approach everything in my life.

Image credit: Daniel Kan

Related: It's Harder, But You Are More Likely to Win if You Think for Yourself

His perpetual chill hasnt gone unnoticed. He's highly analytical, so you know every idea will be evaluated logically and fairly, and he comes up with solutions that take into account all aspects of whatever problem he is facing, says Ghazvinian. He's never daunted by a problem of any size. Even when problems inevitably arise, he never gets flustered. He just recognizes the situation and comes up with a plan of action to solve the problem one step at a time.

It seems to be working. I didnt think that I would ever start a company. I didnt think that I would ever build autonomous vehicles, says Dan.

Related: A Look Inside An Unlikely Journey: From Olympic Skier and NFL Player to Tech Entrepreneur

But oh, look at him now. Driving right along. With no hands.

Image credit: Daniel Kan

The big thing is, for me, it was unexpected. But now I cant see another way that I can have a bigger impact on the world," says Dan. "And thats a big thing for me is really doing something that I enjoy and that I want to be doing.

And to those dozens and dozens of banks who rejected Kan? Thank you, says Dan. Oh, absolutely.

Related:



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The fall of 2001 was one of the most traumatic and distressing few months in U.S. history. More than 160 residents of Connecticut, alone, were among the thousands killed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks by violent extremists deploying jumbo jets as weapons.

Americans and citizens of the planet were in shock, gripped by fear, by anger and, ultimately, by great strength and resolve.

Still, heroes emerged. Some were the first responders and workers who risked everything to save lives in the smoldering rubble. Some were the wives, husbands and parents who lost loved ones but managed to hold their shaken families together through overwhelming grief. Americans, resolute and resolved across differences of political persuasion, race and region, vowed to recover, rebuild and retaliate.

Political leaders, too, stepped up to the crisis to send support to stricken targets, to the responders, to the families.

Formal government response was rapid and massive. Appropriations were made, federal agencies created, intelligence forces upgraded and coordinated. It was a time of action and doing what had to be done.

There was a personal experience for me that I have rarely spoken of, mostly because it never seemed necessary to make a point. But here we are, nearly 15 years later, in the midst of a strange and very tough presidential election season, and I am recalling something that occurred in the weeks following 9/11 that is relevant to evaluating the capacity of candidates to function as effective leaders.

I had been working with New Yorks then-freshman senator Hillary Clinton on a bill, eventually folded into the larger post-9/11 legislation, to help make sure that, in the event of future terror attacks or major disasters, child-centric preparedness measures would be in place to protect our youngest citizens. She and I worked the issue, even appearing on network TV to press for a specific focus on the special needs of kids.

Then, just a few weeks after the attacks, a call came from one of Clintons staffers. The senator wanted to know if I would join her  and, of course I did  on a listening tour around our state. She wanted to assure New Yorkers that she and her colleagues were doing everything possible to make sure such an attack never happened again, that recovery and response would be swift. And she wanted to hear from her constituents directly, to know how they were feeling and what they thought would be needed.

At each meeting Hillary listened intently, she answered every question, she laid out what she and her colleagues were planning to do and took notes as people talked. We were in Syracuse, in Rochester, in Brooklyn  and in every place we went people were visibly grateful to see their senator paying attention to them, realizing this was a public servant who came to them at a moment of national fear and grief. She had come to comfort and reassure her constituents that there was a plan. She was there as a listener and a leader who was determined to get things done.

And as she took on more and more responsibilities, working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Hillary Clinton never lost sight of what would be needed to help all of us to respond, recover from 9/11  and prepare for any future calamities. Like so many other issues she cares about, Hillary has been a reliable and effective champion. She pushed key homeland security legislation, fought successfully for funding to rebuild the stricken terror targets and provide health care for the responders who put their own health and their lives at great risk for the rest of us.

In the heat of this presidential campaign, its worth remembering that Hillary Clinton has a real track record that is not just rhetoric and speechifying. She makes things happen. She follows through and knows how to work the machinery of government, a skill that we need in the White House, now more than ever.

Dr. Irwin Redlener is a pediatrician and professor at the Mailman School of Public Health. He directs the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.
Last week, the Connecticut Post printed articles regarding political disputes between First Selectman Herbst and me. These were printed after he sent a four-page letter, with 29 pages of attachments, to the papers. This turned what could have been a productive discussion of commonly used fiscal controls into another embarrassing public spectacle for Trumbull.

Trumbulls Charter, Art. III, Sec. 6(E), says Expense reimbursements and payments made on behalf of the First Selectman and the Superintendent shall be by the Treasurer. (Page 10, online at http://www.trumbull-ct.gov/filestorage/10623/10675/Charter_Final_2011_(3).pdf.) The Connecticut Post reported that this provision was added in 2011 to require expense reports for the first selectman  be approved by the town treasurer. The Finance Department now approves the first selectmans expense reports. The Charter Revision Commission believes this is a conflict since the finance directors report directly to (the First Selectman).

Under the Charter, I asked to review Mr. Herbsts expense reports. None exist. There were multiple restaurant credit card receipts with handwritten notes. I asked several questions and for itemized receipts. I received neither answers nor receipts. Instead, I received a 4-page letter from Mr. Herbsts town attorney saying the Finance Department, not the Treasurer, should review his expenses.

I also asked the finance department for expense report policies. None exist. Without a policy two problems arise: first, employees have no guidance regarding whether expenses are valid for town budget purposes; second, when IRS regulations require certain polices, both the town and the employee may violate IRS rules if no policies exist.

To fix this, I reviewed policies from various businesses to create a draft policy for Trumbull. I suggested common procedures, including having employees pay expenses directly and being reimbursed rather than using a credit card the town pays directly. I circulated the draft to town officials. From the reaction, I doubt any changes will be made.

What I did not do is contact newspapers to accuse Mr. Herbst of violating the Charter, breaking IRS rules or misusing the town attorney. I commented only in response to questions from reporters. Mr. Herbst contacted the press one day after I discussed the draft policy with the Board of Finance.

Alternately, I worked with town officials for a month to research expense issues and develop a draft policy. The Town Attorney suggested presenting the policy to the Council. I agree, and believe the Board of Finance should also comment. An expense policy that applies regardless of who is Treasurer or First Selectman should be approved by all relevant town bodies in a bipartisan manner. Proper fiscal control should not be a political issue.

Rather than discuss even basic fiscal controls, Mr. Herbst has chosen to violate the Charter and make irrelevant personal attacks. Placing himself above the law and common sense diminishes our residents faith in government. Mr. Herbst can choose to work with others to make Trumbull better, or he can continue his pattern of secrecy, arrogance and deflection that have become all too common in Trumbull.

Anthony Musto

Trumbull
Fairfield Countys railroad crossings are safer than in other parts of the country, but accidents  some even fatal  still occur when drivers try to beat trains or stop on the tracks.

Norwalk had the most vehicle and train collisions  four over the last 10 years  in Fairfield County, a review by Hearst Connecticut Media of rail crossing accidents involving Metro-North trains shows.
STORY LINK Euro (EUR) and US Dollar (USD) Exchange Rate Forecasts Improve ahead of Fed Decision

US Dollar (USD) Exchange Rates Cool Following Disappointing Data

Euro (EUR) Exchange Rates Continue to Struggle following Dovish Draghi Comments

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The closely-linked Euro and US Dollar may be in for a major shift tonight, when the Fed interest rate decision is due to come. A rate freeze is currently on the cards.A brace of disappointing data releases on the other side of the Atlantic have hurt the US Dollar (currency : USD) this afternoon. The latest US Durable Goods Orders is always closely monitored for hints at levels of confidence amongst American economic participants; the March statistic was expected to show a pronounced improvement from Februarys dire showing of -3.0%, with the consensus expectation amongst analysts being for a result of 1.9%.The Durable Goods Orders outcome of 0.8% therefore came as a blow for the Buck and matters got worse for the US unit as the afternoon wore on. This months US Consumer Confidence survey, published a short time ago, revealed a pronounced drop-off in the mood amongst American economic participants, suggesting that concerns regarding a renewed economic slowdown Stateside may be increasing.The Pound Sterling US Dollar exchange rate started the day lodged in the 1.4400s GBP USD, but by the final stages of the European equities session, the pair had traded up to as high as 1.4639. Cable is being supported by a generalised improvement across the board for the Pound thanks to an improved showing for the Remain campaign in recent EU Referendum opinion polls.Elsewhere, the euro (currency : EUR) continues to struggle against the other sixteen most actively traded global currencies following last weeks downbeat comments from Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank (ECB) President.The ECBs head honcho, speaking at his Banks post policy announcement press conference at the end of last week, noted that, in order to reap the full benefits from our monetary policy measures, other policy areas must contribute much more decisively, both at the national and at the European levels.Draghis pela to the eurolands governments to adopt expansionary fiscal policies was viewed by many as a tacit admission that the ECB has done as much as it can to steer the eurozone away from a decimating bout of deflation. Investors have been spooked by this and the euro is forecast has deteriorated as a result.

International Money Transfer? Ask our resident FX expert a money transfer question or try John's new, free, no-obligation personal service! ,where he helps every step of the way, ensuring you get the best exchange rates on your currency requirements.

TAGS: American Dollar Forecasts Euro Forecasts Pound Euro Forecasts
Berlin, Windber and North Star bring plenty of momentum into Week 10

Check out what we learned in Week 9 of the high school football season across Somerset County.
Leesburg Electric: With prices soaring, late fees are being waived

Prices are up, so Leesburg Electric has decided that, as of Oct. 1, late fees will be waived.
Loretta Rudd stands in her office in Manning Hall. I believe that it is through education and persistence that individuals can achieve, said Rudd who holds multiple degrees including a doctorate in educational psychology. She shares her gift by giving back to the university along side her husband, President of the University of Memphis, David Rudd.

Jurnee Taylor Loretta Rudd stands in her office in Manning Hall. I believe that it is through education and persistence that individuals can achieve, said Rudd who holds multiple degrees including a doctorate in educational psychology. She shares her gift by giving back to the university along side her husband, President of the University of Memphis, David Rudd.

Being the first lady of the United States, a large institution or even a church, comes with unofficial responsibilities. For Loretta Rudd, first lady of the University of Memphis, she has much more to offer than standing in the background.

Since arriving to Memphis in 2013 alongside her husband, U of M President M. David Rudd, Loretta Rudd has been inspired by the students, faculty and staff and community members who are all committed to making the university great.

Both were interviewed at the same time; Loretta was offered the position as a clinical associate professor in child development and David at that time was offered the provost position.

Rudd serves on numerous boards in the community and on campus. Through her involvement with Women in Leadership and Philanthropy, sheas been able to share her gift.

aWhen I was approached to lead the WLP, I was immediately excited to connect my professional work with my passion to support women through opportunities to connect with other women who have awalked the path before,aa Rudd said.

The WLPas mission is to connect women as leaders and philanthropists who will work together to make a positive difference on the campus and throughout the community. This program in particular gives women in the community the opportunity to engage with the the university, while supporting students in meaningful ways.

Rudd hosted more than 40 guests at a student networking reception, ranging from students, lawyers and business women around the city in her and the presidentas home on Feb. 24. The students who attended were able to speak with women who are leaders in their respective areas.

aIt was a great experience for Dr. Rudd to welcome us into her home with open arms. It just shows the humble and selfless person she is,a Stephanie Pierce, U of M student who attended the reception, said.

Rudd understood at an early age that she could be of assistance to others while also learning and instructing. Her kindergarten and second grade teachers inspired her to teach and now through her love for education sheas been able to spend her entire professional career working with young children and their families.

Through hard-work and dedication she is a clinical associate professor in child development at the University of Memphis. Rudd has earned her doctorate in educational psychology from Baylor University. She holds bacheloras and masteras degrees in communication disorders/deaf education from The University of Texas at Austin. She also received a masters of education in educational administration from Tarleton State University in Texas.

aEducation is important to me and I hope I am a good ambassador of education as a means to enhance the lives of those who may not have been adealt a winning hand.a I believe that it is through education and persistence that individuals can achieve,a Rudd said.

Rudd hopes to impact women by pushing them to support other women and their families through giving their time, talent and treasure. She is keenly aware of the challenges many women and children face in Memphis.

Rudd holds truth to the quote behind every successful man, there is a strong, wise, and hardworking woman.

aIt is important to me to work alongside my husband to help connect the university to the greater community of Memphis,a Rudd said.
One in five women and one in 16 men are sexually assaulted while they are in college, and 90 percent of these assaults are never reported, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

Crime reports at the University of Memphis show a similar pat- tern. In 2015, only one rape and five forcible fondlings were reported to campus police.

In 2016, an even lower number were reported to U of M police. One forcible fondling was reported, and one rape was reported through the counseling center, according to chief of police Derek Myers.

Myers said students often dont report these crimes to campus police at all. Sometimes, campus police learn about sexual assaults anonymously through the Campus Counseling Center.

The counseling center doesnt release anything confidential to us, Myers said. However, under federal law, they have to tell us that a client came to them and said that they were sexually assaulted on campus. I have no idea who the victim or suspect is, but it ends up getting turned into a report.

As part of a national conversation, the University of Memphis is trying to raise awareness about sexual assault on college campuses with a series of activities, pledges, and special speakers during April, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

Anna Whalley, administrator of crime victim services at Shelby County Rape Crisis Center, said that sexual assault has been a problem on college campuses for years. Getting victims to report can help stop the crimes, she said.

The only way campuses can get rapists to quit doing what theyre doing is for victims to report, Whalley said.

More victims are coming forward now because theyre hoping to get harsher consequences for their offender, she said.

Victims have either been afraid to speak out about what happened to them, or they didnt think anything would happen to the offender, Whalley said.

Rosie Bingham, vice president for student affairs, agrees that the most important thing for victims to do is to report the assault somewhere they feel comfortable.

Reporting to the university police is a good option for victims so they can automatically report the assault and then be directed to the counseling center and the office of institutional equity, she said.

Bingham reiterated that the University of Memphis takes sexual assault and rape very seriously.

The counseling center and student conduct office have been doing programs on sexual assault, Bingham said. The university has done some bystander intervention training, so if someone sees anyone being taken advantage of, they know how to intervene.

As part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the University of Memphis gave students and faculty the option to take the Bystanders Pledge so they know how to recognize sexual assault, identify when it may occur, intervene when consent is not given, and create an environment where survivors are supported.

Bingham said university president, M. David Rudd, makes sure the campus community is aware of this ongoing problem.

We send out a letter to the community from the president every year talking about sexual assault, Bingham said. He has also taken a zero tolerance policy on the issue.

U of M administrators arent the only ones worried about raising awareness about sexual assault. Zeta Beta Tau fraternity recently hosted its first Green Light Go event, a giant game of Red Light/Green Light to teach students about consent and sex.

Zeta Beta Tau president, Tony Joe Connell, said teaching signals and prevention is important to help stop the crimes.

When youre in an environment where sexual assault can happen, a red light and yellow light do not mean to go, Connell said. The entire point is to teach students that only the green light means to go. We try to teach that you need to get full consent from someone before having sex.

The University of Memphis defines consent as an informed decision, freely given, made through mutually understandable words or actions that indicate a willingness to participate in mutually agreed upon sexual activity.

The university sexual misconduct policy also says that a person cannot give consent if they are asleep, unconscious or mentally or physically incapacitated, or are under duress, threat, coercion or force.
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Theresa May yesterday offered an admirably calm, clear and honest critique of the arguments for remaining in the European Union.

Unlike David Cameron and George Osborne, she refrained from issuing apocalyptic warnings that the sky will fall in if we vote to leave.

Instead Mrs May quite rightly dismissed as 'nonsense' the suggestion that this country is too small to survive unshackled from Brussels.

Theresa May yesterday offered an admirably calm, clear and honest critique of the arguments for remaining in the European Union

The Home Secretary also made a convincing case for Britain to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights  even though this put her at odds with Downing Street and Justice Secretary Michael Gove, who plan a new British Bill of Rights that requires us to remain a signatory to the Convention.

By insisting 'we need to be smarter' about how we start changing the many aspects of Europe with which we disagree, she gave a welcome indication that she reckons the renegotiation of Britain's EU membership terms trumpeted by the Prime Minister was lamentably inadequate.

What an enormous pity Mrs May did not follow the logic of these elements in her speech and join the Leave campaign.

For while she conceded that 'free movement rules mean it is harder to control the volume of European immigration', which is 'clearly no good thing', she is prevented by her backing for the Remain campaign from fully acknowledging the profoundly alarming magnitude of this problem.

The Home Secretary also made a convincing case for Britain to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights  even though this put her at odds with Downing Street and Justice Secretary Michael Gove (pictured), who plan a new British Bill of Rights that requires us to remain a signatory to the Convention

As Mr Gove yesterday observed, mass migration poses 'a direct and serious threat to our public services', and 'we cannot guarantee the same access people currently enjoy to healthcare and housing if these trends continue'.

At the weekend, as we pointed out in this column, Mrs May stood accused of being muddled in her analysis of the migration crisis.

Yesterday, the cause of that muddle became clearer. Isn't our admirable Home Secretary an instinctive Eurosceptic struggling uncomfortably in the straitjacket of the Remain campaign?

Hunt's test of purpose

The junior doctors are now testing public sympathy to breaking point.

For although most people have the highest respect for the medical profession, it is hard to see how today's withdrawal for the first time of cover from accident and emergency, maternity and intensive care units can be interpreted as anything other than highly political.

This strike, so contrary to the sense of vocation which impels people to become doctors in the first place, is unprecedented in the history of the NHS.

It springs from the determination of the Left-wing-dominated British Medical Association to demonstrate that it, rather than the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is really in charge.

Patients have long known it is not a good idea to get seriously ill at the weekend. That is one reason why this Government was elected less than a year ago on a promise to bring in a seven-day-a-week health service.

This strike, so contrary to the sense of vocation which impels people to become doctors in the first place, is unprecedented in the history of the NHS. It springs from the determination of the Left-wing-dominated British Medical Association to demonstrate that it, rather than the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is really in charge

For although most people have the highest respect for the medical profession, it is hard to see how today's withdrawal for the first time of cover from accident and emergency, maternity and intensive care units can be interpreted as anything other than highly political

Mr Hunt must now stand firm as he seeks to implement this pledge. To yield to the BMA activists, as they incite their members to ever more dangerous forms of protest, would be a betrayal not just of the cause of public-sector reform, but of the NHS itself.

The Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, is reported to be planning a U-turn on the decision to turn all schools into academies, to mollify councillors, including many Conservatives.
WEDNESDAY

Top Tory minister Chris Grayling makes the speech of his political life at his local village hall, in front of an audience well into double figures, according to an aide.

Warning that the Great British Banger will soon be outlawed by the EU, Grayling calls on villagers to fight for this proud nations inalienable right to tuck into mechanically recovered pigs knee, connective tissue and starch filler all lovingly wrapped in a synthetic casing.

Polls taken immediately after Graylings keynote speech show public opinion significantly unchanged.

Warning that the Great British Banger will soon be outlawed by the EU, Chris Grayling calls on villagers to fight for this proud nations inalienable right to tuck into mechanically recovered pigs knee, connective tissue and starch filler all lovingly wrapped in a synthetic casing, Craig Brown writes

Meanwhile, the Remain campaign receives a boost when former Bay City Rollers bass guitarist Alan Longmuir comes out in favour of staying in, following hot on the heels of former lead vocalist Les McKeown.

THURSDAY

Pundits have been gathering overnight outside the headquarters of top Eighties band Kajagoogoo in anticipation of an announcement as to how the various members plan to vote in the forthcoming referendum.

I have always been a diehard Kajagoogoo fan, says Chancellor George Osborne, in a last-ditch effort to swing their vote.

I remember as a youngster rushing out to buy their unforgettable hit single whatsitsname, oh, you know, didnt it have something to do with holiday in its chorus, or was that one by someone else?

In response to rumours that Kajagoogoo might be about to declare themselves in favour of Remain, Boris Johnson points out that Prince, the recently deceased pop star, was a convinced Brexit-eer.

Pressed for evidence, the Mayor of London cites the song When Doves Cry, adding: Clearly those doves were welling up as a result of insidious anti-dove legislation emanating from the EU. End of argument.

Polls taken immediately after Graylings keynote speech show public opinion significantly unchanged

FRIDAY

Prime Minister David Cameron upbraids the Brexit camp for calling the Remain campaign Project Fear.

If they go on calling us by names such as this, there will be terrible consequences ahead, not only for the people of this country, but for the whole world, he says.

Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott delivers a major speech calling on the UK cloud and leer to vast our coats in favour of the berry vest choice for our country in the redeferendum, namely to stay in and come out.

If we dont do this, well be facing devastational consequentialities on a punresidented scale.

SATURDAY

Already beset by divisions in its ranks, the Brexit campaign has divided still further, into Brrr, Ex and It campaigns.

The first group, Brrr, wants to stress the fact that the UK will grow significantly colder if we choose to remain in the EU.

Some of these Eastern European countries have an awful lot of snow and ice and biting winds, and if we stay in the EU well be leaving the door wide open, explains Brrr leader Geoffrey Barking.

The second splinter group, Ex, is formed of divorced men who fear that, under recent EU rules, their ex-wives will be entitled to a significantly higher proportion of their earnings. The third group is so virulently anti-Europe that they refuse to even mention the word and refer to it only as It.

So as not to rock the boat, all three breakaway campaigns will formally vote on whether or not to leave the overall Brexit campaign on June 24, the day after the referendum.

SUNDAY

Brexit campaigners argue that if the UK leaves the EU, we have a choice of three models: the Swiss model, the Norway model and the Turkey model. But opponents say the first is full of holes, the second is not something we can affjord and the third wont be ready until Christmas.

There is also a Topless model, believed to be favoured by Culture Secretary John Whittingdale.

MONDAY

Following the deaths of at least 25 major rock stars so far this month, the Government warns that a vote to leave the EU will result in a dramatic 75 per cent increase in rock star deaths over the next three years.

In a keynote address on the EU, former pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith repeats the phrase Lets be quite clear about this 27 times

In reply, Brexit campaigners declare that leaving the EU will result in up to 63 per cent fewer rock star deaths per annum.

They point out that until Britain joined the EU in 1973, there had been virtually no rock star deaths whatsoever, but within just a few years Elvis Presley had died, followed by Marc Bolan a month later.

TUESDAY

In a keynote address on the EU, former pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith repeats the phrase Lets be quite clear about this 27 times.
The Queens 90th birthday passed off in a rare blaze of positive publicity. Only one headline  Prince is Dead  caused momentary confusion when some courtiers feared heir-to-the-throne Charles had fallen from his perch. But their relief to hear otherwise was brief, says my source. It soon turned to disappointment as coverage of pop star Princes death pushed the Queen off some front pages.

Still more fanciable at 50 than rivals half her age, actress Elizabeth Hurley has entered the EU debate, opining: If it means we can go back to using decent light bulbs  60-watt, peach-coloured, both bayonet and screw-in  Im joining Brexit for sure. At last, some light on this subject!

Still more fanciable at 50 than rivals half her age, actress Elizabeth Hurley, pictured, has entered the EU debate

Prince Philip and HM go their separate ways TV-viewing-wise. They watch only Antiques Roadshow together. During a Windsor walkabout the duke met two Gogglebox regulars  the jolly West Indian ladies Sandra Martin and Sandy Channer. After a brief explanation of the show featuring ordinary (occasionally gormless) viewers commentating on TV programmes theyre watching, he advised them in his usual tactful way: Well, I wont be watching you, thats for sure! A silver-tongued rogue, isnt he?

RE Philip, 94, his Im in charge decision to drive luncheon guests President Obama and First Lady Michelle the half-mile from Home Park, where their helicopter landed, to Windsor Castle terrified US Secret Service agents. Courtiers stammered that the Queen was able to drive, although she has never passed a test, wont wear a seatbelt and doesnt possess a driving licence. In the end, Obama took his chances with fiendish Philip.

Money-oriented Sir Mick Jagger, 72, will enjoy hearing that the combined wealth of the Rolling Stones  630million  has now surpassed the 500million amassed by tax-avoiding rival crooner Bono and his band U2. They had overtaken the Stones with the highest-grossing world tour in 2011.

Money-oriented Sir Mick Jagger, 72, will enjoy hearing that the combined wealth of the Rolling Stones  630million  has now surpassed the 500million amassed by tax-avoiding rival crooner Bono and his band U2

Why didnt the Prime Minister organise a present for the royal birthday? Tony Blair had his Cabinet club together to buy HM a 1,000 Spode tea service for her 80th. This gave him an excuse to visit Windsor to hand over the present in person. Not invited to join HM on her 90th  is she still smarting with displeasure over his showing-off indiscretions about their conversations?  David Cameron says hes now planning to get his Cabinet to send a present for her official birthday in June. He says in a radio interview: Apparently thats the right way of doing things  we did check  by the book. My own royal source says: This is wrong. Gifts are given on the actual birthday, not the official one.
Since it was launched three years ago the page has 17,000 followers

Reid, now five, was born through a surrogate in India

They share photos of their young son Reid, who is the star of the page

The couple started an Instagram page to update their family and friends

Dads Jarrad and Michael Duggan-Tierney are The Real Dads of Melbourne

Jarrad and Michael Duggan-Tierney did not set out to become Instagram sensations.

For them, the photo sharing site was simply a way to keep in touch with family and friends and share photos of their son's milestones.

But three years later Jarrad and Michael, who go by the Instagram handle The Real Dads of Melbourne, have amassed more than 17,000 followers, and told Daily Mail Australia the support they've had for the page is overwhelmingly positive.

The Real Dads of Melbourne: Jarrad and Michael Duggan-Tierney, pictured with their son Reid, have more than 17,000 Instagram followers

Staying in touch: The family shares photos from their day-to-day life, and originally started the page to keep in touch with family and friends

On trend: Five-year-old Reid is the star of the page, with his on-trend style and social life

The Real Dads of Melbourne is a highlights reel of the family's day-to-day life.

And the undisputed star is five-year-old Reid.

The primary school student, who dresses stylishly in bow ties, blazers and sunglasses, has a social calendar most adults would be envious of.

But it's the 'real' moments - like the first day of school and time spent as a family - that draws people to the page.

Street style: 'In a time of "reality media" we think people are interested in how others live their lives,' Jarrad said

Strong following: The family share photos from days out, events and moments they spend together at home

'In a time of "reality media" we think people are interested in how others live their lives,' Jarrad said.

'Yes, we are a two dad family, but there is one thing we have in common, the love for our kids.

'We know not everyone understands why we are putting ourselves out there, and we respect their opinion.

'As a family we do this as we feel in some small way we are contributing to raising awareness and helping acceptance and equality of diverse families.'

Instagram star: The page has amassed more than 17,000 followers who are given an insight of the family's day-to-day life

Creating awareness: 'In some small way we are contributing to raising awareness and helping acceptance and equality of diverse families,' Jarrad said

Jarrad and Michael's journey to parenthood is one they have been open about.

The couple previously spoke to LittleOne Magazine about their decision to have a child through surrogacy.

They opted to work with a surrogate agency in India, but it took years of research before they found someone they felt comfortable working with and who they believed worked with integrity and respect.

Journey to parenthood: Jarrad and Michael had their son via surrogate after years spent researching their options

Baby boy: Reid was born at 36 weeks after a complicate pregnancy, but despite moderate jaundice, was born happy and healthy

The couple travelled to India where they met with their surrogate: a University educated woman from Mumbai.

But heartbreak was to follow, as early in to their first pregnancy they suffered a miscarriage.

The decision to try again was not a simple to make, and the second pregnancy did not go smoothly.

Baby Reid's kidney were not devolving properly, and he was born premature at 36 weeks.

But despite some moderate jaundice, Reid was born healthy and happy.

'The feeling was overwhelming': Bringing their son home to Melbourne is a moment Jarrad and Michael will never forget

Happy family: 'Looking back on that time was so surreal and magical to be physically holding our own child,' they said

'Looking back on that time was so surreal and magical to be physically holding our own child after all those years of planning/praying,' they wrote on Instagram.

Jarrad said 'the feeling was overwhelming' the first time they took their son home.

'We vividly recall that very moment we arrived home in Melbourne in the early hours of the morning after flying home from Mumbai,' he said.

'We closed the front door and burst into tears for two reasons: one our dream of being parents had been realised, and two, what do we do now.'

Family unit: Reid calls Jarrad daddy and Michael daddm, and is proud of his family

This year Reid started school, and Jarrad said it made him and Michael 'really proud' when Reid's friends would ask which one is 'daddy' (Jarrad) and which one is 'daddm' (Michael).

'Kids are so curious and honest with no filter, we love it,' Jarrad said.

'We proudly say, "yeah Reid has two dads, we love him just like your parents love you".

'He (Reid) is proud of his family and understands all families are made up of different combinations.'
She advised trolls to 'think twice' after she was called a b****h and a s**t

Rachelle, the blogger behind parenting blog, The Mummy Code, recently went viral after writing a post about her demanding daily routine and overwhelming lifestyle.

And although her post was seen over 2.5 million times and shared by thousands around the world, Rachelle, 34, was also the victim of relentless trolling and cruel comments on social media.

The Melbourne-based mother took to her blog to talk about the trolling and to send a message to those who target people online.

'Be kind people': Rachelle, the writer behind successful parenting blog 'The Mummy Code', has hit back at trolls after one of her blog posts went viral

Not as easy as it seems: Rachelle recently shared a post on social media about her demanding daily routine and overwhelming lifestyle which later went viral

'In a day and age where Kim K breaks the Internet by showing her butt or posts naked selfies with #liberated, its no wonder that so many trolls exist,' Rachelle began.

'However, this is her content, she is old enough to know what shes doing and has a team of management/lawyers who deal with everything. Plus, really who cares? If you don't like it dont look.'

Rachelle said she started her blog as a 'creative outlet' and a way to 'share funny stories, support and perhaps help other women with the struggles of raising children' and that she had 'no idea' her photo of her 'filthy car' would cause such a stir.

'I also read some of the troll comments and just took them with a grain of salt': The Melbourne-based mother took to her blog to talk about the trolling and to send a message to those who targeted people online

Harsh: 'I was called a b***h, whinger and s**t multiple times? My parenting was questioned? And a number of people commented on my looks and/or makeup,' she said

'There were many comments and 90% of them are positive (thank you). I also read some of the troll comments and just took them with a grain of salt,' she wrote.

'My main concern and first thought was for all the young girls (or boys) trying to be like Kim K or Justin Bieber and posting photos or blogs online. What if they read these comments about themselves?

'I was called a b***h, whinger and s**t multiple times? My parenting was questioned? I was told I was neglecting my children by putting them in childcare and a number of people commented on my looks and/or makeup.'

Rachelle said she wasn't concerned about herself, but what these kinds of comments could do to others.

'An 18 year old with anxiety might not take this "feedback" so well': Rachelle said she wasn't concerned about herself, but what these kinds of comments could do to others

'The young girl who you insult on her beauty blog may suffer depression': Rachelle advised people to think twice before making a comment as they are unaware of the circumstances surrounding a person

'My point is, Im 34 years old, thick skinned and dont easily offend. However, an 18 year old with anxiety might not take this "feedback" so well,' she said, adding that most of the negative comments were from people the same age as her parents.

'If you or your children are starting a blog, posting photos online just know exactly that. They are public, people are cruel and while its nice to be acknowledged, in the grand scheme of things its really nothing.'

Rachelle advised people to think twice before making a comment as they are unaware of the circumstances the person they are commenting about may be dealing with.

The original post: 'To anyone who thinks that working mums have it all together. Ummm no......[sic],' the Melbourne-based council worker wrote on Facebook next to a photo of herself in the car

Relatable: 'My children get in the car and they're eating and it's all crazy so I thought "why not share and see if people can relate" and obviously they can,' Rachelle said

'If you are a troll or thinking of making a negative comment think twice the young girl who you insult on her beauty blog may suffer depression, the mother that you say is a "bad mother" may have PND,' she said.

'The child you call ugly is just an innocent child and has done nothing to you.'

She concluded by saying she will be watching her children very closely when they start using social media and said she had taken the experience as a lesson.

'Be kind people, it costs nothing,' Rachelle said.

Early starts: 'When I go to work I get up earlier than my kids so I can look a little bit put together beforehand,' Rachelle said

Rachelle's post about being a working mother went viral earlier this month.

'To anyone who thinks that working mums have it all together. Ummm no......[sic],' the Melbourne-based council worker wrote on Facebook next to a photo of herself in the car.

'My car is dirty.....filthy dirty. Filled with toys, juice boxes, lolly wrappers, red bull cans and way too many sultanas to even bother cleaning,' she wrote.

'I have shopping on the passenger seat that I quickly grabbed at lunch time, schlepped all around Richmond and finally back to my car.

'It may appear that working mums have it together but we are really all just running around, muddling through and trying to make it all work, so no one is let down or left out.'

'We all need to be supporting each other': Rachelle concluded by saying she is 'grateful' for her family and her job but 'it's not easy' and the post has since received over 44,000 reactions

Rachelle concluded by saying she is 'grateful' for her family and her job but 'it's not easy' and the post has since received over 44,000 reactions.

Rachelle said there should never be a debate between working mums and those who stay home as they both have their own struggles and work incredibly hard.

'We need to all be supporting each other... I work hard and when it comes to stay-at-home mums I don't know how they do it,' she told Daily Mail Australia.
But when the 'guard' punches the 'spectator', there's stone cold silence

Onlookers call out for the police, with one shouting through palace gates

Visitors to Buckingham Palace were left calling for the police when a prankster punched a fellow actor who had dressed up as a Queen's Guard.

In the stunt performed by online jokers Trollstation outside the royal residence, an actor in the uniform of the Queen's Guard - pretended to be knocked out cold after answering back to his partner in crime who was 'mocking' him.

But onlookers who had no idea it was all for show were appalled and a member of the public tried to raise the alarm by crying out through the Palace gates as the 'soldier' lay on the floor.

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The pranksters filmed the stunt outside Buckingham Palace, with one dressed as a Queen's Guard and the other posing as a spectator

But as the spectator taunts the 'guard', he warns him to step back while stamping his feet

The actors then filmed another stunt in which the tables were turned and the actor dressed as the guard lashed out at his fellow conspirator, who was playing a member of the public at nearby Horse Guards - the official entrance to St James's Park and Buckingham Palace.

The video captures the actor again taunts his friend dressed as the guard and waves his hands in front of his face, boasting that he is unable to do anything about it as he's 'not allowed'.

'Step away from the Queen's Guard', shouts the pretend soldier.

Despite a member of the public asking the prankster spectator 'not to be an idiot' and to leave the 'guard' alone, he persists - and then performs a robot-style dance in front of him.

But instead the 'spectator' punches him to the floor, leaving a large group of onlookers stunned

This woman grabs onto the prankster responsible for the blow and shouts for someone to call the police, along with other people in the crowd

The same concerned lady shouts through the palace gates in a bid to grab the attention of security there

But the 'guard' then takes a swing to his face, knocking him to the floor in the realistic-looking stunt.

He then then retrieves his tall fur hat from the floor, and stands upright like nothing has happened - with his friend lying on the ground in front of him.

But instead of calling for the police, the large group of onlookers are left in a stunned silence and don't move.

They then filmed a second clip outside Horse Guards and it was met with a very different response

The spectator taunts the 'guard' again, but this time it's the prankster in uniform that pretends to lash out

The actor posing as a member of the public fakes being knocked out and lies on the floor motionless

The videos have had more than half a million views in total, and have been shared thousands of times.

Another similar stunt, filmed outside the Tower of London, sees the pranksters posing as a royal guard and spectator rolling around on the floor fighting - and has had a further 450,000 views.

Trollstation are well-known for their controversial stunts and 'social experiments' which have seen the police called on a number of occasions including one using toy guns.

But instead of rallying to his defence, the onlookers are left in a stunned silence and don't move

The large crowd - including children - watch as the pretend guard picks his tall fur hat up from the floor and stands upright like nothing has happened

Other antics have included invading a pitch at Spurs and actors disguising themselves as Middle Eastern oil billionaires carrying a fake bag of money to buy properties.

Social experiments to establish how London reacts to provocative behaviour have included an actor pretending to hit his pregnant girlfriend, a woman being groped in a fake assault on a Tube train and another depicting a sexist male employee insulting his female boss.
A mother who was a cruise ship dancer in her youth is relishing the chance to have a second shot at fame with her daughters.

Sales executive Lisa Ward, from Cambridge, said her daughters Aggie, nine, and Lydia, seven, take after her as natural born performers and they have been in the showbiz industry since they were two.

The family appear on Channel 4 documentary The Tiny Tots Talent Agency which shows the girls attending auditions and winning roles, supported all the way by their mother.

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Lisa Ward is proud of her daughters aged seven and nine who are pursuing parts on stage and screen

The mother of three watches her daughters Aggie, left, and Lydia performing at home. A former professional dancer, she said her talent has 'seeped through' to them

Lisa, pictured with her daughters, said she won't push them to continue if they say they want to quit the showbiz industry later in life but admits she would be disappointed

So far the two girls have been in high demand on stage and screen with Aggie appearing in a Viktoria Modesta music video and Lydia winning a coveted role on a UK tour of the Sound Of Music.

They have also appeared in local stage productions and pantomimes and been cast in national advertising campaigns.

Lisa said she is proud of everything they have achieved so far and she hopes it is just the start of their career in the industry.

She said: 'My friends smile and say "here she goes again" because I am so proud of what they have achieved.

'It is lovely to share that with friends and family and for them to say "well done".

'They are only seven and nine, they may turn around at 16 and say "we don't want to do this any more" and I would say "that is fine" but secretly I would be disappointed. If I am perfectly honest it is my dream as well as their dream.'

Starring roles Lydia, left, has had so far include playing Gretel in a UK tour of the Sound Of Music while Aggie has appeared in a Viktoria Modesta music video

The mother-of-three revealed that in her 20s she danced professionally at holiday camps and on cruise ships and enjoyed being part of the cabaret circuit.

She said her talent for performing 'has seeped through to my girls' and she has signed them up with the BizzyKidz Agency to ensure they will be given opportunities to shine.

She admits she is a 'little bit obsessive' about following the agency on Twitter to regularly check what auditions are coming up that her daughters may be suitable for.

She said it is worth the effort to take the girls to casting calls and auditions where the competition is fierce.

She explained: 'Sometimes I get flack from family members saying, "oh what a waste of time, all the money you spend to get to London to audition" but when you get the yes it is such an amazing feeling for them and they are so excited. What a wonderful childhood to have.'

Manager of BizzyKidz Talent Agency agency Debi Clark, centre, with some of the young models and performers on her books who share their stories in a new Channel 4 documentary

A West End production is the most sought after role so she was delighted when Lydia won the part of Gretel in the Sound Of Music tour, even though it meant the little girl was away from home for days at a time.

Dropping Lydia off at the airport so she could fly to Belfast for her professional stage debut, a tearful Lisa admitted it is hard having Lydia away from home. But the tour was too good an opportunity for her to miss.

She said: 'A couple of friends and family members have said, "oh gosh I didn't know she would have to stay away" and they are surprised when I say she is going away between three and six days a time.

'But again that is something I have thought about from the beginning asking myself, "am I happy with her doing that?" I have had a few months to come to terms with that now.'

Lisa Ward says she won't push her children, including Lydia, to perform if they decide they don't to later in life

She added: 'Lydia is very independent and wilful, she knows what she wants so I don't have any doubt she won't cope.

'You have to be in it and understand it and you have to know your child loves it and thrives from it to be able to let them go and do that.'

Lydia said was nervous about being away from home on the tour but was excited about performing.

Her moves and those of the rest of the child cast are all choreographed by award winner Bill Deamer, who admits he expects the best at all times from all his performers - even seven-year-olds like Lydia.

He said: 'I will never treat them like "hello darling, hello little one", they are young adults. You give them all the love and support they need but you have to push because if they think they can get away with something they will.'

He was impressed with Lydia, and following her successful debut, Lisa said she was keen to do more and she will carry on auditioning for West End shows along with her older sister.

Lisa admits her own ambition is drive by spending her 20s dancing on cruise ships and in cabaret

Lisa says Aggie and Lydia are competitive and can get upset if one has been booked and the other hasn't

Lisa said the only drawback of both the sisters trying to make it in the industry is they often have to compete for the same parts and it can be hard for one if the other wins.

She admitted: 'They are generally quite competitive. That is good in some ways as it gives them at energy to do what they are doing but it can be quite draining at times.

'Lydia has had four castings in a row recently and Aggie hasn't had one so gets been a bit despondent wondering "why aren't I getting picked?"

'I have to say to her "this will happen". I am trying to teach them when one gets a job and the other doesn't we have to be supportive and proud of them because next time it will be your turn.'

While she said she won't push her daughters to carry on if they choose not to when they are older, but she said she hopes they will remain on their current path to stardom.

Lisa has had her daughters signed with the London agency BizzyKidz and stalks them online to keep an eye out for roles that would suit either of the girls

She said: 'It would be a dream come true for them to carry on what they are doing and get some good roles whether that be theatre or film. They work so hard and I know they have the ability to do it. Like any mother I am incredibly proud.'

The Wards shares their story in the second part of the documentary which lifts the lid on the London talent agency BizzyKidz, which is the UK's largest organisations of its kind.

The eye-opening new documentary series explores the extraordinary lives of showbiz kids.

After the first episode aired last week, viewers took to Twitter to say how cute and impressive many of the young performers and models were.

But others criticised the parents for pushing their children into doing too much too soon.

Among them was @ifIDoSaySoMyself who wrote: 'Well Tiny Tots Talent was an hour long lesson on how NOT to bring up kids #stolen childhood.'

Proud mother Lisa watches her daughter perform next to her son Harrison, who is more interested in football, than having a career on the stage

Sister Lydia, left, and Aggie have been performing since they were two and can be competitive with one another about winning roles

Caroline McKenzie agreed saying some of the parents featured were 'too pushy and deluded'. She added: 'Hope the kids find their own way in life in 5 to ten years before harmed.'

Manager of the agency Debi Clark, who is a mother herself, said dealing with pushy parents is all part of the job.

'I've had parents email [ultrasound] scans to me trying to get on the books but that's pushing it a little bit,' she said.

She added: 'People are going to have opinions about children being used in this industry especially babies because they don't have a choice you know.

'But this industry is so highly regulated we can't even breathe without licensing regulations and everything adhered to.

'They (the babies) are so well looked after and well paid in the process. We are here for a reason we are the protection, we are the provider of work and the protection between client and child.'

Viewers watching last week's first episode of Tiny Tots Talent Agency were critical of the parents
Women have been bravely sharing their stories about facing their rapists in court in a series of heartfelt confessions - from the uplifting to the heart-wrenching.

Using the secret-sharing app Whisper - which allows users to make anonymous confessions without the risk of being identified - dozens of people have laid bare the chilling reality of having to come face-to-face with their attackers.

'I testified against my rapist today,' wrote one user from Nebraska. 'It was the most empowering thing I have ever done in my life.' She also urged other victims not to be afraid of coming forward.

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'It was the most empowering thing I have ever done in my life... Don't be afraid': Women have been bravely sharing their stories about facing their rapists in court in a series of heartfelt confessions on Whisper

'The closer I get to my court date,' the closer I get to a full mental breakdown,' one woman confessed

One woman expressed her despair after being told there was 'nothing' police could do in terms of prosecuting her attacker (left) while another victim said she was terrified about appearing in court (right)

Another user from Swampscott, Massachusetts, wrote: 'The closer I get to my court date, the closer I get to a full mental break down. I don't want to see my rapist again.'

One woman from Portland revealed that she had testified against her attacker 12 years after the incident - only to be told that the police were powerless to help because 'it happened so long ago'.

Another victim, who was also forced to wait almost a decade for justice, confessed that she was terrified about appearing on the witness stand. 'I honestly do not want to. I'm trying to be brave.'

She wasn't the only one feeling apprehensive about her court appearance. 'In one week I'm forced to see my rapist in court,' said one woman from East Taunton, Massachusetts. 'I can't do this. I'm not ready. They're just going to let him walk.'

'I can't do this': One victim felt that they were 'not ready' to face their rapist in court

'I don't trust the courts to deliver justice if I testify,' said one victim whose attacker had entered a plea bargain

Using the secret-sharing app Whisper - which allows users to make anonymous confessions without fear of being identified - women have laid bare the chilling reality of having to come face to face with their attackers

'I don't trust the courts to deliver justice if I testify,' wrote another user. 'My rapist is trying to plea bargain. It feels like negotiating with a terrorist.'

Another revealed she was terrified of 'reliving' her ordeal by going to court. 'And then I become even more depressed,' she explained.

One victim confessed the prospect of seeing her rapist was 'scary'. 'He took my childhood and my happiness, not just my innocence,' she said. 'I did not ask for this.'

'I was raped 4 years ago,' another user wrote. 'Court date got canceled. And the case was thrown away. They let him go (sic.).'

Many users confessed that they found the prospect of coming face-to-face with their attacker terrifying

'They let him go': One woman revealed that her rapist was let off after her court date got cancelled

It wasn't all negative: One user said she felt like 'a new woman' after facing her attacker (left) while another said she felt she could 'finally walk free without fear' after her rapist was found guilty in court (right)

However, it wasn't a negative experience for everyone. One woman wrote: 'This week I have faced my rapist in court. I feel like a new woman. I can breathe again.' Another said she could 'finally walk free without fear; after her rapist was found guilty.

One woman expressed her despair after evidence was tampered with, meaning that her rapist - who had initially been put behind bars - was due to walk free. 'I'm done,' she said.

But one woman confessed to feeling 'secretly relieved' after learning that her District Attorney (DA) wouldn't be prosecuting her attacker. 'I was terrified to have to tell every detail in front of a court full of people,' she explained.

'I'm done' said one victim whose attacker won't be going to trial after evidence was 'messed with'
A former Vogue cover model who has struggled with addiction and depression has revealed how she used drugs to cover her feelings of anxiety and not fitting in, admitting that this downward spiral eventually led led her to attempt suicide.

Adwoa Aboah, 23, who is from London but has modeled on catwalks all over the world and fronted campaigns for the likes of H&M and Calvin Klein, candidly shared her experience with overcoming addiction while shedding her clothes as part of StyleLikeU's video series, The What's Underneath Project, in which participants are asked to strip down to show that style is really about being comfortable in your own skin.

'I just didn't want to be Adwoa,' she admits in the clip. 'That self-hatred is something I work on on a daily basis.'

Opening up: Model Adwoa Aboah, 23, appears in a new video for StyleLikeU, in which she strips down on camera, while breaking down her emotional barriers and detailing her struggle with depression and addiction

The model, who was treated for depression, bipolar disorder, and addiction, explains that, as a child and as a teen, she wanted 'to be like someone else', noting that all the girls she saw around her were 'blonde, white, blue-eyed, [and] sexy.'

'All the boys fancied them,' she recalls.

'I had braids. Everyone had straight hair, and then I got straight hair and felt weird. I actually wore a hat for two years because I was so embarrassed.'

While slowly shedding all of her clothing in front of the camera, Adwoa, who recently appeared on the cover of Italian Vogue, continues to describe how she fell into drug addiction as a young teen, explaining that it all began with her personal insecurities about the way she looked and whether or not she could fit in with the people around her.

I think I was born slightly sad... I remember thinking I couldn't be bother to feel emotions anymore

Beginning to tear up, she explains that she never felt as though she had any 'positive influences' in her life growing up, and that she didn't have anyone close to her that she felt she could look to for help or advice.

'I think I was born slightly sad,' she adds in a heartbreaking confession. 'I really remember thinking that I couldn't be bothered to feel any emotions anymore.'

Continuing to drop her accessories and her clothing, the Calvin Klein model details how her drug addiction began to spiral out of control when she was just 14 years old and discovered drugs for the first time.

'I remember getting drunk on my 14th birthday and trying some spliff and then very quickly it just went on to coke, but I was never really into that. And then as soon as I found Ketamine it just kind of went down hill from there.

'[Ketamine] is like a horse tranquilizer. That was the one that really got me because it just numbs you out.

'[I was doing drugs] every day. My favorite was just sitting in my room and just [doing drugs] by myself.'

Baring it all: The London-born model admits that she began taking drugs when she was just 14, after doing a spliff at her birthday party, and it wasn't long before she started doing horse tranquilizer Ketamine

Shedding her insecurities: Adwoa, who has modeled for the likes of H&M and Calvin Klein, explains how she was sent to rehab in Arizona by her parents, where she slowly began to deal with her insecurities

Emotional: During her time in rehab, the model admitted that she found comfort in some of the older patients who 'loved her' and cared for her, acting just like her 'mothers', breaking down as she recalled their kindness

Adwoa, who attended boarding school as a teen, explains that, despite her insecurities, she could always find people to party with - and therefore always had people around her with whom she would do drugs. In fact, she says, the constant cycle of drug abuse didn't stop until her parents stepped in and sent her to a rehab facility in Arizona.

'It was my choice to come out with everything and be like I've got a problem,' she said. 'This has been what's happening. They definitely always known that I took drugs I just don't think they knew the amount.

'It was a proper intervention. My psychiatrist, Claire, who is the most amazing woman in the world, she was there. Then in the other corner was this other woman... from Cottonwood [rehab center].'

During the intervention, Adwoa recalls everyone around her breaking down in tears, but admits that she was unable to 'feel anything', saying that, if anything, she may have actually 'smiled' during the painful experience.

She explains that many of her friends took drugs, which helped her to 'get away with it' for a long time - because doing drugs wasn't seen as being out of the ordinary as far as they were concerned.

But Adwoa admits that the start of her modeling career contributed to her feelings of insecurity, and her use of drugs to dull her emotional pain.

'Rejection from [modeling], losing out on jobs and being judged on your appearance... I definitely grew a second skin and got used to it, but more so now I realized that it definitely contributed to a lot of the things I feel about myself,' she explains in the clip, while perching barefoot on a stool against a plain white backdrop.

And even when she found success within the fashion industry, Adwoa says it did little to boost her self-esteem.

Opening up: 'I just didn't want to be Adwoa and that self hatred is something that I work on on a daily basis,' the model admits during the emotional clip

Everything out in the open: At the end of the video, Adwoa is left perched on a stool in nothing but her underwear, admitting that she feels at her most 'vulnerable' when she cries - not when she is naked

Looking ahead: 'I realized I just can't be anyone else. I might not love myself all of the time, but I am pretty alright,' Adwoa says of her battle to start loving herself for who she is

'I definitely don't think it made me feel any better about myself being in a magazine,' she said. 'I think if you don't like being in your skin it doesn't matter how many times people say you are beautiful or how many jobs you get or whatever it is.

'I just didn't want to be Adwoa and that self hatred is something that I work on on a daily basis.'

Speaking about her time spent in the Arizona rehab facility, the model, who counts fellow fashion star Cara Delevingne as one of her closest friends, says she struggled to come out of her shell, explaining that she was 'so shy' and 'didn't want to make friends'.

But she found comfort in some of the older patients, who, a teary Adwoa says, were like 'mothers' to her, and 'loved her' and cared for her while she was there.

I just didn't want to be Adwoa, and that self hatred is something I work on daily

'They really loved me,' she added. 'I had pushed everyone away and these women... they got me to an emotional level. And I was so not used to feeling all these things. I had never cried in public.

'I didn't want to leave in the end.'

But although Adwoa had achieved something momentous as far as her rehab was concerned, she still struggled to kick her drug habit, even after undergoing the intensive treatment in Arizona.

'[I] had three more treatments after [Arizona],' she says in the video. 'I went into sober living, like a halfway house and I overdosed straight away.

'I was found in the bathroom and had to be taken to hospital.

'I had just lost a friend to an overdose, so my dad couldn't believe that that hadn't taught me anything.'

While Adwoa says that she did everything she good to 'be a new person' and 'throw herself into life', she couldn't escape her demons, and on October 3, 2015, she tried to commit suicide with an overdose.

Firm friends: The model counts fellow fashion star Cara Delevingne as one of her closest friends, and the pair have both spoken out about their own personal battles with insecurities in the past

Fashion star: Adwoa, pictured on the catwalk during London Fashion Week in February 2014, says she really struggled to find happiness in her modeling success

'I was in a coma for four days,' she says. 'It was a close one. My parents put me in psychiatric care for a month.

'There I was just kind of kept safe from myself. I spent a lot of time sitting in my room. Cottonwood only got me to a level; when I got back to London, I was still making lovely friends, I had a great counselor, it all seemed to be going pretty well on the outside.

'But inside, I was just so tired and in a lot of pain.'

It wasn't until Christmas 2015 that she began to realize how lucky she is to be alive - and to have loving family members around her.

'From then on I put my all into it. I started opening up,' she explained. 'I started doing everything that everyone told me to do. I went to meetings. I started talking to my counselor regularly.'

And since then, Adwoa says that she has finally felt able to take full advantage of the 'many opportunities that have come my way', setting up a female-focused online forum called Gurls Talk, as well as a budding charity venture which she is in the process of establishing.

'It is just about opening up a space within schools where we as women and girls can talk about whatever we want,' she explains.

'They tell me things they would never tell anyone, so I've got to meet them halfway. I got to you know start confiding in them these 15-year-old girls, and I can't tell you how nervous that makes me feel.'

She goes on to admit that she feels most vulnerable when she cries, because she feels like it gives people the opportunity to really 'see her', before explaining that - although she doesn't see this in every photo - she is able to feel truly beautiful when her boyfriend takes pictures of her, 'because it's me, versus me with make-up or me pretending to be something else'.
The mere word perm is enough to transport most women of a certain age straight back to the Eighties and those unflattering corkscrew curls.

So Kylie Minogue, 47, must have been feeling nostalgic when she stepped out this week with enormous ringlets that appeared to be the result of a perm - or permanent wave.

Her new fiance, 28-year-old Joshua Sasse, was not born when Kylie debuted her ringlets in 1986 on Neighbours.

Here, Femail writers recall their own encounters with the dreaded perm...

Kylie Minogue, 47, must have been feeling nostalgic when she stepped out this week with enormous ringlets that appeared to be the result of a perm - or permanent wave

I looked like Leo Sayer's sister

Frances Hardy, 58

Here I am, circa 1983, sporting the most preposterous poodle perm. My hair was so big, it should have come with its own maximum headroom warning.

Back then, it was essential not only to have a perm, but also to have high hair.

Every self-respecting twentysomethings hair was expected to be unfeasibly curly, and it was never allowed to be flat.

So the minute a perm started to grow out on top - at the first hint that it couldnt be teased into a gravity-defying pompadour - wed rush to the salon to have what we called a root perm.

Frances Hardy, 58, sported 'the most preposterous poodle perm' in 1983 (right). She wrote: 'I cant think what possessed me, other than a desire to be in the vanguard of fashion'

How many hours did I fritter away in thrall to the tyranny of my high-maintenance hairdo? I dread to imagine. But I do know that, for an entire decade during the Eighties, I never left the house unless I looked as if I was wearing a fuzzy microphone on my head.

I was 19 when I had my first perm, in 1976. I went into the salon with my sleek, dark hair flicked back at the sides - we all looked like low-budget versions of Farrah Fawcett at the time  and came out resembling Leo Sayers sister.

I cant think what possessed me, other than a desire to be in the vanguard of fashion. I was in my first year at university, and the change in my appearance was so dramatic that even my Anglo-Saxon tutor noticed.

What on earth have you done to your lovely hair? he asked, aghast, as I arrived for a tutorial with a barnet treble its usual volume.

I took it as a compliment. If Dr Gough thought it looked awful, surely it must be all right.

Mercilessly mocked for my poodle makeover

Linda Kelsey, 64

When, in 1978, my first marriage came to an end after six years, the way to move on seemed obvious. Get a new job, a new place to live - and, most important of all, a new hairdo.

It would be the hairdo that would propel the 26-year-old me to a glamorous new life after a traumatic relationship breakdown.

The job fell into my lap when the editor of the new Company magazine invited me to be her deputy. It meant I could now afford a mortgage on my own.

It was the hairdo I agonised over most. Perms werent yet all the rage, but I was a big fan of Barbra Streisand and she had a perm.

I thought if I had one, too, it might add volume and body to my rather fine and wavy mop, which needed daily blow-drying to give it any semblance of style at all.

Linda Kelsey, 64, got her perm in 1978 (right) after her first marriage came to an end after six years when she was 26

Id have preferred a Charlies Angels job if I could - Farrah Fawcetts fabulous flicks were what we all wanted - but I didnt have enough hair to carry it off.

Over the years, my hair had been getting shorter, going from fringed and shoulder-length to a longish bob, because I was never satisfied with how it looked. I took myself off to a posh salon on account of horror stories Id heard about cheap perms making your hair fall out, yet I still remember the acrid stink of the chemicals as they went on.

Well, the perm certainly gave me the appearance of having more hair! And I no longer had to worry about my hair frizzing in the rain, as it was frizzy the whole time. But instead of being pleased with my easy new style, I was mortified.

So were my friends, who were quick to point out I resembled an over-prettified poodle. I dont remember any young man saying anything flattering about it.

After six or so weeks, I was delighted to see the re-emergence of my limp locks, and resolved to never again complain about the daily faff of washing and straightening them.

I dont know if there was any connection, but no sooner had the horrible perm dissolved than I met the next love of my life.

By the mid-Eighties, when everyone started jumping on the perm bandwagon, I felt rather smug because Id been through it and had come out the other side, while they were still going to have to learn the hard way.

My father was left speechless

Samantha Brick, 45

During my early teens, I spent hours furiously backcombing my fine hair, desperate for a barnet worthy of foxy troublemaker Lucy Ewing in Dallas. Oh, how I coveted her long, flowing blonde curls, which magnetised men and somehow got them to do exactly what she wanted.

So when a local hairdresser had a promotion on perms, I took the first available appointment.

Were such glamorous tresses achievable in a Birmingham surburban hairdressers? The 15-year-old me hoped so.

Samantha Brick, 45, thought she looked 'less like Lucy Ewing and more like a reject from Ozzy Osbournes Black Sabbath' after her hair make-over (right)

I felt more like Hilda Ogden from Corrie than a Hollywood star as thin rubber rollers were wound tightly on to my forehead. I ignored the overpowering chemical smell of the lotion that was applied to set the curls, and the sensation of my scalp being singed as it started to work.

I avoided the mirror as cotton wool was wrapped inelegantly around my scalp. But finally, as I left the salon, I had to face the truth: I looked less like Lucy Ewing and more like a reject from Ozzy Osbournes Black Sabbath. My father was speechless. When he did find his voice, it was to refer to me as The Poodle.

Mum maintained a diplomatic silence, remembering all too well my previous celebrity hair disasters: the unflattering Purdey (Joanna Lumley in The Avengers) at junior school and the Lady Di flick as I entered my teens.

But its the perm that I regret most. Because I understand from my brother-in-law that, when he goes back to reunions at the school we both attended, Im not remembered for my career in television or even as an author.

No - Im known as the one with the poodle hair.

I thought I'd make Patrick Swayze swoon

Alice Smellie, 43

As the curlers were gently removed from my hair, I gazed with rapture at the ringlets surrounding my face and bobbing about my chin. I was almost 18 and my birthday present from my parents was my first-ever perm.

The sight of Kylie Minogue with curly hair in yesterdays Mail gave me a flashback to November 1990. My reasons for wanting curly hair were threefold.

First, I was spending all my time with my head tipped upside down, hair stiff with volumising mousse and desperately trying to scrunch curls into my bone-straight locks.

Alice Smellie, 43, wanted to look like Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing when she got her perm done in November 1990 at 18 (right)

Second, I wanted to look like Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing so that when Patrick Swayze finally made an appearance in Farrers Coffee Shop on Kendal High Street and I served him with a shortbread, he would be my boyfriend.

Third, I genuinely believed that having curly hair would improve my quality of life. Girls with curls were pretty and fun.

I went to school the Monday following The Perm and spent the whole day waiting for my life to change for the better. Perhaps it needed more time.

Four weeks later, it was Christmas Eve. I had a new, black puff-sleeved dress and my hair was at peak curl. My friends and I headed off for Malibu and lemonades in Kendals bars. Miraculously, a boy I liked finally gave me a kiss.

The word perm may not seem romantic, but for me, its a word resonant with youth, promise and a world where good hair genuinely can make all the difference.

I was an orange frizzball

Kathryn Knight, 44

Summer of 1987 and sixth-form beckoned at my school in Bolton - and with it the chance to wear my own clothes instead of uniform.

At last! A golden opportunity to shed my geeky schoolgirl self and reveal the grown-up 16-year-old sophisticate I knew was lurking inside.

The key to this, I firmly believed, was a perm. Several of the coolest girls in my year had them, and now I would join their elite ranks. My bouncing curls would mark a new chapter and, I hoped, even bring me my first boyfriend.

Kathryn Knight, 44, thought her bouncy curls (right) would 'mark a new chapter and, I hoped, even bring me my first boyfriend'

The picture I took to my hairdresser by way of illustration was Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan - a big ask, given that her hair was shoulder-length and I had a short, blonde bob.

The result, two hours later, was less tumbling waves than gigantic frizzball. An oddly coloured ball, moreover, because the perm solution reacted with my blonde highlights and turned them a peculiar shade of orange. I knew it wasnt good, an instinct confirmed when I called on my best friend. Her jaw actually dropped when she saw me, at which point I promptly burst into tears.

The first hair wash at home only made things worse, giving the perm the texture of Velcro. In the end, the only way to get rid of it was to chop it off altogether

And so, a month after I entered sixth-form with all my big plans, I was sporting a short back and sides.

A hairdo only fit for radio

Jenni Murray, 65

Oh, what a terrible shock to look back at myself with that frizzy mop! You could have turned me upside down and used me to clean the kitchen floor.

But in the late Eighties, it was the height of fashion. And perms had been part of my life for as long as I could remember - from the Twink home perms my mother gave me to jazz up my rod-straight locks, to the body perms they insisted on when I first went on TV in my 20s.

Not really curly, certainly not frizzy, just to add a bit of lift and femininity, as they used to say in make-up.

Jenni Murray, 65, said her hair 'got worse' when she joined Womans Hour radio in 1987 (right)

I hated going to the hairdresser once every six weeks to be covered in stinking perm solution.

But my hair got worse when I joined Womans Hour - this photo was taken soon after in 1987.

Oh, the joy of the radio, where the way you look hardly matters. I had a new baby and a four-year-old, too. But the advantage of the frizzy look was that you could just have a quick shower and leave it to dry. None of that time-consuming blow-drying every day.

I think it was Him Indoors who finally told me that I looked like a chubby Barbra Streisand on a bad hair day. Thats what it took to make me get a good cut and rebuild my relationship with my hairdryer.

It was loathing at first sight

Wendy Leigh

When I look at this photograph of myself in 1985, I cant quite believe that was me. Thank goodness, it wasnt for very long.

I only got my dreadful perm in a vain attempt to fix the damage I had done to my hair while chasing the in style of the previous decade.

As a child, I had thick, curly hair, but at 16, I stupidly had it straightened. In the midst of the process, my head started to burn, and half of my hair fell out in clumps. I should have collapsed in tears, but once the pain had subsided, I was thrilled. I now had long, straight, swinging London hair.

Wendy Leigh said her hair looked like her head was 'covered in curled-up wire' because of her Eighties perm (right)

Flash forward to the Eighties and I was disgusted with my limp, lacklustre locks.

So I decided to take the plunge. But, of course, my lost crowning glory could not be restored using harsh chemicals. The moment I caught sight of the end result, I loathed and despised it. It looked as if my head was covered in curled-up wire.

I had it reversed by some kind of a chemical process two months later.

These days, I wear extensions that my hairdresser artfully crafts into ringlets. No pixie-style hair for me. As far as Im concerned, Eighties-type volume, albeit not achieved by a perm, wins every time.




As the eagerly anticipated finale for Married At First Sight Australia approaches, many are questioning whether their favourite couples will last the distance.

And with Clare and Jono already broken up and Simone and Xavier on the rocks, all eyes are firmly on Christie, her farmer beau Mark, Erin and Bryce.

A new preview for Wednesday night's episode, which promises 'tears, heartbreak and a love that will conquer all', sees a conflicted Mark, from Melbourne, concerned about his relationship with Christie, who's based in Sydney.

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'I'm pretty torn': As the eagerly anticipated finale for Married At First Sight Australia approaches, many are questioning whether their favourite couples will last the distance

Will they make it? A new preview for Wednesday night's episode, sees a conflicted Mark (left), from Melbourne, concerned about his relationship with Christie (right), who's based in Sydney

'I'm pretty torn,' the 36-year-old said during an interview.

Later in the dramatic preview he is seen turning to his TV wife and saying 'you are an amazing person... but.'

In the previous episode the proud farmer travelled seven hours with Christie to her home in Sydney and was seen struggling with 'cabin fever' in the small apartment.

Will the distance break them? Later in the dramatic preview he is seen turning to his TV wife and saying 'you are an amazing person... but'

Is it true? A friend of the couple has since revealed that the pair are in fact still together and told New Idea 'they're really falling for each other' and 'working around interstate commitments'

And while Mark did say he felt 'claustrophobic', he did make the effort to get out and about and see what the big city had to offer.

'There's a lot to consider for me... picking up my whole life and taking myself away from everything I love,' Mark said, 'I've got to make up my mind for sure that I would be happy here.'

Later in the episode, Christie admitted she was was developing strong feelings... despite an initial lack of attraction.

Getting out and about: 'There's a lot to consider for me... picking up my whole life and taking myself away from everything I love,' Mark said when he visited Christie's home

Overcoming obstacles: Also in the preview, Erin and Bryce are seen looking adoringly at each other... despite Bryce's concerns about Erin's lack of plans to have children

Controversial: The 26-year-old previously admitted she had 'never really considered children as a serious thing because I just never really pictured my life with kids for some reason'

A friend of the couple has since revealed that the pair are in fact still together and told New Idea 'they're really falling for each other' and 'working around interstate commitments.'

Also in the preview, Erin and Bryce are seen looking adoringly at each other... despite Bryce's concerns about Erin's lack of plans to have children.

The 26-year-old admitted she had 'never really considered children as a serious thing because I just never really pictured my life with kids for some reason.'

Surprise announcement: The judges are seen congratulating a couple after producers promise a 'surprise announcement of the year'

Bryce said Erin's comments were 'flagged' on his radar as he didn't want to be an 'old father.'

But the pair may have resolved their issues, with a friend revealing Bryce, 31, 'thinks she will change her mind in time.'

'She can't believe her luck. She thought he'd dump her after they talked about kids but Bryce is a lovely guy and Erin is smitten,' a friend told the magazine.

'I'm not wanting dogs': The show's 'villain' Jono is also set to make a comeback for the finale and is seen sitting with an unimpressed Clare

Over it: Based on Clare's Instagram posts since appearing on the show and their dramatic TV breakup, it is very unlikely the pair have plans to patch things over and start fresh

The producers have promised a 'surprise announcement of the year' so whether this comes from Erin and Bryce remains to be seen.

The show's 'villain' Jono is also set to make a comeback for the finale and is seen sitting with an unimpressed Clare after saying he's 'not wanting dogs.'

Based on Clare's Instagram posts since appearing on the show and their dramatic TV breakup, it is very unlikely the pair have plans to patch things over and start fresh.

Not so happily ever after: Xavier and Simone appear to be all smiles in the preview for the episode, but a friend of Simone recently revealed the couple has split due to Xavier's quest for fame

Rocky: 'When filming ended he was a completely different guy,' a friend told New Idea

Xavier and Simone appear to be all smiles in the preview for the episode, but a friend of Simone recently revealed the couple has split due to Xavier's quest for fame.

'When filming ended he was a completely different guy,' the friend told New Idea.
She was taken in by a shelter but stayed trembling in her cage for two days

Nala was found terrified after walking the streets of Christchurch for weeks

The one-year-old pup is 'sweet and affectionate' and very outgoing

It was the incredible moment that touched the hearts of animal lovers across the globe.

Nala the abandoned American staffy cross, who had spent two days cowering in the corner of her cage, was roused from her misery at the sight of a seven-year-old boy.

But while the exchange was incredible, Nala's subsequent recovery has been even more so and today the 'sweet and affectionate' girl is ready to find her forever home.

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'Sweet and affectionate': Nala the American staffy cross was found abandoned on the streets of Christchurch

Fur-ever home: She was taken in by Christchurch Bull Breed Rescue and is now happy, healthy and ready for adoption

Best of friends: A few days after getting up from the corner of her cage Nala started to make a recovery

The one-year-old pup has been put up for adoption by Christchurch Bull Breed Rescue, a dog rescue organisation in New Zealand.

Nala was taken to the shelter she spent weeks wandering the streets alone.

The 'extremely shutdown and terrified' pup remained withdrawn, despite shelter owner Abbey van der Plas's best efforts to coax her out of her cage.

It was not until Ms van der Plas asked her son Zach to come and sit by Nala's cage that the heartbroken dog stood up and tentatively gave her tail a wag, before walking over and licking Ms van der Plas' face.

Sweet two: Nala has spent time with other dogs to help in her recovery, after she spent two days trembling in the corner of her cage

Adorable: 'The shelter was a very scary environment for her and she didn't know how to cope,' Ms van der Plas said

'The shelter was a very scary environment for her and she didn't know how to cope,'it says on the shelter website.

'At some point in her life [she] has lived with a child that has made her feel safe.

'She now loves all people and is a very outgoing and friendly girl.

'She gets on well with other dog and is currently getting used to living with a cat.'

Come a long way: Christchurch Bull Breed Rescue took Nala in after she was found terrified in the street

Instant connection: Owner Abbey van der Plas called over her seven-year-old son Zach to sit by her side, and almost instantaneously, the once shy dog jumped up and walked over

Immediate: Nala's ears prick up the moment she spots Zach coming towards her

Touching: After Zach sat down by the cage Nala started to wag her tail excitedly before sniffing Ms van der Plas' hands

Nala would suit a home where she is not left alone much as she can get anxious, and her crate training is only getting better with time.

Nala's recovery has been an ongoing journey.

After the video went viral online, Ms Van der Plas took to Facebook to thank everyone for their support and share an update on Nala's progress.

Out of her shell: Her recovery was swift, and Ms van der Plas remained confident she would find a new home

'A few days after that video I bought Nala home and she's been slowly coming out of her shell,' she wrote.

'My boy Papa has been showing her the ropes and of course she loves the kids.

'She doesn't like being left alone and needs some confidence building but she's a super sweet girl and one day soon some family will be lucky to have her!'

Ready for love: 'She now loves all people and is a very outgoing and friendly girl,' Ms van der Plas said

Too cute: Nala would suit a home where she is not alone much as she can get quite anxious

Pictures of the once frightened dog showed her looking happy and relaxed in a pink collar and playing with the family dog.

While Nala is ready for a home, the organisation also hopes to use the exposure and raise funds to help them help the dogs in their care through merchandise, events, donations or adoption.
They are cheaper than many high-end masks and are absorbed quickly

The masks replenish the moisture in the skin and reduce dark circles

Jessica Alba and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley are also fans of the product

Model Simone Holtznagel is the latest to don their popular masks

Women have been known to go to extraordinary lengths to ensure a glowing complexion, but how far is too far?

Australian model Simone Holtznagel is the latest celebrity to share a snap of herself wearing gold-infused collagen eye masks - the latest beauty trend sweeping the market.

The striking 21-year-old recently took to Instagram to show off her 24 karat golden eye masks, created by Australian company Lonvitalite, which are believed to replenish moisture and collagen and eliminate dark eye circles and puffiness.

Eye-catching: Australian model Simone Holtznagel is the latest to praise Lonvitalite's golden collagen eye masks

Devoted following: Jessica Alba is also a fan of the golden masks, which are believed to replenish moisture and collagen and eliminate dark eye circles

'Jet lag got me good. Pre shoot prep with my favorite @lonvitalite 24k gold + collagen eye patches. Savior [sic],' the natural beauty wrote on Tuesday.

But Holtznagel isn't the only celebrity to try out the unique patches, with Jessica Alba, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and countless beauty bloggers also praising the quirky masks.

While the sparkling beauty products sound excessive, the 24 karat gold creations are just $32 for a pack of six... considerably cheaper than many other face masks on the market.

Big fan: Model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and countless beauty bloggers have also praised the quirky masks

Impressive: The company claims the mask increases the 'one way absorption rate' of the skin by more than 98 per cent

WHY DO CELEBRITIES LOVE LONVITALITE? The Queensland-based company prides itself on their natural plant based collagen. Their masks and serums are completely cruelty free. Their products are available from the top six Australian beauty websites. Their golden eye masks have been reviewed and praised by thousands the world over. Advertisement

The company also claims the mask increases the 'one way absorption rate' of the skin by more than 98 per cent - 10 times the rate of a 'traditional' eye mask.

Ingredients include vitamin C, E and B3, grape seed extract, rose essential oil and red algae extract... a combination of nutrients thought to leave the skin looking 'visibly bright and youthful.'

The popular company also boasts over 28,800 followers on Instagram where they often share snaps of their masks worn by notable Australian and global celebrities.

Taking the beauty world by storm: The popular company also boasts over 28,800 followers on Instagram where they often share snaps of their masks worn by notable Australian and global celebrities

Complex: Ingredients include vitamin C, E and B3, grape seed extract, rose essential oil and red algae extract... a combination of nutrients thought to leave the skin looking 'visibly bright and youthful'
Jessa Duggar has taken her five-month-old son Spurgeon on an international adventure to Central America so the infant could meet her older sister Jill and her husband Derick Dillard for the first time.

The 23-year-old was joined by husband Ben Seewald, 20, for the trip, which was filmed for Tuesday night's episode of the TLC reality series Jill & Jessa: Counting On.

Jill and Derick have been doing missionary work in Central America, and in a preview clip from the episode, he can be seen picking up Jessa and Ben up from the airport as he happily meets their baby boy in person.

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Back together: Jessa Duggar's brother-in-law Derick Dillard happily meets his five-month-old nephew Spurgeon for the first time on Tuesday night's episode of the TLC series Jill & Jessa: Counting On

Airport arrival: Jessa, 23, and her husband Ben Seewald, 20, traveled to Central America to visit her sister Jill's family after the November birth of their first son

Finally reunited: Derick gave Jessa a warm hug when he picked her and her family up from the airport

'When we came out of the airport, Derrick was there to meet us and pick us up, so it was really exciting to get to see him,' Jessa tells the cameras.

Derick immediately bends over to pick up Spurgeon, who is resting in his baby carrier. The proud uncle happily lifts the smiling little boy over his head as he showers him with kisses.

'We had seen Spurgeon on video conference, but this is my first time to get to meet him in person, and I got to pick him,' he tells the cameras.

Loving uncle: Derick couldn't wait to meet his nephew Spurgeon, who was happily sitting in his car seat

Happy baby: Spurgeon was all smiles as his uncle Derick lifted him up over his head during their first meeting

Precious moment: Derick happily cuddled and kissed Spurgeon during the happy family reunion at the airport

'He's a solid guy, and he's just really a chill baby, and he seems like a happy baby. Just a special time to get to hold him.'

After telling Spurgeon that he has been waiting to meet him. he points out that it has been about seven months since Israel, his one-year-old son with Jill, was that small.

And while they had a sweet family reunion at the airport, Jessa was itching to see her 24-year-old sister Jill and her nephew Israel.

'Jill and Izzy didn't come to the airport, and so we are dying to get over to the house and meet them,' Jessa explains.

Big adventure: Ben put Spurgeon back into his car seat as they prepared to go and see Jill and Derick's one-year-old son Israel

Anticipation: 'Jill and Izzy didn't come to the airport, and so we are dying to get over to the house and meet them,' Jessa said in the clip

Well-rested baby: While Derick drove them home from the airport, Jessa gushed that Spurgeon slept through most of their flights

Although the cousins have met via video chat, this is the first time that the boys get to hang out in person.

While Derick drives them to his home, Jessa gushes about how good Spurgeon was during their trek from their home in Arkansas to Central America.

'He did pretty good. He slept on both flights a majority of the time,' she recalls of their trip.

'He just sleeps whenever you know? He doesn't have a whole lot on his schedule,' Ben adds.

Family adventure: Jill (right) and Derick have been living in Central America with their son Israel since September

Perfect portrait: Ben and Jessa welcomed Spurgeon into the world on November 5. The couple are pictured with their son the week of his four-month birthday in March

Big event: Israel (left) celebrated his first birthday on April 6. This is the first time he will meet his baby cousin Spurgeon (right)

When it comes to the Duggars, distance clearly makes the heart grow fonder as Jessa can't wait to be reunited with her sister and her nephew.

'The drive to meet up with Jilly and Izzy seemed really long because there was so much anticipation,' she admits.

While fans of the show will have to wait until tonight to see the entire reunion, it was undoubtedly a monumental occasion for the tight-knit sisters.
A woman whose son almost died after falling off his bike without a helmet is warning other parents of the dangers of letting their own children cycle without protection by sharing his story online, along with graphic pictures of his horrific injury.

Tiffany A Rivera, a mother-of-two living in West Palm Beach, Florida, recently went through a nightmarish ordeal with her 10-year-old son Jaden, when the little boy came home with a scraped elbow and knee, an ordeal that she later shared on Facebook.

'On Monday March 21, 2016, my 10-year-old son Jaden was riding his bike without a helmet,' Tiffany wrote online. 'While riding his bike he fell off scraping up his elbow and knee.'

Holding close: Mother-of-two Tiffany A Rivera of West Palm Beach, Florida, has penned a cautionary tale for parents about wearing helmets after her 10-year-old son Jaden (left) nearly died from a fall from his bike

Telling the story: In her revealing Facebook post, Tiffany included photos that showed the ailing Jaden arriving at the hospital two days after falling from his bike

She added: 'When he was asked if anything else hurt his only complaints where his elbow and knee. He showed no signs of trauma and continued about his day.'

Two days later on Wednesday, little Jaden woke up with a headache and seemed to his mother to be lethargic and 'not his normal self at all'. The little boy wouldn't eat and just wanted to lay down.

Tiffany noticed that there was a strange 'squishy' spot on on Jaden's temple, so she promptly took him to the hospital.

'The moment I had Jaden in the car he started vomiting,' said Tiffany. 'Once Jaden arrived at Saint Mary's Children's hospital a CT scan was done. The diagnosis was right temporal fracture of the skull and right temporal epidural hematoma.'

The diagnosis was a grim one. Jaden had to have emergency surgery immediately and only had a 50/50 chance of survival.

A mother's nightmare: Tiffany's emotional story and message of awareness has been shared more than 28,000 times online

Coming out: After the scan showed that Jaden had a right temporal fracture of the skull and right temporal epidural hematoma, he was rushed into surgery

Patching him up: In a two-and-a-half hour surgery, doctors removed the hematoma and repaired his skull using wire mesh

Performing a craniotomy on the little boy over two-and-a-half hours, the doctors removed the hematoma and used wire mesh to repair the fracture.

'We were told by the surgeon and other doctors that it was a miracle he survived. All other cases the kids never came out of surgery,' Tiffany wrote.

'On April 5th, 2016, Jaden turned 11 with almost no permanent damage or disability. My family and I would like to thank the Trauma Surgical Team and PICU at Saint Mary's Children's hospital in West Palm Beach Florida.'

Following the ordeal, Tiffany decided that she was going to take her story online to help other parents avoid such a scare - or something even worse.

In recovery: After the surgery, poor little Jaden was left with 32 staples in his head

The final step: The last of the images shared by Tiffany shows Jaden after having his staples removed

'I am telling you this in hopes to raise awareness for all children and adults why you need to wear a helmet,' said Tiffany. 'Help others be aware of the dangers of riding without the proper safety equipment. This can happen to anyone! The injuries my son had were equal to those in a motorcycle accident!'

Along with her post, the mother included photos of Jaden every step of the way, from the ailing boy at the hospital to after the surgery to the 32 staples they placed in his head. The last photo shows Jaden having had the staples removed on April 13.
A new documentary has delved into the murky world of luxury fashion, taking an unblinking look at the animal fur and skin trade - an industry that regularly churns out 1 million (774,000) coats for its demanding customers.

Airing for the first time tonight, This World: Inside the Billionaire's Wardrobe sees presenter Reggie Yates investigating the process that goes into the production and sale of the most expensive animal wares, from fur coats to stoles and crocodile skin handbags.

The new BBC Two programme follows Reggie as he travels the world learning about the trade - and meets the designers whose customers are almost exclusively billionaires from China and Russia.

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This World: Inside the Billionaire's Wardrobe sees Reggie Yates investigating the process that goes into the production and sale of the most expensive animal wares, from fur coats to stoles and crocodile skin handbags

Reggie visits the store of Igor Gulyaev, Russian designer who runs a luxury fur boutique in Moscow. Trying on one fox coat (pictured), Reggie can't help asking how many animals went into making it; Igor guesses ten

He begins by meeting Dana Thomas, a fashion commentator who explains that despite fur being seen as taboo in recent years, it has had something of a resurgence since the recession.

'After the crash of 2007 there has been a whole new generation of super rich,' she explains.

'What we talk about is the one per cent and they have never had this indoctrination against wearing fur and they have money to buy it.'

Reggie then visits Igor Gulyaev, Russian designer who runs a luxury fur boutique in Moscow.

Reggie is shown dozens of sables (pictured), arctic foxes and minks kept in tiny cages on a fur farm

The BBC Two programme follows Reggie as he travels the world learning about the trade - and meets the designers whose customers are almost exclusively billionaires from China and Russia

He is shown a staggering range of furs made from lynx, racoon and minx. Trying on one fox coat, Reggie can't help asking how many animals went into making it.

Igor guesses at around ten, hastily adding: 'Don't think about the animals, think about the beauty!'

He says: 'When you go to a supermarket, do you think about the animal? When you buy meat, when you buy sausages, do you think about the animal?'

His next stop is a remote part of Siberia where he meets Vladim, who makes a living from hunting sables, a small type of carnivore related to the ferret. Last year a fur coat by Fendi made from wild caught sable sold for over a million Euros.

Visiting Igor's Moscow boutique, Reggie is shown a staggering range of furs made from lynx, racoon and minx

He joins Vladim on his hunt, where he sets spring loaded traps - risking attack from bears and wolves - and stays overnight in his cabin.

They do manage to catch and skin one of the rare animals, with Vladim explaining: 'This is second-best, top quality has patterning to it. This will fetch around $90 - $100 (69 - 77). We need to thaw it out and wash it check there is no damage; well definitely get $90-100.'

The presenter then visits a fur auction in St. Petersburg, Russia in a quest to find out how a $80 pelt becomes a coat worth more than 1 million (over 774,000).

Reggie visits a remote part of Siberia where he meets Vladim, who makes a living from hunting sables, a small type of carnivore related to the ferret. He even joins Vladim on his hunt, where he sets spring loaded traps

Reggie visits a fur farm, where he is shown dozens of sables, arctic foxes and minks trapped in cages

The owner assures a visibly disturbed Reggie that the animals in the fur farm are perfectly comfortable

There are around 260,000 skins up for sale - it takes 40 to make just one coat - and we learn that nearly $20 million(13.7 million) will be spent on sable at this auction.

Reggie's next port of call is a fur farm, where he is shown dozens of sables, arctic foxes and minks trapped in cages - despite the owner telling him they are perfectly comfortable.
A man who was left with his stomach rumbling after he forgot to bring snacks on a five hour train journey has been applauded by Twitter after having a pizza delivered during the journey.

Dubstep producer DJ Artwork decided to order the cheesy snack on Saturday after realising that his train didn't have a food trolley available.

Tweeting about his mistake he wrote: 'What idiot would get on board a five hour train journey without checking if it has a bar car and without getting any food or drink before...'

Scroll down for video

Dubstep producer DJ Artwork achieved the impossible on Saturday when he successfully had a pizza delivered to a moving train

The increasingly hungry commuter then proceeded to ask whether anyone might be prepared to meet him with a snack.

Minuted later he tweeted: 'Would anyone in the train line between Glasgow and Sheffield go to the shop for me and get me a few bits and meet me on a platform?'

Running out of options the hungry traveller decided to chance it and placed an order for a takeaway to be delivered to his moving train.

The passenger decided to order a pizza after realising that there was no food cart on his train

He tweeted: 'I'm going to try and get a pizza delivered to a train as it pulls in to a station. Bit of research needed.'

The DJ then invested several minutes researching how he could time the delivery of a pizza to coincide with the train pulling into the station.

After sharing some departure times with his 44,000 followers he decided to take delivery at Darlington ordering the snack in the hope that it will arrive at the same time the train pulls into the station at 18:13.

The hungry commuter meticulously timed his delivery of the pizza to coincide with arriving at the station

While he waits to arrive at the station the passenger shared his anticipation with his followers recording a short video.

He says: 'Let me tell you I'm quite excited we've just Newcastle. Darlington is next in 20 minutes.'

While he anxiously awaits the arrival the DJ is not without support from both his Twitter followers and the train carriage.

The DJ tweeted regular updates of the pizza's progress to his 44,000 strong Twitter following

The DJ tweeted: 'So the whole carriage is behind me. They are all excited. If they think they are getting one slice they can f*** off!!'

onethird reassurred him that he could rely on support from overseas tweeting: 'Finland is cheering for you. Our preparty is awaiting updates.'

User emmer joined the conversation adding: 'A milestone in food delivery history if @artworkmagnetic gets his dominos.'

The manoeuvre attracted much attention with many Twitter users tweeting their support to the hungry traveller

Johnny Earl even created a hashtag for the event writing: 'This is too tense. I'm rooting for ya, buddy. #PizzaTrain'

When the train finally approaches Darlington DJ Artwork films his triumph capturing the moment Domino's successfully delivered the pizza.

Leaning out the window of the train he collects his pre-paid for ham, mushroom and pineapple pizza.

Domino's successfully delivered his ham, mushroom and pineapple pizza to Darlington station on Saturday

Shortly after his delivery the satisfied customer was shocked when a food trolley arrived at his seat on the train but not resentful in the slightest he even asked the on board caterer to join him for a slice.

Following the success of his first stint, DJ Artwork attempted the same manoeuvre the following day this time trying another pizza outlet.

The daring diner tweeted: 'So let's try @pizzahut today. @Dominos_UK came through yesterday. This is the decider.... CAN ... THEY .... DELIVER?'

Just after he had received his pizza the train's food cart emerged, but unresentful the traveller asked the on board caterer to join him for a slice

However, he was to be left disappointed by the chain as he revealed in a follow up tweet: 'Right @pizzahut flopped massively. @Dominos_UK rose to the challenge. 3:18pm Kettering station.'

The tweeter is successful once more as he shares a video of a delivery man running down the platform with his pizza at Kettering Station.

The DJ followed in the footsteps of comedian Chris Ramsey who first attempted the stunt in 2014 when he ordered pizzas to be delivered to Doncaster station during a journey from Kings Cross St Pancras to Newcastle.

The hashtag #pizzaontrain was trending number one worldwide that evening to the surprise of the Geordie comedian.

At the time he tweeted: '#PizzaOnATrain trending number 1 worldwide... This is terrifying. How can I eat with this many people watching? What if it goes on me chin?
If you're having a vaccination, book a morning appointment.

A new study out today has shown that flu shots are more effective when they're administered in the first half of the day.

Scientists at the University of Birmingham who followed up patients from 24 GP practices, who had flu shots between 2011 and 2013.

They found that one month after being vaccinated those who had jabs in the morning had much higher concentrations of flu-fighting antibodies than those seen in the afternoon.

Timing affects almost every aspect of our health and wellbeing with a study out today giving one example of how flu vaccinations tend to work better if given to patients in the morning

Lead researcher, Dr Anna Phillips, explains: 'We know that there are fluctuations in immune responses throughout the day and wanted to examine whether this would extend to the antibody response to vaccination.

'Being able to see that morning vaccinations yield a more efficient response will not only help in strategies for flu vaccination, but might provide clues to improve vaccination strategies more generally.'

WHY TIMING IS IMPORTANT

And this isn't the only study to show the importance of timing.

If your baby is having their first shots, an afternoon appointment is best.

A study published in the journal Pediatrics found they sleep for longer after being vaccinated than infants who are seen in the morning.

In fact, timing affects almost every aspect of our health and wellbeing.

Professor Russell Foster, a pioneer of this body-clock biology who is based at Oxford University, and author of Rhythms of Life: The Biological Clocks that Control the Daily Lives of Every Living Thing, explains.

An afternoon appointment may be best when it comes to a baby having its first injections as a study found they sleep for longer than children who were vaccinated in the morning

'All life on earth has evolved under a rhythmically changing cycle of light and darkness, and organisms from single-celled bacteria up to man possess an internal representation of time,' he says.

Anyone who has traveled long-haul knows this is true, but you don't have to leave home to feel the effects of this internal rhythm of life.

And the reality is that we don't have just one body clock, we have millions of them.

Professor Michael Hastings, a Medical Research Council scientist based at Cambridge University explains: 'We used to think that there was only this one clock in the brain and that told everything else in the body what to do.

'But the fact is that all the bits of the body have their own local body clocks  and at least some of them can influence the master clock in the brain.'

It's a little an orchestra. The main body clock in the brain is the conductor who sets the rhythm and when all the other clocks are timed perfectly the orchestra, or body, performs to the peak of its ability.

HOW TO TUNE YOUR BODY CLOCK AROUND ITS STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

Having a heart attack is more common in the morning because blood is more sticky

6am

The chances of having a heart attack between 6am and noon are 49 per cent higher than at any other time of day, says Professor Foster.

This is because our blood is more sticky and prone to clot, blood pressure rises rapidly as we wake and blood vessels are also at their least flexible.

This triple-whammy causes angina to peak between 6am and 8am and the risk of a heart attack or stroke to soar between 8am and 10am.

If you take blood-thinning drugs such as Warfarin keep them by your bedside, take one when you wake and then enjoy lie in.

By resting and keeping calm for an hour or so while they take effect you should reduce your risk.

7am

Hay fever, migraine and the pain of rheumatoid arthritis are all likely to peak around this time of day.

One simple strategy is to leave your medication and a glass of water on your bedside table when you retire for the night and then set you alarm clock for an hour ahead of your usual wake-up time.

Wake up, take your tablets, and go back to bed. If they should be taken with food, add a few dry crackers.

Hay fever sufferers are most likely to feel the worst in the morning so experts recommend taking medication first thing to have the maximum benefit

8am

Don't exercise if there is a family history of heart disease.

As Professor Foster explains your cardiovascular system is not prepared for the extra strain of a work-out when you have just woken up.

A man's sperm counts are at their highest at 8am in the morning so anyone trying for a baby should take note

But if you're trying to lose weight, set your alarm an hour or so earlier and exercise before breakfast.

If you're trying for a baby, this is also the time to make love  male sperm counts are highest at this time of day.

9am

Morning is the best time to have surgery.

An American study which tracked 90,000 ops found the odds of an adverse event were lowest between 9am and noon.

Anyone undergoing surgery on a morning will be reassured to know between the hours of 9am and noon have the fewest adverse events

The highest risk of something going wrong is between 3pm and 5pm.

Researchers said tired staff and patients stressed by waiting around could both be factors.

10am

This is a good time to revise for exams or an important business presentation.

We are alert, but our brain is rested so we're at peak performance when it comes to digesting and remembering information.

This is a good time to revise for exams or an important business presentation as our brains are at their peak time for remembering information

11am

Schedule in any complex tasks.

Logical reasoning, concentration and short term memory are at their best from late morning to early afternoon.

12 noon

If you suffer from osteoarthritis  as more than a million Britons do  pain and stiffness usually peak in the afternoon and evening.

If you take painkillers now they will have time to take effect before the worst symptoms start to kick in.

1pm

Eating a banana can help with the post-lunch slump

Apart from the fact that you're probably hungry, this is a good time to eat if you exercise later in the day  when your body is at peak physically.

Eating now will ensure your body is well fuelled, but your system will have had time to digest everything and focus on pumping oxygenated blood to muscles

2pm

Everyone's familiar with that post-lunch slump, in fact researchers have identified 2.16 as the time we feel most drained and unable to concentrate.

Instead of reaching for a shot of sugar, try walking around and stretching, having a drink of water or snacking on something healthy such as dried fruit and nuts or a banana.

3pm

A time to avoid if you are scheduling any sort of medical procedure.

As mentioned above, the peak period for adverse events is between 3pm and 5pm

4pm

Aerobic workouts work best in the late afternoon.

American scientists who analysed lung function tests of 4,835 patients which had been taken at different times of day over a five-year period found that our breathing is at its best between 4pm and 5pm.

Dr Boris Medarov, who led the study, says: 'We often associate the end of the work day with being tired and less motivated for physical exertion; however lung function seems to be at its best during this time.

Aerobic workouts work best in the late afternoon with studies on lung function finding it is best between 4-5pm

'As a result, exercising or engaging in other physical activities in the late afternoon may help us achieve optimal performance.'

5pm

If you have worked out, eat a protein-based snack to restore blood-sugar levels and give muscles the protein they need for repair.

6pm

Heavy jobs and weight-based work-outs are best between 6pm and 8pm because muscle strength, grip strength, cardiovascular efficiency and flexibility are all at their peak at this time.

7pm

Avoiding all food, but not water, between 7pm and 6am is a simple and effective weight loss strategy

It's not just carbohydrates that should be on curfew.

Researchers at Brigham Young University have shown that avoiding all food, but not water, between 7pm and 6am is a simple and effective weight loss strategy.

Volunteers lost an average of 0.9lb when they avoided eating after 7pm, and gained 1.3lb when they when back to eating whenever they wanted.

If you take a statin to control cholesterol, most slow-release medications such as simvastatin, lovastatin and fluvastatin, should be taken in the evening or before bed.

Some work best with a meal, and this timing will also ensure you gain the maximum benefit in the morning, when cardiac risk peaks.

8pm

Have your last coffee.

Caffeine has a half life of between three and five hours, so having a latte any later is likely to disrupt your sleep.

10pm

If you suffer from asthma, now's a good time to use your preventer inhaler.

Night-time asthma is common and studies have shown that attacks peak between the hours of 2am and 4am.

Taking a prevention inhaler before bed can help stop attacks in the night with a peak between 2 and 4am

For maximum benefit, you should use a preventer inhaler twice a day, at a regular time  but leaving your second dose as late as possible will ensure maximum benefit while you sleep.

11pm

If indigestion is a problem, take an antacid before bed.

Gastric acidity is at its highest from around 8pm through to 2am, but symptoms often seem worse when you go to bed because.

This is primarily because it's easier for gastric acid to escape into the oesophagus when we're lying down.
Europe should brace itself for the arrival of the Zika because mosquitoes carrying the virus will flock to the continent as summer arrives, experts have warned.

Despite a decline in cases in Brazil, there is the potential for a 'marked increase' in Zika infections as the virus spreads to new parts of the world, according to the United Nations' health agency.

Until now Zika has been largely contained to Latin America and the Caribbean - but as summer arrives in the northern hemisphere the mosquitoes that carry the disease will travel to Europe.

Marie-Paule Kieny, the World Health Organisation's assistant director general, said: 'As seasonal temperatures begin to rise in Europe, two species of Aedes mosquito which we know transmit the virus will begin to circulate.

'The mosquito knows no borders.'

Europe should brace itself for the arrival of the head-shrinking Zika virus, as mosquitoes carrying the virus will flock to the continent as the temperature becomes warmer, the World Health Organisation has warned

There is also a risk men infected with Zika could pass the disease on to women via sex, and the world 'could see a marked increase in the number of people with Zika and related complications,' Ms Kieny said.

The virus is known to be transmitted by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes found in the tropics.

But the second Zika-transmitting mosquito, Aedes albopictus, has been found in European countries in the summer  including France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Croatia.

However, Aedes albopictus mosquito is less prone to causing outbreaks than its cousin Aeses aegypti, according to new research by the Pasteur Institute.

A virus can also be introduced to a new region when a local mosquito picks it up from an infected human - someone coming back from a holiday in South America, for example.

If it lives long enough, the mosquito then infects people who it bites, starting a vicious cycle.

Zika causes only mild symptoms such as a rash and joint pain in most sufferers.

But in pregnant women the virus can lead to babies being born with microcephaly - a disease characterised by unusually small heads and developmental problems.

It has also been linked to Guillain-Barre syndrome - a nerve disorder that causes temporary muscle paralysis.

In Brazil, the country hardest hit by the outbreak, officials are investigating more than 2,500 cases of suspected microcephaly.

But Ms Kiely said infections are 'clearly on the decline'.

Scientists at the University of Oxford produced map charting the potential spread of the Zika virus across the world - but they did not predict it would spread to Europe

A Zika-transmitting mosquito, Aedes albopictus, has been found in European countries in the summer  including France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Croatia

She made the comments at a Zika conference in Paris, in which 600 disease experts from 43 nations are meeting to analyse data on the outbreak.

Despite a flurry of research, very little is known about the virus, including how long it can hide out in the human body and the degree of risk of sexual transmission.

It is also not known exactly which diseases and disorders it may cause or all the mosquito types capable of transmitting it.

As seasonal temperatures begin to rise in Europe, two species of Aedes mosquito which we know transmit the virus will begin to circulate. The mosquito knows no borders Marie-Paule Kieny, the World Health Organisation's assistant director general

Professor David Heymann, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said: 'It's not what we know but what we don't know that is concerning.

'We can't make recommendations for prevention if we don't understand the full potential of a virus or bacteria.'

As there is no vaccine or treatment for the virus, Ms Kieny described it as a 'global emergency' and a 'growing threat'.

Developing new tools for quickly diagnosing infections - particularly in pregnant women whose babies risk severe disability - is an 'urgent priority', she added.

Scientists in the United States, France, Brazil, India and Austria are working on 23 vaccine-development projects, she said.

But it could take years to create, so the feasibility of an 'emergency-use' vaccine is being examined.

Until then, the first line of defence remains controlling mosquitoes and preventing people being bitten, experts said.

And women in regions where there is an outbreak are advised to put off becoming pregnant.

There have been an estimate two million cases of Zika across 40 countries, with 1.5 million infections in Brazil

Duane Gubler of the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, said Zika 'surprised' the world, just as Ebola before it, despite both viruses having been known about for decades.

'I think we should take this as a wakeup call and start developing our surveillance systems so we can monitor these viruses a little more effectively,' he told the conference.

Ms Kieny said particular vigilance was required in Africa, where the virus was first discovered in Uganda in 1947.

A Zika outbreak began in Brazil in early 2015, followed nine months later by an surge of infants born with microcephaly, and an increase in Guillain-Barre cases.

Brazil reported some 1.5 million infections out of an estimated global total of two million in more than 40 countries.

In eight nations, there have been reports of person-to-person transmission via sex.
Uyghur-Chinese dissident Dolkun Isa's travel document was cancelled, days before he was to attend a conference in Dharamshala

Bureaucratic explanations could not shield the Narendra Modi government from severe criticism for cancelling the visa to Uyghur-Chinese dissident Dolkun Isa, a move widely perceived to be a case of New Delhi buckling under pressure from Beijing.

While sources in the Ministry of External Affairs claimed they were not involved in the granting of the visa, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs clarified that the Dolkuns travel document was cancelled, days before he was due to attend Inter-ethnic Inter-faith Leadership Conference in Dharamshala.

The Electronic Tourist Visa issued to Dolkun does not allow him to attend a public meeting.

A pending Interpol Red Corner Notice against Dolkun Isa was another reason cited for the cancellation of his visa.

Officials, however, could not explain why the Red Corner Notice was overlooked when the visa was granted. But the Uyghur leader said he was informed through e-mail about the cancellation of his visa and that he was looking forward to visiting India. He termed the development as sad.

Dolkun Isa, now living in Germany, heads the World Uyghur Congress.

Beijing had protested the granting of visa to the Uyghur dissident claiming that he is a terrorist. Isa said he was being labelled wrongly as there was no parallel between him and Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar.

Isa claimed that he has been pursuing his cause through non-violence.

Earlier, experts in New Delhi saw the granting of the visa to Isa as a bold move by the Narendra Modi dispensation setting ties with Beijing on a new and challenging course.

The granting of visa was seen as retaliation for Chinas move to block Indias initiative at the United Nations to blacklist Pakistan-based terrorist Maulana Masood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Mohammad.

India had registered strong protest at various levels against Chinas position.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval had travelled to Beijing recently where the two sides took stock of the ties.

The row over the visa highlights the uneasy ties between New Delhi and Beijing.

An article in the Chinese state media on Monday talked about Indias tricky two-sided China policy in the South China Sea.

Indian diplomacy rests on engagement with major world powers instead of clinging to a particular country. By adopting an ambiguous strategy, India places itself in a position that all the major powers woo it, but it never explicitly promises anything regarding the policies of other nations, the article in the state-run Global Times said.

The Uyghursare a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia. As of the present day, Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China, where they are one of 55 officially recognised ethnic minorities.
A Delhi-based paediatrician is at the centre of a landmark lawsuit alleging that her ex-husband had forced her to illegally test the gender of her unborn twin daughters.

She claims that her in-laws pressured her to abort her unborn kids.

Though her case was rejected at the Delhi High Court on Monday, the paediatrician has decided to move it to the Supreme Court.

Pre-natal sex determination attracts a penalty of Rs 50,000 and/or three- year jail term. (image for representation only)

Dr Mitu Khurana, purportedly the first Indian woman to initiate proceedings against her former spouse and his relatives under a law that bans foetal sex determination, said she will approach the Supreme Court after the High Court turned down her petition.

I have been fighting for over 10 years, said the doctor, who gave birth to the girls in 2005, and subsequently left her husband, allegedly due to their abusive relationship.

I have lost my health, my profession, money, mental peace... If I give up today, it will harm several women who have not been able to raise a voice till now. They are being tortured day in and day out for giving birth to a girl child.

After losing the case in the trial court, Dr Khurana approached the High Court, but it rejected her petition on the grounds of limitation.

Whenever an offence is committed, there is a particular period within which you have to report about it. In this case the limitation period is three years, explained her lawyer, Sanjay Parikh.

According to the 2011 census, India has only 918 girls for every 1,000 boys below six years of age.

The United Nations said two years ago that the dwindling number of girls in the country had reached emergency proportions and was contributing to violent sex crimes against women.

Khurana filed a case against her husband, Dr Kamal Khurana, his mother and another member of his family, for allegedly colluding with a hospital official to determine the gender of her foetuses while she was pregnant in 2004, and then forcing her to undergo an abortion.

She says that she learnt about the offence only in 2008 and immediately approached the authorities, seeking justice under The Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostics and Test Act passed in 1994.

Our submission said - 'a crime against a woman is a crime against the society', it should be treated as a continuous offence, said Parikh.

The Act provides for a maximum punishment of three-year jail term and financial penalty of up to Rs 50,000.

The paediatrician became a known face after appearing on actor Aamir Khans talk show Satyamev Jayate, in an episode themed on female foeticide.

I will continue to fight because when my daughters were born and I had held them in my arms for the first time - I had promised them that they will not be forced to kill their own daughters. I had promised to hand them over a better world and a more just society, she said.
The Congress attempt to play victim in Parliament over dismissal of its government in Uttarakhand was thwarted by the NDA, which hit back at the principal opposition party for compromising over national security in the Ishrat Jahan case.

The face-off between the Congress and the BJP over Ishrat Jahans encounter and Presidents rule in Uttarakhand rocked the Parliament on day one during the second half of the Budget session.

Both the ruling and the opposition parties have hardened their position over the two issues as they made full-throated allegations against each other.

Keeping in view the odd-even scheme, special buses were arranged for the parliamentarians

BJP lawmaker Kirit Somaiya raked-up the Ishrat Jahan issue in the Lok Sabha accusing a former UPA home minister of playing with national security by seeking to dub a terrorist as a martyr.

He alleged that the former home minister (P Chidambaram) had dubbed Ishrat as a terrorist in the first affidavit, but changed it in the second affidavit.

In a series of tweets, Chidambram defended his decision.

The affidavit controversy is only to divert attention from the real issue in the Ishrat Jahan case. Real issue is whether there was a fake encounter and whether four people already in custody were killed in that fake encounter, he tweeted.

BJP member Anil Madav Dave arrives on a bicycle to the Parliament

Ishrat Jahan and three other accomplices were killed in an encounter by the Crime Branch of Ahmadabad Police on 15 June, 2004, on the allegation that they were LeT operatives and plotting to kill then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

The Congress has argued that the saffron party wants to deliberately block the case as it would reach Prime Minister Modi, who was the then Gujarat chief minister and BJP chief Amit Shah, who was the state home minister.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah need to answer as to why are they trying to bypass the judicial findings of Metropolitan Court, Ahmadabad and Division Bench of Gujarat High Court. Why is the Government of India and the government of Gujarat not sanctioning the prosecution of officers found responsible for the fake encounter of Ishrat Jahan and the accomplices? Why is the PM and the BJP President trying to block an ongoing trial and blatantly interfering with the judicial process? What is it that they seek to hide or are scared of? Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said.

The Congress has also negated the BJPs charge that Chidambaram changed the second affidavit at the instance of party chief Sonia Gandhi.

While the BJP is highlighting the Ishrat Jahan case against the Congress, the opposition party is in an aggressive mood over the dismissal of its government in Uttarakhand and has made it clear it will not let go of the issue easily.

Uttarakhand issue is very important for us, Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said after the party did not allow Rajya Sabha to function over the issue.
Reserve Bank governor Raghuram Rajan asked the bureaucrats to do their job without the help of their assistants for a day

Reserve Bank governor Raghuram Rajan had a word of advice for the bureaucrats.

At a function in Mumbai, he asked the babus to do their job without the help of their assistants for a day.

His logic is that assistant-free work will help the bureaucrats relate to the aam admi (common man).

He said a similar system could be in the offing in the RBI.

Rajan was recently named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine's list of influential people.

The magazine had lauded the banker for his path-breaking initiatives.

Admiral Dhowan to retire soon

Navy chief admiral RK Dhowans tenure is coming to an end next month and the recently held naval commanders conference was the last major event during his term.

Dhowan had assumed office when navy was passing through a crisis due to sudden resignation of his predecessor Admiral DK Joshi in February 2014.

Dhowans stint, which began in April 2014, saw the force stretching its operational capabilities through deployments across the world.

Apna Dal MP slams celebrity promos

At a time when celebrities are an essential part of any promotion, Apna Dals MP Anupriya Patel wants an end to the practice.

The MP from Uttar Pradesh said that celebrities are worshiped in the country.

This leads to complications in endorsement of products.

Accusing the real estate builders and developers for not completing projects on time, Patel slammed the celebrity endorsements that, in her opinion, complicated matters further by influencing the public.

Clean chit for Ashish Nandy

An article written by political analyst Ashish Nandy eight years ago portraying Gujarat in bad light, for which he was booked, will no longer haunt him.

Granting him relief, the SC quashed the FIR after he tendered an unconditional apology.

The case was lodged by Ahmedabad Police on a complaint by VK Saxena, currently the Chairman of Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC).

Jairam Ramesh's helping hand for Chidambaram

Jairam Ramesh and P Chidambaram are helping each other out after being out of power as ministers in the previous UPA government, it seems.

Ramesh defended Chidambaram, who is being targeted by the BJP in the Ishrat Jahan case, at an AICC briefing.
Sub-Inspector Akhtar Khan was killed during a raid

His cellphone rang repeatedly at the police station while sub-inspector Akhtar Khan was laying lifeless on the dusty floor of a nearby house.

Akhtar Khan died in the raid held on Monday morning, which went horribly wrong and it raised questions over the preparedness of the police and their combat skills.

The 40-year-old cop got wounded in a gun battle in Greater Noidas Dadri area, but no timely aid could be offered to him which allegedly led to his death.

According to a senior police officer, based on information on two wanted gangsters Javed and Furkan, the police team raided a house, but it did not find anyone there.

As the police team was returning, it got another tip-off that Javed was hiding at Furkans house in Nai Abadi area, which was 400m away, the officer associated with the investigation of the case told Mail Today.

Khan was the first to enter the gangster's hideout, but it seems the gangsters were ready for the cops as they opened fire.

Khan was shot between his neck and shoulder and collapsed on the spot.

Not realising this, other members of the raiding team took cover and fired retaliatory shots and then came out, the officer said.

Police speak to the media outside the house where the raid happened

According to sources, the police team returned without Khan and while gearing up for its next plan of action, the team realised that one of the members was missing.

The police tried to call Khans mobile phone to check his location, but got no reply as he had left his phone for charging at the Dadri police station.

An hour later, the team went back to the spot with reinforcements and found Khans dead body.

By this time, the criminals had fled while the security was intensified.

Khans family initially alleged that he was killed by his team members, as part of a conspiracy and demanded the immediate arrest of those guilty.

However, senior police officers pacified the relatives and sent the body for post-mortem.

The other police personnel fled from the spot leaving Akhtar alone. We want a probe in the incident and will not conduct the last rites till they are not arrested, Wahid Khan, Akhtars elder brother, told the reporters.

Following the incident, DIG (Meerut range) Laxmi Singh reached the spot and ordered an inquiry.

Forensic teams from Meerut and district police inspected the site and have collected blood samples.

Khan, who joined the force in 1998 as a constable, was posted as the in-charge of the Kot police post in Dadri.

Hailing from Aligarh, he cleared the internal exams to get a promotion as a sub-inspector.

The deceased is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.

CM Akhilesh Yadav announced a Rs 20 lakh compensation for the Khans family.

State Director General of Police Javeed Ahmad paid his tribute on Twitter.
The 15-year-long regime of Rashtriya Janata Dal headed by Lalu Prasad and Rabri Devi may have earned widespread criticism for the rise in abduction cases in Bihar, but their minister son now appears to be trying to refurbish the past image of his party in his own way.

Tej Pratap Yadav, Lalus eldest son, who happens to be the health minister in the Nitish Kumar government, is playing the role of a chief minister in a Bhojpuri film with an interesting title, Apharan Udyog (Abduction industry).

Tej Pratap took part in the mahurat and shot for a sequence in the film - starring Bhojpuri actor Chhotu Chhalia as the lead - at the tourist town of Rajgir in Nalanda district on Sunday.

RJD chief Lalu Prasads son Tej Pratap wants to obliterate the negative image of his party by playing the role of an honest chief minister in the film titled Apharan Udyog.

The 27-year-old minister, who also holds additional portfolios of minor irrigation and forest and environment, enacted a scene at the location in the midst of hundreds of curious onlookers.

The sequence saw Tej Pratap playing the chief minister, who pacifies a crowd protesting against the kidnapping of a youth.

As the protesters shouted slogans demanding immediate recovery of the abducted youth and restoration of the law and order situation, Tej Pratap arrived at the scene and reassured people that the kidnapped youth would be recovered safely.

Asserting that criminal activities would not be allowed in the state, he told them that the abduction was part of the conspiracy hatched by the Opposition to defame the government.

Regime of Rashtriya Janata Dal headed by Lalu Prasad earned criticism for rise in abduction.

No matter how big a criminal is, the law will take its own course, he said effortlessly in the shot which was okayed by the director.

Sharing his experience of shooting for the film on his Facebook account, Tej Pratap said that this was another facet of his personality.

He said that he had played a positive role, which was of a chief minister in the film.

Interestingly, the locals who had thronged at the shooting location, did not take his acting seriously and besieged him with different demands.

They apprised the minister about the deplorable condition of the government hospital at Rajgir and urged him to conduct an inspection to help ameliorate it.

Tej Pratap lent a patient ear to their problems and grievances and assured them to look into their demands.

I have not come here on an official visit, but I am chalking out a programme to inspect all the hospitals across the state from next month, he told the residents of Rajgir.

The next round of the films shooting is scheduled to take place in Patna.

Apart from Chhotu Chhalia, Apharan Udyog stars Birendra Kumar, Kishan Choudhary, Mahesh and Sangita in stellar roles.

A new challenge

Many movies based on the theme of the rise of abduction industry between 1990 and 2005 have been made in different languages so far.

Bihar-born filmmaker Prakash Jha had made the Ajay Devgn-starrer, Apaharan while Bollywood actress Neetu Chandra had produced Deswa in Bhojpuri and Once Upon A Time in Bihar in Hindi based on the abduction industry flourishing in the state.

Chandras film was recently yanked off the Patna Film Festival because of its controversial theme.
In six weeks Vodafone has failed to collect Mrs Stewart's unwanted phone and is now sending them threatening text messages

On March 7 this year I arranged an upgrade with Vodafone to an iPhone 6 and it arrived shortly after.

Two days later, well within the 14-day cooling off period, I called Vodafone to say I wasnt happy with the new contract because I found a much better deal with O2.

I was told a returns pack would be sent out so I could return the phone and once this had happened the contract would be cancelled and my PAC handed to me.

Today, on April 18  six weeks later  the phone is still sitting unopened in my lounge as Vodafone has been unable to send the returns packaging out.

During this time Ive called Vodafone 12 times and spoken to 17 different customer service agents.

I have been sent from pillar to post with some staff even telling me they cant help as were out of the 14-day cooling off period.

Vodafone also started sending me text messages to my old handset threatening to cut me off for not paying, even though the usual direct debits have left my account in March and April - which apparently arent showing up on the Vodafone system.

Then, on April 16 I was cut off completely and only reconnected after a two-hour phone conversation with Vodafone to explain what had happened.

This is the most ludicrous and frustrating debacle I have ever encountered.

Ive written to Vodafones CEO as a last resort and I have no idea what else to do apart from getting a lawyer involved.

I am now still paying for a phone I dont want and have a brand new phone which needs to be returned. Eric and Heather Stewart, via email

Rebecca Rutt, of This is Money, replies: Sadly your case isnt unique and we have been inundated with reader complaints and questions regarding Vodafone recently.

In your case it seems a simple request of cancelling a contract, well within the given time, has led to six weeks of wasted time and phone calls to Vodafone.

It seems incredible that after 12 phone calls the issue wasn't sorted and youve been left with no resort but to email Vodafones chief executive for a response.

We got in contact with it to find out why it wasnt able to cancel your contract and send a returns package, and why this issue wasnt sorted out a lot earlier on.

Phone chaos: Our inbox has been flooded with emails recently from unhappy Vodafone customers

A spokesperson from Vodafone said: Weve investigated Ms Stewarts case and we can see our adviser made a serious error in that he set up a new account instead of simply upgrading the phone.

This caused Ms Stewart problems and were very sorry this happened. We will be speaking to the adviser concerned. Weve been in touch with Ms Stewart to confirm that a returns bag has been sent and to give her the PAC code.

There is one remaining line on the account, so we will provide three months free line rental and discount the future monthly rental by way of apology for all the problems she has faced.

Vodafone confirmed it will apply the 4.50 discount on your monthly contract for your old handset so youll now be paying 34.

It will also throw in an extra 1GB of internet data for free to apologise for its mistake.

While the issue was swiftly sorted out once we got involved, its disappointing this wasnt fixed a lot sooner.

Your only other option would have been to make an official complaint to Vodafone via its complaints procedure. Then after eights weeks, if you hadnt of had a response, or you weren't happy with the response you received, you could have escalated the complaint to the Ombudsman Services: Communications.
Costa Coffee owner Whitbread has announced rapid expansion plans across the UK and abroad, buoyed by strong growth and profits at the coffee chain and its Premier Inn hotels business.

Chief executive Alison Brittain said her attention is firmly fixed on growing the business further, targeting around 2.5billion of sales at Costa by 2020 and ramping up expansion at Premier Inn.

Brittain added: 'Both Premier Inn and Costa benefit from attractive market growth opportunities and we will continue to capitalise on these by developing our network and brand strength as we fulfil our ambitions to reach circa 85,000 UK hotel rooms and circa 2.5billion system sales in Costa by 2020.'

Familiar: Whitbread businesses include Premier Inn and Costa, some of the most instantly recognizable hotels and shops in the UK

Her strategy outline comes as the company posted solid annual results. Whitbread said underlying profits grew 11.9 per cent to 546.3million, while operating profit at Costa climbed 15.8 per cent to 153.5million on turnover of 1.6billion.

Sales across the group grew 12 per cent to 2.9billion.

However like for like sales cooled - growing 3 per cent in the 53 weeks to March, compared to much stronger growth of 6.5 per cent the previous year.

Nevertheless the group has promised a 10 per cent increase in its full year dividend, to 90.35p.

Shares this morning have risen 2.0 per cent, or 79.0p, at 3,945.0p.

Brittain, who joined from Lloyds Banking Growth where she was head of the lenders retail operation, also spelled out her priorities for the group.

She added: 'I have identified three key strategic themes to develop our business: grow and innovate in our core UK businesses; focus on our strengths to grow internationally; and build the capability and infrastructure to support long-term growth.

'This strategy will enable us to deliver our significant growth ambitions, grow earnings and dividends, maintain good returns on capital and create further value for our shareholders.'

Brittain will now have to deliver on the ambitious targets, after a tough start since taking over from previous chief executive Andy Harrison.

Back in March the company said sales had slowed in the 11 weeks to mid-February, which the firm said reflected 'lower footfall on the high street and an unusually warm winter'.

While last month Whitbread shares also slid on the day that it announced the departure of the highly rated Chris Rogers, the managing director of Costa Coffee, after 11 years at Whitbread.

But this morning analysts and investors were satisfied by the direction the company was travelling under Brittain.

Steve Clayton, head of equity research, at Hargreaves Lansdown, said:

'Costa is busily slaking the nation's never ending thirst for caffeine; think of it as an investment play on the UK's long hours work culture.

'Premier Inn is a great product; a clean comfortable room, in a good location at a sensible price.'

He added: 'Costa is omnipresent on UK High Streets and highways, with a rapidly growing overseas presence too. Both businesses have ambitious growth plans over the next four years. The restaurants business plays a supporting role to the hotels, but struggles to inspire in its own right.
Dubai's top religious authorities have issued a fatwa against WiFi theft - warning that stealing connectivity from your neighbour would not be proper Islamic conduct.

The religious edict was announced by the Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities Department in the United Arab Emirates city.

Authorities posted the fatwa on the department's website this week in response to a question asked by an anonymous reader.

Dubai's top religious authorities have issued a fatwa against WiFi theft - warning that stealing connectivity from your neighbour would not be proper Islamic conduct

The edict says: 'There is nothing wrong in using the line if your neighbors allow you to do so, but if they don't allow you, you may not use it.'

The fatwa matches others issued by other regional clerics in recent years.

Dubai's Islamic Affairs & Charitable Activities Department answers a variety of online questions.

They range from prayers and religious matters to modern issues like cosmetic surgeries and illegally downloading movies.

Dubai, the Emirates' biggest and most cosmopolitan city, has the most relaxed social codes in the conservative Gulf region.

The edict says: 'There is nothing wrong in using the line if your neighbors allow you to do so, but if they don't allow you, you may not use it'

But last July holidaymakers in Dubai were warned to be careful what messages they send home after a new law meant anyone caught swearing over WhatsApp could face a 45,000 fine.

They were told that using foul language in texts could also carry a prison sentence.
'If we get a Republican president we will get a pipeline within three weeks,' says Martin Jorgensen, a 91-year-old cattle farmer and bull breeder.

The pipeline in question is known as Keystone XL and would carry Canadian oil from the tar sands of Alberta 1,700 miles across America to Steele City, Nebraska, where it would join up with other pipelines taking it to refineries in Texas and Illinois. Most of it would then be exported.

It would run for a mile under Mr Jorgensen's land near the tiny community of Winner, South Dakota.

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Martin Jorgensen and his wife at their farm outside Winner, South Dakota. The pipeline would run for more than a mile under their land

It is a hugely divisive issue in Nebraska, South Dakota and Montana and the front-runners for the White House in November's presidential elections are not surprisingly on opposite sides of the fence.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have both said they would give it the go-ahead while Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both promised to uphold the presidential veto which Barack Obama imposed last year.

Sanders won the Democratic primary in Nebraska in March and his more outspoken opposition to Keystone XL is believed to have been a factor.

Nebraska holds its Republican primary on May 10 while South Dakota holds both Republican and Democratic primaries on June 7.

An existing pipeline already runs beneath the fields of Nebraska (left) but the Keystone XL pipeline has created a fountain of controversy. A Native American spirit camp has been set up on the route of the pipeline near the town of Ideal, South Dakota (right)

Earlier this year Cruz, who is from oil-loving Texas, said: 'If youre a Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging Greenpeace activist, you should love the Keystone pipeline.

'The Canadians are not going to leave the tar sands unmolested. Theyll send it to China to be refined there and it will be refined in a much, much dirtier way.'

Trump, being Trump, has dollar signs in his eyes.

He said recently he would give Keystone XL the go-ahead but wanted a 'big, big chunk of the profits, or even ownership rights' for the U.S.

Referring to TransCanada, the company behind the project, he said: 'I want 25 per cent of the deal for the United States. Theyre going to make a fortune.'

The pipeline would bring oil from the tar sands region of Alberta across the border, through the Sandhills of Nebraska as far as Steele City. There it would join existing pipelines taking the oil south or east to refineries in Texas and Illinois

The discovery of the tar sands deposits has made Canada a net oil exporter and Alberta in particular has seen a major economic boom.

But Alberta is land-locked and getting the oil refined and exported provides a dilemma.

There is an existing Keystone pipeline which delivers up to 590,000 barrels per day to oil refineries in Texas and Illinois.

But Keystone XL would, as its name suggests, be much larger and would have a much greater capacity.

Tom Poor Bear, vice president of the Oglala Lakota Nation, in his office on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. He says clean water is one of the few things his people still have to cherish

TransCanada is also trying to push through another controversial pipeline, known as Energy East, which would carry oil to Quebec, where it could be refined and exported.

Some oil is transported by rail but in July 2013 an oil train derailed and exploded in the Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, killing 47 people.

It makes us sad that Obama's time is nearly up and the Republicans are the rich ones with the money and they will try to get it through Mona Sue Walks Up

But while transportation by pipeline may appear safer there are many environmentalists and residents who say the dangers of a leak in Nebraska or South Dakota would be catastrophic.

This is partly because of the Ogallala Aquifer, a natural water table which sits beneath the Great Plains and provides fresh drinking water for 2.3 million people and irrigation for 30% of the farmland in the US.

The aquifer was formed millions of years ago and many opponents of Keystone XL say an oil leak could make the water undrinkable for decades.

Inferno: In 2013 a runaway oil train derailed and 47 people died in an explosion and fire in the town of Lac-Megantic in Quebec. Many supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline say it is a safer option than carrying oil by rail

Among those who rely on the aquifer are Oglala Lakota Nation, a Native American tribe who live on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.

The Oglala Lakota - better known in days gone by as the Sioux - were once proud warriors. Crazy Horse, who defeated Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, was an Oglala Lakota.

Nowadays they are a pale shadow of their former selves.

Unemployment on the Pine Ridge reservation is 80% and alcoholism is so endemic that liquor has been banned. Even so dozens of drunks from the reservation wander across the border and drink themselves into a stupor in the town of Whiteclay, Nebraska, which has to be one of the saddest places I have ever visited.

Tom Poor Bear, tribal vice president of the Oglala Lakota Nation, told me clean drinking water was one of the few things the white man had not taken away from his people, until now.

The Pine Ridge reservation has one of the highest levels of poverty and deprivation in America. Liquor is banned because of endemic alcoholism and unemployment is around 80 per cent

Speaking to me in front of a large tribal flag in his office in Pine Ridge, he said: 'There has already been breaks in the pipeline in Canada where it has poisoned the water and killed animals and plants.'

He described the proposed pipeline as being like a 'black snake crawling across America to bring destruction and death'.

Mr Poor Bear says the pipeline will not bring jobs to his people and he says the only people to benefit will be the big oil corporations and the infamous Koch brothers, who not only drill for oil in Alberta but also refine much of it.

The Koch brothers have donated millions of dollars to the Republican Party.

The resentment of the Oglala Lakota has to be put into context.

In 1868 they signed the Fort Laramie Treaty, which set up the Great Sioux Reservation, a vast area covering western South Dakota.

The Black Hills of South Dakota Crazy Horse are home to Mount Rushmore (left) but a new carving is slowly appearing, that of Lakota chief Crazy Horse astride a horse (right)

Then in 1874 gold was discovered in the Black Hills (Paha Sapa), which were considered sacred to the Lakota.

The treaty was torn up and the Lakota were shunted into tiny infertile corners of the state, like Pine Ridge.

To rub salt in the wound the faces of four presidents were later carved into Mount Rushmore, deep in the heart of the Black Hills.

Mr Poor Bear voices the anger at the latest incursion that Keystone XL represents: 'If this pipeline becomes a reality it will cause a civil war and not just with the Native Americans but also the white ranchers. People will fight for their lifestyle. Our way of life is under threat again.'

The Black Hills of South Dakota remain a largely unspoilt wilderness. Campaigners fear freshwater like Stockade Lake (pictured) would be permanently polluted if oil from the pipeline seeped into the Ogallala Aquifer

Ford Walks Out, 68, a distant descendant of Crazy Horse, said he believes lobbyists in Washington have 'brainwashed' people into thinking the pipeline is safe.

TransCanada will also pay $3m (2.11m) a year to each county the pipeline crosses.

His friend, Mona Sue Walks Up, agrees: 'What's $3m a year if your grandchildren have only got polluted water to drink?'

Mona, 70, praises the president's exercise of his power of veto and says: 'Obama is thinking about our people but it makes us sad that Obama's time is nearly up and the Republicans are the rich ones with the money and they will try to get it through.'

Mona Sue Walks Up lives on the Cheyenne River reservation in South Dakota and she fears a Republican president would kowtow to its friends in big business and the oil industry by pushing the pipeline through

Steele City, Nebraska is at the center of this big political showdown but it is a sleepy town with a population of only 84 and there are no protest signs or graffiti to indicate the controversy which surrounds it.

Just outside of town is a pumping station which gives the only clue to the area's importance as a proposed junction on the oil pipeline network.

Don Swett's house overlooks the pumping station and the fields nearby where little TransCanada marker posts indicate 'WARNING - High Pressure Petroleum Pipeline'.

This pumping station just outside Steele City, Nebraska, would become a crucial pipeline junction. But security was minimal on the day I visited

They have had a pipeline in these parts since 2010 and it has ruffled few feathers.

Mr Swett said: 'There wasn't much controversy with the first pipeline and most people in town are probably for the new one. There's certainly nobody that upset about it. I think it's a safer option than the railroad.'

TransCanada says Keystone XL has undergone eight safety reviews and the company points to aquifer experts like James Goecke, who says that even if oil were to leak it would not affect the majority of the Ogallala Aquifer because oil cannot run uphill.

But Hillary Clinton came out against the pipeline last year. She said: 'I oppose it because I dont think its in the best interest of what we need to do to combat climate change.'

That came as no great surprise to Martin Jorgensen, who has little time for Democrats, refers to Obama as 'that damn fool president' and says Hillary would be 'just as bad as he is'.

Ford Walks Out (pictured) fought in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division, but he is angry with what he sees as a threat to the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies many Native American reservations

Mr Jorgensen's father came to South Dakota from Denmark more than 100 years ago and started out as a 'homesteader'.

'Now we farm 20,000 acres and have 5,000 cattle too. We are the biggest bull breeders in America,' he says proudly.

He says the Democrats are opposed to 'progress' and he says: 'There are a hell of a lot of pipelines in the US, both for crude oil and natural gas. They don't create any problems.'

Last year President Obama vetoed legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline, much to the delight of conservationist campaigners (pictured). But a Republican president is expected to drop the veto

Mr Jorgensen looks at the world much as he views his animals.

The most fertile bulls have the best of everything while those who don't come up with the goods soon find themselves on their way to the abattoir.

Mr Jorgensen claims the local Native American population are workshy and 'want to live on welfare' and he said he had given up on employing them because they were too unreliable.
The Indian air stewardess whose iconic image of her shell shocked with blood splattered across her face became a symbol of the Brussels airport bombings has woken from her coma - a month on from the terror attacks.

Nidhi Chaphekar, 42, suffered 15 per cent burns on her body and fractured her foot as she sat shell shocked, blouse open and dust in her hair struggling to make sense of the chaos in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity.

Nidhi spent 25 days in a medically induced coma in a Brussels hospital before being gently awoken to find her beloved husband Rupesh waiting for her to come round at her bedside.

Rupesh told MailOnline 'She opened her eyes, looked up at me and just smiled. I assured her that everything would be fine now. She has also spoken to our children over phone.

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Victim: Nidhi Chaphekar, pictured on holiday with her husband Rupesh and their two children, became a symbol of last month's Brussels airport attacks

Victim: The picture of the 42-year-old mother of two, her face bloodied and covered in ash amongst the carnage, went viral

'Although most of the minor surgeries have already been performed, we do not have clear picture on how long the treatment would take now.

'She has an idea that she has been sleeping for a while, but she may not know the number of days that have passed. We are not discussing the blast with her.'

Nidhi, a Jet Airways hostess from Mumbai, India, is responding well to treatment in the burns unit at Grande Hospital de Charleroi, 37 miles from Brussels.

The mother-of-two became a symbol of defiance of the March 22 terror attacks after her image went viral.

It showed her sat on a bench moments after the blast, her bright yellow uniform ripped across her chest.

Hers was one of the first pictures beamed around the world after terrorists Ibrahim El-Bakraoui and Najim Laachraouisuicide detonated their suitcases packed with explosives, killing 15.

CCTV filmed the pair along with the mysterious 'Man in White', since revealed a Paris bomber Mohamed Abrini, just moments before the explosives were detonated.

An hour later a second bomber Khalid Bakraoui, 27, detonated his explosives at Maelbeek metro station where 22 were killed and 16 injured.

Happier times: Nidhi, a Jet Airways hostess from Mumbai, India, is responding well to treatment in the burns unit at Grande Hospital de Charleroi, 37 miles from Brussels

Coma: The Indian air stewardess from Mumbai, spent 25 days in a medically induced coma in a Brussels hospital before being woken to find her beloved husband Rupesh (pictured) waiting at her bedside

Last week, Belgium began an investigation into how they failed to stop the bombings - just four months after the Paris attacks.

Officials visited the two scenes of the attacks as part of a mission to shed light on the attacks on both capitals. They were said to have been carried out by the same Islamic State cell.

The panel wanted to find out how Belgium had prepared since the Paris attacks on November 13 to try to 'avoid the same tragedy', panel member Laurette Onkelex said.

It must 'shed light eventually on responsibilities, but also make recommendations and improve our security architecture', Onkelex said.

Meanwhile Maelbeek metro station reopened for the first time today amid tight security.

Brussels public transport service spokeswoman Francoise Ledune said Maelbeek station would resume service at 6am this morning until 10pm.

One of the station's eight tiled portraits by artist Benoit van Innis remains damaged and will be covered up.

The same artist is now working on a project to commemorate the massacre that is due to be completed in June, Ledune said.

Like many of the people injured at the check-in at Brussels airport, Ms Chaphekar had just arrived at the terminal to get ready for a flight to Newark, United States, when a series of explosions tore through the building.

Carnage: Brussels' Zaventem airport was left unrecognisable after the double explosions. Pictured is the debris left behind by the blasts

Horror: Nidhi was in the departure area on level three when the blasts went off. It was covered in blood, surrounded only by the remains of check in desks and shops

Shattered: The airport was left covered in broken ceiling tiles and wires trailed across holidaymakers' abandoned luggage

An hour later, a third explosion occurred in a metro carriage, leaving a total of 34 people dead and 270 injured in the Belgian capital.

Ms Chapekar was one of two Indian cabin crew members flying with Jet Airways and had been working for the airline for the past 15 years.

Her photograph rapidly gained attention on social media, with #PrayForNidhi trending on social media.

Jet Airways released a statement which said: 'She was waiting to board a flight from Brussels to Newark at 10.15am local time.

'She is a cabin crew member. We don't have full information on the extent of her injuries.

'We know her location - she is in hospital and receiving medical care.'

The mother-of-two from Mumbai is responding well to treatment and could be discharged as early as next month.

Twenty-two people were killed, and 16 wounded, in Maelbeek station the same day when Khalid El-Bakraoui detonated a bomb on a train in Maelbeek station.

Maelbeek metro station reopened for the first time on Monday amid tight security - a month on from the devastating terror attacks.

Last week, Belgian lawmakers vowed to investigate how Belgium failed to thwart the bombing which took place just months after jihadists attacked Paris.

Officials visited the two scenes of last month's attacks - Maalbeek station and Brussels Airport - as part of a mission to shed light on the attacks on both capitals. They were said to have been carried out by the same Islamic State cell.

The panel wanted to find out how Belgium had prepared since the Paris attacks on November 13 to try to 'avoid the same tragedy', panel member Laurette Onkelex said.

Attackers: Ibrahim El-Bakraoui (centre) and Najim Laachraoui (left) set off the explosives in their suitcases while the 'Man in White', now known to be Mohamed Abrini, fled

Departures: The three bombers detonated their explosives on the departures area near the British Airways check in desk on March 22

It must 'shed light eventually on responsibilities, but also make recommendations and improve our security architecture', Onkelex said.

Brussels public transport service spokeswoman Francoise Ledune said Maelbeek station would resume service at 6am this morning until 10pm.

One of the station's eight tiled portraits by artist Benoit van Innis remains damaged and will be covered up.

The same artist is now working on a project to commemorate the massacre that is due to be completed in June, Ledune said.

Like many of the people injured at the check-in at Brussels airport, Ms Chaphekar had just arrived at the terminal to get ready for a flight to Newark, United States, when a series of explosions tore through the building.

An hour later, a third explosion occurred in a metro carriage, leaving a total of 34 people dead and 270 injured in the Belgian capital.

Ms Chapekar was one of two Indian cabin crew members flying with Jet Airways and had been working for the airline for the past 15 years.

Coordinated: Twenty-two people were killed, and 16 wounded, in Maelbeek train station (pictured, armed police guarding the station on Monday) hours after the attack on Brussels airport

Protection: Maelbeek metro station where, 22 died in the second blast, reopened for the first time on Monday amid tight security (pictured, armed police at the station)

Her photograph rapidly gained attention on social media, with #PrayForNidhi trending on social media.

Jet Airways released a statement which said: 'She was waiting to board a flight from Brussels to Newark at 10.15am local time.

'She is a cabin crew member. We don't have full information on the extent of her injuries.
Hungary's constitution bans 'Islamisation' because the document aims to protect Hungarian language and culture, the country's prime minister has declared.

Viktor Orban said the constitution forces the government to oppose any kind of mass migration that would endanger those principles.

'To be clear and unequivocal, I can say that Islamisation is constitutionally banned in Hungary,' Orban said in parliament at an event celebrating the fifth anniversary of Hungary's new constitution, now known as the Basic Law.

Hungary's constitution bans 'Islamisation' because the document aims to protect Hungarian language and culture, the country's prime minister Viktor Orban (pictured) has declared

Orban was quoting from the National Avowal, the Basic Law's preamble, which details the country's commitment 'to promoting and safeguarding our heritage, our unique language, Hungarian culture' and the protection of 'the living conditions of future generations.'

Hungary maintains that the migrant issue is a matter of national sovereignty.

'We have the right to choose whom we want and don't want to live with,' Orban said.

Orban has said he wants 'zero' migrants in the East European nation. Refugees are pictured on the Hungarian and Austrian border in September

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban addresses a ceremony held to mark the 5th anniversary of the proclamation of the new constitution in the Parliament building in Budapest, Hungary

Hungary has built razor-wire fences on its southern borders to stop migrants from passing through to other European nations. Orban has said he wants 'zero' migrants in the East European nation.

Before the fences, nearly 400,000 migrants entered Hungary in 2015 on their way to richer nations in Western Europe.

Hungary has sued the EU at the European Court of Justice to avoid having to take part in an EU plan to resettle migrants.
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The specks on the roof of this giant power station are among the bravest people on earth - or the most foolhardy.

Every day they clamber to the top of what was once the Vladimir Illyich Lenin energy plant in Ukraine to seal in the unseen, unheard killer lurking beneath a shell of rotting steel and concrete.

They have little or no protective gear, save for home-made masks and overalls lined with PVC. They work in bursts of 30 minutes then scurry off to chemical showers followed by radiation checks four times a day.

They are the men dubbed the 'suicide squads' by the 4,000 people who inhabit a zone unlike anywhere else in the world - the place where mankind came closest to bringing about its own demise 30 years ago.

Suicide squad: These men, wearing little or no protective gear, save for home-made masks and overalls lined with PVC, are still working to help contain the radiation leaking from the shell of the Vladimir Illyich Lenin energy plant - better know to us as Chertnobyl

Death factory: These men are working to protect the 4,000 people who inhabit a zone unlike anywhere else in the world - the place where mankind came closest to bringing about its own demise 30 years ago

Utter disaster: Today marks 30 years since a fire ripped through the nuclear plant, but it is still so dangerous the men are only allowed to work in bursts of 30 minutes before they have to scurry off to chemical showers followed by radiation checks four times a day

Silent killer: It is estimated a million people have died because of the accident, with the firefighters who first tackled the blaze, and then the helicopter pilots, followed by the miners. Today, cases of cancer are still flooding into the hospital, undoubtedly caused by the radiation

Tribute: Three decades later, the town of Pripyat, where a monument to the firefighters who battled to stop the disaster as it unfolded stands today, remains abandoned. The so-called suicide squad live in villages just outside the 30km 'alienation zone'

Today marks 30 years since Reactor Number Four at the old Soviet era power station at Chernobyl caught fire, triggering the worst nuclear disaster in history. For months it was touch and go as the sclerotic communist authorities first went into denial about the accident - then into overdrive to try to contain it.

Had the molten mass of superheated Cesium-137, Plutonium, Iodine-131 and Strontium-90 weighing close to 150 tons melted through the floor of the reactor to the water table below it would have triggered a nuclear blast 10,000 times greater than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of WW2, making western Europe uninhabitable for thousands of years.

The catastrophe accelerated the collapse of the Soviet regime which was teetering on the verge of implosion before the 5billion clean-up costs pushed it into the dustbin of history. Gorbachev, the man who presided over the demise of the Marxist experiment, admitted as much in the weeks following the disaster.

The human specks now seen working on the roof are the next generation of heroes: their predecessors died in the days, weeks and months following the blast. The first to succumb to massive radiation poisoning were the firemen who tackled the blaze in the immediate hours after the accident caused when a test on the reactor went hideously wrong.

Then came the kamikaze helicopter pilots who flew day and night to drop 5,000 tons of lead and other minerals into the gaping hole to put out the fire, absorbing more radiation in minutes than humans should be exposed to in 10,000 years.

Next it was the turn of miners to die. Drafted in to dig a tunnel and a chamber beneath the stricken plant where it was hoped to catch the diabolical nuclear mass if the floor gave way, they too were exposed to staggeringly high doses of nuclear poison and died in agony at government nursing homes across the Soviet empire.

Finally, it was the turn of conscripted soldiers. Without protective suits, their noses bleeding from the effects of radiation sickness that came on hours after they began working at the site, they became the living dead as they struggled to complete a steel and cement sarcophagus around the ruptured plant.

Danger: The workers are waiting for the completion of a 1.2billion new sheath, made of rubber and steel, which will be rolled over the top of the shell of Reactor 4. Until then, they are responsible for maintaining the current shield protecting what remains

Saviours: The blast, which sent the surrounding inhabitants running for safety, could have been far worse. Had the 150 tons of radioactive matieral melted through the floor to the water table below it would have triggered a nuclear blast 10,000 times greater than Hiroshima

Contamination: Instead, the firefighters and those who followed managed to contain it - but not before hundreds of thousands had been poisoned by the radiation, both in Pripyat, and across swathes of the Ukraine and Belarus

Ghosts: The explosion led to the evacuation of 94 villages and two cities where once 130,000 people lived, loved, worked and played

They succeeded, but at a staggering human cost. Now, 30 years on and perhaps as many as a millon deaths later - the victims of cancers triggered by the blast in Ukraine, neighbouring Belarus and many other lands on the continent where wind and rain blew the toxic cloud to defile all in its path - the sarcophagus has outlived its usefulness.

I am worried for the future, sure. I get my blood checked twice a month. I go through the scanners four times a day. But the pay is good and someone has to do this. Ivan Marchenkov

Wind and rain, harsh winters and baking summers have eroded the shield which was constructed to keep in as much of the lethal material as possible.

A 1.2billion new sheath, made of rubber and steel, is being built next door to the site of Reactor Four. Within the next year or two, it will be slid on rails over the entire plant to stop the elements from further degrading the current tomb.

But until it does, the suicide squads work on. They are regarded as the bravest, most reckless and toughest of the community of Chernobyl which lives in a zone sealed to the rest of the world.

'We do what we do because we have no other place to go,' said Ivan Marchenkov, 35, who lives with his family in a town just outside the 30km 'Alienation Zone' that has been thrown up around the Chernobyl site.

'I am worried for the future, sure. I get my blood checked twice a month. I go through the scanners four times a day. But the pay is good and someone has to do this. Until that giant rubber and steel condom is ready, we have to keep this shield up and running.

'Risk is not something you think about constantly; to do so would mean never getting any work done. But the thought of an unseen, unsmelling killer sure plays on your mind. At night, when you have time to think, that is the time to drink vodka. And to not think so much.'

High risk: Now all those who remain in the contamination zone are those who are willing to risk everything for the high wages, or doctors and nurses like Nelia Tretyidic, pictured with her baby Maria in the kitchen of her home in the town of Narodychi

Checks: Everyone has to keep an eye on radiation levels on handheld devices - there are still highly dangerous black spots

Too soon: Those living just outside the Alienation Zone prefer not to dwell on the statistics saying they shouldn't be living here for another 240,000 years. Worker Ivan Marchenkov gets his blood checked twice a month and goes through scanners four times a day

He lives in this dead land along with nurses, doctors, engineers and cooks, maintaining the cooling and safety systems of the crippled plant, making sure that another explosion never happens. They share Chernobyl with the ghosts of its past residents and handfuls of atomic tourists who are bussed in to gaze at the wilderness left behind by the evacuation of 94 villages and two cities where once 130,000 people lived, loved, worked and played.

Wolves, wild horses, bats, rats, rabbits and mice roam un-hunted in the wilderness where plant life is mutated and the soil irradiated. They even prowl through the eerie desolation of Pripyat, a Soviet showcase city of 50,000 people - a third of them children - just a few miles from the explosion.

Here, time stands still, the clock stopped at the time the meltdown occurred and the world changed forever. Pripyat was evacuated the day following the blast as people collapsed on the streets, blood running from their noses, their faces gripped by stabbing pins-and-needles pain, their mouths flooded with the metallic taste of radiation.

A fleet of 400 cars, 1,200 buses and a dozen trains shipped them away with just a few hours notice. Behind they left all their furniture and possesions, long since looted by the soldiers who were the last to leave this accursed place.

Running for their lives: Pepyat was evacuated the day following the blast as people collapsed on the streets, blood running from their noses, their faces gripped by stabbing pins-and-needles pain, their mouths flooded with the metallic taste of radiation

Evacuation: A fleet of 400 cars, 1,200 buses and a dozen trains shipped them away with just a few hours notice - leaving the city a ghost town, forever stuck in April 1986. It is now an increasingly popular tourist destination, with buses taking people around the 'sights'

Deserted: A children's school - which would have been full of noise and laughter 30 years ago - sits rusting behind its abandoned gate

Back to nature: Wolves, wild horses, bats, rats, rabbits and mice roam un-hunted in the wild where plant life is mutated and soil irradiated

Stuck in time: Pripyat is just three kilometres from the reactor, and had a population of 49,360 the day it was evacuated

Pripyat now, suitably, has the look and feel of a Hollywood movie portraying nuclear Armageddon. The big Ferris wheel that will never turn again, the dodgem cars immobilised for all time, the May Day banners of a lost workers' state that will never be carried by human hand: everything irradiated, everything a broken testament to the titanic power of the atom.

Because no-one can see radiation, they act as if it was not there. But I know it is there. You can visit, you can stay, you can sleep here. But day by day, one is absorbing more and more of it.

Outside the Alienation Zone life goes on in towns where citizens, like Ivan, prefer not to dwell on the statistics that say they shouldn't be living there for another 240,000 years at least.

Tanya Moshinska, 35, and her daughter Maria, eight, live in one of the houses abandoned after the evacuation of the town of Narodychi in 1991; given to Tanya for free because she is a nurse working in the town hospital. The authorities declared it 'safe' less than a decade ago, although what yardstick they work by is a mystery to all.

'Cancer?' she says. 'Oh come to my hospital, there is plenty of cancer to see. I think that the place is safer to live in than it was in 1986, but it is all about degrees, isn't it? What is entirely safe?

'I try not to think about it. I worry for Maria though. I hope she will grow up strong and be able to leave this place. Chernobyl will not be safe for thousands of years to come and we are its neighbour. How can we be safe?

'Because no-one can see radiation, they act as if it was not there. But I know it is there. You can visit, you can stay, you can sleep here. But day by day, one is absorbing more and more of it. It cannot be good for you.'

Time warp: After the land was declared habitable, the Alienation Zone shrunk to a 30km radius around the wrecked power plant, encompassing over 2,500 square km of irradiated land in both Ukraine and Belarus. Pripyat remains in the zone, however

Bleak: Those who remain living near the zone are fatalistic. 'What choice do we have?' asks one mother, Tanya

Russian biologist Dr Alexey Yablokov, a former environmental advisor to the Russian president, Dr Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist in neighbouring Belarus and Dr Vassili Nesterenko, a physicist and, at the time of the accident director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, wrote a book on the Chernobyl tragedy six years ago in which they claim 985,000 people across the world died as a result of the explosion and fire, most of them from cancer due to the radiation spread by the wind.

'Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment' was published by the New York Academy of Sciences and based on solid scientific data. It makes for grim reading and is not a tome likely digested by the residents of Narodychi.

When the authorities declared it habitable once again, it meant the alienation zone shrank to a 30km radius around the wrecked power plant, encompassing over 2,500 square km of irradiated land in both Ukraine and Belarus.

Most have accepted their life with a fatalism bordering on recklessness. 'What choice do we have?' added Tanya. 'Life deals you the cards, you have to play with them. I just wish I could move somewhere else but there is nowhere to go.'

At night the eyes of all turn to the horizon where the husk of Chernobyl lies, pulsating in their imaginations like some Grimm fairy tale castle where the ogre lives.
' and an ambulance was called to take him to a hospital where he was later pronounced dead

He was 'still acting

Bradford Macomber, 63, (pictured) of Gulfport, Mississippi, died after being tasered by a police stun gun on Sunday

A 53-year-old man has died after police used a stun gun on him outside a Mississippi restaurant, authorities say.

Bradford Macomber of Gulfport, Mississippi, was behaving erratically outside the Shaggy's Gulfport Beach bar and grill on Sunday and police were called.

They arrived around 4.30pm after the restaurant asked authorities for help with Macomber.

Macomber was outside the restaurant when officers arrived and he became 'resistive' as officers tried to investigate the complaint, Sgt. Damon McDaniel said in a news release, according to the Sun Herald.

Police used a stun gun to subdue him because he was continuing to resist them and acting disorderly, Gulfport police.

Macomber was handcuffed at the time he was tasered.

An ambulance was called after the erratic behavior continued and Macomber was brought to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead, according to WXXV 25.

Harrison County Coroner Gary Hargrove said the cause of death was under investigation and that an autopsy would be performed.

Macomber was dining at Shaggy's Gulfport Beach bar and grill (pictured) when the restaurant staff called police because he was behaving erratically

There are believed to be three deaths from police deployed stun guns in Mississippi since 2010, according to the Sun Herald (stock image)

The District Attorney's Office and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation are investigating the case.

Hargrove says Macomber was white and McDaniel would not disclose information about the officer or officers involved.

McDaniel said he wasn't sure if the officer who deployed the Taser would be placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation, the Sun Herald reported.

Since 2010 it is believed three people have died from being tasered by officers in Mississippi.

Blaine McElroy, 37, died from an officer's stun gun on November 27, 2010.

He had threatened a woman and children with a wrench and bit a deputy. He was tasered and died but authorities said McElroy died of a cocaine overdose.

Jermaine Williams, 30, died July 23, 2010, after a Cleveland, Mississippi, police officer tasered him.
A teenage girl crippled by polio told how her father threw her out of their home because he thought she was cursed and brought shame on his family.

Speaking in barely a whisper Jacinta Akuwom chose her words carefully as she recalled her shocking treatment: When I was very young, I was an outcast because I was disabled.

My father tried to throw me away, he did not want me and forced me from my home because I was not a proper person, he was ashamed (of me). He thought I was worthless, I was bad luck.

She is not sure at what age her legs were amputated above the knees because of the polio  she thinks six or seven  but it was around that time, Jacinta said, that her father made his devastating decision.

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Survivor: Jacinta Akuwom, 17, had her legs amputated from above the knee ten years ago after contracting polio - which her father said was cursed by 'evil spirits' and threw her out of the family home to die

Brave: But Jacinta fought to survive and was 'saved' by a Catholic missionary who supported her ever since

She has not seen him, her mother or brothers and sisters since.

Sitting in the shade of a white-washed school corridor in Turkana, north western Kenya, the 17 year-old told MailOnline her father had kept her hidden in the familys mud hut home because he did not want anyone to associate him with a disabled daughter he believed had been cursed by evil spirits.

It was a heartbreaking and disturbing story that to those of us in the West beggars belief but it is also an inspirational one for Jacinta was  in her words  saved by a Catholic missionary who took her in and has helped to support her ever since.

Today she has prosthetic legs and is one of the star pupils at her school, an oasis of calm and learning, set in a barren landscape parched by drought that has scarred much of Turkana, killing livestock and forcing families from their homes.

Yet there are thousands in the region who continue to suffer from discrimination.

We heard Jacintas story when travelling in north western Kenya with the British-based charity Save the Children, which provides her limbs, and is seeking to change attitudes  some here believe that disability is a curse of the gods or evil spirits who have damned them  towards disabilities and widespread discrimination.

Dozens of disabled children in Turkana  some as young as three the victim of gunshot wounds, others who have had limbs amputated because of treading on poisonous thorns in the bush or being attacked by wild animals  are regularly assessed and are provided with bespoke limbs, many made in Germany and shipped to Kenya.

Jacintas story can be told as Save the Children today launches an international campaign, Every Last Child, to end discrimination against youngsters who are victims simply because of disability, they live in the wrong place or are from an ethnic or religious minority.

The charity declares: Every child should have an equal chance, no matter who or where they are.

To make that happen we have to reach the children who are being left till last  and put them first.

Star: Now Jacinta is a star pupil in her class in Turkana, northern Kenya who dreams of becoming a lawyer

Champion: The brave teenager told MailOnline she wants to become a champion for disabled children

Incredibly, Jacinta says she wants to become a champion for those who are discriminated against and even says she forgives her father for his ignorance and cruelty.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, she said: At one stage I was in a chair (wheelchair) and did not think I would ever be able to walk again but these legs have given me my life back so that I can be seen as a person again, she said under the admiring gaze of Sister Florence Nabwire, Principal of Turkana Girls National School Lorugumu.

No one realises the pain unless they too have suffered both the physical and mental sides of disability. I am so happy that now I have legs and I thank God and all those who give me hope and support.

Beneath a 35 degree sun, Jacinta walks virtually at the same pace as fellow pupils, picking up speed and momentum but she has to remove her legs in order to sit down during lessons  they are placed on the floor beneath the desk  because at this stage, they do not bend at the knees.

Sometimes, the stumps become raw.

I would like to tell other children who are in my position to be courageous and that people are being educated so that discrimination against girls and disability is no longer a reason to be discarded like rubbish.

I am learning and I will be successful to be a lawyer so that I can defend the rights of other children and represent them against people with views like my father.

I will go to the courts and tell people dont judge us by our disability but by who we are and what we are, they need to see our character  and that we too are human like them. We have the same emotion to cry and laugh.

Pain: Jacinta has to remove her prosthetic legs for lessons, where they sit underneath her desk

Challenge: Turkana is Kenya's poorest province and there are 6,000 children with physical disabilities according to Save the Children, who launch their international campaign Every Last Child today

The sheer scale of the challenge that she, aid groups and governments face is illustrated in Turkana, which borders South Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Just 360 miles from the flourishing capital Nairobi, it is Kenya poorest province and there, according to Save the Children, are 6,000 children with physical disabilities.

The charitys Gemma Parkin, who listened with us as Jacinta told her story, said: 'Discrimination is a huge factor. Were working to change harmful traditional beliefs - a common misconception is that disability is caused by evil spirits or a curse from the gods.

These myths prevent disabled people from going to school or to hospital if theyre sick so is a dangerous and destructive rumour. Some of the disabled people we help tell us of spending their entire childhood locked away out of sight.

Girls with disabilities are doubly disabled suffering the usual prejudices against those with disabilities, but are also constrained by traditional gender roles and barriers.

Jacinta is one of the most inspiring girls Ive ever met. Thrown out of home as a toddler because her father thought her disability was a curse, a double-amputee, shes a confident and resilient, thanks to her new legs which Save the Children upgrades every few years as needed.

'The legs have given her a new life because shes able to go to school and socialise. She wants to be a lawyer and defend the rights of disabled children,helping them to be just as courageous.

'Doubly disabled': Girls with disabilities in northern Kenya are said to suffer twice - they face discrimination because of their disability, and also because of their gender where girls face traditional barriers to education

Stigma: Traditional beliefs in Kenya mean some families think that if they give birth to a disabled child they have been 'cursed' and hide the child away believing they are incapable of eduction or work

She continued: There are more than 6,000 children with physical disabilities in Turkana, which is one of the poorest and most remote counties in Kenya. We know children with disabilities are less likely to go to school, which perpetuates the cycle of poverty they are trapped in.

Globally, there are around 75 million primary school age children not in school and a third are children with disabilities. Save the Children is getting Turkanas disabled children back into school by providing surgery, giving prosthetic limbs and wheelchairs so theyre mobile and by upgrading local schools wheelchair access.

SAVE THE CHILDREN LAUNCHES 'EVERY LAST CHILD' CAMPAIGN

400 million children are discriminated around the world for ethnic and religious reasons

There are 150 million children estimated to be living with disabilities

Around 16,000 children under the age of five die each day, many from preventable diseases

It is three-four times more likely that children with disabilities will experience physical and sexual violence  and neglect from their parents.

Only one in four refugee children are in school

Girls as young as 12 and 13 are being forced into early marriage

There are three million unsafe abortions among girls, aged 15-19, each year, many resulting in the early deaths of the girls Advertisement

It is not only disabled children in Turkana that the charity is helping but also disabled adults like 32-year-old Akure Sekona Kirien, who is now part of a collective in their village of Kaite the, a 40-minute drive from Turkanas capital Lodwar, that aims to support those with disabilities.

If a family gives birth to a disabled child, it is seen that they have been cursed, Akure said, The family hide the child away  in a way, they deny it is alive and part of them.

They are seen as being incapable, school is not allowed and they are stopped even from looking after the animals, which the males would do here.

Akure added: Many children die here from mosquito and disease and to be disabled means you are much more vulnerable to such things. You are not a real person.

The village of spartan mud huts straddles the Turwel river and Save the Children has bought the group a motorcycle that is used to earn money by providing transport but also carrying vegetables grown by them in one of the few areas where there is water for irrigation.

Andrew Omedo, the orthopedic specialist, helping Jacinta and more than 50 other amuptees in Turkana, warned that disability is a form of psychological torture.

They feel that their life is at an end because they cant do anything, they lose hope and give up, he said.

We can help with limbs but it is the education of people to understand they can live a good and valued life that is equally as important.

Gemma Parkin added: Save the Childrens aim is to empower people with disabilities, reduce their poverty levels, and make them self-reliant. The best way to change attitudes is to enable children with disabilities to show the community that they can succeed.

Torture: Children say the disability is 'psychological torture' as prejudices mean they are taught to believe they can't do anything and aren't a real person'. Save The Children is working to empower the youngsters

'Sport is helpful in reducing stigma and a powerful means of promoting respect, so we organise sporting events for children with disabilities.

'We also run support groups and business grants, like in the community of Kaite the where Save the Children helped a group of disabled parents to buy a motorbike which they rent out as a business. Theyre now running a profit which is being invested back into their cooperative.

This is all part of Save the Childrens Every Last Child campaign to ensure every child has an equal opportunity to survive and access food, healthcare and education regardless of who they are or where they live.

Recent progress in fighting extreme poverty is often not reaching children who need it most  because of geography, their gender or ethnicity, a disability or because they are victims of conflict.

The children we need to help now are the hardest to reach. Well need support more than ever to save these childrens lives and give them an equal chance. We must reach Every Last Child.
David Miscavige, the Scientology leader who was Tom Cruises best man at two of his weddings, is engaged in a new war with his own father over a new book, Daily Mail Online has learned exclusively.

Ron Miscavige's highly anticipated memoir, Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me, will hit stores next week and is expected to tell of his regret for creating the unyielding man who has ruled Scientology with an iron fist for three decades.

Marine veteran Miscavige, 80, is expected to reveal details of Scientologys inner workings and how his son changed from a delightful child to a 'ruthless' leader in the book.

And the battle against Ron Miscavige and the book - by his own son - has already begun.

Tony Ortega,who runs the ant-Scientology website The Underground Bunker has obtained a copy of a letter from the Church of Scientology demanding that that the book not be published by Silvertail Books in Great Britain.

Ortega says that US publisher St. Martin's Press has also received a copy of the letter.

Scientology claims the book contains 'malicious, false, misleading and highly defamatory allegations relating to David Miscavige' including:

David Miscavige was never officially appointed to be L. Ron Hubbards successor but rather seized power by out-maneuvering his rivals.

That Gold Base is surrounded by spiked fencing pointing inwards;

That working and living conditions at Gold Base were appalling and staff were not permitted to leave.

That David Miscaige created The Hole as a means of punishing Sea Org members and that people were subjected to deprivation and violence while detained in The Hole

That David Miscavige lives in lavish conditions whille Church staff live in poor conditions.

That David Miscavige's management style is erratic and abusive.

That Miscavige hired private detectives to carry out surveillance on Ron Miscavige.

'Furthermore,' the letter continues, ' the summary of the book on your website is equally outragous and defamatory with your allegations of our clients brutal approach to running the organisation today: and the disastrous effects that his leadership has had on countless numbers of Scientologists and their families.'

Marine vet Ron Miscavige (right) will reveal details of Scientologys inner workings and how his son, Scientology Church leader David Miscavige (left) turned into a 'ruthless' tyrant in his bombshell upcoming book

David Miscavige, who was Tom Cruises best man at two of his weddings, is set to lay bare the inner working of the Church led by his son David Miscavige

The letter also claims David Miscavige has not had any 'meaningful' relationship with his father since he left home at 16.

The bid to gag publication was rejected by Silvertail Books.

Publisher Humfrey Hunter told Daily Mail Online: Rons story, Ruthless, shines a vital new light on the inner workings of the Church of Scientology and it is clearly in the public interest for his book to be published in the UK - as well as the rest of the world.

'He is a brave man to have written a book like this and Silvertail is proud to be helping him get it out to as many readers as possible. We are not changing plans: Silvertail Books will publish Ruthless on May 3.'

If Ron hadnt allowed his son to drop out of high school on his 16th birthday to join the church full-time, the ultra-ambitious David may never have caught founder L. Ron Hubbards eye, and may not have been able to position himself to take command when he was just 26 after Hubbards 1986 death.

When he got absolute control, he went absolutely bonkers, David Miscaviges former number two, Mark 'Marty' Rathbun said.

This could be bloody, [David] Miscavige wont take this without a monumental fight.

Ruthless will be released May 3. The highlight of Rons pre-launch publicity tour will be an interview on ABCs 20/20 on Friday.

The book was originally to be titled 'If He Dies, He Dies,' after a comment David allegedly made about his father when he thought he might be having a heart attack.

This could be bloody, [David] Miscavige wont take this without a monumental fight, one of the church leaders former assistants told Daily Mail Online. But dont expect Ron to cave in. This book has been in the pipeline over three years and he cant wait for his moment to come.

Its going to be gnarly and messy  all out war. The whole might of the Church could come down on Ron, I hope he knows what hes let himself in for.'

The book is co-written by Dan Koon, a former high-ranking member of the church who has become one of David Miscaviges leading critics. Unlike many people who have deserted the church, Koon believes in Hubbards original teachings but believes Miscavige has led the church down a dangerous path.

Koon, who, now calls himself an independent scientologist, says the church should get back to its roots and blames Miscavige for misleading the church. The most important target is to reform the church and put in a new management structure, Koon says on a YouTube talk.

The Scientology that a lot of us knew in the 60s and 70s has been lost and replaced by a much less friendlya much more authoritarian and dictatorial Scientology, that is really much more akin to what goes on in North Korea, he said.

That is not what Scientology really is.

Ron Miscavige, with his wife Becky, awaits the release of his book on May 3. The highlight of Rons pre-launch publicity tour will be an appearance on ABCs 20/20 on Friday, April 29

The books release piles more pressure on David Miscavige, 55, and the entire Scientology movement which has been reeling from a series of revelations about its methods. The HBO documentary Going Clear won three Emmys last year for its account of misconduct and abuse and allegations that David Miscavige is power-hungry, violent and paranoid.

Recent high profile defections have included Lisa Marie Presley as well as King of Queens actress Leah Remini and Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis who have both condemned Miscaviges autocratic rule.

Cruises former wives, Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes, have also cut ties with the church. Miscavige was the best man for Tom at both weddings.

But other celebrities including Lisa Maries mother, Priscilla Presley, actors John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and Anne Archer, Mad Mens Elisabeth Moss and Fox Newss Greta Van Susteren remain committed Scientologists.

After she left, Remini made a report to Los Angeles Police that Miscaviges wife Shelly, who has not been seen in public for nearly nine years, was missing. The LAPD investigated and eventually said they had found her and she did not want to make a statement.

But now its Miscaviges own father who is expected to turn against him in the most public way. According to one critic, Ruthless  which is subtitled Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me  could be a nail in the coffin for Scientology.

Ron Miscavige left Scientology in 2012 after 41 years. Broke, he and his second wife Becky were reduced to moving in with his other son, Ron Jr., in Virginia. Ron and Becky, who is 21 years younger than him, now live in a tiny 1,100 sq. ft. single-story brick home on a busy street in a Milwaukee suburb.

According to public records they bought the home in 2013 for $84,000.

His first wife, Loretta, Davids mother, died in 2005, 15 years after they divorced.

Its going to be gnarly and messy  all out war. The whole might of the Church could come down on Ron, I hope he knows what hes let himself in for,' a former Church leader told Daily Mail Online

Ron Miscavige would not come to the door when Daily Mail Online knocked. His wife said he could not speak due to contractual restrictions.

Tony Ortega, who runs the anti-Scientology website The Underground Bunker and knows Ron, believes the book will go into details about Ron and Beckys escape from Scientology  with details that could be straight out of a Tom Cruise movie.

Ortega agrees that this book could be one of Scientologys biggest blows because Ron was so well loved by the whole organization. Even after he left, church staff revered him.

Ron introduced his first wife and four children to Scientology in the 1970s as he was trying to find a cure for Davids asthma.

He liked that instead of discussing heaven, hell and sin, it promised breakthroughs in relationships and marriages, careers, communication, and physical and emotional well-being, Rons granddaughter Jenna Miscagive Hill wrote in Beyond Belief, her own 2013 memoir about leaving the church.

The highlight of Rons pre-launch publicity tour will be an appearance on ABCs 20/20 on Friday, April 29.. The book was originally to be titled If He Dies, He Dies, after a comment David allegedly made about his father when he thought he might be having a heart attack

He also liked that there was a Utopian quality to Scientology. It held a point of view that man is essentially good and in charge of his own spiritual salvation.

The entire family left its home in Willingboro, New Jersey, to join Scientology. They initially went to England for training. They all stayed in the church for more than quarter of a century until Ron Jr. quit in 2000. Davids twin Denise and younger sister Lori are still understood to be Scientologists.

Hubbard soon saw Miscaviges potential and he rapidly rose through the church ranks. When he officially took over leadership, a year after Hubbards death, he was just 26.

This book could not be any worse for Miscavige, Ortega told Daily Mail Online. Ron was the one who watched his son turn into what he is today.

Its one thing for me to write a book about Scientologys dirty tricks, but its another thing if Ron Miscavige does it.

'So many in Scientology still admire and like him. He was a trumpet player, the musical leader, hes associated with fun times. Scientology loves events with music and he was the bandleader so he was always around.

My understanding is that the book will be mainly about how David grew from a fun-loving little boy to the ruthless dictator that he now is.

Ortega said he looks forward to reading how Ron and Becky Miscavige got out of Scientologys international headquarters in Hemet, California.

'There are fences with razor wire, 24-hour security, heavily watched gates, people have to come up with creative ways to get out. His wife escaped with him, its remarkable. For him to escape, things must have been very bad.

All the stories are remarkable of peoples escapes, its all very dramatic. Its like a scene out of Mission Impossible for people to get out.

Rathbun, the former No. 2 at the Church, reveals one of his Scientology jobs was to break up Cruise and Kidmans marriage and make sure the Top Gun actor got custody of their two adopted children.

He claims he personally saw David abuse his father.

While David Miscavige habitually abused Ron physically and mentally to keep him in line, he also occasionally confided in him, Rathbun, who left the church in 2004, wrote on his blog Moving On Up A Little Higher.

Ron has a wealth of knowledge about the inner workings of the base and the inner workings of Davids mind. Ron and Becky resisted months of pressure and bizarre attempts to break and control them.

Ron Miscavigem here with his wife Becky. Ron's book was originally to be titled If He Dies, He Dies, after a comment David allegedly made about his father when he thought he might be having a heart attack

A private detective who was arrested for stalking Ron Miscavige claimed to police that he was put on the job by David, who paid him $10,000 a week. After his arrest Dwayne Powell said David Miscavige wanted him to survey his father 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The UK version of the book published by Silvertail

Ruthless is not Rons first stab at writing. In 2013 he wrote True Confessions of a Kid about his own childhood in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania and followed it up the following year with a collection of short stories, Hideout For Midgets On The Lam.

His granddaughter Jenna Miscavige Hill  Davids niece  wrote the New York Times bestseller Beyond Belief about her life inside Scientology and her harrowing escape in 2013.

Scientology has a record of discrediting its detractors and Ortega believes the church will almost certainly bring up Rons 1985 arrest for attempted rape. He was never charged.

Expect Scientology to attempt to dead agent Ron by smearing him, Ortega said. One possible method will be by bringing up Rons 1985 arrest for attempted rape  an incident that the Philadelphia Inquirer dug into three years ago and found that the case involved a torn blouse and an iffy accusation.

But expect Scientology to make Ron sound like a fiend.

The working title for the book was If He Dies, He Dies, which referred to an incident in 2013 involving Powell and his son Daniel.

The PIs were watching Ron one day when he hunched over and grabbed his chest. They thought he was in pain, although he was actually just fumbling with his phone.

Fearing that he was having a heart attack, Dwayne Powell told police they called their Scientology contact and within two minutes a man identifying himself as David Miscavige called back. David told him that if it was Ron's time to die, to let him die and not intervene in any way, according to the police report.

Dwayne Powell was arrested by local and found to have two rifles, four handguns, 2,000 rounds of ammunition and a homemade silencer along with two computers, binoculars and a GPS device in his rented SUV. He had a folded knife in his pocket.

Ruthless is not Rons first stab at writing. In 2013 he wrote True Confessions of a Kid about his own childhood in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania and followed it up the following year with a collection of short stories, Hideout For Midgets On The Lam

He was charged in federal court with having an unlicensed silencer but the case was dropped.

After his arrest Powell told cops he had been hired by the Church of Scientology to conduct full-time surveillance on Ron Miscavige, according to police reports.

Detective Nicholas Pye, who interviewed Powell said he asked if he was a hit man and whether the guns were to kill Ron Miscavige, but the PI said they were sport guns.

He explained that Ron and his younger wife, Becky, left the church and David is worried that they will divulge details about the church's activities and that their job was to know who Ron talked to, emailed with, where he went, what he did, etc., Pye wrote in his report.

However, The Church of Scientology told the Los Angeles Times that Miscavige had nothing to do with any surveillance on his father and said he did not know either of the Powells.

'Mr. Miscavige has always taken care of his father and continues to do so. Beyond that, as a matter of policy, neither the Church nor Mr. Miscavige comments on members of his family, Scientology spokeswoman Karen Pouw wrote.
There was a stark difference between the beginning and end of the criminal case against a man accused in a string of freeway shootings in Phoenix that sent a metro area into a frenzy as drivers feared they would be fired at on the interstate.

After the man's arrest, the governor triumphantly tweeted, 'We got him!'

Seven months later on a Friday evening, prosecutors quietly revealed that they were dismissing all charges.

Free to go: Leslie Allen Merritt, Jr., appears in Maricopa County Superior Court. Prosecutors had asked for charges against Merritt to be dismissed amid undisclosed questions about evidence

An attorney for Merritt (pictured in a mugshot) questioned the evidence used to link him to the case

The decision to throw out the case against Leslie Merritt Jr. has kicked up a flurry of questions: Was the case botched? If he didn't do it, who did? And are those responsible for the shootings still at large?

'I don't think they'll ever find this person or persons,' said Mike Black, a Phoenix defense attorney who isn't involved in defending Merritt but has followed the case.

The charges were formally dismissed Monday at the request of prosecutors after undisclosed questions arose about the case's evidence.

The shootings sparked so much fear in the Phoenix area that people avoided driving the freeways, school buses took different routes, and signs were posted telling people to be careful.

The head of the Arizona Department of Public Safety said the shootings were the work of a domestic terrorist, and authorities heightened patrols and surveillance in pursuit of a suspect.

Merritt, who spent those seven months in jail before his release last week, has maintained he is innocent and that authorities arrested the wrong person.

'I am just ready to go home and be with my kids,' Merritt (pictured left in a Facebook shot) said moments after walking out of jail last week

He filed a legal claim  a precursor to a lawsuit  a month ago demanding $10 million from the state and county. Merritt alleged that authorities rushed to judgment and failed to provide evidence that he was present at any of the shootings.

Prosecutors can refile charges against the 21-year-old landscaper and say more investigation is needed for the case to move forward.

A judge has barred several documents in the case from public release, including a filing that led to Merritt leaving jail. Those documents remain under seal.

There have been no public expressions of regret about bringing the case from prosecutors, investigators or Gov. Doug Ducey's office since the charges collapsed in court.

Ducey spokesman Daniel Scarpinato pointed out there was wide public interest in the shootings and public safety is among his top priorities. 'This is in the hands of the criminal justice system, where it belongs,' Scarpinato said.

Jerry Cobb, a spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, which prosecuted Merritt, said it's not unusual for prosecutors to dismiss charges and refile them after more investigation is done.

Asked whether the dismissal signals that authorities don't have a viable case against Merritt, Cobb said, 'The dismissal speaks for itself.'

A judge has dismissed a criminal case against Merritt, who had been accused of carrying out freeway shootings. Prosecutors had asked for charges to be dismissed amid questions about evidence

The Arizona Department of Public Safety, which investigated Merritt, declined to comment. Jason Lamm, one of Merritt's attorneys, had no immediate comment Monday on the dismissal.

'They were so eager to resolve this case that they jumped on the first hint of a suspect,' said Dwane Cates, another Phoenix defense lawyer who doesn't represent Merritt but has followed the case.

Authorities previously said they used ballistic tests to tie Merritt to four of the 11 shootings, but Merritt's lawyers have recently argued that ballistic tests cast doubt on the claim their client was behind the attacks.

Merritt's lawyers said phone records and accounts from family members showed that Merritt wasn't near the scene of the shootings.

Prosecutors have cast doubt on the alibi claim by saying Merritt's fiancee told investigators that she wasn't sure about his whereabouts.
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Nuclear scientist Giorgii Lysychenko knew he had been exposed to a dangerously high dose of radiation outside the flaming remains of Chernobyl's reactor number four.

So when the prostate cancer struck last year, he was surprised it had hadn't happened earlier.

'There was a saying among the men there,' the scientist jokes, 30 years later. 'Cover your balls with lead if you want to be a father.'

Chernobyl was the world's worst nuclear accident. When the Ukrainian power plant exploded on 26 April 1986, Mr Lysychenko was chief of staff at the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's National Academy of Sciences.

Running for their lives: The people of Pripyat were evacuated as soon as the scale of the Chernobyl disaster was realised - but a few brave souls, like Giorgii Lysychenko stayed behind to help with the clean up operation. Pictured: An abandoned swimming pool today

Terror: Mr Lysychenko, then chief of staff at the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's National Academy of Sciences, was one of a handful of scientists charged with containing the radioactive material, to stop it reaching the city of Kiev. Pictured: Bumper cars near the facility

Saviour: Without his efforts, Kiev may have looked like this - the building which once was middle school number 3, one of five secondary schools in Pripyat. It was left like this as the 50,000 residents of the city fled in April 1986

Danger: It was done at huge personal risk to himself. 'There was a saying among the men there,' the scientist jokes to MailOnline. 'Cover your balls with lead if you want to be a father.' Pictured: Childrens gas masks lie at the abandoned middle school number 3 in Pripyat

Pictured: Childrens toys left in a family home in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Tens of thousands of people living in towns and villages within the exclusion zone were only given two hours to leave by Soviet authorities and told they would be returning within days

He was one of a handful of the scientific elite that joined 600,000 military men and women to clean up the fall-out. Together they became known as the 'liquidators'.

Unlike the famed Chernobyl firefighters who sprinted onto the reactor roof to hurl radioactive debris back into its core, Mr Lysychenko's extraordinary contribution during the catastrophe has gone unnoticed by the outside world.

Millions of lives depended on the efforts of him and his team of Soviet scientists. It is thanks to them that Ukraine's capital is still habitable today.

We met in Mr Lysychenko's office, on the top floor of the crumbling Academy building. An enormous map of the USSR and its facilities covers one wall, betraying his nostalgia for the heydays of the Soviet science. He had never before spoken to a western journalist.

'Why now? Because I was in Chernobyl, then I was diagnosed with cancer' his voice tails off.

This is Mr Lysychenko's second bout of the disease. He had half of his thyroid gland removed in 2001. Now aged 69, he worries he may not have another chance to tell the world his story.

By the time Mr Lysychenko reached Chernobyl on April 26 1986, reactor fires had already been roaring for two days. Plumes of toxic smoke rose skyward. Southerly winds swept great clouds of radioactive ash over swathes of northern Europe.

Experts: Mr Lysychenko (second from left) at the helm of a boat heading up the Pripyat river in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. At least 31 people were killed by the reactor explosion or acute radiation sickness in its immediate aftermath - and thousands more later on

As Mr Lysychenko sailed up the river, tonnes of poisonous reactor coolant were seeping into its basin and were in danger of being swept south into the river Dnipro, then on to the capital Kiev. Pictured: A liquidator dons a lead apron as he prepares to clear radioactive debris from the roof of Reactor Number Four. Twenty-eight of them received a lethal dose of radiation poisoning

Plan: Soviet scientist Mr Lysychenko knew about 35million people used water from that river. Under his direction, boatloads of soldiers churned up and down the Pripyat river, casting sorbents into the water to trap isotopes of caesium, uranium and plutonium

At least 31 people were killed by the reactor explosion or acute radiation sickness in its immediate aftermath. Tens of thousands were evacuated from the area.

Estimates of the current cancer death toll range from 4,000 to hundreds of thousands of people.

Although Ukraine's capital was spared from most of the ash, Mr Lysychenko had anticipated another threat.

He headed for the river Pripyat, 55 miles upstream from Kiev. Tonnes of poisonous reactor coolant were seeping into the river basin and in danger of being swept south into the river Dnipro, then on to the capital.

'All kinds of radionuclides were washed into the Dnipro river from the exclusion zone, and about 35 million Ukrainians use the water from it,' Mr Lysychenko explains. 'So apart from closing the sarcophagus [to seal the reactor], the water issue was the major one.'

As radioactive particles seeped into the river basin, he and his team scrambled to build damns, filters and dykes to control the flow of toxic water.

Under his direction, boatloads of soldiers churned up and down the Pripyat river, casting sorbents into the water to trap isotopes of caesium, uranium and plutonium.

'The Dnipro in turn cascades into a series of water reservoirs  if we hadn't acted, all of the reservoirs would have been contaminated by radionuclides. That would have been a disaster.'

Mr Lysychenko knew that the health of his wife, their 12 year old son and three-year-old daughter in Kiev hinged on his success. So did the survival of his native city.

Although an evacuation of the immediate area around Chernobyl was underway, the Soviet authorities kept the disaster quiet until May 6. He was only allowed to move his family from Kiev three days later.

He took them to Moscow. According to Mr Lysychenko, the Kremlin protected the Soviet capital by artificially inducing rain as the ash cloud moved north, causing radioactive dust to fall on Belarus instead.

Sickness: But Mr Lysychenko has paid the price - he is currently undergoing treatment for his second bout of cancer. Pictured: The Pripyat ferris wheel has become an iconic and eerie Chernobyl landmark

Protection: A radar installation at the Chernobyl military base. The Soviet air force is said to have used chemicals to cause it to rain over Belarus, bringing the radioactive ash down to earth before it reached Russia, and the capital Moscow

Measures: Soviet workers buried villages and coated towns in an absorbent dust to prevent the spread of radiation. Since then, trees have even sprung up on rooftops and inside buildings over the thirty years since Soviet Pripyat was inhabited

Remembering: The Chernobyl and Pripyat town signs get a new lick of paint ahead of the visit of President Poroshenko on Tuesday, to mark the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster

'There are radioactive spots in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, but the dust never reached Moscow,' he says. 'I don't know exactly what chemicals they used, but there were aircraft spraying substances in the air to provoke rain.'

On returning to Chernobyl, his body continued to absorb a dangerous dose of radiation. Clad only in surgical scrubs and a mask, there was little he could do.

'Why did we wear white jackets? That was the only clothing available. If there were any spots of dirt or smears, which were, obviously, radioactive, we noticed them right away. We had to destroy them.'

On May 26, the reactor core was finally sealed and the leaks contained with a new roof described as 'the sarchophagus'.

Yet for years Mr Lysychenko continued to visit the toxic exclusion zone, measuring levels of contamination in the water and making adjustments to his containment plan.

Around him, soldiers excavated and removed a metre of top soil from the worst hit areas. They buried villages and doused Pripyat in a fine chemical dust to suppress radioactivity.

Finally they buried their vehicles and equipment, which remains some of the most dangerous radioactive objects in the exclusion zone today.

Top secret: No one was allowed to know about the scale of the disaster until May 6, which meant Mr Lysychenko was unable to move his family away from Kiev until them. Pictured: A radioactive lecture hall in the 'Energetic' Palace of Culture in Pripyat

Dedication: Mr Lysychenko continued to vist the exclusion zone for years after the disaster. It has recently become a tourist attraction. Pictured: Childrens lockers in a bathroom and changing room at a nursery school in one of the evacuated villages surrounding Chernobyl

Fears: Mr Lysychenko says the biggest danger people in Ukraine face is the old power stations still being expected to work 'like new'. Pictured: A childs gas mask and exercise book lie on the ground at middle school number three in Pripyat

Future: Despite what he saw - and knowing what little remains, like this supermarket in danger of collapse after 30 years of decay - he is still in favour of nuclear power. 'Without it, we would not have survived this winter,' he said

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the West stepped in to help safeguard Chernobyl and prevent more contamination. While some of the elements with shorter half-lives have already decayed, elements from the core could continue emitting radiation for 20,000 years.

Since 2010, the international community has spent $2.5bn (1.7bn) on creating an enormous arch-shaped building due for completion next year. They say it will contain the reactor's poisonous legacy for generations.

A disaster won't be caused by physicists who are interested in working safely, but those stupid politicians from our government who want the nuclear power plants to operate as though new. Lysychenko

Weighing in at 30,000 tonnes, 110 metres tall and 165 metres long, it will be the largest ever movable structure, officials say.

Built alongside the existing sarcophagus, it will be wheeled into place along a set of rails either side of reactor four.

The reactor will be dismantled by remote controlled robots inside the arch. Spent nuclear fuel rods will be removed and sealed inside concrete housing.

Yet Mr Lysychenko thinks the next nuclear threat will come not from Chernobyl, but Ukraine's 15 other increasingly antiquated reactors, spread across the country.

'A disaster won't be caused by physicists who are interested in working safely, but those stupid politicians from our government who want the nuclear power plants to operate as though new.'

Despite his concerns, three decades later and two bouts of cancer later, Mr Lysychenko is still not opposed to nuclear power, noting that it provides half of all Ukraine's electricity.

'You shouldn't be afraid of nuclear energy. Without it, we would not have survived this winter.'

Ironically, it is actually thanks to more bursts of radiation that he is still alive today.

'I've had 27 sessions of radiation therapy, I've almost defeated it,' he says. 'Only God knows if it will come back.'

Remains: Boats used by the liquidators to prevent radiations flowing downstream became highly radioactive and were abandoned at Chernobyl port, where they still lie 30 years later

Silence: Pripyat was a town of 50,000 people close to Chernobyl, had to be evacuated after the reactor exploded

Tribute: A monument to the 600,000 liquidators stands in front of reactor number four and the 30 year-old sarcophagus that houses it
Hundreds of thousands of commuters are braced for two days of travel chaos as a strike across Southern railways begins this morning.

The dispute will see trains cancelled and delayed across the south, Kent, Sussex and serving major routes into London.

Around 400 onboard conductors are set to stage a walkout, which begins at 11am this morning and ends at 10.59am tomorrow.

Hundreds of thousands of commuters are braced for two days of travel chaos as a strike across Southern railways begins this morning

Southern Trains expects the strike to cause two days of disruption  with no service on many routes and only a limited service between 7.30am and 6pm on others.

The Rail Maritime and Transport Union, the largest of the rail unions, has ordered a mass walk out by onboard conductors in a long running dispute about changes to working conditions and safety.

Southerns parent company, Govia Thameslink Railway, wants to have drivers opening and closing train doors instead of conductors.

It says this will free up conductors to help passengers on the platforms.

But the union says this is unsafe and fears the move will lead to driver-only trains.

In a full page advertisement in yesterdays Evening Standard, Charles Horton, Southerns chief executive, apologised for the totally unnecessary strike.

Routes where there will be no service include Clapham Junction to Milton Keynes and Redhill in Surrey to Tonbridge in Kent.

There is more misery in store for the estimated 300,000 people who travel on Southerns routes every day next month with back-to-back 24 hour strikes spread over four days in the same week from May 10.

The dispute will see Southern trains cancelled and delayed across the south, Kent, Sussex and serving major routes into London

But there was a welcome reprieve for those travelling on the Piccadilly London underground line as a strike due to start at midday today (Tues) was called off yesterday afternoon.

A second bout of action on Thursday has also been called off.

RMT said it suspended the action following progress in talks with London Underground bosses.

About 400 drivers on the Piccadilly Line - which runs to Heathrow airport - were planning to stage two 24-hour walk outs today and Thursday.
help on how to budget better

A Reddit user who claims they spend $200 a week on food has been mercilessly mocked by the internet.

The user submitted a question to the Australian section of Reddit, seeking help on how to budget more effectively.

The person, who is in their mid 20s, is not a student and lives alone in Perth, and says they spend an average of $150-$200 a week on food but wants to cut it down to a maximum of $100 a week.

A Reddit user submitted a question to the Australian section of Reddit, seeking help on how to budget more effectively

The user, who is in their mid 20s, is not a student and lives alone, says they spends an average of $150-$200 a week on food and wants to cut it down to a maximum of $100 a week

'I know I've got to cut this down drastically. I could be saving so much money if I stopped buying takeaway foods and moderated my grocery shops,' they wrote on Reddit.

One user wrote: 'Jebus dude its mostly a life-style problem you got. Prepare to be ruthlessly mocked here and the other place.'

Meanwhile another user went straight to the point: 'What the f***, $50 for a pizza?' after the original poster admitted they spent $50 a week on pizza when they are 'too tired or lazy to prepare something at home.'

But the original poster said the $50 covered two pizzas, a drink and a side dish.

One user remarked in shock that they spent $50 on pizza at least once a week if they were too lazy to cook at home

The original poster was mercilessly mocked and criticised for being 'lazy'

A user criticised the original poster for being lazy, but listed a number of helpful tips.

'Mate I don't know you or your circumstances and I'm not trying to have a go at you, but if you're serious about your situation it reads like laziness.'

'There's no fricking way you need to spend $50 on pizza for one person.'

The original poster said the $200 adds up when laziness gets in the way, prompting heavy criticism

Many users advised the original poster to shop at German discount store Aldi instead of supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths as they are more expensive

The original poster said the $200 adds up when laziness gets in the way.

'Once a fortnight I do a big online shop ($150) at Coles or Woolworths and get it delivered,' they wrote.

'But then find out I've forgotten something or am craving something specific, so I go to IGA and spend a further $30-$40 a week, sometimes twice a week.

'I'm not a morning person and usually don't have time to have breakfast at home, so I buy it and takeaway coffee at least 3 mornings a week ($10 per time).

'Finally, once or twice a week, I buy lunch when I'm at work, roughly $15 at a time.'

'Once a fortnight I do a big online shop ($150) at Coles or Woolworths and get it delivered,' the original poster wrote

Many users advised the original poster to shop at German discount store Aldi instead of supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths as they are more expensive.

One user simply remarked: 'You have got to be kidding me.'

The post was submitted on Monday evening and has over 130 comments.

'It reads like laziness': One user criticised the poster for being lazy, but listed a number of helpful tips

The post was submitted on Monday evening and has over 130 comments

Another user wrote: 'Dude, how the f*** do you spend $50 on pizza? Get a $3 pizza from Aldi and put it in your freezer. When lazy put in oven and then eat.'

'Sorry, but you sound like a f***ing imbecile,' one user wrote.

More helpful commentators advised the original poster to invest in storage containers to store leftovers, make coffee instead of buying it, eat breakfast, cook easy dishes and go to fruit and vegetable markets.

More helpful commentators advised the original poster to invest in storage containers to store leftovers, make coffee instead of buying it, eat breakfast, cook easy dishes and go to fruit and vegetable markets

One user wrote: 'Prepare to be ruthlessly mocked here and the other place'

'You have got to be kidding me': Many users had little sympathy for the original poster's complaints

Some users found themselves with the same problem as the original poster.

One person wrote: 'I feel like this post mirrors my life.'

'I've been so busy and not spending much time at home lately, that I've all but stopped buying groceries for home and cook something quick and lazy maybe once or twice a week.

'This madness has to stop! And I know a lot of it is to do with my own laziness too, unfortunately.'

Another user similarly wrote: 'G'day, poor student with poorly managed ADHD here. If I can do this you can too.'

Some users found themselves with the same problem as the original poster. One wrote: 'I feel like this post mirrors my life'
The NHS currently offers vaccination to babies aged two to five months

They are urging Government to fund jab for older children for meningitis B

Neil and Jenny Burdett lost their daughter Faye to the disease

Parents who suspect their child has meningitis must be pushier with doctors who try to fob them off as a Calpol case, MPs heard yesterday.

Tory Helen Whately, whose constituents Neil and Jenny Burdett lost their two-year-old daughter Faye to the disease in February, urged mothers and fathers to stand firm.

She told a Westminster debate: Parents need to trust their instincts if a child seems unusually ill, and its also absolutely critical for health professionals to listen to them.

Tory Helen Whately, whose constituents Neil and Jenny Burdett lost their two-year-old daughter Faye (pictured) to the disease in February, urged mothers and fathers to be pushier with doctors who try to fob them off as a Calpol case

Alongside the tell-tale meningitis rash  which is often only spotted too late to stop the disease worsening  parents must look out for other warning signs, the MP and mother of three said.

She added: Parents have to be ready to spot a whole host of other symptoms and to be really confident when they speak to doctors that they think their child is really more sick than usual, this doesnt feel like just a Calpol case.

'Parents, I do believe, have an instinct over this but we need to encourage them to trust their instinct and for health professionals to encourage parents to speak about that.

The Burdetts, who attended the debate, shared their harrowing story in yesterdays Daily Mail.

The couple, from Maidstone, Kent, are urging the Government to fund a vaccination programme for older children for meningitis B  the strain which claimed their daughters life.

The jab is currently offered to babies aged two to five months on the NHS, while a one-off catch up programme extended it to all those under one year for a limited time.

GlaxoSmithKline, which produces the vaccine, made profits of 10.3billion last year. MPs called on the pharmaceutical giant to lower its prices to make the jab more accessible.

She told a Westminster debate: Parents need to trust their instincts if a child seems unusually ill, and its also absolutely critical for health professionals to listen to them'

Tory MP David Nuttall, who represents Bury North, said the Government should divert funding from adults stop smoking services to pay for it.

He added: If they have not stopped [smoking] by now, when will they? These adults have a choice.

Ben Howlett, the Tory MP for Bath, spoke of an 11-month-old girl in his constituency, Harmonie-Rose Allen, who lost both arms and legs after contracting meningitis B. He called for an immediate catch-up vaccination programme for all under-fives.

David Winnick, the Labour MP for Walsall North, shared the story of seven-year-old Mason Timmins who died from the illness.

He said Masons parents had paid to inoculate their three-year-old daughter privately.
Theresa May last night plunged Tory plans to scrap the Human Rights Act into chaos by demanding that Britain should quit the European Court of Human Rights.

The Home Secretary opened up a major split with No 10 by saying that if the UK wanted to boot out more terrorists and foreign criminals, it must quit the Strasbourg court altogether.

By contrast, Downing Street is backing a compromise option giving British judges a greater say over deportation cases and other rulings, while remaining a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Mrs May is the minister the legislation is supposed to help, following years in which the Government's efforts to kick out foreign criminals and Islamist fanatics have been thwarted by Euro judges

Downing Street last night conceded there were 'differences' between Mr Cameron and Mrs May over whether Britain should leave the ECHR but said people 'shouldn't overdo them'

The legislation has been completed and is sitting on David Cameron's desk. His plan was to publish it shortly after the referendum to heal divisions which have opened up in the Tory party over the EU.

However senior ministers say it is hard to see how he can proceed with a British Bill of Rights to replace the HRA when it stops so far short of the Home Secretary's public demands.

Mrs May is the minister the legislation is supposed to help, following years in which the Government's efforts to kick out foreign criminals and Islamist fanatics have been thwarted by Euro judges.

Either she will have to back down, MPs said  or legislation which has been more than a decade in the making will be sent back to the drawing board. In the meantime, the abuse of human rights laws will continue.

In a speech yesterday  ostensibly on Britain's EU membership  the Home Secretary declared only leaving the European court would suffice.

She told a London audience: 'The ECHR can bind the hands of Parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals  and does nothing to change the attitudes of governments like Russia's when it comes to human rights.

'So regardless of the EU referendum, my view is this: If we want to reform human rights laws in this country, it isn't the EU we should leave but the ECHR and the jurisdiction of its court.'

Eurosceptics accused Mrs May of trying to distract attention from the fact she is campaigning to remain in the EU  despite having major reservations. And Brexit campaigners said Britain could not ditch the ECHR  which is operated by the separate Council of Europe  without breaching EU treaty obligations.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel receives the British Prime Minister David Cameron, US President Barack Obama, the French President Francois Hollande and the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi G5 meeting at Herrenhausen Palace, Hannover

The Home Secretary opened up a major split with No 10 by saying that if the UK wanted to boot out more terrorists and foreign criminals, it must quit the Strasbourg court altogetherthere

One minister said Mrs May's intervention was extraordinary.

'This is not Government policy,' he said. 'It's all about her positioning for the leadership.'

Another said: 'The question for No 10 is are they now planning to sack Theresa May? This has got nothing to do with EU membership. The PM has not suspended collective responsibility on anything else.'

There has been a long-running saga over Mr Cameron's decade-old pledge to scrap Labour's Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights.

After years of wrangling, the PM and Justice Secretary Michael Gove finally settled on a compromise.

Tory whips believe that the more radical option of quitting the ECHR altogether will not get through Parliament. It is opposed by a string of senior Tories, including David Davis (pictured) and ex-attorney general Dominic Grieve, who say it would set a bad example to the rest of the world

Britain will remain signed up to the European court but will no longer have to slavishly abide by its rulings. British judges will be told they will not have to follow the court's ruling where they disagree.

Tory whips believe that the more radical option of quitting the ECHR altogether will not get through Parliament. It is opposed by a string of senior Tories, including David Davis and ex-attorney general Dominic Grieve, who say it would set a bad example to the rest of the world.

Downing Street last night conceded there were 'differences' between Mr Cameron and Mrs May over whether Britain should leave the ECHR but said people 'shouldn't overdo them'.

Asked whether Mrs May was speaking on behalf of the Government, the PM's official spokesman would say only that she was 'setting out her views as Home Secretary'.

The spokesman refused to say whether Mr Cameron backed leaving the ECHR, saying: 'He has made clear he wants to see reform of the ECHR. He rules absolutely nothing out if we do not achieve that.'
A widow who spent her savings trying to fix her smile says her life has been ruined after she was butchered by a Hungarian dentist.

Jackie Stokes, 65, spent 9,500 on getting implants fitted in Hungary after her NHS dentist of 30 years went private and she could not afford the fees.

But the procedures went catastrophically wrong, resulting in crippling pain, blisters, stitches falling out and the implants shifting. Mrs Stokes said: Its left me feeling as if I have been butchered, physically assaulted and robbed of my life savings.

Jackie Stokes, 65, spent 9,500 on getting implants fitted in Hungary after her NHS dentist of 30 years went private and she could not afford the fees

Dr Zsolt Csillag, working at the Forest and Ray Medical Care Group in London, had advised Mrs Stokes to have three procedures in the capital and two in Budapest.

While in Budapest in 2012, she had implants in her upper jaw and crowns on eight teeth in her lower jaw. The following year she returned to Hungary, but was left with a bulldog bite  a gap between her gums and upper teeth through which food would seep, and the implants then failed and were removed.

Mrs Stokes, from Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, who now has to wear uncomfortable dentures, said: I am still suffering the aftermath. Its been a nightmare and its still ongoing.

This entire episode is indelibly etched upon my brain. Its ruined my life.

Over a two-and-a-half-year period Mrs Stokes made eight visits to London, two to Budapest and then 17 trips to London to try to fix the damage. But she still needs eight implants as well as cosmetic work  and has been quoted 25,000 to fix her smile.

While in Budapest in 2012, she had implants in her upper jaw and crowns on eight teeth in her lower jaw

The procedures went catastrophically wrong, resulting in crippling pain, blisters, stitches falling out and the implants shifting

Im broke, I dont have any money. I could forget the money but its what they left me with which is so painful, Mrs Stokes said. When my identical twin sister, Jo, saw me for the first time when I returned, she burst into tears and said: What have they done to you?

Dr Csillag was referred to the General Dental Council (GDC), which found him guilty of misconduct which caused irreversible damage to otherwise healthy teeth. It gave him a one-year supervision order, but the restrictions apply only when he is working in the United Kingdom.

Im appalled that they can come in this country... and hide behind the Hungarian law, Mrs Stokes said.

Dr Csillag is believed to have returned to Hungary and appeared at the GDC hearing in February via Skype.

Dental tourism to Eastern European countries has soared in recent years due to the diminishing numbers of NHS dentists and prohibitive costs of private dentists in the UK.

The majority of Hungarian dentists promise a saving of between 40 and 70 per cent in fees. Both Dr Csillag and Forest and Ray were unavailable for comment.

n Thousands of patients could be exposed to the risk of serious injury by cheap Chinese-made dental drills on sale in Britain.

The extremely dangerous high-speed drills, which look identical to a reputable brand, were sold at knock-down prices by a fraudster on eBay. But the devices can shatter during use.
About 170 passengers were evacuated from a train in Victoria after it slammed into a car that was parked on the tracks.

Police are investigating how the four-wheel-drive ended up on the tracks in Glenroy, north of Melbourne, where a V-Line train travelling to Albury smashed into it about 7pm on Monday.

There was no one in the car at the time of the accident, however two people were seen jumping from it moments before the crash, Seven News reports.

About 170 passengers had to be evacuated from a train in Victoria after it slammed into a car that was parked on the tracks near Melbourne

Dramatic footage shot just after the incident shows the wrecked four-wheel-drive in front of the V-Line train.

Passengers were also seen getting off the train, with some appearing to be noticeably shaken by the accident.

The car's owner, Craigieburn carpenter Chris Zammit, said his car vanished earlier in the day and he had no idea how it ended up on the tracks.

'I woke up and it was just gone, I've got work stuff, things belonging to relatives, I just can't believe it,' Mr Zammit told the Herald Sun.
But Mr Whittington and his team remain in a Beirut prison

'I have been abandoned by my country but I will never abandon you guys'

His lawyer laid an Anzac Day wreath at the Australian embassy in Beirut

Former Australian soldier Adam Whittington in message to fellow diggers

The former Australian soldier jailed in Lebanon over the 60 Minutes fiasco has delivered a fiery Anzac Day message as he languishes in a Beirut jail.

'I have been abandoned by my country but I will never abandon you guys,' Adam Whittington said in a statement via his lawyers on Monday.

Before he was embroiled in the 60 Minutes abduction fiasco, Mr Whittington served in the Australian Army for seven years.

His Lebanese lawyer Joe Karam laid an Anzac wreath on his behalf at the Beirut embassy on about 5.20am Monday local time.

Scroll down for video

Adam Whittington (right) released a furious statement accusing his country of having 'abandoned' him on Anzac Day 2016

Adam Whittington served as an Australian soldier (pictures) before he became a so-called 'child recovery' agent

Mr Whittington's lawyer Joe Karam laid a wreath at the Anzac memorial in Beirut about 5.20am on Monday

Family and friends have complained Mr Whittington, known as Skippy, has been deserted by Australian consular officials and Channel Nine.

The 60 Minutes team who joined him in the botched 'kidnapping' of Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner's two young children walked free last week after reaching a deal with the kids' father.

But father Ali Elamine has not dropped the charges against Mr Whittington and his team, which included a Cypriot tattoo artist and two Lebanese men.

Mr Whittington is a dual UK-Australian citizen who lives in Sweden with his young family. He had entered the country using his UK passport, so UK authorities have been handling the case.

His lawyers have produced documents showing the Nine Network made a direct payment of $69,000 into his account prior to the alleged abduction.

School friend Kylie Robertson, who passed on the statement to his Australian friends, told Daily Mail Australia: 'We're so angry and so scared for him and we just want him home'.

The wreath read: 'From veteran ADAM WHITTINGTON Anzac Day Beirut 2016'

Mr Whittington served in the Australian Army (left, right) from 1991 to 1998, according to his LinkedIn page

Mr Whittington is pictured with his wife, Karin, enjoying some leisure time at a waterfall

Last week, his mother Georgina gave her first interview to Daily Mail Australia and spoke of how Mr Whittington would have been distraught at missing his youngest son's 5th birthday.

'It (missing his son's birthday) will be worrying him more than anything else,' a tearful Mrs Whittington said.

'He'll be really upset.... He's never missed one of the kids' birthdays before'.

Mrs Whittington has since appeared on Channel Seven, 2GB and in the Fairfax and News Corp papers.

Daily Mail Australia approached the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for comment.
A university media professor who was fired after calling for 'muscle' to remove a student journalist from a college protest says she was let go 'because she is white'.

The now notorious Melissa Click lost everything after she was filmed launching a tirade against reporter Tim Tai who had been trying to cover a protest about the university's handling of a series of racist incidents last fall.

Tai, who was covering the event for ESPN back in November, refused to move as the crowd chanted for reporters to leave the public quad.

Scroll down for video

University media professor, Melissa Click, who was fired after calling for 'muscle' to remove a student journalist from a college protest says she was let go 'because she is white'.

Melissa Click (pictured) the University of Missouri communications professor was filmed calling for 'muscle' to remove a student journalist from covering a protest. She has been charged with misdemeanor assault

Student videographer Mark Schierbecker filmed the confrontation and continued recording as he went over and asked to speak to Click.

He said: 'I'm media. Can I speak to you?' She replies 'no' and tells him to 'get out'.

When he refused, insisting he had a right to be there, she is seen yelling at other people nearby: 'Hey, who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here.'

Schierbecker's video of his run-in with Click went viral, amassing more than 2.7 million views, and he filed a complaint with university police.

Click faced up to 15 days in jail after pleading guilty to a third degree assault charge at the beginning of the year, but this was later dropped after she agreed to perform 20 hours of community service.

And while she has formally and informally apologized for her actions, many point out this wasn't an isolated incident.

At the same event she told a geology professor that questions he directed to the black students were inappropriate, he says, and asked him to leave, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

She also told two other cameramen they weren't welcome, telling one: 'Wow, you're so scary' and leading students in a chant 'Hey, hey, ho, ho, reporters have got to go!'.

Student videographer Mark Schierbecker (right) filmed the confrontation and continued recording as he went over and asked to speak to Click. Left, University of Missouri

Referring to Schierbecker, Click (above) was caught yelling: 'Hey, who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here'

Meanwhile another video of her surfaced around the same time, showing her shouting and swearing at officers during a protest on October 10.

She is filmed screaming at a police officer who attempted to remove her from the road: 'Get your f***king hands off me.'

The shocking video did little to help her cause and she was booted out of the university after more than 100 state legislators were hounding her to resign.

But speaking months after the furor has died down, Click is attempting to re-write history, claiming the only reason she was fired was because of her race.

She told the Chronicle: 'This is all about racial politics. I'm a white lady. I'm an easy target.'

WARNING: VIDEO CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE

Click has appealed her refusal of employment benefits and has set up a GoFundMe page to pay for the fees

Click is now unemployed but not allowed to claim benefits because the university said she'd been fired for cause.

She has appealed this, setting up a GoFundMe page to pay for the fees. She has so far raised $13,457 of $38,000.

Ms Click remains adamant that though her behavior was regrettable, she did not deserve to lose her job.

She added: 'I'm not a superhero. I wasn't in charge.
One of Britain's wealthiest businessmen gave 1million to the Brexit campaign yesterday to help it get back on track.

Car distributor Robert Edmiston sent 850,000 to Vote Leave, which is backed by Justice Secretary Michael Gove, and 150,000 to Grassroots Out whose supporters include Ukip leader Nigel Farage.

The move by Lord Edmiston, who has previously donated 4million to the Tories and was made a life peer in 2010, follows a torrid week for the Leave camp.

Barack Obama's dire warnings about trade deals with the US went much further than even David Cameron had dared hope. Boris Johnson's attack on the President's Kenyan heritage also caused huge embarrassment for the Leave side.

Lord Edmiston said the idea that the economy 'falls of a cliff the day after Brexit' was 'complete nonsense' as existing treaties will remain in place, with two years to negotiate their replacement

Despite a poll showing 53 per cent of Britons see the President's intervention as inappropriate, Downing Street was delighted.

But Lord Edmiston, founder of car importer IM Group and worth 540million according to the Rich List, said: 'The idea that the American government would not want to do business with us if we left the EU is absolutely risible. It's the worst sort of scaremongering.

'I have been importing and exporting for years and do not anticipate any difficulties if we leave the EU. There might be a bit of disruption but it's in America's interests to do a deal with Britain which is the world's fifth largest economy.'

The 69-year-old peer, a devout Christian, holds the franchises for Subaru and Isuzu. A former finance director at the failed Jensen Motors, he used his 6,000 redundancy pay to set up IM in 1974.

His company trades in Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the Baltic states.

Lord Edmiston, founder of car importer IM Group and worth 540million according to the Rich List, said: 'The idea that the American government would not want to do business with us if we left the EU is absolutely risible. It's the worst sort of scaremongering'

Car distributor Robert Edmiston sent 850,000 to Vote Leave, which is backed by Justice Secretary Michael Gove (pictured), and 150,000 to Grassroots Out whose supporters include Ukip leader Nigel Farage

Lord Edmiston said the idea that the economy 'falls of a cliff the day after Brexit' was 'complete nonsense' as existing treaties will remain in place, with two years to negotiate their replacement.

'I love Europe but don't wish to be governed by it,' he added. 'I can't understand surrendering sovereignty ... to people who we don't know and didn't elect and who we can't remove or replace.

'I also don't wish to be subjected to laws made by others that place business in a straitjacket and do not serve the best interests of our country. Just why is the European court allowed to overrule our own Supreme Court?'

He also feared remaining in the EU would make us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, adding: 'The free movement of people across Europe... means they are freely able to enter our country and that poses a real current threat...'
A bushwalker wearing only a hoodie and jeans has spent his second night lost in Victoria's remote alpine region as temperatures dropped to 6C.

Taddeo Haigh, 31, left for a walk from Sawmill Settlement near Merrijig on Sunday night and failed to return.

He was on holiday with his wife and friends who said Mr Haigh was a fit man but ill-equipped for two nights in the bush, 7News reported.

Taddeo Haigh, 31, left for a walk from Sawmill Settlement near Merrijig, north-east of Melbourne, on Sunday night and did not returned

Victoria's Search and Rescue Squad is co-ordinating a full-scale search with the help of local officers, the dog squad, mounted police and a police aircraft.

The SES and Parks Victoria crew and bushwalking volunteers from Bush Search and Rescue Victoria are also involved.

The search is focused on dense bushland near the area Mr Haigh was last seen.

Police would also like to hear from motorists who travelled through the nearby town of Mansfield in the past 36 hours.

He was on holiday with his wife and friends who said Mr Haigh was a fit man but ill-equipped for two nights in the bush

'Police are seeking information from motorists - if they picked anyone up from the side of the road, or noticed a person who may have looked out of place,' a police spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Victoria Police have released a photo of Mr Haigh as the search intensifies.

He is described as Caucasian with a medium build and light brown hair.

The unshaven Mr Haigh was last seen wearing a grey hoodie, dark jeans and brown shoes leaving a home in Gibb Court in Sawmill Settlement on Sunday about 9.30pm.

Police first conducted a ground search of the area on Monday morning but by nightfall Mr Haigh had not been found.
Thai police are engaged in a worsening street battle against ladyboys, who have become increasingly aggressive as they beat and rob tourists in popular girlie resort towns.

In the latest brutal attack, German tourist Lutz Mohler was smashed in the face with a rock after being approached by two ladyboys in the Pattaya area, south of Bangkok, resulting in him losing consciousness and being robbed of all his money.

He was admitted to hospital with a broken nose and facial injuries - but his attackers were later arrested.

Thai police are engaged in a worsening street battle against ladyboys, who have become increasingly aggressive as they beat and rob tourists in popular girlie resort towns

Shortly before that incident, a gang of transgender shemales prowled the streets of Pattaya looking for unsuspecting tourists.

They got away with hundreds of pounds worth of rings, watches and cash in what police admit is an increasing problem in towns that have notorious girlie bar reputations such as Pattaya and Phuket.

Just last December four ladyboys were arrested and questioned by Pattaya police after 28-year-old British tourist Naami Keyghobadi, from Leeds, died when he fell from a nightclubs fourth floor window.

One of the arrested ladyboys told police that Mr Keyghobadi had fallen after an argument with one of their younger friends over payment.

Police say that hardly a day goes by when they dont hear of a problem involving a ladyboy.

This is of great concern to us, Police Colonel Suktad Poompanmuang said on Sunday at Pattaya headquarters following the arrest of two ladyboys for the attack on Mr Mohler.

The ladyboys are not only aggressively attacking tourists to rob them, they are also severely harassing them for sex. It makes the streets very dangerous late at night.

Mr Mohler told local reporters that he had been approached by what he thought were two women who invited him to join them for sex.

When I refused, they hit me with a rock and rode off on a motor bike.

In the latest brutal attack, German tourist Lutz Mohler was smashed in the face with a rock after being approached by two ladyboys in the Pattaya area, south of Bangkok. Pictured is a woman dancing on a table in Pattaya. File photo

He then lapsed into unconsciousness, only to find when he recovered that his money was missing.

In an earlier robbery a 26-year-old Chinese tourist, Wang Yong, was approached by five ladyboys as he walked back to his tour bus.

They surrounded him, harassed him for sex, pulled at his arms and clothing - and it was only when he made his escape and arrived back at the bus that he found a neck chain and his ring were missing.

Just 30 minutes later an Indian tourist, 34-year-old Rajendra Gupta, was surrounded by what police believe was the same gang of ladyboys who cleverly robbed him of a valuable neck chain he was wearing.

Sometimes the police are lucky and have caught aggressive ladyboys in the act of robbery, such as an incident when two ladyboys were trying to grab a bag containing cash and other personal items from a Japanese tourist.

We stumbled upon the crime and were able to arrest the two ladyboys, said a police spokesman.

The transgender pair were charged with aggravated theft - as were the two who attacked German tourist Mr Mohler.

Theres a 1000 baht (20) fine for sexual harassment, with possible imprisonment for causing serious injury, but that hasnt cut down the problems, said Colonel Poompanmuang.

We can only advise tourists to be very careful about who they speak to late at night and avoid being out and about alone at that time.

In a warning to tourists, an expat has posted a list of signs that help newcomers to sex resorts identify transgender ladyboys.

The expat advises to look out for an Adams apple, large hands and feet, a deep voice, and take note of height - transgenders are usually taller than the average Thai woman.
If you think time goes by faster than ever as you get older, you are probably right.

For we perceive a set period of time as passing much more quickly than when we were younger, a study has revealed.

It is not clear why, but possible explanations range from age-related changes in brain chemistry to a feeling of having seen it all before or even the thought that we have less time left to live.

To measure how the passage of time is perceived, 233 men and women aged between 15 and 89 were asked to close their eyes and mentally count the passing of 120 seconds. All ages perceived the two minutes as passing more quickly than it actually did  but the oldest people were the most inaccurate (stock photo)

Whatever the explanation, the discovery by Brazilian scientists helps explain why summer holidays seem to last for ever when we are children but pass in the blink of an eye by the time we are middle-aged.

To measure how the passage of time is perceived, 233 men and women aged between 15 and 89 were asked to close their eyes and mentally count the passing of 120 seconds.

All ages perceived the two minutes as passing more quickly than it actually did  but the oldest people were the most inaccurate.

The men and women in the 15 to 29 age group counted down the 120 seconds in 115 seconds, on average.

The 30 to 49 age group took 96 seconds but the over-50s took just 86 seconds. This meant the oldest group perceived time as passing 25 per cent more quickly than the youngest did.

The researchers said: Our study aimed to estimate the passage of time in different age groups, to test the truth of the saying that time passes faster in older people. Our results indicated that the perception of time passage was accelerated in ageing.

It is possible the phenomenon is due to age-related changes in levels of brain chemicals involved in concentration and memory, both of which are involved in estimating the passage of time (stock photo)

The researchers, from the Sao Jose Faculty of Medicine in Brazil, said that it is possible the phenomenon is due to age-related changes in levels of brain chemicals involved in concentration and memory, both of which are involved in estimating the passage of time.

It is already known that these changes interfere with levels of dopamine, which is key to concentration, affecting perception of time.

It is also possible the knowledge and experience we gather as we go through life alter our ability to estimate the passage of time.

So, when we are young and trying something for the first time, we savour every moment.

But as we get older, we have fewer new experiences and so time seems to run away from us.

Writing in the journal Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria, the researchers said: Novelty has a strong impact on memory.

As we get older, we have limited time left, so we dont want to linger. Older people also have more disposable time and want to get on and use it Health psychologist Professor Sir Cary Cooper

'The time it takes to learn something new is always subjectively prolonged, such as the first sexual relationship, the first job, the first trip without parents or the first experience of living away from home.

When we are reminded of school holidays, or when we learn to swim or fly a kite, the memory seems endless.

'Most experiences are new to children and most experiences are repetitive for adults. Adulthood does not hold the constant, never-ending discovery of new things that is inherent in childhood.

However, others argue that as we get older, we simply want to make the most of the time we have left.

This need to cram in as much as possible leads to us rushing through things, including tasks such as counting seconds.

Health psychologist Professor Sir Cary Cooper of Manchester University said: As we get older, we have limited time left, so we dont want to linger. Older people also have more disposable time and want to get on and use it.
The former Chancellor (left), who officially launched his campaign this morning, had more than double the number of publicly-declared supporters than Mr Johnson (centre). As of this evening, 228 out of 357 Tory MPs have gone public with their support. Mr Sunak is understood to have 147 backers, while Mr Johnson had the support of 57 MPs and Penny Mordaunt (right) just 24. Mr Johnson, though, has claimed he in fact reached the 'very high hurdle of 102 nominations', but tonight bowed out of the race because it is 'simply not the right thing to do'. He said: 'I believe I am well placed to deliver a Conservative victory in 2024 - and tonight I can confirm that I have cleared the very high hurdle of 102 nominations, including a proposer and a seconder, and I could put my nomination in tomorrow. There is a very good chance that I would be successful in the election with Conservative Party members - and that I could indeed be back in Downing Street on Friday. But in the course of the last days I have sadly come to the conclusion that this would simply not be the right thing to do. You can't govern effectively unless you have a united party in parliament.'
Roquel Bain, 26, of Dayton, Ohio, died after being struck by a train in Louisville, Kentucky Saturday

A 26-year-old woman died after crossing train tracks hoping to spot a legendary half-human, half-goat creature.

Roquel Bain, of Dayton, Ohio, was in Louisville, Kentucky with her boyfriend when they heard the urban legend about the mythical beast.

According to the legend, a creature known as the Pope Lick Monster lives under the trestle and tricks trespassers into crossing the train tracks.

Bain and her boyfriend were walking on the trestle, which stands 80 to 100 feet high, when a train surprised them, KLTV reported.

The couple heard the Pope Lick Monster legend and decided to check out the site in Louisville, Deputy Coroner Jack Arnold said according to KLTV.

The myth has it that a creature looking like a cross between a man and a goat lives under the Pope Lick trestle, next to the Fisherville neighborhood east of Louisville.

The beast is rumored to hypnotize visitors and trick them into crossing the trestle, luring them to their death as they get hit by an oncoming train.

Bain and her boyfriend went up the trestle on Saturday evening and were walking on it when a train arrived.

They realized they didn't have time to make it to the other side and decided to hang off the structure's sides, Arnold said according to KLTV.

Bain didn't move fast enough and was stuck by the train, then fell 80 to 100 feet from the trestle.

She died of multiple blunt force injuries, the coroner said. Her boyfriend survived without injuries.

Officials believe they hadn't consumed any alcohol or drugs.

The Louisville Metro Police Department's homicide unit is investigating Bain's death.

She worked as a surgical assistant according to a badge found in her purse, the Courier-Journal reported.

Many mistakenly believe the Pope Lick trestle is abandoned, but resident Michelle Burns told KLTV she sees trains crossing it every half hour.

'If they're halfway through and the train comes, you either have to jump, run or basically get it,' resident Denise Harris added.

The train that hit Bain belonged to the Norfolk Southern Railway according to the network.

Its parent company, the Norfolk Southern Corporation, spoke out against a 1988 movie by Louisville director Ron Schildknecht, which depicted a group of teenagers in a quest to spot the half-human, half-goat creature.

The 16-minute movie, titled The Legend Of The Pope Lick Monster, posed a safety hazard, the company said at the time.

The couple had booked a tour of Waverly Hills, an abandoned sanatorium in Louisville that housed tuberculosis patients in the 20th century.

Many now believe the facility is haunted and it offers guided tours as well as paranormal investigations, during which visitors can use detection equipment to spot paranormal activity.

Bain and her boyfriend ventured onto the Pope Lick trestle (pictured) in east Louisville hoping to spot a mythical creature, who lives under the train tracks according to an urban legend

According to the myth, the Pope Lick Monster (pictured) hypnotizes visitors and tricks them into walking on the tracks, leading to their death as they get hit by an oncoming train




The furious owner of an Italian restaurant threw out 'malicious' customers after they threatened to give a bad review on Trip Advisor.

Claudio Menichetti who runs Vecchia Bologna in Bridge of Allan in Scotland, sent the couple packing after a dispute erupted over prices on a set menu.

The pair were peeved when they could not pay 15 each for a dish and threatened to challenge the restaurant on the well known review site.

Angry: Mr Menichetti can be seen talking to one of the customers at the restaurant's bar area in the footage

In CCTV footage Mr Menichetti can be seen angrily escorting them out the door and gesticulating as they get on their way.

He claims that the couple got the wrong impression after failing to see a notice on the restaurant's website that 15 per-head was only available for pre-booked, large parties of 20 or more.

However, true to their word the couple, using the name of Loisfran, posted a negative review with the title 'Can't handle helpful feedback'.

They wrote: 'We went for a meal thinking from their website that they did a set meal - but were informed that this was only for large groups - this is not as clear on their website as it could be.

'We decided not to stay and on our way out made the suggestion that it could be made more prominent on their website.

'We initially got a very defensive response and the manager then became both aggressive and threatening . We will not be going back even though it's our nearest restaurant.'

Dispute: The female customer rows with Mr Menichetti as the pair leave the restaurant in Bridge of Allan

Slammed: Mr Menichetti closes his restaurant's door after sending the unimpressed customers on their way

Mr Menichetti has since hit back at the comments on Vecchia Bologna's Facebook page, describing the initial threats as an 'attack' on his livelihood.'

He wrote: 'We do not need to deceive anybody to make them come and dine in our restaurant. We are happy when people leave a good comment on any site but we won't lose any sleep over a bad one.

'We know what we deliver to be more than fair and at competitive prices, threatening us with a poor Trip Advisor review is an indication of the kind of person the people in the video are.

The Italian restaurant (pictured) has 296 reviews on Trip Advisor and 257 diners have rated it as excellent or very good

'I interpreted their threat of a negative review as a clear assault on the livelihood of my parents, my wife and most importantly of my children.

'It is at this moment I unfortunately lost it and left them under no illusion of what my feelings are on the uncensored, unmoderated, mostly subjective pure unadulterated vile that often cruel malicious, spiteful defamatory want to be food critics write on Trip Advisor.'

Despite the negative comments from the unimpressed couple, it would appear that not all have the same opinion.
Ted Cruz found himself cornered by an angry Donald Trump voter on Monday as he campaigned in Indiana.

The exchange took place outside an ice cream shop as Senator Cruz stepped off his campaign bus.

A number of Trump's supporters have echoed the candidate's anger about how delegates were chosen in a number of states,

The supporter accused Cruz of playing games with the establishment. Cruz shot back, insisting that the grassroots operations working in states such as Colorado to win delegates are the 'exact opposite of the establishment.'

Stop right there! Outside an Indiana ice cream shop today, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz stepped off his campaign bus and was almost immediately confronted by an angry Donald Trump supporter (pictured in a green shirt)

Charges: Kathy Hiel, left, questioned Cruz about the delegate process, accusing him of rigging the system

Cruz made the case to the woman that he is the real anti-establishment choice while Trump was funding the Gang of 8.

The term is commonly used to refer to a bi-partisan group of senators who wrote the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill which saw a citizenship path for illegal aliens already in the country.

The woman, known as Kathy Hiel, dismissively said a couple thousand 'isn't funding much of anything.' Cruz told her thats he gave nothing.

She continued to confront him about his position on things like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Cruz, sensing things were getting a bit heated, told her, 'I'll have a respectful conversation with you.'

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade agreement among twelve Pacific Rim countries concerning matters of public policy and to promote 'promote economic growth and the creation and retention of jobs; raise living standards and reduce poverty.'

Bye bye Kasich: After pact, Cruz has the field to himself in Indiana to try to take on Trump one-on-one

The contentious exchange ended with Hiel saying Cruz isn't a natural-born citizen and Cruz saying that if Trump had been confronted by a voter challenging him, the Trump campaign would have threatened her with violence.

Afterwards, Hiel talked to ABC News and identified herself as a Trump supporter. She bashed the decision by Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich to coordinate in three states.

'With the collusion of Ted and the Republican Party and John Kasich I feel that they should -- both men should just step out. They're just doing nothing but trying to hurt the front-runner when they actually don't have a chance of winning,' Hiel said.

'Well we are all in on Indiana,' he Cruz told reporters in the state, where he is holding a series of events today.

'After a discussion with the Kasich campaign we made a decision about allocating resources. Governor Kasich decided to allocate his resources elsewhere. I think that made sense for both camps,' Cruz said  rejecting Trump's accusation of 'collusion.'

'This is entirely about the will of the people,' Cruz said.

Defensive: Ohio governor John Kasich played down the significance of the pact. 'I'm not campaigning in Indiana and he's not campaigning in these other states. That's all it is,' Kasich said

WHO GETS WHERE? CRUZ WILL CAMPAIGN IN: Indiana KASICH WILL CAMPAIGN IN Oregon, New Mexico AND WHERE'S LEFT FOR THEM TO FIGHT OVER? Nebraska, West Virginia, Washington, California, Montana, New Jersey, South Dakota Advertisement

Cruz made his comments hours after his and Kasich's campaign revealed that they made a deal that the Ohio governor stay out of Indiana and Cruz clearing out of Oregon and New Mexico to allow each man an opportunity to hold down Trump's delegate total  potentially denying him enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot.

Campaigns always make strategic decisions about where to deploy resources, but it is highly unusual to make a deal and announce it publicly.

Cruz defended it was 'good for the country to have a clear and direct choice.'

Cruz predicted that Trump would 'scream and yell and curse and insult and probably cry and whine.'

Trump fired of a furious statement early Monday morning saying: 'Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive. They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are.'

'We're focusing our energy on the state of Indiana and Gov. Kasich is focusing his energies elsewhere,' said Cruz.

'I don't doubt that Donald Trump is going to scream and yell and curse and insult and probably cry and whine some as well, Cruz added. 'That has been Donald's pattern.'

Trump (pictured center on Monday) blasted the pack between his two rivals as 'collusion'

Cruz has largely abandoned the five states that vote Tuesday where he is trailing in the polls.

Yet he laced into Trump for not having the guts to come to debate him in Indiana, which holds its primary May 3.

'Yet Donald Trump continues to cower in Trump Tower,' Cruz riffed.

'Donald is fond of telling everyone what a strong, tough man he is,' Cruz goaded. 'Well he can demonstrate his strength by not hiding in Trump Tower.'

Earlier, Kasich defended the pact not so much by attacking Trump but by minimizing its significance.

'All you gotta do is get the right number of delegates and you win. If you can't get the right number of delegates, you don't win, and the delegates  who were selected through the Democratic process  get to choose. What's wrong with that?' he said while campaigning at a Philadelphia diner.
Muslims will very soon outnumber practising Christians in Europe, a Belgian minister claimed yesterday.

Koen Geens, the justice minister, told the European Parliament the continent does not realise this, but this is the reality.

At a hearing by MEPs into the Brussels attacks, the Belgian deputy prime minister Jan Jambon added that the worst thing we can do is to make an enemy of Islam.

The remarks follow claims by Mr Jambon in the wake of the suicide bombings that a significant section of the Muslim community danced when attacks took place.

Muslims will very soon outnumber practising Christians in Europe, a Belgian minister claimed yesterday

Speaking before the Parliaments justice and home affairs committee yesterday, Mr Koens said the EU needed to realise a shift in population was taking place.

In Europe, very shortly were soon going to have more practising Muslims than practising Christians, he said.

That is not because there are too many Muslims, it is because Christian are generally less practising.

Europe does not realise this, but this is the reality.

Mr Jambon, who also serves as the countrys interior minister, added: Ive said a thousand times, the worst thing we can do is to make an enemy of Islam. That is the very worst thing we could do.

We have 600,000 to 700,000 Muslims in Belgium and the overwhelming majority of those people share our values.

To make an enemy of all of those people, we really will be creating problems. We need to see who the terrorists are, who supports the terrorists, what networks are there to support them.

That is who we need to tackle and we need to get all of the rest of the Muslims on our side not working against us.

Mr Jambon was accused of stoking tensions with Belgiums Muslim community after he claimed there was dancing after the attacks that killed 32 at Brussels airport and an underground station in the city.

In the interview with a Belgian newspaper on 16 April, he also accused Muslim residents of the Molenbeek district of attacking police officers during an operation last month to arrest Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam.

Mr Jambon, who also serves as the countrys interior minister, added: Ive said a thousand times, the worst thing we can do is to make an enemy of Islam. That is the very worst thing we could do'

Several of the terrorists involved in both the Paris and Brussels killings lived in the neighbourhood that has a large Muslim population.

They threw stones and bottles at police and press during the arrest of Salah Abdeslam. This is the real problem, he said.

Terrorists we can pick up, remove from society. But they are just a boil. Underneath is a cancer that is much more difficult to treat. We can do it, but it wont be overnight.

Last night a spokesman for Mr Geens refused to provide evidence to back up his claims on the number of practising Muslims. She said: His comments were very clear, I will not say anything more.

The EUs official statistical body Eurostat said it did not compile figures on religion.

But European Commission figures from 2012 show that, across Europe as a whole, 72 per cent of people identified themselves as Christian compared to two per cent who said they were Muslim.

In Belgium the figures were 65 per cent and five per cent respectively.

Although the numbers actually practising their religion may vary wildly, it is not known if such figures exist.

The Belgian ministers claims do not tally with the assessments of most respected analysts of religions and their numbers of followers.

The countrys national census has never counted religious groups  unlike Britains  so independent surveys are the only source of information.

A number of studies have suggested that Muslims make up around five per cent of the countrys population.

A key study is the religious population project carried out by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre.

Last year it projected that the number of Muslims in Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, would increase by 63 per cent between 2010 and 2050.

This increase would mean the Muslim population of Europe would rise from 43.5 million to nearly 71 million.

Christian numbers in Europe, Pew said, would drop over the same period by 18 per cent from 553 million to 454 million.

In Belgium, the study said that of the 10.7 million population 6.9 million are Christian and 630,000 Muslim. In 2050, it projected, this would changed to an overall population of 11.1 million, with 5.9 million Christians and 1.3 million Muslims.

In 2050, it projected, this would changed to an overall population of 11.1 million, with 5.9 million Christians and 1.3 million Muslims

The study is based on people who identify themselves as Christians or Muslims, rather than the much less precise category of who is practising either faith.

Researchers said the rapid projected growth in the number of Muslims was due to a higher fertility, younger populations and migration.

Mr Jambon and Mr Koens both offered to resign following the 22 March attacks on Brussels, but they were refused.
French marine builder DCNS has been announced as the recipient of the $50 billion contract to build the newest submarine fleet for the Australian Navy.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made the announcement in Adelaide on Tuesday that the French consortium would build 12 new submarines to be built in the South Australian capital, generating 2800 jobs.

The French company designed a custom Shortfin Barracuda submarine specifically for the Australian navy, to replace the current 20-year-old fleet of Collins class submarines.

Mr Turnbull said the combat system for the submarines would be sourced from the United States.

French marine builder DCNS has been announced as the recipient of the $50 billion contract to build the newest submarine fleet for the Australian Navy

French Defence shipbuilder DCNS designed a custom Shortfin Barracuda submarine (pictured) specifically for the Australian navy, to replace the current 20-year-old fleet

The announcement has been under heavy speculation in recent weeks after Defence launched an investigation into a series of leaks regarding the contract.

Earlier, South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill said he's expecting 'very good news' for the state in anticipation of Mr Turnbull's announcement.

'I don't want to go into details of what I've been told except to say I think we're expecting some very good news for South Australia when the prime minister stands up at 10.30,' Mr Weatherill told ABC radio on Tuesday.

'The French have a long history of being able to develop a first-class submarine' - South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill addressed rumours that French shipbuilder DCNS has been awarded the contract

He addressed rumours that French shipbuilder DCNS has been awarded the contract.

'The French have a long history of being able to develop a first-class submarine but, more importantly for our purposes, they've got a great tradition of transferring technology and their engineering skills,' Mr Weatherill said.

Treasurer Scott Morrison declined to say whether there would be an announcement on Tuesday after a cabinet phone hook-up, saying only that it was important such projects delivered tangible gains.

'They're significant expenditures of public money and we'll be focusing on ensuring that Australians get the real benefit of that for jobs and growth in the future,' he told ABC radio.

Independent South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon said he suspected Mr Turnbull would announce a hybrid build.

'Obviously a local build would sound preferable, but it depends how that hybrid build would shape up,' he said.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Tuesday the designer of 12 new submarines that could be built in Adelaide, generating hundreds of jobs

Independent South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon said he suspected Mr Turnbull would announce a hybrid build

The French company designed a custom Shortfin Barracuda submarine specifically for the Australian navy, to replace the current 20-year-old fleet of Collins class submarines (pictured).

The outdated Collins class submarines (pictured) during a military exercise in Jervis Bay, NSW

'If it means more jobs, more quickly, if it means that several hundred South Australians would be working overseas initially, that would be better than no work at all.'

The news comes after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a direct phone call to Mr Turnbull to convince him to award the contract to Japanese consortium Mitsubishi Heavy Industries which offered a longer version of the Soryu Class submarine.

Germany's ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems designed an 89-metre Type 216 submarine for the contract.

The announcement has been under heavy speculation in recent weeks after Defence launched an investigation into a series of leaks regarding the contract

German company Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems said it was disappointed with the outcome of the bid, but respected the decision.

'The competitive evaluation was conducted with high integrity and professionalism and we were privileged to be part of it,' chairman of the company's Australian arm, John White, said after the announcement in Adelaide on Tuesday.
His lawyer pleaded not guilty and said he would apply for bail on Friday

Court documents reveal he was allegedly trying to source a weapon

The 16-year-old charged with planning to carry out an Anzac Day terrorist attack in Sydney has pleaded not guilty.

On Monday court documents revealed the teenager was charged after he tried to source a weapon on the weekend at Auburn, in Sydney's west.

Appearing at the Parramatta Children's Court on Tuesday, the 16-year-old's lawyer Zemarai Khatiz entered a not guilty plea.

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Zemarai Khatiz (centre) the lawyer representing a 16-year old-accused of planning an Anzac Day terrorist attack leaves court on Tuesday after entering a not guilty plea

The Sydney teenager, 16, was arrested on Sunday and he was charged with terror-related offences. He was allegedly planning an attack for Anzac Day (above is the Martin Place service) and tried to get a gun

The teenager was not in court, and Mr Khatiz said he there would be a bail application on Friday, with supporting evidence from a psychologist's report.

The boy was arrested near his Auburn home by counter-terrorism police on Sunday.

Upon searching his family home, police did not find any weapons or explosives but they did uncover extremist propaganda, 9News reported.

The boy was charged with one count of acts in preparation for or planning a terrorist act, which carries a maximum penalty of a life imprisonment.

Police say he was acting by himself and no one else was involved.

NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said it was 'really concerning' to see a 16-year-old charged with the offence.

Police presence has been increased across the state following the arrest of the teenager. Above are officers at Martin Place in central Sydney

The boy was taken to Auburn Police Station (pictured) and he appeared at Parramatta Children's Court

'We will be suggesting that there was a proposed attack to happen on this day [Monday] and that being Anzac Day, it is very, very concerning,' he said earlier on Monday.

Comm Scipione would not reveal which suburb the boy had targeted but he did confirm the attack was planned for Sydney.

He also urged families heading to Anzac Day services not to be deterred by the incident.

'The risk from this particular threat has been thwarted... Do not let an event like this stop you from going out,' Comm Scipione said.

'So, please, don't be perturbed. We are doing absolutely everything we can to keep people safe. This threat has been dealt with. Enjoy your day.

Comm Scipione would not reveal which suburb the boy had targeted but he did confirm the attack was planned for Sydney. Above are spectators watching the march in Sydney

He also urged people not to be deterred by the latest threat as it was safe

'People shouldn't have concerns that this person may have other associates out there that may have been joining in the threat.

'We believe it was one person by himself and at this stage we are satisfied.'

Comm Scipione said NSW Police had increased their presence around the state following the arrest.

'At this stage it is a noticeable increase... we are not leaving anything to chance at the moment,' he said.

Comm Scipione said counter terrorism police were forced to act on Sunday afternoon in order to ensure public safety.

NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said: 'We have taken swift action to ensure community safety on the eve of a sacred day on the Australian calendar'

'Clearly we have taken swift action to ensure community safety on the eve of a sacred day on the Australian calendar,' he said.

'I want to assure the NSW community that our counter terrorism capability is such that we were able to move quickly to prevent harm.

'The age of the individual is obviously a concern for us, and it remains a measure of the ongoing task facing law enforcement and the community.'
Susan Sarandon suggested tonight that Pennsylvania could be plagued with the same problems as New York in Tuesday's primary and urged Bernie Sanders supporters to come prepared to fight 'corruption.'

'I just drove from New York,' the actress told a crowd of Sanders supporters waiting to see the senator at a Philadelphia college tonight. 'You might have heard we had a little bit of difficulty in our primary in New York.'

Sarandon noted that 'thousands of people couldn't vote' and proclaimed that 'thousands of peoples' votes disappeared.'

'So I'm counting on you all to be super vigilant when you go, to carry a number of someplace to call....if you have any irregularities when you get there because I'm sure you're all gonna vote right?' she said at Sanders' Drexel University rally.

Susan Sarandon suggested tonight that Pennsylvania could be plagued with the same problems as New York in tomorrow's primary and urged Bernie Sanders supporters to come prepared

Sarandon noted that 'thousands of people couldn't vote' in New York City and said, 'I'm counting on you all to be super vigilant when you go, to carry a number of someplace to call....if you have any irregularities when you get there because I'm sure you're all gonna vote right?'

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders gets a hug from actress Sarandon as he takes the stage at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, tonight

The award-winning actress and progressive activist told them, 'If you get there, and there's any kind of problem, deal with it.'

Quoting Kurt Cobain, she said 'the duty of youth is to challenge corruption.'

'Some of you are not completely youthful, you can challenge corruption, too,' she said. 'I do it. I'm old. I do it.'

New York City's Board of Elections threw more than 125,000 Democratic voters off the rolls in Brooklyn ahead of last Tuesday's primary.

At one Brooklyn location, a polling coordinator told CNN that an estimated 10 percent of prospective voters who tried to cast a ballot at that location were unable.

The Board of Elections' executive director told the network that 12,000 voters who were stripped of their rights moved away, 44,000 had election mailers bounce back and 77,000 were determined to be inactive after failing to vote in the last two federal elections and respond to notices informing them of their status.

In the weeks leading up to the election voters inundated the State Board of Elections will complaints that their registration had changed without their consent to another political party, or unaffiliated, depriving them of their right to vote in their preferred primary.

A group of 200 New York voters filed an emergency lawsuit before the polls opened contesting the changes.

The New York Attorney General's office says it received 1,000 complaints through a voter hotline on the day of the primary compared to 150 in 2012.

NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said a day later that 'if any New Yorker was illegally prevented from voting, I will do everything in my power to make their vote count and ensure that it never happens again.'

Sanders commented on the drama on election night during a rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, calling it 'absurd' that in Brooklyn, where he was born, so many people were purged from the voting rolls.

So far, complaints like the ones directed at the state of New York have not surfaced in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania also prohibits independents from voting in its primaries.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said his office will have a dedicated number of staffers on hand tomorrow should anything go wrong.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been slammed for claiming everyday Australians need tax breaks to 'get ahead' - by showcasing a family who used negative gearing to buy a house for their one-year-old daughter.

Mr Turnbull stood outside the Mignaccas home in Penshurst, a southern suburb of Sydney, on Sunday as he criticised Labor's 'reckless' plan to restrict negative gearing to only new houses.

He said his government would not touch the current negative gearing model - and he used Julian and Kim Mignacca as an example of those who have benefited from deducting rental losses on an investment property from their salary.

But voters have hit back, claiming that Mr Turnbull's negative gearing model only puts more pressure on the market because investors are given an advantage in buying residential properties, while the average Australian struggles to afford their own home.

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Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull stood outside the Mignacca's home in Penshurst, a southern suburb of Sydney, on Sunday as he criticised Labor's plan to restrict negative gearing to new houses if elected

He said his government would not touch the current negative gearing model as he allowed Julian and Kim Mignacca spruik the benefits of deducting rental losses on an investment property from their salary

The video was slammed as 'Liberal propaganda' by social media users who believe negative gearing only helps those who profit from being a home owner, rather than those struggling to get into the market

Mr Mignacca said he purchased his first property in Cronulla, in Sydney's southern shire, about 10 years ago because his accountant told him it would have great 'tax benefits' and help his plumbing business 'in the long run'.

He said he has spent 'quite a bit of money' renovating his properties and that there is no way his family could afford to invest in 'a couple more' houses if negative gearing was wound back.

'Look, if you couldn't negative gear a property I don't think I would buy another investment property,' Mr Mignacca said.

'It would purely cost me too much,' he added.

Mr Turnbull warned that if Labor's proposed changes to negative gearing were implemented, property values would decrease and rental prices would sky-rocket, meaning Australians would struggle to 'get ahead'.

Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull stood outside the Mignacca's home in Penshurst, a southern suburb of Sydney, on Sunday as he criticised Labor's plan to restrict negative gearing to new houses if elected

'The enterprising spirit of Australians like the Mignaccas is what secures our economic future and the jobs of our children and grandchildren in the years ahead,' he said.

Kim and Julian Mignacca play with their young daughter Addison in the home they say they bought for her

'The enterprising spirit of Australians like the Mignaccas is what secures our economic future and the jobs of our children and grandchildren in the years ahead,' Mr Turnbull said.

'We will always back those people who back themselves, their business and their family's future.'

WHAT IS NEGATIVE GEARING? Negative gearing is when an investor has a taxable loss from owning property. The investor's costs are greater than the income generated from the investment, and the loss can be offset against other income such as a wage. This provides tax savings, as it reduces taxable income. Advertisement

The Mignacca's video, which was posted to Mr Turnbull's Facebook account, has been slammed as 'Liberal propaganda' by social media users who believe negative gearing is only helping those who profit from being a home owner, rather than those struggling to get into the market.

'I resent my taxes being used to subsidise another's 'investment'. Use that money to fill the health and education void,' wrote one man.

'Labor has no problem with fist home buyers negative gearing. But fifth home buyers They don't need tax breaks,' said another.

'It uses tax dollars to advantage those who are already advantaged while locking out those who just want one house to actually live in themselves. Poor selfish public policy.'

Hundreds of voters have expressed their disappointment in the prime minister's stance, stating that he is out of touch with what the average Australian needs

'I resent my taxes being used to subsidise another's 'investment'. Use that money to fill the health and education void,' wrote one man

Mr Turnbull said the government 'will always back those people who back themselves, their business and their family's future'

Others criticised Mr Turnbull for back flipping on previous claims he made about negative gearing.

In 2005 he called negative gearing 'tax avoidance' and later penned a paper stating that the practice shifted investment 'away from wealth-creating pursuits towards housing', the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

'Malcolm in 2005 you said yourself that negative gearing is a sheltering tax haven. Stop treating Australian's as though we are clueless,' one woman wrote.

In February, Opposition leader Bill Shorten announced negative gearing will be restricted to 'newly constructed homes' under a Labor government.

Others criticised Mr Turnbull for back flipping on previous claims he made about negative gearing

In 2005 he called negative gearing 'tax avoidance' and later penned a paper stating that the practice shifted investment 'away from wealth-creating pursuits towards housing'

In February, Opposition leader Bill Shorten announced negative gearing will be restricted to 'newly constructed homes' under a Labor government

He said the new restrictions would not affect tax breaks for investment properties purchased prior to July 2017, when his negative gearing model would be implemented.

Mr Shorten said this could save the government up to $32.1 billion over 10 years, while 'levelling the playing field for first home buyers competing with investors', the ABC reported.

'We will put the great Australian dream back within the reach of the working and middle-class Australians who have been priced out of the housing market for too long,' he said.

This comes as the Grattan Institute claims Australia's version of negative gearing, along with the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount, costs the public purse $11 billion a year.

Chief executive John Daley said the think tank's report suggests that losses from new housing investments should be deducted from other investments and not from wages.

Chief executive John Daley said the think tank's report suggests that losses from new housing investments should be deducted from other investments and not from wages.

As negative gearing stands, it substantially increases borrowing by investors - which is one of the reasons the Reserve Bank doesn't like it very much - and it results in less owner-occupied housing and more investor housing

As negative gearing stands, it substantially increases borrowing by investors - which is one of the reasons the Reserve Bank doesn't like it very much - and it results in less owner-occupied housing and more investor housing.

'It is unclear why we would want to encourage that,' Mr Daley told AAP.

He believes Labor's proposal to limit negative gearing to new property while allowing people already holding negatively geared properties to continue - so-called grandfathering - will just add to distortions and complexities in the tax system.

But he is pleased that one side of politics is prepared to talk about changing negative gearing.

'I am pleasantly surprised that a political party in Australia has had the courage to have a go at negative gearing,' he said.

The report also noted that the top 10 per cent of income earners receive almost 50 per cent of the tax benefits of negative gearing - which Labor wants to limit to new properties.

But Treasurer Scott Morrison denies that wealthy Australians are the main beneficiaries of tax breaks for property investors.

But Treasurer Scott Morrison denies that wealthy Australians are the main beneficiaries of tax breaks for property investors

'I know it's the popular consensus among some ... that this is some big rort for big high-income earners. That's a complete and utter myth,' Mr Morrison told ABC radio on Tuesday, citing figures that show two out of three were mum-and-dad investors.

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said he can't believe Mr Morrison is still denying negative gearing benefits high-income earners.
Tesla will open its first standalone store in Australia, located in Sydney.

The two-storey store at 20 Martin Place in Sydney's CBD will open sometime from June to September in 2016, a Tesla spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

The showroom will house display vehicles, merchandise, and the design studio where customers can customise their own electric car.

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Tesla will open its first stand alone store in Australia, located at 20 Martin Place in Sydney's CBD

The chassis of a Tesla Model S automobile sits on display inside a Tesla showroom in Paris, France

Those interested can also take test drives which will depart from the underground car park connected directly to the store.

All of Tesla's stores across the world are owned by the company as opposed to being franchised.

TESLA STORES IN AUSTRALIA Service Centre and Stores 10 Herbert St, St Leonards, NSW Shop 4 650 Church St, Richmond, VIC Permanent Retail Displays Chadstone Shopping Centre, VIC Carindale Shopping Centre, QLD These sites, along with the growing Supercharger network highlight the commitment Tesla has to the Australian market. Advertisement

'Any customer visiting the new store will be directly dealing with a Tesla staff member, allowing for great product education and customer service,' the spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

But the store won't provide any on-site Superchargers as the store will cater to pedestrians rather than drive-in customers.

Tesla currently has two Australian stores, one at Artarmon on Sydney's north shore and Richmond in Melbourne's south-east

'These sites, along with the growing Supercharger network highlight the commitment Tesla has to the Australian market.'

The Sydney showroom will house display vehicles, merchandise, and the design studio where customers can customise their own electric car and will open in the third quarter of 2016

The Tesla Model S P90D automobile sits on display in the Tesla Motors Inc. showroom at a dealership, on Oxford Street in London

Vistors look at a Tesla Model X on display at the Beijing Auto Show in Beijing, China

The Tesla Model S P90D is an all-electric car that broke the Consumers Report rating system with a 103/100 rating
'I've got 10.4 million votes. I have 2.7 million more folks, real people, showing up to cast their vote,' the former secretary of state said

hypotheticals about the Democratic race, Clinton pointed out that she's 'way ahead' of Sen. Bernie Sanders

A visibly frustrated Hillary Clinton made it known that she's 'way ahead' in the Democratic race when she was asked if she planned to adopt some of Bernie Sanders' policies to bring his voters on board.

Clinton, who followed Sanders tonight during back-to-back town halls on MSNBC, said she was winning with her own policies, thank-you-very-much.

'I've got 10.4 million votes. I have 2.7 million more folks, real people, showing up to cast their vote, to express their opinion, than Sen. Sanders,' Clinton pointed out to host Rachel Maddow.

Hillary Clinton pointed to her lead in the Democratic primary after she was asked if she planned to adopt some of Bernie Sanders' policies to attract his voters. Clinton replied that she was winning because of HER policies

'I have a bigger lead in pledged delegates than Senator Obama when I ran against him in 2008 ever had over me,' she continued.

'I am winning!' she said. 'And I'm winning because of what I stand for and what I've done.'

The usually calm, cool and collected Clinton was slightly exasperated when she made the pitch for herself.

Hillary Clinton seemed visibly frustrated when Rachel Maddow asked her hypothetical questions about the end of the Democratic primaries - 'I am ahead in the vote Rachel. I am way ahead in the vote'

'Look, I think we have much more in common and I want to unify the party, but my Wall Street plan is much more specific than his,' she added. 'We saw that when he couldn't even answer questions in the New York Daily News interview.'

She touted her plan to take on the shadow banking industry as well.

Maddow asked if she was correct in hearing that Clinton didn't plan to do anything differently to specifically court Sanders supporters.

Clinton used the 2008 precedent to make her case.

Hillary Clinton speaks to supporters in the shadow of Philadelphia City Hall (pictured). She lost the 2008 Pennsylvania Democratic primary to Barack Obama, which was seen as a crushing blow

'Then-Sen. Obama and I ran a really hard race. It was so much closer than the race right now between me and Sen. Sanders  we had pretty much the same amount of popular votes, by some measure I have slightly more popular votes, he has slightly more pledged delegates,' she recalled.

'We got to the end in June and I did not put down conditions. I didn't say, "You know what, if Senator Obama does x, y and z, maybe I'll support him,"' she said. 'I said, "I am supporting Senator Obama, because no matter what our differences might be, they pale in comparison to the differences between us and the Republicans."'

'That's what I did,' Clinton stated.

Sen. Bernie Sanders said it would be incumbent on Hillary Clinton to go out and get the support from his supporters if the Vermont senator doesn't win the Democratic nomination

Sen. Bernie Sanders (right) sat down with MSNBC's Chris Hayes (left) and eventually relented that he would work toward not electing a Republican to the White House

As the delegate math has become more and more challenging for Sanders, Clinton has hinted that she'd like to see him do what she did for President Obama after pulling out of the race in early June, once all the contests were over.

'At the time 40 percent of my supporters said they would not support him,' she noted tonight. 'So from the time I withdrew, until the time I nominated him  I nominated him at the Convention in Denver  I spent an enormous amount of time convincing my supporters to support him.'

'And I'm happy to say the vast majority did,' she continued.

Hillary Clinton shakes hands at the rally outside Philadelphia City Hall. Her husband Bill trounced the Republicans in Pennsylvania in both 1992 and 1996 presidential elections

'That is what I think one does,' she added. 'That is certainly what I did and I hope that we will see the same this year.'

Maddow pointed out how Clinton had dropped out on June 7, 2008. On June 7, 2016, California and a number of states will be holding a primary, with the District of Columbia still holding one last primary a week after.

'If you're ahead in the vote, if you're ahead in pledged delegates ...,' Maddow began, trying to set up a hypothetical.

Clinton wasn't having it.

Hillary Clinton (pictured) told the crowd outside Philadelphia City Hall: 'There could not be a bigger difference between where I stand and what I believe in and where the Republicans stand'

'I am ahead in the vote Rachel. I am way ahead in the vote,' she said, gesticulating and leaning toward the TV host.

'Now wait a minute,' Clinton scolded. 'I have the greatest respect for Sen. Sanders, but really, what he and his supporters are now saying just doesn't add up. I have 2.7 million more votes than he has. I have more than 250 more pledged delegates,' she said.

'But I am ahead and let's start from that premise when we talk about what happens next, OK?' Clinton said.

The former secretary of state's pushback was likely her responding to remarks Sanders had made during the MSNBC town hall taped right before hers.

Hillary Clinton (pictured) looked relaxed and happy at the campaign rally on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary. The latest opinion polls have her 15 points ahead of Bernie Sanders

Sanders was asked by a student in the audience what would happen if he didn't win and would he work to get his supporters to vote for Clinton to bring the party back together.

For that to happen, the Vermont senator put the responsibility on Clinton, saying he had no control over his supporters.

'You know, we are not a movement where I can snap my fingers and say to you or to anybody else what you should do, because you won't listen to me. You shouldn't. You'll make these decisions yourself,' Sanders answered.

Hillary Clinton (pictured at Philadelphia City Hall) is expected to do well with black voters in Pennsylvania. A recent poll had her up 16 points among non-white voters in the state

'I think if we end up losing  and I hope we do not  and if Secretary Clinton wins, it is incumbent upon her to tell millions of people who right now do not believe in establishment politics or establishment economics, who have serious misgivings about a candidate who has received millions of dollars from Wall Street and other special interests,' Sanders continued.

Sanders added that Clinton would need to tell Americans that private insurance companies should be pulled out of healthcare and public colleges and universities should be tuition-free.

In the past, she's said no to both, refusing to ditch Obamacare, which keeps private health insurance in place, and saying she's against tuition-free college because it's never really going to be tuition-free.

The Vermont senator said Clinton would have to take on the fossil fuel industry as well.

'So the point that I'm making is, it is incumbent upon Secretary Clinton to reach out not only to my supporters, but to all of the American people, with an agenda that they believe will represent the interests of working families, lower income people, the middle class, those of us who are concerned about the environment and not just big money interests,' Sanders stated.

MSNBC's Chris Hayes, who was moderating the Sanders portion, asked  since Sanders had just thrown the responsibility to Clinton  what role he, then, would play.

Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon introduced Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally in Philadelphia (pictured). Sarandon has said she might not be able to bring herself to vote for Hillary Clinton if she wins the nomination

'Fair question,' the presidential hopeful noted.

Sanders noted how he worked with Republican every day in the U.S. Senate and had done the same when he served in the U.S. House.

He bemoaned how they 'do not even recognize the reality of climate change,' while wanting to cut Social Security, give tax breaks to billionaires and wish to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, 'but they have nothing to replace it with.'

At that point Sanders relented.
Treasurer Scott Morrison suffered an embarrassing mishap on Anzac Day after he had to chase his car down the street when he forgot to pull the handbrake.

Mr Morrison made the admission on Tuesday morning after a constituent in the Sutherland Shire, in Sydney's south, dobbed him in to 2GB's Ray Hadley.

The Treasurer had arrived at Miranda's Anzac Day dawn service and got out of his car.

Treasurer Scott Morrison suffered an embarrassing mishap on Anzac Day after he had to chase his car down the street when he forgot to pull the handbrake

As he walked away, his car started to roll away after he left it in gear and with the handbrake off.

'It was only due to the crowd, which alerted him to the situation, no harm came to the gathering throng,' Hadley said as he repeated the words of the constituent.

Mr Morrison laughed upon hearing the story and defended himself against what Hadley labelled as a 'senior moment'.

'It was early in the morning and I appreciate the help from my good Shire mates,' the Treasurer said.

Mr Morrison made the admission on Tuesday morning after his constituent in the Sutherland Shire, in Sydney's south, dobbed him in to 2GB 's Ray Hadley. Above is a stock image of Mr Morrison in a car

Mr Morrison laughed upon hearing the story and defended himself against what Hadley labelled as a 'senior moment'. Above is a photo Mr Morrison shared on Twitter account from the Miranda dawn service in Sydney

'It was not one of my finest driving moments. But there you go.'

Mr Morrison added his wife, Jenny, should take over the responsibility of driving.

'Jen can drive. She's a much better driver than me anyway,' he said.

It is set to be an intense few months for the Treasurer as he fends off criticism tax breaks from the Federal Government's negative gearing policy is only benefiting wealthy Australians.

The topic is fast becoming one of the biggest issues to be discussed ahead of the Federal Election tipped for July 2.

Analysis by the Grattan Institute shows the top 10 per cent of income earners receive almost 50 per cent of the tax benefits of negative gearing - which Labor wants to limit to new properties.

'I know it's the popular consensus among some... that this is some big rort for big high-income earners. That's a complete and utter myth,' Mr Morrison told ABC radio on Tuesday, citing figures that show two out of three were mum-and-dad investors.

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said he could not believe Mr Morrison was still denying negative gearing benefited high-income earners.
An Australian artist who painted a huge mural of Prince after his tragic death has been receiving requests to paint a similar piece in the music icon's hometown.

Sydney-based artist Graham Hoete, 37, who also goes by 'Mr G', spent nearly six hours painting the tribute on Sunday in Liverpool, in Sydney's south-west.

'I asked myself how I could use my art to pay my respects,' Mr Hoete told Daily Mail Australia.

He is now seeking sponsorship to help him paint a five-storey-high mural of Prince in Paisley Park, Minnesota.

Sydney-based artist Graham Hoete decided to use his art to pay respects to the musician who passed away last week

The 37-year-old artist is now receiving requests to paint a similar mural in Princes hometown. He is now seeking sponsorship to help him paint a five-storey-high mural of Prince in Minnesota.

The mural has been a huge hit with Sydney locals and Mr Hoete said the reaction was something like he had never seen before.

'It's really cool, Prince is a creative genius and he is such a huge inspiration to me,' he said.

'People asked me why I painted it in Sydney, why not Minnesota?', Mr Hoete said.

A photo of the mural has received more than 3,500 likes and more than 850 shares since it was posted on Mr Hoete's Facebook on Sunday. A time-lapse video taken by photographer Jackie Te-Aroha that captures the creation of the piece from start to finish was also posted.

Mr Hoete, who has been a full-time artist for the past decade, has posted a call out on his Facebook page, seeking funding to help pay for flights and accommodation, as well as help to find a suitable wall to paint his mural.

'It would be an honour,' he said.

'After working full-time as an artist for the last 10 years, I've learned the power of art to help the grieving process.'

A huge Prince fan himself, he remembers listening to his music back in the 80s:

'I grew up with Prince's music, I'm the baby of the family and my older brother was a huge fan so I listened to his records all the time,' he said.

' Some of my favourite memories growing up were listening to that music, seeing all the album artwork.

The artist known as 'Mr G' has already spoken to someone with links with the Mayor of Minnesota, who has connections with the family of Prince. He is confident that the mural will go ahead

There has been a huge reaction on social media. A photo of the mural on the artists Facebook has received more than 3,500 likes and more than 850 shares since it was posted on Sunday

An Instagram shot from a fan of the mural. The artist hoping to make the US mural even more 'epic' than his Sydney artwork

Mr Hoete has already spoken to someone with links with the Mayor of Minnesota, who in turn has connections with Prince's family.

He's confident that the mural will go ahead saying: 'I'd be surprised if it doesn't happen.'
The website belonging to a small Christian church in Michigan was defaced by hackers who claimed to be in support of ISIS.

Churchgoer Elizabeth Storteboom, 15, discovered the hack Friday night when she visited the site of Lamont Christian Reformed Church, near Coopersville.

She was met with the words: 'You have been hacked by the United Cyber Caliphate'.

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The website belonging to a small Christian church in Michigan was defaced by hackers who claimed to be in support of ISIS.

Churchgoer Elizabeth Storteboom, 15, discovered the hack Friday night when she visited the site of Lamont Christian Reformed Church, near Coopersville (pictured)

She told Fox 17: 'I clicked on the website and all of the sudden this video pops up, and I'm like, what is going on?'

A video then began to play, she said, with the words: 'We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses and enslave your women by the permission of Allah, the Exalted.'

The 2014 YouTube video was by Abu Muhammad Al-adnani, once an ISIL leader in Iraq until he was reportedly blown up by US-led coalition forces in January.

Storteboom said the video was talking about 'crazy things' so she called her dad in to take a look.

She was so scared of what she was seeing that she covered up the camera on her computer, she said.

'It was just talking about hating Christians and how Allah was God and everything,' said Storteboom. 'I was just confused. They were talking about taking women and children and stuff.'

Elizabeth Storteboom (pictured) told Fox 17: 'I clicked on the website and all of the sudden this video pops up, and I'm like, what is going on?'

The 2014 YouTube video was by Abu Muhammad Al-adnani (pictured) once an ISIL leader in Iraq until he was reportedly blown up by US-led coalition forces in January

United Cyber Caliphate, an Islamic State cyberterror group, also distributed a 'kill list' Monday that appears to include dozens of U.S. government personnel

And while the site was fixed by C.C.S. Technologies by Saturday afternoon, there was still some fear in the church that weekend.

Storteboom explained: 'One of my friends said they didn't think a lot of people were going to show up today.

The FBI were notified about the incident and told Lamont CRC member Jennifer Bosch, who is in charge of the churchs website, not to be alarmed.

Bosch said that while the hack was disturbing, she is not too worried.

United Cyber Caliphate, an Islamic State cyberterror group, also distributed a 'kill list' Monday that appears to include dozens of U.S. government personnel.
It is feared gang warfare on the streets of Dublin is continuing to escalate after two killings occurred in the capital within hours of each other last night.

Micky Barr, believed to be from Strabane, Co Tyrone originally, was shot dead in the Sunset House bar in the Summerhill area of the north inner city shortly before 9.30pm yesterday.

About two hours later another man, aged in his 30s, was gunned down in a separate gangland-style killing in the Kilcronan area of Clondalkin in the west of the city.

Micky Barr was gunned down in a Dublin pub and police forensic experts were last night seen examining the Sunset House bar in the Summerhill area where the killing occurred

Gardai were investigating if a car found burnt out in Drumcondra was used in the attack

Gardai said the murder was carried out shortly before 9.30pm amid fears gang warfare on the city streets is escalating

A garda forensics officer takes evidence at the pub where Barr was shot dead last night

After the first shooting speculation immediately centred on Barr being targeted as part of the bloody underworld feud between the Kinahan and Hutch families and their associates.

But there have been conflicting reports as to whether he was the intended target or if a member of the Hutch family was in the pub at the time.

Witnesses reported hearing three shots after a three man gang, at least one of whom was armed, turned up at the pub where more than a dozen people were inside.

The Tottenham Hotspur-West Bromwich Albion Premier League match was half way through the second half when the shooting took place.

Local Dublin city councillor Nial Ring was about 300 yards from the pub taking down 1916 posters on the street when the attackers struck.

'It was utter chaos, people out on the street,' he said.

A man with special needs who had been in the pub had to be carried away from the scene by locals after suffering severe shock.

'No-one understands gangland feuds, least of all him, he just went into shock and had to be carried home. It was horrible,' Mr Ring said.

Barr, who was in his mid 30s, was living in nearby Ballybough and was due to be sentenced on Thursday at the Special Criminal Court for handling stolen electrical equipment.

Earlier this month he pleaded guilty to the offence at Finnstown House Hotel, Newcastle Road, Lucan, Co Dublin on July 18, 2014.

Two months earlier at the same hotel a bomb was found in the boot of a car.

Barr was not facing any charges in relation to that.

About two hours after Barr's death, a man aged in his 30s was gunned down in a separate gangland-style killing in the Kilcronan area of Clondalkin (pictured)

The second shooting is not known to be a gangland incident but the victim was shot a number of times and died at the scene

He lived in Poppintree in the Ballymun area and also in Finglas before moving to the north inner city since taking over the pub some time in the last year.

In November 2014, when charged with the offence, Barr was also charged with IRA membership but the charge was later dropped.

The second shooting is not known to be a gangland incident but the victim was shot a number of times and died at the scene.

At least one bullet hit the front door of the semi-detached house where the attack took place.

A large area of the cul-de-sac in front of the home was sealed off as well as a stretch of the nearby Grand Canal.

Underwater searches are planned as efforts continue to find a murder weapon.

Organised crime units investigating the first shooting said they believed men entered the Sunset House pub and one of them opened fire.

Detectives said a silver-coloured Audi A6 car, partial registration 04C, was later recovered in Walsh Road, Drumcondra, and has been seized for technical examination.

Prior to the car being recovered, it is believed three men left Walsh Road in the direction of Home Farm Road in another silver-coloured saloon car.

The two sides in the murderous Kinahan-Hutch feud have carried out a series of attacks in Spain and Dublin which have claimed the lives of at least five people since late last year.

TIMELINE: HOW ONE OF THE BLOODIEST GANG BATTLES IN IRISH HISTORY UNFOLDED Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch (left) returned to Ireland from Lanzarote earlier this year as the bitter gangland feud that claimed the life of his brother, Eddie Hutch Senior (pictured right), in Dublin intensified February 2014: British police stop a Volkswagen van in Cheshire and discover cannabis and cocaine hidden among the packets of frozen food. The Kinahan family, said to be behind the shipment, believe Gary Hutch, a nephew of former Dublin criminal Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch, snitched. Saturday, August 3 2015: Gary Hutch denies being the 'rat' and is told he is safe and can return to work for the family in Marbella - but it was a trap to lure him to Spain and he was executed by a swimming pool. Friday, February 5 2016: A gang with AK-47s and handguns sent by the Hutch family shoot dead Kinahan mobster David Byrne in the Regency Hotel during a boxing weigh-in Monday, February 8: Christy Kinahan's cartel sends a four man team to shoot dead Eddie Hutch Snr, Gerry The Monk's brother. Tuesday February 9: An elite Garda unit armed with high-powered weapons is being permanently set up in Dublin in the wake of the 'unprecedented' escalation of gangland bloodshed. Advertisement

The Sunset Bar is about a mile from where Martin O'Rourke, an innocent father and former drug user, was shot dead just over a week ago.

He was caught in the crossfire in Sheriff Street as another murder bid linked to the feud was launched.

That in turn was a mile or so from where taxi driver Eddie Hutch, brother of Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch, was shot dead at his home off North Strand in February.

The Kinahan-Hutch feud spiralled into a killing spree when Gary Hutch was shot dead in an apartment complex near Marbella on Spain's Costa del Sol last September.

His killing is believed to have been avenged in the Regency Hotel attack, an audacious shooting spree with assault rifles in early February which claimed the life of David Byrne, an associate of the Kinahan family.

Within days, Eddie Hutch was dead, and, at the end of last month, Noel Duggan, an old friend of suspected armed robber Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch, was shot dead at his home in Ratoath.

Mr Ring said: 'People are now talking about a guy shot at work, a guy shot in his home and a guy shot on the street - nowhere is safe.
A mother of a child who attends the program has defended the facility

A mother of a child who attends the same school holiday care centre where two children were lured away from and allegedly sexually assaulted has defended the facility and hit out at the 'public vitriol'.

Two children - a girl, four, and a boy, five - were allegedly sexually assaulted after they were abducted from the not-for-profit holiday care program in North Perth last Tuesday.

The mother of another child says an 'unfair amount of anger' has been directed towards the organisation, which is run mostly by volunteer parents, since the incident.

Two children - a girl, four, and a boy, five - were allegedly sexually assaulted by a man (pictured) after they were abducted from the not-for-profit holiday care program in North Perth last Tuesday

She said in a Facebook post the facility was co-operating fully and would help investigate to ensure another similar incident doesn't happen again.

'We believe it was managed well, with a good ratio of carers to children, good policies, procedures and, until now, we thought safe. It's in an area that is relatively affluent with a lovely community of families,' she said.

'That community is now imploding... the staff are at varying levels of despair and disbelief.'

The woman's husband is one of the parents volunteers who oversees the school holiday program.

A 52-year-old man has since been charged and is due to face court on Tuesday over the allegedly abduction and sex assault of the two children.

He was charged with three counts of sexual penetration of a child under 13 and two counts of deprivation of liberty.

The children were allegedly sexually assaulted before being left alone in Hyde Park about 12.15pm - an hour after they went missing from the community hall where they were attending the school holiday program.

Staff at the school holiday program did not inform parents until 10.15am the following day when they sent an email, The West Australian reports.

The charges were laid after police conducted a search of a North Perth property and backyard last Thursday.

Anyone with any information is asked to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or make a report online

A man has been taken into custody for questioning as police search a North Perth property (pictured) after two young children were lured away from a holiday school care program and sexually assaulted

CCTV footage was released showing the two children following behind a middle-aged man in an oversized coat down a footpath.

The alleged assault came to light after a woman found the children alone in the playground as it's understood supervisors at the program did not notice the children were missing at the time.

Western Australia State Crime division Commander Kylie Whitely told Perth Now that the school holiday facility were not aware the children were missing until after they were found.

'Obviously the parents are very distressed and no doubt the children are obviously very upset and there's a fair amount of work for them to have to navigate while we continue with the investigation,' she said.

'It's an absolute priority for us as an agency, we understand how the community are going to be feeling so we have every available resource working on it.'

Commander Whitely told 9 News that the children would have been 'enticed' by something to follow him.

'It's every parent's worst nightmare,' she said.
Schumer told Vanity Fair she felt 'helpless and stupid' even as her friends tried to comfort her

He killed 21-year-old Mayci Breaux and 33-year-old Jillian Johnson before turning the gun on himself to commit suicide

Amy Schumer said she regretted writing her romantic comedy Trainwreck, nine months after a gunman stormed a theater in Louisiana and killed two women during a showing.

The 34-year-old comedienne told Vanity Fair how she first heard about the July 2015 shooting through her publicist while she was alone in a Los Angeles hotel room, after seeing 'a million' missed calls on her phone.

'I was laughing before I called her back, because I thought it was going to be like a sex tape or something,' Schumer, who is gracing the cover of the magazine's May issue, said.

'So my publicist told me. And then I put on the news. I was by myself in a hotel, and I was just like, I wish I never wrote that movie.'

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Amy Schumer (pictured left at a premiere in New York last month) told Vanity Fair she regretted writing her romantic comedy Trainwreck (right) after the theater shooting that left two women dead in July last year

The comedienne appears on the cover of Vanity Fair's May issue (pictured) and told the magazine she felt 'helpless and stupid' after learning about the shooting

Trainwreck, which had been out for less than two weeks when the shooting happened, has since grossed more than $140 million worldwide.

Schumer's Comedy Central series, Inside Amy Schumer, is currently in its fourth season, which premiered last week.

The comedienne appears on Vanity Fair's May cover in a red bodysuit, while a headline proclaims her 'America's kid sister'.

Another photo shot by Annie Leibovitz shows her in a bodysuit and stilettos, straddling a golden rocket.

In a third picture, Schumer is dressed casually in a plaid shirt, t-shirt and sweatpants and sits next to her sister and co-writer Kim Caramele.

The last photo shows Schumer in a white t-shirt that says 'No coffee no workee' with no underwear, her crotch seemingly on fire.

'I begged Annie to photograph me with no underwear on in just a T-shirt,' Schumer told Vanity Fair.

'I explained to her how important it was to me and she finally agreed. I felt powerful and beautiful. She understood once we shot it. Or maybe she ran to the bathroom to throw up. It was one of the most meaningful moments of my life.'

Inside the magazine, a detailed profile of Schumer highlights key moments of her career - including the theater shooting.

Schumer cried as she told Vanity Fair more about the evening.

'It's like when the Dark Knight shooting happened, and in Paris. The idea of people trying to go out and have a good time - you know, like looking forward to it? I don't know why that makes me the saddest.'

Friends called, trying to comfort her, but Schumer told the magazine she was inconsolable.

'I just felt helpless and stupid,' she added.

Shortly after the shooting, the comedienne, who wrote Trainwreck and played its main character, partnered with Senator Chuck Schumer, her second cousin once removed, to campaign in favor of gun control legislation.

The New York senator was the one who reached out to her and she has since appeared at his side at two events supporting tighter laws in August and October last year.

Mayci Breaux, 21 (left), and Jillian Johnson, 33, (right) died after being shot during a showing of Trainwreck in Lafayette, Louisiana, last year

Schumer later campaigned alongside her second cousin once removed, New York Senator Scott Schumer, for tighter gun laws after the shootings at the Grand Theatre in Lafayette, Louisiana (left). John Russel Houser (right), 59, opened fire during the movie then killed himself

Two young women died after being shot in a Lafayette, Louisiana movie theater in July last year as they watched Trainwreck.

Jillian Johnson, 33, and 21-year-old Mayci Breaux, a radiology student, were gunned down by John Russel Houser, 59, just 20 minutes into the 7pm screening.

Houser killed Johnson and Breaux and injured nine others before committing suicide when cornered by police.

Johnson, 33, left behind her husband of two years, Jason Brown, with whom she ran a local gift shop called the Red Arrow Workshop. The couple also owned a clothing store called Parish Ink which had two locations in Lafayette and one in New Orleans.

Breaux, meanwhile, was from Franklin, Louisiana where she attended Hanson Memorial High School and was voted 'Most Beautiful' by her 2012 graduating class and was co-captain of the Varsity cheerleading team.

Survivors spoke of the terrifying moment the gunman indiscriminately opened fire saying 'there was blood everywhere,' as he silently attacked the about 100 in the theater who ranged in age from 18 to 60.

Schumer wrote on Twitter at the time: 'My heart is broken and all my thoughts and prayers are with everyone in Louisiana.'

The shooting drew comparisons to the 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado in which James Holmes walked into a movie theater, killing 12 and injuring 70 during a midnight screening of the Dark Knight Rises.

Holmes was later convicted on 24 counts of first-degree murder in that rampage, which occurred on July 20 - almost three years before the Louisiana shooting.
ISIS has underground cells in the UK, Germany and Italy, a top US intelligence official told reporters on Monday.

James Clapper, the Director Of National Intelligence, spoke at a reporters' breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington, DC.

When asked whether ISIS had groups in the UK, Germany and Italy similar to those that carried out the Paris and Brussels attacks, Clapper replied: 'Yes they do.'

He added that intelligence officials continue to see evidence of plotting on the part of ISIS in these countries, the New York Times reported.

Clapper also said that ISIS 'fanatics' had 'taken advantage, to some extent, of the migrant crisis in Europe'.

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James Clapper (pictured in February 20120), the Director Of National Intelligence, spoke at a reporters' breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington, DC

Clapper became the country's top intelligence official in 2010, when Barack Obama named him to replace Dennis Blair.

ISIS has pledged to attack these three countries, although experts say it is impossible to know where the terrorist group will hit next, the New York Times wrote.

Former French intelligence officer Claude Moniquet told the newspaper the UK and Germany were particularly concerned about a potential attack.

Hearing that ISIS is conducting activities in Germany, Italy and the UK is 'not new', Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told CNN.

But Levitt added: 'It's new that Clapper is saying it.'

Obama urged European countries to 'do more' in the fight against ISIS during a speech in Hannover, Germany, on Monday.

'Right now, the most urgent threat to our nations is ISIL, and thats why were united in our determination to destroy it,' the president said, calling ISIS by a different acronym.

'But this remains a difficult fight, and none of us can solve this problem by ourselves. Even as European countries make important contributions against ISIL, Europe, including NATO, can still do more.'

Clapper told reporters ISIS had groups similar to those who conducted the November 2015 Paris attacks (file picture) in the UK, Italy and Germany

Intelligence officials continue to receive evidence that ISIS is planning an attack in these countries, Clapper added. Pictured, the attacks at Brussels Airport last month

He urged more European countries to join the military intervention in Syria and Iraq.

France, the UK and the Netherlands have conducted strikes in Syria.

All three as well as Belgium and Denmark have struck Iraq.

Obama also asked for more nations to help strengthen local forces in Iraq and to back the country economically to prevent the spread of extremism.

'These terrorists are doing everything in their power to strike our cities and kill our citizens, so we need to do everything in our power to stop them. And that includes closing gaps so terrorists cant pull off attacks like those in Paris and Brussels,' the president added.

He then urged European countries to share more information with one another, which they do not usually do.

'If we truly value our liberty, then we have to take the steps that are necessary to share information and intelligence within Europe, as well as between the United States and Europe, to stop terrorists from traveling and crossing borders and killing innocent people,' Obama said.

He then reminded the crowd that the next NATO summit would take place this summer in Warsaw, Poland.
Marijuana grow operations were found at two of the shooting scenes

Leonard Manley, who lost a daughter and three grandchildren, believes the victims knew their killer

Cops are still searching for a gunman and are looking into threats made against the family

Authorities have said the shootings at four homes were carefully planned

Bruising raises suspicions that they may have also been beaten up

was shot nine times, but their identity has not been revealed

Seven of eight relatives who were killed by a rampaging gunman in their rural southern Ohio homes were shot multiple times, the coroner has revealed.

Results of autopsies carried out by Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco showed one of the victims, all of whom were killed execution-style during a massacre in Pike County on Friday, had nine bullet wounds.

Some also had bruising, which matched a report from a 911 caller who said two appeared to have been beaten up.

The shocking findings were released on Tuesday as the mystery into the horrific slayings deepened and the search for those responsible continued.

Leonard Manley, who lost a daughter and three grandchildren, believes the victims knew their killer.

Autopsy results have revealed that seven of eight relatives who were killed by a rampaging gunman in their rural southern Ohio homes were shot multiple times. One of the scenes is pictured in the aftermath of the slaying on Friday

Leonard Manley, who lost a daughter and three grandchildren, believes the victims knew their killer. He has also insisted he didn't know about the drug growing operations that were found by police investigating the execution-style deaths

The findings were released after prosecutors confirmed they were looking into a threatening message was directed at victim Christopher Rhoden Jr, 16, (pictured)

Husband-to-be Frankie Rhoden and his fiancee Hazel Gilley, 20, were among those killed Friday in Piketon, Ohio, according to the Morning Ledger

Devastating: Hanna May Rhoden (pictured left and right) was killed Friday in the Piketon shooting that has rocked the small community, according to the Morning Ledger. Her Facebook page says she was already a mother to one child

He told Inside Edition that is the only way he would have been able to get around the guard dogs.

The Hamilton County coroner said the victims had wounds to their heads, torso and other parts of the body.

Dr. Sammarco's report said one victim had a single wound, one had two wounds, and the rest had three or more.

Ohio's attorney general has called the deaths carefully planned slayings carried out at four locations in Piketon, a rural Appalachian Mountain region community.

Tragic: Grandmother-to-be Dana Lynn Rhoden (left), 37, and her son, 16-year-old Chris were also murdered, according to the Morning Ledger. Victims Chris and Frankie are brothers

Mike DeWine has also said there were marijuana growing operations at three of the locations where bodies were found.

It has also been revealed that the area has historical ties to Mexican cartels, but it's not known whether the murders were related to drugs.

Pike County Prosecutor Rob Junk told the Columbus Dispatch on Monday that the marijuana operations included a grow house sheltering hundreds of plants.

'It wasn't just somebody sitting pots in the window,' Junk said.

Manley, father of Dana Rhoden, told the Cincinnati Enquirer that he first learned about the marijuana operations from news reports.

Manley, 64, said he's sure his daughter couldn't have been involved in anything illegal.

'They are trying to drag my daughter through the mud, and I don't appreciate that,' said Manley, whose three grandchildren  Dana's children  were also among the dead.

Manley also noted that the assailant was able to get by his daughter's two dogs.

'Whoever done it knows the family,' Manley said. 'There were two dogs there that would eat you up.'

Many also told Daily Mail Online in an exclusive interview that a road rage incident may have been behind the massacre.

He said he was angered by law enforcement revelations that marijuana 'growth operations' were found at three of the four death scenes.

Manly insisted that he knew nothing about the dope installations uncovered at the homes, but did say his family had been riven by tensions and recriminations since the beginning of the year

DeWine said Tuesday that investigators have received more than 300 tips and are continuing to serve search warrants in an effort to identify the killer or killers.

He said 79 pieces of evidence have been sent to a state crime lab for testing and analysis. One was said to be a threatening Facebook message that singled out one of the dead.

Authorities have said members of the Rhoden family were targeted in the slayings.

A woman who called 911 Friday morning to report finding two of the bodies said that she saw 'blood all over the house' and that the two looked like they had been badly beaten.

The victims are 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his ex-wife, Dana Rhoden; their three children, 16-year-old Christopher Rhoden Jr., 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden and 20-year-old Clarence 'Frankie' Rhoden; Christopher Rhoden Sr.'s brother, 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; their cousin, 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; and 20-year-old Hannah Gilley, whose 6-month old son with Frankie was unharmed. Two other children, a 6-month-old and a 3-year-old, were also unharmed.

Kenneth Rhoden (left), 44, and Chris Rhoden Sr (right), 40, were named as victims in Friday's murders. Chris Rhoden Sr is the father of Chris Rhoden Jr, who was also killed in the massacre

Gary Rhoden (pictured above in an undated photograph), 38, was named as one of eight family members killed in Pike County on Friday

DeWine said Monday there was also possible evidence of cockfighting at one of the properties, but he didn't know what was relevant to the investigation.

More than a dozen counselors, clergy and psychologists arrived at the local high school on Monday to help friends and neighbors cope with their grief as they remembered the victims as loyal and caring people.

Dana Rhoden 'always wanted what was best for her kids,' Scioto Valley Local School District Superintendent Todd Burkitt said.

The youngest victim, Christopher Rhoden Jr., was a freshman at Piketon High School.

'He was the first one that if he thought that someone wasn't being treated fairly or felt like someone wasn't being treated appropriately, he would speak up about it,' Burkitt said.

Members of the family of the victims suggested that jealousy or a dispute over a $3,000 demolition derby car (pictured) driven by Frankie Rhoden could be behind the murders.

Hanna and Frankie Rhoden also had attended the school.

While authorities have not released any details about a motive, the attorney general's office did confirm Monday that one of the victims had received a threat via Facebook. Authorities didn't elaborate.
Kimmel apparently claimed that she had 'forgotten' gun was in her bag

One woman caught this week was Julie Kimmel in Southwest Florida airport

Passengers caught with guns could face arrest and an $11,000 fine

Federal law bans guns in carry-on bags but permits them in hold luggage if unloaded and declared

An incredible total of 73 firearms were confiscated from carry-on bags at airports across the country in the last week.

Transportation Security Administration officials said the number reached in the week ending April 21 surpassed the previous high of 68 set in October.

The startling discoveries also revealed that 68 of the weapons were loaded and more than two dozen had a round in the chamber, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

One case that ended in an arrest involved a 33-year-old woman, Julie Kimmel, (left) who was going through a TSA checkpoint at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers

An incredible total of 73 firearms were confiscated from carry-on bags at airports across the country in the last week

Two loaded guns were seized at Boston Logan Airport on Tuesday and Thursday and other airports where weapons were found included Raleigh-Durham, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix and Detroit.

Two replica military rounds were also discovered in a checked bag at Tucso airport.

Federal law bars guns in carry-on bags but can be transported in checked luggage if they are unloaded and declared to the airline before the flight departs.

TSA spokesman Bob Burns in a press release: 'Unfortunately, these sorts of occurrences are all too frequent, which is why we talk about these finds.'

Two loaded guns were seized at Boston Logan Airport on Tuesday (pictured) and Thursday and other airports where weapons were found included Raleigh-Durham, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix and Detroit.

'Sure, it's great to share the things that our officers are finding, but at the same time, each time we find a dangerous item, the line is slowed down and a passenger that likely had no ill intent ends up with a citation or in some cases is even arrested.

The passenger can face a penalty as high as $11,000.'

One case that ended in an arrest involved a 33-year-old woman, Julie Kimmel, who was going through a TSA checkpoint at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers, reported Fox 4.

She apparently told officers she forgot the gun was in her bag.
A mother who was urinated on by a drunk man at a music festival has criticised the lack of response from security.

Joana Perkins said the incident happened at the Groovin the Moo music festival in Canberra which she attended with her son Sam, 15 and daughter Ema, 9, on Sunday.

In a Facebook post she describes the response from security and police as 'patronising' and 'inadequate' and says she will be filling complaints against ACT Police and ISEC.

Joana Perkins was enjoying Groovin the Moo music festival in Canberra with her son Sam, 15 and daughter Ema, 9, (pictured) before a drunk man urinated on her

In a Facebook post she describes the response from security and police as 'patronising' and 'inadequate' and says she will be filling complaints against ACT Police and ISEC

After the man was escorted away by security, Ms Perkins decided to leave the festival with her children. She claims she spotted the two security guards laughing, then patted the drunk guy and let him go

'I notice a bloke behind me and my 6th sense picked up he may have been 'fiddling' with his penis. The feeling of warm liquid running down my leg confirmed the very drunk bloke had decided to urinate on my legs,' Ms Perkins wrote.

She grabbed his armed and pulled him away towards the fence while looking for security to help her. She was spotted by a fellow mum who helped assist her.

'The lady flagged two security guards who came over and asked what had happened. I told them and they proceeded to move the guy away. As my daughter was now pretty upset and I had urine down my leg, we decided it was time to leave. Heading out of the door we noticed the two security guards laughing. They patted the drunk guy and let him go.'

Ms Perkins was shocked to see that security didn't do a follow up or throw the man out of the festival.

When she approached the security guards, however, one claimed that they had kicked the man out of the festival.

'When I told them that we had seen the whole thing they threatened me saying that I would be chucked out next. I asked to speak with their supervisor - but was dismissed with a wave of a hand,' she wrote in the post.

Ms Perkins also accused a female security officer of telling her that she was 'at fault' for bringing her children to the event

Ms Perkins 15-year-old son Sam (pictured) said he felt like he couldn't rely on any of the security guards

Speaking to the ABC, Ms Perkins also accused a female security officer of telling her that she was 'at fault' for bringing her children to the event.



Her 15-year-old son Sam also spoke of the experience: 'She was assaulted and it's their job to keep an eye on her,' he said and added he felt like he couldn't rely on any of the security guards.

'I'd expect the security company, even if someone was just being aggressive and drunk, to warn them or get them to leave.'

Ms Perkins claims that the ACT Police failed in their duty of care, while the security guards and their employer ISEC failed in duly dealing with a complaint of assault

In a statement ACT Police say that they were generally satisfied with the overall behaviour of the crowd at the annual Groovin the Moo festival in Canberra

After further interactions with the security guards, which left her uncomfortable, Ms Perkins approached a nearby police officer and described her ordeal.

The officer told her to get the security ID numbers off the guards.

'His tone is best described as patronising. He then says---so I'll leave it with you. And walks away,' she writes in her post.

Ms Perkins claims that the ACT Police failed in their duty of care, while the security guards and their employer ISEC 'failed abysmally in duly dealing with a complaint where someone was assaulted in front of her children'.

In a statement ACT Police said that they were generally satisfied with the overall behaviour of the crowd at the annual Groovin the Moo festival.
A serial paedophile who pleaded guilty to 75 child sex offences, some committed in Kmart toy aisles, has had his sentence reduced by four years.

Peter Anthony Lewsam, 50, successfully appealed his 16 and a half year sentence after earlier pleading guilty to more than 120 charges involving 75 children aged between two and 10 at Perth shopping centres, according to the West Australian.

The father-of-three had pleaded guilty to charges in July last year of indecently dealing with children under the age of 13, 85 counts of indecently recording children under 13 and four counts of sexual penetration of a child committed between 2012 and 2015.

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Peter Anthony Lewsam, 50, pleaded guilty to 120 charges of abuse against 75 young victims

Lewsam would lure his female victims, mostly aged between two and six, with lollies and filmed his sex abuse on a mobile phone and a GoPro camera attached to his shoe within Kmart stores in Warwick and Joondalup.

Three Court of Appeal judges unanimously agreed to reduce his sentence to 12 years after they found the initial term exceeded sentences that are handed to even more serious offences by repeat offending adults in a position of trust, according to the news report.

'The appellant clearly acted in a premeditated manner on a large number of occasions to target 75 children with whom he had no connection,' the Court of Appeal judgment said.

'Those children were, as the primary judge noted, entitled to feel safe playing in the toy aisle of a department store.

'The appellant took advantage of the vulnerability of those small children to satisfy his own deviant sexual urges.'

Lewsam was arrested after the father of a four-year-old girl interrupted him while he was abusing her. She is the only victim who has been identified.

Police discovered his horrific collection of videos and other child pornography material after searching his phone and home computer.

Judge Stephen Scott said at the time of sentencing Lewsam's actions were premeditated.

The court heard Lewsam smoked up to 15 cones of marijuana a day and had singled out children who appeared to be alone in the toy section of Kmart stores.

'How you are able to abuse so many children ... beggars belief,' he said.

Lewsam singled out young girls, mostly aged between two and six, in toy aisles would them with lollies

Judge Scott said the victims would be constantly reminded of their abuse as they grew older and learned about sexuality.

'The community is entitled to protection from you,' he said.

'This is every parent's nightmare.'

While Judge Scott accepted that Lewsam was remorseful, he said Lewsam had not taken steps to rehabilitate himself and only ceased his offending when he was caught.
An 11-year-old boy is being called a hero after he saved the life of a teenage girl who was drowning in a pool at their mobile home park Sunday evening in south Florida.

Angel Rivera and some of his other friends and family were swimming without any lifeguards at the closed pool at the Highlands Mobile Home Park.

Rivera noticed Usely Michel, 13, at the bottom of the eight-foot-deep pool and told CBS Miami that 'she was just right there floating like a star.'

He then instinctively jumped into the pool to save her.

Angel Rivera (left) saved the life of teenager Usely Michel (right) after spotting her drowning in a pool at their mobile home park in south Florida on Sunday evening

The pool at the mobile home park is closed on weekends and holidays. Apparently the group of people who were there on Sunday found a way to access the pool through a clubhouse that was open

'She was down on the bottom, I picked her up and took her out and then I had to save her life because the people were screaming,' he told CBS Miami.

The adults who were nearby the pool called 911 and CPR efforts were started.

'I just saw her vomiting a lot,' Rivera, who admitted that he was frightened, told CBS Miami.

'I was thinking like "wow, is she okay" and I was scared because I thought she would die.'

A Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue crew rushed Michel to Broward Health North Hospital and doctors expect her to survive thanks to the young boy.

'You know to watch a drowning or a near drowning happen, you know that's preventable,' Broward Sheriff spokesman Mike Jachles told CBS Miami.

'This little boy went in, he jumped in, he was in the right place at the right time and got her out. It was quick thinking on his part.'

Witnesses said the girl's sister and mother were by the pool at the time of the near fatal incident.

The young boy (pictured) was at the closed pool at the Highlands Mobile Home Park with a group of friends when he spotted Usely

Broward Sheriff spokesman Mike Jachles (above) said: 'This little boy went in, he jumped in, he was in the right place at the right time and got her out. It was quick thinking on his part'

'She was sitting right there. She was sitting at the table. She was texting on the phone,' Rivera told CBS Miami.

'Some kids think they're cool 'cause they're not around their parents. They're like, 'oh I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that.' But that's the lesson learned today.

'You need an adult or a lifeguard to be with you. At that moment you never know.'

The pool at the mobile home park is closed on weekends and holidays.

Apparently the group of people who were there on Sunday found a way to access the pool through a clubhouse that was open.

A group of residents were swimming without any lifeguards at the closed pool (above) at the Highlands Mobile Home Park at the time of the incident. He said: 'She was down on the bottom, I picked her up and took her out'

The teen girl's mother, Mirielle Michel told the Sun Sentinel that her daughter moved from Haiti a year ago and doesn't know how to swim.

The girl was playing in the three-foot water but apparently went into the deeper section of the pool as her mother told her and her sister that it was time to go, but she wanted to keep swimming.

Mirielle Michel is thankful for Rivera and the other residents who administered CPR before the firefighters arrived.
A mother of a boy with cerebral palsy says she was left humiliated after a Coles employee yelled at them saying they were not welcome at the supermarket after he had an epileptic fit.

Kelly Page and her 16-year-old son Kyle were doing their grocery shopping at Coles at Stanhope in Sydney's north-west on Anzac Day when he collapsed at about 3pm.

Ms Page said she was in a different aisle at the time because she gives Kyle money each week and a separate trolley to do his own grocery shopping as a way of teaching him independence.

Kyle Page, 16, was doing his weekly grocery shop with his mum Kelly at Coles at Stanhope in Sydney's north-west on Anzac Day when he suffered a drop seizure in an aisle at about 3pm

'He had a three second drop seizure, which is different to a normal seizure. He loses control, drops to the ground and gets back up. There's zero warning. They happen everywhere,' Ms Page told Daily Mail Australia.

'I was called over the speaker. When I arrived another customer had helped Kyle up and he was happy and back to shopping again.

'A Coles employee started yelling at me and pointing her finger at me in front of about 12 shoppers. She said I go there all the time and leave him alone all the time.'

Ms Page claims the employee then told her she couldn't bring Kyle in any more and told them 'you are not welcome in this store'.

Kelly Page said she was in a different aisle at the time because she gives Kyle money each week and a separate trolley to do his own grocery shopping as a way of teaching him independence

Kelly said she was called over the loudspeaker when Kyle collapsed and a Coles employee from the Stanhope store started yelling at her in front of about a dozen shoppers

Kelly claims the employee told her she couldn't bring Kyle in any more and told them 'you are not welcome in this store'. The single mum said Kyle's drop seizures can happen anywhere and at any time

'I don't leave him, I'm in the same store as he is. He is 16 years old and must have a little independence,' she said.

'He is allowed $20 a week to select special things he would like - coco pops, grapes, a match box car.

'He also does this with the special needs school he attends... they load up his iPad with 10 grocery items and he has to go and find them.'

Ms Page, who is a single mother, said she lost it when Kyle started apologising for having the seizure after they had left the supermarket.

'I burst into tears. It's discrimination against Kyle. They humiliated us,' she said.

Kelly said the pair were left humiliated and Kyle started apologising to her for having the seizure after the left the store

'As a mum of a child with a disability you have to fight for everything, but to go to the shopping centre you go every week for 11 years to cop that - it's not good enough.

'Yes he has a disability, yes he has epilepsy. But he knows not to leave, he knows to go to the service desk if he can't find me - he has common sense.

'I cannot leave him on a lounge chair for the rest of his life. He has to be out in the community. He is almost an adult.'

A number of shoppers who witnessed the exchange took to Coles' Facebook page to slam the supermarket for the employee's behaviour.

In a statement, a Cole spokesperson said the supermarket 'wants all of our customers to feel welcome in every one of our stores'.
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The notorious hoarder house in one of Sydney's most sought after suburbs will be sold for more than $2 million after the owners refused to pay the $160,000 council cleaning bill.

Domain.com.au reports that the Boonara Avenue site at Bondi is being listed for its land value only, potentially bringing to an end a 26-year battle.

There are no inspections allowed of the property which is just a short walk from the iconic eastern suburbs beach.

It was due to be sold in February but the Bobolas family managed to stump up the cash to settle a $180,000 debt just hours before the house was to go under the hammer but Waverley Council says their attempts to recover the rest of the money have come to nothing.

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Bondi's notorious 'hoarders house' which is littered with rubbish is set to be auctioned off on May 19 as Waverley Council seeks to recoup $160,000 in cleaning costs. The property is set to fetch $2 million plus

Waverley Council called in the NSW Sherriff's Office to reclaim the money owed for cleaning and a real estate agent has been brought in

The owners of the property - Mary, Elena and Liana Bobolas - have been the centre of controversy over the past few decades as Waverley Council and furious neighbours have battled to get them to clean up their yard. Now the property will go to auction on May 19

Liana Bobolas (pictured) has previously been taken into custody for trying to stop a court-ordered clean up

The sale of 19 Boonara Avenue has been called to recover money owed for cleaning fees owed to Waverley Council by the Bobolas family. Already 12 contracts have been issued ahead of the proposed auction.

Liana Bobolas was taken into custody in July last year after workers arrived at the home in Sydney's iconic Bondi for a court-ordered clean up.

Waverley Council workers removed 10 truckloads of rubbish from the property that day as the family watched on.

The family - Mary, Elena and Liana Bobolas - had previously been able to stop a clean up by lodging several court appeals.

Rubbish has been a constant fixture at the property over almost 26 years as the occupants, dubbed 'the Bondi hoarders', refused to clean up.

Liana Bobolas was previously arrested, but later released by police, after she refused to allow council workers to carry out a clean up

More than $350,000 of ratepayers money has been spent in a bid to control the piles of rubbish in and outside the Bondi property

Plastic bags full of garbage, slabs of wood, what looks to be old carpet samples and cardboard boxes litter the front of the house

More than $350,000 of ratepayers money has been spent in a bid to control the piles of rubbish in and outside the Bondi property.

Empty glass bottles, cardboard boxes, discarded appliances and pieces of old wooden furniture are regularly piled high outside the home.

Plastic bags full of rubbish, old paint tins, a rusted wheelbarrow and a suitcase have caused the gates to almost burst at the seams as they hold back the mountains of trash.

Real estate agent Ric Serrao of Raine and Horne Double Bay has been brought in to oversee the sale, according to Domain.

He told the website no reserve had yet been set but there were expectations of a $2 million price tag.

The dilapidated house was due to go to auction about a year ago over $180,000 the family owed in previous clean-up bills

An over-grown yard is littered with empty glass bottles, cardboard boxes, discarded appliances and pieces of old wooden furniture
A same-sex American-Spanish couple won a high-profile custody battle Tuesday against a surrogate mother in Thailand who gave birth to their child but then decided she wanted to keep the baby when she found out they were gay.

Bangkok's Juvenile and Family Court ruled that the legal guardian of the 15-month-old child, named Carmen, is her American biological father, Gordon Lake, said Lake's lawyer Rachapol Sirikulchit.

'The court has granted legal custody of Carmen Lake to Gordon Lake, my client, and (said) that my client is her only guardian,' Rachapol said.

American Gordon Lake, right, and his Spaniard partner Manuel Santos, left, won full custody of their daughter Carmen (center) on Tuesday, after a legal battle with the girl's Thai surrogate mother. The family pictured above on March 23

The Bangkok court said in a statement that it granted custody to the couple, who live in Spain but have been caring for the 15-month-old in Bangkok, in order to 'protect the well-being of the baby'.

'Based on evidence and witness testimonies the judge was convinced that the girl's custodians took care of her with love,' it said.

'Their homosexuality is not an obstacle to raising the girl and to making her happy like any other child,' the statement added.

Lake and his partner, Spaniard Manuel Santos, both 41, have been stuck in Thailand since launching their legal battle after Carmen was born in January 2015.

Santos emerged from the court smiling and with tears in his eyes.

Santos emerged from court on Tuesday wearing a 'love wins' t-shirt. A Thai judge ruled that his partner was the legal guardian of their daughter Carmen

Carmen is Santos' partner's biological child with an anonymous egg donor. Carmen's surrogate mother, Patidta Kusolsang, has no genetic relation to the child. Above, Santos leaving court on Tuesday

The couple will still have to wait at least 15 months before they are allowed to leave the country with their daughter, if Kusolsang decides to appeal the judge's decision

'We won,' he told reporters. 'We are really happy. ... This nightmare is going to end soon.'

'After 15 months, Carmen will fly to Spain,' Santos said.

Rachapol said the couple would not be able to take Carmen out of the country right away pending the possibility of an appeal by the surrogate mother, Patidta Kusolsang. She was not in court and her intentions could not immediately be learned.

Lake and Santos celebrated their legal victory on the 'Bringcarmenhome' Facebook page set up to support their custody fight.

'There is no way to express with words what we are feeling!' they posted. 'We are crying, our family is crying, our friends are crying, and we are sure all the Thai people who showed their love for us during this time are crying too.'

'Today is a huge day for love, for family and for truth. And it is also a big day for LGBT rights,' said their posting, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights.

The couple also have a toddler son named Alvaro, who was born to a surrogate mother in India, with Santos as the biological father. The couple pictured above with their daughter Carmen

Lake, left, and Santos, right, stare lovingly at their daughter in a snap posted to the couple's Instagram page

Lake, left, and Santos, right, pictured above with their daughter and son, shortly after Carmen's birth last year

Lake and Santos will raise Carmen in Spain, but say they will return to her native Thailand often, since they are proud of her heritage

The case was seen as complicated by the fact that Thai law does not recognize same-sex marriages and also by a new law that bans commercial surrogacy, which took effect after Carmen's birth. Rachapol said the court's ruling was based on a transitory clause in the law allowing the intended parents of any baby born before the law took effect to request to be the legal parents.

When Carmen was born, Patidta handed over the baby to Lake and Santos, who left the hospital with the infant. But they say Patidtda then changed her mind and refused to sign the documents to allow Carmen to get a passport so they could leave Thailand.

Lake, who is from New Jersey, is Carmen's biological father, while the egg came from an anonymous donor, not Patidta. Neither he nor Carmen were in court Tuesday.

Lake and Santos were told Patidta had thought they were an 'ordinary family and that she worried for Carmen's upbringing,' according to a message Lake posted on a crowdfunding site that has raised $36,000 to help cover the costs of the trial and staying in Thailand.

Lake has said he doesn't know why the surrogate says she didn't realize they were gay. He says he was clear about that from the start with their surrogacy agency, New Life, which has branches in several countries.

The Bangkok-based New Life office has closed since commercial surrogacy was outlawed in Thailand in July 2015, following several high-profile scandals. There was a grace period provided for parents whose babies were already on the way.

Carmen has lived since birth with the couple, who also have a toddler son, Alvaro, born to a surrogate mother in India with Santos the biological father.

They said in their Facebook posting that the family will live in Valencia, Spain, but that they love Thailand and promised to come back often.
Police have confirmed the emergency situation in Brisbane's north has been resolved, after several people reportedly made threats from inside a home.

Officers made an emergency declaration at around 3.28pm on Tuesday and specialist police moved in and cordoned off several blocks surrounding Newman Road in Wavell Heights.

Just after 5.30pm police confirmed the matter had been resolved and two men and a woman were taken into custody.

Police have declared an emergency situation in Brisbanes north after several men made threats from a residence (stock image)

The declaration was made at 3.28pm causing specialist police to move in and block off several blocks surrounding Newman Road in Wavell Heights (stock image)

The police perimeter stretched from Ballantine Street, running north across 7th Brigade Park to Allison Road then running east along Ellison Road to the intersection with Bilsen Road, running south on Bilsen Road to the intersection with Hamilton Road then west to Ballantine Street.

Police diversions were in place and residents were asked to remain indoors.

More details to come.
Aly disagreed saying: 'if there were

He said there is 'controversy,

The producer accused of fuelling conspiracy theories of the Port Arthur massacre has returned fire at The Project after host Waleed Aly castigated him during an interview.

In a series of lengthy Facebook posts, producer Paul Moder said he suffered a 'butchering' from 'biased gatekeepers' during his interview on Monday night that focused on the making of his film about the Port Arthur massacre, which is being produced without the support of victims.

The Melbourne filmmaker went on the show to defend the movie and said there is much 'controversy, conspiracy and agenda' around the 1996 incident as the case never went to trial.

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In a series of lengthy Facebook posts, producer Paul Moder said he suffered a 'butchering' from 'biased gatekeepers'

Moder responded to backlash saying he had 'utmost respect' for victims. In a series of Facebook posts, he said he underwent a 'butchering'

'I will be including the FACTUAL anomalies, discrepancies and legal improprieties that are evidenced and on public record' - Mr Moder hit back after the interview and said he understands the victims objection to the film

'A predictable butchering by these biased, agenda driven moral 'gatekeepers',' Mr Moder took to Facebook to voice his frustration following the interview

Aly pointed out considering Martin Bryant confessed to the killings, there was no need for ballistics evidence and suggested the producer was 'building [his own] conspiracy theory'.

'That's how you build a conspiracy theory, you try to inject doubt where there isn't any,' Aly said.

'If there was a defensible case in this case it would have run a trial and those discrepancies - if they even exist - would be discussed and judge would rule on them.

'But the fact that someone can say in a case, where there was a conviction and really no debate who did this, 'oh look there was a discrepancy over here', that's the stuff of a conspiracy theory.'

Mr Moder claims just 20 per cent of his interview was played during the segment on Monday night.

But Mr Moder hit back after the interview and said he understands the victims objection to the film.

'A predictable butchering by these biased, agenda driven moral 'gatekeepers',' he wrote on Facebook.

'I will be including the FACTUAL anomalies, discrepancies and legal improprieties that are evidenced and on public record.

Waleed Aly (pictured) has hit out at the writer and producer of the controversial upcoming film about the Port Arthur massacre after he suggested there were 'conspiracies' surrounding the 1996 tragedy

Melbourne filmmaker Paul Moder appeared on The Project to defend his choice to create the movie without the support of the victims and said there is much 'controversy' around the incident as the case never went to trial

'I will always hold the victims, the survivors, the emergency services, police and their families in the highest regard and with the utmost respect and I acknowledge and understand their pain and objection to this film.

'The film is sadly, a part of Australian history, it affected all Australians and as such it needs to be made.'

Mr Moder claims just 20 per cent of his interview was played during the segment on Monday night.

During the interview Mr Moder said 'a lot of people out there don't agree' with Aly's view and the host interrupted to tell him they are in 'no position to say so' as the case did not go to trial.

Earlier in the program Aly made mention to a post on Mr Moder's Facebook referring to Bryant's 'alleged' crimes'.

'What is that meant to mean? I mean he is convicted, there is no allegedly about it,' Aly asked.

Mr Moder said 'a lot of people out there don't agree' with Aly's view and the host interrupted to tell him they are in 'no position to say so' as the case did not go to trial

Aly pointed out considering Martin Bryant (pictured) confessed to the killings, there was no need for ballistics evidence and suggested the producer was 'building [his own] conspiracy theory'

Gunman Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded another 23 in a mass shooting at Port Arthur in Tasmania between 28 and 29 April in 1996

Mr Moder said his aim is to hold the victims and their families in the 'utmost respect'.

The filmmaker has come under fire for allowing the graphic retelling of the event to go ahead, even though he does not have permission from the victims.

Filming for the project is due to start later this year and the script for mass murderer Martin Bryant is reportedly in its final stages.
Donald Trump is aiming for a sweep of all five Northeastern states holding primaries Tuesday, including Pennsylvania, with his rivals pinning their hopes of stopping the Republican front-runner on a fragile coordination strategy in the next rounds of voting.

For Democratic leader Hillary Clinton, wins in most of Tuesday's contests would leave little doubt that she'll be her party's nominee.

Rival Bernie Sanders' team has sent mixed signals about his standing in the race, with one top adviser suggesting a tough night would push the Vermont senator to reassess his bid and another vowing to fight 'all the way to the convention.'

Clinton was already looking past Sanders, barely mentioning him during recent campaign events. Instead, she deepened her attacks on Trump, casting the billionaire businessman as out of touch with Americans.

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump expects to run the table as Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island hold primaries on Tuesday

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is looking past her rival Bernie Sanders and gearing up for a November clash with the billionaire GOP front-runner

'If you want to be president of the United States, you've got to get familiar with the United States,' Clinton said. 'Don't just fly that big jet in and land it and go make a big speech and insult everybody you can think of.'

Asked Monday whether she needed to do more to gain Sanders' support in the general election, she noted her loss in the 2008 Democratic primaries to Barack Obama.

'I did not put down conditions,' she said on MSNBC. 'I said I am supporting Senator Obama. ... I hope that we will see the same this year.'

In addition to Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island hold primaries on Tuesday.

Candidates and outside groups have spent $13.9 million dollars on advertisements in the states, with Clinton and Sanders dominating the spending.

Sanders said candidly on ABC's 'Good Morning America' that his campaign is 'handicapped' since the states in play Tuesday don't allow independents to participate, but added that 'we are going to fight through California and then we'll see what happens.'

Democrats are competing for 384 delegates in Tuesday's contests, while Republicans have 172 up for grabs.

The Democratic race is far more settled than the chaotic GOP contest, despite Trump having a lead in the delegate count. The businessman is the only one left in the race who can reach the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination before the convention, but he could very well fall short, pushing the nominating process to the party's July gathering in Cleveland.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are now joining forces to try to make that happen. Their loose alliance marks a stunning shift in particular for Cruz, who has called on Kasich to drop out of the race and has confidently touted the strength of his convention strategy.

Second-place GOP candidate Ted Cruz is making a case based on delegate math, not the popular vote among rank-and-file Republicans

Kasich has won just a single primary  his home state  but hopes to sway convention delegates that he's the only Republican capable of defeating Clinton in the general election.

Under their new arrangement, Kasich won't compete for votes in Indiana, allowing Cruz to take Trump on head to head in the state's May 3 primary. Cruz will do the same for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico.

'The fact is, I don't have unlimited resources,' Kasich said Tuesday on NBC's 'Today,' downplaying the collaboration as the logical step if he is to win the nomination in a contested convention.

Cruz called the partnership 'big news' as he campaigned in Indiana on Monday. 'That is good for the men and women of Indiana. It's good for the country to have a clear and direct choice.'

Trump panned his rivals' strategy as 'pathetic.'

'If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail,' Trump said as he campaigned in Rhode Island.

'But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude.'

Ohio Gov. John Kasich's last hope for the White House hangs on the idea that neither Trump nor Cruz can win the GOP nomination in Cleveland, making him a more moderate consensus pick who can end a convention floor fight

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders isn't ready to throw in the towel just yet although his numbers look increasingly bleak

Cruz and Kasich's public admission of direct coordination was highly unusual and underscored the limited options they now have for stopping the real estate mogul.

The effectiveness of the strategy was quickly called into question after Kasich said publicly that while he won't spend resources in Indiana, his supporters in the state should still vote for him.

Trump's path to the nomination remains narrow, requiring him to win 58 percent of the remaining delegates to reach the magic number by the end of the primaries.

He's hoping for a solid victory in Pennsylvania, though the state's unique ballot could make it hard for any candidate to win a big majority.

While the statewide Republican winner gets 17 delegates, the other 54 are directly elected by voters and can support any candidate at a convention. Their names are listed on the ballot with no information about which White House hopeful they support.

Clinton is on solid footing in the Democratic race and enters Tuesday's contests having accumulated 82 percent of the delegates needed to win her party's nomination.
A cat was rescued from the top of a two-storey Cardiff home thanks to a piece of cardboard used as an improvised slide.

Farah Mukhtar, a PhD student at Cardiff University, said she heard the cat miaowing outside on Sunday evening but could see nothing when she went to her front door.

The 29-year-old, who is originally from Malaysia, said she could still hear the cat - whose owner lives a few doors down - on Monday morning before she realised it was on the roof of the Riverside home she shares with her husband Syafiq Basar and three-year-old son.

Enterprising: A cat was rescued from the top of a two-storey Cardiff home thanks to a piece of cardboard used as an improvised slide

Stranded: Farah Mukhtar, a PhD student at Cardiff University, said she heard the cat miaowing outside on Sunday evening but could see nothing when she went to her front door

'I never thought it would be on the roof,' she said.

'My husband tried to call the cat to the other side of the house so it would be easier to catch it, but it didn't want to.

'A ladder was too short so we couldn't use that. There was a contractor working nearby who tried to call it but it didn't want to move.'

The couple got in touch with the fire brigade but were told they would only get involved if contacted by the RSPCA.

Here kitty kitty! 'A ladder was too short so we couldn't use that. There was a contractor working nearby who tried to call it but it didn't want to move'

Success! Farah said: 'We tried to make him jump but it didn't want to. So eventually my husband used the cardboard box and got it to slide down into the house'

Oh no! Syafiq then grabbed hold of the cat from the window although there was still a hairy moment when it appeared reluctant to be rescued

Farah said: 'We tried to make him jump but it didn't want to. So eventually my husband used the cardboard box and got it to slide down into the house.'

Syafiq then grabbed hold of the cat from the window although there was still a hairy moment when it appeared reluctant to be rescued.

But after consolidating his grip on the moggy, Syafig ensured the cat could be reunited with its owner - and still have all of its nine lives intact.

Phew, got you! But after consolidating his grip on the moggy, Syafig ensured the cat could be reunited with its owner - and still have all of its nine lives intact
Turkey's parliamentary speaker has called for the country to enshrine Islam in its constitution, after nearly 100 years of secularism.

Speaker Ismail Kahraman said thatTurkey needed a religious constitution, aproposal which contradicts the modern republic's foundingprinciples.

While Turkey is a secular state which has no official state religion, some 96.5 per cent of the population is Muslim.

Against the state: Parliamentary Speaker Ismail Kahraman said Monday that Turkey needed a Muslim constitution, a proposal which contradicts the Turkish republic's founding principles

'For one thing, the new constitution should not havesecularism,' Kahraman said, according to videos of his speechpublished by Turkish media.

'It needs to discuss religion ... Itshould not be irreligious, this new constitution, it should be areligious constitution.'

As parliamentary speaker, 75-year-old Kahraman is responsible for overseeing efforts to draft a new constitution, a move which is being pushed by President Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling AK Party.

When the Turkish republic was formed from the ruins of an Ottomantheocracy in the 1920s, it's 'founding father' Mustafa Kemal Ataturk banished Islam from public life, replaced Arabicwith Latin script and promoted Western dress and women's rights.

The AK Party has its roots in political Islam, and have tried to restore the roleof religion in public life. They have expanded religiouseducation and allowed the head scarf, once banned from stateoffices, to be worn in colleges and parliament.

In charge: As parliamentary speaker, Kahraman, pictured with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is responsible for overseeing efforts to draft a new constitution

The AKP is pushing to replace the existing constitution,which dates back to the period after a 1980 military coup.

Critics fear a new constitution could concentrate too muchpower in the hands of Erdogan, who wants an executive presidencyto replace the current parliamentary system. The government haspromised that European standards on human rights will form thebasis of the new text.

Mustafa Sentop, a senior AKP member who heads aparliamentary commission on constitutional reform, said a drafttext retained the precept of secularism and his party had noteven discussed removing it.

But Kahraman's comments drew criticism from governmentopponents suspicious of the ruling party's Islamist ideals.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the main opposition andsecularist Republican People's Party (CHP), tweeted: 'Secularismis the primary principle of social peace ... Secularism is thereto ensure that everyone has religious freedom, Ismail Kahraman!'

Devlet Bahceli, leader of the opposition NationalistMovement Party (MHP), said it was not right to open secularismup for debate and called on Kahraman to take back his words.

Ankara police used pepper spray to disperse about 50demonstrators, including some CHP lawmakers, who gatheredoutside parliament. Dozens of people were detained.

NATO member Turkey, which aspires to join the EuropeanUnion, has long been touted by its Western partners as a modelsecular, democratic nation with a majority Muslim population.

President Erdogan and the ruling AK Party he founded, their roots in political Islam, have tried to restore the role of religion in public life

Erdogan's fervent supporters see him as a champion of thepious working class, resetting the balance of power in a countrythey say was dominated by a secular elite for much of the lastcentury. Turkey's most influential leader since Ataturk, Erdoganwon almost 52 percent of the vote in an August 2014 presidentialelection.

The AKP holds 317 of the 550 seats in parliament and wouldneed 330 votes to submit its draft constitution to a referendum.This means it must win over lawmakers from other parties, acampaign which Kahraman's comments could risk undermining.

'These statements are going to complicate efforts towards anew constitution,' a senior AKP official told Reuters.

'We willhave to convey very clearly to the public that such an approachis not being considered. But frankly, after yesterday'sstatement, it is not going to be easy.'

Kahraman said the current charter was already religiousbecause it declared Islamic holidays as public holidays, even iffails to cite 'Allah' once.

Turkey amended its original 1924 constitution four yearslater to drop Islam as the official religion of the state.Historians consider that measure the basis of the modern,democratic and secular Turkish Republic. The currentconstitution does not promote any official religion.

Turkey is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, but a fifth of its 78million people is estimated to be Alevi, which draws from Shi'a,Sufi and Anatolian folk traditions. Turkey is also home to about100,000 Christians and 17,000 Jews.
A transgender woman flouted North Carolina's controversial new law by using the women's restroom in the Governor's office and got away with it.

The law, known as House Bill 2 or HB2, bans transgender people from using restrooms in government buildings that match their gender identity.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, was in the state capital, Raleigh, protesting at the law.

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Mara Keisling (pictured) was not arrested despite telling a large crowd what she had done within earshot of a police officer. Ms Keisling, 56, began her transition in 2000

She told Buzzfeed: 'I was a guest of the state of North Carolina, so guests get to use the bathrooms.

'It was uneventful. No one was bothered, because when I go to the bathroom, I do my business, I mind my own business, and then I go about my business.'

She said several women saw her enter the restroom, as did a police officer who was standing nearby but the cop did nothing.

North Carolina's Governor Pat McCory (pictured) insists the law is designed to protect women and girls from sexual predators. But it has become hugely controversial and many businesses have called on it to be repealed

'They are not even enforcing this stupid law in state office buildings, which is where it applies. They can't enforce this,' she told a crowd of supporters.

Governor Pat McCrory, who supports the law, has argued it is necessary to maintain public safety.

Mr McCrory said banning transgender women protects women and girls from sexual predators.

Ms Keisling (pictured left) was one of a number of campaigners who delivered a petition containing 150,000 names to the capitol building in Raleigh. She was later arrested for trespass after a sit-in protest

The law specifies that women's restrooms in government-run buildings can only be used by a person if their birth certificates states they were female.

Keisling asked: 'How many tourists and lobbyists carry their birth certificate when they go to capitol?

'If they are going to check my birth certificate, they damn well check everybody's birth certificate. And if they check my anatomy, they have to check everybody else's. That is how this country works - laws have to be enforced equally.'

No entry - Ms Keisling used this restroom in the state capitol building in Raleigh. Governor McCrory has enraged LGBT campaigners by referring to transgender women as 'men'

North Carolina has been sued in federal court over the law, dozens of businesses have asked state officials to repeal it and several entertainers, including Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr and Demi Lovato, have cancelled concerts in the state in protest.

LGBT groups delivered petitions signed by more than 150,000 people asking for the law to be reversed but Keisling and several other people were later arrested after a sit-in protest.

Keisling and the others were taken to a detention center on Monday evening but later released. They were believed to have been charged with trespassing.
A top US intelligence official has warned that encryption technologies used by terror groups have sped up by seven years because of Edward Snowden.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said the development posed a problem for officials attempting to collect data on ISIS.

It comes after he also warned the group had underground cells in European countries including UK, Germany and Italy.

Top US intelligence official James Clapper (left) has warned that encryption technologies have sped up by seven years because of Edward Snowden (right)

Mr Clapper, speaking during a meeting organized by the Christian Science Monitor, said: 'As a result of the Snowden revelations, the onset of commercial encryption has accelerated by seven years.'

He added: 'From our standpoint, it's not a good thing.'

But experts questioned the 'seven-year' figure provided with one claiming investigations were not being hindered by encryption, which is the process of encoding messages or data so only those authorized can get access.

Amie Stepanovich, U.S. policy director of Access Now, told NBC News: 'He's speculating on what would have happened if what happened didn't happen. I'm not sure what metric he is using.'

Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, added: 'When Clapper says that ISIS worries about their security, I don't doubt that.

'But we really don't have any situation where, but for strong encryption, we could have stopped a terrorist attack.'

Mr Snowden also responded to the claim, writing on Twitter that he was 'proud' of the accusation

Mr Snowden also responded to the claim, writing on Twitter that he was 'proud' of the accusation.

He wrote: 'Of all the things I've been accused of, this is the one of which I am most proud.'

It comes after Mr Clapper also claimed ISIS has underground cells across Europe.

When asked whether ISIS had groups in the UK, Germany and Italy similar to those that carried out the Paris and Brussels attacks, Clapper replied: 'Yes they do.'

He added that intelligence officials continue to see evidence of plotting on the part of ISIS in these countries, the New York Times reported.

It comes after Mr Clapper also claimed ISIS has underground cells, similar to those that carried out the Paris and Brussels attacks, across Europe. Above, the aftermath of the Paris attack

Clapper became the country's top intelligence official in 2010 when Barack Obama named him to replace Dennis Blair.

Former French intelligence officer Claude Moniquet told the newspaper the UK and Germany were particularly concerned about a potential attack.

Hearing that ISIS is conducting activities in Germany, Italy and the UK is 'not new', Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told CNN.

But Levitt added: 'It's new that Clapper is saying it.'
North Korea appears to be preparing a test-launch of a ballistic missile with a range of more than 1,800 miles, it was reported today.

The Musudan missile, which can be fired from a mobile launcher, is not known to have been successfully flight-tested.

Its first test-launch on April 15 was described by the United States as a 'fiery, catastrophic' failure.

With a range of more than 1,800 miles, it could, if launched successfully, hit Japan and also theoretically put the U.S. territory of Guam within range.

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South Korean army soldiers pass by a TV news program showing a file footage of a ballistic missile launch conducted by North Korea on April 15. Kim Jong Un appears to be preparing a test-launch of the same Musudan missile with a range of more than 1,800 miles after a failed first attempt, it was reported today

North Korea tested its fourth nuclear bomb on January 6 and launched a long-range rocket on February 7, both in defiance of U.N. resolutions.

The North on Saturday conducted a test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile.

'There are indications that the North may fire a Musudan missile that it launched and failed on Kim Il Sung's birthday on April 15,' Yonhap quoted an unnamed government official as saying.

Kim Il Sung is the North's founder.

North and South Korea remain technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, rather than a treaty.

North Korea claims it has successfully test-fired this ballistic missile from a submarine and warned of its growing ability to cut down its enemies with a 'dagger of destruction'

The South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the projectile traveled about 19 miles on Saturday evening

The North, whose lone major ally is neighbour China, routinely threatens to destroy South Korea and its major ally, the United States.

The April 15 failure was seen as an embarrassing blow for current leader Kim Jong Un, Kim Il Sung's grandson, who has claimed several advances in weapons technology in recent months and is widely expected to conduct a fifth nuclear test soon.

South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun declined to confirm the Yonhap report but said the North's military would likely spend some time trying to fix the problem following the failed launch.

Experts see North Korea's Musudan test as part of an effort to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the mainland United States.

Leader Kim Jong-Un hailed the submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test as an 'eye-opening success', and claimed Pyongyang has the ability to strike Seoul and the US whenever

North Korea said its fourth nuclear test in January was a hydrogen bomb, although that claim has been disputed by foreign governments and experts given the relatively small size of the blast.

North Korea said its submarine-launched ballistic missile test on Saturday was a 'great success' that provided 'one more means for powerful nuclear attack'.

South Korea today described the test, which sent a missile travelling about 18 miles, as a partial success.

The U.S. and South Korea began talks on possible deployment of a new missile-defence system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, after the latest North Korea nuclear and rocket tests.
Brussels officials are secretly plotting to haul Britain before the EU courts - just weeks before the Brexit vote - for charging foreign lorries to drive on UK roads.

The government introduced a levy of up to 10 a day two years ago to 'level the playing field' for British truck drivers who have to pay tolls on the continent.

Even though British hauliers also have to pay the charge, the EU will claim it unfairly penalises foreigners as its launch was paired with a reduction in road tax for UK lorries.

Brussels officials are secretly plotting to haul Britain before the EU courts - just weeks before the Brexit vote - for charging foreign lorries to drive on UK roads. Trucks are pictured queuing on the M20 in Kent last summer

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker's chief of staff, Martin Selmayr, has privately boasted that infringement proceedings will be taken against Britain that could result in the policy being ruled illegal by the European Court of Justice and the government facing a hefty fine.

However, Commission officials yesterday refused to publicly comment on the court plan, which will lead to accusations they are trying to keep it under wraps in the run up to the referendum on Britain's EU membership.

As Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin launched the HGV levy in April 2014, he described it as a 'massive boost for the UK haulage industry'.

About 100,000 foreign heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) that make 1.5million trips to the UK every year were told they had to stump up the charge towards paying to repair potholes and maintaining the roads which they use.

Germany's transport minister Alexander Dobrindt planned to copy the scheme, but the Commission has written to him revealing the plan to take Britain to court.

In a letter dated the 13 April, which was leaked to German magazine Der Spiegel, Mr Selmayr wrote the Commission believed the levy breached EU law.

He wrote: 'In the course of the last year, the Commission has notified the UK that it has not provided sufficient proof to allay these concerns.

'Therefore the EU Commission is preparing an infringement procedure in this case, following the failure of exchanges with the UK authorities in recent weeks to produce a result.'

As Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin (pictured) launched the HGV levy in April 2014, he described it as a 'massive boost for the UK haulage industry'

A spokesman last night said: 'The Commission does not comment on rumours in the press.' The Department for Transport did not respond to a request for comment.

Tory MEP David Campbell Bannerman last night said the secret court threat demonstrated how the Commission was holding back plans that will negatively affect Britain until after the referendum vote.

He said: 'This is further evidence of a devious plan to hide and bury controversial legislation and EU actions in order to fool the British people into voting Remain.

'The result will be our people will become extremely angry as they realise they have been totally shafted by our so called friends. This is deeply dangerous.'

He added: 'The charge allows us to recover some of the costs of foreign lorries using UK roads for free. It is outrageous these free riders are being protected by the European Commission.

'It is time foreign lorries  and the whole EU  paid their own way. It is yet another example of our nation's total loss of control. We must slam the EU brakes on 23 June.'

The levy affects all HGVs of 12 tonnes or more that drive on UK roads, regardless of their country of registration. Foreign operators have to pay the tax before using UK roads, with charges varying from 1.70 and 10 a day, or 85 to 1,000 per year.

The levy is structured in a series of bands, reflecting vehicle type, weight and number of axles, said the Department for Transport.
The mother of four has now been fined 60 by Blackpool Council

Miss Smith 'had little choice' but to take Amelia out of school for the trip

Amelia, 10, had different term times compared to her other children

Michelle Smith, 34, wanted to go to Ibiza with her family during Easter

Michelle Smith, 34, (right) wanted to go to Ibiza for the Easter break but rules allowing schools to set their own holidays meant Amelia, 10, (left) broke up two weeks after her other children

A mother of four has been fined for truancy offences after taking her youngest daughter out of school because a Government 'free for all' on term dates meant her children had their Easter breaks at different times.

Michelle Smith, 34, wanted to go to Ibiza but rules allowing schools to set their own holidays meant Amelia, 10, broke up two weeks after her two elder brothers, elder sister and stepbrother who attended other establishments.

Miss Smith, from Thornton-Cleveleys, near Blackpool, Lancashire, has four children at three different schools and alerted Amelia's teachers over the clashing term dates.

But she went ahead with the family's eight day break to the Balearic island after having 'little choice' but to take Amelia out of school.

When she arrived back in the UK, she was issued with a 60 fixed penalty notice 10 days later by Blackpool Council for failing to ensure her child attended school.

Her daughter Amelia, who goes to Norbreck Primary Academy in Thornton-Cleveleys, had previously had a flawless attendance rate of 100 per cent.

She was scheduled to break up for her Easter holiday on April 8 - more than a week after the Easter weekend actually took place.

Her brother Taylor, 16, and sister Courtney, 14, who go to Hodgson Academy in Poulton, near Blackpool, and her brother Shai, 12, who goes to nearby Montgomery High School, all broke up for their two week break on Thursday, March 24 - 16 days before Amelia.

Miss Smith supplied photographs from their holiday to Ibiza. Amelia (left) and her sister Courtney (right) were pictured in the sea on holiday

The 'ridiculous' situation comes after academies, free schools and voluntary-aided and foundation schools had the ability to set their teaching hours and term dates.

All state schools were given similar powers last September under the Government's Deregulation Bill, which removes the role of local authorities in fixing the dates of school terms and leaves the decision to school leaders and governors.

Critics have warned the move risked creating a 'free for all', with schools in the same area setting different term dates, causing chaos for local parents.

Miss Smith, a travel agent, took Amelia out of school for seven days, with her other options being leaving her daughter at home - or cancelling the trip.

She is now refusing to pay the 60 penalty and her decision could land her in court where the fine could be increased to 2,500.

The mother of four could also face three months in jail and a criminal record after her daughter Amelia missed seven days at school.

Miss Smith, a travel agent, then 'had little choice' but to take Amelia out of school, with her other options being leaving her daughter at home - or cancelling the trip

Miss Smith said: 'Family holidays are incredibly important to us because we like to spend that time together as a family.

'But these new rules on term dates simply don't make that possible any more and I want to make a stand for all parents.

'The whole system simply doesn't take into account large families who have several children at different schools.'

She added: 'I would never dream of taking Amelia out of school to go on holiday but in this case we had little choice.

'The other alternatives were leaving Amelia at home which of course we would not do - or just axe the family holiday altogether and I don't see why we should have to do that.

'I was trying to make the most of an awkward situation by taking just one child out of classes. We couldn't leave her behind and we didn't want to cancel the trip.

'It's a ridiculous situation, the system is putting families under unfair pressure.'

Amelia (left) playing in the sand with her sister in Ibiza over the Easter break. She was also photographed swimming in the sea (right)

The mother of four received a letter from Blackpool Council 10 days after returning to the UK

Miss Smith's partner, Rickie Lake, a 48-year old scaffolder, has a 12-year-old son, Lenny, who attends Cardinal Allen school in Fleetwood and he broke up on March 23.

All the older youngsters were due back in school on April 11. The family went on holiday on March 29 and stayed for eight nights, returning on April 6.

Amelia went back to school for the last two days of her spring term until she broke up on April 8.

Amelia (right) had a 100 per cent attendance record at school before she went on holiday to Ibiza with her family

Amelia, who goes to Norbreck Primary Academy (pictured) in Thornton-Cleveleys, had previously had a flawless attendance rate of 100 per cent

Miss Smith said: 'When the term dates were announced I went into Amelia's school to check the holidays were correct because I couldn't believe they were so different from the other four schools. But they told me they were the right dates.

'I told them of our holiday plans in advance and I thought as Amelia had 100 per cent attendance, they would be understanding of the situation.

RULE CHANGE: SCHOOLS CAN NOW SET THEIR OWN TERM DATES September 2015: All state schools in England were able to decide their own term dates, under plans for more school autonomy announced by the government. The plans put forward in the Deregulation Bill meant schools that are not academies would not have to accept the term dates set by local authorities. A majority of secondary schools are now academies, but most primary schools have not adopted academy status - so this represented an extra level of flexibility for them. They still have to operate within a legal limit of a minimum of 190 school days each year. Advertisement

'My other three children had all been to that primary school too so we just went on the holiday and we thought we would be OK.

'When Amelia went back to school, there was no mention of a fine - but about 10 days later the letter came through.

'I opened it and I was absolutely gob-smacked. I just don't see what else we could have done, it was either not go on holiday or leave her here.

'It was impossible, common sense somewhere should prevail. If I took them all out of school randomly, I would absolutely expect to be fined.

'There is no common sense in this, what are parents supposed to do in that instance?

'I could pay the fine and forget about it but why should I? The children wonder why I'm whinging about 60 but I was absolutely raging when I got the letter.

'Yes 2,500 is a lot of money if we go to court but morally I'm in the right.

'I think this is going to be a common problem because there is a lot of academies that can chose their own holidays.

'I don't hold Amelia's school at fault and I don't hold the other schools at fault either.

'The new system just doesn't help parents out at all. It is not my fault that my daughter Amelia's school has different holidays than the children's schools.'

Jon Platt, 45, (pictured) has his punishment overturned in court after he refused to pay the 120 fine for taking his daughter out of school

Karen McCarter, principal at Norbreck Primary, said: 'We understand that this is a difficult situation for the family but the government only permits schools to authorise absence in very exceptional circumstances such as bereavement or funerals.

'Although it may seem harsh, term-time absence for holidays are not allowed.'

Miss Smith's fine comes just six months after determined father Jon Platt, 45, had his punishment overturned in court after he refused to pay the 120 fine for taking his daughter, seven, to Disney World in term time.

Mr Platt, from Nettlestone, Isle of Wight, had to travel during term because there was no other date when all the relatives would be available, but the girl's school on the island refused to sign off on her absence.

But magistrates ruled that because Mr Platt's seven-year-old daughter was only away from school for eight days, she was still attending 'regularly' and he had not broken the law.

Campaigners welcomed the ruling, claiming that it could 'turn the tide' for parents seeking greater flexibility on when they can take their children on holiday.
The Japanese government is demanding answers from Australia after it lost to France in the $50 billion race to design Australia's next fleet of submarines.

Japan's Defence Minister Gen Nakantani said the decision was 'deeply regrettable.'

'We will ask Australia to explain why they didn't pick our design,' he said.

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The Japanese government is demanding answers from the Turnbull Government (pictured) after it lost to France in the $50 billion race to design Australia's next fleet of submarines

Japan's Defence Minister Gen Nakantani (pictured) said the decision was 'deeply regrettable'

French industrial group DCNS' offer to build Shortfin Barracuda submarines beat rival bids from Japanese and German groups.

Japan's Soryu-class designs were understood to be the favoured choice of former prime minister Tony Abbott.

Announcing the winning bid on Tuesday, Mr Turnbull stressed both he and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe were committed to the special strategic relationship between their countries.

Australia's ageing fleet of Collins Class submarines will be phased out from 2026 (Royal Australian Navy/AFP)

Mr Abbott said the ties were 'more than strong enough' to withstand any disappointment.

He claimed credit for starting the process to pick the winning bidder, saying the selection of DCNS involved an 'exhaustive and very comprehensive' process devised by his government.

This comes after the Australian Federal Police launched an investigation into how confidential information was leaked for the second time detailing the outcome of the tender process for Australias next submarine fleet.

It was reported that the Japanese bid had been dismissed, leaving France and Germany still in contention.

French President Francois Hollande welcomed the 'historic' contract for DCNS.

'I congratulate all those who have contributed,' Mr Hollande tweeted.
For more of the latest Islamic State news visit www.dailymail.co.uk/isis

An ISIS terror cell has reportedly entered Sweden and is planning on carrying out acts of terror in its capital.

'Seven or eight' ISIS terrorists are already in the country with the aim of attacking civilian targets in Stockholm, according to Iraqi security services.

Sweden has the second highest 'ISIS fighters per capita' in the EU, with intelligence services identifying around 300 who have left the country to join jihadists in the Middle East since 2013.

Warning: A cell of 'seven or eight' ISIS terrorists are already in Sweden and planning on carrying out a terrorist attack in the capital, according to Iraqi security services

'Swedish security service has received information from Iraqi security officials that seven to eight ISIS terrorists have entered Sweden to carry out acts of terror in Stockholm,' Expressen reports.

'According to the information, the terrorists are planning to attack civilian targets in the capital.'

The Swedish Security Service, national task force and the Stockholm Police have officially gone into a 'heightened state of readiness' after acting on the Iraqi intelligence, Swedish media reports.

While the Swedish Security Service (Sakerhetspolisen) would not confirm the reports in both Expressen and Aftonbladet - Scandinavia's biggest tabloid newspapers - but said they are working on analysing the intelligence received.

The Swedish Security Service said in a statement that although it is not unusual to receive intelligence of this nature, in this case it was judged that action had to be taken.

Under threat: ISIS's plan is reportedly to strike against civilians in the Swedish capital of Stockholm

According to Expressen, Swedish security officials travelled to Iraq on Monday to try to get more information on the planned terror attack.

'The Swedish Security Service receive this kind of information relatively often in all of our areas of operation,' a statement reads.

'While sometimes it is more or less reliable, sometimes more or less concrete, it has been ruled that this information is of such character that it can not be dismissed.'

Sweden has the second most ISIS fighters per capita in the EU, second only to Belgium, recent statistics show.

Sweden has the second highest number of ISIS fighters per capita in the European Union with 300 people having left the country to fight for the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria since 2013

Some 300 people have left Sweden to join the terrorist organisation in Iraq and Syria in the past two years.

Around half of these are from the city of Gothenburg, Sweden's second largest city with a population of around 500,000 people.

This makes Gothenburg the European city which, in proportion to population, 'contributes the highest number of people to violent extremism,' Swedish integration police chief Ulf Bostrom said last year, branding it 'ISIS's recruiting ground in the EU'.
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It is home to the Bolshoi theatre, St Peter's Basilica and the U.S. Capitol building.

But this isn't some kind of model theme park  it's the so-called gypsy capital of the world that has become Europe's most unlikely tourist destination.

The Moldovan town of Soroca  or 'Gypsy Hill' as it is known locally  has taken on a landscape all of its own after locals keen to flaunt their wealth started building flamboyant homes.

And none more so than the 'Gypsy King' Arthur 'Baron' Cerari, who presides over his community from his grand Moorish-inspired palace headquarters.

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Outlandish: A mansion reminiscent of St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican is seen in the Moldovan town of Soroca, the so-called gypsy capital of the world where where locals flaunt their wealth by building flamboyant homes, many of them inspired by global landmarks

Flamboyant: A house inspired by Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre complete with the three horses with a carriage on the roof. The so-called gypsy capital of the world that has become Europe's most unlikely tourist destination

American dream: Locals walk past a home designed like the U.S. Capitol building in the Moldovan town of Soroca

Palatial: The town has taken on a landscape all of its own after locals keen to flaunt their wealth started building flamboyant homes

Master of all he surveys: The 'Gypsy King' Arthur 'Baron' Cerari is seen against a backdrop of the Moldovan town of Soroca

The King's palace: A female fortune teller stands outside Arthur 'Baron' Cerari's home, a grand Moorish-inspired palace

For a community of just 37,000, it has a bewildering array of architectural highlights inspired by global landmarks including the Russian Bolshoi theatre, St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and the U.S. Capitol building.

Journalist Andrei Ghihan, 31, travelled to Soroca in the north of the eastern European nation  where he was welcomed by Arthur Cerari at this home.

Video footage shows Arthur serenading Andrei with a traditional song accompanied with his accordion.

Andrei said: 'Baron was a very good talker. As it turned out, this king plays the keyboard, saxophone, accordion and clarinet. He told me he speaks eight languages, including Farsi and Yiddish.

'He has the highest title in the Roma hierarchy  the king. He is the only recognised leader of all the Roma living in Romania and Moldovia. Baron oversees administrative disputes, is engaged in legal affairs, protect the rights of his people to defend their interests.

'He is an advisor on Roma affairs to President of Moldova and his government. The attitudes of Baron's gypsy subjects is that they did not obey him, but rather to listen to and respect him.'

Gypsy King Arthur Cerari serenades journalist Andrei Ghihan with a traditional song accompanied by his accordion

Eclectic: The baron shows off his collection of porcelain figurines at his mansion in the Moldovan town of Soroca

Arthur Cerari's collection of accordions. He also plays the keyboard, saxophone and clarinet and claims to speak eight languages

The Gypsy King's kitchen: The Baron oversees administrative disputes, is engaged in legal affairs and protect the rights of his people

The 'Gypsy King' Arthur 'Baron' Cerari presides over his community from his grand Moorish-inspired palace headquarters

Cerari is the only recognised leader of all the Roma living in Romania and Moldovia, according to a journalist who went to meet him

Cooking up a storm: The Baron's wife, 'Baroness' Lidiya prepares gypsy stuffed cabbage roll at their home

Europe's Roma population are believed to have originated from India, travelling through the Middle East in the 6th and 7th Centuries to the Byzantine Empire in what is now modern day Turkey.

From the 15th to 17th Centuries they had reached Britain, Ireland and other parts of Western Europe.

Over the centuries they faced persecution, which came to a height in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe, where thousands were killed in death camps.

Now many gypsy communities can be found across the world.

According to Andrei, property prices vary in Soloca from 20,000 for a basic one story home to 150,000 for a lavish palace, with most of the money being sent to the community by members living abroad.

A golden dome in the style of an Orthodox Church actually belongs to a typical home in the Moldovan town of Soroca

The Roma homes have been turned into a tourist attraction for Moldova, with people coming to look at the dramatic architecture

Christian statues figures of ancient Gods are seen on a mansion reminiscent of St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican

'After we talked, Baron gave a tour of Gypsy Hill,' said Andrei.

'When locals first saw my camera, they asked for money. But I would not agree and just smiled instead.

'When they realised that I do not give money, they asked me to take photos of their houses, which they are very proud of.

'Now the Roma homes have been turned into a tourist attraction for Moldova.

'Visitors come specifically to look at the Roma and their homes, so they are used to the attention.

'At first, locals seemed suspicious, but once I got to know them I realised they were friendly and clever people.'

A view over Soroca where property prices range from 20,000 for a one-story home to 150,000 for a lavish palace
Britain's top police officer has revealed the investigation into Madeleine McCann's disappearance could end in the next few months unless new evidence comes to light.

Scotland Yard boss Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said investigators are following one remaining line of inquiry - and unless any new evidence comes forward it will spell the end of the British probe.

Madeleine vanished at the age of three while on holiday with her parents in Portugal in 2007. Despite a high-profile hunt, no trace of her has ever been found.

Scotland Yard boss Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said investigators are following one remaining line of inquiry and unless any new evidence comes forward it will spell the end of the British probe into Maddie's disapperance

Speaking on LBC, Sir Bernard said: 'There's been a lot of investigation time spent on this terrible case.

'It's a child who went missing, everybody wants to know if she is alive and if she is where is she, and sadly if she's dead then we need to give some comfort to the family.

'It's needed us to carry out an investigation together with the Portuguese and other countries have been involved.

'There is a line of inquiry that remains to be concluded and it's expected that in the coming months that will happen.'

Image: This picture shows Madeleine as she may have looked in 2012, when she would have turned nine

Sir Bernard's comments come just weeks after the Home Office granted 95,000 funding to keep the investigation - which now only has a handful of officers working on it - going for another few months.

Sir Bernard said: 'The size of the team has come down radically, we are now down to two or three people in that team, at one stage there were about 30 officers in it.'

But he added: 'There is a line of inquiry that everybody agrees is worthwhile pursuing.'

When asked when the probe called Operation Grange will end, the Met chief said: 'At the moment it would be at the conclusion of this line of inquiry unless something else comes up.

'If somebody comes forward and gives us good evidence we will follow it. We always say that a missing child inquiry is never closed.'

Operation Grange, which is estimated to have cost 12million so far, was launched in 2011 after the Portuguese police ended their investigation into Madeleine's whereabouts.

British officers searching for Madeleine have taken more than 1,300 statements and spent several days digging up scrubland in the Algarve in the hunt for clues.

Hunt: British officers travelled to the Algarve in 2014 to scour a patch of land near Praia da Luz

The girl - who would turn 13 next month - was apparently abducted from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz while her parents Kate and Gerry were having dinner at a nearby restaurant.

In direct contrast to Sir Bernard's comments, just last week the detective in charge of the search for Madeleine said that police still believe the missing girl could be found alive.

The head of Scotland Yard's homicide squad insisted there is 'always a possibility' that the girl will be discovered safe and well as he justified the ongoing operation.

And Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Duthie, who supervises the investigation, said that it could be extended into next year if police need to continue following up leads.

'There is always a possibility that we will find Madeleine and we hope that we will find her alive,' he told the Evening Standard.

'That's what we want and that's what the family and the public want and that is why the Home Office continue to fund it.'

On Sunday it emerged British trolls paid 50,000 to help a Portuguese policeman fight his libel suit against Madeleine's parents.

Former police chief Goncalo Amaral had previously been ordered to pay Kate and Gerry McCann 395,000 in damages in April last year after accusing them of lying about their daughter's abduction.

MailOnline reported that libel conviction was overturned by a court in Portugal after Amaral's appeal was upheld.

Former Portuguese police chief Goncalo Amaral (pictured) won his appeal over a court libel loss against Madeleine McCann's parents and won't have to pay them 500,000 in damages

A GoFundMe page was set up to help pay for the police inspector's appeal - but the page was later taken over by an anti-McCann 'fan club', according to Antonella Lazzeri of the Sun on Sunday.

Pro-Amaral supporters boosted the fund to 52,000 before the fund was shut, the newspaper reports.

Amaral was part of the police investigation into Madeleine's disappearance in May 2007, days before her 4th birthday.

In 2008 he published his book about the case called 'The Truth of the Lie.'

The McCanns sought 1.2 million euros in damages from Amaral, saying they were 'totally destroyed' and 'depressed' by Amaral's allegations and felt 'ashamed' that they might appear to have been to blame for their daughter's disappearance.
Turkey's president has been condemned by a newspaper in Holland after a Dutch reporter was arrested while on holiday - for criticising Tayyip Erdogan in an article.

Columnist Ebru Umar, who is of Turkish descent, was detained by police in Kusadasi, a resort town on the Aegean coast, a week after calling Erdogan a 'dictator' in the Dutch free newspaper, Metro.

Another Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf, has since printed a cartoon image of the Turkish leader on its front page, showing Erdogan as an ape.

Turkey's president has been condemned by De Telegraaf in Holland after a Dutch reporter was arrested while on holiday - for criticising Tayyip Erdogan in an article

The cartoon, called 'The long arm of Erdogan', shows the president apparently crushing free speech in Europe. He is shown standing on a rock called 'Apenrots' which the Washington Post described as meaning 'monkey rocks' - a term it says is sometimes used to refer to a place where one person holds power.

Columnist Ebru Umar (pictured), who is of Turkish descent and an outspoken critic of Erdogan, was detained by police overnight in Turkey where she was on holiday

Umar, a well-known atheist and feminist journalist, said she was hauled out of bed and arrested late on Saturday.

Writing in Metro last week, Umar had criticised a Turkish consular official in the Netherlands for asking all Turks there to report incidents of insults against Erdogan in the country. The call was widely criticised and later withdrawn.

Erdogan is known for his readiness to take legal action over perceived slurs. At his behest, prosecutors in Germany are pursuing a comedian for mocking him. Critics say Erdogan uses the courts to stifle dissent.

Umar was released on Sunday after top Dutch officials voiced concerns at her arrest, but is not allowed to leave the country and must report to police twice a week.

Police had questioned her for about 16 hours over two Tweets she had sent in which she sharply criticised Erdogan.

But Umar told the daily Metro, a Dutch newspaper which she writes for, that her Amsterdam apartment was then burgled overnight, saying the door 'was forced open, and my old computer was taken'.

A prominent Dutch journalist has been detained by Turkish police while on holiday - a week after she criticised President Tayyip Erdogan (pictured) in print for clamping down on dissent

Erdogan (pictured) is known for his readiness to take legal action over perceived slurs. At his behest, prosecutors in Germany are pursuing a comedian for mocking him

She took to Twitter on Monday to voice her thanks to everyone for their support during her detention. Although the officers were 'a bit harsh' at first, Umar said she had been 'treated very well.'

Born in The Hague to Turkish parents, Umar has been an outspoken critic of militant Islam, first in columns for the website of Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by a radical Islamist in 2004 after making films critical of the religion.

Writing in Metro and the critical website GeenStijl, she has denounced headscarves, excessive noise from mosques and what she sees as excessive Dutch tolerance, attracting bulging bags of hate mail from furious critics.

Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said Sunday he was 'relieved' she had been released, but slammed her arrest, saying he had contacted his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu to voice his 'regret' about the case.

'I made it clear that press freedom and freedom of expression is a good thing,' Koenders said in a statement.

'A country that is a candidate to join the EU should continue to push for press freedom and freedom of expression,' he stressed.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte also telephoned his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu to voice his concerns.
A Navy officer was punched in the face on his way back from an Anzac Day Memorial Service by a drunk thug who said his uniform was 'f***ing gay', it has been claimed.

Police have charged a 27-year-old man with assault following the attack on a train in Sydney on Monday which left an officer with a bloody nose.

The 24-year-old officer, who was in his full uniform, was returning home from a service with his girlfriend when he approached a group of men who were 'harassing the other commuters'.

He asked the men to stop drinking and control their behaviour, but one of the men took offence and punched him in the face as the train was pulling into Glenfield station.

A Navy officer, 24, was punched in the face in Sydney following an Anzac Day Memorial Service on Monday

The man's partner Emma Novotny (left) has described the event, and urged witnesses to come forward

His partner Emma Novotny told Seven News that the man was 'intoxicated, slurring words, struggling to walk and even urinated in his pants'.

'The man swore at my partner and commented on his uniform. I believe 'f****** gay' was said,' she said.

'As my partner turned around to face him, the man punched him.'

A 27-year-old man handed himself in to officers at Macquarie Fields Police Station on Tuesday afternoon.

He was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm, common assault, behaving in an offensive manner in a public passenger vehicle and drinking alcohol on train.

Ms Novotny has described the shocking attack, claiming the loud group were 'openly drinking, swearing, and disrespecting Anzac Day in front of veterans and families with young children.'

She told Daily Mail Australia there were five people - one female and four males - drinking and swearing on the train.

The serving officer was in full uniform and returning from an Anzac Day Memorial Service

He had told a bunch of men to stop drinking and harassing people on the train before he got off at Glenfield station (pictured)

'They were just swearing at us, and the war veterans that were sitting in the carriage,' she said.

'They were disrespecting Anzac Day.'

She said her partner stepped in, and as the pair got off the train at Glenfield station he was punched in the face by an attacker.

Ms Novotny said the attackers escaped and urged anyone with any information about the attack to contact police, and thanked those who stopped to help.

'If there were any witnesses, or anyone has any information as to who this man is can you please contact Macquarie Fields police.

'Thank you. To the people who stopped and gave their assistance, thank you so much,' she wrote on social media.

'The officer suffered a bloody nose but did not require any treatment,' NSW Police said in a statement.
The wife of a man who went missing after going bushwalking has made a tearful plea for the help of the public in safely finding her husband.

Taddeo Haigh, 31, left for a walk from Victoria's Sawmill Settlement near Merrijig on Sunday night and failed to return. Temperatures in the area have since dropped as low as 5.2 degrees.

His wife Elizabeth said she believes he is either lost or injured and urged anyone who may be able to track him down to come forward, reports 9 News.

Taddeo Haigh's wife Elizabeth believes her husband is either lost or injured in Victorian bushland

'I feel like he is lost at this stage, or perhaps injured and can't make his way back,' Elizabeth said.

'If anyone has seen him walking or seen someone who looks like they're trying to get a ride somewhere, or any information at all, we'd be grateful for it,' she said.

Acting Sergeant Mark Helyer said he rough terrain surrounding where Mr Haigh went missing has hampered search efforts.

'Intelligence for the search at this stage is quite low,'

Police, the dog squad, SES personnel, national park workers, and bush search and rescue volunteers are taking part in the search to find Mr Haigh.

Mr Haigh was wearing only a hoodie and jeans when he went missing.

Acting Sergeant Mark Helyer said he rough terrain surrounding where Mr Haigh went missing has hampered search efforts

Taddeo Haigh, 31, left for a walk from Sawmill Settlement near Merrijig, north-east of Melbourne, on Sunday night and did not return

He was on holiday with his wife and friends who said Mr Haigh was a fit man but ill-equipped for two nights in the bush, 7News reported.

Victoria's Search and Rescue Squad is co-ordinating a full-scale search with the help of local officers, the dog squad, mounted police and a police aircraft.

The SES and Parks Victoria crew and bushwalking volunteers from Bush Search and Rescue Victoria are also involved.

Police would also like to hear from motorists who travelled through the nearby town of Mansfield in the past 36 hours.

He was on holiday with his wife and friends who said Mr Haigh was a fit man but ill-equipped for two nights in the bush

'Police are seeking information from motorists - if they picked anyone up from the side of the road, or noticed a person who may have looked out of place,' a police spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Victoria Police have released a photo of Mr Haigh as the search intensifies.

He is described as Caucasian with a medium build and light brown hair.

The unshaven Mr Haigh was last seen wearing a grey hoodie, dark jeans and brown shoes leaving a home in Gibb Court in Sawmill Settlement on Sunday about 9.30pm.
A Cambodian tour operator says it will reduce work hours for elephants following the heatstroke death of an animal - but only until temperatures drop.

The female elephant, aged between 40-45, died by the roadside on Friday after carrying tourists around Cambodia's famous Angkor Wat temple complex outside Siem Reap.

Photos of the dead animal, which had been forced to carry tourists in 40C heat, triggered calls for Cambodia to reform the already controversial elephant ride industry.

Campaign: Shortly after the death of the 45-year-old elephant went public, thousands signed a petition to stop elephant rides in the area

Worked to death: A veterinarian concluded that Sembo had died of a heart attack due to high temperatures, heat exhaustion and lack of wind

Tragic: The ride operator has now pledged to reduce the hours elephants must work in the scorching heat

Oan Kiri, manager of Angkor Elephant Company, told AFP Tuesday that vets believed heatstroke was the cause of death of the elephant named Sambo.

He said: 'Veterinarians concluded that the elephant's death was caused by the hot temperatures which caused stress, shock, high blood pressure and a heart attack.'

The elephant had been working around 45 minutes, walking 2.1 kilometres carrying tourists, before she collapsed on her way to an enclosure.

He added that the company was 'regretful and felt pity' and would now let the 13 remaining elephants work fewer hours until temperatures dropped.

A Facebook post by user Yem Senok carrying photos of the elephant lying dead on the ground has been shared more than 8,000 times.

One viewer begged travellers to please be a compassionate tourist and do not ever ride an elephant.

The nationalities of the tourists who were carried by the elephant to the temple complex has not been revealed.

But a number of visitors who saw her lying dead at the roadside are reported to have wept.

The Greater Mekong region is experiencing its hot and dry season where temperatures of 40C are not unusual. This year has seen particularly hot spells.

Animal rights groups have long complained that elephants which give rides to tourists across the region are routinely overworked and brutally broken in during training.

The elephant named Sambo carried tourists to the famous Angkor Wat temple complex in the scorching heat

Thailand has seen multiple cases in recent months where elephants have killed their handlers or attacked tourists.

A petition on Change.org calling on Cambodian authorities to end elephant rides at Angkor had garnered 24,500 signatures by this afternoon.

'There is no such thing as cruelty-free elephant rides,' it stated.

Handlers and tour operators have long argued that tourism provides much needed income and employment for people - and for domesticated elephants that would otherwise risk abandonment and starvation.
At first glance, this may appear to be a display of the more brutal side of nature, but instead, these images show the tender moment a female darter bird feeds its young.

It almost looks like the adult bird is engaging in cannibalism, but it is a role reversal, with the young one excitedly diving into its mother's throat.

The adult darter bird, also known as a snakebird, has caught a fish for its baby, which is clearly in a rush to get dinner.

Hanger: A baby darter, or snakebird, shoves its head inside its mother's mouth to fetch dinner

The intriguing pictures were taken by Patrick Bell in Rietvlei-Dam in Pretoria, South Africa.

Mr Bell, 69, said: 'Patience gets pictures like this, you have to feel anticipation and be ready for anything.

'The camera safety-catch has to be off all the time. It should be primed to capture a shot in high speed.

'The parent birds always choose catches for the young that are not too spiny.

The reason is when the baby takes it out the fish, the spines could damage and perforate the throat.'

Time to feed: The Snakebird baby rushing over to its mother to be given dinner from it's throat

Big gulp: It almost looks like the adult bird is engaging in cannibalism, but it is just feeding its baby
The father at the centre of the botched 60 Minutes abduction has uploaded a picture to social media of himself and two young children smiling as they enjoy lunch in Beirut.

Their Brisbane mother, Sally Faulkner, returned home to Australia on Thursday and was reunited with her newborn baby Eli, after spending two weeks in a Lebanese prison for a failed attempt to snatch Lehela, five, and Noah, three from her estranged husband.

On Sunday, Ali Elamine, 32, uploaded a photo to Facebook of the children smiling as the three enjoy lunch at what appears to be a Beirut shopping mall.

Scroll down for video

Ali Elamine (pictured with children Lehela and Noah) - the father at the centre of the botched 60 Minutes abduction - has uploaded a picture to social media of himself and two young children smiling as they enjoy lunch in Beirut

Their Brisbane mother, Sally Faulkner, returned home to Australia on Thursday and was reunited with her newborn baby Eli, after spending two weeks in a Lebanese prison

Mr Elamine forced Ms Faulkner to sign over the custodial rights of the children to have the child abduction charges against her dropped.

'The custody, the way it happens is I had sole custody in Lebanon way before the custody in Australia came out,'he told news.com.au.

'Our place of residence is Lebanon. This is where our family used to live. So technically we live here. They'll be staying here.'

Mr Elamine said he may bring the young children to Australia in the future once 'things cool off' and said he would enjoy going surfing if he were to visit.

Mr Elamine forced Ms Faulkner to sign over the custodial rights of the children to have the child abduction charges against her dropped

Mr Elamine said he may bring the young children to Australia in the future once 'things cool off' and said he would enjoy going surfing if he were to visit

She was reunited with baby Eli, partner Brendan Pierce, her mother Karen and brother Simon

On Sunday night's 60 Minutes program, Ms Faulkner cried as she remembered what could be the last time she enjoyed ice creams with Lahela and Noah at a McDonalds in Beirut suburb Furn El Chebbak.

'Lahela, she looked at me and said: 'Mummy will you take my ring?' She gave me her little Barbie ring, she said: 'This is so you don't forget me',' Ms Faulkner recounted.

Ms Faulkner said her heartbreak at having 'to say goodbye to my babies' comes 'in waves'.

She was reunited with baby Eli, partner Brendan Pierce, her mother Karen and brother Simon.

'Our place of residence is Lebanon. This is where our family used to live. So technically we live here. They'll be staying here,' Mr Elamine said

Ms Faulkner (pictrued) was released from prison on bail on Wednesday along with Tara Brown and her crew, producer Stephen Rice, cameraman Ben Williamson, sound recordist David Ballment

On Sunday night's 60 Minutes program, Ms Faulkner (pictured with Tara Brown) cried as she remembered what could be the last time she enjoyed ice creams with Lahela and Noah at a McDonalds in Beirut

Ms Faulkner was released from prison on bail on Wednesday along with Tara Brown and her crew, producer Stephen Rice, cameraman Ben Williamson, sound recordist David Ballment.

The children will now live in Lebanon with their father, but Mr Elamine insisted that Ms Faulkner would be able to visit.

Nine Network's 60 Minutes said they were doing some 'soul searching' and admitted to making mistakes during Sunday's program.
Japan's Mitsubishi Motors has admitted to using dubious fuel-efficiency testing methods for 25 years and said it had no idea of the scale of the cheating.

The firm's president, Tetsuro Aikawa, acknowledged the crisis was very damaging and said: 'I can only apologise.'

Last week the company revealed it had falsified fuel economy data for more than 600,000 vehicles sold in Japan.

Mitsubishi President Tetsuro Aikawa said an internal investigation found such tampering dated back to 1991. Mr Aikawa told reporters the probe was ongoing, suggesting more irregularities might be found

The firm's shares have plummeted on the Tokyo stock exchange since the story broke last Wednesday with billions of dollars wiped off the company's market value.

Last year the finger of blame was pointed at Volkswagen after its huge emissions scandal but the Mitsubishi scandal suggests it could be more widespread.

The inaccurate mileage tests revealed last week involved 157,000 of Mitsubishi's eK wagon and eK Space cars, 468,000 Dayz and Dayz Roox vehicles produced for Nissan.

The eK Wagon is one of the models affected by the fuel testing scandal. It is sold only in Japan but there are fears that exported cars could be dragged into the fiasco

All these models were sold only in Japan.

Its latest admission is expected to boost speculation that the misconduct includes vehicles sold overseas.

Mitsubishi vice president Ryugo Nakao said: 'For the domestic market, we have been using that method since 1991.

'But we don't know the number of models.'

The inaccurate mileage tests revealed last week involved 157,000 of Mitsubishi's eK wagon and eK Space cars, 468,000 Dayz and Dayz Roox vehicles produced for Nissan.

All these models, known as mini-cars or kei-cars, were sold only in Japan.

Mini-cars are small and fuel-efficient vehicles with 660cc engines which are hugely popular in the Japanese market, but have found little success abroad.

The company said it was appointing an outside panel of experts to investigate the problems.

Mitsubishi Motors shares have nosedived since the fuel testing scandal first broke last week. They are currently worth half what they were last week on the Tokyo stock exchange

Mitsubishi was founded in 1870 and was one of the original four zaibatsu, vast conglomerates which powered Japan's industrial revolution.

It survived World War II intact and was at the forefront of Japan's post-war boom with the car division only one part of a vast conglomerate.

Mitsubishi officials said they did not change their fuel-efficiency testing method when the Japanese government ordered an updated system in 2002.

Mitsubishi president Tetsuro Aikawa (centre) and his fellow executives bows during a press conference on Tuesday when the company tried to come clean about the extent of the scandal. Mr Aikawa may be forced to commit the corporate equivalent of hara-kiri under pressure from shareholders

Last week Mitsubishi also admitted unnamed employees manipulated testing figures to make some of its cars seem more fuel-efficient.

Transport ministry authorities raided the company's office last week, a decade after the automaker was pulled back from the brink of bankruptcy when it was found to have covered up a series of vehicle defects.

Bailouts by the Mitsubishi group companies saved the automaker, which had hidden flawed axles that could lead to wheels coming off vehicles.

Japanese automaker Mitsubishi has admitted it manipulated pollution data in more than 600,000 vehicles Toshifumi Kitamura (AFP)

It is unclear if some of the automaker's top shareholders, including shipbuilder Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), would come to its rescue again as it faces the likelihood of huge fines and lawsuits.

MHIS president Shunichi Miyanaga said: 'Mitsubishi Motors has come a long way since past problems, so this is very disappointing.

'We need to think about the brand image of the Mitsubishi Group, its social responsibility and accountability for performance.'
This is the moment a motorist accidentally reversed into a hospital before swiftly driving away as the first all-out strike in the history of the NHS got underway this morning.

Sky News Sunrise presenter Eamonn Holmes was reporting from the studio when he crossed live to health correspondent Thomas Moore standing outside Royal Blackburn Hospital in Lancashire.

The video shows Mr Moore beginning his broadcast and commenting that it is quiet in the vicinity as a silver people carrier comes into view behind him.

Health correspondent Thomas Moore was standing outside Royal Blackburn Hospital in Lancashire when a silver people carrier came into view behind him

The car is seen reversing at speed towards the hospital's emergency department before bumping into a pillar

It reverses at speed towards the hospital's emergency department before bumping into a pillar - the noise is audible in the broadcast but Mr Moore continues without hesitation.

The driver is then seen apparently considering his options while remaining still for a few seconds.

The vehicle eventually pulls away as if nothing happened while a bystander can be seen looking over at the driver having just witnessed the collision.

The motorist leaves the area and appears to come quite close to the Sky News presenter in the process before finally exiting the car park.

Meanwhile Mr Moore, who is apparently completely unaware as to what occurred behind him, continues to discuss the breaking news.

Thousands of junior doctors began the first all-out strike in the history of the NHS after the Health Secretary said the government would not be 'blackmailed' into dropping its manifesto pledge for a seven-day health service.

The noise is audible in the broadcast but Mr Moore, who appears to be unaware as to what happened, continues without hesitation

The driver is seen apparently considering his options before pulling away and exiting the car park

Jeremy Hunt appealed directly to medics on Monday not to withdraw emergency cover, which he said had particular risks for A&E departments, maternity and intensive care.

The impasse between the Government and the British Medical Association (BMA) prompted the industrial action, from 8am to 5pm on Tuesday and again on Wednesday.

It is the first time services such as A&E, maternity and intensive care have been affected during the dispute over a new contract.

NHS bosses are monitoring the situation closely and say plans are in place to ensure the safety of the public up until the end of the strike.
This is the moment the RAF unleashed its enhanced 2,000lb bunker buster bombs for the first time against ISIS, obliterating a tunnel network in Iraq.

Aerial footage shows the powerful Enhanced Paveway III bombs pounding the entrances to a sprawling underground complex dug deep into the hillsides above the Euphrates in western Iraq.

Tornado fighter jets scored direct hits on the terror group's lair using one of the latest additions to the RAF's arsenal of weapons.

Direct hit: Footage captures the moment the RAF unleashed its enhanced 2,000lb bunker buster bombs for the first time against ISIS, obliterating a tunnel network in Iraq

Aerial footage shows the powerful Enhanced Paveway III bombs pounding the entrances to a sprawling underground complex dug deep into the hillsides above the Euphrates in western Iraq

The EPWIII had been held in reserve by military chiefs who were keeping it for 'particularly challenging underground or hardened targets'.

The Ministry of Defence released a video today showing Tornado jets taking aim before the massive bombs destroyed the tunnels below in two huge explosions.

RAF bosses said their aircraft normally carries Paveway IV guided bombs and Brimstone missiles, which can be carried in larger numbers and are more useful for close air support missions.

Brimstone missiles were cited by David Cameron as the kind of UK asset which would make a 'meaningful difference' to the coalition's battle against IS in Syria.

The EPWIII bombing raid was one of a series of RAF airstrikes carried out last week.

Tornado fighter jets scored direct hits on the terror group's lair using one of the latest additions to the RAF's arsenal of weapons

The EPWIII had been held in reserve by military chiefs who were keeping it for 'particularly challenging underground or hardened targets'

The Ministry of Defence released a video today showing Tornado jets taking aim before the massive bombs destroyed the tunnels below in two huge explosions

On April 19, Tornados and Typhoons attacked ISIS targets in northern and western Iraq, including three mortars and two machine-gun teams.

A day later, Typhoons provided close air support to Iraqi forces in western Iraq, while Tornados destroyed two buildings in the north.

The Enhanced Paveway III bombs were then deployed for the first time against the terror group on Thursday.

Reapers then destroyed a car-bomb facility and a terrorist vehicle in Syria on Friday while Tornados destroyed an ISIS-built bridge and a communications post in northern Iraq.
This is the shocking moment a lawyer ate an important document to help his client.

The incident, in the town of Kyzyl in central Russia's autonomous Republic of Tuva, was caught on CCTV cameras.

The lawyer, who has not been named, was studying papers in the office of a judge relating to a client who had been accused of causing an accident while drink-driving.

The lawyer was studying papers in a judge's office relating to a client who had been accused of causing an accident while drink driving. He is seen picking up the report revealing the level of alcohol in his client's blood. But the woman in the background, believed to be the judge's secretary, later leaves him alone

He is seen picking up the breathalyser report revealing the level of alcohol in his client's blood.

The lawyer first stashes the evidence in his bag but then appears to have second thoughts and takes it out again, nearly puts it in his pocket before ultimately deciding to put it in his mouth and start chewing.

Local media say he managed to eliminate the most important piece of evidence in the case while the judge and her secretary were out of the office.

By now alone the lawyer is pictured picking up the report. He obviously is completely unaware that the judge's office is covered by a CCTV camera

When the judge's secretary returned, the lawyer told her the report was missing and that without it, there was no evidence against his client.

The stunned secretary started to look for the missing report, then she called for the guard, suspecting the lawyer had stolen the evidence.

The truth was revealed only when she studied the CCTV footage.

A police spokesman said: 'The lawyer's guilt cannot be denied when you look at the CCTV film.'

The hapless lawyer now faces up to two years in prison or a 200,000 roubles (2,000) fine.

It is not clear whether his client was prosecuted in the absence of the document.
Dramatic footage has emerged of the moment a man was arrested after he allegedly threatened police with a sword in a shopping centre.

Sonny Dan, 25, reportedly stormed the mall to defend his wife after hearing she had been involved in a fight with a group of women, some of whom claim they were abused for wearing burkas.

Police said while they were speaking with two of the women at Campbelltown Mall, south of Sydney, on Sunday, a man known to them approached officers armed with a sword.

Officers arrested the man following a short struggle and seized the long sword in front of terrified shoppers.

Dramatic footage has emerged of the moment a man was arrested after he allegedly threatened police with a sword in a shopping centre

Dan has since been charged with assaulting police and he appeared at Campbelltown court on Tuesday.

During the struggle, one of the women assaulted an officer and she has since been charged, police said.

Camera phone footage has emerged of the moment the man was escorted out of the shopping centre after being arrested.

Caroline Adam, who witnessed the arrest, said she saw police shouting at the man, saying 'drop your weapon'.

The confrontation with police occurred following a dispute between a group of women at around 1.30pm.

Police said two women were involved in a fight with another woman, who was pushed to the ground before fleeing.

Sonny Dan, 25, reportedly stormed the mall to defend his wife after hearing she had been involved in a fight with a group of women, some of whom claim they were abused for wearing burkas

Police said while they were speaking with two of the women at Campbelltown Mall, south of Sydney, on Sunday, a man known to them approached officers armed with a sword

Seven News reported that at least one of the women claimed she was abused for wearing a burka.

A spokesman for NSW Police said they were investigating reports that the initial incident was racially motivated.

The man and woman, both aged 25, involved in the confrontation with police were taken to Campbelltown Police Station.

Dan was charged with carrying a weapon in a public place, assaulting police and resisting arrest.

He appeared at Campbelltown court on Tuesday and is expected to return on Friday to apply for bail.

The woman was charged with affray, assaulting police, and hindering police. She was granted conditional bail and is due to appear at Campbelltown court on 23 May.

Caroline Adam (pictured), who witnessed the arrest, said she saw police shouting at the man, saying 'drop your weapon'
A massive fire has gutted a museum of natural history in India today that housed thousands of plant and animal exhibits including a 160-million-year-old dinosaur fossil.

More than a hundred firemen battled for about three hours to douse the flames that broke out on the top floor of the National Museum of Natural History early this morning.

Rajesh Panwar, deputy chief of the Delhi Fire Service, said the museum's firefighting system was out of operation because part of the building was being renovated.

Gutted: Firefighters battle a fire that broke out in the National Museum of Natural History in the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) complex in New Delhi, India, on Tuesday

Up in flames: The fire tore through the building that housed scores of plants and animal exhibits, including a 160-million-year-old dinosaur fossil

He added: 'The damage is huge. If the fire provisions were working, the fire could have been controlled well in time.'

Five firefighters overcome by heavy smoke were taken to a hospital and released after being treated, New Delhi fire official Harinder Singh said. Thirty-five fire engines were called.

Among the museum specimens was a 160-million-year-olddinosaur bone, the Times of India newspaper reported.

The extent of the damage would only be known once fireofficials hand back the building to the department that managesthe museum, said federal Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar,who ordered a safety review of India's state-run museums.

Five firefighters overcome by heavy smoke were taken to a hospital and released after being treated

An investigation was ordered to determine the cause of the fire.

The museum, in the heart of New Delhi, is popular withschool children, but the fire broke out several hours beforeopening time.

The state-run natural history museum features thousands of exhibits on plants, animals and mineral wealth in India and around the world.

Fires are common in buildings in India due to a lack of proper safety standards.
Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring, 67, plans to demolish her red-and-white striped townhouse in Kensington after being ordered to restore it to its original white colour

The owner of a multi-million-pound townhouse who painted the property in red and white stripes much to the annoyance of neighbours now plans to demolish the building after being ordered to restore it to its original colour.

Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring, 67, was told in January that she had to repaint her Kensington property within 28 days after a judge ruled that the colour scheme damaged the exclusive area's aesthetic appeal.

That deadline was later put on hold after she lodged an appeal against the decision made by Hammersmith magistrates and she has now revealed plans to demolish the property entirely.

The property developer, who divides her time between Switzerland and London, began work to knock down the empty building on March 22, with scaffolding erected outside and asbestos removed.

However, she is now awaiting a so-called party wall agreement from her adjoining neighbours before she can completely level the building.

She admitted the demolition will 'no doubt' anger her neighbours and claimed they will likely cause her 'terrible problems' in trying to delay the demolition work, which could take months.

Her comments come after neighbours hit out at the 'eyesore' red and white stripes which appeared on the property last Spring. Some likened the outlandish paint job to a 'beachside hut' and claimed to be 'horrendously unhappy'.

Ms Lisle-Mainwaring has long been embroiled in a battle with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council and local residents over the appearance of the property.

She originally painted the property, which she bought in 2012, with the bright stripes last Spring after being denied permission to build an 'iceberg basement' beneath the property.

At the time, the property was classified as office space but she successfully had it changed into a storage premises.

She then submitted a planning application to convert the property into a residential classification and extend it to include a double 'super' basement but that application was refused in July 2013.

Ms Lisle-Mainwaring, 67, (pictured under her coat leaving court following a hearing about the property) has denied painting stripes onto her home to 'get her own back' on neighbours. She claims she never would have painted it had she known it would cause such a fuss

Ms Lisle-Mainwaring, 67, was told in January that she had to repaint her Kensington property within 28 days after a judge ruled that the colour scheme damaged the exclusive area's aesthetic appeal. That deadline was later put on hold after she lodged an appeal against the decision and she now plans to demolish the property

The decision was later overturned at appeal in July last year. Mrs Lisle-Mainwaring's solicitor said this was later quashed at the High Court.

She then submitted a second planning application in December 2013, but this was refused by the planning committee in May last year despite being recommended for approval by planning officers.

The bright stripes then appeared in March last year in a paint job that took 'five-and-a-half hours'.

She was later ordered to repaint it by the council, but took the authority to court challenging the decision.

During that court hearing in January this year, her lawyer denied that the house was out of character for the conservation area where it is situated.

But District Judge Susan Baines ruled that the colour of the house 'had an adverse effect of the amenity of the area' and ordered the homeowner to repaint it within 28 days - meaning it should have been restored to its white colouring by the end of February.

The property developer, who divides her time between Switzerland and London, began work to knock down the empty home in Kensington, London, on March 22, with scaffolding erected outside and asbestos removed

Workers have been spotted outside Ms Lisle-Mainwaring's property in Kensington, London, in recent weeks

The judge added: 'The applicant did not have to choose such a garish red colour and in so doing brought harm to the amenity of the area.

'She should have been aware of the nature of the area and it was incumbent upon her to paint the property in a similar manner to other properties.'

Ms Lisle-Mainwaring lodged an appeal against the judge's ruling, which automatically suspended the deadline by which she was supposed to paint the house.

Now, she admits work is underway to demolish the building and claims she would never have carried out the daring paint job had she had known how much fuss it would have caused.

'It has been very stressful but at least I have a comfortable home to live in and am not going to go bankrupt,' she told the Evening Standard.

Ms Lisle-Mainwaring has long been embroiled in a battle with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council and local residents over the appearance of the property which was painted in stripes last Spring

Ms Lisle-Mainwaring was ordered by the courts to return the house (pictured centre before the paint job) to its former state. However, she appealed the decision and now plans to demolish the red striped townhouse

Neighbours have already blasted the 'noisy' building work, which is set to last for the coming months.

Mohammed Dawood, who lives opposite the townhouse, told the newspaper: 'It is really loud in the mornings and I struggle to sleep through when it starts at around 6am.'

Another told the Standard: 'She has no idea of the amount of disruption she is causing.

'The serious work hasn't even started yet - so it is likely to get worse.'

Despite outrage from locals, Ms Lisle-Mainwaring branded their claims that building work started as early as 6am as 'ridiculous' and said it was 'against the rules' to start before 8am.
He had done so in order to be reimbursed by patients' medical insurance

He was today sentenced to eight years in jail for the vicious procedures

Another said pieces of flesh were 'hanging everywhere' after tooth removal

One patient claimed he ripped out eight of her teeth in a single procedure

Labelled the 'dentist of horror', he ripped out healthy teeth and broke jaws

A French court has sentenced a Dutch dentist to eight years in jail for deliberately mangling dozens of his patients' mouths in a case which saw him dubbed 'the dentist of horror'.

Jacobus van Nierop, 51, was on trial for ripping out healthy teeth and leaving patients with broken jaws, recurrent abscesses and septicemia in the small central town of Chateau-Chinon.

The court in the central town of Nevers also banned him from practising as a dentist and fined him 10,500 euros (8,100).

Scroll down for video

Jacobus van Nierop (pictured) was nicknamed the 'dentist of horror' for ripping out healthy teeth and leaving patients with broken jaws, recurrent abscesses and septicaemia

A court sketch dated October 24, 2014, shows Jacobus van Nierop in a court in Amsterdam. The Dutch-born dentist was accused of mutilating more than 100 patients during his time at a clinic in rural France

This courtroom sketch, drawn on March 8, shows Van Nierop attending his trial in Nevers, central France

During the trial, prosecutor Lucile Jaillon-Bru said Van Nierop had carried out 'useless and painful procedures' on about 100 patients with the aim of having them reimbursed by medical insurance schemes.

She said he took 'pleasure at causing pain' to his patients and he was charged with aggravated assault, as well as fraud over claims that he tried to rip off patients and insurance companies.

Van Nierop, who went by the first name of Mark, was hired by a head-hunter for the small town in 2008 and was initially welcomed by locals who were sorely lacking in medical services.

A neighbour recalled the arrival of a smiley, larger-than-life character, with a 'big 4x4, a big dog, a big cigar'.

But by 2011, the authorities were starting to question some of his accounting, and patients were starting to compare notes on his dentistry.

Sylviane Boulesteix, 65, visited the dentist in March 2012 to have braces fitted.

'He gave me seven or eight injections, and pulled out eight teeth in one go. I was gushing blood for three days,' she said.

Following his arrest in 2013, Van Nierop fled France but was later arrested and extradited from Canada

An 80-year-old, Bernard Hugon, said the dentist left 'pieces of flesh hanging everywhere' after tearing out a tooth.

'Every time, he would give us what he called "a little prick" and we were asleep, knocked out,' said Nicole Martin, a retired teacher who lost several teeth to abscesses caused by the horrific operations.

'When it was over, we would find a Post-it note saying to come back for an appointment the next day or the day after,' she added.

With the help of one of Van Nierop's assistants, Mrs Martin set up a victims' group in early 2013 to press charges, and it soon swelled to 120 members.

In June of that year, police arrested Van Nierop but left him free pending trial, and he fled the country the following December.

He was eventually tracked down to a small Canadian town in New Brunswick and arrested under an international warrant in September 2014.

Local media reported that he tried to cut his throat when police came for him.

Van Nierop tried to block his extradition, first to the Netherlands and then France, claiming to suffer from 'psychological problems' including gender identity issues and suicidal tendencies.

However, he was eventually placed in a prison psychiatric unit in the Loiret department, south of Paris.

'He claimed to have killed his first wife, he played crazy, he said he was trans-sexual. He tried everything' to avoid extradition, Mrs Martin said.

According to Dutch media, Van Nierop had already come under investigation at home over his working practices before coming to France.
University has now been ordered to pay her 750 in compensation

Took it up with the OIA who found it partially upheld - they say she should have been

A university has been ordered to pay 750 in compensation to a mature student who complained that her creative writing course was too 'sex obsessed'.

Mother-of-two Angie Marynicz, 61, from Pencader near Carmarthen in West Wales complained the way her creative writing course was being taught was 'very worrying' because of the focus on sex.

She had her initial complaint about the course's 'peculiar obsession with sex' rejected by the University of Wales Trinity St David - but it was partially upheld when she took the matter to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA).

Mother-of-two Angie Marynicz, 61, (pictued) from Pencader in West Wales complained the way her creative writing course was being taught was 'very worrying' because of the focus on sex

Holiday cottage owner Mrs Marynicz complained that her male lecturer, quoting a female poet, told the class: 'All literature is about sex because sex is the most important thing in the world.'

She said head of cultural studies Dr Paul Wright was taking a poetry module on the BA Honours course when he quoted the poet.

Holiday cottage owner Mrs Marynicz complained that Dr Paul Wright (pictured) quoting a female poet, told the class: 'All literature is about sex because sex is the most important thing in the world'

She said: 'This is a quote from a woman named Blanche Bachelor, I believe, and I found it a very worrying statement to make in front of impressionable/vulnerable young adults when it is clearly not true.

'The majority of written word is not sexual but it seems that there is a most peculiar obsession with sex at Trinity St David.'

In another complaint about the course, delivered at the university's Lampeter campus, Mrs Marynicz wrote: 'One of the compulsory modules for the BA (Hons) Creative Writing course was Critical and Cultural Theory.

'The first lecture for that module was listening to the lecturer read aloud the Edgar Allen Poe short story The Black Cat, which is a graphic account of domestic abuse where the abuser puts an axe through his wife's head.

'As he finished reading the story, he giggled which I found very upsetting and offensive. I emailed him twice to tell him so, to which I received no reply.

'The second lecture in that module was the Freudian idea that Shakespeare's Hamlet had an Oedipus complex ie child sex abuse/incest. I was told by the Head of School, in no uncertain terms, that this was good art and they would carry on teaching it as such.'

Mrs Marynicz said she asked the Head of School whether she could just hand in written work and not attend lectures as she found the lecturer's 'ignorant and callous delivery of such sensitive topics' very distressing but was told she could not.

While the OIA rejected Mrs Marynicz's complaint about the content of the course itself on the grounds of academic freedom, it said the university 'should have considered whether it was reasonable to require Mrs Marynicz to attend the Critical and Cultural lectures in view of the content and delivery of the module which Mrs Marynicz had difficulties with.'

She had her complaint about the course's 'peculiar obsession with sex' rejected by the University of Wales Trinity St David, (Lampeter campus pictured) but it was partially upheld when she took the matter further

It said the university should pay her 750 in compensation.

A university spokesman said: 'The university wishes to stress that the OIA found the student's complaint "not justified" in all of its main points, including those relating to course content and delivery.

'The complaint was deemed partly justified solely in relation to attendance for particular lectures and, in accordance with the recommendation of the OIA, a sum of 750 was paid'

Mrs Marynicz said she asked if she could just hand in written work and not attend lectures as she found the lecturer's 'ignorant and callous delivery of such sensitive topics' very distressing but was told she could not

Mrs Marynicz, who completed a foundation course before joining the second year of the creative writing course in September 2014, was unavailable for comment yesterday.

But her husband Ted, 62, said she was a normal chick-lit loving person who included Marian Keyes among her favourite authors.

He said she had also been upset when a poem about a sex act was chosen for discussion from an anthology of sonnets and that she came home in tears after the Poe lecture.
Failed to inform police his address changed from parents' to second wife's

A senior banker at HSBC conned police out of 3,500 in travel expenses while motorbiking to his shifts as a special constable, a court heard.

Conduct standards manager Mark Attfield, 47, repeatedly claimed more than double his fuel allowance from the Metropolitan Police for riding his Yamaha motorbike from Essex to London.

Attfield, who had risen through the police ranks to 'Special Inspector', failed to inform the Met that he had moved from his parents' home in Benfleet, to his second wife's house in Rainham, Essex.

He then continued to claim 28p a mile for travelling the 39 miles from Benfleet to a police station in London instead of the 18 miles from Rainham.

Senior HSBC banker Mark Attfield, 47 (pictured outside the Old Bailey), is accused of claiming more than double his fuel allowance from the Metropolitan Police for riding his Yamaha motorbike from Essex to London

Prosecutor Max Hardy told jurors at the Old Bailey: 'He was therefore claiming a bonus, an extra sum of money that he was not entitled to because that was not in fact his home address.

'That situation carried on for a number of years so every claim built a growing total.'

Mr Hardy claimed that Attfield moved to the Rainham address some time after March 2011 when he was added to the electoral roll.

The investigation into his expenses began in July 2014 and when interviewed by police in December that year he claimed that he had only moved to Rainham very recently.

But Mr Hardy said: 'Sadly that is just not true. He had for a number of years been using that opportunity to claim inflated travel expenses.

'The prosecution suggest the failure to notify the Metropolitan Police of that change of address is indicative of his lack of integrity.

'He was a special inspector in a senior role in the Special Constabulary.'

Jurors heard special constables are not paid but are entitled to free travel on public transport and reimbursement of travel expenses.

Attfield started working for HSBC in 1996 and began volunteering as a special constable in 2010, giving his address as a residential street in Benfleet, Essex.

Attfield began volunteering as a special constable for the Met Police in 2010. He is accused of claiming 28p a mile for travelling the 39 miles from Benfleet, Essex, to London, when he was actually travelling just 18 miles

In March 2011, he informed HSBC he was living in Rainham and took out a season ticket loan for travel between Rainham and Limehouse train station, it is claimed.

His driving licence was changed to Rainham in August 2013 and his Yamaha motorcycle was registered there in September 2014, the court heard.

Mr Hardy added: 'From the year 2010 onwards when he signed up to the force the home address he provided was Benfleet in Essex, his parents' address.

'Throughout the entire period as far as the Met Police were concerned that continued to be his home address.'

Jurors heard Attfield, who was mainly stationed at Eltham, southeast London, claimed a total of 9,884 in travel expenses as a special constabulary.

On one expense claim he attached an invoice for buying motorcycle boots.

The total amount of the fraud is believed to be around 3,500, it is claimed.

Attfield denies one count of fraud between 1 June 2011 and 1 September 2014.
Austin Reed today became the second High Street chain this week to call in the administrators - putting more than 1,000 jobs at risk.

The menswear company, which was founded in the Victorian era, has seen its revenues plunge for years after being snubbed by younger shoppers.

Bosses struck a deal to sell off dozens of shops just last year, but it was not enough to turn the firm around.

Crisis: Austin Reed has gone into administration after years of sliding revenues

Austin Reed's announcement came just 24 hours after BHS also entered administration, endangering the jobs of 11,000 workers.

In the latest set of accounts Austin Reed recorded annual revenues of 100.5million, down 7.8 per cent on the previous year for a loss of 5.4million before tax.

It was the seventh year in a row that the company's sales had fallen, prompting a string of previous emergency measures.

Global business advisory firm AlixPartners was today appointed administrator to the menswear group, which has 100 stores, 50 concessions and employs 1,184 staff.

Austin Reed will continue to trade while AlixPartners seeks a rescue deal for all or part of the business.

Classic: Vintage adverts for Austin Reed, which was founded in the Victorian era

The company, whose past clients include Winston Churchill and the Beatles, has been put up for sale but been unable to find a buyer.

Austin Reed agreed to offload 31 outlets after securing a company voluntary arrangement with its creditors in February 2015, and received financial backing from turnaround specialists Alteri Investors.

It is thought Alteri may look to buy Austin Reed from administrators while Better Capital, the private equity firm which owns Jaeger, is also said to be among possible suitors.

However, even if the business is sold in full it is likely to shutter more shops as the new owners focus on cutting costs, leading to possible redundancies among the workforce.

Flagship: The company's store in Manchester pictured today as news of the administration was announced

Peter Saville, joint administrator at AlixPartners, said today: 'Our priority now is to work with all stakeholders and determine the optimum route forward for the business as we continue to serve customers throughout the UK and Ireland.

'Austin Reed is a well-regarded and iconic brand and therefore we are confident that it is an attractive proposition for a range of potential buyers, as such we expect, and welcome, contact from interested third parties.'

Austin Reed's first shop opened in London's Fenchurch Street in 1900, and its flagship Regent Street store opened in 1911.

The firm was forced to downsize to a smaller branch on the other side of Regent Street five years ago, and is currently trying to sell off the premises as part of its cost-cutting exercise.
But under fire Business Secretary Sajid Javid is not taking part in the trip

Massive South Wales steel works has been under threat since Easter

David Cameron is to visit Port Talbot for the first time since the steel crisis broke today for private meetings with Tata management and trade unions.

The Prime Minister will be given a tour of the vast South Wales steelworks which has been under threat of closure since Tata announced it was selling its UK steel business.

But Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary, will not take part in the visit - weeks after he was slammed by Labour for missing the meeting in Mumbai where Tata decided to sell up in the face of losses running to 1million a day.

David Cameron is due at the Port Talbot steelworks today, pictured, for private meetings with management and trade union leaders

Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns was due to take part in the visit.

The Government announced last week it was prepared to buy up to 25 per cent of the steel business and offer hundreds of millions in support to a commercial buyer to keep the plant running.

Mr Cameron's official spokeswoman said today: 'The Prime Minister will have meetings with management staff and unions there. It's an opportunity for him to hear their views and discuss the way forward.'

She added: 'The Government has been very focused in the last few weeks on making sure it is doing all it can to support the sustainable future of the steel industry in Port Talbot.

'There have been a number of ministerial visits, the Prime Minister has been involved in discussions and had a ministerial meeting in No 10 shortly after Tata set out their decision to sell. He has remained engaged throughout.'

Mr Cameron's spokeswoman warned the Government did not underestimate the challenges facing the UK steel industry.

Mr Cameron was due to meet the chief executive of Tata Steel Europe, Tata Steel UK and then a number of those involved with the Community union on his visit.

Asked why Mr Javid was not on the visit, the spokeswoman said: 'The Business Secretary has already been down to Port Talbot and met with many of these people.

The Prime Minister will be accompanied by his Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns on the visit

'This was an opportunity because the Prime Minister wanted to go and discuss these issues with them.'

Shadow business secretary Angela Eagle said: 'Workers at Port Talbot and across the UK steel industry will be relieved that the Tory Government at long last seem to be treating this crisis with the seriousness it deserves.

'Labour has been warning of the escalating crisis facing steel for months, raising the issue over 200 times in Parliament.

'After this visit I hope the Prime Minister will see the need to preserve the blast furnaces at Port Talbot and appreciate the need for Tata to sell these assets as an integrated business.

'The Government now needs to roll up its sleeves and be proactive in these crucial few weeks to ensure a viable future for the UK steel industry.'

A possible management buy out of the steel works emerged last week after Tata triggered the official sale process.

The firm concluded a sale of its Scunthorpe steel works earlier this month, selling it to financiers Greybull Capital. Union members at the site agreed three per cent pay cuts this week as part of the deal.

Announcing the support the Government was prepared to offer a buyer for Port Talbot, Mr Javid said: 'This Government is committed to supporting the steel industry to secure a long-term viable future and we are working closely with Tata Steel UK on its process to find a credible buyer.

'The detail of our commercial funding offer is clear evidence of the extent of that commitment.

'Ministers have visited Tata Steel sites across the country and the pride and dedication of the highly-skilled men and women working there is obvious to see.

'We have already delivered on energy compensation, on tackling unfair trading practices and on procurement of British steel, and we will keep on going further to support this vital industry.'

A director at the plant was yesterday given temporary leave of absence to help develop a management buyout of the firm's UK business.

Stuart Wilkie, currently hub director for Tata Steel Europe's Strip Products UK business, is helping to put together a group of business people interested in buying plants including Port Talbot in South Wales.

Mr Wilkie will be replaced on a temporary basis by Jon Ferriman, currently leading the project management office for Tata Steel Europe.

A statement said: 'As communicated on April 20, Tata Steel Europe welcomes credible expressions of interest for Tata Steel's UK operations.
Lovkesh Kumar, who featured on America's Most Wanted after he fled following the murder of two women, hanged himself in his UK jail cell after his identity was discovered, an inquest heard

A suspected killer who featured on America's Most Wanted after he fled following the murder of two women hanged himself in his UK jail cell after his identity was discovered, an inquest heard.

Lovkesh Kumar left the United States in 2003 after being accused of the double murder of his wife Pooja and mother-in-law Nirja, who were both stabbed to death and chopped up in January that year.

The 42-year-old managed to slip into the UK as Sarbjit Singh in 2004 before living a life of petty crime.

He was finally jailed for drug offences more than five years later before his identity was uncovered after Interpol tipped off authorities about the earlier murder.

Kumar was found hanging in his cell at Wandsworth jail just three days after appearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court, where he was told he would face extradition to the US following the tip. An inquest is now being held into his death.

The coroner heard Kumar was accused of stabbing his wife and mother-in-law to death at the family home in California before cutting up their bodies with a butcher's knife in January 2003.

After arriving in Britain as Singh the following year, he spent the next decade serving a series of jail terms as he carried out a wave of crimes here including criminal damage and drug dealing.

He was eventually handed a 33-month prison sentence for possession of class A drugs with intent to supply.

His true identity as one of America's most wanted men was discovered only after Interpol got a tip-off.

DNA and fingerprints taken from the scene of the 2003 murders in Clovis, California were sent to Scotland Yard and a match was eventually made with Kumar. He later confirmed to a police officer that Kumar was his real name.

The 42-year-old, pictured on a wanted poster (second from left), left the United States in 2003 after being accused of the double murder of his wife Pooja and mother-in-law Nirja, who were both stabbed to death and chopped up in January that year

He was arrested by officers from Scotland Yard's extradition squad after he was sent to Westminster Magistrates' Court from Highpoint prison in Newmarket, Suffolk, in July 2014.

He was then transferred to Wandsworth jail in south London, Westminster Coroner's Court, sitting at the High Court, was told.

His body was found in his cell on September 6, 2014, three days after his first extradition hearing. Another one was scheduled to take place in November that year.

In a statement read to the inquest, prison officer Tom Carter said Kumar never gave the impression he was scared.

He added: 'He was moved up to that cell and was content to my knowledge and never had any problems with his cell mate.

'He was pretty quiet. He very rarely left the cell. He would usually be in bed which would be the predominant time I would see him. I am usually in the office.

'He never gave me the impression he was scared. He was calm in response. He never struck me as a man who was frightened, I would say.'

Kumar was found hanging in his cell at Wandsworth jail (pictured) three days after appearing at court, where he was told he would face extradition to the US following a tip off by Interpol about the murder

Kirsten Ross, a primary care nurse at Wandsworth jail, said she attempted to save Kumar.

In a statement read to the hearing, she said: 'I do not think that there was anything else at that immediate time that could have been done.'

Coroner Bernard Richmond QC told jurors there was a police investigation but nothing suspicious was found.

He added: 'The position really is this - the police, the prison, everyone has checked to see there was no third party involvement in this.

'And there is absolutely no evidence to suggest there was any third party. He went into his cell, the cell was locked. He did not trouble anyone in the night. And he was found.'

Kumar was known as Singh throughout his time in the prison system - even at the time of his death.

The fugitive is also believed to have used a host of other different aliases including Said Ali, Rakesh Kumar, Bobby Kumar, Bobby Vasudeva and Malkiat Singh.
Advertisement

A rare collection of personal etchings by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert which were leaked to a reporter in 1844 causing a massive legal furore and leading to the first super injunction are to go up for auction for 50,000.

In one of the first cases of its kind, the furious monarch applied to the courts to stop publication of the drawings in 1844. Now, more than 150 years later, the public have the rare chance to see them as 80 go under the hammer.

Under the guidance of the Royal portrait painter Sir George Hayter, the Royals drew a wide range of subjects from medieval battles to their dogs and children. The Royal couple took up etching in 1840 and there are only a small number of their pieces available to view by the public.

But in 1844 royal reporter Jasper Tomsett Judge caused a scandal when he managed to acquire 60 unauthorised prints for 5 from an employee of a local printer.

Under the guidance of the Royal portrait painter Sir George Hayter, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert drew a wide range of subjects from medieval battles to their dogs and children (Pictured: A print from etchings signed by Queen Victoria from the extremely rare set)

A print from an etching signed by Prince Albert from an extremely rare set of 80 etchings made by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert

A sketch of Prince Albert by Queen Victoria (left) and (right) Henry VIII drawn by Albert for the book of etchings by the royal couple

Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, Princess Royal Victoria, is seen as a baby crawling along with a ball of wool in another intimate drawing

Judge had hoped to sell the prints at an exhibition and produced a catalogue, but Queen Victoria was infuriated when news of the sale emerged.

A wave of lawsuits and injunctions were launched and the proposed exhibition and sale never took place. Very few etchings by either Royal exist outside of the private collections at Windsor and the British Museum as a result of the uproar.

But now auction house Dominic Winter has unearthed a collection of 80 etchings - one of only three known sets.

Her injunction was one of the earliest examples of high-profile figures turning to the courts to prevent reporting on their private lives  a facility now popular with philandering celebrities.

The presentation album, which Queen Victoria gave to close friend Sir Theodore Martin, will go under the hammer on May 11 in Cirencester with a guide price of 30,000 to 50,000. They remain in the possession of the Martin family.

Other etchings in the set include sketches of her children taking a bath, playing with their pets and being tended by their nurse.

One shows her eldest daughter, Victoria, the Princess Royal as a baby crawling along the floor clutching a toy. Each portrait is accompanied with a caption written by the Queen.

She wrote Before going to Bed underneath a sketch of her three children enjoying bath time.

The pictures were never meant to be seen by the public - but in 1844 royal reporter Jasper Tomsett Judge caused a scandal when he managed to acquire 60 unauthorised prints for 5 from an employee of a local printer

Judge hoped to sell the prints at exhibition and produced a catalogue, but Queen Victoria was infuriated when news of the sale emerged

A wave of lawsuits and injunctions were launched after the leak and the proposed exhibition and sale of the sketches never took place

Very few etchings by either Royal exist outside of the private collections at Windsor and the British Museum as a result of the uproar

Auction house Dominic Winter has unearthed a collection of 80 etchings by the royal couple - it is one of only three known sets

The queen's her injunction was one of the earliest examples of high-profile figures turning to the courts to prevent reporting on their private lives  a facility now popular with philandering celebrities

Chris Albury, auctioneer at Dominic Winter, said: 'Being one of just three sets, it is incredibly rare and certainly the only one in the public domain to come up for sale.

'One can see the Queen grappling with her etchings. It shows the full progress from a novice into quite a fine artist.

'Over the course of a number of years, Victoria and Albert had become interested in etching. The album is a collection of 80 of the 87 which they created.

'It was given to Sir Theodore Martin, who was a close friend of the Queen. She gave him the job of writing a biography of Prince Albert following his death. Martin's wife Helena Faucit was an actress who the Queen had seen perform.

'They were very close and when the Queen toured Wales she actually visited them. The etchings are all bound into album. When Sir Theodore Martin died, it stayed in his estate. Some of the etchings are very poignant.

'It is good to know the skills our monarchs had and Queen Victoria was a very talented artist.

'The album crosses into the art world. It isn't just royal memorabilia and we expect a lot of interest.'

The presentation album, which Queen Victoria gave to close friend Sir Theodore Martin, will go under the hammer on May 11 in Cirencester

The sketches by the royal couple will go under the hammer next month with a guide price of 30,000 to 50,000

Each portrait is accompanied with a caption written by the Queen - both of these fairytale-esque images were drawn by the queen

Other etchings in the set include sketches of the couple's children taking a bath, their pets and royals from previous generations
People drink all sorts of bizarre things these days: cayenne pepper and hot water, dissolved charcoal plus all manner of protein charged concoctions.

Yes, we're pretty good at trying out new things, but very few could muster a thirst for live reptile water.

You heard me. That's water with fish, frogs and tadpoles inside - and a Chinese man has been filmed glugging the lot.

Tasty treat? A Chinese man has been filmed glugging water with fish, frogs and tadpoles. He makes sure we get a real close-up of the gang - should we doubt the authenticity of the feat

Disturbing footage shows the man in Shenyang, Liaoning Province chatting excitedly as he ogles his refreshing beverage.

Inside the large glass swims an assortment of underwater critters.

He makes sure we get a real close-up of the gang - should we doubt the authenticity of the feat.

'Lets have a heroic challenge,' he tells his viewers. 'One frog, two frogs, three frogs, plus a catfish, tadpoles... Look how big they are. Did you see? Lets do this.'

And he does.

He tips the jar towards his mouth and begins to drink.

Some water splashes out as he slugs but as the container begins to run dry with just the amphibians left you cannot help but think - 'Well he'll obviously stop now, surely he won't consume the living things too?'

Refreshing... He tips the jar towards his mouth and begins to drink. Some water splashes out as he slugs but as the container begins to run dry with just the amphibians left you think - 'Well he'll obviously stop now, surely he won't consume the living things too?'

Revolting: The creatures slide into his mouth and down his throat followed by a stomach-churningly large swallow

Wrong.

The creatures slide into his mouth and down his throat.

After a stomach-churningly large swallow he breathes out open-mouthed, thoroughly chuffed with his success and gives a thumbs up to the camera.

He'd previously shown off about he wasn't ill before he enjoyed the beverage - you may well be now, mate.

However some online commentators have pointed out the cruel side to the feat given the creatures are still very much alive.
Labour MP Naz Shah today apologised and quit as an aide to John McDonnell over the row

A Labour MP today has resigned as an aide to John McDonnell after sharing a graphic on social media that appeared to say Israel should be 'relocated' to America.

Bradford West MP Naz Shah shared an image that showed an outline of Israel superimposed on to a map of the USA.

The headline on the image said: 'Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict - Relocate Israel into United States.'

Ms Shah then wrote with the post: 'problem solved.'

The Muslim MP today apologised for 'offence caused' before quitting as the shadow chancellor's PPS.

The resignation will reignite a bitter row within Labour about whether Jeremy Corbyn has done enough to combat anti-Semitism among some new members who have joined the party under his leadership.

Tory MPs today led calls for Ms Shah to be suspended from the Labour Party over the incident.

Questions have also been raised about Ms Shah's membership of the Home Affairs Select Committee, which is research anti-Semitism currently. Her post will not be discussed by the committee before its next meeting on Tuesday.

The Facebook post, shared by Ms Shah in 2014 before she became an MP, suggested the US has 'plenty of land' to accommodate Israel as a 51st state, allowing Palestinians to 'get their life and their land back'.

It added that Israeli people would be welcome and safe in the US while the 'transportation cost' would be less than three years' worth of Washington's support for Israeli defence spending.

Ms Shah added a note suggesting the plan might 'save them some pocket money'.

After the posting was highlighted by the Guido Fawkes website, Ms Shah released a statement in which she said: 'This post from two years ago was made before I was an MP, does not reflect my views and I apologise for any offence it has caused.'

In a second statement, she added later: 'I deeply regret the hurt I have caused by comments made on social media before I was elected as an MP.

'I made these posts at the height of the Gaza conflict in 2014, when emotions were running high around the Middle East conflict. But that is no excuse for the offence I have given, for which I unreservedly apologise.

'In recognition of that offence, I have stepped down from my role as PPS to the shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

'I will be seeking to expand my existing engagement and dialogue with Jewish community organisations and will be stepping up my efforts to combat all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism.'

Oliver Dowden, the Conservative MP for Hertsmere, today wrote to the Labour leader demanding he expel Ms Shah from Labour.

He said: 'A failure to act would call into question the commitment of the Labour Party to deal with wholly unacceptable behaviour and would constitute a betrayal of the values that all those who believe in democracy should uphold.'

Ms Shah is a member of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, which is conducting an inquiry into the rise of anti-Semitism

Ms Shah shared the graphic, pictured left, in August 2014 on Facebook. She added comments underneath, pictured right, suggesting she would lobby Barack Obama and David Cameron over the idea

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen told the website: 'If Jeremy Corbyn was serious about tackling anti-Semitism, he would put his money where his mouth is and remove the whip her from Naz Shah immediately.'

Mike Freer, Conservative MP for Finchley and Golders Green, told MailOnline: 'She is another example of the poison that is coursing through the Labour Party. She should have the whip withdrawn and she should recuse herself from the Home Affairs inquiry into Ant-Semitism.'

Ms Shah is a member of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, which is conducting an inquiry into the rise of anti-Semitism.

Jonathan Sacerdoti, director of communications at the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said it would be 'hard' for his organisation to take the parliamentary committee's inquiry seriously if Ms Shah remained part of it.

Speaking before Ms Shah's resignation, he said: 'One cannot simply apologise for ''any offence caused'' and expect a evidence of gross and brazen anti-Semitism to disappear.

'Once again the Labour Party has been revealed to have within its ranks people who express extreme prejudice towards Jewish people in their public statements. Once again the party has failed to find these statements itself, and reject those who freely and willingly express them.

'How can we believe Labour when it says it takes the problem of Jew-hatred seriously when it repeatedly defends anti-Semitic MPs? It seems that Jeremy Corbyn's anti-racism policy only operates when convenient.'

He added: 'We have offered to assist the Select Committee in its work investigating anti-Semitism. However, if Naz Shah remains on the committee it will be hard for those of us giving evidence to take the inquiry seriously.'

Last night the Jewish Chronicle reported that in August 2014 she linked on Twitter to a blog where Zionism  the belief in a Jewish state  was likened to Al Qaeda.

The blog also claimed Zionism had been used to groom Jews to exert political influence at the highest levels of public office.

In July 2014 she posted a link on Facebook to an online poll asking whether Israel had committed war crimes. She wrote: The Jews are rallying to the poll.

In another  eight months before she became an MP  she wrote Apartheid Israel over a picture of Martin Luther King with the caption Never Forget That Everything Hitler Did In Germany Was Legal. This prompted Sir Eric to demand she be stripped of the Labour whip. Mrs Shah is also under pressure to stand down as a member of the House of Commons home affairs committee while it conducts an investigation.
One in three workers in Britain are too scared to ask for a pay rise, new research revealed today

One in three workers in Britain are too scared to ask for a pay rise, new research revealed today.

Seven in ten UK employees have not asked for an increase in the past three, with the fear of rejection given as the biggest reason for not asking.

Other reasons for not asking for a pay increase in the past three years included concerns over their manager's reaction and the prospect of having to explain why they deserve it.

Londoners were the most confident of asking for a pay rise in the last three years, with workers in East Anglia the least confident, according to the study by recruitment firm Randstad.

A third of Londoners have asked for a rise in the last three years, but just one in five workers in East Anglia have requested one.

Men are more than twice as likely as women to have sought a pay rise, according to the research, while 72 per cent of women would never consider asking for a rise compared to just 58 per cent of men.

The study found youngsters aged between 18-24 are the most eager to seek higher compensation - 14 per cent said they had asked for at least three pay rises in the past three years.

But this age group is also most likely to doubt their abilities in front of their boss.

The survey of British workers found 35 per cent decided against requesting a pay rise because they fear being turned down.

This was closely followed by concerns over their bosses' reaction, while 29 per cent said they had not asked for a pay increase in the last three years because they feared having to justify being paid more.

Other reasons for not asking for a pay increase in the past three years included concerns over their manager's reaction and the prospect of having to explain why they deserve it.

Fear of rejection was a bigger barrier for women asking for a rise - with 44 per cent of the respondents citing it as the main reason.

These reasons explain why 72 per cent of UK employees have not asked for a rise in the last three years and only 34 per cent would consider asking their current boss for more pay.

Nearly half (45 per cent) of those asked said they were 'very' or 'quite' worried that asking for a rise would jeopardise their current role.
Bernie Sanders rebuffed a push this morning for him to endorse Hillary Clinton if he loses the ongoing Democratic primary by pointing out that 'the election is not over yet.'

Five states vote today, 10 more contests will be held after that, he stated on Good Morning America.

'I'm gonna to give every person in this country the right to decide who is going to be president of the United States, what the agenda is of the Democratic Party,' Sanders said.

The U.S. senator said if he's not his party's nominee, he will do 'everything' he can to 'make sure that some Republican does not sit in the White House.'

'But for the moment, we're gonna fight all the way to the Philadelphia convention,' Sanders said, 'and we're going to win as many delegates as we can, and we believe we do have a path toward victory.'

Bernie Sanders rebuffed a push this morning for him to endorse Hillary Clinton if he loses the ongoing Democratic primary by pointing out on GMA that 'the election is not over yet'

'I'm gonna to give every person in this country the right to decide who is going to be president of the United States, what the agenda is of the Democratic Party,' Sanders told George Stephanopolous

Sanders has been adamant about his plans to see the primary process through the very last contest, on June 14, in the District of Columbia.

A week before California, New Jersey and four other states that control a combined 694 pledged delegates cast their ballots.

This morning, on GMA, Sanders hinted at a strategy his campaign is pursing that would see him extend his brawl with Clinton to the convention floor in July in Philadelphia.

He said, 'We are gonna fight through California and then we see what happens.'

If Sanders wins the May and June elections on the West Coast, his campaign intends to challenge the party's elected officials to abandon Clinton for the candidate with the momentum and the better shot at winning the general election based on polling.

Sanders suggested multiple times on Sunday that should he fail in that endeavor, he would endorse Clinton for the Democratic nomination - but she shouldn't expect him to persuade his followers to do the same.

That's on her, he said. She needs to pursue a platform that appeals to his voters.

Clinton lost her patience last night during a town hall on MSNBC. 'I am winning!' she said. 'And I'm winning because of what I stand for and what I've done.'

Infuriated, she bought up the results of the 2008 nomination fight.

'Then-Sen. Obama and I ran a really hard race. It was so much closer than the race right now between me and Sen. Sanders,' she stated. 'We had pretty much the same amount of popular votes, by some measure I have slightly more popular votes, he has slightly more pledged delegates.'

Clinton told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, 'We got to the end in June and I did not put down conditions. I didn't say, "You know what, if Senator Obama does x, y and z, maybe I'll support him."

'I said, "I am supporting Senator Obama, because no matter what our differences might be, they pale in comparison to the differences between us and the Republicans."'

'That's what I did,' Clinton stated.

Speaking before Clinton at the same town hall, Sanders reiterated his position.

'You know, we are not a movement where I can snap my fingers and say to you or to anybody else what you should do, because you won't listen to me. You shouldn't. You'll make these decisions yourself,' Sanders said.

Today he declined to respond to Clinton's complaint on Good Morning America during his interview with George Stephanopolous.
A former Playboy Playmate who is being held in jail in New York has said she misses her Versace dresses and Louboutin heels, claiming 'the torture is real' behind bars.

'Asia's sexiest DJ' Angie Vu, 33, is locked up in Brooklyn while she fights extradition to France on parental kidnapping charges after allegedly trying to flee the U.S. with her nine-year-old daughter, who was supposed to be in the custody of her father.

Vietnamese Vu was jailed in November after allegedly trying to fly from John F. Kennedy Airport to China with her daughter Isabella.

Isabella's father, Richard Froger, is based in France and has custody of the girl but agreed to allow her to stay with Vu until August 29, but Vu is accused of breaking that agreement by boarding the plane.

Five months on and Vu is whining from her cell, calling the lack of a full-length mirror 'cruel' and branding prison life 'horrible'.

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Hard life: Angie Vu, pictured in happier times on holiday, is in jail as she fights extradition for allegedly kidnapping her own daughter and says she misses her Versace dresses and Louboutin heels

Mother and child: Vu, 33, allegedly tried to flee the U.S. with her nine-year-old daughter Isabella, who was supposed to be in the custody of her father

Locked up: Vietnamese Vu was jailed in November after allegedly trying to fly from John F. Kennedy Airport to China with Isabella

'This place is so horrible, there's no sunlight ever. I have been under the harsh light 24/7 and turned pale,' Vu told the New York Daily News.

'I need a good supply of Guerlain's moisturizer in here. I miss my Versace dresses and Louboutin heels. My nails are nicely trimmed but I'm dying to have some colors on them. The torture is real.

'There's no real mirror in prison. We all buy this tiny piece of plastic, but the images are distorted. I wish there should be at least one full-length mirror in here. I haven't looked at myself for months. It's cruel.'

Vu, who has previously said she has had to repeatedly turn down the advances of lesbian inmates, said being jailed had taken a huge toll on her life.

'[I've gone] From extremely proud and confident getting naked for Playboy to shaking, sobbing in humiliation to do hundreds of strip search for contraband,' she said.

'Last year became the dark year of my life. I had abandoned my jobs, my fans and pushed away all other fabulous hungry men and all the young sexy model boys that were chasing me.

'I'm not supposed to be worried about anything. It gives me wrinkles.'

'Asia's sexiest DJ': Vu called the lack of a full-length mirror in jail 'cruel' and branded prison life 'horrible.

No regrets: Vu hates prison life but said it was a sacrifice she was willing to make for her daughter

Vu, who has previously said she has had to repeatedly turn down the advances of lesbian inmates, said being jailed had taken a huge toll on her life

Vu said her legions of fans have sent in a huge haul of gifts, from teddy bears to flowers and even lingerie, but it has all been returned because it is contraband.

Despite her less than luxurious existence, she vowed to continue her legal fight.

'Do I feel ashamed for being here? The answer is no,' Vu said.

'I'm here for a great cause, for protecting my child. This injustice won't crash my spirit. I'm still rocking and rolling.'

Vu maintains that the Family Court in Paris made a mistake when it awarded custody of their nine-year-old daughter to her biological father.

A judge ruled she should be extradited to France to face the parental kidnapping charges, but she appealed the decision, delaying proceedings until her appeal can be heard.

High-powered friends: Vu, pictured with former president Bill Clinton, said the stress of being in prison was giving her wrinkles

Vu, who is also a DJ and has appeared on America's Got Talent, is being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn

The lawsuit she filed portrays Mr Froger as a reluctant father who played no part in his daughter's life until she was seven years old and refused to even acknowledge her until she was five.

The suit, seen by the Daily News, features emails written by Froger after the couple's fling in which he outright says: 'I never wanted to have a baby with you.'

'I still remember when I asked you if you used contraception pills!!!' Froger is alleged to have written in 2006. 'So you lied me and I don't feel guilty about nothing.'

Vu replied: 'I was sad when i read your email before but now I think its ridiculous that you think I have to use a baby to trick you.

'First, I'm not the kind of women who r ugly, stupid or uneducated that I cannot get a man.

'I thought you were a handsome kind gentleman that I had feelings for even though I didn't expect anything from you as I wrote.'

Vu, who is also a DJ and has appeared on America's Got Talent, is being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn in an open dormitory with about 100 other female inmates.

She is being held without bail as she is considered a flight risk.

In February she told the Daily News that prison was not as bad as she expected, although the food was disappointing and she kept having to turn down advances from lesbian inmates.

'A lot of lesbians around here and a few blondies are hitting on me,' Vu told the paper. 'But I prefer to read my Bible for now.'
Donald Trump has a message for celebrities who say they'll leave the country if he's elected president: Pack your bags.

The Republican presidential front-runner said Tuesday on 'Fox & Friends' that purging the United States of Rosie O'Donnell, Whoopi Goldberg and Lena Dunham would be a pot sweetener if he wins the White House.

'We'll get rid of Rosie? Oh, I love it. Now I have to get elected!' he said during an early morning phone-in interview.

'Now I have to get elected because I'll be doing a great service to our country. I have to. Now it's much more important. In fact I'll immediately get off this call and start campaigning right now.'

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NOW HE'S SERIOUS: Donald Trump joked on Tuesday that ridding America of celebrities who loathe him is a new motivation to win the election

BYE-BYE: As the list of anti-Trump celebs grows, the billionaire is offering to make their exit from the United States as easy as possible

GOOD RIDDANCE? Trump has publicly feuded with Rosie O'Donnell (left) and Whoopi Goldberg (right), making their departure seem like more of a feature than a bug

Trump's glee at the idea of an America free of Rosie O'Donnell stems from years of public feuds with the actress.

He also jumped for joy on Fox News at Goldberg's threat that 'maybe it's time for me to move' if he wins in November.

'That would be a great, great thing for our country if she did that,' Trump jabbed.

Asked about Lena Dunham, who pledged Monday to move to Canada for the duration of a Trump presidency, the billionaire scoffed.

'She's a B actor, and has no  you know  mojo,' he said.

Dunham said Monday at the Matrix Awards that 'I know a lot of people have been threatening to do this, but I really will.'

'I know a lovely place in Vancouver and I can get my work done from there.'

The star of HBO's 'Girls' show has been a vocal Hillary Clinton supporter, campaigning with the Democratic front-runner on several occasions.

'GIRLS,' INTERRUPTED? Lena Dunham is the latest entertainer to pledge that she'll fle the country if Trump wins the White House

Goldberg said in January on 'The View' that 'I can afford to go.'

She hinted that she believes Trump's focus on illegal immigration has parallels with Nazi Germany.

'I've always been an American, and this has always been my country and we've always been able to have discussions. And suddenly now it's turning into, you know  not them, not them,' she said.

'And you know, we have a lot of friends whose parents saw this already. They don't want to relive this ... So I need all the candidates to get it together. Get back to American values.'

Another 'View' co-host, 30-year-old Raven Symone, boasted in February that she already had her escape route to Canada planned if the presidential election doesn't end the way she wants it to.

'My confession for this election is if any Republican gets nominated, Im gonna move to Canada with my entire family,' she said in February.

.@realDonaldTrump: If me winning means Rosie O'Donnell moves to Canada, I'd be doing a great service to our country!https://t.co/foxt712Ko1  FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) April 26, 2016

PACK YOUR BAGS: Raven Symone, Cher and Al Sharpton have all said they'll make tracks and leave the United States rather than endure four years under a President Trump

Since a Republican is nominated for president every four years, Symone's promise is an iron-clad pledge to emigrate.

'I already have my ticket. I literally bought my ticket, I swear,' she insisted.

Donald Trump Jr., the real estate titan's son, said in late February that he would fund the exit of any famous people who want to abandon the country in a Trump administration.

'I'll buy them their airfare,' said Donald Jr. 'Those are endorsements for Trump.'

The candidate later said he would 'join with my boys and bank for it.'

Cape Breton, in the furthest reaches of Nova Scotia, Canada, has seen interest in tourism spike along with celebrity talk of fleeing America next year.

A website called 'Cape Breton if Trump Wins' now talks up the island as a diversity-friendly place with 'the most affordable housing market in North America.'

Rob Calabrese, a Canadian radio host, launched the effort this winter.

Cher, Eddie Griffin, Barry Diller, Al Sharpton, Jon Stewart, Samuel L. Jackson and Omari Hardwick have all publicly discussed moving outside the U.S. if Trump wins.

'NO MOJO': Trump bashed Dunham Monday morning on the Fox News Channel

NOT FUNNY: Comics Eddie Griffin and Jon Stewart, along with Samuel L. Jackson, say they'll jump off the Trump Train and make a run for the border

DailyMail.com columnist Katie Hopkins, who appeared in the 2007 season of 'The Apprentice,' says she'll move too  to the United States.

Trump spoke early in the morning on Fox before polls opened in five Northeastern states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

All told, there are 172 Republican National Convention delegates up for grabs, and Trump is expected to win the lion's share.

The billionaire real estate developer is on track either to narrowly capture the GOP presidential nomination, or to fall short by a razor-thin margin.

Tuesday morning he crested the 50 per cent level in an NBC News / SurveyMonkey poll of Republican primary voters for the first time, a sign that his populist appeal is gaining him new converts.

After Tuesday, however, the race moves westward.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich have both abandoned the Northeast. Cruz is campaigning furiously in Indiana while Kasich has his eyes on Oregon and New Mexico.

Both men aim to spend time where their candidacies are strongest in a bid to deprive Trump of every delegate that can be pried away from him.

A deal struck between the two seasoned politician on Sunday night called for Cruz to stay out of Oregon and New Mexico, and Kasich out of Indiana, in order to limit the extent to which they will 'split' the anti-Trump vote.

The New York tycoon called the bargain a form of desperate 'collusion,' and mocked Kasich Monday in Pennsylvania after he told reporters that he hoped Indianans would vote for him anyway.

The first Republican contender to win the support of 1,237 delegates  the barest majority possible  will be the party's nominee. Trump hopes to accomplish that on June 7 when the dust settles after the California primary.

But Cruz and Kasich know their only chance to win lies in stopping Trump short of that magic number, throwing the July convention into Cleveland chaos and turning Trump's 'bound' delegates into free agents who can switch their allegiance.
A Disney cruise ship rescued three fugitives off the coast of Cuba after they tried to flee the US.

Cuban nationals Luis Rivera-Garcia, 26, Juliet Estrada-Perez, 23, and Enrique Gonzalez-Torres, 23, were picked up in the Caribbean Sea last Thursday.

The trio were found clinging to the vessel 40 miles north of the communist country when their boat capsized in rough seas.

They were taken on board the Fantasy liner and handed over to the US Coast Guard.

A Disney cruise ship rescued three fugitives off the coast of Cuba after they tried to flee the US. They are seen being taken aboard the Fantasy in the Caribbean Sea on Thursday

Left to right: Luis Rivera-Garcia, 26, Juliet Estrada-Perez, 23, and Enrique Gonzalez-Torres, 23, were picked up in the Caribbean Sea and were wanted on federal fraud charges

Video Courtesy WSVN

U.S. Marshal Amos Rojas Jr said all three were wanted for violating their supervised release on federal credit card fraud charges in New Orleans.

He added that they were probably fleeing to Cuba to escape prosecution.

The Disney Fantasy went on its first trip in 2012. It currently sails seven-night Eastern or Western Caribbean cruises.

Four thousand passengers can fit on the boat during one of its voyages while they are looked after by 1,400 crew members.

At 986ft, it is longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall.

The Fantasy is the fourth ship in the cruise line. The other three are the Disney Dream, the Disney Magic and the Disney Wonder.

Cuba is a common destination for would-be fugitives as the government does not send their citizens back to the US to face prosecution.

Daily Mail Online has contacted Disney Cruises for comment.

The trio were wanted in New Orleans for fraud crimes. They were rescued 40 miles north of Varadero, Cuba

They were taken on board the Fantasy (file picture), one of the four Disney cruise ships, and handed over to the US Coast Guard
says he will stand by Carey and the election 'will be fought not on acupuncture, but on a range of issues'

says he did not agree with his claims on acupuncture

Mr Carey says infertility in women can be cured by genital acupuncture

Controversial politician Nick Xenophon says he stands by a candidate on his federal election team who has promoted acupuncture of the genitals as a treatment for infertile women.

Damian Carey, a candidate for the independent senators team in the South Australian seat of Kingston has written a paper that says the acupuncture procedure would lead to better social outcomes.

Mr Carey is a practitioner of Chinese medicine and self published his paper on his website in which he says Chinese medicine appears to be more effective than traditional medicine for combating unexplained infertility.

Controversial politician Nick Xenophon (pictured) says he stands by a candidate on his federal election team who has promoted acupuncture of the genitals as a treatment for infertile women

Damian Carey (pictured), a candidate for the independent senators team in the South Australian seat of Kingston has written a paper that says the acupuncture procedure would lead to better social outcomes

The paper uses anecdotal evidence from only one of Careys patients and has not been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

It says that acupuncture of the perineum between the vulva and the anus can lead to a successful pregnancy for an infertile woman.

Mr Xenophon told Guardian Australia that he had told Mr Carey that he did not agree with the claims made in his paper.

'The paper reflects Damien's personal views, they are not the view of my team,' he told Guardian Australia.

Speaking at the opening of the Fertility Society of Australia conference in Canberra in September Mr Xenophon told the government to make IVF treatment more affordable under Medicare.

He described Mr Carey as someone who strongly supported the issues important to the Nick Xenophon Team including a stronger stance on poker machines and improving government transparency.

He said the election will be fought not on acupuncture, but on a range of issues.

'His view on fertility is not a reasonable view. But to define him by it is also not reasonable.'
A school bus driver has been sacked after allegedly asking an 11-year-old boy to move a downed live power line.

Driver Patricia Ryan, 60, asked student Tyler Cunningham to get out of the bus to move the wire after it was knocked down into the road by a goose, police said.

The power line had been become entangled with the bus, which was on its way to Penn-Trafford Middle School near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the morning of April 15.

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Tyler Cunningham, 11, burned his hand on a downed live power line that his bus driver Patricia Ryan allegedly asked him to move

Surveillance footage from on board the bus shows Ryan asking for one of the five students on board to get off and move the wire, police said in a criminal complaint.

Tyler exited the bus and came back holding his right hand.

Ryan asked several times whether the wire was live, but took 20 minutes to check whether the injured student was OK, according to police.

She also failed to tell the bus company that a child got off the bus and touched a live power line.

'It shocked me. It got me like right there, on the thumb,' Tyler told WTAE.

His father, Bob Cunningham, said his son suffered minor burns to his hand.

Ryan, from Jeanette, Pennsylvania, was sacked by bus company First Student after school district officials demanded she be banned from driving Penn-Trafford students to school.

She has since been charged with endangering the welfare of a child and recklessly endangering another person.

The power line had been become entangled with the bus, which was on its way to Penn-Trafford Middle School (pictured) near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Dana Cononico, Tyler's mother, said: 'I'm glad because she needs to be held responsible for her actions. She should never have asked a kid to get off the bus at all.

'I want to see her lose her license to drive a bus. I don't think she should ever be allowed to dreve a bus again.'

Mr Cunningham added: 'What if she gets a job with another bus company and puts another child's life in danger?'

Ryan told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that she 'never intended to hurt anyone'. She will appear in court on May 31.

Penn-Trafford School District Superintendent Dr Matthew Harris said in a letter to parents that the power line was downed by a goose that flew into a transformer.

'A school van owned and operated by First Student to transport Penn-Trafford students was in the area at the time of this incident and was obstructed by the fallen wires and became stuck underneath the wires,' Dr Harris said.

'The Penn Township police and the fire department responded and were quickly on site. I, as District Superintendent, along with district administrators Brett Lago, James Bracco, and Jim Simpson, also responded immediately and were present at the site of the incident.

'The wires were quickly removed and the school van proceeded to transport all of the children to school.

'From the time of the incident and leading up to the arrival of these students at school, there was nothing that had been observed by those of us who had responded to cause a reason for concern.

'However, it was subsequently learned from the students who were on that van that while the van was situated under the fallen wires, and prior to the time any of the responders were on site, the driver asked if any of the students would be willing to exit the van to check the wires.

'One student elected to do what was being requested and did exit the van to check on the wires.
Anastasia James, 37, crashed off a motorway at 70mph while under the influence of cannabis - she was jailed today for two years

A mother who killed her 14-year-old daughter and her son's girlfriend by crashing off a motorway at 70mph while under the influence of cannabis has been jailed for two years.

Anastasia James, 37, lost control of her Vauxhall Astra convertible as she drove home from her nephew's first birthday party in London and became 'airborne' before slamming into a tree.

Her daughter Destiny James-Keeling, and her son's girlfriend, hairdresser Megan Marchant, 18, both died within minutes of the accident on the M1 near Shawell in Leicestershire two years ago.

Self-employed James, of Braunstone, Leicester, had denied two charges of causing death by careless driving when unfit through drugs following the fatal crash on January 4, 2014.

She claimed she may have unknowingly taken it when taking what she thought was a legal high the previous evening.

But Leicester Crown Court heard analysis of her blood showed she had taken the Class C drug shortly before the accident.

James, who suffered only minor injuries, was given a two-year sentence for each life lost, to run concurrently.

The court heard she had been at the child's birthday party in Islington, north London, before she took the 'unforgivable' decision to smoke cannabis - before heading back to her hometown of Leicester.

Forensic scientist David Berry told the jury traces of cannabis found in James's blood would have probably 'impaired' the motorist.

James, a former good parenting co-ordinator, had denied smoking anything on the day of the collision and blamed her car.

She claimed a defect in her car had made driving it like 'being in a tunnel'.

Her son, Wade Keeling, 18, was sat behind her and suffered a broken leg.

Sentencing her today Judge Paul Mann said: 'For the sake of a few drags of cannabis, the lives of these young people were extinguished.

'The forensic evidence is absolutely clear - it was not a legal high as you still insist, and the cannabis impaired your ability to drive.

'You knew what your responsibility was to the young people in your car. I absolutely have to bear in mind the devastating effect this has had on Megan's parents, as well as you,

James's daughter Destiny James-Keeling (left), 14, and her son's girlfriend, Megan Marchant (right), 18, both died within minutes of the accident on the M1 near Shawell in Leicestershire two years ago

In a victim impact statement Megan's father, Scott said: 'My world was torn apart when I was given the news'

'Their distress is clearly made all the worse by you having a trial. It has virtually destroyed her father, to the point where he couldn't be here today. And her mother speaks of a life sentence of grief she must endure.

'I want to believe deep down you have remorse. You have done your best to hide it throughout the trial. All I saw was a hardened determination to avoid your responsibility which the family of Megan, who sat throughout your trial with quiet dignity, must have found very tough indeed.

'You still maintain your innocence to the probation service.

'As I said during the trial, there are no winners in this case, on either side.'

James, who has a previous conviction for possessing cannabis, was also banned from driving for two years upon her release from prison

James, who has a previous conviction for possessing cannabis, was also banned from driving for two years upon her release from prison.

Michael Evans QC, prosecuting, said at the trial: 'She did not want this to happen and you will have sympathy for her, but she had the care of children and to make the choice she did is simply unforgivable.

'She was willing to take that risk. Her carelessness undoubtedly caused the crash.

'The reason for her carelessness, as confirmed by uncontradicted expert evidence and demonstrated by the manner of her driving, was the cannabis.

'This is a tragic case. Miss James has lost a child. Another family has also lost a child.

'They placed the care of their daughter in the hands of Miss James. Miss James betrayed that trust by driving from a children's party back from London to Leicester whilst under the influence of cannabis.'

In a victim impact statement, which was read to the court by Mr Evans, Megan's father, Scott Marchant, said: 'My world was torn apart when I was given the news by my other daughter, Jodie.

'You do not expect as a mother and father to have to bury your own daughter.

'The last two years have been a nightmare. I've not been able to talk to anyone. Days just passed as though they were a daze. I have tried counselling and therapy but had to give it up because I couldn't talk about Megan.

'The court case was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. From thinking it was a tragic accident to being informed it was due to drug driving and could have been avoided was devastating.

'I miss Megan terribly every day. I do not know if we can rebuild our lives, but we have to try. We will cherish the memories we have of Megan.'

Megan's mother Vicky Marchant added: 'Megan was the most beautiful, caring and talented daughter I could have wished for.

'She loved spending time with her family and friends. She was beautiful inside and out. She touched the lives of everyone who met her, young and old.

'We all miss her so much - part of us all died when Megan died. The thought I will never get to hear her voice again fills me with indescribable sadness and pain.
A man who served 25 years in prison has been released after new DNA technology proved he did not commit a rape in 1989.

Darryl Pinkins, 63, was jailed in May 1991 after a woman claimed he was the man who dragged her into a car in Hammond, Indiana, and violated her for hours.

He has always maintained he was innocent, but all the evidence pointed against him.

But now, tests done by the Indiana Innocence Project using technology invented in the last few of years found there is no evidence from the alleged attack that points to Pinkins.

After a quarter-century in jail, Pinkins has lost teeth, he is now diabetic, and he now has thyroid disease.

However, he beamed on Monday morning as he walked out of Lake County correctional facility into the sunshine to be reunited with his family.

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Exonerated: Darryl Pinkins, 63, pictured embracing family as he leaves jail on Monday after 25 years inside

Quarter-century: Pinkins was convicted of rape in May 1991. But new DNA tests dissected the evidence and found nothing that points to him. He is pictured with his son, 24, (right) was was born after Pinkins was jailed

Accused: Pinkins (pictured in his 1989 mugshot) was accused of dragging a woman into his car and raping her for hours in Hammond, Indiana. His friend, accused of participating, was also jailed in 1991 and paroled in 2009

Among the crowd stood his 24-year-old son, who was born after Pinkins was jailed.

'It feels like this day was - was meant to be. And I know it was,' Pinkins told reporters waiting outside for him in a news conference recorded by ABC7.

'There was a crack in the system. It does exist, and I'm not the only one within this situation that's going through this.

'It's people that are not fortunate enough to get the team that I have behind me.'

Pinkins' case was taken on by a team from the Idaho and Indiana Innocence Projects, as well as Indiana University Law School professors, in 2007.The unit used a new method of analyzing DNA, which is called TrueAllele.

To date, the technology has been used to identify missing people or draw distinctions in new cases.

In 2007, the convictions review unit took on Pinkins' case.

His is the first convict whose sentence has been thrown out after TrueAllele testing.

Pinkins' friend Roosevelt Glenn, who was also jailed in connection with the rape in 1991, was released on parole in 2009. But subsequent tests have also excluded him from the scene.

Once the tests were completed, the convictions review unit handed their evidence to the prosecutors.

Friends and family take pictures of his glorious moment as Pinkins looks overwhelmed with emotion

While preparing a hearing for a re-trial, prosecutors concluded the evidence was so conclusive that Pinkins did not have to be tried.

He walked free days later.

'When you look at the evidence that stands now, it would be an injustice for us to even attempt to try Mr. Pinkins. We would not convict him,' Bernard Carter, Lake County prosecutor, told ABC7.

On Monday, Pinkins described first hearing about the technology, which can dissect intricate mixtures of DNA to differentiate between similar kinds.

'Once they explained to us what DNA was, we [Pinkins and Glenn] told them to bring the test on because we know where we were,' Pinkins said.

Fran Watson, an attorney at Indiana University Of Law School, explained the importance of the new testing program.

'Until recently, there was no technology that could really do what I call dissect DNA mixture,' she told ABC7.

The leading DNA analyst in the case, Idaho Innocence Project director Greg Hampikian lauded the verdict as a victory for both justice and science.

'This technology holds the key not just to answering complex DNA problems, but the literal key to freedom for men like Daryl Pinkins and Roosevelt Glenn,' he wrote in a statement.
A mother has appealed for help on social media to track down her daughters father in time for the youngsters 13th birthday.

Kerryn Leigh posted on Facebook saying she met the man, called Rodney, during a snowboarding trip to Queenstown in New Zealand 13 years and nine months ago.

The mother, from Perth, said she wanted nothing from the man  except a possible conversation.

My wee girl is about to turn 13 & would really like to find her dad, Ms Leigh posted on Facebook.

Kerryn Leigh (pictured) has appealed for help on social media to track down her daughters father in time for the youngsters 13th birthday

We want nothing from him, but possible conversation. Who knows I just need to do this for her.

In the post, she said Rodney would be in his late 40s and would probably still be living on the Gold Coast.

She said he was a keen surfer and was between 5ft 7in to 5ft 10in with long scruffy fair hair and blue eyes.

Ms Leigh said that Rodney had a daughter who was around two-years-old when they met.

She posted on Facebook saying she met the man, called Rodney, during a snowboarding trip to Queenstown in New Zealand 13 years and nine months ago

The mother, from Perth, said she wanted nothing from the father of her daughter (right)  except a possible conversation

She also revealed that the man was in the resort for three days with two friends, one of whom was called John and worked in a cardboard box factory in Brisbane?

I met Rodney snowboarding in Queenstown NZ 13yrs 9 months ago....... this is all I know he was only there for 3 days with two friends called John, john worked in a cardboard box factory in Brisbane?

I'm pretty sure Rodney surfs & that's about it.
A 14-year-old girl has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly stabbing another teenage girl in the chest during an incident at a school.

The unnamed victim, a girl aged 15, was taken to hospital in Portsmouth for treatment to a minor injury following the incident at the Petersfield School, Petersfield, Hampshire, yesterday.

The arrested girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has been charged with attempted murder and threatening a person with a blade or sharp-pointed article.

The unnamed victim, a girl aged 15, was taken to hospital in Portsmouth for treatment to a minor injury following the incident at the Petersfield School (pictured), in Petersfield, Hampshire, yesterday

She was remanded in custody and appeared at Basingstoke Magistrates' Court this morning.

Police were called to the scene shortly after 9.30am yesterday morning.

Following the assault the 15-year-old girl was taken to hospital where she was treated for a minor injury to her chest and she is today recovering at home.

A Hampshire police spokesman said: 'A 14-year-old girl has been charged following a serious assault at the Petersfield School on Monday April 25.

'Officers were called at 9.35am to the school on Cranford Road. A 15-year-old girl who was taken to Queen Alexandra Hospital to be treated for a minor injury is now recovering at home.

The 14-year-old girl was remanded in custody and appeared at Basingstoke Magistrates' Court this morning

'The 14-year-old girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons and who was arrested in connection with the assault, has now been charged with one count of attempted murder and one count of threatening a person with a blade or sharp pointed article on school premises.'

Petersfield School's headteacher Mark Marande, who only took up the post this month, quickly moved to reassure parents it was an isolated incident.

Petersfield School is the only state-funded secondary school in Petersfield and has around 1,200 pupils.

It became an independent academy in 2011 following an Outstanding Ofsted inspection.
Norwegian government has announced they will appeal the ruling

Court ruled he had been subjected to 'inhuman and degrading treatment'

The Norwegian government will appeal the ruling that mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik's human rights have been violated during his imprisonment.

Last week, Breivik won parts of his lawsuit against Norway, in which he listed being fed the same food two days in a row and being kept in isolation as proof of 'inhuman treatment'.

The government 'disagrees' with the ruling that said the isolation of Breivik, who killed 77 people in a massacre in 2011, breaches the European Convention on Human Rights, the justice ministry said.

Terrorist: Mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik won parts of his lawsuit against the Norwegian state over his prison conditions, in which he claimed his 'human rights' had been violated

'I have asked the Office of the Attorney General to appeal the verdict,' justice minister Anders Anundsen said in a statement.

'The conditions under which Breivik is detained does not constitute, in the state's view, 'inhuman or degrading treatment' under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.'

Anundsen said Tuesday that further details about the government's decision would be released within days.

The April 20 ruling by Oslo district court said the 37-year-old's conditions at Skien prison, 87 miles south of Oslo, breached an article in the European Convention on Human Rights prohibiting inhuman and degrading treatment.

'The prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment represents a fundamental value in a democratic society. This applies no matter what - also in the treatment of terrorists and killers,' judge Helen Andenaes Sekulic said in her ruling.

Appeal: The Norwegian government 'disagrees' with the Oslo court ruling that said the isolation of Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011, breaches the European Convention on Human Rights

Making his case: Addressing the court last month, The 37-year-old listed being fed the same food two days in a row as proof of 'inhuman treatment'

'Cruel and inhuman'?: Breivik has an entire cellblock to himself at Skien prison, with three cells, access to a computer and a PlayStation, as well as a yard and permission to cook his own food

The ruling also said the Norwegian state had not violated the right of Breivik, who killed 77 people and injured 300 in the 2011 massacre, to have a private life and a family life.

In his lawsuit, Beivik had stated that he had been a 'victim of cruel and inhuman treatment' in Skien prison, where he has an entire cellblock to himself and access to a computer and PlayStation.

During court proceedings Breivik claimed to have been 'treated worse than an animal', complaining about cold coffee, having to use plastic cutlery.

'Sometimes I've been fed the same microwave meal two days in a row. It might sound comical [to you, but it's worse than waterboarding,' the Nazi terrorist told a court earlier this month.

Taking the stand for his first public statement since his sentencing in August 2012, Breivik said he was the secretary of an extremist party he is trying to create, the Nordic State Political Party.

Mass killer Anders Behring Breivik raises his arm in a Nazi salute as he enters the gym-turned-courtroom in Skien prison, south-west of Oslo last month

Murderer: Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011, is suing Norway, claiming his solitary confinement in Skien prison, south of Oslo, is 'cruel and inhuman treatment'

He also compared himself to anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, saying the only difference between them was that Mandela 'ordered action,' while he had been the one to 'carry out the action,' CNN reports.

Addressing the court, he vowed to fight 'to the death' for Nazism, confirming fears he would use the platform to grandstand his extremist views.

'I have fought for National Socialism for 25 years, and I will fight for it to the death,' he said of the Nazi party's political doctrine.

It was considered too dangerous to hear the case in an Oslo court, and proceedings have instead been held inside Skien prison's gymnasium, which was turned into a courtroom for the case.

Survivor Dag Andre Anderssen, deputy leader of a support group for survivors and the bereaved, called Breivik a 'unique' inmate in Norway's prison system, which is focused on rehabilitating rather than punishing criminals.

'They say that every society is measured by how they treat their prisoners so we will allow him to use the system, to try to use the system against us,' Anderssen said.

'But I think the system will say that his conditions are as good as they can be.'

Breivik's suit was heard in Skien prison's gymnasium, which had been turned into a courtroom for the day

Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik sits next to his lawyer Oystein Storrvik, right, at a makeshift court in Skien prisons gym

The Norwegian Attorney General has denied Breivik's claims, saying there is no evidence of the murderer suffering from the conditions under which he is being held at Skien (pictured)

Breivik murdered 77 people and injured more than 300 - many of them teenagers - in July 2011, by detonating a bomb in downtown Oslo and carrying out a mass shooting on Utoya Island.

The Norwegian Correctional Service denies Breivik is held insolitary confinement, preferring the phrase 'excluded from thecompany of other prisoners' - as he disposes of an entire block.

At Skien prison, Breivik lives in three different cells - for living, study andexercise - between which he can move freely.

He also access to a computer, which is not connected to the internet, as well as his own television and a PlayStation.

The right-wing anti-muslim extremist is also free to take walksin a yard at his leisure and he can cook his own food and do his laundry should he so wish.

'There is no evidence that the plaintiff has physical ormental problems as a result of prison conditions,' the Office ofthe Attorney General, the Norwegian state's legal office incivil lawsuits, wrote in a document sent to the Oslo DistrictCourt and released on Wednesday.

Breivik was sentenced to 21 years' imprisonment with preventive detention in 2012, and has been kept in isolation since his arrest.
But others say that no-one has ever been arrested for doing that in the US

They say men will pretend to be transgender to abuse vulnerable females

A petition to boycott Target has gathered more than half a million signatures after the company announced that it would allow transgender people to use their preferred bathrooms in its stores last week.

In a statement on its website published on April 19, Target announced, 'we welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.'

But that has upset a vocal group of prospective customers, who have pledged not to use the store - with 678,000 signatures as of Tuesday morning.

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Petition: On April 19, Target announced that it would allow transgender customers and staff to use the bathroom of their choosing; now a fast-growing petition hopes to reverse that decision

The petition was created on April 20, one day after the announcement,The Washington Post reported, but appears to have picked up speed over the past week, with the signature rate rising by hundreds every minute.

The petition claims that Target's policy 'means a man can simply say he "feels like a woman today" and enter the women's restroom... even if young girls or women are already in there.'

'Targets policy is exactly how sexual predators get access to their victims,' it continues. 'And with Target publicly boasting that men can enter womens bathrooms, where do you think predators are going to go?'

It says that the policy is 'a danger to wives and daughters.'

The petition was started by The American Family Association, a Mississippi-based Christian organization that claims to 'restrain evil by exposing the works of darkness' while promoting 'that which is right, true and good according to Scripture.'

The petition has also been shared on Twitter under the hashtag #BoycottTarget.

Angry: Petitioners say the policy puts women at risk from male predators who pretend to be transgender, and suggests unisex toilets (pictured), but critics say such a crime has never happened in the US

However, a report by CBS on April 19 said that there has never been an example of anyone in America ever having pretended to be a transgender person in order to assault someone in a bathroom.

It did find just one incident in Canada, in which a mentally ill man assaulted two women in a women's shelter. He was placed in a secure hospital.

On the other hand, the report says, there were 21 murders of transgender people in the US in 2015 - more than 2014, which was previously the highest on record.

And the New York City Anti-Violence Project says in a report that in 2013 transgender women across the US were 1.8 times more likely to experience sexual violence than other survivors.

It also says that 72 percent of people killed in hate violence homicides were transgender women.

On Monday, a Target spokesperson told NPR they were sticking with the policy: 'We certainly respect that there are a wide variety of perspectives and opinions.

'As a company that firmly stands behind what it means to offer our team an inclusive place to work - and our guests an inclusive place to shop - we continue to believe that this is the right thing for Target.'

Target's decision to let transgender customers and staff follows a wave of anti-transgender sentiment that has swept America in the past year.

The most notable example is North Carolina's decision to pass its House Bill 2, which - among other things - restricts bathroom usage in certain spaces, including government buildings, to a person's biological sex.

That bill received a series of withering attacks from across the country, with Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen being among many who canceled North Carolina concerts.

Meanwhile, PayPal reversed a decision to build a new office in Charlotte that would have brought 400 jobs to the state.
William 'Wobbles' Soler, 33, appeared for a hearing at Bronx Criminal Court on Monday

A 500-pound gangster who had his arraignment in a courthouse basement basement when he couldn't fit his wheelchair in the elevator last year has lost nearly 80 pounds since his arrest.

William 'Wobbles' Soler, 33, appeared for a hearing at Bronx Criminal Court on Monday where he was sure to pack some snacks with him, according to the New York Post.

Soler, also dubbed 'Redrum' (murder backward), reportedly had some honey-roasted Planters peanuts nestled between his arm and his wheelchair.

'Have you seen him? Yes, he lost a lot of weight, definitely 60 to 80 pounds,' Soler's lawyer Brian Sullivan told the New York Post.

Despite his recent weight loss, the obese gangster had to enter through the side of the courtroom since his wheelchair does not fit in the door that inmates usually enter through. His lawyers and prosecutors spoke to a judge for several minutes before the case was adjourned until May 6.

Soler is facing 25 years in prison after allegedly plotting the murder of rival gang members and smuggling dozens of guns into New York City via Metro-North trains.

Soler, his lawyer, prosecutors and a judge met in an eight-by-ten-foot basement room of the courthouse for the gang member's arraignment last May, which he pleaded not guilty on all counts.

'Basically, it's a love seat on wheels,' Bronx Supreme Court Justice George Villegas told the New York Post, upon seeing the wheelchair last year.

Lost weight: William 'Wobbles' Soler, 33, pictured on Monday, looked as though he dropped 60 to 80 pounds, according to his lawyer Brian Sullivan

Still big: Despite his recent weight loss, the obese gangster had to enter through the side of the courtroom since his wheelchair does not fit in the door that inmates usually enter through

Soler and his ring of nine gun runners reportedly bought 93 firearms on the streets of Westchester in New York state, Maine and Connecticut last year.

They then hid the weapons - including .22 caliber guns and semiautomatic rifles - in suitcases and boarded Metro-North trains to the Big Apple.

But they were caught after they sold the guns to undercover NYPD detectives in the city for 'several times' their original cost, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman told the New York Post.

The 500-pound gangster, pictured here prior to his arrest, who had his arraignment in the basement when he couldn't fit his wheelchair in the courthouse elevator last year has lost nearly 80 pounds since his arrest

Guns and murder: Soler is facing 25 years in prison after allegedly plotting the murder of rival gang members and smuggling dozens of guns into New York City via Metro-North trains
The first senior officer in charge at the Sydney siege has said he expected it to end peacefully and has defended their decision not to storm the Lindt Cafe sooner but 'contain and negotiate'.

NSW police Assistant Commissioner Michael Fuller was in command for the first two hours of the siege in December 2014, and is the most senior state police officer to yet give evidence.

He told the coronial inquest the policy to 'contain and negotiate' had always been successful in his experience, Daily Telegraph reports.

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NSW police Assistant Commissioner Michael Fuller was in command for the first two hours of the siege in December 2014, and is the most senior state police officer to yet give evidence (pictured on Tuesday)

When asked by counsel assisting the inquest, Jeremy Gormly SC, if his 'expectation was a negotiated and peaceful outcome', Mr Fuller answered: 'Correct.'

He said although he had a feeling something was 'seriously wrong', they had little information and could not rule out it was a botched robbery so early into the hostage situation.

'There was no active shooter,' Mr Fuller said on Tuesday while describing the incident's early moments.

'There was no information to suggest there is any immediate threat in that environment to any of the hostages,' he said.

He said although he had a feeling something was 'seriously wrong', they had little information and could not rule out it was a botched robbery so early into the hostage situation

'There was an enormous amount we needed to know.'

At this stage police were uncertain about how many captives were inside.

Mr Fuller said he had dealt with countless sieges in the past, usually about one a month resulting from botched crimes or troubled domestic situations.

'Contain and negotiate has been a resolution where no one has lost their lives,' he said.

The Tactical Operations Unit acted only when there was a 'trigger' of a death or serious injury.

The unit only stormed the building when gunman Man Monis shot dead hostage and Lindt Cafe manager Tori Johnson at 2.13am.

Barrister and mother-of-three Katrina Dawson was killed in the crossfire by the fragment of a police bullet when officers responded.

Survivors Marcia Mikhael (left) and Fiona Ma (right) during a ceremony to commemorate the first anniversary of the Lindt Cafe siege

Hostages run free with their hands up from the cafe in central Sydney

One of 18 hostages runs towards police from Lindt Cafe in Sydney's Martin Place in the CBD

Families of the victims have reportedly questioned why they waited so long to act.

It was 17 hours after Monis took the 18 hostages.

The siege reached its deadly conclusion after 17 hours when officers stormed the Martin Place building following Monis's point blank murder of Tori Johnson.

Monis was gunned down and barrister Katrina Dawson also died after being hit by shrapnel from police rounds, fired as they entered the cafe.

While in charge Mr Fuller was able to assemble and dispatch teams to deal with three bomb threats Monis had made.

Nothing was found at Circular Quay, the Seven Network headquarters or at George Street - the locations at which Monis had said there were explosives stashed.

But, Mr Fuller said, police were still uncertain whether Monis had a bomb in his backpack.

'He had a real firearm, he's taken hostages, he's gone to these lengths, it's not unreasonable to think that he has an explosive device on him,' he said.

Mr Fuller will continue evidence on Tuesday afternoon as the inquest continues.

The unit only stormed the building when gunman Man Monis shot dead hostage and Lindt Cafe manager Tori Johnson (pictured) at 2.13am. Barrister and mother-of-three Katrina Dawson was killed in the crossfire by the fragment of a police bullet when officers responded
Boston College has been ordered to hand over tapes to police in Northern Ireland made by Anthony McIntyre, where he recorded IRA members talking about the Troubles

A U.S. university has been ordered to hand over more tapes to police in Northern Ireland where former IRA members were recorded talking about the role they played in the Troubles.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland, who have also been probing the murder of Jean McConville in 172, has requested the tapes, held at Boston College as part of the Belfast Project.

The tapes were made during the five-year project where former paramilitaries, both republican and loyalist, were interviewed about their roles in the 40 years of violence that blighted Northern Ireland with the understanding the recordings would be private until after their deaths.

After a long legal battle against the college, the PSNI Ireland was handed custody of the some of recordings for potential evidence last year relating to the abduction and murder of mother-of-ten Mrs McConville.

Their seizure prompted a flurry of arrests in 2014, including that of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams in connection with the murder of Mrs McConville, although he was later released without charge.

Now a subpoena has been issued after a request by the PSNI to force Boston College to turn over all tapes relating to Anthony McIntyre, a former IRA member who served as a researcher on the project.

The subpoena states that the university must hand over all notes and tapes belonging to Mr McIntyre to the John Joseph Moakley courthouse in Boston on May 6.

It is unclear why authorities in Northern Ireland have requested these new set of tapes.

The tapes are held at Boston College in the U.S., pictured and were made as part of the Boston Project, where former paramilitaries, both republican and loyalist, were interviewed about their roles in the 40 years of violence that blighted Northern Ireland

However, Mr McIntyre says he plans to fight the subpoena branding it 'vengeful and vindictive'.

In a statement, he said: 'I will not be cooperating in any way. I will not break breath to them.'

Meanwhile the Boston Project's director Ed Moloney and researcher Wilson McArthur called the legal move a 'PSNI fishing exercise'.

Previously tapes relating to the murder of Jean McConville, left, were handed over to police, which saw Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams arrested but he was never charged and has maintained his innocence

They told the Guardian: ' The subpoena request provides no details of specific charge, investigation or offence of which Dr McIntyre is accused, no names of alleged victims, no dates, no places.'

The legal case to have some of the tapes handed over to authorities in Northern Ireland began in 2011 when subpoenas were issued to secure interviews with former IRA volunteers Brendan Hughes, who died in 2008 and Dolours Price, who died in 2013.

Their eventual seizure prompted a flurry of arrests in 2014, including that of Sinn Fein leader Mr Adams after Hughes and Price claimed he ordered the killing of Mrs McConville - allegations he vehemently denied.

Mrs McConville was dragged screaming from her home in Divis flats in west Belfast before being murdered and secretly buried. Pictured is her son Michael who has long campaigned for justice for his mother

Police in Northern Ireland arrested Mr Adams in 2014, but he was never charged and has maintained his innocence.

Mrs McConville was dragged screaming from her home in Divis flats in west Belfast by an IRA gang of around 12 men and women in 1972 and it was the last time her children saw her alive.
Before he was sentenced, Bagshaw apologized to the family

said he planned the slayings and covered up his tracks

A teenage boy who murdered his girlfriend with a shovel after she told him she was pregnant has been given 15 years to life in prison.

Darwin Christopher Bagshaw, 18, beat Anne Kasprzak, 15, to death on March 10, 2012, and dumped her body near Salt Late City, Utah, after she told him she was carrying his baby and they needed to run away together.

But an autopsy later revealed she wasn't expecting.

She ran away from her house after having an argument with her parents. They reported her missing, but just 24 hours later her bloodied and bruised body was found in the Jordan River.

Bagshaw's defense lawyers said the boy, who was 14 at the time, just snapped as he couldn't process the information that he was going to be a father in the right way.

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Darwin Christopher Bagshaw, 18, (pictured left in court on Tuesday) has been given 15 years to life in prison after he beat Anne Kasprzak, 15, to death with a shovel on March 10, 2012, and dumped her body near Salt Late City, Utah, after she told him she was carrying his baby

Bagshaw (pictured in court on Tuesday) entered a guilty plea last week and apologized to Anne's family as he was sentenced. He was only 14 when killed his girlfriend

But prosecutors said Bagshaw planned the slaying and went to great lengths to make sure he covered he covered his tracks.

Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Peter Leavitt said: 'He took her life in the most calculated, cold-blooded and brutal way that he could.

Sentencing Bagshaw, 3rd District Judge James Blanch said the crime 'unspeakably vicious and cruel', according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Before Blanch handed down the sentence, Bagshaw offered a quiet apology to the girl's family.

He said that he would have preferred to do in private without television cameras and the public watching.

Kasprzak went missing on March 10, 2012, and her bloody body was found in a river a day later. An autopsy later showed she suffered blows that crushed her face and head. She was also found not to be expecting

Bagshaw's defense lawyers said he just snapped as he couldn't process the information that he was going to be a father in the right way, but prosecutors said the saying was planend

He said: 'I'm very sorry for everything that happened. I want to apologize to Annie's family.'

Dennis Kasprzak, the girl's father, was emotional Monday as he described looking at his daughter's body after she was found in the Jordan River.

When she was pulled from the water, Anne was so badly beaten that she was unrecognizable.

Investigators had to use scars, clothing and dentistry to identify her, according to search warrants.

One of her fingernails was pushed back and she appeared to have defensive wounds on her hands.

A friend of Bagshaw's had initially backed up his story about the nosebleed but later told police it was a lie concocted by the teen.

An autopsy later showed she suffered blows that crushed her face and head. Police said they found her blood on Bagshaw's shoelace, and he asked a friend to lie and say she had had a nosebleed.

'What I saw there, your honor, wasn't my daughter,' Dennis Kasprzak said. 'It was something you would see being hit by a train.  The only identifiable feature of my young daughter, my baby girl, was a little dimple on her chin.'

'This wasn't one hit with a shovel,' he added. 'It would have been repeated hits, over and over.'

Bagshaw was arrested in fall 2014, more than two years after Kasprzaks slaying, and charged with first-degree felony murder.
A 12-year-old girl was forced to seek permission for an abortion from the Supreme Court of Queensland after she fell pregnant to another child.

Court documents show the girl, referred to as 'Q', spent a month seeking an abortion, seeing a GP before a social worker, two specialist obstetricians and a psychiatrist, before it was deemed she needed a court order to proceed.

Documents showed the girl fell pregnant nine weeks earlier to a child of a similar age and the boy was unaware of the pregnancy.

A 12-year-old girl was forced to seek permission to have an abortion from the Queensland Supreme Court, under Queensland's criminal laws (stock image)

Central Queensland public health took the matter to court after doctors, the girl and her parents agreed she was mature enough to consent to the abortion.

They said continuing the pregnancy could cause her physical and emotional harm.

The judgement was delivered on April 20 but only published on Monday.

It showed the Supreme Court allowed 'Q' to take Mifepristone and Misoprostol to terminate the pregnancy within five days.

In documents it shows the court ordered if the drugs failed to cause the abortion within a period of 72 hours, the pregnancy be terminated via surgery on Tuesday.

The court (pictured) granted her permission to have the abortion in a judgement delivered on April 20, that was only published today. The girl was allegedly nine weeks pregnant to another child of a similar age

In an affidavit the girl said the pregnancy had been 'very stressful emotionally'.

In court documents Judge Duncan McMeekin said 'Q' was at risk of harm if the abortion did not take place.

'While there are strong grounds to believe that Q is at risk of suffering psychological harm, and serious harm, if the pregnancy is not terminated there is good reason to think that she is at considerable risk of physical harm as well,' he said.

'She reports that 'earlier this year and during periods of emotional distress', she ran away from home, cut herself and attempted suicide on two occasions'.

Justice McMeekin said the girl had difficulties adjusting to her parents' separation, before citing a psychiatrist who examined her.

He said the girl had maintained her view consistently throughout that the pregnancy should be terminated.

In court documents Justice McMeekin said 'Q' had 'no wish to be a mother'.

'Unsurprisingly she feels that she is not fitted for that task,' he said.

Under Queensland law, it is illegal to administer a drug, use force or 'any other means' while intending to procure an abortion.
A husband shot his wife dead as she cowered in their basement with her children before he turned the gun on himself, police have said.

Police found Bryce and Courtney Monson dead inside their home in Ramsey, Minnesota, on Friday night and officers are now investigating the couple's deaths as a murder-suicide.

Mrs Monson, 30, 'had sought refuge' in the basement with three of her four young children when her husband, 41, opened fire, Anoka County Sheriff's Office said.

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Courtney Monson (left), 30, was shot dead by her husband Bryce Monson (right) as she cowered in her basement with three of her four young children, police have said

Mrs Monson (pictured with one of her children) 'had sought refuge' in the basement with three of her four young children when her husband, 41, opened fire, Anoka County Sheriff's Office said

Bryce Monson 'shot his wife multiple times with a semi-automatic handgun, and then shot himself', the sheriff's office said.

The children - aged 12, nine, three and two years old - are believed to have phoned 911 and dispatchers heard 'screaming and crying' down the line.

The youngsters ran out of the house to their neighbors, with the eldest child carrying his youngest sister, witness Kathy Anderson told Fox 9.

Friends told the Star Tribune that Mrs Monson had been trying to leave her husband and was seeking counselling to help her do so. She was also said to be looking for a new job.

She was an active member of her local gym Koru Fitness, with its owner, Nicole Kutches, calling it her 'safe place'.

'She found a place here where she felt safe and accepted, she could come here and be herself,' Ms Kutches said.

Bryce Monson 'shot his wife multiple times with a semi-automatic handgun, and then shot himself', the sheriff's office said. Pictured, the family's home in Ramsey, Minnesota

'This is a woman who was completely dedicated and would encourage people without realizing she was doing that.

'It's a big loss, everybody is so grief-stricken and saddened by the whole thing. We ache for those kids.'

Close friend Tyler Roland has set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for the children and funeral costs.

In a touching tribute, he wrote: 'Courtney Monson was a loving mother, daughter, sister, cousin, friend, workout buddy and so much more.

'She loved her children. She strived to provide them with the best life possible. It is our aim to help that legacy she hoped for, live on.'

Bryce Monson had previous convictions for fleeing a police officer and for DWI and driving with an open bottle.

Court records show he was convicted of fleeing a police officer, and that he pleaded guilty to a DWI and driving with an open bottle.

The four children are now in the care of their grandparents.
Suspect: William Gonzalez, 29, is believed to be one of two men who set up a fake date so they could rob the victim. He is alleged to have taken the man's money, clothing, car and iPhone in the robbery

A man who thought that he was meeting a woman at her house before their date got a lot more than he bargained for when he was met by two gun-toting men who took everything he had - including his clothes.

The man, who is not being named, drove to the house in Dania Beach Saturday to pick up his date, but was perturbed when he saw two men waiting in a black Toyota Corolla near the home.

The 'date' assured him by text they were just her neighbor's sons, but when he approached the house, they pulled guns on him and told him to strip, The Sun Sentinel reported.

The men took his clothing, .40 caliber pistol, wallet, iPhone 6, jewelry and 2014 Mercedes-Benz before driving off.

The iPhone had been left in the man's car when it was stolen, so police used its 'Find My iPhone' feature to track it down to a gas station in Lauderhill.

However, the moment they arrived, the suspect took off in the white Mercedes, resulting in a car chase that ended in Tamarac, where the driver escaped on foot.

He was caught shortly afterwards and found to have the victim's wallet and legally owned Glock 27 pistol - as well as the car keys for a nearby black Toyota Corolla containing a gun, handcuffs, gloves and duct tape.

The suspect, 29-year-old William Gonzalez of Coral Springs, then gave a 'detailed confession,' The Sun Sentinel reported, in which he admitted to committing the robbery with a man named 'Savage.'

He said the mystery date was an acquaintance of his who'd been texting the victim to keep up the pretense of the date.

He also admitted to being involved in another robbery, carjacking and kidnapping incident Friday, though authorities were not releasing details of that crime.

Gonzalez, who has three children and had previously worked in advertising, told a court Friday that his bank account was overdrawn.

He will remain in jail until a hearing on Thursday. It is not known if he will contest the allegations of carjacking and brandishing a firearm during a violent crime.
Sir Philip Green's stepson bought a store from BHS just days before the tycoon sold the company last year - and made a 3million profit a few months later.

Property developer Brett Palos is the son of Sir Philip's wife Tina, and sits on the board of the businessman's Arcadia Group, owner of brands such as Topshop.

The 41-year-old's company Thackeray Estates bought the freehold of BHS's Ealing branch in West London in March last year for 6.9million.

Only a week later, Sir Philip announced that he had sold the ailing chain to mysterious investors Retail Acquisitions for 1.

Family: Brett Palos, left, sits on the board of Arcadia Group owned by his stepfather Sir Philip Green, right

BHS has now gone into administration, threatening the future of 11,000 workers and casting doubt on the role of Sir Philip in offloading the firm so soon before its collapse.

In June, the Ealing store was sold by Thackeray to developer Southern Grove and investment firm Topland for a price of 10million - netting Mr Palos' business a profit of 3million.

Sir Philip insisted that he was not involved in the decision to sell the property to his son-in-law at a price 30 per cent below what it was worth three months later.

The bid from Southern Grove and Topland apparently came after the local council gave the green light to a nearby development.

At the time the deal came to light, a source close to Sir Philip told the Sunday Times: 'People buy and sell buildings all day long.

'Do you think we would knowingly sell something for 7million we could have sold for 10million?'

Property: The Ealing branch of BHS was bought by Mr Palos' company shortly before Arcadia sold the firm. The property was then sold on to a developer, attracted to the site because the local council have given the go-ahead for redevelopment of a neighbouring block

Headquarters: BHS's main office in Marylebone, pictured, is believed to be still owned by Sir Philip and is worth 40million. Sir Philip could make more rent from new tenants if BHS staff have to move out

A spokesman for Thackeray Estates did not return a request for comment on the transaction today.

As well as his involvement with his stepfather's company, Mr Palos controls a number of high-value properties around London and elsewhere.

Sir Philip appears to hold his stepson in high regard - suggesting that he may be better suited to succeed in the retail world than the tycoon's own children Brandon and Chloe.

He previously said of his son and daughter that they may not have what it takes, adding: 'They're both very smart, but you've got to dedicate yourself to this stuff, it doesn't happen on its own.'

Mr Palos is the son of Tina Green from her first marriage. She married Sir Philip in 1990, when she was 41 and he was 38, and soon became integral to his business empire.

Most of the shares in his companies are owned by her rather than him - allowing the couple to take advantage of the fact that she lives in Monaco, thus reducing their tax bill without forcing Sir Philip to limit the amount of time he spends in Britain.

Glamorous: Sir Philip on the front row of a fashion show with his daughter Chloe, wife Tina and Naomi Campbell

Mr Palos is not the only member of the family to have retained an interest in BHS property even after the sale of the firm last year.

Sir Philip is said to be the owner of the company's headquarters in Marylebone, Central London, worth an estimated 40million.

That means that if BHS is forced to leave the office building in the wake of its administration, the firm's former owner could cash in by attracting a more profitable tenant.

The Topshop tycoon is facing calls to repay 400million in dividends which he took out of BHS after he bought the company in 2000.

He is currently being investigated by the pensions regulator in a bid to make him help fill the 571million deficit in the firm's retirement scheme.

Sir Philip has also been accused of endangering BHS by selling it to Retail Acquisitions, which is headed by former racing driver and bankrupt Dominic Chappell.

Administrators who took charge of the company yesterday say they intend to sell it as a going concern, and will continue trading for the time being.
For the first time, half of Republican voters are supporting the party's frontrunner Donald Trump.

Trump hit 50 percent this week in the NBC News/SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking poll, a record for The Donald in a poll of registered Republicans, which started tracking their views in late December of last year.

Sen. Ted Cruz is 24 points behind, receiving support from 26 percent of registered Republicans, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich receives support from just 17 percent.

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Donald Trump can now boast that half the Republican party is supporting him, as a new NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll shows him at 50 percent

GOP frontrunner Donald Trump finally hit the big 5-0 this week in a weekly tracking poll that tracks the sentiment of registered Republican voters

In the new poll, Trump is up four points, while Kasich and Cruz are both down two.

This six point swing, NBC News reports, is the biggest shift the tracking poll has seen thus far and could mark the beginning of the end for Trump's two rivals.

Just a month ago, Trump's campaign was taking on water with the battery charge levied against his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

He had participated in an embarrassing radio interview in Wisconsin, in which the host was one of his biggest detractors  something Trump apparently was unaware of when he called in.

He lost that state to Cruz too.

The Texas senator also out-maneuvered Trump in Colorado, ensuring that all that state's delegates were Cruz supporters.

There was also the abortion flip-flop, in which Trump told MNSBC's Chris Matthews that women who undergo abortions should face 'some form of punishment.'

With more brand name Republicans supporting Donald Trump, he may have a good night tonight in states like Pennsylvania, which holds a closed primary

He later said what he meant to say was doctors.

But then New York happened and Trump seemingly turned it all around.

Beyond just the six-point swing, while support among other demographic groups remained consistent for Trump, he saw a six-point gain among those who identify as Republicans.

He tends to do better with independents who lean Republican versus brand name Republicans.

Now, 49 percent of the latter are supporting The Donald, while Republican support for Cruz and Kasich is down this week.

This could be a sign that the party is finally consolidating around the frontrunner.

Trump's boost in Republican support could also assist him in today's set of five primaries.

Four of the states  Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware  hold closed primaries where only registered Republicans can vote.
Amanda Knox has written about the time she recently suffered a case of PTSD induced by a kidney infection.

The 28-year-old who spent almost four years in an Italian prison after being convicted in the murder of her British roommate while studying abroad, detailed her 'baby panic attack' in her latest column for the West Seattle Herald.

The Seattle, Washington native was acquitted and allowed to return to the U.S. in 2011, but she says her imprisonment still haunts her in minor illnesses and every day occurrences like waiting in line at the grocery store.

Amanda Knox has written about how a recent kidney infection triggered a 'baby panic attack' about her nearly four years of imprisonment. Knox pictured above in 2011, after returning to the U.S. from Italy

For nearly four years, Knox was imprisoned in Perugia, Italy, after an Italian jury initially found her guilty in the 2007 murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher

When she came down with a kidney infection recently, Knox says her partner was caring for her, but it didn't stop the flood of scarring memories coming flowing back.

She says her anxiety spiked and she started to cry, and that her partner had to talk to her to calm her down from 'what felt like a baby panic attack'.

'The problem was, though the situation of being nursed by my partner for a kidney infection was as far away as you could get from the isolation of imprisonment, the feeling of physical pain triggered the memory of existential pain.

In her latest column for the West Seattle Herald, Kercher writes about her 'partner' calming her down through the panic attack. She does not name the partner by name. Last year, she was engaged to musician Colin Sutherland (pictured together above on March 27, 2015). It's unclear whether they are still together or not

She goes on to explain how even the most mundane of actions and chores triggers memories of her time behind bars. Knox says that standing in line at the grocery store becomes standing in line for a pat down. And when there's a closed door that she can open, she's reminded of the locked doors of prison.

These moments, Knox writes, makes her empathize with fellow exonerees, and other people trying to get past traumatic events, such as rape.

'These kinds of pain are complex, and yet, we expect ourselves and others to eventually get over whatever happened and move on. And if someones painful memories continue to be triggered by mundane circumstances, we judge them for indulging in victimhood,' she writes.

Meredith Kercher's dead body was found in the apartment she shared with Knox in Perugian in November 2007. Prosecutors initially argued that Knox and her then boyfriend Raffaelo Sollecito were complicit in the murder

'But like physical healing, psychological healing leaves a scar. Memories dont just go away. And even if they could, I wouldnt want them to.

'Healthy trauma processing transforms the inescapable past into a powerful tool that you can pull from your belt as occasions for empathy arise. When a friend looks to me for comfort in a moment of tragic upheaval, I tap into the memory of returning to prison after hearing the guilty verdict and 26-year sentence. Its painful to remember this, but it helps me connect with my friend.

Knox doesn't mention her 'partner' by name, but as of last year she was engaged to Colin Sutherland, a rock musician based in New York. It's unclear whether the two are still a couple.

Also last year, Knox got a final victory in the case against her, when Italy's highest court definitively exonerated her in the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher.

Kercher was found murdered in the Perugia apartment they shared in November 2007. Though a man named Rudy Guede was convicted of Kercher's murder, Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were implicated in the crime, with Italian prosecutors arguing that Kercher was murdered in a violent drug-fueled orgy.
Controversial mayor is said to have demanded keys to his Mercedes

His wife, Aysha, was staying at the home when Mr Mehajer turned up

Police were called to a 'domestic violence' incident at Salim Mehajer's sister-in-law's house after the suspended deputy mayor was heard 'screaming and knocking at the door'.

The controversial politician's wife, Aysha, was staying at the home in Horsley, near Wollongong, with her sister when Mr Mehajer turned up to demand the keys to the Mercedes that she had been using.

Aysha gave back the keys on Monday, but Mr Mehajer had to leave another car behind which was then taken away by a local towing company, according to The Daily Telegraph.

The former beautician, who changed her name from April Learmonth, is said to have left for the Gold Coast as police consider seeking a domestic violence order against Mr Mehajer.

Salim Mehajer's wife (right) was staying at her sister's home in Horsley, near Wollongong, when the suspended deputy mayor (left) turned up and demanded the keys to a Mercedes

The controversial politician is now being investigated over the domestic violence incident on Monday

A spokesman for NSW Police told Daily Mail Australia that an investigation is underway following a an alleged domestic violence incident at a home in Horsley on Monday.

'The incident involved a 29-year-old man. Police have spoken to witnesses and they are assisting with inquiries.'

The couple's shared Instagram has since been set to private.

Aysha reportedly packed her bags and left the couple's mansion in Lidcombe, western Sydney, in March to stay with family in the NSW Illawarra region.

She is believed to have moved out eight months after their multimillion-dollar wedding, and did not turn up at the party he threw for her 30th birthday earlier this month.

Aysha is believed to have moved out eight months after their multimillion-dollar wedding

When asked why he was being investigated over the incident, Mehajer said: 'Once I find out I will inform you'

But Mr Mehajer has posted numerous photos of himself and his wife on social media claiming the pair's relationship is 'unbreakable' following rumours about their marriage.

In April, he posted the words: 'Our love. True love. One love separated by a heart and crown emoji.'

He shared another snap of his wife, Aysha, later, captioned: 'my best friend, my soul mate, my love of my life.'

A Current Affair said friends of the couple claim the property developer and suspended Auburn deputy mayor had been constantly phoning and texting his wife in an attempt to get her back.

When contacted earlier this week, Mehajer claimed he was still 'living happily' with his wife.

'Aysha and I are not separated, we are living happily, just away from our Lidcombe residence  somewhere in Sydney. Kind regards, Salim Mehajer,' he told the Daily Telegraph.

When asked why he was being investigated over the incident, Mehajer said: 'Once I find out I will inform you.'

Just days ago it emerged that six people accused of attempting to rig an election for Mr Mehajer have had the case against them dropped because it took too long for charges to be made.

Charges against the six stemmed from allegations they made fake documents to help Mr Mehajer be elected to the Auburn Council in 2012.

But because authorities did not pursue the case in court until December last year, the charges fell apart because legally they must be made within six months of the offence being committed.
Police refused to sleep in a migrant shelter cleared for them during Barack Obama's trip to Germany after they found the premises and beds covered in urine, blood, faeces and semen.

Photographs of the disgusting conditions in the rooms were posted on Facebook two days ago by the union for North Rhine-Westphalia Police.

The officers were asked to stay in the former migrant home as their own police barracks was accommodating security team members attached to world leaders' meetings with Obama.

Officers were shocked to find the showers inside the accommodation (pictured) stained brown and yellow

An unknown substance is seen on the sheets of one of the bunk beds at the former asylum seeker centre

A smear is visible on the edge of a mattress at the centre, which police eventually refused to sleep in

Police were asked to stay there instead of their normal barracks because it was full with security teams working the Obama visit to Hanover. Pictured are blood stains on a mattress

In a post on the police union's Facebook page, they described seeing cockroaches 'eating' leftover food

The carpet was also seen covered in vomit (left) and other substances (right) wet the floors next to beds

The images showed spots of blood were dotted on a mattress, while what appeared to be faeces was smeared on another, Junge Freiheit reported.

Wet patches also covered the floors of the bunk bed accommodation and a large patch of vomit was stuck to the carpet.

However, police refused to sleep in the filthy conditions, instead opting to kip in their vehicles while parked at a zoo - where they were yesterday seen being woken up by giraffes.

The post on the police union page described the accommodation conditions as 'catastrophic' and said cockroaches were seen eating leftover food.

Although it 'welcomed the exchange of housing units' during such events, it said organisers must ensure clean standards were met.

Around 250 officers slept in their vans at the Serengeti Park in Hodenhagen, northern Germany, before the meeting of the G5 group of nations in Hanover.

Serengeti Park has 1,500 animals roaming free in grounds designed to resemble their natural habitat.

For the giraffes, which are natives of Africa, it is a landscape of open grassland and patches of woodland.

Visitors usually move around the park in safari vehicles, with protective rails keeping the animals in view, but largely out of reach.
Millions of patients each year in the United States suffer from chronic wounds  those that haven't healed long after they should have  and caring for them accounts for billions of dollars in annual spending.

And with obesity and diabetes rates skyrocketing in recent decades, the need for such services has only grown, while the field of caring for chronic wounds has become its own specialization, with centers and departments popping up across the country, including in Montana.

"Ten years ago we didn't have wound care specialists, and a lot of these patients just fell through the cracks," said Dr. Tim Dernbach, a cardiovascular surgeon and medical director of St. Vincent Healthcare's Wound Healing Center.

Chronic wounds are characterized by hypoxia, or a lack of oxygen reaching the surrounding tissue, which in turn leads to bacteria thriving in the affected area and keeping the wound from healing, even over a period of months.

Common chronic wounds include ulcers  including diabetic, pressure, arterial, atypical and a number of other types  as well as radiation injuries, problematic skin grafts or flaps, osteomyelitis and other wounds that haven't healed after 30 days or so.

Dernbach said that people who just go to an emergency department or get a short inpatient hospital stay for chronic wounds usually won't get the continued care and treatment they need and that 90 percent will return to the hospital if they're only admitted to the ED.

"There are people who've had these wounds for two, three, four years and they wouldn't heal," he said. "It markedly devalues the quality of life. These wounds, without appropriate care, will never heal."

Treatment options

At centers like St. Vincent's Wound Center, there are a number of treatment options. They include: extended time in hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which forces oxygen into the areas not getting enough to promote healing and the growth of new blood vessels; advanced dressings; removal of dead tissue; vascular work; reconstruction; or skin substitutes or grafts in the affected area.

Mark White, director of wound care and hyperbarics, said that the center employs a team of experts  including two plastic surgeons, a general surgeon, an interventional radiologist, an infectious disease doctor, three vascular surgeons, a primary care doctor, a podiatrist and numerous support staff  to treat a growing number of patients.

"It has just exploded," he said of the chronic wound care industry.

Annually, chronic wounds affect as many as 6.5 million patients in the U.S., with more than $25 billion spent on treatment.

With drastic increases in both obesity and diabetes  a recent World Health Organization said that diabetes rates nearly quadrupled worldwide between 1980 and 2014, from 108 million adults living with the disease to 422 million  the number of patients with chronic wounds is expected to increase in the coming years as well.

One of the most common wounds seen at the St. Vincent Center is diabetic ulcers. The American Podiatric Medical Assocation says they form in an estimated 15 percent of diabetes patients, most often on the bottom of the foot.

Due to what Dernbach called "diabetic foot neuropathy," some patients might lose feeling in their feet, making it tough to know if there's a wound right away.

But, interest in the field is increasing to meet the demand. Both Billings hospitals have wound care centers, and a number of other health care facilities across the state offer at least some related services as well.

When the Wound Healing Center first opened in 2012, it had 2,500 patient visits in its first year.

In 2015, it saw 8,100 visits.

Gathering to learn

Last year, St. Vincent presented its first wound care conference, drawing more than 100 medical professionals and students from the region to spend two days learning about the issue.

This year's conference on April 14 and 15 drew even more people, and Dernbach said that more than 100 people have visited the center during the past year to observe.

"It's really exciting for us to see this many people here," he said.

Among the attendees  both at the conference and visits to the center  are students in Rocky Mountain's Master of Physician Assistant Studies program.

For the last two years, staff from the center has been providing guest lectures to the students, who in turn spend a day shadowing staff during day-to-day operations.

"It is a wonderful opportunity for them to get out in the community, to see what our Billings medical community has to offer," said Heather Heggem, the PA program's director. "Each student gets a very individualized approach."

It's also a field that brings together a number of the program's modules  including infectious diseases, endocrinology and vascular disease  while allowing the PA students to get out and interact with patients.

"It really does combine a lot of great medicine," Heggem said.

White said that it's important for those learning medicine to get some experience with chronic wound care, but that many newly graduated doctors, nurses and PAs might not have done so.

Students like those in Rocky's PA program, as well as physicians on rotation as part of residency programs, who do spend time there are important throughout Montana because of that growing need.

"They're the tip of the spear for Eastern Montana," he said. "If a PA or a doctor didn't have an understanding of what they're looking at, what they're diagnosing, it can make care more difficult."

Wound care can be complicated and can take a while, but Dernbach said that early treatment with advanced techniques can save time and money in the long run.

If left untreated, he said, it can have lasting effects on a person's life, from keeping them from going out and socializing to affecting their personal relationships, not to mention constantly dealing with an often painful wound.

"We're all just doing the best we can to make the patient better," he said. "If you've got a wound that's still there three or four weeks later, come in and get it evaluated. Don't wait six or eight months."
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton's bickering isn't firing up the party's voters like the 2008 showdown between Clinton and Barack Obama.

Turnout is down 20 percent from that election, which ultimately resulted in an Obama presidency, comparisons between the two races show.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz's match has meanwhile enticed loads more Republicans to cast ballots in 2016, helping the GOP to beat Democrats in terms of turnout.

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Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton's bickering isn't firing up the party's voters like the 2008 showdown between Clinton and Barack Obama. Turnout is down 20 percent from that election, which ultimately resulted in an Obama presidency, comparisons between the two races show.

A review conducted by Breitbart News of both parties' voting records determined that 4.5 million fewer Democrats have voted in the contests held thus far than did in 2008.

Only Arizona, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Maine and Michigan have seen more interest this time around. Sanders won all but one of those - Arizona.

Texas had a steep drop-off of 50 percent, Breitbart found. Mississippi had almost as much, nearly 48 percent.

The news organization based its calculations of of data it purchased from the Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.

It stated as part of its review that it had to rely on the 'best available' information in caucus states that don't require reporting of election information - Iowa, Kansas, Nevada, and Washington.

The Republican Party has seen turnout in its primaries and caucuses increase by 8.5 million voters since the last time its nominee was contested, in 2012, the same data showed.

Turnout was down in just two states so far, Wyoming and Utah, and several non-states with voting rights, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

D.C. switched to a convention this year, and the line to get in extended down a city block, turning off some prospective voters.

At the same time, Arkansas had an increase in primary voters of 170 percent, when rounded to the nearest digit. Trump barely won the state with two percent more of the vote over Ted Cruz.

Idaho had it's turnout nearly quadruple, which can be explained in part by its decision to move from a caucus system to a primary. Cruz handily won there, beating Trump by double digits.

Missouri - another state with a fierce Cruz and Trump battle - had a 272 percent increase in voters.

Trump's home state of New York, which he won easily, had a more than 350 percent increase in Republican primary interest, while Virginia had a showing of 286 percent more voters. Trump also won Virginia but just barely over Marco Rubio.

The last best comparison to this election cycle for Democrats is the one from eight years ago when Obama and Clinton went head-to-head.

Obama was up for reelection in 2012 and faced no real opposition from within his party, driving down turnout in election held in the run-up to November.

Data compiled by the Republican National Committee just before the recent Wyoming Democratic contest and New York primary on both sides backs up Breitbart News' findings.

At that point the RNC determined, according to the Daily Caller, that 5,000,000 million more Americans had voted in Republican primaries and caucuses this year than had participated in Democrats' nomination process.

Turnout was down in 28 of 33 states for Democrats at that point and up in 29 of 34 GOP states.

The party committee had Democratic turnout down by 4,000,000 votes from 2008, and GOP turnout up 8,000,000 million votes.
For more of the latest Sydney news visit www.dailymail.co.uk/sydney

His lawyer pleaded not guilty and said he would apply for bail on Friday

for several weeks before arrest on Sunday

Police said that the 16-year-old spoke about obtaining a

Police will allege the boy spoke to an undercover officer online

A 16-year-old boy charged with planning to carry out an Anzac Day terrorist attack in Sydney was arrested after officers posed as extremist supporters in an online undercover police operation.

It is understood police will allege the boy spoke with an undercover officer through an online chat application, discussing how he could get his hands on a firearm, The Daily Telegraph reported.

The boy was monitored by police for several weeks before they arrested him on Sunday.

Zemarai Khatiz (centre) the lawyer representing a 16-year old-accused of planning an Anzac Day terrorist attack leaves court on Tuesday after entering a not guilty plea

On Monday court documents revealed the teenager was charged after he tried to source a weapon on the weekend at Auburn, in Sydney's west.

He pleaded not guilty.

Appearing at the Parramatta Children's Court on Tuesday, the 16-year-old's lawyer Zemarai Khatiz entered a not guilty plea.

'Hes just an Aussie kid. Hes not a terrorist,' defence counsel Zemarai Khatiz said.

The Sydney teenager, 16, was arrested on Sunday and he was charged with terror-related offences. He was allegedly planning an attack for Anzac Day (above is the Martin Place service) and tried to get a gun

Director of Public Prosecutions lawyer Chris Choi told the court police needed three months before returning to the case so they could examine a 'number of electronic items' seized.

Magistrate Elizabeth Ryan said she was 'unwilling' to keep the teenager in custody that long.

The case will return to court on June 21.

The teenager was not in court on Tuesday, and Mr Khatiz said he there would be a bail application on Friday, with supporting evidence from a psychologist's report.

The boy was arrested near his Auburn home by counter-terrorism police on Sunday.

Upon searching his family home, police did not find any weapons or explosives but they did uncover extremist propaganda, 9News reported.

The boy was charged with one count of acts in preparation for or planning a terrorist act, which carries a maximum penalty of a life imprisonment.

Police say he was acting by himself and no one else was involved.

NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said it was 'really concerning' to see a 16-year-old charged with the offence.

Police presence has been increased across the state following the arrest of the teenager. Above are officers at Martin Place in central Sydney

The boy was taken to Auburn Police Station (pictured) and he appeared at Parramatta Children's Court

'We will be suggesting that there was a proposed attack to happen on this day [Monday] and that being Anzac Day, it is very, very concerning,' he said earlier on Monday.

Comm Scipione would not reveal which suburb the boy had targeted but he did confirm the attack was planned for Sydney.

He also urged families heading to Anzac Day services not to be deterred by the incident.

'The risk from this particular threat has been thwarted... Do not let an event like this stop you from going out,' Comm Scipione said.

'So, please, don't be perturbed. We are doing absolutely everything we can to keep people safe. This threat has been dealt with. Enjoy your day.

Comm Scipione would not reveal which suburb the boy had targeted but he did confirm the attack was planned for Sydney. Above are spectators watching the march in Sydney

He also urged people not to be deterred by the latest threat as it was safe

'People shouldn't have concerns that this person may have other associates out there that may have been joining in the threat.

'We believe it was one person by himself and at this stage we are satisfied.'

Comm Scipione said NSW Police had increased their presence around the state following the arrest.

'At this stage it is a noticeable increase... we are not leaving anything to chance at the moment,' he said.

Comm Scipione said counter terrorism police were forced to act on Sunday afternoon in order to ensure public safety.

NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said: 'We have taken swift action to ensure community safety on the eve of a sacred day on the Australian calendar'

'Clearly we have taken swift action to ensure community safety on the eve of a sacred day on the Australian calendar,' he said.

'I want to assure the NSW community that our counter terrorism capability is such that we were able to move quickly to prevent harm.

'The age of the individual is obviously a concern for us, and it remains a measure of the ongoing task facing law enforcement and the community.'
Two students are suing Kansas State University alleging the school refused to investigate their rapes and other sex assaults at off-campus fraternity houses.

Sara Weckhorst and Tessa Farmer, both 21, allege Kansas State told them they wouldn't do anything about the reported rapes because they occurred off campus, according to federal lawsuits filed last week.

The women, who are still students at Kansas State, contend that the university's practice endangers students and violates federal law by creating a hostile learning environment for victims, according to the civil rights lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court in Kansas.

While the identities of alleged victims of sexual assault are usually protected, attorney Cari Simon said her clients have publicly used their names because they felt they didn't do anything wrong.

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Sara Weckhorst (left) and Tessa Farmer (right) are suing Kansas State Unviersity alleging the school refused to investigate their rapes because they occurred off campus

'If this is what we have to do to make sure that this doesn't happen to a single, one more person, if is this is what it takes  then that is what we have to do,' Weckhorst told ABC News.

The lawsuits allege that by failing to investigate, the university violated Title IX, a federal civil rights law about gender equality in education that prohibits discrimination based on sex.

Both students are seeking unspecified monetary damages and for the university to investigate their allegations.

Weckhorst alleges that she was a freshman in April 2014 when she accepted an invitation to a fraternity event at Pillsbury Crossing, a wildlife area that is a frequent party location not far from campus.

She contends she became 'extremely incapacitated' from consuming a large amount of alcohol and blacked out.

One of the students raped her in his truck while 15 other students looked on, some taking video and photographs, according to the court filing.

Kansas State University (above), in Manhattan, Kansas, is currently the subject of four open federal Title IX investigations for allegedly mishandling sex assault complaints

Farmer (left) alleges she was raped on March 6 last year after a party at a fraternity house. Weckhorst (right) alleges a student raped her in his truck on the way to a fraternity while 15 other students looked on, some taking video and photographs, according to the lawsuit

Her lawsuit also alleges that she was raped multiple times going to and later at a fraternity house.

'It was terrifying,' Weckhorst added. 'I am always fearful they will come back.'

Farmer alleges she was raped on March 6 last year after a party at a different fraternity house where she had become 'very intoxicated.'

She went home, but later returned with a student to the fraternity house, where they had sex.

'If this is what we have to do to make sure that this doesn't happen to a single, one more person, if is this is what it takes  then that is what we have to do Sara Weckhorst

She blacked out and woke up to find another student sexually assaulting her, according to the lawsuit. No fraternity houses were named in either lawsuit.

'I felt worthless and I didn't know how to relieve that pain, there was no closure for it,' Farmer told ABC.

Both women said they reported the sexual assaults to police and went to hospitals where rape kits were taken.

Prosecutors declined to file charges related to Weckhorst's allegations and a decision is pending on whether to file charges in Farmer's case, Simon said.

Weckhorst and Farmer said they reported the assaults to different faculty members - and they decided to file separate complaints with the federal government after they were told by Kansas State officials the incidents would not be investigated because they occurred off campus.

'I went to the offices and they gave me a lot of back and forth, and I answered a lot of questions and they told me they couldn't investigate 'cause it was off campus,' Farmer told ABC.

Prosecutors declined to file charges related to Weckhorst's (left) allegations and a decision is pending on whether to file charges in Farmer's (right) case

The U.S. Department of Education has said that under Title IX, schools have an obligation to respond to such complaints, even if they occur off campus - and its advisory specifically cites fraternities.

Kansas State has 25 fraternities - and all of the houses are based off campus, the New York Times reported.

I felt worthless and I didn't know how to relieve that pain, there was no closure for it Tessa Farmer

Already, Kansas State is the subject of four open federal Title IX investigations for allegedly mishandling sex assault complaints, according to the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.

Kansas State's campus crime statistics show 16 rapes in 2014, six of which occurred off campus.

The lawsuits cite police reports that indicate at least 11 rapes were alleged to have happened at Kansas State fraternities since 2012.

The university, located in Manhattan, Kansas, would not comment beyond an emailed statement: 'Kansas State University does not discuss litigation matters in the media, nor do we publicly discuss individual reports of discrimination, including sexual violence.'

Simon added: 'Schools understand that attending school on a campus alongside an assailant can cause a hostile environment for a student, that it really impacts a victim.

'It can really prevent them from fully accessing their education and can affect their well-being, so schools across the country are investigating these in fact. Kansas State's position is an outlier.'
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They may not have the most fearsome reputation in the animal kingdom, but sheep can still pack a serious punch when push comes to shove.

Incredible images have surfaced of sheep going head-to-head in a goat fighting contest at a fair in Hua County on April 25, in Anyang, Henan Province of China.

About 150 sheep most - most of which were the small-tail han breed - joined the spectacle in front of a modest crowd of villagers at the traditional temple fair.

The breed of sheep, known for their powerful head butting, were divided into groups according to age and weight in an elimination tournament.

The local folk custom drew in locals from a number of neighbouring villages to watch the violent spectacle.

Locals justify the goat fights - which have have come under fire from animal activists by claiming they are an ancient tradition.

Villagers watch two sheep fighting going head to head on April 25 during the temple fair in China's Hua County

About 150 sheep - most of which were small-tail han sheep - joined the spectacle in front of a modest crowd of villagers at the traditional temple fair

The breed of sheep, known for their powerful head butting, were divided into groups according to age and weight in an elimination tournament

The local folk custom drew in locals from a number of neighbouring villages to watch the violent spectacle

In recent years the goat fights have have come under fire from animal activists

A local man helps the victorious ram up after one of many sheep fighting contests held on the day

A villager checks on one of the sheep before the goat-fighting contest held this week in rural China

It is not known if any of the sheep which fought (pictured) were harmed during the fighting
The Royal Navy and coast guard authorities have been investigating why two Belgian naval ships have been allowed to sail close to the Welsh coast for the past 12 hours today.

The colossal BNS Godetia, a command and logistical support ship that is 92 metres long and BNS Lobelia, a 51 metre long minehunter, have been mysteriously circling the coast since late last night.

A Holyhead Coastguard spokesman confirmed the ships were sailing off Cilan Head near Abersoch but said they had 'absolutely no idea what they are up to'.

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BNS Godetia (stock picture), a command and logistical support Belgian Navy ship, has been spotted circling the Welsh coast

This map shows the route the Godetia has taken since midnight - it has been sailing off Cilan Head for more than 12 hours

The colossal ships are believed to have been involved in a task force exercise in the Irish Sea with a Dutch submarine that called in to Dublin at the weekend.

A Marine Traffic map shows the ships heading up the Irish Sea towards the coast and then veering off just before 9pm, in the case of BNS Godetia, and just after 12pm for BNS Lobelia.

They have been going round in circles off the coast ever since.

A Belgian Navy spokesman said the ships were on a training exercise and the Welsh coast 'has an added value in the course of navigation'.

BNS Lobelia (stock picture), a minehunter, has been circling the Welsh coast since 9pm last night

This map shows the route taken by BMS Lobelia - it has been circling the coast just after midnight

The ships are among a number of foreign naval ships sighted in the Irish Sea in recent days.

A Dutch warship, the HNLMS Tromp, is currently off Anglesey sailing from Liverpool to Den Helder.

Captain Bart Ghys, who works for the Belgian Public Affairs Office told MailOnline the ships have been circling off the Welsh coast as part of a training exercise.

'Today the crewmembers of the Lobelia and the Godetia were educating "coastal navigation" to their trainees. Manouvering near the coast is part of the necessary exercice for futur navigation officers.

'The Welsh Coast has always been an added value in this navigation course,' he said.
Their very different lives and public resentment for the Vietnam war had affected their

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The 50-year-old photograph shows four young men who look like they're having the time of their lives, posing with a surfboard in the Florida sun.

But they're not on holiday - just enjoying their freedom while they wait to be sent into the jungles of Vietnam, where they would experience one of the most brutal theaters of combat in living memory.

So when the four reunited on Saturday for their first-ever reunion, it was more than just a cute photo opportunity - it was a chance to recapture a happier, more innocent time, Naples Daily News reported.

Then and now: Both photos show (clockwise from left) Dennis Puleo, now 69; Tom Hanks, 69; Bob Falk, 71; and Bob DeVenezia, 70. The original photo was taken in May 1966, just before the men were sent to Vietnam

Although they have forgotten the exact date, the men agree that the photo was taken in May 1966, 11 years into the war.

It shows Bob Falk, wearing a blue striped shirt; Dennis Puleo mugging for the camera with his mouth open; Bob DeVenezia crouching at the front; and Tom Hanks standing behind him, flexing his chest.

The men had just come out of basic training in Parris Island and were now stationed in San Diego's Camp Pendleton, preparing for the day they would be sent to war.

Each day they would march through mountains for 20 miles and sleep in holes they'd dug in the ground - but at weekends they would live as much as they could, having 'scraps' with Navy recruits in bars or taking trips to Tijuana.

'We were all on the same boat, we were all on the same weapons platoon, we all knew we were going to be cannon fodder, bodies for Vietnam,' DeVenezia, now 70, told the paper. 'You just hook up.'

And the photo - one of several taken that day - is a relic of those more innocent times. 'It's a really funny picture,' DeVenezia said, 'but one with a lot of heart behind it.'

Of course, it couldn't last: all four of these young men were plunged into the horror of war, as were thousands before and after them.

DeVenezia took a bullet in the shoulder during the fighting, and Puelo, now 69, had the last rites read to him after shrapnel tore up his foot, calf and thigh.

'We had the tools. We had the training,' DeVenezia told the paper. 'But nothing trains you for your first combat. Nothing. Zero.'

Recreation: The men took their mission to recreate the photo seriously on Saturday. It was the first time all four had met in the flesh since they were shipped out, as public distaste for the war spoiled their cameraderie

After the war, the men drifted apart and lived successful lives in diverse careers - construction, banking, home security and retail management - and each married, ultimately having six kids between them.

They didn't speak for 45 years, and say that public resentment towards the war, as well as their diverging lives, kept them apart until they each came across an online memorial Hanks, now 69, had made for a mutual friend.

They got in touch but only met up in small groups, until Hanks dug out the photo and had the idea of recreating it.

And so, 50 years on, Hanks, DeVenezia, Puleo and Falk - the oldest at 71 - all reunited to recapture a moment in their shared history.

They rented a condo and picked out clothes - Falk going to six different stores before he found the perfect striped shirt - and borrowed a surfboard from a stranger who'd overheard their story in a surf shop.

Finally, the men got into position - recalling their poses and mannerisms as closely as possible - and the shutter clicked.

'Mission accomplished,' Falk announced as they retired to a fish shack to celebrate.

And celebrate they did - even Puleo, who had previously told the Naples Daily News he didn't want to attend the reunion, said he was happy he'd gone.

But for Hanks, who'd first found the picture, it was something very special.

'One of the best days of my life,' he said.
Sir Bernard Ingham (pictured in 2013) penned a letter in 1996 in which he described Liverpool fans as 'tanked up yobs' and blamed them for the Hillsborough disaster

Margaret Thatcher's former chief press secretary has refused to apologise after describing Liverpool fans as 'tanked up yobs' as he blamed them for the Hillsborough disaster.

Sir Bernard Ingham penned a letter in 1996 in which he tried to dissuade Hillsborough campaigners from taking action, claiming it would do Liverpool 'no good whatsoever' in the 'eyes of the nation'.

He added that the disaster had only unfolded due to 'tanked up yobs' who tried to 'force their way in the ground'. He added that Liverpool should 'shut up about Hillsborough'.

In a second letter to campaigners which was unearthed today, he accused Liverpool fans of being unable to face the 'uncomfortable truth' of the 'real cause' of the tragedy.

But, despite fans today being exonerated of any blame, Sir Bernard has still refused to apologise for his comments.

After the long-awaited verdict, which placed the blame squarely with South Yorkshire Police, he told a Daily Mirror reporter: 'I have nothing to say.'

Sir Bernard has previously defended his comments by claiming that he and Thatcher, who was then Prime Minister, were briefed by officers who apparently told them fans were to blame.

When he was confronted by the Liverpool Echo in 2013, Sir Bernard admitted he had not taken the time to read the Hillsborough Independent Panel report and that he had formed his own view from media reports.

In the first letter, sent to Liverpool fan Graham Skinner - whose friend had died in the disaster - Sir Bernard said the city should 'shut up about Hillsborough'.

He wrote: 'I believe there would have been no Hillsborough disaster if tanked up yobs had not turned up in very large numbers to try to force their way in the ground.'

He then added: 'It will do Liverpool no good whatsoever in the eyes of the nation if, egged on by ambulance chasing lawyers, those who saw their relatives killed at Hillsborough now sue for compensation for the "trauma".

In a letter tweeted today by investigative reporter Mark Williams-Thomas, Sir Bernard said fans could not face the 'uncomfortable truth' about the 'real cause' of the Hillsborough disaster

'Is the pain of losing a relative to be soothed away by a fat cheque? Take my advice Mr Skinner; least said, soonest mended for Liverpool.'

In another letter to a campaigner in the same year, tweeted today by investigative TV reporter Mark Williams-Thomas, Sir Bernard wrote: 'I am sorry you are disgusted with the uncomfortable truth about the real cause of the Hillsborough disaster.

'MOST REASONABLE PEOPLE RECOGNISE THE TRUTH': SIR BERNARD'S SHOCKING LETTER TO HILLSBOROUGH CAMPAIGNER Thank you for your letter of June 13. I am sorry you are disgusted with the uncomfortable truth about the real cause of the Hillsborough disaster. It is my unhappy experience to find that most reasonable people outside Merseyside recognise the truth of what I say. All I get from Merseysude is abuse. I wonder why. You are at least right in believing that you will have to put up with my discomforting views. I cherish the hope that as time goes on you will come to recognise the truth of what I say. After all, who if not the tanked up yobs who turned up late determined to get into the ground caused the disaster? To blame the police, even though they may have made mistakes, is contemptible. Yours sincerely, Sir Bernard Ingham Advertisement

'Who if not the tanked up yobs who turned up late determined to get into the ground caused the disaster? To blame the police, even though they may have made mistakes, is contemptible.'

Today, a jury found a series of failures by police and authorities caused the 1989 stadium tragedy - and concluded the supporters were not to blame for what happened.

Relatives of those who perished in the disaster sobbed and held hands as the jury at last held police to account.

The jury's findings present a damning indictment of the way the match was organised and managed - and the failures of emergency services to respond after the disaster unfolded.

The Crown Prosecution Service has said it will consider the results of a police investigation into the handling of the disaster and what followed, as well a probe by the police watchdog, the IPCC.

South Yorkshire Police Chief Constable David Crompton said his force 'unequivocally' accepts the verdict of unlawful killing and the wider findings reached by the jury.

Leading Hillsborough campaigner Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James died in the disaster, said she was immensely grateful to the people of Liverpool for backing the fight for justice.

Sir Bernard, Thatcher's press secretary for more than a decade, has a history of making controversial comments. In 2013 he described northerners who did not vote Conservative as 'thick'.

On Scotland, he once said: 'I have never understood the Scots, and I defy anybody to understand the Scots.'
An art director claims he was sucker-punched because he looks like Shia LaBeouf.

Mario Licato, who works in advertising, was randomly attacked by the stranger on New York's subway and knocked unconscious on Saturday night while he was on his way to Pianos nightclub.

He has described how he didn't see the assailant until he noticed a fist coming at him.

The punch sent him flying down the stairs at Delancey Street Station on the Lower East Side and, after he fell, he heard someone shouting: 'This is because you look exactly like Shia LaBeouf!'

Art director Mario Licato (left) claims he was punched in the face by a stranger on New York's subway because he looks like Shia LaBeouf (right)

He told Gothamist: 'I was so confused. I was even more confused because I got up and I was like, am I crazy or did I hear him say, "This is because you look like Shia LaBeouf?"

'And [the couple] were like: "Nope. That's exactly what he said as he was running away from you."'

The couple called 911 and helped Licato up the stairs to the sidewalk to wait for an ambulance.

One arrived within minutes, but Licato says the technicians didn't help.

Licato (left) has described how he didn't see the assailant until he noticed a fist coming at him. The punch sent him flying down the stairs and, as he fell, he heard someone shouting: 'This is because you look exactly like Shia LaBeouf! (right)'

Licato is wondering what LaBeouf 'did' to the suspect to provoke him. He questioned whether the assailant has just seen one of his performance art pieces. The actor is pictured with a brown bag over his head at the Berlin Film Festival in 2014

He told the website: 'They got out of the car and the first EMT guy, while I'm gushing blood from my face, with my broken glasses, just says, "Welcome to New York, buddy."

'My response was "Well, f*** you, Im born and raised here." I was like, "Are you kidding me? You're standing in front of somebody who's bleeding out of their face and that's your first response?"'

The medics checked Licato for a concussion.

They found he was clear and said a butterfly bandage would be enough for a cut on his eye.

Then they left without even waiting for the police.

He then told cops the attacker was in his mid-20s, 6 foot to 6-foot-3, and muscular.

He didn't get a good look at him as he was running down the stairs and boarded the train straight after the hit.

Licato said it isn't the first time he has been compared to the Transformers and Even Stevens actor.

But he wants to know why the suspect decided to punch him.

'I wanna know what Shia LaBeouf did to him. What did Shia LaBeouf do to him that he punched somebody that looks like him? He must have did something so mean. Did he steal his girlfriend? Did he just see his last performance art piece?'

In the aftermath, Licato also uploaded a picture of his bruised eye to Instagram.

'I wanna thank the guy who randomly decided he needed to hit me last night. "this happened bc you look exactly like Shia labeouf".

'Well sir you boosted my self esteem bc he's p hot,' he wrote.
A detective put four men through a 'living hell' when they were wrongly accused of gang rape after he cherry picked and airbrushed evidence that could have helped, a court has heard.

Detective Constable Ben Lewis, of Gloucestershire Police was accused of 'stark errors' in his handling of the investigation into Thady Duff, Leo Mahon and Patrick Foster, all 22, and James Martin, 20.

They were accused of gang raping a young woman at a ball at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, Gloucestershire in May 2014.

Thady Duff, left, and Leo Mahon, right, who were cleared of gang raping a young woman at the Royal Agricultural University and are now asking for the CPS to pay their legal costs

The complainant alleged she had been raped and subjected to violence, including strangulation, and some of it had been filmed and shared for others to watch.

The trial had been due to begin at Gloucester Crown Court last month but following delays due to the late disclosure of evidence and a review of the case, the prosecution offered no evidence and the four defendants were cleared.

Now three of the men Mr Duff from Blunsdon, Swindon, Mr Mahon of Cirencester and Mr Foster from Colchester, have returned to court to apply for a proportion of their legal costs to be paid by the prosecution.

They have been left with large legal bills after hiring three QCs to lead the fight to clear their names.

And today a senior barrister criticised the police and in particular Detective Constable Ben Lewis, accusing of 'cherry picking' supportive evidence and 'airbrushing out of the picture' anything that could have helped the four men.

This included text messages sent by the complainant in the hours after the alleged incident and a conversation with a friend about what would happen if the video became common knowledge.

Fellow students Patrick Foster, left and James Martin, right, were also accused of rape but were cleared when the prosecution could offer no evidence

It emerged as the trial was due to begin that police failed to disclose that the complainant was a witness to an alleged rape on an Army base in October 2014 and there were inconsistencies in her evidence. The accused was a soldier and he was cleared at a court martial.

Eleanor Laws QC, representing the three applicants, criticised police for not fully downloading data from the complainants mobile phone, which was only done by an expert instructed by the defence after the trial had been due to start.

She told Judge Jamie Tabor QC that text messages sent after the alleged incident undermined the prosecution case as the complainant discussed 'mundane things.'

She also said it had been 'unadvisable' for Detective Constable Lewis to take on the dual roles of investigator and disclosure officer, which Judge Tabor noted would be 'unthinkable' in a major inquiry.

The complainant alleged she had been raped and subjected to violence, including strangulation, and some of it had been filmed and shared for others to watch at a ball at the Royal Agricultural University, pictured

Miss Laws added: 'If the level of contact that took place between the complainant and the officer in the case was highly unusual, it was not against the rules.

'In my experience it is unusual. He was feeding the complainant information she should not have had.

'He must have realised there was a real danger of cross-contamination because he was discussing with her that she should talk to other witnesses about giving statements.

'In the end there was one witness who came very close to supporting what she said happened - and she was very close to the complainant.

'He failed to disclose matters that undermined the complainants credibility. He failed to disclose material that undermined the prosecution case and assist the defence.

'This material taken together was so significant that in my submission there have been clearly stark errors in relation to matters that were taken into account in offering no evidence.'

Miss Laws then expalined that the decision to end the prosecution against the men should have been taken 'a long time ago'.

She explained: 'There have been a series of stark errors in relation to the telephone and the Royal Military Police material and there are four young men whose lives have been on hold.

A trial had been due to begin at Gloucester Crown Court, pictured, last month but following delays due to the late disclosure of evidence and a review of the case, the prosecution offered no evidence and the four defendants were cleared

'It has been a living hell. It would have been a complete travesty. They are all innocent men.

'They showed the video of a consensual incident and of course we know that happened in relation to the complainant and another man and she got upset by it and he wasnt waiting two years for a trial.

'Yes, their behaviour is bad in showing what they thought was consensual but no-one suggests they deserved what followed.

'It was a false allegation that remained for two years without proper scrutiny from the officer in the case.'

She said Mr Duff, Mr Foster and Mr Mahon, had been suspended by the university as soon as the allegations were made and their studies remained on hold.

Fiona Elder, for the prosecution, said the decision to offer no evidence was for 'cumulative reasons' and a result of lack of disclosure or further disclosure or of 'bad faith' on the part of the police.
CCTV footage of an arson attack and a shooting have been released in the hopes it will help solve the mysteries police believe are linked to extortion.

On August 4 last year, a deliberately-lit fire engulfed a hairdressing salon on Marion Street in Sydneys west.

Just three weeks later on August 25, Billus Indian Eatery on Wigram Street was shot at while about 30 diners and staff were inside.

NSW Police on Wednesday released CCTV footage of the arson and a man they believe could help with their inquiries.

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NSW Police have released CCTV footage of arson and shooting attacks and a man (pictured) they believe could be involved, with the possibility the incidents are linked over suspected extortion

The man is described as being of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern appearance and aged in his late 50s.

It was 4am when emergency services responded to the fire at the salon, which spread to the news agency next door  costing about $1 million in damages.

Four people in upstairs units evacuated and evidence of accelerant was later found by detectives.

A single shot fired into Billus Indian Eatery three weeks later about 9pm broke a window and hit a shelf inside.

On August 4 last year, a deliberately-lit fire engulfed a hairdressing salon on Marion Street in Sydneys west

Footage shows the moment huge flames billow through the hairdressing salon in Sydney's west

Four people in upstairs units evacuated and evidence of accelerant was later found by detectives

Nobody was injured although there were more than 30 diners and staff inside at the time of the shooting.

Detective Superintendent Murray Chapman, commander of Property Crime Squad leading the investigation, said the incidents could be linked to suspected extortions.

We have received information that a number of businesses had been stood over and extorted by a group of people in the Harris Park area during the year, but that victims were reluctant to come forward, Det Supt Chapman said.

Id like to take this opportunity to urge any business owner in the area to come forward and talk to us; your information could be integral to furthering this investigation and you can remain anonymous if you wish.

A single shot was fired into the Billus Indian Eatery three weeks later about 9pm, breaking a window and hitting a shelf inside

Although there were more than 30 diners and staff inside at the time of the shooting, NSW Police said nobody was injured

The deliberate acts of crime against these two businesses cannot be tolerated.

It is extremely fortunate that no-one was hurt in either the fire or the shooting, because the potential for loss of life or serious injury was very real.

In the case of the fire, CCTV from the premises has shown how quickly that fire ignited and travelled through the building. Four residents upstairs were lucky to escape.

Police are urging anyone with information about these incidents to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or use the Crime Stoppers online reporting page.

The man is described as being of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern appearance and aged in his late 50s

The bullet at Billus Indian Eatery narrowly missed about 30 diners and staff who were inside at the time
A US Naval Academy instructor has been removed from his position after he was implicated in a sexual assault case and accused of having a threesome with a student and a fellow major.

Marine Maj Michael Pretus has been removed from the academy after it emerged that he was previously accused of having sex with a student.

Allegations suggesting Pretus was involved in sexual misconduct emerged during a new investigation into his close friend Maj Mark Thompson.

Thompson was convicted in 2013 of committing indecent acts, fraternization and conduct unbecoming an officer while an academy instructor.

Petrus was allegedly involved in a threesome with Maj Mark Thompson (left) and Sarah Stadler (right)

A student accused Thompson of assaulting her, while a second - Sarah Stadler - said she had sex with Thompson and Pretus, who was not then a teacher at the school.

Having sex with a midshipman and having a threesome are both crimes under military law, the Washington Post reported.

An investigation was launched into Pretus in 2013 but it was dropped after he refused to cooperate.

He went on to become an instructor at the Naval Academy the next year, but was finally removed from the role this month.

The academy says he has orders for reassignment with an early May departure date and is 'no longer in a teaching status'.

Pretus was removed from the academy after officials became aware of the allegations and a spokesman said he would never have been given the role had the authorities known.

'The Naval Academy had no knowledge of any involvement in this case prior to his receipt of orders here. Under no circumstances would the Naval Academy have allowed for assignment on staff and faculty had there been disclosure of the circumstances and details of his involvement in that event,' Naval Academy spokesman Cdr. John Schofield said.

Pretus declined to comment on whether he had ever had sex with one of the two students involved in Thompson's case.

Pretus defended Thompson during his original trial in 2013 but told the Post he would be a witness for the prosecution in the new case.

One of Thompson's accusers in the first trial, Sarah Stadler, told the authorities about her alleged 2011 threesome with Petrus and Thompson after spotting Petrus during a court hearing.

An investigation was launched but it ended after Petrus refused to cooperate. He was given his job at the US Naval Academy a year later.

Stadler said she was 'incredibly disgusted and discouraged' when she learned that Petrus had gone on to teach young midshipmen.

An investigation was launched into Pretus in 2013 but it was dropped after he refused to cooperate. He went on to become an instructor at the Naval Academy (pictured) the next year

The new investigation into Thompson was launched after his missing cellphone was found, revealing 650 texts between him and Stadler.

A number of the messages contradicted what he said under oath and also referred to someone called 'Mike', who Stadler sat was Petrus.

Some of the texts suggested the three of them met at Thompson's home.

Other messages sent between Stadler and Thompson made repeated references to exercise, which she now claims were references to sex.

In one exchange, she texted Thompson saying: 'Thanks c u tomorrow for our run.'

'Schedule is good for 1600 run tomorrow,' he replied.

Two hours after the 4pm meeting, she wrote: 'Best run ever! Thanks.'
Manafort was brought in to help with Trump 's delegate strategy, though the

A fresh face brought into Donald Trump's campaign is already breeding bad blood, with the Republican frontrunner bristling at some of the decisions new chief campaign strategist has made.

Trump was reportedly reportedly displeased when he heard that Paul Manaford had told those attending the Republican National Committee's spring meeting that the candidate was merely 'projecting and image' and 'that part that he's been playing is now evolving', according to Politico.

Manafort made those remarks behind closed doors, but he's also become the face of the campaign in recent weeks, encouraging Trump not to do as many media appearances while pushing the candidate to become more 'presidential.'

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Donald Trump was reportedly upset with his new chief campaign strategist Paul Manafort for saying behind closed door that The Donald was 'projecting an image' and 'the part that he's been playing is now evolving'

New Donald Trump aide Paul Manafort (left) is being described as the 'polished insider' versus the frontrunner's longtime campaign manager Corey Lewandowski (right), called a 'hardscrabble outsider'

This, according to Politico's sources, hasn't gone over well with Trump, who was a reality television star before launching his unprecedented bid for the White House.

'I think it pisses him off that he was getting free television by going on the shows and now Paul Manafort is out there resurrecting his career,' one campaign insider said.

The operative added that Trump is 'saying I can get on every show I want for free and you're telling me not to do that and that I should pay for my advertising?'

'That doesn't pass the smell test to me,' the source said of Trump's thinking.

Manafort was hired to mainstream Trump's campaign, which until recently was run by a band of political outsiders.

The head of that crew is campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who became a household name this campaign cycle for being charged with simple battery for man-handling a reporter, which Florida authorities later said they wouldn't pursue.

Lewandowski has been cast by Politico as the 'hardscrabble outsider' and Manafort the 'polished insider,' brought in mainly to handle Trump's delegates woes.

While Trump has won state after state in the contests with his 'yuge' personality taking center stage, the Lewandowski-led Trump campaign wasn't making an effort to win delegates on the ground.

The addition of Paul Manafort has gotten Trump and some of his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski's allies rattled as the Washington insider has called for the candidate to act more presidential

The rules for delegates heading to the Republican National Convention say that delegates chosen  often through a series of local caucuses or conventions  don't actually have to be backers of the candidate they're 'bound' to.

And a super majority of those delegates are only bound to a candidate during the Republican National Convention's first ballot, which is why rival Sen. Ted Cruz, who's mathematically eliminated from winning the nomination outright, has been paying so much attention to getting his allies to Cleveland.

Manafort has blamed Lewandowski for these on-the-ground issues, while allies of Lewandowski have told Politico that they wonder if Manafort has done anything to solve the problem, pointing out that he mostly spends his time talking on TV.

On Fox News Sunday, where Manafort spoke for the Trump campaign, host Chris Wallace pointed to yet another delegate loss on the ground with Cruz-aligned delegates heading to the convention from Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, South Carolina and Utah.

Without saying names, Manafort mentioned that the ground game for these states should have already been in place before he joined the campaign, which means it's squarely Lewandowski's fault.

'Now, most of the conventions that happened yesterday were set in state  stages a month or two ago and before, frankly, I was involved,' Manafort told the Fox host.

Corey Lewandowski suggested that the Politico report simply showed that campaign was growing, not that the bigger outfit was showing growing pains

'That's not the point, though,' he added, going on to attack Cruz.

Lewandowski, talking to Jake Tapper on CNN today, suggested the Politico report merely showed that the campaign was growing, not that there were growing pains.

'Look the media wants to write a narrative which isn't there,' Lewandowski said.

'As you know we have had a very small campaign and done more and won more races, 22 races so far, for the least amount of money spent and we're growing the team,' he continued.

'And Paul is part of that growth,' he added.

Some of the moves that Trump has made have Manafort's name all over them  he's speaking Wednesday at the National Press Club about foreign policy, after his big win in New York he dropped his usual 'lyin' Ted' shtick to refer to his opponent as 'Senator Cruz.'

But Trump seems to already be throwing off Manafort's chains too.

As soon as he was lauded for giving a brief and more presidential speech last Tuesday in New York, the old Trump resurfaced, this week notably mocking the way rival John Kasich slurps down his food.

'I have never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion,' Trump said of the Ohio governor. 'I'm always telling my young son Barron, I'm saying and I always do it with my kids, I would say, "Children, small little bites."'

A campaign operative said Trump reverting to his old self wasn't a surprise.

'That's Trump. If you try to force him into a box, he's going to climb out of the box just to prove it to you,' the insider said.
Laura also commented on the generational shift of women in the workplace

She had the privilege of observing mother-in-law before becoming first lady

When she married months later at the age of 31, people called her an 'old maid' who snagged 'the most eligible bachelor in Midland, [Texas]'

Laura also told her daughter she 'wasn't particularly interested' in Bush Jr. when they first met because he seemed 'very political'

Ted Kennedy kept up a 'steady stream of small talk' after they both found out about 9/11, and she wondered if that was his coping mechanism

Former First Lady Laura Bush recalled the moment she learned about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, crediting Senator Ted Kennedy for his calm demeanor in a candid conversation with her daughter Barbara.

Laura Bush relived the morning that 'changed everything' while also sharing more light-hearted stories about how she met her husband and why she never learned to type in a Huffington Post video series featuring conversations between parents and their children.

Laura revealed that she 'wasn't particularly interested' in George W. Bush when they first met, but they married months later with family friends calling her an 'old maid' who snagged 'the most eligible bachelor in Midland, [Texas]'.

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Barbara Bush (right) interviewed her mother Laura (left) in a revealing conversation about the former first lady's marriage, career and personal highlights in life

Laura (left) recalled meeting with Senator Ted Kennedy (right) immediately after she learned about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and said he kept up a 'steady stream of small talk' and wondered if that was his way of coping

The former first lady told her daughter she initially thought 9/11 was a 'strange accident' after a Secret Service agent informed her that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.

She was on her way to meet Senator Ted Kennedy for a briefing with the Senate Education Committee, and news of the second plane crash broke before she reached her destination.

Minutes later, she met Kennedy, who she said was 'a really, really interesting person to be with on that morning' since the assassination of the senator's older brothers, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy marked her younger years.

She said: 'Those years were years that meant something to me, that I had lived through...and then to be with [Ted] on that morning, he just kept up a steady stream of small talk.

'I always wondered if he thought I would fall apart if he [stopped talking], or if that was just the way he dealt with the shock because hed had so many shocks.'

Barbara also brought her mother's personal life to light when she asked Laura about her career and her first impression upon meeting George W. Bush.

Laura defiantly said: 'I didn't learn how to type because I wasn't going to be somebody's secretary.'

Instead, she became a teacher and librarian, reflecting that while it was what she always always wanted to do, she was 'programmed' to go into those professions because there were fewer options for working women at the time.

Laura (left) told her daughter (right): 'I didn't learn how to type because I wasn't going to be somebody's secretary.' She became a teacher and a librarian instead

Laura (right) told her daughter she 'wasn't particularly interested' in George W. Bush (left) when they first met because he seemed 'very political'

When they married, Laura who was 31 at the time, said a family friend remarked: 'Can you imagine? The most eligible bachelor in Midland is marrying the old maid of Midland'

She also cited the birth of her twin daughters Barbara (left) and Jenna (right on her wedding day in 2008) as the 'biggest and best surprise' of her life

She was introduced to George W. Bush by mutual friends on a trip home to Midland, Texas, to visit her parents in 1977.

When Barbara asked what her mother's first impressions were, Laura said: 'I just thought he was probably somebody who was very political since Gampy, you grandfather, had run for Congress and Senate in Texas, and I wasn't particularly interested.'

Despite her initial hesitations, Laura married at the age of 31 just three months after their first meeting, with family friends commenting: 'Can you imagine? The most eligible bachelor in Midland is marrying the old maid of Midland.'

Barbara then reflected on her own life, asking what it meant that she was 34, unmarried, and living in New York, to which her mother teasingly called her an 'old maid' as well.

When it was time for her to step into the role of first lady, Laura said she had the unique privilege of observing her mother-in-law in the White House.

She also cited the birth of her twin daughters Barbara and Jenna as the 'biggest and best surprise' of her life, concluding that her relationships are what 'make a life well lived'.
The interviews became part of a cover story in New York last July, with the woman

Bill Cosby losthis bid on Tuesday to force the publisher of New York to comply with a subpoena seeking reporters' notes and othermaterial for a story last year chronicling 35 women'ssexual assault claims against him.

The women interviewed for the story, who ranged in age from their 20s to their 80s, not only gave interviews but also agreed to be photographed and featured on the cover.

Inside they told their stories and what they claimed happened between them and the disgraced actor, with most of the accounts being very similar.

The women featured on the cover included models Janice Dickinson and Beverly Johnson, former Playboy Bunny Carla Ferrigno and one empty chair, meant to represent the women who would not speak or had not yet come forward.

In other court news, a preliminary hearing has been scheduled for May 24 in Cosby's criminal sexual assault case in Pennsylvania for a 2004 incident involving Andrea Constand.

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No luck: Bill Cosby's bid to get the notes of a reporter who interviewed 35 women who accused him of rape was shot down by a judge on Tuesday (Cosby above in February)

Speaking up: The interviews became part of a cover story in New York last July (above), with the women describing their alleged encounters with Cosby

U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe in Manhattan ruled againstCosby's effort to compel New York Media LLC to provide access tounedited interviews of six women pursuing a civil lawsuitagainst him.

Gardephe said Cosby's subpoena request 'bordered onfrivolous' and was 'wildly inconsistent' with New York's pressshield law, which sets a high standard for when litigants canseek information from media organizations.

'The subpoena, in my judgment, is a fishing expedition,' hesaid in court.

More than 50 women have publicly accused the star best knownfor his role as the father in the 1980's television hit TheCosby Show' of sexually assaulting them, often after plying themwith alcohol or drugs in instances dating back decades.

Most of the alleged assaults are too old to be criminallyprosecuted, but Pennsylvania officials late last year chargedthe 78-year-old entertainer with sexually assaulting Constant.

That charge came just before the deadline expired to try the comedian in court.

The six women at issue in Cosby's subpoena request are amongseven who have accused him of sexual assault and have beenpursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts accusinghim of defamation.

The lawsuit was filed in 2014 initially by Tamara Green, whoaccused him of lying when he publicly denied having sexuallyassaulted her. Six other women later joined the lawsuit.

Day in court: In other court news, a preliminary hearing has been scheduled for May 24 in Cosby's criminal sexual assault case involving Andrea Constand (above in December)

In March, Cosby moved in federal court in Manhattan tocompel New York Media to comply with a subpoena seeking the fullinterviews and other unpublished material for its July 2015cover story, I'm No Longer Afraid.

In court, Searcy contended Cosby was seeking to review thematerial to look for inconsistencies in the women's accounts inorder to build a defamation defense.

'Truth is an absolute defense to a defamation claim,' hesaid.

But David Korzenik, New York Media's lawyer, said Cosby'srequest had to be denied as the material was privileged underNew York's press shield law.
A Texas vet who killed a cat with a bow and arrow then posed with its corpse on Facebook while joking about being 'vet of the year' is now fighting to keep her veterinarian's license as an expert argues it may still have been alive.

Kristen Lindsey of Brenham made the post in June 2015, writing 'My first bow kill... lol. The only good feral tomcat is one with an arrow through its head. Vet of the year award... gladly accepted.'

The post outraged cat fans and led to her being fired from her clinic. Now she is in the middle of a hearing in Austin to decide whether she will keep her vet's license, KAGS reported.

Fighting: Vet Kristen Lindsey (pictured in hearing Monday) is fighting to keep her license after posting a picture of herself holding a dead cat with an arrow through its head on Facebook

Controversy: Lindsey said the cat in the image, which horrified thousands, was feral. However, a couple later came forward and said it was their pet cat, Tiger (right). Lindsey says using a bow was not 'appropriate'

Yesterday, the first day of the hearing, saw Claire and William Johnson claiming the cat was their pet, 'Tiger,' while Lindsey maintained she thought it was feral because of its bad odor and fleas.

She also said it was a nuisance, and had left droppings on her lawn and fought her own pets, KAGS reported.

She said she would not have shot the cat if she'd thought it was owned by someone, and that killing it with a bow and arrow was 'efficient' but not 'appropriate.'

Her attorneys and those from the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners spent most of the day trying to prove whether or not the cat was owned by the Johnsons

In footage captured by KXAN, she appeared to smile when she was asked whether she would shoot another feral cat. 'No,' she said. Would she post the photo on Facebook again? 'God, no,' she said.

A veterinary board committee had already recommended that Lindsey's license be revoked, but she has been able to continue working up until now.

However, she said that while the case has hung over her head, she hasn't been able to actually get work since she was fired from Washington Animal Clinic. 'Its pretty much put me out of work for a year,' she said, according to KXAN.

'Im essentially unemployable. Im not licensed elsewhere, so until I get this resolved... There is not much I can do.'

Hearing: On Tuesday, the second day of the hearing, two witnesses - both vets - disagreed as to whether the cat was actually alive in the Facebook photo. The defense also argued that Tiger looked like any orange tomcat

On the second day of the hearing, KAGS reporter Tashara Park said on her Twitter feed that Houston veterinarian Dr. Bill Folger was called in to analyze the Facebook image.

He said that the cat in the Facebook photo was alive, based on the position of its legs, and added that he was 'shocked, bewildered, that a colleague could kill a cat like this.'

He also said that based on other photos of Tiger on a tractor, he was sure they were the same cat and that the Facebook image was of a neutered male cat that looked too well-fed to be feral.

However a second vet with 47 years of experience, Dr. Paul Smith, said that from the position of the arrow in the cat's head, it must be dead, and most likely died instantaneously.

He added that there was 'no way' someone could tell the cat was alive from that photo.

Other witnesses spoke out on Lindsey's behalf, including a woman who said customers at the clinic 'love' Lindsey.

In addition, a veterinary technician from Lindsey's former clinic who said another doctor there told Lindsey to 'take care of' the cat.

Lindsey's lawyers also argued that the dead cat looked like many other ginger tomcats.

Tiger: These are the photos of Tiger riding a tractor that were used to argue that he was indeed the dead cat. One expert witness said that the cat in the Facebook photo was neutered and too well fed to be feral

Lindsey has also said in the hearing that she has received death threats since the image went viral, and many are hoping for the hearing to end in the vet losing her license.

A Facebook group, 'Tiger's Justice Team News Page,' has been posting updates from the hearing and had previously posted a daily 'Countdown to justice' before it began.

One commenter wrote, 'I'm sending you KARMA right now #Lindsey. Enjoy and savor the taste of it. You are a disgrace in your profession.'

Another said, '[I] cannot fathom a vet acting and having no compassion like this Lindsey monster... I just want to kill her.' A later post asked people to 'refrain from profanity or threatening language.'

The page currently has 8,499 followers. Another page, Remembering Tiger, has 11,018 followers.

Lindsey was brought up on animal cruelty charges in June 2015 following the controversy, but a grand jury failed to indict her, saying there wasn't enough evidence.

She had tried to reach an agreement with the medical board regarding her license in March, but they could not come to a decision, leading to this hearing.

The hearing will continue on May 10.
There is a crow's nest for children, a rope bridge and a dramatic mesh-floored section to peer at the trees below

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A dramatic tree-top walkway has opened at Britain's National Arboretum, giving visitors a unique bird's-eye view of its woodlands.

Some 43feet above the ground, it snakes through the world-famous collection of trees at Westonbirt, Gloucestershire, for nearly 1,000 feet, taking people into and above the leafy canopy.

The 1.9million walkway - the biggest in the UK - also has a crow's nest for children, a rope bridge and a mesh-floored section to peer at the trees below.

The impressive structure - which is accessible to disabled people - is made from larch and Douglas fir and includes over 20 pairs of timber legs, ranging in height from 8ft to 44ft.

It snakes through Westonbirt's Silk Wood, and also features seven interactive hotspots where visitors can learn more about the trees in the collection.

The Treetop Walkway was unveiled today by BBC Countryfile presenter Ellie Harrison, after a fundraising campaign by the Friends of Westonbirt Arboretum.

Charity chief executive Anna-Clare Temple said: 'The Treetop Walkway will add a whole new dimension to our visitors' experience of trees and be an all accessible route into Silk Wood. '

'We are really thankful to all who have supported the Westonbirt Project.'

Andrew Smith, Arboretum Director said: 'This landmark addition transforms the visitor experience with incredible views which have never been seen before.'

Access to the walkway is included in the admission cost to the arboretum, which is managed by the Forestry Commission and famed for its collection of 15,000 trees.

The attraction officially opens to the public on Wednesday, April 27.

This stunning tree-top walkway has opened at Britain's National Arboretum in Westonbirt, Gloucestershire, giving visitors a unique bird's-eye view of the woodlands

The 1.9million walkway - the biggest in the UK - also has a crow's nest for children, (pictured) a rope bridge and a mesh-floored section to peer at the trees below

The attraction, which runs through Westonbirt's Silk Wood, also features seven interactive hotspots where visitors can learn more about the trees, which come from all over the world

Some 43feet above the ground, it snakes through the world-famous collection of trees for nearly 1,000feet, taking people into and above the leafy canopy

It is accessible for people of all abilities, including those with mobility scooters and wheelchairs, and was unveiled today by BBC Countryfile presenter Ellie Harrison (pictured)

The presenter has often shown her support for woodlands such as the National Arboretum. She recently attended a tree-planting event in Gloucestershire after the county council donated five woodland sites to the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust

Andrew Smith, Arboretum Director, said the walkway would provide 'incredible views' to visitors that had 'never been seen before'

The funds for the walkway were raised by the Friends of Westonbirt Arboretum, a charity established to preserve and protect the arboretum and its 15,000 trees

Charity chief executive Anna-Clare Temple said: 'The Treetop Walkway will add a whole new dimension to our visitors' experience of trees and be an all accessible route into Silk Wood. We are really thankful to all who have supported the Westonbirt Project'

The impressive structure - which has easy disabled access - is made from larch and Douglas fir and includes over 20 pairs of timber legs, ranging in height from 8ft to 44ft
A brawl broke out at an Alabama city council meeting after the mayor punched a city council member in the face and several others joined in.

Alexander City councilman Tony Goss claimed that Mayor Charles Shaw punched him as Monday night's meeting came to an end, so he decided to punch back.

The fight occurred after a heated discussion about firing the city's finance director, Sandra Machen.

A brawl broke out at a city council meeting in Alexander City, Alabama, on Monday night following a heated discussion about finances

'The mayor has an objective of firing her because she's on to something he doesn't want her on to. He wants to pursue this witch hunt,' Goss told AL.com, not revealing what Machen had allegedly found out. 'I believe 100 per cent of the council knew that.

An argument followed the discussion, with Goss shouting, 'You're a dictator', and Shaw responding, 'You're a liar'.

The men had different takes on how the dispute turned physical.

Goss said he was trying to apologize to some state auditors who were present at the meeting when Shaw punched him the face. He said he punched back.

Shaw claimed that the incident occurred after Goss swore at his wife, adding that he'd hit Goss again he swears at his wife in the future.

Goss told AL.com that Shaw's wife and a friend allegedly joined in on the brawl and kicked him while other people at the meeting tried to separate them.

No one was seriously injured in the brawl, but Goss said he left with light abrasions and was checked out at the hospital.

Alexander City councilman Tony Goss (left) claimed that Mayor Charles Shaw (right) punched him as Monday night's meeting came to an end, so he decided to punch back

He added that he had filed a police report and intends to press charges. Shaw, however, considers the police report an empty threat and is not concerned, according to Alexcityoutlook.com.

Goss said that Shaw fired Machen in 2015, but the council reinstated her shortly thereafter, citing that the mayor did not have the authority to fire her.

Shaw, however, claimed Machen had changed her pay and had email evidence showing that she lied.

He claimed Machen was 'in over her head' in the job and was two years behind on an audit.

Machen, however, told Alexcityoutlook.com that she is 'just one person' and that the city was 'two years behind' when she started.

Other council members were embarrassed with the city leaders following the brawl.

'I'm done,' councilmemeber Sherry Ellison-Simpson told Alexcityoutlook.com. 'This is ridiculous. You can't even do what you were elected to do. There is no excuse for his. Alexander City deserves better.'
Served prison time before his release and has since worked in real estate

Followed row with a couple in New York where he threatened to kill them

He was convicted in 1991 of possessing and

Was wearing a New York Veteran Police Association next to the

A man who stood alongside Donald Trump and dozens of retired police officers on stage at one of the presidential hopeful's rallies is a convicted felon, it has been revealed.

Dale Robert Javino was seen chanting his support for the Republican frontrunner under the banner of the New York Veteran Police Association (NYVPA) event on Staten Island on April 17 and then posed for pictures alongside the candidate.

The 55-year-old wore a hat with NYVPA written on the front, but Newsday has uncovered that he was never in the line of duty.

They revealed that he served time in prison after being caught outside a couple's home with a Molotov cocktail.

According to court records, Javino was convicted in 1991 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York of receipt and possession of an incendiary bomb.

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Dale Robert Javino (circled), who stood alongside Donald Trump and dozens of retired police officers on stage at one of the presidential hopeful's rallies in New York, is a convicted felon who once threatened to kill a couple using a Molotov cocktail

The 55-year-old (right) was seen chanting his support for the Republican frontrunner under the banner of the at the event on Staten Island on April 17 and then posed for pictures alongside the candidate

Since then he has mostly worked in real estate and insurance, according to his Linkedin profile.

It is believed he was able to get on the stage as the Secret Service didn't need a list of attendees.

At some events they are required to carry out background checks on those who show up and especially individuals who get close to the candidate.

The judgement from the court reads: 'In August 1990, Javino had been involved in a dispute with Michael Constantino and Lynn Fitzgerald, residents of Amsterdam, New York, and had threatened to kill them.

'Just after midnight on August 3, Constantino and/or Fitzgerald observed Javino in an automobile lurking near their home, at times driving slowly by, and for a time parked nearby with its lights off.

'Fitzgerald reported to Amsterdam police that as the car drove by she had seen a gun sticking out of the window. Shortly thereafter, the police stopped the car, which was owned and driven by Milton Block and in which Javino was a passenger.

'In plain view on the back seat of the car was an incendiary bomb consisting, in part, of a 40-ounce Dole glass juice bottle nearly filled with clear liquid; attached to the bottle with electrical tape was a large explosive and detonation device with a wick.

Javino wore a hat with NYVPA written on the front, but it;s since been uncovered he was never a cop

Javino (left and right) served time in prison after being caught outside a couple's home with a Molotov cocktail. He was convicted in 1991 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York of receipt and possession of an incendiary bomb

'Javino and Block were arrested for possession of the bomb. Block testified at trial that he had not known the bomb was in his car until after the arresting officers seized it.

'In a postarrest interview, Javino stated that the bomb belonged to him and that he had planned to use it to burn brush on property located in another town.

'He declined to reveal the name of the person who had made the bomb, stating that he did not want to get that person in trouble.'

Javino was sentenced principally to serve three concurrent 21-month terms of imprisonment on three charges.

One of them was dismissed on appeal but the other two stood.

Javino sought a pardon for his conviction from George W. Bush in 2002, but it was rejected.
The heir to retail company Primark drowned along with his son and his son's girlfriend off the coast of the Republic of Ireland, an inquest heard.

Barry Ryan went into the water at Baltimore rocks in West Cork after his son Barry Davis Ryan and his girlfriend Niamh O'Connor, both 20, were pulled out by a freak wave on 30 June 2015.

Mr Ryan's 14-year-old daughter Charlotte Davis Ryan recalled running to find help before returning to the scene to discover all three had lost their lives.

Mr Ryan and Miss O'Connor were pronounced dead at the scene with the body of Barry Davis Ryan being recovered on 10 July 2015.

Barry Ryan senior, son of Primark founder Arthur, was tragically drowned off Baltimore, co. Cork

Niamh O'Connor (left) and her boyfriend Barry Davis Ryan (right) were talking about buying a house together on the day they drowned

All four had been fishing on the eastern side of Beacon Point near Baltimore when a freak wave hit. Niamh and Barry Davis Ryan were swept out to sea while Barry Davis went to their assistance only to get in to difficulty himself.

At the inquest in to their deaths in Clonakilty, Co Cork yesterday Charlotte Davis Ryan said they were enjoying their day and Niamh and Barry Davis Ryan had been talking about buying a house.

They decided to go fishing and climbed down the rocks. Barry Davis Ryan went further down the rocks and Niamh went over to join him.

Charlotte described how a big wave came and hit her and her dad and pushed them against the rocks. Barry Davis Ryan and Niamh were pushed out to sea by the pressure of the wave.

The teenager said her father made the decision to rescue the pair and she ran off to raise the alarm.

'Niamh was screaming. My dad told me to keep going. He swam out to Niamh. I thought as I was walking up the hill that they would be okay and I was making a big deal of it.

'I saw Barry was going backwards to the other side. Niamh and my dad were closer. I couldn't see Barry. I started to panic,' she recalled at the inquest.

Barry Davis Ryan and Niamh were pushed out to sea by the pressure of the wave and drowned

A local walker said was not aware that they were in difficulties and recalled seeing a man (Barry Ryan, pictured) enter the water. She said he seemed calm and she did not think there was any incident unfolding

CPR was carried out but unfortunately all efforts to revive them failed and the pair were pronounced dead by Dr Jason Vanderveldt

'I was out of breath when I met tourists. The Welsh tourists rang the coastguard and I walked them down to the spot and they were holding my hand. Two bodies were found. Barry was further out.'

Tourist Christine Burr Jones said she met Charlotte on the path. The girl told her 'my family have drowned I know they have. My father, my brother and his girlfriend. I know they are dead. I saw their heads go down.' Ms Burr Jones said Charlotte was in serious shock and trembling.

Siobhan Murphy, a local walker, gave evidence of seeing the relevant parties in the water and said she thought they were swimming.

She said was not aware that they were in difficulties and recalled seeing a man (Barry Ryan) enter the water. She said he seemed calm and she did not think there was any incident unfolding.

Kieran Cotter, coxsman of Baltimore Lifeboat said he was notified by Valentia Coastguard of an incident on the rocks at 6.36pm on the day in question.

He said Barry Snr and Niamh were recovered from the water. CPR was carried out but unfortunately all efforts to revive them failed and the pair were pronounced dead by Dr Jason Vanderveldt.

The search for the body of Mr Davis Ryan continued for many days and involved the input of up to 80 divers who were mainly voluntary.

Mr Cotter issued a general warning that anyone fishing near rocks should wear lifejackets.

Coroner Dr Frank O'Connell recorded a verdict of accidental death in all three cases. He commended Barry Ryan for his efforts to save two lives

Dr Bolster said a significant factor in causing the deaths of both young people was traumatic brain injury with subarachnoid haemorrhage

'It (a lifejacket) gives he emergency services the opportunity to get to them and rescue them. It (drownings) is happening every year on rocks. The sea can be very unpredictable and people can be caught unawares.'

Diver Eric Hennessy said Barry Davis Ryan's body was recovered on July 10th. Divers had searched for his body using a grid system to leave no area uncombed.

Pathologist Dr Margaret Bolster of CUH carried out postmortems on the deceased. She said all three victims died of acute respiratory failure consistent with drowning. She added that death would have been instantaneous and there would have been no suffering. Niamh O'Connor and Barry Davis Ryan incurred brain injuries after being hit up against rocks.

Dr Bolster said a significant factor in causing the deaths of both young people was traumatic brain injury with subarachnoid haemorrhage.

Coroner Dr Frank O'Connell recorded a verdict of accidental death in all three cases. He commended Barry Ryan for his efforts to save two lives.

'He gave his life in the course of trying to save two others. He was obviously an extremely brave and courageous man to do what he did. It was a very unfortunate and unlucky turn of events.'

He extended his sympathy to the Ryan and O'Connor families following their tragic losses.

Mr Ryan and Mr Davis Ryan were the son and grandson of Penney's founder, businessman Arthur Ryan while Ms O'Connor was the grandniece of former Cork GAA stars, Bertie Og and Tadgh Murphy.

At Niamh O'Connor's Requiem Mass her father Paul said that his daughter was 'a stunner' who had found 'the love of her life' in Barry Davis Ryan.
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Western special forces soldiers were involved in a Javelin anti-tank missile launch that took out an ISIS car-bomb in Syria, footage has revealed.

Images show a 'Mad-Max style' car racing towards its target before being struck by the missile.

The dramatic video was captured by broadcaster France 24.

Footage shows a car bomb disappearing into a ball of fire and black smoke after it was struck by a missile launched by Western troops

The broadcaster said about a dozen British, American and French soldiers were involved in the missile launch.

THE SAS IN SYRIA FOR MONTHS British special forces have been given the green light to launch raids deep into ISIS-held territory in Syria and Iraq, senior intelligence sources have revealed last year. They were given 'carte blanche' to kill or capture the terror group's leaders  including the masterminds behind the Tunisian beach massacre. In February a SAS sniper has beheaded an ISIS executioner with a single shot while the militant was teaching jihadis how to decapitate prisoners Advertisement

The footage shows the soldiers in military clothing arranging airstrikes from American A-10 tankbuster warplanes, reported The Times.

The Ministry of Defence did not comment on the footage in line with government policy of not discussing special forces operations.

The video shows the car - resembling those in apocalyptic action film Mad Max - careering through the desert at high speed.

The British narrator says: 'The IS driver hurtles towards our position', before the missile launches.

The missile hits the car, making the vehicle explode in a huge fireball of black smoke.

Kurdish troops then can be heard whooping and cheering as they celebrate their success.

One female soldier says: 'A suicide bomber tried to attack us but our comrades managed to kill him', while another says he's thrilled because he believes its his missile that has hit the vehicle.

But the video reveals that a coalition of reportedly British, American and French forces were the ones who launched the strike.

The video clip, recorded by broadcaster France 24, shows the car bomb travelling at speed towards its target

It's believed around 12 American, British and French troops were involved in the missile attack

The soldiers carried standard issue US weaponry including M4 carbines, an M2010 Enhanced Sniper Rifle, an M249 light machine gun and a Milkor multiple grenade launcher.

The US currently has 50 special forces soldiers fighting with Syrian domestic forces against Isis, but a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) told The Times that the US soldiers are not involved in active combat.

Colonel Tala Selo said: 'The Western special forces are not settled here, they actually come and go back, 15 to 20 of them each time.'

The footage came just hours after Barack Obama said the US was sending 250 more troops to the war-stricken country.

British forces using a 'javelin' rocket launcher in 2014. This photo, One Of Four by Corporal Dean Docwra of the Queen's Royal Hussars won the Amateur Soldiering category of the British Army Photographic competion

The video comes after it was announced yesterday that special forces commandos are preparing for a deadly two-headed attack against IS militants in Iraq and Libya.

Hundreds of crack troops from both the SAS and SBS will lead assaults on a key Islamic State held city.

They will join with regiments from France and the US in launching the ground and air attacks aimed at not only regaining the area, but cutting off extremist forces from their Syrian stronghold in the country's capital, Raqqa.

The car bomb bore a strong resemblance to a vehicle in last year's action movie hit Mad Max Fury Road

There have been an increased number of special force raids in recent weeks - about once every three days, according to Obama's special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter Isis, Brett McGurk.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that ISIS are developing driverless car technology to carry out attacks.

Scientists and ballistics experts have been employed by the terror group to create sophisticated new weapons intended to bring bloodshed to Europe.

From a 'jihadi university' in the Syrian city of Raqqa, they are working on building remote-controlled vehicles which can be used as mobile bombs in devastating strikes.

ISIS is developing driver-free cars in a bid to carry out spectacular attacks against the West, it emerged earlier this year

According to video clips obtained by Sky News earlier this year, an IS team has produced fully-working driver-free cars which can be packed with explosives and driven into a target, causing horrific damage

MPs voted by 397 to 223 in favour of extending British action to quash IS from Iraq into its Syrian strongholds in December - a majority of 174.

Troops entered Syria just days later.

The footage is not the first time an ISIS car bomber has been blown to smithereens by strikers.

In February, video was captured of another by blown up by Kurdish fighters in north-east Syria.

The footage is not the first time an ISIS car bomber has been blown to smithereens by strikers - video footage earlier this year showed Kurdish fighters successfully striking a car
Although not unprecedented, its hard for even hardcore political junkies in Montana to remember the last time a sitting judge was removed in an election.

When a term expires, and there is no opponent, a judge must run for retention. In yes-or-no votes, Billings Municipal Court Judge Shelia Kolar set an example of the high number of positive voters, retaining her seat with 97 percent yes votes.

In the upcoming June 7 election, both Yellowstone County District Court judges Mary Jane Knisely and Michael Moses are unapposed and running for retention. Heres a short profile of their accomplishments since taking the bench.

Judge Russell Fagg also will be in the spotlight in coming months as he has taken on the position of Chief Judge this year.

"I needed it once in my entire career, and it was too far away and covered in notebooks ... I ended up pounding the table with a rubber stamp."  Judge Mary Jane Knisely

Judge Mary Jane Knisely sometimes pulls over to the side of the road to talk to former participants in her special treatment court.

Several years ago, when the Legislature funded a new judge position in Yellowstone County, Knisely won the seat. She promised to expand special treatment courts catering to the special needs of veterans and drug addicts.

Early in her tenure, Knisely was without a courtroom, meeting in a hearing room. She didnt have a full staff and she was getting cases piled on her from other judges who were finally able get on top of their growing case loads.

Organizing two new special treatment courts during all of that was a daunting task.

The first is the Sobriety, Treatment, Education, Excellence and Rehabilitation, or STEER court, which enhances community safety by helping people maintain sobriety. And, there is CAMO court, Courts Assisting Military Offenders, which treats first-time felony veteran offenders.

The specialty courts have helped more than 300 people who may have otherwise have gotten trapped in the revolving door of the criminal justice system, Knisely said.

"Some of these people have medical conditions, co-occurring addiction and mental disorders," Knisely said. "We have a responsibility to treat the young folks who are putting the pieces of their life back together."

The CAMO court grew out of the STEER Court after Knisely noticed how many veterans were appearing before her for drunk driving arrests, among other felony crimes.

She has already received funding to join a tele-services pilot program that will help to reach veterans in rural Montana and allow them to appear remotely for drug court, check in with their probation officers over the phone and provide them access to psychiatric services. The program is facilitated through an app.

A second grant will provide early and accurate screening for the veteran treatment court, not only in Yellowstone County but across the state. It may start to be a Department of Corrections placement, rather than just a diversion court.

As Knisely's programs have grown, so has her office. Three drug court coordinators help run the day-to-day of the specialized courts. Her judicial assistant Amanda Hudson, whom she met many years ago when Hudson was her server at a restaurant, joined the team about a year after Knisely took the bench. Since then, she has been commended for her work by the Montana Supreme Court.

"She has the ability to shine no matter where she is," Knisely said. "I'm very proud of her."

Knisely's law clerk Diane Cochran was honored by the Montana Board of Crime Control for her work as Eastern Montana's first ever drug court prosecution coordinator. Cochran was hired by Knisely last year and brought a temperament that was missing from Knisely's office before, the judge said.

Outside the courtroom, Knisely serves on many boards, and continues to research innovative ways to approach criminal justice. Outside the courtroom, no judge embodies the word hurried more than Knisely.

But inside the courtroom, Knisely slows down. Her thoughtfulness is displayed during the recess she takes between hearing arguments at a sentencing and declaring her final judgment.

"That's a really important time for me," Knisely said. "The courtroom is always emotionally charged. It's a judge's duty to weigh things in the role of the neutral."

Knisely said she never wants to rush that or lose the time for reflection.

"It's easy, as a judge, to isolate yourself, to try to strip away all emotion," Knisely said. "If you do that, you become less than human, and that is not what I was elected to be."

"I don't have a gavel. Why would you have to pound on a table?"  Judge Michael Moses

Two years after starting his job, Judge Michael Moses oversaw the adoption of the first neglect case he ever had.

The toughest cases he presides over are child neglect cases, he said. Seeing children going to good homes is overwhelming. Moses has officiated over Adoption Day twice since taking office, once setting a record for the most Montana adoptions done in one day.

"It was spectacular."

Moses was appointed to his seat by Gov. Steve Bullock in 2014 after Judge Susan Watters became a U.S. District Court judge. Moses is seeking election this year for the first time and is unopposed in the race. He won't sit comfortable following this election, however. He will have to run again in 2018 when Watters' term expires.

In the busiest district in the state, with the highest number of child neglect cases, Moses compared the constant slew of new filings to drinking water from a fire hose. But, he said, he enjoys the work.

"It's a fascinating job," Moses said. "One of those things where you enjoy coming to work in the morning and you don't mind staying late at night."

For Moses, the people he represents appear in his courtroom every day. Every person who comes before him needs to know that everybody has thought about them and tried to listen to them, Moses said. They rely on the system to do the right thing and officials to do the right thing and one of the right things to do is listen, Moses said.

Each of the judges handle civil, criminal and juvenile court matters. All Yellowstone County District Judges are general jurisdiction and don't focus on one type of law, which Moses can see changing as the district grows.

"In larger metropolitan areas, judges might do nothing but try civil cases or juveniles," Moses said. "Yellowstone, we aren't there yet. We're still a tweener  not quite a big city, but no longer a small town."

Right now, additional judges are enough to help with some of the increasing load. Because to Moses, giving each case his 100 percent attention, especially when they involve kids, is the most important thing to him.

"For a judge, there is no detachment," Moses said. "Those kids are in life's basement. But there is hope, there is life for those kids, ... It's not your fault if something terrible happens to a child, we're not God, we can't be God, but we can worry and we do worry and we can try to help them."

Michael Sarabia is Moses' law clerk and studied at the University of Iowa where he received his doctorate. He works in conjunction with Deanne Breshears, Moses' judicial assistant.

"I have a gavel, I just don't use it."  Chief District Court Judge Russell Fagg

Chief District Court Judge Russell Fagg has kept busy over the past 21 years. And, now hes even busier.

In March, Faggs department took over as chief judge from District Court Judge Ingrid Gustafson.

All it is, is more administration, Fagg said. There is no prestige in it at all.

The position rotates every year between the judicial departments.

With the retirement of Judge G. Todd Baugh, who served on the bench since 1984, Fagg becomes the most tenured judge in the judicial district. He is the last remaining judge elected to his seat prior to the new millennium.

Now, Fagg sits with five entirely new judges from when he started. His caseload has doubled more than once and theres no end in sight. But even with the mounting caseload, the judges are finding new ways to move with careful speed through their cases.

I always say that justice delayed is justice denied, Fagg said. We want to be accurate, we want to follow the law, but we have just got to move cases.

Its time as a society to come to grips with the fact weve lost the war on drugs, Fagg said. We must come up with alternatives to incarceration, in the form of heightened probation with job requirements, regular drug testing and real out-patient treatment.

Keep people in society, keep them productive and keep them out of prison, Fagg said. There are better ways to spend that money.

Peoples strengths must be better recognized and at a younger age, Fagg said. The education system needs to rethink the push to send students to academia after high school.

You start to see students being tardy in second grade, Fagg said. So you get a little behind in second grade, then you get a little more behind, then a little more behind, then a little more, until youre dropping out in seventh grade because there is just no way to catch up.

Fagg said the definition of education should be broadened to include trade education.

Weve followed the same education structure for the past hundred years, Fagg said. I think we can do better.

Fagg is supported by his Judicial Assistant Terry Halpin, who manages the judges schedule, tracks case motions and transcribes the electronic recordings for his hearings. Halpin, who said in the almost 20 years shes worked with her judge, she has never lost a bit of respect for him.

Faggs law clerk, Toby Cook advises the judge on the law when it comes to writing case opinions. Fresh out of law school, Cook was hired by Fagg in August.

When I joined on he told me, Go forth and follow the law,' Cook said.
Saudi Arabia is 'not convinced about women driving' and sees negative consequences if it is allowed, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said.

The prince, who is one of the Middle Eastern country's most influential figures, has previously indicated his support for more freedom for Saudi Arabian women.

However, he has since said that reform can't be rushed and that changes 'could' happen in the future, Bloomsberg reports.

Scroll down for video

Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pictured with US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter on April 20 in Saudi Arabia

Women driving in Saudi Arabia is not technically against the law, but is banned in practice because women are not able to obtain driving licences.

Some exceptions have been made in rural areas if a woman driving is essential for her family life.

In an interview on Monday, Prince Mohammed, who is second in line to the throne and believed to be around 30, said that allowing women to drive is more than just a religious issue, but a community one.

His comments came after he outlined a plan to reduce the kingdom's reliance on oil.

Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz bin-Abdullah has defended the country's 'ban' on women driving

Recently, Saudi Arabias top cleric defended the ban on women driving, claiming it would expose them to evil.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin-Abdullah al-Sheikh added obsessed men with weak spirits could end up causing female drivers harm.

The Grand Mufti is known for being outspoken and earlier this year ruled that chess is forbidden for Muslims because it is a 'waste of time' and promotes gambling.

He issued the fatwa ahead of a major chess tournament in Mecca in January.

Last year campaigner Loujain al-Hathloul was jailed for 10 weeks after violating the ban by driving from the United Arab Emirates to the Saudi border.

And in February 2015, Saudi historian Saleh al-Saadoon caused controversy in trying to justify the ban, claiming women could be raped if their cars broke down.

The historian was speaking on Saudi Rotana Khalijiyya TV and added his opinion that in countries like America sexual crimes 'are no big deal' to women.

But some progress on womens rights has been made recently, with females allowed to stand and vote in municipal elections for the first time last December.

The prince (right) has amassed 'extraordinary power and influence very quickly' since his father (centre) took the throne last year after the death of King Abdullah

The prince has amassed 'extraordinary power and influence very quickly' since his father took the throne last year after the death of King Abdullah, said Frederic Wehrey of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

'He's clearly very bright, very intelligent, very on top of all his briefs' and has significant influence on the 80-year-old monarch, one Western diplomat said.

Several Saudi women have driven in protest against the rules and have been jailed as a result (file picture)

Among his most prominent positions is chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs, set up last year to coordinate economic policy.

Prince Mohammed also chairs a body overseeing state oil giant Saudi Aramco.

As defence minister, the prince supervised the kingdom's military intervention in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition 13 months ago launched air strikes against Iran-backed rebels in support of the embattled government.

In reaction to the prince's comments on Monday, Muneerah Sulaiman, 26, a lawyer in Riyadh, told Bloomsberg: 'We were very disappointed. I don't understand the argument of people who appose the ban on religious grounds.
When Oregon Republicans check the state government's official voter pamphlet for information about the three men running in the May 17 primary, information about John Kasich is nowhere to be found.

The Ohio governor's campaign missed a deadline to include his biographical essay, issue platform and photograph, leaving only Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in the pamphlet.

Officials mailed copies last week to about 1.8 million households in the Beaver State.

Including a campaign's statements in the pamphlet costs just $3,500, making it the most cost-effective way of reaching voters who participate in Oregon's primary, the only one in the nation to be conducted exclusively through the mail.

Candidates who want to do it on the cheap can submit the signatures of 500 Oregonians instead.

Kasich, though, missed the boat completely.

DEADLINES AREN'T HIS THING: Ohio Gov. John Kasich's campaign blew off a March 10 due date to include information about the presidential candidate in official voter guides sent to 1.8 million Oregon households

TWO MAN RACE? Even though Cruz has since promised Kasich he won't campaign in Oregon  as part of a strategy to avoid diluting the anti-Trump vote  it's Cruz, not Kasich, who is featured in the pamphlets

The embarrassing omission came to light on Monday, less than a day after Cruz agreed not to campaign in Oregon, where Kasich is stronger, in an attempt to avoid 'splitting' the anti-Trump vote.

Now Kasich, the great white hope of Oregon's '#NeverTrump' movement, is at a competitive disadvantage.

The bargain, which Trump immediately slammed as an unethical 'collusion,' calls for Kasich to pull out of Indiana's winner-take-all May 3 primary, where Cruz's appeal to conservative evangelical Christians gives him a reasonable chance to wrest all 57 Hoosier delegates to the Republican national Convention away from Trump, the billionaire front-runner.

In exchange for abandoning his Indiana campaign, Kasich got Cruz's promise to stop campaigning in Oregon and New Mexico  two more Democrat-friendly states that are more likely to warm to Kasich's centrist image.

Oregon's mail-in ballot system gives voters three weeks to mark and return their ballots. A government agency blankets the state with county-specific pamphlets, ranging from 40 to 64 pages long, containing information about every candidate on the ballot who wants the free advertising.

Kasich's organization, like every other political committee, had until March 10 to send in some text and a photo.

HE MADE IT IN: Trump's campaign organization, despite a reputation for seat-of-the-pants management, found a way to send in a lengthy candidate statement

HE'S STILL RUNNING, RIGHT? Cruz's candidate statement appears next to Trump's in the Oregon voter guide, even though he has said he's leaving the state to Kasich and focusing on Indiana instead

Notices went out on January 12 to every campaign that qualified for the ballot.

Willamette Week was the first to report on the omission.

Molly Woon, a spokeswoman for Oregons Secretary of State Office, told the Register-Guard in Eugene that Kasich will be on the ballot, but 'we did not hear anything from them at all' about submitting information for the pamphlet.

Electronic versions of the lengthy handouts are available on the Secretary of State's website, but Woon said it's too late for Kasich's information to be included.

'All that is set in [state election] rules,' she said. 'I think there would be challenges to have him included after its gone out.'

Kasich's campaign didn't dispute that it dropped the ball, telling the Register-Guard that 'Gov. Kasich is on the ballot in Oregon, and the campaign will do its part to educate voters about why they should vote for him the primary.'

The official pamphlet still lists the names of all three Republican candidates  'Ted Cruz,' 'John R. Kasich' and 'Donald J. Trump.' But an asterisk next to Kasich's name leads to a footnote reading that the '[c]andidate chose not to submit a voters' pamphlet statement.'
Shapoor Azimi, 37, has been jailed for eight years for attacking the woman on the back seat of his private-hire vehicle after picking her up following a night out

An Afghan asylum seeker who had convictions for kerb-crawling was allowed to continue working as a taxi driver and went on to rape a student in his cab.

Shapoor Azimi, 37, has been jailed for eight years for attacking the woman on the back seat of his private-hire vehicle after picking her up following a night out.

A court heard he raped the lone 22-year-old after cruising Nottingham on October 17 last year searching for young women to prey on.

Shockingly, Nottingham City Council had failed to notice Azimi was cautioned for kerb crawling in 2005 and convicted for soliciting a lone woman for sex in 2011.

The authority had now launched an internal investigation after admitting the past convictions should have been spotted.

On Monday April 25 the driver was convicted of rape by a jury and was jailed at Nottingham Crown Court.

Sentencing, Judge Timothy Spencer told Azimi, who is married, that he was a predator who targeted young women.

He also raised concerns about how the 'sexual deviant' had been allowed to work on the streets as a taxi driver following his previous crimes.

He added: 'On that night, on October 17, you were working as a taxi driver in this city.

'You were, in my judgement, preying on young women. One of whom was the victim.

'You, in my judgement, were a chancer. You spotted your chance. She filled at least some of your desires.

'In particular she was clearly in a state of disorientation through alcohol and you decided, in my judgement, that she was prey for your sexual desires.

'Somewhere in that journey you decided rather than take her home, as your duty and obligation was to do, you were going to stop and take advantage of her.

'I know not if he was checked by taxi licensing, whether he withheld his relevant conviction or caution from taxi licensing, or whether they checked independently against records that must have been available to them.

'That conviction and caution reveal a situation where this man was wholly unsuitable to be driving a taxi anywhere and certainly within this city.

The court heard the victim had got into the taxi following an evening at Propaganda nightclub (pictured) in Nottingham city centre at about 4am

'It seems to me if the authority did carry out any checks they need to look carefully at the system and go to independent records, which I assume are available to them by going to the police.'

The court heard the victim had got into the taxi following a night out at Propaganda nightclub in Nottingham city centre at about 4am.

But just 15 minutes after she got into the car Azimi pulled over and climbed into the back seat where he raped the graduate student.

He left her on a street in Lenton, Nottingham, to find her own way home but he was later caught after his DNA was found on swabs taken from the victim.

Azimi even tried to blame the victim and claimed she had actually sexually assaulted him after he turned her down for sex.

He told the court he rebuffed the woman's advances who 'begged for sex' because he was 'a professional man'.

But prosecutor Gordon Aspden said his defence was a transparent attempt to 'get away with rape' and described the defendant as a 'deviant' driven by 'sexual compulsion'.

Azimi, of Bobbers Mill, Nottingham, was convicted of one count of rape but cleared of another relating to the same victim.

A Nottingham City Council spokesman said after the hearing: 'This driver applied for a licence with us in 2008.

'His earlier caution and conviction undoubtedly should have been spotted in our background checks and acted on and we are very sorry that this didn't happen.

'If we were presented with the same situation today, our procedures have improved sufficiently for us to be confident that he would be identified as a person who was not fit and proper to be a taxi driver, and so not given a licence.

'Our priority is to protect the public.

'We now demand higher standards of drivers and if there is the slightest doubt about a person's suitability, we err on the side of caution and don't issue a licence.

Azimi left the victim on a street to find her own way home but he was later caught after his DNA was found on swabs taken from the victim, Nottingham Crown Court (pictured) heard

'We now carry out DBS checks every year rather than every three and our licensing team is now co-located with the police licensing team where intelligence sharing and closer working will allow issues like this to be identified and acted on.'

Detective Inspector Clare Dean, from Nottinghamshire Police, said: 'As a taxi driver Azimi is entrusted to get people to where they need to be in a timely, comfortable and above all safe manner.

'He failed on all counts in this case.

'We know he actively targeted this woman over other potential fares.

'He then exploited her vulnerability for his own sexual gratification and abandoned her in the dead of night.

'Her welfare was never his concern.

'But her welfare has been our number one concern and this conviction is a testament to her resilience throughout.
The Florida professor who was fired after claiming the massacre of children at a Connecticut elementary school was staged has filed a lawsuit against the university.

James Tracy, who taught students about conspiracy theories at Florida Atlantic University's School of Communication and Multimedia Studies, was served a notice of termination in January.

Now he is suing the school for wrongful dismissal and violation of his First Amendment right to free speech, CBS reports.

Tracy was fired after publishing a series of blog posts claiming the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, was staged to intensify feelings against guns.

James Tracy, who taught at Florida Atlantic University, was fired in January for claiming Sandy Hook was staged by the government as anti-gun propaganda. He has now sued the school for violating his 'free speech'

Gunman Adam Lanza shot dead 26 people, including 20 children.

But Tracy wrote on his blog that he did not believe the media narrative.

Soon after, he started harassing the parents of six-year-old Noah Pozner - one of 20 children killed in the attack - demanding proof that the child ever existed.

Tracy has also questioned accounts of other mass slayings in his blog.

Addressing Sandy Hook, he said he felt conflicting media reports from the day of shooting lead him to question whether it happened at all.

Tracy insinuated 'corporate media' institutions, as well as government authorities, spun official accounts of the massacre to drive a preconceived agenda of gun control in America.

'As documents relating to the Sandy Hook shooting continue to be assessed and interpreted by independent researchers there is a growing awareness that the media coverage of the massacre of 26 children and adults was intended primarily for public consumption to further larger political ends,' he wrote on his blog.

As part of the theory the massacre never happened, Tracy questioned whether Noah Pozner (left) - one of the 20 children shot dead by crazed gunman Adam Lanza (right) - ever existed, demanding proof from his parents

A total of 26 people were killed in the Sandy Hook massacre on December 14, 2012, with 20 children and six staff shot dead by Lanza

A total of 26 people were killed in the Sandy Hook massacre on December 14, 2012, with 20 children and six staff shot dead by Lanza.

Prior to driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. Lanza killed himself inside the school as first responders arrived.

The school sent Tracy a notice of proposed discipline in December 2015, with ten days to respond.

School officials did not say whether he had replied before his contract was ultimately terminated in January.
A three-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed himself after finding a gun in his Georgia home.

Holston Cole died after he was struck in the chest when the firearm went off in Paulding County on Tuesday morning.

Deputies responded to a 911 call just after 7am while the toddler's parents were getting him ready for the day.

Three-year-old Holston Cole (pictured with mother Haley) accidentally shot and killed himself after finding a gun in his Georgia home

First responders performed CPR on the toddler when they arrived before taking him to a nearby hospital.

But he was pronounced dead a short time later, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

Holston lived at the residence with parents David and Haley Cole and one-year-old twin sisters Paisley and Macy.

No charges have been filed. It is not known who owns the gun and how the child got access to it.

Investigators would not reveal what type of gun was used. They would only reveal that it was a small handgun.

Neighbors told 11 Alive they always saw the family outside playing together.

Sergeant Ashley Henson with the Paulding County Sheriff's Office told the station: 'You could see the concern on their face. The anguish, it was just a very difficult situation.'

Pastor Paul Richardson, who is acting as spokesman for the family, said: 'Scriptures that you read, that youve read your whole life begin to take on new meaning.'

He added that Holston was 'full of life' and a 'happy little boy'.

Cole died after he was struck in the chest after the firearm went off in Paulding County on Tuesday morning
A New York judge decided today that the Trump University case will go to trial, meaning the Republican frontrunner could testify while he's running for president of the United States.

Judge Cynthia Kern made the decision at a hearing today, according to Fox News, though didn't indicate whether the case would be heard in front of a jury, which is what Trump's legal team prefers.

New York's Democratic attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, accused Trump and his business associates of misleading the students who enrolled in the school.

Donald Trump's defunct Trump University could come back and bite the candidate as a New York judge decided today that the case will go to trial

Schneiderman claims that the businessman and his partners used 'bait-and-switch' tactics to encourage students to enroll in expensive seminars that were supposed to be led by real estate experts hand-picked by The Donald himself.

But Trump never met many of the experts.

The case originated in 2013 and the attorney general sued Trump and the school for $40 million seeking restitution and damages for more than 5,000 students, including 600 New Yorkers.

The students paid up to $35,000 each.

On his end, Trump has defended Trump University, which opened in 2005 and changed its name to the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative before closing its doors in 2010.

Trump has talked up the '98 percent' approval rating the school was given by its students.

The legal case will surely make Trump University political fodder again.

Sen. Marco Rubio, when he was still a presidential candidate, memorably brought up Trump University during the run-up to the Florida primary.

The Florida senator brought up how Trump had bragged that the university would 'hire the best people .. and there are going to be handpicked instructors and they are going to be the best instructors in the world.'

'Well, one of them was a manager at Buffalo Wild Wings,' Rubio said.
She was sentenced to just three years of supervised probation when the prosecutors office wanted to lock her up for five years

McDonough agreed to give up her teaching certificate and will not be able to teach in the state of New Jersey ever again

two male students photos of herself in just a bra and also a photo of her in just a towel

A New Jersey teacher who admitted to having sex with her 18-year-old student twice in 2014 lost her teaching license this month.

Nicole McDonough, 33, pleaded guilty and in February was admitted into an intervention program that spared her from prison time. She was sentenced to just three years of supervised probation when the prosecutor's office wanted to lock her up for five years.

McDonough agreed to give up her teaching certificate as part of the deal and will not be able to teach in the state of New Jersey ever again, according to NJ.com.

Nicole McDonough, the Mendham High School teacher who had sex with an 18-year-old student is pictured here in January of 2015. She lost her teaching license this week

Serving 36 months: Nicole McDonough, 33, pleaded guilty and in February was admitted into an intervention program that spared her from spending five years behind bars

McDonough formerly held a Teacher of English Certificate of Eligibility, issued in June 2007, a Teacher of English Certificate of Eligibility With Advanced Standing, issued in January 2008 and a Teacher of English certificate, issued in September 2009.

If McDonough complete's the state's pre-trial intervention program then the charges against her will be dropped. If she violates any terms of the program she could face up to 10 years in prison and a $150,000 fine.

McDonough was arrested on December 30, 2014 on suspicion of having sex with an 18-year-old student while employed as a teacher at Mendham High School.

It was later revealed that she allegedly engaged in improper 'communication' and 'fraternization' with two other male students, who were also 18.

McDonough allegedly sent those students pictures of herself wearing just a bra and a picture of her coming out of the shower wearing just a towel, according court documents.

According to The Daily Record, the alleged sexual relationship occurred in April, May, and June of 2013. The relationships with the other two students then allegedly occurred in April, May, and June of 2014.

If McDonough, pictured last April, complete's the state's pre-trial intervention program then the charges against her will be dropped

McDonough was arrested on December 30, 2014 on suspicion of having sex with an 18-year-old student while employed as a teacher at Mendham High School

Additionally, NJ.com reported that McDonough does not face any sex charges because all three alleged victims were 18.

The prosecution made it clear they believed she was only sexual with one of the boys.

Her indictment outlined that McDonough committed second-degree official misconduct because she 'did commit acts relating to her office, but constitutionally unauthorized exercises of her official functions'.

McDonough did so 'with the purpose to obtain a benefit for herself, specifically emotional, mental and/or physical sexual gratification', the indictment said.

Describing herself on the school's website when she was still an employee, she wrote: 'Although teaching is one of my many passions, I am also a mom, a personal trainer, and a cross-fitter. I am a mother of two amazing girls. We also have a puggle named Tegan.'

She closes by saying; 'The classroom is one of my many loves and I am excited to return to start a full year of school!'

Authorities have not released any of the student's names.

Of age: McDonough, pictured last April, did not face any sex charges because all three alleged victims were 18
UK and US are reforming the famous 617 Dambusters squadron at the base

The MOD has released unseen footage of its latest fighters jets being flown by British RAF personnel in the US.

The F-35B Lightning II, a state-of-the-art stealth aircraft, is shown alongside its US counterparts at Marine Air Corps Station Beaufort, South Carolina.

Britain will receive the first advanced aircraft this summer, but they will be seen by the public at the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in July and the Farnborough Air Show in Hampshire.

The MOD has released unseen footage of its latest fighters jets being flown by British RAF personnel in the US

The F-35B Lightning II, a state-of-the-art stealth aircraft, (pictured) is shown alongside its US counterparts at Marine Air Corps Station Beaufort, South Carolina

Squadron Leader Hugh Nichols, the UK's senior representative at the US base, said: 'The first thing you'll notice about the aeroplane is the slightly different shape.

'It's what we call a stealthy cross section so we minimise the enemy's ability to see the aeroplane on radar.'

The plane is a short take-off and vertical landing aircraft, which means it is able to fly from ships and short runways and will be fully operational by 2018.

It is planned the aircraft will be based on the UK's two new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers, the first of which is due to come into service in 2017.

Currently 36 RAF and Royal Navy pilots and ground crew are working with the US Marine Corps at MCAS Beaufort, and by the end of the year that will increase to more than 100, before they return to RAF Marham in Norfolk.

Squadron Leader Hugh Nichols (pictured), the UK's senior representative at the US base, said the aircraft's unusual shape was to make it harder to be seen by enemy radar

Britain will receive the advanced aircraft this summer, but they will will first be seen by the public at the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in July

By 2018 over 200 personnel will be training on the aircraft in anticipation of their deployment on HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Squadron Leader Nev Kingdon, a F-35 pilot at MCAS Beaufort, who completed his first flight in the jet on the day the video was filmed said: 'It was fantastic to get in an aircraft, particularly this aircraft.

'It's just brilliant as it's the world most advanced fighter aircraft and we're lucky to be part of that in the UK and to be at the leading edge of that is a real privilege and a real delight.'

The UK has been a leading partner in the development of the F-35B Lightning II aircraft and has contributed $2.5 billion, about 10 per cent of the planned costs.

Around 15 per cent of the components for the aircraft are produced in the UK, involving 900 domestic companies.

The British military pilots are in South Carolina to undertake intensive combat aircraft training as the two countries reform the famous 617 Dambusters squadron.

The 617 squadron was formed on March 21, 1943, with Wing Commander Guy Gibson tasked to recruit top fliers from other squadrons.

The 617 squadron was formed on March 21, 1943. The huge dams on the German River Ruhr protected industrial heartlands for the Nazi war effort. Breaching the dams in May 1943 was a crucial blow

Dr Barnes Wallis (right) had very little time to test his bouncing bomb, which skimmed the surface of the water before impacting low on the dams. It was tested off the British coast in top secret conditions, so confidential that even Wing Commander Gibson was not told the full nature of his mission until shortly before

For weeks not even he was told of the task - only that it was essential to be able to fly low over water.

They trained by flying over the dams and reservoirs of Derbyshire while the bouncing bombs, designed by Barnes Wallis, were tested off the Kent coast.

The crews were tasked with breaching four huge dams on the river Ruhr, the heart of German industry and crucial to the Nazi war effort.

In just a few precious weeks, top-secret tests had shown the bomb had to be dropped at exactly 220mph, 60ft above the water in order to skim across the surface.

PROBLEMS WITH THE F-35: ENGINE PROBLEMS AND OUTPERFORMED BY A 40-YEAR-OLD F-16 JET A series of setbacks have delayed production of the F-35 by up to eight years and put it $263billion over budget so far. The spiralling costs are due to a number of factors, including engine problems that caused one jet to burst into flames during take-off last May. Air Force Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, who is in charge of the F-35 programme, said the planes had been plagued by simple mistakes. These included everything from wingtip lights that did not meet Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) standards to tires that could not cope with the landings. It has also emerged the jet's complex radar system keeps crashing. Major General Jeffrey Harrigian, director of the air force's F-35 integration office at the Pentagon, described the problem as 'radar stability - the radar's ability to stay up and running'. The cutting-edge F-35, which is meant to be the most sophisticated jet ever, was embarrassingly outperformed by a 40-year-old F-16 jet in a dogfight in July. The dogfight, which was staged near Edwards Air Force Base, California, was designed to test the F-35's ability in close-range combat at 10,000 to 30,000 feet. The F-35 pilot reported a number of aerodynamic problems, including 'insufficient pitch rate' for the jet's nose while climbing - resulting in the plane being too cumbersome to dodge enemy fire. Advertisement

Nineteen modified Lancaster bombers flew into enemy territory on the night of May 16, with Gibson deliberately using his own plane to draw away German aircraft while his team undertook their task.

Eight of the aircraft and their crews were lost, and two of the four dams - Mohne and Eder - were breached.

Upon their return, the crew were honoured for the danger they had faced, the short time they had to prepare and the audacity of what they had done.

Their exploits were legendary even before being made into a film, The Dam Busters, released in 1955.
A Florida man who was interrupted while he was having sex with a woman in an apartment complex pool grew angry and started fighting with a pair of teenagers when they asked him to stop.

Austin David Misiak, 28, was charged with assault as well as lewd and lascivious behavior after witnesses say he was having sex with an unnamed woman at Heather Glenn Apartments in Walton Beach on Saturday.

Misiak, who was highly intoxicated according to arrest reports, was punched twice when he appeared as if he was going to hit a 15-year-old girl.

Austin David Misiak, 28, was charged with assault as well as lewd and lascivious behavior after witnesses say he was having sex with an unnamed woman at an apartment complex pool in Walton Beach, Florida

When members of the community asked Misiak to stop, he got out of the pool, chased a number of kids around and tried to hit them, according to the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office.

He also yelled at a man and got into a fight with a 15-year-old girl, who told him to stop chasing the kids.

When the 28-year-old moved in, appearing as if he was going to hit her, the teenager's boyfriend stepped in and punched him twice, the NWF Daily News reported.

Misiak tried to swing at him but missed. When deputies arrived on the scene, Misiak denied the incident, saying 'nothing happened'.

When members of the community asked Misiak to stop, he reportedly got out of the pool, chased a number of kids around and tried to hit them. He also appeared as if he was going to hit a 15-year-old girl
A burglar who broke into an Indiana man's garage two years ago has sued the homeowner for shooting him during the incident.

David Bailey, now 31, of Albany, Indiana, broke into David McLaughlin's Dunkirk garage on April 21, 2014, authorities said.

McLaughlin, now 33, fired gunshots at the intruder as he fled, hitting Bailey in the left arm as he ran through an alley.

Bailey's lawsuit, which was filed last week against McLaughlin, asks for 'a monetary award in an amount sufficient to compensate (Bailey) for all damages', according to KSDK.

David Bailey (left), 31, of Albany, Indiana, broke into David McLaughlin's (right) Dunkirk garage on April 21, 2014, and claims he suffered 'permanent damage' after the homeowner shot him.

While Bailey pleaded guilty to a related burglary charge last year, he said in his lawsuit that he 'had not entered (McLaughlin's Dunkirk) garage', which is in a city of 2,500 residents 65 miles northwest of Indianapolis.

He said he 'never entered the defendant's garage for the purpose of stealing property'.

Bailey was fleeing through an alley behind McLaughlin's home when the homeowner 'exited his residence and began firing his weapon into the air in response to a security alarm sound in his garage,' Bailey's suit claims.

The lawsuit claims that McLaughlin 'continued to the public-right-of-way (and off his property) and continued firing his weapon down the dark alley'.

McLaughlin fired three shots at Bailey, the lawsuit claims. One narrowly missed Bailey's head, and a second hit him in the back of the arm, piercing an artery and causing 'serious and permanent damage'.

McLaugh's attorney, Brian Pierce, told Fox 59 that the lawsuit is 'outrageous'.

'My client thinks it's outrageous and I tend to agree,' Pierce said. 'You don't ordinarily expect someone to burglarize you and turn around and sue you for damages.'

The lawsuit states that McLaughlin 'owed the plaintiff a duty to exercise reasonable care when he exited his property and began firing gunshots down a dark alley'.

'I think the claim is absurd. In Indiana every homeowner has a right to defend their property and that may include using a firearm,' Pierce told Fox 59.

Pierce believes that Bailey will not receive any money from the lawsuit.

Following the 2014 burglary, a Jay County Superior Court jury found McLaughlin guilty of criminal recklessness in September 2014,, nd he was later sentenced to 60 days in jail and four months home detention.
A $10 million lawsuit against Yellowstone County District Judge Russell Fagg has been dismissed.

Montana District Judge Randal I. Spaulding, from Roundup, ruled the suit was invalid because Fagg is protected by judicial immunity.

Benette Johnson, who represented herself in the case, filed the suit in February in Yellowstone County District Court. On the same day, Johnson also filed suits against her adoptive father, ex-husband and two others. Those cases also have been dismissed.

Johnson claimed in the suit that Fagg plotted against her, harassed her and was biased in favor of her ex-husband and her adoptive parents.

Montana Supreme Court Administrator Beth McLaughlin said the Supreme Court has seen similar suits before. But if someone disagrees with a verdict or judge's decision, they have avenues outside a lawsuit to pursue a different result, McLaughlin said. They can appeal to a higher court, they can try to substitute the judge, they can appeal to the judge directly and they can not vote for the judge's re-election.

Fagg has presided over Johnson's case since 2011. Due to the civil suit, the ongoing custody suit was moved to another judge's docket.
A couple have been found shot dead in their home in San Jose next to chilling note scrawled on the floor saying: 'Sorry, my first kill was clumsy.'

The bodies of Bangladeshi husband and wife Golam and Shamima Rabbi, 59 and 57, were found on Sunday by worried friends who had not heard from them for days.

Both of the Rabbis, who are Muslims, had been shot once and were found on the floor of their home, with a source telling ABC 7 that the note was found next to their bodies.

A source said another rambling message was written across the wall, saying: 'I can't be like you, telling a lie. I can't love someone without telling them.'

The rant also said the wife begged for her life before she was killed, NBC Bay Area reported.

Mystery deaths: Bangladeshi husband and wife Golam and Shamima Rabbi, 59 and 57, were found dead next to two chilling notes left at their home

Crime scene: The couple's bodies were found at around 2pm on Sunday by worried friends who had not heard from them for days. Pictured, police at the scene

Concerned friends opened an unlocked sliding glass door at around 2pm on Sunday and found the couple dead inside their home, which they share with their two sons, aged 23 and 17.

It is not known who shot the pair or the motive for the shooting, but one of the sons has been taken in for questioning, a relative told the San Jose Mercury News.

The whereabouts of the other son is not known, they added.

The police investigation into the pair's deaths is ongoing.

Mr Rabbi, who was an engineer, liked to hunt and had several guns in the house, friends told KTVU.

Hasan Rahim, from the Evergreen Islamic Center that the couple regularly attended, said he had warned Mr Rabbi about the dangers of keeping firearms in the home.

It is not known who shot the pair or the motive for the shooting, but one of the sons has been taken in for questioning, a relative said. Pictured, emergency services at the scene

Worried friends opened an unlocked sliding glass door and found the couple dead inside their San Jose home

'I just said be careful. If you have weapons in the house be careful,' Mr Rahim said.

'I've known him for 30 plus years, so it's a loss,' he added.

'People were in disbelief, in shock, they were stunned and the loss is so enormous that we are still finding it difficult to come to grips with the truth.

'I still cannot reconcile the tragedy of this whole situation. It is just unbelievable. It is just too much too accept.'

Friends described the the husband and his accountant wife as gentle and kind.

'We are surprised that they are no longer with us and especially going away in such a manner is something we just can't come to grips with,' Evergreen Islamic Center member Faisal Yazadi said.

'He always asked me about my family, now I can't answer him back. I can't ask him about his family,' he added.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has stumbled his way through an interview during which he was pressed about his election policies - including negative gearing.

Appearing on ABC's 7.30 on Tuesday night Mr Turnbull became flustered when asked by Leigh Sales to explain the modelling behind the policy.

It comes after the prime minister was slammed at the weekend for presenting a family in Sydney who had used negative gearing to buy their one-year-old daughter a home.

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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been criticised for a 'trainwreck' interview on ABC's 730 on Tuesday

When asked about his negative gearing policy the prime minister said it was 'a matter of common sense'

On 7.30 when he was asked what evidence he had to support his claims that Labor's police would 'take a sledgehammer' to property prices, the prime minister said it was a 'matter of common sense'.

'Around a third of the buyers for residential property currently are investors. What Labor is proposing will take all or almost all of them out of the market.

'If you take a third of the buyers out of the market, prices, values will fall. That's common sense,' he said.

Sales then further pushed Mr Turnbull to explain the modelling, asking him whether voters were simply to 'trust' his analysis on the matter.

'So, is what you're saying to voters 'I don't actually have any hard evidence here. It's my common sense and so you have to trust my analysis on this?' ' she asked.

'Well Leigh, your viewers tonight understand the laws of supply and demand,' Mr Turnbull said.

'But what I am asking you is how do you know you are taking out a third [of buyers from the market] ... where's your modelling for the fact you're taking out a third?' Sales said.

'So, is what you're saying to voters 'I don't actually have any hard evidence here. It's my common sense and so you have to trust my analysis on this?' ' Sales asked

Sales also pushed the prime minister on whether the policy was most beneficial to Australia's top earners

Audience members were quick to criticise the prime minister's interview with Leigh Sales

One viewer said he was 'ducking and diving' and provided 'no real evidence' on negative gearing

Others said he made 'no sense' and it was 'probably on purpose'

Sales also pushed the prime minister on whether the policy was most beneficial to Australia's top earners.

'These policies favour most people who are on the highest incomes,' she said.

'Of course people on the highest incomes will make the highest gains because they tend to have more property,' Mr Turnbull said.

'There are well over a million Australians, most of whom are on average earnings, who have an investment property and they are negative gearing,' he said.

Viewers were quick to criticise the flustered prime minister online, with many branding the interview a 'trainwreck'.

'Its an exciting time to have a trainwreck interview,' tweeted one 730 viewer.

Another said Mr Turnbull had been 'ducking and diving on negative gearing. No real evidence for his views other than "it stands to reason" Rubbish'.

The interview comes off the back of an ongoing debate about negative gearing, and on Sunday he was slammed for claiming everyday Australians need tax breaks to 'get ahead'.

Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull stood outside the Mignacca's home in Penshurst, a southern suburb of Sydney, on Sunday as he criticised Labor's plan to restrict negative gearing to new houses if elected

He said his government would not touch the current negative gearing model as he allowed Julian and Kim Mignacca spruik the benefits of deducting rental losses on an investment property from their salary

The video was slammed as 'Liberal propaganda' by social media users who believe negative gearing only helps those who profit from being a home owner, rather than those struggling to get into the market

Mr Turnbull showcased a family who used negative gearing to buy a house for their one-year-old daughter as an example.

He said his government would not touch the current negative gearing model - and he used Julian and Kim Mignacca as an example of those who have benefited from deducting rental losses on an investment property from their salary.

But voters have hit back, claiming that Mr Turnbull's negative gearing model only puts more pressure on the market because investors are given an advantage in buying residential properties, while the average Australian struggles to afford their own home.

Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull stood outside the Mignacca's home in Penshurst, a southern suburb of Sydney, on Sunday as he criticised Labor's plan to restrict negative gearing to new houses if elected

'The enterprising spirit of Australians like the Mignaccas is what secures our economic future and the jobs of our children and grandchildren in the years ahead,' he said.

Kim and Julian Mignacca play with their young daughter Addison in the home they say they bought for her

WHAT IS NEGATIVE GEARING? Negative gearing is when an investor has a taxable loss from owning property. The investor's costs are greater than the income generated from the investment, and the loss can be offset against other income such as a wage. This provides tax savings, as it reduces taxable income. Advertisement

Mr Turnbull warned that if Labor's proposed changes to negative gearing were implemented, property values would decrease and rental prices would sky-rocket, meaning Australians would struggle to 'get ahead'.

The Mignacca's video, which was posted to Mr Turnbull's Facebook account, has been slammed as 'Liberal propaganda' by social media users who believe negative gearing is only helping those who profit from being a home owner, rather than those struggling to get into the market.

Others criticised Mr Turnbull for back flipping on previous claims he made about negative gearing.

In 2005 he called negative gearing 'tax avoidance' and later penned a paper stating that the practice shifted investment 'away from wealth-creating pursuits towards housing', the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

In February, Opposition leader Bill Shorten announced negative gearing will be restricted to 'newly constructed homes' under a Labor government.
Paralyzed: Jamie Nieto (pictured, at 2012 Olympics), a US high-jumper, was paralyzed after landing on his head during training Saturday. He had previously canceled his health insurance to save money

Former US Olympic high jumper Jamie Nieto was paralyzed in a training accident Saturday - after he canceled his health insurance to save money.

Nieto, 39, was working with would-be Olympians at Azusa Pacific University in California when he landed on his head during a backflip, suffering a severe spinal injury.

The accident was so bad that he had to be flown directly to USC Medical Center by helicopter, TMZ reported.

'We were very close to losing him at one stage,' his manager Paul Doyle told TMZ, 'but thankfully the MRI came back with no broken neck and the spinal cord remained intact.'

Nieto, who represented the US at the Olympics in 2004 and 2012, is now starting to get feeling back in his legs and hands, Doyle said.

However, he faces months of expensive rehabilitation.

And as the athlete was suffering financial difficulties before his accident - so much so that he canceled his own health insurance to save cash - his challenges are even greater.

That's why his friend and fellow athlete Lolo Jones has set up a fundraising campaign for the injured star on Athlete Biz .

Speaking in video posted Sunday, Jones - a bobsled and track-and-field Olympian - said Nieto 'will have to fight just to be able to step again - and this is someone who was one of the most elite athletes in the world.'

Her voice cracking with emotion, she added: 'He's always been a light for me. Even when i had some of my toughest moments, he was always there to be an encouragement

'He was the unspoken team captain and I just beg of you to please donate to him so that we can help him get back on his feet.'

As of Tuesday afternoon the fund had raised $9,092 - 45 percent of its $20,000 goal.
Megyn Kelly's highly anticipated memoir has been given a release date.

The book, which does not yet have a title, will be available on November 15 - two weeks after the general election.

There have been no confirmed reports about how much HarperCollins is paying Kelly for the book, but it is believed to range between $5 and $10million.

The book will also be released around the same time Kelly's contract with Fox News expires at the end of the year.

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Big news: Megyn Kelly's memoir will be released on November 15, two weeks after the general election

Big week: It was also revealed this week that Kelly had landed an exclusive interview with Donald Trump that will air May 17

Kelly shared the news about her memoir on Twitter, writing; 'Excited to announce my new memoir is coming out 11/15! Title & cover coming soon.'

The news comes just days after it was revealed that Kelly had scored an exclusive interview with Donald Trump on May 17.

The Fox News anchor was spotted walking into the private residence entrance of The Donald's New York City building earlier this month to woo the presidential hopeful, and it seems to have worked with reports that he will join her for a special on Fox News.

Kelly confirmed on her show The Kelly File that she had spoken with the Republican frontrunner that same day.

Quipping that the doormen at Trump Tower 'were surprised to see me', Kelly said she discussed 'the possibility of an interview' with Trump, adding 'I hope we will have news to announce soon.'

She said Trump was 'gracious' and that their hour-long meeting was 'at my request' and 'a chance to clear the air' later that day.

She did not reveal any details of the forthcoming project and simply told viewers: 'Stay tuned'.

Trump also spoke about the meeting during an appearance that night in Pittsburgh.

He smiled when host Sean Hannity mentioned Kelly's name and the crowd booed her, but then said; 'She called last week and they set up a meeting, thgey said, "Could we come up?" and I said, "Would you ncome to Trump Tower" because I didn't want any confussion.

'And she did. And she was very, very nice and we had a meeting and she was very nice. She really was.'

He then added; 'And by the way, in all fairness, I give her a lot of credit for doing what she did.'

Announcing the slot, producers said the program 'will be personal in nature and address the year Kelly has had as one of the most prominent voices covering the 2016 presidential campaign.'

Keeping quite: Kelly (above earlier this month) has not yet revealed the title of the book, which will be released at the same time her contract expires with Fox News later this year

The two last came face-to-face during the the Fox News debate in March that was moderated by Kelly.

Fox News later confirmed the meeting as well, saying in a statement; 'FOX News Chairman & CEO Roger Ailes has spoken to Donald Trump a few times over the past three months about appearing on a Fox Broadcasting special with Megyn Kelly airing on May 17.

'Kelly requested a meeting with Mr. Trump, which took place at Trump Tower this morning. The results of that meeting will be revealed on tonight's Kelly File at 9PM/ET.
'Hysterical crying' and a woman's screams were heard coming from a home just moments before an elderly woman was found dead inside.

Police were called to the Melbourne suburb of Bentleigh about 4pm on Tuesday, where they found the 75-year-old.

One neighbour, who had lived on the same street as the woman for two decades, said she heard screams coming from inside the house around the time the elderly woman's body was discovered.

Homicide are investigating after a 75-year-old woman was found dead in her Melbourne home on Tuesday

Police were called to the home in Bentleigh about 4pm and neighbours reported hearing crying from inside

She told the Herald Sun she heard: 'hysterical crying and a woman saying "oh my God, oh my God".'

The woman described the 75-year-old as 'very friendly', and said the event was 'really quite shocking'.

Kat Maraventano, who also lives nearby, told the publication it was scary to think something could happen ion the 'family-oriented neighbourhood'.

Victoria Police said the homicide squad were investigating the woman's death.
David Cameron came under mounting pressure last night to give sanctuary to child refugees stranded in Europe following a humiliating rebuke from the House of Lords.

Thousands of child refugees who have made it to Europe were thrown a lifeline by the peers.

Members of the Lords voted by a majority of more than 100  by 279 to 172  for Britain to accept its fair share of unaccompanied child refugees.

The move comes after the Commons rejected plans to welcome 3,000 desperate youngsters into Britain. The knife edge vote was won by just 18 votes and was met with cries of shame in the Commons chamber.

Last night, peers stripped out the specific number of refugees that Britain should take.

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The move comes after the Commons rejected plans to welcome 3,000 desperate youngsters into Britain. The knife edge vote was won by just 18 votes and was met with cries of shame in the Commons chamber

Members of the Lords voted by a majority of more than 100  by 279 to 172  for Britain to accept its fair share of unaccompanied child refugees

This will stop MPs from invoking financial privilege  which would have allowed them to veto any amendment if there are financial consequences. Labours Lord Dubs originally proposed the amendment, having fled the Holocaust as a child refugee himself in the 1930s.

James Brokenshire, the Home Office minister, said the Government did not want to inadvertently create a situation in which families see an advantage in sending children alone, ahead and in the hands of traffickers.

Ministers have instead said they will take in 3,000 child refugees directly from camps in, or near, Syria and other war zones.

Last month, the Daily Mail highlighted the plight of hundreds of children living in squalor in the Calais jungle.

Ministers have said they will take in 3,000 child refugees directly from camps in, or near, Syria and other war zones

James Brokenshire, the Home Office minister, said the Government did not want to inadvertently create a situation in which families see an advantage in sending children alone, ahead and in the hands of traffickers

In a leader, the Mail called for a one-off amnesty for them, saying: It may be that some of the boys have been sent on ahead cynically by families who hope to claim their human right to join them if they make it to Britain.

BRITAIN SET TO HELP EASTERN COUNTRIES INCLUDING ALBANIA JOIN THE EU Britain plans to hand out almost 2billion to help countries such as Albania, Turkey and Serbia join the EU, research reveals today. Downing Street confirmed this week that David Cameron still supports membership bids from Turkey and others on the EUs southern border. This is despite Home Secretary Theresa May warning they are countries with poor populations and serious problems with organised crime, corruption and sometimes even terrorism. Figures compiled by the Vote Leave campaign reveal the UK is set to contribute 1.2billion in pre-accession assistance by 2020 to help them join the EU. And an extra 640million will go to Turkey as part of a controversial EU migrant deal that is linked to the fast-tracking of the countrys bid for membership. Advertisement

But they are young and they are desperate. Which is why this paper suggests today that in a one-off amnesty  a one-off, mind  we should offer refuge to the children who have been through so much to reach Calais alone.

Meanwhile, to avoid cruelly raising false hopes, our authorities should make it absolutely clear that no more will be allowed in.

Earl Howe, the Government spokesman in the Lords said there was no argument that Britain had a moral duty to help those in need. He said: Were simply saying, physically transporting unaccompanied children from one part of the EU to another is not the best or more effective way of fulfilling our duty.

But Lord Dubs warned that thousands of youngsters were not safe just because they had reached Europe. The 83-year-old said the current Tory government would have probably said no to taking child refugees fleeing the Nazis.

These children are being left to their own devices at best and at worst theyre in trouble, he said. He blamed David Cameron, saying: I think the Prime Minister has put his stamp on this.

Speaking to the Mail, he added: The longer this goes on, the harder it is for the Government as they will think theyre losing face. But its a win-win for them. Helping child refugees is wildly popular.

Lord Dubs warned that thousands of youngsters were not safe just because they had reached Europe
Thousands of families let down by energy giant Scottish Power are to get a share of an 18m penalty imposed by watchdogs.

The company, which has millions of customers across the UK, has been penalised for shocking customer service standards.

Problems surrounded the introduction of a new billing computer system which left hundreds of thousands of households in the dark about what they owed.

Thousands of families let down by energy giant Scottish Power (pictured) are to get a share of an 18m penalty imposed by watchdogs

Inaccurate estimated bills and direct debit demands were generated and, in some cases, people did not get bills for months on end.

When customers complained, they found it impossible to get through to staff in order to sort out problems.

Even when the energy industry ombudsman ruled in favour of customers, Scottish Power, which is owned by Iberdrola of Spain, failed to implement the decisions quickly.

The energy regulator Ofgem announced yesterday that Scottish Power has agreed to pay 18m to customers and charity by way of a penalty.

Scottish Power let its customers down during the implementation of a new IT system. When things went wrong, it didnt act quickly enough to fix them Ofgem chief executive, Dermot Nolan

Ofgem chief executive, Dermot Nolan, said: Scottish Power let its customers down during the implementation of a new IT system. When things went wrong, it didnt act quickly enough to fix them.

This created frustration and worry for many customers, who also wasted a lot of time trying to contact the supplier by phone.

Scottish Power was blasted for unacceptably long call waiting times, with the company receiving more than one million complaints between June 2013 and December 2015.

Thousands of ombudsman rulings were not implemented within the required 28 days and Scottish Powers failures resulted in more than 300,000 customers receiving late final bills when leaving the company. This meant many customers did not receive money they were owed.

The chief executive of Scottish Powers retail business, Neil Clitheroe, said: 'We apologise unreservedly to those customers affected'

Up to 15 million of the fine will be paid out to people affected by customer service issues and the remainder will go to charity.

Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, which provided evidence to Ofgems investigation, said: Scottish Power failed its customers not once but twice.

'Not only did the firm struggle to get peoples bills right first time, it also failed to sort out the problems when customers tried to complain.

Time and again were seeing big companies introduce new billing systems which leave customers in limbo - with the wrong bill and no way to sort it out.

Ofgem is right to hand Scottish Power such a large fine.

'We also need the industry to start learning the lessons from issues which have caused such misery for consumers.

Energy expert Tom Lyon, of uSwitch.com, said: By imposing such a significant fine, the regulator is sending the energy industry a clear message that consumers must be treated fairly.

The chief executive of Scottish Powers retail business, Neil Clitheroe, said: Scottish Power has worked with Ofgem throughout this investigation.

'We apologise unreservedly to those customers affected.

In order to upgrade our old IT systems, we invested 200 million on new technology to allow us to deliver smarter digital products and services to benefit our customers.

During the complex transition between systems we encountered a range of technical issues. This lead to an unacceptable increase in complaints and reduced the quality of our customer service.
A surfer is in intensive care after being viciously attacked by a shark in Bali.

The surfer, known as Ryan from California, was in the water at Balian, western Bali, was reportedly bitten on the forearm and elbow by a bull shark on Monday.

Australian man Twiggy Van Ryan witnessed the attack, saying the victim's 'whole elbow had gone into the shark's mouth', according to surfing magazine, Stab.

A surfer is in intensive care after being viciously attacked by a shark at Balian, western Bali, on Monday (stock image)

It is believed the American surfer was attacked by a bull shark as he was riding a wave (stock image)

'It was a pretty heavy wound, maybe four inches either side of the tip of the elbow, basically his whole elbow had gone into the shark's mouth and it was pretty badly damaged as the shark pulled back,' Mr Van Ryan told the magazine.

'Really messy. We wrapped the wound properly and he went into shock - kind of a short blackout.'

Mr Van Ryan, from Cronulla in New South Wales, said the American surfer lost 'a lot of blood' and that it looked like he would be in hospital for 'quite some time'.

He added that he had spoke to the surfer's friends, and was told the Californian was 'recovering' after surgery.

Balian is located about 40 kilometres from the Indonesian capital of Denpasar.

The surfer, known as Ryan from California, was in the water at Balian (pictured) was reportedly bitten on the forearm and elbow by a bull shark
Shocking footage has shown the moment a group of delayed passengers began to attack airport staff at a Chinese airport.

The group were reportedly taking a Capital Airlines flight to the city of Changsha on Sunday, however their flight was delayed by bad weather, the People's Daily Online reports.

According to reports, the airline's representative declined to meet with them and that's when things turned ugly.

Violence in the airport: A man slaps security staff after his flight to Changsha was delayed due to bad weather

At first, the airline staff manage to discuss the issue with the passengers but things soon turn unpleasant

The incident is thought to have taken place at around 8:30pm at Changsha Huanghua International Airport after Capital Airline's flight JD5766 landed later than its scheduled time.

The flight was scheduled to travel from Changchun in north-east China to Changsha in south-west China and was supposed to arrive at 6:10pm.

In the footage, one female member of staff is stood at the desk dealing with passenger complaints.

Things start to escalate and a passenger throws a lunchbox at the woman. She is then seen calling for help.

A member of security then comes to her aid however this woman is also attacked.

A male passenger can be seen slapping her in the face and then continuing to push her away from the desk at the gate.

The footage has caused an outrage on China's social media Weibo.

One user wrote: 'Why hitting people? Does this solve the problem? I'm so angry [watching this].'

Anther user said: 'No matter if they were beating a man or a woman, it's not right.'

However, a third user commented: 'I once got delayed for more than 10 hours at the Nanjing Lukou Airport. [The airline] found so m any excuses, but the other planes continued to take off... After all, passengers are at a disadvantage.'

Not happy: The remnants of the food that was thrown at an airline employee can be seen on the floor

China has many issues with passengers behaving badly and has introduced a black list scheme to try and curb the number of incidents in airports and on planes.

Those who are added to the list will have their names and a description of their behaviour entered onto a database and they will remain there for between one to three years.

Over that period, they can be refused service by travel agents, airlines, hotels and scenic sites.

In a further step, the administration said it was working with major Chinese airlines on 'enacting definite restrictive measures' against those on the list, which currently includes 16 names in total.

The government has grown concerned about the negative impact on China's image stemming from numerous incidents of bad behavior by Chinese tourists at home and abroad, ranging from fighting with air crews to defacing cultural artifacts.

Unhappy with the fact that Capital Airlines' representative would not meet with them, they turn violent

Rising incomes, relaxed regulations and cheap flights have permitted record numbers of Chinese to travel in recent years. Among other frequent complaints are line-cutting, smoking where banned, littering and fouling public toilets.

Last week, a male passenger was arrested after opening the plane door for some 'fresh air' as the aircraft was getting ready to take off.

The businessman, who has only been identified by his surname, Hu, was travelling on Hainan Airlines flight HU7729 from Hangzhou to Shenyang on April 18 when the incident took place.
A Chinese company is to build a fleet of floating nuclear plants costing 318 million each in the politically-contested South China Sea, amid concerns over risks to both the surrounding environment and national security.

The vessels, the first of which is currently being assembled in Huludao, Liaoning, north-east China, could provide energy to the man-made islands in the area, according to People's Daily Online.

The decision has prompted worries that, with a fleet of nuclear power plants, China could more easily command authority over the sizable region that is also claimed by south-east Asian nations including Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Costly: A nuclear vessel crosses the waves, designed by China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN)

Ambitious project: The first of the powerful vessels is being assembled in Huludao, Liaoning, north east China

Risky: They are expected to provide clean power to the controversial 'fake' islands made by China in the area

The announcement was made last week during an expert review by industry specialists from Bohai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry Co Ltd, a subsidiary of China Shipbuilding Industry Corp (CSIC).

The CSIC 719 Research Institute, established two years ago to develop maritime nuclear platforms, said the new fleet will have a range of civilian and industrial uses - from powering rescue equipment to aiding seawater purification.

However it is thought the ships' main purpose will be to provide power to the controversial artificial islands in the disputed region, particularly those recently built in the Spratly archipelago, called the Nansha islands by the Chinese.

The islands thought to be served include the Fiery Cross Reef - called Yongshu Reef in China - and the smaller Subi (or Zhubi) reef to the south of the region.

The construction of these first trial maritime nuclear platforms is expected to be completed by 2018 and be put into use by 2019, and will cost upwards of 3 billion yuan (318 million) to finish.

Zhu Hanchao, deputy chief engineer at CSIC 719, meanwhile predicted to People's Daily that the project would generate profits of up to 22.6 billion yuan (2.4 billion) over a 40 year life span.

The Spratley and Paracel islands are contested by China, the Phillipines and other south-east Asian nations

Who owns what? The region enclosed by the 'nine-dash line' has been claimed by China for centuries

The current market share for the maritime nuclear power platforms is estimated at over 100 billion yuan ($15.45 billion) for aiding in fuelling offshore oil exploration.

At the same time environmental analysts have expressed their concerns over the narrow possibility of a nuclear meltdown if there are errors in regulation, especially given that there are often typhoons and other extreme weather events in the surrounding region.

According to an article on Times of India, David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and the director of the Nuclear Safety Project said: 'The floating accident scenario carries with it the potential for molten parts of the reactor core burning through the bottom of the barge to reach the sea water below, which would be catastrophic.'

The sovereignty of the South China Sea region has been heavily disputed over decades, focussing on whether China can claim ownership of the Spratley and Paracel outcrops which may contain important reserves of natural resources.

China says it owns an area defined by a 'nine-dash line' which stretches over hundreds of miles of water, and claims their right dates back centuries.

At the same time environmental analysts have expressed concerns over the possibility of a nuclear meltdown

Tensions have escalated over the past year with news of China's covert construction of the artificial islands

A case brought by the Philippines to the United Nations challenging China's nine-dash line claim on the South China Sea is due for a ruling over the next couple of months.

Tensions have escalated over the past year with news of China's covert construction of the artificial islands and landing of civilian aircraft on the reefs, which prompted international concern in January.

The concept of embedding nuclear capabilities into a sea-bound vessel is not a particularly novel one and Russia are expecting to complete their own floating reactor by next year.

Currently, the United States Nuclear Navy have over a hundred nuclear-powered boats.
A woman on the Fort Peck Reservation pleaded not guilty to murder Tuesday in the alleged beating death of a 13-month-old relative who was under her care, court officials said.

Janelle Red Dog, 42, is accused of striking and killing Kenzley Olson, then putting her body in a dumpster before reporting the girl missing April 19.

Judge Marvin Youpee denied bond for Red Dog and ordered her back into custody pending a May hearing, according to the Fort Peck Tribal Court clerk's office.

The defendant's mother, Rhea Starr, said she believes Kenzley's death was an accident and Red Dog had been caring for the baby when no one else would.

"That baby was passed along like yesterday's gossip," Starr said. "I don't think (Kenzley's death) was intentional. I think my daughter was trying to help the baby and panicked."

The child's mother and other family members could not be immediately reached for comment.

The defendant's initial claim  that Kenzley disappeared from the house where Red Dog was caring for her  triggered an Amber Alert for an abducted girl that was broadcast in Montana and North Dakota. Authorities canceled the alert after Red Dog purportedly confessed a day later and drew a map that led them to the baby's body.

Red Dog also faces a misdemeanor charge of hindering law enforcement for giving a false report to police.

The Fort Peck Reservation is about 20 miles from the U.S.-Canada border and home to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes.

Funeral services for Kenzley originally were scheduled for Sunday, but they were postponed until Wednesday. Her obituary described the girl's "tiny fingers, baby soft skin and beautiful smile."

Kenzley had been under Red Dog's care for about two weeks, after her mother dropped her off and failed to return, Red Dog's mother and her lawyer said. The tribal jail confirmed the mother was behind bars on unspecified charges when Kenzley died.

Defense attorney Mary Zemyan said told The AP that from the limited information authorities have shared with her, the cause of the baby's death is unclear.

Additional charges could be filed in tribal court later, Fort Peck Tribes Chief Prosecutor Scott Seifert said. Tribal law allows for a maximum three-year prison sentence on any one charge, with a combined maximum of nine years in prison and a $5,000 fine per charge, he said.

The severity of the crime and age of the victim merit the maximum punishment, Seifert wrote in a notice filed with the court.

Separate federal charges that could carry a more severe punishment also are expected in the case.

The child's death was the second major crime in recent weeks to hit the reservation, which has a population of about 10,000.

In late February, a man allegedly abducted a 4-year-old girl from a park in the town of Wolf Point, sexually assaulted her and tried to kill her. The girl was found alive several days later.

Zemyan has said Red Dog admitted to authorities that she struck Kenzley on three occasions. But she said it was unknown if that's what killed the girl.

"I haven't seen any autopsy so I'm not sure," Zemyan said.

Starr said Kenzley had been sick in recent weeks, coughing and throwing up, and she speculated that illness could have played a role in her death.

An investigator testified during a probable cause hearing last week that an autopsy determined Kenzley died of blunt force trauma. However, the court has not released the autopsy results or an affidavit from prosecutors that was said to have further details on the case.

Fort Peck Tribal Chairman Floyd Azure has blamed Kenzley's death and the recent kidnapping on a rising drug epidemic that he says the reservation must address.

Starr said her daughter had been addicted to painkillers "quite a few years ago" but was unsure if she had recent involvement in drugs.

"One addiction leads to another," Starr said. "There's so much drugs on this reservation it's crazy," she said.
Horrifying footage has captured the moment a bus, car and rubbish truck carrying rubble collided leaving two dead and 28 others seriously injured.

The incident took place in Beijing, China on April 20, reports Huanqiu, affiliated with the People's Daily Online.

Reports claim that the truck driver is to blame for the incident.

Passengers are sat on the bus moments before a truck ploughs into the right hand side of it in Beijing

Horrifying: The moment the truck crashes into the bus full of passengers on April 20 in the Chinese capital

According to reports, the truck driver ignored a red light at a crossroad and ploughed into the bus

According to reports, the truck driver ignored a red light at a crossroad and ploughed straight into the middle of the bus.

This then caused the bus to overturn.

Video footage from the bus shows the moment the accident took place.

The aftermath was also captured with fire trucks on site to handle the clean up operation.

The accident scene was cleared in just 15 minutes.

According to witnesses, there was blood everywhere.

Many of the injured were taken to Daxing Capital Medical Hospital in the city.

The video has been shared online with many people calling for stricter controls on heavy dump trucks transporting rubble.

Last month, a couple were killed after a truck carrying gravel overturned, tipping 50 tonnes of gravel on top of their car and burying them alive.

The heavy lorry nearly torn the bus into two as it smashed into the vehicle carrying many passengers
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Building work on an enormous bar with a transparent domed roof that can house thousands of revelers is picking up pace in south central China.

Situated in downtown Zhangjiajie, Hunan province, the ambitious new bar - which resembles a flying saucer when seen from above - will be able to host up to 3,800 guests over an area of 225,000 square feet, according to a report by People's Daily Online.

Zhangjiajie Cloud Top Culture Industry Development Co. Ltd has invested 220 million yuan (23 million) into the project, due to open this August. Chinese media are dubbing it the world's largest bar, although this is difficult to verify.

Ambitious: The main building work on the huge bar in downtown Zhangjiajie, Hunan province, south central China, is now almost complete

Almost at an end? On April 24, the company announced that construction had recently been completed on the main part of the building

Nightlife: It even promises to have a remarkable roof that expands and opens on warm evenings, resembling a gigantic lotus flower

On April 24, the company announced that construction had recently been completed on the main part of the building.

Customers visiting the bar will be treated to a range of attractions and cool features including futuristic lighting, projections and even robot waiters.

Last week a cooperation agreement was signed with Hunan Provincial Musicians Association to establish the bar as an international music venue.

It even promises to have a remarkable roof that expands and opens in the evening, resembling a gigantic lotus flower.

The highly anticipated bar is a short drive from Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, the UNESCO world heritage site said to have influenced the scenery in the popular science fiction film Avatar.

Unique: Customers visiting will be treated to a range of attractions and features including futuristic lighting, projections and robot waiters

Special: Zhangjiajie Cloud Top Culture Industry has invested 220 million yuan (23 million) into the project, due to open this August
Tunisian inventors have looked to the past for inspiration in their designs for a more efficient way of capturing wind energy.

A start-up has developed a new design of bladeless turbine, inspired by the sails on ships from Ancient Carthage.

Saphon Energy said its new design is quieter, safer and more efficient than traditional wind turbines and is capable of capturing twice as much wind energy.

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Tunisian start-up Saphon Energy has created a super efficient wind turbine (pictured) which it states is quieter, safer and more efficient than traditional wind turbines and is capable of capturing twice as much wind energy

Resembling a satellite dish, the rotating bowl sits atop a mast to capture wind to move a converter in a figure-of-eight motion.

According to its creators, the design is inspired by the sails of Carthaginian vessels from 2,000 years ago, as well as movements of birds and fish.

The team behind the innovative design said that due to its low cost performance, it is ideal for use in developing countries such as India, in regions where a power grids are not established.

The team behind the innovative Saphonian design (pictured) say that due to its low cost performance, it is ideal for use in developing countries such as India, in regions where a power grids are not established

The Saphonian design uses a disc on top of a mast to collect wind energy,which its makers say is inspired by 2,000-year-old Carthaginian sail ships (illustrated), as well as the movement of birds and fish

SAPHONIAN TURBINE DESIGN Tunisian start-up Saphon Energy has created a super-efficient wind turbine design. The Saphonian design uses a disc on top of a mast to collect wind energy, and the makers say it is inspired by 2,000-year-old Carthaginian sail ships, as well as the movement of birds and fish. Instead of blades, when hit by the wind the dish moves in a back and forth 3D knot motion, largely inspired by sail boats. The firm claims its bladeless design captures twice as much wind energy as traditional turbines. Saphon Energy said a wind farm of just 50 of the devices could power up to 1,000 homes in an 'off grid' village in developing countries, producing 20kW of power. Advertisement

Saphon believes that a relatively small number of its 'Saphonian' turbines could provide enough power for a village.

Ani Auoini, co-chairman of Saphon Energy, told Reuters: 'This project that is planned for India consisting of 50 Saphonians producing 20 kilowatts of power, a total of one megawatt, will be a wind farm.

'This power produced in south India, could meet the demands of a small village of 1,000 houses.'

The firm has made strong claims around its device, stating that in tests the Saphonian is more than twice as efficient as traditional blade-based wind turbines.

It is also said to be able to convert up to 80 per cent of the wind energy hitting the surface.

What's more, the prize-winning design is picking up support from tech giants such as Microsoft, which is looking to such sources of energy production to power its vast cloud computing farms around the world.

Leila Serhan, Microsoft regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, told Reuters: 'Obviously while we are building our cloud and building our 26 data centres that we have around the world, we are very particular in making sure that those data centres have zero emissions.'

Saphon Energy believes a relatively small number of its 'Saphonian' turbines (pictured) could provide enough power for an 'off grid' village in developing countries

The makers claim the design's absence of blades mean it is safer for birds and bats, as they can easily identify and avoid the compact discs, compared to rotating turbine blades. Saphon Energy said the lack of a gearbox and blades mean it is far quieter than traditional blade-based wind turbines (pictured)

WHO WERE THE CARTHAGINIANS? Carthage was an ancient city state of the Phoenician civilisation founded in 814 BC. Once established, the city quickly grew to have so much influence in the region  which is modern day Tunisia  and became a city state in itself, as well as an empire. Due to its coastal location, Carthage commanded a powerful navy, with historians estimate may have numbered up to 200 galleys. The influence of the empire spread across North Africa and the Iberian peninsula and led the empire to conflict with the Greeks and the Romans. It was the birthplace of Hannibal Barca, the legendary military commander who marched his army and elephants across the Alps, to the gates of the Roman Empire. Hundreds of years before, the city state was reigned over by Dido, the Carthaginian queen who played a pivotal role in the Aeneid - the epic poem written by Virgil which chronicles the lore around the founding of Rome. Ancient Carthage was eventually sacked, destroyed and occupied by the Romans in 146 BC. Carthage grew to have so much influence in the region  which is modern day Tunisia  it became a city state in itself and an empire. Pictured are Carthaginian ruins Advertisement

Ms Serhan made the comments at the unveiling of the latest industrial prototype of the turbine in Rouad earlier this month.

Video footage of the turbine in action shows it to be far quieter than existing turbines, producing only a click as it turns.

The makers claim the design's absence of blades mean it is safer for birds and bats, as they can easily identify and avoid the compact discs, compared to rotating turbine blades.

Looking to beyond small scale projects, Saphon Energy said it hopes to scale up the design in order to produce enough energy to power a city.
For the first time in history, researchers have isolated the parts of the human genome that could explain the differences in how humans experience happiness.

The researchers found three genetic variants for happiness, two that can account for differences in symptoms of depression, and eleven that could account for varying degrees of neuroticism.

The genetic variants for happiness are mainly expressed in the central nervous system, the adrenal glands and the pancreatic system.

For the first time in history, researchers have isolated the parts of the human genome that could explain the differences in how humans experience happiness (stock image). The researchers found three genetic variants for happiness, two that can account for symptoms of depression, and eleven that account for neuroticism

These findings are from a large-scale international study in over 298,000 people, conducted by VU Amsterdam professors Meike Bartels and Philipp Koellinger.

Professors Bartels and Koellinger, in collaboration with scientists in 17 countries, studied the phenotypes in the DNA of more than 300,000 people.

Phenotypes are traits that emerge as a result of nature and nurture.

The researchers then asked the participants to discuss how happy they feel about their life, if they've ever had depression or depressive symptoms and signs of neurotic behaviour.

The results additionally looked into physical traits that can have an impact on mood, including smoking and body mass index.

These revealed that subjective wellbeing, depression and neuroticism are influenced by the same set of genes expressed in the central nervous system, adrenal glands and pancreatic system.

The researchers asked the participants to discuss how happy they feel about their life, if they've ever had depression (stock image) or depressive symptoms and signs of neurotic behaviour. The results additionally looked into physical traits that can have an impact on mood, including smoking and body mass index

These findings are from a large-scale international study in over 298,000 people, conducted by VU Amsterdam professors Meike Bartels and Philipp Koellinger. The genetic variants for happiness are mainly expressed in the central nervous system (illustrated), the adrenal glands and the pancreatic system

Genes in tissues were also found to influence the feeling of wellbeing.

However, the researchers added that the three variants only account for a small fraction of the differences between people.

Prior twin and family research using information from the Netherlands Twin Register and other sources has shown that individual differences in happiness and wellbeing can be partially ascribed to genetic differences between people.

Happiness and wellbeing are the topics of an increasing number of scientific studies in a variety of academic disciplines.

THE HAPPINESS GENE This research builds on a previous study which found that the more people in a country who have a particular gene, the happier the nation will be. The DNA in question, the FAAH gene, makes a protein that affects feelings of pleasure and pain. People with a particular version of it tend to be cheerier souls. However, wealth and health were found to have little effect on happiness. The team from Bulgaria and Hong Kong looked at whether there was a link between levels of the FAAH gene in a population and number of people who said they were 'very happy' in global study of life satisfaction. Sweden  one of the happiest countries in Europe and in the world  also had lots of happy DNA. Advertisement

VU Amsterdam professor Meike Bartels explained: 'This study is both a milestone and a new beginning.

'A milestone because we are now certain that there is a genetic aspect to happiness and a new beginning because the three variants that we know are involved account for only a small fraction of the differences between human beings.

'We expect that many variants will play a part.'

'Locating these variants will also allow us to better study the interplay between nature and nurture, as the environment is certainly responsible - to some extent - for differences in the way people experience happiness.'

These findings, which resulted from a collaborative project with the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium, will not be studied more in depth to create a clearer picture of what causes differences in happiness.

Professor Bartels added: 'The genetic overlap with depressive symptoms that we have found is also a breakthrough.

'This shows that research into happiness can also offer new insights into the causes of one of the greatest medical challenges of our time: depression.'

The research was successfully completed thanks to the assistance of 181 researchers from 145 scientific institutes, including medical centres in Rotterdam, Groningen, Leiden and Utrecht, and the universities of Rotterdam and Groningen.

This research builds on a previous study which found that the more people in a country who have a particular gene, the happier the nation will be. The DNA in question, the FAAH gene, makes a protein that affects feelings of pleasure and pain. This graph shows the relationship between the gene in a country and its happiness

The results were published in the journal Nature Genetics.

This research builds on a previous study which found that the more people in a country who have a particular gene, the happier the nation will be.

The DNA in question, the FAAH gene, makes a protein that affects feelings of pleasure and pain. People with a particular version of it tend to be cheerier souls.

However, wealth and health were found to have little effect on happiness.

The team from Bulgaria and Hong Kong looked at whether there was a link between levels of the FAAH gene in a population and number of people who said they were 'very happy' in global study of life satisfaction.
Being distracted by your phone while crossing the road could cost you your life, with 'texting zombies' four times more likely not to spot oncoming traffic.

Now, in a bid to keep phone addicts safe, a German city has embedded lights into the road at a pedestrian crossing so texters needn't raise their heads to tell when it's safe to cross.

While some people believe the extra lights in the city of Augsburg are a waste of money, they are the latest safety feature to protect phone users.

In a bid to keep phone addicts safe, a German city has embedded lights into the road at a pedestrian crossing (pictured) so texters needn't raise their heads to tell when it's safe to cross

It follows the introduction of designated pavement lanes for texters in the Chinese city of Chongqing and at a US university.

City spokeswoman, Stephanie Lermen, told German site N-TV: '[The embedded lights] create a whole new level of attention.

She added the project is a good use of money and the lights were introduced following the tragic death of a 15-year-old using a phone, by a tram.

A recent survey of European cities including Berlin found one fifth of pedestrians are distracted by their phones, with a study conducted by the University of Washington suggesting it's as high as one in three in the US.

The US Department of Transportation has linked phone use to an increase in pedestrian deaths.

However, commentators in German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung complained the project is a waste of taxpayer's cash, The Washington Post reported.

Augsburg is not the only city introducing measures to make phone users more aware of their surroundings  or at least keeping them safe as well as others around them.

A recent survey of European cities including Berlin found one fifth of pedestrians are distracted by their phones (illustrated with a stock image), with a study conducted by the University of Washington suggesting it's as high as one in three in the US

In 2014, the city of Chongqing experimented with a 165ft long pavement divided into lanes  with one for speedy and alert pedestrians and another for 'smombies,' meaning smartphone zombies.

Similarly, last year, Utah Valley University's Student Life and Wellness Centre (UVU) introduced a 'walking and texting' lane to a busy flight of stairs.

The idea started as a joke, although it could ensure that diligent students get to class on time and prevent accidents caused by people not looking where they are going.

The staircase was divided into three lanes, for walking, running and texting.

Make sure you don't walk in the texting lane at @UVU:http://t.co/YBaLL9uO5B pic.twitter.com/OKMuFg42X5  Inside Higher Ed (@insidehighered) June 17, 2015

Matt Bambrough, UVU's creative director, suggested the lane references many students' bad habit of dawdling along while texting or typing on their smartphones.

'When you have 18 to 24-year-olds walking on campus glued to their smartphones, you're almost bound to run into someone somewhere; it's the nature of the world we live in,' he said.

'But that isn't the reason we did it. We used that fact to engage our students, to catch their attention and to let them know we are aware of who they are and where they're coming from.

'The design was meant for people to laugh at rather than a real attempt to direct traffic flow.'

Mr Bambrough said the staircase has received positive feedback but that most texters 'aren't following the posted lanes.'

'It's the nature of the world we live in. I've texted and walked before - it's not against the law,' he said.
For the first time in the iPhone's history, Apple is expected to post the first year-on-year drop in sales.

After five successive quarters where Apple has reported record revenues, the first three months of 2016 are likely to be the worst in 13 years.

The firm warned investors in January that a decline was imminent, and the official earnings report is expected later today.

After five successive quarters where Apple has reported record revenues, the first three months of 2016 are likely to be the worst in 13 years. The firm warned investors in January that a decline was imminent, and the official earnings report is expected later today. The iPhone 6S Plus, 6S and SE are pictured

At the time, the company suggested it expected revenue to be between $50 billion and $53 billion (34.4 billion to 36.5 billion).

This would represent a drop of around 10 per cent on the same period last year.

In the first quarter of 2015, Apple sold 61.2 million iPhones and the latest forecast suggests the first quarter of 2016 will show sales of 50.4 million - down 18 per cent.

This is significant because around two thirds of the firm's revenue comes from the sale of iPhones.

Slowing growth in China has been suggested as the core reason for the drop, an area Apple has focused on heavily in the last two years, alongside the increasingly saturated smartphone market - with competition from rivals such as Samsung continuing, but also due to improved performances from Chinese firms including Huawei.

YEAR-ON-YEAR COMPARISONS iPhone Q1 2015: 61.2 million Q1 2016: 50.4 million iPad Q1 2015: 12.6 million Q1 2016: 10.1 million Profit Q1 2015: $13.6 billion Q1 2016: $11.1 billion Sales Q1 2015: $58 billion Q1 2015: $50 to $53 billion Advertisement

The fall comes off the back of figures released in January which showed the iPhone made Apple more money in just a single quarter than Google's Android platform has ever made.

It emerged Google has made $31 billion (22 billion) in revenue from its Android operating system, but the figure is dwarfed by Apple, which generated more than $32billion from iPhone sales alone in a single quarter last year.

Google's parent company, Alphabet, has been keen to keep its earnings close to its chest, but the figures were made public during an ongoing court case with computer technology company Oracle.

It also follows reports Apple will push its next major iPhone launch to 2017.

An analyst has said that the next flagship phone, expected to be called the iPhone 7, will lack 'many attractive selling points' and could be remarkably similar to the iPhone 6 and 6S.

The analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo, from KGI Securities, added that despite the forecasts, he estimates that iPhone SE shipments will rise from 12 million to 18 million handsets.

Twitter is also set to report its latest financial results, with questions continuing to hang over the social media site.

In the first quarter of 2015, Apple sold 61.2 million iPhones and the latest forecast suggests the first quarter of 2016 will show sales of 50.4 million - down 18 per cent. Apple Vice President Greg Joswiak introduces the iPhone SE during an event at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino in March

Slowing growth in China has been suggested as the core reason for the drop, an area Apple has focused on heavily in the last two years, alongside the increasingly saturated smartphone market - with competition from rivals such as Samsung and Huawei. Apple boss Tim Cook is pictured with the iPhone 6

Twitter continues to face questions over its future, with its last round of results at the beginning of the year revealing it had failed to add any new users in the previous quarter, even briefly losing around a million active users at one point.

The site's investors will be keen to see an improvement this quarter amid the continued rollout of new features in an attempt to spark new interest in the site, including a Direct Message button to tweets so they can be shared privately more quickly.

Since November, Twitter's stock has been trading in the US below the price at which it launched on the market.
From their absurd dressing room demands to hairdryer-style rants at even the smallest interruption, artists, actors and musicians can often have a reputation for being difficult to get along with.

But now researchers claim to have found evidence that shows creative people tend to share the same personality traits as psychopaths.

In a series of tests, psychologists have shown that the most creative individuals show higher levels of emotional disinhibition, dishonesty and risk taking.

Psychologists have shown creative people tend to rate highly on psychopathic traits, but they say it tends to be more associated with prosocial traits than antisocial ones depicted in films like American Psycho (pictured)

They say, however, in many cases it appears creativity may be more associated with prosocial psychopathic traits rather than those that are antisocial, such as cruelty and meanness.

This means the individuals can still fit into society but may struggle to empathise with others.

CREATIVITY AND PSYCHOPATHY To study the influence of psychopathy, the researchers set up three experiments. In the first they used an online questionnaire to examine the creativity of 503 participants alongside a series of questions designed to examine the dark triad traits - narcissim, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. The second study examined specific traits such as boldness, meanness and disinhibition in 250 college students. A third set of 93 students were given a series of gambling and divergent thinking tasks while the electrical conductance of their skin was measured. The results showed that those who tended to be more creative also had higher scores for psychopathic traits, but particularly for boldness. Advertisement

According to Adrianne John Galang, a psychologist at De La Salle University in Manila, and his colleagues, creative people may need some of these traits to cultivate their talent.

They say it can help them make bold choices that are often associated with the best art or performances.

Writing in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the researchers said: 'We argue that emotional disinhibition, in the form of psychopathic boldness, is actually integral to some creative personalities and functionally related to the creative process.

'Generally then, a creative field might not just shape a person into a more arrogant or dishonest personality, it might be actively selecting them, not for the sake of having disagreeable traits, but because such traits meaningfully co-vary with creativity itself.'

Psychologists have long suspected creativity may go hand-in-hand with some psychopathic traits.

Anecdotally, many artists and actors are well known for attempting to exert control over their surroundings with demands and rules about how others interact with them.

There are also famous examples of actors who have stopped performances to lambaste someone in the audience or because something was not to their liking.

Stories of artists who struggled through a series of failed relationships and were even cruel to those around them have also helped to fuel suspicions that creativity may have roots in psychopathy.

Dysfunction of the orbitofrontal cortex (pictured), among other areas, is implicated in the etiology of psychopathy. Researchers say some of the traits caused by this, however, may make people more creative

However, there are also many other psychological disorders that have also been linked to creative minds, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism.

'SUCCESSFUL' PSYCHOPATHY Successful psychopathy is a controversial idea - but it's not a new one. In 1941, American psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley was among the first to highlight this paradoxical condition in his book The Mask of Sanity. According to Cleckley, the psychopath is a hybrid creature, donning an engaging veil of normalcy that conceals an emotionally impoverished and profoundly disturbed core. In Cleckley's eyes, psychopaths are charming, self-centered, dishonest, guiltless and callous people who lead aimless lives devoid of deep interpersonal attachments. But Cleckley also alluded to the possibility that some psychopathic individuals are successful interpersonally and occupationally, at least in the short term. In a 1946 article, he wrote that the typical psychopath will have 'often outstripped 20 rival salesmen over a period of six months, or married the most desirable girl in town, or, in a first venture into politics, got himself elected into the state legislature'. Advertisement

To study the influence of psychopathy, the researchers of the latest study set up three experiments.

In the first they used an online questionnaire to examine the creativity of 503 participants alongside a series of questions designed to examine the dark triad traits - narcissim, Machiavellianism and psychopathy.

The second study examined specific psychopathic traits such as boldness, meanness and disinhibition in 250 college students.

A third set of 93 students were given a series of gambling and divergent thinking tasks while the electrical conductance of their skin was measured.

The results showed that those who tended to be more creative also had higher scores for psychopathic traits, but particularly for boldness.

The final study showed that those who tended to have the highest levels of emotional disinhibition showed less arousal during the gambling task and also tended to be more creative.

The researchers said traits they detected tended to be more matched with prosocial psychopaths than the antisocial model of the condition.

Cultivating some of these traits and discouraging others, however, could also help to improve creativity in the future.

'We show, antisocial behaviours of the kind associated with psychopathic meanness and disinhibition do not seem essential to the creative personality. Instead, they just happen to coincide with it,' the researchers continued.

Characters such as Loki (pictured from the film Thor) from mythology are thought to typify the psychotic creative types as they are extremely clever but have little empathy for others or inhibition in their actions

'If the model proves useful going forward, it might be the cultivation of forms of boldness, while seeking to mitigate the more harmful forms of disinhibition, which would be the key to fostering creativity in both educational and professional settings.

'The trickster, thief, and rascal are figures of myth that straddle both virtue and vice.

'Whether as a hero or a villain, such as Loki, tricksters appeal to audiences because of their ability to solve problems through cleverness, and always with liberal applications of skullduggery.

'It could turn out that the price of human discovery, whether we like it or not, is to give the Trickster more credit.'
No other culture has venerated animals like the ancient Egyptians, who mummified beloved pets as if they were human and even worshipped cats.

Now, an Egyptologist has detailed how ancient embalmers created these animal mummies, which range in size from diminutive beetles to mighty bulls.

Salima Ikram described the process from removing internal organs to wrapping the animals in strips of linen cloth in a video, where she also describes her own experiments in creating rabbit mummies.

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An Egyptologist has detailed how ancient embalmers created animal mummies (one shown), which range in size from diminutive beetles to mighty bulls

The professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo said Ibises were the most commonly mummified animal, but thousands of dogs, cats, cattle and even scarab beetles and shrew mice were preserved 'for eternity'.

The Ibis represented Thoth, the god of wisdom, knowledge and writing and was also credited with bringing floods, which kept the land near the Nile fertile.

Cats were mummified as religious offerings in enormous quantities and were believed to represent the war goddess Bastet, while dogs sometimes represented jackal deities such as Anubis, who was associated with mummification and the afterlife.

Salima Ikram described the process from removing internal organs to wrapping the animals in strips of cloth in a video, where she also describes her own experiments in creating rabbit mummies. A mummy is shown

It is thought there were four main reasons for mummifying animals  to be worshipped as manifestations of certain gods, act as offerings to them, provide food in the afterlife and allow beloved pets to live on in the afterlife. Baboon mummies are shown above and were sacred, as well as being kept as pets

CREATING AN ANIMAL MUMMY The first basic step of the mummification process was to remove the organs in the case of larger animals, in order to dry out the body. Internal organs are the first part of the body to decompose due to their high water content. Unlike with humans, where certain ancient organs were retained and placed in canopic jars, animal entrails were simply discarded. After washing the animals, the ancient experts had to dry them out. Once dried, an animal's body was cleaned and oils applied before it was wrapped up. For some animals, such as a bull, priests would have recited prayers while it was being wrapped, in an elaborate ceremony, she said. Advertisement

It is thought there were four main reasons for mummifying animals - to be worshipped as manifestations of certain gods, act as offerings to them, provide food in the afterlife and allow beloved pets to live on in the afterlife.

Professor Ikram said the first basic step of the mummification process was to remove the organs in the case of larger animals, in order to dry out the body.

Internal organs are the first part of the body to decompose due to their high water content.

Unlike with humans, where certain ancient organs were retained and placed in canopic jars, animal entrails were simply discarded.

After washing the animals, the ancient experts had to dry them out.

'They did this in the same way they did for humans - by using natron - a combination of salt and baking soda found naturally in parts of Egypt,' Professor Ikram said.

She explained the material sucks out moisture, which helps preserve the body and also serves as a deodoriser and disinfectant, which would have been particularly helpful in the hot country.

The god Sobek, whose cultural centre was at Crocodilopolis in the Fayum, was represented by a crocodile living in the temple. A few other temples also kept sacred crocodiles, occasionally even a pair of them. A whole mummification industry grew up around his cult, with crocodiles specially grown for the purpose

Embalmers had to grind up large quantities of natron using stones, with a handful needed to embalm a lizard, for example, and perhaps 700 handuls needed to preserve a sheep.

Once dried, an animal's body would have been cleaned and oils applied before it was wrapped up.

For some animals, such as a bull, priests would have recited prayers while it was being wrapped, in an elaborate ceremony, she said.

The god Apis, depicted as a bull, was the most important of all the sacred animals in Egypt and its importance increased as time went on.

Dried animals were wrapped in strips of linen cloth, which was the only textile produced in ancient Egypt.

Because little was written about the mummification process in ancient Egyptian times, and there are few illustrations on the walls of tombs, the best was for Egyptologists to understand the techniques used is experimentation. Professor Ikram made mummified rabbits (pictured above)

'In addition to the control rabbit, we made three other mummies (pictured). The control rabbit actually blew up - exploded - and then it started to dry out but it didn't look very nice,' she said

Bandages were sometimes decorated and placed in shaped wooden coffins.

Because little was written about the mummification process in ancient Egyptian times, and there are few illustrations on the walls of tombs, the best way for Egyptologists to understand the techniques used is experimentation.

'We did various tests to see what happens if you leave a rabbit in open air and then we also did different kinds of experimentation based on mummies that had been successfully made by the ancient Egyptians,' Professor Ikram said.

Her team also made experimental fish mummies using catfish and Nile perch. A number of ancient fish mummies are shown above in a museum collection

'In addition to the control rabbit, we made three other mummies. The control rabbit actually blew up - exploded - and then it started to dry out but it didn't look very nice.

'The other three are made in the way we think the ancient Egyptians would have done.'

She said her team also made experimental fish mummies using catfish and Nile perch

'The mummies prove that what horologists wrote and what they did... was very effective and is probably a good but very expensive ways of mummifying,' she added.
In a bid to push forward with plans for self-driving cars, Alphabet's Google has teamed up with Ford and Uber to form a coalition to push for federal action.

Sweden-based Volvo, which is owned by China's ZhejiangGeely Holding Group, and Uber rival Lyft also arepart of the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets.

The group said in a statement it will 'work with lawmakers, regulators and the public to realise the safety and societal benefits of self-driving vehicles.'

In a bid to push forward with plans for self-driving cars, Alphabet's Google has teamed up with Ford and Uber to form a coalition to push for federal action. Sweden-based Volvo, which is owned by China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, and Uber rival Lyft also are part of the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets

The coalition said David Strickland will be the coalition's counseland spokesman.

He is the former top official of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the US auto safety agency that is writing new guidance on self-driving cars.

'The best path for this innovation is to have one clear setof federal standards and the coalition will work withpolicymakers to find the right solutions that will facilitatethe deployment of self-driving vehicles,' Strickland said in thestatement.

On Wednesday, NHTSA is holding the second of two publicforums on its self-driving car guidelines that will featurecomments from tech companies and automakers at StanfordUniversity.

The group said in a statement it will 'work with lawmakers, regulators and the public to realise the safety and societal benefits of self-driving vehicles.' Chris Urmson, director of the Self Driving Cars Project at Google, speaks during a preview of Google's prototype autonomous vehicles in Mountain View

California has proposed barring self-driving cars that do not have steering wheels, pedals and a licensed driver ready to take over in an emergency, which Google (self-driving car pictured) has opposed. Under current regulations, fully autonomous vehicles without human controls are not legal

CHINA'S SELF-DRIVING PLANS A draft roadmap for having highway-ready, self-driving carswithin five years and autonomous vehicles for urban driving by2025 could also be be unveiled in China this year. The draft will set out technical standards, including a common language for cars to communicate with each other and infrastructure, and regulatory guidelines. At a most basic level, the committee will define a'self-driving' car and set a minimum level of functionality. In other respects, China plans to be more ambitious and mayadopt cellular data technology - already used in many cars toaccess the web - for cars to communicate, rather than thededicated short-range communications (DSRC) standard used in theUS and Europe. China's provisional timeline would put it at least in line with, if not ahead, of others developing self-driving cars. Advertisement

NHTSA did not immediately return a message seeking commenton the coalition.

Ford said in a statement the group will 'work together toadvocate for policy solutions that will support the deploymentof fully autonomous vehicles.'

NHTSA hopes to release its guidance to states, policymakersand companies on self-driving vehicles in July.

California has proposed barring self-driving cars that donot have steering wheels, pedals and a licensed driver ready totake over in an emergency, which Google has opposed.

Undercurrent regulations, fully autonomous vehicles without humancontrols are not legal.

NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind has said policymakersshould avoid a 'patchwork' of state regulations on self-drivingcars but has not taken a position on California's proposal.

In February, NHTSA said the artificial intelligence systempiloting a self-driving Google car could be considered thedriver under federal law, a major step toward winning approvalfor autonomous vehicles.

The five companies, which all are working on self-drivingcars, say one of the group's first tasks is to 'work with civicorganisations, municipalities and businesses to bring the visionof self-driving vehicles to America's roads and highways.'

A draft roadmap for having self-driving cars within five years and autonomous vehicles for driving by 2025 in China could also be unveiled as early as this year. The draft will set out standards, including a common language for cars to communicate as well as regulatory guidelines. Changan Auto's self-driving car is shown

A draft roadmap for having highway-ready, self-driving carswithin five years and autonomous vehicles for urban driving by2025 could also be be unveiled in China this year.

The draft will set out technical standards, including a common language for cars to communicate with each other and infrastructure, and regulatory guidelines.

At a most basic level, the committee will define a'self-driving' car and set a minimum level of functionality.

In other respects, China plans to be more ambitious and mayadopt cellular data technology - already used in many cars toaccess the web - for cars to communicate, rather than thededicated short-range communications (DSRC) standard used in theUS and Europe.
From George Clooney to Matt Le Blanc, a peppering of grey hair can make some men look sophisticated and worldly.

But it appears women are given less grace when it comes to grey, and according to one recent poll, going grey can appear to age women twice as fast as men.

It found that women look six years older when they have a significant covering of grey hair.

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A poll has found that when it comes to going grey, women (Helen Mirren shown) are given less grace than men. The poll found that going grey appears to age women twice as fast as men. Women with a significant covering of grey hair looked six years older while men with a similar covering of grey hair only look three year older

But men with a similar covering of grey hair only look three years older, with most saying they would rather be grey than bald.

On average women first start going grey when they are 34, but men discover their first grey hairs a year earlier than women at 33.

The poll found that eight out of ten women (82 per cent) immediately pluck their first grey hairs.

And within a year of the onset of greying, almost three-quarters of women (74 per cent) are dying their hair to disguise their grey hairs.

But the vast majority of men are happy to let nature takes it course, with only 31 per cent saying they start plucking their grey hair as soon as they appear.

A peppering of grey hair can make some men look sophisticated and worldly. George Clooney (pictured) has had continued popularity as a sex symbol, despite going grey

The study found most men are happy to let nature takes it course and go grey. Less than a third of men owned up to plucking grey hairs as soon as they appear. Pictured is Matt Le Blanc, who has embraced his grey hair

SCARED OF GOING GREY? The poll was carried out by hair loss experts Crown Clinic in Manchester. It found that 72 per cent of women dread going grey compared to just 36 per cent of men. Women with a significant covering of grey hair looked six years older while men with a similar covering of grey hair only look three year older. When 1,000 people were quizzed, it found that eight out of ten women immediately pluck their first grey hairs, and almost three-quarters dye their hair within a year of the onset of greying. Advertisement

And less than a fifth of men (18 per cent) are dying their hair within a year of the grey starting to show.

The results are revealed in a new survey of 1,000 people by Crown Clinic in Manchester, a leading hair transplant centre.

It found 72 per cent of women dread the onset of greying and 62 per cent said grey hairs aged them more quickly than any other factor.

Just 36 per cent of men dreaded the inevitable onset of grey hair and 71 per cent said losing their hair would be a more significant factor in the ageing process than going grey.

It is thought the onset of greying earlier in men than women is simply because far more women colour their hair regularly and therefore women may be slower to spot their first grey hairs than men because of the dye.

The Duchess of Cambridge, aged 34, first started going grey just over a year ago when she was pictured on a visit to a West Midlands pottery exposing a handful of silver streaks in her brunette locks.

Going grey ages women more than men, a survey has found. Kate Middleton (pictured), the Duchess of Cambridge (aged 34) first started going grey just over a year ago when she was pictured on a visit to a West Midlands pottery exposing a handful of silver streaks in her brunette locks

Weeks later she was pictured again with no grey hairs, suggesting they had either been plucked or the royal had dyed her hair.

'George Clooney has shown that you can be a worldwide sex symbol with grey hair,' said Asim Shahmalak, owner of Crown Clinic.

'More than 60 per cent of us have some grey hair by the age of 40 and there is no doubt that greying is a significant factor in the ageing process.

For women it is the most important factor, which probably explains why three-quarters of women chose to disguise their greyness with dye.

Men are far more relaxed about going grey and this is because male pattern baldness is a much more significant factor in ageing men.

He added: The fact is, men would far rather be grey than bald.'
The battle for Montana Republican delegates is heating up, with Donald Trumps national campaign urging Montana supporters to meet this Fridays deadline to be eligible.

In a Sunday email blast, Trump West Regional Coordinator Jim Stracner advised supporters in Montana to get their applications to be state delegates to the national convention. The request for applications is first time the Trump campaign has shown interest in the Montana Republican Partys delegate selection process.

At issue is the crucial second vote by Montanas 27 delegates to the 2016 National Republican Convention the week of July 18. Montana delegates are obligated to vote for the Republican presidential nominee who wins the states June 7 primary. But on the second vote, if a nominee isnt selected on the first, Montana GOP delegates can vote for whomever they want.

Plan A is to, and we believe we will, get the 1,237 delegates and win it on the first ballot. That is plan A, and that is a likely scenario. That is the scenario that we believe is going to happen, Stracner told The Gazette. But were similar to every campaign in that were concerned that the delegates are supporters of ours.

In his email to supporters, Stracner provided a link to the Montana GOP website form for delegate applications, and information for becoming a Trump volunteer.

Montana campaign workers for candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, are currently contacting known potential delegates to see how those delegates might vote in a second round vote, said Will Deschamps, who is with Cruz's campaign.

Even with the April 29 delegate application deadline, there isnt a lot known about who the applicants are, said Deschamps, former Montana GOP chairman.

Weve got to find out who they are, and there are a lot of the county conventions that wont decide before the 30th or the first week of May, Deschamps said. People like me and some others who have been around for a while know who some of them will likely be.

The delegates will be selected by vote at the state convention the weekend of May 13 in Billings.

Deschamps said he likes Cruzs chances in Montana. Theres a possibility Cruz could be in Montana around May 13, the Friday after Montanans begin voting absentee. Thats the same weekend as the Texas delegate convention, Deschamps said.

If Cruz makes it to Montana, the visit will have to be shoehorned into the events in Texas that weekend.
Eternal youth could be one step closer.

A woman from Seattle claims to have become the first human to have become younger using gene therapy.

Elizabeth Parrish, CEO of controversial firm Bioviva, says she has been using her own company's experimental gene therapies to battle ageing - but not everyone is convinced of the results.

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Elizabeth Parrish, CEO of Bioviva, has been using her own company's experimental therapies to battle ageing. The self-treatment, which has been ongoing for the past six months, has been met with a mixture of praise and criticism for a lack of scientific rigour

WHAT ARE TELOMERES? Telomeres are the protective caps on the ends of the strands of DNA called chromosomes, which house our genomes. In young humans, telomeres are about 8,000-10,000 nucleotides long. They shorten with each cell division, however, and when they reach a critical length the cell stops dividing or dies. This internal 'clock' makes it difficult to keep most cells growing in a laboratory for more than a few cell doublings. Previous research has found telomere length can reliably predict life expectancy in humans. Advertisement

The self-treatment, which has been ongoing for the past six months, has been met with a mixture of praise for innovation and criticism for a lack of scientific rigour.

But now, Parrish claims to have become the first human being to be successfully rejuvenated by reversing 20 years of normal telomere shortening.

Telomeres are short segments of DNA which cap the ends of every chromosome, acting as 'buffers' against wear and tear.

They shorten with every cell division, eventually getting too short to protect the chromosome, causing the cell to malfunction and the body to age.

In September 2015, 44 year-old Parrish received two of her own company's experimental gene therapies.

The first one was to protect against loss of muscle mass with age, and the second was to battle stem cell depletion responsible for diverse age-related diseases and infirmities.

In one treatment, she received injections into her muscles containing the gene follistatin, according to MIT.

In animal experiments, this has been shown to increase muscle mass by blocking myostatin, which inhibits muscle growth.

She says she also received an dose of viruses containing genetic material to produce telomerase, a protein that extends telomeres.

The procedures were done in Colombia, to get around US regulations.

The treatments was originally intended to demonstrate the safety of the latest generation of the therapies.

But if early data is accurate, it is the world's first successful example of telomere lengthening via gene therapy in a human individual.

Gene therapy has been used to lengthen telomeres before in cultured cells and in mice, but never in a human patient.

Telomeres are the protective caps (shown in green) on the ends of the strands of DNA called chromosomes, which house our genomes. In young humans, telomeres are about 8,000-10,000 nucleotides long. They shorten with each cell division, however, and when they reach a critical length the cell stops dividing or dies

In September 2015, telomere data taken from Parrish's white blood cells by SpectraCell's specialised clinical testing laboratory in Houston, Texas.

It immediately before therapies were administered, revealed that Parrish's telomeres were unusually short for her age, leaving her vulnerable to age-associated diseases earlier in life.

In March 2016, the same tests were taken again by SpectraCell revealed that her telomeres had lengthened by approximately 20 years, from 6.71kb to 7.33kb.

HOW TELOMERES ARE SHORTENED Last year, scientists at Stanford University described their method of lengthening telomeres by using modified messenger RNA. RNA carries instructions from genes in the DNA to the cell's protein-making factories. The RNA used in this experiment contained the coding sequence for TERT - the active component of a naturally occurring enzyme called telomerase. When the cells are treated, they behave as if they are younger and multiply quickly rather than dying. 'One day it may be possible to target muscle stem cells in a patient with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, for example, to extend their telomeres,' said Dr Blau. 'There are also implications for treating conditions of aging, such as diabetes and heart disease. 'This has really opened the doors to consider all types of potential uses of this therapy.' The researchers also hope that the method will be able to allow scientists to generate large numbers of cells that could someday lead to an effective anti-aging drug. Advertisement

This implies that Parrish's white blood cells (leukocytes) have become biologically younger.

These findings were independently verified by the Brussels-based non-profit HEALES (HEalthy Life Extension Company), and the Biogerontology Research Foundation, a UK-based charity committed to combating age-related diseases.

'Current therapeutics offer only marginal benefits for people suffering from diseases of aging,' said Parrish.

'Additionally, lifestyle modification has limited impact for treating these diseases.

'Advances in biotechnology is the best solution, and if these results are anywhere near accurate, we've made history', Parrish said.

Parrish's statement has led to one member of her company's scientific advisory board distancing himself from the firm, according to MIT Technology Review.

This is a big problem,' says George Martin, a professor at the University of Washington and the former scientific director of the American Federation of Aging Research.

MIT says he'd agreed to advise Parrish several months ago but resigned his role recently.

'I am very upset by what is happening. I would urge lots of preclinical studies,' he says.

Meanwhile, BioViva will be testing new gene therapies and combination gene therapies to restore age related damage.

It remains to be seen whether the claimed success in leukocytes can expanded to other tissues and organs, and repeated in future patients.

For now all the answers lie in the cells of Elizabeth Parrish, 'patient zero' of restorative gene therapy.

Far more data is needed before claiming success against aging, Dana Glei, a senior research investigator at Georgetown University said.
The strange blobs only lasted a few seconds, and are a few miles across

was the 'blue blobs' which have never been seen before

A stunning light show featuring 'blue blobs', upside down lightning, red sprites and mile-long jets, have been captured over Earth.

The incredible footage was recorded from the International Space Station by Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen.

Scientists are now studying the images to help them better explain how these strange weather conditions form, and what impact they make on our planet.

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A stunning light show featuring 'blue blobs' (shown), upside down lightning, red sprites (above the blue blob) and mile-long jets, have been captured over Earth. The incredible footage was recorded from the International Space Station by Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen

WHAT ARE RED SPRITES? Red sprites are electrical bursts of light that occur above highly active thunderstorms. They can be seen in the D region of the ionosphere. This is the area of the atmosphere just above the dense lower atmosphere, about 37 to 56 miles (60 km to 90 km) above the Earth. Atmospheric sprites have been known for nearly a century, but their origins were a mystery. They only last a few milliseconds and are relatively dim compared with other lightning. The late experimental physicist John Winckler accidentally discovered sprites, while helping to test a new low-light video camera in 1989. Advertisement

The images were presented at the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna last week.

'We wanted to see what happens above a thunderstorm,' says Olivier Chanrion of the Danish National Space Institute in Lyngby.

'What we see is that at the top of the cloud in what we call the 'turrets', there is incredible activity.'

Mogensen saw sprites, called C-sprites, that create red-coloured tendrils more than 50 miles (80 km) above the ground,

They last for just a few milliseconds, making them incredibly hard to capture on camera.

Named after Shakespeares mischievous sprite Puck, from A Midsummer Nights Dream, sprites are caused by irregularities in the ionosphere - a region of Earth's upper atmosphere.

Mogensen also recorded the first blue jets to ever be captured on film from space. Blue jets are enormous bursts of electrical discharge spiking upwards. Pictured is a blue jet forming

WHAT IS UPWARDS LIGHTNING? Upwards lightning is normally caused by a preceding flash moving from the cloud to Earth, and involves a bolt moving from the ground to the clouds. The preceding flash causes an electrical field change, which allows an upward positive leader to originate from a tall object like a building or wind turbine. During winter snow storms, it is possible for tall objects to initiate upwards lightning without preceding flashes. Upwards lightning is very rare - estimates suggest less than one per cent of lightning travels in an 'upwards' direction. However, this phenomenon captured on video appears to have been jets in the upper atmosphere, and not the same type of upwards lightning described here. Advertisement

They show up red at higher altitudes and fade to blue at lower heights.

Mogensen also recorded the first blue jets to ever be captured on film from space.

Blue jets are enormous bursts of electrical discharge spiking upward from storm clouds in the upper atmosphere.

They emerge from the electrically-charged cores of thunderstorms and rise up to 30 miles upwards in the shape of a cone.

But according to a report in the New Scientist, the blue blobs were the biggest surprise.

They only lasted a few seconds, and are a few miles across.

'They were dancing over the top of the cloud, and we called them glimpses,' says Chanrion.

'We sometimes saw around 100 glimpses per minute, and we think they're integrated between the top and bottom layers of the cloud.

'But it's only a first step and we need to find out more.'

Mogensen four videos and 160 images from the ISS. The footage of the storms was shot over Costa Rica, Mexico, Eastern India and Thailand.

Upwards lightning is normally caused by a preceding flash moving from the cloud to Earth, and involves a bolt moving from the ground to the clouds. The preceding flash causes an electrical field change, which allows an upward positive leader to originate from a tall object like a building or wind turbine

This graphic shows where different weather phenomenon form in Earth's atmosphere. Elves, sprites and blue jets have all be seen from the cupola in the space station by astronauts 249 miles (400km) above Earth

'We used forecasts to decide which storms would be of interest and sent him messages telling him where to point his camera,' says Chanrion.

Torsten Neubert from the Danish National Space Institute also displayed images of upside-down lighting taken in India by Rajesh Singh of the KSK Geomagnetic Research Laboratory

The images show jets of lightning, as long as 11 miles, branching out from the top.

'They only last around 20 to 40 milliseconds,' says Neubert, who likens a thunderstorm to a battery wedged between two conductors  Earth and the ionosphere.

These rarely seen, highly charged meteorological events are known as gigantic jets, and they flash up to the lower levels of space, or ionosphere.

While they don't occur every time there is lightning, the electrical fingerprints are far larger than their downward striking cousins.

It appears from the amount of electricity discharged by conventional lightning and gigantic jets is comparable.

But the gigantic jets travel farther and faster than conventional lightning because thinner air between the clouds and ionosphere provides less resistance.

Whereas a conventional lightning bolt follows a six-inch channel and travels about 4.5 miles down to earth, gigantic jets recorded by the scientists contain multiple channels.

Scientists are still not completely sure what conditions or what types of storms are conducive to gigantic jet formation.
Early morning in Macau's Camoes Park, and Lisbon seems a long way away. This leafy space may be named after the Portuguese poet Luis de Camoes, but the group of elderly Chinese ladies practising the ancient martial art Tai Chi gives the scene a Far Eastern feel.

This peaceful city centre space was originally used only by the Portuguese community - Macau was a colony until 1999. After being handed back to the state next door, everyone co-exists happily.

The result is a blend of Oriental and European cultures. The ruined of 17th century St Paul's Church - destroyed by fire in 1835 - is close to Chinese temples. Its restored facade includes dragons and saints.

More than a Chinese satellite: Intriguing Macau is a heady mixture of European and Cantonese cultures

You can dine on Cantonese dumplings or Portuguese cod balls and gaze at the historic centre of Macau, a Unesco world heritage site, which ranks as the finest example of European architecture on Chinese soil.

There is far more to do than its most gaudy tourist industry, gambling, would suggest, though a stroll through any hotel is accompanied by the ker-ching of slot machines - locals call them 'hungry tigers'.

Macau definitely pays homage to modernity. You can perform the world's highest bungee jump from the 1,108ft Macau Tower, one of Asia's tallest buildings.

If you are brave enough to do this, you will be able to look down on Macau's mass of hotels, including the new JW Marriott (Asia's largest) and the all-suite Ritz Carlton.

Although it is in the heart of Macaus gaming and entertainment  buzz, the Ritz Carltons European style gives it an elegant ambience. But just minutes away from the adrenaline of the Macau peninsula are the quiet islands of Taipa and Coloane.

On sleepy Coloane is the tiny church of St Francis - home of the only portrait of the Madonna and Child with Chinese features.

In the village, you may bump into Eileen Stow, a British blonde who runs the Lord Stow custard tart bakery set up by her late brother. He wasn't a lord, but as the only Englishman in the village, he was so-called by Portuguese locals.

Down the road, you'll find newcomers Kai and Xin at the Macau giant panda pavilion.

On Taipa, a row of five green colonial residences, once home to Portuguese officials, houses small museums explaining the history of Macau, with its stories of pirates, sailors, invaders and traders.

Antonio's is a Portuguese restaurant where the food reflects the mix of cultures - Macanese cuisine can include African chicken (made with coconut and spices) and gambas a Macau (grilled prawns with chilli).

Back on the peninsula, the nightlife is hot.

Bear necessities: You can meet giant pandas Kai and Xin at Macau's panda pavilion

The House Of Dancing Water is a multi-milliondollar mix of aquatics and gymnastics in a colossal pool, featuring dramatic special effects, holograms and motor-bike stunts.

A more sedate experience is found at the smallest hotel, the Pousada De Sao Tiago. The converted 17th century fortress serves a dainty Chinese-Portuguese-English afternoon tea overlooking the inner harbour and the Pearl River Delta.

It sits in the shadow of the A-Ma temple, which is dedicated to the goddess of seafarers from which the name Macau is derived.

The easiest way to reach Macau from Hong Kong is by a 50-minute turbo-ferry. But next year, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge project should be completed.

This dramatic series of bridges and tunnels will connect Hong Kong, Macau and Zhuhai, a city in southern China, in rapid fashion. You can bet it will be another thrilling ride.
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Most people have awkward summer holiday photos that theyd love to forget  especially from their childhood  but they may not be as embarrassing as these.

Families have opened their photo albums to reveal hilarious or humiliating group shots in front of landmarks, unpredictable encounters with wildlife or ill-timed poses.

Providing lasting memories for all the wrong reasons, these photos are among the best of the worst from the website Awkward Family Photos.

This woman and her travel companion didn't realise what was in the background of this photo in New York's Times Square until later

This father's harness was a bit too snug as he and his family posed for a photo before speeding along a zip line in a jungle in Thailand

This girl's parents thought it would be funny to photographer her next to a Rocky Mountain oyster festival sign somewher in the US

A parent snapped this ill-timed photo of their daughter at the giraffe enclosure at the Cape May County Park & Zoo in New Jersey

This father, posing with his daughters, looks like he is completely naked, but the railing is hiding his very small swimming trunks

Encounters with wildlife can be unpredictable, as this family found out when they crossed paths with a deer near Jasper, Canada

With summer holiday planning underway, tourists may want to keep these images in mind to avoid an embarrassing situation when theyre in front of a camera at the beach, amusement park or historic site.

The pictures have been immortalised on Awkward Family Photos, a California-based website where people can share their uncomfortable moments with the rest of the world.

The seven-year-old website is the brainchild of friends Mike Bender and Doug Chernack, who came up with the idea after Bender saw an awkward holiday photo on a wall inside his parents house.

After realising there were probably plenty of similarly embarrassing photos in homes around the world, the childhood friends decided to create a friendly space where people could share their most embarrassing moments.

Love was in the air when this couple (at right) was photobombed by an amorous pair at Chateau de Chambord in France

Group photos can be a bore for young children - and this young girl made it clear how she felt about posing with her family on a beach

Dreams are supposed to come true at Disney's properties, but one young girl wasn't very happy during this encounter with Tigger

The placement of a cow's udder plays a visual trick in this snap taken during a trip to the University of Missouris College of Vet Medicine

Their website started with a handful of pictures and within a week had received more than a million visitors a day and thousands of submissions.

It has since amassed a cult following with daily visitors from around the world and spawned a successful book series and line of funny T-shirts.

In 2014 the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica hosted an exhibition featuring photos from the website.

A mischievous daughter sent this photo to her mother, who was worried about her trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona
Jordan Gardner, 28, was arrested in Charlotte

Passengers on board an American Airlines plane received a rude surprise when a 28-year-old man urinated on the floor of the aircraft on a cross-country flight, police claim.

The incident occurred around an hour into the red-eye journey from San Francisco to Charlotte.

Flight attendants were unable to get rid of the pungent smell of urine, which had soaked into the carpet, meaning passengers were forced to deal with it for the rest of the four-hour flight.

Jordan Gardner, from Ludlow, Kentucky, was arrested by police when the plane landed at Charlotte Douglas International Airport at 7:45 a.m. EDT on Sunday.

An affidavit filed by the FBI and obtained by MailOnline Travel stated that Gardner, 28, allegedly pulled his pants down at his seat, arched his back and urinated on the planes floor.

The passenger seated next to the man got the attention of a flight attendant, who arrived as Gardner was pulling up his pants, the affidavit claimed.

Gardner denied urinating on the floor and was sent to the lavatory but after 15 minutes had not emerged.

The affidavit said a female flight attendant opened the door, found him on the bathroom floor and helped him to his feet before returning him to his seat.

Earlier, the same flight attendant had poured club soda on the urine stain and tried to clean the carpet and mask the odor, but it still smelled when flight 1944 landed and was boarded by police.

An affidavit said an American Airlines passenger pulled down his pants and urinated on the floor (file photo)

Gardner told investigators he had two double shots of vodka at a bar in San Franciscos airport before boarding the plane.

But police said they could still smell alcohol on his breath around 11 hours after the plane took off at 11:59 p.m. PDT.

According to the affidavit, Gardner blamed chewing gum for the smell of alcohol, and told investigators he could not remember urinating on the plane, passing out in the bathroom or the flight itself.

He told authorities someone might have spiked his drink in San Francisco or 'maybe he had a memory problem', the affidavit stated.

Gardner was booked into Mecklenburg County Jail on Sunday night and remains in custody pending a hearing. He faces a criminal complaint of damaging an aircraft.

A spokesman for the Fort Worth, Texas-based airline said: 'American Airlines requested law enforcement meet the flight upon arrival in Charlotte due to a disturbance on the aircraft.'

The spokesman deferred other questions about the incident to the FBI or U.S. Attorney's Office.

An Air Mediterranee passenger was detained in February after he allegedly urinated on a fellow traveller

In February, an Air Mediterranee sparked a brawl after he allegedly urinated on a fellow traveller.

The plane was flying from the Algerian capital of Algiers to Paris and was forced to divert to Lyon, France.

Passengers described a chaotic scene as a shirtless man who was allegedly responsible for the brawl was overpowered by crew and detained.
The Independence of the Seas cruise, which is known as 70,000 Tons of Metal, travelled from Florida to

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This cruise ship really is the Boat that Rocked - taking thousands of heavy metal fans to the seas.

The Independence of the Seas cruise, known as 70,000 Tons of Metal, sees rockers jam to live bands, bomb into pools, and simply soak up the Caribbean sunshine.

The event was photographed by New York resident Giacomo Fortunato, who travelled from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, to Jamaica between February 4 and February 8 2016.

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Iron Maiden voyage: A man jumps into one of the Independence of the Seas' swimming pools in front of an eager crowd during the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise

A group of women and men pose for a photograph in one of the swimming pools during their four-day long cruise from Florida

There are only 3,000 tickets for each cruise on the Royal Caribbean ship. Pool girls (right) pose for the camera wearing their uniforms

In total, around 60 bands performed at various parts of the ship, starting around 10am and playing until sunrise the next day

The event was photographed by New York resident Giacomo Fortunato, who travelled from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Jamaica. Pictured: Two rock and roll fans pose for a snap

Fortunato, a fan of metal music since he was eight years old, shared a tiny room with another rocker, partying until 5am with the 3,000 fans who attended.

His project, To Hell and Back, captures the raw energy of the event - as well as rockers relaxing when they took a break from partying.

In total, around 60 bands performed at various parts of the ship, starting around 10am and playing until sunrise the next day.

The cruise's inaugural voyage took place in 2011 and has been running annually ever since. It also claims to boast 'The World's Largest Open Air Stage to Sail the Seas.'

The ship hosts contests including 'The Bellyflop', which challenges holidaymakers to make the biggest splash when entering the pool

Two men grimace as a tattooed friend jumps from the railings of one of the ships indoor hot tubs and bombs into the water

The cruise's inaugural voyage took place in 2011 and has been running annually ever since. It also claims to boast 'The World's Largest Open Air Stage to Sail the Seas'

Bands played from 10am to sunrise the next day, every day, throughout several venues scattered across the ship. Pictured: Party-goers in the water

Fortunato, 31, said: 'It seemed like a funny juxtaposition of 3,000 people wearing black in the Caribbean sun listening to what some might consider the least relaxing music ever.

'We drank; we sang; we partied in jacuzzis until 5am, watching bands perform on the pool deck of the ship.

'Bands played from 10am to sunrise the next day, every day, throughout several venues scattered across the ship.

'There was very little time to fuel up with food or rest.'

A heavy metal fan turns to take a selfie during a stop at one of the ship's port of calls. Other rockers stare out and admire the view

The cruise ship really is the Boat that Rocked as it takes thousands of heavy metal fans to the seas once a year

Women can be seen posing in bikinis during the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise (left) and (right) four of the cruise ship's staff wear matching clothes on their shift around the pool
A new comparison of the population size of a destination and the number of people who visit it has revealed the most and least touristy countries in the world.

Among them, Bangladesh, Guinea and Moldova are considered the least touristy while the destinations where you're most likely to meet fellow travellers is in Andorra, Aruba and Monaco.

There are also a number of countries that have become much more touristy over the past decade or so, with Georgia, Bhutan and Congo-Brazzaville coming top of the list.

Priceonomics compared most recent visitor numbers with local population data and found that Bangladesh (above) is the least touristy country in the world

Andorra (above), in contrast, has the highest number of tourists compared to local residents thanks to its popular ski resorts

The comparison, by Priceonomics, was made using raw data from the World Bank, which has been tracking international tourists by the number of arrivals since 1981.

For the most and least touristy destinations, Priceonomics looked at the most recent available data, which was from 2014.

Bangladesh, which was once promoted with the slogan 'visit Bangladesh before the tourists come', remains the world's least touristy country with 1,273 local per tourist.

This is thanks in part to its huge population size of more than 159 million people.

Aruba (above) might be the picture of paradise but the tiny Caribbean island has a lot of tourists visiting it

The country is far more heavily populated by locals than the next countries on the list, Guinea and Moldova, which have 372 and 323 locals per tourist respectively.

Andorra was the surprise winner as the most touristy country in the world.

Sandwiched between France and Spain in the Pyrenees mountains, the tiny principality has an estimated population size of just 73,000.

But its popular ski resort, historic churches and pristine lakes attracted more than 2.36million visitors in 2014 - a ratio of more than 32 tourists per local resident.

Andorra is followed by Aruba and Monaco, both favoured by well-heeled jet-setters.

Rather surprisingly, popular destinations like France, Spain and Italy were not among the most touristy destinations.

Monaco (above), another popular destination with tourists, hosts a number of annual events including the famous yacht show

Neither are any of the world's biggest countries in land-size like Russia, the USA and China.

Priceonomics also looked at the growth rate of the number of tourists to visit a country and found that Georgia had the highest increase in tourists between 2004 and 2014, followed by Bhutan and Congo-Brazzaville, or the Republic of Congo.

However, there are some limitations to the World Bank Data.

For example, a number of countries do not have data attributed to them, either because the numbers are too small or because the data has been impossible to track.

What's more, different countries will have different methods for collecting the data and some tourists who make several visits to the same destinations will be counted multiple times.

The data also only considers those who have spent a night in the country.

WHERE ARE THE TOURISTS GOING? 25 LEAST TOURISTY COUNTRIES Country Local per tourist Bangladesh 1,273 Guinea 372 Moldova 323 India 169 Sierra Leone 144 Niger 142 Ethiopia 126 Chad 111 Madagascar 106 Mali 102 Burkina Faso 92 Belarus 69 Sudan 58 Cote d'Ivoire 47 Tanzania 47 Benin 44 Papua New Guinea 41 Angola 41 Tajikistan 39 Venezuela 36 Nepal 36 Kenya 36 Brazil 32 Uganda 30 Solomon Islands 28 25 MOST TOURISTY COUNTRIES Country Tourists per local Andorra 32.4 Aruba 10.4 Monaco 8.7 Bahrain 7.7 Palau 6.7 Malta 4.0 Hong Kong 3.8 The Bahamas 3.7 Bermuda 3.4 Iceland 3.1 Maldives 3.0 Austria 3.0 Curacao 2.9 Croatia 2.7 Antigua and Barbuda 2.7 Seychelles 2.6 San Marino 2.3 Estonia 2.2 Montenegro 2.2 Singapore 2.2 Cyprus 2.1 St Kitts and Nevis 2.1 Greece 2.0 Ireland 1.9 Luxembourg 1.9 Source: Priceonomics Advertisement

Georgia, once a part of the USSR, now has the fastest growing number of visitors between 2004 and 2014
Terri Irwin's estranged sister has spoken out, claiming a bitter feud has torn their family apart.

Speaking to New Idea on Monday, Patricia Raines revealed that she hasn't spoken to the wildlife warrior since their mother's death in 2014, due to a fallout which erupted a few days before her passing.

The 63-year-old says she lives in fear because she is afraid the American-born conservationist will use her fame and power to destroy her.

'My sister has a lot of money and knows a lot of people - she could squash me like a bug,' she said.

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'She could squash me like a bug': Terri Irwin's estranged sister spoke out to New Idea magazine on Monday, saying she lives in fear because she is afraid the conservationist will use her fame and power to destroy her

Patricia refused to go into the events that led to the dispute, saying she is scared of Terri, 51, and fears retribution if she speaks out.

'Truthfully I'm afraid - it's very sad and I'm not at liberty to speak freely - it would be life changing,' she confessed.

Although it has been two years since the sisters parted ways over the disagreement, Patricia says she is still haunted by the tension with Terri.

'It's so petty and it was so small... How people can hang onto grudges, I'm totally amazed. My heart aches so bad,' she expressed.

However, Patricia told the publication she would do anything to be part of Terri and children, Bindi, 17, and 12-year-old Robert's lives again and doesn't bear any animosity towards her famous sibling.

Embroiled in a bitter family feud? Terri's sister Patricia Raines revealed she hasn't spoken to the wildlife warrior since their mother's death in 2014, due to the fallout which erupted a few days before her passing

She also expressed that she would love to reconnect with her niece Bindi in the near future.

Following the argument, Patricia told the publication she was forced to move away from her hometown of Eugene, Oregon.

She now lives 150 kilometres away in the town of Yachats.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted a representative for Terri regarding the claims.

'I'm not at liberty to speak freely': Patricia refused to go into the events that led to the dispute, saying she is scared of Terri, 51, and fears retribution if she speaks out

It seems Patricia is not the only family member the Irwins have had a falling out with.

Bindi and Robert are estranged from their paternal grandfather on their late dad Steve's side, Bob Irwin.

The 17-year-old spoke out following reports of an increasingly strained relationship with Bob, who has previously reflected on his struggle to cope after son Steve Irwin was fatally struck by a stingray in 2006.

'My heart aches so bad': Patricia told the publication she would do anything to be part of Terri and children, Bindi and Robert's lives again and doesn't bear any animosity towards her famous sibling

No contact: Patricia also expressed that she would love to reconnect with her niece Bindi in the near future

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia at the 5th annual AACTA Awards in December, Bindi claims her grandfather became reclusive in the years following his death.

'Everyone deals with grief differently,' she said. 'When my dad passed away he chose to distance himself from everything that dad loved the most.

'At the moment were really just respecting his wishes because he hasnt had anything to do with us for a long time and he decided his own path. Thats important so good for him.'

'He hasnt had anything to do with us for a long time': The Irwins are also estranged from their paternal grandfather on their late dad Steve's side, Bob Irwin

Bindi claims her grandfather, who still operates the Bob Irwin Wildlife & Conservation Foundation having retired from Australia Zoo in 1992, has even rejected well meaning gifts from the family.

'There was one year where we sent birthday presents to him and he opened them up and he sent them back,' she recalled.

'With things like that you realise that people need to deal with grief how they need to deal with grief and as long as it doesnt hurt yourself or hurt those around you then thats the way to go.'

'He sent them back': Bindi claims her grandfather, who still operates the Bob Irwin Wildlife & Conservation Foundation having retired from Australia Zoo in 1992, has even rejected well meaning gifts from the family

Meanwhile, Bindi recently denied claims that her mother has found love again.

The wildlife warrior told KIIS FM's Kyle and Jackie O Show last Thursday that she believes Terri is still in love with her late father.

'My mum is still absolutely married to dad, and I really believe that each and every one of us has that one person in our life,' the teenager said.

'I really want mum to be happy': Bindi recently denied claims that her mother Terri has found love again

New Idea reported earlier this month that the family were set to move to the U.S. where Terri had reportedly found love with a 'controversial' man.

Slapping down the magazine's claims, Bindi said on Thursday: 'No, no. Mum read that article and went, "Wow! He's so mysterious that I don't even know about it!''

At the time a spokesman for Australia Zoo told Daily Mail Australia the report was unfounded.

Flashback: Terri's husband and father to Bindi and Bob, Steve Irwin, was internationally known and referred to as The Crocodile Hunter

'This seems to have literally come out of thin air. There is absolutely no truth to that claim,' they said.

Steve Irwin died in 2006 after being stung in the heart by a sting ray. At the time Bindi, now 17, was just six years old.

During the emotional chat with the radio hosts Bindi said she saw no need in trying to reconnect with his spirit through a medium because she felt he was 'always with us'.

'They are not planning to move anywhere': Australia Zoo confirm there's no truth to reports the Irwin family were relocating to the US (pictured Terri, 51, Robert, 12, and Bindi, 17)

'It'll be like the Universal Studios of zoos': The family were reportedly set to expand the Irwin brand in a big way, carrying on Steve's legacy by opening a massive Australian zoo and resort in Las Vegas

Bindi added that she and her extended Australia-Zoo family is currently preparing for the first Steve Irwin Gala Dinner, to be held in Los Angeles in the coming weeks, where they will honour her late father's legacy.

Despite the event the family insists they have no plans to move to America where Bindi recently triumphed in Dancing With The Stars.

A Woman's Day article alleged they were set to expand the Irwin brand in a big way, carrying on the late Steve's legacy by opening a site in Las Vegas.

They dismissed the report, explaining that they remained living at Australia Zoo.

'There is absolutely no truth to that claim': The Australia Zoo spokesperson said there was no truth to the rumour that Terri planned to relocate to the US to be closer to her 'controversial mystery man'
She's touted as the next big Australian modelling export, recently capturing the attention of renowned photographer Mario Testino with her platinum blonde locks, bee-stung lips and down-to-earth sex appeal that's been compared to Brigitte Bardot.

But Megan Irwin has hit international headlines for other reasons this week, for her burgeoning fame appears to have helped land her in the social circle of Kourtney Kardashian's estranged partner Scott Disick, 32.

The duo were most recently spotted spending time together during a night out in New York City, with Megan reportedly joining Scott for dinner at Cipriani's in the Soho neighbourhood of the Big Apple, before the pair hit up a nightclub 1OAK together.

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Introducing Megan Irwin: The 21-year-old Adelaide-born model who has been spending time with Scott Disick

Born and raised in Adelaide in South Australia, the beauty has forged a career in her home country with campaigns for swimwear brand Seafolly, retail giant David Jones, and has ambitions to storm the Victoria's Secret catwalk.

Her mother, Hellen Muldoon was also a model, and Megan's sister Kirsty has dabbled in modelling as well as pursuing a career as a fashion designer, so it seemed inevitable Megan would 'fall into' the industry at the tender age of 14.

It wasn't until 2013 that the Australian fashion cohort really started to notice Megan, and she landed campaigns for Forever New's Autumn and Summer collections, Australian budget retailer Cotton On and the coveted David Jones Autumn/Winter season launch runway.

Fashion family: The 21-year-old's mother, Hellen Muldoon was also a model

Inevitable: She 'fell into' the modelling world at the age of 14

The following year, she walked for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia in Sydney in the glamorous Swarovski show and was offered to cover the Harper's Bazaar Singapore beauty lift-out in her first international magazine.

In November 2015, the blonde beauty announced her engagement to youth-focused online publication Pedestrian.TV co-founder Oscar Martin, but their romance was brief and they separated shortly after.

Megan's big break came in January when Peruvian fashion photographer Mario Testino touched down in Australia for three weeks to guest edit Australian Vogue.

Burgeoning career: It wasn't until 2013 that the Australian fashion cohort really started to notice Megan having scored campaigns with Cotton On, Seafolly and David Jones

Short-lived: Megan had a brief engagement to Pedestrian.TV co-founder Oscar Martin in 2015

Getting noticed: Megan's big break came in January when Peruvian fashion photographer Mario Testino touched down in Australia for three weeks

She met the acclaimed artist by chance however, having been introduced to Mario through her friend, Sydney entrepreneur Julian Tobias.

'Although Megan is one of Australias top models, he met her by chance through Julian and said "Wow, who is that girl? Shes incredible,"' Steve Dundon from Megan's agency Pride Models told News Corp in March.

Some of her most recent work includes the Witchery white shirt campaign as an ambassador for the retailer in their annual fundraising for ovarian cancer research.

A very brief engagement: In November 2015, the blonde beauty announced her engagement to youth-focused online publication Pedestrian.TV co-founder Oscar Martin

Missing an Angel? The blonde beauty says she's currently eyeing off a spot on the coveted Victoria's Secret fashion show

The latest rumours surrounding a link between Megan and reality star Scott have potential, as the estranged partner of Kourtney has shown his penchant for the beautiful and famous.

He has been spotted out with several different women in recent months, including model Christine Burke, who he was seen out with in Calabasas last month.

Before Kourtney, with whom Scott has three children, Mason, six, Penelope, three, and Reign, one, after nearly a decade together, he was rumoured to have dated celebrity stylist Chloe Bartoli back in 2010 when he and Kourtney were on a break.
Sarah Michelle Gellar and Kerry Washington donned tea-length frocks for the United Way Women's Summit in Beverly Hills on Monday.

The Golden Globe-nominated duo - both 39 - have both managed to make a major impact on the small screen despite being busy married mothers.

Perhaps the Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum and the Scandal star discussed possible creative collaborations after posing together.

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New York natives: Sarah Michelle Gellar and Kerry Washington donned tea-length frocks for the United Way Women's Summit in Beverly Hills on Monday

'So honored to join @kerrywashington!' The Golden Globe-nominated duo - both 39 - have both managed to make a major impact on the small screen despite being busy married mothers

They've never worked together: Perhaps the Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum and the Scandal star discussed possible creative collaborations after posing together

Stylist Erin Walsh outfitted Kerry in a bright coral-and-lavender embroidered dress and tiny black stilettos.

Washington wore her raven bob in a partial updo and sported rosy cheeks and pink lipstick onstage the Beverly Hilton.

The two-time Emmy nominee - who was interviewed by United Way CEO Elise Bulk - celebrated her daughter Isabelle's second birthday on Thursday with husband Nnamdi Asomugha.

Meanwhile, Sarah donned a white perforated mermaid skirt with a black blazer and pink pumps.

Daring dress: Stylist Erin Walsh outfitted Kerry in a bright coral-and-lavender embroidered dress and tiny black stilettos

Natural beauty: Washington wore her raven bob in a partial updo and sported rosy cheeks and pink lipstick onstage the Beverly Hilton

Congrats! The two-time Emmy nominee - who was interviewed by United Way CEO Elise Bulk (R) - celebrated her daughter Isabelle's second birthday on Thursday with husband Nnamdi Asomugha

"When we are of service we make ourselves better. We make all of society better." @kerrywashington #WomenUnited A photo posted by United Way of Los Angeles (@launitedway) on Apr 25, 2016 at 1:38pm PDT

The Daytime Emmy winner was representing Foodstirs - a culinary website offering kid-friendly cooking kits and baking mixes - with her co-founders Gia Russo and Galit Laibow.

Gellar dyed her signature flaxen locks brunette last month to reprise her Cruel Intentions role as scheming socialite Kathryn Merteuil.

The Star Wars Rebels actress wrapped NBC's spin-off series on April 1 in San Francisco alongside original filmmaker Roger Kumble.

Darker 'do: Meanwhile, Sarah donned a white perforated mermaid skirt with a black blazer and pink pumps

'It makes you realize that we can really make a difference': The Daytime Emmy winner was representing Foodstirs - a culinary website - with her co-founders Gia Russo (L) and Galit Laibow (R)

#squadgoals @foodstirs #startup @launitedway I  my girls @galitlaibow #giarusso #foodstirs #womenunited A photo posted by Sarah Michelle (@sarahmgellar) on Apr 25, 2016 at 1:22pm PDT

'It's hard to take your eyes off her,' Taylor Smith Johnson - who plays Kathryn's nephew Bash - told People.

'Even in a scene, its hard to stay focus just because she's magnetic to watch.'

Sarah also voices an Inquisitor called the Seventh Sister in animated series Star Wars Rebels, returning for a third season this year on Disney XD.

17 years later! Gellar dyed her signature flaxen locks brunette last month to reprise her Cruel Intentions role as scheming socialite Kathryn Merteuil

Back at the helm: The Star Wars Rebels actress wrapped NBC's spin-off series on April 1 in San Francisco alongside original filmmaker Roger Kumble (L)

Light saber fight: Sarah also voices an Inquisitor called the Seventh Sister in animated series Star Wars Rebels, returning for a third season this year on Disney XD

I may not have a #sibling, but I am inspired every day at the love between these two #nationalsiblingday A photo posted by Sarah Michelle (@sarahmgellar) on Apr 10, 2016 at 1:59pm PDT

The Princess Rap Battle beauty has two children - son Rocky, 3, and daughter Charlotte, 6 - with husband Freddie Prinze, Jr.

Kerry just executive-produced and starred as attorney Anita Hill in HBO's Confirmation with Jeffrey Wright, Greg Kinnear, and Wendell Pierce.

The George Washington University grad also plays crisis-management expert Olivia Pope on the fifth season of the Beltway melodrama Scandal, which airs Thursdays on ABC.

Sexual harassment icon: Kerry just executive-produced and starred as attorney Anita Hill in HBO's Confirmation with Jeffrey Wright, Greg Kinnear, and Wendell Pierce
A Billings man received a five-year sentence on Monday for numerous drug dealing and possession charges.

Richard Lawrence Packard, 52, appeared before District Judge Russell Fagg, who sentenced him to 10 years in the custody of the Montana Department of Corrections, with five years suspended. Packard was charged for nine felony counts of criminal possession of dangerous drugs with intent to distribute and one felony count of drug possession.

Fagg also sentenced Packard to six months in the Yellowstone County Detention Facility for misdemeanor drug possession, to run concurrent to the felony sentences, and dismissed a twelfth charge of misdemeanor paraphernalia possession.

The sentence came as part of a plea deal in which prosecutors recommended a lighter sentence in exchange for a no contest plea from Packard earlier this year.

Court records say police responded to a drug paraphernalia report at an apartment on North 24th Street, where they found plastic baggies with a powder residue and a glass pipe. They did not speak with anyone at the apartment.

However, when they returned a few days later, Packard let them inside, where they found more paraphernalia and arrested him on a warrant and found meth during a pat-down search, the affidavit states.

Officers also found in the apartment marijuana, more meth, pills and more paraphernalia.

A woman, Hilary Jean Lynch, was also arrested in the case and faced the same charges. All of those charges against Lynch have since been dismissed, according to court records.

Packard remains in custody at the county jail.
Its not every day that a Hollywood star drops into your local pub.

So imagine punters surprise when Bourne actor Matt Damon paid a visit to the Chequers Inn in Redbourn, Herts, on Saturday evening with three friends.

He downed four pints of Guinness over three hours before setting off in his private jet from Luton airport ten miles away.

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Matt Damon paid a visit to the Chequers Inn in Redbourn, Herts, on Saturday evening with three friends

Thankfully, Damon did not bore locals with his views on Brexit, but left each of the bar staff a $100 (70) tip and posed for a photo.

Damon, 45, is due to return to our screens for the fifth instalment of the Bourne franchise this summer.

He downed four pints of Guinness at the pub (pictured) over three hours and left each of the bar staff a $100 (70) tip

Actor Timothy West - the grandee of Britains canals - is hoping the nasty gash on his face has cleared up before he and his wife, Fawlty Towers star Prunella Scales, depart on yet another odyssey through the waterways of Holland to see the tulips next month.

It wasnt Pru - I did it falling out of bed, Tim jokes of the cuts on his forehead and by his nose.

The sight of the couple pootling through Europes waterways in their narrow boat on Channel 4 series Great Canal Journeys has become such popular viewing that more shows are planned. Im hoping my face will clear up in time, says Tim, 81.

We are too small a production to be provided with stylists and make-up people.

I will have to make do with Prus powder puff!

As she turns 46, youthful Uma shares her beauty secret

Hollywood actress Uma Thurman is usually the epitome of elegance - but the Kill Bill star has candidly revealed what she really looks like away from all the glitz and glamour.

Sharing this selfie online before she turns 46 on Friday, Uma wore a pair of puff-reducing pads underneath her eyes while appearing to sip from her three-year-old daughter Lunas baby bottle.

Sharing this selfie online before she turns 46 on Friday, Uma wore a pair of puff-reducing pads underneath her eyes while appearing to sip from her three-year-old daughter Lunas baby bottle

Ageing gracefully, she joked.

Lunas father is London-based French financier Arpad Busson, to whom Uma was twice engaged before they split in 2014.

The star has two other children - Maya, 17, and Levon Roan, 14 - with her former husband, actor Ethan Hawke.

When MPs are campaigning ahead of the EU referendum, what will be going on at the Houses of Parliament?

Lavish parties held by corporate giants, it seems. Authorities are advertising for firms who might want to use the Palace of Westminster.

There is a rare opportunity to hire corporate event space inside the House of Commons this June, they say.

Take advantage by hosting a summer event in one of the riverside terraces at a time when the House would usually be sitting.
My Kitchen Rules judge 'Paleo' Pete Evans tied the knot with his love of five years Nicola Robinson in a beautifully rustic ceremony on Sunday.

And on Tuesday, the former glamour model took to Instagram to thank countless fans for their messages of support and congratulations.

The 39-year-old shared a photo of the couple's dog Shikoba standing on a beach, expressing her 'endless gratitude' in a sprawling and spiritual post.

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Eternally grateful: Nicola Robinson shared a photo of her dog Shikoba on Tuesday as she thanked fans for their support following her nuptials to My Kitchen Rules judge Pete Evans

'We're all feeling so blessed and endlessly surrounded by love!' Nicola gushed under her Instagram handle Nutrition Mermaid.

'Everyone's divine messages are truly heartfelt and our gratitude to you all is eternal! Thank you!' she continued.

'Today...Everyday, Shikoba is consciously, from her core, digging up and freely sharing the wildly cosmic love that connects us all, as she just innately adores holding space for all life!'

She ended the post writing: 'Bless her sweet and pure heart!

'We're all feeling so blessed and endlessly surrounded by love!' The 39-year-old former glamour model took to Instagram to express her gratitude for the countless messages of support

Just married! Happy couple Pete, 41, and Nicola, 39, tied the knot on Sunday at their farm in northern New South Wales

The New Zealander's Instagram account has been inundated with comments to congratulate her and Pete on their marriage.

'Congratulations to two of most genuinely good people on this earth,' user paleo_kate wrote.

Meanwhile, another user wrote: 'Congratulations! So happy you found your true love.'

From model to moon gazer: The bohemian star revealed she didn't write any vows for her wedding to Pete as the pair decided to 'wing it'

Loved up: Pete met his second wife Nicola in Adelaide four years ago, and she has been a driving force behind his Paleo lifestyle

The high profile shared details of their farmhouse wedding in northern New South Wales with New Idea magazine in an article published on Monday.

The couple revealed the intimate affair was complete with 'butterfly bridesmaids, four-legged guests and Paleo cake'.

'We didn't write vows, we chose to do what we call "winging it",' Nicola revealed of the pair's nuptials.

Daddy's girls: Pete's two daughters from a previous marriage, Chilli and Indii, accompanied his new bride Nicola down the aisle on horseback

'We shared our deepest hopes, dreams and promises from our hearts.'

The pair's nuptials come after the celebrity chef proposed last year while they were on holiday in New York.

They met four years ago in Adelaide and she has been a driving force behind his Paleo lifestyle.

Nicola was previously married to millionaire Warriors rugby league club owner, Eric Watson, though they didn't have children together.

Meanwhile Pete's two daughters are from his previous marriage with Astrid Edlinger, from whom he split in 2011.
He's the man behind Australia's most successful make-up empire.

And on Monday, Napoleon Perdis showed off his very individual style as he stepped out for lunch with his daughter Lianna.

The 46-year-old was spotted strolling through Double Bay in a very bright head-to-toe mint ensemble.

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Making them green with envy? On Monday Napoleon Perdis stepped out for lunch with his daughter Lianna wearing a vibrant pastel green ensemble

Napoleon donned a green-coloured bomber jacket layered over a similar coloured T-shirt with a white pineapple print on the chest.

He also donned a matching pair of trousers which appeared to be of the tracksuit pant variety.

He added to his relaxed look with a casual white sneakers and shielded his eyes behind a pair of dark sunglasses.

Minty fresh: The 46-year-old was dressed in a pair matching pastel green trousers and a bomber jacket paired with a similar coloured T-shirt

The father-of-four showed off his penchant for accessorising and finished his look with a lavish floral printed Gucci tote that retails at AU$2,180.

Napoleon was seen deeply engaged in his phone as he walked to the Indigo Cafe to enjoy a late lunch in the sunshine with Lianna.

As he arrived at the trendy lunch spot, his daughter was already waiting and he warmly embraced her with a kiss on the cheek.

Fashionable: The father-of-four showed off his penchant for accessorising and finished his look with a lavish floral printed Gucci tote that retails at AU$2,180

Family: As he arrived at the trendy lunch spot, his daughter was already waiting and he warmly embraced her with a kiss on the cheek

Napoleon leaned over and placed his designer tote on a separate chair as he made himself comfortable for their meal.

The father daughter duo appeared engaged in a lively chat during their lunch together.

This week, the 16-year-old is set to make an announcement this week that she has plans for her own capsule collection named #TotalBae.

Lianna, the eldest daughter of the makeup guru has previously told Daily Mail Australia she lets her father know what's hot and what's not', and planned to continue her involvement in the business.

It's own chair: Napoleon leaned over and placed his designer tote on a separate chair as he made himself comfortable for their meal

Bright future: This week Lianna is set to announce that she has plans for her own capsule collection named #TotalBae

On trend: Lianna, the eldest daughter of the makeup guru has previously told Daily Mail Australia she lets her father know what's hot and what's not', and planned to continue her involvement in the business

Lianna showed off her own style, and just like her father chose to dress all in one colour for their leisurely lunch.

The 16-year-old donned a striped dress with several different tones of blue teamed with a leather jacket in the same colour.

She accessorised with a black pouch clutch and seemed comfortable in a pair of black stiletto pumps.

Stylish: During her outing with her father Lianna wore head-to-toe blue

Quality time: The father-daughter duo appeared engaged in a lively chat during their lunch together

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia in February, Napoleon said his daughters had been involved in the business since they were children sitting around the dinner table, but their future with the company was their choice.

They absolutely have an opinion about product development, he said.

And they absolutely have an opinion about how they feel women can be youthful no matter what age.

Keeping it in the family: Speaking to Daily Mail Australia in February, Napoleon said his daughters had been involved in the business since they were children sitting around the dinner table

Their choice: The father-of-four gushed that if this daughters want to be a part of the business they can, while others have said they want to do something else

They are very keen to understand more and more of the business. Theyre proud of what we do, and if a couple of them want to be a part of it I'm open to it, and if a couple of them want to do something else  thats perfectly acceptable.

Going forward Perdis said the family would continue to split their time between Greece and Australia giving their children a chance to grow up in two locations.

Perdis and his wife Soula-Marie have four children: Athina, Alexia, Angelene and Lianna.
He rose to fame as Gregory Goyle in the Harry Potter series.

But Josh Herdman is now virtually unrecognisable from Draco Malfoy's gormless and quivering aide after pursuing a new career as a cage-fighter.

The 28-year-old actor, who starred in all eight films from the fantasy series, won his first match as an mixed martial arts fighter over the weekend, beating Polish opponent Janusz Walachowski at the City Pavillion in Romford, east London.

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It's just not quidditch! He rose to fame as Gregory Goyle in the Harry Potter series. But Josh Herdman is now virtually unrecognisable from Draco Malfoy's gormless aide after pursuing a career as a cage-fighter

Josh - who also has a son with his partner Morgan - had trained in traditional Japanese jujitsu for five years ahead of his transition of cage fighting and wowed the crowds with his skills on his first match.

But despite paving a career for himself in the ring, Josh revealed that he hasn't given up on his dream of acting and is still pursuing new roles.

Speaking to The Mirror he explained: 'I havent fallen out of love with it, I still have an agent and still go for auditions. Its just a little bit like playing the lottery for a living.'

He added: 'I dont see it so much as a career change, I am passionate about both acting and fighting.'

Fantasy fighter: Josh, 28, (L) starred in all eight films from the fantasy series alongside Tom Felton (M) who played Draco Malfoy and (R) Louis Cordice as Blaise Zabini

Spell-binding! Josh - who now also has a son with his partner Morgan - had trained in traditional Japanese jujitsu for five years ahead of his transition of cage fighting

Meanwhile, whilst the Harry Potter book and film series has come to an end, fans of the wizarding world will have the chance to see their favourite characters brought back to life in the new stage play Harry Potter And The Cursed Child.

The play will receive its world premiere at London's Palace Theatre on July 31, 2016 but the latest update marks a start to rehearsals for the group.

The stage play will run into 2017, which marks the 20th anniversary of the UK publication of the very first book, Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone.

Rising like a phoenix! Despite paving a career for himself in the ring, Josh revealed that he hasn't given up on his dream of acting and is still pursuing new roles but has not starred in anything since Harry Potter

The script of the new stage play, Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, will be released as a book on July 31 - the day after the play's world premiere and, fans will note, Harry's birthday.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ended 19 years after the Battle of Hogwarts, as Harry waved his two eldest children off to the wizarding school.

The Cursed Child will pick up from that moment, focusing on Harry as a frazzled Ministry of Magic civil servant and his middle child Albus Severus, who is struggling under the weight of the family's legacy.
She poked fun at herself turning another year older with an Instagram snapshot the day before.

But Uma Thurman looked ever the ageless beauty as she arrived at the Claridges hotel in London on Monday.

The Pulp Fiction star visited the luxury resort just days ahead of turning 46, which seemed hard to imagine with her incredibly youthful appearance.

Ageless beauty! Uma Thurman looked youthful just days ahead of turning 46 on Friday

The Oscar-nominated actress went effortlessly chic in a fitted navy blue blazer which she draped over a plum-coloured polo shirt with white collar.

Her slim pins were dressed in light denim jeans and the 5ft11in beauty wore simple black ballet flats as to not add any height to her lengthy frame.

She wore her golden mane back in a messy bun and opted for minimal make-up which only further highlighted her timeless complexion.

Traveling in style! The Hollywood A-listed went effortlessly chic as she arrived at the Claridges hotel in London on Monday

Forever young! Uma starred in the cult classic Pulp Fiction more than 20 years ago and hasn't aged much since

As the Kill Bill favourite celebrates her upcoming birthday on Friday, the actress took to Instagram on Sunday and posted a humorous photo.

'Ageing gracefully,' she captioned a selfie as she wore a pair of puff-reducing pads underneath her eyes while appearing to sip from her three-year-old daughter Lunas baby bottle.

Lunas father is London-based French financier Arpad Busson, to whom Uma was twice engaged before they split in 2014.

Leggy blonde! The Oscar nominee's slim pins were dressed in light denim jeans and the 5ft11in beauty wore simple black ballet flats as to not add any height to her lengthy frame

The star has two other children - Maya, 17, and Levon Roan, 14 - with her former husband, actor Ethan Hawke.

And although Uma turns a year older she looks just as young as when she rocked her iconic role in Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2 more than a decade ago.

Earlier this year, director Quentin Tarantino teased a third addition to his hugely successful series, with Thurman reprising her role as deadly Beatrix Kiddo.

Natural beauty! Uma wore her golden mane back in a messy bun and opted for minimal make-up which only further highlighted her timeless complexion

'Me and Uma have talked about it  there is an idea there,' he said. 'Theres no script yet. I never figure out what Im going to do until I get on the other side of this whole thing.'

'I've been very non-committal about it, and I'm not committing to it, but I wouldn't be surprised if The Bride made one more appearance before the whole thing is said and done,' he said to Variety.

He continued: 'I've been talking to Uma about it just a little bit.'
Chris Hemsworth left Los Angeles for Byron Bay with wife Elsa Pataky and their three children last year.

And it seems younger brother Liam Hemsworth could be set to follow in his footsteps, according to reports in Woman's Day magazine.

The current issue of the weekly publication suggests the 26-year-old has been house hunting for a love nest to share with rumoured fiancee, Miley Cyrus in Byron Bay, right alongside his superhero sibling.

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House hunting? Liam Hemsworth is reportedly house hunting for a property in Byron Bay for himself and rumoured fiancee Miley Cyrus

Moving next door! It's understood The Hunger Games star is looking to buy near his brother Chris Hemsworth's home and following in the Thor star's footsteps of swapping Los Angeles for Australia

However, a source told Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday, that Liam hasn't been seen back in the region since spending New Years with Miley, Chris and Elsa.

'As yet, our office hasn't heard that he's looking at particular properties,' the prominent real estate agent told Daily Mail Australia.

'But it wouldn't surprise me,' he admitted, adding: '(Liam) is fond of the place and he is close to his brother'.

Noting the appeal of moving to the region for Liam, the source said: 'He sees the transition that Chris and Elsa have made [from LA]...he sees the lifestyle his brother has'.

'He sees the transition that Chris and Elsa have made': A prominent Byron Bay real estate agent admits he hasn't heard Liam is looking at property in the area but wouldn't be surprised having seen his brother move

Wedding bells? Liam Hemsworth (left) told Angela Bishop (right) in an interview airing on Studio 10 on Friday, there was 'no news' to speak of when it came to rumours he was set to wed U.S. pop star Miley Cyrus

The agent also suggested any property The Hunger Games star might be interested in, would most likely be going through a third-party, like it did with the Thor star when he purchased his sprawling $7 million family home.

In a recent interview to promote his upcoming movie Independence Day, Liam denied rumours of an engagement with his on-again-off-again girlfriend.

The handsome hunk told Studio 10's Angela Bishop: 'There's no news'.

Back on? The couple met in 2009 and were engaged in 2012 and appear to have been back on since spending New Years together in Byron Bay with Chris and Elsa

This follows reports that Miley accompanied Liam for New Years celebrations in Australia with his brothers Chris and Luke Hemsworth and their wives.

Speculation that they had resumed their engagement continued earlier this month after Liam and Miley attended the premiere of The Huntsman: Winter's War in Los Angeles together.

They later put on an affectionate display while enjoying a night out with friends - and Liam was even spotted leaving Miley's Studio City home days later.

The couple began dating after starring opposite each other in the romantic drama The Last Song in 2009.
She is one of the most stunning women on television.

And Padma Lakshmi looked pretty as a peach in her latest outing.

The 45-year-old television personality looked fantastic as always Monday night as she attended the opening night of Fully Committed on Broadway.

Pretty in peach: Padma Lakshmi looked fantastic as always as she attended the opening night of Fully Committed on Broadway

She showed off some skin as she sported a flowy strapless peach mini dress on the red carpet of the play held at the Lyceum Theatre in New York City.

Padma's cute dress was held together by a shiny silver ribbon belt tied around her waist as she finished off the look with a pair of strappy leather heels.

Her raven-coloured tresses were worn down flowing over her shoulders as she sported natural, complimentary make-up on her face topped off by a swipe of shiny pink lip.

Gorgeous: The 45-year-old actress rocked a flowy strapless peach mini dress featuring a shiny silver ribbon belt and strappy leather heels

Natural beauty: The Top Chef host wore her raven-coloured locks down and had natural, complimentary make-up on her face topped off with shiny pink lip

The Top Chef host has recently released her third book, Love, Loss and What We Ate, which spills the beans on her famous ex-husband.

The self-styled cookery expert claims the Booker Prize-winning scribe, with whom she had an eight-year relationship, is cruel, vain and sex mad.

Their affair began when, following a successful career modelling lingerie, she was struggling at the age of 28 to move into acting and get her first cookery book published.

She admits they slept together on their first date, saying she woke 'with a start' at 3am, she recalls, mortified to find herself 'naked in a married man's bed' and sneaked out of the hotel.

Happy couple! Tina Fey and Jeff Richmond attended the event

Beautiful in blue: Rachel York wore a navy sleeveless number with gold open-toed heels

Broadway legend: Bernadette Peters sported a navy blazer over a shiny black satin dress

Talented: Emily Bergl and Rachel Dratch brought their best looks for the first showing of the comedy

Stylish Spock: Zachary Quinto sported a blue suede jacket with skinny black jeans and matching leather boots

Their passionate affair led to marriage, however they filed for divorce in 2007, little more than three years after they had wed.

Salman previously slammed his ex-wife in a book of his own, criticising her 'frequent moodiness', 'brattish "model behaviour"' and frequent coldness towards him.

Fully Committed is a comedy that takes aim at the restaurant business and stars Modern Family actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson. It will run at the Lyceum Theatre through July 24.

Mitch and Cam together again: As his Modern Family co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson is featured on the show, Eric Stonestreet was in attendance for support

Dapper: Victor Garber looked good in a navy suit over a crisp white shirt and purple patterned tie
She's never been shy when it comes to oversharing with her followers or posting a racy snap.

And Imogen Anthony did it again on Friday, fuelling speculation of a pregnancy as she posed side on, naked with an arm covering her breast and her stomach pushed out to look like a baby bump.

The 25-year-old posted the image to her public Snapchat account, cryptically captioning it with 'Shh...' as she posed in the bathroom.

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Something to share? Imogen Anthony sparked speculation of a pregnancy on Friday when she posed naked and pushed her tummy out to look like a baby bump

Imogen, the girlfriend of radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands, flashed some serious skin in the image, her modesty barely covered.

Her pastel pink-coloured locks were wrapped up in a towel and she held another in front of herself while making sure to lean back and push her stomach out.

Her followers immediately began speculating that she was expecting, with one even commenting: 'I have a feeling Imogen is pregnant? Nice snap and congrats if it's true'

Questionable: Her followers immediately began speculating that she was expecting, with one even commenting: 'I have a feeling Imogen is pregnant? Nice snap and congrats if it's true'

Cheeky: Following the post, the 25-year-old took to Snapchat again, confessing to her followers that she was just bloated because it was 'that time of the month' after posting a picture of herself with a flat stomach less than a week earlier (L)

When contacted by Daily Mail Australia, Imogen's management denied that there was any news to announce.

And following her post, the 25-year-old took to Snapchat again, confessing to her followers that she was just bloated because it was 'that time of the month'.

Throughout her recent trip to Los Angeles with her beau Kyle, the beauty has shared plenty of snaps of herself on social media, including a nearly naked photograph.

In the image she was seen placing the palms of her hands over her breasts and posing in a doorway wearing only a beige pair of knickers.

She stretched her back straight and glared out into the distance while displaying some serious underboob.

No news: When contacted by Daily Mail Australia, Imogen's management denied that there was any news to announce
As she eagerly awaits the arrival of their first child, Audrina Patridge has shared a sweet snap with fans, showing off her growing baby bump.

On holiday in Hawaii, the former The Hills star posted an image to Instagram on Saturday as she stood in front of lush green hills in a billowing maxi skirt and black off-the-shoulder crop top.

In the shot, the 30-year-old looked on lovingly as her Australian fiance Corey Bohan tenderly kissed her exposed belly.

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'The countdown is on!' Audrina Patridge shared a sweet snap to Instagram on Saturday as her fiance Corey Bohan tenderly kissed her exposed baby bump while the pair are on holiday in Hawaii

The expectant mum simply hash tagged the colourful shot 'Earth Day' with a love heart emoticon.

Meanwhile, Corey, 34, posted another image on Monday, taken at the same time, which shows the shirtless father-to-be cradling Audrina's bump as the pair stared lovingly at each other.

And it seems the couple's daughter already has daddy wrapped around her finger, with the excited BMX rider captioning the shot: 'The countdown is on!'

'Can't wait till its You @audrinapatridge Me & her,' he added, following up his caption with multiple baby emoticons and the hashtag 'family'.

'Can't wait till its You, Me & her': The 34-year-old father-to-be shared his excitement in his own Instagram post on Monday as he gently cradled his fiancee and her growing baby bump

Fun in the sun! The couple have been enjoying the sun, sand and surf in Honolulu over the past week

Audrina responded by also using multiple baby emoticons, saying: 'The count down is on!'

'Ps you are one ripped hottie,' she added cheekily to the image taken by her younger sister Casey.

The couple have been enjoying the sun, sand and surf in Honolulu over the past week with the mother-to-be looking relaxed and radiant as she frolicked around on the beach in a bikini.

The loved-up pair also made sure to take some time out by the pool at their hotel and revealed they're in town for sister Samantha Patridge's 21st birthday celebrations.

Party time! The loved-up pair also made sure to take some time out by the pool at their hotel ahead of Audrina's sister Samantha Patridge's 21st birthday celebrations

The couple, who started dating in 2008, got engaged in November 2015, one month before they announced her pregnancy.

Audrina revealed in an interview with UsWeekly last month that the pair 'are so excited to meet her' and are trying to get all their wedding planning out of the way, ahead of her arrival.

The couple plan to wed at the end of the year in Hawaii.
She's a natural beauty who can usually pull-off most ensembles with her statuesque 5ft 9in frame.

So why Katie Holmes opted for a rather ill-fitting and drab ensemble on Monday as she attended a Ray Donovan event in Hollywood, is anyone's guess.

The 37-year-old actress hit the red carpet in a loose polka-dot blouse with a mid-length skirt which didn't appear ideal for a red carpet event.

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Strange choice: Katie Holmes missed the mark in an unflattering blouse and skirt combo at a screening of Ray Donovan in Hollywood on Monday

Natural beauty: The 37-year-old actress opted for a berry colour on her lips and left her glossy locks loose

The skirt, with centre slit, featured an odd black lace-trim which was mirrored on the front of her blouse.

Her sleeves reached way past her wrists and she left a long tie hanging loose at her neck.

She teamed the two-piece with sophisticated pointed black heels.

On a positive note, Katie's glossy brunette locks looked great and she glowed with a flattering make-up look consisting of berry hued lipstick.

Drab: Katie's polka-dot two-piece was a bit drab and featured strange black lace trim in places

Say cheese! Katie posed with her Ray Donovan co-star Liev Schreiber, 48

The former Dawson's Creek star was joined by her Ray Donovan co-star Liev Schreiber, 48, who plays the protagonist in the Showtime TV series has just filmed its fourth season.

Other stars of the show, Jon Voight and Kerris Dorsey also made an appearance at the pre-Emmy 'For Your Consideration' screening and panel held at Paramount Theatre.

The fourth season of Ray Donovan premieres on Showtime on June 26.

Meanwhile, Katie presented her directorial debut All We Had at this year's Tribeca Film Festival.

The For Your Consideration screening and panel was held as a promotional event ahead of the Emmy Awards in September

Co-stars: The father-of-two also posed alongside Jon Voight who starred in the show from 2013 to 2015

The gang's all here: Katie, Jon and Liev join their co-stars Kerris Dorsey (far left) and Pooch Hall

She stars in and helmed the drama which follows a single mother (Katie) who struggles to provide for her teenage daughter (played by Lovie Findlay).

It is based on Annie Weatherwax's 2014 novel of the same name.

Katie is mother to ten-year-old Suri who she shares with ex-husband Tom Cruise, 53.

To celebrate her daughter's birthday last week, the actress took to Instagram writing the message: 'So grateful for my favorite day of the year!!!!!! Happy Birthday to my sweet angel Suri.'

Katie and the cast took questions from the floor during the panel discussion

Another star of the show, Kerris Dorsey, arrived in a chic cream trouser suit and bralet

A family affair: Dash Mihok (left), who plays Ray's younger brother Brendan and Eddie Marsan (right), who plays older sibling Terrence

Keeping the press entertained: Eddie appeared in high spirits as he skipped across the stage

The fourth season of Ray Donovan premieres on Showtime on June 26

Cheers: Katie chatted to executive producer David Hollander over drinks
Backing an earlier action by the Zoning Commission, the Billings City Council turned down by a 9-2 vote a zone change that would have allowed for construction of a two-family dwelling at 3122 Lynn Ave.

Council members Angela Cimmino and Mike Yakawich voted against the motion to approve the Zoning Commission decision, taken April 5.

The petition, by property owner James Ouren, would have required approval by at least eight city council members because neighbors had filed a valid protest against the zone change.

Again backing earlier Zoning Commission action, the city council unanimously approved a special review request to allow the location of a 50-foot pole support structure for new Verizon Wireless communication antennas at 401 N. 17th St., within the East Billings Urban Renewal District.

A special review to allow two outdoor patios and 4,000 square feet of space for a liquor and convenience store at a restaurant and casino at the former site of Geyser Park, 4910 Southgate Drive, received approval by a vote of 11-0.

One patio will be for smokers and the other for non-smokers.

Co-owner Shawn Johnson of Huntley, owner of the Bayou Restaurant, said hes invested every penny into the project, which he pegged at $4 million. He said he plans to continue operating the Bayou Restaurant into August before opening the new restaurant on Southgate Drive.

He said he and his business partners are interested in the project, which will include an eatery called America Family Restaurant, because of the lack of restaurants in the Billings Southside.

The city council also approved, by an 11-0 count, the citys 2016-17 action plan and budget for entitlement funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

HUD has awarded the city more than $875,000 for use in affordable housing, home repairs and other projects benefiting low-income residents.

Community Development Manager Brenda Beckett noted the citys housing crunch, with vacancy rates less than 2 percent, has become more concerning for people seeking moderately-priced housing over the past two years.

She said the average home purchase price is up $6,000 this year over last  from $145,000 to $151,000.

School District 2 has identified more than 630 homeless students. Beckett said that 711 Billings residents are considered homeless on any given day.

The number of homeless students is accelerating much faster than our (overall) population, Beckett said. Its astounding.

Beckett also spoke of the 162 people who have worked as AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) in Billings. VISTAs have served 39 community organizations and engaged 6,000 volunteers, she said.

Some of the VISTAs whove served the program and, later, returned to Billings, explained to the city council how important the year-long program has been in their lives.

The city council set a May 23 public hearing date on a petition to vacate a portion of Third Avenue North and N. Broadway. The Alberta Bair Theater Corp. wants to expand the theater in the future, and the vacation of the 3,813 square feet will allow the expansion.

If the expansion does not occur within 10 years, the property would revert back to right of way.
Zilda Williams admitted to her Snapchat followers that she was drunk after commemorating Anzac Day in Bondi with friends.

And it appears as the tequila flowed on Monday, the former Bachelor contestant wasn't afraid to get a little amorous with her bestie Pippa Eve.

Both busty blonde were clad in white tops and sat side-by-side at bar Ravesi's, with the girls later in the afternoon seen in a lip lock for the cameras.

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Eyes wide open! Zilda Williams shared a lip lock with her friend Pippa Eve while out on Monday in Bondi but didn't seem quite as into the public display of affection, keeping her eyes wide open

However, the 33-year-old appeared a little less keen on the public display of affection than her friend, who was seen grabbing Zilda's face to kiss her.

Meanwhile, the reality TV startlet kept her eyes wide open and seemed a little shocked by the pash.

Moments earlier, the pair happily posed for photos smiling and making faces as a man sitting opposite them in a blue shirt clicked away on a mobile phone.

As Zilda pouted for the camera, Pippa poked her tongue out and almost appeared to be licking her friend's cheek.

Posing up a storm! The 33-year-old happily posed for photos moments earlier, smiling and making faces as a man sitting opposite them in a blue shirt clicked away on a mobile phone

Tasty! As Zilda pouted for the camera, Pippa poked her tongue out and almost appeared to be licking her friend's cheek

Soon after, the wavy-haired blonde who had her arm around the back of her friend's neck, took it a step further by grabbing her friend's face for the girl-on-girl kiss.

It's not the first time Zilda has locked lips with the fairer sex, having publicly pashed fellow The Bachelor star Jacinda Gugliemino.

The duo locked lips at Zilda's birthday bash in trendy Double Bay nightclub, Casablanca, earlier this month.

The vivacious glamour model documented her bender on Monday across Snapchat, exclaiming 'I'm drunk!' after downing a few tequila margaritas with her busty blonde girlfriend.

Tequila is flowing: The vivacious glamour model documented her bender on Monday across Snapchat, exclaiming 'I'm drunk!' after downing a few tequila margaritas with her busty blonde girlfriend

She kissed a girl and she liked it: It's not the first time Zilda has locked lips with the fairer sex, having publicly pashed fellow The Bachelor star Jacinda Gugliemino at her birthday party last month

As the night wore on, the FHM model started to look a little worse for wear, swishing her dishevelled blonde locks around as she enjoyed the company of a number of male party-goers.

For her naughty night out on Monday, the New Zealand-born bombshell sported a pair of black skinny jeans and a semi-sheer white lace top that provided more than just a glimpse of her DD assets.

But it seemed there was friends on hand to help the blonde beauty about, with the swimwear model seen being carried by a handsome male friend.

Getting a lift! A handsome male friend was on hand to give the blonde beauty a lift on his back

Friendly trio: Zilda, Pippa and the mystery man made their way down the main street in Bondi together

Resting her high heel clad feet, the blonde babe kept her head down as she got a piggy-back ride down the main street in Bondi from the muscle-tee clad male.

While the stunner failed to find love on season three of Australia's The Bachelor, after leaving the reality TV series in the first episode, it seems Zilda could get a second chance at romance.

The busty blonde revealed to Daily Mail Australia on Saturday she's been approached about possibly joining the upcoming third season of the US Bachelor spin-off, Bachelor in Paradise.
She only lasted two rounds on the hit dance competition show.

But Mischa Barton was thrilled nonetheless to be reunited with her former cast mates on the popular ABC show Dancing With the Stars.

'Getting ready to go to @DancingABC and see my #DWTS family Xoxo,' the 30-year-old star tweeted on Monday.

'Getting ready to go see my #DWTS family!': Mischa Barton, 30, headed off to reunite with her former Dancing With the Stars cast mates on Monday

Just a glimpse: Mischa flashed her legs in her ensemble as she made her way down the street, holding onto her outfit to make sure she didn't show off too much

As the O.C. alum headed off to the Los Angeles studios she was still showcasing her dance-toned legs in a thigh high slit dress.

She donned the form-fitting black number with a chic lustrous silver jacket with zippers adorned throughout.

Her sandy blonde hair was styled straight, parted to one side and tucked behind her ears to highlight her natural good looks.

Leggy display! The O.C. alum showcased her dance-hones stems in a thigh high slit dress as she made her way to the Los Angeles studio

Shining star! The former teen star donned the black number with a chic lustrous silver jacket

Rounding out her stylish ensemble was a large black leather handbag, pointed stilettos and a dark smokey eye for a dramatic finish.

As she stood on the balcony of a high-rise with a breathtaking backdrop, she posed in a stunning picture and captioned the image: '#DWTS ready See you soon @DancingABC.'

The former teen star shared several photos in excitement as she geared up to revisit the set and even wished judge Len Goodman a happy birthday.

Details: Rounding out her stylish ensemble was a large black leather handbag and pointed stilettos

'Happy Birthday @GrumpyLGoodman See you in a few @DancingABC #DWTS,' Barton tweeted to the British dancer as he turns 72.

She also posted a snapshot with DWTS alum Joey Fatone and wrote: 'Fun catching up backstage with the lovely @realjoeyfatone at @DancingABC #DWTS.'

Mischa had struggled during her time on the show and the judges urged her to enjoy herself more while performing.

But she was booted after receiving just 18 points for her samba with pro partner Artem Chigvintsev.

'See you soon': As Mischa stood on the balcony of a high-rise with a breathtaking backdrop, she posed in a stunning picture

Despite the low score Len called it her best dance yet and Carrie Ann said it was a breakthrough that she appeared to be having some fun.

Timing is not your strong suit, remarked Bruno before she was sent packing.

Her performance was part of the Most Memorable Year night  where contestants talk of a time that was significant for them.

The popular celebrity dance competition show is in its sixth week which see the nine remaining teams take on some of the most iconic dance of all time.

Catch Dancing With the Stars on the ABC network on Monday nights.
Their relationship has suffered a host of upsetting blows.

And Charlotte Crosby has once again discussed her fears that her womanising on/off boyfriend Gary Beadle will play the field - most recently as he appears on Ex On The Beach.

The 25-year-old Geordie Shore star spoke to OK! magazine about the make-or-break state of their relationship as she vows to cut things off if he plays away once more - yet new revelations will no doubt break her heart.

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Loved-up: Charlotte Crosby has once again discussed her fears that her womanising on/off boyfriend Gary Beadle will play the field - most recently as he appears on Ex On The Beach

Charlotte voiced her concerns that Gary would was going to play away while he films his second stint on MTV dating show Ex On The Beach - a show centered around dating and dalliances.

The Sunderland-born beauty, who has dated on/off since Geordie Shore's 2011 inauguration, insists that if Gary returns and announces he has romanced a cast mate - she will break things off.

Her vow comes after reports surfaced claiming he worked his charm on two of his co-stars on upcoming season of the controversial MTV hit - allegedly bedding both Charlotte Dawson, daughter of late comic Les, and returning castmember Olivia Walsh.

Charlotte told the magazine: Its quite hard. If he comes back and says something has happened, Ive made him fully aware that Ill be really hurt. If he still goes ahead and does it then it shows we werent meant to be.'

Once upon a time... The 25-year-old Geordie Shore star spoke to OK! magazine about the make-or-break state of their relationship as she vows to cut things off if he plays away once more

Wild night; The reality TV lothario, 28, has reportedly worked his charm on two of his co-stars on upcoming season of the controversial MTV hit - allegedly bedding both Charlotte Dawson, daughter of late comic Les, and returning castmember Olivia Walsh

OK! magazine is on news stands now

A source tells The Sun: 'Gaz and the girls barely knew each other, but they were determined to make this the raunchiest series of Ex on the Beach ever and jumped into bed with each other pretty much as soon as the cameras were on.

'It was a total free for all and even though Gaz has slept with over 1,000 women, it'll be a night he never forgets. He definitely wasn't thinking about how Charlotte C may feel.'

The claims come as Charlotte threatened to quit Geordie Shore after it emerged Gaz had a fling with another Ex On The Beach star - Jemma Lucy.

Tattooed Jemma - famous for her flings with TOWIE's Kirk Norcross on a previous series of the show - blasted critics online after it began to spread on social media that her dalliance with the heartthrob came when he was dating Crosby.

Despite her adamant sentiments, she also revealed that if he managed to stay faithful they could give their relationship a go.

She adds: But if he comes back and says: "I didnt get with anyone and I realise I just want to be with you," then Ill say lets be in a relationship. I do care so much about the boy and I want more than anything for us to be together.

Charlotte's vows come after their relationship has been plagued with rumours - including that she was quitting Geordie Shore due to Gary enjoying a fling with Ex On The Beach star Jemma Lucy.

Fuller pout: Atop her discussions about her relationship status, Charlotte addressed the discussions of her widely discussed lip fillers

Atop her discussions about her relationship status, Charlotte addressed the discussions of her widely discussed lip fillers.

She says: I get compliments every day about my lips. When Im in a picture I pout, so obviously theyre going to automatically look bigger.

Everyone I meet in this industry says: "Yours are the best lips Ive seen that have got fillers in them." I dont care what people say because its a lie. Ive got the best lips in the world!
She's one of the original supermodels from the 1990s.

And Eva Herzigova proved her style was timeless as she stepped out in a pink and black ensemble on Monday evening.

The 43-year-old flattered her enviable figure as she wore a slinky silk shirt and tailored trousers for her talk at the China Exchange.

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Role model: Eva Herzigova wore a slinky silk shirt and tailored trousers for her talk at the China Exchange on Monday evening in London

And, keeping things demure the Wonderbra model refrained from flashing too much flesh and only showed a hint of ankle in a pair of black and gold slippers.

The actress also kept snug in a sophisticated grey jacket, while maintaining her pink theme as she toted a baby pink jumper and matching handbag.

Eva kept her look glamorous with flawless makeup and a cool pink lip, and her trademark blonde locks were perfectly coiffed with a bouncy blowdry.

The model was pictured with Hong Kong businessman and socialite, Sir David Tang.

Contrasting chic: The stunning 43-year-old flashed a hint of her chest in her slinky blouse, teamed with simple separates as she was joined by Sir David Tang

Sir Tang had organised the talk in central London which is part of a series of debates, discussions and performances by exceptional individuals from a wide range of sectors.

The pair looked perfectly in sync as they strolled arm in arm in coordinated jackets and shoes.

However, although Sir Tang opted for a crisp white shirt and pocket square he still added a burst of colour to his outfit with some eye-popping blue socks.

As well as focusing on her work, Eva also has a busy family life.

Natural beauty: Super model Eva kept her look glamorous with flawless makeup and a cool pink lip

The model who famously starred in the 1994 'Hello Boys!' adverts for Wonderbra, has been dating businessman Gregorio Marsiaj since 2006.

The pair have three children together, George, eight, Philipe, four, and two-year-old Edward.

The 90s icon recently said she was never focused on having a family until Gregorio swept her off her feet.

'When I had the first [baby], I wondered why I waited so long, but it was timing  I never had the right man before', she told Net-a-Porter's The Edit.
They're the ultra-competitive married couple who previously said they delayed having kids to compete in My Kitchen Rules.

But contestants Carmine and Lauren Finelli told Nova 96.9's Fitzy and Wippa this week they don't mind being appointed MKR 'series villains' because they got more TV exposure.

'Do you know what, being a villain isn't all that bad because we've had so much air time!' boasted Lauren on Tuesday ahead of the grand final.

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Shaking off the haters! My Kitchen Rules contestants Carmine (left) and Lauren Finelli (right) told Nova 96.9's Fitzy and Wippa they don't mind being appointed MKR 'series villains' because they got more TV exposure

In recent episodes, the South Australian couple appeared to take Brisbane 'legal eagles' Zana Pali and Gianni Romanos place as series bad guys.

They displayed their competitive streak throughout the show, having scraped through to the semi-finals after taking part in three sudden death cook-offs.

But the couple themselves don't seem to bothered about their on-screen portrayal - and in fact seem to relish in the role as 'villains'.

Lauren told Nova breakfast show co-hosts Ryan 'Fitzy' Fitzgerald and Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli that she was actually 'really grateful to Channel Seven'.

See more of the latest updates from the grand final of My Kitchen Rules 2016

'Do you know what, being a villain isn't all that bad because we've had so much air time!' boasted Lauren

They're nice in real life! Carmine was quick to clarify that MKR fans have been pleasantly surprised that the couple aren't as confrontational off-screen

'Who can buy that much advertising?' asked Lauren, who previously hinted that her and Carmine are looking to pursue careers in the food industry. 'No one!'

But Carmine was quick to clarify that MKR fans have been pleasantly surprised that the couple aren't as confrontational off-screen.

'People that know us know that the kind of people that we are,' he began. 'We're quite nice, down to earth people.

'And the people who come up to us on the street are pleasantly surprised as well.'

Ultra-competitive: In recent episodes, the South Australian couple appeared to take Brisbane 'legal eagles' Zana Pali and Gianni Romanos place as series bad guys

Kicked off! Gianni (left) and Zana (right), who were eliminated in the semi-finals on Thursday, began the series as haughty 'villains' but softened in later episodes and eventually became unlikely favourites

Meanwhile, the pair also spoke about MKR judge Pete Evans' surprise wedding this week - and confessed they weren't invited.

'We got shafted!' Lauren joked. 'We didn't get a guernsey.' Meanwhile, Carmine added: '(Pete) kept it on the down low'.

Pete's wedding to model Nicola Robinson, 39, was an intimate affair held at their farm in New South Wales recently.

Despite the MKR cast being absent from the guest list, Lauren had nothing but kind words for the newlywed couple. '(He's a) top bloke... lovely man,' she said.

Not on the guest list! Lauren joked that she and Carmine weren't invited to MKR judge Pete Evans' (left) recent nuptials to model Nicola Robinson (right), which was an intimate affair held at their New South Wales farm
Australian actor Chris Hemsworth joined pro surfer Kelly Slater on a friends surfing trip to Fiji recently.

And on Monday, Thor star Chris joined the 44-year-old champion athlete for a surf at Chris' local spot near his home in Byron Bay.

The duo were seen hitting the waves together as Chris' younger brother Liam looked on from the shore and the filmed the duo in action.

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Making his own movie: Liam Hemsworth (pictured) was seen on the shore filming brother Chris and surfing legend Kelly Slater take to the sea surfing in Byron Bay on Monday

Surf's up? Chris Hemsworth (pictured) joined pro surfer Kelly in the sea after bonding on a boys' trip in Fiji recently

Doing what he does best: Kelly Slater is seen here riding the waves in Byron

Chris, 32, a keen surfer and who is regularly spotted with his board at the beach, wore a black long sleeve rash shirt and a pair of black board shorts.

American star Kelly wore a black wetsuit for the trip as he was seen gliding across the ocean ease.

Meanwhile, Liam, 26, was happy to hang back and watch the duo as they negotiated the waves and at one point appeared to be taking photos and videoing.

Getting a wave: Chris at one point caught the tide in a dramatic moment that could have been straight from a movie

At one point, the swell lowered and after tackling a wave, Chris was seen lying down on his board and paddling.

The actor, who lives in Byron with his family, spoke to another mystery surfer as he roamed around.

Liam at one point, was seen sitting down as he waited for his brother and friend and pulled off his cap revealing a messy mop of hair.

The adventures at sea come after Chris and Kelly enjoyed a surfing holiday in Fiji last week.

Eager: A whole group joined in with Chris (bottom left) and Kelly (far right)

Cruising: At one point, the swell lowered and after tackling a wave, Chris was seen paddling on his board

A true local! He spoke to another mystery surfer as he frolicked in the sea

Patient: Liam was seen sitting down as he waited for his brother and pulled off his cap to reveal a messy mop

Going swimmingly: The adventures in Byron come after Chris and Kelly enjoyed a surfing holiday in Fiji last week (seen here in Byron)

According to The Courier Mail, Chris was seen arriving at Nadi International Airport with the 11-time World Champion.

Kelly also shared to Instagram a snap taken by Josh Bystrom at the Tavarua island resort which 'tagged' Thor star Chris and his actress wife Elsa Pataky.

Chris also shared a shot of himself surfing in Fiji, saying the trip was 'incredible.'

Chris' passion for surfing is well-documented, and he is often seeing catching waves near his coastal New South Wales home.

He knows the beach: Chris lives in Byron Bay with his family where he regularly takes to the ocean

Not going in? Liam was wearing grey board shorts with a cream jumper

Waiting patiently: It remains unclear if Liam joined Kelly and Chris in the sea

The star's friendship with Kelly goes back several years with Chris previously telling Vanity Fair he grew up idolising the Florida athlete.

He even recalled a story when he 'started crying' after discovering his father Craig Hemsworth went surfing with Kelly, but Chris missed out because of theatre class.

Fortunately, the pair become close friends after Chris's rise to fame as a Hollywood star in blockbuster films Thor and The Avengers.

Meanwhile, two days ago, Kelly shared to Instagram a snap of him holding Thor's hammer, the character that Chris famously portrayed in the movie.

He captioned the snap: '#ThorsActualHammer. Stole it. Straight on eBay.'

He's a fan! Chris's friendship with Kelly goes back several years - with Chris previously telling Vanity Fair he grew up idolising the Florida athlete
He impressed the judges on Saturday night's installment of Britain's Got Talent with his unique act.

And it has been revealed that Britain's Got Talent pianist Colin Henry has been entertaining audiences with his upside down piano playing skills for over 40 years.

The 68-year-old showed he's still got what it takes as he flipped backwards off his stool, playing the piano while standing on his head.

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Topsy turvy: Britain's Got Talent favourite Colin Henry has been performing the same gravity-defying stunt for over 40 years

A photo has now emerged of Colin performing the same gravity-defying stunt in 1974, when he made the finals of ITV talent show New Faces.

The Doncaster native's first television appearance helped cement his music career, which saw him support the likes of late stars Paul Daniels and Marti Caine.

He has also enjoyed a successful cruise ship stint and has appeared in pantomimes.

He's still got it: A photo has now emerged of Colin performing the same gravity-defying stunt in 1974, when he made the finals of ITV talent show New Faces

According to the Daily Star, Colin said: 'My routine has served me well. Even now, people are still gobsmacked when they see it.

'I've even got the world record for playing the piano upside down.'

Colin's skills went down a storm with the judges, who were blown away by his quirky act.

Popular: Colin's skills went down a storm with the judges, who were blown away by his quirky act

Alesha Dixon said: 'Youre amazing. I didnt see that coming.'

Meanwhile, BGT has become the most-watched programme of the year so far, thanks to ratings fron the second episode of the talent competition reaching 12.4million viewers.

The show even surpassed Sherlock in the ratings, which achieved 11.6million at its peak on New Year's Day.
Things took an unexpected turn on ITV's Good Morning Britain on Tuesday when Piers Morgan took a playful swipe at his guest Bear Grylls.

The British adventurer and TV presenter attended the show to talk about his dramatic visit to the Oval Office with President Obama and his close call with death.

Before Susanna Reid got the chance to introduce Bear as the next sofa guest, Piers Morgan jokingly jumped at Bear Grylls and said: 'Alright let me at him! Come on son let's be having you!'

Oh dear: Things took an unexpected turn on ITV's Good Morning Britain on Tuesday when Piers Morgan took a playful swipe at his guest Bear Grylls

Naughty boy: Before Susanna Reid got the chance to introduce Bear as the next sofa guest, Piers Morgan jokingly jumped at Bear Grylls and said: 'Alright let me at him! Come on son let's be having you!'

Joining in on the joke, Bear jumped to his feet and responded: 'He comes out like a gorilla, he wants a fight instantly. I'm going "Piers I've just got out of bed!"'

Speaking to Piers and Susanna about his time with President Obama and his invitation to the Oval Office,

Bear said: 'We did our adventure together in Alaska and at the end of it he very sweetly said, "oh I'd love to meet the family, bring the kids to the Oval Office someday"

What a man: Joining in on the joke, Bear jumped to his feet and respoNded: 'He comes out like a gorilla, he wants a fight instantly. I'm going "Piers I've just got out of bed!"'

'And I kind of thought he's just being polite, but as we left one of his assistants said, "I've been with him eight years this has only happened a handful of times, take him up on the offer".'

'So we did. We went in the Easter holiday, took the family there and it was funny because it was in many ways more scary because suddenly you're in his territory.'

But it's fair to say it was no ordinary day for the family.

He's lived a life: Speaking to Piers and Susanna about his time with President Obama and his invitation to the Oval Office

He added: '[The] President had gone left, we were just ushered right into this room and basically the White House went into a lockdown because it was exactly the time of the Capitol Hill shooting.

'I think at the same time they said somebody had tried to climb the White House fence, so everybody thought the whole thing is under attack.

'Then the marines came in and this person took us down underground...and out past the Situation Room so I'm thinking, "this is brilliant!".'

When Piers asked about the closest Bear had ever come to death, he said:

'I remember filming for when we flew paragliders over Mount Everest a few years ago and we were testing these parachutes [in the UK] and the helicopter got too close.

'We flew through the rotor of it, you know all the wash of where it had been, and I literally somersaulted over the top of the thing...and I came spiralling down.

Bear said: 'We did our adventure together in Alaska and at the end of it he very sweetly said, "oh I'd love to meet the family, bring the kids to the Oval Office someday"'

'I didn't have a reserve parachute on me that day.'

On how he felt as the accident occurred, Bear said: 'It all happened very fast and I could just get it to a stall point where it stopped spinning and eventually landed.

'My best buddy who I was with landed and I remember just crying and crying and I think just, I knew I should have died that day.

'It was one of those ones where it was quite undramatic in a way - it wasn't some big expedition.

'I remember going home and saying I'm not actually going to even tell Shara [wife Shara Grylls] about this.'

Bear also announced his very first live arena spectacular tour which kicks off in London on 7 October 2016.

Audiences will join the adventurer as he transports them to multiple environments in this edge-of-your-seat, action-packed two hour show. See www.beargryllslive.com.

Good Morning Britain, ITV, weekdays 6am - 8.30am
She recently enjoyed a sun-soaked Maldives holiday with her dancing pro boyfriend Giovanni Pernice.

And Georgia May Foote showed off her flirty form in a floral two-piece as she posed at a photocall for Lorraines High Street Fashion Awards.

The 25-year-old actress, who will join the fashion panel for the awards this year, showed off her taut, toned abs in the spring-inspired crop top, which was tied at the waist with a dainty knot.

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Floral delight: Georgia May Foote, 25, showed off her flirty form in a floral two-piece as she posed at a photocall for Lorraines High Street Fashion Awards

The Strictly Come Dancing runner-up wore matching high-waisted shorts which displayed her slim legs while posing up against coordinating wallpaper.

Whilst Georgia stands at a petite 5ft 1in, she managed to elongate her enviable frame with strappy white heels.

Adding to the airy feminine feel, the former soap star wore baby pink lips with lashings of mascara, with her thick honey brown mane framing her jovial face.

While she has been busy with work commitments, Georgia has also been focusing on her fledgling relationship with Giovanni.

The pair recently sent rumours into overdrive when was spotted wearing a stunning ring on her engagement finger in an Instagram snap, but it turned out to be a false alarm.

Blending in: The Strictly Come Dancing runner-up, who will join the fashion award show panel this year, wore matching high-waisted shorts which displayed her slim legs

Slight peek! The actress showed off her taut, toned abs in the spring inspired crop top, which was fastened with a dainty knot

Georgia was paired with professional dancer Giovanni for the 2015 series of BBC1 show Strictly Come Dancing.

Their partnership was plagued with rumours of romance throughout the four-month running of the show - reports the stunning actress repeatedly denied since she was in a relationship with fellow Corrie star Sean Ward at the time.

After the Bury-born beauty, who began dating Sean in 2015, announced her split from her actor beau, she revealed she was dating Giovanni.

Fledgling romance: Georgia and her dancing pro beau Giovanni Pernice recently sent rumours into overdrive when Georgia was seen sporting a stunning ring on her engagement finger in an Instagram snap - however, it was a false alarm

Having fun: The good-looking duo also recently enjoyed a sun-soaked Maldives holiday

Georgia recently told The Daily Mirror that she couldn't be happier with the Italian heartthrob, 25.

'Gio is my best friend and he has helped me through a lot. He's the best thing that's ever happened to me,' she gushed.

Georgia will join Lorraine, stylist Mark Heyes and Fabulous magazine fashion editor Lynne McKenna on the panel for the prestigious awards.

Leading lady: Lorraine, who birthed the idea, also posed up a sassy storm in a ladylike pink floral midi-length number

Stunning display: The television presenter stood in front of matching wallpaper in a pair of sexy red heels- showing off her fashionable flair

The awards show will feature 8 categories such as Best Affordable Fashion, Best Curvy Collection, Best Online Retailer as well as a new category - Best Menswear.

Speaking of her new appointment, Georgia stated: 'I am so excited to be part of the panel on this years Lorraines High Street Fashion Awards. I am a huge fan of high street fashion!'

Lorraine, who birthed the idea, also posed up a sassy storm in a ladylike pink floral midi-length number.

Like Georgia, the television presenter stood in front of matching wallpaper in a pair of sexy red heels- showing off her fashionable flair.

Budget awards: The floral-inspired award show will feature 8 categories such as Best Affordable Fashion, Best Curvy Collection, Best Online Retailer as well as a new category - Best Menswear

Speaking of the stylish award ceremony, which was a huge hit in 2015, Lorraine stated: 'The High Street Fashion Awards is one of the biggest events of the year for us. We always get such a terrific reaction from viewers who love celebrating high street fashion and voting for their favourites.

I'm really looking forward to hosting the award ceremony as it's always a fun filled, glitzy evening packed with fashion loving celebrities, and all of the nominees hoping to take home a trophy.'

Lorraines High Street Fashion Awards will launch on ITVs Lorraine on 3 May, with the awards taking place on Tuesday 17, and being broadcast the following day.

The judges: Georgia will joined by (L-R) by Fabulous magazine editor Lynne McKenna, Lorraine and stylist Mark Heyes for the prestigious awards.




She hit the limelight after announcing she was expecting Louis Tomlinson's baby.

And now Briana Jungwirth's cousin Ashley Jessica has hit back at the stream of online abuse Briana, who welcomed Louis' son Freddie Reign in January, and her family have received.

Ashley has insisted that despite claims Briana 'trapped' the One Direction star, the two had no idea who he was when they first met him in a nightclub last year, while she adds that Louis' new relationship with actress Danielle Campbell is 'just bad timing.'

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Hitting back: Briana Jungwirth's cousin Ashley Jessica has defended her against the stream of online abuse Briana, who welcomed Louis' son Freddie Reign in January, and her family have received

Makeup artist Ashley has told Now Magazine that she and her 24-year-old cousin Briana first met Louis, 24, in January 2015, five months before Briana announced she was pregnant, and two months before he split from longterm girlfriend Eleanor Calder.

The cousins met Louis and his friends in a club, with Ashley going onto date the One Direction star's close friend Oli, although they are no longer together.

While some 1D fans have accused Briana of pursuing Louis, Ashley insists that 'honest to God, we had no idea who Louis Tomlinson was. The only person we knew in the band was Harry Styles.'

Happy families: Ashley has told Now Magazine that she and Briana, pictured in May 2015, first met Louis, 24, in January 2015, five months before Briana announce she was pregnant, but had no idea who he was

While Briana and Louis tried to give a relationship a try once they found out about the pregnancy, Ashley insists it simply didn't work out, but despite reports to the contrary they remain close to this day and are co-parenting well together.

Ashley does admit that Louis' relationship with Disney actress Danielle Campbell did come as a shock, with Briana's cousin explaining of the romance which began last autumn as 'just bad timing.'

She adds that it did 'hurt' the family but 'life is life.'

Louis made his relationship with Danielle 'Instagram official' on Monday, sharing a photo of the couple on his account.

New romance: Ashley does admit that Louis' relationship with Disney actress Danielle Campbell did come as a shock, with Briana's cousin explaining of the romance which began last autumn as 'just bad timing'

Ashley also jokes that perhaps Briana needs to get a new man to make Louis jealous, telling Now: 'I need to get Briana on a blind date with one of my single friends. She should get on Raya [the dating app for high-profile people.]

Ashley has been keen to defend Briana and their family against some of the outlandish conspiracy theories surrounding baby Freddie.

And earlier this month new father Louis was also forced to hit back at the online whispers when he stepped out with his first born in Calabasas, Los Angeles.

'Have a bit of respect for a baby, pal,' Louis, 24, told a pap who'd said: 'Hey Louis, it's good to see that your baby is real, man,' in reference to the theory.

All about you: While some 1D fans have accused Briana of pursuing Louis, Ashley insists that 'honest to God, we had no idea who Louis Tomlinson was. The only person we knew in the band was Harry Styles'

In a video obtained by MailOnline, the star can be heard breaking his silence on the bizarre claims for the first time.

Briana has also had her say on the 'sick' claims, branding them 'cruel'.

She commented on an MTV News Instagram post which showed her child Photoshopped out of one of the first photos of Louis holding him.

The stylist fumed: 'Sorry but that is just cruel. I don't usually speak out much, but I'd like to know how would you feel as a new proud mother reading something like this?

'How dare anyone call my child fake? That's sick and morally wrong. Say all you'd like but I won't let anyone take away the happiness I have for my baby son. I know Louis won't either.'
Voters trying to find their way through the maze of claims and counter claims about candidates and elected officials this election year can get help at a meeting of the Billings League of Women Voters on Thursday, May 5. Melisa Oberti, on the staff of the nonpartisan group Vote Smart, will explain how to access unbiased information about state and national politicians and legislation on the Vote Smart website.

Now headquartered in Philipsburg, Vote Smart began in 1988 and has earned national recognition for providing free, factual information that is easily accessible to individual voters nationwide. Biographical information, voting records, campaign finances and ratings from various interest groups are part of the record. Vote Smart is a nonprofit and independent organization.

All are welcome to attend the May 5 meeting at the Elks Club located at 934 Lewis Ave. A buffet luncheon is available for $10 at 11:30 a.m. The free program begins at noon.
She's known for her role as a savvy sorority queen in Legally Blonde.

But Reese Witherspoon proved she's also smart in real life as she wore a sharp shirt and jeans combo for a walk on Monday in Los Angeles.

The 40-year-old actress stepped out in a blue and white striped shirt, with contrasting collar detail, as she enjoyed the Californian sun.

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Getting shirty: Reese Witherspoon stepped out in a blue and white striped shirt, with a contrasting collar, as she enjoyed the Californian sun, on Monday

She teamed her chic top with a pair of faded white bootcut jeans, which casually grazed her ankles and showcased her slim thighs.

And Reese kept things comfortable in the footwear department as she topped off her look with some navy and pink patterned plimsolls.

Sticking to her low-key theme, the Hot Pursuit star kept her accessories small and elegant with a delicate gold chain, tiny stud earrings and a single gold bangle.

Smart and chic: The Hot Pursuit star kept her accessories small and elegant with a delicate gold chain, tiny stud earrings and a single gold bangle

In contrast, she covered her eyes with large, blue-tinted tortoiseshell glasses and toted an even bigger cream and orange shoulder bag for her trip about town.

Reese was seen smiling to herself as she strutted down the street, with minimal makeup and she ran her fingers through her straight and sleek blonde hair to tame it from the spring breeze.

And the mother-of-three has every reason to be happy, as she recently marked her fifth anniversary with her husband Jim Toth in March.

In the jeans: Reese teamed her chic top with a pair of faded bootcut jeans, which casually grazed her ankles

On top of this, Reese has her plate piled high with projects.

Not only has she has lent her voice to the animated musical comedy Sing, which is now in post-production and scheduled for release in December 2016.
After months of competition, My Kitchen Rules' top two teams battled it out for the winning title during Tuesday night's epic grand finale.

During the high-pressure episode, Italian couple Lauren and Carmine faced off against 'spice sisters' Tasia and Gracia for the hefty prize money of $250,000.

The highest complement of the evening was delivered by Irish-born judge Colin Fassnidge, who labelled sisters Tasia and Gracia's third course meal of spicy king prawns 'perfectly cooked'.

High praise: Irish-born judge Colin Fassnidge labelled sisters Tasia and Gracia's third course meal of spicy king prawns 'perfectly cooked' and said they would do well to open a sauce factory

Beaming: Sisters Tasia (L) and Gracia (R) accepted the praise from the judge as they delivered a five course meal

Listen to me: The charming chef insisted the sister mark his word

'The sauce out shone the prawns. Guys, you don't need $250,000 - you open a sauce factory, and you'll be loaded', gushed the tough-to-impress judge.

At the beginning of the episode, both teams assembled before judges Manu Feildel and Pete Evans to receive the lay of the land for the evening's challenge.

The teams were asked to create a five-course menu, with each duo producing on hundred plates for a packed restaurant.

See more of the latest news and updates from the My Kitchen Rules 2016 grand final

The critics: Both teams assembled before judges Manu Feildel (L) and Pete Evans (R) to receive the lay of the land for the evening's challenge

The contestants stuck to their roots when developing their menu, with Carmine and Lauren opting for a modern Italian theme and Tasia and Gracia opting to deliver a spicy Asian palate.

For the first course, Carmine and Lauren chose to serve up beef carpaccio with porcini cream.

'The plan with our menu tonight is to start quite light and end on a nice, heavy dessert', explained Carmine.

Quietly confident: 'The plan with our menu tonight is to start quite light and end on a nice, heavy dessert', explained Carmine

Carving up: He was seen slicing up the beef for his entree of carpaccio with porcini cream

First course: The Italians stayed true to their roots and served up the carpaccio; a dish of raw meat or fish, thinly sliced or pounded

'It's a good way to start a meal. Sliced real thin, melting in your mouth', said Lauren.

Meanwhile, Tasia and Gracia decided to start their service with a spicy entree of seared scallops with betel leaves.

Both teams hit the ground running, each conscious of the limited cooking time available.

Focused: Tasia hit the ground running in a bid to save precious moments

The sisters began with a spicy entree of seared scallops with betel leaves

While Tasia and Gracia made a pact not to scream at each other during the challenge, Lauren was busy espousing the benefits of Carmine as a kitchen assistant.

'It's really comforting knowing that I've got someone like Carmine with me in this competition.

'Clear-minded, I know what to do, and, well, really accept that I'm the head chef', quipped Lauren with a smirk.

Meanwhile, Gracia was busy taking control of the sauces, a job she would keep for the entire five-course meal.

Dah dah: Their entree was described as an explosion of flavours by impressed judges

'The biggest challenge for me is creating completely different flavours', Gracia explained as she frantically prepared her entree.

Soon, the contestants' parents arrived and took their seats in the grandstands after receiving a quick hug from their busy children.

And the competition's eliminated teams arrived and began cheering on the warring duos.

The contestants' parents arrived and took their seats in the grandstands after receiving a quick hug from their busy children. Lauren is pictured being embraced by her mother

Lauren made a grimacing face as her nemesis Zana strutted through the crowd.

After the first challenge was over, the judges had only positive things to say about both teams' dishes.

Liz Egan described Lauren and Carmine's thinly-sliced beef as 'beautifully light and delicate', while Colin gushed over Gracia and Tasia's scallops, saying: 'I was trying to save myself for the next eight courses, and this is me trying to save myself.

'I've emptied the plate. I just kept going. That's how good it was'.

'I've emptied the plate. I just kept going. That's how good it was': Colin said he was bowled over the sisters' scallops

Chicken ribs: The sisters served up a spicy deep fried second course

Voila! Tasia and Gracia wowed the judges with their deep fried chicken ribs with chilli and sweet soy

'That was sweet, sour, salty. You know, the first dish off the rank for these guys and they've nailed it', Colin went on.

It was time for the second course and teams were given just one hour to impress the judges.

Lauren and Carmine cooked up a milk-braised pork belly with scallop and apple slaw.

As the pressure rose, so did tensions in the kitchen. Lauren was seen with a furrowed brow as she realised her pork emerged from the oven without crackling

'Most important thing is making sure we get the crispy skin', said Lauren as she dashed around the kitchen.

Despite her best efforts, however, the braised pork yielded emerged from the oven without even a hint of crackle.

'There is no crackle on this pork. None. Not even one little bit. I don't know why the crackle hasn't worked', groaned Lauren.

Thinking on her feet: Lauren pulled the pork out of the oven and threw it into a frying pan

Thinking on her feet, Lauren decided to create a layer of crackle by frying up the pork in a pan.

Meanwhile, Tasia and Gracia continued their culinary tour of Asia by preparing a second dish of deep fried chicken ribs with chilli and sweet soy.

Most of the judges were also impressed by Tasia and Gracia's efforts, with Karen calling their dish 'spot on'.

Moment of truth: The judges (from left to right) including Guy Grossi, Liz Egan, Manu Feildel, Pete Evans and Colin Fassnidge tuck in

When it came to the judging, Lauren and Carmine delivered flawless results thanks to Lauren's DIY pork crackle.

'The hero was the crackle', purred Liz as she tasted the Italian delicacy.

'Yeah, I love this technique of cooking in milk. It's great. It just mellows out that meat the sweetness of the meat', remarked Colin.

The proof is in the pudding: Liz loved the sisters' deep fried chicken

Speechless: Juges Guy and Liz said the standard of cooking this year was the highest they had seen

'Really clever use of spices, of sweetness, acidity, heat. It's such clever cooking', added Liz.

Colin, however, had a other ideas, admitting that he didn't' think that the dish was as strong as their first.

'There's a lot of heat in there; a bit overpowering for me', he said.

For the third course, Carmine and Lauren whipped up saffron linguine with butter-poached bug tail.

Third course: Carmine and Lauren whipped up saffron linguine with butter-poached bug tail

Having recently delivered a lacklustre pasta dish to the judges, Lauren was especially determined to excel during this round.

'The pasta can't be overcooked, Carmine. We don't need another pasta disaster', said Lauren sternly.

In the other kitchen, Gracia and Tasia were hastily cooking up grilled king prawns with balado and quail egg.

Gracia was given the unenviable job of delicately peeling the small eggs after they had been boiled- a job that made her noticeably uneasy.

'Who knew quail eggs could be this stressful?' sighed Gracia.

Her hard work paid off, however, with judge Guy branding Gracia and Tasia's dish 'vibrant and punchy'.

'It's showing great skill in the kitchen', remarked Karen as she chowed down on the sisters' spicy dish.

The judges were similarly pleased with Carmine and Lauren's work, with Liz calling their dish 'restrained and elegant'.

'This is like really simple, elegant flavors. This is what we want to see in a grand final', gushed Karen.

Pete was over the moon with their dish, which he described as 'absolutely gorgeous'.

Next was the fourth dish and final chance for the teams to prove their skills in the savory department.

Carmine and Lauren decided to keep things simple by cooking up beef sirloin with madeira jus and mushrooms.

Succulent: Carmine and Lauren kept things simple by cooking up beef sirloin with madeira jus and mushrooms

Carmine was left in charge of the meat while Lauren moved onto the dessert.

'I don't know if this jus is gonna be as good as the last one. You made the last one, now you've left me in charge of it', said a visibly worried Carmine.

Lauren wouldn't have a bar of it, responding briskly: 'Just reduce it! High! High! High!' before returning to her delicately constructed dessert.

'This is a pretty complex dessert. There's about 500 elements. Everyone calls me dessert queen. So I will wear the crown and I'm gonna wear it tonight proud', quipped Lauren.

Meanwhile, Gracia and Tasia cooked up another spicy dish, this time featuring crispy skin duck with green chilli sambal.

'This is the last savoury course of the grand final, and we just want to remind the judges that we love chilli', beamed a confident Tasia.

When it came to judging, Lauren and Carmine were praised for their juicy protein dish, with Manu saying: 'That jus is really strong, well reduced, full of flavour. This is restaurant quality.'

Pete went so far as to call their dish 'faultless'.

The judges were also smacking their lips at Gracia and Tasia's dish, with Liz branding the morsel as 'an amazing dish'.

Sweet! Cherry Ripe-inspired dessert consisted of chocolate cake, cherry sorbet, cherry compote and coconut macaron

'These flavours are outstanding. One of the most perfect dishes we've seen so far', commended Guy.

It was finally time for the final course of the entire competition, dessert.

Gracia and Tasia decided to take the spice level down a notch this time by serving up coconut and kaffir lime ice-cream.

Gracia explained: 'We've served four spicy dishes - now we're gonna cool everyone's mouth down with dessert'.

'The ice-cream is fantastic': French-born Manu said the cold pudding satisfied his sweet tooth

Meanwhile, Tasia was quick to admit that she felt rather threatened by 'dessert queen' Lauren.

'Lauren has been known as the queen of dessert in this competition, and we're feeling pretty scared', she admitted.

As expected, Lauren appeared to be in her element as she constructed her Cherry Ripe-inspired dessert consisting of chocolate cake, cherry sorbet, cherry compote and coconut macaron.

Chuffed: Lauren and Carmine's dessert was met with praise thanks to its richness

During judging, Gracia and Tasia were applauded for their light-on-the-tongue dessert.

'The ice-cream is fantastic. It's got that saltiness to it as well. I think it's a really beautiful dessert to finish a five-course meal. Wow. I think its a really beautiful desert', remarked Manu.

Karen added that she loved the consistency, calling the dish 'sublime'.

Meanwhile, Lauren and Carmine's dessert was met with praise thanks to its richness.

'They've really given us a seriously decadent dessert. And they've been building to this', said Liz.

Scoring: Pete gave his verdict and Lauren and Carmine were left with a grand total score of 51

'Thank goodness for that lovely, refreshing sorbet that's got that lovely acid in there to cut through all this rich kind of dessert that's happening there', added Guy.

Lauren and Carmine were left with a grand total score of 51.

'That is our best score ever that we've cooked in HQ,and so it should be',

However, it was Tasia and Gracia who managed to scoop a score of 57, making them the winners of My Kitchen Rules 2016.
The new SBS crime drama Deep Water is set to air later this year.

And Australian actors Noah Taylor and Yael Stone were seen on Monday shooting dramatic new scenes for the upcoming series.

Noah, 46, and Yael, 31, were in character at Sydney's Bondi Beach, with Noah holding a gun aimed at a man who eventually held Yael captive with a knife.

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In character: Australian actors Noah Taylor and Yael Stone were seen on Monday shooting dramatic new scenes for their upcoming show, SBS crime drama deep water

Noah - who was born in the UK to Australian parents and who grew up Dow Under - wore a navy suit with a white shirt and black leather shoes on the film set.

He could be seen walking gingerly towards a criminal training a gun on him as he takes hold of Yael's character and threatened to slit her throat with the knife.

Yael was dressed in a pair of dark denim jeans, a white shirt and brown leather jacket and boots despite the warmer temperatures.

Her brunette locks were slicked back into a low ponytail.

Dramatic: A criminal took hold of Yael's character and threatened to kill her with a knife

Shortly after, the criminal could be seen laying down on the sand appearing to have collapsed, as Noah bares over him with the gun.

Meanwhile, Yael tries to talk to the fallen man and leans over him as she kneels on the sand.

The show is set in Bondi and Noah and Yael's characters, Tori and Nick, play detectives who discover years of crime that went unreported when investigating a murder.

The show is believed to be a four-part series and, according to The Guardian, it is 'inspired by the unsolved gay-hate crime epidemic that swept through Sydney in the 80s and 90s.'

Other stars in the show include Danielle Cormack and Simon Burke.

Dramatic: Shortly after, the criminal could be seen laying down on the sand appearing to have collapsed, as Noah stands over him with the gun

Noah is well known for roles including the 2014 film The Edge of Tomorrow and the third and fourth series of Game of Thrones.

In Game of Thrones, he played the character of Locke.

Yael, meanwhile, has appeared in shows including All Saints and more recently, Orange Is The New Black, as Lorna Morello.

Famous face: Noah was born in the UK to Australian parents and was raised Down Under. He's seen here at an event last year in London
It's the British TV series that has found A-list fans in the likes of Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts.

And - according to actor Cillian Murphy - there's a lot that goes in to creating the authentic gangster-focused era in BBC's Peaky Blinders.

The 39-year-old actor revealed that his character Tommy Shelby has puffed away on roughly 3,000 herbal cigarettes since the show began in 2013.

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Bad habit: Cillian Murphy revealed that he's smoked up to 3,000 herbal cigarettes on the set of BBC's Peaky Blinders since 2013

Speaking to the Independent, the Irish actor explained: 'People did smoke all day [back then] and it just became a Tommy thing.'

Whilst the use of nicotine-based cigarettes would have severely affected his health, the props department ensured that he got into his gritty role with an alternative.

'There were these rose cigarettes that are herbal - Steve [Knight, the show's creator] would joke they're one of your five a day.'

While he credits the hefty smoking element to his real-life inspired character, the curiosity of never going without a cigarette in his hand on set got the better of him.

'I asked the prop guys to count how many I smoked just out of interest, and they think it's something like 3,000.'

Getting in to character: According to actor Cillian Murphy, there's a lot that goes in to creating the authentic gangster focused era

'People did smoke all day (back then) and it just became a Tommy thing,' Cillian explained Tommy's action

The prop department are also experts when it comes to emulating drugs.

Alcohol is replaced by coloured water and cocaine is swapped with powered milk or baking soda.

The series which returns for its third season next month is set just after World War One and is based on the real events led by Cillian's character.

Operating from 1920's Birmingham, Tommy and his gang try to expand their territory and make their fortune by sewing razor blades into the peaks of their caps to use as weapons.

'They think it's something like 3,000,' Cillian asked the prop guys to count how many herbal cigarettes he's smoked on set

Taking inspiration: The series which returns for its third season next month is set just after World War One and is based on the real events led by Cillian's character

Its audience reads like a roll call of top stars, with Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, Leonard Cohen, Ed Sheeran, Jason Statham, John Terry, Jose Mourinho and rapper Snoop Dogg all devoted followers.

Even David Bowie was a committed follower of the programmes first two series and gave permission for it to use his music just days before his death in January.

Cillian, who has been married to his wife Yvonne McGuinness for 12 years, is also set to star in the crime drama Free Fire this year, alongside Brie Larson and Armie Hammer.

Busy man: Cillian is also set to star in the crime drama Free Fire this year, alongside Brie Larson and Armie Hammer




Kylie Jenner is not ready to move in with boyfriend of one year Tyga.

But the 18-year-old Keeping Up With The Kardashians star does want to live near the rapper, according to a Tuesday report from People.

That is why the E! teen is helping the Compton native find a rental close to her Calabasas neighborhood where sisters Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian also live.

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She's a good woman: Kylie Jenner is helping her beau find a new rental near her Calabasas home, according to People magazine

'Kylie and Tyga are not moving in together,' said the source. 'Kylie is helping Tyga find a rental house closer to hers in Calabasas. Kylie loves her Calabasas house and seems happy to be living by herself.'

In 2015 the daughter of Kris Jenner, 60, purchased her Mediterranean spread for $2.7m.

The beauty has been looking specifically in the Westlake area, which is only a few miles away.

He was evicted from his Hollywood Hills home earlier this year and has since been living in a Beverly Hills rental.

See more of the latest Kylie Jenner updates as she helps beau Tyga find a rental near her

He likes the country life The beauty has been looking specifically in the Westlake area, which is only a few miles away. He was born in Compton, California

Tyga was once engaged to Blac Chyna, with whom he has a son, King Cairo.

There was reportedly tension between Blac and Kylie for a while, but they have since become friends.

Chyna is now engaged to Kylie's brother Rob Kardashian and according to UsWeekly, will marry this summer in a tropical location.

All good here: Tyga was once engaged to Blac Chyna, with whom he has a son, King Cairo. There was reportedly tension between Blac and Kylie for a while, but they have since become friends
He's solved numerous crimes with his best friend Sherlock Holmes over the years.

However, Dr John Watson is in for his most challenging role yet as he becomes a father in the upcoming 4th series of Sherlock.

Actor Martin Freeman, 44, was spotted carrying a decoy baby in a carrier as he filmed scenes with co-stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Amanda Abbington in London's iconic Borough Market on Tuesday.

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It's Daddy Watson! Martin Freeman was spotted filming scenes for the new series of Sherlock in London's Borough Market on Tuesday

Reunited: Martin was joined on location by co-star Benedict Cumberbatch, who returns to the role as detective Sherlock Holmes

Wearing jeans and a warm jacket, Watson certainly looked like a doting father as he kept his firstborn close to his chest.

It looks like Watson is going to be a hands on father to his baby daughter given the scenes, while his wife Mary (Amanda) was seen taking charge of a large hound.

The new baby will no doubt provide a new dynamic to the friendship between Sherlock and Watson, and the latter's marriage to former CIA agent Mary.

Never work with children or animals: Martin and Benedict were joined by co-star Amanda Abbington, who took charge of a rather large dog

In among the action: The cast and crew caused quite a stir as they filmed Sherlock during the busy lunchtime period at the market

Puppy love: The actors seemed quite taken with the lovable hound

As fans of the show will know, Mr Selfridge star Amanda, 42, is the real-life partner of Martin. The couple, who have been together for 16 years, have two children together, Joe, nine; and Grace, eight.

The new series comes two years after Series 3, which saw Mary revealing her pregnancy.

Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss gave a big hint this week that the new series will be inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1892 Sherlock story The Adventure of Silver Blaze.

Challenging: It looked like Benedict and Amanda were finding filming with the dog quite hilarious

The dog whisperer: Amanda attempts to reassure the dog as the trio prepare to shoot a scene

The new baby will no doubt provide a new dynamic to the friendship between Sherlock and Watson, and the latter's marriage to former CIA agent Mary

Amanda and Martin are real-life partners, having been together for 16 years and have two children together

The writer tweeted on Tuesday: 'The dog did nothing in the daytime #Sherlock.'

The line is from Silver Blaze, one of the most popular Sherlock stories about the disappearance of a winning race horse and the murder of his trainer, John Straker.

Following the market scenes, the cast were later spotted half a mile away filming in Trinity Church Square in Borough.

From Cardiff to London: The scenes in Borough Market come after Benedict was spotted shooting on location in Wales on Monday

New mother: Series 3 of Sherlock saw Amanda's character Mary reveal her pregnancy

The scenes in Borough come after Benedict was spotted shooting on location in Cardiff on Monday.

Sherlock co-creators Steven Moffat and Gatiss confirmed the show was returning earlier this month following the New Year's special earlier this year.

In a statement earlier this month, Steven and Mark said: 'Sherlock series four - here we go again!

New plotline: Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss gave a big hint the new series will be inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1892 Sherlock story The Adventure of Silver Blaze

Silver Blaze is one of the most popular Sherlock stories about the disappearance of a winning race horse and the murder of his trainer, John Straker

Dapper: Benedict was back in his signature Sherlock look of long coat, gloves and a scarf

'Adventure, romance and terror': The series creators have promised lots of drama and intrigue in the new series

'Whatever else we do, wherever we all go, all roads lead back to Baker Street - and it always feels like coming home.

'Ghosts of the past are rising in the lives of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson bringing adventure, romance and terror in their wake.

'This is the story we've been telling from the beginning. A story about to reach its climax.'

Moving on: Following the market scenes, the cast were later spotted half a mile away filming in Trinity Church Square in Borough

On the hunt: Sherlock looks serious as he takes a call while taking charge of the hound

Action: Sherlock and Watson are back together following a two year absence since the last series - albeit a one-off New Year's special four months ago

'All roads lead back to Baker Street': The trio will be back in Marylebone in no time

Benedict, who performed at the live televised Shakespeare tribute in Stratford-upon-Avon on Saturday night, said he was 'thrilled' to be back as the detective.

He said: 'I can't wait for everyone to see season four. But you will have to wait... though not for long... And it will be worth it.'

Series four will return to BBC later this year with three feature length episodes.

Series four will return to BBC later this year with three feature length episodes

Ready for your close-up: A make-up artist tends to Benedict's face in between scenes

Bustle: Make-up and hair artists tend to the leading actors

Drawing a crowd: Dozens of market visitors stopped to watch the hit series being filmed
Zoe Saldana is getting ready to reprise her role as Gamora in the Guardians Of The Galaxy sequel.

So it's no surprise that the New-Jersey born beauty wanted to give her face a break from all the make-up she's been wearing.

On Tuesday the 37-year-old actress posted a flawless make-up free selfie in Grand Cayman Islands along with her husband, Marco Perego, and one of her twin boys.

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Fresh faced beauty: Zoe looked flawless in the make-up free selfie she posted on Instagram with her family

She captioned the beautiful shot: 'Good Morning... Buenos Dias... Buon Journo...'

This isn't the first adorable family photo Zoe has shared on Instagram of her family.

She posted another photo of her, her husband and their one-year-old twin boys, Cy Aridio Perego-Saldana and Bowie Ezio Perego-Saldana.

Red carpet goddess: Zoe looking beautiful at the 16th Latin Grammy Awards in Las Vegas

In the shot, Zoe and Marc are cuddling the twins as they all look towards one another.

She captioned the heartwarming picture: '#flashbackfriday to a little family time in bed.'

Her hashtags were: #FBF #FamilyTime.'

Family time: Zoe posted the cutest picture of her growing family for a #flashbackfriday post in Instagram

Zoe has also been busy filming scenes for Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 and Star Trek.

However, that hasn't stopped her from seeing her family.

She shared a photo on Instagram of her as her character Gamora as she cuddled one of her twin boys.

Thank you for the visit: Her adorable son came to visit her on the set of Guardians Of The Galaxy 2

She wrote: 'Thank you for the visit.....'

Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 is a continuation of the team's adventures as they unravel the mystery of Peter Quill's true parentage.

Chris Pratt, Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel will all reprise their roles for the sequel.

Gamora from the Galaxy: She shared a photo of her full Gamora gear as she posed next to her husband

Kurt Russell and Nathan Fillion are new members to the cast.

The highly-anticipated film will hit theaters on May 5, 2017.

For Star Trek And Beyond, Zoe will play Uhura alongside, Idris Elba, Chris Pine and Simon Pegg and will be in theaters July 22.
He revealed that he found his girlfriend 'quite scary' when they first met.

But Gareth Gates looked as loved-up as ever as he walked hand in hand with Faye Brookes in Manchester on Tuesday.

The 31-year-old looked dapper in his tweed jacket as he stepped out with the pretty Coronation Street actress.

Still in love: Gareth Gates walked hand in hand with girlfriend Faye Brookes in Manchester earlier today

He wore a smart white shirt and light grey cable knit jumper beneath the tailored jacket, which he teamed with skinny grey jeans.

The former Pop Idol star finished off the look with a pair of large circular sunglasses and stark white trainers.

Meanwhile Faye, 28, showed off her gym-honed figure in a grey top with lace embellishment and black leggings, teamed with a long black duster coat and brown knee-high boots.

The brunette beauty was later spotted out by herself, after swapping the coat for a black leather biker jacket and the boots for a pair of comfy Nike trainers.

Affectionate: The pretty Coronation Street actress looked lovingly at her beau as they went on a stroll

Faye's character Kate Connor is currently stuck in a love triangle on Corrie, after being caught kissing Sophie Webster, who is played by Brooke Vincent, by fiancee Caz Hammond (Rhea Bailey).

The soap star met Gareth when the pair starred together as on-stage lovers in a 2012 production of Legally Blonde.

She revealed in an interview last year that she didn't understand the appeal of her now boyfriend when he first burst onto the scene on the debut series of Pop Idol in 2001.

'When Pop Idol was on I was 15 and my best friend in high school had a huge poster of Gareth on her bedroom wall,' she told OK! magazine.

Chic: The 28-year-old was later spotted by herself, after swapping the coat with a black leather biker jacket

'Whenever I stayed at her house and I slept in that bed Id be like, "I dont get it!" I was so "whatever" about him.

After striking up a close bond with Faye during their time on Legally Blonde, Gareth split from his wife of four years - and the mother of his daughter Missy - Suzanne Mole in 2012.

However, it wasn't until 10 months later that the new couple made their first public appearance together.

Gareth revealed in the same interview that it had not been love at first sight for the pair.

'I was quite scared of Faye, actually! She was this amazing leading lady so she was quite intimidating,' he explained.
He's been the centre of many romantic comedies during his impressive acting career.

And Tom Hanks showed why he'd captured the hearts of millions as he cut a typically dapper figure while promoting new movie A Hologram For The King in London on Tuesday.

The 59-year-old actor demonstrated some serious specs appeal in a large pair of glasses and a crisp white shirt as he arrived at BBC Broadcasting House in the capital.

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Dapper dude: Tom Hanks showed why he'd captured the hearts of millions as he cut a typically dapper figure while promoting new movie A Hologram For The King in London on Tuesday

The star topped off his look with a heavy cord jacket and kept his monochrome look fresh with some straight-legged black jeans.

In the footwear department, Tom shunned smart shoes in favour of some comfortable matte black boots.

And his silver head of hair looked immaculately coiffed, as it was styled into a small quiff.

As part of the promotional campaign for A Hologram For The King, the star has been hopping from country to country.

On Monday evening, Tom made his way to the UK premiere of the flick at London's BFI Southbank.

Looking specs-y! The 59-year-old actor demonstrated some serious specs appeal in a large pair of glasses and a crisp white shirt as he arrived at BBC Broadcasting House in the capital

Sophisticated: The star topped off his look with a heavy cord jacket and kept his monochrome look fresh with some straight-legged black jeans

Busy schedule: The Forest Gump hunk was arriving at the BBC Broadcasting House in London following a hectic promotional tour for his new film A Hologram For The King

The Hollywood legend showed no signs of exhaustion as he pulled fun posed on the red carpet while joined by his co-stars Sarita Choudhury, Sidse Babett Knudsen and Alexander Black.

In the film, Tom plays the character Alan, who travels to Saudi Arabia to propose a business idea to the local government.

The comedy-drama, which is based on the Dave Eggers novel, was released on April 22 in the US.

Best foot forward: In the footwear department, the film star shunned smart shoes in favour of some comfortable matte black boots

Uh-oh! Tom Hanks was also pictured leaving his hotel and as he made his way to a waiting car, he was asked what he thinks about the plight of Aston Villa football club, the team Tom supports

Happy: The superstar appeared to be in high spirits as he made his way down the street with a pal
She has stayed silent on her Instagram account for the past month since news of her husband's latest sext scandal broke.

But on Tuesday Tess Daly, 46, shared a cheery update on her page, posting a photo from her recent trip to the Bahamas with husband Vernon Kay, 41,

The blonde is seen smiling for the camera, looking tanned in a pretty summer dress in the snap from the 'make or break holiday', following news of her husband's texts with Page 3 model Rhian Sugden.

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Back online: Tess Daly, 46, broke her month-long Instagram silence as she shared a cheery update on Tuesday, with a photo from her recent trip to the Bahamas with husband Vernon Kay, 41

Despite the holiday coming at a tough time in her marriage, the Strictly Come Dancing star seems to be missing the beach paradise, as she captioned her photo: 'Missing the sunshine it's waaaaay too cold! Roll on Summer....'

Tess and Vernon headed for the sunny climes of the Bahamas after it was revealed last month that Vernon was still in contact with glamour model Rhian Sugden, who he sent a string of lewd texts to in 2010.

The couple- who have been married for 13 years and share two daughters - seemed to be working through the recent revelations, as sources claimed they were keen to save their marriage.

Trouble: Tess and Vernon headed for the sunny climes of the Bahamas after it was revealed last month that Vernon was still in contact with glamour model Rhian Sugden, who he sent a string of lewd texts to in 2010

A source close to the couple told The Sun: 'The last few weeks have been a nightmare for Tess and Vern and they just want to get away from it all.

'They're hoping a break with the girls thousands of miles away from Britain will give them time to work through their problems.'

Vernon was forced to make a public apology to his wife on Radio 1 back in 2010 and promised he would no longer contact Rhian or four other women he had been caught messaging at the time.

Still in contact: Vernon was forced to make a public apology to his wife on Radio 1 back in 2010 and promised he would no longer contact Page 3 model Rhian Sugen who he had been caught messaging at the time

But the busty blonde, 29, recently revealed she was still speaking with the star, and claimed he had asked her to meet up.

Vernon claimed at the time of the allegations that the Whatsapp messages he sent to Rhian asking to meet had been taken out of context, that he had done 'nothing wrong' and that his wife was completely aware of all contact.

Speaking about their relationship, Rhian claimed the pair had got back in touch in December, after a break of six years, which felt like an 'old friendship coming back'.

She said the messages were not like the explicit texts they had exchanged in 2010, until it emerged that Vernon had 'stalked' her Instagram and labelled one of her photographs a '10/10'.
Billings native Nick Steen once gazed at the massive renovation going on to the historic Northern Hotel and started dreaming about possibilities.

Ill never forget sitting just a couple blocks away and looking at it and thinking: I wish I could be the chef there, Steen said.

Three years after the Northern reopened following a multimillion-dollar renovation, Steens wish has come true.

He's excited to be named the Northern's new executive chef.

Steen was twice named a Top Ten Chef in the Northwest by The Culture Trip, an online art, food and travel site, during a promising 13-year career in the kitchen.

Last year, Steen was one of the featured chefs in the MSU Billings Foundation Wine & Food Festival, which raises money for student scholarships and programs.

Steen succeeds Tim Freeman, who helped burnish the Northerns reputation by defeating the famous Iron Chef Bobby Flay in a cooking competition.

The Northerns history and its commitment to quality drew him back to Billings, said Steen, who most recently worked as executive chef at Lone Mountain Guest Ranch at Big Sky.

Mr. Nelson is one of the most passionate people I know, Steen said, referring to Mike Nelson, who owns the Northern with his brother, Chris. Working here makes you want to be that much better, work that much harder.

Steen, 31, said he has been given plenty of latitude to bring his own touches to the menu at the Northerns two restaurants. Bernies, an upscale diner, serves breakfast and lunch. Dinner is served at TEN.

Theyre very much open to letting me do what Im passionate about, Steen said. Being born and raised in Billings, I believe I have a good understanding of what our market wants.

The Billings dining scene continues to evolve for the better, said Steen, who plans to introduce an updated menu by late spring or early summer.

Sometimes people dont give Montana and Billings enough credit for gastronomy that can happen here, Steen said. They look at Montana and think that all we eat is steaks and baked potatoes. But we also love seafood as well.

With Billings located smack dab in the middle of cattle country, beef will continue to be on the menu at the Northern.

Steen said he hopes to capitalize on the Northern's long tradition of fine dining. We can take some of the history of this place and bring it up to 2016 standards, he said.

While working at Lone Mountain Guest Ranch, Steen often ventured into the hills to forage for local ingredients, such as wild juniper berries. He hopes to make use of other Montana touches at the Northern.

After graduating from Skyview High in 2003, Steen enrolled at Montana State University. His long-term goal was to become a doctor. Needing to earn money to pay his way through college, he landed a cooking job at the Yellowstone Club, the ultra-exclusive resort near Big Sky. He started as a breakfast cook, but graduated into fine dining.

Working there ignited Steen's passion for cooking. In those days, the club offered snowcat dinners  private, catered meals at remote locations. It was during this time that his mentor, Chuck Schommer, taught him valuable tips.

Chuck gave me a chance. He taught me the nuances and techniques, the little things that Ive carried on for 13 years, Steen said.

"We're super excited to have Nick," said Heather Hale, director of food and beverage at the Northern. "He's been really phenomenal."
He's used to playing the slightly more serious character as Thor, God of Thunder in the Marvel superhero franchise.

But Chris Hemsworth has revealed in a new trailer for the upcoming Ghostbusters reboot that his character Kevin the receptionist is slightly more left of centre.

'Kevin, he's a big dumb puppy dog,' the 32-year-old actor told the camera during the short clip.

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'He's a big dumb puppy dog': Chris Hemsworth has opened up about his character Kevin in a new trailer for the upcoming Ghostbusters remake

Funny man: Proving that he wasn't hired for his receptionist skills as the phone on his desk rings, Kristen's character Erin asks Kevin to answer it, as he replied 'Can't, it's in the fish tank'

'He has no idea what they even do. Kevin thinks he's going to become a Ghostbuster too,' Chris.

Hew went on: 'He takes a whole lot of the equipment, gets a bike and builds his own uniform and is like "Look I'm one of the gang now."'

The hunky Australian has been cast as receptionist Kevin in the remake, which features an all-female lead cast with Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon.

Not so bright: In one scene from the short clip, Kevin attempts to put his hand through glass to retrieve a telephone submerged in a fish tank

In one scene from the new sneak peek, Kevin attempts to put his hand through glass to retrieve a telephone submerged in a fish tank.

Proving that he wasn't hired for his receptionist skills as the phone on his desk rings, Kristen's character Erin asks Kevin to answer it, as he replied 'Can't, it's in the fish tank'.

'No, the one on the desk that's ringing,' Erin replies.

Good looking receptionist: The film also stars Melissa McCarthy (C) and Kristen Wiig (R) as the lead characters in the reboot of the classic 1980s film

'Oh, that one!' A clearly distracted Kevin says before asking, 'What's this place called again?'

The film's director and co-writer Paul Feig praised The Avengers actor for his ability to improvise in his role.

'Chris Hemsworth is a huge comedic talent,' Paul goes on to say.

'Chris Hemsworth is a huge comedic talent': The movie's director and co-writer Paul Feig (pictured) praised The Avengers actor for his ability to improvise in his role

'A ken doll with the insides scooped out': Actress Kate McKinnon who plays Jillian Holtzmann in the movie described Chris' character as ken doll, although admitting he's only good to look at

Meanwhile Kate McKinnon, who plays Jillian Holtzmann in the movie describes Kevin as 'A ken doll with the insides scooped out.'

Melissa, who plays leading lady Abby Yates, said Chris had his co-stars in tears of laughter during their time filming together.

Fans of the handsome actor were sent into a frenzy when the international trailer for the movie dropped last month.

New role: Although his character may not understand what the Ghostbusters do, Chris said Kevin is keen to become one of them and join the gang by taking equipment and making his own uniform

In one hilarious scene Abby gives Kevin the important task of 'throwing together a couple of logos', and he proudly presents them with a bad drawing of a ghost with extremely large breasts.

'Oh. You do see how this might make us look bad?' Erin asks gently.

Thinking that he has understood what she means, Kevin replies: 'Is it the boobs you dont like? Because I can make them bigger.'

Ghostbusters opens in cinemas on July 14

Ta-da: Kevin proudly shows off his drawing of a ghost with extremely large breasts

'You do see how this might make us look bad?': Erin gently tells him that the logo is not quite right
Turns out there is something more boring than sitting through 50 Shades Of Grey - filming 50 Shades Of Grey.

Dakota Johnson has revealed there is nothing sexy about filming simulated sex scenes for seven hours straight.

The 26-year-old candidly spoke about just what it is like to film intimate scenes as she sat down with rock legend Chrissie Hynde for Interview Magazine.

'It's pretty tedious': Dakota Johnson has revealed there is nothing sexy about filming simulated sex scenes for seven hours straight in a new Interview magazine Cover story

While Dakota may be the beautiful by-product of the union of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson and her co-star Jamie Dornan is hardly tough on the eyes, the actress said their steamy scenes are not as sexy as they seem.

Cover girl: The 26-year-old candidly spoke about just what it is like to film intimate scenes as she sat down with rock legend Chrissie Hynde for the mag

Speaking to Chrissie as she filmed the two 50 Shades sequels back-to-back, the actress seems to have mastered one of the more awkward parts about being in such a film.

She told Chrissie about the sex scenes: 'It's not ... comfortable. It's pretty tedious.

'Well, we're not having actual sex. But I've been simulating sex for seven hours straight right now, and I'm over it. '

One thing she is not over is having her parents see the naughty S&M-inspired films.

When Chrissie asked if the star's father Don - or as the rocker calls him ' your good-looking dad' - watched the scenes or came to set, Dakota was horrified.

'No! God, no. Thank God.'

While the How To Be Single star may have grown a little blase about the films that saw her be on Hollywood's radar for more than just who her parents are, Dakota is not blase when it comes to understanding that these days fame can be fleeting.

The 26-year-old said: 'It is a bizarre time right now, though. It seems like the world is so fast to move its interest to someone else.

'When I think about filmmakers and actresses that I have admired my whole life, I've admired their entire body of work. I have admired what they began with and what they're doing now.

'And now I feel like there's such a weird pressure to find the new face. I don't get it at all. I want to see women evolve. I want to see a body of work. I want to see all of it.'

New face pressure: While the How To Be Single star is not blase when it comes to understanding that these days fame can be fleeting saying, 'It is a bizarre time right now, though. It seems like the world is so fast to move its interest to someone else'

Not holding back: The 26-year-old did not try to cover up the fact she is still not comfortable with her place in the acting world and even admitted to feeling like her 'life can feel so suffocating'

While acting is her passion, Dakota still seems to feel very uncomfortable with the acting world - and her place in it.

She told Interview: 'I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I'm unsure of what my life will be like.

'I mean, I have such an obsession with making movies that I probably will always do that. But sometimes my life can feel so suffocating, and then it can feel so massive, like I don't have a handle on it at all, and I don't know where it's going or what I'm going to do.

'I never really identified with them': While new to being in movies, Dakota is no stranger to Hollywood thanks to her famous parents - Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson - but she said she never really felt like she belonged even with the other celebrity children

Finding her way: The actress said she still does not know what she is doing but her passion for acting means she wants to act for a long time

'Right now, I'm known for making movies. And I wonder if that's it. I don't know. It doesn't feel like it to me.'

While new to being in movies, Dakota is no stranger to Hollywood thanks to her parents but she said she never really felt like she belonged even with the other celebrity children.

'The kids that I grew up around [had famous parents]... but I never really identified with any of them.

Got a crush? Chrissie (pictured last year) could not help but ask the star how her 'good-looking dad' was doing

'I have one friend who I'm very close with, my friend Riley Keough, whose mother is Lisa Marie Presley. But other than that, I don't have very many pals who are [celebrity's children].

'I kind of stayed away from it all.'

Everyone seems to have a linage, she said: '[It] kind of seem that way. Nothing is really precious anymore. Like, the mystery is gone.'
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On or off the red carpet, she never fails to deliver.

And Elizabeth Olsen pulled yet another stunning look out of the bag when she attended the European premiere of Captain America: Civil War at the Vue cinema in London's Shepherds Bush on Tuesday evening.

Walking the red carpet alongside some of Hollywood's biggest names, the 27-year-old made sure to stand out from her fellow A-listers in an alluring floor-length gown - a look that certainly seemed a hit with her co-star Chris Evans.

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Elizabeth Olsen pulled yet another stunning look out of the bag when she attended the European premiere of Captain America: Civil War at the Vue cinema in London's Shepherds Bush on Tuesday evening

The Avengers: Age of Ultron star injected the event with a welcome dose of glamour in a white gown that had been given a daring twist with gaping keyhole detailing.

The plunging cut-out, which ran from her neck to her navel, teased more than just a glimpse of Elizabeth's generous bust as she worked her angles for the flashing photographers.

The screen siren's seductive style even warranted a cheeky peep from the movie's leading man Chris, who appeared to be enjoying a quickly glimpse at Elizabeth's bust as they posed for a group snap.

Despite the garment's risque upper half, the design remained demure with its floor-sweeping skirt and slightly ruched waist which created a gorgeously feminine silhouette.

Walking the red carpet alongside some of Hollywood's biggest names, the 27-year-old made sure to sound out from her fellow A-listers in an alluring floor-length gown

The Avengers: Age of Ultron star injected the event with a welcome dose of glamour in a white gown that had been given a daring twist with gaping keyhole detailing

Extending the glamour to her glossy mane, Elizabeth wore her blonde tresses in retro waves and sampled a make-up look that was equally enchanting with a red lipstick and dramatic smokey eyeshadow look.

But despite looking right at home on the red carpet, Elizabeth confessed at the premiere on Tuesday that she once wanted to quit acting.

The younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen said there was a point in her younger years when she wanted to shelf her dream of becoming an actress because she didn't want to be a child star.

'When I was nine or 10, I contemplated quitting acting, so it wasn't a real thing,' she said.

Elizabeth's provocative choice of attire looked to be as hit with Chris Evans who appeared to be peering at her chest as they shared a group shot

The screen siren looked to turn a little coy after Chris' jesting as she attempted to reduce the revealing nature of the design with her hand

The plunging cut-out, which ran from her neck to her navel, teased more than just a glimpse of Elizabeth's generous bust as she worked her angles for the flashing photographers

Elizabeth was greeted by a sea of applause as she exited the smoke-lit stage and waved for fans during the event

The Kill Your Darlings star didn't hesitate to stop and smile for selfies with her eager admirers

'I think those people are completely separate. When I was a little girl, I didn't want to work as a child actress but as an adult I always wanted to be an actress, so I am thankful for every job.'

Meanwhile, the 27-year-old beauty - who stunned in a daring white dress at the premiere on Tuesday evening (26.04.16) - previously insisted she doesn't have any 'desire' to be famous.

She explained: 'I wanted to be an actress, but felt it was such a cliche. I thought if I could make it more of a pretentious theatre experience, I could justify it. But celebrity and fame are so odd to me, I just don't have any desire for that at all.'

But she wasn't the only star to dazzle on the red carpet as she was joined by the likes of Robert Downey Jr., Emily VanCamp, Paul Rudd and Tom Holland.

Emily, 29, went for the opposite end of the colour spectrum in a black jumpsuit, which featured glitzy, baroque embellishments around the torso, while the bottom half of the design was comprised of tailored trousers.

Emily VanCamp, 29, went for the opposite end of the colour spectrum in a black jumpsuit, which featured glitzy, baroque embellishments around the torso, while the bottom half of the design was comprised of tailored trousers

The blonde beauty, who plays SHIELD agent Sharon Carter, paired the look with barely-there black stilettos and kept her make-up look relatively simple aside from a sizable sweep of black winged liner and shadow across her lids

The blonde beauty, who plays SHIELD agent Sharon Carter, paired the look with barely-there black stilettos and kept her make-up look relatively simple aside from a sizable sweep of black winged liner across her lids.

Other stars to attend the premiere included Anthony Mackie, who plays fictional superhero Falcon in the flick, Jeremy Renner, who will reprise the role of Hawkeye, and Paul Bettany, who stars as Vision, all of whom were sharp-suited for the occasion.

Samuel L Jackson, who portrays Nick Fury, also graced the event's red and blue carpet, despite not featuring in the latest installment.

The film is the sequel to 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger and 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Legions of fans gathered inside the London shopping centre to catch a glimpse of their favourite stars

Robert Downey Jr. put a quirky twist on his grey suit as it boasted unusually flared trousers

The much-loved actor was on fine form as he entertained the crowds and posed for pictures

(From left to right) Kevin Feige, Jeremy Renner, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr, Emily Vancamp, Daniel Bruhl, Paul Rudd, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan Tom Holland, Joe Russo and Anthony Russo

While he doesn't feature in the movie, Samuel L Jackson - who has starred in the last two installments of the movie as Nicky Fury - made an appearance

The legendary actors displayed their bromance as they huddled up for snaps together inside the event

Leading man Chris Evans and the Iron Man star larked around for the cameras with a series of playful poses

Fans eagerly awaited the celebrities' arrival as they peered over the barricades with their movie props in hand

The plot centres around political interference in the Avengers' activities, causing a rift between former allies Captain America and Iron Man.

New government laws being introduced to regulate superheros divide the entire team into two factions; one lead by Captain America who resists it, the other by Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man, who wants to enforce it.

The adrenaline pumping trailer for the latest chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe shows the two former friends beating each other up in a mouth-watering matchup.

The veteran actor sent fans into hysteria when he emerged from a cloud of red smoke on to the stage

One fan from Essex was lucky enough to share a group selfie with the A-list cast as part of her 21st birthday celebrations

The cast weren't reluctant to offer their biggest grins for the camera

The cast looked like a force to be reckoned with as they dominated the impressive stage

The movie has unsurprisingly acquired quite the celebrity fan base as stars including McFly rocked up on the red carpet

Made in Chelsea's Jess Woodley put a provocative twist on an androgynous maroon trouser suit with a sheer black bodysuit

Girl band Stooshe made sure to coordinate with their khaki ensembles

Comedian Leigh Francis dared to be different in a bold metallic bomber jacket, a stark contrast to the navy jeans and shirt combination worn by Kingsman: The Secret Service star Mark Strong

It also shows where their team-mates ally themselves: The Winter Solder, The Scarlett Witch, The Falcon and Hawkeye line-up behind the Cap, while Black Widow, War Machine and The Vision unite behind Tony Stark - as does newcomer Black Panther.

And it seems the movie has unsurprisingly acquired quite the celebrity fan base as stars including McFly, Star Wars' Mark Hamil and comedian Leigh Francis, as well as Made in Chelsea's Jess Woodley and girl band Stooshe were all present.

Captain America: Civil War is set to begin its international release on April 27, with a release in North America on May 6.

The premiere was also a treat for Star Wars fans as sci-fi veteran Mark Hamil arrived at the premiere with his family

Marvel fans went all out for the occasion and even dressed as some of their favourite characters

Marvel's latest Spiderman recruit Tom Holland certainly wasn't shy as he embraced the screaming crowd with open arms

Jeremy Renner, who reprises the role of Hawkeye in the movie, and Ant-Man's Paul Rudd both put on dapper displays on the red carpet

The duo showed off their chumminess as they put their arms around one another and shared a joke
Irina Shayk looked stunning as she posed in New York City on Tuesday for an edgy Vogue photo shoot.

The Russian model, 30, went for a different look as she donned a high neck printed red dress and black leather boots.

Also with the girlfriend of Bradley Cooper were two well-dressed young boys.

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So vampy: Irina Shayk looked amazing for her Vogue photo shoot on Tuesday in New York

Hair flick: The Russian model got into a series of different positions and poses for the edgy photo shoot

The brunette beauty was all smiles for the edgy shoot with dark lips and her hair in dramatic curls.

The dark lipstick further emphasized her plump pout as she also wore some subtle eye-shadow, which drew attention to her green eyes.

Her glistening skin was the result of a healthy layer of bronzer, which highlighted her already chiseled cheekbones.

Dapper gentlemen: The two young boys probably didn't realize they were posing with one of the world's most sought after models

Strike a pose: The model looked sensational as she smoldered for the cameras during the alfresco shoot

Lucky guy! Irina was joined by a young boy dressed to the nine's in a black suit and bow tie

Her beau Cooper, 41, was nowhere to be seen, but it seems the couple are still going strong.

Just a few weeks ago Shayk made their relationship Instagram official.

The photo was as steamy as it gets.

Red vixen: Irina looked incredible with her dark lips, dramatic curly hair and bold printed dress

Flawless complexion: During the shoot Irina showed off her amazingly clear and pore free skin

Queen of 'smizing': It seems the Russian beauty knows exactly how to work the camera

Perfect pout: The 30-year-old model highlighted her full pout with plum lipstick

The notoriously private couple appeared to be enjoying a dip in the hot tub as the model shared a saucy snap of them.

Despite it being their couple debut on Instagram, the focus was solely on the model's ample cleavage, which was on full display.

Neither of their faces could be seen.

Work it: Irina looked like she was in a playful mood as she twisted and turned for the photo shoot

Sweet nothings: Irina looked deep in thought as she whispered into a male friend's ear during the shoot

Never work with animals or children! Irina kept her cool with the two young boys

She wore a very plunging navy criss-cross swimsuit which went all the way down to her navel.

In spite of the couple beginning their romance last April, they only made their first public appearance together in March.

In a snap posted to the Russian model's account, the gorgeous couple - we presume, unfortunately the photo cuts off their heads - were cuddled up in an outdoor hot tub.

Making an impact: Irina later changed into a striking black and grey skirt and peplum top and headscarf as she pounded the streets of Manhattan

Standing out from the crowd: The Russian model certainly looked striking in the ensemble

Where's a wind machine when you need one? Irina flicked the skirt up to give it a dramatic windswept effect for the photos

Showing some leg: Irina flashed a hint of flesh in the covered-up ensemble

Despite the appearance of Bradley, it's safe to say the focus was firmly on the model's ample chest, which was barely contained in her plunging swimsuit.

In March, the couple enjoyed a romantic trip to Paris where the couple soaked up the sights of the French capital and squeezed in a trip to the opera for the Arop Charity Gala.

It was during this trip that the pair made their red carpet debut at the L'Oreal Paris' Red Obsession party, confirming their romance with a public smooch.

She's a professional: Irina's Vogue shoot is the latest high-profile job for the Russian beauty

I'm ready for my close up: Irina looked like a pro as she stood there posing for the camera

Quirky number: Irina was dressed in a very distinct style for the photo shoot

Goofing around: Despite the long shoot, Irina looked like she was in a playful mood as she cheekily grinned at her friend

The model changed her clothes later in the shoot but stuck with the same look.

She wore an over-sized blue, white and red printed coat with intricate detailing.

She wore the same black leather boots, which matched the quirky outfit perfectly.

Her curly locks had been blow-dried straight as they were tucked under for an old-fashioned look.

Third time's the charm too: Irina changed into a silvery blue number as the photo shoot continued in NYC

In the limelight: Irina joined her two young companions for some photos in a vintage revolving door

Suits you mister: The two youngsters looked very smart in their black suits as they joined the model

She wore the same eye make-up and the same vampy lipstick.

Then she switched to a third outfit consisting of a silver and blue patterned number with a heavy dark blue coat and tall boots with common sense heels.

Irina wore her hair in a stylishly retro chignon. When it began to rain, there were two assistants right beside her to make sure not a drop touched those tresses.

Feeling the drama: The brunette beauty wore her hair in a stylish chignon and made her presence known

Iconic: Irina posed outside Manhattan's popular Carlyle Hotel, an Art Deco-inspired building near Madison Avenue

Lighten up: Irina and photographer Steven Klein got a chance to get silly during the long shoot
While her co-star Elizabeth Olsen dared to bare on the red carpet, it seemed Emily VanCamp opted to cut a more demure figure for the European premiere of Captain America: Civil War on Tuesday night.

Promoting the latest Marvel flick at the Vue cinema in London's Shepherds Bush, the 29-year-old actress proved less isn't always more as she dazzled in a black jumpsuit.

The Revenge actress looked the picture of elegance in the design, which boasted an intricate baroque print which was crafted out of glitzy black embellishments.

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Dressed to impress: Emily VanCamp, 29, went for the opposite end of the colour spectrum in a black jumpsuit, which featured glitzy, baroque embellishments around the torso, while the bottom half of the design was comprised of tailored trousers

Ensuring the ornate detailing stood out, the pattern sat atop a nude underlayer of fabric, which broke up the otherwise all black style.

The lower-half of the garment was of a more simple nature with a tailored trouser that conceded neatly at the ankle, allowing her to show off her barely-there stilettos.

Emily kept her accessories to a minimum, adding only dainty gold drop earrings and a few rings on each of her hands, which possessed a preened white manicure.

Stunning: The blonde beauty, who plays SHIELD agent Sharon Carter, paired the look with barely-there black stilettos and kept her make-up look relatively simple aside from a sizable sweep of black winged liner

Her blonde locks were swept back into a sophisticated up-do, while her make-up look was equally chic with a winged sweeping of black eyeshadow and a relatively neutral make-up palette.

The beauty, who plays SHIELD agent Sharon Carter, looked to be revelling in the astir premiere as she stopped to pose for selfies with the legions of screaming fans eager to catch a glimpse of their favourite stars.

And celebrities were aplenty at the event, with the likes of Chris Evans, Elizabeth Olsen, Robert Downey Jr. and Samuel L Jackson being just a handful of the big names on the red carpet.

Say cheese! The beauty, who plays SHIELD agent Sharon Carter, looked to be revelling in the astir premiere as she stopped to pose for selfies with the legions of screaming fan

Fashionista: Ensuring the design's ornate detailing stood out, the pattern sat atop a nude underlayer of fabric, which broke up the otherwise all black style

The film is the sequel to 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger and 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

The plot centres around political interference in the Avengers' activities, causing a rift between former allies Captain America and Iron Man.

New government laws being introduced to regulate superheros divide the entire team into two factions; one lead by Captain America who resists it, the other by Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man, who wants to enforce it.

The adrenaline pumping trailer for the latest chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe shows the two former friends beating each other up in a mouth-watering matchup.

Style opposites: The look was a lot less risque than that donned by Emily's co-star Elizabeth Olsen, who rocked a floor-length cream gown with a daring key-hole cut-out
She's yet to publicly congratulate them on their surprise engagement.

But Kim Kardashian showed her support for brother Rob Kardashian and his fiancee Blac Chyna as she joined the couple for brunch in Beverly Hills on Tuesday.

The 35-year-old reality star and the happy couple put on a united front as they stopped by Nate'n Al's deli.

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Brunch date: Kim Kardashian looked stylish as she joined brother Rob and her future sister-in-law Blac Chyna for brunch in Beverly Hills on Tuesday

The trio appeared to be in high spirits, smiling as they left the restaurant and stopped to pose for selfies with fans.

Twenty-nine-year-old Rob's shock engagement to 27-year-old Blac Chyna blindsided his famous family. Blac was previously engaged to rapper Tyga, who is now dating Kylie Jenner, and the pair share a three-year-old son, King Cairo.

However, the famous family appears to be burying the hatchet, and Kylie and Blac met up last week to 'make peace,' in a photo shared by a proud Rob on Instagram.

On Tuesday, Kim opted for a casual look in a tight black tank top and ripped jeans as she spent time with her formerly-reclusive brother and his new love.

See the latest on Kim Kardashian as she heads for brunch with Rob and Blac Chyna

Making peace? Kim flashed a smile as she exited the deli with Blac

Family: A happy Rob showed off his healthier look as he strolled down the street with Kim and Blac

Fame: Kim rocked a casual look in a tight tank top and ripped jeans as she stopped to take a selfie with a fan

United front: Kim headed to brunch with Rob and Blac in Beverly Hills on Tuesday

She added large sunglasses and wore an over-sized, blue checked shirt by Enfants Riches Deprimes, which translates as Depressed Rich Children.

The shirt had a 'Frozen Beauties' image on the back and Kim wore it as an off-the-shoulder look.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star, who gave birth to son Saint West in December, added a black Hermes mini-Birkin, a thin gold necklace and bold black choker.

She pulled her dark hair back in a low ponytail, and added strappy sandals with a chunky heel.

Future sister-in-law: The trio's brunch comes after Blac and Kylie Jenner 'made peace' last week

Casual glam: Kim carried a black Hermes mini-Birkin handbag, a slim gold necklace and a black choker

Selfie queen: The KUWTK star paused to take photos with a group of young female fans while out to brunch

Brunch date: The reality stars were mobbed by fans

Side by side: The former pals appeared to have put their differences aside for Rob's sake, heading out to breakfast in Beverly Hills on Tuesday

All together now: There was no sign of discord between Kim and her soon-to-be sister-in-law

Making amends: It was good to see Rob and Kim playing happy families again

Kim and Blac - who were previously close but reportedly had a falling out - appeared to have rekindled their friendship in light of Rob's engagement.

Blac looked thrilled to be spending time with her future sister-in-law, flashing a big smile as she exited the restaurant.

And Rob also looked happy, beaming and putting a protective arm around his fiancee as they were swarmed by photographers and fans.

Relaxed: Rob chomped on a toothpick as he showed off his slim-down look in a white Tshirt and black sweats

Keeping close: The 29-year-old put a protective arm around his love as they were surrounded by photographers and fans

Mega fame: Kim's Enfants Riches Deprimes blue checked shrit featured a 'Frozen Beauties' patch on the back

This way: The reality star placed a hand on Blac's back as they entered Nate'n Al's deli

Sharing secrets? Blac flashed a coy smiled as Kim whispered behind her hand

Family united: The reality star showed a hint of cleavage in a tight black tank

Family feud: Rob has been trying to mend his rift with his famous family after his surprise engagement to Kylie's boyfriend's baby mama

All smiles: A make-up free Blac looked thrilled to be spending time with Rob and Kim

Making up: The Lashed beauty salon owner looked relaxed in black Adidas sweatpants

Their outing comes after Rob posted a photo of Blac and Kylie to Instagram Friday.

'So happy my girls finally got to talk and make peace!',' he wrote.

He added hashtags '#MyFamily' and '#AllLove.'

Best foot forward: Kim wore ripped jeans and slicked her hair back in a low ponytail

Leading the way: Rob and Blac followed Kim back to their car

Center of attention: The trio were surrounded by fans while out in Beverly Hills

And now it appears it was Kim's turn to extend the olive branch by showing her support for the couple.

Blac opted for a laid-back look, going make-up free and pulling her black hoodie over her blonde waves as they strolled down the sidewalk.

Making up: The 35-year-old reality star appeared to be showing her support for Rob and Blac after their shock engagement

Good mood: Rob and Kim shared a laugh as they waited for the parking lot elevator

Good mood: Kim smiled as she adjusted her off-the-shoulder look while chatting with Blac

Making up: Rob shared a selfie of Blac and Kylie Jenner on Instagram on Friday, saying he was relieved they had finally made 'peace'

She added black sweats and wore white slippers with black socks.

Rob also went for a casual look, showing off the results of his new weight-loss regime in a white shirt, black sweats and black Air Jordan Nike sneakers.

The trio were seen sharing a laugh as they waited for the elevator in the parking lot, with Kim arriving in her white Rolls Royce.

Best foot forward: Kim added strappy black sandals for their breakfast outing

Sweet ride: Kim arrived in her luxurious Rolls Royce
White House race: What is a contested convention?

It is Donald Trump's worst nightmare: the Republican White House nomination slipping through his fingers at the party convention in Cleveland in July, after dominating the months-long primary race.

Trump's White House rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich said Monday they were teaming up to try to block him from an outright victory in Cleveland -- if he does not have a majority of delegates, the GOP would find itself in a contested convention.

So what is a contested convention?

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses a rally in a hangar at Rider Jet Center on April 24, 2016, in Hagerstown, Maryland Molly Riley (AFP/File)

Republican delegates designated during the state-by-state primaries and caucuses held from February to June will choose the party's candidate for president in Cleveland from July 18-21.

To seize the nomination outright, a candidate must reach an absolute majority of the delegates in play.

For the past four decades, the frontrunner has always reached the magic number -- which this year is 1,237.

But the strength of resistance to Trump's candidacy -- still challenged by Cruz, a US senator from Texas, and Kasich, the governor of Ohio, as well as the bulk of the Republican establishment -- makes it possible that he may fall short.

That would result in what is known as a contested, or brokered convention.

How would the party pick its nominee?

When a candidate has an absolute majority, party delegates at the convention play a purely symbolic role, effectively rubber-stamping the results of the primaries.

But in the alternative scenario -- if no contender can claim the crown outright -- the nominee is selected through a series of ballots at the convention, in which the delegates acquire a critical influence.

For the first ballot, party rules in all but a handful of cases oblige delegates to back the candidate to whom they were pledged in the primaries.

Even if Trump does not have 1,237 delegates before the convention, a small number of uncommitted delegates could help him win in the first round.

But if no candidate has a majority in the first round, there is automatically a second ballot.

And that is where things start getting interesting.

"The majority of states free their delegates after the first ballot," explains Josh Putnam, a campaign expert and political science lecturer at the University of Georgia.

That means those delegates could change their votes -- and may gravitate towards an alternative candidate.

The rules vary by state, and in Florida, for instance, delegates are only "released" on the fourth ballot. But according to The New York Times, 57 percent of the delegates would be free to change their votes in the second round, and 81 percent would be freed in a third round.

There is no limit on the number of rounds before a candidate earns a majority.

Who are the delegates and how are they chosen?

According to Republican Party rules, each state and a handful of territories send a certain number of delegates to the convention to elect the nominee.

Over the course of the primaries, each candidate amasses delegates. The rules for choosing these vary from state to state.

Delegates are chosen in local party conventions held throughout the months-long process.

In nearly three quarters of states, they are selected without input from the candidates themselves, according to Ben Ginsberg, a former Republican National Committee lawyer.

In some states, like Connecticut and Rhode Island which vote Tuesday, delegates are awarded proportionally to candidates.

Other states have a winner-takes-all system, like Florida, where all 99 delegates went to Trump as the winner of the state primary on March 15.

Given the choice, many delegates may prefer to back another candidate than the one to whom they were pledged.

That is why the Cruz and Kasich teams have been pulling out the stops to position their supporters at the local conventions that pick delegates.

Who could emerge as nominee?

A contested convention could theoretically throw open the 2016 race to candidates other than Trump, Kasich and Cruz.

But the party could set last-minute rules to limit outside candidacies -- for example by requiring that the eventual nominee must have taken part in this year's primaries.

That would rule out the former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, or House Speaker Paul Ryan -- both have been put forth as potential "saviors" for a Republican party in disarray.

Has this happened before?

Brokered conventions are rare in modern American politics.

In 1976, no Republican candidate had a majority when incumbent president Gerald Ford faced Ronald Reagan.

After several days of deal-making, Ford won in the first round thanks to support from a small number of uncommitted delegates.

The last time several vote rounds were needed came in 1948, when Thomas Dewey was the eventual candidate. For the Democrats, the last brokered convention was in 1952, with three rounds necessary to pick Adlai Stevenson.

Ted Cruz (L) and John Kasich (R) have agreed to join forces to try to deny frontrunner Donald Trump the Republican Party's presidential nomination, their campaigns said April 24, 2016

US Primaries: latest poll Kun Tian, Gillian Handyside (AFP)
Scandal-hit VW also faces a US union battle

German automaker Volkswagen, already deep in trouble in the United States over its polluting diesel engines, is also fighting a union challenge at its plant in the southern state of Tennessee.

Volkswagen of America, the automaker's US arm, said Monday it plans to appeal a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that would allow the United Auto Workers to negotiate a labor contract for 160 maintenance workers at the company's plant in Chattanooga.

The escalating issue with the powerful UAW union comes as Volkswagen is mired in legal and regulatory battles in the United States and other countries since its emissions-cheating scandal emerged in September.

Matthias Mueller, CEO of German car maker Volkswagen arrives to address a press conference in Wolfsburg, northern Germany on April 22, 2016 Julian Stratenschulte (dpa/AFP/File)

VW has acknowledged 11 million vehicles worldwide are outfitted with software that reduces pollution levels only when the car is being tested for emissions.

The German automaker had not yet filed the appeal but decided to challenge the NLRB ruling rather than let the decision stand, Volkswagen spokesman Scott Neal Wilson said Monday.

"We didn't state that an appeal was filed, only the decision to do so," he said.

Earlier this month, a three-member NLRB panel had denied Volkswagen's request for the agency to review a December 2015 election in which skilled-trades employees in Chattanooga voted overwhelmingly to designate UAW Local 42 as their collective bargaining representative. The NLRB upheld the results of the election, which it had supervised.

The December vote in Chattanooga marked the first time workers in the US South voted for union representation. The Chattanooga facility is the only Volkswagen plant in the world without union representation, the UAW said.

Volkswagen had argued that the skilled-trades-only bargaining unit in Chattanooga plant is not appropriate for collective bargaining. VW says that production and maintenance employees share a common community of interest and should have an equal voice in their workplace.

The UAW has pressed VW to negotiate a new contract for the unit's 160 members approved by the NLRB that would be the first negotiated at an auto plant in the South owned by an Asian or European carmaker.

The Chattanooga workforce is expected to grow as the company prepares to use the plant for building a new sport utility vehicle, Cross Blue, which is critical for rebuilding VW's sales in the country after the emissions scandal.

- 'Stall tactic': UAW -

Gary Casteel, the UAW executive board member in charge of the organizing effort in Chattanooga, said Volkswagens refusal to come to the bargaining table since the December election has been a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.

Divided union representation is not uncommon at Volkswagen plants around the world or work sites throughout the United States.

"If Volkswagen tries to force this matter into the federal court of appeals, we see it as a stall tactic that won't work," Casteel said.

"The appeals court with jurisdiction over the Chattanooga plant already has ruled that clearly identifiable employee units within a workforce, such as the skilled-trades unit at Volkswagen, can seek recognition in order to achieve collective bargaining," said Casteel, noting that US courts have long ruled that unions can represent part of a company's workforce.

"Furthermore, Volkswagen plants around the world -- including in such countries as Italy, Russia and Spain -- recognize multiple unions that represent portions of a workforce," he added.

Volkswagen of America, however, is facing heavy pressure from conservative Republicans, who dominate the state legislature in Tennessee and had long assumed the Chattanooga plant would be a non-union operation when they voted to help subsidize its construction.

"At a time when Volkswagen already has run afoul of the federal and state governments in the emissions-cheating scandal, we're disappointed that the company now is choosing to thumb its nose at the federal government over US labor law," Casteel said.

"At the end of the day, the employees are the ones being cheated by Volkswagen's actions."
France wins $39 bn bid to build Australia's new submarines

France on Tuesday beat off competition from Germany and Japan to win a Aus$50 billion (US$39 billion) contract to design and build Australia's next generation of submarines, a decision Tokyo called "deeply regrettable".

The announcement by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull culminates years of planning to replace Australia's ageing diesel and electric-powered Collins Class submarines, which are due to leave service from around 2026.

Turnbull said the 12 new subs to be delivered by French contractor DCNS under Australia's biggest-ever defence contract "will be the most sophisticated naval vessels being built in the world".

Australia's ageing fleet of Collins Class submarines will be phased out from 2026 LSA DS Hannah (Royal Australian Navy/AFP)

"This is a momentous national endeavour," he said at an Adelaide shipyard where the submarines will be constructed.

The deal came as tensions grow between China and Australia's allies Japan and the United States. Beijing is flexing its muscles in the region by developing airstrips and other facilities on reclaimed reefs in the contested South China Sea.

French President Francois Hollande hailed the decision as historic.

"It marks a decisive advance in the strategic partnership between the two countries who will cooperate over 50 years," his office said in a statement.

A Japanese government-backed consortium led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and German group ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, were also in the running. But Canberra said DCNS was considered "best to meet all of our unique capability requirements".

Japan was the early favourite and last November Tokyo said handing it the contract would help bolster regional security. Some senior US officials, including former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, also backed a Japanese build.

For Australia, cooperating with Japan risked angering its biggest trading partner China. There were also reportedly concerns that Tokyo lacked experience in exporting such complex military hardware.

Japanese Defence Minister Gen Nakatani was quoted by a ministry official as telling reporters: "We did our best but the decision was deeply regrettable. We will ask the Australian side to explain."

Asked if the decision to go with France would upset key ally the United States, Turnbull said the choice of contractor was "a sovereign decision for Australia".

David Brewster, from the ANU Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in Canberra, said the choice of France was about "capability, cost and risk reduction over broader strategic factors which favoured the Japanese bid".

- Technically complex -

"That may give Australia the best submarines, but it also means that we need to give much more active focus to engaging with Japan as our key regional security partner in the Pacific," he added.

"In the long term that is probably of greater importance to us than the submarines."

Australian submarines operate across huge areas, from the cold Southern Ocean to the tropics, and so require range and endurance to cope with wide-ranging geographic and oceanographic conditions.

Besides matching the capabilities of the Collins Class, the new generation needed to offer superior sensor performance and stealth capabilities.

The government's preferred combat system and main armament is the heavyweight torpedo jointly developed by the United States and Australia.

DCNS has said it plans to build a 4,500-tonne conventionally-powered version of its 4,700 tonne Barracuda, to be named Shortfin Barracuda. It is described by the company as "the most technically complex artefact in Australia".

It said on its website that the new vessel would be "the recipient of France's most sensitive and protected submarine technology and will be the most lethal conventional submarine ever contemplated".

"Pump jet propulsion means the Shortfin Barracuda can move more quietly than submarines with obsolete propeller technology," DCNS said.

The tender process was also politically sensitive domestically, with Canberra keen to maximise Australian industry involvement and jobs amid fears an off-the-shelf purchase could kill off the domestic shipbuilding industry.

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian added Tuesday the contract would also create thousands of jobs in his country.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (2nd left) inspects a Collins-class submarine during a visit to the naval shipyards in Adelaide, on April 26, 2016 James Knowler (AFP)

A 'Barracuda Class' nuclear submarine under construction at the DCNS plant in Cherbourg-Octeville, northwestern France Charly Triballeau (AFP/File)
Taiwan party organiser jailed for fireball that killed 15

The organiser of a party which saw a fireball rip through a Taiwan waterpark, leaving 15 dead and hundreds injured, was jailed for almost five years Tuesday as the court cited the "excruciating pain" of the bereaved.

Lu Chung-chi, owner of Colour Play Asia, was behind the event at which coloured corn starch being sprayed on around 1,000 partygoers ignited under the heat of stage lights last June, sending them running for their lives.

Almost 500 were injured in the blast at Formosa Fun Coast, more than 200 of them seriously. Horrific video footage showed revellers -- mostly aged between 18 and 25 -- screaming as they tried to escape the raging flames.

Relatives of water park explosion victims demonstrate outside Shihlin district court in Taipei, on April 26, 2016 Sam Yeh (AFP)

Some were left with more than 90 percent burns, in some cases leading to amputations. The only undamaged skin on some survivors' bodies were the parts covered by swimsuits.

Although all have now been released from hospital, many are still enduring painful rehabilitation treatments and surgery.

Lu, who was not in court, was found guilty of negligence causing death at Taipei's Shihlin district court as relatives of victims gathered outside waving banners calling for justice.

A statement from the court after the verdict paid tribute to the young victims of the tragedy -- and revealed that one bereaved father had taken his own life in grief.

"Most of the victims were very young and their wonderful lives were about to start. They had beautiful dreams to be realised," it said.

"Because of the explosion, 15 of them lost their lives and most of the survivors suffer tremendous physical and emotional pain and torment.

"Relatives of the deceased suddenly lost their family members and suffered irreparable and excruciating pain and regret," it added.

The statement said the father of a victim surnamed Wang had committed suicide.

"All of this is enough to show the very serious harm inflicted by the defendant's offence," it said.

- Calls for justice -

The case has angered grieving relatives and the families of the injured as only Lu was indicted over the disaster. He was one of nine people investigated, including the chairman and president of the water park.

The high prosecutors' office told AFP Tuesday it had ordered a district court to reopen the probe into the other eight after an appeal by a group of victims.

Campaigners have urged prosecutors to reopen the investigation. A group of 50 rallied outside court Tuesday, waving banners reading: "Return Justice and Fairness to Me."

Most said the sentence was not long enough. The charge of negligence leading to death carries a maximum sentence of five years.

"At least the charges were held up, but this is not enough for the relatives. Four years and 10 months is too little," said Julie Wang, spokeswoman for a victims' association. Her 21-year-old son suffered 55 percent burns.

Medics described the waterpark tragedy as an unprecedented disaster for Taiwan, given the scale and severity of the injuries.

Specialists from Japan were flown in to advise on the treatment of the seriously injured and Taiwan imported metres of skin for grafts.

An investigation showed the hottest parts of the stage lights hit temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius, while the powder's ignition point was just 500 degrees Celsius.

One mother, Chen Lu-yu, whose student son died in the disaster, called for the "real perpetrators" to be brought to justice.

She said the family had donated her son's organs after his death in the hope that it would enable others to have a "happy and healthy" life.

"I see other families, other people holding grandchildren," she told AFP outside the court.

"My son will never have a chance again. He will never have a chance to live out his dreams."

Map locating the Formosa Fun Coast water park in Taiwan where a ball of fire ripped through a crowd in June 2015, killing 15 people AFP (AFP Graphic)

Rescue workers tend to injured people at the Formosa Fun Coast amusement park after an explosion there on June 27, 2015 - (AFP/File)
A century of service over self has earned members of the Downtown Billings Rotary Club the right to celebrate at the Northern Hotel on Monday evening.

The 181-member club, established in 1916  11 years after the founding of Rotary International  celebrated its historic achievement by honoring 50-year members and hearing from Greg Podd of Evergreen, Colo., vice president of the 1.2 million-member Rotary International.

What this club has gone through, said Podd, who was keynoter during Mondays celebration. The Great Depression, significant wars  theyre still together, still serving. How near that theyve given back to their community all that time.

Mondays celebration had co-emcees, Jon Stepanek and Jock Michelotti. They have an ongoing tit-for-tat, said club president Sandy Wong with a smile. Theyre always poking jabs at each other, and its always fun.

Those in attendance will receive the clubs centennial history book, which has a scenic cover featuring a photograph supplied by The Gazettes photography director, Larry Mayer.

He may be busy as Rotary International vice president, but the job description is straightforward, Podd said.

I serve at the pleasure of the president (K.R. Ravi Ravindran of Sri Lanka), he said of the man who will travel 450,000 miles during his year as president as part of a service organization thats in 200 countries. Hes been home three days during his presidency. Ive been home six days already in April.

Podd said his connection to Rotary has helped him out of some potentially difficult positions. Once, while attempting to cross the border from Tanzania into Kenya, he was met by a number of dogs and chickens and thousands of people, many with guns. The border was a mess.

Then a border official spied the Rotary pin Podd always wears on his lapel and waved him over. When he found out Podds Rotary particulars  past club president, past district governor, and a Paul Harris fellow (a $1,000 donor)  the man bowed several times at Podd, called Podd's team over and then gave them a police escort into his country.

All because of that little pin, Podd said, gesturing at his lapel.

Podd said he loves helping local clubs mark milestones.

You see the sparkle in peoples eyes, see them giving back and making a difference in their community, he said. Anytime I travel I always ask to speak at the local Rotary club. Thats where Rotary really happens  at the club level. I'm certainly not there to tell them what to do. Im there as a resource, because people dont realize Rotarys international magnitude.

While membership in Asian Rotary clubs is exploding, U.S. clubs have been losing about 6,500 members each year over the past two decades, Podd said.

Im concerned about that, he said. Two percent of Rotarians are under the age of 40, and weve got to change that.

A recent change, he said, will allow young adults to have a relationship with a local club without joining.

My own daughter asks me, Dad, how can you go to a meeting every week? he said with a laugh. I told her that I actually enjoy it, and she told me she couldnt imagine having a weekly commitment like that. Weve been around 111 years, but weve got to change.

Wong said e-clubs are popping up, allowing members who cant meet in person to join in by Skype.

In Montana, our snow can make it difficult to travel, she said. I think more and more organizations are open to that kind of participation.

Five Rotarians from Tasmania were set to attend Mondays centennial celebration. Its that international flavor that for Podd is a real strength of Rotary.

He recalled a large conference held in Turkey he addressed last year.

All those relationships, all those cultures  all brought together by one thing called Rotary, he said. I dont know any other organization that can do that.
Islamists behead Canadian hostage in Philippines

Islamic militants in the Philippines have beheaded a Canadian hostage, raising fears for more than 20 other foreigners held captive on remote islands, with troops and police vowing Tuesday to hunt down the extremists.

The man's head was found Monday dumped outside city hall on Jolo, a mountainous and jungle-clad island in the far south of the Philippines that is a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf Islamist group.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Filipino authorities identified the victim as John Ridsdel, a retiree in his late 60s who was kidnapped seven months ago from aboard a yacht, along with another Canadian man, a Norwegian and a Filipina woman.

Canadian tourist John Ridsdel was kidnapped by gunmen on September 21, 2015 on Samal island in the southern Philippines

"This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau said in Ottawa.

The four were abducted at a marina near the major city of Davao, more than 500 kilometres (300 miles) from Jolo, as part of a wave of abductions by the Abu Sayyaf -- a loose network of militants who for more than two decades have run a lucrative kidnapping-for-ransom business.

The other three were fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Hall's girlfriend Marites Flor and Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad.

Six weeks after the abduction, gunmen released a video of their hostages held in a jungle setting, demanding the equivalent of $21 million each for the safe release of the three foreigners.

The men were forced to beg for their lives on camera, and similar videos posted over several months showed the hostages looking increasingly frail.

In the most recent video, Ridsdel said his captors would kill him on April 25 if a ransom of $6.4 million was not paid.

Hours after the deadline passed, police in the Philippines said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, which is about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from Manila.

Ridsdel, a former journalist, oil executive and sailing enthusiast, had moved to the Philippines to manage a gold mine before retiring.

- Hunt for militants -

Trudeau said Canada was working with the Philippines to pursue and prosecute the killers, and that efforts were under way to obtain the release of the other hostages.

In the Philippines, security forces said they were setting up checkpoints across Jolo to try to block the movements of the gunmen.

"There will be no let-up in the determined efforts of the joint task group's intensive military and law enforcement operations to neutralise these lawless elements," said a statement released Tuesday by the national police and military.

Philippine security forces have made similar statements many times against the Abu Sayyaf and often failed to achieve their objectives.

On April 9, 18 Filipino soldiers were killed as they waged a day-long battle against Abu Sayyaf gunmen on Basilan, an island next to Jolo that is also one of the group's strongholds.

The Abu Sayyaf is a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since the 1970s.

Authorities say the group is currently holding more than 20 foreigners after a recent wave of abductions.

These include 18 Indonesian and Malaysian sailors who were abducted from tugboats near the southern Philippines over the past month.

The Abu Sayyaf is also believed to be holding a Dutch bird-watcher kidnapped in 2012, while it recently released a retired Italian priest after six months in captivity.

One of the Abu Sayyaf's biggest recent windfalls is believed to have come in 2014 when it claimed to have been paid more than $5 million for the release of a German couple abducted from aboard their yacht in the southwest Philippines.

The Abu Sayyaf's leaders have recently declared allegiance to the Islamic State group. However, analysts say it is mainly focused on ransom money.

"I don't see the Abu Sayyaf as an ideological threat," Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asian security expert based at the National War College in the United States, told AFP.

"But they use the threat of terror and the threat of being part of Islamic State to very effectively raise the psychological stakes."

Map of the Philippines showing the southern region of Mindanao where a Canadian tourist was kidnapped and beheaded AFP (AFP Graphic)

An Indonesian sailor rescued by Malaysian Maritime Enforcement agents is carried after being shot during a kidnapping attempt on April 16, 2016 on the east coast of Malaysia's Sabah state, waters where Abu Sayyaf militants are known to operate
Facts about Australia's next generation of submarines

Australia on Tuesday announced French naval shipbuilder DCNS as the winning bidder to design and build its next generation of submarines. Here are facts about the Aus$50 billion (US$39 billion) project:

Why does Australia need new subs?

The country's current fleet of Collins class diesel and electric-powered submarines, which date from the 1990s, are ageing and expensive to maintain. They are scheduled to leave service from 2026, by which time they will be up to 30 years old.

A technician works on the construction of the nuclear submarine "SNA Barracuda" in a plant run by the French industrial group specialised in naval defence and energy, DCNS, in Cherbourg-Octeville Charly Triballeau (AFP/File)

Who was in the running?

A proposal to replace the subs was first floated in 2009 but the tender was eventually narrowed down in February 2015 to three contenders who were invited to enter a competitive evaluation process. They were French defence shipbuilder DCNS, a Japanese government-backed consortium led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and German group ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems.

What were the key requirements?

Australian submarines operate across huge areas, from the cold Southern Ocean to the tropics, and so require range and endurance to cope with the wide geographic and oceanographic conditions they encounter. The new subs needed to have similar capabilities, along with superior sensor performance and stealth, and a cutting-edge combat system. Canberra's preferred combat system and main armament is the heavyweight torpedo jointly developed between the United States and Australia.

What did the bidders propose?

DCNS plans to build a 4,500-tonne conventionally-powered version of its 4,700 tonne Barracuda, to be named Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A. It uses pump-jet propulsion instead of conventional propellers, making it very quiet. The Japanese consortium planned a version of its Soryu Class submarines, while ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems had proposed a submarine known as the Type 216.

Were politics involved?
Clinton, Trump look to dominate in Tuesday primaries

Five US states vote Tuesday at a critical juncture in the presidential race, with Hillary Clinton seeking a knockout against Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump confident of extending his lead despite rivals joining forces against him.

A very strong showing in primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island would put former secretary of state Clinton on the cusp of Democratic victory, a monumental step in her quest to become the nation's first female commander in chief.

"I don't have the nomination yet," she said in an MSNBC town hall event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's largest city.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a Get Out the Vote rally at Philadelphia City Hall on April 25, 2016 Justin Sullivan (Getty/AFP)

"We're going to work really hard until the polls close tomorrow."

Trump too was traveling the primary landscape in an intensifying effort to surpass the threshold of 1,237 delegates needed to lock down the role of 2016 Republican flag bearer.

But his rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich controversially have joined forces to thwart the frontrunner, unveiling a late ploy that allows them to essentially go one on one against Trump in key upcoming states.

According to the surprise deal, Kasich will forego campaigning in Indiana, which votes May 3, and Cruz will return the favor later in New Mexico and Oregon to try to deprive Trump of victories there.

Cruz told potential voters in Indiana Monday that the deal would give them "a straight and direct choice between our campaign and Donald Trump."

Indiana is a winner-take-all state where a Trump loss would make it much harder for him to reach the winning delegate threshold.

- 'Pathetic' plan -

Trump erupted at news of the deal, assailing the pair as engaging in a desperate strategy that he described as collusion.

"You know if you collude in business, or you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail," Trump boomed in Warwick, Rhode Island.

"But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude."

The partnership "shows how weak they are," Trump said. "It shows how pathetic they are."

Kasich's campaign said the aim was to open the July nominating convention in Cleveland so that a unifying figure other than Trump can emerge as the candidate.

The Ohioan insists he is the only one who could beat Clinton. But his remarks suggested the alliance with Cruz was already fraying.

"I've never told them not to vote for me" in Indiana, he told reporters at a Philadelphia diner. "They ought to vote for me."

"What's the big deal?" he added.

According to a recent CBS poll, Trump leads Indiana with 40 percent of likely Republican voters, compared to 35 percent for Cruz and 20 percent for Kasich.

The newfound allies acknowledge their only hope of success lies in blocking Trump from reaching 1,237 delegates before the convention.

If he falls short, Trump runs the risk that his delegates, who are bound to vote for him in only the first round of balloting, will desert him in subsequent rounds.

Cruz in particular has been successfully maneuvering in state party conventions to have individuals named to delegate slots who, though bound to Trump on the first ballot, would be sympathetic to Cruz in subsequent rounds when they are free to vote for whomever they choose.

Party heavyweights, alarmed by the prospect of a Trump nomination, have long pressed for a united effort around a single candidate against him.

But Cruz is almost as unpopular with the party's establishment as Trump, and Kasich has refused to bow out even though he has only won his home state of Ohio.

"Folks, they ought to both drop out of the race so we ought to unify the Republican Party," Trump told supporters in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

- 'Terrible role models' -

Cruz, perhaps emboldened by the prospect of stopping Trump, has already begun searching for possible vice presidential options.

His campaign chairman Chad Sweet confirmed to CNN that Cruz was vetting several potential vice presidential candidates, and that businesswoman Carly Fiorina, herself a former White House hopeful, "absolutely" was among them.

In an election year that has highlighted voter disaffection with politics as usual, a chaotic convention fight would almost surely damage Republican prospects in November.

The bruising battle is already straining the party and its supporters.

Billionaire Charles Koch, a mega-funder for conservative causes, said in an interview Sunday with ABC's "This Week" that the Republican candidates were "terrible role models" and did not see how he could support them.

Raising eyebrows among Republicans, Koch added it was "possible" Clinton would be a better president.

Trump is favored to win all five states Tuesday, while Sanders, whose grass-roots campaign has done well against the Clinton juggernaut, is seen as mounting a last-gasp effort.

"We are running as hard as we can to win this thing," Sanders said Monday.

Latest national poll for the Democrat and Republican primaries before the April 26 vote Kun TIAN, Gillian HANDYSIDE (AFP)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally on April 25, 2016 at West Chester University in Pennsylvania Jessica Kourkounis (Getty/AFP)

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks during a rally at the Fitzgerald Field House on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh on April 25, 2016 in Pennsylvania Jeff Swensen (Getty/AFP)
Hong Kong's Filipino domestic workers vote to clean up back home

Twerking, selfie-taking, picnicking and performing impromptu dance routines -- Hong Kong's 180,000-strong community of Filipino workers fill the city's public spaces on Sundays, their day off, to relax and party.

But for the past few weeks the colourful gatherings have turned political, as the Philippines heads towards an election in which its migrant workers could swing a tight race.

Bands thrash out rock ballads backing their favourite candidates in the walkways and public squares of Hong Kong's financial district, and campaigners wear t-shirts bearing political slogans to drum up support.

Volunteers campaign in Hong Kong for the upcoming 2016 Philippine election Isaac Lawrence (AFP)

"It's important to vote for change," said 49-year-old Winnie Blaza, a domestic helper who has not lived in her home country for 20 years.

"I became a migrant worker because of poverty. We migrants are supporting candidates who want to help."

The majority of Hong Kong's Filipino workers are domestic helpers, an often-abused underclass in the wealthy city, whose plight has been highlighted by several recent legal cases.

But there is a sense of empowerment now, as they form part of a key demographic candidates are keen to corner: the 1.3 million Filipinos who are registered to cast absentee ballots.

Blaza is backing controversial candidate Rodrigo Duterte, who leads the polls despite remarks about the rape and murder of an Australian missionary that sparked protests from diplomats, the Catholic Church and women's groups.

Likened by some to controversial US Republican candidate Donald Trump, he is held up by supporters as a maverick with a solution to corruption and crime.

- 'Every vote counts' -

For Filipina voter Madeline, 26 -- who has a nursing degree but gets a higher salary working as a maid in Hong Kong -- the ballot box is a chance to clean up politics.

"Crime is very rampant, especially corruption in the government," she said, without specifying her favoured candidate.

Filipinos working overseas - primarily in Asia, North America and the Middle East - sent more than $25 billion in remittances home to their impoverished country last year, giving them extra political clout.

"The votes of migrant workers can be a game-changer," added Eman Villanueva, an activist for Migrante, a political party that campaigns for the rights of foreign workers.

"This is a close fight and every vote counts."

Duterte's son visited Hong Kong as part of the campaign, as did rival candidate Mar Roxas.

US-educated investment banker Roxas and Grace Poe, a movie star's adopted daughter, are among those taking on Duterte, a tough-talking mayor who has been accused of running death squads in his city.

Voting started earlier this month in Hong Kong, where more than 93,000 Filipinos are registered to vote, and ends on election day in the Philippines, May 9.

But, whichever candidate they favour, most simply want to make a living back home.

"The long term goal is to have jobs available in the Philippines so we don't have to leave our country to survive," says Villanueva.

For Blaza, return is the ultimate aim. "I really want to go back to my family," she said.

Hong Kong's 180,000-strong community of Filipino workers could swing a tight race in upcoming election in their home country Isaac Lawrence (AFP)
The battle for birth control: Afghanistan's new fight

"Four children is enough," says the young Afghan woman as she examines a box of contraceptive pills.

Dressed in a burqa and with her husband's permission, she has ventured out to learn more about birth control through an initiative between NGO Marie Stopes International (MSI) and a group of influential Islamic scholars.

The charity's minibus has parked up in a poor neighbourhood of Mazar-i-Sharif city, in front of a madrassa (religious school), and offers free advice on family planning. The young mother, along with other women facing similar dilemmas, is shown a basket containing IUDs, pills, contraceptive implants and condoms.

Batul Mahadiyar, head of the NGO Marie Stopes International, advises women about family planning and contraception at a religious school in Mazar-i-Sharif Farshad Usyan (AFP)

The mechanism for each one is carefully explained. She opts in the end for the pill, paying 20 Afghanis for the box.

"I had a discussion with my husband and he agreed. Without his permission it is impossible," she explains.

Information about and access to contraception in Afghanistan has been hampered by years of conflict, widespread poverty and a lack of education, as well as active discouragement from some hardline religious figures who claim it is "haram" -- forbidden by Allah.

"We definitely have problems in Afghanistan. The biggest one about contraception is that there is no information on family planning," explains Doctor Rahmatudine Bashardost, MSI programme manager for Balkh province, of which Mazar is the capital.

"Illiteracy is one reason," he adds. "People cannot read books and magazines to get information."

And while charities have been able to educate families in some cities, Bashardost explains it is much harder to get information to those in the populous rural regions.

Afghanistan has the second highest rate of under-five mortality in the world -- thousands of children die every year, while every two hours a woman dies due to complications related to pregnancy and birth, according to recent figures from UNICEF.

Families often have more children than they can care for well, and women may fall pregnant too soon after giving birth to adequately allow their bodies to recover, causing ill health for both mother and child.

In Afghanistan religious figures usually advise families -- often via the men -- on social issues. So in a bid to better explain their work, MSI has been working with mullahs to help educate the community.

It has not been an easy task, and the battle is far from won, says Bashardost.

"We faced mullahs who said that what we do is seriously haram," he recalls. "After many debates with them we asked them to show us the proof that family planning is indeed illegal (in Islam).

"If it's haram there should be documents saying so, but those documents do not exist. On the contrary, there are documents that show that it's perfectly legal," he adds.

Mullah Kamalullah Hamid, a prominent local Sunni scholar, says he is not opposed to contraception outright.

"If the parents think they will not be able to feed a new child, it is accepted", he concedes, but warns that birth control is not an option if the "the husband and the wife only want to have a good time and they don't want kids. The first aim of the marriage is to create a new generation".

- Ask mother-in-law -

It is not by chance MSI's bus is parked in front of the madrassa. Its head, Batul Mahadiyar, was trained by the organisation. She now advises adult women on how to plan their families and space out pregnancies in accordance with Islam.

"There is a verse in the Quran that says that 'Mothers should breastfeed their children for two complete years'," says Mahadiyar, who belongs to the Shi'ite sect.

Breastfeeding can act as a natural form of birth control as the hormones released to produce milk can also suppress reproductive hormones, potentially delaying the return to fertility for women.

A 2011 study by America's Centre for Disease Control found women who fell pregnant less than 18 months after giving birth were at higher risk of complications -- both with their own health and that of their child.

In Afghanistan, the financial strain of having too many mouths to feed can also have a big impact.

"Having too many children may create problems in a life. Nowadays too many people are thieves," says Mahadiyar, who has two children, adding that proper family planning enables parents to focus on bringing up each child well.

According to the World Bank, the fertility rate is an average of 5.1 births per woman in Afghanistan. In France that figure is 2, while in Pakistan it is 3.6.

MSI has many branches across the country but has thus far dodged Taliban ire.

"Medicine has nothing to do with politics. If a doctor wants to give service to people, he has no enemy," Bashardost says.

Despite many advances in the rights of women since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, Afghanistan remains a deeply patriarchal country, where men dictate how the family is run.

For the young mother of four, it would have been inconceivable to buy contraceptive pills without her husband's consent.

But Bashardost has stumbled on the perfect way to help persuade these gentlemen -- addressing their mothers as well as the mullahs.

"We have programmes for mothers-in-law to explain to them the benefits of contraception," he says.

A child waits as his mother attends a class on family planning and contraception at a religious school in Mazar-i-Sharif Farshad Usyan (AFP)

Information about and access to contraception in Afghanistan has been hampered by years of conflict, widespread poverty and a lack of education Farshad Usyan (AFP)

Batul Mahadiyar, head of the NGO Marie Stopes International, advises adult women on how to plan their families and space out pregnancies in accordance with Islam Farshad Usyan (AFP)
Vietnam thwarts election bid by dissidents, pop star

Communist Vietnam has blocked a motley crew of independent candidates from running for its rubber-stamp parliament, according to official results released Tuesday, a move activists said highlights its empty gestures towards democracy.

In an unprecedented showing this year more than 100 independent candidates -- including dissidents, a taxi driver and a pop star -- tried to run for the National Assembly.

But of the 870 candidates approved to contest the May 22 elections only 11 were not from the ruling communist party.

Despite attracting widespread public support from her social media campaign, Mai Khoi, dubbed Vietnam's Lady Gaga, was disqualified from running for a seat in the National Assembly - (AFP/File)

Nguyen Hanh Phuc, from the National Elections Committee, said this was due to strict quotas aimed a creating a representative cross-section of society in the legislative body.

"We need the appearance of all social groups participating in the National Assembly," he told reporters.

But democracy activists said all genuinely independent candidates have now been excluded from the race.

While the constitution allows anyone over 21 to seek election to parliament, the reality is quite different.

"No matter how much effort they put into running as an independent candidate, they'd definitely fail if they're not on the pre-approved list," an official at a local election unit told AFP.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there were secret plans to allow some independent candidates to run to give the impression of functioning democracy in the authoritarian country.

"I personally was told to encourage two neighbours to run, to demonstrate that the campaign is democratic," he said, adding that he later encouraged them to "voluntarily" withdraw from the race.

- 'Waste of time' -

Despite attracting widespread public support from her social media campaign, pop singer Mai Khoi -- dubbed Vietnam's Lady Gaga for her eye-catching wardrobe and pink hair -- was among those disqualified.

"It's a waste of time and money," she said of the election process.

Phan Van Bach, a 41-year-old taxi driver and father of four, said authorities used "childish tactics" and threats to force him out of the race.

Bach's wife received a call saying "Tell your husband to stop running for elections or he might have a traffic accident," he said, adding he remained undeterred.

For lawyer Vo An Don, from south central Phu Yen province, it was no surprise that the independent candidates were disqualified.

"In Vietnam, becoming a National Assembly deputy as an independent candidate is like an elephant trying to sneak through a hole the size of an ant," he said, using a Vietnamese proverb.

But academic and failed candidate Nguyen Quang A said he still felt the exercise had been a success.

"This is just a small step in a long and difficult process," he said.

"Everyone has learned a lot -- what an election is, how the process works, where the law is unconstitutional."

Mai Khoi has issued a video invitation to US President Barack Obama, who is due to visit Vietnam in May, to meet the disqualified candidates and push for electoral reform.

Vietnam's rubber-stamp National Assembly had its spring session in March 2016 Hoang Dinh Nam (AFP/File)
Hong Kong leader warns independence calls threaten economy

Hong Kong's Beijing-friendly leader warned Tuesday the city will lose investment and job opportunities if residents continue to seek independence, painting a bleak economic picture of the former British colony without Chinese support.

Unpopular leader Leung Chun-ying's remarks come as political divisions in the semi-autonomous city widen, with young campaigners pushing for self-determination or outright independence from China.

Hong Kong is self-governing and retains many freedoms not seen on the mainland, but Beijing sees the concept of eventual independence as unthinkable.

Hong Kong's Beijing-friendly leader Leung Chun-ying (C) warns the city will lose investment and job opportunities if residents continue to seek independence Isaac Lawrence (AFP/File)

"The city's seven million residents would bear the political and economic consequences with those pushing for independence or self-determination," Leung told reporters at the government's headquarters.

"Investors would lose confidence in Hong Kong. People would lose opportunities to develop and to obtain employment," he said.

"Hong Kong would lose the trust and the support of Chinese authorities," Leung, elected in 2012 by a 1,200-strong committee packed with members of pro-Beijing elites, said.

Last month saw the launch of multiple political parties pushing for independence or self-determination.

Student leaders behind the city's 2014 mass pro-democracy rallies have launched Demosisto, a party campaigning for a referendum to decide the city's future.

And the newly-formed pro-independence Hong Kong National Party, made up of 30 to 50 students and young professionals, said independence was the only path of survival for the city.

Chinese media called on the government to take action against the movement.

"The Hong Kong government cannot continue to be tolerant," an editorial in the overseas edition of the People's Daily said on Saturday, warning the movement had brought the city to a "dangerous" place.

The city's government said it was looking into the issue.

"Advocating independence of Hong Kong is totally contrary ... to the legal status of Hong Kong," secretary for justice Rimsky Yuen said on Saturday.

Hong Kong's freedoms are protected by a 50-year agreement signed when Britain handed the city back to China in 1997.

The British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond dismissed calls for independence or a referendum during a trip to the city early this month.

"We don't believe that any aspiration to independence is a realistic plan," he said.

Hong Kong is self-governing and retains many freedoms not seen on Chinese mainland Roslan Rahman (AFP/File)
Chinese-made, US-bound: automakers eye exports

A gigantic robotic arm capable of lifting an entire chassis at a General Motors plant in Shanghai is the US automaker's secret weapon as it seeks to sell "Made in China" cars to America.

The yellow machine -- dubbed "Fanuc" by workers after its maker -- can lift a one-tonne object and is being used to transport large parts in the body shop of the Cadillac plant.

GM hopes its high-tech approach will persuade American consumers to put aside quality concerns and safety worries over Chinese-made products, and other manufacturers hope to follow in its tracks -- including Chinese firms themselves -- as the auto industry globalises further.

General Motors' Buick cars are being assembled at a Wuhan auto plant in China's Hubei province

GM and its Chinese partner SAIC earlier this year opened the $1.2 billion Cadillac factory to produce luxury vehicles, including the plug-in hybrid version of its CT6 sedan, which will be sold in both China and the United States.

The US automaker has also announced plans to export to its home market a mid-size SUV, the Buick Envision, made in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong -- prompting condemnation from US unions.

GM China's president Matt Tsien said the Shanghai plant is as cutting-edge as any of its facilities in the United States.

"It has, I would say, some of the most advanced manufacturing technologies and capabilities in the auto industry today. The whole purpose of putting all the advanced technology into manufacturing is to build great cars," he said.

Analysts say GM's size and strength might just convince potential customers.

"The 'Made in China' is not that much of a stumbling block. It's who is making it in China," Namrita Chow, principal analyst for IHS Automotive in London, told AFP.

Some major global companies are already manufacturing products or components in China, notably Apple's iPhone and several parts for Boeing's Next Generation 737.

Doing so allows them to take advantage of China's much lower labour costs but even so, Chow said transport costs and import tariffs have to be taken into account before it makes financial sense for companies -- both foreign-invested and domestic -- to manufacture in China and sell elsewhere.

GM is looking to Cadillac to challenge German dominance in the Chinese luxury segment, while Beijing is seeking to develop the electric car industry with incentives and other government support, creating potential economies of scale for manufacturers.

"The overall (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) market, the predominant volume is going to be here in China," said GM's Tsien.

"From a standpoint of logic, it would make sense to manufacture in one location and export small quantities into other parts of the world."

- National champion -

GM is not the only company producing in China and hoping to sell into developed markets: Chinese auto makers have long held such dreams themselves.

China built its auto sector with the help of foreign companies, who must enter into joint ventures with domestic firms to produce vehicles in what is now the world's largest auto market.

The government wants its companies to move up the value chain to develop their own brands that can gain traction overseas.

But sales so far have largely been in developing countries, rather than the coveted US market and Europe, where vehicles must both pass government muster and appeal to sophisticated consumers.

Chinese manufacturers going abroad tend to downplay their roots and stress their international credentials instead.

Geely, owner of Swedish carmaker Volvo, sells cars in Russia and Turkey and the company said last month that it was considering producing in western Europe.

Buyers in the Middle East "were not worried that this was a Chinese brand", said spokesman Ash Sutcliffe. "They looked past the Chinese heritage of the company", focusing on "value for the money".

"In China we really push it on the Chinese-ness of the car," he added. "In international markets... it's affordable premium."

State-owned Guangzhou Automobile Group Co. has a sales presence in the Middle East and is also considering setting up production in Russia and Iran, according to state media.

Chery Automobile Co. has just relaunched cars assembled in Egypt with a local partner and is eyeing the African market.

"We see Africa as a market with huge potential," Chery International president He Xiaoqing told state media.

China exported 755,500 vehicles of all types last year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers -- down 20 percent from 2014 and little more than three percent of total domestic production.

But the largely state-owned firms are competing for a bigger prize than just sales, analysts say -- the chance to be picked by Beijing as a future national champion to lead the Chinese fight in a global market.

"Chinese actors are making a point of exporting and have bought some companies to mark themselves out from the pack to the government and show that they deserve to be the consolidator," said Laurent Petizon, automotive expert at consultancy AlixPartners.

"To do that it's important to show you have an impact abroad," he added. "But it's still symbolic for now."

GM hopes its high-tech approach will persuade American consumers to put aside quality concerns and safety worries over Chinese-made products
An Egyptian court has sentenced 11 men accused of homosexuality to jail terms of between three and 12 years, legal sources said.

The defendants were arrested in a flat in the leafy Cairo suburb of Agouza in September last year.

The court convicted them of 'debauchery and incitement to debauchery', the charges generally used to prosecute alleged homosexuals in Egypt as the law does not formally prohibit same-sex relations.

An Egyptian court has jailed 11 men accused of homosexuality after convicting them of 'debauchery'

Late on Sunday, it sentenced three of them to 12 years, three to nine years, one to six years and four to three years.

Egypt's use of the debauchery law to prosecute and jail gay men has drawn condemnation from human rights groups.

In November 2014, eight men were jailed for 'inciting debauchery' after appearing in an alleged same-sex wedding video in Egypt.

A third of countries have laws banning homosexuality, with some even carrying the death penalty

The men, who formed the wedding party on a boat on the Nile, were sentenced to three years in prison each for the crime of debauchery.

The clip, posted online as 'Egypt's first gay wedding,' shows two men exchanging rings and embracing while friends cheer.
Mutiny on Bounty island protests 'Australia takeover'

Descendants of the swashbuckling British sailors and Tahitian women immortalised in the "Mutiny on the Bounty" movies have petitioned the United Nations to prevent what many consider an Australian takeover.

Norfolk Island, 1,500 kilometres (900 miles) east of the Australian coast and settled by the descendants of Fletcher Christian and other Bounty mutineers in 1856, has governed itself since 1979.

But it is effectively bankrupt and Canberra last year introduced legislation to scrap the Australian territory's parliament and replace it with a new regional council under Australian law.

Stone ruins of the penal colony of Kingston in the Australian territory of Norfolk Island are seen from across Slaughter Bay Lawrence Bartlett (AFP/File)

It is due to take full effect on July 1.

Many are unhappy with the move and the Norfolk Island People for Democracy (NIPFD) lodged a petition at the United Nations on Monday to "have its parliament and self-government restored".

It was unclear how many of the 2,300-strong population signed the document that was delivered by leading human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who said there were consequences for the islanders.

"They will be forced to sing Advance Australia Fair over their preferred national anthem, which is God Save The Queen," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"They won't be able to compete under their own flag at the Commonwealth Games, they will have to join an Australian team."

The NIPFD said the petition demonstrated they "do not accept the perpetuation of injustice against the wishes of the majority of the governed on Norfolk Island".

Lisle Snell, a former chief minister of the tiny outcrop, which is eight kilometres long by five kilometres wide (five miles by three miles), said their proposal was not a declaration of independence.

"It's a declaration to seek listing on the decolonisation committee of 24 in New York to give the Norfolk Island the right to self-determination in free association with Australia," she told the ABC, referring to the UN body that deals with self-determination and decolonisation issues.

Under Australian rule, personal and business tax will be introduced from July, and residents will in return be able to access social security, healthcare benefits and services enjoyed by other Australians.

The Australian government has previously said it was not sustainable to ask a small community to deliver local, state and federal services.

Most of the core population are descendants of the mutineers who set Captain William Bligh adrift from the British warship the Bounty when they famously fell in love with the South Seas, and its women, in 1789.

The mutiny gained such a romantic gloss that chief mutineer Christian has been portrayed by a series of Hollywood heart-throbs over the years, including Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando and Mel Gibson.

Christian and eight other mutineers first made their home on Pitcairn Island with a group of Tahitian women, but their descendants moved nearly 6,000 kilometres to Norfolk Island in 1856 when Pitcairn became too small for them.

Queen Victoria granted them the right to settle in the abandoned former penal colony.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is in Vietnam this week to discuss the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership, which President Obama has made a centerpiece of his effort to expand U.S. influence in the Pacific Rim.

According to the USDA, within eight years the TPP would eliminate Vietnamese tariffs on beef that now run as high as 35 percent. The U.S. exported $32.3 million in beef to Vietnam last year.

On wheat, TPP also would end Vietnamese tariffs of up to 35 percent within four years. The U.S. exported about $67 million in wheat and wheat products to Vietnam in 2015, according to the USDA.

With examples like that, readers might well believe that TPP would be great deal for an agricultural commodities-exporting state like Montana. But in recent letters to The Gazette, some Montana ag producers and union leaders have voice their opposition to the 11-nation trade deal.

Opponents complain that the North American Free Trade Agreement resulted in multi-billion-dollar U.S. ag trade deficits, even though it was promoted as a way to export more U.S. farm products. The Northern Plains Resource Council says Mexico and Canada have exported a total of $40 billion more in food and farm goods to the United States than the U.S. has shipped to those countries since NAFTA took effect in 1997.

Walter Archer, a Broadus farmer and rancher, worries that the TPP will foist food products on Americans that dont meet U.S. health and safety standards. He points to the demise of Country of Origin Labeling when producers in Canada and Mexico complained of an illegal obstacle to free trade in a requirement that U.S. consumers be told where their meat was produced.

Darrell Johnson, president of the Greater Yellowstone Central Labor Council, is concerned that NAFTA caused the loss of Montana manufacturing jobs in dimensional lumber, logs, plywood, particle board, aluminum, medical instruments and electricity.

Trans-Pacific Partnership will be worse than previous trade agreements, Johnson said.

Before the trade agreements started years ago, when our refineries replaced parts, valves, pumps, exchangers and compressors, those parts came from Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri and other industrialized areas of the U.S., said J.W. Westman, a union worker at a local refinery. We could count on those components to be of good quality and consistencies. Sadly, those parts now come from Mexico and other cheap labor areas of the world and we are no long assured of quality and consistency.

The TPP was negotiated in secret. It wont be effective in the United States unless the Senate ratifies it.

Business that stand to profit from international trade favor TPP and it has the support of many Republican lawmakers. However, President Barack Obama doesnt have a lot of support for the pact among his own party members. Hillary Clinton, who favored TPP when she was Obamas secretary of state, now says she opposes it. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders also are against TPP.

Trade agreements create winners and losers. Some businesses will gain greater market shares, others will get more competition with new rules. When the U.S. government agrees to trade rules that will help some Americans and disadvantage others, it must at least mitigate the harm.

Its ridiculous that free trade has come to mean that consumers cant know where their food and other products come from. Theres not a level playing field if U.S. products and plants cant compete effectively against products from foreign nations that have lower standards for health and safety.

As noted in an April 22 Associated Press report, there is recent precedent for renegotiating parts of a trade deal. Obama opposed the Korean Free Trade Agreement in his 2008 campaign, but as president negotiated some concessions, and Congress ratified the pact in 2011.

The TPP could be introduced and ratified in a lame duck Congress, but that would mean an up-or-down vote. A better option would be for the next president to aim for a fairer deal.
Australia's detention of asylum-seekers on PNG unlawful: court

Australia's detention of asylum-seekers on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island is unconstitutional and illegal, a court ruled Tuesday, prompting some refugee advocates to call for the camp to be shut down.

Canberra has come under international criticism for sending asylum-seekers who attempt to enter the country by boat to remote processing centres on Manus or the tiny Pacific island of Nauru but said the finding would not change its policies.

Papua New Guinea's then opposition leader Belden Namah challenged the Manus arrangement in court, claiming it violated the rights of asylum-seekers.

A pro-refugee protester shouts slogans during a 2015 demonstration in Sydney William West (AFP/File)

In its 34-page finding on Tuesday, Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court found that detaining asylum-seekers on the island was "contrary to their constitutional right of personal liberty".

"The detention of the asylum-seekers on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea... is unconstitutional and illegal," it said.

The court ordered the Australian and Papua New Guinean governments to "take all steps necessary to cease and prevent" the continued detention of the asylum-seekers and transferees on Manus.

It was not immediately clear how the ruling would affect the around 850 men held at the centre. Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said the court's decision "does not alter Australia's border protection policies - they remain unchanged".

"No one who attempts to travel to Australia illegally by boat will settle in Australia," he said in a statement.

PNG's Immigration Minister Rimbink Pato told Fairfax Media he would make a statement after digesting the decision and taking legal advice.

- 'Stop the abuse' -

Under a policy accepted by both sides of politics in Canberra, asylum-seekers found to be genuine refugees are denied resettlement in Australia. They are instead urged to return home or be resettled in PNG or Cambodia under a policy designed to stop people-smuggling boats.

Australia has long defended its policy, saying it has prevented the deaths of asylum-seekers at sea and secured its borders.

Under the previous Labor government, at least 1,200 people died trying to reach Australia by boat between 2008 and 2013.

Rights campaigners welcomed the court's decision, saying it was time for the Manus detention centre to be shut.

"PNG's Supreme Court has recognised that detaining people who have committed no crime is wrong," said Elaine Pearson, director of Human Rights Watch in Australia.

"For these men, their only 'mistake' was to try to seek sanctuary in Australia -- that doesn't deserve years in limbo locked up in a remote island prison.

"It's time for the Manus detention centre to be closed once and for all."

GetUp! human rights campaigner Aurora Adams said some people had been detained for close to three years and needed to be brought to Australia.

"It is time to stop the abuse of vulnerable people who only ask for safety and the opportunity to rebuild their lives," she said.

"The moral case is clear, there is no justification for locking people in offshore prison camps indefinitely."

Those detained on Manus should "immediately be released and guaranteed full constitutional rights", added Amnesty Internationals director for South East Asia Rafendi Djamin.

"There has been enough suffering," Djamin said. "It is time that the Australian government closed down the Manus Island detention centre, and the asylum seekers should be welcomed to Australia.

The Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA) said the ruling could open the door to asylum-seekers making claims for damages for allegedly being falsely imprisoned.

"The decision also strengthens claims that Australia has breached its duty of care to those who come within its migration system by keeping them in conditions that are unlawful," ALA spokesman Greg Barns said in a statement.

Reports said immigration authorities have recently been trying to move those classed as refugees out of detention in Manus and into a "transit centre", allowing them to leave during the day.

A similar policy has been adopted in Nauru, where the government last October said the Regional Processing Centre had been converted into an "open centre", giving its inhabitants freedom of movement.

Australia has been criticised for sending asylum-seekers to remote processing centres on Manus or the tiny Pacific island of Nauru Adek Berry (AFP/File)

An asylum seeker walking between tents at Australia's processing centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea

Bunk beds are assembled at Australia's regional processing centre on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea Dep Immigration & Border Protect (Dep Immigration & Border Protect/AFP/File)
Iraqi MPs approve partial cabinet as thousands protest

Iraqi lawmakers approved five of the prime minister's candidates for a new cabinet on Tuesday after weeks of delays and chaos at parliament, as thousands of people demonstrated for reforms.

But some MPs, who were barred from attending after chanting for the parliament speaker's removal and disrupting an earlier session, said they would mount a legal challenge.

Iraq has been hit by weeks of political turmoil surrounding Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's efforts to replace the cabinet of party-affiliated ministers with a government of technocrats.

Thousands of protesters demonstrated for reforms as the latest political turmoil played out in parliament HAIDAR MOHAMMED ALI (AFP)

The crisis comes as Iraqi forces battle to regain more ground from the Islamic State group, and both the United Nations and Washington have warned that it could undermine the fight against the jihadists.

Iraq has also been hit hard by the plummeting price of oil, revenues from which account for the vast majority of government funds.

The proposed cabinet changes have been opposed by powerful political parties that rely on control of ministries for patronage and funds, and parliament has repeatedly failed to vote on a new cabinet list.

Lawmakers approved Abadi's candidates for the ministries of electricity, health, higher education, labour and water resources, MP Sarwa Abdulwahid and two parliamentary officials told AFP.

But they rejected some of Abadi's nominees, and the premier will present additional candidates on Saturday, the sources said.

Earlier in the day, some MPs prevented Abadi from speaking at parliament and threw water bottles in his direction, lawmakers and a parliamentary official who was present at the session said.

Some lawmakers also chanted against parliament speaker Salim al-Juburi, terming him "illegitimate" and saying: "Salim! Out, out!"

The protesting lawmakers were then barred from attending the second session at which the partial cabinet was approved, vowing to file a court case over the issue.

Parliament has repeatedly been hit by chaos in recent weeks, with MPs holding an overnight sit-in at parliament, brawling in the chamber and seeking to sack Juburi, electing an interim replacement who has chaired his own rival sessions.

Abadi called a week ago for parliament to put aside its differences and do its job, but the antics in the legislature have continued.

- Only 'poverty and killing' -

As the latest political turmoil played out in parliament, thousands of protesters demonstrated for reforms nearby, answering a call from powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to do so.

The demonstrators, many carrying Iraqi flags, marched from Tahrir Square in central Baghdad to an entrance to the heavily fortified Green Zone where the government is headquartered, chanting that politicians "are all thieves".

The government "did not bring the country and Iraqis anything but poverty and killing," said demonstrator Abu Ali al-Zaidi, who travelled from Maysan province in the south for the protest.

"The political quotas and the parties that control everything are the reason for the failure of the government," said Abu Mohammed al-Sudani, a protester from Baghdad who carried an Iraqi flag.

Key government posts have for years been shared out based on political and sectarian quotas, a practice demonstrators want to end.

Ali al-Bahadli, a cleric from the Sadr Movement who was taking part in the demonstration, said: "We want the ministers to be independent, outside the control of the political parties and parliament."

Sadr, the scion of a powerful clerical family who in earlier years raised a rebellion against US-led forces and commanded a feared militia, had called for a mass demonstration in Baghdad on Tuesday to pressure the government to carry out reforms.

He organised a two-week sit-in at entrances to the Green Zone last month, calling it off only after Abadi presented a list of cabinet nominees.

Abadi called in February for "fundamental" change to the cabinet so that it includes "professional and technocratic figures and academics".

That kicked off the latest chapter in a months-long saga of Abadi proposing various reforms that parties and politicians with interests in the existing system have sought to delay or undermine.

Iraqi supporters of the Sadrist movement join a demonstration to press for reforms outside Baghdad's Green Zone on April 26, 2016 Haidar Mohammed Ali (AFP)

Protesters marched from Baghdad's Tahrir Square to the Green Zone, where the government is headquartered, chanting that politicians "are all thieves" Haidar Mohammed Ali (AFP)

Sadr supporters want the Prime Minister to press ahead with plans to replace politically affiliated ministers with technocrats Haidar Mohammed Ali (AFP)
Thai court sides with foreign gay couple in surrogacy row

A Thai court on Tuesday granted a foreign same-sex couple full custody of their surrogate baby daughter following a legal battle with the mother who refused to hand her over after giving birth.

Manuel Valero, from Spain, and his American husband Gordon Lake were blocked from leaving Thailand with their daughter Carmen after the surrogate declined to sign necessary paperwork following the birth in January 2015.

They accused the mother, Patidta Kusonsrang, of reneging on the surrogacy once she discovered the couple were gay.

Manuel Valero, from Spain, and his American husband Gordon Lake were blocked from leaving Thailand by the surrogate mother of their daughter Carmen Lilian Suwanrumpha (AFP)

The Bangkok court said in a statement that it granted custody to the couple, who live in Spain but have been caring for the 15-month-old in Bangkok, in order to "protect the well-being of the baby".

"Based on evidence and witness testimonies the judge was convinced that the girl's custodians took care of her with love", it said.

"Their homosexuality is not an obstacle to raising the girl and to making her happy like any other child," the statement added.

A tearful Valero told reporters outside the court that the family would soon return to Spain, where their other child, a son, has spent the past year living with an aunt.

"We are really happy that this nightmare is going to end soon," he said.

The lengthy custody battle was complicated by recent changes to Thailand's surrogacy laws and the fact that the kingdom does not legally recognise same-sex marriage.

The surrogate mother Patidta denied in local press interviews when the row surfaced that she refused permission because the couple were gay.

She has since shied away from the media and has yet to explain what motivated her decision.

Thailand for years hosted a thriving yet largely unregulated international surrogacy industry popular with same-sex couples. But a string of scandals in 2014 spurred the military government to ban foreigners from using Thai surrogates.

One high-profile case saw an Australian couple leave behind a child with Down's syndrome carried by a Thai surrogate but take home his healthy twin sister.

An Australian court said earlier this month that the child was "thriving" in his Thai home and was not abandoned, but rather his surrogate mother wanted to keep him.

In another scandal a Japanese man was controversially found to have fostered at least 15 babies with surrogates in Thailand.

The ban came into force after Carmen was born.
S. Korea's Park says North ready for nuclear test

North Korea is ready to carry out a fifth nuclear test and could press the button at any time, South Korea's president said Tuesday, amid reports Pyongyang has readied a powerful, new mid-range missile for an imminent flight test.

Concern has been growing for weeks that the North is building up to another nuclear experiment ahead of a rare, ruling party congress to be held early next month.

"We assess that they have completed preparations for a fifth nuclear test and can conduct it whenever they decide to," President Park Geun-Hye said during a meeting with local media.

Missiles roll through Kim Il-Sung square in Pyongyang during a mass military parade in 2015

If North Korea does go ahead, it would constitute a dramatic act of defiance in the face of tough UN sanctions imposed after its most recent nuclear test in January.

Some analysts have suggested that, by carrying out a fifth test so soon after the fourth, the North might hope to avoid a heavy package of additional sanctions -- but Park insisted that the international community's response would be swift and severe.

"Although the current sanctions are strong, we can impose even stronger sanctions that fill up any holes," the president said.

- Grave 'miscalculation' -

"North Korea's miscalculation is that by ignoring warnings from the international community and continuing to launch provocations, it will not defend its security, but only speed up its own collapse," she added.

In recent months the North has claimed a series of major technical breakthroughs in developing what it sees as the ultimate goal of its nuclear weapons programme -- an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets across the continental United States.

These have included success in miniaturising a nuclear device to fit on a missile, developing a warhead that can withstand atmospheric re-entry, and building a solid-fuel missile engine.

Earlier this month, leader Kim Jong-Un monitored the test of an engine specifically designed for an ICBM that he said would "guarantee" an eventual strike on the US mainland.

The South's Yonhap news agency on Tuesday quoted unidentified government sources as saying the North had readied a medium-range Musudan missile for an imminent test launch.

Existing UN resolutions forbid North Korea from the use of any ballistic missile-related technology.

The Musudan is believed to have an estimated range of anywhere between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometres (1,550 to 2,500 miles). The lower range covers the whole of South Korea and Japan, while the upper range would include US military bases on Guam.

The missile has never been successfully flight-tested.

A test firing on April 15 ended in what the Pentagon described as "fiery, catastrophic" failure -- apparently exploding seconds after launch.

According to the Yonhap sources, North Korea had prepared two Musudans for the test, but the second launch was called off after the first failed.

"The remaining missile now appears to be standing by for launch," one of the sources said.

South Korea's President Park Geun-Hye speaks during a meeting in trilateral meeting in Washington, DC on March 31, 2016 Mandel Ngan (AFP/File)
Turkey to use US rocket system in fight against IS

Turkey has struck a deal with the United States to deploy American light multiple rocket launchers on its border with Syria to combat the Islamic State group, according to the foreign ministry.

The High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) "will be deployed on the Turkish border in May as part of an agreement" with Washginton, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview published Tuesday.

The system is being brought in "so we will be able to hit Daesh targets more effectively," he told the Haberturk newspaper, using an acronym for IS.

Turkish soldiers sit on a tank as they observe the Syrian town of Ain al-Arab, known as Kobane by the Kurds, from a hill at the Turkish-Syrian border on October 9, 2014 Aris Messinis (AFP/File)

Turkey, a member of US-led coalition against the IS group, has increased its strikes in Syria after a series of deadly attacks on its soil blamed on the jihadists.

Ankara also allows US jets to use its air base in southern Turkey for air bombardments on the extremist group.

In recent weeks, the Turkish border town of Kilis has come under frequent attack from rockets fired across the border, prompting the army to respond with howitzer fire.

Cavusoglu said HIMARS would allow Turkey to hit IS positions within a 90-kilometre (56 mile) range, while Turkish artillery has a more limited range of 40 kilometres.

The aim is to gain control of the so-called Manbij Gap, a backdoor border route favoured by IS for smuggling jihadists into Syria.

Turkey wants to establish a safe zone in the 98 kilometre stretch between Manbij and the border in which to shelter Syrian refugees, the foreign minister said.

Ankara has long pressed for the creation of safe zones in the war-torn country. German Chancellor Angela Merkel this weekend said the zones were "of the utmost immediate importance also in our negotiations for a ceasefire" in Syria.

But Washington is set against the idea, saying it would require a no-fly zone, something that could lead to conflicts with Russian planes flying over Syria.
Clinton, Trump look for big wins in five primaries

Voters went to the polls Tuesday in five northeastern US states, where strong showings by presidential frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could propel them closer to clinching the Democratic and Republican nominations.

Should Clinton sweep the primaries in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware, it would put her on the cusp of Democratic victory against her rival Senator Bernie Sanders, a monumental step in her quest to become the nation's first female commander-in-chief.

"I don't have the nomination yet," the former secretary of state said in a town hall event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's largest city, on the eve of the vote.

People cast their ballots in a polling station during the presidential primary election on April 26, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Eduardo Munoz Alvarez (AFP)

"We're going to work really hard until the polls close."

Trump also was expected to extend his formidable lead in the bruising Republican race, even as rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich mounted a hasty -- and already fraying -- tag team effort to block him.

Kasich agreed to forego campaigning in Indiana, a winner-take-all state that votes May 3, and Cruz will return the favor later in New Mexico and Oregon.

But within hours of the surprise deal, Kasich -- the governor of Ohio -- was already playing it down, saying he was not telling his supporters in Indiana not to vote for him.

"This joke of a deal is falling apart, not being honored and almost dead," Trump mocked on Twitter. "Very dumb!"

- 'Experience and wisdom' -

Tuesday's voting began at 6:00 am (1000 GMT) in Connecticut and one hour later in the other states. Polls close at 8:00 pm (0000 GMT Wednesday).

Voting was brisk in Maryland. "So far it looks good," said Lucy Freeman, 79, the Democratic precinct chair at a voting station in Chevy Chase, a Washington suburb.

New US citizen Imalka Senadhira, a 53-year-old born in Sri Lanka, was voting for the first time and said she was nervous about "which way the country might go."

"I've always believed in experience and wisdom, so I'll go along with that," she told AFP.

Clinton was favored to win all five state Democratic contests, with polls giving her a double-digit lead over Sanders in Pennsylvania, the biggest state of the bunch with 189 delegates.

Should she run the board, it would heap pressure on Sanders, who has vowed to fight on until the California primary on June 7.

"I don't accept there is no path forward. Let's not count our chickens before they're hatched," Sanders told MSNBC Tuesday.

Sanders has deflected recent questions about whether he would actively support a Clinton candidacy if she is the nominee, suggesting it was up to her to win over his passionate young followers.

- 'Pathetic' plan -

Trump was riding high going into the latest "Super Tuesday" contests.

"We feel very good about our position tonight," campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said Tuesday on CNN.

Trump himself had been in full attack mode a day earlier, pouring scorn on the Cruz-Kasich deal and describing it as "collusion."

The partnership "shows how weak they are," Trump said. "It shows how pathetic they are."

Cruz, a US senator from Texas, told potential voters in Indiana Monday that the deal would give them "a straight and direct choice between our campaign and Donald Trump."

According to a recent CBS poll, Trump leads Indiana with 40 percent of likely Republican voters, compared to 35 percent for Cruz and 20 percent for Kasich.

Losing Indiana would make it much harder for Trump to gain the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination in the first round of balloting at the party's convention in Cleveland on July 18-21.

If he falls short, Trump runs the risk that his delegates, most of whom are bound to vote for him in only the first round, will desert him in subsequent rounds.

Lewandowski said that after Tuesday, Cruz and Kasich will both be mathematically eliminated from reaching the 1,237 threshold before the convention, and that they should both drop out and unite behind Trump.

But Cruz and Kasich have openly said they are now counting on a contested convention, where they have a shot at wooing enough delegates to snatch the nomination.

Cruz in particular has been successfully maneuvering in state party conventions to have individuals named to delegate slots who, though initially bound to Trump, would be sympathetic to Cruz in later rounds once free to vote for whomever they choose.

Party heavyweights, alarmed by the prospect of a Trump nomination, have long pressed for a united effort around a single candidate against him.

But Cruz is almost as unpopular with the party's establishment as Trump, and Kasich has refused to bow out even though he has only won his home state of Ohio.

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton greets supporters during a "Get Out the Vote" rally on April 25, 2016 in Philadelphia Justin Sullivan (Getty/AFP)

Latest national poll for the Democrat and Republican primaries before the April 26 vote Kun TIAN, Gillian HANDYSIDE (AFP)

US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump attends a campaign rally in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on April 23, 2016 Timothy A. Clary (AFP/File)

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz campaigns April 21, 2016 in Frederick, Maryland Win McNamee (Getty/AFP)

A woman holds up a sign for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders near a polling station during the Pennsylvania primary election on April 26, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Eduardo Munoz Alvarez (AFP)
Syria truce tested as Aleppo bombardment kills 25

Air strikes and shelling on Syria's second city Aleppo and a town to its west left 25 civilians reported dead Tuesday, as a surge in violence tests a troubled ceasefire.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he was "deeply concerned" by the fighting and urged both sides to stick to the two-month-old truce and troubled peace talks in Geneva.

"The cessation of hostilities should go on, otherwise it will be very difficult for humanitarian workers to deliver," Ban told reporters in Vienna.

More than 270,000 people have been killed since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011 Ameer Alhalbi (AFP/File)

The fighting severely threatens the February ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia and comes as UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva stall.

Syria's main opposition group, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), halted its formal participation this week in the latest round of talks that began on April 13.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura is due to give a progress report to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, when the talks are scheduled to go into recess.

A Syrian opposition group tolerated by President Bashar al-Assad's regime said Tuesday it had asked the United Nations to merge all opposition factions into one delegation at the next round of peace talks.

The comments came from Syria's former deputy premier Qadri Jamil, who was sacked by Assad in 2013 and now heads the so-called Moscow Group, an opposition faction close to the Kremlin which has met repeatedly with De Mistura at negotiations in Geneva.

- Rescue workers 'exhausted' -

On the ground, at least two male civilians died in rebel rocket fire on government-controlled areas in the west of Aleppo city on Tuesday afternoon, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In the rebel-held east, the air strikes and shelling came down "like rain", one resident told AFP.

Fifteen civilians were killed in air strikes on several rebel-held districts, according to civil defence volunteers known as White Helmets.

Another three civilians -- two women and a child -- were killed in government artillery shelling on another eastern neighbourhood, they said.

"The planes are bombing markets, residential areas... We're exhausted, we can't keep up," one civil defence worker said.

Five of their own were killed when the White Helmets headquarters in the town of Al-Atarib, controlled by Islamist rebels, was hit by an overnight air strike, the group said on Twitter.

It was not immediately clear whether the strike on Al-Atarib, 35 kilometres (20 miles) from Aleppo, was carried out by Assad's air force or his ally Russia.

An ambulance and a fire truck, both damaged, were parked in the bombed-out headquarters, surrounded by rubble and twisted metal frames.

A civil defence worker in Aleppo city said he and his colleagues were afraid their local headquarters would also be targeted.

- 'Killing machine' -

Fighting has surged on several fronts in Aleppo province, which is criss-crossed with supply routes that are strategic for practically all of Syria's warring sides.

Once Syria's commercial hub, Aleppo has been divided between rebel control in the east and government forces in the west since 2012.

In the rebel-held Fardos neighbourhood, an AFP correspondent saw a youth being helped down a rubble-strewn street with blood streaming from his head and leg.

Violence has rocked the city since Friday, with at least 100 civilians killed by artillery or rocket fire and air strikes.

On Monday, rebel shelling killed at least 19 civilians in government-held districts, according to the Observatory, a British-based monitor which relies on a network of sources on the ground.

A leading opposition group, the National Coalition, condemned the strike on Al-Atarib and hailed the "remarkable efforts and bravery of Civil Defence workers".

"Favourable conditions for the political process cannot be created whilst the Assad regime's killing machine continues to wreak death across Syria," the Coalition said in an online statement.

More than 270,000 people have been killed in Syria and millions forced from their homes since the conflict erupted in 2011.

Syrians evacuate the area following an air strike on the rebel-held eastern Bab al-Nayrab neighbourhood of Aleppo, on April 26, 2016 Ameer Alhalbi (AFP)
Former Myanmar monk protest leader sentenced to six months

A former leader of Myanmar's 2007 monk protests against the then-ruling junta said Tuesday he had been sentenced to six months in prison with hard labour on an immigration charge, in a case slammed by rights groups as politically motivated.

Nyi Nyi Lwin, who was previously known by the clerical name Gambira, told AFP he was "so disappointed" with the ruling, relating to a 2013 incident when he travelled to neighbouring Thailand for treatment for trauma suffered during years as a political prisoner.

"I have been given a six-month sentence with hard labour," he told AFP by telephone after the hearing at a court in the Maha Aung Myay area of Mandalay.

Nyi Nyi Lwin walks out of a court in Mandalay, Myanmar, on April 26, 2016 Zaw Zaw (AFP)

The former monk was among hundreds freed in amnesties in 2012 by the quasi-civilian government that replaced outright military rule a year earlier.

He had been serving a 68-year prison term for his prominent role in monk-led demonstrations five years earlier, known as the "Saffron Revolution", that were brutally crushed by the army.

Nyi Nyi Lwin has been repeatedly rearrested, while his family have raised concerns about his mental health, which suffered during years of detention.

Human Rights Watch slammed the latest case against him, saying he was subjected to physical and psychological torture following his initial arrest in 2007.

HRW deputy Asia director Phil Robertson said the case "reeks of the ugly political prosecutions of discarded military juntas" and called for Myanmar's new government, under democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi, to do more to help former political prisoners.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) took power last month, riding a wave of huge popular support in a nation choked by repressive military rule for decades.

Suu Kyi, who spent some 15 years under house arrest during the dark junta days, has in recent weeks overseen a push by her administration to pardon scores of political prisoners and quash charges against activists facing trial.

But that did not extend to Nyi Nyi Lwin's case.

His sister Lwin Lwin Mar told AFP that the court found that he had crossed the border illegally when he travelled to Thailand for treatment.
Every year since 1958, the nation has marked Law Day on May 1. Law Day provides an opportunity for us to commemorate our national ideals of liberty, justice, and equality under the law and affords us an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to those great principles.

The American Bar Association has designated the theme of this Law Day as Miranda: More than Words to mark the 50th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miranda v. Arizona. In Miranda, the court held that law enforcement personnel must advise a suspect of his or her rights in order to use statements made during a custodial interrogation in a later criminal proceeding. As a result of this case, police developed the Miranda warning, which lets people questioned by police know of their constitutional rights to refrain from speaking to police and to consult an attorney.

The Miranda warning has become so ingrained in our popular culture and consciousness that many of us know all or some of its words, starting with, You have the right to remain silent. Yet, as the ABA Law Day theme implies, there is much more to Miranda than the words of the warning; it has become a living symbol of the importance of procedural fairness and equal justice under the law in our criminal justice system.

Unfortunately, as a nation, many challenges still remain in effectuating our national pledge of justice for all, including dealing with racial disparities in the justice system, disproportionate sentencing, and inadequately funded public-defense systems. We can and must do better; the Constitution and our cherished national principles demand it.

This Law Day, let us reflect on the importance of our constitutional rights, promote public awareness and understanding of those rights, and commit ourselves to the work that remains to be done in ensuring that we have a criminal-justice system that is fair for all Americans.
Gruesome murders: Bangladesh reels from Islamist attacks

Suspected Islamists have hacked to death two gay rights activists in the Bangladeshi capital, the latest in a series of chilling murders in the Muslim-majority country.

With the list of victims growing fast and rights groups warning that the attackers appear to be expanding their range of targets, pressure is mounting on the Bangladesh government to act.

- Who has been targeted? -

Bangladeshi activists place national flags on mock coffins, symbolizing the deaths of secular publishers and bloggers Munir Uz Zaman (AFP/File)

Since early last year, at least six secular bloggers, liberal activists and writers have also been killed in Bangladesh -- including Bangladeshi-born US citizen Avijit Roy who was hacked to death on a crowded Dhaka street last February.

Many more bloggers and activists, who have also openly criticised Islam, have received death threats, forcing some to flee the country or go into hiding.

A number of Christians, Hindus and Sufi, Ahmadi and Shiite Muslims have also been killed since last year, heightening fears for religious minorities in the officially secular country that comprises mainly Sunni Muslims.

Two foreigners, a Japanese farmer and a faith-based Italian aid worker, were also shot dead last year.

An English professor was hacked to death on Saturday as he walked to a bus stop. Although he had never knowingly criticised Islam, police suspect he was targeted for leading music and literature groups at his university.

- Who is behind the attacks? -

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for murdering the two foreigners, warning in September that "citizens of the crusader coalition" would not be safe in Muslim nations.

IS later also later claimed to have carried out a bombing at a packed Shiite shrine, and other attacks on minorities. The professor, it said, was killed for "calling to the creed of atheism".

A Bangladeshi branch of Al-Qaeda said Tuesday it carried out the latest murders, because the two men had worked to "promote homosexuality". It has also said it was behind the murders of the secular bloggers and writers.

But Bangladesh's government rejects both groups' claims and says homegrown Islamist groups are instead responsible for all the attacks.

- Are the claims credible? -

Bangladesh's top police officers have also repeatedly rejected the claims, saying there is no evidence that either group has any presence in the country. They have echoed the government in blaming local banned Islamist outfits.

Independent security analysts are more cautious, saying it is possible that some homegrown militant groups have established contact with IS or Al-Qaeda or have been inspired by their operations in the Middle East and north Africa.

- What's the government's position? -

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also points the finger at the main opposition and its Islamist ally, accusing them of trying to destabilise the country -- claims rejected by both groups.

Bangladesh has been plagued by political unrest in the last three years, a period which has seen the largest Islamist party banned, while the mainstream opposition boycotted the last elections in January 2014 over vote rigging fears.

Death sentences handed down to several leading Islamists for war crimes over their roles in the 1971 conflict to secede from Pakistan have exacerbated tensions between the secular government and its opponents.

Scores of opposition activists including Islamists have gone missing or been detained since last year's major crackdown by the government on deadly opposition-led street protests.

Experts fear this crackdown has radicalised some of Hasina's opponents.

- How have authorities responded?

Last year a court sentenced two students to death for the 2013 murder of Ahmed Rajib Haider, the first of the attacks targeting secular writers.

Another six people were convicted on lesser charges related to Haider's death.

But no one has been convicted over any of the deaths that have occurred since, although police have made numerous arrests.

Secular activists across the country have demanded greater police protection and justice, fearing a culture of impunity for the attackers.

Their fears have been bolstered by comments of top officials, including Prime Minister Hasina who has criticised the secular bloggers' "dirty" writings on religion.

Relatives and friends attend funeral prayers for Bangladeshi activist Xulhaz Mannan in Dhaka on April 26, 2016 Rehman Asad (AFP)

The bodies of two gay rights activists who were hacked to death are brought down from an apartment in Dhaka, on April 25, 2016 Rehman Asad (AFP)
South Sudan rebel chief becomes vice-president and urges unity

South Sudan's rebel chief Riek Machar finally returned to Juba on Tuesday and was sworn in as vice-president of the world's newest country, calling for "unity" after more than two years of ferocious civil war.

"We need to bring our people together so they can unite and heal the wounds," said Machar, greeted by ministers, diplomats and the release of white doves as he stepped out of a UN plane, after a week-long delay that had threatened a long-negotiated peace deal.

Machar, who was originally due back on April 18, headed immediately to the presidential palace to be sworn in alongside his longtime arch rival, President Salva Kiir.

South Sudan rebel leader Riek Machar (C) meets with his supporters after landing at Juba international airport on April 26, 2016 Samir Bol (AFP)

Kiir, who shook the hand of Machar and called him "my brother", said they would "work immediately" to set up a unity government.

"I am very happy to welcome and warmly receive my brother Dr. Riek Machar," Kiir said. "I have no doubt that his return to Juba today marks the end of the war and the return of peace and stability to South Sudan."

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Machar's return marked "a new phase" in efforts to seal peace and called for "the immediate formation" of a unity government."

The peace deal struck in August 2015 to end the brutal war provides for a 30-month transitional government leading to elections.

Machar's delay in returning to Juba under the terms of the deal had infuriated the international community after months of negotiations spent on getting the rivals to return to the city and share power.

"I am very committed to implement this agreement so that the process of national reconciliation and healing is started as soon as possible, so that the people can have faith in the country that they fought for, for so long," Machar said on being sworn in.

- Deep suspicion -

Ensuring they work together in a unity government, and that the thousands of rival armed forces now in separate camps inside the capital keep their guns quiet, will be an even bigger challenge.

Both sides remain deeply suspicious, and fighting continues with multiple militia forces unleashed who now pay no heed to either Kiir or Machar.

Machar's return had been stalled by arguments that at one point, in a country awash with weapons, came down to a dispute about just over two dozen rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns that the force guarding him were allowed to have.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than two million driven from their homes in the conflict, which has reignited ethnic divisions and been characterised by gross human rights abuses.

The economy is in ruins, over five million people need aid and over 180,000 people are crammed into UN peacekeeping camps, too terrified to venture outside the razor wire fences for fear of being killed.

Tensions are high, and the days ahead will be critical.

"We need the guns to stay silent and give people time -- both as official warring parties and as individuals -- with one another in coming days," said Casie Copeland from the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank.

Suffering is on an epic scale. Parts of the country, especially the devastated oil producing northern Unity region, have been pushed to the brink of famine.

There are huge expectations Machar's arrival means the myriad of problems will be solved swiftly -- but there will be no quick fix.

- 'Best chance yet' -

Diplomats note gloomily that while Machar's return is the "best chance yet", the deal imposed under intense international pressure only sees the country go back to the status quo that existed before his July 2013 sacking as vice president that precipitated the war.

The agreement has already been repeatedly broken with months of fighting since it was signed, and its key power sharing formula left in ruins after Kiir nearly tripled the number of regional states.

The fighting erupted in December 2013 when Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup.

The conflict has witnessed the abduction and rape of thousands of women and girls, massacres of civilians, recruitment of child soldiers, murder, mutilation and even cannibalism.

South Sudan is one of poorest countries on the planet, and had some world's worst indicators for development, health and education even before the war.

Machar has over 1,500 armed troops in the capital, while government forces have officially just over double that number.

All other soldiers have to remain at least 25 kilometres (15 miles) outside the capital.

The threat of violence at a local level remains enormous, with multiple militia forces unleashed and out of control.

Machar and Kiir are decades-old rivals and even if they can work together both must also rein in powerful hardline field commanders.

South Sudan's civil war began in December 2013 when Salva Kiir accused Riek Machar of plotting a coup

The civil war in South Sudan has torn open ethnic divisions and been characterised by human rights violations Samir Bol (cds/AFP/File)

A billboard featuring portraits of South Sudan's President Salva Kiir (L) and opposition leader Riek Machar displayed in Juba, South Sudan on April 14, 2016 Albert Gonzalez Farran (cds/AFP/File)
Ex-Barclays chief eyes bank's African assets

A company run by the ousted former boss of Barclays said Tuesday that it was mulling a bid for the troubled British bank's African operations.

As part of a major restructuring, Barclays announced last month that it will sell down its 62.3-percent interest in Barclays Africa to 20 percent over the next two to three years.

Atlas Mara, a finance company co-founded by ex-Barclays chief Bob Diamond revealed in a statement that it has held talks with investors over the possible acquisition.

Bob Diamond was forced to resign as Barclays chief executive in 2012 Ian Kington (AFP/File)

"Atlas Mara Limited acknowledges that it has had discussions with a consortium of investors that is exploring an acquisition of Barclays' stake in Barclays Africa and a potential combination of Atlas Mara with Barclays Africa," read the statement.

The consortium includes private equity vehicle Atlas Merchant Capital, which was established by Diamond, and the Mara Group that was founded by Ugandan businessman Ashish J. Thakkar.

Diamond and Thakkar formed Atlas Mara in 2013 with the aim of consolidating financial services companies in Africa.

The company has so far made acquisitions in seven sub-Saharan countries from Botswana to Nigeria, with plans to expand that to 10 to 15 markets over the next few years.
Fiat Chrysler net profits rev up but debt builds

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) Tuesday beat analysts' forecasts with significantly higher first-quarter net profits driven by sales in North America but the Italian-US automaker's debt pile also rose.

The results were FCA's first as a single, unified global group since its January's split from luxury unit Ferrari.

Helped by the sale of Ferrari, FCA said it had reduced net industrial debt "significantly" in 2015 to 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion), down from the 7.7 billion at the end of 2014.

Helped by the sale of Ferrari, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said it had reduced net industrial debt "significantly" in 2015 to 5 billion euros, down from the 7.7 billion at the end of 2014 Money Sharma (AFP/File)

But the automaker said the total was back up to 6.6 billion by the end of March, owing to seasonal and currency factors.

Fiat Chrysler shares fell 3.25 percent to 6.99 euros in the afternoon.

CEO Sergio Marchionne said the group was determined to cut debts to below 5 billion euros this year.

Net profit for the first three months accelerated to 478 million euros compared to 27 million a year earlier, the carmaker said. Analysts had expected profits of around 356 million euros.

Adjusted operating profit for January to March exceeded expectations in almost doubling to 1.379 billion euros -- ahead of analysts' forecasts of 1.07 billion -- while sales jumped three percent to 26.6 billion euros, bolstered by strong demand for jeeps.

The firm confirmed its objectives for 2016, including sales of over 110 billion euros and adjusted net profit of 1.9 billion, up from 1.7 billion in 2015.

Those ambitions remain in place despite the recall announced on April 22 of more than a million vehicles worldwide after dozens of people were injured by cars they thought were locked in "park" mode but kept moving.
France warns over EU-US trade pact

France emerged Tuesday as a leading voice of scepticism over plans for a US-EU free trade zone covering 850 million people, bluntly warning it will not accept a deal that lowers standards for people's health and the environment.

Flying in the face of US President Barack Obama's call for a groundbreaking deal to be wrapped up this year, senior members of the French government said there was no urgency and, indeed, the likelihood of striking any pact at all is waning.

Negotiators are this week sitting around a table in New York seeking a way forward to create the world's biggest free trade area covering the United States and Europe, which has been under discussion since 2013.

"I want to be clear: it will not succeed if it does not guarantee that the standards we have in France for our citizens' health and environment will be maintained," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said of the planned US-EU free trade zone Thomas Samson (AFP/File)

They aim to topple remaining trade tariffs, which are already relatively low.

But, far more challenging, they must agree on streamlined rules for politically sensitive areas such as product standards, genetically-modified crops, the environment, consumer protection, how to decide disputes between big business and states, and how to treat jealously guarded geographically-based brand names like champagne.

- Chance of a deal 'fading' -

"I want to be clear: it will not succeed if it does not guarantee that the standards we have in France for our citizens' health and environment will be maintained," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told an environmental conference in Paris.

Earlier, asked about whether a deal may be reached before the end of Obama's term in January 2017, Matthias Fekl, France's minister of state for foreign trade, told broadcaster RTL: "No, I don't think so. The likelihood, or risk, of reaching any accord is fading."

Fekl, who is France's envoy to the talks, added that there was no desire in Europe to "sign up to anything at any price".

Speaking on a visit to Germany, French Finance Minister Emmanuel Macron said "there is no urgency" to sign a deal which France has to be sure is "complete, ambitious and which does not disown any of our interests" but is drawn up "fully transparently".

- Street protests -

His comments come a day after US and European negotiators opened a 13th round of talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in New York, which are expected to last a week.

Should the agreement succeed, it could give an economic boost of 120 billion euros ($135 billion) to the EU and 95 billion euros to the United States by 2027, according to a 2013 study carried out by the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research and financed by the European Commission.

Earlier this week, Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a joint pitch for more transatlantic trade, vowing to complete the US-EU pact in the face of mounting opposition in Europe.

On the eve of Obama's visit to Germany, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in the country against the proposed pact which has raised fears it would erode ecological and labour market standards, and in protest over the secrecy shrouding the talks.

The pact also faces a threat in the form of a British referendum on exiting the EU which is to take place in June.

As one of the largest trading economies of the bloc, Britain would play a major role in the pact, but if it votes to leave the EU, it could deal a devastating blow to trade pact's prospects.

It has also invoked growing anti-free trade talk in the US presidential election race and growing suspicions among the American public because details of the talks are secret.

US President Barack Obama (L) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel together pledged to complete the US-EU pact in the face of mounting opposition in Europe Kai Pfaffenbach (Pool/AFP)
Iran summons Swiss envoy over $2 bn US court ruling

Iran Tuesday summoned Switzerland's ambassador, who represents Washington's interests in Tehran, to protest a court ruling that $2 billion of frozen Iranian assets be used to compensate American victims of "terror".

The US Supreme Court ruled last week that Iran must hand the sum to survivors and relatives of those killed in attacks blamed on the Islamic republic.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif threatened Monday to take legal action in the International Court of Justice against the United States if the amount in frozen funds is "diverted".

US Marines search for victims on October 31, 1983 after a bomb attack on the headquarters of a US barracks in Beirut Philippe Bouchon (AFP/File)

"We hold the US administration responsible for preservation of Iranian funds and if they are plundered, we will lodge a complaint with the ICJ for reparation," Zarif said.

Last week, Tehran said the ruling amounted to theft.

A senior official at the foreign ministry on Tuesday handed Swiss ambassador Giulio Haas two notes bearing Iran's "official objection", a statement said.

It called the Supreme Court decision "a clear violation of agreed mutual commitments" and "both the judicial impunity and that of Iranian government's properties and funds".

It also reprimanded a local New York court's recent verdict that accused Iran of having a role in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The court in March said Tehran had to pay $10 billion to the victims of 9/11 and insurers after Iran failed to show up to defend itself against the charges.

These "baseless accusations to our country, without any documents or proof, ... are ridiculous and against accepted international law norms," the note said.

The Supreme Court decision affects more than 1,000 Americans.

The attacks blamed on Iran include the 1983 bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

Iran's own Supreme Court also voiced its disapproval Tuesday, judiciary news service Mizan Online reported.

"The courts of every country have authority over their own territory and international civil cases" must be handled either through the International Court of Justice or through mutual agreement, it said.
Sudan says referendum result shows Darfur 'crisis' over

Sudan said on Tuesday the result of a referendum in Darfur shows that the conflict in the war-torn region that has killed tens of thousands of people is finally over.

On Saturday, officials announced that almost 98 percent of Darfur voters had opted to keep the region as five states in a referendum that was boycotted by the opposition and criticised internationally.

The vote on whether to unite Darfur into a single autonomous region was held over three days between April 11 and 13.

Sudanese election staff seal a ballot box at a polling station in North Darfur's state capital El Fasher as the polls close on April 13, 2016 Ashraf Shazly (AFP/File)

"The page on the Darfur crisis has now been turned," Amin Hassan Omar, the official in charge of the Darfur file in President Omar al-Bashir's government, told reporters at a press conference in Khartoum.

"Now we need to deal with the after-effects of this crisis."

In 2003, ethnic minority rebels in Darfur mounted an insurgency against the Arab-dominated government of Bashir -- who is wanted for alleged war crimes in the conflict -- complaining of economic and political marginalisation.

More than 2.5 million people displaced by the conflict live in the vast region of western Sudan, and according to United Nations figures 300,000 have been killed in the conflict.

A united Darfur with greater autonomy has long been a demand of ethnic minority insurgents battling Khartoum, but rebel groups boycotted the referendum, calling it unfair.

Bashir, whose ruling National Congress Party supports the five-state system, had insisted that the ballot go ahead as stipulated in a 2011 peace agreement signed with some rebel groups.

Darfur was a single region until 1994 when the government split it into three states, and later added another two in 2012, claiming it would make local government more efficient.

On Tuesday, Omar blamed the rebels for the unrest.

"The rebel groups didn't want peace. They want war," he said, adding that the government now plans to collect weapons that are widespread in the region.

"We will first collect heavy weapons which are in the hands of outlaws," Omar said, adding that some of these "outlaws had ties" with the country's security apparatuses.

Since 2003, parts of Darfur have been further destabilised by conflicts between the region's myriad ethnic and tribal groups, as well as by rising crime levels.

Later on Tuesday, the head of the Darfur Regional Authority, Tijani Sissi, also called for the speedy round-up of weapons in Darfur.

"I urge the state to speed up the collecting of weapons from citizens in order to prevent Darfur from falling into tribal conflict," the official SUNA news agency quoted him as saying in parliament.

More than 2.5 million people displaced by the conflict in Darfur which began in 2003 live in the vast region of western Sudan Ashraf Shazly (AFP/File)
Britain 'disappointed' at pace of Egypt student murder probe

Britain has said it is "disappointed" at the lack of progress in the investigation into the murder of an Italian student studying at Cambridge who was found dead in Egypt in February.

Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old doctoral student who had been researching trade unions, disappeared in Cairo on January 25.

His badly mutilated body was found over a week later by the side of a road on the city's outskirts.

The parents of Italian student Giulio Regeni, Paola Regeni (L) and Claudio Regeni (R), hold a banner reading ''Truth for Giulio Regeni'' during a press conference at the Italian Senate in Rome on March 29, 2016 Andreas Solaro (AFP/File)

The killing has caused tensions between Italy and Egypt -- earlier this month, Rome recalled its ambassador in protest at the lack of developments in the probe.

The Foreign Office in London issued a statement late Monday on the killing of Regeni, who had reportedly lived in Britain for a decade.

"Three months after Mr Regeni's death, we are disappointed by the limited progress made in the case and are concerned that Italy has not found the cooperation that Egypt has provided to them to be sufficient," it said.

The statement added that, while allegations that Egyptian security forces were behind the killing were "unproven", "we urge the Egyptian authorities to consider every possible scenario as they investigate."

Over 11,000 people have signed a petition urging the British government to ensure that "a credible investigation of this extrajudicial killing is carried out".

Egypt's presentation of a theory that a criminal gang carried out the murder has been received with extreme scepticism in Italy and helped fuel public anger over the case.
Number of foreign fighters entering Iraq, Syria plummets: US general

The number of foreign fighters entering Iraq and Syria has plummeted over the past year, a US general said Tuesday.

Major General Peter Gersten told Pentagon reporters that when he arrived in Baghdad about a year ago, between 1,500 and 2,000 foreign fighters were joining the Islamic State group's ranks each month.

"Now we have been fighting this enemy for a year, our estimates are down to 200 (per month) and we are actually seeing now an increase in the desertion rates of these fighters," Gersten said.

Islamic State recruits pictured marching in a video released by the militant group's official Al-Raqqa site

The general attributed the drop in part to the US-led coalition's continued attacks on the IS group's cash-storage facilities.

He said the coalition has carried out about 20 such strikes that have blown up as much as $800 million worth of cash, much of it stashed in houses.

"We are seeing a fracturing in their morale, we are seeing their inability to pay, we are seeing the inability to fight," Gersten claimed.

"We are watching them try to leave Daesh. In every single way, their morale is being broken," he added, using an Arabic abbreviation for the IS group.

Gersten declined to provide an estimate on the overall size of the IS force, but this month Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed the number was at its lowest ebb since the United States began monitoring the group in 2104.

That number has previously been estimated at between 20,000 and 31,500 foreign and local fighters.

In addition to hitting their cash stores, US planes and drones have targeted IS oil trucks and wells in a bid to further diminish their financial resources.
Nigeria taking action as piracy and clashes on rise

Nigeria needs to step up security to stem a rise in incidents of piracy and communal clashes, as well as the continued threat from Boko Haram insurgents, Defence Minister Mansur Muhammad Dan-Ali said Tuesday.

The minister, who is also a retired brigadier general, told a government-sponsored seminar that "all security agencies in Nigeria have been called upon to crush and deter the threats."

A statement reporting his comments said there would be continued support for all agencies, particularly those battling the Boko Haram insurgency in the country's northeast, which has claimed about 20,000 lives since 2009.

Soldiers and security block a road in Maiduguri, Nigeria on January 24, 2015 Tunji Omirin (AFP/File)

Ship hijackings meanwhile have become more frequent since President Muhammadu Buhari last year announced he was winding down an amnesty to former militants in the oil-rich Niger delta region.

Dirk Steffen, maritime security director at the Denmark-based Risk Intelligence firm, told AFP on Tuesday that some 40 vessels have been attacked by pirates inside and outside Nigerian territorial waters since the beginning of this year.

Clashes over grazing too have multiplied, with the latest attack on Monday by gunmen believed to be ethnic Fulani killing at least seven people in a farming community in southeast Enugu state, police said on Tuesday.

Local media however put the death toll at between 20 and 48 with scores of homes destroyed. Nigeria's police chief Solomon Arase said riot troops have been deployed to the affected Agatu area to restore peace.
The $405 million Tongue River Railroad proposed for southeast Montana is the latest casualty of the crashing coal economy.

The federal Surface and Transportation Board published its unanimous decision Tuesday to kill the coal railroad given the recent bankruptcy of Arch Coal.

Arch was to develop the Otter Creek Mine south of Ashland, which the railroad was to serve. In March, Arch suspended its environmental permitting application to Montana's Department of Environmental Quality.

"At this time, there appears to be little prospect that Otter Creek Coals mine permit will be secured in the foreseeable future," the STB concluded. "Otter Creek Coal and its parent, Arch, have both filed for bankruptcy, and Otter Creek Coal has suspended its application for an MDEQ mining permit indefinitely."

The Otter Creek Mine had been in the works since 2010, when Arch Coal agreed to pay Montana $85.84 million for the development rights to 14 state-owned coal parcels in southeast Montanas Otter Creek Valley. At the time, Arch Coal representatives told The Gazette that they would break ground at the mine in five years and be in full production by 2016.

Arch partnered in the Tongue River Railroad Co. with BNSF Railway and TRRC Financing, a limited liability company.

"The Tongue River Railroad Co. is disappointed with the decision today to dismiss our current application," said Matt Jones, BNSF spokesman for Montana and Wyoming. "In the event the development conditions improve in the future, renewing the project will require a new permit application and environmental review."

Last November, the railroad collaborators asked the federal government to suspend the permitting process for the would-be railroad until Otter Creek Mines permits were approved.

Neighbors who have battled Otter Creek Mine for decades weren't ruling out another mine proposal resurfacing at some point.

"I'm a little hesitant to say it's over, because for 30 years it hasn't been over," said Clint McRae, a rancher and member of Northern Plains Resource Council.

It was Northern Plains that asked the STB to reject the developers request that the Tongue River Railroad application be suspended, but kept alive. Tuesdays published decision was a win for Northern Plains.

"It is certainly a step in the right direction," McRae said. "This decision amplifies what we've said all along, that this is a highly speculative venture that doesn't have any markets and shouldn't go forward."

The railroad was running into stiff opposition not only from environmentalists objecting to coal development, but also from the Northern Cheyenne tribe, which last fall cited concerns about damage to tribal culture and the environment when asking STB to reject the railroad.

The coal economy is in rough shape. Natural gas, priced lower than coal, is poised to take over coal's spot as the nation's top source for electricity generation this year, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

Coal exports aren't doing well either. With world coal supply exceeding demand, sale prices haven't been high enough to make it worthwhile to haul Powder River Basin coal by rail to the Pacific Northwest for shipping.

Three of America's largest coal companies  Arch Coal, Peabody Coal and Alpha Natural Resources  with mines in Wyoming and Montana have filed for bankruptcy in recent months.

Public concern about climate change has also driven states like Washington and Oregon to pass laws edging utilities away from coal power.

The federal Clean Power Plan rolled out last year might also require states to phase in cuts to greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, including in Montana where emissions cuts of 47 percent are prescribed. The Clean Power Plan is on hold pending litigation.
South Sudan's long road to peace

South Sudan's rebel chief Riek Machar finally returned on Tuesday to the capital Juba, where he was sworn in as vice-president of a unity government formed to end more than two years of civil war in the world's newest country.

His return, delayed by a week, is seen as a crucial step towards cementing a fragile peace deal brokered in August 2015.

The conflict in South Sudan, which won independence from Sudan in 2011, has pitted government troops loyal to President Salva Kiir against those of Machar, who was sacked as vice president five months before the war began in December 2013.

South Sudanese government troops stand in formation at Juba International Airport on April 25, 2016 Albert Gonzalez Farran (AFP/File)

Tens of thousands have been killed and more than two million people forced from their homes.

The UN says South Sudan ranks "lower in terms of human development than just about every other place on earth".

Here are key events in the war.

- 2013 -

December 15: Heavy gunfire erupts in Juba, where tensions have risen since July when Machar was fired as vice-president. Kiir blames Machar for an attempted coup, but Machar denies this and accuses the president of purging his rivals. Fighting spreads and rebels seize key towns.

- 2014 -

January 10-20: Uganda sends troops to back Kiir. Government troops recapture the northern city of Bentiu, capital of oil-rich Unity State, and Bor, capital of the eastern state of Jonglei.

April 15-17: More than 350 civilians are massacred in Bentiu and Bor, according to the UN.

August 26: A UN helicopter is shot down, with three onboard killed. Each side blames the other.

- 2015 -

February 1: Kiir and Machar sign a new agreement to end the fighting, the latest in a series of deals. Like the others, it is broken within days.

June 30: South Sudan's army raped then torched girls alive inside their homes, a UN rights report says, warning of "widespread human rights abuses". Rebels have been accused of similar atrocities.

July 2: UN and US sanctions decided against six leaders from both sides.

August 17: Machar signs a peace deal in Addis Ababa.

August 26: Kiir signs the peace accord, but issues a list of "serious reservations". Fighting continues.

October 3: Kiir nearly triples the number of regional states, undermining a key power-sharing clause of the peace agreement.

October 28: African Union investigators list atrocities committed, which include forced cannibalism and dismemberment.

November 5: UN experts warn that killings, rapes and abductions continue and that both sides are stockpiling weapons. Over two dozen armed groups are involved in fighting characterised by shifting alliances, opportunism and historic grievances.

November 27: Some 16,000 children have been forced to fight, amid a growing humanitarian crisis, the UN says. More than 2.8 million people, almost a quarter of the population, needs emergency food aid.

- 2016 -

February 8: UN agencies warn at least 40,000 people are being starved to death in the war zone, with rival forces blocking aid.

February 12: Kiir reappoints Machar as vice president.

April 11: A 1,370-strong rebel force completes their arrival in Juba ahead of Machar's expected return. A day later South Sudan's rebel deputy chief Alfred Ladu Gore returns to the capital.

April 25: South Sudan's top rebel military commander Simon Gatwech Dual returns as well.

April 26: Machar returns to Juba and is sworn in as vice-president.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calls for a new unity government to be immediately set up.

The war began in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir (pictured) accused his rival Machar of plotting a coup Charles Atiki Lomodong (AFP/File)
Maersk employee released in Angola after abduction

Danish conglomerate A.P. Moller-Maersk said on Tuesday that one of its employees in Angola had been released unharmed after being held captive for four days.

"Maersk Group can confirm an employee was abducted in Angola and held captive for four days and that he has been released unharmed," spokeswoman Louise Munter said in a statement.

The company was providing support for the man and his family "in this difficult time," she said.

A Maersk employee in Angola has been released unharmed after being held captive for four days, a company spokeswoman said Patrik Stollarz (AFP/File)

"Due to the ongoing investigation by local authorities and the security of our employees, the Maersk Group will not be providing any further details," she added.

Denmark-based website ShippingWatch said the man was a senior employee at Maersk's container terminal operating company, APM Terminals, in Angola.

The group's oil unit, Maersk Oil, also operates in the country but said in March it would cut staff in the capital, Luanda, "in view of the continued challenging market conditions for deepwater developments."

The drop in the price of crude oil has plunged the economy of Africa's second largest crude producer into a crisis, and risks threatening the stability of the country.
11 dead including 8 soldiers in Cape Verde shooting: gov't

Eleven men including eight soldiers were shot dead on Tuesday at a military telecommunications centre in Cape Verde, officials said, adding that a missing soldier was suspected of carrying out the attack.

The government said in a statement that two Spanish technicians and a local civilian were among those killed in Monte Tchota, north of the capital Praia, at the army-guarded centre.

"Eleven people have lost their lives," the statement said. "The victims were all male, aged between 20 and 51."

Eleven people including eight soldiers were shot dead at a telecommunications centre in Cape Verde, a police spokesman announced on radio and television Daniel Slim (AFP/File)

It added: "A soldier who worked in the military centre has been reported missing and there are strong indications that he carried out this attack."

Calling for people to remain calm, the government rejected rumours that the shooting had taken place in the capital and that airports had been closed in response.

"The airports are functioning normally," it said.

It also added that there was "no link between these events and drug-trafficking", following media reports that raised the possibility of an attack in retaliation for recent major drug seizures on the archipelago.

"According to preliminary information, the motivations for these events were personal, which excludes the theory of an attack against the state of Cape Verde," the government said.

"The authorities are taking all necessary measures to shed light on this affair", it added, deploring the shooting as a "tragedy".

Nine guns, along with ammunition, were recovered several hours after the shooting in a car parked in a residential area of Praia, according to the statement.

Spain's foreign ministry confirmed the deaths of two Spanish citizens.
US sends warning shot in Iraq via Hellfire missile

Before blowing up a jihadist cash hoard in Iraq, the US military warned bystanders of an impending strike by using a Hellfire missile to deliver the wartime equivalent of a doorknock, an official said Tuesday.

It was the first time the Pentagon has conducted a "knock operation" in Iraq and Syria, and the inspiration came from watching the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pioneer the controversial tactic in Gaza, Major General Peter Gersten said.

The Baghdad-based commander told Pentagon reporters that ahead of the strike on a cash-storage facility on April 5 in Mosul, the military learned that a woman, children and other "non-combatants" also were using the building.

Iraqi fighters hold their position about 25 kilometres east of Mosul on September 9, 2014 JM Lopez (AFP/File)

He said the United States aims to avoid civilian casualties, and in this instance decided to warn occupants by exploding a missile just above the roof.

"We went as far as actually to put a Hellfire on top of the building and air burst it so it wouldn't destroy the building, simply knock on the roof to ensure that she and the children were out of the building," he said.

"Then we proceeded with our operations."

Ultimately, the woman died anyway because she ran back just after US forces launched bombs to blow it up.

"Much as we tried to do exactly what we wanted to do and minimize civilian casualties, post-weapons release, she actually ran back into the building," Gersten said. "That's ... very difficult for us to watch."

Gersten said several men had also fled the building. He did not say if they were IS jihadists.

"The men that were in that building, multiple men, literally trampled over her to get out," he said.

The coalition has carried out about 20 strikes on IS cash, blowing up as much as $800 million worth of cash in the process, Gersten said.

Critics of the 20-month-old US-led coalition attacking the IS group in Iraq and Syria say the military is overly cautious in avoiding civilian casualties.

In a move ridiculed by hawkish opponents in the US Congress and privately by some coalition partners, pilots dropped pamphlets before bombing trucks ferrying illicit oil around Syria for the IS group.

The IDF has for years warned occupants of buildings suspected of housing Hamas weapons to get out by "roof knocking."
Argentina: man sentenced to jail after his dog kills toddler

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP)  A court in Argentina has sentenced the owner of a pit bull dog that killed a two-year old boy to eight years in prison.

The court sentenced Horacio Gonzalez on Monday in the 2014 death of the child. Gonzalez is a pit bull breeder.

The investigation found that neighbors had warned Gonzalez his dogs were violent. But he still tied one of them to an abandoned car near where local children played before it fatally mauled the boy.

Gonzalez can appeal the sentence. He says he regrets the attack and has euthanized the dog.
Tourist in yoga airplane altercation allowed to fly to Korea

HONOLULU (AP)  A tourist whose desire to do yoga on a plane led to his arrest is being allowed to leave Hawaii and return home to South Korea.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin Chang previously allowed Hyongtae Pae to be released on bond, but prevented him from leaving the state because of concerns about him being on a plane again.

On Monday, Chang made the modification after Pae's defense attorney asked that Pae return to the Honolulu Federal Detention Center. Jin Tae "JT" Kim said his client can't afford to keep staying in a bed and breakfast or to pay to see a doctor for more medication.

FILE - In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 file photo, Hyongtae Pae stands outside the federal courthouse in Honolulu, after pleading guilty to interfering with a flight crew. Pae, a tourist arrested for becoming violent because he couldn't do yoga on a plane is being allowed to return home to South Korea. U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin Chang previously allowed Hyongtae Pae to be released, but prevented him from leaving Hawaii. But on Monday, April 25, 2016, Chang modified conditions of Pae's release to allow him to return home. (AP Photo/Jennifer Sinco Kelleher, File)

Pae and his wife were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary with a Hawaii vacation and the couple was headed home when he was arrested.

According to court records, Pae didn't want to sit in his seat during the meal service on last month's flight from Honolulu to Tokyo, so he went to the back of the plane to do yoga and meditate. Authorities say he refused to return to his seat, threatened crew members and passengers and shoved his wife. The pilot turned the plane around and returned to Honolulu. Pae told authorities after his arrest that he hadn't slept in 11 days.

He pleaded guilty last week to interfering with a flight crew. As part of a plea agreement, he's expected to be sentenced to time served, which was about 12 days in jail and to pay about $43,600 restitution to United Airlines.

Medication has improved Pae's mental state and he's well-rested, Kim said last week.

Through an interpreter, Pae promised that he will return for his sentence, which is scheduled for July. He must also pay $1,250 cash as a deposit before he leaves Honolulu. "I swear to God," he said, pledging to return.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Darren Ching objected to the arrangement, saying it provides little incentive for Pae to return. He said that once Pae leaves, "that will be the last we ever see of Mr. Pae."

Chang noted that Pae is 72 years old, doesn't speak English and has no family or friends in Hawaii. Returning him to incarceration because of his financial and medication problems wouldn't be appropriate, Chang said.

"He may fly back to Korea, but he must come back to Hawaii," Chang said, adding that Pae is restricted from any other airline travel.

___
A 3-day-old California boy mauled to death by the family dog died from bites to his head, according to autopsy results released Monday.

The autopsy, released by San Diego County's medical examiner, also ruled the death of Sebastian Caban an accident.

'At this time, we're looking at this as nothing more than a tragic incident,' Sgt Tu Nguyen, a member of the child abuse unit, said.

San Diego police say the newborn was in bed with his parents and the dog Thursday night when the mother coughed, startling the animal and prompting the attack.

Scroll down for video

This 2-year-old American Staffordshire terrier-mix named Polo mauled its owner's newborn baby to death on April 21

The attack happened at this apartment complex in San Diego. The dog will be euthanized if the couple chooses not to reclaim the animal after a 10-day quarantine

The couple pulled the dog off the baby and made two unsuccessful 911 calls before getting frustrated and taking him to the hospital themselves, police said.

The baby was pronounced dead at the hospital after efforts to revive him were unsuccessful, according to the autopsy.

The parents waited 28 seconds before hanging up their first call to 911, then tried again and waited 34 seconds before giving up, police Lt. Scott Wahl told KNSD-TV on Saturday.

Police said the family has their condolences and that they're also frustrated by slow 911 response times.

'Our heartfelt condolences go out to the family in this very tragic case. We know every second counts in an emergency,' Lt. Scott Wahl of SDPD said in a statement Saturday.

They said their operators are understaffed and that 73 calls came in during the half-hour span when the parents called.

The national goal for 911 wait times is 10 seconds or less, 90 per cent of the time. Wait times in 2015 were on average 13 seconds.

The 2-year-old dog is a neutered male American Staffordshire terrier-mix named Polo. Authorities say they have no record of the dog attacking anyone before.
China set to pass law tightening controls on foreign NGOs

BEIJING (AP)  China's national legislature is poised to vote this week on a draft law criticized by overseas governments for tightening controls over foreign non-governmental groups by bringing them under direct police supervision.

The proposed law requires that such groups accept police supervision and state the sources of their funding and how their budgets are spent, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday.

Police would also be permitted to interview administrators and force Chinese partner organizations to terminate any program considered a threat to state security, Xinhua said. Groups seeking to "subvert the state and split the nation" would be banned, it said.

The proposed legislation has drawn criticism from U.S. and European officials and business and academic organizations concerned it would severely restrict the operations of a wide range of groups, further limiting the growth of civil society in China and hindering non-governmental exchanges between China and the rest of the world.

Several hundred NGOs founded, run or financed by foreigners are now operating in China in fields ranging from animal protection to human rights law.

Many overseas NGOs have partnered with Chinese academic and social, groups but operate in a legal gray area that leaves them vulnerable to crackdowns by the security forces.

In one recent example, China in January released and immediately deported a Swedish man it accused of training and funding unlicensed lawyers in the country.

The third and final draft of the foreign NGO law is expected to be voted on by the National People's Congress Standing Committee at its bi-monthly meeting this week. The committee handles the bulk of the congress' legislative work outside of the full body's annual two-week session.

Cooperative agreements between Chinese and overseas colleges, hospitals and science and engineering research institutes will continue to be handled under separate regulations.

Responding to some criticisms, the new draft would allow foreign NGOs to set up branches in multiple locations, eliminate a five-year limit on operating in China, and remove restrictions on hiring volunteers and staff.

It says the foreign NGOs would no longer need to seek approval for occasional programs but their Chinese partners need to register with local authorities 15 days before the activities.

The draft says the foreign NGOs, whether running permanent offices or operating occasional programs in China, generally would not be allowed to recruit new members except for those sanctioned by the state council. That's mainly because China is encouraging its scientists to join influential international organizations on science and technology.

Of greatest concern to foreign groups and governments has been the naming of the Public Security Ministry as the overall body to govern foreign NGOs, something seen as casting those groups under undo suspicion. Those critics have suggested that the Civil Affairs Ministry would be a more logical oversight body.

Critics fear the law may lead to an onerous degree of scrutiny over administrators, with Xinhua saying police could bring investigations at will and demand the termination of any cooperation program "considered to undermine state security."
Massive fire guts natural history museum in India's capital

NEW DELHI (AP)  A massive fire Tuesday gutted the National Museum of Natural History in India's capital, one of the country's top museums, an official said.

Firefighters took more than four hours to douse the blaze, which started on the top floor of the six-story museum, New Delhi fire official Harinder Singh said. Thirty-five fire engines were called.

Singh said the entire building was gutted by the blaze.

Firefighters try to extinguish fire in the National Museum of Natural History in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. A massive fire gutted India's National Museum of Natural History early Tuesday in New Delhi, one of the country's top museums, with exhibits on the country's plants, animals and mineral wealth. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said the damage caused to the museum was being assessed. An investigation was ordered to determine the cause of the fire.

Five firefighters overcome by heavy smoke were taken to a hospital and released after being treated, Singh said. No other injuries were reported.

Rajesh Panwar, New Delhi's deputy chief fire officer, said the museum's fire safety equipment had not been functioning properly, making it more difficult for firefighters to finally bring the blaze under control.

Fires are common in buildings in India due to a lack of proper safety standards.

The state-run natural history museum features thousands of exhibits on plants, animals and mineral wealth in India and around the world.

Delhi Fire officials put out a fire in the National Museum of Natural History in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. A massive fire gutted India's National Museum of Natural History early Tuesday in New Delhi, one of the country's top museums, with exhibits on the country's plants, animals and mineral wealth. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Firefighters try to extinguish fire in the National Museum of Natural History in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. A massive fire gutted India's National Museum of Natural History early Tuesday in New Delhi, one of the country's top museums, with exhibits on the country's plants, animals and mineral wealth. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
HAVRE  A hearing officer with the Montana Human Rights Commission has awarded $175,000 to a dean at Montana State University-Northern who complained that the former provost sexually harassed him.

Hearing officer Terry Spear said the university owed Randy Bachmeier damages for emotional distress.

The former Provost, Rosalyn Templeton, denied any wrongdoing.

Spear initially found that Bachmeier did not suffer emotional distress and declined to award any damages, but the five-member Human Rights Commission overturned that finding and ordered Spear to review the case and determine damages.

"Despite all the ways in which MSU-N knew about Templeton's behavior of inappropriate touching of males, and her unerring sense of which males would be most distressed by it, MSU-N ignored it as long as possible," Spear wrote in his decision last Friday.

The university system filed an appeal even before Spear issued his ruling because it believes the Human Rights Commission overturned Spear based on the facts. University system spokesman Kevin McRae said university attorneys believe Spear's initial decision could only be overruled on matters of law.

McRae said the case could end up before the Montana Supreme Court.

Bachmeier complained in May 2013 that Templeton had touched and rubbed his leg, arm, shoulder and back several times between 2010 and 2013, making him very uncomfortable and causing him to have nightmares.

Then-Northern Chancellor James Limbaugh testified during hearings in 2014 that he fired Templeton in 2013, ahead of her planned resignation, because of his concern for Bachmeier. Limbaugh resigned in 2014.

Bachmeier's attorney, John Heenan of Billings, said the award is far greater than the $75,000 Bachmeier sought. He said his client had sought a settlement, but MSU-Northern fought every effort to settle the case.

Heenan said Bachmeier will ask the District Court to require Northern to pay his legal bills.

Bachmeier was earlier awarded $20,000 for his claim of retaliation. He said soon after he filed his Human Rights Complaint, he was reprimanded twice in a 24-hour period.
Michigan nursing school uses mannequins for medical lessons

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP)  The leadership at the University of Michigan's nursing school says there is value in students making mistakes while treating patients.

And when the patients aren't real, that's even better.

The Ann Arbor school's new state-of-the-art Clinical Learning Center building features six simulation rooms that house high-fidelity mannequins capable of bleeding, vomiting and even giving birth  just like real patients.

In a photo from, Monday, March 28, 2016, in Ann Arbor, Mich., nursing school students Sarah Hampel, left, and Alexandra Noga interact with a mannequin to learn how to respond to real-life medical situations, including emergencies. The high-fidelity mannequins reside in six simulation rooms set up inside the Ann Arbor school's new Clinical Learning Center. They can bleed, vomit and give birth, just like real patients. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Alexandra Noga, a junior from suburban Detroit, said it's "somewhat intimidating the things that some of these mannequins can do." But Noga added that they're "really helpful, because they can simulate a lot of real-life issues" that wouldn't likely surface during training in a typical hospital setting.

That's the point, said Maureen Westfall, a clinical instructor who led a recent simulation in which Noga and another student assisted as "Sarah," a patient with gestational diabetes, gave birth.

"I've seen a build in confidence, and I've seen just an overall level of comfort" in the students, said Westfall, who points out that it benefits her young charges to learn by trial and error.

Or, as Clinical Learning Center Director Michelle Aebersold put it: "People clearly remember the times they screw up."

The simulation exercises the instructors create mimic real-life patient situations that many nursing students won't see in their clinical rotations. Students can practice suctioning secretions from the trachea, electrically shocking the heart into starting again and administering intravenous drugs.

Westfall is part of a team of specially trained simulation instructors who, while seated in front of a bank of screens and behind a one-way mirror, act as the mannequins' minds and bodies. They use wireless controls to prompt just about any possible physiological response.

Michigan is far from alone in training would-be nurses this way. But Aebersold said the school is unique in that it allows all undergraduates  including first-year students  to take part in the "sims" as they're often called and uses "dedicated simulation faculty."

Plus, Aebersold said, studies indicate undergraduates can replace up to half of their clinical hours with simulations without impacting their ability to pass the nursing certification examination.

When each "sim" ends, students immediately take part in a debriefing session, discussing what they did well and what could have gone better.

"Wouldn't life be so great if we could debrief after every time we go through something at any job that we've had?" Westfall said. "Just to critically think about what we could have done different or better."

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Online:

University of Michigan School of Nursing: http://nursing.umich.edu

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Follow Mike Householder on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mikehouseholder

In a photo from, Monday, March 28, 2016, in Ann Arbor, Mich., clinical Instructor Maureen Westfall, left, and Simulation Specialist Coordinator Ben Oliver monitor a simulation room at the University of Michigan's nursing school where mannequins are used to teach students how to respond to real-life medical situations, including emergencies. The high-fidelity mannequins reside in six simulation rooms set up inside the Ann Arbor school's new Clinical Learning Center. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

In a photo from, Monday, March 28, 2016, in Ann Arbor, Mich., nursing school students help deliver a child as they interact with a mannequin to learn how to respond to real-life medical situations, including emergencies. The high-fidelity mannequins reside in six simulation rooms set up inside the Ann Arbor school's new Clinical Learning Center. They can bleed, vomit and give birth, just like real patients. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
Egypt looks to avert water crisis driven by demand, waste

KAFR HAMOUDA, Egypt (AP)  "For a thousand years," Abdullah Sheikh's family has been working the land the same way  flooding fields in Egypt's Nile Delta and planting seeds by hand.

But now a small, relatively cheap plow has changed all that, allowing him to nearly double the yields of his two acres of wheat, arranging it in neat, raised beds with smaller furrows that require a third less water. "It saves us much labor, seeds and effort," Sheikh said, calling it a "blessing" for his family, eight of whom help work the plot.

The plow could one day help Egypt alleviate water shortages that threaten to cripple the Arab world's most populous country in the next decade. Several groups are offering technologies and techniques to conserve the precious resource  only a quarter of which is absorbed by crops  but time is running out.

In this Monday, April 11, 2016 photo, An Egyptian farmer stands in front of wheat crops on his land in Kafr Hamouda village, in Zagazig, 63 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Cairo, Egypt. Farmers begin to use a small, relatively cheap plow allowing them to nearly double the yields of their wheat. The new technology could one day help Egypt alleviate water shortages that threaten to cripple the Arab world's most populous country. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Egypt has relied on the Nile, Africa's largest river, since the time of the pharaohs. For thousands of years, annual floods dumped rich silt on the banks, allowing the country to serve as a Mediterranean grain reserve.

But the annual flood ended with the completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1970, and surging population growth has transformed Egypt  with over 90 million citizens  into the world's largest wheat importer.

Water is already considered "scarce" in Egypt, and it expects its per capita annual supply to fall below the 500-cubic-meter threshold that denotes "absolute scarcity" under international norms by 2025, from some 600 cubic meters today. Salinization caused by rising sea levels could also one day reduce supply.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said in a speech earlier this year that water was being provided too cheaply. Since then, household water costs have doubled or even tripled, according to bills Egyptian have been posting on social media.

Meanwhile, Ethiopia is building a dam and hydroelectric plant upstream that Egypt is worried will cut its share of the Nile. The two nations are discussing ways to fill the planned water reserve slowly so as to diminish the impact, but so far Ethiopia is pressing ahead with construction without a detailed agreement.

"It's like watching a slow-moving train wreck. Everyone knows that population growth is accelerating, and then you have that dam, which could be a problem if it's filled up too fast," said Richard Tutwiler, a water expert at the American University in Cairo. "There are some intelligent, highly skilled people in the ministries and the water sector, but there's room for better coordination, and taking more of a community approach when it comes to improving crop irrigation."

Successive governments have recognized the need for action, but policies have not kept up with surging demand. Pumping stations and distribution networks are notoriously inefficient, and water cuts in the summer months are common in Cairo. Droughts hit some rural areas in the summer, and new neighborhoods built in the desert often lure residents with promises of infrastructure  including water  that never appear.

One such area is New Gurna, built on the west bank of the city of Luxor, famed for its pharaonic temples and tombs. Residents there complain they go days without water, with pressure sometimes returning for only a few hours a week.

"If I knew it was going to be this bad, I wouldn't have moved out here," said high school teacher Abdullah Said, who has been leading a campaign representing 15,000 residents urging the government to fix their problem.

The land has been used to resettle villagers kicked out of homes that had been built over archaeological sites generations ago, which the state demolished for fear they could damage the sites. Residents say the local reservoir leaks and showed The Associated Press videos of water gushing through a ravine near the site. Local officials deny there is a problem.

Other groups are trying to address the shortages as well, with a wide variety of donors  from the European Union to Bill Gates  involved in the effort. The government has a number of initiatives to recycle water and improve efficiency, but none have been able to keep up with demand.

The small plow that has transformed Sheikh's land in the Nile Delta could have a major impact in a country where the vast majority of farming is done on small plots. It is manufactured locally and sells for just $5,000.

"My own father opposed switching from our old ways, but when he saw the savings he was convinced," said Atef Swelam, the scientist who developed the plow on behalf of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). "Raised beds are difficult to make manually and are expensive, but with this machine it's simple." Only 35 plows have been built so far, but Swelam hopes that number will increase through public and private investment.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, which is helping develop the plow system, hopes the government will encourage the creation of small- and medium-sized businesses to build more.

"Then it would be self-propelling," said Pasquale Steduto, the FAO Representative in Egypt. Action is needed in order to conserve and manage water resources, otherwise "competition between users could create internal conflict ... or conflict with other nations," he said.

Sprinkler systems and underground irrigation  which minimize evaporation  are also being pitched, but their high cost has made the government reluctant to include them in the national water plan.

Mazen Mostafa, an irrigation engineer, thinks the focus should be on transforming Egypt's aging canals into sprinkling networks, which could expand the green areas along the Nile.

"That system is thousands of years old and hasn't been changed since the time of the pharaohs," he said. "Our idea is to bring in investors to modernize the canal system on the old lands into a sprinkler system, then expand that to create new arable land for them to farm."

"Now it's not just a matter of investment opportunities, it is a must, given the coming shortages," he said.

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Follow Brian Rohan on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/brian_rohan

In this Monday, April 11, 2016 photo, Egyptian farmers stand in front of wheat crops on their land in Kafr Hamouda village, in Zagazig, 63 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Cairo, Egypt. Farmers begin to use a small, relatively cheap plow allowing them to nearly double the yields of their wheat. The new technology could one day help Egypt alleviate water shortages that threaten to cripple the Arab world's most populous country. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

In this Monday, April 11, 2016 photo, An Egyptian farmer carries his daughter, as a man, left, working for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) makes his way, on a land in Kafr Hamouda village, in Zagazig, 63 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Cairo, Egypt. Farmers begin to use a small, relatively cheap plow allowing them to nearly double the yields of their wheat. The FAO, which is helping to distribute the plows, hopes the government will encourage the creation of small- and medium-sized businesses to build more. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

In this Monday, April 11, 2016 photo, an Egyptian farmer carries his daughter in front of wheat crops on his land in Kafr Hamouda village, in Zagazig, 63 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Cairo, Egypt. Farmers begin to use a small, relatively cheap plow allowing them to nearly double the yields of their wheat. The new technology could one day help Egypt alleviate water shortages that threaten to cripple the Arab world's most populous country. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

In this Monday, April 11, 2016 photo, Egyptian Atef Swelam, center, the scientist who developed the plow on behalf of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), displays his plow on a land in Kafr Hamouda village, in Zagazig, 63 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Cairo, Egypt. My own father opposed switching from our old ways, but when he saw the savings he was convinced, said Swelam. Raised beds are difficult to make manually and are expensive, but with this machine it's simple. Only 35 plows have been built so far, but Swelam hopes that number will increase through public and private investment. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

In this Monday, April 11, 2016 photo, Egyptian farmers use a plow developed by Atef Swelam, not pictured, the scientist who developed the plow on behalf of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), on a land in Kafr Hamouda village, in Zagazig, 63 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Cairo, Egypt. The plow could one day help Egypt alleviate water shortages that threaten to cripple the Arab world's most populous country in the next decade. Several groups are offering technologies and techniques to conserve the precious resource -- only a quarter of which is absorbed by crops -- but time is running out. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

In this Saturday, April 16, 2016 photo, High school teacher Abdullah Said, who is leading a campaign urging authorities to establish water supply, shows newspaper clippings about his efforts, at his home in New Gurna, on the west bank of the city of Luxor, Egypt. Droughts hit some rural areas in the summer, and one such area is New Gurna, famed for its pharaonic temples and tombs. Residents there complain they go days without water, with pressure sometimes returning for only a few hours a week. If I knew it was going to be this bad, I wouldn't have moved out here, said Abdullah, who has been leading a campaign representing 15,000 residents urging the government to fix their problem. (AP Photo/Brian Rohan)
Viewer's Guide: All in for Indiana, dialing delegates in PA

WASHINGTON (AP)  With five more states in the rear-view mirror, presidential candidates will spend Wednesday recalculating cold, hard delegate math and plotting strategy for the contests still to come  10 for Republicans, 16 for Democrats.

After a strong night Tuesday, front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will try to brush off their rivals like lint on a sleeve. Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz will look for love in Indiana. John Kasich will look further out on the political calendar to Oregon for someplace to show viability.

What to watch on Wednesday, the day after five Northeastern states had their say in the presidential race:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gestures at her presidential primary election night rally, Tuesday, April 26, 2016, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

DIALING FOR DELEGATES

Pennsylvania elected 54 unpledged Republican delegates on its primary night. The prospective delegates' names were listed on the ballot with no information about which presidential candidates they support. So it'll take some effort to figure out who they plan to back. Watch for commitments to different candidates to start trickling out. Pennsylvania had 17 other delegates who will be bound to Trump, who won the popular vote there as part of his five-state sweep Tuesday.

DONALD TRUMP: POLICY WONK?

As Trump tries to shift gears toward the general election, he's eager to show he's got a command of the issues, not just the skills of a political provocateur. His foreign policy address Wednesday in Washington will be the first in a series of policy speeches. It's not clear how detailed he'll be, though. Trump often complains that the Obama administration has been "too predictable" with overseas strategy, and should leave enemies guessing.

But first, he'll be doing a victory tour on the morning TV shows.

ALL IN FOR INDIANA

Next up on the primary calendar: Indiana, which votes on May 3. The candidates all are active there except Kasich, due to his non-compete clause with Cruz. Trump's Hoosier strategy includes an appearance in Indianapolis on Wednesday night with basketball coaching great Bobby Knight and withering criticism of United Technologies' decision to move two of its Carrier heating and ventilating parts plants in Indiana to Mexico, eliminating 2,100 U.S. jobs. Clinton's "make it in America" pitch touches some of the same territory, including criticism of Carrier, in a state where nearly one out of five jobs is supported by manufacturing.

SHAKY CEASE-FIRE

Keep an eye on how Cruz and Kasich execute their stop-Trump alliance, in which Kasich agreed to clear a path for Cruz in Indiana, and Cruz will do the same for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico. Kasich may have agreed not to campaign in Indiana, but he decided to go ahead with a fundraiser there on Tuesday, for example. And he stopped short of urging his supporters in Indiana to back Cruz.

HOOSIER CRUZ-ER

With Kasich on the sidelines in Indiana, Cruz is investing heavily there in radio and TV advertising and he'll spend considerable time campaigning in the state this week. He's got a late afternoon rally Wednesday in Indianapolis.

THE LONG GOODBYE

Clinton keeps trying to leave Sanders behind but he's been resisting taking the hint, even though his long odds of capturing the nomination deteriorated even further Tuesday night after he lost to her in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and Connecticut. The Vermont senator won Rhode Island.

Wednesday will be a time for assessing what's next for Sanders, who'll be campaigning in Indiana. Watch his rhetoric in coming days for hints of futility. On Tuesday, he was still vowing "to fight all the way to the Philadelphia convention." But lately, he's allowed himself to be drawn into speculation over what Clinton would need to do to win over his supporters in the general election.

And no wonder: After Tuesday, she's 90 percent of the way to the nomination.

AD STRATEGY

Watch where the candidates and outside groups put their money. So far, Indiana is attracting the most investment. Anti-Trump groups Club for Growth and Our Principles PAC are spending about $2 million on TV and radio commercials there, and Cruz's campaign and a supportive super PAC have about $1.8 million planned, according to ad tracker Kantar Media's CMAG. Trump is in for $1 million in Indiana ads. So far, Clinton doesn't have Hoosier ad plans, while Sanders is putting about $1.6 million into paid media there. The presidential squad has yet to broaden its plans much beyond Indiana. Sanders has about $600,000 in California ads booked, but look for far more money to show up in this pricey, delegate-rich state before its June 7 election.

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AP writers Stephen Ohlemacher and Julie Bykowicz in Washington and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.

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Philippine troops hunt extremists who beheaded Canadian

MANILA, Philippines (AP)  The Philippine military came under increased pressure Tuesday to rescue more than 20 foreign hostages after their Muslim extremist captors beheaded a Canadian man, but troops face a dilemma in how to succeed without endangering the remaining captives.

Abu Sayyaf gunmen beheaded John Ridsdel on Monday in the southern province of Sulu, sparking condemnations and prompting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to pledge to help the Philippines pursue the extremists behind the "heinous act."

"Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage takers and this unnecessary death," Trudeau told reporters. "This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage."

This image made from undated militant video, shows Canadians John Ridsdel, right, and Robert Hall. Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that the decapitated head of a Caucasian male recovered Monday, April 25, 2016, in the southern Philippines belongs to Ridsdel, who was taken hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in September 2015. (Militant Video via AP Video) NO SALES, MANDATORY CREDIT

Trudeau said he spoke earlier with President Benigno Aquino III.

"The discussions I had with President Aquino and are continuing to have with our allies in the Philippines is the need to bring these criminals to justice and to do whatever we can to express that we are very concerned about security of Canadians, but at the same time, we will not pay a ransom," Trudeau said.

Ridsdel's head, which was placed in a plastic bag, was dumped by motorcycle-riding militants Monday night in Jolo town in impoverished Sulu, a densely forested province about 950 kilometers (590 miles) south of Manila, where the Abu Sayyaf and allied gunmen are believed to be holding 22 foreign hostages from six Western and Asian countries.

It's a politically sensitive time for troops to carry out major offensives, at the height of campaigning in a closely fought race among four contenders in the May 9 presidential election. President Aquino and opposition politicians have had differences over the handling of the Muslim insurgency and the social ills that foster it.

"The pressure on the armed forces is really immense," said Julkipli Wadi, who has conducted extensive studies on the Muslim secessionist conflict in the south.

The underfunded military has to contend with escalating territorial disputes in the South China Sea while dealing with Muslim and Marxist rebellions that have endured through several presidencies, fueled by the poverty, neglect and desperation that have not been tamed by political leaders, Wadi said.

A large-scale offensive could displace many villagers and draw attention to the longstanding security and social issues in the vote-rich south, homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation.

That could play to the advantage of Rodrigo Duterte, the tough-talking city mayor from the south who has emerged as the front-runner in the presidential race with a lofty promise to end crime in six months and restore law and order. Aquino has endorsed another candidate, Mar Roxas, whose platform focuses on continuing the president's anti-corruption drive and economic reforms. All the presidential candidates condemned the beheading.

The Philippine military and police said "there will be no letup" in the effort to combat the militants and find the hostages, even though they have had little success in safely securing their freedom. Many hostages were believed to have been released after huge ransom payments.

"The full force of the law will be used to bring these criminals to justice," they said in a joint statement.

About 2,000 military personnel, backed by Bell UH-1 "Huey" and MG520 rocket-firing helicopters and artillery, are involved in the manhunt for the militants, who are believed to be massing in Sulu's mountainous Patikul town, military officials said.

While under pressure to produce results, government troops have been ordered to carry out assaults without endangering the remaining hostages, including in the use of airstrikes and artillery fire, a combat officer told The Associated Press by cellphone from Sulu. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

Amid the offensive, Brig. Gen. Alan Arrojado resigned Tuesday in Sulu as commander of an army brigade "due to conflict of approach in addressing the Abu Sayyaf threats" in the province. Arrojado did not elaborate.

In past militant videos posted online, Ridsdel and fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipino Marites Flor were shown sitting in a clearing with heavily armed militants standing behind them. In some of the videos, a militant aimed a long knife at Ridsdel's neck as he pleaded for his life. Two black flags with Islamic State group-like markings hung in the backdrop of lush foliage.

The four were seized from a marina on southern Samal Island and taken by boat to Sulu, where Abu Sayyaf gunmen continue to hold several captives, including a Dutch bird watcher who was kidnapped more than three years ago, and Indonesian and Malaysian crewmen who were snatched recently from three tugboats.

Ridsdel was killed after the militants failed to receive a huge ransom demand by a Monday deadline. A police official said the killing of five and wounding of about 16 Abu Sayyaf gunmen in a military assault three days before the beheading may have angered the extremists and helped lead them to decide to kill him in revenge.

In Canada, Ridsdel was remembered as a brilliant, compassionate man with a talent for friendship.

"He could bridge many communities, many people, many situations and circumstances and environments in a very gentle way," said Gerald Thurston, a lifelong friend of the former mining executive and journalist who grew up with him in Yorkton, Saskatchewan.

Thurston said Ridsdel is survived by two adult daughters from a former marriage.

The Abu Sayyaf began a series of large-scale abductions after it emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a separatist rebellion by minority Muslims in the southern Philippines.

It has been weakened by more than a decade of government offensives, but has endured largely as a result of large ransom and extortion earnings. The United States and the Philippines have both listed the group as a terrorist organization.

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Associated Press writer Charmaine Noronha in Toronto contributed to this report.
No regrets expressed by officials in dismissed freeway case

PHOENIX (AP)  There was a stark difference between the beginning and end of the criminal case against a man accused in a string of freeway shootings in Phoenix that sent a metro area into a frenzy as drivers feared they would be fired at on the interstate.

After the man's arrest, the governor triumphantly tweeted, "We got him!"

Seven months later on a Friday evening, prosecutors quietly revealed that they were dismissing all charges.

FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2015 file photo, accused freeway shooter Leslie Allen Merritt, Jr., appears in Maricopa County Superior Court for his arraignment in Phoenix. A judge has dismissed a criminal case against Merritt, who had been accused of carrying out freeway shootings in Phoenix last summer that put drivers on edge. The ruling came Monday, April 25, after prosecutors had asked for charges against Merritt to be dismissed amid undisclosed questions about evidence. (Tom Tingle/The Arizona Republic via AP, Pool, File)

The decision to throw out the case against Leslie Merritt Jr. has kicked up a flurry of questions: Was the case botched? If he didn't do it, who did? And are those responsible for the shootings still at large?

"I don't think they'll ever find this person or persons," said Mike Black, a Phoenix defense attorney who isn't involved in defending Merritt but has followed the case.

The charges were formally dismissed Monday at the request of prosecutors after undisclosed questions arose about the case's evidence.

The shootings sparked so much fear in the Phoenix area that people avoided driving the freeways, school buses took different routes, and signs were posted telling people to be careful.

The head of the Arizona Department of Public Safety said the shootings were the work of a domestic terrorist, and authorities heightened patrols and surveillance in pursuit of a suspect.

Merritt, who spent those seven months in jail before his release last week, has maintained he is innocent and that authorities arrested the wrong person.

He filed a legal claim  a precursor to a lawsuit  a month ago demanding $10 million from the state and county. Merritt alleged that authorities rushed to judgment and failed to provide evidence that he was present at any of the shootings.

Prosecutors can refile charges against the 21-year-old landscaper and say more investigation is needed for the case to move forward.

A judge has barred several documents in the case from public release, including a filing that led to Merritt leaving jail. Those documents remain under seal.

There have been no public expressions of regret about bringing the case from prosecutors, investigators or Gov. Doug Ducey's office since the charges collapsed in court.

Ducey spokesman Daniel Scarpinato pointed out there was wide public interest in the shootings and public safety is among his top priorities. "This is in the hands of the criminal justice system, where it belongs," Scarpinato said.

Jerry Cobb, a spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, which prosecuted Merritt, said it's not unusual for prosecutors to dismiss charges and refile them after more investigation is done.

Asked whether the dismissal signals that authorities don't have a viable case against Merritt, Cobb said, "The dismissal speaks for itself."

The Arizona Department of Public Safety, which investigated Merritt, declined to comment. Jason Lamm, one of Merritt's attorneys, had no immediate comment Monday on the dismissal.

"They were so eager to resolve this case that they jumped on the first hint of a suspect," said Dwane Cates, another Phoenix defense lawyer who doesn't represent Merritt but has followed the case.

Authorities previously said they used ballistic tests to tie Merritt to four of the 11 shootings, but Merritt's lawyers have recently argued that ballistic tests cast doubt on the claim their client was behind the attacks.

Merritt's lawyers said phone records and accounts from family members showed that Merritt wasn't near the scene of the shootings.

Prosecutors have cast doubt on the alibi claim by saying Merritt's fiancee told investigators that she wasn't sure about his whereabouts.

Authorities say Merritt showed an extreme interest in the shootings and made a Facebook post about the arrest of three teenagers who hurled rocks at cars with slingshots in a copycat case but weren't tied to the shootings.

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Follow Jacques Billeaud at twitter.com/jacquesbilleaud. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/jacques-billeaud.
Swedish security police check info that media call a threat

STOCKHOLM (AP)  Sweden's security service said Tuesday it is "working to assess information" after Swedish media reported that Iraqi authorities had told the agency about alleged Islamic State militants who were reportedly planning a terror attack in Stockholm.

The Expressen daily said Iraqi authorities had informed Swedes that "seven or eight terrorists" from IS had traveled to Sweden. The daily, quoting unidentified sources, added that the security service, known as SAPO, had sent people to Iraq to obtain more information.

In a statement, SAPO said Tuesday that action had been taken but didn't elaborate.

Swedish media say security at train stations and airports has not been tightened.

Swedish media is also speculating that the celebrations Saturday for Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf's 70th birthday could be a possible target. Such an event gathers the royal family, government officials and European royal visitors.
LGBT debate spurs arrests at North Carolina statehouse

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  A day of protests and arrests around North Carolina's statehouse marked what's likely to be weeks of impassioned debate over a law limiting protections for LGBT people.

Police arrested 54 protesters who came to voice opposition to the law late Monday as legislators returned to start their session. The arrests capped a day of dueling demonstrations that also included thousands of people who gathered to praise the law.

The state's top elected Republican leaders said they don't plan to repeal it, a stance likely to stoke further protests.

Protesters head into the Legislative building for a sit-in against House Bill 2 in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, April 25, 2016. While demonstrations circled North Carolina's statehouse on Monday, for and against a Republican-backed law curtailing protections for LGBT people and limiting public bathroom access for transgender people, House Democrats filed a repeal bill that stands little chance of passing. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Dozens intent on disrupting lawmakers created a raucous atmosphere at the state legislative building following an afternoon rally that drew hundreds of the law's opponents.

Ken Jones of Swannanoa was among three-dozen demonstrators who stayed to make noise long after the chambers gaveled out. He said he was encouraged by the fact that dozens were willing to risk arrest.

"It's a reason for hope. There's so many of us here," said Jones, who was later arrested when officers sought to close the building for the night. "I'm pretty passionate about it."

Three waves of people, several dozen at a time, held sit-ins outside the offices of legislative leaders.

Shortly before the evening legislative session began, more than a dozen demonstrators walked into House Speaker Tim Moore's office and began chanting.

A few minutes later, law enforcement officers started leading out the protesters who had entered Moore's office, one by one, in plastic handcuffs. One man had to be carried out.

Most were led out quietly, but one woman chanted: "Forward together, not one step back!"

Each time one was led out, fellow protesters chanted standing nearby shouted: "Thank you! We love you!"

Eighteen of those arrested were led from Moore's office, while the rest were arrested a couple of hours later outside Moore's closed office as officers sought to close the building for the night.

Acting General Assembly Police Chief Martin Brock said all would be charged with second-degree trespassing, and cited for violating building rules or the fire code. Brock says one also faces a resisting arrest charge.

Detention records show the protesters were released later that night or early Tuesday morning, and they have court dates scheduled for early June.

Other pockets of protest broke out Monday night elsewhere in the Legislative Building. As the short House meeting ended, demonstrators in the gallery yelled their displeasure. Several dozen protesters shouted, danced and waved their hands inside the front doors of the Legislative Building for at least a half hour before leaving.

"We won't do HB 2," the protesters chanted, referring to House Bill 2 by its initials. "North Carolina sticks together."

Earlier in the day, thousands of Christian conservatives and other supporters of the law gathered on a grassy mall behind the Legislative Building on the legislature's opening day to praise the mostly Republican legislators and GOP Gov. Pat McCrory for passing the restrictions last month in a special session.

"It took great courage for them to establish this bill," said Doug Woods, 82, of Raleigh, a rally participant. "They need to stand firm."

The law blocks local and state protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and directs which restrooms transgender people can use in public buildings. Key lawmakers who pushed through the legislation also urged the rally attendees to contact colleagues and fight off efforts to overturn the law.

"The battle is about to be engaged," said Rep. Paul Stam, R-Wake, a veteran of North Carolina's cultural wars.

Republican legislative leaders have expressed no interest in overturning the new law. GOP lawmakers have focused their discussion of the law on provisions requiring transgender people to use multi-stall restrooms that align with their gender at birth.

North Carolina House Democrats filed legislation Monday to repeal the law, though a lack of Republican sponsors made its chances appear slim.

Moore and McCrory said separately Monday that the law won't be repealed this session.

Senate leader Phil Berger said Monday night that he wasn't swayed by the protesters.

"I don't know that it'll change anybody's mind. I certainly would prefer that we not have this sort of protest. But you know, people have a right to express their opinion if they're upset about something we've done or disagree with something we've done," he said. "And I think most people, when I talk to folks back home, they have a real hard time understanding why people can't be more civil."

___

Associated Press writer Allen G. Breed contributed to this report.

Protesters rally against House Bill 2 in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, April 25, 2016. While demonstrations circled North Carolina's statehouse on Monday, for and against a Republican-backed law curtailing protections for LGBT people and limiting public bathroom access for transgender people, House Democrats filed a repeal bill that stands little chance of passing. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

ADDS STATE REP. TITLE - State Rep. Chris Sgro, D-Guilford, who is also executive director of Equality NC, center, is stopped at the Capitol steps by security with petitions against House Bill 2 in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, April 25, 2016. Tempers are flaring as supporters and opponents of the new North Carolina transgender law hold competing rallies to sway legislators starting their annual session. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Protesters head into the Legislative building for a sit-in against House Bill 2 in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, April 25, 2016. While demonstrations circled North Carolina's statehouse on Monday, for and against a Republican-backed law curtailing protections for LGBT people and limiting public bathroom access for transgender people, House Democrats filed a repeal bill that stands little chance of passing. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

ADDS STATE REP. TITLE - State Rep. Chris Sgro, D-Guilford, who is also executive director of Equality NC, center, is stopped at the Capitol steps by security with petitions against House Bill 2 in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, April 25, 2016. Tempers are flaring as supporters and opponents of the new North Carolina transgender law hold competing rallies to sway legislators starting their annual session. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

ADDS STATE REP. TITLE - State Rep. Chris Sgro, D-Guilford, who is also executive director of Equality NC, leads a group carrying petitions calling for the repeal of House Bill 2 to Gov. Pat McCrory's office at the state Capitol building Monday, April 25, 2016, in Raleigh, N.C. Tempers are flaring as supporters and opponents of the new North Carolina transgender law hold competing rallies to sway legislators starting their annual session. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

ADDS STATE REP. TITLE - State Rep. Chris Sgro, D-Guilford, who is also executive director of Equality NC, center, is stopped at the Capitol steps by security with petitions against House Bill 2 in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, April 25, 2016. Tempers are flaring as supporters and opponents of the new North Carolina transgender law hold competing rallies to sway legislators starting their annual session. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
Yemeni forces take back coastal city from al-Qaida

SANAA, Yemen (AP)  Forces loyal to Yemen's internationally recognized government have retaken the southern coastal city of Mukalla, driving out al-Qaida militants a year after they captured it, security officials said Tuesday.

The Yemeni forces entered the city late on Monday, following days of heavy airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition fighting on the side of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi's government.

The airstrikes targeted al-Qaida positions in and outside Mukalla, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Al-Qaida's local branch captured Mukalla last year amid the chaos caused by Yemen's civil war, which pits forces loyal to Hadi's government against Shiite rebels known as Houthis and their allies.

The offensive to retake the city started on Saturday, the latest operation against al-Qaida in southern Yemen.

Security officials and witnesses said earlier that many of al-Qaida's fighters in Mukalla left the city to escape the heavy Saudi-led coalition airstrikes and shelling by government forces.

Troops loyal to Hadi also advanced over the weekend in the town of Koud in southern Abyan province, according to the province's governor, killing 25 militants from the group in heavy clashes. The coalition has also carried out airstrikes against al-Qaida positions in the area.

The pro-Hadi troops had been preparing for the offensive for months with the coalition's support. Heavy fighting is continuing with al-Qaida militants in Abyan, near the cities of Zinjibar and Jaar.
MISSOULA  The so-called Islamic State is neither a state nor Islamic.

Its a deviant group of gangsters driven by anger and hatred and a thirst for power, Jameel Chaudhry told a packed Lutheran church basement of mostly non-Muslims on Monday evening.

Leaders of that ragtag band define who the faithful are, said Chaudhry, a Muslim and an ethnic Indian from North Africa.

If you dont pledge allegiance, if you dont follow ISIS, youre not a Muslim. You can't call yourself a Muslim, he said. And if they dont call you Muslim, its OK for them to kill you.

Chaudhry, the longtime campus architect for the University of Montana, was emcee and one of four presenters at Saint Paul Lutheran Church in the first of four events during Celebrate Islam Week in Missoula.

Sponsored by the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center and presented by SALAM, the Arabic word for peace and an acronym for Standing Alongside Americas Muslims, the dinner program drew a capacity crowd to a room with a maximum occupancy of 125.

After a greeting from Mayor John Engen, a proclamation from SALAM declaring Celebrate Islam Week was read that decried the alarming escalation of national and local incidents and rhetoric directed against people of the Muslim faith and celebrated Missoula's long history of embracing diversity and dignity for all by statute and practice.

No dissension was voiced from the crowd. One protester held a sign outside the church on Brooks Street and was joined by a few others as the evening went on.

Wurri Kusumastuti, a graduate teaching assistant at UM from Indonesia, explained why she and other Muslim women wear hijabs, traditional veils that cover their heads and indicate a standard of modesty.

The most important time to wear a hijab is during prayer, the effervescent Kusumastuti explained. And Muslims pray five times a day.

I was born Muslim, and, I dont know, I just got used to it, she said of the veil. By using this kind of attire, when its time to pray, I just pray.

In the 1980s, hijabs were banned in Indonesia, and students who protested the act were arrested. Some disappeared, Kusumastuti said. From 1982 to 1998, any religious movement in her country was considered a betrayal by the government.

Slowly the shackles have come off, to a point where today in Indonesia theres a growing market for hajibs.

They are very big business, said Kusumastuti. Theyre not a symbol of oppression. In Indonesia theyre symbols of freedom.

Technical problems with a short video initially marred the presentation of Hanan Omar, a UM graduate student from Saudi Arabia. Eventually they were straightened out and through music and poetic narration, the video portrayed what she called the real meaning of the Islamic phrase Allahu Akbar  literally God is the greatest.

Its meaning has been demeaned by videos of sick, twisted minds screaming it before explosions, the narrator said.

But in fact its known and celebrated by millions of Muslims who gather and speak it with one voice, one love and no hate.

We say it in every occasion and in every way,  at prayer, when one is startled by beauty or frightened by disasters or scared and weak or joyful and at our peak, the narrator said.

Dont allow terrorists to contaminate a peaceful religion and a phrase that is so great. When you hear it let it show its true colors, let it resonate, that Allahu Akbar is about love and trust from 1.6 billion Muslims to the creator of our faith.

Julian Adler, a UM student in philosophy and political science, studied in Morocco and said he bugged his professor there with questions about religion until he was given a life-altering book on the histories of the world's religions. Adler compared the similar philosophical developments of Christianity and Islam.

Like all other religions they shared basic philosophical ideas with each other that still resonate with us today, he said. Both churches have had histories of both enlightenment and repression.

Celebrate Islam Week continues on Wednesday in the Hellgate High School Auditorium with the showing of most of the movie The Muslims Are Coming based on Muslim comedians routines, as well as a TED talk by Dalia Mogahed called What Do You Think When You Look at Me?

On Thursday UM professor Samir Bitar will be keynote speaker at the Urey Lecture Hall on the UM campus, and Kusumastuti and Chaudhry will take part in a panel discussion afterward.

The weeks events culminate on Saturday when Har Shalom on South Russell Street hosts Dances of Universal Peace. No musical or dance experience is required. All three events begin at 7 p.m.

For more information go to SALAMs Facebook page at facebook.com/SALAMMissoula.
Memories painful on Chernobyl's 30th anniversary

KIEV, Ukraine (AP)  As Ukraine and Belarus on Tuesday marked the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident with solemn words and an angry protest, some of the men who were sent to the site in the first chaotic and frightening days were gripped by painful memories.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko led a ceremony in Chernobyl, where work is underway to complete a 2 billion euro ($2.25 billion) long-term shelter over the building containing Chernobyl's exploded reactor. Once the structure is in place, work will begin to remove the reactor and its lava-like radioactive waste.

The disaster shone a spotlight on lax safety standards and government secrecy in the former Soviet Union. The explosion on April 26, 1986, was not reported by Soviet authorities for two days, and then only after winds had carried the fallout across Europe and Swedish experts had gone public with their concerns.

Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko lays flowers at a monument to the victims of the Chernobyl tragedy outside the nuclear power plant in Ukraine, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine on Tuesday marked the 30th anniversary of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the worlds worst nuclear accident. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

"We honor those who lost their health and require a special attention from the government and society," Poroshenko said. "It's with an everlasting pain in our hearts that we remember those who lost their lives to fight nuclear death."

About 600,000 people, often referred to as Chernobyl's "liquidators," were sent in to fight the fire at the nuclear plant and clean up the worst of its contamination. Thirty workers died either from the explosion or from acute radiation sickness within several months. The accident exposed millions in the region to dangerous levels of radiation and forced a wide-scale, permanent evacuation of hundreds of towns and villages in Ukraine and Belarus.

At a ceremony in their honor in Kiev, some of the former liquidators told The Associated Press of their ordeal and surprise that they lived through it.

Oleg Medvedev, now 65, was sent to the zone on the first day of the crisis, to help evacuate the workers' city of Pripyat, less than four kilometers (2.5 miles) from the destroyed reactor. Four days later "I already had to go away from the zone because I'd received the maximum allowable radiation dose. Thirty years passed and I'm still alive, despite doctors giving me five. I'm happy about that."

"My soul hurts when I think of those days," said Dmitry Mikhailov, 56. He was on a crew sent to evacuate a village where residents knew nothing of the accident.

"They smiled at us. They didn't understand what was happening," he said. "I wish I knew where and how they are now. I just can't forget them."

In Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where the government is bringing farming to long fallow lands affected by Chernobyl fallout, more than 1,000 people held a protest march through the city center.

Belarus routinely cracks down on dissent, but authorities allowed the march.

"Chernobyl is continuing today. Our relatives and friends are dying of cancer," said 21-year-old protester Andrei Ostrovtsov.

The final death toll from Chernobyl is subject to speculation, due to the long-term effects of radiation, but ranges from an estimate of 9,000 by the World Health Organization to one of a possible 90,000 by the environmental group Greenpeace.

The Ukrainian government, however, has since scaled back benefits for Chernobyl survivors, making many feel betrayed by their own country.

"I went in there when everyone was fleeing. We were going right into the heat," said Mykola Bludchiy, who arrived in the Chernobyl exclusion zone on May 5, just days after the explosion. "And today everything is forgotten. It's a disgrace."

He spoke Tuesday after a ceremony in Kiev, where top officials were laying wreaths to a Chernobyl memorial.

At midnight on Monday, a Chernobyl vigil was held in the Ukrainian town of Slavutych, where many former Chernobyl workers were relocated.

Thirty years later, many could not hold back the tears as they brought flowers and candles to a memorial for the workers killed in the explosion. Some of the former liquidators dressed in white robes and caps for the memorial, just like the ones they had worn so many years ago.

Andriy Veprev, who had worked at the Chernobyl nuclear plant for 14 years before the explosion and helped to clean up the contamination, said memories of the mayhem in 1986 were still vivid in his mind.

"I'm proud of those guys who were with me and who are not with us now," he said.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin, in a message to the liquidators, called the Chernobyl disaster "a grave lesson for all of mankind."

___

Yuras Karmanau in Minsk, Belarus, and Jim Heintz and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow, contributed to this report.

Belarusian liquidators, veterans of the Chernobyl, bring flowers to commemorate victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster at the memorial in Minsk, Belarus, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Commemorative events are going to be held later Tuesday outside the Chernobyl power stations as well as in Belarus and Russia, neighboring countries that also suffered from the fallout. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

Opposition supporters march carry a banner reading 'Respect nature, respect Belarus' to commemorate Chernobyl nuclear disaster victims in Minsk, Belarus, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Commemorative events are held Tuesday outside the Chernobyl power station as well as in Belarus and Russia, neighboring countries that also suffered from the fallout. (AP Photo/ Sergei Grits)

Nataliya Khodemchyuk, 64, from Ukraine, a widow of Chernobyl liquidator Valery Khodemchyuk, sits at his grave at the Mitino Cemetery in Moscow, during a ceremony on the 30th anniversary of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. About 600,000 people, often referred to as Chernobyl's "liquidators," were sent in to fight the fire at the nuclear plant after an explosion on April 26, 1986. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

A woman stands near a memorial to Chernobyl workers and firefighters in the town of Slavutych, Ukraine, early Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, when the 4th unit of the plant exploded early hours April 26, 1986. The city of Slavutych was built following the evacuation of Pripyat, the town of the Chernobyl plant workers, which was just 1.5 kilometers (about one mile) away from the plant. Some 50,000 Pripyat residents were evacuated after the disaster, taking only a few belongings. They never returned, and workers and their families now live in Slavutych. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

The Chernobyl nuclear plant workers in uniform attend a ceremony to commemorate victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster at the memorial to Chernobyl workers and firefighters in the town of Slavutych, Ukraine, early Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, when the 4th unit of the plant exploded early hours April 26, 1986. The city of Slavutych was built following the evacuation of Pripyat, the town of the Chernobyl plant workers, which was just 1.5 kilometers (about one mile) away from the plant. Some 50,000 Pripyat residents were evacuated after the disaster, taking only a few belongings. They never returned, and workers and their families now live in Slavutych. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

People light candles to commemorate victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, during a ceremony at the memorial to Chernobyl workers and firefighters in the town of Slavutych, Ukraine, early Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, when the 4th unit of the plant exploded early hours April 26, 1986. The city of Slavutych was built following the evacuation of Pripyat, the town of the Chernobyl plant workers, which was just 1.5 kilometers (about one mile) away from the plant. Some 50,000 Pripyat residents were evacuated after the disaster, taking only a few belongings. They never returned, and workers and their families now live in Slavutych. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Ukrainians light candles at the memorial to the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, in Kiev, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine marked the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

People light candles to commemorate victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, during a ceremony at the memorial to Chernobyl workers and firefighters in the town of Slavutych, Ukraine, early Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, when the 4th unit of the plant exploded early hours April 26, 1986. The city of Slavutych was built following the evacuation of Pripyat, the town of the Chernobyl plant workers, which was just 1.5 kilometers (about one mile) away from the plant. Some 50,000 Pripyat residents were evacuated after the disaster, taking only a few belongings. They never returned, and workers and their families now live in Slavutych. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Candles and flowers are placed in front of the memorial to Chernobyl workers and firefighters in the town of Slavutych, Ukraine, early Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, when the 4th unit of the plant exploded early hours April 26, 1986. The city of Slavutych was built following the evacuation of Pripyat, the town of the Chernobyl plant workers, which was just 1.5 kilometers (about one mile) away from the plant. Some 50,000 Pripyat residents were evacuated after the disaster, taking only a few belongings. They never returned, and workers and their families now live in Slavutych. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

A man lays flowers to commemorate victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, during a ceremony at the memorial to Chernobyl workers and firefighters in the town of Slavutych, Ukraine, early Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, when the 4th unit of the plant exploded early hours April 26, 1986. The city of Slavutych was built following the evacuation of Pripyat, the town of the Chernobyl plant workers, which was just 1.5 kilometers (about one mile) away from the plant. Some 50,000 Pripyat residents were evacuated after the disaster, taking only a few belongings. They never returned, and workers and their families now live in Slavutych. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Children attend a ceremony to commemorate victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, in the town of Slavutych, Ukraine, early Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, when the 4th unit of the plant exploded early hours April 26, 1986. The city of Slavutych was built following the evacuation of Pripyat, the town of the Chernobyl plant workers, which was just 1.5 kilometers (about one mile) away from the plant. Some 50,000 Pripyat residents were evacuated after the disaster, taking only a few belongings. They never returned, and workers and their families now live in Slavutych. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Ukrainians hold candles at the St. Michael Church to honor the memory of the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, in Kiev, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine marked the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

Ukrainians prepare to honor the memory of the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, at the St. Michael Church in Kiev, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine marked the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

FILE - A 1986 file photo of an aerial view of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine showing damage from an explosion and fire in reactor four on April 26, 1986 that sent large amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere. Telling the story of Chernobyl in numbers 30 years later involves dauntingly large figures and others that are even more vexing because they're still unknown. (AP Photo/Volodymyr Repik, File)

Belarusian liquidators, veterans of the Chernobyl, bring flowers to commemorate victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster at the memorial in Minsk, Belarus, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Commemorative events are going to be held later Tuesday outside the Chernobyl power stations as well as in Belarus and Russia, neighboring countries that also suffered from the fallout. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

Alexander Burinin, left, former Chernobyl liquidator, his wife Olga and grandson Georgy visit Mitino Cemetery in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, April 26, 2016 on the 30th anniversary of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. About 600,000 people, often referred to as Chernobyl's "liquidators," were sent in to fight the fire at the nuclear plant after an explosion on April 26, 1986. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko, left, carries flowers as he arrives at a monument to the victims of the Chernobyl tragedy for a ceremony outside the nuclear power plant in the Ukraine, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine on Tuesday marked the 30th anniversary of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the worlds worst nuclear accident. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

Ukrainians lay flowers to the tombstone that bears their relative's names, during a ceremony to commemorate victims of Chernobyl tragedy at a monument to them in Ukraine's capital Kiev, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which spread radiation over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

A woman puts flowers to a monument to Chernobyl liquidators at Mitino Cemetery in Moscow, during the 30th anniversary of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. About 600,000 people, often referred to as Chernobyl's "liquidators," were sent in to fight the fire at the nuclear plant after an explosion on April 26, 1986.(AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

A woman holds a photograph of her husband who died following the clean-up operations for the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear explosion, at the Chernobyl's victim monument in Ukraine's capital Kiev, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which spread radiation over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

A soldier places portrait photos near the monument erected in memory of the victims of the Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine's capital Kiev, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which spread radiation over much of northern Europe. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Indonesia to hold regional talks after kidnappings at sea

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  Indonesia's president said Tuesday that his government will host talks with Malaysia and the Philippines this week to boost maritime security following the kidnappings at sea of Indonesians by suspected Abu Sayyaf militants.

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said the meeting of foreign ministers and military chiefs will discuss joint patrols to protect shipping in the waters between the three countries. He said the meeting would be held this week, but did not give a specific date.

Fourteen Indonesians are among more than 20 people being held hostage in the southern Philippines. They were crew members of two Indonesian tug boats hijacked in separate incidents in March and this month.

The company that owns the tug boat involved in the March incident has received telephone calls, purportedly from Abu Sayyaf, demanding a ransom.

But Jokowi ruled out an exchange of money for the hostages by the government. "We will never compromise on such a thing," he said.

Abu Sayyaf militants beheaded a Canadian hostage Monday and dumped his head on a roadside in a plastic bag in the southern Philippine province of Sulu.

The militants had threatened to behead one of two Canadians and a Norwegian they kidnapped last September from a marina on southern Samal Island if a large ransom was not paid by Monday afternoon.
Japan's Funai told to pay Philips $152 million compensation

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)  Royal Philips says an international arbitration panel has ordered Japanese company Funai Electric Co. to pay the Dutch electronics firm 135 million euros ($152 million) compensation over a breach of contract.

Philips launched the arbitration proceedings in 2013 after terminating a $200 million deal to transfer to Funai its audio, video and media accessories unit and license the right to distribute the products with Philips branding for five years.

At the time, Philips said Funai, "refused to take the necessary steps to enable completion of the transaction."
Thousands celebrate Orthodox Palm Sunday in Romania

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP)  Holding palm fronds and flowers, thousands of Romanians took part in processions and services as they celebrated Orthodox Palm Sunday.

In Bucharest, dozens of priests dressed in gold-colored cassocks, led a procession outside a Romanian Orthodox patriarchal cathedral to mark the Sunday before Easter when Jesus made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

Worshippers of all ages joined processions at churches throughout Romania. More than 85 percent of Romanians are Christian Orthodox and there has been a faith revival in recent years.

Priests and believers stand outside the Patriarchal Cathedral after an Orthodox Palm Sunday pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, April 23, 2016. According to local media more than 800 priests and thousands of Orthodox worshippers marched through the Romanian capital and major cities ahead of Palm Sunday. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

In the village of Herasti, in southern Romania, believers gathered for a traditional memorial in honor of the dead. Orthodox believers met at the village cemetery at midnight, lit fires at the graves and shared food in memory of their dead relatives.

This year there is a five week difference between the day Western Christians celebrate Easter and Orthodox Easter. The Orthodox Church follows the Julian calendar, and the Catholic and Protestant Churches adhere to the Gregorian calendar, meaning they often celebrate Easter and other feast days on different dates.

A gendarme escorts Orthodox priests and believers marching during an Orthodox Palm Sunday pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, April 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

An elderly woman hods flowers sitting in a wheelchair as Orthodox priests prepare to march during an Orthodox Palm Sunday pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, April 23, 2016. .(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A gendarme escorts Orthodox priests and believers marching during an Orthodox Palm Sunday pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, April 23, 2016. According to local media more than 800 priests and thousands of Orthodox worshippers marched through the Romanian capital and major cities ahead of Palm Sunday.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Orthodox priests and believers march during an Orthodox Palm Sunday pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, April 23, 2016. According to local media more than 800 priests and thousands of Orthodox worshippers marched through the Romanian capital and major cities ahead of Palm Sunday.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A woman sings holding an icon as believers and priests march during an Orthodox Palm Sunday pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, April 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

An Orthodox priest holds branches after an an Orthodox Palm Sunday pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, April 23, 2016. According to local media more than 800 priests and thousands of Orthodox worshippers marched through the Romanian capital and major cities ahead of Palm Sunday.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

An Orthodox priest speaks to a boy before an Orthodox Palm Sunday pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, April 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Priests stand outside the Patriarchal Cathedral after an Orthodox Palm Sunday pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, April 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A woman wraps a scarf around her neck back dropped by large icons during an Orthodox Palm Sunday pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, April 23, 2016. According to local media more than 800 priests and thousands of Orthodox worshippers marched through the Romanian capital and major cities ahead of Palm Sunday.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A woman holds a child while siting with others by fires lit next to relative's graves in a cemetery during a Orthodox Palm Sunday memorial for the departed in Herasti, southern Romania, early Sunday, April 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A woman lights a candle from a fire lit next to a relative's grave in a cemetery during a Orthodox Palm Sunday memorial for the departed in Herasti, southern Romania, early Sunday, April 24, 2016. Orthodox believers gather at midnight, light fires at the graves and share food in memory of their dead relatives. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

People stand by fires lit next to relative's graves in a cemetery during a Orthodox Palm Sunday memorial for the departed in Herasti, southern Romania, early Sunday, April 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A woman lights a candle as fires lit by villagers burn next to graves in a cemetery during a Orthodox Palm Sunday memorial for the departed in Herasti, southern Romania, early Sunday, April 24, 2016. Orthodox believers gather at midnight, light fires at the graves and share food in memory of their dead relatives. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Believers try to touch an icon outside the Patriarchal Cathedral after an Orthodox Palm Sunday pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, April 23, 2016. According to local media more than 800 priests and thousands of Orthodox worshippers marched through the Romanian capital and major cities ahead of Palm Sunday.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A woman holds branches walking to the Patriarchal Cathedral during an Orthodox Palm Sunday pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, April 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A boy wearing a religious outfit scratches his nose holding tree branches as he stands next to priests outside the Patriarchal Cathedral after an Orthodox Palm Sunday pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, April 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
Turkey's Erdogan chases critics at home and abroad

ISTANBUL (AP)  Ebru Umar was sleeping in her summer residence on Turkey's Aegean coast when police arrived at her door and took her away for questioning about two of her tweets that were deemed offensive to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Dutch-Turkish journalist, a columnist for The Netherlands' Metro newspaper, was released the next day but has been barred from leaving Turkey as authorities continue to investigate whether she should be charged for insulting the Turkish leader.

"I thought it was a joke," said Umar, who tweets so frequently she wasn't even clear which of her missives caused offense. "I saw three police stations in one night. It's stupid. This is just intimidation."

Dutch-Turkish journalist Ebru Umar talks on her mobile phone in Kusadasi, Turkey, Monday, April 25, 2016. Umar, a columnist for The Netherlands' Metro newspaper, has been barred from leaving Turkey as authorities continue to investigate whether she should be charged for two of her tweets that were deemed offensive to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.(AP Photo)

Umar is not alone. There are nearly 2,000 cases open in Turkey against individuals, including celebrities and schoolchildren, accused of insulting the president, whose zero tolerance for criticism is the subject of a growing litany of zingers in Western mainstream media and comedy shows.

Turkey's independent media landscape is rapidly shrinking as a result of government-sanctioned takeovers and forced closure.

Journalists have lost their jobs for critical tweets and retweets. Others are on trial on charges ranging from espionage to making terrorism propaganda. Gag orders are common.

Erdogan, who became Turkey's first directly elected president in 2014 after serving 11 years as prime minister, was once hailed as a reformist. In the eyes of supporters, he had done more than any other leader in advancing Turkey's bid to join the European Union, injected new life into the economy and came closest to resolving a decades-long conflict with Kurdish militants.

But as he has consolidated power with successive electoral victories, the Turkish leader has backtracked on many of the EU-oriented reforms and is taking increasingly drastic measures to safeguard his reputation, which has taken a hit with a corruption scandal ensnaring people close to him in 2013 and with his progressively authoritarian style of governing.

The judiciary has been a key instrument in the crackdown on dissent, with Erdogan prosecuting critics not only at home but also abroad.

Press freedom defenders say Erdogan himself triggered this downward spiral. The Turkish president has advocated loosening the legal definitions of "terror" and "terrorism" to include anyone  including journalists, legislators and scholars  who voices support for "terrorism."

Turkey's war on terrorism encompasses three fronts. While being part of the international coalition against the Islamic State group, Ankara has domestic foes of equal concern  Kurdish militants waging a renewed insurgency in the southeast and loyalists of a U.S.-based cleric opposed to Erdogan, who are not known to have used violence at all.

Umar is one of many journalists  local and foreign  facing problems for tackling such issues critically or using social media in a manner that offends the authorities. "You can't investigate people for doing their job," Umar said. "If people feel offended, it's their problem. Get a life! Get a skin!"

In a recent column, Umar lambasted an appeal sent by Turkey's consulate in Rotterdam urging Turks in the Netherlands to report cases of people insulting Turkey or its leader.

Her case is one of many to strain EU-Turkey relations, but concern over freedom of expression is only one of the issues shaping the way Turkey and EU countries deal with each other.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel triggered an uproar when, on the basis of an archaic law that criminalizes insulting foreign heads of state, she allowed prosecutors to consider charging a German comedian who mocked Erdogan in a profanity-packed poem.

"I am very glad America doesn't have a similar law or I would be in a maximum-security prison right now," British comedian John Oliver, the host of HBO's Last Week Tonight, joked. Britain's Spectator magazine responded to the diplomatic fiasco by setting up an "Insult Erdogan" contest.

Critics saw Merkel's concession as evidence the European Union is willing to overlook rights abuses in Turkey as long as it helps address the migrant crisis.

While representatives of rights groups and even diplomats have shown up at controversial legal proceedings in Turkey  a move that has earned the foreign envoys public rebuke from Turkish officials  European leaders have largely pulled their punches when tackling the topic of press freedom in Turkey.

European leaders should stop making the migrant issue their priority "because it is really dangerous for Europe itself if Turkey becomes a country where democracy step by step disappears," said Reporters Without Borders Secretary-General Christophe Deloire.

"In the long-term, it is really dangerous to have a country, with so many crises  migrants, Islamic jihadism, terrorism  so close to the borders where independent journalism would be impossible," he added.

On Saturday, EU Council President Donald Tusk was walking on eggshells, trying not to offend his Turkish hosts while at the same time condemning moves to prosecute the German comedian. Tusk said that as a former Polish prime minister he had himself "learned and accepted to have a thick skin."

"The line between criticism, insult and defamation is very thin," Tusk added. "The moment politicians decide which is which can mean the end of freedom of expression."

U.S President Barack Obama, in contrast, has been more outspoken. On April 1, Obama said he had told Erdogan directly that Turkey's approach toward press freedom could take the country down a "very troubling" path.

Turkish officials insist that no journalist is in prison for their work, but they have been arrested for other criminal activities, such as links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

Others, like German magazine Der Spiegel correspondent Hasnain Kazim, have been denied renewal of their accreditation or, like U.S. journalist David Lepeska, refused entry at the airport.

The government denies shortfalls in freedom of expression or that it is clamping down on the free media. Erdogan has famously said the fact that the media is "full of insults" to him and his family is proof that the press is free.

At the joint news conference with visiting EU leaders on Saturday, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said: "Democracy, press freedoms are our rising values. We respect them and will continue to do so."

He questioned, however, whether insulting Erdogan can be considered a freedom.

"Press freedom should not ignore human rights and respect to a person's honor," Davutoglu said. "We need to be able to debate whether strong insults to the president of a nation can be assessed as press freedoms."

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Fraser reported from Ankara. Michael Corder in The Hague contributed reporting.

FILE- In this April 1, 2016 file photo, Turkish journalists cover their mouths with black ribbons before the trial of Can Dundar, the editor-in-chief of opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet and Erdem Gul, the paper's Ankara representative, outside the courthouse in Istanbul. Turkeys independent media landscape is rapidly shrinking as a result of government-sanctioned takeovers and forced closure. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

FILE- In this March 4, 2016, file photo, riot police enter the headquarters of Turkey's largest-circulation newspaper Zaman in Istanbul. Turkeys independent media landscape is rapidly shrinking as a result of government-sanctioned takeovers and forced closure. (AP Photo, File)
Pirates release 6 Turks captured off Nigerian coast

ANKARA, Turkey (AP)  A Turkish maritime company says six crew members of a tanker ship who were captured by pirates off the coast of Nigeria have been released.

The pirates boarded the Malta-flagged M/T Puli on April 11 and captured six of the ship's 14 crew members, including the captain. Fehmi Ulgener, a lawyer for the firm Kaptanoglu Denizcilik, said Tuesday the freed crew members are in good health.

He did not elaborate on the circumstances of their release or say whether a ransom was paid.
Key radical Islamist groups in Bangladesh

NEW DELHI (AP)  Hours after Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina accused one group of religious radicals of killing a gay rights activist and his friend on Monday night, a different group took responsibility for the attack.

The government's apparent misfire, including accusations of links to the political opposition, underlines growing doubts about its assurances that it is cracking down on Islamist extremists and maintaining order in the politically fractious South Asian country of 160 million.

Deadly stabbing and hacking attacks have continued, with different groups claiming responsibility for killing rights activists, atheist bloggers, foreign aid workers and religious minorities in the mostly Muslim nation. Claims of responsibility have also come from the Islamic State group based in the Middle East, although Hasina's government has dismissed those claims and said the extremist Sunni group has no presence in Bangladesh.

The attacks have alarmed the international community and raised concerns that religious extremism is taking hold in the traditionally moderate country.

These are the main Islamic political parties and radical groups in the country:

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JAMAAT-E-ISLAMI PARTY:

Jamaat-e-Islami is Bangladesh's largest Islamist party and is a partner of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which is led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, the archrival of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Hasina has accused the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-islami of orchestrating the violent attacks to create chaos in the country, an allegation the opposition denies.

Jamaat-e-Islami advocates the introduction of Shariah, or Islamic laws.

Its leaders opposed Bangladesh's 1971 war to gain independence from Pakistan. Its members formed groups and militias to aid Pakistani soldiers during the war and acted as an auxiliary force involved in kidnappings and killings of those who supported independence. Many of its top leaders fled the country after independence, but returned following the 1975 assassination of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Jamaat-e-Islami was banned for a brief period after the 1971 war, but was revived in 1979 after a military dictatorship took power following a series of coups and counter-coups. The group gained in strength and became a serious political force by the early 2000s.

Many of its top leaders have been accused of war crimes, and some have been executed after special tribunal proceedings that were widely criticized as flawed.

Bangladesh's High Court canceled the party's registration in 2013, effectively barring it from contesting elections. The party has appealed the decision.

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ANSARULLAH BANGLA TEAM:

The Ansarullah Bangla Team  also operating under the names Ansar al-Islam and Ansar Bangla 7  is the Bangladeshi affiliate of al-Qaida on the Indian subcontinent, or AQIS.

Now banned in Bangladesh, the group claimed responsibility for the killings of four secular bloggers last year, as well as the killing Monday night of two men including a gay rights activist who worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Ansarullah came to light as an active Islamist group in 2013, when secular blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider was killed by attackers in front of his home in Dhaka, the capital. Detectives arrested seven suspects, including students at a top private university and the group's alleged chief, Jasimuddin Rahmani, a former imam of a Dhaka mosque.

They have been indicted and are currently facing trial. The other suspects said Rahmani's sermons inspired them to attack Haider.

Bangladesh intelligence officials have said they tracked down the group after investigating a blog called "Ansarullah Bangla Team" which had five administrators, including two in Pakistan. In 2014, detectives arrested a Bangladeshi man and said he was one of the administrators. Despite the arrests of at least 40 suspected group members, the blog remains active with other administrators who operate from abroad, according to Bangladeshi intelligence.

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JUMATUL MUJAHEDEEN BANGLADESH:

The group was founded in 1998 by Shaikh Abdur Rahman, a religious teacher educated in Saudi Arabia.

It came to notice in 2001 when it engaged in conflict with an extremist communist group in Dinajpur in northern Bangladesh. On Aug. 17, 2005, it exploded about 500 homemade bombs at nearly 300 locations almost simultaneously across the country as part of a campaign demanding the introduction of Shariah law.

Later it continued its violent campaign by attacking and killing judges and police, and threatening journalists and women without veils.

It created a large network of supporters; some government officials say it has as many as 10,000 members.

In 2005, six of its leaders including Rahman were arrested and the group was banned. The six were hanged in 2007 after being convicted of the killings of two judges.
The Latest: Cruz shoots an airball at 'basketball ring'

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Latest on campaign 2016 as voters head to the polls in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and Maryland (all times Eastern):

12:10 a.m.

Ted Cruz's attempt to pander to basketball-crazy Indiana is backfiring on him.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Former President Bill Clinton move to the stage at her presidential primary election night rally, Tuesday, April 26, 2016, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

During a rally Tuesday night at a gym where "Hoosiers" was filmed, Cruz attempted to recreate a famous scene by having an aide measure the height of the basket. But Cruz referred to the hoop as a "basketball ring," resulting in a torrent of taunts across social media.

Cruz is a movie buff who has quoted scenes from "Hoosiers" before. In the movie, Gene Hackman has a player measure the height of the basket to show that there's no difference between the court his small-town team was used to playing on and the larger arena where the state tournament was taking place.

It wasn't clear what point Cruz was trying to make.

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11:30 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is collecting several dozen more delegates than Bernie Sanders on Tuesday after winning four out of five states.

With 384 delegates at stake, Clinton is assured of winning at least 194 for the night. Sanders will gain at least 129. Many delegates remain to be allocated, pending final vote tallies.

That means to date, she now has 1,622 delegates based on primaries and caucuses. Sanders has 1,282.

When including superdelegates, Clinton's lead is much bigger.

She has 2,141, or 90 percent of the 2,383 delegates needed to win the nomination. Sanders has 1,321.

Clinton needs to win less than 19 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates to reach 2,383.

Sanders would need to win more than 81 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates. He's only been winning 38 percent.

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10:55 p.m.

Republican Donald Trump says that Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is only doing well in the election because of her gender.

"Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she'd get five percent of the vote," Trump told reporters. "The only thing she's got going is the woman's card. And the beautiful things is, women don't like her, Okay?"

Trump was speaking in Manhattan after sweeping primaries in all five states that voted Tuesday.

Both he and Clinton have high unfavorable ratings, and Trump has made clear that he intends to attack the woman he calls "Crooked Hillary" mercilessly if the pair wind up facing off in a general election.

Trump also suggested twice that Clinton's rival, Bernie Sanders, run as an independent.

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10:53 p.m.

Donald Trump is more than three-quarters of the way toward clinching the Republican nomination for president.

With 950 delegates, Trump has 77 percent of the delegates needed to win the nomination. He needs to win slightly more than half of the remaining delegates to get there.

Trump had a big night on Tuesday, collecting at least 105 of the 118 delegates at stake in five states.

John Kasich will win at least five delegates and Ted Cruz will win at least one.

Seven delegates are left to be awarded.

The AP delegate count:

Trump: 950.

Ted Cruz: 560.

John Kasich: 153.

Needed to win: 1,237.

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10:50 p.m.

An indicted Pennsylvania congressman facing his first primary fight in two decades has lost the Democratic primary just before the start of his federal corruption trial.

Eleven-term U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (SHAW'-kah fa-TAH') had been outspent in the race as he struggled to raise funds for both the campaign and his defense lawyers. He was ousted on Tuesday by a 36-year state lawmaker, Rep. Dwight Evans, in his first primary fight in two decades.

Fattah has represented the Philadelphia region in Washington for two decades and served on the powerful Appropriations Committee.

He's accused of accepting bribes and misusing campaign funds and charitable grants to enrich his family and friends.

He has called the seven-year FBI probe that's ensnared his son and close aides a political witch hunt. He says he has done nothing wrong.

Jury selection in his trial starts next week.

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10:40 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is now at least 90 percent of way to clinching the nomination, having won four of the five primaries on Tuesday.

With 384 delegates at stake, Clinton will win at least 190. Sanders will gain at least 114.

She's less than 250 delegates away from reaching the Democratic nomination. About 80 delegates from Tuesday are left to be allocated, pending final vote tallies.

Based on primaries and caucuses to date, Clinton has 1,618 delegates to Sanders' 1,267.

If Sanders hopes to overtake Clinton in those delegates, he would need to win 65 percent of the remaining delegates through June, having lost ground on Tuesday. So far, he's only been winning 44 percent.

Clinton's lead is bigger when including superdelegates, or party officials who can back any candidate.

She has 2,137, or 90 percent of the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch. Sanders has 1,306.

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10:35 p.m.

With just seven weeks left in the primary process, Hillary Clinton's spokeswoman says the campaign is preparing for the general election.

"It's certainly prudent at this point and necessary to prepare for a general election," Jennifer Palmieri said after Clinton won four out of Tuesday's five contests. "And we have been making preparations and will continue to do so as the next seven weeks wind down."

After Clinton made an appeal to "thoughtful Republicans" on Tuesday night, Palmieri said the campaign believes Clinton can have broad appeal.

"There's certainly not anyone in the general electorate that we don't want to feel welcome on our side," she said.

On building party unity, Palmieri said that Sanders has said he will "do whatever he can to make sure the Republican is not elected in the fall. And we take him at his word that that's what he wants to do."

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10:32 p.m.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says that it's too soon for him to talk about potential vice presidents, but says he's getting closer to that time.

"We're going to set up a committee in the not-too-distant future," Trump told reporters Tuesday at Trump Tower as he celebrated his five-state sweep.

Trump has been asked about rival Ted Cruz's move to vetting candidates. He says Cruz is "wasting his time."

Trump was coy when asked whether he would put Chris Christie, who is in attendance, on his short list.

"I think he's fantastic," he said of the New Jersey governor.

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10:30 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won the Democratic presidential primary in Connecticut, wrapping up a near shutout with wins in four out of Tuesday's five contests.

The former Secretary of State entered having already accumulated 82 percent of the delegates needed to win her party's nomination. While she can't win enough delegates to officially knock Sanders out of the race this week, she can erase any lingering doubts about her standing.

Prior to her win in Connecticut, she was already 88 percent of the way to winning the Democratic nomination.

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10:26 p.m.

Democrats in Pennsylvania have gone with their party establishment's choice for a U.S. Senate candidate and rejected an ex-congressman who six years ago nearly won the office.

Katie McGinty is a former state and federal environmental policy official who got millions in dollars from the party to run her campaign. She also received the endorsements of top Democrats from President Barack Obama on down.

She defeated second-time candidate Joe Sestak (SEHS'-tak), a retired Navy admiral the party didn't consider a team player. Two other candidates finished far behind in Tuesday's voting.

McGinty will challenge Republican incumbent Pat Toomey (TOO'-mee) in the November election. Toomey was unopposed for the Republican nomination.

This is McGinty's second run for statewide office. She finished last in a four-way gubernatorial primary in 2014.

The fall contest could tilt control of the Senate.

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10:25 p.m.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says in an interview with The Associated Press that his campaign has a "very narrow path" to the nomination despite losses in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware on Tuesday.

Sanders says California's primary in June is "very important to us" and he thinks every voter should have "the right to vote for whom they want to see as president of the United States."

Even though his campaign is trailing Hillary Clinton, Sanders says "we are going to fight for every delegate" to the Democratic convention to influence the party's agenda.

Sanders notes that he won in Rhode Island, which was the only state in Tuesday's contests that allowed independents to participate in the Democratic primary. He says independents will be important in the fall election and superdelegates should take that into consideration.

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10:17 p.m.

Donald Trump says that the Republican nomination contest is "over" as he turned his focus to his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

"I call her crooked Hillary," he said in a speech Tuesday in New York following his five-state sweep. He said of the Republican nomination contest: "it's over. As far as I'm concerned it's over."

He vowed to do more for women than Clinton will if elected president and he reiterated his criticism of her handling of the security situation at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

He repeatedly called on Clinton's Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, to run as an independent, saying "I think he'd do great."

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10:15 p.m.

Donald Trump is piling up the delegates on a big night Tuesday, collecting at least 105 of the 118 delegates at stake in five states.

His five-state sweep raises the stakes for the anti-Trump effort in Indiana next week. If Trump can win the Indiana primary, he will stay on a narrow path to clinch the nomination by the end of the primaries on June 7.

John Kasich will win at least five delegates in Tuesday's contests  both in Rhode Island. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, was contending for one or two delegates, also in Rhode Island.

Eight delegates are left to be awarded.

The AP delegate count:

Trump: 950.

Ted Cruz: 559.

John Kasich: 153.

Needed to win: 1,237.

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10:05 p.m.

Donald Trump says he considers himself the "presumptive nominee" of the Republican Party, despite being short of the delegates needed to claim the nomination.

Speaking after his sweep of all five of Tuesday's GOP primaries, the Republican front-runner reiterated his calls to rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich to get out of the race.

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10:00 p.m.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen has won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Maryland.

Van Hollen won Tuesday night after a long and heated primary against Rep. Donna Edwards for the seat opening due to Sen. Barbara Mikulski's retirement at the end of her term.

The campaign became a polarizing battle over race, gender and personality as the two candidates sought to succeed Mikulski, the nation's longest-serving female senator. Both candidates represent House districts that include the suburbs of the nation's capital.

Van Hollen ran on his record as a pragmatic progressive who is able to reach across the political aisle to get things done. Edwards campaigned as a candidate more committed to holding liberal principals without settling for political deals.

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9:30 p.m.

Celebrating several key wins Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton is looking to the Democratic convention, telling a crowd in the host city of Philadelphia that she'll be back.

Clinton told more than 1,300 people gathered at the Pennsylvania Convention Center that said she would be back with the most votes and pledged delegates and promised that "we will unify our party to win this election and build an America where we all rise together."

Clinton focused criticism on the Republican candidates, rather than primary opponent Bernie Sanders. She made a pitch to voters outside the Democratic party, suggesting some may not be happy with the Republican options.

"If you are a Democrat an independent or a thoughtful Republican you know that their approach is not going to build an America where we increase opportunity or decrease inequality," Clinton said.

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9:20 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is assured of winning more delegates than Bernie Sanders for the night after wins in Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania, padding her overall big lead.

She's now less than 300 delegates away from clinching the Democratic nomination  with the outcome of Connecticut still to come.

Pennsylvania and Maryland were the two biggest delegate prizes on Tuesday.

In those states plus Delaware, Clinton will win at least 142 delegates. Sanders will take at least 66. Many remain to be allocated pending final vote tallies.

That means to date, Clinton now has 1,578 delegates based on primaries and caucuses, compared to 1,232 for Sanders.

When including superdelegates, or party officials who can back any candidate, Clinton has 2,097 compared to Sanders' 1,271.

She's now 88 percent of the way to reaching the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch.

Clinton now needs to win just 21 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates to hit 2,383.

Sanders won the Rhode Island primary.

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9:15 p.m.

With a five-state sweep on Tuesday, Donald Trump is staying on his narrow path to win the Republican nomination for president by the end of the primaries.

He has to keep winning to do it, and he has little room for error.

Trump padded his lead in the race for delegates, winning at least 82 of the 118 delegates up for grabs on Tuesday.

In Pennsylvania, Trump collected 17 delegates for winning the state. An additional 54 delegates are elected directly by voters  three in each congressional district. However, their names are listed on the ballot with no information about which presidential candidate they support.

The AP delegate count:

Trump: 927.

Ted Cruz: 559.

John Kasich: 148.

Needed to win: 1,237.

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9:10 p.m.

Bernie Sanders has won the Democratic presidential primary in Rhode Island, offering the Vermont senator modest gains in the race against front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Sanders' win Tuesday blocks a potential sweep of the day's five races by Clinton, who has already won three out of the five contests.

But the former Secretary of State entered Tuesday's five primaries having already accumulated 82 percent of the delegates needed to win her party's nomination. While she can't win enough delegates to officially knock Sanders out of the race this week, her gains could make it virtually impossible for him to catch up to her in the remaining contests.

There are 384 Democratic delegates up for grabs in Tuesday's races in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

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9:00 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won the Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania, further solidifying her footing in the race against Bernie Sanders.

Leading up to Tuesday's contest, Clinton had campaigned extensively in the state, which she often refers to as her ancestral home.

The former Secretary of State entered Tuesday's five primaries having already accumulated 82 percent of the delegates needed to win her party's nomination. While she can't win enough delegates to officially knock Sanders out of the race this week, she can erase any lingering doubts about her standing.

There are 384 Democratic delegates up for grabs in Tuesday's five contests. Earlier Tuesday, Clinton won the races in Maryland and Delaware.

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8:35 p.m.

Donald Trump has won the Republican primaries in Rhode Island and Delaware, sweeping all five of Tuesday's contests.

Hillary Clinton has also won her second contest of the night, winning the Democratic primary in Delaware.

The two front-runners were positioned to do well, further extending their leads against their respective rivals and bringing them closer to their party nominations.

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8:15 p.m.

Bernie Sanders is vowing to continue his Democratic primary campaign, casting himself as the stronger candidate in the general election.

Sanders noted Tuesday that the fall election is not a "closed primary." Independents, he said, "will be voting all over this country for the next president."

Clinton won the Maryland primary on Tuesday night and was expected to do well in a number of other northeastern states holding contests. Only registered Democrats were permitted to vote in those elections. Sanders has polled better with independents.

He is speaking in Huntington, W. Va.

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8:12 p.m.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is using a bit of political theater to propel his underdog presidential campaign in Indiana.

Cruz spoke Tuesday night in the gym where parts of the 1986 basketball film "Hoosiers" was made.

One of Cruz's aides is recreating one of the film's famous scenes by dropping a tape measure from the rim of the basket to show it's the same height as every other basket. Actor Gene Hackman did the same thing in the movie before his team went on to win the state championship.

After recreating the scene, Cruz says to cheers, "There is nothing that Hoosiers cannot do!"

Cruz is focusing on trying to win Indiana's primary next week to deny Trump the majority of delegates needed to capture the nomination before the national convention in July.

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8:10 p.m.

With victories in three states, Donald Trump is adding to his big lead in the race for delegates to the Republican national convention. If he keeps it up, he can stay on track to win the nomination by the end of the primaries on June 7.

Trump will win at least half of the 118 delegates up for grabs in Tuesday's contests. And he has a chance to win a lot more.

In Pennsylvania, Trump collected 17 delegates for winning the state. An additional 54 delegates are elected directly by voters  three in each congressional district. However, their names are listed on the ballot with no information about which presidential candidate they support.

The AP delegate count:

Trump: 904.

Ted Cruz: 559.

John Kasich: 148.

Needed to win: 1,237.

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8:02 p.m.

Ted Cruz says the race for the White House is now moving back to more "favorable terrain" like Indiana.

Cruz chose to speak Tuesday night in Indiana, instead of any of the five Northeastern states that were voting Tuesday.

Trump claimed early wins in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Maryland as polls in those three states closed.

Cruz spoke on the floor of a nearly 100-year-old basketball court where the 1986 film "Hoosiers" was shot. Cruz referenced the film about a small town team's underdog victory in the state tournament, saying "There is nothing that Hoosiers cannot do."

Cruz is hoping to rebound next week in Indiana and is focused on campaigning in the state ahead of its May 3 primary.

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8:00 p.m.

Donald Trump has won the Republican presidential primaries in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Maryland, giving the billionaire businessman a boost in a critical night as he seeks to shut out his opponents.

Hillary Clinton has also won the Democratic primary in Maryland.

Clinton entered Tuesday's five primaries having already accumulated 82 percent of the delegates needed to win her party's nomination. While she can't win enough delegates to officially knock Bernie Sanders out of the race this week, she can make it virtually impossible for him to catch up to her in the remaining contests.

Trump's win in Pennsylvania, the biggest prize in Tuesday's five contests, lends a boost to his embattled campaign which is facing a growing challenge from rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich who announced this week that they are teaming up to thwart his rise.

While the Republican winner in Pennsylvania gets 17 delegates up front, the other 54 are directly elected by voters. They are allowed to support any candidate they choose at the national convention, but their names are listed on the ballot with no information about whom they support, meaning that voters who haven't studied up on their choices will be voting blind.

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7:45 p.m.

A judge ordered four Baltimore precincts to stay open an hour late Tuesday because they were late in opening, delaying the release of results in Maryland primary until 9 p.m.

Rep. Donna Edwards, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the state's open U.S. Senate seat, filed a request with the Baltimore Circuit Court to keep polling places in the city open until 10 p.m. because of the morning delays.

After Tuesday evening hearing that was disrupted by a small fire at the courthouse complex, Judge Althea Handy ruled that only four polling places would be kept open late.

However, the State Board of Elections will not release any results while any polling places remain open, so it won't release the results for Maryland's counties, even though their precincts were to all close at 8 p.m.

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6:52 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is spending much of Tuesday in Indiana promoting her plans for manufacturing and job creation.

Speaking at AM General, a car production plant in Mishawaka, Indiana, Clinton said she wanted to "revitalize manufacturing" as president. While she has largely steered clear of attacks on primary opponent Bernie Sanders, Clinton took one swipe at him, repeating a critique that he did not vote to fund the auto industry bailout.

Clinton said she doesn't know where "we would be if we had walked away from the auto industry. She added her "esteemed opponent in this primary voted not to provide the funding the auto industry needed."

Sanders has accused Clinton of mischaracterizing his record on the issue.

Clinton also pledged to bring people together as president, saying that "anger is not a plan."

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5:51 p.m.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is not expected to win any of the five states voting Tuesday, so he's holding a campaign rally instead inside an Indiana gym where one of the greatest sports movies about an underdog team was filmed.

Cruz plans to speak at what's known as the "Hoosier gym" in Knightstown, Indiana, which holds its primary May 3. The 1986 film "Hoosiers" starring Gene Hackman as the coach of a smalltown Indiana basketball team that wins the state championship was filmed in the nearly 100-year-old gym.

One of the film's most famous scenes is a stirring locker room pre-game speech Hackman gives his players.

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5:55 p.m.

Most Republicans going to the polls in three states Tuesday say they are voting for their candidate, rather than against his opponents.

Only a quarter of voters in Connecticut and Maryland say they voted for someone because they opposed the other candidates. And in Pennsylvania, even fewer  less than one in five  say they were casting a negative vote, according to early results of exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.

Pennsylvania GOP voters are not quite so sanguine. While over a third would be excited by Trump Administration, the idea scares a quarter of voters. Few voters have extreme emotions about Cruz or Kasich. While either candidate's victory would prompt excitement for less than 10 percent of voters, each would produce fear in less 20 percent of voters.

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5:30 p.m.

Few Democratic voters in three states holding primary elections Tuesday have a positive view of Wall Street.

According to early results of exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research, about 6 in 10 Democrats in Connecticut, Maryland and Pennsylvania say Wall Street hurts the American economy.

Among Republicans, voters' feelings are more mixed about the influence of the financial sector.

In Pennsylvania, nearly half of Republicans say Wall Street harms the economy and nearly 45 percent say it is a positive force.

Connecticut Republicans are slightly more positive: Nearly half say Wall Street helps the economy and about 4 in 10 say it is detrimental.

In Maryland, more than half of Republicans see Wall Street as a positive with about a third saying it does more to hurt the economy.

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5:15 p.m.

Most Democratic voters in Pennsylvania casting ballots on Tuesday say they've been energized by the closely contested primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

But Pennsylvania Republicans say the opposite about the heated contest between billionaire businessman Donald Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

That's according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.

About seven in 10 voters in Pennsylvania say the Democratic campaign has energized the party rather than divided it, while about 6 in 10 GOP voters say the Republican campaign this year has divided the party.

Only 4 in 10 Republican voters say they've been energized.

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2:50 p.m.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid says he does not think Bernie Sanders has a path to winning the Democratic presidential nomination.

Responding to questions at his weekly news conference Tuesday Reid declined to suggest Sanders should drop out or cede the ground to Hillary Clinton who's expected to post a strong showing in Tuesday's primaries.

He said Sanders is a good person who "has run a campaign that I think we've all recognized has been unique and powerful, and I think Bernie should do what he wants to do."

But asked whether Sanders has a path to the nomination Reid said: "No I do not."

He said that Sanders will do what he feels is appropriate and Sanders' No. 1 issue is what's best for the country.

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2:50 p.m.

Bernie Sanders is making his latest fundraising pitch by using a photograph of Hillary Clinton smiling up at Donald Trump that was snapped when she attended his wedding to Melania in 2005.

The Sanders email, signed by campaign manager Jeff Weaver and carrying the subject line "Trump," does not elaborate on the photo. It notes that "no matter what the Clinton campaign says, there is one candidate in this race Donald Trump said would make a great president" - meaning Clinton.

Weaver also writes that Clinton allies are accusing Sanders supporters of helping Trump by prolonging the Democratic primary.

The Sanders email arrives on a day when the Republican presidential primary leader provocatively wrote on Twitter that Sanders "has been treated terribly by the Democrats" and should run as an Independent.

Sanders faces increasingly long odds in the Democratic primary, with Clinton ahead of him both in pledged delegates awarded to state contest winners and in "super delegates" who also weigh in.

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2:45 p.m.

An FAA spokeswoman says Donald Trump's business jet is free to fly the contender for the GOP presidential nomination to campaign events once again.

Trump allowed the Cessna 750 Citation X's registration with the Federal Aviation Administration to lapse in January, but continued to fly the plane to some of his campaign appearances.

The FAA told plane's chief pilot earlier this month to stop flying the aircraft after The New York Times reported the expired registration.

FAA records show the plane was re-registered on Friday to a new owner, DT Endeavor I LLC, a limited liability company controlled by Trump. FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown confirmed that it's cleared for flying once more.

The Cessna seats up to eight people. Trump also owns a Boeing 757 airliner and three helicopters.

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11:30 a.m.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Gov. Tommy Thompson are among the 18 delegates at-large who will represent the state at the Republican national convention this summer in Cleveland.

The Wisconsin Republican Party released the delegate names on Tuesday.

Under state party rules, all 18 of them are required to vote for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the first round since he won the state primary earlier this month. They can only switch to another candidate if they are released by Cruz or he fails to get a third of the overall vote.

Walker has endorsed Cruz but said he would back the eventual Republican nominee. Thompson has campaigned for Ohio Gov. John Kasich in Wisconsin.

Other delegates include Walker's wife, Tonette Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, Attorney General Brad Schimel and state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.

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8:15 a.m.

House Speaker Paul Ryan concedes the "five-point" Republican legislative agenda he's pursuing in Congress could be construed as competing with policy points the GOP presidential candidates are pushing in the primary season. But he argues that the party shouldn't wait until its nominating convention in July to tell the public its priorities, including lowering the national debt, strengthening the military and easing government regulation of business.

In an interview on "CBS This Morning" Tuesday, Ryan says that if the party waits until its nominating convention to state its primary policy objectives, "it's too late." He says he doesn't intend to handicap the GOP presidential race or discuss the candidates since he's the party convention chairman. But Ryan adds that the GOP needs "a transition from being an opposition party to being a proposition party."

He says he's spoken to Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich  the three candidates still in the race  but doesn't elaborate. Speaking of congressional Republicans, Ryan says, "We're not worrying about something that's out of our control, which is who is the nominee."

7:45 a.m.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says it would be a "great idea" to have a woman as vice president.

Speaking to MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Tuesday, as the polls in five Northeastern states prepared to open, Sanders said that there are many women who would be qualified and that he would consider as running mates should he win the nomination.

"Elizabeth Warren has been a real champion," Sanders said.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a primary night news conference, Tuesday, April 26, 2016, in New York. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is at back left. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton moves to the stage at her presidential primary election night rally, Tuesday, April 26, 2016, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is accompanied by Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, left, Sen. Bob Casey D-Pa., Gov. Tom Wolf, and former President Bill Clinton, stands on stage at her presidential primary election night rally, Tuesday, April 26, 2016, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks during a rally at the Hoosier Gym in Knightstown, Ind., Tuesday, April 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, takes the stage with his daughters Caroline, left, and Catherine for a rally at the Hoosier Gym in Knightstown, Ind., Tuesday, April 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

People exit past the ladder and basket used as a prop by Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, during a rally at the Hoosier Gym in Knightstown, Ind., Tuesday, April 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., greets audience members before taking the stage during an election night campaign event at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena, Tuesday, April 26, 2016, in Huntington, W.Va. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during an election night campaign event at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena, Tuesday, April 26, 2016, in Huntington, W.Va. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during an election night campaign event at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena, Tuesday, April 26, 2016, in Huntington, W.Va. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, left, and his wife Melania Trump attend the TIME 100 Gala, celebrating the 100 most influential people in the world, at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center on Tuesday, April 26, 2016, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Swedish Greens jolted by claims of Islamist infiltration

STOCKHOLM (AP)  One refused to shake hands with a female journalist. Another compared Israel to Nazi Germany. A third was seen doing hand signs associated with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood in the background of a live TV broadcast.

The behavior of some Muslim members of Sweden's Green Party, which is part of a coalition government since 2014, has sparked concerns that the small environmentalist group may have been infiltrated by Islamists.

It also has triggered a wider discussion about whether Sweden has tried so hard to be inclusive and tolerant toward migrants that it's failed to stand up for its own feminist ideals.

FILE - In this April 18, 2016 file photo, Sweden's Housing Minister Mehmet Kaplan appears before the media to confirm his resignation in Stockholm, Sweden. One refused to shake hands with a female journalist. Another compared Israel to Nazi Germany. A third was seen doing hand signs associated with Egypts Muslim Brotherhood in the background of a live TV broadcast. The behavior of some Muslim members of Swedens Green Party, which is part of a coalition government since 2014, has sparked concerns that the small environmentalist group may have been infiltrated by Islamists. It also has triggered a wider discussion about whether Sweden has tried so hard to be inclusive and tolerant toward migrants that it's failed to stand up for its own feminist ideals.(Jessica Gow / TT via AP, File) SWEDEN OUT

"In our eagerness to embrace a diverse and multicultural society, we have turned a blind eye to undemocratic views," said Gulan Avci, a Stockholm city councilwoman for the Liberals, a center-right opposition party.

Green Party leaders said Monday there's no evidence of Islamists influencing party policies, but admitted the party needs a "reset" with greater focus on environmental issues.

The party's problems started when Housing Minister Mehmet Kaplan, a Green Party member and former leader of a Swedish Muslim youth group, resigned last week after media reports that he had contacts with ultra-nationalists and Islamists in his native Turkey. Though he denied any wrongdoing and the party leadership defended him until the end, he stepped down when a video surfaced of Kaplan comparing Israel's treatment of Palestinians to how the Nazis persecuted Jews.

Trying to cool things down, Green Party co-leader Asa Romson only made them worse when she went off on a bizarre tangent in a TV interview, describing the Sept. 11 attacks as "accidents." She later clarified that she condemns the attacks.

But it didn't end there. New images emerged where Kaplan and other Muslim members of the Green Party were seen holding up four fingers, a hand gesture used by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. One of them, a Green Party youth leader, walked into the picture during a live broadcast on Swedish television and flashed the sign behind the presenter.

The gesture isn't illegal in Sweden but many Green Party members questioned whether the brotherhood's conservative views are compatible with the feminist and gay-friendly platform of the Swedish Greens.

The biggest outcry came after Yasri Khan, a 30-year-old running for a seat on the Green Party's executive board, refused to shake the hand of a Swedish TV reporter. He said shaking hands with someone from the opposite sex is too "intimate," and instead put his hand on his heart in a Muslim greeting.

A ferocious debate ensued in Sweden with Khan's critics calling his behavior insulting to women and his supporters dismissing the criticism as Islamophobia. Even Prime Minister Stefan Lofven weighed in, saying that in Sweden "you shake hands with both women and men."

Dismayed, Khan withdrew his candidacy for the Green Party executive board and also quit his seats on a regional board and city council. He told The Associated Press he's keeping his party membership for now, though he questioned whether practicing Muslims still are welcome in the party.

"I think the Green Party needs to work on their inclusive values," he said. "How do you combine diversity and religion with an ethnocentric and prejudiced idea of gender equality?"

Asked whether he would describe himself as an Islamist, he said he doesn't even know what the word means.

"If it means a practicing Muslim who is contributing to politics, then I'm an Islamist  or was, since I'm leaving. But if it means a terrorist or against gender equality then I am as far away from an Islamist as you can get," Khan said.

Like many Muslims, he said he was drawn to the Greens because of their embrace of diversity, human rights and "all kinds of people who stood up for green politics."

Critics question whether the Greens opened their ranks to members who care more about promoting their religion than the environment.

"People who are close to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is an Islamist party, obviously have a big foothold in the Green Party," Lars Nicander, a security expert at the Swedish Defense University, told Sweden's TV4. He compared it to how Soviet agents tried to infiltrate political parties in the West during the Cold War.

The Greens didn't dismiss his theory outright.

"Even though at this point there are no indications that fears of an infiltration are real, the Green Party will go ahead and investigate our potential vulnerability to infiltration," senior party officials Jon Karlfeld and Anders Wallner wrote in an opinion piece.

There are no official statistics on Muslims in Sweden because authorities don't register people by their religion. Estimates range between 100,000 and nearly 500,000. However, it's clear that immigration from Muslim countries has changed the makeup of Swedish society, though many of the refugees who have come to Sweden are Christians or non-practicing Muslims.

Far-right sympathizers have used the Green Party's woes to bash Muslims, but the most outspoken critics also include non-practicing or moderate Muslims who want to keep religion out of politics in Sweden, one of the world's most secular countries.
Procter & Gamble 3Q results mixed, sales decline

NEW YORK (AP)  Procter & Gamble's fiscal third-quarter results were mixed, as earnings rose even though sales fell on weakness in categories such as grooming and beauty and a strong dollar.

For the three months ended March 31, the company  whose brands include Bounty, Charmin and Crest  earned $2.75 billion, or 97 cents per share. A year earlier it earned $2.15 billion, or 75 cents per share.

Removing certain items, earnings were 86 cents per share. This topped the 82 cents per share analysts polled by FactSet expected.

FILE - This July 9, 2015, file photo, shows signage outside Procter & Gamble corporate headquarters in downtown Cincinnati. Procter & Gamble reports financial results, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

Revenue slipped to $15.78 billion from $16.93 billion, hindered by a strong dollar, minor brand divestitures and the Venezuela deconsolidation. The performance was below the $15.81 billion that Wall Street forecast.

The biggest sales decline came in the grooming category, which was down 10 percent. Beauty and family care sales both declined 8 percent. Health care sales fell 7 percent.

Procter & Gamble Co. said Tuesday that it now anticipates fiscal 2016 core earnings will be down 3 percent to 6 percent compared with the prior year's $3.76 per share. It still foresees a mid-single digit increase in core earnings per share, on a constant currency basis. Analysts polled by FactSet expect earnings of $3.62 per share.

The Cincinnati-based company said that it expects fourth-quarter core earnings per share to be "significantly lower" than year-ago results due to increased advertising investments, a higher tax rate, pressure from the strong dollar and lower non-operating income.
Iran summons Swiss ambassador over US Supreme Court ruling

TEHRAN ,Iran (AP)  The Iranian foreign ministry has summoned Switzerland's ambassador to Tehran over a recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court against Iran, state TV reported Tuesday.

The report said the Swiss ambassador was summoned over a U.S. Supreme Court decision to permit the families of victims of a 1983 bombing in Lebanon and other attacks linked to Iran to collect nearly $2 billion of frozen funds from the Islamic Republic.

Iran and the U.S. have not had diplomatic relations since 1979, when Iranian students stormed the embassy and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The Swiss diplomat was summoned to convey Iran's protest to the Americans.

Ali Akbar Velayati, a foreign adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader, described the court ruling as an act of robbery, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"Iran is insistent on safeguarding its rights and will retrieve the money," Velayati was quoted as saying. "The way to confront Americans is to resist their ambitions."

The cabinet has tasked a workgroup, led by the Iranian finance minister, to examine the court decision and reclaim Iran's "rights," IRNA reported. The ministers of foreign affairs, and the heads of the intelligence agency, judiciary and central bank have joined the workgroup.
Turkey's ruling party denies plans to scrap secularism

ANKARA, Turkey (AP)  Turkey's Islamic-rooted ruling party has denied it has plans to change the nation's secular constitution into a religious one.

The statement from senior party officials on Tuesday came a day after parliamentary speaker Ismail Kahraman said majority-Muslim Turkey should have a religious constitution. His comments have led to fears that Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's party  which is drafting a new constitution plans to scrap Turkey's secular system.

Mustafa Sentop, who heads the parliament's constitutional committee, said the party has no plans to "discuss removing the principle of secularism."

Senior party official Naci Bostanci confirmed there was no such agenda.

Critics accuse the ruling party, in power since 2002, of chipping away at Turkey's secular traditions.
Waltraud Meier as a human Klytemnestra in Met performance

NEW YORK (AP)  No monsters of depravity for Waltraud Meier, thank you. The German mezzo-soprano takes a very different view of the Greek queen Klytemnestra than the one usually seen in Richard Strauss' "Elektra."

Meier, for 40 years one of opera's most glamorous and riveting performers, is portraying the role at the Metropolitan Opera in a production conceived by the late Patrice Chereau and first seen at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France three years ago. The matinee performance this Saturday will be broadcast live in HD to movie theaters worldwide.

During her 25-minute scene in the middle of the one-act opera, Meier exudes a cool refinement that seems almost at odds with the tormented character who murdered her husband, Agamemnon. As critic Martin Bernheimer wrote in the Financial Times, her character, "customarily a dangerous old grotesque, appeared as an elegant, attractive, almost sympathetic victim."

This image released by the Metropolitan Opera shows Mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier as Klytemnestra, left, and soprano Nina Stemme as her daughter Elektra, during a performance of Richard Strauss's "Elektra" at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The matinee performance this Saturday will be broadcast live in HD to movie theaters worldwide. (Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera via AP)

"I see her really as a tragic woman," Meier said in an interview, "I think we get much deeper into what's in her soul when we show that she's still human."

That takes some doing, because the opera is dominated by Klytemnestra's daughter, the vengeance-obsessed Elektra, who describes her mother in the most loathsome terms and is determined to see her punished for her crime.

"When the curtain opens we only hear what her daughter tells about her," Meier said, "and Chereau always said we may not fall into the trap of believing Elektra too much. It's her adolescent point of view. But it is not the truth."

What does constitute the truth is complicated and involves a backstory in which Agamemnon had sacrificed the couple's oldest daughter, Iphigenia, to placate the gods as he went off to fight in the Trojan War.

"I don't say the murder of Agamemnon is right," Meier said, "but it is understandable, there are reasons for it. Not justifications, but reasons."

In the libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Elektra accuses her mother of sending gold to arrange the murder of her absent brother, Orest. Klytemnestra insists the payment was to ensure his good treatment, and Meier thinks she's telling the truth.

"Because he is still her son. And she knows that he has to come back and kill her," she said. "And on one side she wishes that, she waits for that, because that makes an end to her suffering."

LIGHTS, LAUGHTER AND LYING STILL

At the end of her scene with Elektra, Klytemnestra is told (falsely) by messengers that Orest is dead. In most productions, she indulges in a fit of hysterical laughter and then as she exits calls out: "Lichter! Mehr Lichter!" ("Lights! More Lights!") Meier neither laughs nor cries out  choices that she sees as more in keeping with her dignified, restrained take on the character.

Another peculiarity of this production is that Orest murders his mother onstage instead of offstage. After he stabs her, Meier falls to the ground and has to remain there in full view of the audience for the rest of the opera.

"It's very hard in both senses," she said. "You may not move. However you fell down you have to stay like that. Those 17 minutes can be long."

WHERE TO SEE IT
Group: Western Sahara war is possible if no vote date set

MADRID (AP)  A top member of a group seeking independence for Western Sahara warned Tuesday that war is possible over the disputed territory annexed by Morocco if the U.N. Security Council fails to set a timetable for a vote on self-determination.

Bachir Mustafa Sayed of the Polisario Front told reporters in Madrid that it's not enough for the U.N. Security Council to simply restore the peacekeeping mission's role of monitoring a cease-fire between the Moroccan government and the Polisario Front.

Under its auspices, Morocco has proposed a wide-ranging autonomy for Western Sahara, a sparsely populated, mineral-rich region the size of Colorado on its southern border.

Bachir Mustafa Sayed, center, a high-ranking member of the Polisario Front greets journalists before the start of a news conference in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Bachir Mustafa Sayed, who seeks independence for Western Sahara, is warning war is possible for the disputed territory annexed by Morocco if the U.N. Security Council fails to set a self-determination referendum timetable.(AP Photo/Paul White)

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has recommended extending the peacekeeping mission's mandate until April 30, 2017 and the Security Council is expected to vote on the topic Thursday. It has called for the mission to continue but is divided on the way ahead.

Morocco expelled most of the U.N. mission's civilian staff last month after Ban used the word "occupation" to refer to the situation following a visit to Western Sahara refugee camps in Algeria.

Ban warned last week that the expulsions will likely be exploited by "terrorist and radical elements" and could lead to full-scale war.

Sayed, a counselor to Polisario Front Secretary-General Mohammad Abdulaziz, downplayed speculation that Algerian support for Western Sahara's independence could wane if the health of longtime Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika deteriorates.

The 79-year-old leader suffered a stroke in 2013 and was in Geneva this week for more medical tests.

"The Algerians have reaffirmed that they are on the side of the Saharans in any situation," Sayed said.

Morocco annexed Western Sahara in 1975 and considers it the country's "southern province." The Polisario Front has rejected the Moroccan government's offer of autonomy and wants locals to vote on self-determination as has been called for in U.N. resolutions.

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Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report from the United Nations.

Bachir Mustafa Sayed, a high-ranking member of the Polisario Front speaks during a news conference in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Bachir Mustafa Sayed, who seeks independence for Western Sahara, is warning war is possible for the disputed territory annexed by Morocco if the U.N. Security Council fails to set a self-determination referendum timetable. (AP Photo/Paul White)
Archbishop of Havana, key figure in US detente, steps down

HAVANA (AP)  Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who oversaw a warming of relations with Cuba's Communist government and played a role in the secret negotiations that led to U.S.-Cuba detente, has stepped down, the Vatican announced Tuesday.

He is being replaced as archbishop of Havana by Juan de la Caridad Garcia Rodriguez, the archbishop of the eastern city of Camaguey.

Ortega was named Archbishop of Havana in 1981 and oversaw three papal trips to Communist Cuba. He ferried a letter from the Vatican to President Barack Obama during 18 months of secret negotiations that led to the Dec. 17, 2014 declaration that the U.S. and Cuba were restarting diplomatic relations and moving toward normalization.

FILE - In this Sept. 4, 2011 file photo, Cuba's Cardinal Jaime Ortega, center, smiles as he waits for the Virgin of the Copper Charity during a procession in Madruga, Cuba. Ortega, who oversaw a warming of relations with the Communist government and played a role in the secret negotiations that led to U.S.-Cuba detente, has stepped down, the Vatican said on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano, File)

Under his leadership, the Roman Catholic Church has quietly established itself as practically the only independent institution with any widespread influence on the island. Expanding into areas once dominated by the state, the church is providing tens of thousands of people with food, education, business training and even libraries stocked with foreign best-sellers. Under economic reforms launched by Castro, hundreds of thousands of Cubans have launched small businesses or gone to work for them, and the church is increasingly playing a key role in supporting them.

However, the church has made little headway in its hope for more access to state-controlled airwaves and permission to run religious schools.

The church said Pope Francis had accepted Ortega's resignation, which was presented in 2011 under a church rule requiring archbishops to offer their resignation when they are 75. His being kept on four more years was seen, particularly in retrospect, as a reflection of the importance of his leading the Havana archdiocese at a critical time for Cuba.

Garcia, 67, was born in Camaguey, the son of a railway worker and a homemaker. He attended seminary in Havana, as part of the first group of Cuban priests who received their entire training inside the country, and was ordained in 1972. He became archbishop of Camaguey in 2002 and was elected president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops 2006, a post formerly held by Ortega.

The church described Garcia as "a man who's been characterized by his simple life, apostolic devotion, prayer and virtuous living." It described him as particularly devoted to caring for priests with "as much with gestures of great understanding, service and help as discreet and firm authority."

Per Vatican custom, church statements made no mention of Garcia also being appointed cardinal. Important archdioceses traditionally have cardinals at the helm, but sometimes many months can pass before an archbishop is made a cardinal, often in a special decree naming several at a time.

Garcia was known within the church for his work on drawing more young people into the churches of highly traditional Camaguey. Cuba already has one of Latin America's lowest rates of church attendance, a phenomenon exacerbated by the mass emigration of tens of thousands of young people in recent years.

A month after President Barack Obama's historic trip to Cuba was seen by many as closing the first chapter in the normalization of ties between the U.S. and Cuba, the naming of Garcia shows a church focus on renewing religious observance on the island, said Enrique Lopez Oliva, a retired professor of religion at the University of Havana.

"The church is starting a process of renovation in order to adapt itself to the new, historic moment that the country is living," Lopez Oliva said.

The son of a sugar worker, Ortega was born Oct. 18, 1936, in the sugar mill town of Jaguey Grande, in the central province of Matanzas, and moved to the provincial capital as a child. He was ordained on Aug. 2, 1964  just as the new Communist government was further weakening an already feeble Cuban church.

The church, long identified with Cuba's wealthier citizens, took a vehemently anti-communist line shortly before Castro declared Cuba to be socialist in 1961. The government later accused prominent Catholics of trying to topple Castro.

Public religious events were banned after processions were transformed into political protests, sometimes turning violent. Hundreds of foreign priests, mostly from Spain, were expelled. The more than 150 Catholic schools that once operated across the island were nationalized.

Ortega was among many Cuban priests sent to military-run agricultural work camps, spending a year beginning in 1966. After his release, Ortega worked as a parish priest in his hometown.

Ortega was named bishop for western Pinar del Rio province in 1978 and became archbishop of Havana in November 1981. At the time, the Cuban government was officially atheist. Believers of all faiths were banned from the Communist Party, the military and some other professions.

But Ortega quietly helped rebuild the church infrastructure around Havana, establishing new parishes and renovating more than 40 churches. He also set up Caritas of Havana, the first office of the Catholic relief charity in Cuba. That planted the seed for Caritas of Cuba, now among the country's most successful non-governmental organizations.

In November 1994, Pope John Paul II named Ortega the first cardinal in Cuba in more than three decades  and the second in the island's history. In 1992, the government dropped its constitutional references to atheism, and a gradual thaw in church-state relations began, culminating with the papal visit on Jan. 21-25, 1998, and government acceptance of some outdoor religious events. While Ortega refrained from publicly confronting the Cuban government, on some trips abroad he expressed disappointment that the opening had been modest.

After Benedict XVI visited in 2012, Cuba made Good Friday an official holiday. Pope Francis visited in Sept. 2015, flying straight to Washington from Cuba in a gesture aimed at showing his support for the normalization of relations.

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Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein

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This story corrects that Ortega ferried message to Obama from Vatican.
Usain Bolt to run 100m again at Golden Spike in May

PRAGUE (AP)  Usain Bolt will run the 100 meters at the Golden Spike in the Czech city of Ostrava on May 20.

Organizers say it will be the Jamaican great's second start of the Olympic season after a May 14 race in the Cayman Islands, and his first race in Europe.

The six-time Olympic champion will race for the eighth time at the meet, part of the IAAF world challenge series.
Court in Russia-annexed Crimea bans Tatar assembly

MOSCOW (AP)  The Supreme Court in the Russia-annexed peninsula Crimea on Tuesday banned a Crimean Tatar group in the latest step to marginalize the minority.

Crimea's prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya who personally lodged the lawsuit welcomed the ruling against the Mejlis, an assembly of Tatar community leaders.

"This decision aims to ensure stability, peace and order in the Russian Federation," she told Russian news agencies after the hearing.

Crimean Tatars, who suffered a mass deportation at the hands of Soviet authorities in 1944, seemed to be the only organized force within Crimea to oppose Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014. Tuesday's ban follows months of persecution, expulsions and jailing of prominent Tatar leaders as well as rank-and-file protesters.

Six people are now on trial in the city Simferopol on charges of rioting dating back to fist fights between rival rallies of a pro-Russian party and Crimean Tatars on Feb. 26, 2014 which preceded the hastily called referendum to secede from Ukraine. Not a single pro-Russian protester has faced charges.

Russia's Justice Ministry earlier this month ruled the Mejlis was an extremist group, paving the way for the outright ban of the group that represents up to 15 percent of the Crimean population.

Ukraine's foreign ministry spokeswoman Marian Betsa has condemned the ban as an "absolutely criminal and unlawful decision of Crimea's occupational government."

Council of Europe Commissioner Nils Muiznieks on Tuesday called for a reversal of the ban, saying that equating the Mejlis with extremist groups "paves the way for stigmatization and discrimination of a significant part of the Crimean Tatar community and sends a negative message to that community as a whole."

Tatars, including prominent leaders with Soviet dissident backgrounds like Mustafa Dzhemilev, were initially invited to contribute to the new government in Crimea. But a swift ban on Tatar assemblies and the heavy-handedness of the Russian government put a strain on efforts to work together.
Filipino extremists' brutal image precedes that of IS group

The beheading of a Canadian hostage by the Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines turned the spotlight back on the small band of Muslim militants whose brutal reputation precedes that of the Islamic State group, which they now idolize.

Abu Sayyaf emerged as an extremist offshoot of the decades-long Muslim secessionist conflict in the south and has carved its name in blood, carrying out mass kidnappings, beheadings and bombings.

Washington turned the southern Philippines into a key plank of its global war against terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to contain the Abu Sayyaf's actions including the abductions of three American tourists from a resort that year. One was beheaded.

Philippine National Police Director General Ricardo Marquez talks to the media after reading the joint statement of the military and police on the beheading of Canadian hostage John Ridsdel of Calgary, Alberta by Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf group in southern Philippines Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at Camp Crame in suburban Quezon city, northeast of Manila, Philippines. Ridsdel along with fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipino Marites Flor were kidnapped last September from a marina on southern Samal Island with the militants threatening to behead one of the hostages if the large amount of ransom was not paid Monday. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

A look at the major attacks by the Abu Sayyaf:

 April 1995: Abu Sayyaf fighters storm the mostly Christian town of Ipil in the south, killing more than 50 people after robbing banks and stores and burning the town center.

 April 2000: Twenty-one people, including European tourists, are seized from Malaysia's Sipadan diving resort and hauled across the sea border by speedboats to jungle camps in the southern Philippines. All of the hostages were freed in batches in exchange for millions of dollars in ransom reportedly paid by Libya.

 May 2001: Twenty tourists, including three Americans, are kidnapped from the Dos Palmas resort in southwestern Palawan province, starting a yearlong hostage saga that leaves a number of captives dead, including U.S. citizens Martin Burnham and Guillermo Sobero, who was beheaded.

 August 2001: Ten Christian villagers of the Balobo community on southern Basilan Island are beheaded by the militants to retaliate against a military offensive.

 October 2002: A nail-laden bomb detonates in Zamboanga city, killing four, including an American Green Beret.

 February 2004: A bomb on a passenger ferry in Manila Bay kills 116 in the country's worst militant attack.

 February 2005: Nearly simultaneous bombings in Manila and two southern cities kill eight and wound more than 100.

 November 2015: Militants in Sulu behead a Malaysian man while the APEC summit is underway in Manila, attended by President Obama and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Strahan to exit 'Live' in May, Ripa says all is forgiven

NEW YORK (AP)  Kelly Ripa returned to her daytime talk show Tuesday after time off to "gather (her) thoughts" in response to learning her co-host Michael Strahan is leaving, saying the incident had started a conversation about workplace respect.

She also told the audience that her bosses had apologized to her, and she'd received assurances that the "Live with Kelly and Michael" show was important to parent Walt Disney Co.

But only hours after the show's telecast, Ripa's remarks were upstaged by an updated announcement that Strahan will leave in May for full-time duties on ABC's "Good Morning America," not in September, as previously indicated.

FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2015 file photo, Kelly Ripa, left, poses with Michael Strahan, her co-host on the daily television talk show "LIVE! with Kelly and Michael," during a ceremony honoring Ripa with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles. Ripa returns as co-host of the morning show after a four-day absence after ABC announced Tuesday that co-host Strahan will leave the show to join "Good Morning America" full-time. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

Strahan's last day on "Live" will now be May 13, "which not only gives the show the chance to have a nice send-off for him during the May (ratings) book, but to also immediately begin the on-air search for a new co-host," said a publicist for the show.

Ripa, Strahan, and producers of "Live" and "GMA" were consulted in reaching the decision on Strahan's departure date, the publicist said.

The former soap opera actress has been co-host of "Live" since 2001, first with Regis Philbin and then with Strahan.

In between the two men's tenures, Ripa bridged a nine-month gap during which she sat alongside some 60 substitute and tryout co-hosts.

Prior to her return, Ripa had reportedly been upset that she learned only a few minutes before the public last Tuesday that Strahan, her co-host since 2012, was exiting for "GMA." He works part-time on the morning news show now and executives there are looking for a way to turn around fading ratings.

According to the new plan, Strahan will be making more frequent appearances on "GMA" before becoming a full-timer in September.

Ripa skipped Wednesday and Thursday's show, and said she had a scheduled vacation Friday and Monday.

"I needed a couple of days to gather my thoughts," she said after returning to a standing ovation from Tuesday's studio audience. "After 26 years with this company, I've earned that right."

She said the time helped her gain some perspective and that "apologies have been made." She didn't say who apologized and ABC officials haven't publicly admitted to blowing the transition.

"What happened was extraordinary," she said. "It started a much greater conversation about communication and consideration and, most importantly, respect in the workplace. I don't consider this a workplace. This is my second home."

Besides the lack of communication that Ripa took issue with, the shifting of Strahan to take advantage of his popularity on "Good Morning America" sent an unmistakable message about which show was more important to ABC's bottom line.

Yet the network surely didn't anticipate the drama would play out in the media or how it would raise questions about when  or if  Ripa would return. ABC did not comment Tuesday on Ripa's statements.

She walked hand-in-hand with Strahan onto the stage of her show Tuesday as it began, and Strahan swiftly let his co-host stand alone to talk about the incident.

"I am fairly certain that there are trained professional snipers with tranquilizer darts in case I drift too far off message," said Ripa, who appeared emotionally taken aback by the audience response.

Strahan, when she was done, said he was happy Ripa was back.

"If there's one thing I know about you, you love the show, you love the staff, you love your fans and I love you," Strahan said. "You're the queen of morning television."

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Spain sends suspected Paris attack arms dealer to France

MADRID (AP)  Spanish police say a man arrested this month on suspicion of supplying arms used in an attack on a Paris kosher supermarket last year has been sent back to France.

The national police said Tuesday in a statement that Frenchman Antoine Denevi boarded a jet with French police to return to his country and face charges of trafficking in arms and explosives and membership in a criminal organization.

Denevi was arrested on April 12 in the southern Spanish beach town of Rincon de la Victoria.

In an appearance in Madrid's National Court, he denied selling weapons to attackers.
CASPER, Wyo.  Wyoming Catholic College officials named their new president Monday, three weeks after President Kevin Roberts resigned from the position.

Glenn Arbery, formerly the academic dean, will be the schools third president since its founding in 2003.

The colleges Board of Directors selected Arbery to replace Roberts as interim president in early April.

We were preparing to conduct a national presidential search, said Chairman Dave Kellogg in a statement Monday. But as we moved forward on that front, we came to recognize that we already had the best candidate right here in Lander.

Kellogg expressed his belief that by choosing Arbery, the school would could continue its current mission without interruption.

For example, Arbery will carry on a funding campaign to ensure the school does not need to accept federal tuition assistance for its students. The commitment to remaining free of federal support was a key aspect of Roberts' tenure.

The school under his leadership also sued over the Affordable Care Acts mandate to supply contraceptive coverage to employees.

Roberts announced April 1 that he would be stepping down after three years on the job. He will take a job at a policy organization in Texas.

Roberts called Arbery a wise and thoughtful leader in a statement.

I cannot think of a better man to follow me as president, he said.

The new president will officially take office in mid-May.
Man pleads not guilty after wife's body found in well

MONTICELLO, Ky. (AP)  A south-central Kentucky man accused of killing his wife and then hiding her body in a well has pleaded not guilty to murder.

WKYT-TV (http://bit.ly/1T1QEMe ) reports that 29-year-old Joseph A. Jones entered his plea through his public defender in Wayne County District Court on Monday.

Jones was arrested Saturday following the discovery of the body of 28-year-old Rachel Jones at the bottom of a well near Monticello on Friday.

An arrest citation read by the judge accuses Joseph Jones of killing his wife, putting her in a well and then dropping off the couple's 9-year-old son at a family member's home before going on the run.

Authorities say Joseph Jones went to Mississippi before returning to Kentucky. He was arrested at a home near the well.

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Third wave of migrants returned to Turkey from Greece

ISTANBUL (AP)  Dozens of migrants arrived in Turkey on Tuesday, Turkish officials said, as part of a migration deal with the European Union meant to stem the flow of people heading to Europe's prosperous heartland.

Ferries carrying a total of 49 migrants from the Greek islands of Kos, Chios and Lesbos reached the Turkish port towns of Gulluk, Cesme and Dikili, according to Turkish news agencies and an official at Dikili, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government rules.

According to the deal finalized last month, Turkey will take back migrants who reached Greece after March 20, unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece. For every Syrian among those returned, Europe has pledged to take a Syrian refugee directly from Turkey to be resettled in an EU country.

A woman holds a baby outside a tent adorned with the EU flag at a makeshift camp crowded by migrants and refugees at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Many thousands of migrants remain at the Greek border with Macedonia, hoping that the border crossing will reopen, allowing them to move north into central Europe. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Tuesday's group, from Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Myanmar, was the third wave of migrants to be returned to Turkey.

As part of the deal, some refugee camps on the eastern Aegean Greek islands have been turned into closed detention centers holding those who face potential deportation.

One of those is Moria camp on Lesbos, where a protest broke out Tuesday during a visit there by the Greek migration affairs minister and a Dutch official.

A Greek official said Ioannis Mouzalas was visiting the camp with Dutch junior justice minister Klaas Dijkhoff when migrants began shouting "freedom" and "open the borders," and banging metal objects. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department regulations.

Police said the unrest began in the section housing unaccompanied teenagers, with protesters starting fires by burning trash. Riot police were on standby outside the camp, police said, adding that the situation was tense but under control.

Dijkhoff, whose country currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, was visiting Greece to check on progress of implementing the EU-Turkey deal.

The agreements "offer perspective, but their success can't be taken for granted. It is of the utmost importance that member states live up to their side of the deals," Dijkhoff said in a statement released before the protest.

"That means we have to help Greece deal with asylum applications and the return of migrants. Member states also have to accept Syrians from Turkey in return for the migrants being sent back to Turkey."

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Elena Becatoros in Athens, Greece, and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.

A woman stands among tens blown by a strong wind at a makeshift camp at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Many thousands of migrants remain at the Greek border with Macedonia, hoping that the border crossing will reopen, allowing them to move north into central Europe. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
A jilted former student who opened fire on students outside their school prom was shot dead after he aimed at an officer, police say.

Jakob E. Wagner, 18, arrived at Antigo High School in Antigo, Wisconsin, armed with high-powered rifle and shot two students as they left the dance on Saturday evening.

Antigo Police Patrolman Andy Hopfensperger, who had been patrolling the parking lot with two other officers, witnessed the incident and opened fire on Wagner.

The teenage gunman was pronounced dead early Sunday at a hospital after the shooting. Wagner's shooting victims, an 18-year-old male student and his date were injured but survived the attack.

Scroll down for video

Jakob E. Wagner (pictured) arrived at Antigo High School in Wisconsin around 11pm on Saturday night and opened fire on two students before he was shot dead by police

Landglade County Coroner Larry Shadick confirmed Wagner had taken aim at Hopfensperger moments before he was shot.

He said the autopsy showed the fatal shot went in through the suspect's extended left arm and ended up in his chest, explaining that the suspect's arm would have been outstretched if he were pointing a rifle.

'The way this shootout went was just unreal,' Shadick said.

Antigo Police Capt. Nate Musolff said in the documents that Hopfensperger fired 'as the shooter was actively engaging the kids with the rifle' and that the shooter was hit 'multiple times.'

While Police Chief Eric Roller praised Hopfensperger saying his officer's quick reactions had 'saved a lot of lives' by preventing Wagner from ending up inside the dance.

Investigators have not revealed the motive for the attack, but school officials have said it appeared Wagner intended to go into the dance and start shooting randomly.

Meanwhile, friends and classmates have revealed Wagner was bullied for years by fellow students and had been dating a current student at the school, who ended their relationship last month.

Wagner's mother said that her son 'wasn't a monster' and that she hopes the tragedy 'shines light on bullying and how deeply it affects people.'

Wagner (left) died in hospital after being shot by police at the scene. He recently posted a picture of this Airsoft rifle on his Instagram page

Nikita Deep, 16, embraces a family friend at Antigo United Methodist Church following a morning service in Antigo, Wisconsin, on Sunday

Shadick, citing an ongoing state Justice Department investigation, wouldn't confirm how many times Wagner had been shot. The toxicology report was pending.

According to a search warrant and supporting affidavit, meanwhile, police seized spent ammunition, a gun sling and journals from Wagner's home.

School officials do not think Wagner targeted his victims, but believe that he had been planning to enter the prom and start shooting randomly.

Interim district administrator Donald Childs said Wagner did not graduate with his class from Antigo High School last year and was continuing to work on his diploma.

But a friend of the 18-year-old described him as a 'good kid' who loved video games, hanging out with friends and music.

Dakotta Mills said he had known Wagner since sixth grade and considered him a foster brother. He says Wagner was raised by his mother and grandparents.

Mills says Wagner was interested in guns and wanted to become a hunter, and had gone through a hunter safety course a few years ago. But he wasn't sure Wagner could afford a gun.

Antigo Police Chief Eric Roller said several police officers were at the scene providing security for the event and quickly stopped the threat

Two Antigo police department vehicles sit in front of the entrance to Antigo High School on Sunday

Dylan Dewey said Wagner had been dating a girl at the school but that she had broken up with him last month.

Dewey described Wagner as an 'all-around good guy' and said he generally seemed happy.

But on Saturday evening, Wagner arrived at the school armed with the rifle and shot two students in the leg before he was gunned down by the officer.

'Two students who were attending prom festivities were shot as they exited the building,' Roller said.

'City of Antigo officers who were patrolling the parking area heard shots fired, and one of those officers was able to fire upon the shooter stopping the threat to additional attendees.'

He added: 'The officer's immediate response prevented further injuries and possible casualties.'

The officer in question has been placed on administrative leave, which is standard protocol, as the Division of Criminal Investigates whether the use of force was justified, WSAW reports.

Police put the prom on lockdown until a search of the area could be completed  and later everyone at the dance was escorted from the school and was safe.

After an initial investigation, police believe Wagner was the lone shooter and officers are conducting a search of his home seeking information, Roller said.

Sonia Reed, whose son Matthew attended the prom, said that she had been on the school's campus earlier on Saturday evening for a pre-prom procession.

A student crosses below two flags while entering Antigo High School, Monday, April 25, 2016, in Antigo, Wis. According to police Jakob E. Wagner, 18, opened fire with a high-powered rifle outside of the a prom at Antigo High School late Saturday. (Jakob E. Wagner/The Marshfield News-Herald via AP) NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT

She estimated that there were more than 100 students at the prom.

'I didn't see anything suspicious,' she told WSAW. 'I didn't feel any bad vibes. It seemed like it was going to be a normal prom.

She found out about the shooting when another mother called her to tell her that police were at the school and had a person 'down'.

The Unified School District of Antigo said Wagner had approached the school with a high-powered rifle and a large ammunition clip.

In a statement, the district said in a statement that 'quick actions' taken by police and district staff to secure the building 'prevented what might have otherwise been a disaster of unimaginable proportions, and we are extremely grateful for their well-rehearsed response.'

Police already were stationed to patrol the parking lot at the high school dance in Antigo, a community of about 8,000 people about 150 miles north of Milwaukee.

Wagner's family released a statement Tuesday that said his loved ones are 'filled with sorrow over the injuries caused to his victims, the position in which the police officers were placed along with the prom goers and their families.'

The statement, released by an Antigo funeral home, said Wagner's family realizes 'his actions have torn open a wound in our community. We pray for healing.'

According to the documents filed Monday in Langlade County Circuit Court, officers seized several types of spent rounds along with the strap and various journal entries, notes and drawings.

They also took electronics, including an iPod, a cellphone and video game systems. Additionally, the records show the seizure of 'Notecards Devil In Nature' and 'Teen Suicide Reading Materials.'
Selfies with suburban Atlanta gator? Bad idea, police warn

PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. (AP)  Fearing Snapchat could take an ugly turn toward "snap chomp," police are warning people not to take selfies with an alligator in suburban Atlanta.

Peachtree City police also advise residents not to feed the 6-foot gator known as "Flat Creek Floyd" as he soaks in the sun on Flat Creek, about 30 miles southwest of downtown Atlanta.

Peachtree City police Lt. Mark Brown tells WSB-TV (2wsb.tv/1VUBQ8K) that the gator's presence has "gone a little crazy" on social media.
Doctor: Dad accused of tossing child off bridge incompetent

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP)  A doctor says a 26-year-old Florida man charged with killing his young daughter by throwing her off a bridge over Tampa Bay remains incompetent to stand trial.

John Jonchuck didn't attend Tuesday's hearing. The Tampa Bay Times (http://bit.ly/1SxpuO4 ) reports he will return to a state mental hospital to continue treatment.

Public defender Jessica Manuele says another hearing to determine whether Jonchuck will face first-degree murder charges is now scheduled for Oct. 18.
The Latest: Olympic flame stops at UN camp in Athens

ISTANBUL (AP)  The Latest on the influx of migrants into Europe (all times local):

8:15 p.m.

The Olympic flame for the Rio de Janeiro Games made a symbolic stop at a refugee camp in Athens, as part of a global initiative to promote sports among 60 million displaced people.

Syrian refugee Ibrahim Al-Hussein, 27, center, freestyle swimmer, basketball player and former judo wrestler receives the Olympic flame from the head of Greece's Olympic Committee, Spyros Capralos, at the Elaionas camp that is home to about 1,500 refugees and other migrants, in Athens on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. The flame arrives in Brazil on May 3, and will be relayed across the vast country by about 12,000 torchbearers before the Aug. 5 opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro's Maracana Stadium. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

The torch was carried Tuesday by 27-year-old Syrian refugee Ibrahim Al-Hussein, who ran with a prosthetic limb fitted below his right knee.

Al-Hussein said that "this is such an honor for me. This is for every Syrian and ever Arab who has gone through so much."

IOC President Thomas Bach visited the U.N.-run refugee camp in January to promote a refugee sports program, sponsored by the organization with grants to build athletic facilities and fund training aimed at identifying elite competitors for a tiny stateless team.

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7:10 p.m.

A protest has broken out in the Moria migrant detention center on the Greek island of Lesbos, during a visit there by the Greek migration affairs minister and a Dutch official.

A Greek official said Ioannis Mouzalas was visiting the camp with Dutch junior justice minister Klaas Dijkhoff when migrants began shouting "freedom" and "open the borders," and banging metal objects. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department regulations, said the situation was tense.

The Moria camp was converted into a closed detention center after a European Union-Turkey deal aiming to stem the flow of refugees and migrants into Europe. Under the agreement, those arriving on Greek islands from March 20 onwards are detained and face deportation unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece.

--By Elena Becatoros in Athens.

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6:05 p.m.

Denmark's justice minister says members of a volunteer military unit will replace most police at its border with Germany to ease the officers' burden in coping with an influx of migrants.

Soeren Pind says 165 officers will be sent "back to their districts" and be replaced by 140 members of the Home Guard in June. They will be under police command at the border.

Pind spoke Tuesday after a parliamentary majority backed his plan.

The 48,000-strong entity of unpaid volunteers is often used to assist Danish defense units and police, and has also been deployed in Afghanistan and Kosovo.

Danes reinstated temporary controls at the German border on Jan. 4, only hours after Sweden required that travelers show valid documents. Last year, Denmark received some 20,000 asylum seekers.

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5:35 p.m.

Turkish officials and reports say 49 migrants have arrived in Turkey as part of a migration deal between Ankara and the European Union.

Ferries carrying migrants from the Greek islands of Kos, Chios and Lesbos reached the Turkish port towns of Gulluk, Cesme and Dikili on Tuesday, according to Turkish news agencies and an official at Dikili, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government rules.

According to the deal finalized last month, Turkey is to take back migrants who reached Greece after March 20. For every Syrian returned, Europe has pledged to take a Syrian refugee directly from Turkey to be resettled in an EU country.

Tuesday's group of migrants, from Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Myanmar, was the third wave of migrants to be returned to Turkey.

Austrian policemen check vehicles on the Austrian side of the Hungarian-Austrian border near Nickelsdorf, 70 kms southeast of Vienna, Monday, April 25, 2016. Austria has re-imposed controls on its border with Hungary, with police checking vehicles at the main regular crossings and soldiers patrolling other stretches of the border. Police say the controls that began Monday are meant to ensure that no one crosses illegally and to prevent the smuggling of migrants into Austria and other EU nations. They have reported more such smuggling attempts into Austria since countries along the Balkan migration route closed their borders to migrants earlier this year. (Szilard Koszticsak/MTI via AP)

A child walks past tents blown by a strong wind at a makeshift camp at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Many thousands of migrants remain at the Greek border with Macedonia, hoping that the border crossing will reopen, allowing them to move north into central Europe. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Police: Virginia man killed after he fired at officers

NORFOLK, Va. (AP)  Authorities are identifying a man fatally shot by Norfolk police after they say he fired at officers.

Virginia State Police identified the man Monday in a news release as 30-year-old Eric Wakup of Norfolk, who barricaded himself inside a home Friday night. Early Saturday, police say Wakup fired at officers, who fatally shot him. Police say Wakup was white.

Police say they aren't naming a black man who was shot in a separate shooting Friday where a Norfolk officer encountered the man with a gun near another man who had been fatally shot. The injured man was treated and released. Police charged another man in the slaying.
Voters in 5 states speak out on their presidential choices

Voters in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island and Maryland are casting primary ballots for presidential candidates in contests pivotal for Republicans and Democrats alike. Democrats are choosing between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, while Republicans are deciding among Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Donald Trump.

Here are some voters' thoughts:

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Voters line up to enter at the Hanover Market House polling station in the 2nd ward Tuesday morning April 26, 2016 in Hanover, Pa., borough. Pennsylvania voters went to the polls Tuesday with strong views about who should be president. Voters will also decide hotly contested Democratic primary races for U.S. Senate and state attorney general. (Shane Dunlap/The Evening Sun via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Gerson Mendoza, a 23-year-old native of Venezuela, cast his first ballot as an American citizen for Bernie Sanders.

The owner of a cleaning business, Mendoza graduated from the University of Connecticut a year ago with $40,000 in debt. He said he was attracted to Sanders' pledge to make higher education more affordable.

"College was particularly expensive for me, more than anyone should have to pay just for an education," he said after voting in East Hartford, Connecticut. "But I couldn't picture myself without going to college. If he could make that easier for future generations, that would be great."

Mendoza, who came to the U.S. at age 14 and achieved citizenship a few months ago, said he believed Hillary Clinton would probably be a good president but was too incremental in her approach.

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Karin Bryan voted for Ted Cruz because she believes he has campaigned in a more presidential manner.

Bryan, 73, a homemaker in Annapolis, Maryland, described herself as a staunch conservative who had a tough time deciding.

"I think that Trump albeit he says some good things, I think he's a bit of a loose cannon," Bryan said.

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Yvonne Hunt had a hard time deciding because she liked both Sanders and Clinton so much.

"I wish they could be co-presidents," said Hunt, 40, who works at the National Institutes of Health.

Hunt's entire family was divided in the Democratic race: one of 10 siblings, she said half are voting for Sanders and half for Clinton.

Ultimately, she voted in Silver Spring, Maryland, for Clinton, citing her foreign policy experience.

"I just feel like it's Hillary's time, she said.

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Sig Ruskaup, 72, a registered Republican from Warwick, Rhode Island, said the GOP race began with a large cadre of qualified people but Trump stood out to her because he wasn't a career politician.

"I felt things would be different with him," she said. "He has hardworking children and grandchildren and he wants to make America great again for the country and his family."

Ruskaup, who said she owns several properties, was impressed with Trump's work ethic and negotiating skills as a businessman. She sounded resentful of those within the Republican party trying to derail Trump before the convention.

"Everyone is working against him. They're part of the big boys club and they want to keep things the way they are, like Kasich and Cruz working together," she said. "I think we need a real leader."

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Laura Seyler calls Donald Trump a bully.

That's why she voted for him.

"I'm a very solid Cruz fan, and I think Cruz would do an excellent job. But I think Trump is a bigger bully," Seyler, 63, a senior buyer for a direct marketer, said Tuesday at a polling place in Hamburg, Pennsylvania. "That may sound strange, but I think that's kind of what we need."

Seyler, a Republican, said the country is going in the wrong direction  away from constitutional principles and toward socialism  and Trump will lead a restoration.

"I believe Trump will take the bat and straighten things out. I don't think he's afraid, he doesn't owe anybody anything, and I think he's very much an American that loves his country, and he sees Americans suffering," she said.

"He's not perfect. He has flaws. But who is? We could go through every list of politician and pick him apart, but I think he's pulling the people together, and that says a lot," she added.

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Loretta Becker, a pharmaceutical sales representative, said she generally doesn't vote in primaries but came out Tuesday to cast her ballot for Clinton because she considers her the most qualified candidate and is worried about a potential Trump presidency.

"He slurs, his negativity, his racism, the comments that he makes about different ethnic groups I just find it appalling," Becker said after voting in Warwick, Rhode Island.

A former social worker and onetime Vermont resident, Becker indicated she also liked Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, but Clinton was her first choice.

Why Clinton?

"The fact that I really loved having Obama for president and now having Hillary as a president, feeling like she'll do a great job and knowing that she's the best candidate and wanting to vote for her and support her," Becker said.

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Jon Passauer works two jobs, at a coffee shop in the morning and at a bike shop in the afternoon.

On Tuesday, he biked to a polling place in Pittsburgh to vote for Sanders.

A registered Republican until this year, Passauer, 29, voted Republican in the last two presidential elections but switched his registration to Democrat to vote for Sanders.

"I really like Bernie's message," he said. "What he's got going for him is some fresh ideas."

Passauer said a key issue for him was the number of people incarcerated in the U.S. He said he would like to see nonviolent criminals not locked up as frequently, or for as long.

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Retired physical education teacher George Reid, 73, of Hagerstown, Maryland, said he voted for Kasich because "he's a moderate versus the other two extremes, Trump and Cruz."

"I think we need somebody who's kind of willing to compromise. I'm not sure those other two guys are," Reid said.

He said he wants a president who can persuade recalcitrant lawmakers on the left and right to work together on issues including the economic divide.

"You see these people getting bonuses of $430 million, $500 million. That's ridiculous when you see someone else who's working his tail off who's making nothing, just trying to make ends meet," Reid said.

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Ryan Shiring voted in his first presidential primary on Tuesday, casting a ballot in Glastonbury, Connecticut, for Trump.

"I just feel as a young Republican he appeals to us," said Shiring, 20, an engineering major at the University of Connecticut. "He is anti-establishment, and that's something I gravitate toward. ... It's my first time voting. I felt it was important to come out. I wanted to feel like my vote counted, and I feel like it definitely did."

Shiring said he agrees with Trump's immigration policy, and he admires Trump for speaking his mind and taking on the Republican establishment.

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The Latest: Bathroom law didn't deter transgender protesters

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  The Latest on protests over a law curtailing rights for lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual people (all times local):

1:45 p.m.

The leader of a national advocacy group says transgender people used bathrooms aligned with their gender identity during protests in North Carolina's Legislative Building and weren't arrested for it, despite a law curtailing LGBT rights.

Protesters head into the Legislative building for a sit-in against House Bill 2 in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, April 25, 2016. While demonstrations circled North Carolina's statehouse on Monday, for and against a Republican-backed law curtailing protections for LGBT people and limiting public bathroom access for transgender people, House Democrats filed a repeal bill that stands little chance of passing. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Mara Keisling, director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said in a phone interview Tuesday that the stance of state Republican leaders toward transgender bathroom access is "nonsense." State law directs transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate in many public buildings.

On Monday, Keisling, who is a transgender woman, used women's bathrooms near one of the governor's offices and in the Legislative Building. She said others also used the rest rooms of their gender identity.

Later, Keisling was among demonstrators arrested after entering a legislative leader's office or refusing to leave when the building closed, but the arrests weren't related to bathroom access.

12:15 p.m.

North Carolina's Republican nominee for state attorney general urged a crowd to "keep our state straight," drawing criticism from the state's Democratic Party.

State Sen. Buck Newton made the remarks at a rally Monday in support of a state law that limits protections for the LGBT community. Newton shepherded the legislation known as "House Bill 2" through his chamber.

Video of the event shows him urging the crowd to "tell your friends and family who had to work today what this is all about and how hard we must fight to keep our state straight."

The North Carolina Democratic Party issued a statement calling the comments hateful and discriminatory toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. They called for Newton to apologize and for Republican Gov. Pat McCrory to denounce Newton's remarks.

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11:30 a.m.

Dozens of protesters arrested late Monday at North Carolina's Legislative Building have been released after a day of demonstrations for and against a law limiting protections for LGBT people.

Officers arrested 54 protesters who came to voice opposition to the law late Monday as legislators returned to start their session.

Detention records show the protesters were released late Monday or early Tuesday on a written promise to appear or on bonds that were generally around $1,000. Their court dates are scheduled for early June.

Acting General Assembly Police Chief Martin Brock said all would be charged with second-degree trespassing, and would be cited for violating building rules or the fire code. Brock says one also faces a resisting arrest charge.

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4:15 a.m.

A day of protests and arrests around North Carolina's statehouse marked what's likely to be weeks of impassioned debate over a law limiting protections for LGBT people.

Officers arrested 54 protesters who came voice their opposition to the law Monday as legislators returned to Raleigh to start their legislative session. The state's Republican leaders said they don't plan to repeal the law, a stance likely to stoke further demonstrations over the several weeks they're slated to meet.

The arrests capped a day of dueling demonstrations that included a large protest in favor of the law. Thousands rallied outside the Legislative Building to thank lawmakers for enacting the law.

Protesters rally against House Bill 2 in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, April 25, 2016. While demonstrations circled North Carolina's statehouse on Monday, for and against a Republican-backed law curtailing protections for LGBT people and limiting public bathroom access for transgender people, House Democrats filed a repeal bill that stands little chance of passing. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Protesters head into the Legislative building for a sit-in against House Bill 2 in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, April 25, 2016. While demonstrations circled North Carolina's statehouse on Monday, for and against a Republican-backed law curtailing protections for LGBT people and limiting public bathroom access for transgender people, House Democrats filed a repeal bill that stands little chance of passing. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

ADDS STATE REP. TITLE - State Rep. Chris Sgro, D-Guilford, who is also executive director of Equality NC, center, is stopped at the Capitol steps by security with petitions against House Bill 2 in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, April 25, 2016. Tempers are flaring as supporters and opponents of the new North Carolina transgender law hold competing rallies to sway legislators starting their annual session. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

ADDS STATE REP. TITLE - State Rep. Chris Sgro, D-Guilford, who is also executive director of Equality NC, leads a group carrying petitions calling for the repeal of House Bill 2 to Gov. Pat McCrory's office at the state Capitol building Monday, April 25, 2016, in Raleigh, N.C. Tempers are flaring as supporters and opponents of the new North Carolina transgender law hold competing rallies to sway legislators starting their annual session. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

ADDS STATE REP. TITLE - State Rep. Chris Sgro, D-Guilford, who is also executive director of Equality NC, leads a group carrying petitions calling for the repeal of House Bill 2 to Gov. Pat McCrory's office at the state Capitol building Monday, April 25, 2016, in Raleigh, N.C. Tempers are flaring as supporters and opponents of the new North Carolina transgender law hold competing rallies to sway legislators starting their annual session. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

ADDS STATE REP. TITLE - State Rep. Chris Sgro, D-Guilford, who is also executive director of Equality NC, center, is stopped at the Capitol steps by security with petitions against House Bill 2 in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, April 25, 2016. Tempers are flaring as supporters and opponents of the new North Carolina transgender law hold competing rallies to sway legislators starting their annual session. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
Georgia governor OKs state funds for anti-abortion centers

ATLANTA (AP)  Georgia can give state money to "pregnancy resource centers" that offer medical and other services to pregnant women while discouraging them from getting abortions, under legislation signed Tuesday by Republican Gov. Nathan Deal.

The measure's sponsor, Republican state Sen. Renee Unterman of Buford, described her bill as a "positive" response to videos released this summer by abortion opponents showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing procedures for obtaining tissue from aborted fetuses for research.

A Texas grand jury later cleared the organization of wrongdoing.

Deal signed the bill in a private ceremony and didn't issue a public statement.

Georgia now joins at least 10 other states that specifically dedicate funding to anti-abortion efforts, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports legal access to abortion. Elizabeth Nash, a policy analyst at the organization, said the practice began in some states decades ago.

Opponents of the grants say the centers use deceptive advertising to bring pregnant women in but won't discuss all legal options. They also argue that the state could still contribute financially toward lowering abortion numbers, through sex education or counseling programs.

"The state should be ensuring women are getting the best, most accurate and relevant information," Nash said. She added that bill Deal signed "allows state funds to go to organizations providing women with incomplete information or outright misinformation."

Emily Matson, executive director of the anti-abortion organization Georgia Life Alliance, said about 70 facilities in Georgia could qualify for the grant. About 40 of those centers are licensed to provide medical care, she said, while the rest provide other services including clothing and other supplies.

Matson said the organization hopes more funding for the centers will reduce the number of abortions. State records show about 27,500 abortions were performed in Georgia in 2013, the latest year available.

"When you're facing an abortion total of more than 27,000 babies being terminated each year, you're going to look closer at what we can do to ensure women truly are making choices and not just being caught in a for-profit business scheme," Matson said.

Lawmakers' budget proposal includes $2 million for the program. Deal is still reviewing it. He has until Tuesday to decide on a final spending plan for the financial year starting July 1.

Georgia already sends a small amount to some pregnancy centers from the sale of "Choose Life" motor vehicle tags. Since 2008, the state collected about $416,532 through sales of the tags, according to the Department of Revenue. Choose Life of Georgia, a nonprofit, receives $10 of each annual registration fee and has distributed nearly $300,000 to around 40 facilities since the program's creation.

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CASPER, Wyo.  About 9 percent of Wyoming students in K-12 have lived in a home where one of the adults was in jail or prison, according to report released Monday.

The national report, called A Shared Sentence, calls attention to the lack of adequate support for the children of incarcerated adults, with some hoping for an open conversation about how incarceration affects children in Wyoming.

The authors made a number of suggestions for lawmakers to reduce the negative impact incarceration has on the children of inmates, namely criminal justice reform and the provision of services to counteract the stress and income instability having a jailed parent can have on children.

But in Wyoming, the school system is often the provider, or facilitator, of support  from counseling to keeping tabs on children whose parents are in jail or prison. Children of incarcerated adults are treated much the same as other children that appear stressed, or at-risk academically.

At Mountain View Elementary in Mills, where a fair number of students are in this situation, staff and teachers are well aware of how kids are affected by the issue.

Principal Anna Lavin said those students can exhibit emotional instability and need extra care and attention. But unless the child has been put in protective custody, in which case the school receives documentation, teachers learn that a guardian or parent is in jail from word of mouth, whether from the student or a relative, Lavin said.

The staffs response is to communicate regularly on what their students may be facing at home. Classes begin each day with a community time, where kids talk about how they slept, if they ate and how things are at home. This extra piece of communication is important for the teachers to understand their students, and for the children to receive additional care, Lavin said.

The Natrona County School District does not have a specific program addressing children of incarcerated adults, said Dean Braughton, director of student support services.

It does, however, have a contract with the Central Wyoming Counseling Center to provide additional support for families and students. District officials also work closely with the Department of Family Services, he said.

Resources are available, but identifying the children whose parents are in jail or prison largely falls on the teachers, principals and counselors who see the children every day, he added.

Some see the lack of official designation of these kids as part of the problem and want services offered to parents facing jail or prison time so that the kids are not falling through the cracks.

Donna Sheen, executive director of the Wyoming Childrens Law Center, thinks Wyomings criminal justice system needs a mechanism in place that ensures kids of inmates are being properly cared for.

I think part of the challenge we see is we really dont have a formal process for identifying these kids and how to refer them or what kind of assistance to provide, she said. One of the things we advocate for is that the state develop some kind of formal process for when a child will be impacted by a parent being incarcerated.

Mark Horan, public information specialist for the Wyoming Department of Corrections said that questions regarding children are part of the intake process for new inmates. Parenthood is also sometimes revealed in the pre-sentencing investigation done in the courts, he said.

But that information depends on self-reporting from individuals who may not want to speak openly about their situation, said Sheen.

I worry sometimes. These are the kind of children who end up in bad situations, and nobody is checking on them, she said.

Though no statewide effort to identify these children exists within the Wyoming Department of Education, there are services in place that support children exhibiting stress or trauma, said Kari Eakins, spokeswoman for the Department.

Part of the accreditation process for schools requires having a Behavioral Intervention Team (BIT) to address severe academic and/or behavioral issues, Eakins said in an email. Schools are also one entity (others including DFS and the court system) that can trigger High Fidelity Wraparound services, in which a team of individuals who are relevant to the well-being of a youth (e.g., family members and other natural supports, service providers, and agency representatives) collaboratively create a system of care utilizing supports from multiple entities.

The data from the study was collected in 2012 during a National Survey of Childrens Health. The Annie E. Casey Foundation, which paid for the study, is a nationwide research organization focused on policies that affect school age children.

In 2012, there were about 12,000 Wyoming children who had lived in homes with at least one incarcerated adult.
Senators again reach deal on Flint water crisis aid

WASHINGTON (AP)  For the second time in two months, the Senate has reached a bipartisan deal to address a water crisis in Flint, Michigan, where lead-contaminated pipes have resulted in an ongoing public health emergency.

Democratic Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters of Michigan said an agreement reached Tuesday with Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., would authorize $100 million in grants and loans to replace lead-contaminated pipes in Flint and other cities with lead emergencies, as well as $70 million in credit subsidies for loans to improve water infrastructure across the country. The deal also authorizes $50 million nationwide to bolster lead-prevention programs and improve children's health.

The measure would be part of a larger water resources bill in the Senate.

The agreement is virtually identical to a deal reached in late February among the same three senators. That measure was attached to a broader energy bill, then derailed after Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah objected.

Help for Flint is needed more than ever, Peters said Tuesday.

"The people of Flint  many of whom are still using bottled water to drink, cook and bathe  are in dire need of assistance, and I look forward to helping move this legislation forward in the Senate," Peters said in a statement.

Stabenow said she and Peters are "not giving up until this gets done."

A spokesman for Lee declined to comment, saying the senator was just learning of the new proposal. Lee objected to the initial Flint aid, saying that Michigan has a budget surplus and does not need federal money to fix the problem.

Lee also objected to the way the way the bill is paid for  it redirects up to $250 million in unspent money from an Energy Department loan program for high-tech cars. Lee, a freshman elected with the help of the tea party, wants to ensure that money committed to Flint does not add to the federal deficit, spokesman Conn Carroll said last month.

Stabenow and Peters want to protect the loan portfolio known as the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program. Michigan is the hub of U.S. auto manufacturing.

While Lee is unlikely to withdraw his objection, supporters say the new plan has a greater chance of success because it is slated to become part of the Water Resources Development Act, a popular bipartisan measure that authorizes a variety of water-related projects across the country for flood control and other purposes.

If approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this week as expected, the Flint proposal would be embedded in the larger water bill. The earlier proposal was an add-on to the energy bill and faced a higher procedural hurdle to move forward.

Inhofe, who chairs the Senate's environment panel, called the Flint measure "fiscally responsible" and said it not only would help Flint, but also would address a nationwide water infrastructure crisis. The plan would use federal credit subsidies to provide incentives for up to $700 million in loan guarantees and other financing for water infrastructure projects across the country.

Flint's drinking water became tainted when the city switched from the Detroit water system and began drawing from the Flint River in 2014 to save money. The impoverished city was under state control at the time.
London's finest: Fun facts to know about the city's Big Ben

LONDON (AP)  As London's famous clock tower gets a face-lift, here are a few facts surrounding the chimes of Big Ben.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Big Ben is the name commonly used for the Great Bell in the Elizabeth Tower, which is attached to the Palace of Westminster , the U.K. parliament in London on the north bank of the River Thames. It's thought to be named after Sir Benjamin Hall , the First Commissioner for Works while the bell was being cast and tested.

A roadworks sign stands on Westminster Bridge, near the Houses of Parliament and Elizabeth Tower, which houses the Big Ben bell in London, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Officials say the chimes of Britain's Big Ben bell will fall silent for several months during a three-year restoration of Parliament's crumbling clock tower. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

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HOW BIG IS BEN?

Big Ben weighs 13.5 British tons (15.1 U.S. tons)  about the size of two large African Elephants. It is 2.2 meters (7 feet, 2  inches) high and has a diameter of 2.7 meters (8 feet, 10 inches).

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WHAT TIME IS IT?

The tower was completed in 1859 and Big Ben's first peals rang out over London on July 11 that year. Big Ben has rung out hourly through the reigns of six British monarchs.

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BEN'S GRANDFATHER CLOCK

The first recorded clock tower on the site was erected over 700 years ago. According to records at the Palace of Westminster, a clock tower was built in New Palace Yard around 1289. It had one dial and one bell.

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BREAKING NEWS

A few months into its first year, Big Ben was found to be fractured in two places. While a solution was being sought, one of the smaller bells in the tower was used to strike the hour  but its tone was quieter and not as distinctive. Three years later, the problem was solved after a suggestion from the Astronomer Royal, Sir George Airy . Big Ben was turned and its hammer size reduced, allowing it to be used again.

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BIG SISTER IS WATCHING

At the top of the Elizabeth Tower is a lantern known as the Ayrton Light, which is illuminated whenever the House of Commons or the House of Lords is in session. Palace historians believe it was installed so Queen Victoria (1837-1901) could gaze out from Buckingham Palace and see if lawmakers were working.

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STRIKING THE RIGHT NOTE

Musicians may be interested to know that when it is struck, Big Ben chimes out the note "E." The four smaller bells in the tower, which are rung on the 'quarter' hours, strike "G sharp," ''F sharp," ''E" and "B."

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HIGH NOON

If visitors want to cast their eyes on Big Ben, they have to climb 334 stone steps  and any evacuations in the event of an accident are carried out using a complex abseiling rig. A renovation now taking place will make room for an elevator. The Big Ben and the Elizabeth Tower tours are only available to UK residents.

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BEN TRAVELS AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

If a person stands at the bottom of Big Ben's tower with a portable radio and listens to the chimes live on radio, they will hear the peals on the radio first before hearing them from the tower.

Why? Radio waves travel at 186,000 miles per second (the speed of light), as does the signal from the Big Ben microphone to the radio station. Sound itself travels a measly 0.2 miles per second.

An exterior view shows the Elizabeth Tower, which houses the Big Ben bell in London, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Officials say the chimes of Britain's Big Ben bell will fall silent for several months during a three-year restoration of Parliament's crumbling clock tower. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

A roadworks sign stands on Westminster Bridge, near the Houses of Parliament and Elizabeth Tower, which houses the Big Ben bell in London, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Officials say the chimes of Britain's Big Ben bell will fall silent for several months during a three-year restoration of Parliament's crumbling clock tower. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

A roadworks sign stands on Westminster Bridge, near the Houses of Parliament and Elizabeth Tower, which houses the Big Ben bell in London, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Officials say the chimes of Britain's Big Ben bell will fall silent for several months during a three-year restoration of Parliament's crumbling clock tower. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
Bad weather wipes out most of play at BMW Open

MUNICH (AP)  Heavy rain and snow wiped out most of Tuesday's play at the BMW Open, with Florian Mayer beating Matthias Bachinger 6-4, 6-4 in the only full-length match.

The two German qualifiers played in long sleeves and two layers of clothing as they battled strong winds before snow and rain interrupted play for four hours. Play resumed briefly in the afternoon before organizers finally called it a day.
Detained migrants protest in camp on Greek island

ATHENS, Greece (AP)  A protest broke out in the Moria migrant detention center on the Greek island of Lesbos Tuesday during a visit by the Greek migration affairs minister and a Dutch official.

A Greek official said Ioannis Mouzalas was at the camp with Dutch Junior Justice Minister Klaas Dijkhoff when migrants began shouting "freedom" and "open the borders," and banging metal objects. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department regulations, said the situation was tense.

The ministers left the camp and protesters, mainly unaccompanied teenagers, started fires by setting rubbish ablaze. A riot police contingent was sent to Moria but was waiting outside and had not intervened, police said, adding that staff had left the camp and were waiting outside.
Colombian politicians accused of inflating resumes

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)  Two of Colombia's most powerful politicians are fighting allegations they padded their resumes with graduate degrees they never earned.

This month, columnists for El Espectador newspaper denounced that Bogota Mayor Enrique Penalosa had for years been presented at international events, on his books and even in on the city's website as having a Ph.D. in public administration from the University of Paris.

Penalosa denies he ever misstated his academic titles and attributed the error on the website to a staff member's incorrect reading of post-graduate studies he did at the same Paris institution.

However, such explanations haven't satisfied his many critics, who have taken to social media to blast Penalosa, an urban planning expert who has traveled the world coaching developing nations on how to transform their transportation networks.

Meanwhile, his leftist predecessor Gustavo Petro, who criticized Penalosa's apparent stretching of the truth, is now fighting the same charges that he invented up to three academic titles he doesn't possess from universities in Belgium, Colombia and Spain. On Monday, he defended his academic credentials, saying that while he had to abandon his studies he never personally embellished his resume. In a letter to El Espectador, he called the attacks part of a slander campaign by his rivals.

There is nothing illegal about officials lying on a resume, but such actions only erode the public's confidence in their politicians, said Juana Afanador, who discovered the inaccuracies in Penalosa's academic background while studying for her own doctorate degree in sociology at the University of Paris. The debate is even more surprising because in highly class-stratified Colombia it is commonplace to call white professionals "Doctor" whether or not they have a degree.
Woman pleads not guilty to murder in Montana baby's death

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP)  A woman on a Montana American Indian reservation pleaded not guilty to murder Tuesday in the alleged beating death of a 13-month-old relative who was under her care, court officials said.

Janelle Red Dog, 42, is accused of striking and killing Kenzley Olson, then putting her body in a trash dumpster before reporting the girl missing April 19.

Judge Marvin Youpee denied bond for Red Dog and ordered her back into custody pending a May hearing, according to the Fort Peck Tribal Court clerk's office.

A sheriff's department vehicle is parked outside the house where 1-year-old Kenzley Olson was staying when she was beaten to death on Friday, April 22, 2016, in Poplar, Mont. A federal investigator says a woman beat to death the girl on a Montana Indian reservation and threw the baby's body into a dumpster. Janelle Red Dog appeared in Fort Peck Tribal Court on Friday in the death of Olson after she reportedly confessed and drew a map of where the body was located. (AP Photo/Richard Peterson)

The defendant's mother, Rhea Starr, said she believes Kenzley's death was an accident and Red Dog had been caring for the baby when no one else would.

"That baby was passed along like yesterday's gossip," Starr told The Associated Press. "I don't think (Kenzley's death) was intentional. I think my daughter was trying to help the baby and panicked."

Kenzley's mother and other family members could not be immediately reached for comment.

The defendant's initial claim  that Kenzley disappeared from the house where Red Dog was caring for her  triggered an Amber Alert for an abducted girl that was broadcast in Montana and North Dakota. Authorities canceled the alert after Red Dog purportedly confessed a day later and drew a map that led them to the baby's body.

Red Dog also faces a misdemeanor charge of hindering law enforcement for giving a false report to police.

The Fort Peck Reservation is about 20 miles from the U.S.-Canada border. Funeral services for Kenzley originally were scheduled for Sunday, but they were postponed until Wednesday. Her obituary described the girl's "tiny fingers, baby soft skin and beautiful smile."

Kenzley had been under Red Dog's care for about two weeks, after her mother dropped her off and failed to return, Red Dog's mother and her lawyer said. The tribal jail confirmed the mother was behind bars on unspecified charges when Kenzley died.

Defense attorney Mary Zemyan said told The AP that from the limited information authorities have shared with her, the cause of the baby's death is unclear.

Additional charges could be filed in tribal court later, Fort Peck Tribes Chief Prosecutor Scott Seifert said. Tribal law allows for a maximum three-year prison sentence on any one charge, with a combined maximum of nine years in prison and a $5,000 fine per charge, he said.

The severity of the crime and age of the victim merit the maximum punishment, Seifert wrote in a notice filed with the court.

Separate federal charges that could carry a more severe punishment also are expected in the case.

Kenzley's death was the second major crime in recent weeks to hit the reservation, which is home to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes and has a population of about 10,000.

In late February, a man allegedly abducted a 4-year-old girl from a park in the town of Wolf Point, sexually assaulted her and tried to kill her. The girl was found alive several days later.

Zemyan has said Red Dog admitted to authorities that she struck Kenzley on three occasions. But she said it was unknown if that's what killed the girl.

"I haven't seen any autopsy so I'm not sure," Zemyan said.

Starr said Kenzley had been sick in recent weeks, coughing and throwing up, and she speculated that illness could have played a role in her death.

An investigator testified during a probable cause hearing last week that an autopsy determined Kenzley died of blunt force trauma. However, the court has not released the autopsy results or an affidavit from prosecutors that was said to have further details on the case.

Fort Peck Tribal Chairman Floyd Azure has blamed Kenzley's death and the recent kidnapping on a rising drug epidemic that he says the reservation must address.

Starr said her daughter had been addicted to painkillers "quite a few years ago" but was unsure if she had recent involvement in drugs.

"One addiction leads to another," Starr said. "There's so much drugs on this reservation it's crazy," she said.

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This story has been changed to correct the spelling of Red Dog.
Panel confirms first female officer for warfighting command

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Senate Armed Services Committee has approved the nomination of the first female officer to lead one of the military's warfighting commands.

Members of the panel on Tuesday confirmed Air Force Gen. Lori Robinson to be commander of U.S. Northern Command. The panel acted on a voice vote. The command is responsible for preventing attacks against the United States.

Robinson joined the Air Force in 1982 after graduating from the University of New Hampshire. She's currently serving as commander of Pacific Air Forces in Hawaii.

The committee also confirmed Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti to be the top American commander in Europe and Army Gen. Vincent Brooks to lead U.S. forces in Korea.
Maine governor won't apologize for comment about Indians

BANGOR, Maine (AP)  Maine's governor says he won't apologize for commenting on hard-to-understand workers from Bulgaria or India.

Republican Gov. Paul LePage was chuckling Saturday at the state party convention when he said he needed an interpreter to understand some foreign workers.

On Tuesday, he said it was "meant as a joke," but he acknowledged that "maybe it was a bad joke."

Maine Gov. Paul LePage delivers a keynote address at the Maine GOP convention in Bangor, Maine, Saturday, April 23, 2016. Maine Republicans have elected a slate of delegates to the national convention that's heavy on supporters of Ted Cruz. (Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

He told Maine's WVOM-FM that he's not politically correct and that he won't apologize for that. And he said that he's had difficulty trying to give an order in a restaurant with foreign workers, "period."
UN agency: El Nino droughts may get even worse

GENEVA (AP)  The U.N.'s humanitarian aid agency says the El Nino weather phenomenon has affected 60 million people worldwide and is warning the worst impact from the droughts it causes is yet to come.

Stephen O'Brien of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs noted El Nino's impact and expressed concerns Tuesday about "rising acute malnutrition among children under five and the increase in water- and vector-borne diseases."

OCHA says the impact of droughts caused by El Nino is expected to peak later this year or early next year.

Cows drink water at a pond during the dry season on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Cambodia's prime minister says society must mobilize to help deal with the worst drought in at least four decades, which has left about two-thirds of the country's 25 provinces short of water for drinking and other necessities.(AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

The agency said 13 countries are requesting $3.6 billion to help meet critical needs like food, agricultural support, water and sanitation. But OCHA said "the funding gap" for the global response to El Nino is now over $2.2 billion  and could rise.

A couple herds their cows near a pond during a severe dry spell on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Cambodia's prime minister says the country's people must mobilize to help deal with the worst drought in the last four decades, which has left roughly two-thirds of the country's 25 provinces short of water for drinking and other necessities. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Colorado House rejects measure opposing Guantanamo detainees

DENVER (AP)  A symbolic measure in the Colorado Legislature to oppose the potential transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to Fremont County has failed in the Democratic House.

A House committee defeated the resolution Monday. It had no effect, but said that "Coloradans are overwhelmingly opposed to the transfer."

The measure was sponsored by a Senate Republican whose district includes facilities under consideration for Guantanamo transfers. The measure sailed through the Republican Senate.

Democrats say they don't want to see Guantanamo transfers to Colorado, either. Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper and Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet have both said they oppose Guantanamo detainees in Colorado.

But Democrats in the Legislature called the resolution unnecessary.
CASPER, Wyo.  A Casper man is charged with sexual abuse for allegedly touching a girl inappropriately, according to court documents.

Michael Lambert Andrews is charged with two counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor. Andrews, 39, was being held in the Natrona County Detention Center as of Monday afternoon.

Police began investigating Andrews on Wednesday after being contacted by the Wyoming Department of Family Services, the documents state.

The victim, who was born in 2003, was interviewed at the Childrens Advocacy Project, according to the documents. She said Andrews had touched her inappropriately on three different occasions between 2008 and 2009

Andrews underwent a polygraph test at the Casper Police Department, the documents state. Following the test, Andrews admitted to touching the girl inappropriately once, but said it did not happen again.

When asked if he wanted to make a statement, Andrews said he was sorry I knowingly did something to her and didnt talk to her about it, according to the documents.

A Natrona County Circuit judge set Andrews bond at $50,000 Monday during his initial court appearance.
UN office 'concerned' over Mexico missing students case

MEXICO CITY (AP)  A U.N. human rights office said on Tuesday that it is troubled by a group of international experts' complaints of obstacles to their investigation into the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico.

Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement that the office is "concerned about the many challenges and obstacles reported by the experts," including the ability to examine other lines of investigation such the possible roles of the military and other officials in the case.

He called on the Mexican government to "take into serious consideration" the recommendations of the group of experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Activists hold signs reading "We are missing 43," as several hundred supporters of 43 missing teachers college students and their families marched to demand the case not be closed and that experts' recommendations about new leads be followed, in Mexico City, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said Tuesday that it is troubled by a group of international experts' complaints of obstacles to their investigation into Sept. 26, 2014 disappearance of the students in southern Guerrero State.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

The group's report from Sunday criticized the government's investigation of the 2014 disappearances. It said suspects were apparently tortured and key pieces of evidence were not investigated or handled properly.

In a partial study of detainee records, the experts found there was evidence that all 17 detainees included in the study sample had been tortured. On Tuesday, Mexico's governmental National Human Rights Commission said it was investigating 47 complaints from detainees that they were tortured. Four others complained of mistreatment and 11 cited illegal arrest.

Mexico's deputy attorney general for human rights, Eber Betanzos, said Tuesday that his office had received a total of 32 torture complaints, and that a total of nine investigations had been opened into the torture allegations. The numbers vary because of who the complaints were filed with, and how much proof was presented.

Government investigators have said the students were taken by local police in the city of Iguala, in the southern state of Guerrero, and handed over to drug gang members who killed them and burned the bodies at a trash dump.

The group of experts, known by the acronym IGIE, and a separate body made up of Argentine investigators say there is no evidence at the dump of a fire large enough to incinerate that many corpses.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said Sunday via Twitter that the federal attorney general's office would "analyze the whole report, to aid in its investigations."

Colville called the group's work "invaluable" and urged the government to explore new lines of investigation.

On Tuesday, several hundred supporters of the missing students and their families marched through Mexico City to demand the case not be closed and that the experts' recommendations about new leads by followed up.

"We will continue to protest, and we want to organize a global protest," said Vidulfo Rosales, the lawyer for the parents of the students.

The United States also called on Mexico to consider the experts' recommendations.

Parents of the missing students were planning a protest later Tuesday on the 19-month anniversary of the disappearances.

An activist holds a signs reading "We are missing 43," as several hundred supporters of 43 missing teachers college students and their families marched to demand the case not be closed and that experts' recommendations about new leads be followed, in Mexico City, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said Tuesday that it is troubled by a group of international experts' complaints of obstacles to their investigation into Sept. 26, 2014 disappearance of the students in southern Guerrero State.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Family members of 43 missing teachers college students carry pictures of the students as they protest to demand the case not be closed and that experts' recommendations about new leads be followed, in Mexico City, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said Tuesday that it is troubled by a group of international experts' complaints of obstacles to their investigation into Sept. 26, 2014 disappearance of the students in southern Guerrero State.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Family members and supporters of 43 missing teachers college students carry pictures of the students as they march to demand the case not be closed and that experts' recommendations about new leads be followed, in Mexico City, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said Tuesday that it is troubled by a group of international experts' complaints of obstacles to their investigation into Sept. 26, 2014 disappearance of the students in southern Guerrero State.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Family members of 43 missing teachers college students carry pictures of the students as they march with supporters to demand the case not be closed and that experts' recommendations about new leads be followed, in Mexico City, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said Tuesday that it is troubled by a group of international experts' complaints of obstacles to their investigation into Sept. 26, 2014 disappearance of the students in southern Guerrero State.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Family members of 43 missing teachers college students carry pictures of the students as they march with supporters to demand the case not be closed and that experts' recommendations about new leads be followed, in Mexico City, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said Tuesday that it is troubled by a group of international experts' complaints of obstacles to their investigation into Sept. 26, 2014 disappearance of the students in southern Guerrero State.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

A man sits amongst posters showing pictures of 43 missing teachers college students as he awaits the start of a march by hundreds of family members and supporters to demand the case not be closed and that experts' recommendations about new leads be followed, in Mexico City, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said Tuesday that it is troubled by a group of international experts' complaints of obstacles to their investigation into Sept. 26, 2014 disappearance of the students in southern Guerrero State.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Family members of 43 missing teachers college students carry pictures of the students as they march with supporters to demand the case not be closed and that experts' recommendations about new leads be followed, in Mexico City, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said Tuesday that it is troubled by a group of international experts' complaints of obstacles to their investigation into Sept. 26, 2014 disappearance of the students in southern Guerrero State.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
US urges Illinois city to give customers bottled water

Federal regulators are recommending that an Illinois city provide bottled water or filters to residents affected by high levels of lead in their drinking water.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is also urging Galesburg, Illinois, to pay for additional lead testing for customers who request it and provide more public education about health risks. In addition, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the city to perform a corrosion control study to learn whether specific treatments might better prevent old pipes and plumbing from leaching lead into tap water.

The actions come in response to an investigation published this month by The Associated Press, which found that Galesburg had one of the nation's most persistent problems of lead in drinking water. An AP analysis of EPA data involving 75,000 water systems found that nearly 1,500 systems serving 3.3 million Americans have exceeded the lead cap of 15 parts per billion at least once in the past three years.

FILE - In this Oct. 17, 2012 file photo, U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., speaks in Rockford, Ill. Federal regulators are recommending that the city of Galesburg, Ill., provide bottled water or filters to residents affected by high levels of lead in the drinking water. The actions come in response to an investigation published this month by The Associated Press, which found that Galesburg had one of the nation's most persistent problems of lead in the drinking water. Bustos, said she's pleased Galesburg leaders are considering the EPA's recommendations.(Scott Morgan/Rockford Register Star via AP, File) MANDATORY CREDIT

Galesburg's water has exceeded that level 22 times over the last 25 years, including in the most recent sampling period last fall. Knox County, which is home to Galesburg, has also long struggled with some of the highest rates of childhood lead poisoning in Illinois.

In an April 20 letter to Illinois officials, EPA regional water division director Tinka Hyde said the agency was concerned about the elevated blood lead levels and the city's history of lead in water. She urged the state to get a commitment from Galesburg, a city of 30,000 located 150 miles southwest of Chicago, to provide bottled water or filters to residents whose homes exceed the federal action-level for lead.

"Otherwise we will consider other options to protect public health," Hyde wrote.

The EPA has taken several actions to improve the monitoring of lead in drinking water after the crisis in Flint, Michigan, where some children were poisoned when the city shifted to a more corrosive water source.

Galesburg city manager Todd Thompson told the city council in a meeting Monday night that the steps recommended by the EPA would cost about $90,000 to implement. That includes $33,000 for the extra lead testing, $25,000 for certified water filters, $10,500 for bottled water and $10,000 for the corrosion control study.

He said that it might take a decade or longer to replace the lead service lines at 4,700 homes in the city, which would cost $10 million or more.

City aldermen said the lead poisoning rates were unacceptable, but several insisted that there's no proof their drinking water plays any role in them. Instead, they argued it made more sense to spend money removing lead paint from the city's old homes, which health officials believe to be the biggest factor in childhood lead poisoning.

Alderman Jeremy Karlin said the city's response was "in many ways being dictated" by regulators.

But U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, a Democrat who has been calling on the city to act, said she's pleased Galesburg leaders are considering the EPA's recommendations.

Also Tuesday, an Illinois EPA employee was in the city taking water samples at six homes where lead exceeded the federal standard last fall. Spokeswoman Kim Biggs said that move would assure that the samples, typically collected by homeowners, would be professionally drawn.

FILE - In this March 9, 2016 file photo, city officials display an example of lead water pipes in Galesburg, Ill. Federal regulators are recommending that the city of Galesburg provide bottled water or filters to residents affected by high levels of lead in the drinking water. The actions come in response to an investigation published this month by The Associated Press, which found that Galesburg had one of the nation's most persistent problems of lead in the drinking water. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman, File)
6 Cubans acclimate to US after 11 days at sea

MIAMI (AP)  Six Cuban migrants were acclimating to their first full day on American soil Tuesday after their boat came ashore on the Miami area's popular South Beach.

The half-dozen men, part of an uptick in arrivals of Cuban migrants over the past year, kissed the sand and were greeted by beachgoers when they came ashore Monday after what they said was an 11-day journey at sea. They were being processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in Miami.

Barbaro Mirabal, 37, a fisherman, told The Associated Press that he celebrated his arrival by pouring sand over himself before borrowing a beachgoer's cellphone to send word home. He said he came to find a better living and reunite with relatives already in the U.S.

"I have wanted to do this for a long time," Mirabal said. "To do it the proper way is very difficult and takes a very long time. The fastest way is to hop over the sea."

Cubans are allowed to stay if they reach U.S. land, and they routinely come ashore in South Florida. The northbound exodus has swelled amid concerns that the U.S. will erase the policy following a thaw in its relationship with the communist-run island.

About 17,000 Cubans reached the U.S. by foot and sea in the last three months of 2015, compared to a little more than 9,200 during the same months in 2014.

With Florida about 100 miles north of Cuba at its closest point, the migrants typically head there and end up anywhere along a 250-mile-wide swath from Key West up to Jupiter, north of West Palm Beach.

This week's group could barely have had a higher-profile place to make landfall, in a beach-lined area, not far from restaurants and nightclubs and often packed with holiday revelers. Their arrival was captured by beachgoers in cellphone footage, and local broadcasters gave the men prominent coverage.

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'World class emergency care' during junior doctors' strike, says consultant

Patients should be reassured that they will get "world class emergency care" during the junior doctors' strike, a consultant has said, as he wrote an open note to patients across the country.

Philip Lee, a consultant specialising in acute medicine and elderly care, posted on Facebook that emergency care across England will be "no worse, if not better, than an average day".

Dr Lee, who works at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, said the consultant workforce is "100% behind" junior colleagues who are striking to "ensure patients get the best and safest care, not a stretched-out, underfunded, dangerous service".

Dr Philip Lee wrote that he wanted to reassure the public about the strike

The post, which has been shared by more than 120,000 people, contains a picture of Dr Lee, who wrote that he wanted to reassure the public about the strike.

"Putting aside the reasons they're striking for a second, let me now say categorically, you and your friends and loved ones will continue to get world class emergency care those days," he wrote.

"If you come to the emergency department having been run over by a car, we'll be there waiting for you.

"If you're already in hospital, you'll still be seen by a consultant or staff specialist if you need to. If you need an emergency operation, it will happen.

"If your loved ones are in intensive care, doctors will see them as usual.

"If you should have a sudden cardiac arrest in our hospital, my colleagues and I will do our very best to resuscitate you, stabilise you, and treat you just like any other day.

"If your clinic or test appointment or operation has been rescheduled or delayed, I apologise. But these strikes are happening to ensure patients get the best and safest care, not a stretched-out, underfunded, dangerous service.

"The emergency service on those days will be no worse, if not better, than an average day. The Department of Health has said none of this.

"As doctors, we have all sworn an oath to do no harm. Our junior colleagues will not have taken this action lightly, and they do so with a heavy heart but knowing that as consultants, and my staff grade and associate specialist colleagues, we're 100% behind them. Our support let them protest the changes to our NHS that is not safe for patient care.

"On the 26th and 27th of April, if you're ill, please see your GP, or come to hospital. We will be there for you, just like every day. And if you're not ill and walking or driving by, give my friends a honk, or a friendly word. These brave men and women need your support."
Robert Downey Jr meets young cancer patients at Great Ormond Street Hospital

Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr has visited Great Ormond Street Hospital, where he met young fans on the cancer ward.

Ahead of the European premiere of Captain America: Civil War in London on Tuesday, the film's star spent Monday afternoon visiting patients and their families and handing out Captain America goodies.

Seven-year-old Ethan Miller, who suffers from the rare blood disease ITP as well as type 1 diabetes, was "over the moon" to meet the Hollywood actor.

Robert Downey Jr meets seven-year-old Iron Man fan Ethan Miller at Great Ormond Street Hospital

His father Lee said: "Ethan has been in and out of hospital a lot in the past three years. He watches the films all the time and virtually lives in his Iron Man costume.

"Ethan was over the moon to meet his hero and it has really helped to lift his spirits."

The two posed together in the hospital chapel, with Ethan wearing his Iron Man costume.

Downey said of the visit: "The highlight of the Captain America: Civil War tour has been visiting the patients, families and staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Their courage, strength and hope leaves me humbly inspired."

Downey has played Tony Stark - otherwise known as Iron Man - since 2008.

This is not the first time the actor has used his fame and acting skills to surprise young fans.

Last year, he visited Alex Pring, then seven years old, who was born with a partially developed right arm. Showing up in character as Tony Stark, he presented Alex with a bionic Iron Man arm.

He also had a special message for a young boy suffering from cystic fibrosis, donning a Tigger costume and posing for an Instagram photograph to cheer him up and invite him to the Captain America premiere.

Great Ormond Street Hospital is one of the world's leading children's units, treating young patients with rare, complex and life-threatening conditions.
Brexit could lead to less protection for Falklands and Gibraltar, MPs told

Argentinian aggression towards the Falkland Islands may be fuelled by a British exit from the European Union, it has been claimed.

Spain would "take advantage" of the UK quitting the bloc to "further undermine, isolate and exclude" Gibraltar, MPs have also been told.

The British Overseas Territories warned the Foreign Affairs committee they feared losing vital protections if voters backed Brexit in the June 23 referendum.

The Falkland Islands could be under threat from increased Argentinian aggression if Britain leaves the EU, it has been warned

Sukey Cameron, the Falkland Islands government representative in the United Kingdom, said quitting would have "wide-ranging and deep implications".

"Were the UK no longer a member of the EU that support would be much less certain from a large number of those EU member states, and might encourage Argentina to be much more aggressive in its approach," she said.

A statement from the government of Gibraltar said: "In Gibraltar's case, experience has shown that Spain would take advantage of any such renegotiation in order to further undermine, isolate and exclude Gibraltar from the European mainstream."

The warnings were contained in a report by the committee, made up of an equal number of Leave and Remain supporting MPs, on the implications of the referendum.

It "cannot be assumed that the UK would retain full or partial access to the single market" if Britain left or that it would want to "given the restrictions and costs that such an arrangement could potentially incur", MPs said.

Following the Norwegian and Swiss trading models would "not be appropriate or advantageous" for the UK, the report said.

It added: "The Government should recognise the probability of no mutual interest deal being concluded within the two-year notice period."

The UK would move to standard world trading requirements and "would then need to decide which of the 6,987 directly-applicable EU Regulations would need to be replaced by UK law".

MPs also warned that remaining in the bloc would also pose significant challenges and played down some claims that Britain would lose influence in the world.

Pressing problems, such as the "apparent decline" of UK influence in driving EU foreign policy, slow and cumbersome processes, and the bloc's failure to grapple with extreme instability on its borders could turn into "major long-term risks for the UK inside the EU" if they are not dealt with, it found.

MPs also said it was important to "avoid over-stating" the extent of the UK's potential marginalisation in the transatlantic alliance.

Fresh on the back of the visit by US President Barack Obama to London, the committee insisted that, as Britain meets the Nato and UN foreign aid spending targets, the UK is "likely to remain an important player in world affairs and a key strategic partner for the US".

Counter-terrorism co-operation would "undoubtedly continue even after leaving the EU" and the "five eyes" intelligence-sharing network with the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand is unlikely to be affected.

MPs also warned that potential expansion of the EU to a bloc with 33 or more states that have large economic and political disparities "may exacerbate existing fissures within the EU".

"Without appropriate arrangements for controlling migration from new states, moreover - especially from Turkey, should it eventually join the EU - enlargement could put great strain on the resources of the existing member states," the reports states.
Hague migration warning over lack of intervention in Africa and Middle East

Europe will be "overwhelmed" by a wave of migration if Britain and its European neighbours fail to support Africa and the Middle East through intervention, William Hague has warned.

The former foreign secretary said a surge in population in the region, alongside poor governance, low economic growth and divisions along religious lines, could fuel large-scale instability.

He cautioned that, while past military involvement in Iraq and Libya are widely seen as failures of Western intervention, the war in Syria showed that standing by can also be disastrous.

Lord Hague said a surge in population in the region, alongside poor governance, low economic growth and divisions along religious lines, could fuel large-scale instability.

Lord Hague made the comments as British troops prepare to travel to Libya to train local armed forces for a new government set up with the help of British diplomats.

Writing in The Telegraph, he said the combination of instability and booming population across the region could render Western involvement "unavoidable".

He said: "If European countries, including Britain, think they can get by without intervention in that region over the next few decades, they face being overwhelmed by a movement of humanity that they have never before contemplated or experienced.

"Intervention - to try to prevent conflict, end wars, stabilise governments and create economic improvements - will be a completely unavoidable necessity for many Western nations."

Lord Hague said Britain will have to overcome a collective feeling that getting involved abroad is a "mistake" and instead look at how to "intervene well".

Citing the overthrow of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, he said intervention had probably shortened the war and reduced civilian deaths.

"Such situations often need a more forceful, insistent and long-term foreign presence to make them into a success," he wrote.

US President Barack Obama was seen as criticising Britain's involvement in the wake of Gaddafi's downfall when he said Prime Minister David Cameron had appeared "distracted" in dealing with the fallout.

Lord Hague said the problem came from trying to install a new government in place of revolutionary forces too quickly. As a result the new system collapsed as groups jostled for power.

He said: "A free country and democracy can take decades to build. The West will need strategic patience to assist that, rather than dropping each problem country as quickly as possible or pronouncing it a failure."
Madeleine McCann probe could end in a few months, Scotland Yard boss says

The investigation into Madeleine McCann's disappearance could finish in the next few months.

Scotland Yard boss Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said investigators are following one remaining line of inquiry and unless any new evidence comes forward, that will spell the end of the British probe.

Madeleine vanished at the age of three while on holiday with her parents in Portugal in 2007 and despite a high-profile hunt, no trace has ever been found.

Madeleine McCann vanished at the age of three while on holiday with her parents in Portugal in 2007

Speaking on LBC, Sir Bernard said: "There's been a lot of investigation time spent on this terrible case.

"It's a child who went missing, everybody wants to know if she is alive and if she is where is she, and sadly if she's dead then we need to give some comfort to the family.

"It's needed us to carry out an investigation together with the Portuguese and other countries have been involved.

"There is a line of inquiry that remains to be concluded and it's expected that in the coming months that will happen."

The Home Office has granted 95,000 funding to keep the investigation - which now only has a handful of officers working on it - going for another few months.

Sir Bernard said: "The size of the team has come down radically, we are now down to two or three people in that team, at one stage there were about 30 officers in it.

"There is a line of inquiry that everybody agrees is worthwhile pursuing."

When asked when the probe, called Operation Grange, will end, the Met chief added: "At the moment it would be at the conclusion of this line of inquiry unless something else comes up.

"If somebody comes forward and gives us good evidence we will follow it. We always say that a missing child inquiry is never closed.

"First of all, the line of inquiry that is being pursued, that obviously is important and it is important that is resolved, and I think it will be.

"If something new comes forward we will investigate it, but that line of inquiry probably at the moment is the conclusion of this inquiry."

Hopes were high when the UK investigation into the little girl's disappearance was launched in 2011, with Scotland Yard detectives later highlighting a sex offender who had targeted British families with young children staying in villas in the same area where Madeleine was last seen.

Despite no obvious progress since then, last week Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Duthie, who is head of the force's murder squad, remained optimistic.
'Israel relocation' row Labour MP Naz Shah steps down from aide post

A Labour MP has stepped down from her position as aide to shadow chancellor John McDonnell after issuing an "unreserved" apology for a social media posting in which she appeared to endorse the relocation of Israelis to the US.

Bradford West MP Naz Shah said she "deeply regretted" the hurt caused by her comments and accepted there was "no excuse" for the offence they caused.

In a Facebook post in 2014, before she became an MP, Ms Shah shared a graphic which showed an image of Israel's outline superimposed onto a map of the US under the headline "Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict - Relocate Israel into United States", with the comment "problem solved".

Labour MP Naz Shah apologised for any offence caused by a social media post about Israel

The post suggested the US has "plenty of land" to accommodate Israel as a 51st state, allowing Palestinians to "get their life and their land back".

It added that Israeli people would be welcome and safe in the US while the "transportation cost" would be less than three years' worth of Washington's support for Israeli defence spending.

Ms Shah added a note suggesting the plan might "save them some pocket money".

After the posting was highlighted by the Guido Fawkes website, Ms Shah released a statement in which she said: "This post from two years ago was made before I was an MP, does not reflect my views and I apologise for any offence it has caused."

Campaigners against anti-Semitism continued to raise concerns, with one group saying it would be "hard" for them to take seriously an inquiry into anti-Semitism being conducted by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee so long as she remained a member.

In a second statement, Ms Shah announced she was standing down from her unpaid role as Mr McDonnell's parliamentary private secretary.

"I deeply regret the hurt I have caused by comments made on social media before I was elected as an MP," she said.

"I made these posts at the height of the Gaza conflict in 2014, when emotions were running high around the Middle East conflict. But that is no excuse for the offence I have given, for which I unreservedly apologise.

"In recognition of that offence, I have stepped down from my role as PPS to the shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

"I will be seeking to expand my existing engagement and dialogue with Jewish community organisations and will be stepping up my efforts to combat all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism."

Speaking before Ms Shah's second statement, Jonathan Sacerdoti, director of communications at the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: "One cannot simply apologise for 'any offence caused' and expect evidence of gross and brazen anti-Semitism to disappear.

"Once again the Labour Party has been revealed to have within its ranks people who express extreme prejudice towards Jewish people in their public statements.

"Once again the party has failed to find these statements itself, and reject those who freely and willingly express them.

"How can we believe Labour when it says it takes the problem of Jew-hatred seriously when it repeatedly defends anti-Semitic MPs? It seems that Jeremy Corbyn's anti-racism policy only operates when convenient."
JD Wetherspoon head vows to keep up staff bonuses despite national living wage

The chairman and founder of pub chain JD Wetherspoon has vowed to maintain staff perks and bonuses despite having to fork out extra cash for the national living wage.

Tim Martin told the Press Association that JD Wetherspoon would keep bonuses and perks for the group's 37,000 staff because it is a "groovy company".

He said: "I'm not going to cut any perks for employees as a result of the national living wage, we're a groovy company.

JD Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin vowed to maintain staff perks and bonuses despite having to pay out more for the national living wage

"About 40% of our profits go to staff in the form of bonuses and free shares, and there are no plans for that to change."

His comments come after a string of retailers, including Eat and Caffe Nero, have come under fire for withdrawing various perks in order to fund the new wage hike.

But Mr Martin cautioned that implementation of the pay hike is still in its first stage and the living wage could still have repercussions down the line.

Only last month, JD Wetherspoon said staff pay rises had knocked profits. The firm, which runs 954 pubs, said pre-tax-profits slipped 3.9% to 36 million in the first half of the year following two pay increases.

Mr Martin, who is pro-Brexit, also said that his company would not be impacted at all if Britain voted to leave the European Union in June.

Speaking on the side lines of a Brexit debate in Mayfair, hosted by Hot Commodity, he said: "We would not be hit by Brexit, not at all.

"In terms of staff, in the last 100 pubs we've opened, we've only employed 5% of people from the EU, the rest are British-born. That's broadly replicated across the estate."

He also said that he "wouldn't send anybody home", instead favouring the status quo immigration system with the EU before introducing a points-based system.

He said: "In my vision for Brexit, I won't send anybody home. Those that already have the right to reside here, including people like Poles and Romanians, will still have the right to stay after.

"And I have no problem with the current system of immigration from the EU remaining in place after Brexit as it stands, but not any more expansion.
Boris Johnson's hopes for Brexit on the slide, says Orbit artist Kapoor

Sir Anish Kapoor has said he hopes Boris Johnson's feet land "firmly in Europe" when he tries out the new slide at Kapoor's Orbit sculpture.

The British-Indian artist said he would "pray, hope and work to stay in" the European Union ahead of the referendum on June 23.

The Slide at the ArcelorMittal Orbit in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, east London, will open the next day.

Anish Kapoor, left, and Carsten Holler visit The Slide at Arcelormittal Orbit at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to review progress on the construction work

It was designed by German-Belgian artist Carsten Holler at Sir Anish's invitiation to wrap around the sculpture he created in time for the London 2012 Olympics.

Sir Anish said he hopes to be among the first people to travel down The Slide with the mayor of London, adding: " I've got a little to conquer in myself before I can be the first but yes, I will do it with Boris. We want Boris to be the first and we want to make sure that Boris's feet land firmly in Europe."

Asked if that means he hopes for a vote to stay in the EU, he gestured to Holler and said: " Most certainly, this is a good European collaboration between the two of us."

Mr Johnson, who is backing the Leave campaign, will be out of office when The Slide opens as London will elect a new mayor on May 5.

Sir Anish emphasised that a vote for Brexit would impact creative projects, adding: " It will certainly have an effect on our ability, outside of Europe, to make projects like this, so we pray and hope and work to stay in."

The Slide, which will see thrill-seekers hit up to 15mph and twist and turn 12 times, will be the world's tallest and longest tunnel slide at 178 metres long and 76 metres high.

It will feature a tight corkscrew section called the "bettfeder", after the German word for bedspring, and will end with a 50-metre straight run to the ground.

Sir Anish, who is responsible for some of the most famous public sculptures in the world, including Chicago's Cloud Gate and Dirty Corner in Versailles, said he thinks The Slide will give new life to his work.

He said: " I think this idea of grafting one thing on to another is very important in allowing both to have a life.

"It doesn't diminish Orbit to have a slide, I think it does the opposite, so we are looking for the way meaning and experience join up with each other."

Holler said: " I don't want to hang this on being the longest and tallest slide in the world, which it is, it's really more a unique possibility for a unique experience for the people of Europe."
David Cameron vows action to support steel industry during visit to Port Talbot

Prime Minister David Cameron visited the Tata Steel works at Port Talbot in south Wales to assure workers, unions and bosses of the Government's commitment to support the future of steel-making at the under-threat plant.

Unions welcomed the recent offer of state support for potential buyers of Tata Steel's loss-making UK assets, but stressed that any action must cover plants across the whole country and not just in Wales.

The general secretary of the Community union, Roy Rickhuss, said the Prime Minister had "looked proud steelworkers in the eye and promised to do all he could to protect their jobs", and said his union would "hold him at his word".

File photo dated 20/10/15 of a view of a Tata Steel sign.

The PM's surprise visit came as a director at the plant seeks to put together a management buyout of the firm's UK business, which was put up for sale last month.

Mr Cameron was joined by Wales Secretary Alun Cairns for a tour of the plant, which employs more than 4,000 workers. But Business Secretary Sajid Javid - who earlier this month flew to India for talks with Tata's Mumbai-based bosses - was not present.

Downing Street said that the PM and Welsh Secretary spoke to workers in the Port Talbot blast furnace control room and finishing lines before holding round-table discussions with unions and managers, including the chief executive of Tata Steel Europe Hans Fischer.

Mr Cameron's official spokeswoman said that talks focused on "the action the Government has taken to support the steel industry", adding: "The Prime Minister underlined our commitment to working with Tata to support the future of steel-making in Port Talbot and emphasised the need for the Tata sales process to cover the whole business and for there to be sufficient time for that process to run.

"The Prime Minister has been clear throughout that the Government should do all it can to support the sustainable future of steel-making in Port Talbot."

The PM's spokeswoman said it was his first visit to the plant, though other ministers, including Mr Javid, had visited on a number of occasions and Mr Cameron had been involved in top-level discussions ever since Tata announced its decision to sell.

Mr Rickhuss, who was joined by union representatives from Port Talbot and Llanwern, said: "David Cameron has now joined the growing list of senior politicians who have visited Port Talbot, but today we made it clear that steelworks throughout England and Wales are also under threat. This is a national industrial crisis and the Prime Minister needs to act nationally, and indeed globally, to secure a sustainable future for the UK steel industry.

"Steelworkers will now be watching and waiting for the Prime Minister to match his words with real action. We need immediate action to save the industry but also a long-term plan to give UK steel-making a fair chance to compete.

"The Prime Minister has now seen first-hand the great blast furnaces of Port Talbot, both of which will be vital to any future success of the business. He looked proud steelworkers in the eye and promised to do all he could to protect their jobs. Our Save Our Steel campaign will continue as we hold him to his word."

Dai Bowyer, steelworker and Unite executive committee member, described the meeting as "constructive" and said unions had urged the PM to ensure that UK steelworkers have "a level playing field on which to compete with our global competitors", including by tackling energy costs and the dumping of cheap Chinese steel, as well as help with high business rates.

"During the conversation we welcomed the recent commitment by his Government to take a public stake in the UK steel industry, stressing the importance of steel to Britain's manufacturing base," said Mr Bowyer. "Clearly impressed by what he saw, we trust that David Cameron will keep his word in doing everything he can to support steel in Port Talbot and the rest of the UK."

Shadow business secretary Angela Eagle said: "Workers at Port Talbot and across the UK steel industry will be relieved that the Tory Government at long last seem to be treating this crisis with the seriousness it deserves. Labour has been warning of the escalating crisis facing steel for months, raising the issue over 200 times in Parliament.

"After this visit I hope the Prime Minister will see the need to preserve the blast furnaces at Port Talbot and appreciate the need for Tata to sell these assets as an integrated business. The Government now needs to roll up its sleeves and be proactive in these crucial few weeks to ensure a viable future for the UK steel industry.
Peru drugs mule Melissa Reid to return to UK 'very soon'

Drugs mule Melissa Reid is set to return to the UK "very soon" after Peruvian authorities agreed to expel her from the country, according to the British embassy in Peru.

The 22-year-old, jailed for cocaine smuggling in 2013, has been seeking to serve the remainder of her six-year sentence closer to home in Scotland.

Reid, from Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, and Michaella McCollum, from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, were imprisoned in 2013 for six years and eight months after admitting trying to smuggle cocaine worth 1.5 million from Peru to Spain.

Billy Reid has spoken of the devastating effect his daughter Melissa's crime has had on his family

A spokeswoman for the British embassy in Lima said Reid had been "granted expulsion back to the UK", and would be returning "very soon", but refused to comment further.

McCollum, 23, was freed last month under new legislation on early prison release introduced in Peru last year, after serving two years and three months.

However, it is anticipated she will have to remain in Peru for a considerable period as part of her parole conditions.

The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) said they had received no word of Reid's expulsion, adding they would only be notified if she was set to serve the remainder of her sentence in Scotland.

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said: "We continue to provide consular assistance."

McCollum and Reid were caught with the haul at Lima airport on August 6 2013 while attempting to fly to Spain.

They had claimed they were forced into carrying the drugs but pleaded guilty to charges later that year.

The pair were caught trying to board a flight with 24lb (11kg) of cocaine in food packets hidden inside their luggage.

McCollum and Reid faced the prospect of a maximum 15-year prison term but struck a behind-closed-doors plea bargain to secure a shorter sentence.

They had previously been held at Lima's Virgen de Fatima prison but were moved to the Ancon 2 prison, where McCollum was reportedly crammed into a cell with 30 other prisoners with poor sanitation and toilet facilities.

The SPS agreed in principle to a transfer in 2014 and Reid has been awaiting approval from the Peruvian authorities, who need to consent to her serving the remainder of her sentence under Scots law.

Reid's father Billy has previously said that the impact of his daughter's crime on his family had been "horrendous".

He said: ''It's horrendous to see your daughter in handcuffs and the living conditions that she has to put up with. Melissa has spent her own 20th and 21st birthdays in prison in Peru.

''She missed the significant event of her only brother's wedding. Events such as Christmas are non-existent for us. There'll be no celebrations in our house, there'll be no Christmas tree until we get her back home.''
Bomb in eastern Baghdad kills at least 11

BAGHDAD, April 25 (Reuters) - A suicide attacker detonated a bomb in a predominantly Shi'ite Muslim district of eastern Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 39 others, security and medical sources said, the third such blast in four days in the capital.

Islamic State said it was responsible for the explosion which went off near a cinema in Baghdad al-Jadida. Amaq news agency, which supports the group, said the bomber wore a suicide vest and targeted Iraqi security forces.

The blast set fire to at least five other vehicles on a busy commercial street during evening rush hour, the sources said.

Security has gradually improved in Baghdad, which was the target of daily bombings a decade ago, though attacks against the security forces and Shi'ite civilians are still frequent.

At least 12 people were killed on Saturday in two separate car bomb attacks targeting security forces, while a suicide attack at a Shi'ite mosque following Friday prayers left nine others dead. Islamic State said it was behind both of them.
Iraq's southern oil exports hit record high so far in April

By Alex Lawler

LONDON, April 25 (Reuters) - Oil exports from southern Iraq have reached a record monthly rate so far in April as OPEC's second-largest producer resumes the supply growth that has added downward pressure on prices.

Baghdad had given verbal support to an initiative by OPEC and outside producers to freeze output. But they failed to reach a deal at an April 17 meeting, and rising exports from Iraq as well as other nations including Russia underline the challenges to any further attempt at curbing supply.

Iraq's southern exports in the first 24 days of April averaged 3.43 million barrels per day (bpd), according to an industry source and loading data tracked by Reuters.

If sustained, that would exceed the record of 3.37 million bpd reached in November.

The increase is in line with figures given earlier in April by an Iraqi official. According to oil trading sources, it partly reflects an easing of delays in the loading of Basra Heavy crude cargoes.

"They finally managed to catch up on the delays," the industry source said. "I don't believe anyone is really doing anything about that," the source added of the effort to freeze output.

The south pumps most of Iraq's oil. Iraq also exports smaller amounts of crude from the north by pipeline to Turkey.

Northern shipments of crude from fields in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region have risen to 420,000 bpd so far in April, according to loading data, from 327,000 bpd in March.

The shipments have fallen from January's level of about 600,000 bpd due to pipeline sabotage and a decision by the central government in Baghdad to suspend pumping Kirkuk crude into the line.

Given the drop in northern exports from January's level, total Iraqi exports this month of 3.85 million bpd are short of a record high.

Iraq was the fastest source of supply growth in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries last year and boosted production by more than 500,000 bpd, despite spending cuts by companies working at the southern fields and conflict with Islamic State militants.

Iraqi officials and oil analysts expect further growth in the country's exports this year, but at a slower rate than 2015.
Panama's finance minister faces French counterpart in Paris over tax spat

PARIS, April 25 (Reuters) - Panama's finance minister faced demands from his French counterpart in Paris on Monday for "total transparency" following a diplomatic standoff triggered by a data leak at a Panamanian law firm specialising in setting up offshore firms.

The French and Panama presidents agreed this month that the two should meet in the wake of the revelations after France threatened to put Panama on its tax haven blacklist. Panama had warned that it might retaliate.

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said in a statement on Monday that he had told Finance Minister Dulcidio de la Guardia that Panama must share any information requested by the French government, including about offshore shell companies.

He said France would also seek to revise a 2011 bilateral tax convention - one of the few Panama has with other countries - to lift any legal obstacles to sharing tax information.
Hungary c.bank under fire over its foundations' contracts

By Krisztina Than and Gergely Szakacs

BUDAPEST, April 25 (Reuters) - A Hungarian opposition party asked state prosecutors on Monday to examine a possible misuse of public funds by foundations set up by the central bank, in a case seen as a test of transparency and the role of the bank's head, an ally of the prime minister.

The six educational foundations, established in 2014, are a pet project of Governor Gyorgy Matolcsy, whom Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called his "right-hand man". They have received nearly 1 billion euros of central bank funding, investing most of the money in Hungarian government bonds, whose income pays their running costs.

The foundations have denied any wrongdoing. The Hungarian National Bank (HNB) says the foundations are now separate legal entities that operate independently of the bank.

The opposition leftist Egyutt party's move follows a ruling by Hungary's constitutional court late last month to strike down a law that would have restricted financial scrutiny of the foundations, forcing them to publish hundreds of contracts.

The contracts include support for various educational and media projects and for the large-scale construction and renovation of real estate belonging to the foundations.

The Egyutt party said it had asked prosecutors to investigate an unnamed individual on suspicion of mishandling public funds in media content deals, which granted about half a billion forints ($1.81 million) to a Hungarian media firm called New Wave Production Kft.

"We believe these contracts were overvalued," Viktor Szigetvari, chairman of Egyutt, told Reuters.

Egyutt has also called on Matolcsy to resign.

PUBLIC FUNDS

In a statement posted online on Saturday the foundations said all of their contracts "were concluded lawfully" and denied any squandering of public funds. New Wave also said the contracts it had been involved with adhered to the law.

In a separate statement in reply to Reuters' questions, the central bank said: "The rights of the HNB as founder do not include making or influencing ... decisions linked to ... the activities of the foundations."

Matolcsy, a former finance minister under Orban who became bank governor in 2013, is chairman of the board of trustees at one of the foundations and a member of the board of trustees at another. His close relationship with Orban has been key to the direction of Hungary's often unconventional economic policies.

Transparency International, a Berlin-based global non-governmental organisation, said it also wanted Hungary's chief prosecutor to investigate a possible misuse of public funds.

"The Hungarian constitution and other laws say that public funds and the national wealth should be devoted to serving public tasks," said Miklos Ligeti, Transparency International's head of legal affairs in Hungary.
Spain on cusp of new election pending last-ditch political talks

MADRID, April 26 (Reuters) - Spanish political leaders meet King Felipe on Tuesday for a final round of talks to resolve a four-month-old political stalemate, but with a successful outcome unlikely, the stage could be set for a new election.

Political parties have been unable to form a new government since an inconclusive election last December, and with less than a week until a deadline to agree on a prime minister, Tuesday's talks are the last chance to broker some form of coalition.

After consultations with smaller forces on Monday, King Felipe will on Tuesday meet with leaders of the four main parties in his third attempt to unblock the situation, culminating in a session with caretaker Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of the centre-right People's Party (PP).

Most leaders have already recognised they lack the support from rivals to secure a parliamentary majority, making it unlikely a last-minute candidate will emerge to try and lead a viable pact between parties.

"The feeling everyone has is that there will be no surprises," Alberto Garzon, leader of the former communist party Izquierda Unida ("United Left") told a news conference on Monday after meeting the king.

Felipe was keen to see the process through and try to seek a consensus, politicians involved in Monday's talks said, though they added that the monarch had already asked parties to keep the costs of campaigns down if they were another ballot.

The rise of new forces such as anti-austerity Podemos ("We Can" and centrist Ciudadanos ("Citizens") after a deep economic crisis meant all parties fell short of a parliamentary majority in December, in the most fragmented result for decades.

The PP won the most votes and 123 seats in the the 350-seat lower house of parliament, while the Socialists took 90, Podemos 69 and Ciudadanos 40.

The parties' failure to anoint a prime minister by May 2 - after a Socialist pact with Ciudadanos was rejected in parliament in early March - will automatically trigger a repeat election, likely to be held on June 26.

But beyond Tuesday parties will be running out of time to even hold the necessary parliamentary votes, bringing the process to a head.

Opinion polls have so far shown a new election would do little to resolve the deadlock, while politicians such as Garzon said they were concerned about a rise in abstention among frustrated voters.

Many leaders have already entered a pre-campaign mode, blaming each other for the impasse which could start taking its toll on the economy more noticeably if Spain remains without a government for many more months, according to analysts.
France beats rival bidders to $40 bln Australian submarine deal

By Colin Packham, Nobuhiro Kubo and Tim Kelly

SYDNEY/TOKYO, April 26 (Reuters) - France has beaten Japan and Germany to win a A$50 billion ($40 billion) deal to build a fleet of 12 submarines for Australia, one of the world's most lucrative defence contracts, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Tuesday.

The victory for state-owned naval contractor DCNS Group underscored France's strengths in developing a compelling military-industrial bid, and is a blow for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push to develop defence export capabilities as part of a more muscular security agenda.

Reuters earlier reported that DCNS would be announced as the winner, citing sources with knowledge of the process.

"The recommendation of our competitive evaluation process ... was unequivocal that the French offer represented the capabilities best able to meet Australia's unique needs," Turnbull told reporters in the South Australian state capital of Adelaide where the submarines will be built.

In a statement, French President Francois Hollande said the deal "marks a decisive step in the strategic partnership between our two countries", while Prime Minister Manuel Valls said it was "cause for optimism and pride."

The French shipbuilder's share of the overall contract will amount to about 8 billion euros ($9.02 billion), according to sources with knowledge of the deal. DCNS chief Herve Guillou said the deal would create around 4,000 French jobs, benefiting shipyards and industrial sites in Lorient, Brest, Nantes and Cherbourg.

Australia is ramping up defence spending, seeking to protect its strategic and trade interests in Asia-Pacific as the United States and its allies grapple with China's rising power.

Japan's government with its Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries boat had been seen as early frontrunners for the contract, but their inexperience in global defence deals and an initial reluctance to say they would build in Australia saw them slip behind DCNS and Germany's ThyssenKrupp AG.

POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

Industry watchers had anticipated a decision to come later in the year, but Turnbull's gamble on a July 2 general election sped up the process.

The contract will have an impact on thousands of jobs in the shipbuilding industry in South Australia, where retaining votes in key electorates will be critical for the government's chances of re-election.

"The submarine project .. will see Australian workers building Australian submarines with Australian steel," said Turnbull.

DCNS, which traces its roots to 1624 and is 35 percent-owned by defence electronics giant Thales SA, proposed a diesel-electric version of its 5,000-tonne Barracuda nuclear-powered submarine. DCNS enlisted heads of industry and top government figures to convince Australia of the merits of its offering and the benefits to the broader relationship.

"This is a great opportunity for DCNS because they will work with the Australian navy for the long run as it is a series of contracts and a huge opportunity to invest more and to develop business," French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron said on the sidelines of a trade fair in Hannover, Germany.

Thales shares initially rose more than 3 percent in Paris to a record high.

Japan had offered to build Australia a variant of its 4,000 tonne Soryu submarine, a deal that would have cemented closer strategic and defence ties with two of Washington's key Asia-Pacific allies, but risked antagonizing China, Australia's top trading partner.

Paul Burton, Defense Industry and Budgets Director at IHS Jane's said it was a surprise from a strategic standpoint that Japan didn't win. "Japan is very keen to secure a significant piece of overseas business following the relaxation of its export legislation, and this Australian submarine deal was widely regarded as becoming a landmark trade," he said.

"The tradecraft required to convince a sophisticated domestic buyer that Japan's was superior to that offered by France was lacking."

ThyssenKrupp was proposing to scale up its 2,000-tonne Type 214 class submarine, a technical challenge that sources had previously told Reuters weighed against the German bid.

Both losing bidders said they were disappointed by the decision, but remain committed to their Australian businesses.

"Thyssenkrupp will always be willing to further contribute to Australia's naval capabilities," said Hans Atzpodien, Chairman of Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems.

Japan's Defence Minister Gen. Nakatani said the decision was "deeply regrettable," and he would ask Australia to explain why it didn't pick Japan's design.

America's Raytheon Co, which built the system for Australia's ageing Collins-class submarines, is vying for a separate combat system contract with Lockheed Martin Corp , which supplies combat systems to the U.S. Navy's submarine fleet. A decision on the weapons system is due later this year. ($1 = 1.2967 Australian dollars) ($1 = 0.8864 euros)
Ukraine marks 30 years since Chernobyl disaster

KIEV, April 26 (Reuters) - Ukraine prepared on Tuesday to mark the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which permanently poisoned swathes of eastern Europe and highlighted the shortcomings of the secretive Soviet system.

In the early hours of April 26, 1986, a botched test at the nuclear plant in then-Soviet Ukraine triggered a meltdown that spewed deadly clouds of atomic material into the atmosphere, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes.

The latest anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident has garnered extra attention due to the imminent completion of a giant 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) steel-clad arch that will enclose the stricken reactor site and prevent further leaks for the next 100 years.

The project was funded with donations from more than 40 governments. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said lessons learned from Chernobyl should be heeded all over the world.

Over a half a million civilian and military personnel were drafted from across the former Soviet Union as so-called "liquidators" to clean-up and contain the nuclear fallout, according to the World Health Organization.

Thirty-one plant workers and firemen died in the immediate aftermath of the accident, mostly from acute radiation sickness.

Over the past three decades, thousands more have succumbed to radiation-related illnesses such as cancer, although the total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate.

Nikolay Chernyavskiy, 65, who worked at Chernobyl and later volunteered as a liquidator, recalls climbing to the roof of his apartment block in the nearby town of Prypyat to get a look at the plant after the accident.

"My son said 'Papa, Papa, I want to look too.' He's got to wear glasses now and I feel like it's my fault for letting him look," Chernyavskiy said.

Even with the new structure, the surrounding exclusion zone - 2,600 square km (1,000 square miles) of forest and marshland on the border of Ukraine and Belarus - will remain uninhabitable and closed to unsanctioned visitors.

The disaster and the government's reaction highlighted the flaws of the Soviet system with its unaccountable bureaucrats and entrenched culture of secrecy. For example, the evacuation order only came 36 hours after the accident.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has said he considers Chernobyl one of the main nails in the coffin of the Soviet Union, which eventually collapsed in 1991.

Chernyavskiy's wife and four children were evacuated from the zone after the accident, but he doesn't regret his decision to stay behind or the health issues he suffers as a consequence.

"I would do it again," he said.
SK Hynix Q1 profit slips to 3-yr low as IT demand slows

By Se Young Lee

SEOUL, April 26 (Reuters) - South Korean memory chip maker SK Hynix Inc on Tuesday said its first-quarter operating profit fell 65 percent from a year earlier to its lowest in 3 years, hit by faltering demand for consumer electronics such as smartphones.

SK Hynix said in a regulatory filing its January-March operating profit came in at 562 billion won ($489 million), the lowest since the first quarter of 2013, in line with a 559 billion won profit tipped by a Thomson Reuters SmartEstimate.

Sluggish global economic growth has undercut appetite for gadgets such as smartphones and personal computers, dragging on prices of components like memory chips. Market researcher Gartner says global semiconductor revenue will fall 0.6 percent to $333 billion this year, in what would be only the second time the industry has had two straight years of declining sales.

"It is difficult to expect a sharp recovery in demand in the immediate term for the DRAM market, but the launch of new smartphones and chips for servers will boost demand and gradually balance the supply-demand conditions," said the world's No. 2 maker of DRAM chips behind Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

SK Hynix said first-quarter shipments of DRAM chips, used for temporary data storage, fell 3 percent from the previous three months, while their average price fell 14 percent.

Meanwhile shipments of NAND chips, used for long-term data storage on products such as smartphones and servers, fell 11 percent and the average selling price fell 12 percent.

However, the firm said it expects favourable NAND market conditions going forward, supported by the launch of new smartphones as well as growth in the high-end hard drive market.

First-quarter revenue for SK Hynix fell 24 percent from a year earlier to 3.7 trillion won, compared with a Thomson Reuters SmartEstimate of 3.8 trillion won.

Shares of the memory chip maker are down 10.6 percent so far this year based on Monday's closing level, reflecting concern about the outlook for the semiconductor industry.

Intel Corp, the world's top chipmaker, cut its full-year revenue forecast last week and said it would axe up to 12,000 jobs globally as it refocuses its business away from the declining personal computer industry it helped found.

Intel expects the market for personal computers to decline by a high single-digit percentage rate this year, compared with a mid-single digit drop it expected previously.
Japan eyes more foreign workers, stealthily challenging immigration taboo

By Linda Sieg and Ami Miyazaki

TOKYO, April 26 (Reuters) - Desperately seeking an antidote to a rapidly aging population, Japanese policymakers are exploring ways to bring in more foreign workers without calling it an "immigration policy".

Immigration is a touchy subject in a land where conservatives prize cultural homogeneity and politicians fear losing votes from workers worried about losing jobs.

But a tight labour market and ever-shrinking work force are making Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policy team and lawmakers consider the politically controversial option.

Signalling the shift, a ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) panel is likely to propose this week expanding the types of jobs open to foreign workers, who are expected to top 1 million this year.

"Domestically, there is a big allergy. As a politician, one must be aware of that," Takeshi Noda, an adviser to the LDP panel, told Reuters in an interview.

Unlike the United States, where Donald Trump has made immigration an election issue, Japan has little history of immigration. But, that makes ethnic and cultural diversity seem more of a threat in Japan than it may seem elsewhere.

And while Japan is not caught up in the mass migration crisis afflicting Europe, the controversies in other regions do colour the way Japanese think about immigration.

LDP lawmakers floated immigration proposals almost a decade ago, but those came to naught. But, since then, labour shortages have worsened and demographic forecasts have become more dire.

BY ANY OTHER NAME

An economic uptick since Abe took office in December 2012, rebuilding after the 2011 tsunami and a construction boom ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics have pushed labour demand to its highest in 24 years.

That has helped boost foreign worker numbers by 40 percent since 2013, with Chinese accounting for more than one-third followed by Vietnamese, Filipinos and Brazilians.

But visa conditions largely barring unskilled workers mean foreigners still make up only about 1.4 percent of the workforce, compared with the 5 percent or more found - according to IMF estimates - in most advanced economies.

So far, measures to attract more foreign workers have focused on easing entry for highly skilled professionals and expanding a "trainee" system that was designed to share technology with developing countries, but which critics say has become a backdoor source of cheap labour.

Now, however, the LDP panel looks set to go further by proposing foreigners be accepted in other sectors that face shortages, such as nursing and farming, while leaving open the possibility such workers can later seek permanent residence.

"We will tackle accepting foreigners as a labour force head-on," an LDP source close to the panel told Reuters.

Acknowledging the sensitivities - especially ahead of an upper house election in July - the source said the panel will specify it is not recommending an "immigration policy", defining immigrants as people who enter Japan with no fixed limit on length of stay.

"There is worry about the impact on public safety," Masahiko Shibayama, a panel member and special adviser to Abe, told Reuters. "There is concern domestic jobs will be eaten away. So I think there is still an allergy to the word 'immigration'."

Experts, however, say semantics cannot disguise the change underway.

"The government insists it is not adopting an immigration policy, but whatever the word, faced with a shrinking population, it is changing its former stance and has begun to move toward a real immigration policy," said Hidenori Sakanaka, a former Tokyo Immigration Bureau chief.

Two cabinet members have already advocated adopting an immigration policy, as have some LDP panel members.

"The fundamental problem of the Japanese economy is that the potential growth rate is low," LDP panel adviser Seiichiro Murakami told Reuters. "To raise that, big structural reforms including ... immigration policy are necessary."

The influential Nikkei Business weekly has dubbed a foreign worker-driven growth strategy "imin-omics", a pun on the premier's "Abenomics" revival plan and "imin", the Japanese word for "immigrants".

Abe, however, has made drawing more women and elderly into the work force while boosting the birth rate priorities, and publicly the government rules out any "immigration policy".

Still, Abe's right-hand man, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, said debate on more foreign workers lay ahead.

"We are seeking to mobilise the power of women and the elderly as much as possible, but at the same time we recognise that the acceptance of foreigners is a major issue," Suga told Reuters, adding caution was needed.

He said the future debate would also consider the longer term issue of permanent residence for less skilled foreigners.

Conservatives are likely to resist major change.

For example, an ex-labour minister commenting at the LDP panel on a proposal to let in foreign beauticians said the idea was fine, as long as their customers were foreign, too.

Hairdresser Mitsuo Igarashi has four barber chairs in his downtown Tokyo salon, but only himself to clip and shave. He wants to hire other barbers, and doesn't care where they come from.
Resource firms lead China share indexes lower; Hong Kong also down

SHANGHAI, April 26 (Reuters) - China stocks slipped on Tuesday morning, led by resource companies, as the recent commodities boom showed some signs of cooling in response to a government crackdown on speculation.

Hong Kong shares also weakened, tracking regional markets, as investors braced for central bank policy meetings in the United States and Japan this week.

The blue-chip CSI300 index fell 0.2 percent, to 3,155.79 points by the lunch break, while the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.3 percent, to 2,938.52 points.

Investors have become increasingly cautious as the SSEC has closed below the 3,000 mark for five consecutive days - seen by many as a technical sign that the rebound since early March has ended.

There were also few bright spots in economic fundamentals. Profits at China's state-owned firms fell 13.8 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the Ministry of Finance said on Tuesday.

The Institute of International Finance (IIF) estimated that global investors are expected to pull $538 billion out of China's slowing economy in 2016, although the pace of outflows has dropped from last year.

And reflecting reduced risk appetite among mainland investors, China's outstanding margin loans shrank for four sessions in a row.

Most sectors on the mainland fell on Tuesday, with resource shares among the biggest decliners.

Shares of steelmakers, cooper producers and gold miners fell, as prices of some commodities futures including iron ore and rebar started to fall in response to the regulatory crackdown on speculative trading.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index dropped 0.8 percent, to 21,131.32 points, while the Hong Kong China Enterprises Index lost 1.1 percent, to 8,883.68.
BSI Singapore's interim CEO Raj Sriram to leave bank

SINGAPORE, April 26 (Reuters) - Swiss bank BSI said Raj Sriram, the interim CEO of its Singapore unit, would leave the bank and Renato Cohn, member of BSI's group executive board, would become acting CEO.

"Raj will guarantee a smooth handover to Renato in the upcoming weeks and will leave the bank accordingly," BSI said in a statement received by Reuters on Tuesday. It said Sriram will take a break from his professional career.

BSI was recently sold by Brazil's Grupo BTG Pactual SA to EFG International AG. Sriram's exit follows a March announcement that the head of BSI's Asia business, Hanspeter Brunner, would retire from the bank. Sriram was then given responsibility of the Singapore business.
Romania - Factors to watch on April 26

BUCHAREST, April 26 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Tuesday.

DEBT TENDER

Romania sold a less than planned 420 million lei ($105.59 million) worth of March 2021 treasury bonds on Monday, with the average accepted yield at 2.70 percent.

Debt managers, who planned to sell 600 million lei on Monday, last sold the issue on March 28 at an average yield of 2.66 percent.

BUDGET SURPLUS

Romania ran a consolidated budget surplus of 0.4 percent of gross domestic product in the first quarter, up from the 0.1 percent surplus recorded at the end of February, the finance ministry said on Monday.

M3

Romanian M3 money supply rose 9.9 percent on the year to 280.765 billion lei ($70.60 billion) at the end of March, and fell 1.0 percent on the month, central bank data showed.

CEE MARKETS

The zloty, battered by worries that Poland may face credit rating downgrades, led a fall of Central European currencies as the Federal Reserve's upcoming meeting weighed on risk appetite.

For the long-term Romanian diary, click on

For emerging markets economic events, click on

For an index of all diaries, click on
Syrian food crisis deepens as war chokes farming

By Maha El Dahan

ABU DHABI/HASAKA, Syria, April 26 (Reuters) - Syria's war has destroyed agricultural infrastructure and fractured the state system that provides farmers with seeds and buys their crops, deepening a humanitarian crisis in a country struggling to produce enough grain to feed its people.

The country's shortage of its main staple wheat is worsening. The area of land sown with the cereal - used to make bread - and with barley has fallen again this year, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) told Reuters.

The northeast province of Hasaka, which accounts for almost half the country's wheat production has seen heavy fighting between the Kurdish YPG militia, backed by the U.S.-led air strikes, and Islamic State militants.

Farming infrastructure, including irrigation canals and grain depots, has been destroyed, according to the FAO. It said the storage facilities of the state seeds body across the country had also been damaged, so it had distributed just a tenth of the 450,000 tonnes of seeds that farmers needed to cultivate their land this season.

Farmers are also struggling to get their produce to market so it can be sold and distributed to the population.

The conflict has led to the number of state collection centres falling to 22 in 2015, from 31 the year before and about 140 before civil war broke out between government forces and rebels five years ago, according to the General Organisation for Cereal Processing and Trade (Hoboob), the state agency that runs them. Many of those lost have been damaged or destroyed.

The breakdown of the agricultural system means Syria could struggle to feed itself for many years after any end to the fighting, and need a significant level of international aid, the FAO says.

It has had a major impact on plantings; the area of land sown with wheat and barley for the 2015-2016 season stood at 2.16 million hectares, down from 2.38 million hectares the previous season and 3.125 million in 2010 before the war, and only around two-thirds of the area targeted by the government, said the FAO.

The U.N. organisation said its planting information came from the Syrian government. The government itself has not made public the figures for 2015/16 plantings.

The agriculture ministry could not be reached for comment. A government source told Reuters that information on the 2015/16 crop area was still not ready for publication.

"What concerns us is not the fluctuations from one year to the other, it is the worrying overall downward trend," said Eriko Hibi, the FAO's main representative for Syria.

DEPENDING ON RAIN

The worsening wheat shortage is another hammer blow to a country where the population numbered around 22 million before the civil war but more than 250,000 have been killed in the fighting and millions have become refugees.

Last year, farmers sold just over 450,000 tonnes of wheat, a fraction of the 1-1.5 million tonnes that is needed to provide enough bread to government-held areas of the country alone, government sources and traders said.

Before the conflict, by contrast, Syria could produce 4 million tonnes of wheat in a good year, with around 2.5 million tonnes going to the state and the surplus exported.

The United Nations said in January that some Syrians were starving in besieged areas under the control of rebel forces or Islamic State, which it said were home to at least 400,000 people.

Faisal Hejji, a farmer in Ras al-Ain in Hasaka, said he had devoted 200 donnams (20 hectares) of land to wheat this season, down from 300 donnams before the conflict.

"War has made us lose a lot of the necessary inputs we need and when we do find them they are pricey," Hejji said. "We used to support one donnam of wheat with 50 kg of fertiliser but now this is missing," he added.

"Also, we are now depending more on rain rather than other irrigation methods."

NO SECURITY

His plight is typical of farmers across the country, according to the FAO, which estimated last year that Syria's wheat deficit for 2015 stood at around 800,000 tonnes. That deficit could widen every year should farmers continue to lack access to agricultural inputs and markets, it said.

"Many farmers don't want to be displaced or give up their land, they want to stay as long as they can and in order to do that they have to be able to produce their food and make ends meet," Hibi said.

She said it was still too early to tell what this year's wheat crop would be, as it depended on the weather. "So far it has been a bit drier but that may change," she said.

Syrian farmers benefited from the best rainfall in a decade last year and harvested around 2.4 million tonnes of wheat, significantly better than the drought-stricken year before but still around 40 percent lower than the pre-war average.

Hejji's land is located in a part of Syria where Kurdish groups declared their own government two years ago known as the self-administration. Yet he still sells his wheat to the state-run Hoboob, which he says is the only group capable of buying it at suitable prices.

"I go to the Hoboob agency in Hasaka or Qamishli to sell my wheat and I store small quantities for me and my family. Some farmers sell their wheat to middlemen but these traders also sell them ultimately to Hoboob," he said.

It is difficult to transfer wheat and other food from one province to another because of lack of security, Hibi said.

"I've seen a lot of fresh fruit wasted in some areas where just nearby people haven't seen fresh fruit for years."
MIDEAST STOCKS-Saudi may stay firm after reform news, Gulf eyes earnings

DUBAI, April 26 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's stock market may extend gains on Tuesday after Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced an economic overhaul of the oil-dependent kingdom, while investors in the Gulf will take cues from quarterly results.

Price Mohammed unveiled ambitious plans including a restructuring of the government's Public Investment Fund to make it an international investment power, a planned sale of a stake of less than 5 percent in national oil giant Saudi Aramco, a restructuring of the housing ministry to increase supply of affordable housing, and a "green card" system to give expatriates long-term residence.

There were few details, and big questions remain over the government's ability to implement the plan. But investors reacted positively to the sense that the government was acting decisively and the Saudi stock index closed 2.5 percent higher at 6,868 points on Monday. It faces technical resistance on the 200-day average, now at 7,031 points.

"The vibes that come out of Vision 2030 are that of reform, dynamism, change and optimism and hence the market's initial reaction has been euphoric," said Shakeel Sarwar, head of asset maangement at Bahraini firm Securities and Investment Co.

Banks outperformed on Monday because of hopes they will make money from privatisation plans. Other sectors expected to benefit may now be targeted by investors.

"There is a lot of detail to absorb, but in general sectors including mining, banks and healthcare stocks will be of interest," said Mohammad al Shammasi, head of asset management at Riyadh-based Derayah Financial.

Elsewhere in the Gulf earnings will continue to drive market perforamnce with Dubai's Emaar Malls, a unit of Emaar Properties, reporting a 22 percent rise in first-quarter net profit as its rental income grew.

The commercial real estate operator made a net profit of 529 million dirhams ($144.03 million), beating EFG Hermes' forecast of 451.9 million dirhams.

But telecommunications operator du may be soft after it reported a 1.4 percent fall in first-quarter net profit because it paid a higher rate of tax than a year earlier.
Malaria deaths rising in Angola as health crisis spreads

LUANDA, April 26 (Reuters) - Deaths from malaria in Angola this year look set to outstrip 2015 as a health crisis that includes one of the country's worst yellow fever outbreaks in decades spreads, the World Health Organisation said.

Angola recorded 2,915 deaths from malaria in the first quarter of this year, compared with 8,000 for the whole of 2015 and 5,500 the previous year, the WHO told Reuters on Monday.

"This new malaria outbreak has devastated the entire country, even in provinces that have low endemic prevalence we are seeing the spread and surge in cases," the WHO's Angola representative Hernando Agudelo Ospina said.

Ospina said uncollected garbage in Luanda due to government budget cuts and a record amount of rainfall had contributed to high cases of malaria, yellow fever and chronic diarrhoea.

A yellow fever outbreak has killed at least 225 people in Angola and 21 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to data from two weeks ago. The WHO has warned the epidemic poses a global threat.
Burundi president condemns general's killing as violence grows

NAIROBI, April 26 (Reuters) - Burundi's President Pierre Nkurunziza has condemned the killing of a senior army officer, who was shot along with his wife and bodyguard in an attack that also wounded their child in the central African nation's expanding wave of deadly violence.

Brigadier general Athanase Kararuza, who was a military adviser in the office of the vice president, was dropping his child at a school in a neighbourhood of the capital Bujumbura on Monday when his car was attacked by rocket and gun fire, army spokesman Gaspard Baratuza told reporters.

Kararuza has previously worked as a deputy commander of an international peace force in the Central African Republic (CAR).

"He energetically fought against the coup plotters last year and exceptionally contributed in strengthening peace and security during and after elections," Nkurunziza said in a statement late on Monday.

"We humbly pray that with the help of God perpetrators of the shameful acts are arrested and quickly punished according to the law."

Tit-for-tat attacks between Nkurunziza's security forces and his opponents have escalated since April 2015 when he announced a disputed bid for a third term as president and won re-election in July.

The U.N. says more than 400 people have been killed and over 250,000 have fled.

On Monday, the international war crimes court said it will investigate the rising violence in Burundi.

Nkurunziza's opponents said his third term bid broke a peace agreement that ended a previous civil war while the government said a third term was legal, citing a constitutional court ruling.

The president won re-election in July.
PRESS DIGEST - Bulgaria - April 26

SOFIA, April 26 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Tuesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

-- Ruling centre-right GERB party is inclined to revise the controversial changes to the Electoral Code that have provoked public discontent, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said (Trud, 24 Chasa, Standart)

-- Bulgarian truck drivers gave up plans to block the Bulgarian-Greek border over East Orthodox Easter, Bulgarian Transport Minister Ivaylo Moskovski said (Trud, 24 Chasa, Monitor, Standart, Sega)

-- Tolerance to corruption among Bulgarian citizens is very low but only one out of 10 believes it is very likely for an official to be convicted on corruption charges in the Balkan country, a survey, conducted by Exacta Research, showed
MOORHEAD, Minn. -- A Minot man who described himself to police as a Second Amendment activist was arrested after allegedly discharging a handgun in a Moorhead hotel room.

According to documents filed in Clay County District Court:

Police were called Thursday to the Super 8 Motel at 3621 Eighth St. S. on a report of an intoxicated male with a gun. A clerk at the hotel told officers that a guest in the motel had apologized for something but it wasn't clear what. The clerk believed the man may have been talking about firing a gun inside his room.

Officers went to the man's room and entered using a master key. Inside, they found a woman who told officers there was a gun in the room but she didn't know where. Police found a man sleeping on a bed with a gun near his hand.

Officers handcuffed the man while he was asleep, but he woke up and became emotional, telling officers he was a Second Amendment activist and that he had a right to have a firearm, according to the court papers.

Officers found numerous empty containers of alcohol in the room and the man appeared to be extremely intoxicated.

Police also found a bullet hole in the ceiling of the room.

The woman officers found in the room confirmed that her companion had discharged a gun after drinking heavily, but she said it was an accident.

When the suspect, identified in court papers as Cody T. Lehman, 27, was being escorted to a police car, several officers were required to control him and Lehman threatened to harm one of the officers, according to court documents.

Lehman faces charges of reckless discharge of a firearm and obstructing the legal process.
Australia's asylum seeker detentions on Papua New Guinea island ruled illegal

SYDNEY, April 26 (Reuters) - Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that Australia's practice of detaining asylum seekers on PNG's northern Manus Island was illegal and must stop.

Papua New Guinea's highest court said the detentions breached the country's constitution.

Under Australia's controversial immigration laws, anyone intercepted while trying to reach the country by boat is sent for processing to camps in Nauru and Manus Island. They are never eligible to be resettled in Australia.

More than 800 people are detained on Manus Island on behalf of Australia. The detention centre on Nauru houses about 500 people and has been widely criticised by the United Nations and human rights agencies for harsh conditions and reports of systemic child abuse.

Australian Minister for Immigration Peter Dutton said the ruling would not change its policy of offshore detention.

"It does not alter Australia's border protection policies - they remain unchanged," said Dutton.

"Those in the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre found to be refugees are able to resettle in Papua New Guinea. Those found not to be refugees should return to their country of origin."

Australia's asylum seeker policy has attracted international criticism from human rights groups.

"People have been detained for over three years in contravention of the laws of Papua New Guinea in abusive conditions," said Elaine Pearson, Australia Director at Human Rights Watch.
North Korea seen readying another intermediate missile launch attempt-report

SEOUL, April 26 (Reuters) - North Korea appears to be preparing a test-launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said on Tuesday, after what the United States described as the "fiery, catastrophic" failure of the first attempt.

On April 15, the North failed to launch what was likely a Musudan missile, with a range of more than 3,000 km (1,800 miles), meaning it could, if launched successfully, hit Japan and also theoretically put the U.S. territory of Guam within range.

The Musudan missile, which can be fired from a mobile launcher, is not known to have been successfully flight-tested.

North Korea tested its fourth nuclear bomb on Jan. 6 and launched a long-range rocket on Feb. 7, both in defiance of U.N. resolutions. The North on Saturday conducted a test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile.

"There are indications that the North may fire a Musudan missile that it launched and failed on Kim Il Sung's birthday on April 15," Yonhap quoted an unnamed government official as saying. Kim Il Sung is the North's founder.

North and South Korea remain technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, rather than a treaty. The North, whose lone major ally is neighbour China, routinely threatens to destroy South Korea and its major ally, the United States.

The April 15 failure was seen as an embarrassing blow for current leader Kim Jong Un, Kim Il Sung's grandson, who has claimed several advances in weapons technology in recent months and is widely expected to conduct a fifth nuclear test soon.

South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun declined to confirm the Yonhap report but said the North's military would likely spend some time trying to fix the problem following the failed launch.

Experts see North Korea's Musudan test as part of an effort to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the mainland United States.

North Korea said its fourth nuclear test in January was a hydrogen bomb, although that claim has been disputed by foreign governments and experts given the relatively small size of the blast.

North Korea said its submarine-launched ballistic missile test on Saturday was a "great success" that provided "one more means for powerful nuclear attack".

South Korea on Tuesday described the test, which sent a missile travelling about 30 km (18 miles), as a partial success.

The United States and South Korea began talks on possible deployment of a new missile-defence system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), after the latest North Korea nuclear and rocket tests.

Expanded U.N. sanctions aimed at starving North Korea of funds for its nuclear weapons programme were approved in a unanimous Security Council vote in early March on a resolution drafted by the United States and China.
MIDEAST STOCKS-Saudi pulls back in early trade, Dubai's Emaar Malls surges

DUBAI, April 26 (Reuters) - Shares in Saudi Arabia pulled back early on Tuesday as short-term investors booked profits in stocks which had jumped when Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced economic reforms on Monday. The rest of the Gulf was mixed.

Riyadh's stock index, which had gained 2.5 percent on Monday, mainly on the back of banks which could win business handling the government's privatisation plans, was down 0.9 percent after an hour of trade on Tuesday.

Samba Financial Group, lead underwriter of the recent initial public offer of Middle East Healthcare, dropped 5.1 percent after rocketing 9.3 percent on Monday.

But healthcare shares, which could benefit from plans to restructure and privatise the healthcare sector, fared better. Middle East Healthcare added 2.1 percent and Mouwasat, which runs and manages medical centres across the kingdom, rose 1.4 percent.

Regional fund managers said some healthcare, education and insurance shares might benefit from the reforms, which aim to develop those sectors. Al Khaleej Training climbed 1.1 percent.

But because the reforms are long-term, most fund managers do not expect any immediate, extended rally of the overall stock market.

Elsewhere in the Gulf. earnings determined market performance with Dubai's Emaar Malls, a unit of Emaar Properties, jumping 6.3 percent after it reported a 22 percent rise in first-quarter net profit as its rental income grew.

The commercial real estate operator made a net profit of 529 million dirhams ($144.03 million), beating EFG Hermes' forecast of 451.9 million dirhams.

Emaar Properties, which has not yet reported earnings, was up 1.0 percent.

But telecommunications operator du edged down 0.6 percent after it reported a 1.4 percent fall in first-quarter net profit because it paid a higher rate of tax than a year earlier.

The firm made a net profit of 480.1 million dirhams; analysts at EFG Hermes and SICO Bahrain had forecast 480.7 million dirhams and 501.6 million dirhams respectively.
Al Shabaab kills five at Somali military base - army captain

MOGADISHU, April 26 (Reuters) - Al Shabaab insurgents attacked a Somali military base on Tuesday and killed five soldiers in two hours of fierce fighting near the northwestern town of Baidoa, a military officer said.

"Al Shabaab militants attacked early in the morning. Five soldiers died and 12 others were wounded," captain Aden Nur told Reuters from Baidoa. Six al Shabaab fighters were killed, he added.

Abdiasis Abu Musab, the group's military operations spokesman, said it had ambushed a truck carrying troops to reinforce the base, killed 11 soldiers and seized seven guns. "We exploded the truck using a planted bomb and then ambushed," he told Reuters.

It was not possible to verify the death toll independently. Al Shabaab has inflated casualty figures in the past.

The Islamist group, which wants to topple Somalia's Western-backed government, carries out frequent attacks on military targets and civilian facilities like hotels and restaurants, mostly in the capital Mogadishu.
Iran and Russia move closer but their alliance has limits

By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Lidia Kelly

DUBAI/MOSCOW, April 26 (Reuters) - When Iran took delivery of the first parts of an advanced Russian air defence system this month, it paraded the anti-aircraft missile launchers sent by Moscow to mark Army Day.

Tehran had cause to celebrate: the Kremlin's decision a year ago to press ahead with the stalled sale of the S-300 system was the first clear evidence of a growing partnership between Russia and Iran that has since turned the tide in Syria's civil war and is testing U.S. influence in the Middle East.

But the delay in implementation of the deal also points to the limitations of a relationship that is forged from a convergence of interests rather than a shared worldview, with Iran's leadership divided over ideology and Russia showing signs of reluctance to let the alliance develop much more, according to diplomats, officials and analysts interviewed by Reuters.

Some Iranian officials want a strategic alliance, a much deeper relationship than now. But the Kremlin refers only to ongoing cooperation with a new dimension because of the conflict in Syria, in which both back Damascus.

"We are continuously developing friendly relations with Iran, but we cannot really talk about a new paradigm in our relations," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last month.

Russia agreed to sell the S-300 system to Iran in 2007 but froze the deal in 2010 after sanctions were imposed on Tehran over its nuclear programme.

Moscow lifted the self-imposed ban in April last year as Iran and world powers got closer to the deal that led eventually to the nuclear-related sanctions being lifted in exchange for Tehran curbing its atomic programme.

Russia is now weighing the financial and diplomatic benefits of arms sales to Tehran against the risk of upsetting other countries including Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel, or seeing Iran become too powerful.

"There is a military-economic aspect to this alliance which is beneficial to both sides," said Maziar Behrooz, associate professor of Mideast and Islamic history at San Francisco State University, who has studied Iran's relationship with Russia.

"But on a geopolitical level, Iran and Russia can only form a tactical short-term alliance, not a strategic one. I think the ideological differences between the two are just too deep."

BACKING FOR DAMASCUS

The relationship, long cordial, appeared to reach a new level last September when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a military intervention in Syria in support of Iran's ally, President Bashar al-Assad.

Iran had already deployed its Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), who had rallied Assad's troops to check the opposition's momentum. But it took Russian air power to break the stalemate and give Assad the upper hand.

Militarily, the two powers proved complementary. Iran brought disciplined ground troops who worked well with their local allies, while Russia provided the first-rate air power that Iran and Assad lack.

Diplomatically, the joint operations have made Tehran and Moscow central to any discussion about the regional security architecture.

That is important for Putin as he has sought to shore up alliances in the region and increase Moscow's influence since Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, a Russian ally, was killed.

How well Moscow will fare when it comes to winning lucrative business contracts now the nuclear-related sanctions have been lifted is less clear. There is little sign so far of Russian companies making new inroads into Iran.

This is partly for ideological reasons. The Iranian establishment is divided, with President Hassan Rouhani's faction more interested in trading with the West than struggling against it, even if many U.S. policies are still condemned.

Russia has little incentive to join the mostly Shi'ite "Axis of Resistance" to Western interests in the region which is championed by the more conservative Iranian faction as this could ruin its relationships with other Middle Eastern powers such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

SECRET MEETINGS

Russia's first big intervention in the Middle East since the Cold War followed months of secret meetings in Moscow between Putin and Iranian officials, including IRGC commanders and Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A close and exclusive alliance with Russia would suit Khamenei, Iran's most powerful figure, who has blamed Western influence for Iran's troubles and pushed hard to implement his "Look East" policy.

But it runs contrary to the policy of Iran's government, led by Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who have courted Western delegations on an almost weekly basis since the nuclear deal was reached with world powers last July.

The Western-educated Rouhani is less inclined towards Russia and has an uneasy relationship with Putin. Last November, during his first visit to Tehran in eight years, Putin went straight from the airport to meet Khamenei, rather than seeing Rouhani first as most visitors do.

"Rouhani and Putin don't get along that great," an Iranian diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Some Iranian officials are also wary of getting too close to Russia, which fought Britain for domination of 19th century Iran and occupied the country during both World Wars.

"Russians have always used us as a tool in their foreign policy. They never stayed committed to their alliance with any country," Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, who served as spokesman for former President Mohammad Khatami, told Reuters from Tehran.

Putin has worked hard to improve relations with Iran. During the November visit, he presented Khamenei with one of the world's oldest copies of the Koran, which Russia had obtained during its occupation of northern Iran in the 19th century.

The intervention in Syria has served as a distraction from economic problems in Russia, deepened by international sanctions on Moscow over its role in the Ukraine crisis which have forced Moscow to seek new trade partners.

Trade with Iran was only $1.3 billion in 2015, according to Russian data, though there are signs cooperation could pick up.

Russia says it is ready to start disbursing a $5-billion loan to Tehran for financing infrastructure projects. A deal is also being discussed for Russia to send oil and gas to northern Iran, where supply is scarce, and for Iran to send oil and gas from its southern fields to Russia's customers in the Gulf.

But the prospects for cooperation may be limited, sector analysts say, as, to update its energy sector, Iran mainly needs technology and equipment which Russia is also in need of.
Afghan Taliban delegation in Pakistan amid efforts to restart peace process

By Jibran Ahmed and Mirwais Harooni

PESHAWAR, Pakistan/KABUL, April 26 (Reuters) - An Afghan Taliban delegation has arrived in Pakistan to meet officials in a bid to restart a stuttering peace process with Kabul, Afghan officials and Taliban leaders said on Tuesday, although it was unclear who the delegation was meeting.

There was no immediate confirmation from authorities in Pakistan but just a week after a massive bomb blast in Kabul killed at least 64 people and wounded hundreds, the Afghan government refused to take part.

Last month, the Taliban ruled out participating in what it called "futile" talks sponsored by the four-power group of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the United States and China as long as foreign forces remain in the country.

In Kabul, the Afghan government has been frustrated by what it sees as Islamabad's refusal to honour a pledge to force Taliban leaders based in Pakistan to join the talks, or face military action.

"We are aware that Taliban delegations are in Pakistan, but we will not go there until Pakistan fulfils the promises that they made," said Dawa Khan Mina Pal, a spokesman for Afghan president Ashraf Ghani.

On Monday, Ghani said the opportunity for peace talks "will not be there forever" and urged Pakistan to fight Taliban groups on its soil that rejected peace.

Afghanistan has long accused Pakistan of actively harbouring the Afghan Taliban leadership on its soil, a charge Islamabad denies, saying it only has "limited influence".

A senior Taliban member based in Pakistan confirmed that a delegation of leaders was in the southern port city of Karachi, holding talks with Pakistani officials.

"They arrived on Monday," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity, because the Taliban leadership has not authorised him to discuss the talks with the media. "They left for an unknown location later in the day and returned late at night."

Two members of the Taliban's political office in the Gulf state of Qatar, which has played a role in previous attempted peace talks, confirmed the delegation's presence in Pakistan, but indicated meetings were being held in the capital, Islamabad.

"Our people held a meeting with Pakistani officials and I am sure they may meet the Chinese on Tuesday," said one of the Qatar-based leaders, speaking on condition of anonymity, also because he is not authorised to discuss the talks.

"We don't care if Kabul participates in the meeting, as we already launched our spring offensive and are getting successes against them," he said.

The Pakistani Foreign Office and the Afghan embassy in Islamabad did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Migrants trickle back to Turkey from Greece under EU deal

By Karolina Tagaris

ATHENS, April 26 (Reuters) - Two ferries left Greece for Turkey on Tuesday with 18 migrants on board, as a government spokesman said Athens was doing all it could to process returnees under a deal with Turkey intended to stem a huge refugee influx into Europe.

Just over 340 people have so far been returned to Turkey under the accord, agreed with the European Union in March after more than 1 million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond reached the continent last year.

On Tuesday, 13 people were deported from the island of Lesbos to the Turkish town of Dikili and five were ferried back from Chios to Cesme, police said. Most were Afghans.

None had requested asylum in Greece, a government official said.

Greece has said authorities would start ruling on asylum applications in late April, but requests have been piling up and it has been criticised for being too slow to process them.

Giorgos Kyritsis, government spokesman for the migration crisis, said Athens was "not cutting corners (and)... not delaying."

"We're sticking to the legal procedure so that the asylum process is completed in the best possible way," he said.

Under deal, arrivals in Greece from Turkey after March 20 face being sent back if they do not apply for asylum in Greece or if their application is rejected.

In return, the EU will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward Ankara with more money, early visa-free travel for its citizens and progress in negotiations to join the bloc.

About 8,000 refugees and migrants are currently on Greek islands, having arrived after the deal was implemented.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and human rights groups have questioned whether the deal is legal or moral. They are also concerned about whether Turkey is a "safe" country for returnees.

In Geneva, the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) said it was concerned about the plight of Syrian refugees in Turkey, with around 90 percent of them outside official camps, often without work and in makeshift accommodation.
Dutch "horror dentist" sent to jail for 8 years in France

PARIS, April 26 (Reuters) - A Dutchman dubbed the "horror dentist" by French media was sentenced to eight years in jail on Tuesday for mutilating patients' mouths and defrauding social security services.

The verdict was delivered by a court in Nevers, in central France, where local media relayed gory tales, some from old-aged pensioners who spoke of having as many as eight teeth pulled out in one sitting, infections and bills of tens of thousands of euros.
Eastern Libya ships first oil cargo in defiance of Tripoli

By Ayman al-Warfalli

BENGHAZI, Libya, April 26 (Reuters) - A government based in eastern Libya has shipped its first cargo of crude in defiance of authorities in the capital Tripoli, a bold move that could deepen the divisions that have brought chaos since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.

The Tripoli authorities asked the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to blacklist the India-flagged tanker Distya Ameya, which left the eastern Libyan port of Hariga overnight carrying oil they said could not be lawfully sold.

The eastern government has set up its own National Oil Corporation (NOC) to act in parallel to the Tripoli-based NOC that is recognised internationally as the only legitimate seller of Libyan oil.

The tanker departed Hariga carrying 650,000 barrels of crude late on Monday bound for Malta, said Mohamed al-Manfi, a spokesman for the eastern NOC.

Maltese national TV said the ship was in international waters near Malta. The island's Port Directorate said the tanker was not authorised to dock there and requests would be refused.

The ship last reported its position through the publicly available AIS tracking system earlier on Tuesday as still in Libyan waters.

Libya's economy depends almost exclusively on oil export revenue and the fight over who controls those funds has driven chronic instability and civil war since long-serving autocrat Gaddafi was toppled and killed by Western-backed rebels in 2011.

Parallel parliaments and governments have operated in Tripoli and the east since 2014. Much of the country is in the hands of dozens of armed groups loyal to one or other government, while small areas are controlled by Islamic State fighters.

Political division, labour disputes and security threats have reduced Libya's oil output to less than a quarter of the 1.6 million barrels per day produced before the uprising.

A U.N.-backed unity government, which arrived in the capital last month, includes figures from across Libya's divides but has not yet been fully accepted by either of the two loose alliances fighting for power since 2014.

UN RESOLUTIONS

It was not immediately clear how the eastern NOC could conduct a sale given the international opposition. One possibility might be to attempt a ship-to-ship transfer in international waters.

"We are concerned about purchases of Libyan oil outside of legitimate channels," U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday, emphasizing that all sales should go through the Tripoli-based National Oil Corporation.

The United States has stopped unauthorised sales of Libyan oil in the past, sending special forces in 2014 to board a tanker off Cyprus loaded with crude shipped by a group pressing for more autonomy in eastern Libya. The U.S. troops forced that ship to return.

Another senior U.S. official declined to be drawn on whether Washington might undertake a similar operation, saying it would "look at all appropriate mechanisms to address the situation."

If the shipment went through, it could spark copycat sales that would further shrink the unity government's revenues.

"That's very bad for Libya and very threatening, potentially, to the viability of any Libyan government," the second U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Among U.S. concerns are that such oil sales could fund arms purchases by those resisting the unity government's authority.

The official said the United States and other nations could impose sanctions on those found to violate U.N. Security Council resolutions on Libya, though he did not provide details.

The eastern NOC has long been trying to sell its own oil, but until now those efforts have been blocked by the NOC in Tripoli, with the support of Western countries.

The NOC in Tripoli says any sale by its eastern rival would breach U.N. Security Council resolutions and put the future of Libya's economy at risk.

NOC Tripoli officials said on Tuesday they had notified the United Nations, countries with naval forces in the Mediterranean and a unity government now working in Tripoli that the shipment had not been authorised and should be stopped.

"We have done our job and we are waiting for them to do theirs," said spokesman Mohamed al-Harari.

The NOC in Tripoli has continued to run oil production throughout the crisis that followed Gaddafi's fall, with the funds paying state salaries across Libya, including many of the rival armed groups, which have generally been granted official status.

The Tripoli NOC has retained international backing, and says it is working to plan future oil sales with the new U.N.-backed unity government.

News of the eastern NOC's effort to export its first shipment of oil emerged late last week, when the NOC in Tripoli said it had prevented port workers from loading oil onto the Distya Ameya.
WHO issues yellow fever warning as deadly outbreak grows

By Kate Kelland and Stephanie Nebehay

LONDON/GENEVA, April 26 (Reuters) - Amid rising concern over a deadly outbreak of yellow fever spreading from Angola, the World Health Organization on Tuesday urged travellers to the African country to heed its warnings and get vaccinated.

At least 258 people have been killed and there have been around 1,975 suspected cases of the mosquito-borne disease since an epidemic erupted in December 2015. It has already grown to become the worst outbreak in decades.

Yellow fever is transmitted by the same mosquitoes that spread the Zika and dengue viruses, although it is a far more serious disease with death rates as high as 75 percent in severe cases requiring admission to hospital.

Angola's outbreak has already spread to other countries in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and at least 11 cases of yellow fever have been imported into China in people travelling from Angola.

"Cases of yellow fever linked to this outbreak have been detected in other countries of Africa and Asia," WHO director-general Margaret Chan said in a statement.

"We are particularly concerned that large urban areas are at risk and we strongly urge all travellers to Angola to ensure they are vaccinated against yellow fever and carry a valid certificate."

The WHO's regional office for Africa said last week that yellow fever in people who travelled from Angola has been reported in China (11 cases), DRC (10 cases with 1 in Kinshasa) and Kenya (2 cases).

It said three further cases have been reported in Uganda, but these patients had no history of travel to Angola.

The WHO "is working with neighbouring countries such as the DRC, Namibia and Zambia to bolster cross-border surveillance with Angola and information sharing to prevent and reduce the spread of infection", it said.

Jack Woodall, a yellow fever expert who formerly worked for the WHO and the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, said he is worried the outbreak could spread rapidly along a major trucking route from DRC to Uganda's capital Kampala.

"Surveillance of this trade route should be intensified and vaccination of people living along it should be top priority," he said.

A spokesman for the WHO in Geneva said a nationwide vaccination programme that began in Angola in February has reached 7 million people.
Lawmakers became increasingly flummoxed Tuesday when officials outlined a stark contrast Tuesday between reporting requirements and standards in North Dakota and Minnesota for granting and tracking angel fund tax credits.

Members of the interim Political Subdivisions Taxation Committee said a comparative lack of transparency in where angel fund tax credits are being invested as well as the identities of investors was troubling.

This raises a ton of red flags for me. It does not smell right, Rep. Mike Nathe, R-Bismarck, said. This is being done on the backs of North Dakota taxpayers.

House Majority Leader Al Carlson, R-Fargo, while not a member of the committee, attended the meeting and agreed with Nathe.

Shame on us, Carlson said of the lax degree of transparency.

Joe Becker, with the North Dakota Office of State Tax Commissioner, outlined the difference in reporting requirements.

In North Dakota, annual reports are required to be filed with the tax commissioners office outlining the name of the business as well as the location and principal place of business.

State law allows, but doesnt require, the tax department to provide information to North Dakota Legislative Management. This includes the names of qualified angel funds, the names of businesses in which the funds made an investment, the principal location of each business invested in as well as the date and amount invested in each fund.

Unlike Minnesota, the names of investors arent public information in North Dakota.

A lot of information can be found there, Becker said.

In Minnesota, investors and qualified funds must file annual reports for three years detailing business and investment information.

Qualified businesses in Minnesota must file annual reports for five years. Businesses are required to prove they meet numerous requirements, including being headquartered in the state and having a minimum of 51 percent of employees and payroll based in the state.

Carlson said lawmakers and the public have no idea where the tax credits are going and if theyre providing benefits to North Dakota.

Somethings got to come out of this, Carlson said of the interim study.

The North Dakota angel fund investment tax credit is available to all income taxpayers. A taxpayer can claim 45 percent of the amount to each angel fund each taxable year, capped at $45,000 per year with a lifetime limit of $500,000 in credits.

Criteria for being granted the credit includes that an angel fund must be organized with the intent of investing in at least three primary-sector non-publicly traded businesses with strong growth potential.

In Minnesota, the maximum credit is 25 percent. The state doesnt provide the credit until dollars are first invested in a qualified business.

Some angel fund managers were on hand to make the case for continuing the angel fund credits.

Many of my investors have openly stated to me their interest in the opportunity because of the tax credits, Greg Syrup, chairman of the 701 Angel Fund out of Grand Forks, said. It is an incentivizing program like this that has garnered their commitment over other investment opportunities.

Syrup said his fund has nine in-state investors and is close to having its first out-of-state investor. He said eliminating the fund would negatively impact the chance for success for investors.

Nathe asked Syrup if he would be interested in opening his books for improved transparency.

Right now, were blind, Nathe said.

Syrup said he can understand the concerns over transparency.

I myself would be more than willing to do that, Syrup said.

Emily OBrien, a graduate student at the University of North Dakota and president of Dakota Venture Group in Grand Forks, echoed Syrups testimony. The student-run fund she oversees has 29 investors, 18 of which are from North Dakota.

To the best of my knowledge, the reporting on outside investors has been lacking in the past. But that simply does not mean to axe a program, OBrien said.

Syrup and OBrien both said their funds are also certified in Minnesota.

Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Dockter, R-Bismarck, said three bill drafts will come before the committee at its next hearing. One bill draft is meant to clarify the definition of a primary sector business.

The other two bill drafts would beef up angel fund reporting requirements and qualifications for receiving tax credits. One bill is modeled after Minnesota law; the other would take some Minnesota requirements and add them to existing North Dakota law.
PRESS DIGEST- Canada - April 26

April 26 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

** Federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr assured Albertans on Monday that he recognizes the importance of building oil pipelines to new export markets, although analysts question how much additional capacity is needed as depressed prices result in lower forecasts for oil-sands production. (http://bit.ly/1MVslDt)

** Mayor Don Iveson said Edmonton's economy is due for a rebranding as he unveiled plans on Monday to market the struggling city as Canada's hub for health innovation. (http://bit.ly/1QyjD8P)

** Bombardier Inc has cut by more than half the number of streetcars it is promising to deliver to Toronto this year, the latest in a series of delays that has left the Toronto Transit Commission head and city politicians outraged. (http://bit.ly/1QyhYju)

NATIONAL POST

** Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says she discussed with members of the federal cabinet the possibility of the Northern Gateway pipeline being rerouted to a different port in British Columbia, as multiple sources say Enbridge Inc is quietly examining potential alternatives for a new endpoint, including Prince Rupert. (http://bit.ly/1QyijTu)
Greece using public sector deposits as bailout delays pinch -officials

By George Georgiopoulos

ATHENS, April 26 (Reuters) - The Greek government is using cash surpluses deposited by public sector entities to pay its bills because delays on a bailout review have stopped funds from international lenders being disbursed, officials said on Tuesday.

Shut out of debt markets and with aid from its official lenders frozen, Greece has borrowed the cash that institutions such as schools, hospitals and utilities must deposit with the central bank if they do not immediately need it.

The government has used between roughly nine billion euros ($10 billion) and 10 billion through repurchase agreements since last year, most of which has been rolled over, officials said.

"The situation is not pleasant but not as dramatic as last year," said one government official, who declined to be named. "But the more time passes without concluding the review, we could find ourselves with our backs against the wall."

"The cash earned an annual 3.7 percent on average in the second half of last year and the return during the first half of 2016 is similar, better than what the entities would have been earning from commercial banks," a second official said.

A third bailout deal of up to 86 billion euros was agreed last summer but a review of compliance with the terms of the agreement was expected to be completed late last year and Athens is still scrambling to conclude those requirements.

"It has been a bumpy road since mid April but Greece can make it and not go bust until the end of May or early June by also using pension funds cash reserves and piling up state arrears if needed," a senior government official told Reuters.

Public entities, including parliament and the state manpower organisation (OAED), have deposited nearly 500 million euros with the central bank this month, the officials said.
US stages 25 strikes in Iraq, Syria against Islamic State -statement

WASHINGTON, April 26 (Reuters) - The United States and its allies targeted Islamic State with 25 strikes on Monday in their latest assault against the militant group in Iraq and Syria, the coalition leading the operations said.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Combined Joint Task Force said 18 strikes coordinated with the Iraqi government hit near 10 cities, including Falluja, where they struck two Islamic State tactical units, two bridges and destroyed 11 fighting positions. Other strikes hit targets near Mosul, Kirkuk and Hit, among other cities, the statement said.
Spanish voters set for election re-run in June

By Julien Toyer and Blanca Rodriguez

MADRID, April 26 (Reuters) - A new national election in Spain is now inevitable, Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday after he told King Felipe he could not form a coalition government and resolve a four-month political stalemate.

The parties have been unable to form a new government since an inconclusive December election and a final round of one-to-one meetings between the king and party leaders.

With acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy having already said he was also lacking the necessary parliamentary backing, the lower house is now expected to be dissolved on May 3 and the new general election is seen taking place on June 26.

Opinion polls suggest a new vote would do little to resolve the deadlock created by December's election, which produced the most fragmented result in decades. Rajoy's People's Party won 123 seats in the 350-seat lower house of parliament while the Socialists took 90, Podemos 69 and Ciudadanos 40.

Party leaders have already entered campaign mode, blaming each other for the impasse that may start taking its toll on the economy more noticeably if Spain remains without a government for many more months.

"I have told King Felipe VI that I don't have enough parliamentary seats to be elected Prime Minister ... With all probability we are heading towards new elections," Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez told journalists.

"In my opinion, Mr Iglesias never wanted to pact with the Socialist party. Spanish politics have suffered a double blockade, from Mr Rajoy and from Mr Iglesias," he also said.

Raising hopes that a last-ditch coalition deal was possible, the Socialists said earlier on Tuesday they were ready to agree on 27 of 30 proposals made by small leftist party Compromis and modelled on a deal it helped broker last year between left-wing forces in the eastern region of Valencia.

But anti-austerity party Podemos said those three conditions - mainly who should take part in the government and how to ensure its stability - had made any agreement impossible.
Pilots at Kenya Airways plan to strike on Thursday

NAIROBI, April 26 (Reuters) - The Kenya Airline Pilots Association (KALPA) issued a two day strike notice to Kenya Airways on Tuesday, demanding the immediate resignation of Chief Executive Mbuvi Ngunze and criticising his turnaround strategy.

The carrier, which is 26.7 percent owned by Air France KLM , has been selling assets, including planes, and plans to lay off 600 people as it battles deep losses.

KALPA called the turnaround measures "questionable" and said Ngunze had to go.

"This will be the first step towards recovery of Kenya Airways," the association said in a statement.

Kenya Airways said it had not formally been served with a strike notice and that unions were required by law to give a minimum notice period of seven days.

"We would like to assure our customers and travel trade partners that we are fully operational," Kenya Airways said.
South African supermarket chain Pick n Pay to expand into Nigeria

By Zandi Shabalala

JOHANNESBURG, April 26 (Reuters) - South African supermarket operator Pick n Pay plans to expand into Nigeria next year through a partnership with a local conglomerate, as it seeks to reduce its reliance on its home market, it said on Tuesday.

Pick n Pay already operates in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia and plans to open new stores in Ghana next year. Like many other South African companies it wants to expand further across the continent amid sluggish economic growth at home.

The retailer, which reported a 26 percent jump in annual earnings on Tuesday, said it would take a 51 percent stake in a Nigerian joint venture with conglomerate A.G. Leventis , which runs a food business. It did not disclose the size of the investment.

"We are not suddenly going to explode onto the scene in Nigeria next year but we are going to start the process of looking at all those things," Pick n Pay's CEO Richard Brasher told a results briefing, adding that he was aware of tough trading conditions in Nigeria and would not expand hastily.

Nigeria is Africa's biggest economy but some South African companies that expanded into the west African country, including Dairy products maker Clover Industries and fashion retailer Truworths, have either pulled out or scaled down due to a scarcity of hard currency to import spare parts and raw materials.

Brasher said Pick n Pay was taking a long-term view of Africa's most populous nation.

"If you're in the retail business and you are an African business its hard to ignore Nigeria," he told Reuters.

Gryphon Asset Management analyst Reuben Beelders said he backed Pick n Pay's conservative approach to Nigeria.

"People have realised that Africa is not just going to be a pot of gold at the end of the road, it's a lot of graft and it's going to need long-term investment rather than something that happens quickly," Cape Town-based Beelders said.

Pick n Pay has lost ground in South Africa to rivals such as market leader Shoprite, after failing to invest in new stores. But Brasher, a former UK head of Tesco who took over in January 2013, is implementing a plan to win back market share.

Pick n Pay said headline earnings per share (EPS) rose 26.4 percent from a year earlier to 224.04 cents in the year to the end of February, helped by cost-cutting measures. Headline EPS, a measure that excludes certain one-off items, is the profit figure most widely used in South Africa.

The company declared a final dividend of 125.20 cents per share, bringing the year's total payout to 149.40 cents, 26.5 percent higher than the previous year.
More migrants ferried from Greece to Turkey under EU deal

By Karolina Tagaris and Lefteris Papadimas

ATHENS, April 26 (Reuters) - Migrants in a Greek detention camp threw stones in clashes with police on Tuesday hours after two ferries shipped refugees back to Turkey under a disputed deal intended to stem the human influx into Europe.

Plumes of smoke billowed from the Moria compound on Lesbos island that Pope Francis visited on April 16. Tensions simmering for days boiled over just after the Dutch and the Greek ministers responsible for migration toured the camp.

Garbage bins were set on fire, a police spokesman said, and migrants "were throwing stones and pieces of metal at police". Earlier about 200 youths broke through a partition in the camp.

They were "reacting to their detention conditions and the returns to Turkey," the spokesman said. Rights organisations have expressed misgivings about detention conditions on Moria, which holds about 3,000 people.

"Events at Moria highlight the level of frustration there," said the International Rescue Committee's director for Greece, Panos Navrozidis.

"Many of these refugees have been held at Moria for well over a month with inadequate services available to them and very few answers. They deserve much better."

Police said eight minors were taken slightly hurt to a local hospital after scuffles between groups of Pakistanis and Afghans.

Just over 340 people have so far been returned to Turkey since April 4 under the accord agreed with the European Union in March after more than 1 million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond reached the continent last year.

On Tuesday, 13 people were deported from the island of Lesbos to the Turkish town of Dikili, five were ferried back from Chios to Cesme, and 31 from Kos, police said. Most were Afghans and none had requested asylum in Greece, a government official said.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and human rights groups have questioned whether the deal is legal or moral. They are also concerned about whether Turkey is a "safe" country for returnees. UNHCR does not currently have access to the Kirklareli camp returnees are sent to.

The European Commission said on Tuesday it had been formally reassured by Turkey that it would grant access to asylum procedures to all asylum-seekers sent back from the bloc, a key outstanding element in the deal.

Turkey applies the Geneva Convention on refugees only to Europeans, offers limited protection to Syrians and no legal guarantees for other nationalities.

International law bans refoulement, or sending people back to a country where their lives or safety are at risk.

REQUESTS PILING UP

Under the deal, those arriving in Greece from Turkey after March 20 face being sent back if they do not apply for asylum in Greece or if their application is rejected.

In return, the EU will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward Ankara with more money, early visa-free travel for its citizens and progress in negotiations to join the bloc.

Turkey Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on last week that Turkey would no longer need to honour the accord if the EU failed to ease visa requirements by June.

Brussels has said that Turkey fully meets only 19 out of 72 criteria for visa liberalisation. On Tuesday, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said Ankara will meet criteria for visa liberalisation by the beginning of May.

In Greece, the government has said authorities would start ruling on asylum applications in late April, but requests have been piling up and it has been criticised for being too slow to process them.

Giorgos Kyritsis, government spokesman for the migration crisis, said Athens was "not cutting corners (and) ... not delaying." About 8,000 refugees and migrants are currently on Greek islands, having arrived after the deal was implemented.
South Sudan's Machar sworn in as VP, president calls for reconciliation

By Denis Dumo

JUBA, April 26 (Reuters) - South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar was sworn in as first vice president on Tuesday, hours after he returned to the capital of Juba for the first time since conflict erupted more than two years ago.

Machar took up the post under the terms of a peace agreement reached eight months ago, implementation of which had been repeatedly delayed by disputes between Machar and the government of President Salva Kiir.

"Now that Dr. Riek has taken the oath of the first vice president, we will immediately proceed with the establishment of the transitional government of national unity," Kiir said after Machar was sworn in at the president's office. "I ask you to join me and my brother Riek Machar in peace and reconciliation."

Machar was greeted by government officials, members of his SPLM-In-Opposition party, diplomats and officials from the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, with the airport under heavy guard, a Reuters witness said.

His return is a crucial part of the peace agreement - it was Kiir's sacking of Machar as his deputy that ignited the two-year war in December 2013, which has killed thousands and displaced millions in the world's newest country.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon welcomed Machar's return.

"The Secretary-General calls for the immediate formation of the Transitional Government of National Unity," Stephane Dujarric, Ban Ki-moon's spokesman, said in a statement.

"The Secretary-General also calls on the Security Council to work closely with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) to mobilise all the required support for the peace process."

CHALLENGES

Machar's arrival had been continually postponed since the peace agreement was signed in August. Just last week, it was put off again, until international mediators intervened to end a dispute over how many soldiers and what weapons Machar would be allowed to bring with him.

"I am happy with the welcome that I have seen at the airport. I hope that with my arrival we shall finish with the obstacles and get into the implementation of the government," Machar told reporters when he arrived.

"There are challenges that we need to overcome. The first challenge is the stabilisation of the security situation of the country. The second is the challenge is the stabilisation of the economy."

The conflict in South Sudan split the five-year-old country along ethnic lines, pitting Kiir's dominant Dinkas against Machar's Nuer. The fighting turned bitter enough to prompt the United Nations to set up an inquiry into possible human rights violations.
U.S. drone strike kills local Qaeda leader in S. Yemen - residents

ADEN, April 26 (Reuters) - A suspected U.S. drone strike killed a local leader in Al Qaeda and five of his aides in southern Yemen on Tuesday, residents said, as Yemeni and Emirati troops pressed their offensive against the militant group.

Abu Sameh al-Zinjibari and other men died when a missile struck their moving car in Amoudiya, a village near the Qaeda-controlled towns of Jaar and Zinjibar.

Government and Emirati forces based in the port city of Aden, about 40km (25 miles) away, have been mounting a ground push against towns held by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) along a vast stretch of Yemen's coast.

AQAP, which has planned several foiled bombing attempts on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the 2015 attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine's offices in Paris, is considered the most dangerous branch of the global militant group.

It is unclear whether the ground fighting is being coordinated with the United States, which has for years launched drone strikes against Al Qaeda throughout the country.

U.S. officials said earlier this month they were considering a request from the United Arab Emirates request for air power, intelligence and logistics support.

The UAE is a member of the Saudi-led coalition that intervened in a civil war in Yemen in March 2015 to back Yemen's government against the Iran-allied Houthi group, opening up a security vacuum that allowed AQAP to seize territory.

It led a dramatic shift in strategy for the mostly indecisive campaign this month, spearheading a drive westwards to roll AQAP back from a 600-km (370-mile) stretch of Arabian Sea coastline between Aden and Mukalla.

Yemen's third largest port, Mukalla was the militants' de facto capital for over a year where they grew rich by shaking down local businesses and charging port taxes. The coalition advance forced them to quit the city largely without a fight on Sunday.
Six Turkish crew freed two weeks after kidnap by pirates off Nigeria -lawyer

ISTANBUL, April 26 (Reuters) - Six Turkish members of a cargo ship's crew who were kidnapped by pirates off the coast of Nigeria two weeks ago have been released and are safely back in Istanbul, a lawyer for the shipping company said on Tuesday.

"The six of them have been released and are back in Istanbul. All are in good health," said Fehmi Ulgener, a lawyer for the shipping firm Kaptanoglu Denizcilik. He declined to say whether or not a ransom had been paid.

The Turks, who included the M/T Puli's captain, chief officer and chief engineer, were abducted some 90 miles off Nigeria on April 11. Other members of the crew were left onboard, unharmed.

The tanker was carrying liquid chemical fuels and was travelling to Cameroon, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported.

Last month, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea agreed to establish combined patrols to bolster security in the Gulf of Guinea. The countries around the Gulf are a significant source of oil, cocoa and metals for world markets, but pirates pose a growing threat to shipping.
A 6-year-old boy diagnosed with autism and ADHD is found with unexplained bruises after being strapped in a wooden restraint chair in a North Dakota public school.

An 11-year-old boy with ADHD, anxiety disorder, depression and autism-like behaviors is restrained by being sat upon by school staff members.

An 11-year-old girl with a disability, whose diagnosis was not reported, is confined to an isolation room -- a small storage room with windows -- for half of the school year.

These are some of the reports the North Dakota Protection and Advocacy Project received last year on the use of restraint and seclusion in North Dakota public schools.

I dont think putting kids ... in a room, when theyre struggling, and holding the door shut is a solution, said Jenny Renton, the Bismarck mother of a 14-year-old boy diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.

Restraint and seclusion have been used in schools for decades on students with and without disabilities. However, its unknown how frequently these methods are practiced in North Dakota. Some school officials contend they are rarely used, and the U.S. Department of Education states restraint and seclusion should only be used in situations "where a childs behavior poses imminent danger of serious physical harm to self or others and not as a routine strategy implemented to address instructional problems or inappropriate behavior.

About 25 percent of school districts in North Dakota have no written policy on when it's appropriate for staff to use restraint and seclusion.

Id like to make sure every school district does have a policy on seclusion and restraint, because we have anecdotal evidence of children being improperly secluded or improperly restrained," said state Sen. Joan Heckaman, D-New Rockford. Heckaman is a member of the seclusion and restraint task force recently created by the North Dakota Protection and Advocacy Project.

There are cases that show misapplication of restraint and seclusion have resulted in physical injury or psychological trauma to students. In some cases across the country, their misuse has resulted in death.

North Dakota is one of five states with no law protecting students against the use of restraint and seclusion in schools. The others are New Jersey, Mississippi, Idaho and South Dakota.

I think that several legislators are dragging their feet on this because they want the (school districts) to have control, Heckaman said.

Data collection

In 2009, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a national report that revealed hundreds of students had been abused or had died as a result of restraint and seclusion.

Because schools are not required to report how often these practices are being used, information from the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction is particularly elusive.

Some data is available through the U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection, with the most recent data from 2011. In 2009, the department's Office for Civil Rights required all schools to submit the number of incidents of restraint and seclusion, which is self-reported by school districts.

The results of the 2013-14 Civil Rights Data Collection will be released later this year, an Education Department spokesman said in an email.

According to data from the Education Department, 1,249 cases of restraint and seclusion were reported in North Dakota from 2009 to 2011, and about 90 percent of those cases involved students with disabilities.

Since September, state lawmakers have been analyzing the prevalence of restraint and seclusion in schools, and whether there should be a state policy.

An interim education committee started to gather data and information on restraint and seclusion practices, including how many school districts have a policy in place.

A survey of all school districts in October found about half the districts had a policy on restraint and seclusion. The same survey, administered by the North Dakota School Boards Association, was sent to school districts again this month -- and the numbers quickly changed.

The newest survey shows 58 percent of districts have a policy, 26 percent don't, and 17 are in the process of adopting one.

Legislators are debating whether there's a need for a state policy on restraint and seclusion, with some arguing such policies or guidelines should be up to individual school districts.

The locals will have control over the policy; its just that we will require them to have a policy," Heckaman said.

Visiting the 'quiet room'

Rentons son was 9 years old when he was first put in the quiet room in a Bismarck public school.

The room, she said, was the size of a closet and had a small window on the door so you could peer inside. A teacher or staff member would stand outside the door holding it shut, she said.

She was told her son was being aggressive when the school called her to pick him up. When she arrived, she saw him in a panic.

He was very distraught and screaming, crying -- terrified, I guess I would say, Renton said.

He was put in the room twice before he transferred to another school. Her son started out OK when he finally got to middle school, but things quickly went downhill: He was placed in a quiet room more than 10 times, Renton estimated.

She said her son became fearful of going to school. When he was put in the quiet room, he would break things and tear off the wallpaper, she said.

Hed become very destructive, Renton said. When they put him in there, he was already in a heightened state.

Police were called on him three times at the school, according to Renton. Two of those incidents resulted in citations for simple assault and disorderly conduct, she said.

Her son, now 14, wasnt diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome until he was 11. Hes been homebound for his entire seventh-grade year, attending middle school for just three hours a week.

Our hope would be that he could be back in school, but we just dont know that he personally could function in that setting, she said.

Renton said shes frustrated with the lack of resources and knowledge or awareness of how to handle children with autism or behavioral issues.

Obviously that kid is having problems for a reason, and we need to find a way, parents and teachers and school staff ... to figure that out before it gets to that point," she said.

Another parent said he'd also like to see more resources available for North Dakota schools. Carl Young's adopted son, Marc, now 14, went to a public school in Garrison until third grade, when he attacked his teacher when she tried to search him for a missing deck of playing cards.

We started having issues with him not paying attention, not doing his work, getting up from his chair, disrupting class -- all typical behaviors of a child with ADHD," Young said.

Marc has been diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and he is on the autism spectrum. The school would put him in a room when he became aggressive, though Young said he doesn't have a record of how many times that happened.

Theres no consistent documentation about the number of times hes been locked in that room," said Young -- though he adds there have been times, for safety reasons, he agreed with the school's decision to do so.

Still, Young said he'd like schools to be required to report how often they use restraint and seclusion. He also said hes frustrated by the lack of resources and services available for Marc, but he understands the school district is doing the best that they can.

Marc hasn't been back to a public school since third grade. He was home-schooled for a short period, and now he's going to school at the Dakota Girls and Boys Ranch in Bismarck.

Developing policies

Most larger school districts have a policy on restraint and seclusion, including Bismarck. The district adopted a policy last July for its 25 campuses, and staff underwent training in the fall.

The policy states restraint and seclusion may be used to "control violent, disturbed, or depressed behavior" that has or may immediately result in harm to a student or others, or in "extreme or extensive damage to property."

In addition, staff are trained to recognize violent, disturbed or depressed behavior, Superintendent Tamara Uselman said. They are also trained in de-escalation techniques to avoid using restraint and seclusion at all.

This is a scary topic ... for staff, until they really know the policy and they feel well-trained. Then I think its not probably as frightening," she said.

A group has been established to start reviewing data across the district, Uselman said.

Because we want to know, over our 12,000 kids: Is it frequent? Is it infrequent?" she said, adding that the review will include parent input.

We want it completely transparent whats going on," she said.

Mandan Public School District has been using guidelines regarding the use of restraint and seclusion in its schools for the past 10 to 15 years, said Tracy Klein, director of special education.

Restraint and seclusion have been "ongoing at different levels throughout the last decade in regards to Individuals (with) Disabilities Education Act," he said.

Mandan doesnt have seclusion rooms, but it does have quiet areas that are used for education and small group instruction, Klein said. Students are able to go to these rooms as means of self-regulation.

The areas are monitored at all times and doors are never locked, Klein said. Restraints are used only when there's a student or staff safety issue, he said.

Klein said he's comfortable with the guidelines and practices Mandan Public schools use, and said he thinks each district should be able to develop its own policy.
Atlas Mara says funding in place for Barclays' Africa bid

By Lawrence White

LONDON, April 26 (Reuters) - Atlas Mara, the African investment vehicle of former Barclays boss Bob Diamond, has held discussions with investors with a view to making a bid for Barclays' African business, it said on Tuesday.

Atlas said such an acquisition would help it accelerate its strategy to build a major financial firm across sub-Saharan Africa and that it had already lined up funding for an offer, without elaborating on what form the financing would take.

"The consortium has committed, long-term strategic investors, the funding is in place," Diamond said on a conference call.

Atlas Mara's equity at the end of 2015 was $625 million, while Barclays Africa has a market value of $8.47 billion, causing some analysts to question whether they can muster the financial fire power to make a serious offer.

"I am very skeptical that they can pull it off quite frankly," said Zoran Milojevic, a director at Auerbach Grayson, a New York brokerage specialising in emerging and frontier markets.

"However, if this were to happen, they would certainly jump a lot of hurdles, and join the proper playing field in African banking."

Private equity group Carlyle is one member of the consortium, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters this week following media reports of the U.S. fund's interest.

Barclays said this year it would sell down its 62 percent stake in Barclays Africa to focus on other divisions. While its business is mainly in South Africa, it has operations in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique and Seychelles.

Atlas said there was no certainty a transaction would be completed but if discussions with investors resulted in more substantive negotiations with Barclays, Diamond and co-founder Ashish J. Thakkar would recuse themselves from the talks.

Shares in Barclays Africa rose 1.2 percent by 1445 GMT while shares in Atlas Mara were up 4.9 percent, but remain down 18 percent so far this year amid a dim outlook for African banking.

"We share your pain, our money is where our mouth is," Diamond told investors on Tuesday in reference to his and other senior executives' investments in Atlas's declining shares.

Founded in 2013, Atlas made four acquisitions in 2014 and now has operations in Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Tanzania and Nigeria.

But some of those countries have felt the brunt of the global slump in commodity prices, which has sapped government budgets and caused the likes of Zambia and Mozambique to turn to the International Monetary Fund for support.
LuxLeaks defendant accessed data via security glitch, court told

LUXEMBOURG, April 26 (Reuters) - A man accused of leaking information exposing Luxembourg's tax deals with multinational companies only had access to the confidential documents because of a security glitch, a court heard on the opening day of the "LuxLeaks" trial on Tuesday.

Antoine Deltour, 30, a French citizen and former employee of accounting firm PwC, is accused of passing data on PwC clients to journalist Edouard Perrin for a French television broadcast made in 2012.

Prosecutors say this data, as well as material allegedly supplied by a second former PwC employee, Raphael Halet, was later used in the 'LuxLeaks' revelations of November 2014 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The charges against the three Frenchmen range from violating secrecy laws to theft and IT fraud.

The consortium's LuxLeaks reports prompted accusations that Luxembourg had conspired with multinational companies to form tax arrangements that deprived other European Union states of revenue.

The Grand Duchy says other countries have similar arrangements, and has offered to share details of the tax deals with other states.

During Tuesday's hearing, a PwC expert said Deltour copied 45,000 pages of documents that he was able to access because of a glitch in the company's servers, which had since been fixed.

Deltour's lawyer said his client did not set out to find the documents, but only came across them by chance.

"He found them while looking for training documents," the lawyer, Philippe Penning, told reporters.

The trial, criticised by some as aiming to gag whistleblowers and journalists seeking to uncover corporate tax avoidance, attracted dozens of protesters singing and chanting outside the courthouse.

A smiling Deltour, who faces up to five years in prison and fines of 1.25 million euros ($1.42 million), waved to supporters and journalists as he arrived.
China, Indonesia to boost security ties despite South China Sea spat

BEIJING, April 26 (Reuters) - Chinese and Indonesian officials pledged to boost security ties, marine cooperation and infrastructure investment, state media reported on Tuesday, after a diplomatic spat over what Indonesia called a breach of its sovereignty by the Chinese coastguard.

The report came after a meeting between Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi, who outranks the foreign minister, and Indonesia's chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan. Pandjaitan is visiting China this week.

The two countries will strengthen defence ties including in anti-terrorism, law enforcement, curbing narcotics, as well as "marine cooperation", according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Jakarta and Beijing will also work together in the fields of railway, electric power, mining, aerospace, agriculture and fisheries, Xinhua added.

Indonesia attempted to detain a Chinese trawler it accused of fishing in its exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, prompting the Chinese coastguard to intervene last month. China has said its vessels were operating in "traditional fishing grounds".

Indonesia is not embroiled in the rival claims with China over the South China Sea and has instead seen itself as an "honest broker" in disputes between China and the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

Pandjaitan has previously said Indonesia would maintain good relations with China but "without sacrificing Indonesia's sovereignty", and had urged Chinese ships not to enter Indonesia's maritime territory near the northern Natuna Islands, where Indonesia said the incident took place.
LuxLeaks defendant accessed data via security glitch, court told

LUXEMBOURG, April 26 (Reuters) - A man accused of leaking information exposing Luxembourg's tax deals with multinational companies only had access to the confidential documents because of a security glitch, a court heard on the opening day of the "LuxLeaks" trial on Tuesday.

Antoine Deltour, 30, a French citizen and former employee of accounting firm PwC, is accused of passing data on PwC clients to journalist Edouard Perrin for a French television broadcast made in 2012.

Prosecutors say this data, as well as material allegedly supplied by a second former PwC employee, Raphael Halet, was later used in the 'LuxLeaks' revelations of November 2014 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The charges against the three Frenchmen range from violating secrecy laws to theft and IT fraud.

The consortium's LuxLeaks reports prompted accusations that Luxembourg had conspired with multinational companies to form tax arrangements that deprived other European Union states of revenue.

The Grand Duchy says other countries have similar arrangements, and has offered to share details of the tax deals with other states.

During Tuesday's hearing, a PwC expert said Deltour copied 45,000 pages of documents that he was able to access because of a glitch in the company's servers, which had since been fixed.

Deltour's lawyer said his client did not set out to find the documents, but only came across them by chance.

"He found them while looking for training documents," the lawyer, Philippe Penning, told reporters.

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin, who recently tabled legislation offering more legal protection to whistleblowers, expressed France's solidarity with Deltour and asked its embassy in Luxembourg to help him in any way possible.

"It's thanks to him that we're able to lift the shroud that kept European countries from knowing the exact tax situation of a certain number of big companies in Luxembourg," Sapin told French lawmakers.

The trial, criticised by some as aiming to gag whistleblowers and journalists seeking to uncover corporate tax avoidance, attracted dozens of protesters singing and chanting outside the courthouse.

A smiling Deltour, who faces up to five years in prison and fines of 1.25 million euros ($1.42 million), waved to supporters and journalists as he arrived.
Yemen peace talks back on track following world pressure

By Mohammed Ghobari

KUWAIT, April 26 (Reuters) - Yemen's warring factions agreed on an agenda on Tuesday for U.N.-backed peace negotiations, delegates said, following heavy pressure from world powers.

The talks to end fighting between the Iran-allied Houthis and supporters of Saudi-backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi were launched last week but were suspended on Sunday amid bickering about flights over Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition.

The Houthis argue that the flights constitute a violation of the truce that began on April 10 to facilitate the talks. The Hadi government insists the flights are intended to prevent the Houthis and their ally, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, from moving heavy weapons around.

The stability of Yemen, where al Qaeda and Islamic State are vying for influence, is of international concern as the country neighbours Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, and is also near key shipping lanes.

Differences over the agenda had made it difficult for the two sides to start real negotiations to end the 13-month war that has killed more than 6,200 people, wounded more than 35,000 and displaced more than 2.5 million people.

The two sides had agreed last week to a five-point agenda outlined by the U.N. special envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, but remained divided over whether to start with a unity government or to focus on a Houthi withdrawal from the cities and the handover of their weapons.

Delegates said the two sides had agreed on Tuesday to work in two parallel committees.

"The talks will start tomorrow (Wednesday) to discuss this agenda," one delegate told Reuters.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdel-Malek al-Mekhlafi said the agenda provided for the Houthis to quit cities they seized since 2014, allowing the government to retake control of the state.

"We consider approval by the Houthis and the General People's Congress party (of ex-president Saleh) of the agenda as a good step that can lead to positive results," Mekhlafi said.

Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, whose country is hosting the talks, had personally waded into the dispute, helping to smooth differences over the truce and over the agenda, delegates said.

DANGERS

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Islamic State have exploited the crisis to expand their control in Yemen and to recruit new followers.

Hadi supporters, backed by the Saudi-led coalition, have attacked the AQAP stronghold in southern Yemen over the past two days, driving them from the Hadramout provincial capital and from key Arabian Sea ports.

Delegates said Tuesday's talks followed strong pressure from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

"The diplomats were quite tough and used harsh language, telling them that peace in Yemen was important for regional security and that no one would be allowed to leave Kuwait without an agreement," one source told Reuters.
Man suspected of arming Paris supermarket gunman extradited to France

MADRID, April 26 (Reuters) - A Frenchman arrested in Spain for allegedy supplying the arms used by Islamist militant Amedy Coulibaly to kill four people at a kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015 has been extradited to France, Spanish police said on Tuesday.

Antoine Denevi, a 27-year-old from Sainte Catherine in France, was arrested on April 12 on a European arrest warrant in Rincon de la Victoria on Spain's southern coast, where he had fled after the attack.

Police said in a statement that Denevi had been handed over to French authorities, who coordinated the arrest operation, at Madrid's Barajas airport on Tuesday from where he was flown to France.

When Denevi was arrested, a spokesman for Spain's High Court said that he denied selling arms to Coulibaly but was willing to be extradited to France.

Coulibaly was shot dead by police after attacking the supermarket on Jan. 9 armed with assault rifles, semi-automatic pistols and sticks of industrial dynamite. He had also killed a policewoman in a Paris suburb the day before.
Gloves come off in fight to win Denmark's combat jet order

By Erik Matzen and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen

COPENHAGEN, April 26 (Reuters) - U.S. defence giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing have stepped up their battle in Denmark to win a $5 billion order for combat jets which is due to be decided next month, with an advertising blitz in newspapers and on billboards by Boeing reflecting the importance they give to winning the deal.

The result of the Danish government's lengthy deliberations is expected to make waves around the global defence market, as several other nations also have to decide whether to replace their aged warplanes with Lockheed Martin Corp's brand new F-35 Lightnings or play safe with cheaper, older-generation planes such as Boeing's F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.

With so much at stake in terms of prestige, the bitter rivalry between the two has erupted into a public spat in Denmark as Boeing compares its rival's new aircraft to a scandal over the botched purchase of Italian trains a decade ago.

"The choice of fighter jets is not just about Denmark's defence. It's also about working from day one," Boeing has said in newspaper and billboard ads, in a clear reference to the F-35 which entered service last July for the U.S. Marine Corps but is still completing a development program which began in 2001.

The U.S. Air Force is slated to declare an initial squadron of F-35s ready for combat later this year.

In the ads a full-page photograph shows some of the defective trains that had yet to be fully developed at the time of order. Technical problems with the 85 trains, of which less than half are in use to date, ended up costing the Danish state hundreds of millions of dollars, causing a public outcry.

Towards the end of the campaign which started in March and peaked in April in newspapers, on outdoor billboards, radio spots and door-to-door distribution, Boeing had bought ads worth 9.65 million crowns ($1.5 million), excluding discounts, according to TNS Gallup Adfacts.

But by reminding Danes of a past purchasing scandal, the ad campaign has raised hackles in some quarters over the use of such tactics but nevertheless has also sparked a public debate about the merits of investing in untried technology.

"We don't use such methods in Denmark," said one defence lawmaker who is involved in the decisionmaking process.

"Boeing ought to be careful not to be hit by its own boomerang, if we get disgusted by the company. Right now, Boeing is close to giving me this feeling," the person said in reaction to the ad campaign.

However, in the wider public - more accustomed to ads for organic cheese than fighter jets - the discussion quickly shifted from what type of plane should be purchased to whether Denmark should buy new warplanes at all.

Boeing has defended its advertising.

"The informational campaign was created firmly out of respect and understanding of the documented Danish acquisition process which has a phase of public debate," Tom Bell, the top sales executive for Boeing's defence business, told Reuters.

And Boeing executives are publicly bullish about their chances of winning the Danish order for up to 30 jets, but privately concede winning Denmark would be a long shot, making the ad campaign seem like a last-ditch effort.

"Winning Denmark is absolutely vital for Boeing which has limited firm export orders left for the (Super Hornet) and is desperate for business," said Francis Tusa, Editor of Defence Analysis.

Outside the traditional major arms purchasers in the Gulf, nations currently shopping for fighters include Belgium, Indonesia and Malaysia, while eastern Europe is looking for secondhand aircraft..

The United States is poised to approve two long-delayed sales of Boeing fighter sales to the Gulf including 28 Super Hornets worth $3 billion for Kuwait.

A separate but unfunded U.S. Navy requirement calls for another 12 jets, but Boeing remains keen to win new export orders to shore up future production for its fighters in St Louis.

For Lockheed Martin, losing the Danish order could dent market confidence in the F-35.

Denmark is one of eight original partners that helped fund development of the F-35 and flies Lockheed F-16 jets alongside Belgium, Norway and the Netherlands. Norway and the Netherlands have ordered F-35s and Belgium has expressed interest.

However, the $379 billion F-35 program has been plagued with cost overruns and delays, although U.S. officials say the program has met its cost and schedule targets since a major restructuring in 2010, and acquisition costs are now finally coming down.

Software issues and problems with a complex logistics system still pose challenges, according to a U.S. congressional report released this month, which said the lack of a back-up system could potentially ground the U.S. F-35 fleet.

Lockheed officials say they are confident that the new jet's superior data-processing and "fusing" capabilities, coupled with its ability to evade radar, will ultimately prevail over the older-generation Super Hornets.

A third contender in Denmark, the Eurofighter Typhoon made by Airbus Group, BAE Systems and Finmeccanica , officially remains on the shortlist, but Danish government sources say it is no longer being considered.
Libya asks U.N. council to blacklist ship carrying eastern oil

By Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS, April 26 (Reuters) - Libya has asked the United Nations Security Council to blacklist an Indian-flagged tanker on its way to Malta carrying crude oil shipped by the rival eastern Libya government, Libya's U.N. envoy said on Tuesday.

Libyan Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi told Reuters he had written to the Security Council sanctions committee to complain about the first shipment of oil by the rival authorities, which left the eastern Libyan port of Hariga overnight.

The eastern government has set up its own National Oil Company (NOC) to act in parallel to the Tripoli-based NOC that is recognised internationally as the only legitimate seller of Libyan oil.

"We mainly asked for the designation of the ship," Dabbashi said. "We spoke with members of the Indian Mission and gave them the letter we sent to the sanctions committee."

India's U.N. mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Indian-flagged tanker Distya Ameya was carrying an oil shipment ordered by a company called DSA Consultancy FZC, registered in the United Arab Emirates, according to Libyan authorities.

A U.N. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the sanctions committee had written to the governments of India and the United Arab Emirates to remind them of the sanctions and seek further clarification and relevant information.

In March 2014, the Security Council authorized states to board ships suspected of carrying oil from rebel-held Libyan ports and allowed the Libyan government to request that vessels carrying the oil be blacklisted by the sanctions committee.

A 2011 uprising in Libya toppled leader Muammar Gaddafi but left the country in chaos.

Two competing governments, one in Tripoli and one in the east, backed by militias scrambled for control of the oil-producing country, creating a power vacuum that allowed Islamic State militants to gain a foothold in the North African state.
LuxLeaks defendant found tax data by chance, court told

LUXEMBOURG, April 26 (Reuters) - A man accused of leaking information exposing Luxembourg's tax deals with multinational companies only had access to the confidential documents because of a security glitch, a court heard on the opening day of the "LuxLeaks" trial on Tuesday.

Antoine Deltour, a French citizen and former employee of accounting firm PwC, is accused of passing data on PwC clients to journalist Edouard Perrin for a French television broadcast made in 2012.

Prosecutors say this data and material allegedly supplied by a second former PwC employee, Raphael Halet, was used in the 'LuxLeaks' revelations of November 2014 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The charges against the three Frenchmen range from violating secrecy laws to theft and IT fraud. Deltour's lawyer said his client did not set out to find the documents, but only came across them by chance.

France's Finance Minister Michel Sapin expressed "solidarity" with Deltour, saying the 30-year-old was defending the public's interest.

"It's thanks to him that we've been able to put an end to the opacity that prevented European countries from fully knowing the tax status of a number of large companies in Luxembourg," Sapin told lawmakers in the National Assembly.

Sapin has instructed France's ambassador in Luxembourg to assist Deltour during his trial if needed.

The LuxLeaks reports prompted accusations that Luxembourg had conspired with multinational companies to form tax arrangements that deprived other European Union states of revenue.

The leaked documents showed that companies such as PepsiCo , AIG and Deutsche Bank secured deals from Luxembourg to slash their tax bills.

The Grand Duchy says other countries have similar arrangements, and has offered to share details of the tax deals with other states.

During Tuesday's hearing, a PwC expert said Deltour copied 45,000 pages of documents that he was able to access because of a glitch in the company's servers, which had since been fixed.

"He found them while looking for training documents," the lawyer, Philippe Penning, told reporters.

The trial, criticised by some as aiming to gag whistleblowers seeking to uncover corporate tax avoidance, attracted dozens of chanting protesters outside the courthouse.

Deltour faces up to five years in prison and fines of 1.25 million euros ($1.42 million) if found guilty.
Malian national gets 25 years in prison over murder of U.S. diplomat

By Nate Raymond

NEW YORK, April 26 (Reuters) - A Malian national with ties to militant groups was sentenced to 25 years in a U.S. prison on Tuesday after admitting to having conspired to kill an American diplomat during a 2000 carjacking in Niger, prosecutors said.

Alhassane Ould Mohamed, 46, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge William Kuntz in Brooklyn, New York, for participating in a conspiracy to murder William Bultemeier, a defense attache system operations coordinator working at the U.S. embassy in Niger.

Mohamed pleaded guilty in March as part of an agreement that prosecutors would seek a 25-year prison term at his sentencing. He faced a potential life sentence prior to the plea deal.

He was indicted in 2013 for murdering Bultemeier and trying to kill Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Christopher McNeely after the two left a restaurant in Niamey, Niger, on Dec. 23, 2000.

Prosecutors said Mohamed, also known as Cheibani, and another assailant, armed with a pistol and AK-47 assault rifle, demanded Bultemeier hand over the keys to his sport utility vehicle, which bore U.S. diplomatic plates.

Mohamed then shot Bultemeier, prosecutors said. McNeely tried to help Bultemeier when Mohamed's accomplice shot both men, prosecutors said. McNeely survived the attack.

Malian police arrested Mohamed, but he escaped from custody in May 2002, according to prosecutors.

He was arrested in Mali in 2010 in connection with an attack on a convoy of Saudi Arabian officials in Niger that left four dead.

Sentenced in Niger to 20 years in prison, Mohamed escaped again in June 2013 with other inmates who launched an assault coordinated by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, prosecutors said.

Mohamed also had connections to other militant groups, including the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, prosecutors said.
Baltimore primary voters back reform candidate for mayor after Freddie Gray unrest

By Donna Owens

BALTIMORE, April 26 (Reuters) - A Maryland state senator backing law enforcement reform won a narrow victory on Tuesday in the Democratic nominating contest for the mayor of Baltimore, as the city recovers a year after rioting sparked by a black man's death in police custody.

The primary election in the mostly African-American city of 620,000 people comes as Baltimore residents confront rising violent crime and unrest sparked by the death of Freddie Gray in April, 2015.

The incident stoked a simmering U.S. debate on treatment of minorities by law enforcement officers and prompted the current mayor to decline to seek re-election.

While the Republican Party and other parties also held primaries, the Democratic race's winner almost certainly will win November's general election because Democrats outnumber Republicans 10 to one in Baltimore, about 40 miles (60 km) northeast of Washington.

In the Democratic contest, state Senator Catherine Pugh, the chamber's majority leader edged out former Mayor Sheila Dixon, 37 percent to 34 percent. Dixon was forced from office in 2010 for allegedly misappropriating gift cards for low-income families.

Pugh defeated a field of 13 Democrats vying for the nomination, including DeRay Mckesson, a nationally known activist with the Black Lives Matter movement that sprang up after police killings of minorities in U.S. cities.

Mckesson logged 12 percent of the vote.

Pugh, Dixon, Mckesson and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake are African-Americans. Pugh, who co-chaired a legislative working group on law enforcement reform, has called for greater accountability for Baltimore police and the use of mobile units to help residents find jobs.

Voters said they hoped the election would bring positive change to the port city. At 7.1 percent, Baltimore's jobless rate is above the national average, and the city has been hit by a surge in murders.

"I think it's a very important election. It's time for change," retiree Diane McCants, 67, said at a polling place in West Baltimore.

Tyrone Forney, a 52-year-old voter in northeast Baltimore, said the mayor's race was critical. "We need new faces, new ideas," he said.

The onetime steelmaking city exploded into world headlines a year ago after Gray, 25, died from a broken neck suffered in police custody.

His death sparked protests and a day of rioting. Six police officers - three black and three white - have been charged in Gray's death.
Kansas governor withdraws from Syrian refugee program

By Fiona Ortiz

April 26 (Reuters) - Kansas is withdrawing from plans to resettle Syrian refugees in the state after the federal government failed to provide security information and files on the refugees, Republican Governor Sam Brownback said on Monday.

Brownback said in a statement that he repeatedly asked the administration of President Barack Obama for documentation on the screening of refugees that would be relocated from Syria to Kansas.

"Because the federal government has failed to provide adequate assurances regarding refugees it is settling in Kansas, we have no option but to end our cooperation with and participation in the federal refugee resettlement program," Brownback said.

A White House spokesman was not immediately available for comment and the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Obama pledged last year that the United States would take in 10,000 people fleeing war-torn Syria, under pressure from European leaders who have been inundated with refugees.

But the promise came under fire from Republicans concerned that violent militants could come into the United States posing as refugees.

More than 30 governors attempted to block refugees from their states, but courts and attorneys general have said that it is up to the federal government to screen refugees and settle them.

Brownback did not say in his announcement how many Syrian refugees were slated to be settled in Kansas and his press office could not immediately provide the number.

U.S. officials told a congressional panel in February that the country has tightened vetting of immigrants and refugees after attacks in California and Paris, and put on hold hundreds of applications from Syrian refugees.

More than four million Syrians have fled their war-torn country, according to the United Nations, which calls it the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation.
Venezuela formally proposes non-OPEC producers attend Vienna meeting

CARACAS, April 26 (Reuters) - Venezuela has proposed that non-OPEC oil producers attend the group's June meeting in Vienna to continue "dialogue and coordination," according to a letter sent by the South American country's oil minister to the Qatari energy minister, who is also the current OPEC president.

"We've formally proposed to continue Doha discussions in Vienna," Venezuelan Oil Minister Eulogio Del Pino told Reuters on Tuesday.
Venezuela proposes non-OPEC oil producers attend Vienna meeting

CARACAS, April 26 (Reuters) - Venezuela has proposed that non-OPEC oil producers attend the group's June meeting in Vienna to continue "dialogue and coordination," according to a letter from the South American country's oil minister to the Qatari energy minister, who is also the current OPEC president.

A deal to freeze oil output by OPEC and non-OPEC producers fell apart in Doha this month. Price hawk Venezuela had been pushing for a deal to boost prices and is now trying to revive negotiations.

In a letter to Qatar's Mohammed al-Sada dated April 21, Del Pino floats the idea that major oil producers who attended the Doha conference attend the Vienna OPEC Ministerial Conference as observers.

"We formally require of your kind support, as President of OPEC Conference, to activate mechanisms for consultations among all OPEC Member Countries," reads the letter, seen by Reuters.

Venezuelan Oil Minister Eulogio Del Pino told Reuters on Tuesday that "we've formally proposed to continue Doha discussions in Vienna."

Overcoming tensions between OPEC's de facto leader Saudi Arabia and Iran will be a tall order, however.

Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia surprised markets by saying it wanted all members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to take part in the planned output freeze, including Iran, which was absent from the talks.
Turkey's Erdogan defends secularism after remarks by parl't speaker

ZAGREB, April 26 (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday the state should have an equal distance from all religious faiths following a call by the speaker of Turkey's parliament for a new constitution to drop references to secularism.

Erdogan said in televised comments during a visit to Zagreb that the speaker, Ismail Kahraman, had been expressing his own views when he said Turkey needed a religious constitution. The proposal contradicts the founding principles of the Turkish republic, which is overwhelmingly Muslim but also secular.

"My views are known on this ... The reality is that the state should have an equal distance from all religious faiths ... This is laicism," Erdogan said.
Brazil's Temer plans to shakeup central bank, state-run lenders

BRASILIA, April 26 (Reuters) - Brazilian Vice President Michel Temer will replace the leadership of the central bank and state-run lenders if he takes over the presidency, one of his economic advisers told Reuters.

Wellington Moreira Franco, a Temer confidant and architect of his economic plan, said the leadership changes will be done carefully alongside the next finance minister, who has not yet been picked.

"The changes will be made, but they will be carefully studied," Franco said. "The finance minister will have a lot of influence in picking the chief and directors of the central bank and state-run banks."
U.N. council voices alarm at Israeli statements on Golan Heights

UNITED NATIONS, April 26 (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday voiced alarm over Israeli statements about the Golan Heights on Syria's border with Israel, adding that its status remains unchanged.

Earlier this month Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel would never relinquish the Golan Heights, in a signal to Russia and the United States that the strategic plateau should be excluded from any deal on Syria's future.

"Council members expressed their deep concern over recent Israeli statements about the Golan, and stressed that the status of the Golan remains unchanged," China's U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi, president of the 15-nation Security Council this month, told reporters after a closed-door meeting.

He added that council resolution 497 of 1981 made clear that Israel's decision at the time to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the Golan was "null and void and without international legal effect."

Netanyahu's April 17 declaration came on the occasion of the first Israeli cabinet session on the Golan since the area was captured from Syria in a 1967 war and annexed in 1981.

Israel's annexation of the Golan has not won international recognition.

Past U.S.-backed Israeli-Syrian peace efforts were predicated on a return of the Golan, where some 23,000 Israelis now live alongside roughly the same number of Druse Arabs loyal to Damascus.

Liu said the council supported a negotiated arrangement to settle the issue of the Golan.

There is a U.N. peacekeeping force deployed in the Golan called UNDOF. Established in 1974, UNDOF monitors a ceasefire line that has separated Israelis from Syrians in the Golan Heights since a 1973 war.

The force has had to pull back from a number of positions on the Golan due to fighting between militants and Syrian government forces in the five-year-old Syrian civil war. Its peacekeepers have been fired upon and captured by militants on several occasions.
Sweden on alert for possible IS attack in capital-local media

STOCKHOLM/BAGHDAD, April 26 (Reuters) - Sweden has received intelligence about a possible attack on the capital by Islamic State militants, local media reported on Tuesday, and security services said they were investigating undisclosed information.

Newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen as well as public broadcaster Swedish Radio, citing unnamed sources, said the information related to the threat of an attack, possibly in the capital Stockholm.

Expressen reported Swedish security police (SAPO) had received intelligence from Iraq that seven or eight Islamic State fighters had entered Sweden with the intention of attacking civilian targets.

A security police spokeswoman said she would not comment on any specific details of a threat, but said it was working with regular police as well as national and international partners.

"Security police are working intensively to assess received information, and it is of such a nature that our judgement is that we can not dismiss it," she said.

An Iraqi security source said six Iraqis had left Iraq in February 2015 and entered Sweden via Turkey.

The ringleader is a veteran insurgent who was close to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of IS forerunner al Qaeda, and current IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the source said. He was imprisoned multiple times by U.S. forces in Iraq during their occupation.

"They want to conduct special operations to force Sweden to withdraw from the international military coalition (against Islamic State)," the source said, referencing recent attacks in Paris and Brussels.

Sweden has not been hit by a large-scale militant attack, but a man is currently is awaiting a verdict for allegedly building a suicide bomb with the intent of staging an attack in Sweden. In 2010 a suicide bomber died when his bomb belt went off prematurely in central Stockholm.
New York Times to shut some Paris operations, cut jobs

By Jessica Toonkel

April 26 (Reuters) - The New York Times Co said on Tuesday it would close its editing and pre-press print production operations in Paris, resulting in the elimination or relocation of up to 70 jobs as it moves to cut costs at its international newspaper.

"To remain competitive, we need to adapt to a changing market," employees were told on Tuesday in a memo seen by Reuters. "We need to rethink what the print New York Times means to our international, frequently traveling readers in a world where they are getting their news primarily from digital sources."

The New York Times news bureau and advertising department will not be affected, according to the memo.

The changes are part of an effort to simplify the editing and production processes of the International New York Times, and roles involved with those operations will be moved to New York and Hong Kong, according to the memo.

The company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it expected to incur about $15 million in costs related to the measures, with substantially all of the charges to be taken in the second quarter. (http://1.usa.gov/26rdHdy)

The International New York Times evolved from the International Herald Tribune, which was once co-owned by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The New York Times, facing diminishing revenue from print advertising, has been trying to popularize its digital content through marketing and actions such as allowing subscribers to pay in local currencies.
Canada, UK to raise ransom payments with other nations -Trudeau

KANANASKIS, Alberta, April 26 (Reuters) - Canada and Britain will press other nations about the practice of paying ransoms to free kidnap victims, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday, the day after a Canadian hostage was found dead in the Philippines.
For many residents in North Dakota, credit unions and small community banks offer local, affordable financial services. But regulatory burdens increasingly create roadblocks for these institutions and consequently, for consumers.

We know credit unions operate in a regulated environment, but the increase in regulations since the financial crisis has been dramatic and costly.

The Credit Union National Association conducted a study in which it gathered data on costs of staffing, third party expenses, capitalized expenses and reduced revenue opportunities. The purpose was to determine the actual financial impact on credit unions and how much it has changed since 2010. The results are staggering.

Since the financial crisis, credit unions and banks have been subjected to more than 200 regulatory changes. In 2014, those costs added up to $7.2 billionan increase of $2.8 billion since 2010.

These burdens subject each of the 105 million credit union members nationwide to a real cost of about $71 per year. Here in North Dakota, these costs are even greater per credit union memberaveraging $115 per year for more than 215,000 credit union members.

Besides these punitive monetary effectsincluding higher loan ratescredit union members feel the pain with longer wait times for loans, less access to modernized technology, restrained services and products and increased inconvenience.

It is important to point out that not one single credit union in the nation ever has cost the American taxpayer a dime in any bailout. Despite this solid record of responsible banking practices, credit unions are subject to the same rules that were designed to rein in the "too big to fail" banksin essence, creating a "too small to succeed" scenario.

Over the past year, our trade association, the Credit Union Association of the Dakotas, has asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for the agency to use its exemption authority under the Dodd Frank Act.

The agency has the authority to exempt any class of entity from its rules. And we have asked the agency to tailor its rules so they don't have a negative impact, rather than continuing to write "one size fits all" rules that continue to hurt consumers, credit unions and small banks.

In a show of support, 329 members of Congress from both parties, including Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., have asked the agency to write or implement rules that do not hurt credit unions or their ability to serve members.

On April 5, the Senate Banking Committeewhich includes Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.held a special hearing on the "Impact of Consumer Finance Regulations on Financial Institutions."

"Because of the bureau's structure and the means by which it is financed, it remains one of least accountable agencies in the federal government. As a result, the very consumers that the bureau was designed to help have been harmed by it because some of its rules make it more difficult for companies to lend and offer products in the marketplace, said committee chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., in his opening remarks.

Bottom line: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which claims to be a consumer-focused regulator, is letting consumers lose because credit unions and other community institutions have to curtail or withdraw products and services because of the bureau's regulations.

The question remains for Congress and the bureau: Why are credit unions and credit union members being punished when they did nothing wrong in the first place?
U.S. military used 'roof knock' tactic in Iraq to try to warn civilians before bombing

By Yeganeh Torbati and Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON, April 26 (Reuters) - The United States borrowed an Israeli military tactic known as "roof knocking" to try to warn civilians before it dropped a bomb targeting Islamic State fighters in Iraq this month, but a woman was killed in the attack, a U.S. military official said on Tuesday.

The controversial tactic consists of firing a warning missile above or near an intended target, to give residents time to flee before the real strike.

The Israeli military used such "roof knocks" in the 2014 Gaza war, but a United Nations commission found in 2015 that the tactic was not effective, because it often caused confusion and did not give residents enough time to escape.

The United States used the tactic in an April 5 operation in the Iraqi city of Mosul. One woman who initially did leave the targeted building but then ran back inside was killed, a U.S. defense official said.

Air Force Major General Peter Gersten, deputy commander for operations and intelligence for the U.S.-led coalition, said the airstrike targeted a building that housed a member of Islamic State in charge of distributing money to fighters, as well as being a cash storage site.

U.S. intelligence and reconnaissance aircraft tracked the site and observed that a woman and children also frequented the house, which the United States believed to contain about $150 million.

Looking to ensure they and any other non-combatants were clear of the building, the military turned to a tactic used by the Israeli Defense Forces in some of its operations against Hamas militants, Gersten said.

The plan consisted of firing a Hellfire missile above the building "so it wouldn't destroy the building, simply knock on the roof to ensure that she and the children were out of the building," he said.

"We've certainly watched and observed their procedure," Gersten said of the Israelis, while noting that the military did not coordinate with the Israelis on the strike. "As we formulated the way to get the civilians out of the house, this (technique) was brought forward from one of our experts."

But the woman ran back into the building after the U.S. warplane had fired its weapon, Gersten said, adding that it was "very difficult for us to watch and it was within the final seconds of the actual impact."

The U.S.-led coalition could employ the roof knock technique again in the future, he said.

The air campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria has been a key part of the U.S. plan to eventually destroy the hardline Sunni militant group.

But Islamic State's presence in major Iraqi and Syrian cities has made it difficult to destroy its most important headquarters, because of concerns about killing scores of innocents in the process.
German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says

FRANKFURT, April 26 (Reuters) - A nuclear power plant in Germany has been found to be infected with computer viruses, but they appear not to have posed a threat to the facility's operations because it is isolated from the Internet, the station's operator said on Tuesday.

The Gundremmingen plant, located about 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Munich, is run by the German utility RWE.

The viruses, which include "W32.Ramnit" and "Conficker", were discovered at Gundremmingen's B unit in a computer system retrofitted in 2008 with data visualisation software associated with equipment for moving nuclear fuel rods, RWE said.

Malware was also found on 18 removable data drives, mainly USB sticks, in office computers maintained separately from the plant's operating systems. RWE said it had increased cyber-security measures as a result.

W32.Ramnit is designed to steal files from infected computers and targets Microsoft Windows software, according to the security firm Symantec.

First discovered in 2010, it is distributed through data sticks, among other methods, and is intended to give an attacker remote control over a system when it is connected to the Internet.

Conficker has infected millions of Windows computers worldwide since it first came to light in 2008. It is able to spread through networks and by copying itself onto removable data drives, Symantec said.

RWE has informed Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), which is working with IT specialists at the group to look into the incident.

The BSI was not immediately available for comment.
Peru shoot-down law turns drug smugglers to boats, backpackers

LIMA, April 26 (Reuters) - A law in Peru that allows the military to shoot down planes suspected of smuggling drugs has forced traffickers to move cocaine out of a remote jungle region by boat and on foot, the prime minister said on Tuesday.

The law, which ended a 15-year ban on the downing of civilian aircraft when it went into effect in January, intends to keep scores of small planes from flying drugs out of the Peruvian Amazon and into neighboring Bolivia and Brazil.

Prime Minister Pedro Cateriano said that even though the military had not yet shot down any new planes, the threat of force had led to a sharp drop in the number of "narco-flights."

"Drug traffickers are using other routes to transport drugs, we've seen that in recent months," Cateriano said at a press conference, citing police intelligence. "Now, for example, the trafficking is fluvial and there's more antwork transportation, that is, backpackers."

Cateriano said the lack of an easy outgoing route for coca leaf, the main ingredient in cocaine, has led to excess supply and that has prompted its price to plummet.

Coca is native to South America and is especially abundant in a group of jungle valleys in southeastern Peru known as the VRAEM.

The U.S. State Department said in a 2015 report that small aircraft bound for Bolivia constituted the main method of transporting cocaine from Peru.

Peru had stopped shooting at drug aircraft in 2001 after the military, in coordination with the CIA, downed a plane with missionaries on board, killing a U.S. woman and her baby.

The United States also banned funding linked to shoot-down activities in Peru after the incident. However, the United States has not said that the reinstatement of the policy would affect its joint anti-narcotics programs in the Andean country.

Congress unanimously passed the law reinstating the policy in August, even though Peruvian authorities said that U.S. officials had lobbied to stop it.
INKSTER -- Some five dozen volunteers heeded the call Monday morning to help clean up after a weekend fire heavily damaged a portion of Midway Public School.

Less than an hour after the volunteer effort began, the schools website and Facebook pages announced, The turnout has been great. We need no more volunteers!!

The fire, which was reported about midday Saturday, heavily damaged a shop and storage area at the rear of the building.

Its only 5 to 6 percent of the building, Superintendent Roger Abbe said.

However, water damage was reported in rooms near the fire scene, and smoke damage spread throughout the building.

Firefighters from Inkster Fire Department returned to the school early Monday morning to extinguish some hot spots that had developed in the roof.

Midway, with about 220 students in grades K-12, is a consolidated school district in northern Grand Forks and southern Walsh counties, about 35 miles northwest of Grand Forks. The rural district, located 5 miles east of Inkster, serves the communities of Inkster, Gilby, Forest River, Johnstown, Ardoch, Mekinock and the Forest River Hutterite Colony.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation, although Abbe said early indications are that foul play and negligence have been ruled out. An insurance adjuster was expected on the scene Monday.

While school was canceled Monday, classes were expected to resume Tuesday.

Students, teachers, area residents and students from nearby schools, including Fordville-Lankin Public School, cleaned room by room Monday, wiping soot from walls, ceilings, windows, desks and everything in between.

My science lab is out of commission now, said Melissa Osowski, who teaches sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade science, sixth-grade math and eighth-grade language arts.

Osowski and Sarah Patrick, the schools music teacher, were part of a team of five cleaning the computer lab/language arts room Monday morning.

Patrick said she likely will have to find a temporary home for her music classes -- possibly the lunchroom -- because of the music rooms proximity to the fire.

Theres some soot and water damage in there, she said. Its probably better to let the experts handle that.

Also part of the computer lab cleaning crew were Brad Becker, a 1979 Midway graduate and a current Midway School Board member; and his son, Kyle, a 2015 graduate.

I heard about a grass fire and drove over here Saturday, Brad Becker said. It was a little more than a grass fire.
FARGO  A Grand Forks man who trafficked drugs throughout the region and pistol-whipped a man he believed to be working with police must spend his life in a federal prison.

U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson ordered Jose Luis "Joe" Delacruz, 38, to life in prison for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and distribution of methamphetamine, in addition to a consecutive seven-year sentence for brandishing a firearm during the commission of drug trafficking.

Delacruz plans to appeal the sentence handed down during a court hearing last week.

"This sentence not only ensures public safety, but also sends the message to other drug traffickers that if they choose to do business in North Dakota, the collective response by law enforcement will be swift and prosecution certain," U.S. Attorney Christopher Myers said Monday in a press release.

During the course of the conspiracy, co-conspirators received meth from Delacruz and sold it primarily in the Grand Forks area. Myers said the trafficking ring distributed more than 500 grams of a mixture containing meth.

In addition to Delacruz, four other trafficking ring members have been sentenced to prison terms: Patrick James Peltier, five years; Anthony James Farrell, four years; Kimberly Ann Ratliff, 10 years; and Brian Joseph McMahan, 2 years.

Because Delacruz had two prior felony drug convictions, there was a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison for the conspiracy charge, said his attorney, Jade Rosenfeldt.

When Delacruz was 18, he delivered a half-gram of cocaine to a confidential informant for $50 in 1995, according to a memorandum in court records. When he was 25, he was found "with trace amounts of cocaine located inside a five-dollar bill" in 2002.

In a statement he read at sentencing, Delacruz "expressed a lot of frustration" with the evidence in his trial and "the fact that he is receiving a life sentence," Rosenfeldt said.

But Judge Erickson essentially said his "hands were tied," according to Rosenfeldt, and he had to follow the law and enforce the life sentence.

That didn't come as a surprise, Rosenfeldt said. Still, the life in prison requirement can outweigh the nature of the crime, and now Delacruz will "spend the remainder of his life" in prison for convictions more than a decade ago, Rosenfeldt said in a court document.

If Delacruz is released at some point, Erickson ordered that he serve 10 years of supervised release for the conspiracy charge, to be served at the same time as five years of supervised release for the firearm charge.

But there are only two ways Delacruz could be released, Rosenfeldt said: Either a new law is passed that could be applied retroactively to shorten Delacruz's sentence, or Delacruz can file an appeal.

And that's what he plans to do, she said.

"We will file for an appeal," Rosenfeldt said. "The basis will have a lot to do with the trial."

After a three-day trial, a jury found Delacruz guilty May 13, 2015, of the two charges. But Delacruz appealed, saying he should be acquitted and receive a new trial.

Delacruz argued that there was a lack of physical evidence. He also argued that witnesses, specifically the other defendants in the case, had "ulterior motives" to ensure Delacruz was convicted "to get what was offered and promised to them" from plea deals.

But Judge Erickson denied Delacruz's appeal in March 2016, saying "there was substantial evidence, beyond mere conjecture or speculation, to support the verdict on each count."

Delacruz was arrested by Grand Forks County sheriff's deputies in June 2014 after eluding law enforcement agencies for months. An arrest warrant was issued for him in March 2014 after Delacruz and Peltier -- one of the four defendants who took a plea deal -- robbed, beat and abducted another co-conspirator they believed to be cooperating with police.

The victim was abandoned on the side of a rural road in the freezing cold, but was later picked up by two strangers, who drove him back into Grand Forks, court papers say.
 Focus Contemporary Art hosts an artist talk with Megan Marlatt of the Big Head Brigade at 6 p.m. Wednesday at 385 Valley St. in Scottsville. (434) 962-6485.

 University of Virginia Center for Politics hosts Bjorn Lyrvall, Swedens ambassador to the United States, speaking from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Peabody Hall Auditorium on UVa Grounds. Register in advance at centerforpolitics.org. (434) 243-8408.

 University of Virginia Department of Media Studies, Center for Media and Citizenship will present the discussion ProPublica Live: An Examination on the Reporting of Rape from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Thursday in Room 301 in Wilson Hall on UVa Grounds. (917) 703-1242.

 Aging Together will present Teepa Snow, a leading educator on dementia care, and Dr. Jonathan Evans, a geriatric physician, speaking during an all-day conference focusing on support for caregivers, families and professionals for those with dementia on May 3 at Daniel Technology Center in Culpeper. $20 includes lunch. Limited scholarships and respite care are available for unpaid family caregivers. (540) 829-6405.

 Local Food Hub celebrates Local Food Month with Elvis Cordova, U.S. Department of Agricultures deputy undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, participating in a roundtable discussion at 10 a.m. Wednesday at 566 Dettor Road, No.108. (434) 244-0625.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday blasted Gov. Terry McAuliffes order restoring voting rights for 206,000 felons, calling it an example of crooked politics that could tilt the race in Virginia.

Trump referenced Fridays sweeping executive action by McAuliffe, a Democrat, during a campaign rally in Rhode Island.

Theyre giving 200,000 people that have been convicted of heinous crimes, horrible crimes, the worst crimes, the right to vote, Trump said. Because you know what? They know theyre going to vote Democrat. And that could be the swing. Thats how disgusting and dishonest our political system is.

McAuliffe has said his order will allow ex-offenders to fully rejoin society and end a harsh voting restriction that has roots in racial discrimination against African-Americans.

The order applies to violent and nonviolent felons. Its difficult to gauge how many of the 206,000 might vote, because the order applies to those who have not applied to have their rights restored and to ex-offenders who may have moved out of the state.

Recent polling showed Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, a close McAuliffe ally, beating Trump 44 percent to 35 percent in Virginia.

Clinton praised McAuliffe on Twitter Friday, saying the governor is continuing to break down barriers to voting.

On Monday, Trump called Virginia a very close state.

I would win Virginia. I have a lot of employees, a tremendous amount of property in Virginia, said Trump, who owns a winery in Albemarle County and a golf course in Loudoun County.

Trump donated $25,000 to McAuliffes 2009 campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Later that year he donated the same amount to Gov. Bob McDonnell, the GOP nominee for governor.

Trump narrowly won Virginias Republican primary on March 1 over Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who has since dropped out of the race. As in other states, Trump hasnt done as well in the behind-the-scenes jockeying for delegates to the partys national convention.

Thirteen of the states 49 delegates will be chosen at this weekends state convention at James Madison University in Harrisonburg.

The Washington Post has reported that Trump is planning to attend the event to woo delegates in person, but the state party has not confirmed that Trump will be involved. In a Twitter message Monday afternoon, the university said there had been no contact between the university and the Trump campaign.
NORFOLK  Authorities are identifying a man fatally shot by Norfolk police after they say he fired at officers.

Virginia State Police identified the man Monday in a news release as 30-year-old Eric Wakup of Norfolk, who barricaded himself inside a home Friday night. Early Saturday, police say Wakup fired at officers, who fatally shot him. Police say Wakup was white.

Police say they aren't naming a black man who was shot in a separate shooting Friday where a Norfolk officer encountered the man with a gun near another man who had been fatally shot. The injured man was treated and released. Police charged another man in the slaying.

Norfolk Officer Daniel Hudson says three officers are on administrative duty, but their names and races won't be released during state police investigations.
SEKTOR 101 - EU - Even though there was a vote to leave the EU in the UK referendum of 2016, the Brexit vote was ignored and annulled.

There are still pockets of resistance fighters across the continent but every day more and more are discovered, flushed out and liquidated.

Internal body implants became mandatory in 2023, and replaced mobile phones as a means of tracking your every move, your every thought and your every word. Internal body implantation biometric devices are also used for every transaction, tracked and monitored. There is no more cash, and anyone found using other forms of currency are punished severely. The EU can also turn off your digital currency at any time to punish a person for any indiscretion against EU law.

Dissent is punished with imprisonment in a re-education camp, as prescribed by EU diktats, all must obey fully to the state now being led solely by Germany.

In 2020, the EUs capital was moved from Brussels to Hamburg, to reinforce the EUs Germanic supremacy.

Termination

Education begins in the womb, as EU edicts are programmed into foetuses before birth. Microchip brain implant technology introduced in 2028. Without the required programming, a birth licence is not granted, and the baby and mother are both terminated.

Undesirables are rounded up every day, those who have broken the law in any way, those who resist and those who have harboured thoughts deemed subversive by the authorities. The ones who can be reprogrammed to love the EU are spared, but those who still resist are taken to special chambers where their bodies are liquefied, and then fed into the water and food nourishment system to be consumed by the masses as a form of protein.

Britain lost their bid for freedom in 2016. Since then the former countrys population has risen to 180 million people by forced EU repatriation and migration. There were many riots, and it came close to civil war but mandatory implants soon quashed all resistance as well as harsh punitive measures by the EU authorities overseeing the transition.

The many absorbed nations under the EU are all now bound by one singular EU army, which is compulsory to join. The Russian threat is cited as the reason for full compulsory conscription and skirmishes in the Ukraine sector resulted in Russia moving into Finland in 2021. Sweden reported Russian Federation troops entering their borders in 2023.

To escape this EU totalitarian Soviet Islamo-Fascistic nightmare is now a missed opportunity for many. In 2024 thousands were able to flee through Sicily into Libya and then onto Africa, but many were cut down before they could escape the EU.

Permanent Austerity

In the British sector, there have been many riots, quelled by the militarised EU police, the influx of millions into the EU over the years, has left wages at rock bottom, the EU wide welfare system established in 2019 resulted in benefit cuts of over 75% because of the mass of welfare recipients. Hospitals also received huge cuts in funds, and even though nanotechnological medicine was introduced in 2025, this was only available to the elite and EU politburo.

The EU introduced a directive in 2026 banning all private property and land ownership, this law created a backlash from many who were then detained and terminated. Some estimate that over 400,000 EU citizens were culled in one month.

Food shortages due to mass migration from Sub Saharan Africa and the Middle East into the EU over decades resulted in EU citizens being fed on a GM produced porridge substance with the only protein derived from liquefied human cadavers. The protein is sufficient to keep many alive, as there is no room for crop growth any more, or to hold livestock. The EU tries to keep the source of the protein fed to the masses quiet but in 2027 a leaked dossier results in more mass riots, only quelled by EU military forces.

By 2030, the EUs population has risen to 4.6 billion people. There is no European utopia but instead a dystopian nightmare so horrible that many choose death willingly than exist in the EU. But, hey, at least the EU food supply is safe as millions who resist are dealt with appropriately.
Neel-Schaffer Inc., is pleased to announce it has strengthened its bridge design capabilities in Alabama by making four key hires.

The moves come as Neel-Schaffer positions itself to expand the services it offers to clients throughout, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and South Carolina.

"We are adding depth and great experience to the bridge design services we offer," said Chris Sellers, Vice President for Neel-Schaffer's Alabama operations. "They will greatly help us expand our structural engineering capabilities as Neel-Schaffer continues to grow in Alabama and across the South."

The hires:

* Win Petrone, PE, Senior Project Manager

* J. Clifton Price, PE, RLS, Senior Structural Engineer

* Buddy Black, PE, Senior Structural Engineer

* Daniel Mundie, PE, Structural Engineer

Black recently retired from the Alabama Department of Transportation, where he worked for 37 years, including 18 in management. He served 10 years as the Assistant State Aid Bridge Engineer and eight as the State Bridge Engineer. Black has a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Alabama. Black began his ALDOT career designing bridges for Corridor X, the I-22 interstate corridor that stretches from Memphis to Birmingham. In one of his final acts at ALDOT, as State Bridge Engineer, he signed the contract documents for the Birmingham interchange that will complete the corridor, connecting I-22 with I-65.

Mundie has six years of experience as a structural designer, with a primary focus on bridge structures. He has worked on several $100 million-plus design-build projects, and his experience includes analysis and design of post-tensioned concrete segmented bridges, as well as post-tensioned spliced I-girders. He has two degrees from Auburn University, a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, and a Master of Science in Structural Engineering. Mundie is based in the firm's Birmingham office.

Petrone and Price each have more than 35 years of experience in structural and bridge engineering. Petrone holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Tennessee Tech and a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Tennessee.

In addition to experience in structural engineering, Petrone has more than 25 years of experience in project management and structural department management. Petrone is experienced in design and management of a variety of project types, including bridge hydraulics, bridge structures, bridge repairs design, utility structure design, airport slab design, construction management, and industrial structures.

Price, whose resume includes structural engineering experience in bridge design, environmental structures, and industrial plant modifications, holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Price also is licensed as a Land Surveyor in Tennessee and Mississippi.

Neel-Schaffer is a multidisciplined engineering and planning firm with offices throughout the South. Founded in 1983, the firm has more than 400 professional and technical employees, and in 2015 it was ranked 187th on Engineering News-Record's list of the nation's Top 500 Design Firms.

Contact Information

Rusty Hampton

rusty.hampton@Neel-Schaffer.com

(601) 351-2727

Marketing Manager, Neel-Schaffer, Inc.
 HuffPo Gives Platform to Another Anti-Israel Screed | Main | Israel's Syrian Reactor Strike Slowed a N. Korean-Iranian-Jihadi Bomb 

April 25, 2016

Harvard Law Record Abandons the First of the Five Ws of Journalism

The Harvard Law Record explains why it protected the identity of Husam El-Qoulaq, who hurled an anti-Semitic insult at Tzipi Livni, former Foreign Minister of Israel and current member of the Knesset. Livni appeared as a guest at the school earlier this month when El-Qoulaq insulted her.(Screenshot.)

Journalists are supposed to find out what happened and tell their readers what they have learned. Historically, there have been five questions that reporters are expected to answer, or at least try to answer, when writing about public events. The questions are:

1. Who?

2. What?

3. When?

4. Where?

5. Why?

Apparently, the student journalists at The Harvard Law Record did not get the memo.

When Husam El-Qoulaq, a student at Harvard Law School insulted Tzipi Livni, former Israeli Foreign Minister and current member of the Israeli Knesset, at a public event on Thursday April 14, 2016, (he called her smelly?), the newspaper initially concealed the El-Qoulaqs identity.

When, on April 18, 2016, Jewish students who attended the event condemned the statement as antisemitic in a letter to The Record, they did El-Qoulaq the undeserved and unwarranted courtesy of withholding his name from their complaint.

This is their right, but The Record to assist in the effort to protect Husam El-Qoulaqs identity is simply disgraceful and runs counter to the demands of journalism. Its a betrayal of the publication's loyalty to the reader.

Its a decision that makes a mockery of The Harvard Law Records credibility as a journalistic enterprise. Rather than do their job and inform their readers who said what to whom, the staffers at the newspaper withheld this information from their readers. And when students identified El-Qoulaq in the comments section of the article, they deleted these comments. (Eventually, Noah Pollak confirmed El-Qoulaqs identity and posted it on Twitter.)



The Records effort to conceal El-Qoulaqs identity is disgraceful. El-Qoulaq offered his antisemitic insult in front of dozens of students at a public event, which was being videotaped. Even more bizarrely, Harvard Law School deleted the section of the video that recorded Husam El-Qoulaq insulting Livni. One of El-Qoulaqs fellow students even pressured journalists not to use El-Qoulaqs name in their articles about the antisemitic insult, The Washington Free Beacon reported. And the school itself said it could not reveal El-Qoulaq's identity because of "federal privacy laws." It gets even weirder. The Record even allowed El-Qoulaq to issue an anonymous apology for insulting Livni. But as The Washington Free Beacon concisely stated, A public apology typically involves someone identifying themselves by name.? Eventually, The Harvard Law Record did the right thing and published El-Qoulaqs name when a group of Jewish students at the institution came to his defense, stating that he is a victim of a vicious smear campaign.? But when The Record did the right thing, it did so not because it was fulfilling its obligation to inform its readers about who did, or said, what. It did the right thing because El-Qoulaqs name had been broadcast elsewhere in the Internet and because El-Qoulaq had given the paper permission. But no permission was necessary, for El-Qoulap made his comment at a public event. This is basic journalism. Why did the paper withhold El-Qoulaqs name from the story about his antisemitic insult directed at Tzipi Livni? To promote respectful discourse? and recognition of the fact that Husam is a member of this community.? Apparently, holding people accountable for their public statements is not part of the Harvard Law Schools ethos. How else can we explain the efforts of both administrators and student journalists at the school to protect El-Qoulaqs identity? Annual Tuition at Harvard Law School is almost $60,000. Thats a lot of money, but it still does not enough to protect students who attend the school from scrutiny and criticism, as The Records staff seems to believe.



Posted by dvz at April 25, 2016 05:18 PM

Anyone know if this Hasam fellow is on scholarship or does he pay the full $60,000?

Posted by: Rick at April 27, 2016 07:30 PM

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South Indian actress Ragini Dwivedi, who acted in Nimirndhu Nil, recently went for a diving holiday to the Maldives. The actress who was the runner-up of the 2008 Femina Miss India contest says, I was diving at a site in the Maldives and we saw a turtle entangled in fishing nets. We freed it.

Ragini says that she wants to be a professional diver. I am training in deep sea diving, she says, adding, I started at the worlds biggest dive site  The Great Barrier Reef. I am doing practical training in a lot of places, but will have to give a theory exam and a practical in one country to get my certification.

So that is my next plan when I get off work Ill choose a site and go there, says the actress. In her upcoming film Amma, the actress is playing TN CM Jayalalithaa. The film directed by Main Hoon Rajinikanth famed controversial director Faisal Saif, will release in all south Indian languages and in Hindi as well.
GULFPORT, Mississippi -- A 53-year-old Gulfport man died after being tasered by a Gulfport police officer outside a popular coast restaurant.

According to Gulfport Sgt. Damon McDaniel, officers were summoned to Shaggy's on east Beach Boulevard Sunday afternoon around 4:30 in reference to an male subject behaving erratically/disorderly inside the restaurant.

When they arrived, officers learned the man -- later identified as Bradford Macomber of Gulfport -- had gone outside. They located the subject, but Macomber resisted the officers, prompting one of them to subdue Macomber with a taser.

Police took Macomber into custody and handcuffed him, but the erratic behavior continue and paramedics were called to the scene. He was transported to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.

Harrison County Coroner Gary Hargrove released Macomber's identity Monday and said an autopsy would be performed, with the results turned over to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which will investigate the case along with the Harrison County District Attorney's Office.
Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar with his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry before a meeting at South Block in New Delhi on Tuesday. Pakistan's High Commissioner to India, Abdul Basit (right) is also seen. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: India firmly asked Pakistan not to be in denial over the impact of terrorism on bilateral ties while Pakistan kept harping on Kashmir, terming it as the core issue between the two.

The meeting between Indias foreign secretary S. Jaishankar and Pakistans Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry went on for nearly 90 minutes. Several issues, including the probe into the Pathankot terror attack, the 26/11 trial and the Sam-jhauta Express blast investigations were raised.

India raised the issue of the abduction of former naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, saying he had been forcibly taken to Pakistan, and sought im-mediate consular access. This is the first time In-dia has clearly said that Mr Jadhav was abducted.

In a statement, Pakistan said it had raised the capturing of Mr Jadhav and expressed serious concern over RAWs alleged involvement in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi, a charge that was strongly rebutted by India.

Indias foreign secretary emphasised the need for early and visible pro-gress on the Pathankot terrorist attack investigation as well as the Mumbai case trial in Pakistan, an MEA spokesperson said.

Pakistan says kashmir is the core issue

Tuesdays meeting was the first formal interaction of the two foreign secretaries since their scheduled talks were put on hold in the wake of the Pathankot attack in January.

The Pakistani statement emphasised the importance of Kashmir and said the matter was raised by Mr Chaudhry. The statement added that it remained the core issue that requires a just solution in accordance with UNSC resolutions and wishes of the Kashmiri people.

Interestingly, the Pakistani side released the talking points while the meeting between the two foreign secretaries was still on. The statement by Pakistan also said: All outstanding issues, including the J&K dispute, were discussed.
Pennagaram: This sleepy, backward constituency in Dharmapuri district has become the cynosure of all eyes this elections, thanks to PMK Chief Ministerial candidate Anbumani Ramadoss choosing this safe constituency to try his luck to enter the Assembly for the first time.

Always a bastion of Vanniyars, the caste to which Anbumani belongs, Pennagaram overwhelmingly voted in favour of the PMK leader in 2014 Lok Sabha polls. This factor seemed to have weighed high in the minds of PMK top brass when they decided to field him from here.

Since the constituency has returned only a Vanniyar as MLA for the past few decades, almost all political parties, including DMK and AIADMK, have fielded candidates from the dominant community to cash in on the caste sentiments and votes.

To make the PMK leader walk the extra mile, the ruling AIADMK has fielded its strongman K. P. Munusamy and DMK has nominated P. N.P. Inbasekaran, who pushed the then AIADMK candidate to the third slot in 2010 by-elections after the death of his father Periya Annan.

Munusamys candidature has raised stakes for AIADMK as he was shifted to Pennagaram from Vepanahalli constituency since the party wants to avenge the PMK, which won the Dharmapuri seat in 2014.

With animosity between dominant Vanniyars and Dalits still visible in this rural constituency, the PMK would apparently cash in on caste sentiments as it did in 2014 elections after the tragic end of love story of Dalit youth Ilavarasan who married a Vanniyar girl Divya.

PMKs victory in 2014 was largely credited to the partys aggressive stand on the issue of inter-caste marriages, especially Vanniyars marrying Dalits. However, almost two years into his first stint as Lok Sabha MP, Anbumani seems to have the support of all communities and all sections of society with PMK cadre reaching out to people at the grassroots level by propagating the achievements of their leader during his tenure as Union health minister between 2004 and 2009.

The PMK hopes Anbumanis performance as MP and the partys manifesto would help it romp home from this district. Locals say the PMK leader has chosen Pennagaram because of the backwardness of this constituency which results in large-scale migration to neighbouring Bangalore.

Sixty-year-old Kanthasamy, a retired school teacher, says he does not see Anbumani as the leader of a particular community. After he was elected as MP, he has worked for the welfare of all community people.

R. Sakthivel, (25), a Dalit, says he is drawing a handsome salary today due to the job he secured during a fair organised by the Dharmapuri MP. However, an opinion is that Anbumani chose Pennagaram only because of Vanniyar vote bank and his partys strong presence in the district. I feel Anbumani chose this seat as 52 per cent of the total 2.26 lakh electorate belongs to Vanniyar community and only 15 per cent is Dalits, a retired government servant said.

Locals also say though a majority of Vanniyars would vote for Anbumani, a split in their votes would be inevitable as Munusamy and Inbasekaran also belong to the community.

Other candidates like the sitting CPI MLA N. Nanjappan are also influential enough to split the votes. The AIADMK, DMK, Congress and PMK have won the constituency twice each; Nanjappan had represented the seat in 1989 also.
BJP MP Paresh Rawal arrives at the Parliament with an even numbered car violating the odd-even rule, on on Monday. Made a serious blunder by travelling in an odd number car to Parliament ... Sorry to Arvind ji n Delhiite...(sic), Rawal tweeted. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Not heeding to Prime Minister Narendra Modis request of discussing issues in Parliament in a democratic spirit, Congress members on Monday created ruckus in both Houses over imposition of Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh, accusing the Modi government of murdering democracy.

The issue rocked both Houses on the first day of the second half of the budget session with Congress members in both Houses storming the Well and party president Sonia Gandhi joining them in raising slogans.

Almost the entire Congress was in the Well in the Rajya Sabha, shouting anti-NDA and anti-PM slogans and members of other opposition parties including JD(U) and Left were seen supporting them.

Mean-while, the Government placed copies of the proclamation of Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand in both Houses of Parliament amid objections by Congress members.

Before the two Houses met for the day in the morning, the Prime Minister hoped that members of all parties will discuss issues in a democratic spirit and take good decisions.

He hoped that members will involve themselves in free discussions and important decisions will be taken.

In the Lok Sabha, leader of Congress, Mallikarjun Kharge and his party colleagues staged a dharna in the Well as their notice for adjournment motion on the issue was rejected by the Chair.

In the Rajya Sabha, Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad raised the issue accusing the central government of deliberately provoking the Opposition.
This file undated handout photo released by Eastern Mindanao Command (EASTMINCOM) on September 22, 2015 shows Canadian tourists John Ridsdel, 68, who was kidnapped by gunmen on September 21 on Samal island. (Photo: AFP)

Manila: Islamic militants in the Philippines have beheaded a Canadian hostage, sparking fears for more than 20 others they are holding on remote islands, with security forces vowing on Tuesday to hunt down the extremists.

The man's head was found yesterday dumped outside city hall on Jolo, a mountainous and jungle-clad island in the far south of the Philippines that is a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf Islamist group.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Filipino authorities identified the victim as John Ridsdel, a retiree in his late 60s who was kidnapped seven months ago from aboard a yacht, along with another Canadian man, a Norwegian and a Filipina woman.

"This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau said in Ottawa.

The four were abducted at a marina near the major city of Davao, more than 500 kilometres from Jolo, as part of a wave of abductions by the Abu Sayyaf, a loose network of militants who for more than two decades have run a lucrative kidnapping- for-ransom business.

The other three were fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Hall's girlfriend Marites Flor, and Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad.

Six weeks after the abduction, gunmen released a video of their hostages held in a jungle setting, demanding the equivalent of USD 21 million each for the safe release of the three foreigners.

The men were forced to beg for their lives on camera, and similar videos posted over several months showed the hostages looking increasingly frail.

In the most recent video, Ridsdel said his captors would kill him on April 25 if a ransom of USD 6.4 million was not paid.

Hours after the deadline passed, police in the Philippines said two people on a motorbike dropped the head near city hall on Jolo, which is about 1,000 kilometres from Manila.

Ridsdel, a former journalist, oil executive and sailing enthusiast, had moved to the Philippines to manage a gold mine prior to retiring.

Trudeau said Canada was working with the Philippines to pursue and prosecute the killers, and that efforts were under way to obtain the release of the other hostages.

In the Philippines, security forces said they were setting up checkpoints across Jolo in an effort to block the movements of the gunmen.

"There will be no let up in the determined efforts of the joint task group's intensive military and law enforcement operations to neutralise these lawless elements," said a statement released on Tuesday by the national police and military forces.

However, Philippine security forces have made similar statements many times against the Abu Sayyaf and often failed to achieve their objectives.
New York: The United Nations (UN) will distribute food to more than a quarter of a million people who survived Ecuador's devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake but are growing hungry in its aftermath, the organisation said on Monday.

The sweeping aid operation was being rolled out as the scale of the disaster was coming into sharper focus more than a week after the April 16 quake ravaged the country's Pacific coast. About one in every 30 Ecuadorians, or half a million people, were in need of food assistance after the quake disrupted their livelihoods, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said in a statement.

The situation on the ground remained grim, WFP spokesman Alejandro Chicheri said in a telephone interview. The death toll in the small South American country passed 650 on Monday. "There are a lot of people on roads asking for help," he said. "People are hoping to get assistance."

The emergency aid will build on efforts by the government and scores of foreign aid workers who are also distributing food, water and medicine in the quake zone. WFP estimates the cost of its three-month operation at $34 million, a sum that will need to come from public and private donors, Chicheri said.

President Rafael Correa announced on Saturday eight days of national mourning for the victims of the quake. He said the quake inflicted $2 billion to $3 billion of damage to the oil-dependent economy and could knock 2-3% points off growth. The April 16 earthquake was the worst the country has ever experienced in its history, the WFP said.
In their first formal bilateral meeting after Pathankot attack, Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan today held talks focusing on a range of sticky issues including probe into the strike and Kashmir, which Pakistani side asserted was the "core issue".





Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry, here to attend the Heart of Asia conference, met after which the Pakistani side said its Foreign Secretary "emphasised that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution in accordance with UNSC resolutions and wishes of Kashmiri people."

There was no immediate formal word from the Indian side on the meeting.



Ahead of the meeting, the Indian officials had maintained that Pathankot attack and a possible visit by the NIA to Pakistan will be raised during the FS-level talks, which were deferred in January in the wake of the strike at the strategic air base at Pathankot.



"In line with our PM's vision of peaceful neighborhood, FS underscored Pakistan's commitment to have friendly relations with all its neighbors/India. All outstanding issues including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute were discussed," the Pakistan High Commission here said.



India has been pressing for action against terrorists responsible for the audacious attack on the IAF base, to take the talks forward.



This is also the first time the two foreign secretaries are meeting after the announcement of Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue(CBD) by the Foreign Ministers in Islamabad last December. The two secretaries had a informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March this year.



The efforts to resume CBD at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the Pathankot attack that India said was carried out by militants from Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM)terror group.



Jaishankar was scheduled to travel to Islamabad to hold talks with Chaudhary on January 15 but both the countries had announced deferment of the talks with "mutual consent" in the wake of the Pathankot attack.



Todays's meeting came in the backdrop of Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit's recent comments that the bilateral peace process was suspended, evoking a sharp reaction by Indian side.



India has been maintaining that communication channels were on at various levels but also made it clear it wants to see action on terror and Pathankot first before the dialogue could be resumed.



Earlier, Jaishankar met Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Karzai and discussed issues of mutual interests.



After the talks which lasted for nearly 90-minutes, the Pakistan High Commission said in a statement that Chaudhry also took up the matter of capture of RAW officer, Kulbushan Jadev and expressed serious concern over RAW's alleged involvement in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi.



"He said such acts undermine efforts to normalise relations between the two countries. He also conveyed concern over efforts by Indian authorities for the release of the prime suspects of the Samjhauta Express blasts," it added.



He expressed confidence that building on the goodwill generated by the recent high level contacts, the two countries should remain committed to a sustained, meaningful and comprehensive dialogue process.



In this spirit, the Foreign Secretary underscored the need for early commencement of comprehensive dialogue for which the Indian Foreign Secretary's visit to Pakistan is due.


Slogan-shouting Congress members today forced the adjournment of Rajya Sabha till noon after the government rejected their demand for a discussion on a motion on dismissal of the party's government there.



Congress members trooped into the Well of the House raising slogans against the Government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Leader of the House and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said no discussion other than on proclamation of President Rule in Uttarakhand can take place.



Justifying imposition of central rule in the state, Jaitley said the "real breakdown of constitutional machinery" happened in Uttarakhand when the presiding officer (Speaker) "ignored" the vote of 35 out of 67 members against the appropriation bill to declare it passed.



Deputy Chairman P J Kurien's pleading that the Chair was in favour of a discussion and the protestors should allow the House to function went unheeded, forcing him to adjourn the proceedings till 1200 hours.



Congress leaders Anand Sharma and Pramod Tiwari gave notices under rule 267 seeking suspension of business to take up discussion on use of Article 356 by the Centre to dismiss a democractically elected government in Uttrakhand.



While Naresh Agrawal (SP) too gave notice under same rule for discussion on the issue, Mayawati (BSP) supported the demand for suspension of business to take up the debate.



Jaitley said it had never happened in the history of independent India that a presiding officer of a state assembly has converted majority into minority and vice versa.



"This is the real breakdown of constitutional machinery," he said.



He said 35 out of the 67 members in Uttrakhand assembly voted against the appropriation bill but the presiding officer came to conclusion that the bill has been passed. "That is breakdown of constitutional machinery."



The Minister said discussion will take place when the proclamation for President's Rule is placed before the House. "There is no procedure of having pre-proclamation discussion," he said.

Earlier, Anand Sharma (Cong) said he had given a notice under rule 267 for suspension of business to discuss and pass a resolution brought by his party on the destabilisation of a democratically-elected government by the Centre through gross "misuse and abuse of power."



He said rule 267 as well as rule 176 for short duration discussion do not provide any condition for initiating a debate on any issue and there have been umpteen number of precedents when sub-judice matter have been debated in the House.

"This government cannot hide under rules to cover what they have done in Uttarakhand," he said.



Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi asked if the Congress party actually wanted a discussion or was looking at disrupting proceedings.



Naresh Agrawal (SP) said he too did not agree with the government's contention that sub-judice matters cannot be discussed and said the Chair should take the opinion of the House on initiating a discussion under rule 267.



Pramod Tiwari (Cong) said Constitution has been "murdered" in Uttarakhand and "we condemn" the government's action.



Mayawati (BSP) said parties in power have misused Article 356 of the Constitution to dismiss opposition-ruled state governments for political reasons and sought a discussion on the issue.



After Jaitley said no discussion can take place before the proclamation is placed before the House, Congress members trooped into the Well raising anti-government slogans.



"Modi teri taanashahi nahi chalegi, nahi chalegi (dictatorship of Narendra Modi will not be tolerated)," they shouted.



Deputy Chairman P J Kurien asked shouting members to return to their seats and allow a discussion. "Chair is not against discussion. Chair is in favour of discussion. You are not allowing discussion," he said.



As the members remained unrelenting, he adjourned the House till 1200 hours.

Similar scenes continued when the House reassembled.



Chairman Hamid Ansari took up the Question Hour but as the slogan-shouting by Congress members in the Well continued unabated, he adjourned the House for 30 minutes.




Having sent over 200 notices to government hospitals and buildings for mosquitogenic conditions in the past two months, the NDMCs health department will educate all the stakeholders on how to minimise mosquito breeding on their premises in a joint meeting on May 4.





This comes after the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) last year had found it difficult to control mosquito breeding in its jurisdiction.



In 2015, the council had taken action against major hospitals, government buildings and even sent notices to the Rashtrapati Bhavan after heavy mosquito breeding was found in those premises.



The councils focus this year is to boost the educational activities so that buildings in its jurisdiction have fewer incidence of mosquito breeding.



Letters to hospitals

We have written to the sanitation department at Rashtrapati Bhavan, four major hospitals in our area  RML Hospital, Lady Hardinge Medical College, Safdarjung Hospital and AIIMS, all state guesthouses, ministry buildings like Shastri Bhawan and engineers from the CPWD (Central Public Works Department) to attend the meet.



All the stakeholders will be sensitised on how to check mosquito breeding well ahead of the dengue season. This is to ensure that the sanitation and engineering departments take proactive steps to maintain high sanitation level. It becomes impossible for the councils health department alone to bring down dengue cases if the stakeholders do respond well, said a senior NDMC official, Health Department.

Following the sensitisation, if mosquitogenic conditions still prevail on the premises, they will be pensalised, the official added.



The civic body has also requested the embassies to participate in the programme

as last year the council had found heavy breeding in several embassy premises, said the official.



In the past two months, the council has sent 212 notices to hospitals and buildings, including, Lady Hardinge Medical College (LHMC), Safdarjung Hospital, AIIMS, RML, Red Cross Society, UCO Bank and Sanchar Bhawan.



Penalised

Three government buildings have already been challaned. These are Akashwani Bhawan, National Art Gallery Museum and Shivaji Stadium. Challans are issued when no action is taken by the department in the next 24 hours to resolve the issue of breeding in their premises, said an inspector, NDMCs health department.



The council has called public experts from LHMC, National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP) for sensitising the different departments.



The NDMC had issued 265 challans and 3,965 notices last year against hospitals and buildings for mosquito breeding.


PASS CHRISTIAN, Mississippi -- A man who made headlines last year after stealing a car while naked was thwarted in an attempt to commit sexual assault when the Pass Christian homeowners held him off at gunpoint.

According to Harrison County Sheriff Troy Peterson, police responded to a home in Kiln Delisle Road in Pass Christian Saturday for what was reported as a burglary in progress.

When they arrived, deputies found the suspect -- identified as 32-year-old Kenda Leo Casey -- being held on the ground at gunpoint by both of the homeowners.

The victims told deputies Casey had broken into their home, entered their bedroom and attempted to sexually assault the female homeowner.

Casey was booked into the Harrison County Adult Detention Center under a $300,00 bond for home invasion and attempted sexual battery.

Casey has a lengthy arrest record in Harrison County, with prior charges for motor vehicle theft, felony fleeing from police, disorderly conduct, indecent exposure, disturbing the peace, possession of marijuana and paraphernalia, contempt of court and simple robbery.

Casey made headlines last year when he attempted to enter a Gulfport convenience store naked, but was denied entry. He then laid on the ground in front of the door for a few moments before getting up and stealing a car to flee the scene. He drove into Long Beach before he was apprehended with the assistance of a K9 unit.

He was on probation for the auto theft at the time of this latest arrest. That probation has been revoked.
With problems continuing in using the MCA21 portal, the Corporate Affairs Ministry might deduct payments to IT major Infosys, which expects the situation to be normal in the next few weeks.





Infosys, which is managing MCA21, has been facing flak from different quarters on the woes pertaining to the portal, which is used by stakeholders to make electronic filings under the Companies Act.



Sources said problems being faced in using the portal after its upgradation last month are being sorted out and would take some more time.



There are provisions for deducting payments that are due to Infosys with regard to managing the portal in case there are problems and the ministry might look at that also, sources added.



The system was upgraded to SAP platform and went live on March 27, and since then, there have been some glitches such as difficulty in uploading documents.



"We will continue to monitor the situation and work closely with the ministry. We expect the situation to come back to normal in the next few weeks," an Infosys spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement late Monday while responding to queries related to MCA21 problems.



To a query on whether the ministry has told the company that payment could be withheld if the problems in MCA21 are not resolved, the spokesperson said "it is speculative".



The continuing woes with regard to using MCA21 have attracted flak for Infosys from various quarters.



In reference to the MCA21 problems, a few days back, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant had tweeted that "as service provider Infosys has let down the country".



Infosys did not comment on Kant's remark.

Subsequent to the new Companies Act, it has upgraded the MCA21 system to run on the SAP platform.



"Post the go-live, as on April 22, over 1,183 Indian companies have been incorporated and 1,647 Limited Liability Partnerships have been registered on the system.



"In addition, since March 27, 2016, there have been more than two lakh filings. Looking at the data for the week gone by in 2015 during the same week, we have had an average of 8,013 filings per day (excluding the weekends) while the current average is around 9,759, an increase of more than 20 per cent," the company said on Monday.



Further, Infosys said that during the first couple of weeks, after migrating to the new system, there were some issues which by and large have been sorted out.



"There were some delays in the incorporation of some companies due to holidays. The ministry has made arrangements to clear the pendency by deploying additional Assessment Officers," it had said.



Against the backdrop of MCA21 glitches, the ministry has extended the deadline for submitting filings without additional fee till May 10.
Yoga guru Ramdev today appeared to be backtracking from his controversial remark that if not for the law, he would have "beheaded" people for refusing to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', saying he was merely responding to AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi's statement that he won't raise the slogan even if a knife is put to his throat.





Addressing a press conference here, Ramdev said insulting religions like Islam or Christianity would be as "idiotic" as Owaisi's remark.



"I believe in non-violence, coexistence and oneness. It would be wrong to say that behead me but I won't respect the Quran or the Bible. I take pride in my religion but that does not give me the licence to insult other faiths. That would be as idiotic as Owaisi.



"He says at the drop of a hat that behead me but I won't say 'Bharat mata ki jai'. So I responded in rustic language that I would have done so but I believe in the Constitution. No one needs to be scared of me...'Woh toh baat ki baat thi'. If someone wants to say 'Bharat mata ki jai' then let him, what's the point in protesting against it," Ramdev said.



The yoga guru said JNU and NIT Srinagar incidents are "offshoots" of a crisis of ideology, principles and policy in the country.



Asked about Amitabh Bachchan's name surfacing among the Indians listed in Panama Papers, Ramdev said the Bollywood megastar appeared to be a "good person" but he needs to come up-front and say that he is ready for a probe into the matter.



Answering a range of questions, Ramdev also said he does not have any role in the political turmoil in Uttarakhand.



On the black money issue, on which he had been vocal in the past, Ramdev said he has left the issue to "Modi ji" to handle. "I have my full focus on Yoga," he said.



Ramdev also praised the anti-pollution measure 'odd-even' enforced by the AAP government and the liquor ban imposed by the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar, saying other political parties should follow suit.
India and Pakistan today indulged in some plain speaking on bilateral issues with the neighbouring country being firmly asked not to be in denial over the impact of terrorism on bilateral ties while Pakistan harped on Kashmir terming it as the core issue.





Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry met for nearly 90 minutes during which sticky issues including probe into Pathankot terror attack, 26/11 trial and Samjhauta Express blast investigations figured.



Today's meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry, who is primarily here to attend the 'Heart of Asia' conference, was the first formal interaction since their scheduled talks were deferred in the wake of the Pathankot attack in January.



During the meeting, India raised the issue of "abduction" of former Naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, saying he has been taken to Pakistan, and sought immediate consular access. This is for the first time India has categorically said Jadhav was abducted.



However, in its statement, Pakistan said it has raised "capturing" of Jadhav and expressed serious concern over RAW's alleged involvement in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi, a charge which was srongly rebutted by India.



"India's Foreign Secretary emphasised the need for early and visible progress on the Pathankot terrorist attack investigation as well as the Mumbai case trial in Pakistan. He also brought up the listing of JeM leader Masood Azhar in the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee.



"Foreign Secretary Jaishankar clearly conveyed that Pakistan cannot be in denial on the impact of terrorism on the bilateral relationship. Terrorist groups based in Pakistan targeting India must not be allowed to operate with impunity," a statement by the External Affairs Ministry said after the talks.



On its part, the Pakistani statement said Chaudhry brought up the issue of Kashmir emphasising that it remained the "core issue that requires a just solution in accordance with UNSC resolutions and wishes of Kashmiri people."



Interestingly, the Pakistani side released the talking points while the meeting between the two foreign secretaries was still on.



The statement by Pakistan also said, "In line with our PM's vision of peaceful neighborhood, FS underscored Pakistan's commitment to have friendly relations with all its neighbors/India. All outstanding issues including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute were discussed."



Describing the discussions as "frank and consructive", India said humanitarian issues including those pertaining to fishermen and prisoners, and people to people contacts including religious tourism were also covered.



"The two Foreign Secretaries exchanged ideas on taking the relationship forward and agreed to remain in touch," the MEA said.



According to Pakistan High Commission, Chaudhry also expressed serious concern over RAW's alleged involvement in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi. The allegations were firmly rebutted by Jaishankar.



In the context of Jadhav, the Indian foreign secretary also asked which spy agency would put their agent in the field with their own passport, and without a visa.



On Samjhauta Express blast, Chaudhry conveyed concerns "over efforts by Indian authorities for the release of the prime suspects of the Samjhauta Express blasts."



"The Foreign Secretary further pointed out that, despite repeated requests India has not shared investigation reports in which 42 Pakistanis had lost their lives



"He also conveyed concern over the environment being created in India for the release of the prime suspects of the Samjhauta Express blasts," the Pakistan High Commission said.



The Pakistan High Commission said Chaudhry expressed confidence that building on the goodwill generated by the recent high level contacts, the two countries should remain committed to a sustained, meaningful and comprehensive dialogue process.



In this spirit, the Foreign Secretary underscored the need for early commencement of comprehensive dialogue for which the Indian Foreign Secretary's visit to Pakistan is due, it said.


Italian police have arrested a former British professional boxer of Pakistani-origin in Rome on suspicion of delivering funds to Islamic State sleeper cells in Italy.





Hussain Shamshir was found to be travelling on a false British passport, according to British media reports.



The 34-year-old was arrested on Saturday while driving in Rome's suburb of Torpignattara with three other men in a German-registered car.



Described by Italian police as a former professional boxer who worked as a pizza baker in a London suburb, Shamshir was carrying 5,000 euros in cash when he was stopped for questioning by anti-terrorist police who had been tailing his vehicle, The Daily Telegraph reported quoting Corriere della Sera' newspaper in Italy.



Shamshir was quoted as saying the cash was for buying clothing for relatives in Belgium.

The three men travelling with him, two Pakistanis and a Kurd, were released after questioning.



Italian police investigators believe the money was brought to Rome to finance terrorist sleeper cells or terrorist attacks in the country.



Police sources told the Italian newspaper that the Belgian connection was one of the reasons Shamshir was arrested as well as the false passport, large amount of cash and criminal record in the UK.



"We are in contact with Italian authorities following the arrest of a British national in Rome," a British Foreign Office spokesperson said.
India and Pakistan should resolve the issue over Masood Azhar through "direct" and "serious consultations", China today said, weeks after blocking India's bid in the UN to ban the JeM chief that generated negativity in bilateral ties.



"We encourage all parties related to the listing matter of Masood Azhar to have direct communication and work out a solution through serious consultations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said in a written communication to PTI here on the issue which drew serious protests from New Delhi over Beijing's last minute move to block its bid to slap a UN ban on Azhar.



Replying to a question about whether there is any change in China's stand on the issue after a number of top Indian officials conveyed India's strong concerns over the move, Hua said as per the rules of the UN Committee on counterterrorism, the relevant countries should have direct talks. In addition to Hua's comments, Chinese officials expressed confidence that the issue will be resolved as Beijing is also in touch with Islamabad on the issue.



Her comments came as Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan held talks in New Delhi today, in which India raised the Azhar issue.



While External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took up the issue with her counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of Russia, India, China (RIC) Ministers meet in Moscow on April 18, it was raised by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar with his Chinese counterpart the same day in Beijing.



The issue was subsequently raised by National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi during the just-concluded 19th round of India-China border talks.



China - one of the five veto-wielding members of the 15- member UN Security Council, which plays a leading role in banning terrorist outfits through the 1267 committee on counterterrorism issues - was the only country that put a technical hold on India's bid to ban Pakistan-based Azhar in March. The move was criticised by India's Permanent Representatives to UN Syed Akbaruddin as "hidden veto".



Hua, however, once again defended China's move to put technical hold, saying that Beijing's move is in line with the UNSC rules and procedures.



"On the listing matter of the (UN) Security Council Committee established pursuant to Resolution 1267, I want to point out that China has been fairly dealing with the matter in accordance with the Security Council resolutions and relevant rules of procedures on the basis of facts," she said.



"It is in line with the Security Council resolutions and 1267 committee's rules of procedure for China to place a technical hold on the listing of Masood Azhar," she said.



Stating that the relevant rules are in the public domain of the UN for all to verify, she said "in accordance with the rules of procedures of the 1267 Committee, the Committee encourages communications between countries that ask for the listing and countries where individuals and entities in the listing come from and live in."



Stating that China and India are victims of terrorism and have similar stances on the issues of counterterrorism, she said "the Chinese side supports the central coordination role of the UN in the international cooperation against terrorism and takes active part in this regard".


China today said it had expressed concern to India through diplomatic channels over granting visa to Chinese dissident Dolkun Isa before it was revoked by New Delhi and hoped that the two sides would properly deal with the issue.





"We have noted relevant report. At first we saw that India planned to issue visa to Dolkan, we expressed our concern to the Indian side immediately," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing here when asked about India cancelling the visa.



"Dolkan is on the red notice of Interpol and we believe that it is the responsibility of all the countries to bring him to justice," she said.



"At the moment China and India are in very good communication and we hope the two countries will properly deal with the relevant issue," she said.



Later officials said China has conveyed its concerns to India through diplomatic channels.

It is not a protest but China's concerns has been conveyed to India, they said.



Isa, who heads the World Uyghur Congress, which campaigns for rights of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province which is in turmoil for several years over protests against the settlements of Hans from different parts of the country.



Xinjiang, which has over 10 million Uyghur population of Turkik-origin, was on the boil for several years over Uyghur protests against the large-scale settlements of Hans from different part of the country.



China blames al Qaeda-backed East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) for the violence in Xinjiang and other parts of the country.



Chinese officials allege that Isa provided funding and training to ETIM militants to facilitate their terrorist activities.



Earlier, a Chinese state-run Think Tank said the cancellation of Isa's visa by India will contribute to healthy development of relations between the two countries and it shows their common views in fighting terrorism and separatism.



"India has made a cogitative decision, and shows the common views of China and India in fighting terrorism and separatism, and the determination of further cooperation," Fu Xiaoqiang, an expert on South Asian studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times.



"It will contribute to the healthy development of relations between China and India," Hu said.
A suspected Indian Mujahideen terrorist was arrested today by Maharashtra ATS in connection with the 2011 serial bomb blasts in which 26 people were killed.





The terror suspect was nabbed from the city airport this morning and produced before a local court, which sent him in 10-day ATS custody.



"We arrested one Zainul Abedin, a suspected IM terrorist, from the airport this morning. We produced him in the court and got his remand for ten days," a senior Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) official said.



"We will be questioning him in connection with the 2011 Mumbai serial blasts case," he said.



A red corner (RC) notice was issued against the accused, based on which the ATS sleuths of Kalachowki unit arrested him, police said.



According to police, Abedin was allegedly responsible for supplying explosives for operations of the banned outfit, blamed in the past for a string of terror strikes in various parts of the country.



Besides the Maharashtra ATS, Abedin was also wanted by the anti-terror wings of Karnataka and Gujarat Police, and NIA.



Three co-ordinated bomb explosions occurred in Opera House, Zaveri Bazaar and Dadar West on July 13, 2011, killing 26 people and injuring nearly 130 others.
TRAI today told the Supreme Court that it has to safeguard 100 crore telecom subscribers and if companies agree to compensate call drops with equal number of free calls to consumers without pre-conditions then it is open to re-consider its direction imposing penalty on them.





"If Telenor can offer free call for every call drops under its scheme 'call katega-muft call milega', then other service providers can also do so but it should be without any provisos. If they agree to do so, then we are open to considering it," Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said.



Rohatgi, appearing for Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), before a bench of justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman, said that the issue is that telecom companies never agree to any of the arrangements suggested to them by the regulator for compensating the consumers.



"We have to safeguard the interest of 100 crores of subscribers. We suggested the service providers to re-credit the time back to the consumers for the call drop, we asked them to give free calls but every time they say it is not feasible," Rohatgi said.



He said the Telenor scheme also has a proviso that the free calls will be given for every call drop but that call has to be made on intra network and not inter network and second the free calls has to be made in 24 hours.



"If the telcos agree that there will be no provisos of any kind and they are ready to give free calls for every call drops to the consumers, then we are open to looking into our regulations penalizing them," Rohatgi said.



The bench said then why TRAI has not asked other service providers also to follow free call compensation arrangement for call drops.



"They (Telcos) said re-crediting timing is not possible as it has to be done in two days which is not possible if a person is on roaming for more than two days. They said giving free calls is also not feasible to them. We were left with no other option," the AG said.



COAI, a body of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India and 21 telecom operators, including Vodafone, Bharti Airtel and Reliance, have challenged the Delhi High Court order upholding TRAI's decision making it mandatory for them to compensate subscribers for call drops from this January.



The Attorney General further said that telecom companies are responsible for majority of the call drops attributable to the networks but they don't bother to invest on technology.

"Majority of the call drops are attributable to them but they are not interested in investing. They are just interested in filling their coffers," he said while justifying the penalty imposed on telecom service providers.



TRAI also claimed that by call drops, these telecom companies were making profit and said 79 percent customers in India have paisa wise billing while rest of the customers are billed minute wise.



Rohatgi said that 79 percent customers with paisa wise billing have call drops, it has been found that people tend to make several split calls, which result in more billing.



He said similarly if a customer has minute wise billing and if there is any call drops after 15 seconds, he will be charged for one minute which results in more billing.



"Total of 96 percent of population is pre-paid customers. Average re-charge per day is Rs 10. More than 60-70 crore people deposit their money in advance with service providers without any interest being paid to them but when we ask these companies to compensate Rs 3 per day for call drops, then they say we can't do it," Rohatgi said.



He added that although there was no stay on the regulations either from the High Court or Supreme Court but still it has not been enforced as the telecom companies are not providing them the data of call drops.



Rohatgi said that apex court had earlier held that TRAI has to be an active trustee and not sleeping trustee and so we have to safeguard the interest of consumers as they can't come to Supreme Court for every problem.



The hearing remained inconclusive and is likely to continue tomorrow.

TRAI has earlier told the apex court that a "cartel" of 4-5 telecom firms having a billion subscribers are making Rs 250 crore a day but not making investments on their network to improve services to check call drops.



The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), on March 31, had told the apex court that TRAI cannot levy penalty through regulations as they have never exceeded the two per cent threshold limit set by the telecom regulator.



The Delhi High Court had early this year upheld the October 16, 2015 decision of TRAI, making it mandatory for cellular operators to pay consumers one rupee per call drop experienced on their networks, subject to a cap of Rs 3 a day.



The court had said the regulation was made by TRAI "keeping in mind the paramount interest of the consumer".



The telecom firms had moved the high court seeking quashing of TRAI's regulation, terming it as a "knee-jerk reaction" which penalised them without proving any wrongdoing.



The telcos had termed the regulation as "arbitrary and whimsical", contending that providing compensation to consumers amounted to interfering with their tariff structure which could be done only by order and not regulation.


BJP plans to target Sonia Gandhi and other Congress leaders on the issue of bribes in the AugustaWestland chopper deal during the UPA regime in a bid to corner the main opposition party which has been paralysing Rajya Sabha on the Uttarakhand affair.





The top brass of the BJP including its President Amit Shah and parliamentary leaders including Finance Minister Arun Jaitley met here to chalk out a strategy following media reports that an Italian court, which has convicted AugustaWestland chief Giuseppe Orsi, has reportedly described how the firm paid bribes to top Congress leaders to bag the Rs.3,600 crore deal.



The issue also figured in the BJP Parliamentary Party where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also present. Congress would also be targeted on the controversial Aircel Maxis deal and the affidavits in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case.



According to media reports, the Italian court judgement states how the firm lobbied with Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her close aides besides the then NSA M K Narayanan and the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Gandhi was described as the "driving force" by the judge behind the deal.



Subramanian Swamy, who took oath as the newly-nominated member of Rajya Sabha today and the bete noire of Congress' first family, will rake up the chopper deal issue in the Rajya Sabha for which notice has been given. Meenakshi Lekhi is expected to do the job in the Lok Sabha tomorrow.



A top BJP leader said it is significant that for the first time the bribe giver has been convicted but still people do not know who the bribe-taker is.



The Aircel Maxis issue is likely to be raked up by Anurag Thakur in the Lok Sabha while in the upper house it may be raised by Bhupender Yadav.



Similarly, the Ishrat Jahan case pot will be stirred by Kirit Somayya in the Lok Sabha.

To specific questions whether Sonia Gandhi's name would be taken up in connection with the chopper scam, a top leader refused to give a direct reply but party leaders indicated she would be targeted.



For the record, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was fielded by the BJP to attack Congress on the chopper deal. He asked the defence minister in the Manmohan Singh government A K Antony to name the party leaders allegedly involved in the scandal.



"Bribe-givers have been convicted. Why are bribe-takers silent? Antony should answer if leaders of Congress are involved in it or not. Are they from your party or not? Please come clean," he told a press conference.



The Congress hit back and said rejected any allegations against Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh saying "we reject it with the contempt they deserve".



"No one should be making loose comments. The Congress President and the former PM, whose integrity and intellect was never in question," party deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma told the media.



He said the BJP has been making irresponsible statements and wild allegations and the Congress was not going to accept this.



Sharma also claimed that a businessman "close to" Modi has entered into an MoU with AugustaWestland. But he refused to name him.



He also questioned the government why it removed AugustaWestland from the blacklist in which the UPA government had put it in.



On his part, Antony asked the Modi government to fast track the probe into the chopper scam and find out the truth as the UPA government had cancelled the contract and ordered a CBI investigation into it.



"When the primary allegation came out in the media, we immediately ordered a CBI inquiry. We cancelled the contract and fought the case in the Milan court. We won the case and got back all the money we paid in advance by bank guarantee," he told reporters.
GAUTIER, Mississippi -- The Gautier City Council is expected Tuesday night to choose from among four candidates to serve as the interim City Manager for the next few months while the city searches for a permanent replacement for Samantha Abell, who resigned earlier this month.

The four candidates are:

Former Jackson County attorney Paula Yancey

Gautier businessman Phil Torjusen

Former Bay St. Louis Mayor Eddie Favre

Former Southeast Mississippi American Red Cross director Paige Roberts

Paula Yancey

Gautier City Councilman Casey Vaughn said Tuesday afternoon he didn't believe the council had reached a consensus choice and would instead make the decision after meeting with the four candidates in executive session during Tuesday night's special call meeting.

"I've spoken to Hurley Ray (Guillotte) and Mary Martin and neither indicated to me a preference," Vaughn said.

Gautier Mayor Gordon Gollott agreed with Vaughn's assessment that no consensus is in place.

"We're going to interview the four people tonight and then go into discussion," Gollott said. "We may elect to appoint someone tonight, or some (council members) may want to wait until next Tuesday City Attorney Josh Danos has indicated a willingness to continue as the interim manager for another week.

"He just doesn't want to do it for a prolonged period until we hire a permanent manager," Gollott said.

Notably absent from the list of candidates is Gautier Fire Chief Robert Jones, who Abell had recommended as her successor. Vaughn said, however, the council opted not to consider any in-house candidates.

"The city attorney advised us that anyone we appointed who was already a city employee would have to resign from their current position," Vaughn said. "So we didn't even consider that. We thought it best to get somebody from outside."

Once an interim manager is in place, Vaughn said the next step will be to select a firm to conduct the search for a permanent city manager. Vaughn was asked if there was a timetable for having the new manager in place.

"As soon as possible," Vaughn said when asked. "We're hopeful we can have someone in about three months. We can advertise for a month, interview the top candidates and then go from there."

Abell resigned April 5 after the city council rejected her succession plan, which called for her to remain city manager for another two months and train her successor, which she recommended be Jones. The council instead accepted her resignation effective immediately.

Human Resources Director Jason Pugh served as the "person responsible for the city" for the next two days Danos took the interim role to allow the city time to solicit candidates to serve as the interim manager for an extended period.

The Gautier City Manger earns a salary of $88,000 annually, but there are no medical benefits.
Hitting back at BJP on the VVIP chopper deal, Congress today sought to know why was Agusta Westland removed from the blacklisted category by the Modi dispensation.



Rejecting the accusations levelled against the party in the deal, Congress leader and former Union Minister Anand Sharma said, "The chopper deal was scrapped. Action was taken by the UPA government. A K Antony, the then Defence Minister had made a statement in Parliament and Agusta Westland was blacklisted.



"Probe was ordered by the UPA Government  both by the ED and the CBI," he told reporters. BJP is planning to target Congress President Sonia Gandhi and other party leaders on the issue of payment of bribes in the Augusta Westland chopper deal during the UPA rule in a bid to corner the main opposition party which has been paralysing Rajya Sabha on the Uttarakhand issue.



Sharma claimed that instead of putting the probe on the fast track, the Modi government removed Agusta Westland from the blacklisted category so that it "could bid for some projects of Navy as part of the Prime Minister's Make in India programme".



"What prompted the BJP government to reverse the decision of blacklisting," he asked insisting that the UPA government had been proactive in the probe once it came to know that some corruption was involved.



"We took the matter to the Milan court, to the Naples prosecutor," he said.

The Congress leader's reactions came following media reports that an Italian court, which has convicted Augusta Westland chief Giuseppe Orsi, has reportedly referred to how the firm paid bribes to top Congress leaders to bag the Rs 3,600 crore deal.

About allegations against Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the matter, Sharma said, "We reject them with the contempt they deserve".



"No one should be making loose comments against Congress President and Manmohan Singh whose integrity and intellect was never in question," he said.



Noting that he was not privy to the Italian court's documents, Sharma took a dig at BJP saying perhaps the "ruling party has got a special interpretation and translators team at their headquarters".



"BJP has been making irresponsible statements and the Congress is not going to accept this. They have been hurling wild accusations. We are not running away from debate. Why the probe is not over in the last two years," he said.



The Congress' counter-attack came close on the heels of BJP using the conviction of Italian officials linked to the VVIP chopper scam to target the former. The saffron party has asked A K Antony to name the party leaders allegedly involved in the scandal.



BJP wanted to know who were the "bribe takers" after those who allegedly gave the bribe were convicted by an Italian court.



Addressing a press conference earlier in the day, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Antony had in March 2013 admitted corruption had taken place in the purchase of VVIP choppers and that bribe had been taken. He asked Antony to come clean on the whole issue.


The 108-carat famed Koh-i-Noor diamond cannot be brought back to Pakistan as it was handed over to the UK under the 'Treaty of Lahore' in 1849, provincial Punjab government today told the high court here.





"Maharaja Ranjeet Singh had inked the agreement with the East India Company in 1849 under which the precious diamond was given to the UK. Therefore, the UK government cannot be approached for return of the diamond," a law officer of the provincial government told the court during the hearing of a plea seeking direction for the Pakistan government to bring back Koh-i-Noor, which India has also been trying to get from the UK for years.



Petitioner Barrister Javed Iqbal Jaffrey, however, opposed the government's plea, arguing, "both governments were not authorised under the law of the land to sign such an agreement."



LHC Justice Khalid Mahmood Khan directed the government's counsel to submit a copy of the agreement between then Maharaja Ranjit Singh and the East India Company on the next hearing on May 2.



In his plea, Barrister Jaffrey has alleged that Britain had snatched the diamond from

Daleep Singh, grandson of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh and took it to the United Kingdom.



"The diamond became part of the crown of incumbent Queen Elizabeth-II at the time of her crowing in 1953. Queen Elizabeth has no right on the Koh-i-Noor diamond, which weighs 105 carats and worth billions of rupees," he said.



He claimed that Koh-i-Noor diamond was "cultural heritage" of Punjab province and its citizens owned it in fact, it said and prayed to the court to direct the federal government to bring the diamond back to Pakistan from the British government.



The Indian Government had recently said that it will make all efforts to bring back the valued diamond, even as it had earlier told the Supreme Court that the diamond was neither stolen nor "forcibly" taken by British rulers but given to East India

Company by erstwhile rulers of Punjab 167 years back as compensation for helping them in the Sikh wars.
An outlawed Al-Qaeda outfit today claimed responsibility for the brutal killing of Bangladesh's first gay magazine editor and his friend here for "pioneering" homosexuality in the Muslim-majority country which has seen a string of murders of secular activists and bloggers.



Xulhaz Mannan, the editor of 'Roopban' - the only magazine in Bangladesh advocating gay rights - and his friend Tanay Majumder were killed yesterday by armed assailants who entered the flat impersonating as courier company officials, police said as they detained a college student in connection with the twin murders.

The Al-Qaeda in the Indian Sub continent (AQIS) claimed responsibility for killing the duo, saying that the two were because they were "pioneers of promoting and practicing homosexuality."



"The mujahidin of Ansar al-Islam (AQIS, Bangladesh branch) were able to assassin Xulhaz Mannan and his associate Tanay Majumder. They were the pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh," the AQIS said in a Twitter post.



"They were working day and night to promote homosexuality among the people of this land with the help of their masters, the US crusaders and its Indian allies," it said.



Bangladesh police have detained a college student and claimed to have found some "important evidence". Senior Assistant Police Commissioner Shibli Noman said that police found a bag used by the assailants which appeared as "important evidence" in investigating the case.



A police officer chased the killers and managed to snatch a bag from them as they were fleeing the scene, Noman said, adding that the officer was also injured in the scuffle.



One police official said they found several items including a mobile phone in the bag.

Mannan, 35, a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni and ex-protocol officer of the US embassy, was known for his gay rights activism.



Majumder, the other victim, was also a LGBT activist. The assailants barged into Mannan's flat on the second floor and stabbed him and his friend indiscriminately, Abdul Bari, a sub-inspector of Special Branch (SB) of police, was quoted as saying by the Daily Star.



The two died immediately on the spot. Shocked by the double murders, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has ordered police to nab the killers and bring them to justice. US Secretary of State John Kerry has condemned the "barbaric murder" of Mannan, who also worked with the US embassy in Bangladesh.



US Ambassador Marcia Bernicat, meanwhile, asked Bangladesh in the "strongest terms" to apprehend the criminals behind the murder of her colleague Mannan.



Amnesty International's South Asia director Champa Patel said the brutal killing today of an editor of an LGBT publication and his friend, days after a university professor was hacked to death, underscores the "appalling "lack of protection being afforded to a range of peaceful activists in the country.



The killings came two days after the grisly murder of liberal university professor Rezaul Karim Siddiquee in the northern Rajshahi city. The attack was claimed by the ISIS.



There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners.

Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home.



In February, a head priest was killed at a Hindu temple in an area bordering India, the first attack by the ISIS targeting the community. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch today asked the Bangladeshi authorities to immediately investigate the killings of two LGBT activists.



"The slaughter of two men advocating the basic rights of Bangladesh's beleaguered LGBT community should prompt a thorough investigation, aimed at prosecuting those responsible," said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

"The government needs to protect activists and to call a halt to the impunity that links this chain of vicious murders," she said.



The statement said that the prime minister has promised to take action against the attacks, but authorities appointed by her have instead prosecuted bloggers for "hurting people's religious sentiments."



The government should use laws and law enforcement to protect, not harass and prosecute LGBT people, the HRW said.




Chairman of Cabinet sub-committee on drought T B Jayachandra said, funds were not a constraint for taking up drought-relief measures, especially to provide drinking water.



He was chairing a meeting of officials, held to review the situation before setting out on the visit to drought-hit taluks in the district to inspect progress of relief works, here, on Tuesday.



Jayachandra, also law minister, said, the officials had been given a free hand to spend the funds under various heads for the benefit of farmers.



Due to the presence of KRS reservoir in the region, Mysuru is generally perceived to be well placed in terms of water availability. However, the Cauvery water does not reach all parts of the district, hence, five taluks have been declared as drought-hit. The remaining two taluks of Mysuru and K R Nagar too are facing problems. So, the officials concerned have been directed to take steps to tackle the problems on a war footing, he said.



Deficit rainfall



Earlier, Deputy Commissioner C Shikha said the average deficit of rainfall in Mysuru district this year was 70 per cent and 1,720 borewells in a total of 2,008 human habitations had been reported to be failures.



Out of 500 natural sources of water in the district, 200 have dried up. But, as of now there is no problem for drinking water. However, if no rains are received in the next 15 days, there will be problems. Even then, the district administration has sufficient funds and is ready to tackle the situation. The district received Rs 16.52 crore towards drinking water projects this year and Rs 11.17 crore has been spent so far, she added.



No summer crop



Pointing out that there has been no summer crop this year, she said, agriculture labourers had thus been enrolled under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in huge numbers this year.



While 11,982 man-days were provided in 2014-15 and 5,512 man-days in 2015-16, this year, so far 50,105 man-days have been provided at a cost of Rs 67 crore to 13,990 workers, she said.



Ministers Dinesh Gundurao, Dr H C Mahadevappa, H S Mahadev Prasad and MLAs H P Manjunath, Chikkamaadu, G T Devegowda, Vasu and Tanveer Sait were present.

As District In-charge Minister V Srinivas Prasad is heading a sub-committee that is touring Bengaluru region, he was not present in the meeting.


The BJP targeted Congress chief Sonia Gandhi as part of an all-out offensive in Parliament against the scam in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland deal for VVIP choppers.



The party has seized upon on the judgment of an Italian court investigating the role of officials of defence manufacturer Finmeccanica  Agustas parent company  in bribing politicians and officers in India as it has cited documents that name Signora Gandhi.



As details of the Italian court order emerged, the BJP discussed its strategy in Parliament at a weekly meeting attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the case had proved that the Congress is all about scams and the opposition party had to answer.



Senior BJP leaders said the Italian court, in its judgment convicting AgustaWestland chief Giuseppe Orsi, described how the firm paid bribes to top Congress leaders in India and lobbied with them to bag the Rs 3,600-crore deal.



They held that the judgment exposed the Congress role in pushing the deal and accused the erstwhile UPA government for not cooperating with the Italian probe team.



The 225-page judgment of the appeal court in Milan had annexed several documents, including handwritten notes exchanged between the middlemen, stating how the total commission of 30 million euros (Rs 250 crore) was given to Indias political leaders, bureaucrats and Air Force officials.


Japan will make public by the end of this year two classified files containing crucial information about Indias legendary independence struggle icon Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.



Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju on Tuesday told the Lok Sabha that Tokyo had conveyed to New Delhi that the Japanese Government had found altogether five files containing information about Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.



Tokyo responded to a request by New Delhi to share with it the files, which the Japanese Government might have and which might be looked into for information that could help resolve the mystery surrounding his so-called death in a plane crash in 1945.



New Delhi made the request after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met some of Netajis family members at his official residence in New Delhi in October 2015, and promised not only to release the classified government files, but also to request governments of other relevant countries to share information that could help resolve the mystery.



Japan has five files relating to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose which are going to be very crucial. They have decided to declassify two files by the end of this year. We are hopeful, Rijiju told the Lok Sabha during Question Hour, adding: Three more files are there (with the Japanese Government) which they have not committed about yet. So, we are hopeful for those files also.



Austria did not find any material related to Netaji. Russia, too, conveyed to India that it had no document pertaining to Netaji. The UK declassified 62 relevant files, all of which are now available in the British Library. Germany put all the files related to Netaji from 1945, in its archives and they can be seen by everyone. The US did not have any document related to Netaji.



So, we have done everything possible about wherever Netajis documents could be found, said Rijiju, replying to supplementary questions.


The Lok Sabha on Tuesday witnessed a face-off between the Modi government and the Opposition with Agriculture Minister Radhamohan Singh accusing the previous Congress regime of pandering to the sugar industry in drought-hit Marathwada and ignoring the farmers.



The trigger for the war-of-words was a poser from Shiv Sena member Sadashiv Lokhande during the Question Hour on making 21 drought-hit districts in Marathwada loan-free.



As Singh went about listing central aid extended to Maharashtra over the years, Congress member Rajiv Satav sought to remind the minister that the question was about making districts loan-free.



An agitated Singh hit back at Satav asking the Congress member to have patience and the courage to listen to the reply. Singhs refrain was that the Modi government had sanctioned more funds than the previous Congress-led regime.



It is a misfortune of Marathwada that 90% of farms do not get water despite the presence of big dams. The dams were built to serve the needs of the sugar mills and farmers did not get any benefits to irrigate their farms, the agriculture minister said. Though the Shiv Sena shares power with the BJP in Maharashtra, the allies are often at loggerheads.



The Shiv Sena loses no opportunity to pinprick the BJP. The Lok Sabha witnessed another round of heated exchange when Singh accused the previous UPA government of delaying release of funds for the MGNREGA.


The Centre on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that international arbitration proceedings involving two Italian marines, accused of killing two fishermen off Kerala coast in 2012, would be completed by December, 2018.





The court, however, extended the stay of one of the marines Massimiliano Latorre in Italy till September 30. Latorre, along with other Naval officer Salvatore Girone, is accused of killing the fishermen .



A bench of Justices A R Dave, Kurian Joseph and Amitava Roy, meanwhile, asked the Italian authority here to give a fresh undertaking by April 30 to abide by the conditions under which Latorre was allowed to leave India.



Latorres earlier extension for stay in Italy is to come to an end by April 30. The court refused to allow a plea by senior advocate Soli Sorabjee, on behalf of Latorre for his stay in Italy till the year end. A counsel, appearing for victim fishermen, objected to the identical relief of allowing the other accused marine Salvatore Girone to leave India.



The SC said that it has been told to the tribunal that India has the freedom to go ahead with the trial. On August 26 last year, the court had suspended all proceedings here in pursuance of an interim order of the ITLOS (International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea) asking India to maintain status quo in the case.




Their frustrations over lack of water for irrigation apart, the Cauvery delta farmers are holding the key to the May 16 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.



Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Nagapattinam, consisting of more than 20 constituencies, produce 25 lakh tonnes of paddy each year over the Samba and Kuruvai seasons in 20 lakh hectares.



Despite claims and counter-claims by the ruling AIADMK and the DMK that they have brought several welfare schemes to the districts, farmers continue to place Cauvery Management Board their foremost demand. They also ask the government to increase the procurement rate for paddy.



Indeed, various farmers associations in the Delta region felt incredulous about DMK president M Karunanidhis announcement that the procurement price will be increased from the existing Rs 15 per kilo to Rs 2,500. How could that be increased to Rs 2,500? asks Cauvery Delta Farmers Welfare Association president S Ranganathan. The procurement issue will be decided by the Centre. All we want is an increase of Rs 22 per kg from the existing Rs 15.20/kg.



He lamented that politicians only pay lip service about constituting CMB. They make all lofty promises about the Cauvery issue on the election trail. Nothing has been done practically, Ranganathan said.



As the May-September Kuruvai season approaches, water levels are dipping rapidly in all major reservoirs, leaving the region with the prospect of a severe water crises.



We could manage with ground water for paddy cultivation, but if water is not released in time all the crops would dry up, said Selvam, a farmer from Thanjavur.



Selvam said the farmers know how to earn and rejected the lure of free electricity and freebies. All we need is water at the right time, he said.



It was not a surprise that the farmers keep records of water release on their fingertips. Last year, Karnataka released only 139 TMC against the total of about 200 TMC. We cultivated both Samba and Kuruvai crops on time thanks to good rains, Shanmugavel, another farmer, said. Shanmugavel said more farmers are giving up paddy cultivation and are switching to sugarcane.




Debt burden coupled with severe consecutive drought might have been forcing a large number of farmers to end their lives. However, a state-government survey has found the farmers were prompt in loan repayment.





Faced with criticism from his own party legislators over lethargy in administration, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had recently got a rapid assessment survey done of flagship programmes of his government  Anna Bhagya, Krishi Bhagya, Ksheera Bhagya and interest-free farm loans. And he has ensured that his government got a pat on its back with its survey finding efficient implementation of these programmes.



The Planning, Programme Monitoring and Statistics (PPMS) department has done the survey, covering all 784 hoblis of the state. The sample size of the survey, conducted between December 2015 and March 2016, was, however, not impressive compared to the total number of beneficiaries. The chief minister had announced all the four programmes even before properly settling in his chair.



About 94% of 2,335 farmers surveyed said they were repaying farm loans, and only about 6% of them said they had not been able to repay the loans extended by various cooperative societies. The survey, however, did not cover farmers who have borrowed money from private moneylenders.



A record 1,324 farmers committed suicide in Karnataka in 2015-16. One of the main reasons cited by the government was debt burden. Agriculture Minister Krishna Byre Gowda had informed the Legislative Assembly in the last session that about 447 farmers had committed suicide due to debt burden.



The government's decision to cut the quantum of rice under Anna Bhagya has apparently not gone down well with the beneficiaries. About 73% of 2,256 BPL families have said the monthly supply of food grains was not sufficient. Even 50% of 2,232 Antyodaya Anna Yojane (AAY) families have said food grains given to them under Anna Bhagya was insufficient. BPL families get five kg rice per person free of cost. AAY families get 35 kg rice per month free of cost. Both categories of families get 1 kg each of sugar, palm oil and salt, every month at a subsidised rate.



An interesting finding of the survey is that many schoolchildren have said they do not consume milk provided under Ksheera Bhagya because of bad smell. Of the 642 children who said they do not drink the milk, 174 children cited bad smell as the reason.




Instructing the officials to visit drought-hit villages and respond to the problems of people, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that deputy commissioner and zilla panchayat (ZP) chief executive officer would be held responsible for mismanagement of the drought situation, while action would also be taken against other officials, based on the report from the DC.





Chairing a district-level drought review meeting here on Tuesday, Siddaramaiah asked the officials to work on a war footing to ensure proper drinking water supply, availability of fodder, increased number of man days under MGNREG scheme and proper healthcare in affected areas.



New borewells should be dug and defunct borewells should be recharged, wherever required. If needed, take over private borewells by paying them the rent. More fodder banks and goshala should be opened in the affected area. Transportation of fodder from Karnataka to other states should be stopped, but there should be no restriction on inter-district fodder movement in the state, he said.



District in-charge secretaries should clear bottlenecks and technical problems in executing such works, and there is no shortage of funds, Siddaramaiah noted. Earlier, the chief minister visited select villages, including Bandiwad, Gudenakatti and Yerinarayanapur among others in Hubballi and Kundgol taluks to review the drought situation and relief works. The government has embarked upon a plan to rejuvenate dried tanks and thereby mitigate drinking water crisis.



Speaking to mediapersons in Dharwad on Tuesday, the chief minister said that the tank desilting works would be taken up under the MGNREG scheme, and later a programme to refill the tank would be launched. This would help the labourers get work, beside rejuvenate the dried tanks. On crop loss, Siddaramaiah said, The state has suffered a crop loss of Rs 7,000 crore in Rabi season. The government had sought R 1,416 crore from the Centre to compensate the farmers for crop loss. The Union Home Ministry is learnt to have, agreed in principle, to release Rs 723 crore on Monday evening.



He continued saying that the farmers in the state had incurred a loss of over Rs 16,000 crore in Kharif season. The Centre, however, after much delay has sanctioned Rs 1,450 crore, he said.


Stung by the sting operation in which he was shown offering liquor to his guests, Congress legislator from Narkatiaganj, Bihar, Vinay Verma has said he was a teetotaller and had been framed by those whom he had trounced in the last year Assembly polls.





Verma was shown, in a 10-minute sting by a private news channel, having liquor at his home. I am vegetarian and a teetotaller. The question of having liquor does not arise at all. But yes, its true that when a group of journalist wanted to talk to me on tourism, I agreed to their request and talked about Valmiki Nagar Tiger Reserve. During the conversation, they asked me about prohibition. I said I welcomed Nitish Jis move. I also said that liquor was available in Nepal, close to Narkatiaganj. But no where did I offer any liquor to anyone, clarified the first-term legislator.



Show-cause notice



Meanwhile, the Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee (BPCC) is planning to issue a show-cause notice to its MLA against whom a case has been lodged at the Pataliputra police station under the new Excise Act. We will issue a show cause to Verma. Suitable action will be taken against him after his reply, said BPCC chief Ashok Choudhary, who is also Bihars Education Minister in Nitish Cabinet.



Meanwhile, senior BJP leader and former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi on Tuesday said that most of the ruling party MLAs in Bihar were having liquor secretly, even though they had pledged not to drink.



The JD (U), however, reacted strongly to Modis charge. Modi should prove his allegation or be ready to face a defamation suit, said JD (U) spokesperson Sanjay Singh.



In the meantime, the toddy tappers staged dharna here on Tuesday demanding the Nitish government to roll back its decision to ban toddy. We appeal to the chief minister not to ban toddy as it is not liquor. Otherwise, the move will ruin the livelihood of toddy tappers, said president of Akhil Bharatiya Pasi Samaj, Jagdish Choudhary.


A meeting between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan here on Tuesday failed to mark the restart of bilateral dialogue, but ended with the usual exchange of rhetorics.



Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar made it clear to his Pakistani counterpart, Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry, that Islamabad would have to ensure early and visible progress in trial of the plotters of 26/11 Mumbai attacks, as well as in the probe into the January 2-5 attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, Punjab.



Chaudhry sought to underscore Kashmir as a core issue between India and Pakistan. He conveyed concerns over purported moves in India to release prime suspects of the February 19, 2007, blasts on the Samjhauta Express, which killed 42 Pakistanis.



Chaudhry cited the recent arrest of former Indian Navy officer Kul Bhushan Yadav in Pakistan to accuse New Delhi of fomenting trouble in his country. The allegation was dismissed by Jaishankar.



A source quoted Jaishankar asking Chaudhry which country would put its agent in the field with passport issued by its own government. Yadav had a passport issued by the Indian government when he was arrested. Jaishankar reiterated New Delhis demand for immediate consular access to Yadav.



The two foreign secretaries met in New Delhi on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process meet  a multilateral forum for discussing cooperation to help reconstruction in war-ravaged Afghanistan.



A statement released by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Jaishankar clearly conveyed to Chaudhry that Pakistan could not be in denial on the impact of terrorism on the bilateral relationship.



Terrorist groups based in Pakistan targeting India must not be allowed to operate with impunity, said Vikas Swarup, MEA spokesperson.



He referred to Indias plea to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for imposing sanctions on Pakistan-based cleric Masood Azhar, who leads the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and, according to New Delhi, masterminded the Pathankot attack.



While the meeting was on, the High Commission of Pakistan here put out a brief statement on the parleys, a move, which according to officials in New Delhi, was a blatant violation of basic diplomatic protocol.
Two days after the #KillBills Campaign was launched by the Bangalore Political Action Committee (B PAC), the flexes and hoardings have reappeared in Indiranagar, one of the wards where the drive took place.





On spotting the ugly posters again, members of I change Indiranagar, a citizens group, took up the drive and removed close to 200 flexes in the locality, specially on 12th main,HAL second stage; Double Road and 100 feet road.



According to residents, the flexes have been put up by Agarwal Eye Clinic located on 12th Main and also by politicians. Sneha Nandihal, a member of I change Indiranagar, said, We had cleared all the flexes and bills on April 24, but again they have cropped up, which is disappointing.



Praveen Sundaram, another volunteer, said that despite the ban on unauthorised hoardings and posters, people continue to flout rules. Sarfaraz Khan, the BBMP joint commissioner for Yelahanka zone - who is also the JC for Solid Waste Management (SWM) - promised that he would book cases against the violators. The other wards where the campaign took place are Sanjaynagar, Radhakrishna Temple, HSR Layout, Malleswaram (Gayathrinagar ward), Sampangiramanagar, Mahalakshmipuram, Domlur and Bellandur.
The Horticultural Producers Co-operative Marketing and Processing Society Limited (Hopcoms) will organise a four-day exhibition-cum-sale of India-China apples and pears at Lalbagh starting Thursday.



Ten varieties of apples from the United States, Turkey and China will be on display but only four varieties of apples from China will be up for sale.

Hopcoms managing director Belluru Krishna told reporters on Tuesday that the event would give people an opportunity to buy imported apples at a discount of 10-15%. Hopcoms president G R Srinivasan said that 22 tonnes of apple imported from China would be sold at the fair. We hope to sell the entire stock. Based on the response, we will place an order for the next fair, he said. While March is off-season for India-produced apples, China preserves the fruit for sale in off-season.



On the inaugural day of the event, farmers from Karnataka will take part in an interactive

session and get the opportunity to explore business options with Chinese importers. Nearly 13 importers will attend the session. Sophie Jiang, a representative of Baishui Shenglong Fruits Industry Co Ltd, said she was glad to do business in Bengaluru for the first time and expected a good consumer response as a rich variety of apples was brought here from her country.


The police have arrested a ten-member gang of Nepalese nationals for burgling a High Court advocates house and stealing Rs 30 lakh worth of jewellery and cash.





They also suspect the gangs involvement in burglaries at rich individuals houses across Bengaluru. The gang worked in close tandem. Its members mostly did odd jobs like security guards, helpers in hotels and manual labourers. They targeted rich peoples houses, burgled them and went into hiding on the remote outskirts of the city.



They often fled to Nepal where they invested the money in property and small businesses. Once the money was spent, they would come back to Bengaluru and commit more crimes.



The police went after the gang after Suresh Lathru, a High Court advocate, reported that his house was burgled in Amruthahalli, northeast Bengaluru, on April 20.



As the police got on the job, they found that Naresh Khatyat, a security guard working at Lathrus house, had gone missing after the incident. Investigators managed to trace him to Nelamangala where he was staying with his wife Monica at the house of her father Dil Bahadur.



The police interrogated the three people and learnt that a bigger gang was involved. They extracted information about other members and hunted them down. The police identified the other remembers as Dhanbahadur Thapa, D B Bharat Bohara, Prakash Kumar, Narendra Bahadur, Dil Bahadur alias Dhirga, Mahesh Bahadur and Gorhak Bahadur.



According to the police, Prakash had helped Khatyat get the job at the advocates house. Once Khatyat started working there, he learnt that a large amount of jewellery and cash was kept in the house.



He revealed the information to his associates and the gang decided to strike at the house. They stole 600 grams of gold and 300 grams of silver jewellery, all valued at Rs 25 lakh. They also took away Rs 5.87 lakh in cash.



The suspects were living in places like Fraser Town, Hebbal, Marathahalli, Nelamangala and Malur road and adopted different names. They would get together and hatch plans to burgle houses. They targeted only rich peoples houses and went into hiding on the outskirts after committing the crime, a senior police officer said.



The officer further said that several cases were registered against the gang members and an investigation was going on.
The city police on Tuesday arrested an electrician and detained his accomplice in connection with the murder of an elderly couple at their house on Coles Road in Fraser Town.



It was a murder for gain and the duo had made away with Rs 50,000 and gold ornaments after killing Parvathraj, 61, and his wife Chandrakala, 55, on April 22, the police said. They have arrested Premchand Jain, 35, of KG Halli, and detained Chandrashekhar, a resident of RT Nagar, for questioning.



Jain was known to the couple for the past 15 years as he executed electrical works for them. He borrowed money from the couple on interest. Jain and Chandrashekhar became friends after they met at a bar about five years.



Jain confessed to the crime during interrogation, Additional Commissioner of Police (East) P Harishekaran told reporters on Tuesday.



Chandrashekhars wife called him up on April 20 when he was in Hyderabad, his native place, attending a wedding along with Jain. She asked him to rush back to the city due to a death in the family and requested him to arrange money for the funeral.



Chandrashekhar sought Jains help for this and the two flew to Bengaluru on April 21.



The duo bought two knives in Gangammanagudi. They could not execute the plan on April 21 as the couple had several visitors that day. They met Chandrakala on April 22 around noon and Jain requested her to lend him money.



Chandrakala asked him to pledge ornaments and collect the money and the two went away, police said.



They consumed liquor at a bar and returned to the couples house. She did not discuss the matter as her relative Nataraj was around and asked them to come later.



The duo returned in the evening and went upstairs. Jain told Parvathraj that he wanted to check the water pipelines. He took Parvathraj down, while Chandrashekhar stabbed Chandrakala. Minutes later, Jain went upstairs and Parvathraj followed him. The duo held him and stabbed him 25 times. They packed Rs 50,000 and the ornaments kept in the cupboard.



They also collected ornaments that Chandrakala was wearing. Chandrashekhar cut the wrists of the two to ensure that they were dead, before leaving, police said.



The mobile phone call details and information provided by local residents helped the police zero in on Jain. He was found moving around suspiciously in RT Nagar and the police picked him up in the early hours of Tuesday.
The Indian Coast Guard ship Shoor was given a ceremonious welcome on its arrival at the New Mangaluru Port on Tuesday morning.





The ship was commissioned by Nitin Jairam Gadkari, Union Shipping, Road Transport and Highways Minister, at Goa on April 11.



During the formal function, K R Suresh Indian Coast Guard Deputy Inspector General (Karnataka), welcomed the crew at NMPT, and said that ICG is the fourth largest coast guard in the world.



NMPT Chairman P C Parida, who was the chief guest, said that the potential of maritime security has been increased with the commissioning of Shoor.



Deputy Commissioner A B Ibrahim said that the Indian coast guard has been giving its yeoman service to protect the western coast. Along with carrying out sea patrolling, it has rescued a lot of fishermen.



Principal District and Sessions Judge M G Uma and Department of Customs Commissioner Dr M Subramaniam were present among others.



Shoor is the largest ship of Karnataka Coast Guard and is the second in the series of six 105 metres Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPV). The operations of Shoor will ensure better maritime protection in the western coast.



ICGS Shoor is equipped with advanced navigation and communication instruments, sensors and machinery. A 30 mm CRN 91 Naval Gun, an Integrated Bridge System, an Integrated Machinery Control System, a Power Management System and a High Power External Fire Fighting System are the salient features of the vessel.



The ship is capable of carrying one twin-engine light helicopter, five high-speed boats and pollution-response equipment to fight oil spill contamination at sea.



The ship is also equipped with a helo deck.



The other operations of ICGS Shoor include fast boarding operations, search and rescue, law enforcement and maritime patrol.



The ship has a maximum speed of 23 knots and its endurance is 6,000 nautical miles. The ship draws 2350 tonnes (GRT) and is propelled by two 9100 KW diesel engines.



ICGS Shoor has a complement of 14 officers and 98 men and is commanded by Deputy Inspector General Surendra Singh Dasila.



The ship will be berthed at New Mangalore Port Trust.


Nebraska and Oklahoma are trying again to overturn marijuana legalization in Colorado, this time by asking to intervene in an ongoing court case.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a proposed lawsuit brought against Colorado by the two states, leaving the states without a court to hear their complaints. Earlier this month, Nebraska and Oklahoma responded by asking to be added to a case at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

That case is the consolidation of two separate appeals filed by legalization opponents whose lawsuits were dismissed by a lower court. Nebraska and Oklahomas motion means that all of the ongoing challenges against Colorados legalization of marijuana have, for the moment, merged into a single court case.

Since Colorado became the first state in the country to allow licensed stores to sell marijuana to anyone over 21 years old, the state has faced a barrage of lawsuits seeking to shutter the stores. So far, none has succeeded.

One lawsuit was brought by a group of county sheriffs, and another was brought by the owners of a rural property next to a marijuana grow. In both cases, the plaintiffs  backed by national anti-legalization organizations  argued that federal laws criminalizing marijuana should override state law. Federal trial court judges in Colorado dismissed both this year, prompting the appeals, which were consolidated into a single case.

This month, the attorneys general in Nebraska and Oklahoma filed a motion asking to intervene in the appeal.

This is an exceptional case involving an imperative reason for intervention, lawyers for the two states wrote in their motion.

Nebraska and Oklahoma argue that marijuana legalization in Colorado violates their sovereignty and requires them to spend more money arresting, jailing and prosecuting an increasing number of people caught bringing pot into their states. By not allowing them to participate in the case, the two states say the appeals court, may effectively decide Nebraska and Oklahomas claim before it has the chance of being litigated in front of any court.

In a response filed last week, the county of Pueblo  which is named as a defendant in the property owners lawsuit  opposed Nebraska and Oklahomas intervention.

They want to short circuit the process, the countys lawyers wrote.

There is no timeline for the 10th Circuit judges to make a decision on the states motion.

John Ingold: 303-954-1068, jingold@denverpost.com or @johningold
By Sara Malm 25 April 2016 (Daily Mail)  A Swedish park manager was among five rangers shot by elephant poachers during a fatal firefight which claimed three lives in the Democratic Republic of Congos Garamba wildlife park. Poachers entered the UNESCO world heritage site on Saturday, killing one ranger at the scene and injuring four, two of whom later died as a result of their injuries. The fatal shootout followed months of increased poaching in Garamba, during which 43 elephants have been killed, the parks management said. Rangers Richard Sungudikpio Ndingba, Rigobert Anigobe Bagale, and Dieudonne Tsago Matikuli were killed in the firefight, while park manager Erik Mararv, 30, and ranger Kenisa Adrobiago are in hospital. One of the rangers was found dead near the site of the Saturday attack, African Parks officials said. U.S. forces in the area evacuated the others, but two of them died of their injuries a day later at a military base in neighbouring Central African Republic, the organisation added. [] We are devastated by this latest loss. Rangers put their lives on the line each and every day, and are under real siege in Garamba protecting elephants from heavily incentivized and militarized poaching gangs who threaten the very survival of humans and wildlife alike African Parks chief executive Peter Fearnhead said in a statement. [ more ]

Elephant poachers shoot and kill three rangers and wound Swedish park manager at UNESCO world heritage site in Congo

24 April 2016 (African Parks)  Five members from African Parks, including four rangers and the Park Manager, sustained injuries in a shootout with elephant poachers yesterday on April 23rd, 2016 in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It is with sincere regret that we inform you that three of the Rangers, Richard Sungudikpio Ndingba, Rigobert Anigobe Bagale, and Dieudonne Tsago Matikuli have since died. Ranger Dieudonne Kanisa Adrupiako and Park Manager Erik Mararv who both sustained gunshot wounds are now in stable condition. Besides Dieudonne Tsago Matikuli whose body was recovered this morning, the other three Rangers and the Park Manager were evacuated by AFRICOM yesterday and flown to a US military base in Nzara, South Sudan. Two of the three Rangers were in critical condition and were stabilized prior to being transferred to a UN military hospital in Bria, Central African Republic (CAR). Tragically however, Rigobert Anigobe Bagale and Richard Sungudikpio Ndingba died there today. We are devastated by this latest loss. Rangers put their lives on the line each and every day, and are under real siege in Garamba protecting elephants from heavily incentivized and militarized poaching gangs who threaten the very survival of humans and wildlife alike said Peter Fearnhead, CEO of African Parks. Our heartfelt condolences are with the surviving family members of the rangers we have lost. We are extremely grateful to the support we have received from AFRICOM who provided for the timely evacuations and for the assistance of SANGARIS in CAR. We are doing everything possible to provide for all these men and their families during this very difficult time. African Parks is fortunate to have in place a Personal Accident Policy that in the event of death or an accident covers that employee and their family members in the amount of six times their annual salary, in addition to any funds raised through campaigns and generous donors. Elephants numbered around 22,000 in the late 1970s but today a fraction of their population remains. This is ground zero in the elephant poaching crisis, where elephants are slaughtered for their ivory tusks to be sold illegally by local and regional criminal networks. In 2015, Garamba tragically lost five ICCN guards and three members of the Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC) who were killed by heavily-armed elephant poachers in three separate incidents. African Parks has been managing Garamba, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, since 2005 in partnership with the Institut Congolais pour La Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), the DRCs official wildlife authority. The park, which is 4,900km2 and is part of the larger Garamba Complex of 12,500km2, is the last stronghold for elephants and giraffe in all of Congo. If you wish to help support African Parks during this time, please donate here: https://www.african-parks.org/donate To help the rangers specifically, please reference Ranger Fund in the message section of the donate page. Contact African Parks: info@african-parks.org

Phone: US: +1 646 568 1276 // South Africa +27 11 465 0050 // Netherlands: +31 343 565 019
By Morgan Erickson-Davis

22 April 2016 (mongabay.com)  The quest for gold has been stripping rainforest from around rivers in the Amazon Basin, with not even protected areas immune from mining. The situation has gotten so out of hand that the Peruvian government launched an intervention in January, destroying a slew of mining equipment and more than a thousand gallons of fuel in the southern part of the country in effort to stamp out production. But recent satellite and aerial data show this hasnt had the intended effect, with a big recent uptick in mining-related deforestation along the Upper Malinowski River inside Tambopata National Reserve. Artisanal gold mining is big in the Amazon. In southern Perus Madre de Dios Department alone, researchers estimate 30,000 miners are actively trying to glean bits of precious metal from river sediment. To separate the ore, miners commonly use mercury, a heavy metal that gloms gold particles together into a larger, more extractable mass. After its used, the mercury often escapes into the air or water, where it can accumulate neurotoxic levels downstream and up the food chain.


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The Story of an Eyewitness by Jack London

The western American city of San Francisco, California suffered a huge earthquake on April 18th, 1906.

More than three thousand people are known to have died. The true number of dead will never be known. Two hundred fifty thousand people lost their homes. Just a few hours after the terrible earthquake, a magazine named Colliers sent a telegraph message to the famous American writer Jack London. They asked Mr. London to go to San Francisco and report about what he saw.

He arrived in the city only a few hours after the earthquake. The report he wrote is called, The Story of an Eyewitness.

Not in history has a modern city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories and a few homes that were near the edge of the city. Its industrial area is gone. Its business area is gone. Its social and living areas are gone. The factories, great stores and newspaper buildings, the hotels and the huge homes of the very rich, are all gone.

Within minutes of the earthquake the fires began. Within an hour a huge tower of smoke caused by the fires could be seen a hundred miles away. And for three days and nights this huge fire moved in the sky, reddening the sun, darkening the day and filling the land with smoke.

There was no opposing the flames. There was no organization, no communication. The earthquake had smashed all of the modern inventions of a twentieth century city. The streets were broken and filled with pieces of fallen walls. The telephone and telegraph systems were broken. And the great water pipes had burst. All inventions and safety plans of man had been destroyed by thirty seconds of movement by the earth.

By Wednesday afternoon, only twelve hours after the earthquake, half the heart of the city was gone. I watched the huge fire. It was very calm. There was no wind. Yet from every side, wind was pouring in upon the city. East, west, north and south, strong winds were blowing upon the dying city.

The heated air made a huge wind that pulled air into the fire, rising into the atmosphere. Day and night the calm continued, and yet, near the flames, the wind was often as strong as a storm.

There was no water to fight the fire. Fire fighters decided to use explosives to destroy buildings in its path. They hoped this would create a block to slow or stop the fire. Building after building was destroyed. And still the great fires continued. Jack London told how people tried to save some of their possessions from the fire.

Wednesday night the whole city crashed and roared into ruin, yet the city was quiet. There were no crowds. There was no shouting and yelling. There was no disorder. I passed Wednesday night in the path of the fire and in all those terrible hours I saw not one woman who cried, not one man who was excited, not one person who caused trouble.

San Francisco Earthquake Fire

Throughout the night, tens of thousands of homeless ones fled the fire. Some were wrapped in blankets. Others carried bedding and dear household treasures.

Many of the poor left their homes with everything they could carry. Many of their loads were extremely heavy. Throughout the night they dropped items they could no longer hold. They left on the street clothing and treasures they had carried for miles.

Many carried large boxes called trunks. They held onto these the longest. It was a hard night and the hills of San Francisco are steep. And up these hills, mile after mile, were the trunks dragged. Many a strong man broke his heart that night.

Before the march of the fire were soldiers. Their job was to keep the people moving away from the fire. The extremely tired people would arise and struggle up the steep hills, pausing from weakness every five or ten feet. Often, after reaching the top of a heart-breaking hill, they would find the fire was moving at them from a different direction.

After working hour after hour through the night to save part of their lives, thousands were forced to leave their trunks and flee.

At night I walked down through the very heart of the city. I walked through mile after mile of beautiful buildings. Here was no fire. All was in perfect order. The police patrolled the streets. And yet it was all doomed, all of it. There was no water. The explosives were almost used up. And two huge fires were coming toward this part of the city from different directions.

Four hours later I walked through this same part of the city. Everything still stood as before. And yet there was a change. A rain of ashes was falling. The police had been withdrawn. There were no firemen, no fire engines, and no men using explosives. I stood at the corner of Kearney and Market Streets in the very heart of San Francisco. Nothing could be done. Nothing could be saved. The surrender was complete.

It was impossible to guess where the fire would move next. In the early evening I passed through Union Square. It was packed with refugees. Thousands of them had gone to bed on the grass. Government tents had been set up, food was being cooked and the refugees were lining up for free meals.

Late that night I passed Union Square again. Three sides of the Square were in flames. The Square, with mountains of trunks, was deserted. The troops, refugees and all had retreated.

The next morning I sat in front of a home on San Franciscos famous Nob Hill. With me sat Japanese, Italians, Chinese and Negroes. All about were the huge homes of the very rich. To the east and south of us were advancing two huge walls of fire.

I went inside one house and talked to the owner. He smiled and said the earthquake had destroyed everything he owned. All he had left was his beautiful house. He looked at me and said, The fire will be here in fifteen minutes.

Outside the house the troops were falling back and forcing the refugees ahead of them. From every side came the roaring of flames, the crashing of walls and the sound of explosives.

Day was trying to dawn through the heavy smoke. A sickly light was creeping over the face of things. When the sun broke through the smoke it was blood-red and small. The smoke changed color from red to rose to purple.

Pulling Down the Walls of Great Business Buildings

I walked past the broken dome of the City Hall building. This part of the city was already a waste of smoking ruins. Here and there through the smoke came a few men and women. It was like the meeting of a few survivors the day after the world ended.

The huge fires continued to burn on. Nothing could stop them. Mister London walked from place to place in the city, watching the huge fires destroy the city. Nothing could be done to halt the firestorm.

In the end, the fire went out by itself because there was nothing left to burn. Jack London finishes his story:

All day Thursday and all Thursday night, all day Friday and Friday night, the flames raged on. Friday night saw the huge fires finally conquered, but not before the fires had swept three-quarters of a mile of docks and store houses at the waterfront.

A Temporary Home Near the City Hall

San Francisco at the present time is like the center of a volcano. Around this volcano are tens of thousands of refugees. All the surrounding cities and towns are jammed with the homeless ones. The refugees were carried free by the railroads to any place they wished to go. It is said that more than one hundred thousand people have left the peninsula on which San Francisco stood.

Providing for homeless thousands - delivering bread at Commissary tent

The government has control of the situation, and thanks to the immediate relief given by the whole United States, there is no lack of food. The bankers and businessmen have already begun making the necessary plans to rebuild this once beautiful city of San Francisco.

"The Story of an Eyewitness" was written by Jack London and adapted by Paul Thompson. It was published in Colliers Magazine, May 5, 1906. Your narrator was Doug Johnson.

______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

smash - v. to break into many pieces; to shatter or destroy

atmosphere - n. the whole mass of air that surrounds the Earth

surrender - v. to agree to stop fighting, hiding, resisting, etc., because you know that you will not win or succeed

retreat - v. to move or go away from a place or situation especially because it is dangerous, unpleasant, etc.

survivor - n. a member of a group who continues to live after other members have died

firestorm - n. a very large fire that destroys everything in its path and produces powerful winds

jammed - v. to fill (a place) completely

______________________________________________________________

Jack London was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction. Some of his most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf. (Source: Wikipedia)
Newport, Isle of Wight, UK - 26 April 2016 - RFEL will be launching its latest core at EW Europe. The new Fractional Rate Resampler IP core, which was originally part of the company's multi-award winning ChannelCore Flex product, is now offered as a stand-alone IP core for FPGAs in response to customer requests.

The core enables input data rates to be modified to manage systems with multiple clock domains, unifying all signal paths onto a single clock domain. Arbitrary input data rates can be easily matched to support the data rates required for following algorithms such as DEMODS or CODECs. Equally, the core can be used in post filtering applications so that data rates can be optimally set to match the data rate to the output bandwidth.

This makes the core ideal for Digital Signal Process systems development, harmonising over multiple clock domains, clock domain crossing, and algorithm integration that are particularly useful for COMINT, SIGINT, Electronic Warfare (EW), radar, sonar and similar security and surveillance applications.

The architecture uses an Interpolator followed by a Low Pass Filter and a final Decimator stage, leading to the output. This enables the core to change the sample rate of a signal by an integer ratio of L/M, where L is the up-sampling interpolator factor and M is the down-sampler decimator factor. The core can be built as a static configuration (with fixed L and M values) or as run-time programmable variant (where the values for L and M can be modified in real-time). The architecture has an arbitrary internal parallelism and so can support data rates that are limited only by the resources of the FPGA that it is running on. Other key features are a complex wideband input, a high-performance filtering stage and variable bit widths.

RFEL's Fractional Rate Resampler is available as an evaluation core that allows users to integrate the solution into their wider designs for assessment. The evaluation core operates for 30 minutes, before requiring FPGA reconfiguration and can be simply upgraded to the full version by the purchase of a licence key. It is available to target Xilinx and Altera FPGAs.

Dr Alex Kuhrt, RFEL's CEO, said, "RFEL is leader in the field of providing specialist IP for EW. We are constantly reviewing and improving our portfolio of IP designed for EW applications. This Fractional Rate Resampler is a powerful tool in the EW System Designer's toolkit."

A simple example use case is shown in Figure 1.

Plot 0 shows time and frequency-domain views of the input signal. A section of the infinite sequence of sampling images is shown across the frequency axis at intervals of +/- fin.

Plot 1 shows the input signal after up-sampling by a factor of L=3, achieved by inserting 2 zeros between each input sample.

Plot 2 shows the up-sampled signal after a low-pass filter has been applied. The filter has a frequency response (shown in red) that ensures removal of the greyed-out images.

Plot 3 shows the final re-sampled signal after the up-sampled version has been decimation by M=2.

Figure 1 RFEL's Fractional Rate Resampler operation

RFEL www.rfel.com

RFEL is a UK-based technology company providing high specification signal, image and video processing solutions to government, defence, security and industrial customers. RFEL's unique, easy-to-integrate products, and proven designs, developed for a technically demanding environment, give customers a route to reliable product development at low-risk with a short time to market, to meet tomorrow's requirements today. RFEL operates with a total customer support philosophy.






Austrian MVNE platform provider I-New has expanded its Latin American operations with the launch of a new MVNO platform in Mexico.

Already the number one pre-paid MVNE service provider in Latin America, the company announced the launch of its Mexican platform after rolling out similar services in Europe and Asia Pacific. It has already scored its first new customer for the service, weex.

Weex a Mexican MVNO targeted towards millenials. The company was founded by John Cooper and Ricardo Suarez and funded by the Coca-Cola Founders platform.

Weex's USP is the claim to offer new ways for customers to buy mobile services in Mexico and to enable subscribers customise and control their mobile services use more effectively. Subscribers can choose a mobile plan based on specific daily needs and usage.

The I-New MVNE model allows to aggregate multiple MVNOs to run on the same [MVNE platform] and to support compelling offerings with a maximum of convenience and competitiveness, said I-New CEO Peter Nussbaumer. MVNO has never been that easy. We're very much looking forward to announce new Mexican MVNO customers running their mobile business on our award winning portfolio.

I-New says its aim is to open the telecom world to new user groups and naturally link it with the various daily habits of a subscribers' life.
Cross-posted from the Rules for Engagement blog

By Evie Blad

Thank you Noah for sharing your story. As a nation, we need to better support students with incarcerated parents. pic.twitter.com/d3PH0578ym -- John King (@JohnKingatED) April 25, 2016

Washington

Schools need better resources and guidance to help youth with incarcerated parents feel supported and to help them navigate changing family dynamics when their parents are released, a roundtable of students, parents, and re-entry professionals told U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr. on Monday.

And youth who are themselves incarcerated need help to readjust to the real world and catch up academically after they finish their sentences, the panel said.

The discussion was held as the U.S. Department of Education announced $5.7 million in new grants targeted at assistance for students who have been involved in the criminal justice system and a new toolkit with resources for guidance educators to help support formerly incarcerated youth and adults and their families.

Recent bipartisan discussions about criminal justice reform have largely focused on issues like reducing mandatory minimum sentences for certain offenses, but the challenge of addressing the impacts of incarceration is much broader than that, King told participants in the discussion, which was held at Benjamin Banneker High School in the District of Columbia.

Where we are as a country isnt a truthful reflection of who we are ... We are better than folks struggling through the family separation, reunification, re-entry process without support, King said. Yes, we need sentencing reform, but sentencing reform is only a slice of the challenges we face.

The re-entry grants announced Monday will build on existing youth re-entry efforts, supporting programs that focus on on career and technical education and collaborative approaches to improving education, employment, and other outcomes. The toolkit addresses five critical components of an effective re-entry system: program infrastructure, strategic partnerships, education services, transition processes, and sustainability, the education department said.

Children of incarcerated parents are at greater risk of health and behavior issues in school, among other challenges, the agency said in a news release. Research shows that more than 5 million children have had at least one parent in prison at one point in their lives. The prevalence of incarceration, particularly in low-income communities of color, has negative consequences for both those incarcerated and their families. In addition, children of incarcerated parents face more economic and residential instability than their counterparts.

The resources are one of several steps the Obama administration has taken to address the intersection of education and incarceration. In 2014, the Education and Justice departments released civil rights guidance on incarcerated youth . The administration also created a second chance Pell pilot program to fund the education of prisoners, and it has released several previous rounds of grants to fund re-entry efforts.

Among the biggest challenges identified by the discussions participants: shifting familiy dynamics when a parent goes to or returns from prison, a lack of employment options, and an inability for incarcerated parents to take an active role in their childrens upbringing and education.

Banneker High School Principal Anita Berger recalled a conversation she had with an incarcerated mother.

She said it was so disheartening when she heard parents trying to discipline their children from a bank of phones, she said. Parents try to parent their children from a phone call, but they cant.

Schools can help address those challenges by providing students access to tools like videoconferencing to improve communication with parents and by taking steps to ensure that incarcerated parents with internet access have can tap into resources like online gradebooks, Berger said.

Lashonia Thompson-El, who participated in the discussion, went to prison when she was 19, leaving two young children behind. When she was released, her children were 21 and 23.

For my daughter, the most difficult and most traumatic impact of my absence was the stigma she had to face in her school and even in her family, Thompson-El said.

Students on the panel agreed that schools can take a more active role in helping students by addressing that stigma head-on and by creating welcoming spaces where students who are struggling feel comfortable sharing and discussing their experiences.

Not only is the adult incarcerated, but the child is also mentally incarcerated, said Derrell Frazier, whose father was incarcerated from the time Frazier was 2 to the time he was 15.

Diane Wallace Booker, the executive director of the U.S. Dream Academy, which serves children of incarcerated parents, said the new resources are a good first step, adding that teachers and educators need help identifying and address the multi-pronged effects of incarceration.

Sometimes I think we assume that teachers should just figure this out, and it really requires some really knowledgable and sensitive training and support, she said.
One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa. An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction, said Oscar Isaac, playing the eccentric Artificial Intelligence programmer Nathan, in the popular 2015 sci-fi film, Ex Machina.

While the movie elaborated on the concept of Humanoids - Robots shaped like humans and powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), we are going to talk about something much simpler, something that will probably be a stepping stone to human-AI communication of the future - Bots.



What are Bots?

'Bot' is a term thats increasingly being used by tech giants like Microsoft and Facebook to advertise their recent foray into text-based virtual assistant. But, before we get into what these messenger based Bots are all about, lets trace the origin of the idea of intuitive machine-human communication.

Back in 1950, Alan Turing, also fondly known as the Father of Modern Computing, published a widely known paper which proposed a test to determine if a machine could imitate human responses by studying a text based conversation between a human and a computer. A Third person would then study the responses and try to differentiate between machine responses and actual human conversation. A program that succeeded in fooling the third observer, would be said to pass the test. Then, in 1966, a semi-intelligent program named ELIZA, modeled over a psychotherapist, became the first such program to pass the famous Turing test.

ELIZA responded by processing user responses to its scripts, but it was limited by the technology of its time. The ELIZA bots language abilities would now seem primitive in comparison to the advances in natural language processing, used in AI programs and bots of today. If you want an example of the same, go talk to ELIZA here.

According to a report by Research and Markets, a Dublin based market research resource, the artificial intelligence market is set to grow from USD 419.7 Million in 2014 to USD 5.05 Billion by 2020 and the market for natural language processing technology is expected to grow at the highest rate during this forecast period.

These projections obviously keep in mind the recent foray of some big names in the tech industry towards an app-free, Bot-only future. But, how will that future come about? Will we see an end to the service app ecosystem with AI powered Bots managing our digital lives?



Bots That Matter & Bots That Dont

Microsoft kickstarted the bot frenzy this year at their annual Build conference, held a few weeks back. Here, the Redmond based tech giant announced an entire Bot framework for building and connecting intelligent AI powered bots that will interact with users through SMS, Skype, Slack or other such services. These conversational Bots are meant to help users interact with a service or a business through text based chats, diminishing the need for firing up an app and going through a lengthy procedure to place an order of service.

Below is an example interaction between an customer and a Pizza Bot.



Since the announcement of their Bot Framework, Microsoft has introduced a bunch of Bots on Skype for iOS, Android, Mac and Web. While these Bots are pretty cool, they have a long way to go as far as their learning capabilities are concerned.



For the sake of an example, we tried to have some fun with Microsofts Murphy bot on Skype. Murphy is a bot that you can chat with, using Skype and ask it hypothetical "what if ..." questions like "what if I were a robot?" Murphy then tries to respond with an image that visualises an answer to your question. In my case, I asked it "what if I were a robot?" Below is the image Murphy responded with.



Murphy asked for my picture and responded back with my face stuck on to the body of a robot. While I feel I could have been a cooler robot, this will do for now.



Similarly, a bot named Summarize can give you summary pointers from any article just by sharing the link of the article with the bot. See example below.



Summarize Bot on Skype

Bing News is another bot on Skype, thats designed to get you news stories or headlines from the web. All you need to do is type in a news topic that interests you and the bot searches the web for news stories based on that particular topic. Heres an example -



Bing News Bot on Skype

While such bots are engaging and useful in some cases, the bot framework has a long way to go before companies and services jump on to the platform to offer real time, need-based solutions for users. This is also the reason for apps like Slack not making the kind of mark they were hoping to. Slack is a chat client that focuses on increasing productivity in an office environment. Users in a shared workspace can get on to Slack and integrate various bots to increase work efficiency. For example, Leo Bot on Slack is a bot that constantly sends users workplace related questions, to analyse and create productivity reports. Check out a chat with Leo Bot below.



Leo Bot on Slack

While Slack is a trusted web, mobile app for small organisations with limited number of employees, it is proving to be a hassle for relatively larger companies like Uber. According to a report by The New York Times, Taxi aggregator Uber just ditched Slack for not being able to handle its employee base. The report says, Recently, the ride-hailing service Uber dropped Slack because the service could not handle the thousands of Uber employees trying to communicate simultaneously, according to people who work at both companies. Handling larger user requests will definitely be an issue of concern for future bot makers.

Similar to Microsoft & Slack, Facebook also recently announced its own Bot venture at the company's annual F8 developer conference. Dropping the mic in the crowd of startups and other tech companies working with Bots, Facebook announced that developers will now be able to build and integrate Bots into Facebooks hugely popular Messenger service. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, also showed off a CNN chatbot which would bring personalised news stories to users along with a bot that allows users to order flowers on Messenger, without having to call the delivery company.

So, Will the Bots eat the Apps?

Yes, they could. With players like Microsoft and Facebook entering the Bot ecosystem, the app ecosystem faces a huge threat in the future. Currently, the app ecosystem is a $50 billion industry, according to App Annie. But, all this could change.



Owing to the popularity of platforms like Skype and Facebook Messenger, commerce & service oriented Bots would automatically give these companies a huge monopoly in the market, doing away with apps in due course of time.



No one wants to have to install a new app for every business or service that they want to interact with, said Zuckerberg, during the companys F8 conference. Just to put things into perspective, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp (also owned by FB) have a shared user base of 1.9 billion users, who with the help of bots, will not need to download any apps, and will be able to access the same services through their messenger app. This saves users the much needed storage space on their smartphones and creates a more user-friendly environment to access businesses.



Bots would also do away with having to deal with in-app ads, which are increasingly becoming a nuisance because of their intrusive, non-private nature. Interestingly, it is also becoming more expensive for developers to buys new users through ads. According to AdParlour, it costs approximately $4.73 per installation. Bots can easily solve this problem, maintaining the same, if not increasing, the user base of any service oriented app.

As of now, Bots still have a long way to go. Most bots even today are unable to pass the coveted Turing Test. But if larger service and commerce players enter the ecosystem, we can easily say goodby to Apps. Afterall, who needs an app when you can just chat?
According to a report by Reuters, Google, Ford, and Uber are joined by Volvo and Lyft to push for federal action that will speed up the introduction of self-driving cars

Google, Ford and Uber along with Volvo and Lyft have formed a coalition to help speed up the introduction of self-driving cars to the market by pushing for federal action. According to a report by Reuters, the coalition is called the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets and the group said in a statement that it will work with lawmakers, regulators and the public to realize the safety and societal benefits of self-driving vehicles.

The coalition also said that David Strickland, the former top official of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will be its counsel and spokesperson. He said in a statement, The best path for this innovation is to have one clear set of federal standards and the coalition will work with policymakers to find the right solutions that will facilitate the deployment of self-driving vehicles. On April 27, the NHTSA is holding its second public forum on its guidelines for self driving cars, during which it will feature comments from technology companies and car manufacturers. It hopes to release its guidelines in July.

In February, the NHTSA had said that the artificial intelligence system piloting a self-driving car could be considered as the driver under federal law. This was a major step towards getting an approval for autonomous vehicles. While Googles attempts at self-driving cars is well known, Volvo is also planning to introduce self-driving cars on roads in China. The test will be conducted in places where there will be limited number of other vehicles such as expressways and highways.
The latest technologies being implemented into the ATMs that we take for granted

Confederation of ATM industry (CATMi) held its first annual conference on 26th April 2016 at Mumbai. The conference was attended by a large number of representatives from ATM Manufacturing and Outsourcing companies, White Label ATM operators, ATM Security Services & Solutions companies. Also present at the conference were members of Banks, Payment Services companies, Cash replenishment, and Cash-in-transit agencies. The event was a platform for the various stakeholders involved to know and understand the current state of the industry and the future plans of the associated bodies. Significant policy developments and strategies to increase ATM penetration and bringing ATMs to their full potential were discussed.

Dr. Deepali Pant Joshi, Executive Director, RBI

Dr. Deepali Pant Joshi, Executive Director, Reserve Bank of India, was the Chief Guest at the event, and in her address to the gathering from the industry, she shared RBIs perspective regarding ATMs and their usage across the country. She raised concerns about the number of ATMs per million people in India being globally on of the lowest numbers for the parameter. Some of the most important issues raised by her were of counterfeit notes, denomination problems, the cost of setting up ATMs at rural areas and most importantly, security.

Securens is an e-surveillance provider that implements and deploys security solutions based on SAAS that harness business intelligence and analytics. Securens also made its presence felt at the event, as one could visit their stall at the exhibition area and get an understanding of how their technology works. Securens claims to have replaced 3rd generation sensors in ATMs that were incompetent at preventing crime with 5th generation solutions, that provide strong features like 2-way Audio communication, video verification and a lot more.

Mr. Manoj Nair, CEO, Securens

Mr. Manoj Nair, CEO, Securens was also present at the event and he shared his companys outlook and vision about ATM security with us. He explained in detail the workings of the active deterrence system that they have pioneered in the Indian ATM industry. CCTV cameras with obstruction sensors, alarm panels with wireless communications via VPN, dedicated monitoring infrastructure are just some of the features that modern ATMs already contain, due to innovations from companies like Securens.

The ATM industry also discussed the emergence of mobile payments and payment banks, and how ATMs and such payment banks can work together to take ATM and bank account penetration to much higher levels. The conference culminated with a discussion on the challenges being faced by all the stakeholders in their operational strategies, cooperation and coexistence, interchangeability between banks and ATMs, and a concurrence that all the involved parties need to work together for both financial and technical inclusion.
In addition to the panic button, the official notification in the Gazette of India states that an in-built GPS system would become mandatory in all devices from January 1, 2018.

The proposed panic button will become mandatory for all mobile phones, from from January 1, 2017. In addition, a built-in GPS navigation system would be mandatory in all devices, commencing from January 1, 2018. Telecom Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said in a statement, Technology is solely meant to make human life better and what better than using it for the security of women.

As per an official notification in the Gazette of India, feature phones without a panic button should be able to make the emergency call by pressing the 5 or 9 numeric keys. Smartphones without the button should make the call by pressing the same buttons or by pressing the power on/off button thrice in quick succession. In addition, the notification states that no mobile manufacturing company shall sell new phones in the country without a facility of locating the device via GPS. However, the notification does not mention where the emergency call would connect to.

In December 2015, it was reported that Union Minister, Maneka Gandhi, had spoken to mobile manufacturers to introduce a panic button on phones from March 2016. Pressing the button would immediately call the police. As per the report, existing customers would be able to upgrade their existing devices with this feature, while new phones would come with the button.

This step taken by the government seems to be welcomed by mobile manufacturers. For instance, Karbonn Mobiles has announced that they have already been working on a mobile SOS app for women. This app would rolling out to their customers within a few months.
The University of Oklahoma is offering a special program aimed at teaching majors with the goal of enticing them to not only stay in state after graduation , but to serve the districts that need quality instructors most . OUs Debt-Free Teachers Program pays $5,000 each year after for up to four years after graduation if students commit to teaching children in high needs areas throughout the state.

The Debt-Free Teachers Program was created in 2014 as a response to graduates leaving the state directly following degree completion. Just 45 percent of education majors work in state upon college graduation. Even out-of-state students who chose to attend school in Oklahoma are leaving after graduation. Between 2010 and 2014, 18 percent of Oklahoma higher education graduates originated from out-of-state, with only a quarter remaining to serve Oklahoma schoolchildren.

Mississippi and South Dakota are the only other two states with lower teacher salaries than Oklahoma, where the average pay in 2015 was $44,628. Oklahoma has been experiencing a teacher shortage since 2012. As of July 2015, the Oklahoma Department of Education has had to issue 1,060 emergency certifications allowing new teachers extensions to meet teacher certification requirements and complete relevant training. These emergency certifications are only approved if a district cannot find licensed candidates. In 2012, only 30 emergency certifications were granted, illustrating the sharp decline in qualified educators.

With Oklahoma offering lower teaching salaries and experiencing large teacher shortages , a solution had to be made to counter this issue, in hopes of retaining quality educators. The Debt-Free Teachers Program seems to be a viable solution to keep students in state and working in the districts that need it most.

There has been a huge demand from students wanting to participate in the OU Debt-Free Teachers Program. There are 37 students currently enrolled, with 8 graduating May 2016 and 9 already serving in rural or inner-city schools throughout Oklahoma.
The US central banks 'dovishness' led to a "dramatic" decoupling between bond yields and cyclicals over the past two months, with the former falling even as the latter outperformed, but investors would be best advised to follow the latter, Credit Suisse said.

Several relative valuation measures for cyclicals led the Swiss broker to the above conclusion.

For one, cyclicals were 0.5 standard deviations cheap relative to defensive issues, Andrew Garthwaite said in a research note sent to clients.

On the other side of the equation, oil prices had rocketed by about 55% from their lows but US 10-year US Treasury note yields had fallen by 20 basis points.

"A rise in oil price of this magnitude has never historically been associated with a fall in bond yields," Garthwaite said.

Furthermore, yields often rose in the three to six weeks after the start or accelration of quantitative easing, he added.

By sectors, Garthwaite recommended selling "expensive" bond proxies, such as Danone, Henkel and Pennon and to buy the beneficiaries of any rise in yields, banks in particular.

In the case of Europe those had "de-coupled" from 'macro-momentum to an extraordinary degree, he observed.

Safer plays in composites/life insurers also tended to outperform alongside rising yields, especially those with significant US exposure such as Prudential and Aegon.

"Earnings momentum, dividend momentum and yield relatives all look attractive (AXA and L&G)," the strategist added.

However, while Credit Suisse said it was sticking to its overweight on European domestic demand-related cyclicals, it was also "more cautious" on US cyclicals as they appeared relatively expensive and US lead indicators had been weaker than those in Europe.
Banks and real estate and property stocks rode to the top of the leaderboard on the heels of well-received quarterly earnings from StanChart and a perception that Brexit risks were fading, although analysts and market commentary were cautious on both counts.

For the first quarter of the year, Asia and commodities-focused StanChart reported a 59% drop in pre-tax profits to $589m (405m) as revenues came off by 23%.

However, revenues were slightly higher than over the previous three months and losses from bad loans in fact fell 1% to $471m, a much better outcome than analysts had feared.

That sent shares in London-based StanChart higher by 9.76% to 571.40p, capping a nearly 50% gain in the stock since the early-February lows - which at one point saw the stock trade at approximately half their book value - mirroring a rise in the prices of some industrial commodities, such as iron ore.

Nonetheless, market chatter after the results was generally cautious regarding the outlook, not least due to the challenges facing the Chinese economy.

Read-across from StanChart sent shares Lloyds were up 3.57% to 70p, while stock in HSBC Holdings gained 2.14% to 469.4p, Barclays tacked on 2.11% to 173.95p and RBS another 1.65% to 252.4p.

The main UK lenders may also have received a boost from positive comments from Credit Suisse on European banks, who strategist Andrew Garthwaite said would be a key beneficiary of steepening yield curves.

Garthwaite also told clients to underweight so-called 'bond proxies', including Tesco, National Grid, Pennon, Severn Trent, British Land, Intu Properties and Derwent London.

That helped the likes of RBS brush off a note from Deutsche Bank in which the brokers analysts trimmed their target price from 248p to 241p ahead of the release of its first quarter numbers on 29 April.

Homebuilders headed higher as the gloom surrounding the 23 June referendum on Britains membership of the European Union appeared to lift a little.

Improved sentiment was particularly evident in foreign exchange markets, where the pound jumped 0.69% to 1.4582 as of 18:32 BST, despite the results from two new polls published on Tuesday showing that the 'Leave' camp had in fact gained a little bit of ground.

An ORB/Telegraph poll published on Tuesday put the 'Remain' camp ahead at 51.0% versus 43.0% of voters who said they would throw their hat in the ring for the 'Leave' option. Nonetheless, that meant 'Remain' had lost two percentage points of support which were picked up by 'Leave'.

However, in the last week Bloombergs Brexit Tracker put the odds of voters opting to leave the EU at about 20%.

The Daily Telegraph cautioned that "[this] vast gap in expectation means that the Remain campaign is still largely at risk of voter complacency. Many of their supporters will expect to win the referendum and thus fail to recognise the significance of their own vote."

Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, was more upbeat. In a research report sent to clients he said a "last-minute swelling" of support for no-change should mean the 'Remain' camp would prevail on 23 June.

Nonetheless, he cautioned there was a near-term risk the recent rally in sterling against the US dollar and the pound might unwind.

To take note of, on Tuesday Robin Hardy at Shore Capital weighed in on UK homebuilders, saying the sell-off in the sector over the last couple of weeks had eliminated the over-valuation seen in the larger housebuilders.

Nevertheless, he cautioned that: "we see that there is an important distinction to be understood here  while the larger house builders are no longer looking at expensive, they are not cheap and we can see little or no case for considering adopting a positive stance on Barratt Developments, Persimmon or Taylor Wimpey at the lower share prices."

On a more positive note, Hardy "stressed" his 'buy' recommendation on Crest Nicholson (Fair value: 607p) and that he saw "a material potential gain at Redrow" (Fair value: 466p).

Berkeley Group Holdings remained "attractive" in his view but was likely to be held back by concerns around the London market.
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No power, no hot water, bedbugs at apartment towers near Downtown

Residents at the Latitude Five25 apartment towers on the Near East Side said they've had no hot water, no power at times. The city is going to court.
Cleveland to Pay $6M to Settle Tamir Rice Shooting Lawsuit

The city of Cleveland has agreed to pay $6 million to the family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old shot and killed by police officer Timothy Loehmann in 2014. Rice was in a park playing with a toy gun when he was shot.

It is the latest in a series of million-dollar settlements following deadly police shootings, and the latest chapter in Cleveland's own history of police violence and lawsuits.

Civil Settlement Over Criminal Charges

Rice was by himself in a park when someone dialed 911 and reported a male, "probably a juvenile," with a weapon, "probably fake." The 911 operator, however, just told responding officers of a report of a male with a weapon. Surveillance footage caught a police cruiser speeding into the park, stopping feet away from Rice, and officer Loehmann stepping out of the car and quickly shooting Rice.

Although a judge found probable cause to charge Loehmann with homicide, a grand jury failed to indict him. Rice's family then filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Cleveland. Under the terms of the current settlement, the city admits no wrongdoing in Rice's death and is expected pay the settlement in two payments over the next two years. (That is unless the city tries to avoid payment like it has in other police misconduct cases.)

City in Crisis

Cleveland's police force had already been in the national spotlight, and not for good reasons. The city paid out some $10 million to settle police misconduct lawsuits from 2004 to 2014, and the police force has been operating under a Department of Justice consent decree after a DOJ investigation found the Cleveland Division of Police (CDP) engaged "in a pattern or practice of the use of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution."

And the city had not handled Rice's case well, either. As noted by The New York Times:

Tensions escalated last year when Cleveland filed a response to the lawsuit that seemed to blame Tamir for his death, prompting an apology from Mr. Jackson and a revised filing. Then, in February, Cleveland moved to sue the Rice family for $500 to cover Tamir's emergency medical treatment, but quickly reversed course after a public backlash.

Perhaps Cleveland can begin to repair its image by overhauling its police practices and actually paying the settlement.

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Salt Lake City alone has more than 30,000 older brick homes and other unreinforced buildings.



By SCOTT SONNER

Associated Press

RENO, Nev.  A new report raising the likelihood of a destructive earthquake striking Salt Lake City in the next half century has underscored the urgency to retrofit more than 30,000 older brick homes and other unreinforced buildings at high risk of collapsing.

It's also getting attention in neighboring Nevada where a significant quake is overdue along the Sierra. Nevada officials are anxious to see if Utah succeeds in a first-in-the-nation attempt to secure federal disaster funds for private homeowners to aid in such efforts.





. . .
'The Good Wife': Good Law? -- Season 7, Episode 20

Only "The Good Wife" could use a coming together to show just how far its characters are fracturing apart. Howard and Jackie's Ketubah signing at Alicia's condo becomes a discussion of divorce, decampment, and a dissolving criminal case. Who's in love with whom? Who's in Diane's new female-led firm? Who's out on their own, and who's out of the woods in Peter's corruption investigation?

Here are the legal ins and outs of last night's episode, "Party."

Episode Recap (Spoiler Alert):

With most of the emotion action coming at Alicia's party, Jason is busy pulling the criminal case against Peter out of the background and into the fore. What originally looks like Peter meddling in a murder trial to help a donor's son becomes an incompetent (at best) or crooked (at worse) crime lab technician spoiling key evidence in the case.

Meanwhile, Alicia and Peter's split becomes common knowledge, Zack is engaged an on his way to Paris, Grace is upset an on her way to college, and Jason has one foot in his relationship with Alicia and one foot on the way to god knows where. And don't even get us started on the bizarre made-for-TV movie on in the background or the show despoiling The Pixies with an awful "Wave of Mutilation" cover. Let's instead focus on the criminal case.

Legal Roots:

Why did Peter keep blood evidence out of a murder trial? Why did he check the now-missing bullets out of the crime lab? All the early speculation, and the bulk of the case against Peter, pointed to the former state's attorney covering for a campaign donor's son. By the end of the episode, it turns out the crime lab tech had screwed up a few of Peter's prior prosecutions, and this one as well. Sadly, forensic evidence mishandling, mistakes, and misuse are all too common, and in some cases have led to false confessions. But Peter remains adamant and refused any plea bargain in his corruption case.

Legal Fiction:

but Peter isn't the only one at risk in the corruption investigation: Cary hired Louis Canning as his attorney, and Canning quickly tries to mount a coordinated defense trying to implicate Peter, going so far as to encourage Alicia to roll over on her (still) husband. Eli hired Diane to represent him, and with Mike Tascioni bowing out of repping Peter, may ask her to be Peter's trial lawyer. If Eli really thinks he's in trouble, this would be a bad idea. While joint representation (one lawyer representing two criminal defendants in the same case) can and does happen, it is heavily discouraged. As the ABA notes in its Rules of Professional Conduct: "The potential for conflict of interest in representing multiple defendants in a criminal case is so grave that ordinarily a lawyer should decline to represent more than one codefendant."

Legal Babble:

"One-lawyer divorce." Not every divorce needs to be a knock-down drag-out affair -- there are ways that a divorce can be (relatively) fast, cheap, and painless. Obviously it helps if both parties are amicable to the divorce, and Alicia and Peter admit that they don't want to fight each other. They agree to forgo hiring their own lawyers and have one attorney represent them both. Considering everything at stake for each in the divorce, it's highly unlikely they would share an attorney, but if they do, perhaps they can end their marriage on a positive note.

Legal Verdict:

Two episodes to go to find out just how deep the fissures in the Florrick family will run. Both Alicia and Peter feel sad about their divorce, so could Peter wining his case and Jason's interest in moving every year have them rethinking the decision? Or will the divorce and the empty nest mean Alicia will wander the earth with Jason? We'll find out more next week.

What did you think of this week's episode of "The Good Wife"? Is the show guilty of making any legal mistakes? Check back here for more legal recaps of "The Good Wife," and send us a tweet at @FindLawConsumer with the hashtag #TheGoodWife.

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Aramco may buy refinery stake in India, says report

Saudi Aramco is considering proposals to buy stakes in oil refining and petrochemical projects in India, a Reuters report on Monday quoted union minister for petroleum and natural gas Dharmendra Pradhan as saying.

The report comes amidst other reports to the effect that Saudi Arabia is likely to sell a 5-per cent stake in its oil refinery Aramco and India could be looking for a stake in Aramco.

India, the world's third-biggest oil consumer, imports more than 70 per cent of its crude oil requirements, mostly from the Middle East, while Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest oil exporter is seeking outlets for its oil.

Saudi Arabia was also India's biggest source for oil, sending about 889,000 barrel per day (bpd), or about 21 per cent of the country's total crude imports in the January-March 2016 quarter.

India, meanwhile, is seeking funds for the expansion programme of the Bina refinery and a 1.2-million bpd refinery and petrochemical plant at Dahej. Pradhan had, earlier this month, met with Saudi Aramco chairman Khalid al-Falih and sought Saudi investment in the west coast refinery projects.

"All the three we have offered to Saudi. The two sides will decide on the proposals in a time-bound manner," Reuters quoted Pradhan as saying.

State-run oil refiners, Indian Oil Corp, Hindustan Petroleum Corp and Bharat Petroleum Corp, plan to build a 1.2-million bpd refinery on the country's west coast, investing more than Rs1,00,000 crore ($15.02 billion).

Bharat Oman Refineries Ltd is expanding the capacity of the Bina refinery in Central India by 30 per cent to 156,000 bpd while OPAL, majority owned by Oil and Natural Gas Ltd (ONGC), is building a petrochemical plant in Gujarat.

Saudi Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser last month said his company is looking to expand its downstream investments in China, Malaysia, India, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Investment by Aramco in its markets will help guarantee demand for its crude oil while at the same time ensuring supplies in consumer markets.

India is the best bet for Aramco as the country is expected to be the major driver of world energy demand growth in the years to come with its oil consumption rising by 6 million bpd to about 10 million bpd by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency.

India had, earlier this month, signed a framework agreement for investment promotion cooperation between Invest India and Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority earlier this month, minister of state in the ministry of commerce and industry Nirmala Sitharaman informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply on Monday.

Saudi Arabia has identified infrastructure, energy, manufacturing, transport, education and healthcare as key sectors of investment in India.

India, on its part, is looking for investments in areas such as information and communication technology (ICT), energy, chemicals, construction, food processing, machinery, healthcare and life sciences, transport and logistics, human capital and tourism.

The framework agreement is aimed at facilitating investments by private sector in the two countries. Invest India will provide all handholding and investment facilitation to Saudi Arabian investors planning to invest in India.
Louisiana Gov bribed KKK to go easy in mid-'60s: FBI files

Louisiana Governor John J McKeithen was behind payments to Ku Klux Klan leaders in the mid-1960s that were meant to suppress the racial violence swirling throughout Louisiana at the time, according to FBI records.

John J McKeithen, Louisiana Governor from 1964 to 1972

Several FBI entries in the file, which focused on prominent Klansman Robert Fuller of Monroe, concluded that Klan leaders were informed shortly after the 1964 gubernatorial election the state would pay them if they kept a lid on violent acts.

The 50-year-old reports were obtained by the Louisiana State University Cold Case Project under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Agents were led to believe the genesis of that strategy was the new governor who received campaign support from some Klan leaders, support that steadily eroded after McKeithen took office because of his rapidly evolving policy of racial toleration and civil rights.

Whether McKeithen's anti-violence strategy worked is unclear. US Department of Justice and FBI investigations detail at least a half dozen Klan-related homicides, scores of beatings, and dozens of fire bombings in central Louisiana between 1964 and 1969. Whether it would have been worse without the tempering payments will never be known.

What is clear is that the KKK soon soured on McKeithen, whose moves toward better race relations and rights for blacks did not sit well in Louisiana Klan circles. By 1967 handbills being circulated in Bogalusa were charging that McKeithen had asked for their vote and then double-crossed them. The Klan called for him and other Louisiana officeholders to be "tarred and feathered".

But the declassified FBI documents point to McKeithen's use of the Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission, a legislature-generated authority designed to keep state control of civil rights issues, to send privately raised money to the Klan.

The goal, according to the FBI, was to "maintain law and order in the State of Louisiana and to contact the Klan on a liaison basis in order to insure that no violence occurred."

"Of his many accomplishments as governor, my grandfather was most proud of his record on civil rights and race relations during an explosive period in our country's history," stated granddaughter Marjorie McKeithen, a New Orleans attorney. .

"Thanks to his leadership, Louisiana was spared much of the violence that permeated other southern states. Unlike other southern governors, he openly and publicly called the KKK 'racist, hate mongers and trouble makers', according to the FBI and the KKK's own documents, and he protected the civil rights marchers at a time when it was not popular - all serving to land him on the KKK's 'Should Be Tarred and Feathered' list.

"If he did assist in directing money to prevent violence (even the documents cited say they are based on rumours), his record shows he would have done so to help protect those seeking their God-given, equal rights."

Gus Weill of Baton Rouge, then McKeithen's 30-year-old executive secretary (the 1960s equivalent of chief of staff ), who would later become a political legend in Louisiana, said that while he had no first-hand knowledge of those northern Louisiana payments, they nevertheless would have "made sense".

"John was completely practical. He wanted Louisiana to endure without the (racial) violence that Alabama and Mississippi were experiencing at the time."

To that end, Weill remembered another little-known McKeithen anecdote - Alabama Governor George Wallace, who was in the early stages of running for president in 1967, quietly slipped into Baton Rouge to visit McKeithen. Wallace, said Weill, wanted the Louisiana governor to take the segregation leadership mantle Wallace proudly had worn. McKeithen declined, informing Wallace, "I just don't feel as strongly about it as you do, George."

Weill also related that years later he was told by a long time political operative friend, who also was a confidant of McKeithen's, that in 1965 he was directed by the governor to take $10,000 in cash to Bogalusa where racial strife had reached boiling point.

McKeithen told the emissary that half the money was to be given to local Klan leaders and the other half to the local chapter of the Deacons for Defense, an armed African-American group that protected demonstrators and civil rights workers. Both sides were told to cool it.

There is no indication in the reviewed FBI documents the Feds had any interest in McKeithen's supposed ways of maintaining peace, let alone have him under any formal investigation. The agents were focused fully on Robert Fuller and the Klan.

(Also see: Hacktivists Anonymous take down Ku Klux Klan site)
Ronald Moede was born on December 21, 1934, in Rio Creek, WI. The son of the late Fred and Emily (Hanamann) Moede, he married Bonnie Neinas in Brussels on June 4, 1960, and they were married for 62+ years. He was a life-long resident of Rio Creek and was an innovative dairy farmer. He owned and managed a large dairy operation, Meade Manor Farms, which had been homesteaded by his grandfather, August Moede, in 1895. The log cabin home, barn, and herd grew to become one of the larger dairy farms in Kewaunee County under his guidance. Upon his retirement, it evolved into Meade Manor Pet Clinic, a vet service for small animals, but the land continued to flourish and produce. Ron graduated from Casco High School, Class of 1952 and Graham School for Cattlemen, Kansas. He was a member of the Wisconsin Holstein Breeders, Kewaunee County Holstein Breeders, and the National Holstein

Association. He was a charter member of the Algoma FFA Alumni. His family exhibited champion dairy cattle at local, state, and national dairy cattle shows. In 1984, in Madison, the Wisconsin FFA named him Outstanding Farmer and in 1995, he was named and honored at the Wisconsin State Fair as a Century Farmer. He served as an elder in his church for many years as well as a trustee and various committee appointments. In his younger days, he was active in dartball and also high school sports. He received the Algoma Honorary Chapter Farmer Award, and the Unified Board Business Award. In his retirement, he drove school bus for 15 years for the Algoma School District and was a member of the Great Lakes Sports Fishermen. A hobby later enjoyed was his chicken farming. He raised a small flock of chicken, and he enjoyed passing out extra eggs to friends and relatives when the supply was greater than the family could handle. He was an avid sports fan and he and Bonnie attended both Packers Super Bowl games in 1996 and 1997, and also the Milwaukee World Series in 1983. He enjoyed hunting and fishing, both here and in upper Michigan and Minnesota. He even got Bonnie to go along with him to Lake of the Woods on the Canadian border to do some ice fishing. He held Packers season tickets since 1960 and at the time they bought their tickets they were allowed to pick out where they wanted to sit on the sidelines --there were no end zone seats yet-- and the tickets cost $5.00 a piece! He traveled through most of the U.S. including Alaska and Hawaii as well as traveling to the Caribbean and Europe. He enjoyed a summer place in Door County for 20 years. He told many stories of farming with his dad and the fact that at the age of 12, he had his own team of horses to work with on the farm. Responsibility came early as he was left in charge whenever it was necessary for his parents to be gone for a few days. He learned to drive a truck at an early age and often drove himself to school in 8th grade and parked the vehicle a few doors down at a relatives. This was because chores need to be done before and after school. The first tractor purchased was in 1937. In his retirement, he had it restored and displayed in local fairs and tractor shows. He would tell of shocking grain and threshing crews traveling from neighbor to neighbor and the wonderful table his mother would set full of food. A vivid memory was the day WWII ended. The whole neighborhood and working crew quit in the early afternoon (unheard of) and celebrated With beer and music! Even the clergy arrived and joined in. It was a day to remember! In his lifetime he went from horses and the depression, to the digital age and unimagined luxuries. There was no electricity and no running water in his youth and now he had wireless phones, computer screens in his vehicles, along with heated steering wheels and heated seats. Who would have thought that back then.

Ron is survived by his wife Bonnie; son Robert (Debbie Harms) Moede; grandson Michael and granddaughter Megan; siblings, Terry (Jane) Moede, Paul (Roxie) Moede; sisters-in-law, Diane Fontaine, Sheila (Don) Baudhuin; and brothers in-law, Dan (Mary) Neinas. He was preceded in death by his parents, Fred and Emily Moede; sister, Marilyn (Arno) Schneider; father- and mother-in-law, Herman and Madeline Neinas, and brother-in-law, Gary Fontaine.

Visitation will be held at Kinnard Funeral & Cremation Services  Algoma, on Friday, October 7, 2022, from 4-7:30 pm with a prayer service at 6:30. Visitation will continue on Saturday, October 8th at St. Johns Lutheran Church  Rankin, from 9-11:00 am. Funeral service will be held at 11:00 am with Dr. Rev. Christopher Jackson officiating. Burial to follow in Evergreen Cemetery. Online condolence message may be shared at KinnardFCS.com. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to the Kewaunee County 4-H Dairy Fund and the Projection Screen Fund at St. Johns- Rankin.
A company is looking to hire between 60 and 80 local residents to complete a utility-scale solar project on Fort Rucker over the next several months, allowing the temporary workers to gain solar energy experience that could potentially prepare them for jobs throughout the country.

Tradesmen International, a construction and industrial-based staffing agency, will host job fairs May 9 through 12 throughout the Wiregrass for entry-level laborers who may have general construction or manufacturing experience, or who are military veterans. Applicants with administrative experience are also sought.

The job fairs are from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on each of the following days: Monday, May 9, at the Troy Career Center; Tuesday, May 10, at the Enterprise Career Center; Wednesday, May 11, at East Gate Business Park in Ozark; Thursday, May 12, at the Dothan Career Center; and Friday, May 13, at East Gate Business Park.

Applicants should have a valid drivers license and one other form of identification, and be able to pass a drug test and a background check to be able to work on a federal installation.

Potential workers will be hired for an estimated six-month utility-scale solar project on Fort Rucker that will be headed by North Carolina-based company, Strata Solar, for Alabama Power. The jobs are expected to pay between $12 to $18 per hour, based on experience.

Strata Solar project manager Todd Yunker said training for the solar project will likely begin in mid-to-late May at the East Gate Business Park in Ozark, near the Fort Rucker gate.

He said the project will likely begin in June and run through the end of the year. Residents hired for the project are expected to be bused on and off Fort Rucker for work.

Yunker expects each of the jobs to be full-time with the possibility of some overtime opportunities. He said experience is not necessary but a willingness to work hard is essential.

Yunker said the workers will take a safety course and an installation training course before the project begins.

Our motto is to come in and hire locally, do a good job, do it well, give more back to the community than when we got here, and leave a good name, he said.

To do that we want to train people with a good attitude who are willing to work outside, can learn a skill and work safely so they can go back home. If they do a good job, they could potentially get hired again for projects like this all over the country.

The solar project on Fort Rucker is the first of its kind for Alabama Power and will coincide with a similar project at the Anniston Army Depot. Both utility-scale solar projects were approved by the Alabama Public Service Commission last year as part of Alabama Powers plan to develop or procure up to 500 megawatts of renewable energy and environmentally specialized generating resources over the next six years.

According to an article by the nonprofit group, the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Army base projects are expected to produce about 10.6 megawatts each, which would be about enough power to service 4,200 homes. The group also reported the solar installations will count toward energy policy requirements the Department of Defense has set forth in an effort to have 25 percent of its energy produced by renewable sources by 2025.

-----------------------

Fort Rucker Solar Project Job Fairs

May 9

8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Troy Career Center, 1023 S. Brundidge St., Dothan

May 10

8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Enterprise Career Center, 2021 Boll Weevil Cir., Enterprise

May 11

8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at East Gate Business Park, 406 Ben St., Ozark

May 12

8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Dothan Career Center, 787 Ross Clark Cir., Dothan

May 13

8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at East Gate Business Park, 406 Ben St., Ozark

Bring a resume and two forms of identification
Dothan police investigators arrested a local bail bondsman on Monday and charged him with striking his girlfriend multiple times in the face, and choking her until she temporarily lost consciousness.

Dothan Police Sgt. Lynn Watkins confirmed police investigators arrested 57-year-old Larry Morris and charged him with felony domestic violence strangulation or suffocation.

Watkins said police charged Morris with striking the victim several times in the face before placing his hands on her throat and causing temporary loss of consciousness. Watkins said the domestic violence offense occurred around 10 a.m. Monday at the victims home in the 600 block of East Adams Street. Watkins said the police report listed Morris as the victims live-in boyfriend.

Watkins said the victim called police after the suspect left the home shortly after the offense. Watkins said police made the arrest around 2 p.m. Monday after the suspect went to his employer at A-Advantage bail bonding.

Rickey Stokes, the owner of A-Advantage Bail Bonding, said Morris works as a bail bondsman for his company. But Stokes said Morris was not working when the domestic violence offense reportedly occurred.

That was strictly a domestic issue, and had nothing to do with the business, Stokes said. I had him come up here, and I walked him over to CID.

Watkins said Morris was booked into the Dothan City Jail, and would later be transferred to the Houston County Jail on the felony charge.

Court records show Morris was charged with felony making a terrorist threat in April 2013, in connection with a reported threat to kill a police officer in Henry County. Records show that charge was no billed by a grand jury earlier this month.

Records also show investigators with the Houston County Sheriffs Office arrested Morris in 2001 and charged him with felony first-degree rape. He later pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor third-degree assault charge in that case.
ENTERPRISE - The family of a man who was fatally shot during a Wednesday night incident that occurred in the Walmart Store here says there is 
Rome wasnt built in a day, goes the saying, but a great deal can be accomplished in a day with willing participants and a well-conceived plan.

That was the idea behind Houston County Spirit of Service Day, sparked years ago when Robert Crowder, then-chairman of the Houston County Commission, learned of a similar initiative in Baltimore while attending a conference there. When Crowder returned, he began drumming up support for a local version.

That was 27 years ago, and since that time thousands of projects have been undertaken and completed throughout the county  most of which may not have been done otherwise, Crowder told the Dothan Progress a few years ago.

Long established, Spirit of Service Day is indicative of our communitys greatest attribute  the willingness of residents to turn out to help with a sense of civic pride. Spirit of Service has spread to the school systems, and students can be found tackling projects alongside adults from all walks of life.

We applaud Crowder for bringing this stellar idea back home, and the Dothan Area Chamber of Commerce, local schools and volunteers who coordinated this past Saturdays event, as well as all the residents who put a shoulder to the wheel and made good things happen in a short span of time.
Houston Countys Emergency Management Agency director said Tuesday that he hopes the countys 32 outdoor community warning sirens will be fully operational soon.

The agency has ordered a digital repeater that will allow all sirens to operate in the event of a tornado warning. The sirens have not been fully operational since the old repeater failed earlier this month. EMA Director Steve Carlisle said a new repeater has been ordered. Once it arrives, it should take a full day to install. The agencys regular outdoor warning siren test occurs on the first Friday of each month at noon, if the weather is clear.

The community outdoor warning system exists to warn residents who are outdoors of a pending weather emergency.

Tuesday, the Houston County Commission voted to pay half the cost of the repeater. The City of Dothan is expected to cover the other half. Total cost of the equipment and installation is $11,356.90.

Also Tuesday, County Engineer Barkley Kirkland said 16 county roads remain closed. County crews continue to work weekends when the weather allows, but some repair work has been delayed because of a backlog of pipe orders. Most of the repairs needed to open the closed roads require cross drain replacement. Kirkland said counties throughout the tri-state area have all ordered pipe for drain replacement, causing a delay in delivery.

We have at least one road where we ordered pipe for it months ago and we still havent gotten it, Kirkland said.

In other action Tuesday, the Houston County Commission:

 Recognized the Houston County Farm-City Committee, which received several awards at the annual Farm-City Banquet in Birmingham. Houston County earned second place overall in Division 1 (counties with a population of more than 35,600.) Cullman County won first place. Houston County won awards for Best Media Coverage and Proclamation as well as the Target Award for incorporating the theme of Agriculture: Sustaining Future Generations into all activities. Gloria Jeffcoat was named 2015 Volunteer of the Year.

To think Houston County can go to these awards programs and come home with this many awards shows the dedication of all the committee members, Jeffcoat said. We know the importance of agriculture.

 Appointed Brad Kimbro to the Dothan-Houston County Library System Board.

 Agreed to allow the Dothan Downtown Redevelopment Authority to temporarily attach artwork to the old juvenile probation building near the Foster Street green space downtown. The artwork will feature contributing farmers in conjunction with a May 5 downtown fundraiser titled Foster Farm to Fork.

 Awarded a bid to Steward Construction Company for $249,899 for replacement/upgrade of the Houston County Jail control system.

 Agreed to provide site work to assist with the proposed Cowarts Senior Center

 Agreed to place miscellaneous power tools, a wooden table with metal legs and one IBM typewriter on the auction site govdeals.com to be awarded to the highest bidder.

 Agreed to accept a grant from the Department of Homeland Security for certain overtime expense accrued by the Houston County Sheriffs Department.
Who was Julia?

If you believe playwright Lillian Hellman, on whose memoir Fred Zinnemann's Oscar-nominted drama is based, she was a childhood friend of Hellman's who eschewed her privileged upbringing to become a brazen anti-Nazi freedom-fighter in pre-World War II Austria. By forging passports and smuggling cash to fascist resisters, Julia helped hundreds of Jews and political dissidents emigrate to the West. An episode in Hellman's highly acclaimed book, 'Pentimento,' profiles this courageous woman, and chronicles how Julia secretly tapped Hellman to undertake a dangerous mission in service to the cause.

Fascinating? Without a doubt. True? Well, maybe. Questioning the validity of memoirs is a common pastime today (remember the cause celebre that consumed author James Frey a decade ago?), but for years controversy has hounded and tainted 'Julia.' Ironically, Hellman's first hit play, 'The Children's Hour,' examines the power of a lie, and how a simple fib laced with a kernel of truth can forever alter, and even destroy, innocent lives. Though no one has been harmed by Julia's story (unless one considers a bruised ego an injury), it's now widely believed that in 'Pentimento,' Hellman  of all people  told a whopper.

Oh, Julia existed all right, but probably not in the form Hellman would like us to believe. In real life, many claim, she was Dr. Muriel Gardiner, an esteemed psychoanalyst whose background, ideology, and exploits closely mirror Hellman's heroine (and are recounted in Gardiner's own autobiography, 'Code Name Mary: Memoirs of an American Woman in the Austrian Underground'). Hellman supposedly learned of Gardiner's tale through a mutual friend, "borrowed" and embellished it for 'Pentimento,' and inserted herself as a character to add immediacy and impact. There's no evidence the two women ever met, let alone shared an intimate friendship. And the idea Hellman carried concealed cash into Nazi Germany? Hogwash, says the intelligentsia. Yet for years, Hellman ardently denied fabricating the mission, Julia, and their long personal history together.

Both Hellman and Gardiner are now dead, but the debate lives on, as does 'Julia,' and its long-overdue Blu-ray release will surely stoke the embers anew. Zinnemann's fine film, however, rises above the fray. Its 11 Oscar nominations (including ones for Best Picture and Best Director) and three wins notwithstanding, 'Julia' remains a meticulously crafted, beautifully acted, suspenseful, and inspiring piece. When I first saw it as a 15-year-old during its original theatrical release, it made a deep impression on me, opening my eyes to the insidious seeds of Nazism, the passion and courage of those who fought it, and the powerful bond of friendship. In the intervening four decades, other films have addressed those topics more incisively, thus dulling the impact of 'Julia,' but Zinnemann's lush visuals and Alvin Sargent's Oscar-winning script keep it a compelling and affecting work.

As do the performances. Jane Fonda may have lost the Oscar to Diane Keaton's Annie Hall, but she etches her finest character portrait as the fiery yet insecure Hellman. With admirable restraint, Fonda captures the playwright's creative frustrations, intense attachment to Julia, and slow awakening to the devastating issues facing the world. Hellman's relationship with Julia dominates the film, but her stormy on-again-off-again romance with hard-drinking novelist Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards in an Academy Award-winning turn) equally resonates. In other roles, Maximilian Schell (also Oscar nominated) contributes an excellent cameo as the intermediary who sets up Hellman's mission, and Meryl Streep  in her film debut, and almost unrecognizable in a jet-black wig  makes a brief splash as one of Hellman's haughty society friends.

Julia, however, is the film's pivotal character. Though only sporadically seen (and often as a juvenile in flashback), she orchestrates the action and constantly occupies our thoughts. Today, Vanessa Redgrave is perhaps better remembered for her notorious Oscar acceptance speech (in which she famously referenced "Zionist hoodlums") than for the performance that won her the award, but hopefully this Blu-ray release will put the focus back on her subtle yet luminous work. I've said it before, but it bears repeating...Redgrave transmits more with a blank stare than most actresses do with an exhaustive monologue. Her minimalist acting reminds us of Hemingway's prose  terse yet poetic  and like Garbo, we endlessly search her beautiful, cryptic face for clues. She gives away so little, and at the same time so much, it's impossible not to be entranced by her.

And, as a result, by Julia...whoever she is.

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

'Julia' arrives on Blu-ray in a limited to 3,000 edition packaged in a standard case. An eight-page booklet featuring an essay by Twilight Time columnist Julie Kirgo, assorted scene stills, and a reproduction of the film's poster art is tucked inside the front cover. Video codec is 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 and audio is DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0. Once the disc is inserted into the player, the static menu with music immediately pops up; no previews or promos precede it.
dpa ElectionsData

With dpa ElectionsData you get access to a unique collection of data. Via a programming interface (Rest-API), your developers can access detailed information, candidate profiles and live results for all national elections in the European Union and important international elections, like the US Midterm elections etc.

The data pool also includes all heads of state and government as well as about 20,000 elected members of parliament throughout the EU. In addition to their data (name, party, constituency or list position), we collect social media profiles and official websites of individuals and parties.


Refugees in Si Taung Village Refugees in Si Taung Village

The refugees are Arakan, Khami, Daingnet, and Chin people from the villages of Nat Ai, Kyaw Lann Chaung, and A Bu.

A Kyaw Lann Chaung resident told Narinjara News that the villagers had fled in fear after artillery shells fell onto their village destroying mango trees.

There have been recent clashes between the Arakan Army and the Burma Army in the area of the shelling.

Translated by Thida Linn

Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
Nissan has cut the fat from its line-up, dropping the slow selling Micra city car and Pulsar hatch.

The Japanese brand also confirmed that the diesel-powered versions of its ageing Patrol will also be gone from showrooms by the end of 2016.

The company explained there was simply no longer a viable business case for the compact Micra or the Pulsar hatch. However, the sedan version of the Pulsar, which makes up the majority of its sales, will continue.

Both the Micra and Pulsar hatch will now enter run out phase with only cars already in the country being offered.

Nissan has already made the same decision to cull the Almera compact sedan and phase out the Murano SUV as it bids to rationalise its extensive range and focus on its better-selling SUV models.

Nissan only sold 1243 examples of the Micra in 2015, a 48 per cent drop on 2014, and less than half of Pulsar sales are the hatch.

"These decisions are in line with our commitment to running a robust business in Australia, led by strong products including Qashqai, X-Trail and Navara," explained Nissan Australia CEO Richard Emery.

"Complete after-sales service and technical support for the affected models will continue to be available from our Australian authorised dealer network.

"Nissan is committed to maintaining a strong and healthy business in Australia, which includes our national sales company, Nissan Financial Services, Nissan Casting Australia plant, field quality centre and motorsport activities."

The demise of the Patrol cab chassis and wagon models was inevitable. The diesel-powered variants of the decade-old four-wheel drive were kept on following Nissan's global decision to only offer the current generation Patrol, which went on sale in 2013, with a V8 petrol engine.

Click here for all the latest Nissan news and reviews
ANP Deputy Chairperson Daw Aye Nu Sein said to Narinjara News: Every government promotes national reconciliation, stability and the rule of law. National reconciliation is impossible due to the wars in Arakan State. Innocent civilians have been suffering. There is no security, even in a big city like Sittwe where there are rumours of people being forced to work as porters. This is happening because there is no rule of law.

Also who will take responsibility for the innocent civilians who have fled from the mountains and rural villages? It is chiefly the State Governments responsibility. That is why we have released the announcement, to demand that the government solve [the issue]. In order to stop the fighting immediately they need to solve this immediately.

In their announcement the ANP also urged the government to take full responsibility for: preventing innocent villagers from being used as hostages or porters; preventing the relocation of existing villages; protecting innocent civilians lives and livelihoods; and protecting refugees from the fighting.

They also called on government to allow organisations to provide humanitarian assistance to refugees.

When Narinjara News contacted the Arakan State Chief Minister, U Nyi Pu on 23 April someone who claimed to be his personal assistant said that U Nyi Pu had not yet read the ANP statement and that he would not be able to comment on it until the next day.

The Burma Army and the Arakan Army have been fighting each other in the area of the Lawyama Mountains between Kyauktaw Township and Rathedaung Township in Arakan State since 16 April.

Both sides have suffered high casualties and thousands of residents from Buthidaung Township, Rathedaung Township, and Kyauktaw Township have fled their homes, according to groups providing relief aid.

ANP MPs said that in the upcoming parliamentary sessions the party will send official submissions to the Arakan State Parliament and the Union State Parliament calling for a halt to fighting in Arakan State and calling on the parliaments to ensure there is regional peace and stability.



ANP Statement

Translated by Thida Linn

Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
Mid-Day market watch on April 26, 2016

It was a grand come back for the Indian markets after four retreats in a row. Our benchmark indices washed off early losses where Nifty broke above 7950 mark, gaining 1.1 per cent after a gap down opening. Sensex too gained 300 points and is trading higher by 1.1 per cent at 25965 levels.

Market breadth remained positive with 1455 advances; and 881 declines where the broader Midcap index outperformed the benchmarks.

On the sectoral front, Metals were trading in the positive territory even when markets were in red; specifically Hindalco surged 4 per cent after it agreed to accept a takeover bid from MetalsX Ltd. for its Australian subsidiary Aditya Birla Minerals. Nalco too surged 5 per cent plus on its buyback plan.

Other than Metals, Auto and Banking sector specifically PSU Banks, and Realty surged more than 1 per cent each. None of the sectors is trading in red.

Top Nifty Gainers:

Telecom giant IDEA and Metal Giant Hindalco are the top gainers with 4 per cent plus upward movement. IndusInd Bank follows with 3.5 per cent gains. BHEL recovers today after falling for three consecutive sessions and gains 2.9 per cent. Maruti Suzuki follows with 2.5 per cent gains.

Top Nifty Losers:

None of the Nifty50 stocks is trading below 1 per cent losses. Somewhat marginally weak stocks are Adani Ports, Infratel, Hero Motocorp, ICICI Bank. BPCL and Reliance remain flat to negative.

Asian markets were mostly weak today ahead of policy announcements from FED and Bank of Japan later in the week. FED has pointed towards lowering the possibility of rate hikes anytime during the year. BOJ is likely to ramp up its policy stimulus.

Buzzer: Cigarette manufacturers Godfrey Phillips tumbled 17.75 per cent amid reports that government would bring complete ban on FDI in the tobacco sector.

Nifty hit above 7900 followed by 7950 mark. Now we hold 7980-8000 as our immediate resistance for now. On the downside, 7900 followed by 7870 will act as immediate supports for the Nifty.
Dundalk district court has been told a 21 year old Dublin man who admitted trespassing in a private area of a hotel in County Louth, did not get out of the van which was involved in the incident - until he took to the fields after it crashed.

Lorcan Ross with an address at Ballyfermot Road, Dublin 10 was also prosecuted for unauthorised carriage, at Darver Castle on February 28th last year.

The court heard the Nissan vanettte involved - was fitted with false number plates, and had been stolen in Dun Laoghaire 10 days earlier.

The accused was found hiding in a ditch a couple of fields away from crash scene.

The defence solicitor said his client claimed that he'd been picked up and had been drinking, and did not get out of the van.

He added the accused is serving a 21 month sentence with a release date in October, has engaged with crime and drugs awareness programmes while in prison, and has returned to education.

Judge Conall Gibbons sentenced him to six months for trespass offence, and a concurrent three month term for the second offence.
Seventy five years ago this month a band of intrepid Dundalk men made a perilous journey northwards to help the people of Belfast who had been stricken by a German blitz which killed over 1,000 men, women and children, destroyed half the structures in the city and displaced over 50,000 people. The Second World War had been raging for nearly two years by that time but the assault on Belfast seems to have been quite unexpected.

How Dundalk responded to the call for assistance is a story that is now nearly forgotten but it was an epic one --- and was one that nearly dragged us into the great conflict that was raging throughout Europe!

The first raid on Belfast by German aircraft had come on April 7, 1941 but this seems to have done little damage, killed and injured only a few people and little did the citizens know that this was only a 'path-finding mission' for the later massive attack on the city. This came on the night of Easter Monday, April 14/15 and brought devastation!

How Dundalk was dragged into the story is told in the words of Dan Devenney, himself a native of Belfast who was Accountant and Commercial Manager Manager in John Halliday & Son Ltd, living in Blackrock with his family at the time, writing in Victor Whitmarsh's 'Dundalk in The Emergency', first published in 1977.

Dan explains that he had been asked to set up a Fire Fighting Unit for the factory in Quay Street at the start of the war in 1939 and that the Dundalk Urban Council were required by the Department of Local Government to organise Auxiliary Fire Services within the town.

He writes --- 'From the start until Easter 1941 nothing of great incident occurred, except that we did regular training and practice.

Early on Easter Tuesday morning, in Blackrock, I heard heavy aircraft crossing Dundalk Bay, at that time aircraft could be identified by the noise of their engines. These sounded like German planes to me and they were in great numbers.

After daylight, we heard Belfast was under aerial attack and much damage had been done. At the request of the Taoiseach's Office all Auxiliary Fire Units in the Republic were asked to volunteer for duty in Belfast. Dundalk Fire Brigade, with its Merryweather (Fire Engine) and permanent staff were mustered, together with Halliday's Auxiliary Fire Service.'

Dan goes on to detail the events of the two exciting days for him; his journey to Belfast, the horrors he experienced there and the welcome they got from the ordinary people of Belfast. The events of those days are also detailed in an article written for the same book by Tom Kenny, an Assistant Dundalk Town Surveyor at the time, who was in charge of the Dundalk municipal Fire Brigade for the trip to Belfast.

As it turned out only various fire fighting units from Dublin City and, I think, Balbriggan, apart for the Dundalk units, made the dangerous journey to Belfast. I believe the the Halliday Unit may have been the only non-municipal unit to take part! The decision by Eamonn de Valera to allow Free State fire services to help, however, could have had very serious consequences for our position of neutrality at the time. Historians are divided in their opinion as to whether or not Hitler was annoyed by the decision but the fact was that Dublin was attacked by German bombers on the following May 21 and many people were killed by the attack on the North Wall area of the city. It is said that Hitlers interest in attacking Irish targets waned with the launch of his 'Operation Barbarossa' in early June of 1941, as his attention was focused on his invasion of the Soviet Union.

Dundalk itself was bombed on the night of July 23/24, with a 1,000 bomb falling in the area between the Quay front and Castle Road and ten more, smaller bombs fell in a line in fields in the Thomastown area. The only known causality that night was a goat that was killed when grazing near the Dundalk-Greenore railway line where the big bomb fell. My own, small, experience of that night was that a family pet, a canary we had for years, was found dead in his cage on the following morning. I was away on holidays in Donegal at the time but I remember that my mother said that the bomb blast, which happened about half a mile away from our home, had killed the bird. Wonder do any of my readers still remember that night?

No satisfactory evidence was ever found for the bombing of Dundalk on that night so long ago; some say that it was an attack on a British merchant ship berthed at the Quay, others that it was just a stray German bomber pilot who wished to get home by getting rid of his lethal cargo and did not really know where he was dropping them! Who know! Anyway, Dundalk seems to have been lucky that night!
Calls for the company tax rate to be cut in the budget is a perennial issue, and one that small business inevitably weighs in on.

There have been calls for small business to benefit from a lower tax rate for decades. In the three major tax reviews conducted since the early 1970s, (Asprey, Ralph and Henry)  the call has not been answered.

Despite recognition that a number of OECD countries provide their small businesses with a lower company tax rate, successive Australian governments have continually supported other favourable taxation arrangements for small business.

Yet the calls have not been dampened.

Council of Small Businesses of Australia chairman Peter Strong has been outspoken on the issue in favour of a lower rate for his members.

The difference between big and small business is profound. A small business is a person who is in the end just a taxpayer, he said.

Mr Strong has drawn attention to the ongoing tax evasion of big business, which in turn, comes back on the Australian tax payer.

As a result, our national budget suffers and governments have to make individual taxpayers pay for the sins of the biggest businesses, he said.

The Tax Institute is another body urging the Federal Government to use the 2016 Budget to enact meaningful tax reform.

The government brought relief to small business last year and promised tax incentives for early stage investors in its innovation statement, however the current tax debate has become redundant despite the government previously committing to holistic tax reform, the organisation said in a statement.

While the Tax Institute was not optimistic for significant structural tax initiatives in the 3 May Budget, it was calling for a reduction of the company tax rate to 25% (currently 28.5%).

It did not, however, outline calls for a separate and lower rate for small business.

In the last budget, the government was steadfast that while it agreed small businesses should pay less tax on their profits and be treated more favourably that larger businesses, it would not be creating a separate tax rate.

For this reason, its unlikely the 2016-17 budget will differ on this issue.

The government has previously stated that separate tax arrangements may:

distort choices including the structure of business organisation and commercial decisions about forms of expenditure;

result in economic inefficiency if they interfere with the market and result in the allocation of resources to small, less efficient, firms rather than to larger, more efficient, ones.

That said, the government has pulled rabbits out of its hat before  with one week to go before the budget, time will tell.
Australias small business exporters have three things in common: they are optimistic, they are confident and most importantly, they are innovative. When this translates to the international market through exporting, these traits are even more important to success.

As small and medium enterprises (SME) move into the global marketplace, they have the opportunity to learn from international best practice. This provides an opportunity to drive innovation and productivity, creating an enduring competitive edge, both overseas and at home.

Here are some ways in which Australian small business exporters are driving growth and productivity through innovation.

Delivery innovation

Finding an innovative way to distribute their product or service can make a real difference to an SMEs success as an exporter. Collaborating with an established overseas partner is one way to gain a head start in a new market, with immediate benefits for both businesses.

An overseas partner creates a new revenue stream and a new way to bring value to their existing customers, while the Australian SME gains a ready-made delivery channel run by people with direct experience of the market.

Digital technologies have also made it easier than ever before to reach out to overseas customers directly, either in collaboration with a partner or alone.

Sydney-based digital marketing company Stackla has used both approaches to rapidly build a portfolio of more than 500 blue-chip clients around the world. Specialising in collating and analysing user-generated data across social media, Stackla provides its clients with customer insights they can use to create tailored marketing strategies.

By partnering with established providers like Hootsuite and Simpleview, and building relationships with global brands including Twitter and Facebook, Stackla has been able to win hundreds of new clients across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific in just four years.

At the same time, Stacklas strong digital presence enables the company to deliver software and interact with its customers directly via its website and developer portal.

Marketing innovation

An essential element of export success is the ability of an SME to adapt their marketing approach to appeal to customers in different locations. The first step is to analyse the distinctive tastes and buying behaviours of key customer segments in each destination, then adapt the brand and marketing strategy accordingly.

Digital technologies and social media have made it easier than ever to market products and services internationally at low cost. Digital platforms also make it easier to gather insights into the behaviours of different market segments.

Its also important to get the basics like branding and packaging right.

Australian winemaker Cassegrain has been exporting to Japan and other south-east Asian markets since 1987. But when the company made a concerted effort to enter the Chinese market in 2013, it found that getting its marketing right was essential to its success.

As a relatively young market, China tends to place greater emphasis on image and profile than on the quality of the wine itself, says John Cassegrain, Chief Winemaker and Managing Director of Cassegrain.

The market is driven largely by traditional perceptions about what wine should be  so, for example, weve seen a preference for wines that use corks, rather than screw caps. Similarly, our Japanese customers are very demanding when it comes to presentation, including the quality of the bottles we use.

By adapting everything from bottle shapes and sizes to labelling and packaging, Cassegrain was able to create a product with unique appeal to Asian buyers.

And by ensuring that pricing reflects the quality of the wine  and not just the packaging  Cassegrain is helping protect the brands future as the market matures.

Financing innovation

Securing finance for new export initiatives is a key challenge for many SMEs. However, innovative finance methods are becoming increasingly popular and creating new opportunities for Australian export businesses.

For example, a growing number of startups are using crowd-funding: raising capital directly from the public, usually via websites and social media channels.

A key advantage of this approach is SMEs dont need to share control with a third party stakeholder, such as a private equity or venture capital firm.

SMEs expanding overseas and looking for finance to support growth should consider alternative funding sources that can help build their global presence without sacrificing equity or control.

For SMEs unable to source finance through their bank, Efic may be able to help.

As Australias export finance agency, Efic delivers simple and creative solutions for Australian companies  to enable them to win business, grow internationally and achieve export success.

There are numerous ways SMEs can drive growth through innovation. We have seen some great examples of innovation among SMEs, such as adapting their delivery model to meet the needs of an overseas market, or tailoring their marketing and brand strategy to create unique appeal in new markets.

Leveraging innovation can lead to great success overseas for Australian SMEs.

About the Author

Andrew Watson, Executive Director, Export Finance, Efic
In 2005, during the military administration, the Max Myanmar Company confiscated the lands in Shwe Yaung Pya, Laohkhe (Win Gyi), Kyatayaw (Zee Wun), and Kalawkhe (Kha Lauk Inn) to use as rubber plantations. At the time they did not fully compensate those who had been using the land.

The residents made their demands on 21 April. Naw Muu Dar from Zee Wun village told KIC that they were making their demands for justice now because there is transparency and stability in the region now.

She said: When they [the company] took our plantation we had nothing to do. We had to work in their rubber plantation to earn money. Actually, it was our plantation but we couldnt say anything back [to them] so we had to give it [to the company]. When they gave us money for compensation, it was under the market value. After giving us money, they made us sign to prevent us from making further disturbance. Now, its not easy to get our land back. If possible I want full compensation.

When Max Myanmar first confiscated the land in 2010 it gave 20,000 kyats per acre to affected residents. Then the residents demanded proper compensation of 500,000 kyats per acre and eventually Max Myanmar offered 200,000 kyats compensation per acre in 2014 and 2015.

The Max Myanmar owner, U Zaw Zaw, had agreed to help regional development by promising to build roads, bridges and schools and to supply electricity if the business was successful.

Locals claim that the company, despite its promises, has only built a few schools.

The Shwe Yaung Pya Village Administrator Saw Aung Moe Tun said: U Zaw Zaw told us that he would carry them [regional developments] out if the business is successful. Now that the rubber sap can be collected [from the rubber trees] they still havent carried them out. Also, they entered this area claiming this was vacant land owned by the Burmese government and did not negotiate with the local residents. Actually, local people have been working here and this is KNU-controlled territory. In the past, we couldnt speak up so we had to settle when they [Max Myanmar] wanted to settle. Now, we can speak up so we will speak up.

The KNU Thaton District Chairman, Pado Saw Min Thein said: When the company confiscated many lands and gave out compensation some residents received it and some didnt. Some are satisfied while some are dissatisfied. Actually, public awareness on land law and land policy should have been raised first. When they took over the place [land], the local residents lost their place.

According to the Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG) over 90 people have lost land because of Max Myanmars land confiscation. They said that some of those have received some compensation, while others have received no compensation.

During the previous military administration the Burma Army also forcibly confiscated 500 acres of land to the west of Kyatayaw (Zee Wun) Village near to the land confiscated by Max Myanmar. The army still has not returned the land.

Translated by Thida Linn

Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
Bill Cosby's attempt to avoid facing a sexual assault charge was ended Monday by a Pennsylvania appeals court. The entertainer, who claimed that an old deal with prosecutors not to charge him in the 2004 case should be honored, will now be criminally prosecuted.

Cosby, 78, is facing trial over a 2004 encounter at his home with a then Temple University employee who says she was drugged and molested by the comedian. Cosby says they engaged in consensual sex acts.

Former prosecutor Bruce Castor has said he promised he would never prosecute Cosby and urged him to testify in the woman's 2005 civil lawsuit. The release of that testimony last year led a new prosecutor to arrest him. In the lengthy deposition, the long married Cosby acknowledged a series of affairs and said he had gotten quaaludes to give to women he hoped to seduce. Cosby has not yet entered a plea in the criminal case, and remains free on $1m bail posted after his 30 December arrest.
The Family Acid is my favorite Instagram feed. It's a stream of photographer/author/explorer Roger Steffens's vintage snapshots of his dynamic, inspiring, and psychedelic life in the counterculture since the early 1960s. Roger's children Kate and Devon are the editors and curators of their dad's hundreds of thousands of slides and negatives.





Kate has just issued these fantastic enamel pins for just $10/each. The "LSD did this to me" design is based on her dad's original pin from 1960s. As Boing Boing patron saint Timothy Leary once said, "You have to go out of your mind to use your head!"



Family Acid pins




























This transgender woman helps the community speak for themselves.

This is part of a story series about the lives of transgender people. Read the introduction here.

Bre Anne Campbell doesnt want to see another trans woman of color murdered. Its a sobering problem across the country, but especially in Detroit, where Michigans lack of anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people often forces transgender women into the street economy because its the only job they can find. Then, of course, there are the random acts of violence against trans women that have nothing to do with their line of work.

So after the vicious murder in 2011 of Shelly Hilliard, who went by the name Treasure  she was dismembered and her body parts were strewn across the city  Campbell decided enough was enough. She began having conversations with her friend John Trimble, which eventually led them to establish the Trans Sistas of Color Project. The project officially launched in 2015 with Campbell as executive director and Trimble as deputy director. Campbell explains the organizations mission.

I wanted to create an organization for trans women of color who were facing discrimination. Our project started a six-month program wed put trans women through to facilitate getting their names changed and then wed reintroduce them after their name changed  like a debutante ball. We had everything we needed but funding.

Launching the project didnt happen overnight, but Campbell was determined, especially as the number of murders of transgender women continued to rise. In 2015, 21 trans women were murdered in the United States. When Amber Monroe became the 12th trans woman of color murdered in Detroit last year, Campbell was out of town, participating in a fellowship with an organization where she says no one ever spoke to her  until Monroes death.

They wanted me to talk about it and write about it as a trans woman of color, says Campbell, who began transitioning in 2010. I pushed back a lot because they only wanted to talk about sex work. If youre going to talk about my friend Amber, Im not going to just talk about her sex work. Im going to talk about her life.

That was the breaking point for Campbell. She knew she had to come home and hit the ground running with the Trans Sistas of Color Project. She has sacrificed a great deal to create this organization, including giving up her apartment and moving back in with her family, and wiping out the savings shed set aside surgery.

The organizations first event lost money, and Campbell admits she was deeply discouraged. But then she got a call from Steph White, executive director of Equality Michigan. White wanted to know what they could do to help, and after some conversations Equality Michigan became the fiscal sponsor of the Trans Sistas of Color Project.

Now were an organization, says the 30-year-old Campbell. Were going to build sisterhood with trans women in Detroit by mobilizing the community to start training for activism. Everyones activism is important, from the front of the line to the back. I want to be intentional about framing the conversation that everyone is an activist.

Campbell is no stranger to activism. She began this work in 2004, with the AmeriCorps program in Detroit, where she gained experience in HIV advocacy. Shes worked on HIV advocacy with several organizations, and was diagnosed with HIV herself in 2010, just two months before she began transitioning.

My HIV activism was the beginning of my work on transgender advocacy, although I didnt realize it at the time, Campbell says. I was advocating for HIV and didnt see the need to advocate about my trans identity at first.

But it didnt take long for Campbell to step up her transgender advocacy. Although she says transitioning was easy for her  because she had the support of her family and friends, as well as her employer at the time  she spent her entire life until then struggling with her gender identity.

I compare it to taking two magnets and trying to force them together: When you push them together they push back, Campbell says. Thats how I felt in my body, that my inward body was pushing against my outward body and they werent connecting. There was a lot of depression.

Although Campbell had an overall positive experience with her transition, she faced discrimination from the beginning.

In the fall of 2010 I applied for housing in Detroit. When I asked why I wasnt approved, I got several different answers from management. One of them was that I lied on my application, that the name I gave them didnt match who I was. I explained I was in the process of transitioning and hadnt had my ID changed. I explained they needed to process my paperwork according to my ID but not to call me by that name. For two years, I tried to hold them accountable only to have the City of Detroit say I didnt have a case because theres no protections in the state for trans individuals.

From that moment on, Campbell says she began speaking out a lot more about being transgender  and being a person of color, and someone living with HIV. In her personal advocacy and through the Trans Sistas of Color Project, intersectionality is important to Campbell.

For me, as an advocate, theres this constant feeling of having all these issues you face yourself being thrown in your face, she says. You not only have to advocate for yourself but for others.

Throughout that process she was working for an organization that was very trans-inclusive, which included allowing people to use the bathroom that fits their gender identity. But a university Campbell was working for threatened to fire her for using the womens bathroom. She suspects its because she was in the process of getting her name legally changed  yet another issue thats a challenge for the transgender community.

I spent $400 changing my name. Every time I need to verify my identity, the first thing people do is congratulate me. They think I changed my name because I got married. When I explain its my first and middle name I changed, they look at me with disgust and confusion. As someone who is considered successful and has the privilege of passing [as a woman]. I still struggle with having to go into places and disclose this really personal information about myself.

Bathrooms and other public spaces continue to be an issue for Campbell, just like the rest of the transgender community, especially given the increasingly hateful rhetoric around bathroom bills and other anti-LGBTQ legislation.

Its scary out here. I could walk into a bathroom and have someone violently pull me out. I could be walking down the street, have someone be attracted to me and then be assaulted because they find out Im trans. Ive been sexually assaulted, but Im fortunate to still be here to tell my story. There are so many people whose lives have been taken away, just for being who they are. Its scary in Michigan, considering everything thats going on. We get called perverts, we get labeled as deviants  while theyre the ones focused on our body parts.

When even some in the larger LGBTQ community have been less than helpful in advocating for the transgender community, Campbell has persevered. In fact, she believes strongly in creating an organization that lets trans women of color advocate for themselves  and lift themselves up out of poverty and despair.

Campbell has mindfully built a diverse organization made up of people from all walks of life and perspectives. Building future leaders for the movement is a personal goal for Campbell. For the Trans Sistas of Color Project, the larger mission is to open a 24-hour community center for transgender women in Detroit. This drop-in space will include showers, beds, food, clothing, and access to case management services. After the community center is established, the next initiative is to establish a transitional living program for trans women in Detroit, Campbell says.

A lot of women are homeless. They want to get off the street  get out of the street economy. Some trans women choose to be sex workers but many others are forced into the work because of discrimination. There arent a lot of homeless shelters that accept trans women, and those that do, I have a friend who was sexually assaulted by someone who worked at the shelter. So many trans women want to get off the streets and be safe. Im tired of trans women being victims. We want to provide them a way off the streets. If we do that and create leaders, then lives can change. In fact, were already changing lives  something I didnt expect to happen for a couple of years.

Campbell has ambitious goals, and she is determined to help transgender people, especially trans women of color, gain the skills and confidence to speak for themselves, just as she has.

The struggles I face, along with the possibility of violence on me, is a better feeling than being depressed because I was living a life I didnt identify with, Campbell says. At the end of the day, trans people just want to be happy, and were willing to risk our lives for it. But we shouldnt have to. So, as a community, we need to make some noise.

Read all the stories in this series HERE.



[Photos courtesy of Bre Anne Campbell.]
Google has been working on an incubator that would let employees pitch business plans and work full time on approved projects while remaining on its payroll, according to news reports published this week.

The incubator, to be called Area 120, will be led by Don Harrison, VP of corporate development, and Bradley Horowitz, VP of streams, photos and sharing.

Employees whose pitches are accepted can take outside funding or create a company under Googles umbrella.

Its not clear whether Area 120 will be set up under the aegis of Google or its parent company, Alphabet.

The Natural Order of Things

That Google would open up an incubator is not at all strange, observed Scott Strawn, a research director at IDC.

The company is in the business of acquiring early-stage companies, and perhaps they feel like theres a better way of developing these companies than what else is out there, so theyre getting involved earlier on in the process, he told the E-Commerce Times

As of a year ago, Google had purchased about180 companies, with its biggest acquisition beingMotorola Mobility, for which it paid US$12.5 billion.

Hanging on to People

Google could be launching its incubator in an effort to hold on to its top talent.

Last year, it restructured, withAlphabet as its holding company. Google hosts its core business while other projects are run by Alphabet, each with its own CEO.

An incubator is a good environment because typically it allows for a different set of incentives to be put in place so that people can have direct ownership in an independent company, as opposed to having shares in Google, remarked Strawn.

That could be helpful in recruiting talent that they might otherwise have challenges recruiting or when competition issues might arise, he added.

The incubator can be viewed as the ultimate retention tool, said Andreas Scherer, managing partner atSalto Partners, who noted that several Google employees have launched their own businesses after leaving the company.

Further, it lets Google build a structured process around the creative energy within its organization, he told the E-Commerce Times. So instead of implicitly funding ideas by tolerating employee-driven side projects, theres a clear vetting process overseen by investment professionals.

A Step in the Wrong Direction?

Googles latest financials showcase that their massive number of moonshot products are starting to dramatically hurt their financial performance, remarked Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. Youd think theyd bring on board a function that could bring products to market, not another moonshot or incubation function.

Having a hands-off incubation function isnt a bad idea, but Googles already unable to manage the complexity they have, he told the E-Commerce Times. Adding more would seem to be going in the wrong direction.

Further, Googles retention problem is tied to a high value placed on employees who then go and found startups, and the incubator doesnt address that problem, Enderle pointed out.

Its the Management, Guys

Giving incubator participants the option of accepting outside funding reduces risk, but only if they trust Google to keep their hands off the property, he said. So far, Google has shown a distinct inability to keep from messing up their acquisitions, so theyre also likely to mess up the startups.

Googles failure to bring innovative products to market isnt a lack of innovative people; its a management process that either makes it hard to bring innovation to market or kills it, Enderle suggested. Google is aggressively ignoring they have a management and process issue and trying to dodge it by creating yet one more corporate structure.
The parent company of British tabloid the Daily Mail apparently has entered whats shaping up as frenzied round robin bidding war for Yahoo, a firm that long has worn the mantle of a technology relic incapable of exciting interest.

The Daily Mail & General Trust on Monday confirmed a report that it has approached private equity companies on a possible joint bid for the firm.

Given the success of DailyMail.com and Elite Daily we have been in discussions with a number of parties who are potential bidders, a Daily Mail spokesperson said in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by company rep Sean Walsh. Discussions are at a very early stage and there is no certainty that any transaction will take place. We have no further comment at this time. Further updates will be provided as appropriate.

Yahoo reportedly has held discussions with Verizon, IAC/Interactive Corp. and CBS Corp., according to the WSJ, but has not yet sat down with Daily Mail executives. Verizon, whose CEO confirmed interest in acquiring Yahoos core Web business several weeks ago, is widely seen as the leading candidate to pull off a deal.

Yahoo has extended the deadline for receipt of first-round bids from April 11 to April 18, according to reports.

The Daily Mail is the latest surprise entrant in the contest. Its bid could take the form of one or two potential deals, the WSJ noted.

In one scenario, the private equity partner would take over Yahoos entire U.S. operation and fold the news and media properties into the Daily Mail. The second scenario would have the private equity partner take control of Yahoo and fold its news and media companies into a new firm, which would include DailyMail.com and Elite Daily.

The Daily Mail has been in talks with a half-dozen private equity firms on making a bid, including General Atlantic, according to the WSJ.

Plenty to Offer

Despite Yahoos difficulties as a legacy company, there remains a strong core of Web traffic that might attract traditional media company like the Daily Mail, observed Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at Poynter.

Say what you will about Yahoo,they remain a leader in basic traffic, he told the E-Commerce Times. The rap on the company is that they cannot come up with a growth strategy or carve out a distinctive journalistic role.

The Daily Mail claims about 62 million unique visitors per month in the U.S., citing Comscore data from July 2015.

Yahoo reaches nearly 78 million people per month, making it the ninth biggest website in the country, according to Quantcast.

Yahoo has beefed up its content business over the years, luring major media figures like former CBS anchor Katie Couric, who is global anchor at Yahoo, and former Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, who is now the companys chief investigative correspondent.

The news and financial features are good and what makes Yahoo attractive to media companies, said Michael Jude, consumer communication services research manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

Yahoos once-leading search engine probably would be folded into another entity, as it is not what it used to be before Google emerged as a leading search provider, he added.

However, the likely scenario is that whichever company acquires Yahoo, it will wind up with the company largely intact, Jude suggested, because the individual parts by themselves are not as attractive.

Identity Crisis

What exactly is Yahoo these days? A media company, a personal destination page, a news source, a 22-year-old startup? asked Kevin Krewell, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

A case can be made for all of these and none of these, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Defining what Yahoos mission actually is has stymied its management since the leadership of cofounder Jerry Yang, and therefore made the company both malleable and cast hard, Krewell said.

Each potential buyer can see it in their own light, but whichever company does get Yahoo will try to mold it to a new owners whims, he predicted. It will be hard, and some things will break, and some parts will be sold off.

Yahoo will have no comment on the deal process, spokesperson Rebecca Neufeld told the E-Commerce Times  either regarding the Daily Mail specifically or in general.
Chinese authorities have issued censorship instructions to the media following the release of thePanama Papers, according to news reports published last week.

The leaked documents reportedly listed several top Chinese officials who used Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to set up offshore companies.

The names include relatives of at least eight current or previous members of the Chinese Communist Partys Politburo Standing Committee, such as President Xi Jinpings brother-in-law Deng Jiagui; Li Xiaolin, daughter of former premier Li Peng; and Jasmine Li, granddaughter of former Standing Committee member Jia Qinglin.

Instructions Issued

The Chinese government issued a notice ordering the media to find and delete any reprinted reports regarding the Panama Papers, according to a report in theChina Digital Times.

Media were ordered not to follow up on related content, the report said. Any websites that contain materials from foreign media attacking China will be dealt with severely.

The China Digital Times omitted the name of the issuing body in order to protect the source.

Another notice reportedly instructed a website to withdraw an article about the Panama Papers and related stories from its home page and move them to the back end of the site.

Western Influence

Western media and Washington have controlled the interpretation of document leaks, minimizing information negative to the U.S. and emphasizing information about non-Western leaders, the state-run Peoples Dailyasserted.

The leaks might be disinformation, the publication hinted, adding that the West would be happy to see such leaks occur if they attack its opponents.

No mention was made of any Chinese subjects of the Panama Papers.

Exposing the Truth

Its now increasingly difficult to completely hide the digital trail of illegal transactions, no matter how rich and powerful you are, commented Chenxi Wang, chief strategy officer atTwistlock.

The Great Firewall was fairly effective in restricting the access of people in China to the Internet until application-level messaging apps such as WeChat and QQ became popular, she told the E-Commerce Times. The Great Firewall doesnt work on them.

As more people in China use those apps and others like them to communicate, the Great Firewall will become increasingly less effective unless the government bans the use of such messaging apps, Wang said.

Getting Around the Curbs

Chinas Great Firewall is effective enough with average citizens, but, as with other censoring efforts, usually fails with the tech-savvy, she pointed out.

In addition to application-level messaging apps like WeChat, tech-savvy Chinese are using anonymous communications and VPNs, Wang said. Sometimes VPNs dont work at all in China, but you can usually find one that will get you around the Great Firewall.

Even Fang Binxing, the creator of the Great Firewall, hasgotten in on circumvention: Earlier this month, he reportedly showed students at Harbin Technical Institute how to use a VPN called Tianhe, or Galaxy, to access Google and other blocked websites.

Theres clearly a willingness to take the risk of getting caught in China, noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. There are simply too many connections between the West and the East for a strategy like this to work.

Beijings best strategy would have been to discredit the leaks as false, he told the E-Commerce Times, but that needs to be done early, and that boat, too, has likely already sailed.
If the rash of data breaches in recent months has done anything for businesses, its raised their awareness of cyber liability insurance.

The market for cyber liability insurance is expected to increase dramatically as businesses become more aware that their current policies dont adequately cover cyber-risks, according to theNational Association of Insurance Commissioners.

However, a three-judge federal appeals panel last week threw into question just how inadequately existing insurance products cover cyber-risks.

Portals Pleasant Surprise

The case before the appeals court involves a class-action lawsuit about a data breach at Portal Healthcare Solutions.

Portal has a form of insurance thats de rigueur for most businesses called a commercial general liability policy. Its a kind of umbrella policy thats supposed to cover a variety of unforeseen mishaps.

Portal argued that its CGL policy, issued byTravelers Indemnity, should cover the court costs of the data breach lawsuit.

A lower court agreed with Portal, and the appeals court agreed with the lower court.

What makes the decision important, particularly for small businesses that may not be able to afford cyber liability insurance, is that they may have some data breach coverage that they didnt know they had.

That could cover some gaps in existing coverage, too. Although 64 percent of companies have already gone the cyber liability route, many small breaches fall below policy deductibles, leaving companies to pick up the tab, according to a survey released last month byAdvisen.

Decisions Limitations

Despite the appellate courts decision, businesses should not be too optimistic about their CGLs providing a large measure of cyber liability coverage, noted Collin Hite, an insurance recovery attorney withHirschler Fleischer.

Those types of cases very much depend on the language in the policy involved in the case, he told TechNewsWorld.

Moreover, Hite added, the court did not rule on whether Portals policy would pay for damages if the healthcare provider lost the case  it only said Travelers had to pay the legal costs in the case.

The court is not saying that Travelers has to pay the verdict or not. All its saying is Travelers must pay for the insureds defense counsel and to defend the case, he said.

A lot of times, though, the defense of the case in the most expensive component of the lawsuit because the plaintiffs may not be able to prove any damages, Hite added.

Short-Lived Victory

Cases like Portals are more likely to involve older CGL policies because newer ones specifically exclude anything related to data breaches in the coverage.

What you see now in most standard liability insurance policies like CGLs is that insurance companies are excluding coverage for liability that arises from a data breach, said Alex Purvis, an attorney withBradley Arant Boult Cummings.

Whats unique about the Portal decision is that the policy did not have that type of exclusion, he told TechNewsWorld. It may be one of the few remaining policies without that exclusion.

When Portals CGL is up for renewal, it likely will include a cyber exclusion. This is probably a short-lived victory, Hite predicted. The insurers will rally to close what they see as a potential loophole.

Nevertheless, all companies can learn a valuable lesson from the case.

If you are a company that faces liability from a data breach, you should not forget some of your standard liability policies, particularly if do not have cyber coverage, Purvis said.

Cyber Insurance Still Best Buy

Even if some of a companys cyber exposures are covered in a CGL, it makes more sense to get a cyber liability policy, maintained Jeremy Henley, director of breach services atID Experts.

I would absolutely recommend companies buy cyber insurance in almost every case, he told TechNewsWorld.

The type of policy and the amount can change a lot, but every company has private information and technology involved in their organization, even if its just payroll, Henley continued.

A cyber policy is a prudent step, he said. Its frankly much safer for a policyholder to look at and consider a standalone cyber policy. Its really in their best interest.

Breach Diary

April 11. The Washington Post reports data for 44,000 customers of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is at risk after information inadvertently was downloaded to a personal storage device.

April 11. Three school districts in Mississippi report dozens of employees have complained about problems filing their federal tax returns due to a data breach at a third-party provider.

April 11. Palm Beach County Health Department in Florida announces the U.S. Justice Department has provided it with a list of 1,000 clients who were victims of a data breach at the healthcare provider.

April 12. JMW Solicitors announces 5,954 current and former employees of supermarket chain Morrisons have joined a lawsuit against the company seeking damages for data breach that exposed on the Internet personal information of 99,998 staffers.

April 12. The Identity Theft Resource Center reports that since 2005, there have been 6,013 reported data breaches in the United States exposing 851 million records.

April 13. Facebook announces Account Kit SDK, a method for developers, websites and Web apps to eliminate usernames and passwords to authenticate users.

April 13. Wandera reports CBS failed to properly use encryption on its March Madness apps and exposed users data to risk of theft. CBS denies apps were vulnerable.

April 13. Olympia School District in Washington announces it will offer 2,164 employees free credit monitoring services after their sensitive information was emailed to a fraudster posing as the superintendent of the school district.

April 13. American College of Cardiology announces it has notified 1,400 institutions some of their patient data is at risk after it was accidentally posted to a test site. [*Correction  April 22, 2016]

April 13. Rockhurst University states it has notified 1,300 people employed by the school in 2015 that their tax information was emailed to a third party posing as a university administrator.

April 14. European Parliament gives final approval to the General Data Protection Regulation, which includes a requirement that companies report a data breach within 72 hours of discovering it.

April 14. The city of Baltimore announces it is warning all it employees their tax information may have been compromised because of a data breach of its payroll and tax information systems.

April 14. U.S. Appeals Court overturns lower court ruling to revive a US$5 million lawsuit stemming from 2014 data breach at restaurant chain P.F. Changs.

April 14. Market research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech reports a 3.2 percent increase in new customer during first quarter for TalkTalk, which last year suffered a data breach affecting 157,000 customers.

April 15. Softpedia reports more than 179,000 records from the Fappening Forum, a website known for its nude photos of celebrities, have been posted by Troy Hunt to the Have I Been Pwned? website.

Upcoming Security Events

April 20-22. CSA Summit 2016. Lichtstr. 43i, first floor, Cologne, Germany. Registration: 500 euros.

April 23. B-Sides ROC. B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology, 20 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, New York. Free with registration.

April 23-24. B-Sides Charm City. Baltimore Convention Center, One West Pratt St., Baltimore. Tickets: $15 to $60.

April 25. Some Musings on Cyber Security by a Cyber Iconoclast. 1:30-3 p.m. ET. University of New Haven, Tagliatela College of Engineering, Buckman Hall, Schumann Auditorium, room B120, 300 Boston Post Road, New Haven, Connecticut. Presentation by Professor Gene Spafford, Purdue University. Free with registration.

April 26. 3 Key Considerations for Securing Your Data in the Cloud. 1 p.m. ET. Webinar sponsored by BrightTalk. Free with registration.

April 27. Chilling Effects: Insights on How Laws and Surveillance Impact People Online. Noon ET. Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, 23 Everett St., Second Floor, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lecture by Jon Penney, Oxford Internet Institute. Free with RVSP.

April 28-29. B-Sides Calgary. SAIT Polytechnic (Orpheus Theater), 1301 16 Ave. NW, Calgary, Alberta. Tickets: students, CA$20; professional, CA$50; VIP, CA$150.

April 28. Ransomware Resurgence: Locky and Other New Cryptolockers. 2 p.m. ET. Webinar by Cyphort. Free with registration.

May 3. Dallas Cyber Security Summit. Omni Dallas Hotel, 555 S. Lamar, Dallas. Registration: $250.

May 4. SecureWorld Kansas City. Overland Park Convention Center, 6000 College Blvd., Overland Park, Kansas. Registration: conference pass, $195; SecureWorld Plus, $625; exhibits and open sessions, $30.

May 7. B-Sides Chicago. Concord Music Hall, 2047 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago. Free.

May 11. SecureWorld Houston. Norris Conference Centre, 816 Town and Country Blvd., Houston. Registration: conference pass, $195; SecureWorld Plus, $625; exhibits and open sessions, $30.

May 18-19. DCOI|INSS USA-Israel Cyber Security Summit. The Marvin Center, 800 21st St. NW, Washington, D.C. Hosted by George Washington University. Free.

May 20-21. B-Sides Boston. Microsoft NERD, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tickets: $20.

May 21. B-Sides Cincinnati. University of Cincinnati, Tangeman University Center, Cincinnati. Tickets: $10.

May 21. B-Sides San Antonio. St. Marys University, One Camino Santa Maria, San Antonio, Texas. Tickets: $10.

June 1-2. SecureWorld Atlanta. Cobb Galleria Centre (Ballroom), Atlanta. Registration: conference pass, $325; SecureWorld plus $725; exhibits and open sessions, $30.

June 9. SecureWorld Portland. Oregon Convention Center. Registration: conference pass, $325; SecureWorld plus $725; exhibits and open sessions, $30.

June 13-16. Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit. Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, 201 Waterfront St., National Harbor, Maryland. Registration: until April 15, $2,950; after April 15, $3,150; public sector, $2,595.

June 22. Combatting Targeted Attacks to Protect Payment Data and Identify Threats. 1 p.m. ET. Webinar by TBC. Free.

June 29. UK Cyber View Summit 2016  SS7 & Rogue Tower Communications Attack: The Impact on National Security. The Shard, 32 London Bridge St., London. Registration: private sector, Pounds 320; public sector, Pounds 280; voluntary sector, Pounds 160.

June 30. DC/Metro Cyber Security Summit. The Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner, 1700 Tysons Blvd., McLean, Virginia. Registration: $250.

*ECT News Network editors note  April 22, 2016: Our original published version of this story incorrectly stated that patient data was accidentally posted to a test site on the Internet. However, the test site was NOT on the Internet, the American College of Cardiologys Beth Casteel informed us. Further, our original story stated that the incident occurred during a redesign of its national cardiovascular data registry. The software being developed wasnt a redesign of the National Cardiovascular Data Registry, according to Casteel, but just related software. We regret the errors.
Chariot for Women, a ride-sharing service that excludes males 13 and older, reportedly has postponed its launch to sometime this summer due to heavier-than-anticipated demand. The company originally had planned to debut the service in Boston next week.

Chariot for Women is open to all women, including transgender women. Children, including boys under the age of 13, also may ride.

Focus on Safety

The premise for the gender-restricted service is pretty straightforward: Disturbing stories about Uber drivers abound, and theres an untapped market for serving women and children only.

Founder Michael Pelletz, who once worked as an Uber driver, got the idea for Chariot for Women after he picked up a young man who was behaving strangely. The mans actions scared Pelletz enough that he went to a police officer for help.

The Chariot for Women app is focused on safety, and the company will conduct thorough background checks on drivers before taking them on, it said.

Its drivers will start the day by answering a random security question to verify their identity.

After a passenger requests a ride, the system will send her a safe word that the driver then must provide to verify identity before the passenger gets into the car.

The passenger also will receive a picture of the driver, the make of car that will pick her up, and its license number.

The app will use real-time GPS tracking and maps so customers will know exactly when their ride will arrive and wont have to wait on the curb.

Giving Back

Chariot for Women will donate 2 percent of every fare to womens charities, the company said.

Customers list 10 local and national charities they would like to give to; that list will pop up in the app when they get into the car, and they can choose which of the charities gets the 2 percent of the fare allocated for charity.

Speed Bumps

Chariot for Womens gender focus has raised legal questions, but founder Pelletz has said that the company is prepared for any challenges.

A similar service in New York SheTaxis  has been operating since 2014 and is preparing to launch an Android app in addition to the iOS app currently available.

Theres a need for this service, particularly given the recent horror stories related to Uber, said Susan Schreiner, an analyst at C4 Trends. The concept is very interesting, and will go a long way to eliminating the creep factor.

It also will eliminate problems women have encountered using regular cab services, she told the E-Commerce Times. Theres been times Im coming back from the airport late at night when Ive gotten into a cab and its a little bit scary or the driver is rude, and I dont need that.

Finding Its Way

Support for Chariot for Women has lit up the twitterverse.

Uber is a step above cab, but this sounds even better! wrote Sarah Dudley.

Brilliant idea! Wishing @ChariotForWomen huge success, tweeted Valentina Vitols.

Actress Debra Messing also tweeted support for the concept, as did Global Tech Women, an organization dedicated to closing the gender gap in technology.

However, in a city like Boston, which is not a huge city and not a high-crime city, you wonder about the idea, remarked Laura DiDio, a research director at Strategy Analytics.

Id think a service like this would be better targeted to a larger city with a higher crime rate, like New York, she told the E-Commerce Times.

With competition from Uber, Chariot for Women might have to offer another inducement, she said, like a 20 percent discount.
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Mitsubishi has admitted that it cheated on emissions standards tests for a quarter of a century, and it admits that this affected 600,000 cars, but the company says that the cheating cars were only sold to Japanese people.

Prediction: the company will admit that the number of cars is much bigger, and effects far more countries than Japan.

The company says it will pay a committee of "independent" investigators, with "no conflict of interest" to investigate the matter, over three months. That'll be all right then.

Mitsubishi falsified fuel economy tests on over half a million vehicles, the Japanese car giant has admitted. In a statement published online, Mitsubishi confirmed it had misrepresented fuel consumption rates on four models of car, two of which were Mitsubishi-branded, and two of which were built for Nissan. Over 600,000 vehicles in total were tested using methods other than those required by Japanese law. "We express deep apologies to all of our customers and stakeholders for this issue," Mitsubishi said. "Taking into account the seriousness of these issues, we will also conduct an investigation into products manufactured for overseas markets." The company notes, "The cars in question are only sold in the Japanese domestic market," such as the eK Space, above, and not sold in the US, UK or Australia.



Mitsubishi cheated fuel economy tests since 1991, report says

[Luke Westaway/Cnet]

Establishment of Special Investigation Committee

[Mitsubishi]

(Image: Mitsubishi eK Wagon rear, TTTNIS, PD)
(Photo: REUTERS / Stringer)Philippine National Police (PNP) carry a body bag, containing a member of the Special Action Force, to a van in Mamasapano town, Maguindanao province, January 26, 2015. At least 30 people were killed in heavy fighting between police and Muslim rebels in the Philippines on Sunday, military and local officials said, threatening a year-old peace agreement and shattering a ceasefire that held for three years.

The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the killing of a Canadian hostage kidnapped by Islamist extremists in the Philippines as "an act of cold-blooded murder."

John Ridsdel, 68, who worked in Philippines as a mining consultant, was taken from a tourist resort with three others by the Abu Sayyaf group in September 2015, the BBC reported.

"Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers and this unnecessary death.

"This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau told journalists after a meeting of Canada's cabinet.

In November, the Islamists released a video showing Ridsdel and three other captives, and demanded a ransom of $80 million.

Ridsdel was taken to Jolo after being kidnapped from a marina near the city of Davao, along with another Canadian, Robert Hall; a Norwegian, Kjartan Sekkingstad; and a Philippine woman, Hall's girlfriend, Marites Flor.

Later Ridsdel warned in a video released by the group that they would kill him on April 25 if no ransom was paid.

"The government of Canada is committed to working with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act," said Trudeau.

"The government of Canada is committed to working with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act."

He did not respond when asked whether the Canadian government had tried to negotiate with the captors or pay a ransom, or whether it was trying to secure the release of the other Canadian being held, Robert Hall, Reuters reported.

Ridsdel's family said in a statement that his life being "cut tragically short by this senseless act of violence despite us doing everything within our power to bring him home" had devastated them.

Abu Sayyaf is one of smallest but most radical of Islamic separatist groups in southern Philippines and its name means "bearer of the sword" in Arabic.

With a membership believed to be in the low hundreds, it hived off from the bigger Moro National Liberation Front in 1991.

The group agitates for the creation of an independent Islamic state in mostly Catholic Philippines, and engaged in hostage-taking and bombings to pressure the government.

It was once linked to al-Qaeda, but its leaders have said they are allied to Daesh which is sometimes called the Islamic State.
(Narcos / Facebook)Narcos

As history has already revealed, Pablo Escobar is going to die and that will happen in season 2 of the Netflix original series, "Narcos." The latest updates reveal, however, that the team is looking for a new location to film Escobar's final moments.

Escobar, who is portrayed by Wagner Moura, was one of Colombia's notorious drug kingpins until his death in 1993. He amassed billions of dollars through his cocaine trade. He died in a shootout on a rooftop in Medellin, Colombia.

The "Narcos" team wanted to use the exact spot where Escobar died to shoot the drug kingpin's last hours. However, the government of Colombia did not allow them to, forcing them to find another location.

With Escobar's impending death in season 2, many fans are clamoring if it is possible not to kill the show's main character. However, "Narcos" producer Eric Newman said that the writers of the show are committed to be as true to history as possible. He also added that if there was a way that they could prolong Escobar's life, they would have done it.

"He will die. The design of the show is we told 15 years of history in season one. At the point of Escobar's escape which is the summer of 1992, Escobar has 18 months to live. That's not something we can change. To stretch that out beyond another season would be disingenuous of us. That story was always designed to have an ending," he told Slash Film.

Because of this, many speculations arise that season 2 could also be the show's last season. Add to that the departure of original showrunner Adam Fierro from the show before the first season actually ends.

Aside from Escobar, "Narcos" also focuses on US DEA agent Steve Murphy (Boyd Holbrook) who was tracking down Escobar. The show is set to premiere this year.
Bruce Schneier (previously) has spent literal decades as part of the vanguard of the movement to get policy makers to take internet security seriously: to actually try to make devices and services secure, and to resist the temptation to blow holes in their security in order to spy on "bad guys." In Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World, Schneier makes a desperate, impassioned plea for sensible action, painting a picture of a world balanced on the point of no return. READ THE REST
(Photo: REUTERS / Erik De Castro)Schoolchildren dressed as Swiss Guards rest as they wait for the arrival of Pope Francis outside the Manila Cathedral in Manila January 16, 2015. Pope Francis called on the Philippine government on Friday to tackle corruption and hear the cries of the poor suffering from "scandalous social inequalities" in Asia's most Catholic country

MANILA - Pope Francis has called on leaders in Asia and the Philippines to reject corruption as a means of overcoming "scandalous social inequalities" in a nation where many people live in dire poverty.

Francis made his call in his first speech on his five-day visit to the Philippines, where more than 80 percent of the 108 million population are Roman Catholics and he is getting tumultuous welcomes.

He addressed dignitaries, including President Benigno Aquino, at the Malacanang presidential palace in Manila on January 16 calling on "everyone, at all levels of society, to reject every form of corruption which diverts resources from the poor."

"Today the Philippines, together with many other countries in Asia faces the challenge of building on solid foundations a modern society," said the 78-year-old Argentine pontiff.

Such a society is "respectful of authentic human values, protective of our God-given human dignity and rights, and ready to confront new and complex political and ethical questions. "

The Pope noted that man in the many Filipinos have spoken up for the need for political leaders to have outstanding "honesty, integrity and commitment to the common good.

"In this way they will help preserve the rich human and natural resources with which God has blessed this country.

"Thus will they be able to marshal the moral resources needed to face the demands of the present, and to pass on to coming generations a society of authentic justice, solidarity and peace," said Francis.

President Aquino has waged a strong campaign against corruption since he became the national leader in 2010.

He has received international praise for his efforts, but he has also been questioned about fighting corruption from within his own ranks.

The pontiff said that essential to the attainment of Philippine national goals is the imperative "of ensuring social justice and respect for human dignity."

Francis said, "The great biblical tradition enjoins on all peoples the duty to hear the voice of the poor.

"It bids us break the bonds of injustice and oppression which give rise to glaring, and indeed scandalous, social inequalities."
Considered to be the Ten Best UFO Photos Ever Taken I am sure that we could add more pictures to this list but these are considered ten o...
While intense political pressure has prompted several states to move away from shared tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards, a set of aligned assessments for students with severe cognitive disabilities has managed to maintain support.

For the current school year, 2015-16, 27 states and the District of Columbia plan to administer alternate assessments that were developed by Dynamic Learning Maps or by the National Center and State Collaborative, two federally funded consortia. An additional state, Alaska, had planned to offer a consortium-designed alternate assessment this spring, but dropped out because of technical problems.

In contrast, only 21 states plan this school year to use tests that were developed by either the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) or Smarter Balanced, the two prominent separate consortia that spearheaded development of common-core tests for general use.

Federal Funding

Dynamic Learning Maps and the NCSC received $67 million in federal funds to create assessments of college- and career-ready standards for a tiny portion of an already-small group: students with disabilities who are not expected to master grade-level material. (In comparison, PARCC and Smarter Balanced received $360 million.)

No more than about 1 percent of all studentsequivalent to about 10 percent of all students with disabilitiesare expected to be eligible to take the alternate assessments. Other students with disabilities are believed to be able to master grade-level academics with the proper instruction and support, and so would take whatever general assessment a state offers.

Students with severe cognitive disabilities, however, are still expected to have appropriate access to grade-level content. That philosophy has been further enshrined in the Every Student Succeeds Act, the new federal K-12 law, and alternate assessments received even more attention as a rulemaking committee recently wrestled over how to turn ESSAs mandates into policy.

Avoiding the Firestorm

That the alternate tests are meant for such a small group of students has helped keep them out of the crosshairs of political and advocacy groups that are against the common core in general.

The leaders of the two alternate-testing consortia, which are now either winding down or have ended the federally funded portion of their projects, say they also benefited by

understanding that creating better tests was only a part of their focus.

Equally, if not more important, was introducing academic rigor to students who once were believed to be capable of mastering only the most basic skills. That meant developing extensive professional-development modules and curriculum guides for teachers who are sometimes isolated not only from general education colleagues, but from other special education colleagues as well.

For both of the alternate tests, the instructional elements are tightly woven to the assessments themselves. Model lessons and instructional tools underpin the work of the NCSC. For DLM, all the standards are connected in a learning map. Each stop on the map offers an opportunity for short assessments, or testlets, as a natural function of instruction throughout the school year.

There was a need that these projects seemed to meet, said Rachel Quenemoen, the project director of the NCSC. The consortium is ending its work in September, and much of its resources have been turned over to a partnership of states. The test will be renamed the Multi-State Alternate Assessment.

While curriculum, instruction, and professional-development resources developed by the NCSC consortium will remain available free of charge, states will also have the ability to license the NCSC testing platform, test items, or both, without having to officially join any consortium.

The licensing agreement is a good option for states that like to control their own destiny, Quenemoen said.

Next Phase

The Dynamic Learning Maps project ended its federal grant in fall 2015.

Meagan Karvonen, the project director for DLM, said that part of the consortiums success has been the extensive cross-states conversations about what academic work is appropriate to stretch students with severe cognitive disabilities.

There has been tremendous power in working on a vision of what this assessment could be, she said. At the same time, Karvonen said, she still sees resistance to any tests at all for students in this population. Part of the resistance comes from those who see life-skills trainingcounting money, riding public transportationas more important skills to master. Karvonen agrees that those skills are also important. There is a lot that some of these students need in their educational background, she said.

But some of the resistance, she said, comes from not realizing the potential to learn more-complex material and benefit from it that some students with severe cognitive disabilities have.

These students will continue to be overlooked, they will have poorer long-term outcomes when they leave schools without the work of the consortia, Karvonen said.

Academic Skills

Though the students are not at grade level, most of them have some academic skills. The NCSC consortium asked its member states and found that most alternate-assessment test-takers56 percenthad intellectual disabilities.

Students with autism made up 22 percent, and those with multiple disabilities represented 9 percent of test-takers. About two-thirds of students taking alternate assessments could read, ranging from basic sight words up to reading fluently with critical understanding. Four in 10 students could perform computational tasks with or without a calculator.

ESSA made some changes to previous testing regulations for students in this population. While NCLB placed restrictions on how many students could be counted as proficient, it had no cap on the percentage of students who could take an alternate assessment. In contrast, the new law implements a 1 percent statewide cap. That cap, however, does not apply to districts. That could lead to a situation where a state exceeds its the cap because some of its districts chose to use alternate assessments on more than 1 percent of their students. States can request a cap waiver from the U.S. Department of Education.

The committee formed to hammer out ESSA policy rules weighed how to manage those potentially conflicting mandates. Ultimately, the committee decided not to create a federal definition of severe cognitive disability, as some disability-rights advocates urged, in order to ward off students being wrongly shunted into an alternate academic track.

However, the committee said that states cannot identify a student as having a severe cognitive disability based solely on academic performance or on English-language status. And to get a waiver, the state has to show it has assessed 95 percent of all of its students, including students with disabilities.

The students who take these tests will ultimately benefit from better instruction, said Audra Ahumada, the director of alternate assessment for Arizona. That state is the fiscal manager for the NCSC successor group.

National Center and State Collaborative put way more emphasis on instruction as being a huge part of developing this assessment, Ahumada said. If we develop a test without improving instruction, it doesnt matter what we developwere going to be too far apart. We have to support teachers.

And were not finished, she added. We have a long way to go, still, but were going to get there faster, working together as states.
Fed up with years of political battling over the fairness of Iowas education funding formula, Arthur Tate, the superintendent of the Davenport public schools, says in order to balance his books next year, he will illegally pull $2.7 million out of the districts reserves. Its an amount he bases on the states 1971 funding formula, which leaves Davenport $175 less to spend per student compared to some other districts.

The state tightly controls how much districts can spend, and dipping into emergency savings accounts without state permission is strictly forbidden. Officials say Tate could lose his superintendents license given by the state if he goes ahead, and the districts board members, who unanimously approved the plan this month, could be charged criminally.

Im tired of the inequality, said Tate, the head of a district whose 15,500 students are mostly low-income, Hispanic, and black. I think theres a higher philosophy and principle at stake here. Every student should be worth the same, and the state is saying ours are worth much less.

But Jeff Berger, the states deputy education director, said Davenports problems stem from the fact that its administrators have failed to cut their spending fast enough as 1,000 students left the district.

If you know youre going to be losing kids, dont spend more, spend less, said Berger, who conceded that the formula has disparities. Were way more equitable in Iowa than most other states.

If Davenport follows through with its threat, the state will decide how to handle the situation in September when the district sends state officials its budget, said Staci Hupp Ballard, a spokeswoman for the state education department.

It could be a potentially lengthy process, said Berger.

Jousting Over Funding

The jousting over how states should distribute billions of dollars to school systems has intensified in recent months as many states end the fiscal year with budget surpluses, and governors tout big increases in education spending, yet districts in a number of states lay off teachers and close schools because of funding problems.

The norm is that states are getting budget increases, but its not translating down at the local level, said Noelle M. Ellerson, the associate executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association.

Memphis school administrators sued Tennessee last year after years of laying off hundreds of teachers and closing several schools despite state funding increases to its K-12 budget. Boston students staged a mass walkout last month after district officials, despite a $13 million increase in city and state funding, said theyd need to cut $30 million out of their budget.

And Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis last week compared Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner to an ISIS recruit for pushing a proposal to increase the states K-12 budget by $120 million, a spending plan that would at the same time result in the Chicago district losing $74 million.

Michael Griffith, who tracks school finance for the Education Commission of the States, said a number of factors can lead to a situation where districts have to cut spending even when a state increases overall K-12 funding. They include the particulars of a states funding formula, changes in a districts student population, and local property-tax values.

Were seeing these increases in states in the 4 to 7 percent range, and some districts are getting increases of just 1 to 2 percent, Griffith said. Citizens are asking, How is it that youre getting more money this year, but youre cutting services? 

Although superintendents regularly criticize what they say is the unfairness of state funding formulas that are heavily dependent on local property taxes, few go as far as Davenports intends to do when the districts spending account runs dry this summer. Tate refers to the potential withdrawal of reserve funds as an act of civil disobedience.

States Perspective

Republican Gov. Terry Branstad boasted this year that education spending has increased from $1.3 billion to $2.7 billion in the past 20 years. It consumes more than half of Iowas budget.

While hes made improving education outcomes a central theme in 22 years as governor spread over various terms, he in recent years has voiced a lack of faith in the effectiveness of school district spending.

Academic achievement in Iowa has dropped in comparison to other states, Branstad said in an editorial in The Des Moines Register published last October. It is clear that just spending more money has not improved academic achievement.

With a current state budget surplus of $150 million and projections that tax revenue will increase by 4 percent next year, the legislature approved a 2.25 percent increase in K-12 spending for the 2016-17 school year.

The governor, who originally proposed a 2.4 percent increase for K-12, set aside $150 million for a teacher-training program.

This is a way that will increase student achievement rather than just simply appropriating more money for districts to spend, Branstads spokesman Ben Hammes said.

But district officials say local and statewide economic factors complicate their fiscal situations.

They say, for example, that any increases in state aid of less than 3 percent will, in effect, result in cuts because teachers unions typically ask forand typically getan annual 3 percent bump in salaries.

In addition, thousands of workers in the Hawkeye States agriculture industry were laid off in recent years. Poverty has increased, and the birthrate has declined. Districts have had to cope with a loss in per-pupil funding, and the needs of poorer students can present additional financial burdens.

At least 60 of the states school districts were warned that they will likely end this year in a budget deficit. In an unusual move, the state will fully dissolve Farragut, a shrinking district in the southwest part of the state with 167 students, that, for years, overspent and refused to consolidate with its neighbors.

Funding-Formula Concerns

The states funding formula, passed in 1971, establishes a spending floor and a spending cap for every district to ensure that the gap between what districts spend per student doesnt spin out of control, according to Berger, the states deputy superintendent. As a floor, districts are mandated to spend about $6,500 annually for every student. Based on 1971 local property evaluations and the tax rate when they were brought into the formula, some districts can spend up to $175 more per student using their own local tax dollars. In effect, that means that some districts get to spend more per student than other districts.

Unlike in most states, Iowa districts arent allowed to increase their local levies for their general fund without state authority.

One of the functions of our formula is to protect the taxpayers, said Ballard, the state departments spokeswoman, who pointed out that the state supplements much of the base funding for poor districts. Before it was in place, it was all local and very uneven.

Tate and other local superintendents see the formula as unfair. But Iowa is one of just five states where district officials havent sued their legislatures over the constitutionality, fairness, or adequacy of their funding formula.

One reason: Unlike most states, Iowas constitution does not ensure an equitable or adequate educationprovisions on which districts in other states often base their legal claims. Some school leaders, such as Tate, have lately said more extreme measures need to be taken.

Suing is on the back burner right now, he said.

Davenport has lost 1,000 students in the past decade, though the student population has stabilized in the past two years.

To cope with the loss, its board has made $17 million in cuts in the past five years, including closing several schools and annually laying off teachers and slashing away at his central-administration staff.

Cuts next year will amount to $5 million, Tate said.

Taking A Stand

Over the years, as the spending cuts got deeper, Tate ramped up his protests against the funding formula, culminating in an emotional rally at the state capitol last year with several of his high school students who wore T-shirts that read I am worth-less.

By his calculation, the amount the states funding formula leaves the district short is close to the amount the district has had to cut in the past five years.

It is hard for me to even conceive how a state government could have allowed this discriminatory practice to exist for so long, he said in a rousing speech to his board in March of last year when he originally proposed the idea of breaking the law by pulling money from the reserve account. The speech went viral among urban superintendents across the country.

A board member described the speech as akin to a church revival.

This years legislative session frustrated Tate even more. While the states funding formula took center stage, lawmakers regularly accused district administrators of mismanaging state funds. They didnt agree on a budget plan until early this montha year late. (State law forces legislatures to set spending limits a year before the budget year.) That forced district budget directors to make last-minute changes. The legislators will likely miss that deadline again this year for the 2018 budget.

That all led to the showdown between Davenport and the state.

By pulling that $2.7 million out of the districts $30 million in reserves (the district spends about $200 million a year), Tate says he will avoid having to close another school, cut transportation for several hundred students, and shutter several music, art, and college-preparation programs.

He has the backing of his board.

Its ethically unfair that the formula, as it exists, rewards some over others based on ZIP code, said board member Richard Clewell. This is the first step we need to take to reach equality.
The German city of Augsburg embedded traffic lights in the pavement so pedestrians staring at their phones would be more likely to see them. City officials said the project was initiated after a teenager was killed crossing train tracks while allegedly distracted by her phone.





"(The lighting system) creates a whole new level of attention," said city spokeswoman Stephanie Lermen.





(Washington Post)


The European Investment Bank has agreed to provide GBP 56 million to build seven new secondary schools in Bradford, Harrogate, Keighley, Bradford and Huddersfield. The brand new schools, to include the latest computing, teaching and catering facilities will benefit more than 8,500 Yorkshire school children and replace outdated and redundant buildings.

Over the last year the European Investment Bank has provided GBP 281 million for investment at 46 new state schools being built across the country under the Priority Schools Building Programme, including the Yorkshire schools in the 5th and final batch agreed earlier this week.

Todays agreement unlocks much needed construction of new schools to replace outdated facilities in Yorkshire that will both improve education and benefit local construction companies. Our support for similar school investment under the wider Priority School Building Programme is already transforming schools elsewhere across the country. The European Investment Bank has a strong track record of supporting new hospitals, as well as crucial water, transport, energy, higher education and social housing investment in Yorkshire and we look forward to confirming support for new projects in Yorkshire in the coming months, as part of our commitment to backing long-term investment across the UK. said Jonathan Taylor, European Investment Bank Vice-President.

The seven schools to be transformed are the Samuel Lister Academy in Bingley, Whitcliffe Mount Business and Enterprise College and All Saints Catholic College in Kirklees, Belle Vue Boys' School and Carlton Bolling College in Bradford, Oakbank School in Keighley and Harrogate High School.

Building work has already commenced at four of the schools and will start shortly at the other sites.

The Priority Schools Building Programme is a centrally managed programme set up to address the needs of the schools most in need of urgent repair. By grouping school development schemes aggregating funding requirements, the Education Funding Agency has been able to access cheaper finance, and streamline procurement for each batch of schools. The long-term loan from the European Investment Bank represents around 40% of the overall project costs.

Over the last decade the European Investment Bank has provided more than GBP 4 billion for education investment across the UK. This includes transformational investment at 30 universities and 42 further education colleges across the country.

Recent education investment in Yorkshire supported by the European Investment Bank includes construction at Bradford College, Leeds City College and the Universities of Hull and York, and schools in Barnsley, Bradford and Sheffield. Last year alone the EIB supported work at 77 schools across the country to construction new schools and upgrade existing facilities.

Long-term investment in Yorkshire supported by the European Investment Bank across other sectors includes the Green Port in Hull, investment by Yorkshire Water and upgrading hospitals in Wakefield and Pontefract.

Lending by the EIB in the UK last year totalled GBP 5.6 billion and represented the largest annual engagement since the start of EIB lending in the UK in 1973. This supported nearly GBP 16 billion of overall investment in 40 projects across the UK, which schools, university campuses, hospitals, upgraded energy links, renewable energy projects and water infrastructure.
An honest essay has numerous characteristics: original thinking, a good structure, balanced arguments, and plenty more.

But one aspect often overlooked is that an honest essay should be interesting. It should spark the readers curiosity, keep them absorbed, make them want to stay reading and learn more. An uneventful article risks losing the readers attention; whether or not the points you create are excellent, a flat style, or poor handling of a dry subject material can undermine the positive aspects of the essay. The matter is that a lot of students think that essays should be like this: they believe that a flat, dry style is suited to the needs of educational writing and dont even consider that the teacher reading their essay wants to search out the essay interesting. You might want to have online essay editor service to boost your confidence in writing with an error-free output. Academic writing doesnt need to be  and shouldnt be  bland. The excellent news is that there is much stuff you can do to create your essay more attractive, while youll be able only to do such a lot while remaining within the formal confines of educational writing. Lets study what theyre.

Have an interest in what youre writing about

Dont go overboard, but youll be able to let your passion for your subject show.

If theres one thing bound to inject interest into your writing, its being fascinated by what youre writing about. Passion for a subject matter comes across naturally in your essay, typically making it more lively and fascinating and infusing an infectious enthusiasm into your words  within the same way that its easy to talk knowledgeably to someone about something you discover fascinating.

Include fascinating details

Another factor that may make an essay boring maybe a dry material. Some topic areas are naturally dry, and it falls to you to form the article more interesting through your written style and by trying to seek out fascinating snippets of knowledge to incorporate, which will liven it up a small amount and make the data easier to relate to. A way of doing this with a dry subject is to create what youre talking about that seems relevant to the critical world, as this is often easier for the reader to relate to.

Emulate the fashion of writers you discover interesting

When you read lots, you subconsciously start emulating the fashion of the writers you have read. Reading benefits you a lot, as this exposes you to a spread of designs, and youll start to require the characteristics of these you discover interesting to read.

Borrow some creative writing techniques

Theres a limit to the quantity of actual story-telling youll do when youre writing an essay; in the end, essays should be objective, factual and balanced, which doesnt, initially glance, feel considerably like story-telling. However, youll apply a number of the principles of story-telling to create your writing more interesting.

consider your own opinion

Take the time to figure out what its that you think instead of regurgitating the opinions of others.

Cut the waffle

Rambling on and on is dull and almost bound to lose the interest of your reader. Youre in danger of waffling if youre not completely clear about what you wish to mention or havent thought carefully about how youre visiting structure your argument. Doing all your research correctly and writing an essay plan before you begin will help prevent this problem.

Editing is a vital part of the essay-writing process, so edit the waffle once youve done a primary draft. Read through your essay objectively and eliminate the bits that arent relevant to the argument or labor the purpose.

employing a thesaurus isnt always a decent thing

Avoid using unfamiliar words in an essay; theres too great a likelihood that youre misusing them.

You may think that employing a thesaurus to seek out more complicated words will make your writing more exciting or sound more academic, but using overly high-brow language can have the incorrect effect.

Avoid repetitive phrasing

Please avoid using the identical phrase structure again and again: its a recipe for dullness! Instead, use a variety of syntax that demonstrates your writing capabilities and makes your writing more interesting. Mix simple, compound, and complicated sentences to avoid your paper becoming predictable.

Use some figurative language

Using analogies with nature can often make concepts more accessible for readers to know.

As weve already seen, its easy to finish up rambling when youre explaining complex concepts  mainly after you dont know it yourself. One way of forcing yourself to think about a couple of pictures, present it more simply and engagingly is to form figurative language. This implies explaining something by comparing it with something else, as in an analogy.

Employ rhetorical questions

Anticipate the questions your reader might ask.

One of the ways ancient orators held the eye of their audiences and increased the dramatic effect of their speeches was by using the statement. A decent place to use a statement is at the top of a paragraph, to steer into the following one, or at the start of a replacement section to introduce a brand new area for exploration.

Proofread

Finally, you may write the top interesting essay an instructor has ever read. Still, youll undermine your good work if its plagued by errors, which distract the reader from the particular content and can probably annoy them.
New Financial Intelligence Unit will help tackle corruption

Creating a new stand-alone Financial Intelligence Unit will strengthen the Island's defences against criminal activity and protect our reputation - that's the message from the Department of Home Affairs.

The unit had previously been part of the police Financial Crime Unit - it will now liaise with law enforcement agencies and respond to international requests for help with criminal investigations.

Minister Juan Watterson says it will tackle corruption, money laundering and the financing of terrorism:

Media

Juan Watterson MHK
Videographer documents Nepal one year after devastating earthquake

A former Santon man has travelled to Nepal to highlight the work being undertaken at a British funded medical camp - one year on from a devastating earthquake.

Videographer Olly Pemberton visited the makeshift hospital which was set up by Exodus Travels to help villagers in Thulopatel - a town six hours east of Kathmandu.

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the worst natural disaster to strike Nepal - it claimed the lives of over 8,000 people and injured more than 21,000.

Olly's video shares the story of the camp - which is staffed by Nepali doctors and volunteer nurses - and tells the stories of those who visit it:

Media

Olly Pemberton
WWE will gear up for Payback with three major matches during tonight's Monday Night Raw live stream.

The April 25 event will air live from the XL Center in Hartford, Conn., at 8 p.m. ET. In celebrating its return to WWE's home state, Raw is bound to have a few surprises in the ring.

To get fans riled up, Raw exposed three of tonight's matches via Facebook. Six days before the industry's next pay-per-view, WWE has opted to mix and match it's Payback competitors. Look for Sami Zayne to face off with Rusev as AJ Styles hops into the ring against Sheamus while Roman Reigns will battle Alberto Del Rio.



Meanwhile, Raw tag team newbies Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson are primed to take on the Usos brothers, according to WWE.com. Fresh from Japan, Gallows and Anderson have spent the last two weeks giving the tried and true vets a run for their money, and it looks like Jimmy and Jey might have bitten off more than they can chew.

Even with these power-packed matchups on the card, tonight could be Shane McMahon's final hurrah. Triple H and Stephanie McMahon lost their kingdom after WrestleMania, but, with Raw in their backyard, The Authority might be ready to take their show back.

Find out more when WWE Raw airs tonight on USA. Click here to catch all the action online.
India is poor in record-keeping and has a just as poor awareness of the importance of records. This situation primarily arises due to our faulty archival education system, and the separation of archives as a practical discipline from archives as a topic for epistemological and discursive deliberation. What we need is a fair balance between the practical aspects of archival keeping and its conceptual and theoretical aspects.

The history of archival consciousness is an area less studied and least documented in postcolonial India. The country, with its recorded past of thousands of years, has always had some forms of records administration in place  the earliest documentary evidence of it being the Buddhist sangha records of circa 600 BC. However, many records of ancient India were lost during conicts and very few have survived the passage of time due to the poor record-keeping practices of those days. The Public Record Ofce of Britain was in place as early as 1838. The beginning of archives as an institutional repository of non-current records as we know today began with the foundation of the Imperial Record Department on 11 March 1891 in Calcutta. The British brought the modern practices of archives and records management to India. The colonial government was not interested only in records for dayto-day administration, but was also interested in creating an intrusive domain of information on the people whom they ruled.
A unique rapid-fire electron source--originally built as a prototype for driving next-generation X-ray lasers--is helping scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) study ultrafast chemical processes and changes in materials at the atomic scale. This could provide new insight in how to make materials with custom, controllable properties and improve the efficiency and output of chemical reactions.

This newly launched setup, dubbed HiRES (for High Repetition-rate Electron Scattering apparatus), will function like an ultrafast electron camera, potentially producing images that can pinpoint defects and their effects, track electronic and superconducting properties in exotic materials, and detail chemical reactions in gases, liquids and biological samples that are difficult to study using more conventional, X-ray-based experiments.

The new research tool produces highly focused electron bunches, each containing up to 1 million electrons. The electrons stream at a rate of up to 1 million bunches per second, or 1 trillion electrons per second.

Electrons will be used as a fast camera shutter to capture snapshots of samples as they change over femtoseconds, or quadrillionths of a second. An initial laser pulse will trigger a reaction in the sample that is followed an instant later by an electron pulse to produce an image of that reaction.

HiRES delivered its first electron beam March 28 and experiments are set to begin in May.

Daniele Filippetto, a Berkeley Lab scientist who is leading HiRES, has for much of his scientific career focused on building electron sources, also called "electron guns," that can drive advanced X-ray lasers known as "free-electron lasers." These electron guns are designed to produce a chain of high-energy electron pulses that are accelerated and then forced by powerful magnetic fields to give up some of their energy in the form of X-ray light.

Free-electron lasers have opened new frontiers in studying materials and chemistry at the nanoscale and beyond, and Filippetto said he hopes to pave new ground with HiRES, too, using a technique known as "ultrafast electron diffraction," or UED, that is similar to X-ray diffraction.

In these techniques, a beam of X-rays or electrons hits a sample, and the scattering of X-rays or electrons is collected on a detector. This pattern, known as a diffraction pattern, provides structural information about the sample. X-rays and electrons interact differently: electrons scatter from a sample's electrons and the atoms' nuclei, for example, while X-rays scatter only from the electrons.

The unique electron gun that Filippetto and his team are using is a part of Berkeley Lab's APEX (Advanced Photo-injector EXperiment), which has served as a prototype system for LCLS-II, a next-generation X-ray laser project underway at SLAC National Acceleratory Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif. Berkeley Lab is a member of the LCLS-II project collaboration.

"The APEX gun is a unique source of ultrafast electrons, with the potential to reach unprecedented precision and stability in timing--ultimately at or below 10 femtoseconds," Filippetto said. "With HiRES, the time resolution will be about 100 femtoseconds, or the time it takes for chemical bonds to form and break. So you can look at the same kinds of processes that you can look at with an X-ray free-electron laser, but with an electron eye."

He added, "You can see the structure and the relative distances between atoms in a molecule changing over time across the whole structure. You need fewer electrons than X-rays to get an image, and in principal there can be much less damage to the sample with electrons."

Filippetto in 2014 received a five-year DOE Early Career Research Program award that is supporting his work on HiRES. The work is also supported by the Berkeley Lab Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program.

Already, Berkeley Lab has world-class research capabilities in other electron-beam microscopic imaging techniques, in building nanostructures, and in a range of X-ray experimental techniques, Filippetto noted. All of these capabilities are accessible to the world's scientists via the lab's Molecular Foundry and Advanced Light Source (ALS).

"If we couple all of these together with the power of HiRES, then you basically can collect full information from your samples," he said. "You can get static images with subatomic resolution, the ultrafast structural response, and chemical information about a sample--in the same lab and in the same week."

Filippetto has a goal to improve the focus of the HiRES electron beam from microns, or millionths of a meter in diameter, to the nanometer scale (billionths of a meter), and to also improve the timing from hundredths of femtoseconds to tens of femtoseconds to boost the quality of the images it produces and also to study even faster processes at the atomic scale.

Andrew Minor, director of the Molecular Foundry's National Center for Electron Microscopy said he is excited about the potential for HiRES to ultimately study the structure of single molecules and to explore the propagation of microscopic defects in materials at the speed of sound.

"We want to study nanoscale processes such as the structural changes in a material as a crack moves through it at the speed of sound," he said. Also, the timing of HiRES may allow scientists to study real-time chemical reactions in an operating battery, he added.

"What is really interesting to me is that you can potentially focus the beam down to a small size, and then you would really have a system that competes with X-ray free-electron lasers," Minor said, which opens up the possibility of electron imaging of single biological particles.

He added, "I think there is a very large unexplored space in terms of using electrons at the picosecond (trillionths of a second) and nanosecond (billionths off a second) time scales to directly image materials."

There are tradeoffs in using X-rays vs. electrons to study ultrafast processes at ultrasmall scales, he noted, though "even if the capabilities are similar, it's worth pursuing" because of the smaller size and lesser cost of machines like APEX and HiRES compared to X-ray free-electron lasers.

Scientists from Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and from UC Berkeley will conduct the first set of experiments using HiRES, Filippetto said, including studies of the structural and electronic properties of single-layer and multilayer graphene, as well as other materials with semiconductor and superconductor properties.

There are also some clear uses for HiRES in chemistry and biology experiments, Filippetto noted. "The idea is to push things to see ever-more-complicated structures and to open the doors to all of the possible applications," he said.

There are plans to forge connections between HiRES and other lab facilities, like the ALS, where HiRES is located, and the lab's National Center for Electron Microscopy at the Molecular Foundry.

"Already, we are working with the microscopy center on the first experiments," Filippetto added. "We are adapting the microscope's sample holder so that one can easily move samples from one instrument to another."

Filippetto said there are discussions with ALS scientists on the possibility of gathering complementary information from the same samples using both X-rays from the ALS and electrons from HiRES.

"This would make HiRES more accessible to a larger scientific community," he added.

###

The Molecular Foundry and Advanced Light Source are DOE Office of Science User Facilities. HiRES is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov.

DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
The Journal of Pain Research has published the original research "Nocebo hyperalgesia: contributions of social observation and body-related cognitive styles".

As corresponding author Elisabeth Vogtle says "This study shows that the observation of a person in pain alone can lead to nocebo hyperalgesia in the observer. Moreover, the unexplained administration of an intervention can lead to an elevated pain experience. This should be taken into account in medical practice and research. The nocebo hyperalgesia did not depend on variables like pain catastrophizing, somatic complaints, hypochondriacal concerns or empathy with the observed person."

As Dr. Michael Schatman, Editor-in-Chief, explains "This study is noteworthy in its contribution to the poorly understood concept of nocebo hyperalgesia."

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The Journal of Pain Research an international, peer-reviewed, open access, online journal that welcomes laboratory and clinical findings in the fields of pain research and the prevention and management of pain. Original research, reviews, symposium reports, hypothesis formation and commentaries are all considered for publication.

Dove Medical Press Ltd is a privately held company specializing in the publication of Open Access peer-reviewed journals across the broad spectrum of science, technology and especially medicine.
A new NYU Steinhardt study published in the journal AERA Open looks at income-based gaps in educational attainment. While the difference in high school graduation rates between high- and low-income students shrunk, inequality may have shifted to higher education, with gaps growing in college attendance and completion.

The last 35 years have been marked by increasing income inequality, with stagnant earnings for low-income families and sharp increases for those at the top. As the incomes of affluent and poor American families have diverged, so, too, have the educational outcomes - both test scores and school completion - of children in these families.

However, a 2014 study published in the American Economic Review on intergenerational mobility had surprising findings. The research showed that the gap in college attendance rates between children from the lowest- and highest-income families was more or less constant over time, suggesting that despite growing income inequality, children's chances of mobility have remained stable.

In the current study, the researchers investigated trends in income-based gaps in education. They compared family income measures with how much schooling children completed, looking at high school graduation, college enrollment, and college completion rates.

"Our study sought to understand if rising income inequality has, in fact, made it increasingly harder for children to get ahead," said Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, research associate professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and the study's lead author.

While the 2014 study used data from cohorts of children born from 1971 to 1986, Ziol-Guest and her colleague extended their analysis for another 17 years to study children born from 1954 to 1986, a total of 31 birth cohorts from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The researchers also examined two cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97).

Their findings support the earlier research showing little change in college enrollment among the cohorts used in the 2014 study. However, the researchers found significant increases in college enrollment gaps when looking at the longer historical view used in this study. They also found further strong evidence of growing gaps in college graduation.

In contrast, gaps in high school graduation fell, providing at least one optimistic sign of catching-up among low-income individuals.

"That the gap in high school graduation closed over the study period suggests a possible decline in inequality, but may also represent less a decline in inequality than a shifting of inequality to higher levels of education," Ziol-Guest said.

The researchers note that their data do not enable them to say why they saw an increasing gap in four-year college graduation rates. They point to possible factors, including differences in college persistence or a shift toward two-year colleges, particularly for low-income students.

"Given our findings with respect to college graduation, it is possible that income may increasingly matter for access to and completion of degrees at four-year schools, but perhaps not two-year colleges," Ziol-Guest said.

###

Kenneth T.H. Lee of the University of California, Irvine coauthored the study. This project was funded in part by the Russell Sage Foundation and the Spencer Foundation.

About the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development (@nyusteinhardt)

Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development prepares students for careers in the arts, education, health, media, and psychology. Since its founding in 1890, the Steinhardt School's mission has been to expand human capacity through public service, global collaboration, research, scholarship, and practice. To learn more about NYU Steinhardt, visit steinhardt.nyu.edu.
New estimates published in PLOS Medicine suggest that homicide could be responsible for just over 1% of all neonatal deaths in South Africa. Together with other studies reporting on child homicide from other countries, these findings emphasize the importance of child protection, and highlight a need for cross-sector services to support vulnerable mothers.

In the research, Naeemah Abrahams of the South African Medical Research Council, Cape Town, South Africa, and colleagues studied medical and legal data, from a random sample of urban and rural settings across the country, for 2009. The researchers estimated that 454 children (95% Confidence Interval 366-541) under the age of 5 years were killed. Most deaths were in infants aged 0-6 days, with abandonment being the most common method of homicide in this age group.

Obtaining accurate estimates of the occurrence of child homicide is challenging, because causes of deaths may be hard to determine. In an accompanying Perspective, written by authors independent of the research team, Delan Devakumar and David Osrin of University College London, UK note that Abrahams and colleagues used the best methods available to them, culminating in estimates of child homicide that are "substantial". Devakumar and Osrin note that "protecting vulnerable children is a priority" and that primary prevention should be strengthened by work "with adolescent women to provide advice and support on sexual health, contraception, and childbirth".

###

Research Article with accompanying Perspective

Funding:

Research Article:

The study was funded by Open Society Foundation and from baseline funds from the South African Medical Research Council. NA and RJ, of the The South African Medical Research Council, contributed as authors to the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, and preparation of the manuscript. NN, of The South African Medical Research Council, contributed as an author to the data analysis, decision to publish, and preparation of the manuscript.

Perspective:

There was no specific funding for this study. DD is supported by the National Institute of Health Research. DO is supported by The Wellcome Trust.

Competing Interests:

Research Article:

We have read the journal's policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interest: RJ is a member of the Editorial Board of PLOS Medicine. The authors declare that no further competing interests exist.

Perspective:

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Citations:

Abrahams N, Mathews S, Martin LJ, Lombard C, Nannan N, Jewkes R (2016) Gender Differences in Homicide of Neonates, Infants, and Children under 5 y in South Africa: Results from the Cross-Sectional 2009 National Child Homicide Study. PLoS Med 13(4): e1002003. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002003

Devakumar D, Osrin D (2016) Child Homicide: A Global Public Health Concern. PLoS Med 13(4): e1002004. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002004

Author Affiliations:

Research Article:

Gender and Health Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council, Cape Town, South Africa

Children's Institute, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

Forensic Pathology Services, Western Cape Government, Cape Town, South Africa

Division of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

Biostatistics Unit, South African Medical Research Council, Cape Town, South Africa

Burden of Disease Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council, Cape Town, South Africa

Perspective:

Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Institute for Global Health, University College London, London, United Kingdom

IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THESE URLs TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPERS:

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002003

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002004

Contact:

Naeemah Abrahams

Senior Researcher

Medical Research Council of South Africa

Gender & Health Research Unit

P O Box 19070 Tygerberg

Cape Town , 7405

SOUTH AFRICA

+27 21 9380445

nabraham@mrc.ac.za

Delan Devakumar

Clinical Lecturer in Public Health

UCL

Institute for Global Health

30 Guilford St

London, WC1N 1EH

UNITED KINGDOM

d.devakumar@ucl.ac.uk
Chewbacca, the fictional 'Star Wars' character, has given his name to a new species of flightless beetle, discovered in New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Although Trigonopterus chewbacca was only one of the four black new weevil beetles found during the expedition, it stood out with its curious scales, which made the authors think of Han Solo's loyal companion.

Scientists Dr Matthew H. Van Dam, SNSB-Zoological State Collection, Germany, Raymond Laufa, The University of Papua New Guinea and Dr Alexander Riedel, Natural History Museum Karlsruhe have their paper, where they describe the new species, published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Failing to understand how was it possible that the hyperdiverse beetle genus Trigonopterus has never been spotted in New Britain, two of the researchers travelled to the island to double-check the foliage and leaf litter. Interestingly, the genus thrives best in Melanesia, the Oceania subregion, where Papua New Guinea is located, yet there had been only a single Trigonopterus species known from Bismarck Archipelago prior to the present study.

Eventually, having spent ten days sifting leaf litter and beating foliage, the authors discovered eighteen individuals in primary forests growing on limestone karst, and later assigned them to four separate species. However, these few findings are still striking, given the abundance of the beetles in similar localities in the New-Guinean mainland.

Unlike its sci-fi namesake, the Chewbacca beetle cannot rely on its measurements to scare other possibly malevolent species off. It only measures between 2.78 and 3.13 mm. Dissimilar again, is its body, which is black and rhomboid-shaped, while its legs and antenna appear rusty. What likens the beetle to "Chewie", however, is its distinctively dense scales, covering its head and legs.

In conclusion, the authors note that the beetle genus must have colonised New Britain at least four times in the past. "Given the size, mountainous topography and tropical vegetation of New Britain, it is likely that Trigonopterus has undergone some local speciation on the island, but this possibility requires further investigation," they say.

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Original source:

Van Dam MH, Laufa R, Riedel A (2016) Four new species of Trigonopterus Fauvel from the island of New Britain (Coleoptera, Curculionidae). ZooKeys 582: 129-141. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.582.7709
Dissection might prove unnecessary when identifying new molluscs after scientists Corey Whisson, Western Australian Museum, and Dr Abraham Breure, Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, the Netherlands, and Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium, described a previously unknown land snail based on its genitalia, yet without damaging the specimen in the slightest. The new species is published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The biologists described the first new Australian land snail species of this family for the last 33 years thanks to micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) and reconstruction with specialised software. This novel method, likely applied for identification of molluscs for the first time in history, uses X-rays to create cross-sections of the genitalia, so that a 3D model can be created without damaging the specimen. This can be then compared to known related taxa's genitalia in order to show if there are enough differences to prove species delimitation.

The scientists note that despite the satisfying results, micro-CT is time-consuming and "quite laborious" approach. "However, in the case of a single or just a few specimens, this may be an alternative to destructive dissection," says Dr Abraham Breure in his personal blog.

The new land snail, called Bothriembryon sophiarum after Dr Abraham Breure's wife Sophie J. Breure and Corey Whisson's first daughter Sophie Jade Whisson, can only be found along a 180-kilometre line running across the escarpment and cliff tops of the Baxter Cliffs and Hampton Ranges in Western Australia. Given its restricted distributional range, it is considered a short-range endemic.

The mollusc is characterised with a slender high-spired shell, built specifically for the demanding nature of its habitat. Dwelling in rocky limestone substrate, which is often fractured with narrow cracks and fissures, the snail has developed a slender shell, so that it can move easily through cavities and under rocks. On the other hand, being predominantly cream in colour with reddish or greyish brown blotches, it successfully blends with the limestone.

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Original source:

Whisson CS, Breure ASH (2016) A new species of Bothriembryon (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Bothriembryontidae) from south-eastern Western Australia. ZooKeys 581: 127-140. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.581.8044
Christof Paar has been awarded an Advanced Grant by the European Research Council. The IT security expert will use the 2.5 million euros funding for closing dangerous backdoors that are a major threat for the Internet of Things.

In the current application round for the hotly contested Advanced Grants of the European Research Council (ERC), two researchers from the Ruhr-Universitat Bochum (RUB) have been successful. In addition to Prof Christof Paar who has the Chair for Embedded Security, chemist Prof Martina Havenith also received an ERC grant. These two projects have a total volume of 5 million euros.

Christof Paar's research project "Exploring and Preventing Cryptographic Hardware Backdoors: Protecting the Internet of Things against Next-Generation Attacks" is scheduled to start on October 1, 2016, and has a duration of five years.

Internet of Things has a potential for malicious attacks

The upcoming Internet of Things (IoT) will interconnect many devices of everyday life. For example, cars, houses, smartphones and factories are going to be connected to the Internet. Even though there are many new services for consumers, this development also poses a major security challenge . "The hazard potential of attacks is rising dramatically," warns Christof Paar. On the one hand, it's about protecting people's privacy; in the worst-case scenario, hackers can also put human life in jeopardy, e.g., by manipulating car electronics.

Attacks that target the hardware chips that are present in all IoT devices, rather than the software, are considered particularly dangerous. By manipulating integrated circuits attackers can, for instance, disable cryptographic algorithms. Thus, they can circumvent security solutions and gain control over crucial devices and systems.

Developing security measures against hardware Trojans

The ERC-funded project intends to avert that. In a first step, the researchers plan to analyse the different ways in which hardware can be manipulated. In the second phase, countermeasures will be developed that protect cryptographic algorithms against hardware Trojans.

Such security measures are vital not just for devices in the Internet of Things. Hardware Trojans can, for example, also be a threat for banking terminals or network routers.

Research excellence as selection criterion

The European Union uses the Advanced Grants to fund high-risk, seminal ideas of established academics and researchers. In 2015, 1,953 applications were submitted. The ERC approved a mere 14 per cent of them. Research excellence was the only selection criterion.

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HUNTSVILLE, TX (4-26-16) -- Nathan Jones, an assistant professor at Sam Houston State University, spent a year in Mexico examining drug cartels and government interventions in the drug trade for his first book.

Mexico's Illicit Drug Networks and the State Reaction is a scholarly study that examines why Mexico targets some drug networks over others, looks at risk and democracy, reassesses the impact on the War on Drugs, and proposes new solutions for weak states to battle drug networks. The book is based on extensive fieldwork and interviews with U.S. and Mexican law enforcement, government officials, crime victims, and criminals.

"It was part of my dissertation so we can know more about the Mexican drug networks," said Jones. "I went to Tijuana just after the cartel conflagration. I wanted to find out what made the Arellano Felix cartel so resilient, despite being attacked by other drug networks."

In 2008, there was a split in the drug cartels in Tijuana between El Teo and El Ingeniero. El Teo was a "territorial" drug network, similar to a local Mafia involved in a wide variety of crimes, including drugs and kidnapping. El Ingeniero was a "transactional" network, which concentrated on moving drugs across the border. The territorial networks led to more violence, community reaction, and intelligence at the local level, which resulted in more government intervention. Transactional networks focused on trafficking and were more likely to collude with state officials through corruption, leading to fewer interventions, Jones found.

"I was building on the work of others to flesh out the transactional vs. territorial drug networks," said Jones. "My study provided more details, the risks, the state reactions, and the resilience of some drug cartels."

Jones also discusses policy issues related to the drug war, including drug prohibition reforms, the medicalization of heroin, needle exchange programs, and special fugitive apprehension teams. In Operation United Eagles, the United States trained a special Mexican fugitive apprehension team to target Tijuana cartel leaders in Mexico. This team was specially vetted for the task and their communications with their families were cut off to prevent their use as leverage over team members.

Marijuana has been legalized for medical or recreational use in 23 states and the District of Columbia, which has reduced the illegal drug trade of marijuana across the border. In Switzerland, heroin addicts are provided free heroin and clean needles through doctors, which has helped reduce crime rates and overdose deaths.

"These recommendations focus on dealing with the underlying market," said Jones.

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Mexico's Illicit Drug Networks and the State Reaction is published by Georgetown University Press.
URBANA, Ill. - Last summer, the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone" spanned more than 6,400 square miles, more than three times the size it should have been, according to the Gulf Hypoxia Task Force. Nitrogen runoff from farms along the Mississippi River winds up in the Gulf, feeding algae but depriving other marine life of oxygen when the algae decomposes. The 12 states that border the Mississippi have been mandated to develop nutrient reduction strategies, but one especially effective strategy has not been adopted widely: bioreactors.

Bioreactors are passive filtration systems that capitalize on a bacterial process known as denitrification to remove from 25 to 45 percent of the nitrate in water draining from farm fields. Research on and installation of bioreactors has accelerated in the past decade, but University of Illinois assistant professor of water quality Laura Christianson and her colleagues are urging a move past proof-of-concept toward large-scale deployment.

"Bioreactors are one of the most effective edge-of-field practices, but until now, they haven't been rolled out on a large scale," Christianson says.

Designs vary, but the typical arrangement for a 40- to 80-acre field is a large (100 x 20 foot) pit situated just ahead of where drainage pipes flow into ditches or streams. The pit is filled with carbon-rich organic material: usually wood chips, but sometimes corn cobs, biochar, or other matter. Denitrifying bacteria make their homes in the organic material and utilize its carbon as an energy source to convert nitrate in the water to the harmless nitrogen gas that makes up 78 percent of our atmosphere.

A benefit of bioreactors as a nitrogen management strategy is their cost-benefit ratio. Bioreactors can cost approximately $10,000 to install, but cost-sharing is available through the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service for approximately half of that. Importantly, bioreactors typically operate for 10 years before wood chips need to be replaced.

"It's a big up-front cost compared to a cover crop, but then you're 'one and done' for 10 years," Christianson notes.

Christianson put together a special issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality focusing on bioreactors. Fifteen articles in the issue summarize the state-of-the-art of bioreactor technology, confirming that bioreactors could be an effective part of an integrated approach to nitrate management.

A large component to bioreactor efficiency is design.

According to Christianson and other experts contributing to the special issue, flow rates can significantly affect the efficiency of bioreactors. During low-flow periods, water can be held in bioreactors for too long, setting up conditions for different bacteria that create noxious hydrogen sulfide gas. Likewise, in high-flow periods, water may move through too quickly for efficient nitrogen removal.

"Tile drainage systems never flow at a consistent rate," Christianson explains. "Bioreactors have to be designed strategically to optimize retention time and maximize nitrate removal without undesirable byproducts."

Temperature and seasonal changes also affect how well bioreactors work.

"The critical period for nitrate loss is early spring, before plants are growing and taking up nitrogen," Christianson says. "Snowmelt puts a significant amount of water through a bioreactor, depending on where you are. And because snowmelt and early spring drainage water is cooler, the bacteria aren't as efficient."

Christianson and her colleagues are calling for more field-scale research to optimize design for the set of conditions unique to each field.

"That's where my interest is for research: coming up with better designs. But on the other side of that coin, we don't want to become so advanced in the design that it becomes really complicated. There's a beauty in the simplicity of a trench full of woodchips," Christianson says.

The article introducing the special issue, "Moving denitrifying bioreactors beyond proof of concept: Introduction to the special section," appears in the Journal of Environmental Quality along with 14 additional articles on the topic. Christianson co-authored the introductory article with Louis Schipper of the University of Waikato in New Zealand.

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Links to the articles, several of which can be read in full without a subscription, can be found at: https://dl.sciencesocieties.org/publications/jeq/tocs/45/3#h1-SPECIAL%20SECTION:%20MOVING%20DENITRIFYING%20BIOREACTORS%20BEYOND%20PROOF%20OF%20CONCEPT
The University of Minnesota is expanding access to clinical trials and supporting the health research community by sharing its clinical trial resource, StudyFinder, with other institutions designated with Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA), a program spearheaded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

StudyFinder is an online tool pooling clinical trials and research studies in one space, with easy-to-understand language and functions. It helps patients and healthy volunteers get involved and allows researchers to publicize their clinical trials and connect with study volunteers.

Now other research institutions have adopted the tool, including Penn State University and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), thanks to open-source coding.

Open-sourced code allows outside groups to customize, adapt and implement the program onto their own websites for use in their own communities.

"Shared infrastructure that can be easily exported to other CTSA sites ultimately means less time spent developing the infrastructure and more time spent removing other barriers preventing health breakthroughs from benefitting the public," said Melissa Mueller, MPH, StudyFinder's co-creator. She is also the Recruitment Service Manager for the University's Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI).

CTSI is part of a national consortium comprised of approximately 60 other Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) institutions. CTSI supports researchers to help them bring discoveries into practice and improve human health.

StudyFinder was built by CTSI's Recruitment Center and the Academic Health Center's Information Systems department.

"StudyFinder's simple interface makes it easier for people to participate in research and help develop treatments that may one day benefit a friend, a family member, or someone around the world," said Mueller.

There are currently more than 360 studies listed on the University of Minnesota's StudyFinder website, seeking participants that vary in age and health condition, including trials seeking healthy volunteers.

"The single biggest reason clinical trials fail is lack of enrollment," said Timothy Schacker, M.D., associate director of U of M's Clinical and Translational Science Institute. "Many people, particularly healthy people, don't realize they can volunteer for health studies. StudyFinder helps bridge that gap. Its fantastic that other institutions can utilize this tool for research progress across the country, not just here in Minnesota."

Other CTSA institutions are also engaging in discussions with CTSI about adopting StudyFinder.

"The way StudyFinder is designed really opens the door to collaboration," said Schacker. "Not only can institutions use the StudyFinder code, but they can contribute to it as well. We hope down the road this will help all CTSAs, not just the University of Minnesota, to conduct more studies and improve the lives of those suffering from health conditions."

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It was 30 years ago that a meltdown at the V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station in the former Soviet Union released radioactive contaminants into the surroundings in northern Ukraine. Airborne contamination from what is now generally termed the Chernobyl disaster spread well beyond the immediate environs of the power plant, and a roughly 1000-square-mile region in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia remains cordoned off, an exclusion zone where human habitation is forbidden.

The radiation spill was a disaster for the environment and its biological inhabitants, but it also created a unique radio-ecological laboratory. University of South Carolina professor of biological sciences Tim Mousseau and longtime collaborator Anders Mller of the CNRS (France) recognized that the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which comprises areas with a wide range of background radiation levels, was essentially the first place in the world where it would be possible to study the effects of ionizing radiation on animals living in the wild.

Since the atomic bomb was developed during WWII, laboratory testing has been used to assess toxicological effects of ionizing radiation on life, but Mousseau and Mller wanted to examine the effects on free-ranging organisms. In contrast to their laboratory brethren, wild animals have to forage for food and fend for themselves, likely leaving them more vulnerable to new stressors. With that in mind, Mousseau and Mller began studying the natural inhabitants of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in 2000. Their scope expanded after Japan's Fukushima disaster in 2011, and they have established the USC Chernobyl + Fukushima Initiative, through which they and colleagues have now published more than 90 peer-reviewed papers.

Their work has shown a wide range of damaging effects to wildlife that result from chronic radiation exposure, even when the exposure is at low levels.

"As a starting point for our studies of animal populations, we took our cue from the medical literature--one of the first effects observed was the presence of cataracts in the eyes of people exposed to energy from atomic bombs," Mousseau says. "And we found that both birds and rodents show elevated frequencies and degree of cataracts in their eyes in the more radioactive areas. Nowadays, we see higher rates of cataracts in flight crews who spend a lot of time in airplanes, which expose them to extra radiation. And people who work in radiology fields are more likely to show increased prevalence and degree of cataract formation in their eyes."

The team also showed that radiation in Chernobyl diminished brain size, increased incidence of tumor formation, affected fertility and increased the prevalence of developmental abnormalities in birds. And the effects on individuals propagated through groups as well. Populations of barn swallows, for example, which were particularly hard hit in Chernobyl, were lower in areas of higher contamination, and Mousseau thinks they likely would have died off without immigration of new individuals from uncontaminated areas.

"That's something we tested. Using an isotopic method that shows geographic origin, we compared feathers of barn swallows in the contaminated areas with museum specimens from before the accident and found much more heterogeneity after the accident," Mousseau says. "Most populations are in some kind of equilibrium, teetering on this balance between the effects of birth and death. If the environment changes for the worse, it pushes them toward extinction, and with all of these negative fitness consequences, that's what we see: the populations pushed to smaller sizes because the deaths were outweighing the births. But secondarily, in many of these populations what we're probably seeing is actually a reflection of births, deaths, and immigration. These populations would be locally extinct if it were not for constant immigration."

And in a recently published paper in Science of the Total Environment, Mousseau and colleagues presented a meta-analysis of oxidative damage resulting from ionizing radiation. Radioactive contamination can have direct effects on, say, chromosomes or DNA, but its energy can also ionize other species in the biological milieu, such as ubiquitous water to form peroxide. The resulting oxidative stress can cause a range of biochemical effects.

"One of the messages coming through our research is that this secondary mechanism through oxidative stress appears to be fairly commonly observed," Mousseau says. "We have many examples now, both from other people's research and our own, that shows that there does appear to be some sort of tradeoff between the quantity of antioxidants in the organism's body and its ability to defend itself against the effects of ionizing radiation."

The protectiveness of antioxidants in the face of ionizing radiation might part of the explanation for why some populations are less susceptible to radioactive contamination than others, Mousseau adds. "Species that can somehow adjust the use of antioxidants may be using this as a means to reduce genetic damage."

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VANCOUVER, Wash. - Drought could render the U.S. Northeast's mixed forests unsustainable after 2050 while Washington's Cascade Mountains may require tropical and subtropical forest species, according to researchers using a new type of mathematical model at Washington State University.

The Tolerance Distribution Model (TDM) is the first to use the tolerances of different types of forests to drought, flood and shade to determine how the forests may respond to future climate change. In contrast to existing methods, the new approach can be applied at a continental scale while maintaining a direct link to ecologically relevant stressors.

Details of the WSU team's work are available online in Global Change Biology.

Changes in Northeast, Rockies, Texas, Gulf

WSU Vancouver mathematicians Jean Lienard and Nikolay Strigul, and ecologist John Harrison, predict the Pacific Northwest's climate may be warmer and wetter, requiring the establishment of forest types seen in places like southeastern China, southern Brazil or sub-Saharan Africa.

In the northeastern U.S., the model projects forests of maple/beech/birch, spruce/fir and white/red/jack pine combinations will be ill-suited to withstand predicted drought conditions by the latter half of the 21st century. Other forested areas that were identified as being at risk from drought included the northern Great Plains and the higher elevations of the Rocky Mountains.

Meanwhile, low altitude areas of Texas may eventually host tropical dry forests similar to regions of eastern Mexico. Moist, deciduous forests found in locations like Cuba could one day thrive along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

"Until now, our ability to predict exactly how and where forest characteristics and distributions are likely to be altered as a result of climate change has been rather limited," said Lienard, a postdoctoral researcher and the paper's first author. "With our model, it is possible to identify which forests are at the greatest risk from future environmental stressors. Forest managers and private landowners could then take steps like planting drought tolerant seedlings and saplings to prepare."

Other continents, ecosystems to be modeled

To create the forest tolerance model, the researchers collected physiological data on the abilities of U.S. tree species to cope with drought, varying levels of sunlight and flooding. They assigned tolerance rankings to each of the 400,000 forest plots in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forestry Inventory and Analysis Program based on the composition of the trees in each plot and their corresponding physiological characteristics.

They integrated data on the projected changes in annual U.S. temperature and precipitation from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to determine how each plot is likely to fare in response to changing climatic conditions through the end of the century.

The researchers plan to develop versions of the TDM that can be applied to agricultural systems as well as other terrestrial and aquatic ecological systems.

"We are working on modeling other continents and have already gained access to European and Asian forest data," Strigul said. "Our work is really just getting started."

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Read about earlier forest modeling work by Lienard and Strigul at https://news.wsu.edu/2016/02/24/145871/.
In March, KPMG and CB Insights reported that global investment in fintech companies reached $19 billion in 2015, with most of it ($13.8 billion) provided by venture capitalists, while large chunks also came from banks and corporations.

Its an astonishing amount, when you consider that as recently as 2012, total investment in fintech was just $2.8 billion, and it looked like an intriguing but marginal activity for tech geeks. Investment edged up to $3.9 billion in 2013 and then tripled, in what looked like the breakout year, to $12.2 billion in 2014.

In 2014, venture capitalists allocated $6.7 billion to fintech. It looked like a lot then, but they then doubled that investment last year.

Last years surge, partly fuelled by large deals for blockchain start-ups and a record year in Asia, where fintech start-ups raised more than in the previous four years combined, shows the powerful wave of transformation in financial services. Driven by the need for greater efficiency, specialization and the search for regulatory compliance, the mainstream banking industry is now embracing fintech whole-heartedly.

Brian Hughes, co-leader, KPMG Enterprise Innovative Startups Network, and national co-lead partner, KPMG Venture Capital Practice, in the US, says: Over the past couple of years there has been a significant shift as banks have moved from seeing fintech companies as disruptors to co-creators. Today, many of the banks are increasingly collaborating with fintech companies to access new markets and strengthen the user experience of their customers around the world.

Competition

Banks have been careful to set up a network of accelerators, in-house venture funds and hackathons to capture the best emerging financial technology so that even if it does disrupt their established businesses, they have a good chance of owning it.

But there is still some sense of competition between the incumbents and the tech-enabled newcomers. Last month, World First, a new international payments company, trumpeted a survey by Censuswide into the attitudes of over 1,000 UK small and medium-sized enterprises to new specialist fintech providers of foreign exchange services. The survey shows that those SMEs using specialist providers felt that, compared to traditional banks, the fintech newcomers demonstrated a better understanding of their businesss needs (85%), delivered a more tailored proposition (94%) and provided greater transparency on fees (88%).

Jonathan Quin, CEO and co-founder of World First, says: While SMEs have historically had to rely on the big banks for any sort of financial service, genuine innovation and technological development from the fintech sector has given rise to a wide range of truly compelling alternatives. This new breed of specialist providers is often better placed to serve the needs of SMEs than traditional banks, offering greater flexibility for the user, more transparent pricing and, ultimately, better value.

KPMG and CB Insights reported last month that there are now 19 fintech unicorn companies of which 14 are providing payments or marketplace lending. In October last year, SoFi, one of the biggest marketplace lenders in the US offering student-loan refinancing, mortgages and personal finance, raised $1 billion in a series-E funding round led by Soft Bank. This may have been the largest singe investment ever in a fintech company.

SoFi, which does not use FICO credit scores in loan underwriting, but rather considers employment history, track record of meeting financial obligations and cash flow, has lent over $6 billion.

CEO and co-founder Mike Cagney says: We are proud to be the only major lender that does not use the [FICO] score for any lending. Instead of relying on a three-digit number to tell us whos qualified, we look for applicants who have historically paid their bills on time and make more money than they spend. Its that simple.

The core

Fintech is bringing disruption beyond payments and lending to the core of the capital markets.

In March, SyndicateRoom, a crowdfunding equity-investing platform, announced that it had received intermediary approval status from the FCA to give its members access to the 200 million IPO of HealthCare Royalty Trust on the premium listing segment of the London Stock Exchange. Over the last two years, over 16.5 billion was raised on the LSE via placings and IPOs, with an average 10% discount given to institutional investors.

Goncalo de Vasconcelos, CEO and co-founder of SyndicateRoom, says: We are now seeking to democratize access to the public market, widening the reach of IPO discounts and putting the public back into IPO. SyndicateRooms move into the public equity market is another step in the evolution of the London Stock Exchange providing capital to growth companies, now with greater participation from individual investors.

David Brown, a SyndicateRoom member, says: "I've been investing for more than 25 years on the stock exchange and 15 years as a business angel and am incredibly excited about the prospect of having access to IPOs and private placings on a level playing field with institutional investors.

In the articles below, Euromoney reviews some of the most exciting fintech companies  both recent start-ups and longer established names  now revolutionizing areas ranging from mortgage lending, debt capital markets, emerging-market equity investing, provision of finance to SMEs, as well as bringing new approaches to student finance and enabling investment in start-ups led by women entrepreneurs.

Most of these companies and a host of other leading fintech firms participated in the Innovate Finance Global Summit at Londons Guildhall Monday, April 11.

Fourteen fintech firms in focus
by John Anderson



Hot dog, lukewarm relationship: Barack Obama and David Cameron

The investment banks are predicting doom and gloom if there is an exit; the hedge funds are fantasizing about life without Brussels; and all the transaction/settlement/clearing guys are deep in their bunkers trying to figure it out.

But for some reason Ive become fascinated by the not-so-hidden player in the referendum: the United States, that country with which we in the United Kingdom have been hypnotised for decades into believing we have a special relationship.

Well, folks, Brexit gives us a good opportunity to expose just how false a claim that is.

If we turn our attention back seven years to when Obama first came to office, there were grumblings in the then Labour-run UK government that life would be better outside the EU. At the time, the US almost choked on its Wheaties. The US State Department went into action and pressure was brought to bear on then prime minister Gordon Brown not to entertain any such foolish idea.

During that time, I ran into one of the political officers at the US Embassy in London who was most involved in keeping the UK in check. I told him I understood why the US would want the UK to be part of Europe for strategic political, military and financial reasons.

He just looked at me with a grin and said: Actually, we want to keep to a minimum the number of small, insignificant countries we deal with.

I couldnt believe my ears. Here was a country whose troops who had fought and died in Afghanistan and Iraq in common cause with the Americans now being described as small and insignificant.

I thought he was being facetious, but when I asked the question again, he just smiled: You heard what I said.

That political officer might have been in a foul mood, his words perhaps a bit sharper than they needed to be. But consider a more recent sentiment from a US trade representative who late last year said the US wouldnt be inclined to enter into a bilateral trade agreement with the UK were it to leave the warm embrace of the apparatchiks in Brussels.

Michael Froman was quoted as saying: Were not particularly in the market for FTAs [free-trade agreements] with individual countries. Were building platforms that other countries can join over time. We have no FTA with the UK, so they would be subject to the same tariffs  and other trade-related measures  as China, Brazil or India.

Criticism

To make matters even more interesting, Obama recently criticized the UK for taking its eye off the ball in allowing Libya to become a haven for the so-called Islamic State in north Africa.

Ever since Winston Churchill first spoke it in 1946 as a clarion call for the US and the UK to face off against Stalins Russia, the platitude of a special relationship has stuck so hard and fast that to even hint at its diminishment is seditious, though it continues to have less and less authenticity.

Now we have the news  yet to be confirmed  that Obama is going to pay a special visit to Britain in the coming months in order to make his views known on why the US needs a strong ally in the UK and why the UK can only remain strong if it says in the EU.

When that happens, press secretaries and speechwriters will pour forth a panoply of adverbs and adjectives about why the two countries have such a special relationship.

Those in favour of staying will delight in the involvement; the opposition will groan about the interference from over the pond, but at the end of the day it will have little impact on the outcome.

What will remain is this label that has little bearing to reality; which benefits neither side, but cant be dissolved for the embarrassment that would follow.

From a communications perspective, the phrase special relationship is like a bad tattoo: Youre desperate to have it removed, but the pain is too much to bear.

John Anderson is a freelance writer who spent more than 20 years as a senior corporate communications official at a number of leading global financial institutions. He welcomes comments at john.anderson293@googlemail.com.


'Orient can raise more money in Hong Kong than it could through a mainland IPO'



On April 11, a draft prospectus appeared on the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing website for a company called DFZQ. The 568-page Application Proof, as draft prospectuses are known on HKEx, is heavily redacted on timetable and amount, but illuminating all the same: DFZQ is better known in English as Orient Securities, the Chinese capital markets house, and it is thought to be seeking as much as $1 billion.

The proposed deal catches the eye for several reasons. The first is that Orient is Citis securities joint venture partner: it holds 66.67% of Citi Orient, and Citi 33%. Citi Orient is one of the handful of JVs, alongside UBS Securities, Goldman Sachs Gao Hua and Zhong De Securities (which partners Deutsche Bank and Shanxi Securities), that is doing well both in terms of deal volume and profitability. According to data from the Securities Association of China, as of June 30 2015, Citi Orient ranked second among foreign JVs for net profit (albeit only Rmb162.8 million ($25.1 million)  theres still not a huge amount of money to be made in these ventures), second for total revenue, third for underwriting fees and ranked top for financial advisory fees and second for M&A fees.i







** Daiwa SSC and Fortune CLSA are no longer foreign JVs. Each has been acquired by a Chinese securities firm.

Source: Securities Association of China

A Citi official says the Orient Securities IPO will make no difference to the JV, since its a listing of the parent in isolation, and JVs arent allowed to engage in business that conflicts with the parent. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if the once-removed presence of Citi and the relative success of the JV prove useful in marketing the parents listing.

The second reason the deal is interesting is the selection of Hong Kong rather than China as a listing venue. Orient is already listed in Shanghai, but could have opted to raise more capital domestically, particularly in this low-valuation environment. Some commentators have said the choice of Hong Kong is because of the suspension of capital raising in mainland China, but in fact that suspension was lifted in December and only applied to IPOs. Instead, the answer must be more pragmatic.

Orient can raise more money in Hong Kong than it could through a mainland IPO, and it will possibly be an easier process for them, says Stephen Baron, an analyst at Z-Ben Advisors, the Shanghai-based research group.

Wherever it raises capital, it faces very obvious headwinds. The A-share (domestic mainland Chinese) market has been more volatile than the H-share (Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong) market, but that hardly makes H-shares a haven of peace, particularly when it comes to the listing of mainland securities companies.

Shares in Guolian Securities, which listed in Hong Kong in June 2015, trade at less than half their level at launch. Hengtai Securities followed in October and is also well down on its listing price.

'Time is right'

Although many Chinese securities firms are believed to be ready to launch in Hong Kong when the time is right, among them China Merchants Securities and Everbright Securities, Orient appears to be the first since the Chinese market crash to believe that now is the time.

That said, the draft prospectus is careful to give no indication of timing, though it is understood that the joint sponsors  Citi, Goldman Sachs and Nomura  are sounding out the possibility of a listing within the next few months.

When they do decide to go ahead, it will be interesting to see how different the numbers in the final prospectus are from those in the draft.

The draft  which uses numbers from December 31 2015  shows fabulous performance: a 72% increase in revenue from 2013 to 2014, then a 159.4% increase from 2014 to 2015, reaching Rmb20.46 billion.

The problem is, assuming the interim results are out before the company lists, the next numbers are likely to look rather different.

As Orient itself says in the draft prospectus, the increased income reflects an increase in income from our wealth management business as a result of increased trading activity of the A-share market, the overall strong performance of our asset management schemes in our investment management business leading to an increase in performance fees, and an increase in our net investment gains from our fixed income as well as equity securities investments.

One would imagine all of those sources of income have taken a bit of a dent, particularly anything proprietary related to A-shares. Chinas CSI300 dropped 21% in the first month of the year alone, and, despite a subsequent rebound, was still off 13.8% in the first quarter. Orient says: Our revenue was materially and adversely affected. How much so will have quite an impact on how attractive the IPO looks, particularly to retail investors who tend to make decisions on headlines.

Baron, though, says the numbers may not look too bad. Profits in the brokerage industry have continued to increase, he says. Yes, a fair portion of the revenues for the larger companies were derived from proprietary trading, but they continue to appear healthy.

Clamp down

A bigger issue, in his view, is the drastic shrinkage in margin lending volumes as the A-share market collapsed and regulators tried to clamp down on individual leverage. He says the outstanding margin trading balance has fallen from a peak of Rmb2.4 trillion to about Rmb800 billion this year. Margin lending, he says, is a nice earner for Chinese securities houses; the earnings that come from it will be missed.

Either way, this would all have been a much easier sell last June.

Still, cash is always welcome, now in particular.

The IPO process may benefit their [Orients] securities operations on the mainland, says Baron. It will give them more cash to bolster the margin trading and stock lending side of the business and invest into other areas. Weve seen it before with Citic and Haitong: use the IPO to reinvest in the company and create strong brand names in the industry locally and to make international acquisitions.

Next, another member of the same group may come up with a still more important transaction. Orient is the largest (39.96%) shareholder in China Universal, a fund management business with Rmb107.9 billion under management, one of the top 10 in the industry in both asset and performance terms. Baron reckons it, too, is planning to list, and may well become the first Chinese mutual fund company to do so.

That would be a landmark. Perhaps were not too far from the day when a Sino-foreign securities JV lists in its own right.
Just before Christmas last year Moodys issued a rating on the securitization of a pool of marketplace lending (MPL) loans from a Citi-run shelf known, in the clunky parlance of the industry, as Citi Held for Asset Issuance (Chai). The $265 million deal was the third from the platform and was backed by consumer loans originated by online lender Prosper Marketplace. All the notes were privately placed.

As the industry returned from the Christmas break in January, however, the analysts at the rating agency were clearly having second thoughts. On February 11, a mere 36 working days after issuing the rating, Moodys declared that it was placing the $43 million Class C notes of this deal, which it had rated Ba3, on watch for downgrade along with the Class C notes from the two prior Chai securitizations, both of which had taken place since August 2015. The Class C notes in the December deal had 15% credit enhancement and had been offered at 6% over swaps.

That is a remarkably short period of time for the dynamics of the pool to have changed so dramatically. By the end of the first quarter of this year there had only been 29 securitizations of consumer MPL loans, totalling $3.9 billion, so for three of them to be put on rating watch is a big deal.

It isnt just Chai. In June 2015 Florida-based marketplace lender CircleBack Lending securitized $126 million of loans through Jefferies, with which it has a $500 million forward-purchase agreement. By March this year, however, cumulative losses on the deal had already caused it to breach its triggers, according to Morgan Stanley.

Anyone who lived through the financial crisis  or even saw the film The big short  should have a nasty sense of deja vu about the evolution of the MPL ABS market. This is a market that was launched on the back of a simple idea: two peers lending to and borrowing from each other.

It has, however, developed into a complicated network of risk transfer, with the original loan application often travelling from online platform to agent bank where the loan is made but then transferred back again to the online platform in as little as 24 hours. It is then matched with an investor and is often sold again  this time to a securitization platform. It will then be packaged up and sold on to ABS investors  a process that by any measure has become horribly complicated. Complexity is not what this industry, which is supposed to live and breathe on transparency, needs.

Uncomfortable

Are concerns about this complexity an over reaction? The marketplace lending sector remains tiny in global financial market terms. These are private placements sold to institutional investors and hedge funds, so the systemic implications are minimal.

There is, however, much to feel uncomfortable about if marketplace lending grows to become as big as many expect. That is because securitization will fuel much of that growth. No regulator is looking to make the banks bigger, muses Gyan Sinha, founding partner at Godolphin Capital Management, a New Jersey-based investor specializing in MPL asset-backed securities. Credit has to come from the non-banks.

Sinha has first-hand experience of ABS deals going wrong: immediately before the 2008 crisis he was the lead analyst covering the sector at Bear Stearns where he attracted criticism for his bullish calls on sub-prime residential mortgage-backed securities right up until mid 2007.

After Bear, Sinha joined KLS Diversified, where he worked with Samir Desai, who went on to found UK marketplace lender Funding Circle. Securitization will be absolutely essential to the growth of the MPL market, he says. It will require a huge investment of time and effort on the part of securitizers and issuers.

If non-bank lending is the future, then the securitization industry had better figure out how pools of these loans perform over time  and fast. Because, despite its fintech swagger, marketplace lending is not new.



Ram Ahluwalia,

PeerIQ

This is not a new asset class, it is a new business model, explains Ram Ahluwalia, chief executive officer at research firm PeerIQ in New York. Consumer-lending ABS has been going on since the 1990s. So investors, issuers and rating agencies need to take a hard look at exactly what is different about MPL platforms to unpick exactly how risky this brave new world of consumer finance really is.

Marketplace lending accounts for only 0.08% of the $96 trillion global corporate and household debt outstanding. However, the sector is accelerating fast, growing an average 123% a year since 2010. Some $24 billion of marketplace loans were originated globally in 2014; Morgan Stanley forecasts that this will reach $290 billion by 2020. Its also attracting big names in finance, most recently ex-Deutsche Bank CEO Anshu Jain, who joined the board of marketplace lender SoFi this year.

The global marketplace lending figures are, however, distorted by the dominance of China: Creditease, Chinas largest marketplace lender, has originated $25 billion in loans to 2 million borrowers, while the largest US player, Lending Club, has lent $13.4 billion to 756,878 borrowers. China accounted for 85% of the global online direct lending market in 2015, according to specialist strategic adviser Liberum Alternative Finance.

Research firm LendAcademy has described Creditease as like Lending Club, Avant, LendUp, SoFi, LendingHome, and Charles Schwab wrapped into one company. It spun out its online lending platform, Yirendai, via an IPO in December last year. Confidence in the Chinese market was, however, hit by the collapse of Ezubao, one of its largest marketplace lending platforms, in February this year. Around 95% of the loans on the platform were found to be false; investor losses are believed to have reached $7.6 billion.

The US market is dominated by Lending Club and Prosper Marketplace. Lending Club originated $8.4 billion in loans last year, increasing its loan book by 50%. It projects a 70% increase to $14 billion in 2016. Prosper originated $3.7 billion of loans in 2015 and saw revenues grow to $200 million from $81 million the prior year.



Richard Kelly,

NewOak Capital

The number of players in the industry is set to grow exponentially: US online lending start-ups raised $2.4 billion in the first three quarters of 2015, and there are already more than 100 platforms in operation.

The barriers to entry for marketplace lenders appear to be very low and the presumption is that marketplace lenders dont need a balance sheet, says Richard Kelly, managing director at advisory firm NewOak Capital in New York. New entrants can just buy a white label website for $15,000. However, many will find it that they need to raise significant capital to be able to invest in the loans that they source until they establish clear performance and show they are viable and have the right operational and capital regimen.

These lenders left their peer-to-peer roots behind long ago, as the number of individuals investing in the sites failed to keep pace with loan growth. The model very quickly became peer-to-hedge fund, and attracted intense interest from the banks, who calculated that if they cant beat them, they might as well join them.

In June 2014 one hedge fund, San Francisco-based Colchis Capital Management, had already invested $663 million in marketplace loans  10% of the entire sector. The big institutional investors were already very active too: by mid 2014 BlackRock was buying 25% of all loans originated by Prosper. Faced with this kind of firepower, individual peers have been increasingly squeezed out.

Bank involvement has taken many forms: some have invested in platforms directly  for example BBVA, Credit Suisse and JPMorgan have all invested in Prosper; Silicon Valley Bank and Wells Fargo (via Norwest Venture Partners) have invested in Lending Club; and SoFi raised $1 billion from Softbank Capital last year.





Others have partnered with the lending platforms either by originating through them or buying pools of loans from them. Santander was an early adopter when it cut a deal to buy 25% of Lending Clubs loans in March 2013. It also struck a referral agreement with Funding Circle in the UK. In February this year JPMorgan bought nearly $1 billion worth of Lending Club loans from Santander Consumer Bank USA. It has also invested in Avant and partnered with OnDeck.

Flow purchase agreements such as that between Jefferies and CircleBack are also popular; Citi had such a deal with Prosper allowing it to purchase a proportion of all loans originated on the platform (which were subsequently securitized through Chai). The future of this arrangement is, however, now uncertain. In the UK, Metro Bank set up an alliance with Zopa in March 2015  the first UK bank to lend through a MPL platform and Santander UK has teamed up with Kabbage to provide SME loans.

Several marketplace lenders have also partnered with US community banks: Lending Club with BancAlliance, a national consortium of around 200 community banks and Prosper with Western Independent Banks, which represents more than 160 independent and community banks. The most direct approach is to set up their own online lender: Sun Trust Bank set up online lender LightStream in 2013, but that is a path few others have chosen.

This could change following the news that Goldman Sachs is building a team to launch its own online platform, to be called Mosaic. It will be funded via Goldman Sachs Bank USA, but is unlikely to be operating in the same space as many other platforms.

This is part of Goldmans fintech strategy, they wont be lending to consumers, one online lender reckons. They wont be offering $25,000 loans to purchase a car.

Goldman is, however, now offering an online instant access savings account and has hired Harit Talwar from Discover to run its online lending business.

Cormac Leech, founder of Liberum, sees the connections between banks and marketplace lenders getting only stronger. There is nothing magic about digital lending  it is just an efficient way of extending credit. Banks have a very cheap cost of funding, so they are natural partners for this. Over time the banks will become more efficient. Marketplace lending and the banks will become more integrated into each other. Digital lending is the endgame for smaller loans  it will dominate.

Twitchy

As this process accelerates, regulators are becoming more twitchy. The US Department of the Treasury launched a request for information on the online lending industry in July last year to determine if these lenders should be subject to similar risk-retention requirements as banks. In November last year the FDIC issued a letter reminding FDIC-supervised institutions of the importance of underwriting and administering purchased credits as if they had originated the loans themselves.

This looming regulatory oversight had already created nervousness around the industry when it was hit by further bad press at the end of last year. Syed Rizwan Farook, who together with his wife shot and killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California on December 2, had been the recipient of a $28,500 loan from Prosper Marketplace (that was subsequently purchased by Citi). The California Department of Business Oversight launched an inquiry into the lending practices, investors and business models of 14 marketplace lenders just a fortnight later.

The big worry for these lenders is that they will be hit with the same kind of risk-retention requirements that have been ushered in for bank issuers under the Dodd-Frank Act.

Fidelity and T Rowe Price are not required to retain a percent of every investment they make or recommend to their clients because there is an inherent alignment of interest, grumbled founder and CEO of Lending Club Renaud Laplanche in response to the Treasurys RFI. If their clients earn disappointing results, they will pull their assets out, much as a disappointed Lending Club investor would.

The structural difference between balance sheet lenders and marketplaces is fundamental to this argument. The latter are platforms with lenders and borrowers on either side. The primary function of a marketplace lender is that of a risk-matching platform, says Ahluwalia at PeerIQ.

These are technology companies that do not have the loss-absorption capacity or risk-management capabilities of their institutional investors. If risk retention was attached to the marketplace lenders, the business model would shift abruptly and prematurely select winners and losers not by the underwriting competencies but by their ability to attract low-cost sticky capital. For this reason, he argues, risk retention must be attached to the securitizer not the platform.

Sachin Patel, global co-head of capital markets at Funding Circle in the UK, is also critical of any move towards risk retention requirements. The whole skin-in-the-game argument makes no sense, he tells Euromoney. Mortgage originators all went bankrupt even though they had sold whole loans. The problem was not market structure per se. We publish details of every loan on our website. There is real reporting. You can very quickly see what is going on. Our skin in the game is that we are totally transparent.

Funding Circle, which concentrates solely on SME lending, was due to become the first European marketplace lender to securitize a pool of loans through a 130 million transaction as Euromoney went to press.





Perhaps sensing that the regulatory winds are not blowing their way, Prosper, Lending Club and Funding Circle launched the industrys first trade organization, dubbed the Marketplace Lending Association, in April. The MLA will swiftly draw up a code of business conduct to address transparency for investors, responsible lending, governance and controls, and risk management. Many marketplace lenders are also assembling an impressive array of regulatory expertise with which to fight their corner: Chicago-based Avant has former FDIC head Sheila Bair on its board, while former Treasury secretary Larry Summers is on the board of Lending Club.

Negative press, heightened regulatory scrutiny and the threat of rating downgrades have all conspired to turn the perception of marketplace lending from the fintech industry darling of mid 2015 into a wild west of risky credit today. It has no track record to fall back on, so each bad headline spurs a fresh round of nerves and share-price deterioration (Lending Club, which has been one of the most shorted stocks in the market, has seen its share price fall from a high of $24 after its December 2014 IPO to $7 on March 2). These firms urgently need to demonstrate that they have the systems and processes in place to provide comfort to investors that loans will perform as they are expected to.



Philip Bartow,

RiverNorth Capital

There is high degree of sensitivity around lending today, which is fair and reasonable following the financial crisis, observes Philip Bartow, portfolio manager at RiverNorth Capital Management, a Chicago-based asset manager with $3.3 billion of assets under management. RiverNorth has applied for SEC approval to launch the first closed-end fund focused on marketplace lenders.

When investors make broad assumptions and predictions about asset classes its hard for them to be right all the time, he says. We think it is important to do the actual work on the asset: underwriting losses and the timing of those losses, and then compare that profile to other credit products. I certainly dont think marketplace lending is going to perform without losses across cycles. There is a risk there, and investors need to underwrite accordingly.

Black boxes

The raison d'etre of marketplace lenders is that they have developed underwriting engines that are more efficient and superior to the banks. As these algorithms are closely guarded black boxes, potential investors must take them at their word.

Prosper uses the Prosper score to determine a Prosper rating, while Lending Club uses a model rank to create a loan grade.

Platforms are pulling in a lot of raw data which is used to calibrate a statistical model of the likelihood of default, says Sinha. We back-test the scores and have enough of an insight into the factory to be comfortable.

Perhaps those algorithms will become less of a black box as online lending inexorably comes to dominate the consumer space. Banks are good at large lending but not so good at small lending, says Leech at Liberum. They could reach these borrowers, but it costs them too much to do so.

Bank credit officers have often been doing the same job for 20 years, whereas the underwriters at many marketplace lenders have been to MIT or Harvard and are highly incentivized, he continues. They are on Facebook and LinkedIn and using three or four different rating agencies to make their decisions. They are often lending to people that the banks would reject.

A quick scroll through borrower comments about WebBank on free online credit and financial management platform Credit Karma certainly confirms this. I am exited [sic] over Web Bank. They financed me when no one else would, declared one borrower in December 2012, with another in December 2013 revealing I got approved for $400 from Fingerhut (WebBanks catalogue credit account) after a month of discharge with bankruptcy. Love WebBank.

In January 2016 another borrower revealed: Even though I had two credit cards in collection, WebBank lent to me through Fingerhut. I paid off my first and only use of that Fingerhut credit and after that I got approved for a personal loan through Avant. I was surprised to know that Avant is owned by WebBank [borrowers frequently reveal a lack understanding about exactly who owns their loan]. Its true that they will lend to you when others dont. Im happy that there are banks like WebBank.

Unsecured consumer credit has always been a risky business, so lets hope that institutional investors remain happy that there are banks like WebBank too. The loans in the Chai pools were originated through WebBank for Prosper Marketplace, and Moodys misjudgment of their cumulative net-loss trajectory has left many scratching their heads.

The rating agency used its standard methodology for consumer loan-backed ABS to assess the pool and determined that expected losses were 8%. This was based on the early performance of loans originated on the Prosper platform from 2013. The pool of loans is very similar to the pool backing a $325 million securitization of Prosper loans issued by BlackRock in January last year (CCOLT 2015-1), which has the same 8% expected loss. Moodys declined to speak to Euromoney for this article.

By February, however, the expected cumulative lifetime net loss for each of the pools backing the three Chai transactions had increased to 12%. Why would the performance of an asset class as tried and tested as consumer credit be so wide of the mark? Is there something about online lending that makes performance much harder to predict?

Citi, which declined to speak to Euromoney for this article, has also securitized loans from Marlette Funding through Chai.

The downgrade rating watch on the Chai deals sounds like a breakdown in processes, reckons Sinha. There is obvious confusion about what the underwriting looks like. No one has acquitted themselves well over this and it has created a false narrative of credit deterioration.

But that is a narrative that is proving hard for the industry to shake off. In January 2016, LC Advisors, an investment adviser owned by Lending Club, revealed that some of its loans are not performing as expected. Charge-off rates for some five-year loans are around 7% to 8%, against a forecast of 4% to 6%.

Ahluwalia at PeerIQ believes that it will take time for investors to get completely comfortable with this young asset class. The first securitization of marketplace loans was brought by New York-based hedge fund Eaglewood Capital (run at the time by ex-Lehman trader John Barlow), a $53 million deal bought by one large reinsurer. The first small and medium-sized enterprise marketplace securitization was transacted by OnDeck in April 2014 and BlackRock launched the first rated deal through its CCOLT (Consumer Credit Origination Trust) programme in January 2015.

This is a new credit product for institutional investors, Ahluwalia says. These are unsecured instalment loans with a three to five-year maturity. There is no prepayment penalty which makes it very difficult when you try to project cash flows. There are no smooth monthly cash flows. Investors must model prepay and default behaviour.

These loans take time to go bad, but stronger borrowers prepay early, so for marketplace lenders most of their profit comes in the early years of the loan: portfolios will tilt towards weaker credits as time passes.

Investors are grappling with an unfamiliar but promising asset class and headlines have created investor apprehension, Ahluwalia continues. Merely putting a spreadsheet online is not enough to unlock institutional capital. There needs to be transparency not just at originator level but at ABS level as well.

He says that while there is a year-on-year uptick in delinquencies of 30 basis points to 50bp, these are still multi decade lows as compared to credit card charge-offs.





There is no getting away from the fact that marketplace consumer lending can involve weaker borrowers. According to Morgan Stanley, by mid 2015 80% of MPL consumer loans were being used to consolidate debt. By year end, 68.5% of the origination volume on Lending Club was for refinancing or paying off existing credit-card debt. In the US, borrower quality is traditionally determined using a FICO score that is based on a set of borrower criteria. The generic FICO score is between 300 and 850; the median score was 713 in 2014, down from 723 in 2006. When Lending Club first launched, it required a FICO score of 660 or above in 2013 but lowered this to 640. Prosper has had a floor of 640 from the outset.

The unique selling point of marketplace lending is that all those Harvard-educated underwriters using their proprietary algorithms can judge the credit risk better than the traditional banks could.

Is the pool of borrowers an adversely selected subset of bank customers? asks Sinha. Two thirds of credit card users are convenience users which pay off their balance at the end of every month. If you compare the performance of the other one third of credit card users that do not, the MPL loans performance is about the same.

Investors should hardly be surprised, therefore, if marketplace lending securitizations of consumer loans turn out to be riskier than traditional credit card securitizations. According to Liberum, US credit cards achieve an average net yield of 8.2%, with stable losses and consistently positive returns. The equivalent figure for the UK is 6.4%.

There is a risk that some marketplace lenders gravitate to making hard money loans at soft money rates which is not a recipe for long-term survival, points out Kelly. The rates credit card companies charge are reflective of the credit they are dealing with and they are profitable but not wildly. They lend to consumers at 19% and marketplace lenders reckon to do the same at 15%. However, this could be explained by marketplace lenders having no formal capital requirement as well as more efficient operation acquiring clients.

According to Liberum, average yields of marketplace lending platforms range from 5.5% to 8.8% when converted to US dollars, with the highest being UK-based Bondora at 16% and the lowest SoFi at just over 2%. Lending Club and Prosper yield around 7%.

Kelly reckons that loss severity could actually be worse than it was in some RMBS asset classes. The principal distinction between this kind of lending and mortgage securitization is that MBS is backed by real property. It was an extraordinary anomaly that the value of property fell as precipitously as it did in the financial crisis. Over a long period of time there is a floor on losses with mortgage lending. Loss severity is much less than that for unsecured individual lending, where loss severity may become high under stress. For example, unsecured creditors may be entirely wiped out in bankruptcy. Typically, the defaulted instalment loans will end up being sold at 10c on the dollar or discharged, he warns. Servicers of these loans are not going to sue someone over a $5,000 business or personal loan; even if you get a judgment, enforcement is expensive and uncertain.

Differentiation

As in traditional banking,marketplace lenders are trying to differentiate themselves. Those that focus purely on SME lending, such as OnDeck in the US and Funding Circle in the UK, are keen to distance themselves from the consumer market, and they emphasise the higher quality of lending in this segment.

Nevertheless, as long as investors understand the risks and are being compensated properly for them, then both consumer and SME marketplace lending and the securitization underpinning them should continue to grow. In the US, total MPL ABS issuance now stands at $8.6 billion from 47 deals (29 of consumer loans, 11 of student loans and 7 of small business loans), according to PeerIQ. The pace of issuance slowed in the first quarter of this year, however, and the headlines around Chai have seen spreads in that programme widen by 100bp from its first issuance in 2015.

The relationship between each marketplace lender and its investors is the key to how these platforms will fare as the industry enters choppier waters. Contrary to what most traditional bankers believe, not all lending capital thinks alike, observes Frank Rotman, founding partner of QED investors, a venture capital firm that has invested in, among others, Credit Karma, Prosper, Avant Credit and SoFi.

The key to managing a non-bank lending originator is to find the right partners who like the economics of the business, he says. Some investors are looking for low risk, low volatility and collateral-backed loans. Others are looking for high-yield assets from which they can quickly exit if warning signs arise. Retail investors dont look anything like giant international insurance companies, nor do the insurance companies look like hedge fund traders.

If marketplace lending is hit by more negative headlines, investors could disappear, taking with them the funding on which the platforms are reliant for growth. Indeed, SoFis recent decision to set up a fund, the SoFi Credit Opportunities Fund, to purchase its own loans is a rather surreal illustration of the extent to which these platforms are dependent on borrowing and lending expanding at the same pace.

In normal environments, we wouldnt have brought a deal into the market, SoFi chief executive Mike Cagney said in March when he launched the fund. But we have to lend. This is the problem with our space.

Sinha at Godolphin tells Euromoney that the answer is for MPL platforms to be more programmatic in their approach to clarify the risks to their investors.

The industry has done itself a disservice by treating loan sales as fungible, he claims. The whole loan sale investor market has become very fragmented and balkanised, with a small number of players dominating. We need a set of uniform standards. If these were balance-sheet lenders, they would set up their ABS platform and put a stamp on it. MPLs need to curate their programmes  they cant just keep randomly pumping out loans.

The honeymoon period for marketplace lending is over, and there is a sense that the industry is desperately trying to smarten itself up, put on a suit and persuade the regulators that it can be trusted. But in trying to move away from its roots, it may also go back to them if the institutional capital it has courted becomes too wary of the predictability of loan performance.

In response to an analysts question at the end of Lending Clubs fourth quarter earnings call Renaud Laplanche pointed out that 62% of [Lending Clubs] funding already comes from individual investors, and it wants to preserve and then potentially grow that share of retail investors. We really think that retail is a core competency and a core competitive advantage of Lending Club and pretty much no other platform has any scale in retail distribution. So we think thats going to be a nice differentiator, particularly if and when the economy starts slowing down, because we believe retail is more sticky than any other source of capital.
The euro to pound rate (EUR/GBP) fluctuated after latest domestic data triggers uncertainty among foreign exchange investors. Where next for the sterling against the single currency (GBP/EUR) in latest forecasts?

The euro exchange rates have generally been strong against currency rivals today, though advances have not been uniform across all peers.

The most notable jump up in EUR exchange rate pairings has come against the Australian Dollar which saw 2.2% gains.

While less impressive, a slight advance was seen in the euro to dollar exchange rate and a 0.3% rise on the Pound Sterling have also been recorded.

Other Pound Sterling / Currency Exchange News

Latest Pound/Euro Exchange Rates

On Monday the Pound to British Pound exchange rate (GBP/GBP) converts at 1

The pound conversion rate (against pound) is quoted at 1 GBP/GBP.

Today finds the pound to us dollar spot exchange rate priced at 1.135.

FX markets see the pound vs swiss franc exchange rate converting at 1.133.

NB: the forex rates mentioned above, revised as of 24th Oct 2022, are inter-bank prices that will require a margin from your bank. Foreign exchange brokers can save up to 5% on international payments in comparison to the banks.

The Euro (EUR) exchange rates remained on mixed form against the British pound and the US dollar today in spite of the GfK German Consumer Confidence Survey bettering expectations.

While sentiment strengthened from 9.4 to 9.7 on the month a modest dip in the German Import Price Index increased worries over the inflationary outlook of the currency union.

During Tuesday afternoon's session on the currency exchange markets, the EUR/GBP exchange rate remains 0.4 per cent down compared to today's opening price level.

Earlier on, the euro and virtually all other pound sterling peers plunged against the rallying British currency.

Since then, however the euro has approached the UK currency on a more even footing, owing to diminishing returns on the latest UK Referendum attitude adjustment.

The euro (EUR) exchange rate complex had been mixed overall earlier today, with gains coming against the US Dollar (USD) and losses extending against the British pound (GBP) and the Japanese Yen (JPY), among others.

The latest Eurozone news has been fairly limited, in both its distribution and its perceived positive impact. The day began poorly with the released Finnish data, which showed a rise in the unemployment rate in March from 9.4% to 10.1%.

Elsewhere, Irish residential property prices have risen on the year but fallen on the month, while Luxembourgs unemployment rate has remained at 6.5% in March.

Euro to Dollar Exchange Rate Forecast: High-Impact German Ecostats Incoming, Mixed Forecasts Assigned

With todays Eurozone data essentially all out, it remains for the German ecostats of the remaining week days to generate further movement for the euro exchange rates.

Tomorrow morning will bring the German import price indices for March, as well as Mays consumer confidence survey.

This latter outcome is expected to remain at 9.4 points.

Other data of note out of the Bavarian nation will come on Thursday, when the March retail sales figures will be released to be followed by the stagnation-expected unemployment rate for April.

Pound Sterling (GBP) Exchange Rates Trump Currency Peers Today (Euro, US Dollar and Others) on Brexit Rethink

The Pound has risen notably against virtually all of its peers today, with the reduced odds of a Brexit thought to be the triggering factor behind this highly supportive rally.

Although some predictions have been putting the chances of an UK exit from the EU at 49%, others have been far more optimistic and estimated that the likelihood of a Brexit may be as low as 25%.

The next UK ecostats to watch out for will be tomorrow mornings UK actualised GDP results for the first quarter; current predictions are for slight decline in both cases.

US Dollar (USD) Exchange Rates Generally Poor despite Optimistic Forecasts for Incoming Data

The US Dollar has been poor prospect against its peers recently, thanks to a recent shortfall in the national new home sales results for March.

In spite of this currently declining state, however, it remains possible that the Buck will rally against its peers in the near future.

As two examples, the optimistically forecast durable goods orders result for March is due shortly, while the similarly growth-predicted services PMI for April is due out later on in the afternoon.

Pound to Euro Exchange Rates Strength Attributed to Shifting Sands of Brexit Perception Today

Today could mark a turning point in the Pounds value, at least up to the June 23rd Referendum vote.

While there will always be an element of uncertainty regarding the outcome of the UK Referendum, hopes have certainly increased recently for a Brexit vote failing to materialise.

Mizuho Bank Head of Hedge-Fund Sales Neil Jones has commented that:

The Pound is outperforming on Bremain. Weve become so fixated on what will happen if Brexit occurs, weve forgotten whether Brexit will actually occur at all.
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The announcement this week of the 2016 Texas Business Hall of Fame inductees had some people scratching their heads.

Should Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, also known as one of the worlds richest people, be in the Texas Business Hall of Fame?

Buffett and the vice chairman of Buffetts investment company Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Charles Munger, will be inducted Oct. 27 during a San Antonio gala dinner to be held by the organization, along with five other Texas-based business people.

As word went out late Monday afternoon and Tuesday, questions came in.

Why is Buffett being inducted in the Texas Hall of Fame? I presumed that honor was reserved for Texans, wrote San Antonio Express-News reader Tim Swan in an email. If business interests in Texas are the criteria, then Bill Gates, Elon Musk and legions of others have been long overlooked. It sort of takes the significance out of the title, doesnt it?

Our (selection) criteria is broader than just people who live in Texas, said Kirk McDonald, board chairman for the Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation and the finance executive director for the Zachry Group in San Antonio.

Texas Business Hall of Fame inductees can be people born in Texas but who spent most of the careers outside of the state. They also can be people from outside the state whose companies have substantial anchors in Texas, McDonald explained.

Frank Bennack Jr., a 2012 inductee known mainly for his long career in New York City as CEO for the Hearst Corp., started his career rising through the ranks to publisher of the San Antonio Light. Hearst, which owned the Light, acquired the San Antonio Express-News in 1993.

In Buffetts case, his Nebraska-based investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, operates several Texas-based companies. They include the giant Fort Worth-based BNSF Railway and the McLane Co. Inc. in Tyler, a supply logistics firm, McDonald said.

Houston-based Star Furniture is a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, too. Berkshire Hathaway also is a holding company for Dairy Queen, a Minneapolis-based restaurant chain thats popular in Texas and elsewhere. Buffetts company maintains a large holding in Coca-Cola, which operates bottling plants in Texas.

Its quite a list when you look at it, McDonald said. Our focus is to recognize the impact of investments in the Texas economy and in Texas business. We dont think Buffett takes away from the significance of the Texas Business Hall of Fame.

We look carefully at the tenor, the leadership and the long involvement of inductees, McDonald added. Texas has a huge business economy, and many people are involved.

Buffett, 85, is the third-wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine, which lists his net worth at $68.8 billion.

Buffett and Munger are scheduled to attend the Oct. 27 Texas Business Hall of Fame gala in San Antonio at the downtown Grand Hyatt Hotel, McDonald said. Former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros will be master of ceremonies.

More than 1,000 people attended the most recent Texas Business Hall of Fame gala in San Antonio, in 2013, a sellout also at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The annual gala is held in San Antonio every three years, alternating with Houston and Dallas.

In 2013, the Texas Business Hall of Fame inducted, in another unusual move, the more than 80,000 employees, called partners, of San Antonio-based H-E-B at the grocery chains request instead of inducting H-E-B Chairman and CEO Charles Butt.

Voter Guide: What to know for the midterm election Your guide to the Texas and San Antonio races and candidates on the Nov. 8 ballot.

H-E-B President and Chief Operating Officer Craig Boyan accepted on behalf of the employees.

Along with Buffett and Munger, the three 2016 inductees from San Antonio will be Broadway Bank Chairman Emeritus Charles Cheever Jr., Gordon Hartman Family Foundation founder Gordon Hartman and CeloNova BioSciences Inc. Executive Board Chairman Dennert Ware.

Two other inductees are from outside San Antonio. They are Abilene-based Mansefeldt Investment Corp. Chairwoman Dian Graves Stai and Dallas-based Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly.

Ware said he found out a few days ago of his selection into the Texas Business Hall of Fame and that he would go in with Buffett and Munger.

Thats quite an honor, Ware said. Those are some well-known names in the world. Im so humbled and appreciative.

The Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation uses gala proceeds and donations to fund more than 30 scholarships of $15,000 each annually to Texas university students statewide. The students are chosen based on their entrepreneurial pursuits and capabilities, McDonald said.
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Health insurance company Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas confirmed it has reached an agreement with Hospital Corporation of America that will keep the hospital giant in the insurers provider network after their current contract expires Saturday.

Blue Cross is now working to formalize all verbal commitments agreed upon last week, the insurer said in a statement released Monday.

Both sides had been at odds concerning future reimbursement rates that Blue Cross would pay to HCAs 74 hospitals and surgery centers in Texas for medical care provided to Blue Cross customers at those facilities. That includes Methodist Healthcare System, the largest health care provider in San Antonio, which is partly owned by HCA.

Trinity University Professor Ed Schumacher, who chairs the schools health care administration program, likened the late-running standoff between the two health care giants to a game of chicken.

HCA is trying to get the most favorable rates possible from such commercial contracts, Schumacher said. This is what all their profit comes from  because theyre losing money, presumably, on the Medicare, Medicaid and uninsured. And so its really important to them to get favorable rates on the commercial side, he said. But at the same time, the Blue Crosses of the world are being pressured to have narrow networks and decrease their rates.

Its not unusual for these down-to-the-wire negotiations in health care to make the news, Schumacher added.

It almost always occurs that they come up with an agreement toward the end because they cant live without each other, he said. And so usually they end up agreeing, maybe with a black eye or two.

The duration of the new contract, once it is signed, hasnt been publicly disclosed. Neither side would answer questions about how long it will be in place.

Blue Cross, Methodist Healthcare and HCA all declined to comment beyond emailed statements on the negotiations.

We are not at liberty to discuss the agreement at this time, said Palmira Arellano, Methodist Healthcares vice president of marketing and public relations, in an email Monday.

Had they not come to an agreement, Blue Cross would have dropped HCAs Texas facilities on May 1 from its provider network for the vast majority of group health plans the insurance company sells to employers, including the BlueChoice PPO/POS plans, HMO Blue Texas plans and Traditional/Par Plan. Several hundred thousand Texans are covered by those insurance policies.

The verbal agreement reached late Friday will allow any Blue Cross customer covered by those group health insurance plans to continue paying in-network rates for medical care received at HCA facilities in Texas.

Blue Cross is gratified that HCA facilities will remain in our provider network, thus keeping our wide array of provider options intact for the benefit of our Texas members, said Divisional Senior Vice President of Health Care Delivery Jack Towsley in the statement released Monday. We take our role of being good stewards of our members health care coverage dollars very seriously and will continue to effectively manage the fees they pay when visiting health care providers in Texas.

Fridays negotiations marked the last encounter between Blue Cross and HCA, according to the insurance companys statement. Blue Cross officials said they continued to press for reimbursement rates that will guarantee its 5 million Texas customers cost-effective access to HCA facilities.

The late contract negotiations arent surprising, said Dana Forgione, an accounting professor who chairs the University of Texas at San Antonios business of health program.

I think, in general, negotiations are becoming more feisty across the board, Forgione said, noting he doesnt have any details on the wrangling between Blue Cross and HCA in Texas. Theres just continual downward pressure on payment rates.

Health insurance companies that have lost money on individual and family health insurance plans sold through the federal exchange under the Affordable Care Act are shifting those costs to private plans, Forgione said.

When the private plans start pushing back and saying We are going to cut our own rates also, then its the (health care) providers who are going to have to bear the brunt, Forgione said, and theyre going to have to find major ways to reduce costs of delivering care. I think were seeing this in a lot of different health care sectors. And its only going to increase.

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Many health care providers give in during these types of contract negotiations because they feel they have no choice, but HCA is a big enough player in the industry that it has enough clout to push back, Forgione said. He described the company as a 900-pound gorilla. HCA is the biggest player in the market in the U.S., Forgione said. They own an awful lot of hospitals across the country.

The for-profit company owns around 165 hospitals and 115 surgery centers in 20 states, including Texas, as well as in England, according to its website. Besides Methodist Healthcares eight hospitals and four ambulatory surgery centers in San Antonio, the companys facilities include The Womans Hospital of Texas in Houston, St. Davids HealthCare facilities in Austin, Medical City Dallas Hospital, Rio Grande Regional Hospital in McAllen and Valley Regional Medical Center in Brownsville.

HCA is a very profitable company, and we could all argue that maybe they can afford to do a little belt-tightening, Forgione said. But without knowing more details about this particular (negotiation), its hard to say.

Health insurers have been merging and consolidating to gain market clout against health care providers, but providers also have joined forces in an effort to take back some of that control in the industry, he said.

At the same time, the employers are building consortia and other means of collaboration in order to gain market clout against the payers and the providers, Forgione said. So I think were going to see this kind of difficult negotiation continue.

pohare@express-news.net
Monthly rates paid by most owners of CPS Energys 110,000 streetlights, including San Antonios City Hall, will pay less per month starting in September, thanks to a conversion program to LED lights.

CPS Energy trustees on Monday approved passing on to City Council a proposed new rate schedule for final passage. City Council is tentatively scheduled to vote on the matter May 19. If approved, the new and mostly lower rates would go into effect in September.

The new streetlight rate schedule will expand from six rates to 41 new rates. The rates depend on the light sizes, pole configurations and whether electricity is provided from above ground or underground, said Chad Hoopingarner, CPS Energy director of strategic pricing and cost recovery.

Of the 41 new rates, 25 would be decreases, and 16 would be increases, Hoopingarner said.

The 10 most common LED streetlight types, accounting for 70 percent of all streetlights to be converted, will see price declines, Hoopingarner said.

The price changes will result in less revenue for CPS Energy, about $10 a year per street lamp, he added.

The LED lights, standing for light-emitting diode, have been made by San Antonio-based GreenStar Products Inc. since 2011. CPS Energy uses contractors to install the more-efficient light that are replacing high-pressure sodium lights. GreenStar is a subsidiary of Toshiba Lighting and Technologies.

LED lights last more than a decade and use 60 percent to 70 percent less electricity to operate than traditional lights.

The city of San Antonio owns 70,000 of the 110,000 streetlights in CPS Energys service area. It has already replaced 25,000 LED lights and has tentatively committed to cover the costs of replacing 30,000 more streetlights.

In addition to the city, streetlight owners include Bexar County, other municipalities, homeowner associations and the Texas Department of Transportation, plus individual residential, commercial and industrial customers of CPS Energy.

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The rest of the citys older streetlights will be replaced when they burn out or are damaged, in which case CPS Energy will pay the capital costs under its maintenance program, Hoopingarner explained.

CPS Energy is planning for 75 percent of the areas streetlights to be LEDs three years from now, he said.

The AT&T Center recently converted its lights to LED and saves $26,000 a year, said Paula Gold-Williams, CPS Energy interim CEO.

Also at Mondays meeting, the utility trustees met for almost 90 minutes in closed session to discuss its CEO search that has been underway since last fall, and other real estate and legal matters, but no announcement was made afterward.

dhendricks@express-news.net
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Franklin Palacios Paz, a troubled Honduran immigrant, worked at a tire shop in Edinburg, earning around $80 a week in an environment that state investigators have depicted as rife with tension, according to an affidavit.

On the evening of March 16, 2015, his headless body was fished out of the waters off South Padre Island.

When authorities broke the news of Palacios death to his wife, she threw herself on her bed, yelling, Frankie, Frankie, why? She had filed a missing person report after Palacios stopped responding to phone calls and text messages, but it was her 13-year-old son who provided investigators with the most revealing details about the victim.

Palacios had confided his affiliation with the Gulf Cartel, a drug trafficking organization based across the border in Tamaulipas, Mexico, the teenager said, according to the arrest affidavit for Border Patrol Agent Joel Luna. Palacios and the men at the tire shop boasted of chopping off heads, the boy told investigators. And he had seen drugs hidden in video game machines, along with stacks of dollars brought over from Reynosa, Mexico, the affidavit states.

In an interview with a girlfriend of Palacios, the affidavit continues, the victim had admitted crossing illegals for the cartel.

By November, Cameron County investigators had arrested five men, including Luna, in connection with the grisly killing. According to the affidavit, the men killed Palacios to stop him from revealing their activities as drug smugglers with ties to the cartel.

Aaron Rodriguez Medellin, 23; Nestor Manuel Leal, 19; Eduardo Luna Rodriguez, 25; and Fernando Luna Rodriguez, 35; as well as Joel Luna, 30; all face capital murder and other charges. Joel, Eduardo and Fernando Luna are brothers. All five men pleaded not guilty to the charges in February.

The Cameron County district attorneys office, which is prosecuting the case, has said it wont seek the death penalty.

Cameron County sheriffs investigators, with assistance from Edinburg police, learned that Palacios had filed a police report alleging an assault in January 2015, though it is unclear what came of the report.

Palacios co-workers Medellin, Leal and Eduardo Luna denied having previous altercations with Palacios, telling authorities instead that the victims frequent marital spats were to blame for his troubles.

Authorities soon uncovered damaging messages sent March 9 from Fernando Luna, the affidavit states. One message read in Spanish, Franky and his brother are saying who is selling drugs. Another read, this Franky is a (expletive) traitor, and yet another read, at any moment he is going to put the finger on you.

The next day, investigators brought Fernando Luna in for questioning.

Using global positioning locations from cellphone towers, investigators tracked the phones of Eduardo Luna and Leal from San Juan in Hidalgo County to Port Isabel, near South Padre, then back to San Juan. Meanwhile, records show Palacios cellphone went offline the afternoon of March 10 somewhere near the Edinburg tire shop.

But investigators were thwarted in their attempt to review the tire shop surveillance recordings for the day of March 10. The recording was missing, according to the affidavit.

State District Judge Rose Reyna in Hidalgo County signed a search warrant in April to search the shop. Once inside, investigators found a pattern of blood stains on the walls. A DNA profile would later identify the blood as Palacios.

His body was discovered floating in the Laguna Madre during a busy week of Spring Break, and a Cameron County sheriffs deputy was dispatched to South Padre Island to investigate.

Earlier that day, a group of friends, including children, had been out for a cruise when they found the body. Now the deputy was staring at the gruesome remains, lying in a pool of blood in a body bag.

It appeared that the head had been cut off in a single motion with a sharp cutting instrument, the deputy reported. There were two small puncture wounds in the upper chest, and a deep, wide laceration along the front of the body, exposing internal organs.

Fingerprints run through a government database identified Palacios as the victim. He was 33.

Rodriguez, Leal, Eduardo Luna and Fernando Luna were arrested in June and charged with capital murder, but Joel Luna wasnt taken into custody until much later.

The affidavit leaps over several months and resumes with the testimony of a sister-in-law of Joel Luna, who for six years had been a Border Patrol agent assigned to a checkpoint in Hebbronville.

Luna requested that his sister-in-law open a bank account, in which he deposited $42,000 for the purpose of buying a house, she told authorities, adding that he also kept a stash of money at her mothers house.

A search of the San Juan home found a black safe containing 3 pounds of cocaine, half an ounce of methamphetamine, $89,560 in cash, a 1911 engraved pistol, a .22-caliber pistol, a Border Patrol commemorative badge, plastic baggies, a scale, and a ledger documenting the sale of narcotics, firearms and ammunition, the affidavit shows.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has placed an immigration detainer on Luna at the Cameron County Jail after it was revealed that he has two birth certificates: one from Mexico and one from Texas.

Lunas attorney, Carlos A. Garcia, said that although his client was born in Texas, his parents also had registered his birth in Mexico so he could go to school there, a common practice along the border.

This is a complex case with many moving parts, Garcia said. It is important that everyone reserve judgment until the appropriate time. My client has pleaded not guilty, and we look forward to the process as it proceeds.

Neither the Cameron County district attorney nor the attorneys for the other four men could not be reached for comment.

A status hearing is scheduled for June.

anelsen@express-news.net

Twitter: @amnelsen
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WASHINGTON  Ted Cruz defended his new campaign pact with GOP rival John Kasich on Monday, the latest gambit in an effort to block Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who is a strong threat to sweep five Northeastern presidential primaries today.

The highly unconventional move reflects the growing sense of urgency among Republicans who see the New York real estate mogul as a rogue force poised to clinch the GOP nomination and wreak havoc within the party.

Trump, campaigning in Rhode Island on Monday, denounced the deal as a desperate move by two losing longtime politicians conspiring to upend his insurgent campaign by any means possible.

It shows how weak they are. It shows how pathetic they are, Trump told cheering supporters.

Cruz, campaigning in Indiana, a lynchpin in his effort to slow Trumps march toward the nomination, praised Kasichs effort to step aside in the Hoosier State, which holds its primary next week. In return, Cruz agreed to stay clear of Oregon and New Mexico, states that could favor the Ohio governor in the next two months.

After discussions with the Kasich campaign, we made a decision to allocate our resources, Cruz said in Indiana. I think that made sense for both campaigns.

Cruz and Kasich sought to downplay the significance of the anti-Trump deal, which resembles the progressive elimination tactic of the reality TV series Survivor.

Im not campaigning in Indiana, and hes not campaigning in these other states, thats all, Kasich said. Its not a big deal.

But there was confusion Monday about how far the agreement would go.

On Monday, Kasich canceled all his scheduled appearances in Indiana, and a top Kasich official told the Indianapolis Star that the campaign was asking his supporters in Indiana to vote for Cruz.

Kasich is asking his supporters in Indiana to vote for Cruz so Trump does not win Indiana, and Cruz will do the same in Oregon and New Mexico, Jim Brainard, Kasichs Indiana state co-chairman, told the newspaper.

Kasich, however, told reporters that, Ive never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me.

Cruz was silent on whether he would encourage his supporters in New Mexico and Oregon to vote for Kasich. Because both states award delegates proportionately, Cruz still could pick up delegates there if he shows well.

Cruz rejected any suggestion that the tag-team operation was a sign of weakness in the face of Trumps growing lead in the delegate race.

There is desperation on the Trump side, Cruz said, alluding to the businessmans criticism of party rules that allow the senator from Texas to woo delegates even in states where Trump has won the popular vote.

Trumps sweeping win in New York last week left him the only GOP contender with a mathematical chance of reaching the 1,237-delegate majority needed to claim the nomination ahead of the Republicans July convention in Cleveland. Cruz and Kasich now can hope only to stop Trump from reaching the winning threshold in the remaining 15 primaries. That would force a contested convention with multiple ballots in which delegates no longer would be bound to statewide voting totals.

Heavily favored in todays primaries in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland and Delaware, Trump is looking to build momentum for the rest of the primary calendar. Every win puts pressure on Cruz and his allies.

Their opportunities to block him vanish with each passing week, Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said.

As a strategic tactic, it is similar to ex-contender Marco Rubios suggestion that  to stop Trump  his backers should support Kasich in Ohio. Kasich did not return the favor in Rubios native Florida, contributing to a crushing primary loss that ended Rubios campaign.

Regardless of whether voters follow suit in the Cruz-Kasich accord, the deal is a rarity in modern American politics.

It is unprecedented that we have so public a mutual aid pact, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. Long-rumored, the prospect of some type of Cruz partnership with Kasich or Rubio seems to take on more appeal, with Trumps 285-delegate lead about to widen in the coming days.

Candidates who are behind are much more likely to be strategically smart about where they go and how they spend money, Rottinghaus said. They both need to put all their wood behind that one arrow because theyre running short of time and running low on momentum.

In nearly identical statements Sunday night, the Cruz and Kasich campaigns cast the move as an effort to prevent Trump from winning the GOP nomination and losing to a potential Hillary Clinton candidacy in the fall general election.

Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans, wrote Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe. Having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation.

Both campaigns described a collaboration to limit Trumps winnings in the upcoming primary states.

Due to the fact that the Indiana primary is winner-take-all statewide and by congressional district, keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland, Kasich strategist John Weaver said in a statement. Given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaigns resources west and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana.

Trump, notified of the pact near midnight Sunday, reacted with incredulity. Wow, just announced that Lyin Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination, Trump tweeted late Sunday. DESPERATION!

However rare, the campaigns public pronouncements could be the only way to legally give direction to their allied Super PACs, with which the campaigns cannot officially collaborate, Rottinghaus said.

There were immediate signs that some pro-Cruz super-PACs would follow his lead. One, Trusted Leadership PAC, announced plans Monday to add a pro-Cruz spot in Indiana and shelve advertising plans in Oregon and New Mexico.

Kellyanne Conway, the groups director of research and media outreach, said Trusted Leadership still would run an attack ad against Kasich in Indiana as we attempt to win every possible vote for Sen. Cruz.

Her group reported a $640,893 media buy against Kasich in Indiana on Friday, two days before the deal was struck, according to federal campaign finance reports.

Anti-Trump forces also welcomed the deal, particularly in Indiana, where they can coalesce behind a single candidate when the state votes May 3.

Weve seen from victories in places like Ohio and Wisconsin that when #NeverTrump forces unite behind the one alternative thats better suited to that state, that we can beat Trump decisively, said Rory Cooper, a senior adviser to #NeverTrump, a leading anti-Trump super-PAC.

Indiana looms large for Cruz. A win there would put pressure on Trump to dominate the rest of the primaries, including delegate-rich California on June 7, or risk an open convention where anti-Trump activists are likely to have the upper hand. But Cruz allies also face the prospect of a voter backlash from the deal  or at least fueling the narrative pushed by Trump that party forces are colluding to deny him the nomination.
Mayor Ivy Taylor, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and other officials called on local residents and businesses Monday to do their part in fighting off the potential spread of the Zika virus and other mosquito-borne diseases in San Antonio.

A vector-control team is out in force, Taylor said, addressing pools of standing water to prevent mosquitoes from hatching. Though there have been four confirmed cases of the virus in San Antonio, in all instances the infections were contracted abroad.

Earlier this month, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that theres enough evidence to definitively link the virus to microcephaly, a birth defect that include unusually small heads, brain damage and other neurological problems in infants born to infected mothers.

Outside of pregnant women, the virus is less concerning. Its rarely fatal, and most people who are infected wont show any symptoms, which could include low-grade fever, headache, rash, aching muscles, joint pain or red eyes.

At this time, there is no local transmission of Zika in our city, Taylor said at a joint news conference Monday. That means that mosquitoes in our area are not infected with Zika, but were still working diligently to prepare in the event that one day that happens. As with the West Nile virus and other mosquito-borne diseases, prevention is the key.

Bexar County has embarked on a public-awareness campaign, Wolff said. The county has spent $85,000 printing information sent inside utility bills and by other means, he said. Wolff asked residents across the county to address any standing water on their property.

We want residents to make sure that at least once a week, they dump any standing water near their homes, scrub the sides of containers such as bird baths, flower-pot bases, and dogs water bowls. Treat free-standing water that cannot be dumped with larvicide tablets that you can buy at almost any home supply store, he said. Make sure your family is wearing protective clothing and treats bare skin with insect repellent when theyre outside.

Taylor, Wolff and others also encouraged anyone who could do so to donate blood to ensure a strong local blood supply.

According to Elizabeth Waltman, the chief operating officer for the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center, blood collectors across the nation have been very concerned about the Zika virus and the risk it poses to both the safety and availability of the blood supply.

The blood bank has taken precautions to ensure that infected blood doesnt enter the supply, including asking potential donors to delay blood donations until at least 28 days after they return from areas where mosquito-borne transmissions are occurring. Those areas include South Asia, Mexico, the Caribbean and the rest of Central and South America.

Because Zika can be transmitted sexually, it is, for all intents and purposes, a sexually transmitted disease, Waltman said. Therefore, Zika is more than a mosquito-borne disease. This is a year-round issue.

Blood banks currently have no test for the virus, Waltman said, but that could change by July 1, when equipment to do so should become available.

Dr. Vincent Nathan, director of the citys health department, said Metro Health has been watching both humans and mosquitoes since the beginning of the year to detect the presence of the virus.

What we know today is that theres no vaccine to prevent Zika. You as individuals can prevent being exposed to Zika by not being bitten by a mosquito  I know sometimes, thats difficult.

Nathan also warned against sexual transmission and advised men who have traveled to Zika-affected areas to abstain from sex for at least eight weeks and for men with confirmed infections to abstain for six months.

You can prevent sexual transmission by using condoms or by not having sex, he said. Abstinence, in this case, is a good thing.

jbaugh@express-news.net

Twitter: @jbaugh
Chef and restaurateur Johnny Hernandez will cook a special dinner at the White House for Cinco de Mayo, the Express-News has learned.

The details are still being worked out, and Hernandez is expected to finalize his menu later today.

Its a one of the highest accomplishments of my career, he said. Im very excited to share the authenticity of Mexican cuisine with the White House and to bring the culture of San Antonio to a whole new place.

Hernandez is the first San Antonio chef to serve as a guest chef at the White House. He joins a roster of guest chefs that includes Rick Bayless of Chicago, who cooked for a 2010 state dinner with the then-president of Mexico; and Maricel Presilla, a Cuban-born chef based in New Jersey and authority on Latin American cuisines, who cooked for President Obamas Fiesta Latina in 2009.

Other celebrity chefs who have cooked at the White House include Top Chef Masters winner Marcus Samuelsson, Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, Emeril Lagasse, Guy Fieri of the Food Network, and Masaharu Morimoto, famed for his run as an Iron Chef.

Hernandez wont be the first San Antonio chef to cook for Obama. Chef and restaurateur Jason Dady catered an Austin fundraiser 2014 that the president attended. And in 2010, Diana Barrios Trevino cooked puffy tacos for the Congressional Picnic on the South Lawn of the White House.

In addition, Don Strange Catering catered the Congressional Barbecue in 1990 and the Diplomatic Corps dinner at the White House that same year. The company also catered a dinner for President Obama two years ago at a private home in the Dominion.

etijerina@express-news.net

@etij
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Between South Presa Street and the San Antonio River, the San Antonio Water System has cut a deep trench in the ground to replace an artery in its sewer system in order to prevent raw sewage spills.

In 2012, SAWS began working to fix the 40-inch-diameter sewer main that funnels all the sewage from east, central and south San Antonio to SAWS Dos Rios wastewater plant on the far South Side. SAWS is nearly finished repairing or replacing 5.7 miles of the line.

From 2013 to 2023, SAWS is set to spend about $1.1 billion on sewer maintenance and repairs, $492.1 million more than it would have spent otherwise, according to SAWS. The goal is to stop sewage spills that can carry bacteria like E. coli and other fecal coliforms, along with other contaminants, into waterways.

In 2013, SAWS, the state of Texas and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed an agreement requiring SAWS to take action on its sewers. The agreement was part of a wave of stricter enforcement of the Clean Water Act by the EPA nationwide.

So far, SAWS has met all of its deadlines in the decree, EPA spokeswoman Jennah Durant said Monday.

Sewage spills have cost SAWS in fines, though. Under the consent decree, the utility has to pay $350 per day for spills that do not reach creeks or rivers and $500 per day for those that do.

Since 2014, sewage spills have cost SAWS $167,500 in fines to state and federal regulators, spokeswoman Anne Hayden said.

Sewer repairs were a key part of the water and sewer rate increases that took effect in January. Though much of the publicity around a November City Council vote to raise rates centered on the Vista Ridge pipeline project, much more of the increase will go to sewer repairs, at least in the first few years.

This year, of the $3.90 in bill increases for the average SAWS customer, $1.02 is going to sewer repairs and 12 cents to Vista Ridge, according to SAWS. In 2017, the allocations change to $1.10 and 21 cents, respectively.

To draw attention to the sewer work, SAWS President and CEO Robert Puente and Mayor Ivy Taylor toured the repair site Monday where workers were excavating a trench roughly 25 feet deep. Sections of fiberglass pipe lay nearby.

A lot of people think of SAWS as just a water supply company, Puente said. Just as important is our sewer system.

SAWS sewer territory covers more than 421 square miles and 1.3 million people, according to details in the consent decree. It includes 5,160 miles of pipe in which mainly gravity moves sewage from north to south to reach the utilitys wastewater plants: Dos Rios, Medio Creek and Leon Creek.

Keeping up with the repairs to an aging sewer system is a continual process, even without EPAs involvement. The old concrete line off South Presa dates to the 1950s or 1960s, said Genoveva Gomez, SAWS vice president of engineering. SAWS was ready to fix it even without the consent order, she said.

It was pretty old; it was already time, she said.

Aging pipes can cause immediate spills when they collapse, and pipes without enough capacity to hold the sewage can sometimes overflow.

Oil and grease dumped down sewers can cause clogs, hence SAWS advertising campaign encouraging customers not to feed the grease monster.

Some sanitary wipes marketed as flushable do not break down in sewers and are increasingly clogging SAWS system. The utilitys staff sometimes jokingly refer to the huge bundles of wipes they pull out of sewers as La Wipeacabra.

bgibbons@express-news.net

Twitter: @bgibbs
Last Tuesday, the Zoning Commission addressed two contentious cases pitting neighborhood residents against the threat of incompatible development.

In one case, involving a dispute over a hair salon in Mahncke Park, commissioners sided with residents. In the other case, even with Councilman Ron Nirenberg leading the charge for homeowners, commissioners ignored the residents concerns and went with the developers.

At least on the surface, those two decisions seem to offer mixed messages about preserving neighborhood integrity.

Granted, the cases arent exactly parallel. Nirenbergs case involves a vacant 36-acre tract on the Northwest Side  near the intersection of Babcock and Prue roads  which the federal government confiscated from an alleged financier for the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel. The U.S. Department of the Treasury auctioned off the property early this year and it was purchased by a California company doing business in San Antonio as Babcock Riverwalk LLC.

Even before his 2013 election to City Council, Nirenberg heard neighborhood concerns about the property, and the issue only gained traction over the past three years.

At every HOA (homeowner association) meeting I attended either in Tanglewood or Jade Oaks or any of the other adjacent communities, this property would come up, because of the activities that were taking place there: dumping, vandalism, target shooting, vagrancy, dirt-bike racing, Nirenberg said. Things that are generally a nuisance to neighborhoods.

Nirenberg said the property was always on our radar of things to be dealt with, and when the feds seized it late last year, he saw it as an opportunity to ensure that any development on the land was consistent with the low-density nature of the neighborhoods that surround it. As a result, he requested a zoning change reducing the number of housing units allowed on the tract from 33 to 11 per acre.

City staff supported Nirenbergs thoroughly reasonable downzoning request, but the Zoning Commission rejected it. In the Mahncke Park case, however, objections from neighbors seemed to carry more weight with commissioners.

Why were the concerns of Mahncke Park residents more compelling than those of the people living near Babcock and Prue?

Its slightly incongruent, Nirenberg said about the commissions handling of the two cases.

If youre looking for a consistent thought pattern, you could surmise that the commission is reluctant to tamper with the status quo in hotly contested cases, because in both of these cases the commission went against the side that requested a zoning change.

Of course, that didnt stop the commission in 2014 from recommending approval of a requested zoning change from the owners of the French & Michigan art gallery, despite adamant opposition from Beacon Hill neighbors.

You could also argue that Andrew Guerras hair-salon pitch was weakened by the fact that he opened his Ritz Hair Studio last November, before he obtained the proper zoning. But that same situation presented itself with French & Michigan, and the commission let it slide in that case.

Truthfully, the biggest difference between the two cases heard last Tuesday was that Babcock Riverwalk had the muscle of city lobbyist Kenneth Brown representing them, and the backing of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and the Greater San Antonio Building Association. Guerra, by contrast, was on his own.

While Guerras emotional presentation before the commission could never match Browns professional smoothness, the hairstylist probably had a better argument.

Guerra spent nearly $350,000 to purchase and upgrade a Perry Court bungalow that had been vacant for 3 years and idling on the market for 451 days. Those upgrades resulted in a building that conforms reasonably well with the neighborhood, especially if you consider that theres a Bill Miller Bar-B-Q and a FedEx office at the end of the block.

Also, his zoning request was modest, simply calling for a special-use exemption that would allow for his low-key, referral-only salon.

Nirenberg takes his fight to the council dais on Thursday, and Guerra is tentatively set for next month. In both cases, politics needs to step aside and leave room for consideration of whats best for the community.

ggarcia@express-news.net
Haiti: Beyond Commemorations and Boundaries

May 12-14, 2016 at The University of Chicago Franke Institute for the Humanities

An international group of scholars and doctoral candidates meet for the first time in a face-to-face gathering to assess the landscape of Haitian studies with an emphasis on the unique issues faced by graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who identify their field of interests in French Caribbean, Francophone, or French/Francophone literatures. The full conference program can be found here:

Program: https://haitibeyond.wordpress.com/program/

About the conference:

The conference explores the field of Haitian Studies through multiple approaches that go beyond geographical and linguistic boundaries as well as the chronological limitations of a century. The aim is to transcend the curiosity towards the Haitian Revolution, and the extended series of sociopolitical crises made more acute in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. Vast fields of potential inquiry in Haitian Studies (notably literature, history, anthropology, culture, and language) are too often under-examined, whereas the most popular of these fields seem bound by deeply entrenched traditional academic discourses. This event is an attempt to generate a pertinent, innovative, and theoretically informed approach to understanding Haiti. It proposes a brainstorming on current work in a number of disciplines, thereby attempting to move scholarly work and theoretical reflection on Haiti beyond commemorations, as the conferences title so aptly puts it. The contributors represent a diverse group of scholars (both established and young researchers) in terms of discipline, methodological and theoretical perspectives. The conference will discuss the issues introduced above, with a special emphasis on all sorts of new ground-breaking projects related to the context of a New World intellectual history of Haiti and the Black American Diaspora since the French Revolution.

Papers cover (but not limited) the uncharted connection between late nineteenth-century Haitian thinkers (such as Antenor Firmin, Louis-Joseph Janvier) and Booker T. Washington, on the one hand, and W.E.B. Dubois and Jean Price-Mars (the Father of Negritude according to Senghor), on the other. A comparative analysis of the race issues and political visions of Black writers and historians in the context of a New World intellectual history of Haiti and the Black American Diaspora at the end of the nineteen century. Some following questions are: Is there an opportunity to understand the intellectual history of Haiti and the Black Atlantic? How and why does the French/Francophone tradition examine Haitian culture differently? How can we possibly talk about postcolonialities in the case of Haiti which has been independent since 1804? How does history of literature or philosophy of history engage with issues of slavery, colonialism, and the colonial legacy of racial conflict within Haiti? How to re-think Haitian music, culture, art, and tradition beyond colonialism and voodoo? What about Nietzsche and Haiti beyond Hegel and Haiti?

Conference organizers:

Bastien Craipain

Michele Kenfack

Mollie McFee

Linsey Sainte-Claire

(graduate committee organizers)

Daniel Desormeaux

Professor

Dept. of Romance Languages & Literatures

Generously sponsored by: The University of Chicago Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, Franke Institute for the Humanities, The Humanities Visiting Committee at the University of Chicago, CIS Norman Wait Harris Fund, Faculty Grants-Awarded-CSRPC 20th Anniversary, France Chicago Center, and CLAS.

For more information:

Conference Website:https://haitibeyond.wordpress.com/
by David A Marcillo | Tue, Apr 26th 3:46pm EDT

Miami Marlins third baseman Martin Prado was reinstated from the paternity list on Tuesday. (Joe Frisaro on Twitter)
This degree combines business modules, developed by the prestigious Bristol Business School, with equine industry and functional equine science modules. Students are able to widen their skill base, develop key contacts and gain valuable work experience with an in-built work placement module, with an additional opportunity to take a Sandwich year and work within the business industry between years 2 and 3. Graduates therefore enter the job market with an applied business degree and an in-depth understanding of the equine industry.



The Equine Business Management degree is made up of core (or essential) and optional modules, enabling students to tailor the degree to their personal strengths and areas of interest. Studying for a degree at Hartpury will give you unrivalled access to the equine industry. As the largest equine college in the world, we have long-standing relationships with national governing bodies (eg British Dressage) and partnerships with key equine companies (eg Natural Animal Feeds (NAF), Baileys Horse Feeds). The College also hosts three national equine events each year, including the Hartpury International Horse Trials, which students are encouraged to be involved in. Students can take advantage of international standard equine facilities with their own horse or in recreational riding sessions.



The programme can be completed full time in three years, or four years with a sandwich year. Part time routes are also available and should be planned with your programme manager
EU animal disease programmes do a good job of containing disease, but it is hard to tell whether they are cost-effective, concludes a new report from the European Court of Auditors.

While there have been notable successes, such as decreases in the number of cases of BSE, or commonly known as mad cow disease, in cattle, the auditors warn that some controls are not sufficient and some costs are unreasonably high.

Member States health programmes to eradicate, control, and monitor certain animal diseases involved EU funding to the value of 1.3 billion between 2009 and 2014 to cover activities such as animal vaccination, testing, and providing compensation for slaughtered animals.

The auditors visited seven Member States  Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, Romania and the United Kingdom  which represent 72 % of the total expenditure in this connection.

They found that the examined programmes had contributed adequately to the containment of animal diseases.

The approach taken by the European Commission was generally sound, and supported by good technical advice, risk analysis, and a mechanism for prioritising resources.

There have been some notable successes, for example, decreases in the number of cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle, salmonella in poultry, and rabies in wildlife.

Member States programmes had generally been designed and implemented well, with adequate systems to identify animal disease outbreaks and facilitate their eradication.

However, the cost-effectiveness of programmes is difficult to determine, due to the lack of available models for analysis.

There were examples of programmes which had been insufficiently monitored by the Member States, and of unreasonably high costs.

Areas with scope for improvement included the exchange of epidemiological information and access to historic results, although this was in the process of being improved.

The auditors also found that some programmes should better specify the actions and controls needed.

Continuous vigilance 'is essential'

"Animal diseases can spread rapidly across borders and some animal borne diseases are transmissible to humans", said Bettina Jakobsen, the Member of the Court of Auditors responsible for the report.

"So continuous vigilance and effective action at EU level is essential."

While the assessment of specific veterinary programmes was positive, say the auditors, the eradication of bovine brucellosis and tuberculosis, and ovine and caprine brucellosis, posed continuing challenges in some Member States.

The auditors recommend that the Commission should:

 facilitate the exchange of epidemiological information between Member States;

 examine whether existing indicators should be updated to provide better information on veterinary control activities and the cost-effectiveness of programmes;

 systematically include wildlife as an aspect of future veterinary programmes, when relevant; and

 support Member States in acquiring vaccines, when this is epidemiologically justified.
The EU Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan and more than 60 agri-food executives are visiting China and Japan in the coming days representing key sectors in the EU trade with the two countries.

As well as supporting a number of promotion events in Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo to help facilitate agri-food trade, the Commissioner will meet with the respective Ministers and national authorities in order to address common interests relating to agriculture and ongoing bilateral issues.

With China, discussions are likely to cover Geographical Indications, research and innovation, rural development and organic farming, and, with Japan, the state of play of the FTA negotiations.

The visit to Japan will end with the G7 meeting of Agriculture Ministers in Niigata.

The trip comes following the entry into force of new EU promotion rules for EU agricultural products, which provide an increased budget for promotion and a simpler application system.

It also follows on from his visit to Columbia and Mexico earlier in the year, with a further journey to Viet Nam and Indonesia planned in the second half of the year.

"China and Japan are particularly important markets for the EU agri-food sector which have shown considerable growth in recent years.

"I hope that these promotion events will highlight the quality, traditions, and added value of our products, as well as our food safety and traceability guarantees, and stimulate further interest from Chinese and Japanese consumers in European food and drink", said the Commissioner ahead of his journey.

"I look forward to building on our existing trade flows and showing that Europe is open to business, in particular for agri-food products.

"This will also be an occasion to take stock of the excellent cooperation in agriculture with China and Japan.

"My hope is that I can also make some progress on a number of hindrances to current trade."

Subsequent to Commissioner Hogan's visit to Mexico, the Mexican authorities have re-opened their market for imports of pigmeat products from a number of Member States.

The Commissioner's programme foresees meetings with China's and Japan's Ministers in charge of agriculture, sanitary and phytosanitary regulations, as well as trade.

He will also be launching a "European restaurant week" programme in Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo, opening B2B meetings, and visiting a number of retailers/markets, as well as and field trips to local producers.

Background

China was the second largest importer of EU agricultural and processed agricultural products in 2015, receiving 8% of all EU agricultural exports.

The main EU agricultural exports to China include infant food, pork, offal, wines and spirits, and dairy products.

EU imports from China represent 4.5% of EU total agri-food imports (China is ranked 5).

The main products imported are vegetables, preparation of vegetables and fruits, offals.

Japan was the fifth-largest importer of EU agricultural and processed agricultural products in 2015, receiving 4.1% of all EU agricultural exports.

The main EU agricultural exports to Japan include pork, wines and spirits, cheese, chocolate and sugar confectionery and other processed agricultural goods.

The EU imports from Japan mainly soups and sauces, vegetable products (vegetable seeds), as well as food and cereal preparations.
Its time for farmers to ride out the financial climate and look at costs and efficiencies, say leading chartered accountants Duncan & Toplis.

Duncan & Toplis Director Mark Chatterton, the firms agriculture specialist, suggests that although similar conditions have prevailed before, the profit in farming as a whole is currently flat.

Mark said: "The levels of profit we have seen back in 2011 and 2012 are gone.

"Operating costs and general commodity prices are proving to be a challenge for many, but farmers will be used to this."

Duncan & Toplis has analysed harvest data for 2015 and found that net farm incomes (NFI) among its clients have fallen by 11 per acre from 62 to 51 since 2014.

This is the lowest average profit since 2003.

This is a significant reduction from the harvests in 2011 and 2012 when the average NFI exceeded 150 per acre.

"The NFI needs to cover drawings, tax and reinvestment which often exceeds 50 per acre.

"The average farm balance sheet will therefore be seeing a decline this year.

"But although times might seem tough, farmers are taking heed of the warning to tighten their belts and address efficiencies across the board as well as cost control.

Mark says all farm businesses have some form of other income  storage, let property rents and diversification income.

He added: "Weve been here before, and farmers are resilient."
Grainseed are pleased to announce that Lucy Smith-Reeve is joining the team as Seed sales specialist.

Graduating from Reading University in 1999-2001 with a BSc (Hons) in Rural Resource Management, she explains that the course was split between the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Agricultural Economics and included modules from the Department of Land Management also.

After graduating she took up a couple of short-term positions to expand her experience  both seed related.

In early 2002 she started working for Limagrain UK as a Wheat Breeding Technician and then progressed to Wheat Breeder.

For Grainseed Lucy will be dealing with local farmers in East Anglia, mainly in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.

She will specialise in maize and oilseed rape seed sales as well as the range of Horizon products from grass and environmental mixes to clamp covers and additives.

Kevin Jordan, Managing Director of Grainseed says he is delighted that Lucy is joining the company and is confident that she will add significantly to the companys presence on farm.

"Her university and subsequent work with Limagrain will mean that she brings good ideas, relevant expertise and experience plus knowledge of the seed trade with her and we are really pleased she is joining our team."
Farmers attending this years Scotgrass event will get their first look at New Hollands new T5 and T6 Tractors, along with a selection of other machinery from the manufacturer.

New Holland will be showcasing its most recent machinery, including T5.120 and T6.145 tractors from the newly-launched T5 and T6 ranges.

These tractor ranges feature new engines to meet Tier 4B emissions regulations and incorporate a host of new features designed to boost comfort, efficiency and productivity.

The new tractors will be unveiled to visitors in the morning of Wednesday 18th May, with a walk-around presentation by New Holland product specialists.

The companys demonstration plot (no. 22) and its static exhibition stand will feature a range of machinery, including the new FR650 Forager Cruiser, Round Baler, Big Baler, LM telehandler and the W170c wheel loader.

Mark Crosby, New Hollands T5 and T6 tractor product specialist, commented: "We are delighted to be showcasing our latest range of machinery at Scotgrass, particularly our new T5 and T6 tractors.

"We look forward to welcoming visitors to our stand and giving them a chance to see our machinery in action."
A team from The University of Nottingham have been collecting samples from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to investigate the long term behaviour of radioactive isotopes in soils.

Thirty years after the catastrophic nuclear disaster on 26 April 1986, at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the town of Pripyat in Ukraine, experts from the School of Biosciences have been collecting samples to verify the results of laboratory measurements being made back home in the School of Biosciences on the Universitys Sutton Bonington campus.

Readily absorbed radioactivity 'can contaminate agriculture'

George Shaw, Professor of Environmental Science, said: "The radioactive isotope which received most attention after the emergency phase of the Chernobyl accident was caesium-137.

"This has a 30-year half-life and is readily absorbed by plants and animals, so can contaminate our agriculture and food supply.

"It can still be measured in soils across Europe but its impact has diminished significantly over the last 30 years."

This research - Biogeochemical processes and radionuclide behaviour in soil-plant systems' - is part of a broader study being conducted into the long-term environmental impacts of the Chernobyl accident.

The TREE project is examining the transfer, exposure and effects of long-term radioactive contamination from Chernobyl, with the aim of integrating the science needed to underpin assessments of environmental radioactivity effects on humans and wildlife.

The TREE project is led by Brenda Howard MBE, who is based at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, is also an Honorary Professor in the School of Biosciences at Nottingham.

The University of Nottingham team visited the site last year. The main precautions were to avoid contamination of skin and clothes while working in the field and to minimise any inhalation of dust by wearing face masks during sampling.

External exposures are monitored by personal dosimeters worn at all times in the field; these doses are minimised by continuously monitoring the ambient radiation dose at each field site and spending as little time as possible in sites with higher dose rates.

The team also had expert local guidance from Dr Sergey Gaschak of the Chernobyl Centre for Nuclear Safety, Radioactive Waste and Radioecology.

Close to the Chernobyl Power Plant, where much higher levels of radioactivity still persist, numerous other radioactive isotopes can be found, some with extremely long half-lives.

The research at Nottingham is focussing on some of these, including technetium-99 (half-life 210,000 years), iodine-129 (half-life 16 million years) and uranium-238 (half-life 4.5 billion years).

The aim of this research is to develop predictive computer models for these radioisotopes which can be tested using data from analysis of samples taken from the most highly contaminated parts of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

The Exclusion Zone surrounding Chernobyl, which has remained largely unpopulated by people, can be seen as a unique outdoor laboratory in which the long-term behaviour and effects of large-scale radioactive contamination can be studied.

'Long-lived radioactive waste'

Professor Shaw said: "Our current understanding is hampered by a lack of measurements on the long-term behaviour of radioisotopes under natural conditions.

"The results of our studies will help us understand the implications of disposing of long-lived radioactive wastes underground."

Studies conducted by the TREE project will also contribute to the development of policy which regulates radiation exposure and protects both humans and wildlife from radioactive contamination of our environment.

Furthermore, the university are training a cohort of post-doctoral researchers and PhD students who took part in a summer school in the Chernobyl area in September 2015. These will be the UKs environmental radioactivity experts of the future.

The Chernobyl accident was the most catastrophic nuclear accident in history. The university are striving to learn valuable scientific lessons from its far-reaching impact which can be used to protect ourselves and our environment in the future.

Nottinghams major experimental contribution to the TREE project is due to end in 2017 when the results will be published. The TREE project itself is due to run until 2018, when the full results from the consortium will be reported.
Legal ruling set to have implications for farm inheritance rows
Almost 75 per cent of farmers rejected the idea

By Diego Flammini

Assistant Editor, North American Content

Farms.com

The Missouri Department of Agricultures (MDA) idea of adding an additional $1.00 state beef checkoff in Missouri in addition to the national checkoff was rejected by a majority of farmers in the state.

According to the MDA, 8,480 beef producers received ballots; 6,658 of which were returned. 4,903 farmers, or over 74 per cent of beef producers voted against the idea, compared to 1,663 farmers who were in favour of the idea; they represented about 25 per cent of the returned ballots.

The state checkoff was brought forward by the Missouri Beef Industry Council. It said the money would be used for education, promotion and research efforts, but some beef producers arent seeing enough results in the national program to warrant a statewide one.

"We already pay $2 million a year into the federal checkoff, which is not efficient, effective or a good use of our money. Increasing that would have been ridiculous and farmers gave it a resounding 'no,'" Rhonda Perry, a cattle farmer from Armstrong and Missouri Rural Crisis Center program director told The Joplin Globe.

Jim McCann, a farmer from Lawrence County supported the checkoff and told The Joplin Globe that the federal program is operating on 1988 dollars and the money could have been used for promotion and research grant funding.
MacAulay, Vilsack among the attendees

By Diego Flammini

Assistant Editor, North American Content

Farms.com

Technology and dealing with an aging population of farmers were discussed at the recent G7 Niigata Agriculture Ministers meeting in Japan.

The average age of a farmer in Japan is 67 and the government is planning to spend nearly $36 million U.S. this year to develop agricultural robots.

There are no other options for farmers but to rely on technologies developed by companies if they want to raise productivity while they are greying, Makiko Tsugata, senior analyst at Tokyos Mizuho Securities told South China Morning Post.

Earlier in the year, Kubota unveiled its first driverless tractor. Once field data is entered, the tractor uses GPS to perform tasks including tillage, fertilizer and pesticide application. The manufacturer said the tractor could be on the market for farmers by 2018.



Kubota's driverless tractor

Ministers of agriculture from Germany, Italy, France, Britain, Canadas Lawrence MacAulay and Tom Vilsack from the United States attended the meeting; Vilsack said aging farmers could jeopardize the worlds ability to produce food.

Japans Agriculture Minister Hiroshi Moriyama said all G7 nations face an aging farmer population and need to work together to manage the issue.

Canada will continue to help foster collaboration across the G7 in order to build a resilient global food system that will continue to contribute as a major driver of our economy, Minister of Agriculture Lawrence MacAulay said in a release.
Is Wawa coming to Fayetteville? Heres what we know.

Wawa, a Pennsylvania-based convenience store chain that residents have long clamored for, could be coming to the area.
What do I love about the FCPA Blog NYC Conference 2016? Its big and broad just like the FCPA Blog itself. It has the energy of the blogs global readers.

The FCPA Blog is the community meeting place for the global compliance profession.

The conference is going for the Big Picture. Sometimes we need to stop and take account. We need to see where we are.

Why is the compliance profession the way it is, why is it suddenly changing so dramatically, and how we can influence where its going?

This conference, run by the FCPA Blog, is a unique opportunity to dive into these questions and begin conversations that should change how compliance and business interact and what the public thinks of compliance professionals.

Its the only compliance gathering of its kind and not to be missed.

______

Michael Scher is a senior editor of the FCPA Blog. He has over three decades of experience as a senior compliance officer and attorney for international transactions. He can be contacted here.

* * *

The FCPA Blog NYC Conference 2016

Date: October 26, 2016



Time: 8:30-17:00



Location: Convene Conference Center

237 Park Ave

New York, NY 10017

As part of our goal and vision to broaden and challenge our thinking, we will award scholarships to up to eight attendees to cover their registration fees, with a travel and accommodation allowance.

Scholarship awards will be based on need and a proven interest in the topic. Applicants will submit short essays and bios. Likely scholarship recipients include students, journalists, public-sector professionals, and others.

Apply for a scholarship here.
Dolly Parton wants her life story to be made into a musical on Broadway when she dies.

Dolly Parton

The 70-year-old country music legend has plenty of things left to do on her bucket list, including starting her very own beauty line, and even beyond the grave she has ambitions as she wants her story turned into a show sound tracked by her own songs when passes away.

In an interview with Paper magazine, she said: "I've got buckets on both sides. I do someday hope to see my life story on Broadway as a musical. I'd love to have a cosmetic line. As far as a bucket list, I think I do pretty much what I want - just takes a lot of time sometimes."

The '9 to 5' hitmaker is about to embark on her biggest tour in 25 years and plans on telling stories about her life through her songs and how she grew up in her grandfather's church.

Asked what her favourite tour traditions are, she said: "I always talk about (the song) 'Coat of Many Colors' and my mom. Now that the 'Coat of Many Colors' movie did so well, I also wrote a song called 'Mama' that I'll probably sing before I start talking about the home section [of the show]. I'll be talking about my grandpa and how I was brought up, which means a lot to me. I'll be doing my gospel segment from the fact that I grew up in my grandpa's church."

The buxom blonde beauty will visit over 60 cities across North America in support of her brand new double-disc release, 'Pure & Simple With Dolly's Biggest Hits'.

Of the tour, she previously said: "We're so excited to get out there and see the fans again. I'm really looking forward to singing songs the fans have not heard in a while, as well as the hits, while debuting a few new ones off 'Pure & Simple'."
The 35-year-old actor, who was one of the most famous American child stars in the early 90s and is nowadays seeking refuge from media attention in France, has recently announced that he's more or less retired. Now that's a bit early, isn't it?? We'll take a good look at his chart to find out what current inner process may have prompted him to come to this decision: With his sun and Mercury forming a dominant duo in practical, intelligent Virgo, he's got a very critical and analytical personality. Talk about a sharp focus on completing his tasks and fulfilling his duties! Virgos appreciate being needed, and staying busy all the time makes them happy and healthy, so that doesn't look like someone who fancies the idle life.

Macaulay Culkin

But on the other hand, as indicated by Macaulay's dreamy, sensitive Pisces moon (a position he shares with the likes of the late Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Prince!), regarding his emotions he's just the opposite - He loves the quiet and peace, feeling carefree and simply chilling and letting the flow of life take him wherever it wants to without being concerned about stuff!

He's also very intuitive regarding his needs and can pick up on even the most subtle feeling and grain of inspiration. There is no birth time so we cannot know for sure the aspects of the moon, but this is definitely a very different side of him. At present, Jupiter and Saturn play very important roles: While Jupiter strongly triggers his awareness of what's benefitting him most and what allows him the greatest chance of growth, Saturn, which rules age and time, puts the foot on the brakes and notably dampens Macaulay's overall desire for expansion. Under realistic Saturn's influence things become calmer and slower, and what you do with your time is a very important question - as opposed to Jupiter's often too gracious, wasteful attitude. With these two forces battling and striving to align, shifting down a gear and leaning back with a nice cafe au lait may be just the type of progress and personal growth that he needs

Personal profiles/readings available! -> www.mirjamschneider-astrology.com

by Astrologer Mirjam Schneider for www.femalefirst.co.uk


Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie is coming to the big screen later this summer and - as you may expect - there are a whole host of A-list star who are going to make a cameo appearance throughout the film.

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie

This is the first time that Absolutely Fabulous has been given the film treatment and will see Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley reprise the roles of Eddy and Patsy.

There are still quite a few weeks to go until the film hits the big screen and we have some images of Kate Moss Collins, Lulu, and Barry Humphries aka Dame Edna Everage, who are all on board.

There are some other familiar faces to watch out for as Julia Sawalha, Jane Horrocks, and June Whitfield are back as Saffy, Bubble and Mother.

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie sees Edina and Patsy still oozing glitz and glamour, living the high life they are accustomed to; shopping, drinking and clubbing their way around London's trendiest hotspots.

Blamed for a major incident at an uber fashionable launch party, they become entangled in a media storm and are relentlessly pursued by the paparazzi. Fleeing penniless to the glamorous playground of the super-rich, the French Riviera, they hatch a plan to make their escape permanent and live the high life forevermore!

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie is released 1st July.

by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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Chris Evans says that it was a little 'daunting' when he read the Captain America script for the first time and saw what the directors were trying to achieve.

Chris Evans

Evans is set to return to the role of Captain America for the third standalone film for the popular character... and it looks on course to be the biggest Marvel film yet.

And while Evans was daunted when he read the script for the first time, he was confident that Marvel would pull off what they had set out to achieve with this film.

Speaking to Collider, the actor said: "It is obviously daunting when you see how much they are trying to accomplish and you see plots they are trying to navigate. But, if there is anything that I have learnt from Marvel, it is that they can handle it."

Civil War sees Evans reunite with filmmaker Anthony and Joe Russo, who brought The Winter Solider to the big screen two years ago. The duo is set to take up the director's chair on Avengers: Infinity War later this year.

The movie also sees Evans star alongside Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie, and Sebastian Stan in a Captain America film once more. Robert Downey Jr is the big new addition as he reprises the role of Tony Stark for the first time since Avengers: Age of Ultron last year.

But what about Evans' future at Marvel? We know that he is coming to the end of his contract and he reveals that he is willing to do whatever Marvel needs him to do for this character.

He continued: "There's no re-upping yet. I was just saying in my last interview, it is so funny thinking about how fast time has moved; we started this in 2010 and six years have gone in the blink of an eye. In the beginning, it was so terrifying and now I am scared to walk away and I am scared to not have one of these coming. It has been wonderful especially because the movies have been so good. When you make good movies, who wants to stop doing that?

"We will see. I know in the comic books, the shield gets passed off. What you do know when being in this process, meeting the fans, experiencing these junkets, and meeting people who love the character, the character is bigger than you and whatever the character needs and whatever Marvel needs for that, I am willing to do. If that is me passing it off, I will pass it off. If they want to make more, I am ready."

Captain America: Civil War is already winning over the critics and looks set to be another huge hit for Marvel... will it be the first Captain America movie to gross over $1 billion? I guess we are going to have to wait and see.

Captain America: Civil War is released 29th April.

by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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Captain America is set to blast back onto the big screen this week as Chris Evans reprises the title role for the third solo film for this popular character.

Captain America: Civil War

Captain America: Civil War is one of the most anticipated films of the year and will explore the much-loved Civil War storyline from the comics; which sees Captain America and Iron Man go head to head.

Civil War is the 2016 film that I am looking forward to the most and it looks like it is not going to disappoint. We take a look back at the Marvel movies so far and pick out some of Captain America's best moments.

- Captain America Transformation - Captain America: The First Avenger

There's no denying that the effects that were used to make Chris Evans look like a small and rather puny young man in The First Avenger were pretty impressive... but the action really started when he transformed into Captain America.

Chosen by Abraham Erskine, the scientist who has created the Super Soldier Serum. Steve Rogers was to be the first in an army designed to fight and defeat the Nazi enemy during the Second World War. Of course, things don't quite go to plan... they get one solider and not an army.

- Captain America Wakes Up In Modern Day - Captain America: The First Avenger

After saving the world from the Red Skull, Rogers sacrifices his own life and crashes the plane he is flying into the Artic - to prevent the detonation of the weapons.

Our hero wakes up in a 1940s style hospital... only to discover that things are not what they seemed. Rogers escapes and finds himself in modern-day New York City.

- 'Put on the Suit' - Avengers Assemble

It's fair to say that Steve Rogers and Tony Stark don't see eye to eye when they first meet at the beginning of Avengers Assemble. Rogers is the self-less hero who puts everyone and everything before himself, while Tony Stark is more self-centered and revels in the attention that Iron Man has brought.

The Avengers could be any less of a team in this scene as they learn that S.H.I.E.L.D. were going to us the Tesseract to build weapons. Captain America and Iron Man are heading for a showdown the helicarrier is attacked by Hawkeye and Loki's other possessed agents.

The two may have been at loggerheads in this scene, but this emergency sees them pull together and start to become a team.

- Avengers Stand Together in New York - Avengers Assemble

Speaking of a team... this remains one of my favourite moments in all of the Marvel movies so far.

The Avengers have been anything but united so far but when the chips are down and New York is under threat, they come together to be the fighting force that Nick Fury knew they could be. It is a defining moment in the Marvel movies.

- Elevator Fight - Captain America: The Winter Solider

Even though we had seen Captain America in Avengers Assemble, it was Captain America: The Winter Solider that really explored how Rogers was coping with the modern world.

He is soon thrown back into action when Nick Fury is killed and made out to be a traitor. Rogers is next on the hit list and is attacked in an elevator at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters.

For me, this is one of the best fight scenes in the movie. I love how much was achieved in such a small space. From this moment, Rogers becomes a target and an enemy of the organisation he is supposed to work for.

- Captain America and Black Widow Become A Team

Captain America and Black Widow may be fighting together at the beginning of Winter Solider - needless to say, he trusts her as far as he can throw her.

This is the moment they really become a team after he has saved her life in a S.H.I.E.L.D. attack. There is now an understanding between the pair and this is one of Marvel's most interesting relationships.

This is also an interesting scene because we learn a little more about Black Widow. She is a character that we are learning bits and pieces about as we go through the different Marvel films - this is one of those moments and you see that it is important to her that Steve trusts her.

- Steve Rogers Comes Face to Face with Bucky

Who is the Winter Solider is a question that we ask ourselves through a big chunk of the film.

During a highway battle involving Captain America, Black Widow & Falcon against the Winter Solider and his goons his face is revealed... and it is Steve's childhood friend Bucky. It seems that he did not die after a fall in The First Avenger and has been experimented on to become the first of HYDRA.

Steve comes to the realisation that his best friend his now his enemy.

- 'Language' - Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron kicked off with a great battle scene as the team set off to collect Loki's sceptre. They may have been fighting the enemy, but there is still time for the Cap to remind the others to watch their language.

Of course, this is a joke that runs throughout the film.

- Captain America v Ultron - Avengers: Age of Ultron

There are some great battle scenes in Avengers: Age of Ultron and one of the best is when Captain America faces off with Ultron in Seoul.

Ultron is trying to load himself into a body and Captain America, Black Widow, and Hawkeye set off in pursuit to stop him. Unfortunately, for Rogers, he does get thrown around quite a lot by the enemy.

Captain America: Civil War is released 29th April.

by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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Trevor Horn will join Yes on stage at the Royal Albert Hall for the first time in 36 years.

Trevor Horn and Yes

On May 10, the band - which currently consists of Steve Howe, Alan White, Geoff Downes, Billy Sherwood and Jon Davison - will bring their extensive tour to London where they will be joined by Horn, who performed lead vocals on the prog rock band's 1980's album 'Drama', which they will perform in its entirety.

Guitarist Steve said: "Most of the songs haven't been performed in some 30 years."

It will be the first time the 'Heart of the Sunrise' hitmakers would have performed without bassist Chris Squire, who tragically passed away in June 2015 from a rare form of Leukaemia.

Drummer Alan commented: "Reliving those years will be very emotional. I know Chris would have loved to be here with us for this."

While the tour sees them relive their career spanning more than four decades, Alan says they haven't ruled out the possibility of making a new record in the future.

Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz, he said: "I wouldn't like to say no to making another album. At the moment we are focusing on the tours we've got coming up. But we've talked about it."

Elsewhere, the 66-year-old rocker - who performed drums on the late John Lennon's super-hit 'Imagine' - said his fondest memory of his career was when he put the phone down on The Beatles legend because he didn't believe it was him.

He recalled: "The best memory was when John Lennon phoned me up to ask me to be on his song Imagine. I put the phone down on him because I thought it was a friend of mine playing a trick on me. It was him and he called me back five minutes later asking me to do a gig with him."

And asked if he's planning on retiring any time soon, he added: "They [Yes] won't let me retire."

Yes UK tour dates:

April:

Wednesday 27, Glasgow, Royal Concert Hall

Friday 29, Newcastle, City Hall

Sat 30, Manchester, Apollo

May:

Monday 2, Liverpool, Philharmonic

Tuesday 3, Sheffield, City Hall

Wednesday 4, Bristol, Colston Hall

Friday 6, Birmingham, Symphony Hall

Saturday 7, Brighton, Brighton Centre

Monday 9, Oxford, New Theatre

Tuesday 10, London, Royal Albert Hall
A joke in the play 'Nell Gwynn' was changed to avoid offending Prince Charles.

Prince Charles

The play - which stars Gemma Arterton and is based on the mistress of Charles II - references a "boring" Duke of Cambridge but the quip was amended during a performance attended by Prince Charles as his son Prince William is also known as the Duke of Cambridge.

Producer Nica Burns told the Daily Telegraph: "It wasn't a political act, it was politeness. There was a joke about a Duke - it didn't matter which Duke it was - where the King kind of rolled his eyes that a Duke was very boring.

"The name happened to be the Duke of Cambridge.

"Because we had the father of the Duke of Cambridge in the audience, we didn't want to make it sound to the audience like it was deliberate, because it wasn't.

"We thought it was best to change it so people didn't read it the wrong way."

The name was changed to the Duke of Bedford for the performance even though Prince William was not the Duke of Cambridge in question.

The play most likely refers to the Second Duke of Cambridge, Edgar, who lived during the time of Charles II.
Prince Harry attended an Anzac Day service in London on Monday (25.04.16).

Prince Harry

The 31-year-old royal looked visibly moved as he paid tribute to fallen Australian and New Zealand soldiers at London's Wellington Arch Cenotaph.

Anzac Day commemorates the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landing at Gallipoli at dawn on April 25, 1915 in which thousands of soldiers died.

A service has taken place in the UK every year since 1916, when King George V attended a memorial at Westminster Abbey.

Australian High Commissioner to the UK, Alexander Downer, also attended the service, and said: "When we reflect on Anzac Day we imagine the Gallipoli landings, what it must have been like, at dawn on the water, in sight of that rugged shoreline - and a collectively held breath, a leaden silence about to be broken.

"We consider the enthusiasm, the courage, and the heroism of the Anzac troops - ordinary men fighting for God, King and empire, for their mates, for adventure, for a world without war."

Prince Harry served in the British Army for 10 years and has devoted himself to working with injured veterans through the Invictus Games.
Dairy prices are plummeting across the UK so PETA has proposed the dairy industry swap cow's milk for sustainable, cruelty free soya milk that is profitable.

Vegan on Female First

PETA has sent a single soya bean to the heads of the top UK Dairy producers- First Milk, M uller, Arla and Meadow Foods - with a letter suggesting change.

"We'd like to suggest that the future of milk is green , and we urge you to help dairy farmers transition into farming soya beans, oats or other plant crops that can be turned into kinder, nutritious, delicious, pus-free non-dairy milks", writes PETA . "We're all grown-ups - it's time to wean."

PETA reminds us that dairy foods are the most avoided foods in the UK and plant based milk sales are on a high.

"On British dairy farms, baby cows are stolen from their loving mothers, and all are subjected to a life of misery - just to produce an unhealthy food that British farmers can't even turn a profit on", says PETA Special Projects Manager Dawn Carr. " PETA hopes this single soya bean will blossom into a lucrative new cruelty-free future for UK farmers."

In the letter, PETA - whose motto reads, in part, that "animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way" - notes that cows often suffer from mastitis as their udders are unnaturally large.

When they are no longer able to produce milk- they are sent to slaughter for human consumption.

Heart disease, diabetes and cancer, among other illnesses are also more common in people who drink cow's milk.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.

by Lucy Moore for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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The Accord, an independent, legally binding agreement between brands and trade unions designed to work towards a safe and healthy Bangladeshi RMG industry, has said that all factories listed with it have been inspected.In a statement on the third anniversary of the Rana Plaza tragedy, the Accord said more than 50 per cent of all safety hazards identified in its initial inspections have been corrected, and seven factories have remediated all items from the initial inspections. To date, 23 factories that have been unwilling to correct safety hazards have become ineligible to do business with Accord signatory companies.

The Accord, an independent, legally binding agreement between brands and trade unions designed to work towards a safe and healthy Bangladeshi RMG industry, has said that all factories listed with it have been inspected. In a statement on the third anniversary of the Rana Plaza tragedy, the Accord said more than 50 per cent of all safety#

Labour-management safety committees are being trained and supported to have factory level mechanisms in place to monitor safety on a day-to-day basis.The Accord said it will continue its earnest and tireless efforts in these areas so that all inspected factories are remediated and that workers and managers work together to ensure the ongoing safety of their factories. This work is unfinished. The memory of the Rana Plaza tragedy and victims serve as constant reminder and motivation to all of us that we must succeed in these efforts. It said.The Accord Steering Committee is now in Dhaka for its quarterly meeting and to hold discussions and consultations with in-country constituents including the Bangladesh Ministry of Labour, BGMEA, trade unions, the ILO, the Accord Advisory Board, and bi-lateral country missions supporting compliance and sustainability in the Bangladesh RMG sector.Meanwhile, Swedish retail clothing giant H&M which sources many of its products from Bangladesh and is a member of Accord, said all factories producing for it should be safe and all workers should feel safe at their everyday workplace.In general, there is a need of improving fire and safety in Bangladesh  a country where poor electrical installations and bad maintenance is common, H&M said in a statement. As a consequence, the textile industry in Bangladesh is today experiencing a substantial transformation when it comes to fire safety and is now converting into Western safety standards.This is a huge and complex work, but extremely important. It requires specialist knowledge, availability of international safety equipment and the necessary technical know-how. It is of utmost importance that all measures taken are according to the quality standards agreed in the industry, it said.Our signing of the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh was a complement to the work we started several years ago, and a great way forward as we want to involve a wide range of actors pushing for change in the entire textile industry in Bangladesh, not only the factories producing for H&M, it continued.H&M said it is working jointly to improve the situation of around 1,600 factories in Bangladesh of which around 250 produce for the company.To speed up the remediation, H&M is working closely with IndustriALL to use their combined leverage where needed. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India
Pakistan has taken full advantage of the EU including it in the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) to wrest 37 textile markets from India.Under GSP, preferences are given to certain countries through tax exemption in developed markets to boost trade from that country

Pakistan has taken full advantage of the EU including it in the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) to wrest 37 textile markets from India. Under GSP, preferences are given to certain countries through tax exemption in developed markets to boost trade from that country. In 2014, the European Union included Pakistan to the list of GSP#

In 2014, the European Union included Pakistan to the list of GSP which allowed duty-free access to EU markets for textile exports. Consequently, exporters from Pakistan are now able to ship fabrics, made-ups and garments with no tariffs. In comparison, Indian exporters must pay 9.6 per cent export duty for madeups and garments, and 6.58 per cent duty on fabric items.According to the Textiles Ministry's figures, India's textiles exports remained flat at around $40 billion in 2015-16 and far from its target of $47.5 billion set at the beginning of the year.It is a matter of deep concern that India has already lost market share to Pakistan in 19 textile and 18 clothing products (37 products in all) during calendar year 2014 due to the preferential access extended by the European Union to that country under the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) plus scheme. If urgent action is not initiated to address the issue then India would lose its market share in many more items, said R K Dalmia, chairman of industry body Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council (Texprocil).Meanwhile, even though the textile sector was at the forefront of creating employment in the country, the cotton textiles business is fast losing its market share worldwide. Drawing attention to a report of the Labour Bureau published recently, Dalmia stated that the textile industry was at the forefront of creating maximum employment in 2015 as compared to other sectors like auto and information technology.More employment can be generated provided the government gives greater priority to the needs of the textile sector and recognizes its huge potential by giving timely impetus in terms of policy support. Some of the issues relating to exports such as cost of funds and adverse impact of preferential access given to competing countries need to be addressed on a war footing, Dalmia told Business Standard.Dalmia said a Free Trade Agreement with the EU could arrest India's falling textiles exports to Europe. Dalmia said the government needs conclude the FTA with the EU at the earliest. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India
The Malian Company for Textile Development (CMDT) has received two loans of 32,920 billion CFA Francs (about $54.8 million dollars) from the West African Development Bank (BOAD), according to a Xinhua report Two agreements in this regard were signed Thursday in Lome by BOAD President Christian Adovelande and CMDT director Modibo Kone.

The Malian Company for Textile Development (CMDT) has received two loans of 32,920 billion CFA Francs (about $54.8 million dollars) from the West African Development Bank (BOAD), according to a Xinhua report. Two agreements in this regard were signed Thursday in Lome by BOAD President Christian Adovelande and CMDT director Modibo Kone.#

The first agreement of 15 billion CFA Francs ($25 million approx.) will be used for partial funding of a project to extend and modernize CMDT.The second loan of 17,920 billion CFA Francs ($30million) will be used for funding cotton farming during the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 seasons.BOAD president said the loans are justified given the place occupied by cotton in Mali's economy. Mali is the second largest cotton producer in Sub-Saharan Africa after Burkina Faso."The second export product after gold, cotton directly or indirectly supports the livelihoods of 3.3 million Malians which is 21 per cent of the country's population," he continued.CMDT director said the first loan will enable his firm to acquire new equipments and repair three old ones."The second loan will enable CMDT to comfortably fund the farming season, from acquisition of farm inputs and fertilizers, to purchase and transport of the cotton as well as sale of the cotton fibre and other by-products," he added. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India
Recently, there were many reports doing the rounds that Sussanne Khan was overheard discussing about her ex-husband Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut's case with her family at the Istanbul airport.

Now, after reading this report in a leading daily, Sussanne Khan took to Twitter and wrote, ''Hello @dna you wanna know what I am thinking..So sorry you will never know. So continue guessing.''



Click On VIEW PHOTOS To See Some Really Beautiful Moments Of Hrithik & Sussanne



The report in DNA stated, ''The Hrithik Roshan-Kangana Ranaut legal battle is getting uglier by the day and it seems to have got everyone talking. However, people close to him have maintained their silence. While it was suggested to him that he should make the females in the family speak out in his support, the actor refused to drag his mother, sister or ex-wife Sussanne Khan into this.''



Wow Pictures: Katrina Kaif Attends Baar Baar Dekho Bash With Sidharth Malhotra, Looks Smoking Hot



''However, last night Sussanne was overheard discussing the Hrithik-Kangana in a public place. Our source spotted Sussanne at the Istanbul airport, boarding the flight to Mumbai. along with her father Sanjay Khan, brother actor Zayed and his wife Malaika, their kids and their maids. While walking past this entourage, our source overheard them talking about the case.''

''He reveals, "I heard them talking about Hrithik and Kangana's case. They continued walking so couldn't hear what they were exactly talking about. However, I must add that they were so engrossed in their talk that they weren't looking at their children and it was the maid who had to look after all four of them."

Hmm...quite an interesting reaction from Sussanne Khan...what say readers?
Ragini Dwivedi, who is back from an adventurous trip to Maldives, has shared her experiences with a leading daily.

Going by the report, it looks like the 25-year-old actress loves to explore the action side of her, not just on the big screen but in real life too.

"I was diving in a site in Maldives and saw a turtle entangled in a fishing net. I, along with other divers, instantly detangled and set it free. We even fed baby sharks," Ragini has said.

When asked about her passion for deep-sea diving, the Namaste Madam actress has said she took deep-sea diving lessons at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

"I have been undergoing deep-sea diving training and will be a professional diver soon. I started learning it at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia last year and I plan on going to different countries and diving sites every three months," she has said.

Also Read: Rachitha Ram Cried So Much During Chakravyuha, Here's Why!
We had already reported that in yesterday's (26th April) hearing, the Bombay High Court's judge, Justice Mridula Bhatkar had decided to hear the three-minute recording of her telephonic last call with Rahul Raj Singh. And what Pratyusha said will not shock you, since everybody would have known Rahul's character, by now!

According to the reports from a leading daily, Pratyusha's last telephonic conversation, was on April 1st, 3.43 pm (not long before Pratyusha committed suicide). Apparently, the call lasted for 201 seconds and the actress called Rahul, a cheater.

Click on the slides to know what the actress said in the last telephonic conversation. Also read on to know what Rahul & Pratyusha's lawyers argued in the court....



Rahul, who is accused of abetting the suicide of his girlfriend Pratyusha, has been given an anticipatory bail. The special public prosecutor had asked for Rahul's custody, as he was also being investigated for murder. But the court turned down the request as Rahul was yet to be charged with murder.

Special Public Prosecutor, Nilesh Pawaskar was quoted by the leading daily as saying, "The investigations are presently revolving around 306 of IPC (abetment) and 302 of IPC (murder). We suspect Rahul had much more to do than abetment but only his custodial interrogation can tell us more."

Justice Mrudula Bhatkar was quoted by the leading daily as saying, "If you have evidence, why don't you register a murder case against Rahul? Why do you need his custodial interrogation to register a murder case? Don't you register murder cases when the accused is absconding? If you register a murder case, I will look at the matter from another point of view and will not grant Rahul bail or any relief."

Well, it has to be seen how the case would proceed - Will Rahul be charged with murder? Stay locked to this space for the latest updates....
A few months back there were reports of Drashti Dhami and Siddhant Karnick's show, Ek Tha Raja Ek Thi Rani, going off air, due to low TRPs. But, then the rumours vanished into the thin air.

Later, there were news of the show taking a leap and the main lead, Drashti, who plays the role of Gayatri, quitting the show. Apparently, post leap, the story would revolve around Ranaji and Gayatri's kids, and the actress didn't want to play a mother at this point of time. Now, there are reports that Siddhant too, will be out of the show!

Click On 'View Photos' To Read On To Know What Siddhant Has To Say About His Exit And His Plans Post The Show...



Siddhant aka Ranaji was quoted by a leading daily as saying, "It's a bittersweet feeling. We got to know around two weeks back that our track will be ending. It was nice of them to let us know in advance. In the industry, many a time, you just read the script and get to know that your character is ending. They were quite professional. We had a feeling of closure."

While Drashti has plans to spend time with her husband Neeraj Khemka as she will be flying to Europe for a long holiday, Siddhant has plans of heading out of Mumbai on his motorcycle for 15 days.

According to the latest spoiler, Chetan Hansraj will be entering the show to kill Siddhant's character. Chetan, who is currently shooting for Nagarjun, will be playing a role of a tribal in this show. The actor was quoted by the leading daily as saying, "I am playing a positive character in 'Nagarjun' and a negative character in 'Ek Tha Raja...' It's interesting to juggle two contrasting characters."

Well, it has to be seen how the show will run without Drashti and Siddhant! (Images Source: Instagram)
Ant Financial, the online payments affiliate of Alibaba, said on Tuesday that it had raised a record $4.5 billion from private investors, valuing the company at almost $60 billion and moving it a step closer to launching a hotly anticipated initial public offering.

Proceeds from what it said is the largest-ever private fundraising by an Internet company globally will be used to extend Ant Financial's reach into rural Chinese areas and to expand Chinese e-commercial giant Alibabas footprint in the thriving mobile e-commerce market of Southeast Asia.

While other so-called unicorns -- private technology startups worth $1 billion or more -- globally have seen their valuations come under increased scrutiny in recent months in the wake of disappointing flotations, the company controlled by former English teacher Jack Ma so far seems unaffected. Ant Financial, which operates China's biggest online payment platform Alipay, is now worth about a third more than it was last year after its first round of funding, when it was valued at $45 billion.

The valuation places Ant Financial among the most valuable privately owned internet companies, alongside China's smartphone maker Xiaomi and US taxi-hailing app Uber, if somewhat below the near-$200 billion market cap of New York-listed Alibaba. Xiaomi and Uber are valued at $45 billion to $50 billion based on their most recent funding rounds last year.

According to data provider Dealogic, there were only 30 technology IPOs in the US last year -- the smallest number since 2009 and about half the total of the previous year. Partly behind the waning investor interest in financial technology, or fintech, companies is a series of disappointing IPOs, including that of US-listed peer-to-peer lender LendingClub, whose share price fell by 70% after its 2014 listing.

But the de-rating of some US-listed fintech companies does not seem to have crossed over fully to infect its Chinese counterparts, in part thanks to Premier Li Keqiang's policy of "internet plus", a strategy to integrate the mobile internet, cloud computing, and big data with modern manufacturing to promote the country's service sector.

The capital raised in Series B will allow us to invest in the infrastructure, such as cloud computing and risk control, that will underpin out long-term growth in rural and international markets, Eric Jing, president of Ant Financial, said in a statement.

The company's second round of private equity funding is the largest investment in a technology company to date, surpassing the $3.3 billion that Meituan-Dianping, Chinas largest group deals site, raised in January.

Sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp and a unit of China Construction Bank participated in Ant Financial's latest capital raise, along with existing investors state-owned China Life and China Post Group, whose banking arm Postal Savings Bank of China is planning to raise as much as $10 billion through a Hong Kong float.

Ma has previously said that Ant Financial has plans for an IPO in China but has so far declined to give a timeline.

Banking sources have previously told FinanceAsia that the company may yet decide to list both in Shanghai and Hong Kong, depending on market conditions and investor feedback.

CICC, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan advised Ant Financial on its latest funding round.

Disruptive innovation

Analysts at Credit Suisse estimate the fair value of Alipay at about $47 billion, making it Ant Financial's most valuable asset. Alipay had a near-60% market share of China's online payment industry last year, followed by Tencent with 20%.

The Swiss bank expects the country's total online payment market to reach Rmb52.4 trillion ($8 trillion) in 2018, including Rmb23.5 trillion from PC online payments and Rmb29 trillion from mobile phones. The online payment market was about Rmb22 trillion last year.

"Ant Financial is clearly sounding the beginning of the Ice Age for the banking dinosaurs," Keith Pogson, a partner at accounting firm EY, said, anticipating the decline of China's traditional banking industry due to the disruptive effects of fintech.

He said the rapid rise of Ant Financial suggested it had worked out how to make money from the big data that Alibaba gathers from its various online platforms.

Ant Financial has more than 450 million active users in 2015, of which 140 million are rural dwellers.

In addition to China, Alibaba and Ant Financial have collectively invested $680 million in Indian mobile wallet provider Paytm, hoping to replicate the success of Alipay in India's emerging and potentially vast e-commercial market.

Ant Financial, spun off from Alibaba in 2011, runs Alipay, the PayPal-like online payments company that has more than 400 million active users. It also has 260 million active users in Chinas largest online money market fund, Yuebao, and food-ordering app Kuobei, which means word-of-mouth reputation in Chinese.
Citi has appointed Christine Lam as its country officer for China, replacing Andrew Au whos retiring in June after a 32-year stint, the US bank announced on Tuesday.

Lam, another Citi veteran and most recently its head of operations and technology for Asia, will oversee all of the banks businesses and franchise operations in China in her new role, which will take effect in June. She will move from Hong Kong to Shanghai, and report to Francisco Aristeguieta, Citis Asia-Pacific chief executive.

A career banker, Lam joined Citi as a management associate in the Financial Institutions Group in 1983. She subsequently worked in various business and operation roles in Canada and Hong Kong, and spent a number of years in trade services and the worldwide securities business (now securities services).

She worked her way to the top, becoming chief operating officer for Asia global banking in 2004 and deputy country business manager for Hong Kong with direct responsibility for the retail business in 2011.

Lam served as country business manager for Hong Kong and Macau since 2013, demonstrating leadership skills in managing one of Citis largest consumer businesses in Asia. She was also on FinanceAsias list of top 25 women in finance in 2015.

Her wide-ranging experience across both our institutional and consumer businesses, with an extensive background in O&T over a 33-year career, will be critical to delivering the full power of our network and value propositions to capture growth opportunities we see in China, said Aristeguieta in an internal memo seen by FinanceAsia.

Citi first established business in China in 1902 when it opened its Shanghai office. The New York-headquartered bank now runs operations and employs 8,000 staff in 13 cities across the country.

In recent years, Citi has focused more on affluent consumer banking clients living in cities, selling them a mix of financial products via bank branches and digital platforms. This is a global strategy for Citi and one it wants implemented in China too.

Andrew Au, Lams predecessor, decided to retire in June after having spent 32 years at Citi. He was named as the banks China chairman and CEO in 2008 after previously working as Asia head of Citis commercial bank for three years.

Under his eight-year watch, Citi set up an onshore securities joint venture with Orient Securities in 2012 and became the first global bank to launch sole-branded credit cards in the country the same year. The banks overall revenue in China also totaled more than $1 billion in 2014, according to a spokesman for the bank.

In February, Citi sold its minority stake in mainland Chinese lender China Guangfa Bank for $3 billion, after a decade-long investment as the cost of holding stakes in banks grows.

This article has been updated to reflect the fact Lam will be based in Shanghai, not Hong Kong and that Au spent eight years in his post
A FINRA hearing officer has moved to bar a former Citigroup registered rep from the industry for engaging in money laundering and helping a childhood friend and business associate deceive creditors.

James Van Doren worked for Citigroup Global Markets in New York. He pleaded guilty in federal district court to money laundering and was sentenced to 15 months in prison in November 2014.

Van Doren invested in his friend's real estate deals through a company he formed in Arkansas, according to FINRA documents. Within months of making his first investment in May 2007, the investment soured. Despite the fact that Van Doren knew that his friend's company was in trouble, he nevertheless invested additional money in the hope of recovering funds he loaned his friend to pay off subcontractors.

As creditors descended on his friend's failing company, Van Doren on three occasions accepted money from his friend to conceal those assets from his friend's creditors. In total, he accepted $244,000, including $30,000 stashed in a briefcase in cash. Whenever his friend needed money, Van Doren dipped into the briefcase, which he kept in a safety deposit box, according to FINRA.

Van Doren later returned most of the money to his friend and retained some of the money to offset financial losses he suffered. On one occasion, he made false representations to his bank in an effort to obtain additional funds for his friend.

"The respondent's misconduct signifies that he is a grave risk to customers, firms, and other participants in the industry," FINRA's hearing officer, Lucinda McConathy, writes in her decision. "He is unfit to be in the securities industry and should be barred."

Van Doren vehemently refuted the allegations. "I did not hide anything from anyone, I never misled anyone and I did nothing improper," he said in an email. "I was a creditor of my former friend, and I lost moneylike his other creditorsdue to my investments with him. I was always very open about my business dealing with him and no one, including my employer and FINRA, ever thought I had done anything wrong until I was wrongly accused as a co-conspirator by the U.S. Attorney in Arkansas.

Van Doren explained that his decision not to participate in FINRA's proceeding had to do with his inability to appeal his criminal conviction. He regretted having signed the plea agreement and tried unsuccessfully to have it withdrawn.

"I refused to settle the case with FINRA because I would not admit to facts that were untrue," he said in the email. "My counsel and I determined we would not get a fair hearing from FINRA since they would rely on the conviction and U.S. Attorney's version of the facts."

His friend pleaded guilty to money laundering, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit bankruptcy fraud and was sentenced to 65 months in jail.

Van Doren joined Citigroup in January 2011 and was permitted to resign in April 2013, following criminal charges brought against him in the U.S. Western District Court of Arkansas. On the day he resigned, Citigroup terminated his registration, reporting a "loss of confidence" in Van Doren, FINRA said in its decision.

Prior to Citigroup, Van Doren worked for Barclays Capital and Lehman Brothers, according to his BrokerCheck report. He joined Lehman in October 2005 and Barclays in September 2008.

Unless FINRA's decision is appealed to the regulator's National Adjudicatory Council, or is called for review by the council, the decision becomes final after 45 days, FINRA said.

Robert Julavits, a Citigroup spokesman, declined to comment on the matter.
JC Flowers has shown disregard for transparency and credibility in the financial community, and their selection is the final proof of the rigged and illegal process managed by the Andorran Government

ANDORRA, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Ramon and Higini Cierco, the majority shareholders of Banca Privadad'Andorra ("BPA") will take all necessary and appropriate actions against JC Flowers & Co. and the Andorran Government to block the illegal expropriation of BPA.

JC Flowers & Co.'s bid for BPA is another dispiriting chapter in a process shrouded in secrecy and devoid of accountability, due process, and the rule of law. The Ciercos cannot understand why a U.S private equity fund with i) a questionable investment track record, ii) a history of rejection by the Spanish government in its attempts to acquire a financial institution in Spain and iii) in poor financial condition is the chosen solution to a problem of Andorra's own making.1 J. Christopher Flowers, the CEO of the company, once described their business model as "lowlife grave dancers."2 JC Flowers & Co. currently face their own financial restructuring problems, legal claims, and reputational harm as its investors learn that their funds are "exposed to several faltered deals, including MF Global".3 JC Flowers & Co. is not a serious or responsible option to resolve this debacle that has been mismanaged by the Andorran Government from the beginning until today.

With regards to the selection of JC Flowers, the Chairman of BPA's Andorran administrator, stated, "The selected offer achieves every single objective pursued by the Resolution Plan for Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA)." This is a ludicrous continuation of Andorra's attempt to avoid accountability for the mismanagement of this process and the squandering of value and loss of Andorran jobs.There can be little doubt that JC Flowers & Co. is acquiring BPA assets at a bargain basement price and is likely to terminate employees, strip assets, reduce customer service and contribute nothing to the Andorran economy or financial sector. It is the Ciercos who have continually attempted to pursue a constructive dialogue that preserves value, jobs, and customer service while maximizing the future prospects of the Andorran financial sector. All of the Ciercos' attempts at constructive dialogue for the benefit of all stakeholders have been thwarted by the Andorran authorities. Although the fine print of the deal has not been made public, it appears that JC Flowers will only put up a tiny amount, 7.5 million euros at closing, and any future payments are highly contingent. Why would Andorra shut down a bank worth in excess of 500 million euros and then sell it at a knock down price without any assurances that this deal will be good for the Andorran financial sector, Andorran jobs or the reputation of Andorra? This is simply a continuation of the cover-up by the Andorran authorities of their own incompetence.

In March 2015, the United States Department of the Treasury designated BPA an "institution of primary money laundering concern" citing at its basis information that had been disclosed properly to authorities by the bank more than a year before. The Andorran government immediately fell into line with the United States and put BPA into administration and launched a massive internal audit of BPA, from which no findings have been made public. In May 2015, a US Embassy official admitted in public that the action against BPA was in fact rooted in the US government's dissatisfaction with Andorran financial regulators and the Andorran financial system as a whole.

It is remarkable that in this day and age, two contemporary governments, that of the United States and that of a European state, Andorra, can first have a fight about bank regulation, the United States then "uses the hammer" against a single bank, BPA, in order to teach a recalcitrant government a lesson, and then these two governments can make up by Andorra appeasing its more powerful partner, creating a non-transparent structure to expropriate the original shareholders, prevent either government from being held accountable, and transferring the supposed "new bank" consisting of the expropriated assets to some new purchaser through a secret process. Since the outset of this, all the Ciercos have wanted the best for BPA clients, its employees and Andorra. They have simply asked for an open dialogue, a transparent process, and an understanding of why their bank was stolen from them. Instead, they have been faced with stonewalling and threats that one would expect from a totalitarian state.

After fourteen months, the Government of Andorra has neither charged the Ciercos with any wrongdoing nor disclosed any specific information to support their ousting of the Ciercos from BPA's Board of Directors. The Andorran regulator has never disclosed why it endorsed the expropriation of a highly solvent and successful the financial institution over a more reasonable, restructuring option to assess and eventually correct any weakness in Anti Money Laundering controls. It is now well known that, in their multi-million Euro audit of BPA, PwC has not applied the current Andorran standards applied to all the other banks. Consequently the Andorran government has breached the civil rights of BPA and, its owners, and moreover, has never allowed PwC to make public the audit with detailed information on the actual status of BPA's accounts.

The Ciercos are committed to fighting for their civil and human rights, in both the courts of the United States and Europe. What has happened here is a threat to the rule of law and the rights of all participants in the international financial system. This lawless action cannot be permitted to stand.

1 JC Flowers Said to Mull Restructuring Fund to Gain Time, Bloomberg News, 8/5/15, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-05/jc-flowers-said-to-mull-restructuring-fund-to-gain-time-cash

2 As Investors Circle Ailing Banks, Fed Sets Limits, 5/5/09, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/business/06equity.html?_r=0

3 JC Flowers Said to Hold Fund Recapitalization Talks With Coller, Bloomberg News, 2/10/16, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-10/jc-flowers-said-to-hold-fund-recapitalization-talks-with-coller
WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwired - April 25, 2016) - Ifrah Law's Michelle Cohen has been recognized as a 2016 Top Rated Litigator by American Lawyer Media and Martindale-Hubbell and is featured in the current edition of The National Law Journal.

"Congratulations to Michelle for being recognized for her exceptional skills and expertise. She continues to be a leader in privacy law matters and is a great asset to our clients and our firm," said Ifrah's founding member, Jeff Ifrah.

Michelle's litigation experience, coupled with her regulatory and corporate experience, allows her to offer clients up-to-the-minute legal counsel on a wide range of data privacy matters, online sweepstakes and promotions, and matters involving the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Her deep knowledge in these areas and her strong footing in the privacy community help her to resolve issues in the most expedient manner possible.

Of this recognition, Michelle Cohen said, "I am honored to have received this recognition from American Lawyer Media. I value my client relationships, some which go back two decades, and will continue to help clients achieve top results with our tremendous team here at Ifrah Law."

Michelle is currently handling the defense of several class action matters. She also represents a leading digital health and wellness company. Michelle is a frequent speaker and writer on progressive technology topics.

About Ifrah Law:

Ifrah Law is a Washington, D.C.-based law firm that represents clients in a variety of litigation settings. Founded in 2009, the firm specializes in Internet advertising, iGaming, government contracts and healthcare."Its attorneys also author three noted blogs: www.ifrahonigaming.com, covering all aspects on online gaming, www.ftcbeat.com, FTC and State AG News for Ecommerce, and www.crimeinthesuites.com, an analysis of current issues in white collar defense. For more information, please visit www.ifrahlaw.com.

Jeff Ifrah Law -- Hands-on Counsel, Gloves-off Litigation: http://www.jeffifrahlaw.com

Ifrah Law's Jeff Ifrah Advises No Poker Market Is Possible Without PokerStars: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ifrah-laws-jeff-ifrah-advises-230000833.html

Ifrah Law -- Washington, DC -- Law Firm Profile -- Chambers and Partners: http://www.chambersandpartners.com/usa/firm/232884/ifrah-law

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/4/25/11G095048/Images/Michelle_Cohen_Named_2016_Top_Rated_Litigator_by_A-1c584fafacd5b149afdeb7b8760cfc08.jpg

Embedded Video Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NulnyhvjT_M

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Regulatory News:

United Company RUSAL Plc (Paris:RUSAL) (Paris:RUAL)

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited and The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited take no responsibility for the contents of this announcement, make no representation as to its accuracy or completeness and expressly disclaim any liability whatsoever for any loss howsoever arising from or in reliance upon the whole or any part of the contents of this announcement.

UNITED COMPANY RUSAL PLC

(Incorporated under the laws of Jersey with limited liability)

(Stock Code: 486)

UPDATE ON THE REFINANCING

This announcement is made pursuant to Rule 13.09 of the Listing Rules, the Inside Information Provisions (as defined under the Listing Rules) under Part XIVA of the Securities and Futures Ordinance (Cap. 571, Laws of Hong Kong) and applicable French laws and regulations.

Reference is made to the announcements of the Company dated 24 June 2011, 29 August 2011, 18 January 2012, 30 March 2012 and 30 October 2012 in relation to the USD4.75 Billion PXF, the announcement of the Company dated 31 January 2013 in relation to the USD400 Million PXF, the announcement of the Company dated 21 March 2014 in relation to the Amendment Agreement, the announcement of the Company dated 4 August 2014 in relation to the obtaining of the credit approvals from all its Lenders with respect to the Amendment Agreement, the announcement of the Company dated 21 August 2014 in relation to the effectiveness of the Amendment Agreement and the announcement of the Company dated 24 December 2014 in relation to the Combined PXF Facility.

Following the comments made on the debt refinancing process as disclosed in the Company's announcement dated 21 March 2016 with respect to financial result for the year ended 31 December 2015, the Company would like to provide details of the amendments expected to be made to the Combined PXF Facility in this regard. The amendments disclosed in this announcement will become effective only once the relevant documentation is signed by the relevant parties and the conditions precedent are met. The Company continues negotiations with the lenders under the other financings in its credit portfolio and will announce any future developments in this regard in due course.

Amendments to the Combined PXF Facility

The Company is pleased to announce that it intends to enter into an amendment and restatement agreement with the lenders under the Combined PXF Facility to introduce new refinancing tranches under the Combined PXF Facility on the following terms:

Amount and purpose: Maximum amount of up to USD700million which corresponds to the

Company's scheduled repayment instalments falling due in 2016 and 1Q

2017 under the Combined PXF Facility and aims at the refinancing of

those repayments. Final maturity date and repayment schedule: Final maturity date will fall 48 calendar months and quarterly repayments

will start from the 22nd calendar month after utilisation Interest: Interest shall accrue on the amounts outstanding under the refinancing

tranches at a rate of 3-month LIBOR plus margin. Margin for the loans

under the new tranche will be in accordance with the below margin grid: Leverage ratio Margin (per cent. per annum) Above 5x 5.75 Above 4.5 and at or below 5.0 5.30 Above 4.0 and at or below 4.5 4.75 Above 3.5 and at or below 4.0 4.25 Above 3.0 and at or below 3.5 3.75 Above 2.5 and at or below 3.0 3.50 Above 2.0 and at or below 2.5 3.25 At or below 2.0 3.00 Security The Company will extend the security given under the Combined PXF Facility

The relevant documentation is expected to be signed and to be effective by the end of April 2016.

Shareholders and potential investors are advised to exercise caution when dealing in the securities of the Company.

DEFINITIONS

In this announcement, the following expressions have the following meanings, unless the context otherwise requires:

"Amendment Agreement" the agreement dated 18 August 2014 pursuant to which the USD4.75 Billion PXF and the USD400 Million PXF are combined into a single facility agreement ("Combined PXF Facility "Company" United Company RUSAL Plc, a limited liability company incorporated in Jersey, the shares of which are listed on the main board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. "Director(s)" the director(s) of the Company. "Lenders" the lenders under the USD4.75 Billion PXF and the USD400 million PXF. "Listing Rules" Rules Governing the Listing of Securities on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. "USD" United States dollars, the lawful currency of the United States of America. "USD4.75 Billion PXF" the up to USD4,750,000,000 aluminium pre-export finance facility agreement dated 29 September 2011 between, amongst others, BNP Paribas (Suisse) SA (as facility agent and security agent) and the Company (as borrower) as amended on each of 26 January 2012 and 9 November 2012, and consisting of two tranches, Tranche A and Tranche B. "USD400 Million PXF" the up to USD400,000,000 multicurrency aluminium pre-export finance facility agreement dated 30 January 2013 between, amongst others, ING BANK N.V. (as facility agent and security agent) and the Company (as borrower).

By Order of the Board of Directors of

United Company RUSAL Plc

Aby Wong Po Ying

Company Secretary

26 April 2016

As at the date of this announcement, the executive Directors are Mr. Oleg Deripaska, Mr. Vladislav Soloviev and Mr. Stalbek Mishakov, the non-executive Directors are Mr. Maxim Sokov, Mr. Dmitry Afanasiev, Mr. Len Blavatnik, Mr. Ivan Glasenberg, Mr. Maksim Goldman, Ms. Gulzhan Moldazhanova, Mr. Daniel Lesin Wolfe, Ms. Olga Mashkovskaya and Ms. Ekaterina Nikitina, and the independent non-executive Directors are Mr. Matthias Warnig (Chairman), Dr. Peter Nigel Kenny, Mr. Philip Lader, Dr. Elsie Leung Oi-sie, Mr. Mark Garber and Mr. Dmitry Vasiliev.

All announcements and press releases published by the Company are available on its website under the links http://www.rusal.ru/en/investors/info.aspxhttp://rusal.ru/investors/info/moex/ and http://www.rusal.ru/en/press-center/press-releases.aspx, respectively.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425006310/en/

Contacts:

United Company RUSAL Plc


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. Department of Justice announced a settlement that permits Charter Communications Inc. (CHTR) to complete its $78 billion proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) and its related $10.4 billion acquisition of Bright House Networks LLC or BHN from Advance/Newhouse Partnership.



The settlement forbids the merged company, referred to as 'New Charter,' from entering into or enforcing agreements that could make it more difficult for online video distributors (OVDs) to obtain video content from programmers.



The Justice Department's Antitrust Division filed a civil antitrust lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to block the merger, along with a proposed settlement that, if approved by the court, would resolve the competitive harm alleged in the lawsuit.



The department's complaint alleged that, as a result of the proposed merger, New Charter would have greater incentive and ability to impose or broaden contractual restrictions on programmers that limit their ability to distribute their content through OVDs. According to the complaint, TWC has been an industry leader in seeking such restrictions; with its much larger subscriber base, New Charter would have even more to gain from frustrating OVD competition.



According to the department's complaint, the combination of Charter, TWC and BHN into New Charter would create the second-largest cable company and the third-largest multi-channel video programming distributor (MVPD) in the United States, with over 17 million video subscribers. As the complaint explains, TWC has been the most aggressive MVPD in the industry in securing Alternative Distribution Means (ADM) clauses in its contracts with programmers that either prevent the programmer from distributing its content to OVDs or place certain restrictions on such online distribution.



The complaint alleges that New Charter, which will have almost 60 percent more subscribers than TWC standing alone, would have even more to gain from imposing ADMs and other contractual provisions that make OVDs less competitive. As a result, the complaint alleges that the merger would likely result in a substantial lessening of competition for video programming distribution services.



Under the terms of the proposed settlement, New Charter will be prohibited from entering into or enforcing any agreement with a programmer that forbids, limits or creates incentives to limit the programmer's provision of content to one or more OVDs. The settlement further provides that New Charter will not be able to avail itself of other distributors' most favored nation (MFN) provisions if they are inconsistent with this prohibition. The settlement also prohibits New Charter from retaliating against programmers for licensing to OVDs.



The department said that it would continue to closely monitor developments in the industry and would vigorously enforce compliance with the proposed settlement to ensure that New Charter does not use the influence it will have as one of the nation's largest MVPDs to restrict or discourage programmers from licensing their content to OVDs.



The department said it also examined whether the merger would allow New Charter to become an unavoidable gatekeeper for internet-based services, including OVDs, that rely on a broadband connection to reach consumers. The department previously expressed significant concerns about an earlier attempt to acquire TWC by Comcast Corporation, which is significantly larger than Charter, because that transaction would have enabled the combined firm to control access to nearly 60 percent of high-speed broadband subscribers, and would likely have resulted in higher internet interconnection fees that could have limited OVDs' ability to compete effectively with traditional MVPDs.



The order circulated by the FCC Chairman today would impose an obligation on New Charter to make interconnection available on a non-discriminatory, settlement-free basis to companies that meet basic criteria. In light of the remedy sought by the FCC Chairman, the department elected not to pursue duplicative relief in its own lawsuit.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
OTTAWA (dpa-AFX) - Husky Energy (HSE.TO) said that it has reached an agreement under which 65 percent of its ownership interest in select midstream assets in the Lloydminster region of Alberta and Saskatchewan will be sold to Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings Limited and Power Assets Holdings Limited or PAH. Husky will receive C$1.7 billion of gross cash proceeds, will have a 35 percent interest in the assets and will remain operator. The sale price represents about 13 times the expected 2016 EBITDA of approximately C$180 million. The assets involved in this transaction include approximately 1,900 kilometres of pipeline in the Lloydminster region, 4.1 million barrels of oil storage capacity at Hardisty and Lloydminster, and other ancillary assets. A new limited partnership will be formed of which Husky will own 35 percent, Cheung Kong Infrastructure 16.25 percent and PAH 48.75 percent. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
TOKYO, 2016-04-26 05:09 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ALMEX INC. has launched Loveinn Japan, a website devoted to Japanese love hotels on April 25, 2016. Loveinn Japan is the first website in English exclusively for foreigners, with Chinese and Korean languages to be added in the coming months. Its purpose is to introduce the unique culture of love hotels to foreigners, including guides and how-to tutorials to make it easier for travelers to use leisure hotels when coming to Japan. Loveinn Japan also offers the option to search and browse hundreds of love hotels, with many more to be added every month. Frequent content updates and blog entries are another core feature of this website, offering advice on love hotels and related topics. Loveinn Japan is currently the only website offering services related to leisure hotels in English. Not many foreigners know what love hotels are and not being able to read and speak Japanese makes it very hard for tourists to understand the leisure hotel system. Loveinn Japan will act as intermediary between users and love hotels, offering support to both parties and making it easier for foreigners to use love hotels. Loveinn Japan is also planning to launch a booking system in 2017 which will allow customers to browse and reserve online rooms for their stay. "We are very excited about this new adventure," said Mr.Tsuboi, Managing Executive Officer of ALMEX INC. "and we can't wait to see more foreigners coming to Japan and enjoy staying at love hotels." ALMEX INC., the company launching the website, has a long history in the industry of providing IT systems and support solutions in the hospitality and medical sectors, and with more than thirty years of experience in the field the future of Loveinn Japan certainly looks very bright. https://loveinnjapan.com/ ALMEX INC. 3-1-2 Kitaaoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0061 Tel: +81 03-6820-1411 Email info@loveinnjapan.com http://www.almex.jp/

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Verisk Analytics Inc. (VRSK), a leading data analytics provider, and Veritas Capital, a private equity firm, announced the signing of a definitive agreement under which an affiliate of Veritas Capital has agreed to acquire Verisk's healthcare services business, Verisk Health, for $820 million. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions and is expected to close by June 30, 2016. The total purchase price is subject to typical adjustments for, among other things, the working capital of the business at closing. The purchase price consists of $720 million of cash consideration, a $100 million long-term subordinated promissory note with interest paid in kind, and other contingent consideration. Verisk Analytics estimates after-tax proceeds of approximately $675 million, of which about $600 million will be received at closing. In the near term, Verisk Analytics intends to use a portion of the cash proceeds to repay its revolver drawings. Verisk remains committed to reaching its stated leverage target by the end of 2016. Over time, Verisk anticipates that the majority of the proceeds will be applied to its long-standing capital allocation priorities, including acquisitions and share repurchases. Upon closing, Verisk Health will be renamed and will operate as an independent company at its current headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
NEC Seiichiro Toda s-toda@cj.jp.nec.com +81-3-3798-6511

TOKYO, Apr 26, 2016 - (JCN Newswire) - NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) today announced the establishment of the "Blockchain Workshop" as part of the Incubation & Innovation Initiative (III), a cross-industrial consortium that includes NEC, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and The Japan Research Institute, Limited.NEC has been a member of III since its establishment in February 2016. The Blockchain Workshop studies the properties of Blockchain technology in order to maximize its utilization. Blockchain technology involves the use of encryption technology that is attracting attention due to its application in areas that include financial transactions and stock exchanges. Blockchain technology dispersion manages and synchronizes account book information such as transaction history, thereby helping to ensure that account books cannot be falsified. By the end of the first half of the 2016 fiscal year, the use of Blockchain technology is expected to be verified in an evaluation environment."Blockchain technology may be applicable to a wide range of industries," said Fumiaki Matsubara, senior vice president, Business Innovation Unit, NEC Corporation. "NEC's collaboration with III, whose members possess a variety of specializations, is expected to accelerate open innovation and to support reforms in finance and many other industries."About NEC CorporationNEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. By providing a combination of products and solutions that cross utilize the company's experience and global resources, NEC's advanced technologies meet the complex and ever-changing needs of its customers. NEC brings more than 100 years of expertise in technological innovation to empower people, businesses and society. For more information, visit NEC at http://www.nec.com.Based on its Mid-term Management Plan 2015, the NEC Group globally provides "Solutions for Society" that promote the safety, security, efficiency and equality of society. Under the company's corporate message of "Orchestrating a brighter world," NEC aims to help solve a wide range of challenging issues and to create new social value for the changing world of tomorrow. For more information, please visit http://www.nec.com/en/global/about/solutionsforsociety/message.html.Source: NEC CorporationContact:Copyright 2016 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Australian dollar weakened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Tuesday. The Australian dollar fell to an 8-day low of 1.4624 against the euro, from yesterday's closing value of 1.4600. Against the yen and the NZ dollar, the aussie dropped to 4-day lows of 85.44 and 1.1199 from yesterday's closing quotes of 85.77 and 1.1248,respectively. Against the U.S. and the Canadian dollars, the aussie edged down to 0.7706 and 0.9763 from yesterday's closing quotes of 0.7714 and 0.9776, respectively. If the aussie extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 1.51 against the euro, 82.00 against the yen, 1.10 against the kiwi, 0.74 against the greenback and 0.95 against the loonie. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Regulatory News:

The municipality of Sulkava in Finland has chosen Attendo (STO:ATT) as the new provider of all care and healthcare services to its citizens. In a separate decision, Raakkyla municipality has chosen to extend its current combination contract with Attendo for another four years.

Sulkava municipal board decided at its board meeting on April 25 to award Attendo the combination contract for providing the municipality's social and health care services. The decision will be effective as soon as the appeal period has passed and the contract has been signed.

"We are delighted about Sulkava's vote of confidence in Attendo and we are looking forward to bringing our services to all of Sulkava's citizens", says Antti Ylikorkala, Business Area Director for Attendo Kuntaturva services (combination contracts) in Finland

Sulkava becomes the seventh municipality to choose Attendo Kuntaturva. The contract is valued at about 11.6 MEUR (106 MSEK) annually, starting January 1st, 2017. The contract is valid for 6 years plus an optional extension for another 4 years.

In a separate decision, the municipality board of Raakkyla decided to use the option to extend its current combination contract for another four years until end of 2020. Raakkyla was the first municipality to sign a combination contract with Attendo Kuntaturva already in 2011. The contract is valued at just over 10 MEUR (92 MSEK) in annual revenue.

The main purpose of combination contracts is to secure foreseeable and moderate cost development for the municipalities while guaranteeing all citizens access to high quality care and healthcare services.

Attendo AB (publ)

________________________________________________________

Attendo the leading care and healthcare company in the Nordics

Attendo is the leading private provider of publicly financed care and healthcare services in the Nordic region. The company was founded in 1985 and was first to provide outsourced care for older people in Sweden. In addition to care for older people, Attendo provides care for people with disabilities, individuals and families, and, in Finland, healthcare and dental care. Attendo has 19 000 employees and is locally anchored with 510 operations in more than 200 municipalities in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark. www.attendo.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160425006676/en/

Contacts:

Attendo

Ingalill Ostman, Head of Investor Relations

Phone: +46 708 67 42 12

E-mail: Ingalill.ostman@attendo.com

or

Stefan Svanstrom, Communications Director

Phone: +46 708 67 38 07

E-mail: stefan.svanstrom@attendo.com
DUNSTABLE (dpa-AFX) - Hotel and restaurant group Whitbread Plc. (WTB.L) reported Tuesday that its full year profit before tax was 487.7 million pounds, 5.2 percent higher than last year's 463.8 million pounds. On a 52-week comparative basis, profit grew 2.2 percent. Earnings per share were 214 pence, higher than 202.79 pence a year ago. Underlying profit before tax was 546.3 million pounds, compared to 488.1 million pounds last year. Underlying earnings per share were 236.82 pence, compared to 211.56 pence. Total revenue climbed 12 percent to 2.92 billion pounds from 2.61 billion pounds a year ago. Like- for -like sales growth was 3%. Premier Inn, economy hotel brand, recorded total sales growth of 12.9% and like for like sales up 4.2%. Further, the Board recommended a final dividend of 61.85 pence per share, making a total dividend for the year of 90.35 pence per share, an increase of 10.0%. Looking ahead, the company said that it is only six weeks into new financial year, and the indications are that Costa UK has had a good start to the year and Premier Inn is growing share in a flat market. However, trading comparators have been impacted by the early timing of Easter. The company said it remains confident of making good progress this year. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
The iW3690 driver IC bridges the gap between traditional wall dimmers and the latest digital solutions accelerating smart lighting penetration in a market which is forecast to be worth 58 billion USD annually by 2020

Dialog Semiconductor plc (FWB:DLG), a provider of highly integrated power management, AC/DC power conversion, solid state lighting (SSL) and Bluetooth(R) low energy technology, today announced the iW3690, a revolutionary driver IC for LED smart lighting that combines digital control (I2C) with the company's advanced phase-cut TRIAC dimming technology. For the first time, a single chip solution provides Smart LED luminaires the ability to dim using digital commands, including those sent wirelessly, while working concurrently with traditional TRIAC wall dimmers.

Suitable for applications up to 25W, the IC's Dual-Dim technology enables dimming from 100% to 1% without flicker or shimmer. The driver IC works with any wireless protocol including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and ZigBee. Optimal wireless connectivity is made cost effective and easy using Dialog's SmartBond DA14580 Bluetooth low energy System-on-Chip (SoC) to create a high-performance wireless smart dimming platform with the minimum number of external components and the lowest system bill of materials (BOM).

The iW3690 enables digital link dimming and remote on/off at any AC phase conduction angle. It employs resonant control and features 0.95 power factor (PF), less than 20% total harmonic distortion (THD) and 85% typical efficiency, comfortably meeting DesignLights Consortium (DLC) requirements. The device automatically protects against over-temperature conditions, LED open and short circuits, AC line over-voltage, and output over-current.

"Until now, designers were forced to compromise on legacy dimmer control in order to provide users with digital smart lighting control. Combining support for legacy analog dimmers with a digital interface in a single unifying IC offers designers of LED luminaires the most cost-effective and easy-to-implement control solution for smart lighting," said Davin Lee, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Dialog's Power Conversion Business Group. "Combining our leadership positon in innovative LED driver ICs and Bluetooth low energy SoCs enables Dialog to provide optimal interfacing and best-in-class standby power; an important factor given that smart lighting must be always-on in order to receive wireless commands."

The iW3690 is sampling now and will be available in production quantities this quarter.

Dialog's Dual-Dim controllers and Bluetooth solutions are being demonstrated at 2016 Lightfair International (LFI), April 26 28 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California.

ENDS

NOTES

Market forecast from Transparency Market Research: Smart Lighting Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 2020.

The DesignLights Consortium is a trade organization that brings stakeholders together to define and promote leading edge, high quality, high efficiency commercial lighting.

Dialog, the Dialog logo, Dual-Dim and SmartBond are trademarks of Dialog Semiconductor plc or its subsidiaries. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners. (c) Copyright 2016 Dialog Semiconductor. All rights reserved.

About Dialog Semiconductor Dialog Semiconductor provides highly integrated standard (ASSP) and custom (ASIC) mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs), optimized for smartphone, computing, IoT, LED Solid State Lighting (SSL) and smart home applications. Dialog brings decades of experience to the rapid development of ICs while providing flexible and dynamic support, world-class innovation and the assurance of dealing with an established business partner. With world-class manufacturing partners, Dialog operates a fabless business model and is a socially responsible employer pursuing many programs to benefit the employees, community, other stakeholders and the environment we operate in.

Dialog's power saving technologies including DC-DC configurable system power management deliver high efficiency and enhance the consumer's user experience by extending battery lifetime and enabling faster charging of their portable devices. Its technology portfolio also includes audio, Bluetooth(R) low energy, Rapid Charge AC/DC power conversion and multi-touch.

Dialog Semiconductor plc is headquartered in London with a global sales, R&D and marketing organization. In 2015, it had approximately $1.35 billion in revenue and was one of the fastest growing European public semiconductor companies. It currently has approximately 1,650 employees worldwide. The company is listed on the Frankfurt (FWB: DLG) stock exchange (Regulated Market, Prime Standard, ISIN GB0059822006) and is a member of the German TecDax index.

Additional features:

Picture: http://newsfeed2.eqs.com/dialog-semiconductor/457613.html Subtitle: The iW3690 driver IC bridges the gap between traditional wall dimmers and the latest digital solutions accelerating smart lighting penetration

Language: English Company: Dialog Semiconductor Plc. Tower Bridge House, St. Katharine's Way E1W 1AA London United Kingdom Phone: +49 7021 805-412 Fax: +49 7021 805-200 E-mail: jose.cano@diasemi.com, lauren.ofstedahl@diasemi.com Internet: www.dialog-semiconductor.com ISIN: GB0059822006, XS0757015606 WKN: 927200 Indices: TecDAX Listed: Regulated Market in Frankfurt (Prime Standard); Regulated Unofficial Market in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart; Terminborse EUREX; Luxemburg

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005722/en/

Contacts:

Dialog Semiconductor

Lauren Ofstedahl

Phone: +1 (408) 845 8518

lauren.ofstedahl@diasemi.com

Web: www.dialog-semiconductor.com

Twitter: @DialogSemi
Espoo, Finland, 2016-04-26 09:00 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SRV GROUP PLC STOCK EXCHANGE RELEASE 26.04.2016, KLO 10.00SRV has been chosen to further develop the historical, valued at about EUR 300 million, new central hospital project in Central FinlandSRV has been chosen to be a futher developer for Central Finlands Central Hospital. SRV can also be chosen to be a management contractor for a EUR 300 million new hospital project, if the final target price set by Central Finland Health Care District is achieved. In that case, the project will be largest in company's history, which do not include the company's own equity.On 26 April, the Central Finland Health Care District selected SRV as the further developer of the entirely new hospital, which will be built in the vicinity of the current central hospital. The final target price of the project management contractor agreement will be confirmed at a meeting of the Administrative Council of the Central Finland Health Care District on 3 June. If SRV meets the target price by 31 July 2016, the agreement will be recognised in SRV's order backlog and the construction of the new hospital in Jyvaskyla can begin in August- September 2016."This is the largest contract in SRV's history to which we are not committing our own equity. The agreement further consolidates our position in carrying out large spearhead construction projects. Our order backlog was at a record high during all of 2015; thanks to the preliminary agreement we have now signed, we firmly believe that we will maintain our momentum in 2016," says Juha Toimela, SVP, Operations in Finland.The construction of the new central hospital will begin in early autumn 2016 and it will be completed in phases by 2020. It will be located in Kukkumaki, Jyvaskyla, in the vicinity of the current Central Finland Central Hospital. Most of the premises in the new hospital will be used for specialised healthcare. Part will be reserved for the City of Jyvaskyla's primary healthcare services. SRV has strong experience in building healthcare and demanding specialist premises. In recent years, for instance, SRV has built an additional emergency room for the Jorvi Hospital in Espoo as well as the HUSLAB laboratory building in Meilahti, Helsinki."The hospital projects we've carried out in recent years have been highly successful - and this, naturally enough, bears fruit. For example, we completed the HUSLAB laboratory building significantly ahead of schedule and with no defects at handover. We are currently also building three new hospital buildings for the Tampere University Hospital, the New Children's Hospital in Helsinki, and a health and wellbeing centre in Kalasatama, Helsinki, as well as renovating and expanding the HUCS Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology," says Juha Toimela, SRV's SVP, Operations in Finland.The final project management contractor agreement will be signed on by mid-August at which time the value of the contract will be specified and it will be recognised in SRV's order backlog. The agreement is subject to the Central Finlands Central Hospital agreement becoming legally valid."Our investment decision in Central Finland is a historical one in local terms as well - the construction of the new hospital is the largest public investment ever carried out in the region," says Juha Kinnunen, Director, Central Finland Health Care District.More information Juha Toimela, SVP Operations in Finland ,+ 358 40 594 5473, juha.toimela@srv.fi Kimmo Kurki, procuction manager, + 358 40 705 7266, kimmo.kurki@srv.fi Timo Kauppi, regional manager, + 358 40 592 3008, timo.kauppi@srv.fi Paivi Kauhanen, SVP communications, + 358 50 598 9560, paivi.kauhanen@srv.fiwww.srv.fiYou also find us on social media: Facebook LinkedIn Twitter InstagramSRV - Building for life


LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Carpet and floor coverings retailer Carpetright Plc. (CPR.L) Tuesday reported that its 12 weeks like-for-like sales in UK edged up 0.7% and was up 2.9% for the financial year to date.



In its trading update, for the 12 weeks ended April 23, the company said like-for-like sales in the Rest of Europe, including Netherlands, Belgium and the Republic of Ireland, in local currency terms, increased 1.9% for the twelve week period, and was up 4.6% for the financial year to date.



The company said its full year profit expectations are unchanged.



For UK, the company now expects full year gross margin to decline around 80 and 100 basis points, an improvement from previous forecast of a decline of 100 - 150 basis points.



Wilf Walsh, Chief Executive, said, 'The UK business continued to make progress in the final quarter, against strong comparatives in the prior year and in a market which was increasingly competitive. Against this background, we have delivered two year compound like-for-like sales growth in excess of 10% and, having rebalanced our promotional activity, are pleased to report revised gross margin guidance for the full year of a decline of around 80-100 basis points, an improvement on the previous range.'



Trading in the Rest of Europe continues in line with expectations.



The company will report its preliminary results for the financial year ending April 30 on June 28.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
26 April 2016

ATLANTIS JAPAN GROWTH FUND LIMITED

Up-dated PIRC Recommendation

Atlantis Japan Growth Fund Limited (the "Company") notes that Pensions & Investment Research Consultants Ltd (PIRC), the independent shareholder advisory group, has updated its report following the publication of LIM's letter to Shareholders on 19 April 2016. In its up-dated report:

PIRC notes the Company has "effective discount control mechanisms in place";

PIRC is supportive of the lead fund manager change; and

PIRC continues to recommend that Shareholders vote against LIM's Resolution.

As announced on 20 April 2016 and 21 April 2016 respectively, Glass, Lewis & Co., LLC (Glass Lewis) and Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc. (ISS), two other independent shareholder advisory groups, have also recommended that Shareholders vote against LIM's Resolution.

The Board also notes LIM's market update on 25 April 2016 and makes the following points:

The Company focuses on small and mid-cap stocks, but its investment policy permits it to invest in any Japanese stocks, irrespective of size. Accordingly, the Company's benchmark is TOPIX, and not the MSCI Japan SMC Index. As LIM stated in its letter to Shareholders, Atlantis Japan has tracked TOPIX over 1 and 3 years and beaten it over 5 years.

Recognising there to be room for improvement in the Company's more recent performance, the Board had previously announced a transition towards a change of lead fund manager. That was before LIM requisitioned the EGM - the requisition simply resulted in the Board bringing forward the date for completing the transition and the appointment of Taeko Setaishi as lead fund manager with effect from 1 May 2016.

LIM has described Ms. Setaishi's existing open-ended fund as having delivered "excellent results". Ms Setaishi intends to take advantage of the Company's closed-end structure with the objective of providing superior investment returns, relative to her open-ended fund, over the longer term. According to PIRC, "the appointment of the new lead fund manager is considered appropriate".

The Board has been pro-active in tackling the issues of a high discount, low liquidity and a shrinking in size - in particular, introducing:

- the redemption facility and the discount control mechanism to increase liquidity and maintain an average single digit discount - according to PIRC, the Company "appears to have effective discount control mechanisms in place as, since March 2013, the Shares have traded at an average discount of 8.0%", which is narrower than the average discount for its peer group of 9.5%; and

- the embedded subscriptions right mechanism as a means for growing the Company (an increase in Share price of just c.3% by 30 September 2016 is expected to lead to a 20% increase in the size of the Company, with similar opportunities to increase the Company's size in each of the next 3 years).

The Board provides the breadth of expertise required to run the Company effectively and is being refreshed. Noel Lamb, Chairman, was appointed to the Board in 2011 and became chairman in 2014. Philip Ehrmann was appointed to the Board in 2013. Andrew Martin Smith, who has been a director for 13 years, is retiring at this year's AGM and the Company is using a highly regarded specialist in non-executive director searches to assist it in the process of appointing his successor.

The Board unanimously recommends that Shareholders VOTE AGAINST LIM'S RESOLUTION at the extraordinary general meeting of the Company to be held on 3 May 2016.

Shareholders are reminded that the latest time and date for receipt of completed Forms of Proxy and CREST electronic proxy instructions for use at EGM is 2.30 p.m. on Sunday, 1 May 2016 (the "Voting Deadline").

Investors who hold their Shares through a non-discretionary broker, manager or other adviser, or via an execution-only platform, should ensure that they submit their voting instructions to their broker, manager or other adviser, or platform, at least several days in advance of the Voting Deadline so that their votes can be cast on the resolution to be proposed at the EGM.

Noel Lamb, Chairman of Atlantis Japan Growth Fund, said: "On behalf of the Board I'd like to reiterate our recommendation that Shareholders vote against LIM's Resolution on 3 May as it is not in the best interests of Shareholders as a whole.

"We have already taken action to manage the Company's discount. In 2013, we introduced the discount control mechanism, which has helped limit the Company's discount to an average of 8.0%, notably narrower than the average discount for its peer group of 9.5%.

"In October 2014, we received strong* shareholder support for the introduction of the embedded subscription right mechanism, which provides a platform for us to grow the Company over time.

"The Board is confident that, with the change of the lead fund manager, the discount control mechanism in place and the continuation vote in 2019, these measures will enable us to further narrow the Share price discount and ultimately grow the Company."

*89.2% of votes cast on the relevant resolution were in favour.

Enquiries

Sue Inglis Cantor Fitzgerald Europe T: +44 (0) 20 7894 8016 James Alexander Aravis Partners T: +44 (0) 20 7036 8172 David Masters /

Henrietta Guthrie Lansons T: +44 (0) 7825 427514

T: +44 (0) 20 7294 3612 Cara De La Mare Northern Trust International Fund Administration Services (Guernsey) Limited T: +44 (0) 1481 745 498

Email: cd109@ntrs.com

Notes

A circular explaining the Board's reasons for recommending Shareholders to VOTE AGAINST LIM'S RESOLUTION and containing the notice convening the extraordinary general meeting of the Company, which will be at the offices of Stephenson Harwood LLP, 1 Finsbury Circus, London EC2M 7SH (commencing at 2.30 p.m.), was posted to Shareholders on 7 April 2016. Copies of that circular are available at www.atlantisjapangrowthfund.com and at www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/nsm. Words and expressions defined in that circular have the same meanings when used in this announcement.
Ontology 5.3's unique dynamic customer and network topology is facilitating the next level of Service Operations which deliver proactive service impacts analysis, improved customer interactions and superior customer experience.

The Partnership between Tieto and Ontology Systems has led to a wide scale transformation project with one of the largest Tier 1s in the Nordics.

"Tieto is a wonderful partner for Ontology. Our customer has deep confidence in Tieto's professionalism, and our own experience of their team is that it is exemplary," commented Benedict Enweani, Ontology's CEO, "this market validation of Tieto as a fully trained, turn-key delivery partner means that Ontology's revolutionary technology is now locally available to even more CSPs."

By deploying Ontology's innovative real-time inventory and topology product, which is based on graph-data and semantic modelling, Tieto is delivering dynamic Change and Service Impact Analysis capabilities which are part of the strategic service operations transformation of a large number of individual OpCos which are being concurrently consolidated to use a single Global Service Assurance Centre.

Service-centric operations are important because they enable proactive customer and service assurance for a wide array of digital and communications services. Centralised processes are driven by Ontology's dynamic, cross-network-domain model of dependencies that includes practically all technologies, services and customers to provide consolidation and extreme accuracy. This linked-data model is easily accessed via either an intuitive search interface or programmatically through an API, allowing personnel and systems to acquire accurate knowledge of customers, services, regions and trouble tickets with unprecedented ease. Automated dynamic and real-time service-centric analysis means that customer service representatives are far better informed, can be proactive and are therefore more helpful and credible to their customers. This directly impacts the bottom line by resulting in quicker dispute resolution, faster provisioning, happier customers and increased up-sell revenue.

Anna Brodd Strategic Partner Manager, Tieto commented:

"This partnership is aligned with our goal of being the leading supplier to our CSP customers. The Tieto-led transitional journey to enable improved and more proactive customer and end-to-end operations allows us to continue to add value to our communications customers by continuing the advancement of efficient Service Operations that deliver precise customer interactions and a pleasing customer experience."

Ontology and Tieto will be available at TMF Live! 2016, 9 12 May 2016, Acropolis Convention Center, 1 Esplanade Kennedy, 06300 Nice, France

Ends -

To read more about Ontology's product and solutions please visit our resource library www.ontology.com/resources

Follow us on Twitter @OntologySystems

Follow us on LinkedIn Ontology Systems

About Ontology Systems

Ontology Systems uses graph-data and semantic modelling to create an end-to-end dynamic view of the network topology and services. This swift, low-risk, flexible approach delivers an up to date picture of difficult and fragmented network, OSS and BSS data.

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in London, UK, Ontology customers include Telenor, T-Mobile, BT, Level 3, Three UK, Vodacom, MBNL, BskyB, Vodafone, Neotel, Internet Solutions and Telkom SA.

About Tieto:

Tieto aims to capture the significant opportunities of the data-driven world and turn them into lifelong value for people, business and society. We aim to be customers' first choice for business renewal by combining our software and services capabilities with a strong drive for co-innovation and ecosystems. www.tieto.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005713/en/

Contacts:

Ontology Systems

Jo Hicks

jo.hicks@ontology.com

+44 (0) 207 239 4937

www.ontology.com

@OntologySystems
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - At 4:30 am ET Tuesday, British Bankers' Association releases U.K. mortgage approvals for March. The number of mortgage approvals are forecast to rise slightly to 46,500 from 45,892 in February. Ahead of the data, the pound rose against majors. As of 4:25 am ET, the pound was trading at 0.7761 against the euro, 1.4173 against the Swiss franc, 1.4545 against the US dollar and 161.18 against the yen. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Mentor Graphics, a leader in electronic design automation (EDA) uses Projectplace (http://www.projectplace.com/) by Planview to significantly improve project collaboration, task management and organization with teams around the globe. During a one-hour webcast on Wednesday, April 27, Brian Tharp, IT PMO manager at Mentor Graphics, and Jason Morio, Projectplace's global segment manager at Planview, will discuss how the company transformed the project collaboration culture within its IT department.

Webinar Title:

"Connecting Global Teams with 21st Century Project Collaboration: A Customer's Story" (https://www.projectplace.com/resources/events/global/connecting-global-teams-with-21st-century-project-collaboration-a-customers-story/?utm_source=businesswire&utm_medium=pr&utm_campaign=na-2016-q2-connecting-global-teams-webinar)

Topic:

Collaboration is a challenging endeavor, especially when teams are globally dispersed. In the past, project members would have to switch between multiple tools not designed with virtual teams in mind. However, a new breed of project collaboration technologies provides a modern solution to empower people to work more effectively. Find out how Mentor Graphics accomplished the following goals using Projectplace:

Eliminate email for project-related activities

Drive consistency in project collaboration and reporting

Replace a host of legacy systems with a single tool and common language for projects

Enable teams to manage commitments and on-call rotations remotely with the mobile application

Speakers:

Brian Tharp, IT PMO Manager at Mentor Graphics: Brian Tharp has worked as a senior IT project manager at Mentor Graphics since January 2001. Tharp's primary role is integration management of mergers and acquisitions, and over the years has integrated over 40 companies in dozens of countries into the Mentor fold.

Jason Morio, Projectplace Global Segment Manager for Planview: In the span of his 18-year career in the technology space, Morio's experience has run the gamut from roles in Fortune 1,000 companies all the way to the "four dudes, a dog and a garage" level of startups. Morio isn't just a spokesperson for project collaboration and the notion of "virtual teams," he lived it in true fashion having run a software development group in Romania from his bedroom desk in Austin. He now works with several multi-faceted virtual teams that span between Austin, Stockholm and Bangalore in his current role at Planview, where he helps companies, large and small, to overcome the challenges they face with the ever-changing nature of collaborative projects.

Date and Time:

Wednesday, April 27 at 10 a.m. CDT/5 p.m. CEST

Registration:

http://bit.ly/1SsAscZ

Social Media:

Follow the conversation on Twitter at @Planview, @Projectplace and @JMProjCollab and use the hashtag collaboration.

About Planview

Planview enables organizations to get the most out of their resources and achieve their goals. We are the global leader in solutions that optimize resources and work, spanning strategic planning, portfolio and resource management, project collaboration, and enterprise architecture. From small teams to large enterprises, companies in every industry use Planview's products: Planview Enterprise, Projectplace, and Troux. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, our 600 employees worldwide serve more than 1,000 enterprise customers and one million users. For more information, visit http://www.planview.com.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005792/en/

Contacts:

Planview

Per Holmlund, Senior Public Relations Manager

+46 73 156 03 12
STOCKHOLM (dpa-AFX) - Sweden's producer prices continued to decline in March, but at a slower pace than in the previous month, figures from Statistics Sweden showed Tuesday. The producer price index fell 3.7 percent year-over-year in March, following a 4.2 percent decrease in February, which was the biggest drop since June 2013. It was the ninth consecutive monthly fall. Export market prices dipped 5.5 percent annually in March and those in the import market went down by 6.1 percent. Prices in the domestic market also dropped 1.8 percent. On a monthly basis, producer prices rose 0.8 percent in March, reversing a 0.1 percent slight decrease in the preceding month. It was the first increase in seven months. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - AstraZeneca (AZN.L, AZN) Tuesday announced that it has entered into a licensing agreement with Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (IRWD) for the exclusive US rights to Zurampic (lesinurad). Under the terms of the agreement, Ironwood will acquire exclusive US rights to Zurampic. In addition, Ironwood will gain the exclusive US rights to the fixed-dose combination of lesinurad and allopurinol. Ironwood will pay AstraZeneca sales-related and other milestone payments of up to $265 million and tiered single-digit royalties on Product Sales. Zurampic was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration or FDA in December 2015, in combination with a xanthine oxidase inhibitor (XOI), for the treatment of hyperuricemia associated with uncontrolled gout. AstraZeneca said it plans to submit the fixed-dose combination programme for regulatory review in the second half of 2016. AstraZeneca will manufacture and supply Zurampic, provide certain support and services to Ironwood and undertake the FDA post-approval commitment on their behalf. Revenue from the licensing agreement will provide AstraZeneca with recurring Externalisation Revenue from any expected milestone payments and tiered single-digit royalty payments on Product Sales. The agreement does not impact AstraZeneca's financial guidance for 2016. Gout is a serious, progressive and debilitating form of inflammatory arthritis. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
BAAR, Switzerland, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Ready to benefit from global growth as 100 % owner of Airolux

ATG to acquire Resilux's 50% stake in Airolux joint venture

Full control of Airolux allows ATG to reach its next level of growth by increasing production and enhancing its organizational footprint

ATG looks forward to expanding the use of its revolutionary and worldwide patented Airopack technology to offer leading fast-moving consumer goods companies faster, better and cheaper solutions

ATG and Resilux to enter into a Global Preferred Supply Agreement of PET preforms

ATG will commence preparation for a share capital increase to implement its strategic partnership with Apollo

Airopack Technology Group AG ("ATG" or the "Group") is pleased to announce it has reached an agreement regarding the acquisition of 50% of the Airolux AG ("Airolux") joint venture currently owned by Resilux NV ("Resilux"). The acquisition will allow ATG to fully exploit ATG's Airopack technology and unlock its growth potential, reduce cost price, enhance time to market and improve the organizational footprint.

ATG will pay a cash consideration of 25 million to acquire Resilux's 50% stake in Airolux. ATG will also repay Resilux's outstanding shareholder loans and financial debts to Airolux of around 37 million. Furthermore, ATG will enter into a global long-term supply agreement with Resilux under which Resilux will have the first right to supply PET preforms to ATG.

Full ownership of Airolux was a key condition to complete the transaction announced in December in which ATG enters in a strategic partnership with funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management, LLC (NYSE:APO) (together with its consolidated subsidiaries, "Apollo").

Commenting on the announcement, Quint Kelders, CEO of ATG, said: "We are extremely pleased to be reaching an agreement with Resilux. This agreement allows us to accelerate on our strategy to further become a key supplier to fast-moving consumer good companies. Our Airopack technology is well developed and ready to be used for large-scale production and various applications. Together with Apollo we can further revolutionize the packaging industry by making dispensers cleaner, safer and more cost effective."

Last year ATG had its breakthrough in the commercial market when its revolutionary technology was embraced by one of the world's leading consumer brands. ATG has now the availability of additional investments and strategic support from Apollo. The company has a clear strategy to be able to provide supply close to where key customers need it as well as the ability to ensure a cost efficient procurement approach which will benefit its customers packaging needs. Next to this the Airopack technology is available for all kinds of applications for products that today still rely on metal and have environmental impact. ATG plans to start two new Airopack Ready to Fill manufacturing sites in the course of 2016; one in North America and another one in The Netherlands.

Airopack Technology Group AG is a leading provider of innovative mechanical and pressure-controlled dispensing packaging technologies and systems. Its customers include worldwide manufacturers and suppliers of cosmetics, body care, pharmaceutical and food products.

The revolutionary and worldwide patented Airopack(R) technology offers a safe, all-plastic pressurized dispenser that is environmentally and planet friendly. With deliveries to the world's leading consumer brands, Airopack Technology Group reached a key milestone in 2015 with respect to commercial market entry when its technology was embraced by one of the world's leading consumer brands.

Airopack Technology Group, listed at the SIX Swiss exchange, is based in Waalwijk, The Netherlands, home to its Global Management, Research & Development and Customer Service functions. In addition, it runs a Full Service Filling operation in Heist-op-den-Berg, Belgium, and a Ready to Fill manufacturing facility in Glarus Nord, Switzerland. Airopack Technology Group plans to start and operate two new Airopack Ready to Fill Manufacturing sites; one in North America and another one in the Netherlands, in the course of 2016.

The shares of the company are listed on the Swiss Reporting Standard of the SIX Swiss Exchange since 2010. (Ticker: AIRN / ISIN: CH0242606942).

http://www.airopackgroup.com
HURLEY, England, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Licence marks first combination foam spray for plaque psoriasis: Enstilar (calcipotriol/betamethasone dipropionate) 50 micrograms/g + 0.5mg/g cutaneous foam

LEO Pharma today announced that it has received Marketing Authorisation (MA) for Enstilar for the topical treatment of plaque psoriasis in patients 18 years of age or older in the UK.[1]

The application for MA licence was based on on the pivotal Phase 3a PSO-FAST study[2], which evaluated the efficacy and safety profile across a four week period versus placebo, and a Phase 2 MUSE safety profile study[3]. In the PSO-FAST clinical trial, over half (53.3%) of patients treated with Enstilar were "Clear" or "Almost Clear" by Week 4 as measured by the Physician's Global Assessment (PGA) improvement score, compared to 4.8% in the placebo arm of the study.[2] Additionally, more than half of patients treated with Enstilar achieved a 75% improvement in Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) score from baseline.[2]

"Receiving Marketing Authorisation for Enstilar is a great step forward for people living with psoriasis and LEO Pharma," comments Geraldine Murphy, Managing Director of LEO Pharma UK and Ireland. "Due to the innovative foam spray delivery, Enstilar is easy-to-apply and a offers a convenient, effective and generally well-tolerated new treatment option for people living with plaque psoriasis in the UK."[3],[4]

Enstilar was developed to treat patients with plaque psoriasis[1] - the most common clinical form of psoriasis.[5] In the UK, around 1.8 million people have psoriasis.[6]

Data shows that Enstilar is an effective topical combination (calcipotriol/betamethasone dipropionate) treatment and is generally well-tolerated[3], with some patients in clinical trials experiencing visible signs of improvement within the first week, and more than half achieving treatment success after a four-week period.[2]

Marketing Authorisation is anticipated in the other European countries involved in this regulatory procedure, including Ireland.

Notes to editors

About Enstilar

Enstilar (calcipotriol/betamethasone dipropionate) is a topical, alcohol-free, foam spray treatment for all severities of plaque psoriasis in patients who are 18 years or older.[1] It is designed to provide patients with a convenient treatment option that can be easily applied.[4] In clinical trials, the foam spray was generally well-tolerated and provided relief from psoriasis symptoms, including itch.[2],[3] Patients treated with the new product in clinical trials experienced visible signs of improvement within the first week, and more than half achieving treatment success after a four-week period.[2]

About Psoriasis

Psoriasis is a chronic, inflammatory skin disease, which is frequently accompanied by multiple physical and/or psychological comorbidities, such as psoriatic arthritis, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and depression.[7]

Psoriasis is estimated to affect up to 3% of the population of the UK.[6] 80% of patients are affected by plaque psoriasis - the most common type of psoriasis.[5]

Topical treatments can be used as first-line therapies for the majority of patients with psoriasis.[8]

For more information about psoriasis visit our QualityCare [ TM ] website at: http://www.qualitycarebyleo.co.uk

website at: http://www.qualitycarebyleo.co.uk For practical advice to make small changes that can have a big impact on psoriasis, download the MyPso app at the Apple App Store or Google Play

About LEO Pharma

LEO Pharma helps people achieve healthy skin. By offering care solutions to patients in more than 100 countries globally, the company supports people in managing their skin conditions.

Founded in 1908 and owned by the LEO Foundation, LEO Pharma has devoted decades of research and development to delivering products and solutions to people suffering from skin diseases.

LEO Pharma is headquartered in Denmark and employs around 4,800 people worldwide. The UK/IE affiliate is headquartered in Hurley, Berkshire.

For more information about LEO Pharma UK/IE, visit http://www.leo-pharma.co.uk.

References

Enstilar SmPC; UK Available http://www.mhra.gov.uk/home/groups/spcpil/documents/spcpil/con1461299716483.pdf. Last Accessed April 2016 Leonardi C, et al. Efficacy and Safety of Calcipotriene Plus Betamethasone Dipropionate Aerosol Foam in Patients With Psoriasis Vulgaris - a Randomized Phase III Study (PSO-FAST). Journal of Drugs in Dermatology 2015; 14:12 Taraska V, et al. A Novel Aerosol Foam Formulation of Calcipotriol and Betamethasone Has No Impact on HPA Axis and Calcium Homeostasis in Patients With Extensive Psoriasis Vulgaris. Journal of Cutaneous Medicine and Surgery 2015; 1-8 Koo J, et al. Superior efficacy of calcipotriene and betamethasone dipropionate aerosol foam versus ointment in patients with psoriasis vulgaris - A randomized phase II study. Journal of Dermatological Treatment 2015; 1471-1753 American Academy of Dermatology. Psoriasis. Available https://www.aad.org/media/stats/conditions/psoriasis. Last accessed April 2016 Psoriasis Association. About Psoriasis. Available https://www.psoriasis-association.org.uk/pages/view/about-psoriasis. Last accessed April 2016 National Psoriasis Foundation. Comorbidities associatied with psoriatic disease. Available https://www.psoriasis.org/about-psoriasis/related-conditions. Last accessed April 2016 Psoriasis Assocation. Topical Treatments. Available https://www.psoriasis-association.org.uk/pages/view/about-psoriasis/treatments/first-line-treatments. Last accessed April 2016

Date of preparation: April 2016

Job code: 1070/00036c
DUBAI, UAE, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai and The Big Heart Foundation, an initiative of Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi, Wife of His Highness the Ruler of Sharjah and UNHCR Eminent Advocate for Refugee Children, are working together to treat a three year old Syrian girl called Salma Mustafa Asaad, aged three and was born with around two thirds of one of her eyelids missing, due to a rare condition called Congenital Eyelid Coloboma. This is where the eyelid and eyebrow are cleft and need repair- her right eye is healthy.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/359890 )



The first of a series of surgical procedures to correct this was recently completed successfully at Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai by a specialist oculoplastic team, led by Consultant Ophthalmic & Oculoplastic Surgeon Dr. Yassir Abou-Rayyah. They removed eyelid tissue from her lower lid and grafted it in the upper lid to close the defect. Salma is recovering from the procedure at present and will require a series of further specialist eye surgeries planned over the next 12-18 months.

Salma's father, Mustafa Ahmed, said: "I want to extend my profound thanks to Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher Al Qasimi, Wife of His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, and The Big Heart Foundation and all its administrators, and to the doctors and medical staff at Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai and especially Dr. Yassir Abou-Rayyah, for facilitating this eye surgery for my daughter Salma, and bringing joy and happiness to our hearts."

Mariam Al Hammadi, Director of Salam Ya Seghar, added: "Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi seeks to alleviate the suffering of children and refugees wherever and whenever her Highness can. It is through her Highnesses' The Big Heart Foundation (TBHF) that the surgery for little Salma can be provided in collaboration with Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai. It is a beautiful thing to give a child her sight back, it is a gift that will last her lifetime. TBHF always strives to provide support to children in need through various charitable projects and relief campaigns, and we hope that this assistance will reach all people who need our help and support."

Commenting on the medical condition and treatment, Dr Yassir Abou-Rayyah, Consultant Ophthalmic & Oculoplastic Surgeon, said: "Salma has a rare congenital disease, which severely affects her vision. The surgical team was very pleased with the first stage surgery to separate her eyelid from the eye globe and her condition is now very stable, and we now look forward to seeing Salma grow and develop over the next few months, before we continue the treatment to fully restore her upper and lower eyelids. We are very optimistic about the outcome because she is so young and still growing, and look forward to helping Salma achieve normal healthy vision.

Moorfields is delighted to work with The Big Heart Foundation to help Salma and her parents through a challenging series of surgeries, as part of our charitable work in the region and after her referral from the Palestine Children's Relief Fund."

Yara Al Saleh, UAE Chapter President, Palestine Children's Relief Fund, concluded: "Our primary goal is to identify and treat every child in need in the Middle East region, regardless of their nationality, religion, race or gender. We are doing the best we can to make a positive difference in children's lives and bring back the hope and smiles to their faces again. We are pleased to have great volunteers and partners like Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai and Salam Ya Seghar to support us in the treatment of Salma and many others."

Notes to editors:

About the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF)

A registered 501(c)(3) non-governmental organization.

The PCRF is a non-political, non-profit organization established in 1991 to address the medical and humanitarian crisis facing children in the Middle East. Today the PCRF provides medical and humanitarian aid for hundreds of children living in the Middle East region - regardless of their nationality, religion or gender.

The PCRF sendsmedical volunteer teamsto Palestine,Lebanon and Jordanto treat children in urgent surgical need and train local medical personnel. More than 20,000 children already benefitted from this program.

Children who cannot be treated locally are provided with cost-freetreatment abroad. Since 1991 the PCRF has sent over 1,500 childrenfrom Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Iraq oversees for free medical care, which is provided by supporters in North and South America, Europe, Asia and other parts of the Middle East.

The PCRF also runs numeroushumanitarian programsfor children in need, especially the ones suffering in war-torn Syria and Gaza through providing food, clothes, heaters, wheelchairs, eyeglasses, cancer medicine and other medical supplies.

To learn more visit:

http://www.pcrf.net

Facebook: PCRFUAE

Twitter: PCRF_UAE

Instagram: PCRF_UAE

About The Big Heart Foundation

Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi, Wife of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Ruler of Sharjah was appointed as UNHCR's first Eminent Advocate for Refugee Children in May 2013. In this role, Sheikha Jawaher helped increase public awareness about refugees and the work of UNHCR, with a focus on children. Her previous work with charities and her fund-raising initiatives are testament to her commitment to helping relieve the suffering of people affected by war, especially women and children. After the huge success of the Big Heart Campaign during its two years, it was re-launched by Her Highness in 2015 as an independent foundation. The Big Heart Foundation has currently three divisions supporting childhood cancer, children in Palestine and refugee children and their families. In future new philanthropic initiatives for the family and children may be added to the foundation's scope of work as per Her Highness's directives.

About Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai

Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai (MEHD) is the first overseas branch of Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, the oldest and one of the largest centres for ophthalmic treatment, teaching and research in the world. Located at the Al Razi Medical Complex in Dubai Health Care City, the facility provides day case surgery and outpatient diagnostic and treatment services, for a variety of surgical and non-surgical eye conditions. MEHD will also raise standards for research and teaching in the region. MEHD is owned and managed by the NHS Foundation Trust, and maintains close links with London, to ensure that patients in the GCC receive the best eye care treatment in the world.

Issued on behalf of Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai by WPR.
TOKYO, Apr 26, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - Showa Denko ("SDK"; TSE:4004) announced on February 10, 2016 its decision to introduce a performance-linked stock compensation scheme called Board Benefit Trust (BBT) ("the Scheme") that includes the establishment of a trust ("the Trust") in accordance with a trust agreement with Mizuho Trust & Banking Co., Ltd. At the 107th Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders ("the General Meeting of Shareholders") on March 30, 2016, SDK's shareholders approved the introduction of the Scheme as a part of performance-linked variable compensation for directors. Today, SDK resolved at its board meeting that the details of the Scheme should be as follows.1. Outline of the Trusti. Name: Board Benefit Trust (BBT)ii. Settlor: Showa Denko K.K.iii. Trustee: Mizuho Trust & Banking Co., Ltd. (Re-trustee: Trust & Custody Services Bank, Ltd.)iv. Beneficiaries: Resigned Directors and Corporate Officers meeting beneficiary requirements set forth in the Director Share Grant Regulationsv. Trust administrator: A third party with no interest-based relationship with Showa Denko K.K.vi. Type of trust: Trust of money other than cash trust (third-party-benefit trust)vii. Conclusion date for the trust agreement: May 11, 2016viii. Date of money entrustment: May 11, 2016ix. Trust period: From May 11, 2016 to the termination of the Trust. (No specific expiration date is set for the Trust, which will remain in effect as long as the Scheme continues to be in force.)2. Prospected acquisition of shares in SDK by the Trusti. Class of shares to be acquired: Ordinary shares of SDKii. Entrusted amount of funds to acquire shares in SDK: 400 million yeniii. The maximum number of shares to be acquired: 3,000,000 sharesiv. Method of acquiring shares in SDK: Stock exchange transactionsv. Period of acquisition: From May 11, 2016 to May 30, 2016 (Planned)3. Structure of the Schemei. SDK will obtain the approval of the General Meeting of Shareholders for the director compensation under the Scheme, and establish the Director Share Grant Regulations within the scope of the framework approved at the meeting concerned.ii. SDK will entrust funds to the trustee within the scope approved by the resolution of the General Meeting of Shareholders stipulated in item (i) above.iii. The Trust will use funds entrusted to it, as stipulated in item (ii) above, as underlying funds to acquire shares in SDK by way of the stock market or by underwriting shares of SDK's treasury stock.iv. SDK will grant applicable points to Directors and Corporate Officers pursuant to the Director Share Grant Regulations.v. The Trust, obeying instructions from the trust administrator independent from SDK, will not exercise the voting rights of SDK shares held in the trust account.vi. The Trust will grant shares in SDK to each of the resigned Directors and Corporate Officers meeting beneficiary requirements set forth in the Director Share Grant Regulations ("Beneficiaries"), based on the number of points assigned to the beneficiary; provided, however, that, with regard to a certain portion of the points, the Trust will pay an amount of money corresponding to the prevailing market price of SDK shares to any Director or Corporate Officer meeting relevant requirements set forth in the above-mentioned regulations.Press release: http://bit.ly/1qON8ybAbout Showa Denko K.K.Showa Denko K.K. ("SDK"; TSE:4004,US:SHWDF) is a major manufacturer and marketer of chemical products serving a wide range of fields ranging from heavy industry to the electronic and computer industries. The Petrochemicals Sector provides cracker products such as ethylene and propylene, the Chemicals Sector provides industrial and high-performance gasses and chemicals and high-purity gases and chemicals for the semiconductor industry, and the Inorganics Sector provides ceramics products such as alumina, abrasive, refractory and graphite electrodes and fine carbon products. Today, the Aluminum Sector provides aluminum materials and high-value-added fabricated aluminum, the Electronics Sector provides HD media, compound semiconductors such as ultra high-bright LEDs and rare earth magnetic alloys, and the Advanced Battery Materials Department (ABM) provides lithium-ion battery components. For more information, please visit www.sdk.co.jp/english/.Source: Showa Denko K.K.Copyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
Worksoft in the top three of every report use case, including mobile applications and responsive design

Worksoft, a leading global provider of automation software for high-velocity business process testing and discovery, today announced that a new Gartner report ranks Worksoft No. 1 in the Packaged Applications Use Case for Software Test Automation. The industry report, "Critical Capabilities for Software Test Automation,"1 provides an in-depth technical review of software test automation capabilities of 12 automation solution providers in three categories: Packaged Applications, Responsive Design and Mobile Applications.

As part of the study, Gartner outlines major use cases, details functional areas and rates each vendor's ability to support typical use-case scenarios. Worksoft is the only vendor ranked in the top three of every use case.

"We feel the new Gartner report reinforces our view that Worksoft's end-to-end approach is market-leading and unique. We believe that no other platform matches Worksoft's capabilities," said Jim Kent, CEO, Worksoft. "A key differentiator is Worksoft Analyze, which speeds up test building and allows companies to efficiently build and maintain an enormous enterprise-level portfolio of business process tests," he said.

Gartner states, "Automation of software testing is not new, yet it is becoming more critical as organizations become digital. Functional test automation focuses on the automation of testing in a way that simulates the way a real user would interact with an application by driving the user interface (UI)."

"The ability to ensure that the 'latest update' hasn't broken the system via an automated regression suite reduces overall costs and can boost confidence," according to Gartner.

With Worksoft, companies shorten project timelines by 40% or more, deploy business-critical software with improved quality assurance, increase the pace of innovation with on-time delivery of new enterprise software, reduce costs by eliminating slow manual testing, and ensure business process quality on a 24/7/365 basis.

About Worksoft Inc.

Worksoft is a leading global provider of automation software for high-velocity business process testing and discovery. Enterprises worldwide use Worksoft intelligent automation to innovate faster, lower technology risk, reduce costs, improve quality, and deeply understand their real end-to-end business processes. Global 5000 companies across all industries choose Worksoft for high speed process discovery and functional testing of digital, web, cloud, mobile, big data, and dozens of enterprise applications, including SAP, Oracle, and Salesforce.com. For more information, contact Worksoft at info@worksoft.com or visit www.worksoft.com.

[1] Gartner "Critical Capabilities for Software Test Automation," by Joachim Herschmann, Thomas E. Murphy, and Maritess Sobejana, April 7, 2016.

Gartner Disclaimer

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005318/en/

Contacts:

Worksoft Inc.

Debra Dekelbaum, +1-972-993-0425

info@worksoft.com


BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The British pound strengthened against the other major currencies in the European session on Tuesday, as European stock market rebounded after corporate earnings results.



The U.K.'s FTSE 100 index is currently up 0.47 percent or 29.55 points at 6,290, France's CAC 40 index is up 0.50 percent or 22.59 points at 4,568 and Germany's DAX is up 0.56 percent or 57.53 points at 10,351.



However, investors remain cautious ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve's two-day policy meeting starting later today.



The Federal Reserve is not expected to lift rates at this meeting, but the markets will be looking for clues on whether a June rate hike is on the table.



The Bank of Japan meets this week and expectations that it would help banks lend by offering a negative rate on some loans are rising.



The Reserve Bank of New Zealand also meets on policy where possibilities of a rate cut in the near-future might be discussed.



In other economic news, data from the British Bankers' Association showed that the number of loans approved for house purchase dropped to 45,096 from 45,646 in February. Economists had forecast 47,000 approvals for March. The March approvals was the lowest since December, when they totaled 43,675. In January, approvals were 46,653.



In the Asian trading today, the pound held steady against its major rivals.



In the European session, the pound rose to more than a 2-1/2-month high of 1.4578 against the U.S. dollar, from an early low of 1.4478. The pound may test resistance near the 1.47 region.



Against the euro and the Swiss franc, the pound advanced to near 1-1/2-month highs of 0.7746 and 1.4197 from early lows of 0.7783 and 1.4107, respectively. If the pound extends its uptrend, it is likely to find resistance around 0.76 against the euro and 1.44 against the franc.



The pound edged up to 161.53 against the yen, from an early low of 160.46. On the upside, 165.00 is seen as the next resistance level for the pound.



Looking ahead, U.S. durable goods orders for March, S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. house price index for February, the Conference Board's U.S. consumer confidence index for April and the Richmond Fed's regional manufacturing index for April are due in the New York session.



At 8:55 am ET, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz is expected to speak at the Canada-US Securities Summit in New York.



At 1:00 pm ET, Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe will speak at the Ross Goobey Memorial Lecture in London.



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LONDON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- At M2M World Congress in London, Huawei shared its Narrow-Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) strategy and innovations to advance IoT applications and smart cities that deliver social and economical benefits. Huawei also demonstrated how it is building an ecosystem that works together to realize the full potential of NB-IoT, including its collaboration with Vodafone to launch the Vodafone NB-IoT Open Lab in Newbury, U.K.

On the ecosystem development front, on April 25, 2016, Huawei and Vodafone announced the launch of the Vodafone NB-IoT Open Lab, which aims to help third parties conduct services including network solution verification, new application innovation, device integration, business model research and product compliance certification to accelerate the application advancement within the vertical industries and promote the development of the industry chain.

NB-IoT technology has emerged as the Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) standardized by 3GPP, which provides a wide array of significant advantages including supporting more than 100,000 connections per cell, a long battery life of 10 years, deep coverage with a 20db gain over GSM networks, enhanced security supported by two-way authentication and strong interface encryption, as well as providing carrier stability to enable IoT applications and smart cities.

Currently, Huawei offers a comprehensive portfolio of IoT solutions. In addition to traditional network equipment, Huawei also offers a unified business management platform and communication chipsets to provide carriers with effective support for their commercial deployment of NB-IoT solutions.

"IoT applications represent powerful opportunities to transform the way businesses and cities connect to create vast social and economic benefits. However capturing the full potential of NB-IoT applications such as smart metering and smart parking requires innovation and collaboration around NB-IoT to ensure secure, stable and robust connectivity," said Paul Scanlan, President of Business & Network Consulting, Huawei. "Together with our partners, Huawei is applying groundbreaking NB-IoT innovation to solve core challenges around IoT applications and smart cities. As a platinum sponsor of M2M Congress, we believe this is an important forum bringing together industry experts to discuss innovation and best practices for sustainable development of NB-IoT technology to enable IoT applications and smart cities and ultimately to build a better connected world."

To date, Vodafone, Huawei and u-blox have already completed the successful commercial trial of the pre-standard NB-IoT technology. By successfully integrating the technology into the operator's existing mobile network in Spain, the carrier will be able to offer long-distance remote metering services to its users in the future. Huawei's chipset and software supported this successful trial of the pre-NB IoT technology which realized narrowband communications in carrier frequency. The deployment of NB-IoT in licensed cellular spectrum means it is secure and less susceptible to interference and can provide a better guarantee of service. Further trials and large-scale commercial deployments are planned by the companies.

Moving forward, Huawei will continue to invest in innovation and is committed to building a robust, open ecosystem to drive NB-IoT technology innovation and commercialization. Together with its strategic partners such as Vodafone, Huawei will lead the development of NB-IoT connectivity across a number of different verticals including utilities, agriculture, manufacturing, wearables and transport to create a better connected world.

About Huawei

Huawei is a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider. Driven by customer-centric innovation and open partnerships, Huawei has established an end-to-end ICT solutions portfolio that gives customers competitive advantages in telecom and enterprise networks, devices and cloud computing.

For more information, please visit Huawei online at www.huawei.com or follow us on:

http://www.linkedin.com/company/Huawei

http://www.twitter.com/Huawei

http://www.facebook.com/Huawei

http://www.google.com/+Huawei

http://www.youtube.com/Huawei




26 April 2016 AIM: AAU



DAKOTA - LYNAS FIND LITHIUM PROJECT UPDATE Ariana Resources plc ('Ariana' or 'the Company'), is pleased to provide an update on the exceptional drilling results from its 7.64% strategic investment in Dakota Minerals' Lynas Find Lithium Project, in the Pilgangoora region of Western Australia. The results included 35m @ 2.1%, 35m @ 1.75% and 40m @ 1.52% Li(2)O, with an overall weighted average grade of 1.75% Li(2)O. These results confirm the continuation of the Pilgangoora system, now the second largest hard rock lithium deposit in the world, into Dakota's Lynas Find Lithium Project.



Full details of the announcement included details of the drilling programme and highlights can be found through the following link:



http://dakotaminerals.com.au/index.php/asx- announcements/2016/download?path=1547787.pdf



Dr. Kerim Sener, Managing Director, commented:



'Our team are highly encouraged by Dakota Minerals' excellent maiden drilling results on the Lynas Find project in the Pilgangoora region of Western Australia. In the interests of Ariana's shareholders, we are leveraging our exploration targeting capabilities and our ability to commercialise new project opportunities outside of the gold sector. The synergy between global gold bearing systems and those of the emerging and highly exciting technology-metals sector are proving to be an excellent fit for the company.



The Ariana team is continuing to identify further technology-metals projects, with a special focus on lithium. We expect to commercialise these projects according to the model applied to Dakota Minerals.'



Contacts:



Ariana Resources plc Tel: +44 (0) 20 7407 3616



Michael de Villiers, Chairman



Kerim Sener, Managing Director



Beaumont Cornish Limited Tel: +44 (0) 20 7628 3396



Roland Cornish / Felicity Geidt



Beaufort Securities Limited Tel: +44 (0) 20 7382 8300



Jon Belliss



Loeb Aron & Company Ltd. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7628 1128



John Beresford-Peirse



Editor's Notes



Competent Person: Dr Kerim Sener, BSc (Hons), MSc, PhD, is the Managing Director of Ariana Resources plc. A graduate of the University of Southampton in Geology, he also holds a Master's degree from the Royal School of Mines (Imperial College, London) in Mineral Exploration and a doctorate from the University of Western Australia. He is a Fellow of The Geological Society of London and has worked in geological research and mineral consultancy in Africa, Australia and Europe. He has read and approved the technical disclosure in this regulatory announcement.



About Ariana Resources:



Ariana is an exploration and development company focused on epithermal gold- silver and porphyry copper-gold deposits in Turkey. The Company is developing a portfolio of prospective licences selected on the basis of its in-house geological and remote-sensing database, on its own in western Turkey and in Joint Venture with Eldorado Gold Corporation in north-eastern Turkey. Eldorado owns 51% of this joint venture and are fully funding all exploration work on the JV properties, while Ariana owns 49%. The total resource inventory within this JV is 1.09 million ounces of gold.



The Company's flagship assets are its Kiziltepe and Tavsan gold projects which form the Red Rabbit Gold Project. Both contain a series of prospects, within two prolific mineralised districts in the Western Anatolian Volcanic and Extensional (WAVE) Province in western Turkey. This Province hosts the largest operating gold mines in Turkey and remains highly prospective for new porphyry and epithermal deposits. These core projects, which are separated by a distance of 75km, are presently being assessed as to their economic merits and now form part of a Joint Venture with Proccea Construction Co. The total resource inventory at the Red Rabbit Project stands at 475,000 ounces of gold equivalent.



Beaufort Securities Limited and Loeb Aron & Company Ltd. are joint brokers to the Company and Beaumont Cornish Limited is the Company's Nominated Adviser.



For further information on Ariana you are invited to visit the Company's website at www.arianaresources.com.



This announcement is distributed by GlobeNewswire on behalf of GlobeNewswire clients. The owner of this announcement warrants that: (i) the releases contained herein are protected by copyright and other applicable laws; and (ii) they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.



Source: Ariana Resources plc via GlobeNewswire [HUG#2006805]



B085SD5R8



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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The Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of AB Amber Grid (hereinafter - the Company) held on 26 April 2016 adopted the following resolutions:1) Auditor's report on AB Amber Grid financial statements for 2015 and AB Amber Grid Annual Report 2015.DECIDED:When taking decisions regarding approval of AB Amber Grid financial statements for 2015 and the AB Amber Grid Annual Report 2015, to take note of the opinion presented in the Independent auditor's report to the shareholders of AB Amber Grid.2) Information of the Audit Committee.DECIDED:To take note of the information presented by the Audit Committee on its activities.3) Annual Report of AB Amber Grid for 2015.DECIDED:To approve Annual Report of AB Amber Grid for 2015.4) Approval of AB Amber Grid financial statements for 2015.DECIDED:To approve AB Amber Grid financial statements for 2015.5) Approval of AB Amber Grid Profit (Loss) Allocation for 2015.DECIDED:To approve AB Amber Grid Profit (Loss) Allocation for 2015.6) The election of the Audit Company and determining the terms of compensation for audit services for the year 2016.DECIDED:To elect UAB PricewaterhouseCoopers as the Audit Company to perform the audit of AB Amber Grid financial statements as of 31 December 2016 (drawn up in accordance with the International Financial Reporting Standards and of the Annual Report and regulated activity financial statements prepared in accordance with the requirements established by the Law on Natural Gas and secondary legislation) and to set remuneration for the services of the audit of the financial statements and related statements at EUR 15,910 (excluding VAT).7) Amendments to the Articles of Association.DECIDED:1. To adopt the new version of the Articles of Association of AB Amber Grid (as per attachment). 2. To authorise the CEO of AB Amber Grid, Saulius Bilys, either in person or through a proxy, to sign the amended version of the Articles of Association of AB Amber Grid and to take any and all actions required for the registration of the Articles of Association with the Register of Legal Entities of the Republic of Lithuania.8) Election of the Board of Directors.DECIDED:1. Given the fact that the term in office of the Board of Directors (as elected in accordance with the Articles of Association of AB Amber Grid on 11 June 2013) expired before the date of the present General Meeting of Shareholders, to elect a new Board of Directors of AB Amber Grid consisting of the following members:- Nemunas Biknius,- Saulius Bilys,- Nerijus Datkunas,- Vytautas Ruolia,- Rimvydas Stilinis.2. Given the fact that the present General Meeting of Shareholders has passed the resolution on the adoption of a new version of the Articles of Association of AB Amber Grid providing for a 4-year-term of Board of Directors, upon the registration of the respective amendments of the Articles of Association, the term of the Board of Directors as elected by the present General Meeting of Shareholders, shall be 4 years.9) Abolition of the Audit Committee and repeal of the Regulations for the Formation and Activities of the Audit Committee.DECIDED:In consideration of the fact the term in office of the Board of Directors that was elected on 11 June 2013 expired prior to the date of the present General Meeting of Shareholders, which in accordance with the Regulations for the Formation and Activities of the Audit Committee means also the expiry of the term in office of the Audit Committee that was nominated by the Board of Directors in question, and also in consideration of the fact that in accordance with the newly adopted version of the Articles of Association of AB Amber Grid the functions of the Audit Committee of AB Amber Grid will be carried out by the Audit Committee of the parent company, UAB EPSO-G, to abolish the Audit Committee of AB Amber Grid, with effect as from the date of the registration with the Register of Legal Entities of the Articles of Association as adopted by the present General Meeting of Shareholders, and to repeal the Regulations for the Formation and Activities of the Audit Committee of AB Amber Grid (as adopted by the Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of 11 December 2013).10) Establishing a maximum annual budget for wages of the members of the Board of Directors of AB Amber Grid and concrete wages for members of the Board of Directors, the conclusion of agreements with the members of the Board of Directors regarding their activity in the Board of Directors of AB Amber Grid, the determination of standard terms and conditions of such agreements and the appointment of a person authorised by AB Amber Grid to sign the agreements.DECIDED:With regard to resolutions adopted at the extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders which took place on 30 June 2014 and the provisions of the new version of Articles of Association of AB Amber Grid approved at the present General Meeting of Shareholders:1.1. to approve a maximum annual budget of 36 000.00 (thirty-six thousand euros) for wages of the members of the Board of AB Amber Grid.1.2. to set the following concrete wages for members of the Board:an hourly wage of  50.00 (fifty euros) (before taxes) for activity in the Board of Directors of AB Amber Grid, with a maximum monthly wage not exceeding 1 000.00 (one thousand euros) (before taxes) to be paid to the members of the Board of Directors of AB Amber Grid, except those members who are the employees of UAB EPSO-G, which holds a controlling stake in the Company.1.3. to approve the standard terms and conditions of agreements signed with members and independent members of the Board of Directors of AB Amber Grid on their activity in the Board (enclosed).1.4. to appoint and authorise Director of the Law and Administration Department of AB Amber Grid Tomas Suslavicius immediately, not later than 10 (ten) days following the adoption of this Resolution to sign on behalf of AB Amber Grid agreements with members and chairman of the Board of Directors of AB Amber Grid on their activity in the Board of Directors of AB Amber Grid in accordance with the standard terms and conditions of agreements approved by the Board of Directors of AB Amber Grid under this resolution.Annexes:1. Information of the Audit Committee 2. Confirmation of Responsible Persons 3. Annual Report of AB Amber Grid for 2015, submitted together with the Corporate Governance Report form 4. AB Amber Grid financial statements for 2015. 5. Profit (Loss) Allocation of AB Amber Grid for 2015. 6. Articles of Association of AB Amber Grid. 7. The Standard Terms and Conditions of the Agreement of the Board Member on the activities in the Board of AB Amber Grid. 8. Press release.The individual authorised by AB Amber Grid (the issuer) to provide additional information on the material event:Tomas SuslaviciusDirector of Legal and Administration Departmenttel. +370 5 2327732fax +370 5 236 0850e-mail: t.suslavicius@ambergrid.ltAttachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=558206
HS Orka and Jardboranir have signed a contract for drilling of a 5 km deep, high temperature well at the Reykjanes geothermal field. Jardboranir's biggest drilling rig "Thor" will be used for the project. The well is intended to be the country's deepest and hottest geothermal well, with temperatures up to 500C. Drilling operations are scheduled in the second half of 2016.



HS Orka's existing 2,5 km well at Reykjanes, well 15, will be deepened to around 5 km. The contract realizes the next step of the Icelandic Deep Drilling Project (IDDP), but earlier drilling into superheated steam was conducted in the Krafla field. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate the possibility of harnessing deep hydrothermal high enthalpy reservoirs in order to augment the current conventional geothermal fields. If the chemistry of the superheated steam can be dealt with, the well will be used directly for power production, potentially increasing the output of the Reykjanes plant. If not, the well may be used as an injection well, increasing the output of the existing shallower production wells. New technology will be introduced for the drilling, testing and harnessing the deep well, in collaboration with domestic and international partners.



HS Orka manages the project in cooperation with Statoil in Norway and the partners inside the IDDP consortium. The IDDP project was recently awarded an over 9 million Euro research grant from the European Union research program "Horizon 2020". The project is led by HS Orka in cooperation with, Isor, Landsvirkjun, Georg, Statoil and number of European companies.



THE IDDP project has being ongoing the last 15 years. The consortium consists of the Icelandic power companies HS Orka, Landsvirkjun, Orkuveita Reykjavikur together with the National Energy Authority and Statoil.

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CareSage sets Philips Lifeline apart from the competition by enabling the company to contribute data towards national healthcare objectives by leveraging PERS data

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the personal emergency response systems (PERS) market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Philips Lifeline with the 2015 North America Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Line Strategy Leadership. Philips has taken a major stride forward in product strategy by leveraging anonymized longitudinal patient data gathered from Philips Lifeline monitoring to enrich patient care. Using predictive analytics, Philips CareSage provides analysis of real-time and historical data from healthcare providers and Philips Lifeline to proactively identify patients most likely to need emergency room transport so clinicians can intervene before problems occur, and potentially reducing avoidable hospitalizations. The solution was designed to support the 'triple aim' of healthcare, which is to enhance the patient experience, improve the health of populations and lower the per capita cost of healthcare in the United States.

Logo -http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160421/358645LOGO

The Philips Lifeline suite of solutions has evolved to include GoSafe1, a mobile PERS solution, and HomeSafe, a solution for the traditional at-home user. GoSafe works on the AT&T network and features a mobile help button with AutoAlert and a communicator. Alternatively, HomeSafe presents two options: the standard service that requires the patient to press a button for help and the standard service with AutoAlert, which automatically notifies the contact center if a fall is detected2. Lifeline also offers a response app, which connects to the contact center via a smartphone. All services include 24 x 7 access to help through the Lifeline call center.

In April 2015, Philips Lifeline introduced CareSage, a new predictive analytics engine that combines actionable insights with wearable devices to boost patient care. The first program supported by CareSage offers health organizations alerts regarding the risk of hospital readmission for elderly and chronically ill patients. Philips Lifeline works with the organization to segment the at-risk population, integrate enrollment into the clinician workflow and feed operational reporting and actionable alerts back into the workflow.

"With the introduction of CareSage, Philips Lifeline has endowed their suite of solutions with next-generation capability to harness the data derived from user behavior to create new analytical and predictive features," said Frost & Sullivan Industry Principal Analyst Victor Camlek. "CareSage is built on the Philips HealthSuite digital platform, an open cloud-based platform that allows the creation of the next generation of connected health and clinical IT innovations, , which will aid organizations in designing and capturing data based on their own intervention protocols."

Philips CareSage supports population health management as it collects a variety of data that can build baseline and ongoing information for preventive measures among individual users, as well as establish trends in patient populations.

"CareSage adds reporting capabilities that support the industry's need to transition to value-based models of care," noted Camlek. "By augmenting data capture, analysis and predictive capabilities, Philips Lifeline can extend the use of the solution to a wider pool of healthcare organizations."

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed a comprehensive product line that caters to the breadth of the market it serves. The award recognizes the extent to which the product line meets customer base demands, the overall impact it has in terms of customer value as well as increased market share.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

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Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants.

Our "Growth Partnership" supports clients by addressing these opportunities and incorporating two key elements driving visionary innovation: The Integrated Value Proposition and The Partnership Infrastructure.

The Integrated Value Proposition provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation.

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For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies?

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1 With GoSafe, coverage outside the home is provided where AT&T wireless network coverage is available.

2 AutoAlert does not detect 100% of falls. If able, users should always push the help button if they are able to do so. Button signal range may vary due to differing environmental factors.
PUNE, India, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new market research report "Dental Digital X-ray Market by Product (Digital, Analog), Type (Intraoral, Extraoral (CBCT, Panoramic), Hybrid X-ray), Application (Diagnostic, Therapeutics, Forensic), End User (Dental Clinics, Forensic Laboratories) - Global Forecast to 2020", published by MarketsandMarkets, The global market is expected to reach 3,290.6 Million by 2020 from USD 2,154.0 in 2015, at a CAGR of 8.8% during the forecast period.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )



Browse 174 market data Tables and 46 Figures spread through 194 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Dental Digital X-ray Market"

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/dental-digital-x-ray-market-102002511.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

Factors such as technological advancements, rapidly growing geriatric population, ability of digital systems to reduce diagnosis time and provide improved image quality, growing adoption of cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT), increase in dental disorders, and the growing demand for cosmetic dentistry are propelling the dental digital X-ray imaging market during the forecast period.

In this report, the dental digital X-ray imaging market is segmented on the basis of type, application, end user, and region. On the basis of type, the market is segmented into extraoral X-ray systems and hybrid X-ray systems. The extraoral X-ray systems segment accounted for the largest market share in 2015.

This segment is further categorized into panoramic/cephalometric X-ray systems and cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) systems. The intraoral X-ray systems are further segmented into PSP (Photostimulable phosphor) systems and digital sensors. Digital sensors segment accounted for the largest market share in 2015 and will continue to dominate the market in the forecast period. The large share of this segment can be attributed to the significant reduction in operating time and excellent-quality images obtained from these sensors as compared to PSP systems.

Geographically, the Dental Digital X-ray Market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia, and the Rest of the World (RoW). North America is expected to account for the largest share of this market in 2015. However, the Asian market is expected to grow at the highest CAGR. Growth in the Asian market can be attributed to growth in the geriatric population, focus of emerging and leading market players to expand their presence in the developing Asian markets, rise in disposable income, less stringent regulatory guidelines, improving healthcare infrastructure, and growth in medical tourism in the region.

Talk To Our Research Experts: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalyst.asp?id=102002511

The dental digital X-ray imaging market is highly competitive, encompassing a range of major as well as emerging players. Danaher Corporation (U.S.), Carestream Health, Inc. (U.S.), Sirona Dental Systems, Inc. (U.S.), Planmeca Oy (Finland), Vatech Co. Ltd. (South Korea), LED Medical Diagnostics (Canada), The Yoshida Dental MFG.Co. Ltd. (Japan), Midmark Corporation (U.S.), Air Techniques, Inc. (U.S.), and Cefla s.c. (Italy) are prominent players in this market.

Browse Related Reports:

Dental Imaging Market by Technology (X-ray, CBCT, Intraoral Camera, Optical Imaging), Method (Extraoral, Intraoral), Application (Diagnostic, Therapeutic, Cosmetic, Forensic), End User (Dental Clinic, Dental Labs) - Global Trends & Forecasts to 2019.

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/dental-imaging-market-109621591.html

Dental Equipment Market (Dental Radiology, CAD/CAM, Dental Chairs, Dental Lasers) Current Trends, Opportunities - Global Forecast to 2019.

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/dental-equipments-market-784.html

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CHICAGO, IL--(Marketwired - April 26, 2016) - Spectrem Group today released its newest research study, Financial Behaviors and the Investor's Mindset, a comprehensive report examining ways in which attitudes and viewpoints of wealthy investors are evolving. The study looks at how high net worth investors feel about the current state of their finances, prospects for the future of their children and grandchildren, and explores the underlying values that enabled them to build and grow their family's wealth throughout their lives.

The report looks at wealthy investors' views on the value of a college education, whether they still believe purchasing a home remains an essential strategy for building wealth, and whether they believe their children will have the opportunity to be as successful as they have been.

Additional key findings in the report include:

More than half of Millionaires (with a net worth between $1 million and $5 million) believe their children are better at investing than they are.

Less than 40 percent of Ultra High Net Worth investors (with a net worth between $5 million and $25 million) believe they are better off today than they were one year ago. A slightly higher percentage (but less than half) believe their financial situation will improve over the next 12 months.

Less wealthy investors are more likely to believe a college student should finance their college education and be responsible for paying it back.

A growing percentage of Mass Affluent investors (with a net worth between $100,000 and $1 million) are interested in more conservative investing strategies. Nearly six-in-ten of this year's respondents prefer a guaranteed rate of return and lower risk, compared with 54 percent in the prior year.

All categories of affluent investors cite the political environment as their top concern.

"Providers and their Advisors working with wealthy investors need to be aware of the critical financial issues their clientele believe are most important in their lives," said Spectrem president George H. Walper Jr. "Retirement, taxes, transfer of wealth and concerns about overall market conditions are all areas where advisors can regularly add value to affluent investors. Sharing regular perspectives about these important life milestones and issues can strengthen wealthy investors' ability to make those decisions."

Additional information on the three wealth segment reports examined in the report, as well as information about other Spectrem studies, can be found at Spectrem.com and Spectrem's Millionaire Corner, including:

Education, Savings, Home Ownership Remain Wealthy Investors' Core Values

How Do The Wealthy Handle Household Finances?

About Spectrem Group: Spectrem Group (www.spectrem.com) strategically analyzes its ongoing primary research with investors to assist financial providers and advisors in understanding the Voice of the Investor.

About Millionaire Corner: Spectrem's Millionaire Corner website (www.millionairecorner.com) provides information for investors about investors. With its Best Financial Advisors service, investors can search for financial and investment advisors to assist in growing their wealth.

Contact:

George H. Walper, Jr.

(224) 544-5350

Email contact


- Users can connect, reconnect and disconnect even when flow path is wet and pressurized

- New Lynx CDR connectors facilitate faster and more economic biopharma fluid management

DARMSTADT, Germany, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Merck, a leading science and technology company, today announced the launch of its first-in-class Lynx CDR connectors to improve fluid management in the biopharma industry. The Lynx CDR connectors debut at the International Pharmaceutical Expo (INTERPHEX) event in New York, New York, April 26-28.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160421/358559

"Lynx CDR connectors will change the way pharmaceutical fluids are managed, lowering drug manufacturing costs," said Udit Batra, CEO, Life Science at Merck. "The Lynx CDR connectors set a new standard for sterile fluid connections, dramatically improving ease of use and reliability."

Making simple, reliable, sterile-to-sterile fluid connections is critical to successful biomanufacturing. Previous disposable connector technology allowed users to make only a single sterile connection per device, requiring the use of multiple devices per unit operation. Previous technology also required a dry, non-pressurized flow path during connection and disconnection. These limitations are resource- and cost-intensive when industry standards demand increased productivity and improved efficiency at all stages of the drug manufacturing process. With the Lynx CDR connectors, users can perform faster, more economic fluid management when the flow path is wet and pressurized.

Lynx CDR connectors allow efficient fluid management through sterile connection, disconnection and reconnection giving customers a fail-safe alternative to the time-consuming tube welding processes and costly manifold configurations traditionally used in upstream and downstream processing. The connectors provide efficient fluid management with six sterile connections, disconnections and reconnections from one disposable device.

INTERPHEX attendees should visit booth #2841 to learn more about Merck's products and speak with company experts. Follow us on Twitter @merckgroup.

About Merck

Merck is a leading science and technology company in healthcare, life science and performance materials. Around 50,000 employees work to further develop technologies that improve and enhance life - from biopharmaceutical therapies to treat cancer or multiple sclerosis, cutting-edge systems for scientific research and production, to liquid crystals for smartphones and LCD televisions. In 2015, Merck generated sales of 12.85 billion in 66 countries.

Founded in 1668, Merck is the world's oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company. The founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed corporate group. Merck, Darmstadt, Germany holds the global rights to the Merck name and brand. The only exceptions are the United States and Canada, where the company operates as EMD Serono, MilliporeSigma and EMD Performance Materials.

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WESTBROOK, CT -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- O'Brien Communications Group (OCG) has been contracted by msg global solutions, Inc., with U.S. headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey, to support its marketing communications in various channels and media. A global provider of software and services to insurance, financial services, and other industries, msg is looking to expand its footprint in U.S. markets.

"The global insurers and reinsurers we serve know the value we bring in terms of offering finance and risk solutions that meet worldwide regulatory pressures," said Edward Wilczynski, Jr., msg global's US CEO. "In the past decade, we've concentrated on the US market with some significant Tier 1 wins. We'd like to share the benefits of those wins with more insurers in the US. Given OCG's record and reputation in North America, we recognized their ability to help us communicate our value propositions effectively."

msg offers operational consulting, analytics, and planning to the Insurance, Finance, Risk, Banking, Food, Dairy, Automotive, and other industries, as well as SAP consulting, implementations, training, and managed services. They also offer IoTA, a software solution analyzer for managing IoT data; MyMile, a mobile application for usage-based insurance; msg.LRM (for life reinsurance); and msg.Reporting in addition to several co-innovations with SAP.

"We're honored to have been selected by a firm as prestigious as msg," said Mark O'Brien, founder and Principal of OCG. "Despite its global reach, msg's localized practices suit the diverse needs of all its geographically varied constituencies. We look forward contributing to their increasing success."

About O'Brien Communications Group

O'Brien Communications Group, LLC, is a business-to-business brand-management and marketing communication firm. OCG offers strategic consultation and planning services. OCG creates, packages, distributes, and measures the effectiveness of brands, messages, and marketing communication programs. OCG stands behind its work. For more information, please visit www.obriencg.com, e-mail info@obriencg.com, or call 860-944-9022.

About msg

msg global solutions is a product- and solutions-based systems integrator that serves the financial services/insurer/reinsurer markets in all regions of the world. Its expert teams employ a complete selection of consulting services and software products to help large and mid-size clients succeed with a range of business and IT strategies, including digital transformation. Operating from 17 global offices and growing, msg global solutions' market presence covers the major insurance markets worldwide. msg global solutions is part of msg, an independent, international group of companies with autonomous regional companies and subsidiaries and more than 5,500 employees worldwide. To learn more, please visit: www.msg-global.com.

Media contacts:



JoAnna Bennett

Partner, Account Management

O'Brien Communications Group

860-333-5009

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Mendee Morgan

Global Marketing Director

msg global solutions

617-680-4417




NOTTINGHAM, NH -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- GenTent Safety Canopies today announced that its portable generator canopy is now available in the Canadian market via Amazon.ca. The company has selected the National Hardware Show, May 4-6, in Las Vegas (Booth #3738) to showcase its safety canopies and demonstrate the GenTent 3k for smaller inverter generators and GenTent canopies in different colors and fabrics.

Share your story: Tweet @GenTentUSA and tell us when you WeatherProofYourPower

GenTents will be shown for smaller inverter generators that can be used more frequently for camping, tailgate parties, and light jobs around the house. On display will also be GenTent canopies in a variety of potential new color and fabric combinations.

GenTent customer Heather Swindall at Good Life BBQ, Barbeque event competitors, underscores the product's value for ensuring continued operations -- even in heavy rain.

"We have our share of rain and we chose to continue cooking at a competition during Hurricane Patricia," Swindall said. "Our parallel 2k inverter generators ran smoothly and we never lost power. GenTent worked perfectly."

In addition, GenTent is endorsing the Portable Generator Manufacturers' Association (PGMA) "Take it Outside" campaign providing tips on safe operations of portable generators to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning.

"Our endorsement of PGMA's 'Take it Outside' campaign is closely aligned with GenTent's efforts in raising public awareness on safe operations of portable generators to avoid CO poisoning and electrocution risks," Mark Carpenter, Inventor and CEO of GenTent Safety Canopies, added.

GenTent's safe, inclement weather operating solution for 98 percent of the portable generator market is manufactured in the U.S. and approaching 10,000 sold units worldwide. GenTent products are engineered to be more affordable and convenient than stationary, steel generator enclosures, retrofit plastic sheds or DIY doghouses.

GenTent provides:

Protection for portable and inverter generators -- rated for high winds, heavy rains and blizzard-force precipitation.

Safe operations of portable generators in wet weather, reducing risk of electrocution, and allowing portable generator operation well away from structures to eliminate CO poisoning risks.

Easy access for refueling and maintenance in wet weather.

Waterproofing approach that allows the generator to naturally cool itself.

The ability to naturally expel exhaust fumes, preventing buildup of poisoning gasses.

GenTent Safety Canopies for emergency backup and outdoor enthusiasts are available for ordering online, via a number of dealers, or by contacting the company directly via email: customercare@gentent.com or phone: 781-33G-TENT (781-334-8368).

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http://www.takeyourgeneratoroutside.com

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http://www.bestportablegeneratorguide.com/gentent-easy-to-use-portable-generator-enclosure/

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About GenTent Safety Canopies

Established in 2011, GenTent Safety Canopies are easy-to-install weatherproof covers that ensure safe operations of portable generators in virtually any wet weather conditions while keeping the generator portable. The GenTent reduces CO poisoning or electrocution risks by enabling portable generators to safely operate outdoors away from structures during wet weather. Installation is a simple 3-step operation -- Clamp it, Frame it and Cover it -- to "Weatherproof Your Power".

The company's independently tested, patented, portable generator safety canopies are Made in the USA and relied on by the National Guard as well as homeowners and businesses during such notable storms as SuperStorm Sandy. GenTent is considered the premier safety canopy for portable generators operated by the National Guard, RV owners, tailgaters, campers, homeowners, businesses and first responders. For more information visit: http://www.gentent.com/.

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For more information, contact:

Emily Girard

BridgeView Marketing (for GenTent)

518.338.6362

emily@bridgeviewmarketing.com

https://twitter.com/GenTentUSA




Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- SKULLY, Inc., a pioneer in Augmented Reality and maker of the AR-1, the world's most intelligent motorcycle helmet, today announced that 1-800-PublicRelations, Inc. (1800pr), a leading PR and content marketing firm who is ranked #3 for social impact for media and communications, will serve as the public relations agency of record (AOR).

The Company will work in partnership with 1800pr to extend its brand leadership, and leverage PR and corporate communications with content marketing solutions to build and sustain brand buzz and market growth.

"We are excited to partner with a firm that has a distinguished reputation for brand management. 1800pr's expertise, passion and creative thinking are impressive and I look forward to our partnership as SKULLY scales its Augmented Reality and Technology platform into the future," said Carlos Rodriguez, Head of Product & Marketing of SKULLY.

"We're excited about winning a game-changing brand like SKULLY and being able to work alongside their energized and engaged executive leadership team," commented Matthew Bird, President of 1-800-PublicRelations, Inc. "SKULLY is a distinguished leader in its category, and we look forward to furthering that leadership position for the brand."

About SKULLY

SKULLY has developed an award-winning Augmented Reality hardware and software platform aimed at saving lives and improving human interaction through its patented technology. Founded in Silicon Valley in 2013, SKULLY's human-centered approach to engineering has led to the SKULLY AR-1, the first vertically integrated heads up display motorcycle helmet for consumers. SKULLY Synapse is a situational awareness platform that enhances the awareness of its users by linking advanced optics to an intelligent network of sensors and microprocessors. SKULLY is a privately held company with strategic partnerships spanning the world's leading technology companies. For more information, visit www.skully.com.

About 1-800-PublicRelations, Inc. "1800pr"

1-800-PublicRelations, Inc. "1800pr" is a full-service PR Agency and content marketing firm, currently ranked #3 in social impact for media and communications. The company services over 400 established and emerging brands, small businesses, multi-national corporations, global interests groups, high-profile individuals, communication firms, government agencies and academic institutions. 1800pr helps clients define their strategic PR goals and achieve them with measurable deliverables, on-time, on-budget and on-demand. Our model ensures our client's content and messaging is both visible to the media and accessible to everyone searching on the web -- while improving their credibility. For more information, visit www.1800pr.com.

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Company Contact:

Carlos Rodriguez

Head of Product & Marketing

SKULLY, Inc.

(408) 430-6388

carlos@skully.com

www.skully.com



PR/ Media Contact:

Matthew Bird

President

1-800-PublicRelations, Inc.

(646) 401-4499

support@1800pr.com

www.1800pr.com




TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - April 26, 2016) - ioFABRIC Inc. today announced that InReach Continuing Education Solutions has chosen ioFABRIC's Vicinity for its storage infrastructure.

InReach has been helping leading professional associations, educational content providers, non-profits, and businesses bring continuing professional education and training online for more than a decade. As a Software-as-a-Service provider, InReach hosts content for streaming webinars, events, conferences, and even exams for clients primarily in the legal, healthcare, and financial sectors. As such, performance and reliability of its underlying storage system is critical to the success of InReach and its customers.

The company was trying to optimize IOPS and performance to support virtual environments critical for testing and development of its software and had employed a two-unit Synology network attached storage solution. In an effort to improve the performance of its NAS rather than replace it, they looked for a way to extend the life of its storage infrastructure easily and cost-effectively.

"I spent a great deal of time trying to get the most performance out of the NAS units," said Donald Lopez, IT Manager at InReach. "I started looking at other options for our storage needs. ioFABRIC Vicinity was extremely simple, very easy to deploy and use. That was a really nice plus for me."

As a 'SAN Extender,' Vicinity helps companies like InReach add more performance, more capacity, and new features to their current storage solution, building on what they have, without a costly and time-consuming rip-and-replace project. They can add new resources to their existing storage devices, such as flash, inexpensive hard drives, or overflow to cloud storage. All systems and applications remain fully available and centrally manageable. Vicinity automatically maintains application Quality of Service levels, utilizing the appropriate storage, monitoring performance, optimizing capacity, and managing data protection. Additionally, Vicinity maintains service levels, adapting in real-time as demands and workloads change.

Vicinity was deployed in InReach's test environment, which consisted of a couple of infrastructure servers for Active Directory and file sharing. The test environment had heavy SQL performance needs with databases requiring significant IOPS. Setting ioFABRIC Vicinity up on a dedicated server, Lopez said that it was 'pretty nice' to be able to have different options for various LUNs or lines he had attached to the NAS units he had while being able to modify the performance of each individual storage device.

"If I didn't have ioFABRIC Vicinity, I'm not sure how well I would have made it through all of that while keeping the company running," said Lopez. "Once I set the configuration for the performance-based environment, I didn't have to do anything else."

ioFABRIC Vicinity is now being utilized to provide the optimal performance needed for testing a mixed environment of domain controllers, Active Directory, and file servers before deploying them into production.

In addition to the performance and easy deployment of Vicinity, Lopez said he was impressed with the solution's documentation, reporting and management dashboard, and the support he received from ioFABRIC.

About ioFABRIC

ioFABRIC Inc. is a software-defined storage company that increases business agility while reducing storage costs. Its vision is to transform storage into something a business can simply depend on, eliminating admin demands, and freeing IT time to focus on true business innovation. Its flagship product, ioFABRIC Vicinity, drastically reduces storage OPEX and CAPEX with intelligent automation and growth through commodity hardware and the cloud. Vicinity Solutions are available to extend existing storage systems, solve migration problems, and deploy as distributed storage, hyperconverged, or Docker. Vicinity is sold through ioFABRIC's reseller and distribution channel, supported by its industry leading LEaD program. Partners sell Vicinity as licensed software with support or by white-labeling it with additional hardware and/or software. Founded in 2013 by an executive team that has worked together for more than 20 years, the company is funded by private investors and Real Ventures. ioFABRIC is an industry leader in customer service and product development: agile and responsive. For more information visit www.ioFABRIC.com/Learn.

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JPR Communications

818-798-1475

judys@jprcom.com



CONTACT CLIENT:

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BRUSSELS, BELGIUM -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- Editors Note: There is a photo associated with this press release.

EFMD would like to warmly congratulate Economics and Management School of the Wuhan University & Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) who have just been awarded EQUIS accreditation.

This takes the number of accredited schools to 161 across 40 countries.

Prof. Saibal Chattopadhyay, Director of Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) said: "High quality management education in today's world requires institutional strategy for remaining in sync with the pace of changes in the global environment and in the corporate world, managing opportunities and challenges of the ever-intensifying levels of globalization, paving ways for producing ethical leadership, attracting and retaining high quality students and faculty who would find their expectations exceeded in the learning environment, and rewarding the recruiters by constantly supplying them well-trained talents they need. EQUIS prioritizes on a set of such dimensions."

"The Economics and Management School of Wuhan University is proud to be the first EQUIS-accredited business school in Central China, a dynamic area with a population of 300 million. This is a critical step for our School to become a leading business school in China with a world-class standing. Our School, in further collaboration with international partners, will contribute to business knowledge creation and human capital development for China, as well as for the World," added prof. Danyang Xie, Dean of Economics and Management School of the Wuhan University.

EFMD is delighted to announce that further nine institutions have been successfully reaccredited by EQUIS. Please read here what the Deans of the reaccredited business schools said about the achievement.

Prof. Martin Schader, the EQUIS Director, added: "We are delighted to welcome two new institutions into the community of EQUIS accredited schools. EQUIS accreditation ensures a rigorous quality improvement process, involving a thorough self-assessment, a visit of an international peer review team, and finally, a very experienced Awarding Body evaluating the assessment and findings of the review team to determine whether the School should be granted accreditation. EQUIS benchmarks the School against international standards in terms of governance, programmes, faculty, students, research, and foremost, corporate engagement, internationalisation and ethics, responsibility and sustainability. There are currently no substitutes for such an in-depth assessment of quality and both the newly accredited and reaccredited schools should be commended for their commitment to excellence."

More information on EQUIS is available at www.efmd.org/equis.

About EFMD

EFMD is a leading international network of business schools and companies at the forefront or raising the standards of management education and development globally. More information about EFMD is available via efmd.org.

To view the photo associated with this press release, please visit the following link: http://www.marketwire.com/library/20160425-EQUIS_awards.jpg.

Contacts:

EFMD

Magdalena Wanot

+32 2 629 08 38




LYNNFIELD, MA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- American Power Group Corporation (OTCQB: APGI) today announced that its Annual Shareholder's meeting will be held on Friday, May 13, 2016 at 9:00 A.M. at the offices of Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton, P.C. City Point, 230 Third Avenue, 4th Floor, Waltham, MA 02451 for the following purposes: (1) to consider and act upon a proposal to elect four directors for the ensuing year; (2) to approve an amendment to the Restated Certificate of Incorporation to increase the number of authorized shares of Common Stock from 200,000,000 to 350,000,000; (3) to approve, consider and act upon a proposal to approve the adoption of the 2016 Stock Option Plan; (4) to hold an advisory vote on the compensation of the Company's named executive officers (the "say-on-pay") and (5) to consider and act upon a proposal to ratify the selection of the firm of Schechter, Dokken, Kanter, Andrews & Selcer, Ltd. as our independent auditors for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2016. In conjunction with the mailing of the proxy statement for the Annual Meeting and the Annual Report for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2016, the following letter to the shareholders of American Power Group Corporation was included.

MESSAGE TO OUR SHAREHOLDERS

To Our Shareholders:

As I believe everyone can appreciate, we are living in a much different world than we were a year ago or even three months ago. The one constant during these turbulent times has been the reliability and durability of our industry leading dual fuel solution and growing market recognition that we have the best dual fuel conversion technology at the lowest total cost of ownership available in the market. We estimate our customers have driven over 100 million cumulative dual fuel miles thus far. While we cannot control the macro variables associated with low priced oil that are impacting all alternative fuel companies today, we can control how we deploy our resources during this time. Accordingly, we have had to modify our approach in several areas in response to the ever-changing economic and competitive landscape we live in.

As we noted in early January, we have reduced operating costs across all functional areas during the past year and recently restructured approximately $5 million of long term and short term debt to better reflect the near term cash flow implications of a slower than expected revenue ramp up. This will save us over $1.5 million in cash outflows during 2016. We are very pleased with the fact that several large shareholders, including several investors affiliated with members of our Board of Directors, have invested an additional $2.2 million in January on top of their over $11 million investment to date in American Power Group. We believe this speaks volumes to the level of support and confidence these individuals have in our company despite the recent softness in oil prices.

Instead of letting these challenges become distractions, we are building a new foundation that transcends economics alone and builds on new emerging market (regulatory driven as well as sustainability driven) initiatives which will benefit from our dual fuel technology. Our value add proposition is going to be more about trying to expand the regulatory adoption of our emission reduction programs at the state and federal level. We are at the forefront of providing technical and practical solutions to meet the ever increasing regulatory demands of reducing diesel related emissions with our dual fuel solution and that message is beginning to spread. We are focusing our efforts on what we call "Momentum Builders". These are opportunities where we can provide cost effective, game changing environmental solutions to help meet the ever increasing global, national and local air quality objectives; expand our addressed markets geographically with a growing global footprint; and expand into new product lines beyond heavy duty trucks and stationary diesel engines. Several examples are as follows:

A. California - A Land of Opportunity for American Power Group

California has some of the highest fuel costs in the country while consuming approximately 3.5 billion gallons of diesel fuel per year, resulting in record levels of harmful ozone pollutants such as nitrous oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (soot). California is under extreme regulatory pressure to show dramatic improvements in emission reduction, particularly in the area of NOx reduction by 2023, or potentially face significant reductions in federal funding. This is where American Power Group can help and we believe the opportunity could be huge from multiple perspectives. In 2015, we received our first California Air Resources Board ("CARB") engine conversion certification, opening the door for two subsequent additional engine family submissions. When our V5000 dual fuel solution is installed on a 2010 and newer OEM SCR (selective catalyst reduction) engine, the emission results are 50% below the current EPA/CARB NOx standards, which is one of the lowest readings in the industry. As a result, we are now seen as a viable, if not the most viable, cost effective solution out there to help address California's emission reduction goals today as well as the more stringent ones coming in 2023. We are currently in discussions with CARB and various California air quality organizations seeking an agreed upon path to commercialization as well as the potential funding to complete the next generation development of our dual fuel solution which would incorporate advanced aftermarket SCR technology we believe will be necessary to meet the 2023 requirements. This next generation solution will be designed for both vehicular and stationary applications and there is potential funding available to offset a portion of the operator's conversion costs. We believe that by positioning our dual fuel solution as a cost effective way to meet mandated emission reduction requirements, we can mitigate some of the near term concern regarding the tighter diesel/natural gas price differential, especially given the alternatives of purchasing an expensive new dedicated natural gas truck or taking your diesel truck off the road. We also anticipate that the ripple effects of success in California should have national implications since California is regarded as being at the forefront in emission reduction efforts.

B. Increasing Federal and State Incentives and Tax Credits for Natural Gas Usage

In these times of increasing federal, state and local regulatory pressure to reduce harmful emissions on multiple fronts, we are seeing a larger number of fleets placing a higher value on the significant emission reduction benefits of our dual fuel technology than in the past. The EPA reports that 129 million people, or 40% of the U.S. population, live in air quality non-attainment regions. This past year we have seen a noticeable increase in attention and commitment at both the federal and state level to increase funding for tax credits and incentives for natural gas solutions at both the fueling infrastructure and operator levels. In late 2015, Congress approved an alternative fuel excise tax credit of $0.50 per gallon retroactive to 2015 and prospectively approved it for 2016, which many fuel suppliers are passing on in the form of lower CNG and LNG pump prices. In addition, a recent federal law change provides that LNG will be taxed on its BTU value, which reduces the federal fuel tax by $0.17/gallon. We are currently tracking natural gas funding programs in twenty-three states including Texas, which recognizes all of our 489 EPA engine approvals as being eligible for its Emission Reduction Incentive Grant ("ERIG") program, under which grant incentives ranging from several thousand dollars to $15,000 may be available.

C. The Projected Growth of Renewable Natural Gas Will Benefit Us in Several Ways

Renewable Natural Gas ("RNG") is derived from bio-methane that is naturally generated by the decomposition of organic waste from landfills, agriculture waste, municipal solid waste plants and waste water treatment plants. California has taken the lead in expanding the use of RNG to help reduce its carbon footprint in their EPA non-attainment regions. Given that our dual fuel solution is agnostic between RNG, CNG, and LNG sources of natural gas, this is another opportunity where American Power Group can help. Our reduced NOx emission results combined with the use of RNG enhances the positive attributes of our dual fuel technology in California and other emission sensitive states. We estimate that every 10,000 long-haul trucks using our dual fuel solution and running on RNG would consume 92 million gallons of RNG and displace 92 million gallons of diesel fuel on an annual basis. A second emerging potential dual fuel benefit and potential revenue source in using RNG will be carbon credits. We have been contacted by firms in the carbon credit trading industry to discuss incorporating the value of various potentially available carbon credits into the marketing of our dual fuel solution.

D. Continued Expansion of Our Global Footprint

Around the world, the use of natural gas as an alternative to diesel fuel for economic and environmental reasons continues to gain significant traction. At the recent Paris Climate Change Conference in December 2015, the 195 participating countries agreed to a global pact to reduce emissions as part of the method to reduce greenhouse gases during the 21st century, with the use of natural gas to displace diesel being high on the list of solutions. During the past 15 months, two leading natural gas joint venture groups have begun to build out the CNG and LNG infrastructure in key Mexican cities and have selected us as their "Preferred Dual Fuel Natural Gas Partner" for Class 8 trucks as well as an emerging new market for mine haul trucks. It is their intention to roll the cost of our dual fuel solution into the cost of their natural gas, making adoption much easier and cost effective for potential customers. In essence, they see us as the "razor to their razor blades". We also anticipate doing our first conversions in Quebec and British Columbia during 2016.

E. Trident Oil and Gas Flare Capture Business - Our Diamond in the Rough

Our core Trident business acquisition strategy is centered on the need for oil and gas production companies to employ Trident's flare capture and recovery services on remote and stranded wells sites to meet the increasingly more stringent regulatory flare capture limits in North Dakota. In January 2016, North Dakota's flare capture requirements increased from 75% to 80% and are set to increase again in November 2016 to 85%, presenting an increasing challenge to operating in a compliant manner for many of the remote and stranded wells. Recent low oil prices have impacted both the number of potential well sites as well as the price we are paid for the resulting natural gas liquids ("NGLs"), prompting us to idle our flare recovery systems pending improvement in both metrics. As noted earlier, we have proactively restructured and reduced our near term Trident obligations in anticipation of this potential idling of the units to conserve resources. We have seen an increase in requests for service quotes in the past thirty days as oil prices have improved, with some of the NGL component pricing up 50% from their January lows. We see these pending tighter flare regulations, the increased number of designated "remote and stranded" wells due to delayed pipeline infrastructure investments and the recovery of oil prices positively impacting these efforts.

An even larger potential opportunity for Trident's future capabilities is centered around the recently announced federal methane capture requirements placed on the oil and gas industry. On March 10, 2016, the Obama Administration and EPA announced measures to reduce methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industry by 40% to 45% below the levels of 2012 by 2025. The announcement from the White House came as part of a joint agreement with Canada on curbing methane emissions in North America. Historically, flared methane has been excluded from the flared gas regulations due to the difficulty and higher costs to separate methane from the other flared gases. The World Bank estimates about 4.9 trillion cubic feet of gas of the world's oil and gas production is flared off by the oil industry every year. In anticipation of this potential opportunity, we have designed our fourth remote flare capture system to have the capabilities necessary to separate and process the currently un-regulated flared methane into compressed natural gas that can be used with our dual fuel solution.

We greatly appreciate your support and will continue to do our best to take the actions we believe necessary to ensure the future viability and sustainability of American Power Group. We invite you to please join us on May 13, 2016 for our Annual Shareholder's Meeting at which time you'll get an opportunity to meet our Senior Management Team as well as Board of Directors.

Sincerely,

Maurice E. Needham

Chairman

About American Power Group Corporation

American Power Group's subsidiary, American Power Group, Inc. provides cost effective products and services that promote the economic and environmental benefits of our alternative fuel and emission reduction technologies. Our patented Turbocharged Natural Gas Dual Fuel Conversion Technology is a unique non-invasive software driven solution that converts existing vehicular and stationary diesel engines to run concurrently on diesel and various forms of natural gas including compressed natural gas, liquefied natural gas, conditioned well-head/ditch gas or bio-methane gas with the flexibility to return to 100% diesel fuel operation at any time. Depending on the fuel source and operating profile, our EPA and CARB approved dual fuel conversions seamlessly displace 45% - 65% of diesel fuel with cleaner burning natural gas resulting in measurable reductions in nitrous oxides (NOx) and other diesel-related emissions. Through our Trident Associated Gas Capture and Recovery Technology, we provide oil and gas producers a flare capture service solution for associated gases produced at their remote and stranded well sites. These producers are under tightening regulatory pressure to capture and liquefy the flared gases at their remote and stranded well sites or face significant oil output reductions. With our proprietary Flare to Fuel process technology we can convert these captured gases into natural gas liquids ("NGL") which can be sold as heating fluids, emulsifiers, or be further processed by refiners. Given pending federal methane capture regulations, we anticipate our next generation NGL processing systems will have the capability to convert the residual flared methane into pipeline quality natural gas that can be sold for a variety of dedicated and dual fuel vehicular, stationary, industrial and household uses. See additional information at: www. americanpowergroupinc.com

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Statements and Opinions

With the exception of the historical information contained in this release, the matters described herein contain forward-looking statements and opinions, including, but not limited to, statements relating to new markets, development and introduction of new products, and financial and operating projections. These forward-looking statements and opinions are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve risk and uncertainties that may individually or mutually impact the matters herein, and cause actual results, events and performance to differ materially from such forward-looking statements and opinions. These risk factors include, but are not limited to, the fact that, our dual fuel conversion business has lost money in the last seven consecutive fiscal years and our flare gas capture and recovery business has yet to generate measurable revenues, the risk that we may require additional financing to grow our business, the fact that we rely on third parties to manufacture, distribute and install our products, we may encounter difficulties or delays in developing or introducing new products and keeping them on the market, we may encounter lack of product demand and market acceptance for current and future products, we may encounter adverse events economic conditions, we operate in a competitive market and may experience pricing and other competitive pressures, we are dependent on governmental regulations with respect to emissions, including whether EPA approval will be obtained for future products and additional applications, the risk that we may not be able to protect our intellectual property rights, factors affecting the Company's future income and resulting ability to utilize its NOLs, the fact that our stock is thinly traded and our stock price may be volatile, the fact that we have preferred stock outstanding with substantial preferences over our common stock, the fact that the conversion of the preferred stock and the exercise of stock options and warrants will cause dilution to our shareholders, the fact that we incur substantial costs to operate as a public reporting company and other factors that are detailed from time to time in the Company's SEC reports, including the report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2015 and the Company's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements and opinions, which speak only as of the date hereof. The Company undertakes no obligation to release publicly the result of any revisions to these forward-looking statements and opinions that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Investor Relations Contacts:

Chuck Coppa

CFO

American Power Group Corporation

781-224-2411

Email Contact



Mike Porter

Porter, LeVay, & Rose, Inc.

212-564-4700

Email Contact




BREUKELEN, THE NETHERLANDS -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- TIE Kinetix (EURONEXT AMSTERDAM: TIE), leader in Partner Automation solutions, announced today that they have entered into a strategic collaboration with Google AdWords to become a Google AdWords Premier SMB Partner. The cooperation will combine Google AdWords and the TIE Kinetix FLOW Partner Automation platform to provide vendors and brands with an effective solution to run Google AdWords campaigns through their small- and medium-sized channel partners.

Customers of TIE Kinetix work through independent channel partners to market, sell and deliver their products and solutions. Channel partners are typically small and medium businesses and generate a large percentage of the revenue for the vendors and brands. Furthermore, digital adoption and mobile growth is enormous, which generates a strong growth in search with specific local intent. As a result, there is a growing need for vendor-driven Google AdWords campaign strategy that brings prospects and visitors directly to the local channel partners.

The Google AdWords Premier SMB Partner Program (PSP) connects Google's trusted and experienced AdWords partners with small- and medium-sized businesses that want expert help in creating, managing and optimizing their online advertising campaigns. In addition to in-depth AdWords expertise, PSP partners provide full-service campaign management, detailed reporting, one-on-one customer support and broad marketing guidance to help advertisers make the most of their campaigns. Premier SMB Partners meet Google's highest standards and criteria for qualification, transparency and customer service, which includes completing extensive Google product and account management training. This ensures they can provide businesses with the most effective AdWords advertising solutions.

"We are very excited about this collaboration with Google AdWords. Our first pilot customer went live in the Netherlands on April 11th 2016 and the combined offering is now globally available to all customers through our FLOW Partner Automation platform. With this combined offering, we see big opportunities for our customers to increase demand and sales within their channel community. This will also allow media agencies to use the new FLOW Partner Automation platform and offer additional value to their customers who market, sell and deliver their products through independent partners," stated Jan Sundelin, CEO of TIE Kinetix.

"We are excited to launch the Google AdWords Premier SMB Partner program with hand-picked, highly qualified companies like TIE Kinetix," says Kartik Taneka, director of Google's EMEA Channel Sales partnerships. "Small- and medium-sized businesses will benefit from TIE Kinetix' years of experience in the market."

About TIE Kinetix

TIE Kinetix transforms the digital supply chain by providing Total Integrated E-Commerce solutions. These solutions maximize revenue opportunities by minimizing the energy required to market, sell, deliver and optimize online. Customers and partners of TIE Kinetix constantly benefit from innovative, field-tested, state-of-the-art technologies, backed by over 25 years of experience and prestigious awards. TIE Kinetix makes technology to perform, such that customers and partners can focus on their core business.

TIE Kinetix is a public company (EURONEXT AMSTERDAM: TIE), and has offices in the United States, the Netherlands, France, Germany, United Kingdom and Australia.

Follow TIE Kinetix on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TIEKinetix

Follow TIE Kinetix on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/TIE-Kinetix

Follow TIE Kinetix on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TIEKinetix

For more information:



TIE Kinetix N.V.

Patrick van Boom

De Corridor 5d

3621 ZA Breukelen

T: +31-88-369-8000

E: Email Contact

W: www.TIEKinetix.com

www.flowpartnerautomation.com




CHICAGO, IL -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 --THE BEVERAGE FORUM -- Taught to make healthy choices from a young age, Gen Z college students take that lesson seriously when reaching for beverages. Practicality and natural products are preferred -- while artificial ingredients and crazy fads likely to cue a collective eye-roll -- as determined by a new survey from industry consultants Beverage Marketing Corporation (BMC) and Fluent, a leading college marketing and insights agency. The survey of undergraduates offers clear direction to those who make, distribute and sell beverages to Gen Z: keep it simple and know your niche. Results will be shared here at BMC's Beverage Forum in Chicago (April 26, 27), and available in depth in BMC reports and databases.

"From early-kindergarten lectures to constant health-related headlines on their phones, this generation knows about having to proactively make their own choices and not just take things at face value," said Fluent EVP Michael Carey. "And while they reach for water first, there are opportunities for other beverages to fill niche roles, if they know where to look."

"As Gen Z matures, there are exciting opportunities for our industry to engage with these consumers in a positive way," said Beverage Marketing Corporation Chairman and CEO Michael Bellas. "We look forward to sharing how companies can reinforce strengths and create new experiences by listening to what this newest and typically hard-to-access audience has to say."

Top Picks and Consumption Trends -- Water Rules!

Bottled water is THE top beverage purchase -- 43% consume it 7+ times per week, with coffee (hot or iced, not specialty) next at 22%. Brewed tea was third at 12% in that category, and then beer at 9%. Hydration/thirst was the number one reason students pick up something to drink.

Asked about future consumption, 42% plan to drink more bottled water and only 8% less of it, and 22% of students expect to drink more brewed tea, against 7% saying less. Barring significant innovation, soda is likely to continue its decline, with 33% planning to drink less against 3% to drink more. This correlates with recent data from BMC that finds bottled water is the second most popular beverage in the U.S., likely to overtake carbonated soft drinks' supremacy late 2016 or in 2017.

While they find bottled water tastes better than tap water, 59% try to fill up water bottles and/or use a filtered water system on a regular basis. Still, nearly 20% of students rely solely on bottled water over tap or filtered, for many of the same reasons bottled water scores over other non-alcoholic beverages: It's healthier, more convenient and easier to find.

Purchase Decision Drivers -- What's On the Label, Friend Recommendations

Students read labels, 43% regularly and 38% at least sometimes. The top three descriptors influencing purchase are "all-natural" (52%), "low-calorie" (37%), and to a lesser extent, "organic" (36%), with "vitamin-enhanced" at 31% and "zero-calorie" at 27%.

Around half of all students say they try to avoid artificial sweeteners, flavoring, preservatives, and high-fructose corn syrup. The sweetener they are most okay with is cane sugar (55%).

The top reasons they try beverages? Students cite friends' picks (52%), "healthy/good for you" (49%), free samples (37%), interesting flavors (36%) and sale/ promotions (25%).

Habits by Select Categories -- Practicality, Baby!

Sports drinks have clear roles. 37% of respondents drink them for hydration and recovery, 14% drink them for taste, and 13% to quench their thirst. They drink them most often while working out (54%) vs. before or after, to combat hangovers (46%), then because they are thirsty (45%).

Pick-me-up choices were campus classics. The top go-to beverage was coffee at 49%, and then brewed tea at 15%. Water tied for third at 13% with soda, which seems to be a key messaging opportunity for carbonated soft drinks -- ahead of energy drinks (8%).

Alcohol Highlights -- Picky Preferences

74% of respondents say they do consume alcohol and 81% of those do drink beer on occasion. Asked what they prefer most, beer had a slight edge, with it, wine and spirits somewhat equal.

When it comes to mixers, students reach first for soda (37%), and then juice (35%), followed by seltzers (10%).

This survey was conducted March 15 - 21, 2016 and polled 1,010 undergraduate respondents across the country. A third were under 21 years of age, with data on use of alcohol reflecting demographics. In addition to data shared at the Beverage Forum, survey results will be published and put in context in a BMC market report entitled U.S. Student Beverage Consumption and Attitudes. Findings also will be offered as a module within BMC's DrinkTell Database with Market Forecasts.

ABOUT BEVERAGE MARKETING CORPORATION

New York City-based Beverage Marketing Corporation (BMC) is the leading consulting, research and advisory services firm dedicated to the global beverage industry. Founded in 1972, BMC offers nearly 45 years of beverage industry expertise, reliable industry data and actionable insights. BMC's consulting and advisory services divisions regularly provide strategic and tactical direction to many of the world's leading beverage companies. Meanwhile, the firm's research group offers more than 40 market reports on a broad range of beverage categories and topics, custom research and the DrinkTell Database with Market Forecasts, BMC's powerful, one portal to all things beverage.

ABOUT FLUENT

Specializing in "translating brands for the college world," Fluent works with clients who want to understand and engage College Millennial Consumers (CMCs) nationwide, both on- and off-campus. With a network encompassing more than 1,000 colleges and universities, Fluent's capabilities include campus activities and programs, College Millennial Consumer insights, digital and social media strategy and activations, and experiential programs. Clients have included major brands such as Kellogg's, Microsoft, Macy's, Keurig, Jack in the Box, Skype, Zipcar, Kotex, Dove and L'Oreal. For more information, visit: www.fluentgrp.com.

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2997630



Contact:

Sue Parente

781-642-7788

sparente@tieronepr.com

@sueparente




DUBLIN, IRELAND -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- Decawave, specializing in precise location and connectivity applications, reached another important milestone for its ultra-wideband (UWB) technology in the 2016 Microsoft Indoor Localization Competition. Eleven of 20 competitors used Decawave technology in their 3D radio-based location solution with several placing in the top-five performance results. This is the second year for Decawave to sweep this competition with its Ultra-Wideband technology with even better results than last year's when three of 23 competitors used Decawave.

This industry-wide competition was organized to bring together indoor location technologies and compare performance, real-time capabilities and demonstrate accuracy in indoor environments. Decawave partner Quantitec, a RTLS indoor positioning company, scored with an accuracy of 23cm in 3D applications. Hangzhou Sunsend Info Tech Co. Ltd., specializing in intelligent buildings and computer systems integration, finished with an accuracy of 29cm.

Quantitec's indoor-positioning system, Intranav combines the benefits of inertial sensors and radio-based Decawave technology to deliver micro-location-based services into its solution for precise location and connectivity applications. The win comes on the heels of an impressive joint demonstration of the Quantitec and Decawave technology by Bosch COO Dr. Werner Struth in his keynote demo at Bosch Connected World.

"The Decawave chip is providing a very accurate and reliable raw data. But in challenging environments like this competition, Quantitec's ability to fuse the information from inertial sensors with the information from the Decawave technology was the key to our success." said Ersan Genes, Quantitec CTO.

Hangzhou Sunsend Info Tech Co. Ltd focuses on location technology for intelligent buildings and computer system integrations for use in affordable customer turnkey solutions such as in shopping malls, hospital, warehouses, manufacturing companies, schools, and employees in dangerous environments. "Our success in the competition is a step toward advancing the indoor localization field," notes M. Lou, CTO of Hangzhou Sunsend. "Aided by Decawave, we are able to develop systems offering a balance in cost, power consumption and capacity."

"A big thank-you to all participants for joining the competition and for all their efforts to make the most out of Decawave technology, remarked Mickael Viot, Decawave vice president of marketing. "The eleven competitors using Decawave technology gained impressive results under difficult conditions. We are glad to see customers, partners and researchers push the technology to reach new heights as this year's location accuracy showed a 40 percent improvement over last year while in 3D versus 2D."

For the full results of the Competition, visit http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/events/msindoorloccompetition2016/

The Decawave EVK1000 and TREK1000 evaluation kits are available on the following websites: DigiKey and Semiconductorstore.com.

About Decawave

Decawave is a pioneering fabless semiconductor company developing a family of integrated circuit products called ScenSor, compliant to the IEEE802.15.4a standard, which can identify the specific location of any object, person or thing at very competitive cost, very low power and with a required level of precision and reliability never achieved before (+/-10cm). In addition, the data communication capability of the chip (up to 6.8Mb/s) makes it a perfect fit for IOT applications and other low-power wireless network applications.

With applications in diverse markets including factory and building automation, healthcare, ePOS and retail, robotics, warehousing, automotive and consumer, the company's flagship DW1000 chip has garnered interest from more than 2,500 firms globally.

Decawave is headquartered in Dublin Ireland, with presence in France, South Korea, Taiwan and the US.

For more information, please visit http://www.decawave.com

Press Contact:



Becca Bauer

PAN Communications for Decawave

+1 415 984 1970 ext 0106

Email Contact




COLUMBUS, OH -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- With the ARCOS Callout and Scheduling solution, the Upper Peninsula Power Company, UPPCO, has centralized and automated the process by which it calls out utility crews for after-hours restoration. UPPCO, which serves about 54,000 customers throughout Michigan's Upper Peninsula, began launching automated call outs for approximately 100 employees in February.

"While establishing new corporate and operations processes at UPPCO, we began implementing about a dozen IT platforms. We were looking for one that would be a 'quick hit' for us, something that would make an impact immediately," said Bill Nelson, director of Engineering for UPPCO. "Due to our past experience, we weren't starting from scratch by choosing a system like ARCOS because we knew its capabilities, and it's an industry standard."

When a transformer blows or other trouble happens after hours, it falls to the UPPCO system operation center to launch call outs. According to Nelson, the ARCOS solution maintains the callout lists in a central database and eliminates what was a laborious job for operators -- hand dialing up to 20 numbers to put a two-man crew together for restoring power. UPPCO workers can, in turn, review, accept or decline a call out from their mobile phones.

"Giving crews a way to see their callout status and manage their response via a mobile device has made a remarkable difference in the way we handle call outs," said Nelson.

The software records and clarifies what happens as part of a call out and eliminates much of the time it would take to investigate an issue by sorting through paper-based records.

"Without ARCOS, we could spend hours determining who was called out," added Nelson. "Now, we use ARCOS to bring up the dispatcher's call log, and in seconds have the data we need to show what happened."

UPPCO also owns seven hydroelectric generation facilities and two combustion turbines. If these locations have an alarm or unit trip, then the utility turns to the ARCOS solution to call out workers via email, text and phone.

About ARCOS LLC

ARCOS is the North American leader in delivering crew callout and crew management SaaS solutions to the utility industry. ARCOS automates crew assembly and management daily and during emergencies, ultimately helping to restore energy faster, yet safely, to communities. The award-winning solution helps utilities save time and money, while improving customer satisfaction. Learn more about ARCOS emergency resource management software at www.arcos-inc.com.

ARCOS and Crew Manager are registered trademarks of ARCOS LLC.

Media contact:

Bill Perry

Mobile: 614-975-7538




AUSTIN, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- Threshold Agency, along with Asset Campus Housing, Collegiate Development Group and Kayne Anderson, has won a 2016 Innovator Award from Student Housing Business for Best Marketing and Lease-Up Program. The award highlights their work with TODD Student Living, which helped the community become one of the fastest lease-ups in the Columbia, Mo., market and generate overwhelming demand from opening day.

In 2014, Asset Campus Housing, along with Collegiate Development Group and Kayne Anderson Real Estate Advisors, engaged Threshold to create a brand for their new development. The Threshold team proposed the TODD name after coming across the term "transit-oriented development," or TOD, in their initial research. The term refers to mixed-use communities within walking distance of a transit station or key points of interest. It fit well with the new community, which is located near the University of Missouri, Greek Town and other sites popular with college students.

"The TODD brand that demonstrates how we bring creative, cutting-edge thinking in helping clients launch and name new properties," said John Wilkinson, CAS, chief strategy officer for Threshold, a full-service agency that provides student housing marketing, multi-family marketing and other residential marketing services. "We develop true partnerships with our clients, which allows us to fully understand the challenges they face and to marry that information with a client's wishes to put together creative marketing strategies and tactics that drive success in leasing up properties."

As a result of the team's efforts, TODD Student Living leased up in just two months, with a waiting list before many other properties in the market had even reached 50 percent. Students also embraced the TODD brand better than any projects seen in student housing in a long time.

"It's important for us to have a partner like Threshold work on this brand development," said Joe Goodwin, senior vice president for Asset Campus Housing. "From concept to final delivery, the innovation and forward thinking approach really helped set the community apart from all others. Our on-site team was able to live the TODD brand and create a marketing plan that resulted in two very successful lease-ups."

Learn more about the Threshold Agency at http://thresholdagency.com.

About Threshold

THRESHOLD is The Anti-Vacancy Agency, an Austin, Texas-based full service marketing agency. Our over 40 clients with 2,200+ properties include student housing, senior housing and conventional housing communities, as well as hotels and resorts and the vendors that serve them. Our solutions include design, branding, digital solutions, promotional products, print and signage -- just about anything to put heads in beds. Visit our website at http://thresholdagency.com.

Mark Evans

Public Relations

Threshold

Email Contact

3809 S 2nd St., Studio C-300

Austin, TX 78704

(979) 492-1150




THUNDER BAY, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- Benton Capital Corp. (TSX VENTURE: BTC) ("Benton" or "the Company") would like to announce that it has acquired a 100% interest through staking in an additional 30 units in 2 claims at its Wisa Lake Lithium project located 80km east of Fort Frances, Ontario (see BTC PR April 19, 2016). The property is connected to Highway 11 (Trans Canada), located 65km north, via an all-weather road that crosses the centre of the project. The land position was increased in order to cover an additional spodumene-bearing pegmatitic dyke located approximately 900m south of the Wisa Lake zone. Selective grab samples collected from the zones have been submitted to the laboratory for analysis.

As indicated in the Company's PR dated April 19, 2016, the property covers the Wisa Lake deposit with a historical resource of 330,000 tonnes grading 1.15% Li2O (Lexindin Gold Mines Ltd., Manager's Report, 1958; Ontario Geological Survey, Open File Report 6285, Report of Activities 2012). In 1956, Lexindin completed a total of 20 drill holes (packsack and AQ-sized core) over a strike length of 335m and to a depth of approximately 65m to outline the Wisa Lake lithium mineralization. The diamond drill log of the most easterly hole intersected 6.4m containing 20% of the lithium-bearing mineral spodumene suggesting the mineralization is open at depth and to the east. It should be noted that the historical resource estimate for the deposit was calculated prior to CIM National Instrument 43-101 guidelines and as such should only be considered from a historical point of view and not relied upon. A qualified person has not completed sufficient work to classify the historical estimates as current mineral resources. Further diamond drill programs are required to bring the mineralization into a proper NI 43-101 compliant category.

The Company has recently applied to change its name to Alset Energy Corp. and in is the process of applying for a new trading symbol. The Company has also granted 2,395,000 options to officers, directors and consultants of the company at a price of 7 cents for a period of 5 years.

All of the above transactions are subject to TSX.V and regulatory approvals.

Benton Capital is well funded with approximately $1 million in cash.

Clinton Barr (P.Geo.), V.P. Exploration for Benton Capital Corp., is the qualified person responsible for this release and has reviewed and approved all scientific and technical data and disclosures in this release.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Benton Capital Corp,

Stephen Stares, President

THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements."

Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms; risks related to the outcome of legal proceedings; political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to gold price and other commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projections.

Contacts:

Benton Capital Corp.

Stephen Stares

President

(807) 475-7474

(807) 475-7200 (FAX)

www.bentoncapital.ca




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- Organto Foods Inc. (TSX VENTURE: OGO) is pleased to announce the signing of a Letter of Intent (LOI) with Antonio Pullin Pivaral Farm for a joint-venture on the 150 hectare, fully certified (OCIA) Finca Buenos Aires organic farm located in Santa Rosa, Guatemala. The Pivaral Family are pioneers in farming and have been growing in the FRAIJANES coffee producing area of Guatemala for over 100 years.

Finca Buenos Aires is situated at approximately 4000 feet on a fertile valley that is rich in nutrients due to the presence of volcanic sediment that has been deposited in the area for millennia. The farm has been certified organic by OCIA for over the past 20 years and is ideal for growing beans and other high margin organic produce. Practices at the farm are in accordance with the highest organic handling standards, with a strong emphasis on social responsibility and sustainability.

Pursuant to the terms of the joint-venture, Organto will contribute technical oversight, working capital, and organic seeds and fertilizers, for the 10-year life of the agreement; and the Piviral's will provide the land, machinery and employees. Organto will also initially fund the cost of the irrigation system, which will be amortized and recovered over a 5-year period.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD,

Peter L Gianulis, President & CEO

Neither the TSX-V nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX-V) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This release may include certain forward-looking information and statements, as defined by law including without limitation Canadian securities laws and the "safe harbor" provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 ("forward-looking statements"). In particular, and without limitation this news release contains forward-looking statements respecting the company's intention to enter into a production sharing contract with respect to the Finca Buenos Aires Farm in Santa Rosa, Guatemala; future plans for planting on the farm; general plans for growth and development of Organto's business; the implementation of a comprehensive social responsibility platform; management's goals and objectives; the future prospects for the company; management's beliefs, assumptions and expectations; and general business and economic conditions. Forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions that may prove to be incorrect, including without limitation assumptions about the following: the completion of a definitive production sharing contract; levels of agricultural production; achieving a sufficient level of profitability to allow management to fund social responsibility initiatives; establishing market share; cost increases; dependence on suppliers, partners and contractual counter-parties; changes in the business or prospects of the company; unforeseen circumstances; risks associated with the organic and conventional produce business, including inclement weather, unfavourable growing conditions, low crop yields and similar risks; general business and economic conditions; and ongoing relations with employees, consultants, partners and joint venturers. The foregoing list is not exhaustive and we undertake no obligation to update any of the foregoing except as required by law.

Contacts:

Investor Relations

604-634-0970

1-888-818-1364

info@organto.com




Enterprises to Benefit from Integrated IoT Service and Application Enablement Platforms

Cumulocity, a leading mobile application enablement platform, today announced a collaboration with Cisco Jasper, Cisco's IoT Cloud Business Unit, which will enable enterprises to streamline the delivery of IoT services and applications through connected devices. This collaboration allows Cumulocity to integrate the functionality of the Cisco Jasper IoT service platform, making it easy for joint customers to manage the delivery of IoT services and applications on the Cisco Jasper platform from within Cumulocity.

"Our goal is to make it as simple as possible for enterprises to deliver and manage IoT services while working within their IT solutions of choice," said Macario Namie, Head of IoT Strategy at Cisco Jasper. "This integration gives Cumulocity customers access to their Cisco Jasper IoT service platform, and all of the visibility, intelligence and control they need to manage their connected services, from within Cumulocity."

"Over 3,500 enterprises rely on the Cisco Jasper platform to deliver their IoT services, and many of those enterprises already utilize Cumulocity's powerful application enablement platform to create, deploy and manage IoT applications that facilitate control of devices and their data," said Jari Salminen, MD Sales Strategic Partners at Cumulocity. "This collaboration enables our existing joint customers to easily manage their IoT connectivity, devices and data within a single solution, while also streamlining the ability for new customers to bring IoT services and applications to market."

Control Center is the Cisco Jasper IoT service platform, a cloud-based IoT platform that enables companies of all sizes to rapidly and cost-effectively launch, manage and monetize IoT services for any connected device. The platform, which is easily configurable to meet the unique requirements of businesses across a broad range of industries, helps companies accelerate time-to-market, automate operations, optimize performance, troubleshoot and fix issues, and manage costs.

The Cumulocity IoT application enablement platform is designed to facilitate an open eco-system with free and immediate access to test accounts, open developer documentation and tools. The Cumulocity platform is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, which is sold through mobile operators and is extensible to enterprise end customers. Through this integration, mobile operators who resell Cumulocity services will have the benefit of having Control Center functionality built into the Cumulocity-based applications they make available to their enterprise customers.

As businesses grow, Control Center makes it easy for them to seamlessly scale their IoT service businesses across the globe. Cisco Jasper collaborates with 27 mobile operator groups, representing more than 100 mobile operator networks worldwide, to deliver the benefits of the Cisco Jasper IoT solutions.

About Cumulocity

Cumulocity is the leading independent Application Enablement and Device Management platform for the Internet-of-Things (IoT) since 2010. Cumulocity is an open platform, delivered via cloud or on-premise, that provides a complete feature set for rapidly developing and deploying IoT solutions. The key features include Data collection and Storage, Real-Time Analytics, Real-Time Visualization and Device Management. Scalability, security and reliability are critical in IoT solutions. Our origins as part of Nokia Siemens Networks, the world's mobile broadband specialist, gives us the experience of securely managing millions of devices without service interruptions.

For more information and to start your free trial visit www.cumulocity.com.

About Cisco

Cisco is the worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing things can happen when you connect the previously unconnected. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005175/en/

Contacts:

Cisco

Robb Henshaw

robhensh@cisco.com

+1 925-640-7321

or

Cumulocity

Jari Salminen

jari.salminen@cumulocity.com

+358 44 012 757
F&C Commercial Property Trust Limited

(a closed-ended investment company incorporated in Guernsey with registration number 50402)

("the Company")

26 April 2016

NOTICE OF ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

Notice is hereby given that the 2016 Annual General Meeting of the Company will be held at the offices of Northern Trust International Fund Administration Services (Guernsey) Limited Trafalgar Court, Les Banques, St Peter Port, Guernsey on 2 June 2016 at 12.30pm.

The Notice of AGM together with the Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 December 2015 have been posted to shareholders.

In accordance with Listing Rule 9.6.3, the Notice of Annual General Meeting, proxy form and accounts have been submitted to the National Storage Mechanism and will shortly be available for inspection at: www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/NSM

Enquiries:

Northern Trust International Fund Administration Services (Guernsey) Limited

The Company Secretary

Trafalgar Court

Les Banques

St Peter Port

Guernsey

GY1 3QL

Tel: 01481 745001

END


SEATTLE (dpa-AFX) - Amid concerns about food wastage, Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) has announced a new plan to donate 100 percent of its unsold food to charity.



The world's largest specialty coffee retailer has launched FoodShare - a program to donate ready-to-eat meals to food banks - from its 7,600 company-operated stores in the U.S.



Starbucks hopes that its new plan will feed people who struggle with hunger and also divert food surplus from landfills, thus minimizing the company's environmental footprint. The company expects to inspire other companies to do the same.



Initially, Starbucks will conduct the food donation program through an existing collaboration with Food Donation Connection and a new partnership with Feeding America.



With an estimated 70 billion pounds of food waste in America each year, according to Feeding America, Starbucks hopes to encourage other businesses to put a focus on food rescue.



In the first year alone, Starbucks FoodShare plans to be able to provide nearly 5 million meals to individuals and families in need of nourishing food.



The company intends to expand the program over the next five years and rescue 100 percent of its food available for donation from participating company-operated U.S. stores. That will amount to almost 50 million meals by 2021.



According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an estimated 15 million children live in households where adequate, nutritious food is limited. They are among the nearly 50 million Americans who are struggling to avoid hunger today.



Since 2010, Starbucks stores have donated pastries through the support of Food Donation Connection or FDC, a service provider that collects pastries at the company's stores after these can no longer be sold to customers.



For its new plan, Starbucks has partnered with FDC to develop a safe process to add perishable food to the pick-up. This will be implemented in participating company-operated stores in the U.S. by this time next year.



Starbucks noted that the new program could be potentially expanded with refrigerated vans making additional stops at other restaurants that join in the effort, increasing the impact exponentially.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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WASHINGTON, DC -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- Airbus Group will host the grand opening tonight for its new Airbus Experience Center, a collection of interactive, multimedia exhibitions highlighting the extensive role that the company and its divisions play in the U.S. aerospace and defense industries.

"We can't bring Washington to the thousands of employees and thousands of suppliers that we have across the country," said Airbus Group, Inc. Chairman and CEO Allan McArtor, "so we wanted to bring all those people and their stories to Washington."

The Experience Center is also intended to be a meeting ground to facilitate collaborative events with industry colleagues and Airbus' extensive list of partner companies.

The Experience Center uses a variety of cutting-edge technologies to provide a virtual tour of the Airbus presence in the United States economy, highlighting manufacturing and other facilities in the United States in a digital, tactile and immersive format. Videos, images and personal profiles introduce the employees who are designing and building technologies at the leading edge of American aerospace.

Stories span Airbus Group's divisions and subsidiaries operating throughout the U.S., including Airbus Americas, Airbus Defense and Space Inc. and Airbus Helicopters Inc. They also highlight the network of more than 3,500 American suppliers in all 50 states, with which Airbus Group invests more than $16 billion annually.

"It's a story about people, but also the amazing products and innovations that those people are working on," McArtor said. "You'll see our Rosetta spacecraft that landed on a comet. You'll see the Perlan II glider that is going to ride wind currents into the stratosphere. You'll see U.S. Army helicopters that are built in Mississippi and A320 single-aisle aircraft being built in Alabama."

The new Airbus Experience Center was the work of a team of talented organizations:

The Glover Park Group, Washington, D.C. - Creative Consultants

Hornall Anderson, Seattle, Wash. - Experience Designers

VOA Architecture Associates, Washington, D.C. - Architects

rand* construction, Washington, D.C. - General Contractor

JLL, Washington, D.C. - Project Management

Avidex Industries, LLC, Seattle, Wash. - Audiovisual Integrators

Xibitz, Inc., Grand Rapids, Mich. - Custom Exhibit Fabrication

Leviathan, Chicago, Ill. - Custom Content Design and Coding

Schema Design, LLC, Seattle, Wash. - Custom Experience Design

For more information about the Experience Center, or to schedule a visit, please email ECRSVP@airbus.com.

About Airbus Group, Inc.

Airbus Group, Inc. is the U.S.-based operation of Airbus Group, a global leader in aeronautics, space and related services. Airbus Group contributes more than $16.5 billion to the U.S. economy annually and supports over 250,000 American jobs through its network of suppliers.

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2997778

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2997781



Media Contacts:

James Darcy

Airbus Group, Inc.

james.darcy@airbus.com

571-214-1722 (mobile)




MADISON, WI--(Marketwired - April 26, 2016) - Awana, a global, nonprofit ministry that works with millions of children, parents, and church leaders, has selected the Widen Media Collective for its digital asset management (DAM) needs. Awana will use Widen's cloud-based DAM solution to store and share photos and other digital media files that help tell the story of the work they do around the world.

John Walton, Manager of Global Stories at Awana, was well aware of the challenges his organization faced when it came to keeping track of its digital files. As a photographer, he himself has captured and collected tens of thousands of photos during the two decades he's worked with Awana. He was also spending a lot of his time fielding questions about how to find this photo or that video file.

Like many nonprofits, Awana necessarily keeps a close eye on its budget and initially resisted funding a new DAM system. But when Walton conducted an informal survey of staff and found that they were spending nearly 40 hours each week searching for photos for various projects, executives got a better understanding of the enterprise-wide problem and supported the team in finding a solution.

"Once we started thinking in those terms, then we started getting everyone on board," Walton says. "Everything is going digital, so we need to have these things more readily available, and we need to be able to find them quickly."

Walton is part of a new department that is working to improve how staff around the world access what they need to do their work, from the latest budgets and statistics, to stories and testimonials. Tom Chilton, Director of the new Strategic Information Center, says their first job is to centralize all of those assets.

"Our organization has grown so rapidly over the last three years that, to get the kind of information we need to make the decisions the organization needs to make, we need a place where everybody can access information," he explains. "We really needed to start with a tool that would allow us to warehouse that information."

Walton began doing some research. His top priority was finding a DAM system that would be easy to search and accessible for users with varying computer abilities. Price was also a deciding factor. After reading several white papers about DAM system options, and finding Widen's name in many of them, he reached out for more information. He was impressed by the knowledge of the sales advisor and that the entire team could answer questions on the spot. Walton says he's also excited about the scope of features the Widen system has to offer, like converting videos on the fly.

"For me, the icing on the cake was that I could take a photo release document and attach it to a photo, or attach a transcript to a video interview," he says. "You're trying to find stuff all the time, you know?"

The asset management system will be used by members of Awana's Global Ministry Advancement Team for use in development, as well as the Ministry Resources team, which handles marketing and creative services.

They know that sharing the positive stories of the work their volunteer leaders do all over the world can make a big difference, so it's important to make those assets easily available to donor representatives, as well. They want to train their hundreds of global staff members as field contributors, so they can snap photos or videos in places like Kenya, Zimbabwe, or Nepal and upload them directly to the DAM.

"We're gathering assets so that our marketing team can create stories," Walton says. "Our global media collective is a one-stop shop for finding information to communicate our story to the rest of the world."

"The team at Awana came to Widen knowing a strong content strategy and delivery of digital assets would help drive their global initiatives," said Craig Bollig, Senior Advisor with Widen. "The group had a vision for how they could overcome their current challenges with the right technology and team. It's wonderful to see the Media Collective is now a foundation for that change and will be part of the greater story for Awana and its mission."

About Awana

Awana is a global, nonprofit ministry with fully integrated evangelism and long-term discipleship programs for ages 2 to 18 that actively involves parents and church leaders. Each week, more than 3 million children and youth, 350,000 volunteers, and 260 field staff take part in Awana in over 40,000 churches around the world. Offered through local churches, Awana reaches kids where they're at and walks alongside them in their faith journey.

About Widen Enterprises, Inc.

Widen is a marketing technology company that powers the content that builds your brand. Leveraging cloud-based resources, Widen delivers configurable, scalable, and cost-effective digital asset management solutions to help you easily store, search, and share your digital content. Organizations of all sizes use Widen's SaaS DAM solution, the Media Collective, to streamline their marketing and creative workflows and make their content work harder. Widen is trusted by hundreds of thousands of users around the world at organizations like LG, Roche, Trek, Cornell University, New Orleans Tourism Marketing, The Atlanta Falcons, Red Gold Tomatoes, Electrolux, and Yankee Candle. To learn more about Widen, go to http://www.widen.com.

Contact

Jake Athey

jathey@widen.com

608-222-1296
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - April 26, 2016) - Golden Share Mining Corporation (TSXV: GSH) ("Golden Share" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that in April 2016 it acquired an additional 25% interest in the 15-unit mining claim that hosts the past producing Berens River Mine. This transaction gives Golden Share a total of 75% interest in the mining claim. The Company intends to acquire the remaining 25% interest by continuing monthly installments of CAD $2,500 until May 15, 2019.

The Berens River Property (the "Property) is located 200 km north of Red Lake, Ontario, in the Favourable Lake Greenstone Belt of Northwestern Ontario. The Property is comprised of 30 mining claims (355 units) and includes the past producing Berens River Mine which was operated by Newmont Mining from 1939 to 1948. The Berens River Mine is reported to have produced 158,000 ounces of gold, 5.8 million ounces of silver, 1.7 million pounds of zinc and 6.1 million pounds of lead (Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines Mineral Deposit Inventory). As of today, the company now owns 100% of 29 claims (340 units) and 75% of the 15-unit mining claim hosting the Berens River Mine

"We are pleased with the progress of the Berens River Project, one of the Companies two main projects. Golden Share is currently reviewing a proposed exploration program on the Berens River Project and we are evaluating the options available carefully in order to increase reward while reducing exploration risk", commented Nick Zeng, Golden Share's President & CEO.

The technical information in this news release has been prepared in accordance with Canadian regulatory requirements set out in National Instrument 43-101 and reviewed Steven Siemieniuk, P.Geo., a Qualified Person under NI 43-101.

About Golden Share

Golden Share Mining Corporation is a Canadian junior mining company focusing on exploration in Ontario, the politically stable jurisdiction with a history of rich mineral endowment.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONSULT http://www.goldenshare.ca OR CONTACT:

Golden Share Mining Corporation

Nick Zeng, President & CEO

Tel: (905) 968-1199

E-mail: info@goldenshare.ca

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
WINNIPEG, MANITOBA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- The partners of TDS Law congratulate Scott Hoeppner, Lucy Kinnear, Melissa Malden and Terra Welsh on their admission to the partnership.

Don Douglas, CEO and Managing Partner of TDS Law said, "We are very pleased to announce that Scott, Lucy, Melissa and Terra have accepted our invitation to join the Partnership". Douglas added, "These four lawyers will continue to be a tremendous asset to our clients, their practice groups and the entire firm".

Scott's practice is focused on the areas of labour & employment law with an emphasis on health care and manufacturing.

Lucy practices in the Portage la Prairie and Gladstone offices, with a focus on estate planning and administration, and residential and agricultural real estate transactions.

Melissa focuses her practice in the areas of corporate and commercial law and wills and estates, with a primary focus on owner-manager taxation issues, corporate reorganizations, and estate planning and administration.

Terra's practice is focused on the areas of labour and employment law. She primarily advises employers and employees with respect to contracts, discipline, terminations, collective agreement administration, workplace policies, employment standards, and human rights issues.

About TDS Law

TDS is a leading Manitoba-based law firm, providing legal services to its clients locally, nationally and internationally. The full-service firm's 85+ lawyers provide services in over 20 areas of the law and deliver corporate development services through its strategic partner Acumen. TDS offers the most extensive geographic coverage in Manitoba, with 10 full-time and part-time law offices in the province. TDS is also the exclusive member firm in Manitoba for Lex Mundi - the world's leading network of independent law firms with in-depth experience in 100+ countries worldwide.

Contacts:

TDS Law

Mark E. Howe

Director of Client Relations

204.934.2580 or Toll-Free 1.855.483.7529

mhowe@tdslaw.com

www.tdslaw.com




Company announcement no. 4/2016Aalborg, Denmark, 2016-04-26 16:35 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --Today the Annual General Meeting of TK Development A/S was held.Items 1 - 3 on the agenda were considered and adopted in accordance with the submissions. No dividend will be distributed for the 2015/16 financial year.The Board of Directors' proposal for approval of fees payable to the Board of Directors for 2016/17, was adopted, see item 4.1.1 of the agenda.In accordance with item 5 of the agenda, the proposal for the Board of Directors to remain composed of six members was adopted. Niels Roth, Peter Thorsen, Arne Gerlyng-Hansen, Morten E. Astrup, Kim Mikkelsen and Henrik Heideby were re-elected.The Board of Directors' proposal that one auditor be elected was adopted. Deloitte, Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerselskab, was elected as the Company's auditor; see item 6 of the agenda.After the General Meeting, a meeting was held for the purpose of electing officers, with Niels Roth being re-elected as the Chairman, and Peter Thorsen being re-elected as the Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors.TK Development A/SNiels RothChairman of the Board of DirectorsContact information:Frede Clausen, President and CEOTel. +45 8896 1010Attachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=558360
OYSTER BAY, New York, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ABI Research, the leader in transformative technology innovation market intelligence, forecasts LTE M2M cellular modules will grow to over 50% of total module shipments by 2021. The company's detailed cellular M2M module market tracker monitors LTE forecasts across seven categories, covering both single mode and multimode variants across Cat 1, Cat 0, Cat M1 and Cat M2 (NB-IoT) technologies. In total, ABI Research tracks 14 cellular technology categories across 2G, 3G, and 4G markets.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151014/276887LOGO

"The train has left the station," says Dan Shey, Managing Director and Vice President at ABI Research. "With the recent ratification of the Cat M1 standard and later Cat M2, it is pretty clear that LTE will rapidly replace 2G and 3G connections in some of the major M2M markets."

North America is one region where rapidly expanding network coverage and a very competitive operator environment will drive LTE's connection dominance in IoT. Verizon is the most aggressive with LTE as they are more reliant on LTE for competitive advantage than are the GSM operators of AT&T and T-Mobile. Of the developed world markets, Europe's LTE M2M module shipment share will be the lowest. 2G modules are still preferred due to high network coverage and some operators are looking to extend 2G with the EC-GSM standard.

LTE shipment growth rates rapidly accelerate later in the forecast period as Cat M1 and Cat M2 modules gain a foothold in a myriad of application segments. However module revenue growth will not be nearly as robust as shipment growth since M1 and M2 modules are far less expensive than 3G and the higher speed and capacity 4G modules.

"There are lots of expectations for LTE Cat M1 and M2 technologies, and there are certainly tremendous opportunities particularly for creating new IoT application segments," concludes Shey. "But the hyper growth expected for these technologies has many uncertainties, including the appeal and attractiveness of various LPWA business models, operator connection pricing, and competition from other connectivity architectures and technologies. Cooperation among many IoT suppliers is required if the potential of these technologies is to be realized."

These findings are part of ABI Research's M2M and IoT Modules and Devices Service (https://www.abiresearch.com/market-research/service/m2m-modules/), which includes research reports, market data, insights, and competitive assessments.

About ABI Research

For more than 25 years, ABI Research has stood at the forefront of technology market intelligence, partnering with innovative business leaders to implement informed, transformative technology decisions. The company employs a global team of senior analysts to provide comprehensive research and consulting services through deep quantitative forecasts, qualitative analyses and teardown services. An industry pioneer, ABI Research is proactive in its approach, frequently uncovering ground-breaking business cycles ahead of the curve and publishing research 18 to 36 months in advance of other organizations. In all, the company covers more than 60 services, spanning 11 technology sectors. For more information, visit www.abiresearch.com.

Contact Info: Mackenzie Gavel

Tel: +1.516.624.2542

pr@abiresearch.com
MAPLE GROVE, MN--(Marketwired - April 26, 2016) - TopLine Federal Credit Union, local member-owned financial services cooperative, teamed up with Osseo Senior High School to provide students with a glimpse of what the career world is all about. Eager students attended the career exploration sessions to learn about business operations and marketing/communications.

During recent career-focused sessions, TopLine employees shared their stories relating to education and career paths, position responsibilities, daily tasks, examples of projects, additional training, keys to success and more. Credit union employees also helped to educate students on what a financial cooperative is, and how credit unions differ from banks. The sessions were interactive with students asking a variety of questions based on interests in the business and financial-related career fields.

"This was a fun opportunity for students to get hands-on information about careers related to business operations and marketing/communications from our neighbors next door," said Michelle Mazanec, College and Career Specialist at Osseo Senior High School. "Exposing students to those in various career fields arms them with knowledge they can use to help with post-secondary school selection, class choices based on career interests, and provides real insight that climbing the career ladder doesn't happen overnight, it takes time and dedication."

"TopLine was honored to facilitate discussions with our local high school students to assist them with learning more about various careers in the financial services industry," said Vicki Erickson, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at TopLine Federal Credit Union. "Helping students understand different education and career paths is vital to building our next generation of skilled professionals -- and it's a real privilege to help students discover their passions."

ISD 279 - Osseo Area Schools is an award-winning school system that inspires and prepares all students with the confidence, courage, and competence to achieve their dreams; contribute to community; and engage in a lifetime of learning. Osseo Senior High School is a four-year public high school located in Osseo, Minnesota on 317 2nd Avenue NW.

TopLine Federal Credit Union, a Twin Cities-based credit union, is Minnesota's 13 th largest, with assets of more than $380 million. Established in 1935, the not-for-profit cooperative offers a complete line of financial services, as well as auto and home insurance, from its five branch locations -- in Bloomington, Brooklyn Park, Maple Grove, Plymouth and in St. Paul's Como Park -- as well as by phone, mobile app and online at www.TopLinecu.com. Membership is available to anyone who lives, works, worships, attends school or volunteers in Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott or Washington Counties and their immediate family members.

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/4/26/11G095109/Images/OSH_Career_Day_041316_1-f082d0abf04ab8fab83d4be151db13af.jpg

CONTACT:

Vicki Roscoe Erickson

Vice President, Marketing & Communications

verickson@toplinecu.com

763.391.0872
Press-release

Krasnodar

April 26, 2016

PJSC "Magnit" Announces the Disposal of Shares by the Entity under the Issuer's Control

Krasnodar, April 26, 2016: PJSC "Magnit", Russia's largest food retailer (the "Company", the "Issuer", MOEX and LSE: MGNT), announces the disposal of shares by the entity which is under the Issuer's control.

Full company name and address: Joint Stock Company "Tander"

185, Levanevskogo street, Krasnodar, Russia Taxpayer Id Number: 2310031475 Principal State Registration Number: 1022301598549 Object of disposal: Ordinary registered uncertified voting shares with a state registration No. 1-01-60525-P of 04.03.2004, International Stock Identification Number(ISIN) RU000A0JKQU8. April 21, 2016 Disposal of shares Amount of disposed shares: 6,383 shares (0.006750% of the total equity) Basis for disposal: Sale and Purchase Agreements executed in the trading of MICEX Stock Exchange Amount of votes before disposal: 42,740 votes (0.045198% of the total number of votes) Amount of votes after disposal: 36,357 votes (0.038448% of the total number of votes)

For further information, please contact:

Timothy Post Head of Investor Relations

Email: post@magnit.ru

Office: +7-861-277-4554 x 17600

Mobile: +7-961-511-7678

Direct Line: +7-861-277-4562 Investor Relations Office MagnitIR@magnit.ru

Direct Line: +7-861-277-4562

Website: ir.magnit.com/ Media Inquiries Media Relations Department

press@magnit.ru

Company description:

Magnit is Russia's largest food retailer. Founded in 1994, the company is headquartered in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar. As of March 31, 2016, Magnit operated 34 distribution centers and about 12,434 stores (9,715 convenience, 382 hypermarkets, and 2,337 drogerie stores) in 2,385 cities and towns throughout 7 federal regions of the Russian Federation.

In accordance with the audited IFRS results for 2015, Magnit had revenues of RUB 951 billion and an EBITDA of RUB 104 billion. Magnit's local shares are traded on the Moscow Stock Exchange (MOEX: MGNT) and its GDRs on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: MGNT) and it has a credit rating from Standard & Poor's of BB+. Measured by market capitalization, Magnit is one of the largest retailers in Europe.
CALGARY, AB--(Marketwired - April 26, 2016) - (TSX: ECA) (NYSE: ECA)

Encana Corporation will announce its 2016 first quarter results and hold its Annual Meeting of Shareholders on Tuesday, May 3, 2016. Prior to the first quarter conference call, the news release and financial statements will be available on the company's website.

The conference call and webcast to discuss the 2016 first quarter results will be held for the investment community the same day at 7 a.m. MT (9 a.m. ET). To participate, please dial (866) 223-7781 (toll-free in North America) or (416) 340-2216 approximately 10 minutes prior to the conference call. An archived recording of the call will be available from approximately 10 a.m. MT on May 3 until 11:59 p.m. MT on May 10, 2016 by dialing (800) 408-3053 or (905) 694-9451 and entering passcode 8482440.

The Annual Meeting of Shareholders will be held at BMO Centre, Palomino Room, 20 Roundup Way S.E., Calgary, Alberta, beginning at 10 a.m. MT (12 p.m. ET).

Live audio webcasts of the first quarter conference call and the Annual Meeting of Shareholders, as well as presentation slides, will also be available on Encana's website, www.encana.com, under Investors/Presentations & Events. The webcasts will be archived for approximately 90 days.

Encana Corporation

Encana is a leading North American energy producer that is focused on developing its strong portfolio of resource plays, held directly and indirectly through its subsidiaries, producing natural gas, oil and natural gas liquids (NGLs). By partnering with employees, community organizations and other businesses, Encana contributes to the strength and sustainability of the communities where it operates. Encana common shares trade on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges under the symbol ECA.

SOURCE: Encana Corporation

Further information on Encana Corporation is available on the company's website, www.encana.com, or by contacting:



Investor contact:

Brendan McCracken

Vice-President, Investor Relations

(403) 645-2978



Patti Posadowski

Sr. Advisor, Investor Relations

(403) 645-2252



Media contact:

Simon Scott

Vice-President, Communications

(403) 645-2526



Jay Averill

Director, Media Relations

(403) 645-4747



Doug McIntyre

Sr. Advisor, Media Relations

(403) 645-6553
Saudi Arabia announced that it intends to wean itself off oil by selling a sliver of Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco) and transforming the world's largest company into an industrial conglomerate/juggernaut. But will investors even want to invest in a company that is an arm of the Saudi government, one of the most repressive regimes in the world? A country that has single-handily gutted global oil prices? I'm also not sure what investors around the world would think if President Obama releases the 28 pages of classified documents and it points to a Saudi connection to the.

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
DUBLIN, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

France's DCNS Group has been awarded one of the world's biggest defense contracts to build 12 submarines for Australia. The USD 39 billion contract is expected to generate around 2,800 jobs in Adelaide, Australia, where the submarines will be built by Australian workers using Australian steel. DCNS's triumph has come as a disappointment to Japan, as both Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. had made offers for the deal. Germany's Thyssenkrupp AG also made an unsuccessful offer. The deal will bolster the global submarine market, which is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 4.44% by 2020 according to a recent report from Research and Markets.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160330/349511LOGO )



DCNS's diesel-electric powered Shortfin Barracuda submarines will replace Australia's Collins Class models, and the 12 new submarines are expected to enter service by the early 2030s. The decision to award the contract to the French state-controlled DCNS was likely influenced by China's position as an economic partner of Australia. China and Japan are currently contesting territories in the South and East China Sea, and the disputes have led to somewhat of an arms race in Asia. A recent Australian Defense White Paper estimated 50% of the world's submarines will be located in the Indo-Pacific region by 2035.



The defense deal will likely influence other markets related to submarines. For instance, the global SONAR systems market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.01% by 2019, as noted in an industry report, but could be higher due to the contract. The SONAR systems market may also grow if neighbouring countries decide to improve their defense detection systems in response to Australia's 12 new submarines.



Similarly, the global high-voltage power cable market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 7.25% by 2019, as predicted in a market report. High-voltage power cables are used extensively in submarines, and DCNS's contract may result in a higher demand for such cables.

For further information on this topic, and a full list of all related documentation, please visit the Maritime section at http://www.researchandmarkets.com/rm/NQRN.

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-26/france-wins-39-billion-contract-to-build-australian-submarines

About Research and Markets

Research and Markets is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.





Media Contact:

Research and Markets

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For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470

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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Real estate tycoon Donald Trump has dismissed his Republican rivals' efforts to deny him the delegates needed to secure the GOP presidential nomination. In a post on Twitter on Tuesday, Trump claimed that the agreement between Senator Ted Cruz, R-Tex., and Ohio Governor John Kasich is 'almost dead.' 'The Cruz-Kasich pact is under great strain. This joke of a deal is falling apart, not being honored and almost dead. Very dumb!' Trump tweeted. The comments from Trump come after Cruz and Kasich announced an agreement to focus on specific states with upcoming primary contests. Cruz said his campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico. The agreement reflects an effort by the candidates to prevent Trump from winning the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination before the convention this summer. Trump previously described the agreement as 'collusion' and a sign of the weakness of Cruz' and Kasich's campaigns. (Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore) Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
BANGALORE, India and LONDON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Platform integration will enable secure mobile banking through advanced biometrics and multi-factor authentication

Infosys Finacle, part of EdgeVerve Systems, a product subsidiary of Infosys (NYSE: INFY), and Onegini today announced a partnership to integrate the Onegini mobile security platform with Finacle banking solutions.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151104/283829LOGO )

The integration will allow banks to provide their customers enhanced security to access and transact across channels. Using this solution, banks can offer customers an option to select advanced authentication methods, including fingerprint, facial, eye and voice recognition as well as multi-factor authentication for added security as they transact on devices. The end-user will be presented different authentication methods depending on device, location and type of transaction.

Andy Dey, President of Customer & Operations at EdgeVerve, said, "A bank is no longer somewhere to go - you carry it with you. This offers a new level of convenience, but at the same time our customers demand secure solutions. Through this partnership, we aim to provide advanced security with convenience to customers."

"Since we started the company, we have worked with many multinational enterprises in the financial industry. By combining EdgeVerve's product capabilities and deep experience with global banks, we will further strengthen our combined offering to reach new markets and customers in the digital era," said Denis Joannides, CEO, Onegini.

About Onegini

Onegini is an international software company and focuses on security and user-friendly disclosure of personal data for the use in mobile apps. Organizations such as AEGON, ING/NN, and the Dutch Railroads use Onegini to address the growing need for digitization of customer access.

Onegini has offices in the Netherlands and Poland.

About Infosys Finacle

Finacle is the industry-leading universal banking solution from EdgeVerve Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys. The solution helps financial institutions develop deeper connections with stakeholders, power continuous innovation and accelerate growth in the digital world. Today, Finacle is the choice of banks across 84 countries and serves over 547 million customers - nearly 16.5 percent of the world's adult banked population.

Finacle solutions address the core banking, e-banking, mobile banking, CRM, payments, treasury, origination, liquidity management, Islamic banking, wealth management, and analytics needs of financial institutions worldwide. Assessment of the top 1000 world banks reveals that banks powered by Finacle enjoy 50 percent higher returns on assets, 30 percent higher returns on capital, and 8.1 percent points lesser costs to income than others.

To know more, visithttp://www.finacle.com

About EdgeVerve Systems Ltd

EdgeVerve Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys, develops innovative software products and offers them on-premise or as cloud-hosted business platforms. Our products help businesses develop deeper connections with stakeholders, power continuous innovation and accelerate growth in the digital world. We power our clients' growth in rapidly evolving areas like banking, digital marketing, interactive commerce, distributive trade, credit servicing, customer service and enterprise buying.



Today EdgeVerve products are used by global corporations across financial services, insurance, retail and CPG, life sciences, manufacturing, and telecom. Finacle, our universal banking solution, is the choice of financial institutions across 84 countries and serves over 547 million customers - nearly 16.5 percent of the world's adult banked population.

To know more, visithttp://www.edgeverve.com

Safe Harbor

Certain statements in this press release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2015. These filings are available at http://www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. Any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law.
According to the latest market study released by Technavio, the global mass spectrometry marketis set to reach USD 5.94 billion by the end of 2020, growing at a CAGR of more than 8%.

This research report titled 'Global Mass Spectrometry Market 2016-2020' provides an in-depth analysis of the market in terms of revenue and emerging market trends. This market research report also includes up to date analysis and forecasts for various market segments and all geographical regions.

Request sample report: http://goo.gl/pu6bJb

The report categorizes the global mass spectrometry market into three major end-user segments. They are:

Pharmaceutical

Industry

Other

Global mass spectrometry market in the pharmaceutical industry

The pharmaceutical sector was the largest end-user of mass spectrometry instruments in 2015 and will maintain its leading position during the forecast period. These instruments play a key role in the pharmaceutical sector, particularly in improving drug safety and efficacy. Mass spectrometry instruments also help in reducing the costs associated with drug discovery and the development of new formulations and drugs. The most important application of mass spectrometry in the biopharmaceutical field is its use in protein characterization.

According to Amber Chourasia, a lead analyst at Technavio for lab equipment, "Mass spectrometry is an established technique and has proved to be an aid to biochemists in protein characterization. This end-user segment will show the highest growth rate within APAC during the forecast period with several pharmaceutical companies and subcontract laboratories migrating their research, testing, and development facilities to this region."

Global mass spectrometry market in the industrial sector

Mass spectrometry as an analytical technique is in common use in a number of industries ranging from chemical to oil and gas to electronics since process monitoring plays a major part in the activities of these industries. Among these, the chemical sector is the largest user where the technique is employed to analyze chemicals, as it is the most efficient means of understanding the composition of complex natural products.

"One of the most important safety applications of mass spectrometers is their use in leak detection in industries that use hazardous gases and chemicals. The rapid growth of these industries will lead to a rise in the demand for these instruments over the next four year," says Amber.

Global mass spectrometry market in the other end-users segment

The global mass spectrometry market in the other end-users segment will exhibit a steady growth between 2015 and 2020. This segment includes academia, healthcare, and environmental monitoring. Mass spectrometers are used extensively in the academic world. Many laboratory-based experiments involve the use of technologically sophisticated equipment to achieve accurate results. Institutions that offer courses in specialized subjects also perform research using this analytical technique.

The growing emphasis on environmental protection has led to the increased importance of environmental monitoring. There are several international bodies that advocate environmental monitoring, such as the Environmental Monitoring Committee of OP. One of the most important aspects of environmental monitoring is water quality monitoring. The importance of water quality monitoring will rise rapidly with the global environmental monitoring and sensing market growing at a CAGR of 7.1% during the forecast period. The increase in the number of subcontract laboratories and other research facilities worldwide will also lead to the rise in the demand for these instruments over the forecast period.

The top vendors highlighted by Technavio's research analysts in this report are:

Agilent Technologies

Bruker

Danaher

Thermo Fisher Scientific

Waters

Browse Related Reports:

Global Microscopy Device Market 2016-2020

Global Scientific Instrument Market 2015-2019

Global Scanning Electron Microscope Market 2016-2020

Purchase these three reports for the price of one by becoming a Technavio subscriber. Subscribing to Technavio's reports allows you to download any three reports per month for the price of one. Contact enquiry@technavio.com with your requirements and a link to our subscription platform.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.

Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005078/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
DENVER, CO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- Innoprise Software, Inc. announced today that it received an important Order from the Court today in its lawsuit in Denver, Colorado against N. Harris Computer Corporation and Harris Systems USA, Inc. ("Harris") for breach of the Asset Purchase Agreement dated April 29, 2011 ("APA"). While Harris had requested that the summary judgment be granted and that the lawsuit against Harris be dismissed in its entirety, the Court rejected nearly all of Harris' arguments. The Court ruled that sufficient evidence exists concerning Harris' behavior in violation of the APA that the case should proceed to trial beginning on June 13, 2016. The Court stated as follows:

[I]t appears to me from my review of this summary judgment record that the motion fails as to all the other claims because material issues of fact remain in genuine dispute, including: whether [Harris] engaged in actionable conduct post-APA as amended, which would not have been released by the APA as amended; whether [Harris] failed to report some software sales to New Customers and the effect of any such failure on [Harris's] payment obligations to [Innoprise]; whether [Harris] properly notified [Innoprise] of all the resolutions or settlements and the effect of any such failures on [Harris'] payment obligations to [Innoprise]; which party was responsible for failing to have these issues addressed by the required audit process; and whether, even if none of [Harris'] actions post-APA as amended was prohibited by the contracts, [Harris] nevertheless breached the duty of good faith and fair dealing in taking any of those actions.

Though the Court dismissed a portion of the lawsuit against Harris relating to software suites that Harris allegedly improperly stole from Innoprise, the case is set for a seven-day jury trial to begin on June 13, 2016. The parties expect many of the upper-level executives of Harris to testify in person, including Jeff Bender, Jim Simak and Dennis Asbury.

For More Information:

Innoprise Software, Inc.

Dennis J. Harward

djharward@gmail.com



Media Contact:

Stephen E. Csajaghy

steve@cclawcolorado.com

720-287-6602




DUBLIN, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global CAD Market for VARs 2015-2019" report to their offering.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160330/349511LOGO )



High R&D investment across EMEA, APAC, and Americas by both, government, and private industries boost the growth of the global CAD market for VARs. Market research analysts predict the global CAD market for VARs to grow at a CAGR of close to 8.75% until 2019.



Cloud computing provides vast space for data storage, ease of access, flexibility, and security. Companies increasingly prefer to use cloud-based CAD software as it is cost effective. End-users do not have to pay license fees as they can access the software through the cloud. The deployment of CAD in the cloud leads to low cost, faster distribution, low maintenance, and an increase in scalability.



According to the report, high R&D investment across EMEA, APAC, and the Americas by both government and private industry to boost their industries contributed to the growth of the global



Further, the report states that the availability of free and open-source CAD software in the market poses a serious threat to the revenue generation of a large number of VARs.



The existing adoption rate of CAD in Americas in industries is more than 85%. The market is at its mature stage where most of the companies across industries are utilizing the advantage of CAD. Hence, CAD vendors in this region are shifting their business towards new and innovative products.



Europe emerged as the largest contributor for the 3D CAD market in EMEA for VARs in 2014. Increased R&D and capital investment by companies across industries in Europe contributed to the growth of the market. In Germany, the automotive industry R&D investment amounted to USD 23 billion in 2014.



Leading vendors analyzed by this report



- Autodesk

- Dassault

- Seimens

- PTC

- Others



Key questions answered in the report



- What are the key factors driving the global CAD market for VARs?

- What are the key market trends impacting the growth of the global CAD market for VARs?

- What are the various opportunities and threats faced by the global CAD market for VARs?

- Trending factors influencing the market shares for the global CAD market for VARs?

- Market shares for APAC, Americas, and EMEA?

- Key outcome of the five forces analysis on the global CAD market for VARs?

- Growth forecast of the global CAD market for VARs until 2019?



For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/n348dw/global_cad_market



Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716


VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- The Executive Director of the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) has issued a notice of hearing alleging that Lance Sanford Cook and CBM Canada's Best Mortgage Corp. (CBM) sold securities in breach of securities laws concerning prospectus requirements. CBM was a federal corporation with its head office in Victoria. Cook is a resident of B.C. and a former sub-mortgage broker. He was the president and sole director of CBM.

The notice alleges that between 2007 and 2012 Cook and CBM issued six sets of promissory notes for gross proceeds of $380,000.

Neither Cook nor CBM has ever filed a prospectus under the Securities Act, and neither Cook nor CBM qualified for an exemption from prospectus requirements for any of the relevant distributions.

These allegations have not been proven. Counsel for the Executive Director will apply to set dates for a hearing into the allegations before a panel of commissioners on June 28, 2016, at 9:00am.

You may view the notice of hearing on our website, www.bcsc.bc.ca, by typing Lance Sandford Cook, CBM Canada's Best Mortgage Corp., or 2016 BCSECCOM 115 in the search box. Information about disciplinary proceedings can be found in the Enforcement section of the BCSC website.

Please visit the Canadian Securities Administrators' Disciplined List for information relating to persons disciplined by provincial securities regulators, the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA).

About the British Columbia Securities Commission (www.bcsc.bc.ca)

The British Columbia Securities Commission is the independent provincial government agency responsible for regulating capital markets in British Columbia through the administration of the Securities Act. Our mission is to protect and promote the public interest by fostering:

-- A securities market that is fair and warrants public confidence -- A dynamic and competitive securities industry that provides investment opportunities and access to capital

Learn how to protect yourself and become a more informed investor at www.investright.org

Contacts:

Media Contact:

Richard Gilhooley, Media Relations

604-899-6713



Public inquiries:

604-899-6854 or 1-800-373-6393 (toll free)




BRUSSELS, BELGIUM -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- Hunter Tootoo, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard will attend Seafood Expo Global in Brussels, Belgium April 26 to 28, 2016, to boost Canada's sustainable fish and seafood industry. The Minister will meet with senior European Union officials to voice Canada's strong support for continued access to European markets for the Canadian lobster industry and improved collaboration on ocean science.

While in Brussels, the Minister will meet with EU Commissioner for the Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Karmenu Vella, to discuss how Canada and the EU can cooperate to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing on the high seas. He will also meet EU Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Carlos Moedas, to determine how Canada and the EU can work together on innovative scientific research to support healthy oceans and understand the impact of climate change.

Minister Tootoo will express Canada's concern about a potential ban on North American live lobster in all meetings with key European officials and industry representatives in attendance at Seafood Expo. He will also discuss the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) as well as issues affecting the Arctic. The Minister will also raise the issue of the EU ban on seal products given Canada's support for a humane and sustainable seal harvest and voice support for the EU's exemption for indigenous seal products.

"The Seafood Expo provides an excellent opportunity to showcase Canada's global leadership in providing high quality fish and seafood products to consumers around the world," said Minister Tootoo. "Our government's goal is to boost collaboration with the EU on trade and other measures while also protecting the interests of Canadians who make their living from fisheries."

Quick Facts

-- Canadian fish and seafood exports continue to grow with total sales of $6 billion in 2015. This represents a record high growth rate of 21% and a $1 billion increase since 2014. -- Canada exports more than $2 billion in lobster annually. -- When CETA comes into force in 2017, approximately 98% of all EU tariff lines will be duty free. -- Aquaculture is key to meeting the growing global demand for fresh fish and seafood. More than 50% of the world's seafood is produced through aquaculture.

Associated Links

-- For more information about Canadian fish and seafood exports consult Fisheries and Oceans website at: http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/stats/stats- eng.htm -- Read more about Canada's commitment to sustainability in our wild capture fishery and aquaculture sectors at Fisheries and Oceans Canada's Sustainable Seafood web site

Internet: http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca

Follow us on Twitter! www.Twitter.com/DFO_MPO

Contacts:

Media Relations

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

613-990-7537

Media.xncr@dfo-mpo.gc.ca



Patricia Bell

Press Secretary

Office of the Minister

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

613-992-3474




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- Thursday, April 28 is the labour movement's most solemn day. Thousands of workers, friends and families of fallen workers will gather at ceremonies across Ontario to recognize the National Day of Mourning for Workers Killed or Injured on the Job. As we mourn for the dead, the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) will continue to fight for the living.

The OFL's six-year-long campaign, "Kill a Worker, Go to Jail," made history earlier this year, when Metron Construction Project Manager, Vadim Kazenelson, received Ontario's first prison sentence for workplace negligence causing the deaths of four workers and the serious injury of a fifth. The sentence was the first of its kind in Ontario, since the Criminal Code of Canada was amended in response to the 1992 Westray Mine Disaster, to allow for the criminal conviction of negligent employers.

"Workers have been fighting for health and safety rights for centuries but we know that we won't stop the carnage in the workplace unless employers come to realize that there will be serious personal consequences if they put workers' lives in the line of danger," said OFL President Chris Buckley. "No prison term or financial penalty can bring back the workers who died or undo the pain felt by their families, but we hope the threat of jail time will send a shiver down the spine of every employer and make them see accident prevention as an occupational priority."

According to the latest statistics from Ontario's Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB), 226 workers reportedly lost their lives in 2015 due to workplace tragedies or occupational disease. Roughly 230,000 Ontario workers are injured or made sick at work every year, thousands of others pass away years later due to resulting health complications, and still other cases, undoubtedly, go unreported or unacknowledged. It amounts to a workplace epidemic that has needlessly cost tens of thousands of lives and impacted literally millions of working families over the years.

This year, the OFL has joined the Canadian Labour Congress in calling for a total ban on asbestos. Every year, 145,000 Canadian workers are exposed to asbestos in their workplace and, tragically, over 2,000 are still being diagnosed with often fatal diseases, like mesothelioma and lung cancer. These startling figures have earned asbestos a reputation as the number one workplace killer, yet after banning the mining and export of asbestos in 2011, Canada continues to allow the importation of products containing asbestos.

"There is absolutely no justifiable reason to delay a full ban on asbestos. Indeed, Canadian lives are depending on it," said Buckley. "It is time to start listening to the resounding scientific evidence, it is time to start listening to the tragic stories of the families of fallen workers, and it is time to make workplace health and safety a national priority."

OFL Officers and staff will attend Day of Mourning Ceremonies in cities and towns across Ontario. The province's labour unions, regional labour councils, injured workers' groups, family members and allies will come together demand action - from our courts and from our governments - to ensure that every employee who heads off to work will return home safely to their family at the end of a workday.

"Canada has the opportunity to show the world we care about stopping the tragedy of asbestos and protecting the lives of every worker. We believe the National Day of Mourning on April 28 offers a tremendous opportunity for meaningful action to make workplace health and safety the bottom line for every employer," said Buckley.

For a list of Day of Mourning events across Ontario, visit: https://www.whsc.on.ca/Events/Day-of-Mourning

The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) represents 54 unions and one million workers in Ontario. For information, visit www.OFL.ca and follow the OFL on Facebook and Twitter: @OFLabour.

Contacts:

Joel Duff

OFL Communications Director: 416-707-0349 (cell)

jduff@ofl.ca




DES MOINES, IA--(Marketwired - April 26, 2016) - Hundreds gather this week in Downtown Des Moines for the Global Insurance Symposium -- the world's premier symposium for industry experts. It is hosted by the Iowa Insurance Institute, the Federation of Iowa Insurers, the Iowa Economic Development Authority, the Greater Des Moines Partnership and the Iowa Insurance Division.

This year's Global Insurance Symposium is themed "Inspiring Innovation in the Insurance Industry." New at the Symposium this year is an Innovation Track, which comprehensively explores innovation opportunities and challenges. In addition to the Innovation Track, all attendees will have the opportunity to hear presentations from companies within the Global Insurance Accelerator, a mentor-driven business accelerator designed to foster innovation in the insurance industry by supporting startups targeting the global insurance industry.

The Global Insurance Symposium features a powerhouse agenda of renowned industry keynote and panel speakers, as well as numerous opportunities for attendees to participate in roundtable and breakout discussion sessions with global insurance leaders. Speakers include state insurance commissioners, industry leaders, regulatory representatives from various states, national offices and international organizations, and other experts in the insurance industry from around the world.

"The Global Insurance Symposium is the prime event for national and global leaders in the insurance industry," said Iowa Insurance Commissioner Nick Gerhart. "This is an essential event for insurance executives including CEOs, CIOs, CMOs, counsel, presidents, chairpersons and partners, as well as entrepreneurs."

Speakers include the following:

Julian Enoizi, CEO at Pool Re

X. Rick Niu, Chief Executive Officer and President at Starr Strategic Holdings LLC

Maria Ferrante-Schepis, Managing Principal, Insurance and Financial Services at Maddock Douglas

Jayne Plunkett, Head of Casualty Division at Swiss Re

Neil Sprackling, President, North America Life and Health Business at Swiss Re

Paul Thanos, Director for Finance and Insurance Industries at U.S. Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration

Jennifer Fitzgerald, CEO and Co-Founder at PolicyGenius

Tom Sullivan, Senior Advisor, Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation at the Federal Reserve

Adam Cassady, Co-Founder and CEO at Tyche

Chad Nitschke, Co-Founder and CEO at Insure.VC

Kyle Nakatsuji, Principal at American Family Ventures

See a full list of all speakers and sessions at GlobalInsuranceSymposium.com.

About the Global Insurance Symposium

Established in 2014, the Global Insurance Symposium is the premier Symposium for insurance professionals and regulatory authorities to hear from the world's most renowned insurance experts and to interact with fellow insurance industry colleagues from around the world. The Global Insurance Symposium is presented by the Iowa Insurance Institute, the Federation of Iowa Insurers, the Iowa Economic Development Authority, the Greater Des Moines Partnership and the Iowa Insurance Division. For more information, visit GlobalInsuranceSymposium.com.

About the Greater Des Moines Partnership

The Greater Des Moines Partnership is the economic and community development organization serving Central Iowa for more than 125 years. Together with 21 Affiliate Chambers of Commerce and 5,700 business members, The Partnership drives economic growth and careers through innovation, strategic planning and global collaboration. We foster an environment where residents are empowered to live their passions and shape our community, making Greater Des Moines the best place in the world to build a business and life. For more information, visit DesMoinesMetro.com.

About the Global Insurance Accelerator

Created in 2014 as an initiative of the Greater Des Moines Partnership, the Global Insurance Accelerator is the world's first startup accelerator focused on the global insurance industry. The mentor-driven program is backed by major carriers and brokerages and its mentors consist of current and former industry leaders and executives. To learn more about the GIA, visit GlobalInsuranceAccelerator.com.

Contact:

Sophia S. Ahmad

sahmad@desmoinesmetro.com

(515) 286-4919
MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- Bombardier (TSX: BBD.A)(TSX: BBD.B)(OTCQX: BDRBF) will hold its annual and special meeting of shareholders at its cutting-edge Commercial Aircraft facility in Mirabel, Quebec on Friday, April 29, 2016.

WHERE: Bombardier Commercial Aircraft 13100 Henri-Fabre Boulevard, Mirabel, Quebec Please follow media signs on site WHEN: Friday, April 29, 2016 Media registration: 9:15 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) Opening of the meeting: 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) -- At the very beginning of the meeting, there will be a brief photo opportunity. Photographers and cameramen will then be invited to leave the room. -- Approximately 45 minutes after the meeting, Mr. Alain Bellemare, President and Chief Executive Officer, Bombardier Inc., will be available to meet media representatives in the room where the meeting was held. -- Additionally, visits of the C Series final assembly line will be arranged on demand after 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time (ET).

The annual and special meeting of shareholders will also be webcast live at the following address: www.bombardier.com

The replay of this meeting will be available on Bombardier's website shortly after the end of the webcast.

Contacts:

Isabelle Rondeau

Director, Communications

Bombardier Inc.

+514 861 9481



Patrick Ghoche

Vice President, Investor Relations

Bombardier Inc.

+514 861 5727




OAKVILLE, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/26/16 -- NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Saint Jean Carbon Inc. ("Saint Jean" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: SJL) with reference to the previous press release dated April 25 of this year, wishes to announce that it placed an aggregate of 5,750,000 units ("Common Units") at a price of $0.05 per Common Unit for gross proceeds of $287,500 (the "Common Unit Offering"). Each Common Unit consists of one (1) common share in the capital of the Company ("Common Share") at a price of $0.05 per Common Share and one (1) common share purchase warrant ("Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder to acquire one (1) additional Common Share at an exercise price of $0.06 per Common Share for a period of 36 months from the date of issuance.

In connection with the closing of the first tranche of the Common Unit Offering, the Company paid a cash finder's fee in the amount of $18,000 to one arm's length finder. In addition, the Company issued options entitling two (2) arm's length finders to each purchase 180,000 Common Units at a price of $0.05 per Common Unit.

The Company intends to use the proceeds of the Common Unit Offering for general corporate and administrative purposes.

All securities issued as part of the Common Unit Offering are subject to a four month and one (1) day hold period.

About Saint Jean

Saint Jean is a publicly traded carbon science company, with interest in graphite mining claims on the 100% Company-owned properties located in the province of Quebec in Canada. The properties include past producing mines. For information on Saint Jean's other properties and the latest news please go to the website: www.saintjeancarbon.com

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Saint Jean Carbon Inc.

Paul Ogilvie, CEO and Chairman

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS:

This press release contains forward-looking statements, within the meaning of applicable securities legislation, concerning Saint Jean's business and affairs. In certain cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "intends" "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Such forward-looking statements include those with respect to the Company's intention to use the proceeds of the Common Unit Offering as working capital to fund the continued development of the Company's business.

These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, and are naturally subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances that may cause actual results to differ materially. The forward-looking statements in this news release assume, inter alia, that the conditions for completion of the Common Unit Offering, including regulatory approval will be met.

Although Saint Jean believes that the expectations represented in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that these expectations will prove to be correct. There are risks which could affect Saint Jean's ability to complete the Common Unit Offering, including that required consents and approvals from regulatory authorities will not be obtained.

Statements of past performance should not be construed as an indication of future performance. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether or not such results will be achieved. A number of factors, including those discussed above, could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Any such forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement.

All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking information is provided as of the date of this press release, and Saint Jean assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required under applicable securities legislation.

Contacts:

Information Contact:

(905) 844-1200

info@saintjeancarbon.com

www.saintjeancarbon.com




Qapla, a San Casciano in Val di Pesa (FI), Italy-based provider of a customer experience platform for ecommerce, raised an angel round of funding of undisclosed amount.

Backers included startup incubator Nana Bianca, Club Acceleratori and an angel investor.

The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and improve the platform.

Led by CEO Roberto Fumarola and CTO Luca Cassia, Qapla provides a customer experience platform featuring tools to monitor delivery of over 40 national and international shipping companies allowing them to directly communicate with the end customers about the service via email and a dedicated ticketing system. The service integrates with such platform as eCommerce  Magento, PrestaShop, Woocommerce  and supports marketplaces including Amazon, Ebay and EPrice.

The company expects to launch its mobile app QaplAPP soon.

FinSMEs

26/04/2016
Zero Zero Robotics, a Beijing, China-based robotics company, raised $25M in total funding including a $23M Series A round.

Backers included IDG, GSR Ventures, ZhenFund, Zuig and others.

Co-founded in 2014 by former Twitter software engineer and Stanford PHD MQ Wang, and Stanford PHD Tony Zhang, Zero Zero Robotics has also unveiled its Hover Camera, a portable autonomous flying camera designed to let anyone capture exciting moments indoors and out, from creative new perspectives by leveraging Embedded AI to navigate the environment, which combines artificial intelligence with a small PCB, to run complex AI algorithms.

The company, which has a team of 70 in offices in San Francisco, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou, intends to use the funds to introduce Hover Camera to the public.

FinSMEs

26/04/2016
The Bombay High Court granted anticipatory bail to producer Rahul Raj Singh on Monday, who was accused of abetting the suicide of actress Pratyusha Banerjee, after observing that prima facie there is no evidence to show that the accused "instigated or intended" the suicide.

"From the statements of witnesses, it is clearly seen that harassment and disputes were there between the applicant accused (Rahul) and the victim (Pratyusha). But prima facie, there is nothing on record to show abetment," Justice Mridula Bhatkar said.

The court was hearing the application filed by Mr Singh seeking pre-arrest bail after the sessions court rejected his plea. The High Court, while granting his application, directed Mr Singh to appear before the Bangur Nagar police, which is probing the case, thrice a week for two weeks.

"For an offence to be made out under section 306 of IPC (abetment to suicide) there should be instigation, intentional aid or an intent that the person should commit suicide. It is necessary to show whether the accused had mens rea (intention)," the court said.

It added that harassment or disputes can be a reason for a person to not like another person and take steps to end his or her life. "For that person, the behaviour of the other person may be the cause of his or her death. However, for an offence of abetment to be proved, there should be evidence to show instigation, provocation and intention," the court said.

The court in its chamber during the day heard the last telephonic conversation between Rahul Raj Singh and Pratyusha banerjee recorded on April 1 an hour before the actress committed suicide.

"Throughout the conversation, the applicant accused is asking the victim (Pratyusha) not to take any drastic steps and assured her that he would return home immediately. After perusing all the facts of the case, this court is prima facie of the view that the police can investigate the case without any custodial interrogation of the accused," the court said.

The prosecutor also told the court that the police was also probing if Pratyusha Banerjee was forced by Mr Singh to abort her pregnancy.

Mr Singh's lawyer Abaad Ponda argued that Rahul and Pratyusha were happy with each other and had even partied together the night before she committed suicide. "On April 1, Rahul had gone out in the afternoon to bring lunch when Pratyusha called him. Rahul berated her for drinking in the day time and told her that he would return soon," he said.

Mr Ponda added that the post-mortem report also suggests that Pratyusha committed suicide and that it was not murder.

However, according to this Hindustan Times report, Pratyusha may have had a drinking problem and was under the influence of alcohol at the time of her suicide.

With inputs from agencies
In order to understand what made solar power become a global movement, one needs to take a look at what Hermann Scheer did when he was the energy minister of Germany at the turn of this century. And nothing explains his vision better than his own 45 minute interview  titled, Nothing like the Sun.

Hermann Scheer was the prime mover of the feed-in-tariff (FIT), which was first explained in Germanys 2000 RES Act. He was an electrical engineer who realised that the reason hydro-carbons had become so popular was partly because of the huge subsidies they had enjoyed  both in the past and in current times.

He reckoned that if solar power could be given just 1 per cent of those subsidies, this source of power could change the entire energy market globally. He was proved right.

It helped that he belonged to the Green Party which was keen on pushing through any piece of legislation which would be environmentally friendly. But Scheer  like most Germans  did not want a policy that would hurt his country. He wanted a policy that would help both Germany and the environment.

The Hermann Scheer model

What Scheer did was to introduce a set of laws that:

(a) Allowed each rooftop of each house to be fitted with solar panels which were subsidized by the government.

(b) Allowed for the creation of a new class of people  whom we can call agent-aggregators for purposes of convenience. Their job would be to fit the panels on housetops, maintain them, and also monitor bidirectional meters. These meters would register the amount of energy sold by the household to the states power grid, and also how much of power was taken from the grid. The net amount of power had to be paid for either by the consumer if he was in deficit, or the state. The agent acted as an aggregator of such power which he then sold to the power grid at a guaranteed price of 15 cents per unit for a period of 20 years. It is this guarantee that has kept German solar power expensive today. But the tapering off has begun and energy costs should fall dramatically in around five years time.

The Hermann Scheer model ensured that the consumer was not inconvenienced in either the setting up of the panels, or in maintaining them, or in even getting the State to pay him for the power that he had sold to the grid.

(c) Ensured that the agent got a commission from the power tariff that was fixed for solar power. True, the State would incur a loss from the higher tariff paid for solar, but it would win eventually if the costs of dealing with pollution were also taken into account.

The plan worked. In just eight years, prices of solar panels plummeted. And it was then discovered that the solar power industry in Germany had begun employing more people than the automobile and engineering sectors.

As a result, by 2009, FIT policies got enacted in around 63 jurisdictions around the world, including Australia, much of Europe, Iran, Republic of Ireland, Israel, the Republic of Korea, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, in several states of the US, and is gaining momentum in China, India and Mongolia.

But the biggest advantage was that the Scheer model allowed each household to become a power generator.
NEW DELHI Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed one of two Italian marines facing murder charges over the deaths of two Indian fishermen to further delay his return for the trial until the end of September.

The court had earlier allowed Massimiliano Latorre to stay in Italy until April 30 following heart surgery.

In 2012, India arrested Latorre and Salvatore Girone who were escorting an oil tanker on suspicion of shooting dead two fishermen they mistook for pirates. They were not charged but were barred from leaving India.

Latorre was allowed to return home last year for medical treatment but Girone has been confined to New Delhi, where he lives at the Italian ambassador's residence and reports regularly to police.

Soli Sorabjee, one of the lawyers appearing for Latorre before the Supreme Court, argued for delaying his client's return, citing the suspension of the trial on the orders of a UN tribunal.

"Everything has been stayed in India," Sorabjee said. "What is the point of coming here?"

The Indian government's lawyer did not contest his plea.

Italy and India have been at loggerheads over who has jurisdiction over the case. Italy has sought international arbitration.

Rome maintains the immunity of both the marines to prosecution since they were serving on a U.N.-backed anti-piracy mission and the oil tanker they were escorting was in international waters when it fired on the fishermen.

The Supreme Court last year suspended all legal proceedings against the two Italian marines on the orders of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). However, it keeps setting dates to be informed of the status of the proceedings at the UN tribunal.

The court has set the next date of hearing for September 20.

(Reporting by Suchitra Mohanty; Writing by Rajesh Kumar Singh; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Refuting reports that underworld gangster Dawood Ibrahim's health, his trusted lieutenant Chhota Shakeel has said that he is 'perfectly fit.'

Reports had emerged on Monday that Dawood Ibrahim's health is deteriorating. Affected by gangrene caused due to loss of blood supply, reports have claimed that his body tissues are dying. According to an earlier Firstpost report, Dawood, was all set to retire on his 60th birthday and announce a successor. However there has been no word about that. According to NDTV, it is likely that the don's trusted lieutenant, Chhota Shakeel would be the successor.

Dawood Ibrahim is wanted by India for the 1993 Mumbai blasts that killed 256 people.

According to India Today, the 'underworld don' is undergoing treatment at the Liaquat National Hospital and Combined Military Hospital at Karachi.

In August last year, a Hindustan Times report had cited fresh evidence in the form of a telephone bill and a passport to support India's claim that Dawood Ibrahim is in Pakistan.

The bill mentioned D-13, Block 4, Karachi Development Authority, Sch 5, Clifton, as the address, and was issued by the Pakistan Telecommunications Company Limited. The passport had a recent image of Dawood, which shows him now to be clean shaven and with a receding hairline.
IITs have been asked to teach Sanskrit language for facilitating study of science and technology as reflected in its literature, Lok Sabha was told on Monday.

A panel, chaired by former CEC N Gopalaswami, in its report had suggested that IITs may facilitate study of science and technology as reflected in Sanskrit literature along with inter-disciplinary study of Sanskrit and modern subjects, HRD Minister Smriti Irani said in a written reply.

"Accordingly, IITs have been requested to teach Sanskrit language especially with reference to study of works which contain scientific knowledge," Irani said.

But the HRD minister's request has been met by mockery by Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia. In his tweets, Sisodia took a dig at Irani and the BJP -

One should understand Sanskrit is the only language which can compete with C++, Java, SOL, Python, Javascript...1/2 https://t.co/QhYq3PcuZy  Manish Sisodia (@msisodia) April 26, 2016

All computers in India using languages like C+, Java, SOL, Python..should b declared antinational once IITians learn working in sanskrit.2/2  Manish Sisodia (@msisodia) April 26, 2016

According to a report in NDTV,

Left parliamentarian D Raja questioned the need for Sanskrit in IITs' literature and also alleged that the BJP is pursuing RSS's agenda, saying, "why not Tamil? It's the RSS agenda and the government is working on it. The government should take Parliament into confidence as this is a policy matter."

Congress leader Pramod Tiwari said that including Sanskrit in the curriculum stands no ground professionally and that something like this cannot be forced, reported NDTV.

With inputs from PTI
Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court on Tuesday issued notices to the state and central governments on a plea challenging the "legality" of Gujarat's eco-sensitive zone policy restricting commercial constructions within 10 sq km peripheral buffer zone of Gir lion sanctuary.

The notice was issued by a division bench of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice V M Pancholi after the petitioner, owner of a Saavaj Resort, claimed the state government had no authority to formulate such a policy under Environment (Protection) Act as such power rests only with the union government.

The government had prepared the policy in question in response to a suo motu petition filed in the HC in 2014 against illegal and haphazard constructions in and around the reserved forest areas.

The policy prevented construction activities for commercial purposes within 10 sq kms peripheral buffer zone of the sanctuary. The government also banned setting up flood lights and electric fencing within the area.

The policy, however, could not be enforced as the matter is still pending before the HC.

The petition on Tuesday challenged the "legality" of the policy, contending the government has contradicted itself on the issue through two separate resolutions issued by the Forest Department and the Home Department.

In its resolution issued in June 2009, the Forest department had permitted hospitality units constructed before 2009 to continue within the buffer zone while the Home department had issued a prohibitory order in 2010.
The JNU administration has achieved the impossible. Perhaps for the first time in JNU's history, it has united the Left and Right against a draconian decision.

On Sunday, the JNU administration imposed a wide range of penalties and punishments on more than a dozen students. Some of them, including Kanhaiya Kumar and Rama Naga, have been let off with fines and penalties. But Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya and Mujeeb Gatoo, a surprise addition to the list of the usual suspects, have been suspended and banned from the campus.

Here is the delicious irony: Among those penalised is Saurabh Sharma, the ABVP joint secretary of the JNU students' union who had complained about anti-national slogans and activities on the campus in February.

If the quantum of punishment is any indication, Kanhaiya Kumar and Saurabh Sharma have been found guilty of similar offences, whatever they may be, making the ABVP leader bawl about injustice. Poor Saurabh seems to have got the sharp end of the stick in the wrong place. While Kanhaiya has become something of a hero for his defiance, Saurabh would become a butt of jokes for being punished in spite of his obsequious compliance!

Before we see the decision for what it is  farce masquerading as justice  a word about the JNU administration's courage. After waiting for several weeks, it has struck against Kanhaiya Kumar and his azaadi gang on the eve of exams. Aware that the pursuit of a degree may appear more pragmatic to students than the pursuit of justice, the administration is hoping that its decision would not be resisted much. On the scale of courage, this must rank at par with committing a burglary in a vacant house in the dead of night, hoping nobody would notice or resist. In a few days we would get to know if the treachery would be accepted in silence or the campus would go up again in flames, as it should.

But, what exactly are the students being punished for? For shouting anti-national slogans? But, nobody has proved conclusively who were the masked men who shouted those ugly slogans and disappeared. The tapes that were shown as evidence of the purported anti-national slogans are suspected to be doctored, those behind them are currently facing a Delhi government probe. So, what exactly is the fault of the students found guilty?

For sedition? The Indian courts are already in the process of deciding whether Kanhaiya, Umar, Anirban and their associates are guilty of treason and inciting rebellion and violence. Since the verdict is pending, how could the JNU administration pronounce not just its judgment but also read out a draconian sentence? Or, has the vice-chancellor of the university and his bench decided that there is no point waiting for courts, trusting the judiciary?



For argument's sake, what if the court's decide that the student were innocent? Will the JNU be able to give back students what it is depriving them of in haste? Sounds very much like Andhaa Kanoon, no?

Ironically, the JNU administration is itself in the dock for twiddling its thumbs when it should have acted, and then acting in haste when it should have waited for the courts to decide the cases against students. When it allowed a minor incident, repeat a minor incident, on a campus dhaba to turn into a national farce, the administration was guilty of being a mute spectator. Now, when the case is sub-judice, it wants to act tough and pass pre-judicial judgments, when it should have ideally let the embers cool down and wait for the trial to end.

Perhaps the administration wants to punish students for indiscipline, for organising a controversial political discussion on Afzal Guru in the name of a cultural event. But handing out bans and long suspensions for organising debates and discussions is like bringing on tanks to deal with a verbal argument.

For a change, even the ABVP may agree.
The fight inside the countries premiere institution, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), over the 9 February events  when anti-national slogans were allegedly raised inside the campus - seems to be far from over, as the JNU Students Union is preparing for a fresh agitation against the university administration decision to rusticate three students and impose fine on the others.

The university administration rusticated three students on Monday, including Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, while the president Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU), Kanhaiya Kumar, was fined Rs 10,000, Bhattacharya was rusticated till 15 July and barred from the university from July 25 for five years.

Now, the JNSU students Union is planning to go for fresh protests and review the existing mode of protests and change the strategy for fighting against the decision, which they call, a "sheer vendetta and a biased inquiry.

We will start a fast unto death in next few days. We are burning copies of the report in front of the administrative block today (Tuesday), and try to review the mode of the protest. This will also include political mobilization, JNU students' union vice president, Shehla Rashid Shora, told Firstpost.

This political mobilization, she said, would also include launching a countrywide campaign to expose the government's anti-student character.

A High-Level Enquiry Committee (HLEC) set up by the University to probe the events of 9 February had submitted its final report to JNU authorities on March 11, but the university authorities, according to sources, were not sure about quantum of the punishment.

The students Union said on Tuesday they will burn the copy of the report as a way of symbolic protest against the anti-democratic and one-sided inquiry.

Why did they take so much time to come to this decision? They wanted to derail the movement that had caught the attention of nations. That was the only motive, Said Rakeeb, a student of International Politics, in the university.

Rakeeb said that everyone was sure that the probe by the university administration was never going to be fair and just.

We will oppose this. Most of the students who have been punished by the university belong to Dalit, Muslim and backward castes," he said.

Students say the university was not even ready to change or add extra members to the committee when questions were raised over its composition.

How can you expect decision of a committee to be fair, when its composition was questioned, Ritika, a PhD Student told Firstpost. The university, in February, had ruled out any change in the composition High-Level Enquiry Committee, saying it has "full faith" in the three-member panel.

The teachers had said that composition of the committee was unacceptable to them as its scope was limited, the students who were asked to appear before the panel have refused to participate in the inquiry citing "unjust" suspension of eight students.

This is clearly against the democratic culture of the university. We will take this fight forward for the reason because it is about future and not just of this institution but also about institutions across the country. And this all is happening because of the outside interference, not only here but through the country, Ashutosh, an MPhil student, told Firstpost.

"A farce is what this inquiry has been from day one, made to witch-hunt and punish students by hook or crook. Do we need to remind you, Mr Jagdish Kumar (JNU VC) that unlike you the students and teachers of this campus are not pliant stooges of the RSS," Umar Khalid wrote on his Facebook page.

Two students, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya are likely to lose a semester while another student Mujeeb Gattoo, a Kashmiri, has been suspended for two semesters, an order from the university proctor said. Khalid has been fined Rs 20,000 while ten others were also fined varying amounts, including one from the ABVP on charges of obstructing traffic in the campus.
In spite of being labelled as an 'anti-national' from various right-wing quarters, Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union leader Kanhaiya Kumar has found support from people most unexpected.

Not only did Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday said it is wrong to brand Kanhaiya as anti-national and slap a sedition case against him, soon after, the Hindu Sant Mahasabha  an affiliate organization of the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha  said they were wrong in labeling Kumar as anti-national, according to this report by The Times of India.

Swami Chakrapani Maharaj, the president of the organisation, was quoted in the report as saying, that they were misled by the "BJP propaganda" against Kumar and his fellow JNU scholars Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya.

"I was enraged when I learnt that Kanhaiya, Umar and Anirban had raised slogans against my mother land. I was swayed by the BJP's propaganda. However, I decided to follow this case properly. When I went into the details, I realized that there was not a shred of evidence against any of the three students. It was clear to me that the BJP has been trying to make scapegoat of them," Maharaj told The Times of India.

According to this report by The Hindu, Chakrapani Maharaj said that the BJP government was trying to make Kumar a scapegoat and is trying to exploit the issue of nationalism. "It is quite shameless and completely wrong to brand innocent students as anti-national when their views are completely within the purview of the Constitution," Maharaj was quoted as saying in the report.

On Monday, the JNU slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on Kumar and rusticated Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya and Kashmiri student Mujeeb Gattoo for varying durations over their alleged role in the controversial 9 February event for which they were charged with sedition, an action which had sparked outrage and triggered protests.

Based on the findings of a high-level enquiry committee (HLEC), Khalid has been rusticated for one semester and Bhattacharya till 15 July. Khalid has also been slapped a fine of Rs 20,000. Anirban has been barred from JNU campus for a period of five years starting 23 July.

JNU students union president Kanhaiya, Umar and Anirban were arrested on charges of sedition in February in connection with the controversial event and are out on bail.

Their arrests had triggered widespread protests at JNU and many other universities, following which the Opposition had accused the government of attempting to stifle dissent.

While Umar and Anirban were blamed for "triggering communal violence" and "disrupting" communal harmony on the campus, Mujeeb was found guilty of participating sloganeering. Kanhaiya was pronounced guilty of indiscipline and misconduct.

With inputs from PTI
New Delhi: Defiant JNU students who have been punished in connection with a controversial event on campus on Tuesday asserted they will not pay fine and vacate hostels as ordered by the university and will go on an indefinite hunger strike from Wednesday demanding withdrawal of orders.

"We have rejected the so called high-level enquiry committee right from the day it was set up as an undemocratic and biased one so there is no point accepting the punishment meted out to us on basis of its findings," JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar told reporters in Delhi.

Kanhaiya, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya were arrested on charges of sedition in February in connection with an event against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. They are now out on bail.

The university on Monday rusticated Umar for one semester, Kashmiri student Mujeeb Gattoo for two semesters and Anirban for five years. As per decision, Bhattacharya has been barred from pursuing any course in JNU for next 5 years. Kanhaiya has been penalised with Rs 10,000.

13 other students have been let off with varied fines. The campus has been made out of bounds for two former students Banojyotsana Lahiri and Draupadi  while hostel facilities of Ashutosh Kumar and Komal Mohite have been withdrawn for a year and till 21 July respectively.

"We have decided that none of the students will pay the fine or vacate their hostels. We demand that the university administration withdraws these orders as we have maintained right from the beginning that we do not have faith in this enquiry panel and it should be reconstituted," JNUSU Vice President Shehla Rashid Shora said.

"We will begin an indefinite hunger strike from tomorrow after staging a protest march from varsity's Ganga dhaba to administration block. The decision has been well-timed by the university officials to avoid any protests as summer break is about to begin but we will not bow down and continue our fight," she added.

Anirban, who has been given a window of a week (15-23 July) to submit his thesis and has been debarred from university for five years beginning 24 July said, "I am not going to vacate my hostel and follow any of the punishment orders but as a student I am going to stick to the deadline for my thesis submission. I am a bit scared about my future but we will fight against the administration".

The university officials, however, maintained that the students have an option of filing an appeal before the Chief Proctor if they are not satisfied with the decision.

"If they want to file an appeal, we will give them an option to be heard. However, if they are not filing an appeal, they are supposed to vacate hostels immediately and pay fine by 17 May," a senior university official said.

He, however, did not comment on what will be the university's course of action if the students don't vacate the hostels.

Meanwhile, a delegation of the JNU Teachers Association (JNUTA) met Vice Chancellor Jagadesh Kumar on Tuesday and raised concerns over the punishment orders.

"It was an unfruitful meeting. We have decided to call an emergent general body meeting on Thursday to decide on future course of action," a JNUTA member said.

Questioning the hurry in announcing the decision and the priority of the vice chancellor, Kanhaiya said, "since this is subjudice what is the hurry? Also the committee report said outsiders raised slogans then why punish the insiders? VC was on leave and on his return first thing he did was this, but he is not addressing hostel issues, OBC reservation, deprivation point. This administration is running from phone calls coming from outside."

Meanwhile, five members from ABVP on Tuesday sat on an indefinite hunger strike against the imposition of penalty of Rs 10,000 on Saurabh Kumar Sharma, lone ABVP member in JNU students union and complainant in the Afzal Guru event.

"I was the one to object to an anti-national event and I have been penalised and equated with Kanhaiya. We had spoken to the administration demanding strict punishment against the ones who have been found guilty and withdrawal of my fine.

"But we have not got any assurance so far so we are beginning a hunger strike," Saurabh said.
Mumbaikars, you're in for some bad news! Your city has been declared the noisiest city in the country. The latest report by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has placed India's financial capital at the first place. Meanwhile, Delhi long admonished for its dirty airhas something to be (relatively) happy about, as it is ranked fourth, behind Lucknow and Hyderabad.

According to a report in The Times of India, Mumbai breached the safe noise levels - 55 decibels during the morning and 45 dcibels during the night - consistently between 2011 and 2014.

Delhi escaped the dubious distinction, thanks to a greener environment in and around the capital.

According to the CPCB, the most common source of noise pollution is motor vehicles, while other sources like generator sets, office machines, aircraft, industrial and construction activities also contribute to increasing the noise level in the cities.

Tinnitus (ringing in the ears) can lead to forgetfulness, depression and even panic attacks, according to the report.

Speaking to Firstpost, Sumaira Abdulali, environmentalist and founder of NGO Awaaz Foundation, said, "Mumbai is a geographically cramped city, so even if a few people come together there is a lot of noise. Also the fact is that the city is India's financial capital compounds the noise problem. New cars are added everyday, and it seems that there is a competition over who will make more noise."

Speaking about the possible solutions to this problem, she added that there is a need to look at the noise pollution element too while developing new infrastructure in urban areas, and an effective action plan must be implemented for reducing noise pollution.

The CPCB report was compiled after collecting data from 35 locations in seven cities. The final results were inferred by averaging the location-wise day time and night time noise level.

It is interesting to know that Mumbai and Delhi are among the noisiest cities in the world. According to a report in India Today, the dubious list also features Tokyo - the most populated city in the word, at number 2, New York at 3 and Spanish capital Madrid at number 4. Cairo, Egypt's capital city, is the noisiest in Africa and the Middle-east.
The fire safety mechanism of the National Museum of Natural History in FICCI building was "not functioning" which could have controlled the fire that broke out in the wee hours of 26 April, fire service officials said.

The fire broke out on the top floor of the museum at around 1.45 am, located in FICCI Building at Mandi House, where some repair work was underway and quickly spread to lower floors of the building, damaging the specimens kept there.

The fire soon spread to the rest of the building.

"The fire safety systems were there but they were not functioning at the time when we tried to operate them. Had they been working, the fire would have been curtailed at the earliest time," Deputy Fire Chief Rajesh Panwar said.

"Had the fire system been working it would be easier to control the fire at the earliest time because we had to depend on our resources only," he said.

The flames have been completely doused and other buildings in FICCI auditorium are safe. Only the National Museum of Natural History building has been damaged, the official said.

As many as 35 fire tenders were pressed into service. It took firefighters more than four hours to douse the blaze after which a cooling operation was launched which lasted for another few hours, a fire official said.

Six fire officials were rushed to hospital after they inhaled excessive smoke. Their condition is said to be stable, officials said.

The industry body FICCI said the cause of the fire is being investigated and thanked the Delhi Fire Service for its quick response in bringing the situation under control.

"Luckily, no one was present inside the building when the incident occurred. Federation house, which is the FICCI office building, and FICCI auditorium were not affected by the incident" FICCI said in a statement.

Minister of State for Environment, Forests and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday said that it was an unfortunate event and ordered an energy and fire audit of all the 34 museums across the country, reports The Indian Express.

The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained, a senior police official said.

With inputs from PTI.
New Delhi: Delhi Police have registered a case in connection with the massive fire that broke out on Tuesday at the National Museum of Natural History, housing thousands of rare specimens of flora and fauna.

A case under section 436 of IPC (mischief caused by fire or explosive substance with intent to destroy house) has been registered against unnamed persons in connection with the incident, a senior police official said.

The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained. Delhi Police will conduct a forensic examination of the building and collect samples for forensic tests once the fire department declares the building safe for the exercise, the official said.

Police and Fire department officials have ruled out the possibility of sabotage on the basis of investigation conducted so far. A short-circuit is unlikely to have caused the blaze as the incident took place in the wee hours when there is no chance of overload at the premises, the official said.

Nearly four-decade-old National Museum of Natural History, housing rare specimens including a 160-million-year old fossil bone of the Indian Sauropod Dinosaur, in the heart of the capital was ravaged in a massive blaze.

The fire started on the top floor of the six-storey FICCI building which housed the museum in Mandi House area of Central Delhi at around 1.45 am and rapidly spread to all other floors except the ground floor.

35 fire tenders were deployed to contain the blaze. Six firemen were injured in the operation. The fire was brought under control at around 6 am.
Mumbai: BJP Mumbai unit chief Ashish Shelar on Tuesday criticised Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray who recently took on the Centre for branding JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar as "anti-national".

"How can Shiv Sena support Kanhaiya Kumar, who is being prosecuted for holding a programme to mourn on death anniversary of terrorist Afzal Guru?" Shelar asked.

Thackeray had recently said, "It is wrong to brand Kanhaiya as anti-national and slapping sedition case against him. He is not anti-national. Who gave birth to Kanhaiya, Hardik Patel and Rohith Vemula? The government should ponder over it."

To this, Shelar stressed that sedition charges against Kanhaiya are not for his criticism of the Centre, but for the alleged anti-national sloganeering in JNU at a programme organised on the death anniversary of Afzal Guru.

"Afzal was hanged for his involvement in the attack on the Parliament. How can Shiv Sena support someone who hails Afzal? What has caused this 360 degree ideological shift in the Shiv Sena's stand?" the BJP leader asked.

Meanwhile, in what is being seen as the beginning of a campaign for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections next year, the city BJP has planned to celebrate Maharashtra Day, on 1 May, on a bigger scale this year.

"We have planned 2-3 programmes each in all the 227 municipal wards. The programmes include health camps, blood donation camps, road shows, and cultural programmes. The programmes would start early morning and would go on till late in night on 1 May."

"Party workers would be decorating over 200 traffic squares across the city and would convey (to people) the important decisions made by the Union and state government," Shelar said.

"BJP as a party has been celebrating statehood day for a long time. This year it is on a bit bigger scale," he said.

He said party workers would reach out to the people of the city with a slogan 'Our Aim Developed Mumbai'.

"All the MPs, MLAs and state-level leaders would participate in these ward level programmes," Shelar said.

The programmes on 1 May would be followed by a door-to-door communication drive where the party workers would try to reach out to every household across the city between 3 and 9 May, he added.
Washington: Scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have unveiled unique and unexpected behaviour of water molecules that is unmatched by any known gas, liquid or solid states.

Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) described a new tunnelling state of water molecules confined in hexagonal ultra-small channels - 5 angstrom across - of the mineral beryl.

An angstrom is 1/10-billionth of a metre, and individual atoms are typically about one angstrom in diameter.

The discovery, made possible with experiments at ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, demonstrates features of water under ultra confinement in rocks, soil and cell walls, which scientists predict will be of interest across many disciplines.

"At low temperatures, this tunnelling water exhibits quantum motion through the separating potential walls, which is forbidden in the classical world," said lead author Alexander Kolesnikov of ORNL's Chemical and Engineering Materials Division.

"This means that the oxygen and hydrogen atoms of the water molecule are 'delocalised' and therefore simultaneously present in all six symmetrically equivalent positions in the channel at the same time.

"It's one of those phenomena that only occur in quantum mechanics and has no parallel in our everyday experience," said Kolesnikov.

The existence of the tunnelling state of water shown in the study should help scientists better describe the thermodynamic properties and behaviour of water in highly confined environments such as water diffusion and transport in the channels of cell membranes, in carbon nanotubes and along grain boundaries and at mineral interfaces in a host of geological environments.

While previous studies have observed tunnelling of atomic hydrogen in other systems, the discovery that water exhibits such tunnelling behaviour is unprecedented.

The neutron scattering and computational chemistry experiments showed that, in the tunnelling state, the water molecules are delocalised around a ring so the water molecule assumes an unusual double top-like shape.

First principle simulations made by Narayani Choudhury of Lake Washington Institute of Technology and University of Washington-Bothell showed that the tunnelling behaviour is coupled to the vibrational dynamics of the beryl structure.

"The average kinetic energy of the water protons directly obtained from the neutron experiment is a measure of their motion at almost absolute zero temperature and is about 30 percent less than it is in bulk liquid or solid water," Kolesnikov said.

"This is in complete disagreement with accepted models based on the energies of its vibrational modes," said Kolesnikov.

The research was published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
New Delhi: Under attack over deployment of central forces inside NIT in Srinagar, the government on Tuesday said in Lok Sabha that it was not a suo moto or unilateral decision but it was done following requests from the institute authorities.

"It was not our decision, not a suo moto decision. There was a request from the NIT authorities and hence the decision was taken to deploy central forces in the campus. It was not a unilateral decision of the central government," Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said.

Rijiju's remarks during Question Hour came after Congress chief whip Jyotiraditya Scindia alleged that by deploying the central forces in the NIT campus, the central government had undermined the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

The NIT in Srinagar had witnessed clashes between local and outstation students after India lost to West Indies in World T-20 semi final match on 31 March, following which paramilitary forces were deployed at the campus.

Scindia accused the Jammu and Kashmir Police of "brutally" attacking the protesting students of NIT, claiming that they resorted to lathi charge on those students who were shouting slogans like 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.

The Congress leader's comments invited strong protests from treasury benches, particularly from BJP MP and former Union Home Secretary R K Singh, who said Jammu and Kashmir Police is known for its sacrifices for the country's unity and integrity and such comments are unwarranted.

Rijiju said it is a known fact that it is the state police which takes action wherever necessary and the central forces only help the local authorities.

He said three companies of paramilitary personnel were deployed inside the NIT campus while outside is being guarded by the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

A company of central forces comprises of around 100 personnel.

AIMIM member Asaduddin Owaisi also disapproved of Scidia's comments saying 3,000 personnel of Jammu and Kashmir Police have laid down their lives serving the nation.

Owaisi said after deployment of central forces, there was a perception that non-locals can be protected only by central forces, which was not good.

"Alienation of youth has been increasing and if we do not take action to stop alienation of youth, there will be problems," he said.

Rijiju said the reports of HRD Ministry's fact-finding team, Jammu and Kashmir government-appointed Magisterial Inquiry and an internal committee were yet to come and action will be taken as per their recommendations.

Intervening in the debate, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said when the non-local students had requested to go home, the state government made all arrangements and many of them now have returned to the campus.

Singh said those students who missed their examination will now be given opportunity to appear in the tests between 26-29 May.

Tension started brewing inside the NIT campus, located on the banks of Dal lake, after some local students burst crackers to celebrate Indian team's defeat in the T-20 match.

This was protested by the outstation students resulting in clashes.

During the Zero Hour later, Scindia mocked at the government over the Srinagar NIT row, questioning when it would hoist the national flag there as he referred to the HRD Ministry's recent directive that central universities will fly the tricolour at 207 feet.

The former Union Minister also said that official policy is to have a majority of teachers from outside the place where such institutes are located but in NIT most of the teachers are locals.

"I will ask the HRD Minister when will you fly the national flag at the entrance of the NIT? I am sure members sitting in front of me who preach about nationalism will agree with me," he said, in a jibe at the treasury benches.
12:43 (ist)

Manohar Parrikar explains AgustaWestland deal:

"AgustaWestland chopper was 100 cCore. We had to test the helicopters in Indian conditions. The other two vendors didn't agree to do so and conducted the test outside the country. this was against the clause in the country. Out of the 6 vendors who were given tenders, AgustaWestland Italy was also one of the vendors. But AgustaWestland UK took over the tender.

Only AgustaWestland got the concessions. They created a single vendor situation. In 2008, the price oh AW101 was 15 million Euros and oin 2010, it was listed as 27 million. Benchmark cost given by CNC(Contract negotiations committee) was 6 times higher than that of AoN (Acceptance of Necessity) There was no explanation for this.In 2012 February, then the government had written to the embassy through the MEA. The government even went to the investigating agency but nobody wrote to the company. This deal should have stopped in 2012. But yet, 3 helicopters were delivered in December 2012 and we accepted it.

In January 2013, Chief exec of Finmenccancia was arrested, Within hours our defence minister wrote to CBI immediately. If he wasn't arrested, they would not have taken this up.

After the CBI took it up, in Feb 2013, there was a notice issued to stop the deal.

Legal action forced the termination of the deal, it was not a proactive step, it was forced. Bank guarantee needed to be revoked and that was done.

When the Milan Court argued, they said that 166 Euros could be returned and the money for the 3 helicopters will not be returned.

I am not making allegations, but it is our Endeavour that we will take action. Defence Ministry initiating procedure to blacklist AgustaWestland. If that is our job, why is the Congress worried? "
Voters cast ballots in five northeastern states Tuesday, with frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both looking to overwhelm their respective Democratic and Republican rivals in the race for the White House. With Hillary Clinton poised to sweep the northeast and with an already strong lead among the influential wise men of her party, Bernie Sanders' claims to have a path may hit a dead end, reports The Guardian.

A very strong showing in primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island would Clinton on the cusp of Democratic victory, a monumental step in her quest to become the nation's first female commander in chief.

Young voters favor Hillary Clinton for president over Donald Trump by a landslide margin, a new poll of 18- to 29-year-olds finds, and their interest in any Republican for president has dropped significantly over the last year of campaigning. On the same day, Trump reached for the first time a 50 per cent plus rating among Republican leaning voters in a new NBC poll.

The new youth poll by Harvards Institute of Politics found that when likely voters under 30 were asked about a general election match-up between the two parties front-runners, 61% said they would vote for Mrs. Clinton, 25% said Mr. Trump, and 14% were not sure.

Links: How the Asian voter lights up path to the White House
New Delhi: Availability of agriculture loan tops the priority list for rural voters in Tamil Nadu, while for the people in urban areas the most important issue is better job opportunity, a new survey showed today.

"Rural voters still form the bulk of people in the state. When asked for their top three priorities, they said agriculture loans, employment and electricity for agriculture were the top priorities," a report by Association for

Democratic Reforms (ADR) said.

Around 24.75 percent of voters said that agriculture loan availability was one of the top three priorities for

them, followed by better employment opportunities for 22.88 percent and electricity for agriculture for 20.72 percent people.

On the other hand, reservation for jobs, education, terrorism, strong military, corruption, law and order did not

feature on the top of the priority list for voters, the report said.

A survey of over 16,000 respondents was done in every constituency of Tamil Nadu before February 2016, ADR said.

On the rural performance rating of government, the worst rated performance was on agriculture loan availability and

better employment opportunities. Electricity for agriculture also did poorly according to voters.

There were a total of 31 issues for which they gave priorities and rated government's performance.

Agriculture loan availability performance was ranked 27th out of 31, better employment opportunities 26th and

electricity for agriculture 20th.

The issue of agriculture loan availability was chosen by 22.79 percent of voters as one of the two issues on which

they wanted to rate the government.

The priority issues where the government performance was considered relatively good were hospitals and PHCs, water for agriculture and sand stone quarrying and mining.

The last may be an environmental hazard but people may have supported it due to the employment generated, it said.

For urban voters, employment was given the highest priority, followed by noise pollution and drinking water.

Better employment opportunities was opted by 23.59 percent urban voters, followed by noise pollution (21.82 percent), drinking water (20.69 percent).

PTI
KANANASKIS, Alberta/MANILA Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned on Monday the execution of a Canadian hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines, calling it "an act of cold-blooded murder."

John Ridsdel, 68, a former mining executive, was captured by Islamist militants along with three other people in September 2015 while on vacation on a Philippine island.

The Philippine army said a severed head was found on a remote island on Monday, five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by militants who had threatened to execute one of four captives.

"Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers and this unnecessary death. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Trudeau told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting.

"The government of Canada is committed to working with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act."

Trudeau declined to respond when asked whether the Canadian government had tried to negotiate with the captors or pay a ransom, or whether it was trying to secure the release of the other Canadian being held, Robert Hall.

"Obviously there was talk of money involved, but not by the government of Canada or by the government of Norway, but certainly by the families attempting to do what they could to free the four," said Bob Rae, a former federal politician and longtime Ridsdel friend.

"But its been an awful process, just horrendous," he told Canadian television.

In a statement, Ridsdel's family said they were devastated his life had been "cut tragically short by this senseless act of violence despite us doing everything within our power to bring him home."

Ridsdel, Hall and the other captives, a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman, had appealed in a March video for their families and governments to secure their release.

Residents found the head in the center of Jolo town. An army spokesman said two men on a motorcycle were seen dropping a plastic bag containing the severed head.

A Philippine army spokesman said al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of four captives on Monday if the 300 million pesos ($6.4 million) ransom for each of them was not paid by 3 p.m. local time.

The initial demand was one billion pesos each for the detainees, who were taken hostage at an upscale resort on Samal Island on Sept. 21.

Ridsdel's former employer described him as gregarious, adventurous and warm.

"We are in profound shock, disbelief and sorrow to have lost our former colleague and close friend," Calgary-based mining company TVI Pacific (TVI.TO) said in an emailed statement.

Abu Sayyaf is a small but brutal militant group known for beheading, kidnapping, bombing and extortion in the south of the mainly Catholic country.

It decapitated a hostage from Malaysia in November last year on the same day that country's prime minister arrived in Manila for an international summit. Philippine President Benigno Aquino ordered troops to intensify action against the militants.

Security is precarious in the southern Philippines, despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest Muslim rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict.

Abu Sayyaf is also holding other foreigners, including one from the Netherlands, one from Japan, four Malaysians and 14 Indonesian tugboat crew.

($1 = 46.8930 Philippine pesos)

(Additional reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by David Gregorio and Tom Brown)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
SYDNEY/TOKYO Australia has awarded the A$50 billion ($40 billion) contract to build the country's new fleet of submarines to French naval contractor DCNS, sources said on Tuesday, dealing a major blow to Japan's nascent defence export industry.

Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will officially announce on Tuesday the winner of the contract to build the country's 12 new submarines, but two sources familiar with the process told Reuters that France has secured the contract ahead of Japanese and German bidders.

Another source at the French naval contractor said he was "quietly confident" of success ahead of the announcement by Turnbull.

Australia is ramping up defence spending, seeking to protect its strategic and trade interests in the Asia-Pacific as the United States and its allies grapple with China's rising power.

Local media reports suggested last week that Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (7011.T) and Kawasaki Heavy Industries (7012.T), the previous frontrunners for the contract, had dropped out of contention, leaving France's state-controlled naval contractor DCNS and Germany's ThyssenKrupp AG (TKAG.DE) to battle it out.

Beyond the contract price tag, one of the most lucrative global defence deals going, Australia's decision on the submarines has political implications both at home and abroad.

Industry watchers had anticipated a decision to come later in the year, but Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's recent gamble on a July 2 election has sped up the process.

The contract will likely have an impact on thousands of jobs in the shipbuilding industry in South Australia state, where retaining votes in key electorates will be critical for the government's chances of re-election.

"There are significant expenditures of public money," Treasurer Scott Morrison told reporters ahead of the announcement. "The focus is on Australia getting real benefits from jobs and experience in the future."

France's state-controlled naval contractor DCNS has proposed a diesel-electric version of its 5,000-tonne Barracuda nuclear-powered submarine. France enlisted heavyweight support for its bid, with heads of industry and top government figures lining up to convince Australia of the merits of its offering.

Japan offered to build Australia a variant of its 4,000 tonne Soryu submarine, a deal that would have marked a significant development under Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's more muscular security agenda following his lifting of a decades-old ban on arms exports last year.

A deal with the Japanese would also have cemented closer strategic and defence ties with two of Washington's key allies in the region but also risked antagonizing China, Australia's top trading partner.

ThyssenKrupp was proposing to scale up its 2,000-tonne Type 214 class submarine, a technical challenge that sources had previously told Reuters was weighing against the German bid.

America's Raytheon Co (RTN.N), which built the system for Australia's ageing Collins-class submarines, is vying for a separate combat system contract with Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), which supplies combat systems to the U.S. Navy's submarine fleet.

(Editing by Lincoln Feast)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Rome: India's jurisdiction over two Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen in 2012 during an anti-piracy mission is "suspended", the Italian government said on Tuesday.

"Italy considers Indias jurisdiction over the case to be suspended and therefore legally overridden," the Italian foreign ministry said in a statement.

The statement came after India's Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that one of the marines, Massimiliano Latorre, could stay in Italy until 30 September for medical treatment.

Italy took the case to international arbitration last June and the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruled in August that India had no jurisdiction in the case, referring it to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Latorre has been in Italy for the past 18 months, where he had heart surgery after suffering a stroke.

Italy said on Tuesday it has also requested that the second marine, Salvatore Girone, return to Italy and stay in his homeland until the arbitration verdict in the case, which is expected in August 2018.

Girone and Latorre have not been charged over the fishermen's deaths but were barred from leaving India and ordered to stay at the Italian ambassador's residence and report regularly to police.

The Hague tribunal is expected make a decision on Girone in the next few days, the Italian foreign ministry said.

Last week, Italian President Sergio Mattarella voiced solidarity with Girone and Latorre, saying the legal wrangle was "dragging on too long".

The shooting dead in February 2012 of the two fisherman by Latorre and Girone as they guarded an Italian oil tanker off India's southern state of Kerala sparked a diplomatic incident and the case has strained relations between the two countries.

Latorre and Girone allege that they believed the unarmed fishermen were pirates.

Rome claims the marines are immune to prosecution since they were serving on a United Nations-backed anti-piracy mission and the oil tanker they were guarding was in international waters at the time of the incident.
ATHENS Migrants in a Greek detention camp threw stones in clashes with police on Tuesday hours after two ferries shipped refugees back to Turkey under a disputed deal intended to stem the human influx into Europe.

Plumes of smoke billowed from the Moria compound on Lesbos island that Pope Francis visited on April 16. Tensions simmering for days boiled over just after the Dutch and the Greek ministers responsible for migration toured the camp.

Garbage bins were set on fire, a police spokesman said, and migrants "were throwing stones and pieces of metal at police". Earlier about 200 youths broke through a partition in the camp.

They were "reacting to their detention conditions and the returns to Turkey," the spokesman said. Rights organisations have expressed misgivings about detention conditions on Moria, which holds about 3,000 people.

"Events at Moria highlight the level of frustration there," said the International Rescue Committee's director for Greece, Panos Navrozidis.

"Many of these refugees have been held at Moria for well over a month with inadequate services available to them and very few answers. They deserve much better."

Police said eight minors were taken slightly hurt to a local hospital after scuffles between groups of Pakistanis and Afghans.

Just over 340 people have so far been returned to Turkey since April 4 under the accord agreed with the European Union in March after more than 1 million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond reached the continent last year.

On Tuesday, 13 people were deported from the island of Lesbos to the Turkish town of Dikili, five were ferried back from Chios to Cesme, and 31 from Kos, police said. Most were Afghans and none had requested asylum in Greece, a government official said.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and human rights groups have questioned whether the deal is legal or moral. They are also concerned about whether Turkey is a "safe" country for returnees. UNHCR does not currently have access to the Kirklareli camp returnees are sent to.

The European Commission said on Tuesday it had been formally reassured by Turkey that it would grant access to asylum procedures to all asylum-seekers sent back from the bloc, a key outstanding element in the deal.

Turkey applies the Geneva Convention on refugees only to Europeans, offers limited protection to Syrians and no legal guarantees for other nationalities.

International law bans refoulement, or sending people back to a country where their lives or safety are at risk.

REQUESTS PILING UP

Under the deal, those arriving in Greece from Turkey after March 20 face being sent back if they do not apply for asylum in Greece or if their application is rejected.

In return, the EU will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward Ankara with more money, early visa-free travel for its citizens and progress in negotiations to join the bloc.

Turkey Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on last week that Turkey would no longer need to honour the accord if the EU failed to ease visa requirements by June.

Brussels has said that Turkey fully meets only 19 out of 72 criteria for visa liberalisation. On Tuesday, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said Ankara will meet criteria for visa liberalisation by the beginning of May.

In Greece, the government has said authorities would start ruling on asylum applications in late April, but requests have been piling up and it has been criticised for being too slow to process them.

Giorgos Kyritsis, government spokesman for the migration crisis, said Athens was "not cutting corners (and) ... not delaying." About 8,000 refugees and migrants are currently on Greek islands, having arrived after the deal was implemented.

So far under the deal, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has facilitated the resettlement of 350 Syrians from Turkey to European countries including in Austria, Denmark, and Germany, it said on Tuesday. It expects to resettle another 300 this week, mostly in France.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Dasha Afanasieva, Nevzat Devranoglu and Seda Sezer in Ankara and Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WEST CHESTER, Pa. Republican Donald Trump, on the eve of primary elections in five states that he is expected to sweep, launched blistering attacks on Monday on rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich for their 11th-hour joint effort aimed at denying him the party's presidential nomination.

The Cruz-Kasich agreement, which some stop-Trump Republican strategists say should have been undertaken weeks ago, was forged to try and keep Trump from securing the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the nomination outright and force Republicans to consider the two rivals at the party's national convention in Cleveland in July.

Kasich, the Ohio governor, and Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, agreed not to compete against each other in three upcoming nominating contests that could prove to be pivotal: Indiana, Oregon and New Mexico.

Trump, speaking at Pennsylvania's West Chester University, near Philadelphia, dismissed the deal as a sign of desperation and predicted he still would win the nomination on the convention's first ballot.

With dramatic flair, he compared his plight to a champion boxer whom Trump said he once warned not to go into unfriendly territory because the judges could rule against him.

The boxer, Trump said, replied: "If I knock him out there's not a damn thing the judges can do."

Trump is expected to win all five of Tuesday's nominating contests in the northeastern states of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and Maryland, which have a total of 172 delegates at stake.

Trump is already ahead in the delegate race with 845, followed by Cruz with 559 and Kasich with 147, according to the Associated Press.

After Tuesday, Indiana, which votes on May 3, will be the next big battleground, with 57 delegates up for grabs.

The Kasich-Cruz deal already showed signs of bending on Monday, with Kasich telling voters in Philadelphia that people who want to vote for him in Indiana should still do so.

Ive never told them not to vote for me, they ought to vote for me. But Im not over there campaigning and spending resources," he said.

Cruz took steps to maintain he is a serious contender for the nomination with his campaign team announcing he has developed a short list of vice presidential running mates. Traditionally, candidates wait until they have secured the nomination to select a running mate.

One person being vetted for the No. 2 position is former Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, an aide to Fiorina said. Fiorina, a businesswoman, endorsed Cruz when she dropped out of the race.

AGREEMENT SIGNALS PANIC

Showing no sign of trying to unify Republicans around him with a more serious demeanour, Trump ripped Kasich for refusing to get out of the race and even criticized his eating habits.

This is just a guy whos a stubborn guy, who eats like a slob and shouldnt have press conferences while hes stuffing stuff down his throat, Trump said.

On Cruz, Trump said he has done a "lousy job" in the Senate and has shown that he "cannot build consensus."

Trump agreed to an May 17 interview with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, whose questioning of him at a debate last August angered Trump and led him to criticise her for months.

Cruz said the deal with Kasich was aimed at preventing a Trump nomination that he argues would assure victory for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

The Cruz-Kasich agreement is unique in modern presidential politics and signalled panic after Trump's sweeping victory in last week's New York primary, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

"They know he's going to have a great night tomorrow," Sabato said. "If things are not shaken up, Trump's going to be the nominee. They have to do something big to shake things up. They're hoping that this is it."

But Cruz said Trump was the desperate one because he knows he has a difficult path to win the party's nomination.

"I don't doubt that Donald Trump is going to scream and yell and curse and insult and probably cry and whine some as well," Cruz said in Indiana. "That has been Donald's pattern."

Trump has dominated the nominating contests so far but still faces a tough path to earn the delegates needed to lock up the nomination before the convention.

If no candidate has enough delegate support on the first vote at the national convention, many delegates can switch to another candidate on subsequent ballots.

(Additional reporting by Emily Stephenson, Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu, Megan Casella in Washington; Writing by Steve Holland and Ginger Gibson; Editing by Bill Trott and Leslie Adler)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Lahore: The 108-carat famed Kohinoor diamond cannot be brought back to Pakistan as it was handed over to the UK under the 'Treaty of Lahore' in 1849, provincial Punjab government on Tuesday told the High Court.

"Maharaja Ranjeet Singh had inked the agreement with the East India Company in 1849 under which the precious diamond was given to the UK. Therefore, the UK government cannot be approached for return of the diamond," a law officer of the provincial government told the court during the hearing of a plea seeking direction for the Pakistan government to bring back Koh-i-Noor, which India has also been trying to get from the UK for years.

Petitioner Barrister Javed Iqbal Jaffrey, however, opposed the government's plea, arguing, "both governments were not authorised under the law of the land to sign such an agreement."

LHC Justice Khalid Mahmood Khan directed the government's counsel to submit a copy of the agreement between then Maharaja Ranjit Singh and the East India Company on the next hearing on 2 May.

In his plea, Barrister Jaffrey has alleged that Britain had snatched the diamond from Daleep Singh, grandson of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh and took it to the United Kingdom.

"The diamond became part of the crown of incumbent Queen Elizabeth-II at the time of her crowing in 1953. Queen Elizabeth has no right on the Koh-i-Noor diamond, which weighs 105 carats and worth billions of rupees," he said.

He claimed that Koh-i-Noor diamond was "cultural heritage" of Punjab province and its citizens owned it in fact, it said and prayed to the court to direct the federal government to bring the diamond back to Pakistan from the British government.

The Indian Government had recently said that it will make all efforts to bring back the valued diamond, even as it had earlier told the Supreme Court that the diamond was neither stolen nor "forcibly" taken by British rulers but given to East India Company by erstwhile rulers of Punjab 167 years back as compensation for helping them in the Sikh wars.
JUBA South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar was sworn in as first vice president on Tuesday, hours after he returned to the capital of Juba for the first time since conflict erupted more than two years ago.

Machar took up the post under the terms of a peace agreement reached eight months ago, implementation of which had been repeatedly delayed by disputes between Machar and the government of President Salva Kiir.

"Now that Dr. Riek has taken the oath of the first vice president, we will immediately proceed with the establishment of the transitional government of national unity," Kiir said after Machar was sworn in at the president's office. "I ask you to join me and my brother Riek Machar in peace and reconciliation."

Machar was greeted by government officials, members of his SPLM-In-Opposition party, diplomats and officials from the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, with the airport under heavy guard, a Reuters witness said.

His return is a crucial part of the peace agreement - it was Kiir's sacking of Machar as his deputy that ignited the two-year war in December 2013, which has killed thousands and displaced millions in the world's newest country.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon welcomed Machar's return.

"The Secretary-General calls for the immediate formation of the Transitional Government of National Unity," Stephane Dujarric, Ban Ki-moon's spokesman, said in a statement.

"The Secretary-General also calls on the Security Council to work closely with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) to mobilise all the required support for the peace process."

CHALLENGES

Machar's arrival had been continually postponed since the peace agreement was signed in August. Just last week, it was put off again, until international mediators intervened to end a dispute over how many soldiers and what weapons Machar would be allowed to bring with him.

"I am happy with the welcome that I have seen at the airport. I hope that with my arrival we shall finish with the obstacles and get into the implementation of the government," Machar told reporters when he arrived.

"There are challenges that we need to overcome. The first challenge is the stabilisation of the security situation of the country. The second is the challenge is the stabilisation of the economy."

The conflict in South Sudan split the five-year-old country along ethnic lines, pitting Kiir's dominant Dinkas against Machar's Nuer. The fighting turned bitter enough to prompt the United Nations to set up an inquiry into possible human rights violations.

It also disrupted the South Sudanese economy. Oil output, on which the government depends, has plummeted and many of the nation's 11 million people have struggled to find food to eat.

(Reporting by Denis Dumo; Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Larry King)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
United Nations: India on Monday said persisting "undemocratic systems" of international governance are creating hindrances for effective participation of developing countries in global decision-making processes, as it expressed disappointment that its repeated calls for a conducive environment has met with resistance.

"The global development divide of today can trace its origins in an array of historical injustices that have somehow never completely disappeared from the equation," Permanent Representative of India to the UN in Geneva Ajit Kumar said at a session of the Working Group on the Right To Development.

Kumar said the global divide is "evident" on Monday in the "persisting undemocratic systems" of international governance where effective participation of developing countries in international decision-making is paved with all kinds of obstacles.

"In this regard, our repeated calls for a conducive international environment as well attempts towards greater acceptance and operationalisation of the right to development at the international level have only yielded disappointment and resistance," he said.

Kumar called for "strong political will" and "genuine commitment" of the international community to make the right to development a "working reality".

Kumar stressed that the challenge of guaranteeing human rights becomes nearly impossible to tackle in the face of unmet human needs.

"There seems to be a tacit acknowledgement of this fact in the plethora of internationally agreed declarations, resolutions, decisions and norms on the issue of right to development, however, when it comes to allocation of adequate time and resources to this issue, our collective endeavour at the various UN fora leaves much to be desired," he said.

The deliberations in all multilateral fora as well decades of experience of the ground realities have established that any lasting progress towards fulfilling the right to development require equitable economic relations and a favourable economic environment at the international level, apart from the national level policies.

He reiterated the centrality of the right to development in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, saying this would require mainstreaming of the right to development in the policies and operational activities of the UN and its various agencies, funds and programs.
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Xiaomi is looking forward to take on chip makers like Qualcomm and Samsung by introducing in-house chips, according to a latest report from Korea Times.

A certain official from one of Xiaomis component partners said that the company is going to reveal its own Application Processing Unit (APU) to power its mobile devices next month at an event. Going forward the report adds that Xiaomi plans to design the APUs using standard ARM licensed technology. However the specifications of the Rifle processor are not known as of now.

It is said that the in-house chips will be used in budget smartphones from the company. Until now we have seen Xiaomi use chips from the likes of Qualcomm and MediaTek for its devices. In addition to selling its processors, Xiaomi will include them in its smartphones, tablets, and smart television sets. The move comes from the Chinese company as it plans to reduce dependence and expenses in using chips from outside sources.

Xiaomi is hosting an event on May 10 where it will announce the phablet Mi Max and Mi Band 2. We can expect the company to reveal more about the Rifle mobile processors at the event.

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A new report of the US fresh produce industry flags that while the sector is gradually returning to its pre-COVID-19 employment and wages levels, it still delayed in its... Read More
Philip Morris International (PM 1.74%) stock looks like a tempting proposition for dividend investors right now. Shares of the tobacco giant are paying a smoking-hot dividend yield of 4.2%, considerably above the yields offered by competitors such as Altria (MO 2.11%) and Reynolds American (RAI). However, the dividend payout ratio is quite high, and tobacco is a particularly risky industry. This raises an important question for investors: Should you bet on Philip Morris and that compelling dividend yield?

A top dividend play in tobacco

Philip Morris International, which doesn't operate in the United States, owns the rights to the massively popular Marlboro brand outside of the U.S. and China. When including its three main brands: Marlboro, L&M, and Chesterfield, management estimates that Philip Morris owns a leading market share of 38.7% across its key markets. Tobacco consumers are remarkably loyal to their favorite brands, and this is a crucial source of competitive strength for Philip Morris.

Companies in the industry face serious regulatory limitations when it comes to marketing and advertising, and this can be a major plus for an established market leader. Bans on advertising keep market share levels relatively stable, and Philip Morris doesn't need to spend too much money on marketing to hold the line against the competition. The business produces big operating margins in the neighborhood of 40% of revenue, and low capital requirements allow Philip Morris to reward investors with generous cash distributions.

Philip Morris has been independently traded and operated since 2008, when the company was separated from Altria through a spinoff. Back then, Philip Morris was paying a quarterly dividend of $0.46 per share, and distributions have increased consistently every year, rising to $1.02 quarterly per share nowadays.

Compared to other tobacco players, the company offers an above-average dividend yield of 4.2%, versus 3.7% for Altria and 3.5% for Reynolds American. In addition, Philip Morris is considerably above its peers in terms of dividend growth over the last five years.

However, its dividend payout ratio is also quite high. Phillip Morris is expected to make $4.44 in earnings per share during 2016, meaning that at current levels, dividends would absorb nearly 92% of earnings over the year. Altria has a safer payout ratio of 74% versus earnings forecasts for the coming year, while Reynolds American is expected to distribute a much more comfortable 54% of earnings as dividends.

Is the dividend safe?

Governments and nonprofit organizations are implementing all kinds of initiatives to combat smoking and its negative impact on public health, and consumers are increasingly conscious about the massive health damage that cigarettes can produce. Tobacco consumption around the world is on a long-term decline, and Philip Morris International is not immune to this trend.

Philip Morris' total cigarette sales volume declined from 927 billion units in 2012 to 880 billion in 2013, then to 856 billion cigarettes in 2014, and then again to 847.3 billion in 2015. This represents a year-over-year decline of 5% in 2013, 3% in 2014, and 1% in 2015.

There is no sign that this trend is likely to reverse. During the first quarter of 2016, Philip Morris reported a 1.4% decline in sales volume excluding acquisitions, and management is expecting industrywide volume to fall by 2% to 2.5% during the full year 2016.



Philip Morris is outperforming the industry due to strong brand power and market share gains, so the company is doing better than the competition in terms of sales volume. Besides, pricing power allows Philip Morris to partially compensate for the volume decline by increasing prices. On the other hand, foreign currency headwinds are hampering its financial performance when its sales are translated into U.S. dollars.

The company announced a worrisome decline of 8.1% in revenue during Q1 2016, while sales in constant currency increased 2.4% versus the same quarter in the prior year. Earnings per share fell 15.5% in U.S. dollars during the period, increasing by a modest 0.9% when expressed in constant currency terms.

Since the dividend payout ratio is already quite high, dividend growth should at best be in line with earnings growth in the future, meaning that increases will most probably be quite modest in the coming years. Philip Morris announced a lackluster increase of only 2% for 2015.

The business is financially solid, so there is no reason to expect a dividend cut anytime soon. However, it's hard to estimate how long Philip Morris will be able to continue buffering the decline in cigarettes sales volume with price increases. Sooner or later, falling sales should cut into revenue and earnings, which could jeopardize dividend payments in the long term.
Answers at the bottom of the page

Question 1: Daniil Kvyat became the first Russian to race on home soil in 2014. But where did he qualify for the inaugural event - fifth, seventh or ninth?

Enlarge  Sutton Motorsport Images Info Close

Question 2: What did Sergey Zlobin become the first Russian to do at Fiorano, Italy, in September 2002?



Question 3: Which two drivers are shown here doing battle around Sochis daunting Turn 3 in 2014?





Question 4: Who was fastest in the first ever F1 practice session on Russian soil on October 10, 2014?



Question 5: Whose big crash on lap 11 of the 2015 Russian Grand Prix brought out the safety car?

Enlarge  Sutton Motorsport Images Info Close



Question 6: What unfortunate event caused FP1 to be delayed by several minutes at last years Russian Grand Prix?



Question 7: Which driver clocked the first fastest lap of his career on his way to third place in Russia in 2014?



Question 8: Sergio Perez finished third in last years Russian Grand Prix, but was it his third, fifth or seventh career podium?



Question 9: Last year, the stewards deemed Kimi Raikkonen to blame for the controversial final lap clash with Williams Valtteri Bottas shown in the video below. But what punishment did the Ferrari star receive?





Question 10: Mercedes have led every lap in Russian Grand Prix history to date, true or false?



Question 11: Which driver celebrated his 250th Grand Prix start at last years Russian Grand Prix?



Question 12: Where and when did Russias first Grand Prix driver Vitaly Petrov score the only podium of his F1 career?



Question 13: Which two drivers are pictured below colliding on the opening lap at Sochi last year?

Enlarge  Sutton Motorsport Images Info Close



Question 14: Which Russian driver made his one and only F1 practice appearance to date during FP1 at Sochi in 2014, finishing 17th for Sauber?



Question 15: Midland became the first Russian-registered team to compete in F1 in 2006, but which two drivers formed their original line-up?
The quote a penny saved is a penny earned tells us that money we save is more valuable than money we spend right away. A majority of parents are falling short when it comes to teaching their children that important lesson.

T. Rowe Price (NASDAQ:TROW) found that not only are 71% parents are reluctant to have financial discussions with their kids; mom and dad are making big mistakes when it comes to saving. A majority of parents have insufficient emergency funds to cover at least three months worth of living expenses. Almost a quarter of parents have used retirement savings for nonessential expenses, such as vacations.

"Although parents may not want their kids to worry about money or think that theyre too young, our data supports the value of parents having money conversations with their kids," says Judith Ward, Senior Financial Planner at T. Rowe Price.

Ward says parents should take advantage of teachable moments.

"Combining money conversations with opportunities to experience money - such as giving an allowance, opening an account for kids, or giving them a limited amount of money in their favorite store - is the most effective way to raise money savvy kids."

Experts say financial literacy is more important as children become adults.

Without a cash down payment you will likely not be able to obtain a loan to purchase a car or a home. says Greg Anton, Chairman of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants National CPA Financial Literacy Commission. If you dont start the discipline of saving early in life, its more difficult to break the spending habits and save throughout your life.

Despite understanding the importance of saving for emergencies and retirement; a study by Fifth Third Bank (NASDAQ:FITB) found that Americans are not implementing the financial lessons theyve learned.

Many adults arent saving because they dont have a plan in place, says Stacie Haas, Fifth Third spokesperson.

Joanne Kerstetter, Spokesperson for Money Management International says any savings plan should include paying yourself first.

Put it on autopilot and have it deducted from your pay or checking account, says Kersetter. In order to estimate your savings needs, you need to develop short, medium and long term goals. Then estimate how much youll need for each goal and set aside in a savings plan.

Most experts advise consumers to save three to six months of expenses in an emergency fund. Pamela Yellen, financial expert and New York Times best-selling author disagrees. Yellen says the Great Recession was a wake-up call.

"We found that you could lose your job and not get another job for two years or longer. My advice is that your rainy day fund should be equal to two years of your household income.

Yellen says while two years savings may feel daunting; it's not impossible.

"If you increase the amount youre putting away each year by just one to two percent, youll find that you won't really feel the pinch, says Yellen. Youre going to be amazed at how much your liquid savings can grow."

This is the fourth and final report in a series of articles that appeared weekly during April; National Financial Literacy month.

Linda Bell joined FOX Business Network (FBN) in September 2014 as an Assignment Editor after more than a decade at Bloomberg News. She is an award-winning journalist/writer of personal finance content. You can follow her on Twitter @lindanbell.
Trader Joe's looks like it's taking aim at Whole Foods Market's new lower-price chain, but the price cuts could have a bigger meaning behind them. Image source: Mike Mozart.

A price war would not be good for Whole Foods Market . With its currently lackluster sales and falling profit marginseven as it launches a new chain of discount grocery stores, the organic foods supermarket could see profits pinched further.

According to analysts at Deutsche Bank, however, rival supermarket Trader Joe's may have quietly fired a salvo across Whole Foods' bow to start just such a war. In a channel check of some 77 similar items, the analysts found that thediscount chain's prices were on average 26% cheaper than at Whole Foods, with the basket of goods at the latter costing $303 and just $240 at the former. The difference is reportedly wider than it was last time the analysts compared the chains' prices, which led them to conclude that Trader Joe's has been cutting prices again.

Because Whole Foods is about to target Trader Joe's niche -- using the 365 by Whole Foods stores, with three slated to open this year and up to 10 next year -- the smaller chain may feel threatened, and it's fighting back with the one weapon it has in its arsenal: price. Yet as the saying goes, if you're competing on price, you've already lost the battle.

If Trader Joe's has dropped its prices, it's just one additional sign the shopping cart wars are becoming even more competitive. While mass merchandisers like Wal-Mart and Target are investing heavily in their organic produce sections, traditional supermarkets such as Kroger are also paying keen attention to the space. Although private equity just bought organic grocer The Fresh Market, a chain Kroger was said to have a special interest in, the second-largest U.S. supermarket operator behind Wal-Mart just announced a "meaningful investment" in Lucky's Market, an independent natural foods grocer with 17 stores in 13 states, aimed a accelerating Lucky's growth. .

Analysts say many of Whole Foods' private-label products ought to command a premium compared to the Trader Joe's versions because of their superior quality, but because the supermarket operator has been trying to live down the "Whole Paycheck" pejorative it's long been saddled with, it's had to remain price competitive with Trader Joe's.

The new discount grocery store chain is allegedly Whole's play to attract consumers put off by the high cost of organic produce. Image credit: 365 by Whole Foods.

That was partially the reason it launched its 365 private-label products to begin with, items that in quite a number of instances are actually priced lower thancomparable goods at Wal-Mart. And the launch of its discount grocery chain was supposed to help cement in the public's mind the notion that buying organic produce doesn't have to be an expensive proposition.

But a price move by Trader Joe's may be part of something bigger. German supermarket giant Aldi is making a big expansion push in the U.S., seeking to grow from its current footprint from some 1,500 stores centered mainly on the East Coast into a more national discount phenomenon. It just opened eight stores in southern California and plans on opening a total of 45 in the region this year, while also expanding its natural and organic foods selection.

So what's the connection? The Aldi supermarkets in the U.S. are owned by Aldi Sud. Trader Joe's is owned by Aldi Nord. Aldi Sud and Aldi Nord operate as subsidiaries of ALDI Einkauf GmbH & Co. oHG and both use the same no-frills business model regardless of where they're operating.

While Wal-Mart may feel the pressure of yet another deep discount rival, it seems more like a concerted effort to squeeze Whole Foods, or more specifically its new 365 concept store.

Like Aldi's, more than 90% of the goods Trader Joe's sells are private label items, and Whole Foods' new discount chain is likely to sell a relatively high percentage of store brand products, too.

Though the new direction seems a testament to Whole Foods not wanting to dilute its otherwise premium brand by resorting to steep discounting in its namesake stores, it is a new direction for the grocer and there's no guarantee it can manage the efficiency its competitors have achieved after year of practice. Thus Aldi and Trader Joe's may actually be striking at Whole Foods and doing so where and when it is most vulnerable.

The leading organic foods supermarket does have its own advantages, including size and experience in servicing consumers seeking out exceptional quality, not to mention being able to tap the public markets to finance any growth initiatives it devises. Trader Joe's may be firing a shot in a price war, but by choosing that arrow from its quiver, it could end up putting a hole in its own bottom line.

The article Trader Joe's Pinches Whole Foods Market Inc. on Price originally appeared on Fool.com.

John Mackey, co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Rich Duprey has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Whole Foods Market. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Photo: Flickr user Pug50.

There is no set full retirement age in the USA, but there are a few ages that are significant for retirement purposes. For example, age 62 is the earliest you can claim Social Security retirement benefits -- and there are also significant events at age 59 1/2, 65, 66, 67, and 70. If you have a good knowledge of this timeline, you can determine your ideal retirement age, as well as know if there's a change any of these ages might be increasing by the time you're ready to retire.

The five most significant "retirement ages"Obviously, you have the ability to retire anytime you want, or not at all. Just look at Warren Buffett, still going strong at 85. However, there are some ages that are more significant to Americans' ability to retire than others.

59 1/2 : This is when you are allowed to withdraw from your retirement savings such as 401(k)s and IRAs for any reason without paying a penalty.

: This is when you are allowed to withdraw from your retirement savings such as 401(k)s and IRAs for any reason without paying a penalty. 62 : This is the age when you're first eligible to collect Social Security retirement benefits. If you choose to file for Social Security earlier than your full retirement age, your benefit will be reduced.

: This is the age when you're first eligible to collect Social Security retirement benefits. If you choose to file for Social Security earlier than your full retirement age, your benefit will be reduced. 65 : This is the age when Americans become eligible for Medicare, whether or not they've filed for Social Security benefits yet. It's also a common full retirement age for many companies' retirement plans.

: This is the age when Americans become eligible for Medicare, whether or not they've filed for Social Security benefits yet. It's also a common full retirement age for many companies' retirement plans. 66/67 : 66 is the current full retirement age for Social Security purposes. If you were born in 1954 or earlier, you can claim your full Social Security benefit at age 66. For those born after 1954, the retirement age will gradually increase (by two months per birth year) until it reaches 67 for those born in 1960 or later.

: 66 is the current full retirement age for Social Security purposes. If you were born in 1954 or earlier, you can claim your full Social Security benefit at age 66. For those born after 1954, the retirement age will gradually increase (by two months per birth year) until it reaches 67 for those born in 1960 or later. 70 : This is the age where you have to start collecting Social Security. Well, technically, you don't have to. There's just no reason to delay benefits beyond age 70. This is also the age where you'll be forced to start withdrawing money from your pre-tax (non-Roth) retirement accounts. Starting when you turn 70 1/2, you'll be required to start taking required minimum distributions (RMDs) from your accounts, based on the IRS's life expectancy tables.

Will any of these ages change?If you're relatively young (50 or under), there's a real chance that some of these retirement ages will change by the time you get there, especially in regard to Social Security. As I've written before, Social Security is not sustainable in its current form, and there are only two main ways to fix it -- increase taxes or cut benefits. And increasing the retirement age is a form of benefit cut that could go a long way toward solving the problem.

Now, increasing the Social Security retirement age isn't the most popular option to fix Social Security, nor is it projected to be the most effective. Tax increases would do much more to fix the problem and are supported by the majority of the population, so I'm reasonably confident that's the direction we'll eventually go. However, it's important to note that an increase in the minimum or full Social Security age is entirely possible.

What's your ideal retirement age?Many people strive for early retirement but don't realize the drawbacks. For example, if you retire before age 65, you'll probably have to pay for health insurance out of your own pocket, unless you're one of the lucky ones who can keep your employer's plan. And if you retire before you can collect Social Security, 100% of your day-to-day expenses will need to be covered by your savings, which can deplete your nest egg quickly.

When I'm asked when I plan to retire, I say, "As soon as I'm financially comfortable for the rest of my life, and not a day later." I realize that's an unsatisfying answer, so here's a discussion that can help you figure out how much you'll need to save to be comfortable enough to retire, as well as a discussion of some things to consider before planning to retire early.

The article What Is the Retirement Age in the USA? originally appeared on Fool.com.

Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) and NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) have both led their respective technology markets for years, and technology investors are right to take notice of both companies. Qualcomm makes mobile processors and baseband chips (modems) that have become staples in the mobile industry. Additionally, the company has a treasure trove of intellectual property that it licenses to smartphone makers. If you've ever owned a smartphone -- of any kind -- then you've almost certainly used Qualcomm's technologies.

NVIDIA may be lesser known than Qualcomm but the company has become one of the most dominant players across several growing tech industries. NVIDIA's graphics processors dominate the discrete desktop graphics processing unit (GPU) market and its artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and software is quickly becoming a leader in the driverless car space.

With both companies already such an integral part of so many technologies, it can be hard to assess which company has the better stock to buy right now. So let's look at the financial fortitude of both, what their competitive advantages are, and each one's current valuation to figure out which is the better buy right now.

Financial fortitude

First, let's compare a few key financial metrics:

Qualcomm has substantially more cash than NVIDIA, but it also has a lot more debt as well. It's also worth pointing out that Qualcomm is currently buying an Internet of Things company called NXP Semiconductors and has suffered several years of lawsuits stemming from its patent licensing fees. What this means for Qualcomm is that it'll likely use much of its cash to pay for the NXP purchase and could, at the same time, earn less in the future from its lucrative patent licensing, both of which could weigh down the company's financial outlook for a while. For those reasons, and because of its current debt, I have to give NVIDIA the advantage here.

Winner: NVIDIA.

Competitive advantage

Any company you invest in should have some sort of competitive advantage and NVIDIA is a good example of just that. NVIDIA makes about 53% of its total revenue from sales of its GPUs in the gaming market and over the years it's amassed a desktop discrete GPU market share of 72.5%. That means that computer companies that are looking to put high-end graphics processors into their computers consistently rely on NVIDIA's tech.

The company is also a key player in the growing driverless car market and sells its Drive PX 2 supercomputer to automakers who want to bring semi-autonomous features to their cars. NVIDIA's Drive PX system has made huge gains through partnerships with Audi, Tesla, Toyota, Baidu, and others. There are no winners in the driverless car space right now and NVIDIA will have to continue outpacing competitors like Intel's Mobileye in the driverless tech space, but for now NVIDIA is one of the leading semi-autonomous driving companies and it's showing no signs of slowing down.

Investors should know that while NVIDIA's total addressable market in driverless cars could reach $8 billion by 2025, the company only made $142 million -- or about 6% of its total revenue -- from its automotive business in its fiscal third quarter 2018.

If all that weren't enough, NVIDIA's GPUs are also powering some of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) servers available today. Google, Facebook, Amazon, and others have used NVIDIA's GPUs and no other company comes close to its graphics processing power right now.

For years, Qualcomm's main competitive advantage has been its plethora of intellectual property (IP) for how mobile devices connect to 3G and 4G networks. The company's IP business (called Qualcomm Technology Licensing, or QTL) accounts for about 21% of its total revenue, but also brings in a substantial amount of the company's profits. QTL accounted for 73% of the company's pre-tax earnings as a percentage of revenue in the fiscal third quarter 2017.

But Qualcomm's intellectual property isn't as important as it used to be. The majority of the company's patents have to do with 3G cellular connectivity and as more mobile devices rely on 4G and LTE connections, Qualcomm hasn't been able to earn as much from its patents as it had in the past. QTL revenue fell 42% year over year in the most recent quarter.

Additionally, while Qualcomm's processors have been widely used in many smartphones, some companies, like Samsung, have created their own chips to power some of their devices. That's cut down the amount of processors Qualcomm supplies to smartphones makers. And to make matters worse, Apple now splits its baseband orders (the chips for cellular connection) between Qualcomm and rival Intel, instead of exclusively ordering from Qualcomm, as it had in the past. Apple is also suing Qualcomm for $1 billion because it says Qualcomm collected too much in licensing fees from the iPhone maker. Apple is currently refusing to pay Qualcomm until things get resolved, which is wrecking Qualcomm's financials.

All of this means that some of Qualcomm's mobile dominance in both processors and intellectual property licensing has slipped over the past few years, which leaves the company without much of a competitive edge at the moment. Winner: NVIDIA.

Valuation

Finally, let's take a look at the valuations of both companies by looking at their price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, based on past earnings, and their forward P/E ratio, based on expected earnings. The P/E ratio tells us how much investors are willing to spend for every dollar of company earnings, and the forward P/E gives us an idea of what investors are spending for every dollar of the company's future expected earnings.

Qualcomm's current P/E ratio of 17.2 is substantially lower than NVIDIA's 55.1. Not only does Qualcomm's stock look much cheaper when compared to NVIDIA, but it's also less expensive than the technology industry's average of about 26. NVIDIA technically looks "expensive" by this standard, so I'm giving Qualcomm the win for this one. But it's worth noting that you shouldn't make any investment decision based on this one metric, or any metric, alone.

Winner: Qualcomm.

The verdict

I'm giving the overall win here to NVIDIA based on both its financial fortitude and competitive advantages. NVIDIA is both dominating the GPU space and forging new opportunities, meanwhile Qualcomm continues to face ongoing litigation issues and is in the midst of a $1 billion lawsuit from Apple. More importantly, those lawsuits are changing how much Qualcomm can charge for its patent licensing fees, which is likely to negatively affect the company's profits from its licensing business. Qualcomm will probably end up with new revenue streams from its NXP purchase, but investors will have to wait awhile to see how well that bet plays out.

10 stocks we like better than NvidiaWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*

David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Nvidia wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.

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*Stock Advisor returns as of August 1, 2017

Chris Neiger has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon, Apple, Baidu, Facebook, Nvidia, and Tesla. The Motley Fool owns shares of Qualcomm. The Motley Fool recommends Intel and NXP Semiconductors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Shake Shack(NYSE: SHAK) andHabit Restaurants(NASDAQ: HABT) typify the better-burger and fast-casual trend that has taken over the restaurant industry in the last decade.

Unlike traditional fast-food mavens likeMcDonald's, Habit and Shake Shack serve fresh beef and burgers that are made to order. The higher quality warrants a higher price tag, and the movement has been successful as a number of other better-burger shops have also proliferated including Five Guys and Smashburger.

As stocks, however, Habit and Shake Shack have not been so successful. Both debuted around the same time (Habit in November 2014 and Shake Shack in January 2015), and are trading below their opening price on their IPO day. As the chart below shows, shares have been giving investors an upset stomach.

HABT data by YCharts.

Still, both companies are growing fast and continue to outperform the overall industry. The sell-off over the last two years could also present opportunity. Let's take a closer look to see if either of these stocks has much to offer investors.

Image source: Shake Shack.

The Shack attack

Shake Shack's outsized brand may have led the stock to soar in its initial months on the market. Founded by famed restaurateur Danny Meyer, it built a reputation for delicious burgers and shakes with just one kiosk in Madison Square Park.

Its average unit volumes, at around $5 million, are much better than any other fast-food chain, though management expects that number to moderate over time. While Shake Shack has successfully executed its growth plan during its two years as a public company, accelerating its new store openings and beating analyst expectations in almost every quarter, expectations may have simply been too high.

Even today, with shares trading near a 52-week low, the stock is valued at a P/E of 61, a lofty multiple for a restaurant chain. However, though its torrid performance from 2015 has slowed, Shake Shack is still looking strong. At a time when the overall restaurant industry has seen comparable sales fall, its same-store sales ticked up 1.6% in its most recent quarter and revenue jumped 43.5%.

However, Shake Shack has struggled to absorb higher labor expenses as company-operated restaurant margins shrunk 280 basis points to 25.4%. While increased labor costs could hamper bottom-line growth over the next year, the long-term picture still looks strong as the it moves toward its goal of 450 company-owned stores nationwide.

Image source: Habit Restaurants.

Back in the Habit

Like Shake Shack and other fast-casual stocks that have IPO'd in recent years, Habit debuted with high expectations. However, growth has fallen short over the past two years and the stock has crashed along with it.

While Habit continues to expand from its California base, profits have been scant as adjusted pro forma net income for 2016 was just $8 million, or $0.31 per share. That number was only modestly better than 2015's EPS at $0.29.

Comparable sales continue to improve at Habit as they increased 1.7% in both the fourth quarter and for the full year, though traffic actually fell for the full year as a price increase was the reason for the increase in comps. Still, it just completed its 52nd week of positive same-store sales, a streak that's virtually unmatched in the restaurant industry, and a testament to the company's consistent growth.

Revenue grew 23% last year, but profit growth was slower due in part to increased labor costs as well, which ate into restaurant-level operating margins.

Looking ahead to next year, the company expects to increase from 16.7% to 20%, which could help profit growth improve.

Who's got the tastier burger?

Both stocks have struggled historically and are valued about the same, as Habit carries a P/E of 60. Of the two, however, Shake Shack has a much better long-term outlook. The company has a stronger brand and outperforms Habit, based on key metrics such as average unit volume and restaurant-level operating margin. Shake Shack, with only 64 company-owned restaurants, has only just begun on its path to 450 locations.

Habit, on the other hand, has more than double the number of restaurants but equal the revenue and less profit. Until the company can demonstrate it can grow profits at least as fast as revenue, the stock is likely to remain mired in the teens.

10 stocks we like better than Habit RestaurantsWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*

David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Habit Restaurants wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.

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*Stock Advisor returns as of February 6, 2017

Jeremy Bowman owns shares of Habit Restaurants and Shake Shack. The Motley Fool is short Shake Shack. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: NXP.

Security and communications semiconductor maker NXP Semiconductors reported first-quarter 2016 results on Monday night after the close of after-hours trading. Investors approached this release with some caution: NXP shares traded 1.2% lower in the regular Monday session, and then fell another 1.3% in extended trading. Here's how the quarter measured up.

NXP's Q1 results: The raw numbers

Q1 2016 Actuals Q1 2015 Actuals Growth (YOY) Revenue $2.22 billion $1.47 billion 52% Adjusted net income attributable to shareholders $401 million $328 million 22% Adjusted EPS $1.14 $1.35 -15.6%

Data source: NXP. Using adjusted figures rather than standard GAAP, because they account for merger-related effects not related to ordinary operations.

What happened with NXP this quarter? This was the first full quarter reported after the closing of a $12 billion merger with Texas-based rival Freescale Semiconductor. As such, it's NXP's first chance to show investors how well the business combination is working out in practice.

Three months ago, NXP's management set the midpoint of its first-quarter guidance for adjusted earnings at $1.10 per share. The revenue target stood at $2.2 billion. The company exceeded both of these targets by modest margins.

The strong earnings sprang from a high-end product mix and early onset of merger-fueled cost synergies.

In particular, sales in the automotive products segment hit $805 million, or $5 million above the midpoint of management guidance. That's an indication that Freescale's automotive expertise is translating into NXP success, as quickly as planned or better.

Looking ahead, the company issued detailed second-quarter guidance ranges.

The company sees sales rising 5% sequentially, landing at $2.30 billion. Comparing the target to NXP and Freescale figures from the year-ago period, this would be a year-over-year revenue decline of roughly 10%, much like the first quarter.

Adjusted earnings should land near $1.35 per share. Getting there would amount to a 6% drop from the $1.44 per share NXP reported in Q2 of 2015.

Non-GAAP gross margins should sit right at 50%, in line with first-quarter margins.

NXP CEO Rick Clemmer. Image source: NXP.

What management had to say In press statements, CEO Rick Clemmer focused on the progress of NXP's merger process. The integration is reportedly going well, with no major snags to report.

"Our major accomplishments include the integration of our customer facing teams, clear alignment within our internal product development groups, and very positive progress on the integration of our operations and supply organizations," Clemmer said. "Customer response to the merger continues to be outstanding."

On a larger scale, however, Clemmer also outlined some rough waters for the semiconductor industry as a whole.

"Our year on year revenue trends reflect the semiconductor industry weakness that accelerated throughout the second half of 2015, and affected both NXP and Freescale," he said. "On a comparable basis, revenue was down approximately 11 percent year on year. We believe we have begun to see incremental positive trends in a number of our businesses, with comparable sequential revenue up approximately two percent into the first quarter."

The industry headwinds should fade over the next few quarters, in Clemmer's opinion, but customer demand continues to run soft until then.

Looking ahead This is a snapshot of a company in transition. With Freescale under its wing, NXP now generates nearly half of its revenues from the automotive division, and no other segment comes close. That's a drastic shift from the same quarter in 2015, where each of NXP's five product categories produced roughly equal sales.

The company's all-in automotive focus is off to a strong start, as shown in that segment's solid sales and Clemmer's optimistic comments.

The article Betting Big on Automotive Chips: NXP Semiconductors NV's Q1 Results originally appeared on Fool.com.

Anders Bylund has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends NXP Semiconductors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: Anavex Life Sciences.

Recently, two women in Melbourne with Alzheimer's disease found themselves able to complete complex tasks they haven't been capable of for some time. One woman found herself suddenly able to play the piano again, and another the ability to paint.

Image source: National Institutes of Health.

The apparent reason for their regained abilities is an experimental pill from Anavex Life Sciences that they've been taking as part of an early stage trial. Could this new drug, named 2-73, be the first to slow, or even reverse progression of this awful disease? If so, how long until it's available to the public?

To answer these questions, it seems we'll have to wait and see. The principal investigator of the 32-patient clinical trial these ladies are enrolled in, Stephen Macfarlanepoured water on the excitement these women generated. "It's looking good at this stage," he said. But, "What's required is a much larger trial with a placebo control group to see if the changes we've noticed in this early study are actually real and pan out in a proper and well conducted study."

In other words these women's regained abilitiescould be due to a placebo effect, because every patient knows they're getting the drug.

A second opinionGiven my limited experience with Alzheimer's patients, I reached out to another expert in an attempt to pin down just how significant these two ladies' regained abilities were with respect to the 2-73 pills they've been taking.

What I learned was, they're basically meaningless. James A. Hendrix, Ph.D., director, global science initiatives, at the Alzheimer's Association, was quick to point out patients over the age of 65 often have several different health problems. When something else bothering them -- think arthritis, asthma, even depression -- is alleviated, some patients appear to have better cognitive abilities.

With respect to clinical trials, Hendrix's remarks were nearly identical to Macfarlane's.

What we need to wait forTo answer the question of whether this pill is a cure or not, we're going to have to wait for Anavex to conduct the only sort of study that the FDA will accept as proof that 2-73 is effective and safe. For a disease as widespread as Alzheimer's, regulators will probably insist on data from a single trial with at least two groups of over 1,000 patients each. Most importantly, they will need to be randomized into two groups, one receiving 2-73, and others a placebo, without anybody's knowledge save for a group of independent data monitors that charge an arm and a leg to run pivotal trials of this sort.

Furthermore, Alzheimer's disease progresses slowly, which means that once such a trial doses the last patient enrolled, it will be years before any meaningful conclusions can be drawn. Until Anavex has data showing statistically significant improvements in efficacy, without side effects, regulators won't even consider an application to market the drug to Alzheimer's patients.

When will Anavex begin a pivotal trial?So far, that's been the toughest question to answer. In theory, it could begin today, but it doesn't have the necessary financing. The company has never conducted a pivotal trial with any drug, and has nothing to sell but shares of its stock. A much more sensible (and financially responsible) option would be tolicense 2-73 to a larger company with the means to run a such a large and expensive trial.

Image source: Alzheimer's Association.

It's not at all uncommon for smaller companies with promising Alzheimer's candidates (or any drugs, for that matter) to collaborate with deep-pocketed drugmakers to reduce their own risk and begin generating some revenue to fund further projects. For example, Biogen licensedthe most promising Alzheimer's candidate at the moment, aducanumab, from privately held Neurimmune and several others from Eisai.

It's important to note here that Anavex's 2-73 does not function in the same manner as any Alzheimer's candidates that have been put through placebo-controlled studies. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Every drug with potential to slow progression of the disease run through large, placebo-controlled studies has so far failed.

Anavex has begun "preparation" for a pivotal study, but it hasn't set a date to begin. I contacted the company's PR firm to ask if it had received any offers to license 2-73, or whether it was seeking partnerships. The company is "open" to collaboration but will not comment on whether it has received any offers.

Back where we startedAs hopeful as I am for the participants in Anavex's trials to date, I'm afraid we can't say anything significant about 2-73's potential to cure or slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease, at least from a regulator's standpoint.

Anavex has no shortage of presentations and press releases suggesting its efficacy, but until it's been compared to a placebo in a larger, blinded study, we really can't call it a cure.

As to when, or how, it will run the necessary trials to support an application that could eventually lead to an FDA approval, we can't say that either. I suggest Anavex shareholders keep their fingers crossed in hopes some company will collaborate soon. For now we're left with more questions than answers.

The article Could a Pill to Cure Alzheimer's Disease Become Available Soon? originally appeared on Fool.com.

Cory Renauer has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Biogen. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Source: Pexels.

Apple has yet to reveal -- or even acknowledge it's working on -- an electric car, but it may have already made one big blunder with its secretive project. Last week, German finance publication Handelsblatt said that Apple's talks with both BMW and Daimler have both fallen through.

Since late last year we knew that Apple and BMW weren't exactly seeing eye-to-eye, but we didn't know that talks had completely ended. We also didn't know that Daimler is reportedly finished with the Apple car discussions as well.

So why does this matter? Well, Apple is planning to debut its electric car sometime in 2019, according toThe Wall Street Journal, but before it can do so it needs to find a company that will actually build the car. And as of right now, it appears it doesn't have that little detail nailed down.

Just like the company's iPhone, iPad, Watch, and iMac, Apple designs all of its devices, the software, and the internal specs, but it doesn't manufacture them. The same will be true if, and when, Apple releases its car. So not having a manufacturer at this point -- and seemingly taking two huge carmakers out of the running -- isn't exactly reassuring news for Apple investors.

What happened?According to Handelsblatt, both carmakers had a disagreement with Apple on who would be in charge of the customer data that an Apple car would produce. New cars collect massive amounts of data and questions around who owns the data, how secure and private it is, and whether or not it can be bought and sold still remain.

Apple reportedly wanted to have 100% control over customer data from the car (no surprise there) and store it all in its iCloud servers. That doesn't sound all that unreasonable considering the company's car would likely be an Apple product, and not Daimler's or BMW's.

To make matters worse, Apple, Daimler, and BMW reportedly couldn't come to an agreement over who would actually lead the car project.

Why Apple may be making a mistakeWe don't know all of the details, of course, but I understand why Apple would want data from its cars stored on its own cloud servers. Apple keeps a very close relationship with its customers, and it typically doesn't like anyone else claiming ownership of its customers' information.

But having said that, I think Apple runs the risk of both alienating itself from the automotive market, and losing potential manufacturers, if it takes too strong of an approach on this issue. Remember, Apple is anything but a dominant force in autos, and it needs the expertise of automotive manufacturers in order to successfully pull off a car.

Apple is used to having the upper hand when it comes to getting manufacturers to build its popular devices, but the same isn't true for an Apple car. Instead, the company needs to be much more open to a collaborative enterprise, where it doesn't have complete control, so that it can find a manufacturer willing to take on such a big (and risky) project.

Handelsblattmentioned that Apple is in talks with the Canadian-Austrian automotive manufacturing company, Magna Steyr. But we don't know yet how far along talks are between Apple and Magna, or if it's even in relation to building Apple's car.

If there is one thing that's starting to become clear from all of this, it's that the road to an Apple car will be anything but smooth.

The article Has Apple Inc. Already Made 1 Huge Mistake With Its Secret Car Project? originally appeared on Fool.com.

Chris Neiger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool recommends BMW. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: Intel.

On chip giant Intel's most recent earnings call, analyst Vivek Arya made a very interesting observation. Top fab-less chip companies -- that is, companies that do not own and operate their own chip manufacturing plants -- can deliver operating margins in the range of 20% to 25%.

Additionally, Arya pointed out, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the top contract chip manufacturer for many of these fabless companies, can often deliver operating margins within spitting distance of 40%.

Intel is a unique company in that it owns its own chip manufacturing plants (as well as the all-important "process recipes" used to build chips in those plants) and it designs and sells the products that are built in those plants.

This, as former Intel CEO Paul Otellini liked to point out to investors, meant that Intel was able to get paid twice: once for the manufacturing portion and once for the design portion of a chip.

Interestingly, in 2015, Intel saw operating income of $14 billion on revenue of $55.4 billion, essentially putting it at the high end of what Arya says fabless chip companies can reasonably pull off.

The question that Arya raised then was the following: "Where should Intel be [in terms of operating margin] after all these restructuring actions are taken?"

Here's what the CFO had to saySmith didn't explicitly give a long-term operating margin target for the company, deferring a more in-depth discussion to the company's investor meeting in November of this year. However, he did point out that the company's recent restructuring efforts, after which Intel should see a $1.4 billion reduction in the company's annual operating expense run rate, operating expenses as a percent of revenue should be "back down in the low 30%."

"You can do the math from there and see what we think we can achieve next year in terms of overall operating margin," Smith said.

Let's run with this a little bitIntel had previously guided to operating expenses for 2015 of $21.3 billion, which would have been an increase from the prior year. That guidance has now been reduced to $20.6 billion as some of the impact from this restructuring will be felt in the coming quarters of the year.

To understand what the company's normalized operating expense run-rate should look like following these restructuring efforts, we should subtract $1.4 billion from the original spending forecast of $21.6 billion. This gives us new annual operating expenses of $19.9 billion -- just slightly below 2015 levels.

Intel is guiding to "mid-single digit" revenue growth for 2016, so let's call this 5% growth, or around $58.2 billion. At the new operating expense run rate, and assuming projected 2016 revenue levels and gross margin levels (62% is the current forecast), operating margin should expand to about 27.8%.

Taking it a step further, let's assume that Intel can keep operating expenses in 2017 at roughly $20 billion, gross margins stay at 62% for the year, and the company delivers the $60.93 billion in revenue that analysts project. At this point, Intel would be able to grow operating margin to around 29.2%.

If Intel is able to bring gross profit margins back up into the 63% to 65% range (probably challenging but doable), there would be additional room for operating margin growth.

It's clear why Intel initiated these restructuring actionsAt the end of the day, Intel management has a duty to its stockholders to bring in as much revenue -- and, ultimately -- profit as possible. If the company can cut operating expenses without sacrificing future revenue/profit growth, then from the perspective of maximizing shareholder value, such a move makes sense.

The article Intel Corporation Tries to Improve Operating Margin originally appeared on Fool.com.

Ashraf Eassa owns shares of Intel. The Motley Fool recommends Intel. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: Panera Bread.

Fast-casual restaurants have become the growth driver of the broader restaurant industry, and Panera Bread has worked hard to build itself into one of the most important players in the fast-casual space. Following in the footsteps of Chipotle Mexican Grill , Panera has worked at expanding its restaurant network and offering high-quality food and a positive, comfortable experience for customers. Coming into Tuesday's first-quarter financial report, Panera investors were ready to see a restoration and acceleration in growth from the company, and its results were even better than most of those following the stock had anticipated. Let's look more closely at what Panera Bread had to say this quarter and whether it can continue to deliver on its goals in the future.

Panera Bread rakes in the dough Panera's first-quarter results were uniformly strong. Revenue jumped 6% to $685.2 million, easily surpassing the consensus forecast among investors for sales of $674 million. GAAP net income was up 10% to $35.1 million, and even though one-time items helped boost earnings growth, a big drop in outstanding share counts produced adjusted earnings of $1.56 per share. That was $0.06 per share higher than investors had expected to see.

A closer look at Panera's numbers reveals a reawakening in comparable-restaurant sales. Across the Panera restaurant system, overall comps rose 4.7%, and the much-watched figure for company-owned locations grew at an even faster 6.2% pace. Average check size accounted for the majority of the comps growth, but traffic count also contributed more than a third to the company's increase in comparable sales. Franchise-owned restaurants didn't fare as well but still produced comparable-restaurant sales gains of 3.3%.

On the margin front, however, Panera's numbers were mixed. From a GAAP perspective, operating margins rose four-tenths of a percentage point, but Panera incurred substantial costs in the year-ago quarter related to the company's refranchising efforts. When adjusting for those costs and other one-time items, adjusted operating margins fell four-tenths of a percent. Panera blamed wage increases, start-up costs, and expenses from the strategic transitions that the company has made for the drop in margins.

Panera CEO Ron Shaich seemed surprised by the extent of the company's success. "Our growth in same-store sales and transactions was the best we generated in four years," Shaich said, "and we outperformed the Black Box all-industry composite by the widest margin we have ever recorded." The CEO also pointed to bottom-line growth as showing the success of the strategic moves that Panera has taken.

Can Panera stay tasty?Because of the strong success that Panera has seen, the company chose to raise its full-year 2016 targets for comps and earnings per share. The fast-casual chain now expects company-owned store comps to grow at a 4% to 5% pace, up half a percentage point from its previous range. Similarly, Panera added $0.17 to $0.18 per share in earnings to its guidance range, which will now be between $6.50 and $6.70 per share. Panera still thinks that operating margins will fall between a half percentage point and a full percentage point.

A combination of factors could keep Panera moving forward. Comparable-restaurant sales for the first part of the current quarter were up 4.4%, which is only slightly slower than its first-quarter performance. At the same time, Panera continued adding new cafes to its network. During the quarter, Panera opened 17 new corporate-owned locations, and franchisees opened 13 more. That brings the company's total count to 1,997.

Panera's results stand in stark contrast to what Chipotle reported. In its first-quarter results, Chipotle suffered a huge revenue plunge of 23% on a stunning 30% drop in comparable-restaurant sales, and the company ended up posting a net loss for the quarter of $0.88 per share. Given the Mexican food chain's history of profit growth, the report came as a shock to Chipotle investors, and it gives Panera an opportunity to take full advantage.

Investors were pleased with Panera's performance, and the stock climbed almost 2% in the first 30 minutes of after-hours trading following the announcement. If Panera can stay on course with its growth plans, then shareholders should be pleased with the stock's long-term performance.

The article Panera Satisfies Shareholders With Strong Comps, Higher Guidance originally appeared on Fool.com.

Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panera Bread. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) on Tuesday was seen as the latest casualty of the recent steep decline in global energy prices. Standard and Poors downgraded the $363-billion American multinational oil and gas companys credit rating from a pristine AAA to AA+, after putting the firm on CreditWatch with negative implications in February.

The ratings agency cited increased pressure from low commodity prices, high capital spending, and large dividend payouts and share repurchases as the chief reasons for the downgrade. The firm said it predicts Exxon will continue to return cash to shareholders instead of placing higher priority on reducing its debt and bolstering cash on hand.

This isnt the first downgrade of its kind. According to an April 2016 report from S&P Ratings Services, the firm downgraded 45 of nearly 105 energy and production and integrated companies that it rated at the start of 2015, and another 27 through the end of the first quarter of this year. Twenty of those E&P companies were slashed to default or selective default after missed interest payments or distressed debt exchanges.

Phil Flynn, FOX Business contributor and senior market analyst at the PRICE Futures Group, said the downgrade reflects how serious oils sharp decline has been. As of Tuesdays settlement, West Texas Intermediate crude prices had shed more than 25% from a year ago, and have plunged more than 70% from record highs hit in 2008.

[It] really reflects a sector that is in really big trouble right now, he said. It means were going to see billions of dollars of less investment in energy, billions of barrels of oil that arent going to get produced in the future, and were going to be paying the price down the road.

Flynn pointed to past examples of similar narratives that have played themselves out: In 1998, Exxon and Mobil agreed to a $73 billion merger amid pricing pressures in the crude-oil market, and Texacos bankruptcy later resulted in a buyout from Chevron (NYSE:CVX).

What we will see now will cost us billions of oil barrels in the future because when you get the biggest of big oil cutting back, the exploration of more barrels of oil and gas isnt going to happen. What will happen is demand will go up and the U.S. will fall behind, he said.

Yet, the price action in the market following the news wasnt of all out panic. Energy continued to be the best performer of all 10 S&P 500 sectors, while Exxons share price traded virtually flat, up about 0.2%.

Darin Newsom, senior analyst at DTN, said thats because most of the downside risk has already been priced into the market, and itll take a lot more than one downgrade to spook investors in the energy sector

No one can expect oil companies to do well, so investors are kind of sitting back and not going to get excited about this sort of thing. If we go another year down the road and large oil companies are still struggling, then maybe well see more reaction by investors, he explained.

For now, he said to expect slow movement as oil prices continue to move higher, and larger companies look to buy up smaller, struggling companies at cheap prices. From Newsoms point of view, Tuesdays action by S&P wasnt so much an indication of whats to come so much as a result of the pressure the industry has suffered for the last year and a half.

This is more of a reflection of the past. I dont see the ripple effects out there nowcould it roil the markets down the road? Its possible. But I think Exxon will continue to be Exxon just not with the triple-A rating from S&P, he explained.

For a significant reaction in the markets as a result of increased pressure, Newsom said the oil market would have to collapse further and something even more severe than a ratings cut will have to happen. For example, he said a large oil company would have to come close to the brink of collapse or suffer substantial problems. Still, he said he doesnt expect that to happen any time soon.
Image source: Cheniere Energy annual report.

Cheniere Energy had a monumental moment this year, when it produced and delivered its first cargo of LNG from its facility in Louisiana. This has been a a long time coming for a company that now doesn't have to worry so much about whether it will find the funding to successfully bring this facility to fruition. Now that it's producing something that's a revenue-generating asset, some investors may be tempted to head for the quarterly earnings reports to see how the company is doing. At this point, that would be a mistake. So let's look at why you may want to ignore most of the company's earnings numbers for the time being and what you should be looking for instead.

Now an operating company, sort ofYou have to give credit to a company that's finally made its roots in an industry that looks to be lucrative for some time to come. After spending a few years building out LNG import terminals, founder and former CEO Charif Souki had the wherewithal to notice the coming boom in natural gas production from shale and quickly pivot to an LNG-exporting company. With natural gas looking like it will be an abundant resource in the U.S. for years to come, it appears that Cheniere has a pretty strong competitive advantage in the industry. It also helps that the company has gone out and secured long-term, fixed-fee contracts that should take the sting out of being in a commodity business and ensure some security that it can generate robust cash flows.

Image source: Cheniere Energy investor presentations.

One thing to consider, though, is that the company delivering its first cargo of LNG does not mean that it is a fully functioning business yet. In fact, that delivered cargo was generated from oe of the five planned liquefaction trains under construction at its Sabine Pass facility. Even under managments rather ambitious schedule, the originally planned four liquefaction trains aren't expected to be online until late 2017.

Image Source: Cheniere Energy investor presentation

Another thing to consider here is that the Sabine Pass facility is wholly owned and operated by Cheniere's subsidiary partnership Cheniere Energy Partners . Thanks to a rather complex corporate strucutre, Cheniere Energy, the parent, won't start to see the financial benefits from this facility until other financial obligations are paid to other parties.

Cheniere Energy will benefit more directly once the Corpus Christi facility is up and running, because that one is wholly owned by the parent company, but again this one isn't expected to be fully operational until late 2018 at the earliest.

With the real earnings power of the company not slated to come online for another year or two, it's still too early to tell if the company is hitting the financial marks it has laid out in its numerous investor presentations.

What to look forSome parts of Cheniere Energy can be hard to understand, but there's one component of the business that should make it easier to analyze: its revenue. The supply contracts, as well as some newly minted short- and medium-term contracts through its marketing arm, mean that more than 87% of Cheniere's LNG processing capacity is under contract. This gives an immense amount of clarity to the revenue side of the business.

What that means is the only variable we're left to get a better handle on is the cost side of the business, and that will mostly come down to operational excellence. In its investor presentations, management has laid out pretty detailed EBITDA projections. Meeting those projections accurately will be largely predicated on the company's ability to control operational costs. That's something we have yet to see the company do yet.

So when the company does report earnings, one thing investors should do instead of digging into profit numbers is to look at any comments from management about operational delays, unplanned downtime, or higher-than-anticipated operational costs. It's probably fair to cut the company a little slack as its first train or two come online because, again, it's a first time operator. Persistent news about delays or higher-than-expected costs, though, should be a sign of caution that the company may not be able to hit those EBITDA projections on the nose.

What a Fool believesWe're starting to enter a new phase in Cheniere's life cycle. Instead of a speculative bet on whether the company can realize the idea of exporting LNG from the U.S., now investors need to focus on the nuts and bolts of an operating company. We're still a way off from seeing these results trickle down to the financial statements, but anyone with a stake in the company should start focusing their attention on whether Cheniere can operate these massive processing facilities in a efficient and cost-effective manner. If it can, then the company should be a strong cash-generating machine that's worth owning for the earnings power. If not, then perhaps it will simply remain a stock based solely on an idea.

The article When Should We Start to Pay Attention to Cheniere Energy's Earnings? originally appeared on Fool.com.

Tyler Crowe has no position in any stocks mentioned.You can follow him at Fool.comor on Twitter@TylerCroweFool. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Four years ago, Delta Air Lines shocked analysts by buying an oil refinery from what soon became Phillips 66 . In the years since then, Delta's new Monroe Energy subsidiary has delivered mixed results. At times, it has posted strong profits, but it has also experienced long periods of breakeven performance -- or worse.

Delta's refinery segment has now entered another period of weak profitability. Fortunately, this isn't actually a bad thing for Delta Air Lines investors.

Delta buys a refineryWhen Delta bought the (then-shuttered) Trainer refinery complex from Phillips 66, it paid just $150 million after a $30 million job-creation incentive from the state of Pennsylvania. It then invested about $100 million in the refinery to increase its jet fuel production capability.

Despite this modest initial investment of $250 million, Delta told investors that the refinery would help it reduce its annual fuel expense by $300 million. That's because owning a refinery would allow Delta to avoid the steep markup it was paying on jet fuel (relative to the cost of crude oil).

Delta Air Lines bought a refinery to help manage jet fuel crack spreads. Image source: The Motley Fool.

Losses pile up -- then recedeInitially, Delta's new Monroe Energy segment failed to meet the company's profit expectations. In 2012, the refinery segment posted a full-year loss of $63 million as damage from Superstorm Sandy disrupted operations in November and December.

These problems were resolved within a few months, but a steep drop in crack spreads -- the difference between the cost of crude oil and the price of refined products -- led to an annual loss of $116 million in 2013.

In 2014, crack spreads began to increase again, allowing Delta's refinery to reach profitability. Still, the $96 million full-year profit was significantly less than what the company had advertised to investors. Last year, the refinery came into its own, as the sharp drop in oil prices and rising demand for refined products boosted crack spreads. The refinery posted a full-year profit of $290 million in 2015.

This period of high profitability at the refinery didn't last long, though. The refinery segment lost $28 million last quarter, as crack spreads have collapsed again. For the full year, Delta hopes that the refinery will break even.

The refinery isn't a profit machine -- it's a hedging toolLooking at the volatile profitability of the Trainer refinery, it's easy to understand why Phillips 66 didn't want to continue operating it. As a pure-play refiner, it makes more sense for the company to stick to operating the most efficient refineries, which generate the highest margins.

However, that doesn't mean that Delta got a bad deal. Delta's rationale for buying the refinery wasn't exactly to earn big profits by refining oil -- it wanted to hedge against the risk of high crack spreads that would drive up the price of jet fuel.

By paying to reopen a refinery that was otherwise slated to close and retooling it to produce more jet fuel, Delta has increased the supply of jet fuel, particularly in the Northeast. All else equal, that would tend to push down refining margins, hurting the refinery's profitability.

But when the refinery loses money because of low crack spreads, Delta simultaneously saves hundreds of millions of dollars through lower jet fuel prices. The fuel cost savings more than offset the refinery losses.

Thus, in today's environment of weak refining margins, refiners like Phillips 66 are expected to report sharp profit declines. Meanwhile, analysts expect Delta's earnings per share to soar more than 40% year over year in 2016. This shows how Delta wins regardless of whether crack spreads are high or low.

Smooth operations are the keyThis isn't to say that Delta's refinery gamble has been risk-free. However, tightening crack spreads aren't the big risk, as would be the case for a pure-play refiner like Phillips 66.

Instead, the real risk is that maintenance issues or other operational problems could disrupt the refinery's production (and possibly require costly repairs). In that scenario, Delta could lose money on the refinery while still paying high crack spreads to buy jet fuel for the airline.

So far, the Monroe Energy management team has done a great job of avoiding these snafus. Other than the late 2012 disruptions associated with Superstorm Sandy, there have been no major production problems. As long as it stays that way, Delta's refinery purchase will continue to pay big dividends for investors.

The article Why You Shouldn't Worry About Delta Air Lines' Refinery Losses originally appeared on Fool.com.

Adam Levine-Weinberg is long January 2017 $40 calls on Delta Air Lines, The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Utah alcohol bosses have filed a complaint and will consider revoking the liquor license of a movie theater it says violated a state obscenity law by serving drinks while screening "Deadpool," which features simulated sex scenes.

The theater said the law is unconstitutional and has threatened to challenge it in court if the complaint isn't dropped.

Rocky Anderson, an attorney for Brewvies in Salt Lake City, said Monday the law violates free-speech rights and is so broadly written that even a movie featuring Michelangelo's nude "David" sculpture would be banned if alcohol was served at a screening.

Utah's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control filed the complaint against Brewvies after three undercover state officers attended a screening of "Deadpool" in February.

Investigators cited a state obscenity law that is generally used to regulate alcohol and nudity at strip clubs, which are required to have dancers wearing G-strings and pasties if the club serves liquor.

The law also bans the showing of any film with sex acts or simulated sex acts, full-frontal nudity or the "caressing" of breasts of buttocks. It only applies to businesses with liquor licenses, so most Utah movie theaters, which are alcohol free, are not cited under the law.

Brewvies, which has been open since 1997, only allows people 21 and older to attend movies and serves food and liquor to customers.

The DABC has scheduled a meeting in May to discuss or possibly settle the complaint before further disciplinary action.

The agency's Vickie Ashby had no comment Monday and said she could not speak to the next steps in the disciplinary process. She directed questions to the attorney general's office and State Bureau of Investigation, which ran the undercover investigation.

Dan Burton, a spokesman for the Utah attorney general's office, declined to comment. The State Bureau of Investigation looked into the matter after the DABC sent it a compliant, according to Marissa Villasenor, a spokeswoman for Utah's Department of Public Safety, which oversees the investigative bureau.

Anderson said he'll challenge the law in court unless the complaint is dropped and Utah stops enforcing the obscenity law. Anderson said his client should also be repaid for a $1,627 fine the theater paid five years ago when it was cited under the same law for showing "The Hangover Part II."

Anderson, who provided a copy of the investigative report to The Associated Press, said the fact that the film can be shown at other theaters nearby makes it clear Utah officials are using liquor laws to limit First Amendment rights of free speech.

Anderson said the Utah law is similar to an Idaho measure that lawmakers repealed this year after a theater sued after its liquor license was threatened for showing "Fifty Shades of Grey" while serving alcohol.
Amy Schumer recalled the moment she heard there was a shooting in a theater playing her movie "Trainwreck."

On July 23, a man opened fire inside a Lafayette, Louisiana theater, while Schumer was still on a press tour for the movie. She tells Vanity Fair magazine's May issue that she remembers having a bunch of missed calls from her publicist that night.

WATCH: Amy Schumer Tweets About Gun Control After San Bernardino Mass Shooting -- 'It Doesn't Have to Be This Way'

"I was laughing before I called her back, because I thought it was going to be like a sex tape [had surfaced] or something. So I was kind of laughing, like ready to  And then she told me there had been this shooting," Schumer explains in the publication's cover story. "It really  I dont know. Its like when the Dark Knight shooting happened, and in Paris. The idea of people trying to go out and have a good time -- you know, like looking forward to it? I dont know why that makes me the saddest.

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Starting to cry, the 34-year-old comedian adds, "So my publicist told me. And then I put on the news. I was by myself in a hotel, and I was just like, I wish I never wrote that movie."

WATCH: Amy Schumer Bashes the Kardashians and Guns in Saturday Night Live Hosting Debut

Schumer says that when her friends attempted to comfort her by telling her that she wasn't at fault, it only made it worse. "I just felt helpless and stupid," she says.

The "Inside Amy Schumer" star contacted the victims' families and made donations on their behalf. She also started working with her cousin, Senator Chuck Schumer, to change the gun laws in America. "I got a call, and he was like, Amy, this is your cousin Chuck. And I said, I hope this is you asking me to help with guns," she shares. "He laughed. Yeah, thats what this is. I was like, Lets go. Lets do it.'"

WATCH: Amy Schumer Emotionally Speaks Out on Gun Violence -- 'These Shootings Have Got to Stop'

When ET spoke with Schumer in December, she was adamant that she would not be silent about this issue. "I am someone who has a voice right now, and I feel really passionately about it, and it's so heartbreaking," she said. "It's just, like, enough. So, if not me, then who? And I hope other people will follow suit."
The growing number of patients who claim marijuana helped them drop their painkiller habit has intrigued lawmakers and emboldened advocates, who are pushing for cannabis as a treatment for the abuse of opioids and illegal narcotics like heroin, as well as an alternative to painkillers.

It's a tempting sell in New England, hard hit by the painkiller and heroin crisis, with a problem: There is very little research showing marijuana works as a treatment for the addiction.

Advocates argue a growing body of scientific literature supports the idea, pointing to a study in the Journal of Pain this year that found chronic pain sufferers significantly reduced their opioid use when taking medical cannabis. And a study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association found cannabis can be effective in treating chronic pain and other ailments.

But the research falls short of concluding marijuana helps wean people off opioids -- Vicodin, Oxycontin and related painkillers -- and heroin, and many medical professionals say it's not enough for them to confidently prescribe it.

In Maine, which is considering adding opioid and heroin addiction to the list of conditions that qualify for medical marijuana, Michelle Ham said marijuana helped her end a yearslong addiction to painkillers she took for a bad back and neck.

Tired of feeling "like a zombie," the 37-year-old mother of two decided to quit cold turkey, which she said brought on convulsions and other withdrawal symptoms.

Then, a friend mentioned marijuana, which Maine had legalized in 1999 for chronic pain and scores of other medical conditions. She gave it a try in 2013 and said the pain is under control. And she hasn't gone back on the opioids.

"Before, I couldn't even function. I couldn't get anything done," Ham said. "Now, I actually organize volunteers, and we have a donations center to help the needy."

Bolstered by stories like Ham's, doctors are experimenting with marijuana as an addiction treatment in Massachusetts and California. Supporters in Maine are pushing for its inclusion in qualifying conditions for medical marijuana, and Vermonters are making the case for addiction treatment in their push to legalize pot.

Authorities are also desperate to curb a sharp rise in overdoses; Maine saw a 31 percent increase last year, and drug-related deaths in Vermont have jumped 44 percent since 2010. Vermont officials also blame opioid abuse for a 40 percent increase over the past two years of children in state custody.

"I don't think it's a cure for everybody," said Maine Rep. Diane Russell, a Portland Democrat and a leader in the state effort to legalize marijuana. "But why take a solution off the table when people are telling us and physicians are telling us that it's working?"

Most states with medical marijuana allow it for a list of qualifying conditions. Getting on that list is crucial and has resulted in a tug of war in many states, including several in which veterans have been unsuccessful in getting post-traumatic stress disorder approved for marijuana treatment.

"It's hard to argue against anecdotal evidence when you are in the middle of a crisis," said Patricia Hymanson, a York, Maine, neurologist who has taken a leave of absence to serve in the state House. "But if you do too many things too fast, you are sometimes left with problems on the other end."

In New Hampshire, where drug deaths more than doubled last year from 2011 levels, the Senate last week rejected efforts to decriminalize marijuana.

There are some promising findings involving rats and one 2014 JAMA study showing that states with medical marijuana laws had nearly 25 percent fewer opioid-related overdose deaths than those without, but even a co-author on that study said it would be wrong to use the findings to make the case for cannabis as a treatment option.

"We are in the midst of a serious problem. People are dying and, as a result, we ought to use things that are proven to be effective," said Dr. Richard Saitz, chair of the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health.

Cannabis could have limited benefits as a treatment alternative, said Harvard Medical School's Dr. Kevin Hill, who last year authored the JAMA study that found benefits in using medical marijuana to treat chronic pain, neuropathic pain and spasticity related to multiple sclerosis. But he urged caution.

"If you are thinking about using cannabis as opposed to using opioids for chronic pain, then I do think the evidence does support it," he said. "However, I think one place where sometimes cannabis advocates go too far is when they talk about using cannabis to treat opioid addiction."

The findings in the Journal of Pain study that found chronic pain sufferers reduced their opioid use when using medical pot were limited because participants self-reported the data.

Substance abuse experts argue there are already approved medications. It would also be wrong to portray marijuana as completely safe, they say, because it can also be addictive.

But supporters point to doctors like Dr. Gary Witman, of Canna Care Docs, who has treated addicts with cannabis at his offices in Fall River, Stoughton and Worcester, Massachusetts.

Since introducing the treatment in September, Witman said, 15 patients have successfully weened themselves off opioids. None have relapsed.

"When I see them in a six-month follow up, they are much more focused," Witman said. "They have greater respect. They feel better about themselves. Most importantly, I'm able to get them back to gainful employment."


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CVS Pharmacy has recalled an organic herbal tea after the product manufacturer said one of its raw material suppliers detected salmonella in an ingredient packaged in a separate item. The product, labeled Gold Emblem Abound Organic Spiced Herbal Tea 1.41 oz, also contains that ingredient.

Salmonella can pose serious health risks to people who are young, elderly or immunosuppressed. When exposed to salmonella, healthy people can also suffer from flu-like symptoms and abdominal pain. In rare cases, the organism may lead to arterial infections such as aneurysms, endocarditis and arthritis, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The best-by date of the recalled product is March 18, 2018 with a UPC code 0 50428 541043. According to the FDA, no other best-by dates were affected. The products were distributed in CVS stores nationwide, and about 200 units have been recalled.

CVS hasnt received any reports of illness but has recalled the item as a precaution. The company has blocked further sale of the recalled items and removed the affected products from its store shelves.

Individuals who have purchased a recalled item may contact CVS for a refund, according to the FDA.
The family of an 11-year-old girl who died after choking on a marshmallow is demanding answers after a doctor said she suffered catastrophic brain injury. Azriel Estrabrooks reportedly began choking on the marshmallow at an April 15 birthday party and then hit her head while falling down stairs, Fox25 reported.

Estrabrooks mother was called and arrived to find a Connecticut state trooper who was attending the party performing life saving measures on her. She was then rushed to Childrens Hospital in Rhode Island, but died April 22.

The doctor said it was a catastrophic brain injury, Estrabrooks grandmother, identified as Ione, told Fox25. To be as catastrophic as that she had to have been without oxygen for several minutes.

The family wants to know what else happened and how she wound up on the floor. The Somerset police department declined to comment to Fox25, while the district attorney told the news station that the investigation was over and there were no signs of foul play.

Its the same thing as stabbing us in the heart, Ione told Fox25. We dont have any idea.


What if there were a way to stave off the creaks and calamities of old age? Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is working on it.

With word leaking out, seniors from all over the globe have been hounding Dr. Barzilai and his colleagues to get in on the actionwith many writing to prove their worthiness. Never mind that formal patient recruitment is still perhaps a year away.

One 71-year-old sent a photo of himself along with a note: still do 100 push ups every day! A retired engineer disclosed his schedule: Completing 2 crosswords a day; walking for 30-45 minutes daily; playing the piano for one hour a day; consuming 1000 mg of turmeric.

I constantly worry, how long will I be able to work; will I ever be able to retire and will I be able to care for myself when Im older? another prospective volunteer wrote.

All humankind is waiting and watching, wrote a 76-year-old who teaches Introduction to Twitter at a senior center in Las Vegas.

Would-be participantsfrom Cherry Hill, N.J., the Four Corners area of New Mexico, the Netherlands and beyondhave inundated Dr. Barzilai with calls and letters. Other researchers in the project have been swamped as well.

Behind the mania is a widely used, inexpensive generic pill for Type 2 diabetes called metformin. Scientists are planning a clinical trial to see if the drug can delay or prevent some of the most devastating diseases of advanced age, from heart ailments to cognitive decline to cancer. To test the pill, gerontologists at 14 aging centers around the U.S. will follow 3,000 seniors for six years. Half the seniors involved would get the drug, while the others would receive a placebo.

Click for more from the Wall Street Journal.
Yury flopped open a mini-date log and pointed to the notations that marked each helicopter trip he took over the still-smoldering Chernobyl nuclear power plant after reactor No. 4 exploded 30 years ago, heaving tons of uranium, cesium, plutonium and other radioactive poisons three miles into the atmosphere.

In the weeks following the disaster, the Soviet powers ordered Yury, a Russian video journalist, to film aerial scenes of the crippled Ukrainian facility. Again and again in the wake of the nuclear nightmare, Yury and his chopper pilots hovered eerily over the molten mess. Each flight memorialized numerically in Russian - Odin, dva, tri, chetire, pyat  signified a trip into the abyss.

After those flights, my hair started to fall out, Yury recounted in English back in 1991, as he drove our U.S. humanitarian team to Chernobyls 18-mile Exclusion Zone. At first I thought it was from a lack of eating vegetables.

Almost five years after the worlds worst nuclear catastrophe, and our Jeep lurched and bumped over ruts, kicking up billows of dust. Compared to the reactor's sickening cloud of smoke and radionuclides Yury had witnessed, the airborne debris seemed trivial.

A quarter-century after I became one of the first Western journalists to venture into the Exclusion Zone, it is time that I reveal the secret that I held for decades, one that so clearly haunted Yury on that day.



After showing us his Chernobyl flight record, Yury stared at the Jeeps steering wheel before continuing to recount the events of five years earlier. On the very Saturday the reactor exploded, Yury was videotaping a family not far from the doomed power plant. Springtime flowers and the squealing laughter of children masked the hidden reality of invisible chemicals wafting in the breeze and swirling into streams. Deadly atoms gripped trees, grass and shoes. Ionizing particles floated inside nostrils and lungs.

As Yurys camera rolled, firefighters and first responders were racing in vain to dampen the roaring reactor where a nuclear blast had already blown a 1,000-ton lid off the container holding the reactors fuel elements. And no one told the public of the out-of-control monster fanning a lethal plume northward across Belarus and countries beyond.

Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev and other members of the Politburo had learned there was a problem hours earlier, around 3 a.m. Seeds of a global cover-up took root overnight. What Soviet commanders knew and when they knew it is still debated, but it was another 36 hours before residents of Pripyat, the power plants surrounding atom town received first official details of the meltdown.

Attention comrades, an unsatisfactory radioactive situation has occurred at the Chernobyl power station, read the warning broadcasted to residents. As a temporary precaution, it has been decided to evacuate citizens of Pripyat.

Three hours later, with the aid of 1,200 buses from Kiev, the community of roughly 45,000 turned eerily empty.

Somewhere in the panic and precaution, Soviet authorities learned of Yurys idyllic spring day video. Moscow aired clips on state television, offering a distorted truth of the clear landscape and jovial people into a half-truth for the world to see. April 26 was a bright, sunny day, with local children giggling and romping, adults toasting and feasting, went the story given credence by Yurys footage. All was well for USSR citizens.

But Yuri knew the truth.

The government used my video to say that Nyet, nyet, nyet, the Chernobyl plant is fine, he told me. Everything is fine. That video, it . . . it. . . how you say? It is a black spot on my heart. A black spot on my whole life.

The civil authorities turned an innocent party into international propaganda. If Sweden hadnt sounded the alarm three days after the initial devastation, how might Moscow have remained tight-lipped? As it was, authorities held back on the full effects of the radiation contamination for years. Children splashed in streams, women gathered mushrooms in the forests and men tilled their farmland far too close to Chernobyl.

The calculated downplaying of the Chernobyl disaster cracked open in October 1990, when the minister for foreign affairs of what is now known as Belarus, Pyotr Kravchanka, addressed the United Nations General Assembly and appealed for help.

The bitter truth is that it is only now, four and a half years later, that we are finally and with tremendous difficulty making a breach in the wall of indifference, silence and lack of sympathy, and for this we ourselves are largely to blame, Kravchanka said.

I sensed the countrys suffocating unease as Yury drove us to the Zones checkpoint and armed communist guards herded us into an outdated bus to tour a number of desolate evacuated villages. At one point we ventured within four miles of the mangled energy plant and our cell phone-sized dosimeter soared to indicate dangerous radiation levels10 times higher than what is considered safe.

I can still hear the haunting creak of dilapidated playground swings and picture dirt-swept toys and dolls long abandoned in schoolrooms. Drawing close to Chernobyls Ground Zero, we met an elderly couple outside their farmhouse.

Why are you still here in this contamination? I asked. The wife pointed to the sky and scolded me through our interpreter, Nyet! Nyet! Nyet! We see nothing in the air!

An accurate tally of the ill and dead from Chernobyl may never be knownestimates still range from hundreds to hundreds of thousands.

Thirty years ago in a Cold War culture, Yury did not know Moscow would manipulate his family-time video. He did not know the danger he confronted in the following days and weeks when he was pressed into duty videotaping the plant. Was Yury an unknowing pawn on a convoluted global chessboard or merely a dedicated family man just doing his job? He was both.

A quarter century after we spoke in that chilly Jeep, I still wonder if Yury was attempting to alert the outside world through me. And I wonder if he is even alive. Of the first photographers who snapped photos or recorded video on the ground and in the air that fateful Saturday, two are dead from radiation-related disease and one was constantly ill from the Chernobyl exposure for years before dying in a 2015 car accident.

After my discussion with Yury, I reported on the relief effort, accompanying a New York-based group that brought three tons of medicine and supplies to Belarus hospitals and orphanges.

Our host, the Byelorussian Childrens Fund, escorted us throughout the troubled country where more than half of the unseen Chernobyl toxins showered unsuspecting citizens with a blanket of potential disease and death. I grasped the hand of a dying teen and cradled babies nobody wanted.

The sight of dozens of hairless, chemo-sick boys and girls remains burned into my minds eye. I told their story, but until now, I did not tell Yurys. Maybe doing so will help soften the black spot he once described to me.
After an aggressive New York primary campaign Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were supposed to go back to being friendly. Or they were, at least, meant to hide their disdain for one another better.

That didnt happen.

Just a few days after Sanderss major defeat in New York and his trip home to Vermont so that he could recharge his batteries he was back out there criticizing Clinton for her poor judgment. And Clintons team was floating names of potential V.P. picks for her and focusing on Donald Trump, a clear signal to the Sanders campaign and his voters that the primary is all but over.

This has only angered Sanderss supporters even more. Over the weekend, Sanders surrogate and actress Rosario Dawson said that she felt solidarity with Monica Lewinsky because both had been bullied by the Clinton machine. Sanders didnt support her statement, but he didnt disavow it either.

And though the battle continues to rage into Tuesdays primaries where Clinton is poised to expand her delegate lead, its not actually the war of words between the campaigns thats the issue. Its unification.

The clearest and most obvious obstacle to unification for the Democrats is that Sanderss supporters dont like Hillary Clinton all that much. Surveys have shown that as many as 25% of Sanders voters wouldnt vote for Clinton in the general election. Thats compared to just 14% of Clintons voters who say they wouldnt get behind Sanders if he was the nominee.

And then theres the faction of Sanders supporters who say theyll be voting for Donald Trump instead of Clinton. They see their positions on free trade and the economy more generally as pretty aligned. This is only bound to increase after Trump said last week that he wants to raise taxes on the wealthy. Im sure that led to a collective groan at Clinton HQ.

Weve been here before. In May 2008, Indiana exit polls found that 50 percent of Clinton supporters said theyd stay home or vote for McCain rather than vote for Obama and we know that they turned out for him at the general election. But that doesnt mean that this is any less troubling as Democrats look ahead to November.

Democrats are also facing a serious ideology obstacle on their path to winning in November. Bernie Sanders isnt a Democrat, hes a socialist. Hes very open about it and we all know that hes only running as a Democrat because an Independent candidacy would be dead in the water.

But what establishment Democrats didnt bank on was how many Americans would identify with socialism. A recent poll found that 57% of Americans think that socialism has a positive impact on society. We know the Democrat electorate is becoming more and more liberal, but that finding shocked everyone. Furthermore, as we know that Democrats and socialists have clear ideological differences, there will be no tradition of party unity here. This reality inevitably complicates matters for Clinton in get a fractured party to coalesce around her.

Then theres her opponent to worry about. If its Donald Trump  and all the evidence suggests that it will be  shes going to have a steep challenge in that he has shown an ability to bring in Independent voters and, critically, some Democrats, too. Some of this cant be avoided in that Trumps candidacy will always defy the odds, but Clinton needs a real progressive running mate to keep the Obama coalition together as best she can.

By now weve all seen the list of 10 or so names that the Clinton campaign is considering as VP and they all offer great qualities shed want in a running mate. That said, I believe that Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown is the best choice of a running mate. Hes been a longtime Clinton ally who is more progressive than she is. Hes universally respected and well liked. And he brings with him Ohio, a valuable swing state that shell need to capture the presidency.

Tuesdays results will shed some light on how much longer Sanders is going to stay in the race. Though hes said that hes staying in until the end, there are rumblings that his campaign will reevaluate after Tuesday. But even if he does exit the race  and I dont think he will  Clinton has her work cut out in unifying this Democrat party. Sanders will have to play a role himself and Elizabeth Warren will have to come off the sidelines. And Senator Brown will be a huge asset to her as she woos Sanderss backers.

Who knew wed still be fighting socialism in 2016?
If there is one group that best represents the need for high, consistent educational standards in our public schools today, it is the military family.

For more than 50 years, America has relied on a small, but significant, core of volunteer soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Many of these brave men and women dedicate 20 years or more of their lives in the service to their country on the front lines. Most have their own families who also serve our country on the home front.

Military families, like others, want their children to have the best education possible. But consider this fact: Military families move an average of six to nine times throughout a childs K-12 life. Thats a new school every year and a half to two years.

That means new teachers, friends, expectations and curricula. In some states, military-connected students may be ahead of their classmates. In others, they may be far behind.

Having grown up on a military base, I know this places significant stress on military children.

This explains why groups like Military Families for High Standards exist. Led by Christi Ham, a longtime military spouse, parent and educator, the initiative is working to raise awareness about why military students need these high standards and how consistent standards can benefit these highly mobile students as they move from state to state and base to base.

If moving was not bad enough, military families know the quality of the public schools surrounding our bases is extremely uneven. This makes the strain even worse. After all, no one wants to send their kids to a bad school.

Its no wonder why this issue is so important to military families. So much so, that  not surprisingly  education plays a role in reenlistment. Surveys show service members are less likely to reenlist if they face a transfer to a base with poor-performing schools.

Fortunately, the military has heard these concerns. Now, the branches are starting to do something about them.

First, the Pentagon and states put together the Military Interstate Childrens Compact in 2007. The Compact set rules for the treatment of military children transferring between school districts and states.

For example, say a child receives a passing grade in algebra in Arizona. If the family moves to Georgia, the Compact ensures the student doesn't have to retake the class. The Compact finally went into effect in all 50 states in January 2015.

Now, the Pentagon is looking at ways to pressure base communities to improve schools. In 2013, now-former Army Chief of Staff Raymond Odierno signaled a major change. The Pentagon, he said, would be looking at the quality of schools around military bases as a factor in future base closings.

At a press event with military families, Odierno was asked what local politicians could do to keep military bases open. He responded, [T]hey better start paying attention to the schools that are outside and inside our installations. Because as we evaluate and we make decisions on future force structure, that will be one of the criteria.

Odierno went one step further. He commissioned a study that examined schools that serve at least 200 children of Army soldiers in the United States. It reviewed and reported on 393 individual public schools across 22 states. For example, in Arizona, the report looked at nine public schools near Ft. Huachuca.

The study had one major conclusion. It found that since every state uses different standards, it was impossible to compare the schools across borders. In short, you couldn't compare Arizona's nine schools with those in Texas or any other state.

Thats where high, consistent standards, such as the Common Core State Standards, come in. Developed by governors and state education departments, the Common Core is currently used in 43 states and the District of Columbia. The Department of Defense Education Activity, the branch of the Pentagon that runs military schools, also uses it.

The Common Core lays out a path that ensures students gain the knowledge and educational skills necessary to succeed in college, career and life. It also allows for apples-to-apples comparisons of school performance across state borders.

Military families sacrifice a lot for us. In return, we need to do everything possible to ensure their kids have an opportunity to succeed. The continued use of high, consistent national standards ensures their kids, and ours, get the best education possible.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has sounded the alarm bells regarding the Zika virus, calling it "scarier than we initially thought." In the aftermath of Ebola, one might wonder why the government would not assume that an emerging disease such as Zika would be frightening and plan accordingly.

Just over a year after President Obama requested emergency funding for the federal response to the Ebola crisis and Congress provided $5.4 billion for that purpose, the president asked a less inclined Congress for $1.9 billion for the federal response to the Zika crisis. Now we wait to see what Congress will do.

Lives will be lost to infection while policymakers on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue draft, debate, and decide whether and how to spend billions of public health dollars. Unlike lawmakers, health care providers do not have the luxury of time when dealing with infectious disease. They must make quick therapeutic decisions.

The governments untenable policy position is worsened by an unsustainable method of funding. To pay for Zika response, the administration has redirected $510 million from Ebola (even though Ebola continues to threaten America and the world) and $79 million from other health priorities. The CDC is actually reaching into state and local health departments and pulling back grant money the agency already assigned to them to meet other health needs. Because local health departments are usually the first to respond to a biological incident, it is counterproductive to rescind or repurpose this money. It puts local preparedness at a disadvantage right when we need it the most.

It would be easy enough to say that this situation is an anomaly: because the Zika virus is unusually stealthy and swift in its spread, the election year has unbalanced our normal budgeting and appropriations mechanisms, or that we need a special allowance just this once.

Unfortunately, none of these statements is true. Numerous studies describe an increasing trend of emerging pathogens and the outbreaks caused by them. We should expect an onslaught of such pandemics for many years to come. The current situation simply underscores the lack of a comprehensive plan, advanced coordination, and thoughtful direction of funding toward responding to these inevitable events.

To address these shortcomings, and because we believe that the biological threat (terrorist, natural, or accidental) is among the greatest threats we face, we recently released A National Blueprint for Biodefense. This assessment provides 33 actionable recommendations that the government can act on right now. Chief among them are centralizing leadership in the Office of the Vice President, developing a comprehensive national strategy for biodefense, and aligning funding with that strategy in advance of biological incidents.

It is clear that lack of centralized biodefense leadership and strategy continue to hamper the federal governments well-meaning but fractured efforts. We understand that the Obama administration does not want to repeat the mistakes of Ebola, and its rapid and determined actions to do better with Zika reflect this. However, if we undermine existing funding streams, and if we operate in the absence of a collaborative and considered long-term national strategy, then we are certain to repeat past mistakes.

We must approach emerging infectious disease threats more strategically, and empower a leader in the federal government who will be accountable for doing so. We must address the root causes underlying the frequent emergence of diseases like Zika. We must also build preparedness for them into existing budgets. We call on policymakers to plan ahead for the emergence and reemergence of deadly diseases through strategic budgeting and evidence-based risk analysis. Agencies must coordinate with one another to systematically prioritize emerging infectious diseases with the potential to cause catastrophic public health emergencies sufficient to affect national security. The priorities we develop should then drive strategic and comprehensive annual budget requests.

Zikas spread from its previously limited geographic range in Uganda in 2007, to its startling presence and aggressive movement throughout the Western Hemisphere seven years later, underscores the need for a correspondingly aggressive response. We must harness the wherewithal of American resources in an attempt to beat it back. We cannot continue to pretend that funding by crisis to address predictable health emergencies is good governing.

We have heard many calls for Congress to pass the emergency Zika supplemental, and we support these because of the gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves. But we also call upon Congress to introduce and pass legislation in the near term that will require a comprehensive national biodefense strategy tied to comprehensive annual budget requests, and we ask the Vice President to oversee their implementation. This administration has the opportunity to take action now, and ensure that the next administration is better prepared for whatever 2017 sends our way.

Joe Lieberman was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Tom Ridge was the nations first secretary of Homeland Security and the 43rd governor of Pennsylvania. Together they chair the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense. Learn more at www.BioDefenseStudy.org.
Why is it only retiring members of Congress talk about how they spent more time raising money than doing the job they were elected to do, speaking to a problem they actively participated in while in office but one which they can no longer address as a sitting lawmaker?

One retired Democratic senator said he had to raise $10,000 a day every day for six years. An outgoing Republican House member called fundraising the main business of Congress. And recently a retiring New York member of Congress admitted he spent 4,200 hours on the phone raising money. That equates to two full years out of his fifteen in Congress. Two years worth of calling you for money and not doing the job he was elected to do.

Well, the way I see it it's not an act of conscience when you wait until retirement to complain about fundraising. It's an admission that you did nothing to stop it when you had a chance.

So let's do something about it. I've been in Congress two years and believe the demands placed on legislators to raise money are the greatest impediment to a functioning Congress.

Republicans, Democrats and independents can all agree on one thing -- the public did not elect members of Congress to go to Washington and spend their time raising money for their re-election.

I recall being sat down by a member of my own leadership and told my responsibility was to raise $18,000 a day to secure my re-election. I was told not to think about my job as a Congressman until I hit that goal.

Similarly, I was told by an adviser it didn't matter how I voted as long as I raised enough money to pay for television commercials.

Its wrong. But it would be even more wrong to go along with this culture and do nothing to try to change it while in office. So I've introduced the Stop Act to prohibit sitting federal office holders from directly soliciting a campaign contribution - no member of Congress, no senator, and no one serving as president or vice president would be permitted to spend their days asking you for money instead of doing their job.

Fundraising would instead be left to the campaign staff.

And I'm putting it all in the line by pledging to abide by the Stop Act now.

The Stop Act is less campaign finance reform and more Congressional reform. The message it sends to Congress is clear: put down the phone, get back to work, and start advancing the national debate on important matters of national security, immigration reform, and tax relief.

Republicans, Democrats and independents can all agree on one thing - the public did not elect members of Congress to go to Washington and spend their time raising money for their re-election. They are not paying members $174,000 a year to spend, in some cases 20 or 30 hours a week, on the phone dialing for dollars. But that is exactly what is happening. Simply put, you, the taxpayer, are getting ripped off.

Variations of the Stop Act are on the books in many states today. State legislators in states like Florida are prohibited from directly soliciting contributions while they are in session. A similar prohibition applies to judicial elections in 30 states across the country. And the Supreme Court recently upheld the Florida statute that bans fundraising by judicial candidates.

Ive heard some say the Stop Act has no chance of passing. Personally, I believe thats an excuse created by politicians who benefit from the status quo.

Well lets call the status quo what it really is - cheating the taxpayer. Its a first-rate bipartisan shakedown of the American people and its time to put an end to it. In any other profession, if you spent half your week doing something other than what you were hired to do, you'd be fired.

The Stop Act now has the support of six other members of Congress. It has been endorsed by a dozen newspaper editorial boards across the country. And support continues to grow.

Sometimes the simplest reforms can make the greatest impact. The Stop Act is simple and its impact could change Washington forever.


After the Paris and Brussels attacks, Americans are rightfully worried about ISIS operatives infiltrating the United States to plot attacks. Since 2014, more than 80 ISIS-linked individuals have been arrested in 24 states.

ISIS is remotely recruiting people within our communitiesonline and across bordersand encouraging them to carry out attacks. They are also providing hit lists of military, law enforcement, and government officials.

It is worth noting how bad the situation has become. The FBI is currently conducting nearly 1,000 homegrown terror investigations in all 50 states, most related to ISIS, and more than 250 Americans have traveled or attempted to travel to fight with extremists in Syria and Iraq.

Most of these individuals were brainwashed in whole or in part by the terror outfits online propaganda, and some of them have been in direct communication with the groups deadliest operatives overseas.

We are in uncharted territory, but this week Congress is continuing to provide U.S. law enforcement with the tools to fight back.

On Tuesday, the House will consider H.R. 4820, the Combating Terrorist Recruitment Act, crafted by a bipartisan group of members.

The bill requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to use the testimonials of former extremists and defectors as part of ongoing efforts to stop terrorist recruitment. These are individuals who have seen the brutality of terrorist groups firsthandand have rejected it.

Such testimonials are one of the most effective tools in countering the propaganda of violent extremist groups, and can persuade potential recruits to turn away from terror.

This is an issue where we agree with President Obama. He noted last year, we need to lift up the voices of those who know the hypocrisy of groups like ISIL firsthand, including former extremists.

Indeed, these organizations are soliciting Americans with promises of glory and opportunity. But defectors have revealed the truththe only promise they can keep is to spread death and hate.

Its not a revolution or jihad, one explained. Its a slaughterI was shocked by what I did.

We need to amplify these messages, whether through non-governmental organizations or in cooperation with our foreign partners.

The bill the House is considering this week will help do exactly that.

Last September, the House Homeland Security Committee released the final report of its bipartisan Task Force on Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel, and this bill implements one of the panels top recommendations.

The concept was also promoted by the nonpartisan Homeland Security Advisory Council last spring, which urged the Department of Homeland Security to craft and disseminate counter-narrative efforts based on the testimonials of former extremists.

Not only has the president called for this kind of counter-messaging, but our foreign partners are already doing it abroad. They have found that amplifying credible voices is one of the most effective ways to stop terrorist recruitment.

Importantly, this bill is not limited to specific groups, and it gives our counterterrorism professionals the flexibility needed to fight back against extremists as the threat environmentand terrorist tacticschange.

It also requires DHS to coordinate these efforts with other agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and foreign partners so that we do this the right way, finding the best outlets for undermining terrorist propaganda.

Just last month, we were reminded how important this legislation is.

A 26-year old Virginia man who defected from ISIS was picked up by Kurdish forces in Iraq. The young American fighter said joining the group was a mistake: I found it very, very hard to live there[ISIS fighters] dont represent the religionI dont see them as good Muslims.

Those words could stop others in our hometowns from making a terrible mistake and are the kind of messages we must spread to keep young Americans from being convinced to kill.

We need to get in the online fight. Time is not on our side.

Republican Will Hurd represents Texas' 23rd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. He serves on the House Homeland Security Committee.



Democrat Kathleen Rice represents New York's 4th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. She serves on the House Homeland Security Committee.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump once again took aim at rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich Monday night for joining forces to try and stop him from winning the GOP nomination before the part's convention, while Cruz said he was looking beyond Tuesday's five Eastern primaries.

The Cruz and Kasich campaigns announced Sunday that the Ohio governor would shift his campaign resources to give Cruz a clear run in Indiana, which votes on May 3. In return, the Texas senator's campaign would allow Kasich a clear path in Oregon  which holds its primary on May 17  and New Mexico, which votes on June 7.

Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity the move by the two campaigns was "collusion."

"In business you go to jail for that, but it's collusion where they're coming together because they are getting beaten badly," he said.

Trump continued to label Kasich as "1-for-42," a reference to the Ohio governor only winning his home state primary of all the Republican contests.

"If I would have campaigned two more days in Ohio, I would have won, but Kasich is doing terribly," Trump told Hannity.

Ahead of Tuesday's primary in Pennsylvania, Trump said despite what he called "a rigged system", he had high hopes of capturing most of the Keystone State's 71 delegates.

"Fortunately in Pennsylvania you have a great head of the Republican party, you have a great head of the party and I think it will be fair," he said. "We hope we're going to win, we're going to win very big."

Cruz told Hannity that he was looking past Tuesday's contests in and focusing his energies on primaries in Midwestern and Western states, beginning in Indiana next week.

"As [the race] shifts back west, there are a lot of states that I think are going to be very good [for us]," he said. "It shifts to Indiana, it shifts to Nebraska, it shift to North Dakota, Montana, and then the big enchilada, California. California is 172 delegates and I believe we are going to do very well in California."

He added that he foresees a contested Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July.

"Where we are now, nobody is going to get to 1,237 [pledged delegates]. The only way to win the nomination is to earn the majority of delegates and nobody is going to do that," Cruz said. "I'm not going to do it, but neither is Donald Trump, which means we are headed into a contested convention.

"I'll have a ton of delegates, he'll have a ton of delegates, and it's going to be a battle to see who can earn a majority of delegates elected by the people. And I think in that battle we will have a tremendous advantage."

However, Trump told Hannity that he believes that "millions of people" won't be happy to see a contested convention.

"These are unbelievably dedicated people, they want to make America great again, they're not going to be happy, Sean. It's going to be disastrous I think, I really do," the real estate mogul said. "How do you put somebody that owns millions of more votes  I mean I'm up already like two and a half million votes over Cruz and much more than that over Kasich  how do you take that and say 'Oh, gee, we're going to go to the second ballot because of 25 delegates'?"
Donald Trump completed a five-state sweep in Tuesdays Republican presidential primaries, strengthening his shot at avoiding a contested convention  while Hillary Clinton scored convincing victories but was denied the same bragging rights of a primary sweep by a surprise Bernie Sanders win in Rhode Island.

Of the two front-runners, Clinton  who won four states Tuesday  remains closer to clinching the nomination. She now has nearly 90 percent of the delegates needed to secure the party nod, even as Sanders vows to keep fighting.

On the Republican side, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich still can potentially hold Trump under the 1,237 delegates he needs. But the billionaire businessmans Super Tuesday III run-of-the-table reinforces his aura of invincibility going into the next round.

I consider myself the presumptive nominee, Trump said at Trump Tower, with ex-candidate and now-supporter New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie standing behind him. As far as Im concerned, its over.

Trump said he has no plans to change his approach right now.

In their victory speeches, both Trump and Clinton clearly were looking ahead to a general election contest each expects will involve the other.

We will beat Hillary so easily, Trump said, nicknaming the Democratic front-runner crooked Hillary and declaring the only card she has is the womans card. He continued to taunt his GOP rivals, blasting their alleged collusion and asking of Kasich: Why is he here?

Clinton likewise kept her remarks Tuesday focused on a general election audience, vowing to unify our party, drawing sharp contrasts with Republicans, and taking on Trump.

The other day, Mr. Trump accused me of playing the quote woman card, she said in Philadelphia, which hosts the Democratic convention. Well, if fighting for womens health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in.

When the dust settled on Tuesdays contests, Trump was declared the winner in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island, on the heels of his victory in New York state a week ago. His dominant showing in the Northeast gives him significant momentum heading into next weeks primary in Indiana. And hes on track to win over 50 percent of the vote in Tuesdays contests, a feat he has only achieved once before, in New York.

Meanwhile, Kasich was shaping up as the second pick of Northeast Republicans so far, projected to place second in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland and Delaware  leaving Cruz to finish third.

Clinton, meanwhile, was the projected winner in Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware  while Sanders won Rhode Island.

Overall, Democrats were competing for 384 delegates in Tuesday's contests, while Republicans had 118 up for grabs (not counting 54 unbound delegates in Pennsylvania).

With his five victories Tuesday, Trump will win at least 105 of the 118 delegates. And he has a chance to win a lot more. In Pennsylvania, Trump collected 17 delegates for winning the state. An additional 54 are elected directly by voters -- three in each congressional district. However, their names are listed on the ballot with no information about which presidential candidate they support.

Trump suggested they have a moral obligation to back him, though Cruz had worked hard to get allies elected in that group.

Primary front-runners Clinton and Trump both were looking to Tuesdays contests to bring them closer to clinching the respective nominations, or at least dispiriting the remaining competition.

As of early Wednesday, Clinton had 2,141 delegates to Sanders 1,321; it takes 2,383 to win. The total includes so-called superdelegates who are not bound to primary results. On the GOP side, Trump had 950 delegates, followed by Cruz at 560 and Kasich at 153.

But on the GOP side, an energized Cruz held out hope that he and Kasich can still hold Trump back from the nomination. Speaking to supporters in Indiana, Cruz claimed the campaign was moving to more favorable terrain while calling Trump the medias chosen candidate.

"Donald and Hillary, they are flip-sides of the same coin, Cruz said.

Kasichs campaign also vowed to keep going, appealing for donations online and declaring on Twitter: John Kasich will continue making his supporters proud.

Whether Cruz and Kasich can prevent Trump from clinching the nomination remains to be seen. Both were also on defense after teaming up to try and hold Trump under that magic number. Kasich agreed to stand aside in Indiana to help Cruz, while Cruz agreed to stand aside in Oregon and New Mexico to help Kasich.

As Trump accused the two of collusion, Cruz countered in a radio interview that what theyre doing is actually coalition-building.

Still, Kasich appeared Monday to undercut their arrangement by urging voters in Indiana to support him anyway. And the campaign stumbled on a procedural issue in Oregon, missing the March deadline to submit information for a voter pamphlet the state distributes ahead of the May primary.

Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf stressed that Kasich nevertheless is on the ballot in Oregon.

Cruzs best chances to undercut Trump might be in Indiana, which votes next week, and California, which votes in June.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., cast doubt Tuesday on whether a Cruz-Kasich alliance would do much good in his home state. Asked about their partnership, McCarthy told reporters hes not convinced it will help in California.

On the Democratic side, Sanders also vowed Tuesday night to keep fighting, casting himself as the candidate best-positioned to take on Trump or any Republican rival.

This campaign is doing as well as it is with the extraordinary energy and enthusiasm we are generating across the country, Sanders told a crowd in West Virginia, which votes May 10.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A suspect apparently fleeing the scene of a robbery was taken into custody after jumping a fence at a federal building next to the White House Tuesday afternoon.

The unidentified man jumped a fence at the Old Executive Office Building, also known as the Eisenhower Building, which is directly opposite the West Wing, sources told Fox News. Law enforcement later confirmed the subject was in custody.

A sudden flurry of responding law enforcement activity on the North Lawn of the White House at about 3:45 p.m. led to tourists being moved back toward Lafayette Park.

Secret Service officials said their initial investigation indicated the man was apparently fleeing on foot from the scene of a robbery a few blocks away when he jumped the fence.

Reporters at the daily White House briefing remained safely inside while the building was locked.

Fox News' Chad Pergram, Wes Barrett and Matt Dean contributed to this report.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich appeared Monday to undercut his campaign's extraordinary agreement with Republican presidential rival Sen. Ted Cruz to stand aside in the key state of Indiana by urging voters in the Hoosier State to support him anyway.



"I've never told them not to vote for me," Kasich said while campaigning in Pennsylvania. "They ought to vote for me." He added that he simply agreed not to spend "resources" in Indiana.

Adding to the mixed messaging was the fact that Kasich planned to travel to Indianapolis Tuesday for a private fundraising event, despite canceling two planned public rallies in Indianapolis and Noblesville.

Kasich made the remarks approximately 13 hours after his camapign announced an arrangement to give Cruz "a clear path" in Indiana, which holds a winner-take-all primary next week. In exchange, Cruz is to give Kasich a clear path in Oregon and New Mexico in an effort to prevent front-runner Donald Trump from attaining the necessary delegates to seal the GOP nomination before this summer's national convention.

"It's not a big deal," Kasich said of the agreement, which he described as a recognition of the realities of the campaign. Kasich has only won one primary contest, in his home state of Ohio, but has insisted he can win the Republican nomination at a contested convention.

By contrast, Cruz trumpeted the agreement during a campaign stop in Indiana Monday, saying it was "big news" that Kasich had pulled out.

"That is good for the men and women of Indiana," Cruz told reporters. "It's good for the country to have a clear and direct choice."

Cruz insisted that "there is desperation on the Trump side", arguing that the real estate mogul knows he won't be able to get enough delegates to the Republican National Convention to win the party's nomination and "is in real trouble."

Meanwhile, Kasich's campaign efforts in Oregon suffered a setback Monday, when it was revealed that his campaign never submitted the governor's biography to the Oregon secretary of state's office. The office prints out a voter pamphlet each year bearing information on each candidate.

This year, the pamphlet includes Kasich's name followed by an asterisk indicating that he didn't submit any information. Cruz and Donald Trump, meanwhile, each get a full column explaining their positions and personal histories.

Kasich's campaign late Monday sent out a statement saying their man is on the ballot in Oregon "and the campaign will do its part to educate voters about why they should vote for him the primary."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A New York judge decided Tuesday that a fraud case against Donald Trump over his former school for real estate investors will go to trial  raising the possibility that the Republican presidential primary front-runner could testify during campaign season.

New York County Supreme Court Judge Cynthia Kern made the decision at a hearing Tuesday, though it remains unclear whether the case will be weighed at a jury trial  which is what Trumps team is seeking. Trump attorney Jeffrey Goldman said its possible the trial could be held this fall, and Trump could testify.

In the case, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, has accused Trump and others of misleading thousands of students over the school.

Schneiderman alleges that Trump University was unlicensed since it began operating in 2005 and promised lessons with real estate experts hand-picked by Trump, only one of whom had ever met him. The attorney general said the school used "bait-and-switch" tactics, inducing students to enroll in increasingly expensive seminars.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing. He has said it was "a terrific school" with 98 percent approval ratings by its students.

Schneiderman had sued Trump and the school, which changed its name to the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative before it closed in 2010, for $40 million. The lawsuit seeks restitution and damages for more than 5,000 students nationwide, including 600 New Yorkers, who paid up to $35,000 each.

A New York court earlier had refused to throw out the fraud lawsuit.

Trump filed complaints with the state's ethics commission in 2013, four months after the lawsuit was filed, alleging Schneiderman pursued it to wring out campaign contributions from Trump's daughter Ivanka. The commission dropped the complaint after a review. Schneiderman denied it, and his campaign returned the $500 donation Ivanka Trump had made in 2012.

Trump's fellow Republican candidates have attacked him over litigation against the school, including a class-action suit in California. Trump criticized the judge in that case.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The latest budget impasse in Illinois is about to hit elected officials in their wallets, with the state comptroller planning to delay their paychecks amid nearly $6.5 billion in past-due bills.

The austere measure and mounting bills are the result of a stalemate between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Democrat-controlled legislature on a tax-and-spending plan that has dragged on for nearly 10 months. Their failure to compromise already has caused cutbacks in social services and sparked concerns about cuts in education.

Were all in this together, Comptroller Leslie Munger, who called for the paycheck delay, said last week. We all have to stand and wait in line together.

Munger insists she isnt trying to be punitive toward the elected officials, who in July will have another budget due.

Im just trying to be fair, said Munger, appointed as comptroller by Rauner and sworn in last year.

Mungers measure -- which would impact her, the attorney general and the legislatures 177 members -- amounts to $1.3 million a month, or $15.6 million a year. The comptroller wants to make lawmakers wait for their paychecks just like others, hoping to motivate lawmakers to strike a deal.

The amount is relatively small, compared with the billions in unpaid bills, which are projected to reach $10 billion by July.

Still, others are skeptical or argue the Mungers decision is politically motivated, considering she is trying to get elected in November to the comptroller post.

I hope it works, but I doubt it, state Democratic Rep. La Shaw Ford told CBS Chicago TV.

Rauner, a wealthy businessman elected in 2014, does not collect a salary.

The sides essentially agree that a mix of spending cuts and tax increases will end the budget impasse. But Democrats are not on board with Rauners request for a slate of pro-business incentives and changes to collective bargaining laws.

The stalemate has resulted in a roughly two-month delay in payments to small businesses that provide services to the state and to nonprofits that provide social services across Illinois. And roughly 24,000 state workers are also reportedly owed back pay.

Former Gov. Pat Quinn tried a similar move in 2013. He vetoed state lawmakers pay to push reforms to the states employee pension plan. However, a judge ruled the move unconstitutional.

Mungers effort apparently attempts to avoid such a legal challenge because she is having the checks printed, then added to the stack of bills.

The next monthly paycheck for elected officials is scheduled to be issued on April 30.
PRESENTING YOUR I-95 PRIMARY FIELD GUIDE

Whether you call them grinders, subs or hoagies, theres a pretty decent chance that if you are Northeastern Republican, its primary day for you.

Its a piece of the primary calendar that has had remarkably little scrutiny in recent years. The Republican calendar is designed to give moderates like John McCain or Mitt Romney a boost with blue states in the late going. Much like California on the last day of balloting, these primaries are scheduled to provide stopping power against insurgents.

Or not

Weve talked before about Donald Trump as Bizzaro World Romney: a Northeastern, socially moderate businessman distrusted by the partys conservative base. Trump has what Romney lacked: a passionate core group of followers. But he is only just now gaining what Romney had: the support of the partys elite and the backing of its professional class.

But, ready or not, here he comes. Trump will perhaps not do as well overall in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island as Romney did four years ago, but he is almost certain to win.

How much Trump wins by, though, is quite material.

On the Democratic side, it doesnt really matter. Whether presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton wins by 2 points or 20 points, its all about the narrative. Bernie Sanders cant really catch her. And while she could win so big today that her race was not just substantially over but actually done, its only a question of time. She will not be denied.

Trump, however, needs both the narrative and the delegates. So well leave the Democrats to their own devices today and focus on the hunt for the 172 delegates on the GOP side.

The stakes are these: Trump needs clearly to win all five contests, even if by pluralities, for the sake of momentum and claim at least 100 delegates for the sake of math. If Trump moves another furlong ahead of Sen. Ted Cruz today, Cruzs task in must-win Indiana next week becomes that much harder.

With that in mind, lets meet the last folks in America who still know what a passenger train looks like.

[Watch Fox: Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier bring you the latest as the first results roll in at 6 p.m. ET]

PENNSYLVANIA

For todays primary contests, Pennsylvania is the one that matters the most. It has the most delegates on the line and the weirdest allocation system.

Only 17 of the states 71 delegates are given to the states overall primary winner. The remaining 54 are directly elected within their congressional districts  three for each of the 18 districts  but are unaffiliated with any campaign on the ballot.

This means that voters will elect delegates that arent officially supporting any particular candidate and are not bound to any candidate ahead of the national convention in Cleveland.

In normal years, that makes them objects of affection and desire among campaigns. This year, they had better just hope they have unlisted phone numbers. This will also require campaigns to continue to have a strong ground game in Pennsylvania beyond todays vote, something that Cruz has been far more adept at than Trump throughout the cycle.

Even though Trump enjoys a 20-point lead over Cruz in the Real Clear Politics polling average in Pennsylvania, his delegate gains are likely to be substantially smaller.

The keys to the Keystone State are, not surprisingly, in and around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. But there are some gains to be made in the broad expanse in between the home turf of the Stillers and the Iggles.

--71 total delegates

--17 at-large, 54 congressional delegates

--Winner-take-all statewide, unbound delegates elected on the district level.

--Closed primary

--811,706 total ballots cast in 2012

--Mitt Romney, 58 percent; Rick Santorum, 18 percent; Ron Paul, 13 percent; Newt Gingrich, 10 percent

--Polls close at 8 p.m. ET

Bucks County: Frilly Philly

--Population: 626,685

--Median household income: $76,824

--Race: Caucasian, 89 percent; black, 4 percent

--Adults with bachelors degrees: 37 percent

--2012 election: Obama 50 percent

--Residents 65 or older: 17 percent

--Yardley is where George Washington and his men set off for their history-turning Christmas Eve raid on Hessian troops dozing across the river in Trenton.

Washington County: Pittsburbs

--Population: 208,187

--Median household income: $55,323

--Race: Caucasian, 94 percent; black, 3 percent

--Adults with bachelors degrees: 26 percent

--2012 election: Romney 56 percent

--Residents 65 or older: 19 percent

--Site of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791, when Scots-Irish residents rebelled against a tax on their currency: distilled spirits. President Washington, ahem, disagreed with their interpretation.

Centre County: They are Penn State

--Population: 160,580

--Median household income: $50,295

--Race: Caucasian, 89 percent; black, 4 percent

--Adults with bachelors degrees: 40 percent

--2012 election: Obama 49 percent

--Residents 65 or older: 12 percent

--Pennsylvania Match Company was founded in 1899 and was among the leading producers of wooden matches in America until World War II.

MARYLAND

Like Pennsylvania, Maryland is divided into three states: the rural western Panhandle, the D.C. suburbs and the shore. But unlike the Keystone State, Maryland awards all of its 38 delegates today.

The panhandle and the areas around Baltimore County are pretty much a slam-dunk for Trump, but the D.C. suburbs of Montgomery County will prove challenging for the Republican frontrunner. This area is similar to Fairfax and Loudon Counties in Virginia, which went heavily for Sen. Marco Rubio in their primary back in March. Gov. John Kasich can expect to see some support kick in today.

Further out in Frederick County is where Cruz will see his votes aiming for the sweet spot between the more liberal conservatives in Washington area and the fervent Trump supporters in the outskirts. These areas are more conservative by nature, yet are still affluent areas that are not natural to Trumps base.

--38 total delegates

--14 at-large, 24 district delegates

--Winner-take-all

--Closed primary

--248,468 total ballots cast in 2012

--Mitt Romney, 49 percent; Rick Santorum, 28 percent; Newt Gingrich, 11 percent, Ron Paul, 10 percent

--Polls close at 8 p.m. ET

Montgomery County: Club Fed

--Population: 1,030,447

--Median household income: $98,704

--Race: Caucasian, 62 percent; black, 19 percent

--Adults with bachelors degrees: 57 percent

--2012 election: Obama 71 percent

--Residents 65 or older: 14 percent

--Among the 10 richest counties in America.

Frederick County: Out West

--Population: 243,322

--Median household income: $84,480

--Race: Caucasian, 83 percent; black, 9 percent

--Adults with bachelors degrees: 39 percent

--2012 election: Romney 50 percent

--Residents 65 or older: 13 percent

--In 1862, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee seized Fredericks train yards in order to choke off supplies to the Army of the Potomac, but failed to arouse what he hoped would be an uprising of support for the rebellion.

Baltimore County: Down to The Wire

--Population: 831,128

--Median household income: $66,940

--Race: Caucasian, 64 percent; black, 28 percent

--Adults with bachelors degrees: 36 percent

--2012 election: Obama 57 percent

--Residents 65 or older: 16 percent

--Bengies drive-in theater in Middle River is the largest continually operated movie theater screen in America.

CONNECTICUT

If Trump delivers in Connecticut the way he did in his neighboring home state of New York, the Constitution States unique allocation of delegates wont be a problem.

But...

Connecticut awards their 10 statewide delegates to the winner with over 50 percent, which based on neighboring New Yorks results could be a possibility for Trump. If no candidate reaches that 50 percent mark then each candidate with 20 percent support receives delegates proportionally based on their results.

This would still be good for Trump because even if he doesnt clinch a 50 percent mark, hell likely be very close to it meaning he can still walk away with a majority of delegates.

The district level delegates are awarded to the winner of each of the five congressional districts. Areas like Fairfield County just outside of the greater New York City area is where Kasich may find his support. These are the affluent, well-educated types of voters that gave him a congressional district in Manhattan last Tuesday, so theres a chance he could snag a few delegates here.

The rest of the state looks a lot more like Hartford County with its blue-collar roots, post-industry boomtown with the same ethnic populations of the Trump strongholds weve seen in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York.

And if the states Republicans were once willing to pick a pro wrestling executive as a Senate candidate in 2010, why not one of its characters for president?

--28 total delegates

--13 at-large, 15 district delegates

--Winner-take-most

--Closed primary

--59,578 total ballots cast in 2012

--Mitt Romney, 67 percent; Ron Paul, 13 percent; Newt Gingrich, 10 percent; Rick Santorum, 7 percent

--Polls close at 8 p.m. ET

Fairfield County: Ahoy, polloi

--Population: 948,053

--Median household income: $83,163

--Race: Caucasian, 80 percent; black, 12 percent

--Adults with bachelors degrees: 45 percent

--2012 election: Obama 55 percent

--Residents 65 or older: 14 percent

--As with all counties in Connecticut, there is no county government or county seat. Each town is responsible for all local government activities.

Hartford County: Remember the Whalers

--Population: 897,985

--Median household income: $65,499

--Race: Caucasian, 77 percent; black, 15 percent

--Adults with bachelors degrees: 36 percent

--2012 election: Obama 62 percent

--Residents 65 or older: 16 percent

--The Hartford Courant is recognized as the oldest continuously run newspaper in the United States, beginning in 1764.

RHODE ISLAND

Meet the Buddy Cianci Republicans.

The former Providence mayor, who died in January, had some disagreements with the federal government. But he might have credibly run for mayor in 2014 despite his criminal convictions if it werent for the cancer that killed him. A colorful crook who favored tough tactics, locals loved their hard-knocks mayor.

A wide authoritarian streak runs through Rhode Islands Republicans, much like those in New York. So its no surprise that Trump should ride roughshod everywhere from Federal Hill to Warwick.

The rules for delegates, though, are as slippery as a quahog.

The Ocean State also awards their statewide delegates proportionally with a mandatory 10 percent threshold. In the congressional districts, if one candidate receives 67 percent of the vote then that candidate receives two delegates and the next highest candidate receives one. If no one reaches 67 percent then the top three candidates with a 10 percent threshold each receive one delegate.

These rules somewhat favor Trump who is expected to sweep Rhode Island in todays contest. Even those in highly affluent areas like coastal Washington County are unlikely to have enough Kasich voters to give delegates to anyone but the Republican frontrunner. And most of the vote share lies in Providence County, a highly ethnic, working-class town that looks a lot like Boston and Staten Island making it an expected sweeping victory for Trump in the states most populous county.

--19 total delegates

--13 at-large, 6 district delegates

--Proportional

--Open to Republicans, unaffiliated voters

--14,564 total ballots cast in 2012

--Mitt Romney, 63 percent; Ron Paul, 24 percent; Newt Gingrich, 6 percent; Rick Santorum, 6 percent

--Polls close at 8 p.m. ET

Washington County: Chip off the old Block

--Population: 126,517

--Median household income: $72,784

--Race: Caucasian, 94 percent; black, 1 percent

--Adults with bachelors degrees: 44 percent

--2012 election: Obama 57 percent

--Residents 65 or older: 18 percent

--Known as South County it has some of the best seaside spots in the eastern states, including Block Island and Watch Hill.

DELAWARE

With only one congressional district, Delaware looks to be a sweep for Trump across the board. The rules here are pretty simple: majority wins it all. This makes things even easier for Trump. The main stash of voters is in New Castle County where the capital, Dover is, but those in the beach communities in Sussex County will likely be just as strong for the Republican frontrunner.

--16 total delegates

--13 at-large, 3 district delegates

--Winner-take-all

--Closed primary

--28,592 total ballots cast in 2012

--Mitt Romney, 56 percent; Newt Gingrich, 27 percent; Ron Paul, 11 percent; Rick Santorum, 6 percent

--Polls close at 8 p.m. ET

Sussex County: Under the boardwalk

--Population: 210,849

--Median household income: $53,505

--Race: Caucasian, 83 percent; black, 13 percent

--Adults with bachelors degrees: 22 percent

--2012 election: Obama 57 percent

--Residents 65 or older: 24 percent

--Every two years, the community of Georgetown has a festival known as Return Day, two days after Election Day. The holiday originates from colonial times when the town would gather to hear election results and end any animosities with a traditional ox roast.

[GOP delegate count: Trump 845; Cruz 559; Kasich 148 (1,237 needed to win)]

Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News. Sally Persons contributed to this report. Want FOX News First in your inbox every day? Sign up here.
The State Department withheld a vital Hillary Clinton email for two years that would have exposed the existence of her private email server before she wiped it, a conservative watchdog claimed Tuesday.

Judicial Watch, the group that successfully sued in federal court for Clintons emails, claims the Sept. 29, 2012 email was withheld from them in 2014 by the State Department because it showed she was not using a government account for State Department business. They received the document last week from the State Department.

Upon further review, the Department has determined that one document previously withheld in full in our letter dated November 12, 2014 may now be released in part, the letter, dated April 18, said.

The email in question was sent to Clinton from then-Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan and concerns talking points for a call with senators about the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attack -- an attack that left four Americans dead. The email contains Clintons non-state.gov address.

A State Department official called the delay an administrative error and added that they did not receive the email in question until July 2015  after the Clinton email address was known."The Department regrets any confusion and will be sending corrected correspondence to Judicial Watch," the official told Fox News.

Judicial Watch requested records in a July 2014 Freedom of Information Act request related to the drafting of the talking points given to then-Ambassador Susan Rice in the aftermath of the attacks.

Now we know the Obama administration consciously refused to give up key information about Hillary Clintons email in 2014. It covered up this email both from the court and Judicial Watch, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. This cover-up provided Hillary Clinton enough time to hide potentially thousands of government records.

The fall of 2014 was a critical period in the email controversy as Clinton attorney David Kendall received the back-up thumb drives in December, and by that time it is believed as many as 30,000 emails  deemed personal by Clintons team  had been deleted.

Judicial Watch said the shifting explanations from the State Department explain why a federal judge is allowing Clintons close aides to be questioned about the emails and server as part of the litigation surrounding the FOIA request.

It is not the first time the State Department has blamed an administrative error. Fox News reported in February that Senator Grassley was given bad information about Clinton aide Cheryl Mills security clearance status by the State Department, that later had to be corrected. An administrative error was blamed.

Fox News Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.
As Donald Trump was celebrating his epic New York victory last Tuesday night -- once again in the glow of the media spotlight -- Sen. Ted Cruz was toiling away in Philadelphia, meeting in a private room with potential delegates for about an hour after delivering a little-noticed speech on unity.

The symbolism was not lost on Cruzs Pennsylvania chairman Lowman Henry, who says he attended all of Cruzs delegate meetings during the candidates swing through the Keystone State.

I would characterize that as a microcosm of this entire campaign, Henry told Fox News. He's willing to roll up his sleeves and go out there and do the hard grass-roots work that is necessary to win delegates.

The meeting in Philadelphia was one of many Cruz held with dozens of delegate candidates in a state where voters will select three delegates per congressional district Tuesday. He has hosted them on his campaign bus, backstage at campaign events and, in Scranton, Cruz met with a group in a kitchen at the Radisson hotel after a rally.

Fifty-four delegates from the states 18 congressional districts will go to the Republican National Convention unbound. But even as hes poised to lose Pennsylvanias popular vote, Cruzs team worked hard to field a slate of known supporters in an attempt to pick off delegates likely to remain loyal to him at the convention. In robo-calls, direct mail and at rallies, his campaign has promoted pro-Cruz candidates, many whose names would otherwise be unrecognizable to voters.

There will be no direction on the ballot as to who those delegate candidates support, Henry said. So we are working hard to make sure that the voters who we have identified as Cruz supporters know who our delegate candidates are.

I didnt even realize there was delegates being elected, said Harold Clark, Jr., a voter attending a Cruz rally in Williamsport, Pa., last week. Clark only found out about the delegate portion of the ballot after his father told him that morning.

I would be caught blindsided, Clark said after a pro-Cruz delegate candidate handed him campaign material. Ill tell everyone I know and pass the word, because I didnt know anything about it.

Trump, positioned for a decisive Pennsylvania victory, fielded his own delegate slate. But a Fox News producer who covers the Trump campaign reported only one instance of delegate cards being passed out at Trump rallies.

Aides to Trump told Fox News that until recently, the front-runner was unaware of the critical difference between delegate allocation and delegate selection.

On Monday, however, the candidate himself held up a card at his rally in West Chester, Pa.

"We have a slate of people, Trump told voters. Go vote for the slate." The list is also now available on Trumps Twitter feed and his website. His campaign also started placing robo-calls and sending emails, notifying voters of his slate.

As Trump attempts to ramp up his own delegate operation, hes fired off a barrage of accusations that Cruz is wining and dining delegates to win them over. Cruz mocked the notion at a Fox News Town Hall Sunday night.

I was laughing at the Trump campaign claiming that we're wining and dining people, Cruz said, recounting one of his delegate meetings in Pennsylvania. I said, gosh, do you see any wine? We didn't even give them a glass of water.

Fox News' Christopher Snyder and James Rosen contributed to this report.
World-renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs, who plays a high-powered role as special adviser to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and director of a number of U.N.-sponsored enterprises, abruptly resigned last week from one of his other part-time jobs: foreign policy adviser for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

The move, according to a press spokesman for Columbia Universitys Earth Institute, of which Sachs is founding director, was to avoid conflict of interest with his U.N. role as Bans top adviser on the recently approved Sustainable Development Goals -- a socialist/progressive plan for reshaping the world economy.

Whether cutting ties with Sanders is enough to insulate Sachs -- and the U.N. -- from the consequences of vitriolic attacks he has been steadily launching against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, is still an open question.

Before he suddenly stepped down, Sachs had slammed Clinton for at least two months in print and on U.S. television as unfit to be President, the candidate of the military-industrial complex, the candidate of Wall Street, and sundry other epithets.

He also charged Clinton with heavy responsibility for Syrias bloodbath, deep involvement in CIA-led regime change around the world, said her record as Secretary of State is among the most militaristic, and disastrous, of modern U.S. history, and called her a danger to global peace.

Sachs also has criticized former President Bill Clinton, blaming him for a quarter century of financial bubbles, low taxes on the rich, falling public investments, and the off-shoring of jobs. At the same time, he extolled Sanders for winning a new generation of voters for offering up the opposite of the derided Clinton economic recipes.

Some of the juiciest diatribes are headlined on his own website, then linked to outside publications where they appeared. The website also offers a waterfall of paens to his attainments and reputation, studded with U.N. titles and U.N.-sponsored roles.

While the pace of Sachs criticisms has increased in the past few months, as far back as late May 2015, during a televised segment on MSNBC, he called the Clintons the ultimate schmoozers, and said we see how, frankly, in utter pursuit of money they are all the time.

"Clintons role in Syria has been to help instigate and prolong the Syrian bloodbath, not to bring it to a close."  From piece written by Jeffrey Sachs titled, Hillary Clinton and the Syrian bloodbath

He added, Now where is a candidate, maybe it is Bernie Sanders; but somebody can stand up and make this point.

Sachs press spokesman refused to answer questions from Fox News as to how long exactly he had served as a Sanders adviser, a role that was dramatically highlighted on April 16, when he appeared with the presidential candidate at the Vatican, and attended the brief meeting of Sanders and his wife with Pope Francis I.

Sachs self-identifies as a Sanders adviser in various published articles and TV appearances for at least two months before that -- many of them containing his most heated anti-Clinton attacks.

The U.N. itself did not answer a number of questions from Fox News before this article was published, concerning Sachs resignation from the advisory position, whether Secretary General Ban or his office had ever expressed concern about any conflict of interest, and the U.N.s position on political statements by Bans special advisers.

A statement from Secretary General Bans spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said only that Sachs has told us that, so as to avoid any perception of a conflict of interest, he has notified the Sanders campaign that he will no longer be an adviser to them and has requested that he no longer be identified as such.



Ultimately, the attacks themselves may be the issue, rather than Sachs relatively bland stated role of Sanders policy adviser. They have carried him well into the zone of taking a hyper-partisan stand in a domestic political campaign -- something that international officials bearing U.N. titles are assiduously supposed to avoid.

Sachs has always been a peculiar hybrid among U.N. officials. He carries imposing titles, and heads institutions that are launched with U.N. approval and advance U.N. goals, and which also give him a high-profile in the U.N. system and great amounts of international sway and cachet. But he is not a paid U.N. employee, which apparently allows him to escape U.N. strictures and protocol.

His global intellectual status nonetheless owes considerably to his expansive U.N. ties.

Sachs first won elevated status at the U.N. from Ban Ki-moons predecessor, Kofi Annan, as special advisory on the U.N.s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a simpler and much less ambitious predecessor to the Sustainable Development goals (SDGs) adopted this year. He still holds that position on U.N. protocol lists that assign him Under Secretary General rank, the U.N.s third-highest designation.

CLICK HERE FOR THE PROTOCOL LIST

On the secretary generals website, Sachs is dubbed the special adviser on the new SDGs, even though his appointment date is still listed as 2002.

To complicate things further, in mid-January, he was officially named as one of 17 distinguished SDG advocates operating under Bans auspices to promote the agenda of the goals, and bring new stakeholders into their achievement -- which might include those with deep pockets to finance them.

Along with his cheerleading and engagement roles with the SDGs, Sachs is founder and head of a U.N.-sponsored academic network launched by Ban Ki-moon personally in 2012 to help formulate the sprawling and amorphous goals, and now to offer advice on how to implement them.

Known as the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UNSDSN), it currently involves at least 350 academic institutions in 80 countries, and has launched a score of national and sub-national networks.

Sachs is not only the director of the network, he is a top-ranked member of its leadership council, its executive committee, its advisory Assembly, and its secretariat.

He also is a founder and key figure in the U.N.-sponsored Millennium Project, a mammoth effort to lift parts of Africa out of poverty that has been criticized by some experts as an expensive failure, and that has carried its own baggage as a possible conflict of interest.

Alongside his U.N.-supported international profile, a penchant for ultra-leftist viewpoints and heavy slams at the U.S. political establishment are nothing new for Sachs.

He has taken President Barack Obama to task for similar alleged capitulations to capitalism, although without the buzz-saw edge he has honed against the Clintons.

Sachs acid criticisms of the U.S. and its economic and military-diplomatic dominance are standard fare among developing nations at the U.N. where Sachs has long held sway as an institutional proponent of global taxes and steep increases in development aid from rich nations.

In fact, radical postures have been par for the course for years with Sachs, who, in October 2011, joined the tent-city demonstrators of Occupy Wall Street to denounce capitalism and, among other things, Fox News.

In 2012, Sachs put himself forward without much visible support as a populist candidate for World Bank president, promising to lead the institution into a new era of problem-solving.

The Obama administration had other notions, which involved supporting another unorthodox candidate, the current incumbent Jim Yong Kim, a physician and anthropologist, for the job.

Sachs critical eruptions seem to have increased after that.

The big question the U.N. may have to answer is whether his partisan positions are in violation of their own rules about how U.N. officials are supposed to behave.

According to Regulation 1.2 (f) of the most updated version of the U.N.s staff rules and regulations -- very, very close to the top of the list -- is the stricture that international civil servants shall not engage in any activity that is incompatible with the proper discharge of their duties with the United Nations.

The rule goes on to warn that they shall avoid any action, and, in particular, any kind of public pronouncement that may adversely reflect on their status, or on the integrity, independence and impartiality that are required by that status.

Sub-section (h) of the same regulation says that U.N. officials shall ensure that their participation in any political activity is consistent with, and does not reflect adversely upon, the independence and impartiality required by their status as international civil servants.

Even higher up in the regulations comes an oath that U.N. officials are supposed to adhere to, which includes a vow to regulate my conduct with the interests of the United Nations only in view.

Its hard to see how deeply personalized attacks on someone who may well become the next President of the United States -- an office that has the determining hand, among many other things, in deciding what money and support the U.N. will get from its most important member -- measure up to any of those responsibilities.

George Russell is editor-at-large of Fox News and can be found on Twitter: @GeorgeRussell or on Facebook.com/GeorgeRussell
With Donald Trump heading for a five-state sweep today, his two top rivals have cut a deal that carries a whiff of desperation.

Just as Trumps campaign is adjusting to the realities of delegate warfare, Ted Cruz and John Kasich are colludingand yes, thats the only honest wordto stop splitting the anti-Trump vote.

The agreement struck by their campaign aides is that Kasich will stop campaigning in Indiana, which votes next week, and Cruz wont show up in Oregon and New Mexico.

The fact that the deal is hard to defend is evident in how the candidates responded when reporters got a crack at them.

Cruz pivoted away from whether this was a Hail Mary pass and, oddly, called Trump a fringe candidatewho just happens to be beating him by hundreds of delegates and a couple of million votes.

Kasich said the agreement was "not a big deal" and that he wants people in Indiana to vote for him; he just wont be campaigning there because of limited resources. So if Kasichs fans do what he is asking, it wont help Cruz in Indiana.

Trumps reaction? Sad!

It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for ten months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination, his campaign said. The statement said Cruz and Kasich are puppets of donors and special interests, adding: Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive.

The alliance between the Texas senator and Ohio governor merely makes explicit what had been obviously implicit: Neither one has a shot at a first-ballot victory, so their only hope is to stop Trump short of the magic 1,237 and peel off delegates on subsequent ballots.

Theres nothing inherently awful about two rivals dividing up states to derail a common enemy; I just question whether it will have much practical impact. The Cruz camp sees Indiana as one state where the senator can slow down the Trump express and is only trailing by 6 points in the latest Fox poll, as opposed to double digits.

But the media may be far more interested than actual voters. Are Republicans going to go along with strategic voting? If they like Kasich, would they vote for Cruz just because the governor isnt holding rallies in their state? If they like Cruz, are they going to side with Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico for the same reason? I have my doubts. It's hard to imagine two candidates who are more different.

Trump, meanwhile, is trying to create the perception that this thing is over. In the wake of his New York landslide, and expected wins in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island, the media are certainly treating him as the likely nominee. By bringing on Paul Manafort, whose experience dates to the Ford-Reagan convention in 1976, he is taking seriously the grubby business of courting delegates under arcane state-by-state rules that Trump denounces as rigged.

Manafort came aboard too late to influence the last several caucuses, but is leading an effort to make sure more of those running for delegate are Trump loyalists who cant be flipped before Cleveland. In New York, Manafort's emphasis on playing in each congressional district meant that Trump won not only 60 percent of the vote, but about 90 of the states 95 delegates.

The talk inside the Trump camp is about winning smartthat is, winning the popular vote but then not losing delegates after the fact to Cruzs more organized ground operation.

In effect, you have to win twiceand Trump was a bit late to that game before hiring Manafort and now others from the much-derided Washington establishment.

The Cruz-Kasich alliancecould there be a running mate offer down the road?may be the last shot for the #NeverTrump crowd. Cruz recently told Politico that one of the greatest risks of a contested convention is, if you come out with a party fractured, it potentially makes you vulnerable going into the general election.

But fracture is now his strategy--and the only sure way for the GOP to avoid it is for Trump to wrap things up before the convention in Kasichs home state.
Space might very well be considered the final frontier, but according to alien hunters, intelligent life on Venus includes cities for its inhabitants.



A 20-minute Spanish-language video posted to YouTube by mundodesconocido magnifies and examines images of the planet taken by NASAs Magellan probe.

Related: 2015 was a big year for Canadian UFO sightings, report says

The video applies 3D modeling to some of the images. In a post accompanying the video, mundodesconocido says the images reveal huge cities, artificial structures and all kinds of elements that seem to obey constructions appear intelligent effected [sic] by some kind of alien race that inhabited or colonized the second planet in our solar system.

Magellan launched on May 4, 1989 and began orbiting Venus on August 10, 1990. The spacecraft was sent to study the face of the planet and to model its interior.

Related: Real-life 'X-Files'? CIA posts trove of UFO documents

Despite being referred to as the Earths twin and sister planet NASA describes Venus as an Earth-sized planet with no evidence of Earth-like plate tectonics. Magellan also revealed that at least 85 percent of Venus surface is covered with volcanoes. The planet has a surface temperature of 864 degrees.



NASA lost contact with Magellan on October 13, 1994.
You don't hear a lot of good news about coral reefs these days, so the the discovery of more than 3,600 square miles of undiscovered reef at the mouth of the Amazon River is a pretty big deal.

The Atlantic reports researchers in the 1970s caught a few types of fish that indicated a reef might be present along the coast of northeastern Brazil, but it wasn't taken seriously.

The waters at the mouth of the Amazon are some of the muddiest in the world, according to the Guardian. Sediment and other debris from all over South America are rocketed hundreds of miles out to sea, blocking the sunlight believed necessary for coral reefs to form.

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Even so, a Brazilian oceanographer hitched a ride on an unrelated research mission and convinced them to hunt for the rumored reef. The result of that expedition, which was announced Friday, was a 600-mile-long reef of coral and sponges containing 73 species of fish, 60 species of sponges, and more.

Researcher Patricia Yager tells the Atlantic she was "flabbergasted" to find a reef where conditions seemed to preclude its existence. But that existenceunder environmentally difficult conditionscould be a great sign for the future of reefs currently being threatened by climate change.

(Nearly the entire Great Barrier Reef is currently suffering from coral bleaching and much of it may not recover, Science Alert reports.) Unfortunately for the new reef, its existence is only getting more difficult.

The Brazilian government is allowing dozens of oil drilling operations essentially on top of the newly discovered reef. (Under Yellowstone, scientists found an enormous magma reservoir.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: The Amazon's Muddy Waters Have Been Hiding a Massive Reef
Even decades after the last bombs fall or shots are fired, historic battlefields are still dangerous. The problem is undetonated explosives and mines. Up until now, there was no inexpensive way to find them, but researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison have found a way to do just that.

The technology, developed by the university's Fusion Technology Institute, looks for signatures of explosive material or other objects by shooting out a small stream of neutrons at a given target from a small device mounted on a drone.

In addition to finding explosives, researchers say the technology could be used to locate persons trapped beneath building rubble in the wake of a natural or man-made disaster, or employed by miners to locate valuable mineral deposits much quicker than conventional methods.

Related: European first responders use drones to save lives

Unlike many discoveries we've reported on in the past, this one has already been tested. The school says a proof of concept device was successfully mounted on a drone and tested about five months ago. This said, the device still gives off hazardous gamma ray radiation, leading some to raise concerns over its safe use.

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That is unwarranted, says lab director Jerry Kulcinski, who argued the amount of radiation a person in the device's scanning path would receive is rather minimal -- about the same as a person flying for 10 minutes at 30,000 feet. But that's not the only issue: there are limitations on scanning and the flight path will put it in harm's way.

Anything buried more than 3 to 6 feet below the surface would be undetectable, Kulcinski says. The drone will need to fly relatively close to the ground in order to scan effectively, heightening the risk of the device-equipped drone being shot down. That is an acceptable risk, and will tell you that you're on to something, he argues.

Either way, there is quite a bit of excitement surrounding the discovery. With current methods so expensive, Kulcinski's team definitely is on to something here, say experts.

"In a very practical manner, I think this can be a tremendous tool," National Nuclear Security Administration chief Col. John W. Weidner told the Journal Times. "From what I've read, its applications are only limited by the imagination of the user."
The Transportation Security Administration is the federal agency everybody loves to hate. Call them necessary evil if you will, but bad-mouthing them all the time is not always fair.

Some checkpoints have been organized in a way that makes the job easier, while others are lacking the infrastructure or staff to get people faster through security.

While many people dont understand why checking peoples belongings can take so long because Im not carrying anything dangerous, you may be surprised at what other people have in their luggage. As many as 2,653 firearms, 83 percent of them loaded, were discovered in 2015 in carry-on bags at checkpoints across the country--seven a day on average--according to a TSA report.

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Believe it or not, TSA agents dont like slow lines either, but passengers share some of the blame for the slow processing. As one former TSA agent told Fox News: I always found it surprising that people did not know they had to remove shoes, laptops, liquids, etc.

Doing that as youre about to get screened only holds up the line. Check out some of the country's worst TSA checkpoints.

1) John F. Kennedy International Airport  New York City

The John F. Kennedy International Airport has by far one of the worst TSA checkpoints. According to cntraveler.com the average wait time is 16.8 minutes. One individual wrote a review on airlinequality.com, in which he explained that the queue was massive and moved exceedingly slowly" and that "it took over an hour to check in and then there was the queue for security.

Another reviewer wrote: At New York JFK as I was going through security, there were many passengers there who clearly did not understand English or the confusing security procedures we were required to go through and the staff had absolutely no patience for them. Confused looks were met with insulting and sarcastic remarks from staff. More complaints are written in other reviews.

2) Newark Liberty International Airport  Newark, N.J.

Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) has been known for employee misconduct and theft. According to nj.com, a few years ago the TSA said four of its employees at Newark Liberty International Airport were dismissed and dozens of others were suspended this week in an investigation of lax baggage screening and supervision." Another six employees were exonerated during due process hearings. The average wait time at Newarks checkpoint is 16.5 minutes.

3) Orlando International Airport  Orlando, Fl.

Orlando International Airport is said to be extremely unorganized. According to a recent yelp review, one individual explains: MCO was a sea of people and the lines extended way beyond the stanchions...it was a mess. For some reason, my line moved insanely slow to the point I was worried about catching my flight. By the time I got up to security, they were trying to move everyone so quickly that we didn't have to do the normal, shoes off/laptops out procedure. They were funneling people through as fast as possible in what seemed like an effort to make sure these planes had people on them.

4) Los Angeles International Airport

A not so happy individual reviewed Los Angeles International Airport: The TSA at LAX is an island of mediocrity in a sea of horrendous government bureaucracy designed to trick the public into thinking theyre safe. He also explains: Ive seen policies and basic rules broken left and right. Ive seen screeners on power trips over cowering unknowing passengers. They almost managed to destroy my laptop, then laughed about it. Now, if that doesnt sound like one of the worst checkpoints, Im not sure what is.

5) Louisville Regional Airport  Louisville, Ky.

A seemingly annoyed individual reviewed Louisville Regional Airport: I arrive at the Louisville airport TSA security check point. They let a few people in front of me through, then a family and when they got to me, they closed the non-X-Ray line and force me to enter the full body scan line. After that I find my bag being inspected by one of the rudest people in my entire life. He proceeds to go through my entire bag and even touch my toothbrush! He then runs my bag through the machine again, to end up going through a second smaller bag that was in my suitcase.

Cant stand the worst? Check out the Best TSA Checkpoints in the U.S.
Medical teams on Monday finished the autopsies of eight family members shot and killed in a total of four different homes in southern Ohio, as officials revealed the investigation had uncovered three marijuana growing operations.

This was a preplanned execution of eight individuals, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said. It was a sophisticated operation. And those who carried it out were trying to do everything they could do to hinder the investigation and their prosecution."

DeWine and Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader did not immediately release the results of the autopsies. The attorney general had prevously said each relative apparently was shot in the head, and that none of the shootings appeared to be a suicide.

Most were apparently sleeping when they were killed. Three young children -- including a 4-day-old infant -- were also found unhurt.

This is not your case where someone got mad at somebody else, shot him, theres a witness, two witnesses. Its a very, very different kind of case, DeWine added, saying it wasn't clear whether drugs played any role in the shootings.

All the victims were members of the Rhoden family: 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his 16-year-old son, Christopher Rhoden Jr.; 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden; 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden.

DeWine said a force of at least 100 investigators had already received more than 100 tips and conducted more than 50 interviews. Five search warrants had been executed and the four crime scenes had been evaluated and secured. DNA technicians were currently examining 18 pieces of evidence at a state crime lab.

Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said he advised other members of the targeted Rhoden family that they could be in danger and advised them to be armed.

DeWine and Reader both cautioned that the investigation likely would take a long time. A lot of what is going on here is just basic, old-fashioned police work, DeWine said.

Pastor Phil Fulton, of the Union Hill Church, described the Rhodens as a close-knit and hardworking family. He said they were previously part of his congregation, though not recently. He said a crisis resource team was at the church to work with the family.

"They're not doing well with this situation at all," Fulton said. "A tragic situation like this ..."

The Rhoden family released a statement through the Ohio Crisis Response Team Saturday, according to Fox 19.

"The Rhoden family would like to thank everyone for all the outpouring of prayers and support for their family. They ask to continue to keep them in your prayers, the statement read. They would like to thank all law enforcement from Pike County and surrounding counties for their immediate response. Especially, to Pike County Sheriff Charlie Reader for all his hard work. They would like to thank the Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, his staff, BCI agents, all EMS services and first responses.

The family also urged anyone with information to call 1-855-BCI-OHIO.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Allyson Downey was a newly minted Columbia University MBA graduate when she landed a job in the wealth management department of Credit Suisse in New York City. She was, thanks to her previous professional experience raising money from billionaires in politics, doing extremely well right out of the gate. Her managers were praising her and she was on the verge of bringing in a major client. And then she got pregnant.

Downey, then 31, had spent years dealing with fertility issues, a struggle she wrote openly about in a post on Medium. Midway through the pregnancy, she had complications that required her to be off of her feet. Despite Downeys strategic planning for a contingency plan such that she could continue to complete her work from home, Downeys attempts to communicate with management were repeatedly ignored. When Downey did finally hear back from Credit Suisse, it was with a phone number for human resources. They would help her process her disability leave, she was told.

Downey never returned to work on Wall Street.

After having her baby, Downey took a job raising money for a nonprofit. It was mind-numbingly easy for her, and she got bored quickly. It was in that time when Downey was largely unstimulated professionally that she had the idea for weeSpring, a platform where new parents can find reviews of products from friends, peers and other trusted voices in their networks. Launched in Jan. 2013, Downey went through the Techstars program in the spring of 2013. The company is headquartered in Boulder, Colo., and her team of five are distributed across the country and work virtually. She doesnt share revenue or profit figures, but says that weeSpring is indeed in the black.

Related: Secrets to Being Both an Executive and a Mom

Downey is now 36 and has two children: Logan turns 5 in August and Caroline turns 2 in June.

Learning how to be both a business owner and a mom was not easy for Downey. Finding answers to her questions was often frustrating. I was Googling, pregnancy discrimination and finding these sketchy looking websites with blinking Call now buttons, and that was the extent of what I was able to find out, Downey says during a phone conversation with Entrepreneur.

So Downey set out to write the book that she wished had been there for her. The result, launching today, is Heres The Plan. Your Practical, Tactical Guide to Advancing Your Career During Pregnancy and Parenting (Seal Press). For the book, Downey interviewed nearly 75 professional moms and culled through survey data. Its a comprehensive, straight-shooting guide to all of the questions that new moms are too afraid to ask or too naive to even know they need to ask.

Here are five of the lessons that Downey learned from her own experience and research.

1. Speak up and communicate clearly about what you want.

Often, colleagues and managers make assumptions about what they think a pregnant woman or new mom prefers. While their intentions may be good, they may inadvertently be short circuiting a womans professional ambitions. Downey calls this benevolent discrimination. Whether you want to work from home part time or you want to be sure your boss knows that you still want that promotion even though you have just had a baby, Downey says that women need to be ready to communicate often and clearly.

We tend to assume that people know what we are thinking and very rarely do they actually know what we are thinking, she says. The onus really is on the woman to be crystal clear and vocal. She recommends women set quarterly reminders for themselves to proactively communicate with managers both what they want to do and how they will accomplish their goals.



Related: Reality Check: You Need to Care About More Than Your Business



2. Build up your network.

Its always important to develop your contact list, but its especially important to keep the networking going when a woman is pregnant, on maternity leave or taking care of young children. Its often one of the first things to go when they are having children because they think that they dont have time anymore to go out and go to networking cocktail events or show up for an industry breakfast, says Downey. Men, however, dont have the same compulsions.

Dont forget to lean on partners and caregivers so that you can attend those professional mixers, advises Downey. Also, there are ways to network from your computer, too, she says. Proactively make email connections that dont necessarily have an immediate impact. Finding those ways to be helpful and constructive of two people with one introduction is going to get you those favors in the favor bank that, even without you having to go proactively cash in on them, wind up coming back to you, says Downey. You get the benefits of networking without having to put in the face-to-face time.

3. Arbitrage your time.

You cant be everywhere at once. Pay people to do things for you. Instacart your grocery delivery, drop off your laundry and TaskRabbit the rest of your chore list. Take your annual salary and reverse engineer your hourly rate and when you can afford it, pay people to have tasks done that are less than what you make per hour.

I know that people dont have endless resources, but people also dont have endless time," she says.

4. Create a paper trail of your achievements.

This isnt just in case you find yourself the victim of pregnancy discrimination, either. Women need to keep a dossier of their successes, says Downey. Every Friday afternoon, take 15 minutes to document your successes. Put in writing conversations that commend your work. That way, when its time for you to meet with your manager for a review, you have a detailed list of everything that you have done well.

Rather than thinking about a document of your accomplishments for potential defense, think about it as an offensive strategy. As women, we tend to spend a lot of time berating ourselves for what we didnt have time to do and what we didnt finish and what we didnt get done and rarely do we take time to celebrate what we did do, says Downey.

Related: Great Entrepreneur, Lousy Lover?

5. Change the way you think about having kids and a career.

You cant be both leading a meeting in the board room and changing your babys diaper in the nursery at the same time. So switch how you feel about that reality. Everyone feels torn all the time. I do not know anyone who doesnt suffer from working mom guilt. That is an absolute truism. And I dont know anyone who does not experience that, says Downey.
Authorities on Long Island, N.Y., Sunday charged a home owner after discovering a deadly, 6-foot-long alligator on the homes property, Fox 5 New York reported.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation removed the animal that was illegally held on the property after receiving a tip.

Alligators do not make good pets and one this size could be deadly, Roy Gross, the head of the Suffolk County SPCA, told Fox 5 NY. Alligators will bite the hand that feeds them.

The owner, who was not identified in reports, was charged with illegally keeping a reptile without a license.
Video that spread online showed a dog owner in Stockton, Calif. driving down the street with her dog tied to a rope running along the cars side.

The owner insisted her dog was not being abused because there was slack on the rope, Fox40.com reported. Police, upon viewing the video, appeared to side with the owner said there did not appear to be any evidence of animal abuse. Still, they reportedly could have cited her for distracted driving.

Though the dogs owner appears to be safe in the eyes of the law, her actions drew scrutiny from the woman who confronted her.

Youre going to be a dog owner, a responsible dog owner, then you need to get out and walk your dog you know, dont be lazy, Amanda Brajkovich, a Stockton resident who recorded the incident, said.

Click for more from Fox40.com
The youngest of the eight Ohio family members found slain in execution-style murders last week received a threat on Facebook before the mass killings, Ohio's attorney general said Monday.

Christopher Rhoden Jr., a 16-year-old freshman at Piketon High School, was the subject of the threat, CBS News reported.

"I'm aware of the Facebook threat," Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said. "Every piece of information is valuable and our investigators are certainly taking that into consideration."

The threat is just one emerging piece of evidence in the investigation, which has also uncovered cockfighting chickens and a marijuana growing operation at some of the properties where the eight were killed.

Seven of the relatives were multiple times, according to autopsy results released Tuesday. One family member's body showed nine bullet wounds. Some bodies also had bruising, which matched a report from a 911 caller who said two appeared to have been beaten up.

The victims have been identified as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his ex-wife, 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; their three children; Christopher Rhoden Sr.'s brother, 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; their cousin, 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; and 20-year-old Hannah Gilley, whose 6-month old son with "Frankie" was unhurt.

Leonard Manley, father of Dana Rhoden, told the Cincinnati Enquirer he first learned about the marijuana operations from news reports.

Manley, 64, said he's sure his daughter couldn't have been involved in anything illegal. "They are trying to drag my daughter through the mud, and I don't appreciate that," he said.

Manley also noted that the attacker was able to get by his daughter's two dogs. "Whoever done it knows the family," Manley said. "There were two dogs there that would eat you up."

DeWine told te Enquirer investigators found roosters kept in individual cages, which he said was "consistent with" an illegal cockfighting operation. DeWine cautioned, however that investigators "don't know what's relevant" to the murders of members of the Rhoden family.

Also Monday, a local prosecutor confirmed that several hundred marijauna plants were found at three of the crime scenes, some of which were sheltered in a large grow-house.

"It wasn't just somebody sitting pots in the window," Pike County Prosecutor Rob Junk told The Columbus Dispatch.

All eight victims were fatally shot in the head, including a young mother whose newborn baby was sleeping beside her Friday morning. That baby, another infant and a toddler were spared.

Extensive marijuana-growing operations are not uncommon in sparsely populated rural southern Ohio, an economically distressed corner of Appalachia. Two of the four homes that became crime scenes Friday are within walking distance of each other along a remote, winding road leading into wooded hills from a rural highway. The others are nearby.

Piketon  about 60 miles south of Columbus and 90 miles east of Cincinnati  is in Pike County, which is home to just 28,000 people and has an unemployment rate of 8.6 percent, considerably higher than Ohio's rate of 5.1. A main employer is a shuttered Cold War-era uranium plant whose cleanup provides hundreds of local jobs.

More than 22,000 marijuana plants were seized in Pike County in 2010, and while authorities made no arrests, they said they found two abandoned camps where Mexican nationals apparently stayed. In 2012, another 1,200 plants were seized in Pike County in an operation connected to a Mexican drug cartel, the Attorney General's office said. Seizures continued in 2013 and 2014 in the county.

DeWine said the state's crime lab was looking at 18 pieces of evidence from a DNA and ballistic standpoint, and that five search warrants have been executed. More than 100 tips have been given to investigators, and a Cincinnati-area businessman offered a $25,000 reward for details leading to those responsible.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
An American Airlines pilot flunked two sobriety tests before a 7 a.m. flight out of Detroit. An Alaska Airlines pilot flew a commercial plane from California to Oregon and back again, all while allegedly drunk. Yet another pilot, from United, allegedly moonlighted as a pimp, running half a dozen brothels out of apartments in Houston, according to authorities.

The cases are enough to frighten the flying public, and are not isolated, according to a FoxNews.com investigation. Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that while the overwhelming majority of men and women at the cockpit controls are law abiding and responsible, too many fly  or attempt to fly  intoxicated, and even engage in criminal behavior after they touch down.

"According to FAA data, there is no leveling off or decrease in this trend, in fact drug use seems to be climbing," said Peter Bartos, a retired military pilot with an FAA Airline Transport Pilot license, who reviewed the FAA data for FoxNews.com. The general public probably has no idea that this abuse is occurring with such regularity at certain airlines.

The general public probably has no idea that this abuse is occurring with such regularity.  Peter Bartos, retired military pilot

Experts say flying in America is extremely safe, and note that of the more than 56,000 alcohol screening tests done by the industry in 2015 for pilots, mechanics, aircraft dispatchers, ground security coordinators, aviation screeners, and traffic controllers, just 119  or around 0.2 percent - were confirmed at or above the legal limit. Under FAA rules, pilots are not allowed to consume alcohol eight hours before a flight or have a blood alcohol content level higher than .04 percent.

Between 2010 and 2015, FAA records show 64 pilots were cited for violating the alcohol and drug provisions, and in 2015, some 1,546 personnel who must ensure airline safety, including 38 pilots, tested positive for one or more of five illegal drugs.

The number of positive tests is low considering the number of tests performed each year, said Lynn Lunsford, Mid-States Public Affairs Manager for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Still, the idea of any pilot flying high, considering the number of lives at stake, bothers pilots like Bartos.

It is mind-boggling that on average one U.S. pilot a month is caught trying to fly a passenger aircraft while over the legal limit for flying, which at 0.04 percent, is more restrictive than for driving a car in many states, especially given that they know they are subject to screening, Bartos said. It also means that others arent caught, since it is not a mandatory test for all pilots on every flight.

All commercial airline pilots should take a test for alcohol and drug use before every flight, Bartos said.

"One might surmise that all pilots from the problem airlines should blow into a breathalyzer/drug tester before every flight until this trend stops, he said. And the airlines should issue them their own breathalyzers so they can know when not to try to report to work.

Drinking is not illegal, but operating under the influence with an aircraft full of passengers certainly is," Bartos added.

Discipline varies based on the offense, but even in the most egregious cases, pilots can make it back into the cockpit. In 1990, Northwest Airline Pilot Norman Prouse was arrested after flunking a sobriety test following a flight from Fargo to Minneapolis. Prouse, who had reportedly drunk 15 rum and cokes the night before, served jail time but was rehired by by the airline, first at a ground job, then later as a commercial pilot.

Pilots have two certificates, a medical certificate and an airman certificate. In cases such as that, we typically take separate action to revoke their certificates, Lunsford said. After revocation, pilots must wait at least one year to reapply and must start over from the beginning, first earning a private certificate, then an instrument rating and so on.

The FAA opened 1,001 investigations into pilots in 2015, typically sending out warnings to pilots for everything from disobeying the flight tower, failing to comply with an airworthiness directive, operating an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner, making a fraudulent or intentionally false statement on any application for a medical certificate and failing to have an appropriate and current airworthiness certificate.

The FAA also ultimately revoked 38 pilot licenses and suspended another 46 pilot licenses.

Morgan Durrant, spokesman for Delta Air Lines, said the FAA often cites pilots for what equates to driving citations, with the vast majority minor and sometimes simply mandating additional training.

In some cases, commercial pilots have used their travel privileges to orchestrate other crimes, or committed crimes while off duty, and as a result, put their pilots certification in jeopardy, according to records reviewed by FoxNews.com.

For example, a United Airlines pilot was apprehended by Texas police March 25 for allegedly running a half a dozen brothels in apartment complexes throughout Houston with up to 60 prostitutes that prosecutors deemed massive.

Another commercial airline pilot who holds a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Global Entry Card was arrested Jan 17 at Newark Airport after allegedly attempting to smuggle $195,736 in undeclared currency into the country.

And yet another regional airline pilot was arrested after he was allegedly caught trying to smuggle 60 bags of drugs to Houston from Colombia.

In certain offenses, such as using an aircraft to transport drugs, the revocation (of the pilots certification) can be permanent, Lunsford said.

The FAA is strict with pilots, experts say, because the human factor is one of the main contributing reason for aviation disasters.

Crashes are rarely caused by a single cause, but they are the effect of several contributing factors: technical, human, environmental, weather, and procedural, said David Cenciotti, who operates the popular blog The Aviationist, noting human error remains the main contributing factor.

That's why training, fatigue control, health checks and all that is required to prevent mistakes in the cabin is paramount to improve aviation safety, Cenciotti said.

Jan-Arwed Richter, founder and general manager of the German flight safety bureau, JACDEC, which gathers data worldwide on accident and incidents reports, safety benchmarks and operational safety, said overall, flying is safe, especially in the North American region.

There were only 171 fatalities in commercial aviation over the last 10 years. The second-best region, Eurasia, has 680 fatalities, Richter said.
The parents of two teenagers who vanished months ago while fishing off the coast of Florida engaged in a new legal battle over a recovered iPhone, with one family filing a restraining order Sunday to keep the phone away from the other family before law enforcement could examine it.

Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos disappeared last July. Each was 14 at the time. Their bodies were never found, but a Norwegian cargo ship spotted their 19-foot boat near Bermuda last month and recovered it. Onboard were Stephanos' phone and some fishing gear.

One day after the Cohen family filed the restraining order, Blu Stephanos, Austin's father, promised to share the phone's data with investigators and both families.

Speaking to the Palm Beach Post, Blu Stephanos said salt water had damaged the phone badly, making it unclear whether any information could come out of it. Still, he added, "I am not giving up hope."

This is not the first rift to appear between the families since their sons disappeared. Last October, Pamela Cohen, Perry's mother, asked that Stephanos' parents not use her son's name and likeness while fundraising for their new foundation.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission took the phone after crews recovered it. The restraining order would have prevented the Stephanos family from taking it before investigators.

A court hearing is pending, said Guy Rubin, the Perry family's attorney. He said his clients have had no formal communication with the Stephanos family about the phone, so "I am not sure what their intentions are."

FWC spokesman Rob Klepper issued a statement Monday saying that since this is not a criminal investigation the agency would turn over the phone and other items to the respective families. Any retrieval of information from Austin Stephanos' phone would only be done with his family's permission, Klepper said.

The cellphone, two fishing rods and two small tackle boxes were recovered from the boat. The phone was shipped ahead to FWC, but the boat and other personal effects were crated and are expected to arrive at Port Everglades next month.

Robert Heller, a digital forensics expert in Texas, said the phone could contain the boat's location, its speed, its direction, distress text messages the boys tried to send, photos they took and other information, assuming it wasn't damaged beyond repair. Even if FWC turns over the phone to the Stephanos family, Heller suspects investigators will download its data for safekeeping, if it is accessible.

"If they didn't make a forensic record, then shame on them," he said.

The Coast Guard searched for a week and the families' volunteer search lasted more than two weeks. During its search, the Coast Guard did spot the overturned boat near Daytona Beach, almost 200 miles from where the boys departed but it was gone when a recovery boat arrived at the location.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A family member of the fitness instructor killed last week in a North Texas church, apparently by someone in a SWAT team uniform, asked the killer to come forward Sunday and give some honor back to your family.

Terri "Missy" Bevers, 45, of Red Oak, was found last Monday by a student arriving for a class, police said.

Bevers, a married mother of three, was killed at Creekside Church of Christ in Midlothian, 20 miles southwest of Dallas.

CBS Dallas reported that Bevers, who was preparing for a 5 a.m. boot camp class, died from a head wound. Authorities said the killer used an unidentified blunt object to strike her.

Marsha Essary Tucker, the victims mother-in-law, posted a message on Facebook Sunday touching on the toll the killing took on her family. But she also said the crime would also hurt the killer's own relatives.

You have now ruined your childrens life, along with your familys life by doing this senseless act, Tucker wrote. We can at least visit Missys gravesite, even though we have the comfort of knowing she is already in heaven. Your family will get to visit you in prison, forever reminded of your crazy, selfish act. What a legacy you have doled out to your family.

Surveillance video shows the suspect inside the church minutes before the fitness instructor arrived. Investigators say the killer wore a jacket labeled "Police," gloves and a helmet. In fact, the suspect wore so much clothing, even determining his or her gender has proved challenging.

Police found broken glass on the floor and evidence of forced entry into the church, possibly for a burglary.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
An Arizona woman accused of faking a cancer diagnosis to get the state to pay for her late-term abortion was convicted of fraud and other charges Monday.

Maricopa County Superior Court officials said jurors found Chalice Renee Zeitner guilty of all 11 counts against her. The aggravation phase of her trial was scheduled to begin Monday afternoon.

Zeitner, 30, was tried on charges including fraudulent schemes, theft, forgery and identity theft.

She was accused of presenting falsified medical records to support her claim that she had cancer and telling an obstetrician that her pregnancy put her life in danger.

Investigators say the scheme was discovered a year after the 2010 abortion.

Zeitner's attorney Adam Schwartz told jurors in opening statements that his client genuinely believed she had cancer and didn't set out to defraud anyone.

According to attorneys for the state, Zeitner told her doctor in 2010 that she was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation for cancer and that her fetus had been exposed to radiation.

After a specialist found her fetus was healthy, they say Zeitner didn't give up the alleged scheme and forged a letter from another doctor that stated her pregnancy had to be terminated to save her life.

The Arizona health care program in which Zeitner was enrolled covers the cost of abortions in limited circumstances, such as when a mother's life is endangered. Prosecutors say she never mentioned cancer when she applied.

Zeitner allegedly claimed before her abortion that she had stage IV cancer in her abdomen and lower spine and told her obstetrician that she was scheduled to resume cancer treatment at a hospital in Boston. Her abortion occurred 22 weeks into her pregnancy.

Investigators say the scheme was discovered a year after the April 2010 abortion when a doctor who performed a C-section during Zeitner's subsequent pregnancy found no signs of cancer. Another doctor who was listed on medical records as having treated Zeitner for cancer later said he never treated her.

Zeitner was arrested in May 2015 in Georgia, where she was living under an assumed name.

The state estimates that more than $6,000 was spent on health care related to her abortion.

She is also accused of using a fake identity on social media to convince her boyfriend to set up a fundraising website for her cancer treatments.

Zeitner faces a trial May 25 in a separate case in which she is accused of defrauding a charity for military veterans and the leader of a second charity in 2012.

She allegedly persuaded one charity to buy $7,700 worth of tickets for a gala with the promise of returning the money and providing a portion of the event's proceeds. But investigators say Zeitner cancelled the event and instead spent the money on personal expenses.
Thunderstorms bearing hail as big as grapefruit and winds approaching hurricane strength lashed portions of the Great Plains on Tuesday, but arrived without the grand tornadoes that many had worried about for days.

A rope tornado brushed fields south of Wichita, Kansas, and another small twister touched down in southwestern Indiana. As the sun went down on the western prairie, the Storm Prediction Center had received reports of bad weather from Texas to Nebraska to West Virginia, but none of them deadly.

"It's never straightforward when you're sitting here talking about (predicting) large tornadoes," meteorologist Matt Mosier said as the forecast was taking shape.

But it's not like the weather wasn't bad or scary. It was both.

Hail 4 inches in diameter fell in northern Kansas, northwest of Marysville, and winds hit 70 mph in Missouri and Texas while storms went through. Residents of Topeka, Kansas, eyed the sky nervously during rush hour after forecasters warned that a supercell thunderstorm could produce a tornado at any moment.

As night fell, small twisters accompanied a line of thunderstorms as it rolled into Oklahoma City. Telltale power flashes from failing transformers pierced the twilight as another neighborhood lost power.

Forecasters posted a tornado watch for Oklahoma and Texas until midnight, saying the atmosphere could still be unsettled enough for twisters to develop.

"This is a particularly dangerous situation," the Storm Prediction Center alerted in red type in an afternoon advisory. It uses such language on only about 7 percent of its tornado watches. Forecasters had predicted a 90 percent chance of tornadoes and said 80 percent could have winds above 111 mph in much of Oklahoma and northern Texas.

In the days ahead of the storm, forecasters had said a severe weather outbreak was possible Tuesday, perhaps including tornadoes that could stay on the ground for miles. Bad weather is expected again Wednesday in Arkansas and Missouri, then later in the week in Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana.

Ahead of Tuesday's storms, businesses set out to protect their goods ahead of storms while school districts sent children home early, hoping to keep them safe.

George Eischen, 51, spent Tuesday morning moving vehicles off the lot at his Chevrolet dealership in the small town of Fairview, about 100 miles northwest of Oklahoma City. Eischen said he was lining the new vehicles "bumper to bumper" in the shop and even the floor of the lobby to protect them from the hail.

"We've never been hit by a tornado here in town, amazingly," Eischen said. "But yeah, we've had hail. And that's the real enemy of the car dealer."

Workers scrambled to protect planes at the Spirit of St. Louis Airport in Chesterfield, Missouri, when the winds picked up and the sky turned green.

"And I mean green green," aviation director John Bales said. "It was pretty violent but luckily we didn't have any substantial damage. We saw it coming and we were able to get most of the airplanes into hangars, so we didn't have too much hail damage."

Bill Schwindamann, the emergency management chief for Marshall County, Kansas, said large hail damaged roofs and broke car windows near the town of Bremen, near Marysville. The hail started small about 5 p.m. but grew to as much as 4 inches in diameter, or about the size of a grapefruit.

Mid-Del Public Schools, in the Oklahoma City suburb of Midwest City, said in a statement that the safety of students and staff is a priority, noting that it reworked its tornado safety plan three years ago after a twister killed seven schoolchildren in the neighboring suburb of Moore.


The Bangladeshi branch of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility Tuesday for the killing of a gay rights activist and his friend, undermining the prime minister's insistence just hours earlier that her political opponents were to blame for the attack and for a rising tide of violence against secular activists and writers.

The claim by Ansar-al-islam  which said it targeted the two men on Monday night because they were "pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality"  raised doubts about Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's repeated assurances that authorities have the security situation under control.

The victims of the attack were identified as Xulhaz Mannan, an activist who also worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, and his friend, theater actor Tanay Majumder. Mannan, a cousin of former Foreign Minister Dipu Moni of the governing party, was also an editor of Bangladesh's first gay rights magazine, Roopbaan. Majumder sometimes helped with the publishing, local media said.

At a funeral for Mannan on Tuesday, his brother said free speech was something Islam should protect.

"A true Muslim will always consider that he has freedom of expression," Minhaz Mannan Emon said. "We should respect that opinion. We hope... particularly I, on behalf of the family, hope that no other family loses their child or brother like us in the future."

Mannan had written openly about the frustration of living "in the closet" as a gay man in Bangladesh, where homosexual relations are considered a crime. In a May 2014 blog, he said gays and lesbians in Bangladesh experience "A country where the predominant religions say you are a sinner, the law of the land says you are a criminal, the social norms say you are a pervert, the culture considers you as imported."

He launched the magazine in 2014, giving the country's small and secretive lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community its first open platform. Earlier this month, he tried to organize a Rainbow Rally in the capital, but was foiled when police briefly detained him and three others.

Ansar-al Islam, the Bangladeshi branch of Al Qaeda on the Indian subcontinent, or AQIS, claimed responsibility in a Twitter message on Tuesday for what it called a "blessed attack" on Mannan and Majumder.

It said the two were killed because they were "pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh" and were "working day and night to promote homosexuality ... with the help of their masters, the U.S. crusaders and its Indian allies."

Just hours before the claim of responsibility, the prime minister had pointed the finger at her political opponents, the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami group and its ally, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

"Everybody knows who are behind these killings," Hasina told policymakers in her secular Awami League party Monday night, repeating her government's allegation that the opposition was orchestrating the attacks. "The BNP-Jamaat clique has been involved in such secret and heinous murders to destabilize the country."

The opposition denies the allegations, saying they are being scapegoated for Hasina's failure to maintain security and placate the country's desire for Islamic rule.

Police said no arrests have yet been made in connection with Monday's attack, which involved at least five young men who posed as courier service employees to gain access to Mannan's apartment building.

A security guard working at the building said he was injured when one of the attackers hit him with a knife while fleeing.

Crime scene investigators recovered a mobile phone and bag apparently left by the attackers. The national police chief, A.K.M. Shahidul Hoque, expressed confidence the attackers would be caught and acknowledged there were similarities in how the killings were being carried out. He said authorities were making progress in cracking down on radicals' hideouts and weapons caches.

"We are investigating all the cases very seriously," Hoque said. "Many arrests have been made involving previous killings, we have busted their dens for making bombs."

Security analysts warned that the government could lose the people's trust if it does not act quickly to curb the attacks.

"It is high time to set up special tribunals to handle these cases," suggested retired Maj. Gen. Abdur Rashid. "It has to be dealt with more seriously and with a clearer and quicker process. ... There has been a lack of confidence among people about the investigation and justice system. We must fix these issues immediately."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the "barbaric" murders in a statement. Earlier this month, the U.S. said it was considering granting refuge to a select number of secular bloggers in Bangladesh facing imminent danger.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said Monday that remained an option. He described Mannan as a "beloved member of our embassy family and a courageous advocate" for gay rights, and pledged U.S. support to Bangladeshi authorities "to ensure that the cowards who did this are held accountable."
A white Labrador was honored as a hero for rescuing seven people in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Ecuador last week before dying from exhaustion at the age of 4.

Dayko, a dog that worked for the Ibara fire service, spent several days searching for survivors after the magnitude-7.8 earthquake, The Telegraph reports.

The fire services Facebook page said the resilient pup collapsed on Friday and died from a "massive coronary myocardial infarction and acute respiratory failure."

The firefighters added, "This four legged friend gave his life in the line of duty. Thank you Dayko for your heroic efforts in Pedernales and in various emergencies where you were present."

The April 16 earthquake killed at least 654 people and wounded more than 2,000 others. Ecuadors president has said reconstruction could cost billions of dollars.

"You held high the name of the K9 unit," the firefighters told their dog.

Click for more from The Telegraph.
An Iranian foreign adviser Tuesday blasted the Supreme Courts ruling to permit families of victims of attacks linked to Iran to collect nearly $2 billion in frozen funds, as the Islamic Republic threatened to take the U.S. to the International Court of Justice at the Hague.

Ali Akbar Velayati, a foreign adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader, described last weeks court ruling as an act of robbery, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"Iran is insistent on safeguarding its rights and will retrieve the money," Velayati was quoted as saying. "The way to confront Americans is to resist their ambitions."

The report also said Irans foreign ministry summoned Switzerland's ambassador to Tehran over the Supreme Courts decision, to convey Iran's protest to the Americans.

Iran and the U.S. have not had diplomatic relations since 1979, when Iranian students stormed the embassy and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

The Supreme Courts decision permits the families of victims of a 1983 bombing in Lebanon and other attacks linked to Iran to collect nearly $2 billion of frozen funds from the Islamic Republic.

The cabinet has tasked a workgroup, led by the Iranian finance minister, to examine the court decision and reclaim Iran's "rights," IRNA reported. The ministers of foreign affairs and the heads of the intelligence agency, judiciary and central bank have joined the workgroup.

Iran said the court decision violated international obligations between the two countries, including a 1955 economic treaty, and on Monday threatened to sue the U.S.

Iran has repeatedly denied responsibility for the attacks and has accused the U.S. of using them as an excuse to steal their money, The New York Times reports.

We hold the U.S. administration responsible for preservation of Iranian funds, and if they are plundered, we will lodge a complaint with the I.C.J. for reparation, Irans foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said Monday in Tehran.

Its unclear if the courts jurisdiction would be accepted in such a case. The U.S. stopped following the courts jurisdiction after losing a case in 1986 about intervention in Nicaragua.

Other experts also said Iran may be calling a bluff, as it would not let the ruling sabotage a deal over its nuclear program that unfroze billions of dollars of Iranian money abroad and eased sanctions.

The ruling will further chill Iran-U.S. relations, but Tehran still wins a ton from the deal and isnt about to split, Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a Washington-based political risk consulting firm, told The New York Times.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Iraq's parliament has endorsed a partial Cabinet reshuffle proposed by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, bowing to mounting public pressure for reform, including mass protests led by an influential Shiite cleric.

Parliament spokesman Emad al-Khafaji says lawmakers approved nominees for six ministries: health, labor and social affairs; water resources; electricity; higher education and culture.

Al-Khafaji says al-Abadi has until Thursday to submit other names.

Thousands of followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had earlier massed outside the capital's heavily fortified Green Zone, calling for political reform and an end to corruption. Separately, dozens of lawmakers calling for the ouster of al-Abadi, the parliament speaker and the president had interrupted the parliamentary session.

In August, al-Abadi proposed a sweeping reform package to combat corruption, cut government spending and merge ministries, but his efforts have been stymied by the country's main political blocs.
The rate of foreign fighters joining the Islamic State terror group in Iraq and Syria has dropped to just 200 per month, down from 1,500-2,000 a year ago, a senior military officer from Baghdad told Fox News during a press briefing at the Pentagon Tuesday.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Peter Gersten, the U.S.-led coalition's deputy commander for operations and intelligence, said recent airstrikes against ISIS cash storage facilities have "fractured" the group.

"In every single way their morale is being broken, in every single way their capability to wage war is broken, and in every single way way we will take this fight and eradicate this cancer," he added. Gersten also said the desertion rates among ISIS fighters have risen.

The announcement came as House lawmakers considered a bill aimed at weakening terror recruitment efforts.

A bill sponsored by Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., would urge the Department of Homeland Security to use testimonials from former or estranged jihadis, like the State Department has, to effectively counter the ISIS message.

Any time you have someones first-hand account of the sheer terror that ISIS can provoke  thats powerful, Fleischmann said Tuesday, hours before the House voted on his measure, which has bipartisan support.

Fleischmann, whose home state was the site of a terror-inspired attack last year in which four Marines and a sailor were killed, also expressed optimism about the bill's chances for success, amid some Democrats arguing the measure wouldn't reduce domestic terror.

Its incumbent upon all members of Congress to support legislation that keeps us safe at home and abroad, he said. When you have  bipartisan support, it shouldnt devolve into a bipartisan fight. We all have to be concerned about the world being very dangerous.

Gersten estimates strikes against ISIS cash sites have wiped away between $300-800 million dollars. The coalition conducted "tens" of strikes as he described it.

Pentagon officials say they believe one strike last month killed the terror group's finance minister. $150 million was destroyed at his house.

Using a tactic from the Israelis, Gersten said the coalition detonated explosives in the air to scare civilians out of the home. The "knock operation," as this tactic is called, has been used to minimalize civilian casualties, Gersten said.

When asked how many ISIS fighters have been killed on the battlefield, he replied, "not enough." He did not give an estimate on the overall size of ISIS.

Gersten said the U.S. military would deploy an advanced rocket system to Turkey which uses GPS guidance to destroy targets up to 180 miles away, in another sign of incremental escalation in the war against ISIS. On Monday, President Obama announced 250 more U.S. troops would be going to Syria.

Gersten would not say where the rocket system, known as HIMARS, would be deployed in Turkey citing operational security.

In addition, the FBI has seen fewer Americans traveling or trying to travel to Iraq and Syria, director James Comey said last week. However, he pointed out that more people could have taken different routes or worked to hide their trails online.

Comey said he's hopeful the drop is due to stiff law enforcement efforts and tough federal sentences for those attempting to join ISIS.

Fox News' Matt Dean and Chad Pergram and FoxNews.com's Joseph Weber contributed to this report.
Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court has ruled that Australia's detention of asylum seekers at a facility on the country's Manus Island is unconstitutional.

The Pacific island nation's ruling on Tuesday could jeopardize Australia's divisive policy of refusing to accept any asylum seekers who try to reach its shores by boat. The country pays Papua New Guinea and the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru to hold them in detention camps instead.

The court dubbed the detention of the asylum seekers a violation of their constitutional right to personal liberty. The court ordered the Papua New Guinea and Australian governments to take immediate steps toward ending the detention of asylum seekers at the Manus Island facility. The center houses around 900 men.
Russia has resumed bombing moderate opposition fighters in Syria, a U.S. military officer from Baghdad told reporters at the Pentagon Tuesday.

"We have seen them begin operations again in that region," Air Force Maj. Gen. Peter Gersten, the U.S.-led coalition's deputy commander for operations and intelligence, told Fox News.

President Obama called Russian President Vladimir Putin last week asking him to help "press" Syria to end its airstrikes, according to a White House statement. The strikes appeared to violate the ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia in February.

"The two leaders committed to intensify their efforts to shore up the Cessation of Hostilities and affirmed the need to end attacks by all parties," the statement read.

Fox News has learned Russia also restarted airstrikes against Syrian opposition fighters, some backed by the United States.

Russia claims it is striking Jabhat al-Nusra, otherwise known as the al-Nusra Front, Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate. The group is not bound to the ceasefire agreement.

The "cessation of hostilities" has shown signs of fraying as the Syrian regime resumed bombing operations in northwest Aleppo and in the coastal province of Latakia where a Russian airbase is located. Russia claims al-Nusra is trying to take over Aleppo and parts of Latakia province.

Moscow has urged the United States to share targeting information on Nusra. So far the United States military has refused to cooperate.

"We only see them, we don't actually coordinate in any way with them," Gersten said, referring to the Russian Air Force operating in Syria.
The show trial of my brothers Frank Rusagara and Tom Byabagamba has made me take a harder look at myself. To be sure this was a show trial. The term show trial dates back to what became known as the Great Purge or the Great Terror in the old Soviet Union. The Great Terror was a campaign of political repression in Soviet Union in 1936-1938 period, involving a large-scale purge of party cadres, government officials, repression of rural populations, as well as the military ranks. This was a period of widespread police surveillance, suspicion of saboteurs, imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. It is estimated that during the Great Purge between 600,000 and 1.2 million innocent people were murdered by Joseph Stalins Soviet regime.

The trial of Rusagara and Byabagamba was no more than a show trial. The entire case was largely built on hearsay  which is generally considered inadmissible in most countries in the world. This trial lacked the opposite of hearsay, namely, demonstrative evidence, documentary evidence, and testimonial evidence. Revealingly, in one of testimonial evidence, a witness for the government, David Kabuye, who had earlier testified that he did not hear Frank Rusagara talk ill of the regime, changed his mind and said he had heard Rusagara say bad things. What a shame.

The reason that this show trial made me think harder about myself is simple. I realized that the Kagame regime has been conducting show trials for sometime now. But due to my ethnic Tutsi bias, I was blind to the show trials  these show trials involved mostly members of the Hutu community. Let us look at two cases for illustration.

Bizimungu  from president to prisoner

Take the case of Pasteur Bizimungu. Here was a former Rwandan head of state, and a symbol of reconciliation in the country, that was sentenced to 15 years in prison in show trial, later pardoned. The former head of state remains a prisoner, unwell, and not allowed to travel overseas for treatment. An ethnic Hutu from the northern Gisenyi Province  same region of President Habyarimana stronghold  Bizimungu became a member of the then rebel RPF. He was one of the groups few Hutu members who joined the movement during its push into Rwanda from neighboring Uganda. A trained lawyer, Bizimungu was involved in negotiating the Arusha peace accords between 1992 and 1994. He was then given the role of president until 2000 when he resigned, amid growing differences with the Rwandan military strongman, Paul Kagame. Shortly afterwards, Bizimungu was put under house arrest and stripped of the privileges enjoyed by former heads of state.

The Rwandan brave who sought to lead Rwanda

Then we have the show trial of Victoire Umuhoza Ingabire. Here is a Rwandan brave who sought to run against the Rwandan strongman in the August 2010 elections. Married and a mother of three, Ingabire was an executive in the Netherlands. She resigned after deciding to dedicate herself to political leadership of her homeland. Upon returning to her country after 16 years in exile, Umuhoza ended up in jail instead.

She was placed under house arrest, and later put on a show trial that charged her with terrorism, genocide ideology, and threatening national security.

Niemoller in his later years

The show trial of my brothers Frank and Tom just made realize that I may be the new Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemoller.

Niemoller was a German pastor during the Nazi regime. He was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler but soon realized that the dictator was no good. The pastor soon became one of the founders of the Confessional Church, which vehemently opposed the Nazis. Martin Niemoller was to later explain his circumstance as follows:

When the Nazis came for the communists,

I remained silent;

I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,

I remained silent;

I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,

I did not speak out;

I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,

I remained silent;

I wasnt a Jew.

When they came for me,

there was no one left to speak out.

Himbara the Rwandan Niemoller?

And so I here I am. In my case, I must say the following:

When they locked up Pasteur Bizimungu,

I remained silent;

I was not a Hutu.

When they came for Umuhoza Ingabire,

I did not speak out;

I was not a Hutu.

When they came for my brothers Frank and Tom,

there was no one left to speak out.

I am on my knees now  asking for forgiveness from my Hutu sisters and brothers, and for praying for my brothers Frank and Tom.

Source
Ahmad Sowwan is no stranger to franchising and no stranger to success. The 33-year-old multi-unit, multi-brand franchisee operates two Dairy Queen locations and a Huddle House restaurant and has just taken over a second Huddle House in Florence, SC.

Sowwan says he was looking to further expand his operations from North Carolina into new markets when he discovered the Florence Huddle House location was available. He jumped on the opportunity to take over the previously company-owned location.

"It was a personal goal to expand my business across state lines and into South Carolina," says Sowwan. "Florence is an area with a strong sense of community, and the restaurant already has a strong and loyal customer base. I look forward to becoming more involved with the community and continuing to provide the great food and southern hospitality everyone has come to expect."

This is Sowwan's second acquisition of a Huddle House restaurant. He purchased the St. Pauls, NC location from a retiring franchisee. He's also proud to operate two Dairy Queen restaurants in Lumberton and Fayetteville, NC.

Sowwan has a long track record as a successful restaurant owner. His Huddle House location in St. Pauls ranks among the top locations in sales each year.

"Although the Florence Huddle House has been operating for a number of years, Ahmad's hands-on ownership and involvement in the community will make dining at Huddle House even more special for local residents as well as visitors to the Florence area," says Cassidy Ford, franchise development manager for Huddle House.
Churchs Chicken Joins Thriving Vancouver Airport Restaurant Scene

Restaurant Becomes One of the Biggest Brands Represented at Major International Travel Hub

April 26, 2016 // Franchising.com // ATLANTA, GA  With nearly 20 million passengers passing through its gates per year, food and beverage at the Vancouver International Airport is serious business. Top brands from around the world compete to serve a global clientele at this gateway destination  Canadas second-busiest airport. Thanks to a new agreement with SSP America, Churchs Chicken is now among the choices available to hundreds of thousands of daily travelers starting April 22nd. The move will make Churchs one of the largest brands at the airport, and the only restaurant dedicated to world-famous quality fried chicken served quickly for those on the go.

Quick-service restaurants like ours have a unique opportunity when it comes to non-traditional locations like airports, said Bill Schreiber, Vice President of Global Business Development at Texas Chicken/Churchs Chicken. Weve already perfected a rapid service concept execution, delivering great tasting, high quality food to guests who are in a hurry, but looking for a great meal. At the same time, non-traditional locations allow us to reach new customers and expand our brand awareness in these important centers of activity.

Non-traditional locations are undeniably massive hubs of diverse people, who share a common appreciation of accessibility. As the fourth-largest chicken restaurant chain in the world, Churchs uses these venues to capture the attention of audiences that may, otherwise, be far too busy for the traditional drive-thru or dine-in. Guests no longer have to forego their favorite restaurants due to the hustle and bustle of life. The ability to take advantage of this niche is becoming essential to facilitate brand growth and overall evolution.

Non-traditional locations, especially airports, provide an opportunity for us to deliver the brand that consumers love while on the go, said Zack Kollias, Executive Vice President of International Operations at Texas Chicken/Churchs Chicken. At a time when Churchs is taking huge steps to continue expanding its presence in the international market, developing non-traditional locations will continue to cater to new customers and fortify our growing global community.

Our extensive portfolio in the food and travel space, paired with Churchs unique flavor and commitment to quality, is just a piece of what makes this new relationship so exciting, said Pat Carroll, Senior Vice President, Brands and Concepts of SSP America. Regardless of where your journey is taking you, quality food is essential, so were happy to bring the guests of Vancouver International Airport a hearty option.

Churchs is continuing to broaden its scope through exploring non-traditional territory. With several locations in travel plazas and a current express location in Luis Munoz Marin International in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the chicken giant has plans to continue tapping into high-traffic, non-traditional locations and the advantages they offer.

About Texas Chicken / Churchs Chicken

Founded in San Antonio, TX in 1952 by George W. Church, Churchs Chicken, along with its sister brand Texas Chicken outside of the Americas, is one of the largest quick service chicken restaurant chains in the world. The brands specialize in Original and Spicy Chicken freshly prepared throughout the day in small batches that are hand-battered and double-breaded, Tender Strips, sandwiches, honey-butter biscuits made from scratch and freshly baked, and classic, home-style sides all for a great value. Churchs Chicken and Texas Chicken have more than 1,650 locations in 25 countries and global markets and system-wide sales of more than $1 billion. For more information, visit www.churchs.com. Follow Churchs on Facebook at www.facebook.com/churchschicken and Twitter at wwww.twitter.com/churchschicken.

SOURCE Texas Chicken / Churchs Chicken

Contact:

Alex Autry

866.252.1750, x129

Alex@inklinkmarketing.com

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HouseMaster's Scott Wharton Honored With the Century Club Award

RICHMOND, VA -(Marketwired - April 26, 2016) - HouseMaster, the first and most experienced home inspection franchise company in the U.S. and Canada, recently honored Richmond, Virginia's Scott Wharton. The Century Club award goes to the office or offices that completed 100 inspections in one month for the first time in their franchise history. March 2016 was a record month for HouseMaster LLC, Century Club award winners with four Franchisee Owners as winners.

"It was very gratifying to be recognized for the hard work of myself and my team in the industry," said Scott. "In today's competitive real estate market, the services we offer as part of the HouseMaster family are more important than ever in helping both sellers and buyers make educated real estate decisions. I'm proud to be a source of quality home inspection services for our local community."

Kathleen Kuhn, President of HouseMaster states, "We are very proud of the achievements that Scott and his team in the Richmond area have made in positioning HouseMaster as the number one resource for professional inspections services in his community. We know the hard work it takes and congratulate him for his efforts!"

As a HouseMaster Owner, Scott provides home buyers and sellers an independent, third-party, professional evaluation of the condition of the major elements of a home. The guaranteed inspections enable potential home buyers and sellers the opportunity to make educated real estate decisions. From interior systems such as plumbing and electrical to exterior components like the roof and siding, the HouseMaster Home Inspection includes the evaluation of all visible and accessible elements of the home.

HouseMaster also conducts new construction, commercial property, and foreclosure inspections as well as other services depending on the needs of the local community.

About HouseMaster

Founded in 1979 and Headquartered in Somerville, NJ, HouseMaster is the oldest and one of the largest home inspection companies in North America. With more than 310 franchised areas throughout the US and Canada, HouseMaster is the most respected name in home inspections. For over 35 years, HouseMaster has built upon a foundation of solid leadership and innovation with a continued focus on delivering the highest quality service experience to their customers and providing HouseMaster franchisees the tools and support necessary to do so. Each HouseMaster franchise is an independently owned and operated business. HouseMaster is a registered trademark of HouseMaster LLC.

For more information please visit www.housemaster.com or call 800-526-3939.

SOURCE HouseMaster

Contact:

Scott Wharton

804-745-4588

scott.wharton@housemaster.com

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Leading Early Education Provider Set To Break Ground On First New Jersey School In Montville, April 23

Kids R Kids Learning Academies Expands National Footprint in Northeast Region

April 26, 2016 // Franchising.com // Kids R Kids Learning Academies, a national early childhood education franchise with three decades of experience, announced today a groundbreaking ceremony for its first New Jersey center, located in Montville, N.J., on Saturday, April 23 at 1 p.m. at 217 Changebridge Road. Montville Township Mayor James Sandham and Deputy Mayor Richard Conklin will be in attendance along with Township Committeewomen Deborah Nielson. The new school represents Kids R Kids' first center in the Tri-state Region of the country. To date, the company has nearly 160 schools located in 16 states nationwide.

The new Kids R Kids Learning Academy will be owned and operated by husband-and-wife team Patricia and Fred Ferraro. Patricia, a mother of four, has worked with children for more than 35 years throughout her career as a kindergarten teacher. Mr. Ferraro brings more than 35 years of business experience to Kids R Kids and most recently worked as a business consultant to companies in New Jersey and Indiana.

We are excited to break ground on the first Kids R Kids Learning Academy of New Jersey, said Patricia Ferraro. Weve found the perfect site for our school and look forward to sharing this special occasion with local residents and dignitaries. Both Fred and I are very proud to be part of a project bringing a state of the art Learning Academy to families of the community. We are enthusiastic about supporting the development of future generations in Morris County.

The Kids R Kids Learning Academy of Montville will be environmentally efficient with features such as energy efficient windows, LED lighting and other energy saving strategies. The new building will also include a computer lab, cafeteria, library, gymnasium and 10 classrooms. The school is projected to open in January 2017.

For the last 30 years, Kids R Kids Learning Academies has upheld its long-standing principle of strengthening and encouraging childhood development on an emotional, intellectual, social and physical level through a unique partnership between its child care providers and parents. The companys proprietary First Class CurriculumTM is designed specifically for every developmental stage of education with theme-based units, specific learning activities and teacher-friendly lesson plans. Last year, Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies unveiled its new STEAM AHEAD curriculum, an integrated project-based curriculum for preschool students, ages three to five, which incorporates more science, technology, engineering, art, and math into everyday learning through play.

With a nationally awarded curriculum, Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies provides early education and care for children from six weeks through 12 years of age at its nearly 160 schools located in 16 states across the country. Programs offered to children include infant care, toddler and preschool care, private pre-K and kindergarten, before-and-afterschool care and summer camp. In order to provide even more convenience for families with busy schedules, Kids R Kids Learning Academies remain open during all major school breaks and holidays year-round.

Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies has been accredited by AdvancED in America for more than six years, the worlds largest education community. This accreditation ensures its schools are meeting and exceeding the highest accreditation standards and providing excellence in education beyond most daycare and childcare providers.

To learn more about ownership opportunities with Kids R Kids Learning Academies, contact Rashid Khan at (844) KRK-FRAN (844-575-3726) or rashid@kidsrkids.com or visit kidsrkidsfranchise.com.

About Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies

Headquartered in the North Atlanta suburb of Duluth, Ga., Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies provide a secure, nurturing, and educational environment for children ages six weeks - 12 years to bloom into responsible, considerate, and contributing members of society. With nearly 160 learning academies in 16 states, Kids 'R' Kids International is a family-owned and operated organization that ranks in the top three nationwide for franchised early childhood education centers (www.kidsrkids.com).

SOURCE Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies

Media Contact:

Tiffany Trilli

Account Coordinator

Fish Consulting, LLC

O: (954) 893-9150

C: (305) 299-4581

ttrilli@fish-consulting.com

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Minuteman Press Franchise in Midland, Western Australia Celebrates One Year in Business

Wins Customer Service Award and Hits New Sales Milestone

Diana Sim joined Minuteman Press as a franchise owner in March 2015. Her husband John decided to leave his job late last year, and together they have successfully grown the family business in Midland, Western Australia. Diana and John have recently hit the one-year mark for their franchise, and already they have racked up awards and hit sales milestones, all while serving a community they have lived in and loved for 16 years.

April 26, 2016 // Franchising.com // MIDLAND, Western Australia - The Minuteman Press franchise in Midland, Western Australia recently celebrated one year in business by winning a customer service award and hitting a new sales milestone. Owner Diana Sim began with Minuteman Press in March 2015, and a few months later her husband John joined her in the business full-time. In just over one year as franchise owners, Diana and John have already become difference-makers in their community by serving local area business clients with high quality products and supporting organizations such as the Singapore Western Australian Network. As a result of their continued efforts, this dynamic husband and wife franchise team just hit a new sales milestone in March 2016, recording their highest monthly sales to date with an impressive increase from their first month in business last year.

Diana and John Sim have really taken their Minuteman Press center to new levels through their hard work and by following the franchise system, said Glenn Coyle, Minuteman Press International Area Manager for Perth, Western Australia. He adds, They are growing their business tremendously by marketing, networking, and adding new customers each week on a regular basis.

For more information on Diana and John Sims Minuteman Press marketing, design and printing franchise, visit http://midland.minutemanpress.com.au.

About Minuteman Press

Serving the business community for over 40 years, Minuteman Press customer service driven business model provides digital print, design and promotional products and services to businesses from concept review through to completion. Today we are much more than just print; we can provide anything you can put a name, image or logo on! Our new slogan  We Design, Print & Promote YOU!  indicates the wide variety of products and services we offer that go beyond printing. For more information about our products and services or to find your local Minuteman Press, visit www.minutemanpress.com.

About Minuteman Press International

Minuteman Press International is a number one rated business service franchise that offers world class training and unparalleled ongoing local support. Started in 1973 by Roy Titus and his son Bob, Minuteman Press began franchising in 1975 and has grown to over 930 locations worldwide including the U.S., Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Minuteman Press has been rated #1 in category 24 times by Entrepreneur and 12 times in a row, including 2016. Prior experience is not necessary to own and operate a successful Minuteman Press franchise. Learn more about Minuteman Press franchise opportunities at www.minutemanpressfranchise.com.

SOURCE Minuteman Press International

Media Contact:

Chris Biscuiti

(632)249-1379

cbiscuiti@mpihq.com

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RadioShack Announces Dene Rogers Joining as President and CEO

The Neighborhood Electronics Convenience Store Continues Positive Momentum Under New Ownership

April 26, 2016 // Franchising.com // Fort Worth, Texas  RadioShack, the neighborhood electronics convenience store, today announces that Mr. Dene Rogers will join the company as President and CEO on May 9, 2016. Mr. Rogers brings to RadioShack a wealth of experience in the retail space. He has previously served as CEO of Target Australia and CEO of Sears Canada, which he led to become Canadas largest and most profitable online retailer. At RadioShack, Mr. Rogers will focus on positioning RadioShacks unique omni-channel platform for long-term growth. Mr. Rogers will also serve on RadioShacks board of directors.

Mr. Robert Lavan, Chairman of RadioShack, said Dene Rogers has a long and consistent record of business success. We are thrilled to have him join the RadioShack team. Dene shares our commitment to RadioShacks legacy as the nations leading neighborhood electronics convenience store and has an impressive vision for how to expand the business into other segments of the market across a variety of platforms.

RadioShack is a storied brand known for its customer focus, its unique place in the community, and its top-notch selection of products. I am privileged to lead the team who is working to improve RadioShacks existing operations and expand its online presence, said Dene Rogers. Together, we will re-invent RadioShacks business model to create a dynamic growth company.

The RadioShack brand was acquired by General Wireless last spring, and since then its leadership has focused on reinvigorating the electronics retailer through new partnerships, programs, and product offerings. In the past year, RadioShack has re-launched Radioshack.com as a premier destination for creators and DIY enthusiasts everywhere, launched the NCREDIBLE brand and the popular Ncredible 1 headphones with Chief Creative Officer Nick Cannon, and formed an exclusive partnership with Sprint to create stores-within-a-store in 1,400 of the more than 1,700 RadioShack stores across the country.

RadioShack remains the nations Youve Got Questions, Weve Got Answers store with dedicated associates who provide informed recommendations, answer questions and help shoppers find exactly the products they are seeking.

For more information on RadioShack, visit your neighborhood RadioShack store or shop online at www.RadioShack.com.

About RadioShack

RadioShack, the neighborhood electronics convenience store, is a leading national retailer of innovative personal and home technology products and services, and power supply needs. Founded in 1921, RadioShack is owned today by General Wireless, Inc., which acquired the storied brand in March 2015. The new RadioShack has over 1,700 company-owned stores, including 1,400 Sprint Stores at RadioShack, and nearly 500 independent dealers located nationwide. Instagram: @radioshack | Twitter: @radioshack | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RadioShack.

SOURCE RadioShack

Contact:

John Weiss

The SPEAKEASY Agency

John@thespeakeasy.agency

(646) 650-3518

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Starwood Continues Aggressive Expansion in Latin America with the Signing of Two Leading-Edge Properties in Lima

aloft Lima Miraflores and aloft Lima Costa Verde will Bring an Innovative Style and Vibrant Social Scene to Perus Buzzing Capital

STAMFORD, Conn. - April 26, 2016 - (BUSINESS WIRE) - Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:HOT) today announced that its innovative aloft brand will soon debut in Peru, with two new properties in the countrys buzzing capital. Set to open in 2018, aloft Lima Miraflores and aloft Lima Costa Verde will bring tech-forward innovation, modern style and a vibrant social scene to Miraflores, the citys most important sector. Both hotels are owned by and managed by Libertador, one the leading hotel groups in Peru. Grupo Libertador also owns and manages three Starwood hotels under The Luxury Collection brand in Cusco, Urubamba and Paracas and The Westin Lima Hotel & Convention Center.

Latin America continues to be a key priority for the aloft brand, and we look forward to expanding our presence to Lima, one of South Americas most sought out destinations, said Brian McGuinness, Senior Vice President, Specialty Select Brands for Starwood. With more than 100 hotels globally and a bullish pipeline, aloft continues to debut in some of the worlds most dynamic destinations.

Since its launch in Latin America with the opening of aloft Bogota Airport in December 2011, the aloft brand has had a great deal of success propelled by its leading-edge design, tech-forward mindset and buzzing social scene. Now, it is set to more than double its footprint in Latin America, with six hotels in operation, including aloft Asuncion that opened its doors this month, and six more properties in the pipeline.

As the first aloft hotels in Peru, aloft Lima Miraflores and aloft Lima Costa Verde will bring the brands unique energy and style to this eclectic city. The hotels are strategically located in distinct areas of Miraflores, designed to serve the increasing number of hyper-connected global business and leisure travelers who visit the buzzing capital.

Miraflores is a commercial district with a growing tourist demand. The two aloft hotelsboth in unbeatable locations in the city are an excellent complement to our existing Westin Lima Hotel & Convention Center located in San Isidro, said Jorge Melero, CEO of Libertador Hotels, Resorts & Spas.

Oceanfront aloft Lima Costa Verde will feature 160 loft-like guest rooms and an enviable location on the boardwalk of Miraflores, making it ideal for leisure and business travellers alike. aloft Lima Miraflores, located in the heart of Miraflores, is part of a multi-use development complex that will have shops and dining. The hotel will have 164 loft-like guest rooms and more than 5,000 square feet of space for meetings and events.

Both properties will feature alofts bold and stylish design in guestrooms and public spaces as well as tech-forward features such as SPG Keyless entry and fast and free Wi-Fi. They will also provide guests with programming that is unique to the aloft brand, including access to local emerging artists and some of the hottest bands with Live At aloft Hotels, and signature cocktails and light bites the WXYZ bar. Dining options will include Re:fuelSM by aloft, a cafe where guests can grab breakfast and lunch while on the go. They will also feature alofts signature Re:chargeSM fitness center and a Splash pool to unwind and relax.

With the recently opened aloft Asuncion and more than six hotels set to open in the next three years, aloft is on track to more than double its footprint in Latin America, said Victor Vazquez, Vice President of Latin America Development, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. aloft has been a key driver of our growth in the region, and continues to gain momentum as developers, investors and guests recognize its differentiated approach.

alofts innovative initiatives set it apart from the competition. With the launch of SPG Keyless - an evolution of alofts Smart Check-In and the hospitality industrys first mobile, keyless entry system - guests have the ability to use their smart phone as a key. The revolutionary technology is currently available at all aloft, Element and W Hotels Worldwide globally. Additionally, every aloft hotel around the world offers live, free access to local emerging artists and some of the hottest bands with Live At aloft Hotels programming at the W XYZ bars.

aloft is Starwoods fastest growing brand with 100 hotels in 16 countries now open and the companys second largest pipeline in hotels. Fueled by accelerating demand in dynamic markets worldwide, aloft continues to enter new markets - including recent openings in Munich and Stuttgart, Germany - and is on track to double its footprint in Latin America in less than two years.

Lets get social. Follow @aloftHotels on Twitter, check us out on Instagram @aloftHotels, or head to Facebook.com/aloftHotels.

About aloft Hotels

With 100 hotels open now and coming soon in 15 countries around the world, Starwoods (NYSE:HOT) aloft brand delivers a fresh approach to the traditional staid hotel landscape. For todays (and tomorrows) connected, curious and communal evolving global traveler, the aloft brand offers a tech-forward, vibrant experience and a modern style that is different by design. For more information, please visit www.alofthotels.com/experience.

About Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world with nearly 1,300 properties in some 100 countries and over 180,000 employees at its owned and managed properties. Starwood is a fully integrated owner, operator and franchisor of hotels, resorts and residences under the renowned brands: St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, W, Westin, Le Meridien, Sheraton, Tribute Portfolio, Four Points by Sheraton, aloft, Element, along with an expanded partnership with Design Hotels. The Company also boasts one of the industrys leading loyalty programs, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG). Visit www.starwoodhotels.com for more information and stay connected @starwoodbuzz on Twitter and Instagram and facebook.com/Starwood.

About Libertador Hotels, Resorts & Spas

With hotels in Perus most attractive destinations, like Cusco, Lake Titicaca, Paracas, Arequipa, Lima and Trujillo, the Peruvian hotel group is preparing to celebrate its 40th anniversary in business with eight properties now in its portfolio which consists of The Westin Lima Hotel & Convention Center in Lima; Tambo del Inka, a Luxury Collection Resort & Spa, in the Sacred Valley; Hotel Paracas, a Luxury Collection Resort, south from Lima; Palacio del Inka, a Luxury Collection Hotel in Cusco, Libertador Lima, Libertador Arequipa, Libertador Lake Titicaca in Puno, and Libertador Trujillo.

For more information, please visit www.libertador.com.pe.

SOURCE Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc.

Media Contact:

Ashley Chapman

Global Public Relations, aloft, Element & Four Points

(212) 380-4015

ashley.chapman@starwoodhotels.com

###

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Wyndham Worldwide Reports First Quarter 2016 Results

Increases Full Year EPS Guidance

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - April 26, 2016 // PRNewswire // - Wyndham Worldwide Corporation (NYSE:WYN) today announced results for the three months ended March 31, 2016.

Highlights:

First quarter adjusted diluted earnings per share (EPS) was $1.12, an increase of 9% from $1.03 in the first quarter of 2015. Reported diluted

EPS was $0.84, compared with $1.00 in the first quarter of 2015.

First quarter 2016 adjusted EBITDA increased 4%, or 6% on a currency neutral basis and excluding acquisitions compared with the first quarter of 2015.

The Company repurchased 2.5 million shares of its common stock for $175 million during the quarter.

"We're off to a good start this year," said Stephen P. Holmes, chairman and CEO. "We continue to execute and innovate across our businesses to drive growth, profitability and shareholder value. Our businesses are well positioned for long term growth and they are resilient, regardless of economic and industry cycle dynamics. Of course, disciplined capital allocation continues to be a hallmark and commitment of our company."

First Quarter 2016 Operating Results

First quarter revenues were $1.3 billion, an increase of 3% from the prior year period.

First quarter adjusted EBITDA was $291 million, compared with $279 million in the prior year period, an increase of 4%. Year-over-year adjusted EBITDA comparisons were adversely affected by foreign currency effects of $6 million in 2016. On a currency-neutral basis and excluding acquisitions, adjusted EBITDA increased 6%.

Adjusted net income was $127 million, or $1.12 per diluted share, compared with $126 million, or $1.03 per diluted share for the same period in 2015. Adjusted net income and earnings per share benefited from solid operating results, but were reduced by higher interest expense and higher depreciation and amortization. EPS also benefited from the Company's share repurchase program.

Reported net income for the first quarter of 2016 was $96 million, or $0.84 per diluted share, compared with $122 million, or $1.00per diluted share, for the first quarter of 2015. Reported net income in both periods reflects several items excluded from adjusted net income. The net result of these items unfavorably impacted first quarter 2016 net income by $31 million and unfavorably impacted first quarter 2015 net income by $4 million. Full reconciliations of adjusted net income to GAAP results appear in Table 8 of this press release.

Free cash flow was $218 million for the three months ended March 31, 2016, compared with $197 million for the same period in 2015. The increase reflects solid operating results and the timing of capital expenditures, partially offset by a $24 millionunfavorable impact from the devaluation of the Venezuelan currency. For the three months ended March 31, 2016, net cash provided by operating activities was $261 million, compared with $253 million in the prior year period. The Company defines free cash flow as net cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures.

First Quarter 2016 Business Unit Results

Hotel Group

Revenues were $295 million in the first quarter of 2016, a 1% increase compared with the first quarter 2015. Despite weaker RevPAR, adjusted EBITDA grew 6% to $84 million reflecting growth in our Wyndham Rewards credit card program, strong performance at our owned hotels and expense management.

First quarter domestic RevPAR was flat. In constant currency, total system-wide RevPAR declined 1.6% compared with the first quarter of 2015, which reflects continued weakness in domestic and Canadian oil markets and higher unit growth in lower RevPAR countries such as China.

As of March 31, 2016, the Company's hotel system consisted of approximately 7,830 properties and approximately 679,100 rooms, a 1.8% net room increase compared with the first quarter of 2015. The development pipeline included over 1,000 hotels and over 124,000 rooms, of which 61% were international and 65% were new construction.

Destination Network (formerly Vacation Exchange and Rentals)

Revenues were $385 million in the first quarter of 2016, a 4% increase compared with the first quarter of 2015. In constant currency and excluding acquisitions, revenues increased 5%.

Exchange revenues were $182 million, down 2% compared with the first quarter of 2015. In constant currency, exchange revenues and exchange revenue per member were flat, as was the average number of members.

Vacation rental revenues were $183 million, a 10% increase compared with the first quarter of 2015. In constant currency and excluding the impact of acquisitions, vacation rental revenues were up 9%, reflecting a 7.0% increase in transaction volume and a 2.3% increase in average net price per vacation rental.

Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2016 was $105 million, a 1% increase compared with the first quarter of 2015. On a currency-neutral basis and excluding the impact of acquisitions, adjusted EBITDA increased 3% compared with the prior year period.

Vacation Ownership

Revenues were $641 million in the first quarter of 2016, a 4% increase over the first quarter of 2015.

Gross VOI sales were $428 million in the first quarter of 2016, an increase of 10% compared with the first quarter of 2015. Volume per guest (VPG) for the quarter increased 3.8% in constant currency and tour flow increased 6.5%.

EBITDA for the first quarter of 2016 was $136 million, an increase of 5% compared with the first quarter of 2015, reflecting higher sales volume and stronger resort management and consumer finance results, partially offset by an increase in the provision for loan losses.

Other Items

The Company repurchased 2.5 million shares of common stock for $175 million during the first quarter of 2016. From April 1 through April 25, 2016, the Company repurchased an additional 0.6 million shares for $45 million.

Reported net interest expense in the first quarter of 2016 was $31 million, compared with $23 million in the first quarter of 2015, reflecting the

$350 million 5.10% bond issued in September 2015 and the absence of a fixed-to-floating interest rate swap terminated in 2015.

Depreciation and amortization in the first quarter of 2016 was $62 million, compared with $56 million in the first quarter of 2015, reflecting new projects that were placed into service.

Balance Sheet Information as March 31, 2016:

Cash and cash equivalents of $318 million, compared with $171 million at December 31, 2015

Vacation ownership contract receivables, net, of $2.7 billion, unchanged from December 31, 2015

Vacation ownership and other inventory of $1.3 billion, unchanged from December 31, 2015

Securitized vacation ownership debt of $2.1 billion, unchanged from December 31, 2015

Long-term debt of $3.3 billion, compared with $3.1 billion at December 31, 2015. The remaining borrowing capacity on the revolving credit facility, net of commercial paper borrowings, was $1.1 billion as of March 31, 2016, compared with $1.4 billion at December 31, 2015.

A schedule of debt is included in Table 5 of this press release.

Outlook

Note to Editors: The guidance excludes possible future share repurchases, while analysts' estimates often include share repurchases. This results in discrepancies between Company guidance and database consensus forecasts.

For the full year 2016, the Company reiterates the following guidance:

Revenues of approximately $5.800 - $5.950 billion.

Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $1.375 - $1.400 billion.

For the full year 2016, the Company updates the following guidance:

Adjusted diluted EPS of approximately $5.61 - $5.75 based on a diluted share count of 113 million, up from $5.46 - $5.60 based on a diluted share count of 116 million.

The Company will post guidance information on its website following the conference call.

Conference Call Information

Wyndham Worldwide Corporation will hold a conference call with investors to discuss the Company's results, outlook and guidance on Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at 8:30 a.m. ET. Listeners can access the webcast live through the company's website athttp://www.wyndhamworldwide.com/investors/. The conference call may also be accessed by dialing 877-876-9177 and providing the pass code "WYNDHAM." Listeners are urged to call at least 10 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. An archive of this webcast will be available on the website for approximately 90 days beginning at 12:00pm ET on April 26, 2016. A telephone replay will be available for approximately 10 days beginning at 12:00pm ET on April 26, 2016 at 800-723-5154.

Presentation Of Financial Information

Financial information discussed in this press release includes non-GAAP measures, which include or exclude certain items. These non-GAAP measures differ from reported GAAP results and are intended to illustrate what management believes are relevant period-over-period comparisons and are helpful to investors as an additional tool for further understanding and assessing the Company's ongoing core operating performance. Exclusion of items in our non-GAAP presentation should not be considered an inference that these items are unusual, infrequent or non-recurring. A reconciliation of reported GAAP results to the comparable non-GAAP information appears in the financial tables section of the press release. It is not practicable to provide a reconciliation of forecasted adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS to the most directly comparable GAAP measures because certain items cannot be reasonably estimated or predicted at this time. Any such items could be significant to the Company's reported results.

About Wyndham Worldwide

Wyndham Worldwide (NYSE: WYN) is one of the largest global hospitality companies, providing travelers with access to a collection of trusted hospitality brands in hotels, vacation ownership, and unique accommodations including vacation exchange, holiday parks, and managed home rentals. With a collective inventory of more than 120,000 places to stay across 100 countries on six continents, Wyndham Worldwide and its 38,000 associates welcomes people to experience travel the way they want. This is enhanced by Wyndham Rewards, the Company's re-imagined guest loyalty program across its businesses, which is making it simpler for members to earn more rewards and redeem their points faster. For more information, please visitwww.wyndhamworldwide.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, conveying management's expectations as to the future based on plans, estimates and projections at the time the Company makes the statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release include statements related to the Company's revenues, earnings, cash flow and related financial and operating measures.

You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include general economic conditions, the performance of the financial and credit markets, the economic environment for the hospitality industry, the impact of war, terrorist activity or political strife, operating risks associated with the hotel, vacation exchange and rentals and vacation ownership businesses, as well as those described in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, filed with the SEC onFebruary 12, 2016. Except for the Company's ongoing obligations to disclose material information under the federal securities laws, it undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to any forward-looking statements, to report events or to report the occurrence of unanticipated events.

For Full Spreadsheet reports, please go to: [http://investor.wyndhamworldwide.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=200690&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2161315].

SOURCE Wyndham Worldwide Corporation

Investor and Media Contact:

Margo C. Happer

Senior Vice President

Investor Relations

Wyndham Worldwide Corporation

(973) 753-6472

margo.happer@wyn.com

Barry Goldschmidt

Vice President

Investor Relations

Wyndham Worldwide Corporation

(973) 753-7703

barry.goldschmidt@wyn.com

###

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RICHMOND  Republican leaders of the Virginia General Assembly called on Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe to convene a special legislative session to discuss the governor's recent restoration of voting and other civil rights to more than 200,000 convicted felons.

House Speaker William J. Howell and Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. sent a letter to McAuliffe on Tuesday saying the governor's actions last week was a "matter of great consequence" that deserves a thorough debate.

"The people, through their elected representatives, deserve the opportunity to have their voices heard on this matter," the letter said.

McAuliffe rebuffed the request, saying a few hours after the letter was made public that there was no need for a special session. The governor has cast his move to restore voting rights as an overdue remedy to Virginia's lengthy history of suppressing the black vote.

"After decades of troubling policies intentionally erected to limit Virginians' voting rights, Gov. McAuliffe used his constitutional authority to break those barriers down," McAuliffe's spokesman, Brian Coy, said in a statement.

The governor's order enables every Virginia felon to vote, run for public office, serve on a jury and become a notary public if they have completed their sentence and finished any supervised release, parole or probation requirements as of April 22. The administration estimates this population to include about 206,000 people.

Thereafter, the governor will act month by month to restore the rights of felons who complete all these requirements.

McAuliffe is limited to a single term and a Republican successor could stop granting rights restoration in the future. Three top potential contenders for the GOP 2017 gubernatorial nominee  former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie and U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman  have all criticized McAuliffe's order.

Republicans have suggested McAuliffe's move was political, and designed to help boost Democrats in coming elections. McAuliffe is close friends with Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, but he has denied that politics played a role in his decision.

State GOP leaders have a limited ability to call a special session. Under the Virginia Constitution, the governor has the ability to call a special session on his own. He must call one if two-thirds of the lawmakers in each chamber ask him to, but Republicans would need the sizeable support of Democrats in the Senate to reach a two-thirds majority there.

Republican leaders are also considering a potential legal challenge to McAuliffe's order, according to Howell's spokesman, Matthew Moran. The governor has said he feels confident that his actions were legal and would survive any attempt to undo them in court.
The teacher crisis is real, and were not going to work our way out of it simply by making it easier to hire teachers.
Off Grid Contracting Announces Partnership with Prominent Solar Panel Franchise

Off Grid Contracting Announces Partnership with Prominent Solar Panel Franchise. The partnership will bring affordable top quality wind power, solar panel and renewable energy products available to remote regions of Alaska

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Wind and Solar Panel Energy, Off Grid Contracting Alaska and Franchise, Off Grid Contracting have announced a strategic partnership going forward.

Full details on the partnership can be viewed here: http://www.offgridcontractingalaska.com/

The partnership will encompass Expansion of off grid renewable energy application to far reaches of Alaska which will have the benefit of Unprecedented growth opportunity in a market with a tremendous need for off grid construction services..

In the near future, customers of both companies can expect proven products for power production to include wind turbines and solar panels at great prices. ,Superior logistics will make available products available to consumer not readily available currently in Alaska and Proven dependable service by a company with a track record in the field of off grid construction..

Off Grid Contracting is the result of a desire to provide the Homesteading and Prepping community the logistical construction services for Off Grid Living at an affordable cost worldwide. In May of 2015 OFF GRID CONTRACTING officially became an entity in the construction community founded by Lucas and Nikki Cameron in White Pine, Tennessee servicing the USA and abroad. In April 2016 William and Andzelika Greene joined the construction family and Off Grid Contracting Alaska has began construction which will be a satellite location specifically catering to the state of Alaska off grid communities needs and will be owned and managed by William and Andzelika Greene. What makes Off Grid Contracting a one stop source for off grid construction is having assembled a great network to provide almost every facet of development for independent living.

As part of a long-term strategy, the two companies hope to To enhance the quality of life in rural regions by providing superior equipment providing energy to meet consumer needs . When asked about the new joint venture, Lucas Cameron from Off Grid Contracting Alaska said, Off Grid construction is honored to have William Greene aboard at off grid contracting..

OTG Alaska is excited to have the opportunity to apply the training and knowledge to the expansion of off grid contracting and look forward to serve the Alaskan community. Off Grid Contracting is also excited about the venture, saying William Greene .

Current and future customers are invited to learn more about the joint venture and how they will benefit by visiting the website at

http://www.offgridcontractingalaska.com/

About Off Grid Contracting Alaska and Off Grid Contracting

Off Grid Contracting Alaska was founded in 2016 and serves the Off grid construction solar power industry. Off Grid Contracting was founded in 2015 and serves the Off grid construction industry.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.offgridcontractingalaska.com/

Contact Info:

Name: William Greene

Email: 7trumpetsprepper@gmail.com

Organization: Off Grid Contracting Alaska



Release ID: 112050

For more information visit r



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Armstrong & Surin Expands Personal Injury Services

Armstrong & Surin expands its personal injury legal services to accommodate the needs of those injured in automobile, motorcycle, boating, and trucking accidents.

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As the warm weather season begins, Armstrong & Surin, Attorneys at Law, has announced an expansion of its personal injury legal services. The firm has been expanding these services to accommodate the needs of those injured in automobile, motorcycle, boating, and trucking accidents. Medical malpractice and product defect representation is under the umbrella of these expert services available to clients.

"Personal injuries are commonly triggered by someone else's negligence," states Armstrong & Surin attorney, Timothy Gatza. "If the injury is not their fault, the only option may be to pursue who is. A client or loved one can depend on us as one of the top personal injury attorneys in Ottawa, Illinois, and LaSalle County. Free consultations are available to all."

A personal injury attorney reviews all the information regarding the case. Medical bills, police reports, and eyewitness accounts all come into play. The attorney will review all of these and the client's claims. If the case goes to trial, the attorney can present the evidence and even bring the appropriate parties to testify. "From car accidents to slip and falls, assault, and wrongful death, the legal process is complex, but we can help navigate the steps and help one successfully obtain the compensation they deserve," says Gatza.

In addition, the firm specializes in divorce law, bankruptcy, real estate transactions, and criminal law. It was established in 1980 and incorporates the expertise of attorney William T. Surin, the firm's principal attorney. He specializes in family, real estate, personal injury, and worker's compensation law, and attended Chicago Kent College of Law. Attorney Timothy Gatza attended Michigan State University College of Law on a full merit scholarship and takes a personalized approach to legal practice.

For more information on Armstrong & Surin, and expanded personal injury legal services, go to http://www.armstrongsurin.com/attorney-services/.

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For more information about us, please visit http://www.armstrongsurin.com

Contact Info:

Name: Timothy Gatza

Organization: Armstrong & Surin

Phone: 815 212 4321

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/armstrong-surin-expands-personal-injury-services/112245

Release ID: 112245

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Kenneth Nugent Attorney Announces New Georgia Law Tuition Scholarship

The Kenneth Nugent law firm in Georgia has announced a new law scholarship for six students to help with the cost of financing their studies. The awards will go towards school fees to help the winners achieve their dream of working in law professionally.

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A legal attorney in Georgia has announced the launch of six new legal scholarships to help students wanting to break into the law industry. Ken Nugent understands the value of an education, and recognizes that there are often financial hurdles that people face when pursuing a higher education. Because of this, he is offering $10,000 in legal scholarships for qualified applicants. Each semester will have 3 awards: 1- $3000.00 2- $1,000 scholarships for a total of $10,000 per year.

More information can be found on the Attorney Ken Nugent website at: http://attorneykennugent.com/legal-scholarship/ind....

Kenneth S Nugent, PC is a personal injury law firm that has been practicing in Georgia for over twenty five years, with a dedicated team of attorneys and staff who are committed to helping victims and their families in their quest for justice. There is a video available on the site providing more information on the legal scholarship on offer, which explains how the money can help students to achieve their dreams by alleviating some of the financial pressure students have to deal with during their time at college.

In order to be eligible for the scholarship, the applicant must be a resident of the USA, currently a full-time law student, or have proof of acceptance to an accredited US law school. If they have not yet received their paperwork, they can still apply for the scholarship, but will not be able to receive the scholarship until paperwork has been submitted. Applicants also need to have a GPA of 3.0 or higher.

The deadline for applying is 30 June, 2016, with the six law scholarships being awarded to the six applicants who are voted by the selection committee as best fitting of the scholarship criteria. The money has to be spent on school tuition and school related expenses, and will be paid to the student's college or university. Entries can be submitted online, with only one available per student. The winner will then be posted on the Ken Nugent website.

Anyone with questions about the scholarship can find more details on the FAQ section of the site, or contact the law firm at Scholarship@attorneykennugent.com.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.attorneykennugent.com/legal-scholarship/index.php

Contact Info:

Name: Tim Derrickson

Organization: Kenneth S. Nugent, P.C.

Address: 4227 Pleasant Hill Rd. Building 11, Suite 300 Duluth, GA 30096

Phone: 1-770-364-4875

Release ID: 112230

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Peru Ancient Mystery Tour Inca Sites & Vitrified Stones New Site Launched

A new travel site has launched advertising mystery tours around Peru, where people can visit ancient Inca sites and learn all about them. It also features social and fair-trade projects, and runs from 19 October - 11 November.

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A new site has launched specializing in ancient mystery tours in Peru, where visitors can discover the secrets of one of the most historically rich countries in the world. Ancient Mysteries Explained provides a host of information on ancient ruins, and will run a tour around the many interesting sites from 19 October - 11 November including the New World Wonder "Machu Picchu". The tour will include also visits to social and fair-trade projects.

More information can be found on the official website at: http://ancient-mysteries-explained.com/perutour2016.html

The site explains the background of the Incas ruins. The Inca's were a great civilisation in pre-Columbian America, which reached part of South America, including all of Peru, part of Ecuador, Bolivia, and even parts of Argentina, Chile and Columbia. On the website it is explained how their structures were built on even older foundations, from time periods much older than Inca time.

The new website details the unique features of the tour including evidence of antiquity in the sites beyond what official science will admit. Especially in the city Cusco, the former Inca capital, local expert Jesus Gamarra will explain his interesting theories. He will show the participants of the tour all the mysterious details of the sites and how that all fits within the ideas of his father, late Alfredo Gamarra. Jesus Gamarra is featured in Graham Hancock's new book "Magicians of the Gods".

The famous author was guided by Gamarra during his stay in Peru and both agree on many points, especially on the sites being much older than Inca time and having much in common with other ancient sites around the world.

The website also elaborates on the key Inca sites and their background information, so people can research the area before embarking on their journey. There are photos to show just how vast some of the stonework is, and how strange forms are captured in the rocks.

The 21 day guided tour will take people to the most exciting destinations in Peru, including Peru's capital city, Lima, the wildlife of the Ballestas Islands, the mysterious Nazca lines, the Colca Canyon and the Condor Valley. The tour includes internal flights from Cusco to Lima and transfers between cities, so participants are assured that all aspects of the journey are covered.

The guided tour will be led by Jan Peter de Jong, an ancient mysteries specialist who studied at the Agricultural University of Wageningen and has lived in Peru for thirteen years. He made 2 documentaries together with Jesus Gamarra. His assistant, John de Jong, will be on hand as well. John is an expert in eco- tourism, running his own bed and breakfast in a beautiful region of Sweden. Combined they speak English, Spanish, Dutch and Swedish. A full itinerary is available on the website, so interested parties can check out exactly what the tour entails and plan their trip accordingly.

Anyone wishing to contact Ancient Mysteries Explained can do so using the form provided on the site.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.ancient-mysteries-explained.com/perutour2016.html

Contact Info:

Name: Jan Peter de Jong

Organization: Ancient Mysteries Explained

Address: Kruizemunt 24, 8252BM, Dronten, the Netherlands

Phone: +31648197118

Release ID: 112149

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Harmony Caregiving Introduces Full Range Of Senior Care Services For Families

Their services include companionship, personal care, healthy meal preparation, appointment accompaniment, and a host of other things that seniors may need, reports http://harmonycaregiving.com/.

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Harmony Caregiving Inc., Edmonton's wholehearted senior home care provider, is introducing their full range of services for families who are in need of quality care for their loved one. These services cover just about anything that a senior may need, including house cleaning, personal care, companionship, dementia care, meal preparation and medical appointment accompaniment. Those who would like to learn more or see all of the services that Harmony Caregiving offers can visit http://harmonycaregiving.com/.

Sherry Gibson-Walters, President of Harmony Caregiving Inc. and a Certified Professional Consultant on Aging, stated "Anyone who is acting as a caregiver for a parent or other elderly relative would likely understand how difficult it can be to balance the expectations of work, family life, and aging parents or family members. Physically, mentally, and emotionally, it can be an exhausting experience. Caregivers often feel guilty, because they feel obligated to be the "good caregiver" and it is hard to reconcile that feeling with how draining the experience is. That, in turn, often leads to resentment and or caregiver burnout."

As Gibson-Walters goes on to say, "These feelings are more common than one may think, and it's important to acknowledge them. It is also important to recognize that there are ways to share the burden. Respite care, also known as family caregiver relief, consists of a care companion who can visit a home to provide care and support for an elderly relative. Respite care gives the loved ones a chance to leave the house and spend some time on their own to recuperate and relax. Too often, caregivers find it hard to get time for themselves, and if they do take that time, it is often followed by feelings of guilt. However, obtaining this respite care for self-care from a caregiving company is important for the caregiver's mental and physical health."

Harmony Caregiving's mission is to bring harmony into the home and hearts of their families and clients. Their skilled and caring team will go above and beyond for clients, working with them to determine their health and wellness goals. Harmony Caregiving offers well-rounded services, from task-oriented assistance such as cleaning, healthy meal preparation and medication reminders to activities that foster physical and emotional well-being such as companionship and personal home care services. The Harmony Caregiving team strives to give families the assistance they need as they help their loved ones navigate the senior stage of life.

At Harmony Caregiving, we believe that when a care team works together, the commitment can uplift the spirits of a senior who may be living in isolation, and will enhance their overall wellbeing and quality of life.

About Harmony Caregiving Inc.:

Edmonton's One-Stop Senior Care provider connects your loved one to a Licensed Health Care Aide in the comfort of their home or in a health care facility. Harmony Caregiving works with families to design a plan consisting of companionship, healthy meal preparation, medication reminders, senior home care, medical appointment accompaniment, bath assists, daily exercise and fun outings.

For more information about us, please visit http://harmonycaregiving.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Sherry Gibson-Walters

Organization: Harmony Caregiving Inc.

Address: 9856 89 Ave NW Edmonton, AB T6E 2S4, Canada

Phone: 1 (780) 328-3917

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/harmony-caregiving-introduces-full-range-of-senior-care-services-for-families/112333

Release ID: 112333

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MuttManners.com Launches a Dog Training Awareness Campaign

Well-trained dogs are more than pets, as they become a member of the family and one that is well received wherever they go, announces Best Friend's Dog Training of Northern Virginia

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When dogs undergo training, they tend to be happier simply because fewer restrictions are placed on them. In addition, trained dogs tend to receive more attention from family and friends, as humans know they can be counted on to behave. Sadly, according to http://www.example-infographics.com/dog-training-statistics/, more than half of all dog owners fail to take their pet to a dog trainer virginia, and this hurts both the dog and the human. Best Friend's Dog Training of Northern Virginia (www.muttmanners.com) offers the training humans and dogs need to have a long, happy life together.

"Pet owners who turn to our dog trainer arlington find the program is customized to meet the needs of their canine. From basic obedience to behavioral issues, we can help, and we offer in-home private lessons. Every dog needs training to truly become a member of the family, and we ensure this is the training they obtain," Frank Bonomo, founder of Best Friend's Dog Training of Northern Virginia, explains.

Training is an ongoing process, yet many owners fail to recognize this. They take their puppy in for training, believing this is all that is needed for a well behaved animal. Sadly, dogs may develop issues as they age or they may struggle from day one, failing to grasp certain behaviors that are desired from the pet owner.

"When an owner chooses to work with Best Friend's Dog Training, they find we offer one price for the life of your dog packages. Owners can bring their pets in for refresher lessons when needed or new issues arise. Our team of trainers remains available to ensure the dog is happy and well mannered at all times," Bonomo continues.

Some dogs appear to be untrainable, yet this truly isn't the case. Regardless if they are fearful or aggressive, they can learn manners and how to behave around humans. It may be the dog barks excessively or they may suffer from separation anxiety. Inappropriate elimination remains a problem with some dogs as they mature, and other canines tend to bite strangers, irrespective of the training and discipline they have received. Training addresses these and numerous other issues, based on the unique needs of the owner and the dog.

"Our mutt manners training can be of benefit to any animal. In fact, we have been contacted by dog owners and other trainers when a dog has been labeled untrainable. We've earned a reputation of being able to work with, train and rehabilitate animals that other trainers won't work with. Contact us today for free evaluations, private lessons, in home training, home based boarding and more," Bonomo declares.

About Best Friend's Dog Training of Northern Virginia:

Founded in 1999 by Frank Bonomo, Best Friend's Dog Training (BFDT) employs only those trainers who are willing and trained to understand, train and teach all major methods of dog training, including leash based, clicker and modern remote collar training. The company adapts and changes their training based on the most up to date information and owners find they receive the best, most personalized training currently available. Over the years, BFDT has trained more than 12,500 canines for families, law enforcement, hunting, therapy and more and the trainers work with those dogs other companies have been unable to handle.

For more information about us, please visit http://muttmanners.com/arlington-dog-training/

Contact Info:

Name: Frank Bonomo

Organization: Best Friend's Dog Training of Northern Virginia

Phone: (571) 485-9292

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/muttmanners-com-launches-a-dog-training-awareness-campaign/112331

Release ID: 112331

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Third Annual Brain Chase Treasure Hunt Announced for Summer 2016

Students Can Go On A Six-Week Global Expedition In Search Of A Real-Life Buried Treasure And $10,000 Scholarship

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Brain Chase Productions, the online education company specializing in global treasure hunts for kids, is announcing their third annual summer Brain Chase. Beginning June 20, 2016, students around the world in grades 2-8 can embark on an online learning adventure in search of the Mask of Tomoe Gozen, a gold-plated, mechanical trophy named after a female samurai warrior. The first participant to pinpoint the location of the lost mask within a two-mile radius will receive an all-expenses paid trip to go unearth the real-life buried treasure that holds the key to a $10,000 scholarship!

Designed to combat the "summer slide," children who participate in the 6-week interactive Brain Chase will complete weekly online learning challenges through academic partners such as Khan Academy, Typing Club, Google Books and Rosetta Stone. Students can also choose elective challenges including Engineering with Leo Labs, Cooking with Edible Education, Yoga with YogaMeDo, Art with Thorpe Studios, Creative Writing, and Brain Chase Book Club. Upon the completion of each week of academic challenges, an original animated webisode with kid archaeologists from the Grayson Academy of Antiquities is unlocked that contains hidden clues to the location of the buried treasure. Previous Brain Chase winners were whisked away on real-life adventures to Spain and Japan to dig up their prizes.

"Brain Chase immerses students in an educational environment that is disguised by the exhilaration of a massive treasure hunt," said Allan Staker, CEO of Brain Chase Productions. "With this summer's new quest for the mask of the historically brave samurai, Tomoe Gozen, we continue to redirect screen time into positive, academic digital experiences that keep kids sharp all summer long."

In addition to the online electives, Brain Chase includes weekly Bonus Challenges, three different adventure tools in the mail, a completion certificate and patch, and weekly update emails to parents. Early-bird pricing is now available now through May 15, 2016 beginning at $69. To join the Mask of Tomoe Gozen Brain Chase adventure, please visit www.brainchase.com.

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ABOUT BRAIN CHASE

Brain Chase began as a simple conversation between two parents, Heather and Allan Staker, who sought out to design a program that would keep their own five children sharp over the summer. Knowing that most students lose about two months of hard-earned knowledge over the summer months, Heather and Allan launched the online program to the world in June 2014. With much success, Brain Chase became the motivational tool to help kids return to school in the fall fresh and confident. In addition to its direct-to-consumer product, Brain Chase partners with schools and community programs around the country to offer Brain Chase at group rates. Brain Chase now offers spring, summer and fall programs year round.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.brainchase.com

Contact Info:

Name: Brandy Shuman

Organization: Konnect Agency

Address: 888 South Figueroa Street, Suite 1000, Los Angeles, CA 90017

Phone: 2139888344

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/third-annual-brain-chase-treasure-hunt-announced-for-summer-2016/112239

Release ID: 112239

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Openwork has added two equity funds managed by Jupiter and Baillie Gifford to its investment proposition.

The new products, which will be offered to the networks 3,000 financial advisers next month, will mirror existing strategies run by the two asset managers.

This comes as Openwork looks to further expand Omnis, a range of multi-asset model portfolios launched in February 2014.

The Omnis European Equity fund will be run by Cedric de Fonclare, manager of the Jupiter European Special Situations fund.

The Omnis Asia Pacific Equity fund will be run by Iain Campbell, who manages the Baillie Gifford Developed Asia Pacific fund.

Other funds in the range include the recently added equity strategy managed by Neil Woodford, and offerings run by Schroders and Threadneedle.

Last year, Openwork announced a radical restructure of its distribution business in a bid to build on its profitability.

According to Openwork, the new funds will form the building blocks of a number of multi-asset model portfolios, which automatically rebalance every six months.

Mark Duckworth, chief executive at Openwork, said the network is always looking for ways to enhance the options offered to advisers and their clients.

Last month Openwork, which operates a restricted multi-panel distribution network, tripled the number of protection policies recommended to clients in 2015.

Colin Low, managing director of Kingsfleet Wealth, said the new offerings raise a number of questions to establish whether they would be a good deal for clients.

He questioned whether the mirrored fund would have the exact same underlying stocks, whether the cost of access if cheaper by going through the network, and queried whether an adviser would be forced to sell the funds if they decided to leave the network.

katherine.denham@ft.com
Brooks Macdonald Groups discretionary funds under management broke the 8bn mark at the end of last month, climbing 2.37 per cent from 7.82bn at the end of December.

The figure represents all the discretionary funds managed by the group across asset management, funds and international, with this growth put down to a combination of performance (minus 56m) and net new business (241m).

The groups property management business, Braemar Estates, had property assets under administration of 1.13bn, up from 1.12bn at the end of last year.

In terms of third party assets under administration, these are now in excess of 260m, up from 245m at 31 December 2015.

Analysis of discretionary fund flows over the quarter m Opening discretionary FUM (Dec 15) 7,822 Net new discretionary business 241 Acquisitions 0 Investment growth (56) Total FUM growth 185 Closing FUM (March 2016) 8,007 Organic growth (net of markets) 3.08% Total growth 2.37%

Chief executive Chris Macdonald explained after good progress in the first half of last year we have had a satisfactory third quarter, growing discretionary funds under management to more than 8bn for the first time in the firms history.

Net organic growth remained strong at over 3 per cent for the quarter, although our underweight positions in resources and UK fixed income caused client portfolios to lag the benchmark after a sustained period of outperformance.

The group recently rebranded, to better define that its six underlying businesses are part of the same group.
High-profile UK equity income managers unencumbered by their sectors dividend yield rules have backed their peers calls for change, a move which suggests the Investment Associations (IA) consultation will prompt an overhaul of its requirements.

As revealed by Investment Adviser last week, the IA has announced a four-week discussion on whether to change the need for UK Equity Income funds to yield 10 per cent more than the FTSE All-Share index over a rolling three-year period.

Eighteen funds have now been removed from the sector for failing to meet the requirements. Firms such as Invesco Perpetual, Schroders, and Rathbones, whose funds are among those to have exited, have welcomed the IAs review.

Artemis and Aviva Investors, whose UK income funds are in no danger of being ejected, have also backed a change of heart by the trade body.

The IA has proposed either preserving the status quo, lowering yield requirements, or doing away with them altogether in favour of greater disclosure over income generation.

Alan Gadd, head of product and distribution development at Artemis, whose 6.6bn Income fund is the second-largest in the sector, said the firm would support the best outcome for high-profile funds wanting to come back.

He said: The things that would be sensible to change point us towards option two. But this goes hand in hand with option three. With a spotlight on the sector, why would we not provide more information for what investors need?

Chris Murphy, manager of the 920m Aviva Investors UK Equity Income fund, called the review long overdue and similarly backed options two and three.

Our preference is for option two, he said. We would also support additional disclosure on the income aims of the fund.

Others are still considering their options ahead of the May 13 deadline.

Fidelity, whose 1bn Moneybuilder Income and 430m Enhanced Income funds sit in the sector, said it had held preliminary discussions but was still weighing up the options.

Liontrusts Stephen Bailey, co-manager of the 520m Macro Equity Income fund, took a more critical view, calling the consultation unedifying.

He said current market conditions, whereby a contingent of high-yielding mega caps have pushed up yields on the market as a whole, were not at fault for funds missing objectives.

The IA needs to be clear in explaining how [a] new threshold will be arrived at and probably more honest in flagging the arbitrariness of any yield target.

If these investors wanted a growth bias, they would presumably have selected a fund from the IAs UK All Companies sector.

Firms responding to the consultation will also provide additional food for thought for the IAs ongoing, separate review of its entire sector structure. The trade body launched the initiative last year to address the burgeoning Unclassified sector, but this has been pushed back further into 2016, with a complete sector classification overhaul still on the cards.

Henderson director of global equity income James Henderson, whose UK Equity Income & Growth fund was removed from the Income sector in 2014, backed the greater disclosure option and suggested the creation of a new sector.
Government policy initiatives will have a limited impact on encouraging people to save, an academic has said.

Professor Sharon Collard, the professor of personal finance capability at the True Potential Centre for the Public Understanding of Finance at the Open University Business School, said community initiatives could have more impact.

Speaking at a Westminster Business Forum conference in London today (26 April) she said: The short term policy environment chops and changes quite a lot.

What we need is something that transcends that to keep peoples motivation. It is about initiatives that are community-based or are in schools.

We need initiatives that are beyond politics and policy in order to keep savings in peoples minds.

Prof Collard pointed out that more than nine million UK households - making up more than 30 per cent of the total - have no savings at all.

This proportion has increased since 2007 to 2008, she said.

In recent years the government has introduced several products under the Isa banner to encourage saving.

These include the Help to Buy Isa, the Innovative Finance Isa and the Lifetime Isa.

Prof Collard admitted these products may have their flaws, such as helping those who already have money to save, but said they should be welcomed.

She said: For all these concerns these products signal that saving is important.

But government policy is not going to motivate people to save - it is about winning peoples hearts and minds.

We need to show people they can afford to save and show them it doesnt affect their standard of living.
The Pensions Regulator is looking at whether the owner of British Home Stores will have to plug holes in the collapsed retail chains pension fund.

Yesterday (25 April) the group officially went into administration, after 88 years of business, putting 11,000 jobs at risk.

It has been rumoured the regulator is considering whether Sir Philip Green, the former owner of BHS, should be made to put more funds into the retailers scheme to fill a pension deficit of half a billion pounds.

A spokesperson for The Pensions Regulator said: We can confirm that we are undertaking an investigation into the BHS pensions scheme to determine whether it would be appropriate to use our anti-avoidance powers.

Such cases are complex. There is a clear process that must be followed and this can sometimes take a considerable amount of time. We are unable to provide a running commentary on case investigations, or confirm the targets of our investigation.

Historically, The Pensions Regulator used its powers where the employer has become insolvent in the case brought by the administrators of 20 insolvent companies in the Lehman Brothers and Nortel groups.

Scott Gallacher, director at Leicester-based Rowley Turton, said while final salary schemes are generally the gold standard of pensions, they are not completely guaranteed and the collapse of BHS highlights some of the downsides of these schemes for both members and the business owners, or even former owners.

He said: Fortunately members benefit from protection via the Pension Protection Fund. The rules are somewhat complex, but retired members generally have 100 per cent of their pension protected whereas those under retirement age generally have 90 per cent protected. This protection can be lower for those who retired early, or had high pension benefits.

Owners, or former owners, of businesses with final salary schemes should realise that under the Pension Protection Fund they do not benefit from limited liability and may, like Sir Philip Green, find themselves asked to make up any shortfall even after they have sold the business on.

This underlines the need to exercise extreme caution and due diligence over pension arrangements when buying, or indeed selling, any business.

ruth.gillbe@ft.com
God of War 4 Release Date Soon With Remastered GoW 3 Ready For Launch?

The Remastered "God of War 3" was disclosed to be out on July 14, and now the focus of fans naturally shifted to when the "God of War 4" will hit the market. At this point, all the rumors suggested a late 2016 release date at the soonest possible time, although this could not be confirmed just yet.

In fact, Gama Sutra pointed to this big hiring call for developers to work on their Santa Monica Studio, which fans know is the birthplace of the "God of War" franchise. Those who are lucky enough to be hired for the project would find themselves being thrown into a cesspool of creativeness, which would prove beneficial if they do want to build a career as a game coder.

While it might not be prudent to infer that the big hire is most likely in connection to the "God of War" 4 release date, it would not be too much of a reach to make that conclusion either. For now, however, Sony is not talking, which would be the wise thing to do considering the announcement surrounding the Remastered "GoW 3."

Writer Cory Barlog has confirmed in a blog post published on the Playstation website that the Remastered "God of War 3" will be out this July. He also wrote that fans can better enjoy the action-packed game on a 1080p resolution, together with a "silky smooth combat" and a "new photo mode" which permits gamers to share their achievements on various social media platforms.

Meanwhile, there's speculation that the main hero, Kratos, won't be reprised for "Game of War 4." The upcoming installment of the franchise hinted of some grim ending as the body of the warrior [SPOILER] went missing, but there's blood trail on the ground leading to somewhere.

There are two conclusions from this: either he dragged his own body somewhere to heal, or somebody dragged his bloodied corpse away. But it would not be the first time that Kratos died, so there is a possibility he will be featured as well in "God of War 4," which can only be confirmed once the rumors get some semblance of confirmation from the studio, particularly if the release date draws near.
If your father works as an alumni director for colleges and universities, chances are you grew up in a series of college towns.

That was the experience for Paul Bilotta, who took over April 11 as the Community Development director for the city of Corvallis.

Bilotta, 50, was born in Kansas City, Kansas, when his father worked for the University of Kansas. The family moved to other college towns: the Twin Cities (University of Minnesota), Providence, Rhode Island (Brown University) and Eugene (University of Oregon), where Bilotta graduated from high school.

Ive always liked working with college communities and living in college towns, Bilotta said. There is so much vibrancy in college communities, much more than you usually get in a community of that size.

Bilotta has worked in both the private and public sectors on planning and development issues in Champaign, Illinois; the Twin Cities and Moorhead, Minnesota.

His Moorhead experience will sound familiar to Corvallis residents. The big challenge there was parking, particularly in a neighborhood that was sandwiched between a pair of colleges, Moorhead State University and Concordia College. Among the challenges Bilotta encountered there was that many of the students needed cars because their part-time jobs were not in the campus core.

And an extensive study showed that although Moorhead faculty members could park for free on campus, teachers were parking in the neighborhoods because those spots were closer to their offices or main classroom buildings.

Ultimately, the city established three-hour parking zones in the neighborhoods to encourage the faculty members to park on campus.

I like complex problems, Bilotta said. Cities are very interesting organisms to get your hands around. I moved around a lot while growing up and learned how cities differ. Some do things very well and some do not.

The Corvallis position was attractive to Bilotta because he and his family wanted to get back out West.

We always thought wed relocate here in the Willamette Valley, said Bilotta. The natural features, climate, attitude. Im a big fan of community engagement  and theres no problem here on that front.

Bilotta admitted that weather was a factor in his decision to move here from Roseville, Minnesota, northwest of the Twin Cities.

I lived in Minnesota for quite awhile but never got used to that part, Bilotta said of the weather.

The biggest claim to fame of Roseville is that it is the site of the John Rose Oval, North America's largest outdoor artificial sheet of ice. The facility is used for all types of outdoor winter recreation.

Bilotta, who went to eight public meetings in his first two weeks in town, noted that there are a lot of challenges his department and the city are facing, including the vision and action plan work and comprehensive plan amendments related to Oregon State University growth.

Its exciting, but were going to have a lot on our plates for the next three years, probably, he said. Which is fine by me. My nightmare job is if I sit here all day and nothing happens. I like going out and going to the meetings and solving the problem. You work through the emotional issues and hopefully come to a good solution.
Oregon State University will be awarded a Phi Beta Kappa chapter at an installation ceremony on the Corvallis campus this week, the university announced on Monday.

The ceremony, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday in Room 100 of the Learning Innovation Center.

Only about 10 percent of U.S. colleges and universities are awarded membership in Phi Beta Kappa, the nations most prestigious academic honor society. OSU joins the University of Oregon, Reed College, Lewis & Clark College and Willamette University as the only schools in the state with Phi Beta Kappa chapters.

Catherine White Berheide, the organizations president, will lead the installation ceremony. Immediately afterward, the new chapter will induct its first class, with about 200 OSU juniors and seniors being awarded membership.

OSU President Ed Ray, a Phi Beta Kappa member himself, will speak at the event.

I am genuinely pleased that we are now able to offer Phi Beta Kappa membership to some of Oregon States many high-achieving students, Ray said in a statement issued by the university. Becoming a member of Phi Beta Kappa had a profound impact on my life and on my career as a higher education leader.
The annual Get There alternative transportation campaign runs Monday through May 22.

Participants can track trips made by bike, bus, walking, carpool/vanpool and teleworking at DriveLessConnect.com for a chance to win prizes such as a Kindle Fire, a getaway to Chinook Winds Casino Resort in Lincoln City, restaurant gift cards, a gym membership, farmers market tokens, and more.

To track trips and be eligible for prizes, individuals must create a profile at DriveLessConnect.com by clicking Register Now" (or sign-in if already a member). Click Ridematch in the top grey bar to create a trip, and Calendar to track trips.

The Get There campaign, which began in 1990, features events such as breakfast for bike commuters hosted by the city of Corvallis, bike repair classes in Corvallis, outreach at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, free lights for transit users in Lincoln and Linn counties, and an informational meeting for employers in South Lincoln County.

For information about Corvallis events, go to this website: http://www.corvallisoregon.gov/index.aspx?page=1102

The event is sponsored by the city of Corvallis and the Cascades West Council of Governments.
More than 80 people gathered Monday night at Lincoln Elementary School for a forum on the future of South Corvallis.

The event, facilitated by Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services, was designed to be the first in a series of meetings at which neighborhood residents could weigh in on issues facing the community. A volunteer steering committee also will be formed to help frame the process.

Well start the conversation and see where it goes, said Councilor Zach Baker, whose Ward 3 includes South Corvallis.

Baker was one of four speakers who gave presentations. Also speaking were Jim Moorefield of Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services, Rocio Munoz of the Benton County Health Department and Ryan McCambridge of Linn-Benton Food Share.

Issues discussed by the presenters and audience members in 30 minutes of questions and answers included the need for a full-service supermarket, affordable housing, how to involve more of the community in the process and challenges the neighborhood would face in a major earthquake.

Much of the Q&A focused on the possibility of the old Corvallis Auction Yard property just south of the meeting site being used as a neighborhood town center.

Moorefield mentioned forming an urban renewal district as one way to advance the project, but he also emphasized that there are other ways to get it done.

Moorefield also noted that grocery stores run on thin profit margins and that companies track the population level of neighborhoods closely before they commit to putting in a store.

"If the traffic count isn't there they they aren't going to invest," Moorefield said. "That's the way the business works ... and I don't blame them. More people could change that equation  or finding a vendor who isn't as sensitive to those calculations."

McCambridge, meanwhile, offered a story of a smaller challenge the neighborhood faces. His organization supports a twice a month meal service in South Corvallis. But because there isnt an available commercial kitchen in the area, the food must be prepared at the First United Methodist Church on Monroe and transported down Highway 99W.

And because the South Corvallis Food Bank doesnt have a big enough room to host the food service the Tunison Community Room is used, which requires a temporary restaurant license fee of $38 each time.

One success noted by Munoz during her presentation was a 2013 remodeling project at Tunison Park, which involved private businesses, the Tunison Neighborhood Association, the Corvallis Parks and Recreation Department, the Healthy Kids Healthy Communities program and several nonprofits as well as neighborhood outreach that involved the Latino community.

Baker noted that South Corvallis issues came up often during the three workshops for the city's Imagine Corvallis 2040 vision and action plan and that the climate action plan process might lead to more bike and pedestrian facilities for South Corvallis.

"It's an exciting time in the city," Baker said. "There are a lot of opportunities to partner in a lot of conversations citywide."
Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021.
April 26 : News in Brief

Heres a quick look at some news from Bonn; a planned demonstration, thefts and attempted theft.

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Demonstration: About 100 to 200 persons are expected to take part in a demonstration for the humane housing of refugees. It will begin on Wednesday at 10 a.m. with a gathering at Kaiserplatz and will proceed over Maximilian Strae and through the city, winding its way to Martinsplatz. A final rally is expected there at 4 p.m. Police expect a peaceful demonstration but some traffic could be affected for short periods of time.

Young man knifed in mugging attempt: A 19-year-old was near the Bonner Loch at Bonn central train station on Saturday night just after midnight when a woman asked for his money and threatened him. He tried to defend himself but she slashed his hand with her knife. He had to be treated at the hospital. The woman fled without any money. She is described as 28-30 years-old, black hair and wearing a gray jacket at the time of the incident. Anyone having information is asked to contact police at (0228) 1 50.

Cherry Blossom Fest pickpocket: A 29-year-old woman was visiting in Aldstadt on Saturday with two girlfriends when a man asked if he could take a picture of the women. After he took the picture and left, one of the women noticed her wallet was missing from her purse. Because they had noticed another man near them when the picture was being taken, the women believe he dipped into the purse. The first man is described as around 28-years-old, 1.7 meters, dark short hair parted on the side, wearing a red training jacket and dark pants. His possible accomplice was wearing a black T-shirt. Anyone having information is asked to contact police at (0228) 1 50.
Tanz in den Mai : Sing and dance into May

Bonn One of Germanys fun traditions is dancing on the eve of May to celebrate the coming of spring and warmer weather. Heres at least some warm places to go!

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Its a great reason for Germans of all ages to go out dancing. Tanz in den Mai in English means Dance into May and always falls on the eve of May Day.

The tradition stems from Walpurgis night when the night witches are said to ride to the Blocksberg mountain, the highest mountain in the Harz mountain range, to celebrate the arrival of spring. Of course, you dont need witches or a mountain to welcome spring and hopefully warmer weather.

But if you want to partake in this tradition and dance your way into May, here is a selection of places where you can meet up with friends and dance the night away.
Warning strike on Wednesday : Some regional services still running

Bonn/Region. Heres a summary of what you need to know concerning tomorrows strike.

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Trams, buses: Local buses and trams (61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68) operated by the city in Bonn (SWB) and Cologne (KVB) will not be running. An exception could be some buses that are private and not run by the city but there is no concrete information as to which lines or how much of their routes they might cover. No timetable will be published.

Some regional buses are running: Buses belonging to Rhein-Sieg Verkehrsgesellschaft and Regionalverkehr Koln GmbH will be running.

Trains: Deutsche Bahn trains will be running, as well as the private firms Transregio (MRB 26), and National Express (RB 48).

Taxis: Bonn taxis will be running but they will be very busy and recommend customers order at least 45 minutes in advance. They cannot guarantee to get you where you need to go on time, emphasizing that they cannot replace the public transport system. There are 313 cabs belonging to Taxi Bonn (0228) 555555.

Car Sharing: Statt Auto car sharing in Bonn is not yet fully booked (0228) 215 923.

General Anzeiger ride share Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/233146710383539/

Cologne/Bonn airport: Expect many flight cancellations and delays. Passengers are asked to contact their airlines or tour operator in advance. A hotline at the airport has been established and is open from 3 p.m.  11 p.m. Tuesday and from 4 a.m. on Wednesday (02203) 40 40 00.

Public services and workers: Sanitation workers from Bonnorange will be on strike so garbage will not be emptied on Wednesday. Some kindergartens will be affected but you should check directly with your provider. City spokesperson Marc Hoffman says he has not yet heard of any public Kindergartens affected but a hotline has been set up for parents. It is open Tuesday and Wednesday from 8 a.m.  6 p.m. (0228) 77 55 44. Other public services such licensing and vehicle registration are expected to be staffed.

Work laws: Bonn labor expert Stephan Pauly reminds that workers are still expected to show up on time in their place of work despite the strike. People are expected to carpool, ride their bike or find other means of transportation.
Dog owners alarmed : Suspicious looking meatballs in Wachtberg

Suspicious looking meatballs. Foto: Axel Schuster

Wachtberg A strange looking type of meatball has been found near Burg Gudenau and Bertleskreuz in Villip. It is suspected that the meatball is really a kind of bait containing poison.

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It wasnt mouse poison, it was clearly aimed at dogs, said Axel Schuster who was out for a walk with his three dogs when he discovered the concoction. Schuster is a roofer whose wife runs a dog training school in Wachtberg. He filed a report with Bonn police and took the suspicious findings to a veterinary office for testing.

Schuster said that his two terriers and his Argentinian dog are well-trained. When they are told to drop something from their mouths, they obey immediately. Otherwise, he said we may have had three dead dogs. After the first finding, he made a searching game out of it and let his dogs go on to see if they could find other suspicious meatball-like concoctions. They found six altogether.

It is not yet clear what the meatballs contain. According to the press department of Rhine-Sieg Veterinary Bureau, the findings have been sent to a laboratory in Krefeld for examination. District spokesperson Rita Lorenz says they are now waiting for the results.

Anyone who is out walking and spots these clumps which look like meatballs is asked to bring them to a veterinary clinic for testing. Bonn police have begun investigating the situation but are awaiting results from the laboratory to confirm the exact findings.
An opportunity for foodies and beer lovers to get lost in a world of food and drink from a hand-selected range of food trucks and breweries from around New Zealand.
USS Donald Cook Arrives in Kiel

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS160425-14

Release Date: 4/25/2016 1:05:00 PM

By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Mat Murch, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet Public Affairs

KIEL, Germany (NNS) -- Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG 75) arrived in Kiel for a scheduled port visit, April 23.

Such port visits serve to enhance U.S.-German relations as the two nations work together for a stable, secure and prosperous region.

Quotes:

"Although this is only a short stop we are looking forward to experiencing the town of Kiel and German hospitality. We are grateful for the support we have received from the German navy during our visit."

-Cmdr. Matthew Powel, executive officer, USS Donald Cook



Quick Facts:

* Strengthening alliances during the port visit to Kiel demonstrates the shared commitment we have to promote safety and stability within the region, while seeking opportunities to enhance our interoperability with Germany.

* Donald Cook is currently on a forward-deployed patrol, working with allies and regional partners to help develop and improve our maritime forces, maintain regional security, and work toward mutual goals in order to advance security and stability in Europe.

* USS Donald Cook, forward deployed to Rota, Spain, is conducting naval operations in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations in support of U.S. national security interests in Europe. The ship deployed from Naval Station Rota March 16.

* U.S. 6th Fleet, headquartered in Naples, Italy, conducts the full spectrum of joint and naval operations, often in concert with allied, joint, and interagency partners, in order to advance U.S. national interests and security and stability in Europe and Africa.



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Russia denies supporting Taliban in Afghanistan

Iran Press TV

Mon Apr 25, 2016 5:52PM

Russia's ambassador to Afghanistan dismisses speculation that Moscow has been backing Taliban in order to curb the Daesh Takfiri terrorists operating in some areas of Afghanistan.

Ambassador Alexander Mantytskiy told reporters in the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday that "Russia has no hidden agenda in Afghanistan."

"We do not provide any assistance to the Taliban," Mantytski said, adding, "Our interest with the Taliban regarding the fight with Daesh do coincide but no type of information exchange between Russia and the Taliban takes place."

The envoy pointed out that Russia, like several other countries, has always been urging the Taliban to pursue peace instead of continuing militancy.

The ambassador also expressed his serious concern about growing Taliban militancy the in northern provinces of Afghanistan that border former Soviet Republics including Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Mantytskiy stressed that Russia would continue to strengthen Afghan government forces defense capacity.

He said Russia recently gave the Kabul government 10,000 Kalashnikov automatic rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition for the fight against terrorism.

In addition to that, Moscow has also been discussing two potential helicopter deals and had proposed increasing intelligence cooperation with the Afghan government to curb militancy, the ambassador noted.

In October last year, Afghanistan's Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah said that Kabul would welcome assistance by Russia in the war-hit country's ongoing fight against terrorism.

The developments come as hundreds of Afghans have been killed over past months at the hands of Daesh terrorists, who are trying to strengthen their foothold in the militancy-riddled country.

Daesh, mainly active in Syria and Iraq, has been using a sophisticated social media campaign to woo the local militants, who defect from the main Taliban group.

Although Taliban leaders have warned Daesh against "waging a parallel insurgency in Afghanistan," the latter has been trying to expand its outreach there and is reported to have between 1,000 to 3,000 terrorists on its payroll.

Afghanistan is gripped by insecurity 14 years after the United States and its allies attacked the country as part of Washington's so-called war on terror.

Moscow has been critical of the United States and its NATO allies over its handling of the war in Afghanistan.

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Saudi-led forces enter town after Qaeda exit

Iran Press TV

Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:7AM

Forces loyal to Saudi-backed ex-president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and Emirati troops have reportedly overrun Mukalla after al-Qaeda militants left the seaport in southeast Yemen.

Reuters quoted residents as saying that local clerics and tribesmen negotiated with al-Qaeda to exit quietly and that militants withdrew Sunday westward to neighboring Shabwa province.

They said there was no fighting after Saudi-backed units mobilized their forces at Mukalla's suburbs. However, the official Saudi news agency SPA claimed on Monday that more than 800 al-Qaeda members had been killed.

Around 2,000 pro-Hadi and Emirati troops reportedly advanced into Mukalla, home to an estimated 200,000 people, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints.

Mukalla has been the center of a rich mini-state that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) built up over the past year. The group took control of an almost 600-km (370-mile) band of Arabian Sea coastline.

Once faded into irrelevance, AQAP has gone from strength to strength in Yemen since Saudi Arabia began its ferocious military campaign against the impoverished neighbor.

Al-Qaeda and other Takfiri groups such as Daesh have become stronger as Houthis - their arch enemy in Yemen - have come under the heaviest Saudi attacks for more than a year.

The Rai al-Youm newspaper on Monday pointed out that Saudi Arabia had supplied weapons to al-Qaeda militants in the Abyan and Hadhramaut to confront Houthi fighters.

The paper, edited by prominent Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan, wrote that Saudi Arabia had decided to retake Mukalla from al-Qaeda in the face of rising criticism in the West of the fallout of the invasion.

The decision was also linked to a US congressional motion to hold the Saudi ruling family accountable for potential roles in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it added.

Pro-Saudi forces, however, retreated from Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province in south Yemen, after they entered it on Saturday night.

A bomb-laden vehicle exploded Sunday killing seven pro-Hadi militants who had launched an offensive with the help of Saudi air power.

"The withdrawal was decided following information that al-Qaeda was preparing other car-bomb attacks against our troops," AFP quoted a pro-Hadi officer as saying.

The alleged recapture of Mukalla coincided with UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait after a ceasefire entered into effect on April 11, but from which Takfiri groups are excluded.

There was no immediate official reaction to the reports from Houthis and their allies who are to hold their fifth day of peace talks on Monday in a bid to end 13 months of war.

More than 9,400 people have been killed and at least 16,000 others injured since Saudi Arabia launched its airstrikes against Yemen last March.

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Polish President Stresses Government Commitment to Strong Army

Sputnik News

19:11 25.04.2016

Polish President Andrzej Duda said that strong and efficient army is an absolute priority for Polish authorities.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  A strong army and increased state security is a key priority for the current Polish government, Polish President Andrzej Duda said Monday.

"And all of you in this room can be absolutely sure that today Poland is ruled by people for whom building a strong state and the security of the state, and therefore a State which has a strong and efficient army, is an absolute priority," Duda said during a briefing with the country's Defense Ministry and Armed Forces staff, as quoted by the Polskie Radio public broadcaster.

Earlier on Monday, Poland's Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz signed a decree stipulating the creation of a new "territorial force" army unit. Earlier in April, Macierewicz said that there are plans to increase Poland's army by up to 50 percent over the coming years, with at least three territorial defense brigades to be deployed at the country's eastern border.

"We all know what actions are taken today the Russian authorities, we all know that Russia is back to imperial policies that consequently lead to the violation of interests and security of other countries," Duda said.

Events such as the 2008 war in Georgia and the ongoing Ukrainian conflict, as well as recent incidents with Russian flybys of NATO vessels and aircraft, indicate the need for an effective and strong military, the president added, affirming Poland's commitment to the NATO bloc.

Poland is preparing to host a NATO summit in Warsaw in July 2016. Earlier in April, Duda said Poland would urge partners to step up NATO military exercises in Central and Eastern Europe.

 Sputnik

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Afghan Taliban Negotiators Arrive in Pakistan for Initial Talks

by Ayaz Gul April 25, 2016

A group of Taliban negotiators has arrived in Pakistan from the Islamist insurgency's political office in Qatar for "exploratory" meetings with authorities in Islamabad, diplomatic sources confirmed Monday to VOA.

The visit of the three-member Taliban delegation is part of efforts that Pakistan is "cautiously" making to facilitate resumption of Afghan peace and reconciliation talks, the sources said.

The dramatic development happened on a day when Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani, in a speech to the national parliament, blamed Pakistan for not preventing fugitive Taliban leaders from using its soil to plot insurgent violence in Afghanistan.

The Taliban delegation includes Shahabuddin Dilawar, Jan Muhammad Madni and Mullah Abbas Akhund. But when contacted by VOA, a Taliban spokesman said he was unaware whether its delegation traveled to Pakistan.

'Test waters'

Sources described the visit of Taliban negotiators as a "step to test waters" in the wake of past experiences when efforts to start Afghan peace process faltered even before talks could open.

The Taliban maintains an office in Doha, the capital of Qatar, and it is authorized by its chief, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, to conduct political talks.

The arrival Monday in Islamabad of U.S. Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Jonathan Carpenter gave credence to reports that key stakeholders have stepped up efforts toward restarting peace talks, despite widespread anger and growing demands for Ghani to abandon his policy of engaging the Taliban in such negotiations.

U.S. officials were not available to comment on the purpose of Carpenter's visit. Chinese diplomatic sources told VOA "we are not part of" the "exploratory" discussions with the Taliban.

Previous efforts

Pakistan, Afghanistan, the U.S. and China launched a four-way dialogue process earlier this year to arrange Afghan reconciliation talks.

In his speech to the parliament Monday, Ghani said his government will talk to Taliban members who are ready to denounce violence and cut ties to terrorists, but he said those negotiations will be held within the Afghan constitution.

Pakistan hosted the first direct talks between Taliban and Afghan government officials last July, the first such interaction since the Islamist group was ousted from power in 2001 and launched insurgent attacks against U.S.-led international and Afghan forces.

But the process came to a halt a few weeks later when it was revealed that Taliban founder and its first leader, Mullah Omar, had died two years ago. The insurgency's Qatar-based political office did not attend those discussions.

Afghan officials maintain that the Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services-Intelligence (ISI), covertly supports the Taliban and the Haqqani network of militants fighting alongside the insurgency, charges Islamabad rejects as baseless.

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What Will New US Forces Do in Syria?

by Carla Babb April 25, 2016

The additional 250 U.S. special operations troops heading to Syria in the coming days will be a "force multiplier," meeting with local fighters and providing expertise to Syrians willing to take on Islamic State, according to the Pentagon.

"This is as much about introductions and connections and seeing what we can do to support those forces, some of whom we don't know yet," Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook told reporters Monday. "That's what the main task of these additional forces will be."

President Barack Obama announced earlier in the day that the new personnel would join a team of about 50 U.S. troops already advising local fighters in Syria.

"These new forces will expand those efforts and build on what's been working," Cook said. "They will not be engaged in direct combat. They will not be on the frontlines."

The Pentagon said advising in Syria would be on a more basic level than the latest logistical and weapons support being provided to Iraqi security forces.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced last week that the U.S. was sending about 200 additional U.S. forces, along with Apache attack helicopters and High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, to help Iraqi security forces in the fight to retake Mosul from Islamic State.

"I don't think we're talking about bringing these weapons capabilities to Syrian forces," Cook said, adding that the U.S. special operations forces would carry out activities such as helping local forces with "air support for their engagements."

Who, where?

Cook said U.S. forces will be reaching out particularly to Syrian Arab fighters, whom he deemed "critically important" to the fight to retake Islamic State's hub, Raqqah. Some critics have feared that Syrian Kurds, who have made sweeping gains against Islamic State in northern Syria, are less motivated to retake the predominantly Arab city.

The Pentagon would not disclose where U.S. special forces would operate in Syria, but Cook tried to dissuade fears of potential attacks on American forces by Russian forces also operating in the volatile country.

"In the past, we have identified a particular geographic area where we asked Russia not to strike," Cook said, adding that the U.S. would take "every step" necessary to ensure the safety of American forces.

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Counter-ISIL Strikes Hit Terrorists in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, April 26, 2016  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted seven strikes in Syria:

-- Near Manbij, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions and an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Mara, six strikes struck four separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions and two ISIL vehicles.

Strikes in Iraq

Bomber, ground-attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 18 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Baghdadi, a strike destroyed an ISIL mortar position.

-- Near Rutbah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Beiji, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Fallujah, six strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units; destroyed 11 ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL-used bridges, an ISIL bunker and two ISIL heavy machine guns; and damaged a separate ISIL fighting position.

-- Near Habbaniyah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Hit, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed four ISIL fighting positions and an ISIL heavy machine gun.

-- Near Kirkuk, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL command and control node, an ISIL assembly area and an ISIL fighting position.

-- Near Kisik, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and an ISIL assembly area.

-- Near Mosul, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and an ISIL weapons storage facility and destroyed an ISIL supply cache.

-- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed an ISIL fighting position and an ISIL vehicle.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct operations.

Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations which have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

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Prime Minister, Minister for Defence  Joint media release  Future submarine program

Australia Department of Defence Ministers

26 April 2016

The Turnbull Government today announces that the next generation of submarines for Australia will be constructed at the Adelaide shipyard, securing thousands of jobs and ensuring the project will play a key part in the transition of our economy.

DCNS of France has been selected as our preferred international partner for the design of the 12 Future Submarines, subject to further discussions on commercial matters.

Along with our recent naval shipbuilding announcements, the commitment to an Australian build will create a sustainable Australian naval shipbuilding industry and provide the certainty that industry requires to invest in innovation and technology and grow its workforce.

The Future Submarine project is the largest and most complex defence acquisition Australia has ever undertaken. It will be a vital part of our Defence capability well into the middle of this century.

This $50 billion investment will directly sustain around 1,100 Australian jobs and a further 1,700 Australian jobs through the supply chain.

Todays announcement follows the comprehensive Competitive Evaluation Process (CEP) involving DCNS, TKMS of Germany and the Government of Japan. Each bidder submitted very high quality proposals and the Australian Government takes this opportunity to thank both TKMS and the Government of Japan for their ongoing commitment to Australia and their participation in the process.

The CEP has provided the Government with the detailed information required to select DCNS as the most suitable international partner to develop a regionally-superior future submarine to meet our unique national security requirements, as detailed in the 2016 Defence White Paper.

This rigorous and independent process was led by Head of the Future Submarine Program, Rear Admiral Greg Sammut AM CSC, and General Manager Submarines, Rear Admiral Stephen Johnson USN (retired), who was previously in charge of the program to replace the Ohio Class ballistic missile submarines.

The process was overseen by an independent Expert Advisory Panel, chaired by former Secretary of the United States Navy, Professor Donald Winter. It was peer reviewed by Vice Admiral Paul Sullivan USN (retired) and Rear Admiral Thomas Eccles USN (retired).

This decision was driven by DCNSs ability to best meet all of our unique capability requirements. These included superior sensor performance and stealth characteristics, as well as range and endurance similar to the Collins Class submarine. The Governments considerations also included cost, schedule, program execution, through-life support and Australian industry involvement.

Subject to discussions on commercial matters, the design of the Future Submarine with DCNS will begin this year.

The Turnbull Government is also conducting a strategic review of the workforce, skills and infrastructure needs to deliver this key capability as part of its Naval Shipbuilding Plan, to be released this year. The Plan will bring together the requirements for the Future Submarine program, along with the more than $35 billion Future Frigate program and the more than $3 billion Offshore Patrol Vessel program, as part of the broader continuous naval shipbuilding philosophy to which the Government is committed.

The Turnbull Government will maximise Australian industry involvement in the program and will work closely with DCNS to identify opportunities for local businesses to integrate into the supply chain.

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Update: air strikes against Daesh

26 April 2016

British forces have continued to conduct air operations in the fight against Daesh

Latest update

- Tuesday 19 April  Tornados and Typhoons attacked Daesh targets in northern and western Iraq, including three mortars and two machine-gun teams.

- Wednesday 20 April  Typhoons provided close air support to Iraqi forces in western Iraq, while Tornados destroyed two buildings in the north.

- Thursday 21 April  Tornados employed deep penetration Enhanced Paveway III bombs against a bunker complex in western Iraq.

- Friday 22 April  Reapers destroyed a car-bomb facility and a terrorist vehicle in Syria, Typhoons provided close air support in western Iraq, and Tornados destroyed a Daesh-built bridge and a communications post in northern Iraq.

- Sunday 24 April  Typhoons attacked a Daesh compound and sniper position in western Iraq.

Detail

In northern Iraq, Royal Air Force Tornado GR4s spotted a tractor pulling a large towed mortar near Barimah on Tuesday 19 April. A hit from a Brimstone missile brought the tractor to a halt, and a Paveway IV guided bomb then destroyed the mortar. Near Mosul, a pair of Typhoons accounted for two more mortars, hitting them with Paveways which also destroyed their stockpiled ammunition. In western Iraq, another Tornado mission assisted Iraqi forces, who had liberated the town of Hit the previous week, as they cleared terrorist positions across the Euphrates on the northern bank. The Tornados destroyed two machine-gun positions using Paveway IVs.

On Wednesday 20 April, Typhoons, supported by an RAF Voyager refuelling tanker, provided close air support to Iraqi troops operating north and east of Fallujah. Two successful Paveway attacks hit a machine-gun team in a trench and a mortar in a covered firing position. In northern Iraq, Tornados used Paveway IVs again to attack two Daesh-held buildings near Qayyarah.

A Tornado mission on Thursday 21 April saw the first use of the RAF's Enhanced Paveway III (EPWIII) against Daesh  a guided bomb with a 2000lb deep penetration warhead. Our aircraft normally carry the smaller Paveway IV guided bombs and Brimstone missiles, which can be carried in larger numbers and are more useful for close air support missions. The EPW III has been held in reserve for use if needed against particularly challenging underground or hardened targets. The Tornados flew as part of a coalition air strike on a large complex of tunnels and bunkers dug into terraced hillsides above the Euphrates in western Iraq, successfully scoring direct hits with a pair of EPW IIIs on two entrances to the bunker network.

Two RAF Reapers operating over Syria conducted strikes on Friday 22 April. Near Abu Kamal, one Reaper provided surveillance support to a successful coalition attack on an improvised weapons factory, then used two of its own Hellfire missiles to demolish a nearby workshop used for constructing car-bombs. The second Reaper tracked a terrorist vehicle near Tabuqah, south-west of Raqqa, and destroyed it with a Hellfire.

In western Iraq, Typhoons continued to support Iraqi ground forces north of Fallujah, where they conducted four Paveway attacks against snipers, a bunker and an entrenched fighting position. Tornados patrolled south-west of Kirkuk, where two Paveways destroyed a bridge built by Daesh across a canal, and a communications post nearby. Typhoons were again in action near Fallujah on Sunday 24 April; one pair silenced a sniper position that was firing on Iraqi troops, while a second pair dropped three Paveways on a Daesh compound.

Previous air strikes

1 April: Typhoons were active over western Iraq. A Daesh truck armed with an anti-aircraft gun was successfully bombed north-east of Ramadi and Paveways were used to destroy a fuel tanker converted into a truck bomb near Hit and a bunker west of Fallujah where terrorists had been spotted. In northern Iraq, a Tornado patrol employed Paveway IVs to destroy three Daesh buildings in the Mosul and Sinjar areas.

2 April: Coalition surveillance operations had identified Daesh extremists using a former Iraqi military ammunition depot near Qayyarah in northern Iraq. This intelligence indicated that the terrorists were manufacturing improvised explosive devices and other weaponry on the site. As part of a large coalition air strike on terrorist facilities in the area, four RAF Tornado GR4s were tasked with attacking 16 of these storage bunkers. Each aircraft dropped a salvo of four Paveways, and initial indications are that the strike was highly accurate and effective. An RAF Reaper was also active in the Qayyarah area, hunting a Daesh mortar team. The aircraft's crew were able successfully to locate the team, operating a truck-mounted mortar, concealed under trees on the western bank of the Tigris, and secured a direct hit with a Hellfire missile.

4 April: Typhoon FGR4s patrolled over Anbar province in western Iraq. East of Fallujah, the Typhoons struck two buildings occupied by Daesh fighters that had been identified by Iraqi ground forces with Paveway IV guided bombs. The aircraft then flew to the city of Hit, on the Euphrates river, where a coalition surveillance aircraft had spotted a large group of terrorists positioned in a line of trees on the edge of the town. These extremists were also struck using a Paveway IV.

Other RAF aircraft were active over northern Iraq; Tornado GR4s assisted Kurdish peshmerga engaged in a firefight north-west of Mosul, hitting their Daesh opponents with a Paveway, whilst Typhoons conducted a successful bombing attack on extremists mustering near Qayyarah.

5 April: A Typhoon flight operated over northern Iraq, using Paveways to attack three Daesh-held buildings north-east of Mosul, including a weapons store. They then used a further three Paveways to destroy three Daesh positions some miles south of Kirkuk, including a headquarters building and a base used by a mortar team.

6 April: A Typhoon flight tasked to provide close air support to the Iraqi security forces attacking Daesh strongholds in Hit. The Typhoons used Paveways to strike a total of seven targets identified by the aircraft themselves, the Iraqi forces and supporting surveillance aircraft. A rocket-propelled grenade team firing from a building were silenced in a precise strike which avoided causing damage to a nearby mosque. They also destroyed two heavy-machine guns; a third heavy machine-gun on the northern bank of the river; and a series of simultaneous attacks eliminated a fourth machine-gun position and two more groups of Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG)-armed terrorists. In northern Iraq, Tornado GR4s bombed a network of trenches near Qayyarah.

7 April: The Tornados were in action again over northern Iraq, where they used a Paveway to destroy a truck-bomb positioned ahead of Kurdish troops south of Kirkuk. They then destroyed a machine-gun position on the Little Zab River using a Brimstone missile. Near Qayyarah, a Typhoon flight supported Kurdish troops who had come under fire from a number of Daesh positions. Two terrorist-held buildings were destroyed, and a group of extremists caught manoeuvring in the open were also struck with a Paveway.

8 April: RAF Typhoon FGR4s patrolled the area around Hit. Coalition surveillance aircraft located a concealed improvised artillery piece  known as a "hell cannon"  which had opened fire on the Iraqi troops and was hidden under trees. Working closely with surveillance aircraft, the Typhoon flight was able to score a direct hit using a Paveway IV guided bomb.

9 April: A RAF Reaper remotely piloted aircraft was tasked to hunt for a Daesh mortar team operating in the Hit area. Intensive surveillance allowed the Reaper's crew to identify and track motorcycle-mounted terrorists who stopped to set up a mortar. They were struck by a Hellfire missile from the Reaper.

10 April: Two flights of Tornado GR4s operated over northern Iraq to support Kurdish ground forces. One flight working east of Mosul demolished a Daesh-held building, suspected to be a local headquarters, using Paveway bombs. The Tornados then hit a building being used to stockpile rockets with another Paveway and used a Brimstone missle to account for a set of rocket launch rails nearby. The second Tornado flight provided support to Kurdish troops near Qayyarah who were coming under fire from a sniper team  they were successfully silenced by a further Paveway.

11 April: An RAF Typhoon mission destroyed a terrorist machine-gun team east of Mosul, then struck three Daesh positions east of Qayyarah.

12 April: A pair of Tornados bombed through thick cloud to hit two terrorist positions, including a rocket launching team, north of Mosul, and a Daesh mortar team near Qayyarah. In western Iraq, Typhoons supported the Iraqi counter-terrorist forces pushing into Hit, and used Paveways to strike two buildings held by Daesh rocket-propelled grenade and machine-gun teams.

13 April: RAF Typhoon FGR4s assisted in the destruction of one of the remaining terrorist strongpoints on the eastern outskirts of the town, striking, despite the very close proximity of the Iraqi forces, a Daesh machine-gun position with a Paveway IV guided bomb. When the Iraqi troops liberated the town's hospital, they found that it had been converted into a terrorist bomb-making factory, with a number of vehicles there, including an ambulance, converted into truck-bombs; fortunately, the speed of the Iraqi victory prevented these deadly booby-traps from being deployed. In northern Iraq, other Typhoons bombed terrorist rocket and mortar teams located some miles south-west of Sinjar, and in the Kisik area, which had opened fire on advancing Kurdish troops. West of Mosul, Tornado GR4s tracked an articulated lorry carrying a prepared car-bomb on its trailer; despite the lorry's speed, a direct hit was scored on the car-bomb using a Brimstone missile.

The Tornados then used Paveways to destroy two clusters of barges being used by the terrorists to move men and supplies across the Tigris.

14 April: Tornados patrolling over northern Iraq provided close air support to Kurdish forces in the areas south of Sinjar and Kisik. Successful Paveway attacks accounted for a Daesh mortar team and destroyed the entrance to a tunnel system where a number of terrorists were reported to be hiding. Near Qayyarah, Typhoons destroyed a Daesh-held building, again using a Paveway IV. In western Iraq, as the last Daesh fighters pulled out of Hit, a Tornado flight employed two Brimstone missiles to sink boats used by them to cross the Euphrates.

17 April: A Tornado armed reconnaissance patrol over northern Syria bombed a Daesh large calibre mortar position near Manbij. In northern Iraq, a Typhoon flight used a total of eight Paveways in a succession of successful strikes around Kisik, Mosul and south of Kirkuk, destroying a terrorist mortar team, four vehicles, and three Daesh-held buildings.

18 April: A Typhoon mission used Paveways to attack two mortar positions which had opened fire on Kurdish troops near Kisik, while a pair of Tornados conducted simultaneous attacks on three Daesh targets north-east of Mosul, hitting a bomb-making factory and two other terrorist-held buildings. In western Iraq, Typhoons dropped four Paveways to destroy ten rocket-launchers and a stockpile of ammunition positioned on the bank of the Euphrates.

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South Sudan: Ban welcomes swearing in of Riek Machar as First Vice-President

26 April 2016  United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has welcomed the return of Riek Machar to Juba and his swearing in as the First Vice-President of South Sudan, calling it a "new phase" in the implementation of the peace agreement.

In a statement attributable to his spokesperson, Mr. Ban also called for the immediate formation of the transitional government of national unity.

"He commends the efforts of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC) Chairperson, former President Festus Mogae, and the African Union (AU) High Representative, former President Alpha Oumar Konare," the statement said.

The Secretary-General also called on the Security Council to work closely with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the AU Peace and Security Council to mobilize the required support for the peace process.

Mr. Machar's return to the capital marks a significant step towards bringing stability to the country, which only gained independence in 2009 after breaking away from Sudan, its northern neighbour. A political dispute erupted into conflict in December 2013, killing thousands, displacing over 2.4 million people, 650,000 of whom fled abroad, and impacting the food security of 4.6 million.

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US Forces Warn of More Militant Attacks in Afghanistan

by Ayaz Gul April 26, 2016

U.S. forces in Afghanistan Tuesday warned of fresh militant attacks in several provinces, including Kabul.

A public announcement issued in the capital named eight would-be attackers and released an Afghan cell phone number ((0702210396)), encouraging anyone with information on the individuals to call.

"Insurgents from the Haqqani and Taliban networks are known to be planning attacks on the Afghan people" in the northeast provinces of Parwan, Khost, Kabul and Logar, the statement said, without giving more details.

The eastern Khost province borders Pakistan and traditionally has been a stronghold of the Haqqani network.

The Taliban launched its annual spring offensive in Afghanistan on April 12 and vowed to carry out suicide bombings and other attacks against Afghan security forces.

Recent Kabul attack

The public warning comes a week after a Taliban bomb-and-gun attack in the heart of Kabul that killed nearly 70 people and wounded 347 more. The Islamist insurgency claimed responsibility.

Officials said the Haqqani network plotted the coordinated assault on a facility linked to the Afghan intelligence agency, alleging the militant group is operating from Pakistan and has links to that country's intelligence agency. Pakistan has rejected allegations it is aiding insurgent attacks in Afghanistan.

"Pakistan condemns all forms and manifestation of terrorism and it is committed in the fight against this menace," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Nafees Zakaria. He was responding to remarks that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani delivered Monday in a speech to the parliament in Kabul.

Ghani accused Islamabad of not helping in the Afghan peace efforts and of not stopping Taliban insurgents from using Pakistani soil for plotting attacks in Afghanistan.

Spokesman Zakaria insisted Pakistan is making "serious efforts" to promote Afghan peace and reconciliation but said Pakistan alone is not responsible for bringing the Taliban back to the table. Zakaria said all members in the so-called Quadrilateral Coordination Group shared the responsibility to do so.

The group, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China, has been trying to arrange peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban.

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South Sudan Rebel Chief Sworn In as VP

by Waakhe Simon Wudu, Dan Joseph April 26, 2016

South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar returned to the capital Tuesday and took the oath as the country's top vice president.

Machar's arrival raises hopes the government and rebels can move ahead with a peace deal signed last year to end the country's 30-month civil war.

After the swearing-in, President Salva Kiir said he and Machar "will immediately proceed to form the Transitional Government of National Unity" called for in the peace accord.

He said this is the "only choice" to return South Sudan to the path of unity and prosperity.

Cooperation promise

Machar, in his comments, promised to cooperate with President Kiir.

Machar was Kiir's vice president once before. It was his firing in July 2013 that set off the war in December of that year. Since then, fighting has killed tens of thousands of South Sudanese and displaced more than 2 million from their homes.

Machar's plane landed at Juba International Airport on Tuesday, after more than a week of delays as the government and rebels argued over the size and weaponry of the rebel force deployed to protect him in the capital.

In New York, South Sudanese Ambassador Joseph Malok said that despite the delays, South Sudan's government remains committed to fully implementing the peace deal. He said the new transitional government would be formed "in a day or two, after consultations with the different parties in the country."

The United Nations had pressured both the government and rebels to ensure that Machar returned. Monday, a U.N. spokesman said, "We'd like to see him back as soon as possible; it's an integral part of hopefully returning some peace to South Sudan."

On Monday, one of Machar's top officials arrived in Juba from Gambela, Ethiopia, along with nearly 200 military personnel.

Like Machar, General Simon Gatwech was expected to arrive last week, but officials said his chartered plane was not granted permission to land by South Sudan's government until Sunday evening.

Dressed in a green military uniform, Getwech disembarked at Juba International Airport along with 195 SPLM-in-Opposition military officers, 20 rocket-propelled grenades and 20 machine guns, per an agreement reached between government and SPLM-IO officials.

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Phaleristics / Faleristics

Europe has a long tradition of awarding merit. Even if the orders and honours conferred by individual countries vary, even if their form has changed over the centuries and the circles of people they could be granted to has expanded, it has always been about the same thing: The recognition of demonstrated service. Recognition that comes neither in the form of material possessions nor in powers of authority. State honors bring their bearers honour and renown that cannot be compensated with either money or influence.

The individual countries in Europe appreciate "honour and renown". It reflects particular national traditions, differing historical developments and cultural uniqueness. But it also is proof of an all-encompassing unifying element - the relationship between service and honours. The motto of the European Union, "In Varietate Concordia (Unity in Diversity)," holds true for faleristics as well.

Honors and orders have gone through a long development. The once-exclusive insignia of closed knightly communities have gradually transformed, have grown more varied and have "democratised" into the forms of state honours accessible to all citizens. But they have maintained their exceptional character in awarding individual service conferred by the appropriate authority. Nowadays, orders and medals serve as a very necessary reminder to mass consumer democracies: Not everything important in this world can be bought, and not everything meaningful can be voted on.

The term 'faleristics' is based on the Greek word phalera, which indicated the metal decorations on helmets. The Romans adopted the word from the Greeks as phaleare, a term for military honours worn on armour. The term faleristics developed from these words to mean the scientific field, auxiliary to historical science, which is concerned with the orders, medals and insignia conferred upon individuals or groups of people for merit in all fields of human endeavor. The most valuable visible decorations of merit are orders, which now exist in nearly all countries worldwide. Their birthplace, however, was Europe, in whose civilisational framework the originally spiritual-chivalric orders developed over the centuries into orders as decorations of merit.

The first order societies began in the second half of the 11th century and were related to the military conflicts between Christianity and Islam in the Holy Land and on the Iberian Peninsula. The first society, the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, was formed in the year 1059, in St John's Church in Jerusalem; it cared for pilgrims visiting the Holy Sepulcher and protected them with arms in hand. At the same time, the Military Order of Alcantara was formed as part of the reconquista taking place on the Iberian Peninsula. Other chivalric orders were formed later; in the Holy Land there were the Order of the Temple (the Templars), the Order of the Holy Sepulcher, and the Order of the Hospital of St Mary of Jerusalem (the Teutonic Knights). On the Iberian Peninsula there were the Military Order of Calatrava, the Order of St James of the Sword, the Order of St Benedict of Aviz and others. During the 12th century, the order movement expanded throughout Europe; in the Czech lands, the Knights of Malta, the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Knights were all established in that period.

Influenced by the successful activities of religious-chivalric orders in the 14th and 15th centuries, European rulers started to surround themselves with the most faithful of their noblemen and decorated them with visible insignia. Order societies were also gradually founded, and membership in them was a symbol of merit and loyalty. In England, the Order of the Garter was founded in 1348, the Order of the Bath in 1399; in Savoy, the Order of the Collar in 1360; in Hungary, the Order of the Dragon in 1408; in Burgundy the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1430; in Denmark the Order of the Elephant in 1462 and in France, the Order of St Michael in 1469. As opposed to the religious-chivalric orders, their symbols were not limited to the cross only as a generic symbol of Christianity; mythological, exotic and fairy-tale figures began to appear. The new order societies were often named after Christian saints. With regard to the connection between order organisations and rulers, these orders gradually joined with dynasties, and some of these exist to this day as family orders.

Another transformation of these orders occurred in the 18th century, when they ceased to be societies and became honours. The end of knighthood and the emergence of modern states with their extensive systems of officials, officers and diplomats led to the need to bestow the visible honours represented by the new orders. Bearers of orders are no longer accepted into order societies on the basis of merit, but now have the honour conferred upon them. Military orders were the first to be formed at that time - the Military Order of St Louis in France was founded in 1693; the Military Order of St Henry in Saxony in 1736; the Order of the Sword in Sweden in 1748; the Military Order of Merit in Prussia in 1740; the Military Order of Maria Theresa in Austria in 1757; the Military Order of St George in Russia in 1769. Along with the military orders, however, a number of orders for the appreciation of civil merit were formed in most countries at the same time - the Order of the Dannebrog in Denmark in 1671, the Order of the Red Eagle in Prussia in 1705, the Order of St Alexander Nevsky in 1725, the Royal Hungarian Order of St Stephen in 1764 and the Imperial Austrian Order of Leopold in 1808. Some of these order decorations kept some of the Christian saints' markings, but markings also began to appear according to their founders or according to symbols close to the reasons for the award. Moreover, these orders were also gradually structured into classes, so the variability of the award according to the importance of the merit also rose significantly.

The definitive step toward modern honours was taken after the French Revolution by Napoleon Bonaparte, who in 1802 founded the Legion of Honour as a universal order of merit. The order was divided into five classes and individuals were honoured without regard to status, faith or state citizenship for merit shown in all spheres of human endeavour. The Legion of Honour became the first decoration of its type and in later years inspired heads of state and governments of countries worldwide to start similarly-conceived merit honours. Influenced by the Legion of Honour, dozens of order decorations were begun in the 19th century not only in Europe, but also in non-European states. After the end of World War I, the Legion of Honour became the model for the creation of honours in the new European countries; for example, in 1922, the order's rules were used in Czechoslovakia for the creation of the Order of the White Lion. The Legion of Honour became the model for the creation of similar honours in African and Asian countries in the second half of the 20th century. The order also strongly influenced European order decorations that already existed, and they were modified into universal orders of merit along the lines of the French model.

In today's world, individual states' decorations of merit number in the thousands, and there are hundreds of orders. As a rule, they are conferred upon individuals, but sometimes they are conferred on organizations of various types (such as cities or military units) for their demonstrated merit. For this reason, these orders are a continuation of the chivalric tradition of service, which is illustrated by the motto of the Czech King John, "Ich dien! (I Serve!)." After the battle of Crecy, in which the blind ruler met a heroic death, this motto was handed over by the English King Edward III to his son, Edward, which was then included not only in the insignia of the Prince of Wales, but also as the motto on the badge and star of the British military group the Order of the Bath.

National prides dictate that there shall be nearly as many stories about the origin of campaign medals as there are nations in existence. The Russians credit the genius of Peter the Great. Some French sources claim that Napoleon, with his magnificent ability to command the loyalty of men and to inspire high morale, was the first to award campaign medals in modern form. Other claims are similarly advanced, but careful scrutiny of all available documents and the surviving medals themselves seems to point clearly to British origin. This conclusion must be qualified in two ways, however. There were many medals struck or cast to commemorate victories prior to the earliest British campaign medals, but these were not designed to be worn. They were presented to churches or to the heads of allied or friendly states. The second qualification lies in the direction of distinctive colored sashes, sleeves, cords, streamers, and devices sewn in cloth upon uniforms. Throughout recorded history one may find examples of such badges being authorized for units in recognition of notable victories won. But these, like flags or pennants, must be separately considered. They have evolved modern counterparts which are not campaign medals.

The first precursor of today's campaign medals was probably the "Ark in Flood," so called by collectors and antiquarians because the design on the reverse shows a wooden vessel of high freeboard, waterborne. It exists in both gold and silver, and is provided with a suspension ring. It seems to be a naval medal and was issued in the year 1588 in the reign of Elizabeth. The destruction of the Spanish Armada by Drake may have been the victory commemorated.

The earliest documentary record of medals being awarded to all members of the victorious forces in any battle dates back to Cromwell and the Commonwealth. In 1650 Parliament authorized gold medals for all officers and silver medals for all men who participated in the Battle of Dunbar. These medals were also fitted with suspension ring? arranged as on the "Ark in Flood" medals. The Dunbar medals were definitely worn on the person, suspended from neck chains called "collars." England awarded many naval and some army medals to commanders during the 16th and early 17th Centuries, but these cannot be classed as campaign medals. True, they commemorated victories, but they seem to have been in the nature of decorations to individual commanders. Subordinate officers and men were not included.

Military and naval thinkers early recognized the need for "all hands" awards. Naturally they were the first to think in terms of general morale. The general commanding the famous defense of Gibraltar dipped into his own pocket in 1782 to buy the medals he presented to all officers and men who served under him. Admiral Lord Nelson's prize agent, a Mr. Davidson, presented a medal to "every officer, seaman, and marine" who participated in the Battle of the Nile.

Some doubt exists about the first medal to be suspended from a ribbon in the modern fashion, on the left breast. Sometime during the 16th Century the usage became general. The early medals were not provided with pins attached to their ribbons. Instead, the ribbon, doubled through the suspension ring, was merely folded over and pinned to the garment with a straight pin. Sometimes it was sewn in place.

By 1810 the British government began to see the light. England was engaged in extensive operations against Napoleon on the Spanish peninsula, and the gold Peninsula Medal was authorized for all officers taking part in these battles. Though men were not yet included, this award clearly combined the commemorative concept with recognition of honorable service. It was authorized while the war was still in progress, and originally one medal was to be presented for each battle in which an officer took part. But the war stretched through several campaigns and many battles, and in time some officers had earned as many as nine or ten gold medals, all exactly alike except for the battle names inscribed on the reverse of each.

This situation appeared ridiculous in view of previous practice. It also threatened to be very expensive to the crown. So in 1813 it was modified in two ways. The first modification was the authorization of clasps to be worn on suspension ribbons. The first battle earned the medal, and its name was duly inscribed on the reverse. The second and third battles earned clasps bearing their names. Thus was established the clasp precedent which today applies to the Victory Medal, the American Defense Service Medal, and the Navy Occupation Service Medal. The second modification was the authorization of a cross-shaped medal for participation in four battles. The name of one battle was inscribed on each arm of the cross, and clasps were awarded for subsequent engagements. The "Iron Duke" of Wellington was the commanding general and he was awarded "Peninsula Cross with nine clasps."

In 1816 the first modern campaign medal was awarded in identical form to officers and men alike, at the suggestion of the Duke of Wellington. It was for the Battle of Waterloo, "to be conferred upon every officer, noncommissioned officer, and soldier present upon that memorable occasion." Ever since that date the British have adhered strictly to the campaign medal tradition.

In 1861 Senator James W. Grimes of Iowa, chairman of the US Senate Naval Committee, introduced a bill which was passed by both Houses and approved by President Lincoln, and which established a Medal of Honor for enlisted men of the Navy  the first decoration formally authorized by the American Government to be worn as a badge of honor. The custom of giving identical campaign medals to admirals and seamen, generals and privates, has been called "... the most democratic of all military traditions." It seems strange that the infant United States of America did not take quickly to the idea. In fact, it was not until 1898 and the Spanish American War that the United States issued an all hands medal. Perhaps the citizenry of the young republic looked upon all medals as being too reminiscent of royalty. Perhaps, as the country matured, the continued public apathy toward military "trappings" made Congress cautious about spending money on medals for an army and a navy which barely existed between wars. Whatever the reasons, no campaign medals were authorized despite the pleas of professional army and navy officers. The Dewey Medal was the first. It was authorized by Congress less than one month after the Battle of Manila Bay, and was presented to all hands. Though it was more commemorative in concept than a campaign medal, it none the less established the precedent.

Medals were authorized from time to time "to commemorate" various campaigns and expeditions. Following the British tradition, they were all "round, like a coin." They were all suspended from ribbons which were "of distinctive colors and designs heraldically symbolic of the campaigns they represented." For example, the red and white stripes outboard on the Asiatic-Pacific ribbon represent the colors of Japan. The green and brown background of the European-AfricanMiddle Eastern ribbon represents brown deserts and green fields, and the colors involved in the vertical stripes are our own, the German, and the Italian. While the heraldic tradition of colors still plays its part, today the dominant factor seems to be recognition. As the medals are all round and about the same size, it would be difficult to distinguish one from another except by close inspection if they were not suspended on distinctive ribbons. This recognition factor seems to have determined the relative widths and spacings of colors.

The Great War brought on a few modifications of the tradition. The only service medal authorized by the United States was the Victory Medal. It was an international medal created by a board which met in Paris in 1919. The idea behind it was interesting. Aside from the thought that an identical medal issued by all countries would demonstrate the solidarity and close comradeship of the Allies, there was a little matter of money and administrative work. Previous to the first World War it had been customary among European countries to exchange campaign medals. In other words, every country awarded medals to its own soldiers and sailors, and in addition awarded the same medals to all the soldiers and sailors of all allied nations serving with their own forces in any given campaign or engagement! So the Victory Medal was a very happy idea for all concerned. Even though no international medal was created after World War II, the custom of allies exchanging medals has virtually died out.

Actually the Victory Medal is not identical in all the allied countries. The commission found that it did not have time to make it so. The ribbon with its rainbow effect symbolizing all the colors of all the allies is identical, but only the general specifications of the medal itself were agreed upon. All nations agreed upon the diameter of the medal and its round shape. They also agreed that the obverse should have the "Winged Victory designfull face and full figure." But the reverse was a matter of some disagreement so it was finally decided that it should bear the inscription, "The Great War for Civilization" in the language of the issuing country and "either the names or arms of allied or associated nations."

Terminology is far from standardized. Are they "service medals" or are they "campaign medals"? Some authorities class those covering an entire war or period of time as service medals and those for specific campaigns as campaign medals. There is really no clear cut distinction, as an examination of the official titles of the medals will quickly show. Another class of medals is generally referred to as "special commemorative medals" and includes the Peary Polar Expedition Medal, the NC-4 Medal, and the several Antarctic Expedition medals. The Good Conduct Medal is an individual award. As such it is more a decoration than a service medal, and it now ranks accordingly. It is doubtful that the terminology will ever become standardized, however. One reason is the continuing evolution of the campaign medal concept, and another is the confusion which exists with regard to decorations. Many decorations are "medals" by official title. The majority of decorations are not round, but run to stars or crosses. But enough decorations are round to invalidate distinction on the basis of shape.

The value of such recognition of honorable service is beyond dispute. Long years of experience and the spread of the campaign medal tradition throughout the world have proven that point. Campaign medals are morale builders. And they build service pride as well as personal morale.

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Sukhomlinov Effect

An Army may travel on its stomach, but defeat or victory rides on the epaulets. In a conflict between two armies with uniforms, the troops with the more elaborate uniforms will lose. Special attention goes to the uniforms of the officers: big hats, jangling medals, and feather plumes spell certain defeat.

The Sukhomlinov Effect is named after the sartorially smashing but [supposedly] strategically stumbling World War I Czarist War Minister, V.A. Sukhomlinov. The 'law' that wars are lost by the side that wears snappier uniforms is named after the Russian chief of general staff and minister of war (until 1915) Vladimir Sukhomlinov. He wore uniforms with gold braid up to his elbows and is often [unfairly] held responsible for the Russian unpreparedness for war in 1914. Barbara Tuchman gives a thoroughly negative view of Sukhomlinov in her Guns of August, but other accounts of his career are rather more favorable.

"There is a curious, disturbingly regular, pattern apparent here. In war, victory goes to the side whose leaders appear the least prepossessing. The handsome dressers lose. This is particularly obvious for military field dress. ... It is not accidental, therefore, that the revolutionary's garb is puritanical, a symbol of renunciation of the old order. There is Mao Tse Tung's boiler suit. Ho Chi Minh's simple jacket. Fidel Castro's messy fatigues. It is the outlook which such renunciation garb represents that gives staying power to the Long March, single purpose to the revolution, and appeals so seductively to the jaded mentality of bourgeois intellectuals." [James, BJ; Beaumont, RA (1971) The Law of Military Plumage (Dressed Up to Kill). Transition [Magazine] 39: 2427.]

In Dirty Little Secrets , James F. Dunnigan and Albert Nofi write [on page 283]: "Consider the lessons of history: the barbarian invasions, the Dutch War for Independence, the English Civil War, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, WWI, the Russian Revolution, WWII, the several Arab-Israeli Wars, the Vietnam War, and the Afghan War were all lost by the side that had the snappier uniforms. There is more than a coincidence here, though the suggestion of a "law" at work is perhaps a bit facetious. ... The Sukhomlinov Effect describes a common pathology of armies. Particularly in peacetime, armies tend to concern themselves more with appearances and style than with fighting skill, which cannot, after all, be demonstrated. Men who "look" like generals- tall, ruggedly handsome guys with broad shoulders and splendid posture who wear the uniform well- are more likely to be promoted than those who may have a real talent for war, since the latter may not meet the peacetime criteria. Although lots of fine commanders have been short, and fat, and slovenly, they had to wait around for a war before they could prove themselves. There is no known way to pick the able generals in peacetime. As a result, despite a few notable exceptions, the generals who command at the onset of a war are rarely still in charge by its conclusion."

In 1899 the Prince of Wales had the right to wear seventeen, British Naval and Military uniforms and four foreign uniforms. In the first place. His Royal Highness was a field-marshal. Then he was colouel-in-chief of the 1st and 2nd Life Guards, and of the Royal Hors^ Guards. He was also colonel of the 10th Hussars, and captain-general and colonel of the Honourable Artillery Company. Besides these he was honorary colonel of the following: The Norfolk Artillery (Eastern Division R.A.), the 3rd Battilion Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, 3rd Battalion Gordon Highlanders, 4th Volunteer Battalion Suffolk Regiment (the Cambridge University Volunteers), 1st Volunteer Battalion Oxfordshire Light Infantry, the 6th Volunteer Battalion King's Royal Rifle Corps (for service in which battalion he wears the Volunteer Decoration), 2nd Volunteer Battalion Seaforth Highlanders (Ross-shire Buffs, the Duke of Albany's), the 2nd Regiment of the Ghoorka Infantry, the 6th Bengal Cavalry, and the Ceylon Light Infantry Volunteers.

He also had the right to wear a Naval uniform as an honorary Admiral of the Fleet.

The Prince also had four foreign uniforms, namely, as honorary co!onel of the 5th Pomeranian (Blucher) Hussars, the 12th Austro-Hungarian Hussars, and the Kieff Regimeut of Russian Dragoons, and of the 1st Prussian Regiment of Dragoon Guards. The uniform of the 5th Pomeranian Hussars was a crimson coat and dark blue trousers. The 12th Austro-Hungarian Hussars wear blue coats and red trousers. The Kieff Regiment of Russian Dragoons had dark green tunics and blue trousers. The 1st Prussian Regiment of Dragoon Guards were red coated, with light blue facings and dark blue trousers.

It is reported that Kaiser Wilhelm II could find no better way of expressing his resentment at Great Britain when the war broke out, than by renouncing his titles, and returning his British uniforms. He sent a message to that effect to the British Ambassador in Berlin before the war was many hours old. "His Majesty begs that you will tell the King that he has been proud of the titles of British Field Marshal and British Admiral, but that in consequence of what has occurred, he must now at once divest himself of those titles."

The uniforms have duly been returned, but it was said that the Kaiser was still able to wear more different uniforms than any other man in the history of the world. He was entitled to wear 150 different kinds of foreign uniform alone, while the variety of German uniforms he could assume brought the total up to well over 500. A whole suite of apartments, full of wardrobes, was devoted at' Potsdam to the housing of the Kaiser's uniforms, and it is said that he often wore ten or a dozen uniforms in the course of a day. If, for instance, he were receiving a distinguished Russian in uniform, he would put on one of his thirty Russian uniforms for the occasion; and so on. It was not surprising to learn that he has the privilege, in some honorary capacity, of wearing the uniform of every regiment in the German Army. He cherished this privilege, and exercised it.

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sukhomlinov (1848-1926), the Russian general and war minister, was born in 16 August 1848. He passed through the cavalry school in St. Petersburg, and in 1867 was given a commission in the Guard Ulans. He graduated from the Academy of the General Staff in 1874. He took part in the war with Turkey in 1877-8 as an officer of the general staff, and was awarded the St. George Cross of the fourth degree.

From 1884 to 1886 he commanded a dragoon regiment and from 1886 to 1897 he was the head of the officers' cavalry school in St. Petersburg, having meantime in 1890 been promoted to the rank of general. His next appointment was as commander of the 10th Cavalry Division. In 1899, while commanding the troops of the Kiev military district, Gen. Dragomirov appointed him as his chiefof-staff and later as his assistant. His close connexion with Gen. Dragomirov, who enjoyed enormous prestige in the Russian army, ensured Sukhomlinov's future career. After the death of Dragomirov, he was appointed commander in Kiev.

In March 1909, Vladimir Sukhomlinov took over the post of Minister of War of the Russian Empire. He was a proponent of the development and use of new technologies; Thanks to him, the Russian army established automotive units and a naval air fleet. In 1911, the Russian army military counter-intelligence was established.

In the Council of Ministers at Suhomlinova had a difficult relationship with Minister of finance V.N. Kokovcovym, who sought to reduce military spending. In the midst of the first world war, when in the spring of 1915, the biggest disadvantage of shells and other military equipment, Suhomlinova became regarded as the main perpetrator of poor supply of the Russian army. In June 1915, he was dismissed from his post as Minister of war, and soon there began investigations of his activities at the ministerial post.

In March 1916, Vladimir Sukhomlinov was dismissed from military service in April was arrested and while the investigation continued, had been detained in Trubeckom bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress. In October, he was transferred to house arrest. As co-defendants were also his wife E.B. Butovic.

The trial of Suhomlinovym lasted for months. He was charged with treason, idle power and bribery. The majority of the allegations had been substantiated, however, Vladimir Sukhomlinov was found guilty of unpreparedness of the army for war and sentenced to indefinite and deprivation of all rights. His wife was acquitted. Katorga was soon replaced by a term of imprisonment, and was placed in Sukhomlinov Trubetskoy bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress.

After the October revolution, Vladimir Sukhomlinov was transferred to another prison. In May 1918, as a result of an amnesty, he was released and then travelled to Finland and from there to Germany. In exile, wrote memoirs, which tried to rehabilitate him. Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sukhomlinov February 2, 1926 died in Berlin.

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Obama dismisses Pyongyang's bid to halt nuclear tests

Iran Press TV

Mon Apr 25, 2016 9:13AM

US President Barack Obama has rejected an offer by North Korea to ditch its nuclear tests in exchange for Washington's suspension of joint annual war games with South Korea.

Obama, who was speaking Sunday at a presser in Hanover with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said, "We don't take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to do a test these kinds of activities."

"What we've said consistently... is that if North Korea shows seriousness in denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, then we'll be prepared to enter into some serious conversations with them about reducing tensions and our approach to protecting our allies in the region. But that's not something that happens based on a press release in the wake of a series of provocative behaviors. They're going to have to do better than that."

The remarks come on the heels of a Saturday interview by The Associated Press with North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong who told the US news agency that his country was ready to stop its nuclear tests Washington halted its annual military drills with Seoul.

"Stop the nuclear war exercises in the Korean Peninsula, then we should also cease our nuclear tests," Ri told AP.

He also maintained that the US drove his country to develop nuclear devices as an act of self-defense.

"If we continue on this path of confrontation, this will lead to very catastrophic results, not only for the two countries but for the whole entire world as well," he said.

"It is really crucial for the United States government to withdraw its hostile policy against the DPRK (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) and as an expression of this stop the military exercises, war exercises, in the Korean Peninsula. Then we will respond likewise."

On January 6, North Korea said it had successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb, its fourth nuclear test, vowing to build up its nuclear program as deterrence against potential aggression from the US and its regional allies.

Pyongyang accuses the US of plotting with regional allies to topple its government, saying it will not relinquish its nuclear deterrence unless Washington ends its hostile policy toward Pyongyang and dissolves the US-led UN command in South Korea.

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Refusing an Olive Branch: US Spurns North Korea's Offer to End Nuke Program

Sputnik News

00:16 26.04.2016(updated 02:03 26.04.2016)

Despite decrying North Korea's recent missile tests, President Barack Obama has roundly rejected an offer from Pyongyang to halt its programs in exchange for an end to joint US-South Korea military exercises, which the North considers a provocation.

On Saturday, the South Korean military claimed its northern neighbor had successfully launched a ballistic missile from a submarine in the East Sea. Speaking during a state visit to Germany over the weekend, President Obama deemed this incident "provocative."

"What is clear is that North Korea continues to engage in continuous provocative behavior, that they have been actively pursuing a nuclear program, an ability to launch nuclear weapons. And although more often than not they fail in many of these tests, they gain knowledge each time they engage in these tests," Obama said.

But while the US is ostensibly interested in having North Korea end its nuclear ambitions, the president made the curious decision to reject Pyongyang's offer to do just that.

"It is really crucial for the United States government to withdraw its hostile policy against the DPRK and as an expression of this stop the military exercises, war exercises in the Korean peninsula," North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong said during a rare interview.

Then we will respond likewise," he said.

"If we continue on this path of confrontation, this will lead to very catastrophic results, not only for the two countries but for the whole entire world," Ri added.

President Obama appears uninterested in the offer. On Sunday, he told reporters that he doubted Pyongyang's sincerity.

"We don't take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to do a test," he said. "That's not something that happens based on a press release in the wake of a series of provocative behaviors. They're going to have to do better than that."

Since January, North Korea has carried out a series of nuclear and ballistic missile tests. These resulted in harsh new sanctions from the United Nations Security Council. Pyongyang, however, insists that the technology is necessary to defend itself against threats from the US and its key ally, South Korea.

Since the Korean War never officially ended, Washington and Seoul conduct joint military exercises annually. The drills explicitly rehearse a "preemptive strike on North Korea," according to Gregory Elich of the Korea Policy Institute, speaking to Radio Sputnik.

While tensions are high on the peninsula, both China and Russia have urged for calm.

"The situation on the Korean peninsula calls for particular alarm," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a speech at the Mongolian Foreign Ministry earlier this month.

"Pyongyang is ignoring the demands of the UN Security Council and continuing to make threats with nuclear missile experiments."

 Sputnik

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Obama: US Taking Defense Measures Against North Korea

by VOA News April 26, 2016

U.S. President Barack Obama says the U.S. is taking defensive measures to counter "low-level" threats from North Korea.

"As we try to resolve the underlying problem of nuclear development inside of North Korea, we're also setting up a shield that can at least block the relatively low-level threats that they're posing now," Obama said in a CBS television interview that aired on Tuesday.

He said the issue of North Korea is "not something that lends itself to an easy solution." "We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals. But aside from the humanitarian costs of that, they are right next door to our vital ally, Republic of Korea [South Korea]," Obama said.

Earlier Tuesday, South Korea's news agency reported North Korea is preparing a second launch of a new, powerful mid-range missile capable of reaching U.S. military installations in the Pacific. The Yonhap News Agency said it learned from an unidentified government official that South Korea's military "is picking up signs" that its northern neighbor will launch the missile "in the near future."

But a spokesman for South Korea's Defense Ministry said it could not confirm Yonhap's report.

North Korea's Musudan missile is a mobile land-based missile that was converted from an old Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missile. It has a range of anywhere between 3,000-4,000 kilometers, which puts the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam within reach.

North Korea test-launched the missile on April 15, the birthday of Kim Il Sung, the country's first president and grandfather of current leader Kim Jong Un. South Korean and U.S. officials say the launch was a failure.

The North has been conducting a series of missile launches in recent weeks, in defiance of a new, stronger set of sanctions imposed by the United Nations over its fourth nuclear test in January. And South Korean President Park Geun-hye said recently there are indications North Korea is preparing to conduct a fifth nuclear test.

Analysts believe Kim Jong Un will try to use the test to cement his hold on power and enhance his image within the country as it prepares for a rare congress of the ruling Workers Party next month.

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Planning to Stay: Germany to Construct Permanent Air Base in Turkey

Sputnik News

12:10 25.04.2016(updated 14:37 25.04.2016)

Germany is discussing the construction of its own permanent air base in Turkey with Ankara; it plans to use the base to combat Daesh terrorists, according to the Der Spiegel magazine.

Berlin is in talks with Ankara, and hopes to build its own permanent air base on Turkish soil which will allow it to fight Daesh, the international terrorist organization which has been condemned by numerous countries including Russia and the United States, the magazine Der Spiegel reported on Monday.

According to Der Spiegel, German authorities plan to allocate almost 30 million euros for the construction of a German airstrip and accommodations for its soldiers on the territory of the Incirlik Air Base.

The project is scheduled to be implemented before the end of 2017, Der Spiegel reported.

In the next six months, Germany is due to earmark 10 million euros for the construction of an airfield for its Tornado fighter jets as well as fueling planes. Also, the German Defense Ministry plans to allot another 15 million euros for the construction of barracks for 400 soldiers, plus another 4.5 million euros for the construction of a recreation site in the area.

Deployed at Incirlik Air Base, Germany's anti-Daesh mission in Syria has been in place since December 15, 2015 and is slated to last until December 31, 2016.

Several Tornado reconnaissance combat aircraft are involved in the mission, as well as a frigate to support the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle in the Mediterranean Sea.

On November 25, German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to support France's anti-Daesh campaign following the deadly Paris attacks that claimed the lives of 130 people earlier that month.

 Sputnik

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Russia may buy heavy water from Iran

Iran Press TV

Mon Apr 25, 2016 4:3PM

Russia announced on Monday that it is considering buying 40 tons of heavy water from Iran in what could make Moscow the second customer of the nuclear material from Iran after Washington.

Russia's Foreign Ministry has announced in a statement that the volume of the planned purchase of heavy water from Iran will be 40 metric tons.

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi had been quoted by the media earlier in the day as saying that Iran and Russia are discussing heavy water sales.

Araqchi had emphasized that the US had been the first buyer of Iranian heavy water and some other world powers, including Russia, are now showing an interest.

He had earlier last week also said that the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and a US company  which he did not name - had reached an agreement over the sale of heavy water.

He added that the agreement was signed following three months of negotiations.

This was accordingly confirmed by the US Department of Energy which said it plans to buy 32 metric tons of heavy water from Iran for $8.6 million.

"The United States will not be Iran's customer forever," a spokeswoman with the Department had been quoted by the media as saying. She further added that the Department plans to sell the heavy water to commercial and research entities, including a national lab, inside the US.

The nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 that was made operational in January gives Iran the right to sell, dilute or dispose of the heavy water it has produced under certain conditions.

It also authorizes Iran to purchase natural uranium or "yellow cake" in return.

In early March, Araqchi told the media that Iran had sold 32 tons of heavy water to the US in what seen as a landmark progress in the commercialization of the country's nuclear energy program.

He also said the Islamic Republic had purchased 140 tons of yellow cake from Russia as well as 60 more tons from Kazakhstan.

These were the first trade activities that the country had carried out over its nuclear energy materials after the implementation of the nuclear deal in January.

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Iran enjoys 'unparalleled' security: Intelligence minister

Iran Press TV

Mon Apr 25, 2016 4:0PM

Iran's Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi says while the insecurity prevailing in most countries in the Middle East and across the world, the Islamic Republic enjoys "unparalleled" security.

Relying on their intelligence radar, Iranian security forces have so far managed to identify and dismantle many terrorist groups and thwart all plots aimed at endangering the security of the country, Alavi said on Monday.

He added that all efforts by Takfiri terrorists are focused on "challenging the security" of the Islamic Republic, but all such plots have been neutralized.

Alavi said Daesh Takfiri terrorists seek to hatch plots against the Islamic Republic from its de facto capital Raqqa in Syria, but any terrorist team which headed to Iran fell prey to Iranian security forces.

The Iranian intelligence minister emphasized that the country's security forces succeeded in defeating Takfiri terrorists and their nurtured elements.

Iran maintains military advisers in Syria, where the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is fighting an array of foreign-backed militant forces, including, but not limited to, those of the Daesh terrorist group.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. Damascus says Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar are the main supporters of the militants fighting the government forces.

According to UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, some 400,000 people have lost their lives as a result of over five years of conflict in Syria.

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Iran won't forget sanctions era allies: First VP

Iran Press TV

Mon Apr 25, 2016 2:24PM

Iranian First Vice President Es'haq Jahangiri reiterates the country's foreign policy on the expansion of ties with the international community, saying Iran will never forget its allies during years of sanctions.

"South America and important countries in this region, including Uruguay, have always been among the Islamic Republic of Iran's friends and the Iranian government and nation have always respected nations in this region," Jahangiri said during joint talks between senior delegations of Iran and Uruguay, co-chaired by him and Uruguay's Vice President Raul Sendic Rodriguez in Tehran on Monday.

He expressed hope the current visit by Uruguay's vice president to Tehran would lead to stronger mutual relations.

He added that the nuclear agreement, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries last July, proved the Islamic Republic's diplomatic capacity to solve issues and clear misunderstandings with international community.

The JCPOA created a "new opportunity" for Iran and the South American countries, particularly Uruguay, to improve their trade and economic relations.

Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council  the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia  plus Germany started implementing the JCPOA on January 16. The two sides signed the agreement on July 14, 2015 following two and a half years of intensive talks.

Under the JCPOA, all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran by the European Union, the Security Council and the US would be lifted. Iran has, in return, put some limitations on its nuclear activities.

Jahangiri said Iran's Ministry of Petroleum is ready to take steps to resume the sale of oil and petrochemical products to Uruguay, but the Iranian and Uruguayan governments should provide the required banking facilities and support trade relations.

The Iranian veep also expressed the country's readiness to transfer its experience and know-how to Uruguay in the sectors of trade, economy, the pharmaceutical industry, nano-technology, mines and construction of dams and power plants.

The Uruguay vice president, for his part, said his country has always maintained cordial relations with Iran and is ready to take major steps to further improve trade and economic cooperation now that the sanctions have been lifted on Iran.

Rodriguez emphasized that Tehran and Montevideo should proceed with political talks to expand relations with more coordinated stances.

The Uruguay's veep is in Tehran at the head of an economic and trade delegation on an official visit to hold talks with Iranian officials on ways to strengthen trade and economic cooperation.

He plans to hold talks with President Hassan Rouhani; Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani; Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif; Minister of Agriculture Mahmoud Hojjati; Minister of Industry, Mines and Trade Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh and Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian.

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Iran Threatens Legal Action Against US Over Diverted Funds

by VOA News April 25, 2016

Iran has threatened legal action against the United States if $2 billion in frozen funds are diverted to compensate American families of people killed by Tehran-sponsored terrorism.

"We hold the U.S. government responsible for protecting our (frozen) funds," said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. "If our funds are illegally accessed, we will surely claim damages from the American government at an appropriate time."

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 2012 law concerning the distribution of the funds. The court's ruling directly affects more than 1,300 relatives of victims, some who have been seeking compensation for more than 30 years.

Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told VOA's Persian Service that the court's ruling is consistent with international norms and conventions.

"The U.S. law is indeed at the edge of international practice," he said. "Courts have increasingly gotten involved in what were thought to be 'politically off-bounds' areas. This is not universally practiced, but the U.S. law is not unique."

The ruling awards damages to the relatives of 241 Marines killed in a 1983 terrorist attack in Beirut, 19 U.S. military troops killed in the 1996 Khobar Towers truck bombing in Saudi Arabia, and other attacks.

Iran, which is linked to the militant group Hezbollah, denies any involvement in the attacks and has said it had no role in the deadly events in the Lebanese capital.

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Iraqi Kurds Counting on Further Supplies of Russian Arms

Sputnik News

16:30 25.04.2016

Head of Iraq's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Hemin Hawrami, said that he hopes deliveries of Russian equipment to Iraqi Kurds will continue in the future.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Iraqi Kurdistan is grateful to Russia for supplying it with arms and looks forward to continued cooperation in this area, the head of Iraq's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Hemin Hawrami, said Monday.

"I would like to express our gratitude to Russia on the behalf of Iraqi Kurdistan for [its] help in the fight against Islamic terrorism. We hope that deliveries of equipment will continue in the future," Hawrami said at a press conference in Moscow.

In March, Russia supplied the Iraqi Kurds with five ZU-23-2 twin-barreled anti-aircraft autocannons and 20,000 rounds of ammunition to help the Peshmerga militia in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) militant group, which is banned in many countries including Russia.

According to Russian Ambassador to Iraq Ilya Morgunov, schedule of Moscow's arms deliveries to Iraqi Kurdistan was approved by and coordinated with the Baghdad authorities.

 Sputnik

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Protest by Iraqi MPs Blocks Vote on New Cabinet

by VOA News April 26, 2016

Some Iraqi lawmakers interrupted a parliamentary session on Tuesday impeding a planned vote to decide on a new technocratic cabinet, one made up of policy experts.

The protesters, many allied with former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, threw water bottles towards his successor Haider al-Abadi, chanting demands for his removal.

They also demanded the removal of President Fuad Masum and Speaker Salim al-Jabouri.

Abadi has called for the government to be run by experts, rather than politically affiliated ministers, but political parties have pushed back on the proposed changes in an apparent effort to maintain the patronage system they rely on to stay in power.

Abadi also attended the session on Tuesday but members of parliament prevented him from speaking.

A new session was later held at another hall which the protesting lawmakers were prohibited to enter. As a result, the legitimacy of the session will most likely be challenged.

Last week, Abadi called for parliament to put aside its differences and do its job. Of the original list of 14 cabinet appointees, named at the beginning of the month, just four remain on a new list released Tuesday.

The nominees for water resources, health and transportation stayed the same, while a fourth nominee from the original list became a candidate for the planning ministry.

In February, Abadi called for "fundamental" change to the government and called for the inclusion of academic and professional figures in the cabinet. Since then he has proposed several reform measures that have been delayed or otherwise undermined by parties and politicians with vested interests in keeping the current system running.

The political crisis comes as Iraqi forces are fighting to regain more ground from the Islamic State group. Both the United Nations and the U.S. have warned the political crisis could undermine the fight against the jihadists.

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US Senators Urge Substantial Boost in Military Aid for Israel

by Chris Hannas April 26, 2016

A group of 83 U.S. senators called on President Barack Obama to complete a new security agreement with Israel that would include increasing the $3.1 billion the United States now provides in annual military aid.

That money is allocated through a 10-year agreement that expires in 2018. Negotiations on a new pact are ongoing, with Israel believed to be seeking an increase to at least $4 billion a year.

The senators, in a letter dated Monday, did not specify how much they think Israel should receive, but said they "stand ready to support a substantially enhanced new long-term agreement."

Militant threats

The letter cited a number of militant threats facing the U.S. ally, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, al-Qaida and Islamic State in Syria, and militant Islamic groups in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

It also highlighted Iran's support for many of those groups and its recent ballistic missile tests as immediate threats to Israel's security.

"Given the extraordinary levels of weapons pouring into the Middle East, Israel could quickly find itself on the wrong end of the regional military balance," the letter said.

The bipartisan group of senators makes up most of the 100-member body.

Senator Chris Coons, who is leading the effort along with Senator Lindsey Graham, urged the Obama administration to act "swiftly."

"During a time of increased instability in the Middle East, it is important the United States and Israeli governments reaffirm their historic and unshakeable security partnership," Coons said.

The U.S. has allocated more than $17 billion in foreign military and police aid this year, according to data compiled by Security Assistance Monitor, including the $3.1 billion for Israel.

Afghanistan, with $3.8 billion, is the only country to get more. Egypt ranks third on the list with $1.3 billion.

Department of Defense spending

In addition to those funds, Congress often allocates more money within the lines of the Defense Department's budget for certain countries.

For 2016, that extra spending includes up to $206 million to Israel for three missile defense systems -- $40 million for the Iron Dome, $150 million for David's Sling and $15 million for Arrow 3.

Iron Dome is used to intercept short- and medium-range rockets fired from just beyond Israel's borders, while Arrow 3 interceptors fly beyond the earth's atmosphere and are meant to destroy incoming nuclear, biological or chemical missiles.

The David's Sling Weapons System (DSWS) is a joint U.S.-Israeli project that is meant to fill the gap between the two defenses. It defends against arsenal such as Syria's 302mm rockets and Scud B-class ballistic missiles.

The senators said in their letter to the president they are currently considering increasing that Israeli missile defense funding in 2017.

The Senate version of the Pentagon funding bill has not yet been made public, with the Senate Armed Services Committee due to work on it next month.

But on Monday, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee released the summary of its version of the legislation.

It called for a substantial increase in Israeli missile defense funding, to up to $332 million, with $62 million for the Iron Dome, $150 million for David's Sling and $120 million for Arrow 3.

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South Korean Military on High Alert Over Possible Nuke Test by N Korea

Sputnik News

10:54 25.04.2016(updated 11:00 25.04.2016)

The South Korean armed forces are on high alert due to a possibility that North can conduct a nuclear test on Monday to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the Korean People's Army (KPA), local media reported.

TOKYO (Sputnik)  On April 25, North Korea celebrates the Military Foundation Day, which is considered to be one of the country's major national events.

"Our military is maintaining thorough preparations against the possibility of North Korea carrying out a nuclear test We are keeping particularly close attention to the possibility because today marks the founding anniversary of the North's armed forces," South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun said as quoted by the Yonhap news agency.

According to the spokesman, Seoul has detected signs of Pyongyang's preparations for the nuclear test.

The official, however, noted that North Korea may conduct a nuclear test at any time as it maintains technical readiness to do so.

In early January, North Korea successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test, putting a satellite into orbit a month later, in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. In March, North Korea conducted multiple short and medium-range rocket launches.

In response to North Korea's recent activities, South Korea and the United States have launched large-scale military drills in the region. The exercises, expected to last through April 30, include rehearsals of strikes on North Korea's missile and nuclear facilities in case of war. Pyongyang has labeled the drills as provocation.

 Sputnik

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Russia Hews Closer To Zhirinovsky's Wacky Vision Than You Might Have Expected

April 25, 2016

by RFE/RL

Russian firebrand politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky made his name with crackpot, bellicose, and often offensive statements. But are his ideas really so eccentric in the current Russian context?

Since the early 1990s, the man dubbed the "clown prince" of Russian politics has gained a solid reputation for flying trial balloons on the Kremlin's behalf. Here are some of Zhirinovsky's seemingly outrageous proposals that have since become remarkably close to Russian reality.

The Baltic states have long been one of Zhirinovsky's favorite targets. He has urged Russia to build giant fans to blow radioactive waste over the Baltics, called for a Russian invasion, and last year suggested conducting local referendums on the return of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to the Russian fold. He voiced confidence that Balts would opt for joining Russia, arguing that Moscow had "abandoned" the three countries by recognizing their sovereignty in 1991. "They never wanted to live in independent states; they were and wanted to remain citizens of the U.S.S.R.," he said.

His tirades took a more ominous tinge when the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office, at the request of a lawmaker from the ruling party, subsequently examined the legality of the U.S.S.R. State Council's recognition of the sovereignty of the Baltic states and came to the conclusion that it was "defective."

Zhirinovsky has since predicted that Russian flags will fly over Kyiv, Riga, Vilnius, and Tallinn as soon as 2016.

Against that backdrop, Russia in 2015 sentenced Estonian security officer Eston Kohver to 15 years in jail on charges of espionage and illegally crossing the border. Tallinn has insisted Kohver was abducted in his home country and dragged into Russia (and an initial joint investigation hinted at the same). After protracted negotiations, Kohver was eventually exchanged for jailed Russian spy Aleksei Dressen.

And earlier this month, Russian jets buzzed a U.S. destroyer conducting military exercises within international waters in the Baltic Sea in what Washington described as a "simulated attack."

In April 2014, soon after an armed conflict pitting Ukrainian forces against Russia-backed separatists erupted in eastern Ukraine, Zhirinovsky addressed the State Duma in military fatigues and denounced the new Western-leaning government in Kyiv as a "junta." Four months later, he urged Putin to take resolute action in eastern Ukraine and "wipe out" Poland and the Baltic states if the West retaliated.

Although Russia has denied sending troops into eastern Ukraine (while acknowledging well after the fact that it deployed the "little green men" who occupied Crimea ahead of the peninsula's forced annexation), NATO has repeatedly accused Moscow of training, arming, and fighting alongside the separatists.

According to the United Nations, the conflict in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 9,100 people and injured some 21,000 others.

Zhirinovsky once said that he dreamed of a day when Russian soldiers could "wash their boots in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean." His dream is now one step closer to becoming reality. In March, Russia's Pacific Fleet sent a naval group on an unofficial visit to five different countries, effectively restoring long-distance naval voyages. The fleet's spokesman, Roman Martov, said the purpose of the mission was to "ensure naval presence and demonstrate the flag in the Pacific and Indian Oceans."

As a candidate in the 2008 presidential election, Zhirinovsky pledged to shut Russia's borders as soon as he became head of state. "If you think that these are the actions of a police state, be my guest," he roared. "I promise that I will take these actions."

While at the time the remarks were dismissed as another of his eccentric rants, his pledge can now be seen as a troubling harbinger of Russia's current isolationist drive. Russia has since banned Western food imports, barred holidaymakers from booking package tours to Turkey -- one of the most popular tourist destinations among Russian tourists -- and prohibited Federal Security Service (FSB) employees, debtors, police officers, firefighters, and other categories of citizen from leaving the country.

Last fall, a prominent lawmaker announced that Russia was considering reintroducing Soviet-style exit visas for all Russians wishing to travel abroad. The lawmaker quickly retracted his statements, saying he had been misunderstood. But rumors continue to swirl that the authorities are mulling ways to control the ability of Russians to travel.

When bird flu spread around the planet in 2006, sparking worldwide panic, Zhirinovsky came up with a simple solution to end the epidemic: Send troops "from Sochi to Crimea" to shoot all the birds dead. "This little song of theirs has to be broken," he said, adding, "This is not a joke!" Eight years later, Moscow did indeed dispatch soldiers to Crimea. Their agenda, however, did not include birds. The Ukrainian peninsula was forcibly seized by Russia and a deepening crackdown is under way to silence critics in Crimea denouncing their peninsula's illegal takeover.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-zhirinovsky- no-longer-so-wacky/27696519.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Russia to Conduct Observation Flight Over France Under Open Skies Treaty

Sputnik News

12:21 25.04.2016

Sergei Ryzhkov, who is head of the Russian Defense Ministry's Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, said that in the course of the observation mission, French specialists on board the aircraft will monitor compliance with the agreed parameters for the flight and the use of observation equipment.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Russian military experts will fly over parts of France under the Treaty on Open Skies on April 25-29, Sergei Ryzhkov, who is head of the Russian Defense Ministry's Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, said Monday.

"As part of the international Open Skies Treaty, a Russian inspection team plans to carry out an observation flight on a Russian An-30 plane over the territory of the French Republic. An observation flight with a maximum range of up to 2,078 kilometers [1,291 miles] will be carried out during the period from April 25 to 29 from the Orleans-Bricy Air Base," Ryzhkov said.

According to him, in the course of the observation mission, French specialists on board the aircraft will monitor compliance with the agreed parameters for the flight and the use of observation equipment.

"Carrying out observation flights under the agreement promotes greater openness and transparency in the military activities of the treaty states parties. This will be the eleventh Russian observation flight in 2016," Ryzhkov added.

The Treaty on Open Skies was signed in March 1992 and became one of the major confidence-building measures in Europe after the Cold War. It entered into force on January 1, 2002, and currently has 34 states parties, including Russia and most NATO members.

 Sputnik

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19 killed, 120 injured in militant attacks in Syria's Aleppo

Iran Press TV

Mon Apr 25, 2016 5:3PM

At least 19 civilians, including three children, have been killed in rocket attacks carried out by terrorist groups in Syria's northern city of Aleppo.

Some 120 people were also injured in the attacks on residential areas on Monday, the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Syria's official news agency, SANA, said that some 16 people died and 86 others were injured in the attacks carried out by al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front and its allied groups.

According to reports, some 86 civilians have been killed in Aleppo in clashes between government forces and militant groups over the past three years.

On Sunday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry sent letters to the UN Security Council and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to protest the terrorist attacks on residential neighborhoods in Aleppo and the capital, Damascus.

The letters said that the attacks violated the ceasefire, which was brokered by Russia and the US, and which took effect in February.

Syrian officials say the recent militant attacks show lack of seriousness on the part of opposition to respect the truce deal.

Damascus and militant groups involved in the ceasefire have been trading accusations of truce violation.

Meanwhile, Syria peace talks are going on despite the absence of the so-called Saudi-backed opposition group High Negotiations Committee (HNC), as the group's leaders left the talks on April 19 to protest at what they called escalating violence and restrictions on humanitarian access in Syria.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. Damascus says Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar are the main supporters of the militants fighting the government forces.

According to UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, some 400,000 people have lost their lives as a result of over five years of conflict in the Arab country.

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PKK attack kills two soldiers, injures four in Turkey's southeast

Iran Press TV

Mon Apr 25, 2016 2:17PM

Two Turkish soldiers have been killed and four others injured in an armed attack by militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the country's volatile southeast.

According to a statement by the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), the casualties occurred on Monday during clashes with PKK militants in Nusaybin, a Turkish town located on the Syrian border.

The assault came after the TSK said in a statement on Sunday that 15 militants from the outlawed PKK forces had been killed in clashes in Nusaybin and the towns of Sirnak and Lice, which are also located in Turkey's southeast.

Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast has been hit by waves of violence in clashes between government forces and PKK militants after a ceasefire fell apart in July 2015.

The Turkish military has been conducting offensives against the positions of the group in northern Iraq and Syria as well.

The operations began in the wake of a deadly July 2015 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc. More than 30 people died in the attack, which the Turkish government blamed on the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

Following the bombing, PKK militants, who accuse the government in Ankara of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of attacks against Turkish security forces, prompting Turkey's military operations in predominantly Kurdish-populated areas.

The clashes between the militants and the Turkish military in the flashpoint areas have forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.

More than 40,000 people have been reportedly killed in the violence since the autonomy-seeking PKK took up arms in 1984.

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If Erdogan Can't Stand Criticism, 'He Shouldn't be in Politics'

Sputnik News

20:20 25.04.2016(updated 20:54 25.04.2016)

The Turkish government has called on Turkish organizations in the Netherlands to collect information about Turks in the Netherlands who make insults against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Speaking to Sputnik, a representative of Turkey's leading opposition party in the Netherlands said that the measure serves only to humiliate Dutch Turks.

Last week, Dutch media reported that the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam had emailed Turkish organizations operating in the Netherlands, asking them to report cases of insults being made against the Turkish leader. The request came a day after Dutch authorities said that they intended to abolish a law which made insults against a friendly state's leaders a criminal offense.

Dutch officials have called the Turkish initiative a disturbing case of Turkish overreach into Dutch affairs.

Speaking to Sputnik Turkey, Orhan Selim Bayraktar, the head of the Netherlands branch of the Republican People's Party, Turkey's main opposition party, said that the scandal has been a humiliating experience for the country's estimated 400,000 ethnic Turks.

"For starters, requests like this by the Turkish consulate go far beyond their functions. Secondly, this is something for lawyers and prosecutors, not the staff of the diplomatic mission, to be engaged in. Thirdly, the behavior of the Turkish Consulate has caused a wave of reaction from Dutch society, as a result of which Turkey has found itself on the agenda in a very humiliating way."

"For me, as a Turk, this is something very unpleasant and painful to observe. We do not deserve such treatment. Neither the president nor the Turkish diplomatic mission has the right to take actions which decrease our country's prestige in this way."

Another unfortunate consequence of the initiative, Bayraktar said, is that "all Turks living abroad now show apprehension. What if, somewhere, someone says something objectionable to the country's authorities? Will this be cause to institute legal proceedings? After this scandal, the agenda of Turks living in the Netherlands has changed."

"Before, we discussed Dutch issues, or issues in the areas where we live. Now we have to deal with this problem,which has risen suddenly and out of nowhere. We have to think about the classification of insults against the Turkish president, and it shouldn't be this way."

"I don't think that any Turk living abroad wants to insult their own president. But the authorities in Turkey do not understand this, and are trying to establish universal control, which spoils our lives and puts us in a very difficult position."

Ultimately, Bayraktar said, if Mr. Erdogan does not want to face public criticism, he shouldn't be involved in politics.

"If the president does not want to be criticized and insulted, he should leave the political arena. Because for me, as a politician, it's obvious that if you choose to enter politics, you will have enemies who will insult you, and friends who praise you. If you cannot get used to this, you have no business being in politics. The Turkish president should abandon the persecution of his own citizens. He must serve as the guarantor of our freedoms, instead of assisting in their limitation."

 Sputnik

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Turkey's 'Homemade' Missile Defense System Will be Integrated Into NATO

Sputnik News

11:38 25.04.2016(updated 14:00 25.04.2016)

Turkey is going to eleborate its own missile defense system, which may be integrated in the NATO-operated one, the head of Turkey's Undersecretariat for Defense Industries (SSM) said Monday.

ANKARA (Sputnik)  Turkey plans to develop its own missile defense system, which will be integrated with that operated by NATO and may help the country to increase the chances of enteringthe alliance, the head of Turkey's Undersecretariat for Defense Industries (SSM) said Monday.

In November 2015, Turkey canceled a $4-billion tender for the purchase of components for the country's missile defense system, as it decided to develop the system domestically.

"We have canceled the results of the tender, not the project itself. Soon we will enter a new phase, where domestic companies, including Roketsan and Havelsan, will participate. We continue the development of short-, medium- and long-range systems, gradually increasing the range. We will not make any direct purchases, but at the same time the missile defense system we are developing, will be integrated in the NATO system. We consider that joint work with NATO will speed up the process [of the development]," Ismail Demir told the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet in an interview.

He added that it is Ankara's objective to create an entirely domestically-produced defense system and to increase Turkey's military exports by 15 times in the next seven years.

In 2009, Turkey put out a tender for the creation of its missile defense system. The US consortium Raytheon-Lockheed Martin, Europe's Eurosam and Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport all entered bids, however, China's CPMIEC ultimately won the tender.

 Sputnik

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UK Gov't Seeks to Quell Fears Over Warship Contract in Scotland

Sputnik News

18:16 25.04.2016

UK Secretary of State for Scotland David Mundell stated that the UK Government is absolutely committed to shipbuilding on the Clyde, and to the Type 26 programme, which is a very significant investment.

EDINBURGH (Sputnik)  The UK government is "absolutely committed" to completing the Type 26 warship program on the Clyde shipyards in Glasgow, Scotland, UK Secretary of State for Scotland David Mundell said in a statement Monday.

The construction of the next generation of Royal Navy frigates was a key issue in the failed 2014 Scottish independence referendum. The UK government had warned that a vote in favor of Scottish independence would jeopardize the contract to the BAE Systems shipbuilder tasked with constructing the Type 26.

"The UK Government is absolutely committed to shipbuilding on the Clyde, and to the Type 26 programme, which is a very significant investment," Mundell said.

The minister estimated $11.5 billion spending in the next decade on Royal Navy warships, including construction of two offshore patrol vessels on the Clyde to maintain Scottish shipbuilding capability ahead of the planned Type 26.

"There will continue to be shipbuilding jobs on Clydeside for years to come, and that is only because Scotland is part of the UK," Mundell added.

Last week, BAE Systems warned redundancies at the shipyard would be unavoidable if Ministry of Defense funding was not released. The warning prompted concerns over whether the program to build the Navy vessels on the Clyde would go ahead with workers' representatives accusing the government of "betrayal".

In a separate statement issued Monday, Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon echoed concerns over the warships' future.

"Workers won a contract for 13 Type 26 frigates and have already had to watch that be cut back to only eight vessels. Now there are doubts over the time table for these vessels and for other work due to come to the Clyde," Sturgeon said.

"The workforce here has already seen its numbers reduced and it would be a disgrace if they are to face further cuts. A series of claims were made by the Tories and Labour during the referendum about employment at these yards and we will do everything in our power to hold the Tories to their promises," Sturgeon added.

The BAE shipyards on the Clyde employ over 2,500 people.

Scottish voters rejected independence from the United Kingdom by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent in a referendum held in September 2014.

 Sputnik

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Chornobyl

In April 1986, Chernobyl' (Chornobyl' in Ukrainian) was an obscure city on the Pripiat' River in north-central Ukraine. Almost incidentally, its name was attached to the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant located about twenty-five kilometers upstream. On April 26, the city's anonymity vanished forever when, during a test at 1:21 A.M., the No. 4 reactor exploded and released thirty to forty times the radioactivity of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The world first learned of history's worst nuclear accident from Sweden, where abnormal radiation levels were registered at one of its nuclear facilities.

The Chernobyl reactors are of the RBMK type. These are high-power, pressure-tube reactors, moderated with graphite and cooled with water. The operational experience of military reactors testified that they can be reliably operated. However, there were accidents, emergencies occurred, but nothing was known about them. That created the illusion that military reactors can be used for nuclear power plants. This was a strategic mistake.

At the time of the Chernobyl accident there were seventeen RBMKs in operation in the Soviet Union. Since then, five RBMKs have been shut down. All four RBMKs at Chernobyl were shut down: Unit 4 reactor was destroyed in the 1986 accident; Unit 2 reactor was shut down five years later; after a serious turbine building fire; Unit 1 was closed in November 1996, and Unit 3 was closed December 15, 1999 as promised by Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Ignalina Unit 1 in Lithuania, the fifth RBMK, was shut down in December 2004. The remaining 12 operating RBMKs are in Russia (eleven reactors) and Lithuania (one reactor).

The plant lies near the Pripyat River, at the northwest end of a cooling pond. The pond is 12 km long; during normal operation the plant discharges warm water counterclockwise around the pond, taking in cool water near the north end. Just northwest of the plant is the city of Pripyat. The smaller town of Chernobyl lies south of the cooling pond.

According to data in the possession of the KGB of the USSR, design deviations and violations of construction and assembly technology occurred at various places in the construction of the second generating unit of the Chernobyl AES, and the KGB warned that could lead to mishaps and accidents. The structural pillars of the generator room were erected with a deviation of up to 100 mm from the reference axes, and horizontal connections between the pillars are absent in places. Wall panels have been installed with a deviation of up to 150 mm from the axes. The placement of roof plates did not conform to the designer's specifications. Crane tracks and stopways have vertical drops of up to 100 mm and in places a slope of up to 8 degree. The cement plant operated erratically, and its output was of poor quality. Interruptions were permitted during the pouring of especially heavy concrete causing gaps and layering in the foundation. Access roads to the Chernobyl AES were in urgent need of repair.

With complex automated systems, the user's mental model directly impacts operating decisions and emergency response. The user's mental model is his/her concept and mental representation of how the system operates. A correct understanding of the system is particularly needed in response to infrequent or unusual system events. In safety critical systems, lack of a accurate and complete mental model can lead to disastrous results. The meltdown at Chernobyl was attributed to a lack of understanding of how the reactor operated on the part of the operators, technicians, and specifically the engineer who developed the test that required by-passing safety controls.

Unlike the other types of commercial light water reactors, which use water both as coolant and as neutron moderator, conversion of water into steam within the core of the RBMK-1000 reactor results in an increase in reactor power; the core is thus said to have a "positive void coefficient." This characteristic played an important role in the Chernobyl accident.

An experiment was planned to determine the feasibility of utilizing the turbine-generators to supply electricity to selected safety systems while the turbines were coasting down. The shutdown operations were interrupted by a need to keep the reactor on the electrical grid. The reactor continued to operate at 50% power for about 9 hours; during this time, in violation of operating procedure, the emergency core-cooling system remained isolated from the reactor system.

The operators then compounded the problem by permitting the reactor power, through operational error, to decrease considerably below the level intended for the experiment. In so doing, the core power began to fluctuate, and the operators continued in their attempts to increase the power level even though the reactor was now at a power level that was considered unsafe for continuous operation. This circumstance was likewise ignored.

In addition, in an attempt to steady the core and increase the power level, a number of safety systems were disengaged which would have automatically shut down the reactor, and the control rods were removed both in number and in extent that the reactor was now operating in a condition that was in gross violation of the very strictest operating procedures. The operators appeared to have been fully aware of the situation, but ignored it. Even at this stage, the reactor was only at about the 6% power level, considerably less than that intended for the experiment.

Nonetheless, the operators disengaged a final automatic shutdown safety system and, at 1:23 am on April 26, 1986, began the test. About 30 sec later, on observing a sudden increase in power level, the operators attempted to trip the reactor; shortly thereafter, two explosions, one immediately following the other, occurred, and fragments of burning material were thrown into the air above the reactor building.

The accident involved a reactivity excursion which occurred because of the positive void coefficient of the core and its peculiar significance at lw reactor power operation. Also, it is likely that the situation was initially worsened by a positive insertion of reactivity when the control rods began to be inserted into the core, owing to the extreme positions to which they had been removed, and the use of graphite followers for water displacement.

The Chernobyl accident was neither unique in cause nor in consequence, but the effects completely dwarfed the previous incidents in magnitude. For example, whereas the Windscale accident resulted in the escape of about 2,000 curies of Iodine-131 into the biosphere approximately 7,000,000 curies of Iodine-131 escaped from the Chernobyl reactor. The events at Fukushima Dai-ichi during the period from March 12  March 20, 2013 released 5,400,000 curies of I-131 into the atmosphere.

While the reactor was still on fire, all settlements within 30 km were evacuated, including Pripyat (1986 population 45,000), Chernobyl (1986 population 12,000), and 94 other villages (estimated total population 40,000). As of 1992, this area remained almost completely abandoned.

To stop the fire and prevent a criticality accident as well as any further substantial release of fission products, boron and sand were dumped on the reactor from the air. In addition, the damaged unit was entombed in a temporary concrete "sarcophagus," to limit further release of radioactive material. Control measures to reduce radioactive contamination at and near the plant site included cutting down and burying a pine forest of approximately 1 square mile. The three other units of the four-unit Chernobyl nuclear power station were subsequently restarted. The Soviet nuclear power authorities presented a report on the accident at an International Atomic Energy Agency meeting in Vienna, Austria, in August 1986.

The Chernobyl accident caused many severe radiation effects almost immediately. Among the 600 workers present on the site at the time of the accident, 134 received high radiation doses and suffered from acute radiation sickness. Of these, thirty-one died in the first four months after the accident. Another 200,000 recovery operations workers received doses of between 0.01 Gy and 0.50 Gy. This group is at potential risk of late consequences such as cancer and their health is being monitored.

The Chernobyl accident also resulted in widespread contamination in areas of Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine inhabited by several million people. There has been an increase in thyroid cancer among individuals who as children were exposed to radioactive iodine as at the time of the accident. The affected children most likely were exposed by drinking milk contaminated with radioactive iodine. However, no increases in overall cancer have been observed in adults living in contaminated areas that could be attributed to ionizing radiation. The risk of leukemia was not elevated, even among the recovery operation workers. However, there has been a dramatic increase in thyroid cancers (about 1,800 cases), particularly among children living in the severely contaminated areas of the three affected countries. Additional cases of thyroid cancer are expected to occur.

Radiation contamination later forced abandonment even outside the 30-km zone. The 1992 image is overlaid with zones indicating December 1990 levels of cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years. Note that the area with more than 40 curies/sq km is almost completely abandoned, but abandonment of fields in the 15-40 curies/sq km zone is highly variable. In all, more than 120,000 people, from 213 villages and cities, were relocated outside contaminated areas. In December 2000, with help from the international community, the last reactor at Chernobyl was shut down.

The radiation also affected wild plants and animals around Chernobyl. Pine forests soon died, cattails grew three heads, and wild animals declined in number. But in the coming years, as the short-lived radionuclides decayed and the longer-lived contaminants settled deep into the soil, the wildlife rebounded. Human abandonment also made habitat available for birds, deer, rodents, wolves, boar and other animals. These populations appear to be increasing despite the extraordinarily high mutation rates caused by contamination in the food chain and by one of the highest background radiation levels in the world.

Ranking as one of the greatest industrial accidents of all time, the Chernobyl' disaster and its impact on the course of Soviet events can scarcely be exaggerated. No one can predict what will finally be the exact number of human victims. Thirty- one lives were lost immediately. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Russians, and Belorussians had to abandon entire cities and settlements within the thirty-kilometer zone of extreme contamination. Estimates vary, but it is likely that some 3 million people, more than 2 million in Belarus' alone, are still living in contaminated areas. The city of Chernobyl' is still inhabited by almost 10,000 people. Billions of rubles have been spent, and billions more will be needed to relocate communities and decontaminate the rich farmland.

Chernobyl' has become a metaphor not only for the horror of uncontrolled nuclear power but also for the collapsing Soviet system and its reflexive secrecy and deception, disregard for the safety and welfare of workers and their families, and inability to deliver basic services such as health care and transportation, especially in crisis situations. The Chernobyl' catastrophe derailed what had been an ambitious nuclear power program and formed a fledgling environmental movement into a potent political force in Russia as well as a rallying point for achieving Ukrainian and Belorussian independence in 1991.

Construction of the sarcophagus covering the destroyed Chernobyl Unit 4 was started in May 1986 and completed by the Soviet authorities in an extremely challenging environment six months later in November. It was quickly built as a temporary fix to channel remaining radiation from the reactor through air filters before being released to the environment. After several years, uncertainties about the actual condition of the sarcophagus, primarily due to the high radiation environment, began to emerge.

When workers finished the huge steel-and-concrete shell that entombs the intensely radioactive mass of the shattered No. 4 reactor in late 1986, Soviet officials declared the site safe for at least 30 years. Yet within a few years, the sarcophagus was cracked, crumbling and in peril of a disastrous collapse. The melted-down fuel is turning to unstable dust. Contaminated objects are being smuggled out of the poorly guarded 1,092-sq.-mi. exclusion zone. Birds fly into the sarcophagus through holes as big as a garage door; rats breed in the ruin. The structure is so unsteady that a strong windstorm could smash it, sending a plume of radioactive dust into the atmosphere.

In 1997, the countries of the G-7, the European Commission and Ukraine agreed that a multilateral funding mechanism be established to help Ukraine transform the existing sarcophagus into a stable and environmentally safe system through the Chernobyl Shelter Implementation Plan. The Chernobyl Shelter Fund was established to finance the Plan. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development was entrusted with managing the Fund. The Plan is intended to protect the personnel, population and environment from the threat of the very large inventory of radioactive material contained within the existing sarcophagus for many decades. First, the existing sarcophagus was stabilized and then eventually it was replaced with a new safe shelter (confinement). The new shelter was an arch-shaped steel structure, which will slide across the existing sarcophagus via rails.

In 1997, the G-7, the European Commission and Ukraine agreed to jointly fund the Chernobyl Shelter Implementation Plan to help Ukraine transform the existing sarcophagus into a stable and environmentally safe system. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development manages funding for the plan, which will protect workers, the nearby population and the environment for decades from the very large amounts of radioactive material still in the sarcophagus. The existing sarcophagus was stabilized before work began in late 2006 to replace it with a new safe shelter called the New Safe Confinement.

The New Safe Confinement structure was an unprecedented project to design a new building that would completely enclose the existing sarcophagus. To protect the construction workers from radiation, the arch-shaped steel structure was assembled away from the damaged reactor building and rolled into place across steel rails. Over 350 feet high and 840 feet wide it was the world's largest transportable building. In 2016, the New Safe Confinement was repositioned over the sarcophagus, and finishing work is expected to be completed in 2018. This new structure is designed to last at least 100 years. In 2017, construction was completed on an Interim Spent Fuel Storage Facility. The facility will process and store the spent fuel assemblies from the undamaged units 1, 2, and 3 in dry, double walled canisters designed to last at least 100 years.





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As several companies from around the world of telecoms share their Q3 results, here is a financial round-up with all of the key points.
English Lithuanian

Vilnius, Lithuania, 2016-04-26 15:11 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On April 26, 2016, during the ordinary general of Litgrid shareholders (legal entity code 302564383, legal status  public company, registered address: A. Juozapaviciaus g. 13, Vilnius city, Vilnius City Municipality, the Republic of Lithuania, data about the company are accumulated and stored at the Vilnius branch of the State Enterprise Centre of Registers, Division of Legal Entities) the following decisions were made:

1. Approval of the Consolidated Annual Report for 2015.

DECISION:

To approve the Consolidated Annual Report on Corporate and the Litgrid Group of Companies Operation in 2015. (Annex No. 1)

2. Presentation of an independent auditors findings.

The issue does not require decisions. (Annex No. 1)

3. Approval of the set of Consolidated and Corporate Financial Report 2015.

DECISION:

To approve the set of Consolidated and Corporate Financial Report of Litgrid 2015". (Annex No. 1)

4. Distribution of corporate profit (loss) 2015.

DECISION:

To approve the proposed distribution of corporate profit (loss) of Litgrid 2015. (Annex No. 2)

5. Approval of the new edition of Litgrid Articles of Association.

DECISION:

5.1. To approve the new edition of Litgrid Articles of Association (Annex No. 3).

5.2. To authorize the Litgrid CEO Daivis Virbickas sign the new edition of Litgrid Articles of Association and personally or through an authorized person to carry out any action in relation to its approval and registration in Lithuanian Register of legal entities according to the laws.

According to General Director of EPSO-G Rolandas Zukas, renewed Litgrid Articles of Association will ensure more efficient and transparent management of the company.

Amendments in the Articles of Association adjust the powers of the Board, enhance supervisory and control functions. A new mixed model of the Board was validated, meaning the Board will consist of two members from Litgrid, two members from holding company EPSO-G and one independent member. This will ensure the quality and transparency of Board decisions. In addition, Companys goals were reviewed and updated, including the long-term strategic goals, - said Mr Zukas.

EPSO-G General Director Rolandas Zukas stressed that in order to create the preconditions for the consistent management of the group companies, the Articles of Association of other major EPSO-G companies - Lithuanian natural gas transmission system operator Amber Grid and energy exchange operator Baltpool - were standardized as well.

Information on aforementioned decisions is also available on Litgrid website http://www.litgrid.eu as well as in Litgrid headquarters (A. Juozapaviciaus g. 13, Vilnius) during business hours (7.30-11.30 and 12.15-16.30, on Fridays 7.30-11.30 and 12.15-15.15).

Attachments:

1. Consolidated and Company's Financial Statements for 2015, presented together with Independent Auditor's Report and Consolidated Annual Report;

2. Distribution of Corporate Profit (Loss) 2015;

3. New edition of Litgrid Articles of Association;

4. Informational Notice.
Virginia Crews said that Tuesdays shooting was nerve wrecking for her. Too many youth have guns in their hands, she said.

Danville had two shootings almost eight hours apart between Monday evening and Tuesday morning.

The first shooting occurred in the 200 block of College Park Drive. Danville police responded at 7:43 p.m. to find a 27-year-old man suffering from a single gunshot wound.

Police said he was transported to the Danville Regional Medical Center for non-life threatening injuries.

On Tuesday at 2:41 a.m., police went to Berryman Avenue for reported gunfire. They found a 67-year-old man from Dry Fork suffering from non-life threatening injuries.

The man was delivering newspapers for the Danville Register & Bee when bullets were fired into his vehicle. He was taken to the Danville Regional Medical Center for treatment.

Police cars roamed the neighborhood streets Tuesday afternoon while residents sat on porches or went through their daily routines.

Crews said police were on the street in front of her house as they investigated in the early morning hours. Its not the first time officers have been on Berryman Avenue in response to a shooting.

On the evening of Oct. 27, police on Berryman Avenue  discovered a 27-year-old male Danville resident suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to the chest.

Then, on Dec. 5, police said they responded to Berryman Avenue in reference to a drive-by shooting and a 19-year-old suffering a gunshot wound to his upper torso. Officers said the gunshot was fired from a grey or black SUV as it drove by the victim and others on the street.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria and GOP challenger Jen Kiggans have faced off in a combative first debate in their closely watched race to represent Virginia's coastal 2nd Congressional District. The swing-district race between Luria and Republican state Sen. Jen Kiggans is among the most competitive in this years midterms and will help determine whether Democrats will maintain control of the U.S. House. The two Navy veterans tangled Wednesday over federal spending, the economy and abortion restrictions. The candidates are set to meet for two other similar events before Election Day.
Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump on Monday blasted Gov. Terry McAuliffe's order restoring voting rights for 206,000 felons, calling it an example of "crooked politics" that could tilt the race in Virginia.

Trump referenced Friday's sweeping executive action by McAuliffe, a Democrat, during a campaign rally in Rhode Island.

"They're giving 200,00 people that have been convicted of heinous crimes, horrible crimes, the worst crimes, the right to vote," Trump said. "Because you know what? They know they're going to vote Democrat. And that could be the swing. That's how disgusting and dishonest our political system is."

McAuliffe has said his order will allow ex-offenders to fully rejoin society and end a harsh voting restriction that has roots in racial discrimination against African-Americans.

The order applies to violent and nonviolent felons. It's difficult to gauge how many of the 206,000 might vote, because the order applies to those who have not applied to have their rights restored and to ex-offenders who may have moved out of the state.

Recent polling showed Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, a close McAuliffe ally, beating Trump 44 percent to 35 percent in Virginia.

Clinton praised McAuliffe on Twitter Friday, saying the governor is "continuing to break down barriers to voting."

On Monday, Trump called Virginia "a very close state."

"I would win Virginia. I have a lot of employees, a tremendous amount of property in Virginia," said Trump, who owns a winery in Albemarle County and a golf course in Loudoun County.

Trump donated $25,000 to McAuliffe's 2009 campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Later that year he donated the same amount to Gov. Bob McDonnell, the GOP nominee for governor.

Trump narrowly won Virginia's Republican primary on March 1 over Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who has since dropped out of the race. As in other states, Trump hasn't done as well in the behind-the-scenes jockeying for delegates to the party's national convention.

Thirteen of the state's 49 delegates will be chosen at this weekend's state convention at James Madison University in Harrisonburg.

The Washington Post has reported that Trump is planning to attend the event to woo delegates in person, but the state party has not confirmed that Trump will be involved. In a Twitter message Monday afternoon, the university said there had been "no contact" between the university and the Trump campaign.
A new granary facility planning to locate near South Boston is seeking a guarantee from regional corn producers they can provide 4,000,000 bushels of corn to the facility on an annual basis.

Mountaire Farms in partnership with Virginias Agriculture and Forestry Secretariat, the county IDA, Virginia Cooperative Extension, Farm Bureau, Farm Credit and Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services are pursuing this regional agribusiness opportunity, according to Halifax County Industrial Development Authority Matt Leonard.

And dedicated annual production of 4,000,000 bushels of corn from area farmers within approximately 100 miles of the planned new granary facility near South Boston will be required to seal the deal.

Mountaire seeks to purchase this corn directly from a network of regional growers, Leonard said when contacted this weekend about the arrangement.

In order to determine if regional growers are willing to participate and can meet Mountaires requirements, the IDA is circulating a survey among area grain farmers.

Regional grower participation is the critical factor in Mountaires site selection decision. They are evaluating other states and regions of the country for this project, Leonard said. If we want them in our region, then we need to show them we have a committed regional grower network.

According to Leonard, the surveys are being sent this week to 3,000 farmers within a 100-mile radius of Halifax County.

We issued the survey electronically to our partners the middle of last week, and it is to be distributed this week.

We believe those 3,000 corn growers represent one million acres of cropland, and I do believe they can provide the needed 4,000,000 bushels of corn.

Based on the number of growers we are contacting and the acres they represent, we believe we can meet that 4,000,000 bushel threshold, he reiterated.

And for corn growers who may not receive a survey in coming days and are interested in supplying corn to Mountaire, Leonard said, We want their information too.

Virginias Agriculture and Forestry Secretariat, the county IDA, Virginia Cooperative Extension, Farm Bureau, Farm Credit and Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services plan to support the project through resource allocation to ease and speed the project to completion, the IDA executive director said.

Mountaire, with operations in Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina and Arkansas, plans to make its decision to proceed with this project in the third quarter of this year, according to Leonard.

It plans to construct the granary facility and negotiate contracts through the balance of 2016 and into 2017 and will be ready to receive corn in the 2017 harvest.

Although Mountaire has not identified a specific site yet, Leonard said, Halifax County is their first choice in which to locate their granary.

However, if Mountaire should choose to locate elsewhere in the region, the IDA director added, We will work with them if they need to have it located somewhere else in the region.

When asked how IDA officials idenitified Mountaire as a good fit for Halifax County, Leonard explained, the IDA has had its eye on this company for a couple of years.

A few years ago, Mountaire was identified as one of a few potential good agribusiness prospects, and in the last year we have ramped up our discussions, visits and exchanges of information.

I want to be clear that currently there is no deal on the table, no imminent agreements, he said.

These projects take significant time to develop. They are proactive, collaborative and agile, but not rash.

Mountaire and the IDA have agreed to continue our project due diligence on and with each other in good faith. Distribution of the flyer to our regional grower community is the next critical step in that process. And the good faith we have created with Mountaire comes from the shared core values we have with them. We both believe in partnership, relationship, community, Leonard said, adding, Youll see that through and through if you visit their website.

A check of Mountaires website reveals a fast growing company with nearly 7,000 employees. Mountaire Farms is comprised of three, fully integrated poultry complexes in Delaware, Maryland and North Carolina with a first class breeder operation in Statesville, North Carolina, according to information on its website.

It also currently operates full service grain elevators with locations throughout Maryland and Delaware handling corn, soybeans, wheat and barley, all sourced from local farmers.

Mountaire Farms operates feed mills in North Carolina, Maryland and Delaware that are used exclusively by their contract poultry growers and use ingredients including corn, soybean meal, cookie meal, distiller dried grains, peanut meal and vitamins and minerals.

Mountaire pays per bushel using Chicago Board of Trade, plus basis to be determined. They pay either by check or direct deposit within 24 hours of receipt of grain at the granary.

Mountaire can defer payment on grain at a customers request to assist with tax planning, according to information provided in the survey being distributed to local farmers.

It also does the following:

 Allows for moisture up to 25 percent because they will dry at the facility;

 Accepts corn with certain amount of Aflatoxin when they ship to their own feed mills for use;

 Picks up grain at farms under certain conditions;

 Uses granary management systems that reduce grower wait times when delivering to the granary; and

 Plans to purchase rotational crops (other grains).

Several years ago, the IDA adopted a more business-like approach to economic development, and Leonard said out of that initiative, Halifax IDA created a targeted marketing plan identifying five broad industry sectors that they felt they could successfully retain, attract and grow.

One of those targeted sectors is agribusiness.

Team members on this project includes VDACS, Farm Bureau, Farm Credit, Ag Extension, the Secretariat of Agriculture and Forestry and the governors special advisor for rural partnerships.

The final and most important stakeholder group, according to Leonard, is the regional grower community.

The flyer (survey) makes that clear, Leonard said. I believe that these growers will do what Virginians always do when it comes to our relationships and partnerships: over-deliver. I believe the growers in Southern Virginia will easily meet the 4,000,000 bushel threshold needed for us to move to the next steps with Mountaire.

Growers who are interested in discussing contracting opportunities with Mountaire may contact IDA Deputy Director Kristy Johnson at KJohnson@HalifaxVirginia.com or call 434-572-1734, ext. 103 and provide name and name of farm or business, zip code, best phone number and time at which the farmer may be reached.
VANCOUVER, April 25, 2016 /CNW/ - VanadiumCorp Resource Inc. (TSX-V: "VRB") (the "Company") is pleased to announce that Mr. Mark Reynolds has joined the advisory board of VanadiumCorp and The Company's Vanadium Electrolyte Process Partnership (VEPP) development team. Mr. Reynold's advisory role includes strategic development, financing and leasing possibilities.

Mr. Reynolds current consulting work is focused on vanadium battery development and commercialization. Mr. Reynolds experience includes financing energy storage projects, such as Vanteck Technology Corp. (VTC), that acquired the chemical patent for Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries (VRB) from the UNSW, Australia in 2001. This resulted in the first North American VRB installation. Former developers of The Company's Lac Dore Vanadium Project were also minority investment partners of VTC. Mr. Reynold's complete profile and background is available on the Company's website at www.vanadiumcorp.com.

"For decade's I have had the belief the world is in desperate need for a solution to our energy requirements and climate change." said Mr. Reynolds. "The era of grid scale energy storage is upon us and few technologies have the right criteria to facilitate a global shift to renewable energy. The Vanadium redox flow battery (VRB) is the right technology with only one obstacle, there is no primary supplier of vanadium electrolyte in the world. VRBs are not a new technology and have evolved through development and commercial deployment for over 40 years. VRBs resolve the intermittent nature of storing wind and solar energy and provides clean green generated power. Rapid reductions in cost and increased efficiencies of the renewable sector are reinforcing that the VRB solution is the superior technical choice. When I first met VanadiumCorp management and discussed their plans years ago, I firmly believed that within their timing for project development, a market for high purity vanadium production would grow and develop, resulting in a very strong market position. VanadiumCorp has stayed on course and should prosper from their vision as the VE market matures. Quality, supply and pricing concerns plaguing existing battery producers can be alleviated through VanadiumCorp's objective of building the world's first primary supply of Vanadium Electrolyte (VE)"

Mr. Reynolds continued, "VRB Battery technology requires high purity VE to function efficiently, and hold its charge indefinitely with virtually no maintenance. VanadiumCorp has focused on development of a low cost beneficiation process for VE from the Lac Dore Vanadium Project. I am very proud to join the advisory board of VanadiumCorp at such a pivotal time. A new electrical grid is possible through renewable energy storage utilizing VRBs. This is a significant and extremely relevant solution for global climate change. The recent Paris Climate Change Conference included consideration of flow batteries that could last longer and hold more energy than lithium ion batteries to store renewable energy. Last Friday, on Earth Day, Canada joined 169 other countries at the United Nations by signing the Paris Climate Treaty. The Right Honorable, Mr. Trudeau, Canada's Prime Minister indicated Canada's support for this global climate change initiative. The primary supply of the most proven grid scale technology is located in Quebec, Canada with all infrastructure and low cost high purity production plans looking more promising by the day."

About Vanteck Technology Corp. (VTC): Located in Vancouver, B.C. Canada until 2008, VTC was an electrochemical energy storage company that commercialized the 1st patented Vanadium Energy Storage System in North America. The expiration of this global patent in 2008, led to a significant increase in global research and development. Most notably, the US Department of Energy's breakthrough in VRB energy density with third generation VRB technology. In 2008, VTC was acquired by Prudent Energy and proceeded to install over 20 Vanadium Battery installations before it was taken over by an undisclosed Chinese company. VTC was formerly listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange as "VRB". VanadiumCorp acquired the stock symbol "VRB" in 2013 when the Company management was replaced, renamed, and relevant experience in vanadium mine construction and operations was integrated into The Company's team. Expertise of VTC is currently working with vanadium battery company's: Prudent Energy, Imergy Power Systems and Avalon Battery.

About the Vanadium Redox Battery (VRB): The VRB is an enabling technology that can effectively store electricity on demand for long durations indefinitely at grid scale. This is the categorical difference from high density short life technologies like Lithium. Higher density short life batteries are unable to deep cycle efficiently and have various energy storage limitations that are problematic for large scale storage. The VRB vastly improves power reliability, safety, power quality and will reduce costs for applications such as load levelling, peak shaving and providing power suppliers with essential Uninterruptible Power Systems (UPS). The application of the VRB technology is particularly well suited to stationary power sources such as power stations, telecommunication operations and alternative energy generators, including wind farms. The VRB technology is also characterized by low ecological impact. It uses conducting plastic electrodes and contains no heavy metals unlike most other conventional energy storage systems that rely on toxic substances such as lead, zinc or cadmium. The VRB can also be designed to be mobile, so it can be relocated to another site as needed in the future and the contained VE never degrades or loses charge. A primary supplier of VE is necessary as VE represents close to 42% cost of a VRB battery as opposed to 3% for Lithium. VanadiumCorp is targeting primary VE and high purity vanadium production for the fastest growing vanadium market segment with strategic advantage of location to demand.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note - The information in this news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein including, without limitation, plans for and intentions with respect to the company's properties, statements regarding intentions with respect to obligations due for various projects, strategic alternatives, quantity of resources or reserves, timing of permitting, construction and production and other milestones, are forward looking statements. Statements concerning Mineral Reserves and Mineral Resources are also forward-looking statements in that they reflect an assessment, based on certain assumptions, of the mineralization that would be encountered and mining results if the project were developed and mined in the manner described. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. This preliminary assessment is preliminary in nature; it includes inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and there is no certainty that the results of the preliminary assessment will be realized. Forward-looking statements involve various risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from VRB's expectations include the uncertainties involving the need for additional financing to explore and develop properties and availability of financing in the debt and capital markets; uncertainties involved in the interpretation of drilling results and geological tests and the estimation of reserves and resources; the need for cooperation of government agencies and local groups in the exploration, and development of properties; and the need to obtain permits and governmental approval. VRB's forward looking statements reflect the beliefs, opinions and projections of management on the date the statements are made. VRB assumes no obligation to update the forward looking statements if management's beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors should they change.

SOURCE VanadiumCorp Resource Inc.
OAKVILLE, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - April 25, 2016) -

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Saint Jean Carbon Inc. ("Saint Jean" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:SJL) is pleased to announce that it intends to complete a non-brokered private placement financing of up to 8,000,000 units ("Flow-Through Units") at a price of $0.05 per Flow-Through Unit for gross proceeds to the Company of up to $400,0000 (the "Flow-Through Unit Offering"). Each Flow-Through Unit will consist of one (1) common share in the capital of the Company issued on a "flow-through" basis pursuant to the Income Tax Act (Canada) (each a "Flow-Through Share") at a price of $0.05 per Flow-Through Share and one-half (0.5) of a common share purchase warrant (each whole common share purchase warrant a "Warrant"). Each whole Warrant will entitle the holder to acquire one (1) additional common share in the capital of the Company (each a "Warrant Share") at an exercise price of $0.06 per Warrant Share for a period of 36 months from the date of issuance.

In addition, the Company intends to complete a non-brokered private placement financing of up to 16,000,000 units ("Common Units") at a price of $0.05 per Common Unit for gross proceeds to the Company of up to $800,0000 (the "Common Unit Offering" and together with the Flow-Through Unit Offering, the "Offering"). Each Common Unit will consist of one (1) common share in the capital of the Company ("Common Share") at a price of $0.05 per Common Share and one (1) Warrant. Each Warrant will entitle the holder to acquire one (1) additional Common Share at an exercise price of $0.06 per Common Share for a period of 36 months from the date of issuance.

Closing of the Offering is subject to customary conditions, including receipt of all regulatory approvals, and is anticipated to occur on or before April 29, 2016. All securities issued as part of the Offering will be subject to a four month and one day hold period.

The Company intends to use the proceeds of the Flow-Through Unit Offering on the Company's exploration and development expenditures on its mineral properties located in Quebec and to incur eligible Canadian Exploration Expenses that qualify as Canadian exploration expenses and "flow-through mining expenditures" for purposes of the Income Tax Act (Canada) and which will be renounced in favour of the holders with an effective date of no later than December 31, 2016.

The Company intends to use the proceeds of the Common Unit Offering for general corporate and administrative purposes.

The Company intends to pay a cash finder's fee, to certain arm's length finders (each a "Finder"), equal to 9% of the gross proceeds raised under the Offering from purchasers introduced to the Company by each Finder. In addition, the Company intends to issue an option (the "Finder's Option") entitling each Finder to purchase up to such number of Common Units as is equal to 9% of both the Flow-Through Units and Common Units issued under the Offering from purchasers of securities introduced to the Company by each Finder at a price of $0.05 per Common Unit.

About Saint Jean

Saint Jean is a publicly traded carbon sciences company with interests in graphite mining claims on five 100% Company-owned properties located in the province of Quebec in Canada. The five properties include the Walker property, a past producing mine, the Wallingford property, the St. Jovite property, East Miller and Clot property. For information on Saint Jean's other properties and the latest news please go to the website: www.saintjeancarbon.com.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Saint Jean Carbon Inc.

Paul Ogilvie, CEO and Director

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains forward-looking statements, within the meaning of applicable securities legislation, concerning Saint Jean's business and affairs. In certain cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "intends" "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Such forward-looking statements include those with respect to the Company's intention to complete the Offering and use the proceeds of the Offering as working capital to fund the continued development of the Company's business.

These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, and are naturally subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances that may cause actual results to differ materially. The forward-looking statements in this news release assume, inter alia, that the conditions for completion of the Offering, including regulatory approval will be met.

Although Saint Jean believes that the expectations represented in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that these expectations will prove to be correct. There are risks which could affect Saint Jean's ability to complete the Offering, the impact of general global economic conditions and the risk that they will deteriorate, industry conditions, that required consents and approvals from regulatory authorities will not be obtained.

Statements of past performance should not be construed as an indication of future performance. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether or not such results will be achieved. A number of factors, including those discussed above, could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Any such forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement.

All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking information is provided as of the date of this press release, and Saint Jean assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Apr 25, 2016) - Lion One Metals Limited (TSX VENTURE:LIO)(ASX:LLO)(OTCQX:LOMLF) ("Lion One" or the "Company") announces today that a new investor presentation "High Grade Highlights" has been added to the investor relations section of its website and can be accessed directly at www.liononemetals.com/investors/presentations. The presentation references results from feasibility level work done at the Company's 100% owned Tuvatu Gold project in Fiji by prior owner Emperor Gold Mining, in particular the results of extensive underground sampling.

About Lion One

Tuvatu is a fully permitted, high grade, low cost, underground gold project located in one of western Fiji's largest volcanic goldfields. Tuvatu is an epithermal vein system with estimated NI 43-101 resources of 1,101,000 tonnes indicated at 8.46 grams per tonne gold (g/t Au) containing 299,500 oz. Au, and 1,506,000 tonnes inferred at 9.67 g/t containing 468,000 oz. Au, at a 3.0 g/t cutoff. In 2015 the Company announced a PEA outlining a potential 6.16 year mine plan based on the production of 352,931 oz. Au at a head grade of 11.3 g/t Au, at cash costs of US$567 per oz. At US$1,200 gold prices, the project delivers an after-tax IRR of 52%, with a US$48.6 million capex and 1.5 year payback on capital. The economic results disclosed herein are based on the "Preliminary Economics Assessment (PEA) NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Tuvatu Gold Project, Fiji" prepared by Canenco Limited, AMC Consultants Pty Ltd, Knight Piesold, and Mining Associates Pty Ltd. This technical report is available for viewing on the Lion One and SEDAR websites at www.liononemetals.com and www.sedar.com.

Tuvatu exhibits bonanza grades near surface, at depth, and on other prospects inside its mining lease.

Highlights include:

Near surface: 290.60 g/t Au over 2.35m from underground channel sampling at vertical depth of 80m;

At depth: 252.64 g/t over 4.22m from diamond drill hole DDH 160 at vertical depths of 324m;

Other prospects: 293.50 g/t over 0.15m from channel sampling at Nubunidike 1 km from Tuvatu

The new presentation includes a level plan with channel samples of the near-surface Nasivi zone of the Tuvatu underground, located approximately 250m inside the decline, at a vertical depth of 80m from surface. Mineralization in the Nasivi zone is one of the first areas scheduled for production under the Lion One 2015 PEA potential mine plan. Previous operator Emperor Gold Mining conducted channel sampling and geological mapping in the Nasivi zone that including the collection of 166 rib channel samples, with average widths of 2.81m, taken on 2m spacings, for a total of 466m of sampling within a 160m section of the decline. This sampling work demonstrated continuity of grade and mineralization, with the highest grade samples summarized as follows:

Select Uncapped Samples from Nasivi Zone of Tuvatu Underground

10-20 g/t Au 20-40 g/t Au 40-100 g/t Au >100 g/t Au meters g/t Au meters g/t Au meters g/t Au meters g/t Au 2.70 16.23 2.10 33.10 2.40 74.89 3.60 109.19 1.80 17.31 2.52 33.16 3.30 79.47 3.10 116.32 3.45 17.48 3.50 33.21 3.40 79.37 2.95 118.41 2.50 18.06 3.00 35.50 3.00 83.85 2.50 122.65 1.90 18.18 2.70 35.68 3.45 84.83 2.80 203.59 3.25 19.09 3.00 36.04 2.95 92.48 2.35 290.60

Deep drilling also conducted by Emperor demonstrated down dip continuity of mineralized zones with high grade intercepts up to 400 meters vertical depths below surface. Holes 160 and 176 were drilled from opposite sides of the main zones and were angled to intercept the zones at roughly the same depth. Multiple high grade intercepts were reported by each hole. A cross section showing the trace of the two holes in relation to the decline is included in the technical presentation on the Lion One website.

Highlights of DDH 160 & 176*

DDH 160 Highlights Dip -58 Az. 84.5 DDH 176 Highlights Dip-50 Az. 270 Interval Grade From To Interval Grade From To (m) (g/t Au) (m) (m) (m) (g/t Au) (m) (m) 4.22 252.64 332.00 336.22 2.40 22.41 436.60 439.00 includes includes 0.50 8.25 332.00 332.50 0.45 116.00 437.35 437.80 0.80 7.45 332.50 333.30 0.50 2.97 437.80 438.30 0.86 96.00 333.30 334.16 0.99 167.00 334.16 335.15 4.15 17.47 495.00 499.15 0.50 1,614.00 335.15 335.65 includes 4.12 19.61 403.20 407.32 0.75 20.50 496.00 496.75 includes 0.50 46.80 496.75 497.25 0.95 8.96 403.20 404.15 0.80 27.00 497.25 498.05 0.35 15.33 404.15 404.50 0.70 16.85 498.05 498.75 0.45 15.48 404.50 404.95 0.78 20.50 404.95 405.73 0.50 25.00 405.73 406.23 0.64 29.50 406.23 406.87 0.45 28.00 406.87 407.32 2.00 37.82 416.50 418.50 includes 0.67 7.62 417.10 417.77 0.50 141.00 418.00 418.50 *drill hole assays are uncapped

CEO Comment

Lion One CEO Walter Berukoff commented "We are actively reviewing the best opportunities to take the project into production. We are fully permitted for development, construction, and production by the Mineral Resource Department and the Government of Fiji, and have paid a FJD$2.7 million environmental bond and FJD$700,000 Surface Lease payment. We believe Tuvatu's highly prospective setting in the South Pacific Ring of Fire is an ideal location to build up a highly profitable mining operation and aggressive resource expansion program. In my experience this represents a rare and compelling opportunity to create substantial value for our shareholders and stakeholders."

The recent increase in gold prices created renewed and heightened interest from third parties wanting to assist Lion One in moving Tuvatu forward. Lion One is in discussions with several funding groups currently undertaking due diligence. The Company expects a variety of financing options for potential mine development and construction will be presented to it when these discussions and investigations are completed. While the Company cannot guarantee an arrangement will be made with the parties currently negotiating it expects these discussions to be productive. Any material financing agreement will be announced to shareholders as soon as details are available.

Appendix: Historic Tuvatu Drill Highlights

Highest Grade Drill Intercepts to Date (Uncapped)

Hole ID Sample no. From (m) To (m) g/t Au Int. (m) TUDDH-160 TU122462 335.15 335.65 1,614 0.50 TUDDH-100 TU120810 254.50 255.00 1,185 0.50 TUDDH-348 TS3917 161.37 161.54 855 0.17 TUDDH-045 TU112546 114.00 114.50 463 0.50 TUG-013 TUG565 41.50 41.90 430 0.40 TUG-1849 TUG1852 1.70 2.10 346 0.40 TUG-056 TUG2665 103.60 104.00 334 0.40 TUG-112RO TUG113 1.50 1.70 295 0.20 TUDDH-045 TU112547 114.50 115.00 283 0.50 TUDDH-013 WKK11415 34.00 34.05 271 0.05 TUG-051 TUG2586 34.95 35.45 270 0.50 TUDDH-347 TS3606 124.04 124.13 248 0.09 TUG-062 TUG4558 56.90 57.20 209 0.30 TUG-067 TUG4472 66.35 67.20 193 0.85 TUG-327 TUG329 1.60 1.85 177 0.25 TUG-079 TUG3991 62.50 63.15 174 0.65 TUG-058 TUG4366 100.85 101.35 170 0.50 TUDDH-160 TU122461 334.16 335.15 167 0.99 TUG-099 TUG5608 57.95 58.48 167 0.53 TUDDH-057 TU113289 121.60 121.80 164 0.20 TUG-013 TUG560 34.90 35.55 156 0.65 TUG-008 TUG10 3.40 3.80 155 0.40 TURC-174 TURC143175 54.00 55.00 155 1.00 TURC-174 TURC143174 53.00 54.00 152 1.00 TUDDH-076 TU14392 211.50 212.15 150 0.65 TUDDH-160 TU122500 418.00 418.50 141 0.50 TUDDH-228 TU149537 209.76 210.26 141 0.50 TUG-005 TU142477 28.80 29.10 136 0.30 TUG-001 TU142022 37.75 38.35 133 0.60 TUDDH-207 TU144019 307.10 307.60 125 0.50 TUG-087 TUG5503 7.63 7.73 121 0.10

The Company advises that it has not based a production decision on a feasibility study of mineral reserves, demonstrating economic and technical viability, and, as a result, there may be an increased uncertainty of achieving any particular level of recovery of minerals or the cost of such recovery, including increased risks associated with developing a commercially mineable deposit. Historically, such projects have a much higher risk of economic and technical failure. There is no guarantee that production will begin as anticipated or at all or that anticipated production costs will be achieved. Failure to commence production would have a material adverse impact on the Company's ability to generate revenue and cash flow to fund operations. Failure to achieve the anticipated production costs would have a material adverse impact on the Company's cash flow and future profitability.

The Company further cautions that the Tuvatu PEA is preliminary in nature. Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability. There is no certainty that the Tuvatu PEA will be realized.

QA-QC

Assay analyses performed for Lion One's drilling programs were subjected to formal quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) programs and overseen by Stephen Mann, P.Geo, and Managing Director of the Company. Diamond drill core was logged and sampled on site at Tuvatu by Company staff with samples delivered by the Company to the facilities of Australian Laboratory Services (ALS) Pty. Ltd., an independent accredited analytical laboratory. Samples were first prepared and crushed at the ALS facility in Suva, Fiji, before being shipped to Brisbane, Australia for assay analysis. Samples were subjected to fire assay with atomic absorption finish for gold and 33 elements, four acids, and Inductively Coupled Plasma Spectrometry (ICP-AES). Standard reference materials, blanks, and field duplicates samples were inserted prior to shipment from site to monitor the quality control of the data. Samples with higher grade gold (greater than 3 grams per tonne) were re-assayed using a gravimetric and/or pulps and metallic procedure.

Qualified Persons

The technical information contained in this news release is based upon information prepared by Mr. Ian Taylor BSc (Hons) MAusIMM (CP) of Mining Associates Pty Ltd, and Mr. David Lee, Principal Mining Engineer at AMC Consultants Pty Ltd.

The information in this report that relates to the Exploration Results or Mineral Resources is based upon, and fairly represents, information and supporting documentation compiled by Mr. Stephen Mann, who is an officer and director of the Company and is a member of The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. Mr. Mann has sufficient experience relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and the activity in which he is undertaking to qualify as a Competent Person under 2012 Edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves (JORC Code). Mr. Mann confirms that historic analytical work completed at Tuvatu was conducted by reputable companies and laboratories and conformed to industry standards at the time, indicating that the historical assays can be used with a reasonable degree of confidence. Mr. Mann consents to the inclusion in this news release of the matters based on his information in the form and context in which it appears. The Company confirms that it is not aware of any new information or data that materially affects the information included in previous news releases referred to above, and confirms that the form and context in which the findings are presented have not been materially modified from the original news releases.

Robert McLeod, P.Geo, Consultant to the Company and Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101 has reviewed and approved the technical content of this release.

On behalf of Lion One Metals Ltd.

Walter H. Berukoff, Chief Executive Officer

For more information on Tuvatu, the NI 43-101 technical reports entitled "Independent Technical Report and Resource Estimate on the Tuvatu Gold Deposit" dated May 6, 2014 prepared by Mining Associates Pty Ltd, and the NI 43-101 PEA technical report entitled "Tuvatu Gold Project PEA" dated July 14, 2015 are available for download on the Company website and SEDAR website at www.liononemetals.com and www.sedar.com.

Forward Looking Statements: Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information or forward-looking statements for the purposes of applicable securities laws. These statements include, among others, statements with respect to proposed exploration and development activities and their timing, resource estimates and potential mineralization, the PEA, including estimates of capital and sustaining costs, anticipated internal rates of return, mine production, estimated recoveries, mine life, estimated payback period and net present values, opportunities to enhance the value of the Tuvatu Gold Project and other plans and objectives of Lion One. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Such factors include, among others and in addition to those described elsewhere in this release, delays in obtaining or inability to obtain required government or other regulatory approvals, permits or financing, the risk of unexpected variations in mineral resources, grade or recovery rates, of failure of plant, equipment or processes to operate as anticipated, of accidents, labor disputes, and unanticipated delays in completing other development activities, the risk that estimated costs will be higher than anticipated and the risk that the proposed mine plan and recoveries will not be achieved, equipment breakdowns and bad weather, the timing and success of future exploration and development activities, exploration and development risks, mineral resources are not as estimated, title matters, third party consents, operating hazards, metal prices, political and economic factors, competitive factors and general economic conditions. In making the forward-looking statements, the Company has applied several material assumptions including, but not limited to, the assumptions that: required approvals, permits and financing will be obtained; the proposed exploration and development will proceed as planned; with respect to mineral resource estimates, the key assumptions and parameters on which such estimates are based; that the proposed mine plan and recoveries will be achieved, that capital costs and sustaining costs will be as estimated, and that no unforeseen accident, fire, ground instability, flooding, labor disruption, equipment failure, metallurgical, environmental or other events that could delay or increase the cost of development will occur, and market fundamentals will result in sustained metals and minerals prices. The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation.

The Company has concluded it has a reasonable basis for providing the forwardlooking statements included in this announcement. The detailed reasons for that conclusion are outlined throughout this announcement and in particular under the headings "Preliminary Economic Assessment Parameters - Cautionary Statement" The Company confirms that it is not aware of any new information or data that materially affects the information included in the announcements and that all material assumptions and technical parameters underpinning the resource estimates continue to apply and have not materially changed.

This announcement was made in Canada for the TSX.V and in Australia for the ASX. Public filings for Lion One Metals Ltd. are available at SEDAR www.sedar.com (Canada) and www.asx.com.au (Australia). Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Toronto - Tsodilo Resources Ltd. ("Company") (TSX Venture Exchange: (TSD) is pleased to announce that it has negotiated a non-brokered private placement of 1,008,948 units of the Company (the "Units") at a price per Unit of CDN $0.60, which will provide gross proceeds to the Company in the amount of CDN $605,369. Proceeds from the private placement will be added to the Company's working capital.

Each Unit will consist of one common share and one common share purchase warrant of the Company, each such warrant entitling the holder to purchase an additional common share of the Company for a period of two years from the date of closing at a price of USD $0.60. The common shares and the warrants comprising the Units and the common shares underlying the warrants will be subject to a four month hold period from the date of closing per applicable regulatory requirements. A director of the Company has subscribed for 648,312 Units (CDN $388,987) of the placement. Closing of the private placement remains subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

About Tsodilo Resources Limited: Tsodilo Resources Ltd. is an international diamond and metals exploration company engaged in the search for economic diamond and metal deposits at its Bosoto (Pty) Limited (Bosoto) and Gcwihaba Resources (Pty) Limited ("Gcwihaba") projects in Botswana and its Idada 361 (Pty) Limited (Idada) project in Barberton, South Africa. The Company has a 100% stake in its Gcwihaba project area consisting of twenty-two (22) metal (base, precious, platinum group, and rare earth) prospecting licenses and eight (8) radioactive mineral licenses all located in the North-West district of Botswana. The Company has a 75% stake in Bosoto (Pty) Ltd. which holds the BK16 kimberlite project in the Orapa Kimberlite Field in Botswana. Additionally, Tsodilo has a 70% stake in Idada Trading 361 (Pty) Limited which holds the gold and silver exploration license in the Barberton area of South Africa. Tsodilo manages the exploration of the Gcwihaba, Bosoto and Idada projects. Overall supervision of the Company's exploration program is the responsibility of Dr. Mike de Wit, President and COO of the Company and a "qualified person" as such term is defined in National Instrument 43-101.

The Company has offices in Toronto, Canada and Gaborone and Maun, Botswana. Please visit the Company's website, www.TsodiloResources.com, for additional information and background on our projects.



This press release contains forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, that address activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future (including, without limitation, statements relating to the development of the Company's projects) are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect the current expectations or beliefs of the Company based on information currently available to the Company. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results of the Company to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements, and even if such actual results are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on the Company. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things, changes in equity markets, political developments in Botswana and surrounding countries, changes to regulations affecting the Company's activities, uncertainties relating to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future, the uncertainties involved in interpreting exploration results and the other risks involved in the mineral exploration business. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Although the Company believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein.



Neither the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. This news release may contain assumptions, estimates, and other forward-looking statements regarding future events. Such forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties and are subject to factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control, which may cause actual results or performance to differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

James M. Bruchs Chairman and Chief Executive Officer JBruchs@TsodiloResources.com Dr. Mike de Wit President and Chief Operating Officer MdeWit@TsodiloResources.com Head Office Telephone +1 416 572 2033 Facsimile + 1 416 987 4369 Website http://www.TsodiloResources.com

To view this press release as a PDF file, click onto the following link:public://news_release_pdf/Tsodilo04262016.pdfSource: Tsodilo Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture:TSD) http://www.tsodiloresources.com/s/Home.aspCopyright  2016 Filing Services Canada Inc.
TSXV: GGI

OTC: GGIFF

Frankfurt: RQM

VANCOUVER, April 26, 2016 /CNW/ - Garibaldi Resources Corp. (TSX.V: GGI) (the "Company" or "Garibaldi") (the "Company") is pleased to report the following progress at its 100%-owned Grizzly Project in the Sheslay district of northwest British Columbia:

Initial "proof of concept" metallurgical testing by Bureau Veritas has confirmed that high-grade magnesium and nickel intersected in widely spaced drill holes at Grizzly Central (Ultra 1 Zone discovery) are both recoverable from the Kaketsa "black unit"

Met-Solve Laboratories, specialists in mineral beneficiation using state-of-the-art technologies, have been engaged by Garibaldi to carry out advanced testing of the Ultra 1 Zone material and develop methods for extracting and converting the magnesium and nickel into marketable final products

A further review of the late 2015 drill program has identified prospective areas where gold mineralization may have formed within the Ultra 1 Zone

Steve Regoci, Garibaldi President and CEO, commented: "The Ultra 1 Zone, which to this point features highly elevated scandium above a magnesium-nickel 'black unit' of apparently very large scale, is a major advancement in the geological understanding of the Grizzly and the entire Sheslay district. As large of a discovery area as this is, defined by broadly spaced holes, wide intercepts and a compelling geophysical signature, the Ultra 1 Zone represents just 1/300th of the entire Grizzly property package where there are no less than 7 comprehensive regional target centers.

"Further examination of the high-grade gold potential of Grizzly South is our immediate priority at this project outside of Grizzly Central. Elsewhere in B.C. we're focused on capturing value with our now 100%-owned King Property featuring high-grade gold, silver and base metal targets in the heart of the Golden Triangle, and also with our Red Lion Cu-Au porphyry property contiguous to the Kliyul Project optioned by Teck Resources. We're preparing for a busy summer on these three fronts in B.C.," Regoci concluded.

Ultra 1 Zone Metallurgical "Proof of Concept" Testing

Initial metallurgical testing of Ultra 1 zone samples carried out by Bureau Veritas involved a low heat (650 degrees Celsius) process. The solids were filtered out through leaching to produce a residue of magnesium-rich material from the serpentinite with removal of up to 85% of the silica from the magnesium concentrate. Meanwhile, the primary source of nickel in the "black unit" is hosted in sulphides and 80% to 90% of the total nickel from a sample was recovered by Bureau Veritas using a weak acid leach test.

Met-Solve Testing

Since its founding in 2007, Vancouver-based Met-Solve Laboratories has worked with mining projects of all sizes and at all stages of production, specializing in mineral processing and extractive metallurgy. Met-Solve is currently completing extensive leach work testing on selected samples from the "black unit" using sulfuric acid at various concentrations. Once the leaching behavior is fully understood, Met-Solve can proceed to potential methods for extracting and converting the magnesium into marketable final products including magnesium sulphate, magnesium carbonate and magnesium oxide while also investigating techniques for producing a high-grade nickel concentrate.

Initial discussions with the engineers from Met-Solve have been positive and Garibaldi is confident that more progress will soon be made toward achieving high potential recovery rates for both the magnesium and nickel using processing methods that may be viable at large tonnages.

Geological Follow-Up

Further analysis of the Ultra 1 Zone discovery has revealed the potential for listwanite-associated lode gold deposits in this part of Grizzly Central that may have formed along faults in altered serpentinite. These faults were not tested in the initial drilling. Meanwhile, the type of rock intersected in drill hole GC-15-05, collared east of the Ultra 1 Zone and drilled toward the east, has been determined from petrographic analysis to be an excellent source for copper. An ideal environment for a copper porphyry in this area of Grizzly Central would be where an intrusive interacts with this rock. GC-15-05 returned highly elevated scandium throughout, and the potential significance of that continues to be investigated.

Corporate Fact Sheet

To view the updated corporate Fact Sheet for Garibaldi Resources, please visit the following URL:

http://www.garibaldiresources.com/i/pdf/GGI-Fact-Sheet-April-6.pdf

Qualified Person

Mr. Adrian Smith, P.Geo., an on-site consultant for the Company's Grizzly Project and a Qualified Person as defined by NI-43-01 regulations, has reviewed this news release and approved the contents thereof.

About Garibaldi

Garibaldi Resources Corp. is an active Canadian-based junior exploration company focused on creating shareholder value through discoveries and strategic development of its assets in some of the most prolific mining regions in Mexico and British Columbia.

We seek safe harbor.

GARIBALDI RESOURCES CORP.

Per: "Steve Regoci"

Steve Regoci, President

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or the accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Garibaldi Resources Corp.
Fotolia A Mayo Clinic-led study found that protective mastectomies that preserve the nipple and surrounding skin prevent breast cancer as effectively as more invasive surgeries for those with BRCA.

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Study finds such surgeries are effective

By Mayo Clinic News Network (Tns)

DALLAS  Protective mastectomies that preserve the nipple and surrounding skin prevent breast cancer as effectively as more invasive surgeries for women with a genetic mutation called BRCA that raises their risk of developing breast cancer, a multi-institution study led by Mayo Clinic found.

The research should reassure patients and surgeons that nipple-sparing mastectomies, which leave women with more natural-looking breasts than other mastectomies, are a safe way to reduce breast cancer risk in BRCA carriers, the authors say. The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons in Dallas.

"Nipple-sparing mastectomy is gaining wide acceptance because of its superior cosmetic results, but pockets of the medical community remain skeptical that it is the right choice for the BRCA population," says study lead author James Jakub, M.D., a breast surgeon at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "This is the largest study of its kind to address the controversy, and to show that nipple-sparing mastectomy is as effective at preventing breast cancer as traditional mastectomy."

To determine the incidence of breast cancer in BCRA-positive women who had prophylactic nipple-sparing mastectomies, researchers studied outcomes among 348 patients who collectively had 551 mastectomies performed at nine institutions between 1968 and 2013.

The study included 203 women who had both breasts removed protectively, known as a bilateral mastectomy, and 145 patients who had one breast removed preventively after cancer occurred in the other breast.

None of the patients who had a bilateral nipple-sparing mastectomy developed breast cancer at any site after an average of three to five years of follow-up, the researchers found. No breast cancers developed in the retained skin, nipples, or lymph nodes on the side of the prophylactic procedure. Seven women died from breast cancer during follow-up; in all of those cases the patients had a previous or concurrent breast cancer at the time of surgery and their stage IV disease was attributed to that cancer.

Mastectomies have changed dramatically over the years. The radical mastectomy of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s removed the breast tissue, skin, lymph nodes, and underlying muscle. By the 1980s, that procedure largely gave way to the modified radical mastectomy, which left the chest muscles alone. Next came skin-sparing mastectomies, which preserve an envelope of skin and allow surgeons to begin breast reconstruction during the mastectomy surgery.

Nipple-sparing mastectomies leave the nipple, areola and breast skin intact. Their use is increasing and has gained acceptance as a safe option in breast cancer patients.

In 2009, approximately 8 percent of mastectomies performed at Mayo Clinic were nipple-sparing. Five years later, that fraction had more than tripled to approximately 30 percent, and Dr. Jakub says the number is increasing. Still, controversy remains over whether or not the procedure is appropriate for women with BRCA mutations, who can have a breast cancer risk of 50 to 60 percent by age 70 and up to 80 percent over a lifetime.

"The BRCA population has a genetic mutation in all the cells of their body that predisposes them to breast cancer," Jakub says. "We know that a majority of breast cancers originate in the breast ducts, so it might seem counterintuitive to leave behind the nipple and the ducts associated with the nipple when you are trying to reduce the risk of this disease."

Several studies have shown the procedure is safe among BCRA carriers, but some physicians have been waiting for more evidence, Jakub says. He believes the study results offer further proof that nipple-sparing mastectomies are effective in preventing breast cancer among women carrying the BRCA mutation and should be offered when they consider prophylactic surgery.

"There is no question that this option of nipple-sparing mastectomy can often provide an outstanding cosmetic result and may make it easier for women who are at risk to take this preventive measure," Jakub says. "Though the nipple is preserved, it unfortunately will not have stimulation or arousal. Despite that, studies looking at the impact of risk-reducing surgery on quality of life, sexual satisfaction, and intimacy, suggest that being able to preserve aesthetics and body image can improve all of these factors."

The study's senior author is Shawna Willey, M.D., of Georgetown University. The co-authors are Richard Gray, M.D., and Sarah McLaughlin, M.D., of Mayo Clinic; Anne Peled, M.D., of the University of California San Francisco; Rachel Greenup, M.D., of Duke University; John Kiluk, M.D., of Moffitt Cancer Center; Virgilio Sacchini, M.D., of Memorial Sloan Kettering; and Julia Tchou, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania.

The study was supported by National Institutes of Health Specialized Program of Research Excellence in Breast Cancer grant CA116201 and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
This Feb. 7, 2016 photo shows the Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand. The Fox and Franz Josef glaciers have been melting at such a rapid rate that it has become too dangerous for tourists to hike onto them from the valley floor, ending a tradition that dates back a century. (AP Photo/Nick Perry)

SHARE In this Feb. 6, 2016 photo, tourists who have taken a helicopter trip onto the Fox Glacier follow a guide in New Zealand. The Fox and Franz Josef glaciers have been melting at such a rapid rate that it has become too dangerous for tourists to hike onto them from the valley floor, ending a tradition that dates back a century. (AP Photo/Nick Perry) In this Feb. 6, 2016 photo, Wayne Costello, a district operations manager for the Department of Conservation, explains how the ice has retreated at the Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand. The Fox and Franz Josef glaciers have been melting at such a rapid rate that it has become too dangerous for tourists to hike onto them from the valley floor, ending a tradition that dates back a century. (AP Photo/Nick Perry) In this Feb. 6, 2016 photo, tourists who have taken a helicopter trip onto the Fox Glacier climb through a hole in the ice in New Zealand. The Fox and Franz Josef glaciers have been melting at such a rapid rate that it has become too dangerous for tourists to hike onto them from the valley floor, ending a tradition that dates back a century. (AP Photo/Nick Perry) This Feb. 6, 2016 photo shows an ice crevasse on the Fox Glacier in New Zealand. The Fox and Franz Josef glaciers have been melting at such a rapid rate that it has become too dangerous for tourists to hike onto them from the valley floor, ending a tradition that dates back a century. (AP Photo/Nick Perry)

By NICK PERRY, Associated Press

FRANZ JOSEF GLACIER, New Zealand (AP)  New Zealand is renowned for its wondrous scenery, and among the country's top tourist attractions are two glaciers that are both stunning and unusual because they snake down from the mountains to a temperate rain forest, making them easy for people to walk up to and view.

But the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers have been melting at such a rapid rate that it has become too dangerous for tourists to hike onto them from the valley floor, ending a tradition that dates back a century. With continuing warm weather this year there are no signs of a turnaround, and scientists say it is another example of how global warming is impacting the environment.

Tourism in New Zealand is booming and nearly 1 million people last year flocked to get a glimpse of the glaciers and the spectacular valleys they've carved. But the only way to set foot on them now is to get flown onto them by helicopter.

Tour operators offer flights and guided glacier walks, although logistics limit this to 80,000 tourists per year, half the number that once hiked up from the valley floor. Up to another 150,000 people each year take scenic flights that land briefly at the top of the glaciers.

Flying in the UNESCO World Heritage area comes with its own risks, highlighted in November when a sightseeing helicopter crashed onto the Fox Glacier, killing all seven aboard.

Sitting near the base of the Franz Josef Glacier, Wayne Costello, a district operations manager for the Department of Conservation, said that when he arrived eight years ago, the rock he was perched on would have been buried under tons of ice. Instead, the glacier now comes to an end a half-mile (800 meters) further up the valley.

"Like a loaf of bread shrinking in its tin, it's gone down a lot as well," Costello said. "So it's wasted away in terms of its thickness, and that's led to quite a rapid melt."

Because of that melt, the valley walls that were once braced by the glaciers have been left exposed and vulnerable to rock falls, making hiking up too dangerous. Tour operators stopped taking guided hikes onto the Franz Josef in 2012 and the nearby Fox in 2014.

A 2014 paper published in the journal Global and Planetary Change concluded the two glaciers have each melted by 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) in length since the 1800s, making them about 20 percent shorter. The glaciers have recently been melting at a faster pace than ever previously recorded, the authors said.

Heather Purdie, a scientist at the University of Canterbury and lead author of the paper, said climate change is the driving factor.

"We know that glaciers around the world, including the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, are responding to that warmer temperature and they're retreating," she said. Small changes in temperature and snowfall tend to be magnified in the two glaciers and their retreat has been interrupted by advances that can last years, she said.

Costello and tour operators are hoping to see another advance soon. But there's no sign of that: February was the second-hottest month ever recorded in New Zealand.

The hot weather has even created a new type of tourist attraction over the other side of the mountains. Purdie said the glaciers there are also rapidly retreating, resulting in tourists taking boat rides on the lakes to see some of the massive icebergs that have begun to shear away.

A helicopter trip onto the Fox Glacier reveals deep crevasses in the translucent blue ice and stunning ice caves through which guides take crampon-wearing tourists. A guide retells the indigenous Maori legend which would have it that the Franz Josef Glacier began as a stream of tears left by a young woman whose lover was killed by an avalanche.

The glaciers are formed by prevailing westerly winds dumping snow in a high-altitude basin. It compacts into ice and is pushed down the valleys much like toothpaste being squeezed from a tube. The glaciers slide and roll down the mountain at a rate of 4 meters (13 feet) each day, picking up rocks and debris along the way.

"It's the uniqueness, the rawness of the environment," that draws tourists from Australia, North America, Europe, and, increasingly, China, said Rob Jewell, chairman of the Glacier Country Tourism Group.

It's also a region which is subject to rapid changes in the weather. At the time of November's helicopter crash  which killed four tourists from Britain and two from Australia, as well as the New Zealand pilot  some observers said the weather and visibility were marginal for safe flying.

Jewell said he didn't want to comment until an investigation by authorities was complete. He said the crash hasn't affected tourist numbers, which have been stronger than ever this year.

At the base of the Franz Josef, Dutch tourist Dieuwke Derkse said she was overwhelmed by the beauty of the glacier and the purity of the environment.

She said she believed global warming was responsible for its retreat and felt a little guilty even visiting New Zealand because of the fossil fuels burned by the plane ride there. But she said the glacier also helped inspire her to live in a more environmentally conscious way.

"It makes me a little bit sad because you see how fast everything is going," she said. "The river is going very fast but the snow and glacier is going backward."
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By From Staff Reports

About ?For the Record'

The records in 'For the Record' are provided by the Tom Green County justice of the peace, county and district clerks' offices. The Standard-Times publishes all the records it receives from the office and does not edit them for content. Entries involving criminal cases include the defendant's name, date of birth and the charge. Civil dockets involve divorces and lawsuits in which damages are sought.

For corrections or clarifications, please call (325) 659-8252.

Following is a glossary of legal terms in the records.

Arraignment: The calling of an accused person before a court to answer the charge made against him. Typically, pleas are entered and bonds are set at arraignment.

Disposition: The resolution of a case.

Deferred adjudication: A type of probation. If the defendant successfully completes the terms of probation, the proceedings are dismissed.

Probated: A probated jail sentence is not served unless the defendant violates terms of probation.

COURTS

COUNTY COURT-AT-LAW

Judges Penny Roberts

and Ben Nolen presiding

Criminal Docket

Dispositions

Larry D. Newton, 6/75, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail (probated 1 year) and fined $500.

Kevin David Dorris, 10/89, deferred adjudication on a charge of racing on highway.

Dylan Joseph Martin, 1/90, pleaded guilty to a charge of assault. He was sentenced to 120 days in jail.

Monte Jarmon, 12/83, pleaded guilty to a charge of assault. He was sentenced to 120 days in jail.

Grissell S. Flores, 5/84, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft of services by check.

Cody Anthony Salazar, 12/79, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft, checks.

Eusebio Martinez, 11/50, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while license invalid. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail, fined $100 and his driver's license suspended by law.

Wacey Cason, 12/85, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft, checks.

Alejandro Santana Lopez, 7/86, pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawful possession of marijuana. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail (probated 1 year), fined $500 and his driver's license suspended 6 months.

Carlos Alvarado, 8/74, pleaded guilty to a charge of assault. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail (probated 1 year) and fined $400.

Yesenia Marengo-Angelino, 5/84, pleaded guilty to a charge of assault. She was sentenced to 1 year in jail (probated 18 months) and fined $500.

Ashley Lerma, 2/84, deferred adjudication on a charge of unlawful possession of a dangerous drug.

Tucker Wayne McCrea, 8/82, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. He was sentenced to 120 days in jail (probated 18 months) and fined $700.

Charles Benjamin Bell, 9/82, deferred adjudication on a charge of driving while license invalid.

Pete Martinez Jr., 4/70, deferred adjudication on a charge of assault.

Tyler Jameson Jones, 10/87, pleaded guilty to a charge of terroristic threat of family/household. He was sentenced to 120 days in jail (probated 1 year) and fined $400.

Tywanna Nicole Johnson, 9/88, deferred adjudication on a charge of unlawful possession of marijuana.

Andrea Michelle Ramon, 10/88, deferred adjudication on a charge of criminal trespass.

Rolando Victorino, 7/73, deferred adjudication on a charge of racing on highway.

Moses Lawshea, 7/86, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft, checks.

Sasha Vaughn Elledge, 1/69, deferred adjudication on a charge of driving while license suspended/invalid.

Mark Anthony Santiago, 10/80, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail and his driver's license suspended 6 months.

Juan Pedro Hernandez, 9/69, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail (probated 1 year) and fined $500.

Danny Kay Ponder Jr., 5/78, deferred adjudication on a charge of driving while license invalid.

Mary Ellen Pate, 8/63, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft, checks.

Robert Robinson, 2/55, deferred adjudication on a charge of assault.

Debbie L. Berry, 12/58, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. She was sentenced to 365 days in jail, fined $500 and her driver's license suspended 1 year.

Albert Lopez, 12/82, pleaded guilty to a charge of assault. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail (probated 1 year) and fined $300.

Manuel Soto Duarte, 4/87, pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawful possession of marijuana. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail, fined $500 and his driver's license suspended 1 year.

Frank Anthony Fay Jr., 4/81, pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawful possession of marijuana. He was sentenced to 3 days in jail, fined $500 and his driver's license suspended by law.

Dana Rae Alvarado, 8/90, deferred adjudication on a charge of unlawful possession of marijuana.

Nikki Lynn Meador, 5/84, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft, checks.

Pedro J. Munoz, 2/61, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. He was sentenced to 120 days in jail (probated 1 year) and fined $750.

Joe Ruis Vara, 1/79, pleaded guilty to a charge of theft. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail (probated 1 year).

Danielle T. Collins, 2/80, pleaded guilty to a charge of theft. She was sentenced to 120 days in jail.

Michael Brandon Crawford, 9/82, pleaded guilty to a charge of evading detention. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail.

Raymond Earl Boyd, 3/63, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. He was sentenced to 120 days in jail (probated 1 year), fined $800 and his driver's license suspended 6 months.

Tabitha Leigh Mota, 8/82, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. She was sentenced to 45 days in jail, fined $500 and her driver's license suspended 1 year.

Billy Gene Wright, 8/72, deferred adjudication on a charge of driving while license invalid.

Semaj

Jawon Jones, 7/89, deferred adjudication on a charge of unlawful possession of marijuana.

Pimenio Vela Herrera, 6/72, pleaded guilty to a charge of assault. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail.

Alicia Tijerina Garza, 7/59, pleaded guilty to a charge of evading detention. She was sentenced to 30 days in jail and fined $200.

Cherith Briana Collins, 6/89, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft.

Nicholas Andrew Atilano, 7/90, pleaded guilty to a charge of evading detention. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail (probated 9 months) and fined $300.

Michael Conrad Waite, 11/73, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft.

Lisa Ann Mendez, 1/60, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft.

Vanessa Antonia Flores, 9/90, pleaded guilty to a charge of theft. She was sentenced to 60 days in jail (probated 9 months) and fined $300.

Charles Randall Carroll III, 6/88, deferred adjudication on a charge of criminal mischief.

Verba Sheree Pape, 4/83, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft, checks.

Cory Daniel Espinosa, 9/84, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail (probated 1 year) and fined $500.

Raymond Gene Bennett, 2/65, pleaded guilty to a charge of fail to identify fugitive intent give false info. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail.

Corey Shane Cathey, 7/77, pleaded guilty to a charge of theft, checks. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail and ordered to pay $382 in restitution.

Shane William Allen, 7/73, pleaded guilty to a charge of theft. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail.

Victoria Chavez, 9/75, pleaded guilty to a charge of fail to identify fugitive intent give false info. She was sentenced to 3 days in jail and fined $100.

Arturo Vasquez Villegas, 12/50, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. He was sentenced to 1 year in jail and his driver's license suspended 18 months.

Amy Rivera Ingram, 11/81, pleaded guilty to a charge of sale alcoholic beverage to minor. She was sentenced to 30 days in jail.

Joe Lopez Jr., 9/65, pleaded guilty to a charge of assault. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail.

Mikel David Doyle, 3/84, pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawful possession of prohibited weapon. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail.

Joseph Mark Tarin, 4/90, deferred adjudication on a charge of criminal trespass.

Brenda Louise Marcon, 12/81, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. She was sentenced to 90 days in jail (probated 1 year) and fined $500.

Juan Antonio Blanco, 12/79, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail (probated 1 year) and fined $500.

Ashley Renee Watson, 2/89, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft.

Logan Daniel Uriegas, 9/90, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft.

Carmen Tanguma Fowler, 1/69, deferred adjudication on a charge of driving while license suspended/invalid.

Jacqueline Lopez, 6/78, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft.

Shannon Aaron Vanderburg, 4/83, pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal mischief.

Carlos Angel Langarica, 8/89, deferred adjudication on a charge of criminal mischief.

Christopher Issac

Reyes, 4/91, pleaded guilty to a charge of theft. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail (probated 1 year) and fined $300.

Stephanie Eulalia Rios, 2/87, deferred adjudication on a charge of theft.

Taylor Chase Routon, 8/88, pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal trespass. He was fined $200.

David Allen Shelley, 11/85, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail (probated 1 year) and fined $500.

Joe P. Ramirez, 7/70, pleaded guilty to a charge of assault. He was sentenced to 85 days in jail.

Karl David Balfanz, 10/85, deferred adjudication on a charge of public intoxication.

Zane Bruton Bowers, 3/70, pleaded guilty to a charge of disregard stop sign. He was fined $100.

Zane Bruton Bowers, 3/70, pleaded guilty to a charge of speeding. He was fined $100.

David Lee Dunnavant, 8/53, deferred adjudication on a charge of speeding.

Paul Anthony Gonzales, 1/89, deferred adjudication on a charge of unlawful possession of marijuana.

John Triplett, 2/86, deferred adjudication on a charge of evading detention.

Jeremy Chad Dennis, 11/76, pleaded guilty to a charge of theft. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail.

Michael Joseph Carrasco, 10/83, deferred adjudication on a charge of driving while license invalid.

Richard Fredrick Lowrey, 3/72, pleaded guilty to a charge of fail to identify giving false/fictitious information. He was sentenced to 75 days in jail.

Johnny Dale Adcock Jr., 11/75, pleaded guilty to a charge of harassment. He was sentenced to 120 days in jail (probated 12 months) and fined $300.

Jacob William Flowers, 5/89, deferred adjudication on a charge of unlawful possession of marijuana.

Jeremiah Lee Mediano, 4/82, pleaded guilty to a charge of theft. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail (probated 1 year) and fined $500.

Juan Carlos Hernandez, 4/87, deferred adjudication on a charge of driving while license invalid.

John M. Fay, 12/58, pleaded guilty to a charge of theft. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail (probated 6 months) and fined $250.

Adam Walker, 2/89, pleaded guilty to a charge of assault. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail and fined $200.

51ST, 119TH, 340TH and 391ST

DISTRICT COURTS

Judges Barbara Walther,

Ben Woodward, Jay

Weatherby and Thomas

Gossett presiding

Criminal Docket

Henry Jacque Gray, 8/39, deferred adjudication completed on a charge of evading arrest detention with vehicle, dismissed.

Victor Marin, 11/80, deferred adjudication completed on a charge of forgery financial instrument, dismissed.

Brett Allen Robinson, 4/82, deferred adjudication completed on a charge of injury child/elderly/disabled, dismissed.

Bertha A. Zapata, 7/61, deferred adjudication completed on a charge of tamper with government record defraud harm, dismissed.

Veronica C. Rodriguez, 5/53, deferred adjudication on a charge of aggravated assault with deadly weapon, dismissed.

Jason Earl Cansler, 12/69, pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of a controlled substance. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison (probated 5 years).

Santiago Lara Jr., 8/47, a charge of driving while intoxicated, dismissed-defendant deceased.

Mikle

Anthony Swenson, 1/71, pleaded guilty to a charge of unauthorized absence community correction facility. He was sentenced to 180 days in prison.

Angelique Cervantes, 4/73, deferred adjudication completed on a charge of tamper with government record, dismissed.

Ryan Paul Plate, 4/89, deferred adjudication on a charge of criminal mischief.

April Dawn Merriman, 4/87, a charge of possession of a controlled substance, dismissed.

David Rios, 6/39, pleaded guilty to a charge of indecency with child sexual contact. He was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

Britany Nicole Baker, 9/87, a charge of credit card or debit card abuse, dismissed-convicted in another case.

Donnie Dale McClelland, 11/76, a charge of forgery financial instrument, dismissed-convicted in another case.

Christopher Lee Arroyo, 3/87, a charge of bail jumping and fail to appear felony, dismissed.

Leo Leon Buentello, 8/55, a charge of assault, dismissed.

Ray Lavaris Reyes, 9/88, pleaded guilty to a charge of burglary of habitation. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison (probated 10 years) and fined $1,000.

Ray Lavaris Reyes, 9/88, a charge of burglary of habitation, dismissed-convicted in another case.

Otilio Juarez Martinez Jr., 1/64, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

Armando Ruiz Jr., 5/90, pleaded guilty to a charge of burglary of habitation. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison (probated 5 years).

Charles Everett Johnson, 3/78, deferred adjudication completed on a charge of aggravated perjury, dismissed.

Michael Duron Green, 5/78, deferred adjudication completed on a charge of aggravated perjury, dismissed.

Reynalda Renee Everett, 8/77, deferred adjudication completed on a charge of secure execution of document by deception, dismissed.

Christopher Yanez, 1/78, deferred adjudication completed on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, dismissed.

Jason Earl Cansler, 12/69, pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of a controlled substance. He was sentenced to 730 days in prison.

Santiago Lara Jr., 8/47, a charge of driving while intoxicated, dismissed-defendant deceased.

Billy Don Lowery, 4/73, a charge of engage in organized criminal activity, dismissed-convicted in another case.

Civil Docket

Divorces

Karen Kinney Foltz and Ronald Frank Foltz.

Billie Nicole Scott and Jimmy Lewis Greathouse.

Amy M. Jackson and Michael D. Jackson.

Andrea Dawn Bradley-Talley and Robert Todd Talley.

Tandy Lynn Bilbrey and Randal Bilbrey.

Kandace Leigh Berry and Robert Gordon Berry.

Arnold Alfaro and Ashley Ann Perez.

Francisco Martinez and Lydia Torres Martinez.

Tamri Elane San Miguel-Wilson and Robert Anthony James Wilson.

Joe Cano and Betty Cano.

Monica Falcon and Mario Falcon.

Marci Marie Aranda and Sammie George Aranda.

Chandra Matthews and Daniel Matthews.

Ana L. Garcia and Juan M. Garcia.

Irma Flores and Aldo Flores.

Christina Marie Green and Rickey Dewayne Green.

David James Louis Hunter and Melila Timeli Hunter.

Kristin Gay Stanley and Alan Patrick Prest.

Tara Lasham Brady and Matthew Brady.

Bryon T. Dunn and Christy Dunn.

Mary Korn and Michael Korn.

Robert Corona and Rosa Corona.

Reyes Alicia Vaquera and Frank Vaquera.

Susan Flores Soto and Lee Andrew Soto.

Jessica L. Clutz and Michael D. Clutz.

Sheen R. Dykstra and William Allen Dykstra.

Jody Lynn Springer and Daniel James Springer.

Jodi Layne Daley and Danny Lee Daley Jr.

Belen Falcon Ornelas and Jamie Ornelas.

Jennifer Gaitan and Charles Gaitan.

Marsha Race and Philip Race.

James M. Foltz and Carla B. Foltz.

Charity Joy Stephens and Robert M. Stephens.

Whitney Kay Gibson and Donald Ray Gibson.

Fabian Montano and Juana P. Montano.

Rick H. Fleming Jr. and April Elaine Fleming.

Justin Kyle Conger and Eliza Jean Conger.

Mariah Nichole Herrington and Richard Dustin Herrington III.

Susan M. Daniel and Jewell D. Daniel.

Mario Gonzales and Melissa Flores Gonzales.

Lucio Gerardo Mendoza and Delia Mendoza.

Benito F. Perez and Carmen Trevino Perez.

Roger A. Williams and Susan T. Williams.

Alton Oliver Rittenour and Cynthis

L. Rittenour.

Zelina Torres and Jose L. Torres.

Ashley Renie Walker and Ronnie Lane Walker.

Jacqueline Marie Aguilar and Regoberto Antonio Aguilar.
Adam Sauceda/Standard-Times The traffic signal at S. Chadbourne St. and Washington Drive is being considered for removal.

SHARE Michelle Gaitan/Standard-Times Safety City, a miniature city of San Angelo used to teach children safety awareness, sits deserted on the corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard and 12th Street. The miniature city is a fenced half acre.

By Rashda Khan, Rashda.Khan@gosanangelo.com

Students from Fort Concho Elementary School, located at 310 E. Washington Street, have appeared before the San Angelo City Council quite regularly this month.

One of the school's third grade classes is championing the necessity of Safety City, a miniature town used to teach traffic and fire safety to elementary students. It's been a San Angelo institution for about 50 years and is in a state of disrepair.

Mrs. Fluitt's third graders, who call themselves the "Safety City Savers," decided to make it their cause.

"It's not safe for a child to enter, how are we going to learn about safety here," asked one young spokesperson at a recent City Council meeting, where the mayor recognized their efforts with a proclamation. "Our class has renamed it Unsafety City."

The class printed up T-shirts with "Safety City Savers" logos and sold them to raise funds.

They wrote letters to area businesses and people asking for help, and organized volunteers to spend a day helping spruce up the rundown city  painting the old buildings, the train and the traffic light poles. The Texas Department of Transportation volunteered to repaint stripes on the model roads.

The kids reported that Safety City's board is looking to create a new-and-improved Safety City at a new location, but until it's built they will continue to use the existing structures at 12th Street and Martin Luther King Drive.

"It won't get built until they get their funding," one of children reported to council. "So we're looking for five corporate sponsors to help build five new buildings."

Fire Marshal Ross Coleman, who is on the board, said members are still exploring possible locations for the proposed new version of Safety City.

The proposed version would greatly expand Safety City, allowing more safety training, and be used to train both children and adults from the Concho Valley area, Coleman said.

Besides fire, bicycle and pedestrian training, Coleman envisions adding railroad, school bus, Internet, predator, water and weather safety training capabilities.

"We've also been asked to look into providing anti-bullying training and maybe add in green education," Coleman said. "We also want to do Trick-or-Treating there, Christmas at Safety City and other special events."

Coleman said things are moving forward. "We (the board) recently got our 501 c3 designation," he said. "We registered ourselves (Safety City of San Angelo) for the May 3 San Angelo Gives."

San Angelo Gives is a 24-hour online fundraising event hosted by the San Angelo Area Foundation to support local organizations and causes.

Another third grader, Hunter Henry, took the opportunity in front of council to share her thoughts regarding the proposed traffic light removal at Washington and Chadbourne Streets.

"I feel like kids would pay more attention to a blinking light instead of just a regular stop sign," she said, adding that a lot of students walk by that area. Fort Concho, which has 454 students, is a neighborhood elementary school that also houses the majority of students participating in the San Angelo ISD's Gifted and Talented programs, grades 1-5.

On April 11, the city began phasing out traffic signals at the intersections of Chadbourne and Washington streets, and Martin Luther King Drive and 14th Street.

Councilman Johnny Silvas previously requested the city to do a traffic study at the intersection of Washington Street and Chadbourne Street and MLK Drive and 14th Street for possible removal of traffic lights in the areas. The council on April 5 agreed to remove the signals because according to staff report the traffic counts no longer warrant them.

For the first 30 days of the 90-day removal process, a flashing red light will stop traffic in all directions. Afterward, the signal heads will be covered and nonoperational for the remainder of the 90-day removal period. Once the 90-day period has ended, the signals will be removed at both intersections, unless they hear otherwise from residents.

If the signals are removed, north-south traffic on Chadbourne will no longer be controlled by a traffic signal, while east-west traffic on Washington will be controlled by a stop sign. Likewise, east-west traffic on 14th Street will no longer be controlled by a signal, while north-south traffic on MLK will be controlled by a stop sign.

Jamie Highsmith, public information officer with SAISD, said the school district is concerned about the removal of the traffic signal at Washington and Chadbourne.
SHARE

By Janet Charlesworth

One reason you might pack on pounds when you're sleep deprived is because your body goes into survival mode. Sleeplessness can fool your body into thinking you're in danger. Your metabolism slows because your body is trying to maintain its resources, and it also wants more fuel.

In fact, sleep-deprived participants in a recent study ate an average of 300 more calories per day, according to research in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

TIME TO QUIT

Many smokers swap tobacco cigarettes for e-cigarettes because they believe the new devices are less harmful. But new research shows that e-cigarette users, just like smokers, inhale free radicals with every drag. Free radicals are atoms that can have a dangerous chemical reaction with your body's cells, eventually damaging or killing them.

Public health experts suspect free radicals play a key role in the development of cancer, heart disease and a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

EXERCISE BUILDS A BRAIN

Compelling evidence shows that physical exercise helps build a brain that not only resists shrinkage, but increases cognitive abilities. For example, we now know that exercise promotes a process known as neurogenesis, i.e. your brain's ability to adapt and grow new brain cells, regardless of your age.

Those who exercise have a greater volume of gray matter in the hippocampal region of their brains, which is important for memory. Exercise helps boost blood flow throughout the body, including the brain. This causes brain cells to become better at connecting with one another.

Physical activity becomes like a fertilizer for the brain, nourishing it to improve attention, memory, accuracy and how we process information.

SEE FOOD

What you see is what you eat, so if you're trying to lose weight, leave some fresh fruit on the kitchen counter. And get everything else out of sight. In a recent study, women who lived in homes where fruit was displayed on the counter weighed about 14 pounds less than women who didn't have fruit at their fingertips.

Where cookies were visible, women (but not men) weighted nearly 9 pounds more than their peers. It's candy that tempted the men in the study. Men who saw candy on their countertops outweighed their peers by 17 pounds.

SLEEP TIP

According to an article in The New Yorker, of all the factors that contribute to poor-quality sleep, using electronics right before bed is the biggest culprit. Your body interprets the blue light that shines off computers and phones as daylight, which triggers our circadian rhythms to go into awake mode. By watching TV or reading on a Kindle, you're actually preventing your body from going into rest mode and delaying sleep.

HEALTHY RECIPE

Roasted Asparagus

Makes 8 servings

Ingredients

40 asparagus spears, trimmed (2 pounds)

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons low-sodium soy sauce

1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

Directions

1 Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2 Arrange asparagus in a single layer on a baking sheet sprayed with Pam.

3 Sprinkle with salt & pepper.

4 Bake for 12 minutes or until tender. Melt butter in a small skillet over medium heat; cook 3 minutes or until lightly browned, shaking pan occasionally.

5 Remove from heat; stir in soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. Drizzle over asparagus, tossing well to coat.

Per serving: 45 calories, 3 g fat, 1.7 g fiber, 3.9 g carbohydrate

Janet Charlesworth is operations manager for the San Angelo Community Health Club. Contact her at janet.charlesworth@sacmc.com.
A cat, who has been named Olson, hangs around food and water placed near a building at ASU.

SHARE

Feral felines are spayed or neutered, vaccinated and fed

By Becca Nelson Sankey Special To The Standard-Times

Kristin Stanley believes in second chances. The former Angelo State University lecturer and animal advocate wants the feral cats at her alma mater and former workplace to have a shot at a healthy life, and for the second time in eight years she's spearheaded efforts to make that happen.

Stanley, who taught at the university from 2004 to 2011, trapped and had some of the campus' unsocialized cats spayed and neutered before grant funding ran out.

She renewed her initiative, known as trap-neuter-release, late last year after ASU's Facilities Management Department began removing the cats that were living there.

According to the Humane Society of the United States' website, trap-neuter-release programs are the most effective response to feral cat overpopulation.

TNR, the website states, involves humanely trapping, sterilizing and vaccinating the cats before returning them to the environment where they were found and providing for their lifelong care.

In December, Jay Halbert, ASU's director of Facilities Management, sent an email informing faculty and staff that the feral cats living on campus would be trapped and taken to the city animal shelter. At the time, he said, 50 cats were roaming the west side of campus, getting into and under buildings and interfering with electrical equipment.

"At some point," he said, "I had to do something to control the population."

ASU staff who had been feeding the cats scrambled to trap and take them home before Halbert's department began trapping, Stanley said. Still, Stanley estimated 24 to 31 were taken to the shelter. Of those, at least a dozen were euthanized, said Jenie Wilson, executive director of Concho Valley PAWS (Pets Are Worth Saving), a rescue that is aiding ASU's new feral cat coalition.

Julie Vrana, city of San Angelo Animal Services manager, said in an email to the Standard-Times that she did not know how many feral cats from ASU were brought to the shelter or when trapping on the campus began.

"They are normally euthanized after they are held for a stray hold if they are feral," Vrana said in the email. "If they are owner-released by the campus and they are feral when they come to the shelter, then they can be put down, also."

Stanley adopted seven of the cats ASU transported to the shelter, she said, with hopes that she could eventually return them to the campus sterilized and vaccinated. Stanley got her wish: In January, Stanley, members of Concho Valley PAWS and ASU staff met to discuss her proposal of instituting a campus feral cat coalition modeled after those at Texas Tech and the University of Texas. Within weeks of the meeting, the proposal was approved.

The ASU Cat Coalition works by pairing a student volunteer with an ASU employee and assigning both of them to a feeding station on campus where the cats congregate. A prototype feeding station has been approved by university officials, and plans are in the works to build four more, Stanley said.

An experienced trapper captures each cat, and Concho Valley PAWS provides for its sterilization and vaccinations at no cost to ASU, Stanley said. As of this month, 12 cats had been spayed or neutered, two had been adopted, and two more are living in foster homes.

Cleave Pool, director of counseling services at ASU, agreed to serve as a liaison between the coalition and the campus, Stanley said, in the event that Facilities Management encounters a problem with the cats remaining on campus.

"It sounds like a good situation because we will no longer have to trap them and take them away," Halbert said last month, just before the coalition's approval. "We do like a few cats on campus because they keep the rodent population down."

Some of the buildings on campus experienced an influx of rodents and varmints when the feral cats living there were removed in the 1990s, Stanley said. The cats' removal in December, she said, is likely to cause an influx of more cats that will move in to take their place, a phenomenon called the vacuum effect.

Alley Cat Allies, a national cat advocacy group, claims on its website that catching and killing the cats temporarily reduces their numbers, but the unsterilized cats that remain will continue to reproduce, and cats from elsewhere will move in to replace those that left.

Furthermore, Stanley said, some cats that were removed from campus left at least two litters of kittens orphaned.

"That's the aftermath of that," she said. "It's sad, but I think Jay is probably relieved and excited that there's an organization that will come together and help him" with the cats that remain.

Tech's feral cat coalition began in 1993 as a student volunteer project, according to the Humane Society of West Texas' website. Lubbock animal organizations helped address the campus's cat overpopulation issue by sterilizing its wild adult cats and socializing and adopting out the kittens, the website states.

Alice White, a retired Texas Tech University professor who began volunteering for the TTU Feral Cat Program in 2007, in an email attributed the coalition's success to "caring, generous people and TTU leaders who value the program and collaborate with us."

Tech's program, which comes at no cost to the university, is beneficial because "non-producing feral cat colonies eliminate rodents, yowling, fighting and spraying; eliminate incoming, reproducing, unvaccinated stray cats; and eliminate the expense of trapping and euthanizing Texas Tech's longtime feline residents," White said in the email.

A similar program at ASU "will provide a huge opportunity to educate people about feral cats and homeless cats," Stanley said.

ASU student Maxwell Kennady, a Concho Valley PAWS board member who serves as a campus liaison for the coalition, said having a feral cat maintenance program at ASU aligns with the university's community outreach goals, including its Quality Enhancement Plan.

"It's something that we at ASU as a community can do together to help these animals," he said. "I think it's a great thing for the university as a whole."

While some ASU staff members have asked their employees not to feed the campus cats, Stanley said, dozens of people from the university, Concho Valley PAWS and the community have offered to support the program as volunteers.

"It's our responsibility because these cats were once someone's pets or the descendants of someone's pets" that were not sterilized, Stanley said. "Why not try? Because what (we've been doing) doesn't work."
Women in Florida will no longer be required to wait 24 hours before having an abortion -- at least for now.The Florida Supreme Court on Friday tapped the brakes on the controversial state law, which requires women to visit a doctor in person a full day before an abortion. It's the latest twist in a protracted legal fight that began last summer after the measure was passed by the Republican-controlled state Legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Scott.Gainesville-based abortion clinic Bread and Roses Women's Health Center and the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida sued the state, claiming the law violates broad privacy protections under the Florida Constitution. A Tallahassee circuit court still hasn't ruled on that question. The fight has so far focused on an injunction that had stopped the law from initially going into effect.For about a day in July, the law was in effect before a judge issued the injunction. Then, on Feb. 26, a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal ruled in the state's favor, allowing the waiting period to become state law while the lawsuit moved forward.The Supreme Court's 5-2 ruling on Friday, however, puts the law's implementation back on hold while the state's highest justices decide whether to accept the case."We hope the Court will ultimately agree that Florida women are capable of making decisions about their health and their families without political interference," said Julia Kaye, staff attorney with the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project. "And that the Florida Constitution tolerates nothing less."But the law's supporters criticized the court's move as "overreaching" and part of a pattern of the justices ruling against the state Legislature's decisions."It appears that several of our Justices seem to believe it is their job to invalidate any action of the legislature, regardless of the law and constitution," House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, said in a statement. "I do hope that our next appointees will have a better understanding and appreciation for the true role of our Courts."Whitney Ray, a spokesman for Attorney General Pam Bondi, said they are "waiting to see if the Florida Supreme Court accepts jurisdiction so we can continue to defend the law."Supporters of the waiting period say it ensures women have time to consider the decision and protects them from being pressured by their partner or a doctor. And, said bill sponsor Rep. Jennifer Sullivan, R-Mount Dora, it doesn't violate the constitution."It's something that, when I wrote the language, I gave a lot of care to," Sullivan told the Times/Herald in February.However, opponents say the extra doctor's visit is an unnecessary burden, especially for poor women who may have limited access to transportation or find it difficult to take multiple days off work to have two appointments at a far-away clinic."The people of Florida care deeply about preventing unwarranted governmental interference with their private decisions, and that is exactly what this law does," Kaye said, arguing against the legislation in the 1st District Court in February.
Two members of President Obama's cabinet went to a North Philadelphia community center Monday to publicize the administration's latest effort to help men and women who are getting out of prison get their lives together.After meeting at the Raymond Rosen Manor public-housing project with people who have been convicted of crimes, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro announced a grant for agencies that help the recently incarcerated.Lynch called helping those with criminal records reintegrate into society "the most important challenge in the criminal justice system today."Too many obstacles, advocates and some government officials say, keep those with criminal records from reaching their goals."When they look for a job, they're X'ed out because of a criminal record," Castro said. "How do we expect to give them a second chance when we won't give them a second look?"Lynch and Castro announced Monday that HUD and the Department of Justice will give a total of $1.75 million to public-housing authorities across the nation to be spent on people trying to rebuild their lives after getting out of prison.Philadelphia and Camden were among the cities that received $100,000 each for their housing authorities. In Philadelphia, the money will be directed to the federally run Juvenile Reentry Assistance Program.The Philadelphia Housing Authority is partnering with Community Legal Services, a nonprofit organization that provides free legal services to low-income people in the city, to help PHA residents ages 16 to 24 who are reentering society. A main goal of the program will be to expunge or seal criminal records."We are sending a message that should resonate across the country to individuals who have been incarcerated who want to have a better life," Lynch said."What's most important is that these individuals believe they can do it," Castro added.Lynch called on the nation's governors, including Gov. Wolf, to make it easier for prisoners to obtain state identification cards when released.The ID proposal would allow federal prisoners to exchange their Bureau of Prisons ID card for a state ID, or for the state government to accept Bureau of Prisons ID cards, which already include the holder's photograph, eye color, and address as a valid form of identification. Pennsylvania is one of 35 states that do not allow such exchanges, federal officials said."This would have a powerful impact," Lynch said.
Kansas Citys Smart Corridor

The City as a Customer

Smart City or Surveillance City?

On the new streetcars that will start running in Kansas City next week, theres a decal that says KC is a smart city. As the streetcars clang through the downtown business district on trial runs, pedestrians can watch the sentence slide by.Along the 2-mile streetcar line, Kansas City is installing video sensors to spot badly parked cars, traffic lights that are programmed to keep traffic flowing and digital kiosks that serve as city guides. All this, the city says, helps makes it smart.But the truth is that theres no clear definition of a smart city, a label that many cities are grabbing onto by integrating some information technology into some city services.The concept of a smart city is somewhat amorphous, but its focused on cities leading with technological innovation, said Brooks Rainwater of the National League of Cities.Its just using digital technology to improve community life, said Jesse Berst of the Smart Cities Council.Its a paradigm shift in the way we think, said Kate Garman, the innovation analyst for Kansas City.Some smart city advocates emphasize efforts to engage and connect with residents, others emphasize infrastructure. But the general goal  something no city has yet achieved  is to collect immediate data on everything from traffic patterns to home water use, analyze it, and use that information to make the city work better.We have some cities moving in that direction, but a lot more doing little one-offs, really, said Stephen Goldsmith of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a former mayor of Indianapolis and former deputy mayor of New York.Advocates say smart city technology will save cities money and energy, while better connecting cities and citizens. The White House announced $160 million in spending to research and develop smart city technology. British government researchers estimated in 2013 that the global market for such technology would reach $408 billion by the end of the decade.But as cities like Kansas City are finding, being smart doesnt just mean installing new gadgets. It really means changing the way city agencies operate and learning to balance that against security and privacy concerns.Kansas City has already installed two digital kiosks , the first of 25, near the streetcar line. Theyre in beta testing, so they might not work, Garman warned recently as she approached a 7-foot unit on the wide and empty sidewalk.She touched the icons on the kiosks touch screen  it worked. They opened to offer information about local news, attractions and public transit. A related smartphone app will push restaurant deals and other promotions to users.A few blocks away, sensors wired on top of energy-saving LED streetlights will alert the city to cars parked in the streetcars path and brighten lights automatically when more than six people pass by.Modems clamped to lampposts will provide free wireless Internet. Updated traffic lights will use advanced computing to keep vehicles moving to avoid congestion.The features along the streetcar line arent revolutionary. The kiosks mostly serve as a high-tech visitors guide. In a metropolitan area that sprawls across two states, a few miles of programmable lights and Wi-Fi seem very small.But Kansas Citys latest smart city efforts, to be launched along with the streetcars, could grow into something bigger. What you see now is technically called phase one. What phase two is, we still dont know, said Garman, a part-time law student and half of the citys two-person innovation staff.Kansas City will truly become a smart city when it starts using all this technology to find problems and fix them, she said.The streetcar corridor isnt the citys first investment. In 2010, the state-run police department bought scanners that automatically collect license plate data from passing cars. In 2011, the local electric utility finished installing more than 14,000 smart meters in homes and businesses. And in 2012, Google installed Internet cables with speeds up to 1 gigabit here.Kansas City is a finalist for the U.S. Department of Transportations $40 million Smart City Challenge , which will fund investments in driverless cars, connected vehicles and sensors. If it wins, the city will develop a self-driving shuttle from the international airport to downtown and expand the kiosks and sensors to other parts of the city, among other initiatives.As part of its streetcar corridor, Kansas City has also issued an open invitation to entrepreneurs who are developing technologies that could improve city services. A few cybersecurity companies and a drone company are already interested in testing their products here, according to Herb Sih of Think Big Partners, a startup accelerator.Drones, for example, could help the city save money on searching for an elderly person with a mental disability who goes missing, Sih said. He described a California company thats developing drones that connect to wristbands; when an alert is issued, a drone can find and hover over the missing person.Getting city bureaucracies to think creatively, using data, is the biggest obstacle aspiring smart cities face, Goldsmith said. Government is highly mechanistic in how its organized.To aid with the transition, the Kansas City Council last year established a chief data officer position and designated contacts in charge of data in every branch of city government.Like most cities, Kansas City will rely on outside contractors to build its smart city infrastructure. It has had to figure out how to vet vendors  who, in some cases, are hawking technology that seems straight out of science fiction  and think carefully about security and privacy.We get approached by vendors constantly, Garman said. Theres so much out there, its crazy.Kansas City didnt plan to add sensors, kiosks and Wi-Fi along its streetcar line until it was approached by Cisco Systems Inc., a multinational technology company looking for a city to debut its smart cities software.Cisco and Think Big Partners researched city agencies to find areas where technology could improve services. The companies and the city agreed on the streetcar corridor as a starting point. Cisco helped identify subcontractors who had the kind of technology the city wanted.The result is a patchwork of technologies run by corporate partners: a Wi-Fi network run by Sprint Corp., video sensors run by Sensity (a lighting technology company), kiosks run by Smart City Media (a company that makes interactive signs for cities), and  as part of a separate contract  traffic lights run by Rhythm Engineering (a traffic management company).Cisco made sure Kansas City installed the newest and best technology, Garman said. All told, the city has only had to allocate $3.7 million toward the projected $15.7 million cost of the 10-year partnership, and will share with Smart City Media some of the money raised by advertising on the kiosks.Not all cities are becoming partners with big corporations. Bostons innovation office is a little more leery of buying software from them. Often, software engineers at such companies dont know what problems cities actually face, said Nigel Jacob, co-chair for the Boston mayors Office of New Urban Mechanics.Jacobs team has worked on research projects for the city since the office was set up in 2010. In the process, it has learned that new technology doesnt fix every problem.For example, almost half of requests for city services now come through an app Jacobs team built. But the app hasnt engaged new groups of people. Homeowners, the group most likely to call in a problem, are also the most likely to use the app.As cities add more sensors, analyze more data, and use advanced computer programming to run traffic lights and even vehicles, theyre increasingly confronting new ethical, legal and policy questions.Smart city technology exposes infrastructure and potentially personal data to computer malfunctions and hackings. The more data cities collect, the easier itll be to aggregate a detailed picture of an individuals life.What smart city advocates call data collection their critics call surveillance.From an ideal privacy perspective, much of this technology is a bad idea, said Jeffrey Mittman, head of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri. But technologies such as license plate scanners and drones exist, and are being used. So the question becomes how to manage the data collected, he said.Kansas City has tried to address privacy concerns in a few ways. In April 2015, the City Council passed a resolution that laid out a number of basic data privacy principles , including a promise to consider public well-being before collecting, using and disclosing personal information.Kansas City contractually owns all the data collected by Cisco, Sensity and Smart City Media, such as the most popular time of day for accessing a certain kiosk in a certain location. The companies cant sell or use the data without permission. The kiosks will be able to use the interactions between users and devices to sell advertising. Thats how theyll raise revenue.Sprint owns the Wi-Fi data, and will follow the usual industry practice of having users click yes on a user agreement.The city is choosing to collect less data than it could, Garman said. Her office will receive only bulk data, although cameras in the kiosks and lights will record video footage. The city will only request that footage in an emergency, such as a terrorist attack. Because it wont have the footage, it wont have to release it in response to a public information request.Garman said that some potential uses of the light sensors will require users to opt in  for example, to get a text message alert when their car is parked in the streetcars path.Although Kansas Citys innovation office holds periodic events to educate the public about its projects, Mittman thinks the city should do more. The average Kansas Citian likely doesnt know how theyre being tracked, he said.Chances are, the average Kansas Citian is already being tracked by private companies. Think of how Google saves everyones search history, or how retailers can now use video cameras to track customers through the store or use Bluetooth beacons to send customers promotions.This is the future, and as a city government we need to be responsive to our citizens expectations, Bennett said. And as we move toward the 22nd century we need to be a data-driven organization, we need to be connected.
Other bills Hogan plans to sign Tuesday include:

The Freedom to Vote Act, which requires state agencies to give citizens more opportunities to register to vote and to expand outreach efforts. In its original form, the bill would have made voter registration automatic for any eligible Marylander who did not opt out. As passed by the House, the bill attracted little Republican support, but it was rewritten in the Senate as a more bipartisan bill and passed unanimously.

A bill requiring an increase in the number of early-voting centers in Maryland's larger counties, while allowing smaller counties to add a second early-voting center if the local government and election board agree. While the measure faced strong GOP resistance in the House, Hogan spokesman Matthew A. Clark pointed to the high early-voting turnout before Tuesday's primary as a reason to sign it.

A measure allowing buyers of properties being sold by the state Department of Housing and Community Development to roll student loan debt into their home mortgages. Sergei Kuzmenchuk, the department's chief financial officer, said homes in foreclosure are fixed up before the state sells them. He said the state has about 20 homes now in various stages of improvements.

Legislation requiring that pharmacists and professionals who prescribe pain-killing drugs bolster their monitoring of patients to prevent abuse and addiction. The bill responds to one of the recommendations of Hogan's task force on heroin addiction and opioid abuse. The measure also increases education requirements for medical professionals on prescription drug monitoring.

(TNS) -- On Tuesday, April 26, Gov. Larry Hogan signed legislation that will launch a program under which ninth-grade students could obtain a high school diploma and associate's degree in six years, and be on track to land a high-tech job.The administration initiative, known as P-Tech, is one of more than 170 bills the Republican governor is expected to approve in the second bill-signing ceremony since the General Assembly session ended April 11. In a nod to today's primary elections, the bills include measures to expand voting opportunities.The $10 million, five-year P-Tech program will start this fall at two schools in Baltimore. In 2017, the program is expected to expand to schools on the Eastern Shore, in Western Maryland and in Prince George's County.Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr., a senior adviser to Hogan, said the governor hopes those are only the first steps. "The governor definitely wants to see it expand to other parts of the state," Mitchell said.Mitchell said Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels and IBM Corp. approached the administration after rioting erupted in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray from injuries suffered in police custody. They proposed bringing the technology-oriented program to the city. P-Tech stands for Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools.Under the program, a high-tech employer agrees to offer jobs to young people who complete the tuition-free program spanning four years of high school years and two of community college."It's a true partnership between the business, the local school system and the community college," Mitchell said.Stanley Litow, president of the IBM International Foundation, said the program was launched in 2011 in Brooklyn and has expanded to Connecticut and Illinois. Maryland, Colorado and Rhode Island are expected to join them this fall.Litow said many in the program, which targets low-income and minority students, have graduated in four or five years instead of needing the full six. So far, he said, none of the P-Tech graduates have had to take remedial courses when they reach community college. Litow said the dropout rate is "virtually zero."Hogan and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced plans to launch the program in Baltimore at a new conference in November. The programs to be established in Maryland can either be separate institutions or "schools within a school," Mitchell said.Edie House, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore school system, said she expects an announcement of the schools to be chosen in the next few months.
The growth in the number of devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) has set the stage for malicious actors to come after high-value information on a global scale, according to findings from Verizons latest look at data breaches.The 2016 Data Breach Investigations Report outlines some troubling trends that havent necessarily evolved, but have certainly gotten more dangerous to our tech-centric way of life.By studying the patterns and tactics used to inflict damage in the cyber-realm across myriad industries, Jonathan Nguyen-Guy, CIO of Global Security Solutions with Verizon Enterprise Solutions, said researchers have been able to effectively reconstruct the hacker playbook and what is happening in the wild.This years report  the ninth such study by Verizon  is based on more than 100,000 incidents and 3,141 confirmed data breaches. Of this larger data set, analysts evaluated more than 64,000 incidents and 2,260 breaches.All told, the lengthy analysis and research from partners around the world show the vast majority of attacks falling within nine common attack vectors.What weve found is that over 90 percent of those data breaches could be categorized into one of nine incident patterns, and that these patterns are pretty consistent and have been over the last 11 years, he told. When we look at this years report, there are three key themes that come across, and the first one is that it is really about economics.These vectors include things like stolen credentials or equipment, denial of service, malware and phishing attacks.The heart of that is the statement that crime pays," Nguyen-Guy said, "and cybercrime pays and it pays very well."The harsh reality of modern IT is that a brief, 30-minute window inside a compromised network is enough to cause tens of millions of dollars in damages, as occurred in the Saudi Aramco breach in 2012.In this case, a malicious email corrupted systems, caused damage or destruction to a reported 35,000 computers, and triggered substantial operational setbacks, according to a CNN Money report The interval between the detonation of malware or when someone launches an attack to when damage is done to a network, when devices are destroyed, when memory is erased and things are irreparably damaged is shortening with every passing year, Nguyen-Guy said.According to the CIO, it isnt that attacks have become more sophisticated, its more that hackers havent needed to change their approach and continue to use proven tactics that get them entry into sensitive networks and systems.What were seeing is that the attackers are not really developing new methodologies of attack," Nguyen-Guy said. "They are refining very time-tested and proven methodologies, and they are readily successful."Another problem faced by both the public and private sector is the ever-expanding number of devices in the workplace. From smartphones to fitness trackers and iPads, the challenge of mitigating the ramifications of a possible breach caused by these connected electronics is something many IT departments may think they understand, but dont.While there is no shortage of suggestions as to how to best insulate networks from unauthorized access, Nguyen-Guy points to basic actions as being the most effective defenses.Tactics like requiring multi-factor identification, training employees to recognize a potentially harmful email and knowing the capabilities and vulnerabilitis of your networks, can go a long way to stop data breaches. But until the larger profit machine for ill-gotten data is slowed, hackers aren't likely to stop on their own.Until we disrupt the dynamics in the threat environment and the marketplace," he said, "were not going to see a fundamental improvement in cybersecurity, whether thats commercial or public sector."
A Russian billionaire is now the full owner of the fabled F1 circuit the Nurburgring.

In late 2014, we reported that Viktor Kharitonin, who co-founded the pharmaceutical company Pharmstandard, had bought into the embattled German grand prix venue.

Forbes Russia now reports that Kharitonin, 43, has upped his stake from 80 to 99 per cent.

"Today we have closed the deal," he is quoted as saying, with Forbes claiming the value of the new transaction is some EUR 38 million.

It is believed Kharitonin has paid EUR 77 million in total for the circuit, with the minority shareholder GetSpeed keeping a symbolic 1 per cent.

Amid the Nurburgring's well-documented financial and ownership troubles, Germany fell off the F1 calendar last year and is once again back in doubt for 2017.

F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone said he came close to buying the Nurburgring, but the then owners opted for another offer "for the sake of one or two million".

"I think we can say for sure that there will not be a race" in 2017, he told motorsport-magazin.com late last year.

Explaining the 2015 absence now, Kharitonin said: "We ourselves refused because they did not agree with the organisers on financial matters."

Kharitonin, however, claims talks with Ecclestone will resume, according to Forbes Russia.

(GMM)
The four-cylinder 2.0-liter Ford EcoBlue debuts in the new Transit and Transit Custom commercial vehicles, increasing fuel efficiency by more than 10%. Drivability is enhanced with 20% more torque at 1,250 rpm compared with the outgoing equivalent power 2.2-liter TDCi diesel engine. The new engine also delivers passenger car refinement to the commercial segment, reducing radiated noise by 4 decibels at idle.

In Europe, Ford revealed the all-new 2.0-liter EcoBlue diesel enginethe first in a new range of diesels that will offer optimized fuel efficiency and reduced CO 2 and NO x emissions. Building on the performance and technology of Fords award-winning EcoBoost gasoline engines, the EcoBlue diesel range will deliver power outputs ranging from 100 PS to 240 PS (99 to 237 hp).

An all-new engine architecture delivers reduced friction and a clean-burning combustion system. Advanced after-treatment processes for exhaust gases enable ultra-low emissions in line with stringent Euro Stage VI standards that will be introduced in September 2016, requiring a 55% reduction in NO x emissions compared to Euro Stage V standards.

Advanced technologies include an integrated intake system with Fords first application of mirror-image porting for optimized engine breathing; a low-inertia turbocharger featuring rocket engine materials designed for high temperature applications; and an all-new high-pressure fuel injection system that is more responsive, quieter and offers more precise fuel delivery.

Developed by Ford engineering teams in the U.K. and Germany, the versatile all-new 2.0-liter Ford EcoBlue engine initially will be offered with 105 PS, 130 PS and 170 PS in commercial vehicle applications. Capable of delivering more than 200 PS, the engine will later feature in Ford passenger cars alongside further new EcoBlue enginesincluding a 1.5liter variant.

Low friction, sophisticated combustion. The clean-sheet design features multiple innovations that reduce friction, contributing to a 13% improvement in fuel efficiency, including:

A 10 mm offset crank design that minimises piston side-load, reducing rubbing forces against the cylinder walls of the downsized four-cylinder iron block.

Minimized crankshaft bearing diameters.

A belt-in-oil design for the camshaft and oil pump drive belts.

An optimized valve-train and an all-new single-piece camshaft module.

Ford is for the first time using a new mirror-image porting design for the integrated inlet manifold that precisely controls the flow of air into the cylinders, with the clockwise airflow for cylinder numbers one and two, reversed for cylinder numbers three and four.

This symmetrical arrangement ensures uniform mixing of fuel and air in the combustion chambers of all four cylinders, helping engineers more closely control the way the engine burns fuel. When fine-tuning the combustion process, computer experiments used measurements from more than 1,400 factors that affect performance of the valve lift and timing alone.

Our first ever mirror-image inlet design in combination with an optimized combustion chamber layout helps us turn fuel into energy more effectively than any diesel engine weve ever produced. Dr. Werner Willems, Ford technical specialist, Combustion Systems

New fuel injectors are capable of delivering up to six injections per combustion event, with each injection taking as little as 250 microseconds (0.00025 seconds) and delivering 0.8 mg of dieselequivalent to a grain of sugar. This tiny volume of fuel is injected through eight conical holes each 120 microns in diameterabout the width of a human hair.

Piezoelectric technology that uses electrically-responsive crystals to closely control fuel deliverytypically found in premium passenger-car enginesis incorporated into the body of the injector unit. The new injectors deliver reduced noise levels; minimal energy wastage from the fuel pump; more responsive and less intrusive Auto-Start-Stop performance; and real-time calibration correction for maximum fuel efficiency.

Advanced turbocharging. The all-new compact turbocharger has been specifically designed to deliver more air at lower engine rpm compared with the outgoing 2.2-liter TDCi engine, for a light and urgent feel across the rev-range and up to 340 Nm (251 lb-ft) of torque at 1,250 rpm.

An aerodynamically advanced turbine wheelmade from Inconel, an alloy used in extreme temperature environments such as rocket enginesis reduced in diameter by almost 10%. The aerospace aluminium grade compressor wheel is reduced in diameter by 15%. The reductions decrease inertia and enable faster boost performance with wheel speeds up to 240,000 rpm, contributing to improved low-end torque.

One important factor we noticed through customer feedback is a growing tendency for drivers to creep their diesel-powered vehicles by engaging the clutch while the engine is at idle, making low-down torque even more essential. Paul Turner, base engine technical leader, Ford of Europe

Compressor wheels are milled from solid, rather than cast, improving tolerances to within two or three microns, increasing durability and reducing noise and vibration. A new turbocharger actuator replaces a worm drive with a geared design that halves response times to 110 milliseconds.

Ford says that the new engine will comfortably meet future European emissions requirements by using Fords first standardized selective catalytic reduction system. The system is close-coupled to the rear of the engine for maximum efficiency and excellent cold-driving performance. A short-loop exhaust gas recirculation channel is incorporated into the cylinder head, contributing to a more compact engine design and helping optimize cooling of gasses.

Enhanced refinement. The 2.0-liter Ford EcoBlue engine will be the first diesel commercial vehicle powertrain from Ford to achieve passenger car noise, vibration and harshness criteria, contributing to enhanced driving appeal.

The new engine radiates half as much sound energy at idle as the 2.2-liter TDCi diesel engine. A noise-optimized cylinder-head, block, stiffening ladder-frame and oil pan are specifically developed to be desensitized to activity inside the engine, and non-flat mating surfaces are carefully designed to offer tight seals that trap noise within the engine.

A moulded acoustic cover that provides foam encapsulation of the cylinder head, and a front cover made from sound deadened steel, further prevent engine noise being transmitted to the cabin for a quieter driving environment. Additional measures taken to enhance NVH include:

Micro-geometry analysis of gear teeth down to a micron level (0.001 mm) to achieve perfect meshing for smoother operation and less high-frequency whine.

An optimized oil pump featuring unevenly spaced vanes that break up the pumps noise frequency to make it less perceptible to the listener.

Advanced fuel injectors featuring integrated piezo-stacks, noise softening software and optimized pilot injection.

Commercial vehicle durability. The new 2.0-liter Ford EcoBlue engine meets Fords demanding global commercial vehicle durability standards for extreme usage in markets as diverse as Europe, the US and China.

The engines performance has been put through the equivalent of 5.5 million km (3.4 million miles) of durability testing including 400,000 km (250,000 miles) at the hands of real-world customers, comprehensive analysis in laboratories and at Ford vehicle proving grounds, and CAE evaluations at every stage of development.

The oil systemincluding the oil specification, oil pan and filter dimensions, bore distortion tolerances and piston ring specificationshas been engineered to extend oil life, and maintenance-free components include the camshaft belt, camshaft module, and water pump.
Forsyth Medical Center has joined Moses Cone Hospital in being ranked among the Triads top large hospitals when it comes to a measuring stick on patient safety.

A semiannual study was released Monday by The Leapfrog Group, a national not-for-profit organization founded by larger employers and private health care purchasers.

Forsyth Medical Center, operated by Novant Health Inc., rose from a B grade last fall to an A. Cone and affiliate Wesley Long Hospital each received an A for the fourth consecutive report.

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center was given a B, unchanged from the previous four reports. High Point Regional also stayed at a B.

Medical Park Hospital, operated by Novant, also rose from a B to an A in the spring report, while Kernersville Medical Center, also operated by Novant, dropped from an A to a B. The fall 2015 report was the first in which the Kernersville hospital was eligible to receive a score.

Leapfrog began issuing safety scores in spring 2012.

All Novant Health facilities were assigned an A or B grade, with most showing an improvement, said Dr. Tom Zweng, Novants chief medical officer. However, until our system can report zero incidents of infection or error, we will never be fully satisfied.

Therefore, on an on-going basis, a team of Novant Health physicians and clinical staff analyze our hospital acquired conditions, patient safety indicators, hospital-acquired infections, safe practice measures and patient communications to identify opportunities for improvement.

Researchers use publicly available data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and secondary data sources to produce a composite score published as an A to F letter grade for 2,571 hospitals nationally. Overall, 798 hospitals earned an A (31 percent), 724 earned a B (28.2 percent), 866 earned a C (33.7 percent), 133 earned a D (5.2 percent) and 34 earned an F (1.3 percent).

Leapfrog reviews 28 measures of patient safety, including areas such as error prevention, infections and medication mix-ups. It also issues a score of above average, average and below average in six categories: collapsed lung, serious breathing problem, dangerous blood clot, surgical wound splits open, accidental cuts and tears, and death from treatable serious complications.

For the first time, the score includes five measures of patient-reported experience with the hospital, as well as two of the most common infections  C. diff and MRSA.

Additional findings point to a 9 percent higher risk of avoidable death in B hospitals compared with A hospitals, along with 35 percent higher in C hospitals and 50 percent higher in D and F hospitals, Leapfrog said.

The analysis identified an estimated 206,000 avoidable deaths in U.S. hospitals each year, a figure analysis describes as an underestimate. The measure only accounts for a subset of avoidable harms patients may encounter in the hospital.

Avoidable deaths in hospitals should be the No. 1 concern of our health-care leaders, said Leah Binder, the groups president and chief executive.

Hospitals that earn an A from Leapfrog are leaders in saving lives, and we commend them and urge their continued vigilance.

Officials with the N.C. Hospital Association caution that a simple grading system for hospitals safety ignores many of the factors involved in patient care, particularly a consultation with their physician.

Wake Forest Baptist officials have said they prefer to be compared primarily with other academic medical centers. Duke University Hospital received an A for the eighth consecutive report, while UNC Hospitals received a C for the third consecutive time.

We welcome the opportunity the many rating systems, like Leapfrog, provide to be measured at all levels, said Dr. Russell Howerton, Wake Forest Baptists chief medical officer.

The rating provides a snapshot in time that allows us to use the information to understand how we can continue to improve, and we are confident that we are continuously improving.

Dr. Bruce Swords, Moses Cones chief medical officer, said in a statement that Leapfrog is one of the better-known sources where consumers can compare the quality of health care, so we pay a lot of attention to their rankings.
Grants

The UnitedHealthcare Childrens Foundation is seeking grant applications from North Carolina families in need of financial assistance to help pay for their childs health care treatments, services or equipment not covered, or not fully covered, by their commercial health insurance plan.

Qualifying families can receive up to $5,000 per grant with a lifetime maximum of $10,000 per child to help pay for medical services and equipment such as physical, occupational and speech therapy, counseling services, surgeries, prescriptions, wheelchairs, orthotics, eyeglasses and hearing aids.

To be eligible for a grant, children must be 16 years of age or younger. Families must meet economic guidelines, reside in the United States and have a commercial health insurance plan. Grants are available for medical expenses families have incurred 60 days prior to the date of application as well as for ongoing and future medical needs. Families do not need to have insurance through UnitedHealthcare to be eligible.

Parents or legal guardians may apply for grants at www.UHCCF.org, and there is no deadline.

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Students in Piedmont Community Colleges Digital Effects and Animation Technology program will benefit from a $19,500 grant from The Community Foundation of the Dan River Region. These funds will be used to purchase a new MakerBot Replicator Z18 3D printer, two new MakerBot Replicator 3D printers, and supplies and equipment to maintain the printers.

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High Point University instructor of English Allison Walker recently received a $56,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. She is working with a team of five colleagues from Michigan State University, Spelman College and N.C. A&T on a project, Tracking Evolution on Social Media.

These colleagues are using genetic algorithms to track the conversation surrounding the science of evolution on social media platforms. Walker is working to develop a computer program that will identify positive language cues that make a science story go viral on social media.

Were trying to develop a computer algorithm that can trace key words and phrases associated with this conversation about evolution on social media platforms like Twitter, said Walker. We want to figure out how to share valid scientific information with a popular audience without triggering bias and negative perceptions.

Once the group figures out what words or phrases work best, they then want to work with scientists to use this language on social media to educate people about evolution.
GREENSBORO  Westminster Presbyterian Church will withdraw a proposal for a youth house and parking lot on Westminster Drive and has agreed to work with neighbors who say the plan would ruin the character of their neighborhood.

On the brink Monday night of a contentious public hearing before the Board of Adjustment, attorneys for the church and the neighborhood told the board they believe an agreement can be worked out to satisfy both sides.

At issue is whether Westminster, at 3906 Friendly Ave., can operate its youth house across Westminster Drive as a "religious assembly," which requires adjacent parking under city zoning at the corner of Westminster Drive and Friendly Avenue.

Residents who live on Westminster Drive and elsewhere in the Hamilton Forest neighborhood say a parking lot would ruin the character of the area and open it to unlimited church expansion. They say the house does not fit the city's definition of a religious assembly and is Westminster Presbyterian's attempt to expand its parking into the next block.

The church will now reconsider its plan in cooperation with the neighbors, who had challenged an earlier city decision to allow changes to the church's property.

Both groups agreed to drop the matter Monday under some duress. Lawyers said both sides had began positive discussions and they might reach an agreement with another month of talks. They did not want to argue the case before the board because that would eliminate the chance for a compromise.

The Board of Adjustment is a quasi-judicial board whose decisions are law and can only be appealed to Superior Court. Members noted that this would be the third continuance of the case in three months and they said to delay any longer would be wasting the board's time.

While the board considered other matters, church and neighborhood representatives huddled in the hallway at City Council chambers and agreed to withdraw the church plan and the neighborhood appeal.

Marc Isaacson, Westminster Presbyterian's attorney, said after the meeting: "We agreed to take a timeout on this matter and continue our positive dialogue on issues of concern to nearby property owners and the church."

Marsh Prause, the neighborhood's attorney, echoed a similar sentiment.

"I would have taken no pleasure in orchestrating an argument," he said.

Jim Mahoney, who lives in Hamilton Forest, said the church underestimated the level of concern.

"They realized this wasn't one neighbor complaining when they saw all the (protest) signs," he said.

Westminster has been conducting youth meetings in the house on 602 Westminster Drive since 2008. In 2014, it bought the house next door at 3906 W. Friendly Ave. The church let the Greensboro Fire Department burn it down as a training exercise. That lot would be used for parking if a new plan should be approved.

With 1,800 members, Westminster is struggling to serve an average of 700 parishioners who worship on Sundays within its 450-seat sanctuary.

Neighbors are afraid the church could buy up other properties and expand further.

But Mahoney believes Westminster is sincere.

"They're going to take a step back and rethink everything," he said.
Business culture and its acknowledgement as an important factor in corporate success have come a long way in recent years. More and more companies are paying attention to culture, seeking to improve and sell it to employees as a perk. Even so, the concept remains a mystery to most business leaders.

The larger the company, the harder it is to have a culture that permeates through the entire organization. If your culture has deteriorated to a less than satisfactory level, the more difficult it is to turn it around. Before attempting to initiate a shift in your company, you must understand that a healthy culture consists of a marriage between the vision of the leadership team and your team's personality.

Leadership's Role in Culture

The executive team sets the organization's direction for a large variety of strategic decisions -- but culture is often overlooked in the "strategic" category. For a business culture to be strong, one unifying set of commonly understood principles must flow from top to bottom. An organization with a laissez-faire approach towards culture, devoid of a strategic plan, surrenders that ability to help create a unified cultural identity.

A company with this problem likely will not have a culture deck -- a clearly stated slide deck -- which helps create both a common language and official standards the company embraces. A lack of a standardized vision generates opportunities for a variety of culture cliques within the team, each a slight variant of the other. The larger the institution and the longer this exists, the more these culture pockets grow away from one another. An organization with multiple cultural identities, in reality, doesnt have any.

When clashing sub-cultures exist, the atmosphere is ripe for office politics, in-fighting, unhealthy competition and wildly varying leadership philosophies. Devoid of a culture plan, each department develops its own attitudes and practices. Some sub-cultures may be strong, others weak, and many simply unclear. Each sub-culture hires and promotes according to their own whims and standards, creating additional opportunities for the chasm to widen.

Bottom line, culture should not be left to happen without a plan.

The team's role in culture.

When culture is governed too tightly by "corporate" it can quickly start to feel unauthentic. Rather than a true reflection of the overwhelming majority of the team, it is reduced to talking points from a few individuals far removed from true day-to-day business. Adding to the complexity of creating a strong culture is a situation where a murky one already exists.

Lack of a unified culture requires an even greater emphasis on strong employee buy-in. To give a cultural change initiative a fair chance to work, much of the existing team must believe in the new direction. The likelihood of a high acceptance rate increases in proportion to the team's level of involvement in shaping the changes. Believers in the freshened culture will support it because it is close to thoughts they were able to share.

Still, incorporating and soliciting employee feedback does not mean that every team member will "get their way." The right candidates for the new culture will appreciate that though their ideas were ultimately not incorporated, they were heard. On the other hand, individuals that don't feel comfortable in the newly branded culture may not be the right long-term fit for the team.

A rigid culture, mandated by a select few, doesn't allow for innovation to emerge from all organizational layers and levels. It eliminates room for employees to contribute in new ways beyond the original vision. Just as all businesses need to adapt over time, so does the culture. A well-defined culture's core values should not shift significantly from year to year, but they do need to gradually evolve to match an ever-changing business and team.

Just like business in general, culture is a balance between art and science. In the end, the right "magic" formula is a balance between engaging the team's opinions and the philosophical beliefs of leadership.

Related:

Understanding The Importance Of Listening For Effective Communications

There Is No Formula That Guarantees a Thriving Culture

Can Your Company's Culture Disrupt the Sales Side of Your Business?



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
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The former money man for an international drug cartel was sentenced in federal court in Houston Tuesday for aiding in a $1 million marijuana operation.

Jose Juan Banda-Corona, who was known by the nickname Cachetes, or Cheeks, admitted he was an accountant for the Gulf Cartel drug operation.

BEHIND THE SCENES: Gulf Cartel show their faces in recently released photos

U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison sentenced him to three and half years in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release.

"Sir, if you are deported, which I think you will be, I hope you won't come back here," Ellison said.

Banda-Corona looked at him and indicated that he understood.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Darnell Smith told the judge that Banda-Corona, 36, was the fee collector for the cartel in Mexico and the U.S., and tabulated $1 million worth of business.

Defense attorney Fabian Guerrero asked the judge for leniency.

"He's as pleasant a fellow as you'll meet," Guerrero said.

Banda-Corona was among 52 people named in a 31-count indictment in 2013.

Ellison sentenced four other defendants from the same indictment Tuesday, the majority of whom received similar advice from the judge. For the most part, their pleas were under seal, preventing the public from knowing the acts they admitted to committing.

Juan Oscar Rodriguez, 34, known by the nickname Cuatro, or Four, was given a sentence of just under five years in prison and four years of supervised release. Mario Alberto Gonzalez, 41, known as Cookie, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison and four years of supervised release.

Julio Cesar Lerma, 36, known as El Licenciado, or the Graduate, who had pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute more than 100 kilograms of marijuana was sentenced time already served in federal detention.

Lydea Gonzalez, 56, who was not mentioned by nickname in the indictment, was sentenced to eight months in prison and two years of supervised release. She remained free on bond and will voluntarily surrender to officials.

So far, 35 codefendants have entered guilty pleas, though a number of them has yet to be sentenced.

Several of the defendants remain fugitives and two have died, including the man associates referred to as Comandante, or Commander, Galindo Mellado-Cruz, the founder of the Zetas.

Officials said he was killed in a shootout with Mexican federal police in the border region of Tamaulipas in 2014. The Zetas were an offshoot of the Gulf Cartel known for beheading civilians. U.S. officials have said Mellado-Cruz returned to the Gulf Cartel in a lower profile in the last years of his life.
The room is really nice at Cherche Midi. Photo: Sarah Silberg/New York Magazine

Youve got to take your mom out for Mothers Day (its May 8  dont forget). But like Valentines Day or New Years, it can be a restaurant-going nightmare day, filled with mediocre mimosas and overpriced set menus. Your mom deserves better. So Grub Street scoured the city in search of brunch specials that are worthy of the woman who literally gave you life. As of now, reservations are available at all of the spots below, but youd better act fast to secure a prime seat. Enjoy.

Where: The Cecil

Price: A la carte

Availability: Tons of tables for parties of two, three, four, and six throughout service.

Along with specials like a large-format crisp whole duck ($160, feeds four) with pickled ramps, pineapple hot sauce, and more, the Harlem hot spot will have live music from Emily Braden, a vocalist who won New Yorks Best of the Best Jazzmobile Vocal Competition.

Where: Dovetail

Price: $58 per person

Availability: Plenty of tables for parties of two, three, and four all service, and ones for six at 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

For his three-course prix fixe, chef John Fraser has created special canapes like a caviar croquante, entrees including lamb-shank lasagna and a lobster omelette, and desserts such as Mexican chocolate entremet.

Where: Gabriel Kreuther

Price: $145 per person

Availability: Lots of tables for parties of two, three, and four; parties of five or more need to contact the reservationist.

The acclaimed Alsatian restaurant, usually open for dinner only, will serve Mothers Day brunch from noon to 6 p.m. The three-course prix fixe will include options like a sturgeon-and-sauerkraut tart, squab-andfoie gras croustillant, and chocolates made specially for the occasion.

Where: Meadowsweet

Price: Two-course brunch is $45 per person, dinner is a la carte

Availability: Parties of up to five people can still easily find a table; larger parties need to contact the restaurant.

At the New American Williamsburg restaurant, theres a two-course brunch menu with assorted baked goods for the tables and choices for mains including duck pastrami hash, a fried-chicken sandwich, and huevos rancheros. Dinner is a la carte, with special dishes like an appetizer of gnocchi with braised rabbit and herb ricotta and entrees such as roasted lamb with green garbanzos and spring onion.

Where: Le Coq Rico

Price: A la carte

Availability: There are plenty of tables for two available, and tables for three after 2 p.m.

If you want to keep things more low-key, or dont want to commit to a special menu, head to Antoine Westermanns poultry palace. Its the perfect mom restaurant, and theyll be serving their usual egg- and chicken-heavy brunch menu with all the French charm youd expect.

Where: The East Pole

Price: A la carte

Availability: Finding a table when you want it is still easy, whether youll be two, three, or four. Tables for six are available around 10 a.m. and after 2 p.m.

If Mom wants to stick uptown, head here. There will be special dishes include an egg-white omelette with asparagus, smoked salmon, creme fraiche, and caviar, as well as a gift basket (moms only) with a candle, jam, and more.

Where: Boulud Sud

Price: $55 per person

Availability: There are lots of tables for parties of two, three, and four.

All of Daniel Bouluds restaurants will open for the holiday. At his Mediterranean spot, options on the special three-course prix fixe include green shakshuka, ruby red shrimp with Spanish chili, and a chocolate hazelnut tort with Earl Grey gelato.

Where: Momofuku Ko

Price: $195 per person

Availability: Reservations went live today.

Treat your mom to one of the best tasting menus in town. Normally closed on Sundays, Ko will serve its tasting menu for both lunch and dinner this Mothers Day. Lest you think you cant get in, reservations just went live, so if you act fast, you might be able to snag some seats.

Where: Aquavit

Price: $85 per person

Availability: There are tables for two, three, and four all service, plus tables for six until 1:30 p.m.

The longtime Scandinavian restaurant will open for brunch, and chef Emma Bengtsson will mine her Swedish roots and serve a traditional smorgasbord menu. Expect gravlax, king crab salad, and lots of other seafood, but also roast beef, Swedish meatballs, and desserts like Budapest cake.

Where: The Modern

Price: $138 per person for three courses, $158 per person for four

Availability: Lots of tables for two.

During lunch in the museum restaurants main dining room, youll have a choice of a three- or four-course prix fixe at one of Danny Meyers premiere restaurants. You just know his staff will make your mom feel extra special.

Where: Khe-Yo

Price: A la carte

Availability: You wont have a problem finding a table for a party of up to six people.

Alongside the normal brunch and dinner fare, the downtown Laotian restaurant will have all-day specials like chicken wings with sriracha hoisin and Thai basil; soy-ginger braised osso buco with quail eggs; and Mamas Lad Nah, a mix of Berkshire pork, chicken, and wild prawns seared in a wok with goal gai-lan and gravy-smothered rice noodles.

Where: Cherche Midi

Price: A la carte

Availability: Lots of tables for two, a decent number still available for four.

You might not be able to take your Francophile mom to Paris, but you can get her pretty close with Keith McNallys Bowery brasserie. The design is elegant, the windows partly obscure the streets (ideal for pretending youre in the Ninth Arrondissement), and the food is approachable, well-executed French.

Where: Via Carota

Price: A la carte

Availability: They dont take reservations.

The Grove Street spot is kind of an ideal neighborhood trattoria, and your mom will almost certainly become a fan (if she isnt already). Go drink some good wine or maybe a spritz, eat the bunless burger and some pastas, and just generally enjoy a very relaxed afternoon.

Where: Carbone

Price: A la carte

Availability: A surprising number of tables are still available.

In honor of Mom, you could hit up Major Food Groups red-sauce palace, which isnt normally open for lunch on Sunday, for one of New Yorks best steaks: the massive 60-day dry-aged porterhouse ($150), ideally with its smaller tenderloin made into a tartare for your appetizer.

Where: La Pecora Bianca

Price: A la carte

Availability: Lots of reservations for parties of two, for four around 11 a.m. and from 1:30 p.m. on, and for six at 11 p.m. and from 2:30 p.m. on.

Along with the regular menu, the Flatiron Italian spot will have specials like pasta al forno; maccheroni baked with short rib and brisket meatballs, plus two types of cheese; a crostino with stracchino cheese and sugar snap peas; and the Emilia-Romagnan dessert zuppa inglese, a sponge and custard cake.

Where: Runner & Stone

Price: $35 per guest

Availability: Theres still lots of availability for all groups.

This one is for the bread- and pastry-loving moms. The prix fixe menu includes pastries from the talented Peter Endriss, plus coffee or tea, a mimosa or Bloody Mary, and a choice of mains like a crab-cake Benedict and a French toast with cannoli filling. You can supplement your meal, too, with spicy curried hummus, potato hash, and other extras and sides.

Where: Jean Georges

Price: A la carte

Availability: Tables for two available around noon and after 2 p.m., tables for four after 2 p.m. as well.

Jean George offers the best of both worlds: Its the kind of place moms love (or would love) to go, but the kitchen continues to crank out some of the more consistently compelling dishes in town. For the a la carte brunch this year, there will be appetizers like a decadent foie gras brulee and tuna tartare, mains including grilled Berkshire pork chop, and those always very nice views of Central Park. Sure, its pricey, but Mom will love it. (At Nougatine, there are also a bunch of tables for two available throughout service and a few for three and four after 3 p.m. if you want a more casual, less expensive meal.)

Where: Ivan Ramen

Price: A la carte

Availability: Plenty of tables for two, four, and six guests.

If your mom is a noodle fiend, this is your spot. Ivan Orkins brunchified Japan-meets-Manhattan menu includes a Japanese bodega breakfast sandwich, a breakfast ramen with dashi-Cheddar broth, and sake mimosas.

Where: Estela

Price: A la carte

Availability: Tables for four available after 2 p.m., tables for two all afternoon.

The room is magic during the day, and they serve some of the best brunch in town. If youre going to show your mom you love her, what better way than with Ignacio Mattoss egg, avocado, and pancetta breakfast sandwich? Its normally a lot more relaxed during the day, but this is one weekend youll definitely want to make a reservation.

Where: Reynard

Price: A la carte

Availability: Tons of tables for two free throughout the day, and tables for three to six are mostly available.

Your mom will love Andrew Tarlows stylish, civilized Wythe Hotel restaurant, which will serve a few specials along with its regular (always excellent) menu.

Where: Prime Meats

Price: $38 per person

Availability: Plenty of tables for all parties.

The Court Street homage to German-style steakhouses is serving a prix fixe brunch menu with options like Nicoise salad for an appetizer, mains including steak and eggs with chimichurri and a farmers breakfast, as well as classic deserts such as coconut cream pie.

Where: Grand Army

Price: A la carte

Availability: Lots of reservations available for parties of all sizes.

Is your mom more about brunch cocktails than brunch dishes? Treat her to the Downtown Brooklyn bars Bloody Mary platter: two Bloody cocktails, a pair of pilsner sidekicks, plus an assortment of oysters, clams, deviled eggs, peekytoe crab, and shrimp cocktail.
A placard describing Urths 45-minute seating policy. Photo: Sara Farsakh/Facebook

A popular California coffee chain is up to its eyes in image repair after being accused of booting a customer and her group simply because they were all dressed in hijabs. Sara Farsakh claims she and her headscarf-donning friends were asked to leave the Urth Caffe in Laguna Beach under the auspices of freeing up a table, even though others were free and a group of white women sitting nearby noted theyd been there for a good deal longer. In a truly multimedia Facebook post (800 words of text, two videos, and a picture), Farsakh writes that Urths racist and Islamophobic treatment turned their fun get-together into a painful and embarrassing reminder of what it is like to be visibly Muslim  even in liberal California.

Urth says it was merely informing Farsakh and her friends that they needed to give up their table per a policy written on placards that asks customers to limit their stay to 45 minutes during busy hours. However, it also adds: If tables are available, you are certainly welcome to enjoy Urth for as long as you desire. Farsakhs group protested that the restaurant didnt look slammed, but she says the server was adamant, so she filmed herself walking around pointing out all of the empty tables. The manager then called the police, who showed up to escort the women out.

Urths owner, Shallom Berkman, argues the incident was unfortunate but had nothing to do with their religion  its that customers were definitely waiting. Were very sorry that she has this feeling that this was something racist, but that is just not the case, he told ABC 7, adding, Everybody wants an outside seat. He also noted that his wife is Muslim (and that hes Jewish  We like to say were a sign of world peace), and has offered Farsakh a meal on the house. Its unclear if Farsakh could be lured back by freebies, but she says she plans to issue a statement through the Council on American Islamic Relations later today.

[OC Weekly, ABC 7]
The Marshmallow roll-out for Samsung's Galaxy S5 smartphone seems to be in full swing as the South Korean company has started pushing out the update in Italy and Germany as well. While in Italy, all unlocked S5 units are getting the update, model SM-G900F is currently receiving it in Germany.

To recall, the Galaxy S5 Marshmallow update first started rolling out in Samsung's home country of South Korea last month. This was followed by roll-out to SM-G900 models in Sri Lanka and SM-G900I units in India.

The update brings Android version 6.0.1, which - needless to say - includes all the usual Marshmallow goodies, such as Doze, Google Now on Tap, and redesigned app permissions.

Via
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Over at expreview some performance numbers of the Radeon Pro Duo have appeared on-line, a dual-Fiji GPU based card. The Radeon Duo Pro with its two FIJI GPUs are tied towards a thick 120mm liquid cooling solution.

The product will offer 16 teraflops of performance, indicating two fully enabled Fiji XT GPUs. AMD Radeon Pro Duo (dual-GPU Fiji) was developed under code-name Gemini would have 8 GB HBM1 graphics memory with a whopping 8192 stream processors.

Performance numbers for the Radeon Pro Duo were released by Expreview. Anyway, have a peek, click on the thumbnails.










Haiti - Diplomacy : Ban Ki Moon deeply concerned by the postponement of elections





Monday, the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki Moon, noted with deep concern that the agreed upon date of 24 April set in the 5 February Agreement for the holding of elections in Haiti has not been met and that no alternate electoral calendar has been announced.



The Secretary-General reiterates his strong support for the completion, without further delay, of the 2015 elections and calls on all Haitian actors to ensure the prompt return to constitutional order, as the country can ill afford a period of prolonged transitional governance while facing major socio-economic and humanitarian challenges.



The Secretary-General notes the intended establishment of a commission to evaluate and verify the elections held in 2015. He stresses the need to conclude the process with the required urgency.



The Secretary-General reaffirms the commitment of the United Nations to extend its full support to the Haitian people in the fulfilment of their democratic aspirations.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Politic : Towards a reform of the cooperation with France





Monday, Aviol Fleurant, the Minister of Planning and External Cooperation has held a working meeting at the Ministry with the Ambassador of France, Elisabeth Beton Delegue around bilateral cooperation between the two countries.



The Minister and the Ambassador agreed on the desirability of a reform of the external cooperation aimed at the revitalization, of the strengthening of Franco-Haitian relations and management of aid to ensure better funding of the national development planning and autonomy of Haiti.



This working session was also an opportunity for the Minister Fleurant to inquire on the declaration of intent concerning the execution of a reforestation project in Haiti, involving France and the United States hoping that this great environmental project, is part of a global dynamics of socio-economic development.



Finally, at this meeting, Ambassador of France announced the launch in two months, of a public agency in charge of the university scholarship program and the creation of a platform that will bring together the former Haitian scholars of the French government.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Culture : European Tour of Follow Jah





After a first invitation to Africolor festival in Paris in 2012 https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-7306-haiti-news-some-news-here-and-there.html , Caracoli organizes the first European tour (Belgium, France, Netherlands) of the walking band Follow Jah from April 28 to June 5, 2016. The more than one month tour will begin with a performance in the festival "Jazz under the Apple trees ". It will end with a week in Savoie with interventions in schools, meetings with local marching bands and evenings festivals to animate, in addition to the performances to the "Marche des Continents" of Chambery. Meanwhile, Follow Jah will stop at the prestigious festival "Music Meeting" of Nijmegen (Netherlands) and spend a few days in residence at the House of Creation in Brussels.



Since 2010, Caracoli endeavors to explore and develop the full potential offered by the rara and the walking band, through specific accompanying work of the walking bank Follow Jah. Together, they have multiplied the possibilities offered by the format (wanderings, static animations or even live shows) and meetings with other genres, including jazz (with saxophonist Paul Austerlitz or the pianist Laurent de Wilde). Meanwhile, they have worked to better knowledge of the music of rara bands and walking bands by developing an educational workshop on the subject, workshop that is given regularly in schools, encouraging several research projects of this genre.



Tour schedule :

April 29: Arrival Paris

1 May: Festival "Jazz sous les Pommiers" Coutances (FR)

May 9-11: Pontarlier with the association "L'Ouverture pour Haiti" (FR)

May 12-13: Lille, Dunkirk with the Haitian community in the North of France (FR)

14-15 May: Festival "Music Meeting" Nijmegen (Netherlands, NL)

16-20 May: Residence at the House of Creation and activities with New Flibuste, Brussels (B)

21 May: Night of Museums, Confluence Museum in Lyon (FR)

24 May: Evening Tropical Discoteq, Paris (FR)

25 May: Festival les Arts'Viateurs, Orly (FR)

May 26-27: Residence House of Creation, Brussels (B)

28 May: Flower Festival, Watermael-Boitsfort (B)

May 30-June 4: Tour in Savoie, "Marche des Continents" of Chambery (FR)

June 5: Return Port-au-Prince



The European tour of the walking band Follow Jah is supported by Wallonie-Bruxelles International in the framework of bilateral cooperation program 2015-2017 between the Republic of Haiti and the French Community of Belgium, the French Institute (Africa device Caribbean and Craft 2016), the European Union through the EPC (European Programme for Culture) and Air France.



See also :

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-16456-icihaiti-culture-the-walking-band-follow-jah-in-music-on-all-fronts.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-14254-haiti-music-follow-jah-live-on-stage.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-12978-haiti-carnival-2015-follow-jah-innovates-by-launching-simultaneously-two-carnival-songs.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-11638-haiti-culture-the-rara-workshop-of-follow-jah-touring-music-schools.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-9992-haiti-culture-a-workshop-rara-financed-by-the-idb.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-4497-haiti-culture-2nd-tour-of-follow-jah.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping politics...





Me Danton Leger recognizes not having legal provisions

The Government Commissioner, Me Danton Leger admitted on Radio Max FM, he had not, in the context of convocations of former ministers, legal provisions. However, he stressed that it was common practice in Haiti. Note that in Haiti the current practice falls in the arbitrary and opposes to the establishment of a genuine rule of law.



Note that the former Minister Wilson Laleau convened to the prosecutor on Monday and the former Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe, convened on Tuesday, did not attend. The refusal to appear are multiplying and more than one observer wondered about the real motives of the decisions of the Commissioner Leger, given the absence of their legal basis and nature of citizens convened.



Privert in harmony with the PM ?

Sunday the President a.i. Jocelerme Privert assured that he was in perfect harmony with the Prime Minister Enex Jean-Charles on the record of theVerification Commissio, adding that there is no dissonance within the Executive. An assertion that does not appear to be shared by the Prime Minister, after reading several of his recent statements.



Parliament is not responsible !

"The President Privert believes

he did what he had to do in the agreement and return the ball to Parliament. Too bad for him, Parliament has no responsibility for the failure to comply of the agreement of 6 February. Parliament has done its part of the agreement," declared Cholzer Chancy, the President of the Lower House...



Privert affirms not to interfere in the CEP

President a.i. consideres as a lie the fact that he would have stated that Jovenel Moise had arrived not first but fifth in the first round of elections recalling that he had committed "[...] to make no interference in the management of the electoral process"... Yet no later than Sunday he publicly stated he wished that the Provisional Electoral Council take into account in its electoral timetable the renewal of third of the Senate, to be held in October... A suggestion not an interference ?



Moise Jean-Charles threat

Moise Jean-Charles presidential candidate under the banner "Pitit Dessalin" impatient against the delay in the implementation of the Verification Commission of elections of 2015 and threatens to launch this week of demonstrations across the country and even goes to evoke a general uprising.



Conspiracy to replace Privert

Pierre Esperance, Executive Director of the National Network Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH), points out that for the first time since the ratification of the 1987 Constitution, the Prime Minister (Enex Jean-Charles), openly opposes to President Republic and even conspires with parliamentarians to replace him.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Harlow is a former New Town in Essex with a population of 86,000. Located in the upper Stort Valley, it was built in the decades after the Second World War to ease overcrowding and London and provide homes for people bombed out during the Blitz. It includes Britain's first pedestrian precinct and first modern residential tower block, The Lawn. Old Harlow, the historic part of the town, was mentioned in the Domesday Book. David and Victoria Beckham's former home, Rowneybury House, nicknamed 'Beckingham Palace', is nearby.

09:00, 23 OCT 2022
Two killed in blast at Bulgarian arms plant

Two workers were killed in a massive gunpowder explosion on April 25 at the Arsenal AD armaments and munitions factory in the central Bulgarian town of Kazanlak, according to the companys press office. Both men, a mechanic and an engineer who were long-term employees of the company, died of burn injuries.

The company said they were adjusting an arms-making machine and triggered a gunpowder fire, which then ripped through the depot, the head of the Arsenal factory, Nikolay Ibushev, told public BNR radio. The other four workers in the plant at the time were evacuated and the fire has been contained, Ibushev added.

Poor safety has been a major problem in Bulgaria's arms industry, with explosions causing casualties almost every year. Recent fatal weapons and ammunition plant blasts have happened in June 2015, December 2014 and October 2014.

Arsenal AD is Bulgaria's oldest and biggest arms and munitions plant, which was the only licensed producer of Russian Kalashnikov assault rifles outside the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The company was fully privatised in 2011 and is still making a wide range of assault rifles, heavy and light machine guns and ammunition.



An interdepartmental commission to investigate reasons the for the incident has been established and the local prosecutors office is also carrying out an independent investigation.


employees; the industry; and the wider community.

implementation of special training programs to address the needs of workers, supervisors and management

purchasing or developing new equipment, systems of work etc. for the benefit of the workplace

publicity regarding the alleged breach

industry-wide awareness programs regarding safety, and

partnering and donations to not-for-profit organisations.

the proposed EUs merits and benefits

the business financial ability to meet the terms of the proposed EU

the significance of the commitment compared to the culpability of the business

the business compliance history

the support the business has provided to the injured person

the input from the injured person, and

the likely outcome of a prosecution.

Luke Holland, Partner, Sparke Helmore LawyersCourtrooms and big fines look to be a thing of the past as businesses in the WHS harmonised states rush to sign up for enforceable undertakings (EUs) when faced with a safety prosecution.Governments have sought to motivate safety behaviours with the big stick for years but with the introduction of model Work Health and Safety Legislation (the WHS Act) in most Australian states, businesses now have an alternative to a court imposed sanction for a contravention of the WHS legislation. The WHS Act allows the regulator to accept an enforceable undertaking in lieu of a prosecution so rather than waste time and money on legal proceedings a business can focus on improvements in safety, develop safety initiatives and do good for the benefit of the community.An enforceable undertaking is a legally binding agreement submitted by the alleged offender that commits to achieving significant WHS outcomes. The alleged offender will propose a number of projects within the EU, which must deliver benefits to three key stakeholders:Examples of projects that deliver such benefits include:EUs have been available under Commonwealth safety law for a number of years. However, this is the first time they have been available to the broader workforce. EUs are an important instrument in avoiding prosecution but there are a number of factors that must be considered before proposing and implementing an EU.Legal adviceIf charged with a contravention of the WHS legislation, it is important that proper legal advice is sought regarding the contravention. Safety contraventions are serious in nature and a failure to adequately protect the business legal interests could result in serious consequences for the business as a whole. In particular, the process of proposing an EU is one that requires legal assistance.Strength of caseOf primary importance is the strength of the prosecution, if there are reasonable prospects of successfully defending a prosecution then the business should assess what benefit an EU will achieve that they cannot undertake voluntarily. As they say, knowledge is power so understanding the strength of your case can also help you negotiate the fairest outcome.ReputationThe effect of a WHS prosecution on the reputation of a business is something to be considered. Whilst an EU is published online, it does not constitute an admission of guilt, is not adversarial in its process and leads to a resolution that is less disreputable in its effect. Consideration should also be given as to the benefit of a no conviction status as a result of an EU given many modern business tenders now require disclosure of prior offences.CostWhilst lawyers and fines are expensive, the costs of an EU can be significant so much so that they can often exceed the financial penalty of a successful prosecution. Understanding the likely financial and time costs to be spent will be critical to working out whether an EU is right for your business.BenefitEUs provide a unique tool to create change and invest in areas that otherwise might be missed by a business. Weighing up the true difference that can be made to workers, the industry and the community is a perhaps the most exciting consideration when contemplating an EU.EUs present a number of benefits for a business. They provide the opportunity to invest in organisational reform within the organisation, which can minimise exposure to WHS issues. They also promote safe practices throughout the industry and promote collaboration between businesses in addressing major WHS concerns. When such a culture is created within industries, employees will benefit significantly. Rather than businesses paying hefty fines and court fees they are able to re-invest this capital into their own organisation and often address the issues that created a problem in the first instance.Ultimately, an EU should be considered when there is a strong prosecution case, the costs of implementing the EU are reasonable and if there could be an adverse effect on business as a result of a successful prosecution.There are no strict guidelines on the length or total cost of an EU. The factual circumstances of each case will influence the content of the agreed terms of an EU.The regulator assesses the proposal for an EU based on:The best guidance comes from analysing EUs that have been accepted across the country to date. These can assist to provide an understanding of what is deemed acceptable by different regulators in particular cases. The variable nature of an EU is such that no template can be used that would be adequate for every differing circumstance.You cannot force the regulator to accept your terms so knowing what other regulators have agreed in similar circumstances will help with your negotiation.Once an EU has been entered into, the business is monitored by the regulator to ensure that all terms are being implemented or complied with as set out in the EU. If a business contravenes an EU, the regulator can apply to the court to impose a financial penalty and give orders either compelling the business to comply with the EU or discharging the EU altogether. The original prosecution can also be revived.Whilst EUs cannot be described as carrots there is no doubt that in the right circumstances EUs can achieve good out of a potentially bad situation. The key to achieving the right outcome for your business is understanding and knowledge. Good luck.
Appalachian State University, in partnership with Southwestern Community College, has been awarded a $1.4 million grant by NASA to fund the Smoky Mountain STEM Collaborative.

Leading the Smoky Mountain STEM Collaborative is Matt Cass, science chair at Southwestern Community College in Sylva and a two-time graduate of Appalachian. Cass is spearheading initiatives related to growing mathematics and science in the southwestern region of the state and, in particular, expanding the ability of community colleges to offer astronomy courses in order to develop more STEM majors. This project will ultimately lead to an increase in community awareness of NASA-developed science content and will improve student learning across grade levels of science and mathematics. Cass earned a bachelors degree in physics in 2004 and a masters in applied physics in 2006 from the university.

Appalachian will play a key role in this project by offering a series of graduate courses designed to prepare faculty in community colleges for teaching astronomy, and will also provide summer research experiences for community college students in mathematics and physics.

Dr. Michael Briley, chair of Appalachians Department of Physics and Astronomy, said the department is delighted to provide research experiences for these students. With some of the best astronomical facilities in North Carolina, students will work on topics ranging from instrument development, to understanding what the sun was like when it was young, to searching for stars that have sucked off coverings of neighboring stars. Through these projects, students will have the opportunity to take what theyve learned in the classroom and apply it to the universe around us.

Community college students will be mentored by Dr. Rene Salinas in Appalachians Department of Mathematical Sciences in selecting research projects and faculty facilitators, preparing their research for presentation, and adapting to the professional contexts of the STEM fields. Outreach to students also includes summer visits by middle and high school students, allowing Appalachian to connect with school districts in the southwestern part of the state.

College of Arts and Sciences Dean Tony Calamai offered his support for the project, explaining, Appalachian State University is excited about this opportunity to partner with Southwestern Community College to successfully develop more STEM majors from a population that has been overlooked for far too long. Were also very pleased to closely collaborate with our community college partners, many of whom are alumni of Appalachian State University, a great example of which is this grant programs principal investigator, Mr. Matt Cass.

The Smoky Mountain STEM Collaborative leadership also includes Vance Waggener and Tracie McLemore Salinas of Appalachian State University. Additional partners are Jackson County Public Schools, Macon County Schools, Swain County Schools, Cherokee Central Schools, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, NASA Marshall Space Center and Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute.

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Two weeks after The Childrens Playhouse annual celebration of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math), parents are still hearing from their children what a great time they had at BuildFest 2016.

My two-year-old is still talking about how much fun the giant bubble activity was, said local parent Melissa Greaves. This was our first BuildFest, and we all had a wonderful time!

BuildFest is a signature event of the North Carolina Science Festival. It is the biggest event hosted annually by The Childrens Playhouse, a local 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving children, parents, and caregivers in the High Country.

This years event was held April 9 from 10 a.m.  2 p.m. in the gymnasium of the new Watauga High School. This years event brought over 1,200 attendees from as far as Charlotte, N.C. More than 200 amazing volunteers from Appalachian State University and the community contributed to the success of the community event.

BuildFest involves months of planning said Playhouse Executive Director Kathy Parham, but its worth it to see how much the kids and parents love it. Someone heard a kid say, when I die, this is where I want to go.

Each year BuildFest offers activities suitable for all ages, as well as activities specifically designed for preschool, grades K-3, and grades 4-6. Organizations and individuals from both App State and the Watauga County community served as activity partners by sponsoring and running various STEAM activities throughout the day.

BuildFest brings together a variety of organizations from our community and shows how important a wide range of experiences can help build a childs confidence in making healthy choices as well as igniting their love for learning, said Courtney Baines Smith, Director of Lettuce Learn.

BuildFest 2016 activity partners from App State included PSEA (Professional Construction Estimators Association of America), Child Advocacy Club, Physics & Astronomy Club, the Physics, Geology, Chemistry, and Art departments, the Aging, Growth, & Experience (AGE) Labs, GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs), and Appalachian Educators.

Brooke Hester of the ASU department of physics jumped at the chance to participate, explaining, This is the most important thing we can do as educators. If kids realize that STEM is fun, especially minorities, then we can help to ensure a diverse skill set amongst our future educators, scientists, engineers, and legislators.

Community partners included the Watauga County Library, Thinkers Linkers by Murrah Woodcraft, Boone Bouncers Jump Rope Team & Club, Lynn Mountain Farm, BRAHM (Blowing

Rock Art & History Museum), Mountain Alliance, The Childrens Council, Lettuce Learn, and the Watauga County Extension Center.

The Childrens Playhouse would like to thank OP Smiles Orthodontics & Pediatric Dentists Drs. Mayhew, Scheffler, Conn, and Hardaway and the North Carolina Science Festival for their generous sponsorship of BuildFest 2016. Other sponsor include ECRS The Retail Success Company, Mast General Store, Appalachian Regional Healthcare System, Boone Drug, Bluebird Exchange, LifeStore Insurance, Pells Angels Painting, Blue Ridge Pediatric; Eggers, Eggers, Eggers, & Eggers; Galileos; Boone Paint, and Wendys Tar Heel Capital.

A special shout-out goes out to all of the volunteers that made this event successful, including 150 volunteers from ASUs sororities and fraternities.

About The Childrens Playhouse

Located at 400 Tracy Circle near downtown Boone, The Childrens Playhouse provides an enriching play environment for children from birth to age eight while at the same time offering parents and caregivers friendly support in the important job of raising children. It the only childrens museum in the High CountryDaily admission is $5 per person. A one year Playhouse Passport Membership for $125 includes admission to the Playhouse and half-price admission to more than 150 childrens museums nationwide. Scholarship memberships are available for families that meet income guidelines. For more information, call The Childrens Playhouse at (828) 263-0011, like the Facebook page (http://facebook.com/Childrens.Playhouse), follow on Twitter and Instagram (@GoPlayhouse), or visit the website (http://goplayhouse.org).

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(Bloomberg) Activist investing isnt a thing in China. Its culturally frowned upon to be that confrontational. Liang Jian, a journalist-turned-hedge-fund manager, is on a mission to change that. Not that Liang, or Nick as hes known in international circles, would ever be confused with the likes of the brash American activist investors  the Bill Ackmans and Carl Icahns and Dan Loebs. Hes a newbie with a war chest thats a fraction of theirs and zero experience in the kind of epic battles for boardroom control, but..

To read this article:
Victims' group honors county detective, court advocate

A Henderson County sheriff's detective was one of three Western North Carolina law officers recognized as an outstanding law enforcement professional and a Henderson County court advocate was also honored by the Western North Carolina Victims Coalition and the U.S. Attorneys Office.

Related Stories

U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose announced that 12 individuals were recognized Monday at an event commemorating National Victims Rights week.

Detective Matthew Orr, of the Henderson County Sheriffs Office, was the only honoree from a Henderson County agency. Benjamin McKay, a former Henderson County sheriff's captain and now a sergeant with the Buncombe County Sheriffs Office, was also recognized as an outstanding law enforcement professional. The third winner was Detective Joshua Meindl of the Asheville Police Department.

Meredith Hooks, a court advocate and Family Justice Center coordinator with Safelight in Hendersonville, was one of three Victim Advocacy Professional honorees.

Victim Advocacy Professional winners were:

Christine Gibson  Disability and Elder Safe Coordinator with the 30th Judicial Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Alliance, Inc.



Melissa Knight  Court Advocate with Helpmate.

Susie Presley  Victim Advocate with Haywood County Sheriffs Office.

Angelica Wind  Executive Director of Our Voice.



Criminal Justice Professional winners were:

Rachael Groffsky  Assistant District Attorney with the 28th Prosecutorial District, Buncombe County.

The Honorable James Calvin Hill  Chief Court Judge with the 28th Prosecutorial District, Buncombe County.

Reid Taylor  Assistant District Attorney with the 30th Prosecutorial District. Compassionate Community Volunteer:

Carolyn Lescallitt Volunteer with the 30th Judicial Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Alliance, Inc.
Dave Mahon and his wife Audrey at Dublin Central Criminal Court Photo: Collins Courts

A Dublin man allegedly "gutted" his stepson with a carving knife after a day of heavy drinking because the victim had taken a part off his bicycle, a court has heard.

The murder trial of David Mahon (46) also heard it alleged that he then ran away, doing nothing to help his stepson, Dean Fitzpatrick, who later died of his injuries.

Mr Mahon is before the Central Criminal Court charged with murdering Mr Fitzpatrick on May 26, 2013.

The 23-year-old father-of-one was stabbed in the belly near Mr Mahon's former home at Burnell Square, Northern Cross, Malahide.

Opening the case for the prosecution, Remy Farrell SC, told the jury that David Mahon was the partner - now husband - of the deceased man's mother, Audrey Fitzpatrick.

He said that she also had a daughter, Amy Fitzpatrick, from a previous relationship.

Mr Mahon, Ms Fitzpatrick and the two children moved to Spain in 2004, where the family had business interests.

Limelight

"Tragically, Amy Fitzpatrick went missing in 2008," said Mr Farrell, adding that she had never been found.

"Shortly afterwards, Dean, who had turned 18, returned to Ireland."

Mr Farrell said that the accused and his wife had been "much in the limelight" since Amy went missing.

In relation to the death of Mr Fitzpatrick, Mr Farrell said that it would be alleged that Mr Mahon had been drinking heavily on the day that Mr Fitzpatrick came to his apartment to see him.

He said it would be the State's case that Mr Mahon stabbed Mr Fitzpatrick during the visit.

Mr Farrell said the accused would claim it was an accident and he might allege that Mr Fitzpatrick had been suicidal, but the State argued this would be peculiar if it were "suicide by stepfather".

Mr Farrell told the Central Criminal Court that in 2013, Mr Fitzpatrick was in a relationship and had a two-year-old child.

He had mental health difficulties and had a difficult relationship with Mr Mahon.

Mr Farrell said that both men were members of the Northwood Gym in Santry, and Mr Mahon's bicycle was interfered with outside the gym on May 24, 2013.

The court heard that CCTV footage suggested that it was the deceased who had done so, removing a part from the bike.

The jury was told that Mr Mahon was annoyed and sought to have his stepson barred from the gym.

He also spent much of the following day trying to contact the deceased.

Witnesses would say he was not in a good mood and had been drinking heavily on the day in question, said Mr Farrell.

He said that Mr Mahon was in his apartment with two friends on the night in question and he phoned Mr Fitzpatrick and asked him to come over. The deceased arrived and there was a confrontation.

"Ultimately, Mr Fitzpatrick admitted doing it (interfering with the bicycle) to annoy him," said Mr Farrell. "Both were agitated."

One of Mr Mahon's friends told Mr Fitzpatrick to leave and he brought him outside, the court heard.

Mr Mahon then told the other friend he'd be back in a minute.

"It's what happened when he walked out the door that's the issue," said the barrister. "David Mahon arrived back in and had a carving knife.

"The prosecution's case is that David Mahon stabbed Dean Fitzpatrick in the abdomen."

The jury heard that Mr Fitzpatrick ran off, collapsed nearby and was tended to by strangers.

He died the following day.

Mr Farrell alleged that Mr Mahon tried to flee the scene.

However, the accused told a friend and another witness what had happened and he eventually went to the gardai.

"He suggested it had been an accident, that he had taken the knife off Dean Fitzpatrick and that Mr Fitzpatrick had walked onto it, impaling himself," said Mr Farrell.

Suicidal

"At one point he muses that Dean Fitzpatrick was suicidal."

Mr Farrell told the jurors that they would have great difficulty in reconciling that account with Mr Fitzpatrick's injuries.

"There was a piece of intestine protruding," he said. "In common terms, he had been gutted."

Garda Brian Cleary and Garda Caroline Hughes told the jury that they had mapped the location at Burnell Square and had taken photographs of the scene and surrounding buildings.

A book of photographs and a map of the area was handed to the jury members.

Garda Michelle Purcell also showed the jury CCTV evidence of the night in question.

The jury watched seven short clips of CCTV footage. One clip showed Mr Fitzpatrick arriving at Burnell Square on a bicycle at 11.06pm.

The CCTV footage showed that Mr Fitzpatrick was wearing a red T-shirt, had a grey hoodie around his shoulders and was drinking from a bottle of water.

A second clip of CCTV footage showed Mahon leaving his apartment, getting into a taxi with a friend and heading off in the direction of the Malahide Road at 11.13pm.

Mahon, with an address at Ongar village in Clonsilla, has pleaded not guilty.

The trial continues before Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan and a jury of six women and six men.

It is expected to last up to two weeks.
A woman has been ordered to pay 5,000 damages for a "vitriolic and personalised" attack on the character of a man who opposes the beliefs and teachings of the Church of Scientology of which she is a leading member.

Judge James O'Donohoe in the Circuit Civil Court said that allegations by Zabrina Collins against Peter Griffiths of criminal activity, hate mongering and links to gay pornographic movies of teen boys "were largely untrue and grossly defamatory".

He stated that references in an e-mail from Collins to a Dublin headmaster, describing Griffiths as not being a fit person to engage with impressionable students, was "particularly distasteful" but had not gone far enough to brand him a paedophile either directly or by innuendo.

Judge O'Donohoe had heard that Collins had sent the email to the principal of St David's CBS, Artane, Dublin, in May 2013 after she discovered a YouTube recording of a talk on "cults" by Mr Griffiths to a class of teenage boys at the school.

She had claimed his talk had centred on Scientology, which counts actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta among its members, and accused him of "openly and viciously" slandering the church.

She had also accused him of being "an avid hate campaigner against Scientologists" and of "hate mongering".

In the email she included a picture that Griffiths had allowed to be taken of himself with his genitals covered with a Guy Fawkes mask.

Griffiths told the court this had been in support of Prince Harry following a nude photo scandal by the third in line to the British throne in a Las Vegas Hotel in August 2012.

Seamus O Tuathail SC, counsel for Griffiths, of Cual Gara, Teeling Street, Ballina, Co Mayo, had told the court Mr Griffiths was seeking 50,000 damages against Ms Collins.

The judge said, in a reserved judgment, that the claim of qualified privilege regarding Ms Collins's remarks could not extend to protect such "a vile attack" on Mr Griffiths' good name.

History

There had been a good deal of history and animus between the parties which had accounted for the tone of the email which he described as "malicious in the extreme".

He said publication of the defamatory remarks had not been extensive and had been directed to the school principal. Mr Griffiths almost immediately uploaded the material to the internet which had a much wider audience, thereby moderating the level of damages due to him.

Judge O'Donohoe also gave judgment in a second case in which Collins, a chiropractor, of The Boulevard, Mount Eustace, Tyrelstown, Dublin 15, and Scientologist Michael O'Donnell, a marketing consultant of Cherrywood Lawn, Clondalkin, Dublin, sued Griffiths and also embalmer John McGhee, of Armstrong Grove, Clara, Co Offaly, for assault and battery.

The judge said Mr McGhee had followed Ms Collins and Mr O'Donnell in Dublin as they distributed leaflets against drug taking.

From a video he had seen it was very clear to him that Mr McGhee had certainly been guilty of assault. His harassing of her and the grabbing by him of leaflets constituted battery.

The judge awarded Ms Collins and Mr O'Donnell a total of 3,500 against McGhee for assault and battery.

Mr Griffiths, he said, had played a lesser role by videoing the assault but had consorted with Mr McGhee. For harassment and assault he awarded Collins and O'Donnell 2,000 damages against Griffiths.
Gardai examine the scene of the house fire in Co Meath Photo: Steve Humphreys

A convicted killer who was dragged from a house fire in Kildare was later arrested in relation to a discovery of ammunition that may have been linked to a shooting in Meath.

Stephen Penrose (34), who had just completed a jail term for manslaughter, was being questioned at Leixlip Garda Station after a night of mayhem that began in Dunboyne, Co Meath, at the weekend.

Sources revealed that gardai are investigating whether Penrose was the gunman responsible for an attack at 11.30pm on Sunday in which two homes in the Woodview Heights estate, Dunboyne, were shot at with a shotgun.

Luckily no one was hurt in the reckless gun attack. However, a garda alert was issued with details of the car that was seen fleeing the scene.

Ammunition

It has emerged that this car was then spotted by officers who were responding to a fire at a house in Clonuff, Broadford, Co Kildare, at around 12.45am yesterday.

When gardai arrived at the house with the fire brigade where Penrose and a female associate had been saved by a neighbour, the pair were suffering from the effects of smoke inhalation.

After seeing the car that was allegedly used in the earlier gun attack, officers became suspicious and searched a bag that Penrose had in his possession, which contained a number of shotgun cartridges.

Penrose and the woman were brought to Mullingar General Hospital in Co Westmeath for treatment for their injuries.

However, after being discharged yesterday morning the couple were immediately arrested and they remained in garda custody last night.

Sources said that gardais main theory is that the fire was started in the front room of the Co Kildare house by a third party and that petrol had been used to start it.

Gardai are still trying to confirm a link between the fire and the earlier gun attack.

Another theory is that Penrose may have accidentally started the fire himself.

Penrose was only released from jail in February after he served a nine-year stretch for the manslaughter of Dublin man David Sharkey, whose body was found in the boot of his own car in Finglas in May, 2009.

Mr Sharkey was stabbed 13 times while delivering heroin to an apartment in Navan, Co Meath, and Penroses murder trial heard that the killer had only planned to rob Mr Sharkey, but he had bought a knife earlier that day.

Penrose told the jury that he had only planned to steal heroin but the plan went wrong after Mr Sharkey took out a knife and demanded his drugs back.

He stabbed Mr Sharkey 13 times on the stairwell of an apartment at Parkview, Blackcastle in Navan, on the evening of May 17, 2009.

During the trial, the court heard that Penrose admitted to gardai to texting the dead mans partner, Joleen Smyth, from Mr Sharkeys mobile phone after he had killed him.

Disciplinary

Sources have revealed that Penrose had been living in Ashbourne, Co Meath, for a number of weeks after his release.

Jail sources revealed that Penrose had a poor disciplinary record while serving his sentence and was regularly moved from prison to prison across the country while doing his time.

He had got over 30 P-19 prison reports for breaches of discipline, which included threatening staff and other inmates, possession of weapons as well as fighting and being verbally abusive.

Meanwhile, the shotgun which was used in Sunday nights gun attack has not yet been recovered.
Controversy continues to surround the construction of the new 350m incinerator at Poolbeg in Dublin.

Residents of Sandymount, Ringsend and Irishtown who spoke to the Herald said they remain "unhappy" and "disappointed" that the huge plant was given approval.

It is intended the incinerator will become operational at the end of next year.

The project, which has been delayed by years of controversy, will see the construction of a multi-million euro facility that has the capacity to burn 600,000 tonnes of waste a year.

Work on the Dublin 4 site began in October last year, despite Dublin city councillors voting to scrap the proposed incinerator.

The company behind the project, New Jersey-based waste firm Covanta, is expected to spend almost 500m on development.

The Poolbeg incinerator plant was first proposed in 1997 but has faced numerous legal and political challenges, including an unsuccessful complaint made to the European Commission.

City councillors at several junctures voted down the proposed incinerator, but the decision to proceed was taken by four Dublin local authority chief executives - including former Dublin City Manager Owen Keegan and management.

However, locals are not convinced that it is the best option for the city.

"The incinerator is an abomination and looks much bigger already than what I expected," said life-long Sandymount resident Michael Flynn (60).

Tara Murphy (50) said she thought the incinerator was "already an eye-sore".

Edel Vaughan from Sandymount said she was satisfied health concerns about the incinerator had been cleared up.

Local man Tommy Walsh (79) was worried the busy incinerator will mean that traffic on local roads "will be murder".

Liam Tilly (81) from Ringsend also agreed that the plant will "cause havoc" with local traffic.

But Victor Levingstone (70), a volunteer beach cleaner in Sandymount, said that the incinerator has the potential to become part of Dublin's cultural history.

"We need to catch up with the rest of Europe," he said.

"On a visit to beautiful Vienna, I saw their incinerator was in the middle of the city and it was on its tourist trail.Incinerators are in cities all over Europe and they are not causing problems."

Fund

Irishtown mother-of-two Maria Moloney (43) said the new plant was "a huge monstrosity" which should not have been placed in one of the most densely populated parts of Ireland.

The Herald recently revealed that Dublin City's chief executive added an extra 3,000 to the proposed annual allowance of the chair of a controversial community fund.

Peter McLoone was appointed chairman of the Poolbeg Community Gain Fund in May 2015, on an annual allowance of 15,000. However, email correspondence shows Mr McLoone offered to do the job for at least 3,000 less.

Derek Murphy (73) from Irishtown was totally against any payment for the post, which he said should be occupied on "a wholly voluntary basis".

Sandymount mother-of-two Deirdre Cunningham (44) said the incinerator building was already "profoundly ugly" and the fund should pay for "thousands of trees" to help block the view of the plant.
Mystified Outer Banks tourists witnessed a bizarre act of nature Friday, Oct. 14, as fish began flinging themselves onto the beach at Ocracoke Island. Multiple videos shared on social media show the ocean appeared to boil with fish as they tumbled over each other in the surf. The so-called bluefish blitz concluded with thousands of dying fish piled on the sand, flopping up and down as ...
Marsha Blackburn isnt one to worry about appearances.

The Tennessee Republican didnt make any pretense this week of being impartial with the committee she chairs, the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, commonly known as the Planned Parenthood committee.

On the eve of her panels Wednesday hearing, Blackburn went over to Georgetown University to participate in a protest against Planned Parenthood, the very entity she is supposed to be investigating. According to the Right to Life organization, she gave a speech at a gathering called Life-Affirming Alternatives to Planned Parenthood, part of a series of events in opposition to Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richardss speech at Georgetown on Wednesday.

Then Blackburn showed up at her committee hearing the next morning and proclaimed, My hope is that both parties can work together.

That was probably never going to happen  and it certainly isnt now that the secret videos that justified the panels creation have been discredited as doctored.

House GOP leaders created the panel last year in response to the Planned Parenthood videos that suggested the organization was illegally selling tissue from aborted fetuses to researchers for a profit. But investigations in a dozen states looking into the allegations came up empty. In Houston, a grand jury convened by the county attorney, a Republican, not only cleared Planned Parenthood but indicted the video makers on charges of tampering with a government record.

GOP leaders, in naming Blackburn to lead the Planned Parenthood panel, had hopes of defusing the Democrats complaint that the probe was another offensive in the Republicans war on women. That charge has been easier to make with Donald Trump leading the Republican presidential race  and with several House Republicans on Monday making the extraordinary gesture of voting against a ceremonial bill honoring the first woman to be elected to Congress.

But whatever legitimacy the select panel had left after the videos were discredited has been undermined by Blackburn.

She scheduled the committees first hearing for the very day the Supreme Court was holding arguments on the most important abortion case in 24 years. At that hearing, one of Blackburns witnesses likened fetal tissue research  a legal practice in the United States  to the experiments of Nazi scientist Josef Mengele, saying the two are maybe equivalent. Blackburn, in her opening statement, drew the same comparison and invoked the Nuremberg Code.

Then came Wednesdays hearing, the panels second. Blackburn gave an opening statement mentioning the buying and selling of baby body parts no fewer than seven times. And the evidence that abortion clinics profit from the sale of these body parts? That would be in Exhibit G, handed out by Blackburns staff. The AC [abortion clinic] has no costs so the payments from the PB [procurement business] to the AC are pure profit, it said.

But this incendiary exhibit  asserting that any abortion clinic that receives any payment for fetal tissue is breaking the law  turned out to be not evidence but an undocumented claim by the Republican staff.

I think that these exhibits were created from whole cloth, said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) a member of the panel. She objected to the use of the exhibits, claiming they violated House rules. Republicans moved to table her objection and prevailed on a party-line vote.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) tried again. He raised a parliamentary inquiry about how the pure profit conclusion was reached  particularly because it was contradicted by three other exhibits that appeared to document activities performed by abortion clinics in the tissue sales that have associated costs.

Blackburn declared that there was no discrepancy and that the documents come from the investigative work of staffers.

The doubts about the videos and the unsupported exhibit did not stop the majority on the panel and their witnesses from relying on both. Gruesome revelations came from a series of videos, declared Michael Norton, one of the witnesses. It was clear from the videos that Planned Parenthood had been actively engaged in harvesting and trafficking, for profit, body parts of babies whose lives Planned Parenthood had ended.

Another majority witness, Catherine Glenn Foster, cited the undercover videos and the evidence presented by this panel.

Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) spoke about how the select panel investigation reveals that abortion clinics are incurring no costs  and therefore reaping profits from fetal tissue.

And Kenneth Sukhia, yet another witness for the majority, said the discredited videos provide corroborative evidence that Planned Parenthood broke the law, saying it doesnt matter that statements in the video were selectively edited. It doesnt matter?

After doctored videos, unsubstantiated exhibits and political moonlighting by Blackburn, those assessing the panels relevance will conclude just that.
Harper's dramatic HR sends Phillies to first World Series since 2009

The reigning NL MVP hit a go-ahead home run in the bottom of the eighth inning to give the Phillies a 4-3 win over the Padres
Nothing goes right for Edgewood in long trip to East Central
HICKORY  Business students from Lenoir-Rhyne University are using their entrepreneurial skills to help make Safe Harbor Rescue Mission in Hickory even stronger financially.

This past semester, Dr. Ralph Griffith, director of the Center for Commercial and Social Entrepreneurship at LRU, put together an undergraduate team to create business solutions to keep Safe Harbors Scents of Hope from closing its doors.

Scents of Hope is a soap making/selling program intended for the women experiencing homelessness in Safe Harbors New Day program.

Its been operating now for a couple of years but has never turned a profit before, Griffith said. Vicki Murray (Safe Harbor Executive Director) came to me and said that the board of directors suggested that they were going to close it down unless they could start generating some income for it because its becoming kind of a draw on the rest of the organization.

It needed to either show a profit or at least break even.

For Murray getting Scents of Hope back on track was more than vital. Besides the financial reward from working there, the women in the program also earned a big emotional boost.

Once they reach certain goals in the New Day program, they can apply to work in the soap room and for the hours that they work, we put money in a benevolence fund for them, Murray said. If they need bus tickets or if they have a doctors bill that needs to be paid or they need money for a deposit for housing, we can pay for these things for them, from money theyve earned.

Griffiths three-student team has been working on the project for 14 weeks. They wanted to focus on a stronger online presence, lower production costs, and updating the in-home selling of Party with a Purpose.

LRU senior Charlie Mcburney, team leader, was the first student to get involved with the Safe Harbor project, laying the groundwork last summer as an intern for Griffith.

I worked a lot on stream lining what their ambassador program is going to be like for the people who will be going into these homesworking on creating a video for them to really highlight what Safe Harbors Scents of Hope is really about, Mcburney said. We wanted to really focus on the stories behind these soaps.

For Mcburney, this kind of project is less about work and more about a passion to help.

Im a social entrepreneurship major and so working with non-profits is what Ive done for the past few years, he said. When I had the opportunity to work with Safe Harbor, it was just really exciting because its direct application of what Ive been learning.

It was so nice having a class that rather than just trying to do something for a grade, it has a real world impact.

Griffith made sure that along with a passion for the project his students had the knowledge needed to do the job.

All three of these (students) have worked with a start-up or started their own company, so were just trying to parlay that into more experiential learning and being in the market place, he said.

Jolene Baldridges focus on the team was on the actual creation of the soap, finding ways to lower production costs. While shes happy with the job theyve accomplished, it was an emotionally intense project at times.

I get very emotionally attached and I was afraid they would tell me this is why I was at the shelter. My husband was abusivethe kids and I barely got out, and I was just going to cry all the time, Baldridge said. Ralph assured me that would not be the case.

Her academic focus is on commercial entrepreneurship but Baldridges time with Safe Harbor proved to herself that her time in college has provided some real, practical business skills.

This makes me feel like its worth it that I came to college for entrepreneurshipI was obviously able to put the skills that I learned to use, she said.

Phillip Black stepped up to deal with the online/social media needs of the project.

They had a Facebook page. They had some posts on it but it wasnt doing anything to generate them income or anything like that, Black said.

The team took over the existing Facebook site and Black also created Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Basically we laid down a framework of how they should run their social media and get traffic to their (internet shop) site for sales, Black said.

Again, the team also focused on highlighting the lives of the women making and selling the soap on the social and internet shop sites.

Its just awesome to see how people can hit rock bottom and still come out and be successful, Black said. All the women there, it just goes to show that you can do that. That can be accomplished.

The changes the LR team initiated was the jolt Scents of Hope needed.

Were just now starting to see sales pick up so in the next month or two we should see a very great increase in women working in the soap room because of that, Murray said.

She expects the program will start making money if not at least breaking even soon because of the initiatives Griffiths students started.

The online shop for Scents of Hope is etsy.com/shop/safeharborscents.

For more information about Safe Harbor visit safeharborrescuemission.org or call 828-326-7233. Scents of Hope and the ReSource Warehouse and Gallery are located at 451 11th St NW in Hickory.

Safe Harbor Rescue Mission is located at 210 Second Street SE in Hickory.

Safe Harbor Rescue Mission in Hickory is a faith-based program established to provide a, Christ-centered community where women can work to rebuild their lives through immediate and long-term programs, according to the missions website.
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Of the four states and a Union Territory whose election results will be declared next month, the outcome in Assam is the most crucial.

A myth about the Assam elections is that the BJP is in a good position there because Sarbanda Sonowal and Himanta Biswa Sarma, the two front-ranking leaders in the BJP in Assam, do not have an RSS background and had cut their teeth in the politics of the student movement of the 1970s and the 1980s. Nothing can be further than this from the truth. For long, the RSS has been targeting the North-East to Hinduise the region. Sonowal and Sarma are just pawns in the big game.

READ: Sarbananda Sonowal: Regionalist turned nationalist

Assam is an ethnic, cultural mosaic with a colonial and pre-colonial history. Post-independence India took it upon itself the task of managing this society. In the Assam assembly, an MLA can take an oath in Assamese, English, Hindi, Bengali and a tribal language.

The assembly polls of 2016 and the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 have introduced a new element not there earlier in a strong way. It was the introduction of a party, the BJP, which has been spreading the cause of Hindutva. The designing of the BJPs campaign was to pit the Hindu Assamese versus the Muslim Bangladeshis. But this is not a very neat equation. One look at the contours of the Assam students movement of 1979-85 shows that it sought to play off the Assamese Hindus against all Bengalis, including Muslims from Bangladesh. This politics of targeting led to the Nellie massacre of February 1983. And this time too such targeting is being practised. The top leaders of the BJP have said if the NDA wins in Assam, the Bangladeshis would be thrown out. In other words, ethnic cleansing.

READ: How can a family-centric party serve people? Sonowal in Majuli

By forming an alliance with the Bodoland Peoples Front, the BJP thinks it can capitalise on the anti-Muslim sentiment among the Bodos. It is true that the Bodos and the Muslims have been on the warpath since 1952, and the riots of 2012 are fresh in peoples minds. But the Bodos did not fight just the Muslims. The Assamese-speaking people were among their first targets. In 1996, Bodo militants killed about 100 Santhals and other adivasis (brought by the British from central India more than 150 years ago for tea plantation work). In July 1997, at least 33 Bengali Hindu settlers were killed. About 300 non-Bodos (including the victims of a train blast in 1996) were killed between 1993 and 1997.

READ: Assam elections: Only 8.6% women candidates in fray

The political scientist Paul Brass has written that in Assam there have been many interstices of confrontations: Bengalis vs Assamese, Hindus vs Muslims, plainspeople vs tribal hill people, tribals in the plains vs non-tribals, etc. The BJP is unmindful of this and wishes to drive cart and horse through this tapestry of ethnicity.

Is Assam headed towards perpetual violence?

CP Bhambhri taught politics at JNU

The views expressed are personal
On the face of it, neither the issue of a visa or its denial is a big thing in the hurly-burly of international relations, but there is a lot to be said if the context, the manner and the people involved are such that they leave a scar on the reputation of the worlds largest democracy.

That is what seems to have happened this week after the Home Ministry, the purveyor of the entry of foreigners into India, abruptly cancelled a visa issued to Chinas dissident Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa after first issuing the controversial document in what was hailed as a diplomatic tit-for-tat.

In the murky lexicon of Chinese diplomacy, the Germany-based ethnic leader is a terrorist. The fact that India gave him something of a welcome to attend a conference of dissidents at Dharmashala, the seat of the Dalai Lama, was evidently a counter to China blocking the listing of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar as an international terrorist at the United Nations.

Diplomacy, however, is a messy business when it involves a strongarm neighbour. Though the Home Ministry has not specified why Isa has been denied the visa, there is an implicit acknowledgement of Chinese displeasure at the event.

Read | India following tricky two-sided China policy: Chinese media

The big question: why did New Delhi grant Isa an e-visa in the first place? The leader of the World Uyghur Congress represents the Muslim majority in Chinas Xinjiang region. Does India have a measured position on where the pursuit of ethnic rights in Xinjiang graduates from legitimate democratic politics to terrorism?

China has been sore for decades that Tibets leader-in-exile, the Dalai Lama, is based in India, and an outlawed dissident going up to the Tibetan leaders home is obviously not something it would be pleased with. But it would be naive to think the pundits in New Delhi were not aware of what the mandarins in Beijing would feel. So the obvious conclusion is that between the South Block and North Block, there was a funk or faux pas that undid the early bravado.

A perception battle has been lost, and bilateral mistrust has gone up.

Read | Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa blames China as India cancels his visa

In hindsight, there was a matter of deeper principle because the Chinese foreign ministry described Dolkun Isa, a pro-democracy activist to the world, as a terrorist on red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police.

Clearly, retaliatory diplomacy cannot sit easy with a multilateral regime of terror control. India had in fact secured Abu Salem from Portugal more than a decade ago under Interpol rules, and discretion would have been the better part of its diplomatic valour this month, despite the fact that India had legitimate ground to be more than upset with the Masood Azhar episode. After all, Azhar was the man India had to release from prison in 1999 to secure the release of passengers on board the hijacked IC 814  long before the current Pathankot attack investigation for which he is wanted.

In juggling principled multilateralism with tit-for-tat bilateralism, New Delhi has certainly missed a step somewhere. The measured way out is for India to rally the international community to find if China has abused Interpols Red Notice policies in Isas case. It is a long haul, but one that is on more solid ground.
Trinamool Congress chief spokesperson Derek OBrien has put the hair on his head at stake in the ongoing assembly elections.

Unwilling to take a possible loss in his stride, the quiz master-turned-Rajya Sabha MP announced in an interview with the Indian Express that he will shave his head if CPI(M) opposition leader Surjya Kanta Mishra wins the Narayangarh seat in Burdwan district.

Who is the leader of this patchwork (the Left-Congress electoral understanding) because the man they are projecting, Surjya Kanta Mishra  I will shave my head if he wins his own seat of Narayangarh, OBrien was quoted as saying in the interview, published on April 20.

Mishra, a politburo member and the CPI(M) state secretary, is one of the strongest members of his party.

OBriens announcement has come as a reminder of a similar vow made by BJP leader Sushma Swaraj before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, in which the Congress emerged as the single-largest party. Swaraj had threatened to shave her head if a person of foreign origin became the Indian premier.

Read: Trouble brews for Trinamool over morphed photo

If Sonia becomes the Prime Minister, I will shave my head and start a mass movement, Swaraj, a Lok Sabha MP, had said then.

Swaraj was spared a trip to the hair saloon when Gandhi refused to take up the post  bequeathing it to Manmohan Singh instead.

While Swarajs vow was appreciated by many, including BJP leader Uma Bharti, OBriens announcement has not found much resonance among Trinamool members. The leader, who is known for his curls, is facing criticism over a recent press conference in which he displayed a doctored photo of BJP Union minister Rajnath Singh offering a laddoo to CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat.
The battle between actors Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut has taken a new turn, with a picture that appears to show Hrithik embracing Kangy at a party, surfacing online and in some publications. The picture, clicked at the pre-production party of Krrish 3 (that starred both actors) at actor Arjun Rampals house, attempts to counter Roshans claims that he knew Kangana only professionally.

Interestingly however, we show you that in the original picture, there is a person next to Hrithik and Kangana.

The original photo of Hrithik and Kangana at Arjun Rampals house in December 2010.

The photoshopped version that appeared in tabloids, to give the impression that no one was around when the picture was clicked, and that it was a private moment.

Spot the difference.

However, in the picture that has appeared online and in some tabloids, this person has been photoshopped, giving the impression that the two were sharing an intimate private moment, and no one was around when the picture was clicked. Now, fresh pictures have emerged, which show Hrithik hugging his then wife Sussanne Khan at the same party. Other Bollywood celebrities such as actors Arjun Rampal, Dino Morea and filmmaker Abhishek Kapoor were also present.

In her desperation to prove that she had something to do with Hrithik Roshan, Kangana has done the unthinkable. She has used a distorted picture from a party. At the party, all of them are hugging each other and making a group picture. That has been zoomed in to give an impression that Kangana was in an intimate moment with Hrithik, says a source.

These pictures that are from the same night of December 2010 tell the whole story. We are living in strange times where a girl has been speaking lies about verifiable facts and selling them to media. And all this just for the sake of somehow proving that she had something to do with Hrithik Roshan, the source adds.

Another picture from the same party which shows Hrithiks ex-wife Sussanne Khan, filmmaker Abhishek Kapoor and actor Arjun Rampal , along with other guests posing for a group photo.

Actor Hrithik Roshan with his then wife Sussanne Khan. Actor Dino Morea strikes a pose for the camera.

Another picture from the same party which shows actors Kangana Ranaut and Hrithik Roshan with Arjun Rampal and Nandita Mahtani.

Meanwhile, when contacted, Kanganas advocate Rizwan Siddiquee said, We are fed up of dealing with Hrithiks sources. Let him or his lawyer come forward, and give a proper statement... If Hrithiks source is saying that the photo has been tampered with, then let the source come out in the open, and make a proper claim... Hrithik claimed not knowing my client even socially. So, I am sure he is looking for a way to wriggle out of the situation...

What started as a complaint against an alleged imposter by Hrithik has turned into an ugly public and legal battle between the two stars, with both coming up with allegations and counter-allegations against each other almost everyday.

The 42-year-old Krrish star and Kangana have slapped legal notices on each other for defamation.

Hrithik, who was the first to send the legal notice to Kangana, has demanded that she apologise in a press conference publicly and clear the air about their alleged affair which he firmly refutes.

Kangana sent a counter-notice to the actor, alleging him of slut-shaming by circulating private mails and photos.
This should be your lesson for the day on not leaving things unsaid. Shraddha Kapoor revealed that she had crush on her Baaghi co-star Tiger Shroff ever since she saw him playing basket ball in school. If that wasnt enough, Heropanti actor admitted that he now regrets not proposing to Shraddha when they were in school.

When asked if he is a rebel in love, Tiger said, I wish I could say I am a rebel for love in real life. I dont think I am so cool. But I really think I should have been a rebel and ask out Shraddha when we were in school together and had a crush on her. But now, I am a rebel in my reel life, so at least on-screen I proposed her.

Read: Aashiqui 2 changed my life overnight, says Shraddha Kapoor

This is the first time that the duo is sharing the screen space and will be seen romancing each other. (AFP)

This is the first time that the duo is sharing the screen space and will be seen romancing each other.

It was really easy to romance Shraddha on screen. We were very comfortable. We immediately broke the ice the day we met for the film. I knew it there and then that I would love to work with her again and very soon. When director says action, we both would seriously work but the moment it was cut, we would get back to having fun, added Jackies cub.

Tiger also said the Aashiqui 2 actor has successfully shed her girl next door image with this film.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
The Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut spat is like a wildfire which goes on spreading. Even as the lawyers of the stars release statements every day damning the other side, an old picture of the two Bollywood actors has surfaced in which they are seen hugging.

Kanganas supporters are citing the leaked picture as a proof that the two were actually a couple and their love went sour. Hrithik and his legal team has maintained that there was a purely professional relationship between the two and the Dhoom star didnt know Kangana socially. However, it is too early to say if the picture proves a social relationship between the two stars. It is not even clear who leaked the picture.

Hrithik Roshan whispering sweet nothings into ears of the Pope pic.twitter.com/LFOn5eyDSM  Gabbbar (@GabbbarSingh) April 25, 2016

According to a Times of India report, this picture was clicked at a private party during Krrishs pre-production. The ugly fight between the two started when Kangana referred to an unnamed star as her silly ex who is trying to get her attention. Hrithik reacted with a tweet saying he would rather date the Pope than a Bollywood actress with whom the media is linking him.

Read: Kanganas conversations with Hrithik revealed

It soon denigrated into an ugly public and legal battle between the two stars, with both coming up with allegations and counter-allegations against the other. They then slapped legal notices on each other for defamation.

Hrithik, who was the first to send the legal notice to Kangana, has demanded that she apologise in a press conference publicly and clear the air about their alleged affair, which he firmly refutes. Kangana sent a counter-notice to the actor, alleging him of slut-shaming by circulating private mails and photos.

She will also submit her electronic devices for forensic examination. Hrithik contends that Kangana was interacting with his impostor on email while she has claimed the actor had created a new account just to communicate with her. She has also alleged that Hrithik later hacked her email account. The 29-year-old actress will record her statement as a witness in the imposter case filed by Hrithik on April 30 and his legal team claims it will prove the truth.

Read: Kangana didnt tell her lawyers the truth, claims Hrithiks legal team
Bollywood actor Tiger Shroff is so keen to work in the Pakistani cinema that he has even made up his mind to charge less for those films. During a recent video conference in Lahore, the 26-year-old actor said, I am ready to work in a Pakistani film if a good opportunity comes my way. I will even give a 10% discount to the producers in this connection, reports the Express Tribune.

Read: This is how Tiger, Shraddha shot for action scenes

Tiger Shroff and Shraddha Kapoor in a scene from Baaghi.

The Heropanti star added that he knows there are Pakistani viewers who have given him a lot of appreciation and this is his way of giving back to them. Talking about his Baaghi co-star Shraddha Kapoor, Tiger said, Shraddha and I go back a long time to our school days. Her presence made things fun.

Baaghi is set to hit theatres on April 29.
Amazon Indias head Amit Agarwal has been inducted into the senior management of the US-based e-commerce giants global operations.

Confirming this development, Amazon India said, We (Amazon India) have witnessed tremendous growth in less than three years of our operations in the country and are already the leader on things that matter to customers. We are confident that if we execute well, India should be Amazons largest geography outside the US in the coming years. We are investing aggressively in the country with a long term outlook. Amit Agarwals inclusion in Amazons S-team is a recognition of how excited the Amazon leadership is with our progress and how committed we are in delivering on our ambition to transform how India buys and sells.

Apart from the fact that Amazons S-team (senior team) is the leadership team with a direct line to the $107 billions founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, further details are not available. Media reports suggest this is a 12-member team. The names of executives who make up this group and their role in steering the companys growth is not available.

An article in The Guardian newspaper in the UK published in April 2014 criticized Amazon and its founder Bezos of running the company with a 12-member all-male S-team.

The company said that several initiatives introduced by Amazon India under the leadership of Agarwal have now been exported to other markets. These include Amazon Easy Ship (for faster and predictable delivery time), Amazon Pickup (that allows customers to pick up their purchases from a physical stores), Chai Carts (an outreach programme to rope in small businesses to sell online) and Amazon Tatkal (enables small business to join Amazon and start selling in 60 minutes or less). The company also said that the number of sellers on its network has grown to over 80,000 since June 2014, when it had started with just 100.
Chinas biggest e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltds affiliate Ant Financial Services Group has closed a $4.5 billion funding round, paving the way for a long-expected initial public offering (IPO).

China Investment Corp Capital and CCB Trust, a subsidiary of China Construction Bank Corp, participated in the Series B fundraising, Ant Financial said in a statement on Tuesday.

At the current exchange rate, the funding translates to about Rs 30,100 crore, which is three-quarters of Indias annual MNREGA budget of Rs 38,000 crore.

Ant Financial did not disclose what its valuation was after the round closed, but a person familiar with the fundraising said it is now valued at close to $60 billion.

The Alibaba affiliates latest fundraising is the biggest ever for a private Internet company. But the company is also much older than its fundraising peers, and is only now gearing up for an IPO after 12 years and a rebranding in 2014.

Ant Financial is among a series of financial technology companies tapping investors for pre-IPO financing to fund expansion as Chinese consumers move more of their banking, payments and investing online.

The company has confirmed plans for an IPO, but has previously said it does not have a timeline for the process. It did not comment on the IPO on Tuesday.

The capital raised in Series B will allow us to invest in the infrastructure, such as cloud computing and risk control, that will underpin our long-term growth in rural and international markets, said Eric Jing, Ant Financials president, in Tuesdays statement.

Those risk control measures include biometric verification technologies. This could help Ant Financials private banking venture, MYbank, overcome blocks set by regulators on taking deposits, with authorities concerned about keeping transactions above-board.

Existing Ant Financial shareholders China Life Insurance Co Ltd, China Post Group, the parent of Postal Savings Bank of China, China Development Bank Capital and Primavera Capital Group also took part in the round, the online finance firm said.

Ant Financial offers services like online payment, wealth management products and insurance. Its core Alipay online payment business was founded in 2004.

The company, though, is now facing strong competition in the form of Alibaba arch-rival Tencent Holdings Ltds WeChat Payment, which has quietly become one of the worlds largest payments systems.

Read: Chinese internet mogul Pony Ma pledges $2 bn donation
Five years before Aditya Burman returned from the University of Kansas in 2002, the Burman family had decided that none of them would hold an executive position in Dabur. So Aditya joined as an intern at Dabur Pharma, a company that his father Anand Burman had incubated inside the Dabur Group.

The pharma business had a research wing, which did high-end cancer diagnostic reasearch. That fascinated Aditya. While he sharpened his skills at the pharma business, he tried to scale up the research business.

The rule was you dont work with Dabur and do things on your own, says Aditya. His father had told him: Here is the business (though it was just a small wing). Handle it.

Soon, Aditya found himself torn between his role as an intern with Dabur Pharma, which employed a few hundred people, and the head of the research business.

THE BEGINNING

In 2007, Dabur Pharma was spun off as an independent company. Thats when the problems started. The research wing was small; there were only 45 collection centres, doing just high-end cancer diagnostics; losses were mounting, and at a mere Rs 15 lakh in 2002-03, revenue was dwindling. So, when the management wanted to shut down the company in 2006-07, Aditya bought it for an amount, he now says was hardly anything.

Aditya was now on his own. But, running Oncquest Laboratories (thats what he called it) was not an easy job. Within a year Aditya wanted to expand internationally to Malaysia and West Asia. He even appointed a CEO. But soon, the CEOs death left the companys expansion plans in jeopardy.

Aditya was now back at the helm. He put aside all international expansion plans, and decided to concentrate on domestic growth. In a couple of years, thanks to some help from his family and business lessons from Dabur, the company was on track to recovery.

But Oncquests diagnostics were still expensive. So the company started developing its own kits, bringing down costs substantially. A $2,000-3,000 test in the US costs Rs 300-500 in Oncquest. It also validates kits for other pathology laboratories.

The results are visible. From Rs 15 lakh in 2002-03, revenue shot up to Rs 100 crore in 2015-16.

THE BOOSTER DOSE

Once the cancer diagnostic business was stablised, Aditya decided to go for the bigger market  general diagnostics. The market had many organised and unorganised players, Dr Lal PathLabs being the biggest competitor.

We are now in over 12,000 locations. There is also a central lab, which does high-end oncology work, says Aditya.

We took the top-down approach. We did the high end first and then got into routine stuff. Most of the other guys did the opposite, he adds.

A sound strategy, considering it helped Oncquest scale up its low-end business faster than competitors.

But what was it like during the transition phase?

In 2008-09, the problem was how do we scale up? It was a tiny little business, barely making any money, recalls Aditya.

So he turned to the Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO), Delhi, for help. Aditya was a board member of the organisation. Its other members, with businesses all over India in various industries, helped him find the right real estate for collection centres in various cities, set up human resource (HR) team, and advised him on how to scale up operations.

Oncquest now runs 23 labs for hospitals and other nursing homes. It is also expanding in clinical-trial support, such sample collection and reporting, for pharma companies. Aditya realised that just doing high-end diagnostics will not take Oncquest any further.

We didnt want to give the commodity business to other labs, he says. But, unlike speciality, the sample collection and general diagnostics business require scale. He had learnt that from his early years at Dabur.

When he started on his own, he waited to meet doctors for hours. No one met me because I was my fathers son, says Aditya. But all that has changed. He has a sales and marketing team that does it for him. And Oncquest, he says, is also ready to go international, once again.

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Jewellers in the country are a divided lot.

After the 42-day strike against the governments proposed 1% excise duty was called off on April 12, many went back on a three-day strike from Monday, demanding rollback of proposed levy.

But a section of the jewellers have come forward saying they will not support the strike and keep their shops open in the interest of the consumers.

Some of the leading retail jewellery chains in Mumbai such as Waman Hari Pethe Sons, Jagannath Gangaram Pednekar, Lagu Bandhu and a few others jointly issued advertisements in newspapers stating they are not participating in the strike.

We dont support any strike and will keep our shops open throughout the ongoing wedding season, the jewellers said. They dont want to lose faith of their loyal customers and see further loss of business.

We dont want to inconvenience our customers. We hope the trust that they have placed on us only grows stronger, they added.

All the jewellers had gone on a strike in March after the finance minister Arun Jaitley announced a 1% excise duty on non-silver jewellery sales in the Budget. The protest is learnt to have caused a loss of over `50,000 crore to the jewellery industry.

Already good business was lost on the auspicious occasion of Gudi Padwa in western India earlier this month as shops were shut. Now with Akshay Tritiya coming up in May, jewellers may be wary of losing further business.

Jewellers say they are not against paying extra but levy of excise will cause lot of difficulties as they will have to maintain lot of paperwork. Government had assured jewellers that it would look into their issues and has constituted a panel under former economic adviser Ashok Lahiri for the same.

The All India Sarafa Association and a few other associations want the government to completely rollback the excise and so the three day strike to put more pressure. However, other associations like the All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation (GJF) and India Bullion and Jewellers Association have distanced themselves from the current strike.

We have had meetings with the government, it has said it will simplify the rules. It has set up a high level committee to look into our demands, so we are not supporting this strike, said Bachhraj Bamalwa, director at GJF.

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Crude oil futures dipped on Tuesday as analysts warned of an intensifying producer race between Saudi Arabia and Iran, wiping out earlier price gains that came from a weaker dollar and a flood of new cash into the market.

Front-month Brent crude futures were trading at $44.37 per barrel at 0639 GMT, down 11 cents from their last settlement. US crude futures were down 12 cents at $42.52 per barrel.

The dips erased earlier gains on Tuesday from a weaker dollar and by a rush of new investment into crude futures.

And while BPs chief executive Bob Dudley said on Tuesday that robust demand and weak supply growth will move global oil markets closer into balance by the end of the year, analysts warned of a deeper glut as Saudi Arabia and Iran seemingly ramp up output in a race for customers.

The biggest bear risk to the oil market right now is that Irans ramp-up accelerates and then that Saudi Arabia does the same, Citi said in a note to clients.

If anyone had a doubt about Saudi Aramcos ability to use its logistical system and spot sales to increase market share, its recent 730,000 barrel sale of a cargo to a Chinese teapot refiner in Shandong should lay any doubts to rest, it added.

The cargo will be lifted in June from Aramcos storage in Japans Okinawa prefecture and shipped to Chinas eastern province of Shandong, Reuters reported on Monday.

Citi said it was likely that Saudi Arabia was targeting 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) in new sales to bring its production up to at least 11 million bpd or higher.

BMI Research said that it had upgraded its Saudi Arabian crude production forecast, reflecting the failure of the meeting at Doha, planned increases in output capacity and the creeping politicization of oil under deputy crown prince Mohammad bin Salman.

The company said that it expected Saudi output to average 10.3 million bpd, up from a previous estimate of 10.2 million bpd.

Iran wants to get back to pre-sanction production of 4 million bpd.

Traders said that a looming gasoline glut in Asia also threatened the recent rise in prices as refiners flood the market with unwanted products.
The turnover of Patanjali Ayurvedic Limited of Baba Ramdev grew 150% to more than Rs 5000 crore in 2015-16 from about Rs 2000 crore in the previous year, and the Baba predicts the growth of the brand would hurt the market share of existing FMCG majors.

Nestle ka panchi udne wala hai, Colgate ka gate bandh hone wala hai, aur Pantene ka pant kharab hone wala hai (The Nestle bird will fly away, Colgates gates will shut and Pantene will lose its trousers) Ramdev said at a press conference here on Tuesday.

To give a comparison, Nestle Indias turnover was Rs 8,175 crore, HUL had Rs 30,805 crore and Colgate-Palmolive announced Rs 3,981 crore, at the end of 2015. Patanjali targets the turn over to double to Rs 10,000 crore in 2016-17.

Ramdev claimed many patriotic professional management talents from many multi national companies are joining the Patanjali.

Acharya Balkrishna, MD, Patanjali Ayurvedic Limited, said the company now operates at 8-10% profit margin.

Ramdev said Patanjali will invest over Rs 1,150 crore to set up six processing units and one R&D center in the current fiscal.

The units, said Balkrishna, will come up at drought-hit areas such as Vidharbh in Maharashtra and Bundelkhand region in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, and at least four of these will become operational by the end of the fiscal. He expects these to create more than 5 lakh jobs.

To reach our growth target, we will venture into new categories such as dairy, animal feed and khadi garments for yoga. We will enter dairy segment this year with the launch of milk, cheese, butter milk and paneer, Ramdev said.

Patanjali sells its products though about 5,000 distributors, 10,000 health centers, 100 mega stores, besides through the retail market where it has tie ups with Fortune group and Reliance retail. It employs more than 15,000 people.

The company -- that today unveiled its new range of products including toilet soaps, anti-aging cream, digestive biscuits, energy bar, and whole milk powder, among others.-- has created four major verticals: natural food, processed food, personal care and home care to expand and consolidate distribution networks.

Balkrishna says Patanjali is now looking to increase its exports and improve online presence. Ramdev said the company claims Patanjali gets more than 5 crore online searches a month. Patanjali plans to spend around Rs 500 crore on cow protection, a research center, and setting up world class universities for Vedik education.

Read: Piggybacking on Ramdev, Patanjali has become a threat to MNCs
Patanjali Ayurved is expecting 150 percent growth in 2016-17, reaching an over Rs 10,000 crore turnover in the current fiscal, its founder yoga guru Ramdev said hn Tuesday.

We are targeting to cross Rs 10,000 crore turnover in the current fiscal from Rs 5,000 crore in 2015-16. We will grow by 150 percent this year, Ramdev told reporters at a press meet.

The company will be investing Rs 1,000 crore this year in setting up five to six new processing units of its various products in different states.

We will set up five to six processing units in Assam, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Out of these, four will be fully functional within this year, Acharya Balkrishna, managing director of the company, said.
When the Maharashtra government brought a Bill to ban cow slaughter in 1995, Bal Thackeray was the first and last court of appeal for the butchers associations of Mumbai. He agreed to stop the Bill and when journalists questioned him on this, he snapped back, First bend down and see if the animal has udders. No cow is being slaughtered here or anywhere else.

Thackeray was right. It was only bulls and male calves that were slaughtered. As he told me afterwards, he had consulted experts before coming to the decision and these experts had told him such a complete ban would work against the national interests. It was not just that India was competing with Brazil and other nations for beef exports  if the Bill were passed, cowhide would not be available for the world-famous Kolhapuri chappals and Thackeray was nothing if not a blue-blooded Marathi manoos looking out for the interests of the state. Then, again, animal rights groups funded by foreign NGOs were pressing for this ban and it aroused Thackerays suspicions. What he discovered was that after gold, leather from India was the most sought after  and it was an attempt by western organisations to put an end to these exports so that their own leather goods could find a market not just in the West but also India. The designer Jimmy Choo was then sourcing leather from Dharavi. If these exports stopped, Indian workers would be the biggest sufferers  and Thackeray was nothing if not a nationalist.

READ: Can Ambedkar cause a divide between BJP and Shiv Sena?

So he stopped the ban and everything he feared then is coming true now, including the decline of the Kolhapuri chappal. The jostling between the Shiv Sena and the BJP then reminded me of Tweedledum and Tweedledee but, today, the nationalist debate between these two is also cause for much concern and ridicule.

Uddhav Thackeray now takes to nationalism with rather more confidence and somehow I agree with him when he says the BJP has made a hero of JNU student Kanhaiya Kumar. Uddhav has gone to the extent of saying that Kumar cannot be labelled anti-national. Now even Aditya Thackeray has joined the bandwagon by pointing fingers at the lack of judgement on the part of BJP leaders.

It was unnecessary for the police to make it difficult for Kumar to address meetings in Maharashtra. It unnecessarily excited the social media, which went to town on the obstructionist ways of the government. But that apart, Uddhav has also been very critical about chief minister Devendra Fadnavis position with regard to the chanting of Bharat Mata ki Jai. Fadnavis had said people who dont want to chant the slogan have no right to live in India. Uddhav had snapped back, But they have a right to die in India! That was some finger pointing at the failure of the Fadnavis government to stem farmers suicides and tackle the drought in Marathwada.

READ: Failing to get things done puts Fadnavis in tough spot

The accusation, however, is deliberate. Sena workers have been pressing Uddhav to distance himself from the BJP for it has begun to be obvious the party is fast losing ground among all sections of society, rural and urban. Mere distancing though might not be enough. The Sena must be seen to be making a sacrifice to garner some sympathy  and that will come only if it sacrifices its position in government.

Bal Thackeray did not have that kind of courage. Will Uddhav have that?

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A fire broke out in the top floors of the National Museum in Natural History (NMNH) located next to the FICCI auditorium at Mandi House on Tuesday, gutting parts of the museum.

The three-storeyed building was a draw for school students, though over the years, footfall has fallen to a modest number. Children part of eco clubs supported by the environment ministry, that runs the museum, are among the frequent visitors.

For many, a replica of dinosaurs is what comes to mind when you think of the museum. Apart from them, there were replicas of other animals such as the cheetah and snakes. Most of these were old but had audio aids explaining their history and science.

The Natural history museum was started by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in mid 1970s along the lines of the one in the US. The museum however was a pale shadow of the American version.

It was inaugurated on June 5, 1978, to coincide with World Environment Day.

Displays in the museum included sections on conservation, biomes, solar system, endangered animals, fossils, evolution and origin of life and mans impact on nature. It also had a collection of herpetological specimens and butterflies, according to its website.

As a part of its collection, the museum housed a library which had films on wildlife, conservation, environment, ecology, etc.

Despite the grand vision for it, the museum is not a must-visit location in Delhi as the ministry has had insufficient funds to improve the facility.

Such was the state of the museum that the government decided to renovate the museum using a one-time grant. The money was sanctioned by the UPA government.
Another standoff is in the making at Jawaharlal Nehru University, with students refusing to vacate hostels or pay fines slapped on them for flouting norms while hosting an event that set off campus unrest and a political storm.

A group led by JNU student union president Kanhaiya Kumar on Tuesday burnt a copy of the report of the panel that looked into the February 9 gathering. The report found him and 16 others guilty on various counts, including giving wrong information and misrepresenting facts.

Demanding that the punishment be rolled back, Kumar warned of an indefinite hunger strike from Wednesday. We will not abide by the committee that was rejected by us ever since its formation, he said.

We will take out a rally and start an indefinite hunger strike tomorrow. The arbitrary punishment given to students should be rolled back, he said.

Read: JNU rusticates Umar, Anirban for a semester; Kanhaiya fined Rs 10,000

Rival student faction, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarathi Parishad, is already on hunger strike, accusing the administration of giving into pressure from a section of teachers and being lenient on Kanhaiya and others.

Im being punished for acting as a patriot. I exposed the anti-national activities on the campus but they have fined me and warned that I should not repeat my actions, said Sharma, the only ABVP member in the student union. He, like Kumar, has been fined Rs 10,000.

Kumar, Anirban Bhattacharya and Umar Khalid are out on bail after their arrest on sedition charges following the event commemorating Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-India slogans were allegedly shouted.

The university rusticated Bhattacharya, Khalid and Mujeeb Gattoo, fined 14 students and barred two former students from the campus. They have till May 15 to follow the orders, officials said.

JNU had constituted a five-member inquiry committee to investigate the February 9 event that led to protests and snowballed into a political controversy, with the opposition and students accusing the Modi government of stifling dissent.

The committee found some students guilty of violating disciplinary norms and disrupting communal harmony on campus.

The action against students is a way to send chilling effect among students so that we stop raising our voice. The inquiry committee is a proxy war being waged by the government against us, said JNUSU vice-president Shehla Rashid Shora.

Students accuse the Centre of trying to saffronise the university known for its Left leanings.

The JNU teachers association, which met the vice-chancellor, said they were against the committee as it was set up without following norms. Its inquiry process was faulty as it failed share evidence with the accused students, JNUTA president Ajay Patnaik said. The teachers will hold an emergency general body meeting on Thursday.

Read: Kanhaiya says man tried to strangle him on plane, cops dismiss claim

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Situated on the banks of Yamuna river, the residential colonies of Okhla are a pitiable sight. Heaps of garbage and rows of slum clusters have not only choked the river, but the area stinks of sewage and waste. Okhla, once a village, showed first signs of urbanisation in 1935 when the foundation for a new building for Jamia Millia Islamia, earlier housed in Karol Bagh, was laid.

Over the years, the area grew rapidly with parts of it developing into industrial, commercial, educational and residential hubs. Today, it comprises residential colonies such as Zakir Nagar, Batla House, Abul Fazal Enclave, Okhla Head, Jamia Nagar, Shaheen Bagh, Okhla Vihar, Johri Farm, Ghaffar Manzil, and Jamia Millia Islamia campus spread over 200 acre.

During the early 70s, when most of Delhi was being urbanised, people from various parts of the country started moving to Jamia Nagar. The initial move was led by the professors of the university along with their families and later many other families followed.

Despite this large-scale expansion, the successive governments have failed to work out a comprehensive plan for this area. Residents rue that the population near Yamuna bank is taken into consideration only at the time of elections and their problems are forgotten soon after. The flow of residents into this area had started with the objective of education which was lost over the years. The unchecked urban migration later resulted in the formation of unauthorised colonies here.

CULTURAL CENTRE

Okhla might be congested and cramped, but it is home to a unique mingling of cultures. With Jamia as the nerve centre, areas like Batla House and Zakir Nagar accommodate university students from across the nation as well as countries like Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Turkey. The entire cluster of these areas faces critical developmental issues, but the liveliness of the streets is unmatched. The narrow lanes of Batla House with all-night shops add fun to life, while packed streets of Zakir Nagar are famous for its food especially biryani and kebabs.

Veteran theatre director Habib Tanveer established Okhla Theatre in the 50s. He roped in several local artistes for his various productions. His famous creation Agra Bazaar, a play on the life of poet Nazir Akbarabadi was first staged in Okhla.

Jamia Nagar is also one of the Capitals many religious-ethnic enclaves, much like Chittaranjan Park and Tilak Nagar. It is located along the coast of Yamuna separating Delhi from Uttar Pradesh.

Among the outer areas, Noor Bagh is known for its sprawling bungalows. Modern food courts can be found at the nearby community centre, which also houses several popular commercial outlets like garments stores and restaurants including the famous Al-Bake restaurant which is known for its shawarma, an Arab preparation. Abul Fazal Enclave, which is an extension of Jamia Nagar, has the office of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, an offshoot of the Jamaat-e-Islami, which had split into separate independent organisations in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and J&K following the Partition of India in 1947. Abul Fazal Enclave also has many Urdu publication houses.

PROBLEMS GALORE

A few kilometres from Nehru Place, as one enters Okhla area, potholed roads and piles of garbage greet visitors. Among the primary problems is the faulty sewage disposal system which not leads to stink but also is a breeding ground of mosquitoes. Illegal encroachments have added to the congestion here. However, irrespective of the shortage of potable water, sanitation woes, unkempt parks and lack of parking space, the residents prefer this area due to its proximity to Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), Noida, and other south Delhi areas.

Our family shifted to this place from Old Delhi in 1972 . At that time, you could count the houses here. The congestion happened later, said Dr Zain Mohammed. According to him, after the 1984 anti-sikh riots in Delhi, several Muslims preferred to make this their area their home. The second phase of migration, he said, started after the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.

Experts caution that the unchecked concrete expansion over alleged active flood plain could have fatal consequences. The locals, however, say that these were once fields that were sold to them by the farmers.

Manoj Misra, convener of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, said that the localities near Yamuna could get badly damaged in case of a natural disaster. People here are living on a floodplain and this started happening after the Outer Ring Road was extended years ago. Many found space and started living here, but it was never part for the dwelling area, Misra said.

Jamia Nagar narrow lanes face major parking issues. Most of the vehicles can be seen parked along the road side. Residents want the authorities to create parking lots here. Such a move, they said, will not only help the area but also generate revenue.

The residents, however, havent lost hope. Its true that Jamia Nagar is congested, but it is also modern. Good changes are being witnessed and with the passage of time things will get better. These narrow lanes see latest models of cars and bikes every day, said Anwar Ahmed.

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South Asia is not a safe space for diversity or independent thought, anymore. A region that showed the world how non-violent struggle can challenge colonialism now has a high incidence of settling political and ideological differences through egregious violence. Christians and Shias are subject to brutal terrorist violence periodically in Pakistan, while India has seen a rise in everyday coercion of liberals who do not adhere to Right-wing agendas.

READ: Bangladesh branch of al Qaeda claims killing of LGBT editor

Bangladesh is also seeing the kind of extremism and savagery that makes the world shudder. Xulhaz Mannan, the editor of Roopbaan, Bangladeshs only LGBT magazine, was hacked to death along with his friend, Tonoy Mehbub, a USAID worker, by five or six men in Dhaka on April 25. Last weekend saw the murder of English professor Rezaul Karim Siddique at Rajshahi. These are among several attacks on secular, atheist independent thinkers and bloggers that have happened over the last year. In most cases, the victims have been attacked with machetes and left dying to evoke public horror and provoke fear among the intelligentsia. The reasons why the killings are not stopping are all too familiar.

READ: Student detained over gay rights activists murders in Bangladesh

The Sheikh Hasina government, known to be more tolerant than the Opposition Bangladesh National Party of Khaleda Zia has pursued the trials against those who had participated in the atrocities during the countrys liberation in 1971. But Hasina is however wary of offending religious conservatives and her government has not tracked down and prosecuted the criminals who have committed these acts. Instead, her government has on occasion arrested bloggers for allegedly offending religious sentiments or corrupting readers. Extremism in Bangladesh has been a global security concern for a while now and the State has likely acquired some capacity to be able to deal with high-profile crimes. Not acting in this regard is a political choice that the Hasina government has made, to its countrys detriment.

READ: Bangladesh jails 2 Hindu schoolteachers for abusing Islam

Those in India must not presume that Bangladeshs reality is worlds away. We see hate speech deployed on Twitter against liberals daily and have seen the killings of activists Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and scholar MM Kalburgi, without anyone prosecuted yet. Protecting liberty and establishing the rule of law are in the final analysis national security issues.
With just a day to go for the results of the Central Board of Secondary Educations Joint Entrance Examination (Main) to be declared, students are feeling the pressure.

The multiple errors pointed out by academicians in the JEE-Main answer key that was released on April 21 last week has the aspirants as well as their families all the more worried.

While the CBSE had admitted to multiple answers to two questions in the physics section, candidates claimed to have found several other errors, including some incorrect answers, dual answers and questions framed incorrectly.

Nitin Gupta, a resident of Chandigarh, told HT, I am very nervous and I dont even know if Ill clear the cut off or not since there were so many errors in the answersheet. I am not even able to focus on my preparation for the advanced exam.

Read more: JEE (Main) 2016 results tomorrow, students anxious

Keeping his fingers crossed, Arjun Khullar, a Shimla resident, who appeared for the main exam in Chandigarh, said, Since the paper was lengthy, my confidence dropped and I am feeling quite anxious ahead of the results.

While many demanded bonus marks for two doubtful questions in the offline paper, Radhika Singh, who took JEE Main 2016 Computer Based Test (CBT) exam on April 10, said awarding bonus marks to offline candidates would be injustice to CBT examinees.

If 8 bonus marks are awarded to candidates of JEE offline paper for two dubious questions, irrespective of their attempt, many undeserving offline candidates would gain over CBT candidates, she said eagerly awaiting the result.

It was my first JEE attempt and I prepared for it for two years. So I am keeping my fingers crossed. If I clear it, then I will opt for computer science engineering, said Manmohan Preet Singh, a Moga resident.

Read more | Errors in JEE (Mains) question papers, give bonus marks: Experts

In Ludhiana, Ayush Sharma is praying hard for a favourable result. I want to attend IIT Bombay. While I am confident of cracking the exam, I am hoping for a good rank.

Holding her breath, Asees Sidhu in Ludhiana said, I am very nervous, confused and could not sleep last night. If I manage to secure a good rank, I would opt for computer science. I have worked very hard, and now that the D-Day is approaching, I am very jittery.

Arpit Jain, however, is feeling confident. My attempt at the exam was very good, so I am not scared. My first choice would be IIT Kanpur and I want to do research in material science.

Leaving matters to fate, Muskaan Mehra said, I have given my very best in the exam, now it is all destiny. I have not decided which field to opt for, but it is my dream to attend an IIT for higher studies.

(Inputs from Aneesha Bedi and Avtar Singh)
Delhi Universitys Hindu College has finally opened a hostel for female students, too. But even before the students could rejoice in the news, the college decided to throw in a shocker for female students. According to the prospectus, female students are expected to dress according to the normal norm of society when visiting common areas of the hostel. Besides the dress code, there are some other rules too which arent going down well with the students. Its funny that at this time, when we are fighting for equality in the University, this college would come up with such sexist, bizzare rules. Ladko ka banao na dress code, says Aparna Dutt *, a third year student.

Some of the other rules mentioned are that hostellers cannot bring any visitors, are allowed only one night-out in a month, cannot be in the common areas after 11pm.

The rules that the authorities have come up with are so absurd. Who decides what is normal? Will someone go around, with a measuring tape and the measure the lengths of the skirts or shorts, says Poonam Sethi, former warden of the Hindu College, Mens hostel. Devangana Kalita, a member of Pinjra Tod, a campaign to fight sexist rules on campuses, says, The boys hostel has liberal rules. Why does the college feel the need to monitor every move of the female students? The university should not act like khap panchayat.

In fact, protests have started in college over the disparity in the rules for the mens hostel and womens hostel. Of course well protest! This infantilisation of female students is not cool at all, says a second year student. The college authorities could not be reached for a comment.

The Hindu College, hostel for men. (Ronjoy Gogo/ Hindustan Times)

The fees for the hostel has also become a cause of worry for many students as the hostel fees is around Rs. 82,000 annually for womens hostel, while that of mens hostel is Rs.47,000.

Vani Gupta*, another student who has also applied for the college says, The fee is so high. What is the difference between private accommodation and college hostel then? A not-so-well off familys kid works so hard to get into DU. They say theyre giving us a swimming pool, lifts  who wants all that? We only want an affordable room we can study in.

College authorities refused to comment on the subject.

* Name changed on request

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Around 12 lakh aspirants who appeared for the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) Main this month will know their results on Wednesday.



Many anxious students have an idea of how they performed, as they have matched their answers with the key released by the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) recently.

I have solved the question paper at least 10 times and will do so again before my result is out. It will give me confidence, said Akshita Bhatt, student said.

Read more | JEE (Main) 2016: Answer keys released, check it here

Ahead of the results, students are trying different ways to beat their stress. Gaurav, a student of City Montessori School, Lucknow, went to Hanuman temple on Tuesday morning. Morning prayers helped me ease my nerve. Such is the pressure that I did not even match answers with the key that was uploaded on the site. Im keeping my fingers crossed.

Niladri, a student of La Martiniere College in Lucknow is also tense. I kept on sleeping till Tuesday afternoon to keep away from tension. I have done well but am not sure that I will qualify for the Advance test which is the next level for the exam, he said.

Some like Aastha Gaur, a resident of Yamuna Colony in Dehradun, have opted to forego all holiday fun and prepare for JEE Advanced to be held on May 22.

Expecting a high score, Aastha dropped one year to prepare for the exam. I am nervous but confident for JEE Main results, she told HT.

Read more: Ahead of results, Errorsin JEE (Main) answer keys bother students

Like Aastha, many other students who appeared in the JEE (Main) are gearing up for the advanced examination, aiming to get through in one of the IITs in the country. I want to pursue engineering from IIT and so I have started preparing for JEE Advanced, Abu Sharique, a student said.

Others however, have kept their fingers crossed for the results on Wednesday. My future course of action will depend on the percentage I score in my Mains, said Rishabh, another student.

JEE (Main) exam is held to shortlist candidates seeking admissions to undergraduate engineering programmes at NITs, IIITs and other centrally funded technical Institutions.

How to check your results

Visit the official website jeemain.nic.in and click on the appropriate link. Log in with the required details and your result will be displayed on the screen.

Read more | Class 12 marks will not impact JEE Main rank: HRD ministry
Given the rising summer heat, schools in Ranchi have been told to change their timings to close latest by 11.30am, an official said on Tuesday.

The new timing is likely to be implemented from Wednesday, the official said.

All classes up to eighth will close at 10.30am and classes from ninth to 12th at 11.30am, he said.

Once the summer capital of undivided Bihar, Ranchi has been experiencing temperatures well above 40 degree Celsius since April 1.

On Monday, a school girl reportedly died here due to sun stroke.

About 15 deaths in Jharkhand have so far been attributed to the intense heat, with temperatures in Jamshedpur and Daltanganj touching 45 degree Celsius.

There is also acute water crisis in Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Daltanagnj and some other parts of Jharkhand.

Read | Schoolgirl dies of heat stroke in Ranchi
Iron Man and Captain America will soon be locking horns on screen but the actors who play the two characters, Robert Downey Jr and Chris Evans, have nothing but love for each other. Robert says he cant imagine anyone else playing the role of Captain America other than Chris Evans as he is just the right guy for the job.

Asked about Evans playing the role of the American superhero, Downey Jr said he couldnt imagine anyone else in that role from the first outing itself.

I couldnt imagine anyone else in that role from the first outing itself. Also, I think it is probably the highest degree of difficulty of all the superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to get right.

Both the superheroes - Iron Man and Captain America - will be seen in Captain America: Civil War, which is scheduled to release in the US and India on May 6. (Marvel)

I think there is a certain degree of confidence and humility you need to have going in. Chris has gotten more and more detached from his neurosis and judgment as the years have gone by, Downey Jr said in a statement.

In his characteristically witty way, Downey Jr added: To look good in that helmet! They should have done a random facial pattern search. Hes just the right guy for the job.

Actors Chris Evans (L), who plays Captain America and Robert Downey Jr, who plays Iron Man, pose for photographers at a media event ahead of the release of Captain America: Civil War, in London, UK on April 25, 2016. (REUTERS)

Both the superheroes - Iron Man and Captain America - will be seen in Captain America: Civil War, which is scheduled to release in the US and India on May 6. Downey Jr expressed his views in the video of the making of the Disney and Marvel film.

Read: Captain America- Civil War reviews are here to wash away that BvS taste

Referring to Evanss directorial venture Before We Go, Downey Jr said: It has also afforded him the opportunity to do a lot of other stuff he wants.

Watch the trailer for the movie here:

Follow @htshowbiz for more
The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Tuesday arrested an alleged Indian Mujahideen (IM) operative in connection with the 2011 Mumbai blasts.

ATS sources said the accused, Zainul Abedin, was picked up from the Mumbai airport. The twelfth person to be arrested in the case, he was earlier detained in Saudi Arabia in 2015.

The accused was allegedly involved in supplying the explosives used in the Mumbai triple blasts. The bombings were executed by Yasin Bhatkal, who also planted one of the explosives.

Read: Delhi court discharges 2 Indian Mujahideen men due to lack of evidence

Abedin, hailing from Bhatkal, is allegedly close to IM operative Riyaz Bhatkal  who operates from Pakistan. Sources said his name came up during the questioning of an accused from Karnataka, who was arrested by the ATS last year.

A mixture of trinitrotoluene, ammonium nitrate and petroleum carbon oil was used to prepare four bombs that were set off at Zaveri Bazaar, Opera House and Dadar between 6.52 pm and 7.05 pm. Though a fourth bomb was planted at the Dadar Phool Market under a police van, it did not go off.

The bombs were assembled in a rented room at Habib Mansion in Byculla. As many as 27 people were killed and another 127 injured in the three blasts.
The Bharatiya Janata Party asked its members of Parliament on Tuesday to go on the offensive against the Congress over the Ishrat Jahan case.

The case refers to the gunning down of four alleged terrorists in Gujarat in 2004, which the CBI had alleged to be killed in a staged gunbattle.

The issue was discussed at a BJP parliamentary party meet attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley told the MPs that the whole world knew Ishrat Jahan was a terrorist, but Congress and the then home minister P Chidambaram tried to help her, minister of state for parliamentary affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said.

This move of the then ruling party was intended to politically finish the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and the then state home minister Amit Shah, he added.

The Agusta Westland helicopter deal was also taken up in the meeting. The new revelations in the case exposed Congress and proved that it was all about scams, Naqvi said. The case refers to a 2010 VIP helicopter deal involving alleged corruption.

The BJP issued a whip for its MPs in both the Houses, asking them to be present in parliament on all days of this week.

It is aimed at ensuring partys full strength in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha to counter opposition on various issues, including Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand, union Urban Development and Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu told the MPs, sources said.

Sources said that Naidu also asked party MPs to ensure their attendance during elections to various parliamentary committees.

Later, several officials associated with the case, including those from the home ministry and the Intelligence Bureau, accused the then Congress-led UPA government of changing an affidavit for political gains.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) asked the Congress on Tuesday to come clean on bribe-takers in a controversial chopper deal but the opposition party hit back by accusing the NDA government of indulging in vicious propaganda.

The political slugfest erupted after a Milan court convicted two Italians for paying kickbacks to Indian officials in the 2010 AgustaWestland chopper deal that was scrapped by the previous UPA government in 2014.

Though the Italian court did not indict any Indian, the BJP plans to corner the Congress in Parliament on Wednesday over references in the judgment to middlemen talking about Signora Gandhi being the driving force behind the deal and referring to senior Congress leaders Manmohan Singh, Ahmed Patel and Oscar Fernandez.

AgustaWestland, a subsidiary of Italian defence giant Finmeccanica, had allegedly paid more than Rs 375 crores as bribe to secure the Rs 3,727-crore contract to supply 12 VVIP helicopters to the Indian Air Force.

Antony was the defence minister when the deal was sealed in February 2010.

Now that bribe-givers have been convicted, what should happen to the bribe-takers? Will Mr (former defence minister AK) Antony publicly give a statement on this? Will he accept that his partymen are involved in the scam? Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said at a press conference.

Read: British arms dealer offers help in AgustaWestland chopper deal probe

The Italian court document contains a note sent by a British consultant to a company official in 2008, which read: Mrs Gandhi is the driving force behind VIP...she will not fly any more in the Mi-8. The Mi-8 helicopters used by the Indian Air Force for VIPs are being phased out.

In the note, the middleman wanted the company officials in India to advise the British high commissioner to target Gandhis close advisors.

BJP president Amit Shah and Union ministers Arun Jaitley and Venkaiah Naidu met after the court verdict to mull over the partys next move.

Party sources said they will raise the issue in both houses on Wednesday and seek a debate on the matter. The ruling alliance is on the back foot over a plitical crisis in Uttarakhand with the Congress accusing the BJP of trying to topple opposition governments.

BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad alleged that the previous UPA government raised obstacles in a CBI probe into the scam.

Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma, however, dismissed the corruption charges and said it was the UPA government that cancelled the contract and blacklisted the company.

We also lodged a case in Italy and confiscated helicopters. The question is that a company was blacklisted for violation of integrity pact. Why did the BJP government remove it from the blacklist?

Sharma said the BJP government allowed the company to bid for projects in the navy. PM Narendra Modi invited AgustaWestland to participate in Make in India when he met his Italian counterpart in New York.
Facing opposition s ire over the Uttarakhand crisis, BJP on Tuesday sought to corner Congress over the VVIP chopper scam and Ishrat Jahan issue, alleging that the UPA government stood with LeT to prove a terrorist as a nationalist.

Read more: Why Cong wants Parliament session to be a wash-out

In the first Parliamentary Party meeting after the Session began on Monday, both issues besides the row over Presidents Rule in the hilly state were deliberated and senior union ministers Arun Jaitley and M Venkaiah Naidu articulated the partys position on different matters.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also attended the meeting.

Jaitley told the MPs that the whole world knew that Ishrat was a terrorist and LeT operative but Congress and the then Home Minister P Chidambaram allegedly tried to help her and whitewash the case, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told the media after the meeting.

This was the first time that a Home Minister was trying to prove a terrorist as a nationalist. The Home Minister appeared to be working with LeT, he charged, adding that it was done to politically finish Modi, the then Gujarat Chief Minister, and Amit Shah, then a minister in the state government.

The national would not have seen something as abhorrent and shameful as this, he said, adding that there would be a discussion on this in Parliament.

The Agusta Westland issue was also taken up and the new revelations, he said, had exposed Congress and proved that it was all about scams. The opposition party would have to answer, he said.

BJP has also issued a whip asking all its members to be present in both the houses.

On the Uttarakhand issue, the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs said BJP was willing for a discussion when the matter is scheduled for a debate in Parliament.

Referring to the Ishrat Jahan issue, Naqvi said Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and her deputy Rahul Gandhi travelled across the country to attack Modi over it.

BJP members also expressed happiness at the Modi governments efforts to empower villages, farmers, the poor and the youth, he said, claiming that the whole world is acknowledging Indias progress.

The party, though, accused the opposition, especially Congress, of continuously working to derail the governments developmental efforts.

They have not been able to get over their hangover of the Lok Sabha election defeat, he said.

BJP also defended the imposition of Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand and Naqvi said the constitutional machinery in the state had broken down and it was a state without a budget. The government yesterday wanted to take up in the Rajya Sabha an important bill aimed at the welfare of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes but Congress did not allow it, he said, accusing the opposition party of working against the countrys development.

He said Telecom Ministry has developed several provision for protection of women and Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will make an announcement in Parliament in this regard. BJP wanted a positive and constructive debate in Parliament, he said.
Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh will likely be questioned this week in a disproportionate assets probe over alleged irregularities, including those linked to an antedated agreement with an aide for managing his apple orchard.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been investigating the chief minister and his wife since last September over concerns of alleged amassing of disproportionate assets worth Rs 6 crore during his 2009-12 stint as a steel minister in the UPA II government. Apart from Singh, the CBI is looking into his aide, insurance agent Anand Chauhan for allegedly trying to camouflage the money as proceeds of agricultural income  not taxed in India  from his 105 bigha apple orchard Shrikhand, located in the state.

Read more | HC tells Virbhadra to join probe into disproportionate assets case

The money was used to purchase 19 insurance policies via Chauhan in the names of Singh, his wife, and his children. Singh later revised his Income Tax returns for the three years, allegedly attributing a huge jump in income to the orchards higher sales. The CBI suspects the authenticity of these sale receipts.

The June 2008 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) comprised of a stamp paper and a few pages of judicial papers, which were antedated. The judicial papers were released from a Himchal Pradesh printing press three months later, in September 2008, said a CBI source on the condition of anonymity.

An antedated contract is one where the date of the contract is prior to the date on which the agreement was actually drawn up.

The MoU between Singh and Chauhan was for managing the maintenance and sale proceeds of the orchard, with a 2% commission on the sale proceeds.

The CBI, which suspects the authenticity of the photocopy provided, is yet to receive the original MoU document. A Rs 5 stamp paper that was part of the memorandum had allegedly not been sold to the accused, raising doubts over its veracity.

Singh and Chauhan could not be reached for comment but had earlier denied any wrongdoing. Rejecting the allegations as baseless, one of Singhs aides said, If there is any doubt about the MoUs stamp paper, the CBI should confront the vendor.

Read more | Theres no threat to my govt, says Himachal CM Virbhadra Singh

As part of a separate money-laundering probe, the Enforcement Directorate had recently moved to attach assets worth around Rs 8 crore belonging to Singh and his family.

The agencys initial plan to question the chief minister on Monday was shelved as the investigating officer was not available that day. CBI will question the CM on another date, to seek his clarifications about issues linked to the unaccounted assets, said the source.

The Delhi High Court recently asked Singh to join the probe and told the CBI that he could not be arrested without the courts consent. Singh said he would willingly cooperate so long as he and his wife were not arrested during the investigation.

Dismissing the allegations, the chief minister earlier claimed this was a case of political vendetta by the NDA government that was conspiring to destabilise his government.
The Centre has sought time to implement the Paris climate agreement, saying it should not be done in haste and all countries should be allowed to follow their national processes.

A debate about early entry into force of the Paris Agreement is unfortunate. Early ratification can be understood, but it will take time as per the national processes of approval, environment minister Prakash Javadekar said at the Major Economies Forum Meeting in New York on Monday.

We should not make haste because Paris Agreement is to be implemented post 2020. There is enough time for ratification and all countries should be allowed to follow their national processes, Javadekar said.

According to reports, the US and China are leading a push to bring the Paris climate accord into force much faster aided by a typographical glitch in the text of the agreement.

India on April 22 signed the historic deal along with more than 170 nations, marking a significant step that has brought together developing and developed nations for beginning work on cutting down greenhouse gas emissions.

Paris agreement is a historical achievement for mankind. All countries should implement it in letter and spirit. After signing of Paris agreement, developed world needs to immediately ratify the Kyoto Protocol second commitment period and should present enhanced pre-2020 actions, he said.

The minister also urged developed nations to announce their enhanced pre-2020 climate action plans and undertake the urgent task of mobilising 100 billion dollars, lack of which will hamper implementation of nationally determined contributions of developing countries.

The second urgent task to be done is mobilisation of 100 billion dollars. Without this crucial mobilisation, many of the developing countries cannot implement their nationally determined contributions, Javadekar said.

Javadekar said the need of the hour is to lay out the complete institutional mechanism for building up on the Paris accord.

The plan to work for the first meeting of Ad hoc group on Paris Agreement (APA) and additional works by Subsidiary Body for Implementation and Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBI/SBSTA)...should be prepared in consultation with all stake holders as issues covered under these bodes have a direct bearing on the Provisions of the Paris Agreement. There is a need for coherence between COP, APA, SBI, SBSTA and other institutions, he said.

Observing that India has led from the front as far as pre-2020 action is concerned, he said that though it is not mandated to take pre-2020 actions as per Kyoto Protocol, the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has showcased to the world that if there is political will, there is a way.

India has shown its leadership by action. It is now actions of developed countries which will be watched by the world against the backdrop of Indias proactive achievements, he said.
Former Maharashtra deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal, who has been arrested in a money laundering case, was discharged from St Georges Hospital on Monday afternoon.

Bhujbal is alleged to have got himself admitted to the hospital after he complained of chest pain and high blood pressure though he had informed doctors of a toothache and was supposed to visit the Government Dental College (GDC) on the St Georges Hospital campus.

On Monday, Bhujbal left the hospital in CST without undergoing dental treatment at the GDC.

His premolar tooth is causing him discomfort as the pulp has gone bad. We can either perform an extraction or a root canal. We offered to perform the root canal but he (Bhujbal) said he will go through it later and not today, said Dr Mansingh Pawar, the GDC dean.

Doctors at St George Hospital, however, had a different version of the events.

Dr J Bhawani, the medical superintendent of the hospital, said, He complained of breathlessness at the dental college, so they decided to go for the treatment later. We shifted him to the jail in an ambulance equipped with Ambu Bag.

An Ambu Bag is a device that help patients witnessing breathlessness.

However, Dr Pawar said the patient denied the treatment as he was not comfortable. Around 2 pm on Monday, Bhujbal left St George Hospital for the jail.

Despite the controversy around his unwarranted hospitalisation, a four-member team from Sir JJ Hospital said that Bhujbals hospitalisation was clinically needed. He is known to have hypertension.

The prison department had found Dr Rahul Ghule, the doctor at Arthur Road jail, guilty of manipulating records to get Bhujbal admitted to St George when he had complained of toothache. The department moved the doctor out of the jail. A prison department official said, Ghule manipulated the record and sent Bhujbal to St George.

The prison department on April 19 had ordered an inquiry into Bhujbal being admitted to St George. Sources said, Bhujbal had initially complained of toothache but was admitted for chest pain and this led to the inquiry.
The alleged flip-flop by the previous UPA government on the Ishrat Jahan affidavit may continue to fire the BJPs charge in the ongoing budget session of the Parliament.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said the then home minister, P Chidambaram, and the Congress tried to help Jahan despite the whole world knowing her links with the LeT.

Addressing BJP MPs during the weekly meeting, Jaitley said the Congress compromised on national security for political gains and caused grave damage to the security apparatus.

This was the first time a home minister was trying to prove a terrorist as a nationalist. The home minister appeared to be working with the LeT, Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said after the BJP parliamentary party meeting.

Naqvi said it was it was done to oppose Narendra Modi, the then Gujarat CM since the Congress could not fight him electorally.

The nation would not have seen something as abhorrent and shameful as this, he said, adding there would be a discussion on this in Parliament. Jaitley also briefed the party MPs about the Uttarakhand crisis, saying the Speakers conduct in the House on March 18 led to the constitutional breakdown.

An attempt was made to pass the Appropriation Bill that was defeated on the floor of the House with 35 out of 67 MLAs opposing it. They tried to keep a minority government running, Jaitley said.
India on Tuesday used its first high-level contact with Pakistan since the January 2 attack on Pathankot airbase to send out a clear message: Islamabad must crack down on terror groups operating from its soil instead of being in denial on terrorism.

During talks with his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry ahead of a meeting of the Heart of Asia grouping, foreign secretary S Jaishankar also sought early and visible progress in Pakistans probe into the Pathankot attack and the trial of the alleged perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks.

Pakistan, Jaishankar said, cannot be in denial on the impact of terrorism on the bilateral relationship. A statement from the external affairs ministry quoted him as saying, Terrorist groups based in Pakistan targeting India must not be allowed to operate with impunity.

Indian sources said the Pakistan side said the Joint Investigation Team that recently visited the country to probe the Pathankot attack is finalising its report.

Also Read | Pakistan cooperating closely on Pathankot attack: Sartaj Aziz

Sources described the 100-minute meeting at Jaishankars chamber in the South Block as constructive despite the airing of contentious issues. They noted the foreign secretaries had exchanged ideas on taking the relationship forward and agreed to remain in touch.

Jaishankar also brought up the listing of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) leader Masood Azhar under the UN Security Council sanctions committee.

Though JeM is on the sanctions list, its chief isnt. Earlier this month, Pakistans close ally China blocked an Indian bid to sanction Azhar, accused of masterminding the Pathankot attack, at the UN.

Indian foreign secretary S Jaishankar seen with his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basit and other officials in New Delhi on Tuesday. (HT Photo)

Chaudhry raised all outstanding issues and emphasised that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions and wishes of the Kashmiri people, according to a statement from the Pakistan high commission.

He also took up the capture of a purported RAW operative, Kulbhushan Jadhav, and expressed serious concern over RAWs involvement in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi. Such acts, Chaudhry said, undermine efforts to normalise relations.

Also Read | Decision on NIA teams visit to Pakistan at appropriate time: India

Jaishankar sought immediate consular access to Khulbushan Jadhav, a former naval officer who, he said, was abducted and taken to Pakistan.

The Pakistani side described Jadhav as a purported RAW operative and expressed serious concern over RAWs involvement in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi. Such acts, Chaudhry said, undermine efforts to normalise relations.

Our Statement on Foreign Secretary Jaishankar's meeting with his Pakistani counterpart pic.twitter.com/BtOuduz73M  Vikas Swarup (@MEAIndia) 26 April 2016

Pakistan also raised all outstanding issues, including Kashmir, which Chaudhry said was the core issue that requires a just solution in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions and wishes of the Kashmiri people.

According to a statement from the Pakistani mission, Chaudhry conveyed concern over the environment being created in India for the release of the prime suspects of the Samjhauta Express blasts and said India had not shared investigation reports regarding the 2007 bombing of the cross-border train that killed 42 Pakistanis.

The discussions also covered humanitarian issues, such as jailed fishermen and prisoners, and people-to-people contacts including religious tourism.

Chaudhry spoke about the need for early commencement of comprehensive dialogue for which the Indian foreign secretarys visit to Pakistan is due. He expressed confidence the two sides will build on goodwill generated by recent high-level contacts and remain committed to a sustained dialogue.

The Pakistani side provided its talking points to the media while the meeting was underway.

Chaudhry led the Pakistani delegation to the meeting of senior officials of the Heart of Asia grouping that discussed the security situation and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

During external affairs minister Sushma Swarajs visit to Pakistan in December, the two sides had agreed to launch a comprehensive dialogue process. Prime Minister Narendra Modis surprise visit to Lahore on December 25 to meet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif after a trip to Kabul had also given a fillip to the peace process.

However, bilateral contacts were stalled after the attack on Pathankot airbase that killed seven security personnel.

Also Read | Pak must respond positively to Modis peace move: Muslim leaders to Basit
A one-year-old girl, who had fallen into a bore well in Gujarats Surendranagar district, died on Tuesday morning during the treatment after being rescued.

The toddler had fallen in the 300 feet deep bore well in Juna Ghanshyamgadh village in Dhrangadhra taluka at around 7 pm on Monday evening.

The parents informed the village chief when they came to know of the incident and the chief, in turn, sought the help of district administration.

Soon, a team comprising of National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) personnel, police and fire department officials rushed to the spot and began the rescue operations using CCTV cameras, oxygen cylinders and ropes.

The child was pulled out of the bore well after five hours and taken to hospital where she while the doctors were trying to revive her.
BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi alleged on Tuesday that over half of the ministers and legislators of the ruling Grand Alliance in Bihar are habitual boozers. His remarks come in the wake of a Congress MLA caught on camera purportedly offering liquor to his guests.

Narkatiaganj MLA Vinay Verma has been caught in the booze sting at a time when a total prohibition is in force in Bihar.

The BJP leader also asked chief minister Nitish Kumar to take stringent action against Verma.

It is known to everybody that more than half of legislators and ministers in the ruling Grand Alliance are habitual boozers, which puts a question mark on Nitish Kumar governments commitment to fully enforce prohibition in Bihar, he alleged.

He was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of weekly Janata Durbar at his official residence.

Sushil Modi alleged that prohibition has not brought the desired results as liquor is being sold illegally in all parts of Bihar although its production, sale and consumption was made a punishable offence under the Bihar Excise Act.

On the sting, he claimed, he was not surprised that a ruling party legislator has been stung by the media for boasting about keeping liquor at home despite the ban.

He described the police action over the alleged case last night as drama.

However, the embattled Congress MLA claimed conspiracy behind the sting. He claimed that he is a vegetarian and a tee-totaler and any talk of offering liquor to guests was not true.

Kumar should use his influence with the Congress leader to seek stringent action against Verma for wilful violation of prohibition as he had taken oath in the legislative assembly against consuming liquor and offering it to anybody, the BJP leader said.

He also sought to debunk the chief ministers assertion that the enforcement of total prohibition in Bihar from the first week of this month has brought down crime rate and said data was misplaced as crimes like murder, dacoity and loot have nothing to do with liquor.

Saying that the BJP was firmly in favour of total prohibition, he demanded strict action against illegal sale of liquor in Bihar.
It started as an innocuous social media taunt by one politician to another but soon devolved into a bizarre Twitter fight that brought out the tech geeks and possibly even inspired an online love story.

The saga began on Monday when Delhi education minister Manish Sisodia taunted Union human resource development minister Smriti Irani for ordering IITs to teach Sanskrit.

In a series of apparently sarcastic tweets, Sisodia took on the BJP leader.

One should understand Sanskrit is the only language which can compete with C++, Java, SOL, Python, Javascript...1/2

All computers in India using languages like C+, Java, SOL, Python..should b declared antinational once IITians learn working in sanskrit.2/2 Why anti-national? Were guessing the AAP leader was trying to comment on the recent wave of patriotism that has seen ministers claiming ancient India was adept in modern medicine and technology.

This was all that happened. A statement and a taunt. But this small teaser is all it took for Twitter to explode.

Read: Govt to set up Sanskrit cells in IITs to research ancient science

The social media site started building a story around it by adding fight scenes, sub-plots and romantic encounters.

As a Computer Scientist, I can say @msisodia displays abysmal ignorance of computer & natural languages and Sanskrit, @sankrant tweeted.

This was the most re-tweeted reply for Sisodias second tweet. This was followed by a flurry of tweets by users who thought Sisodia was actually supporting inclusion of Sanskrit in IITs. This Guy is Education Minister of capital of India

Tell me a computer which uses Sanskrit as its programming language. Are you so dumb?

sanskrit is not a programming language like C++ ( there is no lang called C+ which you ve tweeted BTW. Lol

So, sir, how many members of your own family plans to learn and adopt Sanskrit! And what your own plan??

And finally one confused individual dared to express his confusion...

is this sarcastically or are u serious?? If serious then god saves us frm this so called Edu Ministers..

After reading the tweets, even we had to re-check whether Sisodia was indeed being sarcastic.

And a lot of sub-plots emerged

1. Two users got into a fight over a spelling mistake in Sisodias tweet.

its not SOL. Its SQL. and, not every computer runs on these. said one user.

SOL is correct. Sisodia talking about language and SOL is language and SQL is database said the other.

But SOL is used in domain specific legacy systems. He was talkin abt systems that are currently running the computers the other shot back.

SOL is also used to run system. Pat came the reply.

They went on fighting over which one was correct, and many jargon-filled tweets later, they agreed to disagree.

SOL means Sisodia Oriented Language? Or is it a new movie that @ArvindKejriwal will review? Another users genuine confusion.

2. A man and woman ended up fixing a call over learning to code in Sanksrit

She wanted to know whether one can code in Sankskrit. He replied in complicated lingo. She asked whether he can call and explain. He said sure. Karan Johar, take note.

3. Users started posting journal articles, research papers that proved that Sankskrit was a good programming language.

Ironically, scientists have argued that Sanskrit is indeed the most suitable language for programming, a user posted with a screen shot of a research paper.

Indeed Sanskrit is best suited for programming. Expert programmers has said, another said quoting from a vedic science website.

Write a Hello World in Sanskrit, another user challenged.

sir i think u have not read computer science in ur life. If people can develop s/w in chinese language. Then y not in sanskriti another reasoned out.
The meeting between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan on Tuesday had two sides exchanging strong views over arrest of an alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav.

Indian sources said Pakistan side seem pre-determined to harp on the issue to address its domestic audience. Visiting foreign secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry spoke of the arrest and capture of RAW (Indias external intelligence agency) officer Jadhav. And he talked about the subversive activities of the RAW in Balochistan and Karachi and spoke at length from Jadhavs confessions to back his claims.

At this point, Indian side said he was said in your custody and surrounded by all your men, arguing it was a confession extracted under duress. Foreign secretary Jaishnakar said such confessions cannot be taken at face value, and said Jadhav, a former naval officer was abducted and taken to Pakistan.

Pakistan was using the words like arrest, capture, but we made it clear he was abducted and taken to custody, said Indian sources.

Foreign secretary said Pakistan should immediately give consular access to Jadhav. But Pakistani side was of the opinion that investigations on the leads provided by Jadhav are still on. When Pakistan side pointed out acts of subversive nature undercuts the efforts to normalize the ties, foreign secretary was came up with a strong rebuttal. In this context Indian foreign secretary asked which spy agency would put their agent in the field with their own passports and without a visa.

We pressed for immediate consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav, former naval officer abducted and taken to Pakistan, external affairs ministry said in a statement after the talks.

Indian sources said Pakistan is determined to harp on the spying case, which they see as part of the deliberate strategy to counter genuine Indian concerns over terrorism emanating from Pakistani soil.
The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan will meet on Tuesday to review the status of bilateral ties and Bilateral Comprehensive Dialogue (CBD), which is stagnant.

Primarily, Pakistans foreign secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry will be in Delhi on a day-long visit to attend the Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia  Istanbul Process. An announcement to this effect was made in Islamabad.

On the sidelines of the meet, Chaudhry will hold bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar.

Sources say,the focus of the talks would be on the investigation into the Pathankot terror strike and a possible visit by NIA team to Pakistan in this connection.

Read | Why are India and Pak struggling to take bilateral talks forward?

This will be first formal meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry after the announcement of CBD by the foreign ministers in Islamabad last December. The two secretaries had a informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March this year.

The efforts to resume CBD at the foreign secretary-level hit a deadlock after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase in January that India said was carried out by militants from the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group.

The meeting comes in the backdrop of Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basits recent comments that the bilateral peace process was suspended, evoking a sharp reaction by Indian side, which maintained that communication channels were on at various levels but also made it clear it wants to see action on terror and Pathankot first before the dialogue could be resumed.

Read | India-Pak in touch? Basits suspension of talks may be false alarm

Announcing Chaudhrys visit, the Pakistan foreign office, in a statement in Islamabad had said,Pakistan delegation will also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting. Pakistan looks forward to active participation in the forthcoming Heart of Asia meeting, reflecting our commitment to efforts for promoting long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan, it added.

Pakistan had hosted the fifth Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015.
Foreign secretary S Jaishankar left for a two-day trip to Washington late on Tuesday to discuss the agenda for Prime Minister Narendra Modis forthcoming visit to the US and summit meet with President Barack Obama.

This will be perhaps the last Modi-Obama bilateral engagement with the US president ready to demit office eight months later.

Top sources said Jaishankar has been invited by the White House and State Department on April 27-28 to chart out the course of bilateral ties in the last year of Obamas presidency.

Jaishankar will meet his counterpart, deputy secretary of state Anthony Blinken, and national security advisor Susan Rice; Modis joint address to US Senate and Congress on June 7-8, 2016, is high on the agenda. The US is in election mode but Modis visit comes at a time when the bilateral relationship has gone beyond official dimensions.

India has made its opposition known to Washington on the supply of F-16 fighter aircraft to Pakistan and the proposed China-Pakistan Economic Corridor via Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

New Delhi also wants to move ahead with the US on the defence, nuclear and space fronts. Final movement is expected on supply of six Westinghouse-Toshiba nuclear reactors for the 6000-MW Mithi-Virdi power plant in Gujarat with techno-commercial closure expected before the visit.

New Delhi expects President Obama to do the heavy lifting at the New York plenary of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) later in June to ensure India enters this group and is allowed to participate in global nuclear commerce. For Indias entry into the NSG, to which the US committed itself in 2010, Obama will have to over-rule possible opposition from China as the latter wants to bring in Pakistan. India is also waiting for entry into the Missile Technology Control Regime grouping, which had its reinforce point of contact meeting in Paris last week.

New Delhi is also looking for easing of US restrictions in space cooperation so that Indian launchers could be used for American satellites as they are more cost-effective. New Delhi is also looking towards US aircraft manufacturers in connection with the Make in India initiative.

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Two crucial files relating to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose will be declassified by Japan this year-end but the country has given no assurance regarding three more such files in its custody, government said on Tuesday.

Minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju told Lok Sabha that these five files, which are with Japan, could be crucial in resolving the mystery over the fate of Bose.

Japan has conveyed to us that they will declassify two of the five files by the end of this year but no commitment has been given to the rest of the three files. But we are hopeful that they will declassify the remaining three files too, he said during Question Hour.

Rijiju said two files relating to Netaji which were with the Prime Ministers Office and the ministry of home affairs continue to be missing and efforts were on to trace them.

While the file, which was with the PMO, related to bringing back the ashes believed to be of Netaji from Renkoji temple in Japan to India and installation of his statue at Red Fort, the file which was with the MHA too related to the ashes, he said, adding efforts were on to find these two files.

Rijiju said India has approached a number of countries to retrieve any documents related to Netaji and they have responded to the requests.

While Austria, Russia and the United States have conveyed to the Indian government that they do not have any file or document relating to Netaji, the United Kingdom said that all 62 files in its possession were given to British Library and are available for public.

Germany too has said that the files relating to Netaji were archived after declassifying them, he said.

Rijiju said the first two inquiry commissions had suggested that Bose died in a plane crash in Taihoku (now Taipei) on August 18, 1945, but the Mukherjee commission had rejected the conclusions of the previous two inquiry commissions.

We are not in a position to say actually what had happened to Netaji, he said.

The minister said around 150 Netaji files have been declassified so far and were available online, while 25 more files each are being uploaded online every month.

In October last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met the family members of Netaji and announced that the government would declassify the files relating to the leader whose disappearance 70 years ago remains a mystery.
Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) founder Amanullah Khan passed away at a Rawalpindi hospital on Tuesday morning. He was 82.

Khan, the father-in-law of Kashmirs regional party Peoples Conference president Sajad Gani Lone, breathed his last at 8:30 am following a chronic lung disease.

Lone said, He was seriously ill for the past three weeks. My wife Asma Khan and our children were with him. He died early today in Rawalpindi.

The deceased leader, who was born in the Astore area of Gilgit on August 24, 1934, was also the co-founder of the Kashmir Independent Committee in 1963. He was elected secretary general of the JK Plebiscite Front (PF) in 1965 and co-founded the JK National Liberation Front (NLF) with Maqbool Bhat.

JKLF chairman Yasin Malik had earlier this month expressed concern over Khans deteriorating health and appealed to the people of Kashmir to pray for his speedy recovery.

According to reports, his funeral would be held on Wednesday.
JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar said on Tuesday a panel that fined him Rs 10,000 over a controversial event at the university was casteist, adding he would burn its report.

The high-level inquiry committee is casteist. We dont believe the committee nor the penalties imposed, which is why we will burn the report, Kumar said. The people targeted arent being given a chance to express their stand, he added.

Since this is subjudice, what is the hurry? Also the committee report said outsiders raised slogans, then why punish the insiders? VC was on leave and on his return first thing he did was this, but he is not addressing hostel issues, OBC reservation, deprivation point. This administration is running from phone calls coming from outside.

The committee had also rusticated Jawaharlal Nehru university students Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya and Mujeeb Gatto over the February 9 event on Kashmir. Khalid and Bhatacharya will lose a semester of their academic session while Gatto has been suspended for two semesters.

The action comes after a probe panel set up by the Jawaharlal Nehru University found them guilty of misconduct and indiscipline.

Khalid, Bhattacharya and Gatto were found guilty of staging a protest demonstration under the pretext of holding a poetry reading of A Country Without a Post Office, the chief proctor said. Khalid was also fined Rs 20,000, the order said.

We have decided that none of the students will pay the fine or vacate their hostels. We demand that the university administration withdraw these orders as we have maintained right from the beginning that we do not have faith in this inquiry panel and it should be reconstituted, JNUSU vice-president Shehla Rashid Shora said.

We will begin an indefinite hunger strike from tomorrow (Wednesday) after staging a protest march from the universitys Ganga dhaba to administration block. The decision has been well-timed by the university officials to avoid any protests as summer break is about to begin but we will not bow down and continue our fight, she added.

Read: Kanhaiya says man tried to strangle him on plane, cops dismiss claim

On Monday, Khalid and Bhattacharya said the decision to rusticate them was unacceptable and termed as farce the inquiry by the high-level committee even as the students union threatened a countrywide campaign on the matter.

JNUSU rejects the punishment handed down by the administration on the basis of a farcical committee! Kanhaiya had tweeted.

The February 9 event led to the arrests of Kumar, Khalid and Bhattacharya on sedition charges after it was alleged that participants at the event shouted anti-national slogans.

The Delhi Police repeatedly claimed they had evidence against Kumar and the other students but failed to produce it in court, leading to their release from jail on bail.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended Italian marine Massimiliano Latorres stay in Italy till September 30. Latorre, along with his colleague Salvatore Girone, is accused of killing two fishermen off Kerala coast in 2012.

The court was informed by the Centre that international arbitration proceedings in the matter would be completed by December 2018.

A bench comprising justices A R Dave, Kurian Joseph and Amitava Roy asked the Italian authority in New Delhi to give an undertaking to abide by the conditions under which Latorre was allowed to leave India.

It said a fresh undertaking has to be furnished before April 30 when the earlier extension of his stay comes to an end.

Solicitor General (SG) Ranjit Kumar apprised the bench about the schedule of proceedings fixed before International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Germany.

End of 2018 is when the award will come, the SG told the bench, saying that India had not agreed for the conclusion of proceedings in 2019.

The apex court had on January 13 asked the Centre to apprise it of the status of international arbitration proceedings in the case.

The court had earlier stayed all criminal proceedings, including the trial of the two marines.

While allowing the joint request of India and Italy, the apex court had said the proceedings would remain stalled till the jurisdictional issue about which country has the right to conduct trial was decided through international arbitration.

The SG said that all the proceedings will remain stayed in India till the matter is pending in the tribunal. He also said the Government of India is clear that nothing can proceed till the tribunal passes the award.

Senior advocate Soli Sorabjee, appearing for the marine, wanted the extension of Latorres stay in Italy till the year end but the court did not agree with him.

Sorabjee was of the view that since there was no trial, there was no point in compelling him to come back.

The marines, who were on board ship Enrica Lexie, are accused of killing two Indian fishermen off the Kerala coast on February 15, 2012.

The counsel, appearing for victim fishermen, raised an objection that identical relief of allowing the other accused marine Salvatore Girone to leave India, should not be given.

The SG said that it has been told to the tribunal that India has the freedom to go ahead with the trial.
The Rajya Sabha on Tuesday again witnessed disruptions over the Uttarakhand issue, and the chair finally adjourned the Upper House for the day.

Soon after the newly nominated members were administered oath, the Congress and other Opposition parties started raising slogans against the Narendra Modi government and demanded a debate on the Uttarakhand issue.

2.30pm Rajya Sabha adjourned till 3 pm

The government and the opposition were once again at loggerheads of the Uttarakhand issue. Congress MPs were seen chanting anti-government slogans. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley accused the Congress of not waiting for the proclamation to be laid before the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

12.30pm Rajya Sabha was again adjourned till 2pm as Congress protest continues over Uttarakhand.



12.18pm Opposition in Rajya Sabha condemns rustication of JNU students

The opposition condemned the rustication of three students from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) the action.

Raising the issue, CPI-M member Tapan Kumar Sen described the punitive action of the JNU the most arrogant, anti-democratic act being patronised by the government.

Rusticating them, debarring them for five years and thereby taking vengeance against their educational career in a very unjust manner - this is a part of this governments project, Sen said.

CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury sought a proper debate on the issue. CPI leader D. Raja also raised the issue.

This house cannot be a mute spectator when such things are happening in JNU. This is very vindictive, revengeful action, Raja said.

Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien said that the universities are autonomous. Yechury countered that statement, saying the university has been established by an act of parliament.

Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad supported the Left leaders in decrying the punitive action taken by the university.

Universities atmosphere is being vitiated. It is the HRD ministry which is responsible, Congress leader Anand Sharma said.

Nominated members including Subramanian Swamy and Mary Kom, took their oath to Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

Kom, Swamy, journalist Swapan Dasgupta and former planning commission member Narendra Jadhav were among the nominated members who took oath.

Shiromani Akali Dal member Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa also took oath.

11.45am Statement on declassification of Netaji files in LS

Two crucial files relating to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose will be declassified by Japan this year-end, but the country has given no assurance regarding three more such files in its custody, government has said.

Minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju told Lok Sabha that these five files, which are with Japan, could be crucial to resolve the mystery over the fate of Bose.

Japan has conveyed to us that they will declassify two of the five files by the end of this year but no commitment has been given to the rest of the three files. But we are hopeful that they will declassify the remaining three files too, he said during Question Hour.

11:40 am : RS adjourned till 12 noon

Slogan-shouting Congress members on Tuesday forced the adjournment of Rajya Sabha till noon after the government rejected their demand for a discussion on a motion on dismissal of the partys government there.

Congress members trooped into the Well of the House shouting slogans against the Government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Leader of the House and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said no discussion other than on proclamation of President Rule in Uttarakhand can take place.

Justifying imposition of central rule in the state, Jaitley said the real breakdown of constitutional machinery happened in Uttarakhand when the presiding officer (Speaker) ignored the vote of 35 out of 67 members against the appropriation bill to declare it passed.

Deputy Chairman P J Kuriens pleading that the Chair was in favour of a discussion and the protestors should allow the House to function went unheeded, forcing him to adjourn the proceedings till 12:35 hours.

11am Anand Sharma, Pramod Tiwari give notices seeking suspension of business

Congress leaders Anand Sharma and Pramod Tiwari gave notices under rule 267 seeking suspension of business to take up discussion on use of Article 356 by the Centre to dismiss a democractically elected government in Uttrakhand.

While Naresh Agrawal (SP) too gave notice under same rule for discussion on the issue, Mayawati (BSP) supported the demand for suspension of business to take up the debate.

10.50am 35 out of 67 members give in writing that we voted against bill, but presiding officer says minority is majority: Jaitley

Jaitley said it had never happened in the history of independent India that a presiding officer of a state assembly has converted majority into minority and vice versa.

This is the real breakdown of constitutional machinery, he said.

He said 35 out of the 67 members in Uttrakhand assembly voted against the appropriation bill but the presiding officer came to conclusion that the bill has been passed. That is breakdown of constitutional machinery.

The Minister said discussion will take place when the proclamation for Presidents Rule is placed before the House. There is no procedure of having pre-proclamation discussion, he said.
Mocking the Congress-Left Front alliance in West Bengal, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said no alliance will survive in Bengal and both CPI(M) and Congress will turn into sign boards after the Assembly elections.

Let them (Cong-LF combine) win 20 seats. No alliance will survive here in Bengal. Both CPI(M) and Congress will turn into sign boards, Banerjee said in response to CPI(M) state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishras comments that after the fourth phase of polling in the state, the alliance was on its way of winning 200 seats.

Have faith on us. Since we came to power in 2011, we have tried our best to serve people and fulfil their requirement. People are now living peacefully. A decision has already been taken to create Sundarban a new district, she said while addressing an election rally here.

Alerting people against possible rigging by the opposition, the West Bengal Chief Minister said I have information that a plan has been chalked out by the opposition CPI(M) to rig polls at Raidighi. Booths have also been identified for the purpose. Remain alert and prevent any such attempt.

Campaigning for Trinamool candidate Debashree Roy, who is contesting against former minister and CPI(M) leader Kanti Ganguly from Raidighi, Banerjee said TMC is confident of winning the seat despite removal of SP, DM and a host of other officers from the district by the EC.

She also assured people to Re-elect our candidate Debashree Roy and we shall take care of you. I will visit again after the win.

Commenting on the fourth phase of polls held yesterday, she alleged that people in many places were not allowed by the opposition and central force to cast their votes and said Many issues will come up from this election.

Many development works have taken place in South 24-Parganas district. No riots broke out anywhere in the state or people were not cheated during our tenure, she said.

After the results are declared, nobody has to request for protection, she said adding We will protect everybody and all. People will get everything from the Ma, Mati and Manush government.

Banerjee is scheduled to address election rallies in Baruipur and Bhangor constituencies in the same district where polling will be held on April 30 in the fifth phase.
The Dadri police have ordered an enquiry into allegations that sub-inspector Akhtar Khan was abandoned by his team during a raid during which he was shot dead by criminals.

Read more: Police sub-inspector shot dead during raid at Greater Noida

Khan, 40, was leading a team that raided a hideout of criminals Furkan and Javed at Nai Abadi in Dadri, 30 km from Delhi.

His family and witnesses questioned the response of the raiding party after Khan was shot in the encounter that lasted over an hour.

More than 12 policemen were there but no one came forward to pull him out. All of them ran for cover and kept hiding till the criminals fled from the spot. Till that time, Khan had lost too much blood and died. I have heard that he was taken to the hospital at about 6am while the firing occurred at about 4.10am. What was the team doing for nearly two hours? asked Mohammad Shahrukh, a cousin of Khan who came from Aligarh to receive the body.

Khans family and witnesses questioned the response of the raiding party after Khan was shot in the encounter that lasted over an hour (Photo by Burhaan Kinu / Hindustan Times) (Hindustan Times)

He said the police team did not work professionally and failed to save Khan after he was injured.

When they knew that the suspects were armed, then why did they keep Khan in front of them? It shows the police team does not have enough experience to handle such situations. I would request the police to take action against the officers who left Khan after he was shot, said Shahrukh.

The house of the suspects is in the middle of a narrow lane in Nai Abadi. When the suspects started firing, the police team was exposed to the bullets and did not have any shelter to take cover.

They ran to take cover at the end of the lane and fired retaliatory shots, police said.

An inquiry will be conducted in the allegations levelled. If anyone is found lax in performing his duty, strict action will be taken against him, said Abhishek Yadav, superintendent of police (rural), Gautam Budh Nagar.

Shahrukh said Akhtars brother Yaseen Khan works with UP police and is posted in Aligarh.

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The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) state government in Delhi on Monday distanced itself from the dispute between Haryana and Punjab on sharing river water through the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal.

The Arvind Kejriwal-government submitted before the Supreme Court that it didnt want to take sides but was more concerned about Delhis water share under the project. Appearing for the Delhi government, senior advocate Indira Jaising told a constitution bench headed by justice AR Dave that her client would not go into the controversy of who was right. She requested the court to ensure that Delhis share of water was protected under the law. The Supreme Court is hearing the Presidential Reference on the SYL dispute.

We insist that the allocation to us should come. For us, the matter of concern is that the allocation of water should be protected, Indira Jaising submitted. The Delhi governments latest stand comes a week after it withdrew written submissions filed in the Supreme Court on behalf of Delhi Jal Board (DJB), in which it had supported Haryana. It was forced to do so after the Akali government of Parkash Singh Badal in Punjab accused Kejriwal of doublespeak on the SYL issue. Kejriwal was accused of telling voters in Punjab that the state did not have even a drop of water to share with Haryana, and saying exactly the opposite in the top court.

On March 14, the Punjab assembly passed a bill against building the SYL, allowing the return of canal land to farmers for agriculture. Three days later, the Supreme Court halted the move and appointed the Union home secretary and Punjabs chief secretary and director general of police (DGP) as joint receivers of land and other SYL property till further orders. Punjab said it had the right to terminate the water-sharing agreement with its neighbour.

Sacked Delhi lawyer says it was unfair

Advocate Suresh Tripathy, who had filed the written submission for the DJB and was sacked for acting beyond instructions, said the AAP government had claimed wrongly that he was not authorised to file the papers.

At this, the bench asked Delhi government counsel Indira Jaising to sort out the issue, to which the she agreed, saying: The submissions suggest that the Delhi government is supporting a particular party, which is not the case.
In a bid to reduce commuter woes and keep its suburban passengers informed about delays and disruptions, the Western Railway has launched a unique service through which commuters would be able to know the running status of local trains from simply giving a missed call.

The commuter needs to dial the Toll Free No. 1800 212 4502 and the call will get disconnected automatically after two rings subsequent to which an SMS will be sent informing the running status of the suburban trains.

This service was launched on Monday and the initial feedback from the commuters have very exciting, said Ravindra Bhakar, chief PRO of WR adding that Western Railway has hired a private agency to facilitate this service.

Outlining the importance of the service, Bhakar said, This service will be a convenience to the commuters as they will be aware of the running status of local trains and will be useful, in particular, during unusual occurrences or

disruptions.

WR has tied up with a firm in order to facilitate this

novel concept to its esteemed passengers and with this

commuters can check the running status of our suburban trains

by giving a missed call.

The information regarding running of services shall

be communicated to the firm by the Railways at a stipulated

schedule time, which in turn will be conveyed to the

passengers accordingly, Bhakar said adding that the best part

of this service is that the system can be used by any kind of

mobile phones be it smartphone or high end mobile or basic

mobile phone.

Even commuters would not need to have internet

connection and the service is totally free of cost and

commuters can also alternately register themselves with

www.mobitip.info for daily periodic updates at scheduled

times.

Passengers representatives and commuters have,

however, hailed this initiative with a cautionary note.

Kailash Verma, member of WRs Zonal Railway Users

Consultative Committee (ZRUCC), said, This is good that

railway is launching such tech-savvy initiatives, but the most

important thing is that it should stick with such initiatives

because in recent past many other message based services were

launched, but were scrapped over a period of time.

Another member of WRs Divisional Railway Users

Consultative Committee (DRUCC), Rajiv Singal also maintained

the same and said, Use of technology to empower the

commuters is always welcoming, but it must keep its servicing

intact so that its importance does not fade away.
A district court in Odisha sentenced a former school sub-inspector (SI) to life in jail on Tuesday for the murder of a school teacher, a case that became a major political issue in the state.

The district and sessions court of Rayagada found SI Netrananda Dandasena guilty of masterminding the murder and pronounced its verdict on the basis of the charge sheet filed by the state polices crime branch.

BK Sharma, special director general of Odisha crime branch, said Dandasena was awarded the life term under several sections of the Indian Penal Code for criminal conspiracy, abetment and murder. In our investigation, Dandasena was the only accused. We had filed the charge sheet after recording the statements of 36 witnesses and appointed a special lawyer to argue our case, Sharma said.

Twenty-nine-year-old Itishree Pradhan was a contractual teacher at a primary school in Tikiri, Rayagada, more than 600 km southwest of Bhubaneswar. She was set alight by an unidentified person in her room in the hostel on school premises on October 27, 2013.

Six days after the incident, Pradhan succumbed to her injuries in a hospital in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. She was survived by her aged parents and an unemployed brother, who she supported with her monthly earning of Rs 4,000.

Former Biju Janata Dal MP, Jayaram Pangi, who Pradhan accused of protecting Dandasena, welcomed the verdict, saying the case had been unnecessarily politicised. I was the first person to demand (a) CBI inquiry into the case, he said.

Pradhans death caused widespread resentment across Odisha as she was murdered despite lodging a sexual harassment complaint against Dandasena on July 18, 2013, and approached a host of officials  from the district collector to even the chief minister  for protection.

The teacher was apparently harassed for denying sexual favours to Dandasena and was targeted by a local gang that was politically backed.

The state government ordered the crime branch to investigate the case after Pradhans dying statements before magistrates in Rayagada and Vishakapatnam came out.

Pradhan said she was attacked because she refused to withdraw her complaint against the sub-inspector and accused Pangi of protecting him.

Following investigations, Dandasena was arrested, two officials of the Tikiri police station were dismissed and few government officials were suspended. However, the man who murdered Pradhan has not been caught yet.

The Supreme Court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take over the case following a petition by a law graduate, Sudipta Lenka. The CBI began investigations last February and is still probing the involvement of Dandasenas alleged accomplices in the murder.
A crippling drought has prompted the Narendra Modi government to look for solutions in genetically-modified (GM) crops, a sector it has tried to restrict due to ideological differences.

Sugarcane plantations, which guzzle more water than most crops, are being blamed for the drought crisis in two big producer states, Maharashtra and Karnataka.

The government is willing to back efforts and give permission for trials in drought-tolerant GM sugarcane by the Coimbatore-based Sugarcane Breeding Institute and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research under the farm ministry, according to a letter from Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar to former agriculture minister and leader of the Nationalist Congress Party, Sharad Pawar.

India is the worlds largest consumer of sugar and also the second-biggest producer, after Brazil. Frequent droughts have forced scientists to find sustainable ways of growing it.

GM crops have been stiffly resisted in the country by civil society organisations, including those affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ruling BJPs ideological parent, on grounds of bio-safety and market control by seed firms.

GM crops are those in which a gene has been altered for a specific outcome, such as pest-resistance.

The Modi government has no policy on shutting out GM crops, but it has focused more on traditional farming practices and has put curbs on GM options, since coming to power.

In December, the farm ministry intervened to bring down BT cotton seed prices and referred Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech (India) Private Limited (MMBL) -- a 50:50 joint venture of US biotech giant Monsanto Company  for a probe into alleged monopoly. BT cotton is the only GM crop India has allowed so far.

Pawar, who is a Rajya Sabha MP, had written to Javadekar seeking speedy permissions to try out drought-tolerant cane. Pawar is the president of the Pune-based Vasantdada Sugar Institute, which is trying to acquire a gene for drought-resistant sugarcane in partnership with the state-run ICAR.

The ICAR is trying to acquire a gene originally developed by Ajinomotto Company, a Japanese firm, through an Indonesian public-sector sugarcane firm. The Indonesians have completed advanced trails of drought-resistant sugarcane and both ICAR and Pawars institute are collaborating to import it, said Bhagirath Choudhary, head of the South Asia Biotech Centre, which is involved in the project.

The environment minister, replying to Pawar on March 29, said the review committee on genetic manipulation  a body under the biotechnology department -- is currently evaluating the Coimbatore-based facilitys application to start work on drought-tolerant GM sugarcane.

After approval by RCGM, the application will be recommended to the GEAC for necessary permission to conduct field trials, Javadekar said. GEAC stands for the genetic engineering appraisal committee, the GM crops regulator.

The biotechnology department recently set up a working group to consult with states in finalising modalities for notified GM field trial sites, Javadekar wrote.

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Jawaharlal Nehru University students and teachers criticised the high-level inquiry committees findings and said the rustication of three students over the February 9 incident was against natural justice.

Students called an all-party meeting on Monday night to discuss the future course of action. Teachers too held a meeting.

The punishments are not justified. Students, teachers and prominent personalities have said there are many loopholes in the procedure in which inquiry was done. Students were not even shown the evidence against them. This is against natural justice, said Ajay Patnaik, JNU teachers association (JNUTA) president.

He said teachers will meet university vice-chancellor M Jagdeesh Kumar on Tuesday.

Based on the committees recommendations, JNU administration rusticated Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya and Mujeeb Gattoo. Additionally, the campus is out of bounds for Bhattacharya for five years. JNU slapped a fine on 14 students. JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar was fined Rs 10,000.

There is no co-relation between the punishment awarded and the students crime. Students have been let off with fines and only some have been rusticated. I am being wrongly punished for acting as a whistle-blower. It was my moral duty to oppose such activities but now I have been fined, said JNUSU joint secretary and ABVP member Saurabh Sharma.

JNUSU vice-president Shehla Rashid also dismissed the panels findings.We reject this farcical enquiry report, as it is based on sheer vendetta and a biased enquiry. The students are all dedicated activists. This is a conspiracy to crush anti-Modi voices. We will also challenge this sham of a report, she said. The union also called for an emergency meeting.

What I am unable to understand is the quantum of punishment given to Anirban? We will have to find out how the punishment has been decided for the students, said Abhishek, a PhD student at the Centre for International Studies.
The issue of imposition of Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand continued to stall the Rajya Sabha for the second day on Tuesday but Lok Sabha, where the government has a majority, functioned normally.

The Lower House took up the demand for grants for railways for 2016-17. Members cutting across party lines enthusiastically took part in the proceedings up to 7pm. Opposition members also took part in debates and question hour.

But the Upper House, where the opposition has more members than treasury benches, witnessed repeated disruptions over the Uttarakhand political crisis. The chair finally adjourned the House for the day around 3 pm after repeated requests for peace went unheeded.

Soon after newly nominated members, including Mary Kom, Narendra Jadhav, Subramanian Swamy and Swapan Dasgupta were administered the oath, the Congress and other opposition members started raising slogans against the Narendra Modi government and sought a debate on Uttarakhand.

The Congress demanded an apology from the central government for what it said was the destabilisation of the Harish Rawat government.

Parliamentary affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the opposition was not interested in what the government had to say on the issue.

Opposition leader, Ghulam Nabi Azad, charged finance minister Arun Jaitley with trying to set a wrong precedent by accusing Uttarakhand assembly speaker, Govind Singh Kunjwal, of turning a minority government into a majority government in the hill state.

Jaitley defended the imposition of Presidents Rule and said it can be discussed in Parliament only when the proclamation is laid in both houses. But the Congress is not interested (in letting the proclamation to be placed in Parliament).

Congress members massed in front of the chairmans podium more than once, shouting slogans like Modi teri tanashahi nahi chalegi (Modi, your dictatorship wont be tolerated).

The Rajya Sabha has failed to transact any official business since Parliament convened on Monday.

In the Lok Sabha, the demand for grants for railways was passed after railways minister Suresh Prabhus reply.

Earlier, initiating a debate, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge criticised the government for indulging in gimmicks.

Among others, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, Yogi Adityanath (BJP), Tapas Mandal (Trinamool Congress), and Shrirang Appe Barne (Shiv Sena) spoke.

During the question hour, minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju said that two files related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, including one from the Prime Ministers Office (PMO), were missing.

Members posed questions on the severe drought and water crisis in parts of the country, especially in the Latur region of Maharashtra.

Agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh admitted that bhayankar (terrible) conditions prevailed in the Marathwada region. He said big dams did not help farmers and were built only to help big sugar mills.

This provoked angry reactions from opposition members, including Supriya Suley of NCP.

The government also asserted that the deployment of central forces at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) in Srinagar would not alienate the Kashmiri youth.

Even Jammu and Kashmir Police are outside the campus. So I dont think there will be any alienation, Rijiju added.
After a brief lull in the first half of the budget session, disruptions are back on the parliamentary menu. Key legislation such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST) bill await clearance from the House, but the Congress-led Opposition -- which has a majority in the upper house -- has taken the disruptive route.

Read more: Uttarakhand row rocks Parliament, Cong protests undemocratic move

The Communist Party of India (CPI) on Tuesday gave a motion of suspension seeking suspension of Zero Hour to discuss the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) issue in the Rajya Sabha. Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has issued a three-line whip to all its MPs in Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, asking them to be present in the Parliament till Friday. The Congress Party, on the other hand raised the Uttarakhand issue in the Rajya Sabha once again following which the House was adjourned till 12.

Uproar by Congress in Rajya Sabha over #Uttarakhand issue, members protest at well of the house pic.twitter.com/6mKpPS2Hzz  ANI (@ANI_news) April 26, 2016

Here are the key issues the Congress has against the BJP:

1. Uttarakhand: The party is seething with anger over its government being dismissed by the Union government. While observers say it was a result of the Congress inability to rein in rebel MLAs, the party sees it as a BJP ploy to destabilise one Congress state government after another across the country. After Arunachal Pradesh, this was the second Congress government to be dismissed this year.

2. Ishrat Jahan: The alleged encounter-killing of the 19-year-old girl has remained a bone of contention between the Congress and the BJP for years. Even as the BJP targets the former UPA leadership for changes made to the second affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, the Congress has decided to take up the issue on the floor of the House. This and Uttarakhand are the biggest grouses that the Congress holds against the Union government.

3. Pakistan probe team: The Congress has always been critical of the NDA governments alleged flip-flops on the Pakistan policy. Now, after the Centre allowed Pakistan to send a team to investigate the Pathankot attack, the Congress has found another reason to attack the ruling establishment. It has also questioned the outcome of the probe.

4. Communalisation of education institutes: Even during the Vajpayee rule, the Congress and other Opposition parties had been crying out against the alleged attempts to saffronise education. This time, following the incidents at JNU, Hyderabad University and Srinagar NIT, the Congress is accusing the BJP of trying to communalise academic institutes.
Details of Vijay Mallya and his familys assets should be disclosed to banks seeking loan repayment of more than Rs 9,000 crore from the liquor baron, the Supreme Court ordered on Tuesday.

The top court rejected Mallyas argument that the assets werent acquired from the loans. We do not find any tenable objection in disclosing the assets to the petitioners (banks), a bench of justices Kurien Joseph and RF Nariman said.

Mallyas lawyers said the industrialist   who left India on March 2 despite probes by the CBI and enforcement directorate -- was unwilling to return as banks wanted to see him in jail.

Read: Vijay Mallya may face expulsion from Rajya Sabha

They said Mallya wasnt a wilful defaulter and accused the banks and government of creating circumstances that force the 60-year-old to live abroad.

Appearing for the SBI-led consortium, attorney general Mukul Rohatgi said Mallya was a fugitive running away from justice, underlining the governments hardening stance on the industrialists loan default.

Read: Mallya in Lalit Modi-like situation after passport revocation

He submitted the liquor baron ran away with money that belongs to the people of India and not a king.

The disclosure will enable the 17-bank consortium to have a meaningful settlement of money owed by Mallyas now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, the court said.

The bench directed the SC registry to provide a list of assets -- furnished by Mallya in a sealed packet -- to the consortium after Rohatgi argued the liquor baron was playing hide and seek with the court.

Read: What led to the revocation of Vijay Mallyas passport

Rohatgi said Mallya was deliberately concealing because the industrialist had no intention of returning.

The development came a day after the parliamentary ethics committee recommended Mallyas expulsion from the Rajya Sabha. The foreign ministry has already suspended his passport and is consulting experts on his deportation.

Read: Mallya lives in $15 mn British mansion bought from Hamiltons dad: report

The SC bench also pulled up Mallya for not honouring its April 7 order that directed him to furnish asset details of his family and himself, specify an amount he will deposit and give a possible date when he can appear in court.

You have to respect our order. But you are not ready to show even a rupee of what you have, the bench noted. However, the court said Mallya and his family could avail legal remedies against banks.

Read: Not just Mallya: 6 cases where India tried to bring back the accused

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Over 150 prominent personalities have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, expressing their deep collective anxiety over the severe drought prevailing in many parts of rural India.

The crisis has only evoked a listless response from the government, they said, asking it to implement traditional relief measures and ensure that the MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gurantee Act) as well as the National Food Security Act are used effectively to counter the situation.

The signatories of the letter included activists Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander; economists Jean Dreze, Prabhat Patnaik, Jayati Ghosh, Amit Bhaduri and Utsa Patnaik; writer Arundhati Roy; and actors Naseeruddin Shah, Sharmila Tagore and Shabana Azmi, among others.

They said people across the country are struggling with rain shortfall  causing chronic agrarian distress and large scale migration of the rural population to cities. The problems arising from this are many, including broken childhoods and interrupted education, they added.

Read: Indias hottest town Titlagarh roasts at 48.5 degrees Celsius

Of the 33 districts in Rajasthan, 19 are reeling under a severe water crisis. The governments public health engineering department has taken up steps to transport water to around 17,000 of its 44,672 villages.

Purulia and Bankura districts in western West Bengal have been severely hit, with their ground water levels dipping sharply. This district has not seen rain since August last year. This followed two years of drought-like situation here. We are spending funds allotted by the 14th Finance Commission to tackle the situation. But the ground water level is so low in some areas that even digging tube wells is of no use. Wells are being dug on riverbeds, Purulia district magistrate Tanmay Chakraborty told HT.

River expert Kalyan Rudra attributes the drought-like situation to the abnormally high temperature, little or no rainfall, and the exhaustion of ground water.

A similar situation exists in many other states.

The activists have alleged that the governments response lacks urgency and compassion. They said that while workers havent been paid their wages for months, the states have been doing little to implement the Food Security Act  which would have helped 80% of rural households in poor states access half their cereal requirements free of cost.

The enormous distress  of food, drinking water, work, fodder for animals, and dignity  for hundreds of millions is utterly unacceptable, the letter said.
Indias external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, who is being treated for pneumonia in a private ward in the Cardio-Neurosciences Centre of New Delhis All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), is stable.

She is likely to remain admitted for a few days.

Swaraj, 64, was admitted to AIIMS at 4pm on Monday, with complaints of severe chest congestion and chest pain.

She is under treatment for fever, chest congestion with features of pneumonia. A medical team of specialists is looking after her. Her current condition is stable, the hospital said in a statement.

Swaraj has long-standing diabetes, which makes infection management critical. She underwent a series of tests recommended by a medical board comprising a team of multi-specialists, including cardiologists, pulmonologists and endocrinologists.

Swaraj was initially admitted into the hospitals old private ward and was later moved to the CN Centre on Monday night.

There is nothing to worry about. We had admitted her into one of our private wards under a team of multi-specialists but later moved to cardio-neurosciences centre. She has been put on antibiotics and is doing fine, said a senior doctor at the hospital.

We are waiting for all the test reports to know the exact picture, the doctor said.
Ratna doesnt remember how long she has been working at Texports Creations, a garments factory in outer Bengalurus Peenya industrial area. She travels six kilometres every day and earns Rs 6,500 a month, most of which goes in paying her rent.

Her husband died a decade ago but she managed to put her two daughters through college. Most of the money for their education and household expenses came from her provident fund.

I took breaks from my job every five years to get my provident fund (PF) amount  about 20,000 rupees or so  to pay for school fees, domestic expenses like rent advances, etc, she tells HT.

So if we dont get double PF (employer and employee contribution) then there is nothing left for us.

Ratna is among the 100,000 garment factory workers who came out on the streets of Bengaluru on April 19 to protest against the governments proposed changes in the PF withdrawal scheme.

They violently clashed with police and blocked highways.

Over a hundred vehicles were burnt and 43 policemen were injured. Over 80 workers and bystanders also sustained injuries and the loss to industry from the three-day closure was estimated around Rs 1,500 crore according to industry sources.

The unprecedented protests forced the government to roll back the proposed changes that barred workers from withdrawing their entire retirement fund in case of unemployment of two months or more.

Every month, salaried individuals contribute 12% of their pay to the PF and the employer matches this, creating a fund that is pivotal for low-income workers in a country with no formal social security net.

Out of 950 women in our factory, not even four or five have continuous service of five or 10 years. So when we read that the government has changed the rules, we were very upset, says Ratna.

Read | PF protests: 3-day ban on assembly of more than 10 people in Bengaluru

Bengaluru has about 700 garment factories where an estimated 1.2 million workers are employed. Around 90% of these workers are women, who report at work at 8.30am and leave around 6.30pm, travelling as much as 200 kilometres daily.

In a notification issued in February, the labour ministry said individuals will be able to withdraw only their contribution to the fund and the interest earned on it, and not the employers contribution.

There are women who work for a few months, accumulate their PF and resign so that they can pay their childrens fees. We tolerate much injustice and exploitation, this was the last straw, says Bharathi, who works for a factory that produces coats for Raymonds.

To survive and make ends meet, Ratna stitches petticoats at home. Many women do domestic work before reaching the factory, others string flowers or make agarbattis, she says.

This kind of pace cannot be kept up for long, so there is usual high attrition of workers. This benefits factory owners, who are saved from having to pay workers their gratuity.

They say that they wont pay us double PF. We are not going to agree, even if we die, says Anasuyamma.

Her co-workers Asha and Pavithra sit around with severe head injuries. Two others cannot speak as the police hit them on the mouth and face.

The simmering discontent drove the protests that saved the PF of 50 million Indians. But the struggle isnt over. Workers say the government has booked thousands of protesters and policemen are roaming the roads near the factories where the women work.

We cannot take any more injustice, madam,  s ay s Anasuyamma.
Its 11 in the morning on a weekday and the streets of Titlagarh are empty. Not even a stray dog in sight.

A small town of 60,000 people in western Odishas Bolangir district, Titlagarh is reeling under a blistering heatwave. The mercury touched 48.5 degrees Celsius on Sunday, the highest April temperature ever recorded in the state.

Titlagarh  which is locally known as Tatlagarh or sizzling place for being a heat island  ranks among the hottest places in the country. It recorded 50.1 degrees Celsius on June 3, 2003.

But the past weekend has been terrible even by the towns high standard as an unrelenting heatwave is scorching Odisha. The state has recorded 99 deaths so far from sunstroke-related ailments.

Read|Odishas Titlagarh sees highest temperature in India

Read|Heat wave scorches Odisha, 73 dead so far

Read|The heat is on: Mercury climbs to 47 degrees Celsius in Odisha

You can say there is an undeclared curfew in Titlagarh after 10am. If you go out, you are either a very brave person or you are an outsider, local Congress member Upendra Bag said.

Though summers are usually hot in Titlagarh, this time it feels like living in a furnace.

People try to finish their chores by 10am, rush into their homes and venture out only after sundown at 6pm.

Inside their homes, people try everything they can to beat the heat: from switching on airconditioners, aircoolers and ceiling fans to having food that is traditionally believed to cool the body.

The heat is on in Titlagarh and nobody dares to step out. (HT photo)

Airconditioners are giving up after the temperature shot past 45 degrees Celsius consistently in the past week.

Although we have airconditioners in office, these are no match to the rising heat, said Kailash Sahu, the sub-collector of Titlagarh.

Read|Odisha declares summer vacation for schools as heat wave continues

To make things worse, power outages and low voltage are adding to the woes.

Journalist Dilip Purohit who has to go out on assignments during the day deploys an array of home remedies to avoid sunstrokes. As soon as I leave bed at 5am, I sense the heat. By 9am it is unbearable and after 10am anyone out wont be able to last long. Even when I go out, I tie a wet gamchha (towel) over my head and drink as much buttermilk and soft drinks as possible. The heat is blinding, he said.

The standard food for the heat-harassed residents is pakhala  cooked rice normally soaked overnight in water  which is a popular dish in Odisha.

Even Marwari people in our town who eat chapatti are subsisting on pakhala now, said Sarat Mishra, a Titlagarh resident.

The baking sun has triggered a water crisis in the town, which is now increasingly recording long queues, frayed tempers and fights near supply taps and tankers. A junior engineer of the public health department was roughed up recently over a water tanker turning up late.

The town gets its water from the Tel river but that is hardly adequate. As the town sits on a rocky bed, groundwater is difficult to draw. The groundwater level is falling over the years, Mishra said.

Locals believe the Kumuda hill and a few other hillocks surrounding the town act as heat radiators, adding a few degrees more to the place.

As Titlagarh turns into a ghost town in daylight, all meetings, social events and even weddings are scheduled after nightfall. Bag, who heads an NGO, convened a meeting at 6 pm two days ago. No one turned up before 8.30pm.

The condition improved a little with the mercury dropping to 45.5 degrees Celsius on Tuesday.

The townsfolk have learnt to live with the heat, celebrating the summer sizzler in a popular music video some years ago.

Read|Heat wave spreads; Odisha, Telangana, Andhra worst-hit
The Supreme Court will on Tuesday hear a petition alleging that liquor baron Vijay Mallya is not cooperating in the probe initiated against him, and has refrained from disclosing his foreign assets.

A consortium of banks on Monday stated in a rejoinder to an affidavit filed by Mallya that disclosure of his foreign assets was significant for recovering its dues.

Mallya, who owes over Rs 9,000 crore to around 17 banks, flew to London on March 2 to allegedly escape his creditors. The businessman later proposed to pay a settlement amount of Rs 6,868 crore, an offer that was turned down by the banks.

In our rejoinder to Mallyas affidavit, we have stated that he has not even indicated the date of his return to the country, attorney general Mukul Rohatgi said, adding that the liquor baron also failed to deposit a substantial amount to establish his bona fide intentions.

Rohatgi said that the non-disclosure of assets-related information by Mallya prevents the banks from ascertaining his ability to repay.

Read: Mallya to lose MP tag? RS ethics panel to recommend expulsion

We have nothing to do with Mallyas claim that he cannot appear personally because of the governments action against him, the banks said in their affidavit. They also expressed disapproval over the fact that Mallya and his companies wanted to submit the data in a sealed cover to the apex court instead of them.

The rejoinder was filed in response to Mallyas affidavit, which claimed that banks had no right to seek information on his overseas assets because he was an NRI since 1988. The businessman stated that as he was an NRI, neither his wife nor his three children  all US citizens  were required to disclose their assets. My overseas assets were not considered while granting the loans, he said in a statement.

Mallya, however, said he was willing to deposit an aggregate of Rs 1,591 crore before the apex court to show that his intentions were bona fide.

The Supreme Court had earlier directed the businessman to disclose the total assets owned by him and his family by April 21, and indicate when he would appear before it. It had also asked Mallya to deposit a substantial amount to prove that he was serious about conducting meaningful negotiations and arriving at a settlement.

(With agency inputs)
A day after India cancelled the visa of Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa, China said on Tuesday that it had approached the Indian side through diplomatic channels against his visit to Dharamsala for a global Uyghur meet.

Chinese foreign office spokesperson Hua Chunying, answering a query at a press briefing, said that India and China should respect each others concerns and properly handle relevant issues.

Isa had voiced disappointment after the Indian home ministry cancelled his tourist visa saying it is not a valid travel document to attend a conference.

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is scheduled from April 28 to May 1 in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, as a closed door event. It is being organised by the US-based Initiatives for China.

Asked about her comments on the cancellation, Hua said: We have noted the relevant report. Upon learning that the Indian government would grant a visa for Dolkun, the Chinese side has immediately expressed its concerns with the Indian side through the diplomatic channel.

What I would like to stress is that Dolkun is a terrorist on the red notice of the Interpol and the Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is the due obligation of relevant countries. Sino-Indian relationship enjoys a sound momentum of development. The two sides should respect each others concerns and properly handle relevant issues, she said.
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) told the Supreme Court that private telecom companies had put blinkers on their eyes and were filling up their coffers without augmenting the infrastructure.

Attorney General (AG) Mukul Rohatgi told a bench of justices Kurien Joseph and RF Nariman that TRAI has to safeguard the interest of 100 crore telecom subscribers. He said the penalty imposed on call drop can be done away with if the companies compensate the consumer with equal number of free calls.

Rohatgi cited Telenors plan under which the company provides for a free call in lieu of a call drop. However, it is restricted to only Telenor subscribers. The AG said the other operators should consider offering this service to their consumers too. If they agree to do so, then we are open to considering dropping the penalty, Rohatgi said.

As per the TRAI regulation, under challenge by the operators, the mobile telecom companies have to pay must credit Rs 1 to a user for every call that ends abruptly due to poor mobile signal, subject to a maximum of Rs.3 per day. The notification was to take effect from 1 January onwards but has been put on hold till the SC verdict. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COA) has challenged the Delhi High Court order declining to set aside the regulation.

Last week Rohatgi had attacked the telecom companies for running a cartel. He said the telcos had invested just 4% to augment infrastructure in India whereas their profits had jumped by 48 %.

TRAI told the court the companies have never agreed to any arrangements it suggested compensating the consumers. Rohatgi claimed the regulator had invited suggestions from the telcos and details were uploaded on its website.

We suggested the service providers to re-credit the time back to the consumers for the call drop, we asked them to give free calls but every time they say it is not feasible, Rohatgi said.

The AG said a majority of the call drops are due to poor service. Sixty-five percent of call drops happen due to poor network, he argued.

Total of 96 percent of population is pre-paid customers. Average re-charge per day is Rs 10. More than 60-70 crore people deposit their money in advance with service providers without any interest being paid to them but when we ask these companies to compensate Rs 3 per day for call drops, then they say we cant do it, the AG said, defending the regulation.
Rejecting their claim that they were still in the party, the Congress chief whip told the Uttarakhand high court on Tuesday that nine rebel MLAs had in one voice with the BJP legislators told the governor that the Harish Rawat government was in minority and presented themselves as an alternative regime.

The submission was made before justice UC Dhyani by advocate Amit Sibal who further argued that the nine were paraded before the governor to show the new majority.

The judge was hearing the petition by the Congress MLAs who were disqualified by assembly Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal under the anti-defection law.

Through the letter of March 18 morning and later the appearance in person of all the 35, they were presenting themselves to the Governor as an alternative government. They (the nine) need not have gone in person, yet they were paraded. Why would they go in person if not to show that they constitute a new majority.

The joint memorandum was submitted on the letter head of Leader of Opposition Ajay Bhatt signed by all 35. It shows that the nine Congress MLAs were speaking in one voice with the 26 BJP MLAs, Sibal argued.

He also contended that the nine were hell bent on seeking the dismissal of the government, whatever it takes, be it making false statements or suppression of documents.

He also said that though the dissident Congress MLAs say they are willing to support another Congress government under another CM, this is not said in the memorandum to the governor and as it was a joint memo, the BJP MLAs would never say that.

Sibal said: Money bill or no money bill, on the morning of March 18 they told the Governor that the Congress government was in minority and that it was carrying on unconstitutionally. Therefore, their stand is clear and unequivocal.

Their conduct cannot get any more overt than this. Money bill was the essence, the core of the party of which they are members. So if they sought a division of votes, that amounts to opposing the money bill.
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a public interest litigation seeking registration of criminal cases and CBI inquiry against the Trinamool Congress allegedly caught accepting bribes in a sting operation conducted by Narada, a news portal.

A bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur told the petitioner  a social activist and businessman  that the PIL will be heard on April 29.

The petitioner, Biplab Kumar Chowdhury, has claimed he was forced to approach the SC because the authorities, including Lok Sabha Speaker, Bengal Assembly Speaker and state police officials have ignored his representation for acting against the politicians exposed in the sting operation.

Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan earlier last month referred the alleged bribery case involving the TMC leaders to the ethics committee for investigation and report.

The videotape clearly showed senior police official SM Ahmed Mirza accepting cash from the representatives of the company and acknowledging himself to be the key fund collecting agent of the political party and also a trusted lieutenant of Rajya Sabha member Mukul Roy, the petition said.

According to the petition, the news portal also listed the names of TMC leaders and those associated closely with them in accepting bribes and promising favours in return.
Days after a controversial poster depicting UP BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya as Lord Krishna triggered a political row, another one showing former CM Mayawati as Goddess Kali came up in Hathras on Sunday.

Mayawati is shown holding the chopped head of Union human resource development minister Smriti Irani in one hand, standing over the body of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is shown begging for forgiveness and assuring that job reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes would not be scrapped. It apparently referred to a statement made by Bhagwat last year that there should be a rethink on the continuation of quotas in jobs. Later, the government clarified there was no such move.

The poster surfaced at an Ambedkar shobha yatra and was removed by police soon after BJP workers expressed their furore.

The poster depicts the mental bankruptcy of BSP chief Mayawati. Our workers showed admirable restraint despite provocation, said UP BJP spokesperson Vijay Bahadur Pathak.

You will see bua-bhateeja posters soon, said a BJP worker, referring to Mayawati and UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav as aunt and nephew.

A few days ago, ahead of Mauryas visit to Varanasi, a poster showing him as Krishna, with the Sudarshan Chakra in one hand, went viral on social media on Ram Navami. It also displayed leaders including Mayawati, Akhilesh, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, UP minister Azam Khan, and AIMM MP Asaduddin Owaisi indulging in UP chirharan (stripping).

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Getting flak over its inability to control the spiralling prices of tur dal, the state cabinet on Tuesday approved a new law, which will help it fix the rate at which pulses are sold across Maharashtra.

Called the Maharashtra Pulses Price Control bill, the law will empower the government to intervene and fix the base rate for up to a year by issuing a notification. It also has a provision for penalty and a jail term from three months to a year to those found violating the law. The bill will now be sent to the President for his assent, before it is officially notified and brought into effect.

The rising prices of tur dal, which touched the Rs150-a-kg mark last week, had sent the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government into a tizzy, as it was attacked by both the Opposition and ally Shiv Sena.

While the government looks at the law as a quick fix to the rise in prices of pulses, government officials said its implementation was far from feasible.

According to food and civil supplies minister Girish Bapat, the act will avoid a sudden spike in prices, like the one witnessed recently. We will divide the state into four areas -- rural areas, district towns, A-class municipalities and metropolitan areas. A base rate will be fixed for each category and separate rates will then be decided for each area depending on the local dynamics there. However, this will be done only in times of a crisis.

Bapat said this would mean there will be a difference in the rates for Mumbai, a metropolitan area, and its neigbouring districts owing to variations in cost of transportation, cost of labour, etc. We will fix a base rate, but there might be 7-10% fluctuation in the range owing to local factors. The government, however, is yet to frame the rules for the Act. We will decide on the mechanism while framing the rules, he said.

The bill makes it mandatory for traders to print the prices of pulses on the packets and give receipts to consumers. Moreover, it has a provision to fix the responsibility on the officials of any firm, organization or establishment found to be violating the law.

An insider, not wishing to be named, said the plan was a knee-jerk reaction to the criticism and seemed impractical. The department is yet to frame the rules to fix the rates. While there has been little monitoring of our rationing system, how will we keep a check on the private traders sell pulses at?

Deepak Kapoor, secretary of the department, said, We will fix the rates for all areas in Mumbai. It is definitely workable. We will look at different factors in each area has and then finalise the rates.
Punjab director general of police (DGP) Suresh Arora on Tuesday entrusted ADGP, internal vigilance cell and human rights, Prabodh Kumar, with supervising the investigation of six major cases relating to attack on Shiv Sena and RSS leaders in the state.

The police are under fire following an increase in attacks on leaders of Hindu bodies, the latest being the murder of Punjab Shiv Senas labour wing chief Durga Prasad Gupta, who was gunned down by two assailants on Saturday at Lalhedi Chowk in Khanna.

Read: Four Shiv Sena leaders booked for firing in air at cremation in Khanna

On March 20, Phagwara youth wing president of Shiv Sena Sumit Bhandari was shot at and critically injured by a youth in broad daylight.

Read: Road rage: Shiv Sena youth wing leader shot at in Phagwara

On January 18, two men on a motorcycle had fired upon Rashtriya Swayamswak Sangh (RSS) leader Naresh Kumar (38) at Kidwai Nagars Shaheedi Park in Ludhiana and fled. The RSS leader had jumped aside to dodge the bullets and injured his hand a bit in the process.

Read: Unidentified men fire shots at RSS shakha in Ludhiana

Punjab Sena head gives up security

Expressing anger at the murder of Gupta, Shiv Sena, Punjab, chairman Rajiv Tandon has given up the police security. Tandon, who was provided six gunmen by the Punjab Police, said there was no use of his security as his companions were being murdered.

Its huge embarrassment for the police that our men are repeatedly being attacked and killed despite security. The police provide security to us for the sake of formality. The security is not adequate, said Tandon.
The Punjab and Haryana high court has sought the details on Maninder Singh alias Bittu Aulakh, one of the accused in the Bhola drug racket case, on a petition alleging that the government had not provided the information sought about security provided to Aulakh.

The order was passed by the high court bench of justice RK Jain on the petition by Sandeep Kumar Gupta, who had sought information following news reports in 2013 that Bittu Aulakh was arrested in connection with the Bhola drug racket case and at the time of the arrest he had police security provided by the government and his Pajero vehicle had a red beacon atop it.

The petitioner had sought information regarding the name of the officer/authority on whose directions the police security was provided to Aulakh, and particulars of private business/commercial establishments which had been provided security by the state since 2010. However, the information was declined by the government, claiming that the security wing was an exempted organisation under Section 24(4) of the RTI Act.

Justice Jain has issued direction to the Punjab home secretary to file an affidavit, giving details on Aulakh.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) district women cell secretary Dharmavati Mishra (45) was killed when the two-wheeler she was on was hit by a truck in the Focal Point Area, near Metro Tyres, on Monday morning.

Dharmavati was on her way to attend a bhog ceremony and was killed on the spot after the truck ran over her.

Focal point station house officer (SHO) Surinder Mohan said the truck driver fled from the scene, leaving behind the vehicle.

A case has been registered under Sections 279 (reckless driving) and 304-A (causing death due to negligence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against the unidentified driver.

The body has been handed over to relatives after the post-mortem that was conducted at Lord Mahavira civil hospital, said the SHO.

The news of the death has led to a pall of gloom among political circles, especially in the BJP. The family and other relatives paid their last rites to at the Jamalpur cremation ground.

While expressing his condolences, BJP district president Parveen Bansal said that Dharmavati had attended a party meeting just before her death.

She was an active member of the women wing of the party, he said.
Even after being removed as chief parliamentary secretary (CPS) on Tuesday, Inderbir Singh Bolaria, the SAD MLA from Amritsar South has no immediate plans of quitting the party.

Bolaria was the only CPS to be removed as chief minister Parkash Singh Badal elevated seven MLAs belonging to the SAD and BJP as CPSes, taking their strength to 25. Bolaria was among the first batch of 19 MLAs elevated as CPSes after the 2012 assembly polls.

Read: Five Akali, two BJP MLAs made CPS in Punjab govt, total now 25

I dont intend to quit the party, he said when HT wanted to know his reaction. He said he was busy in a family function and would react at a press conference in Chandigarh on Thursday.

Removal as YAD Majha president

Once a close confidant of revenue minister Bikram Singh Majithia, Bolaria was appointed the Majha zone president of the Youth Akali Dal (YAD) when SAD chief and deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal decided to revamp the youth wing by appointing separate presidents for the three zones in 2013. It was owing to his closeness to Majithia that Bolaria was earlier made the CPS.

He had assumed charge as YAD chief (Majha) amid fanfare with Majithia himself leading the road show in Amritsar. However, a year later, Bolaria was removed from the post following his differences with SAD leaders, especially Majithia.

Initially, the differences between the two were termed as personal, but with no efforts being made to clear the air, the gap between the two widened. Local Akali leaders, particularly those eyeing the Amritsar South assembly seat for the 2017 assembly election, were happy that the party had decided to sideline Bolaria, who was once the most important Akali leader in the district after Majithia.

Navdeep Singh Goldie, a Congressman who had joined the SAD during the 2014 Lok Sabha election, and Gurpartap Singh Tikka saw this as an opportunity to cosy up to Majithia and Sukhbir. The two are now among the frontrunners for the SAD ticket from Amritsar South in case the party decides to dump Bolaria, which now looks a possibility.

The gap between the SAD MLA and the Akali leadership further widened after Bolaria questioned Sukhbirs decision to locate the solid waste management plant at Bhagtanwala, an area in Bolarias constituency. He sat on dharnas with the locals who wanted the plant to be shifted to the outskirts as it could prove an environmental hazard. No one from the SAD came out to support Bolaria on this though some of the issues he raised were genuine.

As local Akali leaders distanced themselves from him, Bolaria decided to come close to food and supplies minister Adaish Partap Singh Kairon, the son-in-law of the chief minister, who is not on good terms with Majithia. Kairon told his department officials to ensure that maximum eligible families of Amritsar South were covered under the atta-dal scheme.

There have been reports that Bolaria may join the Congress, but at this stage he is not likely to risk losing his assembly seat.
After his visit to Canada was stalled by activist group Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), Punjab Congress chief Captain Amarinder Singh is connecting with the Canadian Punjabis through Skype from Chicago. Amarinder addressed a gathering of Punjabi NRIs in Canada through Skype on Monday.

Also read: ISI-link remark: Sikh group to file defamation suit against Capt in US

Accusing vested interests and anti-India forces of creating legal impediments to help and support the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Kapurthala MLA Rana Gurjit Singh, coordinator for his programmes in Canada, said on Tuesday that all the programmes in Canada will go on as per the schedule through Skype. Amarinder was to address gatherings in Toronto on Saturday and participate in a nagar kirtan on Sunday. A programme was scheduled for Friday in Vancouver. Rana Gurjit said the party was also trying to organise a function in the US, near the Canadian border, so that those who wanted to meet Amarinder personally could do so there.

Extended holiday!

Meanwhile, the cancellation of the week-long tour to Canada has come as an extended holiday for Amarinder and those accompanying him. Though Amarinder has appointed MLAs Kewal Dhillon and Sukhjinder Randhawa as coordinators for Chicago, several Punjab Congress leaders, who otherwise struggle to meet Amarinder in Punjab, are camping in Chicago and posting their pictures on WhatsApp and Facebook. Former MLA Raman Behl has shared his pictures with the media back home, and selfies and pictures of Amarinder, MLA Rana Gurmeet Sodhi and an officer on special duty (OSD) with Capts Pakistani guests have gone viral on the social media.

Amarinders next programme in the US is scheduled for Sunday at Los Angeles, followed by Fresno on Tuesday, San Francisco on Wednesday and New York on Saturday. At least three sitting and former MLAs are camping in each of these locations to make arrangements and many others have reached to mobilise Punjabi diaspora in the said cities. The Punjab Congress chief is slated to return to India from Chicago on May 11.

Meanwhile, the party has also hired a battery of lawyers in Canada to legally fight the complaint filed by Sikhs For Justice. Rana Gurjit said they have decided to get the issue resolved to avoid any ugly and untoward situation and Amarinder will again plan a visit to Canada sooner than later.
Unable to repay a loan, a farmer and his elderly mother allegedly committed suicide on Tuesday by consuming pesticide at Jodhpur village here when a commission agent, with the help of police and revenue officials, was trying to take possession of his land.

The deceased have been identified as Baljit Singh Ballu, 35, and Balbir Kaur, 62. Police said the farmers family had taken a loan from the commission agent by mortgaging two-acre land.

Its an old case going on between the two parties. Police and district administration officials had gone to the village to take possession of the land on courts order, said superintendent of police (detective) Swarn Singh Khanna.

According to sources, when the commission agent arrived at farmers house, the latter asked for some more time to repay the debt. His request, however, was turned down.

Some villagers gathered outside the house and started raising slogans against police and revenue officials following which protesters were detained.

The victim, meanwhile, rushed to the rooftop along with his mother and consumed pesticide. The duo was taken to the civil hospital where Balbir Kaur was declared brought dead. Ballu, who was referred to Rajindra Hospital, Patiala, died on the way.

Family members of victims have demanded registration of case against the commission agent.

Buta Singh Burjgill, state president, Bhartiya Kisan Union (Dakonda), said, Commission agent Teja Singh and his sons arrived at the farmers house with a pistol to take possession of latters land. While government officials were also present there, they didnt do anything to help the farmer.

Another farmer leader Darshan Singh Ugoke said, The victims family had taken loan of Rs 1.8 lakh in 2002 from the commission agent. In 2003, the agent, a retired cop, got some blank papers signed from victims father Darshan Singh. The agent then prepared an agreement showing selling of land by Darshan to one of his relatives.

Police have registered a case against Teja Singh and his sons Jaspreet Singh Jassa and Manpreet Singh Manna under section 306 (abetment to suicide) of the Indian penal code.

State agriculture minister jathedar Tota Singh said he has brought the matter to the notice of chief minister Parkash Singh Badal.

Read also: Two debt-ridden farmers commit suicide in Mansa

Must read: Farmers under Rs 69,000-crore debt, says Punjabi University survey

HT Explainer: With bill, Punjab attempts to pay its debt to farmers
The Punjab and Haryana high court on Monday dismissed the preliminary objections raised by Ranjit Singh Brahmpura, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) MP from Khadoor Sahib, on an election petition.

The high court bench of justice Rameshwar Singh Malik had reserved the order on March 30 to decide the legal point whether the petition could be heard further. The detailed order is awaited.

Brahmpura, responding to allegations, had submitted that they were baseless and that expenses incurred by him were duly filed before officers concerned; and that he had not come up with advertisements by using religious symbols.

Petitioners counsel, Surjit Singh Swaich, said petitioner Harminder Singh, a Tarn Taran resident, had approached the high court in July 2014 alleging that the SAD leader had got issued election advertisements on TV channels using the sacred religious symbols of Sikh religion, including pictures of the Golden Temple, etc, to woo voters. It was also alleged that Brahmpura had also indulged in corrupt practices of not filing the correct account of election expenses before the district election officer.
Dissatisfied with the response of the ministry of civil aviation on the delay in the start of international flights from Chandigarh international airport, the Punjab and Haryana high court, on Monday, sought a response from seven airlines in the country by May 10 on whether they were ready to start international operations.

The directions came even as the high court bench of justice SS Saron and justice Gurmit Ram observed five times during the hearing that it did not want the airlines to become party to the case, stating that it would enlarge the ambit of the petition.

Jet Airways, Indigo and Air India, among others, have also been asked to list difficulties being faced in starting international operations and suggest solutions. The court has directed the ministry of civil aviation and the Chandigarh International Airport Limited (CHIAL) to serve notices to the airlines.

Ministry says Indigo ready to start

In the hearing that lasted over two hours, civil aviation ministrys counsel, assistant solicitor general Chetan Mittal, told the court that Indigo was ready to commence operation and Air India was also in the process. However, he failed to submit any definite plan especially with regard to foreign airlines.

Let the land be returned to villagers (from whom it was acquired). Poor people (are) running here and there. You have fooled these 320 villagers, justice Saron remarked as the Centre failed to submit any definite plan.

The HC was also anguished over the fact that it was the CHIAL CEO who wrote to international carriers seeking the commencement of international operations from city airport. Who is he? It (letters) should have been done (written) by the ministry, the bench remarked as court was told that 36 international carriers had been approached in March.

Appearing for CHIAL, senior advocate Atul Nanda informed the court that out of these 36 carriers, seven had responded stating that they would examine the proposal

of CHIAL, after deliberating with their respective governments. The HC was also informed that as directed, Customs facility etc had been added at the airport.

Appearing for the petitioner, Mohali Industries Association, senior advocate Puneet Bali asserted throughout the hearing that airlines should be made a party to the case, so that the real picture could emerge.

The bench observed that the civil aviation ministry should have written the letters as who would take a CEO seriously.

Let it (the airport issue) be given a decent burial. You (govt) have made enough mockery of system and the HC. I have grown old. I cant take this much stress. You will be happy in your cocoon in Delhi and we will live within our means..., justice Saron, said asking the government to disband the airport and return the land acquired.
When Chief Justice of India (CJI) TS Thakur broke down in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the burden of work on the judiciary, the huge backlog of cases in courts at all levels came into the limelight. A look at the tricity shows that Chandigarh has the maximum pendency of cases at 33,506 in its district courts at present.

The city is followed by Panchkula (Haryana) at 15,496, and SAS Nagar (Punjab) at 20,172 cases. And, more than the shortage of judicial officers, it is the shortage of public prosecutors and the increase in filing of cases that has added to the pendency, experts say. No wonder, the CJI also talked of depleting faith of the common man in the justice system.

In Chandigarh, criminal cases (17,850) are more than the civil matters (15,656). There are a total of 30 judges, which roughly means pendency per judge is 1,117.

Of these cases, only a little over 2% are 5-10 years old, while 18% cases are 2-5 years. The majority, nearly 80% are less than two years old. But the growth rate exceeds the disposal rate  according to National Judicial Data Grid, at the Chandigarh district courts, 2,658 cases were disposed of but 2,998 cases were instituted last month.

Sunil Toni, president of Chandigarh District Bar Association, said, Though the pendency here has gone down in comparison to previous years, judiciary can work more efficiently if we get more judges. Primarily, we require more clerical staff too.

Balram K Gupta, director of the Chandigarh Judicial Academy, echoed this: Pressure is mounting every day so we need to increase the number of judges. Other alternative dispute redress (ADR) systems and lok adalats are efficient means to expedite cases.

In Panchkula, 15,496 cases are pending before the district courts, of which the primary chunk is criminal cases. There are 9,527 criminal cases while civil disputes are 5,969. Including the two benches at Kalka, there are 14 judges, which means the per-judge pendency at 1,107 is slightly lower than that in Chandigarh.

Here, too, more cases are being filed than disposed of. In April, 1,757 cases were disposed of while 1,997 cases were filed.

President of the District Bar Association, Panchkula, Jagpal Singh said, Courts should prioritise cases by how long they have been running. Lok adalats and mediation should be encouraged where advocates could also contribute. Specially designated courts such as those for crime against women also help. And we must have more judges.

SAS Nagar, however, has a slightly different shade as civil matters dominate the district courts assigned for it. While there are 12 judges, no less than 20,172 cases are pending here; of which 12,141 are civil while about 8,031 are criminal proceedings. The per-judge pendency is significantly higher here at 1,681.

With numerous real estate projects coming up in SAS Nagar district, civil cases pertaining to land acquisition and disputes among the owners dominate. Interestingly, in Dera Bassi the major chunk of cases pending pertains to road accidents while in Kharar petty offences dominate the civil cases, said a court official.

Over 4,400 cases are pending in Kharar sub-division alone which has just four judicial magistrates, while in Dera Bassi there are over 4,200 cases in the courts of three judicial magistrates.

SAS Nagars district courts came into existence in 2006 when it became a district; and it was only last week that a district and sessions judge was appointed here as such.

Before that, its district courts were being administered by the district and sessions judge of Rupnagar.

The court operating from Kharar earlier was shifted to Community Centre, Phase 3B1, SAS Nagar, in 2006 and it was only in January this year that the court was shifted to a new complex in Sector 76.

Procedures need to be changed along with appointment of judicial officers and public prosecutors. Also, efficiency of the process-service agency that delivers summons has to be made increased, said SAS Nagar district bar association president Amarjit Singh Longia.
Not every doctor who retires from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) opts for perks offered by private hospitals.

A few retired senior consultants of the PGIMER have approached the UT health department with an offer to serve patients at government hospitals in the city on honorary basis.

During a meeting in this regard on Monday, health officials appreciated the offer, saying that it will provide better services to patients.

A group of retired PGIMER doctors have put forth a request to the UT administration, wherein they have offered to work on honorary basis in the city hospitals. Today a meeting was held to look into the proposal. The things are still at a preliminary stage and we have to decide the nitty-gritty, including days of working and timings, said an official of the UT health department. The official said the department received the proposal a few months earlier, and is trying to revive it, for which the meeting was held.

In the UT health department, there are 46 MBBS doctors (regular) and 89 specialists (regular) as on June, 2015. Under the National Health Mission, 175 posts were sanctioned, of which 119 have been filled. These include 29 specialists, 57 medical officers, 12 BDS and 21 Ayush doctors.

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District fire department was kept busy in the past 24 hours, with fires breaking out at six places in the city and its adjoining areas. The incidents rendered over three dozen people homeless, besides causing damage to articles and properties worth lakhs. While two incidents were reported from slums, three fires broke out at factories and another fire occurred at a wheat godown.

Ladhowal slum

As many as 45 slum dwellers were rendered homeless after a fire broke out at the slum near Ladhowal Toll plaza on Sunday evening.

Fire broke out around 6:15pm, when most of the labourers were off to work in the nearby villages. Shanties of eight families were destroyed, and all their belongings, including eatables, clothes, utensils, cash and other valuables were gutted.

Two fire tenders were rushed to the spot and the firefighters took around 45 minutes to douse the fire. However, no casualty was reported in the incident.

The homeless slum dwellers are now waiting for financial help from the district administration and the NGOs.

Ram Singh, a slum dweller, said, All of us were working in the fields at a nearby village when fire broke out. I have lost everything in the incident. I had kept Rs 1,000 cash in my house. Now, we have nothing to eat and we spent entire night in the open.

Manju Devi and her husband Ashok were running a small shop from their shanty, which was engulfed in the fire.

Fire officer Rajinder Sharma said, Fire tenders were rushed to the spot immediately after receiving information. Exact reason behind the fire is unknown.

Sources said that it was suspected that someone might have thrown a burning cigarette that led to the fire. They said there was no chance of a short circuit, as the slum had no power supply.

Dhandari slum

A major fire broke out at a slum at Dhandari on Sunday night. Local resident Gaganpreet Singh, who was returning from a wedding noticed the fire, and called the fire department for help. Fire spread to four shanties within seconds, he said.

The fire wing has confirmed that fire took place at the slums, but the Dhandari police had no information about the incident. Sources said that articles of slum dwellers were gutted in the incident.

Plywood factory

Another fire broke out at a plywood factory on Hambran Road on Sunday night. Rajinder Sharma informed that a fire tender was rushed to the spot after they received information at 9:35pm. The fire was brought under control within an hour. Articles and property got damaged in the incident.

Wheat bags gutted

On Monday morning, over 31,000 bags of wheat were burnt after a fire broke out at the godown of Punjab Agro food supply at Mullanpur Dakha, 15 kilometres from Ludhiana. After a prolonged struggle, four fire tenders controlled this fire, which started around 10am.

As labourers came to know about the fire, they informed officials.

The loss of wheat gutted in fire is estimated to be in lakhs. As firefighters sprayed water to douse the fire, the remaining wheat was also affected with water resulting to more losses.

Officials, including sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) Richa, Punjab Agro DM Jagtar Malli, tehsildar Yashpal Singh and police reached the spot to take stock of the situation.

SDM (west) Richa said, The reason behind fire is not known. Three fire tenders were rushed to the spot and fire was brought under control by evening. We are studying the damage.

Fire officer Rajinder Sharma said, Two fire tenders were rushed from Ludhiana and another from Jagraon. Fire was controlled within two hours, but tenders remained stationed there to tackle any situation.

Punjab Agro DM Jagtar Singh Malli said the exact loss was not known, but they would find out the estimated loss in a couple of days.

Tyre factory

A major fire broke out at Poddar Tyres Limited, a factory, at Jugiana near Ludhiana on Monday afternoon. Articles worth lakhs were gutted. The firm deals in manufacturing two-wheeler and rickshaw tyres and tubes. Raw and packing material was stored in the godown, which was completed destroyed in the incident.

Besides, godowns roof was completely damaged, but no casualty was reported.

A security guard at the factory said he had noticed smoke coming out of the godown around 1pm and rushed immediately towards it. We made efforts to douse the fire, but to no avail. The fire team reached around 30 minutes after the fire broke out.

Fire officer Rajinder Sharma said, As many as 10 fire tenders were rushed to the spot. The tenders made at least 50 rounds to bring water for sprinkling. The factory staff was also seen helping the firefighters.

It took them around three hours to douse the fire. Fire tenders were called from all stations in the city, he added.

Factory finance and accounts vice-president Raj Masih said, It is suspected that articles worth `60 lakh were gutted. Reason behind fire has not been ascertained. Exact damage is yet to be surveyed.

Bicycle parts unit

A fire took place at a bicycle parts unit at Focal Point around 3:45pm on Monday. A fire tender from Gill Road fire station was rushed to the spot.

Leading fireman Pardeep Kumar informed that the fire broke out after blast occurred in a furnace at the factory. No casualty was reported, he added.
Bhagat Singh Memorial Foundation Pakistan chairman Imtiaz Rashid Qureshi has expressed the hope that they would be able to prove the innocence of Shaheed Bhagat Singh in the Saunders murder case in the Lahore high court.

While talking to mediapersons at the residence of former MLA Rana KP in Rupnagar on Tuesday, Qureshi said the foundation had filed a petition in the Lahore high court for reopening the Saunders murder case, to prove Bhagat Singhs innocence, in May 2013.

He said the single judge had heard the petition and following their averments, the petition was sent to the chief justice for the constitution of a larger bench. Thereafter, a division bench was constituted in February this year.

However, during the first hearing, the foundation objected saying the division bench could not hear the case as the three-judge tribunal of the high court had conducted the Saunders murder case and now the case should be heard by the five-judge bench. Now, the petition is pending before the chief justice for constitution of a larger bench, he said.

Qureshi said the FIR regarding the Saunders murder case was lodged at Lahore against unidentified persons and had the names of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. He said it was a sham trial against Bhagat Singh and more than 450 witnesses were not given an opportunity to depose in the case, and only 25 witnesses had deposed against Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev.
With the Lok Sabha too passing the Sikh Gurdwaras (Amendment) Bill, 2016, on Monday, the plan to debar Sehajdhari Sikhs from voting in gurdwara management elections in the Acts application area  Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh  has cleared the Parliament test.

Read more: Bill to exclude Sehajdharis from gurdwara polls gets LS nod too

Only a formal nod by the President is now awaited as the Rajya Sabha had passed the bill unanimously last month.

Read more: Amarinder says SGPC Act amendment unfortunate; will divide community

This primarily covers the Amritsar-headquartered Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), which controls Sikh shrines in these four states, including the Golden Temple. Other bodies such as the one in Delhi may follow suit, as per the respective procedures. But what are these definitions of Sikh, and is the issue as straightforward as it may look? Here are the answers:

Who is a Sehajdhari?

As the Punjabi word sehaj here means gradual, Sehajdhari in Sikhism means one in the process of adopting the religion. Anyone belonging to a non-Sikh family who may not wear symbols of Sikhism (or Khalsa Panth) but believes in Sikh gurus and Guru Granth Sahib is a Sehajdhari. The definition of Sehajdhari has no sanction in Sikhism as far as its tenets concerned. This nomenclature was added to the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925, and they got SGPC voting rights in 1944, under British rule.

Who is an Amritdhari?

An Amritdhari Sikh is a baptised Sikh who has partaken of Amrit (holy nectar), recites the path (prayer) every day, and keeps the five symbols of the faith  kesh (unshorn hair), kangha (comb), kada (metal bracelet/bangle), kachha/ kachehra (underpants), and kirpan (a short sword/dagger).

What are Patit Sikhs then?

A Patit Sikh is one born in a Sikh family but who does not practise Sikhism, that is, does not keep unshorn hair. It also includes those who were once baptised but not following the Rehat Maryada (Sikh religious code) any longer.

And those who follow Five Ks but arent baptised?

They are called Sabat Surat Sikhs (complete by appearance), and continue to have the voting rights.

Who has what rights now?

Sabat Surat Sikhs can vote; Sehajdharis cannot, nor Patits; while Amritdharis can vote as well as contest the polls. Simply put, Sikhs with shorn hair have no voting rights now. However, there is no bar on them visiting gurdwaras. Disfranchising them from the SGPC polls does not exclude them from the larger Sikh identity.

Why did SAD and SGPC want Sehajdharis out?

The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)  Punjabs ruling party in partnership with the BJP; which also controls the SGPC for years  lobbied for the exclusion. It says the bill was necessary as only Sikhs be involved in the management of shrines. Politically, a smaller electorate is easier to handle, while it also helps the SAD strengthen its Panthic, or politico-religious, credentials. The SGPC does not want outsiders in the core of the Panth. According to the Sehajdhari Sikh Party, out of the 1.75 crore Sikhs as per the 2011 census, 70 lakh are now pushed out of the religio-management.

How did it come about?

It was during the last BJP-led NDA regime, in 2003, that the Union home ministry sought to amend the Act of 1925 by way of a notification to exclude Sehajdharis. But that was quashed by the Punjab and Haryana high court on a petition by the Sehajdhari Sikh Party in 2011, saying that the amendment had to come through the legislature. Then, as the Narendra Modi-led NDA regime came in, SAD started lobbying hard.

What next, and any hitch?

The HC had quashed the 2003 notification of debarring Sehajdharis in 2011. But elections for 170 members of SGPC general house had been held just before that, by excluding the Sehajdharis as per that very notification.

The SGPC moved the Supreme Court, which gave temporary relief by freezing the elected general house. It allowed the pre-election 15-member executive body of the SGPC to remain functional. That was to be until a final call was taken by the legislature.

Now, when the bill becomes law, the home ministry will go to the SC to get that 2011 SGPC general house de-freezed, since the amendment is with effect from 2003. And that house will then pick a new SGPC executive body, including the president. As per practice, SGPC general house polls are to be held every five years while an executive chosen each year. Apart from the 170 elected members, the SGPC house has 15 nominated members (eminent Sikhs). And the five high priests are ex-officio members but without voting rights in the house.

Whats the immediate politics ahead?

With the Punjab assembly polls less than a year away, the SAD would strongly project itself now as a party of real Sikhs. This bill would help it strengthen its core constituency, that is, the Panthic vote-bank; especially in the wake of disquiet in the Sikh community after a series of sacrilege incidents last year. It will also allow the Akali Dal  which lords over the cash-rich SGPC  to gain a tighter control over the gurdwara management body. It can now reshuffle the SGPC executive, including president Avtar Singh Makkar.

Read more: Badal thanks Parliament, Centre for SGPC Act amendment

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Chandigarh

With the deadlock between the Centre and the Supreme Court over the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) on for over a year now, the Punjab and Haryana high court is one of the worst affected in terms of vacancies of judges.

The high court has 46 judges against the sanctioned 85, while three judges are scheduled to retire later this year and another seven in 2017. The number of vacancies in the high court is one of the five highest in the country.

In September 2014, the high court had got 12 new judges and the number had gone up to 59, which later fell owing to retirements and transfers. Only one or two judges could be added in 2015 as the Supreme Court and the Centre locked horns over the NJAC, being set up for the appointment of high court and Supreme Court judges. Since July 2014, the high court has been functioning without a regular chief justice after then chief justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul was transferred to the Madras high court.

The pendency of cases, which was already a staggering 2.97 lakh cases in 2014-15 is set to increase owing to shortage of judges and increased litigation. This year, there will be an increase of more than what it was last year. More and more cases are being filed, but the disposal rate is not encouraging, a top official said, adding that judges were so overburdened that the daily case listing before some benches went up to 100. The annual report on the state of affairs of the high court for 2015-16 is to be released later this year.

Situation also grim in lower courts

The situation is equally grim in the lower courts of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh, where the posts are sanctioned by respective governments in consultation with the high court. There are 19 sessions divisions in Punjab, 21 in Haryana and one in Chandigarh, a total of 41 sessions divisions. In Punjab the sanctioned strength is of 672 judges; there were 505 judges in 2014 and another 100 were added in 2015. In Haryana, there is a sanctioned strength of 644 judges; there were 485 of them in 2014 and another 100 were added in 2015. Chandigarh has all 30 posts of judges filled.

According to a report of 2014-15, the pendency in Haryana is 4.93 lakh cases and in Punjab 5.07 lakh cases. Chandigarh has 40,000 cases pending as per the report, with a total pendency of 10 lakh cases in the two states and the union territory.

Filing of cases has gone up manifold, but recruitment of judges has not been done in proportion to it. The situation is grave more in lower courts. Not only vacancies of judges, but a holistic view of the problem needs to be taken to speed up the justice delivery system, high court senior advocate RL Batta said.

Punjab advocate general Ashok Aggarwal said, The strength of judges at all level needs to be increased. The present strength is not enough to clear the backlog and deal with the present inflow of cases. But I would not blame any particular government or institution. The system is to be blamed and corrective measures need to be taken by the government as well as courts.

Haryana advocate general BR Mahajan said, The vacancy of judges is one of the reasons behind the pendency. There are other issues as well. We need to think of the problem holistically, be it infrastructure or vacancies. All these issues require attention of the government and courts as well. Of the issue of vacancies in lower courts, it is the high court that has to fill them. As many as 119 posts were advertised, but only 50-odd suitable candidates were found.

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A Delhi police team arrived in Jamshedpur on Monday, bringing with them suspected al-Qaeda operatives Abdul Sami and Abdul Rehman Katki and handing them over to their Jamshedpur counterparts.

Sami, who hails from Jamshedpur, was arrested from Mewat, Haryana, and Katki, his alleged mentor, was arrested from Odisha in December 2015. They are accused of recruiting youngsters from the steel city and indoctrinating them to wage war against India in the name of jihad.

An FIR was lodged against them in January after the Jamshedpur police arrested two suspected al-Qaeda sleeper cell members on the eve of Republic Day.

Ahmed Masood Akram Sheikh alias Masood alias Monu was arrested from Dhatkidih area while Nasim Akhtar alias Raju was nabbed from Road No 6, Zakirnagar, Old Purulia Road.

The police said during interrogation, Monu and Raju had spilled the beans about their modus operandi and said they were influenced by Katki and Sami to join the terror group.

A senior police officer not authorised to speak to media said Jamshedpur police had recently prayed in the court for the remand of Kakti and Sami, who were nabbed by the NIA and lodged in Delhis Tihar jail.

During interrogation by the NIA, Sami and Katki had revealed that they used to frequent Jamshedpur and motivated youngsters at different strategic points, one of them being the Sakchi Jama Masjid. The two had travelled to Saudi Arabia several times where they met their mentors and senior leaders.

Sami had even gone to Pakistan for terrorist training. According to the police, Masood said he had one more operative in his cell who may have visited Pakistan but claimed to know him only by face.
Actor Radhika Apte feels Tamil superstar Rajinikanth is very inspiring and that there is no one else like him. She is currently working with him in the Tamil film Kabali.

Who wouldnt enjoy working with Rajinikanth? I enjoyed a lot. I think it was one of the best experiences of my life, because it was Rajini sir. It was very inspiring, hes such a wonderful man, there is no one like him, said Radhika about her experiences at the trailer launch of her film Phobia. She declined to answer if she was doing any action in the film.

In Kabali, directed by Pa. Ranjith, Rajinikanth reportedly plays a character based on a real-life don and Radhika plays his wife. The final schedule was shot in Malaysia recently. Malaysia shoot was very good, there was a lot of heat, shooting is over and dubbing is going on. It will release soon, she added.

Read: Radhika Apte wins best actress award at Tribeca Film Fest

Read: Rajinikanth, Radhika Apte in Malaysia for Kabalis final shoot

In her Hindi film Phobia, she plays an agoraphobic, a person who has a phobia of open spaces, and doesnt want to step out of the house. But certain incidences in the house make her want to leave the house, making her battle with the phobia.

Actor Rajinikanth is very inspiring, feels Radhika Apte. The veteran actor receives the Padma Vibhushan award from President Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi. (PTI)

About the psychological thriller, she said: It was one of the most difficult films to do, there was a lot of research that went into it. It is an actually disorder, it has its own symptoms, it is biological. Panic attack comes like how someone develops fever. You cant do anything about it, because it naturally comes to you.

I think there is a very thin balance when youre trying to say a few things and also when we had to make it gripping and edgy. It used to be lots of discussions on the sets every day. We shot it in a very few days, so it was very hectic. Emotionally and physically it was stressful, but I had a great time playing it.

The film is directed by Ragini MMS director Pawan Kirpalani.

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The Bangladesh wing of Al Qaeda on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the killing of a gay rights activist and his friend in the national capital.

A statement from Al Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent (AQIS) said Xulhaz Mannan, editor of the LGBT magazine Roopbaan, and Samir Mahbub were killed by mujahideen because they were pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh.

Alhamdulillah. By the grace of Almighty Allah, the mujahideen of Ansar-al-Islam (AQIS, Bangladesh branch) were able to assassinate Xulhaz Mannan and his friend Samir Mahbub Tonoy, the statement said.

They were working day and night to promote homosexuality among the people of this land since 1998 with the help of their masters, the US crusaders and its Indian allies, it added.

Unidentified men stabbed and killed Mannan and Tonoy on Monday evening. Besides editing the countrys first and only LGBT magazine, Mannan was an employee of USAID.

A policeman was injured when a patrol team chased the attackers while they were fleeing from Mannans flat. A security guard of the building where Mannan lived was also injured.

The guard told reporters that five to six youngsters came to the building, posing as courier service staff. He said they were young and carried bags, and one of them had a pistol.

Officials said two separate cases had been filed regarding the murders, one by the police and another by Mannans brother.

The Inspector General of Police said some evidence had been found at the scene of the attack and pledged to bring the killers to book. No arrests have been made so far.

The killings were condemned by US Ambassador Marcia Bernicat, secretary of state John Kerry and Amnesty International. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has vowed to bring the killers to justice.

The killings took place just two days after unidentified men hacked to death university teacher Rezaul Karim Siddique in the northwestern city of Rajshahi.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for killing Siddique, according to US-based SITE Intelligence Group, but Bangladeshi authorities have said the group has no presence in the country.
Albert Einsteins theory of general relativity is to be put to the test by a newly launched satellite in an experiment that could upend our understanding of physics.

The French Microscope orbiter will try to poke a hole in one of Einsteins most famous theories, which provides the basis for our modern understanding of gravity.

Scientists will use the kit to measure how two different pieces of metal  one titanium and the other a platinum-rhodium alloy  behave in orbit.

In space, it is possible to study the relative motion of two bodies in almost perfect and permanent free fall aboard an orbiting satellite, shielded from perturbations encountered on Earth, said Arianespace, which put the satellite into orbit on Monday.

Einsteins theory suggests that in perfect free-fall, the two objects should move in exactly the same way. But if they are shown to behave differently the principle will be violated: an event that would shake the foundations of physics, Arianespace said.

Also aboard the Russian Soyuz rocket launched from French Guiana was an earth-observation satellite equipped with radar to monitor the planets surface to track climate and environmental change and help in disaster relief operations.

That satellite, along with another launched two years ago, is part of the 3.8-billion-euro ($4.3-billion) Copernicus project, which will ultimately boast six orbiters in all.

Three previous launches from Arianespaces Spaceport in French Guiana, an overseas territory that borders Brazil, were delayed by poor weather and technical issues.

A countdown on Sunday was halted after scientists observed an anomaly, the agency said in an earlier statement, while adverse weather conditions had thwarted other attempts.
Afghanistans vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum has been denied a US visa for his activities as a warlord, including the alleged killing of hundreds of Taliban prisoners by his militia, according to a media report.

Dostum, a leader from the ethnic Uzbek minority, is the second-ranking official in Afghanistan. Though he was eager to visit Washington and discuss how best to overcome the Taliban, US officials found themselves in the unusual position of threatening to deny him a visa this month, The New York Times reported.

The message was passed to the Afghan government days before Dostum was to leave for a trip to New York and Washington, the newspaper quoted multiple Afghan and US officials as saying.

To avoid a humiliating public spectacle, the Afghan government quietly canceled Dostums visit, the report said.

Dostum said in an interview on Saturday with Voice of America that the tenuous security situation in Afghanistan had required him to cancel the trip, which was to include an address to a special session of the UN General Assembly on narcotics trafficking.

I personally intend to visit as soon as the situation here allows, Dostum said. He said he had many friends in Washington - I am well acquainted with our Pentagon friends and congressmen - and that he would tell them how things were in Afghanistan.

I want to discuss the situation with them, he said. They have to take this issue seriously. Otherwise, it might get out of control.

The State Department did not comment on the development, saying it could not discuss individual visa cases for privacy reasons.

But for years, there has been broad agreement among US officials about Dostum, who stands apart for his brutal past even when measured against the alleged crimes and misdeeds of many of the people the US has relied on during the war in Afghanistan, the report said.

Dostums ascent to the vice presidency of Afghanistan, despite his past, exemplifies a central American failure in a war it is now fighting for the 15th year. In its effort to defeat the Taliban, the US has built and paid for a government that is filled with the kinds of warlords and power brokers whose predatory ways helped give rise to the insurgent movement in the 1990s, and who US officials say pose as much of a threat to the stability of Afghanistan as the insurgents themselves, it added.

Though Afghan President Ashraf Ghani once described Dostum as a known killer, he later courted the warlord to help secure votes from Uzbeks in the 2014 presidential election.

At the outset of the war against the Taliban, Dostum fought alongside Central Intelligence Agency operatives and Special Operations forces to oust the militant group, the report said.

Dostum fell out of favor with his US patrons over his open defiance of the new government in Kabul, it added.

President Barack Obama said in 2009 his administration would investigate the allegations of war crimes against Dostum, which centre on the killing of hundreds of Taliban prisoners by his militia in 2001.
A magistrate in southern Bangladesh rescued two Hindu school teachers from an angry mob that attacked them and sentenced them to six months in jail for making derogatory comments about Islam and Prophet Mohammed.

Magistrate Anwar Parvez made the decision as the teachers of Hijla High School were under attack at Chitalmari in Bagerhat district.

An assistant teacher allegedly made the derogatory comments in a Grade X class on Sunday and students complained to the head teacher, also a Hindu. The head teacher sided with the other teacher.

On Monday, students, their parents and local residents confined the teachers to a room and attacked them. Police intervened and the magistrate sentenced them to jail.

Hundreds of people gathered there and the situation went beyond control. As soon as I heard of the incident, I rushed to the scene and rescued them, Parvez told Hindustan Times by phone.

The villagers and dozens of students and teachers from a nearby madrassa gathered there. They were so angry that anything could have happened. So I went for an on-the-spot trial, he said.

We recorded testimony from seven students of Grade X separately. We got the proof that they made derogatory comments that hurt the sentiments of the Muslim students. I asked the assistant teacher whether he made such comments, he pleaded guilty, Parvez said.

I followed the law and I sentenced both of them to six months in jail. Law allows up to one year in jail for publicly insulting religion, he said. They are respected people, they are teachers, thats why I went for a reduced prison term.

Bangladesh has seen a spike in attacks on secular people and members of minority communities. Several atheist bloggers and a publisher have been killed, and attacks on religious personalities have been a concern.

On Monday evening, two gay rights activists were hacked to death in an attack by suspected militants. The Bangladesh branch of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) claimed responsibility for the killings. On Saturday, a university teacher was killed by unidentified men in a northwestern city and the Islamic State claimed responsibility.
Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic militant group from the southern Philippines notorious for abducting foreigners, beheaded a Canadian hostage on Monday.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was outraged by the killing, and authorities were trying to free another Canadian still being held along with a Norwegian man and a Filipina.

Here are five facts about Abu Sayyaf:

Origins

The group is a radical offshoot of a Muslim separatist insurgency that has claimed more than 100,000 lives in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines since the 1970s.

It was established in the 1990s with funds from a relative of former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Abu Sayyafs strongholds are the Muslim-populated islands of Jolo and Basilan in the far south of the Philippines, about 1,000 kilometres from Manila.

Methods

Sallying forth in fast boats from the islands, the Abu Sayyaf snatches local and foreign victims, demanding ransom payments for their freedom.

Hostages, many of them Western tourists but also Christian missionaries and locals, are then hidden among sympathetic Muslim communities on Jolo and Basilan.

Victims are often murdered if ransoms are not paid -- the Abu Sayyaf beheaded an American man in 2002, as well as a Malaysian last year.

US help

The United States lists the Abu Sayyaf as a foreign terrorist organisation.

From 2002-2014, the US deployed Special Forces advisers to train and provide intelligence to Filipino troops, which led to the killing or arrest of many Abu Sayyaf leaders.

US assistance was scaled back after the Pentagon concluded the group, originally with about 1,000 fighters, had lost the ability to launch international attacks.

Rising threat

Since then, Abu Sayyaf has launched a series of raids on foreigners and locals, as well as engaged in battles with Filipino troops that have killed dozens from both sides.

A German couple abducted off their yacht in 2014 was released after six months, with a ransom of more than $5 million believed to have been paid.

In September last year, gunmen seized two Canadians, a Norwegian and a Filipina from a Philippine resort island. When an April 25 deadline for a ransom of three million pesos ($6.3 million) passed, the severed head of Canadian John Ridsdel was dumped in a Jolo street.

Fourteen Indonesians and four Malaysians have been abducted from boats in waters near the southern Philippines over the past month, an unusual expansion of operations against sailors and away from targets along the coast.

Black flags

In recent years, several Abu Sayyaf units, along with other small armed groups in the south, have publicly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group that holds vast swathes of Iraq and Syria.

IS, known for its black flag and brutal interpretation of Islamic law, has acknowledged them and cited the Abu Sayyaf in its communiques and news reports.

Philippine authorities and security analysts say the pledges are just ploys to draw attention and potential funding from IS. They say the Abu Sayyaf is less interested in Islamic ideology than in getting rich from kidnappings.
It was a telling case of the Indian government hastily backing off after testing the waters with China. But then, any other action would have sent New Delhi veering into diplomatic adventurism of the kind that can hardly be afforded with its biggest neighbour.

The government first issued an e-tourist visa to Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa for attending a conference in Dharamsala, but on April 23  a day after the Chinese foreign office slammed the move  quickly reconsidered its decision.

Granting Isa a visa was neither prudent nor pragmatic, considering that he figures on the Interpol watch-list. It is incumbent on India or any other country to arrest him as soon as he lands on its soil. If the move was a reaction to Beijing blocking the designation of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Mazood Azhar as an international terrorist, it was fraught with both danger and possible failure.

Read: All diplomatic: Indias message to China in Uyghur activist row

Isa was the wrong choice to pick because he carries a red corner notice against his name, and China terms him a terrorist. Hosting him would have amounted to India itself making a distinction between good and bad terrorists, something it has stood firmly against for long. Its this position taken by India that has enabled it to claim a high moral ground from which to point fingers at Pakistan.

But of course, New Delhi was just testing the waters. Isa knew this too, which was why he demanded an assurance from Indian authorities that he would not be arrested upon arrival.

Nevertheless, the justifications made for granting the e-visa to Isa does not befit a country thats purportedly at the forefront of the war against terror. How could the authorities have failed to notice his name on the Interpol list? The argument was that he had applied for a tourist visa, when he should have applied for a conference visa. Does this mean to suggest that an Interpol red corner notice cannot bar a person from getting a tourist visa to India? Do the details of the people on the Interpol list not factor in the system that provides tourist visas?

Isa had applied for the visa from Munich in Germany, but this is not the first such occurrence. Exiled Uyghur matriarch Rebiya Kadeer had also applied for a visa from the same country in 2009, but was turned away by the Indian government.

Read: What was all that chest thumping? Omar taunts govt on Dolkun Isas visa

Besides, India and China have an understanding that they will not allow their soil to be used for political activities against each other. This time, the conference was taking place in Dharamsala  the seat of the Tibetan government in exile and the office of the Dalai Lama (whom China terms as a splitist). Norms stipulate that organisers of international conferences acquire security clearance from the home ministry, and submit a list of foreign participants to the officials concerned. It is strange that they failed to notice Isas name there.

Beijing has constantly been blocking Indias efforts to target Pakistani militants, and its double-standards on terrorism must be exposed. However, episodes such as these  which seem to show India buckling under Chinese pressure  may not serve that end. The first move, in such cases, holds the key.

The writer tweets @jayanthjacob

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A French cardinal said his diocese has made some mistakes in the management and nomination of certain priests amid allegations that he had covered up child sex abuse cases.

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin stressed the importance for the victims to see their right to truth and justice recognised in a statement issued Monday following a meeting on the issue with 220 priests from the Lyon region.

Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon and one of the highest-ranking officials of the Catholic Church in France, is among six ecclesiastical officials targeted by complaints for not reporting child sex abuse cases to judicial authorities.

The French Catholic Church has decided this month to set up a new independent commission made up of secular experts in charge of advising bishops and helping them handle child sex abuses cases.
French television has broadcast what it says is a video taken from inside the restaurant where jihadi Brahim Abdeslam blew himself up during the Paris attacks on November13, killing himself and wounding several others.

The footage broadcast by Frances M6 on Sunday appears to show a man walking into the Comptoir Voltaire restaurant crowded with Friday night diners, looking down and covering his eyes before an explosion at his back propels his body forward.

The Associated Press was not immediately able to verify the footages authenticity.

The images are gruesome but reaction in France has been muted. A spokesman for Frances television watchdog says he couldnt give the total number of complaints but says it wasnt unusually high.

The November 13 attacks in Paris killed 130 and wounded hundreds more.
China said on Tuesday that it is up to India and Pakistan to resolve the issue of sanctioning JeM chief Masood Azhar at the UN Security Council since it had played by the rules while blocking the move earlier this month.

India has raised the issue repeatedly with China and expressed its indignation during several bilateral interactions in the past week. The issue also figured when foreign secretary S Jaishankar held talks with his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry in New Delhi on Tuesday.

Also Read | JeMs Azhar lives freely in Pakistan, govt never detained him: Report

In a written reply to a query from PTI, foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said: We encourage all parties to related to the listing matter of Masood Azhar to have direct communication and work out a solution through serious consultation.

She added, China is willing to continue with it communication with all relevant parties.

India has accused Pakistan-based Azhar of masterminding the January 2 terror attack on Pathankot airbase. Indian officials believe China blocked the move to sanction Azhar at the UN at the behest of its close ally Pakistan.

According to Hua, China was within its rights to block Indias move.

Also Read | India to push China on sanctioning JeM chief Masood Azhar

On the listing matter of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to the Resolution 1267, I want to point out that China has been fairly dealing with the matter according to Security Council resolutions and relevant rules of procedure on the basis of facts, she said.

It is in line with Security Council resolutions and the 1267 Committees rules of procedure for China to place a technical hold on the listing of Masood Azhar.

The UN committee that handles the sanctioning of terrorists and terror groups under Resolution 1267, she said, encourages communication between countries that ask for the listing and countries where individuals or entities covered in the listing come from or live in.

The rules and working norms of the committee are public documents, she added.

Also Read | Doval raises Masood Azhar with China during talks on terror, border

Both China and India are victims of terrorism and have similar stances on the issue of counter-terrorism. The Chinese side supports the central coordinating role of the UN in the international cooperation against terrorism and takes an active part in this regard, she said.

Hua also referred to the issue of India giving a visa to Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa and told a regular news briefing that Beijing had conveyed its concerns to New Delhi.

Isa, branded a terrorist by China, was granted a visa to attend a conference in Dharamsala. The visa was cancelled after Beijing protested.

Hua reacted to the cancellation of the visa and said good communications will ensure that the two sides handle the issue properly. At the moment, China and India are in very good communication and we hope the two countries will properly deal (with) the relevant issue, Hua said.

Also Read | Love thy neighbour: Chinese diplomats response to Masood Azhar issue

Fu Xiaoqiang, South Asia expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times: India has made a cogitative decision, and (this) shows the common views of China and India in fighting terrorism and separatism, and the determination of further cooperation.

It will contribute to the healthy development of relations between China and India, Fu said.

Also Read | Chinas stand on Masood Azhar could impact ties with India
A Japanese warship sailed into a Philippine port near disputed South China Sea waters on Tuesday in another sign of deepening security ties between the World War II foes to counter Beijing.

Tensions in the South China Sea  through which one-third of the worlds oil passes  have mounted in recent years since China transformed contested reefs into artificial islands capable of supporting military facilities.

The Japanese destroyer Ise docked in Subic Bay while on a navigational training mission, the ships captain said.

It marked the second time in just over three weeks that Japanese naval vessels visited Subic, a former major US naval base that lies around 200 km from a Chinese-controlled shoal.

We want to deepen the relationship with the Philippines, Ise Captain Masaki Takada told reporters, who were given a tour of the vessel.

Helicopter crew members of Japan's helicopter carrier Ise stand on the deck shortly after arriving at Subic port, north of Manila, on Tuesday. Ise is in the Philippines for a four-day goodwill visit, near disputed South China Sea waters, where Beijing's increasingly assertive behaviour has sparked global concern. (AFP)

Takada declined to say whether the Ise had been in contact with Chinese naval vessels during its voyage.

The Philippines, a US security ally with a severely under-equipped military has been seeking to strengthen ties with Japan as tensions mount over the disputed waterway, almost all of which is claimed by China.

Aside from the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan also have overlapping claims.

Japan has its own dispute with China in the East China Sea over uninhabited islands that it administers but that are also claimed by Beijing.

In February, Japan agreed to supply the Philippines with military hardware, which officials said may include anti-submarine reconnaissance aircraft and radar technology.

Ises Philippine visit was the third by Japanese military vessels this year.

This visit will further strengthen our relationship with them. We have a strong relationship with them already but we want to enhance that, Filipino Navy Captain Samuel Felix told reporters.
The 108-carat famed Kohinoor diamond cannot be brought back to Pakistan as it was handed over to the UK under the Treaty of Lahore in 1849, provincial Punjab government told the high court in Lahore on Tuesday.

Maharaja Ranjeet Singh had inked the agreement with the East India Company in 1849 under which the precious diamond was given to the UK. Therefore, the UK government cannot be approached for return of the diamond, a law officer of the provincial government told the court during the hearing of a plea seeking direction for the Pakistan government to bring back the Kohinoor.

India too has also been trying to get the diamond back from the UK for years.

Petitioner barrister, Javed Iqbal Jaffrey, opposed the governments plea, arguing, Both governments were not authorised under the law of the land to sign such an agreement.

LHC Justice Khalid Mahmood Khan directed the governments counsel to submit a copy of the agreement between then Maharaja, Ranjit Singh, and the East India Company on the next hearing on May 2.

In his plea, Jaffrey alleged that Britain had snatched the diamond from Daleep Singh, grandson of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh and took it to the United Kingdom.

The diamond became part of the crown of incumbent Queen Elizabeth-II at the time of her crowing in 1953. Queen Elizabeth has no right on the Kohinoor diamond, which weighs 105 carats and is worth billions of rupees, he said.

He claimed that Kohinoor diamond was a cultural heritage of Punjab province and its citizens owned it, requesting the court to direct the federal government to bring the diamond back to Pakistan from the British government.

The Indian government had recently said it will make all efforts to bring back the valued diamond, even as it had earlier told the Supreme Court that the diamond was neither stolen nor forcibly taken by British rulers but given to East India Company by erstwhile rulers of Punjab 167 years back as compensation for helping them in the Sikh wars.
A tourist whose desire to do yoga on a plane led to his arrest is being allowed to leave Hawaii and return home to South Korea.

US Magistrate Judge Kevin Chang previously allowed Hyongtae Pae to be released on bond, but prevented him from leaving the state because of concerns about him being on a plane again.

Chang made the modification on Monday after Paes defense attorney asked that Pae return to the Honolulu Federal Detention Center Jin Tae JT Kim said his client cant afford to keep staying in a bed and breakfast or to pay to see a doctor for more medication.

Pae and his wife were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary with a Hawaii vacation and the couple was headed home when he was arrested.

According to court records, Pae didnt want to sit in his seat during the meal service on last months flight from Honolulu to Tokyo, so he went to the back of the plane to do yoga and meditate.

Authorities say he refused to return to his seat, threatened crew members and passengers and shoved his wife. The pilot turned the plane around and returned to Honolulu. Pae told authorities after his arrest that he hadnt slept in 11 days.

He pleaded guilty last week to interfering with a flight crew. As part of a plea agreement, hes expected to be sentenced to time served, which was about 12 days in jail and to pay about $43,600 restitution to United Airlines.

Medication has improved Paes mental state and hes well-rested, Kim said last week.

Through an interpreter, Pae promised that he will return for his sentence, which is scheduled for July. He must also pay $1,250 cash as a deposit before he leaves Honolulu. I swear to God, he said, pledging to return.

Assistant US Attorney Darren Ching objected to the arrangement, saying it provides little incentive for Pae to return. He said that once Pae leaves, that will be the last we ever see of Mr Pae.

Chang noted that Pae is 72 years old, doesnt speak English and has no family or friends in Hawaii. Returning him to incarceration because of his financial and medication problems wouldnt be appropriate, Chang said.
US President Barack Obama has said China has tended to behave as the biggest kids around here in its maritime disputes with other nations over the South China Sea.

In an interview recorded during his just-concluded tour of Germany, and aired Tuesday morning, Obama said that with respect to the South China Sea, rather than operate under international norms and rules, their (Chinas) attitude is, Were the biggest kids around here. And were gonna push aside the Philippines or the Vietnamese.

In the same interview, Obama said Russian President Vladimir Putin was not entirely persuaded on the need for European unity, and he tended to view NATO, EU and trans-Atlantic unity as a threat to Russian power.

But the president, who has eight more months left in office, was scathing in his criticism of China over a dispute that has been a cause of some tension between the two countries. And it wont go unnoticed in Beijing, which is ever so prickly about real and perceived slights.

New Delhi will be tuning in too on this, as an occasional target of Chinas kids-like behavior over the South China Sea, where tensions have risen over seven man-made islands built by Beijing in the Spratly Islands.

Both India and the US have denied reports of plans for joint naval patrol in the deputed region, but continue to engage closely on the issue at high-level bilateral meetings.

Obamas remarks came in response to a question if he worries that Chinas aggression on the issue may someday make it cross some line, which may force the US to respond more aggressively.

The American president said he believes a productive, candid relationship between the US and China is good not only for the two countries but also for the world.

But the Chinese tended to look at it as a zero-sum game, he said. What is true, though, is that they have a tendency to view some of the immediate regional issues or disputes as a zero-sum game.

Then he accused Beijing of childlike aggression  biggest kids here. But, he added, it doesnt mean that were trying to act against China. We just want them to be partners with us.

And where they break out of international rules and norms, were going to hold them to account.

US air force jets flew over the islands in May 2015 and a navy destroyer sailed within 12-nautical of one of artificial islands in October on what were called freedom of navigation missions.
Suspected Islamists have hacked to death two gay rights activists in the Bangladeshi capital, the latest in a series of chilling attacks on intellectuals, writers and religious minorities for which only a handful of people have been convicted in the Muslim-majority country.

At least six men carrying machetes and guns entered an apartment building in Dhaka on Monday night and killed Xulhaz Mannan, editor of a magazine for the LGBT community, and fellow activist Mahbub Tonoy.

With the list of victims growing fast and rights groups warning that the attackers appear to be expanding their range of targets, pressure is mounting on the Bangladesh government to act.

Read: Bangladesh professor hacked to death in suspected Islamist attack

Who has been targeted?

Since early last year, at least six secular bloggers, liberal activists and writers have also been killed in Bangladesh -- including Bangladeshi-born US citizen Avijit Roy who was hacked to death on a crowded Dhaka street last February.

Many more bloggers and activists, who have also openly criticised Islam, have received death threats, forcing some to flee the country or go into hiding.

A number of Christians, Hindus and Sufi, Ahmadi and Shiite Muslims have also been killed since last year, heightening fears for religious minorities in the officially secular country that comprises mainly Sunni Muslims.

Two foreigners, a Japanese farmer and a faith-based Italian aid worker, were also shot dead last year.

An English professor was hacked to death on Saturday as he walked to a bus stop. Although he had never knowingly criticised Islam, police suspect he was targeted for leading music and literature groups at his university.

Who is behind the attacks?

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for murdering the two foreigners, warning in September that citizens of the crusader coalition would not be safe in Muslim nations.

IS later also later claimed to have carried out a bombing at a packed Shiite shrine, and other attacks on minorities. The professor, it said, was killed for calling to the creed of atheism.

A Bangladeshi branch of al Qaeda said on Tuesday it carried out the latest murders, because the two men had worked to promote homosexuality. It has also said it was behind the murders of the secular bloggers and writers.

But Bangladeshs government rejects both groups claims and says homegrown Islamist groups are instead responsible for all the attacks.

Are the claims credible?

Bangladeshs top police officers have also repeatedly rejected the claims, saying there is no evidence that either group has any presence in the country. They have echoed the government in blaming local banned Islamist outfits.

Independent security analysts are more cautious, saying it is possible that some homegrown militant groups have established contact with IS or al Qaeda or have been inspired by their operations in West Asia and north Africa.

Read: Student detained over gay rights activists murders in Bangladesh

Whats the governments position?

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also points the finger at the main opposition and its Islamist ally, accusing them of trying to destabilise the country -- claims rejected by both groups.

Bangladesh has been plagued by political unrest in the last three years, a period which has seen the largest Islamist party banned, while the mainstream opposition boycotted the last elections in January 2014 over vote rigging fears.

Death sentences handed down to several leading Islamists for war crimes over their roles in the 1971 conflict to secede from Pakistan have exacerbated tensions between the secular government and its opponents.

Scores of opposition activists including Islamists have gone missing or been detained since last years major crackdown by the government on deadly opposition-led street protests.

Experts fear this crackdown has radicalised some of Hasinas opponents.

How have authorities responded?

Last year a court sentenced two students to death for the 2013 murder of Ahmed Rajib Haider, the first of the attacks targeting secular writers.

Another six people were convicted on lesser charges related to Haiders death.

But no one has been convicted over any of the deaths that have occurred since, although police have made numerous arrests.

Secular activists across the country have demanded greater police protection and justice, fearing a culture of impunity for the attackers.

Their fears have been bolstered by comments of top officials, including Prime Minister Hasina who has criticised the secular bloggers dirty writings on religion.

Read: Two including USAID official stabbed to death in Bangladesh
Its so long to Big Ben s bongs  at least temporarily.

British officials announced Tuesday that the famous bell of Parliament will fall silent for several months during repairs to its crumbling clock tower.

The work, due to begin in January 2017 and last three years, is the biggest repair job on the tower for decades  and Steve Jaggs, Parliaments Keeper of the Great Clock, said it cant wait much longer.

The tower is not unstable, he said. But unless we do something now its going to get a lot worse.

We need to do the work pretty soon to keep this for future generations to enjoy.

Jaggs said the 29 million pound renovation will include work to repair corrosion to the cast-iron roof and to stop water seepage that threatens to damage the stonework on the iconic 160-year-old building.

The huge clock will be stopped for several months so that Parliaments clockmakers can work on the 13-foot (4-meter) pendulum and remove the hands from each of the four faces.

The 13.5 ton Big Ben bell will cease to sound the hours for another stretch of the project while it is cleaned and checked for cracks.

Elizabeth Tower, which houses the Big Ben bell, at the Houses of Parliament is reflected in a bus window in London, Tuesday, April 26, 2016. (AP)

Officially named the Elizabeth Tower in honor of Queen Elizabeth II, the structure is one of Londons most famous landmarks. It became a symbol of defiance when it survived German bombing raids during World War II  though one of the four clock faces was blown out.

The tower is popularly known as Big Ben, though that is actually the name of the largest of its five bells. The four smaller bells chime the quarter hours, while Big Ben bongs out the hour.

The sound of the bongs became associated with Britain around the world during wartime BBC news broadcasts, and is still played live each day on BBC radio through a microphone in the belfry.

Jaggs said workers will make sure that Big Ben still chimes at midnight on New Years Eve throughout the renovations.

The repair work will use traditional methods and materials as much as possible, but a couple of modernizations are planned. (AP Photo)

The repair work will use traditional methods and materials as much as possible, but a couple of modernizations are planned.

The 28 lightbulbs behind each clock face will be replaced with energy-efficient LED bulbs that can change color, so the clock tower can be tinted to mark major celebrations or commemorations.

And there are plans to install an elevator in a ventilation shaft. Currently the only way to the belfry is up a 334-step circular staircase.

The tower repairs are only a small part of the work that needs to be done to shore up a Parliament complex beset by damp and decay.

A report released last year said the 19th-century neo-Gothic structure needs major repairs that could cost up to 7 billion pounds to remove the risk of a catastrophic failure. One option under discussion would see lawmakers move out for up to six years while the work is done.

Jaggs said that even if the rest of the building is empty and under scaffolding, the tower will still be a beacon of democracy around the world.
Air strikes and shelling on Syrias second city Aleppo and a town to its west left 25 civilians reported dead Tuesday, as a surge in violence tests a troubled ceasefire.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he was deeply concerned by the fighting and urged both sides to stick to the two-month-old truce and troubled peace talks in Geneva.

The cessation of hostilities should go on, otherwise it will be very difficult for humanitarian workers to deliver, Ban told reporters in Vienna.

At least two male civilians died in rebel rocket fire on government-controlled areas in the west of Aleppo city on Tuesday afternoon, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In the rebel-held east, the air strikes and shelling came down like rain, one resident told AFP.

Fifteen civilians were killed in air strikes on several rebel-held districts, according to civil defence volunteers known as White Helmets.

Another three civilians -- two women and a child -- were killed in government artillery shelling on another eastern neighbourhood, they said.

The planes are bombing markets, residential areas... Were exhausted, we cant keep up, one civil defence worker said.

Five of their own were killed when the White Helmets headquarters in the town of al Atarib, controlled by Islamist rebels, was hit by an overnight air strike, the group said on Twitter.

It was not immediately clear whether the strike on al Atarib, 35 kilometres (20 miles) from Aleppo, was carried out by President Bashar al-Assads air force or his ally Russia.

Fighting surge

An ambulance and a fire truck, both damaged, were parked in the bombed-out headquarters, surrounded by rubble and twisted metal frames.

A civil defence worker in Aleppo city said he and his colleagues were afraid their local headquarters would also be targeted.

Fighting has surged on several fronts in Aleppo province, which is criss-crossed with supply routes that are strategic for practically all of Syrias warring sides.

Once Syrias commercial hub, Aleppo has been divided between rebel control in the east and government forces in the west since 2012.

In the rebel-held Fardos neighbourhood, an AFP correspondent saw a youth being helped down a rubble-strewn street with blood streaming from his head and leg.

Violence has rocked the city since Friday, with at least 100 civilians killed by artillery or rocket fire and air strikes.

On Monday, rebel shelling killed at least 19 civilians in government-held districts, according to the Observatory, a British-based monitor which relies on a network of sources on the ground.

The fighting severely threatens the February ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia and comes as UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva stall.

Syrias main opposition group, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), halted its formal participation this week in the latest round of Geneva talks that started on April 13.

UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura is due to give a progress report to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, when the talks are scheduled to go into recess.

A leading opposition group, the National Coalition, condemned the strike on al Atarib and hailed the remarkable efforts and bravery of Civil Defence workers.

Favourable conditions for the political process cannot be created whilst the Assad regimes killing machine continues to wreak death across Syria, the Coalition said in an online statement.

More than 270,000 people have been killed in Syria and millions forced from their homes since the conflict erupted in 2011.
For the first time since the National Health Service (NHS) was set up in 1948, nearly 45,000 doctors did not report for duty in accident, emergency, maternity and intensive care units of hospitals across Britain on Tuesday.

Thousands of operations and appointments were cancelled or postponed because of the two-day strike that began on Tuesday. Opinion polls suggested the majority of the British public support the junior doctors, but the backing fell slightly after an all-out stoppage of work was announced.

The junior doctors have been at loggerheads with the David Cameron governments efforts to introduce new contracts that are considered dangerous and unfair, and health secretary Jeremy Hunt has said the doctors are blocking the will of the people.

According to Hunt, the new contracts are being introduced in line with a promise made in the Conservative party manifesto before the May 2015 elections, in which the party won a clear majority.

Hunt called the strike from 8am to 5pm a very bleak day. The strike will continue on Wednesday during the same hours, said the British Medical Association (BMA), which has been accused of trying to topple the government.

Backing Hunt, Cameron told ITV News: There is a good contract on the table with a 13.5% increase in basic pay  75% of doctors will be better off with this contract. Its the wrong thing to do to go ahead with this strike, and particularly to go ahead with the withdrawal of emergency care  that is not right.

This is the fifth strike since the impasse between the doctors and the government began after the 2015 elections. Hospitals said consultants and other senior doctors were on duty to provide services during the strike hours.

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Donald Trump is asking Republicans headed for Tuesday primaries for their vote if they dont want to see a president who eats like rival John Kasich, shoving a pancake in his mouth.

Ive never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion, Trump said at a rally on Monday in Rhode Island, one of the five states holding nominating contests Tuesday.

This guy takes a pancake and hes shoving it in his mouth  its disgusting. Do you want that for your president? I dont think so! I dont think so! Honestly, its disgusting.

Both Republicans and Democrats are holding primaries on Tuesday in Rhode Island, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Pennsylvania  called the Acela Primary after Acela, a high-speed train that connects them.

Trump had largely spared Kasich thus far as he was running a distant third, and last, in the Republican race. But he has since joined up with Ted Cruz to stop Trump, earning the tycoons ire.

Second-placed Cruz and Kasich have announced a joint strategy for the next bunch of nominating contests starting next Tuesday  that will see them get out of the way for each other.

They will take Trump on in one-on-one fights, hoping, tactically, to deny him the advantage of fractured anti-Trump votes that has let him win even without securing majority of the votes.

Cruz and Kasichs strategy is not aimed at helping them win, but to stop Trump from winning 1,237 delegates needed to secure the partys nomination before the end of the primaries/caucuses.

If he failed to get that number by June 7, when the last primaries take place, the race will be decided at a contested convention, where, Cruz and Kasich believe, they have a chance.

Trump leads the delegate count at this stage with 845, to Cruzs 559 and Kasichs 148. They need to get to 1,237 to secure the nomination from among the 733 still left.

While the Republican race is about stopping Trump, which is not likely to happen this Tuesday as Trump is set do extremely well, the Democratic race is about how long before its over. Front-runner Hillary Clinton is expected to win most of the delegates at stake, making it impossible for Bernie Sanders to continue, but he is determined to fight to the last.

Clinton leads delegate count with 1,428 to Sanderss 1,153; their threshold is 2,382, with Superdelegates, who include present and past presidents, federal lawmakers and party officials. They are also called unpledged delegates who are not bound to any of the candidates, and are free to vote for who they like  Clinton leads this category as well, 516 to 39 as of Tuesday.

Indian American in the race

The Tuesday primaries will also determine the fate of Indian American Kumar Barve, who is seeking the Democratic party nomination for the House of Representatives from Maryland.

Barve, a member of the Maryland state House of Delegates since 1991, is seeking the party ticket from congressional district 8, which is a safe Democratic seat.

Whoever wins the nomination stands to easily win in the general election in November. For Democrats, thus, the Tuesday primary is the big election this cycle.

Barve is the first Indian American ever elected to a state legislature in the US, in 1990. If he wins now, he will be only the fourth Indian American ever in US Congress, but he is in a tight contest.

Other Indian-Americans in the congressional race in 2016 include California attorney general Kamala Harris, who is running for US senate and Ro Khanna, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Pramila Jayapal and Mary Thomas, running for the House of Representatives.
Yemeni government forces and their Emirati allies took back control of the countrys largest oil export terminal from al Qaeda on Monday, security officials said, a day after routing the militants from their nearby stronghold.

The lightning advance is a shift in strategy for the Saudi-led coalition forces, which for over a year have focussed their firepower on the Iran-allied Houthis who had seized the capital Sanaa and driven the government into exile.

The civil war has killed more than 6,200 people, displaced more than 2.5 million people and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the worlds poorest countries.

A fragile ceasefire, part of a UN-sponsored push for peace talks between the Houthis and President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadis government in Kuwait, has been in force since April 10.

The UN Security Council ask Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday to submit a plan within 30 days detailing how his Yemen envoy can help the move towards peace.

In 48 hours, the Saudi-led coalition has deprived the Islamist militants of a lucrative mini-state they had built up over the course of a year, based around the southwestern port city of Mukalla.

Read: The return of Al Qaeda: Militants openly rule mini-state in Yemen

About 80 percent of Yemens modest oil reserves were exported in peacetime from the Ash Shihr terminal, 68 km (42 miles) eastwards along the coast from Mukalla, which has been shut since the war began and al Qaeda seized the area.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - seeking official recognition as a quasi-state as well as trying to get rich - tried last year to export the 2 million barrels of oil stored there with the approval of Yemens government, which refused.

In a separate incident, residents said that an unidentified warplane believed to belong to the Saudi-led coalition fired missiles at a car in the city of Azzan in Shabwa province killing at least eight suspected al Qaeda militants.

Azzan is part of a string of southern Yemen towns seized by al Qaeda since last year as Hadi supporters and their Houthi enemies fought each other.

Deaths

A statement by the mostly Gulf Arab coalition said on Monday its offensive had killed 800 al Qaeda fighters and several leaders, though Mukalla residents said the number appeared unlikely and the group withdrew largely without a fight.

Its highly exaggerated. There was only very little combat, resident Mubarak al-Hameli said by telephone.

A Yemeni military source put Sundays death toll at 18 and said 30 al Qaeda fighters had been killed.

Residents said clerics and tribesmen had tried to persuade the al Qaeda fighters to leave quietly and that they had withdrawn westward to the neighbouring province of Shabwa.

Read: Yemeni troops recapture key port city Mukalla from al Qaeda

Local Yemeni officials said on Sunday that some 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern city.

AQAP, which has planned several foiled bombing attempts on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the 2015 attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazines offices in Paris, was taking about $2 million a day in tax from the port.

The coalition offensive is now seeking to advance westwards on AQAP-held towns along a 600-km (370-mile) stretch of Arabian Sea coastline between Mukalla and the governments base in Aden, where militants appeared to be mounting fiercer resistance.

Local security officials said a senior Yemeni officer escaped an AQAP car bombing that killed four of his bodyguards outside the city of al-Koud in Abyan province on Sunday night.

The two-week ceasefire, which has reduced fighting along most frontlines between coalition and Houthi fighters, has helped launch peace talks in Kuwait last week.

The talks had been bogged by disputes over Arab coalition flights over Yemen, prompting the UN Security Councils request to Ban to inform it within 30 days of his plan for the next phase of the move towards peace.
The international war crimes court will investigate the violence linked to a political crisis that has plagued Burundi over the past year, which has left hundreds dead and forced hundreds of thousands to flee.

The violence was sparked in April 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza launched a bid for a third term and intensified after he won a disputed election in July. As this developed, three armed rebel groups emerged in the country. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that at least 430 people have been killed.

Announcing a preliminary examination by the International Criminal Court, prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said Monday that she had seen reports of rape, torture and imprisonment, as well as ongoing killings and enforced disappearances.

"All these acts appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC," she said. "At least 3,400 people have been arrested and over 230,000 Burundians forced to seek refuge in neighboring countries."

From the onset of the conflict, Nkurunziza's opponents have maintained that his move is unconstitutional since presidents are only allowed to serve a maximum of two terms, thus violating the constitution and a peace agreement that ended the 1993-2005 civil war. However, Nkurunziza's supporters have argued that he has done nothing wrong and cite a court ruling that said he could run again.

The result of this ongoing debate has been tit-for-tat violence between the two factions that has left the country in shambles, while Western powers and regional states fear that this conflict could erupt into another civil war.

Their fears aren't unfounded either. Violent incidents have been commonplace - the most recent iteration came Monday when a senior army officer, Athanase Kararuza, was killed after his car was attacked by a rocket and gunfire in the capital Bujumbura. Nkurunziza condemned the killing and has vowed revenge on those who committed it.

The ICC investigates allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in states that have signed up to its founding treaty, the Rome Statute. Preliminary investigations, based mainly on publicly available information, can last months or years before leading to a possible full investigation. Once complete, then the body can bring criminal charges against individuals suspected of war crimes or crimes against humanity.

However, it has a very poor track record and has never successfully prosecuted a sitting head of state. The ICC has failed to follow through on an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir that has existed since 2009 and was recently forced to drop its last case against the leaders of regional power Kenya after a fierce lobbying campaign by the country and its African allies alleged that the court unfairly singled out Africans for prosecution.

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Things are getting worse for Mitsubishi Motors. In less than a week after admitting that it had falsified mileage tests, the automaker revealed Tuesday that it has been engaging in this practice for the past 25 years - drastically widening the scope of the mileage-doctoring scandal the company finds itself mired in.

The automaker said it still did not know exactly how many models had been given exaggerated fuel ratings, but it said it now believed it had been using unapproved methods since 1991 - a period that covers dozens of vehicle introductions and millions of cars and trucks. The automaker initially said this practice went back to 2002.

Mitsubishi has been reviewing its tests since it revealed last week that it had cheated on tests for the mileage ratings of so-called "minicars" that it sells in Japan and supplies to another Japanese automaker, Nissan, through a joint venture agreement. The problem surfaced after Nissan brought it to Mitsubishi's attention last year, the company said.

Specifically, the automaker said it compiled data for fuel economy tests using U.S. standards, where higher-speed, highway driving is common, as opposed to Japanese standards, where more prevalent city driving commonly consumes more fuel. Mitsubishi Motors said the U.S. testing method might have been used as it is shorter and would save time and was likely the result of aggressive internal targets which could have possibly put pressure on employees to overstate the fuel economy of its vehicles.

All of this means that even though the confirmed tests only involved 157,000 of Mitsubishi's eK wagon and eK Space light passenger cars, and 468,000 Dayz and Dayz Roox vehicles produced for Nissan Motor Co., other vehicles may now have overstated fuel economy values as well.

Even with all of this new knowledge, Mitsubishi President Tetsuro Aikawa said that the investigation is still ongoing, which means its still likely that more irregularities may be found.

"We don't know the whole picture and we are in the process of trying to determine that," he said. "I feel a great responsibility."

Mileage fraud is a violation of Japan's fuel efficiency law for autos because buyers are eligible for tax breaks if a vehicle model delivers good mileage. Possible penalties are still unclear due to the uncertainties over the investigation's outcome. However, even if legal penalties are unclear, financial ones are as clear as day. After revealing that it had cheated on the tests, Mitsubishi lost about $3.9 billion - or half of its market value.

This whole situation revives memories of a scandal more than 15 years ago in which Mitsubishi Motors admitted to systematically covering up customer complaints for more than two decades, bringing the company close to collapse. The brand was tarnished even further in 2002 when a woman who was walking down a sidewalk was struck and killed after a tire rolled off a nearby Mitsubishi truck.

In the past, other Mitsubishi firms bailed the company out of trouble, however there may be no such luck this time around. Senior officials at other firms say that if needed, it would be difficult for them to help the car maker this time, as they have their own financial problems to deal with thanks to this debacle, as well as calls to put shareholder returns above ties with the former Mitsubishi business empire.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
What do comedy and marketing have in common? The key is timing. You have to be there for your potential guests at the very moment that they're looking for you.

Imagine you had a way of knowing whenever someone thought about going for a holiday in your area, and in that very moment they're mulling over their options, you're able to suggest that they visit you.

Mobile browsing has made this fantasy a reality. Smartphones have provided us with immediate access to unprecedented amounts of data, and potential guests now have the ability to search for information in the precise moment that they want it, which also means that it's possible for you to be there for your potential guests at the exact moment they're looking for the information you can provide.

Google has identified "moments that matter" in which people turn to their mobile devices for immediate information, and it is in these intent-rich moments that hotels and others in the hospitality industry need to make sure that their product is the one that potential guests come across.

So how can you capitalise on these moments that matter in your marketing strategy?

Map your potential guest's journey

Before making any kind of decision, a person will usually engage in a mental decision-making process where they consider various aspects of their decision, such as their options and their feelings about each option. Understanding this mental "journey" can help you to discover which moments will have your prospective guest turning to the web for ideas, help or advice.

In the case of travel, your potential guest's journey will probably be quite long. It starts before they even know if they will be travelling or not. They have to believe that travel is important, and that its benefits outweigh the negatives such as time away from work and the cost. Your potential guest's journey will probably involve moments like deciding why to travel, where to travel, when to travel, how much to spend, and how long to travel for.

Decide which moments matter to you

Once you have mapped out your potential guest's journey, you will be able to see when they are likely to turn to the internet in moments that matter. While all of these are potential moments that matter to marketers, they might not matter to you. Someone searching "travel insurance" might be a potential guest, but unless you provide travel insurance included in your room rate, this moment might not matter to you.

Identify which of the moments when your potential guest turns to the web you can add the most value to. For example, someone might be deciding where to travel. If your strength as an establishment is in the natural beauty of your area, then this might be the time to position yourself in front of people who are trying to determine where the most picturesque holiday spot might be.

Cater to multiple moments

Not everyone online is in the same phase of their journey at the same time. Some people are just sitting on a train wishing they could travel to some far-off tropical island; others have saved up their money and are booking their flights tonight. If you are able to help people through all phases of their journey they will be more likely to trust you when the time comes for them to make their final decision.

If someone has already arrived at the point where they are searching "accommodation in [your area]", this is a moment that matters and you need to be greeting your potential guest in that moment. However, as you have already seen, the journey to making a decision that ends with a visit to your establishment starts way before this point, and you need to be catering to other moments as well.

When a person searches "best times to travel to [your area]", they might not yet be at the point where they are booking their tickets, but you can still provide the answer to their question, and position yourself as helpful, authoritative and trustworthy. Then, the next time they consider visiting your area, you will be the first establishment that they think of.

Provide instant gratification

The reason that people are turning to the internet for in-the-moment information is because it provides all the information they need immediately. Mobile browsing and moments that matter are all about instant gratification.

Even if they are not yet staying at your establishment, give potential guests something that they can enjoy. If they are looking for picturesque places to visit, provide a variety of quality, high-resolution photos for them to look at on your website. If they are searching when the best time of year to visit your area is, don't just direct them to a generic landing site, direct them to a blog post about that topic.

Get to know your potential customer's behaviour

The sheer volume of data available to you online can be quite overwhelming, but you can always start somewhere. For instance, you can download our handy infographic booklet about the habits of people doing travel-related searches on the web. If you know when, where, and why people are looking for you, you will be better equipped to provide them with the information they're after.

Your website's Google Analytics, your AdWords statistics, and your social media analytics can all provide clues about your potential customers  when they are online, where they are from, and what they are most interested in.

Conclusion

The sheer size of the online world can be intimidating, but it is also a fertile ground for cultivating interest in travel, your area, your establishment, and your particular offerings. If you can leverage the moments that matter throughout your potential guests' journeys online, the size of the online space makes it a convenient place to meet your guests long before they arrive at your door.

Sources:

GuestRevu helps hoteliers worldwide to listen to, learn and earn from their guests by enabling them to leverage the power of guest intelligence to build lasting loyalty and drive revenue. GuestRevu's mission is to give hoteliers tools they can use every day to develop a guest-centric culture in their hotels, enhance guest experience, optimise operations, and ultimately, to drive revenue using online surveys and reputation management. With their headquarters in the UK, GuestRevu is a TripAdvisor Platinum Review Collection Partner. For more information please visit www.guestrevu.com

Sarah Came

GuestRevu

+27 (0)87 231 0125

GuestRevu

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Scandic Hotels, the largest hotel company in the Nordic countries, has signed a long-term lease agreement with Airaksinen Capital to take over the operation of the former Kantarellis hotel in central Vasa from June 2016. The hotel, which has 68 rooms today, will be expanded to include close to 140 hotel rooms at the same time as the hotel's conference and congress facilities will be expanded. The expansion is expected to be finished at the end of 2017.

In connection with the takeover, the name of the hotel will be changed to Scandic Vaasa.

 Finland is an important growth market for Scandic and today, we are already the biggest hotel company in the Helsinki area. With Scandic Vaasa, we are further strengthening our network in the Finnish market, says Frank Fiskers, President & CEO Scandic Hotels Group.

 Vasa is the largest economic center in the Osterbotten region and part of Finland's fastest growing area. By opening Scandic Vaasa we will further contribute to the attractiveness of the destination, says Aki Kayhko, Head of Scandic Hotels Finland.

 I am very happy about the agreement. Scandic is a strong, long-term and responsible partner for us to have and I look forward to jointly developing the hotel, conference and restaurant operations to realize the full potential of the hotel, says Tommi Heikkinen, President & CEO of Airaksinen Capital Oy.

The building was constructed in the 1930s and originally functioned as the printing house for the Pohjalainen newspaper. The current hotel began operating in 2009. The property is owned by Airaksinen Capital Oy, one of the largest private property companies in Vasa.

About Scandic Hotels Group

Scandic is the largest hotel company in the Nordic countries with more than 280 hotels, in operation and under development, in more than 130 destinations. The company is the leader when it comes to integrating sustainability in all operations and its award-winning Design for All concept ensures that Scandic hotels are accessible to everyone. Well loved by guests and employees, the Scandic Friends loyalty program is the largest in the Nordic hotel industry and the company is one of the most attractive employers in the region. Scandic Hotels is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. www.scandichotelsgroup.com

Ann-Charlotte Johansson

VP Group Communication & IR, Scandic Hotels

+46 721 80 22 44

Scandic
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Tambo Del Inka, A Luxury Collection Resort & Spa, Valle Sagrado

Both hotels are owned by and managed by Libertador, one the leading hotel groups in Peru. Grupo Libertador also owns and manages three Starwood hotels under The Luxury Collection brand in Cusco, Urubamba and Paracas and The Westin Lima Hotel & Convention Center.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:HOT) today announced that its Aloft brand will soon debut in Peru, with two new properties in the country's capital.

Set to open in 2018, Aloft Lima Miraflores and Aloft Lima Costa Verde will bring tech-forward innovation, modern style and a vibrant social scene to Miraflores, the city's most important sector. Both hotels are owned by and managed by Libertador, one the leading hotel groups in Peru. Grupo Libertador also owns and manages three Starwood hotels under The Luxury Collection brand in Cusco, Urubamba and Paracas and The Westin Lima Hotel & Convention Center.

"Latin America continues to be a key priority for the Aloft brand, and we look forward to expanding our presence to Lima, one of South America's most sought out destinations," said Brian McGuinness, Senior Vice President, Specialty Select Brands for Starwood. "With more than 100hotels globally and a bullish pipeline, Aloft continues to debut in some of the world's most dynamic destinations."

Since its launch in Latin America with the opening of Aloft Bogota Airport in December 2011, the Aloft brand has had a great deal of success propelled by its leading-edge design, tech-forward mindset and buzzing social scene. Now, it is set to more than double its footprint in Latin America, with six hotels in operation, including Aloft Asuncion that opened its doors this month, and six more properties in the pipeline.

As the first Aloft hotels in Peru, Aloft Lima Miraflores and Aloft Lima Costa Verde will bring the brand's unique energy and style to this eclectic city. The hotels are strategically located in distinct areas of Miraflores, designed to serve the increasing number of hyper-connected global business and leisure travelers who visit the buzzing capital.

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"Miraflores is a commercial district with a growing tourist demand. The two Aloft hotelsboth in unbeatable locations in the city are an excellent complement to our existing Westin Lima Hotel & Convention Center located in San Isidro," said Jorge Melero, CEO of Libertador Hotels, Resorts & Spas.

Oceanfront Aloft Lima Costa Verde will feature 160 loft-like guest rooms and an enviable location on the boardwalk of Miraflores, making it ideal for leisure and business travellers alike. Aloft Lima Miraflores, located in the heart of Miraflores, is part of a multi-use development complex that will have shops and dining. The hotel will have 164 loft-like guest rooms and more than 5,000 square feet of space for meetings and events.

Both properties will feature Aloft's bold and stylish design in guestrooms and public spaces as well as tech-forward features such as SPG Keyless entry and fast and free Wi-Fi. They will also provide guests with programming that is unique to the Aloft brand, including access to local emerging artists and some of the hottest bands with Live At Aloft Hotels, and signature cocktails and light bites the WXYZ bar. Dining options will include Re:fuelSM by Aloft, a cafe where guests can grab breakfast and lunch while on the go. They will also feature Aloft's signature Re:chargeSM fitness center and a Splash pool to unwind and relax.

"With the recently opened Aloft Asuncion and more than six hotels set to open in the next three years, Aloft is on track to more than double its footprint in Latin America," said Victor Vazquez, Vice President of Latin America Development, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. "Aloft has been a key driver of our growth in the region, and continues to gain momentum as developers, investors and guests recognize its differentiated approach."

Aloft's innovative initiatives set it apart from the competition. With the launch of SPG Keylessan evolution of Aloft's Smart Check-In and the hospitality industry's first mobile, keyless entry systemguests have the ability to use their smart phone as a key. The revolutionary technology is currently available at all Aloft, Element and W Hotels Worldwide globally. Additionally, every Aloft hotel around the world offers live, free access to local emerging artists and some of the hottest bands with Live At Aloft Hotels programming at the W XYZ bars.

Aloft is Starwood's fastest growing brand with 100 hotels in 16 countries now open and the company's second largest pipeline in hotels. Fueled by accelerating demand in dynamic markets worldwide, Aloft continues to enter new marketsincluding recent openings in Munich and Stuttgart, Germanyand is on track to double its footprint in Latin America in less than two years.


Castlepalooza returns for its 10th anniversary this year from July 1-3.

Castlepalooza has announced more acts for their 10th anniversary festival. Joining the likes of Caribou, Jurassic 5, Villagers and Cat Power are Lisa O Neill, Son Lux, Lynched, Policia, Steve Davis & Kavus Torabi (DJ & pool set), Little Scream, Slow Readers Club, Daithi, Hare Squead, New Jackson, Daphni, Field Music

Further new additions today include I Am The Cosmos, Prins Thomas, Lets Eat Grandma, Jarbird, Toby Kaar, I Have A Tribe, All the Luck in the World, Paddy Hanna, Orchid Collective, Malojian, J. Cowhie, Sea Pinks, No Monster Club, Morning Veils, Rosa Nutty, Little Scream and Like Chandeliers.

Tickets for CASTEPALOOZA priced 134 (weekend w/ camping) and 115 (weekend) are on sale now.

Castlepalooza supports the Charleville Castle restoration project. A portion of each ticket will go towards the ongoing work carried out on one of Irelands most historic landmarks.

Day by Day Breakdown

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Friday :: Caribou / Polica / Daphni / Romare (live AV set) / Lynched / Toby Kaar / Jarbird / The Altered Hours / Get Down Edits / Rosa Nutty / Like Chandeliers.

Saturday :: Jurassic 5 / Preoccupations (formerly Viet Cong) / Prins Thomas / Steve Davis & Kavus Torabi (DJ & pool table set) / Tiger & Woods / Little Scream / Hare Squead / Lets Eat Grandma / Lisa ONeill / Slow Readers Club / Overhead, the Albatross / Daithi / Badlands / All the Luck in the World / I Am The Cosmos / Sea Pinks / Malojian / J Cowhie / Tandem Felix / Oh Boland.

Sunday :: Villagers / Cat Power / New Jackson / Alle Farben / Field Music / Son Lux / Colm Mac Con Iomaire / Cian Nugent / I Have a Tribe / Somerville / Paddy Hanna / Orchid Collective / No Monster Club / Morning Veils.

This year, Vodafone are bringing comedy to Castlepalooza with acts playing their new Comedy Stage on Saturday and Sunday night. Act announcement for this stage coming soon.
The success that BBC's Peaky Blinders has amassed has sparked the conversation of a film adaptation.

Cillian Murphy's Peaky Blinders has become quite the sleeper success.

With Season 3 just around the corner, series creator Stephen Knight and executive producer Caryn Mandabach spoke to Digital Spy and the prospect of a Peaky Blinders movie arose; "We did have a conversation about potentially doing a movie," Mandabach revealed, "There are many people in America that love Peaky Blinders and plenty of movie stars that want to be in the movie."

The period drama stars Cillian Murphy as gangster Tommy Shelby. Set in 1920's Birmingham, the volatile Shelby heads the Peaky Blinders gang whose trademark it is to sew razor blades into the peaks of their caps and use as weapons. The show runs on BBC Two and has broke the American market thanks to its deal with network giant Netflix.

It's a completely viable project that we're sure plenty of actors would jump at the opportunity to star in. Peaky Blinders has acquired a huge star following which boasts Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Ed Sheeran, Steven Spielberg, Julia Roberts and Stephen King. Also counting himself as Peaky Blinders fan was the late David Bowie. Creator Stephen Knight told Radio Times that Bowie granted the show use of his music just days before his death. Knight received a personal copy of Blackstar from Bowie before the album was released to the public.

"It seems that his people were keen to establish that we could use it before he died," Knight reflected, "[Bowie] sent a photo of himself with razor blades in his cap to Cillian about a year ago. I got in touch with his people who came back straight away and said he was a big, big fan."

Peaky Blinders Season 3 will have the boys back in action again on May 5 at 9pm on BBC Two.
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Ryan Vail plays Fumbally Stables in Dublin on April 28.

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Cavan rockers set for pre-Christmas visit

It's not so long since The Strypes last rocked The Olympia, and the Cavan collective have announced a return date for the end of the year.

Buoyed by their chart-topping LP Little Victories, the quartet packed them in at the Dame St. venue in January, and will be repeating the trick in December. We'll be rightly in the Christmas spirit when the lads take the stage on December 8, with tickets  priced at 31  on sale from Thursday.
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The Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau went to federal court Monday, asking a judge to block a comic convention from using "Space City," which the bureau trademarked more than a decade ago.

But U.S. District Court Judge Nancy F. Atlas was skeptical of the convention bureau's argument that allowing Space City Comic Con to use Houston's long-standing moniker would confuse people and lead them to believe that event was sanctioned by the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau. Instead of a court order, she suggested a much simpler solution: adding a disclaimer on tickets and brochures that Space City Comic Con event is not affiliated with the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"I'm not prepared to shut the conference down," Atlas said.

The hearing was the latest development in the dispute between Space City Comic Con, a three-day festival scheduled for NRG Center over the Memorial Day weekend, and the convention and visitors bureau, which has a 50 percent take in a rival pop culture event, Comicpalooza, scheduled for the George R. Brown Convention Center in mid-June. The convention bureau sued Space City Comic Con and its owner, George Comits, for trademark infringement earlier this year.

Comits agreed to add a disclaimer to printed materials as well as social media. But Charles Baker, the Houston lawyer representing the bureau, told Atlas that his client still wanted to pursue the case. "Disclaimers don't work all the time," he said.

Atlas scheduled a hearing on a temporary restraining order for 8 a.m. Wednesday.

Comits said in an interview that he believes the convention bureau is seeking the court order because it doesn't want competition for Comicpalooza. He noted that the bureau's request for the restraining order followed his recent announcement that British actor Charlie Hunnam, who played Jackson "Jax" Teller in the television series "Sons of Anarchy," would make a rare personal appearance at Space City Comic Con.

The TV series, which ran from 2008 to 2014 on the FX network, follows the members of an outlaw motorcycle club in California. "This is a big sexy male star, said Comits. "Women want to meet this guy."

Social media is "on fire" with the excitement, he added, and fans are buying tickets.

A.J. Mistretta, spokesman for the bureau, said his organization is "vigorously defending" its trademark and that its request for a restraining order is a step in that legal process.

Space City Comic Con has already booked 40 stars who will be on hand to sign autographs and take photographs with fans, according to Comits. Last year, the festival, which grew rapidly after starting in a hotel lobby in 2012, drew about 10,000 visitors a day.

The convention bureau calls Comicpalooza, which drew about 45,000 visitors last year, "Houston's Official Comic Con." In its request for a temporary restraining order, the bureau said the use of "Space City," is causing irreparable harm to its business of promoting tourism, trade and conventions in the Houston area.

More Information Founding date: 2008 - Comicpalooza 2012- Space City Comic Con 2015 attendance: 45,000 Comicpalooza 18,000 Space City Comic Con Scheduled location: George R. Brown Convention Center - Comicpalooza NRG Center - Space City Comic Con Featured entertainers: Comicpalooza: Sigourney Weaver, who played the character Ellen Ripley in the science fiction horror film "Alien," and Kate Beckinsale, who appeared in the horror film series "Underworld," which included a role as a vampire. Space City Comic Con: Charlie Hunnam, who played Jackson "Jax" Teller in the television series "Sons of Anarchy," and William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in "Star Trek" television series. Dates: Comicpalooza: June 17-19 Space City Comic Con: May 27-29 Three-day admission: Comicpalooza:$66 Space City Comic Con:$75 See More Collapse

Not only will it likely cause public confusion, it will also destroy the bureau's goodwill and reputation with its current and prospective customers, the convention bureau said in court documents.

During the hearing Monday, Atlas pointed out that the bureau's arguments gave her pause, since many businesses already use "Space City," a nod to Houston's long-time connection to the space industry through NASA's Johnson Space Center. She also questioned why the bureau waited so long to seek a restraining order after filing suit in February.

Comits testified that the bureau won't even put Space City Comic Con on its calendar of events because of its investment in Comicpalooza. Atlas was surprised to learn that the convention and visitors bureau had a financial interest in Comicpalooza. "Really?" she asked.
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Low oil prices dampened but did not crush Houstonians' feelings about the economy or their own job prospects or pocketbooks, the latest Houston Area Survey shows.

They were less sanguine about traffic jams, however.

A large majority surveyed in the annual report from the Kinder Institute at Rice University, released Monday, show a population accustomed to booms and busts remaining relatively upbeat even in tough times - even though some observers cite reasons to worry in the near future.

The results of the survey, now in its 35th year, show a city with evolving views on matters from politics, parks and quality of life issues to matters of diversity and inequality, said Stephen Klineberg, the Kinder Institute founding director who conducts the survey.

"It's a city reinventing itself," Klineberg said. "In order to succeed, we have to address a new set of strategies. We are rethinking about what we can rebuild."

In the survey, 62 percent of Houston-area residents surveyed rated the local economy as "excellent" or "good." That is down just 7 percentage points from last year. The number of people who responded that they believed their financial situation would improve three to four years down the road was up to 61 percent. At the same time, the number of people who saw their fortunes improve in the last few years declined slightly.

"It was a big surprise that there is very high optimism at this time," Klineberg said. "We thought there would be a sense of concern. It hasn't hit yet."

"So much is endemic to Houston. People think we are going to make it."

More Information Houston Area Survey Views on Houston's most troubling issues have shifted over the years. During the downturn of the mid-1980s, for example, 71 percent of respondents said they were most concerned about the economy. The top worry spot was replaced in the 1990s by crime and, more recently, traffic. Following are the results for this year, last year and the peak year for each category over the survey's 35-year history. Traffic: 2016: 29 percent 2015: 28 percent 2004: 47 percent Economy 2016: 21 percent 2015: 18 percent 1986: 71 percent Crime 2016: 21 percent 2015: 21 percent 1995: 70 percent Source: Houston Area Survey, Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University Houston area survey Views on Houston's most troubling issues have shifted over the years. During the downturn of the mid-1980s, for example, 71 percent of respondents said they were most concerned about the economy. The top worry spot was replaced in the 1990s by crime and, more recently, traffic. Following are the results for this year, last year and the peak year for each category over the survey's 35-year history. Traffic 2016: 29 percent 2015: 28 percent 2004: 47 percent Economy 2016: 21 percent 2015: 18 percent 1986: 71 percent Crime 2016: 21 percent 2015: 21 percent 1995: 70 percent Source: Houston Area Survey, Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University See More Collapse

Klineberg said the city is no longer as dependent on the energy industry as in the past, the unemployment rate is still below the national average and other industries have yet to feel effects.

"We are still riding the momentum of $100 oil," he said. "There have been a whole bunch of new developments in real estate, medical and education. Many economists say today, 'Hang on, there.' If the price doesn't come back, the momentum is beginning to fade. It's going to hit lives of individuals much more than it has so far. The downturn will finally spread to the whole economy."

Architect Humr Alam, who moved to Houston 18 years ago from Pakistan, says his firm has clients in the medical industry, a strong and growing sector of the region's economy. He has watched researchers be recruited from other major cities and seen the medical industry continue grow.

Yet he is realistic that there will be a day when the low oil prices in Houston catch up.

The 1980s crash

"I have friends who remember the '80s crash. Houston is more diversified now," Alam said. "Yet it will still affect Houston, just maybe down the road. We've been doing well for so many years. It's easy to be optimistic when you've had years like that."

Bill Gilmer, director of the Institute for Regional Forecasting at the University of Houston, said a lot of people in Houston should still feel good about the economy. Many large industries correspond with the national economy and others are not directly tied to the oil industry. But he cautioned things could quickly change for many.

He said a lot of the activity that helped bolster the economy, including construction of offices and apartments, has turned off. The jobs aren't coming to Houston any longer, he said.

"As you look forward, the oil industry is in a pickle for sure," he said. "The population growth and the momentum is going away."

Job losses

Thus far, job losses of about 50,000 to 60,000 represent only 2 percent of the working population. But Gilmer predicted by the end of the year, more industries will start feeling the strain. He expects public optimism to fall off as well.

The survey also found that traffic is a big worry for Houstonians. About 30 percent of respondents listed traffic as their top concern. This has been the same result for the last three years of the study.

"That is a part of the new normal," Klineberg said. "This is the most automobile-dependent city in America. It's a slow, difficult process. People are experiencing worse traffic every time you go out."

In Harris County, 50 percent of respondents said they would prefer a smaller home in a more urbanized area, within walking distance of shops and work. The other half responded that they wanted a single-family home with a big yard.

But while half say they would prefer the urban lifestyle, 37 percent of people in that group do not live in that environment.

Klineberg said the condominiums, high-rises and townhomes growing inside the 610 Loop will help attract people who from outside Houston who like to walk.

"All of a sudden there are empty-nesters, young creative people in no rush to move out of town," he said. "So much of the suburban life we built in Houston needs to be rethought as we reposition ourselves in the 21st century."

'A cool place to live'

Alam, who lives in Midtown, said he has seen lower rents than in the string of years leading up to the oil price fall. He said home prices and rents had been approaching West and East Coast levels. He said cooling down that aspect of the economy can be a benefit.

"I think people outside of Houston are realizing that it's a cool place to live," he said. "Where else can you live in a largest city in the country and have pretty affordable housing right next to downtown?"

Still, he said there are warning signs from past busts in Houston.

Alam said he and his co-workers went to lunch in the Sharpstown area, a popular area before the 1980s oil bust.

"It was where the yuppies lived before there were hipsters. The bust just killed it completely, and it never recovered," he said. "People forget."
Shallow-water driller Hercules Offshore could be forced into bankruptcy for the second time in less than a year as some creditors claim it has defaulted on a $450 million loan, according to regulatory filings.

In a filing last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Houston company said creditors could push it back into bankruptcy as soon as Thursday. Creditors allege that two of Hercules' international affiliates violated the terms of the loan, giving lenders the right to demand immediate payment, according to the filing.

Hercules denied it has failed to comply with the requirements set by lenders, according to filing. Company officials did not respond to requests for comment. The creditors who alleged Hercules was in default were not named in the regulatory documents.

Hercules' customers include some of the world's biggest energy companies, including Chevron Corp. and Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company of Saudi Arabia, according Hercules' annual report filed with the SEC. Hercules employed about 1,000 people at the end of last year, according to the document.

Hercules was among the first corporate casualties of plunging oil prices. At the height of the boom in mid-2014, Hercules contracted about 20 shallow-water rigs to drillers in the Gulf of Mexico. But as prices fell and drillers retreated from offshore, Hercules was left with fewer customers and hefty debts.

By 2015, about half of its Gulf rigs were idled. In August, the company filed for bankruptcy with a restructuring plan already in place. The deal converted Hercules' $1.2 billion in debt into stock for its creditors, and the company emerged from bankruptcy in November.

As part of the restructuring deal, Hercules took out a $450 million loan to help it complete its Hercules Highlander rig, which is under construction in Singapore. Hercules has a five-year contract for the rig with the Dutch company Maersk, which plans drill in the North Sea.

Creditors claim Hercules first violated the terms of the loan when it subsidiary, Hercules Offshore Nigeria Limited, failed to offer a vessel's mortgage as collateral for the loan on April 15, according to the SEC filing. The second violation occurred when Hercules didn't meet a deadline to consolidate its Gibraltar-based affiliate into another unit of the company, according to the filing.

Hercules said in the filing that creditors have asserted the company is in default, although they have not given formal notice.

Hercules also said that it believes there are ways to avoid default before next week's deadline.

In its most recent earnings release in March, Hercules reported a net loss of $23.7 million on revenues of $32.4 million between Nov. 6, when the reorganized company emerged from bankruptcy, and Dec. 31.
The European Union has taken the first steps toward importing natural gas from Iran, hoping to boost the country's energy security.

The EU's desire to tap into Iran's energy reserves is a key reason why President Barack Obama says the deal reached last year to limit Iran's nuclear program was the best he could get. Finding a new source of energy became a priority after Russian President Vladimir Putin used natural gas to demand European acquiescence to his invasion of Ukraine and other geopolitical adventures.

A pipeline to import Iranian gas would reduce the continent's dependence on both Russia and imports of expensive liquefied natural gas from the United States and other sources. The more sources of energy a country enjoys, the greater the energy security.

EU High Representative Federica Mogherini met Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Tehran on April 16 and announced their plans to cooperate on many levels, but energy was the most important.

Their joint action plan committed the two sides to negotiate:

- Conditions for investment in the Iranian energy sector;

- Development prospects of oil and gas export infrastructure in Iran to contribute to the EU's energy security;

- Joint cooperation on Iran's oil and gas industry, upstream, midstream and downstream activities;

- Dialogue on a regulatory framework conducive for attracting investments in power generation,

transmission, and distribution;

- Joint cooperation activities in the field of renewable energy and energy efficiency.

That's billions of dollars in potential business for both European and Iranian companies. Unfortunately, U.S. firms remain locked out of participating in that bonanza because of remaining U.S. sanctions on Iran. That's a missed opportunity.

Iranian leaders have prioritized economic growth over nuclear weapons, which has angered many hardliners in Tehran. These same hardliners fear that opening the country up to foreign business will lead to liberalizing influences, something that is inevitable.

The EU is both securing its energy future while having a positive influence on Iran. The U.S. could do the same if our leaders could get past the outdated notion that Iran is our worst enemy in the Middle East.

Constructive engagement with Iran would help defeat our true enemies, such as al-Qaeda and Islamic State Group, while marginalizing extremists in Tehran. Our companies could also make some serious money at the same time. It's time to rethink Iran as the bogeyman.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Already home to the world's biggest skyscraper, Dubai has another tall order to fill: By 2030, its leader wants 25 percent of all trips on its roads to be done by driverless vehicles.

Monday's announcement by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum came without warning and with few details, as is sometimes the case with the many aspirations of the leadership of the United Arab Emirates.

In this car-crazed city-state of over 1.5 million registered vehicles, it's not unusual to see Ferraris idling alongside Lamborghinis at traffic lights. And Dubai already is home to a driverless Metro rail system, which carried 178 million riders in 2015.

Smart-car technology is being used in some of the world's luxury vehicles, and it is advancing rapidly enough for the plan to become a reality - or a nightmare for the thousands of taxi drivers who now plying the streets among the sleek skyscrapers in the UAE's commercial capital.

In a statement carried by the state-run WAM news agency, Sheikh Mohammed said the plan would cut down on costs and traffic accidents. The project would be a joint venture by Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority and the Dubai Future Foundation, he said, without offering how it would be funded.

"Today, we lay down a clear strategy with specific goals for smart transportation to form one of the key drivers for achieving sustainable economy in the UAE," said Sheikh Mohammed, who can be seen driving himself around Dubai in his white Mercedes-Benz G-Class SUV, license plate No. 1.

Dubai boasts the world's tallest building with the 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa, which opened in 2010. In 2020, it will host the World Expo, a world's fair that is held every five years.

Mattar al-Tayer, the director-general and chairman of the Roads and Transport Authority, said his agency has contacted a number of driverless vehicle sellers.

His agency already has signed a deal with Toulouse, France-based driverless vehicle manufacturer EasyMile to conduct tests on their box-shaped EZ10, which carries up to 10 passengers, according to a statement from al-Tayer.

For now, Dubai and EasyMile haven't made financial commitment to each other, said Ahmed Bahrozyan, the CEO of the Roads and Transport Authority's licensing agency. Instead, EasyMile is using the opportunity to test its battery life and air conditioners against Dubai's summertime heat.

"Our strategy is not only looking at private cars, but looking at taxis, looking at buses, looking at ... cable car systems," Bahrozyan told The Associated Press.

While still a nascent field, many big names are looking at entering the driverless market. Google began developing driverless cars in 2010. Traditional automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, General Motors and Toyota are working to gradually automate functions until vehicles potentially become fully capable of driving themselves.

Dubai may prove to be a good test site. It sees little rainfall and has a nearly new road system crowned by the E11 highway known as Sheikh Zayed Road, the country's longest thoroughfare that is a dozen lanes at its widest. But there are also high-speed traffic crashes and massive collisions caused by seasonal fog in Dubai and the rest of the Emirates.

Bahrozyan said Dubai has contacted Mountain View, California-based Google about its self-driving car, which he added had artificial intelligence far beyond the EZ10.

Google said in a statement that it has seen a lot of interest for self-driving cars and has talked to organizations and communities all over the world, without specifically addressing questions about Dubai.
Sometimes it's good for a show to be at the unexpected intersection of two seemingly unrelated trends in television, to spark a conversation that uses narrative specifics to connect with some larger sociopolitical issue.

And sometimes it's not.

The death of lead character Abbie Mills, played by Nicole Beharie, during the third-season finale of Fox's supernatural drama "Sleepy Hollow" provoked howls of rage from fans, many of whom could not see the point in the show continuing without the female half of its central team (it's not clear if the show will get a fourth season).

But it also gave a new and pointed focus to a larger issue or, rather, the collision of two larger issues: death and diversity.

Many feel that TV's attempt to increase cast and character diversity is increasingly undercut by its equally new willingness to kill off popular characters.

Especially those who are not straight white males.

For years, complaints about black men being used as zombie fodder have dogged "The Walking Dead" (which may or may not have just killed one of TV's few Asian leads, Steven Yeun, who played Glenn), while the recent deaths of LGBT characters on a wide variety of shows seem to be resurrecting the Bury Your Gays and Dead Lesbian tropes. (Bury Your Tropes, Not Us is the new protest slogan.)

Long before this year's finale season, death came to many non-straight-white-male characters, including several on the CW's post-apocalyptic drama "The 100," including Commander Lexa, played byAlycia Debnam-Carey; early April saw the death of so many fictional women that some critics felt compelled to list them, like soldiers lost in a strange new war.

Not that the list was necessary. Fueled perhaps by the superior attitude the television industry took during the recent #OscarsSoWhite controversy - look at us, we have "Empire," "black-ish" and the oeuvre of Shonda Rhimes - fans have been steadily calling out the high fatality rate of minority characters for months now. (Including on "Empire," in which a lesbian couple recently died in their attempt to kill Lucius.)

But when "Sleepy Hollow" killed Abbie, things got real.

For those who do not watch "Sleepy Hollow," which is to say the vast majority of Americans, her death may seem the very definition of a non-event.

A freshman hit, the show seemed to lose its way in Season 2, and by Season 3, despite a change in showrunner, it was in how-did-this-happen free-fall.

So it's not terribly surprising that Beharie, who had previously drawn attention in the films "24" and "Shame," decided to leave, or even that the writers chose to explain that departure by death.

After all, why not? The finale, with its out-of-nowhere formation of a George Washington-sanctioned ghoul squad, was clearly a Hail Mary attempt at renewal, and certainly the American television audience is used to loss. Having survived Sean Bean's beheading in "Game of Thrones," Dan Stevens fleeing "Downton Abby" and Josh Charles' murder in "The Good Wife," we are a very different nation from the one that collectively collapsed on learning that Lt. Col. Henry Blake's plane had been shot down over the sea of Japan after McLean Stevenson decided he'd had enough of "M*A*S*H."

Except.

Except Abbie was one of two lead characters in "Sleepy Hollow." More important, Beharie was one of the few nonwhite female leads on television.

And some believe that this was not just a case of a show failing and a star realizing she could do better elsewhere. Many "Sleepyheads" felt that Abbie's story had been systematically sidelined in favor of those that focused on her partner, Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison), which made Abbie's decision to die in order to save him infuriatingly symbolic: the black female sacrificed to sustain another white-male-centric storyline.

It's a legitimate reading of the show, though perhaps not the only one. But the fact of the analysis is far more important than its detail.

After years of obsessive and often myopic deconstruction of certain series, the television audience is broadening its gaze to the bigger picture and realizing that the personal really is the political. The shows we watch are part of a larger presentation of modern life, and they matter both separately and as part of that whole.

Yes, there are more non-straight-white-male characters on television than ever, and perhaps they seem equally represented in your favorite show, but overall white men continue to rule, and everyone else exists mostly in the ensemble.

Which, in these days of death-at-anytime exposition and OMG pacing, makes them very vulnerable.

And though plenty of straight white guys get killed on television, too, when one falls, another inevitably springs up to take his place. We miss Josh Charles, but would we trade Jeffrey Dean Morgan to get him back? Probably not. Because Will's death on "The Good Wife," though upsetting, was not political.

And that's what's changed. With television's new status comes increasing responsibility; if you're going to be at the vanguard of popular culture, then you need to, well, be at the vanguard of popular culture.

It's the stories that have to change, not just the window dressing. In life, women are not the minority, and when taken together, neither are people who are black, Asian, Latino, LGBT or any other definition that television still sees as "nontraditional." These characters should not be used as seasoning or garland to give a white man's story a little spice, a little color.

They should be telling their stories, too, in ways that don't call for the ultimate sacrifice quite so often.
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A man has been arrested in the death of 35-year-old woman whose body was found nearly two years ago in an abandoned warehouse in south Houston.

Lucius Alexander Williams, 34, is charged with murder in the death of Lakeisha Perkins, according to the Houston Police Department.
Editor's note: This story on Houston restaurant matriarchs, which includes Pat Mickelis of Cleburne Cafeteria, was published before a Tuesday morning fire gutted the restaurant at 3606 Bissonnet. According to firefighters, nearly the entire structure was destroyed; no injuries were reported. This year, Cleburne Cafeteria is marking its 75th anniversary; it is one of Houston's iconic family-owned and -run businesses.

They're founders and owners; wives and mothers; proprietors and caretakers. You see them whenever you visit their restaurants, quietly toiling, never calling attention to themselves. They're the dedicated keepers of the flame and the faces of some of Houston's most enduring and treasured restaurants. And they are treasures themselves.

Meet Nancy Fung of Fung's Kitchen, Irma Galvan of Irma's Original, Pat Mickelis of Cleburne Cafeteria and Arpi Tcholakian of Arpi's Phoenicia Deli. Each has invested decades of hard work and love into feeding loyal customers and running a successful business while also raising a family.

These matriarchs have engendered maternal fondness among generations of diners. They are the old-school boss ladies who continue to inspire and build allegiances for their long-running restaurants that are considered Houston institutions. As Mother's Day approaches, these are their stories, told in their own words.

Pat Mickelis

Cleburne Cafeteria, 3603 Bissonnet, 713-667-2386; cleburnecafeteria.com

Years in the business: 64

Age: 92

What we're known for: Meatloaf, chicken and dumplings, chicken-fried steak, Greek salad, fresh side dishes like green beans, candied yams, carrot salad, cakes and pies made - everything unprocessed and made from scratch.

My story: I was born in Tuttle, N.D., in 1923. When I was 14, we left North Dakota because it was just too cold - 50 degrees below zero during Christmas. My family packed up all we had in our Studebaker and drove down to Liberty, here in Houston.

My mother was a photographer, and I became a photographer, too. I had a special gift as a coloring artist, where I would color in the black-and-white photos. By the time was in my late 20s, I had my own business, a photography studio in downtown Houston called Photos by Pat. That's how my husband and I came to meet.

He was an immigrant from a tiny island in the Aegean sea called Patmos, Greece. His mother had asked him to send a picture home to her, so he came to my studio for a sitting. When I draped the cloak behind the camera and looked through the lens, lightning struck. I was instantly in love with the man that sat in the frame.

I found out that Nick worked at a local barbecue restaurant, and he was an artist. One day, I went to his restaurant, saw his beautiful artwork, and he sat down and had coffee with me. As the weeks went by, we would run into each other in downtown Houston. Nick didn't speak much English, but I would say, "Coffee?" and we would have coffee. It didn't matter that we had a language barrier. We fell in love.

At the time, Nick was in business with two uncles at the barbecue restaurant. Every day after work, he would tell me that he was tired of being in business with family that didn't have the same motivation or aspire to the same dreams that he did.

I listened to him and told him, "You've got what it takes to make it on your own. You can do this. I can help you." So I took out the newspaper and found that the Cleburne Cafeteria was for sale. When I took Nick there to see it, he said, "Pat, I know barbecue. I know hamburgers. I don't know anything about a cafeteria." But I told him, "I've watched you work. You can learn anything. You're dynamite."

In 1952, Nick bought Cleburne Cafeteria from Anabelle Collins and Martha Kavanaugh, the founders, without ever having eaten in a cafeteria. We got married. I closed my photography business and spent every day in the cafeteria, working side by side with my husband as a translator. "This is how you make apple pie. This is how you make a lemon tart. This is how you make baked squash." I started to learn the business myself.

From day one, I had to learn how to be cashier because the cashier quit. Nick was in charge of the cooking and the kitchen. I managed everything in the front. Work was exciting. I like to say that it was like being a Bendix washing machine, where you get thrown back and forth and side to side. Every day in the cafeteria it was always something. Maybe we were shorthanded, or we had way too much food and not enough customers, or way too many customers and not enough food. When the help didn't have a ride to work, I would go and pick them up. We were all a big family. Most of our employees stayed with us through all this time. The cake lady worked for me until the day she passed.

Nick and I made a life for ourselves at the cafeteria. When we weren't working, I taught Nick how to drive and to speak English. In his spare time, he would paint. His beautiful works of art still grace our walls today. We had two children, George and Angela. They grew up at Cleburne Cafeteria. In 1969, we bought the location that we're still in today.

My husband passed away in 1989 at the age of 68. After he passed, it was my job to continue our legacy. I continued to come in every day. I worked at the cash register well past our 65th anniversary, until about five years ago.

I still come to the cafeteria every day because, more than anything, this is my home. I like to drink my coffee and say hello to the customers as they walk by. My friends come and visit me here. This is my life. This is all I've known. My husband worked here until the day he died, and I want to be here every day until it's time for me to join him. My heart is here, just like the picture of Nick that I fell in love with so many years ago.

Nancy Fung

Fung's Kitchen, 7320 U.S. 59 S., 713-779-2288; eatatfungs.com

Years in the business: 26

Age: 55

What we're known for: Hong Kong-style Cantonese cuisine. Dim sum, peking duck (roasted fresh every day); fresh seafood, including scallops in the shell, oysters, lobster, live Dungeness crab, king crab, lobster and geoduck; and fresh vegetables such as snow pea leaves and baby bok choy.

My story: I am originally from Hong Kong. I worked for a big Chinese restaurant there but in the personnel department. I met my husband when I was 19 years old. It was a special occasion, my eldest sister's birthday. We all went to my husband's father's seafood restaurant in Kowloon to eat. Halfway through the dinner, my husband came in to say hello. And then he saw me, and he asked my brother-in-law if I was married. That was our beginning. We got married when I was 21.

My husband wanted to move to America to try and make a new life for us. When we moved here, I was pregnant, so I was not doing anything until my daughter was born. Then one of my friends called. Her boss lady was sick. They asked me to come and help at their Chinese restaurant on T.C. Jester. That was in 1984 - my daughter was just 2 or 3 months old. They wanted me to be a hostess, but they had a bar, so they taught me how to make the mixed drinks, too. Later on, they let me be a waitress.

My husband always wanted to open his own restaurant, but we weren't sure of the economy. He saved some money but said maybe we should buy a house first. During this time - 1986 to 1989, we both worked at the same place, Golden China Restaurant. He was in the kitchen, and I was working in the front as a waitress.

In 1990, my husband said, "OK, maybe now we can try our own career." I didn't have any doubts because I knew he was a good cook. We opened Fung's Kitchen that year. It was only a few thousand square feet then. We took over a restaurant called Hong Kong Kitchen.

In the beginning, I was the manager, the hostess, the waitress. I did everything that needed to be done. My husband and I both worked seven days a week, from open to close.

Our restaurant still sits in the same location, but we expanded four times. We both still work seven days a week. I am just like the hostess and the waitress. I answer the phones. Whenever my husband orders things, and the bill comes, I must help to double-check the invoices and write the check. I never go in the kitchen. At home, I let my husband cook. I say, "You cook, I wash dishes."

The restaurant opens at 10:30 a.m., and I am usually here by 11 or 11:30. When I come to work, I concentrate on making sure that everything runs smoothly.

I've been doing this for 26 years. Sometimes, I feel sorry for my kids. My son and my daughter were 6 and 7 years old when we first opened. During their younger years, we took very little time off, and they spent most of their days at the restaurant. Things are better now. I take about a three-week vacation each year, but I go by myself. We cannot go together. One of us has to be here to oversee everything.

My kids are all grown up now. Me and my husband are still in a good condition. I'm thinking we'll be doing this for five more years, at least. Maybe up to 10 years, I'm not sure. When I come to work, I am very happy - happy to take care of my regular customers. We have generations of families that come to Fung's Kitchen. I've seen little kids grow up, get married and have kids of their own that they bring here. That's why I love my job.

Irma Gonzalez Galvan

Irma's Original, 22 N. Chenevert, 713-222-0767; irmasoriginal.com

Years in the business: 27

Age: 74

What we're known for: Chicken mole, poblano peppers, carne guisada, pork roast tamales (mole, chile ancho, tomatillo), chicken, beef, cheese, fresh mahi mahi and spinach enchiladas, tilapia fish tacos, mahi mahi fish tacos, chorizo con huevos tacos.

My story: I was born in Brownsville. My mother had four children, and I was the oldest. She raised us as a single mom. We moved to Houston when I was 5 years old. I had to help support the family, so when I was 12 or 13 I started in a Mexican bakery, a panaderia, with my sister.

I learned to cook from my mother. The first thing I learned to make was el arroz, Mexican rice. I didn't go to college. When I graduated from high school, I started working at the Purse & Co. wholesale furniture store located across the street from where my restaurant is now. I started as a receptionist and worked myself to sales on the floor. I worked there for 30 years. I got married while I was working there; I had four children while I was working there.

In 1981, my husband passed away. We had no insurance, so I became a single mom with four kids, stuck paying a mortgage. Eventually, Purse & Co. went out of business, and I had to find other work. A friend of mine, a welder, convinced me to take over his mom's sandwich shop, which I named Irma's.

It took me about eight years to get things going. I started out making sandwiches, but it was a sad business because I made very little money. Then I started selling tacos and began making better money. I hired a lady to make tortillas so we could have handmade flour and corn tortillas. Enron was very popular at the time, and they were giving us a lot of business. So I went from tacos to making plate lunches. My first dishes were carne guisada, enchiladas, chile rellenos, mole. Then I started having fish, shrimp, steaks.

I also began making deliveries to the courthouse. I had a lot of people supporting me - judges, attorneys, mayors, police chiefs, the sheriff's department. I started accumulating friends, and when they came, they'd give me their business card and say, "In case you ever need anything, Irma, call me; here's my card." So I started putting their cards on the wall. And they'd say, "If you go to Irma's, my card's on the wall."

These days, I get to work about 9 o'clock in the morning. I still go to Canino's and buy everything fresh two to three times a week. The girls start in the kitchen at 8 a.m. because everything we make has got to be fresh, ready by 11 o'clock.

The minute I get here, I make sure everything is clean, then I go into the kitchen, make sure everything tastes good and has good presentation. I am in the kitchen from the minute I come in until we close because I also help my girls clean up the kitchen. I am the one that preps the plates. I make the guacamole.

When we cook, we call it como en su casa, or "just like home." Nothing fancy. The people I hired, they are not chefs but housewives. They've been with me 17 years. As for why I still do what I do every day? I'm hands-on. I see things other people do not see. It's important for me to be here because I want to give my customers the best that I can give.

Arpi Tcholakian

Arpi's Phoenicia Deli, 12151 Westheimer, 281-558-0416; phoeniciafoods.com/locations/arpis-deli

Years in the business: 33

Age: 72

What we're known for: Shawarma (beef, chicken and lamb), falafel, kibbeh, hummus, tabouleh, cucumber salad, beet salad, muhammara dip

My story: Our family comes from Beirut, Lebanon, but we are Armenian. I was not cooking when we were in Beirut. I used to work in research in the endocrinology department at the American University Hospital in Lebanon. We moved to Houston in 1978 when I was pregnant with my first child because I had a cousin here.

My husband's first job was as a draftsman for Bechtel Engineering, but it was the early '80s, and the economy was bad. The oil prices came down, and Bechtel was laying off people, so we had to do something. They didn't lay off my husband, but we were scared.

We opened Phoenicia Deli in 1983. We decided to specialize in shawarma because my husband's family had a similar business in Lebanon. Wherever you go and you see meat on a spit - it can be called gyro, shawarma, doner kebab- it is the same, but a lot of places use frozen meat. We grew up with these things, so we knew what we wanted. We didn't ask anybody how to do it. Me and my husband, we created the special spice mix for our meat. To this day, we still use the same recipe.

We started the deli with three spits - two chicken, one beef - and just a few groceries. Beyond the shawarma, we had falafel and some vegetarian dishes, a few cold cuts, po-boys and some of the side dishes we have now. At the time, my husband was in one corner doing the sandwiches, and I was in the other taking orders, working the cash register and controlling things. Little by little, we added more employees and we grew. In 1992, we needed more space, so we rented a place next door for storage, and it ended up becoming a retail store. This business later expanded across the street and became Phoenicia Specialty Foods in 2006.

My husband and my kids now take care of the retail store. I have always stayed in the deli. That's why, when we opened this current location in 2010, we changed the name to Arpi's Phoenicia Deli. This new location is much bigger and busier than before. We added more spits and started serving lamb. We have more than double the number of side dishes we used to have. All the food, they are my recipes.

The work is not easy, but I never complain, as if it's my first day of work. I come with that attitude. My husband works the same hours, from 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week. Every morning my husband and I drive to work together. He drops me off at the deli and goes to the store, then picks me up at 7 p.m., and we go home together.

When the kids were younger, I used to have Sundays off. The rest of the time, the kids would go to work with me. We had a special table and a special TV just for them. We take time off when we need to but never more than three days at a time.

Most of the customers, they are like family to me. Everybody that knows me, they come and give me a hug. If they don't see me, the next time they say, "Where were you? We came, you were not here. Are you OK?" So it's not that I don't get tired, but my presence is felt, and I enjoy it.
Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett says officials have put together an initial plan to help prevent motorists from driving into dangerously flooded underpasses in the Houston region.

Emmett said barricades would be placed and personnel -- which could be sheriff's deputies or other transportation officials -- would be deployed to high-risk locations. These include the exit ramp from the Westpark Tollway to Loop 610 that stretches deep underneath U.S. Highway 59, where three people died driving into high water last week. This followed the death of a motorist 11 months ago during Memorial Day flooding at the same Galleria-area location.
More than half of Harris County residents lean Democratic for the first time in over three decades, propelled by plummeting support for Republicans among Latinos, according to a survey released Monday by Rice University's Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

The finding, in the midst of a divisive presidential campaign, could signal an important shift in arguably the nation's largest swing county, which narrowly went to President Barack Obama in 2012 by about 970 votes.

"Frankly, I'm not all that surprised," said Jim McGrath, a Republican political consultant in Houston and spokesman for former President George H. W. Bush. "These are the fears realized by those on the Republican side who are worried about the irresponsible rhetoric surrounding the illegal immigration issue."

According to the annual survey, which was conducted between January and March, 52 percent of Harris County residents said they identify more with the Democratic Party, compared to 46 percent in 2012. Only 30 percent of residents lean Republican, about the same as in 2012, meaning that it is the share of undecided and new potential voters that has swung largely Democratic.

More Harris County residents have leaned Democratic than Republican since 2006, but until this year, no party could claim the support of more than half of residents. The survey has been asking about political affiliations since 1984.

Stephen Klineberg, co-director of the institute and author of the report, said the county in the past was pretty evenly divided among those who said they aligned more with Democrats and those leaning Republican.

Though the survey has a margin of error of 3 percentage points, the increase in Democratic support from 2012 to this year is "really remarkable," he said. "The big change is among Latinos."

The survey was conducted by land-line and cellphone calls among a representative sample of 808 residents in Harris County. Among 521 survey respondents who were eligible to vote in 2016, 52 percent leaned Democrat and 37 percent Republican. Among those ineligible to vote, 62 percent were Democrat and 20 percent Republican.

The shift among Latinos toward the Democratic Party could also lead to higher turnout in an election that has featured anti-Latino and anti-immigrant rhetoric, particularly from billionaire Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner. But the shift among Latinos may not mean much this November if Hispanics don't go to the polls in greater numbers.

Latinos in Texas historically lag behind other groups in voter turnout, below even the dismal national level. Though no exit polls were conducted in Texas in 2012, it is estimated that only about 20 percent of voters were Latino.

"Demographic change by itself is like having wind with no sail," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

Sea change among Latinos

Support for the GOP has stayed steady among white and African-American residents for the past decade, with 54 percent of the county's whites leaning Republican and 39 percent Democratic. (There was a slight increase in Democratic support among Anglo voters in the county over the past two years).

Similarly, 82 percent of African-American residents lean Democratic and 8 percent Republican.

Among Latinos, however, there has been a sea change.

From about 2000 to 2008, some 40 percent of the county's Hispanic residents identified with the Democratic Party, compared to fewer than 30 percent who aligned with the GOP, Klineberg said. Around 2009, Latino support for Democrats spiked to nearly 50 percent and the share of those leaning Republican dropped to 25 percent.

The gap widened again around the 2012 presidential election, when Republican Mitt Romney received a lower share of the Hispanic vote - 27 percent - than GOP presidential nominees had tallied in the previous three election cycles. Immigration was a particularly divisive issue in that campaign.

This spring, Harris County's Hispanic residents registered the lowest level of support for Republicans ever - only 18 percent - compared to 68 percent of Latinos who said they leaned Democratic.

"It's a powerful message to the Republican Party - reach out to these Latino voters, don't push them away," Klineberg said. "And for the Democrats - get out the vote."

Some advocacy groups, such as the William C. Velasquez Institute, a national Latino public policy research group in San Antonio, predict Hispanics in Texas this year will account for more than 3 million registered voters and cast more than 2 million votes, both of which would be records. Overall, the state has about 14.2 million registered voters.

Their expectations are largely predicated on population growth. Since 2012, Texas gained 600,000 eligible Hispanic voters, expanding to 4.8 million - second only to California, according to the Pew Research Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C. The Latino share of Texas' eligible voters increased 2 percentage points in that period, to 28 percent.

Warnings from Republicans

For precisely that reason,McGrath, the Bush spokesman, said Republicans must talk about the politically charged issue of immigration without alienating such a key voting bloc. He noted that Hispanic support for the GOP was relatively high during the presidency of George W. Bush, who tried to overhaul the nation's immigration system.

"The right wing in the Republican Party rejected that and blocked any progress," McGrath said.

Kevin Shuvalov, a GOP consultant in Austin who has worked on local races, said Texas Republicans have generally fared well among Hispanics.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick notably won 46 percent of the Latino vote in his 2014 race against Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio, who received 52 percent.

The study shows how closely divided Harris County really is.

"This isn't like a Republican county ... where you throw out some Republican red meat and everything is fine," Shuvalov said. "You're going to have to work."

Unless the GOP changes tactics soon, Republican candidates may increasingly feel the impact of dwindling Hispanic support, said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.

"This declining support among Latinos is a worrisome trend for Harris County Republicans in particular and for Texas Republicans more generally, placing the former's majority status in Harris County at risk this year and in the state potentially at some point in the next decade," he said.
President Barack Obama issued a disaster declaration Monday for Harris County and three other Texas counties following last week's heavy rains and floods, making residents eligible for federal assistance likely to total millions of dollars.

Flood victims will be able to apply for the assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The maximum grant per household is $33,000, with the total varying based on what damage is reported.

In addition to repair costs, some aid from FEMA also can be used for certain medical expenses, funeral costs and damage to clothing or household items, among other losses.

County officials encouraged flood victims to register with FEMA and report damage at 1-800-621-FEMA or disasterassistance.gov.

"I would like to thank the President and FEMA for quickly granting Texas' request for Individual Assistance following last week's severe weather," Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement Monday. "The State of Texas will continue to work with our local and federal partners to aid Texans recovering and rebuilding from flood damages and ensure all those affected receive the assistance they need."

The declaration covers Harris, Grimes, Parker and Fayette counties.

During what are being called the Tax Day floods, heavy rain - more than 17 inches in parts of north and northwest Harris County - caused waterways across the region to spill out of their banks. At least eight people across the region died during the floods.

In the city of Houston, the communities of Meyerland, Acres Homes, Greenspoint and Inwood Forest were among the most affected.

The most recent damage estimates count more than 3,500 flooded homes in the county - about $56 million in damage. Harris County is still seeking separate federal assistance to help cover more than $32 million in estimated costs from debris removal, emergency response and damage to public infrastructure.

Not all applicants will be eligible for FEMA aid. People will not receive aid for property covered by insurance, but if someone with some form of insurance has damage to property that is not insured, they may still be eligible for some aid, FEMA officials said.

Reasons to register

Officials stressed that anyone with any damage should register with FEMA and apply for funds.

"No matter how little damage you got, or what got damaged, whether it was your vehicle or your home, you lose nothing at all by registering," said Francisco Sanchez, spokesman for the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

The amount of damage registered with FEMA will determine in part how much total aid arrives.

Sanchez said that in the coming days, FEMA personnel will set up "storefronts" and mobile centers in the area. He said they will likely be focused in areas hit hardest by the storms.

Michael Walter, spokesman for the city's Office of Emergency Management, cautioned that Houston residents not living in Harris County are not yet eligible for the FEMA aid.

Sanchez said there will be a deadline for people to apply.

"That's why we encourage folks to hop on at the early end," he said.

Some fees to be waived

This type of aid - called individual assistance - can play a big role after disasters like last week's storms. In the aftermath of the Memorial Day 2015 floods, FEMA doled out almost $57 million. More than $530 million went out after Hurricane Ike.

While there will be a deadline to apply for assistance, certain types of FEMA aid can take years to trickle down. For example, Walter said the city only "closed the book" on 2001's devastating Tropical Storm Allison two years ago.

"Recovery is a yearslong process," Sanchez said.

Also Monday, Harris County's engineering department opened a phone line for residents seeking information on permits and inspections they may need to rebuild flood-damaged homes.

Residents can call 713-274-3880 from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. daily.

County commissioners are expected to vote Tuesday to waive fees for the permits and inspections for unincorporated parts of the county - fees that could otherwise add up to a few hundred dollars.

A city public works spokeswoman said City Council would have to determine whether to waive the city's permit fees, and said she was not aware of any plan to do so.

The city did not waive fees after the Memorial Day floods.

'Long-term recovery'

County commissioners are also expected to vote on using about $6 million in contingency money for debris removal and infrastructure repair.

Sanchez said damage assessment has been mostly completed and the county is in "restoration and relief" mode, helping people with their immediate needs.

He said the United Way of Greater Houston, which is operating a 211 line to connect people to services, has received more than 10,000 calls for assistance, 2,000 this weekend alone, mainly for food, shelter and medical needs.

After FEMA personnel arrive, Sanchez said the county will "start going into long-term recovery."

County flood control district spokeswoman Kim Jackson said most of the county's waterways were back within their banks. She said some flooding near Addicks reservoir would continue for five to seven days as rainwater pools in the reservoir.

She said officials were cautiously eyeing more potential rain Wednesday.
The first full year of the Affordable Care Act brought historic increases in coverage for low-wage workers and others who have long been left out of the health care system, a New York Times analysis has found.

Immigrants of all backgrounds - including more than 1 million legal residents who are not citizens - had the sharpest rise in coverage rates.

Hispanics, a coveted group of voters this election year, accounted for nearly a third of the increase in adults with insurance. That was the single largest share of any racial or ethnic group, far greater than their 17 percent share of the population. Low-wage workers, who did not have enough clout in the labor market to demand insurance, saw sharp increases. Coverage rates jumped for cooks, dishwashers, waiters, as well as for hairdressers and cashiers. Minorities, who disproportionately worked in low-wage jobs, had large gains.

The health care law was one of the most bitterly contested pieces of legislation in the country's history. It remains controversial because of its costs to both taxpayers and insurance customers. The high premiums and high deductibles of many plans still make coverage a crushing financial burden for some families.

And the law is not close to achieving the goal of universal coverage, in part because 19 states have declined to expand their Medicaid programs for the poor, an option the Supreme Court granted them in a landmark 2012 case. Nevertheless, the Times' analysis shows that by the end of that first full year, 2014, so many low-income people gained coverage that it halted the decadeslong expansion of the gap between the haves and the have-nots in the American health insurance system, a striking change at a time when disparities between rich and poor are growing in many areas.

"The law has clearly reduced broad measures of inequality," said David Cutler, an economics professor at Harvard, who served in the Clinton administration and advised the 2008 Obama campaign on health issues. "These are people who blend into the background of the economy. They are cleaning your hotel room, making your sandwich. The law has helped this population enormously."

Until now, the effect of the law has been measured mostly in broad numbers of newly insured people - about 20 million by the administration's most recent account. But the Times' analysis of census data from 2014, the first year the heart of the law was in full effect, provides a finely detailed look at who the newly insured actually are - by race, education, occupation, immigration status, and family structure.

The analysis shows how the law lifted some of the most vulnerable citizens. Part-time workers gained insurance at a higher rate than full-time workers, and people with high school degrees gained it at double the rate of college graduates. Adults living in households headed by relatives, such as siblings or cousins - often a marker of economic distress - gained insurance at double the rate of those in traditional households.

The law's passage, without a single Republican vote, capped decades of efforts to enact a broader health insurance system. Medicaid and Medicare passed in the 1960s, but did little to help workers who did not receive insurance through their jobs. Presidents Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton all tried and failed to win approval for expanded coverage, and the number of uninsured Americans grew to nearly a fifth of adults under the age of 65 by 2010, the year the Affordable Care Act passed.

The findings from the census data could inform the national dialogue, especially in this election year. Hispanics are a powerful voting force and the law is viewed favorably in Hispanic neighborhoods.

But whether the sharp increase in coverage rates for Hispanics will translate into votes for Democrats who supported the law, or whether some Republicans might temper their vows to repeal it, is not clear. And the fact that so many who benefited under the law were not citizens (or voters) - 1.2 million out of the total 8.7 million who got health insurance in 2014 - could set off a new round of debate in a year when immigration has become a deeply polarizing issue.

About 60 percent of those noncitizens were Hispanic, mostly natives of Mexico and Central America who had been living in the United States for decades. Another third were Asian, mostly newer arrivals living in states like California, New York and Texas. Unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for insurance under the law, but legal immigrants who have been in the country for more than five years are.

The vast majority of the country's 11 million unauthorized immigrants, about 70 percent of whom are Hispanic, still lack coverage, said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center.

Though the law has withstood two Supreme Court rulings that would have undermined its central elements, it continues to face challenges.

It requires most Americans to have health insurance and gives subsidies to those who cannot afford it. Even so, many still cannot afford policies. While it expanded Medicaid to cover more of the country's poor, the Supreme Court allowed states to opt out and 19 have, leaving millions of people still uncovered.

But in low-income neighborhoods like South Los Angeles, a historically poor patch of the city dotted with palm trees, small ranch houses and home to a growing Hispanic population, the law is having a big effect.

"From the vantage point of the poor and working poor, Obamacare has been profound," said Jim Mangia, president of the St. John's Well Child and Family Center, a federally funded health clinic in South Los Angeles that has enrolled 18,000 new patients under the law, nearly all of them Hispanic or black and the vast majority in Medicaid.

The clinic reported a 44 percent increase in cervical cancer screenings, a 25 percent increase in tobacco cessation therapy, and a 22 percent increase in the share of patients with controlled hypertension since 2014, the result, he said, of more patients having insurance.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)

One new patient, Angela Cruz, 60, is a typical example of a winner under the law. A legal immigrant who is not a citizen, she came to this country from El Salvador in 1990. She had never had health insurance in her 25 years of working in the United States, most recently as a nanny. She stitched together medical care through emergency rooms, free clinics and home remedies. When she needed to pay for medicine for a painful bout of kidney stones, she stopped buying meat.

Then she got coverage under the health law's expansion of Medicaid in California.

Now, she said, "I don't have the stress of wondering - can I pay this - when sometimes I didn't have anything to pay it with."

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)

Hispanics remain the least insured Americans, with only 67 percent having coverage in 2014, in part because so many unauthorized immigrants are uninsured.

Gains for blacks were muted because they disproportionately live in states that chose not to expand Medicaid. About 60 percent of poor blacks live in states that did not expand Medicaid. While the share of poor blacks covered by Medicaid did rise by 2 percentage points in those states, the rate rose by six points in states that expanded the program.

In all, minorities gained more than whites, making up two-thirds of the increase in insured adults across the country, and 70 percent of the increase in private insurance. Minority men who work as groundskeepers and janitors saw substantial gains, rising to 59 percent insured, up from 51 percent in 2013. Hispanic male construction workers rose to 43 percent insured, from 36 percent in 2013.

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

One such worker, Sergio Ortega, 51, a legal immigrant from Mexico who had never been insured before getting covered by Medicaid in 2014, said making a doctor's appointment seemed unthinkable without insurance, so he often simply ignored his health problems.

Several years ago, he started feeling tired, a condition that eventually drove him to quit his job demolishing buildings and start selling fruit from a street cart. By the time he sought treatment through his new coverage and discovered he had diabetes, his lower leg had to be amputated.

"I realized it was getting really bad because my foot started turning purple," said Ortega, who is a patient at St. John's.

Perhaps the biggest unmet promise of the law is that many it was supposed to help still cannot afford insurance. Alberto Torres, 50, a driver for a garment company in Los Angeles who could not afford insurance before the law, had signed up for a plan in 2014 for $41 a month. But this year his monthly premium jumped to $106 - too much, he said, for his meager salary.

"I'm feeling not so good," he said recently, waiting in line for help to look for a less expensive plan.

High deductibles are another big obstacle. "If you are living paycheck to paycheck and have nothing in the bank, insurance with a $3,000 deductible might feel like no insurance at all," said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Having insurance does not necessarily mean better health, but experts hope it could start to ease some of the worst disparities that have kept the United States close to the bottom of health rankings of rich countries.

Ortega has been fitted for a prosthetic leg. He is still learning how to use it.

"Now I don't worry," he said. "It's a security, a comfort that I feel."

Additional information:

Statistics in this report are estimates generated using census samples provided by the University of Minnesota Population Center, with additional insurance variables provided by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center and information on state Affordable Care Act status provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
GUBAREVICHI, Belarus - On the edge of Belarus' Cherno-byl exclusion zone, down the road from the signs warning "Stop! Radiation," a dairy farmer offers his visitors a glass of freshly drawn milk. Associated Press reporters politely decline the drink but pass on a bottled sample to a laboratory, which confirms it contains levels of a radioactive isotope at levels 10 times higher than the nation's food safety limits.

That finding on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident indicates how fallout from the April 26, 1986, explosion at the plant in neighboring Ukraine continues to taint life in Belarus. The authoritarian government of this agriculture-dependent nation appears determined to restore long-idle land to farm use - and in a country where dissent is quashed, any objection to the policy is thin.

Factory refutes lab finding

The farmer, Nikolai Chubenok, proudly says his herd of 50 dairy cows produces up to two tons of milk a day for the local factory of Milkavita, whose brand of Parmesan cheese is sold chiefly in Russia. Milkavita officials called the AP-commissioned lab finding "impossible," insisting their own tests show their milk supply contains traces of radioactive isotopes well below safety limits.

Yet a tour along the edge of the Polesie Radioecological Reserve, a 850-square-mile ghost landscape of 470 evacuated villages and towns, reveals a nation showing little regard for the potentially cancer-causing isotopes still to be found in the soil. Farmers suggest the lack of mutations and other glaring health problems mean Chernobyl's troubles can be consigned to history.

"There is no danger. How can you be afraid of radiation?" said Chubenok, who since 2014 has produced milk from his farm just 28 miles north of the shuttered Chernobyl site, and a mile or so from the boundary of a zone that remains officially off limits to full-time human habitation. Chubenok says he hopes to double his herd size and start producing farmhouse cheese.

His milk is part of the Milkavita supply chain for making Polesskiye brand cheese, about 90 percent of which is sold in Russia, the rest domestically. The World Bank identifies Russia as the major market for Belarusian food exports, which represent 15 percent of the country's export economy.

Since rising to power in 1994, President Alexander Lukashenko - the former director of a state-owned farm - has stopped resettlement programs for people living near the mandatory exclusion zone and developed a long-term plan to raze empty villages and reclaim the land for crops and livestock. The Chernobyl explosion meant 138,000 Belarusians had to be resettled, while 200,000 others living nearby left voluntarily.

One of the most prominent medical critics of the government's approach to safeguarding the public from Chernobyl fallout, Dr. Yuri Bandazhevsky, was removed as director of a Belarusian research institute and imprisoned in 2001 on corruption charges that international rights groups branded politically motivated. Since his 2005 parole, he has resumed his research into Chernobyl-related cancers with European Union sponsorship.

Bandazhevsky, now based in Ukraine, says he has no doubt that Belarus is failing to protect citizens from carcinogens in the food supply.

"We have a disaster," he told the AP in the Ukraine capital, Kiev. "In Belarus, there is no protection of the population from radiation exposure. On the contrary, the government is trying to persuade people not to pay attention to radiation, and food is grown in contaminated areas and sent to all points in the country."

The milk sample subjected to an AP-commissioned analysis backs this picture.

Isotope linked to cancers

The state-run Minsk Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology said it found strontium-90, a radioactive isotope linked to cancers and cardiovascular disease, in quantities 10 times higher than Belarusian food safety regulations allow. The test, like others in resource-strapped Belarus, was insufficiently sophisticated to test for heavier radioactive isotopes associated with nuclear fallout, including americium and variants of plutonium.

The Belarusian Agriculture Ministry says levels of strontium-90 should not exceed 3.7 becquerels per kilogram in food and drink. Becquerels are a globally recognized unit of measurement for radioactivity.

The Minsk lab informed the AP that the milk sample contained 37.5 becquerels. That radioactive isotope is, along with cesium-137, commonly produced during nuclear fission and generates most of the heat and penetrating radiation from nuclear waste. When consumed, scientists say strontium-90 mimics the behavior of calcium in the human body, settling in bones.

A person who answered the telephone at the press office of the Belarusian Emergency Situations Ministry, which is tasked with dealing with the fallout of the nuclear disaster, said they would not comment on the AP's findings.
BANGLADESH

Gay rights activist stabbed to death

NEW DELHI - Unidentified assailants fatally stabbed two men in Bangladesh's capital Monday night, including a gay rights activist who also worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, police said, in the latest in a series of attacks targeting atheists, moderates and foreigners.

Police said they suspected radical Islamists in the attack, which occurred two days after a university professor was hacked to death. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The victims were identified as USAID employee Xulhaz Mannan, who previously worked as a U.S. Embassy protocol officer, and his friend, Tanay Majumder, according to Mohammed Iqbal, a police officer in Dhaka's Kalabagan area. Mannan was also an editor of Bangladesh's first gay rights magazine, Roopbaan, as well as a cousin of former Foreign Minister Dipu Moni of the governing Awami League party.

PHILIPPINES

1 of 2 Canadians held by militants is decapitated

MANILA - Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that the decapitated head of a man recovered Monday night in the southern Philippines belongs to one of two Canadians taken hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in September.

Trudeau identified the victim as John Ridsdel of Calgary, Alberta and said his government will work with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this "heinous act."

Two men on a motorcycle left Ridsdel's head, placed inside a plastic bag, along a street in Jolo town in Sulu province and then fled, Jolo police Chief Superintentdent Junpikar Sitin said.

AFGHANISTAN

President chides Pakistanis for shielding Taliban

KABUL, Afghanistan - After courting Pakistan for more than a year, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan changed course Monday and warned that he would lodge a complaint with the U.N. Security Council if Pakistan refuses to take military action against Taliban leaders operating from its soil.

Ghani has tried to persuade Pakistan's leadership, particularly its powerful military, to bring the insurgent leaders to the negotiating table. But an increase in Taliban violence, including a brutal attack last week in the heart of Kabul that killed at least 64 people and wounded more than 300, has forced the Afghan president to effectively end the negotiations.

"If we do not see a change, despite our hopes and efforts for regional cooperation, we will be forced to turn to the U.N. Security Council and launch serious diplomatic efforts," Ghani said.

VENEZUELA

Government starts rationing electrical power

CARACAS - As if daily life in Venezuela wasn't hard enough, people across the crisis-wracked South American country will now have to add electricity to the long list of things they'll have to do without.

President Nicolas Maduro's government on Monday began rationing power in 18 of 24 states. The rolling blackouts of up to four hours a day are a last-minute attempt to save energy until water levels stabilize at the Guri Dam, which provides the bulk of the country's electricity.

MEXICO

Missing students' parents criticize pace of probe

MEXICO CITY - The parents of 43 missing students who disappeared in September 2014 accused Mexico's government on Monday of lying to them and not adequately investigating the case.

The parents' comments came a day after a group of international experts issued a report criticizing the investigation, saying suspects appear to have been tortured and key pieces of evidence related to the supposed burning of the students' bodies were not correctly investigated.

The 43 students have not been heard from since they were taken by local police in late 2014.

From wire reports
AUSTIN - Texas could pick up two, perhaps three, new congressional seats following the 2020 decennial Census if current population growth continues through the decade, political and demographic experts said Thursday.

With continued growth in Texas' four major metropolitan areas, they said, the state could almost match the gains it made in political representation after the 2010 Census, when it added four seats in Congress.

The Houston metropolitan area has led the way this decade, according to Census Bureau data released Thursday, potentially positioning the area for two additional seats in fast-growing Fort Bend and Montgomery counties.

The San Antonio area likely would be at the top of the list for an additional congressional seat, as well, said state demographer and University of Texas at San Antonio professor Lloyd Potter.

All told, the state's largest metro areas - anchored in Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio - added about 400,000 people last year, more than any other state in the country.

Hard to gerrymander

The greater Houston area, which includes The Woodlands and Sugar Land, added about 159,000 residents between July 2014 and July 2015, while the second-fastest-growing Texas metro area, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, saw an increase of 145,000.

The state's population growth was led by Latinos in the last decade, Potter said, a trend that has accelerated.

"I can see areas that, maybe historically, were largely non-Hispanic white shifting and becoming more integrated in terms of having people of Hispanic descent, Asian and even African-American in them," Potter said.

Under those circumstances, it could become increasingly difficult for Republicans, who will control the state legislature for the foreseeable future, to draw the new congressional and state district lines in ways that favor their party.

In the short term, given the party's firm grip on power in Texas, growth in the state will favor the GOP, but that political calculus cannot last in the long-term, according to Bob Stein, a political science professor at Rice University.

"There simply aren't enough bodies to go around to draw what we might call safe Republican districts," Stein said. "Nonetheless, I think Republicans will find a way to advantage themselves, particularly in the statehouse. But increasingly, what you're going to find is a black and Hispanic population become an obstacle to drawing districts."

Pending court cases

How the redistricting fight shakes out could well be determined by two major court challenges that have the Texas electoral system somewhat in limbo.

A San Antonio federal court still is considering a lawsuit against legislative maps drawn in 2011, and the case is expected eventually to head to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the other case, two voters who live in rural parts of the state sued Texas, arguing the state should draw political boundaries based on the number of eligible voters or registered voters who live in the area, instead of the total number of people in the district.

The high court heard oral arguments in the case in December and is expected to issue a ruling by summer.

For nearly two decades, Texas Democrats have argued that looming demographic changes favor their party in the coming years, a position they continue to assert.

"Texas did a miserable job of drawing districts in 2011 in line with the population growth of the last decade," said Chad Dunn, an election law attorney for the Texas Democratic Party. "In my view, it's impossible for the state Legislature to crack up the Latino and African-American communities in Texas any further in such a way to prevent them from electing candidates of choice."

Republican redistricting plans that helped the party in recent years are about to hit a wall, he said.

"The low-hanging and the mid-hanging fruit has already been picked. It's going to take a jump of Olympic proportions to continue denying minority American Texans in these new Congressional districts."

Who benefits?

Republican Party of Texas leaders reject any assertion that a population boom among Latinos and African-Americans largely will benefit the Democratic Party.

They point to state elections in the last decade that show Republican candidates winning a plurality or near-plurality of Latino voters in various contests, particularly U.S. Sen. John Cornyn's 2014 re-election campaign, in which he bested his Democratic opponent among those voters.

"There is no conclusion Democrats can hang their hat on that they're going to win these new voters," said Tom Mechler, the state Republican Party's chairman, adding that under his leadership the party has prioritized minority outreach.

In addition to trying to win over native Texas voters in the fast-growing areas of the state, GOP leaders argue that the population explosion in the state's metro areas is the product of new residents who have left states governed by Democratic majorities.

"It appears to us that these people are moving from high-tax states, from Democratic states," he said. "It's reasonable to conclude that they're leaving for a Republican state."
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WASHINGTON - Ted Cruz defended his new campaign pact with GOP rival John Kasich on Monday, the latest gambit in an effort to block Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who may well sweep five northeastern presidential primaries on Tuesday.

The highly unconventional move reflects the growing sense of urgency among Republicans who see the New York real estate mogul as a rogue force poised to clinch the GOP nomination and wreak havoc within the party.

Trump, campaigning in Rhode Island on Monday, denounced the deal as a desperate move by two losing "longtime politicians" conspiring to subvert his insurgent campaign.

RELATED: Trump calls delegate selection 'crooked'

"It shows how weak they are. It shows how pathetic they are," Trump told cheering supporters.

While Cruz campaigned in Indiana, a linchpin in his effort to slow Trump's march toward the nomination, he praised Kasich's effort to step aside in the Hoosier State, which votes next week. In return, Cruz agreed to stay clear of Oregon and New Mexico, states that could favor the Ohio governor next month.

"After discussions with the Kasich campaign, we made a decision to allocate our resources," he told reporters in Indiana. "I think that made sense for both campaigns."

Cruz and Kasich sought to downplay the significance of the anti-Trump deal, which resembles the progressive elimination tactic of the reality TV series "Survivor."

"I'm not campaigning in Indiana, and he's not campaigning in these other states, that's all," Kasich said. "It's not a big deal."

There was confusion about how far the agreement would go, however.

On Monday, Kasich canceled all of his scheduled appearances in Indiana, and a top Kasich official told the Indianapolis Star the campaign was asking his supporters in Indiana to vote for Cruz.

Kasich, however, told reporters "I've never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me."

Cruz remained silent on whether he would encourage his supporters in New Mexico and Oregon to vote for Kasich. Since both states award delegates proportionately, Cruz still could pick up delegates there if he shows well.

At the same time, Cruz rejected any suggestion the tag-team operation was a sign of weakness in the face of Trump's growing lead in the delegate race.

"There is desperation on the Trump side," Cruz said, alluding to the businessman's criticism of party rules that allow the Texas senator to woo delegates even in states where Trump has won the popular vote.

Trump's commanding win in New York last week left him the only GOP contender with a mathematical possibility of reaching the 1,237-delegate majority needed to claim the nomination before the convention in Cleveland.

RELATED: After N.Y. loss, Cruz officially aims at long slog to contested convention

Cruz and Kasich now can only hope to stop Trump from reaching the winning threshold in the remaining 15 primaries. That would force a contested convention with multiple ballots in which delegates no longer would be bound to statewide voting totals.

'Running short of time'

Heavily favored in Tuesday's primaries in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland and Delaware, Trump is looking to build momentum for the rest of the primary calendar, where every win puts pressure on Cruz and his allies.

"Their opportunities to block him vanish with each passing week," Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said.

Strategically, the move resembles ex-contender Marco Rubio's suggestion that - to stop Trump - his backers should support Kasich in Ohio. Kasich did not return the favor in Rubio's native Florida, contributing to a crushing primary loss that ended Rubio's campaign.

Regardless of whether voters follow suit in the Cruz-Kasich accord, the deal is a rarity in modern American politics.

"It is unprecedented that we have so public a mutual-aid pact," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. Long-rumored, the prospect of a Cruz partnership with Kasich or Rubio seems to take on more appeal with Trump's 301-delegate lead about to widen in the coming days.

"Candidates who are behind are much more likely to be strategically smart about where they go and how they spend money," Rottinghaus said. "They both need to put all their wood behind that one arrow because they're running short of time and running low on momentum."

Coordination

In nearly identical statements Sunday night, the Cruz and Kasich campaigns cast the move as an effort to prevent Trump from winning the GOP nomination and potentially giving the White House to Hillary Clinton.

Both campaigns described a collaboration to limit Trump's winnings in the upcoming primary states.

"Due to the fact that the Indiana primary is winner-take-all statewide and by congressional district, keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland," Kasich strategist John Weaver said in a statement. "Given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign's resources west and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana."

Trump, notified of the pact near midnight Sunday, reacted with incredulity. "Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination," Trump tweeted late Sunday. "DESPERATION!"

However rare, the campaigns' public pronouncements could be the only legal way to give direction to their allied Super PACs, with which the campaigns cannot officially collaborate, Rottinghaus said.

There were immediate signs that some pro-Cruz Super PACs would follow his lead. The Trusted Leadership PAC announced plans Monday to add a pro-Cruz spot in Indiana and shelve advertising in Oregon and New Mexico.

Kellyanne Conway, the group's director of research and media outreach, said Trusted Leadership still would run an attack ad against Kasich in Indiana "as we attempt to win every possible vote for Senator Cruz."

Her group reported a $640,893 media buy against Kasich in Indiana on Friday, two days before the deal was struck, according to federal campaign finance reports.

Anti-Trump forces also welcomed the deal, particularly in Indiana, where they can coalesce behind a single candidate when the state votes on May 3.

"We've seen from victories in places like Ohio and Wisconsin that when #NeverTrump forces unite behind the one alternative that's better suited to that state, that we can beat Trump decisively," said Rory Cooper, a senior advisor to #NeverTrump, a leading anti-Trump Super PAC.

Indiana looms large for Cruz. A win there would put pressure on Trump to dominate the rest of the primaries - including delegate-rich California on June 7 - or risk a contested convention where anti-Trump activists are likely to have the upper hand.

However, Cruz allies also face the prospect of voter backlash from the deal - or at least fueling the narrative pushed by Trump that the party forces are colluding to deny him the nomination.

RELATED: Anticipation heats up for trouble at GOP convention

"I just think that these stop so-and-so efforts, all they do is just build up the guy they're trying to stop," said Rick Shaftan, who heads the pro-Cruz Courageous Conservatives PAC. "It wouldn't be my way of doing things."
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Recently the press office of U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan released a mission statement for a task force addressing poverty, opportunity and upward mobility. The leadership group includes three House committee chairmen from Texas: Mike Conaway, R-Midland, Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, and Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands. The mission lists goals and policy reform ideas. With platform drafts taking shape ahead of the upcoming presidential nominating conventions, this is a good time to identify and align on poverty-related policy improvements. Consistent with the task force's goal to reward work by providing benefits, we believe the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) should extend to more of the poor. And consistent with the task force's goal to assure the design of policy is guided by results, the leadership should avoid structural changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan (SNAP, known formerly as "food stamps") that would eliminate the guarantee of food assistance to all qualifying families.

The EITC has existed in various forms since 1975. The program is for low-income Americans who are working. The credit grows with the amount of income earned. Low-income Americans keep more of the money they earn, and are encouraged to work more. In 2014, the EITC lifted 6.7 million Americans out of poverty. And, our economy also benefits. Economists working with the nation's mayors estimate that every EITC dollar credited back to low-income families has a multiplying effect of 1.5 to 2 times in added economic activity in the local communities. This is a high yield on investment. And yet, more opportunity remains.
In opposing President Obama's executive actions on immigration, critics on the right have it wrong.

The arguments made to the Supreme Court by conservatives who oppose the administration's efforts to temporarily defer deportation and grant work permits to two groups of undocumented immigrants - young people brought to the United States as children by their parents, and the parents of U.S.-born children - were neither strong nor persuasive.

In a nutshell, Republicans like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott insist that Obama is making the law instead of executing it. As a former state attorney general, Abbott should know better. Prosecutorial discretion is a real thing, and law enforcement officials get to prioritize who to go after and in what order. Just because a policeman uses his discretion to give you a warning instead of a citation does not mean that he is unilaterally rewriting the vehicle code.

Besides, discretion is a double-edged sword. According to immigration attorneys I've heard from, the administration is currently moving Central American refugees - mostly women and children - to the front of the deportation line, placing them ahead of hardened criminals. Do conservatives have a problem with this, too? If so, they're being awfully quiet about it.

Opponents also worry that, if the White House allows illegal immigrants to remain on this side of the border, states like Texas - which is leading a coalition of more than 20 states in opposition to the administration - might have to provide the undocumented with driver's licenses and other benefits. So, they insist, this is an unfunded mandate.

Talk about taking the long way home. No one forces a state like Texas to provide driver's licenses, at least not without another court fight or putting the question on a state ballot. We still have states' rights. Obama didn't even issue executive orders, which would have the force of law. He merely took executive action, which amounts to implementing minor policy changes at the Department of Homeland Security that can be easily undone by any future president.

So what is this really about? I have a theory: Republican critics of Obama's executive actions - better known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) - are actually afraid of having to pay a price at the ballot box for their tolerance of demagogues like Donald Trump. They think the best way to avoid being held accountable is to fight any attempt to let the immigrants remain in this country.

But just because conservatives are off-base in their arguments against Obama's executive actions on immigration doesn't mean those policies are a home run. More like a foul ball.

Although I was once a supporter, I've come to realize that these executive actions represent a major step backward for those of us who want a permanent fix to our broken immigration system. They're crumbs that immigration reformers - out of hunger and desperation - like to imagine is a steak dinner.

Let's remember that these executive actions were born of dishonesty, cynicism and expediency. Obama spent the first three years of his presidency repeatedly denying that he had the very kind of executive power that he eventually exercised. In fact, he often pushed back against immigration activists, telling them that he was "not a king" and so he had to work with Congress. In June 2012, he did an about-face and went it alone to rekindle Latino support for his re-election, which had been on the wane due to his broken promise to fix the immigration system and a record number of deportations. This suggests that Obama launched these changes not because he wanted to, but because he felt he had to. This often makes for bad policy.

And while the deferred action is temporary - two or three years with the possibility of renewal - what's permanent is the jeopardy that applicants put themselves in to receive it. Immigration officials will have on file an individual's name, fingerprints, and a home address where they can find the applicant and his or her family members, some of whom may also be undocumented and subject to deportation. This is a Band-Aid on a chest wound. And it's not just deficient. It's dangerous.

The 2016 presidential hopefuls are sometimes asked if they intend to preserve Obama's executive action on immigration. That's the wrong question. We should be asking the candidates how quickly they intend to end it and what they would replace it with.

Navarrette's column is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. His email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com.
What an odd twist the Republican primary has taken when the two major candidates left in the race spar over which bathroom transgender people can use.

It started when Donald Trump last week said a trans visitor to Trump Tower could use whatever bathroom is in line with their gender identity. Ted Cruz, ever the crusading conservative, took Trumps response and turned it into a punchline at a rally over the weekend.

So, let me make things real simple: Even if Donald Trump dresses up as Hillary Clinton, he shouldnt be using the girls restroom, the Texas senator said at a Saturday rally in Lebanon, Indiana.

Politicians, and Cruz is chief among them, often like to admonish reporters who ask questions about these so-called wedge social issues. Americans care about jobs and the economy, they argue, and a series of questions about, say, where trans people can relieve themselves are used by a gotcha liberal media to humiliate conservatives.

Right now, though, Cruz needs to win a Republican primary, and he has planted his flag in Indiana, where some polls show Trump with a narrow lead. A Cruz ad specifically called out Trump for giving in to the PC police and allowing grown men in dresses to follow your daughter or wife into the restroom.

Its not appropriate. Its not safe, the ad warns. Its PC nonsense thats destroying America.

In a matter of days  propelled by a North Carolina law that mandates people use the bathrooms that correspond to the gender thats on their birth certificate  the issue has become an unlikely lightning rod for the party. Republicans everywhere have seemed to make it their cause of late, including those in Texas.

On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick became the highest-ranking Texas lawmaker to come out for a so-called bathroom bill in Texas, signaling he thinks is appropriate for the Texas Senate, over which he presides, to consider the issue next session. If it costs me an election, if it costs me a lot of grief, then so be it, he said. I think the handwriting is on the wall: Stay out of the ladies room if youre a man.

From the top echelons of state government to a local race for county sheriff, its catching on here.

Take the case of Tracy Murphree, the former Texas Ranger and current GOP candidate for Denton County sheriff. Murphree, who worked as a narcotics officer in Houston for a while, bested the incumbent, Will Travis, 56 percent to 43 percent in the March primary.

It appears local law enforcement got their man, the Denton Record-Chronicle wrote of Murphrees victory, noting that sheriffs office employees endorsed him and that his opponent weathered some negative press about a bribery investigation. (A grand jury eventually decided not to indict Travis, according to the paper.)

Murphree has all but won the race for sheriff. He faces no Democrat in November, as if it would matter in that part of the state, and he is expected to easily defeat a Libertarian candidate in November.

That could explain why, on April 22, he posted this message on Facebook: This whole bathroom thing is craziness (sic) I have never seen. All I can say is this: If my little girl is in a public womens restroom and a man, regardless of how he may identify, goes into the bathroom, he will then identify as a John Doe until he wakes up in whatever hospital he may be taken to.

The presumptive chief lawman of Texas ninth most populous county continued: Your identity does not trump my little girl's safety. I identify as an overprotective father that loves his kids and would do anything to protect them.

There are a few things working in Murphrees favor here. First, its not likely his statements will hurt him in his race, no matter how many LGBT groups raise hell about it. Second, and most importantly, there already are laws that protect his daughter should anybody of any gender try to harm her in a bathroom or anywhere else.

I understand how they interpreted it, I understand how they saw it, I understand their anger. For that, I apologize, Murphree said Monday after his comments drew scorn. He is expected to meet with Equality Texas, the largest gay rights group in the state, on Tuesday to discuss ways to move forward, according to a report from CBS-DFW.
We now have an idea of when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will reconsider Texas voter ID law, at the heart of a touch-and-go legal battle that has consumed elections in the state since 2011. Heres background on the case if you need a refresher.

The court said Thursday morning that it would hear the case en banc during the week of May 23. That means the full panel of active judges on the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit, which is known for being among the most conservative in the country, can weigh in on the issue. They have to hear the oral arguments and then issue a decision, which means the case is likely to be settled, at least at the circuit court level, late summer or early fall.

If thats the case, by then, we should know who the Democratic and Republican nominees for president are, as both national conventions are scheduled for late July. All this is to say that the country, and Texas specifically, just got another high-stakes issue thrown into the mix of an already raucous political year.

Texas' top politicians obviously were not satisfied when a three-judge panel gave the plaintiffs a narrow though considerable victory last year by upholding a lower court ruling that said the law had a discriminatory effect on Latino and black voters.

Todays decision is a strong step forward in our efforts to defend the states Voter ID laws, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement Wednesday. Safeguarding the integrity of our elections is a primary function of state government and is essential to preserving our democratic process.

Leave it to Texas, which already has blockbuster affirmative action and abortion cases before the U.S. Supreme Court this term, to tee up another one in the federal courts.

As early as next week, President Barack Obama reportedly could submit a Supreme Court nominee to the Senate to fill the seat left open by Justice Antonin Scalias recent death. The Senate Republican majority has said it wont consider any nominee by Obama, and the political staredown that has ensued has placed the Texas voter ID case in a precarious position.

Rick Hasen, a UC-Irvine law professor and election law expert, wrote Wednesday that, with a 4-4 partisan split on the high court, whatever the 5th Circuit decides could be the final say on the laws implementation in Texas for quite some time -- definitely through the 2016 election and maybe longer.

Also of note, Hasen warned about the timing of the case: The 5th Circuit will rule, and who knows how close this will be to the election, and (whether) the Court will let the voter ID law be in effect for this election. One can imagine judges on the 5th Circuit who want Texas to use the voter ID law in this election to drag their feet long enough to assure a decision does not come until after the election.
Three Rivers Community College (TRCC) of Poplar Bluff will withdraw from Willow Springs by the end of the year, according to school and city officials who said the school hasnt been able to meet the requirements of the Missouri Department of Higher Education in offering a general studies program.

I am disappointed that it hasnt worked, TRCC director Scott Williamson said. I still believe there is a need for vocational technical education in the area, however there were simply more obstacles than we could overcome. We will meet our obligations to all current students but will not be enrolling any new students,

Williamson, TRCC president Dr. Wesley Payne, and Willow Springs Mayor Kim Wehmer all expressed their disappointment.

The college has been part of the South Central Education Consortium, along with Missouri State University-West Plains, offering classes in the former Missouri Department of Transport District 9 building since January 2014. Williamson said approximately 30 students attended the college, which offered courses in HVAC, welding, EMT courses, transitional math, reading and writing.

Willow Springs reached an agreement with MoDOT for use of the facility so that the city could begin negotiations with Three Rivers to establish a vocational center. MSU-West Plains expressed their interest also in the buildings. An agreement was then signed by the two in 2013 as regulated by the Missouri Department of Higher Education. State Sen. Mike Cunningham and State Rep. Shawn Rhoads also helped.

To hear the news that TRCC would be terminating their lease with the city of Willow Springs at the end of 2016 was disheartening, to say the least, said city administrator Beverly Hicks. However it did not come to us as a shock, being that the obstacles that had been placed on the education consortium were extremely challenging from the very beginning which included not being able to offer a general studies program.

The Missouri Department of Higher Educations policies, in regard to the duplication of services, made it extremely difficult for TRCC to be sustainable and grow as successfully as it has in other areas of the state. This partnership, quite honestly, was set up for failure and very frustrating on the part of the city, as we had no control over the policies set forth in this agreement, said Hicks.

The city will now take a hard look at the current MoDOT lease in relation to the future of the building.

We have had a great working relationship with Payne, Williamson and all of the TRCC staff and appreciate their past willingness to partner under such difficult terms, Hicks said. It is my hope the Missouri Department of Higher Education would reevaluate these policies and allow communities to have some control over their own educational needs and wants, and if this was to ever occur, I believe that TRCC would be willing to partner with the city once again.
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In general, Employee Advocacy is increasingly popular in our HR community. It has broad reaching operational benefits for your organization and for you as an HR professional. Its a unique and powerful approach to talent management that has multiple benefits not only HR but for Marketing, Sales and organizational leadership.



Joann Corley, the founder and CEO of The Human Sphere, author of several books and will present the following:

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An Australian politician is blaming fracking after he lit a river on fire in a video posted to Facebook last week.

The video shows Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham taking a lighter to the Condamine River in the country's Queensland province.

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Buckingham swore in the clip as flames flared up beside his boat.

"Holy f***! Unbelievable," he said. "A river on fire!"

The video was shot close to some coal seam gas (CSG) operations. CSG is a form of natural gas that's found in coal deposits deep underground, and it's extracted through fracking  or drilling a well that pulls the gas up to the surface.

Buckingham claimed the extraction process in the area is causing methane to come up through the ground, polluting both the air and the water in the river.

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Environmentalists noted signs of methane seeping in the area after noticing bubbles on the surface of the Condamine River, Australia's ABC reported.

A study released the following year found that CSG drilling could be one of a number of factors causing the bubbling.

However, Origin Energy  which operates a number of CSG drills  said that the seeping posed "no risk to the environment, or to public safety, providing people show common sense and act responsibly."

Environmental risks of LNG

Australia isn't the only country where fracking is happening.

British Columbia is looking to have three liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities up and running in the province by 2020.

Unlike CSG, LNG is natural gas that's been cooled and turned into a liquid, which makes it easier to transport overseas. It, too, is extracted using a well.

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Federal scientists have said that LNG poses a low environmental risk  but environmentalists are still concerned about the potential for explosions on LNG tankers, as well as the risk of fires resulting from spills.

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WASHINGTON  Justin Trudeau's gender-equal cabinet could soon be replicated in the United States, depending on the outcome of the current American election.

The poll-leading presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, appeared to indicate her intention to follow suit when asked about it in a televised event on the eve of Tuesday's five northeastern primaries.

A moderator had asked about the federal cabinet to the north: "Canada has a new prime minister, Justin Trudeau. He promised when he took office that he would have a cabinet that was 50 per cent women, and then he did it. He made good on his promise. Would you make that same pledge?"

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Clinton suggested she would: "I am going to have a cabinet that looks like America, and 50 per cent of America is women, right?" That prompted the MSNBC moderator, Rachel Maddow, to conclude, "So that's a yes?"

Hillary Clinton might follow Justin Trudeau's example. (Photo: Washington Post via Getty Images)

Canada's gender-balanced cabinet has gotten a fair bit of attention in the U.S., fuelled partly by how the prime minister responded to a question about it with a shoulder shrug and the sound bite: "Because it's 2015."

But in reality, Canada didn't blaze that particular trail.

Finland's cabinet is 62 per cent female; Cape Verde's is 53 per cent; Sweden's is 52 per cent; and France's is 50 per cent, according to last year's statistics from the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

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Even within Canada, the first gender-parity cabinet was created not by Trudeau  but by the former premier in Trudeau's home province of Quebec, Jean Charest.

Trudeau's gender-equal cabinet is not the first one in Canada. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Clinton remains the U.S. presidential front-runner, despite a tougher-than-expected primary challenge.

She retains a significant lead over her more progressive challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and is expected to add to it Tuesday in primaries in Maryland, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Delaware.

She has also consistently led general-election polls against the two Republican front-runners  Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz  although she has performed far more poorly against less-successful Republican candidates like Ohio Gov. John Kasich and the dropped-out Marco Rubio.

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Trump has also been asked about the Canadian cabinet  and he won't commit to copying the Trudeau formula.

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Olaf Protze via Getty Images SVALBARD, NORWAY - 2007/07/07: MS Explorer in the harbour Ny Alesund. (Photo by Olaf Protze/LightRocket via Getty Images)

It's Earth Day weekend and I'd been planning to write a column on a feel-good topic, say the runaway success of solar power or the 130 world leaders gathered at the UN to sign the landmark Paris Declaration; the promise instead of the peril.

But my sunny outlook faded to black when I heard the highly alarming news that a massive cruise ship called the Crystal Serenity was preparing to transit the Northwest Passage on August 16. I have so far resisted the impulse to lead with a paragraph summ'at like this:

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The ground above Sir John Franklin's grave must be vibrating as the great Arctic explorer spins violently in his grave with the imminent departure of the cruise ship Crystal Serenity to transit the Northwest Passage. The ship will carry 1,000 passengers and 600 crew through the icy waterway where in 1845 he and his doomed crew of 129 mariners suffered an agonizing death and probably resorted to cannibalism.

For 300 years, the Northwest Passage was a holy grail for explorers until 1906 when Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen sailed the route in three years. Passengers on the Crystal Serenity will fork out from $30,000 to $156,000 dollars to sail from Anchorage, Alaska, through the Northwest Passage, then down to New York City. The month-long cruise is already sold out. And the greatest tribulation they can expect is possibly running out of the good Scotch.

But I refuse to lead, as practically every other journalist has, by comparing the cruel fate of Franklin and his men to the hedonistic, pampered experience-to-be of the Serenity's passengers. Rather, I choose to lead with the opinions of two concerned Arctic-lovers I know personally, both experts on our melting, endangered northern reaches.

Dr. Michael Byers and his wife, Catharine, kindly hosted my wife, Debbie, and I in 2014 when I gave a talk on Saltspring Island, where they live. Michael holds the Canada research chair in global politics and international law at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of International Law and the Arctic and cares deeply about the Arctic. He recently wrote about the impending cruise/invasion in the Globe and Mail.

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"Arctic cruises are the latest thing in high-end tourism. Icebergs, polar bears, beluga whales, awe-inspiring vistas and isolated Inuit communities -- what's not to like for the jaded traveller? But here's the thing: Arctic cruises involve greater hazards and environmental impact than just about any other kind of tourism," he writes.

Michael touched on the climate change "feedback loop" of Arctic cruises, which produce carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to even more melting in years to come. "Consider the emissions associated with the Crystal Serenity: Passengers will fly from their homes to Anchorage, and return at journey's end from New York. On board the ship, they will enjoy food products that have also travelled great distances. They will be cared for by 655 crew members, each with their own smaller but still significant climate footprint. All the while, the ship will be burning fuel oil for propulsion, heat and electricity," he writes.

He touches on the many hazards involved in transiting the Northwest Passage, such as running aground in the poorly charted waters; exceptionally hard and deadly mini-icebergs called growlers that float low in the water and are difficult to spot; and oil spills, which would be practically impossible to clean up and would stain the pristine frigid Arctic waters for many generations to come.

But I think the Crystal Serenity will leave a legacy far more toxic and destructive in her wake than an oil spill. She will open up the north for other, less sophisticated cruise lines. I think it highly unlikely that Carnival cruise lines will have two helicopters and its own ice-strengthened escort vessel at its disposal.

My second Arctic expert is a dear friend. CW Nicol made his first expedition to the Arctic from his native Wales in 1958 when he was 17. He forged his stepfather's signature, told his mother he was going camping and researched eider ducks for six months on Baffin Island. By 1965 Nic was spending seven months a year in the north as a marine mammal technician for the Arctic Biological Station.

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He wound up a citizen in Japan with a black belt in karate and over 100 books, including a bestseller on the Arctic called The Raven's Tale, a luminous story of surviving an Arctic winter told by the creatures who live there led by an old raven called Gon.

Nic sails the Northwest Passage regularly on the Ocean Endeavour, a small cruise ship that carries about 200 passengers and leaves little trace of its passing. Nic says they get some of the top Arctic experts in the world as guides and interpreters, hire Inuit as guides, teachers and artists, and contribute a lot of money and support to all the small coastal communities they visit.

Nic says the captain of the ship is very experienced in icy waters and will take no risks. Novelist Margaret Atwood has sailed on the Endeavour several times, as has painter Robert Bateman. Nic feels that the more we can take sincere, concerned people into the Canadian arctic, the better it will be for global understanding.

Michael says Arctic cruises are a form of "extinction tourism," in which people travel to see a species or culture while they still can. The Crystal Serenity is preparing to ply the same waters as the good ship Ocean Endeavour, but won't carry any sincere, concerned Arctic lovers. I fear the star-crossed Serenity will carry the first extinction tourists into the Northwest Passage and begin the end of our endangered, fragile north.

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This is a picture of me enjoying a glass of wine as a nine-year-old.

In February, I found it at my parents' house. I held it between my thumb and my finger, and I laughed. Such foreshadowing, I thought.

I put the picture on my fridge at home. It would be a conversation starter. Every time I went for a snack, to grab a soda, or to put away what was left of my dinner, I glanced at the glossy snapshot, half-thinking. I didn't talk to anyone about it.

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As time passed, half-thoughts turned into full meditations, and by the end of March, I had to take the picture down. The girl in the photo had changed. She was no longer the goofy little kid that I had laughed at in February. She had undergone an unbearable mutation; every time I visited her, she looked a little different, a little dimmer, a little more drunk, even more like a nine-year-old than ever before, and therefore more sad. Such foreshadowing, I thought. Had the change happened over night, or over time? Not knowing, I resolved to throw the photo away, deep into the bottom of my junk drawer.

As a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, feelings of remorse exist frequently in the wake of nostalgia. I'm told that, with time, nostalgia and remorse will undergo a kind of mitosis, and begin to occupy different spaces in my consciousness. Until then, they are forced to coexist, making Memory Lane feel more like an unlit back alley.

April is Alcohol Awareness month. During this month, doctors, addictions specialists, and researchers ask us to examine alcohol; to determine whether or not it's something we consume, or something we use, whether memories of drunken nights evoke feelings of nostalgia, or remorse. Essentially, in April, the world is asked to live as I've been living for the last year and a half in recovery. Painfully, gratefully aware.

I don't know in which month that photo was taken, but I do know that, at nine years old, I was totally clueless. About everything. Unaware of the hardships that come with maturity, the challenges born out of relationships, the sentence that a guilty conscience is capable of handing down, and how quickly a person's life can slip away if they elect not to participate in it.

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Wine every day, my grandfather told me, and I later told my doctors, was actually very good for you.

At nine years old, I couldn't know that alcohol would be the catalyst to my coming undone. That, for me, it would start with booze, and lead to cocaine, and then opioids and amphetamines, and high-risk sex, and then rehab, and then relapse, and then rehab again.

The photograph was taken at my grandparents' house. My biological father's parents. The side of the family that might lose the hereditary/genetic debate, if we were ever to have one.

When eating dinner at their place, which I did on Sunday nights, it was not at all uncommon for there to be wine on the table, cocktails for the adults before the meal, and then cocktails for the adults after.

Before the age of ten, I was introduced to what would soon become my go-to defense in every doctor's office I'd ever sit in. Wine every day, my grandfather told me, and I later told my doctors, was actually very good for you! He would rattle off a long list of health benefits, as he struggled with the screw, punctuating his pitch with the popping sound of a cork. Even at the age of nine, I knew to take heed. Somehow I recognized in myself the need to know these benefits by rote.

It's long been said that moderate drinking has its advantages, from a reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, to achieving better defenses against cold and flu. But a recent study out of the University of Victoria argues that such might not really be the case; that we have overestimated the benefits of booze, and grossly underestimated the risks associated with alcohol use at any level.

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I comforted myself for years with the belief that what I was doing to my body, my spirit, my friends, and my family, was normal.

As reported by the Vancouver Metro News, the updated research tasks us to look less at the old data, more toward the methods used in collecting it, and the sample group from which it was collected.

In the article, Tim Stockwell, director of U of Victoria's Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia, concludes his interview with a soundbite. Though he was speaking to everyone -- to the journalist interviewing him, and all readers respectively -- I felt like it was directed specifically to me.

"Do not believe or comfort yourself by thinking [alcohol is] good for your health."

And there it was. Comfort.

I comforted myself for years with the belief that what I was doing to my body, my spirit, my friends, and my family, was normal. Everyone drinks with dinner, and dinner is eaten daily! Cocaine is perfectly acceptable on weekends, if you can afford it! Technically, these pills were prescribed to someone... I normalized extremely abnormal behaviour because, in many ways, society made it very easy for me to do that.

And every time I began to suspect that my behaviour was teetering on abnormal -- hard liquor before work for breakfast, cocaine on a Tuesday, "are these Oxys or Altoids... let's find out!"-- I normalized that too. Because by the end, I simply could not feel normal without this stuff, and I also had no clue what normal was. Awareness is a luxury of the living, and I had spiritually flat lined.

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The truth is, much like the girl on my fridge, I didn't just change over night, and I didn't slowly change over time either. In fact, I didn't change at all, I just stayed the person I've always been: An alcoholic and drug addict, predisposed, though perfectly oblivious.

The definition of awareness is the knowledge or perception of a certain situation or fact. So, this month, don't make it about what alcohol is, but rather what alcohol is to you. Are you consuming, or are you using?

At nine, I used alcohol to feel grown up. It was my temporary invitation into the wild world of adulthood, with all of its fancy antioxidants and better conversations. Nearly two decades later, I used it to escape what adulthood had eventually become, which was a collage of uncertainty and isolation. A drink a day may be unhealthy for some, but it's potentially lethal for others. The awareness is essential to knowing which category we fit into. The ounces add up, so if you're not aware of it, that one glass of wine could significantly change things for you in the big picture, overnight and over time.

And if you're anything like me, changing it back will be anything but comfortable.

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Next week is mental health week and as we talk about mental health, I want us to take the time to talk about suicide. To many, suicide is a scary word, forbidden from their vocabulary. We're scared to talk about it because we don't know what the implications are.

Can we talk about it with people who have experienced suicide in their family? Can we talk to high school students about suicide? Do we say committed suicide or lost their life to suicide?

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Today 11 people will end their own lives and 210 will attempt to end their lives . Eleven people will die, and 77 to 110 people will have to live with the hurt and pain of losing a loved one to suicide. I have lived with anxiety and met many people who live with different mental health problems, but I had never met anyone with first-hand experience with suicide.

When we decided to write about suicide and talk to people and families impacted by it, we were a little scared. What would others think? How uncomfortable were we going to make them? Well, I'm writing this article to make us uncomfortable. Suicide is not and should not be taken lightly.

We interviewed mothers, sisters and classmates of people who lost their lives to suicide. We interviewed people who survived and are now talking about suicide, they want us to know it's preventable. A sister who lost her brother recently said she was still in shock of "how is this still happening?" We also interviewed the head of the suicide task force for suicide in Ontario. Dr. Ian Dawe talked about the steps Ontario is taking towards reducing suicide numbers.

"You can't have any mental health conversation without addressing stigma."--Dr.Ian Dawe

Dr.Dawe believes that the most damaging part of stigma is the misinformation that recovery is not possible. The way we talk about mental health recovery or the lack thereof leads many to believe they are stuck. That their state is permanent and they will always stay this way.

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"It's a very human reaction, all of us in crisis will think this way. It's called black and white thinking; it's either this or it's that. The very nature of distress is that it's isolating and in that isolation it preys on itself to create this ever narrowing circle of connections. A mental health illness is not in any way a death bed," he says.

The situation can change and it's just a matter of educating everyone and providing the right tools and skills. It was made clear throughout our interviews that stigma is not the only barrier; identifying and realizing the problem is an issue as well. Many people don't know they need help, they don't know the signs and symptoms of depression, anxiety or insomnia. It's the not knowing that can hurt people in the long term; when is the right time to seek help?

I asked Dr. Dawe about ways of getting the message to the right person at the right time. His response was similar to how many entrepreneurs and business people would have answered this question:

"With the help of marketing professionals, just look at how the elections are happening in the south. There are strong ways of getting the message out effectively. We need to use social media effectively to get into the school systems -- public, private and also postsecondary. We need to be communicating broadly enough to reach people not just while in the middle of distress but pre-distress so that when they fall into these situations they know what to do."

It's about having the right skills, and being able to utilize those skills to live life the way it's meant to be lived.

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The Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention (CASP) defines three stages when discussing suicide; prevention, intervention and postvention. Education and awareness is a key part of prevention, the stage that most attempts can be averted at.

The task force is working to implement a model called the "Zero Suicide" prevention plan. In Michigan, this model resulted in 80 per cent reduction in suicidal behaviors and completed suicide. They successfully got to zero for four years running. It's based on many of quality improvement models used in engineering and manufacturing to remove bottlenecks.

"As a system, the only way to make change is to decide to make a change," says Dr. Dawe. He described a zero-suicide prevention plan as "Making sure that every single person who comes to the hospital is screened for suicidal ideation, and if they are suicidal they get transitioned in a careful and expedient way. The care is not just a one-time hospitalization, but part of a long-term continuity of care because being in the hospital is not enough to treat suicidality."

This is just the beginning of this conversation for us, every week we will introduce a suicide story on the TranQool blog. We believe in prevention, we believe in the right to live happy and healthy lives. We believe taking care of our emotional health is just as important as taking care of your physical health.

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At a speaking engagement, the inspiring Zahra Al-Harazi told the audience that her final piece of advice would be to "understand who you are and get to know your strengths and weaknesses. You need to do that to find your calling."

We are not born with the skills needed to deal with life's challenges. Asking for help, wanting to know yourself and looking for what makes you happy is the best gift you can give yourself.

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The Canadian fintech space has never been more exciting. From mobile wallets and online banking, to robo-advisors and peer-to-peer lending; startup after startup, we're finally catching up to what has been business as usual in the States, and while it's taken a little longer to catch on here in Canada, there's little doubt fintech is already having a huge impact on Canadian banking.

So why would big banks be interested in partnering with alternative lenders, and courting these underbanked borrowers? Simple: customer loyalty. Through their partnerships with alternative lenders, larger banks can now bring these underbanked customers into their fold earlier, whilst letting the alternative lenders step in and help these customers grow. When the small borrower eventually outgrows the structure and scale of their alternative lender, the big bank can then step in and usher that previously underbanked borrower to the next level of banking service, keeping the customer under the same roof and helping them grow even bigger.

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Fintech startups offer a lot of appeal to small businesses and first-time borrowers, those whose credit profile would normally have them shy away, or be turned away, from banks or credit unions. In the past, underbanked customers with low credit scores couldn't get any loan at all, even if business was booming or they were set to grow, signalling a nail in the coffin.

But alternative lenders have stepped in and filled this niche. Using algorithms that look at a wide set of data points to evaluate a prospective borrower, alternative lenders can make informed assessments of a borrower's credit risk.

This approach is still fairly new, and as alternative lenders continue to increase their pool of usable customer data, which can include unconventional things like reviews on social media - in conjunction with other, more traditional credit metrics - these lenders will in turn be able to further refine their risk models. The goal of this continual refinement is to ultimately lower the cost of capital for prospective borrowers as well as make the process more convenient.

Meanwhile, for these underbanked borrowers, the three most attractive features of alternative lenders are:

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Accessibility: they can actually get a loan!

Speed in which their business loan can be accessed.

Convenience; not having to leave the comfort of one's computer or smartphone, and the smooth user experience of online applications.

One of the most compelling effects of this new banking evolution has been how quickly some traditional banks, recognizing the influence of fintech, have partnered with these innovative alternative lenders. And as traditional big banks begin to forge these partnerships, the gap between big banks and alternative financial players is narrowing, and a new ecosystem of Canadian banking is being created.

Conventional wisdom tells us that any new or revolutionary way of doing things is automatically "disruptive" and threatening to the established industry players. But with the emergence of alternative lenders, big banks are wise to see them not as "disruptors", but as true partners, who are helping deliver banking services to a previously underbanked, underserved customer.
Rawpixel Ltd via Getty Images A multi-ethnic group of students' hands raised in front of a classroom blackboard. There are 18 hands raised, visible to the wrist or elbow, and seen from the side of the palm. The blackboard is dark green and has been freshly erased.

It is widely known that disadvantaged children perform dramatically lower on cognitive achievement tests than children from well-to-do families. In Toronto, for example, children from family homes earning less that $30,000 per year (disproportionately single moms), perform more than 30 points lower on test scores in reading, writing and mathematics, compared to children coming from homes with over $100,000 family income, on the EQAO provincial tests.

We know what the problem is. We even know what to do about it. But do we have the political will?

As Canada plans for investment of billions of dollars in infrastructure, it is worth noting that James Heckman (Heckman Equation), Nobel laureate in economics of human development, has shown that infrastructure has only a one to two per cent rate of return while investing in pre-school disadvantaged children has a proven record of yielding an eight to 10 per cent rate of return. As McKinsey & Companypointed out, achievement gaps, in evidence from birth, are "the equivalent of a permanent national recession."

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Children who participated in the early childhood projects during the 1960 and 70s, called the Perry Preschool Project and the Abecedarian Project have been followed intensively now for up to 40 years and the results are powerful and instructive. They offer a bright beacon of light on narrowing the inequality gap and reducing child poverty.

Early childhood education delivered to disadvantaged children as young as one to four clearly promotes economic efficiencies and reduces lifetime inequalities.

In 1972, in North Carolina, the Abecedarian Project conducted a controlled experiment with 111 randomly selected disadvantaged high risk children, who were born between 1972-77, starting from infancy to age five. Ninety-eight per cent were Afro-American children. The 57 children were given a high quality education including important home visits focusing not only cognitive skills but socio-emotional soft skills such as: perseverance, motivation, risk-aversion, self-esteem, self-control. The important home visits by social workers and teachers impacted on the lives of parents that made positive permanent changes in the home environment that affected their children for years long after the program ended.

The lessons from this study of 57 children are remarkable. While the early IQ gains found in the Perry Preschool project evened out after four years (though the gains in achievement scores were maintained at age 14), the IQ gains from the earlier and more intensive Abecedarian project, carried on into adulthood.

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While cognitive skills were important to both programs, socio-emotional development was central and key. Achievement tests do not adequately capture socio-emotional character skills. As James Heckman points out, socio-emotional skills have a 27 per cent life time earning impact, while cognitive test scores have only a seven per cent impact on life time earnings. Achievement test scores predict only a small fraction of the variance in later-life success. For example, adolescent achievement test scores only explain about 15 per cent of the variance in later-life earnings.

By the time children start kindergarten, those born into poverty are already at risk of dropping out of school, crime, and a lifetime of low-wage work.

The Abecedarian Project produced a phenomenal 10 per cent rate of return on investment compared to a standard 5.8 per cent average rate of return on investing in stocks.

Recently researchers at Duke University published a study that looked at what happened to five-year-old students, 13 to 19 years after they left kindergarten. The five-point teacher-rated social competence scale used was a powerful predictor of both positive and negative future outcomes in education attainment, employment achievement, criminal justice, substance use and mental health.

These studies, demonstrate that an early intervention for children in disadvantaged homes, focussing on these soft skills, have a direct positive effect on wages, schooling, teenage pregnancy, smoking, crime, performance on achievement tests, including a wide range of health factors and health choices. They are healthier, and make better life style choices. Both the Perry Preschool Project and Abecedarian Project reduced participation in a variety of social pathologies.

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By the time children start kindergarten, those born into poverty are already at risk of dropping out of school, crime, and a lifetime of low-wage work. This is not only bad for all those born into poverty by the accident birth, and bad for society.

Common intervention programs offered by many government organizations such as adult literacy, job training, or prisoner rehab programs all have far lower rates of return. As well, no other remediation programs for older students come close to the returns from investment in preschool children.

A recent revised report of cost benefit from 40 years of data for the Perry Preschool showed that $15, 895 spent for every child in the Perry Preschool Project saved $138,486 in social costs, for every dollar invested, a return of $8.74 at age 27, and over $14.00 at age 40. Within the targeted population, among many other outcomes, there was a pronounced reduction in crime, obesity, and heart disease.

Investing in disadvantaged pre-school children can dramatically raise tens of thousands of children out of poverty, narrowing the income gap, and giving thousands of marginalized children, born poor by the accident of birth, an equal opportunity to thrive and succeed in our society. It's part of a necessary anti-poverty pro-equality strategy that's good for kids and good for all of us.

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A petition to get Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to extend maternity/parental leave for Canadians to 18 months is currently making the social media rounds, earning praise from parents and complaints from the childless along with 40,000 signatures.

It addresses a specific offshoot of Canada's national daycare crisis, which is that parents may get a combined total of 12 months of leave but most daycares won't take infants between the age of 12 and 18 months. And when they do, the cost is exorbitant even by the already sky-high standards of Canadian child care.

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My wife and I live across the street from a daycare in downtown Toronto, so we put our son on the waiting list literally before he was born. But like many, it only takes kids 18 months and older (though we eventually got him into one of two exception spots for 16-month-olds who can walk).

We managed to find infant care near my wife's office, but that meant our year-old baby was travelling 45 minutes each way to an incredibly expensive daycare so she could go back to work after her parental leave ended.

How expensive?

A study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) found that in 2015 the average cost of daycare in Toronto was $1,736 a month. Yes, a month. That's $411 more than it costs for a toddler at $1,325, but again these are averages. Infant care spaces in Toronto can top $2,000 a month per child in a city where the median annual income for young families is $58,000.

Almost 90,000 of those kids are in low-income families but there are only 25,000 child care subsidies available.

And honestly, we were lucky to have the opportunity to pay that much. The Toronto Star reported last year that there are 346,320 kids under 12 in the city but only 64,700 licensed child care spots. As well, almost 90,000 of those kids are in low-income families but there are only 25,000 child care subsidies available.

It's not just Toronto. The average cost for infant care is $1,200 in Vancouver, $1075 in Calgary and $1,400 in Saint John, so this is a problem that stretches from sea to sea. Even when costs are lower in places like Winnipeg, earnings are lower, too, so as a percentage of income it's a wash.

The petition is calling for Trudeau to fulfill a campaign promise in which the soon-to-be PM claimed "We will introduce more flexible parental benefits that will: allow parents to receive benefits in smaller blocks of time over a period of up to 18 months; and make it possible for parents to take a longer leave -- up to 18 months when combined with maternity benets -- at a lower benet level."

Due to these lower benefits over a longer time, Trudeau costed it at only $125 million per year. Maternity and parental leave benefits come from EI, and equal 55 per cent of weekly insurable earnings up to a maximum of $537 per week for an income of about $50,000.

You're basically just getting your own money back, especially since most Canadians pay into EI their whole lives and may never need it. But that hasn't stopped folks online from griping about tax increases, especially those without children who don't want to subsidize those who do.

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In 2008 UNICEF declared Canada tied for the worst child care out of the world's 25 richest countries.

Well, I would like to drop the mic in front of those folks and point out that our children's taxes will support you in your old age. That's how the system works. Young people pay for old people's health care and social security, whether those old people had kids or not. So stow that argument unless you plan to cover your own elder care costs.

With all that said, extending maternity/parental leave to 18 months doesn't actually solve the problem.

It's a ninja turtle Band-Aid that looks cool and will make us feel better until it's peeled off and we are faced with the same bloody daycare crisis we've had all along.

In 2008 UNICEF declared Canada tied for the worst child care out of the world's 25 richest countries. Since then costs have only gone up and access has only gone down. There are available spaces for only one out of every five Canadian kids.

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Infant care is the worst part of this problem -- due to higher caregiver-to-child ratio regulations increasing costs for parents and lowering profit for daycares -- but costs are also incredibly high for toddlers, preschoolers and school-age before and after care.

Everywhere, that is, except for Quebec.

The average monthly cost in Quebec is $174 across all age groups because they have government-subsidized spots that cost $7.30 a day (regardless of the child's age) for those making under $50,000 and $20 a day for those making between $50,000 to $150,000.

In other words, infant care in Quebec is as much as 10 times less than in Toronto for median income earners.

So go ahead and sign that petition because more parental leave would be great, especially if it encourages a more equitable care-giving split between moms and dads. But also realize there's even more benefit for moms with universal child care.

Universal access to low-fee child care in Quebec induced nearly 70,000 more mothers to hold jobs than if no such program had existed.

A study by Quebecois economist Pierre Fortin found that Quebec's child care plan, which launched at $5 a day for five-year-olds back in 1997, had resulted in more women working and lower poverty rates, along with the increased tax revenue and economic activity those portend.

Fortin estimated that by 2008, "universal access to low-fee child care in Quebec induced nearly 70,000 more mothers to hold jobs than if no such program had existed -- an increase of 3.8 per cent in women employment."

That calculated to injecting $5 billion into Quebec's economy, raising the gross provincial income (GDP) by 1.7 per cent.

"The argument can no longer be that governments cannot afford it. This program is paying for itself. It is self-financing. That is the main finding," Fortin told the Toronto Star in 2011, noting that Quebec recoups $1.05 for every dollar it spends while Ottawa clears 44 cents in pure profit.

This wasn't an issue in decades past, but dual-income families have doubled since 1976 to 69 per cent, or 1.9 million couple families. Meanwhile, single-parent families topped 1.5 million in the 2011 census.

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It's clearly high time for Canada to build on Quebec's lead and develop a universal child care program that extends across the country just like universal health care, social security and education already do.

I mean, if anyone understands the benefit of government-funded child care, it's Justin "Nannygate" Trudeau.

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Baby Suman is one of thousands of children born into post-earthquake Nepal. His parents are proud and hopeful. But what does his future hold? Photo/World Vision

One year ago I rushed to Kathmandu after a 7.8 magnitude quake rocked Nepal. It was chaos everywhere, as thousands of families faced a real-life nightmare of collapsing buildings, buried loves ones, and the horrifying loss of all that's safe and familiar. I remember holding newborns in a clinic just days after the quake, wondering what life lay ahead. What barriers would babies born into such a fragile environment face? Would they have a chance to grow up healthy and thrive?

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It's been a challenging year for aid organizations in Nepal. We're working in a tough environment. We've dealt with fuel shortages, huge landslides, monsoons, and frustrating road blocks. Despite these hurdles, we've managed to make great strides in meeting immediate needs. Within 24 hours of the earthquake hitting Nepal, World Vision was delivering food, tarps, blankets and water purification tablets. Over the past year, we've provided thousands of families with shelter and access to clean water, and repaired and equipped health posts and schools.

Work far from over

But our work in Nepal is far from over. Recovery from an earthquake of this scale can take 10 to 15 years. As in most earthquakes of this scale, shelter remains the critical need. Too many displaced families are still exposed to harsh living conditions and are vulnerable to extreme weather. While emergency shelter kits have been distributed in the hardest-hit areas, and winter kits and other essential supplied were provided to help families withstand the cold, construction of permanent housing needs to accelerate.

Understandably, in Nepal there's still a profound (and legitimate) fear of another earthquake striking. It's a sad reality that many Nepali mothers tell us they feel safer living in tents rather than another poorly constructed home. That's why we must do more than merely repair and restore. Houses, schools, health facilities, and infrastructure must be rebuilt stronger and better than before.

To do this, World Vision is training local masons, builders and homeowners on simple techniques for building sturdier structures. It's an approach that will not only make families safer, but will provide new skills to help people be active in their own recovery.

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Building up people

Building up people, particularly women and children, is equally important during the recovery phase. Thousands of Nepali families are still fighting their way through immense shock and grief - not to mention steep financial loss. With their homes and livelihoods destroyed, their situations are dire. It's critical for survivors, especially the most vulnerable, to gain new skills and knowledge of their rights.

In Nepal, we're offering entrepreneurial training and cash grants to help women and youth start up small businesses. We're promoting gender equality and social inclusion throughout our programs, which is vital to create stronger communities. Such an intense focus on empowerment leads to resilience, and results in families and communities becoming more equipped to deal with future shocks and disasters.

As a humanitarian, I'm encouraged that the families we are working with are resilient, determined, and willing partners in the process of rebuilding. Recently I learned of one family that donated a piece of land for the construction of a new health facility. We are seeing many examples like this, as families increasingly take ownership of their own recovery, for their own children's future.

Continuing our work

We must continue to stand alongside Nepal. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, Canadians were generous with donations that helped deliver life-saving aid and a chance at survival for thousands. This Canadian aid didn't end even when the news headlines did.

At these one-year-later moments, headlines inevitably reappear. There's no denying the challenges are real, and there's no doubt we can expect more. But let's not allow ourselves to become cynical. As donors, we need to be patient, flexible and think long-term. To do the most good in the long run, Canadian support needs to allow for the ups and downs of an unpredictable recovery.

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Hope can grow, even in fields of rubble.
NxN Photography

With the fickle nature of the Canadian fashion industry, and headline after headline about the demise of Canadian retailers, it's even more important to focus on our fashion and design students. Through them, we may find fresh ideas to help make the industry more sustainable.

On the forefront of developing new talent are the art, design and craft programs on the east coast at Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, which recently hosted a fashion show, Epoch.

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The event had a twofold agenda: to showcase the collections of 14 student designers, while simultaneously hosting a VIP experience in a semi-detached room where higher-priced tickets were sold to raise funds for scholarships to the college's Textiles and Fashion program.

NSCAD tapped fashion icon Jeanne Beker to host the sold-out show, who commented on the importance of making time for students: "This is what it's all about, the grassroots. It's not about the hype; it's about the education, preparation and future of fashion. That's why I'm interested in it."

Standouts from the evening were Maggie MacCormick with 1970's gym-inspired pieces, Toban Ralston who wowed with his three collections, and Kelly MacGillivray with Yeezy-esque looks inspired by luxury planes.

Check out some of the amazing designs showcased at Epoch in the slideshow below:
PATRICK BAZ via Getty Images Lebanese Yogi Danielle Abi Saab and Syrian schoolchildren flash the love sign during an introductory yoga course organised by Abi-Saab and the Non-Governmental Organization Beyond with the support of the UNICEF, at a makeshift school for Syrian refugees near the town of Zahle, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, on October 01, 2015 AFP PHOTO/PATRICK BAZ (Photo credit should read PATRICK BAZ/AFP/Getty Images)

Every day, students at our yoga studios get on their mats to stretch, strengthen and breath beside a wall-quote stating the importance of recognizing our shared humanity. This quotation from the Yoga Sutras expresses a hope that "beings everywhere will be happy and free", and then directs us to focus our energy towards making this happen: "May the thoughts, words and actions of my own contribute in some way to that happiness, and to that freedom for all."

The word yoga means "union," and in our studio we not only encourage students to unite their movements with their breathing but most importantly to find a common base from which to connect with others. Yoga provides one path to recognize not only our shared humanity, but also the responsibilities we incur as a result of this recognition.

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We act on this belief in many ways beyond the physical practice of yoga, by mobilizing our students to provide food and presents to needy families over the holidays, by collecting donations for the Snowsuit Fund, and most recently by joining Canadians in the shared mission of offering refuge to Syrians in need of a new home.

We will pave their way to Canadian citizenship with the love and warmth that Canadians can extend.

Desperate Syrians flee the destruction of their homes and cities, in fear for their lives; they are forced to seek haven in neighbouring states, often so poor they can do little to support the newcomers. These Syrians have a right to seek asylum -- and as the conflict has persisted, few people deny that Syrians are legitimate refugees -- and we, as Canadians, have the tools at our disposal to grant this asylum.

Canada is the only country in the world that allows private citizens to unite to sponsor refugees, by taking on a commitment to welcome them and support them as they take refuge in the safe and tolerant country of which we are lucky to be a part. Like so many Canadians, we and our students are working together to raise money, which we will use to house, feed, and clothe these newcomers, and to help them get back on their feet after a long and hard journey from Syria. We will pave their way to Canadian citizenship with the love and warmth that Canadians can extend.

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One of our students wondered why we are prioritizing the needs of foreigners over those of needy Ottawans. We answered that there is so much unmet need in Canada, and around the world, and our job is to work steadily in doing our part to meet some of that need. This effort to help vulnerable Syrians is in addition to all of the efforts we put into our local community.

Canadians have been commended for their commitment to Syrians. Minister John McCallum is probably right in claiming to be the only Minister of Immigration in the world whose challenge is meeting the demands of Canadians who want to support refugees. When he announced the Liberal Government's pledge to admit 25000 refugees from Syria, the High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres said, "This is a huge gesture of solidarity with the Syrian people"; it is a solidarity that is expressed within and by private sponsorship groups like ours. Everyone we have asked to join us in our mission has agreed. Together we are living our yoga.

The practice of yoga in Ottawa has recently been criticized -- a yoga class at the University of Ottawa was cancelled, citing concerns over cultural appropriation. There is no better way to show that yoga's lessons -- of unity and solidarity -- have crossed borders and cultures, than by standing up in defense of everyone's right to live in safety.

Interested in joining us for our final fundraiser on April 30th? Click on yoga and tacos for more info.

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Seth Joel via Getty Images Oil pump working in an extensive oil field at sunset.

Protests and petitions were never really my thing. I've never owned a Che Guevara t-shirt and my haircut would be entirely appropriate for a police officer. But the more I read about climate change, the more I felt like I was part of a society and an economy going in the wrong direction. Specifically, plummeting downward. And unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life avoiding eye contact with children and mirrors, I knew I had to do something more than cast an occasional ballot.

About this time I became aware of the fossil fuel divestment movement. Students from over 20 universities across the country are attempting to convince their schools to divest their endowment funds from the top 200 fossil fuel companies within five years, and immediately freeze any new investments in those companies. And I thought, hey, I have a couple of university degrees, maybe I can help.

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But first you might be wondering why exactly these students and I are so worked up about climate change and fossil fuel companies. The answer boils down to 3 numbers:

2 DEGREES CELSIUS

Every country in the world has formally agreed to limit the Earth's temperature rise to two degrees, and recently agreed in Paris to aim even lower.

900 GIGATONS

The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) scientists estimate is the maximum amount we can burn to have a decent chance of keeping warming under 2C.

2860 GIGATONS

The total CO2 contained in the proven reserves of fossil fuel companies. So if we're serious about keeping warming under 2C, most of that needs to stay in the ground.

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BUT not only are fossil fuel companies committed to burning all of those reserves, they're spending billions looking for new ones. New UNBURNABLE reserves. So by investing in fossil fuel companies you're essentially placing a bet on how long they can fool people.

But this isn't just a financial issue, it's a moral one.

New investigations (available here and here) have concluded that ExxonMobil (and other fossil fuel companies) understood the science of climate change and its implications by the mid-1980s, and then spent decades systematically funding climate denial. That's some soul-boggling evil right there.

Exxon is now being investigated by New York's attorney general, and it could be the start of years of lawsuits like those against the tobacco industry after they were caught covering up the health effects of their product.

The fossil fuel industry is not some benevolent group of companies competing on a level playing field to make an honest buck. It's heavily subsidized, subverts democracy by blocking laws that protect the environment, and funds climate denial lobby groups (there's lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of evidence for this).

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HOW WILL DIVESTMENT HELP?

The goal of divestment is to revoke the social license of an industry whose business model is not compatible with a liveable climate. Divestment activists are simply saying "It is immoral to profit off of climate change. Period. Exclamation mark."

BUT...

Isn't divestment hypocritical since we all use fossil fuels every day?

Isn't divestment pointless if it doesn't bankrupt fossil fuel companies?

Isn't shareholder engagement the best way to drive change?

All reasonable questions, and all answered by The Guardian in this handy article.

Even a former CEO of Shell called divestment a "rational approach," and it must be at least somewhat effective since the industry feels threatened enough by the movement to attack it.

OVER 500 INSTITUTIONS VALUED AT $3.4 TRILLION HAVE DIVESTED

These include colleges and universities, churches, charities, cities, and others. However...

NO CANADIAN UNIVERSITY HAS JOINED THE FOSSIL FREE MOVEMENT

(UPDATE: Just hours after I posted this letter uOttawa became the first Canadian university to commit to divestment. Congrats to the hardworking students of Fossil Free uOttawa!)

In their reasoning for their decision, the Dalhousie Board of Governors cited their "fiduciary duty to generate reasonable risk adjusted returns from a diverse portfolio of investments."

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But is the primary duty of a university to "generate reasonable returns?" They claim to be preparing students for the future, but how can they claim to do that while profiting from an industry that is actively working to make that future uninhabitable?

Easy, they pretend, and hope the calls for change grow quieter. But in fact, the calls are only growing louder by the day.

AND HERE'S WHERE YOU CAN HELP

A university's most valuable asset is its reputation, and its alumni network is a crucial part of that reputation. As alumni, you have the power to influence the behaviour of your alma mater if enough of you act together.

THE ASK: ADD YOUR VOICE TO THOSE CALLING FOR DIVESTMENT

Sign a petition to urge your alma mater to divest from fossil fuels, and send the message that you will withhold any donations until they do.

School-specific petitions:

Create a new alumni petition for your alma mater, or send any existing ones, to divest@gofossilfree.ca to add it Fossil Free Canada's list of alumni petitions: gofossilfree.ca/alumni.

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You can also sign Fossil Free Canada's alumni pledge to withhold donations.

I've put my degrees where my mouth is and ripped up my Dalhousie and Queen's degrees to protest their refusal to divest (watch the videos of the rip-ups here and here).

Thanks for reading, I hope you're inspired to help!

This letter was originally published on Medium.
In the latest of a few species specific blog posts of late, we return to the 'Ode To The' theme for another of our 'O' friends. This time around, we're stopping and staring at the Giant Otter.

Otters have long been a great icon of British wildlife. They've lived for many years in our lakes, rivers and canals, but their popularity hasn't necessarily prevented them from being the victims of habitat loss of hunting. The story is the same around the world, which has led to the creation of a number of Otter based conservation projects.

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Brazil is one such location. There, the Giant Otter is the resident sub-species, is the largest species of Otter and largest member of the weasel family too. Reaching a nearly unbelievable six feet in length, this staggeringly big otter has been listed as endangered for a number of years now.

Giant Otters are renowned for being pretty tough chaps, along with the rest of their species. There are stories from all over the world of them standing up against crocodiles and large birds of prey. This is hardly surprising from animals that eat piranhas, pikes and other predatory fish.

This ferocity and refusal to back down hasn't, however, kept the otter from the disruptive forces that shake the populations of so many other animals. The Giant Otter has been yet another victim of habitat loss. This is a particularly strong problem in South America, so much of which revolves around the Amazon basin, a hive of habitats, species, eco-systems and diversity that is surely a paradise if left alone. However, this diversity has too attracted the eye of industry, as it is an unmissable goldmine of recourses. The Giant Otter, along with so many others, has therefore been a victim of logging and deforestation, along with poaching for furs.

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In addition, the giant otter can be used as a marker for the eco-system in which it lives over all, being an apex predator and their gradual decline in recent decades directly correlates to the gathering speed of the Amazon's decline.

It goes without saying that the plight of the Giant Otter is becoming drastic. In response, conservation

efforts have stepped up, not just in Brazil for the Giant Otter, but globally for all the different subspecies.

Here too in the U.K, where the otter is so beloved, attention has been turned towards them to save and restore their populations. Cordoning off areas of national park or wildlife reserve has been a big step forward, where more and more areas of land are given over to nature in order to give the otter and other species' a safe haven in which to prosper. They also run into trouble with agriculture, as their habitats often come into close proximity with farmland which can be highly disruptive to their feeding and living requirements. Otters have been protected under law since the 80's too, but their numbers in U.K are only just starting to stabilise after a steep decline.

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In Brazil, the story is much the same, just catching up by a few years. The current estimation is that there are only somewhere between one and five thousand Giant Otters left in the wild. There are however a large number in captivity, which could help re-establish the wild populations.

The threats to the Giant Otter aren't just loss of habitat however. Over fishing in the Amazon has led to depleted food sources for the Otter, who have to complete with a wide variety of other predators for the fish supplies. Quite a unique threat too is the extensive gold mining industry that takes place in numerous locations around the Amazon. As a result of this process, huge amounts of mercury are dumped or leaked into the river systems. Mercury is used in the process of gold mining but is a waste material of the process. A highly toxic and pollutant metal, it contaminates animal and vegetation supplies in the area, again reducing the necessary recourses the Giant Otter relies on.

This gold mining industry is an under the radar threat to the amazon, one that is only just starting to be recognised for the damage it is and has been doing.

In practical terms, Brazil is leading the way with conserving the Giant Otter, with new conservation projects springing up fast. These projects working on everything from breeding programmes to protecting and restoring environment conditions, education in local schools and organisations so that the word is spread about protecting the animals and lobbying to legislate protection nationally.

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This is what the new Frontier Otter Sanctuary and Conservation project is aimed at in Brazil. This project works hands on with scientific research of the environment and the animals to put together a more detailed and effective game plan for saving them.

Otters of all types are just one of those animals that we humans love, even if, when asked about their favourite animals, most people won't immediately think of them. Beyond that, they are some of the most important apex predators alive as they inhabit some of the most complex and diverse eco-systems on the planet. The Amazon and Giant Otter is a prime example, being the apex predator in arguably the world's most diverse environment.

They are vital to their environment, which is good enough reason to help conserve them, along with the added reason of us humans having a soft spot for them.

For more information about the Frontier Brazil Otter Sanctuary and Conservation Project, visit this link.

By Guy Bezant - Online Journalism Intern

Frontier runs conservation, development, teaching and adventure travel projects in over 50 countries worldwide - so join us and explore the world!

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The five things you need to know on Tuesday April 26, 2016

1) FROM MAJOR TO MINER

For quite some time, Jeremy Hunt was tipped by some in his party as a moderate, voter-friendly dark horse in a future Tory leadership race. MPs would whisper about him being a John Major figure who would quietly come through on the rails as the bigger beasts flogged themselves to death.

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But just now on the Today programme, Hunt made plain that any such ambitions were finally over. This is likely to be my last big job in politics, he said. Instead of being remembered as Tory leader, Hunt wants to go down in history as a radical reforming Health Secretary. (Will George Osborne have a similar moment of self-awareness?) And hes clearly determined not to blink in the battle with the BMA over todays junior doctors strike.

The Ipos MORI poll for the BBC last night showed that 57% of the public still back the doctors, up from 44% asked in January if they would keep backing them even if they withdrew emergency cover.

Yet the Government clearly scents the mood switching, not least with Labour giving its own first hints of unease. Perhaps thats why Government sources went in with studs showing overnight, saying: This is a political strike its like the miners strike - it has to be defeated. One source told the Guardian that some ministers are privately describing the bust-up with doctors in training as a miners moment  a dispute we cannot lose.

On Today, Hunt was asked repeatedly about that miners comparison. In so far as it is a political strike, there are some elements at the very top of the BMA who are absolutely refusing to compromise. But he then decided to step back. "I do not make a comparison with the miners strike because the miners strike left devastation that lasted for many years. The last thing we are doing is itching for a fight we are absolutely clear about that."

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With lots of pre-planning from consultants, the BMA hopes today may well pass off without incident. Yet having fired its biggest weapon, and seen Hunt stand firm, where does the doctor's union go next? At some point, one side is going to have to concede defeat and right now it doesnt look like the Government.

2) UPSET AND VINE

The Sun has a scoop on a foul-mouthed spat between Samantha Cameron and Sarah Vine (aka Mrs Michael Gove). Apparently at Andrew Feldmans 50th birthday party, soon after Goves decision to back Brexit, Sam Cam went for Vine for the betrayal of her husband. And in a wonderfully 1950s touch, the Sun story adds: The pair ended up raising their voices and effing and blinding, the well placed source who heard the exchange said.

The Goves and Camerons have long been friends and Vine is godmother to the PMs youngest daughter Florence. Apparently they havent spoken since the row but have exchanged texts on Sam Cams 45th birthday (one assumes those texts werent full of smiley emojis or thumbs-ups).

All good goss, for sure. But theres a more serious side, as No10 has been privately very upset at Goves campaigning since he came out as a Brexiteer, not least how high profile he has been despite assurances that he would just make a principled statement and stay in the background.

And with the NHS in the news, what upsets Downing Street most is the way the Vote Leave camp is using Brexit to undermine Tory policies on public services. Last week they had a leaflet ridiculing Jeremy Hunt and an NHS in crisis. The Times splashes today on Cabinet anger with Gove and Chris Grayling for Vote Leaves suggestion that junior doctors could get the pay contract they wanted if we didnt send 350m a week to Brussels.

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Theres a wider point too. Rachel Sylvester reveals that having tested the approach with the health service, the Vote Leave strategy will soon be extended to schools and housing, with the campaign stepped up after the local elections on May 5. One insider explains: The public services angle connects money and immigration. It cuts through in a very powerful way. Its another example of how hard it will be to heal the wounds even if there is an In vote.

Oh and heres a fun item in the Times: Albanias PM has poked fun at Vote Leave for embracing the Albanian model of trade with the EU.

3) PING PONG MATCH

There were cries of Shame! from Labour MPs last night as the Government defeated the Alf Dubs amendment by 294 votes to 276. In the end, just a handful of Tory MPs voted against their whips, including Tania Mathias and Stephen Philips (who made an impassioned speech), over the issue of admitting 3,000 child refugees from Europe.

Dubs isnt giving up easily however and he had already drafted an alternative amendment (because ministers invoked financial privilege on the Immigration Bill) before the defeat. Im told that the veteran Labour peer was behind the Speakers chair for the crunch vote result, and when he saw Theresa May leaving the chamber he told her: You might be smiling but Im not giving up!

The amendment will be voted on by the Lords today and we can expect ping pong to keep this issue alive over the May bank holiday, as the next time the Commons can consider it is next Tuesday. The amendment has been cannily worded to call for a rolling programme of refugee admissions coordinated by councils. That will make it harder for Clerks to make a calculation about the costs.

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The squeeze on the rebellion in the Commons (even Heidi Allen abstained) was helped in part by the backdrop of the EU referendum, not least No10s fear of providing a pull factor for more people traffickers. Keir Starmer impressed many of his colleagues with the way he demolished that argument last night (it was his best Commons performance to date). But perhaps the failure to win the vote underlined just how much better the Lords is at getting and keeping cross-party consensus.

BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR

Watch Tom Hanks sound vaguely David Cameron-ish about his beloved Aston Villa. But he recovers with a line about betting on Leicester

4) FRANKLY SPEAKING

David Cameron is on the stump for the first time with Zac Goldsmith this morning and security seems to be the theme. The PM may or may not want to explain just how his main weapon against Sadiq Khan - the imam Sulaiman Ghani - ended up outside No.10 (LBC released a startling photo yesterday) and backing Tory candidates. The FT has a piece citing Muslim groups saying the Tories have sunk to disturbing lows in the race.

The polls still have Khan leading, but by using such aggressive tactics there are some who think Goldsmith can still edge it. And if Zac does win, you can imagine the outcry from some in Labour who think another Lynton Crosby-esque did for their man just as the SNP scare did for Ed Miliband. And in a strange way, it would make it harder for Jeremy Corbyns critics to blame him for any London loss.

We have an interview with Zac out today, which you can read HERE. He explains how his previous line that he would not stand for Mayor (its simply not going to happen) actually wasnt a promise. He hits back at Norman Smiths Tube test, saying there are 250 Tube stations some I know very well, some I dont (especially Oxford Street, it seems).

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Zac counters the birther conspiracies too, revealing that he had no idea that his first name was Frank, until he got married. The Tory Mayoral candidate takes part in a Mumsnet webchat later today. Spoiler: he tells our Owen Bennett that his favourite biscuit is a Pret cookie, Ive been living off them during the campaign.

5) BOSS CLASS

Last night in the Commons, as Angela Eagle hammered away, it was notable that several Tory MPs expressed their unease at the role Sir Philip Green had played in the BHS affair. Backbencher Richard Fuller even went back to the future with an echo of Ted Heaths famous denunciation of Tiny Rowland, suggesting that Green was the unacceptable face of capitalism.

And lots of papers pile into Green today, not least given his tax affairs, and the Mail is one of those leading the charge about him and his family pocketing 425m over the years, while the pension deficit grew to around 500m. The Times says other business people are among those most critical of the way BHS was asset stripped (though the FT says while he could have done more, he should not be scapegoated).

Yet in the Times, John McDonnell has a letter unveiling a new plan to curb the boss class. He says a Labour pay commission will look at giving the workers more rights over directors pay. Pay, particularly for the most senior staff, needs to be set in a fair and transparent fashion, and remuneration should be overseen by those from all levels in a company, from shop floor to director. Now if that seems like too radical an idea for some moderate MPs, but Im pretty sure a certain David Miliband once advanced a similar ideaback in 2010.

Speaking of Labour policy, Trident is back on the agenda as John Woodcocks own backbench committee takes evidence at 4.30pm from defence minister Philip Dunne, Vice Admiral Simon Lister and Ian Forber, MoD director of strategic programmes. Its a heavyweight line-up and unprecedented that theyre taking time to brief Labour MPs privately in the Commons. And the clocks ticking on the Thornberry review, now expected at the end of May, Im told.

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The row over the imposition of the Junior Doctor contract has been ratchetted up yet another notch as England now faces its first ever full Junior Doctor strike, including the withdrawal of emergency care. Neither side has given any indication that they are going to concede defeat. The BMA has ordered 4 non-emergency strikes to date and is pursuing legal action against the Department of Health. In return, the government has repeatedly accused the BMA of misleading Junior Doctors, endangering patient care, and most recently, "trying to trying to topple the government".

In ordering this all-out strike, has the BMA gone a step too far? Or is the government responsible for forcing the Junior Doctors into striking?

Whose Fight is it Anyway?

Ever since Jeremy Hunt's statistics about weekend death rates were shown to be phoney, according to both the authors of the main studies and the government's own Health Select Committee spokeswoman, Hunt and Cameron have effectively stuck to the tried and tested Tory line of defence- blame the trade union. Hunt has repeatedly accused the BMA of a wide range of allegations, from lying about working hours to "trying to topple the government", as the BBC reported yesterday.

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However, a cursory look at the evidence shows that the strategy of simply blaming the BMA is deeply flawed. If we go back to the start of the dispute about strike action, we find that the call for strike action did not come from the BMA leadership rallying the medical workforce for an ideological political cause. Rather, this debate about strike action started because an online petition was launched that received 94,330 signatures imploring the BMA to ballot Junior Doctors for strike action. Of course, the BMA could have ignored this petition and carried on their daily business. But I doubt any member of any trade union would deem this an appropriate response, given the sheer size of the petition.

Thus, these strikes are not happening because the BMA ordered the Junior Doctors to leave their posts. Rather, it is because the Junior Doctors ordered the BMA to ballot them on strike action, and the BMA acted in accordance with the unambiguous wishes of the overwhelming majority of their large membership. And it is worth remembering that the strike ballot saw 98% of Junior Doctors vote in favour of full strike action.

The Health Secretary obviously wants to paint this conflict as between the government and the mighty and corrupt BMA. However, this is simply not the case. This conflict is between the government and the vast majority of the Junior Doctor workforce in England.

Is An All-Out Strike Too Far?

However, Junior Doctors and their representatives in the BMA must accept a significant degree of responsibility for the consequences of the all-out strike. Many people fear that the strike will endanger patient safety and potentially even increase mortality. Could this all-out strike really jeopardise the well-being of patients?

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This question is very difficult for anyone to answer. We know that there will be a large withdrawal of Junior Doctor Cover in A&E departments across England. However, we also know that these Junior Doctors will be replaced by increased Consultant Cover, as well as increased cover from allied health professionals such as nurses and midwives. Therefore, the overall workforce covering A&E departments will change in make-up, but not necessarily in overall sized.

Nonetheless, it is impossible to objectively predict exactly what impact this shift in A&E workforce will have on patient safety. The NHS has never seen a full withdrawal of one type of healthcare professional, and A&Es deal with such diversity and fluidity of patient presentations that predicting overall morbidity and mortality on a particular day is virtually impossible anyway.

So how can we possibly tell if an all-out strike is defensible? For me, there is only group of people who can justifiably make that call; that is the people who know the thorough ins and outs of A&E workload, patient problems, staffing protocols and how all of these would respond and interact in the new situation of a strike. I think the Junior Doctors themselves are in the best possible position to judge whether this strike will endanger patient safety or not. Therefore, it is my belief that the Junior Doctors who withdrawal their emergency cover (which may not be all A&E Junior Doctors in England) will do it in the best possible knowledge that patient safety will not be endangered.
Kamala Thalea lost her son, two daughters and her mother when a devastating earthquake hit Nepal one year ago.

She said, "My family and old life are gone now, I only have my eldest daughter left with me."

I met Kamala last week in Rasuwa, three hours north of Kathmandu, as I travelled to meet communities impacted by the earthquake who are receiving support from CAFOD and our partners. As people in Nepal and across the world prepare to pray and remember those who died in the earthquake one year ago, how have their lives changed and what are their hopes for the future?

Kamala's remaining daughter, Asmita aged 13, told me that she survived the earthquake last year because she was in a wooden section of the family home, while her brother, sisters and grandmother were in an older section of the house built of stone. Although her hip was injured by falling rubble, she saved her two-year-old cousin who lay in the rubble in the debris next door. Her mother Kamala was visiting her mother in law three hours away and arrived home the next day to a collapsed home and her lost children.

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Kamala and Asmita left their home village, travelling to a camp for those made homeless by the earthquake, but there were not enough supplies or space for them. They lived outdoors under tarpaulin until CAFOD's partners in Nepal arrived with supplies to build them a sturdy shelter in a nearby resettlement area.

When I asked them if they wished to return to their village, Asmita and Kamal said, "No, we will stay here. There are too many memories there."

Kamala has a temporary home now in a settlement area for Nepali people who cannot return home. Her village has been deemed unsafe for inhabitants by the Nepalese government due to the severe structural damage from the earthquake and the threat of landslides. She has been given seeds and shown how to plant vegetables that will grow in the lower altitude where they now live, and her tomatoes and spinach will supplement their meals.

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Asmita attends the local school and told me in English that she would like to be a doctor when she finishes her studies.

CAFOD working through our partners in Nepal have provided shelter, clean water, and jobs training for people made homeless in this region. While they are still a very long way from returning to a normal life, they have survived, they are healthy, and Asmita's return to school, like many other children, fills her mother with hope for their future.

CAFOD supporters across England and Wales raised 3.8 million to help the people whose lives have been changed forever by the Nepal earthquakes begin to rebuild their lives. Within the next year, we will help to build 550 permanent homes in Rasuwa for people like Kamala and Asmita, including 50 for people with disabilities. We are working to help Dalits, traditionally the lower caste in Nepal, to secure land rights so that they may build homes as the recognised landowners, ensuring a future legacy for their children.

Our humanitarian commitment means that we must do everything in our power to ensure people's lives are saved. But aid agencies won't remain in Nepal forever, and therefore we must empower communities to rebuild their lives sustainably and be in charge of their own destinies.

The process can be slow and frustrating. A combination of the monsoon rains, a border blockade leading to a fuel crisis, and the new Nepalese government's lumbered reaction to the crisis means that rebuilding permanent, earthquake-resistant homes is months behind schedule. But breakthroughs in the government guidelines this month means that CAFOD through our partner agencies will be helping communities to rebuild safe homes in the coming months, ensuring a more stable and bright future for thousands of families.

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With so many lives lost and such a momentous task in front of us, sometimes we can forget the tragic stories of so many individual families who have lost loved ones, their lifelong possessions, and the ability to live in their home villages where their families have lived for generations. But listening to Kamala and Asmita this week, I'm reminded that a multitude of tragedies must not make us overwhelmed, but ever more determined to help create new opportunities for those who've lost so much.

Asmita said: "I miss my brother and sisters every day but here my mother and I will live and be strong."
Scotland commemorates St Andrews's Day as a celebration of Scottish culture. The Welsh celebrate St David's Day with parades, music and singing. St Patrick's Day is marked by a bank holiday in Ireland and celebrated by Irish communities throughout the world. But if you're English you may struggle to even remember that today is St George's Day.

Photo: St George and the Dragon

Contrast that with Barcelona. Visiting in the late 1990s I found that throughout Catalonia they also celebrate St George's Day, known locally as El Diada de Sant Jordi. It turned out he is Catalonia's patron saint too.

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But whereas in England there may be little reason to remember St George's Day, in Catalonia it is a day you'd better not forget. The Ramblas should be on the itinerary of anyone visiting Barcelona, but on 23rd April each year the city's best-known street is overtaken by bookstalls and flower sellers commemorating the Catalan equivalent of Valentine's Day, only better.

Although the legend of George and the Dragon is well known, there is strong evidence the man really existed. A Roman soldier who in 303AD was martyred for refusing to denounce his Christian faith, George was canonised in 494AD. Probably of Greek origin, he died in what is now Turkey with the dragon myth emerging later from Beirut.

In England St George's Day was first mentioned in a ninth century document and churches dedicated to the saint began appearing during the following century. The story of St George and the Dragon appears to have been introduced to England by returning Crusaders and in 1348, when Edward III founded The Order of the Garter and inspired by their stories, he chose St George as patron.

This coincides with the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) with France when English soldiers started to use the saint's name as a battle cry. During the battle of Agincourt (1415) the English carried banners adorned with the cross of St George and the same year it became obligatory to take St George's Day as a holiday.

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I remember marching as a Cub Scout on the annual St George's Day parade, but the day got lost to me after leaving the Scouts. Maybe we were reminded at school and perhaps the English flag was flown above official buildings, but I would have been hard pressed to name the date.

As well as England, St George was also adopted as the patron saint of the Crown of Aragon, which on the Spanish mainland included Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia. In fact, it turns out St George is also the patron saint of Portugal, Georgia, Romania and others and his feast day celebrated in countries that include Russia, Syria, Hungary, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon.

We all know the story of St George and the Dragon, but the version told in Catalonia ends with St George giving the princess a red rose born from the blood of the slain dragon. And in a tradition dating from at least the 15th century, Catalan men give their sweetheart a red rose on St George's Day.

Photo: The Ramblas on El Diada de Sant Jordi by Yearofthedragon. Licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0

Since the 1920s, men receive a book in return. This addition to the tradition was started by an enterprising bookseller in Barcelona who wanted to commemorate the birthdays of Shakespeare and Cervantes, both born on 23rd April, and in doing so shift a few books. Throughout the city on street corners, in squares and outside bookshops you'll find book and flower stalls.

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Thirty years ago this week, a catastrophic nuclear accident took place. Thousands have died as a result, communities were devastated and displaced, and the legacy of environmental damage lives on.

During routine activity at the Chernobyl nuclear power station there was an unexpected power surge. As workers struggled to manage the surge, a fire started after the reactor was exposed to air.

Chernobyl was located in the Western Soviet Union, just inside the Ukrainian border. The impact of the accident was felt in Belarus, Russia and eventually as far afield as western Europe as large amounts of radiation spread out through the air. The environmental and agricultural consequences continued in Britain for decades.

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The result was a catastrophe for the local population. The nearest city Pripyat had to be completely evacuated and hundreds of thousands of people were permanently relocated. The environmental damage means that huge areas today are still unfit for human habitation. The radiation led to high levels of child thyroid cancer and leukaemia in the affected areas.

Chernobyl was part of a long series of nuclear accidents that have continued up to today. In the UK we had our own major accident in 1959 at Windscale (now known as Sellafield) from which radiation spread across Europe. In 1979 there was a partial reactor meltdown on Three Mile Island, and last month we marked the 5 year anniversary of the horrific Fukushima disaster in Japan.

After Fukushima a number of countries - Germany most notable amongst them - finally made the wise decision to break with nuclear power production. Sadly, others including our own government, have failed to learn the obvious lesson of Chernobyl and the other disasters: that nuclear power is simply too dangerous to continue using. Attempts to build new nuclear power stations across Europe are fraught with problems, accidents and escalating expense. Increasing evidence shows that such facilities are detrimental to human health even on the basis of normal functioning. It's time for the British government to face up to this reality and abandon their support for a new generation of nuclear power stations. Many clean and sustainable energy forms now exist and there is no conceivable case for continuing with nuclear power production.

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Unicef

This week marks one year since swathes of Nepal were devastated by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killing almost 10,000 people, flattening entire villages and leaving 3.5million people homeless.

Watching the news, I don't think any of us could fail to be moved by the devastating scenes we saw in the aftermath of the quakes. To be hit by one so strong was devastating, to be hit by a second just a few short weeks later, as recovery efforts were gathering pace, was almost beyond belief.

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I have a close bond with Nepal. When I was filming the BBC documentary The Cold Chain I had the chance to spend some time with Unicef there. Following the path of a vaccine, we travelled from India up to Kathmandu, driving west to Nepalgunj, taking a hair-raising flight to Talcha before finally hiking to the tiny village of Luma.

It was a journey I'll never forget, and one that really illustrated to me the lengths that Unicef will go to reach every child in danger, no matter where they live.

Almost five years have passed since I visited Nepal, but the memories of the children and families I met there remain with me. Watching the news last year it was devastating to think that in and around Kathmandu many of the children I met had lost their homes, their schools, and even loved ones.

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Ewan in Nepal

In the days following the earthquake, despite the snow and freezing temperature, families were forced to sleep outside, scared to go indoors because of the damage to buildings and the threat of aftershocks. I remember spending one night in a tent in Luma, and even with a sleeping bag and several layers it was an incredibly cold. But after the earthquakes many families had no choice but to sleep out in the open.

The earthquakes not only destroyed their homes and their schools, but left millions of children scared and in danger. They needed shelter; food, water and medical supplies, and also support to deal with the traumatic events they had experienced, and the chance to get back to school as soon as possible.

Unicef was there, on the ground in Nepal, when the children of Nepal needed them most, as it has been for over 40 years. Unicef staff worked tirelessly to reach every child affected by the earthquake. Working to ensure that each and every one of the children affected were kept safe, and provided with the food, water and supplies they so desperately needed.

Unicef also worked with the Nepalese government to set up temporary learning centres. Evidence shows that children who are out of school for prolonged periods of time after a disaster are increasingly less likely to ever return to the classroom. Unicef helped set up 1,500 temporary learning centres after the earthquakes destroyed 34,500 classrooms. Since then, Unicef has continued to work with the government of Nepal and partner organisations to help children and families affected by the earthquakes begin to rebuild their lives, providing not only education but healthcare, nutritious food and clean water for thousands of children.

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One of the reasons Unicef was able to react so quickly following the earthquakes was because of the Children's Emergency Fund. Whenever or wherever disaster strikes, the Children's Emergency Fund allows Unicef to respond rapidly to deliver life-saving food, clean water and health care, as well as crucial protection from violence and the chance to learn in safety.

Currently there are 59million children facing conflict, natural disasters and other complex emergencies in 50 countries across the world. In all of these emergencies children are some of the hardest hit - losing lives, families, homes and schools.

From children fleeing brutal conflict in countries like Syria, to those whose homes are destroyed by natural disasters like in Nepal one year ago, to families and communities at risk from the Zika virus, there's never been a more challenging time for children. By donating to Unicef UK's Children's Emergency Fund today, you can help Unicef reach these children - no matter what.

Help Unicef by clicking here and donate to the Children's Emergency Fund by clicking here.
Introduction

The international attention that Lebanon currently receives is focused on its proximity to the war in Syria - with an estimated 1.5million Syrian refugees in the country. This would be a huge number for any country, but for Lebanon with its population of 4 million it's a significant burden. However, a burden seen by most political actors in Lebanon as their duty.

The country has long been intimately involved in various regional conflicts, and has half a million long term Palestinian refugees, and within its borders Hezbollah, an armed group as well as a political party. But last summer it was the large protests about the government's failure to deal with domestic waste that re-focused the international community on the country. The "You Stink" protest brought thousands out on to the streets of Beirut when the closure of the landfill site meant there was nowhere to dispose of the city's rubbish.

It was this in the back of my mind when I was asked, and agreed, to be part of an international delegation to make an assessment of the country's readiness for the forthcoming municipal and mayoral elections. The delegation was organised by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a not-for-profit, nongovernmental organisation that supports democratic institutions and practices around the world. It comprised a former Canadian MP, a Tunisian civil society activist who runs an election observation network, NDI's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa and me. We met civil society activists, government officials, electoral authorities, representatives of political groups and members of the international community.

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Politics in Lebanon

Lebanon's politics are paralysed at the national level. The country has been without a President since the previous incumbent's tenure ended in May 2014, and despite numerous attempts by MPs to elect a new one there has been no agreement. In addition, due to the regional crisis, parliamentary elections have been postponed in both 2013 and 2014.

Political parties are organised primarily on what is called "confessional", as well as sectarian lines. Getting agreement is not an easy matter. Being without a President, parliament is no longer meeting. It wasn't surprising to find a general mood of depression in the political world in Lebanon, and considerable scepticism that the local elections would go ahead.

Local election issues

Last summer's crisis over waste management brought citizens together across sectarian and economic divisions, it also served to highlight the importance of municipal councils as the last bastion of functioning governance. With interest in service delivery and transparency at an all-time high, municipal council and mayoral elections give an important opportunity for citizens to hold their authorities to account. Electoral preparations and campaigning also provide an opportunity for renewed debate about decentralisation, given the strong role of central government over municipal affairs and finances.

A November 2015 poll by NDI and its partner, the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections (LADE), found that 60% of respondents believe these elections represent a chance to bring about change. When probed, basic services and infrastructure, in addition to Syrian refugees, were most commonly cited as priorities for local governance.

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The elections are due to take place every six years. Despite the Ministry of the Interior and Municipalities, which is responsible for elections, having called elections for four consecutive Sundays in May, we met many people who were not sure they would actually happen. Some political parties were not prepared to begin spending on the elections without clearer indications they were going ahead. The lack of campaigning was evident and it was only on our final afternoon that we saw our first political poster. Nonetheless it was clear that all the required procedures have been followed.

We were told by many that local elections, particularly in rural areas, have an emphasis on family links and local connections rather than political issues. It's also usual for many areas that political parties submit joint candidate lists. This is clearly within the rules, but does give the political parties the power to decide who will govern when there is only one list submitted to the voters.

Women and young people

We were asked to look at the extent to which women and young people were likely to be involved in the election. With a higher than usual voting age of 21, and even higher age of 25 for standing for elected office, Lebanon struggles to engage young people in political activity. Despite the involvement of women in many aspects of economic life, including at a high level, female representation is amongst the worst for the region and globally. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union at parliamentary level only 3.1% of representatives are women, 177th out of 191 countries.

Many in civil society want a legally mandated quota for women. The suggested percentage is 30%, in line with the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to which Lebanon is a signatory. This is not an issue that can be addressed before the local elections, but there is pressure for this to be part of electoral reform before the next parliamentary elections that are expected in 2017.

The political party representatives we met all recognised the need to involve more women and young people, however only one party had specific mechanisms to encourage this. This party was committed to ensuring that women made up 25% of their lists for the election. We were repeatedly told that this was a cultural issue and that many people did not accept women as candidates, but this is not borne out by research that reports 85% of those surveyed supportive of women's involvement.

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New political activists

Following the protests last summer, a number of Beirut residents decided that rather than just complain they should come together to seek election and formed Beirut Medinati, which means Beirut My Town. They have a 10-point political platform as their manifesto for the local elections. Some political party representatives applauded the content of the political platform and felt that whatever the outcome of the elections the policies that had been put forward should be taken up. Beirut Medinati are aiming to govern in Beirut, however it is a concern that should they fail to gain many seats their enthusiasm might wane and the potential to move politics towards a more ideological basis could easily be lost.

General voting issues

Although the focus was specifically on the forthcoming elections a number of issues about the electoral process were inevitably part of discussions. Most astonishing was the fact that there are no pre-printed ballot papers - completely outside normal international standards. Not only does this mean that the integrity of the vote is threatened but it is one very important element in ensuring the secrecy of the ballot. There have been proposals to rectify this following a number of international organisations recommending a change.

Voters are automatically registered to vote in their family's ancestral home, or if a married woman in their husband's family's ancestral home. This means that particularly for local elections there is often no connection between the voter and those elected to deliver services. As candidates must stand in the area where they are registered it creates additional difficulties for women as they may not be known in their husband's local area.

Conclusion

Failure to elect a President and hold parliamentary elections are key elements of the political paralysis in Lebanon. Successful local elections could be important in giving the people of Lebanon some confidence that democracy is in place and that elections matter. That many local issues fundamentally affect people's lives adds another level of importance to the process. Political parties and candidates should campaign on issues such as transport, housing and waste management in order to build support for elections and the role of local government.

The delegation recommended that in order to increase confidence that the elections will take place, the Ministry needs to begin an immediate voter information campaign. While it was accepted by all that a small number of places may not be able to hold elections due to violent unrest, for the vast majority there is no reason for the elections not to take place.

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There are fundamental issues about the election process that cannot be addressed this time but should be addressed in the future. The most important is to take steps to ensure the secrecy of the ballot through pre-printed ballot papers, and arrangements for voting and counting that eliminate the many current possibilities for identifying who has voted for whom. Alongside this, lowering the age for voting and being a candidate would encourage greater involvement of young people.

The country also needs to demonstrate through actions and not just words that it wants women to be more fully involved in the electoral process as candidates and elected representatives. There is no doubt that the quickest way to do this would be through a legislative quota, but nothing prevents parties from having their own voluntary quotas and ensuring that women and young people are an integral part of their own decision making processes.
Is the UK government doing enough over the terrible case of Giulio Regeni?

By "enough" I mean: is the government putting any real time and effort into supporting the campaign to find out what really happened to this Cambridge University student who was abducted and tortured to death during his PhD research in Egypt?

There are grounds for thinking the answer is no. That no, the UK government isn't investing a great deal into establishing Verita per Giulio Regeni (the name of Amnesty Italy's Regeni campaign). Look for a public statement on Regeni's case on the Foreign Office's website, and you'll look in vain. There isn't one. (Indeed, in the last three months Egypt's swingeing crackdown on a whole swathe of human rights merits just one short, three-paragraph UK statement).

Regeni's mutilated body was found in a ditch on the outskirts of Cairo on 3 February. Clearly something terrible had happened. A full two months later the UK Government said it wanted to see a full and transparent investigation. The Guardian said the UK government was only then "breaking its silence" on the case.

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The Foreign Affairs Committee recently expressed concern that the Government "has not been supporting the Italian authorities as forcefully as [Regeni's] murder deserved". The committee also expressed some incredulity at the Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood leading a trade delegation to Egypt in January and then saying he couldn't remember whether or not he'd raised human rights during the visit. Daniel Zeichner, an MP from Cambridge who's raised Regeni's case in the House of Commons (getting only a standard Government answer), has said he's "increasingly frustrated with the Government's weak response." Al Jazeera reports that the Italian government is far from pleased at London's response to Regeni's death, though for the time being we're told this via an unnamed official who reportedly wishes not to be named.

Friends and former colleagues at Cambridge are also unimpressed. On Friday they organised a large public rally in the centre of Cambridge to once again draw attention to Regeni's murder. (Note: Andrea Purgatori accuses the US government of similarly keeping a low profile on Regeni's case, preferring, it seems, to stress Egypt's significance to peace and security in the region).

Late last week Reuters reported that, contrary to the Egyptian authorities' claims, Regeni had been taken into custody by the Egyptian police at the time of his disappearance, and his torture and killing were therefore very likely to have been the work of one branch or another of Egypt's almost-completely-unaccountable security services.

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Though unusual because he was a visiting foreign student, Regeni's fate by domestic Egyptian standards is chillingly commonplace these days. Trade unionists, journalists, students, Muslim Brotherhood sympathisers, academics and numerous others have recently found themselves the subject of unwelcome visits from Egypt's increasingly hard-line authorities. An Amnesty report last year showed how a whole generation of young protesters enthused by the 2011 uprising have now been picked off under President Sisi's crackdown, many of them becoming "Generation Jail" and joining the tens of thousands of those locked up by the police and the courts. Hundreds - if not thousands - of detainees appear to have been tortured, and many have died through deliberate mistreatment or neglect and denial of medical care (something, by the way, the UK Government's recently-published Human Rights & Democracy report acknowleges to be a serious issue).

As a 28-year-old student of trade unions, Regeni could hardly have been unaware of this forbidding situation. It's nevertheless a tragic irony that he too seems to have been caught up in the maw of this monstrous turn of events in Egypt.
Published last month, the Department for Education (DFE)'s White Paper Educational Excellence Everywhere has been the source of a tremendous amount of debate, with criticism coming from a wide range of sources.

The National Union of Teachers has declared it is "utterly opposed to [its] proposals to convert all schools to academies, end democratic accountability in England's education system and threaten teachers' pay and conditions". The Guardianimplores Education Secretary Nicky Morgan to "slow down". And, in a recent editorial in The Times, one of the White Paper's flagship initiatives was dismissed as "peculiarly crude" and "clumsy ministerial overreach".

But what do teachers themselves think? Amid all of the sound and the fury, it is important that their voices aren't lost. So kudos to education research house Schoolzone, who, straight after the White Paper was published, surveyed 800 UK teachers about whether they agree or disagree with its core ideas.

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It is immediately evident that there is much more that teachers disagree with in the White Paper than agree. A very substantial majority - 88% - disagree with the idea that by the end of 2020, all remaining maintained schools should be academies, or in the process of conversation. Primary school teachers tend to be even more opposed to the plan, with 80% "strongly disagreeing" and a further 10% "somewhat" disagreeing. A mere six per cent of both primary school-teachers and secondary-school teachers agreed with the idea.

The rise of Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) were also a cause for deep concern by teachers. 71% of teachers disagreed with the idea that most schools with have to form or join MATs. Only 11% agreed. A greater 79% of teachers are opposed to the further development of MATs. Schoolzone believes that teachers are: "Often most concerned over the lack of autonomy that they fear being part of a MAT might bring. For example if budgets were out of the control of school or department heads, or if the MAT insisted on a particular curriculum or resources. Teachers value being able to exercise their personal judgement in these matters".

There was a slightly more balanced picture, however, when it comes to MATs being held more accountable through the publication of performance tables - although the majority, 52%, remain opposed. Two-thirds also disagreed with the idea that key positions in MATs, like the chair of the board of governors, should be paid positions, and there was strong resistance to the idea that parents of school children should no longer have places reserved for them on the governing boards (80% disagreeing).

Interestingly, there was a split between senior staff and classroom teachers when it comes to schools-based Initial Teacher Training (ITT). Exactly half of head teachers agree with the White Paper that the proportion of ITT being led by our best schools should continue to increase. While the largest proportion of teachers "somewhat" agree (29%), teachers are less inclined to believe that heads are best placed to accredit new entrants to the profession, with 58% disagreeing. Heads, perhaps unsurprisingly, are much more positive about the idea.

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While there is ambivalence from primary-school teachers, secondary-school teachers are evidently concerned about the White Paper's stated ambition for 90% of pupils in mainstream secondary schools to enter the EBacc. Indeed 73% are opposed, with only 18% of secondary teachers being in favour.

There are, however, some aspects of the White Paper that teachers do, on the whole, support. The majority (55%) are in support of the establishment of a National Teaching Service, where schools in challenging areas will be able to request support from "elite" teachers and middle leaders for up to three years.

More teachers than not are also in favour of a new Standard for Teachers' Professional Development - an attempt to help schools ensure that the PD they purchase will be of sufficient quality. They are also broadly in favour of a new platform to advertise vacanciesfor free on a new national teacher vacancy website although, as I have argued previously, the potential costs associated with this initiative - which has already failed once - should not be underestimated.

As the report's author, Philip Collie, observes, the White Paper was released just before the Easter holiday, when teachers were extremely busy in the run up to the end of term. That they responded to a survey in such numbers - many hundreds overnight - shows "that teachers are very engaged with schools policy".
Local Teacher, Shila Dhakal, talking to children in Lamjung, Nepal, about earthquake preparedness.Credit: VSO/Suraj Shakya.

Nepal's New Year started on the 13th April this year - a time for friends, family, feasting and exchanging gifts. As a Nepalese man based in London, I miss this joyful occasion. This year, I made an extra special effort to get in touch with my relatives and friends in Nepal. I wanted to see how they're moving on with their lives, one year after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake claimed nearly 9,000 lives and made hundreds of thousands of people homeless. Sadly I lost a friend and one of my relatives in the badly hit region of Sindhupalchok. Many other relatives of mine also lost their homes. In spite of such tragedy and destruction, the spirit of help, cooperation and unity lives on, but so does the fear...

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While on the phone to my friend in Kathmandu, a 4.5 magnitude aftershock abruptly ended our conversation. Although the 6.9 magnitude epicentre was actually north-west of Mandalay in Myanmar, he experienced a tremor which forced him to rush out of his house as a precaution. This was the 447th significant aftershock felt in Nepal since the 25th April last year. He was scared. My friends and family are living in constant fear of another earthquake. So am I - my earthquake app on my mobile phone has become my new obsession.

As VSO's Lead Advisor in Education, I've been working with my colleagues to develop a strategy to help the Government of Nepal deliver education services to earthquake survivors. More than 8,000 schools were damaged and over 1 million school children lost their classroom. At first, our priority was to resume children's education as quickly as possible and to help them regain a sense of normality in the face of trauma and aftershocks, but this hasn't been easy.

The recent border blockade and ongoing political strikes have severely hampered Nepal's recovery. In addition to devastating earthquake damage, the country's transport network has been disrupted by a fuel shortage. Violent clashes have also threatened the safety of communities so people have been put off by large gatherings - even attending school. From September to December last year, more than 3 million children from 20 districts in the Terai region, did not attend class. One of districts affected was Parsa.

VSO operates 'Sisters for Sisters' in the Parsa District - a mentoring scheme where older school girls 'Big Sisters' pair up with younger schools girls 'Little Sisters' to encourage them to attend school - an alternative to marrying young and abandoning their education. Despite a national ban on dowries and early marriage, these practices still persist. According to UNESCO, it's mostly girls from rural areas who miss out on their education. 7% of girls in Nepal are married by the age of 10 and 40% by the age of 15. Pregnancy follows which drastically reduces their chances of continuing their education. Unfortunately, due to the current security and political restrictions in Parsa, 'Sisters for Sisters' has not been able to work at full capacity.

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The blockade and political situation has also slowed down the reconstruction of new homes and schools. Many families are still living in temporary camps a year after their homes were destroyed. Despite the challenges, VSO - in association with UNICEF - has established nearly 120 Temporary Learning Centres. These 'safe spaces' are enabling 17,000 children to continue their education while their schools are being rebuilt. We've also provided post- earthquake trauma counselling to over 30,000 children and managed to distribute essential learning materials to nearly 8,000 pupils in 75 schools.
Would someone please explain to me how "No Platform" and "Safe Spaces" are Progressive policies?

The BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme this Monday hosted a debate on "no platforming". In preparation, ComRes interviewed 1,001 UK university students online, with data weighted by course year, university type and gender. They found nearly two-thirds (63%) of university students supported the National Union of Students policy declaring that certain people or organisations can be excluded from platforms or premises, for holding racist or fascist views.

The NUS lists six organisations (three Islamist, three far-right) which it deems students should not hear speak. Student unions can "no platform" other people and organizations, and declare premises "Safe Spaces" where those with unwanted opinions may be banned from attending.

But who gets to decide who is racist or fascist? Why should other students be prevented from hearing dissenting voices? Don't these policies actually decrease the diversity of views among student activists?

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Author Julie Bindel has long been banned from student premises because of a claims that her writing harms Trans people. She claims no evidence has ever been presented by anyone to back this claim, and that the some of the same student bodies which ban her, allow speakers who call for the stoning of women and other very not "Progressive" policies.

"It really annoys me when you've got middle-aged people on Twitter and all these things saying we're ridiculous, we're stupid, actually that's very insulting... We're not stupid. You're just saying this generation who have more progressive views than you suddenly, we don't think the same way."

Acquah goes on:

"It's ridiculous, we do live in the real world. We know there's not a safe space. We're trying to create what we want in our spaces."

I'm going to disagree with this. Does this mean that I too will be no platformed, or forbidden from entering student safe Spaces?

In the real world, people hold different opinions. You can't just pretend people who disagree with you don't exist. You can refuse to sit next to them on a bus, but would you refuse to serve them breakfast? You can avoid them in debates and block them from twitter, but they can still speak elsewhere, and they get a vote the same as you -- so what good does excluding them do you?

As long as people aren't calling for violence or harassment or otherwise breaking the law, they can, respectfully, say what they want. Is it this freedom of expression that student activists are targeting? Is it progressive to try to build a world where people are not allowed to disagree?

The Iraqi-born, US-based writer Faisal Saeed Al Mutar describes such a world that exists right now.

...I get messages and emails all the time from people from Pakistan, Saudi, Iran and many other countries telling me that they agree with me but [are] afraid to ... like or share [my posts in case ] someone in their family or friends list notice[s] that and that might get them persecuted or killed.

In the real world, in Iran cartoonist and activist Atena Farghadani having her prison sentence for drawing a politically sensitive cartoon reduced from 12 years to 18 month is a small blessing.

In the real world, almost 2,000 cases have been opened against people in Turkey for supposely insulting their President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In the real world, in Pakistan thousands of people have protested in support of Mumtaz Qadri, executed for killing a politician who'd spoken in defense of alleged "blasphemers".

In the real world, arguments over what does and does not constitute a true Muslim have led to leaflets in a London Mosque calling for the killing of Ahmadiyyas if they won't convert to mainstream Islam; and it seems, to the murder of Glasgow shopkeeper Asad Shah.

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In the real world, the UK, the USA and the rest of the West are all substantially more tolerant places to hold minority options, express dissenting views and even to practice whatever religion one thinks fit, than anywhere else in the world. Of course the West is far from perfect. Of course we expect our student activists to work for a better world... But are they?

Does anyone really think that marking people for exclusion helps win arguments? Or increases tolerance? Or makes the world a better place? Or makes the world safer for those with minority views or opinions or customs?
Pharmaceutical companies are just like any other company and "It's important we treat a business like a business" said a representative from the US Chamber of Commerce in a recent discussion around access to medicines. This is the reality we've all come to take as the natural order of things, that medicines, like any other consumable, are a product traded by companies in order to reap the maximum profit. But is this justifiable or absurd?

The recent press release of pharma giant GSK saying they were expanding access to their products for poorer countries and the flurry of activity from HIV activists ACT UP fighting Gilead to lower the prices of PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) so the NHS can afford it - is clear evidence that both the public and industry are waking up to the latter.

The protest from ACT UP also show that high drug prices have become a global problem. The high price of Hepatitis C treatment at 35,000 and other Cancer drugs are why we're seeing a 15.1% increase in the NHS hospital's expenditure on prescription medicines.

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Yet this week we celebrate one of the leading structural causes of this global health crisis. World Intellectual Property Day (April 26th) is one of the more curious world celebration days but an important one, according to the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO), to learn about the role that IP rights (patents, trademarks, industrial designs, copyright) play in encouraging innovation and creativity.

It makes sense that innovators should be rewarded with a secured market return on their investment when it comes to certain non-essential goods, however this model also applies to medicines. If patent monopolies lead to prices so high that a person is then unable to realise their human right to health - to access affordable and appropriate medicine- then surely this incentive system has become nonsensical.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has set a group of experts to task to try and grapple with this very question. The UN High Level Panel on Access to Medicines brings together thought leaders from industry, government and global health to resolve the incoherence between intellectual property rights, international human rights law and public health.

Despite progress made in many areas, millions of people are still dying because they cannot access life-saving medicines. In 2014 1.2 million people died from AIDS, 9.6 million people infected with TB and 1.5 people died because of TB, over 400 million people have hepatitis B and C and 38 million people have died from non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases (17.5 million deaths), diabetes (1.5 million deaths), cancer (8.2 million deaths) and respiratory diseases (4 million deaths).

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The panel have reviewed almost 200 submissions and last month held two hearings in London and Johannesburg to hear ideas from activists, industry, governments and academics on how we can address the current imbalance.

The discussions at both the London and Johannesburg meetings included a mixture of ideas ranging from incremental changes to our current model to an entire system overhaul. Unsurprisingly the pharma industry reps present were on the defence when it came to the latter. Jon Pender, vice-president of GlaxoSmithKline at the Joburg hearing, said:

"We need to insure that the new proposals are going to lead to more innovation than we see now. It is important not to throw the baby out with the bath water in some of the proposals," he said, underlining the number of significant medical innovations that have been put on the market in the last 50 years for the benefit of patients.

The quality of innovation was bought into question from Els Torelle from Open Society Foundation, who said that "What patents are rewarding is anything that is new and inventive, but they're not linked to how they improve health outcomes. This is a fundamental problem. This is why we have 70% of drugs coming to market having zero added-therapeutic value compared with the medicines that are already there."

The issue of patent monopolies, although a problem in itself, is only a symptom of a much broader issue, that our model for researching and developing medicine's isn't driven by public-health need - it is driven by profit. Not only does this lead to high prices and a market flooded with non-effective medicines, it also means that some health conditions, even if they are life threatening, get ignored if they affect non-profitable markets. We've seen this with the Ebola virus. There was no emergency response prepared when the Ebola outbreak began in West Africa in 2014, it was only when there was a suspected case found in America that research into a vaccine sped up.

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For all these reasons there is a growing movement of people who are keen to push for a reformed medical research and development (R&D) model. The sentiment from civil society at both meetings is that health is our most basic asset as human beings, its primacy cannot be denied and "This should be the starting point for the panel," as one Kenyan academic in Johannesburg put it.

Richard Elliott, Executive Director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, highlighted that there is a proposition according to international law that states have an obligation for human rights to prevail above any other obligation, including intellectual property rights.

As duty bearers of human rights, it is the responsibility of states to ensure that their citizens are able to realise their rights. The High Level Panel's recommendations are set to come out in June and will be addressed to heads of state. It is yet to be known whether these recommendations will have an accountability mechanism attached to them so it may well fall to civil society to hold governments to account.

The Missing Medicines campaign, who are fighting for a public health driven R&D model are poised for this role. You can join this important struggle by signing up here.
There's a reason most of us lock our phones with a passcode. We know they've become a window into our private lives, much more revealing than a rifle through our diaries or bedside drawers. They contain our contacts, banking details, confidential work emails and personal messages - highly valuable in the wrong hands.

So if a stranger approached you in the street and asked to see your browsing history or text messages, you'd naturally recoil. And that's exactly how people responded when Liberty sent Olivia Lee out to do just that. Even Home Office staff couldn't see why she should get to hoover up everybody's communications data.

But under the Investigatory Powers Bill, the latest resurrection of the Snoopers' Charter, we won't get a choice.

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The Bill seeks to legalise the disturbing mass surveillance powers exposed by Edward Snowden, and add even more intrusive ones for good measure. It will all but end the ability of ordinary people to correspond in private - even with doctors, lawyers or journalists. And the Government thinks people don't care enough to raise their voices and stop it becoming law.

Telecoms companies are already forced to store the who, where, when and how of every single person's communications - data that can then be accessed by a massive range of public bodies, from the DWP to HMRC, with no robust safeguards. Liberty is currently challenging the legality of that power in court - but the Home Secretary has stuck it in the new Bill anyway.

And she's gone further. The Snoopers' Charter would make the UK the only country in Europe to force internet service providers to store every single citizen's internet connections for a year - that's your web browsing history, smartphone use, online gaming, television streaming, and more. That means your every internet connection would be logged in a huge bank of information guarded by internet providers like TalkTalk, revealing when you're at home, when you're awake and asleep, and your most private online activities, thoughts, feelings, worries and interests - from the banal to the embarrassing. These huge databases would be honeypots for hackers.

Our digital security is under attack in the name of total surveillance. The Government is creating powers to force telecoms operators - defined to include a diverse range of organisations from Gmail, Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter to offices, businesses and law firms - to remove encryption, and ban them from even telling us they've done so.

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So the major debate in the US - Apple fighting the FBI's attempt to force it to hack into a phone due to concerns it could make every device vulnerable - wouldn't even take place in the UK.

In fact, the Bill would hand police and intelligence agencies the power to hack thounsands of our devices.

Not only is this an unprecedented intrusion into the lives of innocent people in a supposedly liberal democracy, but it would open up dangerous back doors to our data for criminals and foreign spies.

The Snoopers' Charter would also allow our intelligence agencies to acquire, retain, access and link "bulk personal datasets". These are massive databases seized, copied or stolen across the public and private sector containing personal information on thousands of ordinary people including biometrics, medical information, political opinions, sexuality, web browsing histories and more: a mind-blowing searchable vat of data on virtually all of us. The Stasi could only have dreamt of it.

The Government hasn't explained how these hugely intrusive powers will make us safer. It hasn't addressed the concerns of tech industry experts, former surveillance chiefs and three cross-party parliamentary committees who ripped the plans apart.

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And, despite a growing consensus that mass surveillance actually hinders spies by drowning them in irrelevant data, it has refused to review whether targeted, not total, surveillance might be a better and more effective way.

Liberty was one of the leading voices calling for an overhaul of our surveillance laws. We urgently need a framework that will help our agencies prevent and detect crime, while safeguarding our privacy and security.

The logical way to keep tabs on criminals is through targeted surveillance. The terrorists involved in major attacks of recent years - from 9/11, to 7/7, to Paris - were all known to security services.

But the agencies are already thought to process 50billion communications a day under existing powers - and these proposals will pile even more on their desks - making it increasingly likely they'll miss crucial details, follow false leads and ultimately fail to keep us safe.

The Investigatory Powers Bill proliferates spying for the sake of spying. It legalises the speculative mass surveillance powers being challenged in court by Liberty - and ignores suggestions there could be a better, more effective way.

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The Government sees the positive steps we all take to protect our privacy as a threat to be overcome at all costs, while failing to target resources at the real dangers.
My decision to vote against the Government on Monday night over the resettlement of child refugees already in Europe was both the easiest and most difficult one of this Parliament. Difficult, because voting against the whip is not something that most MPs take lightly; easy because my convictions on this matter are so strong.

The vote, on an amendment proposed by Lord Dubs in the House of Lords, would have obliged the Government to give safe haven in the UK to 3,000 unaccompanied children in Europe who have fled the conflicts raging in the Middle East and - all too often forgotten - parts of Africa too. The Government rightly points out that the UK has already done a great deal to help, and certainly more than other nations; and that taking these children would only encourage others to make the dangerous journey to our shores.

Whilst I don't doubt the sincerity of Government ministers and their desire to do the right thing for those forced to flee their homes - efforts which have including taking refugees from camps in Syria and the surrounding region - these arguments carry little weight. The amendment concerned those unaccompanied children who are already in Europe, who have faced unspeakable horrors in their homelands, and who are exposed daily to violence and exploitation we can only imagine. They have lost or become separated from their families, often for reasons over which they have no control. They have braved the journey to our continent hoping for safety, only to end up in camps or on the streets. And they are children.

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These children are in Europe, but they are in danger. They are at risk from sexual abuse and human trafficking. Europol estimates that 10,000 of them went missing last year, even after they had been registered with the authorities. And as a former Archbishop of Canterbury pointed out in a national newspaper over the weekend, doctors report that as many as half of them require treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, almost certainly acquired from sexual exploitation during their journey to Europe.

We have a proud history in the UK of helping refugees escaping from appalling horrors, particularly children. Had we not given safe haven via the Kindertransport programme to thousands of Jewish children in the run up to the Second World War, most would have died in the Holocaust. We took in refugees from Iran and Vietnam, and those fleeing Idi Amin in Uganda. We did the right thing, and I believe we must do so again.

But my conviction on this also comes from the fact that I am a father. Many of the children in these European camps are the same age as mine, and I think about what I would want for them if they were in the appalling situation which these children face. I would want them to be safe, warm, well-fed and given a chance to create a life for themselves away from conflict. That's why I voted against the Government on this issue, and, if the Lords stick to their guns, it's why I will continue to do so.
The Tories and their media can be like a broken record in their questioning of Jeremy Corbyn's ability to lead the country. However, as David Cameron has already said he will not lead the Conservative Party for a third term, a more pressing question is which Tory is going to be able to take the reins from Cameron.

The issue will no doubt come into sharper focus after the EU referendum, but it is worth considering the options now. The Party does not seem to be spoilt for choice.

A recent Ipsos MORI poll, commissioned by London Evening Standard, found Corbyn to be leading both Cameron and George Osborne, in terms of satisfaction with their leadership. Some 35% were satisfied by Corbyn's leadership, against 34% for Cameron and 27% for Osborne. The poll came in the wake of a budget that had cross-party condemnation and led to a U-turn on disability benefits, far from Osborne's first.

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Osborne is in the extremely unfortunate position of appearing not only cruel and callous but also inept. Like a Mr Bean of the vampire world. His ruthless austerity has been seen as an attack on the most vulnerable, but also as ineffective in that he has not hit targets for reducing the UK's budget deficit. The endless floundering between attempts to appear tough and the inevitable U-turns and spinning makes him look out of his depth and dazed by reality. This perception is reinforced by intermittent footage of him looking more like someone in a 5am chillout room than poised for high office.

Beyond all the funny footage of the man some now call Giddyone Osborne, the serious issue is that he has perpetually disregarded fundamental economic and social realities in order to push an austerity agenda that simply hasn't worked for people. It seems highly unlikely that such an unpopular Chancellor of the Exchequer would be a credible prime minister.

If Osborne is a man struggling to appear ruthless and ending up looking like Mr Bean, Boris Johnson is someone who uses the mask of a clown to try to hide a ruthless and, some might say, callous, personality. His desire for the limelight has backfired as people have found out a lot about Boris since his first stint as an MP. Since being sacked as a shadow minister, in 2004 for lying about an affair, Boris' clown mask has changed for many, I suspect, from fleetingly amusing to rather disturbing and irritating.

While he is seen by some as a 'big hitter' in the Leave campaign, he has a lot of baggage that could well thwart his leadership ambitions. His grubby old mask may not be enough to distract voters from his infidelities, his role in a plot by an embittered friend to beat up a journalist, or his description of Africans as "piccaninnies" with "watermelon smiles". These things tend to be remembered, especially when he does things like use President Obama's ethnic origins as a way to disparage his enthusiasm for EU harmony. Less shocking than the above, but to a trained journalist still quite outrageous, is Boris' history of fabricating a quote when working as a reporter, for which was sacked.

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There are many other examples I could list that would throw into question Boris' integrity, sincerity and work ethic, and these will no doubt be brought up again and again if Boris puts himself forward in a leadership challenge. Now the public knows what it does about Boris and can see behind the clown's mask, I would be very worried for the rationality of the UK public if they allow him to become prime minister. So who are we left with as a viable option? Theresa May?

May's controversies may not be quite as ludicrous as those created by Boris, but these are no less significant. More than 18 months into the role of Home Secretary she refused to take responsibility for border checks being relaxed. Instead she blamed others and abolished the UK Border Agency. Two years into the role May gained the dubious distinction of being one of only two Home Secretary in Britain's history to be convicted of contempt of court. This conviction was for disregarding a legal agreement to free an Algerian man from an immigration detention centre.

I suspect some people will feel pity for May's stress levels during some of the fiascos she has been involved with. For example, steering the Home Office during the slow motion car crash that ensued when Abu Qatada seemingly ran rings around an army of QCs at the government's disposal, to avoid deportation. But feeling sorry for someone is not a good enough reason to allow them to be prime minister. Amid the wrangling with Qatada, May looked increasingly distressed in photos, as though actually haunted.

The spectre of Qatada still appears to be haunting May and leading her to poor judgement. Just this week she caused an outcry by suggesting that the UK should withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights regardless of the referendum outcome. Shadow justice secretary, Charles Falconer, described her suggestion as ignorant, illiberal and misguided, and said she was "sacrificing Britain's 68-year-old commitment to human rights for her own miserable Tory leadership ambitions".

If May believes Boris has burned his bridges by being an outspoken leave campaigner, she might have hoped her comments would allow her to straddle both sides and at gain some credibility among pro-Brexiters. However, she may have lost credibility among many more people, given that, as Lord Falconer pointed out, we cannot be a member of the EU and withdraw from the convention. She might find that all her interjection has done is remind us of the Qatada fiasco and that she was is charge during the mess.

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Fairfax Media

Australia's scheme of detaining asylum seekers on Manus Island has been ruled illegal by Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court, throwing the offshore detention system into doubt.

The ABC has reported that the court "ruled the detention breached the right to personal liberty in the PNG constitution," and that PNG and Australian governments have been ordered "to immediately take steps to end the detention of asylum seekers in PNG.

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"There are 850 men in the detention centre on Manus Island, about half of whom have been found to be refugees," the ABC reported.

What effect this will have on detention on Manus Island, and Australia's broader system of offshore detention including on Nauru, is as yet unclear.

On Tuesday afternoon Immigration minister Peter Dutton released this statement:

Peter Dutton has released a response to the Manus Island court decision - holding firm but no word on next steps pic.twitter.com/DxMKCtUblE  Josh Butler (@JoshButler) April 26, 2016

Labor immigration spokesman Richard Marles said the ruling was "of significant concern" and he called for Dutton to be immediately be dispatched to Port Moresby for urgent talks with the PNG government.

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"Labor is seeking an assurance from the government that it has a contingency plan to deal with today's ruling. This decision, and our government's response will be monitored by people smuggling networks," Marles said.

Refugee advocate Jeanie Walker, who is in regular contact with many detainees on Manus, told HuffPost Australia that the decision was not a surprise to her.

She claimed staff at the Manus Island centre had been making changes to conditions in anticipation of the decision, including preparing to let certain groups of refugees take "day trips" into the local community. Walker claimed centre operators were attempting to portray Manus as an "open centre" like Nauru, to skirt the ruling.

"They had a meeting yesterday where they said the refugees are now allowed to leave, like on Nauru, and pretending it's an open centre," Walker said.

"They'll have a bus outside the compounds, they sign a form that says they will come back, and they go out on a daytrip. [Staff] have also said [refugees] are allowed to have phones inside two of the compounds. They knew this was happening, we knew for a long time this was going to happen."

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However, Walker said groups of refugees quickly agreed amongst themselves that they would not take up the offer, claiming the opportunity was a play to show Manus as a more open centre than it really was.

"None of them are going to do it, they had meetings, they agreed that nobody would put in a request to go on a daytrip," she said.

"[The Supreme Court ruling] is a good decision, but we need to know how it will be interpreted. It should be interpreted that the refugees shouldnt be on PNG, they should be taken to Australia and processed properly."

Ian Rintoul, of the Refugee Action Coalition, described the detention program as a blight on Australia, and said any move to keep holding the men would be a political decision between the PNG and Australian governments

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Its very, very good news. They have put those people through three years of hell for no lawful reason.

Legally its clear cutthey should be released.

The decision confirms everything we have said about Manus."

Sarah Hanson-Young, Greens immigration spokeswoman, called for the government to take swift action in the wake of the ruling.

The PNG Supreme Court has ruled that the Manus Island Detention Camp is ILLEGAL. Time to bring those left there to Australia to be cared for  Sarah Hanson-Young (@sarahinthesen8) April 26, 2016

Elaine Pearson, Australia Director at Human Rights Watch, welcomed the decision.

"This ruling is a massive victory for asylum seekers and refugees who remain locked up on a detention centre on a naval base in Manus, many for almost three years now. PNGs Supreme Court has recognized that detaining people who have committed no crime is wrong. For these men, their only mistake was to try to seek sanctuary in Australia  that doesnt deserve years in limbo locked up in a remote island prison," she said in a statement.

"Its time for the Manus detention centre to be closed once and for all. Those found to be refugees should be given resettlement in countries that have capacity to integrate them, starting with Australia. Australia should also reconsider New Zealands offer of resettlement. Locking people up for years on end has severe mental health impacts. These refugees have suffered enough, its time for them to finally move on and rebuild their lives in safety and dignity."

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RunPhoto via Getty Images businesswoman in the office

With last week's announcement from government of a $30 million campaign to stop domestic violence before it starts by targeting disrespectful behaviour, we see a growing recognition that tackling domestic violence requires widespread cultural change.

One of the key levers in driving cultural change will be the role our workplaces play in reducing the stigma around domestic and family violence, raising awareness of the impact domestic and family violence has on the workplace and supporting employees who are experiencing violence.

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The role that workplaces can play in ending domestic and family violence was highlighted throughout last month's UN Commission on the Status of Women. It was also the subject of the recent Male Champions of Change report Playing our Part: Workplace Responses to Domestic and Family Violence, which featured a call to action by CEOs of Australia's leading companies such as Telstra, CBA, ASX and KPMG.

The impact of domestic and family violence on the workplace

For women experiencing violence, keeping their job is crucial. Economic factors are the most significant predictor of whether a woman remains, escapes or returns to an abusive relationship. Maintaining employment can provide someone experiencing violence with economic independence and a support network.

What does an effective workplace response look like?

While much of the recent media coverage has focused on the inclusion of domestic violence leave clauses in workplace agreements, it is important that this is part of a broader workplace response.

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Essential components to a workplace response include:

1. An organisational commitment to gender equality

We know gender inequality is both a cause and consequence of domestic and family violence. Workplace responses to domestic violence need to be underpinned by a robust implementation of diversity and inclusion strategies in an environment where gender-balanced leadership is a known business imperative.

2. Strategies to keep people safe

Having systems in place that protect the privacy and contact information of employees where needed is essential, as well as the ability to change phone numbers, email addresses and internet profiles quickly and easily. Enabling flexible work practices, such as adjustments to time and location to work, is important, as is providing support from security personnel. Lastly, workplaces should also ensure that those who disclose their experience of domestic violence are not discriminated against or victimised, and establish processes to restrict access to such information on HR files.

3. Access to information and services

For many people experiencing violence, they don't feel safe accessing information on personal devices about services and referrals that may help them. Providing information about referral pathways (such as 1800 RESPECT) on employee intranet portals is helpful, as is providing access to a free and confidential counselling service with the relevant expertise that employees can access during work hours.

4. Access to paid leave

Providing additional paid leave to employees experiencing violence in order for them to find emergency accommodation, move children into new schools, file police reports and attend court increases the likelihood that they can seek help while retaining their employment. This is crucial in terms of them maintaining their economic independence and links to the community. Ten days of special leave appears to be a developing norm. Employees need to know the leave is available, feel comfortable accessing it, and be assured of confidentiality.

5. Not just policy and entitlements but genuine cultural change

A workplace response to domestic and family violence shouldn't simply be about adding a policy to the intranet portal. Rather, the focus should be on driving widespread cultural change in organisations, through:

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 leaders role-modelling respectful relationships and inclusive behaviours;

 encouraging employees to call out inappropriate behaviour;

 communicating about diversity issues regularly through multiple channels;

 information about workplace support available at important employee touch points (e.g. induction, training days, team meetings);

 equipping people with the skills they need to have challenging conversations with their colleagues and implement policies relating to domestic violence; and

 making it clear to perpetrators and potential perpetrators that violence against women is unacceptable and ensuring appropriate referrals for them are also available.

6. Contributing to efforts to end domestic violence in the broader community

Organisations can join forces with their customers, suppliers and communities to create a culture where domestic and family violence is unacceptable. Examples of this include Telstra's commitment to donating mobile phones and sim cards to domestic violence shelters, Network Ten's provision of free air time to the White Ribbon Foundation and ANZ's free financial literacy workshops accessed by women experiencing violence.
"Don't be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi party!"

--Mel Brooks, Springtime for Hitler

When I applied to graduate schools in the late 1970s, I was interviewed at one institution by a dignified Southern gentleman who happened also to be the school's founder. His name was Nevitt Sanford, and the program in psychology he created was named, with a touch of irony, the Wright Institute. Sanford had gained prominence as the coauthor of The Authoritarian Personality, originally a research project sponsored by the American Jewish Committee in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The organization sought to engage social scientists in helping to develop rigorous methods for the study of prejudice and hatred. And that is exactly what they did.

Sanford, deeply influenced by what he learned during his years of research, was tested immediately by a new form of prejudice sweeping the American collective psyche. In 1950, the same year The Authoritarian Personality was published, he became one of 12 professors at the University of California's Berkeley campus who refused to sign a loyalty oath during the McCarthy era of communist witch hunts. For his courage, he was dismissed by the university, but in 1959 he was reinstated by a Supreme Court ruling.

In 1968, he founded the graduate school where I was applying and later accepted. I had been drawn by the school's declaration that graduate education should be informed by a multidisciplinary approach, humanistic, and ethically responsive to the social conditions of its time. He told me that his vision was to create "clinicians for society," a role that did not yet exist. I think this is what defines certain kinds of visionaries. They see productive responses to social dilemmas long before others even perceive the need.

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As Daniel Goleman noted in a New York Times obituary following his death in 1995, "Dr. Sanford was among the first to study the interaction between social systems and personality. He wrote about how social conditions could encourage people with dogmatic biases to persecute groups they were prejudiced against." His seminal work on authoritarianism became, in the words of social psychologist Dr. Susan Fiske, "a main taproot of all the later research on prejudice, as well as the field of social psychology."

It's now over sixty-five years since The Authoritarian Personality was first published. And the academic world has not been kind to this taproot of seminal ideas. Denigrated for its methodology, dismissed for its conceptual underpinnings in psychoanalysis, and relegated to the margins of social science for its hypothesis of an authoritarian personality linked with European fascism, the research fell into disfavor.

Now, in the midst of a political storm that few saw coming, the conceptual relevance of authoritarianism is greater than ever. Fortunately, novel approaches by social scientists have brought new perspectives to a redrawn authoritarian disposition, a quality no longer associated with a fixed personality structure. Rather, authoritarianism appears to ebb and flow with the perception of threat and, as Sanford hypothesized, is associated with the experience of social disruption.

Donald Trump's candidacy, and the heightened attention it has brought, sheds light on a nascent authoritarian movement, uniquely American. And it is growing inside the bowels of the Republican party--large enough to be a political party of its own. A Vox poll estimated that more than 55 percent of members of the Grand Old Party (GOP) score "high or very high" on an authoritarian scale. Far less worked up about traditional conservative issues, such as limited government and free trade, this group takes its animus from perceptions of threat--the most visible being outsiders, such as terrorists and immigrants, but also internal threats to social order and established hierarchies, such as the growing acceptance of same-sex couples and the increased influence of women and minorities.

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The discomfort felt among the established Republican elite is palpable. They are witnessing a political experiment that has gotten out of hand. Having positioned themselves as a law-and-order party, a home for the silent majority, and a promoter of American exceptionalism, they cobbled together voters with a predilection for authoritarian views. Now, the alliances they helped create are turning on them as not being extreme or strong enough. Lurching between Trump and a similarly disliked candidate, Ted Cruz, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham described the dilemma as a choice between "being shot in the head or poisoned." Asked the difference, Graham explained, "Donald is like being shot in the head; you might find an antidote to poison."

Of course, it is not just Republicans who are upset but any of us who find the incendiary rhetoric repugnant. Vox journalist Amanda Taub, fascinated with the phenomena of an authoritarian political movement, summarized a key finding from her investigation into the subject. "People who score high in authoritarianism, when they feel threatened, look for strong leaders who promise to take whatever action necessary to protect them from outsiders..." The Vox poll concluded that authoritarianism "was the best single predictor of support for Trump."

Trump instinctively understands the connection between his audience and the desire for protection against outsiders. Referencing his remarks about building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, he told the New York Times: "You know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, 'We will build the wall!' and they go nuts." He also seems to embody the black-and-white terms in which authoritarian-minded individuals think. Trump gained prominence early on in the nominating process by declaring the need to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants with the proposition that "we either have a country, or we don't have a country." The either/or framework is consistent with an authoritarian hatred for ambiguity and an underlying fear that if selected rules are not followed, an existential threat exists.

While the media focuses on the contradictions, bombast, and resilience of Donald Trump's campaign, we must look beyond the personality and ask how such a figure rises in prominence. It is tempting to discredit Trump as an exception, an extreme case, or a product of a flawed political process. However, there are deeper and more uncomfortable questions related to the rise of authoritarianism. What latent urge for prejudice still lurks in our collective psyche? How might a Trump or even a Cruz candidacy be prologue to a new chapter in collective madness?

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Mel Brooks got it partially right with his satirical insight that there is an alluring tug (be a smarty) to join a party, or even a mob, but that is not the whole story. Nor is the notion of a simple authoritarian personality, a person generally submissive to any authority. We must discover a more sophisticated link that, even while revealing the darker shades of our collective behavior, illuminates what is unfolding. We are talking about a growing movement, likely in the tens of millions, willing to support military force over diplomacy, alter the Constitution to bar citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, and target Muslims and others of Middle Eastern descent for continuous police surveillance.

What is important to know, albeit disturbing, is that the authoritarian disposition is a psychological potential in each of us. In fact, the research on authoritarianism clearly suggests that under high conditions of threat, the majority of us will act in ways that "mirror the behavior and opinions of authoritarians..." (Hetherington and Weiler). In other words, this is not about us (nonauthoritarian) and them (authoritarian), but all of us and our collective response to fear.

And so I return to Sanford's vision of clinicians for society. To me this is about showing up with curiosity and courage, a commitment to genuinely understand what tears at the fabric of our social bonds. It is also, however, a rejection of attempts to amplify the danger from external threats or create internal scapegoats. Being a clinician for society is a declaration of power to act constructively and even therapeutically. Maya Angelou put it poetically when she said, "We are all at once both a composition and a composer. We have the ability not only to compose the future of our own lives, but to help compose the future of everyone around us and the communities in which we live."
Stop Gesture Of African American Woman. She showa her Hand as a stop Sign with a Serious Facial Expresion on Background

As we near the end of National Sexual Assault Awareness month, the importance of its message -- raising public awareness and improving prevention -- is underscored by the continuous stream of sexual assault cases in the news. From the fake Uber driver in Los Angeles, to the fitness club owner and former high school sport trainer, to the dropped charges of incest and gang rape in Brooklyn, the need to challenge the context and culture facilitating these crimes is undeniable.

The first step is to better understand the problem, and identify which women are most vulnerable and the least likely to seek, or be able to access, justice or assistance. And in some cases, we have yet to take this step.

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When the 18-year-old Brooklyn complainant recanted her testimony in February, the charges of gang rape against five teens were dropped. And while consent is no defense to incest, when she refused to co-operate with the police to testify against her father, she didn't just doom the incest case, she also became a target of public outrage and censure.

The night after the charges are dismissed, I am in an audience, listening to Farah Tanis, Executive Director of Black Women's Blueprint, speak at a benefit about her own response to the news: "When I hear this 18-year-old girl recants her story, says there was no gun, no five boys who seized upon her father raping her and then each took their turns . . . the girl inside me cried out."

Farah speaks with palpable sorrow, but also with anger. Because she too was a victim--of incest by an uncle and domestic violence in her childhood home--and understands all too well why a daughter will not aid the prosecution of a father.

The full theatre thrums with empathy and tension, and several audience members voice their affirmations.

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Farah was speaking at the Mother Tongue Monologues benefit, held to support this week's truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) on experiences of rape and sexual assault by women of African descent in the United States. The night was dedicated to both sharing stories and honoring women who support black women and girl victims of sexual violence. "As you put yourself on the line, we respond in mutuality, in community, in love, with you, in struggle until there is peace." I sat in tears, humbled, aching with compassion, and in awe. These words, spoken to each honoree, reflect sentiments I've heard across countries and cultures around the world.

From Kenya to East Timor, Guinea to Colombia, I've witnessed women support each other to speak out about their trauma, and to challenge the stifling silence surrounding their suffering. A Kenyan woman who became a mother as a result of rape started a support network for other women survivors, which has spread across the country; a Colombian women's organization hosted a symbolic tribunal for sexual violence because of the government's systematic failure to prosecute these crimes.

As a woman of color living in the U.S., however, I've been shocked to see how prevalent sexual violence is here as well, in our "developed" country. Violence against black women, including sexual violence, is widespread and largely unaddressed by law enforcement. Intimate partner homicide is the number one killer of African-American females aged 15-34; and police brutality against black women is increasingly documented as pervasive.

This week, the TRC will harness the power of truth-telling to raise awareness about the systematically uninvestigated and unpunished crimes against black women, and the suffocating silence around these violations that has become the norm.

But why a truth commission in the United States? Why is it so important for women survivors of sexual violence of African descent to recount their trauma in a public forum?

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Truth and reconciliation commissions, made famous in post-Apartheid South Africa, typically aim to reveal the reasons, nature and effects of large-scale human rights violations. They also offer victims a chance to overcome the fear of stigma and isolation to share their experiences and have them publicly acknowledged. This is a critical first step in identifying the facts about past violations and their enduring impact on victims, and informs the types of remedies required to respond to the violations.

This matters in America because up to 60 percent of black girls will experience sexual assault before their 18th birthday. Black women are less than half as likely to report rape to the police compared to white women. As the recent trial of police officer Daniel Holtzclaw in Oklahoma City and the subsequent discovery of 1000 more instances of similar police sexual misconduct demonstrates, this is due to a well-founded distrust and fear of authorities. The harm caused to women is not just committed by men in their family, community, or even strangers on the street. It is compounded by law enforcement officers and government agents who systemically deny victims access to assistance and justice, and ignore their own institutional responsibility to restore and protect these women's security.

We are still at the start of the International Decade for People of African Descent, with building momentum for the Black Lives Matter movement and recent UN findings of structural discrimination against African Americans. Understanding the specific nature and impact of sexual violence against women of African descent is a crucial piece of this landscape; and yet, as in other societies, it is too often overlooked.

I've supported women survivors of sexual violence share their stories in defiance of the oppressive code of silence in several countries. Whether it is to better access criminal and restorative justice, or advocate for laws and policies that recognize and respond to their suffering, the need for solidarity is universal.

The Black Women's Blueprint TRC mission is as compelling as it is timely. It will examine the history (traced back to slavery), context, causes, chronology, and consequence of rape and sexual assault on women of African descent. It seeks recognition of how black women's rights are central to racial justice concerns of all people of African descent; a renewed focus on increasing resources to prevent sexual violence in the first place; and the creation of transformative processes to eradicate gender-based violence.



These goals matter because they are a strategic call for action, and because the power of a platform for truth should not be underestimated. For the young woman in Brooklyn and the women of Oklahoma City struggling to pick up the pieces and heal, it's my hope that hearing the experiences of others will give strength and prompt newfound community support. As Farah declared that night at Mother Tongue Monologues, "in both our shared agony and our shared celebration, we will not be silent and we will not be subdued."
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in June 2015. I share my learning from the illness that jolted me back on track to a new life. This is my second posting.

The oncology center at Karolinska, Soder Sjukhuset in Stockholm is located in the basement. I was scheduled for the first radiation therapy after my two surgeries in the left breast. The hospital is huge. Even finding the correct elevator requires a clear mind. There is no natural daylight and through the open doors along the very long corridor, I spotted loads of towels, lines of beds on wheels and various medical equipment.

- I am in a factory,

I thought,

- and I am a vital part of this factory. They are here to heal me.

I felt a swoosh of gratefulness. I was grateful to science, to progress, to the Swedish health care system, for having this huge factory at my disposal. But as a cancer patient in emotional turmoil, the factory analogy also felt harsh. I needed human recognition, not only efficiency.

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The health personnel that I encountered along my journey were mostly warm, welcoming and caring. My son's girl friend Marie, who is studying to become a nurse, have been taught to leave her personal life at home when interacting with patients. I met one doctor who was unaware of that. I am grateful it was only one.

13 days after my first surgery, I was back in the operation suite to remove more cancer. The Swedish summer holiday had just started. The temporary summer procedures left the nurses fumbling and I was waiting in a huge room filled with empty beds, not knowing what would happen next. I felt forlorn and was overwhelmed by loneliness. The considerate care I experienced during the first surgery was a stark contrast.

The anesthetic doctor arrived at last. We waited to be allowed into the operation theatre.

- Oh, it was so wonderful to be on the west coast,

Dr Josephine said and smiled. She was tanned and looked very healthy.

- I just love those lazy days with my parents by the sea. I had to return to work, but I will soon have another three weeks off.

I could sense the warm summer breeze, I imagined the family closeness and I smelled the barbeque. Her words created a movie of longing in my mind. I longed for all that I missed out on this summer, and most of all, I longed to be away from the hallway where I was standing in my oversized blue hospital gown with a green plastic hat on my head.

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With tears in my eyes, I mumbled how I was supposed to be in Italy at a wedding right now. It was impossible to keep my self-pity abbey.

This was one incident in many meetings with excellent health care staff. But yet, it stays in my memory. Marie is so right. As a patient, I was focusing on what was ahead; being put to sleep, the surgery. I hoped they would remove all the cancer this time. I could not rejoice in Dr Josephine's private happiness. It interfered strongly with my concentration.

We all have such immense power over our surroundings. What we say and do towards other people affects them. When we are sick and vulnerable, it is difficult to fend off comments and energies that hurt us.

Walking along the endless corridors on a later check-up at the same hospital, an older man loudly proclaimed:

-WOW! You are so beautiful!

-Indeed!

his buddy echoed.
ISIS has been generating millions of dollars through the sale of women and children abducted from the regions it has conquered. While the Yazidi slave trade is well publicized in the West, we also chillingly learned through our ISIS Defectors Interview Project, that ISIS has not only enslaved Yazidi women (who they claim as devil worshippers), but also women who were the wives and daughters of its so-called enemies--most of them Sunni Muslims. Enslaving Sunni women directly contradicts their own fatwa on who can be enslaved, but ISIS is not known for being internally consistent in any case. One of our Syrian informants, a former guard and now defector, recently went into great detail about his work guarding hundreds of Yazidi and Sunni women doomed for systematic rape. Our forthcoming book (ISIS Defectors: Inside Stories of Confronting the Caliphate, Advances Press, 2016) provides a more detailed account of those interviews.

This week news broke in Turkey about a legal case resulting from Northern German Broadcasting (NDB) and Southwest Broadcasting (SWR) reporting last November that ISIS slave trade and brokers have been operating in Turkey adding huge sums of money to the ISIS coffers. Last November, the German news outlets managed to film this illicit slave trade as it was secretly operating in Gaziantep, Turkey as well as make interviews with abducted women's families and the middlemen in Turkey who helped broker the release of some of these women.

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Gaziantep is a Turkish city of two million people in southern Turkey near the border with Syria having as its neighbors the Turkish cities of Sanliurfa and Kilis--cities where many ISIS members are have been very active in support in recent years for their terrorist activities. Some ISIS members have even referenced Sanliurfa (Urfa) as a place for rest and relaxation when they chose to take a break from fighting in Syria and Iraq.



The German reporting featured the case of Hoda Alias and her three children who were abducted and enslaved during the Sinjar massacre of ISIS and were released in November 2015 through money paid to ISIS, via a middleman in Gaziantep. Hoda served over a year as a slave to ISIS fighters, after which she with her three children, was put up for sale on an ISIS internet page with reference to her as "slave number twelve". Below is the picture of them featured on that web page. Her sale price was advertised on the webpage as eighteen thousand dollars. According to the NDR and the SWR , many Yazidi women were similarly sold through the Internet. (Picture credit to http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/16-gunde-beraat-40089919)

The middleman in this case, goes by the Arabic kunya of Abu Mital and is from Iraq. He brokers trades for Yazidi families to buy their relatives back from the hands of the ISIS. While he manages to rescue the enslaved family members, the money he collects directly supports and goes into the coffers of ISIS. In the German news video , he claims that he directly negotiates with ISIS via online chat rooms and WhatsApp.

In this case, to broker Hoda's and her children's release, Abu Mital was told by ISIS to go to Gaziantep so that he could purchase them. According to the German reporting, captured via a hidden video camera, Abu Mital met with ISIS brokers in Gaziantep and handed over money to them. The building they entered looks like a regular office building from the outside. Inside, the ISIS slave dealers used cash counting machines to make sure the amount is correct. After the payment is received, the ISIS slave dealer called another in his network to arrange transfer of the money to ISIS. All this was carried out secretly in Gaziantep in Fall of 2015 without any interruptions (translated from the Turkish subtitle in this video.) (The original footage can be seen here.)



In this case, Hoda--the enslaved woman, with her children aged two, four and eleven--were purchased and brokered by Abu Mital to hand them over to their family. The negotiation price for the woman was twenty thousand U.S. dollars and fifteen thousand dollars for the eleven-year-old boy. After the payment was made and carefully counted, release of Hoda (identified as number twelve slave) with her three children was arranged with Abu Mital being told that someone would call him for their delivery. When the family met with their relatives, the sad story did not end there. Hoda and her children learned that her husband, and their father, had been slaughtered by ISIS.

Although directly contributing to the financing of one of the most heinous terrorist groups in history and brokering for ISIS slaves, Abu Mital attempted to portray himself in a positive light--as the savior of Yazidi women, claiming he has managed to save over two hundred fifty Yazidi women from the hands of ISIS alone, paying over two and a half million dollars directly to the terrorist organization He also adds that he identifies the women through a special ISIS webpage, where the women are labeled by numbers and where their families could recognize their loved ones and arrange their purchase back from the brutal grip of ISIS.

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ISIS is also known to have released an order in Iraq, which was found on an Emir who was killed there. The order for the sale of slaves bore the stamp of the terrorist organization and was dated October 16, 2014. Pictured below, it describes and regulates the sale of enslaved women, including the prices of a variety of ages. The prices of women and girl slaves are arranged and grouped as from ages one to nine, ten to twenty, twenty to thirty, thirty to four and forty to fifty. This document also specifies that slaves who do not accept being sold are ordered to be killed. This echoes our ISIS Defectors Interviews Project data in which we also were told the sex slaves had their children taken from them--including breastfeeding babies--and were faced with execution unless they succumbed to becoming the objects of systematic rape.

After the German video aired on the German TV channels on Nov 30, 2015, the Gaziantep Bar Association made a complaint to the Turkish justice system though the Gaziantep Prosecutor's Office. After the complaint, the Turkish National Police raided the office featured in the news video. During the raid, the police confiscated over three hundred seventy thousand dollars, many foreign passports, and around two thousand pages of cash receipts indicating various cash transfers between Turkey and Syria. Among the documents, the following receipts:



Six suspects were arrested and charged with being members of a terrorist organization, financing a terrorist organization, and human trafficking. The first trial was held on December 31, 2015. The suspects denied the allegations and claimed that they were basically transferring regular Syrian people's money to Syria via a fixed commission, as the banking system is currently collapsed in Syria.





The slave-brokering trade between ISIS in Syria and Turkish middlemen was carried out in a very simple manner. ISIS numbers the slaves it would like to sell with pictures attached and places their information on a hidden website. If a slave has children, the pictures of the slave with her children, as in Hoda's case, were also attached to this special and somewhat hidden webpage. Underneath the pictures, the prices are listed. After the buyers agree with the brokers for ISIS on the purchase price, cash is handed to the office in Gaziantep, as was video recorded by the German TV stations. The transaction is confirmed first by counting the money carefully, then having the money transferred to ISIS, and followed by transfer and release of the slaves inside Turkey.

The Gaziantep Bar Association after learning of the release of the suspects and the closure of the case without charges being applied has now decided to take the case to the appellate court in Ankara. News of slave brokering happening inside Turkey was a shock to the Turkish public as was the verdict in the case decided in only sixteen days and in favor of the brokers, in comparison to many other Turkish criminal cases that went on for several years. This news was reported in Turkish newspapers as of April 17, 2016.

Ahmet S. Yayla, Ph.D. is a tenured Professor and the Chair of the Sociology Department at Harran University in Turkey and serves as Deputy Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE). He previously served as Chief of Counter-Terrorism and Operations Division in the Turkish National Police. His research focuses on terrorism, radicalization and countering violent extremism (CVE). He has also served as an advisor to the United States Department of Homeland Security (December 2005 to April 2006) on issues of terrorism and interacting with Muslim communities in the United States. Dr. Yayla was invited in 2005 to testify to the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee as an expert witness. During his career Dr. Yayla has interviewed thousands of terrorist cadres representing over twenty different terrorist organizations. The ISIS defectors interviews of late are unique in the world as he was one of the first researchers (with Dr. Anne Speckhard) who managed to reach ISIS defectors hiding in Turkey and to persuade them to talk openly on video about their stories. The results of this research are forthcoming in academic articles, film and the book entitled, ISIS Defectors: Inside Stories of Confronting the Caliphate (Advances Press, 2016).

Anne Speckhard, Ph.D. is Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University in the School of Medicine and is Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) and is a nonresident Fellow of Trends. She is also the author of Talking to Terrorists and coauthor of Undercover Jihadi. Her newly released book, inspired by the true story of an American girl seduced over the Internet into ISIS, is Bride of ISIS. Dr. Speckhard has interviewed nearly five hundred terrorists, their family members and supporters in various parts of the world including Gaza, the West Bank, Chechnya, Iraq, Jordan and many countries in Europe. She was responsible for designing the psychological and Islamic challenge aspects of the Detainee Rehabilitation Program in Iraq to be applied to twenty thousand detainees and eight hundred juveniles. She is currently running the ISIS Defectors Interview Project with Dr. Ahmet Yayla at ICSVE. Personal website: www.AnneSpeckhard.com
By Anjali Sarker



A few years ago, a male friend of mine slapped me, and tugged my clothes on a busy street in Dhaka over an argument. He was just an average guy my age and we studied at the same university. But being a man, he dared to physically abuse me in broad daylight in front of a crowd.

He had already taken away my mobile phone to make sure that I was unable to call my family. I felt numb with fear. My senses stopped working. I caught a glimpse of a group of security guards who were standing just a few feet away, watching the drama. None of them bothered to interrupt and say, "What the heck is going on here?"

Now every time I notice an adult man walking towards me, my mind goes into special alert mode. I start calculating his expressions, appearance, age, movement and speed of walking to determine what I should do if he comes too close to me. My brain has run this algorithm so many times that it takes only a fraction of a second to get the result and take action -- sometimes I just cross the road, sometimes I start running. I know no-one is going to intervene to help me.

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I'm not alone. In New Delhi, 40 percent of women have been sexually harassed in a public place such as a bus or park in the past year. Almost two-thirds of women in the UK say they were victims of unwanted sexual attention in public. The figure is even higher for women in Israel. What's worse is that there are often witnesses to the abuse but they are too stunned, too scared or too indifferent to intervene.

On 20 March 2016, a 19-year-old girl was brutally raped and murdered in Comilla, a small city in Bangladesh. Ten days before that, a woman was gang raped on a bus in India and her 14-day-old baby boy was killed by the rapists in front of her 3-year-old daughter.

Around the world, many women wonder daily if they will be able to reach home safely. It seems that for women and girls, safety is not a right, it's a privilege.

It's telling that while many people like the video of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying, "I am a feminist" on Facebook, they still turn their faces away when a man gropes a woman on the street. Be it strangers harassing a schoolgirl in a busy city or an abusive husband beating his wife in a remote village, more often than not, there are people nearby who choose to ignore instead of act. This collective silence indirectly offers the perpetrators impunity.

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Sometimes people are not sure what to do when they do witness harassment or they worry about their own safety. I acknowledge that sometimes people who intervene get hurt, as recently happened in Los Angeles, or even killed, as happened in Egypt, Germany, and USA.

But there are ways to reduce the risk. Thanks to the Internet, creative ideas that motivate bystanders to speak up are just a click away. Distractions and indirect interventions, such as asking for directions, asking for the time, talking loudly on the phone or simply clearing one's throat to make a noise, are easy ways to stand beside the victim. Women's groups such as Polli Shomaj in Bangladesh and Gulabi Gangs in India have successfully shown that bystanders can make a real difference.

Every time a man looks at a woman in an obscene way and others nearby just turn away, he gets a simple message, "Enjoy. No one will stop you." Encouraged, he may become bolder, and take things a step further. Leering may lead to whistling, whistling to groping, and groping to attempts to force a sexual encounter.

When an attack results in murder and becomes a media sensation, people watch the news feeling a sense of shock and pity for the victim. But they forget that the perpetrator didn't become a rapist overnight. When he was a 10-year old boy and started whistling at the girls passing by, perhaps no one told him his behavior was inappropriate. Today, someone else paid the price.
by Erik Shilling, originally posted on Atlas Obscura

Antarctica is home to one of the most unique natural ecosystems in the world: subglacial lakes, which are massive pockets of warm, fresh water that are sealed in ice. They exist beneath the continent's many, massive glaciers.

The largest is Lake Vostok, which scientists say is over 4,800 square miles of water, and could contain life forms never before seen by humans.

Researchers said last week that they may have just discovered another such lake, almost as vast as Vostok. This one is in eastern Antarctica, in an area of the continent that has not been extensively studied, according to New Scientist.

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For now scientists can only report they have a strong suspicion the lake is there, based on satellite imagery that reveals topical grooves similar to those found on top of other subglacial lakes, nearly 400 of which are known to exist.

Scientists think the new lake is around 62 miles long and six miles wide, a leader of the project told New Scientist. Researchers have flown over the suspected location of the lake to gather radar data that could confirm their hypothesis.

What could be inside? Literally anything. Many glacial lakes have been sealed off from the outer world for millions of years, meaning that life forms were left to evolve at a pace all their own.


Irene Glezos and Todd d'Amour in Orpheus Descending. Photo by Ride Hamilton.

The tale of Orpheus, the mythical musical prodigy who went into the underworld to rescue his wife Eurydice, has inspired several plays, but in my mind Tennessee Williams's version is the most interesting. While Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice easily presents itself as mythical, I often forget that Williams's Orpheus Descending is based on the same characters. When I saw the recent Southern Rep production in New Orleans, directed by Jef Hall-Flavin, Val's immortal guitar was lowered down to the stage like a gift from the gods, a reminder that these characters are not entirely of this world. A few weeks after that, Val and Lady and the rest of the cast of Orpheus Descending are performing a new version of the play directed by Austin Pendleton in St. John's Lutheran Church on Christopher Street. On a lovely spring night, I stepped inside of the church, ready to follow Williams's Orpheus again.

The first thing I noticed is that the mythical and religious aspects of this play have different resonances with stained glass renderings of Jesus in the background. The space is both intimate and resonant, a fitting place to hear Williams's musings on life, death, love, and fate. Orpheus Descending was one of the first Williams plays I read, and the first outside of the "big three" of The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I was immediately drawn to some of the fantastic lines in the piece, and to the character of Lady, who takes a chance on a musical drifter trying to make something of himself. I even memorized some of Lady's lines.

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Perhaps I feel the need to tell you a bit about my own journey to this production because the production's journey has been so fascinating to me. Produced by two of its lead actors, Beth Bartley (Carol Cutrere) and Irene Glezos (Lady), along with the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, this production of Orpheus Descending has been years in the making. Bartley has been a fan and performer of Williams since childhood, and even got accepted to Julliard with Carol Cutrere's monologue about being a "Christ-bitten reformer."

After going to the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival (generally referred to by those in the know as "Ptown"), she says she was "inspired when director Nick Potenzieri gave a heartfelt speech before our final performance. He said, 'Keep working, keep creating, even if you don't have money to create. Keep acting and creating. The money will come.' When I arrived home in New York I refused to go back to normal life - I needed to keep this artistic creativity and the spirit of the festival in my everyday life. The day I returned to NY, I began to organize a reading of Orpheus Descending. I rented a theatre in the east village and contacted about 15 actor friends and we met one afternoon in early October for a read-thru. We quickly realized that everyone had different editions of the play, making for a clumsy & fascinating read - further igniting my excitement. It was electric and I knew I was onto something, so I organized a second reading, this time for an audience. The reading went smashingly and caused more excitement among the actors, who asked me, 'Beth, are you going to produce this?!' Playwright Delaine Douglas attended the reading and at drinks afterward she told me 'I like who you're conspiring with.' The second reading garnered an invitation to bring the play to the Provincetown festival in 2010, where Orpheus became the central theme for all of the other festival offerings. It was a hit and received an unprecedented return to the festival in 2011."

This success was followed by a single benefit performance with the generous help of Alan Rickman in New York in 2012. Next came the full production in New Orleans at the end of March and the beginning of May, which I was lucky enough to see, and now Austin Pendleton is at the helm and the ship of Orpheus Descending has once again come to dock in New York. The work that has gone into producing this little-done Williams play is truly remarkable, and that passion is evident in the performances in this production.

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Beth Bartley and Randi Sobol. Photo by Ride Hamilton.

The performances are what bring great writing to life, and this play is filled with them. Irene Glezos's Lady is strong and vulnerable, played with a fierce passion that is awe-inspiring to watch. Todd d'Amour's Val is our attractive, charming, and rebellious Orpheus, strumming on his guitar and stirring up trouble in a small town where strangers are suspect. D'Amour looks like he's stepped out of the 1950's, and it is a rare treat to see this part played by an actor who can really play music that could charm stones, as was said of Orpheus.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about seeing Orpheus Descending on stage is that this production drew my attention to two other characters who had not jumped off the page at me quite as much: Carol Cutrere and Vee Talbott. Beth Bartley's Carol Cutrere is another wild, dangerous, live wire, who threatens the sanctity of a small town. Indeed, Bartley's performance adds dimensions to Carol that are easily missed in a reading: the vulnerability behind her bravado, her desire to prove she's alive, and to find life in a stilted existence. Similarly Mia Dillon's Vee Talbott is a visionary, a seer, but she is also much more than that. Dillon's charming presence reveals the humanity of this character who so often serves as a messenger of doom in most mythical plays.
By Matt Kertman, Communications and Marketing Associate, BRAC USA

When Sa'a jumped from the moving truck, she wasn't thinking about her education that had just been cut short. She was fleeing for her life.

One of the more than 250 girls kidnapped from their school in Chibok, Nigeria, two years ago, Sa'a recounted that heartbreaking story to members of Congress recently, renewing calls to rescue the hundreds of still missing schoolgirls and finally #bringbackourgirls.

Sa'a is now a college student in the U.S. Her story is a reminder of what is possible when girls are given the chance to receive a quality education in a safe place. Her story also illustrates what we stand to lose when a girl's education is taken away.

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Every day, BRAC helps girls all over the world reach their full potential through education and leadership opportunities. There are millions of girls like Sa'a, and we are determined to ensure that no girl is born into a community where she isn't given the chance to learn and become a leader.

In Karamoja, Uganda, BRAC enabled Maria, a child bride forced to marry at the age of 10, to earn the education she had been denied. Now, she is a teacher working to educate girls in a region where they were previously denied an education.

Girls in the world's poorest countries continue to fight for access to quality education, as well as job and leadership opportunities. According to the Brookings Institution, a 100-year gap persists between education levels in developed and developing countries. And this is worse for girls. There are 33 million fewer girls than boys in primary school globally, according to the UN Global Education First Initiative.

At the same time, the evidence tells us that educating girls is among the best tools in our tool box for improving development outcomes globally. Educated girls grow into women who invest 90 percent of their income in their families, improving the health, nutrition and education of their children. Girls' education has also proven to delay early marriage, and each additional year of primary schooling for girls is correlated to a 10 - 20 percent increase in their future wages.

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That's why BRAC is proud to report significant progress on its pledge to support girls' education in developing countries.

At the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in September 2014, BRAC joined the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, along with more than 50 other partners, in a global commitment to advance girls' education. Through this commitment to action, known as the Collaborative for Harnessing Resources and Ambition for Girls' Education (CHARGE), BRAC pledged to reach 2.7 million additional girls by expanding access to schools, ensuring school safety, improving the quality of learning, helping girls transition to the world of work, and supporting leaders in girls' education in developing countries.

This commitment would ensure that every girl has access to a quality education, in a safe school, with leadership and job opportunities. It will empower a generation of girls worldwide.

Just 18 months later, BRAC has enrolled 1,158,151 girls in the developing world in schools where they are receiving a high quality education. With three years yet remaining, we have made real progress against our specific goal of expanding access to educational opportunities for 1.33 million girls. This achievement illustrates one of BRAC's key capacities: the ability to deliver safe, relevant and quality girls' education at scale.

"Millions Learning: scaling up quality education in developing countries," a report released this week by the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, cites BRAC's Non-Formal Primary Education (NPFE) program in Bangladesh as an example of scaling education delivery for the world's poor. First implemented in the 1970s, the NFPE today has graduated more than 11.2 million students, making BRAC the largest, secular, private school provider in the world. Better yet: the dropout rate from these schools in Bangladesh is below 5 percent, while pass rates often exceed government schools.

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The #MillionsLearning report details five recommendations to enhance quality education, including the sharing of new ideas through a network of idea hubs. As part of its CHARGE commitment to support leaders in girls' education in developing countries, BRAC also pledged to invest $6 million in the BRAC Institute for Educational Development at BRAC University in Dhaka, making it a global learning hub for innovation, research, training, assessment and advocacy on education approaches and quality in the developing world.

There is much to celebrate: overall, BRAC has raised more than 75 percent of its pledged $280 million to support girls' education, work and leadership opportunities. We have also trained 44,485 girl mentors, marking an ambitious 85 percent progress against our goal of 52,000 trained mentors by 2020. These kinds of outcomes would not be possible without the generous support of our many funders and partners.

And, in Uganda, BRAC's Empowerment and Livelihoods for Adolescents (ELA) program, which empowers teenage girls socially and financially and provides safe spaces for them to socialize and receive mentoring and life skills training, is preparing ELA mentors to become 'play leaders' as part of a new partnership with the LEGO Foundation to improve early childhood development through play-based learning. This is the kind of low-cost, high-impact collaboration that characterizes BRAC's track record of involving local communities.

ELA is BRAC's fastest-growing program outside Bangladesh, with more than 100,000 girls now participating in five African countries and more than 168,000 girls in similar clubs in Bangladesh and Afghanistan. A 2012 study evaluating the effectiveness of the ELA program, by researchers from the World Bank's Africa Gender Innovation Lab, the London School of Economics and others, found that participants' reports of having sex unwillingly decreased by 83 percent over a one-year period, due to participation in the program, while the likelihood of an adolescent girl being engaged in income generation increased 35 percent.

As part of its CHARGE commitment, BRAC has empowered more than 30,000 girls already in their transition to work - but there is still much to do. We know that educated, empowered women are more likely to break the cycle of poverty for their family. We also know that a generation of female leaders will keep working to close the gender gaps in the classroom and in the workplace, breaking that cycle of inequality. BRAC wants to deepen and expand its ELA program to reach an additional 192,000 girls by 2020 with robust and relevant livelihood training that will ensure sustainable economic independence.

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We are calling for supporters, partners and others interested in empowering girls worldwide to join us in closing our remaining funding gap to reach an additional 1.6 million girls by 2020. BRAC wants to provide work opportunities for unemployed young people, especially girls, in Bangladesh by scaling a program that provides a pathway to work through apprenticeships. We also want to reach more girls through our pre-primary and primary education programs, equip 25,000 more teachers, and ensure 356,000 more girls have a safe space to learn.
Portrait of Newlyweds Sitting on Stairs With Presents

By Allyson Dickman for BRIDES

It's that time of year -- your refrigerator is filling up with wedding invitations, and between shower gifts and wedding gifts, well, your wallet is hurting. Don't worry -- you're not alone! According to a 2016 survey by RetailMeNot, the average person spends anywhere between $45 to $195 on a wedding gift. But it's not as simple as that. Your relationship with the bride and groom often dictates how much you're willing to pay. Take a look at these country-wide averages, and the perfect gifts to match the budget:



Photo: Courtesy of Heys America

1. Immediate Family



Turns out, your sibling's wedding is the most expensive one you'll attend this year. The average person will spend $195 on their brother or sister. Looking in that price range? Instead of writing a check, consider sending them a bottle of champagne every night to their hotel honeymoon suite, or buying a one-of-a-kind experience on their trip through Honeyfund. Or, go for the ultimate jetsetter's must-have, and an essential for the honeymoon, a really good piece of luggage. (Orion 30-inch Deep Space Luggage, $199, Heys America)

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Photo: Courtesy of JeanetteZeis

2. Best Friends



In a close second comes your best friend's wedding. While you're probably spending a lot of extra money on their shower and bachelorette, you'll also most likely spend around $159 on the wedding gift. Go off the registry with something custom for this price range, like a personalized cake stand. (Personalized Wedding Cake Stand, $160, JeanetteZeis)



Photo: Courtesy of UncommonGoods

3. Extended Family and Friends

For extended family, most Americans spend an average of $94 on gifts, while a friend's wedding will cost about $89. If you fall into one of these two categories, try a beautiful gift for their home together, with a subtle personal touch, like a custom vase. (Personalized Faux Bois Vase, $90, UncommonGoods)



Related: 49 Must-See Tips For Anyone Planning A Wedding



Photo: Courtesy of Kate Spade

4. Acquaintances and Coworkers
Pint of beer and dollar bills

It's been a year since I last wrote a post about my sobriety. When I read that post now, I can see how uncomfortable I still was with parts of it -- namely, the social aspect. I knew life was better without alcohol, and I was a better person when not consuming it, but I still hated some of the questions that came up in social situations.

"Are you really never going to drink again?" made me feel like people didn't believe in me. And "don't you miss it?" made me feel like people thought I'd made the wrong choice, and then I worried about what they thought of me. Rather than just answer the questions, I felt hurt by them. And after being asked repeatedly for two years, I turned that hurt into a blog post.

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Today, I'm happy to report I have a much healthier mindset about it all. I still stand by the message in that post, which was to be mindful about what you say to people who are giving up something they once relied on (whether it's alcohol, smoking, drugs, even food). But if you asked me those questions today, I wouldn't be mad. In fact, I've even gone from feeling insecure about being able to find a guy who would date a girl who doesn't drink, to proudly saying upfront with them that "it's the best decision I've ever made". It's taken three years for me to get here -- and there were some ups and downs in that time -- but I'm confident in my decision to live a life without alcohol. There's no going back now.



"Life is too short to waste money on anything that doesn't add value to it."



I've always said that I didn't quit drinking to save money and that is certainly true. I never cared about the numbers back then and, if I had, it would've been the wrong reason to quit. Recently, however, I've found myself wondering how much money I wasted on getting wasted. It's a sunk cost, at this point -- not worth worrying about, as I can't get it back -- but I'm still curious, so I ran some numbers.

High School for Five Years = $3,000

I started drinking when I was 13 years old. In grades 8 through 10, I spent at least $7/week to split a 2L of cider with a girlfriend on the weekend. At some point, I know I graduated to drinking the whole 2L myself ($14-15/week). And I definitely drank more in summer months, and over holiday weekends and Christmas vacations. But let's say I spent $7/week for the first three years of high school.

$7 x 52 weeks x 3 years = $1,092

By grade 11, I'd upgraded to rum and typically drank a "mickey" (this might be a Canadian term but it's a 375mL bottle -- nearly 13 liquid ounces or shots of alcohol) every weekend, to the tune of at least $12. Again, I know I drank more in summer months and over holidays. But let's say I spent $12/week for the last two years of high school.

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$12 x 52 x 2 years = $1,248

There is no part of me that believes I only spent $2,340 on partying in high school. After I started working (age 15), I know I drank more, gave it as gifts to friends on birthdays, etc. I'd also love to tell you I've never touched a drug in my life, but I'd be lying if I said that -- or that I never paid for them. Let's set the total at $3,000. I'm sure I spent more, but we can start with that.

Two Years Off = $6,240

That takes us to 2003 -- the summer I graduated and turned 18. I would say that's also the summer I started to care a lot more about boys and partying than anything else. I went to college in the fall, but put more effort into socializing than studying and, for the first time, nearly failed two of my six classes. Rather than flunk out, I decided to drop out and take time off instead.

In the two years I was out of school, I probably drank at least three nights/week. At 18, I moved out with my boyfriend (who was 19 and could legally buy us alcohol). We'd have nights where we'd try to spend as little as possible on cheap beer to drink at home, and nights where we'd go out and drop all our cash at the bar (granted, you could still get $3 drinks back then -- but we had lots of them). We lived within walking distance from downtown, so we didn't need to cab anywhere. But on a cheap week, I'd say we each spent at least $40 each on alcohol, and an expensive week was more like $80.

Let's say I spent $60/week for the first two years I was out of high school.

$60 x 52 weeks x 2 years = $6,240

College for Two Years = $6,240

I turned 20 in July 2005, moved home and went back to school that September. I don't think most people who have gone to college will be surprised when I say drinking was our social pastime. We'd go to the school's pub for cheap drinks on Thursday, go to karaoke on the weekends and have parties at anyone's house who would host one. Sometimes I'd take it easy, if I had a lot of projects and deadlines, but I was generally out at least two nights/week. I'd say some weeks I was spending as little as $40 on a couple drinks + a cab, but there were many more where I'd spend $80+.

For simplicity's sake, let's stick with the average and say I spent $60/week on partying while in college.

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$60 x 52 weeks x 2 years = $6,240

So now we're at the summer of 2007. I'm 22 and have already spent approx. $15,480 on partying. That's $1,720/year if we average it out over nine years, which isn't far off from the averages reported in various studies. Stats Canada says the average household spent $1,222 on tobacco/alcohol in 2014. And British Columbians spent an average of $754 each on beer alone that same year. Tack on cab rides, bar covers and takeout food eaten while drunk, and $1,720/year seems cheap -- even normal. But let's remember that for the first five of these nine years, I was an underage high school student.

The amount of money I was spending on partying wasn't normal then, and it got worse after college.

Three Years Off = $13,520

If I'm being honest, the next few years are a bit of a blur -- not that I don't remember them, but there's a lot I've chosen to forget about. For the first year, I was in an extremely toxic relationship. We lived together, so I wasn't out at the bar every weekend with my girlfriends, but we still partied a lot. Some weeks, we'd be good and stay at home -- maybe have a few friends over for drinks. Other weeks, I'd easily drop $100 on a night out. We also drank a lot when we went away, and I have no idea how much I spent then. I'll lowball and say it was still $60/week for the year we were together.

$60 x 52 weeks = $3,120

After we broke up, I binged - on both drinking and spending. I've written about that a few times before, but essentially I tried to buy a new life. I moved into a one-bedroom apartment by myself and filled it with all brand new furniture (that I put on credit). I also financed a brand new car. I thought that if things looked like they were pieced together, that's how I would feel. Of course, it didn't work.

Living alone also gave me the freedom to drink as much as I wanted without anyone watching over me. I had friends over every weekend, and we'd split a few bottles of wine or packs of Strongbow, before heading downtown for the night. It was common for me to start a tab at a club and tell my friends to put all their drinks on it because I wanted to make sure the party never ended.

I can't say for sure how much money I spent on partying during the two years I lived alone, because this is when I started racking up my credit card debt, ignoring my statements and making only the minimum payments. I know there were nights where I'd drink nothing more than a $10 bottle of wine at home. But there were also nights where I'd say to my server, "whenever my wine glass is empty, that means I want another". On those nights, I do remember that my bill was typically in the $80-120 range -- and that almost never included food. I'm lowballing again, but let's say I spent $100/week on partying then.

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$100 x 52 weeks x 2 years = $10,400

University for Two Years + Maxed Out = $3,787

When I turned 25, I decided to go back to school and turn my diploma into a degree -- and it was one of the best decisions I could've made for myself. Because I was so busy working full-time during the day and doing homework at night, I literally had no time to party. I still went out maybe once/month and would have wine at home with friends, but I wasn't spending nearly as much money as before.

The one time I blew through a ton of cash was my first attempt to move to Toronto in 2011. I brought $5,600 cash with me, looked for work but couldn't find a job in the field I wanted and blew through every last penny in just eight weeks. Considering I was living with a friend and my expenses were low, I can only guess that at least one-third of the money went towards partying.

8 weeks in Toronto = $1,867

I was maxed out, when I came back home from that little adventure, and had no option but to spend less on going out. I still had a year of university to complete, so I used homework as an excuse for why I couldn't party with friends. I'd occasionally get a $10 bottle of wine or a pack of Strongbow, but truly didn't party much during the two years I was in school (other than those eight weeks in Toronto).

If we average out the eight weeks I partied more with the months I barely drank at all, I'd say I spent $20/week during that time.

$20 x 48 weeks x 2 years = $1,920

The Last Six Months = $2,925

When I finished school in July 2012, I went on a bender. I was living alone again, seeing someone new and felt like celebrating my freedom. I went back to drinking at least three nights/week, like when I was 19, and loved being able to see all the friends I'd been too busy to party with during school. This continued when the relationship ended in late July. I used drinking as a way to cope in August, and that same breakup is one of the reasons I accepted the full-time job offer I got in Toronto that took me out there again in September 2012. I would've done anything to get away.

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I drank fairly steadily until the last week of September, when I realized I wasn't happy with the person I was becoming. In October, I announced that I was going to quit drinking. And I had every intention of sticking to that but it only lasted 45 days (6.5 weeks). When I started drinking again mid-November, I went hard. I was used to blacking out, but this was on another level. My first Christmas party with the new team? I don't remember anything after 10 p.m. and somehow lost my pants and came home in a dress.

The last time I got drunk in Toronto? My tab was $240 and I woke up covered in bruises. And my first trip to NYC? I got so drunk that I left my friends and somehow managed to get myself back to our Airbnb. I don't remember how any of it happened. But after drinking more in Victoria that Christmas, and continually finding myself in sticky situations, I knew enough was enough. Minus the 6.5 weeks I was sober, I'd estimate I spent close to $3,000 on partying in those final few months.

$150 x 19.5 weeks = $2,925

The True Cost of Wasting Money on Getting Wasted

When you add up all these numbers, I've spent approx. $35,712 on partying; that's $2,463/year for 14.5 years -- and this is a lowball estimate. Writing this post and looking at that number is terrifying. Again, I know it's a sunk cost, but I still can't help but wonder what else I could've done with $36,000. I could've put an extra $2,463/year aside for retirement and been tens of thousands of dollars ahead with my goal. Or I could've put $1,500/year aside for retirement and gone on one more vacation each year. Or I could've saved it all for a future down payment. Instead, I spent $36,000 masking my feelings and doing things I can barely remember (and am left with some nights I wish I could forget).

The worst part about wasting so much money on getting wasted wasn't the fact that I wasted money at all -- it was losing pieces of my life and not being able to grow emotionally during all those years. One of the things I've learned and had to deal with is that your emotional age gets stuck at the age your addiction kicks in. For me, I would guess that was around age 19 -- with the worst of it setting in around age 23. I certainly didn't love myself at age 19, and felt worse at 23, so it makes sense that it's taken a few years of being sober for me to get to a place where I can say I love and value myself now.

One of the reasons I think I've been able to let go of 75 percent of my belongings, quit my job and embrace the life I want, is because I finally believe in myself. I know what I want and that I'm capable of having it, if I just do the work; I couldn't have said the same five years ago, but I'm grateful I can today.

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And while I didn't quit drinking to save money, I'm also grateful I'll never add to that $36,000 grand total; that, in the future, my money can go to far better things. But I still think this exercise has been a powerful lesson in how quickly a weekly expense can add up over time.

If you spend $25/week on something, that's $1,300/year.

$50/week = $2,600/year

$75/week = $3,900/year

$100/week = $5,200/year

$150/week = $7,800/year

If you spend $25/week on something for 5 years, that's $6,500.

$50/week for 5 years = $13,000

$75/week for 5 years = $19,500

$100/week for 5 years = $26,000

$150/week for 5 years = $39,000

When it's a small expense, it seems like it makes no difference at all -- but it adds up fast. And if those small expenses are a result of mindless spending, or they don't align with your goals or values, they can hurt you and your future in more ways than one.

Life is too short to waste money on anything that doesn't add value to it.

This post originally appeared on Blonde on a Budget.

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A caribou trail meanders through sedges alongside the Kongakut River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Dave Shreffler

It's that time of year. The cherry blossoms spring to life, there are crowds of school kids on their first trips to Washington, DC, our Metro is full of tourists seeing the monuments or touring the museums - and Alaska Wilderness League greets our advocates for a week of lobbying and education. The city is full of people advocating, learning and experiencing all of Washington, DC.

Our participants come from all across the country to advocate for our public wild lands and waters in Alaska - from small towns and big cities, from Alaska to Florida. We bring them here to share their love of Alaska's public lands with their members of Congress and to relay their experiences and opinions to their legislators. This year they are advocating for Wilderness protection for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's Coastal Plain - otherwise known as the Refuge's biological heart. This is the place where life begins, where hundreds of migratory birds are hatched, where polar bears den and where caribou give birth.

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Congress and President Obama have taken great steps towards protecting the Arctic Refuge over the past year, but it was only a start. In January 2015, President Obama announced that it was time to take the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge off the table to development. He recommended that Congress protect its sensitive Coastal Plain and other important areas as Wilderness. That same month, Representatives Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA) introduced legislation to protect one of America's greatest treasures and a truly iconic place: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. H.R. 239, the Udall-Eisenhower Arctic Wilderness Act, would designate the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's Coastal Plain as Wilderness. A few months later, U.S. Senators Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced a companion bill with the historic support of 34 senators.

On February 26, the House of Representatives took a groundbreaking vote to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's Coastal Plain as Wilderness. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) offered the House Arctic Refuge Wilderness bill as an amendment to the Sportsmen's Heritage and Recreational Enhancement (SHARE) Act of 2015, H.R. 2406 in an attempt to achieve something positive in a bad bill that contained a number of destructive provisions for wildlife, public lands, environmental laws and key conservation policies. The vote on the amendment - the first time Congress has ever voted on a Wilderness bill for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - was 176 yeas and 227 nays, with nine Republicans voting in support of Wilderness for the Refuge. Rep. Jared Huffman said, "The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska is one of those uniquely American places, and we must do our due diligence to protect this one of a kind national treasure from the dangerous effects of drilling. By designating this area as wilderness, we can finally recognize the intrinsic value that this land holds. As Edward Abbey said, 'The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.' I thank my colleagues who stood up today as defenders of wilderness and voted for my amendment."

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What's more, support for the Arctic Refuge is growing, including the voices of conservation and religious leaders, Native leaders, communities of color, outdoor enthusiasts, and veterans. These groups are joining from across the U.S. today to act on climate change, demand justice for Alaska Natives, and call on the federal government to establish the strongest possible protection for the Arctic Refuge. Together, we have an unprecedented opportunity to protect the Refuge, once and for all. Politics, science, and public opinion are all lining up in favor of protecting this irreplaceable wilderness.
In the next few weeks, parents across New York City will receive notices about prekindergarten slots for children attending school this fall. Thanks to Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio, universal pre-K became a reality for children across New York two years ago. The first year of the program was a success, with 92% of parents in NYC rating their child's experience as good or excellent. Universal pre-K helped make New York a leader in the movement toward better education and greater equity.

If we want to ensure that our kids get off to a healthy start and are ready to learn, there is a natural next step: providing universal school lunch as well as universal prekindergarten.

In this land of plenty, a hungry child is among the starkest symbols of inequality. A hungry child can't learn or realize her full potential. A hungry child is more likely to the listen to the rumblings in his stomach than to the squeal of chalk on the blackboard. Hungry kids find it harder to do what is good for their health and engage in a natural part of growing up: being physically active and playing.

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Public education strives to provide kids with the tools they need to succeed. Public school students are provided with text books and pencils and the other supplies they need to make it through the school day--free of charge. Adequate nutritious food is just as important to feed the mind and the body and optimize learning.

Universal school lunch is not such a stretch. New York City schools already offer all students free breakfast and make free lunch available to students in standalone middle schools. The problem is that while many children are eligible for free meals, few of them participate. Only one-third of public school students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch take part in the program. What is stopping them? Stigma. Students, especially in high school, skip the lunch program to avoid the embarrassment and bullying associated with being poor. Food is the one arena in public schools that segregates children by family income. When all kids have access to free lunch, that stigma dissolves and more students participate. Principals reported that New York City's middle school lunch program has led to more students eating lunch--and eating more nutritious foods--at school and to positive social interactions among students. Higher levels of participation also increase schools' purchasing power, allowing them to provide more local, fresh, and organic food options.
There are few areas where there is more bipartisan support than the need to provide adequate health care for the country's veterans. While many of us opposed the war in Iraq and other recent military adventures, we still recognize the need to provide medical services for the people who put their lives at risk.

This is why it is especially annoying to see right-wing groups invent scandals around the Veteran Administration's hospitals in order to advance an agenda of privatizing the system. If there was a real reason to believe that the current system is badly hurting our veterans, and that they would be better cared for under a privatized system, then it would be reasonable to support the transition.

But this is the opposite of the reality. All the evidence suggests that a privatized system would make worse any problems veterans now face in getting care -- and it is likely to cost more money.

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To back up a step, we actually have a great deal of evidence on the quality of care provided by the VA system. In an outstanding book, The Best Care Anywhere, Washington Monthly editor Phillip Longman documents how the VA's system of integrative care outperforms the models used by private insurers. The key point was that the VA system effectively tracks patients through their various contacts with doctors and other health care professionals.

This reduces the likelihood that they will get unneeded treatment, but more importantly, ensures that the patient's doctors are aware of the other treatments their patient is receiving. A major problem for patients seeing multiple doctors is that none of them may have full knowledge of the set of conditions afflicting the patient or the drugs they might be taking. By keeping a central system and having a general practitioner assigned to oversee the patient's care, the VA system minimizes this source of mistakes. In fact, this model is so successful that most providers have tried to move in the same direction in recent years.

Longman was writing about the VA system of the 1990s, which had undergone a remarkable turnaround under the leadership of Kenneth Kizer who President Clinton had appointed to head up the health care system as Under Secretary of Veterans Affairs. The quality of care established by Kizer deteriorated somewhat under President Bush. This was partly a result of the large inflow of new veterans associated with the administration's wars. It was also partly due to the fact that Bush's political appointees showed the same sort of commitment to veterans' health as his appointees to the Federal Emergency Management Agency did to preparing for disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

Nonetheless, as Alicia Mundy points out in a recent Washington Monthly piece, the VA system still did quite well by most measures. An analysis done for the VA in 2010 found that nearly all the studies comparing the quality of VA care with its counterparts in the private and public sector found that the VA provided care that was as good or better than what was available in its competitors.

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Given this reality, the proponents of privatization had to invent a scandal to push their case, and they got one. They found evidence of substantial waiting lists at the VA hospital in Phoenix. According to accounts promoted in the media, 40 patients died while they were waiting to see a doctor. This of course sounds horrible.

In reality, a report by the VA's Inspector General found that six, not forty patients had died while waiting for appointments. And it wasn't clear that in any of these cases the death was related to lack of treatment. But the reality didn't matter, the right had their story and they were determined to push it everywhere they could.

The Koch brothers funded a new veterans organization, Concerned Veterans of America (CVA), which made attacking the VA health care system the major goal of its work. While full-fledged privatization is clearly a step too far at this point (most veterans really value the health care they get through the VA system), their goal is to piecemeal privatization through a process of gradually outsourcing more and more services.

As this process gains momentum, full-scale privatization may look like less of a lift. The outsourcing is likely to undermine the quality of care, most importantly by making the VA system's practice of integrative care more difficult. It is also likely to increase costs, since the privatized services will almost invariably cost more than the services provided through the VA.

In short, the practice of outsourcing more services from the VA and eventually privatizing it is likely to be a really bad deal from the standpoint of the country's veterans. It is also likely to be a bad deal from the standpoint of taxpayers, who will be getting a larger bill for lower quality care. But, it is likely to be a very good deal for the contractors making profits on VA business, and for that reason privatization of the VA is a very real threat.
The United Nations threw a large and lavish party at its headquarters in New York on Earth Day, the opening day of the signing ceremony for the world's new climate agreement. About 170 heads of state and government representatives came to inscribe their names, in alphabetical order by country, in the General Assembly Hall. They also read short statements reinforcing the power of the climate accord for all nations, with John Kerry, United States secretary of state, quoting Nelson Mandela, saying, "It always seems impossible until it is done."

In between, officials ate lunch in the Delegates Dining Room as guests of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, with approximately 200 people there to talk about how "investment flows are being gradually redirected toward a low carbon and resilient economy," the UN statement read, with the lunch and signing webcast live.

"We are breaking records in this Chamber -- and that is good news," said Ban as the first speaker at the ceremony. "But records are also being broken outside. Record global temperatures. Record ice loss. Record carbon levels in the atmosphere. We are in a race against time. I urge all countries to move quickly to join the Agreement at the national level so that the Paris Agreement can enter into force as early as possible."

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The countries signing the agreement -- starting with Francois Hollande, president of France, whose nation officially ushered the accord into place in December -- had not been pinned down until the last minute, given the moveable schedules of some of the globe's most important people.

"France needs to be a role model, it needs to set an example," Hollande told the press at the UN later. "France wasn't just the venue for the agreement. It contributed to the solution." France, he added, "wants to be the first not just to ratify but to implement the agreement." He acknowledged ratification takes a long time in France, but said that it was likely to happen by the summer.

As of April 20, the arrival of Dilma Rousseff, president of Brazil, who is under impeachment, was up in the air, as was Vladimir Putin, the Russian president (his deputy, Alexander Khloponin, attended). Heads of state who did appear included Matteo Renzi of Italy, Justin Trudeau of Canada, Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ollanta Humala of Peru and Evo Morales of Bolivia.

Rousseff did arrive and speak, noting, after she talked about climate change, the "grave moment" her country was undergoing and that "Brazil is a great nation, with a society that was able to defeat authoritarianism and build a vibrant democracy. Our people are hardworking and have great esteem for freedom. I have no doubt they will be able to prevent any setback."

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The goal behind the high-security signing ceremony was to signal that all the leaders who came to sign were serious about mitigating and preventing further climate change effects, UN officials told the media days earlier in a briefing. The agreement will be open to signature until April 21, 2017.

The officials who signed the agreement featured representatives of the top four national emitters of greenhouse gases, in order: Zhang Gaoli, vice premier of China; Kerry of the US; India's environment minister, Prakash Javadekar; and Russia's deputy president. The European Union, a 28-member-country group, falls between China and the US as an emitter and is also a signatory to the agreement, but each country must ratify the agreement itself, taking enormous work, Hollande said.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework for Climate Change Convention, and Segolene Royal, France's ecology, sustainable development and energy minister and the president of the Paris conference, or COP21, which adopted the agreement in December, were present at the signing as well. (Royal is a former "partner" of Hollande.)

Only about 15 countries deposited instruments of ratification at the UN, the next step to putting the agreement into force. These "early ratifiers," made up of small island developing states (as well as Somalia), are the most vulnerable to global warming.

The agreement marks one of Ban's most important achievements -- if not the most important -- during his two-term tenure as UN secretary-general, which ends this year. He has struggled recently to overcome damaging reputation problems related to peacekeeping sex abuse scandals. UN officials repeatedly emphasize that managing the effects of climate change will have a direct impact on achieving the new universal development aspirations of Agenda 2030, or the Sustainable Development Goals, which went into effect in January for 15 years.

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But the SDGs probably didn't matter to people trying to move around Midtown East, where traffic on the stretch of First Avenue abutting the UN was strictly curtailed by the New York City Police Department and other security forces on the day before and day of the signing. A US Coast Guard boat had been sitting in the East River, right outside the UN, since early in the week.

On the day before and day of the signing, full access inside the UN was also blocked to accredited journalists, as if government officials -- whose salaries in the democratic world are paid for by the public -- might be asked questions about climate change or, worse, who is to blame for the faltering Syrian peace talks. One area given over to media by the president of the General Assembly office was even restricting certain journalists with UN accredited passes.

And though the UN constantly talks about how many of its important projects and trust funds are miserably underfinanced, the signing ceremony seems to have found the money to take place on a grand scale.

Not everyone in the UN was transfixed by the excitement of the VIPs in their midst; the Dag Hammarskjold Library, situated at the southernmost end of the campus, remained a small island of serenity during the hubbub, which was how the librarians, they nodded unilaterally, liked it.

At the ceremony lunch, guests were seated at tables of 10, each with a mix of participants from business, civil society, government and the UN. Details on how much the lunch cost or even what was served were hard to find despite numerous contacts with several offices at the UN, including Protocol, who said on the phone they couldn't "reveal" that information and hung up. (It turns out it the meal was fish and salad.) Among the guests were Juan Manuel Santos, president of Colombia, and Mary Robinson, representing her foundation, which is focused on "climate justice."

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As to the technical aspects of the agreement, a minimum of 55 countries, accounting for at least an estimated 55 percent of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions, must ratify the accord for it to enter into force 30 days after those conditions are met. UN officials have decided on 2020 for the agreement's start date, though they hope it will occur sooner.

Alternatively, states can "accept" the agreement instead of ratifying it, as the United States plans to do. The White House has deemed that the agreement does not require changes to US laws, so President Barack Obama has the ability to authorize adherence under his executive powers. This approach gives him the ability to skirt Senate ratification for the international agreement, since he expected strong pushback from Republicans, leaving the US isolated as to global consensus on the agreement's goals.

The Paris agreement, moreover, is not a treaty but an international legal document, according to the UN, and it has no enforceable capacity. It evolved after years of arduous negotiations, played out in annual conferences in many capitals, to present a global unified front to combat the warming of the earth and to prevent more environmental damage to the planet.

Sealed at the conference in Paris on Dec. 12, 2015, parties to the agreement committed to limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Yet many experts say these limits are not nearly enough to make headway against a hotter planet and related chaotic consequences, such as famines, floods, droughts, rising sea levels, pandemics, migration and conflict.

The main method for ensuring adherence to the agreement is the adoption of national action plans, nonbinding commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by each country. About 190 countries have submitted such plans. The agreement also entails the mobilization of much-needed financing for technological and other support to developing countries to help them cope with climate change.

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To begin carrying out the plans, developing countries will need enormous resources, including the $100 billion, if not triple that number, pledged by developed countries and private sources, to follow a low-carbon direction.

The amount so far in this pool is estimated by the Organization for Economic and Cooperation Development to be $60 billion, said Heather Coleman, manager of climate change at Oxfam America. But the methodology of how that money has been counted is contested by developing countries, who are asking, where's the money.
Queens House of Detention, New York

The U.S. Department of Justice has designated April 24-30 as National Reentry Week. Each year, more than 600,000 individuals return to our neighborhoods after serving time in federal and state prisons, and another 11.4 million individuals cycle through local jails. What is not widely known is that public defenders can and do play a critical role in helping people transitioning back to the community, when provided the opportunity and funding to do so.

While the Second Chance Act was passed almost twenty years ago, policymakers recognized that to be successful, formerly incarcerated individuals needed to be connected with employment and job training, and educational opportunities, as well as housing and other necessities of life. What the past two decades have shown, however, is that these services are not enough. While there are laws and policies preventing the blanket use of criminal records to deny housing or a job, enforcing them can be a challenge. Many employers don't hire people with criminal records. Landlords may refuse to rent to formerly incarcerated people, and families who take in a loved one returning from prison may find themselves evicted. And while we know that getting a college degree increases your lifetime earnings, schools are allowed to reject applicants based on even a misdemeanor conviction.

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That people are not being given a true second chance has led a growing number of public defenders to become involved in reentry. While best known for protecting the constitutional right to an attorney for people accused of crime, public defenders know that the need for legal services doesn't end with a dismissal, verdict or plea. Supporting successful reentry serves public defense systems by reducing recidivism, and serves communities by restoring citizens to productivity. In public defender programs throughout the country, advocates provide returning citizens an enormous range of reentry services. Defenders may help people understand whether their record is eligible for sealing or expungement, and if so, assist them in the process. Defenders can help someone who believes they were wrongly denied a job to file a complaint. The may also be able to address a range of other unmet civil legal needs and ensure the restoration of rights (including education, access to housing, asset reclamation, employment licensing, restoration of medical benefits and many others) that make it possible to successfully reenter the community.

Every successful reentry experience means increased public safety, reduced use of other government services like homeless shelters, and more reunited families and healthier neighborhoods. For this reason, some offices, like the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, have begun providing non-legal services as well, such as publishing a guidebook to reentry resources and organizing reentry fairs where returning citizens can not only talk to someone about their legal issues but connect with housing providers, employers, and other charitable and government agencies that can help them be successful. The Metropolitan Public Defender in Portland, Oregon worked with the Mercy Corps Reentry Center to create a "pre-entry" checklist that aims to prevent some of the hardships of reentry with a much smaller investment of time prior to incarceration. They also have an innovative partnership with the housing authority to hold community legal clinics for folks at public and low-income housing, focused on mitigating the impact of the justice system.

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Unfortunately, despite increased acknowledgement of the value of defender-supported reentry programs, many public defender offices do not have the mandate or the funding to provide reentry services. This is short-sighted. Laws and policies reducing the barriers to successful reentry are meaningless without the resources to enforce them. And by reducing re-offending, public defenders are able to reduce the need for their own services at the front end.

The way that we are thinking about our criminal justice system is changing in many ways. Our ideas about the role of public defenders needs to evolve as well. Protecting a person's legal rights at all stages of the justice system, including when that person has paid their debt to society, should be a priority. We all stand to gain by providing not just social but legal support to returning citizens.

Ernie Lewis is the Executive Director of the National Association for Public Defense. He can be reached at ernie.lewis@gmail.com, 502-545-3142.

Alex Bassos is Director of Training and Outreach, Metropolitan Public Defender, Portland, Oregon. He can be reached at abassos@mpdlaw.com, 503-709-4319.
Part 1:

The time has come for Christians and Muslims to make peace between our communities. Christians and Muslims already make up more than half of the global population, and these numbers are expected to grow in the coming decades; according to the Pew Research Center, by 2050, two thirds of humanity, some 5.7 billion people, will be either Christian or Muslim.

Our planet simply cannot afford another century of misunderstanding and violence between these two communities. The challenges we face as a global human family are profound: ongoing warfare and nuclear proliferation, global poverty and economic inequality, climate change and ecological degradation. How will humanity handle these crises and others if our two largest religious communities are embroiled in constant conflict, if misunderstanding defines our relationship? As contemporary theologian Hans Kung has argued for decades, there will be no peace between our nations without peace between our religions. Now is the time to transform the way Christians and Muslims see and relate to each other.

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In an earlier blog on the Huffington Post about the problem of Christian Islamophobia, I argue that Christians have the opportunity to transform the way we see Islam and Muslims by accepting Muhammad as "Spirit of Truth."

Historically, most Christian theologians--including John of Damascus, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Nicholas of Cusa, and Martin Luther--have seen Muhammad not as a "Spirit of Truth" but as a "Spirit of Error," a false prophet or heretic. There are many Christians today who respect the Islamic tradition and would never make such an offensive statement about Muhammad.

However, the majority of Christians still maintain a fundamentally Islamophobic position on Muhammad. So I believe that the time has come for peacemaking Christians to contradict this position directly. Changing our view of Muhammad--so that we recognize him as a true prophet rather than discredit him as a false prophet--would effectively inoculate Christians against Islamophobia and would help to establish a new paradigm of cooperative Christian-Muslim relations.

In Jesus' farewell discourse in the Gospel of John (chapters 14 to 16), Jesus speaks about the coming of the "Spirit of Truth" or "Advocate" (in Greek, parakletos). For centuries Muslim interpreters have seen Muhammad as this "Advocate," based on Qur'an 61:6, a verse in which Jesus predicts the coming of a future prophet named Ahmad: "O Children of Israel! Truly I am the Messenger of God unto you, confirming that which came before me in the Torah and bearing glad tidings of a Messenger to come after me whose name is Ahmad" (61:6, The Study Quran). Ahmad, which is another name for Muhammad, is very close etymologically to the Greek word, parakletos, so it is likely that the Qur'an is claiming that Jesus' farewell discourse in the Gospel of John predicts Muhammad. The major objection to applying these predictions to Muhammad or any other prophet is that Christians normally read them as part and parcel of Jesus' promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit.

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Jesus's promise of the Holy Spirit is an essential part of the Christian faith and my interpretation of Muhammad as Spirit of Truth affirms this. John 14:16-17 and 14:26 are clearly about the promise of the Holy Spirit: in John 14:16-17, the Advocate or Spirit of Truth is spoken of as an everlasting, invisible, abiding, inner presence; in most manuscripts, this Advocate is even directly called "the Holy Spirit" in John 14:26. But as Jesus' farewell discourse proceeds these titles become multivalent and, in John 15:26-27 and 16:7-15, they begin to refer more to a future prophet than to the Holy Spirit. Some Muslim interpreters who identify Muhammad with the Advocate argue that this title does not refer to the Holy Spirit at all--and that the text of John has been corrupted so as to obfuscate its direct link to Muhammad. But I believe that the titles Spirit of Truth and Advocate are used in the Gospel of John, first of all, to speak about the promise of the Holy Spirit--and I do not believe that the text has been changed to hide anything. This interpretation of John opens us up to Muhammad as Spirit of Truth in a way that affirms the integrity of the Christian tradition. But before I explain the fine details of my exegesis I want to speak briefly to the big picture of why the Gospel of John, in particular, tells us that Jesus predicts a future prophet.

Part 2:

The Gospel of John is the latest canonical version of the Gospel--it was written at least a generation after the synoptic gospels and probably two generations or more after Paul's letters. The author of the Gospel of John, often called the beloved disciple, claims to be the last living witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In a passage at the end of the Gospel he tells a story about an encounter with the risen Jesus that made him and others believe that he would live to see Jesus' second coming.

Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, "Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?" When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, "Lord, what about him?" Jesus said to him, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!" So the rumor spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?" This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. (John 21:20-24, NRSV)

This passage shows us that the author of the Gospel of John is in a different paradigm than earlier New Testament authors insofar as he no longer expects Jesus' imminent second coming. Paul, for example, who wrote in the decades immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection, believed that Jesus would return while most of the people he was preaching to were still alive. The author of the Gospel of John looks for new meaning in Jesus' promise of the Spirit of Truth or Advocate because he realizes he will die before Jesus returns. When his Gospel was published he was likely already dead and his community was looking forward into a longer and more complicated future than originally expected.

The Gospel of John plays a similar role for the New Testament as Deuteronomy does for the Torah. Deuteronomy is the latest text of the Torah--it reiterates the Law of Moses as told in the four earlier books--and like the Gospel of John it predicts a future prophet:

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command.(Deut 18:18-19, NRSV)

Both Deuteronomy and the Gospel of John are reflections on specific revelations--the Torah and Gospel--and both indicate that there is more revelation to come. The Gospel of John's language for the Spirit of Truth or Advocate is strikingly similar to Deuteronomy's: "he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come" (John 16:13, NRSV).

Like Deuteronomy, the Gospel of John opens up an expectation for future revelation. John's prophecy is not so specific that it must apply to Muhammad and only Muhammad. But insofar as the Qur'an makes the claim that Muhammad is the Spirit of Truth or Advocate that Jesus foretold, a strong interpretive option emerges for Christians to receive Muhammad as a prophet that Jesus predicts when he says:

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I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16:12-15, NRSV)

In this passage, the description of the Advocate or Spirit of Truth is qualitatively different than earlier mentions. Here we see the Spirit of Truth speaking not through the disciples but to them. Earlier, in John 14:17, Jesus says that this Spirit of Truth will abide with his followers and be in them; throughout the Gospel of John the Holy Spirit is spoken of as an abiding, inner presence. Again, in 14:26, Jesus says that the Advocate will "remind you of all that I have said to you." In these passages, Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit who helps his followers understand what he has said. Essentially, this would have been the experience of the beloved disciple, the author of the Gospel of John, who was guided by the presence of the Spirit in remembering and interpreting Jesus' words and deeds (which he does spiritually rather than literally). However, in John 16:12-15, Jesus is talking about a Spirit of Truth who will bring forth new revelations, who will say the "many things" that Jesus does not say because his followers "cannot bear them now."

The clear distinction is that the Spirit of Truth in John 16 is predicted to declare new revelations not merely remind Jesus' disciples of what he already said, as in John 14. The idea that he will "declare to you the things that are to come" is especially important because it acknowledges the uncertainty about the future that Jesus' followers faced, given the fact that he had not returned as soon as expected. Jesus asserts that this future prophet will glorify him by declaring a new revelation that will come from the same source as his message: God. This discourse is designed to open the minds of Christians to receive a future revelation not as something that competes with or diminishes the Gospel, but rather as something that glorifies Jesus. Unfortunately, these words in the Gospel of John have been totally missed by Christians who reject and belittle the Qur'an; we have for the most part completely ignored the unity of the Gospel and the Qur'an in terms of their common revelatory source. However, if we take Jesus' words seriously, we have the opportunity to receive the Word of God in the Qur'an in accordance with Jesus' promise that the Spirit of Truth "will take what is mine and declare it to you." We can accept the Qur'an as a revelation, not in opposition to the Gospel, but in unity with the Gospel and the will of Jesus.

Part 3:

In the First Letter of John, which was written after the Gospel of John and is very similar to it, we find a continuation of the Gospel of John's multivalent way of speaking about the Spirit as applying to the Holy Spirit as well as to prophets inspired by the Spirit. In 1 John 3:24 and 1 John 4:13, the author speaks about the gift of the Holy Spirit and how it abides in Jesus' followers. But in 1 John 4:1-6, in between these mentions of the Holy Spirit, the author speaks at length about testing the spirits. In these verses the word "Spirit" is used to talk about prophets and how to tell whether they are true or false:

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. (1 John 4:2, NRSV)

The author contrasts "the Spirit of God" with the "Spirit of Anti-Christ," those who are "from God" with those who are "from the world," and "the Spirit of Truth" with "the Spirit of Error." This discourse, again, is strikingly similar to the discourse in Deuteronomy about future prophets that I quoted above.

In Deuteronomy 18:20-22, after the promise of a future prophet in 18:18 and the commandment to listen to that prophet in 18:19, criteria are laid out to distinguish a true from a false prophet. Deuteronomy threatens that a prophet who speaks for another god or who falsely speaks on God's behalf "shall die" (18:20). It also advises the Israelites to ignore prophets who prophecy falsely:

If a prophet speaks in the name of the Eternal but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Eternal has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it. (18:22, NRSV)

In the same way, but using different criteria, the author of 1 John defines true prophets and false prophets relative to their allegiance to Jesus, God, and the early followers of Jesus. Part of the dynamic of the early community of Jesus' followers was that many claimed the inspiration of the Spirit and prophesied. The author of 1 John is especially worried about Docetic versions of Christianity that had developed denying that Jesus "came in the flesh"; in these versions of Christianity Jesus was not an actual human being but rather an angelic being that only appeared to be human. Such a version of Christianity, obviously, would have been quite disconnected from the actual teachings and values of Jesus of Nazareth and his earliest followers, who knew him as a real human being. It is worth noting that Muhammad meets these criteria insofar as the Qur'an affirms that Jesus is the Messiah and that he "came in the flesh."

In the history of Christianity, all of the negative terms in 1 John 4:1-6 have been used against Muhammad. He has been identified with "the Spirit of Anti-Christ" and the "Spirit of Error." However, the time has come for Christians to recognize how wrong we have been in these assessments and to correct the record by affirmatively identifying Muhammad with "the Spirit of Truth."

When we look at Islam as a world religion, and see that 1.6 billion people and growing are following in the way of Muhammad, the time has surely come to recognize him as a prophet. If Muhammad is not a prophet, who is? It is understandable, really, that so many Christians have been defensive and have reacted negatively to Islam. That kind of group-ego, fear-based response is part of human nature. However, it is absurd for us to continue to see Muhammad as a heretical Christian or false prophet given that Islam has lasted for nearly 1,400 years, has supported monumental cultural, spiritual, artistic, political, moral, and intellectual achievements, and has a tremendous and vibrant global following.

There is no better candidate than Muhammad, no one in fact that comes even close, in terms of fulfilling Jesus's promise of the Spirit of Truth who would bring forth a new revelation from God. I do not have space in this article to explore the many Qur'anic verses directly addressed to Christians, but if we were to receive them our religion would be transformed for the better and would come into balance with Judaism and Islam.

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Jesus knew it would be difficult for us to accept his guidance from another source. But he did not want our fear of the apparent otherness of the Prophet Muhammad and the Qur'an to separate us from the Way, the Truth, and the Life; that is, the Word of God. This is why he spoke to the disciples reassuringly about the Spirit of Truth, saying, "he will glorify me"; and, for the same reason, he emphasized the unity of his teaching with the revelations to come, twice repeating the promise, "he will take what is mine and declare it to you" (John 16:14-15, NRSV). Based on the promises of Jesus, Christians can encounter the Qur'an without fear, knowing that it is a revelation which glorifies Jesus and, in a spiritual sense, is from him.
Maimonides, the most famous Jewish philosopher and author of the Mishneh Torah, was born in Cordoba in 1125. A statue to his honor stands in Tiberiadus Square in the Juderia.

Many Jews are familiar with Maimonides' teaching that the highest level of tzedakah (charity) is to help a person gain employment so that they can have the dignity of working to support themselves. But what if full-time work paid so little that a person was denied that measure of dignity by continuing to be in need of tzedakah? That is the reality that millions of low-wage workers face in today's economy.

Jews' emphasis on the dignity of work and the rights of workers existed long before the creation of labor unions. The Torah itself includes rules governing the fair treatment of workers, recognizing their vulnerability to exploitation.

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In recent years, Jewish workers, activists and religious leaders have campaigned side-by-side with workers' rights advocates in the fight for an increased minimum wage.

On April 14th, the #JewsFor15 campaign stood in solidarity with the tens of thousands of striking low-wage workers around the country who are part of the Fight for $15 movement to call for an increased minimum wage across the country. In addition to joining marches in New York, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Durham and New Orleans, we joined workers in Washington, D.C. who are organizing under the Good Jobs Nation banner to call on the country's largest low-wage job creator - the U.S. government - to do better by offering $15 and a union to every federal contract worker.

Each year more than a trillion tax dollars are spent to purchase goods and services from private corporations through federal contracts. These corporations then hire millions of workers to sweep the floors of the Capitol, clean the offices of Cabinet secretaries, serve meals to military generals, and do the numerous other tasks that keep our nation running.

Shockingly, more than a third of these jobs don't pay a living wage. That means workers who we - the taxpayers - employ work full-time and still live in poverty.

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This is shameful. It's not just an economic crisis; it's a moral crisis as well. All workers deserve to live with dignity. They should not be forced to rely on public aid and charitable giving to make ends meet. Work should be the foundation to building a full life where participation in a vibrant economy is something a worker can take pride in.

Our government has a responsibility to make sure our workers receive a fair, living wage. If Congress won't act, our next president must exercise his or her executive powers.

That's why Bend the Arc Jewish Action has joined with 25 national religious organizations to call on the next president to take Moral Action on the Economy by signing an executive order that raises the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $15 an hour and allows for collective bargaining to ensure that workers' rights are protected.

As we observe Passover and celebrate our liberation from bondage in Egypt, we also remember this passage from Exodus:

"The Egyptians ruthlessly imposed upon the Israelites the various labors that they made them perform. Ruthlessly they made life bitter for them with harsh labor at mortar and bricks and with all sorts of tasks in the field." - Exodus 1:13-14

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With the stroke of the pen, the next occupant of the Oval Office can honor the spirit of Passover and liberate millions of contract workers from the bondage of poverty and suffering.
A bill allowing lenders to make even more money on predatory loans passed a state senate committee this week, with supporters of the legislation telling reporters that increased profits are necessary to keep personal-loan lenders in Colorado.

That's the major argument for the bill. Specifically, backers told the Durango Herald that the one company offering such loans will leave Colorado if it's not allowed to make millions more here.

The Denver Post's Joey Bunch was the only journalist to report how OneMain Holdings, Colorado's only predatory loan company after merger last year with Springleaf Holdings), is doing financially. I mean, that's the key question.

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Is it struggling to make ends meet, like many of the folks it lends money to are? People who pay the company 36 percent interest on a $1,000 loan as it is?

Phil Hitz, who represented Springleaf Holdings, acknowledged that the company is very profitable nationally and confirmed the 30 percent Colorado growth over the past four years.

Bunch apparently didn't ask Hitz if Springleaf would leave Colorado if the bill didn't pass, but all indications are that it would not.

Last year, when a similar predatory-lending bill was debated, the Colorado Attorney General's office testified that access to such loans is not threatened under the current interest-rate structure. Similar testimony was reportedly offered yesterday as well.

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Opponents of the bill, led by the liberal Bell Policy Center, are saying the proposed legislation will simply hand $9.5 million more in loan charges to an already-profitable company that preys on struggling families. The cost to finance a $5,000 loan, for example, would increase 26.9 percent, according to Bell.

The bill's backers haven't refuted the key point that lenders of personal loans are profitable in Colorado. They say One Main is unhappy with how much profit it's making--without disclosing how much is enough. There's no indication that the lenders will walk away from Colorado and its money.

To be fair, Hitz told Bunch that Colorado is the company's lowest-yielding state, and other states help subsidize it.

But lowest-yielding state compared to what? Astronomically-earning ones? We know the company is "very profitable" nationally. So the fact that it's doing well enough in Colorado is a signal that states should protect consumers, many of them low-income, and adopt Colorado's humane regulatory framework.
Anyone who knows me, knows how excited I am about the L.A. Metro Expo Line opening to Santa Monica next month. Still, this week I am feeling lucky to have some time in New York, America's transportation mecca. I am here soaking up the springtime and studying the countless lessons the city has to offer Los Angeles and the rest of the country when it come to transit, active transportation and more.

I am also here to help out my father recovering from back surgery (he's doing fine!). Between my time with him, other family members and friends, there has been ample time to take in the good of what is happening here.

It hasn't hurt that for the past few days it has been warm and the flowering trees are in full bloom. Along with all of the other things that have changed so since I last lived here in 1987, the explosion in the number of trees planted on the streets and in new pocket parks has helped make the city that much more livable.

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The dogwoods, magnolias, cherry blossoms and eastern redbuds in all their springtime glory are almost enough to make anyone forget it is not like this here all of the time.

But there are other, mostly positive things happening in New York that other cities across the country would be well-served to heed. The availability of ubiquitous public transportation, new bike lanes and wide, mostly well maintained sidewalks foster a dense urban experience that attests to the fact that Jane Jacobs is still alive and well in the city she left for Toronto in 1968.

Granted it is better for transit riders, bikers and pedestrians in Park Slope and on the Upper West Side than in places like Richmond Hill and Allerton, but the widespread embrace of these means of getting around mean everything to the city's economic vitality and make being here a feast for the eyes and a welcome alternative to the dashboard and taillights.

Old enough to remember when only the bike messengers were brave, or stupid, enough to ride through midtown Manhattan, it is inspiring to see so many adults and children plying New York's streets, protected bike lanes and parks on their own wheels or on Citi Bikes.

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It is why LADOT's plans for more bike lanes and Metro's roll out of bike share

in downtown Los Angeles are so exciting to this Angeleno. I just hope Metro can land a sponsor to help pay for the program the way they have in New York.

Being here in the advertising capital of the world has underscored for me how wise it is for Metro to partner with companies looking to put their name on our buses, bikes, trains and transit stations in exchange for cash. It costs money to build and run these critical public amenities and it is high time we cut more favorable deals that can help pay for operations. Take for example the Barclays arrangement with the MTA at the sprawling Flatbush Avenue subway station in Brooklyn. Transit riders certainly don't suffer from the $4 million naming rights deal the MTA made with Barclays ($200,000 a year for 20 years) to have its name on one of busiest stations in Brooklyn.

A couple of other striking things I am seeing in New York:

Homelessness: How under control homelessness seems to be here relative to Los Angeles and Santa Monica. So far, I can count the number of people I have seen sleeping on the street versus the unacceptable explosion of homeless encampments one finds all over downtown L.A., in Koreatown, Hollywood and on and under freeway overpasses across the city. L.A.'s failure, and the courts' foolhardy siding with so-called homeless advocates, is hurting the homeless most of all but the rest of us as well as our neighborhoods turn into unsightly and unsanitary shantytowns. A friend visiting recently from Shanghai expressed shock at our homeless epidemic saying he sees nothing like this in his travels across Asia.

Given L.A.'s homelessness and affordable housing crisis, it is exciting to see that on Friday, May 6th, the AIA|LA will be convening Design for Dignity, an all-day forum aimed at developing actionable plans to address these challenges.

Sidewalks: Also striking is how New York has somehow managed to keep its sidewalks in decent repair in spite of a climate whose temperature extremes presents a challenge to asphalt. While I am happy to see a new plan for repairing L.A.'s sidewalks, it's unacceptable that city government ever let things get this bad. Walking the streets with my father and his cane I shudder to think what it would be like for him to get around L.A. right now.

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Illegal Dumping: As for our limp response to illegal dumping and street cleaning, L.A. remains a city that is still largely failing with respect to the most basic of city services. I believe in data and research as much as the next geek but $805,000 for Cleanstat, a survey and website that lets Angelenos look up their block's grade for cleanliness.

Fuhgeddaboudit!

As a Koreatown resident, all I need to do is look out my window to see what a failing grade we've earned.

Public Private Partnerships (P3s) & Philanthropy: With both L.A. and New York experiencing rapid change due to gentrification and economic displacement, it has been striking to see the things that New York seems to have gotten right. Part of its relative success probably stems from a stronger tax base and an embrace of P3s and philanthropy designed to pick up where government has fallen down on the job. While it would be nice if taxes were enough to provide for all of our needed city services, since they are not, it is past time that L.A. accelerated the pace of partnerships with businesses and private foundations to keep the streets clean and in good repair, build and maintain transit and green our streets. That's what makes Metro's plans for Measure R2 so exciting, but countless other opportunities, including business improvement districts (BIDs) to improve the quality of life for all seem to remain unexplored.

Transit: Riding the trains here, I keep thinking of Hillary Clinton on the subway in the Bronx during the primary campaign. With her victory in the Democratic contest looking pretty likely I hope she doesn't forget just how critical trains and buses are to the economic vitality of our cities.

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The next president of the free world needs to be someone who rides the train and gets out often enough to know that not everyone eats with a silver spoon.

There is so much more to see here, including the new No. 7 train extension to the Hudson Yards and the MTA's progress on the Second Avenue subway. But even without visits to those projects yet, it has been great revisiting the Prospect Park West protected bike lane, the vibrant farmers market at Grand Army Plaza, the hoppin' street life along Flatbush Avenue in downtown Brooklyn and to take in the lively scene in Prospect Park and on the streets in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan. The city is packed with locals and tourists making New York a dense urban experience considerably more livable than when I lived here back in the 80s. Thanks to the foresight of New York's planners and leaders and smart active transportation advocates at places like Transportation Alternatives this city of considerable density works pretty well.

A great film, New York Story, showing at the New York Historical Society explains how a profoundly diverse and mostly religiously tolerant New York developed (albeit with the labor of African slaves) into the world class city that it has become. Living in an equally diverse Best Coast city, I have high hopes that we too will continue to become a more livable city with extensive transit, complete streets, high performing schools, affordable housing and opportunity for all. To the luddites who whine, "Stop Manhattanwood," I say, "Bring it on!"
A: Dale Jackson Small business owner 3rd District GAGOP Chairman

Q: So how did you get interested in politics in general?

A: I became interested in politics when we discovered our son was severely affected by autism. I then realized how big of a role that government plays in the life of a special needs family.

Q: How does it play a role?

A: In the educational system and now in how we are allowed to treat his autism. Currently the best way to treat autism is via cannabis oil but yet it is illegal here in the state of Georgia. My position as district chairman of the GAGOP has given me the opportunity to influence state officials within our party to change those laws.

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I originally got involved in the delegate process when I supported Ron Paul in 2012. We knew the process and our strategy was to get Ron Paul on the ballot by having the required number of delegates go to the RNC. I was elected as an alternate delegate in 2012. I was obviously involved this time around because I'm now the chairman of the district. Hopefully next time around, the new Trump delegates will still be around and maybe in four years one of them will be chairman of the district just like I am now.



Q: Did you have to give a speech or two, saying what you would do if elected as a delegate?

A: I gave a speech in 2012 and this year in 2016. I said the same thing both times. If elected I will go to the national convention and represent conservative limited government principles.



Q: Who won the district? If Trump won it, why didn't pro-Trump delegates win at the meeting?

A: The primary dictates how the delegates are to vote on the first ballot. It doesn't dictate who the people are that are elected to represent the convention body at the RNC. The convention body elected three delegates of their choice.

Q: What are the rules? Do you have to vote for Trump each time, or Cruz? Does it depend on the ballot?

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A: According to the rules and how they have been explained to me, I am bound to vote for Donald Trump on the first ballot. After that I am free to vote my conscience.



Q: Did any Trump supporters show up? How did they take the results?

A: I would estimate that of all the delegates casting votes, approximately 20% to 25% were Trump supporters. They were understandably upset that their slate did not get approved by the convention body. I spent most of the morning explaining to the leader of their group exactly what was going on and how things were going to move forward. I wanted to make sure they were comfortable with understanding the process.

Q: Why do you think the results went down the way they did?

A: The delegates wanting to support Trump were just late getting involved in the process. I don't think the campaign fully understood how important the actual delegates could be if it came down to a brokered convention. Once it became obvious that the convention may go that route, it was too late to start the process. The delegate process started with mass precinct meetings in February. In February it looked like Trump would easily walk away with the nomination.

Q: One of my students, Seth Golden, asked "Do you coordinate with other Cruz delegates on strategy?"

A: Building coalitions in the convention process is always necessary to be elected by the convention body. Moving forward to the RNC, I will vote my own conscience based on who I believe to be the best candidate for the republican nominee.

Q: Do you know if Cruz shares your opinion on cannabis oil?

A: He has stated that he believes in states' rights but I'm not currently comfortable with his official stance on states experimenting with cannabis oil laws. Now that I'm one of the delegates to the RNC.... I have a feeling that he and I will have that conversation face to face. That will definitely play heavily into my decision.

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Q: Did you get to work in the marijuana for medicinal purposes proposal into the meeting?

A: I was able to present my resolution supporting cannabis oil and developing a cultivation program here in Georgia to the convention body. I was able to answer a few questions from the floor and then the body voted on the resolution. The resolution passed almost unanimously! I have found that most people within the Republican Party are very open to the idea of medical cannabis oil once they are presented with real facts.

Q: One of my students, Abby Bowen, asked what you think of the petition to make Quicken Loans Arena (the Convention site) a gun free zone for the Republican Convention, so people will be able to carry guns?
The call for profound change from the Group Health Research Institute (GHRI) scientist was refreshing: "It is time for all stakeholders making or influencing health and medical care decisions to step back, take a collective breath, and consider what they can do to restructure the highly reductionist biomedical approach to health, illness, and disease that continues to fall short of meeting the needs of many Americans suffering from chronic back pain and other health problems."

The writer is Dan Cherkin, PhD, a GHRI senior scientific investigator. One of the top researchers in integrative health community, Cherkin has served on the Advisory Council to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine (NCCIH) and as an advisor to the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).

The occasion of Cherkin's call to end the dominance of reductionist approaches was the publication of the most recent of his papers in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. The randomized controlled trial (RCT) examined the value of mindfulness-based stress reduction for people with low back pain.

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Cherkin's pattern: integrative care and sham each better than regular medicine

His call for transformation of pain care grew out of a pattern of outcomes from multiple trials of non-pharmacologic approaches to low back pain. In RCTs examining mindfulness, yoga, acupuncture, and chiropractic, each proved better than regular medicine. Yet each was not significantly better than the research control, or "sham."

Cherkin doesn't think so. He reflects: "It is intriguing to compare the results of this recent trial with those of our previous trials evaluating the effects of physical treatments for chronic non-specific low back pain." Mindfulness was no better than cognitive behavioral therapy. Yoga was no better than slow stretching. Acupuncture no better than "sham" needling. Chiropractic treatment no better than the sham he chose there.

Yet in each of these scientific trials, both intervention and sham were better than regular care. Something valuable was going on.

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Cherkin concludes: "Clinicians and researchers have been underestimating the benefits to patients of receiving care within a credible and supportive context -- and overestimating the importance of the specific effects of treatments."

Or to paraphrase Flip Wilson's Geraldine a few decades ago: "Turn off the reductive love of drugs and look at the human beings for awhile."

Cherkin argues that his findings exemplify the relationship-centered, whole person view of pain treatment that was the central tenet in the Institute of Medicine's 2011 2011 Relieving Pain in America: "To reduce the impact of pain and the resultant suffering will require a transformation in how pain is perceived and judged both by people with pain and by the health care providers who help care for them."

Hit the pause button on the reductive research industry

Cherkin: "I couldn't agree more." Then he makes the two step call to action at the top of this column:

"Step back, take a collective breath." Why?

"Restructure the highly reductionist biomedical approach to health, illness, and disease."

Why? Our current approach "continues to fall short of meeting the needs of many Americans suffering from chronic back pain and other health problems."

What a great idea: Hit the pause button on the pain center of the medical-industrial complex and the reductive research industry that has given us the opioid epidemic. Just say no to an approach to pain that still typically promotes reductive pharmaceutical strategies.

Cherkin's advocacy tempts me to a Trumpian suggestion. While leaders of this machinery are pausing, why not tie their hands to the chair and put a cloth in their mouths to force them to listen to the story medicine of patient-centered rather than reductive, mechanism-centered chatter.

If they listened, they would have a chance to hear what a research team with which Cherkin was involved found in a qualitative study of people who participated in his randomized controlled trials. Listen to these"unanticipated benefits" of these integrative, relationship-centered approaches:

Our analysis identified a range of positive outcomes that participants in CAM trials considered important but were not captured by standard quantitative outcome measures. Positive outcome themes included: "increased options and hope" "increased ability to relax" "positive changes in emotional states" "increased body awareness" "changes in thinking that increased the ability to cope with back pain" "increased sense of well-being" "improvement in physical conditions unrelated to back pain" "increased energy" "increased patient activation" and "dramatic improvements in health or well-being." Cherkin's team adds that "the first five of these themes were mentioned for all of the ... treatments, while others tended to be more treatment specific."

Imagine how these outcomes would be splashed around the media were these associated with a pharmaceutical intervention.

We need more scientists like the veteran Cherkin to courageously call for this practical, patient-centered view. We need this redirection to climb out of the reductionism that led us into the dark cul-de-sac of the opioid crisis. We need this new whole person approach to research, and to care, to propel the new moral, patient-centered, value-base era for which the medical industry's transformative leaders are calling.

When past American Hospital Association chair Jonathan Perlin, MD, PhD took over his position he wondered how the medical industry can move from "sick care to health care." He mused aloud: "I'm not sure that any of us ... fully understands or knows the recipe."
The movement of planetary integration which sixty years ago we started calling "globalization" was at work long before we gave it a name. The history of this movement is the history of mankind. Voting with their feet, the act of migrating from point A to point B because of dissatisfaction with the way things are going in point A and the hope of a better life in point B is what humans do. It is what they have always done. The Asians who populated the Americas during and after the ice age, the Jews who fled Egypt and the Huguenots who went eastwards after the Saint-Barthelemy massacres in France were migrants and refugees.

In late 2005, The New York Times columnist Roger Cohen came to Paris to write a piece on the mood in the banlieues, the French capital's suburbs. There he met a young French entrepreneur of Moroccan descent who had built a business importing memory chips from China. The resulting column, entitled "Young French Muslim finds Feng-Shui in Guang Zhou," captured brilliantly the emergence of a phenomenon which to this day has gone largely unnoticed: migration as a means of emancipation, until then an overwhelmingly unilateral movement from developing countries to developed ones, had become multilateral. Rachid Ech Chetouani, who like many young French Muslims had spent his entire life in France being called a foreigner, an "Arab," a Muslim, a thug, transcended those identities when he went eastwards, to a country which then was still referred to as "emerging". For the very first time, he found himself surrounded by people for whom a French-speaking person from France was... a Frenchman.

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Far from being anecdotal, Rachid's story is that of an increasing number of second- or third generation immigrants tired of being treated as underdogs in the country their parents adopted. Nor is this limited to sons and daughters of migrants. Whether you are a gifted young hairdresser in Leeds, Grenoble or Bremen or flipping a mean burger for eight bucks an hour in Detroit, it is not extraordinarily hard or daring to take a bet on what your professional trajectory will be if you stay where you are. But if you are willing to take those skills to Abu Dhabi, Shenzhen or Jakarta, where trendy burger joints and hipster hair dressing salons are still rather hard to come by, there is quite a fair chance you will be running not one but a few establishments before too long...

Nor is the phenomenon even purely intercontinental. The European refugee crisis is threatening the very fabric of the entire European project, arguably the world's most daring political adventure since the US came into being. Yet this crisis and the continent's incapacity to absorb these refugees is in no small part the result of the unwillingness most European countries have shown so far to take on their fair share of refugees, which in turn stems from Europe's incapacity to create among Europeans the sense of shared identity and solidarity that should bind them together. In other words, Europe's failure to encourage internal European migration--the single most effective way of building that shared sense of identity--over the years is hindering its capacity to welcome external migrants. Rather than financing agricultural subsidies, shouldn't European taxpayers' money be spent in a kind of professional corollary to Erasmus (the EU's extraordinary successful student exchange program) subsidizing young people to seek jobs in other European countries?

Many in favor of a Brexit are using the refugee crisis as a scarecrow. Angela Merkel has paid a high political price, to be sure, for her firm, welcoming stance towards refugees. Ultimately, she will be remembered as a visionary. First of all, because European countries that have an exclusively negative take on immigration, given their birth rates, will not stop migrants from flowing in. They will simply attract the less productive, dynamic ones. But also because, as the fourth industrial revolution unfolds and robotics and machine intelligence continue to challenge our ability to deal with mass unemployment, a consensus is arising that we need to turn masses of employees into entrepreneurs, which migrants are by nature, just as they are innovators adventurers and hard workers. As they move around, humans learn things which might well prove more valuable in the world we are building than what we are teaching them in schools: how to create jobs rather than get a job.

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Young people worldwide, who have been more affected than their elders by the financial crisis, identify with one another more than they ever have in the past. They are the #StarWarsGen: just as no one cares where you are from on Endor or Coruscant in Star Wars, for these kids, being from planet earth is enough information, thank you very much. Because the histories of migration, globalization and urbanization are so closely intertwined, these youth are natural allies for the word's migrants. Indeed, for many youth these days, the best hope to escape unemployment and inertia is to flock towards cities and embrace nomadism, twenty-first century style. And to become fully the entrepreneurs, innovators and citizens of the world our time so sorely needs in the process.


Ruth Benally, Dineh Elder, Big Mountain resident, matriach and activist. Published with permission from the Benally family.

In a remote part of the Navajo reservation lays an area known to the locals as Big Mountain. Its residents, who refer to themselves as Dineh, have called that land home long before Europeans occupied North America. The Navajo Nation is the largest reservation in the U.S and also sits next door to Hopi land, home to some of the oldest settlements that are still occupied and considered sacred to the people.

Big Mountain has dirt roads, no electricity and no running water. The roads are incredibly hard to navigate without a local guide and nearly impossible to pass in the winter. The families that live here still speak Dineh and practice their traditional culture.

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Right now, Senator John McCain and government agencies are enforcing a process known as the Relocation Act. Efforts to remove the Dineh from their ancestral land and mine coal and uranium have been going on for fifty years at least. Some families have managed to resist this diabolical plan and are holding on tenaciously.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) use some pretty undignified tactics to try to evict families including impounding the Dineh's livestock upon which they rely to live on. This was happening fifteen years ago when I was doing humanitarian support work on Big Mountain, and it is still happening right now.

On April 5, 2016, reports rapidly spread on the Internet that the Hopi Rangers had impounded cows that belonged to Dineh families and were busy organizing their transport to auction. Under the Rangers care, it was being said on the Emergency on HPL-BIA War Against Navajo Grandmothers Facebook page that none of the animals were being fed or watered, and calves were being separated from their mothers. According to the Facebook page, the Hopi Rangers took sixty-six cows and then asked a staggering $400 per cow to return them to their families. For people living in poverty, this amount is impossible to meet.

The excuse for the impoundments is that the cows are negatively impacting the rangeland. However, how just sixty-six cows do this, I am not sure. We are not talking about massive herds of animals here like the cattle ranchers who are regularly allowed to chew up public land. We are talking small herds of up to 100 animals, mainly sheep but some cows. Having witnessed the brutality of these roundups and the injuries sustained by the animals, I can attest to the lack of food and water the cows and horses receive at the hands of careless rangers.

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This issue is complicated by multiple levels of deceit and many years of exploitation. I will not attempt to explain the entire sordid story here, but it is a national disgrace that still, the Indigenous people's of North America face daily humanitarian abuses, poverty, and oppression that is shocking. Orion Magazine did a good job of explaining the Dineh's situation, as did Vice Magazine more recently.

Government agencies have exploited a story made up many years ago by people who were keen to extract the coal and uranium from the land and created a so-called land dispute between the Navajo and Hopi peoples. The elders of both tribes say there is no land dispute, but what is going on is an attempt to remove people to make it easier for companies like Peabody Coal to access and exploit the natural resources.

As we speak, the families caught in the middle of this mess face daily harassment and threats. When their livestock was taken on April 5, swift negotiations ensued to retrieve the animals, but the families are being forced to pay over $4,000 to get them back. So, people's animals are stolen by a government agency and then they are told to pay over $400 a head to get them back? Where is the fairness in that?

The entire situation is a humanitarian crisis that has long been ignored. Last year, the AP reported that the relocation had cost the federal government about $500 million more than its initial budget of $41 million. The land they are forcing families to relocate to in Sanders, AZ is downstream from Church Rock, the site of the worst uranium spill ever recorded in the U.S, which happened in 1979. The area was never adequately cleaned up.

The story is getting really old--find natural resources that you can sell, forcibly remove the indigenous population, move them somewhere toxic and make millions.

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How do members of Congress like Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Rep. Ken Calvert of California, who are actively playing a role in this relocation, sleep at night?

Thankfully, this part of the story ends well with the return of the cattle to the families but not without loss, extremely challenging negotiations and a whopping $4,000 fee.

We must stop this endless, horrific treatment and persecution of the Indigenous tribal people's of this continent and indeed all Indigenous peoples. Let us all work to rectify the wrongs capitalism, and white patriarchal colonization has done to them. Enough is enough.

For more info and to support the Dineh click here.


Ilyich "Equipto" Sato, his mother, Maria Cristina Gutierrez, and Ike Ali Pinkston announce their hunger strike in front of the San Francisco Police Department Mission Station, 630 Valencia, April 21, 2016 photo by Karen Fleshman



A group of black and brown native San Franciscans launched a hunger strike on April 21, 2016 demanding that Mayor Ed Lee fire San Francisco Police Department Chief Greg Suhr or resign.

Bay Area hiphop legend Ilyich "Equipto" Sato; his mother, Maria Cristina Gutierrez, director of Los Companeros del Barrio Preschool; Edwin Lindo, candidate for Supervisor in District 9; political hip hop artist Sellassie; and child development professional Ike Ali Pinkston have pledged not to eat until Mayor Lee accedes to their demands. To date, Pinkston and Lindo have both passed out and received care and returned to the strike. Other protestors have joined them in support.

The hunger strikers sit and sleep in front of the Mission Police Station at 630 Valencia, a street that symbolizes the polarization of San Francisco, a city with a 3.4% unemployment rate where thousands sleep in the streets every night. A city that young white and Asian men move to from across the country and the world to earn six figure salaries while the San Francisco Police Department shoots and kills black and brown young men with impunity.

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A Large and Growing Body of Evidence Shows SFPD is Out of Control

Since 2011, when Mayor Ed Lee appointed Greg Suhr to be chief of police, SFPD has killed 21 people, the most recent, Luis Demetrio Gongora Pat, on April 7, 2016.



San Francisco Police Department in front of protest of shooting of Luis Demetrio Gongora Pat at Mission Police Station April 7, 2016 by Liam McStravick



Coalitions have united to demand justice for Alex Nieto (shot 59 times on March 21, 2014), Amilcar Perez Lopez (shot 6 times in the back on February 26, 2015), and Mario Woods (shot 20 times on December 2, 2015).

Mayor Ed Lee's Calls for Moderate Reform Insufficient

Under mounting pressure, in February, 2016 Mayor Lee and SF Police Department Chief Greg Suhr invited the U.S. Department of Justice Community Oriented Police Services (COPS) office to "collaboratively review" SFPD. The review process will produce recommendations that are unenforceable.

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Mayor Lee and the SF Police Commission proposed changes in use of force policies on February 22, 2016.

But the San Francisco Police Officers Association, SFPD's union, is intransigent, refusing to comply with the proposed policy and issuing its own proposed use of force policy on April 6, 2016.

Recognition that SFPD Requires Reform is Widespread

The Northern California American Civil Liberties Union has petitioned U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to launch a civil rights investigation, citing SFPD's history of distorting evidence, opacity, and violating its own rules.

District Attorney George Gascon, who himself previously served as Chief of SFPD, has called SFPD "systemically racist" and commissioned a Blue Ribbon Panel to investigate SFPD racism that has been met with stonewalling.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi has requested that California Attorney General Kamala Harris investigate SFPD racism.

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Public Defender Jeff Adachi, District Attorney George Gascon, Supervisor Malia Cohen, Supervisor David Campos, Supervisor John Avalos, Benjamin Bac Sierra of the Justice4AlexNieto Coalition, Father Richard Smith of the Justice4AmilcarPerezLopez Coalition, Northern California ACLU Senior Counsel Alan Schlosser, and Reverend Christopher Muhammad and Phelicia Jones of the Justice4MarioWoods Coalition call on California Attorney General Kamala Harris to investigate SFPD, April 13, 2016 at San Francisco City Hall, photo by Karen Fleshman

Attorney General Harris, who is running for U.S. Senate in the November 8, 2016 election, responded with a tweet that her office would "monitor whether local officials are cooperative" in the USDOJ COPS review. "If investigators face resistance and the implementation of reforms falls short," she said in a statement, "I intend to launch a civil pattern and practice investigation."

By the time USDOJ COPS issues recommendations Harris will likely be well into her first term as Senator.

Despite the growing body of evidence that SFPD needs dramatic reform, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee continues to support Chief Greg Suhr and believe that current oversight is sufficient. I expressed my concerns about SFPD to Mayor Lee on April 17, 2016 and he reiterated his support of allowing current investigations to run their course and of providing tasers to SFPD.

San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who visited the hunger strike on April 24, 2016 commented that "the strike is an expression of the frustration activists feel -- the latest group of racist texts and the shooting death of Luis Gongora have only added to the feeling that reform efforts have failed to change the culture at the SFPD."

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Hunger Strikers Exhausted Peaceful Protest

The hunger strikers have had enough. They want change before another black or brown San Franciscan is killed by SFPD. They feel they have exhausted every avenue.

Like many native San Franciscans, Ilyich has been angry about the transformation of his hometown for a long time, writing songs about it and helping his friends campaign for Mayor. Ilyich first confronted Mayor Lee October 2015.

Mayor Ed Lee won a second term in November 2015 in an election in which less than 25% of San Franciscans voted.

Ilyich and his friends disrupted Mayor Lee's inauguration; booed him off the stage at the 2016 Northern California Martin Luther King Day celebration; and protested the Superbowl. They scored a major coup when Alicia Keys said "I want you to know that I salute everyone that has the courage and conviction to stand up for what is right. I want to thank you for your commitment to making sure justice is done for Mario Woods" at her pre Superbowl concert.

Ilyich says he is motivated by the families of Alex Nieto and Mario Woods. His message to Mayor Lee is that he needs to "speak with the community, represent the community or stop being selfish and step down."

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Striker Sellassie echoes Ilyich, adding that firing Chief Suhr is a first step, and that he wants to see "real, tangible reform of SFPD and of the Mayor's interaction with the people of San Francisco- all the people, not just the rich." He urges San Franciscans of all income brackets to confront the Mayor and demand SFPD reform.

Striker Ike Ali Pinkston says "I should be able to feel safe regardless of the color of my skin when a police officer approaches me regardless of the situation and currently that is impossible."

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Ilyich's mother, Maria Cristina Gutierrez, also on hunger strike, urges San Franciscans to call the Mayor, call their Supervisors, hold press conferences, walk out of school, do whatever they can to pressure the Mayor to fire Chief Suhr or resign.

Striker Edwin Lindo says the goal of the hunger strike is to "stop police impunity for extrajudicial killings of people of color in poor communities. We want a police force that lets us live.

We are going hungry for justice."

Strikers urge San Franciscans who feel the same way to call Mayor Lee 415-554-6141, tweet at him @MayorEdLee, email him mayoredwinlee@sfgov.org and demand he fire Chief Suhr.
Scientists offer a bleak forecast for the future of the climate, and already the urgent need to redress its most dire consequences has turned everyday global citizens into environmental crusaders.

Political systems around the world absorb climate activism with varying degrees of sincerity. Some, like the government of the state of Florida--charged with stewardship over an endangered coastline, and a world-class city susceptible to blue-sky flooding--respond simply by instructing state employees not to speak on the subject. That's hardly reassuring. Along with its obvious call to action, climate change can be regarded as an indirect audit on the health and functionality of any given political entity. As of right now, Florida Governor Rick Scott's administration would not pass, nor for that matter would the Republican majority of the US Congress.

But in some respects we have all been climate deniers. We persist in minimizing the issue of global warming by presenting it as a discrete set of concerns--just another item on the progressive policy menu. Some order it, and some don't.

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In our conversations about climate change we fail to recognize the ways in which the task ahead will not just add to or reorder our priorities, it will restructure our politics, forcing unexpected common pursuits upon places and among people previously inhospitable to them, and fracturing others along lines that look trivial to us now.

Either way, the climate imperative will transform politics on a global scale.

Take for example the Middle East, which is right now mired in intractable conflict. We are accustomed to casting disputes between Israel and Palestine in religious and historical terms. Yet, although the region can be described and analyzed by invoking occupation and Zionism, or by pointing to implacable enemies and the need for security, its future politics will hinge more upon its status as coastal Levant, a precarious river basin where water and arable land are already scarce, and will only grow more so over time.

Existing tension over the allocation of natural resources strains the structure and adherence to current agreements between Israel and Palestine; as drought plagues the region and a rising sea level hampers the coastal aquifer, the ability to equitably divide water and land will become, for all intents and purposes, impossible. This could portend still greater conflict (and some suggest the Syrian civil war represents just that), or the need for cooperative projects on conservation and the desalinization of water may enhance the stature of the one-state argument, a proposal to integrate the region into one entity with different districts and citizenship rights for all. Right now both sides spurn a one-state resolution. Nevertheless, regardless of the outcome, the effects of climate change will render the status quo--two parties committed to a two-state peace process in theory, but not in practice--unsustainable.

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This is only one pointed example of the way in which the climate imperative will reshape the landscape of conflict, and cooperation. It is not a constellation of issues; it is more a point of rupture, separating our current political premise from what will inevitably follow. So far only presidential candidate Bernie Sanders seems to grasp the transformational reality of global warming, and he has recently mentioned the (somewhat fraught) analogy of war to characterize the level of government mobilization required in response.

Though startling to us now, Bernie Sanders' metaphor will be a standard framework of discussion in the not very distant future.

If progressives fail to anticipate the climate imperative, we will once again be unable to hold moments of crisis accountable to our values, and to influence them according to our ideas. In that sense, we also fail to pass the "audit." I am reminded of a quietly indignant Franklin Roosevelt, forced to watch peacetime US military exercises where the infantry sent trucks into battle with placards that read "TANK" for want of the real thing, as antediluvian commanders assured him that the next war would be won by horse-mounted soldiers and urged him to invest more in cavalry. Meanwhile Hitler stormed through Europe, piercing defenses with the techniques and tools of modern warfare.

To extend Bernie Sanders' metaphor, our meek responses to global warming are trucks posing as tanks, and the Democratic Party's notion, both implicit and explicit, that global warming is just one issue among many deserving of our attention is akin to expanding the stables in anticipation of more cavalry.

Global warming will change everything. So far, although we have proven ourselves able to understand science better than Republicans, we have yet to recognize and organize in anticipation of its far-reaching implications.
Nepal marked an anniversary of the earthquake, which killed thousands. People gathered Sunday at the remains of a historic tower in Nepal's capital that collapsed in a devastating earthquake a year ago, as Nepalese held memorial services to mark the anniversary of a disaster.

Meanwhile, UN Nepal country team issued a press release stating their solidarity with the lives lost and the people affected by last year's earthquake. The UN Country Team expressed their concern about the upcoming monsoon season and the ramifications it could have on the vulnerable quake-affected victims.

500 Aftershocks Over 4 Richter scale

The devastating earthquake occurred in Nepal on 25 April 2015, which killed more than 9,000 people. The country is continued to feel aftershocks since then. More than 500 aftershocks over 4 Richter scale were recorded since April 25. Over 30 thousand tremors were felt in this period. Those aftershocks were enough to force Nepalese people who had already gone to bed to come out of their houses onto open grounds and roads.

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Aftershocks spread terror in Nepal and people couldn't sleep properly. People came out on the streets and couldn't sleep into their homes because of rumors of higher intensity earthquake. Nepalese are still restless because of the rumor and news of another bigger earthquake.

Fear of Another Earthquake

Another major earthquake in the Himalayan Mountains may be imminent according to some news and researchers. However, it's hard to predict about an earthquake. According to researchers, a major tremor could hit Nepal's Gorkha district within years rather than the centuries that usually pass between quakes. Lead author John Elliott of Oxford University said the rupture, shooting upward through the fault line from deep below, stopped abruptly 11km (6.8 miles) beneath the Nepalese capital, leaving an unbroken upper portion nearer the surface. The unbroken upper part of the fault is continuously building up more pressure over time. As this part of the fault is nearer the surface, the future rupture of this upper portion has the potential for a much greater impact on Kathmandu if it were to break in one go in a similar-sized event to that of April 2015 according to the research.

Scientists can predict where an earthquake is likely to strike, but there is no way to tell exactly when it will happen, or how big it will be. This is why Nepalese people are living in fear of another bigger earthquake. Nepalese government and people should take this warning as an aware alarm and they should be well prepared for when it does happen. Earthquakes don't kill people. Buildings and structures do. But it's possible to build an earthquake-proof building and structures. Engineering techniques that can be used to create a very sound structure that will endure a modest or even strong quake. Nepalese people and the government should be aware of minimizing damage when another earthquake happens.

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Thousands Are Still Homeless

Hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless because of the earthquake. After a year of the earthquake, thousands of people are still homeless. The government announced reconstruction aid is yet to reach the victims.

More than 600,000 homes were destroyed and around 185,000 damaged in the quake. But only 661 families have received the first installment of $1890 (Approx.) government grant, getting $470 (Approx.) so far. The amount of government grant is not enough to rebuild home.

Emergency relief reached most people. But the rebuilding process is too slow. The full amount of money may never materialize due to delays caused by the government. Out of the 4.1 billion dollars pledged, Nepal has so far received just 1.28 billion dollars but hasn't spent billions dollar donations. The rest of the money is sitting in the bank accounts of the donors because of the government of Nepal.
For the last ten years we have been told an 'Africa rising' story in which continued economic growth is offered as the only measure of progress that seems to matter. It is a woefully inadequate way to understand the health of our societies at a time when we still face a number of stubborn development challenges that governments and business alone cannot solve. What we have witnessed is largely jobless growth and growth without equity. Inequality plagues us. For too many people across our continent the daily reality remains a struggle for jobs and better access to land and water, healthcare and education. Women are the backbone of many communities and could make a far greater contribution to our economies but often progress on gender equality is slow. Then there is climate change which even the Pentagon sees as the biggest threat to global security. For example, the tragedy of Darfur is now being understood as probably the worst resource war brought about by climate impacts. The scientific consensus is clear: our continent and its people will face the worst of its impacts. Those who have done the least to cause the climate crisis are already facing higher temperatures, more drought in some places and more flooding in others. Amplified by climate change the recent El Nino weather pattern has destroyed crops and livelihoods of millions of people in Ethiopia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Food prices have risen for everyone. Climate change is deepening historical inequality that has long denied people living in poverty access to services, resources and wealth. If our economies are driven by the exploitation of natural resources the proceeds often seem to benefit a few people in power which in turn further entrenches the inequalities of a neo-liberal economic system. Only occasionally do droplets of wealth ever 'trickle down'. Wealth concentrated in the hands of the few seems to fuel a psychological condition we might call 'affluenza' that afflicts far too many politicians and business leaders. They can be shameless. It is indefensible to vote for a double-digit salary increase or award yourself big bonuses when public and private sector workers alike must struggle to get an extra one or two percent. Certain leaders have developed a sense of entitlement clinging on to power for decades by tinkering with constitutions and elections to secure another term. Blood is still being spilt over this is Burundi and the threat of violence hangs over the postponed elections in the DRC. At the continental level the African Union may pass admirable resolutions on human rights and good governance but in practice serious and widespread violations are being committed without sanction. If ever our continent needed a strong, unified civil society it is now. From activists to social movements, lawyers to media we are a tremendous, collective force for good. We protect our communities, our environment and our human rights. Some of us deliver services in times of humanitarian crisis others over the long term where governments cannot. We also hold those in power to account and that is something that can be dangerous. Across Africa and indeed globally a backlash against those who speak truth to power is underway. Civil society is facing a crisis. To silence dissenting voices the right to free speech and to freedom of assembly and association are all coming under attack. Governments in over 100 countries globally and in more than half the countries in Africa have committed serious human rights violations in the last year. More governments are adopting tactics such as making foreign funding of NGOs illegal and state surveillance of online activities is on the rise as authorities fear the power of civil society to mobilise citizens and protest. Worst of all we are losing courageous activists on the frontline. Globally 156 human rights defenders were killed in 2015 and in the last few weeks the activists Sikhosiphi Bazooka Rhadebe in South African and John Waweru in Kenya have both been murdered defending their communities' rights. The terrible irony is that governments know they alone cannot meet the development challenges we face and yet the response by many is brutal repression, and many behind the scenes actions to close democratic space, of the very people, organizations and social justice movements that can offer alternative solutions.




Featured Image: Mount Everest, by Gunther Hagleitner, Creative Commons Attribution License, on Flickr.com.

By Kat Fiske

As I sat in the restaurant of a hotel in Kathmandu, I noticed a large expedition team preparing to depart for Mount Everest. As they went over their plans for the trek to base camp, I couldn't help but think about what a task it is to take on this most famous of mountains, what formidable difficulties and dangers they might face in doing so.

Climbing the mountain means facing walls of ice, bridging bottomless crevasses, keeping a sharp eye out for avalanches and sudden storms. I'm sure for many on this expedition team, Everest would be a challenge of a lifetime, but they seemed ready and well-equipped for their mission. It was this realization that jarred my thoughts back to why I was in Kathmandu in the first place - to visit communities affected by last year's devastating earthquake.

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Nepal was not ready nor well-equipped for the 7.8 magnitude quake, which struck on April 25, 2015, one year ago today, and killed nearly 9,000 people, injured more than 20,000 and destroyed more than 600,000 homes.

Among the most severely affected areas were poor rural villages, known as Village Development Committees (VDCs), near the epicenter, four of which you support through your gifts to LWR's Nepal Earthquake Response Program (NERP), which began in May 2015. Now, a year after the earthquake, my colleagues and I were in Nepal to visit some of these communities to see first-hand how they were recovering.

Krishna Patan

Stopping by Krishna Patan's small farm deep in the steep hills of Jaubari VDC in Gorkha District was an encouraging start to our trip.

He had lost his home and much of his food and livestock in the earthquake. But Krishna, who hails from generations of farmers, knew his best means to recovery was through his land. When LWR began offering trainings to help earthquake-affected farmers recover their livelihoods, he jumped at the chance to participate and learn about improved agriculture practices he could use to increase the productivity and marketability of his farm.

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As he showed my colleagues and I around his fields, Krishna said the trainings gave him a better understanding of the importance of testing his soil as well as using organic fertilizer. The trainings also gave him the idea to further diversify his crop with avocadoes, which are not a traditional crop of Nepal but can grow well in its climate. After the trainings, Krishna was inspired to think of his farming and that of his community more like an agro-business instead of merely for subsistence. He is now encouraging his farmers' group to build a crop storage facility and to market their produce collectively to get better prices and to cut down on their transportation costs.

Lamaya Bishwakarma

Lamaya Bishwakarma, whose home is in Kolki VDC in Lamjung District, also participated in LWR's agriculture trainings. She has had particular success, she told us, with the potato seeds she received from LWR after the training. In her first attempt, she was able to produce 50 kgs (110 lbs) of potatoes, ensuring her family would have food for the coming months.

As Chairperson of her ward's Lamaya took it upon herself to share her training with other Dalits in her community. Lamaya's efforts are particularly important since Dalits, as a marginalized group, often do not have access to opportunities and resources for their development.



Trekking to Recovery

In every community we visited, we found people like Lamaya and Krishna, who were doing their best to recover with the support they were receiving. Many were able to take part in cash-for-work activities, like debris clearance and road maintenance, to quickly earn income for their daily needs while also contributing to the recovery of their community as a whole. Eager to "build back safer," masons participated in LWR's trainings on earthquake resistant construction. Along the way, we were shown several demonstration buildings on which they had practiced their newly acquired construction skills. But practice was all these masons were free to do. Fearing exclusion from future support if they did not follow the Government of Nepal's authorized reconstruction plan, earthquake-affected communities waited - for an entire year - for the plan and regulations to be finalized before they could start to rebuild.

On the last day of our visit in Kolki, Jayanti Guru's story reminded us of the struggles that still await millions of Nepalis on their trek to recovery. The earthquake destroyed her home, as it did most homes in her ward. She and her ten family members now live in a small temporary shelter [pictured], which they built using construction materials LWR provided in June, like sheets of corrugated galvanized iron.

A multitude of political issues that arose in the months after the earthquake - including a four month-long blockade of the India-Nepal border - meant Jayanti, and 3 million others, suffered through a monsoon season and harsh winter without permanent shelter. The Government of Nepal only started disbursing reconstruction grants this month, and their reconstruction guidelines were just formalized last week. Abiding by the government's "one door policy" for aid coordination, INGOs, including LWR, could not move forward with permanent shelter support until these guidelines and authorization were received. LWR is now in the process of submitting its shelter proposal to the government, and we hope to begin with it as soon as possible. However, with Nepal's monsoon season starting in July, it seems unlikely that many communities will be able to rebuild before the rains come - if they can even afford to begin at all.

The Climb Ahead

Poverty is the greatest hindrance to full recovery for many Nepalis. Rural communities in Nepal lack the basic infrastructure, such as passable roads and irrigation, necessary for their development and income generation. Even with reconstruction grants, many rural Nepalis will be unable to save enough money to pay for the cheapest earthquake resistant house model approved by the government.
UNITED STATES - MARCH 8 - North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory speaks at the Wake County Republican Party 2016 County Convention at the N.C. State Fairgrounds, in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday, March 8, 2016. (Photo By Al Drago/CQ Roll Call)

It may too soon to tell, but so far North Carolina GOP governor Pat McCrory's signing of a sweeping anti-LGBT law hasn't been a great help to his re-election campaign. It would be ironic -- and just desserts -- if a cynical political move to save his campaign actually doomed it.

All winter McCrory was slightly ahead or tying with Democratic attorney general Roy Cooper in the polls, but since his signing of HB2 several weeks ago -- and since the tremendous backlash across the country and around the world -- Cooper now has a lead over McCrory by several percentage points in several polls. At the same time, a new poll shows that HB2 is deeply unpopular with the state's electorate, with only 36% of North Carolina voters supporting it.

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Again, it's early. And polls of the gubernatorial race may have little to do with HB2, as there's been a lot of dissatisfaction with McCrory for many other reasons, his approval numbers having plummeted. But it's certainly better than if McCrory saw a boost in support while anti-LGBT conservatives and groups like Family Research Council and demagogues like Ted Cruz have been heralding this bigoted law.

With the daily barrage of media attention, McCrory's re-election could fast become a referendum on HB2, and if he goes down it may be because progressive activists and Democrats took a far different approach than LGBT activists did in Houston last November, when voters rescinded the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance.

Opponents had turned the Houston ordinance -- which protected 15 classes of people against discrimination -- into " The Bathroom Ordinance," via ugly but effective ads that, like McCrory and the North Carolina GOP legislators, claimed protecting transgender people would allow predators into women's restrooms. And LGBT groups didn't strike back strongly enough with hard-hitting ads that took the bathroom issue head on -- using transgender people in the ads -- and, perhaps most critically, failed to focus in a big way on the devastating economic impact repeal would have.

The Washington, DC-based Human Rights Campaign took over the anti-repeal effort, which was criticized for not focusing on the economic impact enough and instead appealed to what Rice University political scientist Bob Stein called voters' sense of what is the "right thing to do," which he viewed as not so effective. Nicey-nice ads about good neighbors and equality and human dignity just don't cut it when the other side is being ruthless.

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But in North Carolina, not only has the economic impact of the law's passage been front and center every day, with powerful companies, major musicians like Bruce Springsteen and cities and states joining a boycott, but Democrats are committed to ads that focus on that devastating economic impact. One powerful ad already being deployed lays the economic harm to the state at McCrory's feet.

At the same time, the pressure on McCrory has been intense, at the political level and literally on the ground, as activists this week have engaged in civil disobedience meant to bring more attention and underscore the passion people have about the harmful effects of the law.

In a powerful statement of support, the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, led by the indefatigable Rev. William Barber, organized a sit-in at the state legislature's offices this week, a strategy which will only continue to escalate.

Transgender activist Mara Keisling, head of the National Center for Transgender Equality, was arrested with others in the sit-in, but only after she used the women's restroom at Pat McCrory's own office and in front of law enforcement, daring them to enforce the North Carolina anti-trans bathroom law, which they refused to do.

In the new poll, 45 percent of North Carolina voters are opposed to HB2 (while 36 percent are in favor). This is the same state that passed a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality in 2012 by more than 60 percent, perhaps showing how much things have changed in a few short years.

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It would seem that support for HB2 would need to be much higher than the current poll to help embattled McCrory in a great way, and this is only the beginning: As the backlash grows and more economic impact is felt, support for the law is only likely to decrease as voters believe McCrory has harmed the state.

It's true that other negative factors, such as a federal judge's upholding of North Carolina's harsh voter ID law this week -- which was pushed and signed by McCrory -- will no doubt come into play. The GOP, through these laws, is intent on suppressing the votes of minorities, many of whom would support the Democratic candidate. And again, other issues affecting the race will play a role in voters' decision-making.

But if McCrory loses the race, the optics of the anti-LGBT law, and the backlash against it, will be damaging to anti-LGBT conservatives. After the terrible defeat in Houston that gave anti-LGBT forces some wind at their sails, McCrory's loss could deal a blow to anti-trans bathroom bills.

That's why LGBT activists and allies must continue to do everything possible, including civil disobedience and forceful, uncompromising messaging to the public about how dangerous and detrimental these laws are to a state. If Houston taught us anything it's that pleading for equality while hate-mongers put out lies is not a winning strategy.

Michelangelo Signorile's book, It's Not Over: Getting Beyond Tolerance, Defeating Homophobia, and Winning True Equality, is now in paperback with a new afterword, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
WASHINGTON, DC: After delivering a speech at a conference marking the twentieth anniversary of the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, Brandeis University professor, Anita Hill, gives an interview on the topic of discrimination based on gender, at Georgetown University Law School on Capitol Hill Thursday, October 6, 2011. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

You may have seen the new HBO movie, Confirmation. It's about the battle over the 1991 nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court and the courageous effort by Anita Hill to tell her painful story of sexual harassment and Thomas' unbecoming behavior when they worked together at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

At the beginning of the movie, a scene takes place in the office of Sen. Ted Kennedy that propels the whole tale forward. A phone call comes in for his staffer, Ricki Seidman, and a voice on the other end of the line says, "Hey, Ricki, this is Nan at the Alliance for Justice. You know that thing we've been hearing all summer about how Thomas treated women who worked for him. I've finally found a name."

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Well, that "Nan at the Alliance for Justice" is me.

Although many younger people are discovering the remarkable Anita Hill and that hideous episode in American history for the first time, the story still feels fresh to me, and remains infuriating all these years later.

There are many ways to assess the Thomas hearings and the role of Professor Hill. On the one hand, it's an all-too-common story about sexual harassment in the workplace and the unwillingness of men (and some women) to take the issue or victims seriously. At the same time, it was a tale of mean-spirited, ruthless hard-ball politics. It was also an exercise in gross cynicism as President George H.W. Bush chose a radically conservative African-American man to replace Thurgood Marshall, one of the most revered fighters for civil liberties in our history. And, for many of us, it was, in the end, an inspiring profile in courage, a testament to a strong woman facing down humiliation, personal abuse, and outright lies. Truth was being spoken to power, and power didn't like it one bit.

But as fate would have it, Confirmation has come out in the middle of another confirmation fight that once again is very contentious, although lacking the personal rancor or scandalous elements of the Thomas fight. Of course in this case it can't get personal because the Republican majority in the Senate refuses to acknowledge the nomination and the nominee even exist.

President Obama has chosen the universally respected Merrick Garland for the seat previously held by Antonin Scalia. There is no question the stakes are as high in this circumstance as they were when Clarence Thomas was nominated. Garland, by any measure, is well within the legal mainstream, respected by people across the ideological spectrum. Scalia, on the other hand, was known for what might politely be called extreme conservatism. Nevertheless, when Garland joins the Court it will alter the ideological balance in a way that last occurred when Thomas replaced Justice Marshall.

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The nomination has become an election-year political donnybrook, with Republicans refusing even to hold a hearing, let alone a final vote. Americans aren't buying what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley are selling, though. Over 500 editorials have been written across the country denouncing their tactics. National polls consistently show that their stubborn, unprincipled, unprecedented obstruction is deeply unpopular and will affect some Senate races.

Some might find it ironic that the person who helped bring Anita Hill into the Clarence Thomas fight is complaining that a nomination has gotten too political. But that's not what I'm saying at all.

Article 2, section 2, paragraph 2 of the Constitution makes the nomination and confirmation process for Supreme Court justices inherently political. One political actor, the president, has to get approval from another set of political actors, the Senate, in order to put someone on the Court.

We may like to imagine that the Supreme Court itself isn't a political body in the same way the executive and legislative branches are, but no one can say that the process of assembling that court is anything but.

But what the Republicans are doing to Merrick Garland and Barack Obama is not legitimate politics. They aren't just actors in the drama of American democracy; they are acting in a way that is actually in opposition to democratic principles.

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The Republicans have justified their obstruction of Garland by saying that the decision about the next justice needs to be deferred until after the election so that the people can weigh in. But the relevant election has already taken place. It happened in 2012 and Barack Obama won. He gets to make the nomination. To say otherwise is to deny the legitimacy of the last presidential election, disenfranchise the 66 million people who voted for him, and to unilaterally truncate the president's term of office to three years. That's not democracy. That's not politics as it's supposed to be played. This unprecedented obstruction is an act of disrespect of the presidency, the constitutional system, and of Barack Obama himself, who has endured over seven years of endless delays and callous disregard for his judicial nominees.

Republicans won't even give him a hearing, and certainly not a vote. But, remember, even the most controversial nominees, including Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, had hearings, combative though they were. They even had final floor votes, in spite of the fact that Democrats controlled the Senate. Bork lost; Thomas was narrowly confirmed. Two of the most controversial nominees in history got hearings and votes, yet Merrick Garland, who is hardly an ideological lightning rod, gets neither.

If Republicans are concerned about the consequences of putting Merrick Garland on the Court, they should hold hearings, ask him questions, assess his record and life story, listen to what he has to say, and vote their conscience on the floor of the Senate in full view of the American people. That's what happened with Clarence Thomas and it's what should happen now.

When Anita Hill risked everything to tell the truth to the Senate Judiciary Committee, she showed extraordinary courage in the face of a political culture that didn't want to know the truth. But she believed in the system and trusted the process, even though in the end it betrayed her. The Republican obstructionists today have disrespected the system, turned their back on the process, and taken the coward's way out. If Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley had one-tenth of her guts and devotion to the Constitution they'd stop this farce and do their damn jobs.
This week is World Immunization Week and what better way to commemorate it than by discussing the facts about vaccines and the importance of herd immunity. But first...

What exactly IS a vaccine?

A vaccine is a biological agent that stimulates a person's immune system to produce immunity to a specific pathogen, protecting the person from a disease. That's how vaccines work. You get an inactivated, attenuated, or a portion of the version of the pathogen you're hoping to avoid.

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According to the CDC, routine vaccines given to children in the last two decades will prevent hundreds of millions illnesses, tens of millions hospitalizations, and prevent over 700,000 deaths. And that's just in the U.S.



Vaccinations became routine in the late 18th century, when Edward Jenner administered cowpox, which minimally affects humans, to an 8 year-old boy, so he could acquire immunity to the closely related smallpox virus, which is oftentimes deadly. After the success of the first vaccine, doctors sought to find immunizations for a multitude of common -- and deadly -- illnesses. V

accines have been created for measles, typhoid, polio, mumps, cholera, influenza, HPV, meningitis, and smallpox just to name a few.

What is "Herd Immunity"?

Another important aspect of immunization is herd immunity. According to the NIH, herd or community immunity occurs "When a critical portion of a community is immunized against a contagious disease, most members of the community are protected against that disease because there is little opportunity for an outbreak. Even those who are not eligible for certain vaccines -- such as infants, pregnant women, or immunocompromised individuals -- get some protection because the spread of contagious disease is contained."

So, choosing to get vaccinated is not only protecting yourself, but also increasing herd immunity, and as a result protecting those who are vulnerable to disease transmission.

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A Troubling Trend

Despite the effectiveness of vaccines and the importance of herd immunity, there has been a growing trend of parents choosing to forgo or delay vaccinations for their children. And while it is great that parents are taking the initiative and doing research about the health of their children, one must ask, where are they getting their facts? The choice to not vaccinate is largely based on non peer-reviewed anecdotal evidence and pseudoscience, including the fraudulent 1998 study published by a British doctor that claimed vaccines caused autism. Dr. Andrew Wakefield later admitted he falsified results and lost his medical license. However, by the time the truth was revealed, the damage was already done.

Vaccination rates have dropped substantially causing herd immunity to dip below healthy "safety thresholds." Since that study was released it has had a rippling effect throughout Europe and the United States where once eradicated diseases are now back and wreaking havoc on our herd's weakest members -- infants, those in the 2 percent who might not gain immunity from a vaccination, and those with a compromised immune system (who, subsequently, cannot be vaccinated).

In 2014, Disneyland was hit with a measles outbreak that left over 90 people infected with the disease. Last June, a 6-year old boy in Spain was the first patient in 28 years to contract the bacterial infection Diphtheria. Because of the 95 percent vaccination rate in Spain, officials needed to fly the antitoxin in from Moscow to treat the sick boy. Unfortunately, it was too late and the child died from the infection.

In California, a growing number of parents in affluent neighborhoods are choosing not to vaccinate their children. As a result, some pediatricians have even taken the stance to only see patients whose parents choose to have their child vaccinated by the age of five.

In the Westside of Los Angeles, some schools have 60-70 percent parents signing PBEs, or personal belief exemptions, so they don't have to vaccinate their kids. Those rates are so high they rival non-vaccination rates in South Sudan where they are embroiled in a civil war.

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California's New Law

However, these high PBE rates will change dramatically starting July 1, 2016. Last summer, California Governor, Jerry Brown signed SB 277, a bill that states every child must be vaccinated to attend a public or private school. If parents choose not to vaccinate their children for nonmedical reasons, they must home school them. This measure should slow or stop the spread of preventable diseases in California.
By Mario Gutierrez, Supervising Financial Counselor, New York Legal Assistance Group

In an effort to encourage Americans to establish and maintain healthy financial habits, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution in 2004 officially recognizing April as National Financial Literacy Month. Over ten years later, those poor fiscal habits are still a challenge for many people, from every economic rung on the ladder. As a financial counselor I see the consequences of these bad habits every day. A lack of knowledge about financial matters is the root cause of many poor decisions about credit, saving money, investing, banking, and many other issues that seriously threaten the financial stability and well-being of individuals and their families.

So, in honor of Financial Literacy Month 2016, my colleagues on the Financial Counseling team at NYLAG are pleased to highlight some facts about how well (or not so well) Americans are managing their personal finances these days, as well as suggested "fixes" that can help you overcome these common obstacles to better financial health.

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Most U.S. families are struggling to reach their financial goals. This might mean not saving enough for the family vacation and charging the flight on a credit card. For NYLAG's clients, it can often mean not having enough for the cheaper monthly metro card and paying for a more expensive weekly unlimited or a pay-per-ride card, or taking out illegal payday loans.

Fix: Whether on your own or with a financial counselor, you can identify obstacles and create a plan (and a budget!) to guide you. In many cases it starts with a look back to where your money is being spent, and then identifying expenses that can be cut, maximizing your income, and taking advantage of income-support benefits. Keeping your goal front and center is crucial.

Most people can recall the exact moment when they fell into their debt spiral, and it is very often when an emergency hits. Without savings on hand, you will have to either borrow money from friends and family or use your credit card.

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Fix: It's simple. Start by creating an emergency fund, and stick to it. One of the major determinants of financial security is the ability to consistently save a portion of your income. Start with whatever amount you can afford - $50 or $5 a month - and increase the contributions as you grow your income and optimize your budget.

Student loan debt passed the $1 trillion mark in 2012 - exceeding both credit card and auto loan debt. If you are not in default, but still struggling to keep up, you have a few options. You might be able to resolve a delinquency with a deferment or forbearance if you qualify, which are ways to temporarily pause monthly payments. You might even qualify for an income-driven repayment plan where your payment will be determined by your discretionary income. For tools and resources, go to www.studentloans.gov and https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/.

Fix: Once your federal student loan is in default, your options are limited. You must either rehabilitate the loan or consolidate it out of default with a new loan. Though servicers are supposed to thoroughly explain your options, you can also speak with an impartial financial counselor or professional. In addition, access the U.S. Department of Education's special portal developed for students in default at www.myeddebt.ed.gov.

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Unfortunately, the threat of medical debt doesn't seem to be subsiding. Americans pay three times more for medical debt than they do for bank and credit-card debt combined. Even with more people covered by some form of insurance, medical debt is still stymieing progress toward achieving financial goals.

Fix: Ensure that any upcoming procedures are covered under your insurance plan (See this blog by NYLAG colleague Debra Wolf for helpful tips on dealing with insurance providers.) If you have a high-deductible insurance plan, make sure that you have at least the amount of the deductible saved in your emergency fund. You might want to consider low-deductible insurance plans, but be ready to pay more in monthly premiums.

We advise many of our clients to ask for a discount before securing services. In fact, many local, government-funded hospitals offer a sliding scale for services and procedures. For the uninsured, utilize community health centers and other free or low-cost programs and services.

Fact:

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Banking is a crucial pathway to financial inclusion and security. It provides a platform for effectively managing your money. Without access to affordable banking products you are robbed of the benefits of the formal banking system and are often forced into more expensive and less secure alternatives.

Fix: There has been a lot of progress in making bank accounts accessible for low-income Americans. You still need to watch out for the fees, but banks are now offering more options and there's a proliferation of free online bank accounts. New Yorkers can take advantage of the Take It To The Bank search tool, created by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer and endorsed by NYLAG. With it, consumers can enter certain parameters and receive a list of banks that offer accounts that match those features, such as no minimum balance requirements, unlimited free transactions, and acceptance of IDNYC, the municipal ID card.
My last state political meeting had been in 2011 when I was finishing a third term as chair of the Democratic Party. Although I attended caucus and the Weld County meeting in 2012, I had not gone to the State Democratic Convention. I was restricted in how much public political actions I could do because of the position I was holding at that time.

However, this year I am supporting Hillary Clinton because she is the most qualified person to be President. I became involved in the campaign here in Colorado. I was the site manager for seven precincts in the Erie area. I was a surrogate for Secretary Clinton at the Weld County Convention and the Congressional District 4 Convention several days ago. I was also a delegate to both.

The Colorado Democratic Party State Convention was held on Saturday, April 16 in Loveland amid a mix of snow and rain. Let me say from the start that I have friends who are supporting Senator Bernie Sanders. At the precinct caucus, county and Congressional District meetings, there was enthusiasm, respect and courtesy shown to everyone from each side. At the State Convention, the only trait that carried over was the enthusiasm.

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Among Sanders supporters from Weld County, they acted just as civilly as they did at our county meetings. But to our left and down the side of the meeting hall, were some of the rudest, most disrespectful people you could have encountered. Many of those seats were held by Bernie Sanders delegates from other counties.

The catcalls, chanting, yelling during Senator Bennet's nomination speech were very upsetting. Here he stood on the stage with wife and children talking about all the hard work he has done on issues that everyone cares about, and the response was to shout and stomp feet. It was difficult for him to finish in a way that we could all hear. Disgraceful is the word for the behavior of the hecklers. This behavior was certainly not helpful to Senator Sanders but undoubtedly produced a backlash of emotions from other Democrats in the room.

Later when former Senator and former Secretary of Interior, Ken Salazar, spoke on behalf of Hillary Clinton, once again there were catcalls and shouting to block out his words. At one point he had the Clinton delegates chanting "Hillary" in order to block out the noise from the Sanders supporters. Secretary Salazar's final comments were difficult to hear.

Sanders delegates have been instructed to apply pressure on the automatic delegates. Some of them have chosen to send threatening letters and emails. The fact is that if we did not have automatic delegate status for some elected officials and party leaders, Hillary Clinton actually would be closer to the nomination. She would only need 654 more delegates to win the nomination.

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Perhaps the Democratic National Committee should revisit the issue of automatic delegates. But at best, there should be some conversation. For now, we have this system, and I would say to both candidates, win enough delegates to reach your goal without the automatic delegates. In the meantime, can we have a little civil discourse, please?

The issue of automatic delegates was brought up to be added to the platform: in specific, a requirement that the automatic delegates should apportion their votes base on the outcome of the caucuses. In accordance with the rules, the proposal could have a one minute response from each side. An activist lawyer from Weld County went up to present the opposing side and was shouted down, not once but twice, by Sanders delegates. She finally left the stage. How is that democracy?

I talked several times with a friend who is a Sanders supporter. We respect each other. The lawyer from Weld County who was shouted off the stage is a friend of hers. I sincerely believe she was dismayed by the behavior.

What is going on? One friend says that these are "Occupy Wall Street" activists who were let down. Another said that the disrespectful way candidates talk to each other in debates has set a sad example for young people. She blames television. Still another blames the media. Reporters want to get "juicy" stories so they display the worst aspects of politics.

This past Saturday, the officers of the Colorado Democratic Party, along with volunteers, worked hard to make a difficult process work. I salute them because I know how hard it is to run a statewide meeting, especially with a contested Presidential race. I was in their place in 2008.

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But in the end, there are a number of lessons that come out of this experience. First, we need a Presidential primary to pick our candidate choice. Experience in Colorado shows that the voters make a different decision than people who get through the caucus process.

Second, the DNC needs to take another look at the automatic delegates. If they choose to disband that practice, Colorado Democrats need to understand that we will have fewer delegates overall, and activists will have to compete with the Governor, Senator and U.S. House of Representatives, and the party officers for a place on the delegation.
First, let me begin by saying that the last thing that I have time for is to write about and analyze a Beyonce piece, as I am in the middle of finishing a book about health disparities and social injustice, which are issues that are deeply plaguing our community. However, in the midst of my work, a loss occurred--the loss of a complex, mysterious, purple loving Black man, that the world, particularly many Black people adored. He was a Prince. Our Prince. Now gone. While in the feelings of deep, abiding love for this Black man, one of our most beloved sisters comes forward to tell us about, what seems to be trifling behavior towards her--a personal matter. It diverted our attention from the love of a Black man who died as mysteriously as he lived, so they tell us, to anger, animosity and the repeated lament "I ain't sorry" by a sister regarding her situation.

Beyonce's Lemonade is visually appealing and the music feels good when you listen to it. Lemonade is one of those things that you just can't stop looking at as you try to grasp it and take it all in. I love the complexity of it. For example, when she emerges from a large, what appears to be, building of authority, based on its pillars and stone masonry, with water flooding under her feet, in a bright yellowish, ruffled dress, barefoot, and then reappears in platform heels, swinging a bat with intermittent moments of laughter and rage, I sat up. I looked over at my loving husband of over thirty years and the father of my children and thought, oh damn, this is the "baddest" shit I've ever seen in my life! I felt sorry for my husband for a moment because I thought, brothers all over the world, including him, must be terrified because we know that place exists in every sister! "Jealous or crazy but I'd rather be crazy"--that's some scary shit right there!

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The next morning, we went to brunch with our son and his girlfriend. We found ourselves discussing Lemonade as we sipped mimosas, that were delicious, from straws out of large mason jars. We intermittently discussed Prince and Lemonade. All the while I felt confused about which of these two topics were most important and wondered why I was discussing either because I don't know these artists personally and we seemed to be talking about their personal lives. My mind wandered about the fact that I know personally the ills of health disparities, the suffering of my people in America and the world, politics and all of the other trauma going on in our society, at large, for real. I also thought of all of the good things that I know, such as weddings, and new babies being born to family and friends, the great times I have socializing with people I know, the delicious food we were actually eating, my joyous world travels and most importantly, love of family. I consciously became aware that through media imagery, I am being deeply distracted to think and focus on issues that don't have anything to do with me at all, rather than just enjoying newly released music.

As for Lemonade, I thought, as a Black women married to a Black man for over thirty years, would I ever, under any circumstances, put the intimate aspects of any negative personal relationship matters between us, out there for the world to see? Would I emasculate my husband, father of my children, my lover, my friend in such a profound way, publicly, that perhaps he would never recover? Perhaps Lemonade is just a marketing ploy, to keep us engaged in their relationship while we constantly question, is it really about them--Beyonce and Jay-Z? is this a marketing game to keep us looking, buying, watching and then throwing distrustful gazes at each other over something that is not really real for them? But again, I found myself back in the Lemonade discussion, which will make millions of dollars for others because of our interest in it. The next morning, I watched White men and women laugh at brother Jay-Z, who is from Marcy Projects in Brooklyn and rose to be a successful artist and businessman, ridiculed and laughed at by White folks on the morning talk shows.

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Ultimately, it seems that if a Black man cheats on a Black woman, this kind of lamentation exhibited in Lemonade shows that she is in too deep in terms of her concern for whether he is bedding someone else. I know there are vows when you get married, but damn. Is our identity as Black women that predicated on where he puts his organ? If a man cheating makes a woman have to go through measures exhibited in Lemonade to "survive" his infidelity, we are not ready for the realities of love and relationships! Beyonce's questions: "did he convince you he was a God, "are you a slave to the back of his head,"am I talking about your husband or your father?" The answer to those questions should be clear, namely no, no and no! Although I love my husband, he is not my God, I am a slave to no one and what may or may not have happened between my mother and father has nothing to do with me except their union created me and I came through my mother in order to exist and I love them for that.

As I reflected on Lemonade, I could not help but think of my favorite section of Lorraine Hansberry's book, A Raisin in the Sun where she states through her character "Momma" about her son:

"There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him: what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning - because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so! when you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is."

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This is not to say infidelity should be just brushed aside. Obviously, if you know Raisin in the Sun, it is about imperfection regarding business, not intimate relationships. Her son messed up big time with the family money and his sister was majorly hating on him. The point is that the mother put loving him in a bigger context. In terms of some of the Black men in my life and relationships, I had a wonderful, Black brother, my sibling, that I loved deeply. He's gone, so young, without ever learning how to truly love. I have a beautiful Black son, who I also love deeply who is intelligent and fun-loving and learning the nuances of relationship love. I have a handsome, smart Black husband, who for over thirty years while learning all about love, learned with me. Love is not perfect. It has its ups and downs but the ups are in the sustained, long-term love, joy and commitment to each other. Lemonade is not solely about making lemonade out of the lemons of cheating, as an example, but recognizing the wholeness of each other and the complications that exist between Black men and women, in relationships, in a society that does not love Black people, in general.

In lemonade, one line that I love is "if we are going to heal, let it be glorious." We must be glorious together. If we decide we can't tolerate the actions of each other, then we should let go and move on or hold on tighter, in the midst of our imperfection and heal together, gloriously. Public lynching, by Black women, however, of Black men can't be where we are now. Afterward, if our men are still slightly breathing, will we cut them down from the tree, revive them and wash their wounds from the whip that has scarred their imperfect backs and bathe it, put ointment on it and then let them back inside, with scars of shame? Now, ashamed and eager to go back into that safe haven inside of us, their strength, we are willing to take their now weak bodies, minds and spirits back inside of us after emasculating them. Will we really love them again while they experience the shade and scorn of others through their public glances for something so personal? Should the public be involved?

Black women, no one wants to endure a man or woman "cheating," in a society that has told us that there is ONE man for each woman and ONE woman for each man. Monogamy is a bitch for many because if you look back in history, it did not exist in most parts of the world. Intimacy was about something else--namely populating the world, along with pleasure. The problem with it all was, unfortunately, male domination ensued in the process. But we have perhaps evolved to something else; something that has created expectations that for most are impossible to fill. If we look at divorce rates and separation rates, we see how difficult it is to accomplish. You have to be willing to pursue monogamy in your relationships, both, men and women, with everything you have and to understand that neither person in the relationship is perfect. We have to understand that as in Lemonade when we look at the beautiful mothers who have lost their sons to police brutality, that Black women are mothers of these Black men, who society randomly took from us, either by death or mass incarceration. What we can do is raise those young Black men, that are still amongst us, with a purpose. We can try and teach them that loving a Black woman, takes courage, strength, and fidelity to the commitment of love. They must know that it will be hard work but we need each other for protection and survival. If we cheat on each other, in a society that tells us that monogamy is the way, infidelity breaks this ideal notion of love, which perpetuates mainstream society's idea that we can't do what they also are NOT doing successfully.

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As Black women, our strength does not exist in terms of whether or not the man we love cheats on us or not. If and when he does, it's his loss, especially when Black women give their all to the relationship. Black women must know that with or without a man's fidelity, we are whole, we are free and we are absolutely beautiful. I long for the voice of Maya Angelou to speak to our young Black girls and young women just learning how to love and be loved by a black man to say:

Men themselves have wondered

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can't touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them,

They say they still can't see.

I say,

It's in the arch of my back,

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

These are the instructions that I passed on to my beautiful, intelligent, daughter, with hopes that she will pass them on to her children as my mother passed this on to me. Beyonce states in Lemonade: "my grandma said, nothing that is real can be threatened." That is the real deal right there. We can not be cut in half by infidelity. It's too trivial.

In short, we can love and be loved and know that with everything, we can make lemonade out of lemons. But we must also know, that the next time we squeeze lemons to make lemonade and add sugar to make it sweet and tasty, that the Black men that we choose are not the lemons to be sweetened but just like anyone else are flawed, imperfect and that is what makes the lemonade taste so good when it is mixed right. It is the fusion of all of those things together, lemons (each of us), sugar (sweetness from each of us) and water (what each of us all need to survive and what we are mostly made of). You bring all of that together, expecting perfect deliciousness (love). Sometimes it's too tart, sometimes it needs more sugar and sometimes the water is just not right. The last thing we want to happen is on a hot summer day when we drink that cool, refreshing glass of lemonade, to always think of it metaphorically as what we made from the imperfections of our Black men. We must love ourselves. Regardless. I end with number 3 and 4 of Alice Walker's definition of Womanists:

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"3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.


Agriculture is the biggest source of water pollution in the United States, and it remains largely outside the law. (Alexander Wishkoski/Istock)

A headline in the Des Moines Register recently attempted to reassure readers that "Iowa's Water Rarely Exceeds Lead Limits." This statement isn't the confidence-booster it's meant to be. For one thing, federal limits on lead in drinking water aren't protective enough, especially for those most vulnerable to lead poisoning: pregnant women and bottle-fed infants. And the foremost water issue for many in Des Moines isn't lead (although it may well be a concern). It's pollution from the farms that surround the city, which is infiltrating the city's drinking water supply.

Flint's water crisis has drawn national attention to a health threat faced by communities across the country: exposure to lead in drinking water. Stronger federal limits on lead and proper testing and treatment by water utilities, which often flout the law when it comes to lead, will help make drinking water safer. But water pollution from big industrial farms remains largely outside the purview of the law.

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Agriculture is responsible for the majority of water pollution in the U.S. According to a report by the National Water Quality Inventory, agricultural pollution is "the leading source of water quality impacts on surveyed rivers and lakes, the second largest source of impairments to wetlands and a major contributor to contamination of surveyed estuaries and ground water." Agricultural pollution threatens the drinking water of millions of people from Midwestern cities to California farmworker communities to North Carolina's hog belt. Every time it rains, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and animal wastes from industrial farming operations wash off fields and into streams and rivers where they can contaminate drinking water supplies.

In Des Moines, heavy spring rains have driven nitrate pollution in the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers to record highs in recent years. Nitrates have been linked to miscarriages and cancers, and they can cause a rare but sometimes fatal illness known as "blue baby syndrome." (Exposed infants lose the ability to transport oxygen in their blood, causing them to turn blue.)

The problem exists throughout much of the Midwest. Ninety percent of Iowa's land is used for agriculture, and more than 60 towns and cities across the state have battled high nitrate levels in drinking water over the past five years. In Ohio, many people are still wary after a 2014 toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie, linked to phosphorus fertilizer from cornfields, contaminated the city of Toledo's water system.

While Earthjustice and others fight on behalf of communities that lack safe drinking water, we also work to keep agricultural pollution out of waterways in the first place. One way to prevent water pollution is to scale up the use of more sustainable farming and animal husbandry techniques.

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In Iowa, some farmers are beginning to adopt cover crops, which are planted during the off-season to protect soil. Rye and oats, for example, prevent soil from eroding in the winter. Peas and beans help lock nitrogen into the soil, keeping it out of the water and available for next season's crops. Since 2009, the amount of cover crop acreage in Iowa has grown from 10,000 to 300,000 acres. However, that's still only about 2 percent of Iowa's cropland.

Other farmers are rediscovering the ancient technique of intercropping -- growing multiple crops like corn, beans and squash on the same field -- which improves soil health and reduces the need for pesticides and fertilizers. Rotating crops throughout the year, rather than planting only corn, also helps farmers cut back on chemical use. Buffer strips of grass, planted alongside streams and wetlands, can help keep fertilizer out of waterways.

Some farmers in Ohio are experimenting with technological solutions, such as drones and GPS systems, to help make fertilizer application more precise and timely. The USDA just launched a three-year, $41 million initiative to support farmers who are working to keep pollution out of Lake Erie.

However, such initiatives pale in comparison to the billions of taxpayer dollars that support the industrial farming of corn and soy. As long as crop insurance and other subsidies make corn and soy the most secure crops a farmer can grow, there's little incentive to run a small-scale, diversified farm. And as long as agricultural operations are exempt from the Clean Water Act -- the fundamental instrument that keeps water pollution at bay -- there's little incentive for farmers to make investments in techniques that reduce pollution.

We need to ensure that utilities are adequately testing and treating our drinking water, and we also need to work harder to keep pollution out of waterways in the first place. If there's one thing we've learned from Flint, it's that failure to protect water supplies can be a tragic public health and economic miscalculation. Changing U.S. farm policy to encourage more sustainable farming, as well as holding the agriculture industry to the standards of the Clean Water Act, will help protect safe drinking water for millions of Americans.

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The idea of the city skyscraper, of building up instead of out, was first dreamt up back in Chicago's frontier days. But to those, like me, who spend a lot of time squinting up at these towers to the sun, Manhattan has the richer and more varied crop of spires that are not shy about seeming decorative or grand--that, like New York, itself, are not afraid to show off.

Think of the word "skyline" for example, and only Manhattan can come to mind, for it is here that skyscrapers cluster together like straphangers on a train, looming over shadowy avenues and side-streets, and adding their spectacular layers, cupolas and points to the silhouette of the city as a whole.

My grandfather's family were builders of New York apartments and hotels, and one of the first things he taught my brother and me was how to get views of the best of the tall buildings, and how to paint these on the pocket-sized canvases he set up for us in his studio, 14 stories above Seventh Avenue. And paint them we did: rocket-topped structures that looked like they were ready to take off, and sometimes, to his delight, skyscrapers shown after dark with lemon-yellow windows shining out like beacons in the night sky.

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In honor of those times, here is a New York City skyscraper tour of the type my grandfather, H.R. Mandel, might have given, sketchpad in hand. The city's truly classic skyscrapers, most of which rise more than 50 stories and were built prior to 1965, can be chopped up into three manageable afternoon walks: one in midtown, one downtown, and one in the Wall Street area.

Classic Skyscrapers: Midtown

A good way to ease into looking at skyscrapers is to start with one that is not too famous, not too austere, and, well, not even all that tall. The Fred F. French Building at 551 Fifth Avenue (between 45th and 46th Streets) is worth a visit though because of the crayon-colored brick that jazzes up some of its upper stories and because of the strikingly beautiful stamped-metal decoration in the portico and lobby. Built in 1927, the building's style is recognizably Art Deco, but with enough Middle Eastern and Moorish twists to make a sultan feel at home.

From here, head downtown a few blocks, dodge the hot-dog carts and pretzel men in front of the public library, and turn west on 40th Street until you see the ominous, black-brick American Radiator Building (40 W. 40th, between 5th and 6th Avenues). Glowering in its gold-painted trim, this ebony giant packs a punch that few modern buildings can match and, come to think of it, looks a bit like a radiator itself. Designed by the firm of Hood & Fouilhoux in the 1920s, it's an eye-popping example of how zoning laws passed early in the 20th century squeezed New York's taller buildings into wedding-cake shapes with narrower and narrower layers towards the top.

Just a few blocks north and east of here looms what may be the swankiest skyscraper of them all, the pointy-tipped Art Deco Chrysler Building at Lexington and 42nd which, for several months after it was finished in 1930 (and before the Empire State Building was topped off), reigned as the tallest building in the world. Although no longer owned by the car company, this William van Alen landmark is decorated with winged radiator caps and metal gargoyles shaped like hood ornaments, and its gleaming marble lobby was, for many years, used as a showroom for fresh-off-the-line Chrysler cars. The chrome-nickel spire may have nothing to do with automobiles, but its spiky sunbursts (lighted at night) say plenty about progress and the power of the Industrial Age.

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Still on 42nd Street, but a block-and-a-half further east, is the longtime Daily News Building (220 E. 42nd) which isn't much to look at from the outside, but whose lobby offers not just elevators and polished floors but a head-scratching array of wind and temperature gages, time-zone clocks from far and near, and a giant revolving globe which is surrounded by Ripley's Believe It Or Not-style signs which say things like: "If the SUN were the size of this GLOBE and placed here, then comparatively the EARTH would be the size of a WALNUT and located at the main entrance to Grand Central Terminal."

To round out the midtown section of your tour, head back to Lexington and turn north to 51st Street where you won't be able to walk past the original General Electric Building at 570 Lexington. Another skyscraper layered like a cake, this one was built in 1931 with soothing orange brick, rounded corners, and a proud central tower that rockets out of its base to rise another 20 floors. Inside, there's a sparkling Art Deco lobby that's as bright as day, and old-style elevators soaring and descending with the howl of a haunted wind.

Classic Skyscrapers: Downtown

Scrunched into the narrow triangle where Fifth Avenue meets Broadway at the corner of 23rd Street, the Flatiron Building looks a lot like an old-fashioned iron (which, of course, explains how it got its name). Built by the noted architect, Daniel Burnham, in 1902, the Flatiron is Manhattan's oldest skyscraper and one of its most dramatic, because of its rakish angle and because there's nothing crowding it on either side. Stand smack in front of it, or back off to stare at its prow from across the street. There are few views like it. The old saying, "23-skiddoo," was born here when wind currents kicked up by the Flatiron along 23rd Street flipped up women's petticoats and policemen had to "skiddoo" leering gentlemen.

Just across Madison Square Park to the east is another New York landmark, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower (One Madison Ave., between 23rd and 25th) which, for four years after it was completed in 1909, had its moment in the sun as the tallest building in the world. Modeled after the famous campanile in Venice's Piazza San Marco, the tower was known to my family as "the Faraway Clock" as we could just catch sight of its distant hands and face at night from our dining room to try and keep tabs on our approaching bedtimes. The lobby has a superb series of murals of "Pilgrims at Plymouth" by the famous children's book illustrator, N.C. Wyeth, although the security guards don't want to let you past their station to get a good look.

The Empire State Building at 34th and Fifth is visible from every corner of Manhattan and visited by almost every tourist, but if, for some reason, you've never ridden up to the observation deck, you should. It's fun to try and jump up at the exact moment the high-speed elevator begins to slow, for what can be a second or two of weightlessness. Completed in the depths of the Depression by the firm of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, this longtime height champion was topped off by a mooring mast that was supposed to be used to tie up dirigibles.

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Classic Skyscrapers: Wall Street

Only steps away from Ground Zero is the little-known New York Telephone Company Building at 140 West Street, between Barclay and Vesey Streets. Although the current owner has cluttered it up with modern insignias and flags, you can still snag a sense of Art Deco grandeur and then duck inside the lobby to gaze up at the tapestry-like ceiling murals of North and Central American Indians. Among the bas-reliefs that you can hunt down are some showing off bears, babies, grapes, parrots and panthers.

A few blocks east of here looms one of the most lavish and energetic buildings ever built. Nicknamed "The Cathedral of Commerce," the delightfully gothic Woolworth Building (233 Broadway) was commissioned by five-and-dime king F.W. Woolworth to deck out his corporate offices in the details and doo-dads he so admired in European architecture. Rather than being morose like some gothic stuff, this light-colored landmark even has a sense of humor about its nearly nutty elegance, with oddball owl and frog gargoyles and carved caricatures in the lobby depicting architect Cass Gilbert and Woolworth, himself, in the act of counting out his nickels and dimes.
The set up is a novelist's dream, a party chair's nightmare -- a mortally wounded presidential candidate reeling toward the nomination, guaranteed in November to drag the party and its candidates into an open grave. And this nightmare has a sequel: maddened by defeat, the party's factions scrape against each other to create a devastating political earthquake, shattering all hope of resurrection.

Such is the all too real world of Reince Priebus.

The protagonist of his sleepless nights is, of course, Donald Trump. By now, one need not catalog the ignorance, truculence, misogyny and racism which will doom Republicans in the fall. But these fatal flaws have given Trump a base of support among primary voters as obdurate as granite. He has become the bone in the GOP's throat which cannot be dislodged.

Focus groups conducted by Peter Hart -- the gold standard for this sort of thing -- spell out why. Many of Trump's followers have misgivings about his excesses; others don't truly believe that he can build a wall or deport every illegal immigrant. Some don't even care that much. What cements them to Trump is deeper -- a psychic bond too visceral to sunder.

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Central to this is a perception of "strength" -- that Trump will stand up to the establishment which shuns them and terrorists who threaten them. Specifics do not matter. What counts is that Trump gives voice to their anger, frustration and fear, the soul-deep sense that America has betrayed them.

Lodged within this is racial animus exacerbated by the election of Barack Obama. It is salient that Trump first surfaced riding the Trojan horse of birtherism, jam-packed with loathing of our first black president. That Trump rallies seethe with racial antagonism is no accident -- he is the avatar for those who feel that whites, not minorities, are the victims of discrimination and disdain.

Confronted with this disturbing phenomenon, the GOP establishment ran in both directions: some surrendered too soon; others went after Trump too late. After dithering for months, the donor classes have funded over $70 million in attack ads which have driven Trump's disapproval ratings sky high -- two thirds of all Americans, and a substantial plurality of Republicans. The result is paradoxical: they have helped destroy him as a general election candidate while persuading his followers that they and Trump share a common enemy, cementing a base of support which will likely prove sufficient to secure the nomination.

Worse yet, they have been thwarted by a broadcast media, desperate for ratings, which seized on Trump like oxygen in human form. Our screens are filled with Trump interviews; Trump rallies; Trump town halls; Trump tweets; Trump relatives. By now Trump has received well over $2 billion in free media, swamping his Republican rivals. To a remarkable degree, the television establishment has insulated Trump from the Republican establishment -- and from the laws of political gravity.

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And so he staggers on, his unfitness ever more apparent, accumulating delegates as he tramples all hope of unity with the heedlessness of a drunk who cannot stop drinking. He castigates the party for its unfairness; decries its "rigged" selection of delegates; threatens riots in Cleveland; refuses to support any nominee by himself. He demands control over the convention so that he can infuse a "showbiz" quality, and muses aloud about firing Priebus.

His ally, Roger Stone, has started a website calling for protests at the convention so that Trump supporters can "own the streets." The Cleveland police are investing in riot gear, and prominent Republican officeholders have decided to stay away. In the meanwhile, Trump daily dispels the fantasy that he can expand the GOP electorate, alienating suburbanites and women by the score.

The advent of professionals within Trump's campaign increases his chances of winning in Cleveland without addressing the problem of Trump himself. His policy positions change from day to day, confirming his weightlessness as a potential president. And the barely credible suggestion that once nominated he will recalibrate his rhetoric and persona casts him as a self-absorbed shape shifter, whose sole reason for running is that, in whatever guise, he's " Trump."

But within the party one can hear the rising murmur of resignation, including from Priebus himself. The squeamish hopes that some Republicans have invested in Ted Cruz are foundering on the narrowness of his appeal. Trump obliterated him in New York, dispelling the myth that Cruz can serve as a magnet for the stop-Trump movement. In truth, Cruz is a regional candidate, reduced in today's Northeastern primaries to fighting John Kasich for table scraps. When the results sink in, the sense of Trump's momentum could turn the anti-Trump firewall to rubble.

Weeks ago, Trump destroyed the core of Cruz's strategy by piling up victories in the South. So why should anyone imagine that the Cruz agenda will mesmerize America? He opposes all gun control measures. He would force the victims of rape and incest to bear children. He denounces gay marriage and gay rights. He echoes Trump's calls for mass deportations and says that the neighborhoods of American Muslims should be "secured" by law enforcement. And then there is this -- why would voters warm to a man his colleagues despise?

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They won't. Cruz is dead demagogue walking. A big chunk of his support comes from voters who simply don't like Trump. But Trump represents a bigger chunk of people who don't like Cruz, and support their man with a fervor Cruz will never match. As for the tenuous last-ditch agreement between Cruz and Kasich to divide up Indiana, New Mexico and Oregon, it seems doomed to failure.

To start, it came way too late to make much difference -- at this point it is less a compelling strategy than a measure of Cruz's desperation. It also assumes the unlikely: first, that the great majority of Cruz and Kasich voters will go along; second, that it will work despite the complex mechanisms for allocating delegates in the forthcoming primary states, often by awarding them proportionally or to the winner in demographically varied districts; third, that the erstwhile competitors can find a modus vivendi for the biggest prize, California.

Worst of all, this calculating alliance between opposites will give Trump fresh evidence of a conspiracy against him, solidifying his followers' support while further alienating them from the party. Far more than arcane delegate rules, the two-headed monster of Cruz and Kasich personifies establishment perfidy.

Where this goes is plain to see. Whether or not Trump clinches the nomination before Cleveland, he will have a commanding delegate lead over Cruz, for whom a first-ballot majority -- or even anything close to that -- is mathematically impossible. And any sane Republican insider will perceive reality soon enough -- that Cruz's strategy for winning the nomination on the convention floor is electoral suicide.

Like his pact with Kasich, the plan is blatantly Machiavellian and self-serving, the very essence of Ted Cruz: making up the yawning delegate gap by recruiting double agents -- delegates who will abandon Trump for Cruz on the second ballot, nullifying the result of state primaries. For the party to somehow maneuver a Cruz nomination -- let alone by transparent trickery -- would be a poison pill, outraging Trump's supporters and repelling voters at large. As Peter Hart puts it, "Trump may be a disaster for their hopes in winning back the White House, but denying him may be an even bigger disaster for the party's hopes of retaining its majorities on Capitol Hill."

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This goes double for alternative saviors, whether Kasich or the second coming of Mitt Romney. Which is why Paul Ryan, no fool, ran in the opposite direction.

But Trump is the tremor which presages an earthquake. For the fissures which will roil the convention will fracture the party for years to come.

The most shattering is the fear and loathing between Trump's blue-collar base and the wealthy donors and ideological conservatives who have labeled them electoral lowlife.

This poisonous contempt is the party's due bill for all the years of diversionary rhetoric designed to win votes from working-class Americans. But the establishment's true agenda -- lower taxes, free trade, deregulation and fiscal discipline -- did nothing to improve their lives.

The role of free trade in alienating blue-collar voters is, by now, obvious -- and rocket fuel for Trump. Less widely noted is that Republican legislators squelched programs to ameliorate its effects. As Steven Rattner pointed out in the New York Times, the Republican Congress killed Obama's proposals for larger tax credits for child care; investing in community colleges; helping make retirement plans portable; and giving tax relief to manufacturing communities.

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The same fate met programs to retrain workers; help them relocate when their jobs went overseas; or temporarily supplement their wages if they were compelled to take a lesser job. Ditto for payroll tax cuts and creating an infrastructure bank to fund thousands of construction jobs. The coup de grace was cutting back on food stamps. In sum, the GOP establishment -- epitomized by Ryan -- waged a class war against its base.

The base noticed. Donald Trump is the expression of their anger, not the cause. They are through with drinking the GOP's Kool-Aid.

Outraged, the dispensers of the Kool-Aid have turned on their erstwhile victims with the ferocity of a Rottweiler. Allow me to treat you to a few paragraphs of Kevin Williamson in the National Review, showing what happens when a "true conservative" feels spurned by lesser beings:

It wasn't immigrants from Mexico... There wasn't some awful disaster. There wasn't a war or a famine or plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence -- and the incomprehensible malice -- of poor white America... The truth about these dysfunctional downscale communities is that they deserved to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs... The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump's speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn't analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means they need real change, which means that they need U-haul.

To say the least, this marriage is unlikely to be saved. The Paul Ryans of the party are unrepentant; the GOP's hitherto most reliable followers have now identified the class enemy. The rise of Donald Trump is only the beginning.

But less advantaged Republicans are at odds with another element of the party -- the neocons who gave them the Iraq war. This epic foreign-policy disaster created an epidemic of the dead; the hideously wounded; the emotionally traumatized; the intellectually maimed; the alcoholic, drug addicted and suicidal. These soldiers were twice betrayed - first overseas, then by a Veterans Administration which treated them like cattle.

The veterans who pay this terrible price are not the children of Republican donors, officeholders, or theoreticians -- they are the sons and daughters of people the ideologues now scorn. Those who love them are done with the wars of armchair generals.

But no schism is complete without religious conflict. Republicans have that, too.

For years the GOP bought off white evangelicals by preaching that old-time religion -- ban abortion, fight gay rights, and rail against the separation of church and state. For the Republican establishment, this was a cheap and easy way to gain votes for their economic program. But much of the the fundamentalist agenda has been routed -- as the religious rank-and-file notices their paychecks shrinking, their failed leaders are doubling down.

Hence efforts in Georgia, North Carolina and Mississippi to flail against gay rights -- barring anti-discrimination laws and promoting the "religious freedom" of businesses to spurn gay customers. But at last the GOP's business leaders are objecting -- not on moral grounds, but pragmatic ones: this kind of stuff is a loser among young people, and bad for business at that.

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In short order, business interests impressed this lesson on the Republican governor and legislators of North Carolina, severing their ties with the state, even as uneasy corporations are cutting back their funding for the GOP convention. Here, again, key elements of the party are pulling in opposite directions which cannot be reversed.

Finally, the fight between Trump and Cruz will deepen all these fractures going forward. Both will lose in November; all that differs are the details of fragmentation. The defeat of Trump will lead to right-wing recriminations against both his followers and the party establishment, intensifying the internecine warfare which will further shrink the party's electorate. The defeat of Cruz will eviscerate the claim that the GOP can win the presidency by moving hard-right, aggravating the schism between the ideologues and everyone else. The center cannot hold.

It is hard to kill off a major political party. The Republicans proved that between 1964 and 1968, rallying from the Goldwater debacle to win the presidency with Richard Nixon. But that was then, when the Democrats were riven by the war in Vietnam.

Now the Democrats are having an honest fight -- nasty, to be sure, but one whose premises are commonly understood: that a society does better when more of its citizens thrive, and that helping to ensure this is a legitimate concern of government.

Not so the Republicans. They are structurally fragmented and ideologically incoherent, an agglomeration of sects with irreconcilable differences. Their only common denominator is that all are at war with the changing demographics which, at the presidential level, are doing the party in.

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In short, the GOP of 2016 is Humpty Dumpty. He has had a great fall, and cannot be put together again, at least as we have known him -- not in 2020, or ever. Whatever takes his place will look so different that Humpty would not know it.
Arms raised for voting.

The theory has recently been put forth by talking heads and political pundits that if a party convention were to nominate a candidate other than one who received a plurality (but not a majority) of primary votes, that candidate would suffer from a lack of "legitimacy".

This theory reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the role parties play in the election process set forth in the constitution. In fact, political parties are not even mentioned in the constitution, reflecting that a large number of founding fathers didn't even contemplate the future existence of political parties, and if they did, certainly not along the lines of those which evolved in the parliamentary system of the mother country from which they declared independence. George Washington belonged to no established political party, but political parties soon began to coalesce around those who had different visions of federalism.

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The two party system that ultimately evolved is virtually unique among the world's democracies. Even in Great Britain, a three party system requires the creation of fragile and often unstable coalitions in order to govern, and in multi-party presidential systems such as exist in France, voters are often faced with contentious "run-offs" that often present voters with a stark choice between two candidates who, though only winning only a small percentage of the votes in the first round, nevertheless make the final round --despite being opposed by an overwhelming majority of voters-- only because their thin pluralities were slightly greater than a multitude of other party candidates.

There is, of course, nothing in the Constitution that forbids the creation of political parties, and in fact the First Amendment rights of association gives parties the right to make their own rules for how it selects a nominee. While over the past decades the two major political parties have sought to provide their convention delegates with advice and guidance from voters in the form of primaries and caucuses, no party has yet seen the need to provide a national "run-off" system when there are multiple candidates for the nomination. But of course, that is the purpose of a convention. If the theory that a party should be bound to nominate a candidate who won only a plurality of primary votes but less than a majority had any validity, there would of course not be any reason for holding a convention at all. As a practical matter then, conventions perform the sole function of providing a "run-off", and a candidate who may have won a plurality of primary votes, but is opposed by two-thirds of the elected delegates, is not likely to fare well in such a runoff. The notion that such a runoff is somehow "undemocratic" is not only a novel one, but one which if implemented would eviscerate any party's rational goal of nominating a candidate who has the best chance of winning the general election.

Consider the unlikely but not impossible scenario in which twenty candidates seeks a party's nomination. (Perhaps not so unlikely, considering that there were fourteen original candidates seeking the Republican party nomination). Assume further that after all primaries and caucuses are conducted, each candidate has won five percent of the votes, except one who received four percent, and another who received six percent. Would any rational political scientist suggest that only the candidate who received the six percent plurality would be a "legitimate" nominee?

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What remains endlessly hinted at about the 2016 presidential race, but not fully articulated, is that something enormous -- bigger than politics, bigger than America itself, perhaps -- is trembling and kicking just below the surface, struggling to emerge.

I have a name to suggest for this hypothetical phenomenon: the New Enlightenment. Nothing less than that seems adequate.

There are millions of midwives at the ready -- angry, despairing citizens -- desperately hoping to assist in the birthing process . . . by being part of the Bernie Sanders campaign. I say this with full cognizance of the flawed, compromised nature of politics in general and the Democratic Party in particular. The political process is a stew of money and competing interests, power, compromise, cynicism and secret deals. But that's not all it is.

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It's also the opening to our collective future. A failure to acknowledge this leaves the process in the hands of those who think they own it.

The New Enlightenment?

The old Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, which began sweeping across the consciousness of Western Civilization in the 17th and 18th centuries, implanted science, democracy and capitalism at our social foundations and fomented the industrial revolution. But the shortcomings of this enlightenment are many. Slavery, for instance, flourished through much of the Age of Reason. So did war. So did genocide. The worst of who we are maintained its grip on power. We have yet to begin implementing our deepest values in the social and political realm.

The political mindset that sees Hillary Clinton as the pragmatic candidate in the Democratic race is unable to see beyond the parameters of a stunted political system. What she has accomplished in her political career is essentially defined by that stunted system, which not only serves (often in secrecy) the interests of those already in power, but fails to envision the implementation of power except in domination over some enemy or other.

This is illustrated with agonizing clarity by the recent controversy over the tough-on-crime and "welfare reform" policies of the Bill Clinton presidency in the 1990s, which, of course, Hillary supported and promoted, and which have begun coming back to haunt her. While the "war on crime," the backlash against social spending and the implementation -- via imprisonment -- of what Michelle Alexander has labeled the new Jim Crow, got seriously underway in the Reagan era, Clinton continued and promoted rather than tried to undo these policies.

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As Alexander wrote recently in The Nation: "Despite claims that radical changes in crime and welfare policy were driven by a desire to end big government and save taxpayer dollars, the reality is that the Clinton administration didn't reduce the amount of money devoted to the management of the urban poor; it changed what the funds would be used for. Billions of dollars were slashed from public-housing and child-welfare budgets and transferred to the mass-incarceration machine." (Italics mine.)

She added that: "By 1996, the penal budget was twice the amount that had been allocated to food stamps" and "funding for public housing was slashed by $17 billion . . . while funding for corrections was boosted by $19 billion."

The result of all this, as Alexander and others have noted -- and that Black Lives Matter activists recently brought to the forefront of the 2016 presidential campaign, confronting Bill Clinton as he campaigned for his wife -- is that African-American incarceration rates went through the roof and families and communities were shattered. This phenomenon has resulted in recent, stunning apologies from former supporters of Clinton-era tough-on-crime policies.

For instance, U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush of Chicago, a one-time Black Panther, tore his heart out in an MSNBC interview this month over his support of that bill. "I am ashamed of my role. I sincerely apologize to my God, I apologize to my community, to my family," he said, lamenting that, in his urgent desire to deal with the devastating impact of crime and crack in the black community, he became ensnared in single-focus thinking: "locking them up, keeping them in jail."

Despite the anguished sincerity of Rush's apology, I remain pierced by the question: Why?

Why did sheer, vindictive punishment loom in that moment as the solution to crime? Why was Reagan still the de facto president, with the head of his chosen scapegoat still on the altar of American politics? Bill Clinton's Democrats surrendered to Reaganism: to the pursuit of black "super-predators" and the defunding of "welfare queens." They surrendered to racism, as American as apple pie. The New Deal was dead and the Old Deal had reclaimed control over American politics and American thought. And it's still in control today, settled and unquestioned at the level of the political status quo.

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"Of course 'sorry' isn't enough, given the magnitude of the harm that has been done," Alexander wrote, referring to Rush's apology. "A brand new system of racial and social control has been born again in the United States, one that has functioned as a literal war on poor communities of color."

The focus, she says, must be on rebuilding these communities that have been so devastated over recent decades. Yes, yes . . . but I would push it further. Social spending must be utterly redirected away from prisons and punishment, away from militarism and war, and toward the construction of real peace. The original New Deal was conceived in coexistence with war, but war eventually consumed it.

The cry of the New Enlightenment must be heard: Do not dehumanize! The only true enemy is the darkness we all share, lodged deeply in the collective human heart. When we try to kill it in "the enemy," we kill ourselves.

- - -

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.


Courtesy of Pranay Pandey, Bianka Bell, and Oblivion Magazine

This design, originally proposed by Bard College student Coriana Johnson, depicts colorblindness as a form of whitewashing. In rejecting the connection between race, culture, and identity, the default color becomes white.

Many of us, as young adolescents, have been given tremendous context as to what is considered beautiful and worthy in terms of skin color. Some of us have even been referred to skin lightening creams to resemble a lighter image of ourselves. We have been taught that "color" matters, with acceptance and beauty weighted in favor of lightness. There is no truer portrait of the self-hatred permeating among people of color than the one extolled by such an ideology. And even when we are described as beautiful, we remain perplexed and sadly reject this view because of the seduction of colorism. It shows that, although we acknowledge that our skin tones do not reflect the strengths and authenticity we hold deep inside, this kind of evil runs deeper than the melanin that resonates with the pain of living in a bubble of white privilege; one that proves deadly to our identities.

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We have people who prefer to "wash away" their color, if they can. We have people who are simply ashamed because they are a darker shade than their friend of the same race/ethnicity. To say the least, our image of color has sadly become perverted and racialized. External beauty now requires more validation than ever, and that is the reason for why skin tone inequality operates so successfully. This devaluation of the deeper business of feeling beautiful and worthy has also come to surface in public dialogue about the new form of racism: colorblindness.

What exactly is colorblindness?

Colorblindness professes a new wave of thinking to end discrimination by treating everyone as equally as possible; disregarding race, culture, and ethnicity. Such notion entails a lack of acknowledgment of the very real ways in which racism has persisted and continues to do so, both systematically and on an individual level.

Nestled in a intellectualized, white-washed bubble, race is underestimated for its underlying destructive connotations that ultimately robs people of their freedom to embrace their identities as a whole. There is no precedent for such a trajectory that encourages people to adopt a dangerous approach that attests to the fact that "we're all just people". This new wave of thinking avoids conversations on race. It's a total no-no. It invalidates the racial issues that marred us as a society. Colorblindness naively suggests that the depths of racism experienced in our past are of a bygone society although they very much affect individuals till this day. Yet, many are "blind" to the ways society caters to colorism and racial disparities.

But isn't colorblindness trying to see people for who they are despite their race?

No. We live in a society that superficially obscures colorism with colorblindness in a counterproductive way in which color becomes the problem. It falsely equates color with something uncomfortable and negative. Denying people their identities only harkens back to how internally segregated they already felt in the past when they were reminded of how dark and different they were. Not only that, colorblindness is a toxic force vulnerable to ignoring the determining factor - race - in linguistic racism, health disparities in racial minority communities, and microaggressions alike. How do you plan to eradicate these issues without talking about the pertinence of racial categories? If race truly does not matter, such disparities embedded in language, health, and behavior, simply would not exist.

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So how DO we promise equality for all then?

First, and foremost, we need to stop pretending race is off the table. It's not. Race is inherently tied to culture, language, and tradition. It is a central part of people's' identities that is very real and entangled with judgement, success, and quality of life. Instead, we need to utilize the oppression, subjection to violence and internalization, and turn these things into conversation pieces to allow us to work through our opposing views. We need to stop resisting the resistance on how our melanin is racialized and, inevitably, white-washed through colorism and racism. Stories need to be heard and given their deserved attention if we want true progress. Who benefits from ignoring such conversations? Not the ones who already feel subordinated by their skin color. If we can't have a healthy and honest dialogue, how can we ever move towards ending racial oppression?

Doing a person of color a favor by treating them like a white person (or, in other words, like a human being) does not do justice to the equality movement. Having savaged that straw man, those who adhere to this form of colorblindness contribute to the perpetuation of oppression. If we want a shift of perspective - a shift of morals - it is crucial that we become conscious of the privileges and prejudices that come as a result of our colors. THIS is how we prompt action towards letting go of racist fears that still bind us to the prejudices we've internalized.
Lord John Alderdice is a Northern Ireland politician, who served as speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly from 1998-2004, and leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland from 1987-1998. He played a significant role as a negotiator in the 1998 Belfast Good Friday Agreement and became one of the youngest life peers ever upon his election to the House of Lords in 1996. He currently chairs the Liberal Democratic Party caucus in the House of Lords, while also serving as a senior research fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford and remaining actively involved in conflict resolution initiatives in the Middle East. Lord Alderice agreed to share his perspectives on Middle East conflict resolution and lessons that could be derived from the Northern Ireland experience, after his speech at the St. Antony's International Review launch in March 2016. The transcript of our interview is below:

You mentioned in your speech your aversion to the use of force to resolve conflicts in sectarian environments and intra-state conflicts. But in the context of combating transnational terrorist groups, like Islamic extremists, the overriding consensus amongst Western policymakers appears to be responding forcefully, with the debate primarily being one of extent. Do you believe that diplomatic solutions derived from Northern Ireland's experience of taming the IRA can be effective in combating Islamic extremism and ISIS?

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Lord Alderdice: The first thing to say is that in most of these situations, there is a role for security but there is no security solution to these problems. No amount of bombing people is going to change their minds for the better. They will harbor resentment. Their friends and relatives will store up anger and venom for the future. I don't believe you can resolve these problems without security involvement, but security engagement needs to be possible and helpful. It needs to contain the problem so you can engage in the political dimension of it and solve the problem. All the excess security involvement has made the situation much worse than it was two years ago, in the case of Islamic extremism.

As for diplomacy, I don't think that diplomatically engaging leaders of terrorist groups is always ruled out, but I don't think it can be done at any time or at any stage. I don't think there is an advantage in trying to engage with ISIS. They still think they can defeat us. But there are lots of other people we can engage with in the Middle East when we are trying to combat ISIS. One of the very few positive signs I've seen in the region is the engagement of the West with Iran. After a long period of resistance to engagement, Obama, Rouhani and other Western leaders took a courageous step. An agreement was reached. No agreement is perfect, but an agreement was still reached. You can see by the recent election results that it has increased the number of moderate progressive people in Iran. It has improved the atmosphere in Iran and the Iran-West relationship. There are still problems, but this is a positive thing and we need to build on the positives. There are many efforts that can be done to reach out to other countries in the Middle East before determining exactly what we should do with ISIS.

Recently, there has been considerable optimism that a peace deal can finally be achieved in Cyprus to resolve long-standing tensions between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Do you the Cyprus conflict can be resolved as successfully as the Northern Ireland conflict, and what lessons derived from the Belfast Agreement can be applied to Cyprus?

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Lord Alderdice: We would never have resolved our difficulties if the British and Irish governments were not able to dissolve their difficulties. It was also important that the other stakeholders, the United States and Europe pushed hard for cooperation. The Cypriot conflict will not be resolved unless the relationship between Greece and Turkey is improved. There are some possibilities of that happening for various reasons, not least the changing economic environment because of the discovery of oil and gas. The issue of water being provided to Cyprus by Turkey could also create new elements in resolving the conflict.

In your speech, you discussed that lessons from Northern Ireland could be extended to Israel-Palestine. What advice would you give the leaders of Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas as they attempt to resolve this conflict? And why do you think the conflict has become so intractable?

Lord Alderdice: The most important thing is that external stakeholders change their attitudes: the US, EU and front-line Arab states. I don't think the leaders in Israel and Palestine are likely to change their attitudes anytime soon. The prospect of the two-state solution is dead and there is no real peace process. Engagement with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Lebanese and Jordanians as equal partners is crucial. The United States should not try to solve these problems alone. Genuine multilateralism has not taken place. The Arab Peace Initiative did not get much attention, especially from Israel and the United States. So it is not surprising that the issues have not been resolved, because the full context of the conflict has not been engaged properly.

You mention the lack of engagement of extra-regional actors and front-line Arab states as a key problem damaging peace prospects in the Middle East. Do you attribute this primarily to poor leadership or rivalries between different countries?

Lord Alderdice: It is important to recognize that there are many conflicting interests amongst major stakeholders in the Middle East. They are engaged in a vicarious struggle, not unlike the US and Russia or the West and China. One thing that was absolutely necessary in our situation was for the British government to say honestly and clearly we no longer have any selfish strategic or economic interests in the question of Northern Ireland. We simply want to find a way of achieving peace. If the US could say the same about the Middle East, we could take a big step towards peace. At the moment of course, there is a great deal of economic self-interest by the United States, which is a problem.

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Finally, do you think that Israeli leaders should engage in dialogue with Hamas, even though Hamas has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel?

Lord Alderdice: I do not think at the moment that Hamas would even be interested in engaging with the Israeli government, because there is no belief on their part that the Israeli government is seeking a resolution to the conflict. Ultimately, should there be engagement? Absolutely. Would engagement five years ago have helped? Yes. I think it would have helped and I tried to encourage it. But in some senses, the Israeli government missed the boat and finding a way to resolve the conflict has become more difficult.
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U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign rally in Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S., April 24, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Last Tuesday, Hillary Clinton won her home state 58 percent to 42 percent.

The New York primary -- which disallowed independents from voting; required prospective voters to register as Democrats six months before the election, at a time when few knew who Bernie Sanders was; saw a minimum of 126,000 voters accidentally purged from the voter rolls; is now under investigation by the State of New York; and already has led to the firing of at least one state elections official -- was not only declared a decisive victory by Hillary Clinton, but also, per her staff, signaled the end of the Democratic primary race.

That Clinton's home-state margin of victory was 56.5 points less than Sanders' 72.5-point margin of victory in his own home state, Vermont, went unsaid. That she only netted 15 more delegates in New York than Sanders had netted in Vermont -- out of the 4,051 pledged delegates to be awarded this election season -- also went unsaid.

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That's fine.

But since last Tuesday -- since the Clinton camp-declared "end" of the Democratic primary -- we've learned some things about Hillary Clinton that might give voters in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Delaware some pause as they head to the polls on April 26th.

Here are five things we now know about Clinton that we didn't know a week ago:

1. Clinton is now statistically tied with Donald Trump in national polling, while Sanders beats Trump by 10 points.

Sanders supporters have been saying for months that Sanders always beats Trump in national polling -- and, for that matter, all the GOP contenders -- by far more than Clinton does. The Berners have pointed to studies showing that general election polling in April is, historically, as accurate as general election polling in August and, on average, only about five points off the final results. With this in mind, Sanders supporters have also observed that Sanders beats the GOP contenders by more in every November battleground state than does Clinton.

No one listens. The media scoffs; the Clinton campaign snickers.

Surely anybody could beat Trump, even a candidate, like Clinton, wildly unpopular among the independents who decide national elections?

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Well, no.

The moment Trump and Clinton became seemingly inevitable after their respective New York wins, America saw a preview of what the rest of the election season will look like: a neck-and-neck race in which America stands under constant threat of a Trump presidency because of Democratic hubris. Ready for Hillary, America? Then you're ready for this: Clinton, 46 percent; Trump, 43 percent; margin of error, 3.1 percent.

Oh, and the ugliest, least substantive general-election campaign in U.S. history.

During an appearance on The Nicole Sandler Show a few weeks back, I told Sandler that, in contemporary politics, non-incumbent Democrats win only in "movement" elections: 1992 (Bill Clinton) and 2008 (Barack Obama) being the two recent examples. I said that Republicans win when the Democrats nominate a somewhat stiff policy wonk who Democrats feel no great personal warmth for -- Al Gore (2000) and John Kerry (2004) being our two recent exemplars.

So which type of candidate is Hillary Clinton?

Echoing the same reasoning I used a couple weeks ago, Vanity Fair now says Hillary Clinton is Al Gore.

And what did Gore do? Lose a close election to a veritable buffoon that, by all rights, he should have won -- as his campaign followed hard on the heels of a popular Democratic administration that he was an integral part of.

Sound familiar?

As for our other present option -- an Independent social democrat who beats his opponent in every state among voters under 45 -- it sounds new. Or, newer. It also sounds, per the polling, a little like this: Sanders, 50 percent; Trump, 40 percent.

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2. Charles Koch has revealed that Clinton is conservative enough that he might vote for her over any of the remaining Republicans.

For months, Sanders supporters tried to get anyone to look at Clinton's record in government: voting for the Iraq War; soft on Wall Street; against a $15 minimum wage; willing to compromise with the Republicans on late-term abortions; in favor of every job-killing international trade deal of the last two decades; opposed to universal healthcare as a right rather than merely a privilege; silent on campaign finance reform; and so on. It's a late-1970s moderate Republican record, Sanders supporters said.

The media scoffed; the Clinton campaign snickered.

Now that Clinton is, in the view of many media outlets, the presumptive Democratic nominee, the financiers of the far Right can come out and say it: #ImWithHer.

Here's Charles Koch, polishing up his #ImWithHer yard sign for the fall.

It sort of puts into perspective Hillary's late-winter gaffes -- "I'm a moderate -- no, a progressive!" -- doesn't it?

So with Clinton, America gets the moderate Republican candidate it's been looking for. So says Charles Koch, who, last anyone checked, was the number-one enemy of progressivism in America.

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3. It turns out that neither Hillary nor her staff ever had any respect for Sanders, his supporters, or the causes he (and they) have championed.

How do we know? Well, a campaign's press secretary is -- by definition and responsibility -- its mouthpiece. So when Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton's mouthpiece, said publicly after the New York primary that Bernie Sanders and his campaign had been destructive to the Democratic Party and the nation, you know that's exactly what Clinton thinks, too.

Had Clinton fired Palmieri or publicly admonished her, one might think differently.

Instead, silence -- which, in politics, is assent.



4. Clinton has been paying millions of dollars to spread campaign propaganda illicitly, part of which effort was designed to play up the "Bernie Bro" meme.

If you like Putin's PSYOPS and propaganda campaigns -- all waged against his own people -- you're going to love what Clinton's been feeding you via her just-revealed army of social media trolls.

If you were ever swayed by any pro-Clinton content you saw on social media, I'm sorry to hear it, as (a) it may well have been paid propaganda from Clinton operatives posing as regular voters, and (b) you can't now take your Clinton vote back in Iowa, Massachusetts, Illinois, Nevada, Missouri, or any of the other states where a few more voters for Sanders would have won him the state and changed the dynamic of the Democratic race.

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So, with that said, enjoy this read about the veritable army of "Hill Trolls" who've been infiltrating your social media feed for cold, hard cash for many months now.

Funny how this didn't get revealed a month ago, isn't it? Clinton being crowned the Democratic primary winner by the mainstream media does wonders for transparency in the national news, it seems.

5. There will be no attempt whatsoever to bring Sanders supporters back into the Democratic fold.

Sanders supporters knew Clinton was angry at them for voting for Bernie -- they could tell by her comment saying that she "feels sorry for" young voters too misinformed to vote for her; or by Bill Clinton saying that Sanders voters are so unsophisticated that they just want to "shoot every third banker on Wall Street"; or by David Plouffe (a Clinton ally) saying that every person who donates money to Sanders is being taken in by an obvious "fraud"; or by the unnamed Clinton staffer so certain she or he was speaking in a tone and manner consistent with the view of the Clinton campaign that she or he told Politico that the Clinton campaign "kicked Bernie's ass" in New York and that Sanders can "go fuck himself."

And so on.

But who knew that, with almost twenty primaries and caucuses left, and more than 1,400 delegates left to be awarded, Clinton would start vetting potential Vice Presidential picks in full view of an electorate she says she's still working hard to win over? And who knew that not only would Sanders not be considered for a unity ticket, but -- apparently -- her top picks for VP, Cory Booker and Julian Castro, are reliable Clintonites with no ties whatsoever to the Sanders campaign or the movement he heads? And who knew Elizabeth Warren would almost certainly be frozen out of the VP conversation due to her decision to stay neutral in the primary race rather than endorse Clinton?

Well, everyone.

Everyone who knows the Clintons, that is.

So, if you're either a Sanders supporter, sympathetic to the Sanders campaign, or a Hillary voter desperately hoping she'll do something to bring into the Democratic fold the 40 percent of Sanders voters who say they won't vote for Hillary in the fall -- all but ensuring a Trump presidency -- here's some news for you: the signals are now being sent that Sanders and his people will, by calculated design, get absolutely nothing.

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Hillary lost in 2008 and received the second-most powerful position in the world.

Sanders will be ignored and shunned.

What lies behind this "strategy" for the fall election -- if we can call it that -- is the same hubris that permitted Secretary Clinton never to reveal her Wall Street transcripts, to condescend to millennials at every turn, to refuse to apologize for bad judgment in the whole email-server affair, to refuse to apologize for her 1994 crime bill vote, to try to get away with (during the Michigan debate) the lie that Sanders had opposed the auto bailout, and so on.

In other words, America is already seeing the Hillary Clinton they'll get during the fall election campaign -- and also, should Clinton somehow manage to squeak by Donald Trump in November, the sort of Nixonian White House we can expect in consequence.

And it isn't pretty.

It may (or may not) be too late for voters in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Delaware to change the course of the Democratic Primary, but they can certainly send the message that they don't like what the Clinton campaign has been showing America ever since it dropped the benign charade it's been parading before American voters for months.
The color of your skin shouldn't determine whether you live or die. But that is precisely the case for Duane Buck, a Texas man facing execution. His case is before the Supreme Court this month.

Earlier this month, the nation's highest court allowed the execution of another African American man, Kenneth Fults, to take place in Georgia despite the fact that his own defense lawyer referred to him as "nigger" and fell asleep in court. On top of that, one of the jurors in the case, Thomas Buffington said this: "I don't know if he ever killed anybody, but that nigger got just what should have happened." Buffington went on to say that the death penalty is "what that nigger deserved." Kenneth Fults was executed on April 12.

Now the Supreme Court will consider the case of Duane Buck. It's the next big test of whether the words inscribed on the front of the Supreme Court - "Equal Justice Under the Law" - are a mirage. Mr. Buck's guilt is not in question. What is in question is whether or not he should be executed for what he did. And what is also in question is whether or not black people are more dangerous than white people.

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In Texas, during the sentencing trial in capital cases, the "future dangerousness" of the defendant is considered as the jury determines whether someone should be executed. In Mr. Buck's case, his own attorneys introduced testimony from a psychologist that Mr. Buck posed a danger to society because he is black. That same psychologist, Walter Quijano, gave similar racially-charged testimony in 6 other Texas cases that resulted in death sentences. All of those death sentences were thrown out and the defendants were given new sentencing hearings - except for Duane Buck who still faces execution.

It gets worse.

At the time of Buck's trial, Harris County prosecutors were 3 times more likely to seek the death penalty for African American defendants than for similar white defendants. During the same period, Harris County juries were more than twice as likely to sentence African-American defendants to death. Over the last 5 years, nearly 75% of all death sentences in Texas have been imposed on people of color.

Texas and Georgia (where Kenneth Fults was executed) are currently our deadliest states and have accounted for 10 of the 12 executions in 2016. Though Texas and Georgia have accounted for over 80% of the executions so far this year, they are only the eye of the storm.

The contemporary practice of the death penalty cannot be divorced from our history of slavery and racism. As Connecticut's Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional in 2015, the court's treatise made this point: "The 13 states that comprised the Confederacy have carried out more than 75% of the nation's executions over the last four decades."

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To be blunt, the states where people were being lynched 100 years ago are precisely the states where people, and an inordinate percentage of people of color, are being executed today. To this day, one of the biggest predictors of who gets executed is the race of the victim and the resources of the defendant. We are not executing the worst of the worst but the poorest of the poor... and especially people of color.

The roots of the death penalty are sunk deep in the horrific history of lynching. As lynchings decreased, legal executions increased. Two-thirds of those executed in the 1930s were black. As African Americans fell to 22% of the South's population by 1950, they made up 75% of the executions. And today - 2016 - even though African Americans make up only 13% of the nation's population, 42% of death row is black, and 34% of those executed since 1976 have been black.

These stunning realities have created many new leaders in the movement for alternatives to the death penalty. Among those calling for a halt to executions are many conservative legislators and several governors who are for the death penalty in principle but not in practice because of the issues involving racial bias. Even some of the death penalty's most vocal supporters like Southern Baptist leaders Al Mohler and Richard Land have publicly shared their deep concerns about racial bias in the system.

In light of these realities, Duane Buck's request for a new sentencing hearing is a moral imperative. His case and the concerns it raises have brought together an eclectic array of unusual allies around the country. In addition to civil rights leaders, clergy, and elected officials, there are also prosecutors, judges, and a former Texas governor (Gov. Mark White) supporting Mr. Buck's request for a fair sentencing hearing.

Also among the folks asking for justice for Mr. Buck is none other than one of the prosecutors during his trial, Linda Geffin. Her own commitment to justice would not allow her to be silent.

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In the nearly two decades he has been in prison, Mr. Buck has been anything but "dangerous." He has never been written up for a single violation. He has gained a reputation for being a mediator and reconciler, disarming hostilities on the inside even between guards and inmates. The warden has called him a light in the darkness and a blessing to the prison. He's known as "Preacher Buck" because of the clear way his faith shapes him and compels him to care for others.

Since all this is happening in the heart of the Bible belt, it's important to remember that the Bible itself gives us stories of murderers that were redeemed. Among the Bible's most famous figures were three murderers saved by God's grace - Moses, David, and Paul.

As a devout Christian, Preacher Buck has done everything he can to heal the wounds of what he did. One of the folks who can testify to that is Duane's step-sister, Phyllis Taylor, who was critically injured during the crime. She is among the many voices saying that execution is not the solution.

I hope you will join me in calling for an end to the death penalty. But even if you don't - even if you believe in the death penalty - I hope you will join me and hundreds of others in calling for a new, fair sentencing hearing for Duane Buck.

Duane has made his last appeal to the United States Supreme Court. My hope and prayer is that the Supreme Court will fix this injustice once and for all. Let justice prevail.

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You won't need a box of tissue nearby when you read my high-skilled immigration story. I don't feel sorry for myself, neither should you. A Generation X system analyst for a mega-sized telecommunication firms, married, and mother of two -- I felt like the Joan of Arc of the women's liberation movement and had made Simone de Beauvoir proud. That was before I followed the American dream and immigrated to the land of the free.

When my husband was accepted into a surgical oncology fellowship at one of the world's leading Cancer Centers in New York City, I left my successful career, my family, and my country to follow. YES, I followed my man and that was a good decision. A strong, independent, competent woman should make decisions based on her reality, values and beliefs.

I believed my husband needed my love and support during the intense fellowship and that our family should stay united. Over the years, I haven't met a person who was loved by his or her career. Inversely, I have met people who loved their career in a way that destroyed every personal connection they had. I wasn't ready to let that happen. As much as I loved my career, I was ready to temporarily trade it for the common good.

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At the end of his second fellowship combined with years of experience as a transplant surgeon, my husband possessed capabilities and credentials that only a few U.S. surgeons have. He received job offers from leading institutions across America, and we had decided to emigrate to the U.S.

Statistically, high-skilled immigration forms the backbone of America's innovation and leadership; forty percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by high-skilled immigrants. I believed two professionals like us would be welcomed to stay, or the very least, before long, I would receive a work visa and reignite my career.

I was no stranger to curveballs. Over the years, life threw countless ones, and I hitem all out of the park. Yet nothing prepared me for years of unemployment, forced upon me by the visa regulations of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Being unable to work wasn't a curve ball-- unemployment was a loss of identity.

Being financially independent has always been important, but even more, I wanted to prove myself, lead and become successful. I started working when I was twelve. At the age of eighteen, I served in the military as a tank instructor, and seven years later, I graduated from Tel Aviv University. At the age of 29, I became a project manager in the IT department of the largest telecommunication firm in Israel and was responsible for the design and implementation of the country' second Knowledge Management system. My life was interesting and active, I managed employees and my decisions influenced the company's future. I felt powerful, like living with a small but steady stream of adrenaline in my body, and I loved it.

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But this feeling of power swiftly vanished soon after I immigrated to the United States. Unable to work, with a husband who was never home, and children in school, I went out on the streets of New York and wandered for hours alone, taking the subway, and getting off along the way--without knowing where I was, or where I was going. I spent hours in Central Park watching people walk past me. Fall was usually my favorite season of the year, but I remember sitting on a bench watching the trees shedding their leaves, and feeling as if I was shedding my identity.

For the first time in my adult life, I wasn't working. I didn't need to prove myself and be recognized for my success. I had lost a substantial source of pride. I was happy to be a mom and a wife. These were wonderful accomplishments, but at the end of the day, I wanted to come home to my family, instead of waiting for them to come home to me. I needed this for balance. In NY, I found myself completely lop-sided and far away from the life I had vigilantly crafted.

When we decided to emigrate, I thought I was trading my career for something matchless, and I did. I still believe family should come first. But what I cannot wrap my head around is why the United States of America, the greatest advocate of human rights, made me choose between my career and my family. The process took six years, three changes in visa status, and living in a medically under-served region to receive permanent residency. Now, when I'm finally able to work, I reside in an area with extremely limited employment opportunities in my field.

High-skilled immigration is different than illegal, refugee or asylum immigration. Although several years passed while I created my life's new meaning, my story is not a tearful tragedy to leave you feeling grateful for everything you have. But it should be! Over the last century America positioned itself as a superpower thanks to immigrants, and to be precise, thanks to highly-skilled immigrants. America's future prosperity heavily hinge on attracting the best talents.
The big climate story this month should have been a lawsuit. Twenty-one young plaintiffs sued the U.S. government, including President Obama, for failing to act to stop climate change. Our Children's Trust and the so-called "Climate Kids" claimed that young Americans would face future harm caused by older generations. Rising tides, wildfires, hurricanes, and mass food shortages would be their undeserved inheritance.

And the court bought it. That is, Magistrate Judge Coffin ruled that the kids had standing to bring the suit. The Feds' motion to dismiss was denied.

Here's the thing: Surviving that motion to dismiss wasn't easy. The D.O.J. argued forcefully that there is no constitutional right to a pollution-free environment. The court characterized the plaintiffs' theory as something "novel," a cross between a civil rights suit and a Clean Air Act/Clean Water Act claim. Many courts would have been reluctant to enter this new legal territory.

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The key issue before the court was standing. As Judge Coffin wrote, federal courts are not the forum for airing generalized grievances about federal policies. To establish standing, the Climate Kids needed to allege an injury that was concrete, imminent, and particularized.

Youth helped them show particular harm. Climate change affects all of us, but the plaintiffs contended that it will affect them more and for a longer period than older folks (who will no longer be around). The kids also needed to counter the argument that their case was premature. Judge Coffin admitted that the claim was "nascent," but ultimately found this to weigh in their favor. The court should not delay the case simply because society is continuously learning about the human causes of climate change. The lawsuit should continue in order to further develop the record and determine the facts.

In short, the Climate Kids were allowed to keep fighting. That in itself is a really big deal.

And yet, the Climate Kids were certainly not the most widely reported climate story in recent weeks. That would be Sarah Palin. At the Washington premiere of the anti-climate change film Climate Hustle, she mocked Bill Nye as a climate change alarmist. "Bill Nye is as much a scientist as I am," said Palin. In terms of formal training, her claim is disingenuous. Nye is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. Palin has a bachelor's degree in communications.

Media coverage of the Palin-Nye spat completely eclipsed the Climate Kids. This seems predictable - we have a chronically long-lasting fascination with her antics. But there's more to this unfortunate trend. Whenever a political figure weighs in on the environment, it suddenly becomes the big climate story. The Clinton-Sanders exchange on climate at the Brooklyn debate was hyped as a "dumpster fire." Earlier this year, Trump dominated headlines by declaring that global warming was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

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And let's not forget about entertainers who aren't running for political office. Leonardo DiCaprio famously devoted his 2016 Oscar acceptance speech to climate, generating extreme Twitter praise and outrage for "preaching" about the issue.

I mean no disrespect to Leo's speech, in which he comes across as an authentic and passionate advocate for the cause. But it reflects the very distressing paradigm in which we are currently thinking about climate. We have decided that climate change is primarily a political and cultural - rather than a legal - issue.

That's a shame. Despite the many failings of our court system, there is also a great tradition in American jurisprudence of our courts sometimes being ahead of the culture. The Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board in 1954, at least a decade before most Southern states would have been willing to voluntarily desegregate their public schools. When 1963's Gideon v. Wainwright determined that criminal defendants have the right to an attorney even if they cannot afford one, the Court effectively created the modern public defender system.

With talented lawyering, and perhaps a bit more public support, the Climate Kids could join this same tradition of positive, progressive judicial decision-making.

To say the courts should have a role in combating climate change is not to diminish the political and cultural aspects of the issue. It's multi-dimensional, clearly. The point is that we cannot allow the climate change debate to be continually reduced to a battle of big personalities. When it comes to climate change, liberals and conservatives alike should rally behind an old American idea: we must be a "government of laws, and not of men."

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By Brittney McNamara for Teen Vogue.



Courtesy of CNP Montrose

The average period lasts around four to five days, maybe six to eight depending on your body. It usually comes every three weeks, but some variations in flow, length, and spacing are normal. But while periods vary from person to person, one thing is for sure: If your period lasts five years, something is most definitely wrong.

But that was the reality for one Australian woman named Chloe Christos, whose period started when she was 14 and didn't stop until she was 19. But she was hesitant to speak up about her five-year period because she was embarrassed to talk about it and she felt like she was alone, Australia's ABC News reports. When she finally came forward with her experience, she was diagnosed with von Willebrand disease, a bleeding disorder where blood doesn't clot properly. The disease used to be something doctors thought only men could get, but in reality, it affects women and men equally. Chloe landed in the hospital often before her diagnosis, and even developed severe anemia at age 19. Even after she was finally diagnosed, Chloe said doctors didn't know how to treat her, even recommending a hysterectomy to stop her periods.

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"I came across a lot of people, even in the medical profession, who didn't realise what it meant for women to suffer from a bleeding disorder," Chloe, who is now 27, told ABC News. "A lot of statistics and data is kept on diagnosis and treatment for men. There's almost nothing on women that doctors can refer to, and I hope we can change that."

In addition to an increased menstrual flow, people with von Willebrand disease may experience blood in their stools or urine, bleeding from very minor injuries, bleeding from the gums, frequent nosebleeds, and easy bruising/bruising with lumps. Heavy menstrual bleeding, however, is the main sign of the condition in women, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The condition affects 1% of population. It often takes many years before women with von Willebrand disease receive an accurate diagnosis; according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there's an average of 16 years between the onset of symptoms and diagnosis.

To shine light on the impact of blood disorders on women, Chloe hopes to advocate at the World Federation of Hemophilia World Congress in Orlando this July. To get there, she started a GoFundMe Page with hopes that her advocating in Orlando will raise awareness of the condition, leading to better care and access to treatment for women like her. Here's how Chloe sums up her mission on her GoFundMe Page:

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"I have had first hand experience in discrimination in regards to this over the last 7 years when needing assistant [SIC] to help control severe bleeding episodes that there is a great lack of education and awareness about bleeding disorders and that they can happen amongst women. I found it particularly hard at times for even doctors to treat me equally when presenting at emergency rooms and being refused treatment altogether because I'm either a female or not taken seriously, and still do to this day. This has been mostly due to a lack of knowledge and awareness and this happens all over the world. This condition has presented me with the most challenging times in my life but by meeting other patients and specialists, and keeping up to date by attending conferences and events I've been able to improve my quality of life and will continue to do so to help & reach out to others."

The lesson we can learn from Chloe and her story is clear: You are your own best advocate, and it's always a good idea to ask questions or speak up if you suspect something is not right with your body. Periods are a healthy, normal thing, and there's nothing wrong with talking about them. If you're experiencing a medical issue, period-related or not, never be afraid to tell someone.
The foreign aid arena in Africa has traditionally been dominated by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. However, over the last three decades non-traditional donors such as China, have emerged.

The increasing importance of non-traditional donors has meant that the economic and political stronghold of western countries in sub-Saharan Africa has gradually ebbed. China is now the largest non-traditional contributor of aid to sub-Saharan African countries.

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In the 1960s Africa provided China with an opportunity to increase its political and diplomatic reach. Chinese interest in the continent came about in part as a result of political tensions between China and the Soviet Union as well as increased American and Japanese competition in Asia. In addition to political motives, Africa presented China with economic opportunities. While the initial motive for Chinese aid was to strengthen diplomatic ties, the resource motive became an important factor.

China's aid policy

At the onset, China's aid policy was premised on equality between partners, mutual benefit, respect for sovereignty, respect for obligations and enhancing the self-reliance of Chinese aid recipients. According to China's 2011 white paper on foreign aid:

The main areas of support for China has been in projects in agriculture, industry, economic infrastructure, public facilities, education and medical and health care, with the intent on improving recipient countries' industrial and agricultural productivity, laying a solid foundation for their economic and social development, and improving basic education and health care.

China's aid policy in Africa underwent major reforms between 1994 and 1995.These were effected in three main ways:

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New instruments that linked aid, trade and investment between China and Africa were introduced and implemented.

Programmes that combined foreign aid with economic cooperation were developed and financed, and

China refined its portfolio of tools to aid domestic restructuring.

The restructuring also saw the creation of three policy banks. These were China's development Bank, China Export-Import bank and China Agricultural Development bank. They were all state-owned and enabled the government to provide targeted finance. The new policy opened the door to an economic and trade strategy. It enabled Chinese investments in manufacturing and agriculture, and growth in Chinese assembly factories. It also created increased demand for Chinese exports and allowed China's incursion into the exploration and investment in minerals and forest resources in Africa.

Resources as a driver

By 1976 Chinese resource interest was apparent in numerous sub-Saharan African countries. Examples include the construction of the Tan Zam railroad in Zambia in part to facilitate China's access to copper. There was also the construction of roads in countries like Ethiopia to assist the movement of cotton exports to China. China's view of the resource possibilities in sub-Saharan Africa continues today.

Since 2001 the need to boost Chinese domestic economic growth has further driven China's interest in sub-Saharan Africa's natural resources.

Examining what drives Chinese aid allocation to sub-Saharan Africa, empirical evidence suggests that China provides more foreign aid to oil rich sub-Saharan African countries than those that are not oil rich. Almost half of the top 10 recipients of Chinese aid in the last 10 years gave access to oil wells and granted first rights to prospect for oil in return. Examples include Angola and Nigeria.

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Providing billions in debt relief

From 2000 onwards China further cemented itself as a major aid role player in Africa. It established the forum on China-Africa cooperation (FOCAC) which included 44 African countries. It undertook to provide financing for debt relief, training programmes and investments. The China-Africa Business Council was also established, which negotiated the cancellation of $1.2 billion in debt.

A number of developments made 2006 a watershed year. These included:

the publication of a white paper on African policy,

the announcement that debt of $1.4 billion would be cancelled,

the creation of a $5 billion fund made up of soft and commercial loans;

an undertaking to double aid by 2009, and

an agreement to build 30 hospitals and train 15 000 people.

Between 2000 and 2012, China undertook more than 1 700 projects in over 50 African countries amounting to upwards of $75 billion. While this amount is less than the $90 billion committed by the US in the same period, it still represents a significant alternative source of aid financing for the continent.

Where the money goes

China's aid in sub-Saharan Africa is varied and can be found in almost all sectors from telecommunication to health. The largest amount of aid funding goes towards the transport, storage, energy and communications sectors. A significant share, about 70%, is geared towards infrastructure development.

Chinese aid in infrastructure outweighs that of other donors. It accounts for over 30% of total value of infrastructure projects in Africa. Sub-saharan Africa's education and health sectors have also benefited significantly. But the amount committed to these two sectors lags behind others such as transport and energy. This is possibly due to the fact that a significant amount of western aid is focused on these two sectors (see table 1)

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In terms of the largest sub-Saharan Africa recipients of Chinese aid, Nigeria, Ghana and Sudan have been the top recipients in the last decade. The three countries combined received around $250 million in aid. The majority goes to energy infrastructure such as oil pipelines.

Governance myth debunked

Prominent in the aid debate is the notion that western donor countries are more concerned about the degree of governance in recipient countries. Their Chinese counterparts are assumed to overlook the level and type of governance.

At first glance this might be seen to be true. But it is not necessarily the case.

For both types of donors, recipient country governance is important. This conclusion is drawn from looking at the determinants of American and Chinese foreign aid to 31 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In the case of the US, both political rights and civil liberty are considerations in its aid allocation decisions to the region. For China, political rights are more important than civil liberty in influencing who receives aid.

Although the benefits of Chinese aid in sub-Saharan Africa are clear in health and infrastructure projects, including the provision of medicine, the training of health workers as well as the construction of transport infrastructure, there are some drawbacks to the aid. While China provides aid for different projects over a wide spectrum, for the most part it is focused on a few specific sectors. As a result pertinent issues that enable domestic resource generation in the region are not necessarily addressed. This suggests that there is a need to re-assess the type of Chinese aid sub-Saharan countries accept and to make sure that the aid ties in with these countries' development agendas.

This is an extract from a working paper titled 'The political and economic dynamics of foreign aid: A case study of United States and Chinese aid to Sub-Sahara Africa'. [Kafayat Amusa, Nara Monkam and Nicola Viegi]

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PROVIDENCE, RI - APRIL 24: Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) speaks during a rally at Roger Williams Park on April 24, 2016 in Providence, Rhode Island. The Rhode Island primary is April 26. (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

The most popular politician in the country is up against all three facets of the American political power structure, and he's already defeated two of them.

After weeks of inspiration and joy, there was anger and sadness this past week in the Bernie Sanders movement. After historic rallies throughout the state, Hillary Clinton's apparent victory in New York left millions in the movement wondering whether it was the corporate media or the Democratic National Committee that was screwing them over. There's plenty of blame to go around, but it's a third culprit who deserves their scorn.

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Yes, the DNC has actively worked to rig this primary for Hillary Clinton, by minimizing and delaying the debates, by counting superdelegates as if they vote before July's convention, and by surreptitiously funneling money to her campaign that was solicited for down-ticket candidates.

Yes, there have also been countless instances of blatant propaganda in the corporate media, most galling perhaps the ones appearing daily in the New York Times and NPR -- the so-called "N-axis" - - where many thoughtful urban Democrats get their news. So tendentious has Paul Krugman become, for instance, one can only assume he's angling for a position in a Hillary Clinton cabinet.

But the Bernie movement has it's own sources of news, thanks to the Internet you're using right now, and the campaign has its own sources of funds, too, thanks to the number 27.

The Elephant in the Room

The obstacle that the movement has to confront right now is something else: the voting system itself.

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Some people will stop reading this post right here, skip down to the comments section, and fire off about "conspiracy theories" and "sore losers." That's fine, go ahead. Your mind is closed and there's little I can do with you other than point out that you're not a patriot if you love our democracy less than you long for your candidate to win. Rant if you must. It's 2016, I'm not scared of name-calling.

The emperor has no clothes, and I'm going to point it out.

But before I do, let's acknowledge that by many measures Bernie has been winning for over a month now. He has won eight of the last 10 contests, even if we accept these deeply flawed New York results. He has been rapidly climbing in the national polls while Hillary Clinton has been declining; from double digits down, Bernie is now tied or ahead by as many as five points. From a historical perspective, his favorability ratings dwarf Hillary's in a way that makes her chances of winning a national election highly unlikely and his chances highly likely. The polls also show Bernie is the more electable candidate in a race against any of the likely Republican nominees. Among independents -- you know, the ones not allowed to vote in New York but who will determine the winner of the general election -- Sanders is the clear winner. Sanders has maintained a double digit lead over Trump for months. Clinton now leads Trump by only three points -- the margin of error -- and is losing to the other Republican candidates.

Bernie is the one national candidate who people like the more they get to know him. As people learn more about Clinton, Trump, and Cruz, they like them less. As the country learns more about Bernie, they like him more. He's still relatively unknown compared to Clinton and Trump, yet he already outpolls them. Looking at the current trends, one would predict that Bernie Sanders will be the most popular politician in the country come November, just as he is now.

Whichever party gets to nominate him will win the general election.

The Clinton campaign sees this too. They're not idiots. They do have a 231-delegate lead, but they know Bernie is on the rise and that 1,401 delegates have yet to vote. They know that with every passing day his odds increase. They're in a race against time to secure the nomination, so on any given day they howl for Bernie to get out of the race, to "tone it down," to stop trying to actually win the nomination.

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Bernie's remarkable candidacy, and the enthusiasm in the Bernie Sanders campaign are frankly phenomena I haven't seen in my 20 years closely watching American politics. Only Obama's campaign was remotely similar, but that campaign was organized top-down to be a successful election, not bottom-up to be a successful revolution. Bernie will continue inspiring this movement and continue working to win this nomination precisely because he can win.

So let's get back to the real reason Bernie has won only eight of 10, and not all of the contests that have taken place over the past month.

Grand Theft in the Grand Canyon State

The biggest issue, and something the corporate media barely touches, is that Hillary's two wins over the past month -- New York and Arizona -- came in the two state primaries that were most fraught with problems and that are now under legal investigation.

A similarity between the two states is disturbing. In both states, massive voter roll changes and purges took place in the days and weeks leading up to the primary, disqualifying thousands upon thousands of new Democratic voters.



One current delegate map shows Nevada for Bernie and Wyoming tied.

Every western state that has voted is now a Bernie state. Every state, that is, except Arizona, which had only 60 polling places open for 1.3 million people in Phoenix, witnessed massive voter roll changes, and still hasn't counted it's thousands of provisional ballots. Two of Arizona's neighbors -- Utah and Colorado -- delivered decisive wins for Bernie on initial votes, and after second-round caucuses, Nevada has flipped to Bernie as well. Wyoming, where Bernie won the popular vote but ended the first-round caucus tied in delegates, will likely also flip to Bernie after the second-round caucus. With all the voter suppression, and with all neighboring states favoring Bernie, it seems likely Bernie might very well have won Arizona too with a fair election.

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Some have pointed out that Republicans led the effort to reduce the polling places and to reject the provisional ballots in Arizona. This is true, but if we actually delve into how the polling and the voting unfolded there, we learn that the Clinton campaign knew in advance that they had a lead in the early and mail-in voting, but that the polls were beginning to favor Bernie, so an obvious strategy would have been to depress election day turnout. They no doubt feared Bernie could win on election day. The long lines and voter roll purges did indeed depress election day turnout, but Bernie did win on election day. Nevertheless, because of the voter suppression and the uncounted provisional ballots, he didn't win by a large enough margin on election day to win the state. Whether they planned it or not, the Clinton campaign certainly benefited from voter suppression.

If Republicans alone were responsible, one would expect to hear the Clinton campaign condemn the voter suppression, and, for the sake of fairness and democracy, call for a revote. At the least the Clinton campaign might have joined the Sanders campaign in calling for a recount that included the provisional ballots. Hillary instead immediately and unequivocally accepted the flawed victory and said nothing that night while watching Utah and Idaho deliver 50-point wins for Bernie.

In the Empire State the Emperor Has No Clothes

In New York, the suppression was even more obvious, if such a thing is possible. As in Arizona, thousands of voters in New York were simply removed from voter rolls all over the state in the weeks leading up to the election. In the most egregious case, a single county removed 126,000 voters from the voter rolls, and this was an important county -- the county in which Bernie Sanders was born and raised.

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Even with voter suppression throughout the state, Bernie still won 50 of the 62 counties in the state -- yes, even with all the problems, over four-fifths of the state's counties voted for Bernie. The only counties that voted with a significant margin for Hillary Clinton -- and thus enabled her victory -- were the counties in and around New York City. This fact itself is not a smoking gun, as we've seen urban areas and rural areas vote differently throughout this primary.

But we know that the Democratic National Committee establishment has shown repeatedly that they favor Hillary Clinton, and we also know that New York City politics are infamous for corruption and are controlled primarily by the local Democratic Party.

To a neutral observer there is a prima facie case for a deeper investigation here, even before we talk about the exit polls and voting machines.

A Mathematical Impossibility

Exit polls by CNN on the night of the New York election showed a narrow victory of 4-5 percent for Hillary Clinton. Thus it was to the great surprise of many experts that an hour later the results came back as a 16 percent statewide win for Hillary Clinton. While nothing is universally accurate when it comes to democracy, exit polls are viewed as highly reliable assessments of likely final results because they ask people who have just voted, rather than people who intend to vote at some point in the future. Exit polls are widely respected and the vast majority of the time they are correct, within their margins of error. In fact, in countries around the globe, exit polls are used as early indicators of possible election fraud.

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This variance of 10-11 percent between the exit polls and the recorded vote totals is way outside the margin of error. Mathematical analysis of this variance reveals that the probability of this happening by chance is 1:123,000. Which is to say, essentially impossible. We're either dealing with one of the very few instances where exit polls are way off, or we're dealing with election fraud.

It might count as heresy, but I'm going to ask: Why do we assume the voting machines in New York City are honest?

Is it too scary to contemplate? Perhaps for many of us it is.

But someone has to ask this question, and someone has to provide an ironclad answer. If we just choose to look the other way, election after election, we are living in a lie, not a democracy.

My friends, the emperor has no clothes. There must be a manual recount of 5 percent of paper ballots in New York City to determine the truth. A well-researched piece suggests Bernie really might have won New York, and there are already anecdotal cases where voters tried to vote for Bernie Sanders on the electronic voting machines in Brooklyn, but the machine wouldn't record their vote until they chose Hillary Clinton. I hope to be proven wrong, but I suspect that we will find the same type of fraud that was just uncovered in Chicago.

Patriotic Americans: Protect Democracy and Call for Manual Recounts

People in every era of our troubled but brave American history have died for the right to vote. Few died for the right to have to register six months before you vote, at a time when you haven't even heard of the candidate who is going to inspire you, only to have your registration changed or your vote counted for another candidate on election day. But that's what voting looked like in New York last week.

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Without a manual recount of the paper ballots in both Arizona and New York, we won't know if the machines were hacked, and we won't know who won these two pivotal states. All patriotic Americans should call for recounts. Surely those who have fought and died for the right to vote never envisioned this right to be taken so lightly that we wouldn't continually insist on rigorous fairness.

Hillary Clinton must call for a manual recount of paper ballots. Bernie Sanders must do so as well. For potential unity inside the Democratic Party, and so that we can all regard both candidates as trustworthy and democratic, we must have fair counts in Arizona and New York, and we must have reasonably fair elections in the states yet to vote.

Now, do I think Hillary Clinton will ask for recounts? I don't. I think most people watching these elections know -- even if they don't admit it publicly -- that at this point the Clinton campaign needs every victory it can get, by hook or by crook. This desperation will likely be their undoing.

Most Americans, particularly those turned on to politics for the first time by the Bernie Sanders movement, already have lost respect for the Clinton campaign since she hasn't said anything about the obvious flaws in these primaries. How can she blithely claim victory in New York, for example, when her total victory was by approximately 250,000 votes, the same number of voters who were disenfranchised by the voter purges? Clinton lost 50 of New York's 62 counties, and a reasonable person might conclude that those 50 counties were the counties that had the more honest elections.

A responsible leader in a time like this might say, "As a nominee for the Democratic nomination, I join all Americans in recognizing that there were flaws in this election. The State Attorney General has launched an investigation. For the good of our democracy and our party, I will fully support a recount or any other remedies the investigation recommends."

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But Hillary Clinton never says things like this. There is an aura of secrecy and arrogance around her campaign, as if the entire primary is something she barely tolerates on the way to a coronation; it isn't lost on independents or new voters that she has claimed these two flawed victories zealously and proclaimed the nomination hers after her only victory in a month.

If voter suppression on the magnitude of Arizona and New York continues, and goes unopposed, then yes, Hillary Clinton will claim the nomination. But the Democratic Party will be in sorry shape indeed.

Fair Elections Will Transform the Democratic Party and Elect Bernie Sanders

More likely, by winning in states with less corruption and fraud -- and by challenging fraud where it occurs -- the Sanders campaign will continue to rack up wins, delegates, and points in the polls. Bernie will arrive at the convention roughly tied on pledged delegates, perhaps ahead or behind by a few dozen, and with significant momentum. In that case the choice before the Democratic Party and the superdelegates will be to nominate a surging Bernie Sanders with lots of money who obliterates the Republicans in the polls, or to nominate a slumping Hillary Clinton and her string of losses, scandals and weak poll numbers who clings to one positive attribute -- that she is a woman.

It will be a momentous choice. As a country and a planet, we have so much that needs swift and serious reform -- the banking system, the environment, the destructive trade deals, racist criminal justice, profit-driven wars in the Middle East. Millions know this and many will turn up in Philadelphia for the convention. The Sanders campaign just needs to keep pushing despite the fact that the three facets of the political power system are arrayed against him. The corporate media, the Democratic Party, and state elections officials will all suggest that Sanders stops trying to win.



A popular meme on Facebook, 4/20-4/22.

But the Bernie Sanders movement didn't pack it up on March 16, when Hillary "won" five states (two of which were actually ties, Illinois and Missouri). And there's little reason to believe they'll pack it up before the convention. For them, the media's opposition and the party's opposition have largely been neutralized by enthusiasm, organization, and commitment. The appearance of this last edifice of opposition -- election fraud -- should only strengthen their resolve. They're on the right side of history on so many issues, and now they can take inspiration from the social movements of history that fought for the right to vote. They're no longer only fighting for the issues Bernie advocates, they're also fighting for the system that undergirds our very democracy.

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On March 16, the media said it was over, and they're saying it's over now. But those who "do their own research" knew then that the movement had many contests left to win, and they know now that 19 states and 1,401 delegates are still available. Most are winnable, and it's entirely possible that Bernie Sanders wins every state that votes in May.
KATHMANDU - One year after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, the citizens of this small Himalayan country are still trying to put their lives back together. According to the U.N., the devastating earthquake impacted an estimated 8 million people, nearly thirty percent of the country's population.

Marginalized groups of Nepali society were doubly affected by the earthquake as it exacerbated preexisting hardships characterized by poverty and a lack of access to basic services. This was particularly true for single women--widows (or "bidwha" in Nepali), unmarried women over the age of 35, or women who have divorced or separated from their husbands--who were already struggling before the quake on various fronts including financially, emotionally, politically, and socially.

Single women survivors after the earthquake in Nepal (WHR).

Therefore after April 25, 2015, the status of single women in Nepal became even more precarious. Some lost loved ones and many of their homes were damaged or completely destroyed. According to government reports, 2.3 million people were displaced due to the earthquake, leaving women and girls in many areas susceptible to abuse, disease, human trafficking, and gender-based violence.

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Despite the billions of dollars that came in after the earthquake in relief donations, the Government of Nepal has been excruciatingly slow to act leaving earthquake survivors on the ground with little or no assistance. International non-governmental organizations and local Nepali organizations have helped to fill this gap by providing temporary housing, services, and relief materials to earthquake survivors--but their reach is limited.

To mitigate the earthquake's effects for single women and women at risk, Women for Human Rights, Single Women Group (WHR) with the support of Oxfam established eight women's centers at the Village Development Committee (VDC) level in the hardest-hit districts of Nepal. These centers provide single women and women at risk access to services, relief materials, and counseling. They also offer public awareness trainings to educate local communities on issues such as legal awareness, gender-based violence, and WASH and sanitation.

During a field visit last month, we travelled to these centers in six earthquake-affected districts to interview single women. The devastation from the earthquake was overwhelming even one year later. All of the women we spoke to were still living in temporary shelters mostly made out of corrugated galvanized iron (CGI), which does not adequately protect them from cold weather, heavy winds, or rain during the monsoon season. As homes collapsed in the earthquake many household goods, livestock, and food supplies were ruined leaving many women and their families with literally nothing.

Kanchhi Sunar and her granddaughter outside their temporary shelter in Machhegaun VDC, Kathmandu District (WHR).

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That is what happened to Kanchhi Sunar, a 55-year-old widow we spoke to who lives in Machhegaun VDC of Kathmandu District. Kanchhi's struggle is threefold: she is a single woman, she is from a low caste, and she is a victim of the earthquake. Her husband died twelve years ago, leaving her alone to raise six children. Kanchhi and her family used to live in a house--the only thing she owned in the world. Now after the earthquake, her entire life has been turned upside down. Kanchhi recalled the day of April 25, 2015:

I had gone to visit Dhulikhel on a pilgrimage. My daughter had called the night before asking how I was. Then, the next day when I was travelling, the earthquake struck. I was terrified for my family's safety, so I returned home as soon as I could. Once I got home, that is when I learned that my only daughter had died.

Kanchhi was in utter shock. Her daughter had been working in Kathmandu at the United World Trade Center and was crushed by one of the pillars as the building collapsed. Her daughter was only twenty two years old. Now, the thought of conducting the traditional puja ceremony one year after her daughter's death brings tears to Kanchhi's eyes. Although she has received counseling from the Machhegaun women's center, grieving for her daughter's death has been a slow and painful process.

Like so many others, Kanchhi's home was totally destroyed in the earthquake. WHR helped to create a temporary shelter for her family, where she and her two youngest sons and grandchildren now live. Kanchhi's daughter had been the primary breadwinner for their family, so money has been tight since the earthquake. As in Kanchhi's situation, entrenched patriarchal gender norms in Nepal prevent many women from pursuing higher education or a career path other than agriculture or manual labor--especially in the rural areas. Therefore once a woman's husband dies, she is often left uneducated and unemployed with limited livelihood skills. Moreover, traditionally in Hindu society if a woman's husband dies she is considered unlucky and blamed for his death. This was the case for Parvati Neupani, a 35-year-old widow with three children who lives in Tupche VDC of Nuwakot District. During the earthquake, her three-year-old son was upstairs in their two-story home when it collapsed. He was buried under the rubble, so her husband went inside to save him. Tragically, her husband was crushed under the door and killed, but her son was rescued eight hours later. Parvati Neupani outside her home in Tupche VDC, Nuwakot District (WHR). After her husband's death and the loss of her home, Parvati was emotionally numb, and depressed for months. With the support of counseling from the Tupche women's center, Parvati has moved past the initial shock of her husband's death and the loss of her home. She is now concentrating on how to provide for her three children and hopes to support their education. Parvati said the most difficult challenge this past year has been facing mistreatment from the local community. In her village, Parvati's family shares a water pump with seven other families. However, after becoming a single woman the community shunned Parvati from using the tap. Now she has to wake up before all of the other neighbors to fetch water for her family.

"People said that my husband died because I am unlucky and that I was responsible," Parvati said. "Still whenever I speak to a man in public, people say things about me and question my character."

This type of discrimination against single women is common amongst the rural areas of Nepal. That is why the new women's centers have become a safe space for single women to share their problems and to create a collective voice within society. The centers' public awareness programs also spark dialogue within local communities that provides an opportunity to debunk prevailing notions about single women at the grassroots level.

"The public awareness programs have been especially effective because single women, men, and married women can participate," said Sannani Silwal, paracounsellor at the Dhading Salyantar women's center. "So when single women share their experiences and how they felt when the community mistreated them, it is a process of self-actualization and realization for the other community members."

One specific case of self-actualization amongst the single women we spoke to was Bimala Nepali. She is a young widow at the age of 28 living in Salyantar VDC of Dhading District. Her husband died two years ago leaving her with three young daughters. After his death, Bimala's neighbors said that she was unlucky and responsible for his misfortune.

Bimala with her youngest daughter outside the one room where they now live in Salyantar VDC, Dhading District (WHR).As a low caste single woman, Bimala began to internalize this notion. "Maybe I'm not good enough," she wondered. "Maybe I am to blame."

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At the time of the earthquake, Bimala was in church with her children. When she returned home, she found that her house had almost completely collapsed, but one room made of brick was still partially standing. Her brother helped to repair the room by adding pieces of CGI to the walls and roof. Bimala and her children still live in this small room, which feels a bit crowded with a bed, chest of clothing, two small tables, a bench, two chairs, and a sewing machine. After her husband's death, Bimala stayed at home and did not talk to many people in the community. So when she heard about the new women's center in Salyantar she decided to attend one of its programs. There, she realized the importance of sharing her problems with others and gained enough confidence to openly tell her story. "I began to recognize that my neighbors were wrong," said Bimala. "I was not responsible for my husband's death."
Fans of glass-floor attractions--be they boats, wedding chapels, bridges, restaurants, or slides 1,000 feet in the air--have another item to add to their bucket list: a record-breaking ferris wheel in Japan that, when it opens, will feature totally transparent floors.

The 403-foot Redhorse Osaka Wheel will be the fifth tallest Ferris wheel in the world and the single tallest in Japan.

The ride will feature 72 glass-bottomed passenger pods that will have views of the Expo 70 Commemorative Park. Now word yet on how much the ride will cost, but full rotation will take about 18 minutes, according to Japan Today.

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The attraction is just one of many recent plans for glass-bottom attractions. A design company in Mexico has plans to build a bar on the edge of a canyon, Los Angeles' U.S Bank Tower is installing a fully enclosed glass slide on the outside of the building, and transparent observation decks can be found at popular spots like the Grand Canyon, Willis Tower, and London's Tower Bridge.

More from Travel + Leisure:

--By Jordi Lippe-McGraw

Also on HuffPost:
Popcorn in rainbow bowls arranged to fill the frame.

By Jenna Rennert for Vogue.



Photo: Grant Cornett

We've all been there: It's late at night and you're standing barefoot in the kitchen, ravenously searching for something to eat. How to plan in advance to avoid having to resort to that calorie-filled tub of salted caramel ice cream? We spoke to New York City nutritionist Robin Barrie Kaiden, M.S., R.D., C.D.N., C.S.S.D. Here, she lists the five best snacks to keep in your pantry so that when hunger strikes, you're prepared.

1. Fat-Free or Low-Fat Plain Greek Yogurt

"Yogurt is high in protein, which keeps you full and is a great source of calcium," says Barrie Kaiden, who suggests opting for the plain flavor since it has no added sugar. For extra sweetness, sprinkle a few blueberries on top; add chia seeds for fiber and a dash of cinnamon for an antioxidant kick. Or mix in a pinch of cayenne pepper or crushed garlic to create a healthy dip for a few slices of crudite.

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2. Fresh or Frozen Fruit

"Fruit makes the perfect snack, since it's so easy to take on the go," says Barrie Kaiden, who suggests combining apples, bananas, or peaches with a spoonful of almond butter for a nourishing bite. If there's a fruit you love that's not available or not in season, get it on ice. "Frozen grapes or store-bought frozen strawberries make a refreshing summer treat," she says, "and are a great addition to keep in the freezer to top off oatmeal or to make quick smoothies."

3. Raw vegetables

"I love keeping a Tupperware container full of fresh veggies in my fridge," says Barrie Kaiden, who suggests stockpiling a few slices of cucumber, celery, carrot, or jicama. Serve with a half-cup of fresh-made salsa, guacamole, or hummus for dipping, and with the vegetables' high water and fiber content, "you'll stay full for hours."

4. Healthy Snack Bars

Not all bars are created equal. "Many popular ones are made with tons of sugar," says Barrie Kaiden. Stick to treats with all-natural ingredients, like real fruit and nuts, such as Larabar or RxBar, created with protein-packed egg whites.

5. Popcorn

This snack has all the crunch of chips or pretzels with far fewer calories. "If you're craving something salty, grab a handful or two of popcorn," recommends Barrie Kaiden. Pair a bag made with oil, corn, and salt like Pipcorn with a few slices of turkey or a dozen almonds for a filling snack.

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Raul Castro, in the presence of Barack Obama, chides a journalist who asks about political prisoners on the island. (EFE)

14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, 26 April 2016 - In films there are final epics. Systems whose final moments pass between the sound of the hammers tearing down a wall and the roar of thousands of people in a plaza. The Castro regime, however, is going through its death throes without glorious images or collective heroics. Its mediocre denouement has become clearer in recent months, in the signs of collapse that can no longer be hidden behind the trappings of the official discourse.

The epilogue of this process, once called Revolution, is strewn with ridiculous and banal events, but they are, indeed, clear symptoms of the end. Like a bad movie with a hurried script and the worst actors, the scenes illustrating the terminal state of this twentieth-century fossil seem worthy of a tragicomedy:

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Raul Castro erupts in fury at a press conference when asked about the existence of political prisoners in Cuba, he gets entangled in his earphones and comes out with some rigmarole a few feet from Barack Obama, who looks like the owner and master of the situation.

After the visit of the United States president, the government media releases all their rage at him, while Barack Obama's speech in the Great Theater of Havana is number one on the list of audiovisual materials most requested in the Weekly Packet.

Two Cuban police officers arrive in uniform on the beaches of Florida, after having navigated in a makeshift raft with other illegal migrants who helped them escape from Cuba.

A group of Little Pioneers, dressed in their school uniforms and neckerchiefs, contort in sexually explicit movements to the rhythm of reggaeton at an elementary school. They are filmed by an adult and the video is uploaded to the social networks by a proud father who thinks his son is a dance genius.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez accuses Obama of having perpetrated an attack on "our conception, our history, our culture and our symbols" a few days after receiving him at the airport and without having fearlessly said any of these criticisms to his face.

An obscure official at the Cuban embassy in Spain says in a chat with "friends of the Revolution" that this is "the most difficult moment and its history," and calls the coverage of Obama's visit in the foreign media as a "display of an unparalleled cultural, psychological and media war."

Raul Castro is unanimously reelected as first secretary of the Communist Party for the next five years and chooses stagnation. Thus, he loses the last chance to pass into the history books for a gesture of generosity to the nation, as late as it might be, instead of for his personal egoism.

Fidel Castro appears at the Congress's closing ceremony, sheathed in an Adidas jacket, and insists that "we not continue, as in the times of Adam and Eve, eating forbidden apples."

A few days after the end of the Party Congress, the government announces a laughable reduction in prices to try to raise fallen spirits. Now, an engineer no longer has to work two-and-a-half days to buy one quart of cooking oil, he only has to work two days.

Thousands of Cubans throng the border between Panama and Costa Rica trying to continue their journey to the United States, without the government of the island investing a single penny to help them have a roof over their heads, a little food and medical care.

An economist who explained to the world the benefits of Raul Castro's reforms and their progress, is expelled from the University of Havana for maintaining contacts with representatives from the United States and passing on information about the procedures of the academic center.

Two young people make love in the middle of the San Rafael Boulevard in plain view of dozens of onlookers who film the scene and shout obscene incitements, but the police never arrive. The basic clay of the Revolution escapes in the individual and collective libido.
By David Wemer

As Europe reels from the horrific attacks in Brussels, politicians and commentators have struggled to find a unified voice in response. Unlike the November Paris attacks, which were met with public demonstrations of European unity and a visible military response from President Hollande, the aftermath in Brussels has been largely marked by confusion, tension, and apparent paralysis on the part of Belgian and European authorities. Rather than publishing images of somber vigils or stories of heroic rescues, newspapers have been filled with headlines on cancelled demonstrations, right-wing riots, and bungled police raids. Almost all of the discussion in the press and amongst commentators has centered on assigning blame for the attacks, with fingers pointed at the most expedient political target, rather than any sort of sober diagnosis.

Here in the United States, the Obama Administration has been a popular target. To many, the Brussels attacks are a sign that the U.S. President has failed to adequately respond to the Syrian conflict. The United States has stood by for years as ISIL has taken control over large swaths of Iraq and Syria--through which they have been able to orchestrate attacks in two major European capitals. But these criticisms ignore important details about these attacks, chiefly that most of the attackers in Brussels, and indeed in Paris, were European nationals who were radicalized not in the deserts of Syria but in the impoverished urban centers of Europe. These attackers were likely emboldened by ISIL's success and some of the leaders may have had direct access or assistance from ISIL leadership, but the vagueness of ISIL's original press release suggests that the attacks were largely orchestrated without the knowledge of ISIL leadership. Make no mistake: the inaction of the Obama Administration, and indeed many Western nations, in the face of ISIL's atrocious war crimes has been deplorable. To place direct blame on Obama's policy of restraint, however, goes too far.

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Another target of intense criticism has been the victim country itself: Belgium. Revelations of missed intelligence warnings, understaffed security services, and disjointed bureaucracy have made it seem that the attacks could have easily been avoided, had Belgium not dropped the ball. Alternatively, some have placed the blame on nationalist division within the country, which has paralyzed its federal structure, allowing the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek to become the "terror capital of Europe." These criticisms, although easy to make in light of Belgian authorities' confused response to the crisis, are largely unfair. Could Belgium have done better? Perhaps. Were pieces of intelligence missed? Certainly. Belgium is not the first country to miss intelligence warnings, however, and not even the most sophisticated network can stop all attacks.

The rise of radicalism amongst a small minority of European Muslims has rightly received most of the attention in the aftermath of the attacks. The most troubling revelation has been that many of these attackers did not grow up in the autocratic and unstable Middle East, but rather in the liberal democracies of Western Europe. A few commentators have provided insightful analyses of this phenomenon, citing economic isolation and latent structural racism in Europe, as causing the failure of European communities to successfully integrate Muslim communities. These rare analyses have been drowned out, however, by voices decrying "political correctness" and the West's reluctance to offend Muslim communities in the face of Islamist violence. Rather than offering solutions to aid integration, these pundits have placed the blame on European Muslims, capitalizing on fear to advance anti-immigration policies.

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Lost in these assignments of blame is any real discussion of potential solutions. Outside of modest assistance by U.S. Marines to the Iraqi Army outside Mosul, Western countries remain unwilling to commit ground forces to defeat ISIL. The shortcomings of Belgium's security forces have so far only been addressed by a law allowing searches of homes after 9:00PM. And while the idea of further intelligence sharing amongst European nations has been floated, it has been framed in grandiose language of a European "CIA," a drastic integration step that would take years and a formal treaty change to enact. The only real response addressing the status of Belgium's Muslim community is a proposal requiring migrants to sign an "integration pledge."

Certainly a proper diagnosis of mistakes and the root causes of Islamist terror in Europe are necessary to formulate a plan of action. But instead of sober analysis, politicians and commentators have rushed to assign blame on their opponent of choice: the Obama Administration, American neoconservatives, American liberals, Belgian authorities, Flemish nationalists, the European Union, Euroskeptics, Muslim immigrants, and the list goes on. Unfortunately, media coverage is already starting to turn away from the Brussels attacks, and the opportunity to use public attention to implement serious policies is fading fast. It is time to stop focusing on scoring cheap political points, and instead work together to find practical solutions. If we cannot, we risk these attacks truly becoming the new normal for Europe and the world.
Vikas Swarup/Twitter

NEW DELHI -- Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan today held bilateral talks focusing on a range of sticky issues including Pathankot terror attack probe, Jammu and Kashmir dispute and 26/11 terror probe--the first such formal meeting between the two top diplomats after talks were deferred in January following the strike by Pakistani terrorists.

All outstanding issues, including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute were discussed. The Foreign Secretary emphasised that Kashmir remains the core issue that requires a just solution, in accordance with UNSC resolutions and wishes of the Kashmiri people, a Pakistani diplomatic source told The Hindu.

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Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry are also believed to have deliberated on ways to take forward the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue (CBD) which has been stagnant.

India has been pressing for action against terrorists responsible for the audacious attack on the premier IAF base, to move ahead in the talks.

Another important bilateral for Foreign Secretary as he meets with his Pakistan counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry pic.twitter.com/tk5ZKYwxeU  Vikas Swarup (@MEAIndia) April 26, 2016

"Another important bilateral for Foreign Secretary as he meets with his Pakistan counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry," tweeted External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup.

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The two Foreign Secretaries exchanged ideas on taking the relationship forward and agreed to remain in touch.

"We pressed for immediate consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav, the former Naval officer abducted and taken to Pakistan. The discussions also covered humanitarian issues including those pertaining to fishermen and prisoners, and people to people contacts including religious tourism," the Foreign Secretary said.

The Pakistan Foreign Secretary is here on a day-long visit to attend the 'Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia Istanbul Process'.

Jaishankar is understood to have raised the issue of investigation into the Pathankot terror strike.

This is also the first formal meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry after the announcement of CBD by the Foreign Ministers in Islamabad last December. The two secretaries had a informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March this year.

The efforts to resume CBD at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase in January that India said was carried out by militants from Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group.

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Jaishankar was scheduled to travel to Islamabad to hold talks with Chaudhary on 15 January but both the countries had announced deferment of the talks with "mutual consent" in the wake of the Pathankot attack.

Todays's meeting comes in the backdrop of Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit's recent comments that the bilateral peace process was suspended, evoking a sharp reaction by Indian side.

India has been maintaining that communication channels were on at various levels but also made it clear it wants to see action on terror and Pathankot first before the dialogue could be resumed.

Earlier, Jaishankar met Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Karzai and discussed issues of mutual interests.

(With inputs from PTI)

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JGI via Getty Images Close up of male hands in handcuffs

An alleged Indian Mujahideen operative was arrested from Mumbais international airport by a joint team of police and anti-terrorism agencies.

Zainul Abedin, an alleged IM terrorist, wanted for his role in the 13/7 Mumbai bomb blasts, was arrested by officers from the

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Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Gujarat and Karnataka police forces and the National Investigation Agency (NIA). Abedin is also accused of supplying explosives and firearms for various bomb blasts across the country in cities such as Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Bangalore.

A native of Bhatkal, Abedin is believed to be very close to Riyaz Bhatkal, the founder of terrorist outfit Indian Mujahideen.

Accoridng to news reports, Abedin was arrested after he landed in Mumbai on Tuesday morning.

"We had received information that Abedin would be coming to India to visit his native Bhatkal and that he would be going there via Mumbai. Accordingly, we laid a trap and arrested him," The Hindu reported quoting an ATS officer.

Abedin, who was detained in Saudi Arabia in 2015 is the twelfth person to be arrested in the triple bomb blast at Zaveri Bazaar, Opera House and Dadar between 6.52 pm and 7.05 pm that were executed by Yasin Bhatkal. As many as 27 people were killed and another 127 injured in the three blasts.

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Abedins name came up during the questioning of an accused from Karnataka, who was arrested by the ATS last year, news reports said.

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Hindustan Times via Getty Images NEW DELHI, INDIA - JANUARY 22: (EDITORaS NOTE: This is an exclusive shoot of Hindustan Times) Indo-Canadian Bollywood actor, model and former porn star Sunny Leone speaking during an exclusive interview with HT City-Hindustan Times for the promotion of her upcoming adult comedy film Mastizaade at HT Media Office on January 22, 2016 in New Delhi, India. Mastizaade is an upcoming Bollywood adult comedy film, directed by Milap Zaveri and produced by Pritish Nandy and Rangita Nandy. The film is scheduled to release on January 29, 2016. (Photo by Waseem Gashroo/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

Ruling party leaders and civic officials in Hyderabad have been in a tizzy for over 48 hours now, as one of the links that appears on the homepage of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) website has been taking users to a nude image of Bollywood actress Sunny Leone.

This website was previously used to verify sanitation workers' attendance and also garbage disposal details of the vehicles, Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation Commissioner B Janardhan Reddy said in a statement, while keeping distance from the content that is now hosted on the website.

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According to The Hindu, Reddy also said that the GHMC had discontinued the offsite real time monitoring system (OSRT) services two years ago and directed the vigilance officials to look into the matter.

Kiran Chandra of Swetcha, a free software movement organisation, said that the GHMC did not renew the domain that hosted the OSRT website. After expiry of the GHMCs ownership, the domain was acquired by an entity who hosted pornographic content.

Now, passing the buck to the Centre for Good Governance (CGG), a GHMC official told Mumbai Mirror that since the website was maintained by CGG, it was their responsibility to fix it as well. However, the CGG did not confirm whether the site had been hacked or had been tampered with by someone within the corporation.

No official action has been taken against anyone, said the police, as no complaint has been lodged so far.

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Hindustan Times via Getty Images MUMBAI, INDIA - MARCH 20: (EDITORaS NOTE: This is an exclusive shoot of Hindustan Times) Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan during Hindustan Times Most Stylish Awards 2016 at Taj Lands End, Bandra on March 20, 2016 in Mumbai, India. (Photo by Satish Bate/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

The Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning.

Essential HuffPost

Dawood Ibrahim, one of Indias most wanted criminal, is reportedly suffering from severe gangrene in his legs that has left him crippled. The doctors at Liaquat National Hospital, Karachi and the Combined Military Hospital, Karachi, where the D-Company's boss is being treated, said his legs may also have to be amputated.

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A senior official of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has dispelled rumours that they are planning to launch a plan offering 20 GB 3G data for 50. BSNL also claimed that its general manager Ram Shabd Yadav gave no quote regarding the same.

In a move to curb the rampant incidents of child marriages in Rajasthan, the tent suppliers in the state have decided not to supply wedding canopies and other paraphernalia to any unions involving minors. The association, which calls themselves Rajasthan Tent Dealers Kiraya Vyavsai Samiti, has over 47,000 dealers who supply tents and other things for events.

Noted scriptwriter Salim Khan has come out in support of his son and actor Salman Khan as India's Goodwill Ambassador for Rio Olympics 2016. He came out in defence of his son and the Indian film industry, saying that Bollywood had helped resurrect people like Milkha Singh, by making a biopic on the sprinter.

Main News

A massive fire that broke out at the National Museum of Natural History in Delhi early on Tuesday morning has reportedly destroyed it completely. The fire broke out on top floor of the museum, around 1.45 AM and quickly spread to all six floors.

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The floods in the north-eastern state of Assam worsened this week, with the number of people affected in six districts rising to almost one lakh. As several tributaries of the Brahmaputra continued to flow above the danger level and inundated fresh villages, the authorities have also deployed the Army, NDRF and SDRF personnel in rescue operations. As of now, about 7,200 people have been shifted to 40 relief camps.

The JNU on Monday rusticated Umar Khalid and two other students for varying duration and imposed a fine of 10,000 on Kanhaiya Kumar in connection with the February 9 event on the campus against Afzal Guru's hanging.

In an interview, Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa said that India must have cancelled the visa under pressure from the Chinese government. Adding that he was disappointed with the development, Isa said that he would come to India some other time, perhaps as a tourist, as he wanted to enjoy the Indian culture.

Off The Front Page

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Cooperation had a difficult time on Monday when a nude photo of Bollywood actress Sunny Leone kept popping up on their official website. After a lot of difficulty, they finally managed to remove the photo from the homepage, but it still kept showing up on related links and other pages.

In what could be a game changer this IPL, the Royal Challengers Bangalore have got England fast bowler Chris Jordan on board. Jordan, a member of the England side that made it to the final of the World T20, is expected to leave Sussex immediately as a replacement for the injured Mitchell Starc.

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Here's some good news those who look shell out tonnes of money for official Game of Thrones merchandise. Dehradun-based RS Windlass & Sons and Lord of Battles are the only two companies with official licenses in India that can sell clothes and gadgets from the popular franchise. Reportedly, the companies have also closely worked for film such as Gone with the Wind, Rome, the Harry Potter series as well as the Star Wars franchise.

After surprising his fans with his CGI-heavy, make-up enhanced look in Fan, actor Shah Rukh Khan is now set to play the role of a dwarf in Tanu Weds Manu director Aanand L Rai's next film.

Opinion

Finding a balance between privacy and digital economy will not be easy for tech giants like Google, says an opinion piece in Mint. "It is only a matter of time before the Internets data-driven economic model comes under scrutiny here too, on the back of rapidly expanding user bases and a smartphone boom driven by Android devices... Oil or currency, data is likely to prove to be as tricky to handle as eitherand as crucial," says the article.

Public policy needs to figure out the complexities of the polluter pays principle, says Neha Sinha in a column in The Hindu. "The final problem remains: paying compensation gives some respectability to the polluter, while damage to the environment may not always get reversed... The idea that nothing can be done to save the ecosystem is questionable. Even more questionable is the idea that paying cash as compensation is acceptable. Working out a metrics for measuring environmental damage and how it can be compensated will be of great importance and is urgent today," she writes.

NDA has kept its promise to make local self-government more meaningful. It is time for the states to do their bit, says M Venkaiah Naidu in The Indian Express. "With the countrys democratic structure operating at three levels  national, state, and panchayats and nagar palikas  democracy would be more meaningful when people participate in running their own affairs. However, this can be achieved only when states fully empower rural local bodies in terms of devolution of funds, decentralisation of powers, and allow people to have a greater say in local area development," he writes.

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Hutchinson's Salvation Army started in 1894

In 1910, under Captain George Seeds, the citadel at 114 West Sherman St. was built.
Opera said on its blog on Thursday that the newest version of its desktop Internet browser, which is targeted at developers, includes a free built-in Virtual Private Network (VPN), which can be used for getting round online censorship.

Norwegian online browser and advertising firm Opera Software , the takeover target of a Chinese consortium of Internet firms, has embedded a tool in its latest desktop app that can be used to circumvent censorship.

"Regarding China we already have servers in China and are running this through a Chinese IT company which is in compliance with Chinese laws," Opera CEO Lars Boilesen told Reuters.

"China is not a huge market for us on desktop. So this launch has nothing to do with China," he said.

Chinese Internet companies are required to censor any content the ruling Communist Party deems unlawful, a sweeping power which has been used to block content that clashes with the official party line.

China frequently upgrades its Internet censorship mechanism, which is widely considered the world's most sophisticated and known as the Great Firewall. This has often rendered VPNs impotent in China.

Opera is the subject of a $1.28 billion acquisition by a consortium of Chinese firms, including web search and security firm Qihoo 360 Technology Co Ltd and Beijing Kunlun Tech Co.

Last week the group said it had received acceptances on its offer for 72.19 percent of the shares in Opera, below the required level of over 90 percent, and had extended the deadline for acceptances to May 24.

The deal also needs to be approved by the Chinese and U.S. authorities.

Qihoo 360 and Kunlun declined to comment when contacted by Reuters on Thursday about whether Opera's new VPN tool might affect its bid.

Asked whether installing a built-in VPN in its browser could be a problem for the deal, Opera's Boilesen said it would be "completely unproblematic", given it was running it through a Chinese IT company already.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-opera-software-m-a-china-idUSKCN0XI1GN
Barbara Malkas, superintendent of the Webster Public Schools, was selected to lead North Adams.

Malkas Offered Superintendent Post in North Adams

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  Barbara Malkas has been selected to lead the North Adams Public Schools.



The School Committee made the unanimous decision on Monday night after some 40 minutes of discussion.



Malkas, a Clarksburg resident who is currently superintendent for the Webster Public Schools, is expected to start this summer, pending contract negotiations.



Mayor Richard Alcombright, chairman of the School Committee, said the two finalists were both very obviously hard working, capable, knowledgeable, and committed to their districts, students and community.



"We are very lucky to have top-tier superintendents wanting to lead our schools," he said.



But the tie-breaker, in his opinion, was the enthusiasm and passion encountered for Malkas during the site visit to Webster.



"I don't know quite how to explain it, but it was a different excitement," he said, adding he'd heard the word "authentic" at least twice during interviews with Webster officials and faculty. "That's a powerful word to me ... it speaks to a lot of things."



Malkas and Acushnet Superintendent Stephen Donovan had been winnowed down from 10 initial candidates in the search to replace the retired James Montepare. The committee had planned to name a finalist immediately after Donovan's interview 10 days ago but held off because of the absence of committee members Heather Boulger and Karen Bond. Bond was absent on Monday.



The six in attendance shared their impressions of the site visits, which included about five hours each of interviews with stakeholders in those communities, and the candidate interviews in North Adams.



Committee members said they liked Donovan's creative budgetary planning and presentations, his community involvement, responsiveness, willingness to tackle any job and his communication style. They also pointed to his focus on upgrading security and commitment to early education.



Malkas was cited for her confidence, academic planning, communications, clear vision and morale-building and supportive leadership. She, too, was cited for safety, commitment to preschool and community involvement.

Both also came with excellent references and strong expressions of support from their communities.
Cheshire to Decide Race for Selectman on Monday

CHESHIRE, Mass.  E. Richard "Dick" Scholz is trying again for a three-year seat on the Board of Selectmen, this time hoping to oust longtime incumbent Carol Francesconi.

Francesconi, currently chairman, has served on the board since 1989 and said she's not ready to leave.

"I have lived in Cheshire my entire life and I feel like I can continue to contribute," she said.

Francesconi is a retired registered nurse and certified women's health-care nurse practitioner. She was also a president of the Berkshire County Selectmen's Association and was distinguished as the Massachusetts Unsung Heroine in 2006.

She touts her broad experience and says as a lifetime resident, she wants to do what is right by the citizenship.

That occurred when she was first elected, she said, when the town fought for the traffic light on Route 8 installed.

"When I first came on the board we worked to get the stop light up here on Route 8," she said. "That was huge; we had to do all kinds of permits and studies for the state."

Other accomplishments were installing a new water system and winning several grants for education.

"I work hard to keep up with concerns for education and the children," she said. "I try to keep up to date on the best ways to keep our children in school and to improve the quality of their education."

She said the survival of Cheshire Elementary School will be a big concern of hers moving forward if re-elected. The Adams-Cheshire Regional School District is considering closing one of its two elementary schools.

"My major concern at this point right now is Cheshire School and getting the best use of the money that we give to the school district," she said. "Also, to make sure that whatever happens with the school is in the best interest of Cheshire students."

She added that the town budget will also remain a concern and pledged to strive to maintain services under the constraints of Proposition 2 1/2.

"We still must strive to provide services necessary, maintain a balanced budget and yet keep the tax rate at a figure that will be affordable for all of its citizens," Francesconi said.

Scholz first ran in 2014 against current Selectman Paul Astorino.

"I want to go from 20 miles per hour to 150 miles per hour. Things move much to slowly in Cheshire considering the challenges we face and I would like to create more opportunity," Scholz said. "I have a lot of energy and a lot of ideas."

He grew up in Cheshire and, after graduating from Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a degree in electrical engineering, moved to the Boston area. He worked in telecommunications throughout the world and moved back to his hometown in 2004. He now serves on the Cheshire Advisory Board.

Scholz said he wants to use his technical knowledge to broadcast Selectmen's meetings and provide more information online to involve more people in town government.

He also has pushed to expand the select board from three members to five.

"I am running to broaden the ability of Cheshire people to participate, and I have been harping on this three-to-five selectmen thing for a long time," Scholz said. "When you have more people solving the problem you solve it more quickly and you do a better job on it."

However, he added afterward that three can still work if they are the right people  and there are term limits.

Scholz said he wants to work toward a stronger sense of community and he, too, would fight to keep Cheshire School open.

"I will be looking at ways to revise the district because ... if you lose an elementary school you are no longer a town," he said.

He added that he would like to seek grants and invest in the town's infrastructure as well as look for opportunities to revitalize the town's historic yet deteriorating housing stock.

He said he would also like to capitalize on the history and natural beauty of the Cheshire to make it a tourist destination.

"We have some of the best geography and some of the best natural features in this town," Scholz said. "Once you can start a tourist-based economy and you get some attractions we can get downtown looking good and you build momentum."

The town election will be held on Monday, May 2; polls at the Senior Center will be open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Imperial Valley News Center

President Obamas Meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi

Hannover, Germany - President Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi met today for talks at Schloss Herrenhausen in Hannover, Germany. The conversation covered the most urgent issues on the trans-Atlantic agenda.

The leaders agreed that the implications of irregular migration to Europe posed a severe challenge that needed to be addressed in a comprehensive and sustainable manner, reflecting the values that Europe and the United States share: this implies ongoing NATO and EU activities as well as efforts to tackle the root causes of flight and migration.

On Syria, leaders shared the growing concern that the increasing violations of the agreed Cessation of Hostilities by the regime and the continued obstruction of humanitarian access undermine efforts to bring relief to the Syrian people. They called on all parties to respect the cessation, ensure humanitarian access, and contribute to the success of the Geneva talks on political transition in line with the Geneva Communique. They also called on those with influence on the parties to the conflict to press them to refrain from any actions that put the cessation and political talks at risk.

On ISIL, leaders welcomed the Coalitions continued progress in Iraq and Syria and reiterated their full commitment to defeating the terrorist group.

On Libya, leaders welcomed the steps currently undertaken by the Presidency Council to establish a fully functional and effective government. Leaders emphasized their full support for these efforts. With regard to the growing threat posed by ISIL and the destabilizing impact of criminal smuggling networks, they agreed on the strong and urgent need to support the Libyan people in growing the economy and building the capacity of the security sector. This would help counter criminal smuggling networks and counter the threat posed by ISIL. They agreed that these efforts should be undertaken at the request of the Libyan government and be supported by the international community. The leaders also urged NATO and the EU to draw on their experience in the Aegean to explore how they could work together to address in an orderly and humane way migrant flows in the central Mediterranean.

On Ukraine, leaders reiterated their rejection of Russias occupation and attempted annexation of the Crimea. There was agreement that full implementation of the Minsk agreements remained crucial. The leaders reiterated that sanctions against Russia would be lifted if the Minsk agreements were fully implemented.

Finally, the leaders discussed the importance of concluding an ambitious Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement, which would expand growth and create jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.
Engineers build a one-of-a-kind wind tunnel for birds that paves the way for better drones

Stanford, California - Most people look at a pigeon and see a chubby, common, boring bird. A rat with wings, in common New Yorker parlance. When David Lentink watches a pigeon dart around a building and land perfectly in its roost, however, he sees the future of robotic flight.

Lentink, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford, has been studying birds in flight for years, with an eye toward applying the tricks birds use to navigate changing conditions in the real world to design better aerial robots. Most of the insights he and his colleagues have gained so far have resulted from painstaking study, involving calculations of wing force dynamics inspired by footage captured in the wild.

Now, with the construction of one of the most advanced bird wind tunnels in the world, Lentink hopes to reveal even more of the magic of bird flight.

With the recent boom in drone use, its easy to forget that the robots frequently fail in windy conditions. Consider flying a drone down an urban canyon like Fifth Avenue in New York City. Turbulence varies wildly from the middle of the canyon to alongside the skyscrapers, and obstacles like traffic lights pop up frequently. Now, throw in a few dozen drones fighting for position like the taxis below. Its a nightmare for drone operators.

But you look up, and youll see a pigeon swoop by casually. It has no problem stabilizing itself, flying around corners, dodging cables and landing on a perch, Lentink said. Its just something we havent accomplished in robotics yet. We need to study birds up close so we can figure out what their secret is to flying so stably under such difficult conditions, and apply that to aerial robotic design.

The new wind tunnel works like a super tricked-out treadmill for birds. The windflow, generated by a fan roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, is super smooth: Turbulence checks in around .015 percent, less than half of any other bird wind tunnel in the world. This allows the researchers to study how birds fly in smooth-flowing air such as that found at higher altitudes.

Such conditions arent typical closer to the ground, particularly around trees and buildings, though, so the tunnel is fitted with a turbulence generating system, a series of computer-controlled wind vanes that can precisely simulate different turbulence patterns, creating up to 50 percent turbulence. In this state, the flow moves almost equally randomly in all directions, making it very unpredictable for the bird.

Cruising speed for birds

Wind speed is also highly tunable. The lovebirds, parrotlets, and hummingbirds that Lentinks lab studies typically cruise around 7 meters/second, which the engineers can match perfectly to study sustained flight. They will occasionally crank the flow up to 15 m/s, which simulates a strong wind, maxing out at 20 m/s for large birds.

Lentink is fiercely protective of his birds, and said this would be the maximum speed he would consider letting larger birds fly to keep them comfortable. The tunnel can blow much faster, however, with speeds up to 50 m/s for the prototype drones he plans to test in the tunnel.

Nearly two meters long, the six-sided windowed observation section of the tunnel provides Lentink and his students a variety of ways to study bird flight. They currently zero in on specific aspects of birds wing beats, using high speed cameras as well as motion capture techniques more commonly utilized in Hollywood films, recording wing motion millisecond by millisecond. They then translate these measurements to precise calculations of the force dynamics experienced along the birds wings and in the surrounding air. Later this summer, Lentink expects to introduce two fluoroscopes to the mix, which will allow researchers to see inside the bird and visualize the exact muscular-skeletal movements it makes in different flight maneuvers.

Once his team has trained enough birds, Lentink plans to fly entire flocks in the tunnel to determine how turbulence created by one birds wing beats affects a nearby bird, and how they maneuver for position. Both of these measurements will provide critical foundational information for a future sky packed with drones.

Using the information gleaned from bird flights, Lentink envisions using the tunnel as a test-bed for new aerial robot designs. In addition to establishing better maneuverability controls for common quadcopter designs, hes particularly interested in building bird-like, winged robots that quickly morph their wing shape in order to maintain stability in turbulent air flows.

Tricks birds teach us

Ever since Otto Lilienthal and the Wright Brothers studied birds to invent their airplanes, engineers have relied on talking with biologists to learn the tricks birds us, said Lentink, who is a member of Stanford Bio-X. Although the wind tunnel will enable engineers to develop safer and more reliable drones that fly in urban environments as well as birds do, Lentink stressed that it is not only an engineering facility. It is a top-notch biology lab that meets and exceeds all animal research standards enabled by the very best technology Stanford offers.

Lentink, who is both a biologist and an engineer, teaches engineering students and biology postdocs how to collaborate.

Our bird tunnel is really unique, and Im incredibly thankful to my colleagues and the School of Engineering who thought it was an awesome idea to enable engineering students to study how birds fly to develop better flying robots and made this possible, Lentink said. The facility has been built with great care by people within the School of Engineering, and Im really excited about the opportunity to study bird flight up close with engineering students who bring different interests ranging from biomechanics to fluid mechanics to aeronautics in our team of engineers and biologists.

The wind tunnel was paid for by Stanford. The various measurement systems were acquired with support from the Air Force, Navy, Army, Human Frontiers Science Program, and Stanford Bio-X program.
Making sense of the 2016 Campaign for President, assessing the prospects

Berkeley, California - The United States 2016 presidential race so far has been ruled by drama, trauma and Donald Trump, and provided political scientists and reporters assembled at UC Berkeley on Friday for the 19th annual Travers Conference on Ethics and Accountability in Government no shortage of potential lessons.

At the one-day conference, sponsored by the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science, the Institute of Governmental Studies and the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, the experts offered some possible explanations and forecasts in key election arenas, starting with:

Understanding the nominating process

Outsiders and outfoxing Fox?

A creeping radicalization of the Republican Party in recent years has set fire to expectations of the far right and spurred outsider candidates with no ties to party insiders or a need for elite or major media endorsements.

Money, money, money.

The influence of dark money raised by 501c4 organizations that dont have to disclose donors and arent supposed to be involved in politics has increased, as well as single-donor super political action committees.

If Bernie Sanders fails to capture the Democratic nomination, it wont be due to a lack of funds, says Eric Schickler, chair of UC Berkeleys political science department and an authority on political parties and voter behavior. The successful small-donor strategy refined by Barack Obama during his presidential races has helped Sanders collect $140 million, compared to the $160 million raised by Hillary Clinton from larger, often corporate sources.

How voters will decide in November

Its not really all about Trump.

Voters in both the Republican and Democratic parties are in largely anti-establishment mode, often have no idea how government and democracy really work and are increasingly enamored with a style of video politics featuring popular, charismatic candidates whose celebrity in other life roles guarantees them inordinate amounts of free publicity.

We should be appalled as educators about the countrys too-often uninformed electorate, said Thom Mann, a resident scholar at UC Berkeleys Institute of Governmental Studies and author of Its Even Worse Than It Looks.

Latino and Black Lives (and voters) Matter

Missteps with African American voters and alignment with the black communitys most far left leaders may have dealt Bernie Sanders an insurmountable voter deficit. As for the Republican side, neither Donald Trump nor Ted Cruz offer immigration policy proposals likely to win over Latino voters, who are crucial if the Republican Party is to regain the White House.

Could overexposure cripple Trump?

UC Berkeley political scientist Gabriel Lenz says Trumps final political undoing could result from the continuing barrage of attention toward him, no longer so diluted by Trumps criticism of his Republican challengers but instead focusing on his rhetoric and record.

What have you done for me lately?

Lenz, author of Follow The Leader? How Voters Respond to Politicians Policies and Performance, reminded the conference that voters tend to vote according to how the economy and their immediate worlds are performing closer to Election Day, opening the door to what today is unknowable.

Prospects for governance after the votes are counted

Grim. The vote was unanimously negative for anything such as reaching across the party aisle or forming coalitions, although some experts conclude that a Trump backlash in November could bring Thanksgiving early for Democrats, delivering them more seats in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
NAVCENT Commander Concludes IMCMEX, Calls "Realistic" Training a Priority

Manama, Bahrain - Leaders of the International Mine Countermeasures Exercise (IMCMEX) brought the exercise to a close and highlighted the need to continue training with scenarios that are likely to occur in real life in order to keep waterways safe.

The exercise "raised the bar in terms of reality," said Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, "not in terms of some arbitrary metric, but in terms of real-world value. You couldn't just show up and declare success. You actually had to get in the water."



IMCMEX, which ended April 26, featured international naval and civilian maritime forces from more than 30 nations spanning six continents training together across the Middle East.



U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) organized and led IMCMEX. NAVCENT leads U.S. Navy and afloat Marine Corps forces across the more than 2.5 million square miles of ocean in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.



Participants focused on maritime security from the port of origin to the port of arrival and included scenarios ranging from mine countermeasures, infrastructure protection and maritime security operations in support of civilian shipping.



"What's important to each of our nations is the free flow of commerce," said Donegan. "We did raise the bar, and we did it in a way that will be a springboard for next year and the years after that."



More than 4,000 civilian and military personnel, ashore and aboard more than 30 ships, participated the Fleet Tactical Exercise (FTX) portion of IMCMEX, which focused on shipboard, air, and undersea training and conducting port and maritime security operations.



FTX operations included mine countermeasures, diving operations, small-boat exercises, maritime security operations coordinated with industrial and commercial shipping, unmanned underwater vehicle operations, and port clearance.



The FTX demonstrated new technologies, such as unmanned underwater vehicles, and the sealift capabilities of the expeditionary fast transport ship USNS Choctaw County and the afloat forward staging base USS Ponce, equipped with the U.S. Navy's only operational laser weapon system.



During the FTX, 161 mine-like shapes were dropped in the water as practice aids for mine countermeasures. Using the wide array of technology and expertise among the partner nations, participants found and retrieved all of them.



Industry participation in this year's IMCMEX was the largest it has ever been, with collaboration and training between industry representatives and 11 merchant and commercial vessels, including cruise ships HMS Queen Mary 2 and Queen Elizabeth 2.



IMCMEX began April 4 with a symposium in Bahrain on Maritime Infrastructure Protection, bringing together governments, militaries and industry to discuss how to best provide the necessary foundation of security that supports unrestricted access to the vital maritime infrastructure critical to regional and global economies.



Leaders from 13 participating nations, together with the U.S. Naval War College and U.S. Joint Staff, also spent time thinking through notional threats and developing plans to counter and mitigate those notional threats during the Command Post Exercise.



"We've tried a number of things this year that we haven't tried in the past," said Commodore William Warrender, Royal Navy, Combined Maritime Forces deputy commander and leader of the exercise, as he thanked multinational partners for their robust participation and ambition in this year's IMCMEX during the exercise closing ceremony. "I hope you got as much out of this exercise as I did."
Voluntary Principles Annual Plenary Meeting Hosted in Colombia

Bogota, Colombia - On April 21 and 22, the Government of the United States and the Government of Colombia co-hosted the Annual Plenary Meeting of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights Initiative (VPs Initiative) in Bogota, Colombia. This was the first plenary hosted in a country where the VPs are being implemented, offering a unique opportunity to focus on challenges and opportunities related to implementation, and enhancing our ability to show Latin American countries and other regional stakeholders what can be accomplished through the VPs process. At the meeting, Argentina announced its intent to join the VPs Initiative.

The plenary marked the culmination of the U.S. Governments one-year chairmanship of the VPs Initiative. We made progress on several things this year including revision and clarification of the entry criteria for new members; updates to the reporting guidelines for VPs participants to encourage more robust corporate reporting on security and human rights; and implementation of a framework to allow regular verification of members implementation of their respective roles and responsibilities.

U.S. Government leadership in the VPs initiative is an example of this Administrations commitment to partner with corporations, other governments, and civil society groups to promote responsible business conduct and collectively address human rights challenges.
Deputy Secretary Higginbottom Travel to Madagascar and Kenya

Washington, DC - Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom will travel to Madagascar and Kenya, April 25May 1.

Deputy Secretary Higginbottom is among the most senior U.S. State Department officials to visit Madagascar. As the country returns to democracy, her visit underscores the support of the U.S. Government for the Malagasy people. During the visit, she will discuss governance, including transparency and accountability, development and economic growth, and the preservation of Madagascars unique environment. She will meet with President Rajaonarimampianina and other government officials as well as visit U.S. foreign assistance programs related to health, community development, and wildlife protection.

In Kenya, Deputy Secretary Higginbottom will participate in the Giants Club Summit, a high-level meeting of heads of state, business leaders, and wildlife experts to discuss ways to protect Africas remaining elephant populations and their environments. Her visit underscores the U.S. Governments support for Kenyan and continent-wide efforts to combat wildlife trafficking. Following the summit, Deputy Secretary Higginbottom will witness the largest ivory burn in history, an event intended to send a message to the world that ivorys only worth is as attached to a living animal. In addition, she will meet with government officials and others to discuss sustainable development, the protection of refugees, and wildlife conservation and trafficking. She will meet with refugees and review processing and security vetting for those who have been referred for resettlement in the United States.
Stanford historian studies how U.S. intervention in Afghanistan changed that country

Stanford, California - Among the more than a million refugees that have flooded into Europe over the past year are the Afghans, the second-largest group behind the Syrians. Yet the humanitarian crisis affecting this land-locked South Asian country, like most news regarding Afghanistan, has received little attention in the United States.

Robert Crews, an associate professor of history at Stanford, said, In Washington, it has become common to view Afghanistan as a country defined by a never-ending struggle among warlords, tribal chiefs, and religious fanatics. This has been particularly attractive as a way of explaining why the American intervention in that country, despite costing more than 2,300 American lives and roughly a trillion dollars, has achieved so few of its goals in over 14 years.

Crews examines Americas role in policies that have fueled Afghanistans economic and cultural crises in his book, Afghan Modern: The History of a Global Nation. The work explores the extent to which U.S. influence has shaped Afghanistan over the past seven decades, including the American intervention against the countrys fundamentalist Taliban in 2001 in response to their presumed role in the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Long before 2001, Americans came to Afghanistan with the goal of remaking their lives along lines that would advance U.S. interests, said Crews, a historian whose research and teaching interests focus on Afghanistan, Central and South Asia, Russia, Islam, and global history.

Enduring images

Crews starts from the premise that the way Americans conceptualize the country in journalism, public-policy debates and scholarly work  remains mired in stereotypes that bear little resemblance to historical reality.

One of the most enduring images of Afghanistan evokes a desolate, inward-looking, primitive and isolated place, said Crews, whose recent courses at Stanford include The Global Drug Wars, The Islamic Republics and Modern Islamic Movements.

Drawing on a variety of archival and secondary sources in Afghanistan, Europe and the United States, as well as first-hand oral histories he collected personally from Afghans in half a dozen countries, Crews portrays an Afghanistan that is hardly a static and backward collection of tribes or ethnic groups, but rather a central global player in modern politics.

Among the people whose stories inform his narrative are Afghan traders in Africa, poets in Iran, scholars in Iraq, pilgrims in Jerusalem, seafarers in India, entrepreneurs in Australia, carpenters in California, students in Turkey, workers in London and a novelist in Denmark.

Crews became fascinated with Afghanistan in the late 1990s, when he lived with Afghan merchants in Uzbekistan while working on a project in Central Asia. I was struck by their generosity, hospitality and cosmopolitan sophistication, which clashed with the American image of Afghans as being medieval peasants, he said.

Making of a global state

Crews begins his book by examining the making of the Afghan nation-state within and beyond its borders as they exist today, exploring interactions between a sizeable Afghan diaspora abroad and the rulers of the kingdom in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

He then takes up the pivotal period of the 1930s and 1940s, in which Afghanistan became deeply embedded in global financial networks. With the onset of the Cold War, Afghanistan was awash with foreign advisers and experts eager to turn Afghan elites rush toward the industrial era to the advantage of one or the other superpower. Along the way, the country became a major supplier of opium and cannabis to satisfy world demand.

Crews turns his attention to the seizure of power in 1978 by an underground Afghan socialist party, which, he says, triggered a proxy war between Moscow and Washington. He describes the struggle between Soviet communists and Muslims that ensued, later spawning al-Qaida, the Taliban and other revolutionary groups.

U.S. backing for the mujahedeen  the Islamist groups that mounted resistance to the leftist government and its Soviet backers in the 1980s  would have fateful consequences for Afghanistan and the world for years to come, Crews observed.

The American intervention against the Taliban, claimed to be responsible for the 9/11 attacks, opened up yet another distinctive era in the history of Afghan globalism, he demonstrates. Afghans became the object of an American-led humanitarian mission that was, simultaneously, a campaign to remake Afghans in the name of American security, he noted.

A critical view

Afghan Modern is a scathing critique of U.S. military policies in the global arena. In the aftermath of the war on that country, Crews asserted, Americans bear considerable responsibility for a government whose rule has been authoritarian, corrupt, and, in the eyes of so many Afghans, illegitimate.

When the Bush administration decreed Afghanistan a place that was beyond international law, he said, Washington was merely ratifying what many officials had already concluded: that this was a wild place, where force was the only language of communication.

Reliance on Afghan militias, night raids, assassinations and imprisonment without charge were the logical outcomes, he added.

The new Afghan state was built on an American legacy of torture and impunity, Crews said. Moreover, the United States has been shockingly stingy in compensating civilians for unintended casualties, paying as little as $2,500 per fatality  and, in one documented case, less than $200.

Afghan Modern chronicles how by 2014, facing stalemate with the Taliban movement, Washington had abandoned many of its earlier ambitions. Over the decades, the United States has not only lacked the capacity to fix Afghan society, but has played an essential role in breaking it, Crews said.

The current American approach  maintaining a modest contingent of special operations forces to prevent total victory for the Taliban or other insurgents  is unlikely to forestall the downward spiral of the Afghan state, he argued. It is a formula for war without end.

Crews calls for new approaches to Afghanistan, especially how we imagine its past and act in the present.

One of the remaining alternatives, long-neglected by Washington, is a sustained commitment to a political settlement to Afghanistans civil war and its regional entanglements, he said. This is a challenging but not impossible proposition.
On the Occasion of the United Republic of Tanzania's Union Day

Washington, DC - Secretary of State John Kerry: " On behalf of President Obama and the American people, I congratulate the people of Tanzania as you celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the United Republic of Tanzania.

"Tanzania and the United States share a long history of cooperation and friendship. In the coming year, we will continue to work together to make progress in health and education, encourage economic growth, support democratic governance, and advance regional security.

"As Tanzanians gather to celebrate Union Day, I share the hopes of the Tanzanian people for a peaceful and prosperous future."




This Isnt Our Last Love Letter



Dear Don Don,

Way back in 92



I walked into the room and knew



Never felt this way before



I shook your hand while gazing into your eyes



And the feeling grew



As I took a seat I knew



A love that would have my heart



Forever



I knew



Way back in 92





They say love at first sight doesnt always last or isnt true



We were the exception to that rule



Our love had no where to hide



A spark set fire



As if this is how the universe started





I never doubted our love or what we could do



Together we grew



Forming a bond everlasting



That became our glue



My euphoria was YOU



Im eternally grateful for the love and life we shared



For how fortunate we were :



to have and to hold

through sickness and in health

Til death do us part



Until we are together again



This isnt our last love letter



I love you with all my heart and soul



Yours forever,



Deirdre (Mrs. Hank Snow)





Im fortunate to have fallen in love with, marry and make a life with the sharpest, coolest, funniest, most rare, bad ass, tender loving, loyal man on the planet, my husband Don Imus.









A True American Hero

I dont know why it has been so hard for me to write about my dear friend Don Imus.



I certainly know what he meant to me, my family, my charity, my hospital and the millions of fans that listened and loved him for so many years.



I keep reading all the beautiful condolences that people are writing about how much a part of their lives were effected by listening to him over the years.

But what most people dont talk enough about is what he did for all of us.

In every sense of the word, he was an American Hero. His work with children with so many different illnesses and his dedication to their future was unmatched by anyone I have ever known or heard about.



Besides raising over $100,000,000 for so many causes, he took care of young people for over 20 years in a state where he could not breathe. Along with his incredible wife Deirdre, he created a world where children were not defined by their disease. That was a miracle! He was a miracle.

I will miss him ever day for the rest of my life.

I was blessed to be a part of his and Deirdes life.

No one will ever do what he did.

I love you Don Imus - A TRUE AMERICAN HERO





David Jurist

IMUS IN THE MORNING

FIRST DAY BACK!
Iceland Cricket's Quirky Tweets Have an Audience of Their Own
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It's a good time to be a Harry Potter fan.

Not only will this summer see a new two-part play - Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - revisit JK Rowling's wizarding world but an adaptation of her prequel spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will arrive in cinemas this November.

The film, directed by David Yates, has been penned by Rowling herself - the author's first screenplay - and it's now been revealed that said script will be published as an eBook by official website Pottermore following the feature's release.

 Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them - Teaser Trailer

Print editions and eBooks will be released simultaneously courtesy of Little Brown and Pottermore on 19th November. They'll reportedly be priced at 9.

Despite being 128 pages in length, the film - following the travails of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) - is confirmed to be the first part of a trilogy.

Katherine Waterston, Colin Farrell and Ron Perlman will also star in the period adventure set in America 70 years before Harry Potter begins.

A few months back, Rowling wrote a four-part prologue to the film which inducted Pottermore followers into a new place and time within the universe.

Stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 and 2 will be published on 31 July, the day after its release in the London West End.
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You want to be Han Solo. I want to be Han Solo. We all want to be Han Solo, right?

Disney is well-acquainted with our collective daydreams; which is exactly why they've announced the Star Wars-themed lands currently being built at Disneyland and Walt Disney World will feature the one ride that could fulfill all our wishes. Yes, you'll be given a chance to sit behind the controls of the Millennium Falcon itself.

During a recent Disney Parks presentation (via Inside the Magic), Disney Imagineer Scott Trowbridge revealed the following details on the attraction; "Step aboard that iconic spaceship, the Millennium Falcon and take the controls yourself. Youre actually going to pilot this thing. Youre going to be the one in complete control, steering it through outer space, firing those lasers cannons, its all up to you so please be gentle with her."

Considering the sheer weight behind this project, it's likely Disney Imagineers have been pushing for revolutionary new ride mechanics to be developed for the new land; though, exactly what a personalised Millennium Falcon experience would consist of, especially considering the need for huge ride capacities to ease queues, is so far a mystery.



First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience Show all 15 1 /15 First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney First glimpse at Disneyland's 'Star Wars' experience ABC/Disney



The Millennium Falcon experience will be one of two major rides planned for the dual lands; the other plans to drop guests at the centre of a battle between the Resistance and First Order, presumably with a menacing cameo by Kylo Ren himself.

Trowbridge also elaborated a little on the area's general look; "Theres so much more to see and do at this remote outpost. Theres this great otherworldly street market right behind a unique collection of characters, aliens and droids."

"Here there are shops, you can sample the local food and try these really cool and unique drinks. Thats actually one of the things Im most excited about bringing Star Wars off of the screen and into the real world, and thats that we can bring all these immersive stories to life using all of our senses."
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Sitting in the bar at Londons Soho Hotel, casually-dressed with steaming mug of coffee in hand, Helen McCrory looks every bit the down-to-earth mother-of-two and nothing like her intimidating Peaky Blinders matriarch, Polly. Behind her informal appearance and attitude (she briefly pauses our interview after just two minutes to catch up with a co-star) is a formidable character bubbling with intellectually-formed opinions; her actors voice, as rich and distinctive as a full-bodied Merlot, commanding respect. Though she stands little at 5ft 3, she is most certainly fierce.

McCrory is with me today to talk about the BBCs hit 1920s drama, named after a brutal Birmingham gang who sewed razor blades into the peaks of their flatcaps, and back for its third series in early May. She returned to Peaky Blinders having finished playing the unscrupulously evil Madame Kali in Penny Dreadful, a character skilled in the Dark Arts with a similar drive for reaching her goals as Polly. This series, she promises a new script that delves much deeper into the emotions and psyche of the characters, especially hers and lead actor Cillian Murphys, who plays blue-eyed mob boss Tommy Shelby. Were going to places and doing things with the performance that we just havent done before, she says. Its quite nerve-wracking as an actor. You feel vulnerable.

Recommended Read more 13 reasons to catch up on Peaky Blinders before season 3 begins

Polly is back having killed her rapist nemesis, leaving her haunted with self-loathing and a growing longing for peace. Her conversation and story is much more with herself this series, she says, hinting that the arrival of a love interest prompts inwards exploration and insight. To truly be honest with the person you love, you have to be honest to yourself and you have to reveal all, she says. But will you do it or wont you do it?

McCrory was born in Paddington, London to a Welsh mother and Glaswegian diplomat father, both of whom came from working class families. The no-nonsense approach instilled within her as a child means she relates to the get on with it attitude the Shelbys display towards mental health. Both Tommy and his brother Arthur suffer from post-traumatic stress after serving in the First World War trenches, but their stiff upper lip culture brushes its effects under the carpet or, in Arthurs case, buries them in line after line of cocaine and shot after shot of whisky. While McCrory does not advocate such self-destructive behaviour, she understands why the men never talk about their experiences. They would unravel, she says. Everybody says, Oh its wonderful to let it all out, but is it? The 47-year-old knows she is not a psychotherapist, but in the background she came from, there was no whinging that your granddad was shellshocked and your father was sent off to war and your mum was a cleaning lady and money was tight. You just got on with it, she says.

Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Show all 30 1 /30 Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Cillian Murphy as Peaky Blinders mob boss Tommy Shelby BBC Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Peaky Blinders is acclaimed for its stunning cinematography Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Annabelle Wallis as Tommy's new wife Grace Shelby Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Helen McCrory as the fearsome yet complicated Aunt Polly Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures The Peaky Blinders, always meaning business Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Tommy Shelby dances with his new wife Grace in the series three premiere Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby and his young son Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Cillian Murphy looking dapper as Tommy Shelby at his wedding to Grace Burgess Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Tommy's bride was finally revealed in episode one of series three Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Helen McCrory returns as Aunt Polly Gray Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Alexander Siddig plays Polly's potential new suitor Ruben Oliver Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Oh to own one of these beautiful 1920s cars Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Harry Kirton as Finn Shelby Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby meeting Gaite Jansen as Duchess Tatania Petrovna Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Tommy Shelby has moved into the higher echelons of society but the corruption continues Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Harry Kirton as Finn Shelby Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Gaite Jansen as Duchess Tatania Petrovna Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Paul Anderson as Arthur Shelby with Cillian Murphy as his younger mob boss brother Tommy Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Paul Anderson and Cillian Murphy as Arthur and Tommy Shelby Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Tommy struggles to keep Arthur under control in the first episode of Peaky Blinders series three Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Ian Peck as Curley and Ned Dennehy as Charlie Strong Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Benjamin Zephaniah as Jeremiah Jesus and Jordan Bolger as Isiah Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Paul Anderson as Arthur Shelby at Tommy's wedding Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Helen McCrory battles with self-loathing as Polly Gray Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Richard Brake as intimidating new character Anton Kaledin Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Alexander Siddig as the charming Ruben Oliver Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Tommy Shelby orders the Peaky Blinders to behave themselves on his wedding day Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Tommy Shelby's mind is elsewhere at his wedding breakfast Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Jordan Bolger as Isiah at Tommy's wedding Peaky Blinders series 3 in pictures Sophie Rundle as the strong-willed Ada Shelby



Portraying post-traumatic stress disorder is not, McCrory believes, any more tricky than anything else in the refreshingly gritty and layered drama. You always have to rely on the writing as an actress, she says, noting that if complexity is lacking it can be hard to save it. Steve [Knight, creator] has always been very interested in the pressure, the strains and the truth of the situation, how life affects people, she says, adding that she will always give her full support to writing that has thought behind it. Whether its about sex or violence or being a policeman in Somerset, if its not truthful its gratuitous, she says. Steve shows you the relentless exhaustion of these peoples lives and what a cacophony of pain it is.

Pollys rape at the hands of Major Chester Campbell, played by Sam Neill, shocked viewers last series, her subsequent internal struggle as a Catholic set for further exploration in the third. But while Neill did a brilliantly grotesque job in the hard-hitting scene, McCrory found herself reassuring him in the run-up to shooting. He was very worried about doing it, very wobbly, she says, insisting that playing the rapist is much harder than playing the rape victim. Its to do with culpability. Obviously its all pretend, but its much harder to be the bastard, the violent animal, than it is to be the victim. No ones looking at you going, How could you allow yourself to be raped? Nobody allows themselves to be raped. But how do you allow yourself to rape? Thats the real question. Neills pre-rape scene jitters are the rule, not the exception, with many actors refusing to play rapists or paedophiles for fear of audience repulsion. [People] stare at you on the tube, McCrory says. They cant remember why they want to batter you to death, but they just remember that they do, and youre there going, No! It was a programme!



McCrory resists describing Polly as a strong female character, agreeing with my growing suspicion that the ambiguous term littering film and TV articles in the name of equality is ironically doing little for it. I dont really have any idea what it means, she says, genuinely perplexed. Does it mean slightly stroppy bolshy bint? What McCrory looks for, and what the acting industry so desperately needs, is complexity. She has no interest in whether a woman is seen as strong, weak, empowered or the victim, so long as the part is written with truth and explores what that womans position is. I just want to see what she feels and what she thinks, she says. To fill the screens with women who are walking around in six-inch stilettos and telling everyone what to do is as uninteresting to me as filling them with bimbos in bikinis falling into pools and laughing at your jokes. Neither are particularly interesting.

McCrory has long been eyeing another period of history to explore, one she feels has been sorely misrepresented on screen. She would love to have a thriller commissioned about the suffragettes, she reveals, passion glinting in her eyes. Its an area she has been researching for six years. Its incredible the lengths they went to, she says. The different ways that women infiltrated the House of Commons, the extraordinary stories of women who were arrested and continually raped until the police discovered they were Ladies and left them to be shut up by their husbands. Crucially, McCrorys vision is far from the realms of romantic drama, the genre that we like to see women in. If we wrote it as a thriller, as opposed to having Gladys looking out of the window saying Will Harold still love me when he knows Ive been arrested in the square?, I would love to do that, she muses. Weve got the female actresses to do it. I will obviously be the lead - that goes without saying.

It really, really does.

Peaky Blinders returns to BBC Two on 5 May
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HBO has released the episode titles for S06E02 and S06E03 of Game of Thrones, teasing Brans return and seeing sides forming at Castle Black.

Given that, curious Melisandre ending aside, little happened in Sunday nights first episode, a little indication of whats to come is very welcome.

Lets take a look at them first, then well try and glean what we can after:

Episode #52 (season 6, episode 2): Home

Debut: Sunday, May 1 (9:00-10:00 pm ET/PT)

Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) trains with the Three-Eyed Raven (Max von Sydow). In Kings Landing, Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) advises Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman). Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) demands good news, but has to make his own. At Castle Black, the Nights Watch stands behind Thorne (Owen Teale). Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) proposes a plan, and Balon Greyjoy (Patrick Malahide) entertains other proposals.

Written by Dave Hill

Directed by Jeremy Podeswa

Update: We now have a trailer for this episode too - Cersei and Jaime try to regain King's Landing, the Boltons plot to storm Castle Black (!) and Tyrion tracks down Daenerys' dragons.

 Game of Thrones Season 6- Episode #2 Preview (HBO)

Episode #53 (season 6, episode 3): Oathbreaker

Debut: Sunday, May 8 (9:00-10:00 pm ET/PT)

Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) meets her future. Bran meets the past. Tommen confronts the High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce). Arya (Maisie Williams) trains to be No One. Varys (Conleth Hill) finds an answer. Ramsay gets a gift.

Written by: David Benioff & D. B. Weiss

Directed by: Dan Sackheim.

First off, that site that leaked the episode titles got them completely right.

I imagine Home will open with Bran, given that his story is set to form a huge part of this season, and it doesnt look like well get an update on Melisandre/Jon Snow (though its very possible HBO has simply omitted this plot strand from the synopsis for the sake of spoilers). It will be interesting to see how Tyrion starts tackling the uprising in Meereen, and what those newly cast Greyjoys will be up to.

Game of Thrones season 6 stills Show all 26 1 /26 Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills HELEN SLOAN / HBO Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills HELEN SLOAN / HBO Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills Game of Thrones season 6 stills

Oathbreaker is clearly a reference to Brienne, given her sword is named Oathkeeper, but which oath will she be breaking, the one with Jaime or the allegiance she just swore to Sansa in episode one? Brienne is more loyal than perhaps any other character in the show, so this is an intriguing prospect and no doubt more complicated than the name suggests. Elsewhere, the episode description is pretty vague (Ramsay gets a gift) but Bran meeting the past should spell flashbacks, potentially the Tower of Joy one we know is coming.

Episodes 2 and 3 will be broadcast in their usual 9pm ET slot in the US, simulcast on Sky Atlantic in the UK at 2am.
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We love Netflix - believe us, we do. It's fair to say, however, that May's addition slate is not the streaming site's strongest.

Let's discuss the positives - May sees Netflix's original output expand with more new releases than ever. Although we're sure there are those excited for Grace and Frankie season two or its first foreign language production, Marseilles, it's the release of Bloodline's second season at the tail-end of the month that most will be anticipating.

Film wise, highlights include Ridley Scott's Oscar-winning epic Gladiator, comedy Bad Neighbours (in time for the sequel's cinema release) and the searing documentary Cartel Land.

It's probably worth mentioning that Adam Sandler's second Netflix Original is also released this month.Titled The Do-Over, it follows on from The Ridiculous Six which did massive business for the provider. Quite honestly, you're either hyped for that or you're not.

The list of everything joining Netflix in May can be found below; here's a list of everything leaving - from Pulp Fiction to Toy Story.

Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Show all 14 1 /14 Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 House of Cards - Season Four - 4 March Last time we were in Frank Underwoods White House things werent looking to great for the President, his first Lady having just walked out on him. What will happen next in the critically acclaimed show is anyones guess. Netflix Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Daredevil - Season Two - 18 March Back in Hells Kitchen things were seemingly getting better. Kingpin is in prison and the crime syndicates should have dispersed - for the meantime at least. Unfortunately for Matt Murdoch, theres a new anti-hero in town: The Punisher. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Flaked - 11 March According to Netflix, Flaked is set in the insular world of Venice, California. It follows the serio-comic story of a self-appointed 'guru' who falls for the object of his best friends fascination. Soon the tangled web of half-truths and semi-b******* that underpins his all-important image and sobriety begins to unravel. Arnett plays Chip, a man doing his honest best to stay one step ahead of his own lies. Netflix Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt - Season Two - 15 April Following the story of 29-year-old Kimmy Schmidt on her journey through New York, season two is set to start right where the last left us. The Tina Fey created sitcom has already been renewed for a third season, so you know this one has to be good. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 The Ranch - 1 April A comedy starring Ashton Kutcher. Based on a failed semi-pro footballer who returns home to a Colorado ranch. It also has some of the producers from Two and a Half Men behind it, which just happens to be one of the most successful shows of all time. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Marseille - 5 May Netflixs first French language original is a tale of power, corruption and redemption. Sounding like it could very well be the next Narcos. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Grace and Frankie - Season Two - 6 May The tale of a retired cosmetics mogul and a hippie art teacher living together was a hit across the world, especially in the US. Starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, the show has already been renewed for a third season. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Orange is the New Black - Season Four - 17 June Another Netflix powerhouse, Orange is the New Black will see us returning to Litchfield Penitentiary. Prepare for more Piper, Alex and Red come June. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Stranger Things - 15 July Eight-episode series starring Winona Ryder that follows a small community as they look for a young boy who has seemingly vanished. It all sounds quite scary. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 The Get Down - August 12th "Told through the lives and music of a ragtag crew of South Bronx teens, The Get Down is a mythic saga of the transformation of 1970s New York City. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, this is sure to be as stylish as anything hes done before. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 The Crown - Spring Starring Doctor Who actor Matt Smith, the period drama reveals the political rivalries and romance behind Queen Elizabeth II's reign and the events that shaped the 2nd half of the 20th century." Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Luke Cage - Fall 2016 First appearing alongside Jessica Jones in her Netflix series, Luke Cage will pic up the pieces, seeing Cage come to terms with his super-strength and impenetrable skin. It is unknown whether Kathryn. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Narcos - Season 2 - Fall 2016 Its back. The Netflix series hyped to match Breaking Bad was an astounding success around the world, apparently watched more than Game of Thrones. Well find out what happens to Pablo Escabar now he doesnt have the protection of all his men. Netflix Inc. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 A Series of Unfortunate Events - Fall 2016 Netflix is set to revisit the much-loved childrens novel, putting Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf in a show that looks so much creepier than the 2004 film. Not much else is known - i.e. casting - but Lemony Snicket is on board as executive producer, so get excited.

UK

1 May

Traitor

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin' Down a Dream

Paradox

The Return of the Living Dead

12 Years Promise (season 1)

Starboard Light

Easy Living (seasons 1, 2 and 3)

RED

Dark Horse

Deadly Impact

The Black Stallion

Terra

Somm: Into the Bottle

Triumph of the Spirit

Gary Gulman: It's About Time

LoliRock (season 1)

She's Beautiful When She's Angry

The Champions

Last (season 1)

Kevin Hart Presents Keith Robinson: Back of the Bus Funny

Welcome to Leith

Black Friday

A Matter of Faith

The Confessions of Thomas Quick

The Hooligan Factory

Kevin Hart Presents: Plastic Cup Boyz

Ava's Possessions

Leprechaun

Kevin Hart Presents Lil Rel: RELevent

The Substitute

That Gal... Who Was in That Thing: That Guy 2

My Last Day Without You

Soul Mates (season 1)

Palm Trees in the Snow

Full Out

Planet Hulk

X-Men

Who's Driving Doug

Species IV: The Awakening

I Am Road Comic

Sammy J & Randy in Ricketts Lane (season 1)

An Education

3 May

Julius Jr. (season 2)

Bikes vs Cars

4 May

Once Upon a Time (season 5)

Marseilles (season 1)

5 May

4th Man Out

6 May

Atomic Falafel

Orphan Black (season 4, episode 4)

Ali Wong: Baby Cobra

Grace and Frankie (season 2)

7 May

Red Army

No Filter

8 May

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (season 11)

Bad Neighbours

The Chosen One

9 May

A Stand Up Guy

11 May

Once Upon a Time (season 5)

Chelsea (season 1, episode 1) / Next Time On Chelsea...

12 May

Chelsea (season 1, episode 2) / Next Time On Chelsea...

Little Humans

13 May

Chelsea (season 1, episode 3) / Next Time On Chelsea

Orphan Black (season 4, episode 5)

Asthma

Good Morning Call (season 1)

14 May

Shark (season 1)

15 May

Redfern Now (seasons 1 and 2)

Bee Movie

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas

The Road to El Dorado

Invizimals: Dimension Battles

Redfern Now: Promise Me

Suicide

You Carry Me

18 May

A Girl Like Her

Chelsea (season 1, episode 4) / Next Time On Chelsea

Kung Fu Hustle

Gladiator

Funny Girl

Mind Hunters

To Rome With Love

19 May

Chelsea (season 1, episode 5) Next Time On Chelsea

20 May

Good Morning Call (season 1)

The Man in the Wall

Finders Keepers

Chelsea (season 1, episode 6) / Next Time On Chelsea

Orphan Black (season 4, episode 6)

Momentum

21 May

Mako Mermaids: An H20 Adventure (season 4)

22 May

The Ouija Experiment

The Ouija Experiment 2: Theatre of Death

Krampus: The Christmas Devil

David and Goliath

23 May

Cartel Land

Dramaworld (season 1)

25 May

Chelsea (season 1, episode 7) / Next Time On Chelsea

No Man of Her Own

Houdini

The Court Jester

Staying Alive

26 May

The Last Man on the Moon

Chelsea (season 1, episode 8) / Next Time On Chelsea

27 May

Bloodline (season 2)

The Do-Over

Chelsea (season 1), episode 9 / Next Time On Chelsea

Good Morning Call (season 1)

Orphan Black (season 4, episode 7)

Chef's Table (season 2)

30 May

Gary Tank Commander (season 3)

31 May

Scream (season 2)

US

A Study in Sherlock

Admiral

Avas Possessions

Bring It On

Bring It On: All or Nothing

Easy Living (season 1, 2 and 3)

El Critico

FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue

Finger of God

Gary Gulman: Its About Time

Great Expectations

I Am Road Comic

Jesus Town, USA

Just Friends

Kevin Hart Presents Keith Robinson: Back of The Bus Funny

Kevin Hart Presents Lil Rel: RELevent

Kevin Hart Presents: Plastic Cup Boyz

LoliRock (season 1)

My Last Day Without You

The Nutty Professor

Off the Map

Palm Trees in the Snow

Pleasantville

Shark Lake

Shes Beautiful When Shes Angry

Sixteen Candles

Sugar Coated

Terra

Things We Lost in the Fire

To Catch a Thief

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin Down a Dream

Whos Driving Doug

2 May

The Replacements

3 May

Submerged

4 May

The Keeping Room

Shanghai Knights

5 May

Fourth Man Out

Marseilles

6 May

Ali Wong: Baby Cobra

Baby Daddy (season 5)

Grace and Frankie (season 2)

Young & Hungry (season 3)

8 May

The Chosen Ones

9 May

A Stand Up Guy

10 May

Eisenstein in Guanajuato

11 May

Chelsea (season 1, episode 1)

Goosebumps

The Look Like People

12 May

Chelsea (season 1, episode 2)

Bleeding Heart

13 May

Chelsea (season 1, episode 3)

15 May

We Are Still Here

Yo Soy la Salsa

17 May

American Dad! (season 10)

Kindergarten Cop 2

Slasher (season 1)

18 May

A Girl Like Her

19 May

Benders (season 1)

20 May

Lady Dynamite (season 1)

22 May

David and Goliath

The Letters

The Ouija Experiment 2: Theatre of Death (2015)

23 May

Electricity

26 May

Graceland (season 3)

The Last Man on the Moon

27 May

Bloodline (season 2)

Chef's Table (season 2, part 1)

The Do-Over

Mako Mermaids (season 4)

28 May

Hell on Wheels (season 5)
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Travellers to, from and within Germany tomorrow face widespread disruption because of a strike by members of the Verdi union. It will affect ground handling, check in, security and fire cover at the key hubs of Frankfurt and Munich, as well as the low-cost gateways of Dusseldorf, Cologne/Bonn, Dortmund and Hanover. The union is seeking a 6 per cent wage increase for its 2.1m members across a wide range of public-service roles.

Passengers using the countrys busiest airport, Frankfurt, are being warned that access roads may be blocked by strikers. Anyone who does make it to the airport faces long security queues and flight cancellations.

British Airways said it hopes to operate a full schedule, but warned: We may not be able to accept hold luggage at Frankfurt or Dusseldorf airports. BA is allowing passengers booked to fly to or from Germany tomorrow to switch to adjacent dates without penalty.

French air-traffic controllers will begin another strike tomorrow at 6pm British time. It is due to finish at 5am, British time, on Friday. Airlines serving Paris Orly airport have been told to prepare to cancel one in five flights - though services to Corsica and French overseas territories in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean are unaffected.

The controllers are unhappy about staffing and retirement arrangements, as well as the prospect of job losses with moves towards a Single European Sky.

According to the organisation representing Europes biggest airlines, A4E, the action will take the number of strike days by French air-traffic controllers to 44 in the past seven years. That works out at an average of one day's strike every two months. Thomas Reynaert, A4E's managing director, said: Repeated and disproportionate industrial action by ATC unions just means victimising passengers and weakening European airlines.

Whiile airlines need not pay cash compensation for delays and cancellations caused by strikes, they are responsible for providing meals and accommodation for disrupted passengers.
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Twitter has introduced a new feature which could make it easier for users to report harassment.

Thanks to a tweak currently being rolled out, users will be able to bundle multiple tweets into a single abuse report.

This makes it quicker and easier for users to flag up a sustained trolling campaign, and provides more context to Twitter's user safety team, hopefully allowing them to resolve issues quicker and more effectively.

Writing on the Twitter blog, engineer Hao Tang said: "We want everyone on Twitter to feel safe expressing themselves. Behaviour that crosses the line into abuse is against our rules and we want it to be easy for you to report it to us."

Assuring users that "safety continues to be a top priority," Tang said more improvements to the reporting process will be coming "soon".

The feature is being introduced to iOS, Android and Twitter.com, and should become available to everyone over the next few weeks.

Recommended Read more Lena Dunham forced off Twitter by abusive trolls

Twitter has faced tough criticism in the past for the harassment that takes place on its platform.

Some users have claimed the reporting process is cumbersome and can be ineffective, with Kevin Healey, a leading British autism campaigner, telling The Independent the company was failing in its "moral duty" to protect vulnerable users in an interview last year.

To their credit, Twitter has acknowledged these problems and is working to solve them - in a leaked 2015 memo obtained by The Verge, former CEO Dick Costolo said the company "sucks" at dealing with trolling and abuse

Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty

"It's no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day," he wrote.

Twitter has built up its blocking and reporting tools in the last couple of years, and claims to have refined its internal processes for dealing with complaints.

The company will be hoping this latest update will make sustained abuse campaigns much easier for users to flag up.
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A new study from Cardiff University has revealed nearly 60% of doctors have experienced mental illness and psychological problems at various stages in their career. That is bad enough in itself, but what is much worse is that very few of the 2,000 surveyed said that they had sought help.

A number of health and professionals from other industries have been studied in recent years and many, not unsurprisingly, also show high levels of stress. Sadly, however, it seems that this failure to seek help is not a phenomenon that is confined purely to the medical profession.

Findings from the British Psychological Society and New Savoy, for example  reporting on their 2015 staff well-being survey  showed that nearly half of psychological professionals report being depressed, along with admitting feelings of being a failure.

Work again was a culprit, with 70% of those who responded saying that they were finding their jobs stressful. For both medical doctors and psychological doctors, therefore, the current climate in the NHS is not, sadly, a healthy one. Workers on the front line of care are becoming governed more and more by contracts and targets rather than by the imperative of caring for people. The threat of cuts, often presented as efficiency savings and the imposition of contracts on junior doctors are just two of many current examples.

Risk and resolution

Across the caring professions  medical, psychological, nursing, professions allied to medicine, and caring  there is, overall, a picture of worrying levels of depression and stress leading to low morale and burnout.

Burnout is something experienced by people who have been working on the front line of human services in a context where they are caring for, and committed to providing services to, others. Its features are a combination of high levels of depersonalisation  where a person no longer sees themselves or others as valuable  and emotional exhaustion together with low levels of feelings of personal accomplishment. This is exactly what we are seeing reported here in the Cardiff study.

The Cardiff study found that the likelihood of doctors reporting mental health problems differed between different stages of their careers: young doctors and trainees were least likely to disclose any problems. Female doctors were found to be particularly at risk of burnout, as were GPs and trainee and junior doctors.

Almost certainly, the reason why is stigma. People throughout society  particularly frontline professionals  are afraid of disclosing that they are having problems because they fear the repercussions and possible effects that disclosure may have on their careers.

This was also recently demonstrated in a wider paper by Sarah Clements of Kings College London who, with colleague Graham Thornicroft, carried out a meta analysis of 144 studies involving more than 90,000 people. Their resulting global report showed that although one in four people  both inside and outside the healthcare profession  in Europe and the USA have a mental health problem, as many as 75% of people do not receive treatment.

What  if anything  can be done about this situation? Do we really want to consult with professionals who are less able to confront their own difficulties than we are? How can we help them confront their own issues to help others in society overcome the stigma?

There have been moves towards a more open mental health culture within the health professions, with some senior members of staff sharing their experiences. Retired GP Chris Manning, for example, has been greatly involved in the promotion of doctors psychological health and self-care after experiencing depression and burnout.

Clare Gerarda, former chair of the Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners, has also been a long-time advocate for doctors health and is the medical director of the practitioner health programme  a free and confidential NHS service for doctors and dentists who are experiencing psychological or physical health concerns. Additionally, Dr Gerarda established the Founders Group and Founders Network, a coalition working together to promote psychologically healthy environments within the NHS.

A new Charter on Psychological Staff Wellbeing and Resilience was also launched recently by the British Psychological Society and New Savoy. Building on this, a collaborative learning network of employers in health and social care has been established and will have its first meeting on June 21 in order to begin working together to establish and maintain psychologically healthy working environments.

Fundamentally, though, there has to be a change in culture. People need to be able to speak freely about their feelings of stress and psychological needs  and be supported to seek help. I have tried, personally, to model this as the president of the British Psychological Society over this past year and have talked openly about my own experiences of burnout, stress, depression and bipolar disorder while working as a clinical psychologist.

It is my belief that this culture change could begin to be enabled for doctors, both medical and psychological, nurses, allied health professionals and all in the caring professions too, if senior additions and managers begin to talk openly about their own psychological health.

To do so is a sign of strength and humility.

This article does not reflect the views of any research councils the author has been funded by, nor the societies and groups he is a member of.

Jamie Hacker Hughes, Professor of Military Psychology (Visiting), Anglia Ruskin University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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Children who are smacked by their parents are more likely to have mental health issues as well anti-social behaviour problems once they grow up, new research has suggested.

Cognitive difficulties and increased aggression are other side effects recorded in a meta-analysis of 50 years worth of research conducted on more than 160,000 children. The study, which has been published in the Journal of Family Psychology was jointly undertaken by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan, assesses the long lasting impact into adulthood which smacking has on childrens mental health, life skills and development.

The researchers use the term "spanking" to denote hitting a child on their buttocks or extremities using an open hand. They found 13 negative outcomes are significantly associated with parents use of spanking and continue to affect spanked children long into adulthood. These include more aggression, more antisocial behaviour, more externalising problems, more internalising problems, more mental health problems, more negative relationships with parents, lower moral internalisation, lower cognitive ability and lower self-esteem all being found within such adults.

The researchers concluded: Spanking children to correct misbehaviour is a widespread practice, yet one shrouded in debate about its effectiveness and even its appropriateness. The meta-analyses presented here found no evidence that spanking is associated with improved child behaviour and rather found spanking to be associated with increased risk of 13 developmental outcomes.

Parents who use spanking, practitioners who recommend it, and policymakers who allow it might reconsider doing so given that there is no evidence that spanking does any good for children and all evidence points to the risk of it doing harm.

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Research by UNICEF records that around the world 80 per cent of children are subjected to some form of routine hitting or beating as a form of discipline.

In the UK, it is legal for parents to smack children as a form of punishment providing no physical markings such as bruising or bleeding are incurred.
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Although customers bought an incredible 51.2 million iPhones between January and March, the technology product giant has still disappointed investors and analysts with its latest financial report.

For the first time since releasing the iPhone, Apple has reported lower earnings than previously forecast.

In its latest quarter results, Apple projects $1.90 a share compared to estimates of $2, and revenues of $50.6 billion rather than higher estimates of $51.97.

Recommended Read more Apple expected to shrink for the first time since the iPhone era began

Apple already warned investors at the start of the year that its first quarter results may be a milestone for the company - and not in a good way.

This is the first time the company has reported shrinking finances since 2003, the pre-iPhone era. That means disappointment has only come after 51 consecutive quarters of growth.

CEO Tim Cook said the company was anticipating a drop of sales - reported on Tuesday at $50.6 billion - compared to revenue this time last year of $58 billion.

Mr Cook said it had been a challenging quarter due to the tough comparisons of product sales with last year.

iPhone sales, which make up almost three quarters of the companys overall sales, were hurt as the company sold 10 million devices less compared to this time last year, and Apple is facing competition from brands like Samsung and Huawei.

Record sales of its iPhone in 2015 are becoming increasingly difficult to replicate.

As the market for iPhone and iPad devices becomes increasingly saturated, Apple is keen to point out it made $5.99 billion from its services revenue, which is generated by encouraging customers to pay for iCloud storage, subscribe to Apple music and make transactions via Apple Pay.

Yet analysts say the release of the new iPhone SE, which is smaller and less expensive than previous versions, as well as the next generation of the iPhone 7, are expected to drive up results.

A further slump in growth, however, is around the corner.

As for the next quarter, Apple sees revenue coming in between $41 billion and $43 billion, lower than analysts estimates at $47.3 billion.

Shares predictably took a dive of around 5 per cent after the report was released.

The report is the first official data to be released since Apple fought off the Department of Justices request to help it break passcodes from the iPhones owned by the San Bernardino shooters in California.
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Sir Philip Green is facing calls to be stripped of his knighthood after it was revealed that he took out more than 580 million from the company.

Sir Philip sold BHS for 1 in 2015 to little known investors, leaving it with a pensions deficit of 571 million for which he is now on the hook.

Julie Palmer, regional manager at business restructuring specialists Begbies Traynor, told the BBC that the amount of money Sir Philip took out of the company since 2000 will be looked at very carefully by BHS administrators Duff & Phelps as they look to see what they can preserve from the collapsing business.

"[Sir Philip] is an astute businessman, I imagine he was advised and that all of that was done properly. There's a moral issue that if we are facing a pensions deficit of 571 million do we look beyond the boundaries of legality at propriety instead? I understand he already is in discussions to make a voluntary payment which suggests he is aware," Palmer said.

"I don't think the administrator will [bring moral pressure into it] but there are MPs already on the case. There are calls about whether he should be able to keep his knighthood. That's all part of the pressure that is beginning to build," she added.

Sir Philip is reported to have offered 80 million towards the cost of BHS pensions, but he has been accused of leaving others to make up the rest by the shadow business leader Angela Eagle.

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If the worst happens the liability will be covered by the pensions protection scheme and BHS staff will get only 90% of the pension they've worked so hard for and saved for. But Philip Green seems to have got much more out of BHS for himself and his family than that," Ms Eagle said.

BHS staff and the public will understandably want to know whether the former owner who took so many millions of pounds out of the business will have to pay his fair share of the liabilities which accrued during his stewardship," she added.

The pensions regulator has said it will investigate the BHS scheme to see what action is taken. Chris Martin, chairman of the BHS Pension Trustees, told the BBC that he has heard from many concerned members. He said that the government-backed Pension Protection Fund means that many owed BHS pensions are in a better position than they might otherwise have been.

Dominic Chapell, the ex-racing driver and bankrupt at the head of Retail Acquisitions when they bought BHS from Sir Philip for 1, said that no one was to blame for the company going into administration.

In a letter to staff, he wrote: "I would like to say it has been a real pleasure working with all of you on the BHS project, one I will never forget, you all need to keep you heads held high, you have done a great job and remember that it was always going to be very very hard to turn around."

But MPs rounded on Sir Philip in the House of Commons on Monday. Tory MP Richard Fuller accused Sir Philip of being a Judas by "betraying" employees and pensioners, while his Tory colleague Mark Field called for an urgent inquiry into his conduct.

Iain Wright, Labour chairman of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, said: It cannot possibly be right that Sir Philip Green, as the previous owner of the company, loaded it up with debt, did not invest in the business and paid his wife over 400 million in dividends via the tax haven of Monaco.

Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North, accused Sir Philip of asset stripping on Twitter. "BHS paid more than 25 million to new owners in 13 months before going into administration #assetstripping," she tweeted.

BHS went into administration on April 25, putting 11,000 jobs at risk and threatening the future of 164 UK stores.

Administrators will now look at salvaging value from the business in talks with suppliers, employees and other interested parties, although it is unlikely to find a new buyer.

 BHS in numbers

BHS has been given six months to reach a deal over the funding of the pension scheme. Sir Philip is under pressure to extend his existing offer of 40 million in cash and a further 40 million writeoff of a charge relating to BHS assets held by Arcadia.
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Mitsubishi has admitted to using false fuel methods dating back to 1991.

Half the company's value has already been wiped out since Mitsubishi admitted to falsifying fuel economy data on April 20.

Mitsubishi has named three former prosecutors to a panel that will investigate improper testing, according to a statement released by the company on Tuesday.

Recommended Read more Mitsubishi office raided in Japan as shares slide towards record low

It said company president Tetsuro Aikawa and other executives were present at meetings where fuel economy targets were raised.

Keiichi Ishii, Japan's transport minister, told reporters in Tokyo that manipulating fuel economy data is "extremely serious" and that a government taskforce would look at ways to prevent manipulation in future.

The scale of the scandal is only just coming to light after it was revealed in April that data was falsified in the testing of four types of cars, including two Nissan cars.

Mitsubishi originally said the affected models were limited to the Mitsubishi ek Wagon and ek Space, and the Nissan Dayz and Dayz Roox.

The problem was discovered when Nissan pointed out inconsistencies in the ways that vehicles had been tested. Mitsubishi then conducted an investigation and found the data had been falsified.

Biggest business scandals in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Biggest business scandals in pictures Biggest business scandals in pictures Volkswagen emissions scandal VW admitted to rigging its US emission tests so that diesel-powered cars would looks like they were emitting less nitrous oxide, which can damage the ozone layer and contribute to respiratory diseases. Around 11 million cars worldwide were affected. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Martin Shkreli and Turing Pharmaceuticals Martin Shkreli became known as the most hated man in the world after his drug company, Turing, increased the price of a 62-year-old drug that treated HIV patients by 5,000% to $750 a pill. He was charged with illegally taking stock from Retrophin, a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. Shkreli, who maintains he is innocent, and says there is little evidence of fraud because his investors didn't lose money. 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Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Rogue trader A French court cut the damages owed by rogue trader Jerome Kerviel from 4.9bn (4.2bn) to just 1m (860,000). The court ruled on that Kerviel was partly responsible for massive losses suffered in 2008 by his former employer Societe Generale through his reckless trades. Kerviel has consistently maintained that bosses at the French bank knew what he was doing all along. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Barclays CEO under investigation for trying to identify whistleblower - Monday Paril 10 Authorities have launched an investigation into Barclays chief executive officer Jes Staley for trying to identify a whistleblower, the bank said on Monday. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) are both investigating Mr Staley after the bank notified them that Mr Staley had tried to identify the author of two anonymous letters, which were sent to the board and a senior executive in June 2016. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures UK to crack down on bank money laundering after reports of 65bn Russian scam, City minister says - March 2017 The Economic Secretary to the Treasury has vowed that the Government will crack down on money laundering practices, after several of the UK's biggest banks were accused of processing money from a Russian scam, believed to involve up to $80bn (65bn). Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Former HBOS bankers convicted of bribery and fraud over 245m loan scam - February 2017 Two former HBOS bankers were among six people found guilty of bribery and fraud that cost customers and shareholders hundreds of millions of pounds, the BBC reports. Lynden Scourfield, 54, a manager at HBOS, forced struggling clients to use the services of his friends David Mills, 60, and Michael Bancroft, 73. In return, the two businessmen arranged sex parties, cash and lavish gifts. On Monday, the three were convicted at Southwark Crown Court on accounts including bribery, fraud and money laundering. Mark Dobson, another manager at HBOS, Alison Mills, and John Cartwright were also convicted. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Lloyds chief apologises for damage caused by affair allegations - August 2016 Antonio Horta-Osorio, the chief executive of Lloyds Bank, has broken his silence over allegations about his private life admitting he regrets any "damage done to the group's reputation". In a message sent to the bank's 75,000 employees, the banker said that anyone can make mistakes while insisting that staff had to maintain the highest professional standards. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Christine Lagarde faces court over 340m Bernard Tapie payment - July 2016 The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, must stand trial in France over a payment of 403 million (now 340m, then 290m) to tycoon Bernard Tapie, a France's highest appeals court has ruled. The court rejected Ms Lagarde's appeal against a judge's order in December for her to stand trial over allegations of negligence in her handling of the affair. Ms Lagarde could risk a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros if convicted. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures HSBC senior manager arrested in FX rigging investigation at JFK airport in New York - July 2016 A senior executive at HSBC has been arrested at New York's JFK airport for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy to rig currency benchmarks, according to reports. Mark Johnson, global head of foreign exchange cash trading in London, was reportedly arrested on Tuesday. He will appear before a federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, Bloomberg said. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Former PwC employees found guilty in 'Luxleaks' tax scandal - June 2016 Two ex- PricewaterhouseCoopers staffers were found guilty in Luxembourg of stealing confidential tax files that helped unleash a global scandal over generous fiscal deals for hundreds of international companies. Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet face suspended sentences of 12 months and 9 months and were ordered to pay fines of 1,500 (1,230) and 1,000 (822) for their role in the so-called LuxLeaks scandal. Despite the minimal sentences, the ruling was described by Deltours lawyer as shocking and a terrible anomaly. The ruling puts on guard future whistle-blowers, Deltour told reporters.The LuxLeaks revelations sped beyond Luxembourg, causing European Union regulators to expand a tax-subsidy probe and propose new laws to fight corporate tax dodging, while EU lawmakers created a special committee to probe fiscal deals across the 28-nation bloc. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Goldman Sachs dealmakers lavished Libyan officials with prostitutes to win contract - June 2016 A former Goldman Sachs dealmaker trying to persuade Gadaffi-era Libya to invest $1 billion with the investment bank procured prostitutes and invited Libyan officials to lavish parties in the hope of winning the business, the High Court heard on Monday June 13.The Libyan Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund is suing Goldman Sachs for inappropriately coercing its naive staff into giving its sovereign wealth fund cash to the bank to invest in products they did not understand. The products were designed to generate big profits for Goldman, the LIA claims.Goldman denies wrongdoing and says the LIA was treated as an arms-length customer Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Former boss of BHS said his life was threatened - June 2016 Darren Topp, the former boss of BHS, has said former owner Dominic Chappell threatened to kill him when he challenged him over a 1.5 million transfer out of the business. MPs on the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee asked Mr Topp about a 1.5 million transfer Mr Chappell made from BHS to a company called BHS Sweden. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley admits paying workers below the minimum wage - June 2016 Mike Ashley admitted paying Sports Direct employees below the minimum wage at a hearing in front of MPs. The company founder said that workers were paid less than the statutory minimum because of bottlenecks at security in an admission that could result in sanctions from HMRC. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Mitsubishi admits improper fuel tests - April 2016 Mitsubishi has admitted to using false fuel methods dating back to 1991. The scale of the scandal is only just coming to light after it was revealed in April that data was falsified in the testing of four types of cars, including two Nissan cars. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Quindell, the scandal-ridden insurance firm Quindell was once a darling of AIM but its share price fell in April 2014 when its accounting practices were attacked in a stinging research note by US short seller Gotham City. In August the group was forced to disclose that the 107 million pre-tax profit it had reported for 2013 was incorrect, and it had in fact suffered a 64million loss. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Toshiba Accounting Scandal The boss of Toshiba, the Japanese technology giant, resigned in disgrace in the wake of one of the countrys biggest ever accounting scandals. His exit came two months after the company revealed that it was investigating accounting irregularities. An independent investigatory panel said that Toshibas management had inflated its reported profits by up to 152 billion yen (780m) between 2008 and 2014. Biggest business scandals in pictures FIFA Corruption Scandal Fifa, football's world governing body, has been engulfed by claims of widespread corruption since the summer of 2015, when the US Department of Justice indicted several top executives. It has now claimed the careers of two of the most powerful men in football, Fifa President Sepp Blatter and Uefa President Michel Platini, after they were banned for eight years from all football-related activities by Fifa's ethics committee. A Swiss criminal investigation into the pair is ongoing. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Libor fraudster City trader Tom Hayes, 35, has become the first person to be convicted of rigging Libor rates following a trial at London's Southwark Crown Court. Hayes worked as a trader in yen derivatives at UBS before joining the American bank Citigroup in Tokyo. He was fired from Citigroup following an investigation into his trading methods. He returned to the UK in December 2012 and was arrested following a two-and-a-half year criminal investigation by the SFO. Getty

The company said the cars were only sold in Japan, but the investigation would cover overseas.

Mitsubishi is Japan's largest car maker. It sold more than one million vehicles last year but has less than one per cent of the UK market.

This is the first time a Japanese car maker has been implicated in a vehicle testing scandal since the emissions scandal engulfed Volkswagen last year.
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Scottish Power has agreed to pay 18 million for failing to treat its customers fairly.

The fine  of which up to 15 million will be paid to vulnerable Scottish Power customers and 3 million to charity - is the third biggest penalty given to one of the major six energy providers. It follows an investigation by the industry regulator Ofgem into the firms customer service.

Scottish Power's call handling, complaint resolution and billing were all below the basic level of standards required, the investigation concluded. The poor service resulted in over 1 million complaints between June 2013 and December 2015.

Dermot Nolan, Ofgems chief executive, said the 18 million payment sends a strong message to energy companies.

This is a significant amount of money. Its basically because Scottish Power failed to treat its customers fairly over a sustained period of time, he told the BBC.

Customers took to Twitter after the announcement to express their anger.

One said the penalty was well deserved as Scottish Power customer service left an elderly relative terrorised.

Others said they were glad their complaints had finally been taken seriously.

Scottish Power, which collaborated with Ofgem throughout the investigation, said its service failing were linked to the implementation of a new IT system.

Neil Clitheroe, CEO of energy retail and generation at Scottish Power, said the issued had occurred when Scottish Power invested 200 million on new technology. During the transition between systems the company encountered a range of technical issues, which lead to an unacceptable increase in complaints and reduced the quality of customer service, he said.

I gave a guarantee that no customer would be left out of pocket by these issues and we continue to compensate customers who have been affected. Additional customer service advisors were added and we extended our opening hours to the longest in the industry in order to improve our customer service levels, Clitheroe added.

But Nolan said the energy provider should have acted on it immediately.

When things went wrong, it [Scottish Power] didnt act quickly enough to fix them. This created frustration and worry for many customers, who also wasted a lot of time trying to contact the supplier by phone.

The 18 million payment sends a strong message to all energy companies about the importance of treating consumers well at all times, including while new systems are put in place, Nolan said.

Biggest business scandals in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Biggest business scandals in pictures Biggest business scandals in pictures Volkswagen emissions scandal VW admitted to rigging its US emission tests so that diesel-powered cars would looks like they were emitting less nitrous oxide, which can damage the ozone layer and contribute to respiratory diseases. Around 11 million cars worldwide were affected. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Martin Shkreli and Turing Pharmaceuticals Martin Shkreli became known as the most hated man in the world after his drug company, Turing, increased the price of a 62-year-old drug that treated HIV patients by 5,000% to $750 a pill. He was charged with illegally taking stock from Retrophin, a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. Shkreli, who maintains he is innocent, and says there is little evidence of fraud because his investors didn't lose money. Biggest business scandals in pictures Panama Papers: Millions of leaked documents expose how worlds rich and powerful hid money - April 2016 Millions of confidential documents have been leaked from one of the worlds most secretive law firms, exposing how the rich and powerful have hidden their money. Dictators and other heads of state have been accused of laundering money, avoiding sanctions and evading tax, according to the unprecedented cache of papers that show the inner workings of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which is based in Panama. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Google's tax avoidance Google reached a deal with the HM Revenue and Customs to pay back 130 million in so-called back-taxes that have been due since 2005. George Osborne championed the deal as a major success. But European MEPs have since called for the Chancellor to appear in front of the committee on tax rulings to explain the tax deal. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Rogue trader A French court cut the damages owed by rogue trader Jerome Kerviel from 4.9bn (4.2bn) to just 1m (860,000). The court ruled on that Kerviel was partly responsible for massive losses suffered in 2008 by his former employer Societe Generale through his reckless trades. Kerviel has consistently maintained that bosses at the French bank knew what he was doing all along. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Barclays CEO under investigation for trying to identify whistleblower - Monday Paril 10 Authorities have launched an investigation into Barclays chief executive officer Jes Staley for trying to identify a whistleblower, the bank said on Monday. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) are both investigating Mr Staley after the bank notified them that Mr Staley had tried to identify the author of two anonymous letters, which were sent to the board and a senior executive in June 2016. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures UK to crack down on bank money laundering after reports of 65bn Russian scam, City minister says - March 2017 The Economic Secretary to the Treasury has vowed that the Government will crack down on money laundering practices, after several of the UK's biggest banks were accused of processing money from a Russian scam, believed to involve up to $80bn (65bn). Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Former HBOS bankers convicted of bribery and fraud over 245m loan scam - February 2017 Two former HBOS bankers were among six people found guilty of bribery and fraud that cost customers and shareholders hundreds of millions of pounds, the BBC reports. Lynden Scourfield, 54, a manager at HBOS, forced struggling clients to use the services of his friends David Mills, 60, and Michael Bancroft, 73. In return, the two businessmen arranged sex parties, cash and lavish gifts. On Monday, the three were convicted at Southwark Crown Court on accounts including bribery, fraud and money laundering. Mark Dobson, another manager at HBOS, Alison Mills, and John Cartwright were also convicted. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Lloyds chief apologises for damage caused by affair allegations - August 2016 Antonio Horta-Osorio, the chief executive of Lloyds Bank, has broken his silence over allegations about his private life admitting he regrets any "damage done to the group's reputation". In a message sent to the bank's 75,000 employees, the banker said that anyone can make mistakes while insisting that staff had to maintain the highest professional standards. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Christine Lagarde faces court over 340m Bernard Tapie payment - July 2016 The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, must stand trial in France over a payment of 403 million (now 340m, then 290m) to tycoon Bernard Tapie, a France's highest appeals court has ruled. The court rejected Ms Lagarde's appeal against a judge's order in December for her to stand trial over allegations of negligence in her handling of the affair. Ms Lagarde could risk a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros if convicted. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures HSBC senior manager arrested in FX rigging investigation at JFK airport in New York - July 2016 A senior executive at HSBC has been arrested at New York's JFK airport for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy to rig currency benchmarks, according to reports. Mark Johnson, global head of foreign exchange cash trading in London, was reportedly arrested on Tuesday. He will appear before a federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, Bloomberg said. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Former PwC employees found guilty in 'Luxleaks' tax scandal - June 2016 Two ex- PricewaterhouseCoopers staffers were found guilty in Luxembourg of stealing confidential tax files that helped unleash a global scandal over generous fiscal deals for hundreds of international companies. Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet face suspended sentences of 12 months and 9 months and were ordered to pay fines of 1,500 (1,230) and 1,000 (822) for their role in the so-called LuxLeaks scandal. Despite the minimal sentences, the ruling was described by Deltours lawyer as shocking and a terrible anomaly. The ruling puts on guard future whistle-blowers, Deltour told reporters.The LuxLeaks revelations sped beyond Luxembourg, causing European Union regulators to expand a tax-subsidy probe and propose new laws to fight corporate tax dodging, while EU lawmakers created a special committee to probe fiscal deals across the 28-nation bloc. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Goldman Sachs dealmakers lavished Libyan officials with prostitutes to win contract - June 2016 A former Goldman Sachs dealmaker trying to persuade Gadaffi-era Libya to invest $1 billion with the investment bank procured prostitutes and invited Libyan officials to lavish parties in the hope of winning the business, the High Court heard on Monday June 13.The Libyan Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund is suing Goldman Sachs for inappropriately coercing its naive staff into giving its sovereign wealth fund cash to the bank to invest in products they did not understand. The products were designed to generate big profits for Goldman, the LIA claims.Goldman denies wrongdoing and says the LIA was treated as an arms-length customer Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Former boss of BHS said his life was threatened - June 2016 Darren Topp, the former boss of BHS, has said former owner Dominic Chappell threatened to kill him when he challenged him over a 1.5 million transfer out of the business. MPs on the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee asked Mr Topp about a 1.5 million transfer Mr Chappell made from BHS to a company called BHS Sweden. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley admits paying workers below the minimum wage - June 2016 Mike Ashley admitted paying Sports Direct employees below the minimum wage at a hearing in front of MPs. The company founder said that workers were paid less than the statutory minimum because of bottlenecks at security in an admission that could result in sanctions from HMRC. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Mitsubishi admits improper fuel tests - April 2016 Mitsubishi has admitted to using false fuel methods dating back to 1991. The scale of the scandal is only just coming to light after it was revealed in April that data was falsified in the testing of four types of cars, including two Nissan cars. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Quindell, the scandal-ridden insurance firm Quindell was once a darling of AIM but its share price fell in April 2014 when its accounting practices were attacked in a stinging research note by US short seller Gotham City. In August the group was forced to disclose that the 107 million pre-tax profit it had reported for 2013 was incorrect, and it had in fact suffered a 64million loss. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Toshiba Accounting Scandal The boss of Toshiba, the Japanese technology giant, resigned in disgrace in the wake of one of the countrys biggest ever accounting scandals. His exit came two months after the company revealed that it was investigating accounting irregularities. An independent investigatory panel said that Toshibas management had inflated its reported profits by up to 152 billion yen (780m) between 2008 and 2014. Biggest business scandals in pictures FIFA Corruption Scandal Fifa, football's world governing body, has been engulfed by claims of widespread corruption since the summer of 2015, when the US Department of Justice indicted several top executives. It has now claimed the careers of two of the most powerful men in football, Fifa President Sepp Blatter and Uefa President Michel Platini, after they were banned for eight years from all football-related activities by Fifa's ethics committee. A Swiss criminal investigation into the pair is ongoing. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Libor fraudster City trader Tom Hayes, 35, has become the first person to be convicted of rigging Libor rates following a trial at London's Southwark Crown Court. Hayes worked as a trader in yen derivatives at UBS before joining the American bank Citigroup in Tokyo. He was fired from Citigroup following an investigation into his trading methods. He returned to the UK in December 2012 and was arrested following a two-and-a-half year criminal investigation by the SFO. Getty

Many customers experienced unacceptably long call waiting times with many calling multiple times and hanging up before getting through. Scottish Powers failures also resulted in over 300,000 customers receiving late final bills. This meant some customers did not promptly receive money they were owed.

Scottish Power said now the new IT system are in place their service has significantly improved.

In December, Ofgem ordered Npower to pay 26 million for sending out inaccurate bills and failing to correctly deal with complaints.
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Secret courts to be introduced under the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will have "few or no benefits to the UK", according to the only official assessment of the deal commissioned by the UK Government.

The warning was disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information request by anti-TTIP campaigners Global Justice Now.

The group filed a request to the Department for Business Innovation and Skills to ask what risk assessments had been made about the introduction of secret courts known as the Investor-State Dispute Settlement.

The BIS said it had carried out only one such review in 2013, when the London School of Economics was commissioned to conduct a study.

The study found this provision under TTIP would have limited political and economic benefits and may result in "meaningful economic costs in the UK".

"All in all, it is doubtful UK investors will find additional protections from an EU-US investment protection treaty beyond those currently provided, and enforced, under US law," the study found.

 What is TTIP?

Supporters of TTIP say it could boost the European and US economies by hundreds of billions of dollars by making it easier for companies on either side of the Atlantic to trade with one another.

Opponents say the deal could give corporations the power to sue governments when they pass regulation that could hit firms' profits through these secret courts of ISDS.

United Nations figures show US companies have made billions of dollars by suing other governments nearly 130 times in the past 15 years under similar free-trade agreements.

Details of the cases are often secret, but notorious precedents include tobacco giant Philip Morris suing Australia and Uruguay for putting health warnings on cigarette packets.

"Ultimately, we conclude that an EU-US investment treaty that does contain ISDS is likely to have few or no benefits to the UK, while having meaningful economic and political costs," the report said.

Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said the findings show the treaty could have harmful consequences for ordinary people.

"Introducing a system of secret corporate courts under TTIP would be a fundamental shift in trade and legal policies, so its staggering that the government is pushing us into it with almost no assessment of what the risks are for our policy makers or the tax payer," he said.

The revelations come as UK Prime Minister David Cameron travels to join US President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to discuss TTIP in Germany.

Mr Obama's trip to Europe has been seen as an effort to drum up support for TTIP before the end of his time in the White House.

He has been pushing for its completition since parties were scheduled to sign in 2014, promising the treaty would remove regulatory and bureaucratic irritants and blockages to trade".

If we dont complete negotiations this year, then upcoming political transitions  in the United States and Europe  could mean this agreement wont be finished for quite some time," he said.

Business news: In pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Business news: In pictures Business news: In pictures Flybe collapses Airline Flybe has collapsed. All future flights on the Exeter-based airline have been cancelled  leaving more than 2,300 staff facing an uncertain future, and wrecking the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. The chief executive, Mark Anderson, said: Europes largest independent regional airline has been unable to overcome significant funding challenges to its business. AFP via Getty Business news: In pictures Future product placement will be 'tailored to individual viewers' Marketing executives say that product placement in films and televison shows on streaming services such as Netflix may be tailored to individuals in future. For instance, if data shows that a viewer is a fan of pepsi, a billboard in the background of a shot would host an advert for pepsi, while for a viewer known to have different tastes it could be for Coca-Cola Paramount Business news: In pictures Corbyn wishes Amazon a happy birthday In a card sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the company's 25th birthday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes: "You owe the British people millions in taxes that pay for the public services that we all rely on. Please pay your fair share" Business news: In pictures No deal, no tariffs The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers Getty Business news: In pictures Fingerprint payment NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user's fingerprint NatWest/PA Wire Business news: In pictures Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis Business news: In pictures Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid 3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA Business news: In pictures RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA Business news: In pictures Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty Business news: In pictures Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rues contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. Business news: In pictures Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped 4m off of Flybes revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airlines estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year.

A BIS spokeswoman said the TTIP agreement was an opportunity to create the largest free trade area in the world with the potential to boost the UK economy by as much as 10 billion each year.

"Since 2013, the investment protection provisions in TTIP have been significantly reformed," she said.

"The government has engaged closely with stakeholders and the European Commission as negotiations have progressed."

War on Want campaign director John Hilary told Morning Star that the Global Justice Now findings confirmed David Cameron had been misleading British citizens when talking up the benefits of TTIP.

We have challenged the UK government time and again to show us any evidence that TTIP will be good for ordinary people," he said.

"Now we know why it has failed to provide that evidence  because they have none."

This article has been amended to make clear that assessment carried out by LSE looked at the likely costs and benefits for the United Kingdom (UK) of an investment protection chapter or ISDS in a proposed free trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US), rather than the proposed agreement as a whole
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Norway is offering its asylum seekers a 840 bonus if they agree to leave the country voluntarily.

The Norwegain Directorate of Immigration (UDI) said the measure had been brought in as a cheaper alternative to paying for refugees to stay in immigration centres in the country.

Launched on Monday, the offer will run for six weeks and is paid on a first-come, first-served basis, according to Norwegian state broadcaster NRK.

Applicants must have arrived in Norway before 1 April this year and only the first 500 asylum seekers who apply will receive the extra funds.

Integration Minister Sylvi Listhaug said she hoped the move would encourage migrants and refugees to return to their home country.

We need to entice more [people] to voluntarily travel back by giving them a bit more money on their way out, she said. This will save us a lot of money because it is expensive to have people in the asylum centres.

There are also many who are not entitled to asylum and are going to be rejected, she added. It's better for us to encourage them to travel back.

The 10,000 kroner expenses bonus will be paid in addition to the 20,000 kroner already offered to migrants and refugees who choose to leave Norway, as part of a financial incentive brought in by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) last year.

Of around 31,000 people who applied for asylum in Norway last year, 7,825 applications were refused. Approximately a third of the total number of refugees were from Syria.

The Norwegian government agreed to take in 1,000 refugees from Syria as part of an EU agreement, but was criticised in January for attempting to send over 5,500 people back across the Russian border on bicycles.

The UDI said that due to the high quantities of migrants and refugees, Norway was unable to offer protection to many of the people arriving from Syria, Iraq, the Middle East and Africa in sufficient time.

Many cannot wait (for the asylum process to run its course). They have family at home who expect them to be able to help, said Katinka Hartmann, head of the UDI, in December.

For a long time, Norway has not been able to forcibly return people to Somalia, but now that we can, I think that more Somalis with an obligation to leave will opt for assisted return.

Its important to have more initiatives of this kind in the future, she said.

Ms Listhaug was criticised last week after floating in the Mediterranean Sean to experience being rescued from a refugees perspective.

Last year the minister was heavily criticised for using Jesus as an explanation as to why she was against accepting high numbers of asylum seekers into Norway.
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Emma Thompson and her sister Sophie have announced they have a cunning plan to stop fracking.

In a quirky home video posted on Greenpeaces YouTube channel, the siblings said they were prepared to take peaceful direct action to tackle fracking.

The pair jokingly weild cooking utensils in the comical video which is filmed in an unadorned homely kitchen.

People news in pictures Show all 18 1 /18 People news in pictures People news in pictures 7 October 2015 Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in an ice hockey match between former NHL stars and officials at the Shayba Arena in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Vladimir Putin spent his 63rd birthday on the ice, playing hockey with NHL stars against Russian officials and tycoons EPA People news in pictures 6 October 2015 German designer Karl Lagerfeld (R) and model Cara Delevingne (C) appear at the end of his Spring/Summer 2016 women's ready-to-wear collection for fashion house Chanel at the Grand Palais which is transformed into a Chanel airport during the Fashion Week in Paris, France Reuters People news in pictures 5 October 2015 Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne addresses the Conservative party conference in Manchester. The Chancellor argued that reducing the payments to people in low paid jobs would give them economic security by reducing the Governments spending deficit Getty Images People news in pictures 4 October 2015 Cowboys captain Johnathan Thurston takes a moment in the centre of the field with his daughter Frankie Thurston, holding dark-skinned doll, after winning the 2015 NRL Grand Final match between the Brisbane Broncos and the North Queensland Cowboys at ANZ Stadium in Sydney. The image quickly became the talking point of Australias National Rugby League Final and provoked a strong reaction on social media, with many praising Thurston for giving his child a toy that promotes inclusiveness and diversity Getty Images People news in pictures 3 October 2015 Pope Francis gives a thumbs-up as he greets people at the end of an audience to the participants of a meeting organized by the "Food Bank" at the Paul VI audience hall in Vatican Getty Images People news in pictures 2 October 2015 Britain's Finance Minister George Osborne (L) throws an American football as he meets with former American football players Dan Marino (2nd R) and Curtis Martin (not pictured) at 11 Downing Street in London, ahead of the New York Jets playing against the Miami Dolphins at London's Wembley Stadium on 4 October Getty Images People news in pictures 1 October 2015 An honor guard opens the door as Russian President Vladimir Putin enters a hall to attend a meeting with members of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia People news in pictures 30 September 2015 Former Mrs America Lisa Christie, who alleges misconduct by Bill Cosby, holds up photos of her younger self during a news conference at the law office of attorney Gloria Allred in Los Angeles People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Matt Damon has defended himself against claims that he instructed gay actors to remain in the closet. He had said I think youre a better actor the less people know about you and sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether youre straight or gay, people shouldnt know anything about your sexuality but an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show said, I was just trying to say actors are more effective when theyre a mystery. Right? Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Marion Cotillard has said that there is no place for feminism in Hollywood. Speaking to Porter magazine, she saidFilm-making is not about gender/ You cannot ask a president in a festival like Cannes to have, like, five movies directed by women and five by men. For me it doesnt create equality, it creates separation. I mean, I dont qualify myself as a feminist." Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Paul Walkers daughter, Meadow, is suing Porsche over her fathers death in a lawsuit that claims he was trapped in the burning car because of design flaws and the seat belt. The Fast and Furious star was killed when the Porsche Carrera GT he was a passenger in hit a pole in California in 2013. The driver, his friend Roger Rodas, also died when the vehicle burst into flames. AP People news in pictures 28 September 2015 Robert Mugabe waits to address the United Nations General Assembly. The leader of Zimbabwe reportedly exclaimed 'We are not gay!' as he criticised Western nation's "double standards and attempts to prescribe new rights that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions and beliefs. In 2013 he described homosexuals as worse than pigs, goats and birds. Reuters People news in pictures 28 September 2015 South African comedian Trevor Noah hosts the first 'Daily Show' since taking over from Jon Stewart as host. Stewart had presented the US satirical news show since 1999 and was described by Noah during the show as a 'Political father' 2015 Getty Images People news in pictures 25 September 2015 Sir Elton John may have received a phone call from the real Vladimir Putin. Mr Putin's spokesman announced he had made contact weeks after the singer was duped by pranksters pretending to be the Russian President. Getty People news in pictures 25 September 2015 Actor Leonardo DiCaprio was mistakenly declared as the artist who produced the Mona Lisa by Fox News anchor Shepard Smith. It was in fact Leonardo da Vinci. People news in pictures 24 September 2015 A new biography claims Donald Trump expected to be dead by 40 and never marry. The Guardian says the a new book also claims that in 1980, Mr Trump manufactured a fake vice-president of his real estate conglomerate, whom he called John Baron. People news in pictures 24 September 2015 The Dalai Lama has said that Britain's policy towards China is just about 'Money, money, money.' And asked 'Where is morality?' People news in pictures 24 September 2015 Puff Daddy secured the number-one spot on the Forbes Hip Hop Cash Kings list, with the publication calculating he made an estimated $60million (39m) between June 2014 and June 2015.

Hello. I have a cunning plan. David Cameron, as you may have heard is very, very excited about something called fracking, the Oscar-award winning actress announces.

Now a lot of us in this country are not excited about fracking at all. This is my sister Sophie - we are not excited at all. What we're excited about is renewable energy, the two say in unison.

In the past year, the government has come under fire from both Labour and environmental groups who argue it is forcing fracking on local communities who have rejected it and neglecting their wishes.

Thompson is an active environmentalist and a vocal Greenpeace supporter. She made headlines in September of last year when she joined Greenpeaces polar bear protest against oil drilling in the arctic. Joining forces with fellow activists, Thompson helped activists lock onto a gigantic double-decker-bus-sized polar bear puppet outside Shells London headquarters on Southbank.
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Gary Lineker has criticised divorce lawyers who manipulate proceedings for financial gain and called for a mathematical equation to sort out divorce settlements.

Lineker and his wife Danielle Bux announced their divorce in January. The couple, who were married for six years, both wrote on Twitter how the pair will remain good friends.

The couple divorced amicably via a website, costing them around 400. Discussing divorce with the Radio Times, Lineker criticised other methods in which he says lawyers can manipulate couples so that they spend more money.

Just generally speaking, its very easy to get married and very difficult to get divorced, he said. And we know that lawyers try to manipulate it to make you spend more money and basically end up hating each other.

The Match Of The Day presenter suggested a mathematical solution to combat the costly procedure and reach a settlement quickly.

I think there should be a mathematical equation that goes straight to the courts and they sort it out, he said.

People news in pictures Show all 18 1 /18 People news in pictures People news in pictures 7 October 2015 Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in an ice hockey match between former NHL stars and officials at the Shayba Arena in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Vladimir Putin spent his 63rd birthday on the ice, playing hockey with NHL stars against Russian officials and tycoons EPA People news in pictures 6 October 2015 German designer Karl Lagerfeld (R) and model Cara Delevingne (C) appear at the end of his Spring/Summer 2016 women's ready-to-wear collection for fashion house Chanel at the Grand Palais which is transformed into a Chanel airport during the Fashion Week in Paris, France Reuters People news in pictures 5 October 2015 Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne addresses the Conservative party conference in Manchester. The Chancellor argued that reducing the payments to people in low paid jobs would give them economic security by reducing the Governments spending deficit Getty Images People news in pictures 4 October 2015 Cowboys captain Johnathan Thurston takes a moment in the centre of the field with his daughter Frankie Thurston, holding dark-skinned doll, after winning the 2015 NRL Grand Final match between the Brisbane Broncos and the North Queensland Cowboys at ANZ Stadium in Sydney. The image quickly became the talking point of Australias National Rugby League Final and provoked a strong reaction on social media, with many praising Thurston for giving his child a toy that promotes inclusiveness and diversity Getty Images People news in pictures 3 October 2015 Pope Francis gives a thumbs-up as he greets people at the end of an audience to the participants of a meeting organized by the "Food Bank" at the Paul VI audience hall in Vatican Getty Images People news in pictures 2 October 2015 Britain's Finance Minister George Osborne (L) throws an American football as he meets with former American football players Dan Marino (2nd R) and Curtis Martin (not pictured) at 11 Downing Street in London, ahead of the New York Jets playing against the Miami Dolphins at London's Wembley Stadium on 4 October Getty Images People news in pictures 1 October 2015 An honor guard opens the door as Russian President Vladimir Putin enters a hall to attend a meeting with members of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia People news in pictures 30 September 2015 Former Mrs America Lisa Christie, who alleges misconduct by Bill Cosby, holds up photos of her younger self during a news conference at the law office of attorney Gloria Allred in Los Angeles People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Matt Damon has defended himself against claims that he instructed gay actors to remain in the closet. He had said I think youre a better actor the less people know about you and sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether youre straight or gay, people shouldnt know anything about your sexuality but an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show said, I was just trying to say actors are more effective when theyre a mystery. Right? Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Marion Cotillard has said that there is no place for feminism in Hollywood. Speaking to Porter magazine, she saidFilm-making is not about gender/ You cannot ask a president in a festival like Cannes to have, like, five movies directed by women and five by men. For me it doesnt create equality, it creates separation. I mean, I dont qualify myself as a feminist." Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Paul Walkers daughter, Meadow, is suing Porsche over her fathers death in a lawsuit that claims he was trapped in the burning car because of design flaws and the seat belt. The Fast and Furious star was killed when the Porsche Carrera GT he was a passenger in hit a pole in California in 2013. The driver, his friend Roger Rodas, also died when the vehicle burst into flames. AP People news in pictures 28 September 2015 Robert Mugabe waits to address the United Nations General Assembly. The leader of Zimbabwe reportedly exclaimed 'We are not gay!' as he criticised Western nation's "double standards and attempts to prescribe new rights that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions and beliefs. In 2013 he described homosexuals as worse than pigs, goats and birds. Reuters People news in pictures 28 September 2015 South African comedian Trevor Noah hosts the first 'Daily Show' since taking over from Jon Stewart as host. Stewart had presented the US satirical news show since 1999 and was described by Noah during the show as a 'Political father' 2015 Getty Images People news in pictures 25 September 2015 Sir Elton John may have received a phone call from the real Vladimir Putin. Mr Putin's spokesman announced he had made contact weeks after the singer was duped by pranksters pretending to be the Russian President. Getty People news in pictures 25 September 2015 Actor Leonardo DiCaprio was mistakenly declared as the artist who produced the Mona Lisa by Fox News anchor Shepard Smith. It was in fact Leonardo da Vinci. People news in pictures 24 September 2015 A new biography claims Donald Trump expected to be dead by 40 and never marry. The Guardian says the a new book also claims that in 1980, Mr Trump manufactured a fake vice-president of his real estate conglomerate, whom he called John Baron. People news in pictures 24 September 2015 The Dalai Lama has said that Britain's policy towards China is just about 'Money, money, money.' And asked 'Where is morality?' People news in pictures 24 September 2015 Puff Daddy secured the number-one spot on the Forbes Hip Hop Cash Kings list, with the publication calculating he made an estimated $60million (39m) between June 2014 and June 2015.

Following the comments, Lineker criticised the Daily Mail for what he called an outrageously misleading front page headline which read: Lineker cries foul over cost of divorce. The 55-year-old clarified he was talking about legal costs in general and not his own divorce.

Additional reporting by the Press Association.
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Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry has rebuked Bear Grylls particular brand of masculinity as useless and a hangover from a more violent age.

Arguing that Britains leading survival expert embodies an antiquated epoch, Perry quipped that Grylls survival skills would be obsolete in the urban jungle that is Finsbury Park or hunting for an affordable comprehensive for his offspring.

He celebrates a masculinity that is useless, Perry told the Radio Times in an interview to publicise his latest series All Man. Try going into an estate agent in Finsbury Park and come out with an affordable flat. I want to see Bear Grylls looking for a decent state school for his child!

Most controversial Bear Grylls moments Show all 5 1 /5 Most controversial Bear Grylls moments Most controversial Bear Grylls moments The Island contestants kill and eat rare species of crocodile. Male contestants accidentally killed and ate a rare species of crocodile on The Island. Channel 4 apologised for the 'genuine and regrettable error' and replaced the animal. Awkward... Most controversial Bear Grylls moments Producers found to be shipping in animals for The Island The contestants need to hunt and kill something, but viewers were left feeling cheated when it was revealed that extra drinking water, coconuts, caiman, pigs and iguanas were brought on to The Island before the show began. Channel 4 defended the move, saying that of course it was necessary to ensure that there was enough to eat and drink so long as the competitors found it. Most controversial Bear Grylls moments The Island with Bear Grylls criticised for sexism The first series of Grylls' desert island survival contest excluded women by only featuring a group of men, leading to a public outcry and the inclusion of 14 female adventurers in subsequent runs. They were still put on a different island to the men, mind. Most controversial Bear Grylls moments Starving contestants slash pig's throat on The Island Some 500 people complained after contestants crept up on a sleeping pig and slashed it's throat for food. The pig could be heard squealing throughout it's ordeal. Viewers accused Channel 4 of 'killing animals to boost ratings' and displaying a 'callous disregard for life'. Channel 4 defended the scenes. Most controversial Bear Grylls moments Bear Grylls criticised for caving without a helmet Grylls was accused of a 'total disregard for safety' by a cave rescue team after scenes from Britain's Biggest Adventures saw him backflip into rivers and explore caving systems without a helmet, headtorch or protective suit.

The artist also said Grylls ultra manly unthinkingly stoic variety of masculinity prevented men from honestly expressing their emotions.

Men might be good at taking the risk of stabbing someone or driving a car very fast, but when it comes to opening up, men are useless, Perry continued in his scathing attack. Masculinity is a decorative feature that is essentially counter-productive.

Perrys three-part Channel 4 series All Man takes a whimsical look at contemporary masculinity, exploring a variety of ultra-masculine occupations. From immersing himself in the world's of cage fighters, police officers and the traders and hedge fund managers of the City of London, Perry looks at how we have come to establish a tightly defined and restrictive view of manhood.

Perry is best known for his word work in ceramics and his flamboyant cross-dressing. The double BAFTA award-winning artist has frequently explored themes of masculinity; he featured in a Channel 4 documentary called Why Men Wear Frocks back in 2005 and guest edited an issue of the New Statesman titled the Great White Male in October 2014.
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A large portion of the Harry Potter fanbase have grown up along with the characters, witnessing the likes of Emma Watson transform into a prominent feminist campaigner who makes speeches at the UN and Daniel Radcliffe go on to act in various roles which contrast starkly with Harry Potter such as his latest film Swiss Army Man where he portrays a farting corpse.

However, sometimes these actors fall of the grid for a while then re-emerge. For example, Matthew Lewis, aka Neville Longbottom, who as part of his comeback shot a topless cover for Attitude magazine last year shocking even poor old JK Rowling.

Now, another of the former child stars has surfaced with a notably different look and career than in his Harry Potter heyday.

The stars of Harry Potter now and then Show all 14 1 /14 The stars of Harry Potter now and then The stars of Harry Potter now and then 488016.bin WARNER BROS The stars of Harry Potter now and then 357903.bin Getty Images The stars of Harry Potter now and then 108190.bin Reuters The stars of Harry Potter now and then 26-Ghosts.jpg Alliance Films The stars of Harry Potter now and then daniel-radcliffe-kill-darlings.jpg Larry Busacca / Staff The stars of Harry Potter now and then daniel-radcliffe-fame.jpg Alberto E. Rodriguez / StaffActor The stars of Harry Potter now and then emma-watson-young.jpg Steve Finn / Staff The stars of Harry Potter now and then watson.jpg The stars of Harry Potter now and then emma-watson-colourful.jpg Getty Images The stars of Harry Potter now and then 40-coppola.jpg Merrick Morton The stars of Harry Potter now and then emma-watson-ban-ki-moon.jpg Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / Stringer The stars of Harry Potter now and then rupert-grint-young.jpg Anthony Harvey / Staff The stars of Harry Potter now and then rupert-grint-young1.jpg Steve Finn / Staff The stars of Harry Potter now and then rupert-grint.jpg Stephen Lovekin / Stringer

Josh Herdman is best-known for playing Gregory Goyle, one half of Draco Malfoys sidekick duo Crabbe and Goyle (Jamie Waylet who played Crabbe was sentenced to two years in prison for his role in the London riots in 2012). Herdman is now an MMA cage fighter who will be making his amateur debut soon.

The 28-year-old told Addicted MMA he still acts and of his Harry Potter castmates said they were all pretty good guys.
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The royal opening of a new airport on one of the worlds most remote islands has been indefinitely postponed. Air services to the 250m St Helena airport has been shelved while investigations take place into the risk from windshear, in which the speed and direction of wind close to the ground changes dramatically.

Prince Edward was due to fly in next month to open the airport on 21 May - St Helena Day. He was expected to arrive on the first passenger flight from Johannesburg to the South Atlantic island. That plan has now been scrapped.

St Helena is 1,200 miles from the African mainland. Its lifeline to the rest of the world is RMS St Helena, which takes five days to sail between Cape Town and the island. The airport was due to open in February, but that date was postponed by three months to fine tune the operational readiness.

A test flight of a Boeing 737 landed at the airport last week, the first time a large passenger jet had done so. The plane, operated by Comair, is the aircraft expected to be used on the link from South Africa. At the time, the airline's operations director, Martin Louw, said: The flight itself was a non-event - beautiful over the sea with a fantastic view of the Island coming into land."

But it has emerged that the flight revealed concerns about windshear on the approach to the runway from the north.

The St Helena Government statement announcing the postponement read: As a result of the data gathered and the conditions experienced, it has been decided that there is some additional work to be done in order to ensure the safe operation of scheduled passenger flights.

The Official Opening of St Helena Airport will now take place at a later date which has yet to be determined.

Another airline, Atlantic Star, has been forced to postpone its planned link from Luton to St Helena. The first flight, which requires a refuelling stop in the Gambian capital, Banjul, was due to take off a day after the official opening.

Windshear has been deemed responsible for dozens of plane crashes. Dr Todd Curtis, founder of the airsafe.com website, said: Innovations in aircraft and ground windshear detection systems, and also crew training, have led to a reduction in the risk.

The nearest diversion airport is Lubango in Angola, about 1,300 miles away.
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Police chiefs responsible for the Hillsborough tragedy should be prosecuted for their actions leading up to the disaster, MPs have demanded in the wake of the inquest verdicts.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, will make a Commons statement on Wednesday in which she is expected to accept the inquests recommendations.

The Prime Minister said the verdicts represented a landmark moment in the quest for justice for the Liverpool fans who died at Hillsborough.

He added: It is also a long overdue day  the bereaved families and survivors of the Hillsborough disaster have had to wait 27 long years for the full facts of what happened. And it is only due to their tireless bravery in pursuing the truth that we arrived at this momentous verdict.

All families and survivors now have official confirmation of what they always knew was the case, that the Liverpool fans were utterly blameless in the disaster that unfolded at Hillsborough.

Recommended Read more Finally the city of Liverpool has justice

Andy Burnham, the shadow Home Secretary, who campaigned for the inquest to be set up, described Hillsborough as the greatest miscarriage of justice of our times and called for prosecutions of police chiefs who were culpable.

This inquest has delivered justice. Next must come accountability. For 27 years, this police force has consistently put protecting itself above protecting those hurt by the horror of Hillsborough," Mr Burnham said.

"People must be held to account for their actions and prosecutions must now follow.

Steve Rotheram, the MP for Liverpool Walton, said: I have waited 27 years for this moment. But I know it comes too late for many. I was there on the day and saw the horror unfold before my very eyes.

Before we'd even buried our dead, the hurt of loss was compounded by the lies and smears.

He added: The truth is out there for all to see. Justice has been served by the verdicts and now it is about accountability."

Southports Liberal Democrat MP, John Pugh, said: It is a national embarrassment that getting to the truth has taken so long and extended the hurt, pain and anguish of the families, but also the wider community in Merseyside.

He urged Mr Cameron to make a formal apology in the Commons to the Hillsborough families and to Liverpool.
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The NHS survives on the goodwill of its doctors to put in the extra hours needed to save peoples lives  and after more than 60 years, those noble intentions have finally been stretched too far.

Thats the verdict of Dr Dhanuka Perera, who along with up to 100 colleagues took to the streets outside the Royal London Hospital to protest the imposition of a contract for junior doctors which, protesters told The Independent, will risk peoples lives.

Angry and embittered by a dispute with the government that has now seen all communication break down, the doctors on the picket line were remarkably pessimistic about the prospect of any positive resolution  yet also determined not to back down.

Blasting through loudspeakers and writ large on placards, the message to Jeremy Hunt was clear  come back to the negotiating table, or face the prospect of longer strikes which could, in the words of one doctor on Tuesday, bring the NHS to its knees.

Striking doctors take aim at the Health Secrertary (Michael Shaw)

Dr Abhishek Joshi, a 34-year-old trainee cardiologist who helped organise the protests, said doctors had been left with no choice but to walk out because the government wont talk to us.

Weve got no option, theres no other way to communicate with them anymore, he said. Weve had to come stand in the street in the freezing cold  in the snow  and try to get their attention, rather than going into work and treating our patients which is where we want to be.

For this weeks strikes, at least, the doctors are certain lives will not be put at risk. At the Royal London, consultants have turned out to cover their junior colleagues in such numbers that the care on offer will actually be better than normal  a fact the picketers are happy to report.

But with neither side willing to back down, doctors are considering options to escalate matters, with options including a strike without the 5pm cut-off point, walk-outs lasting days on end or even the prospect of devastating, coordinated mass resignations.

In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Doctor in acute medicine, Melissa Haskins, holds up a 'I ain't afraid of no Hunt' sign whilst striking with other junior doctors outside her hospital, St Thomas' Hospital in London Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Accident and emergency junior doctor, Jennifer Hulse, holds a homemade placard outside St Thomas' Hospital as she strikes with colleagues in London Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Demonstrators and Junior doctors hold placards as they protest outside the Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, in Basingstoke during a strike by junior doctors Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Demonstrators and Junior doctors hold placards as they protest outside the Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, in Basingstoke during a strike by junior doctors Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike A supporter displays a slogan on her bag during a junior doctors' strike outside St Thomas' Hospital in London Reuters In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike The picket line outside King's College Hospital in London PA In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike The picket line outside King's College Hospital in London, as thousands of junior doctors begun the first all-out strike in the history of the NHS after the Health Secretary said the Government would not be "blackmailed" into dropping its manifesto pledge for a seven-day health service PA In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Junior doctors and supporters take part in a strike outside the Royal United Hospital in Bath Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Doctor in acute medicine, Melissa Haskins, holds up a 'I ain't afraid of no Hunt' sign whilst striking with other junior doctors outside her hospital, St Thomas' Hospital in London Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Dave Prentis, UNISON general secretary visits a British Medical Association picket line at Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, to show support for striking junior doctors on the second day of the union's annual health conference PA

Jeremy Hunt has lost touch with the junior doctors, said Dr Kyle McBeath, 30. He was nowhere to be found when there were original concerns, and now as things have got worse hes only become more and more reclusive.

Either side could end the dispute by backing down, but you get the feeling that wont happen. Hunt is stuck  he either pushes it through or he loses his job. I dont see how it changes, I just see it getting worse. Its terrible.

Beth, 28, is another protest organiser. She accuses Mr Hunt of hypocrisy after he was so vocal about his support for whistleblowing processes in the NHS  processes that hinge upon working with and listening to people even if you dont agree with them.

Hes called us militants, she says. You cant talk about whistleblowing and then not listen when a bunch of people tell you theyve got a patient safety concern.

 Teachers and schoolchildren show support for Junior Doctors strike

She says that the impact on morale and staff retention means that without a resolution, the dispute will have a lasting impact on the NHSs ability to care for patients, strikes or no strikes.

For me, the most upsetting thing has been seeing my friends leave, she says, clearly incensed.

Ive been through medical school with them, through our expensive medical exams, Ive seen them struggle to maintain relationships despite missing multiple important family events, and this for many of them has just been the nail in the coffin.

The disagreement hinges on the governments manifesto pledge to extend the seven-day working of the NHS, while also making savings in keeping with the core Tory promise to cut the deficit.

Most doctors here say they appreciate Mr Hunt is stuck trying to do both, and the issue is more with the policy than the man himself.

But they cannot help be angered by the language used by the Health Secretary in the media, particularly after he said on the morning of the strikes that the junior doctors were trying to blackmail the government for more money.

Is a strike a form of blackmail? asks Jack, 29. Its blackmail [for Mr Hunt] to say we are imposing a contract that you have to go by, because youve spent 10 years of your life training in a certain field, and if you dont take it you dont have a job anymore. Thats a form of blackmail as well.

 Junior doctors' strike begins

The protest outside the Royal London overlooks a busy road into the heart of the capital, and plays out to an accompaniment of blasting car horns as members of the public show what appears to be overwhelming support.

Inside the hospital, it is impossible to find a patient who doesnt back the junior doctors action, even if they only really became aware of it on their way in on the day.

Mother-to-be Chiyedza Majasi, 36, says she feels like waiting times have been a little longer but adds: Im prepared to do that because I support the strike.

Would she still back action if the dispute continued and it got increasingly disruptive? I think so, she says. The government needs to listen to the people.

A junior doctor gives his views to a television news reporter (Michael Shaw)

Matthew Reed, 39, says he heard Jeremy Hunt on the radio justifying the imposition of the contract because a seven-day NHS was in the Tory manifesto. He suggested this was an oversimplified response, like saying we can sort out the Middle East by bombing all the countries.

Linda Stock, at the hospital with her son Michael, said she was right behind the striking doctors.

And Lorraine Goodspeed, 63, said she fully supports the action. It hasnt affected me today at all, she says, smiling.

Back outside, Dr Joshi says the only thing that could make Jeremy Hunt change his mind would be strong support for the doctors from the British people the minister represents.

If he doesnt hear that message from the public, then this is just going to drag on and on and on, he warns.

Were not going to give up, until either we feel we have no option other than to do something crazier  and I hope we wont  or the Secretary of State listens to either us or his constituents, and by that I mean the country.

I dont want to have to do this, and it could be over this evening if a government minister  I dont care who it is  says lets get back round the table and talk about what were doing.

Because we know what the best thing for the NHS is, for the doctors, nurses and all the employees here, and we like to think we know what the right thing is for our patients. And thats very different from what the Department for Health is putting across.
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Scottish Labour has announced it wants to make paying for sex illegal but stop prosecuting prostitutes ahead of the Scottish Parliament elections.

The party said a new approach was needed to fight commercial sexual exploitation with currently only the victims facing punishment.

In its election manifesto, published on 27 April, the party will say: "Scottish Labour aims to tackle commercial sexual exploitation by challenging demand and by supporting those involved.

"It has a three-pronged framework: criminalising the buying of sex, decriminalising people involved in prostitution, and providing long-term support and exiting services for those exploited through prostitution."

Currently in Scotland, it is not illegal to pay for sex but public solicitation, running brothels and kerb-crawling are criminal offences.

Labour MSP Rhoda Grant, who spearheaded a campaign to make this law change, has said there would protect "the most vulnerable in our society" and reduce sex trafficking in Scotland.

Ms Grant told the Herald: "We have an unequal society where it appears that we concede that men are entitled to sexual gratification even when that is at the expense of women.

"Worse than that our laws punish the women exploited in this way. In no other part of our society do we criminalise someone who has been a victim of violence."

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. 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She added: "Scottish Labour believes that we need to build a fair and equal Scotland and that we cannot do this while allowing this exploitation to continue.

"We will decriminalise women in prostitution and provide them with the support and services they need to rebuild their lives and their health.

"This holds those who feed this industry to account for their actions, and will reduce demand for exploitative sexual activity. This will protect the most vulnerable in our society and will also reduce trafficking both within and to Scotland."

The Scottish sex workers' charity, ScotPep, said it could not support the policy because it believes such changes could put women in greater danger.

ScotPep also disagreed with the idea that all sex workers are "victims".

British Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has given his support for the decriminalisation of selling sex, saying: "I want to be [in] a society where we dont automatically criminalise people.

"Lets do things a bit differently and in a bit more civilised way."
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On Monday night MPs voted by 294 votes to 276 to reject a plan for Britain to accept 3,000 unaccompanied Syrian child refugees who had travelled to Europe.

Recommended Read more MPs vote against Immigration Bill child refugee amendment

The amendment to the Governments Immigration Bill had been proposed by Labours Lord Dubs, who himself arrived in Britain as a child refugee fleeing the Holocaust in the 1930s.

Ministers say they will take 3,000 extra vulnerable children, but that they should be drawn from camps near the conflict zone.

A small number of Conservatives rebelled against the Government to vote with Labour to help the children who had already made the journey, however.

 Refugee rescued standing atop of sinking boat

Here are the MPs who voted to turn away the 3,000 refugees who had travelled to Europe:

Adams, Nigel

Afriyie, Adam

Aldous, Peter

Allan, Lucy

Amess, Sir David

Andrew, Stuart

Ansell, Caroline

Argar, Edward

Atkins, Victoria

Bacon, Mr Richard

Baker, Mr Steve

Baldwin, Harriett

Barclay, Stephen

Baron, Mr John

Barwell, Gavin

Bebb, Guto

Bellingham, Sir Henry

Benyon, Richard

Beresford, Sir Paul

Berry, Jake

Berry, James

Bingham, Andrew

Blunt, Crispin

Bone, Mr Peter

Borwick, Victoria

Bottomley, Sir Peter

Bradley, Karen

Brady, Mr Graham

Brazier, Mr Julian

Brine, Steve

Brokenshire, rh James

Bruce, Fiona

Buckland, Robert

Burns, Conor

Burns, rh Sir Simon

Burrowes, Mr David

Burt, rh Alistair

Campbell, Mr Gregory

Carmichael, Neil

Carswell, Mr Douglas

Cartlidge, James

Cash, Sir William

Caulfield, Maria

Chalk, Alex

Chishti, Rehman

Chope, Mr Christopher

Churchill, Jo

Clark, rh Greg

Clarke, rh Mr Kenneth

Cleverly, James

Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

Coffey, Dr Therese

Collins, Damian

Colvile, Oliver

Costa, Alberto

Crabb, rh Stephen

Davies, Byron

Davies, Glyn

Davies, Mims

Davies, Philip

Dinenage, Caroline

Djanogly, Mr Jonathan

Donelan, Michelle

Double, Steve

Dowden, Oliver

Doyle-Price, Jackie

Drax, Richard

Drummond, Mrs Flick

Duddridge, James

Duncan Smith, rh Mr Iain

Dunne, Mr Philip

Elliott, Tom

Ellis, Michael

Ellison, Jane

Ellwood, Mr Tobias

Elphicke, Charlie

Eustice, George

Evans, Graham

Evans, Mr Nigel

Evennett, rh Mr David

Fabricant, Michael

Fallon, rh Michael

Fernandes, Suella

Field, rh Mark

Foster, Kevin

Fox, rh Dr Liam

Frazer, Lucy

Freeman, George

Freer, Mike

Gale, Sir Roger

Garnier, rh Sir Edward

Garnier, Mark

Gauke, Mr David

Ghani, Nusrat

Gibb, Mr Nick

Gillan, rh Mrs Cheryl

Glen, John

Goodwill, Mr Robert

Gove, rh Michael

Graham, Richard

Grant, Mrs Helen

Grayling, rh Chris

Green, Chris

Green, rh Damian

Grieve, rh Mr Dominic

Griffiths, Andrew

Gummer, Ben

Gyimah, Mr Sam

Halfon, rh Robert

Hall, Luke

Hammond, Stephen

Hancock, rh Matthew

Hands, rh Greg

Harper, rh Mr Mark

Harrington, Richard

Harris, Rebecca

Hart, Simon

Haselhurst, rh Sir Alan

Heald, Sir Oliver

Heappey, James

Heaton-Harris, Chris

Heaton-Jones, Peter

Henderson, Gordon

Herbert, rh Nick

Hinds, Damian

Hollobone, Mr Philip

Holloway, Mr Adam

Hopkins, Kris

Howarth, Sir Gerald

Howell, John

Howlett, Ben

Huddleston, Nigel

Hunt, rh Mr Jeremy

Hurd, Mr Nick

Jackson, Mr Stewart

Javid, rh Sajid

Jayawardena, Mr Ranil

Jenkin, Mr Bernard

Jenkyns, Andrea

Jenrick, Robert

Johnson, Boris

Johnson, Gareth

Johnson, Joseph

Jones, Andrew

Jones, rh Mr David

Jones, Mr Marcus

Kawczynski, Daniel

Kennedy, Seema

Kinahan, Danny

Kirby, Simon

Knight, rh Sir Greg

Knight, Julian

Kwarteng, Kwasi

Lancaster, Mark

Latham, Pauline

Leadsom, Andrea

Lee, Dr Phillip

Lefroy, Jeremy

Leigh, Sir Edward

Leslie, Charlotte

Letwin, rh Mr Oliver

Lewis, Brandon

Lewis, rh Dr Julian

Liddell-Grainger, Mr Ian

Lidington, rh Mr David

Lilley, rh Mr Peter

Lopresti, Jack

Lord, Jonathan

Loughton, Tim

Lumley, Karen

Mackinlay, Craig

Mackintosh, David

Main, Mrs Anne

Mak, Mr Alan

Malthouse, Kit

Mann, Scott

May, rh Mrs Theresa

Maynard, Paul

McCartney, Karl

McLoughlin, rh Mr Patrick

McPartland, Stephen

Menzies, Mark

Merriman, Huw

Metcalfe, Stephen

Miller, rh Mrs Maria

Milling, Amanda

Mills, Nigel

Milton, rh Anne

Mordaunt, Penny

Morgan, rh Nicky

Morris, Anne Marie

Morris, David

Morris, James

Morton, Wendy

Mowat, David

Murray, Mrs Sheryll

Murrison, Dr Andrew

Newton, Sarah

Nokes, Caroline

Norman, Jesse

Nuttall, Mr David

Offord, Dr Matthew

Opperman, Guy

Parish, Neil

Patel, rh Priti

Paterson, rh Mr Owen

Pawsey, Mark

Penning, rh Mike

Penrose, John

Percy, Andrew

Perry, Claire

Philp, Chris

Pickles, rh Sir Eric

Pincher, Christopher

Poulter, Dr Daniel

Pow, Rebecca

Prentis, Victoria

Prisk, Mr Mark

Pritchard, Mark

Pursglove, Tom

Quin, Jeremy

Raab, Mr Dominic

Redwood, rh John

Rees-Mogg, Mr Jacob

Robertson, Mr Laurence

Robinson, Mary

Rosindell, Andrew

Rudd, rh Amber

Rutley, David

Sandbach, Antoinette

Scully, Paul

Selous, Andrew

Shannon, Jim

Shapps, rh Grant

Sharma, Alok

Shelbrooke, Alec

Simpson, rh Mr Keith

Skidmore, Chris

Smith, Chloe

Smith, Henry

Smith, Julian

Smith, Royston

Soames, rh Sir Nicholas

Solloway, Amanda

Soubry, rh Anna

Spelman, rh Mrs Caroline

Spencer, Mark

Stephenson, Andrew

Stevenson, John

Stewart, Bob

Stewart, Iain

Stewart, Rory

Streeter, Mr Gary

Stride, Mel

Stuart, Graham

Sturdy, Julian

Sunak, Rishi

Swayne, rh Mr Desmond

Swire, rh Mr Hugo

Syms, Mr Robert

Thomas, Derek

Throup, Maggie

Timpson, Edward

Tolhurst, Kelly

Tomlinson, Justin

Tomlinson, Michael

Tracey, Craig

Tredinnick, David

Trevelyan, Mrs Anne-Marie

Truss, rh Elizabeth

Tugendhat, Tom

Turner, Mr Andrew

Tyrie, rh Mr Andrew

Vaizey, Mr Edward

Vara, Mr Shailesh

Vickers, Martin

Villiers, rh Mrs Theresa

Walker, Mr Charles

Walker, Mr Robin

Warman, Matt

Watkinson, Dame Angela

Whately, Helen

Wheeler, Heather

White, Chris

Whittaker, Craig

Whittingdale, rh Mr John

Wiggin, Bill

Williams, Craig

Williamson, rh Gavin

Wilson, Mr Rob

Wollaston, Dr Sarah

Wood, Mike

Wragg, William

Wright, rh Jeremy

(Tellers: George Hollingbury, Margot James)

Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Show all 11 1 /11 Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkey's two million Syrian refugees There are already over 2.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, but their current camps can only hold 200,000 people ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkish citizens protest a new deal, also criticised by human rights activists, which will see refugees who arrived in Greece after March 20 be sent back to Turkey AP Photo/Emre Tazegu Turkey's two million Syrian refugees An estimated 80% of Syrian refugee children already in Turkey are unable to attend school BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Refugee children beg for water near the Turkey-Syria border. Turkey has been accused of illegally deporting asylum-seekers back to Syria BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees In Turkey, no-one from outside Europe is legally recognised as a refugee, meaning the 2016 deportations may not meet international legal standards for protecting vulnerable people BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees A refugee child cries as she is searched by police at the Syria-Turkey border, where 16 refugees (including three children) have been shot dead in the last four months BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Many refugees are living rough on the streets of cities such as Istanbul or Ankara (pictured) ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkish soldiers use water cannon on Syrian refugees BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Syrian refugees shelter from rain in the streets of Istanbul BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees A derelict building housing Syrian refugees in Istanbul Carl Court/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkey houses around half of all the refugees who have currently fled Syria Carl Court/Getty Images

Below are the MPs who voted to accept the 3,000 refugees who had travelled to Europe:

Abbott, Ms Diane

Abrahams, Debbie

Ahmed-Sheikh, Ms Tasmina

Alexander, Heidi

Ali, Rushanara

Allen, Mr Graham

Anderson, Mr David

Ashworth, Jonathan

Austin, Ian

Bailey, Mr Adrian

Bardell, Hannah

Barron, rh Kevin

Benn, rh Hilary

Black, Mhairi

Blackford, Ian

Blackman, Kirsty

Blenkinsop, Tom

Blomfield, Paul

Boswell, Philip

Bradshaw, rh Mr Ben

Brennan, Kevin

Brock, Deidre

Brown, Lyn

Brown, rh Mr Nicholas

Bryant, Chris

Buck, Ms Karen

Burden, Richard

Burgon, Richard

Butler, Dawn

Byrne, rh Liam

Cadbury, Ruth

Cameron, Dr Lisa

Campbell, rh Mr Alan

Campbell, Mr Gregory

Campbell, Mr Ronnie

Carmichael, rh Mr Alistair

Chapman, Jenny

Cherry, Joanna

Clegg, rh Mr Nick

Clwyd, rh Ann

Coaker, Vernon

Coffey, Ann

Cooper, Julie

Cooper, rh Yvette

Corbyn, rh Jeremy

Cowan, Ronnie

Cox, Mr Geoffrey

Cox, Jo

Coyle, Neil

Crausby, Mr David

Crawley, Angela

Creasy, Stella

Cruddas, Jon

Cryer, John

Cummins, Judith

Cunningham, Alex

Cunningham, Mr Jim

Dakin, Nic

Danczuk, Simon

David, Wayne

Davies, Geraint

Day, Martyn

De Piero, Gloria

Debbonaire, Thangam

Docherty-Hughes, Martin

Donaldson, Stuart Blair

Doughty, Stephen

Dowd, Jim

Dowd, Peter

Dromey, Jack

Dugher, Michael

Durkan, Mark

Eagle, Ms Angela

Eagle, Maria

Edwards, Jonathan

Efford, Clive

Elliott, Julie

Ellman, Mrs Louise

Evans, Chris

Farrelly, Paul

Farron, Tim

Fellows, Marion

Ferrier, Margaret

Fitzpatrick, Jim

Flello, Robert

Fletcher, Colleen

Flint, rh Caroline

Flynn, Paul

Fovargue, Yvonne

Foxcroft, Vicky

Gapes, Mike

Gardiner, Barry

Gethins, Stephen

Gibson, Patricia

Glass, Pat

Glindon, Mary

Godsiff, Mr Roger

Goodman, Helen

Grady, Patrick

Grant, Peter

Gray, Neil

Green, Kate

Greenwood, Lilian

Greenwood, Margaret

Griffith, Nia

Gwynne, Andrew

Haigh, Louise

Hamilton, Fabian

Hanson, rh Mr David

Harman, rh Ms Harriet

Harris, Carolyn

Hayes, Helen

Healey, rh John

Hendrick, Mr Mark

Hendry, Drew

Hepburn, Mr Stephen

Hermon, Lady

Hillier, Meg

Hodge, rh Dame Margaret

Hodgson, Mrs Sharon

Hoey, Kate

Hollern, Kate

Hopkins, Kelvin

Hosie, Stewart

Howarth, rh Mr George

Hunt, Tristram

Huq, Dr Rupa

Hussain, Imran

Jarvis, Dan

Johnson, rh Alan

Johnson, Diana

Jones, Gerald

Jones, Graham

Jones, Helen

Jones, Susan Elan

Kane, Mike

Kaufman, rh Sir Gerald

Keeley, Barbara

Kendall, Liz

Kerevan, George

Kerr, Calum

Khan, rh Sadiq

Kinnock, Stephen

Kyle, Peter

Lamb, rh Norman

Lammy, rh Mr David

Lavery, Ian

Law, Chris

Leslie, Chris

Lewell-Buck, Mrs Emma

Lewis, Clive

Long Bailey, Rebecca

Lucas, Caroline

Lucas, Ian C.

Lynch, Holly

MacNeil, Mr Angus Brendan

Mactaggart, rh Fiona

Madders, Justin

Mahmood, Mr Khalid

Mahmood, Shabana

Malhotra, Seema

Mann, John

Marris, Rob

Marsden, Mr Gordon

Maskell, Rachael

Matheson, Christian

Mathias, Dr Tania

Mc Nally, John

McCabe, Steve

McCaig, Callum

McCarthy, Kerry

McDonald, Andy

McDonald, Stewart Malcolm

McDonald, Stuart C.

McDonnell, John

McFadden, rh Mr Pat

McGarry, Natalie

McGinn, Conor

McGovern, Alison

McInnes, Liz

McKinnell, Catherine

McLaughlin, Anne

McMahon, Jim

Meale, Sir Alan

Mearns, Ian

Miliband, rh Edward

Monaghan, Carol

Monaghan, Dr Paul

Morden, Jessica

Morris, Grahame M.

Mulholland, Greg

Mullin, Roger

Murray, Ian

Nandy, Lisa

Newlands, Gavin

Nicolson, John

O'Hara, Brendan

Onn, Melanie

Onwurah, Chi

Osamor, Kate

Oswald, Kirsten

Paterson, Steven

Pearce, Teresa

Pennycook, Matthew

Perkins, Toby

Phillips, Jess

Phillips, Stephen

Phillipson, Bridget

Pound, Stephen

Powell, Lucy

Pugh, John

Quince, Will

Qureshi, Yasmin

Rayner, Angela

Reed, Mr Jamie

Reed, Mr Steve

Rees, Christina

Reeves, Rachel

Reynolds, Emma

Reynolds, Jonathan

Rimmer, Marie

Robertson, rh Angus

Robinson, Mr Geoffrey

Ryan, rh Joan

Salmond, rh Alex

Shah, Naz

Shannon, Jim

Sharma, Mr Virendra

Sheerman, Mr Barry

Sheppard, Tommy

Sherriff, Paula

Shuker, Mr Gavin

Skinner, Mr Dennis

Slaughter, Andy

Smith, rh Mr Andrew

Smith, Angela

Smith, Cat

Smith, Nick

Smith, Owen

Smyth, Karin

Starmer, Keir

Stephens, Chris

Stevens, Jo

Streeting, Wes

Stringer, Graham

Stuart, rh Ms Gisela

Tami, Mark

Thewliss, Alison

Thomas, Mr Gareth

Thomas-Symonds, Nick

Thompson, Owen

Thomson, Michelle

Thornberry, Emily

Timms, rh Stephen

Trickett, Jon

Turley, Anna

Twigg, Stephen

Umunna, Mr Chuka

Vaz, Valerie

Warburton, David

Watson, Mr Tom

Weir, Mike

West, Catherine

Whiteford, Dr Eilidh

Whitehead, Dr Alan

Whitford, Dr Philippa

Williams, Hywel

Williams, Mr Mark

Wilson, Corri

Wilson, Phil

Winnick, Mr David

Winterton, rh Dame Rosie

Wishart, Pete

Woodcock, John

Wright, Mr Iain

Zeichner, Daniel

(Tellers: Sue Hayman, Jeff Smith)
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Junior doctors are staging a political strike, Jeremy Hunt has said, as medics begin a 48-hour walkout over a controversial new contract.

The Health Secretary showed no signs of conciliatory language, describing the strike very, very bleak day for the NHS as junior doctors walked out of emergency rooms for the first time in NHS history.

Mr Hunt has said he will unilaterally introduce a new contract for junior doctors. The medics, who voted by 98 per cent to strike, say the policy will put patient safety at risk by incentivising unsafe shift patterns.

The Health Secretary says the contract will help improve NHS care at weekends. Both Mr Hunts proposals and those of the British Medical Association are cost-neutral.

The Government has been unable to negotiate sensibly and reasonably with the BMA over a manifesto commitment for a seven-day NHS, Mr Hunt told BBC Radio 4s Today programme.

The last thing we are doing is itching for a fight. If you look at the evidence of just how hard weve listened to settle this.

Insofar as it is a political strike I do think there are some elements at the very top of the BMA who are absolutely refusing to compromise.

In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK 20,000 Junior Doctors marched through central London in protest at the new contract changes the government is trying to impose which they say will be unfair and unsafe In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors protest in London In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK 4 year old Cassius takes part in a demonstration in Westminster, in support of junior doctors over changes to NHS contracts, London In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Protest over proposed changes to junior doctors' contracts, Leeds In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors and NHS staff protesting against the health service cuts and the proposed contract changes offered by the government outside Parliament In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors and NHS staff protesting against the health service cuts and the proposed contract changes offered by the government outside Parliament In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Over 5000 junior doctors rallied in Waterloo place, before marching through Whitehall and onto Parliament Square, in opposition to Jeremy Hunt's new working conditions for doctors In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Demonstrators listen to speeches in Waterloo Place during the 'Let's Save the NHS' rally and protest march by junior doctors In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors marched in London to highlight their plight In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK A protester at a demonstration in support of junior doctors in London

Unidentified Downing Street sources told the BBC yesterday that some junior doctors wanted to topple the Government.

BMA junior doctor committee chair Dr Johann Malawana however said doctors would return to work if the Government returned to negotiations and dropped unilateral imposition of the contract.

No doctor wants to take any action, he said.

They want to be in work, treating patients, but by refusing to get back around the negotiating table the government has left them with no choice but to take short-term action to protect patient care in the long term.

Todays strike is the first all-out stoppage to include emergency medical care  previous strikes have left A&E rooms in place.

The BMA stressed yesterday that emergency care would still be available  but provided by senior doctors.

Junior doctors walked off the job at 8am this morning and will return at 5pm in the evening. They will do the same on Wednesday.
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Here are the latest updates:

Doctors will today stage what could be the NHSs most significant strike in its 68-year history, as Accident and Emergency and maternity units will be affected for the first time. It is expected that senior consultants will step in to staff the departments as their colleagues take strike action.

Doctors say the new contract will harm patient safety by incentivising unsafe shift rosters. The Government says it will help improve care at the weekends. The new contract is cost-neutral so it is not a case of doctors asking for more or less money overall, though there may be individual winners and losers from it.

 Junior doctors strike - all you need to know

A very large majority of junior doctors are likely to strike, with only a tiny number expected to defy the picket lines.

All polls suggest that the public support the junior doctors and blame the Government for the dispute. There is slightly reduced support for a strike which includes emergency care, but the public still supports doctors overall.
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Labour backbencher Frank Field is expected to warn that the party risks undermining the traditional Labour vote and losing voters to Ukip in "swathes", according to reports.

The MP for Birkenhead will say in the speech that the referendum could become a "suicide note" if the party backs the remain campaign.

It comes after Jeremy Corbyn said he would continue to make the case for Britain's membership of the EU.

Mr field, a former welfare minister, is expected to criticise open-door immigration policy as being damaging to wages and public services, the BBC reports.

"The last thing Jeremy needs to do is to undermine further the traditional Labour vote, much of which wishes to leave the European Union.

"For the party leader more actively to campaign for the Remain campaign will push even more Labour voters into the arms of Ukip," he will say.

 What to believe about the EU referendum

But former cabinet minister Alan Johnson, who chairs the Labour In For Britain campaign, will warn that pro-Brexit Tories hope to use freedom from Brussels rules to scale back workplace rights to almost nothing.

In a speech to the Usdaw union conference, Mr Johnson will point to the fact that unions representing nearly four million workers have already pledged their support for continued EU membership.

"The vote in the referendum on the EU on June 23 is every bit as important as that election in July 1945," he will say in a reference to the reforming post-war government of Clement Attlee, famous for creating the NHS and expanding welfare.

"Perhaps more so. It is a vote about whether we remain or leave the EU, and there will be immediate consequences to that decision for everyone here, and every family in the land.

"It is vital that our unions campaign for Britain to remain in Europe and campaign for a Europe that protects working people and keeps the swivel-eyed alliance of the right of the Tory party and Ukip off our rights at work."

Ten unions, with just short of four million members between them, have announced they will support the Remain cause.

"From nurses and builders to railway workers, steel workers, postal workers and shop workers, trade unions will be campaigning for a Britain that remains in Europe," he will say.

"The rights of working people are protected by our EU membership, and Labour and our union movement are united in campaigning for Britain to remain in Europe.

What has the EU ever done for us? Show all 7 1 /7 What has the EU ever done for us? What has the EU ever done for us? 1. It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe As a member of the EU, UK citizens benefit from freedom of movement across the continent. Considered one of the so-called four pillars of the European Union, this freedom allows all EU citizens to live, work and travel in other member states. What has the EU ever done for us? 2. It sustains millions of jobs A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, released in October 2015, suggested 3.1 million British jobs were linked to the UKs exports to the EU. What has the EU ever done for us? 3. Your holiday is much easier - and safer Freedom to travel is one of the most exercised benefits of EU membership, with Britons having made 31 million visits to the EU in 2014 alone. But a lot of the benefits of being an EU citizen are either taken for granted or go unnoticed. What has the EU ever done for us? 4. It means you're less likely to get ripped off Consumer protection is a key benefit of the EUs single market, and ensures members of the British public receive equal consumer rights when shopping anywhere in Europe. What has the EU ever done for us? 5. It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime Another example of a lesser-known advantage of EU membership is the benefit of cross-country coordination and cooperation in the fight against crime. What has the EU ever done for us? 6. Our businesses depend on it According to 71% of all members of the Confederation of British Influence (CBI), and 67 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. What has the EU ever done for us? 7. We have greater influence Robin Niblett, Director of think-tank Chatham House, stated in a report published last year: For a mid-sized country like the UK, which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence.

"To protect the jobs that depend on our EU membership and the protections at work guaranteed through our EU membership, it is vital that our unions campaign for a Britain to remain in Europe.

"What about Michael Gove and Boris Johnson? Does anyone really believe they want to leave the EU because it will help working families?

"No, their vision is a small state with few, if any, workplace rights, and the Thatcherite "supply side" economy that Nigel Lawson was eulogising the other day.

"They know the EU protects workers' interests, and it's one of the principal reasons why they want to leave the EU.

"According to Michael Gove, we should emulate Albania, Boris Johnson says we should ignore the president of the United States because of his Kenyan ancestry, and Chris Grayling - a man who lights up a room when he leaves it - says that our country is never on the winning side whenever there's a vote at the Council of Ministers, when the facts show that we get our way on the vast majority of occasions."
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The majority of the public supports the junior doctors' strike, a poll has found.

The Ipsos MORI poll, conducted for BBC News, found 57 per cent of adults in England support the strike.

Junior doctors began an all-out strike from 8am on Tuesday, and will resume the walk-out on Wednesday.

The strike has already resulted in the cancellation of 125,000 operations and appointments.

As the strike got underway, there was an outpouring of support for the doctors across social media, while an informal poll on Sky News showed viewers backed the action by more than 70 per cent.

And the overwhelming opposition to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt over the issue appears to have prompted him to tell the BBC it will be his "last big job in government".

The survey of 861 English adults also found public support for an all-out strike, where no emergency care being provided, is higher than was initially suggested when the same question was asked in January.

While 57 per cent support the current walkout, just 44 per cent said they would when asked in January.

However, support for this round of strike action is slightly lower than for previous strikes, when emergency care was not affected.

 Junior doctors strike - all you need to know

Nearly one in five (18 per cent) strongly oppose the full walkout.

An increasing number of people see both parties at fault for the continuing dispute, with over a third (35 per cent) blaming the doctors and the Government, up from 28 per cent in March and 18 per cent in February.

In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Doctor in acute medicine, Melissa Haskins, holds up a 'I ain't afraid of no Hunt' sign whilst striking with other junior doctors outside her hospital, St Thomas' Hospital in London Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Accident and emergency junior doctor, Jennifer Hulse, holds a homemade placard outside St Thomas' Hospital as she strikes with colleagues in London Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Demonstrators and Junior doctors hold placards as they protest outside the Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, in Basingstoke during a strike by junior doctors Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Demonstrators and Junior doctors hold placards as they protest outside the Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, in Basingstoke during a strike by junior doctors Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike A supporter displays a slogan on her bag during a junior doctors' strike outside St Thomas' Hospital in London Reuters In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike The picket line outside King's College Hospital in London PA In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike The picket line outside King's College Hospital in London, as thousands of junior doctors begun the first all-out strike in the history of the NHS after the Health Secretary said the Government would not be "blackmailed" into dropping its manifesto pledge for a seven-day health service PA In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Junior doctors and supporters take part in a strike outside the Royal United Hospital in Bath Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Doctor in acute medicine, Melissa Haskins, holds up a 'I ain't afraid of no Hunt' sign whilst striking with other junior doctors outside her hospital, St Thomas' Hospital in London Getty Images In pictures: Junior doctors first all-out strike Dave Prentis, UNISON general secretary visits a British Medical Association picket line at Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, to show support for striking junior doctors on the second day of the union's annual health conference PA

Over half (54 per cent) now say the Government is more at fault for the dispute continuing this long, down from 57 per cent in March.

The number saying the junior doctors are more at fault has also fallen to 8 per cent from 11 per cent in March.

On Sunday, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt refused to trial an alternative contract in exchange for cancelling the strike.

Jeremy Hunt is also facing a legal challenge from the British Medical Association over the contracts (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

The Government says the contract will help implement the Conservatives' manifesto pledge of a "seven-day NHS".

Junior doctors say the new contract - which redefines what are considered "anti-social" working hours - is unsafe for patients, as doctors will have to work more unsocial hours.

The dispute has become increasingly bitter and has seen junior doctors go out on strike for the first time in 40 years.

Mr Hunt has also been criticised by the director of the World Health Organisation (WHO), who says the contract contradicts the status of women set out by the United Nations.

Commenting on the poll's findings, Anna Quigley, Head of Health Research at Ipsos MORI, said: Were seeing today that support for the junior doctors is still prevalent among much of the public, even when emergency care is withheld.

"However, support is not as high as when we were polling for the strikes where emergency care was provided, as we suggested might happen in January.

"However, the erosion of public support has not been as stark as the January polling suggested, and the public still have some patience left for the junior doctors cause.
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Conservatives have demanded that Jeremy Corbyn expel a Labour MP and aide to the shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, who appeared to endorse the forced relocation of Israelis to the US.

Naz Shah, who was elected as the Labour MP for Bradford West last year said she deeply regretted the hurt caused by her comments and accepted there was no excuse for the offence they caused.

Recommended Read more Labour MP Naz Shah apologises for backing plan to move Israel

In a Facebook post in 2014, before she became an MP, Ms Shah shared a graphic which showed an image of Israel's outline superimposed onto a map of the US under the headline Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict - Relocate Israel into United States, with the comment problem solved.

The post suggested the US has plenty of land to accommodate Israel as a 51st state, allowing Palestinians to get their life and their land back.

It added that Israeli people would be welcome and safe in the US while the transportation cost would be less than three years' worth of Washington's support for Israeli defence spending.

Ms Shah added a note suggesting the plan might save them some pocket money.

After the post became public Ms Shah resigned as an aide to Mr McDonnell. But in a letter the Tories called on her to be expelled from the party.

Following allegations of institutional anti-Semitism within Labour, the shadow Chancellor pledged permanent expulsion from the party for those expressing such hateful opinions, the former Downing Street aide, Oliver Dowden, wrote.

Could you confirm that this zero tolerance approach will be applied to the shadow Chancellors former Parliamentary Private Secretary? A failure to act would call into question the commitment of the Labour Party to deal with wholly unacceptable behaviour and would constitute a betrayal of the values that all those who believe in democracy should uphold.

Campaigners against anti-Semitism also continued to raise concerns, with one group saying it would be hard for them to take seriously an inquiry into anti-Semitism being conducted by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee so long as she remained a member.

Jonathan Sacerdoti, director of communications at the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: One cannot simply apologise for 'any offence caused' and expect evidence of gross and brazen anti-Semitism to disappear.

Once again the Labour Party has been revealed to have within its ranks people who express extreme prejudice towards Jewish people in their public statements.

Once again the party has failed to find these statements itself, and reject those who freely and willingly express them.

How can we believe Labour when it says it takes the problem of Jew-hatred seriously when it repeatedly defends anti-Semitic MPs? It seems that Jeremy Corbyn's anti-racism policy only operates when convenient, Mr Sacerdoti added.
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David Cameron and Michael Gove's wives have fallen out over their husbands' opposing sides in the EU referendum debate, it has been claimed.

Samantha Cameron and Mr Gove's wife, the newspaper columnist Sarah Vine, have been friends since the two men became MPs.

They used to live near each other, have been on holiday together and Ms Vine is godmother to the Cameron's youngest daughter.

But the pair are understood to have had a stand-up row at a party following Mr Gove's decision to back Brexit  and Ms Vine's decision to write about how that impacted on their friendship in her column for the Daily Mail.

The Sun reported that the pair were heard arguing at the party to celebrate the 50th birthday of the Tory party chairman Lord Feldman.

The paper said Mrs Cameron launched into a "tirade" at Ms Vine, accusing her of betrayal.

The paper quoted a source saying raised voices and effing and blinding was heard.

Mrs Cameron was understood to have been particularly incensed by a newspaper column Ms Vine wrote about her husbands internal struggle over backing Brexit.

The piece was published the day before the party.

In it she talked about the couple's friendship and admitted Mr Cameron had been hurt by Mr Gove's decision.

What has the EU ever done for us? Show all 7 1 /7 What has the EU ever done for us? What has the EU ever done for us? 1. It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe As a member of the EU, UK citizens benefit from freedom of movement across the continent. Considered one of the so-called four pillars of the European Union, this freedom allows all EU citizens to live, work and travel in other member states. What has the EU ever done for us? 2. It sustains millions of jobs A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, released in October 2015, suggested 3.1 million British jobs were linked to the UKs exports to the EU. What has the EU ever done for us? 3. Your holiday is much easier - and safer Freedom to travel is one of the most exercised benefits of EU membership, with Britons having made 31 million visits to the EU in 2014 alone. But a lot of the benefits of being an EU citizen are either taken for granted or go unnoticed. What has the EU ever done for us? 4. It means you're less likely to get ripped off Consumer protection is a key benefit of the EUs single market, and ensures members of the British public receive equal consumer rights when shopping anywhere in Europe. What has the EU ever done for us? 5. It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime Another example of a lesser-known advantage of EU membership is the benefit of cross-country coordination and cooperation in the fight against crime. What has the EU ever done for us? 6. Our businesses depend on it According to 71% of all members of the Confederation of British Influence (CBI), and 67 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. What has the EU ever done for us? 7. We have greater influence Robin Niblett, Director of think-tank Chatham House, stated in a report published last year: For a mid-sized country like the UK, which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence.

"The Camerons are some of our dearest friends," she wrote.

"We had been through so much together, both personal and political. I am godmother to Florence, their youngest.

"Now David would inevitably feel let down. Michael was between a rock and a hard place. Be true to himself and disappoint his friend; support the Prime Minister and betray his principles."

She added: "When he eventually told David the truth about his feelings on the re-negotiations  that he was not inclined to support the deal in its current form  the PM was genuinely, and quite naturally, shocked and hurt.

"I blame myself in part for any misunderstanding. In earlier, albeit informal, conversations in which Mr Cameron had asked me about Michaels intentions, I had not been entirely transparent  mostly because I genuinely wasnt sure which way Michael was going to go, but also because, being frightfully middle-class about it all, I didnt want to start a row.

It was never going to be easy. But neither of us had any idea it would be such torture either. Mr Cameron was expecting opposition from all sorts of people, but not from Michael.

Sarah Vine has since told friends that she knew the PM and his wife were incredibly stressed out and she hopes that she and Sam will be able to make up after the referendum.
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Harold Wilson thought politics was about being able to ride two horses at once, warned Frank Field. If you cant do that you shouldnt be in the political circus.

Horses and the circus? For a moment I had the temerity to imagine Labour's great man might have mixed his metaphors. Reassuringly, I was wrong. In the eighteenth century, it transpires, the horse circus was big news. Dramatic works were written especially for them. Horses had their own named parts.

To the political horse circus then, which has arguably never been a stranger place than now. An angry, turbocharged dressage where everyone thinks its their turn at once, the music keeps changing every moment, no one knows what direction theyre meant to be going nor whos taking who for a ride.

At the London Headquarters of Vote Leave, Labour veteran Frank Field, a man to whom the Labour Party always listens even if it does not always agree, spelled out his diagnosis of the problem. Jeremy Corbyn is a one horse man. A one trick pony. And upon the horse that Labour should be riding, Nigel Farage is romping home.

The Labour leadership has signed up to the second longest suicide note in history, he said. We have suffered over the recent past a haemorrhage of votes to Ukip. This will be speeded up by this stance [to remain in the EU]. Do our political leaders not see that our people should be first in the queue not others?

Labour, you might think, is in enough trouble as it is, without one of its more eloquent voices calmly stating the case for how its future depends on the gusto with which it is prepared to take up the immigrant bashing cause. But clearly, there are votes to be won in this anti-EU malarkey, and those votes should be Labours.

People who single out the borders and immigration issue are crucial, because they are the people who have been on the receiving end of the newcomers, he continued. They are the ones that have suffered the pressure of their wages declining, the waiting for housing, they cannot choose schools for their children.

In the referendum campaign so far, this was the rarest of interjections. A person whose position has not wavered, making an entirely honest contribution. Someone who is not a nutter, nor in the political debt of nutters. Not in a leadership contest, not swayed by ambition. Not being told what he must say by a parliamentary party by whom he is loathed but also leads.

Just the internal Labour party politics of the matter is enough to make the complexities of Syria look like an episode of He-Man.

The party has been over represented by North London metropolitan elites, Mr Field claimed. Well it isnt anymore. Jeremy Corbyns in charge, who everybody likes because hes more straightforward, but who has had a Pauline conversion on the EU because his party has told him he must, and so isnt being very straightforward at all.

Then theres the unfortunate matter that Leave vote might not do very much to regain control of our borders given free movement of people is highly likely to remain a condition of entry to the single market. Vote Leave officially arent bothered about re-entry to the single market, but even if their side wins, it wont be them doing the negotiating.

40 per cent of Labour voters are recorded as ones who wish to leave. Thats a basis on which we can build, Mr Field said. The Remain campaign is the governments campaign and thats another reason Labour voters will come out and give them a friendly punch on the nose.

No doubt they will, but if they succeed, theyll get Boris Johnson for their troubles, or worse, and for four more years. Thats a long time to be on the wrong horse.
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A Conservative MP has revolted against the Government to launch an impassioned plea to improve the miserable and brutish lives of thousands of refugee children trapped in squalid conditions across Europe.

Stephen Phillips asked fellow parents in Parliament to imagine what they would want for their children if they became separated and destitute in a foreign country.

Would I be content for them to be at risk of violence and exploitation, often sexual in nature, or would I want them to be offered safe haven with the desire that they be looked after and reunited with family members in due course? he said.

 Stephen Phillips shows even the Tories can't back the Immigration Bill

Those questions are, to my mind, rhetorical. They admit of sure and certain answers.

Mr Phillips was speaking in the House of Commons to support an amendment to the Immigration Bill that would have seen 3,000 minors who have already risked their lives to reach the continent resettled in the UK.

The proposal was defeated by just 18 votes on Monday but its creator Lord Dubs is now considering another amendment after the Governments plan to take in the same number of children from refugee camps in the Middle East and North Africa was criticised by humanitarian organisations.

Mr Phillips, the Conservative MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham, said there was a grave inconsistency between arguing that the UK had a role in Europe  with or without a Brexit  and refusing to take a fair share of the 10,000 unaccompanied young asylum seekers Europol estimates to be missing.

He urged politicians to reflect on Britains history providing refuge to children in the Kindertransport and other programmes during conflicts in Uganda, Vietnam and Iran.

Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily.

(These children) are alone, and far from their families, Mr Phillips added.

They are cold, frightened, hungry and frequently without help or access to those who might help or protect them.

Their lives are miserable and brutish, and at least half of them have experienced or seen violence that we can only dream of in our nightmares - or, rather, hope that we do not.

He said the Governments plans to take up to 3,000 children directly from refugee camps outside Europe is no comfort to those trapped in Calais, on the Greek-Macedonian border and sleeping rough across the continent.

Mr Phillips was one of several Tory backbenchers revolting in support of the amendment on Monday, which was narrowly defeated by 294 votes to 276.

Lord Dubs will make another attempt when the Immigration Bill returns to the Lords on Tuesday, proposing a revised amendment asking the Government to resettle a specified number of lone child refugees to be determined in consultation with local authorities.

James Brokenshire, the immigration minister, argued that resettling children who had already reached Europe would encourage others to make potentially deadly sea crossings with people smugglers.
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Former presidential candidate and Republican Ben Carson has spoken out against freedom fighter Harriet Tubman being placed on a new $20 bill, arguing that she would be horrified to become the new face of American debt slavery.

Mr Carson, in an op-ed for IJ Review, said the modern form of slavery is the national debt and that every child is born with a negative net worth - he said it would take three years of slave labour for a child to repay the debt they are born with.

Therefore, he argued, the abolitionist icon who was born on a slave plantation in Maryland and who escaped to form an underground network for other African Americans would turn in her grave if she knew she was about to be printed on the bill.

Recommended Read more Putting Harriet Tubman on a banknote is an affront to her memory

She would revile the cheap trick being pulled on African Americans in getting them to support this nearly bankrupt symbol of American debt, he wrote. It is amazing how, just as the currency dwindles down to near worthlessness  all of a sudden the Government wants to invoke Harriet Tubman as a symbol on the twenty dollar bill.

He called out the move as an empty gesture and a disgrace that president Obama is trying to rush through the current administration.

It's a potentially controversial view, but one that many civil rights activists may agree with, and more palatable to people than his previous comments. During his presidential campaign he voiced his opinion that one dead body with bullets in it is better than taking away the second amendment, he has called for "transgender bathrooms" to avoid "making everyone else uncomfortable", and said he would not advocate "putting a Muslim in charge of this nation".

The move to replace the image of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, on the $20 bill was led by campaign group Women On 20s.

The campaign leaders said they were ready to claim victory but only if the new bill was issued by 2020, in time to mark the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote.

Ms Tubman was born in 1822 and escaped at the age of 27 when she managed to travel on foot to Philadelphia. She returned to the South many times to help free other slaves by establishing safe houses and an underground network.

Mr Carson argued that slaves were seen as property and were used as collateral for debt obligations, so her escape and her help to free around 300 others resulted in weakening the slavery system through miring it in debt".

The cynical pandering to race, and the exploitation of a real American hero in order to mask the highway robbery being enacted by the Fed and the U.S. Government is nothing short of a disgrace, he said. "It is one thing if they want to rob the American people blind, but quite another to do it in the name of a true freedom fighter.

Cultural commentator and New York hip-hop radio host Jay Smooth said in May last year that it was problematic to honour Ms Tubmans work to free people from slavery by putting her face on the reason we were in slavery.

Donald Trump, who was endorsed by Mr Carson after he quit the presidential race in March, also weighed in on the debate, arguing the move was a result of pure political correctness.

Andrew Jackson has a great history, and it seems rough to take someone off the bill, he said during an interview with NBC last week.

I think Harriet Tubman is fantastic, he added. I would love to  I would love to leave Andrew Jackson and see if we can maybe come up with another denomination. Maybe we do the $2 bill or we do another bill.
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Bernie Sanders said he is not likely to encourage his supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton in the likely event that she becomes the Democratic presidential nominee.

Speaking at a MSNBC town hall in Philadelphia, Mr Sanders said that it is up to the former Secretary of State to win over voters who supported him.

Were not a movement where I can snap my fingers and say to you or to anybody else what you should do, that you should all listen to me, Mr Sanders told the audience member, who is also a supporter of the Vermont senator. You shouldnt. You make these decisions yourself.

He then pivoted to Ms Clinton: And if Secretary Clinton wins, it is incumbent upon her to tell millions of people who right now do not believe in establishment politics or establishment economics, who have serious misgivings about a candidate who has received millions of dollars from Wall Street and other special interests.

She has to go out to you.

In a separate town hall, Ms Clinton said she hopes to see support from Mr Sanders should he drop out of the race  although she stopped short of calling on him to do so.

Certainly we share a lot of the same goals, she told Rachel Maddow. I think we have much more in common and I want to unify the party. And to do so, Ms Clinton hopes Mr Sanders takes after her following her 2008 loss to then-Senator Barack Obama.

I did not put down condition. I did not say, you know what, if Senator Obama does X, Y, and Z, I will support [him], she said. I spent an enormous amount of time convincing my supporters to support Senator Obama.

I hope that we will see the same this year.
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The president of a police union said that the family of Tamir Rice  the 12-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer  should use a $6m settlement from the city to educate children about the use of replica firearms.

Steve Loomis, who heads the Cleveland Police Patrolmans Association, issued a press release following the ruling that awarded the Rice family the settlement, suggesting that the childs death is an educational opportunity.

Something positive must come from this tragic loss, Mr Loomis write. That would be educating youth of the dangers of possessing a real or replica firearm.

Mr Loomis said the CPPA had maintained from the onset that the entire situation was an absolute tragedy for the Rice family as well as our involved officers and their families.

An attorney for the Rice family blasted Mr Loomis statement, calling it tone-deaf.

Anyone who has ever wondered whether tone deafness is a real thing need look no further than the police union leadership, Subodh Chandra said in a statement. He accused the union of placing blame on the victim and are indicative of all that is wrong with Clevelands police division.

Rices family filed a wrongful death suit against the city of Cleveland after police officer Timothy Loehmann shot and killed the youth within seconds of seeing him in November 2014. Mr Loehmann and his partner Frank Garmback were responding to a 911 call from a resident who saw Rice playing in a neighbourhood park with a toy gun.

The officers were not indicted for the killing, as prosecutors ruled it a perfect storm of human error.

Mr Loomis had been previously criticised for remarks he made following Rices death.

Hes menacing. Hes 5-feet-7, 191 pounds, Mr Loomis told Politico in February 2015.  He wasnt that little kid youre seeing in pictures. Hes a 12-year-old boy in an adult body.

In a court filing, which served as a formal response to the Rice familys lawsuit, the city of Cleveland also placed some blame on Rice for his own death. The familys claim, according to city attorneys, were directly caused by their own acts. The filing also said that the 12-year-olds death was caused by the failure  to exercise due care to avoid injury.
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Republican Donald Trump has said Bernie Sanders should run as an independent as he said he has been treated terribly by the Democrats.

Mr Trumps advice comes as Mr Sanders's campaign has faced dwindling momentum after losing out in New York to Hillary Clinton.

On his website, the Vermont senator described himself as an independent until earlier this month, according to Politico.

Mr Sanders switched to the Democrats as otherwise he would not have been able to fully participate in the closed primary system and would not have received the same exposure. Other independents currently running for president include Jill Stein from the Green Party and Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, representing the Libertarian Party.

In an interview on Sunday with NBC, journalist Chuck Todd asked Mr Sanders whether the thought the Democratic party had been fair to him, and he shrugged.

Recommended Read more Hillary Clinton finally exceeds expectations with huge win in New York

No. I think we have look, we're taking on the establishment. That's pretty clear, the senator replied. The fact that we had debates that were scheduled  pretty clearly, to my mind, at a time when there would be minimal viewing audience, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, that's the way it is. We knew we were taking on the establishment. And here we are. So not complaining.

While we have a narrow path to victory, were going to fight for and through that path. We hope to win, he added.

At the end of last year the head of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, said there was nothing sinister in the way the DNC scheduled six Democratic debates on television - versus 12 debates for the Republicans - and held them mostly at the weekend with less people likely to watch them.

Asked whether super delegates might switch from Ms Clinton to Mr Sanders after primaries in upcoming states like California, she told CNN on Tuesday that it was not her job to comment on that.

Our process for developing the platform is going to be open and inclusive and expansive, she said.

She added that Democrats will be making enthusiastic choices whereas Republicans are making a choice as to who they dislike the least.

Voters in five states will be casting their ballots today and Mr Trump and Ms Clinton are expected to sweep up aross Rhode Island, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, with more than 300 delegates up for grabs.

Senator Sanders' wife Jane, speaking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN on Tuesday, urged him and the broadcaster to focus less on delegate math and focus on the issues that Americans care about, like jobs and the economy.

Hillary Clinton says there are more unite them [her and Sanders] than divide them, and they need to beat the Republicans, she said. But there are issues where they differ and they need to talk about that."
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Hillary Clinton has promised that women will make up half of her presidential Cabinet, if shes elected in 2016.

The Democratic front-runner made the promise during MSNBCs town hall on Monday night. Rachel Maddow moderated the event, and asked Clinton how she plans to close the gender gap.

Canada has a new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, Maddow said. He promised when he took office that he would have a cabinet that was 50 percent women, and then he did it. Would you make that same pledge?

Clinton responded, Well, I am going to have a Cabinet that looks like America, and 50 percent of America is women.

Without providing any names, Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta said last week that Clintons shortlist of potential running would also include women.

Well start with a broad list and then begin to narrow it, Podesta told The Boston Globe. But there is no question that there will be women on that list.
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The US sent two of the worlds most advanced airplanes to Romania to show it is beefing up support for its European NATO allies in the face of threats from Russia.

The F-22 Raptors, which travel at twice the speed of sound, touched down in Romania, close to the Black Sea and Ukraine, the Crimean Peninsula and Russia.

The US sent the planes to the country for the first time, just two weeks after Russian fighter jets flew within 30 feet of a US warship in the Baltic Sea.

Secretary of State John Kerry warned that the Russian action could have resulted in the jets being shot down, according to CNN.

President Obama promised in 2014 to bolster defense of NATOs eastern members.

Recommended Read more Obama calls for stronger Europe in face of Isis threat

The F-22 Raptor planes, which are flown by a single pilot and are armed with missiles and radar-guided bombs, flew to the airbase on the Black Sea on Monday, as part of an official NATO training exercise to show how quickly and effectively the US fighter jets could show up for its allies.

We're here today to demonstrate our capability to take the F-22 anywhere needed in NATO or across Europe, said Squadron commander Daniel Lehoski, as reported by Reuters.

But it was also an act of defiance as Russia builds up its military capacity.

Russia pledged to spend $2.4 billion building up its navy. After annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, it has continued to carry out military exercises in the region.

Romania Air Force chief of staff Laurian Anastasof said: They're increasing the air activities, they're increasing the missions, they're increasing the training. This is the thing that we are seeing every single day.

Independent version- Should Obama intervene in the EU referendum?

Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania are considering expanding their NATO navy presence to deter Russia.

US Ambassador to Romania Hans Klemm, who welcomed the planes and crews, said the US and Romania were committed to working together in NATO and improving security following the aggression by Russia that has brought so much instability to this part of the world over the past two to three years.

President Obama has sanctioned more US training, military exercises and more military and naval deployments near the Russian border.

The F-22 Raptors touched down briefly at Mihail Kogalniceanu Airport near Constanta, Romania, on Monday before flying to England to offer a reassuring presence.

12 of these US planes have also been deployed in eastern England. They cannot be detected by radar and have been banned from being sold abroad.

Russia has blamed NATO for escalating tensions by pushing up against its borders, saying this NATO military build-up is completely unjustified.
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A Chinese man has been living alone in a remote village for a decade, it has emerged.

Liu Shengjia was left to fend for himself after resources became scarce and families either moved away or gradually died in Xuenshanshe village.

When his mother and younger brother passed away 10 years ago, Mr Liu said he became accustomed to only having sheep for company in the remote part of Gansu province.

"In the beginning, I wasn't able to sleep at night while listening to the howling of the wild dogs," he told Chinese newspaper the People's Daily.

"But after I started to tend a few sheep and they've become my companions, I slowly got used to living alone."

He continues to work for the local forestry protection station and earns 700 yuan, or about 74, a month but must still travel long distances to buy food and fetch water.

Mr Liu said despite enjoying the advantage of being able to choose whichever house he wants to live in, he still hoped to move somewhere with more people in in the future, according to CCTV News.

"Surviving here is not a problem for me, but I still prefer to move to a more populous area when the time comes," he said.

The phenomenon of "ghost villages" has been on the rise in China as many rural labourers take part in a mass exodus predominantly to its eastern cities to find work.

Yet some of the cities in the centre of the country built expressly to accomodate the country's 1.3 billion citizens - about 20 per cent of the entire globe's population - are still under construction and many remain mostly empty.

The Chinese government has previously said it hopes some 250 million people will move out of the country's villages and into its cities by 2030, as part of a push for urbanisation and increased domestic consumerism.
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Police in Thailand may have to face an international regulator over the way they handled the investigation into the murder of British backpackers Hannah Witheridge and David Miller.

International legal and DNA forensics experts have advised Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo - the two Burmese immigrants sentenced to death over the killings - to make a formal complaint and demand a retrial.

The bodies of Ms Witheridge, 23, and Mr Miller, 24, were found on the island of Koh Tao in September 2014 with severe head injuries.

Ms Witheridge had been raped and Mr Miller had been drowned in the sea after being struck on the head.

But experts have now said the DNA investigation by the Thai Police Forensics Laboratory was at best incompetent - and in the worst case scenario framed the two men.

One of the team told the London Evening Standard: I have spoken to the Australian Asia Pacific Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation which is willing to intervene.

My feeling is the two young Burmese rather than being executed would be suing the authorities in a western country  and their lawyers should do that in Thailand.

The police investigation has come under intense scrutiny after allegations came to light that the two men were tortured until they admitted their guilt.

Myanmar migrant workers Zaw Lin, center, and Wai Phyo, rear, arrive at a provincial court in Surat Thani province, Thailand (AP)

They later recanted and pleaded not guilty.

In January, Ms Witheridges sister Laura attacked the conduct of the Thai authorities in a post on Facebook.

She said the vast majority of Thai police were corrupt, making the country a dangerous trap for tourists.

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The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. 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She hinted that she thought Thai nationals were responsible for the killings and that she received death threats throughout the trial - with one person suggesting the murderers had only half completed the job.

Ms Witheridge claimed they told her parents to go home and make another one if they were upset at losing their daughter.

She said: What if I told you that, since we lost Hannah, there have been many more suspicious deaths on Koh Tao. You probably havent heard of them, as not all were British nationals. The deaths, where possible, are covered up as suicides and accidents.

This would have happened with Hannah, if it had not been for the hideous brutality of her passing.

Ms Witheridges family has not formally condemned or praised the conviction of the two men.

Thai police have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
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A group affiliated to al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the murder of a Bangladeshi gay rights campaigner and editor of the countrys first LGBT magazine.

Xulhaz Mannan, 35, was killed on Monday in his apartment in capital city Dhaka by a group of assailants who posed as couriers. His friend, actor Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy, 25, was killed in the same attack.

A Twitter account claiming to belong to Islamist group Ansar Al Islam said its fighters had killed Mannan and Tonoy because they were the pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh.

The authenticity of the claim could not be immediately verified and Ansar Al Islam - which is part of al-Qaedas Indian Subcontinent branch - has issued similar claims in the past.

Mannan was the editor of Roopbaan, the country's only magazine for the LGBT community. He also worked for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was previously a US Embassy protocol officer.

The killings are the latest in a string of murders of liberal activists and other minorities in Bangladesh.

Julhas Mannan was an editor for Roopbaan, which focuses on issues facing the country's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community (Roopbaan/Facebook)

Maruf Hossain Sardar, spokesman for Dhaka city police, dismissed the groups claim as baseless, saying militant groups like Isis and al-Qaeda had no organisational base in Bangladesh.

The attack comes after Isis claimed responsibility for the murder of Rezaul Karim Siddique, a 58-year-old English professor who died after being attacked with machetes as he left for work on Saturday. A statement from the militant group accused him of "calling to atheism".

Earlier this month, a Bangladeshi law student was hacked with machetes and shot in Dhaka after expressing secular views online. Last year, four atheist bloggers were also killed.

Homosexuality is currently illegal in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation of 160 million people.
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An Australian camper is recovering after being attacked by a crocodile while in his tent.

Peter Rowsell was on a fishing trip with his family in the Daly region of Australias Northern Territory when the reptile grabbed his foot in the early hours of Monday morning.

Mr Roswell told ABC, he awoke to something shaking his right leg and described the animal as three to four metres long.

In what has been described as a lucky escape, Mr Roswell was able to fight off the crocodile before it returned to the water.

The nineteen-year-olds family immediately drove him to a hospital in Katherine, around two hours away from their campsite, where he remains in a stable condition.

Mr Rowsell sustained puncture wounds to his lower right leg and is being given antibiotics due to the bacteria in the crocodiles mouth, an NT health department spokeswoman told Guardian Australia.

None of his injuries were life threatening, but the spokeswoman said Mr Rowsell had been very lucky.

The Northern Territory Government estimates the national crocodile population is around 100,000 and the creatures kill around two people a year in Australia.

Last year, the National Parks department launched an awareness campaign calling on Australian residents to be crocwise.

Mr Roswell said his tent was 15m from the waters edge at the time of the incident, however authorities say campers should be at least 50m away from the waters edge.

In December saltwater crocodiles were reportedly seen swimming in floodwater in the Northern Territories, with some residents claiming the creatures dragged dogs into the excess rain water.

Last year, Australia proposed plans to allow wealthy individuals to hunt saltwater crocodiles, suggesting people may pay up to 15,000 to kill the reptiles in the Northern Territories.
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After a Dutch journalist was arrested in Turkey this weekend for allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the most-read newspaper in the Netherlands on Monday published a front-page editorial cartoon that shows Erdogan as an ape, apparently crushing Europe's free speech.

The cartoon, published by the populist daily De Telegraaf, has an ape with Erdogan's face squashing a woman who appears to be Ebru Umar, the Dutch writer with a Turkish background who was arrested in Turkey on Sunday. In the cartoon, the Turkish president is standing on a rock labeled "Apenrots"  a Dutch term meaning "monkey rocks" that is used to refer to the Dutch Foreign Ministry but can also refer to a place where one dominant individual holds power.

The cartoon is titled "the long arm of Erdogan."

Umar, a columnist for the newspaper Metro, had been detained by Turkish authorities who were investigating tweets she had sent about Erdogan. Umar was released Sunday, but she says she has been ordered to remain in the country as the investigation proceeds.

The detention of Umar has added another layer to what many in the Netherlands think is a growing crackdown on free speech within Turkey  and outside its borders, too. Last week, the Turkish Consulate in Rotterdam came under fire after appearing to send an email that called for Turkish organizations in the Netherlands to report insults against Erdogan to it. The Turkish Embassy later said that the email had been poorly phrased and misunderstood, but it sparked controversy within the Netherlands, which is one of many European countries that still has "lese-majeste" laws that prohibit insults against friendly heads of state.

The cartoon in De Telegraaf

Umar was among the critics of the consulate's email, writing in a column that the call to report insults was similar to "NSB practices," a reference to the Dutch branch of the Nazi Party during the World War II era. Sadet Karabulut, a Dutch politician of Kurdish descent, described the controversy as a sign of "Erdogan's long arm in the Netherlands."

The controversy isn't limited to the Netherlands. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel recently announced that she would allow Jan Bohmermann, a comedian and writer known for his acerbic style, to be prosecuted for a poem he had read on German state television that accused Erdogan of bestiality, among other things. If convicted under Germany's own lese-majeste law, Bohmermann could face up to three years in prison. The prosecution of Bohmermann has sparked a continent-wide backlash against Turkey, with one British magazine launching a competition for rude poems about Erdogan in response. Both Germany and the Netherlands have indicated that they plan to get rid of their lese-majeste laws.

Erdogan has led Turkey for more than 13 years, first as prime minister and as president since 2014. He was once considered a modernizer by many in the West, but he has been accused of increasingly autocratic tendencies over the years. Since he became president, the government has used a previously rarely used law to prosecute about 2,000 people for allegedly insulting Turkey's head of state.

In tweets sent over the weekend, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he was in touch with his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu, about Umar's detention. Rutte also added that the situation "touches directly on our core values of freedom of expression and press freedom."

Copyright: Washington Post
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A dentist has been jailed for eight years in France after leaving patients with broken jaws, recurrent abscesses and septicaemia.

Jacobus van Nierop was also banned from practising as a dentist and fined 10,500 after he performed useless and painful procedures on about 100 patients to get money from medical insurance schemes.

Prosecutor Lucile Jaillon-Bru told the court in Nevers, central France, that Dutchman van Nierop took pleasure in causing pain to his victims.

The court heard how the 52-year-old, dubbed the horror dentist by French media, left many of his patients with mutilations or permanent disabilities between 2009 and 2012.

The complaints filed against him included him removing multiple healthy teeth, leaving drill bits in gums and teeth, causing abscesses and recurrent infections and disfiguring mouths.

One patient, 65-year-old Sylviane Boulesteix, testified that she was unexpectedly summoned to his dental office in May 2012 where he pulled eight of her teeth out and immediately fixed dentures on her raw gums.

She said she sat for hours with her gums gushing blood and claimed that in the following few days van Nierop had refused her pain relief.

A judicial expert said Ms Boulesteix had lost several health teeth and suffered irreversible damage to her mouth.

Victims at the trial of 'horror dentist' Jacobus Van Nierop in central France (Getty Images)

The court heard how van Nierop had forged documents to practice dentistry in France after being the subject of disciplinary proceedings in the Netherlands.

After being discovered in late 2013, van Nierop fled to Canada before being extradited back to the Netherlands then deported to France.

In their 130-page ruling, the judges convicted van Nierop of 85 counts of assault, including 45 counts of mutilation, and of 61 counts of fraud against patients, their health insurance companies and the local social security agency.

He was acquitted of six other counts of assault.

Recommended Read more Florida teen arrested for posing as a doctor and performing exams

Van Nierop has 10 days to file an appeal and will face a ruling in June on the amount of damages due to 62 of the plaintiffs.

But despite living in a large home with a swimming pool and driving expensive cars, the Dutchman had debts of nearly 1m according to court documents - leading to fears that he could be declared bankrupted before the plaintiffs can claim a cent.

One of his victims, Marie-Jo Lemoine, said: "It's silly to say that but I say it: It feels good. He will have time to think about us. But, as for the rest, nothing has changed regarding what we'll be given in terms of compensation. It won't be enough to repair the harm he caused."

Evidence collected against Van Nierop at his trial (Getty Images)

In her closing speech to the court, Ms Jaillon-Bru said that for van Nierop "there was only greed, indifference to another, even some enjoyment in making others suffer" and that for the victims "the price of pain is enormous."

She said his only goal was to make more money.

Defending van Nierop, lawyer Delphine Morin-Meneghel said he had carried out some bad procedures but had never intended to cause harm.

After hearing the verdict the Dutchman showed no emotion in court.

Psychiatrists evaluating Van Nierop said he had demonstrated a narcissistic pervert personality with an absence of all moral sense and said he did not appear to show any compassion.
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Dog owners in Madrid who fail to clean up after their pets defecate in public areas could be forced to sweep the streets.

The Spanish capital has distributed millions of free bags for collecting dog poo in an attempt to address the problems of dog fouling, but to little effect.

Now they are planning to trial a crackdown in two areas of the city, as yet unnamed, where the problem is particularly bad.

In a message to offending owners, Mayor Manuela Carmena said: We know who you are and, beware, a massive wave of fines is coming your way.

For those who cannot, or will not, pay a fine, there is another option.

We are preparing a plan to substitute fines with cleaning work, she told The Telegraph.

The fines are reported to range from 750 to 1,500 (about 580 to 1,160) but blind people with guide dogs will be exempted from the legislation. Around one quarter of Spanish households own a dog.

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The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. 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In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. 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There is still excrement in the streets, parks and other places despite repeated public awareness campaigns, the Madrid city authorities said, according to the AFP news agency.

The municipality has prepared a shock plan against these infractions which will start to be deployed shortly in two districts.

Dog poo has been a persistent problem in Spain, blighting the streets of many cities. Authorities have tried various unusual methods over recent years to combat the problem.

In February, the central city of Guadalajara announced it was working towards creating a database of all dogs in the city, which has a population of 85,000. The efforts are intended to help authorities track down irresponsible owners, who currently can only be fined if the dog is caught in the act of leaving excrement behind, The Local reported.

"This measure will increase the vigilance on the streets in order to prevent dog-owners from leaving their pets' faeces in the public roads," the city council said.

"This situation is the number one complaint voiced throughout the year."

Councillor Francisco Ubeda added: "We hope that these measures will improve the health, hygiene and aesthetics of our city."

A similar scheme in the town of Seu dUrgell had a 100 per cent success rate, according to a representative of a company which helped to implement it.
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The Champs-Elysees  often described as worlds most beautiful avenue  will soon be closed to traffic once a month as the city tackles its air pollution problem.

The famous boulevard, along with four other areas, is one of nine new routes which will be car-free on the first Sunday of every month, joining 13 others already announced as part of the cities Paris Breathes campaign.

Another four zones will also be pedestrian-only on Sundays, but just during summer months.

The initiative, which will launch on 8 May - the second Sunday of the month due to a public holiday on 1 May  is part of a drive by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo to reduce air pollution and smog in the city.

The first Sunday of the month also happens to be the day when the citys national museums have free entry.

Oliver Hayes, a Friends of the Earth air pollution campaigner, told The Independent: Paris is in the fast lane in the race to tackle dirty air; from car free days, plans to phase out dirty diesel buses, and restrictions on traffic when congestion is high.

He suggested London could learn a few lessons from the Paris example. In London, which suffers some of the worst pollution in Europe, a traffic free day would be a welcome start," he said.

But were going to need much more than one day to prevent the thousands of early deaths each year caused by air pollution. Londons mayor has the powers to restrict diesel traffic on the worst pollution days. Boris Johnsons successor must use them.

The next mayor must also accelerate the conversion of Londons iconic red buses to electric or hybrid vehicles and introduce a much bigger, tougher Clean Air Zone than whats currently proposed.

Bad air effects everyone, causing more early deaths than everything other than smoking. As the VW scandal has shown, car manufacturers are not doing anything like enough to curb deadly diesel emissions. At the very least, the Government must introduce a diesel scrappage scheme to help drivers switch to cleaner vehicles.

Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK Show all 12 1 /12 Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK pollution-4.jpg Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK pollution-3.jpg Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK pollution-5.jpg Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK pollution-1.jpg Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK pollution-2.jpg Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK pollution-5.jpg Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK pollution-3.jpg Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK pollution-2.png Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK pollution-1.jpg Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK pollution-4.jpg Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK pollution-7.jpg The Shard and St Paul's Cathedral from Hampstead Heath in London Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK pollution-6.jpg

The new measures in Paris are largely the result of a successful car-free Sunday in the city on 27 September last year. Between 9am and 4pm cars were banned in some key areas of the city, including the Champs-Elysees.

According to air quality network Airpartif, which monitors pollution levels in Paris, there was a 40 per cent drop in harmful exhaust emissions in parts of the city.

In March last year the air pollution reached such high levels a one-day ban on all cars with odd-numbered registrations was announced, halving the amount of vehicles in the city from 5am and significantly reducing the harmful emissions.

Mrs Hidalgo, who has prioritised combating pollution in the city, won a long running battle with the French government for the right to introduce similar emergency measures in the event of any future air pollution spikes.
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A follower of Scientology has been accused of swindling money from Russians in a fraudulent operation and donating some of the proceeds to her Church.

Ekaterina Zaborskikh allegedly stole $2 million, or 130 million roubles, from prospective buyers for apartments and homes which were never built.

At least some of the money was siphoned off and sent to the Church of Scientology in Moscow, an indictment in St Petersburg has alleged.

"Detectives in Saint Petersburg found that some of the stolen funds had been transferred to the account of this religious organisation in Moscow," a spokesperson for the internal affairs ministry told the Rossiya channel.

"The suspect is a member of this organisation.

"The investigation does not exclude the possible involvement in this crime on the part of officials and coordinators of this religious organisation."

The Church of Scientology in Moscow, the only one in Russia (Google Street View)

The charges against Ms Zaborskikh include that she set up a company which advertised "affordable castles" that were then purchased but never built, according to Komsomolskaya Pravda.

Her construction company, Olimp, now appears to have ceased operations and its website is down.

One woman said she had paid 2.5 million roubles for an apartment and was told construction would start immediately, only to then find the project had never received approval for consttruction, according to NTV.

But Ms Zaborskikh's lawyers say no cash was handed over before construction began and their client is innocent.

Scientology officials at the Church in Moscow deny that Ms Zaborskikh ever handed them money from fradulent operations disguised as donations.

"This search was related to a business located in St Petersburg," said Natalya Alekseeva, a public relations director for the Moscow Church.

"This matter has no connection with the Church of Scientology in Moscow."

Russia has previously banned the Moscow Church, which is the only one in the country, alleging that it was using "commercial partnerships" and US trademarks, rather than religious organisations, to spread its message.

Members of the Church, and the Church itself, have been involved in cases of fraud around the globe at different times.

The European Court of Human Rights has several times ruled in favour of the church, saying that Russia violated its rights by refusing to register its churches.

Scientology, which is based on a mixture of psychoanalytic and spiritual premises, was accorded the status of a religion in the US in 1993, some 40 years after is was first proposed by science-fiction writer L Ron Hubbard.

Famous followers of Scientology include John Travolta, Tom Cruise and Nancy Cartwright - the voice of Bart Simpson.
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Saudi Arabia is desperately trying to diversify its economy away from oil, and the person pulling the strings is 30-year-old Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

King Salman is technically the ruler, but Prince Mohammed is the favoured son, and he is increasingly calling the shots on some pretty important events.

He is quite possibly the most powerful millennial in the world, and he is now driving forward Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia's plan to curtail the kingdom's "addiction" to oil.

But there are growing concerns among economists and observers that Prince Mohammed could be out of his depth.

Prince Mohammed has built influence since his father came to power in January 2015, and this month he made it clear that his word is law when he gave the message that there would be no freeze in oil production without Iranian participation.

That Doha, Qatar, deal, or lack thereof, was enough to move the world markets. Prince Mohammed is not afraid to undermine other politicians' authorities to get his way.

But this is ostracizing the technocrat Saudi diplomats who are crucial to achieving Vision 2030. Without the old guard that has executed Saudi economic policy for decades, Prince Mohammad could struggle to get things done.

The millennial who is changing Saudi's traditional decision-making

Paul Sankey, a senior analyst at Wolfe Research, told the Financial Times in April that because of Prince Mohammed's young age  Sankey specifically calls him a "millennial"  he is pushing "the 'old guard' Saudi traditions" aside, "notably of behind-closed-doors consensus decision-making."

"He is offering the opposite, speaking at length to the Western press about policy-in-the-making," Sankey said.

"Most stunningly, the potential IPO of Aramco," the Saudi state-owned oil company, "but also, in more veiled language, the market-share war versus Iran ... [the Prince] appears to be more than ready to use oil as a weapon."

This is sidelining technocratic politicians like Ali al-Naimi, who has been the Saudi oil minister for more than two decades. Alexander Novak, Russia's energy minister, this week cut down Naimi by saying he "didn't have the authority" to negotiate a deal in Doha.

This is a huge deal because Prince Mohammed and the Saudi kingdom need those technocrats to make Vision 2030 come true.

The country reported in December that its 2015 budget deficit  the amount by which expenditures exceeded revenue  hit $98 billion (65.7 billion). Oil prices have dropped from highs in the triple digits in June 2014 to about $40.

Oil revenues make up 77% of the country's total revenue, and because of the severe drop in oil prices revenue is down by 23% on the previous year.

As a result, for the second time in four months the ratings agency S&P has downgraded Saudi Arabia's debt rating, which makes it more expensive for Saudi Arabia to borrow money. The country is reportedly also asking banks for a loan of up to $10 billion (6.8 billion).

Lagging behind on diversifying the economy away from oil

In an interview with Al Arabiya news on Monday, Prince Mohammed discussed expanding the country's Public Investment Fund to $2 trillion (1.3 trillion), up from $160 billion (110 billion), adding that it would "become a hub for Saudi investment abroad, partly by raising money through selling shares in Aramco."

But not everyone is convinced.

"There was very little that was new in the Saudi government's 'Vision 2030' and there are still several key areas that policymakers have yet to address," Jason Tuvey, an economist for Capital Economics' Middle East division, said in a note to clients.

"We don't buy into Mohammed bin Salman's assertion that Saudi Arabia will no longer be dependent on oil by 2020. In short, we were hoping for more."

Andy Critchlow at Breakingviews also highlights how Prince Mohammed's "grand vision to execute a similar rebalancing" of the economy as Dubai undertook in the 1980s "is blurry."

He said that while cutting state subsidies on electricity and creating a sovereign wealth fund was a good idea, Prince Mohammed needed to "target more radical reforms" to make Vision 2030 a reality.

The country "probably needs to address criticism over its human rights and social equality record" to improve the "link between openness and investment," he added.

Saudi Arabia is already struggling to complete its cornerstone investment in economic diversification. The King Abdullah Economic City was initially announced by King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in 2005. It is a $95 billion (67 billion) supercity that the Saudis hope will draw from both Chinese manufacturing and Western tech innovation.

Plans call for the city to eventually have 2 million residents across 70 square miles  the equivalent of Washington, D.C. The project is not expected to be completed until 2035 and has had huge hiccups along the way.

Fahd Al-Rasheed, group CEO and managing director of KAEC, even told Business Insider at the World Economic Forum in January: "It's entirely funded by the private sector and through foreign direct investment. It's completely private."

Basically, it's dependent on foreigners and its own private sector, which still depend on oil to give it cash.

So if the war between Prince Mohammed and the technocrats doesn't cool and more radical reforms aren't being undertaken, it looks as if Vision 2030 could be a damp squib.

Read more:

 MySpace was just acquired by 94-year-old magazine

 Sweden's central bank is fuelling a housing bubble

 3 huge 'risk-off' trades are going crazy right now

Read the original article on Business Insider UK.  2015. Follow Business Insider UK on Twitter.
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Q I am planning a big trip for the whole of November taking in the Gulf, South East Asia and Australasia. I am going through a well-known travel agent. They want me to pay for the whole trip immediately, and say that fares will go up if I hesitate. Are they telling the truth?

Name withheld

A For anything beyond a simple there-and-back trip, its a good decision to consult a real, live travel agent to whom you can talk face-to-face or by phone. While the cost might be slightly higher than doing everything yourself online with the airline, a good agent can add all manner of expertise. That could range from advising on airlines differing baggage limits to recommending ways to expand a trip - such as a surface sector between Bangkok and Singapore, allowing you to explore southern Thailand and Malaysia without any increase in fare. They may also have access to special fares that are not available direct from airlines. Humans are also, in my experience, more responsive than online travel agents, whose location may be a mystery and whose customer service may be dismal.

November is an excellent to fly off to warmer locations, especially New Zealand and the southern part of Australia, where it is early summer. Having said that, your agents implication that you must pay now to guarantee the best deal looks questionable, to say the least. November is the lowest of seasons, and with so much capacity available the airlines will be struggling to fill their planes right up to the day of departure.

Buy now, and youll be tying up cash needlessly early. And you will also be in a pickle if you need to cancel for reasons that are not insurable, such as a change in family or work circumstances. I hear all too many cases where people have committed unnecessarily early to a trip; something unexpected happens, they cancel the trip and end up losing hundreds or thousands of pounds.

Were I in your fortunate position of taking November off to travel, I would be looking to book no earlier than late August - which is also a popular time for airline seat sales.

Every day, our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles readers questions. Just email yours to: s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder
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Dear Piers,

I absolutely understand why you didnt get the Beyonce album - *newsflash honey* - it wasnt made for you - and Im going to need you to be cool with that.

Now, I found quite a few of the comments in your piece for the Daily Mail this week to be highly inflammatory and agitating. As a black woman, I am deeply offended by your lack of due care when writing this article, but I would like to take this opportunity to help you out, and assist you in making the whole Lemonade thing a little less bitter for you.

You are a middle aged, British white man. You have no idea, I repeat: NO IDEA what it is like to be a black woman, and furthermore the sacrificial, struggle-filled, tongue-biting, mask-wearing fight it is to become a successful one.

Let me break this down for you: Beyonces album is not an attack on anyone; it is a celebration of the strength, endurance and potential within black womanhood. The fact that you are mad/uncomfortable/agitated about it is evidence enough of how blind you are to the realities of being one.

Beyonce isnt the only one being unapologetically loud and proud of her blackness. There are many of us (go and type #BlackGirlMagic into Instagram/Twitter/Google), but you didnt see us or notice the wave. That is why Beyonce had to do this.

On social media, we are celebrating ourselves, in all our glorious forms. We are sporting our  what did you call it?  Panther-style afros (babe, weve had these afros growing out of our heads since the beginning of time) not as political statements, but as celebratory beacons for ourselves and forthcoming generations.

Beyonce is a mother now; she wasnt one when you had your little tea party five years ago. Becoming a mother of a black child changes things. You can be privileged, but along with your own, you begin to become concerned for all the other little black children too. You start to think, I dont like what I have had to go through, and I dont want my child to face the struggles I have. I want to change things.

Seldom are black women in a position to make statements that reverberate around the world and penetrate the peripheral vision of your Piers Morgans. Beyonce did that. You wrote about it. Now youre trending, and celebrating that fact  LOL.

Whether or not you feel the involvement of the grieving mothers to be in poor taste is irrelevant. The brutality and racism being faced by black people daily is what IS relevant - and Beyonce has you talking about it. Id say its a job well done.

 LEMONADE Trailer - HBO

Maybe its because Im a black woman. A black woman who cried tears when I read about Trayvon Martin or upon seeing those awful videos of Eric Garner and Sandra Bland, and then again each time murderers got away without so much as a slap on the wrist. I get how a privileged middle aged white man from Surrey doesnt feel that pain, but when I saw Trayvon Martins picture I saw my nephew. When I saw Eric Garner, I saw my uncle. When I saw Sandra Bland, I saw my auntie. I get why you dont get it.

The New Beyonce wants to be seen as a black woman: this line made me laugh out loud! Beyonce has always been black, she just did what millions of black people feel the need to do to gain success: she made her black palatable to you, which is why youre such a big fan! Same thing Oprah did, and the Obamas. This is what black people do. Along with working twice as hard to get half as much, we dilute ourselves and our culture so you accept us. I guess some of us have had enough.

Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Show all 16 1 /16 Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Tina Knowles, Beyonce's mother, and her husband Richard Lawson Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Model Winnie Harlow HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin's mother HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Serena Williams HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Oscar-nominated actor Quvenzhane Wallis HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Naomi Diaz of music duo Ibeyi HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Ballerina Michaela DePrince HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Lisa-Kainde Diaz of music duo Ibeyi HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Lesley McSpadden, Mike Brown's mother HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Leah Chase, restaurant owner and Queen of Creole cuisine HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Jay Z HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Hattie White, Jay Z's grandmother HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Gwen Carr, Eric Garner's mother HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Chloe and Halle Bailey of singing duo Chloe x Halle HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Singer, actor, and activist Zendaya (right) HBO Every cameo in Beyonce's Lemonade Actor and activist Amandla Stenberg HBO

Being black is not an affliction. No race should be seen as such. Celebrating our heritage should not be seen as a threat. We just want what you have, fairness and equal potential, and if you dont give it to us, well fight to get it for our children.

Oh, and on the subject of The Race Card, there would be no possibility of it being played if we didnt have it in our hand.

I dont blame you Piers, not at all. Im sure its lovely being you.

But the lemons we have been handed are those of the black female and, while refusing to see them as lesser, we will use them to make the most wonderful Lemonade.
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Sir Nicholas Winton was a British humanitarian responsible for rescuing children from Czecholsovakia on the eve of the Second World War. His operation, dubbed Kindertransport, arranged for children, mainly of Jewish descent, to be moved to Britain to be saved from the atrocities of war-torn Europe. A man who wished to shy away from the limelight, Sir Wintons work went unnoticed for almost forty years before the world found out about the British Schindler.

Upon his passing in 2015, David Cameron paid tribute saying: The world had lost a great man and we must never forget Sir Wintons humanity in saving so many children from the Holocaust. Fast forward less than twelve months, and dare I say it, Sir Winton would be turning in his grave knowing that Mr Camerons Tory government just voted against allowing 3,000 child refugees fleeing Syria safe passage into Britain, destroying the legacy he worked so hard to build for the UK.

 Stephen Phillips shows even the Tories can't back the Immigration Bill - short

Thats right, the Tory government who unanimously voted to bomb Syria, rejected proposals by Lord Alf Dubs, one of the many children who benefitted from Kindertransport, to accept 3,000 unaccompanied children who have fled the country we are currently attacking. Sir Wintons work is a proud of example of why the UK has always been near the top of peoples list as a safe haven for those suffering from oppression and yesterday the Tories marked an end to this. Only five Tories were brave enough to rebel against their partys wishes and vote in favour of the motion, thats only five Tories who thought we should respect the legacy of Sir Winton and help innocent children who have been left stranded because of the war we have played a major role in.

We arent talking about the swarm of people as David Cameron so eloquently described them, we are talking about innocent children. Children, who remain unaccompanied, scared and left vulnerable to exploitation because the country they once called home is rained down upon by British bombs and drone strikes.

Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Show all 11 1 /11 Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkey's two million Syrian refugees There are already over 2.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, but their current camps can only hold 200,000 people ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkish citizens protest a new deal, also criticised by human rights activists, which will see refugees who arrived in Greece after March 20 be sent back to Turkey AP Photo/Emre Tazegu Turkey's two million Syrian refugees An estimated 80% of Syrian refugee children already in Turkey are unable to attend school BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Refugee children beg for water near the Turkey-Syria border. Turkey has been accused of illegally deporting asylum-seekers back to Syria BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees In Turkey, no-one from outside Europe is legally recognised as a refugee, meaning the 2016 deportations may not meet international legal standards for protecting vulnerable people BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees A refugee child cries as she is searched by police at the Syria-Turkey border, where 16 refugees (including three children) have been shot dead in the last four months BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Many refugees are living rough on the streets of cities such as Istanbul or Ankara (pictured) ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkish soldiers use water cannon on Syrian refugees BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Syrian refugees shelter from rain in the streets of Istanbul BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees A derelict building housing Syrian refugees in Istanbul Carl Court/Getty Images Turkey's two million Syrian refugees Turkey houses around half of all the refugees who have currently fled Syria Carl Court/Getty Images

But do the Tories really care? Minutes after the Government initially voted to bomb Syria the Commons was filled with laughter. MPs shared light hearted moments after they effortlessly voted to go to war, condemning millions to a life of constant fear and death. Yesterday, there was no laughter, instead shouts of for shame rang through parliament as the results of the vote were released. Shame is exactly what the 294 MPs who voted against the proposals should feel.

Shadow immigration minister, Keir Starmer, was right to say history will judge the UK for this. This is nothing short of inhumanity and goes against everything this country stands for. The Tories cannot shy away from the responsibility of the aftermath of Syria after deeming it necessary to take military action. If we have the resources to bomb Syria, we have the resources to help innocent children who face the repercussions of those actions. The Tories need to take a step back and remember who they are supposed to be representing. I think its fair to say the most of us would have been proud to know that our government had taken steps to save 3,000 child refugees. But that would be too naive wouldnt it? This is Tory Britain and David Camerons compassionate Conservatism has struck again.
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When pop stars go to war with their record companies which side do you get behind? The creative artists or the money-grubbing, talentless, suits? Surely a no-brainer. And yet reading about Princes epic battle against Warner Music in the 1990s I cant help but feel sympathy for the suits.

Prince was signed as a precocious 18-year-old by Warner in 1977. He produced an album every year between 1978 and 1981. None of them were commercially successful but Warner kept on funding him as a promising prospect. Then the breakthrough came with the hit single 1999 and Prince was suddenly pop royalty.

The dispute apparently came when the prolific Prince wanted to release a studio-load of new material all at once. Warner said no, arguing that oversupplying the market was not the way to maximise revenues. They wanted the best possible return on their investment by restraining the supply of Prince. This would avoid swamping demand and also enable them to maximise the sense of occasion around each new release.

Warner got their way because they owned the rights to Princes music. Prince was royally annoyed though. He eventually likened his relationship with Warner to slavery and, later, advised all new artists not to sign contracts with record companies.

This was  and probably still is  terrible advice. Around a decade ago there was lots of optimistic chatter about how the internet would enable new artists and bands to reach audiences directly. They could, we were told, make the commercial big time without having to tap the promotional resources of record companies. The web would enable the talented to cut out the greedy middle man. But it hasnt worked out like that. Vanishingly few artists have made it big without serious support from record companies somewhere along the line.

But dont record companies milk top artists like Prince unfairly? Not really. Think about the model from the point of view of the record company. You sign a host of promising new acts. You pay for them to record. You promote their work. But only a tiny number will prove successful. The money the record company has spent on the unsuccessful acts is gone for good. The company makes all its money from the ones that do make it. Thats why it takes such a large share of the proceeds from a minority of successes.

The big acts simply see the large sums of money made by the company from their work and they resent it. But they often fail to grasp that these funds are what enable the record companies to invest in new acts and keep the machine running. Globally, record companies spent $4.5bn (3bn) on marketing and investment in 2014, representing a quarter of their total revenues.

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Small acts might be tempted to think established artists are looking out for their interests when the big guns attack the rapacious record company model. And there has been a lot of purple prose in recent days talking about how Prince valiantly stood up for all musicians with his various battles with record labels. But its nonsense. When big acts attack the funding model of record companies what they are doing, whether they know it or not, is pulling up the ladder behind them.

This isnt to defend the taste of the record companies and the acts they select to sponsor. And there are signs that they do not stick with new artists as long as they should. Its unlikely that an artist today would get funding for four years without any major hits, as Prince did. They would probably be cast aside much earlier. Nor is this to argue that record companies are saintly. Its merely to point out that the underlying business model is a redistributive one in a way that the top artists generally fail to acknowledge.

Prince certainly didnt acknowledge it. Yet he was remarkably quick to capitalise on another trend in popular music economics. He released his Planet Earth album free with the Mail on Sunday (of all publications) in 2007. People said he was crazy for giving away his product. They said he was devaluing it. Thats certainly what his (new) record company felt. They hadnt been told and were forced to scrap plans to sell the album in UK shops. But Prince himself still made a commercial killing from a back-to-back run of 21 live British shows in the wake of the stunt. What Prince discovered  and many have discovered since  is that the big money in music is now in the live experience, not the recorded product.

Of course Prince was a quixotic character  and not just creatively but commercially. He spent a lot of time in the years following that Mail on Sunday give-away trying in vain to stop his music being distributed for free online. In that sense Prince actually had something in common with the record companies, who wasted vast sums fighting an unwinnable battle with the unlicensed distribution of music online.

Record labels are starting to be more sensible now. They seem to have grasped that there is money to be made from working with the internet rather than fighting it; from advertising revenues from music videos on YouTube, from legal downloads on iTunes and from royalties from streaming sites. Global industry revenues in 2015 rose for the first time in two decades.

But the digital world is still in flux. Online music consumption is increasingly shifting from downloads to streaming. And the lions share of revenues could in future flow to the streaming companies  cutting out artists and maybe even record companies in the end.

In response the big players of the artistic world including Jay-Z, Rihanna, Beyonce and Arcade Fire have established their own streaming service: Tidal. This week Beyonce released her new album, Lemonade. It will exclusively stream on Tidal. The dominant streaming players, such as Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer, have been cut out (although it is available to buy on iTunes). This is an attempt by group of successful artists to monetise musical content once again, not just experiences. This will be the biggest test yet of their model. If an artist with the reach of Beyonce cant make it work, it may be a dead end.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Thats the reference in the title of Beyonces new album. Its what Prince, generally, did. Its what the record companies seem to be, finally, doing. The Tidal crew are trying it. The question as far as fans are concerned, though, remains the same as ever: is the music sweet or not?
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The Government should be ashamed. Yesterday they voted to deny sanctuary to child refugees who are alone and at grave risk. Our country is better than this. The Governments cowardice is letting vulnerable children down, and letting Britain down too.

These children have already fled conflict and violence back home. They have lost family or been separated from loved ones. Yet children's homes in Italy and Greece are full, services can't cope, and as a result many face even greater risks of abuse, sexual violence and exploitation.

Children sleeping rough in Northern Greece because the children's homes there are full; 11-year-olds sleeping alone in tents in Calais, suffering scabies and bronchitis; teenagers getting caught up in prostitution rings in Naples, because the hostels are full and there is nowhere safe for them to go; 13-year-olds with sexually transmitted diseases; teenage boys who have been raped.

Just a few weeks ago seven-year-old Ahmed nearly suffocated in a lorry in Leicester. The only reason he survived was because an aid worker in Calais had given him a mobile phone and he was able to send a text message saying that he did not have any oxygen. The aid worker was able to alert the police, and they traced the lorry he was in. The system is not working  and children are taking crazy risks every day to find someone, somewhere to keep them safe.

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According to Europol, a shocking 10,000 child refugees have just disappeared, many into the arms of trafficking gangs. These children are a similar age to mine. They should be in school, not on the streets. They should be cared for not abused.

As many as 95,000 child refugees are alone in Europe with no one to care for them. All countries should help give sanctuary and protection to these child refugees. Yet ours has refused point blank. They are putting our country to shame.

Ministers claim we can't even help 3,000 of those children because that will just encourage more to come. But those children are already here in Europe anyway and most of them are not trying to come to Britain. Tackling smuggler gangs, working with Turkey, a plan for Libya and legal routes to sanctuary might help prevent people making a perilous journey.

 More than 10,000 child refugees disappear in Europe

But what Britain does as a small part of helping so many children already here, won't change whether or not more people come. And anyway it would be immoral to say we should abandon thousands of children to a life of prostitution and abuse in order to deter others from coming.

We cannot give up. In the House of Lords today Alf Dubs is tabling a revised amendment to keep pressing the Government to help. If the Lords supports him again, it will come back to Parliament next week. But we need everyone's support to get this through. We need people to contact their MP, sign the petition on the Government website, speak out for action.

Government ministers are happy to celebrate the Kindertransport which brought child refugees to Britain before the Second World War. But why won't they listen to those whose lives were saved by the Kindertransport - like Lord Alf Dubs, Rabbi Harry Jacobi and Sir Eric Reich - who are all calling on Britain to do its bit again today. It's no good being proud of our history if when the choice faces our generation we turn our backs.

Yvette Cooper is Chair of Labours Refugee Taskforce
Diarmuid Martin urged people to brand those behind the spiralling gangland violence and killings in Dublin as 'despicable' and 'evil'

The leader of the Catholic Church in Dublin has called on the city's people to break the chain of hate and evil which has led to another two gun murders.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said a strong alliance was needed to prevent parts of the inner city being abandoned by its good and honest men, women and children.

He urged people to brand those behind the spiralling gangland violence and killings as "despicable" and "evil".

"Dublin needs a courageous coalition of strong people who are not afraid to call violence what it is: evil," he said.

"Dublin needs a coalition of strong people who are not afraid to call the sponsors of this violence what they are: despicable and evil.

"Hatred and evil easily become a chain and those who resort to such violence feel that they are the strong ones. We need to form a strong alliance of all those who oppose violence on our streets.

"We cannot abandon the good honest men, women and children of parts of our inner city."

Archbishop Martin issued the statement following two gun murders within two hours of each other - the sixth and seventh deaths on the streets of the capital this year linked to gangland feuds, vendettas, organised crime and personal disputes.

He said everyone has a duty to act and he pleaded for people with information on crime to bring it to gardai.

"The elderly live in fear. Their children are exposed to carnage on their streets," Archbishop Martin said.

"Their neighbourhood is being vilified; they are held to ransom by despicable people involved in the rackets of death.

"The promoters of violence think that they can impose their interests on society: we have to show them that together we are stronger than them and that we can bring them down."

Archbishop Martin previously spoke out to condemn two other murders in the Kinahan-Hutch war.

In February he called on "mothers and grandmothers" of those involved to appeal to their humanity and urge them to step back from the feared spiral of violence.

He spoke out after taxi driver Eddie Hutch was shot dead at home in Dublin's north inner city in an apparent retaliation for a fatal gun attack at the Regency Hotel last Friday.

A month later he used his Holy Thursday homily to condemn the murder of Noel Duggan, an old associate of Gerry "The Monk" Hutch, in the driveway of his home in Ratoath, Co Meath.

The Archbishop reiterated his pleas for the violence to stop.

"Everyone has a responsibility," he said. "Those who cultivate violence thrive on our silence.

"We have to unite to undermine them and their business and not close our eyes to what we know."

The Archbishop also recalled the words of Martin Luther King on putting an end to violence, who said "somewhere somebody must have a little sense" and that the "strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil".
A dissident republican was shot dead in the pub he was running despite an armed garda patrol on a neighbouring street, it has been revealed.

One of the force's top officers, Assistant Commissioner John O'Mahoney, said the murder of Micky Barr highlighted the lengths underworld, terrorist and organised crime gangs were willing to go to.

The 35-year-old, originally from Strabane, Co Tyrone, was shot up to three times after two men, at least one of whom was armed, burst into the Sunset House bar in Dublin's Summerhill.

The Assistant Commissioner revealed an armed garda unit was around the corner when the attack was launched.

"I think it's indicative of the challenge we are facing that people are willing to go and commit a crime of this nature despite the presence or close presence of armed gardai," he said.

The three man gang - two of whom are described as skinny and wearing masks - escaped from Summerhill via Ballybough towards Drumcondra in a silver Audi with the registration 04 C 17738.

They set fire to it on Walsh Road and then made a second getaway towards Home Farm Road in a silver saloon car.

More than a dozen people were in the pub when the attack happened, including a man with special needs who had to be carried away from the scene after suffering severe shock.

Despite the brazen killing Mr O'Mahoney said officers were foiling attacks, including the attempt on a person's life one night last week.

"These are the things that are happening and they happen on a regular basis," he said.

Barr was due to be sentenced in the Special Criminal Court in Dublin on Thursday for handling stolen electrical equipment in a hotel in July 2014 where a bomb had been found in a car two months earlier.

Republican supporters described Barr as an "ex-Republican POW".

His murder was the first of two in Dublin on Monday night with speculation immediately that he had been targeted as part of the bloody underworld feud between the Kinahan and Hutch families and their associates.

But there have been conflicting reports as to whether he was the intended target or if a member of the Hutch family was in the pub at the time.

Mr O'Mahoney said both the feud and dissident links were lines of inquiry in the murder probe.

And he appealed for crime figures to end the bloody dispute that has left at least five people dead since last autumn.

"As a law enforcement officer and a policeman of course we would appeal to everybody to take stock and to see that one life after another is not going to solve anything," he said.

Gardai also appealed for local communities to help them in the fight against the upsurge in organised crime and associated vendettas.

Local Dublin city councillor Nial Ring was about 300 yards from the pub taking down 1916 posters on the street when the attackers struck.

"It was utter chaos, people out on the street," he said.

Barr was living in Ballybough, near the pub he had been running and had previous addresses in the Ballymun area and also in Finglas.

Earlier this month he pleaded guilty to handling stolen goods at Finnstown House Hotel, Newcastle Road, Lucan, Co Dublin on July 18 2014.

Two months earlier at the same hotel a bomb was found in the boot of a car.

Barr was not facing any charges in relation to that.

In November 2014, when charged with the offence, Barr was also charged with IRA membership but the charge was later dropped.

The two sides in the murderous Kinahan-Hutch feud have carried out a series of attacks in Spain and Dublin which have claimed the lives of at least five people since late last year.

The Sunset Bar is about a mile from where Martin O'Rourke, an innocent father and former drug user, was shot dead just over a week ago.

He was caught in the crossfire in Sheriff Street as another murder bid linked to the feud was launched.

That in turn was a mile or so from where taxi driver Eddie Hutch, brother of Gerry "The Monk" Hutch, was shot dead at his home off North Strand in February.

The Kinahan-Hutch feud spiralled into a killing spree when Gary Hutch was shot dead in an apartment complex near Marbella on Spain's Costa del Sol last September.

His killing is believed to have been avenged in the Regency Hotel attack, an audacious shooting spree with assault rifles in early February which claimed the life of David Byrne, an associate of the Kinahan family.

Within days, Eddie Hutch was dead, and, at the end of last month, Noel Duggan, an old friend of suspected armed robber Gerry "The Monk" Hutch, was shot dead at his home in Ratoath.

Fianna Fail pledged to raise the issue of Garda resources when talks on a minority government resume.

Sinn Fein deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said there was upset, distress and anger on the ground following the latest murders.

"There is also a feeling of vulnerability," she said.
A Garda spokesman said a number of items including mobile phones and laptops were seized during the searches

Up to 20 homes have been targeted in a wave of dawn raids by detectives investigating criminality in Limerick.

One man, aged in his 20s, has been arrested in connection with the operation.

He is being questioned at Roxboro Road garda station under section four of the Criminal Justice Act.

A Garda spokesman said a number of items including mobile phones and laptops were seized during the searches.

"As part of an ongoing operation targeting criminal activity in the Limerick city area, gardai searched up to 20 houses in the city this morning," he said. "Investigations are continuing."
The second dispersal sale of the Cradenhill dairy herd proved to be a sell-out in Co Cork yesterday.

It followed the failed attempt by the Kingston family to hold on to 500 head of their herd during the first auction held two weeks ago.

Observers believe that the embattled family had more proxy bidders actively bidding yesterday.

Close to 50 registered bidders that had lodged 5,000 to an account prior to the sale were permitted entry to the camera-free zone where the auction was held.

The sale represented the second attempt by the Cork County Sheriff to recoup some of the 2.5m owed by the Kingston's to their main creditor, the ACC. Once again, there was extremely heavy security on the farm, with uniformed gardai and private security personnel present.

Neither George Kingston nor his son Peter were permitted to bid on the animals following the failed attempt by George to buy back half of the lots at the last auction.

Peter Kingston claimed that his father had cashed in his pension to pay for the animals, but that the funds did not clear in time to comply with the first sale's conditions.

The pair had built up a world-class pedigree herd of Holsteins on the 175ac farm near Kinsale. In 2006, Peter embarked on a plan to assemble a 1,000 cow herd.

Despite the smaller attendance, auctioneer Denis Barrett said it was a "great sale", with every one of the 503 lots sold under the hammer. Prices were up on average, ranging from 350 for newborn calves to 3,300 for cows.

Many of the bidders were from the UK, but Mr Barrett estimated that less than a third of the animals are destined for export.

"There was a very different atmosphere in there without the Kingstons present. There was actually a round of applause for the herd manager at the end of the sale," said Mr Barrett.

Peter Kingston told reporters yesterday of the turmoil that his family was experiencing.

"It's absolutely heart-breaking to go through this a second time, to see your life's work go up in smoke," he said.

He added that the sale was adding "insult to injury" and that it was particularly upsetting for the Kingston family that his father had been prevented from bidding on a herd that he had so painstakingly built up over the years.

However, the farm had fallen into serious disrepair by the time the Sheriff seized it last December. Court documents show that vets and staff hired to get the animals ready for sale were 'shocked' by the conditions.

Three animals were put down on the farm in the last two weeks following veterinary recommendations. Up to 800,000 is also believed to be owed to local land owners and suppliers to the Cradenhill herd.

The holding is located in a highly sought after farming area, and is reported to be on the market for in the region of 2.5m.
The outcome of the IFA election has delivered a crystal clear message that the grassroots want change.

It is the first time in the IFA's 60-year history that its two most senior officers have been elected from outside of it's key decision- making body, the national executive.

But the organisation will need to change more than the faces at the top to arrest the worrying decline in turnout at the polling booths for the third consecutive time.

A 'disconnect' with ordinary members has been blamed as the key issue, with the spring workload also being touted as a factor. Excluding the big surges in voter turnout in the home counties of Joe Healy and Flor McCarthy, the overall poll was back 20pc on 2013. It was almost one-third down on turnout in 2009.

"I met it on the campaign and I am absolutely clear that the organisation has to connect more with the farmers on the ground," said the new deputy president, Limerick farmer, Richard Kennedy (pictured).

"It is one of the things that I am looking forward to because a lot of farmers have said to me that it is not good enough that decisions are being made upstairs."

Mr Kennedy also acknowledged that getting the vote out was a challenge because "farmers who were busy with calving, lambing, and tillage had to be very committed to come out to vote." Turnout fell in 23 out of the 29 executive regions. The biggest decline was in Meath where the turnout was down by 72pc and the largest increase was in Joe Healy's home turf of Galway where the turnout was up 66pc on 2013 election.

Mr Healy was seen as an outsider having never served on the national council, although he held several high profile positions including the farm business committee, the Macra presidency, as well as writing the Farming Independent's mart reports for over a decade.

Some 12 executive regions recorded a drop of more than 25pc in members voting compared to 2013.

Newly elected Munster regional chairman, Cork farmer John Coughlan, warned that thousands of family farmers are facing "a cash crisis", which threatens their survival with commodity prices at less than the cost of production.

"We have to get a process in place for credit facilities for farm families to be able to survive over the coming months - not only those with high borrowings - because there is no farmer who will be able to meet repayments this year," he said.

There has also been change afoot on the committees with Cavan farmer Joe Brady elected chair of the IFA rural development committee succeding Kerry's Flor McCarthy.

John Finn from Galway was elected chairman of the liquid milk committee to succeedCork's Teddy Cashman.

Wicklow's Angus Woods takes over as chairman of the livestock committee to replace Henry Burns, and Thomas Cooney was elected the environment chair, after Cork's Harold Kingston vacated the position.

However, the role of western chairman remains vacant with the nomination in the region unresolved.
If there is a new minority coalition - and it remains an 'if' -there will be a Minister for Rural Affairs supposedly dealing with all country matters outside the farm gate. This will make the choice of Agriculture Minister trickier than usual.

The farm unions still pack a punch and a re-vamped IFA under new president, Joe Healy, will be trying to claw back farmer confidence and re-build influence in the corridors of power.

Strongly defending Ireland's farm interests in a pending EU-US trade deal will loom large from the word go.

The Rural Affairs portfolio is earmarked for one of the rural Independent TDs. But Agriculture will certainly be kept by Fine Gael. So, who is in the frame?

The acting Arts Minister, Heather Humphreys, who lives on her family's farm in Ahabog, Co Monaghan, is most talked about.

She is certain to retain a cabinet seat but could leave the arts portfolio.

Simon Coveney, then aged 38, was one of Fine Gael's young Turks when appointed on March 9, 2011.

The need for someone who knew Irish farming, helped overcome being on the wrong side in the botched 2010 leadership heave against Enda Kenny.

Coveney, tipped as a potential future Taoiseach, would like to broaden his canvass and wants a heavy-duty economic ministry.

But that may be enough for Kenny to keep Simon "down on the farm."

Contenders

Other Fine Gael people believe they could make a strong case.

A dark horse will be Kildare South TD, Martin Heydon, a farmer from Colbinstown, south of Kilcullen.

He has impressed in his first Dail term and topped the poll against the national trend in February.

Other contenders include Wicklow's Andrew Doyle; Carlow's Pat Deering. All have identified closely with farmers and enhanced their understanding of the business through good work on the Dail agriculture committee.
The new IFA president Joe Healy has called for collective action from farm leaders across Europe on fertiliser prices ahead of his inaugural address to the IFA AGM tomorrow.

The address is expected to focus on farm input costs as a key way of addressing the farm income situation, which some claim is already at crisis point.

Mr Healy is also expected to address the issues surrounding pay and governance that have over-shadowed the organisation since last November.

Meanwhile, Mr Healy pleaded with the 56 presidents of farming organisations across the EU to put the interests of farmers ahead of national industry interests.

"There is public opposition from Fertiliser Europe and from Poland and other countries seeking to protect their own fertiliser production. I am committed to gathering strong farmer support across Europe to resist attempts to keep import duties and deny badly-needed savings to farmers," he said.

A report commissioned by the IFA concluded that protection afforded to EU manufacturers through the application of anti-dumping duties of 33-47/t and customs tariffs of 6.5pc is costing farmers close to 1bn annually at a time when farm incomes are under extreme pressure.

In addition, the report found that the abolition of duties would deliver significant job creation in the wider EU rural economy of a minimum of 17,245 jobs and possibly of approximately 100,000 jobs in the best-case scenario.

Fertiliser is the third biggest input cost on EU farms accounting for 19.2bn in 2014. The EU fertiliser market is highly protected through the imposition of duties on non-EU imports. Analysis of Irish price data shows that fertiliser prices are out of line, increasing at twice the rate of other inputs since 1995.

"The European industry refuses to offer co-operatives or farmers the opportunity to manage price risk through hedging mechanisms," said Mr Healy.

"Increased concentration of the industry over the last four decades, allied with protection measures and greater vertical integration of the industry, has stymied real competition allowing prices to increase at a disproportionate rate," added Mr Healy.

He also called for anti-dumping duties on Russian-origin ammonium nitrate to be immediately suspended by the EU Commission.

During his first visit to Brussels last week, Mr Healy also hit out at the Commission's approach to the Mercosur trade talks with South American countries.

He demanded that all offers on increased access to the European beef market be taken off the table following a meeting with the Commission's deputy director general for trade, Maria Los Angeles Benitez Salas.
There were two interesting soundbites on the radio waves over the weekend.

The first was Ornua chairman Aaron Forde's claim on local radio that the revelations about pay in the company last week were "sensationalised".

When asked in an interview on Ocean FM about the 9m shared by nine top Ornua executives over the last two years, Mr Forde said that "it is not the Wild West, people don't have their hand in the till taking this money".

He stressed that there was nothing for farmers to be concerned about because there was good governance within the organisation. He also referred to the fact that Ornua was such a large organisation - with 3,000 employees operating in 110 different markets around the world.

The next morning, former IFA president Eddie Downey was on the national airwaves defending his record in office.

"I'm very proud of my time in it," he said of his two years at the helm of the organisation.

He added that he felt obliged to resign for the good of the IFA, but added that "maybe a few more should've taken my lead".

But even more interesting was Mr Downey's assertion that he lost money during his time as president, despite payments totalling nearly 200,000 per year while he was in office.

"I lost money - you come and run my farm. I know that sounds arrogant, but it's not," he told Damien O'Reilly on RTE's Countrywide programme. The Meath poultry, beef and tillage farmer maintained that it took two to three people to make up for his absence on the farm.

"We've two people employed on the farm now. We had five people employed this time last year," he said.

It all seems a far cry from the 26,000 a year that the IFA quote as the average farm income.

But maybe it's a reality check that farmers need. The best people in any business don't come cheap, and there's no doubt that Mr Downey was good at what he did.

Aurivo's Aaron Forde made the same point about attracting world-class talent to a multinational company like Ornua. Top executives in Irish agri-business want to benchmark themselves against the best in the business. As their businesses grow abroad, this is increasingly against the likes of long-established global entities such as Kerry and Glanbia.

But the key difference in those firms is that all the top brass' pay is laid out in the annual reports. Kerry CEO Stan McCarthy's $4.6m (over 4m) pay package in 2015 might be eye-watering, but at least it's there for all to see.

If the top people employed by farmers through their co-ops are worth top dollar, what is there to hide? Assurances that 'everything's alright lads - trust us' just doesn't cut ice anymore. Just ask Eddie Downey.
Strong grocery sales helped boost the retail sector in the first three months of the year, but experts have attributed the bounce to the early Easter rather than a sustained recovery.

And they warned April is likely to be weaker than the same month last year, thanks to a "dysfunctional housing market" hindering sales of furniture and flooring in particular, the report commissioned by Retail Excellence Ireland found.

Retail sales increased 4.9pc in the first quarter, compared with the same period in 2015.

David Fitzsimons, Retail Ireland chief executive, suggested the positive bounce may not be sustained. "March was the second most productive month since June 2007, the primary reason being that Easter fell in March as opposed to April last year and this had a particularly positive impact on Grocery for the month," he said.

"Hot beverage sales were also up indicating that people were out and about over the period, but this did not translate into the same uplift in other retail sectors. Whilst many sectors saw some uplift for the quarter the downward trajectory or sectors such as furniture & flooring points to the impact of a dysfunctional and inactive housing market."

Like-for-like sales were up in most categories except health stores, consumer electronics, home appliances, IT and computing, and digital cameras.

Retail Excellence said that fashion is trading well, particularly menswear, but that digital cameras continue to suffer due to mobile phone photography.

"Bar the specialist camera market, digital cameras will be completely extinct by 2020," the industry body said. The news comes as British department stores group BHS collapsed into administration yesterday, putting the 88-year-old retailer in danger of disappearing from the UK high street and placing 11,000 jobs at risk.

The loss-making BHS employs around 8,000 people, while a further 3,000 contractors work with the company's 164 stores.

Going into administration, a form of creditor protection, means it is Britain's most high profile retail casualty since Phones4U in September 2014.
Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney meets Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin at a planning hearing into the Indaver incinerator in Carrigaline, Co Cork. Photo: Michael MacSweeney/Provision

The Governnment is not opposing plans for a 150m incinerator in Cork.

Defence Minister Simon Coveney's opposition to the Indaver proposal for Ringaskiddy are being made in a personal capacity as a local TD.

The Cork South-Central TD expressed his opposition at an oral hearing yesterday.

But the Government confirmed it has not taken a formal position in opposition to the project. Mr Coveney's own department has expressed concern at the project and its possible impact on the Haulbowline naval base.

Fellow Cork TD and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin criticised the incinerator, saying it was a "totally outdated project".

Addressing the An Bord Pleanala hearing, Mr Coveney said it was "inconceivable"that a major incinerator should be developed in an area where the Government had already invested millions in a marine college, clean-energy research centres and the clean-up of the old Irish Steel/Irish Ispat site on Haulbowline island.

"I am fundamentally opposed to what is being proposed and where it is being proposed for," said Mr Coveney.

The Indaver proposal for Ringaskiddy was first tabled 16 years ago and is now under its third consideration phase.

Mr Martin rejected the incinerator as "a totally outdated project."

"How many times have we walked the streets and said: 'Who in the name of God allowed that to happen?' Future generations will come back and say who allowed this to happen to Cork harbour in terms of the visual landscape alone," he said.

Fianna Fail finance spokesman, Michael McGrath said it was "terribly unfair" that harbour residents should have to live with the spectre of a new incinerator proposal.

However, Indaver boss, John Ahern, argued the incinerator was a critical part of Ireland facing up to its waste management responsibilities.
Traders work at the kiosk where Pandora internet radio is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Photo: Reuters

The major European shares declined for a third day as energy and commodity producers slid, while investors assessed growth prospects following worse-than-expected German business confidence data.

But Irish shares bucked the trend, with the ISEQ Overall Index increasing 0.4pc, or 24.79 points, to end the trading session at 6,148.11.

The leaders on the Dublin market included Cpl Resources, which increased 1.7pc to 5.85, while insulation group Kingspan rose 1.6pc to 22.05.

On the other side of the board, the laggards included speciality baker Aryzta, which slipped 2.6pc to 33.03, while Fyffes dropped 1.1pc to 1.61.

Elsewhere, the Stoxx 600 slipped 0.5pc to 346.68 at the close of trading, paring earlier declines of as much as 0.9pc.

Germany's benchmark DAX Index slid 0.8pc after a report showed business confidence in Europe's biggest economy unexpectedly deteriorated in April. Anglo American and BHP Billiton fell at least 5.8pc, leading miners to the biggest decline of the 19 industry groups on the Stoxx Europe 600 Index, as base metals retreated.

Royal Dutch Shell lost 2.2pc, dragging oil companies lower as crude slid. Royal Philips dropped 4.3pc after saying it is considering an initial public offering of its lighting business.

"Whether you pin it on oil, or earnings or company-specific news, it doesn't really matter," said Frances Hudson, an Edinburgh-based global thematic strategist at Standard Life Investments.

"If you were to put all the headlines that are out there in front of you, there aren't any positive ones. Expectations are quite low for economic progress in terms of the data coming out this week."

Additional reporting by Bloomberg
CEO Sean ODriscoll is to succeed Martin Naughton as the president of Irelands largest private manufacturing company

MARTIN Naughton is to step down as president of Glen Dimplex, and will be replaced by group chief executive Sean O'Driscoll as part of a sweeping reorganisation at the top of the appliance and heater maker.

In a statement last night, Mr Naughton said he would leave the board of the company he founded more than 40 years ago, and hand the reigns to his long-time CEO.

Fergal Naughton succeeds Mr O'Driscoll as chief executive and Michael Maher becomes chief operating officer.

Martin McCourt, formerly of Dyson, joins the group as non-executive chairman and Neil Naughton will be deputy chairman.

Martin Naughton founded Glen Electric in 1973 and in 1977 acquired Dimplex, forming the Glen Dimplex Group.

Along with Lochlann Quinn - another well known Irish business figure - Mr Naughton built Glen Dimplex into Ireland's largest private manufacturing company.

Morphy Richards, Dimplex and Xpelair count among the group's many brands.

While white goods have become its hallmark, Glen Dimplex makes most of its impact through its heating business. The company describes itself as "the undisputed world leader in intelligent electric heating".

"On stepping down as president, I am pleased to say that the business is in great shape, with a clear strategy and strong performance," Mr Naughton said.

"I am particularly pleased that Sean is succeeding me as president and that Fergal and Michael are taking on new responsibilities. I also welcome Martin McCourt to our board as non-executive chairman.

"We have a high calibre team at Glen Dimplex which will drive its long term profitable growth and make our companies even more exceptional in the years ahead," he added.

As part of the reorganisation, the company has set up a new shareholder supervisory board, with Martin Naughton as its chairman. Glen Dimplex said this supervisory board will provide "clear strategic counsel and direction to the board with specific medium to long term performance objectives".

Mr O'Driscoll completes his rise to the top of the firm 26 years after he joined as group finance director.

He was named CEO in 2011. An accountant by training, he has become one of the most vocal figures in the Irish business community.

Mr Naughton has long been one of the most well known figures in Irish business, but unlike other successful companies, Glen Dimplex has shown little interest in listing itself on the stock market.

In 2003, Mr Naughton made plain that he had little appetite for turning the company into a PLC.

"I don't think I'd enjoy running a public company. We haven't needed to go to the market to fund expansion," he said.

The elevation of Mr Naughton's sons Fergal and Neil comes as little surprise. Both had been held senior positions within the group for years.

Mr Naughton has long said that he wouldn't force his children into the business.

"You can't run a business from beyond the grave," he said in 2003. "With the family, there are two criteria. They must want to do it, and they must be able to do it," he added.

While Mr Naughton is most widely associated with Glen Dimplex, along with Mr Quinn, he has had numerous investments elsewhere, most notably in property.

The pair were the key figures behind the five-star Merrion Hotel in central Dublin, while they have long backed top chef Patrick Guilbaud.

The pair were also among the first investors in the IFSC - something that has paid rich dividends. Last year they offloaded two blocks there - Harbourmaster One and George's Dock 5 - for an estimated profit of 40m.

Despite stepping down from Glen Dimplex, Mr Naughton won't disappear altogether from the company.

"I may visit from time to time," he said yesterday.
Irish packaging giant Ardagh has agreed to pay $3.4bn (3bn) for assets being sold by rivals Rexam and Ball in what will be its biggest acquisition ever and arguably its most transformative.

It's also likely the biggest acquisition ever by a private Irish business, and will make Ardagh the third-largest beverage can maker in the world.

It comes just months after Ardagh pulled a planned 2bn stockmarket flotation of its own metal containers division, which would have been spun off into a company called Oressa.

Ardagh had planned a flotation of the entire group back in 2013, but that too was postponed due to market volatility.

Ardagh, headed by executive chairman Paul Coulson, inset, will add $3bn in annual sales to the group's balance sheet through the acquisition confirmed yesterday, increasing the 5.2bn ($5.8bn) of turnover it generated in 2015 by 60pc.

It will also catapult annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) by about $400m (355m). That compares to the 934m in EBITDA that Ardagh generated last year. Ball said the assets being acquired by Ardagh generated $375m of EBITDA last year.

Ardagh also confirmed that its chief executive, Niall Wall, will step down in September. Mr Wall is Mr Coulson's brother-in-law, and will be succeeded by former Smurfit Kappa chief financial officer Ian Curley.

The acquisition of the assets - which includes assumed liabilities of $210m - gives Ardagh its first foothold in the beverage can sector. It already makes glass bottles for wine and beer, as well as metal products such as kegs, anti-perspirant containers, and seafood containers, for a range of beverages and products such as Carlsberg, John West, Nescafe Gold Blend, Nivea and Heineken.

"Whilst we do not currently operate in the beverage can market, the business we are acquiring is highly complementary to our existing metal and glass businesses," said Mr Coulson, who along with his family owns a 36pc stake in Ardagh.

Ardagh Packaging is based in Ireland, but its parent company, Ardagh Group, is registered in Luxembourg.

In January, the European Commission approved the 4.4bn (5.6bn) acquisition by US-based Ball Corporation of UK rival Rexam subject to the disposal of a number of assets. Ardagh was competing against private equity groups Apollo, Blackstone and Madison Dearborn for the assets.

The purchase by Ardagh will transform its already huge business. It's buying 10 beverage can manufacturing plants, and two can-body plants in Europe; seven beverage can manufacturing plants and one end plant in the United States; two beverage can manufacturing plants in Brazil; and some innovation and support functions in Germany, the UK, Switzerland and the US.

The business to be acquired by Ardagh will make it the number three beverage can manufacturer globally, number two in Europe and number three in the US and Brazil.

"You feel it ticks everybody's box," said Sandy Morris, a London-based analyst at Jefferies International. "Until we know which plants precisely have been divested - whether they're standard cans or speciality cans - it will be difficult for us to judge who's come out of it with the best deal."

Completion of the sale is subject to a number of conditions, and is expected to close at the end of June, coinciding with the completion of Ball's acquisition of Rexam.

Ardagh is funding the acquisition through a combination of cash, secured and unsecured debt. It said that it has launched a bond offering for a total of $2.85bn. Mr Coulson indicated that Ardagh may also raise equity.

Ardagh already has 4.7bn in net debt. The yield on its existing bond due in 2022 rose to 4.42pc yesterday, the highest level since early March, when it stood at 4.1pc.

The company also reported first-quarter results yesterday. Revenue was flat at 1.2bn, while EBITDA was rose just over 6pc to 217m in the first three months of 2016. Revenue at its glass packaging unit dipped 1pc on actual exchange rates to 743m. Revenue at the metal packaging unit was 475m, which was 1pc lower.
While Mr Coulson has long been one of the biggest players in the Irish business world, his name reached the wider public as one of the main beneficiaries of the sale of the Irish Glass Bottle site in 2006. A decade later, the deal is seen as a signature event of Celtic Tiger madness. Photo: Gerry Mooney

Dublin financier Paul Coulson - nicknamed 'The Cooler' - has pulled off one of the biggest-ever takeover deals by an Irish company.

His Ardagh Packaging group has agreed to pay $3.4bn (3bn) for 20 factories across Europe, the US and Brazil that make metal beverage containers.

Mr Coulson, a billionaire who, along with his family, owns about 36pc of Ardagh, has confirmed his position as one of the country's most savvy businessmen and in the process made Ardagh one of Ireland's biggest companies.

Media-shy Mr Coulson (who turns 64 on Thursday) is reckoned to be worth about 1bn, with that Ardagh stake contributing the most to his wealth.

He is executive chairman of Ardagh and will now preside over a company that will have annual revenues of close to $9bn (7.8bn), and generate earnings of around 1.3bn. It will have 23,000 employees around the world.

The assets are being bought from US firm Ball and UK-based Rexam.

The European Commission told the pair to sell assets as part of Ball's planned takeover of Rexam.

It marks a major coup for Mr Coulson and his management team, who have been thwarted over the past few years in their efforts to float Ardagh on the stock market.

The planned flotation was pulled due to stock market volatility that has plagued the US and Europe since the financial crisis.

Ardagh has two divisions - one that makes glass containers and another that makes metal ones.

Its products are used by brands such as Carlsberg, Heineken, John West and Nescafe. Before it announced yesterday's deal, it was already one of the world's biggest makers of such container products, with annual sales of about 5.2bn.

Last year, the management team also tried to list Ardagh's metal containers unit on the New York stock market, but that too was cancelled at the last minute owing to unfavourable conditions.

Mr Coulson's key management team includes his brothers-in-law, Niall and David Wall. Niall Wall is group chief executive, while David Wall heads Ardagh's metal containers division.

They are brothers of Mr Coulson's wife, Moya. Mr Coulson and his wife have been living in Paris, but he recently notified the Companies Office that their address has now changed to an exclusive London townhouse. That may be temporary while radical renovations are carried out on their Paris mansion.

Ardagh also announced yesterday that Niall Wall (53) will resign as group chief executive in September. He will be succeeded by the former chief financial officer of Irish paper-packaging group Smurfit Kappa, Ian Curley. Mr Wall owns nearly 10pc of Ardagh, a stake likely to be worth over 200m.

Ardagh will now have spent billions of euros over the past few years, aggressively expanding the business.

It's all a far cry from its humble beginnings as Irish Glass. Mr Coulson, a graduate of Trinity College in Dublin, is said to have made his money from aviation leasing and other investments in the 1980s, before buying into stock market minnow Ardagh just after it had been renamed from Irish Glass.

He became chairman in 1998 and has transformed it from a relatively small Irish business to one of the biggest glass and packaging companies in the world.

He took it private in 2003 and has largely paid for the company's operations by selling bonds, rather than shares in the business.

While Mr Coulson has long been one of the biggest players in the Irish business world, his name reached the wider public as one of the few winners from the sale of the Irish Glass Bottle site (below) in 2006.

A decade later, the deal is seen as one of the signature events of the madness of the Celtic Tiger years.

The 24-acre site was seen as one of the greatest development opportunities in the capital, with the potential to hold hundreds of homes in Ringsend but adjacent to Sandymount - arguably the most expensive part of the city at that time. If fully developed, it could have housed up to 10,000 people.

DEVELOPER Bernard McNamara put together a consortium, including the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, to pay a staggering 412m for the site, which was mostly controlled by Ardagh.

It is estimated that Ardagh received about 273m from the proceeds of the sale.

The fallout from that deal is still felt today.

The property crash soon took hold and the great plans for development never came to pass.

Today, the glass bottle site is still a vacant lot and has been available for rent for the past three years.

Anglo Irish Bank supplied a loan of 288m to buy the site and it was one of the highest-profile loans to be transferred to Nama.

In 2012, the site was valued at just 45m.

To say Mr Coulson won that deal is something of an understatement. He hasn't lost on many deals during his career. Yesterday's agreement suggests that 'The Cooler' is as hungry for more as he ever was.
The long-running battle over board composition between Irish oil and gas firm Petroneft and its largest shareholder Natlata Partners has ended.

Natlata, headed by Russian businessman Maxim Korobov, was seeking the removal of four board members but will now rescind all of the resolutions it was due to put forward at an emergency general meeting yesterday. Mr Korobov has been appointed to the board as a non-executive director while Anthony Sacca and David Sturt have both been appointed as independent non-executive directors.

Meanwhile, David Sanders, Gerry Fagan, and Paul Dowling have all left the board. However, Mr Dowling will remain as the firm's chief financial officer.

Petroneft chairman David Golder said the company was pleased to come to a "workable compromise" with Natlata.

"We feel this is the best way forward for all of the shareholders in the company," he said.

In March Petroneft agreed a deal with Oil India for the financing of a work programme in the Russian-based License 61. However, the deal was subject to the board staying in place.

"The agreement allows the company to implement our recently announced Licence 61 work programme with our partner Oil India along with a new emphasis on business development," Mr Golder said. It is understood both parties reached an agreement that will see Natlata support the motions of the board at both emergency and annual general meetings for the next two years.

Mr Korobov said the company had come to an agreement that suits the best interests of the shareholder. "We look forward to working with the board to develop the business and to bringing our experience in the Russian market to grow the company and increase shareholder value," Mr Korobov said.
The vote on funding raises a major doubt about the commitment of credit unions that make up the league to the reform plan

Plans for a massive shake-up of the credit union movement have been dealt a blow after delegates turned down funding for the initiative.

Leading management guru Eddie Molloy came up with the proposals to radically reform how credit unions operated.

He proposed that the Irish League of Credit Unions changed to become an "empowered centre" instead of being a loose affiliation of credit unions.

The aim is to make the movement more like the GAA, by combining strong local units that make decisions centrally.

The reform plan was presented by Dr Molloy to 1,000 delegates at the annual general meeting of the League of Credit Unions in Limerick at the weekend.

Delegates at the AGM voted in favour of the reform agenda after it was outlined to them by Dr Molloy.

But they voted down a proposal to pay 800,000 to Dr Molloy's Advance Organisation for the work completed so far.

The funding was to come from the league's Special Protection Scheme (SPS), a 100m fund to bail out credit unions at risk of insolvency.

The vote on funding raises a major doubt about the commitment of credit unions that make up the league to the reform plan, especially as it was also planned to tap the SPS to fund the 5m to 6m cost of the first phase of Dr Molloy's Advanced Organisation shake-up plan.

Asked about the vote, a spokeswoman for the league said: "While this particular funding motion was defeated, this is not the end of the process and the board will now decide on a date for a special general meeting to discuss and debate the final Advanced Organisation (AO) report, and make a decision on costs and funding going forward.

"AO at this time has been paid in full for work completed to date."

President of the league Brian McCrory insisted there was an appetite for reform, despite the voting down of the funding proposal.
The setback means that completion of the rollout plan may not happen until 2022 or later

The government has confirmed that the National Broadband Plan, which promised subsidised modern internet to 750,000 non-urban homes and businesses by 2020, will not start this year as planned.

The setback means that completion of the rollout plan may not happen until 2022 or later, 10 years after the scheme was first launched.

A spokesman for the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources said today that the rollout has been put off due to the postponement of negotiations with shortlisted bidders for the process.

The news will be greeted with dismay by over a million people living outside cities and large towns in Ireland. With the process expected to take up to five years, the setback means that many rural homes may be left without adequate broadband until 2022, two years after the governments promised delivery date and a decade after the government first launched the plan.

The contract to build the network out to 750,000 rural homes and businesses could be worth upwards of 500m of state funding, with the government seeking an unspecified amount of matching investment from winning contract bidders.

10 telecoms companies had expressed an interest in discussing the National Broadband Plan rollout with the government. Eir and Siro, the joint fibre venture between Vodafone and the ESB, are considered to be front runners to contend for the state contract. Enet, the company that manages metropolitan area networks in 94 towns around the country, has also indicated that it intends to compete for the state broadband tender.

Other companies to have expressed an interest include French-based Bouyges subsidiary Axione and Gigabit Fibre, which is fronted by the former O2 Ireland boss Danuta Gray.

Virgin Media, formerly UPC, will not compete for the National Broadband Plan tender according to its chief executive, Tony Hanway.

The number of homes and businesses under the tender could shrink, according to officials in the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. The officials say that if Eir proceeds with plans to build out fibre infrastructure to 300,000 of the identified 750,000 rural premises, those 300,000 premises will be withdrawn from the National Broadband Plan. Under EU competition rules, state bodies cannot intervene with services where there are viable commercial alternatives.

A spokesman for Eir said that the company regretted the postponement of the plans rollout.

Eir notes the confirmation today by the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources that it will not now be in a position to commence negotiations with shortlisted bidders as planned this year or to award the NBP contract to the winning bidder or bidders until 2017, several months later than originally planned, said the spokesman.

Eir confirms that it will continue to rollout high speed broadband at pace. Today, 1.4 million homes and businesses across Ireland, can access high speed broadband. This will rise to 1.6 million, or 70pc of the country by June of this year, and will reach 1.9 million premises as soon as possible thereafter.
A spokesman for Apple described the project's reception in Co Galway as being 'overwhelmingly positive'. Photo: PA

A proposed 850m Apple data centre in Athenry, Co Galway faces a challenge, with an oral hearing into the project now planned by An Bord Pleanala.

The 24,500sqm data centre is being built for the company's Apple Music, App Store, Messages, Maps and Siri customers in Europe.

But objections to the new facility, which looks set to create 300 construction jobs, have ranged from traffic congestion to inadequate consideration for the local bat population.

A spokesman for Apple described the project's reception in Co Galway as being "overwhelmingly positive" and said that it would address any outstanding issues being raised.

"We welcome the opportunity to address any additional questions An Bord Pleanala may have," the spokesman told the Irish Independent.

"The planning process is an important way for everyone to have their say and we've made every effort to incorporate the feedback we've received.

"Our plans are for our greenest data centre yet, which is designed to be sympathetic to its surroundings and, like all our data centres, run on 100pc renewable energy from day one."

While oral hearings for major infrastructural projects are not unusual in the planning process, the Apple hearing is set to hear questions around environmental and power-consumption issues.

In December, An Bord Pleanala asked for clarification on a number of issues related to the project, including where the company will source its renewable energy and the environmental impact on the local bat population.

Other objectors have questioned the amount of energy required to power the facility.

The project's supporters include Galway's Chamber of Commerce, whose executives say it will enhance the region's commercial visibility.

"I could see it as a catalyst to attract additional investment here," said Frank Greene, president of Galway's Chamber of Commerce. "It's also going to have a big multiplier effect on indirect jobs here."

Apple held a supplier fair in Athenry for would-be local suppliers to the data centre project.

"I'd hate to see an incinerator or a power plant put in there," said Anne Keary, principal of Lisheenkyle National School, a primary school that borders the proposed Apple development.

"But I'm here 36 years and this is a dream come true for the locality. Apple has dealt with us very professionally.

"As an educator, if we were to choose a neighbour, Apple would be up there."
British oil major BP on Tuesday reported an 80pc year on year fall in core earnings for the first quarter, when oil prices touched a near 13-year low, but the result was better than analysts had expected.

BP's quarterly underlying replacement cost profit, the company's definition of net income, was $532m (472m) in the first three months of the year, compared with a forecast loss of $140m in analyst consensus figures provided by BP.

Chief executive Bob Dudley said he expected global oil supply and demand to balance towards the end of the year, which would likely help push prices higher.

"Market fundamentals continue to suggest that the combination of robust demand and weak supply growth will move global oil markets closer into balance by the end of the year," Dudley said in the results statement.
A young autistic boy is overcome with emotion when Coldplay play his favourite song

A moving video of a young autistic boy overcome with emotion as Coldplay play his favourite song has gone viral.

The boy's father Luis Vazquez shared the video, which charts his son's trip to see Coldplay for the first time at Mexico City's Foro Sol stadium.

When the band starts to play his favourite song 'Fix You' the boy breaks down.

Coldplay also shared the video, declaring, 'This kind of thing makes it all worthwhile. Hola Luis y tu hijo hermoso! Love.'

Hankies at the ready...
The rundown: Macbeth, a Scottish general, is surveying the battlefield following victory over foreign armies when he encounters three witches who prophesise that he will become Thane Of Cawdor and eventually King. Initially bemused, Macbeth starts to be eaten away by the witches visions after the Thane of Cawdor is hanged for treason and the King bestows the title on him.

His conflict is brought to the boil when King Duncan pays a visit to Macbeths castle and his conniving other half Lady Macbeth eggs him on fiercely. He murders Duncan and frames it on his guards who he also kills that night. Duncans sons flee as Macbeth assumes the throne. With power secured, he turns to pal Banquo, who also met the witches that day. According to them, Banquos lineage could be a threat so Macbeth kills him too.

Need to know Yesterday marked 400 years since the birth of Shakespeare, less a man than a cultural institution of the English language. Macbeth  referred to only as The Scottish Play by superstitious elements of the theatre industry  is the Bard at his darkest and most atmospheric. Its themes  corruption v ambition, good v evil, character flaw v fate  have never gone away and lent Shakespeares shortest and arguably best play to constant re-adaptation on stage and screen ever since, from feudal Japan (Akira Kurosawas 1957 epic Throne of Blood) to gangland sagas in Mumbai, Melbourne and Chicago and even a Madagascan fishing village.

The End Duncans son Malcolm raises an army in England to head north and dethrone Macbeth. In the meantime, Macbeth revisits the witches who warn him of Macduff, a nobleman who opposed Macbeths ascent to power. After learning Macduff has fled to join Malcolm, Macbeth has his family murdered.

Lady Macbeth has succumbed to hysteria levels of guilt and finally commits suicide. Malcolms army arrives and Macduff kills Macbeth on the battlefield. However as Shakespeare hints in the play, its a tale doomed to repeat itself.

The verdict Back-stabbing (in its most literal sense), clanging swords and treacherous power-plays are not the invention of George RR Martin (as if it needed saying). In fact, it is hard to imagine Game of Thrones having such a foothold in modern culture without the trail blazed for it by Macbeth. Besides the obvious cut-throat intrigue, its heavy, supernatural undertow adds a delicious mystique to the saga. Nature is at once both placid and grotesque, phantom daggers are seen and ghosts sit down at the dinner table. Or maybe its all just Macbeths psychological demons pulling the strings?

Did you know? There was a real Macbeth who ruled Scotland happily for 17 years. As for the witches, they were a dramatic curtsy to new king James I at Macbeths opening night in 1606. James was obsessed with witches, having ordered a huge witch hunt in Scotland and written a treatise on witchcraft called Daemonologie. Historians believe his fixation is based on a near-fatal trip to Denmark in 1589 which he was convinced was cursed.

Book reviews

Fiction: The Story of My Teeth

Valeria Luiselli, Granta, 11.12

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This delightfully quirky little book has just won the LA Times best book award in the Fiction category, an accolade it richly deserves. Gustavo Sanchez Sanchez although people call me Highway is an auctioneer living in Ecatepec, a poor and overpopulated suburb of Mexico city, and hes intent on replacing his ugly teeth. He manages to do so, with those of Marilyn Monroe, which hes bought at an auction in Florida (told you it was quirky).

He later sells off his own teeth one by one, in what he calls a hyperbolic auction, passing off each tooth as belonging to some great philosophical or literary figure in history, such as Plato, St Augustine, Petrarch, Jorge Luis Borges, even Virginia Woolf. Soon after this auction, Highway is left completely toothless when hes drugged and has his teeth (or Marilyns) extracted by his estranged son Siddhartha. This marks the beginning of Highway's decline.

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The story behind this book is as enchanting and original as that within its covers. It is the result of a collaboration between Valeria Luiselli and the workers in Jumex, a juice factory on the outskirts of Mexico city, which uses its profits to house Mexicos most prestigious contemporary art collection. Many cameos pop up, figures from ancient Greece up to the present day, and the lines between the real and the imaginary are, at times, hardly discernible.

An afterword from the author, explaining how the book came into being, and a kind of linear map of the novel from the translator (its a true collaboration, in every sense), enhances the story, although I thought the afterword would have made a better introduction. Fans of Borges and Marquez will be enthralled. It is magical realism brought to an entirely different, accessible, space.

- Anne Cunningham

Fiction: After Birth

Elisa Albert, Vintage, 11.99

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One year on since the birth of her baby and newish Jewish mother Ari is absolutely barking. She and her husband have bought an old fixer-upper in upstate New York, but not trendy upstate, far from it. Shes now trapped in a slaughtered corpse of a town, in need of a decent coffee shop and a few interesting residents. Her husband commutes to work daily and she deals with the nappies and the nipples and the mess and the suspected racoon in the attic. She admits shes deeply depressed, but  to paraphrase Wilde  youd need a heart of stone not to laugh. This book is riotously, manically funny.

- Anne Cunningham

Crime: Splinter The Silence

Val McDermid, Little Brown, 9.25

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Val McDermid has been dubbed the queen of psychological thrillers. The title is well earned, too. Shes been producing novels of breakneck speed since the late 1980s. Splinter The Silence is her latest offering. One thing can be guaranteed: you wont be able to stop reading. This is the ultimate page turner  even if the story is occasionally ridiculous.

Splinter The Silence follows Carol Jordan after her retirement as a detective. After receiving a charge of driving under the influence, Tony Hill, long-time friend and past lover, swoops in to help pull her life together. What follows is a cracking probe into a serial killer who hates women and sets their deaths up to look like suicides.

The novel is, for the most part, a lot of fun. Its gripping, exciting, and just melodramatic enough for it to be childishly fun. Its easy to empathise with Jordans character; shes full of spirit and strength. Unfortunately, shes overshadowed by an overload of supporting characters who contribute little to the story beyond plot development.

Its also unfortunate that there is little psychological depth in the serial killer that Jordan and her team are trying to track down. His chapters are full of rhetoric  it feels more like McDermid is trying to make a point rather than offering any real insight here.

Despite this, youre probably not reading a McDermid novel for its social critiques and developed characters. Splinter The Silence is all about the fun of the hunt. Even if it doesnt break new ground, its still an entertaining and occasionally incisive read.

- Patrick Kelleher

History: The Splendid Years

Marie Nic Shuibhlaigh with Edward Kenny. Edited by David Kenny; New Island Books; 15.95

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This is an insiders account of the formation of Irelands national theatre and of the momentous events that were the 1916 Rising, told by Maire Nic Shuibhlaigh (Walker), a veteran of both events.

She was one of the pioneers of the theatre and was in uniform at Bolands Mill as a member of Cumann na mBan during that historic Easter week.

There is some record straightening on just what role WB Yeats played in the birth of the national theatre, as well as a poignant account of the impact on Nic Shuibhlaigh of the execution of her close friend, Eamonn Ceannt. There is also an apt insight into how nationalism expressed itself through politics and the arts at that time, and how these dovetailed and complemented one another.

This is an account of major historical events but is also rich in entertaining vignettes that allow the reader access to the larger social and cultural world that was Ireland just after the turn of the last century.

For instance, the account of a trip to perform in Loughrea, Co Galway, as part of the local priests fundraising campaign to build a cathedral for the town shows at once the power and patronage of the Catholic Church at that time.

Our appearance had been announced from the altar for a week before we arrived, and as an extra precaution a special fleet of bell ringers...was engaged to work the surrounding area.

The Splendid Years, first published in 1955, was withdrawn by Edward Kenny because he was unhappy about elements of that publication. Fast forward more than half a century and his son, David Kenny, has restored this richly dense account of the tumultuous events that surrounded the birth of the national theatre and the nation itself.

- Barbara Clinton

Gender: Girls Will Be Girls

Emer OToole, Orion Books, 10.99

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I am always wary of books promoted as laugh out loud humour. However heres an exception. Girls Will Be Girls is now out in paperback, and if you missed it first time round, it will be well worth it for Emer OTooles funny, wise and thoughtful examination of gender stereotypes and how they are still deeply rooted in contemporary society.

As a young woman, I read The Womens Room by Marilyn French. I often wish I hadnt. It was an older womans fight against her American middle-class marriage. Mira, solved her crisis by divorcing, getting into Harvard and earning a doctorate in English. Easy.

Emer OToole is from the west of Ireland, her mother did all the work at home, the men sat back. Such was OTooles awakening of the gender divide.

Her book is largely autobiographical, from school drama queen to a doctorate in theatre studies and embracing her gender identity along the way. The furore provoked by her appearance on television with underarm hair is just one of many illustrative anecdotes.

Having only raised sons, I can say that boys are also codified by what they wear, say, whether they are sporty or uncoordinated.

Gender confusion adds to the quagmire of negotiating this competitive world. OTooles book is an Irish perspective on Caitlin Morans How To Be A Woman. While OToole writes from a personal and academic viewpoint, her theatre experience lends wit to her thesis.
Tom Hanks attending the premiere of A Hologram For The King at BFI Southbank, London

Tom Hanks has said he feels half his age as he looks forward to celebrating his 60th birthday with "a little too much beer".

The Oscar-winning actor said he has always felt younger than his years and that reaching 60 in July will be a "fabulous" milestone.

"I feel like I'm 32 years old, and when I was 32 I felt like I was 24, and when I was 24 I felt like I was 16, so it all works out, doesn't it?" he said.

"I know I'm 60, it's a fabulous number. After 24 it's just a reason to get together with friends and maybe drink a little too much beer, and I vow on July 9, I'll do that very thing."

Hanks was speaking at the premiere of his latest comedy-drama, A Hologram For The King, in which he plays a washed-up, unsuccessful businessman who travels to Saudi Arabia in hope to sell his new hologram technology to the king.

"Every day we take an action in some aspect of our life that could be our downfall," he warned at the BFI Southbank in London.

"If you don't call it right, you could put yourself in a hole that takes you a long time to get yourself out of."

Based on Dave Eggers' best-selling novel by the same name, the film is Hanks' second collaboration with Tom Tykwer since the director's adaptation of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.

Speaking about their friendship, Hanks said: "I love the guy. He and I just get along. The conversations we have are always challenging and yet we still have a great friendship.

"He taught me how to eat a great breakfast, which is, the blackest piece of bread you can have, a piece of cheese and a slab of meat. It powers you through the day."

Appearing alongside Hanks is actress Sarita Choudhury, who spoke about working with the Oscar-winning star.

"He's so funny, and then when you're doing a serious scene he'll come in and just be normal," she said.

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"He's so present and it's all about you, it's not him. So you feel very relaxed."

But Hanks refused to be drawn on the fourth Toy Story film, saying: "Ah man, that's as locked down as Star Wars. If I did, I'd have Disney cops coming and putting me in a Disney van and taking me to Disney jail. I'm not allowed to say a thing."

A Hologram For The King is out May 20.
Thrill-seekers will be in for a treat when hardcore adventurer Bear Grylls travels to Dublin for his first live tour.

Titled Endeavour, the show will recreate some of his most thrilling real-life encounters from some of the toughest places in the world.

Using state-of-the-art technology and featuring an array of aerial stunts, Bear will be hoping to dazzle Irish audiences with tales of his former glories from around the globe.

"I can't wait to get back over to Dublin and Ireland. It's been too long," he said.

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He said that the interactive event, which he has created himself, is a project "that has consumed me for the last year".

Going from daring feats of swimming in shark- infested waters to surviving the inhospitable environment of Everest, he has promised a real treat in store for adrenalin junkies.

The former SAS officer said that audiences will get to witness "some of the greatest and most unknown feats of exploration in history".

Grylls will be joined on stage by Cirque du Soleil aerial artists and stunt crews.

He said that the show was a "truly uplifting experience" and he was so proud of it.

He also had high praise for the winner of his Mission Survive show, namely Howth native Vogue Williams.

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The TV star said that Vogue really proved her mettle during the gruelling journey through the Costa Rican jungle last year, telling RTE's Ryan Tubridy that she was "an incredibly worthy winner".

His show will come to the 3Arena on October 19. Tickets will go on sale this Friday at 9am.
Aidan Turner has admitted that his star-making turn in Poldark is the first role he has not had to audition for.

Turner set pulses racing as the shirtless Cornish heartthrob and has revealed it was the first time he wasnt put through his paces before he was offered the job.

The Dublin-born actor told Radio Times magazine: I usually audition for things but they just sent me the scripts and the books, and asked me if I wanted to play the role.

Its the only thing Ive got offered in my entire life! Everybody else must have been busy.

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Tuner (32) had three months to get into character as Ross Poldark, saying: It gave me tonnes of time to keep reading the books and the script and to figure out how I see the character and mentally prepare for it, get the accent down, get in shape, have horse riding lessons.

He also decided to keep his long hair, which paid off when filming started, telling the magazine: When the offer came in and I read the book, there was a moment when I went, Lets not go to the barbers, lets keep this long, see what they want to do with it.

Physically, I saw Ross in a certain way. Hes strong, does a lot of manual labour, if hes not on the horse hes down a mine, hes building stuff, hes got a farm... It just made sense for him to be fit and strong, he added.

So I went to the gym a bit more, ate a little less, all those boring things. Unfortunately, theres no little pill you can take to grow a six-pack.

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One thing Turner did not have to prepare was a Cornish accent, having decided his character went to public school so wouldnt have had a West Country lilt.

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He admitted he still struggles to understand his co-stars who do speak with the accent. , saying: When I listen to Jud and Prudie (played by Philip Davis and Beatie Edney), I cant understand a single word of it! And even Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson) at times, I look at her script, which is written phonetically, and I cant work any of it out.

Turner also failed to master the ancient art of scything, despite the now-notorious meadow-mowing scene.

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Anyone who knows scything looked at that scene and thought, Oh, dear God, what is he doing? A couple of experts criticised my technique and they were dead right, he said.

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There was an expert there, looking at me while I was doing it and shaking his head. Id go back and say, Show me again, just to make him happy, and then Id get back in front of the camera and carry on swinging it around...

Poldark is expected to return to our screens in the autumn.
Havin' a laugh at the line up announcement of the Vodafone Comedy Tent at Body&Soul was Joanne McNally. Pic: Marc O'Sullivan

She certainly made an impression on RTE's Republic of Telly and now Joanne McNally has set her sights on an international career.

The TV star took over the reins from Jennifer Maguire on the hit series last year and is now gearing up to take on London's cut-throat comedy circuit, with a potential move on the cards.

"I'm going to London in the summer to play some gigs, so hopefully they'll go well," she said.

Although she has never performed in the UK before, McNally is already considering making the move over to further her career.

"Ideally, I would like to go back and forth because I love Ireland," she told the Herald.

"I love Dublin so much so I wouldn't like to totally leave, but it's about going where the work is."

Expand Expand Previous Next Close The Vodafone Comedy Tent at Body&Soul is a glimmering addition to the already outstanding festival line-up that will entertain the masses in the beautiful surroundings of Ballinlough Castle, Co. Westmeath from 17th  19th June. The Vodafone Comedy Tent at Body&Soul is a glimmering addition to the already outstanding festival line-up that will entertain the masses in the beautiful surroundings of Ballinlough Castle, Co. Westmeath from 17th  19th June. / Facebook

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Whatsapp The Vodafone Comedy Tent at Body&Soul is a glimmering addition to the already outstanding festival line-up that will entertain the masses in the beautiful surroundings of Ballinlough Castle, Co. Westmeath from 17th  19th June.

Despite her success on the small screen, the Dubliner insisted stand-up will always be her first love.

"They're totally different. I probably prefer stand-up, I can be more myself," she said.

Joanne is currently gearing up to perform at this year's Vodafone Comedy Tent at the brilliant Body&Soul Festival which takes place at Ballinlough Castle, Co Westmeath from June 17-19.

She'll join fellow comedians Colm O'Regan, Andrew Stanley, Damien Clarke, Al Porter, Christ Kent, Tara Flynn, Fred Cooke, Joe Rooney, Rob Broderick AKA Abandoman, Edwin Sammon, Eleanor Tierney, Niamh Marron and more.

After years on the comedy circuit, the 31-year-old has only been the victim of hecklers "once" and ended up buying the man a drink.

"I was performing and I was telling a story and then this guy just said really loudly 'anybody want a drink?'" she said.

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"I actually laughed at that because he was clearly just so bored. I ended up buying the drink for him as well."

Fortunately, she made sure she was well prepared for the inevitable flop gig in every comedian's career.

"I've only ever really bombed at stand-up once and by the time it happened I was so prepared for it, I really felt like I was earning my stripes," she said.

"It was at a stag party and just about every joke failed. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't, but it is not the end of the world."

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Killiney native Joanne, who created a stand-up show about being adopted, admitted that she's learned how to "read the audience" so it does not happen again.

For full details of the Body&Soul Music & Arts Festival Line-up and programme information visit via bodyandsoul.ie and festival tickets are available via Ticketmaster.
Radio listeners across the country yesterday stepped back in time to listen to the declaration of the Irish Republic, which was broadcast simultaneously by 37 radio stations.. Julien Behal/PA Wire

Radio listeners across the country yesterday stepped back in time to listen to the declaration of the Irish Republic, which was broadcast simultaneously by 37 radio stations.

Through a joint initiative between RTE Radio and the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland, an 80-second morse code message entitled 'The Sound of Sixteen' was played at 5.30pm, 100 years to the exact date and time of the 1916 declaration.

This also marked the anniversary of Ireland's first broadcast to the world, which was from the Wireless School of Telegraphy on Sackville Street.

"Irish Republic declared in Dublin today," the message read.

"Irish troops have captured city and are in full possession. Enemy cannot move in city. The whole country rising."

Joseph Mary Plunkett decided to bypass British censorship by broadcasting news of the Rising.
The Easter Rising took the British authorities in Ireland by surprise; so inevitably, the British sought to understand how and why the Rising had broken out and established a Royal Commission to investigate its causes, with particular reference to the conduct and responsibility of the civil and military executive in Ireland in connection therewith.

In other words, the remit of this inquiry was largely confined to understanding why the Rising had come as such a surprise to the Irish executive. It was concerned with how the British government in Ireland had failed, rather than with Rising itself. The British had successfully crushed the Rising, after all, and the first sittings of the inquiry were on 18 May 1916, less than a week after the final executions in Kilmainham Gaol.

We know, with the benefit of hindsight, that the political legacy of the Rising led to independence, but in the immediate aftermath it seemed to the British that Irish republicanism had been defeated, and would be an issue to deal with another day, if ever. What their inquiry was supposed to do was to explain how the British authorities had provided Irish republicans with an opportunity to strike.

Citizen Army to Blame

The commission was chaired by Charles, Baron Hardinge, a former viceroy of India, along with two judges: Sir Montague Shearman (sitting), and Sir Mackenzie Chalmers (retired). The commission held nine hearings, five in London and four in Dublin (in the Shelbourne Hotel), and interviewed 29 people; senior figures within the British political and military establishment in Ireland.

The final report traced the traced the roots of the Rising back to the 1913 Lockout, with the creation of paramilitary forces like the Irish Citizen Army setting a dubious precedent that had gone unchecked, which led to the creation of the Irish Volunteers, which had inevitably encouraged seditious militarism in Ireland (this was essentially the view of William Martin Murphy, who submitted a statement to this effect to the inquiry).

Curiously, there was no mention of the UVF, despite the fact that the police reports appended to the published minutes of the commission revealed that the UVF was the largest and most heavily armed paramilitary group in Ireland; from this one-eyed perspective, the north never began.

The report went on to trace the activities of the Irish Volunteers in wartime but ultimately concluded that figures such as the Chief Secretary Mathew Nathan and his deputy Augustine Birrell had permitted the republican movement to grow, despite evidence of its trajectory towards rebellion (this was a view shared by some British military figures who privately felt that the growth of the UVF and Irish Volunteers even before the First World War should never have been tolerated).

Inquiry Conclusions

Ireland, it concluded, has been administered on the principle that it was safer and more expedient to leave law in abeyance if collision with any faction of the Irish people could thereby be avoided (it also claimed that the Irish Parliamentary Party had fostered such a climate by its criticisms of the government in Westminster). The military and police forces in Ireland were absolved, and indeed praised for their diligence.

As always in such inquiries, the minutes of evidence presented is far more revealing then the report that was finally produced. Birrell in particular gave a very frank, thorough and perceptive analysis of Irish affairs, in which he identified uncertainty over Home Rule as a key issue that allowed separatists to garner support, given that the chance of it ever becoming a fact was so uncertain; though again, the inconvenient reasons for such uncertainty were not explored in the commissions final report.

The report blamed the Rising on British negligence; but one could argue that such negligence arose from an understanding of Irelands political reality: Nathan and Birrell knew the dangers of a crackdown on nationalists backfiring by creating martyrs prior to the Rising, which would surely have happened regardless of who was ruling in Ireland from Dublin Castle.

The Royal Commission into the Rising makes for fascinating reading, as it reveals how Irelands British rulers sought, however imperfectly, to make sense of what had happened in Dublin over Easter 1916.

John Gibney is currently Glasnevin Trust Assistant Professor of Public History and Cultural Heritage at Trinity College Dublin.
An apology on behalf of Links creche company and its owner has been read at the High Court to two childcare workers under a settlement of their actions for defamation.

In the apology, it was accepted the defendants' suspension and dismissal of Sandra Kavanagh, Brookwood Glen, Artane, Dublin, and Lisa Craddock Hawthorn Park, Forrest Park, Swords, Co Dublin, following an RTE Prime Time Investigates programme in May 2013, was "unfair".

"We now unreservedly acknowledge that both Sandra Kavanagh and Lisa Craddock were hardworking and dedicated employees and diligently carried out their duties as members of the childcare profession," the apology said.

The defendants, it added, "fully appreciate the profound damage" inflicted on both plaintiffs for which we unreservedly apologise".

"It is now our earnest wish to redress this damage so that both Sandra Kavanagh and Lisa Craddock's reputations are restored to good standing."

The statement concluded with a reiteration of the apology and a statement "appropriate redress" had been made to both plaintiffs.

In separate actions, both women sued Deirdre Kelly, owner of The Links Creche and Montessori Ltd, along with that company, arising from a statement issued on behalf of the creche to the media following an RTE Prime Time Investigates programme, entitled "Breach of Trust" broadcast on May 28th 2013.

Today, Jack Fitzgerald SC, with Miriam Reilly BL, instructed by Dore & Company solicitors, told Mr Justice Colm MacEochaidh both cases had settled on terms including an apology being read in court.

The apology said the defendants, "arising from footage shown to us and parents, and represented by it as footage to be shown in this RTE Primetime Investigates programme 'Breach of Trust', and which was subsequently broadcast in an edited form nationally on RTE television on the 28th May 2013, had caused a statement to be published in the national media".

That statement had said: "We hold the standard of professional care of children in all our creches as a high priority, so I was extremely upset by what I saw. The behaviour of some staff members as revealed by the video extracts was wholly inappropriate, inexcusable and unacceptable. We have, as a result, put in place immediate disciplinary action resulting in the dismissal of one staff member and the suspension of three others pending a full investigation."

That statement also said it was "most regrettable that the undercover reporter did not bring to the immediate attention of senior staff and management the behaviour of the child care workers concerned. Otherwise, I can assure you, it would have been dealt with appropriately."

It continued: "In a statement last night, Links Childcare reiterated that it had been 'extremely upset at the poor performance by some staff members in our Abington, Malahide, creche. We firmly believe that this incident is isolated to specific staff in our centre in Abington and does not reflect the overall standard of care given to all children by our employees in Links Childcare'."

In their apology, the defendants said they accepted what they caused to be published clearly identified Sandra Kavanagh and Lisa Craddock as being among those responsible for the behaviour set out in the statement.

The apology added they had suspended and dismissed both women "and these actions on our part were unfair".

The judge received and filed the terms of settlement and, on consent of the sides, adjourned the matter for final orders to November.
The former girlfriend of Dean Fitzpatrick has said that his stepfather threatened to come out to her home and stick a knife in her neck, a jury has heard.

David Mahon (46), of Ongar Village in Clonsilla, denies murdering 23-year-old Dean Fitzpatrick on May 26, 2013.

Mr Fitzpatrick is the brother of Amy Fitzpatrick who went missing in Spain in 2008.

The father-of-one was stabbed to death outside Mahons apartment at Burnell Square, Northern Cross in Malahide.

The Central Criminal Court heard this morning from Sarah O'Rourke, Mr Fitzpatrick's former girlfriend and the mother of his young son.

Ms O'Rourke said she last saw Dean on Saturday morning, May 25, 2013. She was going to the shop with her two children when she saw him on his bike.

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She said he stopped and spoke to them, and she saw he had a black eye.

Ms O'Rourke said she questioned Dean about his black eye and he said he owed someone money and he cycled off.

She said that she and Dean had been fighting around the time of his death. She said the pair had been "arguing quite a bit" and they weren't getting on.

Earlier in the weeks prior to his death, Ms O'Rourke said she had asked Dean to leave their home after she discovered he had been selling tablets, and she wasn't happy about that.

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The court heard that Ms O'Rourke received a phone call from David Mahon on the Saturday night.

She said he sounded aggressive and angry about something, and he told her to put Dean on the phone.

Ms O'Rourke said she explained to him the pair were fighting and Dean wasn't with her, and he was probably in his dad's place.

She said Mahon had it in his head that Dean was with her and started getting really aggressive on the phone, saying " Sarah, put him on". She told him "He's not here, Davey".

Ms O'Rourke said Mahon then threatened to "come to Lusk and stick a knife in her neck".

She told the court she thought Mahon was under the influence of alcohol, and she hung up on him.

She then rang her sister and told her Mahon had threatened her and she was frightened.

Ms O'Rourke said she then text Dean, saying Mahon was looking for him, had been really rude to her and he needed to "go and sort it out".

In cross examination, Ms O'Rourke accepted she was "shocked and surprised" on the evening because "she had never seen a bad side" to Mahon.

The court also heard from taxi driver Karl O'Toole, who has been friends with the accused since he was 18 years old.

He said that on the night in question he received a call from Mr Mahon saying he was in a bit of trouble and he and Audrey (Fitzpatrick, his now wife) had split up for good.

Mr O'Toole said the accused was drunk and asked him to come down to his apartment.

He is continuing to give his evidence.

In his opening speech for the prosecution yesterday, Remy Farrell SC said it will be the prosecution case that Mahon stabbed Mr Fitzpatrick in the abdomen.

Mr Farrell said the accused will claim it was an accident and may allege Mr Fitzpatrick had been suicidal, but he told the jurors they would have great difficulty in reconciling that account with Mr Fitzpatrick's injuries.

There was a piece of intestine protruding, he said. In common terms, he had been gutted.

The Central Criminal Court heard this morning from Paul White, a former gym instructor with Northwood Gym in Santry, who said Mr Mahon approached him on May 24, 2013 complaining his bicycle had been interfered with outside the gym.

Mr White said he looked at CCTV footage and saw a man in a green t-shirt "mess" around with his bike.

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He said Mr Mahon, who was slightly agitated but not angry, told him he wanted the man who interfered with his bike barred from the gym because he was a "bike thief".

Mr White said he told Mr Mahon he couldn't tell from the CCTV who had interfered with his bike, and he couldn't bar someone from the gym without gardai getting involved.

Mr White told the court Mr Mahon said to him he didn't want to go to the gardai.

Conor Troy, the Operations Director of Ben Dunne Gyms, said he received an email from Mr Mahon later that same day, saying a water bottle had been stolen from his bike, and his staff had the culprit on CCTV.

In the email, Mr Mahon claimed gym staff knew who this man was, they had told him he was a bike robber and he wanted him barred from the gym.

Mr Troy said he later spoke to Mr Mahon who again alleged staff knew who the culprit was, and he wanted his membership cancelled.

In his opening speech for the prosecution yesterday, Remy Farrell SC said Mr Fitzpatrick later admitted interfering with the bicycle to annoy Mr Mahon.

The jury heard yesterday that it will be alleged Mr Mahon had been drinking heavily the day Dean came over to see him.

Mr Farrell said it will be the prosecution case that Mahon stabbed Mr Fitzpatrick in the abdomen during this visit.

Mr Farrell said the accused will claim it was an accident and may allege Mr Fitzpatrick had been suicidal, but the State will argue it would be peculiar if it was "suicide by stepfather".

The jury heard Mr Fitzpatrick ran off, collapsed nearby and was tended to by strangers. He died the following day.

Mr Farrell alleged Mahon tried to flee the scene but eventually went to gardai.

He suggested itd been an accident, that he had taken the knife off Dean and he had walked onto it, impaling himself, said Mr Farrell.

Mr Farrell told the jurors they would have great difficulty in reconciling that account with Mr Fitzpatrick's injuries.

There was a piece of intestine protruding, he said. In common terms, he had been gutted.

The trial continues before Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan and a jury of six men and six women.
A former member of the Church of Scientology has been warned he faces serious consequences if he interferes with any member or does not stay away from the church or mission.

Embalmer John McGhee was given the warning by Judge James O'Donohoe in the Circuit Civil Court after being told by barrister Frank Beatty, counsel for two church members, that Mr McGhee had breached an existing court injunction.

Mr McGhee, of Armstrong Grove, Clara, Co Offaly, agreed he had sent leading Scientology Church member Zabrina Collins a text "connected with the death of Jim Carrey's girlfriend" in which he had stated: "Now you must see why your cult must be stopped."

He also agreed he had attended the church on New Year's Eve and had sent Ms Collins a Christmas card "because she was still on my mailing list".

When asked by Judge O'Donohoe why the church had not gone back to court about the breaches of the court injunction, Mr Beatty said: "There is a bit of a circus associated with court appearances and the church has to perform a balancing act with regard to appearing in court."

Mr McGhee, a father of two, and Peter Griffiths, of Teeling Street, Ballina, Co Mayo, have been sued by Zabrina Collins and fellow church member Michael O'Donnell for assault while they distributed anti-drugs literature in Capel Street in December 2014. Both claim they had been put in fear of both Mr McGhee and Mr Griffiths who had videoed the "protest" with a chest camera.

Both men deny assaulting Ms Collins, of The Boulevard, Mount Eustace, Tyrrelstown, Dublin, and Mr O'Donnell, a marketing consultant, of Cherrywood Lawn, Clondalkin, Dublin.

Judge O'Donohue told Mr Seamus O Tuithaill SC, who appeared for Mr Griffiths, he accepted his client had not breached the existing court injunction but he was "not so sure about Mr McGhee".

Judge O'Donohue, continuing the injunction until he has given his reserved judgment, told Mr McGhee not to have any further contact with the church, its members or lawyers.

In a separate defamation claim, Ms Collins earlier told the judge she "could have been a little more temperate" about what she said in an email to a school principal complaining about a former church member's talk to schoolboys on cults.

Ms Collins, who admitted in court to having had a teenage drugs and drinking problem, is being sued for defamation by Mr Griffiths, for what his counsel described as "a vicious character attack".

"I could have dealt with it in a more temperate way," she said.
A former Anglo Irish Bank executive told gardai that he had only a peripheral awareness of a billion euro deal with Irish Life and Permanent in September 2008, a trial has heard.

Four former executives from the two banks are on trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for allegedly conspiring to mislead investors by setting up a 7.2 billion circular transaction scheme to bolster Anglo's balance sheet.

The jury also heard a claim that Anglo would have collapsed in September 2008 if it had not received emergency funding from the Central Bank before it opened for business the next day.

John Bowe (52) from Glasnevin, Dublin, Willie McAteer (65) of Greenrath, Tipperary Town, Co. Tipperary, Denis Casey (56), from Raheny, Dublin, Peter Fitzpatrick (63) of Convent Lane, Portmarnock, Dublin have all pleaded not (NOT) guilty to conspiring together and with others to mislead investors through financial transactions between March 1st and September 30th, 2008.

On day 61 the 13-strong jury began hearing details of witness statements made by Mr Bowe to investigators from the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation.

Mr Bowe, who was head of Capital Markets with Anglo in 2008, told investigators into the deals with Irish Life and Permanent (ILP) that he did not think the transactions were wrong.

I was not particularly concerned about the transaction. I did not consider the transaction to be wrong, though it was large and unusual.

The Financial Regulator became aware of the transaction on October 1, 2008 I think its a fair assumption to make that if the Regulator was aware then the Department of Finance would have been aware soon after.

He told investigators that he only found out the final figure of the ILP deal on September 30 or October 1, 2008. He stated: I had a peripheral awareness of the transactions with ILP as they occurred.

Asked about emergency overnight funding of more than 1bn provided by the Central Bank Mr Bowe said: I wish to state that Anglo was very much in the hands of the Central Bank. They were working to protect the bank and the system.

Without assistance from the Central Bank Anglo would have collapsed on Tuesday September 30th, he told gardai.

The jury were also shown an email from Anglo's former CEO, David Drumm, sent on September 10, 2008, as the banking crisis reached crisis point.

As banks found it increasingly difficult to secure funding, Mr Drumm urged senior executives from the bank's weekly funding meetings to do all they could to generate liquidity, saying: massive push needed guys, look under every rock, this is crunch time for us, thanks.

Commenting on this email Mr Bowe said it was indicative of the market conditions at the time, where there were more bad days than good days.

Detective Sergeant Gerard Doyle told the court that he met Mr Bowe on a number of occasions between September 2010 and February 2011, when the final draft of his witness statement was signed off.

Mr Bowe was not under arrest at the time and his solicitor was present for all meetings. The trial continues before Judge Martin Nolan and a jury.
A Dublin man murdered his stepson by "gutting" him with a knife and then fled the scene and did nothing to help him, a jury has been told.

David Mahon (46) denies murdering 23-year-old Dean Fitzpatrick on May 26, 2013.

Mr Fitzpatrick's sister Amy Fitzpatrick went missing in Spain in 2008 and has never been found. He was stabbed to death outside Mahon's apartment at Burnell Square, Northern Cross in Malahide.

Opening the case for the prosecution, Remy Farrell SC, said it will be alleged Mr Mahon had been drinking heavily on the day when Dean came over to see him.

He said it will be the State's case that Mahon stabbed Mr Fitzpatrick during this visit.

Mr Farrell said the accused will claim it was an accident and may allege Mr Fitzpatrick had been suicidal, but the State argued this would be peculiar if it were "suicide by stepfather".

Mr Farrell told the Central Criminal Court both men were members of the Northwood Gym in Santry and Mahon's bicycle was interfered with outside the gym on May 24, 2013. The court heard CCTV footage suggested it was Mr Fitzpatrick who had done so.

The jury was told Mahon was annoyed and was in his apartment with two friends when he phoned Mr Fitzpatrick to come over. A confrontation followed.

"Ultimately, Mr Fitzpatrick admitted doing it [interfering with the bicycle] to annoy him," said Mr Farrell.

Both men were agitated and Mr Fitzpatrick was told to leave.

Mahon then told a friend he'd be back in a minute.

"It's what happened when he walked out the door that's the issue," said the barrister. "David Mahon arrived back in and had a carving knife," he said.

"The prosecution case is that David Mahon stabbed Dean Fitzpatrick in the abdomen."

The jury heard Mr Fitzpatrick ran off, collapsed nearby and was tended to by strangers. He died the following day.

Mr Farrell alleged Mahon tried to flee the scene but eventually went to gardai.

"He suggested it'd been an accident, that he had taken the knife off Dean and he had walked onto it, impaling himself," said Mr Farrell.

Mr Farrell told the jurors they would have great difficulty in reconciling that account with Mr Fitzpatrick's injuries.

"In common terms, he had been gutted," he said.

The trial continues before Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan.
Telecom giant Meteor Mobile has been convicted and fined 25,000 for removing discounts from customers phone contracts without telling them

Telecom giant Meteor Mobile has been convicted and fined 25,000 for removing discounts from customers' phone contracts without telling them.

In the first prosecution of its kind, the company pleaded guilty at Dublin District Court to breaching statutory regulations.

The court heard the company, which is owned by Eir, had discontinued a 50pc discount package.

However, shop operators and Meteor agents continued to sell the bundle to 123 customers, who later had it taken from them without any notification or any offer to withdraw from their contracts without penalty, which is required under the regulations.

The case came after customers' bills doubled and some of them complained to telecoms industry watchdog Comreg. Judge John O'Neill described the company's explanation that they had technical problems as "gobbledygook".

There were 123 counts of breaching the Universal Services and Users Rights regulations. Prosecution counsel Christian Keeling told the court it was agreed that a guilty plea would be entered by Meteor to 10 counts and Comreg would withdraw the remaining charges.

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Comreg compliance officer Miriam Kilraine told Judge O'Neill the 123 customers had been given a phone bundle with a 50pc discount for 24 months. However, it was later removed from their packages. Customers who complained were told the discount had been given to them in error. "This resulted in their bills being effectively doubled," she said.

The court heard that 29 customers complained directly to the company but refunds to all those affected came following intervention by Comreg.

On top of the refunds, 111 customers who remained with Meteor have been given the discount back for the duration of their contracts. The average refund was 240, the court heard.

Ms Kilraine cited the example of one customer who was told by Meteor there was "nothing they could do" after they noticed their bill had increased.

Another affected customer complained and held off paying his bill but Meteor cut him off, the court heard.

Meteor director Maeve O'Malley said the company had ceased offering the 50pc discount, however their shops and agents were still able to give it because it was not removed from their computer system.
A murder accused told gardai he went to a country lane with armed men who he knew were planning an assault to get back a missing bag of drugs.

Ross Allen (25), with addresses in Carrickmines, Co Dublin and Clara in Offaly, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 47-year-old Christy Daly at Bog Lane, Kilbride, Clara, Co Offaly between December 29, 2013 and January 7, 2014. His co-accused Matthew Gralton (22), of Mt Prospect, Co Roscommon has also pleaded not guilty to murder.

At the Central Criminal Court today Detective Sergeant Jer Glavin agreed with prosecuting counsel Padraic Hogan BL that he interviewed Mr Allen at Portlaoise garda station on February 15, 2014.

During that interview Det Sgt Glavin said Mr Allen told him he had hidden drugs on Bog Lane, close to where Mr Daly was living in a caravan.

On the morning of December 29, at about 2am he went to collect the drugs, worth about e30,000, but couldn't find them. He phoned the man who owned the drugs to tell him they were missing and left the area.

The following morning he returned to continue the search but found nothing. "There was great panic on my part," he said in the interview. "I thought I was fucked."

He said Mr Daly was immediately suspected of having taken the drugs because his caravan was so close by.

Speaking about his relationship with the owner of the drugs, Mr Allen told gardai that he had fallen into debt when another bag of drugs that he had hidden went missing about nine months previously. He owed the drug owner e15,000 as a result and worked for him to pay off his debt. He said he would pay off between e50 and e150 by doing odd-jobs like selling drugs, hiding drugs and moving cars around.

He said he did not like his life and that he was "in a dark place" and had trouble sleeping.

After he reported the missing drugs on Bog Lane he said the owner told him he would get it "sorted out".

Detective Garda John Doran told Mr Hogan that he interviewed Ross Allen at Portlaoise Garda Station on February 16, 2014.

He agreed that Mr Allen told him there was a meeting at a house in Clara with the drug owner and two other men later that evening. Garda Glavin asked him if they discussed using violence or the threat of violence against Christy Daly and he replied, "yes".

"The plan was to give him a few slaps, to find out where the stuff was or who he gave the stuff to," he said.

He said he was told to get a hammer and a torch and he did so.

He said they stopped along the way to collect a sawn-off shotgun that was hidden behind a farmer's gate. Mr Allen said he knew where it was because he put it there. "I was asked to, to pay off some of my drug debt," he said.

He said he handed the gun to one of the people in the back seat and they continued on to Bog Lane. He said he was also aware that the other man had brought a firearm with him.

He said he thought the guns would be used to scare Mr Daly or anyone else they might encounter at the caravan.

When they arrived at Bog Lane Mr Allen said his job was to wait at the gateway to act as a lookout. The others continued up the lane in the car. A short time later he heard two shots. "I presumed that they were warning shots," he said.

About 15 minutes later the men returned and he got back into the car and they drove off. He said the mood was "panicky" and they drove at speed.

Later in the interview he said he had seen the two men taking cocaine earlier in the night and that it caused a change in their personalities. "They were fucking weird" he said.

The following day he was told to burn out the car that they had used the previous night. For this, e150 was knocked off his drug debt. He said he thought burning out the car was an unusual request because at that point he did not know that Mr Daly was dead.

When asked if he feared the drug owner he replied: "Most definitely, yes."

He was asked on a number of occasions to identify the drug owner and the two men who had traveled to Bog Lane but he refused.

Speaking to Detective Garda Glavin he said that when he heard Mr Daly was dead he was shocked. "I thought they were going to frighten him with it [the shotgun] or belt him with it."

Garda Glavin asked him if he thought they would shoot Mr Daly and he replied: "Christ no."

"It made me sick to my stomach when I heard. I haven't slept since."

The trial continues before Justice Patrick McCarthy and a jury of five women and six men tomorrow.
Of the four cases which came before Mr Justice Seamus Noonan yesterday, three were adjourned until tomorrow pending the making by Mr Justice Moriarty of final orders arising from his judgment. Stock Image

The fall-out continues from a significant judgment declaring the law governing suspended sentences as unconstitutional.

Four cases affected by the decision came before the High Court yesterday.

Last week Mr Justice Michael Moriarty's judgment declared key provisions of Section 99 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006, as amended, are unconstitutional.

Acting Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has said emergency legislation is being prepared and will be discussed with her Cabinet colleagues this week.

However it is still unclear when emergency legislation might be passed, with no formal Government in place.

Meanwhile, a number of people have avoided having suspended sentences imposed or have made applications to be released from jail over the past week.

Of the four cases which came before Mr Justice Seamus Noonan yesterday, three were adjourned until tomorrow pending the making by Mr Justice Moriarty of final orders arising from his judgment.

One of them involved a prisoner who is challenging activation of a six-year suspended term imposed on him after being convicted of charges including burglary and attempted robbery.

The suspended term was activated after he pleaded guilty to other charges. As he has an outstanding appeal against his earlier conviction, the suspended term should not have been activated, said his counsel Micheal P O'Higgins SC.

A second adjourned case involved a prisoner who argued Judge Moriarty's decision meant a District Court judge had no power to activate a four-month suspended sentence, imposed in January 2015. He was convicted in January 2016 of another offence for which he received a 10-month term, to run consecutively with the four-month term.

The issue in that case is whether the 10-month sentence is affected by Mr Justice Moriarty's decision.

In the third adjourned case, it was argued an 11-month term being served by the prisoner as a result of revocation of a suspended sentence is unlawful. The 11-month term arises from a sentence of two years for drug offences, of which 11 months was suspended.

The fourth case concerned a man with several convictions for offences including under the Road Traffic Acts and for theft. On the application of the DPP, it was struck out by the judge on grounds it was "moot" in light of the Moriarty decision.
A TEENAGE girl watched in horror as her father, brother and brother's girlfriend drowned after a freak wave turned a summer fishing trip into tragedy.

A Cork coroner's inquest heard that Charlotte Davis Ryan (13) was soaking wet and in deep shock as she told three stunned Welsh tourists out for a hill walk that her family had just drowned a few metres away.

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"I know they are dead - I saw their heads go down," the traumatised teen told the shocked tourists as she raised the alarm over the tragedy.

"My family have drowned. I know they have," she said.

The tourists, including Christine Jones from Wales, were informed by the trembling teen that her brother, Barry Davis Ryan (20), and his girlfriend, Niamh O'Connor (20), had been swept into the sea from rocks outside Baltimore in west Cork on June 30 last.

Her father, Barry John Ryan (51), had then bravely dived into the sea to rescue them.

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The horrified teen ran for help and, when she stopped to look back, saw all three slip beneath the waves.

Coroner Frank O'Connell was told by Supt Ger O'Mahony that the family group had gone to the Beacon Rocks outside Baltimore to enjoy some rock fishing on a sunny June evening.

The two men are the son and grandson of Penny's retail empire founder, Arthur Ryan (80).

The four had gone to the eastern section of Beacon Point, a popular local beauty spot.

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In a statement to Gardai, Charlotte said her brother had initially gone out to the farthest rock with a fishing rod and bait.

"A big wave splashed over us," she told gardai.

"It got Barry and Niamh soaked. Then another big wave came and it hit us."

"Me and Dad got soaked and got pushed up against the rocks."

"Barry and Niamh got pushed out to sea by the pressure of the sea. Barry was farther out. Niamh was screaming."

"My Dad told me to go climb back up the rocks and get help."

"He swam out to Niamh and he got there."

Charlotte scrambled back up the hill to raise the alarm as directed by her father but briefly paused to look back.

"Niamh and my Dad were closest to the rocks. Then I couldn't see Barry. Dad and Niamh were closer to the rocks."

"Then I saw their heads go under."

The bodies of Mr Ryan Snr and Ms O'Connor were recovered almost immediately by Baltimore RNLI.

The body of Mr Davis Ryan was only recovered 11 days later by diver Eric Hennessy following a massive search operation by volunteers.

Assistant State Pathologist, Dr Margaret Bolster, told the inquest that all three died from drowning.

However, in the case of Mr Davis Ryan and Ms O'Connor she said post mortem examinations revealed they had both also sustained traumatic brain injuries.

Dr Bolster said these would have played a significant factor in the deaths.

It is likely that the duo, having been swept away by the giant wave, were then tossed against the rocks by the surging seas, striking their heads in the process.

The inquest was attended by Ann Davis Ryan who lost her husband and son in the tragedy.

She was supported by her children, Arthur and Charlotte, and other family members.

The inquest had to be briefly suspended when Mrs Davis Ryan collapsed. It resumed when she recovered and insisted the hearing could proceed.

Also in attendance were Ms O'Connor's parents.

They only spoke to ask Dr Bolster whether their daughter felt any pain?

Dr Bolster assured them that, given her injuries, she would not have suffered.

Mr O'Connell extended his deepest sympathies to the Ryan, Davis and O'Connor families as he recorded verdicts of accidental death for all three.

"They were so, so unlucky...these freak waves can happen," he said.

"He (Mr Ryan Snr) gave his life in the course of trying to save the two others. He was an extremely brave and courageous man to make that decision."

"His actions are a testament to the quality of the man," the coroner said.

Baltimore RNLI coxswain, Kieran Cotter, told the inquest that such rock fishing tragedies are now an annual occurrence in Ireland.

"If people wear a life-jacket or a buoyancy aid while fishing, it gives the emergency services a chance to get to them and to rescue them," he said.

"I am 41 years in the lifeboats and this is happening every year. The sea can be very unpredictable."

Colin Ryan, who lost his brother and nephew in the tragedy, said the Ryan, Davis and O'Connor families were deeply grateful for the extraordinary solidarity shown to them.

"We would just like to say 'thank you' to the Irish Coastguard, to Baltimore RNLI, to the brave volunteers and especially all those divers as well as the Gardai and people of west Cork who were incredibly supportive throughout this entire trauma," Mr Ryan said.
A solicitor had "no insight into his unfair and unreasonable behaviour" by withholding part of a client's 100,000 damages settlement towards legal costs which were eventually paid by his opponents in the case in any event, a High Court judge said.

Michael O'Sullivan, formerly principal of Michael O'Sullivan & Co Solicitors, Baggot Hall, Lower Baggot Street, Dublin, "clearly needs supervision", Mr Justice Paul McDermott said.

His former client was left at a loss for a considerable period and Mr O'Sullivan "showed no regret for any of his actions nor did he offer any indication that such behaviour might not be repeated in future", he said.

The judge confirmed a finding of misconduct against Mr O'Sullivan made by a Law Society Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) that he deducted without agreement monies due to the client following the settlement of a personal injuries case in February 2004. He also failed to provide written notification of what he (O'Sullivan) thought would be recovered in costs from the defendants in that case.

Mr O'Sullivan must only practise as an assistant solicitor in a partnership and under the supervision of another solicitor of at least ten years standing, the judge said. He has also to make restitution of 6,774 to his former client.

The judge said the client claimed he was being overcharged for the solicitor's services and was refused an explanation of how the fees were broken down. The client said the defendant in his personal injuries action anyway agreed to pay the legal costs as part of the settlement.

The client also claimed undue pressure had been applied on him at the time to settle the case. Mr O'Sullivan later demanded the client withdraw what he called "false allegations of professional misconduct".

Mr O'Sullivan retained 44,850 from the settlement, the judge said.

Following the complaint from the client and the Law Society's intervention, the actual costs due to Mr O'Sullivan were found to be 35,000 and recovered from the insurance company which represented the defendant in the original personal injuries case. That money was then paid directly to the former client partly in lieu of the withheld amount.

After 3,000 actually due from the former client to Mr O'Sullivan was deducted, this meant the solicitor still owed 6,774 to the former client.

The judge was satisfied the SDT finding that Mr O'Sullivan should pay the 6,774 restitution was reasonable and supported by the evidence. He also found a direction that he pay 10,000 to the Law Society's compensation fund was reasonable.

The judge said while the misconduct which Mr O'Sullivan was found guilty of by the SDT was very serious, it fell short of the more egregious forms of misconduct of fraud and dishonesty that might deserve a solicitor being struck off.

It was clear however that Mr O'Sullivan had dealt with the overcharging issue raised by his former client "in an unreasonable and unprofessional way", the judge said.

The judge noted Mr O'Sullivan brought an earlier challenge to the disciplinary inquiry into his conduct which was rejected by the High Court and Supreme Court.

He had more recently brought a case alleging parts of the the law governing solicitor conduct were unconstitutional and in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. That case is still pending.
Gardai at the scene of the shooting this morning

Gardai have confirmed that three men carried out the brutal gangland murder of dissident Michael Barr.

In a statement, released this morning, officers appealed for help tracing a car used in the murder.

A spokesman said: "Gardai are investigating a fatal shooting that occurred at the Sunset House public house, Summerhill, Dublin 1, last night, Monday, April 25, 2016 shortly after 9.30pm.

"Two men, not better described entered the public house. One of these men discharged a firearm, fatally injuring a man, aged in his mid 30s. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.

"A silver coloured Audi A6 car, partial registration 04C was later recovered on Walsh Road, Drumcondra, Dublin 9 and has been seized for technical examination. Prior to this car being recovered it is believed that three men left Walsh Road in the direction of Home Farm Road in another silver coloured saloon car."

Gardai have confirmed that a full investigation has commenced and an incident room has been established at Mountjoy Garda Station.

Investigating Gardai are appealing for witnesses, particularly those people who were in the Sunset House public house yesterday evening from 9pm onwards or who may have observed a silver coloured Audi A6 car, partial registration 04C prior to this incident or its discovery on Walsh Road, to contact them at Mountjoy Garda Station on 01 6668600, The Garda Confidential Line, 1800 666111 or any Garda Station.
A key member of the Hutch mob who featured on Winning Streak fled out the back of a bar as a hitman team gunned down dissident Michael Barr.

Two hitmen entered the Sunset House on Summerhill Parade at 9.15pm and shot 34-year-old Michael Mickey Barr three times, at least once in the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Independent.ie has learned that under-threat criminal Ross Hutch (24)  a nephew of Gerry The Monk Hutch  escaped uninjured.

Senior sources have revealed that Hutch had been socialising in the bar while the Tottenham Hotspur and West Brom Premier League game was underway.

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Hutch, a son of feud murder victim Eddie Hutch, is believed to have fled out a back door of the pub when the gunman entered. Sources say that Ross Hutch is one of the main targets for the Kinahan cartel and has been previously warned of a threat against his life.

The career criminal, who has 54 convictions, featured on Winning Streak last year and left presenter Sinead Kennedy red-faced after viewers saw him pay her a compliment.

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Gun victim Michael Barr was a dissident republican who may have been supplying weapons to the Hutch mob, sources said last night.

It is understood he was an associate of the shooter at the Regency Hotel in February, who has been nicknamed Flat Cap.

He had also been spotted in the company of known associates of the Hutch mob.

A silver Audi A6 car, with partial registration 04C, was subsequently found burned-out on Walsh Road in Drumcondra.

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It is believed that three men left Walsh Road in the direction of Home Farm Road in a silver saloon car.

Barr, originally from Co Tyrone, had been living in Finglas and Ballymun and had been a major target for the Garda Special Detective Unit for the past four years.

Sources said his house was raided by gardai last week. It is understood that these raids were part of the Regency Hotel murder investigation.

Detectives are now probing whether the shooting is linked to the bitter gangland war between the Hutch mob and the Kinahan cartel.

Barr was due to be sentenced on Thursday at the Special Criminal Court for handling stolen property. He had reportedly begun work as a manager at the Sunset House pub in the last few months.
Gardai at the scene of the fatal shooting at Kilcronan Close in Clondalkin

The sister of a man gunned down on his doorstep overnight has claimed he was not involved in gangland crime.

"Gentle Giant" Tom Farnan (37) was blasted to death after he answered his front door on Kilcronan Close, Clondalkin in West Dublin.

The dad-of-one had a number of convictions for minor offences but his heartbroken family have insisted he was not involved in organised crime or gangland feuding.

Younger sister Jenny Farnan told Independent.ie: "Waking up and still living the nightmare how can this life be so cruel.

"Words can't describe how much I'm going to miss him. My heart is broken I still can't believe it."

She said the family could not understand why he was killed and insisted that she didn't want to speculate: "I just want it put out there that he was not involved in any of the gangland or criminal activities.

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"He was just a normal decent man, a big brother, a loving son and a brilliant father."

She continued: "He was the best brother I could have ever asked for. If anybody asked for anything then he would do it for them."

Gardai believe the lone gunman knocked on Mr Farnan's door on Kilcronan Close before opening fire.

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Mr Farnan was hit up to four times in the torso.

This afternoon gardai issued a fresh appeal for help catching his killers.

A spokesman said: "From initial investigations it appears that a lone male entered the hallway of the house at the above location and fired a number of shots fatally injuring a 37-year-old man. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.

"The lone male then left the scene and is believed to have run along Kilcronan Close onto Grand Canal and then exited onto the green area towards Lock View Road."

The hitman was described as wearing all black clothing, black runners, black tracksuit and may have been wearing a balaclava. He is also described as being short in height.

A full investigation has commenced and an incident room has been established at Clondalkin Garda Station.

Investigating Gardai are appealing for witnesses, particularly those people who were in the area prior to the incident and immediately after the shooting and who may have information or who may have seen anything unusual or suspicious to contact them at Clondalkin Garda Station on 01 666 7600 The Garda Confidential Line, 1800 666111 or any Garda Station.
An opportunistic hitman may have used the chaos caused by another gangland hit to seek out and kill a father-of-one.

"Gentle Giant" Tom Farnan (37) was blasted to death after he answered his front door on Kilcronan Close, Clondalkin in West Dublin shortly before midnight on Monday.

His death came just over two hours after dissident Michael Barr (35) was shot and killed in The Sunset Bar, Summerhill.

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Now gardai are investigating if Farnans killer used the confusion caused by the earlier murder to carry out their own deadly attack.

Gardai have not established a motive for the attack but one line of enquiry is that it was connected to a dispute over a stolen motorbike.

A senior source said: There is no clear motive at this point for the killing. He was not a serious criminal.

He was just a local head going about his normal business.

The well-placed source added: The proximity of the two killings timewise is unusual but gardai have been unable to establish a clear link between them.

Expand Close Michael Barr who was shot dead in the Sunset House attack / Facebook

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One theory is that the killer knew garda resources would be drawn to the north inner city and decided to strike while the resources were elsewhere.

Tributes were paid to Mr Farnan this afternoon.

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Nephew Anto Farran told Independent.ie: I lovew him and I hope he rests in peace.

Earlier Toms younger sister Jenny Farnan told Independent.ie: "Waking up and still living the nightmare how can this life be so cruel.

"Words can't describe how much I'm going to miss him. My heart is broken I still can't believe it."

She said the family could not understand why he was killed and insisted that she didn't want to speculate: "I just want it put out there that he was not involved in any of the gangland or criminal activities.

"He was just a normal decent man, a big brother, a loving son and a brilliant father."

She continued: "He was the best brother I could have ever asked for. If anybody asked for anything then he would do it for them."
Mary Lou McDonald has claimed crime gangs are now brazen enough to do pretty much anything.

The Sinn Fein Deputy Leader told RTE Radio One that people in Dublin's North Inner City are terrified that more innocent people will die.

Dissident Republican Michael Barr (34) was gunned down as he worked in The Sunset House bar in Dublins Summerhill shortly after 9.30pm.

Ms McDonald represents the constituency and she said people in the surrounding area are frightened.

There is no doubt now that there is a heightened sense of tension and of fear and of vulnerability on the streets. This is a phenomenon right across the city.

Its very very acute now in the North Inner city.

Ms McDonald explained that she met last week with senior gardai where she expressed the fears of locals.

The gardai In each of the categories say that crime levels are down but I said to them and they accept, fear is up.

She continued: There is now a strong belief that these armed thugs are brazen enough to do pretty much anything with no regard for the life or security of anybody.

There is a belief that innocent passers by, people who live in the area, people who take their children to the school in the area, different clubs in the area are now vulnerable.

People are frightened, its as simple as that.

Ms McDonald lashed out at so called dissidents: I wish them to desist their activities. The only thing they are doing is bringing hardship and heartache and fear onto the streets."

On the same show Dermot OBrien, the outgoing President of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), said gardai need to be better armed to tackle gangs.

He explained that since 2008 there has been no tactical training for specialist units. The first gardai to arrive at the scene of the Regency shooting in February were unarmed.

"It is a well known fact, and the FBI have stated it, that a 500 metre perimeter should be set up around such incidents where unarmed people cannot enter."

He continued: "As members in uniform we have the asp, retractable baton and pepper spray. Once we utilise those forms of force the next available form of force after that is the gun. We have nothing intermediate - the likes of tasers and beanbags."
Fianna Fail figures suggested that Mr Kenny was willing to offer a longer suspension  but that his team of negotiators disagreed strongly with their leader. Photo: Reuters

Acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny is fighting fire from all sides after his own TDs were left fuming by his offer to suspend water charges - and Fianna Fail rejected the proposal outright.

The country is now on the brink of a second election after talks between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail over the future of water charges ended acrimoniously.

Fine Gael accused Fianna Fail of trying to force another election after Micheal Martin's party refused to accept a 'compromise proposal' that would see water charges suspended for between six and nine months.

After a briefing with Mr Kenny yesterday, Fine Gael negotiators proposed that the future of water charges should be examined by an Independent Commission, during which time no household would pay any charge.

Ministers also insisted that any future charging regime would include a series of waivers and generous allowances aimed particularly at struggling households.

But Fianna Fail rejected the proposals outright, instead demanding a suspension period of between three and five years.

The party also insisted that the findings of any commission must be debated by an all-party Oireachtas committee before charges are re-introduced.

"This is a new Dail that is different than we've ever seen. All TDs, from whatever background, should have a say on the future of water charges," said a senior Fianna Fail source.

But Fine Gael insisted that the establishment of a committee would only delay the outcome of the process in re-introducing charges.

A minister also confirmed that the party is not willing to go beyond nine months in relation to a suspension of charges.

Sources close to the talks confirmed that there were robust exchanges between the two negotiating teams who refused to budge on their respective positions. But after the talks at Trinity College had broken up last night, both parties accused each other of painting a false picture of events.

Fianna Fail reacted with fury to a suggestion by acting Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney that Fianna Fail had failed to put any counter-proposal on the table.

Meanwhile, a claim by Fianna Fail sources that Mr Kenny had effectively lost the support of his negotiating team was branded a "lie" by a senior Fine Gael figure.

Fianna Fail figures suggested that Mr Kenny (below) was willing to offer a longer suspension - but that his team of negotiators disagreed strongly with their leader.

The claim, described as "rubbish" by Fine Gael, has led to a major deterioration in relations between the two parties.

But one senior Fine Gael source admitted that there have been "differing views in the leadership" over the approach taken in the past 48 hours.

While talks have been informally scheduled to resume today, senior figures in both parties last night admitted that the process is close to collapse.

Meanwhile, Mr Kenny's decision to offer Fianna Fail a suspension of charges has caused uproar among his own TDs.

The level of unrest is so severe that the issue was even raised at the talks last night by Fine Gael negotiators.

Of the 20-plus TDs who spoke to the Irish Independent, all but a handful said they had deep reservations about suspending charges. Several TDs who would normally be supportive of Mr Kenny said they now believed his leadership was being seriously questioned.

Separately, other TDs spoke publicly about their deep concern over the prospect of charges being suspended.

These include the Carlow/Kilkenny TD Pat Deering, Kildare South TD Martin Heydon and Wicklow/East Carlow TD Andrew Doyle.
Sinn Fein has secured the election of its first openly gay member of the Oireachtas.

Former Mayor of South Dublin Fintan Warfield (24) has become the first candidate confirmed in the 25th Seanad. He was elected on the Educational and Cultural panel after the first count.

Mr Warfield said he is particularly proud to have been elected to the Upper House during the Centenary year.

"I am immensely proud to have been elected to the Seanad and to have received such a large vote.

"To have been elected on the centenary of the Rising is a massive honour and privilege and I look forward to working with the rest of my colleagues in Leinster House to fight for the type of change promised in the Proclamation," he said.

"As a young person involved in the Arts and an LGBT activist, I will be a progressive voice on these issues in the Seanad," Mr Warfield said.

The Seanad count will take place over three to four days and will see some 49 senators being elected.

A further 11 will be chosen by the Taoiseach.

Six senators are elected by graduates of Trinity College and the National Universities of Ireland (NUI), while the remaining 43 are chosen by TDs and councillors via five separate vocational panels.

The Cultural and Educational panel, which produces five seats, was the first contest held yesterday. As the counting continued last night, Independent candidate Joe Conway was also expected to be elected.

Mr Conway has the backing of Waterford TD John Halligan.

Fine Gael's Kieran O'Donnell, who lost his seat in the election, is also poised to be elected. Other candidates in contention for a seat are Fianna Fail's Lorraine Clifford-Lee, her party colleague Keith Swanick, Fine Gael's Gabriel McFadden and Fine Gael senator Jim D'Arcy.
The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

Gardai at the scene of the fatal shooting at Kilcronan Close in Clondalkin

Gardai at the scene of the fatal shooting at Kilcronan Close in Clondalkin

A gunman who shot dead a 37-year-old man in the hallway of his own home fled the scene on foot.

The victim of a second gangland hit in Dublin overnight was named locally as Thomas Farnan.

It was the second fatal gun attack in the city, coming just hours after Michael Barr was shot dead in the Sunset House.

Gardai believe the lone gunman knocked on Mr Farnan's door on Kilcronan Close before opening fire.

The dead man, who has a number of previous convictions for minor offences, was hit up to four times in the torso.

A senior source said: "Gardai will hold a case conference this morning in Clondalkin.

"No car was used in this attack and it is believed the man ran from the scene."

The incident happened in the Kilcronan area of Clondalkin, West Dublin at around 11.45pm.

Neighbours reported hearing up to five gunshots in quick succession.

Local reports say the gunman then escaped on foot in the direction of the Grand Canal.

A massive area of Kilcronan was sealed off this morning.

Although not known as a major criminal, the man has a long list of convictions for crimes including drug possession, burglary, theft, larceny, drink- driving and possession of a knife.

It is believed at this early stage that his death is the result of a local feud or row over money or drugs, but a full investigation will be carried out by gardai to establish the motive.

The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

A garda spokesman confirmed: "Officers are at the scene of a shooting in Kilcronan, Clondalkin."
Dublin City Council has listed this building as 'protected'

A company run by developer Greg Kavanagh is trying to destroy a protected building on Dublin's south quay.

The company has applied to demolish number 20  24 Sir John Rogersons Quay and said that it was incorrectly listed as a protected structure by Dublin City Council.

A spokesman for Mr Kavanagh has insisted that the actual B&I Steam Packet building , which he said was not listed, would not be destroyed as part of the plan.

The company operated ships between ports in Britain and Ireland starting in 1836 and later became B&I Ferries, which was then absorbed into Irish Ferries.

Mr Kavanagh is hoping to develop a 250m complex, made up of 400,000sq ft of offices and 200 apartments, on the south docks.

The planned project would occupy part of the waterfront, at Lime Street and East Hanover Street in the city's south docks area, close to the Grand Canal Theatre.

Listed

A planning application for the site stated that Balark wanted to demolish all structures from 20-27 Sir John Rogerson's Quay, buildings on Lime Street, Lime Court and Hanover Street East.

This would make way for a seven-storey mixed-use development, which would include an internal courtyard, gym, community room and waste storage.

Mr Kavanagh came to prominence by buying up property during the crash.

A statement from Dublin City Council said that the building was first named as a protected structure in 2005.

"This structure is still listed on the 2011 record of protected structures," it added.

A decision on the application is due on until May 27.
A DISABLED athletes hopes of going to the Rio Paralympics is back on track after gardai located his specially adapted car which thugs stole from his home.

John McCarthy was left devastated after callous criminals broke into his Dublin home, whilst he was sleeping, and stole the keys to his adapted car - an Audi A6 - before driving off.

However, a day after independent.ie and the Herald highlighted the case, the car has been found  meaning John can now travel to his vigorous training sessions.

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A garda spokesman revealed this afternoon that the car was located in the Lucan area this morning and no damage was caused to the car.

It had been stolen on Sunday night at the Abbeywood estate in Lucan, Co Dublin. The athlete decided to go to bed at around 11.30pm and woke up yesterday morning at 6am to discover his keys had been lifted from the kitchen table and his car had been robbed from the driveway.

The callous incident meant the Cork native could not drive to his training sessions in Santry and Clontarf.

Im a wheelchair user and the car is adapted for me to drive, John told the Herald yesterday.

Im really restricted, I cant get to work, I cant trainI cant get out really without this car.

John is a Paralympian champion, having won silver medal in discus at the 2004 Athens Paralympics. He also is an Irish rugby international and wore the green shirt at European level.

He started his journey to Paralympics success after a tragic accident 25-years-ago left him wheelchair bound when he broke his neck after driving into a river in 1992.
Last night's brutal gangland killings are the sixth and seventh gun murders in just over 11 weeks.

After a relatively peaceful 2015 this year has started off with a brutal run over gun killings that show no sign of slowing down.

On February 5 senior Kinahan gang member David Byrne was shot dead when killers, disguised as police and carrying AK47s, stormed the Regency Hotel in North Dublin.

Just three days later Eddie Hutch Snr - a brother of Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch - was shot and killed in retaliation.

Expand Close Eddie Hutch (58) was shot dead at his home in Dublins north inner city on the night of February 8 / Facebook

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Whatsapp Eddie Hutch (58) was shot dead at his home in Dublins north inner city on the night of February 8

His murder was followed by the killing of former Real IRA member Vincent 'Vinnny' Ryan in Finglas, North Dublin on February 29.

His murder is not believed to be linked to the Kinahan/Hutch feud.

On April 4, innocent drug addict Martin O'Rourke was shot and killed on Sheriff Street in what gardai believe was a case of mistaken identity.

Independent.ie recently revealed that the gun homicide rate in the Republic of Ireland was almost six times that of England/Wales.

Expand Close Tragic shooting victim Martin O'Rourke pictured with his partner Angelina Power / Facebook

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And, contrary to popular belief, the gun homicide rate in the Irish Republic was more than double that of Northern Ireland for the ten years from 2005 to 2015.

In the last decade there were 201 gun murders or manslaughters in the Republic of Ireland between 2005 and 2015 (statistics below).

The corresponding figure for Northern Ireland was 37; for Scotland it was 34; andEngland/Wales - where the figures are merged - there were 420 gun homicides.

The per capita rate for Scotland was 0.064 per 100,000 per annum; Northern Ireland was 0.204; and England/Wales was 0.075. Incredibly the rate in the Republic at 0.437 was more than double that of the North and almost six times the English and Welsh figures.
Irish Rail workers are to consider strike action as the unions accuse management at Iarnrod Eireann of refusing to take pay claims seriously.

SIPTU and the National Bus and Rail Union (NBRU) are believed to be seeking pay increases upwards of 25 pc for workers at Irish Rail, and have today expressed their desire to ballot their members for industrial action.

It is understood that any industrial action will likely involve work stoppages running to a number of hours each day they are in effect.

In a letter presented to Irish Rail management today, SIPTU said it was convening an urgent meeting of [its] National Rail Committee for Thursday to discuss the possibility of a ballot for strike action.

The union says that the refusal of Irish Rail to engage meaningfully with its substantial pay increase" claims for its members of all grades in the company was forcing the action.

NBRU General Secretary Dermot OLeary said his union was seeking a mandate for industrial action because of a refusal by the State-owned company to attend hearings at the Workplace Relations Commission.

Irish Rail stands accused of ignoring the Industrial Relations institutions of the state; the NBRU referred a number of issues to the WRC on the 29th March, that referral included the ongoing pay cuts, a long overdue pay claim for rail workers and the 10 Minute Dart Service.

Mr OLeary continued: We will now immediately ballot all our members across Irish Rail to seek a mandate for Industrial Action it is simply appalling that this abject failure to cooperate with industrial relations norms may potentially lead to the travelling public and workers being subjected to industrial unrest.

Responding to the threat of strike action, Irish Rail said there was a credibility gap to NBRUs claims.

In recent weeks, the NBRU have walked out of ongoing discussions at the WRC over the 10-minute frequency DART schedule.

Yesterday evening they refused to attend a meeting with Iarnrod Eireann management to discuss issues surrounding DART drivers.

[And they] continues to ignore the fact there is an existing pay agreement with all trade unions in place across Iarnrod Eireann which expires in October of this year.

The company added: We believe the NBRU should  rather than planning ballots for industrial action - focus its efforts on engaging with all existing processes to ensure the company can deliver a better service to its customers, restore financial stability, and meet the aspiration for increased earnings amongst employees.

Earlier this month, Irish Rail raised the threat of High Court action against the NBRU and SIPTU over what it alleges is unofficial industrial action by Dart drivers.

The company has accused Dart drivers of being in breach of their contracts by refusing to train in new staff.
A self-proclaimed "Pastafarian" was not discriminated against for being refused a driver's licence while wearing a colander on his head, the Workplace Relations Commission has ruled.

Noel Mulryan claimed he suffered religious discrimination after the Road Safety Authority (RSA) refused to renew his licence in September 2013, when he produced a photograph of himself wearing the metal drainer on his head which he claimed is a form of religious headwear.

Mr Mulryan claimed that wearing the colander is an integral part of his religion, although he admitted he doesn't don the drainer when out socialising or at work, but he wears it occasionally at home when he is "feeling sad and vulnerable."

The RSA refused to renew the licence on the grounds that the kitchen utensil obscured a clear view of his eyes and forehead area.

It also argued he failed to demonstrate that the colander "is related to a religious belief". He was refused a second renewal when he applied for a licence wearing a smaller, bowl-sized colander.

An Equality Officer ruled that "Pastafarianism" is a parody religion, noting its beliefs include a fondness for beer, a belief that "every Friday is a religious holiday" and that pirates were "the original Pastafarians".

In November, a pastafarian and member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the US, was allowed to wear a colander on her head in her driver's licence photo due to religious beliefs.

Lindsay Miller, who lives in Massachusetts, said wearing the colander allows her to express her beliefs, like other religions.

The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles said usually head coverings are not permitted for license photos, but exceptions are made for religious beliefs.
The ongoing feud between two Dublin gangs has gone on too long and has to be stopped, according to Independent councillor Nial Ring.

The North Inner City councillor has called for an end to the violence following the killings of two men in their 30s in separate incidents last night.

Theres an air of fear around the area. The reaction was initially shock, but whats coming through now is a lot of it is turning to anger, he told Independent.ie.

Where are the resources? This feud has been going on so long, and there are now innocent people being shot down on Sheriff Street.

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Referring to the mistaken identity shooting of Martin ORourke and the killing of Eddie Hutch Snr, he said local people are frustrated with government inaction.

The two parties in negotiation for a government are in talks about the price of water. People are saying, what price for a community living in fear, and what price life itself? The priorities seem to be all wrong, he said.

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Nobody is blaming the guards. Its this circus going on about setting up a government. Meanwhile, people are being shot in their houses, shot in their work places, shot in the street. That is what is angering people now.

Cllr Ring added that one of the victims had been gunned down at work, and the other had been killed in the hallway of his own home in Clondalkin.

He also noted that the shootings last night mark the sixth and seventh murders in 11 weeks.

This gangland thing has gone on too long, it has to be stopped, he said.

He mentioned that his own mother lives just 200 yards from the Sunset House pub, where one of the victims, Michael Barr, had been working as a bartender when he was shot.

Elderly people in particular are nervous, theyve lived in the area all their lives, going to mass, going to the local chemist for their prescriptions.

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There are always people out and about, but I know this morning there will be a lot less, it will be much quieter and more subdued. People will literally be looking over their shoulders.

He described the scene at the Sunset House pub just a day before the killing, when crowds gathered after the 1916 commemorations in nearby Croke Park.

The violence has certainly got to a stage where the ordinary citizen just doesnt know what is going to happen next, and from that point of view, thats what causes the fear and anxiety.

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When you have a guy like Martin ORourke who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and last night at Sunset House the guy was just doing his job. Is anyone safe at this stage? Thats what people are wondering.

Clondalkin TD Gino Kenny (PBP) said people in Clondalkin woke up to the "awful news" of yet another gangland murder.

"It seems to be a catalogue and litany of shootings. People are using dreadful violence against other people.

"Gun crime appears to be out of control," he said.

"My condolences go out to his family but it is also upsetting for the community.

"It is pretty worrying the way gun crime is out of control in Dublin.

"This leaves a stain on the community and society that we live in."

Ciaran Cuffe, Green Party Councillor for Dublins North Inner City, has appealed for a firm focus on door-to-door policing.

Ive just come from the scene of the shooting. The community is in shock, and people want to be assured that they are safe in their homes, he told Independent.ie.

Speaking about the recent tragedies around the city, he said: Theres been a huge amount of bloodshed this year, and its crucial that An Garda Siochana are on top of this, and that they have the resources they need to tackle gangland crime.

He described local people as just trying to get on with their lives amid the rising violence.

There are children going to school, people going to work, and theres a large Garda presence in the area.

But theres also a sense that this part of the city needs a renewed investment in housing, in education, in training to give a very disadvantaged part of the country the support that they deserve.
1978 - Fianna Fail abolishes domestic rates, which had helped to fund water infrastructure.

1985 - Labour Party Tanaiste Dick Spring introduces a local-authority domestic-service levy. But attempts by local authorities to reintroduce water charges are met with opposition, particularly in Dublin. As a result, much of rural Ireland is left paying for water, while Dublin councils decline to bring in charges.

1996 - Labour's Brendan Howlin abolishes water charges completely. Any upgrades to infrastructure are to come from general taxes.

December 2009 - Fianna Fail's Brian Lenihan tells the Dail that preparations are under way for the introduction of water charges. Every house is to get a free allowance in an effort to encourage conservation.

July 2010 - The Fianna Fail-Green-PDs coalition discusses water charges at Cabinet, with a figure of 500 suggested as the average cost per household.

November 2010 - As part of the 85bn EU-IMF bailout, the government commits to introducing water charges by 2013 and to moving responsibility for water infrastructure from local authorities to a new water utility.

February 2011 - In the run-up to the General Election, the Labour Party promises it will stop Fine Gael from introducing water charges.

June 2011 - Newly appointed Fine Gael Environment Minister Phil Hogan announces that every home in the country is to get a water meter ahead of charges being introduced.

April 2012 - The Fine Gael-Labour coalition confirms that Bord Gais will set up and run Irish Water. It is to be funded through charges and 95pc of homes are to have a meter by the end of the year.

July 2013 - Irish Water is officially incorporated as a semi-state company.

December 2013 - Just before the Christmas break, the Water Service (No.2) Bill 2013 is rushed through the Dail in little more than four hours, despite protest from opposition parties.

January 2014 - Irish Water chief executive John Tierney reveals on radio that the company had spent 50m on consultants in the previous 12 months. This sparks outrage.

May 2014 - As opposition to water charges mounts, the Government decides that it will not apply a 50 standing charge, as had previously been flagged.

July 2014 - It is announced that the average yearly water bill for a household with two adults and two children will be 278. Water is to be charged at a rate of 4.88 per 1,000 litres.

The Labour Party pitches for the environment ministry after Phil Hogan is appointed EU Commissioner. Alan Kelly takes over as minister.

October 2014 - Irish Water is again engulfed in controversy after it emerges that staff can earn bonuses of up to 19pc. The 'reward scheme' is later suspended.

Meanwhile, the deadline for householders to register is extended, due to a slow uptake. Tens of thousands of people take part in a massive march against water charges in Dublin.

The junior minister who helped set up Irish Water, Fergus O'Dowd, describes it as "an unmitigated disaster".

"Irish Water has come across as arrogant and uncaring, demanding money and demanding PPS numbers without properly explaining why all of this is necessary," he tells the Irish Independent.

November 2014 - Tanaiste Joan Burton is trapped in her car by water protesters for more than two hours after attending an event in Jobstown.

Alan Kelly announces an overhaul of water charges. Bills are to be capped at 260 - but households can get a 100 water-conservation grant even if they don't pay their bill.

The rate per 1,000 litres of water is reduced to 3.70. However, fewer than one in four households actually has a meter installed.

Mr Kelly also tries to end another controversy over Irish Water's demand for customers' PPS numbers. Irish Water commits to deleting any numbers it collected during registration.

Mr Kelly attempts to quell fears that Irish Water will be sold off by the State, promising that if any future government sought to do so, it would have to put the matter before the people in a plebiscite.

April 2015 - The first Irish Water bills are sent out to 1.5 million households, but just 46pc of people pay up.

July 2015 - Irish Water fails the EU's Market Corporation Test, meaning any money it borrows must go on the Government's balance sheet. Eurostat said the utility could not operate as a standalone entity because the Government exerted "considerable control", not enough people were paying their charges and the prices being levied were too low.

February 2016 - The future of Irish Water and water charges are central to the General Election campaign, with Fianna Fail promising to suspend charges for five years. Fine Gael argues that charges are necessary and the party is fully committed to retaining them. More than half of the TDs elected to the 32nd Dail oppose water charges.

April 2016 - The formation of a new Fine Gael-led minority government hangs in the balance as it rows with Fianna Fail over water charges.
The latest gangland murder in Dublin last night appears to be connected to the feud between the Kinahan and Hutch mobs.

Michael Barr - a senior member of the IRA - was blasted to death as he worked in the Sunset House Pub on Summerhill Parade, which is a short walk from the last needless killing of innocent father-of-three Martin O'Rourke (24) just a week ago.

While it is probably too early to make a definitive judgment on what exactly happened last night, all the indicators at the time of writing are that this is connected to the war between two of Ireland's biggest mobs.

It appears that Barr may have been involved with the associates of murdered Gary Hutch. This is the same crew who carried out the outlandish Regency Hotel attack on Friday, February 5.

He may have organised, with others, the supply of the AK47 assault rifles used in that attack.

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But the problem for gardai, who will begin the process of picking up the pieces of this latest outrage, is which side actually carried out the hit.

Logically it would be first assumed that he was likely murdered by an associate of the Kinahan side. If that is true, there is a really chilling extra dimension to this feud: the Kinahan gang seems to know as much about the investigation as the gardai.

However, there is also the very likely possibility that Barr was suspected of informing on the Hutch side and was the recipient of some summary gangland justice.

Another theory which gardai will be looking at has nothing to do with the Kinahan/Hutch feud - there is a suggestion that Barr may have been killed as part of an internal dispute within the IRA.

Either way, this is yet another escalation of a needless and frightening gang war which has so far claimed the lives of five people, each of whom were gunned down in public places by killers who have obviously no fear of the gardai.

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If Barr's death is indeed part of the escalating feud between the Kinahan gang and associates of Gary Hutch, then he will be the sixth person who has lost his life in this gangland war.

There is a sense of fear in the close-knit community in Dublin's north inner city.

This feeling was perfectly encapsulated by one woman who lives close to last night's murder scene.

The woman said: "People are scared for their lives. These killings are getting closer and things are getting worse. People are very afraid in this area now. Something has to be done."

Michael Barr's death comes less than two weeks after innocent Martin O'Rourke was gunned down in Sheriff Street in a case of mistaken identity.

That scene is less than a mile away from the Sunset Pub where Barr was clinically shot three times by an assassin, including one shot to the head.
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Colette Browne Opinion Every effort must be made to retrieve oral histories of mother and baby home survivors

With three days to go until the Mother and Baby Homes Commission ceases to exist as a legal entity, we are being told that audio recordings of hundreds of witnesses which were deleted may not actually be gone forever. It is another usual twist in a most emotional saga. For decades, survivors of mother and baby homes have been denied a voice and denied autonomy. When they fell pregnant, many through rape and abuse, they were marched to the doors of religious institutions.
Dr Rhona Mahoney is currently Master of Holles St, but under the St Vincents plan, Holles St would devolve not just clinical control, but also control of resources, including staff and funding. Photo: Gareth Chaney, Collins

Inside the beautifully maintained, Georgian-era Provost's House at Trinity College Dublin, a bunch of mostly middle-aged men are fighting over plans to form a Government.

The tiresome theatrics unfolding at No 1 Grafton Street is the political equivalent of watching two bald men fighting over a comb, such is the dearth of difference - despite all the tribalism and testosterone-induced struts - between the former civil war rivals.

Meanwhile, in Holles Street, home to the National Maternity Hospital (NMH), the busiest maternity hospital in Ireland - and one of Europe's busiest - women are giving birth to babies in cramped, inadequate buildings, parts of which date back to the 1700s and all of which lack the palladian glamour of No 1 Grafton Street.

As our Cabinet-in-waiting huffs and puffs over the bungled delivery of Irish Water, the proverbial house is blowing down on the future health, safety, autonomy and dignity of women in Ireland.

The collapse in all but name of plans to co-locate Holles Street on the grounds of St Vincent's Campus in South Dublin is not just staggering.

It is sickening.

First mooted as far back as 1998 and formally announced by the Government three years ago, the re-location of Holles Street to St Vincent's marked one of the most positive developments for the healthcare of women, expectant mothers and their newborns.

Under the plan, a new state-of-the-art, custom-built maternity hospital, with features including a single room for every woman - regardless of whether she is a public or private patient - would be co-located beside St Vincent's, one of the capital's major acute adult hospitals.

The project will be entirely exchequer funded, with some 150m already approved in the HSE's Capital Plan to allow the project to proceed.

The ailing infrastructure at Holles St, which last year handled almost 9,500 births and sees the transfer of some 80 women a year to St Vincent's, is not fit for purpose.

It would take a least 25m in short-term capital funding to keep the NMH in situ on Holles Street.

This runs contrary to the Government's recently published National Maternity Strategy, which wants all of Dublin's maternity hospitals - Holles Street, the Coombe and the Rotunda - co-located with acute adult hospitals to enhance the safety of women and children as they will be treated in close proximity to specialist services which they may need to access.

Co-location also allows for cost reductions as services ranging from catering and cleaning, to laboratory, pathology and diagnostic facilities - as well as consultants and other clinical staff who already work seamlessly across both campuses - are shared.

So, what has gone so catastrophically wrong with the birth of a new era for women's healthcare? The Holles Street/St Vincent's merger has stalled, ostensibly, over a row over corporate and clinical governance.

But is it really a question of governance or control?

Why can't two legal entities, sharing resources and world-class expertise, exist on the same site?

The board of the St Vincent's Hospital Group (SVHG), whose main shareholders are the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity, says that the NMH cannot transfer over to its Elm Park campus unless it dissolves as a legal and clinical entity and come under its governance structures, ie, under its control.

This was never on the cards when the plan was first mooted in 1998 and only surfaced as a key issue around 18 months ago.

For its part, St Vincent's says that it cannot operate a large healthcare campus with "competing systems" of clinical and corporate governance.

However, Holles Street, which operates under the 250-year-old mastership system, says that it was never envisaged that complete control would be surrendered to a limited company (owned by nuns).

Neither did the Government.

As part of the recent National Maternity Strategy, the State endorses the mastership system - which consists of an executive team, including a Chief Financial Officer, Clinical Director, Director of Nursing and Midwifery, as well as a lead obstetrician - to deliver the best clinical outcomes for women and babies.

Holles Street says it cannot devolve control of clinical decision making. It's hard to disagree: if the many maternity scandals of recent decades have proved anything, it is that robust, independent governance is the best protection for birthing women.

Under the St Vincent's plan, Holles Street would devolve not just clinical control, but also control of resources, including staff and funding, to the St Vincent's Group, which has been at odds with the Government after the head of the HSE claimed last year before the Public Accounts Committee that St Vincent's Private Hospital facility had "a parasitic dependence" on the adjacent State-funded public hospital.

I suspect that it may be commercial control and pressures that is driving this drama to deadlock. But the underlying ethos of St Vincent's main shareholders complicates matters.

It is salient to note that the two main prospects for co-location of maternity hospitals with acute adult ones in the capital - St Vincent's and the Mater - are located on lands owned by religious orders. St Vincent's and other Catholic-maintained hospitals, insist they provide medical services in accordance with law, which they no doubt do.

But a woman can't receive a tubal ligation (sterilisation by sealing of her fallopian tubes) at St Vincent's.

And if 2013's difficult birth of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act is anything to go by, the Catholic Church is unlikely to support the development of IVF technologies and fertility treatments, including surrogacy and egg freezing - not to mention stem cell research or transgender reassignment - on their sites.

Such is the complex relationship between Church and State in matters of health and education, matters such as money and ethos will be difficult to resolve.

But our women and their sisters and daughters who will give birth to subsequent generations cannot be sacrificed at the altar of corporate governance or Catholic ethos when the State maintains the public health services on their lands.

If the Holles Street/St Vincent's merger collapses, it will condemn Irish women to another century of unacceptable conditions in childbirth, a barbaric insult to those who gave birth to this Republic.
Premium

John Downing Opinion Pension reforms are dicey territory  but grand plan by minister Heather Humphreys just might win through

Pension system changes all across the western world have a great propensity to infuriate those most feared by politicians: the grey brigade. And when the oldies take to the streets, they usually play for keeps.
Two months ago today, the country went to the polls in the 2016 General Election. The voters' involvement ended on that day, when we exercised our democratic franchise.

From there, it was over to the politicians to elect a government based upon the outcome.

And that's where the trouble started. The election did not throw up a decisive result allowing the straight-forward election of a Taoiseach by the Dail.

Nonetheless, the 158 TDs were left with the privilege and obligation of representing the people who put them in this position of responsibility.

The batch of TDs can be easily divided into two distinct groups - neither of whom are emerging with much credit.

The first group are the fence-sitters, who made it clear from the off that they had no interest in actually providing a government. So the opposition benches are graced by Sinn Fein, the AAA-People Before Profit, the Labour Party, the Social Democrats, the Green Party, Independents for Change and some other Independents.

The second group are the ditherers, who have tried and failed miserably to put a government together by spending two months engaging in talks about talks. This group comprises Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and Independents.

Meanwhile, the public stands aghast and amazed that water charges are somehow the biggest issue facing the country. Really? Not the state of the health service? Not the housing crisis and homelessness? Not the fragile condition of the recovering economy? Not the creation of jobs?

The threat of a second general election lingers heavily. The chances of it throwing up a decisive result are virtually non-existent. Indeed, the only guarantee for candidates appearing on doorsteps is the further ire of the voters.

Irish women let down by maternity hospital row

The stalled relocation of the National Maternity Hospital on the St Vincent's University Hospital Group campus in south Dublin represents a staggering setback for women and infants.

Co-location of maternity services adjacent to an acute adult hospital produces the best clinical outcomes for women and babies: it is the reason why the Government has endorsed co-location in its recent National Maternity Strategy.

St Vincent's is the optimal site for the co-location of the National Maternity Hospital, as the hospitals already share consultants and other clinical staff, not to mention the costs that would be reduced in future as services ranging from catering to pathology are shared between the two entities.

Some 150m has been set aside by the Government to build the new maternity hospital, but the much-needed project has stalled over a dispute between the two hospital entities about governance and control.

The Government endorses the current Mastership system under which all three maternity hospitals in the capital operate. However, St Vincent's wants to bring the National Maternity Hospital under its governance structures.

Whatever the commercial, clinical or ethical issues at stake, the overriding concern must always be the clinical outcomes for women and children in a country whose history is blighted by maternity scandals.

The failure to progress this much-needed merger would represent another dark stain on Ireland's record on women.
Bear Grylls has been branded a hangover of a useless type of masculinity by artist Grayson Perry

Artist Grayson Perry said adventurer Bear Grylls shows the type of qualities that are not useful in modern life

Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry has dismissed adventurer Bear Grylls as a "hangover" of a "useless" type of masculinity.

Perry has turned his attention to masculinity and manly men for a new Channel 4 TV series and said Grylls shows the kind of qualities that are not useful in modern life.

He told the Radio Times: " He celebrates a masculinity that is useless. Try going into an estate agent in Finsbury Park and come out with an affordable flat.

"I want to see Bear Grylls looking for a decent state school for his child!"

Perry said the stoicism that is associated with modern masculinity is damaging and men should instead be more willing to speak about their feelings.

He told the magazine: "Men might be good at taking the risk of stabbing someone or driving a car very fast, but when it comes to opening up, men are useless."

He added: "Masculinity is a decorative feature that is essentially counter-productive."

In Grayson Perry: All Man, the dress-wearing artist puts himself in three ultra-male worlds to see what their masculinity explains about the changing lives and expectations of men in modern Britain.

In the first episode, entitled Hard Man, he will spend time with a group of cage fighters in the North East to explore the vulnerabilities behind the fighters' public personas.

In the next episode, called Top Man, he meets policemen and drug dealers to explore rank and territory and in the last episode, Rational Man, he spends time with traders and hedge fund managers.

Video of the Day

The full interview can be read in the latest issue of Radio Times or at www.radiotimes.com.
London mayor frontrunner Sadiq Khan has refused to address claims made by Lord Sugar that he has "single-handedly wrecked the Labour Party".

The Apprentice host and former Labour peer launched a blistering attack on Mr Khan, branding him and Jeremy Corbyn the "Laurel and Hardy" of politics.

Lord Sugar, who quit Labour to become a non-affiliated peer in protest at what he called its anti-business stance under Ed Miliband, warned Mr Khan would be a disaster for London if he wins the May 5 showdown with Tory Zac Goldsmith.

Labour now welcomes anti-Semites and terrorist sympathisers to its ranks, the TV star warned.

"I would say Khan has single-handedly wrecked the Labour Party, and now he's turning his finely-honed judgment on the great city of London," the peer wrote in The Sunday Times.

Asked about how the article made him feel and what he would say to Lord Sugar, Mr Khan told the Press Association during a campaign visit to Brixton: "I want to be the most pro-business mayor London's ever had. I've got support from across London - chief executives, start-ups, entrepreneurs, as well as bus drivers, cleaners, teachers."

When it was put to him that Lord Sugar is considered to be a very powerful man, and asked if he has worries that his comments will influence people, Mr Khan said: "I've been working my socks off for the last few months speaking to business leaders, those who've started a business, those who run a business, and what's quite clear is they want a mayor of London who's going to be pro-business, who understands the challenges they face, the aspirations that they have."

He said that is one of the reasons he will set up a skills-for-Londoners programme.

"That's one of the reasons why I think it's really important that we stay in the European Union," he added.

Pushed on whether he was going to comment on what Lord Sugar wrote, Mr Khan said: "I'm going to have a positive campaign for the next 10 days like I've had for the last three months, and hopefully Londoners will choose the most pro-business mayor ever."

Video of the Day

In the article, Lord Sugar wrote: "Khan ran Ed Miliband's leadership campaign. He was in the room when Miliband turned on people like me, attacking the country's largest employers as 'predators', as well as Corbyn, who famously called Britain's businesses the real enemy.

"Khan was one of the most senior Labour politicians to nominate Corbyn for leader. Without Khan's endorsement, Corbyn would never have made it onto the ballot.

"Under Corbyn, the lunatics have truly taken over the asylum. His ambition is to drag Britain back to the 1970s - union blackmail and three-day weeks, when our best and brightest were leaving the country in droves. Militants, Trots, anti-Semites and terrorist sympathisers all seem to have been welcomed into Labour with open arms," the peer said.

Lord Sugar said Mr Khan will not be independent of the Labour leader, as he accused Mr Corbyn of being on friendly terms with terror groups like Hamas.

Mr Khan has repeatedly condemned Tory claims he showed poor judgment in sharing platforms with extremists.
At least 237 people have been arrested during protests in Cairo against a government decision to hand over control of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, according to rights groups.

Rights lawyers Gamal Eid and Mohammed Abdel-Aziz, members of the Front for the Defence of Egyptian Protesters, said that all those detained were in custody by midnight on Monday when the group made its last tally.

The number of those still held could be lower since police have been intermittently releasing the detainees, they said.

It is unclear if anyone has been referred to prosecutors.

Thousands of police were deployed across much of Cairo on Monday to stifle plans for mass demonstrations called to protest against the government's decision to surrender the islands of Tiran and Sanafir.

Faced with the police's overwhelming numbers, protesters resorted to staging flash demonstrations in Cairo, drawing tear gas from the riot police.

The arrests, mostly in the Egyptian capital but also some in its twin city of Giza, followed the detention of nearly 100 in pre-dawn house raids and round-ups at cafes in Cairo. Those arrests mainly targeted rights activists and journalists.

Amnesty International criticised the arrests and the use of violence against protesters in a statement on Tuesday.

Magdalena Mughrabi, of the group's Middle East and North Africa section, said: "The Egyptian authorities appear to have orchestrated a heavy-handed and ruthlessly efficient campaign to squash this protest before it even began.

"Mass arrests, road blocks and huge deployments of security forces made it impossible for peaceful demonstrations to take place."

Authorities say the objective of the large deployment of police was to protect vital installations and Egyptians celebrating a holiday marking the final Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982.

Egypt says the islands of Tiran and Sanafir at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba off the southern coast of Sinai belong to Saudi Arabia, which placed them under Cairo's protection in 1950 because it feared Israel might attack them.

The announcement that they would be returned to the Saudis was made during a visit to Egypt this month by Saudi Arabia's King Salman as the kingdom announced a multibillion-dollar aid package to Egypt.

The timing fuelled rumours that the islands were sold off.

The transfer has sparked the largest protests since President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi assumed power in June 2014.

On April 15 some 2,000 protesters gathered in Cairo to shout slogans against him for giving up the islands, calling on him to step down.

Mr El-Sissi has dismissed the controversy and insists Egypt has not surrendered an "inch" of its territory.
Police stand guard on the road leading to the Spanish embassy in Praia, Cape Verde, April 26, 2016

Eleven people have been shot dead in Cape Verde.

The dead included eight soldiers, a local civilian and two Spanish citizens, the minister of Internal Administration for the archipelago off the African coast said in a statement.

The men were killed at a telecommunications site at Monte Tchota, a forested area on Santiago island about 27 km (17 miles) north of the capital, Praia, Minister Paulo Rocha said.

"A soldier assigned to the military team itself is missing, and there are strong indications that he was responsible in the events," said Rocha, adding that the victims were 20 to 51 years old.

Rocha said it was assumed personal motivations were behind the killings, ruling out an attack against the government, and called for calm.

The Spaniards were telecommunications technicians working at the site and the local civilian was a co-worker, the minister said.

The minister said there were no indications of links to drug trafficking.

Cape Verde's battle against gangs smuggling Latin American cocaine to Europe has led to a series of reprisal shootings. The former Portuguese colony is an Atlantic Ocean archipelago of 500,000 people off the northwestern coast of Africa

Nine rifles were taken but were later recovered in a vehicle in Praia's Cittadella neighborhood, Rocha said.
An unidentified co-worker of Xulhaz Mannan cries as she returns from the crime scene in Dhaka, Bangladesh (AP)

Bangladesh's prime minister has pledged to hunt down and prosecute the attackers who fatally stabbed a gay rights activist and his friend in Dhaka.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina blamed the main opposition party and allied militants for Monday night's killings.

However, on Tuesday a different group of radical Islamists claimed responsibility for the attack, raising doubts about her repeated assurances that authorities have the security situation under control.

The stabbings in Bangladesh's capital were the latest in a series of deadly attacks against outspoken atheists, moderates and foreigners.

The victims of the most recent attack were identified as US Agency for International Development employee Xulhaz Mannan, who previously worked as a US Embassy protocol officer, and his friend, actor Tanay Majumder.

Mr Mannan, a cousin of former foreign minister Dipu Moni of the governing party, was also an editor of Bangladesh's first gay rights magazine, Roopbaan. Mr Majumder sometimes helped with the publishing, local media said.

Ansar-al Islam, the Bangladeshi branch of al Qaida on the Indian subcontinent, claimed responsibility in a Twitter message for what it called a "blessed attack".

It said the two were killed because they were "pioneers of practising and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh" and were "working day and night to promote homosexuality ... with the help of their masters, the US crusaders and its Indian allies".

US Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the "barbaric" murders in a statement on Monday and said the US government would support Bangladeshi efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Police said no arrests have been made in the attack, which involved at least five young men who posed as courier service employees to gain access to Mr Mannan's apartment building.

After the attack, a crowd in the area and patrolling police chased the attackers, senior police official Shibli Norman said.

"Some people chased the attackers, thinking they were robbers," but did not catch anyone, Mr Norman said.

A policeman briefly caught one of the attackers but was injured when the man hit him with a sharp weapon and fled, he added.

A security guard working at the building said he was injured when one of the men hit him with a knife while fleeing.

Crime scene investigators recovered a mobile phone and bag apparently left by the attackers.

The national police chief, AKM Shahidul Hoque, expressed confidence the group would be caught.

"We have found some evidence," he said.

Sheikh Hasina quickly blamed the radical Jamaat-e-Islami group and its political ally, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

"Everybody knows who is behind these killings," she told party MPs in a meeting on Monday night after the attacks, which came just days after a professor of English was hacked to death on the street of a north-western city.

Repeating the government's usual accusations, Sheikh Hasina said the opposition was orchestrating the attacks to destabilise the country and upset her secular rule, while also retaliating against the government's efforts to prosecute war crimes committed during the country's 1971 war of independence.

The opposition denies the allegations, saying they are being made into scapegoats for her failure to maintain security and placate the country's desire for Islamic rule.

The US government and numerous rights groups have lambasted Sheikh Hasina's government for failing to keep civil society safe.

Earlier this month, the US said it was considering granting refuge to a select number of secular bloggers facing imminent danger in Bangladesh.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said that remained an option, while describing Mr Mannan as a "beloved member of our embassy family and a courageous advocate" for gay rights, and pledging US support to Bangladeshi authorities "to ensure that the cowards who did this are held accountable".

Amnesty International noted that Bangladesh considers homosexual relations a crime, making it harder for gay activists to report any threats against them.

The group's South Asia director, Champa Patel, said the attack "underscores the appalling lack of protection being afforded to a range of peaceful activists in the country".
The discovery could help scientists identify the best eggs to use for implantation

People who say they have experienced "fireworks" in the bedroom may not be completely exaggerating.

Scientists have tracked the moment of conception and have captured "r adiant zinc fireworks" when sperm meets egg.

A team of US researchers found that h uman life begins in a flash of light as an explosion of tiny sparks erupts from the egg at the exact moment of conception.

The size of these "sparks" is a direct measure of the quality of the egg and its ability to develop into an embryo, they added.

The scientists from Northwestern University in Chicago said that the discovery could help fertility doctors decide which are the best eggs to implant for IVF (in vitro fertilisation).

"This means if you can look at the zinc spark at the time of fertilisation, you will know immediately which eggs are the good ones to transfer in in vitro fertilisation (IVF)," said Teresa Woodruff, one of the study's two senior authors and an expert in ovarian biology at Northwestern.

"It's a way of sorting egg quality in a way we've never been able to assess before."

The study, published in Scientific Reports, found that a s the zinc is released from the egg, it binds to small molecule probes, which emit light in fluorescence microscopy experiments.

The rapid zinc release can be followed as a flash of light that appears as a spark, the authors said.

Co-author Dr Eve Feinberg said: "This is an important discovery because it may give us a non-invasive and easily visible way to assess the health of an egg and eventually an embryo before implantation.

"There are no tools currently available that tell us if it's a good quality egg. Often we don't know whether the egg or embryo is truly viable until we see if a pregnancy ensues.

"That's the reason this is so transformative. If we have the ability up front to see what is a good egg and what's not, it will help us know which embryo to transfer, avoid a lot of heartache and achieve pregnancy much more quickly."
An MP wants emergency vehicles to be discouraged from using sirens after midnight

Loud conversations on telephones and emergency vehicles using their sirens after midnight should be discouraged to help create quiet towns and cities, an MP has said.

Conservative Mark Pritchard also wants "polite notices" on public transport to suggest people set their phones on vibrate or silent, while ministers should work with manufacturers to stop doors on vehicles making a noise when they are shut.

The MP for t he Wrekin, Shropshire, suggested other ways to reduce noise pollution, including Government departments working to encourage "low noise tyres" for vehicles and "silent road surfaces".

He added there should be a "national conversation about how we make this country quieter".

Environment minister Rory Stewart said towns and cities should be encouraged to take the lead in "creating a culture around tranquillity ", as MPs debated the concept of quiet cities.

Moving the Westminster Hall debate, Mr Pritchard said: "The right to some respite from noise, constant noise, needs to be a central feature of Government policy, part of its strategy, not a by-product of another Government policy, a consequence of that policy.

"On my own observations, I think the Government should work with motor manufacturers to encourage all cars and vehicles to have linings which stop their doors making noises when they are slammed shut.

"A simple rubber lining would make a huge difference - metal on metal makes noise.

"And even slamming doors in this own House of Commons - where the doors are lined the doors close quietly, where they're not lined they slam and they create noise pollution.

"Emergency vehicles should reduce using their very loud sirens after midnight. The blue flashing lights alert people enough of their presence in the dark and discretion should be allowed.

"Even walking down the streets here in Westminster, sometimes the ambulances that are going out to save lives - and we respect that and we recognise that and they have to get through heavy traffic - some of the sirens are so ear-piercing compared to other emergency services.

"For example, the ambulances do seem - anecdotally - to be far louder than the police and perhaps there's a reason for that but do they need to be used after midnight when the blue lights can be seen? That is a point of public debate I think we should have."

Mr Pritchard went on: "Perhaps on public transport systems should we set polite notices - we can't compel people to do things - but can we encourage people through polite notices asking people to set their phones on to vibrate or silent?"

He added: " I think there needs to be a national conversation about how we make this country quieter, how we make our cities quieter and towns quieter.

"Even polite notices about loud conversations on telephones, which I'm sure has been an irritant to us all, and I confess I've probably done it myself, I need to do it less.

"Now I've made this speech I'll probably do it less."

Replying for the Government, Mr Stewart said: "I really would encourage cities and towns around the country to think seriously about the way in which different towns ranging from... Hertford to Brisbane have managed to really create a culture around tranquillity, the ways in which British towns and cities could take the lead in creating a culture around tranquillity.

"And in doing so accept that from the very beginnings of the human language perhaps the most fundamental word - spiritually, emotionally, physically - has been the concept of peace."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday condemned the execution of a Canadian hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines, calling it "an act of cold-blooded murder."

John Ridsdel (68) a former mining executive, was captured by Islamist militants along with three other people in September 2015 while on vacation on a Philippine island.

The Philippine army said a severed head was found on a remote island yesterday, five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by militants, who had threatened to execute one of the four captives.

"Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers and this unnecessary death.

"This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage," Mr Trudeau said.

Mr Trudeau declined to respond when asked whether the Canadian government had tried to negotiate with the captors or pay a ransom, or whether it was trying to secure the release of the other Canadian being held, Robert Hall.

The captives included Mr Ridsdel and Mr Hall, along with one Norwegian man and a Filipino woman, who had appealed in a video for their families and governments to secure their release.

Residents found the head in the centre of Jolo town. An army spokesman said two men on a motorcycle were seen dropping a plastic bag containing the severed head.

A Philippine army spokesman said al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of four captives yesterday if the 300 million pesos (5.7m) ransom for each of them was not paid by 3pm local time.
It may come as a shock to owners, but dogs hate being cuddled, a study has shown.

Animal psychologists say dogs feel stressed and unhappy when they are embraced by their owners, because it stops them being able to run away.

In a study which analysed 250 pictures of dogs as they were being hugged, eight out of 10 animals looked visibly uncomfortable.

Experts at The Kennel Club, and Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, also agreed that owners should not treat their dogs like children, because most pets did not like to be cuddled.

The new study was carried out by Dr Stanley Coren, a canine expert and professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia.

He analysed images of dogs being hugged by adults and children he found on the Internet, looking for signs of stress.

At an extreme end, when a dog is especially anxious it bares its teeth or may bite, but Dr Coren said there are 'subtler indicators' that it may be uncomfortable.

Signs of stress include the dog folding its ears down, half-moon eyes or turning its head away to avoid eye contact. If the dog has its eyes closed or is licking his lips it could also be a sign of anxiety. Yawning or raising one paw is another warning sign.

Dr Coren found that in 81.6 per cent of the photographs the dogs had at least one sign of discomfort, stress, or anxiety. Only 7.6 per cent of the photographs showed comfortable dogs whilst the remaining 10.8 per cent were either neutral or ambiguous.

Dogs are technically cursorial animals, which is a term that indicates that they are designed for swift running, said Dr Coren wrote in an article in Psychology Today.

That implies that in times of stress or threat the first line of defence that a dog uses is not his teeth, but rather his ability to run away.

Behaviorists believe that depriving a dog of that course of action by immobilising him with a hug can increase his stress level and, if the dog's anxiety becomes significantly intense, he may bite.

The clear recommendation to come out of this research is to save your hugs for your two-footed family members and lovers.

It is clearly better from the dog's point of view if you express your fondness for your pet with a pat, a kind word, and maybe a treat'.

The advice was also repeated by animal experts in Britain who recommend calm stroking of pets instead of a cuddle.

Claire Matthews, Senior Canine Behaviourist at Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, says: A hug might be a normal social greeting for humans but it isnt for a dog.

Subtle stress signals can be missed when youre hugging your pet and this could lead to a negative reaction, so its about recognising when your dog is uncomfortable.

Some people think that giving their dog a hug is a nice thing to do, but the reality is that a family pet will often tolerate a hug but doesnt like it.

When you hug a dog it usually show signs of stress because it invades their personal space  a person putting two arms around the neck of a dog can be interpreted as being intimidating and means that it cant move away from the situation it is uncomfortable with.

Caroline Kisko, Kennel Club Secretary added: Dogs are often considered part of the family, however they are not human and may therefore react differently to certain interactions such as hugging.

On the whole dogs are sociable animals and love interacting with people, but any action that restricts a dogs movement could make them uncomfortable and it is important for an owner to recognise the signs of stress or anxiety.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
A Dutch dentist has been jailed in France for eight years for causing horrific injuries to his patients.

Jacobus van Nierop, (51), was also banned from practising as a dentist and fined 10,500 for pulling out healthy teeth and leaving his patients with injuries including broken jaws, recurrent abscesses and septicaemia.

The prosecutor in the case, Lucile Jaillon-Bru told the court in Nevers that Van Nierop - who called himself Mark - "took pleasure at causing pain".

Evidence in the court heard that the dentist had conducted "useless and painful procedures" on about 100 patients.

The court heard that Sylviane Boulesteix, 65, went to have braces fitted in 2012.

She said: "He gave me seven or eight injections, and pulled out eight teeth in one go. I was gushing blood for three days."

Bernard Hugon, 80, said the dentist left "pieces of flesh hanging everywhere" after tearing out a tooth.

"Every time, he would give us what he called 'a little prick' and we were asleep, knocked out," said Nicole Martin, a retired teacher who lost several teeth to abscesses caused by the gory operations.

"When it was over, we would find a Post-it note saying to come back for an appointment the next day or the day after," she added.

The accused remained mainly mute during the trial, replying "no comment" to most questions.
A woman is facing life behind bars for stabbing to death a teenager in a petty row over pasta.

Maxine Benson, 33, launched her attack on 18-year-old Alfie Stone after making accusations that he or his older brother had eaten her food.

Following an Old Bailey trial, Benson was found guilty of murdering Alfie outside a Tesco Express in High Road, Ickenham, west London, on November 9 last year.

The jury cleared Steven Hawgood, 29, and his girlfriend, Corinne Cripps, 28, of murder. They were sent back out to continuing deliberating on an alternative manslaughter charge for them.

The court had heard how Benson was captured on CCTV wielding the knife and was also witnessed by members of the public who rushed to give Alfie first aid after the attack.

Alfie died within hours of the stabbing. A post-mortem examination gave the cause of death as blood loss and a stab wound to the heart. There were no signs on his body of defensive wounds. All the defendants lived close to where the attack took place.
A same-sex American-Spanish couple have won a high-profile custody fight against a Thai surrogate mother who decided she wanted to keep the baby when she found out they were gay.

Bangkok's Juvenile and Family Court ruled that the legal guardian of the child, named Carmen, is the girl's American biological father, Gordon Lake, his lawyer Rachapol Sirikulchit said.

Mr Lake and his partner, Spaniard Manuel Santos, both 41, have been stuck in Thailand since launching their legal battle after Carmen was born in January 2015.

Mr Santos emerged from the court smiling and with tears in his eyes.

He told reporters: "We won. We are really happy... This nightmare is going to end soon."

"After 15 months, Carmen will fly to Spain," where the couple lives, Mr Santos added.

The case was seen as complicated by the fact that Thai law does not recognise same-sex marriages and also by a new law that bans commercial surrogacy, which took effect after Carmen's birth.

When Carmen was born, Thai surrogate Patidta Kusolsang handed over the baby to Mr Lake and Mr Santos, who left the hospital with the infant.

However, they said the mother then changed her mind and refused to sign the documents to allow Carmen to get a passport so they could leave Thailand.

Mr Lake, who is from New Jersey, is Carmen's biological father, while the egg came from an anonymous donor.

The couple were told the surrogate mother had thought they were an "ordinary family and that she worried for Carmen's upbringing", according to a message Mr Lake posted on a crowdfunding site that has raised 36,000 US dollars (24,700) to help cover the costs of the trial and staying in Thailand.

Mr Lake has said he does not know why the surrogate claims she did not realise he was gay.

He said he was clear about that from the start with their surrogacy agency, New Life, which has branches in several countries.

The Bangkok-based New Life office has closed since commercial surrogacy was outlawed in Thailand in July 2015, following several high-profile scandals. There was a grace period provided for parents whose babies were already on the way.

Carmen has lived with the couple since her birth.

They also have a toddler son, Alvaro, who was born to a surrogate mother in India with Mr Santos the biological father.

The couple said in a Facebook post that the family will live in Valencia, Spain, but that they love Thailand and plan to come back often.

The post said: "Carmen is half Thai and we are very very proud of that.

"Right now, we just want to go back to our normal lives and try to rebuild what we can, so that Alvaro and Carmen can have the wonderful lives that they were always meant to have."
Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said citizens should assume that those responsible are armed and dangerous (AP)

Marijuana, including a grow-house sheltering hundreds of plants, was found at some of the crime scenes after the killing of eight people in rural Ohio.

The victims - all members of an extended family - were fatally shot in the head, including a young mother whose newborn baby was sleeping beside her on Friday morning. That baby, another infant and a toddler were spared.

The victims were remembered on Monday as loyal and caring people. More than a dozen counsellors, clergy and psychologists arrived at the local high school to help friends and neighbours handle their grief.

Dana Rhoden, who was killed along with her three children, her ex-husband, and three other relatives, "always wanted what was best for her kids," Scioto Valley Local School District Superintendent Todd Burkitt said.

The youngest victim, Christopher Rhoden Jr, was a 16-year-old at Piketon High School, which has 530 students.

"He was the first one that if he thought that someone wasn't being treated fairly or felt like someone wasn't being treated appropriately, he would speak up about it," Mr Burkitt said.

The teenager's siblings - 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden and 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden - had also attended the school.

All eight post-mortems have been completed, and while authorities have released no details about a motive, the Attorney General's office did confirm that one of the victims had received a threat via Facebook.

Attorney General Mike DeWine called the killings "a sophisticated operation", and Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said citizens should assume that those responsible are armed and dangerous.

Extensive marijuana-growing operations are not uncommon in sparsely populated rural southern Ohio, an economically distressed corner of Appalachia. Two of the four homes that became crime scenes are within walking distance of each other along a remote, winding road leading into wooded hills from a rural highway. The others are nearby.

Piketon - about 60 miles south of Columbus and 90 miles east of Cincinnati - is in Pike County, which is home to just 28,000 people and has an unemployment rate of 8.6%, considerably higher than Ohio's rate of 5.1%.

More than 22,000 marijuana plants were seized in Pike County in 2010, and while authorities made no arrests, they said they found two abandoned camps where Mexican nationals apparently stayed.

In 2012, another 1,200 plants were seized in Pike County in an operation connected to a Mexican drug cartel, the Attorney General's office said. Seizures continued in 2013 and 2014 in the county.

The victims have been identified as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr; his ex-wife, 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; their three children; Christopher Rhoden Sr's brother, 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; their cousin, 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; and 20-year-old Hannah Gilley, whose six-month old son with "Frankie" was unharmed.

Mr DeWine said the state's crime lab was looking at 18 pieces of evidence from a DNA and ballistic standpoint, and that five search warrants have been executed. More than 100 tips have been given to investigators, and a Cincinnati-area businessman offered a 25,000 US dollar reward for details leading to those responsible.
The Syrian government cut deals with Isil to help the jihadists earn more than 35m a month from the sale of oil, documents recovered from a US and British raid on a key commander have revealed.

Thousands of spreadsheets and accounts kept by the group's oil boss, Abu Sayyaf, which were retrieved in the biggest intelligence raid in US Special Forces' history last year, reveal how the two sides forged a mutually beneficial arrangement, despite being at war with one another.

Isil fighters captured some of the state's best-producing oil fields in eastern Syria in 2013.

Claims were reported two years ago that the regime had been purchasing oil from the jihadists, but the documents, which have been seen by the 'Wall Street Journal', show the scale of the collusion.

At the height of production, in late 2014 to early 2015, Isil recorded $40.7m (35m) profit each month - the lion's share of which was made from sales to the Syrian government, according to the US Treasury Department.

One memo, itemised No. 156 and dated February 11, 2015, sent from Isil's treasury to Abu Sayyaf's office, requested guidance on establishing investment relationships with businessmen linked to the Assad regime.

The document cited existing agreements allowing trucks and pipeline transit from government-controlled fields through Isil-controlled territory.

Known only by his nom de guerre, Abu Sayyaf, a Tunisian who moved to Iraq after Saddam Hussein's fall, became close to a number of senior Sunni militants during the US invasion, including Isil founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

After Baghdadi established his 'caliphate' in June 2014, Abu Sayyaf was tasked with running its oil business from headquarters in the al-Omar field in Deir Ezzour near the Iraqi border. The documents reveal how, instead of getting rid of state employees at the fields after they had taken them over, Abu Sayyaf offered them handsome salaries to stay - sometimes up to four times the national salary.

According to the accounts of people of worked for him, he was a much-feared boss who would threaten his some 152 employees with beheadings or exile to Iraq if they disobeyed him. However, his work seems to have brought results and he became instrumental in helping it become the world's wealthiest terror group.

Spreadsheets show Isil's natural resource revenues in the six months to February 2015 amounted to $289.5m - some 70pc of which came from Abu Sayyaf's oil fields.

When the US-led coalition became aware of the huge profit-making operation, they began conducting air raids on its makeshift refineries.

The huge profits continued until Abu Sayyaf's death in a raid carried out by US Special Forces and the British SAS on his home in May 2015. ( Daily Telegraph, London)

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Turkey has deported more than 3,300 foreigners suspected of links to jihadi groups, particularly Isil militants, and another 41,000 foreigners have been barred from entering the country as part of its fight against the militant group, a top official said yesterday.

Turkish profiling teams have also interviewed 9,500 people upon their arrival in Turkey, Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told reporters. Some 2,000 of them were denied entry as a result.

Around 2,770 suspects, including 1,232 foreigners, have been caught in police sweeps and 954 of them are being prosecuted, Mr Kalin said.

He didn't give further details. Turkish officials have refused to provide a breakdown of the jihadi suspects by nationality or give details on the countries they have been deported back to.

Separately, Turkey's state-news agency, citing unnamed military sources, said close to 900 alleged Isil militants have been killed since January in Turkish artillery and air strikes against the group in Syria.

The agency said 492 of the militants were killed in air raids while another 370 were killed by artillery fire. The agency didn't specify how the figures were obtained and it wasn't possible to verify them independently.

Turkey, long accused of turning a blind eye to the extremists crossing into Syria, has now taken a larger role in the fight against Isil, opening a key air base in southern Turkey to the US-led coalition fighting the extremists and reinforcing its border to prevent infiltrations.

Four deadly bomb attacks in Turkey since July have been blamed on Isil.

Meanwhile, Turkey's cabinet met yesterday to discuss new measures to try to stop intensified rocket barrages on its frontier by Isil militants in Syria.

Rockets killed two people on Sunday in the Turkish border city of Kilis, where refugees from Syria's war outnumber locals, raising to 17 the death toll there from such attacks this year, 'Hurriyet' newspaper reported yesterday.

Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan travelled to Kilis on Sunday after the first volley struck, and was meeting with officials in the governor's office when another bombardment sent a rocket crashing into the courtyard of a mosque about 100 metres away.

"Unfortunately, there is a power vacuum across our borders," Mr Akdogan said. "Terrorist organisations run wild."

The border area is the site of frequent battles by Isil, US-backed Kurdish fighters and other rebels fighting to depose President Bashar al-Assad. Isil and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front are excluded from a brittle two-month Syrian truce.
Parents of some of the 43 missing students during a press conference (AP)

The parents of 43 missing students have accused Mexico's government of lying to them, planting evidence and not adequately investigating the case.

The parents' comments came a day after a group of international experts issued a report criticising the investigation into the students, who disappeared in September 2014.

The report said suspects appear to have been tortured and key pieces of evidence related to the supposed burning of the students' bodies were not correctly investigated.

The 43 students at the radical teachers' college of Ayotzinapa have not been heard from since they were taken by local police in late 2014 in the city of Iguala in southern Guerrero state.

The government says corrupt police turned them over to a drug gang, which killed them and burned their remains. Parents reject that conclusion and experts say there is no proof of it.

Parent Mario Cesar Gonzalez said prosecutors had lied and planted a bag of charred bone fragments in a river near the dump where the students were allegedly burned. Tests have linked the fragments to only one of the students, with a possible link to another.

The group of experts said the bags of bone fragments were found at a different spot and time than authorities had said, and that outside experts were not immediately allowed access to the site.

"They were the ones who planted the evidence in the San Juan river," said Mr Gonzalez, the father of missing student Cesar Manuel Gonzalez.

Cristina Bautista, whose son Benjamin Ascencio is among the missing students, said the "government started lying to us from the start".

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expert group said a study of 17 of the approximately 123 suspects arrested in the case showed signs of beatings, including, in some cases, dozens of bruises, cuts and scrapes.

Human rights activist Mario Patron of the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez centre said the torture allegations "endanger efforts to find the truth".

The Mexican government recently released documents suggesting investigations had been opened against police and military personnel, but authorities have not answered requests about whether anyone has been arrested or charged.

Mexico's deputy attorney general for human rights, Eber Betanzos, said authorities were investigating complaints filed by 31 people who said they had been tortured.

Mr Betanzos called the case "the most exhaustive investigation in the history of Mexican law enforcement".

The group of experts also complained that the government was slow to deliver some of the evidence it had asked for; it criticised government prosecutors' investigations as flawed and incomplete.

The report said the roadblocks set up on local highways around the city of Iguala on the night of the disappearances were far more extensive than previously thought. The roadblocks were apparently coordinated by the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel to trap rivals; the gang may have thought the students were part of a rival cartel.

The report criticised the forensics investigations of human remains and evidence of fire at the dump in the town of Cocula, Guerrero, saying that prosecutors had provided little evidence there ever could have been a fire a big enough at the site.

President Enrique Pena Nieto wrote in his Twitter account that the federal attorney general's office "will analyse the whole report, to aid in its investigations".
Anders Behring Breivik is held in solitary confinement in a three-cell complex where he can play video games, watch TV and exercise (AP)

The Norwegian government is appealing against the Oslo district court's ruling that authorities violated the human rights of mass killer Anders Behring Breivik.

Justice minister Anders Anundsen said the government "disagrees" with the April 20 ruling that said the isolation of Breivik, who is in prison for killing 77 people in a bomb-and-gun massacre in 2011, breaches the European Convention on Human Rights.

"I have today asked the Office of the Attorney General to appeal against the verdict," he said in a statement, adding that further details about the government's decision would be released within days.

Last month, Breivik, 37, had sued the government, saying his isolation from other prisoners, frequent strip searches and the fact that he was often handcuffed had violated his human rights.

He is held in solitary confinement in a three-cell complex where he can play video games, watch TV and exercise.

During a four-day hearing at Skien prison in southern Norway, where Breivik is serving his sentence, he also complained about the quality of the prison food, having to eat with plastic utensils and not being able to communicate with sympathisers.

The government rejected his complaints, saying he was treated humanely despite the severity of his crimes and that he must be separated from other inmates for safety reasons.

"The prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment represents a fundamental value in a democratic society," the court said in its ruling.

"This applies no matter what - also in the treatment of terrorists and killers."

It also ordered the government to pay Breivik's legal costs of 331,000 kroner (27,800).

However, it dismissed Breivik's claim that his right to respect for private and family life was violated by restrictions on contacts with other right-wing extremists.
The Philippine military has come under increased pressure to rescue more than 20 foreign hostages after their Muslim extremist captors beheaded a Canadian man.

However, troops are facing a dilemma in how to succeed while ensuring the safety of the remaining captives.

Abu Sayyaf gunmen beheaded John Ridsdel in the densely forested province of Sulu on Monday, sparking condemnations and prompting Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau to pledge to help the Philippines pursue the extremists behind the "heinous act".

Mr Ridsdel's head, which was placed in a plastic bag, was dumped by militants in Jolo town, about 950 kilometres (590 miles) south of Manila, where Abu Sayyaf and allied gunmen are believed to hold 22 foreign hostages from six countries.

It is a politically-sensitive time to carry out major offensives at the height of campaigning in a closely-fought race by four contenders in May 9 presidential elections.

President Benigno Aquino III and opposition politicians have had differences over the handling of the Muslim insurgencies and the poverty and social problems that foster it.

Analyst Julkipli Wadi said: "The pressure on the armed forces is really immense. The approach is still conventional and largely detached from the overall political question."

The Philippine military and police said "there will be no let-up" in the effort to combat the militants and find the hostages, even though they have had little success in safely securing their freedom.

Many hostages were believed to have been released due to huge ransom payments.

"The full force of the law will be used to bring these criminals to justice," the military and police said in a joint statement.

About 2,000 military personnel, backed by rocket-firing helicopters and artillery, were involved in the manhunt for the militants, military officials said.

While under pressure to produce results, government troops have been ordered to carry out assaults without endangering the remaining hostages, including via air strikes and artillery fire, a combat officer said.

In past militant videos posted online, Mr Ridsdel and fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipino woman Marites Flor were shown sitting in a clearing with heavily armed militants standing behind them.

In some of the videos, a militant aimed a long knife at Mr Ridsdel's neck as he pleaded for his life. Two black flags with Islamic State-like markings hung in the backdrop of lush foliage.

The four were seized from a marina on southern Samal Island and taken by boat to Sulu, where Abu Sayyaf gunmen continue to hold several captives, including a Dutch bird watcher who was kidnapped more than three years ago.

In Canada, Mr Ridsdel was remembered as a brilliant, compassionate man with a talent for friendship.

"He could bridge many communities, many people, many situations and circumstances and environments in a very gentle way," said Gerald Thurston, a lifelong friend of the former mining executive and journalist who grew up with him in Yorkton, Saskatchewan.

Mr Thurston said Mr Ridsdel is survived by two adult daughters from a former marriage.

Abu Sayyaf began a series of large-scale abductions after it emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a separatist rebellion by minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation's south.

It has been weakened by more than a decade of Philippine offensives but has endured largely as a result of large ransom and extortion earnings.

The United States and the Philippines have both listed the group as a terrorist organisation.
Prince's sister said the superstar musician had no known will as she filed paperwork asking a court in Minneapolis to appoint a special administrator to oversee his estate.

Tyka Nelson, Prince's only surviving full sibling, said in the court filing that immediate action was necessary to manage Prince's business interests following his death last week.

The size of Prince's fortune is unclear, although he made hundreds of millions of dollars for record companies, concert venues and others during his career, and his estate included about 27 million US dollars (18.5 million) in property.

Ms Nelson asked that Bremer Trust, a corporate trust company, be named administrator of the estate. The court documents say Bremer Bank provided financial services to Prince for many years.

The filing comes less than a week after the pop star died at his home in suburban Minneapolis.

The outpouring of grief and nostalgia prompted fans to buy 2.3 million of his songs in three days.

Prince owned a dozen properties in and around his famous Paisley Park complex in suburban Minneapolis - mostly rural pieces of land and some houses for family members.

Public records show those properties were worth about 27 million dollars in 2016.

"He was as big as they get," said Mark Roesler, chief executive of CMG Worldwide, which handles licensing for the estates of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and other late stars.

He estimated Prince's post-mortem earnings will match top-earning dead celebrities like Elvis Presley, whose estate made 55 million dollars (37 million) in 2015, according to Forbes magazine.

"Will there be a business built up around Prince 60 years from now like James Dean? The answer is unequivocally yes," Mr Roesler said.

If Prince filed a will or created a trust, heirs to his future fortune would be known. But no such documents have yet turned up.

Under Minnesota law, a person can file a will with a probate court in secret. If Prince did so, the fact one exists would become public once a death certificate is filed, but the medical examiner has not yet issued one for Prince.

An autopsy was conducted on Friday and his remains were cremated on Saturday.

L Londell McMillan, a long-time lawyer and former manager of the superstar, declined to comment on Monday about whether the entertainer had a will or any other particulars regarding his estate, but added: "I want to make sure his legacy is respected and protected no matter what role I play."

Mr McMillan was Michael Jackson's lawyer and played a role in his estate, as well as those of rapper Notorious B.I.G. and Sammy Davis Jr.

Several other lawyers who have done work for Prince in the past - including Alan Eidsness, who handled his 2006 divorce from Manuela Testolini Nelson - said they were not handling his estate.

Wealthy people usually create trusts to avoid the public spectacle of probate court, and it is probable Prince did so, according to Irwin Feinberg, a Los Angeles trust and probate lawyer.

Prince was not married and had no known living children.

Ms Nelson is his only full sibling, although he has five half-siblings who could share in his estate if he has no will.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the civil war and more than two million have been forced to flee their homes

South Sudan's rebel leader Riek Machar has returned to the capital Juba to become vice president under a peace deal aimed at ending two-and-a-half years of civil war.

Mr Machar briefly addressed the press after landing at Juba International Airport, where doves were released and a welcoming crowd waited.

He then drove to the presidential palace to be sworn in as First Vice President to President Salva Kiir, under the agreement signed eight months ago amid intense international pressure.

Mr Machar flew in from Gambella, Ethiopia, just across the border from his rebel headquarters in South Sudan.

"I'm happy to be back," he told reporters at the airport.

"The war was vicious. We have lost a lot of people in it and we need to bring out people together so that they can unite, reconcile, heal the wounds, the mental wounds that they have.

"There will be challenges ahead, there will be obstacles but as long as there is political will we can overcome all these challenges, all these obstacles."

Government and rebel soldiers stood silently side by side at the airport. Mr Kiir did not come to the airport for Mr Machar's return.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the civil war and more than two million have been forced to flee their homes.

The August peace deal calls for a two-year transitional government of ministers and parliamentarians from the two sides before new elections.

Mr Machar's return is one of the biggest steps towards realising the peace deal meant to end the fighting, but should not be met with "huge optimism", cautioned Jacob Chol, dean of Juba University's political science department.

"It doesn't mean that the implementation of the peace deal is fully on board or fully implemented, because a lot of issues are yet to be sorted out in the agreement," he said.

Many people in South Sudan worry that Mr Machar's presence will only return the bitterly divided country to its pre-war status quo.

The war started when fighting began in Juba between Dinka and Nuer soldiers, before government troops massacred Nuer citizens in the city, sparking revenge attacks against Dinka elsewhere in the country, according to an African Union commission of inquiry.

Mr Machar, an ethnic Nuer, was Mr Kiir's vice president before the war. Mr Kiir, a Dinka, fired him in mid-2013.

He then vowed to run against Mr Kiir for the presidency, sparking a chain of events that led to the outbreak of conflict in December that year which ripped open ethnic hatred and pushed parts of the country to the edge of famine as civilians fled their fields to hide in forests and swamps.

Now the transitional government must end the fighting, resettle millions of displaced, stabilise the country's collapsing economy, reintegrate the split army, and co-operate with a court to be set up by the African Union to try perpetrators of atrocities.

Both men's troops are accused of horrific human rights abuses, including gang rape and murder of civilians along ethnic lines.

A UN panel of experts said Mr Kiir and Mr Machar themselves bear command responsibility for troops who allegedly committed crimes.

Tim Morris, British ambassador to South Sudan, said: "Those shown to be responsible for particularly outrageous atrocities should be brought to justice, but it is also very important that truth is established in a much broader sense.

"Reconciliation is not simply an event, this is something which will take generations."

There are serious doubts that the transitional government can do all that is asked of it due to deep mistrust between the two sides.

Mr Machar's return was repeatedly delayed over the last week as the two sides made last-minute excuses and accusations.

Despite the peace deal, fighting has continued with some of the worst atrocities taking place after the signing last August.

On Monday night, clashes broke out in the government-controlled town of Bentiu.

Rocket propelled grenades and bullets landed inside a UN base where more than 100,000 people are sheltering, injuring a child, according to the UN and aid workers.

Nearly 200,000 mostly Nuer people shelter in overcrowded UN bases around the country which have repeatedly come under deadly attack by soldiers.

The residents of a camp in Juba where 28,000 Nuer shelter will not go home until the peace deal is fully implemented including provisions to take suspects of crimes to court, camp leader Thod Mayei said.

"We cannot go just randomly," he said. "We need to know the leaders of South Sudan can show us that this peace is a real peace."
Donald Trump is aiming for a clean sweep of all five north-eastern states holding primaries on Tuesday, including Pennsylvania, leaving his rivals pinning their hopes of stopping the Republican front-runner with a fragile co-ordination strategy in the next rounds of voting.

For Democratic leader Hillary Clinton, wins in most of Tuesday's contests would leave little doubt that she will be her party's nominee.

Rival Bernie Sanders' team has sent mixed signals about his standing in the race, with one top adviser suggesting a tough night would push the Vermont senator to reassess his bid and another vowing to fight "all the way to the convention".

Mrs Clinton was already looking past Mr Sanders, barely mentioning him during recent campaign events. Instead, she deepened her attacks on Mr Trump, casting the billionaire businessman as out of touch with Americans.

"If you want to be president of the United States, you've got to get familiar with the United States," she said. "Don't just fly that big jet in and land it and go make a big speech and insult everybody you can think of."

Asked on Monday whether she needed to do more to gain Mr Sanders' support in the general election, she noted her loss in the 2008 Democratic primaries to Barack Obama.

"I did not put down conditions," she said on MSNBC. "I said I am supporting Senator Obama ... I hope that we will see the same this year."

In addition to Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island hold primaries on Tuesday. Candidates and outside groups have spent 13.9 million dollars (9.6 million) on advertisements in the states, with Mrs Clinton and Mr Sanders dominating the spending.

Democrats are competing for 384 delegates in Tuesday's contests, while Republicans have 172 up for grabs.

The Democratic race is far more settled than the chaotic GOP contest, despite Mr Trump having a lead in the delegate count. The businessman is the only one left in the race who can reach the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination before the convention, but he could very well fall short, pushing the nominating process to the party's July gathering in Cleveland.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich are now joining forces to try to make that happen. Their loose alliance marks a stunning shift in particular for Mr Cruz, who has called on Mr Kasich to drop out of the race and has confidently touted the strength of his convention strategy.

Mr Kasich has won just a single primary - his home state - but hopes to convince convention delegates that he is the only Republican capable of defeating Mrs Clinton in the general election.

Under the new arrangement, Mr Kasich will not compete for votes in Indiana, allowing Mr Cruz to take Mr Trump on head to head in the state's May 3 primary. Mr Cruz will do the same for Mr Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico.

"It is big news today that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana to give us a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump," Mr Cruz told reporters as he campaigned in Indiana on Monday.

"That is good for the men and women of Indiana. It's good for the country to have a clear and direct choice."

Mr Trump bra

ded his rivals' strategy "pathetic".

"If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail," he said as he campaigned in Rhode Island. "But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude."

Mr Cruz and Mr Kasich's public admission of direct co-ordination was highly unusual and underlined the limited options they now have for stopping the real estate mogul.

The effectiveness of the strategy was quickly called into question after Mr Kasich said publicly that while he will not spend resources in Indiana, his supporters in the state should still vote for him.

Mr Trump's path to the nomination remains narrow, requiring him to win 58% of the remaining delegates to reach the magic number by the end of the primaries. He is hoping for a solid victory in Pennsylvania, though the state's unique ballot could make it hard for any candidate to win a big majority.

While the statewide Republican winner gets 17 delegates, the other 54 are directly elected by voters and can support any candidate at a convention. Their names are listed on the ballot with no information about which White House hopeful they support.

Mrs Clinton is on solid footing in the Democratic race and enters Tuesday's contests having accumulated 82% of the delegates needed to win her party's nomination.

While she cannot win enough delegates to officially knock Mr Sanders out of the race this week, she can erase any lingering doubts about her standing.
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By Kirk Brown of the Independent Mail

Some Anderson restaurants may have to spend between $3,700 and $9,500 on new equipment to comply with rules that the City Council approved Monday night for disposing of fats, oils and grease.

Those costs will likely be passed on to customers, City Councilman John Roberts predicted.

"It doesn't feel good," Roberts said. "It's a hard thing to swallow."

Roberts and other council members spent hours scrutinizing a so-called FOG (fats, oils and grease) ordinance in recent weeks before voting 8-1 Monday to give the measure final approval. Councilman Steve Kirven cast the only dissenting vote.

City Manager Linda McConnell said the new rules had to be put in place under terms of Anderson's 2014 consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Federal regulators cracked down after 48 sewer overflows happened in the city between July 2008 and October 2012.

"Fats, oils and grease certainly are one of the primary causes of your sanitary sewer overflows," McConnell told council members.

No restaurant owners attended the council meeting to speak out on the FOG ordinance, but Mayor Terence Roberts said in an interview afterward that he knows the new rules won't be popular.

Restaurant owners "don't like it but they understand that the EPA's ultimate goal is to protect the quality of water," the mayor said.

The 295 restaurants and other food services establishments connected to the city's sewer system will have a year to comply with the new rules.

Those businesses will be grouped into five classifications ranging from coffee shops and delis to institutional cafeterias found in hospitals and nursing homes. Smaller establishments may only need a grease-trap under a sink while larger restaurants will likely need underground tanks that must be pumped out every 90 days by a city-approved company.

McConnell said that many restaurants in Anderson already have grease-disposal equipment installed. She said the city staff will work with business owners as much as possible to lessen the burden of the new rules.

McConnell said the costs that she cited as Monday's meeting are based on industry examples.

"There is an awful lot of variables that go into that equation," she said.

City Utilities Director Jeff Caldwell said some restaurants may have to upgrade their grease-disposal equipment.

McConnell said the next step in the process will be gathering information.

"We will send out a questionnaire to our food service establishments asking them certain information: if they have grease-control devices, how many meals do they prepare a day, how many tables do they have, things of that nature that will help us classify these establishments properly," she said.

The city will begin inspecting restaurants starting this fall.

Restaurants will not be charged any new fees for at least a year, but the city may impose charges in the future to cover the costs of the program.

The city has raised its sewer rates by 15 percent in each of the past two years to pay for improvements related to the EPA consent decree. As a result, the average residential customer's monthly bill has increased from $30.51 to $40.57.

City officials are estimating that they will have to make $23.5 million in sewer improvements under terms of the EPA consent decree. About $7 million of that work is already underway.

Follow Kirk Brown on Twitter @KirkBrown_AIM
Elections in Anderson County: How to vote early and what to know

What to know about the 2022 general election and voting in South Carolina, which has passed new legislation to create a period for early voting.
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Gross non-performing assets (GNPA) for the quarter stood at 1.67% up 33 yoy, but down 1 qoq. Provisions at Rs.1,168.33crore were higher 64.6% yoy and 63.96% qoq.



For the year ended March 31, 2016, the bank reported net profit of Rs. 8,223.66 crore, registering growth of 11.77% yoy. It's NII for the current period of Rs. 16,832.97 crore was up 18.34% yoy.



Provisions during the period at Rs. 3,709.86 crore were higher by 59.32% yoy.





Axis Bank Q4 Results - Mixed Bag :



Axis Bank's March quarter earnings were a mixed bag. The bank's top line performance was tad better than IIFL estimates, however bottom-line growth was impacted by higher provisioning. The bank made a contingency provision of Rs. 300 crore for the quarter which led to 64.6% yoy and 63.96% qoq jump in total provisions of Rs. 1,168.33 crore. Axis Bank, third largest private sector bank in India, reported standalone net profit of Rs.2,154.28 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2016, registering decline of 1.21% yoy and 0.97% qoq. It's Net Interest Income (NII) for the quarter stood at Rs. 4,552.59 crore, clocking growth of 19.83% yoy and 9.38% qoq.Gross non-performing assets (GNPA) for the quarter stood at 1.67% up 33 yoy, but down 1 qoq. Provisions at Rs.1,168.33crore were higher 64.6% yoy and 63.96% qoq.For the year ended March 31, 2016, the bank reported net profit of Rs. 8,223.66 crore, registering growth of 11.77% yoy. It's NII for the current period of Rs. 16,832.97 crore was up 18.34% yoy.Provisions during the period at Rs. 3,709.86 crore were higher by 59.32% yoy.Axis Bank's March quarter earnings were a mixed bag. The bank's top line performance was tad better than IIFL estimates, however bottom-line growth was impacted by higher provisioning. The bank made a contingency provision of Rs. 300 crore for the quarter which led to 64.6% yoy and 63.96% qoq jump in total provisions of Rs. 1,168.33 crore.

Result Highlights: (Rs. in crore)

Reported Results IIFL Estimates Variance (%) Standalone Revenue 4552.59 4378 3.99 Standalone Net Profit 2154.28 2554 [15.65]



Bloomberg estimated the bank's standalone net profit at Rs. 2322.18 crore.



Corporate Action :



Axis Bank has recommended payment of dividend at the rate of Rs. 5 per equity share of Rs. 2 each i.e. 250% on equity shares of the Bank for the approval of the Shareholders at the ensuing Annual General Meeting of the Bank to be held on July 22, 2016. The said dividend, if approved, will be paid from July 25, 2016.



Stock Commentary:



Axis Bank Ltd ended at Rs. 480.45, up by 10.45 points or 2.22% from its previous closing of Rs. 470 on the BSE.



The scrip opened at Rs. 470.65 and touched a high and low of Rs. 484.6 and Rs. 463.65 respectively. A total of 13773552(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 112082.16 crore.



The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 2 touched a 52 week high of Rs. 613.4 on 16-Jul-2015 and a 52 week low of Rs. 366.65 on 18-Jan-2016. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 478.05 and Rs. 444.45 respectively.



The promoters holding in the company stood at 29.73 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 56.64 % and 10.27 % respectively.



The stock traded below its 200 DMA.










For the year ended March 31, 2016, the company reported consolidated net profit of Rs. 30.88 crore, declining by 66.41% yoy. Its consolidated revenue for the period stood at Rs. 573.53 crore, registering decline of 27.38% yoy.



Tata Sponge Iron's core operating profit stood at Rs. 56.41 crore, recording decline of 52.27% yoy.



On standalone basis,Tata Sponge Iron, reported standalone net profit of Rs. 12.81 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2016, registering growth of 49.47% yoy and 144.47% qoq. The companys standalone revenue stood at Rs. 140.39 crore, down 12.44% yoy but up 1.08% qoq.



Its standalone core operating profit at Rs. 14.73 crore, clocked growth of 532.19% qoq. However, the company had reported standalone core operating loss of Rs. 1.74 crore in the same quarter of the previous year. Operating profit margin for the current quarter at 10.49%, expanded by 881 bps qoq. However, the company had reported an operating loss in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.



For the year ended March 31, 2016, the company reported standalone net profit of Rs. 30.83 crore, declining by 66.45% yoy. Its standalone revenue for the period stood at Rs. 573.53 crore, registering decline of 27.38% yoy.



Tata Sponge Iron's core operating profit stood at Rs. 22.35 crore, recording decline of 77.48% yoy. Operating margin for the current period at 5.19% contracted by 738 bps yoy.

Tata Sponge Iron, producers of high-grade sponge iron, reported consolidated net profit of Rs. 12.81 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2016, registering growth of 49.47% yoy and 144% qoq. The companys consolidated revenue stood at Rs. 140.39 crore, down 12.44% yoy but up 1.08% qoq.For the year ended March 31, 2016, the company reported consolidated net profit of Rs. 30.88 crore, declining by 66.41% yoy. Its consolidated revenue for the period stood at Rs. 573.53 crore, registering decline of 27.38% yoy.Tata Sponge Iron's core operating profit stood at Rs. 56.41 crore, recording decline of 52.27% yoy.On standalone basis,Tata Sponge Iron, reported standalone net profit of Rs. 12.81 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2016, registering growth of 49.47% yoy and 144.47% qoq. The companys standalone revenue stood at Rs. 140.39 crore, down 12.44% yoy but up 1.08% qoq.Its standalone core operating profit at Rs. 14.73 crore, clocked growth of 532.19% qoq. However, the company had reported standalone core operating loss of Rs. 1.74 crore in the same quarter of the previous year. Operating profit margin for the current quarter at 10.49%, expanded by 881 bps qoq. However, the company had reported an operating loss in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.For the year ended March 31, 2016, the company reported standalone net profit of Rs. 30.83 crore, declining by 66.45% yoy. Its standalone revenue for the period stood at Rs. 573.53 crore, registering decline of 27.38% yoy.Tata Sponge Iron's core operating profit stood at Rs. 22.35 crore, recording decline of 77.48% yoy. Operating margin for the current period at 5.19% contracted by 738 bps yoy.

Result Highlights: (Rs. in crore)

Reported Results IIFL Estimates Variance (%) Standalone Revenue 140.39 126.25 11.20 Standalone Net Profit 12.81 5.09 151.67



Consolidated EPS for the quarter stood at Rs. 8.32.



Bloomberg estimated the companys standalone net profit at Rs. 13.50 crore.



Corporate Action :



Tata Sponge Iron Ltd has informed that the Board of Directors of the Company have recommended / decided the following:



1. The Board has recommended a dividend of Rs. 10/- per equity share (i.e. 100%) on 1,54,00,000 equity shares of the Company for the year ended March 31, 2016. Subject to shareholders' approval at the ensuing Annual General Meeting, the cash outflow on account of dividend will be Rs. 1540 lakh.



2. It has been decided to hold the Thirty-third Annual General Meeting of the Company on July 26, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. at "Lake View Recreation Centre" at TSIL Township, Joda, Dist-Keonjhar, Odisha - 758 034.



Stock Commentary:



Tata Sponge Iron Ltd is currently trading at Rs. 551.05, down by 19.35 points or 3.39% from its previous closing of Rs. 570.4 on the BSE.



The scrip opened at Rs. 565.5 and has touched a high and low of Rs. 565.5 and Rs. 538.95 respectively. So far 566643(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 878.42 crore.



The BSE group 'B' stock of face value Rs. 10 has touched a 52 week high of Rs. 642.6 on 27-Apr-2015 and a 52 week low of Rs. 340 on 12-Feb-2016. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 582.2 and Rs. 519.8 respectively.



The promoters holding in the company stood at 54.5 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 3.87 % and 41.63 % respectively.



The stock is currently trading below its 200 DMA.






Centre of Learning, the education and training vertical of Thomas Cook (India) Ltd, has been honored as one of the 10 Top Performing South Asia IATA Authorized Training Centres in 2016, by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), for the fourth time. This prestigious citation was announced by Ivica Kovacic, Head Training Business Development, IATA Training and Development Institute at the 2016 Accredited Training School Conference held in Berlin.



This IATA award is in recognition of the outstanding contribution of Thomas Cook Indias Centre of Learning towards developing human capital by reaching out to the next generation of leaders in the evolving tourism industry in India. Thomas Cook Indias Centre of Learning (COL) provides the Travel & Tourism industry with a valuable inflow of well trained and skilled professionals, ready to be absorbed into the work force; as also an infusion of fresh insights and creative ideas.



Being selected from over 260 IATA training partners, IATAs citation was a high commendation of the unstinted efforts of Centre of Learning and highlighted its sustained achievements in the field of education and skill development.



Centre of Learning has diversified its portfolio of educational programme to include: , the education and training vertical of Thomas Cook (India) Ltd, has been honored as one of the 10 Top Performing South Asia IATA Authorized Training Centres in 2016, by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), for the fourth time. This prestigious citation was announced byIATA Training and Development Institute at theheld in Berlin.This IATA award is in recognition of the outstanding contribution of Thomas Cook Indias Centre of Learning towards developing human capital by reaching out to the next generation of leaders in the evolving tourism industry in India. Thomas Cook Indias Centre of Learning (COL) provides the Travel & Tourism industry with a valuable inflow of well trained and skilled professionals, ready to be absorbed into the work force; as also an infusion of fresh insights and creative ideas.Being selected from over 260 IATA training partners, IATAs citation was a high commendation of the unstinted efforts of Centre of Learning and highlighted its sustained achievements in the field of education and skill development.Centre of Learning has diversified its portfolio of educational programme to include:

Travel Professional Program  a Post Graduate program in Travel & Tourism Management

Certificate Course in Travel & Tourism Management

Certificate Course in World Tour Management
Foreign Direct Investment into India touched "highest ever" mark of $51 billion during the April-February period of last fiscal ended March 31, DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek reportedly said. touched "highest ever" mark of $51 billion during the April-February period of last fiscal ended March 31, DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek reportedly said.

Ramesh Abhishek reportedly said that healthy business climate has been created in the county so that investments are promoted.

"We have had a record inflows of FDI in this country, more than $51 bn from April to February (2015-16)," Ramesh Abhishek was quoted as saying.
Ideaspring Capital, an early stage venture fund by entrepreneurs and for entrepreneurs, announced its official launch in Bangalore. The INR 125 crore fund will focus on early-stage product innovation startups and entrepreneurs in India. Ideaspring Capital aims to bring sustained partnerships to startups and entrepreneurs through a unique high-touch model to foster global scale product innovation companies from inception. Eminent investors and entrepreneurs, including Naganand Doraswamy, Mohandas Pai, Arihant Patni, Amit Patni, Prashant Deshpande, Rajiv Mody, lead the fund.



The fund will work with entrepreneurs having deep technical and domain expertise, developing early stage enterprise products in major cities across India. Intellectual property in the form of algorithms and deep technology will be a key differentiator. Key areas that the fund will cover include Machine Learning & Deep Learning, Computer Vision & Image Processing, Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things, Augmented & Virtual Reality, HealthTech, FinTech, amongst others.



Through its Startup Assist program, Ideaspring Capital will help startups to build scale in product management, customer management, and building products for a global footprint. Ideaspring Capital will provide key interventions in aspects that include Business Market fit, product management, customer connects, and connect to next level of investors. Ideaspring Capital is planning to invest in only 4-6 startups a year and provide high touch Startup Assist program.



Start-ups across sectors are attracting early and growth capital. In 2015 alone, the total amount of investment in the start-up ecosystem stood at $5.4 billion according to data from VCCEdge, a financial research platform of VCCircle Network, which highlights the dependence on foreign capital for Indian start-ups. The Minister of State for Finance, Jayant Sinha mentioned that 90-95% of the venture capital money pumped into Indian start-ups comes from outside India. The government is now looking at ways to boost domestic funding to start-ups. Ideaspring Capital is one such venture fund that aims to fuel tech entrepreneurship in the country. Ideaspring Capital has raised majority of its investment from Indian investors with Aarin Capital as the anchor investor



We see immense growth potential for enterprise product innovation from India and are confident that Indias next wave of innovation will come from this space. Ideaspring Capital is a coming together of entrepreneurs and investors with rich experience to partner with entrepreneurs who are re-imagining technology to enable a better world, said Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Director & CEO, Ideaspring Capital.
Mondelez India Foods on Monday inaugurated its largest manufacturing plant in Asia Pacific, built at an investment of US$190 million in Sri City. on Monday inaugurated its largest manufacturing plant in Asia Pacific, built at an investment of US$190 million in Sri City.

The manufacturing plant was inaugurated by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.

"The multi-category food campus is expected to reach an annual capacity of 2.5 lakh tonnes of production in three phases by 2020, and employ over 1,600 people in five years," Mondelez India MD Chandramouli Venkatesan told reporters.

Mondelez India Foods will produce approximately 60,000 tonnes of Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate annually in the first phase. The company also plans to export at a later stage.

"Going forward, the company will make this manufacturing facility a hub for exports in Asia," Venkatesan said.

"The company already has significant commitment to the state and has been partnering with farmers to grow cocoa in Andhra Pradesh over the last two decades," Naidu said.

In addition to Andhra Pradesh, Mondelez India has manufacturing plants in Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.
Piyush Goyal, Minister of State with Independent Charge for Power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy discussed Indias ambitious target of achieving 175 GW of renewable generation capacity and innovative ways of mainstreaming energy efficiency. At an industry roundtable hosted by the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC) in New York,, Minister of State with Independent Charge for Power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy discussed Indias ambitious target of achieving 175 GW of renewable generation capacity and innovative ways of mainstreaming energy efficiency.

Addressing senior business executives from the U.S. and Indian industry, Minister Goyal said, "I am happy to announce that Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) will set up 21 offices internationally, starting with its first office in New York. The Green Bank and Energy Council in the U.S. have shown great interest. I am confident about the Rupee in the long run and the Rupee could possibly become stronger 10 years down the line."

In addition to low cost long term financing options for Indias ambitious renewable energy plans, Minister Goyal also discussed the need to address hedging currency volatility in tariffs and the need for a stable and simplified policy and regulatory regime that includes standardized power purchase agreements. He also briefed the participants on the steps that the Government of India is undertaking to scale up transmission systems and enhance grid reliability.

Lauding Minister Goyals efforts to improve energy access across India, USIBC President Mukesh Aghi said, Minister Goyals actions over the last two years have gone a long way in addressing stakeholder concerns in the renewable energy sector and improving ease of doing business in India. USIBC members stand committed to helping India achieve its 175 GW renewable energy target.

Optimistic and appreciative of Governments new renewable energy initiatives, Parag Saxena, founding general partner and CEO of New Silk Route welcomed the focus on power sector investment opportunities and private sector involvement. He said, Mitigating the risk for investors (and lowering the demanded return) could be achieved by PPPs or by lowering the cost of hedging currency risk".

"SkyPower considers India to be one of our core markets of interest and one of the most promising opportunities for accelerated investments in renewables," said Kerry Adler, President and Chief Executive Officer, SkyPower.
Union Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Monday. Saudi Aramco is considering proposals to acquire stakes in Indian oil refining and petrochemical projects,said on Monday.

Earlier this month, Pradhan met Saudi Aramco Chairman Khalid al-Falih and sought Saudi investment in a planned 1.2 million bpd refinery on India's west coast, the expansion of the Bina refinery and a petrochemical plant at Dahej.

"All the three we have offered to Saudi. The two sides will decide on the proposals in a time bound manner," Pradhan told a foreign news agency.

India, the world's third-biggest oil consumer, imports almost 80 per cent of its crude oil requirements, mostly from the Middle East nations.

In the first quarter, Saudi Arabia was India's biggest exporter of oil and shipped ~889,000 barrel per day (bpd) to the country, or about 21 per cent of the total.

IOC, HPCL and BPCL plan to build the 1.2-million bpd refinery on the country's west coast at a cost of more than INR 1 trillion (~US$15 billion) to meet the country's growing fuel demand.

Separately, Bharat Oman Refineries Ltd is expanding the capacity of the Bina refinery by 30 per cent to 156,000 bpd.

OPAL, majority owned by ONGC, is building a petrochemical plant in Gujarat.
Shilchar Technologies Ltd stock was higher by 12% at Rs. 295. The Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on April 25, 2016, inter alia recommended a final dividend of 5% to the shareholders.



The scrip opened at Rs. 299 and has touched a high and low of Rs. 314 and Rs. 292.7 respectively. So far 18036(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 100.28 crore.

The BSE group 'XD' stock of face value Rs. 10 has touched a 52 week high of Rs. 299.4 on 06-Jan-2016 and a 52 week low of Rs. 100 on 18-Jun-2015. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 284.5 and Rs. 236.1 respectively.

The promoters holding in the company stood at 65.85 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 0 % and 34.15 % respectively.

The stock is currently trading above its 50 DMA.
Company 30/09/2015 25/4/2016 % Dwarikesh Sugar 27.7 189.9 585.55 Uttam Sugar 11.24 53.05 371.97 Oudh Sugar Mill 18.1 76.65 323.48 Dalmia Bharat Sugar 25 99.7 298.80 Mawana Sugars 7.24 27.85 284.66 Upper Ganges 33.45 121.7 263.82 Dhampur Sugar 31.2 86.5 177.24 Sakthi Sugars 15.07 39.05 159.12 Bannariamman 714.75 1754.25 145.43 Kesar Ent 16 39.25 145.31 Thiru Arooran 25.95 62.2 139.69 Dharani Sugars 12.3 28.95 135.36 Empee Sugars 2.9 6.5 124.13 Triveni Engg 25.9 53.2 105.40 DCM Shriram Ind 62.1 125.1 101.44 Balrampur Chini 52.95 105.6 99.43 Shree Renuka 7.21 13.62 88.90 KCP Sugar 14.26 26 82.32 EID Parry 131.2 232.25 77.01 Sir Shadi Lal 23.55 39.95 69.63 Andhra Sugar 92.4 139.4 50.86 Bajaj Hind 13.96 19.6 40.40 Piccadilly Agro 12.76 17.58 37.77 Ponni Sugars(E) 174.2 186 6.77

Though sugar production in India, the worlds second largest producer and consumer of the sweetener, is expected to be lower for the current sugar season (Oct-2015 to Sept-2016) due to drought-hit Maharashtra and Karnataka, sugar stocks have still emerged as Sweet Hearts for investors. At a time when the benchmark stock indices Sensex and Nifty are facing headwinds at 2% negative return, as many as 24 sugar stocks have offered a hefty return between 6-586% since October 1, 2015, the beginning of sugar season in India.The unprecedented Bull Run has seen 15 of the 24 sugar stocks doubling in price in last 7 months. Dwarikesh Sugar leads the rally from the front with a mammoth return of 585.55%. Joining the bandwagon, Uttam Sugar, Oudh Sugar, Dalmia Bharat Sugar, Mawana Sugar and Upper Ganges have skyrocketed more than 200%.According to industry experts, for the current sugar season, India is expected to achieve a sugar export target of 32 lakh tonnes. Besides, soaring price of the sweetener in domestic markets will help the companies to improve their balance sheets. Sugar prices in domestic retail markets have already gone up to Rs. 40 a kg as against Rs. 30 a kg in the corresponding period last year. Apart from direct daily usage, demand from sugary product (chocolates, confectionary, soft drinks, etc.) manufacturers has witnessed an impressive upsurge.Meanwhile, experts are of the view that amid increasing volatility in the Indian stock markets and particularly in high beta and blue chip stocks, sugar stocks which fall into small-cap and mid-cap segment have succeeded in attracting investors to a major extent. Following is the snapshot of how sugar stocks have carved a niche amid volatile market scenario:

Gloomy production scenario



During the current sugar season, total 243.44 lakh tonnes of sugar has been produced till April 15, which is 21.24 lakh tonnes less than 264.68 lakh tonnes produced in the corresponding period a year ago, according to the Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA). During the period, only 117 sugar mills were reported operational as against 245 mills in the same period a year ago. According to latest ICRA report, sugar production in India will be 10% short in the current sugar year, which could be the lowest production in last five years.



Maharashtra worst-affected



The drought-hit Maharashtra, which is the biggest sugar producing state in India, has so far produced 83.60 lakh tonnes of the sweetener as compared to 99.61 lakh in the corresponding period last year, reflecting a less production of 16 lakh tonnes. As compared to 84 sugar mills operating at this time last year, only 24 sugar mills are crushing sugarcane in Maharashtra as on April 15, 2016. The 740 lakh tonnes of sugarcane crushed till April 15, at an average recovery of 11.29%, is slightly lower than 880 lakh tonnes of sugarcane crushed last year.



Stock limit on traders soon?



Recently in an interview with CNBC TV18, Praful Vithalani, President of India Sugar Trade Association was quoted as saying, The governments move to impose stock limit in sugar traders is expected to bring sugar prices down, which will be unfortunate for the industry. The Food ministry is all set to cap stock limits in a week or so. The closing stock of sugar will be around 70 lakh tonnes for 2015-16. Moreover, the government should look into the export policy for sugar. Of 32 lakh tonnes sugar export target, 15 lakh tonnes have already been exported, added Vithalani.



Not so sugary prospects



The current demand and supply scenario for sugar in India seems in favour of sugar mills with the production is expected to fall and ample closing stock lies with the traders. However, if capping the stock limit brings sugar prices down, traders off-take from mills might decline, which will eventually affect sugar mill balance sheets. Moreover, nearly 70% payments to farmers have been carried out by the mills and now if the prices fall, mills would find it difficult to complete the farmer waiver program.
Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Ram Vilas Paswan in a written reply in Lok Sabha today. The recent rise in prices of pulses is mainly on account of shortfall in domestic production due to adverse weather conditions and increase in demand because of rise in population and per capita income and change in food habits. As speculation, cartelization, black-marketing/hoarding also put pressure on prices, domestic searches and surveys have been conducted on a number of importers, traders and financiers engaged in the pulses trade. This information was given by thein a written reply in Lok Sabha today.

The Minister said that the Government has advised States/UTs to put in place a mechanism for regular collection of data/information on stocks of pulses being held by dealers for effective implementation of Stock limits.

He said that the Government has regularly issued advisories to States/UTs for strict enforcement of the Essential Commodities (EC) Act, 1955 and the Prevention of Black-marketing and Maintenance of Supplies of Essential Commodities (PBMMSEC) Act, 1980.States/UTs have been conducting raids and seized pulses are being disposed, as per the provisions under the EC Act, 1955.

Following steps have been taken by the Government to contain prices of pulses ;

Export of all pulses is banned except kabuli channa and up to 10,000 MTs in organic pulses and lentils.

Import of pulses are allowed at zero import duty.

Stock limit on pulses extended till 30.9.2016.

Government imported 5000 MT of Tur from Malawi/Mozambique and allocated it to States for retail sale to consumers to improve availability and to moderate prices.

MSP (including bonus) raised for kharif pulses for Tur and Urad and Moong. MSP also raised for Rabi pulses for Gram and Masoor.

Government has approved creation of buffer stock of 1.5 lakh MT of pulses for effective market intervention.

Government has decided to immediately release 10,000 MT of pulses from the buffer stock (consisting of 8,000 MT of Tur and 2,000 MT of Urad) to States/UTs at subsidized rates for retailing by them at not more than Rs 120/- per kg to improve availability and stabilise prices.

Regulatory measures by Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Chana contracts including increase in the margin requirement to discourage speculation and to moderate the price volatility in forward market and close monitoring by SEBI

Strict vigilance by Directorate of Revenue Intelligence to prevent importers from mis-using the facilities of Customs Bonded Warehouse facility

Setting up of a Group of Officers for regular monitoring and exchange of information on hoarding, cartelization etc.
If a cop kills an unarmed black person, and that persons family then sues the police, how much can the city expect to pay?

Six million dollars, give or take.

On Monday, the 2014 shooting death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy from Cleveland, became the fourth infamous police killing in the past two years to be settled out of court by a city for roughly this amount of money. Each of the four agreements spared the cities in question the obligation to admit wrongdoing.

It probably doesnt mean anything that these four settlements all ended up clustered in roughly the same price range. After all, in various other cases that involved an unarmed black person being killed by police, the resulting settlements were for different dollar amounts. But the seven-figure sums do reflect the rising cost of police killings for cities determined to avoid lengthy and even costlier trials.

Advocates for criminal justice reform argue that payouts like these, largely funded by taxpayers, are a poor substitute for genuine police accountability and do little to deter police misconduct. Instead, critics say, these settlements merely shift the cost of malfeasance onto the public.

The city of Cleveland announced on Monday that it will pay exactly $6 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of Tamir Rice. Tamir, an unarmed black boy, was shot and killed by a white police officer in November 2014. He was holding a toy gun that the two white cops who confronted him said they believed was real. Tamir was killed within seconds of the police arriving at the scene.

The Cleveland settlement did not include an admission of wrongdoing by the citys police force, according to The Washington Post. A grand jury declined in December to indict the two officers involved, including the one who fired the fatal shots.

The city of North Charleston, South Carolina, agreed to pay the family of Walter Scott $6.5 million in a legal settlement last October. The city did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement. A white police officer shot Scott in the back in April 2015, killing him. Video footage shows Scott, an unarmed 50-year-old black man, being gunned down as he ran from his vehicle during a routine traffic stop. The video contradicted the official police account of the incident and shocked the country.

Michael Slager, the officer who killed Scott, is no longer on the force. He will stand trial for murder on Oct. 31.

In September 2015, the city of Baltimore provided a $6.4 million settlement to the family of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old unarmed black man whod died five months earlier from a spinal injury sustained in police custody. The settlement exceeded the total $5.7 million that Baltimore paid between 2011 and 2014 to settle police misconduct lawsuits.

Grays death sparked days of civil unrest and rioting in Baltimore, where many black residents believe the police prosecute minor crimes overzealously and treat residents callously.

Although six officers involved in Grays arrest and transportation have been indicted for their role in his death, the citys settlement did not acknowledge wrongdoing by Baltimore police.

And in July 2015, New York City agreed to pay $5.9 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of Eric Garner, the 43-year-old black man who died in a police chokehold in July 2014 while officers were trying to arrest him for selling loose cigarettes. Video of the incident shows Garner, lying in a prone position on the sidewalk as the cops forcibly handcuff him, protesting, I cant breathe. I cant breathe. They were his last words.

The settlement in Garners case also denied wrongdoing. A grand jury declined in December 2014 to indict Daniel Pantaleo, the New York police officer who placed Garner in a prohibited chokehold.

In addition to the obvious prospect of moral hazard these settlements raise by preventing police officers and departments from being held accountable for their worst misdeeds, they are putting a strain on cities finances. The Huffington Posts Nick Wing examined in May how much cities have paid to settle police misconduct lawsuits in recent years  and provided examples of the kinds of public projects that money could have otherwise paid for.

Some legal experts have suggested making police officers pay a portion of the settlements that result from their actions. New York Daily News writer Shaun King suggested on Monday that the settlement money come from police retirement coffers.
Plenty of people recognize Virginia McLaurin these days. The 107-year-old woman became an Internet sensation after the White House posted video of her joyfully dancing with the Obamas. The video has been viewed nearly 66 million times.

But that recognition isnt enough for Washington, D.C.s Department of Motor Vehicles, which wont issue McLaurin a new photo ID.

In an interview with The Washington Post, McLaurin described how she lost her photo ID years ago when her purse was stolen. She and her son recently met with a DMV official to try to replace it. But because of strict new federal guidelines, she needs to show her birth certificate to get a new ID. And in order to get her birth certificate from South Carolina, she needs to show photo ID.

I dont think Ill ever get that face card, McLaurin told The Washington Post. I was birthed by a midwife and the birthday put in a Bible somewhere. I dont know if they even had birth certificates back then.

She has a temporary ID, but that wont work if she wants to fly, for example.

McLaurin is, however, still able to vote. Thats because Washington, D.C., doesnt require photo ID in order to cast a ballot. But in many other states, McLaurin wouldnt be so fortunate.

Seventeen states have some sort of photo ID law in place for the 2016 elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In recent years, GOP politicians across the nation have pushed through a number of measures restricting access to the ballot box. These laws tend to disproportionately affect African-American, Latino, elderly and low-income voters  who also, not coincidentally, generally support Democrats.

Its sad to see my mother having to stand in lines, getting tired, Felipe Cardoso, McLaurins son, said. She cant understand how her picture could be in all those newspapers and all over the Internet, how so many people could recognize her on the street and want to take selfies with her, and she cant even get a photo ID.
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The Classified '28 Pages': A Diversion From Real US-Saudi Issues By Gareth Porter April 26, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " MEE "- The controversy surrounding the infamous 28 pages on the possible Saudi connection with the terrorists that were excised from the joint Congressional report on the 9/11 attacks is at fever pitch. But that controversy is a distraction from the real problems that Saudi Arabias policies pose to the United States and the entire Middle East region. The political pressure to release the 28 pages has been growing for the past couple of years, with resolutions in both houses of Congress urging the president to declassify the information. But now legislation with bipartisan sponsorship has advanced in Congress that would deprive any foreign government of sovereign immunity in regard to responsibility for a terrorist attack on US soil and thus make it possible to sue the Saudi government in court for damages from the 9/11 attacks. That development prompted Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir to threaten last month to pull out as much as $750 billion in Saudi assets held in the United States. The Obama administration opposes the legislation, warning of unintended consequences  specifically that the US government could face lawsuits because of its actions abroad. Analysts of Saudi economic policy, however, do not take al-Jubeirs threat very seriously since it would simply punish the Saudi economy. Meanwhile, Obama in an interview with Charlie Rose of CBS News on 16 April, said that his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is reviewing the 28 pages to make sure that whatever it is that is released is not gonna compromise some major national security interest of the United States. Obama said Clapper was nearly finished so the issue might finally come to a head within the next few weeks. But it is unlikely that the declassification of the redacted 28 pages would add any dramatic new revelation to the story of the Saudis and the hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks. Former Senator Bob Graham, who was head of the Senate side of the joint intelligence committee, has implied that the 28 pages containing incriminating evidence about the hijackers' links to the Saudi government. But Grahams smoking gun is more likely to be speculative leads rather than real evidence of Saudi government support for the hijackers. Past suspicions of an official Saudi role in assisting the hijackers has focused on the two Saudi al-Qaeda operatives, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, who moved to the San Diego area in early February 2000 and were immediately assisted by a Saudi man who was suspected by Saudis in the San Diego area of working for the Saudi intelligence service. What many have cited as even more suspicious is the fact that $130,000 in certified bank checks were sent to the wife of Omar al Bayoumi, the suspected Saudi intelligence agent, by the wife of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi Ambassador to the United States but and - more than a decade later - head of Saudi intelligence. But even if those checks were a covert way of supporting an intelligence operative, the broader theory that Bayoumis job was to take care of the hijackers does not hold up in light of the information now available. Investigations by the FBI, the CIA and the two major public 9-11 bodies turned up no evidence that Bayoumi provided any financial support to hijackers. On the contrary they showed that Hazmi and Mihdhar were getting money when they needed it through a direct al-Qaeda channel. On the contrary, the 9/11 Commission learned that the hijackers had left the apartment they had gotten through Bayoumi very soon after moving in, apparently because al-Bayoumi had organised a party in the apartment that was videotaped by one of the participants, and that the al-Qaeda operatives had seemingly not welcomed the attention. Very soon after that, moreover, Mihdhar actually left the United States and didn't return until mid-2001. And in June 2000, Hazmi moved to Arizona apparently through a network of contacts that al-Qaeda had established in Tucson in the 1990s. So Bayoumi did not play any role in the plans of Hazmi and Mihdhar, and the efforts to find any other evidence that the Saudi government was knowledgeable about bin Ladens 9/11 plans have so far turned up nothing. It is unlikely that the leads related to suspicions of Saudi involvement to be found in the 28 pages are completely different from those that have already been widely discussed in the media. Bayoumis relationship with Hazmi and Mihdhar has given rise to speculation about why the CIA failed to inform the FBI about the presence of Mihdhar in the United States until just two weeks before the 9/11 attacks. White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke was outraged that the CIA had known that an al-Qaeda terrorist was on his way to the United States and had kept him in the dark, even though he was supposed to receive every intelligence report on terrorism. He said in a 2009 interview that the only reason he could think that the CIA kept the information to itself was that Cofer Black, the head of the CIAs Counter-Terrorism Center, was determined to recruit Hazmi and Mihdhar as CIA agents inside al-Qaeda. Clarke speculated that the CIA would have used Saudi intelligence to approach the two al-Qaeda operatives and obviously assumed that Bayoumi was the Saudi agent who made the contact. But more than a year had passed after the contact between the two al-Qaeda operatives and Bayoumi had been broken off before the CIA contacted the FBI and other agencies to request that Mihdhar be put on a watch list and began its own search for Mihdhar. That delay was obviously not the result of an effort to recruit Mihdhar and Hazmi. The truth is far more shocking: as the 9/11 Commission report makes clear, the CIAs Counter-Terrorism Center had not even continued to focus on Mihdhar after first learning about his visa in February 2000. It had already lost track of him, and had moved on to other issues. Not until a review in August 2001 had revealed its oversight did the CTC do anything about Mihdhar, which is why the hijackers were not tracked down before 11 September. The Saudi regime certainly played a role in the trail of events that led to 9/11, but there is no need to wait for the declassification of the 28 pages to understand that trail. It has long been well documented that the socio-political constituency for bin Ladens anti-US organisation in the kingdom was so large and influential that the government itself was forced to tread with extreme caution on al-Qaeda until the group's attacks on the Saudi regime began in 2003. The Clinton administration had learned that Saudi supporters of bin Laden were being allowed to finance his operations through Saudi charities. The regime systematically denied CIA requests for bin Ladens birth certificate, passport and banks records. 9/11 Commission investigators learned, moreover, that after bin Ladens move from Sudan to Afghanistan in May 1996, a delegation of Saudi officials had asked top Taliban leaders to tell bin Laden that if he didnt attack the regime, the 1994 termination of his Saudi citizenship and freezing of his assets would be rescinded. The US government has known that Saudi financing of madrassas all over the world has been a major source of jihadist activism. The Saudi regimes extremist Wahhabi perspective on Shia Islam is the basis for its paranoid stance on the rest of the region and the destabilisation of Syria and Yemen. The 28 pages should be released, but at a time when the contradictions between US and Saudi interests are finally beginning to be openly acknowledged, the issue is just another diversion from the real debate on Saudi Arabia that is urgently needed. - Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare .
Syria - Russia Rejects Kerry's New Attempts To Shield The Terrorists



By Moon Of Alabama



April 26, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Moon Of Alabama "- The U.S. admits that the upcoming Aleppo offensive by the Syrian government and its allies is designed to hit al-Qaeda and associated terrorist forces and not primarily the "moderate" unicorns the U.S. propaganda blushes about. But the openly U.S. supported forces will also be hit as they are very much integrated with al-Qaeda. The U.S. has for long considered al-Qaeda a secret ally in its attempt to destroy the Syrian state. The French magazine L'Orient Le Jour sees the U.S. relation with al-Qaeda in Syria as part of the attrition strategy the U.S. is waging against Syria (and Russia). Secretary of State Kerry tried to convince the Russian that al-Qaeda should not be attacked during the cessation of hostilities. But the Russian's did not agree. Al Qaeda is a UN recognized international terrorist organization which, under UNSC resolutions, must be fought. The U.S. only succeeded in downgrading the permanent ceasefire the Russians had preferred to into a temporary cessation hostilities. It thought to use the time to rearm and to regroup its proxy forces. But then thing went wrong. An offensive along the Turkish border to push away the Islamic State and to seal the border between the Islamic State and Turkey failed. Al-Qaeda convinced other groups, including directly U.S. supported CIA assets, to prematurely attack Syrian government forces south of Aleppo on Tal el-Eis. The attack mad only little progress before it was stopped. Now al-Qaeda and the U.S. proxies are heavily targeting the government held western arts of Aleppo city: Elijah J. Magnier @EjmAlrai 13h13 hours ago

#Aleppo observed the most violent day in d history of d war in #Syria causing 21 killed & 95 wounded. Every single street was hit by rebels+ Since the announcement of the cease-fire, over 492 killed & wounded were registered in the only 2 hospitals in regime held area in #Aleppo. Rebels hell bombs fell on all streets w/o exception while a group of rebels were trying 2infiltrate d city in West #Aleppo, trapped n sewage This continued today Elijah J. Magnier @EjmAlrai 2h2 hours ago

17 killed and 92 wounded in #Aleppo regime controlled area today following rebels Hell cannon bombing. #Syria. These attacks on the population are designed to bait the Syrian government forces into an immediate all-out attack into the al-Qaeda held parts of Aleppo city. I doubt that they will fall for it. The response for now will be more intense bombing in preparation for a well thought out attack later on. Kerry recently again tried to convince the Russian government of partitioning Syria into "zones of interest". This would shield terrorist forces form further Syrian and Russian attacks: Weve even proposed drawing a line, an absolute line, and saying, You dont go over there, we dont go over here, and anything in between is fair game. And they are considering that, and I think we will get there in the next week or so. The rather harsh public response to that Kerry nonsense came in today: MFA Russia @mfa_russia

#Lavrov: Splitting Syria into zones of influence is a simplistic idea; the main objective must be to route terrorism @mod_russia @RussiaUN #Lavrov: US has not fulfilled its promise made two months ago to move good opposition forces away from the terrorist front lines in Syria #Lavrov: The US State Dept. may shy away from cooperation with Russia, but there is no place for shyness in the fight against terrorism #Lavrov: The UNSC declared Jabhat al-Nusra a terrorist group. Those who want to distance themselves from this group should do so physically Translation: Get your proxies out of the way or they will get hurt badly. The U.S. "plan B" of splitting Syria into statelets has been rejected by the Syrian government and its allies. The Syrian government and its allies are convinced that they can beat al-Qaeda and its various associates on the battle field. They are preparing a large attack against al-Qaeda and anyone nearby. There is little the U.S. can do to help the designated terrorists of al-Nusra in west Syria. But it continues its attempts to split Syria by inserting more of its special forces into north east Syria. These and their Kurdish proxy fighters have the task to take as much of eastern Syria from the Islamic State and others as possible before the Syrian government forces can do so. The thinking is that any captured town will be an asset in future negotiations. It will be interesting to see how the Syrian government and its allies will counter that move.
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The EU to Become a U.S. Colony? The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would Abolish Europes Sovereignty.



Is Madame Merkel Betraying the EU  Endangering the Lives of Future European Generations with her Push for the Nefarious TTIP?



By Peter Koenig April 26, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Global Research "- This incisive article first published by Global Research in December 2014 is of utmost relevance to the ongoing process of US-EU negotiation of the TTIP Authors Introduction and Update President Obama will be visiting Germany and Mme. Merkel tomorrow (24  25 April) for the Hannover Industrial Messe, the worlds largest Industrial fair, lobbying, in a last ditch convincing effort, Madame Merkel, of the good of the TTIP  that must be signed as soon as possible  maybe even during his upcoming trip to Europe. Everything around the infamous and nefarious TTIP is possible, as it all happens in secret and behind closed doors. One of the most important items on Obamas check list before he leaves office is obtaining the signatures of the free trade agreements  the TPP  Transpacific Partnership with 11 Asian and Pacific countries, and the TTIP  Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the 28 EU countries. The TPP is almost done. Completion of the two trade agreements  the economic enslavement of Asia (except for China and Russia who bluntly refused to join) and Europe, was one of the conditions for the top elite  call them Illuminati  when they summoned him to a special Bilderberg meeting on 5-8 June 2008, in Chantilly Virginia (just outside Washington DC). They caught him in full campaign missing an important campaign event in Chicago. The purpose of the meeting was to figure out whether he is worth the money they were willing to pour into his election to make him President. He complied. His psychological profile having been profoundly analyzed before, they knew he would. And indeed, the spineless Obama complied with all of the conditions. And they made him President at a cost of about US$ 740 million, about double of what Bushs second term presidential campaign cost, and about half of the price of Obamas second term presidency. Below is my article published by Global Research in December 2014, on the nefarious consequences of the TTIP  to remind people what is laying ahead for Europe, if the EU and its members ratify the TTIP: Slavehood, sheer and unescapable corporate slavehood, enhanced and controlled by Goldman Sachs  and not to forget, the Rothschilds, who are the invisible hand behind the FED. Katherine Frisk sums up best what the TTIP would mean for Europe:

International free trade agreements such as the TTIP and the TPP which will override the National Sovereignty of any country who signs them, the Constitution of any country, their Constitutional law courts and any laws that any government may or may not make regarding health regulations, minimum wage regulations or environmental requirements. Far from being Capitalism with checks and balances restricting monopolies, it is a form of Corporate Fascist hegemonic colonialism and Corporate Empire building, eliminating all competition in the interests of monopolies. Peter Koenig, April 24, 2016 * * * The EU to Become a U.S. Colony? The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would Abolish Europes Sovereignty by Peter Koenig Global Research December 2, 2014 The proposed Free Trade Agreement (sic), the so called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership  TTIP  between the US and Europe would be an infringement and final abolishment of Europes sovereignty. It would expand the US corporate and financial empire which already today dominates Washingtons politics and that of much of the western world  to take over Europe. Europes sovereignty would be jeopardized, meaning the sovereignty of the EU itself, as well as and especially the sovereignty of EU member countries. At stake would be EUs and EU members legal and regulatory system, environmental protection regulations  and Europes economy. Europes basic social infrastructure, whats left of it after the 2008 invasion of the infamous troika  IMF (FED, Wall Street), European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission (EC)  like education, health, as well as water supply and sanitation services would become easy prey for privatization by international (mostly US) transnationals. This so-called Free Trade Agreement (sic) between the US and Europe Obama is pushing on the European Commission and for which on behalf of Europe, Germanys Madame Merkel seems to be a forceful standard bearer, if signed, would be serving the interests of corporations rather than of the 600 million European citizens. According to John Hilary, Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, and expert on trade and investment, the TTIP is a Charter for Deregulation, an Attack on Jobs, and End to Democracy. [The] TTIP is therefore correctly understood not as a negotiation between two competing trading partners, but as an attempt by transnational corporations to praise open and deregulate markets on both sides of the Atlantic.

http://rosalux.gr/sites/default/files/publications/ttip_web.pdf ). Strangely, China is not included in the proposed partnership countries. The Western mainstream media says that Obama wants to sideline China  a sanction for not falling in step with Washingtons agenda for a One World Order. However  what if it is the other way around  China sees the fraud in these so-called free trade agreements and opted not to part take in them? If the proposed TTIP combined with the proposed TTP would be ratified and signed, it would be like a corporate empire taking over the world, especially Europe and Asia  less China and Russia. The Unite States is already in the claws of transnationals. Lets keep in mind, these are secret negotiations, taking place behind closed doors, with little to no access to politicians and parliamentarians of the countries concerned. The talks are to be rushed through as fast as possible, so as to put the people at large before a fait accompli. Only We, the People, can stop this crime  a new layer of US propelled world hegemony  by launching and supporting anti TTIP referenda on internet and in the streets. Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, the Voice of Russia, now Ria Novosti, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion  An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed  fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. The original source of this article is Global Research Copyright  Peter Koenig, Global Research, 2016
In Israel, an Ugly Tide Sweeps Over Palestinians



By Jonathan Cook

April 26, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " The National "- In Israels evermore tribal politics, there is no such thing as a good" Arab  and the worst failing in a Jew is to be unmasked as an Arab lover". Or so was the message last week from Isaac Herzog, head of Israels so-called peace camp.

The shock waves of popular anger at the recent indictment of an Israeli army medic, Elor Azaria, on a charge of negligent homicide" are being felt across Israels political landscape.

Most Israeli Jews bitterly resent the soldier being put on trial, even though Azaria was caught on camera firing a bullet into the head of a badly injured Palestinian, Abdel Fattah Al Sharif.

In the current climate, Mr Herzog and his opposition party Zionist Union have found themselves highly uncomfortable at having in their midst a single non-Jewish legislator.

Zuheir Bahloul, an accommodating figure who made his name as a sportscaster before entering politics, belongs to the minority of 1.7 million Palestinian citizens, one in five of the population.

Unlike most of Israels Palestinian politicians, he preferred to join a Zionist party than one of several specifically Arab parties. Nonetheless, he embarrassed colleagues by briefly pricking the bubble of unreason cocooning the country.

Attacks on soldiers were wrong, said Mr Bahloul, but a Palestinian such as Mr Al Sharif  who tried to stab soldiers at a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron  was not a terrorist" by any normal definition. Terrorists target civilians, Bahloul noted, not soldiers enforcing an illegal occupation.

Other Zionist Union MPs raced to disown Mr Bahloul, while Mr Herzog warned that the party was unelectable as long as it was seen as full of Arab lovers".

Mr Bahloul is hardly the first Palestinian politician in Israel to find himself denounced as a bad" Arab. But the others have mostly sinned by demanding an end to Israels status as a Jewish state. Israel is currently promulgating a law to oust such dissenters from the parliament.

Now the earth is shifting beneath the feet of formerly good Arabs" such as Mr Bahloul, the small number who cling to the belief that a self-declared Jewish state can be fair to them.

It is no longer just the states Jewishness that is sacrosanct. The occupation is too.

Salim Joubran, the only Palestinian judge in the supreme court, fell foul of this creed last week as the court considered an appeal from Raed Salah, leader of the northern Islamic Movement, against his jail sentence for incitement to violence.

There is almost continual incitement by Jewish political and religious leaders, but indictments are almost unheard of. Two rabbis who wrote a book, the Kings Torah, calling for the killing of Palestinian babies were investigated but not charged.

In his minority opinion, Mr Joubran thought it reasonable to observe that Mr Salahs remark urging the Arab world to support the Palestinians with a global intifada" to protect Jerusalems Islamic holy sites under occupation was more rhetorical than a call to arms.

He was wrong. Israelis took to social media calling for an intifada" against both him and the supreme court.

The ugly political tide turning against the most moderate and pragmatic elements in Israels Palestinian minority was also exemplified by threats against Ayman Odeh, leader of the only joint Jewish-Arab party in the parliament.

Mr Odehs crime was to describe the assassinations of Palestinian leaders by the Shin Bet intelligence service as executions without trial".

Avi Dichter, a former Shin Bet head who is now a legislator in the ruling Likud party, wondered aloud about the merits of assassinating Mr Odeh, before concluding it was not worth wasting the ammunition". Mr Dichter knows there is no danger he will face a trial for incitement to violence.

Meanwhile, a TV investigation last week turned a critical lens on the late Rehavam Zeevi, a hero of the occupation. The programme revealed that the general had serially raped and assaulted women under his command, and used underworld connections to silence critics.

Tellingly, however, while the programme highlighted his crimes against Jews, it was largely untroubled by his many well-documented abuses of Palestinians.

Zeevi once proudly boasted of killing prisoners, and famously terrorised Palestinians by flying over their villages with a Palestinian corpse hanging from his helicopter undercarriage.

Later he sat in government as head of a party calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland.

When he was assassinated by Palestinians in 2001, he was quickly beatified. Scores of roads and parks are named after him, and a commemoration law requires that his legacy and values" be taught in schools.

The anti-Arab values Zeevi embodied are in no danger of being discarded. Rather, they are being entrenched. Today, the definition of a bad Arab" stretches from those, such as Mr Al Sharif, who take up arms against the occupation to those, such as Mr Bahloul, who do nothing more than raise their voice against it.

The trigger-happy soldier Elor Azaria and the peace camp leader Isaac Herzog have more in common than either might wish to admit. In their different ways, both have helped to turn all Palestinians into outcasts  and crush any hope of concessions from Israel to peace.
The Return of the Coup in Latin America





By Manuel E. Yepe

April 26, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Counterpunch "- Venezuela and Brazil are the scenes of a new form of coup detat that would set the continents political calendar back to its worst times. Meanwhile, in Argentina, the brutal model for the demolition of democracy is set forward by the continental oligarchic right and the hegemonic forces of US imperialism who wish to impose their model in the region.

As we can see in the previews that test the memory of the peoples in the continent, it is difficult to accept that the new types of coups are actually softer and more covert than those which Latin America suffered for so long.

What has been shown so far in Argentina is no less cruel, in terms of contempt for the masses, than the coups carried out by the bloodthirsty dictatorships that sprouted in time of Operation Condor.

In Venezuela the president of the opposition majority in the National Assembly, Henry Ramos, openly declares that in view of the severity of the economic crisis, he fails to see Maduro concluding his term and adds they should put an end to Nicolas Maduros legitimate government within six months. Such statements did not compel the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, to formulate even the mildest rejection to such a coup-like declaration. This indicates they are returning to the era of open and brutal coups in the backyard of the United States of America.

Meanwhile, in Argentina, the newly-elected president, Mauricio Macri, moves forward the implementation of his democratic model with a brutal demolition of all the advances the nation had made after the collapse it suffered as a result of the neo-liberal economic and political crisis from which it had been rescued by the consecutive popular governments of Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Argentinean writer, journalist, and researcher Stella Calloni, explains that the current coup in Argentina began the same day Macri took office. He is an extreme right businessman who, since 2007 (according to Wikileaks) offered his services to the US embassy in Buenos Aires.

The coup offensive began with decrees that allowed for the intervention of institutions and absolutely illegal measures, such as the appointment by decree of two judges to the Supreme Court. All economic measures favor the powerful and mark a path of exclusion for the common people, says Calloni.

Violating the constitution and the laws, and ruling by Necessity and Urgency Decrees(NUDs) since December 2015, Macri took a road that evidently seeks to deliver the country to the global hegemonic power and the destruction of a work that had earned Argentina worldwide admiration and respect. He is delivering the country to the sinister designs of the International Monetary Fund and other agencies, banks and foreign institutions. All his economic actions favor the powerful and mark a path of exclusion for the population.

The negative opposition in Congress is part of the ongoing coup the US and its local puppets are carrying out against Venezuela, Calloni says.

While the United States and its network of partners and local employees with applause from the hegemonic power support Macris unconstitutional decrees, in Venezuela, the decree of economic emergency signed by President Nicolas Maduro, was rejected by the legislative opposition with the acquiescence of the same power.

Never before was the right more willing to violate the Constitution and call to sedition, warned former Venezuelan Vice-President and journalist Jose Vicente Rangel. Seldom in our country had a coup been announced so clearly and at the same time so elusively; the option would be the presidential recall, but this option within our constitution is only tangentially alluded to.

According to Rangel, the opposition sails in two rivers by affirming, on the one hand, that within six months Nicolas Maduro will leave by peaceful and constitutional meansMiraflores Palace (seat of government) and, on the other, that they will not even wait that long to oust the Venezuelan president.

The right has grown presumptuous after its legislative victory of last December 6. But they still remember the failed coup of 2002: a resounding failure that made them switch to peaceful methods as the ones they are apparently trying to use now to overthrow the socialist power, But neither the soft blows, the carnival costumes used to confuse, or the violent coups can occur with impunity, concludes Jose Vicente Rangel.

William Hawesis a writer specializing in politics and the environment. You can find his e-book of collected essays here. His articles have appeared online at Global Research, Countercurrents, Dissident Voice, and Counterpunch. You can email him at wilhawes@gmail.com
South Africas ruling African National Congress (ANC) has said it plans to sue opposition politician Julius Malema after he threatened to remove President Jacob Zumas government through the barrel of a gun. Mondays development came a day after Malema told Al Jazeera that the ANC used violence to suppress dissent, citing an incident last year when members of his Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party were ejected from parliament after heckling Zuma.

We will run out of patience very soon and we will remove this government through the barrel of a gun, Malema, Zumas one-time protege and a former ANC youth leader, said on Talk to Al Jazeera. Part of the revolutionary duty is to fight and we are not ashamed if the need arises for us to take up arms and fight.

EFF protest marches were often met with violent resistance by security forces, he said. In response to the comments, the ANC said it would pursue legal action against him. These remarks are a call to violence, are inflammatory, treasonable and seditious and should be treated with extreme seriousness, the ANC said in a statement.

The ANC calls on state authorities to urgently investigate this matter and act against such conduct. Al Jazeeras Tania Page, reporting from Johannesburg, said: The EFF dont have any military hardware and are not capable of carrying out the threat to remove the government over a barrel of a gun. Despite that, she said, the party was a potent political threat to the ANC.
The Nigerian Army on Tuesday alerted the general public to the existence of new uniforms used by Boko Haram Terrorists.

The Army, in a statement by its spokesperson, Sani Usman, said troops of 22 Brigade Garrison and elements of 3 Battalion that went out on long range fighting patrol on Monday to Gima village in Ngala Local Government Area of Borno State, made the startling discovery.

Mr. Usman, a Colonel, said the patrol came in contact with some elements of terrorist sect, who began escaping in disarray on sighting the team.

However, they were able to apprehend 2 terrorists in their new styled uniform of green colour and use of ropes on their legs and neck, the Army spokesman said.

According to him, this discovery was a new development in the ongoing clearance operations of the remnants of the Boko Haram terrorists in the north east.

Col. Usman listed items discovered during the patrol from the terrorists to include 1 Isuzu Canter lorry, which was concealed with grasses, 5 motorcycles and 2 bags of guinea corn.



Other items recovered include 3 Dane guns, a Solar panel, 3 bows and arrows.



The statement said the arrested terrorists are currently being interrogated to further assist in the clearance operations.
The Senate Leader, Mohammed Ali Ndume (APC/Borno South) yesterday denied the existence of any rift between the executive and legislative arms of government over the 2016 budget, which was later returned to the National Assembly by the Presidency.

The Senate leader, who was speaking with newsmen in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, said the current disagreement over the 2016 budget details was normal in a democratic setting.

He said: The President takes a look at the budget, including the details. If he sees that he is comfortable with it, he signs it. If hes not comfortable with it, he takes notes of the areas that he is not comfortable with and sends it to the National Assembly for ratification.

This is where we are now. The unfortunate thing this time around is that because of the change in government  the government of change. The attitude of Nigerians has also changed, which is normal, which is good. Nigerians are so anxious because President Muhammadu Buhari is the new president. They are expecting so much. They are expecting magic. They are expecting things quickly. They are expecting to see the difference. But if not, for us, this is just a normal thing.

When Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was the president, we had issues of budget.

Senator Ndume noted that since President Buhari had made observations and returned the budget to the National Assembly, the lawmakers would meet with him sometime this week for talks, adding nothing is out of hand yet. The Nigerian budget is a Nigerian budget.
Burundis President Pierre Nkurunziza has condemned the killing of a senior army officer in the capital Bujumbura as violence that began a year ago appeared to intensify. Brigadier General Athanase Kararuza, who was also a military adviser in the office of the vice president, was shot along with his wife and bodyguard on Monday in an attack that wounded their child.

The generals car came under rocket and gun fire as he was on his way to drop his child to school, army spokesman Gaspard Baratuza told the Reuters news agency. He energetically fought against the coup plotters last year and exceptionally contributed in strengthening peace and security during and after elections, Nkurunziza said in a statement.

We humbly pray that with the help of God perpetrators of the shameful acts are arrested and quickly punished according to the law. Kararuza previously worked as a deputy commander of an international peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic.

Tit-for-tat attacks between Nkurunzizas security forces and his opponents have escalated since April 2015 when he announced plans too change the consititution to allow him to run for a third term as president. He went on to won re-election three months later in a poll fiercely disputed by the opposition. The UN says that more than 400 people have been killed and over 250,000 have fled since the violence broke out.

Aljazeera.
Former Information Minister, Prince Tony Momoh, has called on Nigerians not to expect immediate change from the present government of President Muhammadu Buhari, saying it would come in two years.

Speaking at the launch of his book, Each Man, His Time: The Biography of an Era, at Mararaba, Nasarawa State, yesterday, Momoh said: Change must come but be patient. Within two years, you will be celebrating change.

However, the former minister flayed the PDP-led government for allegedly diverting funds meant for the purchase of arms to fight Boko Haram insurgency in the North East.
A tribal court in southern Pakistan has convicted a 10-year-old boy of having an affair with a married woman in her late 30s and ordered him to pay a fine of $7,000, police said Tuesday. According to Scoop, he incident occurred Monday in the remote village of Bakhrani in Sindh province, 510 kilometres (320 miles) north of Karachi. The 10-year-old was caught having an extramarital affair with a lady from another tribe, which created bad blood between the two tribes, a local police official requesting anonymity told newsmen. The incident was later taken to a jirga (tribal court) which ordered the boys family to pay a fine of Rs700,000 ($7,000) to the aggrieved side.

The boys family paid Rs50,000 ($500) up front and undertook to pay off the remaining amount within three months, he added. The chief police officer of the district, Umar Tufail, confirmed the incident but said the tribal courts decision was illegal and was under investigation. It has came to our knowledge that a jirga was held to solve a dispute regarding an extramarital affair. We are looking into the incident as jirgas are illegal, he told AFP.

Under Pakistans penal code, an adult male having sex with a female child is considered to have committed statutory rape, but a woman having sex with a boy does not come under the law. The woman could however be prosecuted for sexual assault or unnatural sexual acts, lawyer Sundas Hoorain told AFP. Adultery is also a crime but rarely prosecuted.

Jirgas typically take the form of a council of male elders assigned to resolve disputes. They have repeatedly come in for criticism for issuing controversial decisions, including forcibly marrying off young girls to end family feuds. In July 2013 Pakistans Supreme Court declared the jirgas illegal and asked provincial authorities to clamp down on them. But they persist in rural areas as a dispute settlement mechanism for people without the means to use regular courts.
Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has called for the collapse of the existing 36 states of the federation into six geopolitical zones as part of a drastic restructuring of the countrys federation.

Failure to do this, he noted, would result in the countrys development being continually hampered.

According to Ekweremadu, the abolition of the 36 states would unleash the latent potentials for growth by the regions, which he said, were, over the years, foiled by the reckless derailment of the countrys federalism by successive military governments.

The deputy Senate president offered the advice in his new book, Who will love my country: Ideas of building the Nigeria of our dreams, which is due for public presentation tomorrow in Abuja.

In the book, Senator Ekweremadu heaped praises on the nations founding fathers  Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamadi Azikiwe and Sir Ahmadu Bello  for espousing federalism as the basis of the countrys federation at independence.

He said that arguments that fiscal federalism would bring about distortive growth were untenable, affirming that even in a forest, not all trees are equal.
Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, has said despite being the 12th largest iron ore resource country in the world and the second largest in Africa, about 70 percent of the deposits in Nigeria are yet to be proven, a pursuit the federal government declares it is now engaging in.

He said earlier today in Ilorin at the foundation laying ceremony of Kam Steel Integrated Complex at Jimba Oja, that the federal government is well aware of this issue and is currently looking at options to solve the challenge, including synergising government capacity and private sector competencies for certifying existing deposits.

Noting that steel is the world mosts important engineering material; the Vice President restated the Buhari presidencys determination to bring about a faster industrialization process in the country through the active development of the steel sector.

According to the Vice President, Nigeria has about 2 billion metric tonnes of iron ore reserve, adding we must be extremely ambitious in our industrialization efforts. He explained further that the need for increased levels of investment in Nigeria, has never been more crucial than at this period in time.

Prof. Osinbajo stated that steel plays an important part in the Buhari administrations economic agenda, and therefore called on other operators in the steel industry in the country to ensure Nigeria becomes a net exporter of steel within the shortest possible time.

The Vice President who was accompanied by the Kwara State Governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed and Solid Minerals Development Minister, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, among others, spoke to a gathering of captains of industries, financial experts, political leaders and stakeholders at the foundation laying ceremony, disclosing that as part of demonstrating its commitment to the industrial development of the country, President Muhammadu Buhari had directed that everything be done so that Nigeria can make progress in respect of ease of doing business ranking this year.

Prof. Osinbajo noted that the federal Government has been putting in place the right macro-economic policies and is working to ensure an enabling environment for business to grow in line with the Change Agenda of the Buhari administration.

This is why the President has given clear instructions that we must make signifiant progress in the ease of doing business ranking this year, adding diligent efforts are being undertaken to ensure this goal is achieved, including the setting up of an inter-ministerial committee, which has since commenced work with a very keen presidential oversight, Osinbajo said.
The Federal Government has blamed unscrupulous dealers for the lingering fuel scarcity in some parts of the country, vowing henceforth, trackers would be installed on trucks to monitor criminal diversion of petroleum products from the points of distribution.

The Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, made this known yesterday while speaking at a Town Hall meeting organized alongside five other ministers with residents of South West geo-political zone, in Lagos.

According to the minister, over 30 per cent of the fuel supplied is diverted by these unscrupulous dealers to neighbouring countries

Kachikwu said: I have had countless sleepless nights. I work round the clock to solve this problem because whatever touches you touches me. Over 30 per cent of fuel is diverted to Chad and Cameroon. But I continue to oversupply and you see some people making money out of the agony of Nigerians.

Apologising for the umpteenth time over the lingering fuel crisis, the minister said: What we met on the ground when we came was complete lack of transparency but we have worked to put everything in order. The loss of N300 billion by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has been reduced to N3billion, subsidy payment has been reduced to near zero. We are focusing on business, not bleeding the government.

We are working on ideas to solve the problems. I worry about a lot of things, about the trucks. What we want to do now is to make sure that we select only truckers who can install trackers on their trucks; we are looking at intelligent solutions. Dont judge us by the supply of fuel; we are working hard at all the issues and believe me I have energy to throw at everything, he added.

Mr. Kachikwu told the audience, which included Nigerians from all walks of life that the NNPC loads 1,400 tankers for Lagos alone.

Ministers at the Town Hall meeting organised by the Federal Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism, are: Alhaji Lai Mohammed (Information, Culture and Tourism), Babatunde Raji Fashola (Power, Works and Housing), Kachukwu (Petroleum), Geoffrey Onyema (Foreign Affairs), Okechukwu Enelamah (Industry, Trade and Investment) and Rotimi Amaechi (Transport).

The host Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, represented by his deputy Mrs. Idiat Adebule, described the town hall meeting as the federal governments way of getting a feedback from the people.

He said the government has made great strides in the fight against corruption and in the economy but some of the changes have not been felt because President Muhamadu Buhari has been painstaking in addressing the many problems facing the country.

This is not the time to despair, but to keep faith with this administration. We need to focus because the gains of the ongoing efforts will start to materialise, Ambode said.
Former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, on Monday frowned at the delay in the passage of the 2016 Budget by the National Assembly and executive arm of the government.

Nnamani said this while answering questions from State House correspondents in Abuja. He said the two arms of government must find a quick solution to the budget impasse.

According to him, time is running out and something must be done urgently to ensure the passage of the budget as quickly as possible.

Budget is an area where we practice what we call co-management between the National Assembly and the executive branch of government.

Both of them co-manage the economy through the budget.

It is a peculiar area, both of them will have to cooperate and collaborate for a proper budget to be passed and once it is passed, it becomes law.

So as it stands today the situation is such that the National Assembly has to do what is called introspection.

How did we get to where we are now.

The year is running out and we are still talking about 2016 budget. Where is the fault from?

Wherever it is coming from, both the executive branch and the legislature must find a quick solution to it.

It does nobody good to drag it any longer, Nnamani said.
Two people, including the editor of a magazine for the transgender community, have been hacked to death in the capital of Bangladesh. A third person, a security guard at the apartment building where the killings took place, was seriously wounded in Mondays attack in Dhaka, in which six attackers murdered Julhas Mannan and Tanay Mojumdar.

Mannan was the editor of Rupban, the only LGBT magazine in the country. Unidentified attackers entered an apartment at Kalabagan and hacked two people to death, Maruf Hossain Sarder, a Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman, told the AFP news agency. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Hasina vowed to hunt down and prosecute those responsible.

She accused the countrys opposition party and what she called allied armed groups of being behind the killings. The opposition has denied the allegations. No suspects have been arrested, police officer Shamim Ahmed told the Associated Press news agency. Mannans magazine, Roopbaan, was launched two years ago and has become a platform for promoting the rights of LGBT people in Bangladesh, where homosexual acts are illegal.

The group also runs an annual Rainbow Rally on April 14, Bengali new year, that was cancelled this year as part of widespread security measures imposed by police. The incident came two days after a university professor was killed in similar fashion in an attack in Rajshahi, which was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS) group.
A group under the aegis of Concerned Citizens of Kaduna State has called on security agents and relevant authorities to stop the senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, from making further inflammatory and inciting statements on the current religious bill before the state House of Assembly.

The concerned citizens made their position known in a statement signed by their chairman, Tijjani Na Abdu on Monday.

According to the statement, Senator Sanis utterances and recent challenge of Governor Nasir El-Rufais move to regulate preaching in the state is capable of plunging the state, notorious for its religious volatility, into another round of needless crisis.

Senator Shehu Sanis recent inflammatory and inciting statement which says; You dont have the right to regulate, issue license to preachers, is capable of throwing the state into another religious crisis bearing in mind the volatile nature of the state. The state has suffered enough crisis in 1997, 2000, 2002 and 2011. And with the emergence of Gausiya Islamic group in Zaria coupled with the recent clash between the Nigerian Army and the Islamic Movement of Nigeria also known as Shiite, the bill becomes absolutely necessary that the state government looked at the existing law with the view of avoiding a repeat of past religious crisis in the state, the statement read.

Our correspondent recalls that the senator made the remark while receiving an award of excellence by the youth wing of Ansarul-Deen Society of Nigeria during their 40 years anniversary and fundraising programme about two weeks ago.

Sani, who said the proposed religious bill is absolutely wrong, maintained that Nobody can violate the constitution because freedom of religion is enshrined in the constitution.
Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State had declared that he will support the policies and programmes of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, especially those that will be of benefit to the people of the state.

He made this declaration on Monday at Government House, Port Harcourt when the local study group from the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, NIPPS, Kuru, paid him a visit.

Gov. Wike assured the visitors that he will not use his office for unnecessary politicking, adding that good policies go beyond party affiliations.

I will support any policy of the Federal Government that will enhance the living standard of the people of Rivers State. It doesnt matter who initiated such policy as long as it favours our people, he said.

Mr. Wike further explained that the primary focus of his administration was the general well-being of the people of the state, as such he will welcome good policies from the Buhari-led Federal Government.
A federal High Court sitting in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital on Monday convicted a former member of the State House of Assembly and former Caretaker Chairman, Ogori/Magongo Local Government Area of the state, Gabriel Daudu, for a N1.4 billion fraud.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, which had first arraigned Mr. Daudu in April 2010, was prosecuted on 208-count charge bordering on money laundering and misappropriation of public funds.

Delivering judgment on the matter, Justice Inyang Ekwo found the former lawmaker guilty of 77 counts and sentenced him to 154-year imprisonment.

In his ruling, the trial judge held that the prosecution proved its case beyond every reasonable doubt, and therefore sentenced Mr. Daudu to two years on each of the 77 counts to run concurrently.

Before the conviction of the politician, prosecuting counsel, Wahab Shittu, tendered various exhibits before the court and fielded 13 witnesses to prove the case against him.

In the course of the trial, Justice Ekwo indicated that the trial might have to start afresh as the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice Ibrahim Auta, asked Justice P.M. Ayuba of the Lokoja Division of the court to take over the case.

However, Mr. Shittu pleaded with Justice Auta to review the decision.

The Chief Judge, thereafter, returned the case file to Justice Ekwo, who, Monday, found Mr. Daudu guilty of the 77 counts.

Since the sentences are running concurrently, Mr. Daudu will spend only two years in jail.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, yesterday, lamented that the country didnt have sufficient gas to fire the countrys power plants to generate up to 7,000 megawatts of electricity.

Osinbajo, who spoke at the NAEE/International Association for Energy Economics Annual International Conference in Abuja, expressed disappointment in the fact that despite Nigerias enormous natural gas reserves of over 185 trillion cubic feet, the country was still faced with huge energy supply problems.

In fact, it is an irony that we do not have sufficient gas to fire our power plants up to 7,000MW, yet in energy industry circles, Nigeria is described as more of a gas territory than an oil territory, Osinbajo, who was represented by his Senior Special Assistant (Power and Privatisation), Chiedu Ugbo, said.

According to him, currently the country has over 12,500 MW of installed electricity generating capacity, consisting of gas thermal, and hydropower plants, stating that capacity of about 7,000MW was available to be generated, if the required fuel was available.

We have limited gas molecules to supply to the power plants. This is a result of many years of under-investment in gas gathering and processing for domestic consumption and also many years of gas flaring. Nigeria alone flares about half of the 40 billion cubic meters of associated gas estimated to be flared in Africa annually.

To address the situation, Osinbajo disclosed that the Federal Government was aware that there is no alternative to electric energy for energizing and powering Nigerias economic growth and development; hence it is determined to resolve the challenges to achieving sustainable energy supply in the country.

We are working tirelessly towards resolving the gas-to-power challenge, ensuring that the needed investment will be made in gas gathering and processing for domestic consumption, especially for power plants and, at the same time working to ensure sustainability of supply of existing gas volumes, he noted.
Vanguard

All the 36 state governors have been challenged to monitor petroleum products distribution in their respective states, in a bid to tackle the persistent fuel shortages, particularly of premium motor spirit, PMS, also called petrol.

Punch

The police and the Nigerian Army have contradicted their claims on the whereabouts of 56 Fulani herdsmen, who were arrested with arms at a military checkpoint, along the Airport Road, Abuja, last week

Thisday

The Nigerian military has once again confirmed the possibility that most of the over 200 girls of Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, kidnapped by the Boko Haram terrorists in 2014 are alive and allegedly kept in two locations in the North-east.

The Sun

Dr Mohammed Junaid in this interview, blamed the recurring Fulani herdsmen, farmers clashes on governments inability to muster political will to address the matter. On the issue of governance , he picked holes in the style of President Muhamnadu Buhari, insisting that the appointments made so far by the President were not such that could inspire hope among Nigerians.

Daily Times

The Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) has lauded the Abia State Governor, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, for judiciously managing the N14 billion bailout fund which the Federal Government released to the state last year.

Daily Trust

Chief Rex Onyeabor is a former National Secretary and member of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In this interview, he speaks on the challenges facing his party and the ongoing war against corruption among others

Leadership

Three persons have been arrested by the police attached to Ogwashi-Uku division of the Delta State police command for allegedly robbing a journalist, Mr. Innocent Osakwe, while armed with gun and other weapons.

Tribune

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has decided to abolish Board of Trustees (BOT) from its leadership structure, Nigerian Tribune has been unofficially told.

The Nation

The Senate drew the flak over its planned amendment of the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) Act and related laws. It quickly dropped the plan  which coincided with the ongoing trial of its president, Senator Bukola Saraki, at the CCT for alleged false assets declaration  following public outcry. To lawyers, the plan was ill-conceived. ADEBISI ONANUGA sought their views.

Tribune

THE Kwara State police command has said it is on the trail of a young man who allegedly stabbed his lover to death and inflicted serious injury on her mother in Ilorin, early Monday.
Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State yesterday expressed confidence that the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, will bounce back to power at the centre in 2019 because Nigerians have discovered that the All Progressives Congress (APC) is a political party founded on deceit.

Speaking in Dutse, the Jigawa State capital on Monday during the PDP Membership Mobilization Programme, Wike told the mammoth crowd that turned up for the event that it was obvious that there the APC is dead in Jigawa State.

The APC not only sacked the PDP-led federal government during the 2015 general elections, it also sacked the PDP from the Jigawa Government House and produced most of the federal lawmakers from the state.

Notwithstanding PDPs humiliating defeat, Wike said the presence of tens of thousands of party supporters for the membership mobilization programme was evidence that there is no APC in the state.

What happened in 2015 has opened the eyes of Nigerians. Nigerians have lost faith in APC. From what we have seen, it is obvious that Nigerians were deceived. They have seen the deceit of APC and they have returned to where they belong.

They have seen the truth and they are back to their original party. The false stories of 2015 will no longer be accepted and come 2019, PDP will bounce back to power, he said.

Wike added: I am going back to the Niger Delta to tell the people that PDP is fully rooted in the North.

In his remarks, the immediate past Governor of Jigawa, Sule Lamido, who recently declared his interest in the 2019 presidential race, declared that PDP is the antidote of the APC.

Lamido assured that PDP will provide answers to the developmental needs of Nigerians.

Also speaking at the event was the national chairman of the PDP, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff.

Sheriff, whose visitto the state was earlier rescheduled, said he was in Jigawa to mobilise more people to register as members of the party.

He said: There is PDP in Jigawa State, APC is finished.

The Jigawa PDP Membership Registration rally was attended by former Kano State Governor and past Minister of Education, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau; immediate past Kaduna State Governor, Ramalan Yero, members of the PDP National Working Committee, including Prince Uche Secondus, serving and former national assembly members.
The Kaduna State Sector Command of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), on Tuesday, blamed the road accident that claimed the lives of six Ekiti State medical doctors and their driver to over speeding.

The Sector Head of Operations, Deputy Corps Commander, Salisu Galadunci stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kaduna.

It would be recalled that the accident occurred on Sunday at Doka, along AbujaKaduna express way.

Twelve medical doctors and a driver were in an 18-seater bus travelling to Sokoto for Nigeria Medical Association (NMA)s annual conference and had a tyre bust due to over speeding.

The vehicle overturned with the occupants and six of the doctors died along with the driver while six others survived with various degrees of injuries.

Bodies of the victim were evacuated to St. Gerard Hospital for depositing and medical attention.

Galadunci noted that over speeding was responsible for a larger percentage of accidents on Nigerian roads.

The official advised drivers to desist from over speeding to save lives (NAN).
The House of Representatives Committee on Interior yesterday quizzed the Controller-General, Nigeria Prisons Service, NPS, Dr Peter Ekpendu over the alleged assault on a female lawmaker by his men last Wednesday.

The Reps member, Mrakpor Onyeamaechi Joan (PDP, Delta) was said to have been assaulted and harassed by an aide to Mr. Ekpendu after her vehicle reportedly blocked the Prisons boss convoy, who was at the National Assembly.

Following the alleged assault of the lawmaker, the House adopted a motion raised by its Minority leader, Leo Ogor, who came under a matter of privilege, summoning Ekpendu as well as the policemen and DSS personnel attached to the National Assembly and the Sergeant-at-arms before the interior committee, which was given today to submit its report.

Confirming that he was at the National Assembly complex on the day of the unfortunate incident, the prisons CG, however, said his vehicles had passed when the lawmaker was allegedly assaulted.

According to Ekpendu, it was the vehicles of two of his deputies that were involved in the incident.

He said: I left the National Assembly complex to attend another assignment. I left in company of some officers, DCG Admin, Jafaru Ahmed and DCG Budget and Finance making it a total of 6 vehicles in the convoy.

Before the incident, the escort, my vehicle and the backup had passed. So, I was never a witness to the incident. I had to be informed by the CG Civil Defence who called my attention to the report in his office the following day.

The Prisons CG said he immediately instituted an investigation and issued a query to the affected officers the following day.

He said he had taken responsibility for all that happened and that if found guilty, the punishment for those involved will not be anything less than dismissal as it is an embarrassment to the service.

Mr. Ekpendu later apologized to the lawmakers for the incident.

Testifying before the committee, Rep. Joan said she was assaulted and insulted by a Senior Inspector of Prisons (SIP) Mr. Dan Odeh, at the exit gate to the National Assembly on that day.
Saudi Arabias cabinet has agreed on a broad-based economic reform plan, known as Vision 2030, revealing how the oil-reliant state plans to diversify its economy over the next 14 years. Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the deputy crown prince, said on Monday that the country was building up the its Public Investment Fund to become a major player in global markets.

He said Saudi Arabia was restructuring its housing ministry to increase the supply of affordable housing, and creating a green card system within five years to give expatriates long-term residence. Salman al-Ansari, founder and president of the Washington DC-based Saudi American Public Relations Affairs Committee (SAPRAC), told Al Jazeera the green card system gives more rights to expatriates to invest in the country.

Almost 10 million foreigners send their money back to their country, they cant invest in this country, so by this green card idea, we are giving more rights to expats for investment or buy houses, he said. That will create a big move for the Saudi economy. It is a visionary kind of move to not only help the Saudi economy and Saudi citizens but also help the foreigners in the country. Saudi Arabia will also sell shares in state oil giant Aramco and set up the worlds largest wealth fund in line with the plan, Mohamed bin Salman said separately in an interview to the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya news channel.
Members of a British police department were left scratching their heads when an officer snapped a picture of an unusual motor vehicle  a giant foot. The photo, posted to Twitter by police in Londons Wandsworth borough, shows a man driving the giant, motorized foot Sunday while a woman in a captains uniform assists him.

Spotted near Balham Tube, a typical day in Wandsworth(anyone have an explanation?) the tweet read. Twitter users dug into the mystery of the mobile foot and discovered the footmobile was a promotion for the Wandsworth Arts Fringe festival.

The festival said the foot was masterminded by the Ministry of Silly Ideas. Another Twitter user who spotted the strange vehicle riding around town shared  ahem  footage of the vehicle in motion.

UPI.
President Muhammadu Buhari said to achieve greater peace and political stability in their countries, African leaders must work harder to ensure social justice for all their citizens.

Speaking at an audience with the Foreign Minister of Equatorial Guinea, Mr. Agapito Mba Mokuy, President Buhari on Monday also maintained that as leaders of sovereign nations, African Heads of Government must be allowed to discharge their responsibility for peace and security within their countries, without external interference.

The President said that this was why Heads of State and Government of the African Union decided against sending peacekeeping troops to Burundi during the countrys recent political crisis.

He said he expected the Government of Burundi to work towards greater peace, national unity and social justice for all Burundians to justify the decision of the African Union.

Governments should be responsible for the security of their countries. Burundi must therefore ensure social justice for all of its people so as not to disappoint Africa in the eyes of the world, the President told the minister who was in Abuja as a Special Envoy of President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

President Buhari assured him that Nigeria will continue to work with Equatorial Guinea and other nations to strengthen the African Union and its various organs for the good of the continent.

He said that Nigeria will also welcome more cooperation with Equatorial Guinea and other members of the Gulf of Guinea Commission to curb piracy and enhance security in the gulf.
US President Barack Obama has said he plans to send 250 more troops to Syria, a sharp increase in the number of Americans working with local Syrian forces. Ive decided to increase US support for local forces fighting ISIL in Syria  Ive approved the deployment of up to 250 US personnel in Syria, including special forces, Obama said, announcing the decision after a meeting in Hanover with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The deployment, which will increase US forces in Syria to about 300, aims to accelerate the process of driving back the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, White House adviser Ben Rhodes said. In Iraq, the US plans to send 200 more soldiers and Apache helicopter gunships in preparation for an offensive to retake Mosul.

ISIL controls the cities of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq and is proving a potent threat abroad, claiming credit for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March. I think the administration has come to the conclusion that the Iraq army is not capable of taking Mosul, Peter Galbraith, a former American diplomat, told Al Jazeera from Paris. The strategy is going to be to go after Raqqa with the Syrian Kurds.

In his remarks, Obama also said that Europe needed to take on its share of the burden to ensure collective security, adding that the Western allies could do more in the fight against ISIL. While Obama has resisted deploying US troops in Syria, he initially sent 50 US special operations personnel there last year. The US officials described the forces as being on a counterterrorism mission rather than involved in an effort to tip the scales in the war, which Staffan De Mistura, the UN envoy, estimates has killed 400,000 people.

Aljazeera.
A suicide attack at the Abuja bureau of ThisDay newspaper and a car bombing at another of its offices killed at least nine (9) people in the first such strikes against the countrys media. ..

The explosions which occurred simultaneously rocked Thisday office in Abuja and another location near its office in Kaduna.



Just while rescue was ongoing in Abuja, the explosion in Kaduna went off. The Kaduna explosion occurred in Kontagora Road by Ahmadu Bello Way, Kaduna, Kaduna at a building housing some media houses which included Thisday, The Sun and The Moment.




The Ogun State Police Command on Monday arraigned two men, Akapo Paul, 73, and Johnson Shorinnolu, 63, for allegedly stealing $14 million belonging to the West African Christian Mission.

They appeared before an Ota Magistrates Court

The accused, whose addresses are unknown, are facing a two-count charge of stealing and conspiracy.

The prosecutor, Abdulkareem Mustapha, told the court that the accused committed the offences sometime in 2015 at about 9:30pm at West African Christian Mission at No.49 Tarmac Road, Ota.

Mr. Mustapha alleged that the accused conspired, as signatories to the bank account of West African Christian mission, to steal 14 million dollars.

He said the offences contravened Sections 390 (8) (b) and 516 of the Criminal Code Vol.1, Laws of Ogun, 2006.

The accused, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge.

The Chief Magistrate, A.I. Adelaja, admitted them to bail in the sum of N2 million each with two sureties in like sum.

She said the sureties must be residents within the courts jurisdiction and should be gainfully employed.

Ms. Adelaja also directed the sureties to swear to an affidavit of means and show evidence of tax payments to Ogun Government.

The magistrate adjourned the case till May 20 for hearing.

(NAN)
The Nigerian Army has refuted the claim that it handed over to the Kaduna State Government 347 dead bodies of members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) also known as Shiites, for mass burial.

The bodies were those of victims of the December 12-14, 2015 clash between soldiers of the Nigerian Army and Shiites in Zaria, Kaduna State.

Speaking at the Judicial Commission of Enquiry into the clash yesterday, the Army said it did not give the figure of the bodies it released to the government, adding that it only handed a few bodies to the government representative.

At the previous hearing, the Kaduna Government said it received at least 347 bodies from the Army for mass burial.

The Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Mallam Balarabe Abbas Lawal, who made this known at that hearing, said the unknown corpses were given mass burial in Kaduna a few days after the incident.

The Director-General of Interfaith, Muhammad Namadi Musa, claimed he led the burial of the unknown bodies, saying it was carried out at midnight in Mando area of Kaduna, and lasted till 5am.

He said: On December 13, 2015 I received a phone call from the SSG to come to the Government House, after which I was directed to go to Zaria to find out the number of bodies and how they would be buried.

At the Army depot, the SSG directed me to meet one Major Ogundare regarding the bodies there. After introducing myself, he refused to let me know the number; but later on, the SSG called me and told me the number.

The Army, however, disputed this position, saying only few bodies were handed over to the representative of the government at the time, not 347 as claimed.

At the resumed sitting of the commission yesterday, a medical officer from the Army Depot, Zaria, Major Uche Agulana, under cross examination by counsel to the commission, said he did not keep the record of the deaths, because, according to him, he was busy at that time trying to save the lives of those brought to the hospital.

The General Officer Commanding (GOC), 1 Mechanised Division, Kaduna, Maj-Gen. Adeniyi Oyebade, said the Shiites attacked soldiers on that day.

He added that it was that situation that prompted his men to apply force to restore law and order.

In response to a question by the chairman of the commission  Justice Mohammed Lawal Garba  why the Army did not inform the police before invading the home of the detained leader of the IMN, Sheik Ibraheem El- Zakzaky, since the matter was a civil one, the GOC said the police lacked the manpower to curtail the Shiite members.
As Apple and Microsoft battle the U.S. government to keep customer data secure from prying eyes and to keep secured electric data unavailable through backdoors, BlackBerry is defending government access to customer communications -- and may have provided the keys to several governments (including Canada and Saudi Arabia) -- so that they can unlock data as desired.

CEO John Chen has said multiple times that tech companies must balance customer privacy with "lawful" government interests. He's even written that "our privacy commitment does not extend to criminals."

Chen's views mirror the arguments made by the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Burr-Feinstein encryption-access bill. On the face of it, it sounds reasonable. Who wants to help criminals?

Ironically, it's BlackBerry that has been the gold standard for secured communications, which is why it is used by presidents, prime ministers, secretaries of state, defense chiefs, and spies worldwide -- organizations that want assurance that everything they communicate is safe from eavesdropping.

But if BlackBerry is willing to cooperate with various governments to provide access, as it says it is, then those communications can't be assumed to be safe. After all, agents of other governments -- spies -- are criminals in those other governments' eyes.

Chen's rationale for providing access to at least some BlackBerry communications is a trapdoor to a Pandora's box we should not open. It amazes me that the very governments that want their people's data and communications to be fully secure are happy to break into others' data and communications -- even when using the same technologies. Once there's a backdoor, there's no guarantee of security.

Beyond the "just desserts" irony of the spies wanting access to each other's devices, though they themselves use the same devices, is a deeper, broader harm: the notion that individual rights aren't worth protecting when it's inconvenient for the government.

In most Western countries, you're innocent until proven guilty. That's not true in many other countries, where disagreeing with the government is essentially a crime -- and it's not only China, Iran, and North Korea, but more open nations like Russia, Jordan, and Thailand. Even "enlightened" Western countries like France, Britain, and America routinely spy on their citizens, criminal or not.

What's happened is that "criminal" now means "suspect," and governments have decided that potential criminals should be treated like actual ones. Worse, many have decided that anyone who can help identify potential or actual criminals should be forcibly made to reveal any information they have.

These requests will of course be "lawful" -- all "lawful" really means is that the government has decided it is. There may be processes to follow, but that's merely a matter of degree. In the United States, we have secret courts to make these decisions when the regular laws get in the way.

Every country will set its own definition of "lawful" and "criminal," so "lawful" and "criminal" are meaningless, arbitrary standards. That's the danger of BlackBerry's thinking -- it may feel good or seem expedient, but it causes a deeper harm each time that erodes our liberties and the type of society that we claim to want.

BlackBerry says customers' BES servers have no backdoors and have never been compromised for government requests. Chen suggests cooperation with governments is in other areas of BlackBerry's technology chain -- perhaps its network operations centers, for example. (The key that BlackBerry has apparently shared is the default that individuals use unless their organization has its own BES server; each organization's BES server has its own key, unknown to BlackBerry similar to Apple not knowing users' encryption keys on iOS devices.)

Although I have no doubt about Chen's sincerity and BlackBerry's integrity, I believe the company's rationale for cooperation with data-access requests is dangerous. If you use a BlackBerry and read Chen's views on how it cooperates on "lawful" requests, do you really believe your data is safe? I wouldn't -- because BlackBerry is not adverse to opening its doors.

I hope everyone who still uses a BlackBerry thinks about that the next time they pick up their phone -- especially if they think that using a BlackBerry makes them more secure than if they used another device. At this point, they will never really know.
As I read about the Kuwaiti government's plan to test and log the DNA of everyone in that country, I was reminded of what a bad idea such schemes are. It's great for law enforcement, I guess, but it's terrible for personal privacy and overall security.

What do I mean that it's bad for security? Wouldn't DNA be the ultimate biometric identifier? Wouldn't using DNA on every system worldwide mark the end of cyber crime?

No, it would result in the exact opposite -- and we're almost there already. Before I explain myself, let's talk about all the ways DNA and other biometric identifiers are collected.

Fingerprints

My fingerprints have been taken for every security clearance I've applied for, whether or not I was accepted, whether or not I completed the process. Part of the application process is that they get to keep your fingerprints forever. They end up in a national fingerprint databases, even if you've never been suspected of a crime.

If you travel between countries, you've probably given your fingerprints on arrival. I've given my fingerprints to several different countries, including my own, several times. You can be required to submit to fingerprinting as part of your job. States can even require a full set of fingerprints for getting a driver's license. I unlock my smartphone using a fingerprint; I know many people who do the same to log on to their desktop computer or to verify their identity to a time clock.

Facial recognition

The idea that you could walk past a security camera and get positively identified was science fiction until a few years ago. Today, it's commonly used and fairly accurate across hundreds of law enforcement jurisdictions. I hear they even use it at the Super Bowl and other big gatherings.

I don't know who has the best facial recognition, but Facebook has to be right up there. I'm still amazed how accurate it is. Several studies say Facebook's technology is more accurate than the human brain and even more accurate than the FBI.

But now facial recognition is used everywhere, including in stores, cars, and everyday access control systems. Even your computer will get facial recognition as a logon choice very soon. Satellites and drones will have it, if the military versions don't already. It's hard to keep up.

DNA

What can be more personal than your DNA? Although DNA repositories aren't as popular as other biometric databases, they're the next big thing. Has your DNA been collected yet? I know mine has.

I submitted my DNA for ancestry analysis. More than likely it ended up inside a big database. Several big ancestry websites and even Google are helping to create huge DNA databases.

Medical researchers and cops are increasingly accessing these public sites, along with their own databases, to solve medical and criminal mysteries. In a story about superhero DNA, researchers found 13 people with more than 400 horrible genetic diseases (they had all the markers) who didn't show symptoms. Buried in that article: Researchers searched through the DNA of more than 600,000 people without any of the parties being aware.

Meanwhile, the cops are increasingly asking for access into otherwise private DNA databases. In at least one case (and probably many more), people are being detained or arrested because their DNA is similar -- not an exact match -- to an unidentified suspect's unidentified DNA.

At what point will hospital birthing centers be required to take newborn DNA and submit it to a centralized data system? It may be done in the name of science and decreasing disease, but it means that everyone's most personal and sensitive identifying biometric, DNA, will be stored in one or more databases. By the way, did you know that anyone can buy a portable DNA analysis machine and have a full analysis in one hour?

The problem with biometric identification

Here's the difficulty: Most biometric identities can easily be stolen and reused. We shouldn't use biometric identity for anything serious or critical, because we have no way of preventing bad people or malware from reusing it maliciously.

None of the places that store your biometric identities are safe or unhackable. No matter how much they may claim your biometric identity is safe, they're either lying or clueless. We need look no further than the security clearance database stored by the U.S. government that contained, among other details, the fingerprints and detailed personal history (including friends' names and addresses) of every person that submitted an application for a security clearance. Chinese hackers stole tens of millions of fingerprints and identities going back as far as 1982.

Am I supposed to believe that Kuwait, 23andMe, the FBI, Ancestry.com, and every other database that stores my DNA (or other biometric identity) will remain unhacked forever, especially when no one believes any of those databases are secure today?

There's the rub. If someone steals your biometric identity, they can reuse it -- and you can't repudiate it. The system you log on to can (and should) require a second authentication factor, like a PIN, but once your biometric identity is stolen, that factor ceases to be a reliable factor ... forever.
Microsoft certainly has no obligation to support "ungenuine" copies of Windows 7, but the strange case of KB 3146706 suggests Microsoft might be actively gunning for the pirates.

Last patch Tuesday, Microsoft released MS 16-044 and KB 3146706 as an "important" security update for OLE running in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1, and corresponding server versions. At the time, patching sirens went off for two odd reasons.

First, the patch was unchecked on most Windows 7 PCs, even though it appears in the "Important" Windows Update list. (A checked patch is one that is installed when Windows Update runs.) The patch is checked on Windows 8.1 systems and on Vista. It's not clear if the patch was originally unchecked on Win7 PCs or if Microsoft dropped the check mark shortly after the patch rolled out.

Second, red lights went up all over China that the patch was throwing a blue screen error 0x0000006B. It's a nasty and recurring error on boot, and the only way to get out of the error is to boot with some other media and uninstall the patch.

Soon after the patch appeared, I posted on AskWoody.com about this strange behavior:

I'm seeing lots of reports of MS16-044 / KB 3146706 throwing errors -- most commonly blue screen 0x0000006B -- that go away if the patch is removed. Remarkably, almost all of the reports (for example, this one on site vvcat) are in Chinese. Makes me wonder if there's a conflict between KB3146706 and a program that's commonly run in China. We saw something similar three years ago with KB 2823324, which triggered BSODs on many computers in Brazil. AskWoody denizen LL wrote to me and said that it looks like Microsoft is still distributing the patch through Windows Update, but isn't checking it -- which is typically a precursor to yanking the patch entirely.

There was, and is still, no indication in the KB article why the patch isn't checked for Windows 7. My Windows 7 test machines currently show KB 3146706 as "Important" but not checked.

After struggling through automated translations of Chinese websites, it's become more apparent to me that the 0x0000006B blue screens appear on Chinese-language Windows 7 systems with a specific pirate copy generally called Ghost (most likely in reference to Norton's Ghost hard drive copying program).

There's a fascinating description of the Chinese Ghost process (in English) from jimdagys on the VideoHelp forum:

This has been going on for at least 15 years, and until today, I was totally ignorant of this practice. I hate to be ignorant of what half the world's population is doing. I remember being in China 10 years ago, and I couldn't figure out why every other disk in a software shop said "Ghost" on it. I know Ghost is useful, but... Today I had a computer that wouldn't access the internet very well. The technician said reinstalling the operating system would solve the problem. I didn't look forward to the hour or so plus reboots involved to reinstall Windows. Shortly after the technician put in a windows cd, I noticed the Ghost interface came up. I was curious why Ghost would be involved in this situation. After 5 or so minutes, Ghost was finished, then a special driver window appeared, automatically installing drivers. The technician said that the one Ghost cd (obviously specially modified) would install Windows on any computer After the operating system was totally installed I did a Malwarebytes scan and there were 3 viruses (apparently already present on the install cd). But for now, I can access the internet perfectly.

I lived in Thailand for 13 years and can attest to the prevalence of the process. In the time I was there, I'd guess less than 10 percent -- more likely fewer than 1 percent -- of the consumer PCs sold and repaired in Thailand had genuine copies of Windows. If you took your perfectly valid, U.S.-bought Windows 7 laptop in for repairs, more often than not it was returned with a pirate copy of Windows.

Is this an attempt by Microsoft to wipe out a wide swath of illegal copies of Windows? Or is it simply roadkill on the path to Windows 10? Without a doubt, Microsoft's under no obligation to make its patches work with illegal copies of Windows. This problem seems  fortuitous.

KB 3146706 may have been put on hold for a completely different reason. As described in this TechNet post and this Reddit thread, there's a conflict between EMET 5.5 and both KB 3146706 and KB 3147071 running on 32-bit Windows 7. I also have a report of KB 3146706 causing a failure to connect to the System Event Notification Service. It doesn't look like Microsoft has fixed these problems yet, which may also explain why KB 3146706 isn't checked.

If intended, however, it's an interesting attack vector, wouldn't you say?

Tip o' the Baker Street Irregulars hat to Hopeful Cynic and Gord.
Wheat (ZW) Gives Up Half of Aug-Sep Bounce Tradable Patterns - 1 hour ago Wheat (ZWZ22) is looking wobbly to start the week, remaining vulnerable to a deeper consolidation this week towards descending wedge support (on the 4hr chart). Odds are moderately high for a lower... ZWZ22 : 845-6 (-0.59%) WEAT : 8.68 (-0.34%)

Lean Hogs Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:11PM CDT The uptrend may be expected to continue, while market is trading above support level 89.150, which will be followed by reaching resistance level 93.025.

Feeder Cattle Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:10PM CDT The uptrend may be expected to continue, while market is trading above support level 178.550, which will be followed by reaching resistance level 183.550 and 188.250.

Live Cattle Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:09PM CDT The uptrend may be expected to continue, while market is trading above support level 151.775, which will be followed by reaching resistance level 156.475.

Soybean Oil Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:08PM CDT The downtrend may be expected to continue, while market is trading below resistance level 73.75, which will be followed by reaching support level 68.16 and if it keeps on moving down below that level,...

Soybean Meal Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:07PM CDT The downtrend may be expected to continue, while market is trading below resistance level 419.1, which will be followed by reaching support level 398.8.

Soybean Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:06PM CDT An downtrend will start as soon, as the market drops below support level 1356, which will be followed by moving down to support level 1315.6.

Corn Weekly Forecast Kolhanov.com - Sun Oct 23, 3:05PM CDT The uptrend may be expected to continue, while market is trading above support level 680, which will be followed by reaching resistance level 698.6 and if it keeps on moving up above that level, we may...
Who said that big legacy foundations can't do cool stuff?

While conventional wisdom holds that it's do-gooders from the tech world who are disrupting yesterday's philanthropic models, making traditional grantmaking look quaint, you'll also find some legacy foundations operating on the new frontiers of philanthropy. Indeed, some of these funders were exploring different ways to deploy capital to improve society long before the recent social investing craze got underway.

MacArthur is a case in point. It's been involved in impact investing since the mid-1980s, well before the phrase was widely used. Most notably, the foundation's been a major supporter of community development financial institutions, making tens of millions of dollars of what everyone once called program-related investments. (Impact investing does sound better, doesn't it?) In just the past decade, the foundation has made PRIs totaling more than $100 million to boost Chicago neighborhoods and advance its programs.

Given this history, it makes sense that the foundation might concoct some big, bold impact investing scheme as part of its larger rebooting under Julia Stasch. Last year, when the foundation announced its reorganization, it said it would also roll out something new in the impact space down the line.

Now that moment has arrived. In partnership with the Chicago Community Trust (CCT) and the Calvert Foundation, MacArthur has created something called Benefit Chicago, which is a $100 million effort to mobilize nonprofit impact investments in the city.

This initiative is kind of complicated, with a lot of moving parts. Check out Mac'spress release to get all the details of how Benefit Chicago will operate.

The point we want to emphasize, here, is that this is a neat, innovative projectand puts the institutions involved right at the cutting edge of the impact investing movement. Why? Because Benefit Chicago allows pretty much anyone with some spare cash to get involved in financing impact investments that make the city a better place.

How low is the barrier to entry? Low. Investors at all levelsindividuals and institutionscan purchase Community Investment Notes issued by the Calvert Foundation that are targeted at improving Chicago communities. As Benefit Chicago explains, these "are fixed-income securities with principal maturities ranging from one to 15 years and interest payable annually. They are available through a brokerage account with a minimum investment of $1,000 or online starting at $20."

You can also get involved through a donor-advised fund at the Chicago Community Trust, and "designate some or all fund assets for investment in a Chicago-targeted Note."

Benefit Chicago isn't just offering a way for anyone to engage in impact investing, it's also connecting up such investing with donor-advised funds, which are a popular mechanism for donors these days, especially those operating at a lower level.

The upshot of all this is a democratization of impact investing, which can be awfully intimidating to smaller-scale investors or donors. While other initiatives and organizations are advancing impact investing, this is the first major effort focused on a particular city that we've seenand you can see how that geographic angle could really get people jazzed, giving them an easy way to invest in their own community.

The other notable thing here is how well the different collaborators fit together to make Benefit Chicago happen. You have MacArthur bringing the deep pockets and experience in impact investing; CCT bringing the donor-advised funds as well as its vast knowledge of Chicago nonprofits; and the Calvert Foundation, which is creating the financing tool. Very clever.

Switching gears, what does this mean for Chicago nonprofits? Very good things, potentially.

CCT and MacArthur recently commissioned a report that found a significant number of unmet needs for financial capital in the social sector of Chicago. The report also pointed out that there are a lot of individual and institutional donors in this area that want to make a meaningful impact but arent necessarily living up to their potential.

The new funds will provide capital to the local social sector via low-interest loans and other investments to further key priorities that nonprofits are working on in the city. These include access to healthy food, affordable housing, education, child care, energy conservation, and job creation and training.

While $100 million is the goal for getting this effort off the ground, the partners involved say this commitment could reach up to $400 million over the next five years. That's real money.
Spacer.com.au Pty. Ltd., an Australia-based peer-to-peer self-storage marketplace, has partnered with Paris-based peer-to-peer storage business Costockage to jointly expand service to Asia. The companies will leverage each others networks as well as operational and marketing resources. The businesses indicated other international markets and a potential co-investment in shared investor networks could be explored in the future, according to a press release. The companies targeted Asia due to the growth in the self-storage market fueled by an increase of disposable income among the middle class, the release stated.

From day one, international expansion has always been part of Spacers growth strategy, especially into the lucrative Asian self-storage market, which is ripe for disruption, said Mike Rosenbaum, co-founder and CEO of Spacer. Our partnership with Costockage facilitates this by allowing us to draw on each others market knowledge, resources and experience to launch into new markets. Together, our goal is to build the worlds dominant peer-to-peer marketplace for space.

Asia holds unlimited potential, with space in major cities like Shanghai, Tokyo and Hong Kong a luxury that many dont have, with conveniently located quality self-storage facilities in short supply, added Adam Levy-Zauberman, CEO of Costockage. We look forward to working with Spacer to expand into this market and explore together other growth opportunities for both businesses.

Since its launch last October, Spacer has amassed a membership base of more than 5,000, with 750 active listings receiving more than 15,000 site visits each month, the release stated. The company expects to have 1,500 active storage sites by June.

In addition to international expansion, Spacer is examining other types of shared-space services to add to its platform. Office co-sharing, commercial-space sharing and warehousing present a huge opportunity to expand our offerings and increase the types of real estate we have listed on our platform, Rosenbaum said. Our goal is to empower everybody to earn a secondary income from their unused space, whether this is a commercial property or a shed in the suburbs.

Costockage launched in 2013 and provides more than 5,000 listings and 600,000 cubic meters of storage space in France.

Spacer enables people in need of storage to find available space in their local area from businesses and homeowners. All rental payments are made through Spacer, which collects a 15 percent commission. The company raised $1.2 million from angel and private investors in October 2015.
A tentative deal between Newark, New Jersey, and ride-hailing company Uber has hit a roadblock.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates Newark Liberty International Airport, is raising concerns about the citys proposal to receive $1 million per year over the next 10 years from Uber in exchange for the right to operate at the airport.

Most of the airport is within the Newark city limits in New Jersey, and the Port Authority leases the land from the city.

State laws in New Jersey and New York give the Port Authority sole discretion in all details of financing, construction, leasing, charges, rates, tolls, contracts and the operation of air terminals, according to language in the New Jersey statute. The Port Authority operates JFK and LaGuardia airports in New York in addition to Newark Liberty.

Last week, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka announced the tentative deal with Uber that included the fee for operating at the airport.

In a statement to The Associated Press, the Port Authority said it has expressed its concerns to city officials and that it plans to discuss the matter with Newark officials in hopes of finding a resolution.

A spokeswoman for Baraka said officials hadnt heard about the Port Authoritys concerns.

The Uber proposal was supposed to be considered at a Newark city council meeting last week but wasnt voted on. Taxi drivers protested outside the meeting, saying ride-hailing has significantly cut their profits and that the proposed Uber deal is unfair.

Newark and Uber had been in a public spat recently over taxes, licensing and background checks. In February, city officials said Uber drivers would be ticketed or towed if they operated at the train station or airport, but the plan was later shelved. At the time, the Port Authority issued a statement saying it wouldnt prevent Uber drivers from operating at the airport.

Newark Liberty Airport handles more than 30 million passengers annually and is among the 20 busiest U.S. airports.

A spokesman for San Francisco-based Uber declined to provide statistics on how many pickups and drop-offs the company makes at the airport. Craig Ewer said Uber is continuing to operate at the airport and has about 13,000 eligible drivers in New Jersey, a number he said includes about 2,000 Newark residents.

Were confident that the Mayor and all interested parties understand what is at stake for the 2,000 Newark residents who rely on Uber to earn extra income, the company said in an emailed statement on April 22.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics New York Aviation New Jersey
Xl Catlin has appointed Kyle McGrath as Fine Art & Specie underwriter. She is based in New York City.

In her new role, she will underwrite Fine Art and General Specie coverage for clients throughout the U.S. and will be dedicated to new business strategy and development.

McGrath joined XL Catlin in 2014 as junior strategy analyst for North America Property & Casualty and in 2015 became strategic analyst for the Americas Region.

Prior to joining XL Catlin, she worked as professional liability underwriter at the Hiscox Group. McGrath also spent a year as a Walter C. Wattles Fellow in London, where she served as aerospace broker for JLT Specialty.

Topics Underwriting
Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin has signed new legislation, H-538, that allows sponsored or industrial insured captives that are inactive to enter a dormant status.

This status would allow such types of captives to be exempted from premium taxes but stay in the state, so that they can resume operations when needed. Previously, only pure captive insurers were eligible to enter a dormant status.

The new law also allows protected cells to move to a different sponsored captive or be converted into either an incorporated cell or a separate captive. Officials said the new changes will make it easier for an existing cell company to convert to a standalone captive and allow for cells to move more easily to another captive arrangement.

The law became effective upon the governors signature on April 13.

These improvements in Vermonts law may seem technical, but taken as a whole they reinforce Vermonts standing as the Gold Standard for domiciles and will provide greater flexibility and clarity going forward for our companies, Shumlin said.

Were proud of our continued support by the governor and the legislature in keeping pace with the changing needs of the industry, said Dan Towle, director of Financial Services for Vermont. The modification to ease the process for converting a cell into a standalone captive is a welcome addition.

The legislation makes Vermont more attractive and sends a strong message to the industry that we are committed to always improving our captive insurance law, said David Provost, deputy commissioner of Captive Insurance.

Captive insurance has been a part of the Vermont insurance industry since 1981, when Vermont passed the Special Insurer Act. Vermont is the largest captive insurance domicile in the U.S. and the third-largest in the world.

Topics Legislation Vermont
Nationwide will start winding down its status this May as a Write Your Own carrier within the federal governments National Flood Insurance Program. Assurant said it formed an agreement with the insurer to fill the gap.

Nationwide said it plans to begin transitioning out of the NFIP on May 16; the decision amounts to a revised strategy, Nationwide spokesman Eric Hardgrove told Carrier Management via email.

Nationwide has made this strategic decision to focus on its core products, Hardgrove said. We are making this announcement now to give impacted agents/customers time to fully understand this change

Financial details were not disclosed. But Assurant said it will acquire the opportunity to renew about 250,000 affected policies reflecting approximately $230 million in written premium within the NFIP.

Assurant, a property insurer and provider of lifestyle specialty protection products, said it is currently the second largest NFIP flood insurance provider nationally. Gene Mergelmeyer, president and CEO of Assurance Specialty Property, said that the transaction will continue to build on our leadership position in the flood insurance market.

We will work with Nationwide to ensure a seamless transition for policyholders and agents, and look forward to providing them with excellent service, Mergelmeyer said in prepared remarks.

As part of the deal structure, there will not be any changes to existing Nationwide NFIP benefits or policies, which will stay in effect through their renewal dates. When renewal takes place, existing NFIP policyholders will have the option to renew through Assurant. Also, Nationwide agents can now regularly offer NFIP policies through Assurant.

Last June, Assurant decided it would leave the health insurance market to focus more on its housing and lifestyle specialty protection business.

Launched in 1983, the Write Your Own program allows participating property/casualty insurance companies to write and serve the standard flood insurance policy issued for the NFIP in their own names. Participating companies receive approximately 30 percent of premiums for expenses and commissions on WYO policies, an amount some officials have called too high. The federal government retains responsibility for underwriting losses.

Federal officials are reviewing the WYO program in light of criticism it pays insurers too much and of how some Superstorm Sandy claims were handled.

Last June, Brad Kieserman, the NFIPs outgoing director, called the program, which is $23 billion in debt to the Treasury, a melting iceberg that is incapable of properly managing its various players including the private insurance carriers that sell policies and handle claims, often by delegating work to subcontractors.

Congress is also weighing a proposal to encourage more private insurers to offer flood insurance. The House is expected to vote this week on a flood reform bill that passed the Financial Services committee last month.

Seventy-seven (77) insurers now participate in the WYO program, although the roster keeps changing. In 2013, The Travelers ended its participation, selling its WYO policy renewal rights interest to Assurant. State Farm dropped out in 2010, leaving behind an estimated 800,000 policies. Last August, Utica First Insurance Co. in Oriskany, New York, announced it was withdrawing from WYO. However, Prepared Insurance Co., a Florida property/casualty carrier, was approved to participate in the WYO.

Hollmer is editor of CarrierManagement.com, where this article was originally published.

Related:

Topics Carriers Flood
American International Group, Bermuda-based Hamilton Insurance Group and affiliates of hedge fund firm Two Sigma Investments said they have agreed to create a technology-enabled insurance platform for sales to the small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) market.

The announcement said the joint venture will combine Two Sigmas proprietary data science and technology platform, Hamiltons technology and underwriting experience in the SME market, and AIGs SME capabilities and global presence to target what they estimate is a North American SME market worth $76 billion.

The venture will offer pricing and servicing using predictive analytics and an easy-to-use customer interface, according to the founders.

Two Sigma will also develop specialized asset allocation products for the unique characteristics of insurance investment portfolios.

Completion of the joint venture is still subject to negotiating final agreements and obtaining required permits and regulatory approvals. The terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.

Brian Duperreault, Hamilton chairman and CEO, will serve as chairman of the board of the joint venture. Richard Friesenhahn, currently executive vice president of U.S. Casualty Lines at AIG, will assume the position of chief executive officer.

Agents and brokers will have roles to play with the platform because they are already involved with most of this business and because SME customers want an intermediary, Duperreault told Carrier Management.

Technology Influence

Hamilton was founded on the premise that technology will redefine the manner in which insurance products are assessed, priced and distributed, particularly in the small commercial market, said Duperreault. Since establishing our partnership with Two Sigma and our start-up operations in New Jersey, our belief in this premise has been validated by the enthusiastic reception weve received from wholesale and retail partners throughout the U.S.

Hamilton and Two Sigma have been working together as the insurer has acquired other insurers and expanded its operations.

David Siegel, a Two Sigma co-founder, sees the deal providing a more convenient and systematic insurance experience for small businesses, and an opportunity to address the challenge of optimal insurance asset allocation.

With this venture, we want to revolutionize the SME market through technology that creates a more tailored and compelling value proposition for clients in this critical segment, said AIG President and CEO Peter D. Hancock.

Tech and Small Business Insurance

Interest by large insurers and technology firms in the small and medium business market is picking up steam.

A 2016 report from McKinsey & Co. said the competition in this market will intensify as more small business customers exhibit their openness to buying via direct and digital channels and as more large insurance carriers enter the field.

The report, Small Commercial Insurance: A Bright Spot in the U.S. Property-Casualty Market, said that the shifting behavior of small business owners towards online purchasing presents new challenges for carriers, particularly those that use independent agents. While a segment of small commercial insurance buyers will always value independent agents, an increasing percentage are open to the direct route and may only be using agents to close a deal because direct binding isnt readily available, according to the report.

The Hamilton/AIG/Two Sigma initiative also comes in the wake of a Novarica report last November that suggested the U.S. small commercial insurance market would likely embrace direct online sales within the next five years, though it is slow to do so right now.

Insurers are investing in digital platforms including CoverHound, 24 percent of which is now owned by ACE Ltd. (the new Chubb). CoverHound is building a small commercial insurance platform that will start by selling businessowners policies. Insureon, an online agency for small business insurance, raised more than $30 million last October. Seattle-based AssureStart, backed by the American Family Mutual Insurance Co., which sells to business with fewer than 30 employees, is backed by the American Family Mutual Insurance Co. Insurer Hiscox has been expanding its online platform for small businesses for a number of years.

Last December, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which owns GEICO, created Berkshire Hathaway Direct Insurance Co. to sell insurance directly to businesses over the Internet. The new insurer planned to initially focus on workers compensation and business owners package policies.

Insurance providers also have competitors from the technology world.

Next Insurance, an online shopper for small businesses, recently announced a $13 million seed investment led by investors Zeev Ventures, TLV Partners and Ribbit Capital. Next Insurance plans to launch its first product this spring.

Also, New York-based CoverWallet launched what it calls its online insurance manager, which it said received $2 million in seed funding from Two Sigma Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, Founder Collective and other angel investors. This startup promises to provide small business owners with a concierge-like service that helps them navigate the details of commercial insurance.

Earlier this month, New York-based private equity firm Aquiline Capital Partners agreed to acquire Simply Business, an online brokerage selling small business insurance policies in the United Kingdom.

Related:

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Carriers USA Agencies InsurTech Commercial Lines Tech Business Insurance New Markets
Burnham Benefits Insurance Services Inc. has named Sara Corp a senior account manager.

Corp will be located in the Sacramento, Calif. area.

She has more than 15 years of experience working in employee benefits. Corp spent four years as an account executive at Benefit & Risk Management Services prior to joining Burnham. She was an account manager at Benefit Mall and Valley Oaks Insurance before that.

Burnham Benefits is an employee benefits consulting and brokerage firm headquartered in Irvine, Calif.

Topics California
EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants has added Victoria McKinney as a team leader and employee benefits consultant and Robin Neer as an account executive.

Both will be based in EPICs Gold River office in the Sacramento area under the leadership of Beth Barr, regional director of employee benefits.

McKinney has more than 20 years of experience.

McKinney previously held positions with Sutter Health, TeleNav, Metrotech and CBIZ.

Neer has worked as a producer and account manager.

Neer was a previously senior employee benefits client consultant and producer with Arthur J. Gallagher. Before that she held client service positions with Filice Insurance and Farmers Insurance.

EPIC is a retail property/casualty and employee benefits insurance brokerage and consulting firm.

Topics California
A new report raising the likelihood of a destructive earthquake striking Salt Lake City, Utah in the next half century has underscored the urgency to retrofit more than 30,000 older brick homes and other unreinforced buildings at high risk of collapsing.

Its also getting attention in neighboring Nevada where a significant quake is overdue along the Sierra. Nevada officials are anxious to see if Utah succeeds in a first-in-the-nation attempt to secure federal disaster funds for private homeowners to aid in such efforts.

The Working Group on Utah Earthquake Probabilities, in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey, released a report last week projecting a 43 percent probability that a magnitude-6.75 or higher earthquake will strike in Salt Lake along the Wasatch front within the next 50 years. Thats twice more likely than previously believed.

Experts estimate a mangnitude-7 quake would kill at least 2,000 people, seriously injure 7,400 to 9,300 and cause $33 billion in damage.

The numbers are staggering, said Cory Lyman, Salt Lake Citys emergency management director.

Its almost incomprehensible, he said last week at the Seismology Society of Americas annual meeting in Reno.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that 90 percent of deaths in a large Wasatch earthquake would be directly related to the collapse of bricks, cinder blocks and other unreinforced masonry.

Such structures are vulnerable because they have no steel reinforcing bars.

Concrete doesnt bend so when it starts shaking like that, it starts to crumble, Lyman told The Associated Press on Friday.

Salt Lake City alone has more than 30,000 residential URMs (unreinforced masonry) that are not likely to withstand the impact of any significant tremor, he said. It gets to be a little frightening. To mitigate these horrific numbers, we have to have a strategy.

Craig dePolo, a research geologist at the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, said most deaths and serious injuries occur when people are struck by falling material while fleeing buildings.

We tell you not to, but if your life is threatened, its a common response, he said.

Chimneys are particularly vulnerable, as are parapets and cornices, the short walls and decorative ledges that run around some building tops.

Most older roofs are not attached to walls, rather the joists sit in grooves under the weight of the roof. Decades ago, most buildings were built that way so if the roof caught fire, it would burn and drop to the ground, leaving the walls intact, dePolo said.

No one was killed, but nearly all the unreinforced buildings were destroyed in rural Wells in 2008 when a 6.0-magnitude quake struck about 60 miles from the Utah line, he said. He estimates there are 1,400 unreinforced buildings in Reno, Sparks and Carson City above a series of Sierra-front faults where earthquakes of 6.5 hit on average every 30 years but havent struck in more than 60 years.

Thirty to 40 percent of those will partially or totally collapse during strong shaking, dePolo said.

Current retrofitting plans focus on historic buildings at the University of Nevada, including a $2.7 million project at a century-old dormitory. Cheaper alternatives include posting signs on vulnerable structures that say, Dangerous Building. If Earthquake, Get Back.

Utah launched a Fix the Bricks program in 2012, encouraging residents to retrofit homes when they put on a new roof or remodel. That brings the price down significantly, in the range of $10,000 for a typical single-family bungalow, Lyman said.

He said they got the idea to apply for a pre-disaster mitigation grant after learning FEMA was footing part of the bill for Oklahomans to build tornado shelters.

Hopefully by next year we will have a template that others can use, Lyman said about the proposal that would reimburse homeowners for up to 75 percent of retrofitting costs.

Nevada is counting on that, said Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismology Laboratory. When we first saw their program, we asked if they can make sure to develop it so we can go back and plug in the words Reno and Sparks, he said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Earthquake
UnitedHealth Group Inc. will drop out of government-organized health insurance markets in at least 16 states as the U.S. industry leader tries to stem losses from participating in Obamacare, the healthcare overhaul that has brought coverage to millions of people.

UnitedHealth hasnt listed the markets its leaving, and confirmations of the companys withdrawals have been trickling in from regulators in the 34 states where the company sold plans for this year. The insurer wont sell individual ACA plans for 2017 in states including Texas, North Carolina and Maryland.

UnitedHealth also is withdrawing from some related state insurance markets for small businesses.

Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hemsley said Tuesday that the company will end up selling Obamacare plans in only a handful of states next year. The exchange market is proving to be smaller and riskier than UnitedHealth expected, meaning we cannot broadly serve it on an effective and sustained basis, he told investors.

UnitedHealths reported state departure are Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Tennessee, Colorado, Maryland, North Carolin,a Texas, Connecticut, Michigan, Oklahoma and Washington.

Its going to take a while for these markets to settle out and stabilize, said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown Universitys Center on Health Insurance Reforms. Some carriers are going to see this as an opportunity and potentially go after business in these areas.

So far, New York and Nevada have confirmed that UnitedHealth plans to remain on their ACA exchanges next year. The company has also filed plans to participate in Virginia for 2017. Wisconsin said it hasnt received an exit notice from UnitedHealth, and that it doesnt comment on insurers business plans. A representative of Covered California said plan participation is confidential until its announced later this year.

In the states where UnitedHealth stops offering ACA plans for next year, people who are currently enrolled with the insurer will have to choose a new health plan during open enrollment. Their current coverage isnt affected.

Volatile Markets

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obamas signature domestic policy achievement, is projected to cover about 12 million people this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, providing tax subsidies that help many afford private insurance. The program has proven volatile for health insurers selling coverage in the new markets, known as exchanges, with some reporting losses.

Insuring customers in ACA exchanges has turned out to be more costly than expected. That may be because sicker people are choosing to buy coverage, or because people buying plans deferred treatment for their medical needs until they got covered. Insurers also have said some people are buying insurance, using lots of care, and then dropping their coverage mid-year.

ACA Losses

UnitedHealth, which had about 795,000 ACA customers as of March 31, warned in November that it was posting losses on ACA policies. In December, the company said it should have stayed out of the individual exchange market longer.

The exchanges are a small part of the companys total medical membership of 47.7 million people. Yet the insurer said Tuesday that it expects to lose about $650 million on ACA plans this year.

Hemsley spoke on a conference call after the companys release of first-quarter results, which topped analysts profit estimates, thanks in part to UnitedHealths consulting, technology and services unit, Optum. The stock gained 2.1 percent to $130.50 at the New York close.

The impact of UnitedHealths decision to leave the ACA markets will vary by state. In North Carolina, a quarter of consumers will see the number of available Obamacare insurers drop to one for next year, according to an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Many of the rest will have just two carriers to pick from.

The Kaiser analysis of UnitedHealths plans doesnt include actions by other insurers. Cigna Corp. is planning to enter a few new markets for next year, Matthew Asensio, a company spokesman, said by e-mail. The insurer offered plans on seven state exchanges for this year.

No Statewide Coverage

In Washington state, UnitedHealth was a relatively small player in the individual market, with less than 2 percent of enrollment, according to Pam MacEwan, CEO of the states health insurance marketplace. Yet the companys exit from the small business exchange would leave that market without a carrier that offers coverage across the state, MacEwan said in a memo to board members of the Washington Health Benefit Exchange.

A UnitedHealth unit called Harken Health will continue to sell in Georgia, mainly in the Atlanta area. Harken also offers plans in the Chicago area. Katherine Hempstead, who studies health insurance at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said Harken is a sign that UnitedHealth is still trying to figure out a better approach to the new markets created by the ACA.

Theyre not totally giving up on the individual market, she said. The one piece of really good news is that they did not pull the plug on Harken. Maybe what United is really doing is reinventing itself.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Carriers Washington
More than 110,000 vehicles and thousands of homes in Texas regions of north San Antonio and Bexar County were pelted by large hail in what will become the costliest hailstorm in Texas history, according to the Independent Insurance Agents of San Antonio.

The storm struck on the evening of April 12, damaging roofs and knocking holes through car windows. The National Weather Service verified reports of 4  inch hail.

The storm primarily struck the northwestern portion of Bexar County moving across northern areas of San Antonio with large hail that was shaped like jagged rocks, said Robert Crosby, the groups executive director.

Estimated insured losses to vehicles are expected to reach $560 million while damage to homes and businesses is expected to reach $800 million.

The $1.36 billion total surpasses the May 5, 1995 hailstorm that struck Fort Worth causing an estimated $1.1 billion in damage.

Uninsured losses from homeowners without residential property insurance and vehicle owners without comprehensive insurance are also expected to be high.

The insured loss estimates were taken from company projected losses and verifying their percentage of the marketplace.

Topics Texas Windstorm
Experts are cautioning both insurance buyers and sellers not to overreact to the recent federal court decision finding data breach defense coverage under a commercial general liability (CGL) policy.

Experts are cautioning both insurance buyers and sellers not to overreact to the recent federal court decision finding data breach defense coverage under a commercial general liability (CGL) policy.

Buyers would be mistaken to think the ruling means that they do not need a cyber policy if they have a CGL policy and insurers might want to think twice before narrowing their general liability language to guard against cyber claims when the marketplace is clamoring for broader coverage.

The April 12 decision in Travelers Indemnity vs. Portal Healthcare Solutions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit presented a particular set of facts that may not apply to other carriers CGL policies or to other insureds situations.

Travelers had argued that its 2012 and 2013 CGL policies did not require it to defend its insured, Portal Healthcare Solutions, which was being sued over a data breach by patients of a New York hospital that had hired it to secure its data.

Defining Publication

The 2012 and 2013 policies  under Coverage Part B Personal and Advertising Injury  obligated Travelers to pay if Portal became legally obligated to pay damages because of an advertising or website injury arising from the electronic publication of material that gives unreasonable publicity to a persons private life or  discloses information about a persons private life.

The insurer had argued that there was no personal injury or publication as defined by the policies because release of the records was not intentional and they were not viewed by a third party. But the court said an unintentional publication is still publication. The court also said the definition of publication does not hinge on third party access.

In a recent interview with Insurance Journal, Stephanie Snyder, senior vice president for Aon Risk Solutions, said that the Travelers ruling turned on defining publication in a digital age and was not all that surprising.

The private healthcare information was viewed as being published. When information is published it really does fall under a CGL advertising injury personal injury type of coverage and it really comes down to the definition of what is published information, said Snyder.

Whereas some CGL policies might have an explicit exclusion for this type of injury, this Travelers policy did not, she noted.

Snyder said the other noteworthy aspect of the decision is that it only said defense costs would be covered. So youre not talking about any of the expense costs, she said, citing public relations, notification, credit monitoring and computer forensics costs that might be picked up by a cyber policy. None of those are taken into account by this particular ruling.

She said she was not necessarily surprised by the ruling. Weve seen other litigation going back where everyones trying to force coverage into a CGL in the case where they dont buy a cyber policy, she said. But where we are starting to see cyber policies become more the norm, I think these types of cases will fall by the wayside.

Taking Notice

Christopher Keegan, cyber and technology risk practice leader with broker Beecher Carlson, agrees that whether there is coverage comes down to the particular set of facts. However, when youve got a word like publishing in the policy, if you can find some element of publishing there, then the courts are going to pick it up and interpret it in a way thats going to help the insured. Thats a good thing, I think, he said.

He said a case like this makes people take notice of an issue and forces underwriters to consider if they are covering things in a CGL, for instance, that they did not intend to cover. It highlights it for us and brings it to our attention in a way thats like, OK, we know this exists. What are we going to do about it?' he told Insurance Journal.

He said cases like this are likely to arise where insureds have not bought a cyber policy and seek to leverage whatever policies they do have to find coverage. Theyre trying to take advantage of less-clear wording in those policies. Once you get lawyers involved in the process, thats what happens, he said.

In these cases, he said, the businesses are really inviting litigation because they are going to get some pushback from underwriters who had no intention of covering what they claim.

Keegan suggests that this is when the broker has to advise his clients: Do you really want that situation? Or in the midst of a breach wouldnt you rather have an insurer thats going to be saying, Hey, were standing behind you. Were going to provide some of the services that are provided under the cyber policy, and have the underwriters be on your side rather than litigating those issues?

Keegan suggested that even this case is not yet finished because it will take some time for this to work its way through the legal system and states before everyone can understand exactly what its application is.

Beyond Data Breach

Linda Kornfeld, an insurance recovery lawyer at Kasowitz Benson Torres & Freidman in Los Angeles, put a different spin on the case, claiming it goes beyond its data breach context.

This a positive decision for policyholders in not just the data breach context, but also with respect to other claims involving privacy issues, such as blast fax and zip code cases, she said in a statement. Kornfeld said the decision is in line with other cases where courts have broadly interpreted the publication language, finding that the undefined term is ambiguous and should be interpreted in the policyholders favor.

She said that while there was no evidence that anyone actually accessed personal information in this case, the potential to do so existed had someone run the right Google search. According to the court, that possibility, even if it never became a reality, was enough to trigger the defense duty, Kornfeld said.

Marketplace Pressure

While buyers need to understand what is covered and what isnt, insurers do as well. Keegan believes the case offers a lesson for insurers to make sure that they understand what the exposures are and how to explain them for their own benefit.

That process is evolving. ISO has developed exclusions carriers can use to say, We want to take this risk or, We dont want to take this risk.

But theres a long way to go, he said, adding that many insurers are only now looking at cyber exposures and aggregations. Its not that easy, he said. Youve got to anticipate all of the things that are going to happen.

While underwriters may want to be more precise in explaining what is covered and not covered under certain policies, perhaps even insert a full exclusion in a general liability policy, carriers have other factors to weigh, including the competitive marketplace with attentive brokers and customers.

Keegan said carriers and brokers are competing with one another for clients and at some point a carrier that is pulling back on a wholesale basis is going to lose business to its competitors.

For example, putting in a full exclusion could leave a hole that even a cyber policy wont fill. You can imagine what insureds are going to think about when someone says, Were removing coverage for you and were not giving you an option to actually fill the gap,' he said.

He said brokers and others in the marketplace want to push for broader coverage and where theres some interpretation involved in policies. Keeping coverage open to certain risks is advantageous to sellers and their buyer clients.

Calling All Policies

Its not only general liability policies that are being challenged by cyber.

Any number of different policies cover cyber risk in some way, shape, or form. As a result of that, were finding situations where two or three policies may respond to a particular situation, said Keegan.

For Joshua Gold, an insurance recovery attorney with Anderson Kill in New York who specializes in cyber, Keegans point is the main takeaway from the Travelers ruling: Policyholders need to look to all of their policies for coverage, not just to general liability or even just to cyber.

The case is an important reminder that non-cyber-specific insurance policies may provide vital insurance protection for cyber-related claims, he said.

He also said the ruling offers hope that defense costs for cyber claims will be found in general liability policies and contends that could be significant.

Theres always an issue with these type of claims that you are going to attract a class action lawsuit so just getting the defense component of that can be hugely valuable, he said. This can be a big deal.

Gold agrees that the Travelers ruling is noteworthy for what it says constitutes publication of data in a breach of privacy. The court found that publication occurs upon disclosure of the medical data, does not need to be intended, and does not require proof that any actual third-party saw the data.

Its a good development for policyholders but I would not put all of my eggs in that basket, he said, stressing that most businesses need multiple policies and need to understand all of their exclusions.

Buyers should know before a claim where their coverage for cyber is, he said and this requires looking at all policies.

Gold said his firm has secured coverage for businesses for claims under various traditional policies including property, crime, general liability, business owners, errors and omissions, and directors and officers.

As for how insurers may react to the Travelers ruling, Gold agrees with Keegan that the marketplace will have its say although reactions will vary.

My guess is that underwriters will all do their own thing on this, Gold said. While some will be completely spooked by the Travelers decision and narrow their offering, other underwriters will realize its a competitive marketplace and they might be able to offer a broker and client something better. So like everything its always hard to generalize but I am quite sure there will be very different reactions, he said.

Cyber Gaps

While most businesses should buy a cyber policy, they should not assume then that they are completely covered if they do, Gold said.

A lot of cyber policies have tons and tons of exclusions and can be confusing so I dont think you can just rely n the cyber policy either, he said.

Los Angeles policyholder attorney Kornfeld wonders how long traditional policies may be of help in cyber situations.

As a policyholder, I would not rely upon this ruling as a substitute to purchasing cyber coverage because the industry is working hard, through exclusions and other language, to push data breach and cyber risks away from the traditional coverages, such as GL policies like that at issue in this decision, and toward cyber specific coverages, she wrote.

Richard Caplan, with the national law firm LeClairRyans Atlanta office, echoed the caution that cyber policies themselves are not a panacea. He said a lot can hinge on the meaning of certain key words and phrases in a policy.

Some who buy cyber insurance assume it covers all first-party costs in the event of an incident  like investigation, notification and credit monitoring. But it only covers third party claims or lawsuits.

If your cyber coverage only kicks in when a third party makes a claim, then practically speaking you may not have any coverage at all, he warns. For now, perhaps the most important thing to do is make sure you do not fall into the category of someone who thinks they are covered when they are not.

Evolving Coverage

In recent testimony on Capitol Hill before a House homeland security subcommittee, Adam Hamm, North Dakota insurance commissioner, cautioned lawmakers and the public about cyber coverage.

Speaking on behalf of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) prior to the Travelers ruling, Hamm said many businesses probably do not realize that most standard commercial lines policies do not cover many cyber risks and thus they need a special cybersecurity policy. But they need to know that cyber policies differ and the market is far from being standardized, he said.

Commercial insurance policies are contracts between two or more parties, subject to a certain amount of customization, so if youve seen one cybersecurity policy, youve seen exactly one cybersecurity policy, Hamm said.

All these nuances mean securing a cybersecurity policy is not as simple as pulling something off the shelf and walking to the cash register. Insurers writing this coverage are justifiably interested in the risk management techniques applied by the policyholder to protect its network and its assets. The more an insurer knows about a businesss operations, structures, risks, history of cyber attacks, and security culture, the better it will be able to design a product that meets the clients need and satisfies regulators, Hamm said.

Topics Carriers Cyber Agencies Claims Underwriting
Britain, Europes biggest financial center, votes on June 23 on whether to leave the European Union.

The countrys banking and fund management industries are among those that could lose most from a so-called Brexit, many analysts have said, though much depends on the trading terms Britain would be able to negotiate with the EU.

The following details the potential changes that could affect different parts of the industry.

Rules. Nearly all of Britains financial services rules are derived from EU law. Though Britain has gone further than the EU in some cases, such as tougher capital requirements and restrictions on banker pay, a new rule framework would have to be devised within two years of Brexit.

Passporting. Financial firms like insurers, banks, asset managers, payment services providers who are authorized in Britain have passport rights to conduct their business in all EU countries, either remotely from Britain or from a branch in another member state.

If Britain were to join the European Economic Area (EEA)  comprised of Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein  financial companies would continue to have passporting rights to conduct business in all EU countries but would have no say over the formulation of EU rules.

If Britain did not join the EEA, UK firms wanting to operate in the EU would have an equivalence test to prove to Brussels that their home rules are as strict as those in the EU.

British firms seeking to offer financial services to retail customers in the EU are also likely to need a locally capitalized subsidiary in the EU, which would be more expensive than running a branch.

Political implications.Open-ended negotiations over equivalency are prone to political horse-trading and it took several years for the EU to accept the equivalence of U.S. rules on derivatives clearing.

A British departure from the EU could alter the political balance within the bloc by removing a major pro-market member, possibly tilting it towards less sector-friendly rules.

Banks.Among the most costly Brexit factors for banks would be the loss of the passporting facility, necessitating creation of European subsidiaries rather than merely operating additional branches.

Funds.Much of the UKs 5.5 trillion pound ($7.9 trillion) mutual funds sector is run almost entirely under EU rules known as UCITS. Unless Britain joins the EEA, lawyers say there is potential for substantial disruption as funds could lose their UCITS designation, seen as a gold standard globally.

Trading, clearing, reporting.Pan-EU share trading platforms, such as Bats Chi-X and Turquoise, along with clearing houses including LCH.Clearnet, CME Clearing Europe and ICE Clear Europe, are also authorized in Britain under EU rules providing a passport to serve customers across the bloc.

Leaving the EU and not being part of the EEA could affect their cross-border business and EU-based customers might be unable to use trading platforms and clearing houses authorized by UK regulators until they have gained approval from Brussels.

Ratings agencies.Credit rating agencies (CRAs) are authorized by EU markets watchdog ESMA. There are eight CRAs in Britain authorized by ESMA, but the larger ones would be able to operate via subsidiaries already established in some EU states.

Repositories. Derivatives transactions in the EU must be reported to a repository and four of the six authorized in the bloc are based in London. To continue serving customers in the EU, the London-based repositories would have to show regulation equivalency.

Derivatives, repos, stock lending.A large chunk of the worlds $550 trillion derivatives market is traded using contracts that come under UK law, even if both sides of the trade are based elsewhere.

Courts in EU countries have agreed to recognize UK law for resolving disputes, but this could change if Britain left the bloc. Hundreds of thousands of contracts could be affected. Repurchase agreements (repos) and stock lending could face similar disruption.

Benchmarks. If the UK left the EU and did not join the EEA, any benchmark administered in Britain, such as Libor, could only be used by EU banks after equivalency approval.

Data protection.If Britain joined the EEA there would be little change in terms of the use of personal data. Outside the EEA and EU, Britain would have to show that its standards of protection meet EU rules to allow data transfers between the UK and the EU. Without this, it would be disruptive to banks that regularly transfer personal data across borders.

Insurance.UK insurers and reinsurers benefit from passporting under the EUs Solvency II rules, but this would be lost if Britain left the EU and did not join the EEA and firms could have to open offices in the EU.

Failing banks.Under new EU rules, regulators are required to recognize each others actions in dealing with a failing bank, such as debt writedowns. If Britain were to leave the EU, there would be no legal guarantee that an EU state would cooperate with any UK regulatory action.

($1 = 0.6994 pounds) (Editing by David Goodman)

Related:

Topics Europe
The attackers who stole $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank probably hacked into software from the SWIFT financial platform that is at the heart of the global financial system, said security researchers at British defense contractor BAE Systems.

SWIFT, a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions, confirmed to Reuters that it was aware of malware targeting its client software. Its spokeswoman Natasha Deteran said SWIFT on Monday released a software update to thwart the malware, along with a special warning for financial institutions to scrutinize their security procedures.

The developments coming to light the unprecedented cyber-heist suggest that a lynchpin of the global financial system could be more vulnerable than previously understood because of weaknesses that enabled attackers to modify a SWIFT software program installed on bank servers.

The new evidence suggests that hackers manipulated the Alliance Access server software, which banks use to interface with SWIFTs messaging platform, in a bid to cover up fraudulent transfers that had been previously ordered.

The findings from BAE and SWIFT do not explain how the fraudulent orders were created and pushed through the system. That remains a key mystery in ongoing probes into the heist.

Deteran told Reuters on Sunday that SWIFT was issuing the software update to assist customers in enhancing their security and to spot inconsistencies in their local database records. She said the malware has no impact on SWIFTs network or core messaging services.

The software update and warning from Brussels-based SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, come after researchers at BAE, which has a largecyber-security business, told Reuters they believe they discovered malware that the Bangladesh Bank attackers used to manipulate SWIFT client software known as Alliance Access.

BAE published its findings on Monday in a blog post on malware that it said thieves used to cover their tracks and delay discovery of the heist.

The cyber criminals tried to make fraudulent transfers totaling $951 million from the Bangladesh central banks account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in February.

Most of the payments were blocked, but $81 million was routed to accounts in the Philippines and diverted to casinos there. Most of those funds remain missing.

Investigators probing the heist had previously said the still-unidentified hackers had broken into Bangladesh Bank computers and taken control of credentials that were used to log into the SWIFT system. But the BAE research shows that the SWIFT software on the bank computers was probably compromised in order to erase records of illicit transfers.

The SWIFT messaging platform is used by 11,000 banks and other institutions around the world, though only some use the Alliance Access software, Deteran said.

SWIFT may release additional updates as it learns more about the attack in Bangladesh and other potential threats, Deteran said.

It is also reiterating a warning to banks that they should review internal security.

Whilst we keep all our interface products under continual review and recommend that other vendors do the same, the key defense against such attack scenarios is that users implement appropriate security measures in their local environments to safeguard their systems, Deteran said.

Adrian Nish, BAEs head of threat intelligence, said he had never seen such an elaborate scheme from criminal hackers.

I cant think of a case where we have seen a criminal go to the level of effort to customize it for the environment they were operating in, he said. I guess it was the realization that the potential payoff made that effort worthwhile.

A Bangladesh Bank spokesman declined comment on BAEs findings.

A senior official with the Bangladesh Polices Criminal Investigation Department said that investigators had not found the specific malware described by BAE, but that forensics experts had not finished their probe.

Bangladesh police investigators said last week that the banks computer security measures were seriously deficient, lacking even basic precautions like firewalls and relying on used, $10 switches in its local networks.

Still, police investigators told Reuters in an interview that both the bank and SWIFT should take the blame for the problems.

It was their responsibility to point it out but we havent found any evidence that they advised before the heist, said Mohammad Shah Alam, head of the Forensic Training Institute of the Bangladesh polices criminal investigation department, referring to SWIFT.

Thwarting Future Attacks

Mondays alert from BAE includes some technical indicators that the firm said it hopes banks could use to thwart similar attacks. Those indicators include the IP address of a server in Egypt the attackers used to monitor use of the SWIFT system by Bangladesh Bank staff.

The malware, named evtdiag.exe, was designed to hide the hackers tracks by changing information on a SWIFT database at Bangladesh Bank that tracks information about transfer requests, according to BAE.

BAE said that evtdiag.exe was likely part of a broader attack toolkit that was installed after the attackers obtained administrator credentials.

It is still not clear exactly how the hackers ordered the money transfers.

Nish said that BAE found evtdiag.exe on a malware repository and had not directly analyzed the infected servers. Such repositories collect millions of new samples a day from researchers, businesses, government agencies and members of the public who upload files to see if they are recognized as malicious and help thwart future attacks.

Nish said he was highly confident the malware was used in the attack because it was compiled close to the date of the heist, contained detailed information about the banks operations and was uploaded from Bangladesh.

While that malware was specifically written to attack Bangladesh Bank, the general tools, techniques and procedures used in the attack may allow the gang to strike again, according to a draft of the warning that BAE shared with Reuters.

The malware was designed to make a slight change to code of the Access Alliance software installed at Bangladesh Bank, giving attackers the ability to modify a database that logged the banks activity over the SWIFT network, Nish said.

Once it had established a foothold, the malware could delete records of outgoing transfer requests altogether from the database and also intercept incoming messages confirming transfers ordered by the hackers, Nish said.

It was able to then manipulate account balances on logs to prevent the heist from being discovered until after the funds had been laundered.

It also manipulated a printer that produced hard copies of transfer requests so that the bank would not identify the attack through those printouts, he said.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston. Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir in Dhaka; editing by Jonathan Weber and Martin Howell)

Related:

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Cyber
Specialty insurance firm Ryan Specialty Group (RSG) has formed a specialty marine underwriting business and tapped two executives who were formerly with American International Group (AIG) to lead it.

The newly-formed specialty marine underwriting manager is named Safe Waters and will focus initially in the U.S. and Latin America on yacht and cargo.

Jorge Pecci, who most recently was AIG Marine Regional Executive for the Americas, has joined the company as president and CEO of Safe Waters. Pecci is responsible for growing the business.

Ray Stahl, most recently senior vice president, Global Recreational Marine Practice for AIG, is also joining Safe Waters as senior vice president to head the yacht practice.

Safe Waters will initially have locations in Florida and New Jersey. The company said it will have future announcements regarding Latin American operations.

Miles Wuller, chief operating officer of RSG Underwriting Managers (RSGUM), said that Pecci, in addition to spearheading the development of the marine unit, will call upon his deep relationships in Latin and South America to further expand the units geographic presence.

Pecci most recently began his career in insurance with AIG in 1993, working in a variety of marine managerial positions.

Prior to beginning at AIG in 2007, Stahl was senior vice president, Recreational Marine for ACE.

Chicago-based Ryan Specialty Group includes a wholesale brokerage, specialized underwriting companies and specialty services for agents, brokers and insurers.

Topics Excess Surplus New Markets
Pennsylvania regulators fined Uber $11.4 million on April 21  a record for the utility commission  for operating for six months in 2014 without the required approval. The company said it would appeal.

The Public Utility Commission, which also regulates buses and taxis, voted 3-2 for a penalty that was considerably lower than the $50 million fine recommended by a pair of administrative law judges in November.

Commissioners who voted for it justified the lower amount because they said the ride-hailing company has modified its practices to comply with state rules and has not generated many consumer complaints while operating under emergency and experimental authority.

San Francisco-based Uber Technologies, Inc. drew criticism from the judges last year for continuing to operate a month after being issued a cease-and-desist order and for what were described as obstructive actions during the investigation. Commissioners John Coleman and Gladys Brown said the companys actions warranted punishment.

It must be recognized that Uber has deliberately engaged in the most unprecedented series of willful violations of commission orders and regulations in the history of this agency, they said in proposing the smaller fine. A record number of proven violations should be expected to result in a record setting fine.

The two commissioners who voted no said the fine was excessive compared to the commissions past actions. Its previous record fine was $1.8 million over an electric generation suppliers handling of a guaranteed savings plan for customers.

Uber spokesman Jason Post said the company was shocked by the fine amount, adding Ubers actions did not harm anyone and the commission subsequently approved the same operations.

Other cases with large fines, said commissioner Pamela Witmer, involved incidents of serious bodily injury, fatalities, significant property damage and/or patterns of unsafe business practices that jeopardized public safety. She called for a more measured and reasonable outcome.

Commissioner Robert Powelson, the other no vote, said he would have preferred a $2.5 million fine.

When Uber launched its operations in Pennsylvania, they were operating in a legally gray area, Powelson said. The commission should take this into account.

The two judges wrote in November that Uber had argued it was providing needed alternatives, it used a broker license held by a subsidiary and there was no proof that harm occurred.

Uber was fined more than $7 million in January for failing to provide sufficient information to California regulators.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Pennsylvania
(Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., the largest commercial insurer in the U.S. and Canada, agreed to join with Hamilton Insurance Group and the Two Sigma Investments hedge fund firm to start a business focusing on coverage for small- to medium-sized enterprises.

The joint venture will combine Two Sigmas proprietary data science and technology platform, Hamiltons technology and underwriting expertise and AIGs scale, the companies said Tuesday in a statement, without disclosing terms.

The deal reunites AIG with Brian Duperreault, a former executive at the New York-based company who went on to lead Ace Ltd. and insurance broker Marsh & McLennan Cos. before starting Hamilton with Two Sigma more than two years ago. The hedge fund firm, founded by David Siegel and John Overdeck in 2001, relies on computer models to bet on securities markets. Two Sigma has also sought to bring increased data analysis to insurance underwriting, a strategy that AIG Chief Executive Officer Peter Hancock has sought to emphasize at his company.

Two Sigma will also assist AIG with its investment portfolio, according to the statement. AIG oversees more than $300 billion, and last year brought on Doug Dachille, a former JP Morgan & Co. colleague of Hancocks, to manage the assets, which include private equity and hedge fund bets.

Insurance Investing

Two Sigma will partner with both AIG and the joint venture to develop specialized asset-allocation solutions for the unique characteristics of insurance investment portfolios, the firms said in the statement.

Duperreault will be the chairman of the new entity, and Richard Friesenhahn, the executive vice president of U.S. casualty lines at AIG, will be CEO. The companies said the market in North America for small- and medium-sized enterprises is a $76 billion industry.
Oltre 26 milioni di americani hanno gia votato anticipatamente per le elezioni presidenziali che vedono in gara, in un testa-a-testa Donald Trump e Hillary Clinton. Si tratta di circa il doppio di quanti usarono learly voting (voto anticipato) una settimana prima delle presidenziali del 2012. A molti lentourage di Trump ha chiesto di rivotare in considerazione delle ultime rivelazioni sullex First Lady

Grazia di Clinton a Rich, file Fbi su web

LFbi ha infatti pubblicato via Twitter i documenti dellinchiesta sulla grazia concessa dallallora presidente Clinton (nellultimo giorno del suo mandato, il 20/1/2001) al finanziere Usa, Marc Rich, morto in Svizzera nel 2013, accusato di 60 reati, tra cui frode, evasione di 48 mln di tasse e traffico di petrolio con lIran. Rischiava 300 anni di carcere. I file sono stati diffusi a 7 giorni dalle elezioni e dopo la bufera scatenata dallannuncio dellFbi sullapertura di una nuova indagine sulle email della candidata Hillary Clinton.

Fbi: carte grazia Clinton note per legge

LFbi ha pero difeso la propria decisione di pubblicare a una settimana dalle presidenziali le carte di una inchiesta  archiviata  sulla controversa grazia concessa da Bill Clinton nel 2001 a un finanziere amico, Marc Rich, scappato in Svizzera per sfuggire alle accuse di evasione fiscale. Per procedura standard  spiega lFbi  questi materiali diventano disponibili per la diffusione e sono postati automaticamente ed elettronicamente nella sala di lettura pubblica dellFbi nel rispetto della legge e delle procedure

Evocato limpeachment per Hillary

Evocato anche lo spettro di una messa in stato di accusa per Hillary se fosse eletta alla Casa Bianca. Lo ha fatto il senatore repubblicano Ron Johnson, presidente della Commissione per la Sicurezza nazionale e per gli Affari governativi. Johnson ha detto al Beloit Daily News che Hillary ha deliberatamente aggirato la legge usando un server privato per trattare affari pubblici quando era Segretario di Stato. Il senatore ha accusato la candidata dem di aver intenzionalmente nascosto e distrutto materiale riguardante la difesa nazionale.

Hacker, NYT: nessun legame Trump-Putin

E Trump oggi ha piu di un motivo per sorridere. Non solo le nuove accuse alla rivale, non solo i sondaggi lo vedono in crescita, ma lFbi non ha trovato finora alcun legame diretto tra il candidato repubblicano alla Casa Bianca Trump e il governo russo.

Secondo i servizi Usa, gli attacchi di hacker contro i democratici sono volti a minare le elezioni presidenziali piu che a favorire Trump. Lo scrive il NYT, citando fonti investigative. Queste rivelazioni, se confermate, sconfesserebbero le convinzioni dei democratici sui legami Trump-Putin.
Business / Companies

by Staff reporter

A cooking oil shortage is looming in the country following revelations that the sector's producers are failing to secure key raw materials from foreign countries due to the situation with banks' nostro accounts.Oil Expressers Association of Zimbabwe president Sylvester Mangani told the Herald Business that producers in the cooking oil sector are facing challenges in importing raw materials due to the depletion of the nostro balances, which has seen a delay in the settling of foreign invoices."We are in a tight situation and we actually don't know our position come the end of the month. This is not only about the cooking oil manufacturing sector but it is about the industry as a whole. Banks at the moment are struggling to make foreign payments. This has made it difficult for us to secure raw materials out of the country considering that we get crude (soya) oil from countries like Argentina and South Africa," said Mr Mangani who is also the chief executive at Surface Investments.In the first quarter of the year, crude soya bean oil imports amounted to $24,9 million.Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries president Busisa Moyo who is also CEO at United Refineries said foreign suppliers in the cooking oil sector were now reluctant to sell to the country because of the delays faced by banks in settling invoices."We are facing challenges in paying foreign suppliers due to the fact that banks cannot make foreign payments at the moment. Foreign suppliers have been reluctant to supply to us and we are trying to negotiate with them but they are getting worried with the situation."As I am talking to you right now I am in South Africa negotiating with some of our creditors so that we secure more lines of credit and ensure that our suppliers continue to supply us while the situation gets back to normal."The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr John Mangudya assured us that the Central Bank is working towards normalising the situation but generally it is in a delicate state," said Mr Moyo.Dr Mangudya recently said the central bank was working on a priority list of importation with the business community which will ensure that the country brings in products and services which are critical."We are not going to control imports but rather we are working on a priority list. However the bigger picture to get past the problem is that we 'make and buy' Zimbabwe.RBZ is also working on a nostro-stabilisation fund worth about $200 million with the Africa Export and Import Bank while tobacco inflows will offer some relief to the situation.However analysts expect foreign payments to remain a challenge for the greater part of the year as banks work towards replenishing their nostro accounts.
There's no disputing the fact that Google (GOOGL) reinvented the way the world accesses information. The company has a whole host of apps and tools that many consumers use on a daily basis, from its search engine and Gmail to Google Drive, its file storage service.

The market now knows Google's parent company as Alphabet. But many people aren't aware of how the corporation ushered in this change. Keep reading to find out the reasons why the company's management decided to make the switch from Google to Alphabet.

Key Takeaways Known around the world, Google abruptly renamed itself Alphabet in 2015, making Google a subsidiary.

As a parent company, Alphabet allowed Google to expand into domains outside of internet search and advertising to become a technology conglomerate.

The company now runs a lesser risk of antitrust violations and is also better able to account for income streams from various subsidiaries.

Google to Alphabet

Google's leadership gave Wall Street formal notice of its intentions to become Alphabet, a technology conglomerate by announcing a new parent entity that would unite its widening interests and product lines. Apart from Google's core search business, there are a number of companies (or "Other Bets") that make up Alphabet. They span a diverse array of industries, including robotics, life sciences, healthcare, and anti-aging.

In a blog post announcing the move, former chief executive officer (CEO) Larry Page said the new entity would help the company take a long-term view and improve the transparency and oversight of its actions. The new entity, he wrote, was an alpha-bet (Alpha is investment return over benchmark), which we strive for!

Not much changed for investors in the reorganization. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, each Google share was swapped for one Alphabet share. The change had minimal consequences on the company's bottom line and on its direction.

That then begs the question: Why did Google change its name to Alphabet?

The Wall Street Effect

When it debuted on the stock market, Google became Wall Street's darling. Its market capitalization increased by $27.2 billion, giving it a market cap bigger than that of Ford (F) and General Motors (GM) on its very first day of trading. That number was based on the market's assessment of the company's search business and turned out to be largely correct as Google's prowess in search powered its fortunes over the years.

The arrival of the social media brigade, however, blindsided Google. Even as the company was coping with competition from Meta (META), formerly Facebook, the disintermediation of web search into mobile apps further eroded Google's bottom line. Google's foray into social media was pretty much a disaster.

Perhaps the thinking was that Google could pioneer other industries, just as it started the search industry.

But the absence of numbers related to the cost and operational expenses of Google's new or acquired ventures made Wall Street nervous. The company's chair defended the moon shots to investors at the shareholder meeting in 2015.

The move was intended to help allay the market's fears by streamlining operations and providing investor visibility into the operations of Alphabet's new ventures and acquisitions. It helped Alphabet prove to investors that it can deliver profits even as it explores new markets and avenues for future profits.

The company's stock price jumped in record numbers after chief financial officer (CFO) Ruth Porat spoke about transparency in the company's 2018 earnings call.

In Alphabet We Trust

Through reorganization as a conglomerate, the move also lessens the glare of antitrust scrutiny on Alphabet. This is because each company within the Alphabet umbrella makes products for a different industry. Bunching all of them together under the search engine umbrella would have invited greater attention from regulators due to the unique nature of Google's business.

With the new corporate structure, Alphabet can always argue that each company within its organization operates independently of the search engine.

However, less obvious was the consolidation of power to be held by the two founders, versus the shareholders. The new entity was to be structured in a way that Page and Sergey Brin hold the majority of the voting rights, without the majority of the stock. This was done in order to prevent the company from drifting away from its vision due to pressure from investors to perform financially.

Inventing a New Company Within a Company

Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have always had a healthy disregard for the impossible. They imbued this thought process into their company's DNA, making Google a fount of innovation within Silicon Valley, where innovation is a byword instead of a buzzword.

But many of Alphabet's attempts at innovation have, in fact, flopped. The company's attempts to reinvent itself as a hardware and Internet of Things (IoT) player have also come under constant scrutiny by the media and Wall Street. Page, who returned as CEO in 2010, lashed out against the criticism, calling for a safe place for innovative companies to carry out experiments at Google I/O in 2013.

The separation between search, Alphabet's main business, and other companies provides the company with a safe place to carry out experiments. Each company within the Alphabet umbrella is headed by a CEO, who reports to the Alphabet CEO, who allows the respective head to determine the best course of action without worrying about the effect on the search engine cash cow.

It also avoids negative public relations (PR) through direct association with the search engine business, which makes money by inferring user interests. For example, Google's acquisition of the home security company Nest raised privacy concerns.

The Bottom Line

According to the author of Google's ten commandments, Larry Page and Sergey always had a bigger picture of technology's role in the world. Larry's vision was always to be something like General Electric (GE), and Google was only his first proof-of-concept, he is quoted in the New York Times. The reorganization was Page and Brin's attempt to streamline operations to focus energies on new ventures and evolve Google from a one-trick pony to a conglomerate.
Commodities get a lot of attention from the media. The price of oil, gold, corn, soy and hogs are in the national news nearly every day. While investing in the commodities markets is a fairly sophisticated endeavor, commodity mutual funds provide an opportunity for almost any investor to get a piece of the action.

A Variety of Fund Types

The generic label "commodity fund" actually captures several distinct types of investments. These include:

Commodity Funds These funds are true commodity funds in that they have direct holdings in commodities. For example, a gold fund that holds gold bullion would be a true commodity fund.

These funds are true commodity funds in that they have direct holdings in commodities. For example, a gold fund that holds gold bullion would be a true commodity fund. Commodity Funds That Hold Futures Holding commodity-linked derivative instruments is a much more common mutual fund strategy for investing in the commodities markets. Most investors have no desire to take delivery of hogs, corn, oil or any other commodity, they simply want to profit from price changes. Purchasing futures contracts is one way to achieve this objective.

Holding commodity-linked derivative instruments is a much more common mutual fund strategy for investing in the commodities markets. Most investors have no desire to take delivery of hogs, corn, oil or any other commodity, they simply want to profit from price changes. Purchasing futures contracts is one way to achieve this objective. Natural Resource Funds Funds that invest in companies that are engaged in businesses that operate in commodity-related fields, such as energy, mining, oil drilling, and agricultural businesses, are often referred to as natural resource funds. While they often hold neither actual commodities nor commodity futures, they provide exposure to the commodities markets by proxy.

Funds that invest in companies that are engaged in businesses that operate in commodity-related fields, such as energy, mining, oil drilling, and agricultural businesses, are often referred to as natural resource funds. While they often hold neither actual commodities nor commodity futures, they provide exposure to the commodities markets by proxy. Combination Funds Some funds invest in a combination of actual commodities and commodity futures. Gold funds, for example, may have underlying holdings that include both bullion and futures contracts.

A Variety of Investment Strategies

In addition to a variety of formats, commodity funds also offer a variety of investment strategies, including active management and passive management. Active portfolios buy and sell in an effort to outperform a benchmark index. Passive portfolios seek to replicate a benchmark index and match its performance. Passive strategies can be implemented using index funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Pros and Cons of Investing in Commodity Funds

Commodities offer portfolio diversification. Investing in futures contracts or actual commodities provides a portfolio component that is not a traditional stock, bond, or a mutual fund that invests in stocks and/or bonds. Historically, commodities have had a low correlation to traditional equity markets, meaning that they do not always fluctuate in tandem with market movements. For many investors, achieving this low correlation is the primary objective when seeking to add diversification to a portfolio.

Commodities also offer upside potential. The raw materials used in construction, agriculture and many other industries are subject to the laws of supply and demand. When demand rises, prices generally follow, resulting in a profit for investors.

Finally, commodities offer a hedge against inflation.

On the Other Hand

The commodities markets can be volatile and subject to wild, short-term price swings and long lulls. Over the course of just a few days, prices can go from record highs to record lows. For a closer look at the range of price movements, research the price of gold over the past 30 years and the price of copper in 2008.

Another item of note is the composition of various mutual funds and the benchmark indexes that they track. In many commodities indexes, energy is often the heavyweight, taking up more than half of the index. When a mutual fund seeks to directly replicate the index, more than half of the fund's assets will be in energy. Some funds place limits on the percent of the portfolio invested in a single commodity to avoid an over-concentration in a single investment.

Look Before You Leap

While commodities provide access to some interesting investments and strategies, the commodities markets are complex, and not as familiar to most investors as the stock market or bond market. Before you invest in commodities funds, read the fund's prospectus and annual report, and be sure that you understand what you are buying and the role it plays in your portfolio. Likewise, pay attention to the fund's holdings. Make sure that you are aware of how much of the fund's assets are weighted to a particular market sector and plan accordingly for other parts of your portfolio. Keep in mind the volatile nature of the commodities markets and limit holdings to a small percentage of your total portfolio.
Long-term corporate bonds typically offer higher returns in comparison to their short-term or intermediate-term counterparts. However, long-term corporate bonds are much more sensitive to interest rate changes, and they are likely to show a lot of volatility when interest rates in the United States rise.

Investors interested in diversifying their portfolios with long-term corporate bonds have several compelling high-yielding exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to choose from. Below are three of the most popular, with information that is available as of May 26, 2021.

Key Takeaways Long-term corporate bonds usually offer higher returns than short-term or intermediate-term corporate bonds.

Long-term corporate bonds in comparison, however, are more sensitive to interest rate changes.

To gain exposure to long-term corporate bonds, there are many exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that investors can access.

Three of the most popular long-term corporate bond ETFs include the SPDR Portfolio Long Term Corporate Bond ETF, the Vanguard Long-Term Corporate Bond ETF, and the iShares 10+ Year Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF.

SPDR Portfolio Long Term Corporate Bond ETF

The SPDR Portfolio Long Term Corporate Bond ETF (SPLB) demonstrated a one-year return of 8.97% and a 30-day Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yield of 3.47%. Created in March 2009, the fund tracks the performance of the Bloomberg Barclays Long U.S. Corporate Index, which is composed of investment-grade U.S. corporate bonds with long maturity profiles.

The fund has assets under management (AUM) of $996 million and has 2,315 holdings in its portfolio. The ETF's assets are concentrated in industrial issuers at 70%, financial services companies at 17.8%, and utility issuers at 12.1%, weighted. The fund holds high-quality bonds with only 47% of its holdings rated A or above. The fund's portfolio demonstrated an average yield-to-worst of 3.46% and an option-adjusted duration of 15.02 years.

The fund exhibited a year-to-date (YTD) loss of 8.55%. For the three-year period, the fund generated an annualized return of 7.41%, while for the five-year period the fund showed an annualized return of 6.72%. The ETF comes with an expense ratio of 0.07% and received a three-star overall rating from Morningstar.

Vanguard Long-Term Corporate Bond ETF

The Vanguard Long-Term Corporate Bond ETF (VCLT) was started in November 2009 to track the investment results of the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. 10+ Year Corporate Bond Index, which is composed of high-quality U.S. corporate bonds that mature mostly in 20 years or more.

The fund has $5.5 billion in total fund assets and 2,461 bonds in its portfolio. The ETF's bond holdings are concentrated on industrials (69.5%), financial services companies (17.3%), and utilities (11.8%). Yield-to-maturity for the fund's portfolio stands at 3.4% and the average duration is 14.6 years.

The ETF showed a YTD loss of 8.69% and a one-year return of 8.48%. The ETF's average annual returns were 7.55% for the three-year period and 6.72% for the five-year period. The 30-Day SEC yield was 3.33%. Morningstar awarded the fund with a three-star overall rating in the corporate bond category. The fund has an expense ratio of 0.05%.

iShares 10+ Year Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF

The iShares 10+ Year Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (IGLB) generated a 12-month trailing distribution yield of 3.36% and a 30-day SEC yield of the same. Started in December 2009, the ETF tracks the performance of the ICE BofAML 10+ Year U.S. Corporate Index, which is composed of long-duration corporate bonds issued by U.S. companies.

There were 2,992 holdings in the fund's portfolio with $2.5 billion in net assets. Compared to its peers, this ETF has a wider sector diversification.

The top sectors in the fund's portfolio are consumer noncyclical at an 18.3% allocation, communications at 12.5%, and electric at 10.9%. Almost the entire fund's portfolio is of investment-grade bonds, with bonds rated BBB having about a 51% allocation. The fund had a yield-to-maturity of 3.37% and an average duration of 14.45 years.

The fund generated a one-year return of 9.82%. The fund demonstrated average annual returns of 7.35% for the three-year period and 6.52% for the five-year period. Morningstar assigned the fund a two-star overall rating in the corporate bond category. The expense ratio for the fund is 0.06%.
As compared with investment-grade bonds, high-yield corporate bonds offer higher interest rates because they have lower credit ratings. As treasury yields fall, high-yield bonds can seem increasingly attractive. However, high-yield bonds carry a higher risk of default than investment grade corporate bonds and treasurys. Bond funds can help to lower this risk by allowing you to easily own a broad portfolio of high-yield bonds. This means that any single default won't be as damaging to your portfolio.

Below, we've selected the top three high-yield corporate bond funds for 2020 by 1-year total return. The best-performing high-yield corporate bond fund, based on performance over the past year, is the Metropolitan West High Yield Bond Fund (MWHYX). All figures are as of April 14, 2020. We have excluded funds with under $100 million in assets under management (AUM), as low-AUM funds sometimes lack sufficient liquidity to be easily investable. Similarly, funds not open to new investors and those with a minimum investment of more than $10,000 were excluded.

Metropolitan West High Yield Bond Fund (MWHYX)

1-Year Total Return: 4.1%

1-Year Trailing Dividend Yield: 4.10%

Expense Ratio: 0.85%

Assets Under Management: $436.9 million

Inception Date: September 30, 2002

Fund Family: Metropolitan West Funds

This fund aims to provide exposure to the full high-yield bond universe, repositioning itself over the course of the credit cycle in order to better manage risk-adjusted performance. The fund's top holdings are bonds from the healthcare services company, HCA Healthcare Inc.(HCA); the food and drink packaging supplier, Reynolds Consumer Products (REYN); and healthcare services provider, Centene (CNC). 

1-Year Total Return: 2.8%

1-Year Trailing Dividend Yield: 5.21%

Expense Ratio: 0.45%

Assets Under Management: $104.3 million

Inception Date: June 12, 2018

Fund Family: Fidelity Investments

FDHY typically invests at least 80% of its assets in high-yield bonds in its goals of seeking a high level of income and capital appreciation. Currently, the fund's top holdings are bonds from healthcare services provider, Centene; wireless infrastructure company, SBA Communications Corp. (SBAC); and credit scoring company, Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO). 

1-Year Total Return: 1.5%

1-Year Trailing Dividend Yield: 4.74%

Expense Ratio: 0.20%

Assets Under Management: $151.3 million

Inception Date: January 11, 2018

Fund Family: Xtrackers

The Xtrackers Low Beta High Yield Bond ETF aims to match the performance of the Solactive USD High Yield Corporates Total Market Low Beta Index. This cap-weighted index is designed to mirror the performance of the low-yielding segment of the USD-issued high-yield corporate bond market. The fund's top holdings are bonds from aerospace component manufacturer, TransDigm Group (TDG); media company, Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (CCO); and medical services company, Centene Corp. 

The comments, opinions and analyses expressed herein are for informational purposes only and should not be considered individual investment advice or recommendations to invest in any security or to adopt any investment strategy. While we believe the information provided herein is reliable, we do not warrant its accuracy or completeness. The views and strategies described on our content may not be suitable for all investors. Because market and economic conditions are subject to rapid change, all comments, opinions, and analyses contained within our content are rendered as of the date of the posting and may change without notice. The material is not intended as a complete analysis of every material fact regarding any country, region, market, industry, investment, or strategy.
Aggregate demand (AD) is the total amount of goods and services consumers are willing to purchase in a given economy and during a certain period. Sometimes aggregate demand changes in a way that alters its relationship with aggregate supply (AS), and this is called a "shift."

Since modern economists calculate aggregate demand using a specific formula, shifts result from changes in the value of the formula's input variables: consumer spending, investment spending, government spending, exports, and imports.

Key Takeaways Aggregate demand (AD) is the total amount of goods and services in an economy that consumers are willing to purchase during a specific time frame.

When aggregate demand changes in its relationship with aggregate supply, this is known as a shift in aggregate demand.

Aggregate demand consists of the sum of consumer spending, investment spending, government spending, and the difference between exports and imports.

When any of these aggregate demand inputs change, then there is a shift in aggregate demand.

The Formula for Aggregate Demand

A D = C + I + G + ( X  M ) where: C = Consumer spending on goods and services I = Investment spending on business capital goods G = Government spending on public goods and services X = Exports M = Imports \begin{aligned} &AD=C+I+G+(X-M)\\ &\textbf{where:}\\ &C = \text{Consumer spending on goods and services}\\ &I = \text{Investment spending on business capital goods}\\ &G = \text{Government spending on public goods and services}\\ &X = \text{Exports}\\ &M = \text{Imports} \end{aligned} AD=C+I+G+(XM)where:C=Consumer spending on goods and servicesI=Investment spending on business capital goodsG=Government spending on public goods and servicesX=ExportsM=Imports

Any aggregate economic phenomena that cause changes in the value of any of these variables will change aggregate demand. If aggregate supply remains unchanged or is held constant, a change in aggregate demand shifts the AD curve to the left or to the right.

The aggregate demand formula is identical to the formula for nominal gross domestic product.

In macroeconomic models, right shifts in aggregate demand are typically viewed as a sign that aggregate demand increased or is growingtypically viewed as positive. Shifts to the left, a decrease in aggregate demand, mean that the economy is declining or shrinkingtypically viewed as negative.

However, this is not always the case. For example, a reduction in aggregate demand might be engineered by the government to reduce inflation, which is not necessarily something negative.

Shifting the Aggregate Demand Curve

The aggregate demand curve tends to shift to the left when total consumer spending declines. Consumers might spend less because the cost of living is rising or because government taxes have increased.

Consumers may decide to spend less and save more if they expect prices to rise in the future. It might be that consumer time preferences change and future consumption is valued more highly than present consumption.

Contractionary fiscal policy can also shift aggregate demand to the left. The government might decide to raise taxes or decrease spending to fix a budget deficit. Monetary policy has less immediate effects. If monetary policy raises the interest rate, individuals and businesses tend to borrow less and save more. This could shift AD to the left.

The last major variable, net exports (exports minus imports), is less direct and more controversial. A countrys current account surplus is always balanced by the change in the capital account (that is, a trade surplus or positive net exports). This would imply a net influx of foreign currency or dollars held abroad to pay for the fact that foreigners are buying more U.S. goods than they are selling to the U.S. This situation would lead to an increase in U.S. foreign currency holdings or an influx of U.S. dollars held abroad and would generally positively shift aggregate demand.

Aggregate Demand Shock

According to macroeconomic theory, a demand shock is an important change somewhere in the economy that affects many spending decisions and causes a sudden and unexpected shift in the aggregate demand curve.

Some shocks are caused by changes in technology. Technological advances can make labor more productive and increase business returns on capital. This is normally caused by declining costs in one or more sectors, leaving more room for consumers to buy additional goods, save, or invest. In this case, the demand for total goods and services increases at the same time prices are falling.

Diseases and natural disasters can cause negative demand shocks if they limit earnings and cause consumers to buy fewer goods. For example, Hurricane Katrina caused negative supply and demand shocks in New Orleans and the surrounding areas. And post-WWII, it's commonly held that the United States experienced a positive demand shock, particularly with real commodities.

The Bottom Line

Aggregate demand is the total amount of goods and services in an economy that consumers are willing to pay for within a certain time period. Aggregate demand is calculated as the sum of consumer spending, investment spending, government spending, and the difference between exports and imports.

Whenever one of these factors changes and when aggregate supply remains constant, then there is a shift in aggregate demand. Utilizing the aggregate demand curve, a shift to the left, a reduction in aggregate demand, is perceived negatively, while a shift to the right, an increase in aggregate demand, is perceived positively.
What Is the EURO STOXX 50 Index?

The EURO STOXX 50 Index is a market capitalization-weighted stock index of 50 large, blue-chip European companies operating within eurozone nations. Components are selected from the EURO STOXX Index, which includes large-, mid-, and small-cap stocks in the eurozone.

Key Takeaways The EURO STOXX 50 index is a blue-chip index designed to represent the 50 largest companies in the eurozone.

The index holds stocks from nine eurozone countries: Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Spain.

The EURO STOXX 50 is managed and licensed by STOXX Limited, which is owned by Deutsche Borse AG.

Understanding the EURO STOXX 50 Index

The EURO STOXX 50 Index is managed and licensed by STOXX Limited which provides indexes representing equity market investments all over the world. The EURO STOXX 50 Index includes the eurozone's 50 largest companies by market cap.

STOXX Limited is owned by Deutsche Borse AG. It has been managing and licensing indexes since 1998. The EURO STOXX 50 Index was among the first STOXX indexes launched in 1998. The company has broadened its offerings substantially since its launch which focused on European stock indexes. It now offers indexes representing nearly every country and region of the world. Asset classes include equity, fixed income, and currency. It also offers indexes by sector, factor, strategy, and theme.

ASML Holding NV, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, and Linde plc are the biggest holdings in the EURO STOXX 50 as of Oct. 30, 2020, representing nearly 16% of the index.

EURO STOXX 50 Composition and Methodology

The EURO STOXX 50 Index includes the largest 50 stocks in the eurozone automatically chosen from the EURO STOXX Index by market capitalization. For inclusion in the EURO STOXX Index, companies must be a eurozone member country. The EURO STOXX Index includes companies of all market capitalization levels from Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Spain.

The EURO STOXX 50 Index typically represents approximately 60% of the EURO STOXX Index. The EURO STOXX 50 Index is reviewed annually in September for any index component changes.

As of October 30, 2020, the top ten components in the EURO STOXX 50 Index included the following:

ASML Holding NV

LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton

Linde plc

SAP SE

Sanofi SA

Siemens AG

Total SE

L'Oreal SA

Unilever NV

Allianz SE  

There are EURO STOXX 50 sub-indexes for the following individual countries: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. Each sub-index includes EURO STOXX 50 stocks from that particular country.

EURO STOXX 50 Index Funds

The EURO STOXX 50 Index is a leading market index for investors seeking to follow the eurozone's largest equity stock investments. Nearly all of the passive index funds in the investment market that track the EURO STOXX 50 Index are exchange-traded funds (ETFs). One of the largest and most popular for investors is the SPDR EURO STOXX 50 ETF (FEZ). The SPDR EURO STOXX 50 ETF has $1.87 billion in assets under management, as of Nov. 24, 2020. The ETF has been available to investors since October 2002.

FEZ trades at $40.46 with an expense ratio of 0.29%. As of Oct. 31, 2020, FEZ had one-year, three-year, and five-year market value returns of -12.47%, -4.45%, and 1.10%, respectively.

Other funds available for investors seeking to track the EURO STOXX 50 Index include the iShares EURO STOXX 50 UCITS ETF and the Xtrackers EURO STOXX 50 UCITS ETF.
Investors around the world have wondered for years who would take the reins of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, BRK.B) once its current 91-year-old CEO (and the world's fifth-richest man) Warren Buffett passes away or retires.

On May 1, 2021, they got their answer. At the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting, executive vice chair of Berkshire Hathaway Charlie Munger made an offhand comment indicating the man succeeding Buffett as CEO would be Berkshire's 59-year-old vice chair of Non-Insurance Business Operations, Greg Abel. Buffett confirmed the news in a CNBC interview the following Monday.

If the actual remark"Greg will keep the culture," Munger said, discussing Berkshire's decentralized operating structurewas a surprise, the individual in question isn't. Abel had long been considered one of the front-running heirs apparent for CEO, along with his fellow board member Ajit Jain, Vice-Chair of Insurance Operations.

Neither Buffett nor Munger gave any indication of exactly when Greg Abel would assume the head post. Still, let's meet the man who is poised to preside over one of the largest U.S. corporations in the post-Buffett era.

Key Takeaways At the Berkshire Hathaway 2021 annual meeting, executive vice chair Charlie Munger made an offhand remarking identifying Greg Abel as the successor to CEO Warren Buffett.

Greg Abel is currently Berkshire's vice chair of Non-Insurance Business Operations and the chair of subsidiary Berkshire Energy Holdings.

Abel has been at Berkshire since 2000, when the conglomerate bought an energy company he'd been running.

Known as a low-key but hardworking dealmaker, Abel has spearheaded some of Berkshire's biggest and most successful acquisitions.

No date has been set for Buffett's departure or Abel's succession.

Investopedia / Alex Dos Diaz

Early Life and Education

Born June 1, 1962, and raised in Edmonton, Canada, Gregory Abel graduated from the University of Alberta in 1984 with a commerce degree. He became an accountant and, after a stint with Big Four accounting firm PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers), joined a small electricity company, CalEnergy, in 1992. He rose to become president of the business in 1998, which expanded into a variety of energy operations, changing its name to MidAmerican Energy Holdings (after one of the firms it acquired).

Abel became part of Berkshire Hathaway when the conglomerate bought MidAmerican in 2000. The firm eventually was re-dubbed Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE). Abel served as its Chief Executive Officer from 20082018. He currently serves as its chair. With subsidiaries focused on coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, wind, solar, geothermal, and nuclear energy, BHE had about 23,800 employees and reported more than $20.9 billion in revenue in 2020.

Notable Accomplishments

That ability continued at Berkshire. BHE has accounted for/been involved in some of Berkshire's largest acquisitions, including PacifiCorp in 2005, Nevada utility NV Energy in 2013, and Dominion Energys pipeline business in 2020.

Abel also nurtured Home Services, a small real estate brokerage that came with the purchase of another company; it's now one of Berkshire's most successful holdings.

Both at MidAmerican and at Berkshire, Abel was mentored by David Sokol, who seemed a likely successor to Warren Buffett until his resignation from Berkshire in 2011. Sokol was singing Abel's praises to Buffett as early as 2007.

$19M Greg Abel's compensation in 2020. It includes $16 million in base salary and a $3 million bonus, according to Berkshire's SEC filings.

An Heir Apparent

Although he tended to avoid public appearances and shareholder meetings, Abel's reputation began to spread throughout the financial and business worldas did speculation about his role at a post-Buffett Berkshire. In September 2017, JP Morgan analyst Sarah DeWitt wrote in a note, The most likely successor in our view, who Warren Buffett regularly praises, is Greg Abel.

Then, in 2018, came the move that marked Abel as a potential heir apparent: Buffett elevated and appointed Abel, along with Ajit Jain, to the Berkshire Hathaway board of directors, creating two new seats for them. Abel received his current title, Vice-Chair of Non-Insurance Business Operations.

As such, Abel oversees all of Berkshire's railroad, auto utilities, manufacturing, and retail subsidiariesover 90 companies in all. All told, the noninsurance operations represent $150 billion in sales and comprise 250,000 employees.

Until Munger's inadvertent mention at the 2021 shareholder meeting, Jain and Abel were both seen as likely successors to Buffettin fact, some gave Jain the edge.

It's possible that Abel's agehe's over a decade younger than the 71-year-old Jainultimately was the decisive factor in his being tapped over Jain.

While at MidAmerican, Abel acquired a reputation as a superb dealmaker, leading and growing the company in more diversified directions through smart mergers and purchasesand managing the new acquisitions intelligently and efficiently. His handling of purchases of Enron's gas lines and of a British firm, Northern Electric, stood out in particular.

In his 2014 letter to shareholders, Charlie Munger characterized Greg Abel and Ajit Jain as "proven performers who would probably be under-described as 'world-class.' 'World-leading' would be the description I would choose. In some important ways, each is a better business executive than Buffett."

Management Style

A resident of Des Moines, where Berkshire Energy is based, Abel leads a relatively low-key life, like Buffett. Although something of an insider's secret, he has stepped up public appearances in the last two years, a notable onstage presence at recent annual meetings. His answers to questions, especially about energy conservation and sustainability, went down well with analysts and shareholders.

Hockey is one of Greg Abel's passions. He played the sport as a boy and coaches his children's teams. He also sits on the Hockey Canada Foundation's Board of Directors.

Who Is Warren Buffetts Successor? In 2021, Greg Abel, chair of Berkshire Hathaway, was named Warren Buffett's eventual successor.

What Is Greg Abel's Net Worth? Greg Abel's net worth is estimated to be between $484 million.

How Much Is Warren Buffett Worth? As of August 2022, Warren Buffett's net worth is estimated to be just over $102 billion.

The Bottom Line

Greg Abel will face challenges when he steps into the big role. An increasingly activist group of Berkshire shareholders is agitating for the company to spend more of its considerable cash reserves, to reduce its carbon footprint, and to promote diversity. All this, along with the fact that he's not Warren Buffett.

But then, he won't be inheriting Buffett's exact role. The job Buffett did will probably be divvied up among various people. Abel will be the CEO of Berkshire, but Buffett's son Howard is likely to be named Berkshire Chair of the Board.

Jain seems likely to continue as vice chair of the insurance operations, and his job could expand further. He's also been cited as next in line for CEO, should anything happen to Abel.

Finally, there may well be a bigger role for Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. Both of these men are investment managers for Buffett and have been taking on greater responsibilities in managing smaller companies in the Berkshire portfolio. It is possible that both will be given more responsibility after Buffetts departure.
The risk of a bank failure from a major cyberattack is not far-fetched. Almost all financial institutions have experienced a cyberattack in one form or another, and the number of attacks is only increasing. Financial firms are 300 times more likely than other institutions to experience them, according to the Boston Consulting Group.

The increasing risk of cyberattacks and the potential impact on banks is a top concern for financial institutions and the government. Here is a look at how and why banks are at risk and what the effect of a cyberattack might be.

Key Takeaways The risk of major cyberattacks on banks is on the rise.

Due to the interconnectivity of banks, the spillover risk of cyberattacks among banks is great and could impair the solvency of a financial institution.

U.S. banks are particularly susceptible to state-sponsored cyberattacks.

There was a spike in cyberattacks in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The Rising Risk of Cyberattacks

Fears of a major cyberattack on banks have been rising since hackers successfully stole nearly $100 million from Bangladeshs central bank in February 2016. Shortly afterwards, Russian central bank officials disclosed that hackers stole more than $31 million (2 billion rubles at the time) from the countrys central bank and commercial banks.

In testimony before the House Financial Services Committee in February 2020, when asked what he perceives as the greatest risk to the financial system, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell named cybersecurity. The thing that we worry about a lot is cyberattacks. I think we have a great game plan for traditional issues like bad loans and things like that. Its more cyberattacks is really the frontier where you worry," Powell said.

Many banks already see millions of attempted attacks each year, resulting in modest losses, but hackers are rapidly becoming more sophisticated, making banks even more vulnerable to major attacks.

How Banks Are at Risk

In a report published in January 2020, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York says the risk of spillover effects from cyberattacks is high because the banking system is interconnected. The report suggests a cyberattack on any of the five most active U.S. banks could affect 38% of the network.

Experts warn U.S. banks are particularly susceptible to state-sponsored cyberattacks by countries including Russia, China, and North Korea. "State-sponsored hacking is the biggest threat to our financial sector because of the capacities that they can bring to bear, Jamil Jaffer, founder and executive director of George Mason Universitys National Security Institute, told the House Financial Services subcommittee on national security, international development, and monetary policy during a hearing in June 2020.

During the same hearing, Tom Kellermann, a member of a cybersecurity commission during the Obama administration who is now head of cybersecurity strategy at software company VMWare, warned of a major rise in cyberattacks on banks and other financial institutions during the 2020 crisis.

238% The rate of increase in cyberattacks against banks between February and April of 2020, according to a report by VMWare.

Impact of Cyberattacks on Bank Customers

Consumers have relatively little to fear from routine cyberattacks on banks, provided they havent been lax about safeguarding their information and notify their bank promptly when funds go missing. U.S. law requires banks to refund money taken from customers' accounts without authorization if the customer alerts the bank within 60 days of the transactions appearing on their bank statement. Business accounts, however, have fewer protections and could be subject to greater losses.

While bank deposits up to $250,000 are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for participating institutions, the banks themselves have no federal guarantee to solvency in the event of a major cyberattack. Such attacks could target bank processing systems and disrupt critical financial transactions.

The Bottom Line

Cybersecurity is a top concern for the banking sector. Consumers are likely to be able to recover their money under federal law, but some experts are concerned that escalating attacks could eventually threaten a big bank's solvency.
Business / Companies

by Business Reporter

AT least 350 delegates will attend the 10th edition of the International Business Conference (IBC) in Bulawayo tomorrow with focus on optimising and leveraging on the country's resource base to create economic value.The IBC is a major highlight of the annual Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF), which starts today at the Zimbabwe International Exhibition Centre and ends on Saturday.Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa will officially open the one day event under the theme, "Innovate-Integrate-Industrialise". IBC is hosted annually by the National Economic Consultative Forum (NECF)."The conference will come up with a clear set of recommendations on how the country can optimise and leverage on its resources and assets so as to create economic value," said NECF in a statement."Discussions will be centred on the three main fundamentals that are innovation as a creator of competitive advantage for businesses and ultimately nations; regional integration and geography as the context for industrial development and economic prosperity and industrialisation as the champion of economic and technology transformation."In line with the agenda of the economic blueprint, Zim-Asset, key objectives of the conference include engaging stakeholders in a policy dialogue on how Zimbabwe can optimise assets and natural resources to resuscitate and revitalise industries and create sustainable value-chains.It is also hoped that the business forum will facilitate knowledge exchange on how businesses can survive and compete in the increasingly competitive global environment as well as offering solutions on how Zimbabwe can make the most out of the global value chains to implement its industrialisation agenda.Delegates are also expected to deepen their engagement with foreign investors and outside markets to lead to growth outcomes that accelerate societal transformation as well as raising expectations and imperatives for further reform and structural change.Delegates at the conference will include policy makers, captains of industry and commerce, and experts drawn from the government, business, academia, diplomatic corps and civil society to interact and debate themes on how to transform the country's economic assets.NECF also said IBC's theme aptly captures the regional aspirations as enshrined in the Sadc Industrialisation Strategy and Road Map ratified in 2015.The industrialisation strategy seeks to ensure that the bloc achieves some levels of parity in terms of industrialisation as well as ensuring that the region benefits from the sale of value added products."The theme also resonates well with Zim-Asset which calls for various economic players in the country to shift from reliance on export of commodities to export of manufactured goods through the resuscitation and revitalisation of industries as well as the creation of sustainable value-chains," said NECF.Building on the 2015 focus, which was on "Seizing Opportunities to Accelerate Growth," the 2016 edition goes a step further to address the critical issues of innovation, industrialisation and regional integration."These are essential to increasing the wealth and employment creation for Zimbabwe. "The 2016 IBC is inspired by the economic policies of economic giants that include China and India that have benefited from technology linked industrialisation and economic integration," it said.
When a company is on the brink of failure, it will often file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This allows the company to undergo a reorganization of its business affairs, debts, and assets. Sometimes businesses are successful at restructuring, while other times, they end up liquidating assets and closing up shop permanently.

Enron, WorldCom, and Lehman Brothers are some well-known examples of bankrupt companies that never came back. But there are companies that have managed to re-emerge from bankruptcy in better shape than before they went bust. These spectacular comebacks are from companies that either went bankrupt or came nail-bitingly close to doing so.

Key Takeaways Filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows a company to restructure its debts.

In some cases, companies are able to emerge from bankruptcy stronger than ever.

General Motors, Texaco, and Marvel Entertainment are three of many companies that have emerged from bankruptcy successfully.

1. Apple

It's hard to believe that one of the world's largest companies by market capitalization was once in dire straits. While never actually filing for bankruptcy, Apple (AAPL) was on the verge of going bust in 1997. At the last minute, arch-rival Microsoft (MSFT) swooped in with a $150 million investment and saved the company.

People have speculated that Microsoft only did this because it was worried that regulators would regard it as a monopoly without the competition from Apple in the marketplace.

2. General Motors

Following the financial crisis of 2008, General Motors (GM), once the largest automobile manufacturer in the world, filed for bankruptcy and was ultimately bailed out by the federal government. In December 2013, the U.S. Department of the Treasury fully exited its investment in GM, recovering a total of $39.7 billion from its original investment of $51 billion.

3. Ally Financial

GMAC, now Ally Financial (ALLY), was the auto-financing arm of General Motors, extending credit to purchasers of its cars. The bank was bailed out alongside its parent to the tune of $17.2 billion by the U.S. Treasury Department. The company has emerged as a profitable business with a market capitalization of $5.9 billion as of May 2020.

4. Chrysler

General Motors wasn't the only carmaker to go bust during the Great Recession. American car manufacturer Chrysler filed for bankruptcy in April 2009, about one month before GM. Chrysler took $12.5 billion in government assistance, of which it repaid the U.S. Treasury $11.2 billion. European carmaker Fiat (FCAU) purchased Chrysler in January 2014.

5. Marvel Entertainment

With blockbuster movies such as Spiderman, The Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy, it is surprising to note that Marvel filed for bankruptcy in 1996. This was before the company got into the movie-making business when it focused primarily on comic books. Today, the company's properties are worth billions of dollars with millions of fans around the world and it is now a subsidiary of Disney (DIS).

6. Six Flags

Theme park operator and amusement company Six Flags (SIX) has 26 theme and water parks throughout North America, home to some of the world's biggest and fastest roller coasters. In 2009, however, the company declared bankruptcy after racking up more than $2.7 billion in debt which it could not pay back. Six Flags reorganized and emerged from bankruptcy in 2010.

7. Texaco

Texaco, now part of Chevron (CVX), once dominated the oil industry. In 1984, Texaco agreed to buy Getty Oil, setting off a three-year legal drama that would end with Texaco owing billions to rival Pennzoil.

It all started when Getty Oil and Pennzoil agreed to a merger. Texaco swooped in with a larger offer, snatching Getty Oil away and leaving Pennzoil fuming at the altar. Pennzoil sued for damages. A jury agreed and awarded Pennzoil $11 billion. Texaco offered to settle for $2 billion, but Pennzoil refused. This forced Texaco to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It emerged from bankruptcy in December 1987 when Pennzoil agreed to accept a $3 billion settlement.

8. Sbarro

Sbarro operates and franchises more than 600 fast-food style pizza and Italian-food restaurants worldwide. Sbarro went bankrupt twice: first through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2011 and then again in 2014. The company has re-emerged with the help of a collaboration of private equity firms to transform the company's image to a more fast-casual style, rather than its previous kiosk or food counter concept.

The Bottom Line

Bankruptcy is often the end of a company, but it doesn't have to be. The companies in the list above have reemerged from bankruptcy to become profitable and successful. As an investor, it is useful to note that bankruptcy isn't always the end of the line for a company and that through buying shares of companies as they emerge, investors can profit from bankrupt companies.
Square Earnings Results Metric Beat/Miss/Match Reported Value Analysts' Prediction Adjusted EPS Beat $0.41 $0.15 Revenue Beat $5.1B $3.4B Gross Payment Volume Beat $33.1B $30.0B

Source: Predictions based on analysts' consensus from Visible Alpha

Square (SQ) Financial Results: Analysis

Square, Inc. (SQ) reported Q1 FY 2021 earnings that dramatically beat analyst expectations. Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) exceeded analyst forecasts by a wide margin. Revenue also came in well above analyst estimates, up 266.2% year over year (YOY). Square's gross payment volume (GPV) came in at $33.1 billion, surpassing expectations. The company's shares rose nearly 2% in after-hours trading. Over the past year, Square's shares have provided a total return of 229.2%, well above the S&P 500's total return of 47.5%.

SQ Gross Payment Volume

Gross payment volume (GPV) is a key metric that tracks the total dollar amount, net of refunds, of all card payments processed by sellers using the company's payments ecosystem. It includes peer-to-peer payments as well as transactions with merchants that use Square's mobile payments app. Square generates revenue through transaction fees that are charged on payments. The greater the GPV, the more transaction-based revenue Square is able to generate. But GPV is also positively correlated with the number of users on Square's platform, users the company can direct to some of its other businesses.

Square's GPV rose 28.7% compared to the year-ago quarter. The majority, or about 90%, of GPV was generated by Square's Seller ecosystem, a suite of financial products and services to help merchants manage the financial side of their business operations. The Seller ecosystem generated $868 million in transaction-based revenue, up 19% YOY. The other 10% of GPV came from the Cash App business, Square's ecosystem that offers financial products and services to individuals in order to help them manage their money. Cash App generated about $92 million in transaction-based revenue. However, Cash App brought in about $495 million in gross profit, while the Seller ecosystem generated slightly less at approximately $468 million.

SQ Bitcoin Revenue

The big boost to Square's total revenue came from its bitcoin revenue, which rose 1,047.0%. At $3.5 billion, bitcoin revenue comprised about 69% of companywide revenue for the first quarter. Square allows its customers to purchase bitcoin through its Cash App. Bitcoin revenue refers to the total amount of bitcoin sold to customers. Bitcoin costs, which were $3.4 billion, refers to the total amount of bitcoin Square purchases to facilitate its customers' access to the cryptocurrency. Square generated $75 million in bitcoin gross profit for the quarter.

Square also invests some of its own cash in bitcoin. In the final quarter of FY 2020, Square invested $50 million in bitcoin and then another $170 million during the first quarter of FY 2021. However, the company recognized a bitcoin impairment loss of $20 million on those investments. The fair value of Square's total investment in bitcoin was $472 million based on observable market prices, as of March 31, 2021.

The company did not offer any forward earnings or revenue guidance in its earnings press release. Square's next earnings report (for Q2 FY 2021) is estimated to be released on Aug. 2, 2021.
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Mullen (NASDAQ: MULN) Continues Acquisition Path With Purchase of ELMS Assets Including Factory in Mishawaka, IN., Enabling EV Production for Retail and Commercial Vehicle Lines

BREA, Calif. - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces the US Bankruptcy Court approval on Oct. 13th, 2022 of its acquisition of electric vehicle company ELMS's (Electric Last Mile Solutions) assets in an all cash purchase.

Top EV Stock News - Investor Idea

Breaking EV Stock News: Mullen Automotive (NASDAQ: $MULN) Taps Former GM Executive John Schwegman as Chief Commercial Officer for Next Phase of EV Growth

BREA, Calif. - October 21, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces today the hiring of John Schwegman as its Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) for Mullen's line of commercial vehicles.

Top EV Stock News - Investor Idea

EV Stocks Driving Higher: (NASDAQ: $MULN) (NASDAQ: $TSLA) (NYSE: $NIO) (NYSE: $F)

Vancouver, Delta, BC - October 20, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Investorideas.com, a leading investor news resource covering EV and automotive stocks releases a special report featuring Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), covering the continued growth of the EV market as government policy and infrastructure plans sync up with consumer and investor interest in the EV space.

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Breaking AI Stock News: FatBrain (OTCQB: LZGI) Acquires Confidential Computing Platform ZeroTrust to Protect Data Privacy and Accelerate Innovation for Millions of Growth Businesses

NEW YORK, NY - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) FatBrain AI (LZG International, Inc.) (OTCQB: LZGI), the leader in powerful and easy-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for star enterprises of tomorrow, has acquired the confidential computing and privacy intellectual property (IP) plus software assets of Zero2A PTE LTD ("ZeroTrust Platform"), a software company based in Singapore.

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Business / Companies

by Mashudu Netsianda

THE National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) has taken 942 of its workers to court for refusing to return to work after downing tools last month over the non-payment of salaries.Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Prisca Mupfumira two weeks ago ordered the disgruntled NRZ employees to return to work pending the determination of the matter.The minister issued the order following last month's application at the Labour Court by the NRZ management for a "show cause" order in terms of the Labour Act.When a court issues a show cause order, one or more parties in a case are required to justify, explain, or prove something to the court.In its application filed yesterday through lawyers, Coghlan and Welsh legal practitioners at the Bulawayo Labour Court, the NRZ management said the strike was illegal.The parastatal said the workers had failed to give the mandatory 14 days' notice to their employer of their intention to engage in collective job action.In their heads of arguments, the workers, through their lawyer Munyaradzi Gwisai, said the collective job action was a spontaneous action in response to an immediate occupational hazard which was a threat to their safety, health and human dignity.They also argued that the strike was guaranteed under section 65 (3) of the constitution."It's only through such action that the workers' fundamental rights under the Labour Act and their basic human rights under the constitution may be defended. The workers therefore aver that their actions are lawful and within the parameters of the Labour Act and in terms of the constitution," argued Gwisai.He said conditions created by NRZ management's failure to pay its workers as well as the company's use of obsolete equipment for its day-to-day operations created an occupational hazard.The lawyer said NRZ's actions were in breach of its own safety regulations."The employer's actions have reduced workers to beggars and destitute and resulted in hunger, mental stress and making it impossible for them to physically and mentally carry out their jobs without risking their own limbs and lives. In the last three weeks alone, there've been at least four train derailments, exposing the grave risk and the danger that workers face," said Gwisai.
Technology and healthcare have always gone hand in hand, and with the health of the world in crisis at the moment through the
An Irish immigrant's new documentary about the hidden world of Irish and American construction workers' poor work habits, drug and alcohol addictions and histories of crime is not a story that Americans want told.

That is according to the rookie filmmaker and Irish construction company owner now residing in St. Louis, MO Tim Monaghan. His new movie Rednecks and Culchies aims to depict how poverty can affect a man's choices, happiness and overall life path.

The movie is already set for worldwide distribution and is already tipped to be one of the documentaries of the year.

Speaking to the Irish Mirror Monaghan said, I wanted to make this film because I knew the story had to be told.

Its about America; its about the working man and how hes forgotten.

The suffering and all the stuff they have to go through, especially being an immigrant.

Its a big story that nobody has touched before. Nobody had the balls to touch it actually.

But I said Id tell it. Its a story nobody wants to hear about their country, or anywhere  that its rotten to the core on the inside.

These guys are working on your houses, theyre all insane and addicted and everything. And theyre the only guys you can find sometimes, you have to work with them.

Originally from Belmullet, County Mayo, Monaghan completed only five years of schooling before went to the United States to work on the building sites. Now, two decades on, Monaghan has his own company but over the years he has been stunned by the prevalence of poverty and addiction to hardcore drugs such as crystal meth, heroin and crack cocaine among his colleagues.

Monaghan continued, Its like working in a mental institute sometimes. But what do I do? I gotta feed my family, I gotta live.

It will bring in the side of addiction, what it can do to a life and family and kids. It will bring the side of the immigrant too. What he has to deal with when he goes to these countries. Because Im sure its everywhere.

He said he wanted to make the movie to highlight how these problems are caused. That is social inequality and not race issues of xenophobia, as he believes are often blamed.

The way the economy has gone the last few years up and down, people lose faith. Blue collar workers are very vulnerable, Monaghan said.

Youve got the same as this in Ireland, I hear about all the suicides and all the depression over there.

Its a story I want to tell because theyre all great characters. Theyre interesting guys, theyve all got their own stories.

Monaghan believes that his success was driven by his own struggles at school. He said, Im a very tough guy, rejection just makes me stronger. You can say whatever you want to me but I just say Hey, thats what you think of me, but Im going to make it happen.

So I figured I have no limitations. When I was a kid the teacher used to make a joke of me going into school. I was the joke of the school.

And I said to myself One of these days Ill show you guys. As I say, I couldnt read or write, and they were laughing about me. I said Just give me a chance.

They didnt explain to me. It was pure abuse when we were kids, they beat us all the time.

A local St. Louis publication, River Front Times, wrote of the movie, It's no secret that many St. Louisans are just scraping by, paycheck to paycheck. But for those whose jobs are seasonal or uncertain, the gaps in between are more familiar than the paychecks. Tony Monaghan came to America from Ireland to escape the classism and prejudice of his homeland but found a subtler, more pernicious form of class warfare here

The film 'Rednecks + Culchies' (an Irish term equivalent to redneck) shows how the working class lives in a city that ignores them at best and dismisses them at worst.

For more information visit www.facebook.com/rednecksandculchies.

Read more: The forgotten construction worker needs to be remembered
A 35-year-old man, known to the police for charges including IRA membership, has been shot at a pub in Ballybough, in Dublins city center. It is believed that his murder is the sixth in recent months related to the ongoing feud between the Kinahan-Hutch criminal gangs.

The victim has been named as Michael Barr, originally from County Tyrone but living in Dublin city center. He was shot at least three times at the Sunset House, on Summerhill Parade, on Monday evening at about 9.35pm. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The bar is a known stronghold of the criminals associated with gangland boss Gerry The Monk Hutch.

Barr was known to the police for his involvement in dissident republicanism. He has appeared before the Special Criminal Court for offenses including possession of stolen property and IRA membership. Last year he came to their attention over a dispute with another known dissident republican.

Body of sixth victim of gangland feud being removed from The Sunset House Pub in Dublin 1 this morning pic.twitter.com/vxdXXFiMht  Sarah O'Connor (@Sarah_UTV) April 26, 2016

Police believe that Barrs murder could be connected to the gangland feud between the Kinahan and Hutch mobs. Barr had been under investigation for suspected links to the shooting at the Regency Hotel, in February. His home was searched by the police last week.

It is suspected that the AK47 assault rifles used in the mass shooting, at the Regency Hotel, could have been supplied to the Hutch faction by traitors, from within the Kinahan gang ranks. The RTE reports that if the Kinahan gang suspected that dissident republicans supplied weapons to the Hutch gang that would be sufficient reason to target them.

The police are now concerned that the latest attack could bring dissident republicans into the fray, as they may want to seek retaliation for the murder.

There have been six recent murders, associated with Kinahan and Hutch, since the murder of Hutchs nephew in Spain last September. Five other men have been shot dead in the past five month including an innocent man, Martin ORourke, shot two weeks ago.

Kinahan gang member, David Byrne was also shot as well as three men connected to the Hutch faction. These were Eddie Hutch (the Monks brother), Noel Duggan and Michael Barr.

Following the shooting of Michael Barr on Monday a silver Audi car, with the partial registration 04C, was found burned out on Walsh Road, in Drumcondra. It is believed that three men fled the scene at Walsh Road in the direction of Home Farm Road, in a silver colored saloon car.

An independent politician in the north city center has called for more resources to be given to the police to tackle gang-related crime. Independent Councilor Niall Ring said the introduction of an armed support unit, as planned, in June will come too late.

Speaking to the RTE radio show Morning Ireland he said "Whatever resources are needed to give the gardai [police] absolute control, absolute information - whatever they need, equipment et cetera to has to be given.

"It has to be given now. This 55 armed support unit will not be ready until June.

"June is too late. By June more people may have been murdered."

The Councilor, who was visiting his mother in the area at the time of the shooting told the Irish Mirror that the community is now looking over its shoulder. He said "This community is now living in fear. One girl I spoke to heard the shots as she was in a local shop and described how she went into shock and could not move.

Man with special needs 'traumatised' by Dublin pub shooting carried home in shock, https://t.co/LE0YIsnAXb pic.twitter.com/ZQzDXNFshR  IrishLuxury (@IrishLuxForYou) April 26, 2016

"Another lady I know well said that she had been in the pub and was still shaking a hour later.

"Also in the pub was a lad with special needs who had to be literally carried home as he could not comprehend the situation he had witnessed but was traumatized by the event."

He continued "I was in the area as I usually drop in to see my Mother when I heard that there was a shooting nearby.

"I went up the road and was told about the shooting in the local pub, the Sunset House.

"I knew the victim as he lived locally."

Cllr Ring added "Obviously everyone in the area knows the man who was shot and there was an air of fear and trepidation as this murder comes shortly after the appalling murder of a well-known local resident, Eddie Hutch and the murder of Martin O'Rourke, two innocent victims inadvertently caught up in a gangland feud.

Police are appealing for information from witnesses. Anyone who may have seen a silver Audi before the first shooting is asked to contact Mountjoy Garda Station on +3531 666 8600, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111 or any police station.

Also on Monday night Thomas Farnan (37) was shot dead in his home in Clondalkin, in south Dublin. Police do not believe the two crimes are related. It is believed that Farnans murder was a more isolated incident related to a criminal dispute.
St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church, which still celebrates six Masses each Sunday, was first established in 1873, when its most active parishioners were workers at nearby Grand Central train depot.

Nine years later, in December of 1882, two immigrants brought their infant son Edward to be baptized at the humble church on East 43rd Street between Lexington and Third.

The mother, Catherine, was from a rural family in Limerick. She -- as thousands of Irish woman did in the lean years after The Great Hunger -- came to New York in search of domestic work.

Catherine was eventually hired by an affluent French family, whose children were taught music by a Spanish immigrant (by way of Cuba) named Juan Vivion de Valera.

These are the humble, highly unlikely roots of the man who was Ireland, as one Eamon de Valera biographer put it.

This month, a new biography of de Valera is out, from University College Dublin professor Ronan Fanning, entitled Eamon de Valera: A Will to Power.

With the 100th anniversary of the Irish Easter Rising finally upon us (even though Easter itself was last month), theres been a whole lot of debate about the American role in this Irish rebellion.

But while reading the new de Valera biography, the thought I couldnt shake was how he literally would not have been born if not for New Yorks rich Melting Pot tradition.

Now, for some of Devs more staunch critics (and there are plenty), maybe that would have been okay. De Valera did play a role in the Rising, though Fanning notes that Devs military failings were extensive.

Worse, during the post-Rising treaty negotiations and during the build-up to the tragic Irish Civil War, de Valeras behavior was petulant, inflammatory, ill judged and profoundly undemocratic, writes Fanning.

But de Valeras shortcomings must be reconciled with his subsequent greatness, Fanning says.

Indeed, like him or not, de Valera -- who served as taoiseach and president -- was arguably Irelands most influential statesmen of the 20th century.

And yet, de Valeras background is pure Melting Pot Manhattan.

First, he was the product of a mixed ethnic marriage, hence the Gaelicized first name and Spanish last name. Then there is the improvisational nature of de Valeras biography, so typical of many in the New World.

Family lore had it that Catherine and her husband were married in New Jersey in 1881. However, no records survive to verify this fact. De Valeras father eventually headed out west, possibly believing the drier air would be better for his ailing health.

And like so many of todays immigrants, de Valera had a foot in two countries. With money tight and his father gone, young Eamon was sent with an uncle back to Limerick, while Catherine stayed in the U.S. to earn wages.

Famously, de Valera was not executed by the British after the Rising. Why? It probably had nothing to do with the fact that he was American-born, as some historians have said, and as Dev himself later told President John F. Kennedy. Fanning says, it was because [de Valera] was unknown.

De Valera returned to New York City in 1919, after a dramatic prison break, to highlight the cause of Irish freedom, raise money, and also to spend Christmas in New York with his mother for the first time in 35 years, Fanning writes.

It boggles the mind to look upon a child of immigrants being baptized today at St. Agnes, who may one day return to visit his mother in New York as a central figure in the history of a developing nation.

It further boggles the mind that this scenario is being threatened by Trumpian neo-nativists.

As for de Valera, when he returned to Ireland in 1920, treaty negotiations with the British were set to begin. Then -- and for decades to come -- de Valera and his countrymen would butt heads with Winston Churchill, a rising star in British politics and future prime minister.

For all of their enmity, Dev and Churchill did have one thing in common. Churchills mother was also born in New York City.
Meet Ellen Murray, the 22-year-old Green Party candidate for West Belfast in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections, and the latest and most striking example of how the legacy of the peace process is transforming the political debate there.

Born in the heart of republican West Belfast, Murray was just two years old when the IRA ceasefire was announced. On May 5 she will make history as the first transgender candidate to stand in an election north or south of the Irish border.

Its a distinction thats not lost on the young woman who, because she lives in the only part of the UK to resist marriage equality for LGBT couples, must watch many of her legal rights appear or vanish as she crosses the border from Northern Ireland to the Republic (same-sex marriage is not legal in Northern Ireland, which also grants significantly fewer rights to its transgender citizens).

Nevertheless, its a measure of the Norths status as a society in transition itself that its calcified political debates are rapidly widening from the usual sectarian headcounts.

The surprise is that I'm encountering widespread support, Mullen tells IrishCentral. It's a very risky thing to put my hat in the ring and I was expecting a lot of pushback and retaliation. But the support's been very encouraging. The conversations that I'm having most are with people from my own LGBT community and they're very enthusiastic.

In terms of the wider population I think there's something about interesting candidates you don't expect to be running here that captures people's attention somewhat. I've had a lot of discussions where I talk to people and then they look me up on Twitter. It's not a novelty. It's interesting for people to see the diversity of candidates.

Last night's hustings at @hearinglossNI went super well - thanks so much for everyone there! pic.twitter.com/0zIQqK9msJ  Ellen Murray (@ellenfromnowon) April 22, 2016

Observers suggest that the cracks in the frozen sea of Northern Irelands politics that have appeared since the start of the peace process could soon become a flood.

They blame the internet. Social media is leading an information revolution that even Northern Ireland, one of the most politically hidebound states in Europe, cannot withstand.

Thanks to sites like Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook, young and traditionally disenfranchised voters are finding their own voices for the first time, and more and more of them are demanding to be heard, perhaps especially in working class communities, where diversity has been reflexively suppressed for decades.

It turns out that's a win for the state. Hyper-articulate and uncommonly focused on her manifesto, which comes from her lived experience, Murray makes for an impressive first time candidate.

I got involved in politics as soon as I came out as trans in 2013 because I was finding that the health services I needed to get access to were completely inaccessible, she explains. They weren't taking any new patients and I was being told to wait forever for an appointment.

Murray took up the issue with her local MLA's at Stormont, which led to two and a half years of healthcare advocacy work with local government departments to promote access to services for young trans people initially, then people of all ages.

When I was working with Stormont there seemed to be many ways in which things could be changed for the better and I just got hooked on that sort of community work.

To her surprise, Murray found support for her work from all parties, but getting public support is still very difficult she admits. There are good individuals in all of the parties. The big unionist parties are quite publicly anti-LGBT, so when it comes party policy and getting candidates to commit to issues publicly that is tricky. There is very little cultural competency around trans and non-binary (gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine) people within politics here.

Murray adds that if elected she is very conscious of the mountain she will have to climb. There's only a small handful of individuals in general  never mind parties  in Northern Ireland that have a real grasp of legislation affecting trans issues or even women's issues generally.

Ellen Murray- 22 year old Irish trans woman who is the first person to run in a northern Irish election pic.twitter.com/aJJRNjKCdi  Feminist Hour (@thefeministhour) March 8, 2016

But even people who disagree with her politics seem to be glad that she's running, she says. Those conversations are starting to happen and space is being made for them to. It's a positive thing and it's been great.

Meanwhile, Murray is appalled by the hysterical bathroom predator bills that are being pushed in some states in the U.S. and believes that North Carolina's HB2 bill is exactly the kind of fear-mongering legislation that she would stand against at home.

I am fearful for a lot of my trans friends who live in the south and in the U.S. generally. I'm seeing a lot of them really struggling at the moment. I have a fairly extensive network of trans folk I have known online for years now and they're worried, they're stressed, they aren't able to access the same public services and integrate into society in the ways that they were. They're deeply concerned about the fear and the backlash that is happening against them.

Bathroom bills are only discussed in fringe circles over here and there are a few candidates  the kind who want to outlaw feminism and rock music  who have it on their manifestoes. Hopefully they won't get too far."

Completely non-evidence based claims made against trans people are used to justify violence and the policing of people's genders in public, Murray says. That can lead to social isolation and to suicide. The US trans hotline has seen a doubling of calls since HB2 (North Carolina's so-called bathroom bill) was passed. That's appalling.

Although the marriage equality referendum in the Republic had a successful outcome last year, there was also a tenfold increase in people being referred to LGBT support she says.

The vitriol in the media and the public backlash at times deeply affected people. With HB2 that's being replicated in the States at the moment and we're talking about one of the most vulnerable communities to self harm and suicide and other risk behaviors and this is not in any way safe for that community.

Representation is Murray's watchword. As a candidate she wants to be a voice for anyone who feels overlooked or underserved by the traditional parities.

I think that makeup of the Northern Assembly has to reflect the makeup of the population. We currently have zero out LGBT MLA's and we're very unlikely to get representative in the Assembly going forward. We need to have a conversation about making our politics more representative.

Until we have a proper balance of demographics within our legislature we won't be making decisions that are well informed. You can do all the consultation work that you want, but until the people making the decisions have the lived experience they will not be making good decisions.

If elected on May 5 Murray will be an extraordinary sign of things to come. After all, Northern Ireland's politics used to exasperate even the habitually unflappable Winston Churchill.

After World War I had shaken Europe to its foundations he was depressed to realize that as the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again.

The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that have been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world, he wrote.

Were all changed utterly, he wrote, but they havent changed a jot. What the hell is wrong with these people, he might have added.

Representation appears to have been the answer. The makeup of Stormont simply needs to change, Murray says. On May 5 she intends to deliver that message by standing in West Belfast.
Two sisters in Ireland are searching for their mother whom they have not seen in over 50 years. The women believe that the answer to all their questions could be in the United States and are now appealing to the public for help.

Eileen (55) and Bridget (61) Gormley, originally from Sligo but now living in Dublin, believe that their mother Nora Agnes Gormley may have traveled to the United States to live with two aunts. In the early 1960s tragic circumstances led to the single mother being left alone and her children in the care of the Sisters of Mercy. Nora eventually disappeared from her childrens life and now the family is hoping to find some answers as to what happened to her.

The sisters hope the public can shed some light on Noras life. The Sligo woman had two aunts who moved to the United States in the early 1900s. She may have she contacted them and decided to emigrate.

One of her aunts, Marie Anne Gormanley, born in 1885, moved to Chicago in 1902, passing through Ellis Island on the way. She married a Thomas P. Gallagher and they went on to have three children, Mary, Eileen and Patrick.

Marie Annes sister, Bridget Gormanley, also traveled to the US where she married an Irishman by the surname of Houlihan. No further details are known at this point, but investigations are continuing.

Padraic Grennan, of Finders International in Dublin, told IrishCentral, Finders are doing everything in our power to locate Nora Agnes Gormley. No death records have been returned which would indicate that she is still living, so if anyone has any information of her whereabouts we would very much appreciate if you could get in touch with us.

Initially the sisters, Eileen and Bridget, and another sister Rosaleen (now deceased) were being raised by their single mother Nora in the small family home in the Tubbercurry area of Sligo. Nora lived with her parents and one of her siblings.

In November 1960 Noras mother passed away and in early February 1961, a group of nuns from the Sisters of Mercy arrived at the family home and took the three children into care. The youngest of the children, Bridget, was nine days old at the time.

The three children were then taken to Banada Abbey Industrial School, Tubbercurry, County Sligo. On February 9, 1961, a committal order was made at Tubbercurry District Court, which admitted Eileen (6), Rosaleen (2) and Bridget to Banada Abbey where they remained until they were 18.

Their mother Nora visited her children initially, but after a few months, the visits stopped. The children have not seen their mother since.

In 1991, Rosaleen, who had special needs, passed away in state care.

The two remaining sisters, Eileen and Bridget, have spent many years doing research and engaging with various tracing agencies in an effort to locate their mother and to find out what happened to her. None of their efforts has been successful.

Bridget recently read a story in the national press in Ireland about two elderly brothers who were reunited in their eighties, having spent their whole lives not knowing of each others existence. A company called Finders International, which specialists in tracing missing beneficiaries and unknown next of kin to unclaimed estates worldwide, and features prominently on the BBCs TV program Heir Hunters, was responsible for reuniting those brothers, and this prompted Bridget to contact them.

Finders is now carrying out extensive research in the United Kingdom and the United States on behalf of the Gormley sisters as they have reason to believe that Nora may have traveled to either destination, possibly to start her life over.

If you have any information that may be helpful, please do not hesitate to email Finders International at contact@findersinternational.ie of by telephone on 003531 6917252.

Read more: Adopted daughter reveals 15-year secret relationship with birth mother
To commemorate the anniversary of the Easter Rising, writer and historian Dermot McEvoy produced 16 profiles of the Irish Rebel leaders who were executed and who, gradually, have come to be seen as heroes.

Sean MacDiarmada

Sean MacDiarmada was born in County Leitrim in 1884. He left home at a young age and traveled to Edinburgh and Belfast where he held many jobs, from tram conductor to barman. At 22, he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and set out on his lifelong quest to drive the English from Ireland. When Tom Clarke returned from America in 1907 and teamed up with MacDiarmada, Ireland finally had her own Dynamic Fenian Duo, two men capable of rousing Ireland out of its political coma.

MacDiarmada, like his young protege Michael Collins, was handsome and charismatic, had an ebullient personality, and was a master organizer. He traveled the country, bringing the word of the new Ireland, an Ireland that would no longer bend its knee to the British. Even an attack of polio in 1912, which left him lame, could not contain his enthusiasm.

In mid-1915, he was arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act for trying to subvert British recruiting for the Great War and was duly packed off to Mountjoy Gaol for several months. Tom Clarke was delighted, as he wrote to Joseph McGarrity in America: The government made a great capture last Sunday week  a fellow named McDermott, Clarke writes. He is one of those bloodthirsty, good for nothing thunder and turf fellows who is always spouting sedition and who at one time ran a rag I think he called it Freedom. Well, this lad went down to Tuam and there commenced to give out against our glorious Empire.

When England went to war with Germany, MacDiarmada knew it was Irelands time. His prime purpose was to resuscitate Irish nationalism, which he feared was dying. He knew the only way to do this was to stage a rebellion. If we hold Ireland for a week, he said, we will save Irelands soul.

In the months leading up to the Rising he was an integral part of the IRBs Military Council, which was planning the uprising. On Easter Monday, because of his lameness, he arrived, along with Clarke, at the GPO via automobile. What they had been working towards for so long had finally come to fruition. One of my happiest recollections of Easter Week, said Diarmuid Lynch, was that of Sean MacDermott and Thomas Clarke sitting on the edge of the mails platform beaming satisfaction and expressing congratulations.

Read more Who was 1916 Easter Rising leader Tom Clarke?

As the week went on MacDiarmada took more control of the GPO as Connolly was wounded, Plunkett was ill, and Pearse was in a funk. With the rest of the men he made his way to Moore Street. After Pearse signed the unconditional surrender the Volunteers revolted  they would not surrender. No one, including Michael Collins, could calm the rebels.

Finally, MacDiarmada spoke up: [You] fought a gallant fight, he said, according to Joe Good in 'Enchanted by Dreams.' The thing that you must do, all of you, is to survive!... We, who will be shot, will die happy  knowing that there are still plenty of you around who will finish the job. The rebels heeded MacDiarmadas advice and surrendered. That quiet speech, said Good, was the most potent that I was privileged to hear.

Later, Michael Collins would write of his time in the GPO and the men he admired most: I think chiefly of Tom Clarke and MacDiarmada. Both built on the best foundations. Ireland will not see another Sean MacDiarmada.

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Lagging behind on their forced march from the Rotunda to Richmond Barracks, MacDiarmada arrived almost an hour after the rest of the rebels. The sorting of rebels, according to importance, began. It may have been at this time that there was some confusion regarding MacDiarmada. He had signed the Proclamation as Sean MacDiarmada, but the intelligence agents of the G-Division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police knew him by the Anglicized name of John MacDermott. Were they one and the same? It took the DMP a while to figure it out, but in the end, they got it right.

Future Irish President Sean T. OKelly saw MacDiarmada in a group assembled for deportation, with bright muffler, talking eagerly and gaily. They were lined up for inspection by detectives. The inspector stood in front of MacDermott for thirty seconds, then [he] was ordered out of the ranks and marched back to his room in the barracks.

Liam OBriain observed a most touching interaction in Richmond Barracks between Clarke and his protege, MacDiarmada: Sean fell asleep with his head on Toms chestI dont think Tom slept at all. Sean would start a little and we would hear a mutter from him saying: The fire! The fire! Get the men out! Then you would hear Toms quiet voice saying gently: Quiet Sean, were in the Barracks now. Were prisoners now, Sean. 

The early shootings were the blood sacrifice that MacDiarmada thought would shake Ireland out of her political slumber: [The executed leaders] are our victory. Had they [the British authorities] not shot them, we would be presented as a lot of poltroons who dared challenge the power of England. Ill be shot and I hope I will be.

He was even blunter to Desmond Ryan: I am going to be shot. If I am not shot, all this is worthless.

Because he was one of the last to be executed, MacDiarmada had a chance to write letters. He wrote to the old Fenian John Daly that he had been sentenced to a soldiers deathI have nothing to say about this only that I look on it as a part of the days work. We die that the Irish nation may live. Our blood will rebaptize and reinvigorate the old land. Knowing this it is superfluous to say how happy I feel. I know now what I have always felt  that the Irish nation can never dieposterity will judge us aright from the effects of our action.

Read more WATCH: A love story comes to a heartbreaking end in the 1916 Easter Rising

MacDiarmada also wrote to his brother and sister the day before his death: I have been tried by court-martial and sentenced to death  to die the death of a soldierI feel happiness the like of which I never experienced in my life before, and a feeling that I could not describeYou ought to envy me.

At midnight his girlfriend Min Ryan  who would later marry General Richard Mulcahy  and three friends were led to Seans cell and remained there for three hours. Min said that Sean was very anxious to have the others go so they could be together alone. But it was not to be. They all left together. At 3:45 MacDiarmada was executed.

Min Ryan late wrote: At four oclock on that Friday morning a gentle rain began to fall. I remember feeling that at last there was some harmony in nature. These were assuredly the tears of my Dark Rosaleen over one of her most beloved sons.

*Originally published in 2016, last updated in May 2021.

~~~~~~~~~

Dermot McEvoy is the author of "The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family, Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising and Irish Miscellany" (Skyhorse Publishing). He may be reached at dermotmcevoy50@gmail.com. Follow him on his website and Facebook page.

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Entertainment / Arts

by Staff Reporter

Music in Africa has indicated that the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) in Zimbabwe will begin its programme for 2016 with a classical music weekend between Friday and Sunday"The Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) in Zimbabwe begins its 2016 programme with a Classical Music Weekend between Friday 29 April and Sunday 1 May. Various venues at St George's College in Harare will host an exciting range of performances and workshops," said the Music Africa in its Facebook post.
Let Me Tell You is a new bespoke podcast series from



Hosts Daniel McConnell and Paul Hosford take a look back at some of the most dramatic moments in recent Irish political history from the unique perspective of one of the key players involved.


Unions at Irish Rail are to ballot their members for industrial action.

Siptu's national rail committee is meeting this Thursday to discuss a ballot for strike action.

The union has referred its pay claim for all grades at Iarnrod Eireann to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).

Siptu said it had informed management in writing that its "refusal to engage meaningfully on the pay claim" has resulted in the referral to the WRC.

Siptu organiser Paul Cullen said members were furious that their pay was behind industry norms.

He said: "Our members are completely vexed with the fact they have fallen behind a number of others within Iarnrod Eireann and within industry in regard to pay.

"We haven't had the 6% we were due since 2008 and we feel we have contributed considerably to the company's financial position in the last number of years through cost-saving measures."

Meanwhile, the NBRU, which referred a number of issues to the WRC at the end of last month, is accusing Irish Rail of ignoring the industrial relations institutions of the state by refusing to deal with ongoing pay cuts, a pay claim and a 10-minute DART service.

In a statement, Irish Rail said there was a "credibility gap" in the unions' claims.

It said: "The NBRU claims to wish to engage on a range of issues, but has itself undertaken a series of walk-outs, unofficial actions and refusals to engage with the company.

"In recent weeks, the NBRU have:

- Walked out of ongoing discussions at the Workplace Relations Commission on the implementation of a 10-minute frequency DART schedule (meeting planned for 22nd March, NBRU withdrew on 18th March)

- Refused just yesterday evening to attend a meeting directly with Iarnrod Eireann management this week to discuss issues surrounding DART drivers.

- Orchestrated unofficial action to prevent the in-cab familiarisation phase of training for new DART drivers.

The NBRU continues to ignore the fact there is an existing pay agreement with all trade unions in place across Iarnrod Eireann which expires in October of this year. This agreement includes a temporary 25-month pay foregoing of basic pay ranging from 1.7% to 6.1%, which will be fully restored in October.

"In October 2015, the NBRU turned down an opportunity for increased earnings for DART drivers offered by management of up to 8% through a series of productivity measures, at a WRC-facilitated engagement.

"The company and trade unions  including NBRU  are currently engaged in a process under the auspices of the Labour Court to examine opportunities for productivity-relating earnings increases for all other grades.

"Iarnrod Eireann believe the NBRU should  rather than planning ballots for industrial action - focus its efforts on engaging with all existing processes to ensure the company can deliver a better service to its customers, restore financial stability, and meet the aspiration for increased earnings amongst employees."
A bronze statue of Nelson Mandela has been unveiled in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The six metre-high statue, which was erected in a new square named after Mr Mandela, was a gift from the Johannesburg municipality, Ramallah's mayor Mussa Hadid said.
The value of imports from the UK will grow by 66% in the next 10 years, adding a further 26bn to the overall level of imports which currently stands at a record-high of 40bn.

Ireland will remain the UKs fifth largest trading partner and biggest per capita, according to the findings of Barclayss Trade Forecast.

Barclays Bank Ireland head of client coverage, Helen Kelly said that while changing demographics, and a structural shift towards emerging markets will continue to reshape the UKs overall trade mix, Ireland will remain a critical trading partner of increasing significance over the coming years.

Each week, over 1bn of trade is conducted between Ireland and the UK, highlighting the huge economic significance of the two markets to each other.

While the US is set to remain the UKs largest individual trading partner and emerging markets such as China and India are set to become key export destinations for UK goods and services in the future, trade with Ireland is at all-time record levels and is projected to grow considerably over the next 10 years.

Financial services will be the UKs single largest export sector in 2026 and given Irelands well-established positioning as a global hub for financial services, it is certain to provide greater trade opportunities going forward, he said.

Added to the growing size of Irelands financial services sector are opportunities across a range of other sectors.

With IDA policy tending to focus on attracting investment from hi-tech sectors such as pharmaceutical, finance and energy, and Enterprise Ireland seeking to develop the same sectors indigenously, the direction of the economy should complement the strengths of UK exporters which specialise in high-value goods and services.

Ireland is also home to many multinational companies such as Dell, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Microsoft all of which provide demand for many service-related sectors, which is a key growth area for UK exports.

The Barclays report sees Ireland becoming the second biggest importer of UK services by 2020.

It also predicts imports of services will surpass goods imports from the UK for the first time in the same period.
Entertainment / Music

by Bongani Ndlovu

REVOLUTIONARY music group Light Machine Gun (LMG Choir) founder Give Nare was buried on Saturday at his rural home in Buvuma, Gwanda South. Nare, 79, who had four children, died last Wednesday at Gwanda Hospital after suffering a heart attack.LMG band member Happiness Sibanda said they were still waiting on the Zanu-PF Matabeleland South provincial leadership to hear if Nare would be accorded liberation hero status having submitted a request last week."The local leadership asked us to compile his history of which we did and handed over to them. They said they would get back to the family on whether he would be declared a hero or not," said Sibanda.Matabeleland South Zanu-PF acting provincial chairman Rapelani Choene could not shed more light on the issue as he was in a meeting when contacted yesterday. Sibanda, however, said the family could not wait any longer hence their decision to bury Nare on Saturday.She thanked fellow war veterans and friends for coming in their numbers to bid farewell to Nare."It's a sad loss, but the support given made it easier for us to mourn our colleague," Sibanda said.Born on January 1, 1937, Nare did his primary education at Buvuma in Gwanda and his secondary education at Manama Mission. After completing his secondary education, Nare had a stint as an untrained teacher at Buvuma (1963), Selonga, Nkalange and Malibeng (all in 1964). He attended Musume College in Mberengwa to train as a teacher and started teaching professionally from 1966.In June, 1972, Nare travelled to Botswana to join the war of liberation. After some years there, he crossed over to Zambia where he trained for infantry at Nampundu camp. In 1978 he was transferred to the JZ School to join a teachers' choir called Jazz Choir. After singing for a while, he joined Radio ZAPU Choir under the leadership of Sifelani Maqethuka Dube.Nare later on left the choir to pursue his dream of forming his own choir. He then consulted fellow cadres in the struggle, Rose Madongo, Meteabo Sebata and Tsepile Ndebele and they formed the choir called Light Machine Gun.As the liberation war was drawing to an end, the late Vice President Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo sent the late Sikhanyiso Ndlovu to watch choirs at JZ Moyo camp. A choir was to be chosen to accompany Nkomo to Lancaster House in London and also inform people in Zimbabwe that the country had been freed from colonial rule.Out of four choirs namely LMG, Mbube, Radio Zapu and Sigwagwagwa, LMG was judged the best.Ndlovu then asked them to add women to the choir of which Portia Dube, Thobedzo Ndlovu, Gladys Ndlovu and Sizwe Dube were added. Later on Sandra Ndabalime and Sibusiso Ndlovu joined the group.At the Independence celebrations in 1980, they performed alongside reggae icon Bob Marley and the Wailers. After independence, Nare went back to teaching and retired from the profession in 2001.
There were no signs yesterday from EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager that the probe was winding up anytime soon. Seamus Coffey an economist at UCC, who has followed the case closely, said that the case could now take to the end of a year to complete. More information has been sent to Brussels by Irish officials.

Commission sources yesterday also played down the delay among political parties here to strike an agreement over a new government as the reason for the long delay in the ruling.

Ms Vestagers competition directorate formally opened the investigation in June 2014 into whether the Irish authorities effectively struck a sweetheart tax deal involving so-called transfer pricing arrangements with Apple, involving two Apple companies incorporated in Ireland.

Ms Vestager has in the past said that it would be better for the Commission to do a thorough job rather than rush to complete the probe under an artificial deadline.

The Commission has since given its ruling on two other tax rulings involving large multinationals which it had opened at the same time as its probe into Irelands dealings with Apple.

It ruled late last year that Luxembourg had provided selective tax advantages to the finance arm of Fiat, and that the Netherlands had given advantages to Starbucks that had artificially lowered the companies tax bills.

That left the Commissions investigations into Ireland, as well as another case involving Luxembourg and its dealings with Amazon, which also begun in June 2014, still to be concluded.

Last December, the Commission opened yet another probe into Luxembourg and a tax deal with fast-food outlet McDonalds.

Meanwhile, Apple results published later today will show far iPhone sales have fallen. Apple has warned investors that its quarterly earnings report will bear bad news about iPhone sales.

The worlds most valuable company forecast in January that revenue would drop for the first time in more than a decade as iPhone sales slow. Apple shares have fallen 18% in the past 12 months amid mounting investor concern that customers are upgrading their phones less regularly.

Analysts will probably be reassured by a sales decline that doesnt outstrip Apples projections for the quarter that ended in March.

From the stock point of view, it is already built into peoples expectations, said Abhey Lamba, a San Francisco-based analyst at Mizuho Securities, who recommends buying Apple shares.

If iPhone sales end up in line to slightly better than expectations then itll be taken positively.

That could mean that demand for iPhones, which accounted last quarter for two-thirds of Apples revenue, has peaked. Its introduction last month of the lower cost iPhone SE was partly seen as an effort to secure new customers in countries such as China or India. Additional reporting: Bloomberg
While producers have been deferring projects, eliminating jobs and freezing salaries, the process will take three years to complete, according to Barclays Lydia Rainforth.

In the meantime, profits are being hammered.

A lot of work still needs to be done on costs, Ms Rainforth said.

For producers from Royal Dutch Shell to Chevron reeling under the threat of credit-rating downgrades, slashing costs is the surest way of protecting balance sheets.

Still, reversing course is painful after $100 oil persuaded companies to pump money into expensive areas in search of new deposits, hire more people and rent rigs and services at record rates. Productivity suffered.

Shell, Europes biggest oil company, had operating costs of $14.70 a barrel last year when Brent crude averaged $53.60, Barclays said last month.

Thats more than double the $6-a-barrel cost in 2005, the last time oil averaged in the $50s. BPs operating expense was $10.40 last year compared with $3.60 in 2005.

After rising every year from 2010 to 2014, Shells costs fell 15%. BPs dropped 19%.

Thats not been enough to counter the rout in oil prices. BP is expected to post an adjusted loss for the first time since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, when it reports first-quarter results today.

Shell is likely to post its weakest adjusted profit in more than a decade.

Exxon Mobil, the worlds biggest oil company, will report the lowest quarterly profit in more than two decades on Friday.

Chevron is estimated to report a second consecutive loss the same day.

Totals first-quarter adjusted net income is predicted to be the lowest since 2001.
Luxembourg-based Ardagh  which has its roots in Irish Glass  had been linked with assets having to be offloaded to allow for the merger of the US businesses for some weeks.

It yesterday launched a bond offering aimed at raising $2.85bn in fresh debt to cover the bulk of the consideration.

Ardagh is not currently a manufacturer of beverage cans but this deal will catapult it to third largest global player in the sub-sector.

The deal is reliant on regulatory approval and the closing of the Ball/Rexam deal, and is due to complete by the end of June.

The deal will land Ardagh 12 manufacturing and support plants in the US, Europe and Brazil.

Coinciding with that news, Ardagh announced yesterday that Niall Wall  the groups chief executive of the past ten years  is to step down in September.

He will be replaced by Ian Curley, who recently left the post of chief financial officer at Smurfit Kappa Group after 16 years.

Mr Curley will join Ardagh as chief executive designate in June and take the helm in September.

Ardagh also yesterday reported first quarter earnings, bringing the publication of the figures forward to tie-in with the acquisition announcement.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) were up 6%, year-on-year, at 217m  with the glass division growing earnings by 6% to 148m and the metal packaging arm up by 8% at 69m.

Ardagh has shelved plans to float the metals division, known as Oressa, but group chairman Paul Coulson recently told investors that while no progress has been made on the issue, the group still intends to carry out the share sale  which could raise up to 2bn  at some point.

Ardaghs overall group revenue, for the first quarter, came to almost 1.22bn, ahead by 1% on an annualised basis.

The Ball/Rexam assets had combined sales, last year, of $3bn.
The news comes as a major chasm emerged between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail over the issue of suspending water charges, with one leading negotiator Barry Cowen saying the chances of success are at best 50/50.

Fianna Fail last night rejected a Fine Gael offer of a suspension of water charges for a period of six to nine months for the second time in three days as woefully insufficient.

Fine Gael is, meanwhile, facing a backlash from its own backbenchers, who are deeply opposed to the proposal to suspend charging domestic customers for water.

However, the Irish Examiner has learned that the order to release the funds to pay the 100 conservation grant has been delayed since January, and according to sources, it will not be signed.

READ MORE: Setting up of Irish Water is a model for how to get things totally wrong

The scheme which cost 94m to run last year was expected to cost 110m this year, and a figure of 110m has been provided for in the 2016 Revised Estimates for Public Services.

While the Department of Social Protection pays the money to homeowners, it requires an order from Environment Minister Alan Kelly, in order to release the funds. Mr Kelly has not given the order and is unlikely to do so, given the current state of chassis.

Statutory regulations must be made under Section 5 of the Water Services Act 2014 to set down the particulars of any 2016 Water Conservation Grant Scheme, including the application process and eligibility criteria.

The regulations havent been presented to the minister, a Department of the Environment spokesman told the Irish Examiner.

The Department of Social Protection is ready to pay out the funds, but Kelly and his department wont give the order, said one minister. In a climate where Irish Waters future is in doubt and charges look like they are being suspended, the order wont be given. They are shelved it seems.

As a result, there will be 110m extra of so-called fiscal space for the parties to utilise in their government formation talks, senior sources have suggested.

Talk of axing the grant means 6m spent on setting up the payment system could go to waste.

In more than three hours of talks yesterday, Fine Gael reoffered a suspension of water charges, believing the move would help to end the stand-off. This was on condition once the period ended, some form of charges system would be returned.

However, Fianna Fail repeatedly rejected the offer.

Meanwhile, the Fine Gael offer has caused a separate crisis for the party, with a number of backbench TDs warning they will not support any such deal.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner last night, Wexford TD Michael DArcy said if a suspension happened thats the end of Irish Water, and that no compromise deal will be agreed when this weeks parliamentary party meeting takes place today or tomorrow.

Kildare South TD Martin Heydon was similarly vocal, saying any suspension deal with Fianna Fail would be tantamount to the party turning its back on candidates who took a lot of punishment, while Regina Doherty said it would be a very large climbdown and Im not sure of the merits of it.

READ MORE: Setting up of Irish Water is a model for how to get things totally wrong
Ms Roche, the voluntary CEO of the Irish charity Chernobyl Children International (CCI), will also call for the establishment of a global fund to help the surviving liquidator heroes  those who were drafted in to fight the radioactive fire in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant which exploded 30 years ago today.

Last week, on her 30th visit to the region, Ms Roche met representatives of the estimated 700,000 surviving liquidators whose action in the first 48 hours after the explosion saved Europe from an even greater nuclear disaster. They appealed to her to bring their stories and their voices to the UN.

Ms Roche will wear liquidator officer Valerii Zaitsevs service medal during her landmark address to a special session of the UN General Assembly in New York today which has been convened to mark the anniversary of the worlds worst nuclear accident.

For Valerii and his gallant comrades, fighting the radioactive fire at Chernobyl was their ground zero, like the brave rescue service heroes of New Yorks 9/11 calamity, said Ms Roche.

The heroes of Chernobyl ought to be rightly honoured and recognised as the heroes who saved Europe and indeed the world.

But many of the Chernobyl liquidators feel that they have not been honoured.

In fact, many feel that they have been dishonoured, neglected, abandoned, and forgotten.

In an unprecedented move, the Belarusian government is to provide speaking time at the UN to Ms Roche in recognition of her charitys role, and that of thousands of Irish volunteers, in helping the victims of the Chernobyl disaster.

It is the first time an NGO has been extended the honour of speaking at the UN General Assembly during a countrys allocated time. CCI is the only UN-recognised NGO working in the area.

It comes as new research has found that milk produced by a herd 48km north of the former nuclear power plant contains levels of strontium-90, a radioactive isotope linked to cancers and cardiovascular disease, in quantities 10 times higher than Belarusian food safety regulations allow. The herd supplies milk to a company which produces a popular brand of cheese  90% of which is exported to Russia.

Ms Roche said she will also raise her concerns about the contaminated food at the UN.

And despite the Belarusian state declassifying vast swathes of contaminated land for farming and re-population, Ms Roche will call for a continued ban on the use of these highly radiated zones.

The world needs to make financial provision to fund access to clean food and adequate food monitoring for milk and dairy products, but also for meat, firewood, and timber in order to protect the citizens of the Chernobyl-affected regions, she said.

 I will also call for the reinstatement of monitoring and radiation check-ups of people throughout the stricken regions, particularly for children and pregnant mothers living in the contaminated zone.
Entertainment / Music

by Showbiz Reporter

Zimpapers' new local commercial radio station, Diamond FM, will be exhibiting at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) for the first time. The ZITF that kicks off today will see the radio station which has been broadcasting for five months in Mutare, sharing space with popular newspapers, Chronicle, The Herald, Sunday News, The Sunday Mail, Umthunywa, Kwayedza, B-Metro, H-Metro, Manica Post and its sister radio station, Star FM.Zimpapers spokesperson, Beatrice Tonhodzayi said the station, which is expected to launch soon, will showcase its products and unveil its personalities. "Diamond FM will be part of the ZITF exhibition under the Zimpapers brand. The station based in Mutare will soon be launching and ZITF is a great opportunity for people to know about it."We want people to get to know the radio station while also showing business opportunities on offer in Mutare," Tonhodzayi said.Meanwhile, Star FM which was a hit at last year's ZITF is back and broadcasting live from the Zimpapers stand. Kicking off the day today is the Breakfast Club with Nikki from 6AM to 9AM. From there, Mox takes over with the TXO from midday to 3PM."The Star FM stand will once again be a hive of activity as we'll be giving away prizes. People will also be given an opportunity to go live on air where they can greet their friends and family."Businesses should also take advantage of the station's live broadcasts and tell people about their products live on radio," said Tonhodzayi.
The claim was made at the oral hearing into the proposed incinerator for Cork Harbour in Ringaskiddy, which also heard concerns over a meeting between applicant Indaver Ireland and the HSE, and fears a well-developed bunker fire at the proposed facility could burn for more than a week.

Gordon Dalton of the UCC-affiliated Marine Renewable Energy Ireland Centre claimed the Indaver facility, if allowed, would produce 1/40th of Irelands industrial Co2 emissions.

Cork will become the waste processing centre of the world, said Dr Dalton, adding that, like his colleagues, he was speaking in a personal capacity and not on behalf of UCC. He also raised the prospect of a brain drain, stating if the plan proceeded, he would be seeking a new job elsewhere.

Pat Leahy, a lecturer on wind energy in UCC, claimed the presence of a wind turbine, erected in 2014 and just 500m from the proposed incinerator site, would create a greater dispersal area for plumes from the facility which would be less controlled and predictable.

The Cork Harbour Area for a Safe Environment (Chase) group has launched its own plume plotter which it said showed the extent to which plumes could expand in the area.

Rory Mulcahy, senior counsel for Indaver, contested the figures and said evidence had already been put forward that the wind turbine would not have any significant impact on plume dispersal.

Peter Daly, a former chief emergency planning officer for the HSE, said the HSEs submission on the proposal did not have an adequate public health element. He also said a fully developed bunker fire, at a time when the facility was operating at 4,000 tonnes of waste capacity, could burn for six days  and for more than a week if operating at its 6,000 tonne capacity.

It also emerged Indaver had met with the HSE around two weeks ago, with Chase claiming the group had not been informed.

The chief inspector leading the hearing, Derek Daly, asked that heads of the meeting be provided, while John Ahern, regional manager Ireland and UK for Indaver, said his colleagues would be able to provide information.

Chase chairwoman Mary OLeary said it was more evidence of meetings behind closed doors.

The hearing was told by a delegation from PDForra, the representative body for members of the Defence Forces, that up to 1,100 personnel are on duty at Haulbowline Island at any one time and there were concerns about the evacuation of the island if there was an accident at the incinerator.

Mark Kane said, given the limited access to and from the naval base, it could take several hours to a number of days to evacuate.

READ MORE: Simon Coveney and Micheal Martin team up on incinerator
In his innocence, he was not to know of the trail of fraud and criminality she had left behind in Canada, Texas, and Australia after leaving Northern Ireland.

Over a 20-year period, she had used up to 40 aliases and, at the time of her death, the PSNI had secured an arrest warrant for her.

She reportedly found Thomas an easy target. A quiet countryman from a highly respected Church of Ireland family, he worked as a mechanic and kept beehives.

Julia moved into his two-storey home at Boolaglass, about 8km from Rathkeale.

They put the word out of having been married abroad and Julia organised a blessing of their non-existent marriage vows at St Marys Church of Ireland in Askeaton. A party was held in a pub about 24km away.

Julia had been married before she left Co Tyrone and, during a colourful life in the US, married a wealthy Texan businessman.

At the time, she had been going under the name of Julia Parish.

She conned her husband and a group of his Texan fiends out of more than 440,000 in a property scam. A major investigation by the FBI led to her arrest and a court in Athens, Texas, sentenced her to two years in jail, followed by deportation.

A life of fraud continued on her return to Ireland. She told many of her victims a blonde wig she wore was to conceal her loss of hair due to chemotherapy for cancer.

As soon as she settled and moved in with Thomas , she began to tap into his honeymaking enterprise.

Julias major marketing exercise under the Irish Bee Sensation brand created such a demand for her organic honey, she began to buy honey from supermarkets and brand it as her own home-produced product.

She won a national Bord Bia food award for the product.

The PSNI, meanwhile, had a warrant for her arrest dating back to 2011.

Meantime, she conned a number of builders into carrying out renovations, estimated at 50,000, to the house in Boolaglass.

The fact that people he knew very well had been conned by Julia began to bother Thomas.

His parents, Bill and Eileen, were highly respected and raised their three children, Thomas, Edward, and Claire as churchgoers. Bill, along with his farming operations, had an agricultural contracting business using combine harvesters.

Edward and Claire moved to the UK and, after their father died, Thomas cared for their invalid mother at the family home. He had worked on the construction site on Alcan land at Aughinish and was known to be handy with mechanical matters such as repairing engines.

Julia and Thomas died after inhaling fumes from a charcoal barbecue placed next to them in a sealed bedroom. Their badly decomposed bodies were discovered by burglars on May 18, 2015.

After their bodies had been released by the coroner for burial, the Ruttle family arranged for Thomas to be interred at the family plot in Askeaton.

However, the Holmes family made it clear they did not wish to have anything to do with Julias funeral arrangements and it had looked likely she would be buried in in a paupers plot.

Eventually, a relative of Thomass engaged a west Limerick undertaker to have her remains brought to Little Island in Cork for cremation. It is not known what happened her ashes.

The funeral service for Thomas took place at St Marys Church of Ireland in Askeaton on June 3, 2015.

Among the mourners were two sons Thomas had from a previous relationship. Addressing the congregation, Rev Ken Scott said: Let our grief be a grief without bitterness of blame. Carrying all that was unfinished away from here today will drag us into the darkness and become a burden which will hamper us and all that we do for the rest of their lives.

Rev Scott said their sorrow was all the more intense due to the almost incomprehensible events surrounding the Thomass death.

He said there was often a sense that those who knew a deceased may have felt they failed them, that, somehow, there was something we should have done, something we missed, or something that we wish we could not take back, that we did or said which we should not have done or said.

Hindsight is 20/20 vision, said Rev Scott. Afterwards, we see clearly and then comes the blame, contempt and anger, the deep regret for things done or left undone, words said or left unsaid. The truth is we have little real power to change how events unfold themselves in the world. The little we can do will always be messy and ambivalent, and there is always something left hanging unfinished.

Gardai suspect that, prior to her death, Julia had been considering one last throw of the dice  to get a cash buyer for Thomass home with the intention of relocating to Spain, knowing the PSNI were closing in on her fast.

However, it is not known if she had arranged for Thomas to be part of a planned new life in Spain.
The calls follow a series of reports criticising the operation of the scheme. Yesterday, it was revealed that the number of people dropping out of the national internship programme early each year is almost as high as those who are completing the scheme.

This followed reports that JobBridge had been used to fill hundreds of positions in State agencies and corporations such as the HSE, the GAA and Hewlett-Packard.

Just last week, the Irish Examiner revealed Department of Social Protection had reversed its decision to ban all firms where it was alleged that interns had been assaulted and bullied, had their safety compromised or were forced to work unfair hours.

A total of 86 companies had received some form of ban from the scheme since it began in 2011, but no businesses had received suspensions from JobBridge since a November decision to lift the existing suspensions.

However, in a statement, the Department of Social Protection hit out at the recent media coverage which, it said, had focussed almost exclusively on the relatively small instances of abuse or misuse of the scheme.

While any misuse of the scheme is regrettable, it should be remembered that JobBridge was introduced in July 2011 as a rapid response to the sharp increase in unemployment resulting from the unprecedented collapse in the economy. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were being lost and unemployed jobseekers found it difficult to compete for those that were available, said a statement.

The Department pointed out that since the scheme was introduced in 2011, 18,500 organisations had provided internships to some 46,500 jobseekers. It said that around 60% of these went on to get paid employment within five months of completing an internship.

Over the weekend, the IMPACT trade union called for JobBridge to be dissolved following its widespread misuse in the health service and elsewhere.Fianna Fail, the Anti-Austerity Alliance and the Workers Party have also called for the scheme to be scrapped.
Micheal Martins party said last night it will remain true to our commitments and manifesto in seeking the suspension of the fees for the duration of the next Dail, potentially ending any hopes of a compromise deal.

In a bid to break the ongoing political deadlock, acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny told Fianna Fail leader Mr Martin at the weekend he was willing to suspend water charges while an independent commission was set up to examine how a new fee system would work.

Fine Gael believed the move would help to end the standoff, on the condition that charges will return once the period ended.

However, during four hours of talks yesterday, Fianna Fail repeatedly said the plan falls far short of its demands. It is understood Fianna Fail believes it cannot agree to the deal because it will mean water charges will be returned before the next election.

However, with senior Fine Gael figures saying last night they want a conclusion one way or the other this weekend, the growing standoff is increasing the prospect of a new election being called.

Speaking after leaving the talks last night, acting Agriculture Minister and Fine Gael negotiating team member Simon Coveney denied talks are at their lowest ebb, but admitted the public is losing patience with the process.

He said Mr Kenny tried to move on that over the weekend and we would like a response to that proposal from Fianna Fail in the morning.

However, speaking just moments later, Fianna Fail counterpart Barry Cowen said there hasnt been a breakthrough and that his party will remain true to our commitments and manifesto.

Meanwhile, the Fine Gael offer to freeze charges for a fixed period has caused a separate crisis for the party, with a number of backbench TDs warning they will not support any such deal with Fianna Fail.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner last night, Wexford TD Michael DArcy said if a suspension happened, thats the end of Irish Water and that to change direction now would be an insult to TDs who fought the election based on the logic of a charges system.

He said his party voted unanimously in favour of keeping charges at its parliamentary party two weeks ago and that no compromise deal will be agreed when this weeks parliamentary party meeting.

Kildare South TD Martin Heydon was similarly vocal saying any suspension deal with Fianna Fail would be tantamount to the party turning its back on candidates who took a lot of punishment, while Regina Doherty said it would be a very large climbdown.

Noel Rock and party chair Catherine Byrne said they wanted to wait until the exact details of any agreement emerged before they backed a water-charges system, while Martin Heydon, Andrew Doyle and Brendan Griffin all criticised a deal.

Mr Martin said the chances of a talks resolution this week are 50/50. Fine Gaels acting Finance Minister Michael Noonan said if progress is made, it will be inching forward slowly.
Apart from highly-specialist units like the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) and Regional Support Units (RSUs), no armed detectives have received tactical training since 2008.

That is according to the GRA (Garda Representative Association), which represents more than 10,000 frontline members of the force.

GRA president Dermot OBrien said that while Ireland might be on the periphery of Europe things could also happen here, he was concerned about the lack of tactical training given to both armed detectives and unarmed, uniformed officers.

The Uzi machinegun was taken away from all detective units in 2012 and the equally devastating German-made Heckler & Koch MP7 has only be given to one specialist unit.

Other detective units are only armed with pistols, which would be no match for heavily-armed terrorists or criminal gangs.

Mr OBrien said the recent gangland shooting at the Regency Hotel in Dublin highlighted the issue of a need for tactical responses because the first gardai on the scene were uniformed, unarmed officers.

He said no unarmed officers should have to face such a scenario and they and all members of the public should be kept at least 500 metres from such a scene until properly-armed units arrive.

Mr OBrien will urge Garda Commissioner Noirin OSullivan to address these issues when she attends their annual conference in Killarney today.
Even if Fine Gael and Fianna Fail agree the parameters of a minority government, Independent TDs who have already taken part in negotiations will need time to pick through the document.

Members of the Independent Alliance, as well as a number of rural and non-aligned Independents, would have to be assured that their priorities are included and could request a second draft of a combined Fine Gael and Fianna Fail document.

Fine Gael would hope to secure the support of the six members of the Independent Alliance which, along with Independents Michael Lowry and Katherine Zappone, would bring their numbers up to 58.

However, the party is aiming to gain the support of 60 TDs to create more stable minority government.

Two of the rural Independent TDs, Denis Naughten and Michael Harty, as well as Maureen OSullivan, could also join a minority government.

Yesterday, Michael Fitzmaurice said the Independent Alliance would be willing to look at any agreement made by the two larger parties.

We are quite open to first of all looking at the document and second of all talking to them, he said.

However, he said there are still unresolved issues with the document which Fine Gael drew up specifically for Independents and they would also have to be looked at.

People are fed up waiting but there is a lot of water to go under the bridge before there is any government, said Mr Fitzmaurice

Fellow Independent Alliance member Sean Canney, TD for Galway East, said that frustration is now taking hold among TDs and the public but added that there would still be a lot of work to be done if agreement is reached between Mr Kenny and Mr Martin.

We have been waiting now for a good while to come back into talks. I think its time that the two main parties came up with some sort of approach which is workable, he said.

Mr Harty said a number of issues, including funding for mental health services, regional development and GP services would have to be addressed before he agrees to support a minority administration.

The removal of 12m from the mental health budget would be an area that I will be looking for reassurances on, he said.

I havent heard anything other than the squabbling and bickering that is going on. We said from the outset that we would engage in any meaningful talks. We would have to see some sort of document which would underpin the formation of government.

The alternative is an election and nobody wants an election.

Independent Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae said he would be waiting until talks between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael end before making a decision on entering minority government or not but said that he would be willing to re-enter negotiations.

The parties havent got their act together yet, Mr Healy-Rae said.

He said that when any agreement if reached it will then have to be put to Independents, which will again take some time.

Its very hard to see anything happening this week. I have to see what is going to come out of this first.
A full 60 days after the February 26 vote, three weeks into historic talks between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, and after 100 hours of separate discussions with Independents, Enda Kenny has made a significant, perhaps game-changing, concession to Micheal Martin.

In return for supporting  or to use Fianna Fails own word, facilitating, because no-one could interpret the partys actions in recent days as support  a Fine Gael-led minority government, Mr Kenny has told his rival he will agree to suspend water charges for six to nine months.

The move has been made in a last-ditch bid to resolve the political stalemate hamstringing the country and comes with two vital caveats, namely water charges will only be suspended while an independent commission examines the issue, and only if both parties agree to reintroduce a charges system once the review concludes.

For Mr Kenny and his negotiating team of Simon Coveney, Leo Varadkar, Frances Fitzgerald, and Paschal Donohoe, the offer is designed to end the stand-off and is the only way to prevent a second election.

However, while the Taoiseach and his negotiators eyes may have been understandably on the water charges gun Mr Martin has pointed at their heads when they outlined the situation, they should perhaps have thought a little harder about whether a similar target is now being placed on their back by their backbench colleagues.

Speaking last night as talks ended for another day, a series of Fine Gael TDs said they cannot support any deal that will see a lengthy suspension of charges.

Regardless of what way it is dressed up, a fees freeze for any significant period of time will effectively spell the end of the regime, they say, something they can simply not abide after wading through the election with the policy repeatedly plunging them into arguments they fought hard to win.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner last night, Wexford TD Michael DArcy said if a suspension as long as what is being suggested is put in place, thats the end of Irish Water, adding we shouldnt take people for fools.

He said the parliamentary party of TDs and senators met a fortnight ago to unanimously re-affirm its position on water charges  namely, that they were not going anywhere  and to change direction now simply because that is the way the wind is blowing means backbenchers views are being ignored for the sake of power.

Kildare South TD Martin Heydon was similarly vocal, saying any suspension deal would be tantamount to the party turning its back on candidates who took a lot of punishment, while similar views were expressed by Regina Doherty, Andrew Doyle, and Brendan Griffin.

Despite other colleagues, including taoiseach-nominee addict Noel Rock and Fine Gael chair Catherine Byrne, saying some form of deal was always inevitable, the reality is the guns, never mind the knives, will be out for Mr Kenny and his negotiating team at their next parliamentary party meeting, either today or tomorrow.

And what makes it worse is that the rock-and-a-hard-place situation Fine Gaels top brass now finds itself in has seemingly not calmed the would-be assassin who continues to have it in its sights. Gun still firmly at Mr Kennys temple, Mr Martins negotiating team of Barry Cowen, Michael McGrath, Jim O Callaghan, and Charlie McConalogue last night made it clear the offer to suspend charges for two years is not enough.

We are true to our commitments and our manifesto across a range of issues, including the one you have mentioned [suspending water charges for five years], Mr Cowen told reporters as he left the Trinity College talks, with colleagues later clarifying no counter-offer will be put forward today. Asked about his leaders suggestion the odds of a deal are in the balance, he agreed theres still a 50/50 chance.

Given the Fine Gael backbench anger the latest attempt at a deal has caused, those 50/50 odds could just as easily relate to who shoots the Taoiseach first  Fianna Fail or the grass-roots on his own side.
Newly elected TD Louise OReilly strongly rejected the suggestion in her partys daily media briefing yesterday, saying Sinn Fein has not been sitting on our hands for eight weeks and that the only reason it has not taken part in talks is because it has yet to be asked.

Speaking after the partys ard fheis on Sunday, Mr Adams said he is open to speaking with Fianna Fail about a programme for government.

Mr Adamss remarks, which were heavily qualified when he said any deal with Fianna Fail would be based on Sinn Fein policy and would have to do the business as far as we are concerned, have been widely seen as an attempt by the opposition party to stay relevant and deflect criticism that it has done nothing to end the post-election political stalemate.

However, speaking to reporters yesterday, backbench TD Louise O Reilly said the offer, which has not been taken up by Fianna Fail, is genuine and not an attempt to give her own party political cover.

We havent been sitting on our hands for the last few weeks, she said.

Weve been actively participating in the committee on Dail reform, on homelessness, were all doing constituency work, so we havent actually been sitting on our hands. So theres no cover required.

Asked why Sinn Fein is open to forming a government now, Ms OReilly said her party has always been available to speak to larger parties. That is despite the fact it passed a motion at its 2015 ard fheis to enter talks only if it was the larger party.

Ms OReilly said protocol of government formation means it is up to Fine Gael or Fianna Fail to contact Sinn Fein, but that no contact has been made.
David Mahon, aged 46, is charged with murdering father-of-one Dean Fitzpatrick on May 26, 2013. The 23-year-old was stabbed in the abdomen on the landing outside Mr Mahons apartment at Burnell Square, Northern Cross, on the Malahide road in Dublin.

Dressed in a navy suit, Mr Mahon stood to be arraigned before the Central Criminal Court yesterday and pleaded not guilty. A jury was then sworn in.

Opening, Remy Farrell, prosecuting, explained that Mr Mahon was the partner, now husband, of the deceased mans mother, Audrey Fitzpatrick. He said she also had a daughter, Amy Fitzpatrick, from a previous relationship. Mr Mahon, Ms Fitzpatrick, and the two children moved to Spain in 2004, where the family had business interests.

Tragically, Amy Fitzpatrick went missing in 2008, said Mr Farrell, explaining she had never been found. He said Mr Mahon and Ms Fitzpatrick had been much in the limelight since Amy went missing regarding her disappearance.

Mr Farrell said Mr Fitzpatrick returned to Ireland shortly after his sister went missing, having turned 18. He said that by 2013, he was in a relationship and had a two-year-old child. He had mental health difficulties and also had a difficult relationship with Mr Mahon.

Mr Farrell said both men were members of the Northwood Gym in Santry and that Mr Mahons bicycle was interfered with outside the gym on May 24 that year.

He said CCTV footage suggested that it was the deceased who had done so, taking a part off the bicycle.

The jury was told Mr Mahon was annoyed and sought to have his stepson barred from the gym. He also spent much of the following day trying to contact the deceased. Witnesses would say he was not in a good mood and had been drinking.

The barrister said Mr Mahon was in his apartment with two friends that night and phoned Mr Fitzpatrick to come over. The deceased arrived and there was a confrontation. Ultimately, he admitted doing it [interfering with the bicycle] to annoy him, said Mr Farrell. Both were agitated.

One of Mr Mahons friends told the deceased to leave and he brought him outside. Mr Mahon then told the other friend he would be back in a minute.

Its what happened when he walked out the door thats the issue, said the barrister. David Mahon arrived back in and had a carving knife. The prosecution case is that David Mahon stabbed Dean Fitzpatrick in the abdomen.

The jury heard that Mr Fitzpatrick ran off, collapsed nearby, and was tended to by strangers. He died the following day.

Mr Farrell said that Mr Mahon tried to flee the scene. However, he told his friend and another witness what he had done and eventually went to the gardai.

He suggested itd been an accident, that he had taken the knife off Dean Fitzpatrick and that Mr Fitzpatrick had walked onto it, impaling himself, he said. At one point he muses that Dean Fitzpatrick was suicidal.

Mr Farrell told the jurors that they would have great difficulty in reconciling that account with his injuries.

There was a piece of intestine protruding, he said. In common terms, he had been gutted.

He said the knife had gone through Mr Fitzpatricks clothes, muscles, duodenum, bowel, cut the aorta, and left a 3cm groove on the spine. The track of the wound was 14cm long. He told the jury to contrast that evidence with the account of Mr Fitzpatrick walking onto the knife.

Or was it something more obvious? he asked: That, David Mahon, having sought to procure the attendance of Dean Fitzpatrick, drunk and angry, stabbed him through the belly, causing his death?

The jury was later shown CCTV footage, which showed Mr Fitzpatrick arriving on his bicycle to Burnell Square at 11.06pm and Mr Mahon leaving the complex about seven minutes later.

The trial continues .
In the first prosecution of its kind, the company pleaded guilty at Dublin District Court to breaching statutory regulations.

The court heard the company, which is owned by Eir, had discontinued a 50% discount package. However, the bundle continued to be sold by shop operators and Meteor agents to 123 customers who later had it taken from them without any notification or any offer to withdraw from their contracts without penalty, which is required under the regulations. The case came after customers bills doubled and some of them complained to telecoms industry watchdog Comreg.

Judge John ONeill described the companys explanation that they had technical problems as gobbledygook. He also said it was ironic they were involved in the communications business when they had difficulty communicating to their stores that the packages should not be sold.

One customer got cut off when he complained that his discount had been taken from him without warning.

There were 123 counts of breaching the universal services and users rights regulations. Prosecution counsel Christian Keeling said it had been agreed that a guilty plea would be entered by Meteor to 10 counts and Comreg would withdraw the remaining charges.

He said the regulations contain consumer protection measures where a provider must notify subscribers of any changes and advise them of their rights to withdraw from their contract without penalty if they did not agree with the modifications.

Comreg compliance officer Miriam Kilraine told Judge ONeill the 123 customers had been given a phone bundle with a 50% discount for 24 months. However, it was later removed from their packages.

Customers who complained were told that the discount had been given to them in error. This resulted in their bills being effectively doubled, she said.

The court heard that 29 customers complained directly to the company but refunds to all those affected came following intervention by Comreg. On top of the refunds, 111 customers who have remained with Meteor have been given the discount back for the duration of their contracts. The average refund was 240.

Ms Kilraine said Meteor had co-operated in a qualified way and Comreg found the information provided to it by Meteor was not of a standard they would expect.

They had no prior criminal convictions. However, Ms Kilraine said the company pleaded guilty in other proceedings for over-charging but that case was struck out after Meteor gave a charitable donation.

Joe Jeffers defending asked the company, which has agreed to pay prosecution costs, be given a chance to donate 10,000 to charity and spare it a conviction. However, Judge ONeill refused and imposed fines totalling 25,000 which have to be paid within four months.
News / Africa

by Staff Reporter

Some girls in South Africa have revealed that a rogue pastor at Carletonville violently abused them at gun point saying their experienced at the hands of the clergyman was horrible."The pastor pushed me to the bed at gunpoint and said we must perform a 'free' pornographic movie to make my friends jealous. He put his fingers inside my vagina. I pleaded with his wife to make him stop."This was a harrowing experience of one of the three girls who were kidnapped by a rogue Carletonville pastor who also raped and assaulted them in his house.Sowetan reported that the girls narrated their eight hours of hell in the hands of the pastor and even revealed the wounds they sustained at his hands.On the night of April 3, the gun-toting pastor took turns raping them after assaulting them with a baton and a wire in the bedroom while his wife watched TV in the lounge.During the ordeal the pastor threatened to shoot them and murder their families should they attempt to flee. Two of the girls are 17 and 18 years old and are members of the pastor's church in Wedela township in Carletonville.The third victim is a 25-year-old friend of the two teenagers."He brought me into the room and said we must have a foursome. We refused. He forcefully penetrated me with his fingers and once he was aroused he proceeded to rape my two friends who were bleeding from being assaulted."Earlier the pastor had locked the room and forced the girls to strip naked."We pleaded with his wife to help us. We could hear her laughing. He forced me to watch as he raped each of them at gunpoint. I prayed to God to spare our lives," said the 25-year-old who shook as she described their experience."My family was all I could think about as he was raping me. My body had been numbed from all the physical pain I had endured from him," said the younger girl.They said at some point the pastor looked insane and was rambling on about how he'd kill them.The pastor panicked and released the older woman after her family called and threatened to send the police to his house.Police were later sent to the house where they rescued the two girls and arrested the pastor. The pastor faces three counts of rape and assault, two of kidnapping and one of pointing a firearm.The girls' parents had hoped that he would help the girls with their personal problems. He also promised to give them jobs and spiritual guidance. But he soon turned into a monster."He would hit me with his fists and then lock me in the bedroom for days," the younger girl said.Earlier this month the two teenage girls escaped from the pastor's house and fled to Krugersdorp. He used their older friend to track them down.He brought all three back to his house where he allegedly assaulted and raped them."This horrific incident has broken our family. We trusted him with our children only to learn that we were feeding a sex-hungry monster. I've lost faith in church leaders," said the mother of one of the victims.The victims are receiving psychological help and police are preparing them for the court case.
Where theres a will, theres a way to cause trouble and strife, and even divide a family.

Not always  but often enough to excercise the courts in Ireland, especially where there are substantial inheritances involved.

Every year, dozens of wills  mostly involving a bequest by parents to their children  are contested in court by an aggrieved party who feels they were hard done by or not properly provided for.

It is an issue now being examined by the Law Reform Commission, which is seeking submissions in relation to the law that deals with children contesting a parents will.

The LRC is examining section 117 of the 1965 Succession Act which deals with whether a parent has made proper provision for a child and, wisely, it is looking for comments and submissions not just from legal experts but also members of the public. Observations will be collected by the commission and a report drawn up by the end of the year.

We are interested in hearing not only from people who are interested in the legal aspects of this question, but also from people who would have expertise or ideas about the whole question of the private transmission of wealth from one generation to another, said Tom OMalley from the Law Reform Commission.

Speaking on RTE radio, Prof OMalley said the result of the publics input will be a consultation document, which will also examine what happens when a parent dies without leaving a will.

At the moment, inheritance is divided equally between children. This can create problems, said Prof OMalley, as a child who might have stayed at home to look after a parent into old age is not entitled to a larger share than a sibling who may have left home and established themselves financially.

Under the current rules, a child has no right to their deceased parents estate where a will has been made but can apply to court and claim that the parent has failed in his or her moral duty to make proper provision for them.

If the court agrees, it can adjust the amount left to the child in the will and order that a different amount the court thinks proper should be made out of the parents estate.

The Succession Act was considered revolutionary in its day as, before it, anyone could leave their estate to whatever person or institution they chose. The surviving spouse and children could be completely left out and the entire estate left to the Cats Home.

One of the main purposes of the act was to protect the spouse and children of a testator from being completely disinherited, but it is now showing its age. In the past 50 years, Ireland has undergone enormous societal and demographic changes and the biggest of these has been in the area of what we regard as the family.

During the Oireachtas debates on the 1965 act, justice minister Brian Lenihan Sr observed that, in a country such as ours which recognises the very special position of the Family [in Article 41.1.1 of the Constitution] as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law, so-called freedom of testation is a paradox which cannot be defended on any ground.

That kind of self-righteous language is evident in the acts reference to the moral duty of the parent and assumes, as the Constitution did at the time, that the family was based on a married heterosexual couple.

Up until 1988, children born to parents who were not married to each other were not entitled to claim under section 117. This changed when the Status of Children Act 1987 which abolished the concept of illegitimacy and removed many of the legal distinctions between children born within and outside marriage.

Similarly, Article 41 of the Constitution was amended in 1995 to remove the constitutional prohibition on divorce; and since the enactment of the consequential Family Law (Divorce) Act 1996 the application of section 117 must take account of more complex family patterns in which claims by children of a number of different parents may be at play.

Last years monumentuous referendum that overwhelmingly endorsed same-sex marriage also points to a succession regime that is past its sell-by date.

It is likely therefore that the policy behind family provision legislation such as section 117, and its application in practice will, and should, reflect such changed social and legal settings, says the LRC.

The Commission considers that this should be taken into consideration in the context of any reform of section 117 of the 1965 Act.

The Commission also considered changing the demographic context in which section 117 of the 1965 Act operates. As noted in Oireachtas debates on the 1965 act, section 117 was derived from the family provision legislation first enacted in New Zealand in 1900.

At the beginning of the 20th century, half the population of the UK and Ireland died at 72. Since then, medical and scientific advances, combined with better nutrition, have extended life expectancy. Even since 1965, life expectancy in Ireland has increased by approximately 10 years.

Another related change in family dynamics is that children remain dependent on their parents for longer, but have greater opportunities than many previous generations. The days of parents insisting on 24, out the door, whereby young adults are expected to fend for themselves, are gone. At the same time, people are living longer after retirement and may look to their children for help or view accumulated earnings as a means to fund their old age.

Parents may decide to have children later and may themselves become dependent on the support of their own children later in life. Lifetime earnings may become increasingly viewed as a safety net to provide for someones later years, rather than a helping hand to give the next generation.

That is why the commission is also seeking views as to whether account should be taken of the effect of current or future demographic changes, such as changing family relationships since 1965. More generally, it is seeking views on the impact longer life expectancy may have on what has been called the generational contract. This is a kind of deposit against future withdrawals whereby the adult generation first cared for their children who, in turn, looked after their parents in later life.

The children did so in the knowledge and expectation that they would inherit, if not quite the Earth, at least the family home.

The traditional generational contract that operated in the 20th century in Europe and elsewhere involved an exchange in which the adult generation first cared for young people, then the young people grew up and cared for their elderly parents.

The LRC paper pays great heed to the work of leading gerontologists, who specialise in the study of ageing, who have commented that we may currently be moving into an adapted generational contract, which means older people will have more responsibility for themselves than in the past. This will arise because parents are having fewer children, and therefore there are fewer people to care for the parents in later life; and that the parents live longer, so they have a longer time period, potentially, to fund their own later life.

This, of course, also means that they may have little or nothing left to leave to their children.

In which case the siblings will have nothing to fight about.

Case study 1: Nothing in will

In one of the first cases under section 117 (decided in 1970) called the GM case (names are anonymised because these cases are heard in camera), the plaintiff was an only (adopted) child, and was 32 when the case was heard.

He was a merchant seaman. His late father had been a doctor and had paid for the plaintiffs education. The fathers will left everything to his widow. The plaintiff was left nothing and he then brought a claim under section 117.

The High Court decided the following should be taken into account in these cases:

Any amount left in the will to the surviving spouse (or else the value of the minimum statutory legal right share of the surviving spouse under the 1965 act);

The number of children, their ages and their position in life when the parent who made the will dies;

The parents means;

The age, financial position, and prospects in life of the person making the claim under section 117;

Whether the parent has already made proper provision for the child; and

The facts at the date of death, not when the will was made.

In the GM case, the court concluded the father had failed to make proper provision for the plaintiff. It awarded him half of the fathers estate, after taking account of his mothers mandatory legal right share under the 1965 act and other will-related expenses.

Case study 2: Value devastated by the economic crash

A section 117 case decided in 2015, the SF case, involved a situation directly related to the economic crash that emerged after 2008.

The estate in this case was worth more than 14m, and the parents will had divided it equally between his six children.

One of the children, who brought the case under section 117, had worked in the family business instead of pursuing his own independent career. When his father was alive, he had sold to the plaintiff some development land for 1.2m.

This was financed by a bank loan to the plaintiff which had been guaranteed by the father.

Because of the economic crash, however, the development land was worth just 160,000 in 2015, but the plaintiff still owed 1.6m on the bank loan.

This meant that the plaintiff was in a much worse financial position than his siblings because much of his share of the estate would be needed to pay off the bank loan.

Taking this background into account, the High Court decided that the father had failed to make proper provision for the plaintiff because he had not referred in the will to the loan guarantee he had given the plaintiff; and because the guarantee was now worthless, the plaintiff was in a considerably worse position than his siblings because much of his share of the estate would be required to pay off the balance remaining on the bank loan.

The court, therefore, decided that the plaintiffs bank loan of 1.6 m should be paid out of the 14m estate, that he should be given an additional sum of 500,000, and that he and the other five children should then share equally the remainder in the estate.
A group representing many of the countrys private hospitals has called for the next health minister to sit down with them and hammer out a deal.

The Private Hospitals Association has not revealed how much it would cost the State or how much they stood to make. However, it claimed they could offer best value for the public purse if it was properly planned.
The now 19-year-old said she had believed she was going to die.

Tralee Circuit Criminal Court heard that Maurice Fitzgerald, aged 23, of Abbeyview, Buttevant, Co Cork, had earlier pleaded guilty to four charges in connection with the incident in Tralee last September.

He was on bail in connection with a sexual assault of a similar nature in Tipperary at the time.

The sentencing hearing heard Fitzgerald met the student, who had separated from her friends and was alone, at around 2am outside a nightclub in Tralee on September 20, 2015. He told the girl there was a party in his house and she could sleep in the spare room. However, there was no party and after he made sexual advances towards her, she left.

She had walked around a mile and a half along the Dan Spring/Dingle road when she heard footsteps, Sgt Gary Carroll outlined to prosecutor Tom Rice.

He ran up to her and the violence started straight away, said Sgt Carroll. He caught her in a headlock and pushed her into the ditch and she tried to fight him off.

Fitzgerald told her to put your hands in front of you or Ill kill you fucking now, the garda said.

At this point, she saw the roll of duct tape and there was a scissors in his jacket.

He proceeded to put his hands around her neck and tried to choke her.

It was about 3.50am. Two people returning to Tralee from work at a Dingle nightclub came upon the scene and Fitzgerald fled and hid near a river.

Gardai located him shortly afterwards.

He had been wearing a hoodie and had his face covered, and the girl had not realised until that point this was the person who earlier offered to help her.

Gardai arrested him and seized his iPhone, on which he had searched the words girl, taped, and gagged hours before the incident.

Fitzgerald made startling admissions to gardai. He had been angry because she had rejected his sexual advances and he had followed her, attacking her from behind. He told gardai he could not control his urges and that he was into bondage. He would not have stopped only he was disturbed, he said.

He pleaded guilty to false imprisonment, assault causing harm, and possession of a weapon at the location on the Dingle road on September 20. He also pleaded guilty to an offence of sexual assault at his house in Tralee.

In her victim impact statement, read by Sgt Carroll, the student said she had thought she was going to die.

I honestly believed I was going to die in a terrifying, brutal way, she said. This was the kind of thing you read about in a newspaper never expecting it to happen to you.

She had nightmares, had lost trust in people, and blamed herself for being gullible.

I knew it was all over if I let him tie my hands together, she said.

Sgt Carroll, answering Mr Rice, said he believed the motivation for the attack was sexual. Mr Fitzgerald is a serious threat to women of all ages, the garda said.

Brian McInerney, defending, said his client wished to apologise in the most abject terms.

He was at a loss to explain his actions.

His client had gone to the UK at the age of 17 to train as a national hunt jockey and had suffered a multiplicity of injuries in falls, including head injuries and a number of concussions.

He had started drinking heavily in the UK and had difficulties with substance abuse, and had returned home. After the Clonmel incident he had found it difficult to get work but had managed to get a job in a stud farm in Tralee, just two weeks prior to the incident.

Fitzgerald was remanded in custody and the matter was adjourned to July.
Judge James ODonohoe in the Circuit Civil Court said allegations by her against Peter Griffiths of criminal activity, hate mongering, and links to gay pornographic movies of teenage boys were largely untrue and grossly defamatory.

He said references in an email from Ms Collins to a Dublin headmaster, describing Mr Griffiths as not being a fit person to engage with impressionable students, was particularly distasteful but had not gone far enough to brand him a paedophile.
Both Mr Coveney and Deputy Martin said there was no economic imperative for such a facility and that it would undermine efforts to transform the entire Cork Harbour area. Mr Martin queried how many times such a proposal could be brought before it is finally dropped.

They were speaking as the oral hearing into the proposal entered its second week and only after the chief inspector, Derek Daly, said he would be continuing with the hearing after calls for the matter to be adjourned over confusion about the application process.

Deputy Coveney, a local TD and Minister for Defence, Agriculture and the Marine, said a significant chunk of money had already been spent on projects such as the transformation of Spike and Haulbowline Islands as part of various master plans and that the construction of an incinerator there by Indaver Ireland would undoubtedly undermine those efforts.

He said he supported the views expressed at the hearing last week by Comdt Dave Brown from the Air Corps regarding concerns about helicopter access and related issues, and he said the proposed development ran counter to government policy.

Mr Coveney also said a letter sent by Junior Environment Minister Paudie Coffey to Cork County Council had been on the matter of national policy and had not been site specific. He said it had been misinterpreted if there were suggestions that the Department of the Environment or a government minister might have been in favour of the location.

Expanding on his opposition to the proposed development Mr Coveney referred to work already taking place in the area and said: The reason why this proposal is such a threat and compromises what the Government is proposing... is simply the proximity of the site to the other activities that are underway in the harbour.

He said he was not making a judgement on Indaver as a company, but that money spent on trying to reinvent the industrially-scarred Haulbowline Island, and resources used to develop facilities such as the Beaufort Centre, was aiming to turn the area into a marine tourism and research area of real significance and locating an incinerator in the midst of it would fundamentally undermine those efforts.

He said Spike Island could be a major tourism feature and work was continuing on looking into the possibility of the harbour acting as an ocean racing hub, so putting an incinerator in the area would undoubtedly undermine those efforts. He said the Taoiseach and a number of ministers had already visited the area as it was the site for significant strategic investment.

Speaking as a local resident and representative he said: I believe fundamentally this is the wrong location. I do not believe adequate attention has been afforded to alternatives.

Deputy Martin, from the same constituency, said he believed the site was too small and the contention that it was the only site available for an incinerator was a false and flawed one.

A new vista is opening up for the harbour which in my view would be irreparably damaged by the insertion of an incinerator, he said.

There is no planning imperative for this incinerator in this location.

Deputy Martin also said it had been proved that attracting inward investment did not hinge on having such a facility in the area, so there was no economic imperative for it either.

READ MORE: Cork could be waste capital of world
Last week McGregors fight with Diaz was suddenly pulled by the UFC after McGregor failed to attend a mandatory press tour. Dana White, the UFCs president, stated that, nobody is exempt from promoting their fights. In their previous fight in March, McGregor racked up his only loss in the UFC when Diaz submitted him in the second round. With McGregors popularity and pay-per-view draw, an immediate rematch was an obvious choice to headline UFC 200 which the company plans to be their biggest event ever.

On Twitter yesterday McGregor said: Happy to announce that I am BACK on UFC 200! Shout out to Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta on getting this one done for the fans. #Respect.

The tweet quickly went viral with countless delighted fans sharing the news across social media.

Happy to announce that I am BACK on UFC 200!

Shout out to @danawhite and @lorenzofertitta on getting this one done for the fans. #Respect  Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) April 25, 2016

Many MMA (mixed martial arts) journalists, however, were suspicious of the tweets timing. Las Vegas, where the UFC is based, is eight hours behind Irish time so the news was effectively released at midnight on a Sunday. The UFC also announces major news rather than leaving it up to the fighters.

John Morgan from MMAJunkie, one of the leading MMA news sites, responded to McGregors announcement tweeting: Multiple sources I have spoken with so far indicated nothing changed in regard to Conors exclusion from UFC 200. Nothing from his team yet.

Other journalists expressed similar opinions.

It wasnt until 4.30 yesterday evening that the UFC commented on the McGregor situation. In a statement to TMZ Sports, White declared that: Its not true. We havent talked to Conor or his manager since the press conference. I dont know why he would tweet that.

I dont know how many more times I can say the fight is off or how many more press conferences I can have saying the fight is off for people to believe its off.

This is not the first time the fighter has falsely announced fights on Twitter. In 2014 McGregor announced he would face Diego Sanchez in a bout in Mexico. The UFC never confirmed the fight and it did not happen.

While McGregors future with the UFC is still unclear, it appears fairly certain that he will not be fighting at UFC 200. White has repeatedly stressed that the fight is off and given McGregors recent insubordination, he seems unlikely to change his mind.

While Diaz was offered another opponent, at the press conference McGregor skipped he said: I just came to fight Conor McGregor. I dont really have too much interest in anybody else If [the fight] aint gonna happen, Im going on vacation.
In Deirdre OKanes case it was leaving behind a leafy suburb with a school walk through the park.

But it was a price the comedian and actor was prepared to pay when she upped sticks and returned recently to live in Dublin after 10 years in London.

It didnt take her long to readjust.

It just feels like home, she says.

Youre a fit. I feel like Im back with my tribe.

Now living in Dun Laoighre, the sea is only minutes away and is a constant, uplifting presence.

When I walk to the top of my road and turn the corner I can see the sea.

"Without fail  it wouldnt matter what kind of a day it was  I find the sea is incredibly healing. I feel absolutely thrilled to be back near it again.

Married to writer and director Stephen Bradley, their children, Holly, 11, and Daniel, 7, have also settled in quickly.

Weve had a few moments but nothing major. Theyve got on great, new schools and all the rest of it. Fair play to them.

* Deirdre OKane performs at The Everyman Theatre, Cork, on Saturday, April 23 at 8pm. For details see: www.everymancork.ie

What shape are you in?

Average. I try to eat well. That would be my number one thing. I try to do a couple of Pilates or yoga classes a week. Thats it, after that Im running around.

What are your healthiest eating habits?

I dont eat pasta or rice or potatoes in the evening. Id have them for lunch though, no bother. I suppose having a light evening meal is probably my healthiest eating habit.

Im avocado mad and I always have a very full fruit bowl in the kitchen.

Ive been taking Revive Active, If Im run ragged and take a sachet in the morning, Im covered.

What are your guiltiest pleasures?

Chips and dips. I could live on hummus, guacamole and salsas.

The downside to all that is the chips, like Dorritos  Im addicted to them and they have far too much salt.

They are are an absolute treat. That and a glass of wine  usually a white.

What would keep you awake at night?

Too much adrenaline. Its a problem if Ive been on stage.

Im on tour at the moment, and after my Dundalk show I drove back to my parents house. I got home at midnight but I couldnt switch off.

I had a herbal tea and read a book, I cant read anything that is too heavy, it has to be a a calming book. I still had to wait for the sleep to come two hours later.

What book are you currently reading?

One of the most beautiful books Ive ever read, Not Yet Dark, by filmaker Simon Fitzmaurice. He has motor neurone disease and is in a wheel chair. He is so unbelieveably talented. The story is just unbelievable.

How do you relax?

Chips and dips, glass of wine and TV  heaven on earth. And now that its coming into summer, a gin and tonic  it takes the little edge of you.

I swear by a bath  its as good as a massage. I always invest in nice bath oils. And I do light the candles.

Whats your favourite smell?

Fresh coffee brewing. I also love flowers and the scent of the blossoms when they come out. Onions and garlic  the smell of food cooking.

Im quite hooked on scent and use a lot of scented candles and oils. I have a particular perfume, Aqua di Parma Iris Nobile

What would you like to change about your appearance?

Id like to fix my nose, Id like it to be straighter, Id like to lose a little fat from my chin and Id like to slice a couple of inches from my waist. That would probably do me.

When is the last time you cried?

I am a good crier. I let the tears happen. Get everything out, Im a believer in that.

What traits do you least like in others?

Im not fond of gossip for the sake of it. I dont like dissing other people, it makes me very uncomforatble.

If you havent got a positive thing to say dont bother. You have to be older to get this  it comes with age.

What traits do you least like about yourself?

My impatience is a huge issue. I fully appreciate the saying patience is a virute. I have to work hard at that.

I feel for the children. I wish they had a more patient parent  they pay the price, God love them.

I often have to apologise, thats the vital part

Do you pray?

Not specific traditional prayers. I dont break into a Hail Mary or an Our Father very often but I certainly talk to the universe.

What would cheer up your day?

The minute I see the sun my heart is lifted. Its probably the greatest mood enhancer.

Also, I love people who have big, positive energy.
Thomas C Hunter was born in Castletownroche, Co Cork in 1883, and began an apprenticeship as a draper in Dublin in 1907.

He befriended Tom Clarke after joining the Gaelic League and was soon sworn into the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). He became an IRB centre (head of a circle, or local club) and was on the organisations Supreme Council for a time.

Soon after joining the Irish Volunteers when it was formed in late 1913, Hunter was made vice-commandant to Thomas MacDonagh in the Dublin Brigade 2nd Battalion. He took part in the Howth and Kilcoole gun-running events in 1914.

With his friend Con Colbert, he also continued IRB duties, such as collecting and storing small arms and ammunition. In the three months before Easter 1916, although probably unaware of the IRB Military Councils rebellion plans, Hunters associations with other extremists were noted 20 times by Dublin detectives.

Over Easter weekend, he and others detained Bulmer Hobson, a founder member of the Volunteers who the Rising organisers feared might alert the authorities after learning of the plot.

Hunter was deployed at Jacobs Biscuit Factory during the Rising, and led a detachment to secure an outpost position on New St and Fumbally Lane, but they were called back a few hours later when the position was deemed indefensible. When the surrender order was given by Mac Donagh, Hunter and others wanted to fight to the end.

His death sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. Although he had been second-in-command at Jacobs factory, a junior officer Michael OHanrahan was one of the 14 men executed in Dublin.

Thomas Hunters reprieve from the death sentence on May 4, 1916, as set out in this dispatch from General John Maxwell to the War Office in London the next day. Future political leader WT Cosgrave was also spared, but there was no such fortune for John MacBride. Picture: National Archives (UK)

For regular updates on news and features (as well as twitter action action as it may have happened 100 years ago) to mark the revolutionary period follow @theirishrev HERE

In Lewes Prison in England, Hunter, Eamon de Valera, and Thomas Ashe were recognised by the men as their commanding officers. The three signed and distributed among the men a no surrender declaration on a sheet of toilet tissue.

They would lead prisoners on hunger strikes to demand their right to be treated as prisoners of war, and not as common criminals. Some of these protests would have a detrimental effect on Hunters health.

Eventually, the three were transferred to different prisons, but within weeks all Rising prisoners were shipped home to a warmly welcoming Ireland.

Hunter was arrested again during the German Plot round-up of Sinn Fein leaders. He ran a front business, The Republican Outfitters drapery shop on Dublins Talbot St, with Peadar Clancy.

Hunter also led the 1920 Mountjoy Prison hunger strike that, in turn, lead to a general strike across Dublin.

Like many 1916 veterans, he was elected to the first Dail in December 1918. He was re-elected for Sinn Fein in Cork North-East, and in the Civil War he was quartermaster of the anti-Treaty IRAs Cork 2nd Brigade.

He married Maire Kelleher, a school teacher from Glanworth and they had one son, Con Colbert Hunter  a tribute to Hunters friend who was executed after the Rising. Con was born on Christmas Eve 1931, but his father died less than three months later at home.

He suffered prolonged health complications from repeated hunger strikes and a life on the run.

While in prison in 1919, he was taken to the Royal Infirmary in Gloucester and his influenza developed into rheumatic fever, which probably contributed to the heart disease which killed him.

Deceased suffered as a result of refusing to take nourishment whilst detained in prison at Mountjoy in 1920, his widow Maire wrote in a successful 1933 application for a dependants allowance under one of the military service pensions acts.

She added he was in constant poor health after that, having never been sick before. The heart disease that caused his death was said to have been contracted while in prison and on the run.

For the loss of her 48-year-old husband from the effects of the Rising and War of Independence, she and Con received an annual allowance of 67 from 1933.

Liam Deasy, Civil War commander of the IRA 1st Southern Division, said he was an excellent officer and soldier.

Hunter features in the exhibition, In their Own Words: Cork Stories, Easter 1916, at Cork Public Museum. Much of the information for this was supplied by descendants of the Hunter family: Matt Hannan in Boston and Margaret Corbett, Limerick.

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Our message is that there is always hope

The excitement is palpable, the energy infectious. Not surprising in a house with 12 children under 16. Each child is as anxious as the next to display their own special talents to the visiting Irish delegation.

The Lord Mayor of Cork, the Irish ambassador to Lithuania and Belarus, and Chernobyl Children International (CCI) chief executive Adi Roche, sit on the couch or on the floor in the front room and prepare for an impromptu talent show.

The children then take turns. One child proudly shows off the drawings in her art folder, two of the boys play traditional tunes on a second-hand piano, while Dasha, 11, stuns the audience with her performance on the tsimbaly, a traditional Belarusian stringed instrument played using two small hammer-like devices.

She has won medals at regional competitions for her tsimbaly playing.

Their foster parents, Irina and Dima Sarapas, are islands of calm amidst the excited chaos. Having raised four of their own children, they are now caring for these 12 foster children, all aged from six to 16. They stand back and let the children have their moment of glory.

The audience applauds and the children bow, wide smiles across the faces, each bursting with pride.

The intimate little show stands in stark contrast to the fate which awaited the children had it not been for the intervention of CCI.

Each child was either orphaned or abandoned. Each has their own tragic story.

In some cases, it included neglect or physical abuse, or a shocking combination of both. In the more extreme cases, children were subjected to years of horrific sexual abuse. They were each facing life in state care.

But thanks to CCI, they and hundreds of other vulnerable children like them are now being raised in loving and supportive homes like this. And most importantly, they are being raised with hope.

This house near Glusk, in eastern Belarus, is one of CCIs Homes of Hope  one of a 30-such homes which have been established as part of the charitys pioneering new approach to foster care in the country.

As part of the foster-care model, the charity has sourced, bought and renovated 30 such homes all over Belarus to target the estimated 25,000 orphans and vulnerable children living in the Chernobyl regions.

This home is sponsored by philanthropist Norma Smurfit, the doyenne of Irish charity work. Another home has been sponsored by telecoms company, eir.

CCI holds the deeds to all the properties and, following an assessment, it places children in need with foster families who then move into the homes.

The charity enters into a legal agreement with the families and, after 15 years, it gifts the properties to them in recognition of their contribution to caring for the children.

The programme has placed 300 children in such homes, saving them from a life in state care. It is the equivalent of closing two orphanages. And more Homes of Hope are planned.

Ms Roche said the opening of each new Home of Hope is another step towards ending the culture of de-institutionalisation in Belarus.

Another family living with the support of Chernobyl Children International in Belarus.

These children have deep emotional and psychological scars, she says. Many have been neglected, abused and abandoned and would have ended up in institutional care.

We are endeavouring to break the cycle of poverty and abandonment in Belarus and give children a chance to live in loving homes with a real family.

The Homes of Hope programme is one of several innovative projects being pursued and developed by CCI across Belarus.

We visit the home of Sveta Cherniavskya to see how her family has benefited from its community care programme.

Her home is down a wide, muddy potholed road on the outskirts of Gomel.

We step through a gate and walk over narrow wooden planks to the front door. Her husband works two jobs, including driving a truck by night, to support his family.

Sveta cares for their four boys, Daniil, 15, who is at school, Tima, three, 18-month-old Ilya, and Nikita, 14, who has cerebral palsy and suffers dozens of seizures a day.

As we arrive, Nikita is asleep in a front room after a difficult night, but he wakes soon afterwards, and walks into the living room on his toes. CCI is hoping to arrange for an operation to straighten his feet.

Sveta links his condition to the nuclear accident. Born with a compromised immune system, he received vaccinations as a toddler, which she believes triggered the chronic deterioration in his health.

But because the state no longer issues what is known as Chernobyl certification, which would have covered some of their medical costs, the family is struggling to cope themselves.

Without CCI, they would be lost, Sveta says.

The delegation also visits a CCI and Irish Aid-funded day-care centre, which is providing care to a region of 50,000 people, and visits the homes of people in rural areas who are benefiting from outreach programmes.

The need is as great as it ever was and support is required now, more so than ever.

Ms Roche said people here feel very isolated, especially the parents of children born with defects and abnormalities.

They are ground down by poverty, she says.

Our message is that there is always hope. We are here to carry their burden, share their pain and suffering.

We know there are huge problems in Ireland but I would ask people to reflect on the power of volunteerism, solidarity and of intervention.

READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 1)

READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 2)

Hope of a brighter future in a house without toys

by Eoin English

Danilova Maryia, and her son Yaroslav in their home in Glusk in south eastern Belarus. The family are at least on CCIs radar now. Picture: Clare Keogh

Its still very raw, the shock, sorrow, and grief etched on her young face.

Cradling her little boy, Yaroslav, aged just one, Danilova Maryia, tells us how her partner took his own life just weeks earlier.

A silence falls on the room. Little Yaroslav, mystified by the appearance of so many strangers in the house, buries his head in one of his mothers shoulders.

On January 6  the Russian Orthodox equivalent of Christmas Day, Danilova tells us. Tears flow, again.

Yet another heartbreaking story of human misery from another town in the Chernobyl-affected region.

A widow at 26, Danilova is now struggling to care for her three children  Yaroslav, who looks pale and underweight for his age, and Andrei, eight, and Sofia, three, who are at school.

Standing in the sparsely furnished front room of the rickety house she is squatting in on the outskirts of Glusk in south-eastern Belarus, Danilova tells us her story.

She was abandoned by her parents when she was eight. Her husband left her some years ago, and her partner took his own life just weeks earlier.

There is a small shrine to him on a table in the corner of the room. A small candle, sitting in a glass of salt, flickers under a faded photograph of him.

The candle is the only working light in the house today. Power cuts occur regularly in the area. And even when the power is on, Danilova doesnt have enough to pay the bill.

She is trying to raise her three children on the equivalent of just 120 a month.

The front door is broken, The fridge is empty. The pipe leading to the sink is broken. Panes are missing from several window panels and a bitter cold wind sweeps inside. There are three young children in the house, but no sign of a toy.

Neighbours brought the familys plight to the attention of the Chernobyl Children International (CCI) charity soon after it built a day-care centre in the town nearby.

The centre provides a range of medical services to people in the region, but its staff have, in recent months, begun a community outreach work, bringing whatever help and supports are needed into peoples homes. Danilova is one of the people it is now supporting.

Adi Roche and the Irish delegation deliver a food parcel  beans, rice, pasta, biscuits, that kind of thing  and Ms Roche tries to figure out what else can be done to help them.

When Danilova asks what else she might need, she replies: Nappies.

As we prepare to leave, Adi hugs the young mother, and touches Yaroslav tenderly on the cheek.

Turning to the interpreter, she says: Tell her whatever she needs we are there to help.

We leave, rocked by their story but knowing that at least Danilova and her children are on CCIs radar. There is a prospect of a brighter future.

READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 1)

READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 2)

While theres breath in me she wont go into state care

by Eoin English

Nadezhda Pribysh with her granddaughter Nastyaz.

Devoted grandmother Nadezhda Pribysh had always vowed that, for as long as there was breath in her body, she would fight to keep her severely disabled granddaughter out of state care.

Little did we know, as we waved goodbye to her on a crisp, bright afternoon last February, the last of the Belarusian winter snows melting beneath our feet, that she would breath her last just weeks later.

Tragically, Ms Pribysh death came even as she was trying to secure crucial documentation that would have ensured she became Nastyas legal guardian, thus removing the worry of Nastya ever being placed in state care.

Her death leaves Nastya facing an uncertain future  another innocent victim of the Chernobyl disaster 30 years ago.

Nadezhda, or Granny as she was known to Chernobyl Children International (CCI) volunteers, was part of the charitys community care and hospice programme.

Granny was just 66. She looked 20 years older  grinding poverty and years of relentless hard work and stress taking an obvious toll.

She stood protectively over Nastya, who chewed a bandaged-fist while strapped into a walking frame she was clearly outgrowing.

Granny told us she had been Nastyas sole carer for over a decade. Despite her own ill-health, she said she was determined to care for Nastya at home.

Against desperate odds, Granny, like many others in this region, fought a daily struggle to deliver that care at home.

While there is breath in my body she wont go to one of those places, she said defiantly.

CCI had been helping the pair for more than a decade with medical and practical care needs, ranging from providing them with food parcels, medical supplies, and equipment such as a walker, as well as medical and therapeutic services for Nastya.

But word came through from Belarus just over three weeks ago that Granny died suddenly days earlier.

She had presented at a local hospital for routine medical tests that would have allowed her to become Nastyas legal guardian.

But doctors discovered she had kidney failure. She died a few hours later. There was nothing the medical staff could do.

CCI staff on the ground in Belarus are still trying to find a long-term care solution for Nastya.

It is hoped that she will be placed in the Vesnova care home. However, because shes 18, that place will be difficult to secure.

Adi Roche of CCI has vowed to do everything in her power to help, and paid a moving tribute to Granny.

The love, dedication, and care that Granny showed Nastya will stay with Nastya forever and with us as a true testament to the strength of the human heart, she said.

READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 1)

READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 2)

I can see my son is getting worse, day by day

by Eoin English

Sasha was lucky to be born healthy after Chernobyl but, after undergoing a tonsillectomy without any anaesthetic, he suffered complications that left him brain-damaged. Picture: Clare Keogh

The rain lashes the window of her small apartment as Natatsaha Tatarinceva weeps openly  her teenage son is dying in the bed in the corner of the room.

Marie Cox, Chernobyl Children International (CCI) medical co-ordinator, who visited the family in October, speaks in hushed tones.

To be honest, Im surprised Sasha is still alive, she says.

We apologise for intruding into their world  a small ground-floor apartment in a non-descript Soviet-style apartment tower on the outskirts of Gomel.

But Natatsaha, a single mother and wheelchair user, insists we bear witness to the heartbreaking scene.

Its important the world knows, she says.

Sasha, 19, was born healthy  one of the lucky 20% of children in Belarus who have been born healthy after Chernobyl.

A photograph of him as a bright, smiling toddler, sitting on his mothers lap, rests on a shelf near his death bed.

When he was just two, he underwent a tonsillectomy at a local hospital. The procedure was barbaric.

The Belarusian health care system was on its knees. The hospital did not have an anaesthetic machine.

Sasha, like countless other children who underwent tonsillectomies at the time, underwent the procedure without anaesthetic.

He was brought into an operating theatre and strapped to a chair. His head was held back and his mouth forced open.

A doctor inserted a long, scissors-like instrument towards the back of his throat, a nurse grabbed the back of his head and shoved it forward violently in the hope the blade severed the tonsils.

Screaming, he was bent over a bucket to collect the blood.

During the recovery, he suffered toxic shock and a range of complications, which left him with severe brain damage.

Shocked by the procedure, CCI co-ordinated a fund-raising drive some years ago to buy a specialist anaesthetic machine for the hospital to ensure that no other children had to endure what Sasha went through.

Today, he lies in a bed in the corner of the tiny apartment  his tortured body twisted under the sheets.

He is being supported by CCIs new hospice programme. Its palliative care outreach team members visit regularly, the care and management of his extensive pressure sores one of their main concerns.

Natatsaha, who has, not surprisingly, suffered from depression, maintains a bedside vigil. At times, it can take up to three hours to feed him, she says. Still clinging to hope, she weeps as she says she does not know what else she can do to help him.

Speaking through an interpreter, she says: Maybe you could help. Maybe there is research on managing pressure sores?

We discuss in English how long Sasha may survive. But it is clear that keeping him comfortable is the only realistic option now. Its only a matter of time.

When I was younger, I thought it would be easier to care for him as the years went by, because I would get more experience. But its been getting more difficult, Natatsaha says.

I can see that my son is getting worse, day by day. It means the world to me that the hospice staff come here regularly. Without them, I wouldnt cope.

Because CCI home-visit teams go the extra mile, helping her with chores and providing emotional support, Natatsaha has recently started to venture outside  just to get some fresh air.

She inhales deeply, and says: I cant explain what it was like before. I was very depressed. But with the support, now, its a little easier.

Adi Roche reaches out to clasp Natatsahas hands, and tells her: Well keep you and him in our thoughts and prayers, well light candles and send lots of hope.

But as she leaves, she tells the team to ensure the family gets whatever it needs, fearing the next time she visits, Natatsaha will be alone.

READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 1)

READ MORE - The Chernobyl disaster: 30 years on (Day 2)
News / Africa

by Staff Reporter

A marriage proposal turned into a rape after the teenage victim turned her attacker down.Daily Sun reported that the 17-year-old girl was going home in Sundwana Location, Chizela Village, from school on Friday afternoon when she met a man who asked her to marry him.When the teen turned him down the man allegedly attacked the girl and dragged her to his house, where he raped her.He later released the girl.Police spokesman Captain Jackson Manatha told Daily Sun the girl reported the incident to her family.They took her to the Dutywa Police Station to open a case. Manatha said police traced the suspect and arrested him in his village on Saturday.The Cambridge police task team in East London arrested two foreigners on Friday for burglary. Police spokesman Captain Mluleki Mbi said the crime intelligence driven operation resulted in the arrest of the two men in Quigney, East London.The men allegedly gained entry through the roof of a bottle store in Amalinda, East London on the night of 17 April 2016. Once inside, they took expensive booze and cigarettes valued at more than R100 000."The arrest is believed to be a breakthrough as there has been a number of similar incidents in the Cambridge policing precinct in recent times," said Mbi.He said they expect more arrests soon.The suspects both in their 30s will appear in the East London Magistrates Court today on charges of business burglary.
IN 2014 the log book from Tara St fire station for early 1916, which was thought to have been lost forever, turned up in a Dublin auction house.

It was an official logbook, or occurrence book, for Dublin Fire Brigade headquarters in Tara St, with handwritten entries which gave a new insight into the events of Easter Week.

The book was bought by Dublin City Library and Archives and now forms a central part of their 1916 Rising material. It has been digitised and is now available online for historians and scholars of the period.

It bears witness to the attempts by Dublin Fire Brigade to deal with the battle raging on the streets of Dublin and within its pages are stories of tragedy and heroism, all told in the clinical shorthand of Irelands oldest fire and rescue service.

Page 167 (Tuesday, April 25) for instance, opens with mention of stations being alerted to a previously reported fire in OConnell St: Sent word to C to attend. Also sent word to A & D & Watercontrol & Police.

C station was the fire brigade station at Buckingham Street. A and D stations were Thomas St and Dorset St stations respectively.

The standard formula of informing the waterworks department and the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) of a fire in the city was also followed, although by this stage the DMP were long gone from the streets.

Since 1898, the Dublin Fire Brigade had provided the capitals ambulance service and a returning ambulance is noted in the log at 12.05: Ambulance returned left 3 patients 1 Male & 2 Female in Jervis St [hospital] Male dead Females unconscious Ages about 14 to 16 Knocked down by a crowd and trampled on.

We can only surmise what happened to those girls. Were they looting among the abandoned shops and caught up in a panic to escape some threat? Were they just children doing what children do and trying to get close to the action to see what was going on?

Some other stories are easier to follow for a student of the period. The ambulance which returned at 12.16 gives us an insight into the fighting going on in the city: Ambulance returned left Sgt. John Hughes DMP aged 47 arm shattered by bullet Also Michael Doherty 10 Mayor St aged 32 . Bullet wounds in body & head. Both in Mercers.

Hughes, a station sergeant in the DMP, had been captured near Stephens Green in plain clothes on the night of Monday, April 24. He was held overnight in the park by the Irish Citizen Army garrison there, but released early on the morning of Tuesday, April 25.

At this time, the garrison was under intense fire from Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the Shelbourne Hotel and the United Services Institute. Hughes was shot in the arm and lay wounded in the park for some hours until an ambulance was able to approach during a lull in the firing.

He was taken to Mercers Hospital, where he had two operations on the arm. He returned to duty in January 1917.

The Dublin City Fire Brigade log for the afternoon of Tuesday, April 25, 1916.

For regular updates on news and features (as well as twitter action action as it may have happened 100 years ago) to mark the revolutionary period follow @theirishrev HERE

Michael ODoherty, on the other hand, was a member of the Irish Citizen Army and had been hit by a burst of machinegun fire while in action on the roof of the Royal College of Surgeons.

He had 12 wounds, including a bullet through his right eye and severe wounds in the face and body. He was rescued from the roof by Joe Connolly of the ICA and treated for his injuries before being removed to hospital.

Joe Connolly was a serving member of Dublin Fire Brigade. He had left Tara St fire station the previous day to take part in the Rising when he heard from his brother Sean that it was going ahead.

Sean Connolly would be killed in action at City Hall. Joe served throughout Easter Week at the College of Surgeons and would later return to duty with the Dublin Fire Brigade after his release from Frongoch internment camp in Wales. He went on to serve as chief fire officer of the DFB in later years.

ODoherty would survive his initial wounds but was arrested in hospital and sent to Frongoch. He suffered terribly through the next few years due to the lack of proper medical attention in the months after he was shot. He died in late 1919.

At 2.08pm another returning ambulance reported that they had left Lord Dunsaney in Jervis St bullet wound in jaw aged 36.

Dunsany was an officer in the Inniskilling Fusiliers travelling in a car with a driver and another senior officer. They had attempted to drive through a Volunteer roadblock near the Four Courts and had been fired on.

All were wounded and captured. Dunsany, a playwright and author in his civilian life, later remarked that a Volunteer officer had passed a favourable comment on one of his plays when he realised who his captive was.

Dunsany had sustained a wound in the jaw when captured and his captors appear to have released him for medical treatment.

These are just some of the stories behind the pages of this amazing book. It is available to view online and the original is held in the Dublin City Libraryand Archive at Pearse St, just one of a host of treasures held within their collection.

Enjoyed this? Then check out our dedicated micro-site, developed in collaboration with UCC, to mark the revolutionary period HERE
I got my last Irish Water bill in February, and it was paid by direct debit. 65.54 it was, for a quarter. So Ive paid 260 in the last year  thats correct, I suppose, because there are four adults living in my house. I dont understand why the bill for each quarter is slightly different, but it does add up to the right round number.

And of course, along the way, the good people in the Department of Social Protection gave me 100 for my troubles, and for my vast contribution to the conservation of water. But have I been conserving water? Not consciously, if Im being honest.

According to the Irish Water website my house has used 113,179 litres of water in the 10 months for which metering is recorded. Thats 25,000 gallons, give or take, or 2,500 gallons a month. Ive no way of knowing if thats high, low, or average. If my calculations are correct, (not counting the conservation grant), Ive been charged just over a cent for every gallon weve used. Of course, if Id used three times as much, Id be paying the same total.

Its not very much, when you think about it  especially when I could think of any number of ways to reduce that bill if it was actually a charge per gallon. Irish Water dont actually tell you that youre paying a cent a gallon  they give you enough information to work that out for yourself, provided you can remember the log-in details you used when you registered in the first place.

Its hard to see anything unfair, or illogical, or inefficient about any of this. If you accept the principle that water is a scarce national resource, that needs to be managed and paid for, and if you accept that it makes more sense for one company to do it, and if you go on to accept that we have no choice but to make a large investment in water in the future, then theres nothing about Irish Water, as a concept, that doesnt make sense. Assuming a reasonable ability to pay, a cent a gallon isnt a lot, especially when you can manage the number of gallons you use.

In much less sophisticated times in Ireland, we established national companies to bring electricity to every home in the country, to ensure that every home in Ireland had a telephone line, to manage the supply of natural gas to homes and businesses throughout Ireland. We have a national company thats responsible for the road building programme, for developing indigenous industry, for marketing Irish food produce abroad, for attracting tourists to Ireland.

Theres a longer list than that. None of these companies were easy to set up, and few of them worked efficiently at first (if youre as old as I am, for example, you might remember that it took several years to get from applying for a phone in your house to actually hearing that dial tone for the first time. And that was back in the days when most phone numbers had no more than three or four digits).

Weve privatised a couple of them along the way  and they were bad decisions that we all paid a price for (in inadequate broadband, for example). Some of our utilities now come with a much heavier price  the cost of a TV/internet/phone bundle, for example, is a considerable multiple of what we pay for water.

But I still remember looking at that Irish Water email when it arrived in February, telling me that 65.54 was about to be deducted from my bank account, and wondering what kind of an eejit I was. More to the point, I wondered what kind of eejits they were.

The bill arrived eight days before the general election. On the assumption that most of those who registered with Irish Water did so as the deadline approached, an awful lot of people would have got that same email in the middle of February, reminding them pretty starkly about one of the key issues on which the election was being fought.

The stupidity of that. But what would you expect? Irish Water has been surrounded by crass stupidity since the day it was established. In years to come, the creation and set-up of Irish Water will be written about endlessly. University libraries will be stuffed full of PhD theses about all the horrendous mistakes that were made along the way. It will  it already has  become a model for how not to do it.

So its not the principles involved in water. Its the how, and the when, that matter. The fact that Irish Water has become a public policy fiasco is down to political failure and nothing else.

And now, it seems, Irish Water has become the main sticking point in deciding whether or not a government can be formed. If one believes what one reads in the media, Fine Gael, the party that established Irish Water in such catastrophic circumstances, has made it now an issue of principle.

Stupidity on top of stupidity. If there is any one thing in Ireland that needs a fresh start, that needs to address its issues from an entirely clean slate, its Irish Water. If the outgoing government doesnt recognise that, and isnt prepared to fix it, they should be turfed out of office for incompetence.

An agreement on this issue now wouldnt just give an essential national utility a fresh start, it would mean that a new government would be able to begin its life without the mess it created hanging over its head. If theyre worried about losing face, thats just daft. In a couple of years time, no one will remember that Fine Gael were forced into a sensible arrangement that re-established a national water utility on a sensible basis where people could afford to pay their water bills and were properly encouraged to conserve water.

If money is the issue, this government is sitting on a pile of bank shares that will, at some time in the near future, be sold on the open market and will generate several billion for the Exchequer. There is no reason to believe that we cant afford to put charging on hold until we get the structures right.

With every day that passes, the challenges that face an incoming government get greater. And with every day that passes whatever shred of goodwill exists for a new government is being dissipated. At the same time, nobody believes that a general election will make more than a marginal difference. It will certainly end one or two careers, just as the last one did. But there will still be a need to form a government from a highly disparate collection of politicians.

So, it wouldnt just be stupid, it would be downright irresponsible, to insist that water charges and the commercial enterprise that is Irish Water remain in their present form. A government that is clinging by its fingertips to a greatly reduced mandate simply doesnt have the right to insist that its past mistakes be accepted by everyone else as a point of principle.

READ MORE: 100 water grant set to be axed
The UN ignores the fact that in every war between Arab states and Israel, either Israel was attacked first or has responded to a legitimate casus belli.

In a national newspaper last year, Peter Murtagh reported on Irish Army peacekeepers based in the Golan Heights. He wrote that the Golan Heights provide a commanding position from which Israel was permanently vulnerable.
Mohammed Iqbal, police officer-in-charge in Dhakas Kalabagan area, identified the activist as Xulhaz Mannan and said he previously worked as a protocol officer for a former US ambassador to Bangladesh.

He said the other victim of yesterdays attack was a friend of Mannans named Tanay Majumder.
In comments which are likely be seen as a further plea for a Remain vote in Britains June 23 referendum, Mr Obama hailed the EU as one of the greatest political and economic achievements of modern times and cautioned individual states against rebuilding barriers which existed in the 20th century.

Mr Obamas intervention, in a speech in Germany, came as Brexits biggest hitters sought to seize back the referendum initiative by putting immigration at the top of the agenda.

Britisn justice secretary Michael Gove warned the UK faces a migration free-for-all unless it breaks away from Brussels as the Leave camp moved to exploit an admission from the Government that EU free movement of labour rules make it harder to curb immigration.

However, Mr Obama warned of the dangers of an increasing intolerance in politics which promoted an us versus them mentality towards migrants.

Speaking at the start of the G5 summit in Hanover, where he will discuss security threats with British prime minister David Cameron, German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Francois Hollande, and Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, Mr Obama acknowledged that anxieties over globalisation, terrorism, and immigration were real and legitimate.

All these challenges have led some to question whether European integration can long endure, whether you might be better off separating off, redrawing some of the barriers and the walls between nations that existed in the 20th century, he said.

If a unified, peaceful, liberal, pluralistic, free-market Europe begins to doubt itself, begins to question the progress thats been made over the last several decades, then we cant expect the progress that is just now taking hold in many places around the world will continue.

Instead, we will be empowering those who argue that democracy cant work, that intolerance and tribalism and organising ourselves along ethnic lines and authoritarianism and restrictions on the press - that those are the things that the challenges of today demand.

Ive come here today to the heart of Europe to say that the United States and the entire world needs a strong and prosperous and united Europe.

Mr Obama said he understood dealing with Brussels could be frustrating and slow down decision-making.

However, he said the union had brought peace among its members and insisted that a strong, united Europe was vital for global security and prosperity.

Remember that every member of your union is a democracy. Thats not an accident.

Remember that no EU country has raised arms against another. Thats not an accident.

Mr Obama said a strong united Europe remains a necessity for all of us.

Its a necessity for the United States because Europes security and prosperity is inherently indivisible from our own, he added.

A strong united Europe is a necessity for the world because an integrated Europe remains vital to our international order.

Ms Obama said Islamic State was the most urgent threat to Western nations and warned the EU it could do more through air strikes, military trainers and economic assistance to stabilise Iraq.

Urging all EU countries to meet the Nato target of spending 2% of national income on defence, he added: Sometimes Europe has been complacent its own defence.

London mayor Boris Johnson came out fighting after being condemned over his highly personalised attacks on Mr Obama during the presidents two-day visit to the UK.

And former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith said Mr Obama was wrong to suggest that the UK would be at the back of the queue for a trade deal, claiming there were many politicians in Washington eager for an agreement with post-Brexit Britain.

Mr Johnson turned his fire on Mr Cameron with a scathing assault accusing him of achieving two-thirds of diddly squat in negotiations with Brussels for a special deal for Britain on immigration and other key demands.

But he sidestepped questions about the row he caused by referring to Mr Obamas part-Kenyan heritage.

Asked about accusations of dog-whistle racism, Mr Johnson told Sky News: Look, I think the crucial thing is what kind of future is there for this country outside the EU.

Weve been told we have to go to the back of the queue. That seems to me to be ridiculous when you consider the real reason we havent been able to do a free trade deal with the United States in the last 43 years is we are part of the EU.

In his Daily Telegraph column, Mr Johnson warned the Remain side not to crow too soon that the Leave side had been bombed into submission.
The US president, hailing recent gains against the group, said the added troops would help to keep up this momentum against IS.

The move will significantly broaden the American presence in Syria, bringing the number of personnel to roughly 300, up from about 50 special operations forces currently there.

Mr Obama revealed his decision a week after Defence Secretary Ash Carter announced that more than 200 US troops will soon be headed to Iraq, where local forces are also battling IS militants who control areas of that country.

He said the newest insertion of US forces will not be in combat roles.

Theyre not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces, Mr Obama said during a speech in Hanover, Germany, that capped a week-long trip that also took him to Saudi Arabia and Britain.

Mr Obama said in a meeting later with the leaders of Britain, Germany, France and Italy, he would ask those countries to step up their contribution to the air campaign and to the training of local forces.

He also said he would be seeking more economic aid to rebuild parts of Iraq the US-led coalition has recaptured from IS.

Europe and Nato can still do more, he said. We need to do everything in our power to stop them.

Mr Obama discussed his troop decision briefly during a broader speech on US-European relations and the importance to the world of continued European unity.

He urged Europes leaders to pay attention to income inequality, which he said creates wedges among populations, and other issues including education for young people and equal pay for equal work for women.
Mr Trump said his two rivals are colluding in a way that would be illegal in many industries.

Under the arrangement outlined on Sunday, Mr Kasich, the Ohio governor, will step back in the Indiana contest on May 3 to let Mr Cruz bid for voters who do not like Mr Trump.

Mr Cruz, a Texas senator, will do the same for Mr Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico.

Mr Trump said in a statement that Mr Cruz and Mr Kasich are mathematically dead  meaning neither can gather enough delegates to clinch the nomination before the partys July convention  and their pact smacks of desperation by two puppets of donors and special interests.

The arrangement does not address the five north-eastern states set to vote, where Mr Trump is expected to add to his already overwhelming delegate lead.

However, the shift offers Trump foes a glimmer of hope in their long and frustrating fight to halt the billionaires rise.

Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans, Mr Cruzs campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said in a statement explaining the new plans.

Not only would Trump get blown out by (Hillary) Clinton or (Bernie) Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation.

Mr Kasichs chief strategist, John Weaver, added: Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee.

The announcement marks a sharp reversal for Mr Cruzs team, which aggressively opposed co-ordinating anti-Trump efforts with Mr Kasich as recently as late last week.

And the agreement applies only to Indiana, Oregon and New Mexico - three of the 15 states remaining on the Republican primary calendar.

As Mr Kasich backs out of Indiana, Mr Cruz promised he would not compete in Oregon on May 17 and New Mexico on June 7.

Mr Trump campaigned in Maryland on Sunday, which will vote today along with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Palestinian Jamal Owda, 26, was one of 23 people held in raids across Europe in December over an operation authorities claim could have made up to 10m since 2013 by preying on desperate civilians fleeing the civil war.

He was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant by National Crime Agency officers at an asylum shelter in Liverpool and Westminster Magistrates Court, London, heard yesterday he is applying for asylum in the UK.
Two students were injured when the gunman  identified by police as Jakob E. Wagner  fired a rifle on them as they left Antigo High School on Saturday night.

A police officer already at the scene fatally shot Wagner in the parking lot.
A 4x4 was filmed barrelling through water in Kentish Town, north London earlier this month, sending a curtain of spray shooting over the pavement.

LBC newsreader Zora Suleman who caught the splash on camera said: There was a little old lady next to me and this car came up really close to the kerb, splashing everyone.

Then I saw him stop and I thought: Oh my God, hes going to do this again, so I thought Id take some footage. It might be fun for the driver, but I felt bad for this old lady, who was quite upset by it.

According to the Camden New Journal, the vehicle is unregistered, leaving the identity of the driver a mystery.

Scotland Yard said: We were contacted on April 15 about an allegation of a person driving without due care and attention in relation to an incident in Kentish Town. Our officers are investigating. No one has been arrested.

Tiger pet

USA: Animal control officers have captured an apparently domesticated tiger that was spotted roaming a residential neighbourhood in a South Texas city.

The Conroe Police Department says it received several phone calls from residents who saw the young female tiger wandering around the city.

Animal control officers captured the tiger, which was wearing a collar with a leash attached.

Sgt Dorcy McGinnis said the tiger seems to be tame. Authorities are asking for assistance in finding the tigers owner.

Sgt McGinnis said if the tiger and its owner live in Conroe, the tiger will no longer be able to be housed in the city due to this incident.

Career change

ENGLAND: A former police officer has been hired as an apprentice by a funeral director  at the age of 67.

Ex-detective sergeant Robert Brown becomes the 1,500th and oldest apprentice to be taken on by Co-Op Funeralcare.

Mr Brown, from Canterbury, Kent, is among an army of pensioners choosing to carry on working beyond retirement age. He said: After a 30-year stint with the police, I did wonder how I would find working in funerals, but I love it. I only wish Id done it sooner.

Cheers

ENGLAND: The number of new distilleries opening in England increased by a third last year to a record high of 28, research has revealed.

The rise was sparked by a surge in popularity of artisan products and boutique spirits such as gin, said accountancy group UHY Hacker Young. Sales of UK gin approached a record 1bn (1.28bn) last year, the study found.

Trump that

USA: Donald Trump is the most popular suggested replacement name for a Texas school named after the top hero of the Confederacy, Robert E Lee.

Donald J Trump Elementary was the most popular suggestion with 45 submissions out of 240 received, according to Austin Independent School District officials.

The second-most popular suggestion was 34 submissions to keep the present name.

Other popular names included author Harper Lee and artists Russell Lee and Elisabet Ney. The Texas capitals school board voted last month to replace the Confederate general in the school name. It could decide on a new name on May 23.

Green creek

USA: Green water flowing in a creek in Alaska, causing panic and drawing a response from multiple agencies, was the result of a prank, authorities have said.

Officials have determined the dye dumped into the Ketchikan Creek was non-toxic.

Police talked to the man responsible but he was not arrested or cited.

It was just a prank, officer Charles Johnson said.

He happened to come across some sort of plumbing dye that they use for testing  checking for leaks and stuff  and thought itd be funny to throw it in the creek and make people wonder why the creek was green.

Surprise birth

CZECH REPUBLIC: It was an unexpected birth that took everyone at the Prague zoo by surprise.

Nobody noticed that 24-year-old gorilla Shinda  who is a bit overweight  was pregnant. After several miscarriages, she was expected to remain childless.

Zoo director Miroslav Bobek says: It seems that a miracle happens from time to time.

Bobek says the zookeepers had given up any hope she could get a baby.

As the birth on Saturday afternoon was smooth and both mother and newborn have been doing well, visitors have been already allowed to see them. The babys gender is not yet known.

The gorillas are among the most popular animals at the zoo. Tens of thousands of people watched the birth of another gorilla online in 2007.
News / Education

by Nqobile Tshili

A NATIONAL University of Science and Technology (Nust) student might have found a solution to the country's litter problem after he designed a machine that turns plastic into diesel.Farai Musendo a final year Chemical Engineering student said he designed the machinery after realising that the country was struggling to deal with litter.Musendo is one of the innovative brains exhibiting at the 57th edition of the Zimbabwe international Trade Fair (ZITF) being held in the City of Kings this week."This is value addition through litter. We collect used plastics and clean them before processing them into diesel," he said in an interview at the Nust stand at ZITF."At the moment through our laboratory testing we've discovered that plastic can, through mixing with other chemicals, be used to generate 60 percent diesel."Musendo, 24, said for him to do further tests into the new technology he requires up to $100,000."That's why I'm here today. I've to showcase my invention and it needs financing to the tune of $100,000. I hope someone can buy into my idea and sponsor my project," he said.The youthful innovator said his diesel was yet to be tested on vehicles as he has not produced enough quantities for bulk consumption."What I've are just samples and my passion of waste management drove me to do this. As a country we're far from properly managing our waste. So this is part of waste management project and improving our energy sector."This could also create employment if it succeeds. We can create employment for people who would be collecting the waste on our behalf. 100 kilogrammes of plastic litter is equivalent to 55,2 litres of fuel," he said.Nust director of marketing and public relations Felix Moyo said such innovations have seen the university topping the education category at ZITF for the past four years.He said Nust was encouraging their students to invent gadgets that can change lives."Innovation projects improve people's lives as well as the nation at large. We've managed to top the education sector through the sincerity of our projects."Our innovations are things that are implementable," he said.The innovation is in line with the government's Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) initiative, which seeks to develop Zimbabwe into a science and technology driven economy."STEM is really not about academic subjects but the subjects should be practical to transform people's lives and the economy as well as the country," said Moyo.
Khadga Prasad Oli made the announcement as he offered prayers at the 17th century Anantapur temple, which was damaged in the magnitude 7.8 earthquake on April 25, 2015, along with more than 600 other historic structures.

More than half a million homes were also destroyed, but hardly any have been rebuilt.

Nepal has been criticised for delays in reconstruction  largely due to bureaucratic bungling  of its historic structures and residents homes despite foreign donors pledging $4.1bn (3.6bn) towards that end.

Aid groups have demanded that authorities speed up the process and change some of the laws that have become obstacles.

Mr Oli said work would begin on rebuilding the temple and three other heritage sites in Kathmandu, including the old palaces and temples at Durbar Square and key sites in nearby cities Patan and Bhaktapur.

Anantapur is one of the small Buddhist temples, stupas and monasteries surrounding the fifth-century hilltop shrine of Swayambhunath that lies in ruins. It is listed among the Unesco heritage sites.

The prime minister said the work would progress swiftly, adding it was a huge task that would require time.

He said the construction of private houses has also been initiated in 10 districts.

According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, an estimated 4m people are living in sub-standard temporary shelters in conditions that pose a threat to health and wellbeing.
The documents, kept in a secure room in the basement of the US Capitol, contain information from the joint congressional inquiry into specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States.

Bob Graham, co-chairman of the bipartisan panel, says the documents point suspicion at the Saudis.

US president Barack Obama has hinted the administration might release at least part of the document.

The disclosure would come at a time of strained US relations with Saudi Arabia, a long-time American ally.

I hope that decision is to honour the American people and make it available, Mr Graham told NBCs Meet the Press.

The most important unanswered question of 9/11 is, did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported?

Tim Roemer, who was a member of both the joint congressional inquiry and the 9/11 Commission, and has read the secret chapter three times, described the 28-page chapter as a preliminary police report.

There were clues. There were allegations. There were witness reports.

"There was evidence about the hijackers, about people they met with  all kinds of different things that the 9/11 Commission was then tasked with reviewing and investigating, the former Democratic congressman from Indiana said.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi government says it has been wrongfully and morbidly accused of complicity in the attacks, is fighting extremists and working to clamp down on their funding channels.

But the Saudis also say they would welcome declassification of the 28 pages because it would allow us to respond to any allegations in a clear and credible manner.

The pages were withheld from the 838-page report on the orders of the then president George W Bush, who said the release could divulge intelligence sources and methods.

However, protecting US-Saudi diplomatic relations also was also believed to have been a factor.

Neither the congressional inquiry nor the subsequent 9/11 Commission found any evidence that the Saudi government or officials knowingly supported those who orchestrated the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Mr Roemer said many questions remain about the roles of Fahad al Thumairy, an official at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles who allegedly helped two of the hijackers find housing and transportation after they arrived in Southern California.

He also says he wants to know more about Omar al Bayoumi, who was strongly suspected of being a Saudi spy and was alleged to have been helpful to the hijackers.
Asia US Presses Vietnam on Detentions Ahead of Obama Visit

Washington presses Vietnam over a recent spate of detentions of dissidents and pushes for other human rights progress ahead of President Barack Obamas visit.

WASHINGTON  The United States pressed Vietnam Monday over a recent spate of detentions of government critics and pushed for other progress on human rights ahead of a visit next month by President Barack Obama.

Senior officials of the two governments held an annual dialogue on human rights in Washington. Its an issue which remains a drag on improving relations between the former enemies.

Tom Malinowski, US assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor, said last year saw a sharp decline in arrests and prosecutions for peaceful dissent in Vietnam.

But he told The Associated Press there has been an increase in detentions of activists and bloggers this year, which was raised during Mondays open and candid discussions. He said the United States side expressed our hope that this would be addressed and that some of the longstanding cases of concern would be resolved.

Vietnams delegation was led by Vu Anh Quang, director general of the Department of International Organizations at the Foreign Ministry. The Vietnamese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Obama will visit Vietnam in May, becoming the third consecutive US president to do so, four decades after the end of the Vietnam War.

The United States and Vietnam have deepened ties in recent years as Washington looks to widen its circle of friends in Southeast Asia and finds common cause with Hanoi in countering a rising China. Vietnam is also a member of the US-backed regional trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was signed in February.

Vietnam recently adopted some laws to improve legal protections for citizens and has agreed to allow independent labor unions, currently forbidden, under a labor agreement that takes effect once TPP is ratified by both nations.

But the ruling Communist Party still brooks no dissent.

According to a recent State Department report, Vietnam held about 95 political prisoners at the end of 2015. Human Rights Watch says that during the last week of March, Vietnam convicted seven bloggers and rights activists and sentenced them to prison.

Among the individual cases of detainees raised by the United States on Monday was Nguyen Van Dai, a prominent human rights lawyer who was arrested in December on charges of spreading anti-state propaganda. In 2007, Dai was sentenced to four years on a similar charge.

Malinowski said the United States was also closely watching Vietnams progress on legal reforms.

Laws on demonstrations, non-government groups and religion that Vietnams National Assembly is due to take up this year could have an important impact on respect for human rights, he said.
Burma Activists Out in Force for Kachin Anti-Drugs Day

Thousands stage protest marches in Lashio, Kutkai and Muse townships for Kachin National Anti-Narcotics Day, hoping to raise awareness of Shan States drugs problem.

RANGOON  More than 3,000 people took part in protest marches in Lashio, Kutkai and Muse townships on Monday, marked as the Kachin Christian minoritys National Anti-Narcotics Day, in an effort to raise government awareness of a growing drug problem in northern Shan State.

Among the demonstrators were vicars and ministers of churches, anti-drug activist groups and local residents of the three townships.

The demonstrators called on the government to view drug elimination as a national duty and speed up its antinarcotics efforts, including by providing proper security for participants of drug eradication campaigns like that of the vigilante group Pat Jasan.

About 1,200 locals took part in the protest march in Muse, around 600 people amassed in Kutkai and some 1,500 protestors took to the streets of Lashio, according to local anti-narcotics groups.

There are various ethnicities as well as various ethnic armed groups in northern Shan State. Im afraid that drug production and trade in Shan State has reached a global scale, Zaw Naung, chairman of Kachin Literature and Language Association in Lashio Township, told The Irrawaddy.

Drugs have [negatively] impacted Shan, Kachin and Palaung ethnicities.

Non-state armed organizations are behind drug production and trade, claimed Zaw Naung, adding that while they benefited from the illicit activity, local communities were being ravaged by addiction.

The Kachin community-based Anti-Drug Group in Muse told The Irrawaddy that, for its part, members hoped to take a grassroots approach to tackling the problem.

Our group conducts public awareness campaigns and over the past three years, poppy cultivation has decreased as a result. To achieve better results, the government alone will not be able to do it. Peoples participation is important, Naw Di Aung, a member of the group, told The Irrawaddy.

Kachin National Anti-Narcotics Day has been celebrated annually since 2014, and Naw Di Aung claimed drug abuse among communities in Muse Township had fallen as a result.

The day was also observed in Kachin States capital Myitkyina, where about 3,000 locals participated on Monday.

Burma is the worlds second largest producer of opium poppies, after only Afghanistan, with most of that cultivation occurring in Shan State.
Burma Ex-Monk U Gambira Gets Six Months in Prison on Immigration Charge

A Mandalay court sentences the Saffron Revolution leader Nyi Nyi Lwin, better known as U Gambira, to six months imprisonment on a controversial immigration charge.

MANDALAY  A court in Mandalay Divisions Maha Aung Myay Township on Tuesday sentenced Nyi Nyi Lwin, a leader of Burmas 2007 Saffron Revolution who is better known as U Gambira, to six months in prison with labor on a controversial immigration charge.

Speaking following the ruling of his pre-verdict high hopes for a withdrawal of the caseas scores of student activists benefitted from earlier this monthGambira expressed disappointment at the trials outcome on Tuesday.

The authorities might think my case is unrelated to any political issue. What I believe is the authorities fabricated the case to put me behind bars again, said the 36-year-old.

Arrested on Jan. 19 for allegedly crossing the Thai-Burma border without an official visa, Gambira had for months petitioned unsuccessfully for bail, citing mental health issues that resulted from severe torture while imprisoned by the former military regime for his involvement in the 2007 pro-democracy uprising led by Buddhist clergy. With time served, the former monk will spend just under three more months behind bars, and on Tuesday said he did not intend to appeal the verdict.

I am very disappointed. But I am not going to submit an appeal as I dont believe in this judicial system, even after there were changes to a new government, he said.

The jury of the court said during Tuesdays hearing that the six-month prison term was the minimal sentence allowable for those found guilty under Section 13.1 of the Immigration Act.

That, however, did not assuage the concerns of the convicted mans family, who pointed to the regular medical treatment that his mental illness requires.

I dont want my son to be in prison six months, or even just a day. I believe Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President U Htin Kyaw will not neglect him and many other remaining prisoners who were jailed with unjust laws, said Daw Yay, his mother.

New York-based Human Rights Watch earlier on Tuesday called for authorities to dismiss the politically motivated charges.

The London-based human rights group Amnesty International made a similar demand shortly after he was arrested in January.

Following the verdict, David Mathieson, Human Rights Watchs senior Burma researcher, chalked up the contentious outcome to some vengeful cabal in the security forces, [and] the corrupt legal process that facilitates them, adding that the burden would now fall to President Htin Kyaw to pardon Gambira immediately.

Failing to do this as a priority will fatally undermine the governments commitment to end the cycle of political prisoners and politically motivated charges, he told The Irrawaddy. On purely humanitarian grounds, let alone genuine rule of law, Gambira should have been released today.

State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) government on April 7 said release of the countrys scores of remaining political prisoners was a top priority, laying out a strategy to do so as soon as possible.

The student activists who had their charges withdrawn and scores of other prisoners of conscience have since been released.

But in Mandalays Obo Prison, Myo Win, a farmers rights activists, and Yay Pu Sayadaw, an abbot from Mogok, remain detained and on trial, among the many still hoping for the NLD leaderships intervention.

We were told that the case we are facing is nothing related to political issues. But what I want to say here is the authorities and the governments lawyers are misusing the laws just to keep activists and journalists behind bars, said Myo Win, after a hearing in Mandalays Patheingyi Township on Tuesday.

Myo Win was arrested six months ago while assisting farmers turned victims of land confiscation in Patheingyi Township. He is facing trial for allegedly destroying public property.

If the authorities dont recognize those who are facing unjust trials and who are behind bars unlawfully, we have to question the judicial system under the new government, which is always talking about change, he added.

Asked about the dozens of political prisoners still behind bars, Mathieson noted the progress seen in recent weeks, but urged swift resolution for the many cases still pending.

The new government has done the right thing in starting to pardon people facing charges and release political prisoners, but its not over yet by a long shot.  The governments approach to activists undergoing trial this week will be an important litmus test of their sincerity, he said, noting Maung Saungkha as among those going through the court system this week.

According to figures from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), there are 60 political prisonersplus now Gambirawho remain behind bars at prisons across the country, while more than 200 farmers and assorted activists are still facing trials.

Andrew D. Kaspar contributed reporting from Rangoon.
Burma Bipartisan Delegation Visits Arakan State Fightings Displaced

NLD and ANP MPs become first sitting members of government to visit Arakanese conflict zone

RANGOON  Five lawmakers, representing the National League for Democracy (NLD) and Arakan National Party (ANP), on Monday led a delegation to groups of Arakanese, an ethnic minority in western Burma, who have been displaced by recent fighting.

Hundreds of civilians have been displaced by fighting between the government and ethnic Arakanese rebels of the Arakan Army in recent weeks, leaving many homeless or living temporarily in monasteries.

The ANP and NLD lawmakers provided the displaced people in Arakan State with rice, oil, medicine and noodles. Some NGOs and other civil society organizations are supplying water and necessities like mosquito nets.

This is the first time the government has visited displaced Arakanese, Khin Saw Wai, an ANP member of Burmas Parliament, told The Irrawaddy. But there are still people who are displaced in other townships, and they also need help. The government needs to make sure that all displaced people receive the same amount of support.

Though it marked the first time sitting parliamentarians had visited pockets of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Arakan State, one member of the delegation said there were no plans currently to make a similar visit to the states better-known IDPs: the persecuted and stateless Rohingya Muslim minority.

I Have a Responsibility to Them

[This area] is my home constituency, Khin Saw Wai said of Mondays travels to Rathedaung and Buthidaung townships. They elected me to Parliament, so I have a responsibility to them.

UN officials also traveled with the joint ANP-NLD group, and discussed plans for providing the internally displaced Arakanese, a predominantly Buddhist people, with drinking water and other supplies.

With the rainy season approaching, things will get more difficult for the displaced Arakanese, and the future of the conflict between the Arakan Army and the Burma Army remains unclear, Khin Saw Wai said, adding that since April 16, the Burma Army had detained dozens of people and forced them to serve as porters.

To handle displaced populations, all of the government agencies and civil society groups have to cooperate, Khin Saw Wai said. We hope that the government will start paying more attention.

Khin Saw Wais NLD colleague agreed.

The government is responsible for helping citizens who are in difficult situations, Min Aung, an NLD member of the Arakan state parliament who was traveling with the group, told The Irrawaddy.

What remained unclear on Tuesday was whether a similar outreach would be extended to the states Rohingya Muslim IDPs, more than 100,000 of whom have lived in displacement camps since violence between Buddhists and Muslims in 2012 forced them from their homes. The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma in 2014 described conditions at the camps as deplorable.

Asked if those camps might also receive a visit from a parliamentary or state government delegation in the future, one member of Mondays group said nothing was yet on the books.

We just formed a new government and it is too early. We do not have a plan yet for a visit to go to help those IDPs, said Chan Tha, the state governments social affairs minister, who was part of Mondays delegation.

Such a visit, if it comes to pass, would be far more politically charged than this weeks, given that the former government referred to the Rohingya as Bengalis, implying that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, despite many tracing familial roots in Burma back generations. That sentiment is believed widely held in majority-Buddhist Burma, where fear of a rise in anti-Islamic sentiment in recent years led many political parties, including the NLD, to field no Muslim candidates in the 2015 general election.

This story was updated at 10:31am on April 27. A previous version was uploaded in error.
Burma Three Armed Groups Opt Out of Talks With Former Govt Peace Delegation

A trio of ethnic armed organizations actively fighting the Burma Army has decided against meeting a former govt peace delegation in Thailand next month.

Three ethnic armed organizations actively fighting the Burma Army have decided against meeting a former government peace delegation in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai next month, according to a leader from one of the groups.

Tar Bong Kyaw, the general secretary of the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday that his group, as well as two alliesthe Arakan Army (AA) and the ethnic Kokang Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA)would not meet with the representatives led by former Lt-Gen Khin Zaw Oo.

The TNLA general explained that they were opting out of the talks because they would not be considered official.

We didnt believe that they could help with anything for peace in this meeting, Tar Bong Kyaw said.

The alliance of Arakanese, Kokang and Taang armed groups want to meet those who can really work for peace, he added, referring to representatives from the new Aung San Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy (NLD) government, which took office earlier this month.

There is tension between the three ethnic armed groups and the military due to recent clashes in western Burmas Arakan State with the AA and in northern Shan State, where the TNLA and MNDAA operate.

The groups released a joint statement on Tuesday confirming that fighting with the Burma Army is ongoing in their respective areas, where they allege that government forces are engaging in offensives and increasing troop numbers. On state-run TV, Burma Army members were quoted as saying that they hoped to eliminate groups like the AA.

[The Burma Army] employed strong military offensives in Rakhine [State], Tar Bong Kyaw said of ongoing conflict between government forces and the Arakan Army. They did the same to us. They should stop fighting if they want to have peace.

In mid-April, Aung Min, the former chief peace broker for the Burmese government, reportedly contacted the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), a coalition of nine ethnic armed groups who did not sign the countrys so-called nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA) in 2015. It was said that Aung Min had reached out to UNFC vice chairman Nai Hong Sar about meeting the AA, MNDAA and TNLA for peace talks; the three groups had been excluded by the government from signing the NCA.

Once a representative of the government-backed Myanmar Peace Center, Aung Min has since taken steps to form a new foundation intending to work for peace, but it is not clear what role the organization will undertake in Burmas future.
Business Rangoon Firms Seek Fixes to Familiar Woes in Chief Minister Meet-Up

Rangoon businesses press the divisions new Chief Minister Phyo Min Thein to deal with squatters, and the citys notoriously unreliable water and electricity supplies.

RANGOON  Reliable supplies of running water and electricity, as well as thousands of squatters, are urgent issues to be prioritized, the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI), an organization of influential businesses in Rangoon, told the divisions new chief minister at its meeting with him on Monday.

The new Rangoon chief minister, Phyo Min Thein, has inherited a host of problems from his predecessor Myint Swe, who critics say failed to see to it that the sprawling commercial capital developed sustainably.

The Hlaing Tharyar Industry Association was forthright about its grievances: The company paid 600 million kyats (US$5.1 million) to the Rangoon Electricity Supply Board, but it still experiences power outages; the government water utility does not supply the companys factories; and more than 8,000 residents it claims are squatters are living along the fences of their factories, disrupting the companys business operations and its workers lives.

More than five associations operating under the banner of the UMFCCI echoed the Hlaing Tharyar Industry Associations concerns, and several companies reported that they had forcibly removed squatters. One of the UMFCCI members, the chairman of the Shwepyitha Industry Association, admitted that his company had hired thugs to force squatters out.

Phyo Min Thein said he was understanding of their concerns but that, We dont want to be a bulldozer government, a not-so-veiled jab at the previous administration, which had in the past used bulldozers to clear squatters settlements.

Internally displaced people arrived in Rangoon in large numbers in 2008 following Cyclone Nargiss destruction of thousands of villages and farms in the Irrawaddy Delta, and many became squatters.

The new minister promised no quick fixes, saying he would solve all the problems that could be handled at the Rangoon Division level, but pointing out that some of the issues required action at the Union level. As for the squatters, Phyo Min Thein said the government could create lists of the alleged trespassers and begin working with businesses to resolve the problem. Further, he pledged more urgent action on water and electricity supply issues, saying he would bring the appropriate regional ministers with him to the industrial zones on his next visit and work out solutions with them.

Traffic congestion and logistics were also on the agenda. Ko Ko Naing, a representative for the logistics committee at the Bayinnaung Terminal, a trucking hub, said the terminal should be moved farther outside of the Rangoon city center because the area is too crowded and the roads cannot handle the increased shipping capacity. Severe traffic jams and other logistical problems have been the result.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Phyo Min Thein said he was glad to have had an opportunity to hear the challenges local companies are facing, and he added that no bribes would be accepted in his government.

Rangoon Division is Burmas largest, with more than 7 million people, a majority of whom live in the densely populated municipality of the same name.
Commentary The Target Is Now Shwe Mann

Under Thein Seins leadership, the USDP expels 17 key members including Shwe Mann, but perhaps cannot remove him as easily as they had wished.

The political temperature is rising again. This time the target is Shwe Mann, a close ally of Aung San Suu Kyi and head of the Commission for the Assessment of Legal Affairs and Special Issues within the Union Parliament.

On April 22, 17 key members including Shwe Mann were reportedly expelled from the military-backed Union Solidarity Development Party (USDP).

The move may not have been lawful, Shwe Mann said.

I think people, including USDP members and relevant authorities, need to look over whether the action by some USDP top members towards me and the commission members is in accordance with the existing laws and rules, he explained.

USDP officials insisted that Shwe Mann and the other members who were sackedmany of whom also serve on the Commissionhad violated the partys charter. But Shwe Manns faction will not go quietly: the showdown is now unfolding in the open.

Shwe Mann once served as the third highest-ranking general in Burmas former military regime and as the joint chief of staff of the army, navy and air force. He had supporters within the armed forces, and several former regional commanders and generals are now thought to be in his camp.

Recently, Shwe Manna graduate of the Defence Services Academys 11th intakecommemorated the 47th anniversary of his graduation and met with his former colleagues, along with Suu Kyi.

On this occasion, the former general issued a statement widely circulated on social media, urging his colleagues to work for the countrys new elected government.

Two days later, the armys information department responded by calling the statement an attempt to divide the armed forces. Shwe Mann, they suggested, was implying that the Tatmadawthe state militaryhad not worked in the interest of the people or the country since Burmas independence.

This reaction illustrates the depth of the fissure between him and the current leadership of the armed forces.

Shwe Manns expulsion from the USDP came after news of former president Thein Seins return to the party, who served in the monkhood for only five days before re-entering politics as the USDP chairman. A photo of the ex-leader, head shaved, holding what appeared to be glasses of wine, was shared widely on social media last week.

One of Shwe Manns key allies, Zaw Myint Pe, was also reportedly among those who were dismissed from the party. He described the USDP as dictatorial and said that he believed the mass expulsion was, in fact, ordered by Thein Sein.

The rivalry between Thein Sein and Shwe Mann became public in 2012 while Shwe Mann was serving as house speaker within Parliament. Increasingly, he was perceived by other USDP members as sympathetic to the struggle of Aung San Suu Kyi and as an advocate for constitutional reformstances which contrast sharply with military interests.

The conflict between the two men escalated as they formed powerful alliances: Thein Sein with armed forces commander-in-chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing, and Shwe Mann with Suu Kyi.

The soft-spoken military general remained popular despite attempts to remove him from leadership. But the internal rift within the USDP intensified in 2015: Shwe Mann faced impeachment from within the Parliament, government scrutiny of his family business and surveillance over two of his sons.

In August 2015, about 400 police raided the USDP headquarters and removed Shwe Mann from party chairmanship. It appeared that the armed forces had ordered the raidno doubt a palace coup.

Before the incident, Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing was known to have sent a three-page letter to Shwe Mann expressing his dissatisfaction with the chairmans political positions. Political observers also noted that the commander-in-chiefs speeches frequently mentioned those who betrayed the country, a slur believed to have been directed at Shwe Mann.

Under the former regime, such a removaland subsequent purgewould have had a lasting impact on Shwe Manns family and his allies, and likely would have resulted in a lengthy prison sentence for Shwe Mann himself.

Yet within two weeks, he was back in action, suggesting that though the Parliament and existing institutions are fragile, they had protected Shwe Mann and his supporters from the wrath of the USDP and the armed forces.

After learning of Shwe Manns dismissal, Suu Kyi said that the move had made it clear who was the enemy and who was the ally, adding that her partythe National League for Democracy (NLD)would work with the ally.

Thein Seins faction within the USDP could not remove Shwe Mann as they had wished.

Since the ousting nearly one year ago, Shwe Manns association with and support for Suu Kyi has grown visibly. Until the recent dismissal, his official standing within the USDP had remained unknown.

Shwe Manns enemies are now regrouping in an attempt to target his political support base, but it appears that he is now in an even stronger position, allied not only with the leading NLD but also with its widely supported figurehead, Suu Kyi. Shwe Manns key allies are now sitting in the Parliament and the Cabinet.

It will be interesting to witness how, and with what strategies, he will fight back against the odds.
Human Rights Upper House Bill Committee Reviews Controversial Laws

Burmas Upper House Bill Committee has started to review the Peaceful Assembly Law and the Emergency Provisions Act for amendment or possible abolishment.

RANGOON  Burmas Upper House Bill Committee on Tuesday began reviewing the Peaceful Assembly Law and the Emergency Provisions Act, both of which have been used in the past to arrest political activists, with the intention of eventually submitting the bills to Parliament for amendment or even abolishment once the legislature reconvenes.

Aung Kyi Nyunt, who is on the committee, told The Irrawaddy that members will review 15 of the 142 laws recommended by the Legal Affairs and Special Cases Assessment Commission to be scrapped, amended or rewritten, while other parliamentary committees will review the remaining laws.

We are now starting to review the Peaceful Assembly Law and Emergency Provisions Act. After reviewing these laws, we will decide whether to amend or abolish them, and then later we will submit these recommendations to the Parliament, Aung Kyi Nyunt said, adding that the two bills would be prioritized throughout the review process.

Parliament is scheduled to reconvene on May 2, following a lengthy parliamentary recess for the annual Thingyan water festival.

Human rights activists have long called for these two laws to be abolished or at least amended since they were widely used under the military junta, and later former President Thein Seins quasi-civilian government, to repress political activists.

Peaceful protesters were often detained under Article 18 of the Peaceful Assembly Law, which requires organizers to seek government permission prior to protesting.

If the committee submits amended bills to Parliament, and if Burmas new National League for Democracy (NLD)-controlled Parliament votes in favor of the committee recommendations, the changes would likely be hailed as another human rights achievement for the new government, which released more than 100 political prisoners, activists and students earlier this month.
News / International

by Staff reporter

US President Barack Obama has said he plans to send 250 more troops to Syria, a sharp increase in the number of Americans working with local Syrian forces. "I've decided to increase US support for local forces fighting ISIL in Syria . . . I've approved the deployment of up to 250 US personnel in Syria, including special forces," Obama said, announcing the decision after a meeting in Hanover with German Chancellor Angela MerkelThe deployment, which will increase US forces in Syria to about 300, aims to accelerate the process of driving back the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), White House adviser Ben Rhodes said.Obama also said that Europe needed to take on its share of the burden to ensure collective security, adding that the Western allies could do more in the fight against ISIL.ISIL controls the cities of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq and is proving a potent threat abroad, claiming credit for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March.While Obama has resisted deploying US troops in Syria, he initially sent 50 US special operations personnel there last year. The US officials described the forces as being on a "counterterrorism" mission rather than involved in an effort to tip the scales in the war, which UN envoy Staffan De Mistura estimates has killed 400,000 people.Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. However, in the latter part of his presidency, he has made decisions to keep or add to the numbers of troops deployed to conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.The president is ending a six-day international trip that began in Riyadh, where he held talks with Gulf Arab monarchs concerned that Washington's commitment to the Middle East had waned.After that meeting, Obama sidestepped a question about whether he would send special forces to Syria if talks failed to end the war, saying: "None of the options are good."Obama also said the US-led coalition fighting ISIL had squeezed the group's territory in Iraq and Syria, reducing its numbers and cutting off its finances.
Tuesday, April 26th, 2016 (9:05 am) - Score 729

Last years traumatic hack of TalkTalks website, which exposed the personal details of 156,959 customers (including 15,656 bank account numbers and sort codes), is continuing to have repercussions after Staffordshire Police confirmed that a sixth person had been arrested.

The attack itself was the result of a combined Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) assault and later an SQL Injection exploit against the ISPs website (here). So far weve seen various UK children and adults being arrested in connection with the hack, including three support agents in India who were working for TalkTalk through their outsourcing sub-contractor Wipro (here).

The latest to be arrested (last week) under the Computer Misuse Act is a 19-year old man from Staffordshire, who apparently handed himself into a local police station and this then triggered a search warrant for a property that is most likely to be his home address. The individual was later bailed until a date in late May 2016, which is the same as other UK linked arrests.

Meanwhile TalkTalk has already suffered a Q4 2015 (calendar) decline in their on-net subscriber base, which fell by -101,000 because of the incident and a related rise in scam calls to affected customers.

Mind you the ISPs customers are by now no strangers to the risk of scam callers and indeed many have been subjected to exactly that sort of con before thanks to two prior breaches, including one in 2014 that the provider was infamously slow to confirm. On top of that the ISP has suffered a sizeable financial hit.

TalkTalks Cyber-Attack Impact (Q4 2015 Financial Report) As a result of a c15m trading impact arising from Q3 [2015] disruption (higher churn and foregone revenues, offset by SAC savings on lower connections) and a c20m impact from the lower customer base with which we entered Q4 and reprioritisation of certain Making TalkTalk Simpler activities, we now expect FY16 EBITDA of 255m  265m. The exceptional costs of restoring our online capability with enhanced security features, associated IT, incident response and consultancy costs, and free upgrades, are expected to total 40m-45m.

Since then TalkTalk has fixed up their website and put a lot of effort into customer retention, including various special offers for both new and existing subscribers. The word is that they might now be slowly turning a corner and returning to more positive territory, which may only become clear on 12th May 2016 when their latest results are released.

Meanwhile the ISPs CEO, Dido Harding, has managed to hold on to the top job despite a series of major mishaps. The UKs Internet access market would certainly be a lot less interesting without her often outspoken approach, although the providers remaining subscribers may have a different opinion.
Tuesday, April 26th, 2016 (1:38 am) - Score 2,567

Several new locations in the county of Cheshire (England) could soon benefit from a 250Mbps (Megabits per second) capable superfast CityWireless broadband network from UK ISP Vispa, which has confirmed that theyre extending their reach beyond the original Warrington area.

The Fibre to the Mast (FTTM) wireless service has been around for a few years now and is powered by kit from Ubiquiti Networks (UBNT), although we had feared that the ever expanding reach of BT and Virgin Medias superfast fixed line networks might dent their progress. However the good news is that Vispa are now moving into expansion mode again.

So far as we can tell theyre already in the process of going live and beginning the first home installations around Mottram St Andrew, which is a more rural area. At the same time they also appear to be expanding into the more urban location of Newton in Chester.

Meanwhile the network is preparing to go live in other locations like Rainow, Strines, Gawsworth and Macclesfield, all of which appear to represent an interesting mix of both rural and urban locations. Perhaps the service should be renamed to CityRuralWireless  . A mix of trials and live service installs are expected to begin in these areas during May  June 2016.

Prices typically start at just 19.95 inc. VAT per month (remember theres no fixed line rental to pay on top) for a basic 10Mbps download / 2Mbps upload service with a peak-time usage allowance of 100GB (unlimited off-peak), free wireless router, static IP address and 12 or 24 month contract term (installation costs from 99).

By comparison Vispas 60Mbps (2Mbps upload) package offers 200GB usage for 29.95 and you can get 500GB for 39.95 (this option also adds 10Mbps uploads). A business grade 250Mbps option also exists, but you have to request a special quote for it. Sadly there are no unlimited use packages.
A startup called Sirin announced its plans to design a ultra-secure smartphone aimed primarily at executives.

According to the online publication Ubergizmo, the debate going on about security and privacy made many users to wonder just how secure their devices are. In this context, Sirin is working to create its specialized "military-grade" secure smartphone that will help executives hold secret company and financial information.

Android and Samsung provide built-in encryption as well. However, world leaders and high-ranking executives can't trust normal security measures.

Sirin is not the first smartphone manufacturing company with such plans. Before companies like Google and Apple to win a larger share on the market, BlackBerry also used to offer high-security devices. More recently, a device called Blackphone 2 came to bring similar protection.

Sirin new startup has recently entered the entering the super high-end, super-secure smartphone market, after a fundraising seed round that gathered about $72 million. The company has ties to both Israel and Britain.

Sirin Labs AG has announced that they will design a highly specialized smartphone with special hardware and software security features. According to Android Headlines, Sirin co-founder and president Moshe Hogeg said that their smartphone will bring the most-advanced technology available combined "with almost military-grade security."

Hogeg added that the company's smartphone will get an edge in security over other phones by including elements that may not be "commercially available." The idea to develop the secure smartphone for executives came from investor Kenges Rakishev's phone being hacked.

Rakishev approached Hogeg and asked him to come with a solution for a more secure smartphone. After Hogeg started to work on the idea, Rakishev offered funding. Singulariteam, Hogeg's own investment capital firm and Renren, a Chinese social network, also funded the project.

Sirin did not unveil yet the name of its upcoming device. Its price will be just under $20,000, so obviously this doesn't cater to the average user.
Aiming to expand the market for Chrome-running laptops, Acer released its first 14-inch Chromebook for Work.

The Acer Chromebook 14 for Work was announced on Friday, April 22, as the first Google compliant Work venture. With its Core i processor, the laptop is claimed by Acer as the faster ever.

According to the website i4u.com, Acer announced the previous variant of the 14-inch Chromebook during the first quarter this year. The Chromebook 14 had a an aluminum chassis and featured a slower Celeron processor.

The enterprise-friendly Acer Chromebook 14 for Work meets MIL-STD 810G reliability standards and features Intel Skylake processors. ZDNet reports that the laptop comes with Gorilla Glass lid and has a starting price tag of $349.

The scratch-resistant Vibrant Corning Gorilla Glass lid addresses corporate concerns about reliability. Companies can also get graphics printed on the lid that can double as free marketing.

The new Chromebook 14 for Work is the first to use Intel's sixth-generation Core Skylake processors. With this feature Acer hopes to appeal to companies looking to run Google's Chrome OS on their corporate laptops.

The Skylake processor will allow for battery life of over 10 hours between charges, Acer claims. The 14-inch display comes in full HD resolution of either 1,366x768 or 1,920x1,080. In order to keep its laptop just 0.88 inches thick and at 3.2 pounds weight, Acer has fitted the 14-inch display into a chassis designed for a 13-inch screen.

Acer latest Chromebook corporate laptop also comes with the ability to withstand drops up to 48 inches and a spill-resistant keyboard. Among its other features are included a 1,280x720 resolution webcam, USB 3.0 Type-C port, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, a range of 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB of RAM and either 16GB or 32GB of built-in storage.

Acer's Chromebook 14 for Work provides support for Google's Chrome for Work program. This provides enterprises with tools to deploy Chrome devices more securely and easily. The laptop also features a Trusted Platform Module chip that allows encrypting files.
The NSW Minister for Finance, Services and Property Dominic Perrottet announced the investment and said the funding would be used for the design of a single, state-wide radio network that will integrate and enhance more than 70 separate government agency networks..



The Minister said the shared-network design will seek to deliver vastly improved coverage for key agencies  almost tripling hand-held radio coverage for the State Emergency Service  while eliminating the inefficiency resulting from many government agencies owning, operating and maintaining separate, overlapping networks.



To assist the design process, the Government will also undertake a pilot project in north-western NSW, integrating ten existing agency networks in the area and delivering a 3,314 km2 increase in coverage for local Rural Fire Service, the State Emergency Service and Fire and Rescue units.





The network design will be led by the NSW Telco Authority in collaboration with government agencies to ensure agency requirements are met, as well as private sector providers. Government approval for implementation of the design is expected to be sought in 2017.The Minister said the Government is delivering on its long-term plan to establish a critical communications network that looks to the future, increases the safety of agency staff and citizens, and eliminates unnecessary duplication.Our law enforcement and emergency services personnel depend on fast and accurate information to protect the lives and property of NSW citizens.Todays announcement shows we are getting on with the job, delivering a smarter, more reliable, more resilient critical communications network that will increase the safety of citizens and frontline personnel in NSW.Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons of the NSW Rural Fire Service welcomed the announcement, saying, "Radio communications are our lifeline. Better availability means a safer and more responsive service.Senior Assistant Commissioner Michael Homden from the Ambulance Service of NSW said, A program focused on improved communication resilience, coverage and innovation will support our front line personnel as they deliver the best possible out-of-hospital care to those in need.
The Zegami visual data management system is available in Australia exclusively through Blue Crystal Solutions.

"We're thrilled to have been selected to be a key partner of Zegami," said Blue Crystal Solutions managing director Vito Rinaldi (pictured top, right).

"In any meeting we're in, as soon as we start running a demo of Zegami's capabilities our clients' face's light up. Zegami is making databases a little bit sexy!"

Zegami's technology means tens of thousands of images, movies or even 3D objects can be sorted, filtered, searched and grouped in real time.

The company was founded in 2015 by Australians Samuel Conway and Roger Noble, Briton Stephen Taylor and Oxford University, with 500,000 in seed funding from investors including Parkwalk Advisors and Oxford Sciences Innovation.

The initial development was carried out by Conway's Adelaide-based consulting firm Coritsu and Oxford University.

The sales and implementation team for the product will be based in Adelaide.

Zegami is said to be able combine millions of pieces of information together from multiple data sources into a simple and intuitive user interface. It can also be used in conjunction with machine learning and image-based analysis.

Its image-based search, image tagging capability, map views and dynamic BI capabilities across such large locally-hosted data sets unique among enterprise software, according to the company.

"Whether in business, research or in our personal lives we generate thousands of images every day and every image has its associated data, there can be no doubt that storage has become cheaper and more efficient over time but how do we find them again, let alone generate any meaningful information from it. Zegami turns this concept on its head," said Zegami CEO Samuel Conway (pictured top, left).

"Data to decision is the new catch cry amongst companies and researchers today; throw in "Big Data" and we need to re-evaluate just how we do this analysis to find what we are looking for. Zegami is enabling technology that is leading to new discoveries and observations in large image data sets."
The company announced on Tuesday that it has appointed Matthew Hyland to the role of Chief Executive Officer, charged with managing UltraServes operations and international expansion.



Hyland previously worked within UltraServe as Chief Financial Officer and strategic advisor.



Company founder Samuel Yeats says he will guide UltraServes strategic direction from a strengthened board.





Yeats said appointing Hyland as CEO was a logical step for UltraServe. Were recording strong year-on-year growth and have successfully launched our services internationally.We already have customers in multiple countries, including North America, India, Brazil and the UK, and we plan to accelerate that pace by expanding our international presence.Matt is the ideal person to take on the CEO role because he has immense experience working in related industries with a particular focus on enterprise B2B (Business to Business) clients, which is UltraServes space. Ill stay actively involved in guiding UltraServe as a director.Hyland said he had accepted the new role because of UltraServes potential for ongoing strong growth. Im excited by the opportunity of taking this business from its current stage to realising its significant future potential.When I looked at the UltraServe business, I saw its market-leading technology with a market position that provides a really sound foundation from which to build. Under Samuels leadership, UltraServe has carved out a very strong position with a unique service offering that stands out from more traditional cloud-hosting companies. I firmly believe that UltraServe has huge growth potential over the coming years.
The new centre will operate as part of the CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, and has a guaranteed research capability for 10 years.



Australias Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel welcomed the CSIROs commitment to establish the Climate Science Centre with a core capability of 40 full-time scientists, saying he was heartened that the Board of the CSIRO has resolved to guarantee the centres staffing levels and resources for the next ten years.



The CSIROs chief executive Dr Larry Marshall said the organisations Strategy 2020 was focussed on collaboration, global connection, excellent science and innovation  all four of these pillars are at work in this Centre.





As I indicated at the start of CSIROs current broader change process, it is critical that we retain the capability that underpins our national climate research effort.The announcement today is a culmination of the ongoing consultation and feedback weve had from our staff and stakeholders, and this new Centre is a reflection of the strong collaboration and support right across our system and the global community.Dr Marshall said collaboration and partnership will be a cornerstone of this decadal commitment for Australia and, in recognition of this, the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science has agreed that an independent National Climate Science Advisory Committee will be established.The Committee will have representation from CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and other experts from Australia and overseas, and report at Ministerial level to inform the future direction of Australias climate science capability and research priorities.Dr Marshall said that the CSIRO, working closely with the Bureau of Meteorology, is also planning to deepen its existing partnership with the UK Meteorology Office.He said CSIRO will offer its unique Southern Hemisphere modelling capability and measurements to the UKs global model, helping to build a model that is even more relevant for Australia and other Southern Hemisphere nations.Dr Marshall also said all of the CSIROs critical measurement infrastructure, such as the ice and air libraries, ARGO float program and Cape Grim, will be guaranteed in the same manner as the other national facilities such as the RV Investigator, which is also centred in Hobart.The chief scientist Dr Finkel also welcomed the establishment of the independent, Ministerial level, National Climate Science Advisory Committee that will advise on the national climate science research priorities. Supported by the Industry, Innovation and Science Minister and the Environment Minister, Dr Finkel said he expects it will have an independent Chair and will include representatives of the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, and other Australian and international experts.Dr Finkel said Australia had a rich history in world-class climate research and its future was now on a much firmer footing.The creation of a national climate research centre is the right move for Australia and I congratulate all the parties involved.This announcement recognises the importance of climate research, in particular modelling and observations, to our science and our community.The new centre is a stable building block in this critical field, which will both inform national policy and meet our international obligations.Australia has a central role to play in understanding the climate of the Southern Hemisphere.Dr Finkel said he also welcomed the strong commitment of the CSIRO to climate science. I also acknowledge the excellent advice provided by Rob Vertessy, the Director of the Bureau of Meteorology, by university leaders, academic leaders and other research organisations that led to the establishment of this collaborative and long-term centre.As I told a Senate Estimates hearing in February this year, Australia needs a continuous and highly effective commitment to climate science.
News / Local

by Stephen Jakes

A man from Cowdray Park in Bulawayo was in trouble after he got into Ok Supermarket and stole one packet of 20 Everest cigarettes.Obriel Sibanda (3) was luck to escape without a jail term or fine when he appeared before Bulawayo magistrate Tinashe Tashaya who warned, cautioned and discharged him.Allegations were that on April 19 this year at 12:15pm he pretended to be a genuine customer at the Ok Store and picked a 20 Everest cigarettes packet and tried to go out without paying.He was arrested at exit after he was searched and found in possession of the cigarettes.
Microsoft today kicked off a two-for-one deal for its Windows-based smartphones, tossing in a free Lumia 950 when customers buy a $649 unlocked top-tier Lumia 950 XL.

The give-away will run until May 1, or while supplies last, Microsoft said on its e-store.

Last week, Microsoft told Wall Street that sales of its Lumia devices -- virtually the only smartphones powered by Windows 10 Mobile -- plummeted 73% in the March quarter compared to the year before, falling from 8.8 million in 2015 to 2.3 million in 2016. Revenue from its phone division fell 47%, to $662 million, in the first three months of this year.

More to the point of the two-for-one sale, on Thursday, Microsoft's chief financial officer, Amy Hood, said, "Sell-through of our Lumia products was weak, and we exited the quarter with relatively high channel inventory." Simply put, poor sales left more than the expected number of devices in stores and warehouses.

The buy-one-get-one-free deal may be Microsoft's way of flushing out the current overstock.

Buyers in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico will receive a $549 unlocked Lumia 950 when they purchase an unlocked Lumia 950 XL. The latter is Microsoft's top-of-the-line Windows 10 Mobile smartphone, which went on sale in November 2015.

The offer is limited to two Lumia pairs per customer.

Microsoft's smartphone business continued to drag down the Redmond, Wash. firm's overall revenue outlook. While Hood did not pin a dollar amount to Lumia's impact on the June quarter, Microsoft's final in its 2016 fiscal year, she acknowledged that, "We expect year-over-year revenue declines to steepen in Q4 as we work through our Lumia channel position."

In hindsight, her comment was a hint of the two-for-one offer.

The company's attempt to compete with Apple, Samsung, and a host of others has been a disaster. Last year, Microsoft wrote off virtually all of its investment in Nokia, the previous manufacturer of the Lumia line. Altogether, Microsoft blew about $10 billion on its venture into smartphones.

At the time of the write-down, CEO Satya Nadella said, "In the near-term, we'll run a more effective and focused phone portfolio while retaining capability for long-term reinvention in mobility."

With sales of only 2.3 million smartphones over three months, even that retrenchment of expectations now appears overly optimistic. By comparison, Apple sold about 61.2 million iPhones in the first quarter of 2015 -- the most recent March quarter available -- or about 2.3 million every three-and-a-half days.
News / Local

by Staff Reporter

The country's largest ferrochrome processor, Zimbabwe Mining and Smelting Company (Zimasco) which is facing serious viability problems has surrendered several schools that ran under it to Shurugwi Town Council.Masvingo Mirror reported that this was confirmed by Shurugwi Town Council chairman, Tsungai Makore who said council has already taken over the six schools handed over to them by Zimasco.He also added that plans are underway to turn Selukwe Primary School into a boarding school."We have taken over the running of the schools and that involves maintenance of the facilities and all the other aspects. The schools that have been handed over to us are Parkinson High School, Selukwe, Ironsides and RB Primary Schools."We have a mandate as a local authority to make sure that educational facilities are at their best to ensure that we offer quality education in areas within our jurisdiction. We have also taken up key partnerships with the Baptist Church where we will turn Selukwe Primary School into a boarding school to ensure that enrolment that had gone down can be improved," added Makore.Zimasco which is saddled with a $65 million debt last year handed over clinics to the local authority and some private players after facing difficulties in running the facility.The ferrochrome processor shut down its Shurugwi operation last year and retrenched its entire workforce owing to viability challenges caused by plunged metal prices on the international market.An initial bid to be placed under judicial management was quashed last year by the High Court after the ferrochrome processor failed to comply with the law in its applications to the court.Zimasco which is controlled by China's Sinosteel Corporation with a 73 percent stake has resubmitted a fresh application to be placed under judicial management to protect its assets from possible attachment by creditors
Recent U.S. election 2016 news revealed that Hillary Clinton's campaign has blasted Donald Trump over his racist remarks. The real estate mogul mocked an Indian call center worker during a rally this week.

The Wire reported that Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has criticized the Republican frontrunner for disrespecting the Indian American community. Trump made his comments at an election rally in Delaware.

"Donald Trump mocking Indian workers is typical of the disrespect he has shown towards groups across the spectrum," John Podesta, chairman of the Clinton Campaign, said. "He has run a campaign of bigotry and division."

"I think that's quite dangerous for the country when you think about the fact that you need friends, allies. The kind of campaign he is running breeds disrespect across the globe and division and danger here at home."

According to IBT, Podesta spoke to the press at the launch of Indian-Americans for Hillary Clinton (IAHC) on Apr. 24. The campaign chairman vowed that the relationship between India and the U.S. would flourish under Clinton's term once elected.

It was noted that the Republican presidential aspirant used a fake Indian accent to mock a call center representative. Apparently, Donald Trump was making a call to his credit card company to learn whether customer support was based in the U.S. or was outsourced.

An Indian American entrepreneur also criticized Trump for his mockery, describing it as "demeaning." Frank Islam, a top Indian-American bundler in the Clinton campaign who is part of IAHC, shared his thoughts on Trump's remarks.

"When Donald Trump fakes the accent of an Indian at the help desk, it is demeaning and demonising to me personally," Islam said. He also addressed Maine Republican governor Paul LePage's comments that Indian workers are "worst" and "hardest" to understand.

"I do not know where he got that impression," he added. "I consider Indian-Americans to be thoughtful, hardworking and resilient. I do not agree with him."
The latest Verizon strike 2016 update revealed that employees have continued their fight for better compensation and benefits. This comes after more than 35,000 employees went on strike last Apr. 13.

The Quad reported that the Verizon strike 2016 is caused by contract disputes. Employees' protests and picket lines stretched across the Northeast.

Members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers rallied outside the company's locations. "The company, despite their profits, is unwilling to put any profit our way," Michael LaRose of Valley Forge said.

Before the strike, LaRose worked at the South High Street Verizon building. Mike Davis, the international staff representative for the Communications Workers of America, also shared his thoughts on the company.

"We want the work generated in our states to stay in our states," Davis stated. "The company is refusing to do anything about any proposals we have."

Davis started working as the staff representative in 2011 when the CWA organized a strike against the company for contract disputes still. "We want to have a contract that keeps jobs in our hometown that keeps our families in our hometown," he added.

Apparently, the newest version of Verizon's contract would widen the transfer radius even further. This means that the company can easily relocate employees without being liable for financial assistance.

According to Asbury Park Press, hundreds of Verizon workers rallied right outside New Jersey's capitol building. The employees had a message for the company's chief executive, Lowell Adam.

"We want a fair contract," Matawan resident Gino Gianfrancesco told the publication. "We want to keep good paying, middle class jobs here in America and we just want good jobs."

"Sooner or later, this company will get the message," Dennis G. Trainor, vice president of CWA District One admitted. "We are committed to a fair contract and we will stay out for as long as it takes. One day longer."
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries announced on Monday that it was still too early for it to show its support to sister company Mitsubishi Motors Corp for the fiasco it is embroiled in due to its fuel economy data cheating.

The transport ministry of Japan is currently investigating Mitsubishi Motors after the carmaker admitted that it had reported faked fuel economy data on four of its car models sold in Japan.

The automaker said on Monday that it would make an announcement the following day to update the media about the issue, but cancelled the event saying there are conflicts in its scheduling.

But the company said that it would submit information connected with the data cheating to the Japanese transport ministry on Tuesday, as its response to the ministry's request.

In a related development, a senior executive of Mitsubishi Motors has cancelled his visit to the Beijing car show in connection with the fuel data falsification. But his absence in the event didn't discourage Mitsubishi's local joint venture partner from announcing that it wants to be the top SUV brand in China, the world's largest car market.

Zhang Yuesai, executive vice president of Mitsubishi's Chinese joint venture, said on stage at the Beijing motor show that his company plans to introduce 10 new Mitsubishi car models in the next five years.

He didn't mention anything about the issue of fraud admission, nor did he apologize for it. But there were no Mitsubishi Japanese executives that spoke at the event.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is the biggest investor in Mitsubishi Motors, having around 12.6 percent stake in the company. Its business includes building of rail infrastructures, military aircraft and luxury cruise ships.

"The investigation into Mitsubishi Motors over its falsified fuel economy data is still ongoing, so at this point we cannot decide on whether to offer assistance," said Shunichi Miyanaga, President and Chief Executive, Mitsubishi Heavy President in an interview.
Hollywood celebrities are increasingly getting vocal about their support for political figures in the United States. Stars such as Leonardo Dicaprio, Ben Affleck and Charlize Theron are not afraid to show their support for Hillary Clinton.

Rosario Dawson, on the other hand, show her avid support for Bernie Sanders by roasting Clinton publicly for facing an FBI investigation about her private email server.

Many believe that the maxim: "Show me the money where your mouth is," is one of the ways a person can support any candidate vying for public office.

This report shows that celebrities have actually poured in their money to support their presidential candidates. It carries a list of around 70 Hollywood personalities along with the actual sums of money they have given current U.S presidential candidates.

Cold hard cash is another form of speech where one can prove just how much he or she supports a presidential candidate. Celebrities have much of this resource and they have chosen to show their support by giving some of their earnings to politicians.

Politicians know the power of celebrities. Even if a celebrity does not actually contribute to the coffers of the candidate, his or her endorsement means a lot.

"Having celebrities can definitely assist in getting people to contribute and getting them engaged," said Dana Perlman, attorney and longtime Hillary Clinton fundraiser told TheWrap.

"If they can see Andra Day, Katy Perry, Elton John or Will Ferrell offer support then that is an extra incentive to get people to dig deeper into their wallets," Perlman added.

But what is the maximum limit that a celebrity, or for that matter any person can donate to a presidential candidate? For sure, celebrities can give thousands upon thousands of dollars.

The Federal Elections Commission in California and New York say that a person can fork out $2,700 "per election to a Federal candidate or the candidate's campaign committee."

This is the reason why in the list you can only see $2,700 donation under the names of Dicaprio, Affleck and Theron.
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Land and Space Journal Sentinel business reporter Tom Daykin talks about commercial real estate and development. SHARE

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A riverfront parking lot at the northern entrance to Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward could be the site of a large mixed-use development.

The owners of downtown's Grand Avenue, who on Monday announced their redevelopment plans for the mall, are considering another project for that 35,000-square-foot lot, 333 N. Water St., according to commercial real estate sources.

That project could include a hotel, according to those sources, who asked not to be identified.

Tony Janowiec, one of the Grand Avenue's owners, declined to comment.

During the Monday presentation of the Grand Avenue plans, Janowiec mentioned some other nearby projects.

He said those included "another development in the Third Ward that will take out another surface lot," but didn't elaborate.

The parking lot is west of N. Water St. and south of E. St. Paul Ave., overlooking the Milwaukee River. It has long been considered a prime Third Ward development parcel, with an assessed value of $1.2 million.

The property is owned by a local investment group, Patsy & Paul Inc., which is operated by members of the Iannelli family. The group's attorney, Heny Piano, couldn't be reached Monday for comment.

The lot is next to the Renassaince Building, 301-309 N. Water St., an office building where Physicians Realty Trust Inc. moved its headquarters last year.

It is also near the Milwaukee Public Market, 400 N. Water St., and the Mercantile Building, 318-324 N. Water St., where the property owners have a plan to add more office and retail space.
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Leave it to Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. to try to turn up the heat in the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore.

In my estimation, the six officer who were charged in the Freddie Gray incident in Baltimore, Maryland, they're political prisoners, Clarke said to a hearty round of applause.

There was no basis whatsoever under the rule of law to charge those officers. None."

Known for his inflammatory rhetoric, Clarke made his remarks at a seminar sponsored by conservative Hillsdale College at the Waldorf Astoria in New York on April 18. Clarke appeared later in the week on the New York set of the "Fox & Friends" show.

In his talk, dubbed "Law and Order in Urban America," Clarke sharply criticized Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby for saying she heard the public call for "no justice, no peace" when she charged the officers. Clarke -- who is African-American -- accused her of being political with her actions.

"She was going to to try to make it right for the cop-haters, Clarke said, He suggested that. when annoucing the charges, Mosby also said, "I hear you" and "Your time is now."

"It's not how I want Lady Justice talking," Clarke said. "I want Lady Justice to hold that scale up. You've seen it, right? Will weigh the evidence, will listen to the witness testimony, will look at all this. And that will determine what happens. That's the country I want to live in."

Clarke said he realizes that cops make mistakes. He said he tells his staff in the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office the same thing every day: "I don't demand perfection. I demand excellence."
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Agustin "Gus" Ramirez, executive chairman of Husco International, was honored Monday night as the 2015 Wisconsin Business Leader of the Year, with proceeds from the dinner at the Pfister Hotel funding scholarships for executive directors of four Wisconsin nonprofits.

Husco is a $400 million Waukesha manufacturer of products including hydraulic controls for off-highway equipment and engine controls for the automotive industry. Under Ramirez's leadership, the company established manufacturing and product research and development facilities in the U.S., Europe, China and India.

The award, given annually by the Harvard Business School Club of Wisconsin, also recognized Ramirez for community service.

The Agustin A. Ramirez Jr. Family Foundation provides scholarships to more than 100 greater Milwaukee students each year. A primary focus of the family has been to build Christian schools in Central America and Milwaukee, with a long-term goal of reaching 1 million children.

The Ramirez family was the initial funder of "Schools That Can Milwaukee," an organization dedicated to building excellent schools and led by Abby Ramirez Andrietsch, Agustin's eldest daughter.

Ramirez said his accomplishments wouldn't have been possible without his wife, Rebecca.

"We are two strands woven so tightly together. God clearly had a hand in this wonderful woman being my wife," he said.

This year's recipients of scholarships to a Harvard program in nonprofit management include John Bloor, executive director of The Threshhold Inc. that provides services for people with disabilities.

Another recipient is Dennis Kois, president and CEO of the Milwaukee Public Museum.

The scholarship will allow him to learn more about data analytics, Kois said.

Jeffrey Martinka, executive director of Neighborhood House of Milwaukee, is another scholarship recipient, as is Virginia Duiven, executive director of Literacy Services of Wisconsin.
Apple says quarterly revenue fell for the first time in more than a decade, as iPhone sales fell compared with a year ago. Credit: Associated Press

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San Francisco Apple says quarterly revenue fell for the first time in more than a decade, as iPhone sales fell compared with a year ago. That's putting more pressure on the world's most valuable public company to come up with its next big product.

Apple sold more than 51.2 million iPhones in the first three months of 2016  while racking up $10.5 billion in quarterly profit. That was more than many analysts expected but still fewer than the 61 million iPhones sold a year earlier.

The company is battling perceptions that its latest iPhones aren't dramatically different from previous models, as overall smartphone sales are slowing around the world. Apple also sells iPads, Mac computers and other gadgets, but nearly two-thirds of its $50.6 billion in quarterly revenue came from iPhones.

Revenue was down 13% from the January-March quarter of 2015, the first quarterly revenue decline in 13 years. And the company surprised analysts by forecasting another revenue drop of 13% or more in the current quarter. The forecast drove Apple's stock price down more than 8% in extended trading Tuesday, after closing at $104.35.

Despite the decline, Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said in an interview, "we continue to believe the iPhone business is very strong." But he added that Apple is expanding its other businesses. The January-March quarter includes $6 billion in revenue from online services, apps and other software, which was up 20% from a year earlier, but just 10% of overall revenue.

Many were hoping the Apple Watch would be the company's next big hit when it went on sale one year ago. Apple hasn't revealed sales figures for the watch, but most analysts estimate the company has sold 12 million or more, producing well over $5billion in revenue. That's more than twice the number of iPhones sold in the first year after the company introduced its signature smartphone in 2007.

But even as some owners say they're delighted with the Apple Watch, others have voiced disappointment that it doesn't do more. And critics say it hasn't ignited consumer passions, in the way the iPhone became a "must-have" product.

"They need to come out with that next great product," Angelo Zino, a financial analyst with S&P Global Market Intelligence, said in an interview before Apple released its earnings report Thursday. While he's optimistic about the company's future, Zino added, "Apple absolutely needs to start diversifying their revenue base."
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Wicab Inc., a Middleton company whose BrainPort device provides sensory input to help the brains of blind people visualize their surroundings, has raised $2.4 million of a proposed $10 million offering, according to a filing with federal securities regulators.

Two investors provided the funding, the filing said.

Wicab, which was founded in 1998, received approval in June from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market its BrainPort V100 device. The device uses a small video camera mounted on sunglasses to translate digital information into gentle electrical stimulation patterns. Users perceive the patterns as vibrations or tingling that are like images drawn on their tongue with small bubbles. With training, the company says they are able to interpret the shape, size, location and position of objects in their environment, and to determine if objects are moving or stationary.

WiCab executives, including chief executive officer Robert Beckman, in January met with leaders of the China Disabled Persons Federation. WiCab's board members include: Richard Glaisner, a partner at Fiduciary Real Estate Development who was previously with several investment firms; Jon Hammes, managing partner of real estate developer Hammes Co.; and Ken Yontz, retired chairman of Sybron Dental Specialties.
The Cousins Subs sandwich chain has seen its footprint shrink by 28% over the last five years. Credit: Journal Sentinel files

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The Cousins Subs sandwich chain, which has frequently cited its "bold expansion plans," has in fact seen its footprint shrink by 28% over the last five years.

Since 2011, the store count for the Menomonee Falls-based company has dropped to 105 from 146, according to disclosure documents that the firm, as a franchiser, files with state authorities.

Sandwich chains Subway, Jimmy John's and Firehouse Subs, meanwhile, have been growing. In Wisconsin alone  Cousins' primary territory  the three competitors collectively added 70 stores from 2011 through the end of 2014, the last year for which their information is available.

Cousins says its decline occurred as a large number of contracts with franchisees came up for renewal in recent years. The company closed some stores "due to underperformance," said Justin McCoy, vice president of marketing. In other cases, he said, franchisees "chose to move on to other endeavors."

Most of the net reduction in Cousins' stores came in Wisconsin, but the decline also included all but four of the 19 out-of-state locations the chain had in 2011. All five Minnesota locations closed within just over six months last year.

McCoy said the chain is as strong today as it was five years ago, if not stronger, and will actively seek new franchisees as part of an initiative it plans to announce next month.

And restaurant industry analyst Darren Tristano, president of Technomic Inc. in Chicago, said Cousins can still do well with a reduced store count.

But a franchise lawyer and a professor who has written extensively on franchising said that, generally speaking, a decline in the number of stores should at least raise questions for potential franchise buyers.

"I would certainly advise a franchisee to be cautious if they were considering purchasing a franchise in a system like that," said Elliot Ginsburg, a partner in Garner & Ginsburg, a Minneapolis law firm that represents franchisees.

In some cases, he said, store counts can fall as shops close because franchisees aren't doing a good job and aren't following their company's system.

But as a general rule, a shrinking base "is definitely cause for concern and often indicates a larger problem for the system than just a few bad franchisees," Ginsburg said.

Robert Emerson, a professor of business law at the University of Florida, also said a declining store count generally would raise questions, particularly when competitors' numbers are rising.

"You'd want some real explanations," Emerson said.

Similarly, franchise researcher Marko Grunhagen, a business professor at Eastern Illinois University, said a shrinking number of units should raise questions. But, Grunhagen added in an email, it might be that a chain in such a position sold too many franchises to begin with and now is "smartening up" by thinning out its stock, a potentially positive step.

The investment required to open even one franchise location can be substantial. Cousins, for example, says in its latest disclosure document that it takes $182,200 to $564,000 to begin operating a single shop.

The 105 Cousins stores open at the end of last year included 83 franchises and 22 company-owned locations. The four non-Wisconsin shops are in Arizona.

Franchise growth was fast

Cousins dates to 1972, when Bill Specht and Jim Sheppard  the men were cousins  opened their first store, at N. 60th St. and W. Silver Spring Drive in Milwaukee.

By 1989, when Cousins started franchising, it had nearly 40 locations. The growth continued for nearly 15 years, then topped out.

The company store count hit 177 in December 2003, but four years later had dropped to 149. The total fell by only a few through 2011, then started declining more sharply.

Meanwhile, Cousins repeatedly talked about expanding.

In October 2003, when the number of stores was near its peak, a company announcement that the firm was embarking on an expansion program quoted Specht as saying, "Ten years from now, I see our chain at 1,000 or more locations."

In December 2007, then-president John Pryor foresaw significant growth in 2008. "We will have a minimum of 26 new stores we're aware of right now, and I think we'll exceed that," he said.

Cousins didn't add any stores in 2008.

The pattern continued more recently, with the firm's news releases repeatedly saying Cousins had "bold expansion plans."

Asked why the company routinely talked about expansion when its store count was declining, McCoy said, "Because that is our intent. ... It is our intent to grow, but you also have to strengthen the brand and strengthen the foundation to go out and to have a viable product to sell.

"We felt we had some areas that we could improve upon as a brand, and we had been working at those, and while we were doing that, developing our strategy and getting us in the best position to grow."

The company dropped the expansion-plan language from its announcements last summer.

Stores profitable

Former franchisee Neal Jacquart said the shop he and his wife operated in Two Rivers from 2005 until last June posted annually increasing sales, and made money, but not as much as he had expected.

"It was profitable, but not for the amount of hours we put into it," he said.

Wanting to exit when his 10-year contract ended, Jacquart said he found a buyer, but ended up closing the shop instead. The would-be buyer didn't feel he could undertake the immediate remodeling Cousins wanted done, and the firm turned down the deal, Jacquart said.

In Fontana, just off Geneva Lake in Walworth County, Neal Gill closed his Cousins store last September after about a year and a half. The many Illinois residents who visit the area aren't familiar with Cousins, and the shop never did much business, Gill said.

In March 2015, Roger Luckow closed one of two Cousins locations he and his wife, Cynthia, had operated in Fond du Lac for several years. Luckow said sales at the now-closed store had been "very good," but that it was in a building the couple was putting up for sale. Business at the shop they still run is strong, Luckow said.

As a group, the Cousins stores that haven't closed have seen rising sales, the company's latest disclosure document indicates. From 2011 through 2015, their collective sales increased from $50.8 million to $59 million, the document says.

And the closings have left Cousins with a stronger core of shops, the document indicates.

From 2013 through 2015, the number of the firm's franchisee-owned, traditional locations  those not linked to a pizza establishment or a convenience store  dropped from 92 to 69. At the same time, average sales at those shops rose 28.5%.

McCoy said other factors contributed to such increases, including rising traffic and check sizes, and the tendency of business to shift from closed stores to nearby survivors.

Restaurant industry analyst Tristano said by email that Cousins, like many legacy chains, has a number of older, single-unit franchisees who find it more difficult to evolve and invest in the system.

But the firm has "a pretty strong, experienced management team that remains focused on technology, catering and unit-level economics," Tristano said.

He said the market is relatively competitive, with Subway continuing to expand and chains such as Jimmy John's, Firehouse and Jersey Mike's growing both nationally and in Wisconsin.

Still, Tristano said, Cousins remains "a strong favorite in the land of cheese and likely will continue to compete effectively, even with the smaller unit counts."
Mary Carpenter from the local relation department of American Transmission Co. talks about her encounters with clients while attending a lunch staff meeting. ATC employees describe their workplace as one with relatively little negativity. Credit: Angela Peterson

SHARE Employees at American Transmission Co. attend a lunch meeting with chief legal counsel Bill Marsan (second from right) and chief operating officer Mark Davis (right). Angela Peterson The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Top Workplaces section recognizes the best places to work in southeast Wisconsin. Go to the 2016 section

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Workplace negativity is like a disease, and even the best companies aren't immune.

Take, for example, southeastern Wisconsin's Top Workplaces  firms that all are highly regarded by their employees.

Large majorities of those employees say their companies are ethical and headed in the right direction. They overwhelmingly express confidence in their leaders and say, nearly 4-to-1, that their managers care about their concerns.

But ask about negativity where they work and these same people aren't so sunny. When surveyed, barely half agreed that "there is not a lot of negativity at my workplace."

And griping, backbiting, resentment, etc. on the job, organizational experts say, breeds big problems.

"Start with just the basic fact that it's a distraction," said Sarah Freeman, an associate professor of organizations and strategic management at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Lubar School of Business. "If people are grousing, whispering, whatever  being negative  they're not doing something else, particularly something that advances the interest of the organization.

"But the other thing is, it's contagious."

That's what Will Felps found. While studying for his doctorate at the University of Washington several years ago, Felps, now a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Australia, conducted an experiment.

He assigned groups of undergraduates a series of business management tasks, with $100 per person going to the group that performed best. Unknown to the students, Felps seeded some of the groups with a single bad apple  an actor instructed to behave like a bullying jerk, a slacker or a depressive pessimist.

The result: The infected groups performed 30% to 40% worse than the others.

Similarly, Stanford University professors Charles A. O'Reilly III and Jeffrey Pfeffer have written about a Men's Wearhouse store that had a salesman who was a top producer but was bringing co-workers down by stealing other people's sales. After he was fired, no single individual was able to match his sales numbers, but sales for the store as a whole rose 30%.

Dismissal sometimes is the only way to deal with a bad apple, Freeman said. But measures needn't necessarily be so drastic if managers keep communication lines open and pay attention to what's being said and not being said  by employees.

"We definitely do have our ear to the ground and (are) always trying to solicit feedback from each of our teams," Kate Weiland said. Weiland is vice president of human capital at Concurrency Inc., a growing technology consulting firm in Brookfield, and a Top Workplace with one of the lowest negativity scores.

Weiland expanded the roles of Concurrency's recruiters to include retention, too, "so they're evaluated on not just hiring people but making sure that our people are happy."

Managers do three or four "check-ins" a year with each employee to ask about concerns and observations. And everyone can know what their colleagues' communications styles are, thanks to a profile test they take that assigns them to one of four color-coded categories. Yellows, for example, are high-energy, outgoing people. Blues are detail-oriented, skip-the-small-talk folks.

Knowing these things, Weiland said, helps minimize misunderstandings.

American Transmission Co., another Top Workplace with a low negativity score, also emphasizes transparency and openness, said Anne Spaltholz, director of corporate communications for the Pewaukee-based electricity transmission utility.

Executives regularly have lunch with employees and take feedback seriously, Spaltholz said. She said that when a worker-engagement survey in 2014 showed that people wanted to know more about how compensation decisions were made, ATC responded with a series of explanatory seminars.

"I think that that kind of philosophy  no surprises  helps reduce that negativity that could emerge in the workplace," she said.

All the same, employees at Top Workplaces in southeastern Wisconsin are somewhat less likely than their national counterparts to say there was not a lot of negativity on the job.

Freeman couldn't speculate on why that might be, but said other surveys have shown a national trend of increasing cynicism and negativity at work. That could reflect the country's general economic direction.

"There's been a sense for, we're going on 10 years now, of the majority of people not getting the benefits but taking the pain," Freeman said.

All the more reason for managers to keep their eyes and ears open.
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Two light industrial developments planned for Pleasant Prairie have received village planning approval, the latest in a series of such projects in the Kenosha area.

The Pleasant Prairie Plan Commission approved conceptual plan updates for the proposed Riverview Corporate Park at its Monday night meeting, according to a village statement.

Riverview Group LLC, an affiliate of Rosemont, Ill.-based Venture One Real Estate, would construct the first phase of the new business park on a site southeast of Premium Outlets.

That outlet mall is just east of I-94, and south of Highway Q/104th St.

The business park's first phase involves three speculative light industrial buildings.

Those buildings would have 105,000 square feet, 166,090 square feet, and 120,065 square feet with a potential 101,000-square-foot expansion.

With the approval of the updates, Venture One can now create more detailed site and operating plans.

The Village Board approved the original master conceptual plan for Riverview Corporate Park in 2013.

Also, the Plan Commission approved preliminary site and operating plans for Majestic Realty Co.'s planned 424,164-square-foot speculative building.

Majestic, based near Los Angeles, plans to develop the building on the east side of Highway H/88th Ave., about one-quarter mile south of Bain Station Road.

The building will be designed to accommodate as many as four tenants.

With the approval, Majestic plans to begin preparing the site this spring. Final plans are expected to be presented to the commission soon.

A conceptual plan was conditionally approved for the property in 2012. Majestic has tentative plans to eventually construct a second building on the property.

The Kenosha area has seen several light industrial development proposals in recent years, including Amazon.com Inc.'s new $250 million distribution center on 165 acres east of I-94 between Burlington Road and 38th St.

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News / National

by Staff Reporter

Zanu-PF wings and war veterans have welcomed President Mugabe's move to establish the National Disciplinary Appeals Committee (NDAC) saying the structure will bring peace and stability in the party.President Mugabe, who is the Zanu-PF First Secretary, called for the establishment of the NDAC to consider appeals from party members aggrieved by either their suspension or expulsion as overseen by the National Disciplinary Committee (NDC).The setting up of the new tribunal comes after some party members expressed reservations with the NDC, whose officials sometimes brought cases as complainants and at the same time arbitrated over them without giving the alleged offenders an opportunity to defend themselves.Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko, who used to chair the NDC, will take over chairmanship of the NDAC.Zanu-PF secretary for legal affairs Patrick Chinamasa becomes the NDC chair.Other members of the NDAC would be drawn from the Central Committee, which is the party's highest decision making body between Congresses.Zanu-PF Youth League secretary Pupurai Togarepi yesterday said with the new panel, Zanu-PF was headed for endless stability as party cadres would not be fired or suspended wantonly."It has always been the President's call for fairness in dealing with disciplinary issues," he said."The committee will obviously create checks and balances in dealing with disciplinary issues and appeals thereof. We applaud His Excellency for giving leadership to this important organ. It will create a sense of fair treatment among party cadres."It has emerged that since the establishment of the NDAC, about 30 Zanu-PF cadres have since lodged appeals with the party's secretary for administration, Dr Ignatius Chombo.The majority of the appeals want the new tribunal to forgive them for what they did while others are complaining that the penalties imposed on them were "too harsh".Zanu-PF Women's League national commissar Mabel Chinomona said: "We welcome and support this initiative because this shows that the party has democracy. If someone is not satisfied with the outcome of the NDC, he or she has a right to appeal and this constitutes democracy which we have always preached since the liberation struggle."Party members simply have to go to another stage or committee where they think their cases can be understood in a just manner, there is nothing wrong with that and this is a step in the right direction."Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association spokesperson Douglas Mahiya said the much desired solidity in Zanu-PF would be brought by the new arrangement."I am informed that the Vice President (Mphoko) is going to chair that committee and as war veterans we say this is a good move made by the President which will definitely bring peace and stability in the party," he said."As an association we are very grateful about that. All the same we would have wanted to see, among the Central Committee members, war veterans being involved as stockholders. Even other stockholder associations like the Zimbabwe Liberation War Collaborators Association should be involved because these are the groups that had raised eyebrows that there is something wrong in the party. This will ensure people, like what happened before, wont filter in their personal interests. To avoid a repeat or come up with an improved product this is a better move we are happy about."It is understood the majority of those who have appealed against their suspensions are those suspended for allegedly aligning themselves to sacked former Vice President Joice Mujuru and her cabal which sought to unseat President Mugabe.Among those said to have lodged appeals are former Politburo members, Cdes Webster Shamu and Nicholas Goche.The two have not joined Dr Mujuru, who has since formed a political party, Zimbabwe People First.Former secretary for Administration in the Women's League, Esphinah Nhari, who got a three-year suspension for chanting a slogan "Down with G40", has also lodged an appeal.The NDC was composed of VP Mphoko (chairperson), Cdes Chinamasa and Togarepi, national political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere and Women's League Secretary, Amai Grace Mugabe.
Who doesn't love a good caramel?

Soft, with just enough chew, sweet, buttery, roasty, perhaps a bit salty. And how do you pair such a confection with a beverage  say, a glass of wine? Or mug of beer? Or a cup of tea or coffee?

A few years back, Rebecca Scarberry, owner of Becky's Blissful Bakery in Pewaukee, turned to local wine expert Jessica Bell for answers to the first question. While Bell had paired wines before with chocolate, cheese, types of cuisine, even financial products (hedge funds call for a risky wine that might not age well), this was a first for her.

Naturally, caramels go well with sweet wines, Bell said. But as she sampled and sipped, she was surprised by how they could also pair nicely with some dry wines, particularly those that are "really fruity and low in tannins." Factors like the caramel's saltiness and intensity of flavor can "balance the sweetness" and allow drier wines to work, she said.

Here are Bell's pairing ideas. Example: With either of Becky's sea salt caramels (regular or dark chocolate), try Zinfandel, Garnacha, ruby port, tawny port, sherry or Sauternes.

The idea of pairing caramels came to Scarberry because, she said, "too many times late at night I was having cheese and wine and caramels for dinner."

But she didn't stop with wine. Beer, coffee, tea and even cheese pairings for her various caramels have all been secured. You'll find the suggestions on her packages, and eventually they'll join Bell's pairings on the website.

"Ultimately, I want to put together a complete pairing guide," Scarberry said.

For beer pairings she worked with Lakefront Brewery; for tea, Rishi Tea; coffee, Stone Creek Coffee; and cheese, an expert at Sunset Foods. She wants to expand the cheese pairings to showcase Wisconsin cheeses specifically.

A side goal of Scarberry's is to share the stories of these other local businesses, she said, particularly now that she has so many customers in other parts of the country.

A fair question

A few weeks ago I wrote about the 2016 culinary contests for the Wisconsin State Fair  including the new old-fashioned cocktail competition.

While that contest has generated plenty of interest, a new overarching rule might have been overlooked.

Last year, a local reader discovered that a winning fair recipe we published in the Food section had been taken straight from a blog on the internet. She questioned whether that was right  shouldn't recipes entered in contests like those at the fair have to be original?

Correspondence with Jill Albanese, the fair's competitive exhibits coordinator, ensued, and now the fair website clearly states: "All recipes must be original to the exhibitor entering them."

"This doesn't mean they have to start from scratch to create a recipe," Albanese explained by phone last week. "But we don't want them to just search the internet for a recipe  we want them to somehow make it theirs," whether that's through spices they use or ingredients they add or substitute.

While fair officials and judges will be on their guard (note: they do remember distinctive recipes, even from years past), Albanese admitted that entrants "are on the honor system" when it comes to rules like this.

Meanwhile, small Wisconsin businesses with less than $250,000 in annual sales have two new categories they can enter products in at this year's fair. Joining the 3-year-old Jammin' Jamboree category of the Grand Champion Eats & Treats Competition  with its jams, jellies, pickles and sauces/salsas  are Definitely Desserts and Snack Sensations.

"Desserts" includes chocolates and candies; sweets, confections and baked goods; and dessert sauces. "Snacks" includes salty foods (nuts, popcorn, crackers, etc.), non-salty foods (granola, trail mix, etc.) and condiments, mustards, dressings and dips.

In addition, up to 20 companies who enter will be selected to provide samples for fair guests on the day of judging, Aug. 11.

"Fairgoers love it," Albanese said. "Anytime there's free food...."

Entries in Eats & Treats are due July 21. The deadline for the regular culinary competitions is 7 p.m. June 8 for online entries and a postmark of June 8 for mailed-in entries.

Now, about that old-fashioned contest, which will be judged during the fair on Aug. 7: "We've had an awful lot of inquiries," Albanese said, "and an awful lot of people who want to be judges."

(Sorry to disappoint, but the judges have all been secured.)

Albanese has even been in communication with Milwaukee native Robert Simonson, a New York City-based writer on wine and spirits and author of the book "The Old Fashioned" (Ten Speed Press, 2014), about a possible appearance in conjunction with the old fashioned contest.

Stay tuned for a final tally of old-fashioned entries closer to the deadline.

Old-fashioned mix

Speaking of Wisconsin's favorite cocktail, an 81-year-old supper club in Plover, near Stevens Point, is about to introduce an old-fashioned mix for retail sale.

While not the first supper club to do so  in 2014, The Meyers Brothers old-fashioned mix, based on a recipe from the former Meyer's Supper Club in St. Nazianz, was introduced  the Sky Club has a colorful history, dating back to 1935 and including a claim to be home of the very first salad bar, a custom piece of equipment built and installed by a Stevens Point manufacturer around 1950.

The Sky Club old-fashioned mix is based on a recipe of the club's longtime bartender, the late Jerry "Shifty" Hafner, a Bartender Hall of Famer whose photo appears on the label.

The mix is a classic blend of water, sugar and angostura bitters, said Eric Freund, co-owner of Sky Club with brother Patrick, adding: "It's all in the proportions."

To make a cocktail, the label says to blend  ounce of the mix with 1  ounces of brandy, whiskey, amaretto "or your favorite spirit" and 4 ounces of sweet or sour soda. But the variations, from there, are endless, Eric Freund said.

The Freunds hope to have their product available to retailers shortly.
A timely class May 31 at the Karen Yontz Women's Cardiac Awareness Center on the south side, as more people begin heading outdoors to parks with their tents and campers, will demonstrate several healthier recipes for cooking around the campfire.

Staci Joers will lead the class, sharing recipes for campfire pizzas, quesadillas with roasted vegetables and stuffed apples for dessert.

The class, which is $12, meets from 6:30 to 8 p.m. To register, call (414) 649-5767.

The Yontz center is in Aurora St. Luke's Medical Center, 2900 W. Oklahoma Ave.

Know of an upcoming event centered on dining, cooking or spirits? Email cdeptolla@journalsentinel.com.
Cara Mangini's grandfather and great-grandfather were traditional butchers. She's taken a slightly different path, carving out a career as a "vegetable butcher."

Her passion for produce has taken the California native from New York to Napa Valley to Columbus, Ohio, all in her quest for delicious vegetables.

Mangini studied journalism at Northwestern University and moved to New York, where she found herself veering into the food and restaurant world. Working as a vegetable butcher at Eataly, prepping and teaching people about vegetables only increased her desire to educate others.

Pursuing her interest, she studied at the Natural Gourmet Institute. She met her husband, Tom, and moved to Columbus, where she opened her own produce-inspired restaurant, Little Eater, along with her shop, Little Eater Produce and Provisions (littleeater.com).

Taking the mind-set and skills of a traditional butcher, Mangini approaches vegetables with creativity and simplicity to make them the star of every meal. She features more than 150 recipes in her "root-to-leaf" cookbook, "The Vegetable Butcher: How to Select, Prep, Slice, Dice and Masterfully Cook Vegetables from Artichokes to Zucchini" (Workman, $29.95). It arrives in stores this month.

Q.What is your goal with this book?

A. My hope is people can use this book as a guide and resource to go to the supermarket or farmers market or sign up for a CSA and feel confident they'll be able to cook with any vegetable and be inspired to cook and eat vegetables every day.

Q.You worked as a vegetable butcher at Eataly. What does that mean? What did the experience teach you about shoppers?

A. Eataly has a person dedicated to breaking down and preparing vegetables for people to take home. The vegetable butcher might show you how to do it yourself, or do it for you to eliminate prep when you get home. The hope would be there are vegetable butchers all over. Just like cheesemongers, fish suppliers or a meat butcher, there is someone who specializes in vegetables and can help and offer advice.

I already knew my focus was vegetables, that I wanted to share my knowledge and make cooking with vegetables more approachable. Coming from a family of butchers, it was already in my blood to teach and specialize in one area.

Many people didn't know the basics when it came to vegetables. They were really amazed by vegetable preparations and knife skills. Perhaps we might benefit from more vegetable education.

Q.What was the starting point for working on this cookbook?

A. I taught a lot of classes. I started with the common questions, starting with what kind of knife and cutting board, and what cuts make a vegetable shine.

There are an infinite number of ways you can approach each vegetable, so I had to pick the things I would think would be most useful for our busy lives and the best way to bring vegetables into our kitchen with ease. I tried to use the most common and useful cuts.

Q.You begin with knife selection. What should we aim to have?

A. The most important thing is to have a good-quality chef's knife. I think a good-quality 8-inch knife is important. ... The big knife blocks that are sold make you think you need all those knives. Some might be nice to have, but they are not essential. I think they may actually be confusing when it comes to vegetables.

Q.Are you vegetarian?

A. I tend to avoid answering this question. By definition I am not a vegetarian. I am open to eating fish on occasion, and I try to keep my mind open to eating meat. I don't want to limit myself.

I do mostly eat vegetables. I do believe vegetables can shine in the center of the plate. I'm from San Francisco, so around Thanksgiving I'll have crab. But for me, I truly enjoy vegetables; they're satisfying, delicious and exciting.

I don't use the word vegetarian. I think I hope it becomes an outdated term. Inherent in that word or connotation is there is some sacrifice or excluding something else. I choose to eat vegetables.

The core of what I do is supporting the health of our community. If we just eat real good food, we don't have to put labels on it. Sometimes those labels can scare people away from the table and the conversation.

Q.Why are some people put off by certain vegetables?

A. I think we all have this with any food, just a bad memory association. If we have something as a child, prepared in a way that was not right, it sticks with us. It is hard to get back on track with that food.

I have bad memories of steamed zucchini and frozen carrots that were mushy. Most people have things, like beets. They had canned beets or they had some as a child that they did not enjoy.

Eggplant is one I hear a lot about. There aren't a lot of people who know how to prepare it. There is a bitterness factor when you don't eat fresh eggplant and that can turn people off, too.

Okra is one that the slime can turn people off. For people who are not used to that thickening or slimy factor, dry cooking methods are best, like roasting or grilling it. Then it becomes like candy.

There's a recipe in the book for grilled okra with smoked paprika and lime. It is a great way to eat okra. Anybody who says they don't like okra, I challenge them to try it grilled and see what they think.

Q.Do you have a favorite recipe?

A. I had to cut 100 recipes from the book! Now the 150 that are left, I would feel so bad choosing one over another.

I definitely have go-tos within each season. In the spring, I absolutely love the artichoke torta based on my grandmother's recipe. In winter, there is a specific time of the year in a snowstorm when celery root potpie is the thing to bring you to life.

Q.What are some unique or unexpected ways that we might use vegetables? What do you want people to think about?

A. First, we have a real challenge with food waste all over.

Also, (think about) fresh vegetables because we've geared our budgets to convenience foods that don't cost as much as fresh foods, we want to get our money's worth.

Don't be afraid of ugly or misshapen vegetables. Real vegetables that come out of the ground come in all shapes and sizes. They're not necessarily the shape or size you see in the grocery store. They're still perfectly fine to eat and enjoy.

There are so many parts of the vegetable that can be used. You want to get your money's worth. Broccoli for example, you want to use that stalk. With celery, the leaves are delicious and can be used like an herb. They're packed with celery flavor and make a wonderful garnish or add to soups.

Same with kohlrabi, the leaves you can use like kale. You can steam them like spinach or collards. Those are things we regularly discard. Same with beet greens, they're delicious and they're sweet like Swiss chard.
Jim Finnerty used his award-winning art as therapy for the post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered from after serving in Vietnam. Credit: Journal Sentinel files

The day I met Jim Finnerty to see his artwork and talk about his struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder from serving in Vietnam, he referred to his eventual death in a playful choice of words.

"With PTSD," he said, "you can recover from it, but you can never get cured. It's with you until you tip over."

Sadly, Jim reached that tipping point on Friday, three years after being diagnosed with cancer. He was 68.

The other thing I remember about my encounter with Jim at his Glendale home in 2010 was that he was overcome with emotion as we looked at his abstract painting interpreting the Tet Offensive by the Viet Cong in 1968. As he tried to tell me about more than 20 of his fellow MPs who died, he had to walk away from his own painting.

For me, this was a newspaper article to write. For him, it was yet another return in his mind to the darkest days of America's war in Southeast Asia. Part of his job was to investigate gruesome accidents in which Vietnamese adults and children were killed in run-ins with American military vehicles. Someone had to do this terrible task, but it left a mark on his soul.

Let me interrupt this sad recollection and tell you something fun about Jim, who for many years ran a graphic art business called Designcor. He designed the mascot for Irish Fest, the bearded leprechaun named Paddy McFest.

"You could call him Paddy's daddy," said Ed Ward, founder of the annual lakefront festival. Other than a pipe that was removed from Paddy's mouth at one point, the image hasn't changed in 36 years.

Jim's sons, Ryan and Jay, said their father was proud of creating Paddy and was quick to tell people about it.

He was also proud of being able to help others with post-traumatic stress disorder while involved in counseling and group therapy at the Milwaukee VA after his own formal diagnosis with the disorder in 2008.

"His paintings, he did it for enjoyment but also as a coping mechanism for PTSD," Jay said.

Even though it came decades after the war, treatment combined with colorful artistic expression helped his father, Jay said. "He was more calm, more relaxed. Before that, there was always a sense of an edge, maybe a sense of urgency for something."

Not every painting was done to exorcise demons. "He was actually working on a piece for my mom and their 45th wedding anniversary, which was on Easter Sunday. We still have that sitting on the easel in the basement," Ryan said.

You don't expect people to describe someone with post-traumatic stress disorder as, in Ryan's words, the life of the party. But Jim had a joking personality and a flair for the off-color quip, at least when he was with his friend Frank Sadler, owner of Sadler Gallery in the Third Ward.

Frank helped Jim sell his work and featured him in shows. Jim's acrylic on canvas paintings won regional and national awards in the Veterans Creative Arts Festival.

"He was painting even if he wasn't selling. It wasn't a hobby. It was something he had to do. It was therapy for him and he was very prolific," Frank said.

Jim, a graduate of the Layton School of Art, talked little about his war experiences to his friend. His art did that for him.

"I think his painting was always stemming from his Vietnam experience. But it was never a thing you thought was weighing him down," Frank said.

A funeral Mass is set for 12:30 p.m. Thursday at Holy Rosary Catholic Church, 2011 N. Oakland Ave., in the east side neighborhood where Jim grew up. Visitation at the church that day is from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Jim also is survived by his wife Mary, daughter Katie McKee and three grandchildren.

Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at jstingl@jrn.com. Connect with my public page at Facebook.com/Journalism.Jim.Stingl
A new study indicates that irrigation may be having a significant impact on water levels in the Little Plover River near Stevens point. Credit: Jim Gifford

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A recent study by the state Department of Natural Resources on use of groundwater near the Little Plover River in central Wisconsin points to three needs: Farmers and the agriculture industry should pay attention to the science and adjust their irrigation methods; more study is needed of similar groundwater issues around the state; the Legislature needs to consider closer regulation of groundwater.

The study by the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey and the U.S. Geological Survey indicates that farming may have a significant impact on the Little Plover, which was designated by the conservation group American Rivers a few years ago as one of the most endangered rivers in the country.

George Kraft, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, and others have argued that the deep wells used in irrigating crops such as potatoes and vegetables suck up groundwater feeding rivers such as the Little Plover, a Class 1 trout stream. In 2005 and 2009, stretches of the river ran dry. Wisconsin is the No. 3 producer of potatoes in the country, and much of that crop is grown near Stevens Point.

The agriculture industry has argued the concerns are overblown and that other factors have been overlooked, including drought and urbanization. No doubt, the industry has a point; other factors do play a role.

But the study's conclusions, outlined in a recent Journal Sentinel article, are compelling:

The ecology of the river is closely linked to groundwater, making the Little Plover vulnerable to groundwater pumping.

About 80% of all of the water used in the river basin comes from irrigation.

Not only do wells matter to the health of the river, but their location is critical. For example, removing about 15 wells closest to the river would substantially increase water flow in the Little Plover in an average year.

As the water table drops, the top few feet used by streams and lakes are depleted, but farmers' wells still may have plenty of water.

The DNR has been under growing pressure from environmentalists and property owners in the Central Sands, where residents see a correlation between shrinking lakes and rivers and the number of pumps spraying long arcs of water on the landscape.

Industry official Tamas Houlihan told reporter Lee Bergquist that the Little Plover looks healthy today and that growers are already trying to conserve water through crop selection and more efficient equipment. But officials said water flows frequently fall below the minimum levels set by the Department of Natural Resources.

As one environmentalist put it last week, the Little Plover River is a "classic example of a water body that is dying a death of a thousand straws." The DNR needs to determine what is happening in other parts of Wisconsin and is hopeful that the model it developed for the Plover River study can be used elsewhere.

In the meantime, the industry and the Legislature need to look at what they can do. As state Sen. Julie Lassa (D-Stevens Point) put it, "It's easy to point fingers. We need to get people to the table to come up with solutions that meet everyone's needs."

Lassa is right. It's time all the parties involved started working on solutions before all those straws suck Wisconsin rivers dry.
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As a feminist, one reason I chose Islam as a religion is because true Islam teaches gender equity and empowerment of women.

Before I converted to Islam, I, like many Americans, believed Islam was a religion that degraded women. News stories of child brides, honor killings and punishment for rape victims make it easy to interpret Islam's treatment of women as terrible if we solely rely on these monstrous anecdotes. Our newsfeeds are filled with stories about extremists who treat women as less than human, leaving room for critics such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali to state that Islam is "especially bigoted against women."

In my path toward Islam, I discovered that if all Muslim men actually practiced what Prophet Muhammad taught, they would be gentle, kind and equitable toward women. Instead, extremists are the brutes who lead to the question recently featured in The New York Times: "What is the Future of Women in Islam?"

Based on my experience, the answer is best left to the women of Islam  not the critics.

Not until I interacted directly with Muslim women did I find genuine understanding of the extent to which Islam empowers women to be educated, productive members of society. I attended an all-women's event in a mosque, where I participated in women-led workshops and seminars on Islamic knowledge.

I was impressed with the scholarly knowledge of the women but was even more surprised by the Muslim men at the event. I was struck to learn that there were dozens of men in the kitchen cooking for the hundreds of women. Since then, I've seen how Muslim men in my community extend themselves for the comfort of Muslim women, whom they respect. This is far from the Islam you see in the news.

Hirsi Ali, an activist of Somali origin and the author of "Infidel" and other books, has made the blanket statement: "I embrace Muslims. I reject everything that is Islamic law."

This is offensive to Muslims, considering her encounter of Islam was based on what she has learned from extremists, not authentic Islamic practice. If she or anyone wants to embrace Muslims sincerely, I invite them to come to my mosque, not denigrate someone's choice of faith. My community recently held a day dedicated to "Muhammad's treatment of women." Men and women who take the time to educate themselves on Islamic teachings will find countless examples of respect for mothers, wives and daughters.

Yet many still believe somehow that Muslim men have "ownership" over Muslim women. For many, this ownership is evidenced by the hijab, a veil that covers the head and chest, which is presumed to be oppressive. As I embraced Islam, I was free to choose my attire and in doing so found the hijab to be one of the most feminist characteristics of Islam. My hijab is a statement  I do not want to be valued for my body or my beauty, but for my intellect and talent.

From my experience, the solution for the future of Muslim women is education and dialogue. One such educational effort is the True Islam campaign. The campaign highlights that True Islam advocates empowerment, education and equity for women.

The crux of the problem is not Islam but extremists who distort the truth for personal gain and subject women to undeniable oppression and cruelty. While it is evident that these severe practices have nothing to do with Islam, it is important that we stand together against extremism  not the religion  to support Muslim women. Education and solidarity will lead to a better future for Muslim women and indeed for all humanity.

Samantha Issam is a social media coordinator for Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA. She lives in Greenfield. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Gov. Scott Walker and former Gov. Tommy Thompson will represent Wisconsin at this summers Republican National Convention. Credit: Associated Press / TNS

By of the

Gov. Scott Walker, first lady Tonette Walker and former Gov. Tommy Thompson are among the 18 at-large delegates who will represent Wisconsin at this summer's Republican National Convention.

The list of delegates set to attend the 2016 convention in Cleveland was released Tuesday by the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

State party rules require all 18 of the delegates to vote for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in the first round because he won Wisconsin's April 5 presidential primary. They can switch to another candidate if they are released by Cruz or if he fails to get one-third of the overall vote.

Walker, who dropped out of the presidential race in September after a brief bid, endorsed Cruz shortly before the state's primary. He has said he would back the eventual GOP nominee.

Thompson has endorsed Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

National GOP front-runner Donald Trump finished second in the Wisconsin primary and Kasich finished third.

"Wisconsin Republicans are unified, engaged and excited to put a real leader in the White House in 2016," state party chairman Brad Courtney said in a statement. "Any one of our candidates will present a clear alternative to scandal-ridden Hillary Clinton and the Washington status-quo she has spent years fighting to protect."

The other at-large delegates are: Courtney; RNC national committee members Steve King and Mary Buestrin; Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch; Attorney General Brad Schimel; Tom Schreibel, a longtime former aide to U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner; Bill Johnson, the state GOP's finance chairman; Mike Jones, the state GOP's treasurer; Kim Bliss, the director of community development at Hendricks Holding Co.; state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos; Michael Grebe, CEO and president of the Bradley Foundation and former chairman of Walker's presidential campaign; state Sen. Duey Stroebel; state Rep. Dean Knudson; Charlotte Rasmussen, president of the Wisconsin Federation of Republican Women; and Candee Arndt.

The state's other 24 delegates were chosen by caucuses in each of the state's eight congressional districts. Trump, who won in two districts, picked up three delegates in each for a total of six. The other 18 congressional district delegates went to Cruz.
Packers defense has no margin for error because rest of team is awful

Certainly the Green Bay defense had lapses at inopportune times, but the loss at Washington can't be placed on Joe Barry's unit.
By Ana Kasparian, John Iadarola, Jimmy Dore | (The Young Turks Video Report) |  

Ted Cruz and John Kasich are doing their best to stop Donald Trump from winning the Republican nomination. One strategy that they came up with is to divvy up the remaining states, essentially telling voters to choose their new tag-team partner if they live in certain states. Ana Kasparian, John Iadarola (ThinkTank), and Jimmy Dore, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

It looked good on paper, but Sen. Ted Cruzs (R-TX) and Ohio Gov. John Kasichs fresh effort to unite Republican voters against frontrunner Donald Trump showed signs of splintering less than 24 hours after their alliance was first announced.

Cruzs and Kasichs campaigns announced Sunday that they were joining forces in an effort to block Trump from securing the GOP nomination, with each candidate focusing on states he views his best chances for victory: Cruz in Indiana and Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico.

The announcement was met with a sigh of finally from anti-Trump forces. For his part, the billionaire, quickly condemned the highly-publicized partnership as collusion.

Cruz trumpeted the newly-forged alliance on conservative talk radio, saying it was very significant Kasich is pulling out of Indiana. He also characterized the move as a simple shift in the allocation of resources, which he said made sense for both campaigns.

But speaking with reporters Monday, Kasich didnt seem to have gotten the memo. He said he hadnt told his supporters in Indiana to cast their ballots strategically.
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By Carl Bildt | (Project Syndicate) |  

STOCKHOLM  Muscular language has become increasingly prevalent in the debate about how to counter the threat of jihadist terrorism. Television talk-show hosts speculate about when control of Raqqa in Syria or Mosul in Iraq might be wrested from the Islamic State (ISIS), implying that these cities liberation will mark, at the very least, the beginning of the end of the problem. And in December, Ted Cruz, a Republican contender in the US presidential race, went so far as to raise the specter of nuclear strikes: I dont know if sand can glow in the dark, but were going to find out, he said.

Such simplistic sound bites understate the severity of the challenge. As the International Crisis Group highlights in a recent report, the jihadist threat we are facing is the fourth in a series of increasingly perilous waves. If we are to avoid creating an even more powerful fifth wave, it is imperative that we learn from the mistakes we made in seeking to counter the previous three.

The first jihadist wave occurred when volunteer fighters from the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan returned home and started attacking regimes they considered un-Islamic. This led to the second, far more deadly jihadist wave, as Al Qaeda launched spectacular attacks against the far enemy, seeking to draw Western powers into violent confrontation and outright war. The attacks on the United States, on September 11, 2001, marked the crest of this wave.

The global counterterrorist offensive that followed largely succeeded in eliminating Al Qaedas ability to launch large-scale attacks. But the 2003 invasion of Iraq created the conditions for the third wave, triggering a vicious sectarian war between Sunni and Shia that allowed Al Qaeda to exploit the chaos of an increasingly fragmented state.

Eventually, the so-called Sunni Awakening broke the back of Al Qaedas efforts in Iraq, and the 2011 Arab Spring redirected the regions political development. But the failure to build an inclusive government in Iraq, together with the violent repression of protesters in Syria, offered battle-hardened jihadist leaders an opening to initiate the fourth wave.

This wave is by far the most dangerous. Tens of thousands of recruits have joined the effort to build a caliphate in the Fertile Crescent. Meanwhile, ISIS has expanded into numerous other crisis zones and recruited or inspired terrorists within Western societies, as demonstrated by the attacks in Paris, Brussels, and San Bernardino.

Countering this threat will require a vigorous ideological battle against the forces of intolerance and hatred, building on Islams history of openness and tolerance. But ideological struggle, on its own, will not be enough.

We must also recognize the true origins of the jihadist threat: the conflicts and state failures ranging from West Africa across the wider Middle East to South Asia. It was not jihadism that created todays crises. On the contrary, bad governance and state failure provided jihadism with the opportunity to flourish.

Addressing these root causes will be a daunting, decades-long task. Much of the region entered the twenty-first century in a deplorable state; and in most places, things have only gotten worse. Trying to meet the jihadist challenge with repression, as Egypt is doing today, risks exacerbating the problem. And incarcerating Islamists often means providing them with an ideal environment for recruitment, indoctrination, and training. Instead, openings must be created for democratic Islamic political forces to operate.

Despite the scale of the challenge, the West lacks a clear policy on what to press for and how to obtain it. Clearly, military force must be used. But retaking Raqqa or Mosul is only the easiest of the tasks facing us. How many times have Western forces retaken Afghanistans Helmand province or Anbar province in Iraq, and with what result?

Far more difficult  and far more important  will be ensuring that legitimate structures of inclusive governance are set up in the places from which ISIS is driven out. These must address feelings of persecution among Sunni Arabs as well as the victimization of large segments of the population that has fostered rage across the region.

Carl Bildt was Swedens foreign minister from 2006 to October 2014 and Prime Minister from 1991 to 1994, when he negotiated Swedens EU accession. A renowned international diplomat, he served as EU Special Envoy to the Former Yugoslavia, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, UN Special Envoy to the Balkans, and Co-Chairman of the Dayton Peace Conference. He is Chair of the Global Commission on Internet Governance and a member of the World Economic Forums Global Agenda Council on Europe.

Licensed from Project Syndicate



Related video added by Juan Cole:

CCTV Africa: Geneva extremism conference: Leaders gather to discuss ways to combat violent extremism
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Maan News Agency |  

BETHLEHEM (Maan)  More than 80 percent of American senators signed a letter addressed to US President Barack Obama urging him to reach an agreement on an increased military aid package to Israel.

In light of Israels dramatically rising defense challenges, we stand ready to support a substantially enhanced new long-term agreement to help provide Israel the resources it requires to defend itself and preserve its qualitative military edge, news agency Reuters quoted the letter as saying.

A reported 83 of the 100 Senators in US Congress signed the letter, including aspiring Republican presidential nominee Ted Cruz, but excluding Senator Bernie Sanders, who is running in the Democratic presidential primaries.

Discussions regarding a new aid agreement have been ongoing for the past several months.

Israel reportedly requested at least $5 billion in annual military aid from the US that would be fixed for the ten years to follow, far surpassing the $3 billion per year currently received by Israel through a military aid agreement set to end by 2018.

After the terms of the agreement became unclear in February, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a cabinet meeting that he would wait for the next US president to sign a deal, if the current administration was unable to meet Israels security needs.

Earlier this month, Netanyahu reportedly backtracked, telling Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who led the letter, that he would prefer to have a deal signed before Obama leaves office.

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the United States government has offered up two possible ten-year military aid packages for when the current one expires: one which would increase the total amount of aid given between 2018 and 2028 to $40 billion, on the condition that Israel not lobby the US Congress for more money during that time period; and another in which the US commits to giving $34 billion over ten years, but without the aforementioned lobbying restrictions.

The Israeli government has reportedly been unhappy with both options, despite them representing a $4 to $6 billion increase from the previous ten-year deal.

While US-Israel relations have seen a series of diplomatic disputes during Obamas administration, Israel remains the number one long-time recipient of US military aid, and US representatives have largely neglected efforts to hold Israel accountable for violations of Palestinian rights and international law.

More than 90 percent of the United States House of Representatives signed earlier this month letter urging Obama to veto any resolution at the United Nations that sets parameters for Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Via Maan News Agency



Related video added by Juan Cole:

CCTV from last Fall:  Israel seeks more military assistance from US 
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, 30, the deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia laid out his vision for Saudi Arabia on Monday in a plan called Vision 2030. He wants to get Saudi Arabia off its oil dependence in only 4 years, by 2020, and wants to diversify the economy into manufacturing and mining.

In an interview with Alarabiya, the prince said the future of the kingdom would be based on

1. Its possession of the Muslim shrine cities of Mecca and Medina and the Arab and Muslim depth that position gave the kingdom

2. The kingdoms geographical centrality to world commerce, with 30% of global trade passing through the 3 major sea routes that Saudi Arabia bestrides (not sure what the third is, after the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf).

3. The creation of a $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund through a sale of 5% of shares in Aramco, the worlds largest oil company.

Prince Muhammad said Monday that he thought these assets would allow the kingdom to cease its dependence on petroleum in the very near future.

CNBC summarized other planks of his platform this way:

The planned economic diversification also involved localizing renewable energy and industrial equipment sectors and creating high-quality tourism attractions. It also plans to make it easier to apply for visas and hoped to create 90,000 job opportunities in its mining sector.

Saudi Arabias citizen population is probably only about 20 million, so it is a small country without a big domestic market. It is surrounded in the general region by huge countries like Egypt (pop. 85 million), Iran (pop. 75 mn.) and Turkey (75 mn.), not to mention Ethiopia (pop. 90 mn.) Without petroleum, it is difficult to see what would be distinctive about Saudi Arabia economically.

The excruciatingly young prince, who was born in 1985, has a BA in Law from a local Saudi university and his way of speaking about the elements of the economy is not reassuring. Take his emphasis on the maritime trade routes that flow around the Arabian Peninsula. How exactly does Saudi Arabia derive a dime from them? The only tolls I can think of are collected by Egypt for passage through the Suez Canal. By far the most important container port in the region is Jebel Ali in the UAE, which dwarfs Jedda. His estimate of 30% of world trade going through these bodies of water strikes me as exaggerated. Only about 10% of world trade goes through the Suez Canal.

As for tourism in a country where alcohol is forbidden and religious police report to the police unmarried couples on dates, that seems to me a non-starter outside the religious tourism of pilgrimage to Mecca. The annual pilgrimage brought in $16.5 bn or 3% of the Saudi GDP four years ago, but that number appears to be way down the last couple of years. Unless the prince plans to much increase the 2-3 million pilgrims annually, religious tourism will remain a relatively small part of the economy.

He also spoke about the new bridge planned from Saudi Arabia to Egypt as likely to drive trade to the kingdom and to make it a crossroads. But the road would go through the Sinai Peninsula, which is highly insecure and in the midst of an insurrection. And where do you drive to on the other side? You could maybe take fruits and vegetables by truck from Egypt to countries such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Would Saudi Arabia collect tariffs on these transit goods? I cant see how that generates all that much money. The big opportunity for overland transport would be to link Egypt to a major market like Iran (pop. 77 mn.), and via Iran, Pakistan and India. But Prince Muhammad and his circle are hardliners against Iran and unlikely to foster trade with it.

Saudi Arabia suffers from the Dutch disease, i.e. its currency is artificially hardened by its valuable petroleum assets. They may eventually not be worth anything if hydrocarbons are replaced by green energy or even outlawed. But in 2016, they are still valuable, and they make the riyal expensive versus other currencies. The result is that anything made in Saudi Arabia would be unaffordably expensive in India (the rupee is still a soft currency). As long as Saudi Arabia produces so much petroleum, it is unclear how it can industrialize in the sense of making secondary goods.

As for the sovereign wealth fund, lets say the ARAMCO partial IPO actually realizes $2 trillion. Lets say it gets 5% on its investments after overhead and that all $2 trillion are invested around the world. That would be $100 billion a year, or 1/6 of Saudi Arabias GDP last year. It doesnt replace the oil.

Saudi Arabias Gross Domestic Product in 2014 was $746 bn., of which probably 70% was petroleum sales. In 2015 it was only $653 bn., causing it to fall behind Turkey, the Netherlands and Switzerland. It will be smaller yet in 2016 because of the continued low oil prices.

All this is not to reckon with the profligate spending in which the kingdom is engaged, with a direct war in Yemen and a proxy war in Syria, neither cheap. (Both wars are pet projects of Prince Muhammad bin Salman). It also has a lot of big weapons purchases in the pipeline, one of the reasons for President Obamas humiliating visit last week. It ran a $100 bn. budget deficit in 2015. Saudi Arabia has big currency reserves, but I doubt it can go on like this more than five or six years.

Yemen in particular has proved to be a quagmire, and the Houthi rebels still hold the capital of Sanaa. The only new initiative is that Saudi and local forces have kicked al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula out of the port of Mukalla. This campaign shows a sudden interest in defeating al-Qaeda, which had been allowed to grow in Yemen while the main target was the Shiite Houthis, which Riyadh says are allied with Iran (the links seem minor).

So it seems to me that the Vision for 2030 is mostly smoke and mirrors. As the electric car and better public transport replace gasoline-driven automobiles and trucks, the demand for petroleum will collapse over the next 20 years. A really big extreme global warming event, like a glacier plopping into the ocean and suddenly raising sea level by a foot, e.g., would spread panic and accelerate the abandonment of oil. Saudi Arabia probably cannot replace the money it will lose if oil goes out of style and so is doomed to downward mobility and very possibly significant instability. It has been a great party since the 1940s; it is going to be a hell of a hangover.



Related video:

CCTV: Saudi government plans restructure of economy, government
TORONTO, April 25, 2016 /CNW/ - AuRico Metals Inc. (TSX: AMI) ("AuRico" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Environmental Assessment Certificate application (the "Application") for its Kemess Underground Project has been screened and formally accepted for detailed review by the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office ("BC EAO"). AuRico is making revisions and reformatting the Application to integrate the clarifications and additional information provided by AuRico during the screening period. The BC EAO will initiate the 180-day review once AuRico has submitted the revised Application - expected to be in approximately two weeks. The BC EAO is managing the environmental assessment in a Substituted Process on behalf of British Columbia and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

About AuRico Metals

AuRico Metals is a mining royalty and development company whose producing gold royalty assets include a 1.5% NSR royalty on the Young-Davidson Gold Mine, a 0.25% NSR royalty on the Williams Mine at Hemlo, and a 0.5% NSR royalty on the Eagle River Mine - all located in Ontario, Canada. AuRico Metals also has a 2% NSR royalty on the Fosterville Mine and a 1% NSR royalty on the Stawell Mine, located in Victoria, Australia. Aside from its diversified royalty portfolio, AuRico owns (100%) the advanced Kemess Gold-Copper Project in British Columbia, Canada. AuRico Metals' head office is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Cautionary Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information as defined under Canadian and U.S. securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are, or may be deemed to be, forward-looking statements. The words "expect", "believe", "anticipate", "will", "intend", "estimate", "forecast", "budget" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements related to the Company's outlook and key deliverables on Kemess over the next 12 months. These statements are based on a number of factors and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by management at the time of making such statements, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Known and unknown factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements and the factors and assumptions underlying them in this document include the timing of the government decision in response to the Company's environmental assessment application.

Actual results and developments are likely to differ, and may differ materially, from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained herein. Such statements are based on a number of assumptions which may prove to be incorrect, including assumptions about: the timing and ability to obtain provincial and federal approval of the environmental assessment application, the number of comments or questions raised by partners or the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office, and additional studies required in order to address concerns raised and the results of those studies. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

Readers are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

SOURCE AuRico Metals
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News / National

by Staff reporter

FORMER Zanu-PF legislator Temba Mliswa and members of his newly-formed pressure group Youth Advocacy for Reform and Democracy (Yard) have been invited for the launch of South Africa's opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)'s local government election manifesto on Saturday.Part of the invitation letter signed by one Matsepo Khumalo from EFF leader Julius Malema's office read: "The Economic Freedom Fighters invites you to join us and the masses of our supporters as we celebrate the launch of the 2016 Local Government Elections Manifesto revolutionary economic emancipation movement."In the invitation letter, Khumalo described EFF as a radical and militant economic emancipation movement that brings together revolutionary, fearless, radical, and militant activists, workers' movements, non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations and lobby groups under the umbrella of pursuing the struggle for economic emancipation.He said they valued international solidarity with other like-minded organisations."The EFF understands that its political programmes and vision are connected to the struggles of all oppressed, underprivileged and exploited people of the world. We value sound international solidarity and relations whose aim is about collective upliftment and development of all people in the world," he said.Mliswa yesterday said he was elated to be invited, adding they had hired a bus to carry Yard members to the event."This is very significant to us as Yard. Quite clearly, EFF stands for what the youths under Yard are trying to bring in terms of being in the elective offices such as councillors and MPs," he said."EFF has been doing some commendable work in South Africa, such as making every leader accountable to the people, particularly President (Jacob Zuma). That would have not happened if there were no younger people pushing for that."Zimbabwean youths must be practical and this is the lesson I hope they will learn from EFF. That party is now the voice of the voiceless and most of our youths suffered intimidation, fear and lack of confidence in achieving elective offices."Zuma was recently shamed after the South African ConCourt ruled that he had failed to uphold the Constitution when he ignored a State order to personally pay the costs for the construction of part of the upgrade such as the visitor's centre amphitheater cattle kraal chicken run and swimming pool at his Nkandla residence.
Hershey has snapped up Ripple Brand Collective, the US firm behind the BarkThins snack brand.

Ripple Brand Collective, based in Congers in New York state, was set up in 2013. The companys annual net sales are expected to be between US$65m in US$75m in 2016, Hershey said. The BarkThins brand is largely sold in the US in take-home resealable packages and is available in the club channel as well as select natural and conventional grocers, the confectionery giant added in a statement. No financial details on the deal were disclosed.

The deal sees Hershey again turn to M&A to broaden its portfolio in the US by acquiring a smaller, faster-growing company that has tapped into evolving consumer trends in the country. Last year, Hershey bought US jerky firm Krave Pure Foods.

Hershey also announced first-quarter results today (26 April) that included a 4.4% year-on-year fall in net sales on a constant-currency basis. The company pointed to a shorter Easter season and lower sales in China. Hershey also cut its 2016 forecasts for underlying sales and earnings per share.

Michele Buck, the president of Hersheys business in North America, claimed the BarkThins brand had essentially created a new form of chocolate snacking.

Buck said: This acquisition is a great addition to our Hershey chocolate portfolio and enables us to expand our mass premium offerings into this growing and on-trend category. BarkThins has quickly become a favourite snack brand due to its commitment to using simple ingredients, fair trade cocoa, non-GMO certification, and no artificial flavours or preservatives. BarkThins addresses key consumer trends, such as premium, high-quality ingredients and snacking.

Scott Semel, founder and CEO of Ripple Brand Collective, said the sale to Hershey would herald the next phase of accelerated growth for the business. He added: Our unique proposition, brand equity, and outstanding team give us confidence that there is tremendous upside for BarkThins with a confectionery leader like Hershey.

The sale of smaller companies can often attract concern from consumers anxious about the prospects for the brands under the ownership of major consumer packaged goods companies. A statement announcing the deal on the BarkThins Facebook page read: Were honoured and excited to be a part of the Hershey family. The commitment to our core brand values will never waiver, and with this partnership, will only strengthen. ?#snackingelevated?.
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News / National

by Staff reporter

SELF-styled Kwekwe political activist Nkosilathi Emmanuel Moyo has reportedly fled the country as State security agents hounded him over his prison garb birthday present to President Robert Mugabe early this year.Moyo told NewsDay he had fled the country for his safety."I am writing all this in exile after fleeing the country since President Robert Mugabe's gestapo, known as the CIO, are hunting for me and baying for my head. I have now been reduced to a fugitive, but my only crime was to exercise my right to freedom of expression as enshrined in the Constitution of Zimbabwe," Moyo said yesterday."I sent President Mugabe a prison uniform marked Crimes Against Humanity as a birthday present when he turned 92 this year. From that day I have been subjected to death threats through anonymous calls and frequent visits by a group of men in suits driving a twin cab without number plates who were hunting for me from both my home and my office."Moyo described the just-ended Independence Day celebrations as a farce, saying the country's fallen heroes must be turning in their graves because what they genuinely fought for had been hijacked by selfish politicians who were plundering the country's resources to line their pockets."It hurts to see that Zimbabwe is now more of a 'Robert Mugabe Private Limited', and to add salt to injury, the dictator is even grooming his own brutal wife, Grace, to take over from him and carry on with the Mugabe legacy, the legacy of oppressing the people and destroying the economy," he said.Moyo urged Zimbabweans to stand up against Mugabe, but in a peaceful manner.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Botswana has expressed interest in increasing bilateral trade with Zimbabwe despite policy differences between the two southern African countries.This comes as Botswana has in the past strongly differed with its neighbour over President Robert Mugabe's iron rule that has stifled democracy.However these differences the BITC said it was mapping various ways including participating at business shows to improve trade between the two countries, which averages $150 million yearly.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Chris Mbanga newly-appointed Harare acting mayor yesterday chickened out and called off a full council meeting he had arranged after his party, the MDC-T, threatened to recall him for insubordination.The MDC-T, which has the majority councillors at Harare's Town House, has refused to recognize Mbanga's recent appointment as acting mayor by Local Government minister Saviour Kasukuwere.The main opposition party has insisted that suspended mayor Bernard Manyenyeni remains in the post.Manyenyeni was last week suspended by Kasukuwere for alleged insubordination and replaced by Mbanga. Both Mbanga and Manyenyeni are MDC-T councillors.
News / National

by Staff reporter

As Zanu-PF continues playing the brinkmanship game, war veterans in the party are of the view that something has gone terribly wrong in the governing party's commissariat department.Mugove Tafirenyika (Q) speaks to the spokesperson of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association, Douglas Mahiya (A) on these and other issues.Q: There is so much infighting in the party at the moment, what do you think is causing this?A: After independence, the party was supposed to put in place a programme to continue educating the masses on the ideals of the revolution. Unfortunately, however, the people responsible failed to meet the political commitment that was required to produce leaders who understand the revolutionary road that was supposed to be taken.That is what brought about the current political situation where you find the likes of Saviour Kasukuwere calling the shots as Zanu-PF national political commissar, misleading people and failing to do a duty whose terms of reference is known only by war veterans.Q: So that is the basis of your argument when you say the post of national political commissar in Zanu-PF should be a preserve for war veterans? But is it enshrined in the Zanu-PF constitution?A: No, do not tell me about the Zanu-PF constitution because we are the ones who wrote it. The constitution says war veterans are the bedrock of the party; it is built on the foundation of war veterans like Jesus said that this church is built on this rock, Peter, so the rock of the revolution of Zimbabwe is the war veterans.So that means it is from them, from the knowledge that they acquired during the war that the party should be carried forward to the next generation.Q: But we understand that Kasukuwere is not the first individual who is not a war veteran to occupy that position. Border Gezi was not a war veteran. Was he? And how come you did not raise the same complaints you are raising now?A: We did not raise issues against him, which is true. But maybe you do not even know.Border Gezi became a member of the national youth brigade movement and it is in this movement that he got the orientation of the revolutionary principles. That is why he did not misfire, that is why he was very qualified to do that.It was because of the socialist ideas that had been inculcated in his mind by the war veterans.Q: But Kasukuwere claims he also has that orientation after he participated in the Mozambique war against Renamo.A: That is not a political qualification. It is an adventure for him but not a qualification to give him the right to become national political commissar because that is not enough. We borrowed revolutionary principles from countries that liberated their societies and used socialist principles that they used but we were informed in no uncertain terms that we were not going to produce a replica of that country but that we were going to use the principles in order to earn our own independence and have our own brand of socialism.A new political position was thus going to emerge and it is that position that I have as a war veteran that Kasukuwere lacks. He missed the days of the revolution and he was not part and parcel of what was yet to be discovered in a political laboratory.Q: But is the president, as patron of war veterans, not alive to this fact that the post of national political commissar is so crucial that it cannot be held by someone who did not participate in the war of liberation, to the extent that he went on to appoint Kasukuwere?A: After independence came political developments that required the inclusion of anybody and everybody and Zanu ceased to be a vanguard party and became a mass movement where anybody could participate.However, it did not mean that we were going to forget the revolutionary ideas that had been inculcated in us and let the country go to the dogs - we were going to continue safeguarding the interests of the masses in policy formulation.Q: So should we conclude therefore that the president made an error of judgment when he appointed him?A: He had no reason not to include everybody in everything. This is failure on the part of Kasukuwere which has nothing to do with an appointment.The president had the understanding that Kasukuwere had learnt the ethos of the party over the years only to discover that he has not learnt anything. In actual fact he is supposed to start again, we want to teach him and approve him, so that he can be one who qualifies in future.Q: So how do you think this can be solved seeing that he is already in office and he has stated that he was not going to resign, you also want the party to go forward as war veterans, what now?A: The honourable thing for him to do is work with war veterans, he must not demonise war veterans, and he must come to us and acknowledge that he has no knowledge of mobilising the masses and building the party then he learns from there.But the moment he remains with his idea that he is more superior to us and probably becoming an untouchable, then the tension will remain.Look my friend you can see how old I am, I have been in the party since I was a boy, even younger than you. I know what I am talking about, I know what is supposed to be done, and when I joined the liberation struggle, I didn't join the liberation struggle to fail I joined in order to give society the economic and social product which is adequate, but Kasukuwere does not know that.At 11 in 1980 (Kasukuwere) I was already an adult, I already had the experience, I had already proved that I am better than anybody else. What political tool does he want to use that we did not use. We discovered new tools and dimensions of politics, he did not. He did not know that at 11, now he wants to say I don't know, who was I then during the liberation struggle?, I was a politician, because I did not see anybody else who took me to Mozambique, the first gun that I saw was my gun because I was politically conscious, he needs to know these things, when am I going to be what he is when I liberated this country and I am not given an opportunity to become what he is, when am I going to do that?He is 47, if he's going to be 110 years old, he has still all that to do , why can't he give the war veterans an opportunity to carry on with what they were doing, after all, everyone else who wants to become an MP or so wants to be baptised by the liberation struggle, which I fought.You want the one who is baptised and not the baptiser? That is not fair!He should relieve himself and if he refuses we are going to take it upon ourselves to mobilise the people to show them how evil the G40 is.We are experts in terms of mobilising the masses. If he repents and wants to utilise the knowledge that we have, if he does that fine, we used to capture the enemies, taking them to the rear and teach them.That is what we will do with him but I am sure Jonathan (Moyo) will not repent because he is a hard core Selous Scout. He said he wants to destroy the party from within.Q: Given this appointment that you think is inappropriate, what is your assessment of the state of the party today?A: He has destroyed the party, that's what we see, he has destroyed all the executives, he has become the party, the policeman, the prosecutor and he has become the judge. And he expels anybody; it is a whistle that has been given to a mentally retarded person.A: As war veterans you seem to be worried about the purges that are going on in the party presently, but these have not started in 2015/2016. Others including war veterans like former VP Joice Mujuru and others were fired from Zanu-PF, and you didn't seem concerned then. Why?A: Not at the scale he is going, he has been to every province, that's excessive, he wants to declare himself the only loyal person to the party.After all when you are a PC of the party, you are that person in the party where everybody rushes to for consolation. He's not a commander. He should be softer; he should be able to forgive, so he has the opposite of that.Q: Are these suspensions and expulsions not being endorsed by the politburo?A: Whatever it is that is not our baby. We are worried about the level of destruction of the party that is taking place as a result of an unqualified execution of his duty as a national PC.Q: Does it mean Kasukuwere is arm-twisting even the politburo to endorse the suspensions?A: I am not talking about the politburo, I am talking about the majority of the people who were suspended in almost all provinces, the arm-twisting, I don't understand, I have not been in one of those politburo meetings, so I cannot comment on that.Q: There is a perception within the party, that you as war veterans have taken sides backing Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa. And the belief that all what is happening in Zanu-PF is all about succeeding Mugabe, seeing that he's 92 and approaching the twilight of his career.A: We have not taken sides. The difference in age between me and the president is the same when we were in Mozambique and that did not stop us from bringing him before the masses as our leader, so we have not taken sides.Q: But who is your choice as the president's successor?A: When we talk about party line, we are talking about how we select our leaders, so it is that ideology, that party line which must be towed by everyone.The moment we start talking about succession issues, who the war veterans want to succeed is out of question. And when the time comes we continue to do it as we have always done.Zanu-PF as a party has created a political culture of how we select the leadership. The method that we used to elevate the president from his position as secretary generals is the one that we will use.The political training that we went through gives us the capacity to tell what is going to happen within the next six months in the national political development.What will remain is whether you believe me or not, but adding x+y in politics - war veterans are able to give you an answer.What we see is Kasukuwere and Jonathan Moyo are being used by the West to destroy the legacy of the president and the war veterans and that is why we do not see eye to eye.The question of supporting the VP has never been said by war vets. We have never discussed that subject. In fact it is the G40 that we have seen being used by the West.Q: Who is the G40?A: Well let me tell you about Kasukuwere and Moyo, the rest you can ask them who they are - because it is Kasukuwere and Moyo who are against war vets.How can Kasukuwere - if he is a member of the Zanu-PF that I know, and Moyo who is known for deserting the war today be more loyal to Zanu? Who has struggled with the party from where it began until now?They are the people who are creating the G40 in a bid to exclude anyone above 40 including war veterans. How sincere is their political perception when they say G40 when the president is 92? It means he also wants to remove the president and this is what we are disputing.Q: You recently met with the president and raised the issue of the Zanu-PF commissariat. Were you satisfied with his response?A: People do not understand the relationship between the commander and the commanded. We do not tell him what to do, he is a commander. When we give him our issues, we must allow him time to consider them - at some point he will be able to realise that what we are saying is true.These people who are trying to destroy the legacy of the party, the president and war veterans had made sure that we had no access to the president.Q: But Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko and the first lady are both members of the Zanu-PF national disciplinary committee yet you seem to blame Kasukuwere alone for the suspensions. Why?A: We can only talk about the person we see in action. In films the main actor is the person directing everything.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Popular Zimbabwean preacher, Emmanuel Makandiwa prophesied about the xenophobic violence that recently rocked the Zambian capital, Lusaka, according to a video posted on YouTube.The video, which shows Makandiwa predicting the disturbances on April 9, exactly nine days before they began, has gone viral on social media platforms.In the video which shows the United Family International Church (UFIC) leader speaking to local and international visitors at the church's Life Haven base in Mt Hampden, the charismatic preacher called on the gathering, which had a sizeable number of Zambian nationals, to pray for the nation of Zambia in order to avert events "previously unheard of in Zambia".He said: "I saw two secret meetings taking place and I was able to "attend" the meetings. And I saw people gathering to formulate a terrorist group... and I am seeing a protest rising up against foreigners...is it (the issue) about foreigners, is it a nationality thing or it's an in-house thing," he says, in what appears to be an apparent reference to the underlying cause of the disturbances.Zambia, which was recently voted as the most peaceful nation in Africa, was rocked by violent protests aimed at Rwandan nationals believed to have been behind a spate of ritual murders in Lusaka and the government had to quickly move in to quell the disturbances which could have easily escalated into bloodshed.Xenophobic violence has no history in independent Zambia and the recent events took many by surprise, including the Zambian president, Edgar Lungu who described it as a shame.Two days after the prophecy, Zambian newspapers were lauding the prevailing peace in the country, in what some analysts have seen as an effort to dismiss Makandiwa's prediction.Makandiwa's spokesperson, Prime Kufa confirmed the prophecy and said: "They may have felt the need to give their nation such assurances seeing that Prophet Makandiwa has become a voice to the nations which cannot just be ignored and that his prophecy would have been taken seriously by their nationals."Some of the Zambians who heard of the prophecy were in polite dismissal saying though they believed in the accuracy and timeous fulfilment of Prophet Makandiwa's prophecies, Zambia was an exception when it comes to violence."This thing might not move a lot of Zimbabweans but the Zambian nationals who knew of the prophecy before it's fulfilment are in awe. Many have been calling our offices and some sending texts to express their gratitude to the Prophet of God for having called for such a prayer, without which, worse things could have happened. Most of us could never have imagined that such a thing could ever happen in Zambia."Kufa said on the same day, Makandiwa gave another prophecy on the need to pray for the aversion of a British Airways plane disaster at Heathrow Airport and a few days later, a drone collided with a BA plane on approach to the airport."We have to thank God for such a man. When he accurately prophesied that gold production levels would rise, it was inconceivable amidst the closure of the big gold mines that was taking place but ever since, gold production has been on a high and even recently our president acknowledged it," Kufa added."The Zambia prophecy comes soon after Prophet Makandiwa gave another prophecy on South African deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa which was fulfilled to exact detail."Prophet Makandiwa has become an international voice over the years, giving accurate prophecies over nations and many of his former critics have accepted that love him or loathe him, he surely has a prophetic eye and is a man whose voice cannot be ignored," said Kufa.
News / Regional

by Leonard Ncube

VICTORIA FALLS Municipality has said aside 10,000 square metres of land for open-air worshipping, as part of an out of court settlement with worshippers who were barred from the Buffer Zone, a green belt in the city. Last month, the council successfully applied for an order at the Victoria Falls magistrates' court barring open-air worshipping at the green belt.The Union for the Development of Apostolic Churches and Zionist Churches in Zimbabwe and Africa (UDACZCZA) appealed to the High Court against the lower court's ruling. The local authority and UDACZCZA, which is made up of 25 churches, have since opted for an out of court settlement, a development that has seen council availing the land between Dadane High School and Oasis College.Town clerk Christopher Dube told The Chronicle that council would give the churches time to move to their new base. "We agreed to allocate them land for all the churches under UDACZCZA," said the town clerk."It's a process and we've to create that land. They've to move but we'll be gentle enough and allow them time to wind up." He said those who would continue defying the local authority after the expiry of the grace period, which is yet to be announced, will be arrested.UDACZCZA board member Anita Sithole said they would build some blocks while those that prefer open-air worshipping would continue to do so on the same piece of land. "We have finally been given land and our members will definitely move to the new site. The land measures 200 metres by 50 metres and we'll build blocks of buildings where all of us will worship from," said Sithole.
GRAND ISLAND -- Three businesses and a residence were still without power late Monday as a result of Sunday nights explosion and fire at Winfrey Plumbing and Heating.

The businesses are on the south side of Fourth Street. The home is just east of Winfrey Plumbing, which is at 808 W. North Front St.

The Grand Island Utilities Department expected to restore power to those businesses Monday. But workers were unable to get into the area because of cleanup and investigative work. Bryan Fiala of the Utilities Department hopes the power will be back Tuesday.

On Sunday night, the Utilities Department switched away from a block of the citys main distribution line on Cleburn Street in order to make the area safe for firefighters and because a utility pole burned next to Winfrey Plumbing. That pole will have to be replaced.

Mike Winfrey, the owner of Winfrey Plumbing and Heating, died in the fire, which started at about 10:45 p.m.

Winfrey, 65, had operated the business for about 10 years.

Hate losing him, said his father, Doyle. The building can always be replaced, but you cant replace the person.

Winfrey said he does not know how the fire started. The investigation going on makes it hard to get in the building, he said. The structure is a total loss, he said.

Doyle Winfrey, 86, has been retired for about 10 years. He started Winfrey Plumbing and Heating in 1962, in a chicken house at the back of his residence at 916 E. Seventh St., he said. It was later located at 517 N. Clark St., behind his current home at 822 W. Fifth St.

He bought the building at North Eddy and West North Front Street in 1970. While his son ran the business, Doyle Winfrey continued to own the building.

He and his wife, Violet, are the parents of Mike.

Two of Doyle Winfreys grandsons own plumbing businesses, which are not connected to the Grand Island company. Nick Winfrey owns Winfrey Plumbing near Phillips and Phil Winfrey owns Winfrey Plumbing in Omaha.

Two people  a male and female  were transported to CHI Health St. Francis with non-life threatening injuries from the fire Sunday night. Their names are not yet available.

The investigation into the blaze is being conducted by the State Fire Marshals office and the Nebraska State Patrol.

Those two organizations are handling the investigation because of the fatality and the scope and the size of the fire, Grand Island police Capt. Dean Elliott said.

Any time a fire causes a fatality, the fire department is required to inform the State Fire Marshals office.

The State Patrol had bomb technicians at the scene to assist the Police Department, Fire Marshals Office and the Grand Island Fire Department with post-blast investigation, said Capt. Chris Kolb of the State Patrols Troop C, based in Grand Island.

The bomb technicians were on hand to assist in the recovery of any unexploded ordinance, if there were any, Kolb said. The techs were also available if any evidence needed to the submitted to the lab, he said.

Kolb was not aware if representatives of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were on hand Monday. But if there were, it would not be uncommon following an explosion, he said.

The fire was still under investigation, said Ray Nance of the State Fire Marshals office.

The call that went out to firefighters Sunday night mentioned an explosion rather than a fire.

Firefighters told Grand Island Fire Chief Cory Schmidt that flames were 40 feet high or taller. Firefighters could see the flames from Fire Station 2, Schmidt said.

One of the explosions was heard by the shift commander at Fire Station 1 on Fonner Park Road, more than a mile from the fire scene.

The blaze was under control by about 11:30 p.m., Schmidt said. Firefighters remained at the scene all night, putting out hot spots. We had some problems getting the fire extinguished due to a gas line that was feeding the fire, he said.

The body was found at about 2:30 a.m., Schmidt said.

Salvador Luevano, who lives across the street, said he heard three explosions on Sunday night. At 10:45 p.m., he heard a big explosion, along with a flash of orange light. The second explosion happened five minutes later and the third blast about five minutes after that.

The first blast rattled our house, said Luevano, who lives at 904 W. North Front St. When he looked outside, he saw one person coming out of the alley, he said.

His brother, who lives two or three blocks away, thought the blast was someone banging on his door, Luevano said.

The first blast was on the north end of the building, and the next explosions moved progressively to the south, Luevano said.

The smell of smoke was strong Monday inside the business just to the north of Winfrey Plumbing, which is Miller Used Tires and Wheels.

The fire caused some communication problems Monday because it burned a fiber connection between City Hall and three other buildings, housing utility, engineering and street department employees. The line was rerouted Monday morning.

Crews from all four fire stations responded to the fire.

The Grand Island Rural Fire Department assisted the Grand Island Fire Department, Schmidt said.
GRAND ISLAND -- Investigators have determined that Sunday nights fire and explosion at Winfrey Plumbing and Heating resulted from the manufacture of homemade explosives by the man who died in the fire, according to the Nebraska state fire marshals office.

Family members have identified the victim as Mike Winfrey, who owned the business.

The investigation was an interagency effort involving the Grand Island Fire Department, Grand Island Police Department, Nebraska state fire marshals office, Nebraska State Patrol, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Hall County attorney.

The structure is believed to be a total loss, said Ray Nance of the state fire marshals office.

A positive identification of the victim is pending an autopsy, which is scheduled for later this week.

Two individuals who were taken to the hospital were treated and released for injuries suffered in the incident.
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News / Regional

by Mashudu Netsianda

A High Court judge has ordered disgraced lawyer, Sindiso Mazibisa, to pay back a 64-year-old Kezi woman $40,000 which he embezzled three years ago. The money, which the shamed Mazibisa failed to deliver, was part of Patricia Wonyana's share from her late son's estate. Mazibisa was a senior partner at Cheda and Partners, which was shut down last year.Wonyana, whose son died in South Africa three years ago, approached Mazibisa to assist her with the legal processes to get the money from an estate executor in the neighbouring country. Mazibisa was paid, but did not give Wonyana her share forcing her to approach the courts.Bulawayo High Court judge Justice Martin Makonese has since issued an order compelling Mazibisa to pay back the money with interest. "The application for summary judgment be and is hereby granted and respondent is hereby ordered to pay applicant the sum of $40,000 together with interest at five percent per annum calculated from July 1, 2013 to date of full payment," ruled the Justice Makonese.The judge also ordered Mazibisa, the sole respondent in the matter to pay the legal costs incurred by Wonyana, the applicant at an attorney-client scale. Wonyana through her lawyer, Godfrey Nyoni of Nyoni and Moyo Legal Practitioners, said Mazibisa received her money from a South African executor and instead of transferring it into her bank account, he blew it.In her founding affidavit, Wonyana said despite having acknowledged the debt, Mazibisa failed to pay. "Mazibisa acknowledged that he owes me the sum of $40,000, which we agreed upon as the equivalent of R400,000 as at 2013 and we signed a deed of settlement to the effect," said Wonyana.In terms of the deed of settlement signed on September, 30, 2015, between the two parties, Mazibisa had agreed to pay the woman $5,000 per month beginning October 31, 2015. He, however, failed to honour the terms of the agreement.In his defendant's plea, Mazibisa said although he acknowledged the debt, he denied that the money was due and payable. He claimed that there was a payment plan for him to pay in tranches of $5,000 per month starting end of this month.However, Wonyana's lawyer said Mazibisa received the money in 2013. He said Mazibisa's defence was solely aimed at delaying court processes and frustrating Wonyana's efforts to recover the money.
Egyptians demonstrate against President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Mesaha square in Cairo's Dokki district, Monday, April 25, 2016. Police fired tear gas and birdshot on Monday to disperse hundreds of demonstrators calling on el-Sissi to step down over his government's decision to surrender control over two strategic Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. (AP Photo/Mostafa Darwish)
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News / Regional

by Nduduzo Tshuma

THE MDC-T is planning a demonstration on Bulawayo streets next month in a bid to prop up its councillors who are under attack for alleged corruption and running down the city. The planned demonstration is the second after a violent march by the MDC-T in Harare two weeks ago.MDC-T Bulawayo provincial spokesperson Mandla Sibanda said the Bulawayo demo would also target Local Government Minister Saviour Kasukuwere, who recently attacked the BCC for not taking the city's housing backlog seriously."We've a demonstration planned for May, it will be bigger than that of Harare," claimed Sibanda. "The theme is largely the same, although there're some things that we'll be demonstrating on relevant to this part of the country."We'll be demonstrating against the involvement of Kasukuwere in the affairs of the Bulawayo City Council. We feel that he's interfering with the good running of the BCC which is the best-run council in the country."Since Independence in 1980, the BCC has won plaudits as the best run council  but fears are growing that the current crop of MDC-T councillors are on a looting spree, demonstrated by parcelling out land to each other at less than commercial value.Bulawayo residents, through the Bulawayo Progressive Residents' Association, have since petitioned Parliament to order an investigation into the alleged illegal land grabbing involving some councillors.Sibanda, when asked about allegations that MDC-T councillors are using their positions to loot, challenged those with proof to come forward."I don't know where those allegations are coming from, but the council was voted for by the people and when they've any reservations, it's the people that will remove them. What I know is that they hold a number of feedback meetings and nothing of that sort has been raised," he said.Gift Banda will soon be constructing town houses at Ascot Race Course after the Bulawayo city council granted him permission to buy land worth $130,000. The land, measuring 3,5 hectares, will be used to construct town houses for middle to high income earners.Local campaigners were outraged after deputy mayor Gift Banda was revealed to have been allocated a portion of the famous Ascot Race Course last year  some 3.5 hectares of land.Two councillors, James Sithole of Ward 7 and Charles Moyo of Ward 9, are also said to have been given town house stands in Parklands measuring 3.7 hectares and 2.3 hectares at below commercial rates.Rowdy MDC-T youths, during a demonstration in Harare two weeks ago, attacked a security guard at a Choppies Zimbabwe outlet before vandalising property inside.Choppies Zimbabwe director Siqokoqela Mphoko said the destructive behaviour by the MDC-T youths has potential to harm the country's investment potential.Police national spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba warned that law enforcement agents would not sit back and watch criminality as they have a constitutional mandate to protect life and property.
News / Regional

by Staff reporter

The government has offered a state assisted funeral to former Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) president Dr Silas Hungwe who has been described by the President Robert Mugabe as a person who worked tirelessly to unite farmers across the country.President Mugabe, accompanied by Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa has paid his condolences to the Hungwe family following the passing on of Dr Hungwe on Monday morning."Dr Hungwe worked tirelessly to represent the wishes of farmers," said President Mugabe.Mugabe described the late farmers' union president as a person who united the farming community owing to his principled works with government and the country at large.President Mugabe says farmers concerns were brought to the government by the late Dr Hungwe through his visionary leadership, revealing that government has honoured him with a state assisted funeral.Dr Hungwe who began his agriculture career before independence, rose to become the president of the ZFU in 1996.Under his leadership of the ZFU, various agriculture training manuals that small holder farmers are using today were developed.The late Dr Hungwe's burial arrangements will be announced in due course.
Opinion / Columnist

IT took the combination of technical support from a non-governmental Organisation (NGO) and indigenous knowledge to transform the fortunes of Meli Nyathi through his goat rearing project. Today he boasts of an admirable flock of 115 healthy goats. Nyathi is not alone in this innovative venture; he is but a case study of how well thought out intervention strategies may have telling and positive effects on rural communities for whom there are limited opportunities.Before 2009 Nyathi, who hails from Ward 1, also known as Silebuho Ward, at the extreme end of Matobo District used to have a small pitiable flock of goats of not more than 20 animals.It took Khula Sizwe Trust to turn around the fortunes of Nyathi and other villagers in Ward 1. Selibuho Ward is characterised by limited pastures due to low and sporadic rainfall.The area has been inhabited by the Babirwa people whose livestock traditions were compliant with the dry conditions that extend into north-eastern Botswana and north-western South Africa in the Limpopo Province.The Babirwa people arrived in south-western Zimbabwe in the first quarter of the 19th Century and were given land by the Rozvi Mambo. Khula Sizwe Trust moved into Sankonjana Village, named after some small Euphorbia tree, mukonjana, and initially took a group of seven people, three men and four women for training.The Trust had accurately identified the problem with regard to livestock rearing. It is said the problem of limited pastures was aggravated by the presence of jackals that prey on goats and sheep in particular.Jackals are a particular menace where there is a shortage of small wild animals such as rabbits, duikers, spring hares and Steen bucks. Apparently, Sankonjana Village does not have these animals and in their absence jackals are turning to available equivalents  livestock. The jackals are wreaking havoc accounting for no less than 60 percent of animal losses.In addition, diseases among the goats were taking their toll. In winter, goat feed was scarce and calving rates were low. The selected villagers were trained in combating common diseases afflicting goats. The trainees were taught about identification and treatment of prevalent diseases.The technical package that they received included inoculation of goats against known diseases. Further, they were advised to construct proper housing for goats. In the past, goat pens were characterised by watery dung smudge which caused wounds to goats' feet."As you can see, now I've this building made from plastered bricks and a mono-pitch asbestos roof. It's dry inside the pen. ''One should look at what goats do when it starts raining-they scamper for cover in a protected area. We get the cue from that," says Nyathi with a broad smile of satisfaction as he looks at the kids penned within the robust building.However, the pen no longer has capacity to house the large flock that he now owns. In order to take care of limited pastures in winter, the group was taught how to supplement the limited pastures such as growing of Barna grass. They were encouraged to collect stover from sorghum and maize stalks to feed their animals.These, they were advised, were to be collected while still green so as to have higher nutritional value. Peanut plants were also harvested and stored while green. Heat from the sun diminishes the food content in the plant stalks.There was marked improvement following these interventions by Khula Sizwe Trust, albeit only to a certain point. The jackals were having a feast of fat and healthy goats.There was need to complement the efforts of Khula Sizwe Trust. Surviving Babirwa livestock traditions were revisited and indeed, what followed thereafter, were success stories.The success story was a result of the combination of the technical package from Khula Sizwe Trust and revitalising some Babirwa ways of dealing with the jackal menace.While doing some field research in Botswana on the history of the Babirwa people a few years ago I came across the practice crafted to deal with menacing jackals.It was at Lentswi le Morete near the confluence of the Limpopo and Motloutse rivers where I picked up the tradition which Nyathi, himself a Mmerwa, applied with commendable results.The Babirwa used to have shepherd dogs that looked after their goats in the veld, sleeping with them in the goat pen and accompanying them to the pastures. Whenever jackals tried to get at the goats the shepherd dogs, mtsa modisi, attacked them. When we got to Nyathi's goat pen we saw two puppies and 21 goat kids.The two puppies seemed at home with the kids. We wondered how the bond between the two disparate animals was sealed. Meanwhile, the older dogs were out with the adult goats-keeping guard over them in the true sense of shepherds."At a tender age the puppies are taken into the goat pen where they grow up with the goat kids. Remember, goat kids at this tender age produce yellow milky excreta. ''Puppies eat these and that seems to build strong bonds between the goat kids and puppies," explains Nyathi as he points at the sleeping puppies and goat kids."Food for the puppies is brought into the goat pen. The puppies only get out of the pen in the company of their friends  the goat kids. In fact, the puppies soon begin to see themselves as part and parcel of the flock," chuckles Nyathi.We had the opportunity to see the goat kids get out of the goat pen to the pastures for browsing. The two puppies went along with the goat kids. They seemed protective of the goat kids as they separated and seemed to rein in the browsing goat kids. The adult goats and dogs were already out in the pastures.The goats and their kids are not only healthy and well fed but also secure from the menacing jackals that roam the forests at Sankonjana. More families have also adopted the old Babirwa tradition of shepherd dogs.Khula Sizwe Trust is assisting villagers with the marketing of the goats. They used to bring a buyer from Bulawayo while local goat producers took their goats to the business centre.On average each goat fetched $50. Individuals and butchers from Sun Yet Sen are also buying the goats. Local incomes have improved appreciably. Project members are able to buy food for their families and pay school fees for their children. All the participants have to do is to build similar goat housing facilities using earned profits for other people joining the scheme.This is indeed a success story involving the combination of modern technical support from Khula Sizwe Trust buttressed by innovative indigenous livestock traditions of the Babirwa.
(Kitco News) - The Far East is on the radar again for gold investors as Hong Kong looks to build the worlds largest gold vault and as China reports higher imports. One famed gold investor says hes watching these new developments closely.

According to media reports, Hong Kong may be looking to become the worlds next gold hub overtaking London and New York as it works to build warehousing and physical settlement services in the Qianhai free trade zone.

Also, data released Tuesday showed that there were higher Chinese gold imports from Hong Kong in March. According to the data released by the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, Chinas net purchases rose to 64.1 metric tons from 42.9 tons in February.

One should not be investing in gold or anything else if they are not watching all this, Jim Rogers, Singapore-based investor and best-selling author, told Kitco News in an email response Tuesday.

The gold market continues moving to Asia  as do all precious metals  as do all markets. This is not 1966. This is where the population, the assets, the wealth, the growth, etc. are moving and have moved. The centers of 1966 are now deep in debt, demographic problems, economic decline, etc, he explained.

However, despite the growing move to the East, Rogers said he doesnt expect London or New York to lose their hub status in the gold market anytime soon.

Veteran gold strategist George Gero, on the other hand, said the news should not affect Western gold investors just yet although he expects the developments in Hong Kong to help the market in the long run.

For us, its not as important as there are depositories in London, Delaware, Toronto, and many other places, he explained.

Gordon Chang, a columnist for the Daily Beast and author of The Coming Collapse of China, said he isnt making much of the news and doesnt expect much change coming from the region.

Many a grandiose dream has died in the Qianhai zone, he told Kitco News. There is always hope, but history says the current gold-trading and gold-storage plans are the next to expire.

By Sarah Benali of Kitco News; sbenali@kitco.com

Follow @SdBenali
Eldorado Gold Corp. (TSX: ELD; NYSE: EGO) says it has agreed to sell its 82% interest in the company's Jinfeng mine in China to a subsidiary of China National Gold Group for $300 million in cash, subject to certain closing adjustments. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter and is subject to regulatory and other approvals. Eldorado has previously indicated that it was looking to monetize its Chinese assets. "We are pleased to have reached an agreement which we believe mutually benefits both companies. China National Gold has been our minority partner at Jinfeng for over 14 years and is the logical buyer as the operation transitions fully into the underground," says Paul Wright, Eldorados president and chief executive officer. "Since commencement of production in 2007, Jinfeng has consistently delivered solid operating results and has been a strong contributor in Eldorado's global portfolio."

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

Endeavour Mining Completes Acquisition of True Gold

Endeavour Mining Corp. (TSX: EDV) has completed the previously announced acquisition of True Gold Mining Inc. (TSXV: TGM), the companies report. Shareholders of True Gold received 0.044 of an Endeavour share for each True Gold share held. In addition, La Mancha Holding S.ar.l. exercised its anti-dilution right to maintain its 30% stake and invested C$82.6 million via an equity placement for 7,546,777 Endeavour ordinary shares. Endeavour says its outstanding shares now total approximately 84.3 million and its market capitalization is approximately C$1.3 billion, based on Mondays closing price on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

Freeport McMoRan Posts Loss During First Quarter

Freeport McMoRan Inc. (NYSE: FCX), the worlds largest publicly traded copper company but also a significant producer of gold and other commodities, lists a net loss $4.2 billion, $3.35 per share, for first quarter, compared with $2.5 billion, $2.38, for first quarter of 2015. The January-March results include net special charges totaling $4 billion, $3.19 per share, largely related to its oil and gas business. After special items, the first-quarter adjusted loss was $197 million, or 16 cents per share. Freeport listed company-wide sales of 1.1 billion pounds of copper, 201,000 ounces of gold, 17 million pounds of molybdenum and 12.1 million barrels of oil equivalents (MMBOE) for the first quarter 2016, compared with 960 million pounds of copper, 263,000 ounces of gold, 23 million pounds of molybdenum and 12.5 MMBOE for the first quarter of 2015. The company says its Cerro Verde expansion project reached full production capacity in the first quarter, with the operation on track to produce over 1 billion pounds of copper in 2016. During the quarter, Freeport said it entered into agreements to sell an additional 13 percent ownership in Morenci and to sell an interest in the Timok exploration project in Serbia for a total of $1.3 billion.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com
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By Ed Friedrich of the Kitsap Sun

BREMERTON  As many as 500 old homes connect to the city's water supply via lead goosenecks, but residents shouldn't worry about contamination. A corrosion-control system keeps the lead in check, officials say.

Goosenecks are about 16-inch pieces of pipe used before 1950 to connect water mains to some customers' service lines. Made of lead, they bent to hook up easier.

In the wake of lead found in the water system of Flint, Michigan, and Tacoma recently discovering high levels in four gooseneck-serviced homes, Bremerton issued a news release Friday. It has no data to indicate issues with its water. Seattle also did not find problems in testing over the weekend.

"We've never found any concerns since we put corrosion control in (in 1999). And even before that we had very low levels, not like other systems have seen," said Kathleen Cahall, water resources manager.

With corrosion control, caustic soda is added to the water to raise the pH level to make it less corrosive on plumbing and reduce the amount of lead that can dissolve into the drinking water. Tacoma also has a corrosion-control system, but the testing created a worst-case scenario that didn't reflect everyday conditions. It doesn't know whether that contributed to the high results. In retrospect, it should have tested the water before the test and not just after it had been sitting in the line up to 60 hours.

Bremerton identified about 2,000 pre-1950 homes, mostly east of Naval Avenue in West Bremerton. It estimates all but about 500 of their systems were upgraded when new mains were installed or they didn't need a gooseneck connector, Cahall said. There's no way to know where goosenecks remain without digging them up.

Lead in drinking water usually comes not from the water source but the plumbing. If water is sitting in contact in a gooseneck six hours or more, lead could leach into it. As a precaution, residents can run the water for at least two minutes before using it for drinking or cooking, Cahall said. Bathing and showering are not affected, so take a shower before making coffee, said Carolyn Cox, spokeswoman with the state Department of Health's Office of Drinking Water.

Before the Tacoma gooseneck testing, the focus had been on copper pipes with lead solder. Water systems are regulated by the federal Lead and Copper Rule, which requires they collect at least 50 samples every three years. The federal limit of lead in drinking water is 15 parts per billion. The tested homes were built between 1982 and 1986 when copper plumbing and lead solder were prevalent.

"Those were the bigger worries (than goosenecks) because they affect a bigger part of the population," said Cox.

Tacoma is doing the state a service in developing a means to identify which homes are most likely to have goosenecks.

"These results had nothing to do with water quality inside people's homes," Cox said of the Tacoma tests. "It was to make sure the city located these 1,700 (remaining) gooseneck pipes in a scientific way so they can be templated without having to dig up entire streets to find them.

"From the state Department of Health's perspective, we're very grateful Tacoma and Seattle did that work. We think what we're going to learn from this is a testing protocol to find these gooseneck pipes that will be a huge benefit to other systems around the state."

Out of thousands of systems overseen by the state Health Department, only about eight are above the level of 15 parts of lead per billion, Cox said.

That testing pool doesn't include homes that might have goosenecks.

Customers can perform a lead test with a test kit or by sending a sample to a laboratory. The city is investigating ways it can help. It will keep its website updated with new information as it receives it.

Water is not a major source of lead exposure, Cox said. People should be more worried about lead paint, dust and soil contamination.
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By Kitsap Sun Staff

PORT ORCHARD  A 20-year-old man was charged Monday in Kitsap District Court with the now-unusual crime of selling marijuana, a felony.

The man had been involved in a "road rage" incident April 24 near Kitsap Mall, where he told a Washington State Patrol trooper that he threw a handful of change at another vehicle after the other vehicle nearly hit his car.

The other vehicle had its rear window broken out. The trooper referred him for misdemeanor vandalism charges for the broken window, though prosecutors did not press that charge.

When asked about the marijuana visible on the floor of his vehicle, the suspect said he sold $10 grams of marijuana when he needed the money. He was charged with possession of marijuana with intent to manufacture or deliver.

Although recreational marijuana is legal in the state, only authorized businesses with a state license may sell the substance.
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By Andrew Binion of the Kitsap Sun

PORT ORCHARD  Not only did a judge decline to rescind a 2014 guilty plea made by a Port Orchard criminal defense lawyer charged with lying about hitting on his client's wife, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Jack Nevin ruled Monday that Dennis Goss' very request to withdraw the guilty plea broke the deal he had worked out with prosecutors and therefor was eligible for resentencing next month.

Prosecutors had initially requested no jail time for Goss when he pleaded guilty in October 2014 to one count of being an accomplice to false swearing, a misdemeanor. He originally had been charged with two counts of felony perjury. However, by breaching the deal with prosecutors, Goss now could face jail time or other punishments.

Chief Deputy Prosecutor Chad Enright said he did not know what sentence he would recommend for Goss at his May 12 sentencing.

The motion to withdraw the plea came a week before a scheduled Bar Association disciplinary hearing for Goss, but that hearing has been postponed. No new disciplinary hearing has been scheduled, a spokeswoman for the Bar Association said Monday. In the meantime, Goss has continued to take clients.

The conviction stems from allegations that Goss prepared and submitted signed affidavits from himself, a client and the client's wife claiming he had not propositioned the wife. Court documents show Goss had made overtures to the woman. Goss' former client, Tyler Williams, ultimately fired Goss, hired another attorney and pleaded guilty to various charges and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In a statement Monday to Nevin  who is hearing the case to avoid the appearance of conflict with Kitsap judges  Goss described a conspiracy by prosecutors and said evidence that could have been used to clear his name during the original case had been improperly withheld. Further, he said any inappropriate conduct by him, which he characterized as "at best flirting," ceased before he accepted Williams as his client.

"I am a victim," Goss told Nevin. "Not a criminal."

At the time of his guilty plea in 2014, Goss told Nevin he was embarrassed by his conduct, was guilty of a "momentary lapse in judgment" and after pleading guilty hugged the deputy prosecutor on the case.

Deputy Prosecutor John Cross told Nevin that Goss' legal argument was without merit.

"That's what pleas are," Cross said, noting that defendants are advised of the finality of their plea. "You can't just come back 16 months later and expect to relitigate the issue."

Nevin said he had clearly advised Goss of the ramifications of pleading guilty and praised Goss' former attorney, saying he was more than adequately represented at the time. Further, Nevin dismissed Goss' allegation of misconduct.

"I find no misconduct. Period," Nevin said.
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By Cal Thomas

Thanks to Gov. Terry McAuliffe, D-Va., 200,000 convicted felons in the state of Virginia may now register to vote.

Writes The Washington Post, "The change applies to all felons who have completed their sentences and been released from supervised probation or parole. The Democratic governor's decision particularly affects black residents of Virginia: 1 in 4 African-Americans in the state has been permanently banned from voting because of laws restricting the rights of those with convictions."

McAuliffe's executive order also allows felons, including rapists and murderers, to run for public office, serve on a jury and become a notary public. I can just visualize the campaign slogan now: "Vote for me. I've already done time."

Republicans are outraged, of course. Virginia House of Delegates Speaker William J. Howell said: "The singular purpose of Terry McAuliffe's governorship is to elect Hillary Clinton president of the United States. This office has always been a steppingstone to a job in Hillary Clinton's cabinet." It's an accusation McAuliffe vehemently denies.

Hillary Clinton tweeted, "Proud of my friend @GovernorVA for continuing to break down barriers to voting. -- H."

After many years as a Republican, or red state, Virginia more recently has become a swing state and important to Democrats for winning the presidency. Just as former slaves in Virginia and elsewhere were loyal to Republicans for many years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation it is likely that many of these felons will become reliable Democratic voters. Maybe Democrats will next figure out a way to hand illegal immigrants crossing our southern border the right to vote.

McAuliffe, a prolific fundraiser for the Clintons, appears to be as loyal to them as a family's faithful golden retriever. He has raised millions for them and for the Democratic National Committee. For a good account of McAuliffe's fundraising antics and other financial dealings, visit the website counterpunch.org.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "In 38 states and the District of Columbia, most ex-felons automatically gain the right to vote upon the completion of their sentence." In liberal Maine and Vermont, convicted felons may cast their ballots while in prison and are never disenfranchised. Most states require ex-convicts to apply to have their voting rights restored. Many factors go into the decision, including the nature of the crime. It is not always automatic.

In his book "The Virginia Constitution," John J. Dinan writes: "Virginia's felon disenfranchisement provision ... has been challenged in several cases, but sustained in each instance." In 1982, Virginia voters rejected a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have allowed convicted felons to vote. As recently as 2004, notes Dinan, a constitutional amendment to automatically restore felons' voting rights after the completion of their sentences "was considered by the General Assembly, but failed to achieve a majority in either the House or Senate."

Societies going back to Greek and Roman times have disenfranchised convicted criminals, because they regarded such actions as part of their punishment. There was also a sense that not allowing convicted felons to vote might, when combined with other forms of punishment, serve as a deterrent to crime.

Republicans have long accused Democrats of election shenanigans, i.e., Mickey Mouse's name showing up on registration lists, voters giving nonexistent addresses, some voting more than once. And let's not forget what I call the "cemetery vote," or the ultimate absentee ballot, where the dead get to "vote."

In an interview following McAuliffe's announcement, Speaker Howell suggested legal action might be taken. There isn't much time between now and November and the Republican majority legislature is not even in session. Legal action would be difficult.

If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency and the votes of Virginia felons prove decisive, cheating and voter cynicism will plunge to new depths. Most people probably think politics can't get any dirtier. McAuliffe's action shows they are wrong.
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By John Crisp

The remarkable durability of non-establishment candidates  Sanders, Trump  in this year's presidential race may reflect the widely held theory that, despite their rhetoric, our two major political parties are so close together that it doesn't really matter which one is in power.

This theory has never been better expressed than by the colloquial George Wallace, former governor of Alabama and perennial presidential candidate: "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats."

The idea implies that citizens who want real change are attracted to non-establishment candidates like Trump ("shake things up") and Sanders ("political revolution").

But, at best, this theory encourages cynicism and disengagement from politics, which corrode a basic foundation of our republic, an informed and interested voting constituency.

Further, the theory's just not true, at least in recent decades, if it ever was. This is nowhere more evident than in foreign policy.

Cuba is a good example. Whether you believe it's a good idea, President Barack Obama's rapprochement with Havana after a feckless 50-year embargo is not something that would happen under any of the Republican candidates for president.

Donald Trump's indifference about Cuba ("I think it's fine, but we should have made a better deal.") separates him from more conventional Republicans. Under President Cruz or erstwhile candidate Marco Rubio, Cuba would continue to be a half-century-old Cold War anomaly.

On climate, the difference between the two parties is vast. At least Obama acknowledges the existence of an international crisis, and halting steps have been taken. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are willing to talk about climate change, as well.

Again, Trump is indifferent about the climate ("I believe it goes up and it goes down, and it goes up again.") Other times he's more emphatic ("The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese.") Ted Cruz, on the other hand, is an outright denier.

Here's another difference: Iran and Saudi Arabia. For almost forty years, Iran has been our "enemy" and Saudi Arabia has been our "friend." This is despite the fact that Iran has a democratic tradition that dates back over a century and in recent years has been showing significant signs of moderation and inclination toward modernization and the West.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is a hereditary kingdom in which women are not permitted to drive or vote.

In terms of the future of the Middle East, these two are the essential nations. Their rivalry is built on jealousy of each other's power and regional influence, and it is stoked by the ancient Sunni/Shia divide.

This is a dangerous stalemate, largely beyond our control. The best we can do is to be smart, diplomatic and reluctant to come down on the wrong side.

Thus Obama negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran last year, a calculated move that gives up some things in exchange for others but which, overall, has a decent chance of urging Iran toward moderation and integration with the rest of the world.

Then Obama visited Saudi Arabia last week. The atmosphere lacked the glad-handing cordiality of the past. Riyadh isn't thrilled about potential reconciliation between the U.S. and Iran; the Saudis would rather have us entirely on their side. But, beyond our support for Israel, some ambiguity about our precise position might be healthy for the players in the region. It's called diplomacy.

The Republican candidates for president are less subtle. They've talked casually about carpet bombing and making the desert sand glow in the dark. Trump has said clearly that we will be on Saudi Arabia's side ("how much will Saudi Arabia pay us to save them?") Cruz says, "I will rip to shreds" the Iran deal on his first day in office.

This imprudent language reflects the kind of carelessness that led to the source of many of the current problems in the Middle East, George W. Bush's ill-advised invasion of Iraq. It's impossible to imagine that Al Gore would have taken that action if he had been elected in 2000. Whom we vote for does appear to make a difference.
Opinion / Columnist

Traits in the philosophy of Ujamaa that could be solutions for Zimbabwe's diverse ethnic and race relations

The philosophy of Ujamaa and the Zambian humanism had good intentions. To recap the definition of Zambian humanism: according to President Kenneth Kaunda, Zambian humanism is a combination of many ingredients: that is the African socialism, radical Christianity and existential humanism. Within the definition, KK says it was his desire to create a humanistic society that had a national identity that emphasized the importance of man he described as common man of unique worth regardless of his/her tribal race and ethnic grouping.The Zambian philosophy of humanism is mainly rooted in Christian and traditional African socialism combined. These noble values were enshrined in Zambian humanism that was adopted as a national philosophy of Humanism: what was going to be known as Mulungushi Declaration of 1967The philosophy of President Nyerere's Ujamaa and its intentions is not very far from Zambian humanism. Ujamaa was based on the assumption of human equality that emphasized the need to abhor the exploitation of man by man. Ujamaa was created to be a model of development of African socialism.The mainline meaning of Ujamaa being: brotherhood/sisterhood which was to be the basis of national development. President Nyerere notes: the nation exists as the extension of extended family as a basic social unit and is well embodied in his argument about rural development. Ujamaa was meant to build a socialist, self reliant national economy.Nyerere philosophized Ujamaa based none exploitation of man by man, every person has the right to live in freedom and be able to lead a decent life in favourable conditions of peace with his/her neighbours. He also noted that is philosophy Ujamaa is well above all human self-centeredness. The philosophy will ensure wellbeing and happiness to all citizens that can be best achieved in a context of shared social and economic wealth.It is in this loaded context that President Nyerere single-mindedly formed a one party state, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, a workers' party. (In Zimbabwe we call it Vashandi/Abasebenzi) He institutionalised social and economic entities through creating a central democracy that would abolish every form of discrimination in the Peoples Republic of Tanzania, Villagization of rural population to collective farming to maximize production, creation of Tanzania as a nation rather than tribal identities through the use of Swahili as the national language that was at par with the official English language and he also made attainment of education compulsory.Ujamaa and its definition do not explicitly extend the values of ethnic cohesion but to be seen and understood in holistic analysis of the ideology itself. These ethical principles were the basis of practical policies that were implemented across the country socially, economic, politically and culturally. Since its inception Tanzania underwent a revolution that transformed itself in all aspects of the country's development. It was for this reason that the philosophy of Ujamaa was also code named an Arusha Declaration of 1968.Because Ujamaa was meant to build socialism, the policy of nationalisation was adopted for the industries and finance sectors. The mantra was self reliance: most private enterprises were nationalized, major institutions such as banks were nationalised as a means to move away from capitalism to socialism that emphasized the equal sharing of the national cake through hard work and self reliance. He said, the use of Tanzania's natural resources to boost the national treasury and less reliance on lending from international money lenders should be one of the core values of Ujamaa.Another mainstay of Ujamaa was the Villagization processes that took place in rural and peasant areas of Tanzania, a much considered the significant theme of Ujamaa Vijijini. The purpose of Villagization was to ensure self-reliance by work in the agricultural sector to substitute for dependence in international aid. The Arusha Declaration emphasized the need for rural development coupled with education and rural investment programs.Again the main purpose of Villagization was implementing socialism at rural levels. It was to initiate and create rural economy and social communities. There were common service centres such as schools and clinics, local Ujamaa villages formed cooperatives and farming was commonly done at village participation levels.There were many reasons why Ujamaa Vijijini failed to take the heat and succeed mostly at village level. Most villagers were coerced to form Ujamaa villages. Leaving their traditional homes of their ancestors was too much of the peasantry comprehensions. The other reason was that men were forced to work a lot harder in communal farms, what they were not used to, it was the women who always worked in farming at their nucleated villages and not men, and there was always less work for men. (Lazy men! Why women marry such lazy men?) It became apparent too that this Villagization was a way to check the movements of people and control any dissenting voices against the government and its philosophy of Ujamaa Vijijini.To come back to our topic of this essay, what do we learn from Ujamaa as a philosophy that put together the ideas of diverse ethnic groups live side by side with respect of one another's social and cultural backgrounds? Are there poignant points we could take on board in formulating our own ideology that will embrace all ethnic and race groups in Zimbabwe, to able to respect one another as peoples however different in our social and cultural backgrounds we are?To answer the above question it is batter to compare the two philosophies: Tanzania's Ujamaa and Zambian humanism. The similarities in both are as follows: Ujamaa means an attitude of mind or ethic based on three key elements; mutual respect, sharing of property and hard work through self reliance. Ujamaa emphasises family ties relations, the basis of Africa socialism marked by classless egalitarian distribution benefits.The Zambian humanism echoes the same reasoning as Ujamaa; it is a combination of many elements: the main ingredients are African socialism, radical Christianity and existential humanism. He codified his ideas of man's rights and duties in society and was adopted as national philosophy of humanism. He argued that man should be the centre of all activities as the African society has always been man-centred. Humanism would be the foundation of his philosophy.President Nyerere's Ujamaa is rooted in traditional Africa values, but was immensely influenced by Fabian socialism and Catholic social teachings and some antidotes of Rousseau ideas and he codifies all those ideas and presented them to the National Council and was approved and came to be known as Arusha Declaration of 1967. His philosophy included extended family values, community, mutual aid and respect for persons.President of Zambia, KK's Zambian humanism was based on Christian values but was immensely influenced by Dr. Julius Nyerere's Ujamaa. He favoured socialism to capitalism. Ujamaa, an ideology deeply rooted in traditional African values. He was profoundly inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's self discipline, austerity, oneness with the people, holiness and sanctity. His humanism included extended family values, community, mutual aid and respect for persons.President Nyerere's Ujamaa has economic and social aspect; he openly favoured socialism to capitalism. The nationalisation of institutions and Villagization processes that formed Ujamaa Vijijini was the core values of Ujamaa. The economic aspect of Ujamaa failed. What remained as his positive achievements are mass education that led to high literacy was extended to all ethnic groups and races, health facilities were accessible to many and to all ethnic societies, as a result the life expectancy standards rose very high. Cohesion of ethnic groups was facilitated implicitly in his Ujamaa philosophy; a stroke of genius!President Kaunda made naive connections between implementation of economic and social policies that failed to resonate together. He was most times at pains in articulating the two as an entity in his philosophy. It was only the social element that held and continued to inspire the nation: One Zambia, one Nation, and Humanism! Each and every citizen of Zambia sang this mantra at every corner of the country. A stroke of genius! This became ingrained in their psyche. The ethnic groups remained united even after KK's defeat in elections of 1991.The two presidents were strong believers of one-party state, became less tolerate of opposition voices. They shared the same premise and fallacy of developmentalism in their philosophies. Implementation of the economic aspect in their very social African rooted values collided seriously with the adopted western values of economic development.It is only when one talks about the two philosophies in economic terms, a complete failed ideologies. Where they really? The ideals of Ujamaa Vijijini seem to have died when the President of Tanzania passed on in 1999. Equally when the President of Zambia lost elections in 1991 humanism was deleted in the politics of Zambia. It went crushing together with the UNIP lost elections. The positives of it socially still linger on.What remained intact from these two philosophies: Zambian Humanism and Tanzanian Ujamaa that shaped the lives of millions of people with complete diverse and distinct ethnic differences?The citizens of both countries share the same values and principles when it comes to human dignity and respect for human life. The citizens of both countries enjoy strong national identities. Very few African countries can boast about national identity in the way Tanzania and Zambia do. Both countries remained stable politically even after the change of administrations. The ethnic violence leading to genocide like was the case in Rwanda; the crimes against humanity experienced in Kenya's ethnic conflicts and Ugandan wars have never had any political impact regarding political instability in Tanzania even to date, despite their proximity o Tanzania, thanks to Dr. Julius Nyerere.Yes Dr. Julius Nyerere and Dr. Kenneth Kaunda have their legacies intact. They are Africa's heroes and not only in their countries but in the entire continent of Africa. We remember Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela as one of the finest father of the rainbow nation: South Africa. Whatever shortcomings they are spoken about, it was because they are human.The coming generations will remember them and will be grateful for that giant unparallel steps they took to liberate the minds of the African people. What distinguishes them from many is their sacrifice for other people, making them great! They achieved greatness, was not trust upon them. All three of them, are a hard act to follow.My part four of these series of essays is how Germany managed its multi-culturalism since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Can Zimbabwe learn how to deal with ethnic conflicts from the German experience of inclusion with that "other" in their societies?
Opinion / Columnist

The hope that a sector of the population can rise over and above people voice and representation, irrespective of sacrifices and contributions, runs contrary to values of democratic norms and must be reviewed and crushed since it constitutes major assumptions on which Zanu Mugabe distortions, half-truths and misrepresentations were born as foundation to where we are today. These insincere statements have replicated and duplicated themselves overtime consolidating the Zanu ideology boosting. The culmination is the false premised socio- veteranism-culture helping to drawn the country economy through increased corruption for the last thirty-six years.The denial of free press to the country, individual groupings and independent associations in the country by Zanu has been the water shade of the politics of decay, corruption and poor governance in Zimbabwe. Were it not for the African Union defending these Zanu political corrupt practices in both governance and political processes, Zimbabwe removal of the dictatorship style of governance would have long been done. The roles though, of Thabo Mbeki and that of Jacob Zuma for influencing a hold on the negative political stalemate in Zimbabwe are disturbing and cannot be ignored.No longer than when Thabo Mbeki's hidden report results on South African Military Generals' inquest in 2008 on Zanu electoral rigging processes were announced, had he been removed out of power by none other than Jacob Zuma, then perceived as more radical, reliable and people driven. With corruption more rampant today in both Zimbabwe and South Africa, Mr. Jacob Zuma's tenure of office is more questionable now than he begun. Particularly when the then Zanu Mugabe favorite Mr. Malema, who has since swiftly changed sides, and rightly so, to support move against Zuma's corruption practices and Zanu Mugabe land distribution corruption saga; Mr. Jacob Zuma will have to work hard for his money to retain power in the ANC and rule South Africa beyond the current term.The get-rich-quick mentality that consume leadership in Africa is a sign of insufficiencies in administering responsibly the TRUST by the electorate to look after others well; namely the masses regardless of ranks. To stop building walls and cages that help individual leadership styles often based on buying favor than growing accountability and responsibility based on rule of law. Because rule of law in practice is absent on the continent and if it does exist it does on paper which makes it more ridiculous for the young to comprehend. When a president intervenes while processes of judiciary are going on to short-circuit judgement simply because one is a good Zanu member who has done numerous favour for the president it does not resonate with the spirit and mind of rule of law. This simply is the basis on which corruption grows if it is not strongly resisted.In the case of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe has built too many mansions using the country's resources while overlooking a system of rewarding veterans consistently so they are kept focused on him as the only God father. The Zanu Mugabe system, for absolutely selfish and personal reasons of him keeping control over the party and people, distorts, misrepresents and gives half-truths on how balanced are checks and balances in the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary functions of government under the rule of law framework.Zanu Mugabe system never established an enabling constitutional instrument for congress to talk and feel the way forward on a successor for the reasons proffered, in part, on the above paragraph. No enabling power building strategy was ever forthcoming from Zanu since they came into power in 1980. There is no single evidence of self-help projects where Zanu has support to give empowerment to the entrepreneur and common person, except snatching from developed and prestigious well run projects only to reduce them to loss making projects. The country need no debate on Zanu as a failure. We are held back by numerous misrepresentations and half-truths Zanu leadership monopolize the home media to use as their sole propaganda machinery.To therefore emerge with long existing political failure conditions and appear serious to be rennovative and come with solutions by increasing expenditure on a system already unable to sustain itself is irresponsible. For president Mugabe to emerge championing the Veterans cause as though new when he could not put together anything sustainable since 1980 and subsequent years, is the highest show of dishonesty coupled with incompetency grossly abused. The nation cannot receive an impression painted year after year on crisis management by Zanu Mugabe crowd compounded by lack of foresight, planning-sheer incompetence, as though veterans issue is only surfacing in 2016.These are the distortions and half-truths Zanu Mugabe has used to emotionally drive support among the veterans at the expense of the nation. Crudely put, this is divide-and-rule game at its worst, and Zanu Mugabe has resorted to this empty strategy for as long as he has remained in power. Therefore, for any government to put up millions and millions of dollars nursing failure is a sick sign that all is not well, hence the country's constant jobless creation sinking economy.No doubt Mr. Mugabe forgets many things about what needs to be done at home for the country than specializing, as he does, at making missions abroad at heavy costs to the fiscus without tangible benefits and retains to the country. While he specializes in condemning outside nations, home inefficiencies administratively grow endlessly worse consistently. Every so often, and normally with urgency, the issue of war veterans has been undersold from the desk of the head of state who concerned himself with the plans of rigging election votes year after year. Truth be told Zanu fail in the laying down of a plan for an overall good governance based on best practices of delivery for services throughout the country. It's not about appeasing these veterans, it's about meeting a balanced approach to solving economic needs of the people in every stratum, level and social class of the nation.I have no pride in seeing war veterans running naked than I would like to see a school-less Mujiba child whose father passed away during engagement between liberation soldiers and the regime army. The nation need take issue with those responsible for resource distribution and allocation done haphazardly an indication of lack of planning and coherence in implementational stages without an evaluation of project success.Frankly the system run on distortions, half-truths and misrepresentations can only cause the nation hardship as the nation is currently experiencing to day (April 2016) in Zimbabwe. It highlights lack of coherence in thinking on consensus on significance and values of telling the truth to what needs be done to change the running of government in Zimbabwe. Politics of appeasement is a diabolical attack on our national goals and accountability which by its very nature should give green light to needs for transparency from the lacking in accountability so far openly demonstrated in Zanu's failure to management the country and her economy.Somehow political cult-veneration of those failing to administer through a deliberate count on personal blackmail of similar minds therefore forming an administrative resistance group to connive against national interest is criminal, unjust and destructive for any country. Is it the weakness of wanting to get rich quickly or a culture of reckless behavior built on personal survival in collusion with those with monetary influence? When governments get away with a lot of robbery from national fiscus without much accountability, does it not further create an accountable efficiency vacuum with deficiency that deliberately survives on the corruption of systems? This type of political behavior driven by decayed values on corruption has saturated the concept and mind in party politics formation leading us into a deeper leadership and political impasse.Zimbabwe might run the risk of growing a "my Mercedez Benz is bigger than yours" mentality crop of children who may not see what is wrong in Mugabe family's aggrandizements, nepotism and favoritism. Questions of national interest need be asked. If all went well in Zimbabwe is the caliber of Grace Mugabe the best to head women ministry in the country really? Is it out of competence, qualifications or fear of reprisals and reward by association that Grace Mugabe qualifies to be who she is in the nation today? Obviously much blood has been shade hiding strong views on principles and fundamentals of good governance and against corruption.If any value can come out of any political union of parties will yield substantive achievement towards removinf Zanu Mugabe anytime between now and 2018 legally, it is when leaders consent to lie low and let within union a hunt merge for leadership. It is sad if the conservative opinions of 'we were beaten by mosquitoes while fighting for the country's liberation' from the 1960s and 70s wreck too the minds of the supposedly new thinking away from the Zanu Mugabe era.The need of a people thinking outside the box which forces us to accept failures and focus on consensus than uplifting individuals above the national constitution and therefore none removable from presidential candidacy once elected, ought to guide the future way-forward. Eminence of the army veterans now needs be shielded in the national flag where heroes and heroines will have to be an issue of a national committee comprising Zimbabweans of merit and achievement than political parties.The move away from Zanu Mugabe euphoria committed to communist values of politicizing civil service without openly admitting it has to fall away, since civil servants are citizens with high values of commitment and achievement. Zanu does not admit to politicizing civil service or army a factor that works to support their stance on half-truths, misrepresentation and distortions in order to appear democratic.
By Mary Constantine of the Knoxville News Sentinel

The fields at Mountain Meadows Farm, Heiskell, were dotted with ripe and juicy strawberries Tuesday as Tammy Algood, spokesperson for Pick Tennessee Products, officially kicked off strawberry-picking season for East Tennessee.

The event was held at the farm of Ernie and Sue Meadows and their daughter Shannon Meadows.

Algood said the kickoff campaign is designed to let consumers know that local products are available.

"With good luck and good weather our growing season will continue for four to six weeks," she said. Ernie Meadows said he's hoping for eight weeks.

"Global warming is hurting us. If it goes over 85 degrees the berries stop producing," he said.

The Meadows grow the Chandler variety of strawberries.

"No one else's tastes like these. They are that much better," he said.

The Meadows family has been growing strawberries for more than 10 years, with the pick-your-own option being available for the last two years. They also sell at local farmers markets.

Algood said when going to a pick-your-own field like Mountain Meadows Farm, it's important to pick judiciously to prevent harming the plant as well as assuring one gets the best product.

"The correct way to pick a strawberry is to pinch and pull. Take the strawberry and pinch about 1/4 inch up on the stem and then pull. It should separate easily. Do not yank as that could damage the plant," she said.

Algood also said to select berries that are completely red. Once it is removed from the plant the ripening process stops. She also recommends bringing a cooler when going to a pick-your-own farm because berries left in a hot car will have a shorter shelf life.

"When refrigerating it's best to spread the berries out onto a baking sheet to prevent bruising to the fruit at the bottom of the container," she said.

Removing the cap should not be done until one is ready to use the fruit as it is designed to keep the moisture inside the berry. And if choosing to freeze the berries Algood recommends slicing them and sprinkling with sugar.

"The sugar helps to seal in the juices. Without the sugar the berry will be more watery when thawed," she said.

Algood said a list of strawberry farms from across the state is available online at www.picktnproducts.org. There is also a phone application that can be downloaded so the information is always at one's fingertips.

The red berry is one of many fruits that Mountain Meadows offers in its fruit-only Community Supported Agriculture basket. Shannon Meadows said their fruit orchards have grown to the point that it only made sense to decrease production of vegetables and concentrate on fruits.

"Taking care of our fruit is a full-time job. We have peaches, apples, plums, nectarines, pears, white, red and purple grapes, a variety of melons, strawberries, blackberries and blueberries. If anyone wants to sign up all they have to do is go to our website," she said. (www.mountainmeadowsfarmtn.com/csa-info.html)

Mahasti Vafaie, owner of The Tomato Head, is a great supporter of the area farmers markets. She said she enjoys the relationships that are made with the farmers, and it's also a good environmental decision to shop local.

"When buying local you get items that are fresh, and the flavors are completely different," she said.

She shares her recipe for fresh strawberry pie that is served as a special at both of her Tomato Head restaurants.

Tomato Head's Fresh Strawberry Pie

Yields one 9 inch pie crust

INGREDIENTS

 cup sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

1 cup frozen cranberry juice, thawed

 cup water

6 cups fresh strawberries, quartered

DIRECTIONS

1 Mix sugar, cornstarch, juice and water in a medium saucepan. Over medium heat whisk mixture until thickened and boiling. The mixture will be cloudy when you start and take on a deep rich color when done. Pour mixture into a medium bowl and allow to cool. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 2-3 hours or overnight.

2 Prick bottom and sides of pie crust with a fork. Line with parchment paper or a few coffee filters. Fill with pie weights or beans and bake in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Allow to cool a little and then remove the pie weights and parchment or coffee filters and bake an additional 5 minutes until the crust looks dry. Cool crust completely.

3 Remove the sugar and cranberry juice mixture from the refrigerator and whisk until smooth. Stir in the strawberries and pour all ingredients into pie crust. Refrigerate pie for 2-3 hours before serving. Serve with fresh whipped cream.

"Best ever" strawberry freezer jam

Yields 4-half pints

INGREDIENTS

2 cups crushed strawberries

4 cups sugar

3/4 cup water

1 (1.75-ounce) box powdered fruit pectin

DIRECTIONS

1 In a large bowl combine the strawberries and sugar. Mix well and let stand at room temperature for 10 minutes.

2 Meanwhile mix the water and pectin in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Stir into the strawberries for 3 minutes.

3 Quickly ladle into sterilized freezer jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Seal immediately. Let the jars stand at room temperature until the jam is set (up to 24 hours), then refrigerate and use within 1 month or freeze up to 1 year.

Source: The Complete Southern Cookbook

Fresh strawberry ice cream

Yields 6 servings

INGREDIENTS

2 1/2 cups half-and-half

4 egg yolks

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 pint fresh strawberries, hulled and quartered

DIRECTIONS

1 Pour half-and-half into a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat.

2 In a bowl, beat egg yolks and half cup of sugar until pale and smooth. Stir one-quarter of hot half-and-half into egg mixture, stirring well.

3 Pour yolk mixture into warm saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantyly, until thick enough to cat a spoon, about 3 minutes. Stir in vanilla. Cool to room temperautre and cover with plastic. Refrigerate at least 4 hours.

4 An hour before making ice cream, combine berries in a bowl with 2 tablesponos sugar and let sit for one hour. Then mash berries with a fork until bite-sized. Stir into chilled custard mixture and pour into ice cream maker. Follow manufacturer's directions. Freeze at least 2 hours before serving.
SHARE Mary Constantine/News Sentinel staff Ronna Farley of Rockville, Maryland, won the National Cornbread Festival's grand prize with this Cornbread-Topped Cordon Bleu Skillet dish.

By Mary Constantine of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Friendships are made around the kitchen table. They are also made around the competitive stove. Just ask Ronna Farley of Rockville, Maryland, who was crowned on Saturday, April 23, as the National Cornbread Festival's cook-off winner for 2016.

"I knew most of my competition. I had met Karen (Harris) before, and I had competed against Nylet (LaRochelle) before. We often enter the same contests, and we all cheer for each other," Farley said.

This year the applause went to Farley whose winning dish was cornbread-topped cordon bleu skillet. It was one of two recipes she chose to enter.

"I wanted to make a one-dish meal with cornbread on top. The first one I made was stuffed peppers with a sausage filling topped with sauce and a cornbread mixture. Then I thought why not try a Cordon Bleu and make it real easy. I added mushrooms and spinach because I thought it needed vegetables, and it turned out really good," she said.

This was Farley's second time competing at the South Pittsburg festival. The first was in 2012 with a skillet chicken cornbread pudding Mexicana dish. It did not place.

She's also been a contestant in Maryland's National Oyster Contest, a Jones Sausage competition, a Crisco Company contest, and a Manischewitz Company competition.

In 2006 she competed in the Pillsbury Bake-Off with a recipe for choco-peanut cups. She won in her category and took home a $10,000 prize and a General Electric oven.

With the National Cornbread Festival win she received a 30-inch FiveStar stainless steel gas range, a $5,000 cash prize, and special gifts from Martha White and Lodge Cast Iron.

"I guess it's time for me to have a new oven," she said.

Farley has worked as a store cashier with Giant Foods for 30 years. She said she enjoys the interaction with her customers and that many of them follow her adventures as a cooking contestant.

"The customers love to know about my contests, and I could talk about them all day. Even my manager likes to know about it," she said.

Second place went to Karen Harris of Littleton, Colo., who prepared Mexican style cornbread with chipotle shrimp salad and third place to Naylet LaRochelle of Miami, Fla. who prepared bayou smoky shrimp and fried cornbread green tomato arepas.

Now that Farley has this win under her belt she's planning to enter a grilled cheese competition.

"The deadline is in 2 1/2 weeks so I better get busy," she said.

Here is her winning recipe.

Cornbread-topped Cordon Bleu Skillet

Yields 6-8 servings

INGREDIENTS

1 large egg

 cup milk

 cup sour cream

 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, divided

1 (6-ounce) package Martha White Cotton Country Buttermilk Cornbread and Muffin Mix or Buttermilk Cornbread and Muffin Mix

1 cup cooked chicken breast, shredded or diced

1  cups bottled Alfredo sauce

1 (4-ounce) can mushroom stems and pieces, drained

1 cup fresh spinach leaves

2 ounces thinly sliced deli-style cooked ham, roughly chopped

4 ounces shredded Swiss cheese

 cups panko breadcrumbs

1 teaspoon dried parsley

DIRECTIONS

1 Preheat oven to 375 degrees

2 In a medium bowl using a wire whisk, whisk together the egg, milk, sour cream and  cup Parmesan cheese. Blend in cornbread mix. Set aside.

3 In a 10-inch Lodge cast iron skillet, combine chicken, Alfredo sauce and mushrooms. Lay the spinach leaves over the chicken mixture. Scatter the ham over the spinach. Sprinkle the Swiss cheese on top of the ham. Spoon the cornbread mixture evenly over the top.

4 In a small bowl, combine the panko breadcrumbs, remaining  cup of Parmesan cheese and parsley. Sprinkle over the cornbread.

5 Bake at 375 degrees for 25-30 minutes until topping is golden brown and toothpick inserted in the center of the cornbread comes out clean. Cut into wedges.

Mexican Street Style Cornbread with Chipotle Shrimp Salad (Second Place)

Yields 6 servings

INGREDIENTS

Cornbread:

3 teaspoons vegetable oil, divided

1/2 small yellow onion

1/4 of a large orange or red bell pepper

1 large clove garlic, crushed

1 cup fresh or frozen yellow sweet corn, divided

1 (7-ounce) package Martha White sweet yellow cornbread mix

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup milk

1 tablespoons coarsely chopped cilantro

1/4 cup chopped green onion tops

Chipotle shrimp:

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

4 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup finely chopped yellow onion

1 large garlic clove, crushed

1/3 cup canned adobo sauce

1 1/4 pound medium size shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/8 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper

Salad:

1/3 cup mayonnaise

2 teaspoons fresh lime juice

1/4 teaspoon mild chile powder

3 ounces cotija cheese, grated, divided

1 medium size head of red leaf lettuce, cut into thin strips

1 ripe, yet firm avocado, peeled, seeded and coarsely chopped

DIRECTIONS

1 To prepare the cornbread preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Pour 1 teaspoon of the oil into the bottom of a 10-inch Lodge cast iron skillet. Rub oil around skillet with a paper towel. Place oiled skillet on stove top over medium high heat. Once the pan is hot add onion and bell pepper. Toast vegetables until they have brown spots and become aromatic, stirring occasionally. Add garlic and saute for 1 minute. Transfer to a medium size mixing bowl; set aside until ready to use.

2 Pour 1 teaspoon of the oil into a 10-inch Lodge cast iron griddle pan. Wipe with a paper towel and place in the preheated oven to heat.

3 Wipe skillet out with a paper towel and return to the heat. Add 1 teaspoon of oil to the skillet and rub into it with the paper towel. Heat pan to hot and add the corn to the skillet and toast, stirring occasionally until it is slightly blistered and has brown spots. Transfer 2/3 to the bowl with the other vegetables and reserve 1/3 for garnish.

4 Add the cornbread mix, egg, milk, cilantro and green onions to the mixing bowl with the vegetables. Mix well. Pour into the hot griddle pan, smoothing with the back of a spoon until it is evenly distributed. Return to the oven and bake 10-12 minutes or until it is a light golden brown, Keep warm until ready to use.

5To prepare the shrimp wipe cast iron skillet out with a paper towel. Preheat pan over medium high heat. When pan is hot add oil and butter. When butter is melted add onion and saute until soft, approximately 3 minutes. Add garlic and saute for 1 minute longer. Add adobo sauce and stir well to incorporate. Once mixture is hot and bubbly add shrimp and saute until they just start to turn opaque. Add lime juice, salt and pepper; stir well. Remove from heat, cover and keep warm until ready to use.

6 For the salad place mayonnaise, lime juice and chile powder in the bottom of a medium size salad bowl. Mix well. Add 1/2 of the cheese and stir gently. Place lettuce and avocado on top of the dressing in the bowl; toss until lettuce and avocado is coated.

7To assemble, slice cornbread into 6 equal size pieces. Transfer to serving plates. Spoon equal amounts of the shrimp and sauce over the cornbread. Top with dressed lettuce and avocado. Garnish with the reserved corn and grated cheese. Sprinkle with additional chile powder if desired.

Bayou smoky shrimp and fried cornbread green tomato arepas

Yields 4 servings

INGREDIENTS

Remoulade:

1/2 cup mayonnaise

2 tablespoons ketchup

1 tablespoon whole grain mustard

2 tablespoons diced pimento

2 tablespoons lemon juice

3-4 dashes hot sauce, or to taste

Arepas:

1 (7-ounce) bag Martha White sweet yellow cornbread and muffin mix

2/3 cup milk

1 egg

1/2 cup crumbled Cotija cheese (or feta cheese)

Green tomatoes:

1 cup panko

1 1/4 teaspoon Cajun seasoning

1/2 cup Martha White sweet yellow cornbread and muffin mix

1 egg

1/4 cup milk

8 slices firm, green tomatoes

vegetable oil, for frying

Shrimp:

1 pound shelled, deveined shrimp, thawed if frozen

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Kosher salt to preference

1 tablespoon smoked paprika

1/8 teaspoon coarse black pepper

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Lemon wedges, if desired

Hot sauce, if desired

DIRECTIONS

1 To make remoulade: Mix all ingredients until combined. Set aside.

2 To make arepas: In a large bowl mix all arepa ingredients except the cheese until well combined. Heat a 10-inch Lodge cast iron skillet over medium heat until hot. Spray with nonstick cooking spray. Pour about 1/3 cup batter in hot skillet (dividing to make 4 arepas). Cook until top has a bubbly surface; flip. Sprinkle top with about 2 tablespoons cheese; cook until light brown on bottom. Fold arepa over to make a half moon. Repeat to make a total of 4 arepas. Transfer to plate; cover to keep warm.

3To make fried green tomatoes: In a shallow pan combine panko and Cajun seasoning. Place cornbread mix in a second shallow pan. In a small bowl whisk together egg and milk. Dip tomato slice in cornbread mix, egg mixture, and then in panko mixture. Repeat to bread total of 8 tomato slices. In a 10-inch Lodge cast iron skillet, over medium high heat, add oil to cover bottom and about 1/2 inch up the sides. Fry tomato, flipping once until browned on both sides. Repeat to make all 8 slices. transfer to a paper lined plate.

4To make shrimp: In a bowl, toss shrimp with lemon juice, salt, paprika and pepper. In a 10-inch Lodge cast iron skillet, over medium high heat, add oil. When hot, add shrimp. Cook, flipping once, 3-4 minutes or until shrimp turn opaque and just slightly browned around edges. Transfer to a plate.

5To serve: Arrange arepas on a platter. Top each with 2 tomatoes and shrimp, dividing equally. Drizzle with remoulade. Sprinkle with cilantro. If desired, serve with lemon wedges and hot pepper sauce.
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By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel

A middleman in a drug sale that turned out to be fatal for a 20-year-old Knoxville heroin addict is headed to prison.

Knox County Criminal Court Judge Scott Green on Monday sentenced Scott Edward Roberts, 40, to eight years in prison on a charge of facilitation of second-degree murder as part of a plea agreement in the October 2014 overdose death of Anthony Joe Powers.

Powers was found dead inside his car in the parking lot of the Knoxville Billiards Club on Chapman Highway. According to Assistant District Attorney General Sean McDermott, police also found inside the vehicle a syringe, a soft drink can with drug residue on it and a belt used as a tourniquet.

McDermott sent the items to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation crime lab, which found traces of heroin and fentanyl, a synthetic opiate more powerful in its effects than oxycodone or morphine.

Knox County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan conducted an autopsy and determined Powell died from a fentanyl overdose, McDermott said.

Knoxville Police Department Investigator Josh Shaffer, who specializes in drug investigations, helmed the probe of Powers' death. Through various interviews, Shaffer learned Roberts might have supplied the fatal mixture of heroin and fentanyl to Powers, according to McDermott.

Shaffer interviewed Roberts, who denied directly supplying the drugs but conceded he put Powers in touch with a drug dealer in South Knoxville.

"Roberts said he arranged a meeting between Powers and this other individual at the Kenjo Market in South Knoxville," McDermott said.

But Roberts also knew there was something strange about the heroin the dealer was peddling, having been a customer himself, McDermott told the judge.

"Roberts said he purchased heroin from the same individual, and, when he used the heroin, it made his body burn and he thought he was going to die," McDermott said.

McDermott said heroin mixed with fentanyl is deadly not only because of the potency of the drug cocktail but because the user  and sometimes even the dealer  doesn't know the synthetic opiate is present.

"If an addict believes they are taking their normal dose of heroin, and they are actually ingesting fentanyl, there is a substantial risk that the much stronger fentanyl will kill them," McDermott said.

It was not clear from the details presented by McDermott whether Shaffer also has tracked down the dealer or whether there is a separate investigation involving the dealer.
Buddy Bland, director of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, shows the Titan supercomputer which will soon be replaced by the next-generation hybrid supercomputer called Summit on Wednesday, April 20, 2016, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ORNL is joining with IBM in development of the new machine that will be five times more powerful than Titan  the Cray XK7 that once was the World's No. 1 and remains American's top supercomputer for science. Summit will be delivered in 2017. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

SHARE Project director Buddy Bland shows the Titan supercomputer which will soon be replaced by the next-generation hybrid supercomputer called Summit on Wednesday, April 20, 2016, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ORNL is joining with IBM in development of the new machine that will be five times more powerful than Titan  the Cray XK7 that once was the World's No. 1 and remains American's top supercomputer for science. Summit will be delivered in 2017-18. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL) The structure for the new Summit supercomputer's water cooling system takes shape Wednesday, April 20, 2016, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. When completed in 2017 the new machine will be at least five times more powerful than ORNL's Titan machine  the Cray XK7 that once was the World's No. 1 and remains American's top supercomputer for science. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

By Frank Munger of the Knoxville News Sentinel

OAK RIDGE  The whir of the computer room, discernible even with ear protection in place, is the background music for success at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

ORNL, a global leader in scientific computing for decades, appears to be secure in that role, for now and the future.

Titan, a Cray XK7 supercomputer, is currently ranked No. 2 on the TOP500 list of the world's fastest computers, second only to China's Tianhe-2. More important than Titan's sheer speed  about 20 million billion calculations per second  is its scientific production.

ORNL Director Thom Mason said it's the best science machine on the planet, bar none, optimized for researchers to tackle science's great challenges.

Blog: Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground

Many of the finalists for the annual Gordon Bell Prize, which recognizes the top achievement in high-performance computing, have used Titan to perform their work in recent years.

Jack Wells, science director at the National Center for Computational Sciences at ORNL, cited four research projects as examples of Titan's worth:

A team from Brown University used the supercomputer to simulate blood flow through veins to grasp the use of microfluidic devices to filter cancer cells from red blood cells. The research also has potential for developing better drug delivery methods and identifying predictors for sickle cell anemia and the formation of tumors.

Researchers from Virginia Tech used the computing power of Titan to model how different kinds of fluids move in porous rock formations. Results could be used to enhance oil recovery efforts and increase the understanding of how pollutants move underground. The studies also could be applied to proposed projects to store carbon-dioxide in underground formations to help slow climate change. "If you put it there, will it stay there?" Wells said.

Fusion energy researchers from the University of Tennessee and ORNL, along with scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory, are looking at how escaped particles of ultra-hot plasma fuel would interact with materials used in the structure of a fusion reactor. The research simulates the impact of bursting helium bubbles on a tungsten surface.

Experts from the Southern California Earthquake Center are using Titan for increasingly sophisticated earthquake simulations to better understand and predict ground motion and establish hazard maps with greater confidence. Researchers continue to ramp up the seismic frequency, gaining information that can be used to reinforce existing structures and to establish building codes for the future.

While today's work is impressive, Mason noted, "We can't be complacent. We've got to keep improving."

Improvements are happening in a big way.

A new IBM supercomputer that's under development with NVIDIA and other partners will be delivered to Oak Ridge beginning next year, and it's guaranteed to perform applications at least five times faster than Titan and probably a lot more by 2018.

The size and power of Summit, which will replace Titan after a year's transition, will ultimately depend on funding, according to Buddy Bland, director of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility.

The contract with IBM specifies that Summit will have a computing power of at least 150 petaflops  150 million billion calculations per second, Bland said. But if there is enough funding to expand the number of cabinets, using central processing units (CPUs) and graphical processing units (GPUs) to accelerate operations, the capability of Summit could go up to 200 petaflops, 250 petaflops or even 300 petaflops.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water, has vowed that ORNL will once again house the world's fastest computer  a distinction once held by Titan and its Cray predecessor, Jaguar.

ORNL is busy making preparations for Summit, expanding the electrical power by 10 megawatts and adding cooling capabilities at a special annex behind the existing facility that will house the new IBM supercomputer. The power will be sufficient if Summit tops out at 150 petaflops, but that will be doubled to 20 megawatts if funding becomes available to double the computer's size.

At this stage, IBM reportedly considers the number of cabinets and other details of the new system to be proprietary, and Bland said the lab signed a nondisclosure agreement that covers that information.

ORNL is acquiring Summit as part of a three-lab partnership called CORAL (Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne and Livermore) that is working together to maximize resources and share technical expertise.

As to whether Summit will rise to No. 1 on the TOP500 list in the next years, that depends  at least in part  on what happens among other computing powers, such as China and Japan, as well as other labs in the United States.

"There's no guarantee," Bland said.

Regardless of whether the new machine tops the charts on benchmark tests that determine the rankings, the Oak Ridge team expressed confidence that Summit will continue a tradition of producing great science.
Custodians Jean Allred (left) and Michelle Lawson (right) makes their voices heard during a rally by UT employees and supporters who are concerned about Gov. Bill Haslam's plan to privatize management and operations of virtually every state-owned facility, including colleges and universities on Cumberland Avenue Thursday, Sep. 3, 2015. (JESSICA TEZAK/NEWS SENTINEL)

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By Richard Locker of the Knoxville News Sentinel

NASHVILLE  About 15 state university employees and United Campus Workers union members delivered a letter to Gov. Bill Haslam's outsourcing team Tuesday expressing concerns about the process and asking officials to accept public comment on the plan to privatize the operation and maintenance of state-owned property.

About two-thirds of the group was blocked at the security checkpoint in the Tennessee Tower state office building but five representatives were allowed to deliver the letter to the 16th floor offices of state officials and consultants in charge of the controversial outsourcing initiative.

Michelle Martin, the project's communications manager, spoke with the workers and minutes later, project director Terry Cowles returned to his office from a meeting and also responded to the workers' questions and comments.

The surprise visit was organized by UCW, a division of the Communications Workers of America, and billed as a protest to demand transparency in the outsourcing project with employees and the public. Participants were civil with each other, although Mike Ledyard, a consultant on the outsourcing team, interrupted to ask Martin, "Are you aware that they are recording you?" after he spotted a worker recording the meeting with a cellphone.

"Yes. That's fine that they're recording," she said.

Scott Martindale, a facilities services employee at Middle Tennessee State University, said the project's state website has little contact information and no mechanism for public comments, and that telephone calls and messages with have gone unanswered. The website has short biographies of the project's officers but the only contact information listed is Martin's.

Cowles said he would consider add some form of public comment mechanism.

"We'll take that under advisement but I think that's a reasonable request," he said.

The governor's facilities management outsourcing initiative is apparently the largest ever attempted by a state government. When a request for information was issued last summer to gauge interest from potential contractors, it proposed a contract covering the operation and maintenance of virtually all state-owned property, including office buildings, state parks, college and university campuses, prisons, armories and hospitals.

In March, the outsourcing team issued a "business justification" for the plan estimating that it could save taxpayers $36 million a year if fully implemented, even while protecting current employees' jobs  although their employment would be transferred to the contractor. Cowles acknowledged at the time that no firm cost comparison would be realized until a contract is bid and negotiated. Largely at the request of higher education officials, Haslam agreed to hire an outside consultant to evaluate his team's estimates of savings and the state on March 17 started the process of selecting a contractor to perform that work. The deadline for potential vendors to submit a proposal is Thursday.

The outsourcing office also earlier this month issued a request for qualifications for the main outsourcing contract, an interim step for potential contractors to submit information showing they have the ability to perform the contract if selected. The project schedule calls for a contract to be in operation in 2017.

One campus worker asked Cowles Tuesday why the bid process for the overall contract is proceeding before the independent verification is completed, and added "everyone thinks it's impossible to achieve the savings" estimated and still protect employees and their compensation.

"Everyone doesn't think it's impossible to achieve," Cowles responded. "We're not going to stop the process. We can always stop once the audit is completed and we get the results if it's not satisfactory or conducive to moving forward. . There's no definitive point until we are basically signing a contract."

"What if the audit says it's a waste of money?" a worker asked.

"Obviously we don't think that's going to be the result but if that outcome exists, we can deal with it at that point," Cowles said.
The Knoxville skyline pictured Nov. 4, 2014, showing TVA Towers, the Crowne Plaza Hotel, and the Sterchi Lofts. (PAUL EFIRD/NEWS SENTINEL)

SHARE tva.co.jpg TVA has approximately 3.5 million square feet of office space throughout the Tennessee Valley system. Their goal is to reduce that number to 3 million by leasing or selling space. The largest of these properties considered is the TVA East Tower shown here. 2004. Photo by Clay Owen/News Sentinel. 10/19/04.

By Ed Marcum of the Knoxville News Sentinel

TVA is looking into selling its twin towers in downtown Knoxville and moving its headquarters into a new facility to be built on adjacent property, the federal utility announced late Monday.

The move would involve finding a developer who would demolish an office and parking garage that TVA owns on Summer Place just west of the towers and replace it with a new structure to TVA's specifications, Gail Rymer, TVA director of public relations, said Monday.

"There is only about a 40 percent occupancy of these towers and from a planning and cost perspective, it would make sense to have a building that is smaller and better-suited to our needs," she said.

TVA President and CEO Bill Johnson said in a statement that such a move would also benefit downtown.

"Downtown Knoxville is a vibrant place to do business and the TVA towers sit on prime real estate," he said.

Moving to an adjacent site could open up development opportunities for the city and provide cost savings to TVA customers, Johnson said. City officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Currently, about 740 TVA employees work in the two buildings, Rymer said. The only other tenant in the buildings beside TVA is the TVA Office of Inspector General, which would also move into the new structure, Rymer said.

All this is contingent on a number of things, including approval at some point by the TVA board, Rymer said. TVA has retained the CBRE Inc. global commercial real estate group to handle marketing of the property. TVA plans to investigate its options with the property and go before its board with a proposal later this year.

"We looked into several options for our Knoxville office complex," TVA Senior Vice President of Shared Services Ric Perez said in a statement. "Selling the towers and adjacent property and moving across the street could offer the best opportunities for savings for all of our stakeholders."

The plan would also be contingent on working out a deal with a developer interested in buying the summer place site and doing a build-to-suit development for TVA. Rymer said TVA has not yet run cost studies on such a project and will do so closer to the time to put the towers on the market.

The idea of selling the towers is not new. TVA considered the option in 2004 but decided the market conditions were not favorable. As part of a strategic look at its long-term real estate needs, TVA is looking at all of its properties, especially those that have a low occupancy rate or might be in poor condition, Rymer said.
The Tennessee House of Representatives during the 2016 legislative session. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

The principal  and principle - issue overlooked in the sturm and drang surrounding the University of Tennessees Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) is that theres a difference between unqualified support of the office and the actual concept of diversity and inclusion.

Backing to the hilt the office doesnt necessarily mean one believes in diversity, inclusion, or anything resembling the two. Taking issue with the offices direction and communications isnt an indicator that a person wants to crush others under the heels of their non-diverse jackboots.

Thats been the mistake in a number of discussions of the ODI, that a person isnt for diversity unless he or she  or the state legislature - leaves the office completely, totally, unreservedly free to do or say anything under the banner of diversity and inclusion, regardless of whether its seen in some ways to be doing the opposite.

The latest ODI development is that the Tennessee General Assembly has sent to Gov. Bill Haslam a bill that would cut by $436,000 money used to fund the ODI. As of this writing the bill has gone to the governors desk for him to decide whether to sign or veto the legislation.

Regardless, a message has been delivered.

Legislative action of some sort was a certainty in the wake of the ODI and university public relations pratfalls that made national news and sparked statewide outrage and derision. The ODIs travails began last fall, when a suggestion was made on its website that a series of what were seen as bizarre pronouns be employed to use in cases where individuals didnt want to be identified by the gender binary, meaning male and female.

Amid the statewide and national guffaws surrounding that debacle, last December U.S. Rep. Jimmy Duncan unloaded on the ODI for another website suggestion that  in the interest of inclusion  Christmas parties not be called Christmas parties and that religiously-themed cards go unused and unsent. In fact, Christmas was the only holiday specifically referenced in the suggestions to deep-six any religious reference for holiday celebrations.

It appeared that the office was all about diversity except when, in the case of religion, the suggestion was to dont ask, dont tell.

The ensuring uproar again had UT officials on the defensive while continuing to pledge their devotion to diversity. It also brought legislators even more vividly into the fray.

Tennessee taxpayers own the right to have a say through their elected representatives in how their money is spent by their government. Its unrealistic and naive to believe that its the responsibility of the legislature to provide the funding to the university and in everything else to sit down and shut up because the enlightened know best.

In any case, the funding cut isnt a death blow to the ODI and its system-wide budget estimated at about $5 million. In fact, a faculty defender of the ODI on WATE-TVs Tennessee This Week once referred to the entire estimated $5 million as budget dust, trying to say it wasnt all that much to be worried about. Thus, $436,000 is dust within dust.

The legislatures communication is a shot across the bow to the university that someone has to get control of the office and the public face its presenting to the taxpayers who fund the university.

It sometimes seemed the UT administrations primary public activity  apart from removing from the office the responsibility for its website  was to assure disgruntled students that the university supports diversity.

Legislators needed more than that. Its they who must face voters and taxpayers. The university needed to take action that would have enabled legislators to tell their constituents that the school had listened.

ODI defenders say this is a lot of noise over not much of an issue. However, if the situation were reversed, and, for example, a single suggestion were to appear on the ODI website that homosexual students should keep their lifestyles quiet, one wonders how long it would take maintenance personnel to clean up the mess across campus of exploded enlightened heads.

For whatever good the ODI provides, it also presents a danger that it becomes the official or de facto determinant of what is, and isnt, acceptable speech. In short, a university is all about freedom of thought and expression as long as its acceptable thought and expression.

Freedom is a messy, contentious, and sometime cacophonous thing. And not everyone will like everything said by everyone else, just as UT officials likely dont care for what they've heard from the General Assembly.

But whoever has the gold makes the rules. If the legislature doesnt like whats going on in something funded by state government, it has the authority to act. Thus, the question for UT officials and the ODI from the legislature: did you get the message?

George Korda is political analyst for WATE-TV, appearing Sundays on Tennessee This Week. He hosts State Your Case from noon  3 p.m. Sundays on WOKI-FM Newstalk 98.7. Korda is a frequent speaker and writer on political and news media subjects. He is president of Korda Communications, a public relations and communications consulting firm.


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Clarence Page states in his Perspective column, "It may be only coincidental, but this is a good time to revisit two racially charged dramas: The O.J. Simpson double-homicide case and the confirmation hearings for now-Justice Clarence Thomas' nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court."

Page's point seems to be that the so-called race card was played in both, that it is usually played from the bottom of the deck, and "no race has a monopoly on it." I would argue the timing of these revisitations in an election year is in no way coincidental. They are used by the Democratic Party in conjunction with their Hollywood friends to help Hillary Clinton win the election. The real purpose of the Simpson case was not to remind people how justice was subverted for Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, but to reinforce anger with a voting bloc about racism in the police department. The Democratic Party is concerned that with a less-than-stellar economic record, voter turnout will be way below what it was in 2012, let alone 2008.

As far Thomas' confirmation hearing, what a joke. If Anita Hill had spoken out earlier, she might have had a little more credibility. The whole purpose of dredging all that up now becomes obvious in reading the words of Jill Abramson, who wrote in the Guardian: "D.C. has rarely been a place that respected women's authority. Perhaps this is the year that finally changes." Why not just put #votehillary at the end?

It's ironic that Clinton's campaign is saying it is finally time we start believing women who make charges of harassment when she was the one involved in destroying women who spoke out against her husband. Voting for someone just because of their sex or race makes little sense to me.

John Woodward, Loudon
Opinion / Columnist

The South African Constitutional Court made a land mark ruling on Nkandla case fews weeks ago. By and large this episode donated a golden opportunity for us as Zimbabweans to introspect, ruminate and engage in 360 degree performance appraisal of our Judiciary system. The SA Concourt noted that the President of the Republic failed to uphold, defend and respect the Supreme law of the land by failing to adhere to and abide by the remedial action by the Public Protector. The Public Protector's remedial action against President Jacob Zuma over the upgrades to his Nkandla home were binding, Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng said.Kudos ought to be granted to the Judicial System of South Africa for showing some semblance of independence and championing the rule of law. The SA bench proved that it is not susceptible to manipulations from the Executive and does not pander to the whims and caprices of the Executive. The ruling also vindicated the vociferous calls by Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Fighters in as far as adhering to the tenets of Constitutionalism is concerned.As Zimbabwe its imperative that we transform to a fully Constitutional Democracy such that our Constitution can act as a biblical David against goliath of corruption.The Nkandlagate ignited a lot of brohouha within political circles in South Africa with some calling for the ouster of President Zuma on the grounds that he had become a liability and an albatross around the neck of the ANC governing party.The ruling was in stark contrast with the situation in Zimbabwe where a President of the Republic has the audacity to tell the people that 15 Billion USD worth of Diamonds was embezzeled. No one approaches the ConCourt for answers. Its bussiness as usual ,there is deafening solemn, statuette silence and the so called Civil Society remains mum. Such apathy is pathetic.Suffice to say in Zimbabwe pointing an accusatory fingers against the Executive is considered taboo and gravely sacrilegious and can attract dire recriminations and ramifications.When Gubbay ruled that the land reform was illegal, he resigned under duress.His ruling was condemned by the Executive and by this the Executive flouted the cardinal principles of the doctrine of Seperation of powers. Justice Gubbay's Office was stormed by rogue and seemingly intoxicated War Veterans. He was called a Manchester man with links wth the CIA and the uncouth, foul- mouthed Prof Jonathan Moyo went further and castigated what he considered to be anti-land reform lawyers as night lawyers going to see night judges in a night court to seek night justice. That marked the genesis of the erosion of rule of law in Zimbabwe. This episode marked the miscarriage and deathknell of the judicial system in Zimbabwe and heralded a new era of Zanupf government flirting with the Courts if the case of the Supreme Court's nullification of MDC Speaker of Parliament in 2008 is to go by. That was a quentissential case where the Zanu pf led government tried to subvert and regain what it lost in an election. Good prevailed over evil and the man who had brought the case before the Constitutional Court, Jonathan Moyo was left in the cold with egg on his face. The MDC's Lovemore Moyo won the Speakership agian.However, we still expect a tectonic shift from the Zimbabwean bench. We still expect the bench to carry out its duties with dignity and decorum.It is imperative that Courts in Zimbabwe are depoliticised by any means. Judicial independence means, at least, that the judiciary is neither dominated nor controlled by the political branches and that it is disentangled to the extent possible from the forces that influence those branches' policy choices. Courts must not be used to achieve political ends. Courts should not be used as pawns in politics but in Zimbabwe we witnessed the brutal expurgation of Judges considered to be anti-land reform by the government. Up to now Zanu pf government still has this abhorrent penchant of using state institutions to achieve political ends. Such is common among Rick flaire political characters though undesirable.The Office of the Public Protector is a Constitutional creature and it has the same powers as the office of the Ombudsman in Zimbabwe and other countries.The Office of the Ombudsman is little known in Zimbabwe and it is not vested with legally binding powers. It can only offer recommendations, this speaks volumes and ought not to be overlooked.The Office of the Ombudsman is more of a paper tiger in Zimbabwe and this allow government departments and institutions to work unmonitored thereby creating a breeding ground for corporate governance malfaesances and dereliction of duty thereby reducing State institutions and departments to mere incubators of mediocrity.When an important office like this is not legislatively empowered to execute its duties and responsibilities, the result will be flagrant disregard of ethics among other fiduciary responsibilities by government departments and institutions. Acts of ommission and commission will be perpetrated with impunity and the end result will not be different from the Enron Scandal, breakdown of everything and total, irrevocable nd irretrievable collapse of everything!
The Free Speech Coalition is pleased to announce that adult performer, writer and activist Siouxsie Q will join FSC as its newly appointed Director of Policy and Industry Relations. Siouxsie has been working with the Coalition in an ad-hoc manner since February.

With her hard work helping to secure our Cal/OSHA victory in February, Siouxsie quickly proved to be an invaluable and truly dedicated member of the team, said Eric Paul Leue, Executive Director of the Free Speech Coalition. She has a deep and nuanced knowledge of the issues the industry faces, and a passion for political work and grassroots organizing that will be essential to our industrys future success.

As Director of Policy and Industry Relations, Siouxsie will report directly to the Executive Director, and work alongside the Membership Director. Siouxsie will help craft policy positions and actions on a wide array of industry issues, from adult business zoning, to counterfeit products, piracy, lubricant regulation, sex worker rights and condom mandates. Siouxsie will head the Free Speech Coalitions recently announced Industry Sector Committees, working as a liaison between the Coalition and the various sectors.

Siouxsie got her start in the business dancing at the unionized Lusty Lady in San Francisco, and has worked as a performer in adult films since 2012, garnering two AVN Award Nominations and a Feminist Porn Award. During that time, she has been an unrelenting advocate for the rights of all workers, regardless of their industry.

Siouxsie Q is an author, weekly columnist for SF Weekly, and the creator of the Whorecast, a podcast network showcasing the diverse voices of the adult industry. She has lectured extensively on sex and sex work, and is regularly quoted and featured in the mainstream media, including CNN, USA Today, Cosmopolitan, Wired, Buzzfeed and America with Jorge Ramos. She has recently published a collection of her columns, titled Truth, Justice And The American Whore.

I am excited to join the Free Speech Coalition and to be of direct service to my industry, which I believe is home to some of Americas best and brightest workers, innovators, and thought-leaders, said Siouxsie. I am incredibly passionate about advocating for the adult industry as a whole, especially at such a critical time for so many of our issues, like piracy, counterfeit products, censorship, discrimination, and worker harassment.

Pictured: Siouxsie Q, activist (l) and performer (r).
By Choi Sung-jin



Korea will sharply boost industrial cooperation with Iran, doubling its oil imports from the world's fourth-largest producer and jointly conducting a crude stockpiling business.



The two governments will sign a memorandum of understanding to that effect next month, industry sources said Tuesday.



Iran has emerged as new trade partner for Korea since January when the West lifted its economic sanctions on the Middle East country. Korea and Iran reactivated a joint economic committee, and President Park Geun-hye will visit Teheran in early May, accompanied by a large trade mission.



"Korea has been seeking a stable supplier of crude oil while Iran wants a beachhead in Northeast Asia and the two countries' interests coincide to produce several MOUs next month," an industry executive said. "On the occasion of the latest MOU, we are planning to increase crude imports from Iran from 115,000 to 280,000 barrels a day."



Iran was once a major crude supplier to Korea, but bilateral trade volume had sharply dwindled since the economic sanctions were introduced. In 2011, Korea imported $9.35 billion worth of oil from Iran, but imports fell to $2.27 billion last year, down 51 percent from 2014. Imports of petroleum products stood at a mere $73 million, less than a tenth of $796 million in 2011.



The atmosphere has drastically changed since the West lifted its sanctions this year.



Imports in the first three months amounted to $629 million, up 17.6 percent from a year ago. Volume totaled 22.85 million barrels, almost approaching half of last year's total. The introduction of the Iranian condensate, ultra-light crude, soared to $247 million, an 846.5-percent jump from the first quarter of 2015. Korean refineries prefer Iranian condensate because it is cheaper than other Middle Eastern products.



The sources said Seoul was also pushing a project to stockpile oil jointly with Teheran, storing 2 million barrels of Iranian oil and condensate in the stockpiling base of the Korea National Oil Corp. in Seosan, South Chungcheong Province.



"The two countries also will promote various cooperation projects related to energy infrastructure, including construction of the Iran-Oman gas pipeline and improving refining facilities in Isfahan," an industry executive said.




By Choi Sung-jin



Korean construction companies have long worried about the low oil prices stemming from the Middle East. Now the companies are seeing and feeling the shock.



Domestic builders received orders worth $11.88 billion from the Middle East this year, down 44 percent from a year earlier, the International Contractors Association of Korea (ICAK) said Tuesday. The protracted softness of international oil prices seemed to have tightened purse strings in the Middle East, the association said.



The price of Dubai light, a yardstick for order receipts by Korean builders, has remained in the $30 range this year, half of the $65.6 per barrel recorded in May 2015. As of last Friday, the price had edged up to $41.01.



The financial crunches of major clients have led to an emergency situation for Korean construction firms. Saudi Arabia has suspended almost 30 out of about 50 construction works for its King Abdullah Financial District project. Samsung C&T, which is taking part in the project, has yet to suspend its works, but is facing a delay in its schedule because of overdue payments.



The King Abdullah Financial District project aims to be the largest financial hub in the Middle East on a 1.6 million-square-kilometer site near Riyadh, at a cost of $7.8 billion.



Early this year, GS Construction has been designated as preferred bidder for building "process offshore crude" (POC), a facility for refining heavy oil, by Takreer, a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Corporation. But Takreer has since put off the signing the contract for the $2.5-billion project, refusing to deliver the letter of intent, company officials said.



The situation is not much different with Hanwha E&C, which won a 9 trillion- won ($7.8 billion) project to build a town in Bismayah, Iraq, in 2012. Construction has been going on and Hanwha has received 200 billion won from its Iraqi client, but is concerned about the opaque payment schedule in the future. Iraq, under constant threats from religious and tribal conflicts and terrorist acts, has a very unstable work environment.



Also most Middle Eastern countries reportedly will begin financial austerity this year, more bad news for Korean builders. The "fiscally balanced oil price" -- the level of oil prices that can keep oil producers from recording a fiscal deficit -- has fallen sharply from last year to $45-$50. The lower figure means clients will either put off placing orders and/or suspending existing works while delaying payment.



A report by NICE Investors Service, a credit-rating agency, said the business risks would likely be particularly high in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.



"In the case of Saudi Arabia, which has a population of more than 30 million, a high unemployment rate, and a fiscally balanced oil price of over $100, new order placements are negligible," it said. "As Riyadh obligates foreign builders to hire locals, project profitability has also aggravated rapidly to push up the rate of cost to sales to high levels."



"Since 2013, major domestic builders' credit ratings have been downgraded because of the massive readjustment of the cost-to-sales rate for their large projects in the Middle East," the report said. "If completion of the projects that began in 2009-2013 is delayed, it will take more time to dissolve uncertainty in the overseas construction sector."




By Kang Seung-woo

President Park Geun-hye said the country needs further monetary easing to boost the economy, fueling the controversy over the Korean version of quantitative easing.

Asked about her position on former finance minister Kang Bong-kyun's recent call for the Bank of Korea to introduce quantitative easing to boost the sluggish economy, she said she agrees with the need for further monetary easing.

Kang, who co-headed the ruling Saenuri Party's campaign for the April 13 general election, has said that the central bank must print more money in the form of buying bonds from the Korea Development Bank and other state-run banks as part of Korea's attempt at quantitative easing.

"I'm in the position that we should positively consider introducing a quantitative easing," Park said at a meeting with senior journalists. "I will make efforts to have (monetary policy) implemented in that direction."












Korea will make a stronger push in restructuring financially-troubled shipping and shipbuilding companies, but the restructuring drive itself should be spearheaded by firms and their creditors, the country's top financial regulator said Tuesday.

"Last year, the overall value of ship orders clenched by local shipbuilders stood at US$10 billion. But this year, new orders have nearly dried up, overwhelming shipbuilders' ongoing self-rescue efforts," Financial Services Commission (FSC) Chairman Yim Jong-yong told a press briefing, also pointing out what he called worsening business conditions and little signs of recovery for the shipping industry as well.

The FSC outlined intensified restructuring measures for shipping lines and shipbuilders that include additional job cuts, wage reductions and sale of non-core assets.

The move comes as shipping and shipbuilding firms continue to perform poorly due to sharp declines in freight charges and ship orders amid oversupply and low demand. They have inked hefty losses in the years since the 2008 financial crisis.

Under its self-help plans announced last year, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. has sold 360 billion won ($313.3 million) worth of assets and cut 709 jobs. Its creditor banks will push forward stricter measures to help the company stay afloat, the FSC said in a statement.

Main creditors of Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. and Samsung Heavy Industries Co. plan to closely watch the companies' self-rescue steps, it added.












Hyundai Motor Group, the world's No. 5 automaker, made clear Tuesday that it has no intention of acquiring two financially troubled former affiliates, saying the group remains committed to its core carmaking business.



Amid a government push to restructure embattled industries, Hyundai Motor Group has been mentioned as a potential candidate to take over shipbuilding giant Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. and Hyundai Merchant Marine Co., South Korea's No. 2 shipping company.



"Hyundai Motor Group will concentrate only on honing the competitive edge of its carmaking business through vertical integration," a group official said. "We are not interested in shipbuilding and shipping that are unrelated to the group."



Hyundai Motor Group has never taken over companies unrelated to carmaking and is mobilizing all its resources to manage its automaking business well, he stressed.



In a pre-emptive move to keep financially troubled companies from denting the economy, the government has singled out five industries -- shipbuilding, shipping, construction, steelmaking and petrochemicals -- for a sweeping overhaul.



Hammered by an industrywide slump and increased costs, Hyundai Heavy Industries has suffered huge losses for two years on end. The company lost 1.36 trillion won ($1.18 billion) in 2015 following a 2.21 trillion-won loss a year earlier.



Hyundai Merchant has also been struggling with mounting losses, hit by an oversupply and declining freight charges since the 2008 financial crisis. The shipper posted 253.5 billion won in operating losses last year.



Hyundai Motor Group is led by Chung Mong-koo, the eldest son of the late Hyundai founder Chung Ju-yung. Its flagships are South Korea's top automaker Hyundai Motor Co. and No. 2 player Kia Motors Corp.



Hyundai Merchant is the shipping unit of Hyundai Group, a conglomerate headed by the wife of a late brother of the Hyundai Motor Group chairman. Chung Mong-joon, the sixth son of the founder, is the largest shareholder of Hyundai Heavy Industries. Hyundai Motor and Hyundai Heavy Industries were separated from Hyundai Group in 2000 following a fierce sibling fight for group control.



Because of their former ties, speculation has swirled that Hyundai Motor Group may take over some business divisions of Hyundai Heavy Industries and Hyundai Merchant Marine to help them stay afloat.



Recently, there have been talks that the automotive group may acquire the construction equipment division of Hyundai Heavy Industries, but a Hyundai Motor Group official dismissed it as groundless.



In March, Hyundai Glovis Co., a logistics unit of Hyundai Motor Group, was contacted about a possible takeover of Hyundai Merchant Marine, but the group spurned the offer.



"I understand the group has received such an offer, but we are not interested in Hyundai Merchant Marine, which is not related to automaking," a group official said.



In the face of an economic slump, Hyundai Motor Group has also begun intensive restructuring, including an early retirement program and a pay freeze for managerial staff. (Yonhap)




By Jhoo Dong-chan

German auto brands Volkswagen and Audi have been ordered to recall a total of 2,617 SUVs, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced Tuesday.

Volkswagen's mid-size crossover Touareg SUVs were found to have a defect in the model's brake parts, which may not operate properly at high speeds. A total of 2,473 SUVs made between Feb. 10, 2011, and Jan. 19, 2016, have been cited for the safety malfunction.

Volkswagen's other compact-size Tiguan SUVs and the company's sister automaker Audi's Q5 luxury crossovers have been cited for an airbag defect. The two models' airbag system, supplied by Japanese company Takata, has a defective inflator and propellant device that may deploy improperly in an accident, spraying metal fragments at the driver.

A total of 115 Tiguans made between Jan. 14, 2015, and Feb. 4, 2015, were affected while 29 Q5s, made between Jan. 13 and Feb. 3 the same year, will be recalled, the ministry said.

Volkswagen started providing free repairs at its service center Tuesday while Audi starts the service for the Q5, Friday.

The ministry advised owners of the affected cars with the Takata airbag system to seek repairs as soon as possible.

"Since they were found to have defects in a safety-related system, we strongly advise owners to get repairs as soon as possible," said a ministry official.

Beyond Volkswagen and Audi, 48 models by six automakers, totaling more than 50,000 cars, were previously found to have the defective Takata airbag system. Of them, the ministry has already issued orders to recall 38,228 of the affected cars, with plans to recall all, once enough replacement parts are available.

So far, however, only 19,776 cars, or 39 percent, have been reported for the recall.

For more information, call 080-767-089, or visit www.car.go.kr.
By Yoon Ja-young





Financial Services Commission Chairman Yim Jong-yong looks pensive at a meeting on restructuring at the FSC office in Seoul, Tuesday. / Yonhap

The government said Tuesday that Hanjin Shipping and Hyundai Merchant Marine will be put under court receivership should they fail to talk foreign ship owners into cutting charter fees drastically by mid-May.

The shipping companies have been negotiating with ship owners over a reduction in ship rental fees. However, the talks have been making little progress.

"We cannot wait forever," Financial Services Commission (FSC) Chairman Yim Jong-yong said after an emergency meeting over the restructuring of indebted shipping and shipbuilding companies.

"The focal point of restructuring shipping companies is the negotiation over charter fees which are over 5 trillion won. If they fail to produce results from the talks, any restructuring program will be meaningless," he added.

Yim said a final proposal will be handed to ship owners by the end of the month, setting mid-May as a deadline for the negotiations.

"The only way left for shipping companies will be court receivership, if the charter fees are not adjusted," he said.

The financial regulator also demanded Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) and other shipbuilders to come up with plans to shed jobs.

DSME is considering slashing 2,300 more jobs by 2019 in restructuring. Samsung Heavy Industries is also expected to have further layoffs. The government plans to set up special measures to cope with the massive layoffs in the industries. It is also considering injecting more capital into state-run banks that lead the restructuring.

"Shipbuilding companies won around $10 billion in orders last year, but they haven't got any this year," Yim said.

Freight charges fell 25 percent more this year for shipping companies, and the global shipping industry is reorganizing alliances amid the worsening situation. The country's shipbuilding and shipping industries are sitting on snowballing debt because of falling global demand and oversupply.

Because this is having a detrimental effect on the economy, the government is preparing measures to reorganize the industries.

While acknowledging efforts for self-led restructuring, the chairman explained they should prepare more rigorous self-rescue plans amid the worsening situation.

However, a government-led merger or exchange of business units among shipbuilders is "neither possible, nor desirable," according to Yim.

"There have been many discussions and suggestions regarding the reorganization of the shipbuilding industry, such as mergers between big players, but the government and creditors aren't preparing or considering such plans," he said.

Instead, the government decided to request additional self-rescue steps  including further layoffs, restructuring the salary system and cutting costs  for DMSE, taking into account that the company has been failing to win orders. The company got rid of 30 percent of its executives last year.

For Hyundai Heavy Industries and Samsung Heavy Industries, the major creditor banks will require rigorous self-rescue programs and oversee whether they are executed as planned.

As to Hyundai Merchant Marine and Hanjin Shipping, the government will monitor their debt-restructuring programs signed with creditors.

Some expect the two shipping companies to be merged, but Yim said it was "not only too early but also inappropriate" to discuss this.

The government also plans to set up a task force to help the two companies stay in a global alliance of shipping companies, because this is crucial for the industry to survive.

The Korea Development Bank (KDB) and the Export-Import Bank of Korea, the state-run banks that will lead the restructuring, are in sound financial health, according to the financial regulator. KDB's BIS ratio stood at 14.28 percent and that of the Exim Bank at 10.11 percent as of last year.

However, Yim said there was a need to strengthen the banks' health further because they will lead corporate restructuring. The FSC has therefore asked the finance ministry and the central bank to help the state-run banks increase their capital. The ministry already provided funds to the Exim Bank through a 1 trillion won stake in the Korea Land and Housing Corporation. Also, the government is considering funding the state-run banks through the Bank of Korea (BOK).

A BOK spokesman said, "If we get a specific request, we will discuss which role the central bank can play in the corporate restructuring process."

The government plans to expand restructuring to other industries. There will be credit risk evaluation for large businesses in the second quarter and one for SMEs in the third quarter to screen out ailing companies.

The government also plans to encourage industries hit by oversupply to decrease their facilities and restructure.

Regarding demands that the owner families of troubled companies should take responsibility for their mismanagement, Yim said large shareholders should share the burden with creditors and workers.

But he said it was difficult for the government to demand a private company's management to take responsibility.

"That is what shareholders should demand," he said, adding that as a shareholder, KDB, for instance, could make such a demand to DSME.
Hue Eye Center Director Pae Hee-cheol shows the Nd:YAG laser, the equipment that treats vitreous floaters, at his clinic in Incheon, west of Seoul. The center is the only hospital equipped with the machine in Korea.

/ Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk





Hue Eye Center is the only eye clinic in Korea to treat the annoying symptoms

By Lee Kyung-min

An office worker, surnamed Kim, visited an eye doctor because for what seemed to be a number of tiny transparent objects floating within his vision whenever he looks at the computer screen.

As his job requires more than 10 hours a day staring at monitors to conduct online research, those "worm-like things" blocking his vision were a nuisance that caused him insomnia and anxiety.

Similarly, a high school student, surnamed Lee, has been experiencing the annoying phenomenon for the past couple of years, unable to concentrate when studying.

What frustrated Kim and Lee even more was that they could not find how to cure their symptoms.

A number of doctors told them that the symptoms were not detrimental to their eyes and they would have to get used to seeing those things as well as ignoring them.

Then they found an online community with some 8,880 members suffering from exactly the same condition, and that was how they discovered the Hue Eye Center in Incheon, west of Seoul, the only ophthalmic clinic in Korea that treats such a condition with an Nd:YAG (neodymium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet) laser.

What are the "floaters" and why do they appear?



According to Hue Eye Center Director Pae Hee-cheol, the chief ophthalmologist there, what Kim and Lee are experiencing is called "vitreous floaters," a condition in which people see what may look like tiny, transparent worms.

They typically disappear whenever people try to get a closer look, only to reappear as soon as they shift their focus.

Such objects occur when the vitreous humor shrinks and changes its formation, causing a small piece of the retina, the light sensitive tissue at the back of our eye, to be pulled off.

"Normally, the vitreous gel is anchored to the back of the eye. But it gets thinner, shrinks, and pulls away from the inside surface of the eye," Pae said.

"Such detached parts contain bits of tissue, red blood cells, or clumps of protein, thus not transparent, and they cast a shadow on part of the light going into the retina, making people feel like there are some objects in their field of vision," he added.

Floaters are particularly more noticeable when people see bright surfaces, blank computer screens, snow, or clear skies, because the consistency of the background makes them easier to be distinguished, he noted.

"Most of the time, the brain learns to ignore them. But abnormally numerous or large worm-like things' not only interfere with vision but also signal signs of a more serious condition," he said.





Hue Eye Center Director Pae Hee-cheol examines the eyes of a patient who suffers from vitreous floaters.

/ Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

Selective Laser Floaterlysis

Selective Laser Floaterlysis, a specialized treatment for vitreous floaters offered by the Hue Eye Center, removes "the detached part" of the retina by two measures using the Nd:YAG laser  either vaporizing them after target-applied laser excision; or making them move as far away as possible from the macula, the central part the of eye responsible for high-resolution vision, so that the objects will not be seen so much.

Pae purchased the laser in 2013 and remains the only ophthalmologist to have the equipment in Korea.

While most ophthalmic clinics in Korea are reluctant to spend up to 50 million won to purchase the machine to only treat "vitreous floaters," Pae feels passionate that he is helping patients who desire improvement, however minimal it may be.

"Only a small number of patients suffer from vitreous floaters, and the level of improvement they feel is relatively small, compared to LASIK (laser-assisted in-situ keratomileusis) or LASEK (laser-assisted sub-epithelial keratectomy). However, I believe as a doctor, I should help patients who want the treatment," he said.

"Most of my patients have been disappointed by many doctors, even though their daily lives are significantly ruined by the floaters that never go away. I am happy when my patients thank me for treating the symptoms which no other doctors take seriously," he added.

The laser treatment is particularly effective for older people, Pae added.

Some 5 percent of patients aged 35 or below say their conditions improved, and those aged between 35 and 45 show varied results, requiring further treatment.

However, most of those aged 45 or older say their condition significantly improved following the treatment, according to Pae.

"While our treatment does not guarantee a 100-percent cure rate, most of the patients opt for the treatment, saying they are willing to do anything to have their vision improved from their current condition. We are seeking to help them," he said.

According to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, some 170,000 people visited hospitals in Korea for vitreous floaters in 2012.
By Jun Ji-hye



The military is facing growing calls from the ruling Saenuri Party and some military experts to develop a nuclear-powered submarine as a countermeasure to North Korea's submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).



There are concerns that it is almost impossible for the surveillance assets that the military currently possesses to detect a North Korean submarine launching a missile from underwater.



Supporters of developing a nuclear submarine say that the only way to counter such a threat would be to have a submarine ordered by Seoul to strike the North's submarine before it launches a missile.



The calls come as the repressive state is accelerating its SLBM program with its latest test Saturday, during which the North reportedly successfully launched a missile from underwater.



The ruling Saenuri Party floor leader Rep. Won Yoo-chul recently raised questions over the capabilities of existing or envisioned assets of the nation of responding to such a threat.



"The effectiveness of the nation's own Kill Chain preemptive strike and the Korean Air and Missile Defense (KAMD) has been called into question," Won said during a party meeting, Monday. "The nation needs to establish stronger and more confident deterrent force in preparation for the North's provocations."



Seoul is developing its own Kill Chain and KAMD programs to better deter the North's nuclear and missile threats with the aim of putting them into service in mid-2020.



But critics point out even if those assets are deployed, it would be hard to detect and destroy a North Korean submarine that sneaks into rear area waters off South Korean territory.



"The ultimate means to respond to the North's SLBM would be to strike the submarine before it launches a missile," said Rep. Kim Jung-hoon, chief of the ruling party's policy committee. "To do so, we have no choice but to possess nuclear-powered submarines."



Moon Keun-sik, a submarine expert at the Korea Defense Security Forum, also told reporters: "Introducing nuclear-powered submarines would be the best way to respond to the SLBM threat."



Supporters say that the nuclear submarine does not have to surface frequently as it is powered by a nuclear reactor, making it difficult for an enemy to detect. Moreover, it can operate at high speeds for long periods of time.



They say Brazil, which does not possess nuclear weapons, is pushing for developing a nuclear-powered attack submarine with assistance from France.



Ministry of National Defense spokesman Moon Sang-gyun said that nothing has been decided regarding the development of nuclear submarines, but left open the possibility, saying, "We are attentively listening to such an opinion."



In 2003, then-the Roh Moo-hyun government secretly pushed for building the nation's own nuclear submarines and operationally deploying three submarines by 2020. But this plan was dropped in a year due to concerns about potential nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula.



Observers say the situation is different this time, noting that the government can push the plan again as a revision of the Seoul-Washington nuclear cooperation deal, signed last year, allows South Korea to produce uranium enriched to less than 20 percent when using U.S. ingredients.




/ Korea Times



By Ko Dong-hwan

Parents who fear their children's academic performance will be below par are seeking "brain stimulus" injections to boost their children's brainpower.

Whether the children want it or not, the parents are giving them shots of gingko leaf extract mixed with various vitamins. One injection costs from 60,000 won ($52) to 120,000 won.

The mother of a boy, 8, preparing for a national mathematics contest, took him to a family medicine physician in Jongno-gu, Seoul, and gave the boy an injection once a day for three days. The mother, from Seoul's opulent Seocho-gu, Seoul district, believed the shots would improve her boy's concentration.

"My boy doesn't like injections," the mother said, according to Chosun Ilbo. "But after I saw that the shots had some effect, I have been giving him a shot every time he writes a paper for a contest."

Seven out of 10 clinics in and around Daechi-dong, a hotspot in Seoul crammed with private institutes, offer the shots, according to the report.

Experts questioned the shots, saying there was no medical proof that they were effective, and that they most likely had a placebo effect.

"Most of the ingredients exit the body in the urine and what's left hardly last for a few hours," said a family medicine physician at Severance Hospital.
Rep. Na Kyung-won, left, and Chung Jin-suk, a lawmaker-elect, greet other lawmakers-elect of the ruling Saenuri Party during a workshop at the National Assembly, Tuesday. Na and Chung are vying to become the party's next floor leader, who will act as the party's chief until the chairman is elected at a national convention, which may take place in June or July. / Yonhap



By Kim Hyo-jin



A senior lawmaker of the ruling Saenuri Party said Tuesday that the next National Assembly speaker should be selected from one of the opposition parties.



Rep. Suh Chung-won, who was elected to an eighth term in the April 13 general election, said it is not desirable for the party to compete with the opposition parties regarding the post because it lost its majority in the election. Instead, it should focus on rebuilding the party with new faces in key party posts, he said.



"The opposition bloc would never allow us to hold the speaker's post in the 20th National Assembly. We should just drop out of the bid," Suh said during a party workshop for lawmakers-elect.



"We will be able to produce a turnaround if the party is led by new figures. I myself will step back and support them."



The remarks came as the party is struggling from the election defeat. The party won only 122 seats, relegated to the second-largest party after the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) with 123 seats.



Loyalists to President Park Geun-hye, who exerted influence in the controversial nominations, have been blamed for the humiliating outcomes.



Suh, the leading figure of the pro-Park faction, has been talked of a potential speaker candidate as a longest-term holder of the entire 300 lawmakers-elect.

His remarks were viewed as Park's loyalists admitting responsibility for the surprising setback.



"We will be given a chance again only when we put forward figures who can seek a win-win with the opposition parties through talks and compromises," Suh said, referring to the chairman and floor leader posts to be filled.



The prospect that the Saenuri Party will retain the speaker's post in the upcoming Assembly was slim.



When it needs a majority vote of the 300-seat Assembly to be elected as the speaker, the opposition parties are likely to join hands to secure the post. The splinter opposition People's Party won 38 seats, resulting in a majority-seat opposition bloc.



Six-term lawmakers Moon Hee-sang and Lee Seok-hyun, five-term Won Hye-young and Park Byeong-seug were on the MPK's list of potential Assembly speakers.



At the first gathering of the 122 lawmaker-elects, the party leadership in the outgoing Assembly vowed to refresh itself by quelling the factional discord.



"We let down the pubic with the nasty practices of the nomination process," floor leader Rep. Won Yoo-chul said. "I believe if we truly reflect ourselves, we need to clear factional politics and shift our focus to the livelihoods of the public."



The report released in the workshop pointed out controversial nominations, the economic downturn, a failure to recruit new figures, and unappealing pledges as the reasons of the defeat, said the participants.



Meanwhile, the People's Party also held the workshop for its 38 lawmaker-elects, assessing the background of its victory and laying out visions for the upcoming Assembly. The leadership concluded that the public who were disappointed with the two major parties voted for the new party.
Shin Hyun-woo, former CEO of Oxy Reckitt Benckiser Korea, speaks to reporters before entering the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office, Tuesday. / Korea Times Photo by Koh Young-kwon



By Lee Kyung-min

The prosecution questioned former CEO of Oxy Reckitt Benckiser Shin Hyun-woo, 68, Tuesday, over allegations that the company knew about a deadly chemical used in humidifier disinfectants before they were sold.

This is part of the prosecution's widening investigation into 70 deaths and 107 multiple respiratory problems allegedly caused by the disinfectants produced by the company between 2001 and 2011.

An additional 44 victims were found to have used products made by Lotte Mart, Homeplus, and Butterfly Effect among others.

Before entering the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office, Shin expressed regret to the victims' families, but denied that he knew about the danger beforehand.

"I offer my sincere apologies to the victims and their families. I will answer any questions earnestly. However, I did not know that the chemicals were dangerous," he said.

Shin is not likely to face murder charges, because it is difficult for the prosecution to prove that he intended to kill the consumers with the toxic products.

Charges against him may include manslaughter and professional negligence resulting in injury, the prosecution said.

Shin headed the company in 2001 when it introduced the products containing the deadly polyhexamethylene guanidine (PHMG) to the market.

Given that the company's head office in England owns Oxy, the prosecution believes the former CEO was significantly involved in the decision making process here.

Prosecutors questioned two other key executives who were in charge of production including a company research center head surnamed Kim and senior researcher surnamed Choi.

They were asked how they first developed the disinfectants, whether they were aware of the chemical's danger, and if they reported consumer complaints about breathing difficulties to the company's head office.

The prosecution also asked why the company failed to conduct thorough toxicity tests on their products before selling them.

Already, the company faces allegations that it erased online consumer complaints from its website, and paid off university researchers to fabricate test results in its favor.

The prosecution will determine whether to seek arrest warrants against them soon.

Meanwhile, Homeplus CEO Kim Sang-hyun offered a public apology to victims at the company headquarters in Gangseo-gu, western Seoul.

Homeplus sold disinfectant containing PHMG between 2004 and 2011.

"I offer my sincere apologies and will set up a body to offer due compensation to the victims," he said.

Kim said the body will be composed of an outside panel to assess the damage fairly, adding that he will hold discussions with the government for a prompt resolution.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice is considering offering money to the affected victims to help with medical costs and living expenses.

The ministry, with the help of Korea Legal Aid Corporation (KLAC), will help those who wish to file damage suits against the manufacturers of the disinfectants.
President Park Geun-hye speaks during a luncheon with the chief editors of 45 newspapers and broadcasters at Cheong Wa Dae, Tuesday. She said she wants to meet with opposition party leaders regularly to discuss state affairs. / Yonhap



President vows to boost communication

By Kang Seung-woo

President Park Geun-hye said Tuesday that she is willing to meet ruling and opposition party leaders on a regular basis to seek their cooperation on pursuing her policy agenda.

She said a good way forward would be to create a three-way consultative body of the government and ruling and opposition parties in May to discuss state affairs.

This is viewed as indicating that she may boost communication with the opposition following the ruling Saenuri Party's defeat in the April 13 general election. One of the reasons for the defeat is said to be the President's unilateral governing style.

She made the remarks during a luncheon with the chief editors of 45 newspapers and broadcasters at Cheong Wa Dae  the first meeting of its kind in nearly three years that lasted more than two hours.

"After visiting Iran (next month), I will try to meet the leaders of the three parties as soon as possible," Park said. She plans to travel to Iran from May 1 to 4 on a state visit. "In addition, I will positively consider regularizing meetings with them."

The President also said that she would make the utmost effort to ensure cooperation and communication with all levels of society, while pushing for change and reforms, by reflecting the wishes of the people as shown in the elections.

Park's remarks came as she faces calls to reform the government and enhance communication after her Saenuri Party only managed to win 122 out of 300 parliamentary seats, demoting it to the National Assembly's second-largest party after the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea with 123. The minor opposition People's Party captured 38 Assembly seats.

In addition, her comments indicate that the President will handle state affairs, including her four major reforms, based on dialogue and communication.

As the Saenuri Party has lost its parliamentary majority, Park cannot pursue economic and social reforms without the support of the opposition parties.





Cabinet reshuffle

In the wake of the Saenuri Party's defeat in the election, there has been speculation that Park may reshuffle the Cabinet as a means to turn things around, but she rejected the idea, saying it was not the right time to do so.

"I cannot afford to reshuffle the Cabinet, considering the urgent security situation that may see a possible fifth nuclear test by North Korea following its recent test-fire of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM)," Park said.

"In addition, the Cabinet has a lot of economic tasks to accomplish."

Asked about former floor leader Yoo Seong-min's return to the Saenuri Party, Park said the decision is up to the party, but did not hide her bitter feelings about him.

Yoo, a former close aide to Park, stepped down from his post last year after locking horns with the President over a revision to the National Assembly Law. At the time, Park denounced Yoo as a betrayer who sought his own political interests.

"I hoped the floor leader would have helped me manage state affairs during difficult times. However, the trust-based relationship between us was broken after he assumed the position and pursued his own political gains," Park said.

As to a tough anti-corruption law scheduled to go into effect in September, the President said she feared it would damage the economy.

The legislation, widely dubbed the "Kim Young-ran Act," calls for imprisonment of up to three years or hefty fines for those who accept money or something valued at 1 million won ($870) or more, regardless of whether it was given in exchange for favors or not.












By Kim Se-jeong



Almost 8,000 Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) employees have donated 40 million won to create a memorial park for former sex slaves of the Japanese military during World War II.



Mayor Park Won-soon handed the money to a representative from the private group behind the project, in his office on Tuesday.



"The only way to stop the same tragedy from recurring is to remember and write about it," said Park during the ceremony. "We should not forget what the Japanese military has done to these innocent women. Seoul City will help surviving victims recover their honor."



The memorial park is scheduled to open before Korea's Liberation Day on Aug. 15 where the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty was signed in 1910 on the slope of Mount Nam. The outdoor park on the 1,000-square-meter site is expected to be used as an education center, according to the city.



About 200,000 women are believed to have been conscripted to serve Japanese troops in its occupied territories until 1945. Most were from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam and other countries. Korea has 44 remaining survivors.



The issue has been one of the most contentious between Korea and Japan in recent years. A verbal agreement reached on Dec. 28 last year sparked further controversy in Korea.



According to the accord, Japan promised to pay 1 billion yen ($9 million) to the 44 survivors, and Seoul and Tokyo will "address" with relevant civic groups the location of the bronze statue of a girl symbolizing a former sex slave in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. Also, the two sides agreed to resolve the thorny issue irreversibly.



A group of lawyers has asked the nation's Constitutional Court to review the constitutionality of the agreement.



The SMG also said it had allocated 100 million won for a book project related to the issue scheduled to be published by the end of this year.



The city's move highlights opposition to the central government's compromise on the sex slavery issue.



In protest against the compromise, municipal and provincial authorities across the country have decided to finance statues in memory of the victims.




By Yi Whan-woo





Yun Byung-se

Foreign Minister

Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se will attend a China-led regional security forum that will begin in Beijing, Wednesday.

During the two-day Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building in Asia (CICA), Yun will focus on convincing former communist nations to prevent another North Korean nuclear test, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday.

On the sidelines of the forum, he is scheduled to hold bilateral talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Wednesday, and with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Thursday.

Yun will be the first South Korean foreign minister to attend a CICA meeting since Seoul joined the forum involving 26 member states.

The participating countries include Mongolia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Krygystnan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Some of the countries maintain friendly ties with North Korea although Pyongyang is not a CICA member state.

China, which holds a two-year rotating chairmanship of CICA, has sought to develop it as a security cooperation tool against the U.S.-led security order in the region, according to diplomatic sources.

Due to Seoul's ties Washington, no South Korean presidents or foreign ministers have participated in previous meetings.

"I think it is quite important, in a timely manner, to win international support and cooperation concerning North Korea's nuclear and missile provocations," Yun told reporters, Monday. "I want to persuade participants at CICA to include warnings against Pyongyang's provocations in conclusive documents after the meeting."

The CICA meeting is held every two years. This year the meeting takes place amid growing signs that North Korea will defy the United Nations again and carry out a fifth nuclear test soon.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Yun is set to deliver a key note speech, Thursday, concerning countermeasures against North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

He will also urge CICA members to implement U.N. Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2270. The UNSC unanimously approved it, March 2, in response to North Korea's fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 and an alleged satellite launch using ballistic missile technology, Feb. 7.

Analysts were optimistic about Yun participating in the CICA meeting.

"A number of CICA member states still maintain friendly relationships with North Korea and Yun's visit will offer South Korea a chance to convince them to stand on our side and step up in pressing the North," said Park Won-gon, an international relations professor at Handong University.

A professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy echoed a similar view.

"Beijing wants to make sure it plays a leading role in security in Asia, and it's worthwhile for a South Korean foreign minister to show up at a CICA meeting and use all possible means to draw support," he said on condition of anonymity.

A researcher at the Sejong Institute pointed out that the success of UNSC sanctions depends on support from China, North Korea's largest benefactor.

"China controls the oil supply and flow of hard currency into North Korea. In this climate, I'd say Yun's trip is being made in a timely manner," he said, asking not to be named.

Meanwhile, Yun will also bring up issues on President Park Geun-hye's signature project, the Eurasia Initiative at the CICA meeting.

The project requires support from CICA member states because it is aimed at establishing an inter-Korean railroad connecting to Russia's Trans-Siberian Railway, and on to Western Europe.

The feasibility of the projects has been under doubt following the latest UNSC sanctions.

Two South Korean vice foreign ministers  Shin Gak-soo and Kim Sung-han  attended CICA foreign ministerial meetings in 2008 and 2010, respectively.

In 2014, then-Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae participated in the CICA summit in Shanghai representing President Park Geun-hye.
South Korea's foreign minister plans to hold separate talks with his Chinese and Russian counterparts this week on the sidelines of a regional security forum to be held in China, Seoul's foreign ministry said Tuesday.

Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se will meet with China's top diplomat Wang Yi on Wednesday and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Thursday amid growing speculation over North Korea's provocations, the ministry said.

The talks will be held on the fringes of a ministerial meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), which will be held in Beijing from Wednesday through Thursday.

"Seoul's foreign minister will attend the conference in a bid to closely consult with CICA member states over North Korea's nuclear issue and to discuss how to curb additional provocations by Pyongyang," Cho June-hyuck, a ministry spokesman, told a regular press briefing.

Yun will be the first South Korean foreign minister to join the conference since Seoul became the member state in 2006. CICA was launched in 1992 and currently counts 26 nations as its members.

His planned visit to China comes amid speculation that Pyongyang may carry out another nuclear test or launch a mid-and long-range missile ahead of its ruling party's congress slated for early May.

"If North Korea makes further provocations, it will face stronger international sanctions and deeper diplomatic isolation," Cho added.

Meanwhile, the spokesman said that there are no signs that two North Korean workers in Qatar are trying to defect to South Korea or a third country.

A local media report claimed Monday that the North Koreans forced to toil as construction workers in the Middle East country fled their workplace and hid in a police station, angered by the North's labor exploitation.

"It is believed that their move was related to internal problems such as labor conditions or wages," Cho said. "As far as I'm concerned, there are no signs that they are hoping to seek asylum in South Korea or another country." (Yonhap)
Australian Defense Attache Captain Vaughn Rixon, second from left, accepts a wreath at the Anzac Day Dawn Service held at the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul on Monday. / Courtesy of John Redmond



By John Redmond

War veterans, distinguished guests and top military personnel assembled to pay their respects at the Anzac Day Dawn Service at the War Memorial of Korea in central Seoul, Monday.

The term Anzac refers to the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps that fought against the Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli during World War I.

Anzac Day, a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand, has been observed every April 25 since the official naming of the day in 1916. It commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders "who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations," the event organizer said in a press release.

Alongside WWII and Korean War veterans from the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, special guests included Turkish Defense Attache Colonel Osman Doganbey, New Zealand Defense Attache Group Captain Rod Fortune, Australian Ambassador Bill Paterson, New Zealand Minister of Veterans Affairs Craig Foss and Australian Defense Attache Captain Vaughn Rixon.

The dawn service comprised welcome remarks, a Mount of the Color Guard, prayers, addresses by invited guests and the reading of the poem, "Commemoration to the Fallen" read by Australian middle school student Rene Eggeleston, the laying of a wreath, a minute of silence and a blessing.

What was clearly missing from the meaningful event were the three national anthems of Australia, New Zealand and Korea, usually performed by the brass section of the Eighth U.S. Army Band of the USFK and the "Last Post" played on a trumpet that precedes the minute of silence.

This omission, though not scheduled and highly out of context, did not dampen the mood of the occasion even though the closing remarks by Captain Rixon alluded to this being a non-musical Anzac Day service.

The musicians were scheduled to participate elsewhere on that day, performing Sunday at the Gapyeong Memorial Service.
/Courtesy of Twitter



By Lee Jin-a

North Korea is executing people who distribute illegal drugs and South Korean videos, says the Korea Institute for National Unification.

The institute published "North Korean Human Rights Report 2016" on Monday after conducting in-depth interviews with 186 North Korean defectors who came to South Korea from the end of 2014 to last year.

According to the report, three North Koreans including a Hyesan University of Agriculture and Forestry student were shot dead in Hyesan, Yanggang Province in 2013 because they distributed drugs and South Korean videos.

Two men were also executed at Hyesan airport in 2014 after being charged with smuggling drugs and watching South Korean dramas. The defectors said 11 people had been sentenced to death for the same offences since 2011.

North Koreans did not face the death penalty just for distributing South Korean TV programs. However, they were sentenced to death when police caught them dealing in or buying illegal drugs as well as the videos.

The institute said illegal drugs were widely distributed in North Korea. Because of the growing number of cases involving drug dealing and distribution of South Korean videos, North Korean authorities had recently launched a crackdown and introduced severe punishment.
By Yi Whan-woo





North Korea is beefing up its border security while bolstering a crackdown on the use of mobile phones to prevent its people from defecting to the South, according to a government report released Tuesday.





The White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea, an annual report published by the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), also showed that the North is forcing its laborers to work long hours in foreign countries and pocketing most of their wages.





This year's white paper was based on accounts of former North Koreans who escaped to South Korea between 2014 and 2015.





The report showed North Korea's State Security Department has ordered soldiers to tighten security checks on the border with China.





The country set up barbed wire and surveillance cameras in Hoeryong and Musan in North Hamgyong Province, which were used as major routes to flee to China en route to South Korea.





Both Hoeryong and Musan are located opposite to China, with the Tumen River in between.





In two other provincial towns  Onsong and Hyesan  the security guards have doubled barbwire fences and also purportedly planted mines alongside the Tumen River.





Under the order of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, its regime has forcibly moved people's homes from border areas since January 2014 if they were found using mobile phones, which have been a means of communication with the outside world.





The North Korean who worked at construction sites in Russia said they were asked to labor 19 hours a day and received as little as $1,000 in their annual wages.





"My Russian co-workers worked eight hours a day under the Russian labor law, but it was not applicable to North Koreans," one of the defectors said.





"We also earned between $1,000 and $1,500 a year and such amount was equivalent to a monthly salary of our Russian co-workers.





"In addition, we're asked to turn in most of our income to the Workers' Party to show our respect and loyalty' toward the party," the defector added.





The white paper was published in Korean. A version in English will be available in late June.




President ParkGeun-hye pledged Tuesday to closely cooperate with the international community to enhance South Korea's security and create fresh momentum for economic growth for Asia's fourth largest economy.

Park made the comments in a meeting with chief editors of several dozen newspapers and broadcasters at Cheong Wa Dae, South Korea's presidential office.

The latest comments came amid speculation that North Korea could carry out a fifth nuclear test.

Last week, North Korea fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile in its latest show of defiance against international sanctions.

The U.N. Security Council has imposed the toughest-ever sanctions resolution on North Korea for its fourth nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch earlier this year.

Park also hinted that she will cooperate with the newly elected parliament to help improve the country's economy.

"I will make utmost efforts to ensure cooperation and communication with all segments of society while pushing for change and reforms by reflecting the will of the people as shown in the elections," Park said.

The move came two weeks after Park's ruling Saenuri Party suffered a resounding defeat in the parliamentary elections.

The Saenuri Party won 122 out of 300 seats up for grabs while the main opposition Minjoo Party and the People's Party secured 123 and 38 seats, respectively. Seventeen other seats are held by other minor party members and independents. (Yonhap)
By Choi Sung-jin

Two years have passed since one of the most tragic  and strangest  maritime disasters in Korea's history threw the nation into shock and sadness.

It was sad because the sinking of the 6,825-ton ferry, Sewol, drowned 304 people, most of them 11th graders on a school excursion. Nine of the bodies were never retrieved from the waters. It was shocking because Koreans had to watch the entire process live on TV in an utterly helpless state, like a slowly progressing nightmare.Law enforcement authorities have punished the vessel's operators, crew members and a coast guard boat captain but will go no further. Yet the victims' bereaved families want to know more, at least about two underlying problems: who told the victims to stay put in their cabins within the foundering ship and why, and what behooved the coast guard to be so passive in rescuing passengers.

Had the 476 passengers, who were wearing life vests, escaped from the ship, all of them should be alive now. They could float in the water with temperatures of 12-13 degrees Celsius for up to six hours, which is more than sufficient time for the coast guard or others to pick them up. But the students on that ill-fated ship could not do that, not because they were timid or not thinking, as some adults have speculated, but because the authorities on the deck told them  up to 12 times  to stay in their cabins.

An SBS TV documentary, produced on the basis of files found in a computer on the ferry and aired on April 16, the incident's second anniversary, reconfirmed two facts, with far more convincing evidence than before.

First, it became clearer the National Intelligence Service had all but managed the ferry for some unknown reasons. The state spy agency refuses to explain the relationship but a fraternity of retired agents had a considerable equity stake in the vessel. It seemed to be the ferry company's executive who was responsible for safety who told the vessel's purser to keep passengers within their cabins. But I can never understand how the executive, a former captain himself, could have made so absurd an instruction at such a critical moment.

At stake is whether the safety official made the decision by himself or did so after discussing with, or receiving orders from, one of 10 NIS agents whose phone numbers were in his smartphone. Also questionable is scribbling in the notebook written by the head of the Jeju branch of the ferry company, which said, "This is horrifyingly ridiculous" and "theta's warning," referring to the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet meaning God. At a hearing of the special investigative committee, the regional chief said he could not remember why he wrote these phrases or even whether it was related to the disaster or not.

Second, the audience of the documentary, myself included, could see what preoccupied the coast guard, particularly its senior staff, in this desperate situation: counting the number of those rescued and securing video footage of the salvage operation, at the behest of Cheong Wa Dae officials for a report to President Park Geun-hye. Accurate and timely reporting to the President might have been important but the Cheong Wa Dae secretary seemed bent only on "briefing the VIP" in ceaseless phone calls. He never asked about the rescue process but demanded only results. Koreans could have forgiven all these if Park had grasped the situation and dealt with it promptly.

Upon appearing before the public after the "golden hours" were over, the first thing Park said was, "Is it so hard for rescuers to spot students in life jackets?" apparently thinking they were floating in the water. Despite her secretaries' pressuring of the coast guard leaders for information, Park must have received erroneous reports  or no reports at all possibly because she was engaged in something else and was not accessible to her aides. A speculative story about the "seven mysterious hours" by a Japanese correspondent in Seoul led to diplomatic squabbles between the two countries. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appeared on TV every half hour right after an earthquake hit southern Japan recently.

Now Koreans can see why the special probe panel has not made much progress over the past 16 months: it has had to confront the nation's two most powerful agencies, namely the presidential office and the top espionage organ. The panel members who represented the government and its party withdrew from it, according to premeditated plans, as members from the opposition camp tried to expand the probes of Cheong Wa Dae.

No fewer than 304 people, mostly the young, lost their lives mainly because of the collusive ties between businesses and bureaucrats and the government's ineptness. Even a single student's life should be more valuable than the leader's privacy or the state spy agency's shady activities not directly related with national security.

Rep. Park Ju-min, a lawyer who represented the victims' families and was elected to the 20th legislature of the National Assembly two weeks ago, is right to call for extending the committee's duty until the end of this year and appointing an independent counsel to dig into this accident.

At "anti-Sewol" rallies, protesters, some of whom were allegedly hired by right-wing organizations that are funded by the lobby group of large conglomerates, call for the victims' families to stop "politicizing the simple traffic accident." Others, complaining about the "Sewol fatigue," demand that the families leave Gwanghwamun Plaza where they are camped out and return it to other citizens.

True, even many who stand on the side of the victims and their families would like to avoid facing the reality if they could because it is too painful  and shameful  to revisit the disaster. But this tragedy will never be over until the core truths are laid bare. That may be because any group of Koreans can be the next victims of another manmade disaster and therefore, the government should prevent another tragedy from happening.

Far more important than that, however, Korea can hardly be called a nation or even a community if it tries to bury the truth deep underwater forever.

It is apparent what the new National Assembly should do ahead of all else: legislate a new Sewol law.

Choi Sung-jin is The Korea Times' senior writer. Contact him at choisj@ktimes.com.
By Raul S. Hernandez

The steady economic growth of the Asia Pacific region  one of the world's success stories in the post World War II era  has transformed the lives and the future of millions of peoples. The Philippines and the Republic of Korea  and the relationship between our two countries  are part of this evolving story.

Yet this region is witnessing profound shifts in its strategic landscape. There are challenges and disputes, which, if not managed wisely, could bring uncertainties to the economic and security environment of the region.

One of the most pressing challenges is keeping a predictable and peaceful maritime order, particularly in the South China Sea, one of the two main bodies of water in East Asia.

Disputes in the South China Sea are not new. However, recent unilateral actions, such as large-scale island-building, construction of artificial structures, installation of surface-to-air missiles, and plans to commence commercial flights to and from some of the contested features have eroded trust and confidence among the parties and have threatened East Asian stability.

The economic, political, and environmental costs of these provocative actions cannot be ignored.

The world is looking at how East Asia will manage these tensions, for this provides a glimpse into how the region's future might look.

Through the years, the region has endeavored to address these challenges. In 2002, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China signed a Declaration of Conduct (DOC) that promotes the peaceful settlement of disputes and upholds the principles of self-restraint and non-use of force among parties in the South China Sea. This political document also envisions a Code of Conduct (COC) that would manage the disputes pending their final settlement.

Notwithstanding this understanding, tensions have escalated in the region as a result of China's actions since 2012. These actions have been carried out without due regard for the legitimate rights of other claimant states and in violation of international law. One of the regretful results of these actions is the permanent destruction of coral reef systems in a bio-diverse region whose health has long-term implications for fisheries and economic activities of millions of fishermen depending on the sea for their livelihoods.

These actions undertaken in a disputed area and an important maritime commons provide the compelling backdrop for the Philippines' advocacy for the peaceful, rules-based approach for the management and settlement of disputes in the South China Sea.

The tensions and uncertainty arising from these actions have only underlined the fact that adherence to the rule of law  the bedrock of peace, order and fairness in modern societies  underpins the stable and predictable security architecture that is critical to sustaining the region's growth.

In January 2013, the Philippines filed a case seeking to clarify maritime entitlements in the South China Sea in accordance with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In 2015, the Arbitral Tribunal set up by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague under the auspices of UNCLOS assumed jurisdiction over the case. The Tribunal is expected to issue a decision within the coming months.

China's aggressive actions in pursuing a claim with no basis under international law are at the heart of this case. China has asserted historic rights and sovereignty over areas encompassed by its so-called nine-dash line on almost the entire South China Sea. This is inconsistent with UNCLOS which states that a state can only claim historic rights over its internal waters (historic bays) and territorial seas (historic title).

A rules-based region that respects the rights of all nations, big or small, should have no room for strategic uncertainty or ambiguity that justifies actions that deny coastal states the exercise of legitimate rights and which, if unaddressed, could have broader repercussions to maritime security, freedom of navigation and unimpeded trade. The untenable situation on the ground has made clarification necessary.

For the South China Sea, that clarification rests in UNCLOS. The Law of the Sea stipulates the maritime rights and obligations of nations. The Philippines, along with other responsible members of the international community and 167 parties to UNCLOS, including the Republic of Korea, have adhered to these rights and obligations in good faith.

The arbitration case is not meant to resolve the Philippines' territorial disputes with China. It does not ask the Tribunal to rule on questions of territory and sovereignty. Instead, it seeks to clarify maritime entitlements of coastal states as provided for by UNCLOS.

As the world's "Constitution of the Oceans," UNCLOS provides the legal framework on matters related to the oceans and seas. In May 2014, the Philippines and Indonesia, after twenty years of negotiations, concluded an agreement to delimit the boundaries of their exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in accordance with UNCLOS. This agreement shows what is possible when parties agree to clarify, define, and peacefully pursue their claims through a common set of rules and through international law, such as UNCLOS.

Claims that the Philippines has not exhausted efforts to discuss the South China Sea issue bilaterally with China are unfounded, if not misleading. As a matter of fact, the Philippines has tried multiple times to convene high-level meetings, both in the bilateral and the multilateral levels, to settle the issue. China's insistence on its "indisputable sovereignty" over almost the entire South China Sea even before talks commence was a non-starter.

The Philippines has taken a constructive, open, transparent, friendly and rules-based avenue of dispute settlement, and has invited China to the arbitration process.

It is unfortunate that China has chosen not to participate in the arbitration proceedings. Having assumed jurisdiction on the case, the Arbitral Tribunal will issue a final decision that is legally-binding on parties, including China.

When issued, the Tribunal's decision will affirm UNCLOS' guidance on the way forward in managing and resolving the disputes in the South China Sea.

The Philippines has said that it will abide by the Tribunal's award and expects China to do the same as a way of manifesting the meaning of its "peaceful rise."

As maritime nations, the Philippines and the Republic of Korea have worked together for a secure and rules-based maritime order in the region through mechanisms such as the ASEAN-Korea Strategic Partnership, and institutions such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the East Asia Summit (EAS).

The Philippines and the Republic of Korea cooperate with each other and with other countries in the region not only because, as seafaring nations, they have maritime interests to protect, but also because both countries have a stake in upholding the rule of law and building a rules-based regional security architecture that we all envision: one that is stable, predictable, and enables our peoples to live in peace and prosperity.

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of the Philippines to the Republic of Korea.
President Park Geun-hye has made a habit of making overseas trips during sensitive times. She faced a huge public backlash when she travelled to South America instead of joining the rest of the nation in marking the first anniversary of the Sewol ferry tragedy.



Park's inaugural visit to Iran on May 1 comes on the back of a major election defeat of her Saenuri Party. Snubbed at home, the President is again turning to an overseas agenda to lift the waning support for her administration.



To underscore the business achievements of the visit, Cheong Wa Dae emphasized that Park would be accompanied by more than 200 businesspeople. There is already a lot of hype about the expected economic outcome of the President's visit to post-sanctions Iran, which is hungry for foreign investment. Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said that the state visit could possibly result in joint business projects worth more than $10 billion.



But a big pile of MOUs does not mean much unless they are translated into actual profit. Cheong Wa Dae should be careful not to repeat the mismanagement and waste of her predecessor Lee Myung-bak's failed "energy diplomacy."



Cheong Wa Dae has stressed the expected achievements and the historic aspect of the state visit in an effort to promote Park's diplomacy. But no amount of diplomatic achievements can help save the credibility she has lost with the people, as shown in her plummeting job approval ratings which recently slumped to the 20 percent range.



With days to go before her departure, Park's diplomatic team should refrain from making an unsubstantiated fanfare about business outcomes. It is worthwhile to remember that Park's previous visits to the Middle East and South America did not produce significant outcomes. There was much fanfare about the economic achievements of Park's 2015 Middle East visit to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, with some media reports predicting a second "Mideast construction boom" like the one in the 1970s during the Park Chung-hee era. However, latest reports show that exports to these countries fell, except for Saudi Arabia, compared to the previous year.



The Park administration should focus on coming up with effective ways to take full advantage of the resurgence of one of the biggest markets in the Middle East. Some experts say that Korean companies will have a hard time in Iran because of competition from Japan, China and other countries. The government should come up with strategies to help Korean companies enter the Iranian market.



It is undeniable that the there are some historical aspects attached to this visit. It is the first visit of a Korean head of state to the country since diplomatic ties between Seoul and Teheran were established in 1962. As a female president, she will be able to do things her male predecessors could not do. She will reportedly wear a veil in the style of local women.



With Park's visit, we hope that Iran and Korea will become not just active business partners but closer friends who share each other's cultures.




Uprooting the evil practice is long overdue



Politicians are poised to land in droves at public institutions following the April 13 parliamentary elections.



On Monday, the Korea Electric Power Corp. voted to recommend former National Police Agency chief Lee Sung-han to its audit committee during a shareholders' meeting.



Lee resigned as police chief two years ago amid criticism that a police probe of Yoo Byung-eun, then chairman of Semo Group that operated the tragic Sewol ferry, was a mess.



On the same day, former ruling Saenuri Party lawmaker Cho Jeon-hyeok was also recommended to the audit committee as a non-executive director. Cho, a conservative education expert, ran in the general election, but failed.



The two, who lack expertise and experience in the energy industry, will oversee an electricity utility burdened with more than 100 trillion won in debt.



Controversy about "parachute appointments'' is also engulfing the financial industry. Rumors have been rife at KB Kookmin Bank  where the government has not a single share  that its auditor position will be filled by Shin Dong-churl, a former aide to President Park Geun-hye.



Shin has no experience in finance and appears unfit for the auditor position of the country's largest commercial bank, which suffered an internal power struggle among its chairman, president and auditor. The Korean Financial Industry Union opposed Shin's entry into the bank vehemently.



Even before the elections, there were mounting concerns that politicians and bureaucrats would try to take executive positions at public institutions. Such worries are becoming a reality.



Since the turn of this year, more than 10 politicians have reportedly landed at public institutions as directors or auditors. But bigger problems lie ahead.



Of the nation's 323 public institutions, including 30 major state companies, 97 are devoid of CEOs or have CEOs whose terms will end by the end of this year. Nearly 20 of the public institutions have to appoint new directors or auditors in May and June.



Already rumors are swirling that candidates eliminated from the governing party's nominations and those who failed in the election are lobbying hard for positions at these institutions.



There is no denying that repeated revolving-door appointments remain the biggest stumbling block to reforming the public sector. It is no surprise that politically appointed executives can do nothing while in office because of their lack of expertise, and do more harm than good to an organization in their blind pursuit of short-term results.



All our previous governments have not been immune from criticism about "parachute appointments,'' and the incumbent administration is no exception. Right after taking office in early 2013, President Park vowed to uproot the evil practice, but her promise proved to be another empty slogan. Her adherence to the outdated practice also goes against the will of the people who handed a stunning defeat to the ruling camp.



Without doubt, President Park's ongoing tolerance of "parachute appointments'' will result in a failure to reform the public sector. Even now, the President should strive to root out the evil practice.




North Korea has intensified its border control and imposed stronger punishment on those who were caught fleeing the repressive country, a report by a South Korean think tank showed Tuesday.



Since 2014, North Korea has raised the level of punishment against people who have sought to escape the nation, according to the white paper on the North's human rights, released by the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification.



The report was written based on interviews with 186 North Korean defectors who arrived in South Korea between late 2014 and last year, it said.



Since 2009, the North's regime has raised surveillance on North Koreans whose family members defected to the South, it said.



"North Korea has strengthened its punishment over those who were caught using mobile phones at areas bordering China (to contact their family members defecting to South Korea) and sharply beefed up surveillance near coastal areas," it said.



Since North Korean leader Kim Jong-un took power in late 2011, he has extended the so-called reign of terror in a bid to take a firmer grip on power.



The report said that regardless of the number of attempts made to flee the country, North Korea has imposed forced labor on those caught since 2014.



Besides cracking down on people trying to contact the outside world using mobile phones, the North has made a determined effort to keep out DVDs of South Korean movies and dramas as they could motivate North Koreans to defect, it said.



Meanwhile, the report said that North Korean workers forced to toil overseas are required to send an excessive amount of their wages to the North's regime after working under poor working conditions.



Many North Koreans are working in the logging and construction sectors, mainly in China, Russia and the Middle East, as means of providing dollars to the North's regime, it added.



It did not reveal the number of such workers, but a U.N. report said that North Korea has sent more than 50,000 workers abroad, mainly to China and Russia, as it seeks to obtain dollars to avert economic hardship under heavy United Nations sanctions.



A South Korean civic group estimated that US$200 to $300 million is presumed to be sent to North Korea's regime annually.



The white paper said that North Korean overseas workers have to give a "considerable" amount of their wages to the North's Workers' Party of Korea to prove their loyalty.



North Korea has long been regarded as one of the worst human rights violators. Pyongyang has bristled at such criticism, calling it a U.S.-led attempt to topple its regime.



The North does not tolerate dissent, holds hundreds of thousands of people in political prison camps and keeps tight control over outside information.



In December 2015, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution for the second consecutive year that calls for referring the North to the International Criminal Court for human rights violations. (Yonhap)




Hesham I. Al-Waqayan, deputy director general of Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development

By Kang Hyun-kyung

KUWAIT CITY  In 1998, a North Korean diplomat posted in Geneva approached a Kuwaiti official there to ask for help. The North Korean explained in detail the dire water situation facing the residents of the North's capital city and then asked if the Middle Eastern country could possibly help them.

Following the meeting, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development had gathered information about North Korea from the United Nations to study the water situation there. The aid agency's investigation found something alarming.

"In 2003, only 7 percent of Pyongyang residents had access to clean water," Hesham I. Al-Waqayan, deputy director general of Kuwait fund, said on April 19 at his office in Kuwait City. He was part of the clean water project and had travelled to the reclusive country many times on a fact-finding mission.

The Kuwaiti aid agency tapped an Australian consulting firm, dubbed Snowy Mountains Engineering Consultancy, for the feasibility study and then provided $20 million for the water project.

"Three years later, all Pyongyang residents were able to have access to clean water," Al-Waqayan said.

The rewarding moment, however, was short-lived. The Kuwaiti government's goodwill met an unintended consequence  many governments, including South Korea and the United States, accused Kuwait of sponsoring the bellicose North Korean regime. Layered sanctions were in place on North Korea for its development of nuclear weapons and missiles. The regime diverted its financial resources to its weapons of mass destruction program while turning a deaf ear on the outcry from its hungry people.

In the face of criticism from Western diplomats, however, Al-Waqayan stood firm. "I told them that we're trying to help the poor people who were suffering, not the regime," he said.

The veteran aid expert lamented that people outside North Korea had no idea of what's going on inside the Hermit Kingdom.

"I had been there many times and had first-hand experience of how people there were suffering. Some hungry people even ate the roots of the trees and many babies were malnourished."

His explanation, however, didn't convince Western and South Korean diplomats. "Some of them said the North Korean regime would collapse sooner or later," he quoted them as saying. "I told them if the North collapses in five years, I can't wait because right now there are people who are suffering. If it collapses in three years, I can't wait, either," he said.

He noted the Kuwaiti government has not linked certain conditions when it lends its helping hand to poor nations, stressing that its foreign aid comes purely from goodwill and friendship. He was critical of some self-serving donors seeking to take advantage of aid to poor countries to fulfill their foreign policy goals or commercial interests overseas.

"If you help someone in need, they won't forget you. This is very much about the idea of why we are trying to help poor nations," he said. Despite the plunge of oil prices which has put the oil-rich country under pressure, he said Kuwait won't cut its aid budget and its commitment to help others will remain the same.

Established in 1961, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development initially focused on helping Arab countries but later expanded its aid to other regions. Over 100 countries have benefitted from the aid agency's infrastructure projects.
Argentina's Ambassador to Korea Jorge Roballo speaks at the "Malbec World Day" event at the Millennium Seoul Hilton on April 17. / Courtesy of the Embassy of Argentina



By Rachel Lee

Every April 17 Argentine celebrates its flagship grape, Malbec, worldwide.

This year the "Malbec World Day" was celebrated in over 100 cities around the world, and Korea was no exception.

Argentina's Ambassador to Korea, Jorge Roballo, hosted a wine tasting to introduce 15 wineries  presented by 14 Korean importers  at the Millennium Seoul Hilton on April 17. This was the sixth such event.

"Since its first international edition on April 17, 2011, this global tribute to our wine insignia, the Malbec, has achieved great success and more and more Argentine wines have gained a great reputation in international markets, not only for variety and quality but, specially, for the favorable relation between quality and price," the ambassador said.

Argentina is the world's fifth-largest wine producer and ninth-largest wine exporter. It has 1,300 wineries.

The ambassador said the country dedicates about 20 percent of total wine acreage to Malbec in Mendoza province, as well as Northern Patagonia and Salta.

"The experience of growing grapes at higher altitude  that could go from 300 meters in Patagonia, through around 1,200 meters in Mendoza and up to 3,000 meters in Calchaqui's valleys in the province of Salta  permits the grape to receive the right amount of sun and humidity in a much cleaner environment," he said.

"That explains why our products are considered bio,' or organic,' as many define those products as totally natural and free of chemicals or other elements that could interfere with their quality."

Argentine Malbec is known for the quality of its tannins: silky and mouth-filling.

"This wine is characterized by its intense dark velvet red, fruit and balsamic aromas," he said. "When it is aged in oak, it develops certain flavors as black or red berries, coffee, vanilla and chocolate that you may find in the back of your palate."

Local importers  including Shinsaegae L & B, Shindong Wine, LB Wine and Nana Cellar  participated in the event.

"Malbec certainly has a cult following in Korea," Donald Jung, a deputy general manager at LB Wine, told The Korea Times.

LB wine imports Argentina's Altos Las Hormigas.

"Like the old-world wine producers, Argentina offers high-quality wines, but at very competitive prices," Jung said. "I think Malbec, in particular, goes well with roast beef."

The old-world wines come from European meccas like France, Italy and Spain.

"Argentina is one of the popular wine producers in the local market, along with the United States, for their soft taste and also the price," a Nana Cellar spokesperson said.

In Korea, wine imports have been increasing over the past seven years, surpassing imported hard liquor for the first time last year. Changing drinking cultures, especially among young people, have driven the popularity of wines _ and more people are enjoying wine and food matching.

According to the Korea International Trade Association, wine imports last year reached $189 million  a 4.2 percent increase on a year earlier.

Argentine wine imports increased 13.3 percent in the first 10 months of last year on the same period a year earlier. Accumulated imports reached $3.3 million from $2.9 million.
LS Cable & System President Yoon Jae-in, right, signs a cable supplement contract with Torben Glar Nielsen, chief technology officer (CTO) at Energinet, a Danish state-run electricity transmission operator, at LS Group headquarters in Anyang, Gyeoggi Province, Monday. / Courtesy of LS Cable & System



By Lee Min-hyung

LS Group's key affiliates are diversifying their revenue streams in the European market amid rising demand for industrial equipment for replaceable energy systems.

The two arms, including LS Cable & System (LS C&S) and LSIS, are producing industrial devices for energy-related business operators across the world. In particular, Europe has remained one of their biggest growth areas, given the strong initiative of governments there to foster energy-efficient systems, or renewable energy resources.

LS C&S, the group's industrial cable manufacturer, said Tuesday it had clinched a cable supplement contract with the Danish state-run transmission operator, Energinet, valued at 23 billion won ($20 million).

Under the three-year contract, the company will supply extra-high voltage cables beginning 2017, according to LS C&S. The company's Vietnam branch, LS-VINA, will provide the cables, with cable joint devices supplied by its plants in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province.

This is the first time that LS-VINA has tapped into the European voltage cable market. LS C&S said the latest contract will pave the way for the Vietnamese branch's active expansion into the market.

The deal comes three weeks after LS C&S signed a 40 billion won contract with Danish energy company, DONG Energy, to supply power transmission cables to the world's largest offshore wind farm, Homsea Project One, in the United Kingdom.

"Most European countries, as well as the U.S., are planning to replace more than 60 percent of their total energy sources with renewable energy including wind by 2030," LS C&S President Yoon Jae-in said in a statement.

"Demand for power transmission cables is also expected to surge in line with green projects," he added.

LS C&S began expanding into the European market, starting from establishing its U.K. sales branch in 2008. The company has since diversified its revenue sources into other European countries, such as the Netherlands, France and Italy.

LSIS, the group's other key revenue generator, manufacturing industrial equipment, also said it aims to raise its global profile by participating in the world's largest industrial technology fair, Hannover Messe, which runs for five days from Apr. 25., in the German city.

At the tech fair, the company unveiled its own static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) for electricity transmission, for the first time.

The STATCOM, commonly used for voltage stability, is a key device of flexible active current transmission systems (FACTS), supporting electricity networks with poor voltage regulation.

An LSIS official said, "Our diversified business portfolio, including FACTS, will help us speed up our penetration into the global electricity transmission systems market."

The exhibition will mark a turning point for LSIS to accelerate its research and development efforts to gain more business with STATCOM, according to the official.

The electrical equipment manufacturing arm of LS Group is also showcasing its smart energy systems at the fair, in its bid to increase market share in the energy-related electrical system market.

Under the theme of "Experience smart integrated systems," the company has set up three zones at its booth  smart factory, grid and consumer.

The company is also featuring its energy management systems (EMS) widely used not just by industry, but also by households. The company's manufacturing facility is equipped with its own factory energy management system (FEMS), using solar power systems on the roofs of its Cheongju plants in North Chungcheong Province.
World's No. 2 chip producer to payout higher dividends



By Kim Yoo-chul



SK hynix, the semiconductor affiliate of SK Group, said it will cut its investment in memory chips amid weak demand and the ongoing supply glut in the industry.



"This year's investment will be cut because the company will put its priority on enhancing technology migration rather than expanding its market share," SK hynix President Kim Joon-ho told investors in a conference call after getting the results of first quarter earnings, Tuesday.



SK hynix invested 6.6 trillion won in its chip plants located in Cheongju and Icheon, as well as in Wuxi in China, according to the company.



The investment cut came after the company's first quarter profit took a huge tumble. Its January-March quarter sales fell 24.1 percent to 3.65 trillion won compared to the same period last year, while operating profit was more than halved to 561 billion won.



Its quarterly profit was the weakest in three years.



"The first quarter was bad and the outlook for the second quarter won't be good. It's unlikely that the industry will see any structural recovery in the current quarter," Kim said, adding that inventory corrections by clients operating datacenters and weak chip demand for PCs hit the company bottom line.



Prices for DDR3 4-gigabit dynamic random access (DRAM) chips averaged $1.81 in the latest period, compared with $3.42 a year earlier, according to data from inSpectrum. DRAM chips, along with NAND flash memory, are used in smartphones, tablets and PCs.



Market analysts say SK hynix's decision to cut its capital spending was a message to Samsung Electronics in which the market leader was intent on igniting a competitive price war, though the memory chip industry could have enjoyed a new era of profitability after painful restructuring.



"SK hynix couldn't comment about reasons that have been resulting in declining chip prices as strategies are different by firms. SK will be concentrating on finding measures to narrow the technological gap with market leaders," Kim told investors.



Rather than sitting back and enjoying higher profit margins with 40 percent market share of memory chips, Samsung is intent on stretching its market share to 50 percent both in DRAM and NAND chips, according to Mark Newman at Bernstein Research.



According to Kim, SK hynix will focus on developing chips using 10-nanometer level processing technology to win back customers lured away by Samsung.



Specifically, the SK affiliate is targeting 21-nanometer mass production for PC DRAM in the second quarter of this year and mobile LPDDR4 in the second half of this year, which should drive costs from the second quarter of 2016.



The SK executive is dedicated to increase the company's foothold in the NAND flash business. "We expect strong sales of NAND flash chips with such devices as solid state drives (SSDs).



SSDs are considered the next-generation storage device that will eventually replace the conventional hard disk drives (HDDs).



The company president said its latest M14 line will be fully operational from the first quarter of 2017 as SK hynix is on a track to boost the output of 3D NAND flash chips at its M12 factory in Cheongju.



Kim confirmed that the company will payout increased dividends to investors over the next three years; however, he declined to specify this year's dividend ratios.



Despite its dismal first quarter performance, shares of SK hynix increased 6 percent to end at 29,150 won, Tuesday, on the local bourse as investors understood that the first quarter results were in line with market consensus.



"We think the first quarter's slump is temporary as investors are thinking that SK's earnings will look stronger in the second quarter than we expected," said Claire Kim, an analyst at Daishin Securities.






Media industry analyst Ken Doctor speculates that if Gannett does succeed in acquiring Tribune Publishing, there may also be an opening to sell the biggest prize in the batch, the Los Angeles Times, to a local buyer  "to Eli Broad, perchance?" Doctor says the numbers don't necessarily add up for Gannett to pay $815 million for Tribune's newspapers. Thus, the prospect of using an LAT sale to make the overall deal pencil out. Gannett's CEO says the proposed acquisition of TPUB pencils out fine, but Doctor's speculation certainly will sound good to many in the LA Times newsroom. They don't look forward to being in the Gannett empire. Gannett would become the giant of the newspaper industry if it swallows up the Times, Chicago Tribune and other Tribune papers, but it doesn't have anything of their size and reach and is not known for ambitious journalism. "Middle-brow, small towns, tight rein on management," Doctor tells James Warren at Poynter. Also: "publishers ascendant and editors not as strong, excellent financial engineers, best balance sheet in the business, still searching for its community voice."

Wonder what the Times staffers are afraid of? Dylan Byers' story for CNN Money wonders if the LA Times as we know it can survive under Gannett or be crushed. Sample:

Under Gannett (GCI), these people say, the already beleaguered L.A. Times runs the risk of losing what national footprint it still has and becoming just another local paper in the sprawling "USA Today Network." Gannett's current strategy has USA Today providing the company's nearly 100 local papers with a one-size-fits-all supplement of national and international news. This allows Gannett to save money and gives papers like The Baxter Bulletin and The Great Falls Tribune content they couldn't produce on their own. But Gannett has never owned a major-market paper like the L.A. Times -- a paper that has the fourth biggest circulation in the country, still harbors national ambitions, and has a legacy of providing its own coverage from around the country and around the globe. "The Gannett model has been to take that USA Today section and put it into all of their papers, which works if you're in Cincinnati or Des Moines," a Gannett veteran said. "But how do you make that work in L.A.?" According to some, it doesn't. In a worst-case scenario, Gannett reduces the L.A. Times' editorial staff to a regional level, gutting what foreign and national bureaus it still has left and supplementing local coverage with USA Today content.



Here is Doctor's full piece for Nieman Lab, After Gannetts $815 million Tribune bid, here are eight things to look out for.

Warren at Poynter, The potential impact of a mega-Gannett-Tribune deal

.

Byers at CNN, Can the L.A. Times survive Gannett?

Also, David Folkenflik's report last night on NPR.

My post yesterday on the Gannett bid


PRESS RELEASE

It Is Al Nusra Escalating the Fighting in Aleppo

April 25, 2016 (EIRNS)Twice in the past week, officials of the U.S. government admitted, out front, that it is the Al Qaeda- affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra which is escalating the fighting in Syria. On April 20, Col. Steve Warren, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, told reporters at the Pentagon via video teleconference that "its primarily al-Nusra who holds Aleppo, and of course, al-Nusra is not part of the cessation of hostilities," with the obvious implication that the Russians and the Syrian government are right to attack them. Two days later, Secretary of State John Kerry admitted to the New York Times editorial board that the Russians might be moving on Aleppo, because members of al-Nusra were mixed throughout parts of the region, and that they were terrorists not party to the cease-fire. At the same time, he said, the region is home to insurgent groups that oppose Mr. Assad and have agreed to the cease-fire.

"That has proven harder to separate them than we thought," Mr. Kerry said. "And theres a Russian impatience and a regime impatience with the terrorists who are behaving like terrorists and laying siege to places on their side and killing people."

Al Masdar News reported, this morning, that there has been a surge in Russian air activity out of their airbase in Latakia, almost back to pre-cease fire levels, over the past three weeks. Citing their correspondent in Damascus, Al Masdar says that the number of airstrikes carried out by the Russian Air Force has doubled in the last three weeks, due to the increase in ground activity by the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra militants.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov offered some advice, this morning, to the Syrian rebel groups that claim to be part of the ceasefire, and to their American backers.

"We agreed long ago that groups that found themselves on the positions of terrorists but that are not terrorists and want to participate in the political process, should leave the territories of terrorist positions,"

Lavrov said. "They should disassociate and physically leave these positions." The problem is, Lavrov went on, the United States has not been keeping to its commitments to separate the groups it backs from al-Nusra. "The firm promise of the U.S. that it gave to us to carry out this demarcation has not been fulfilled for two months already," he said.
PRESS RELEASE

China Daily Repeats Warning About Military Aggression: We Are Ready for Anything

April 25, 2016 (EIRNS)In an unsigned editorial, China Daily again made clear Chinas consistent stance on the South China Sea, and other, similar, provocations directed against China: "[China is in a] Steady pursuit of peace, but ready for anything."

"Washington is rushing to the forefront of the maritime disputes with Beijing. It is dusting off its long-neglected military alliance with the Philippines. It is seeking closer military relationships with India and Vietnam. It is dragging the Japanese military into the South China Sea. "Despite all the ear-pleasing diplomatic rhetoric from Washington, about not choosing sides, about peace and negotiated solutions, the hawkish Pentagon is making it increasingly clear that it will not give up until real trouble emerges in the South China Sea.

"The China-U.S. standoff is going beyond the exchange of verbal swords, and is increasingly taking the form of hostile, though as yet by-and-large restrained, military encounters."

China has argued for a "new-type major-country relationship" between it and the United Sates, "but it takes two to tango. In the South China Sea, at least at this moment, the US does not want to dance with China."

"Washington may not acknowledge it, but the two countries militaries appear to be on a collision course. Which is why Beijing must be prepared."

"However, things are not yet irreparable," in Chinas view.
PRESS RELEASE

White House Lies Any Day Now, In Order To Stall and Crush the Release of the 28 Pages

April 25, 2016 (EIRNS)Senior intelligence sources have been reporting to LaRouches EIR that the White House is dead-set on stopping the release of the 28 pages, and intends to stall on releasing anything of substance, in the hopes that they can bury the gathering momentum for release.

And so Associated Press complied, putting out a story on Sunday evening which generated headlines around the world that the Obama White House is "poised" to release the 28 pages implicating Saudi Arabia in the 9/11 attack on the United States. What actual news is reported? None. "The White House will likely soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter," AP writes [emphasis added].

Obamas Director of Intelligence, James Clapper, told a Christian Science Monitor breakfast that the pages could be made public by June, according to a report this morning in The Hill.

"I think that is certainly a realistic goal from where we stand with that... We are in the position of trying to coordinate interagency positions on the declassification of the 28 pages."

Thats no different from the vague promise the White House gave to former Senator Bob Graham after CBSs 60 Minutes program made the 28 pages a fighting issue again nationwide.

White House arm-twisting, perhaps with Bush family input as well, is the likely source of the backpedaling on the release of the 28 pages by the chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission. Former Gov. Tom Kean and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who had spoken out in defense of their release not long ago, issued a statement on April 22 reasserting the lie that the 28 pages contain merely "raw, unvetted material that came to the FBI," and therefore should be suppressed. They not only lied that subequent U.S. investigations exonerated Saudi government and senior officials, but they went so far as to repeat the lie that Saudi Arabia has repented from its support for "an especially vitriolic extremist form of Islam," some of it linked to terrorism, and has become "an ally of the United States in combatting terrorism."

The two then recommend that, were the administration to decide to release the pages, "steps be taken to protect the identities of anyone who has been ruled out by authorities as having any connection to the 9/11 plot," a telling admission that some very high-up people may be named in those pages the British, Saudis, and Obama are so desperate to silence.

As Kean and Hamilton admit,
The list of 2016 Hugo Award finalists is out and once again slate makers have tried to stuff the ballot box. But how much credit should they get for nominating already-celebrated work?

Along with the Nebula Awards, the Hugo Awards are generally considered the preeminent awards in science fiction and fantasy. Their winners include luminaries such as Robert Heinlein, Ursula Le Guin, Samuel Delany, J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin and Connie Willis. This years finalists for the Hugo Award have been announced, with works by Jim Butcher, N.K. Jemisin, Ann Leckie, Naomi Novik and Neal Stephenson in the running for the best novel category. Other well-known authors -- Lois McMaster Bujold, Neil Gaiman, Brandon Sanderson and Stephen King among them -- show up in other categories, and, utterly unsurprisingly, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a finalist as well.

The Hugo Awards are also surprisingly easy to game in the nomination stage. Nominating for the Hugos is open to anyone who purchases a membership to the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), this year taking place in Kansas City, Mo. In the last couple of years a pair of overlapping groups calling themselves the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies, comprised of politically right wing writers and fans  think the tea party or Donald Trump supporters of science fiction  have posted slates of people and works they wanted to see listed as finalists.

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These slates were made ostensibly to counter what the Puppies contended was a leftward trend in the Hugo nomination process  and to annoy those they saw as their political opponents in the science fiction and fantasy field. This culminated in a successful effort last year that saw the suggested slates dominating or filling up several categories entirely.

The glee of the Puppies didnt last though the 2015 Hugo Award ceremony, however. A finalist slate didnt guarantee a win. Over the course of the evening, all the Puppy finalists save one ended below no award, meaning the voters preferred not to give the award at all than to give it to a finalist on a slate.

The one finalist the Puppies slated that actually finished above no award and even won its category? Guardians of the Galaxy, the smash-hit Marvel film that grossed more than $770 million worldwide and was so popular, and so obviously disconnected from the Puppy slates, that few of the Hugo voters held its presence on the slates against it.

This is a fact the Puppy groups have taken to heart. This year, once again, the two Puppy groups announced slates (or in the case of the Sad variant, a recommendation list) of people and works they wanted to see on the finalist ballot. Once again, many of their choices made the cut. But where last years slates were filled with nominees primarily of interest to the Puppies themselves, this years Puppy slates included works and authors already popular with science fiction fans and tastemakers, and (as a subset of both of these) Hugo voters.

The Puppies are running in front of an existing parade and claiming to lead it.  John Scalzi

Works the Puppy slates included that made the Hugo finalist list include the novel Seveneves, written by Neal Stephenson, a past Hugo best novel winner and multiple nominee; the graphic novel The Sandman: Overture, by Neil Gaiman, also a multiple Hugo winner; the novella Penrics Demon, by Lois McMaster Bujold, who has won four best novel Hugos; and the film The Martian, a best picture Oscar nominee (and controversial best comedy Golden Globe winner).

The Puppies will no doubt be happy to take credit for the appearance of these works and others on the finalist list. But, as with Guardians of the Galaxy last year, their endorsement probably doesnt count for much in the grand scheme of things. Seveneves, one of the most talked-about science fiction books of 2015, was already a heavy favorite for an appearance on the finalist list for best novel. Likewise, Gaimans long-awaited return to the beloved Sandman universe means his finalist listing in best graphic novel was the closest thing to a shoo-in that the Hugos have. If The Martian hadnt been a finalist in its category (best dramatic presentation, long form), people would have been stunned.

Hugo voters are smart enough, and trust their own tastes enough, to know the truth.  John Scalzi

In these cases as in several others, the Puppies are running in front of an existing parade and claiming to lead it. Few who know the field or the Hugos would give the slates credit for highlighting works and authors already well-appreciated in the genre, many of which have appeared this year as finalists for other awards or on bestseller lists.

Last year a number of finalists who made the final Hugo ballot dropped out of the running to avoid association with the slates. This years unwilling and unwitting draftees should probably feel more exasperation than anything else. No one this year should feel obliged to quit the field simply because some group will take credit for their presence. Hugo voters are smart enough, and trust their own tastes enough, to know the truth.

This years Hugos had the largest number of nominators in the history of the award, over 4,000, which was enough to blunt the slating tactic in most of the literary and screen categories (which received the highest number of people nominating, and where the slate makers most heavily relied on already-popular works). In the fan and related categories, where there were fewer nominators, the slates once again dominated.

If history repeats, these categories will find some or all of their slate-approved finalists ending up below no award. Hugo voters, of which there are typically more than nominators, traditionally take a dim view of ballot manipulation. Hugo votes are meant to reflect personal tastes, not slates designed to send a message of one sort or another.

This is also the last year that the tactic of slating is likely to work. At last years Worldcon in Spokane, Wash., the World Science Fiction Society, which administers the Hugos, approved a new nominating procedure (called E Pluribus Hugo) specifically to deal with groups acting in concert to get work on the ballot. If the procedure is again approved at this years Worldcon in Kansas City (proposed rules must be approved twice), it will be in force for the 2017 nomination season.

Then the Hugo finalist lists will entirely and again reflect what they are meant to: not marching orders, but the works and their creators that science fiction and fantasy fans themselves have enjoyed most in the last year.

**

John Scalzi, one of 10 Los Angeles Times Critics at Large, is a three-time Hugo winner, most recently in 2013 for his novel Redshirts. He recused himself from award consideration this year. Nevertheless, two finalist works this year refer to him by name (and not positively). He finds this amusing.

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The leader of the Church of Scientology, David Miscavige, is looking to stop the publication of a new tell-all memoir written by his father Ron Miscavige.

In a document first published by Tony Ortega, noted Scientology reporter, lawyers from Johnsons Solicitors, working on behalf of David Miscavige, contacted Silvertail Books, the publisher responsible for Ruthless in the U.K. and Ireland asking them to halt release of the book, scheduled to debut May 3.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

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Asserting that they were putting them on notice, the letter claimed the material contained in the memoir was highly defamatory and that [i]n the event that you proceed with the release of this book, in total disregard for the truth, our client will be left with no alternative but to seek the protection of UK/Irish defamation and other laws.

The letter sent by David Miscaviges counsel also suggests that a similar missive had been sent to St. Martins Press, the publisher in charge of the books U.S. release.

Among the allegations the younger Miscavige takes issue with is the idea that members of the church were exposed to deprivation and violence while detained at a punishment facility known as The Hole, as well as the accusation that the Scientology leader hired private detectives to surveil his father.

In March, The Times reported on documents detailing that the Church of Scientology had paid $10,000 a week through an intermediary, to monitor Ron Miscavige, including eavesdropping, spying on email and GPS tracking.

David Miscavige and the church denied culpability.

The threat of legal action has not swayed Silvertail Books, whose publisher, Humfrey Hunter, told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday: My plans for the book havent changed at all since I received the letter. Full legal due diligence has been carried out on the manuscript and I am both confident in its integrity and very proud that Silvertail is publishing it. Rons story is an important one, and he is a brave man to be telling it.

Ruthless is the latest in a growing number of books looking to demystify the unseen aspects of Scientology. Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief, an expose on the church written by Lawrence Wright, was released in 2013 and made into a 2015 documentary for HBO. Former Scientologist Leah Remini released her memoir, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology detailing her time with the church in 2015.

Ron Miscavige will appear on 20/20 Friday to speak about Ruthless and his son.

The Church of Scientology did not respond to a request for comment.

Follow me @midwestspitfire

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Tribune Publishing Chairman Michael Ferro on Tuesday criticized Gannett Co. for "trying to steal the company" by pressing for board acceptance of its $400-million takeover bid before the board has a chance to review Ferro's strategic plan for Tribune and before a June 2 shareholders' meeting.

"I believe 100% in my heart that this is completely a manipulation, that theyre trying to steal the company, bum-rush us," he said in an interview. "It is ungentlemanly, it is not what we do in this industry. It is not the way we do business."

Ferro's comments were the latest in an intensifying war of words between his management team and Gannett, which launched its sudden bid for Tribune Publishing on April 12 and made it public Monday.

Gannett offered to pay $12.25 a share for Tribune Publishing, 63% above Tribune's closing price on Friday, before the offer was made public. The price would represent a roughly 44% premium to the price Ferro paid for his 5.22 million shares in February, when he made a $44.4-million investment that gave him a 16.6% stake in the company. Tribune Publishing owns the Los Angeles Times as well as the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, and several other newspapers.

Two other top shareholders, L.A.-based Oaktree Capital Management and Pasadena's Primecap Management, own about a 26.6% stake in Tribune Publishing. Neither has spoken publicly about the offer.

Gannett has asserted -- most recently in a letter dated Tuesday from Chief Executive Robert Dickey to Tribune Publishing CEO Justin C. Dearborn -- that Tribune Publishing management has been dodging its overtures. "From the time of my first contact to Tribune, all we have asked for is a substantive response to our proposal," Dickey wrote.

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RELATED:

Tribune Publishing shares surge after Gannett launches takeover bid

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Ferro and Dearborn have maintained, however, that they are willing to discuss the Gannett offer, but have hired the investment banks Goldman Sachs & Co. and Lazard Freres to review their strategic plan and report on the company's prospects to the board. The firms have no deadline for their report, Ferro said Tuesday.

"We are not avoiding the conversation," Dearborn said in an interview Tuesday. "We asked for some time."

The strategic plan, Ferro said, has several components. One involves building up the strength online and in print of the company's traditional publishing properties -- newspapers that have suffered shrinkage of advertising revenue the same as other newspapers around the country, without a commensurate growth in revenue from their digital properties.

"Theres a tough slog there," Ferro acknowledged, "but then we have two jewels in this company." Those are its largest newspapers, the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.

I believe 100% in my heart that this is completely a manipulation, that theyre trying to steal the company, bum-rush us.  Michael Ferro, Tribune Publishing chairman

"The L.A. Times is a sleeping giant," he said Tuesday, calling it a "billion-dollar brand .... We are planning on breathing some life into the L.A. Times globally." When he unveils his strategic plan May 4, he said, "we will be talking about how to get the L.A. Times brand  to the world. Its on a par with the New York Times and other international publications, that no one has properly cared for, and we are going to do that."

The strategic plan also includes a "content monetization engine" that will use artificial intelligence to redistribute Tribune Publishing content to multiple destinations and market the content in a way "we think will revolutionize our content strategy," Ferro said. "We think it'll be a rock-star business" that can "create more revenue ... than you've ever seen." That module will also be unveiled May 4, he said.

Ferro asserted that Gannett's urging of haste is aimed at reaching an agreement with the Tribune Publishing board before it has a chance to assess Ferro's plan and even before the company's next earnings report, also due May 4. He said that in a phone conversation on April 17, just days after Gannett made its initial offer, Dickey said, "Our guys want to move faster."

The following day Dickey sent Ferro proposed confidentiality agreements and a series of questions aimed at launching the due-diligence process that would precede a formal bid.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

"We think time is of the essence," Dickey wrote, "and believe we should move as quickly as possible so that your shareholders, as well as ours, can gain the benefits of this transaction at the earliest possible date." He asked for a response by April 22. Gannett did not immediately respond to a request for further comment on the exchange of letters and calls.

One point of contention involves an April 18 dinner that had been scheduled for Gannett and Tribune Publishing executives during the Newspaper Assn. of America conference in Washington that week. Dearborn and Ferro say Gannett abruptly canceled the dinner, even though it would have been an ideal setting to discuss the acquisition offer. Gannett says the dinner was canceled because it would have included executives who weren't privy to the bid -- "a social dinner" at which "no substantive discussion could have taken place," Dickey maintained in his letter to Dearborn on Tuesday.

Dearborn said that the guest list easily could have been changed or the dinner rescheduled. "We had questions on funding, we had questions about the DOJ [Department of Justice, which would rule on antitrust implications of a merger], we had questions about their intent for our company, our brand, our people."

Ferro said in the interview that he has not "turned down the deal," but simply put in place a process to review it with the board. He also said that "as a shareholder, I'm not excited" by Gannett's offer.

Ferro said, however, that shareholder value is only one of his concerns as the company's chairman.

"I have three constituents I have to look out for in any transaction," he said. "Of course shareholders are very important in good governance, but we also have to look at the communities we serve and our employees. Journalism is a different business. It's not all about the money .... I have to make sure that we serve all our communities...and it is our job to make sure those communities understand that we take our responsibility seriously."

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

Return to Michael Hiltzik's blog.

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Frontier Communications bumpy takeover of Verizons landlines in California raises a question about the fate of the states other big controller of copper wires. Is AT&T also looking to unload its landline network?

The answer is a resounding maybe.

At issue are the copper phone lines that for decades have connected peoples homes to AT&Ts network. Theyre good for basic phone service and relatively slow DSL Internet access, as opposed to fiber-optic lines that carry super fast services such AT&Ts U-verse TV system.

Ive spoken with a number of telecom industry players and analysts, and the general consensus is that AT&T sees no future in copper landlines  but the company isnt in as big a hurry as Verizon to go digital-only.

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I dont think its in AT&Ts interest to maintain all those copper wires, said Paul Glenchur, senior telecom analyst at Potomac Research Group in Washington, D.C. Gradually, theyll want to replace them.

AT&Ts chief executive, Randall Stephenson, repeatedly has indicated that the company aims to abandon outdated technology by the end of the decade.

In a 2013 letter to shareholders, he said that AT&T is putting software rather than hardware at the heart of our network infrastructure, and that weve committed to upgrading all of our customers to new technology by 2020.

In recent days, I spoke with several AT&T technicians, each of whom asked to remain anonymous to avoid reprisals. They said supervisors statewide are alerting workers that the companys traditional copper-wire network and central switching offices will start being phased out beginning in 2018.

Theyre also saying that one scenario being discussed among AT&T insiders is for Frontier to acquire AT&Ts California landline phone network, just as it did April 1 with Verizons system.

AT&T and Frontier arent strangers. In 2014, Frontier spent $2 billion purchasing AT&Ts landlines in Connecticut. Frontier subsequently issued $10 million in credits to customers to atone for a less-than-seamless transition.

I spoke with Ken McNeely, president of AT&T California. He said its unlikely that the company will sell its landline network in the state.

We are not looking to do that, he said.

I conveyed what Id been hearing from the companys technicians  that supervisors are notifying staff about old technology being put out to pasture.

McNeely didnt deny such meetings are taking place. Wed be negligent if we werent already training our technicians in new technology, he said.

So, on the one hand, AT&T says its aiming to have all customers using new technology by 2020 and admits its preparing staffers for a digital future. On the other, it says there are no plans to jettison the old-school copper wires now running into many peoples homes.

If I had to guess, Id say the company is trying to have it both ways to avoid talking down the value of its landline network prior to a possible sale.

For what its worth, I also spoke with Melinda White, Frontiers regional president. She said she wasnt aware of any talks with AT&T about acquiring the companys California landlines.

Yet AT&T has been busy in Sacramento trying to pass legislation that would  yup  make it easier to get rid of its copper landlines by 2020.

Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) introduced a bill this month that would allow phone companies to kill off copper and switch all phone service to wireless and high-speed Internet systems.

He said this legislation, AB 2395 is needed because right now we have a 21st-century economy operating on a 20th-century IT network. AT&T is a key backer of the bill.

However, critics say the true intent of the legislation is to allow AT&T to stop investing in rural areas where copper landline networks are expensive to maintain.

Rather than modernizing phone service, this bill would take us back to the dark days when consumers were totally at the mercy of AT&T, said Mark Toney, executive director of the advocacy group Turn. It would eliminate the most basic consumer protections, regardless of the enormous impact abandoning copper could have on emergency services and vital communications.

Rural County Representatives of California, another advocacy group, said the legislation would allow a mechanism for legacy carriers to relinquish their decades-old obligations that guarantee basic two-way telephone service via a landline.

AT&Ts McNeely said the bill is aimed mainly at educating California consumers about their telecom choices. He said 85% of AT&Ts customers already receive phone service via broadband Internet connections or mobile devices, so the important thing is to allocate resources appropriately.

With each passing year, the copper network becomes less and less efficient, McNeely said. If no ones using it, let us turn it off.

Or sell it, presumably.

Which brings us back to where we started: Will AT&T follow Verizon in selling its landlines to Frontier?

Could be. Or not.

All we know at this point is that AT&T is definitely gearing up for changes, and those changes definitely involve its landlines.

Oh, and we also know that when Frontier says it expects the transition from one provider to another to go seamlessly, a lot of people are probably going to experience seams. As of Monday, I was still getting dozens of emails daily from former Verizon customers griping about service disruptions.

The email address once again to reach White, Frontiers regional president, is LetMelindaKnow@FTR.com.

David Lazarus column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.

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Newly released court documents depict a remorseful Sumner Redstone late last year as he sought to make amends with his daughter.

Redstone in December wrote a letter to Shari Redstone to apologize for a nasty rift that prompted him to threaten to bar his daughter from attending his funeral or even visiting him in the hospital, according to the court documents.

The records were made public Monday in a contentious legal dispute, after the Los Angeles Times and two other media organizations last month petitioned a judge to open court documents that had been sealed.

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The disclosure comes in advance of a trial, set to begin May 6, to determine whether the ailing 92-year-old media mogul is mentally competent and whether he has been unduly influenced by people around him.

The Dec. 11 letter revealed just how deep divisions in the Redstone family became after the mogul began spending much of his time with two former companions, Manuela Herzer and Sydney Holland.

Shari Redstone, at the time, believed that she was not welcome in her fathers home in Beverly Park.

This letter expresses my true feelings, and I am under no duress or coercion when signing it, Redstone wrote to his daughter, who serves as vice chair of Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. I wish to put our family back as we were before Sydney and Manuela, and restore our family relationship to what it was then. This is very important to me.

The document, part of a trove of newly available records, was released after Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David J. Cowan asked Redstones attorneys to explain why they had not released records that he had ordered unsealed March 18. Despite the order, those records were not released until Monday.

Meanwhile, Redstones legal team has asked the judge to prevent the public from attending key portions of the upcoming trial, including during testimony from doctors and his nurses.

Mr. Redstone objects to the public being present for any portion of testimony from treating or examining physicians and nursing staff, according to filing by Laura A. Wytsma, one of Redstones attorneys. There can be no dispute that Mr. Redstone enjoys a constitutional right to medical privacy.

Cowan now must decide whether Redstones request to protect details about his health and medical care trump the 1st Amendment and expectations that trials are open to the public.

Last month, Cowan said he recognized that Redstone has certain rights to protect his privacy and he asked Redstones attorneys to come up with a plan to try to keep medical information confidential during the trial.

The court intends that the trial be open to the public, Cowan wrote in his March 18 ruling.

Jean-Paul Jassy, a lawyer representing the Los Angeles Times and the Hollywood Reporter, said the plan submitted would restrict the publics right to attend the trial.

The plan put forth by Mr. Redstones counsel does not adequately protect the publics right to know what is happening in court, Jassy said. What Mr. Redstones counsel has proposed is an unworkable system with people being ushered in and out of the courtroom, question by question.

Attorneys representing Herzer declined to comment late Monday.

meg.james@latimes.com
At first, he said no: No, Keanu Reeves did not want to partake in a movie about an adorable cat with his name.

Or at least thats what Reeves representatives told the filmmakers behind Keanu, the action-comedy starring comedians Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele as buddies searching for a lost cat. But when a trailer for the film was released in February, Reeves changed his tune. His sister thought the movie looked hilarious and told the actor he should get involved.

Unfortunately, the film was almost finished and was about to premiere at the South by Southwest festival in March. (It hits theaters nationwide on Friday.) But director Peter Atencio was able to figure out a way to incorporate the 51-year-old star into the film at the last minute.

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Heres how it went down, according to Atencio:

Were you always certain you wanted the real-life Keanu to make a cameo?

We were like, Should we? Is this a good idea? When John Wick came out, we were kind of like, Oh, my God. This is crazy. Theres a movie that has a very similar process that stars Keanu. [John Wick stars Reeves as an assassin seeking vengeance against the Russian gangsters who killed his dog.] In a way, that almost kind of deterred us. We didnt want to see like we we were making a John Wick parody. But the studio kept asking, Can we get Keanu? Can we get Keanu?

But his team said no?

Yeah, they politely declined. Who knows if he ever even heard about the offer. But then we got a call after the trailer came out  apparently, his sister showed him the trailer and said, Hey, you gotta see this. Youre gonna love this! He flipped out and got in touch with us directly to say If theres anything I can do, lets make this work.

How did you fit him in that close to the finish line?

We had a scene in the movie where Peeles character is on a drug trip, and a cat kind of leads him through his hallucinations. We wanted to expand on that anyway, so we thought he could do the voiceover for the cat in that scene.

Was he at all worried you guys were mocking him?

He wanted to talk to me before he agreed to make sure that wasnt the case. So I told him about the movie and talked him through the story. His personality has just transcended life, in a lot of ways. You wouldnt have ever guessed that the guy from Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure would turn out to be this thoughtful, kind man.

OK, so he agrees  then what?

Well, he was in Italy making John Wick 2, so we had him go to a recording studio in Rome. I was on Skype with him, and I spent an hour recording a bunch of dialogue. They hooked it up so that I could talk and he could hear it in his headphones. The studio [Warner Bros.] was wanting him to drop a bunch of references to his old movies. But we didnt want to make it overt or too pointed. We dont want him to do, like, his Bill and Ted voice and beat you over the head with it. And he had great ideas for lines. He was having fun with it. He is credited in the end credits, but those werent ready at SXSW.

Does the film ever explain why the cat is named after Keanu Reeves?

Not really. We didnt want it to be something where youre just kind of waiting for the big Keanu payoff, which is why its cool that hes involved in this way  its a subtle way of acknowledging that of course hes the direct inspiration for that name. The cat was named after him as an act of love for his movies, and especially the kind of movies that he makes. He has become an iconic movie star on a level that most people dont ever attain.

Is he going to be at the premiere on Wednesday in Hollywood?

We extended the invitation, so well see if he shows up.

Follow @AmyKinLA on Twitter for the latest Hollywood news

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Kelly Ripa returned Tuesday to Live with Michael and Kelly and relayed assurances that Disney/ABC remains committed to her syndicated program.

But her on-air co-host, Michael Strahan, will be departing for ABCs Good Morning America sooner than expected.

After meeting with the producers of both Live and Good Morning America, and after speaking with Kelly and Michael, we have decided on a plan that best advantages both shows for the future, Disney/ABC said in a statement issued after the program. To that end, Michaels last day on Live will be on Friday, May 13, which not only gives the show the chance to have a nice send-off for him during the May book, but to also immediately begin the on-air search for a new co-host.

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A company spokesperson said Strahans early exit was not a condition for Ripas return to the program after she sat out two days last week.

It had been announced that Strahan, a contributor to GMA, would join full time in September. He will now start appearing more frequently over the summer.

This makes sense for both shows, the spokesperson said.

Ripa was greeted with a lengthy standing ovation by the audience at ABCs studio on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for Tuesdays program. She had been absent from the show since it was announced that Strahan will leave to join the networks Good Morning America.

Part of Ripas hiatus was a planned vacation, but her unexpected departure turned the breezy chat show into a backstage drama. Ripa told Live staffers Friday that she would be back, but Tuesdays program was the first time she addressed the matter publicly.

I am fairly certain there are trained professional snipers with tranquilizer darts in case I drift too far off message, she said in her opening remarks.

Ripa was said to be angry that Disney/ABC executives did not inform her of its plans to move Strahan to GMA until shortly before it was made public. Strahan became Ripas Live co-host in 2012.

I needed a couple of days to gather my thoughts, she said. After 26 years with this company I earned the right. And lets be honest, I know half of you called in sick to be here and we get each other.

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Without being specific about her conversations with Disney/ABC management, she said the incident spurred a larger conversation about communication, consideration and most importantly respect in the workplace. She said she believes the company supports Live going forward.

Apologies have been made, said Ripa. Our parent company has assured me that Live is a priority. There is a commitment to the show, and to the people who have worked here and most importantly to you the viewers who have watched us every day for 30 years.

Ripa, who stood alone on camera during her remarks, said she was thrilled for Strahan.

I couldnt be and we couldnt be prouder of you and everything we accomplished together, she said.

The Strahan move is seen as an effort to revive the ratings of GMA, which is a massive revenue generator for the ABC Television Network. The program has fallen behind NBCs Today in the 25-to-54 age group, which is the audience advertisers seek to reach with news programming.

There have been rumors for years that ABC wants to expand Good Morning America to a third hour. But Live, which airs at 9 a.m. on most of the stations that carry it, including ABC-owned stations, has been seen as an obstacle to such an idea.

Live is the second-most-watched syndicated talk show on television, but is nowhere near the cash cow that GMA is for Disney/ABC.

Ripas contract with Disney/ABC runs through next year. There will be guest co-hosts until a permanent replacement for Strahan is named.

Twitter: @SteveBattaglio

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There are two bottles of Yamazaki Sherry cask whiskey (a hard-to-find Japanese whiskey) at the basement whiskey lounge at Miro, the new restaurant and bar at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Figueroa Street in downtown L.A. (formerly Cucina Rustica), which opens tomorrow.

Its a pan-Mediterranean, hyper-seasonal restaurant with Greek, Italian, North African and Spanish influences, by chef Gavin Mills (formerly of Wood & Vine and Tavern) and general manager Tyler Dow (formerly of Faith & Flower), that just happens to have a whiskey-heavy bar and an additional whiskey room in the basement.

Why call it hyper-seasonal? Because Mills says he and his team will go to no less than four farmers markets a week to buy all of the produce (all non-GMO) for the restaurant. One of Mills favorite dishes, by the way, is roasted cauliflower with ras el hanout, labneh, pomegranate, mint and preserved lemon.

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Upstairs, in a sun-drenched dining room, there are floor-to-ceiling windows, a marble bar (with a focus on classic cocktails), a charcuterie station (where Mills will make eight kinds of charcuterie), pasta station (all the dough is house-made) and a private dining room that showcases the restaurants 125 different bottles of wine (123 of which are natural wines).

Descend two flights down a stonewall stairway and you find a dark dining room outfitted with plush blue seating and a bar that can light up in different colors, depending on that evenings mood.

The basement whiskey bar at Miro. (Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

And beyond the bar, theres a whiskey lounge with brick walls that used to be the wine storage area. This is where Dow geeks out over the bars collection of rare vintages of whiskey from around the world.

You dont have to have a beard or really tight jeans or a Fixie bike to come down here, he said. Its exclusive, but we want to be inclusive.

So there are no reservations required. You can walk in, grab a seat on one of the Chesterfield leather couches and treat yourself to an ounce or two of Dows rare finds. Some of his unicorn bottles include a 32-year Port Ellen and a Karuizawa Noh 13-year-old whiskey.

And if you need help choosing a bottle, Dow has put together his own whiskey bible  a blue book with a handmade cover that holds information on every bottle available at the lounge. Dow also has the room fully stocked with sherry glasses for whiskey flights, and hes having all the ice cubes cut into the shapes of jewels.

Its super cool, super geeky, super rare, he said.

Miro will be open for lunch by reservation only, Wednesday through the end of the week. Beginning next week, the restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner, also by reservation only. The restaurant doesnt plan on staying reservation-only, and is working toward welcoming walk-ins in the near future.

888 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 988-8880, www.mirorestaurant.com.

Ill take two fingers of the Port Ellen please. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @Jenn_Harris_

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For the Record

April 26, 2:53 p.m.: An earlier version of this article said there are six bottles of Yamazaki Sherry cask whiskey available at restaurants and bars in California. There are more than six bottles available.

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Chefs have been establishing a migratory route between fine dining and comfort food for the last few years, particularly in Los Angeles. Mostly that path has led from white tablecloth restaurants to crab shacks, fried chicken joints and hot dog stands. This fall, add ramen to the list.

Kuniko Yagi, a veteran of Sona, Comme Ca and Hinoki and the Bird, as well as Top Chef, is partnering with David Irvin and Rudy Moujaes of Folklor (an L.A.-based creative agency whose clients also include Gjelina, Gjusta, Tasting Kitchen, Pot and Locol.) to open a ramen shop and a larger Japanese American diner that will feature ramen in addition to a full menu, a dessert program and cocktails. Both called Tokyo Strike, the ramen shop will open in downtown L.A. in the fall, while the diner will open in a location yet to be announced, likely in July.

This is the most difficult thing Ive ever done, Yagi said the other day from her home kitchen, where shes been working on the new menu while the 350-square-foot ramen shop at 4th and Main is being constructed. Ramen is so complicated and meticulous and very technical. Im like, What did I sign up for? Japanese people are the only people who could develop a bowl of noodles to this level; its crazy.

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Yagi, who is from Gunma Prefecture, north of Tokyo, first started talking to Irvin years ago, when both were working on Hinoki and the Bird. Irvin had become fascinated by the rockabilly culture in Japan, as well as the popularity of American diners in Tokyo. They loved the idea of reverse engineering Japans take on American diners, back in America. Thus the name Tokyo Strike, and its logo.

Tokyo Strikes ramen shop will go into the Medallion Building complex, just south of Little Tokyo, in a tiny space: a kitchen with only outside patio seating.

Its very similar to Santouka, said Yagi, referencing the beloved take-away ramen shop inside Mitsuwa markets. Not the style of ramen, but the service. Theres only a kitchen and two windows. Its casual  not a gorgeous, gigantic restaurant like I used to do.

Yagi said she wont be making her own noodles, but will be concentrating on making the broths and, most important for her, the tare, which is the ramens seasoning. For me, the secret is tare; thats the difference that you can make in your ramen.

The Tokyo Strike ramen shop will have three kinds of ramen: a signature bowl, a spicy ramen variation of dan dan mien, and vegetarian ramen. There will be a very limited menu of side dishes, as the focus will be on the bowls of ramen. There will be a beverage menu, which will feature a shochu program and beer slushies.

Yagi, who has been traveling to Japan for research, said that a lot of the ramen in Los Angeles is for Americans; we add too much fat to ours. Its not necessary if you can introduce the flavor through tare and stock. Japanese ramen is really advanced, like the next generation of iPhone.

Because taking pictures of food is almost as much fun as eating it, on Instagram @latimesfood

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Five years ago, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security dropped its color-coded terror threat index developed after the 9/11 attacks amid widespread confusion and ridicule. So what did it do when tasked by Secretary Jeh Johnson in 2014 to measure security along the countrys borders?

Agency staff proposed another system of reds, yellows and greens.

The Institute for Defense Analyses, a consulting firm, was hired by the agency to review the idea and found the index simplistic and misleading, noting that colors were a disaster for communicating terror threats.

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DHS should learn from its own history and avoid repeating this error, the consultants said in its 53-page report.

Homeland Securitys proposal was never made public, nor was the consulting firms $90,000 review. A copy of the report was obtained by the Associated Press, and when AP asked the agency whether it would move ahead with the index, spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said: Currently, there are no color-coded border security indexes or metrics being considered by the Department of Homeland Security.

The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee criticized the color codes Friday while also emphasizing a need for better measurements.

DHS spent $90,000 on a question we already know the answer to, said Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who has introduced a bill for border metrics. Measuring the security across our borders is complex and requires sophisticated and consistent metrics  not a series of colors.

It was one of the latest attempts by the government to come up with a way to measure border security and help the public understand whether the billions of dollars devoted to it each year are being spent wisely.

In 2010, Homeland Security ended a five-year experiment of measuring miles under operational control, in which the Border Patrol was likely to capture illegal crossers. It reported that only about 40% of the borders were controlled in 2010, providing ammunition to those who argue the border is porous.

Then in 2013, Johnsons predecessor, Janet Napolitano, abandoned plans for what was called the Border Conditions Index, which would have relied on various economic, crime and law enforcement data.

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John Sandweg, who was senior counselor to Napolitano, said there was internal consensus about what made up the index but not about how much weight to give each factor.

Sandweg, who advised the secretary when the color terror-alert system was dropped, said he doesnt see the value of a similar color-coded approach to the border. It seems to me like an oversimplification of a very complex problem, he said.

The consultants hired by Johnson agreed.

The red/yellow/green formulation, while intuitively attractive and easy to understand, will open the Department to charges that it is manipulating a complex problem in an effort to be seen as responding to public concerns, the report said.

When the report was completed in June, California and New Mexico/West Texas were green (low risk) during the previous quarter, Arizona was yellow (medium risk), and South Texas was red (high risk). The consultants said that reality was more nuanced.

A new set of metrics should work against this simplistic perception rather than reinforcing it. Instead, the new index does the opposite, by reporting the level of border security in just three large baskets, two of which (red and yellow) are likely to be seen by the public as evidence of a border not controlled, the report said.

The consultants identified other problems. A color index might lead reporters with an appetite for eye-catching headlines to produce misleading stories of an out-of-control border. And Homeland Security relations with Congress could be further strained, with administration officials constantly having to defend their color choices.

For example, a West Texas congressman would demand to know why his district is rated low risk when voters tell him the opposite. A South Texas congressman would want lots more money if the administration acknowledges his district is high risk, the report said.

Now, the most closely watched public indicator is Border Patrol apprehensions, released annually. The number fell to a 44-year low last year, a figure cited by those who argue the border is relatively secure. But there is broad agreement that the apprehension tally gives an incomplete picture, just as a police departments arrest count doesnt fully reflect how safe a city is.

The color-coded index would have relied on 12 indicators for land borders and seven for maritime borders, each one weighted under a formula that produces reds, yellows and greens. Those indicators ranged from the number of border crossers with known or suspected terrorist ties to marijuana seizures.

The consultants report speaks favorably about developing a dashboard of key numbers, as many police departments do. Homeland Security recently began publishing the percentage of illegal border crossers it says are caught or turned back  80% in the 2015 fiscal year  and has developed other measures, including the percentage caught who are repeat offenders.

Rep. Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, said Friday that current measures fall short and that a threat assessment is a key first step toward building trust.

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The enormousness of the task facing Terri McDonald was clear.

A veteran of the state prisons, she had been brought in to turn around a Los Angeles County jail system reeling from allegations of mismanagement and abuse.

Inmates were complaining of rampant brutality by guards. An FBI investigation into excessive force and corruption was underway. Outside experts were calling for extensive reforms.

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Three years later, McDonald, 52, is stepping down, having presided over a period of seismic change in the county jails.

In a department where jailers were accused of adopting an us versus them attitude, McDonald brought a gentler approach, taking time to chat with inmates about their concerns. She sought to revamp a culture in which deputies viewed the jails as an unsavory assignment before moving to patrol.

In 2013, the year she arrived, there were 10 jail suicides. Last year there was one.

The most severe injuries caused by deputies  resulting in broken bones or worse  have decreased to a handful each year. Agreements McDonald helped negotiate with federal authorities and the ACLU now govern how mentally ill inmates are treated and when deputies can use physical force.

But hundreds of inmates still are injured in confrontations with deputies each year  although most incidents are minor  and the number has been climbing. And deputies are being assaulted with increasing frequency, with some complaining that the reforms have given inmates too much power.

Still, McDonald deserves credit for curtailing the worst abuses and making the jails a more humane place with her hands-on management, said Peter Eliasberg, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California and a frequent critic of the jails.

I dont think everythings perfect, Eliasberg said. But theres been a dramatic decrease in the brutal beatings that were quite commonplace prior to her arrival.

In late 2012, a blue-ribbon citizens commission placed much of the blame for the endemic violence on the Sheriffs Departments top brass  and recommended that the jails be led by a corrections professional familiar with how facilities in the rest of the country are run.

Then-Sheriff Lee Baca responded by hiring McDonald as an assistant sheriff in charge of the jails. It was a major shift for an agency that always had cycled its jailers in and out of street patrol.

McDonald started her career as a California prison guard and worked her way through the ranks to become second in command at the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She oversaw attempts to improve training for guards as well as reforms aimed at reducing the inmate population.

In her first days in Los Angeles, McDonald recalled in a recent interview, she found that staffers lacked basic equipment, such as shields for extracting inmates who didnt want to leave their cells. The jails were so overcrowded that some inmates slept in common areas or were stacked three to a bunk.

You cant crowd the conditions and understaff the conditions and expect not to get bad outcomes, McDonald said.

McDonald set new rules and enforced them, while also paying attention to less obvious details.

She matched deputies with partners so they no longer had to face 100 mentally ill inmates alone. She brought in cleaning crews to reduce unpleasant smells that made coming to work an ordeal. Even changing the color of the paint from dark green to light blue went some way to softening the environment, she said.

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Bunk beds that inmates had hurled at each other during riots were bolted to the ground.

McDonald encouraged deputies to talk to inmates and to take pride in working the jails, which had been considered a second-class assignment.

Its not punching inmates, not engaging in hand-to-hand combat with inmates, McDonald said. When somebody strikes an inmate, its because the inmate encroached on them and they have no choice.

Supporters credit McDonald with turning the jails around through a combination of empathy and toughness.

Terri has been tremendous in her ability to reform a system under very difficult circumstances, to identify the A players and to be able to manage, mentor and encourage those that needed the help, said current Sheriff Jim McDonnell, who was a member of the blue-ribbon jail violence commission when he was police chief in Long Beach.

Miriam Krinsky, who served as the jail commissions executive director and then as a top aide to McDonnell, recalled her first visit to Mens Central Jail in 2011. You could almost feel the current of tenseness in the air. It felt like a place on the verge of being set off, the former federal prosecutor said. That is not the way the jail [feels] today.

But the changes have not been well-received by some deputies, who say restrictions on the use of force have made the jails a more dangerous place. McDonalds talk-first approach is inefficient and lets inmates get away with bad behavior, some say.

If it means we talk for six or seven hours to an inmate, and he gets exactly what he wants  he gets to stay in his cell, and theres no discipline  thats not solving the problem, said George Hofstetter, president of the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs.

Tim White, secretary of the association, said tactics that work in state prisons, such as reasoning with inmates, may not work as effectively in jails, where inmates are generally serving shorter sentences.

She knows custody, White said of McDonald. But I think it was a mistake to try to bring in state issues to a county problem.

As McDonald worked to put the jails on the right path, the sprawling system remained under a microscope.

In the last several years, more than a dozen sheriffs officials were successfully prosecuted for using excessive force or trying to conceal misconduct in the jails. Baca, who stepped down less than a year after McDonald started the job, recently pleaded guilty to lying to federal authorities.

Statistics underscore the problems that still exist in the jails.

The number of cases in which deputies injured an inmate was down from a high of 763 in 2009 to 216 five years later. Only one of the 2014 cases involved head strikes or bone fractures. The most serious injuries typically occurred as staffers tried to break up inmate riots, McDonald said.

But in 2015, with figures reported through the end of November, the number of inmate injuries was up to 302. The least serious uses of force  those not resulting in injury  have nearly doubled, with McDonald attributing the increase in part to better reporting by deputies.

Assaults by inmates on jail staff also were up significantly, from 190 in 2013 to 380 in 2015.

Staffing shortages continue to be a major issue, with the court settlements mandating labor-intensive reforms such as more frequent checks on mentally ill inmates and better processing of grievances.

Though the overall number of L.A. County jail inmates is down to about 17,400 from nearly 19,000 after Proposition 47 lowered the penalties for some minor drug and property crimes, there has been an increase in mentally ill inmates: from 2,500 in 2011 to nearly 4,000 in 2015.

Recently, the prolonged handcuffing of inmates has emerged as a concern.

Last summer, an inmate was handcuffed to a chair without food for 32 hours. After a series of cases in which inmates suspected of having contraband were chained to a wall for hours, McDonalds staff issued a policy forbidding the practice. In one case, prosecutors charged a deputy and two sergeants with inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on an inmate who was handcuffed to a wall.

McDonald acknowledges that much remains to be done, including completing the court-supervised reforms on use of force and providing more educational offerings for inmates. It will be up to her successor, Kelly Harrington, who also has decades of experience in the state prisons, to take it to the next level, she said.

The increase in assaults on jail employees is troubling, McDonald said. The causes are complex and include a changing inmate population as well as improved record keeping and the knowledge among some inmates that jail staff will not respond to violence with violence, she said.

In response, sheriffs officials have increased staffing and enforced punishments for inmates who assault employees.

During her time as assistant sheriff, McDonald has commuted from her home in Sacramento. She said she always viewed the job as lasting only a few years and  while she plans to continue working, perhaps as a consultant or a teacher  she is looking forward to spending more time with her partner and their Labrador mix, Skylie.

The transformation of the Los Angeles County jails, McDonald said, is the most substantial reform going on in any jail or prison system in the country.

When she first arrived, she asked a roomful of jail deputies if anyone preferred the jails over street patrol. Those who did were afraid to admit it, she said  not a single hand went up.

Recently, she took the same poll again.

A third raised their hands, saying they valued the career and were excited about coming to work, McDonald said. Despite the peer pressure, they werent afraid to raise their hands and say, I want to stay.

cindy.chang@latimes.com

Twitter: @cindychangLA

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It was billed as a one-day event of peace, love and music, but after three days, it turned out to be much bigger than expected.

An estimated 25,000 people gathered in a field of sycamore trees in Laguna Canyon for what was known as the Christmas Happening.

Despite massive traffic jams, chilly night air and insufficient food, thousands of young people, Vietnam veterans and other servicemen arrived in droves on Christmas Day 1970 for a weekend party on hundreds of acres near Laguna Canyon and El Toro roads.

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It all evoked the scene a couple of thousand miles away in New York the year before. Woodstock also ran longer than planned  to an unscheduled fourth day.

I put that out of my mind 45 years ago, Neil Purcell, a retired Laguna Beach police chief who was a sergeant at the time, said of the Christmas Happening. I had to stretch my mind and dig down deep to remember what happened.

He was addressing a full house at Laguna Beach City Hall on Thursday, telling the story to people who were at the event more than four decades ago and others who were just curious.

For Sunny Taylor-Colby, it was the best Christmas of her life. As she walked amid the happenings potential disasters  drugs, temperatures dipping into the 30s  she felt something of an Aquarian spirit in the air.

I was 18 then and I had a wonderful time at that event with my boyfriend Bobby Lee Gregory, said Taylor-Colby, now a Laguna Beach resident who had traveled from her hometown of Pasadena to the coastal city that day in 1970. I rode in on a bicycles handlebars and it was just great. Everybody there was calm and awesome and beautiful and kind and sweet. Seriously, we were all mellow and chill.

Purcell, 76, who began his career in 1961 as a reserve officer in Newport Beach, stepped into the limelight the year he moved to the Laguna Beach Police Department with the arrest of counterculture guru Timothy Leary. Leary went to trial in 1970 and was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for possession of marijuana, LSD and hashish.

It was a highlight of Purcells career, and it illustrated the silver-haired chiefs activist role in fighting narcotics.

That same year, during Learys trial, came the chaotic Christmas Happening, when Purcell was working as a sergeant in the Laguna Beach Police Departments narcotics division.

Residents had been growing weary of the hippies in town and the surge of drug operations. Dealers were selling around a restaurant on Cleo Street, near hotels and along the coastline, from Main to Bluebird beaches, the retired chief recounted.

At the time, the state narcotics division was not helping local authorities, so Purcell decided to dispatch two undercover officers to the troubled areas in an effort to throw the dealers in jail.

The officers grew beards, bought wigs and purchased fatigues and Army jackets at the now-defunct Grant Boys firearms and outdoors store in Costa Mesa.

In a weeks time, they looked just like the creeps we were dealing with, Purcell told the crowd. We wanted them to get in deep.

That October, the officers told Purcell that they were picking up information about a group in town who were planning to gather drug-addled music lovers, hippies and activists for an event like Woodstock.

It was a socially contentious time. In May of that year, National Guardsmen shot unarmed college students at Kent State University in Ohio, and state police opened fire at Jackson State in Mississippi 11 days later.

Christmas Happening organizers originally wanted to host the festival at the relatively small Heisler Park but changed their plans as they envisioned thousands more people attending.

For weeks, promoters arranged for flatbeds to deliver wood for the stage and trenches to be dug to create open toilets in the canyon.

But as the free festival began to build momentum, Laguna Beach was undergoing its own changes. A new city manager from Washington state, whom none of the police force had met, was installed Dec. 10.

With growing concerns about the estimated 25,000 flower children planning to show up at Laguna Canyon, every police agency in Orange County was called for assistance. School gyms, closed for the holiday, would be the temporary quarters for more than 300 officers, while dispatchers, record clerks and the police chief would stay at the Surf & Sand Resort.

Three days before Christmas, officers began to notice long-haired hippies arriving from Kansas, Illinois and places unknown.

That Dec. 25, at 5:30 a.m., Purcell kissed his wife and left for the canyon.

I dont know when Ill be back, he told her, but you know where I am at.

Since 7:30 that morning, cars jammed the south and north end of El Toro and Laguna Canyon roads. The acting police chief decided to close those streets and Coast Highway to stem the surge of people.

The preventive measure did keep out one high-profile music group. By one account, the Grateful Dead were nearby but were thwarted by the canyon traffic as the road was closed around noon.

That didnt stop people from leaving their cars and walking.

Jerry Hoffman, a Laguna resident who lives in the Top of the World neighborhood, recalled looking into the canyon from his home and watching waves of passersby and cars.

I remember seeing a piano being driven around in a convertible, Hoffman said, and I thought, What nuts are going around with a piano in a car?

The peace-promoting love-in resulted in nudity, makeshift fire pits, stolen furniture, drug overdoses and 10 arrests. An unidentified single-engine plane hovered over Sycamore Flats and released thousands of Christmas cards that included a dose of Orange Sunshine  the LSD brand of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which was then operating the nations largest narcotics network out of Laguna Beach, Purcell said.

After the second day, the cold weather and lack of resources forced most of the attendees out, but about 1,500 people decided to make the canyon their new living space.

Purcell and other authorities decided to encircle the remaining participants the next morning. As the group found themselves surrounded, a plane ordered them to hit the road.

That demand, Purcell said, was met with screams, middle fingers and bare bottoms, but the lingerers left.

Nearby homeowners cheered and clapped. City crews dug a giant hole, partly buried leftover belongings and burned the pile.

Ill drive by that area and think, Theres a lot of stuff buried there, Purcell, who now lives in nearby Laguna Woods, told the crowd with a laugh. But Im happy the way it ended. That was quite an experience for us all.

kathleen.luppi@latimes.com

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Debate over Donald Trump is putting an Anaheim City Council member at odds with the mayor, who is planning to abstain from a vote Tuesday on a resolution condemning the presidential candidates divisive rhetoric.

Mayor Tom Tait said he questions the legality of the motion requested by Councilwoman Kris Murray at the citys last council meeting on April 12.

Weve taken positions on legislation, but never on a candidate, Tait said. Certainly, privately, any council member or I could, but as an official government action -- its not appropriate.

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However, Murray said the city attorney reviewed the resolution and it is fully authorized by state law.

Murray said she proposed the resolution to stand up for tens of thousands of Anaheim residents who have been the target of Mr. Trumps campaign trail attacks.

The rhetoric and the language hes using truly go against the grain of the city of Anaheims core values as a city of kindness ... and as a city thats inclusive of our diverse community, Murray said. Anaheims residents ... can know that their city officials will not passively condone this type of rhetoric, that denigrates their basic humanity, through our silence.

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Murray said no city resources will be spent in connection with the resolution. It will come up for a vote at a meeting scheduled for 4:30 p.m. at Anaheim City Hall.

Since the resolution was placed on the agenda, Tait said hes received feedback from residents stating that city officials should focus on public safety and civic upkeep. A 102-year-old resident, born in Anaheim, Tait said, noted that the city should focus on fixing sidewalks and streets.

I thought he was right on, Tait said. 102-year-old wisdom.

A pro-Trump group, We the People Rising, plans to hold a demonstration before the meeting and is encouraging people to speak out against the measure during public comment.

If Anaheim supports the resolution, it would join officials in other cities who have denounced the billionaire. West Hollywood Mayor Lindsey Horvath told The Times that the presidential candidate is not welcome in her city. Mayors from cities including Philadelphia and St. Petersburg, Fla., have also denounced Trump.

But it doesnt seem that Mayor Tait will follow suit, as he plans to abstain from voting on the resolution.

Im in a dilemma. Even though I dont support the rhetoric or Donald Trump, I also dont support city government taking a political position, he said. My concern is violating the law by taking any vote on it. I dont be want to be part of that.

Times staff writer Jason Song contributed to this report.

Follow me on Twitter @brittny_mejia

brittny.mejia@latimes.com

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Los Angeles County joined the growing number of jurisdictions that have banned official travel to North Carolina following the states passage of a controversial bill restricting the bathrooms transgender people can use in public facilities.

The North Carolina law passed last month requires that people use bathrooms designated for the biological sex listed on their birth certificates. It also limited the ability of local governments to put in place anti-discrimination laws.

At the request of Supervisors Hilda Solis and Sheila Kuehl, the board voted to suspend all travel to the state of North Carolina for the conduct of county business unless the chief executive officer determines that the failure to authorize such travel would seriously harm the countys interests.

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The ban would be lifted if the law, HB2, is repealed or suspended. The board also voted to send a letter to North Carolinas governor and legislative bodies calling for its repeal.

Advocates from LGBT groups urged the passage of the ban.

Porter Gilberg, executive director of the LGBTQ Center of Long Beach, pointed to a recent case in which a transgender woman was beaten and stabbed in Long Beach. The victim survived, and the attack was prosecuted as a hate crime.

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Gilberg said the attack demonstrates the blatant viciousness people continue to exhibit toward trans people and communities.

Today you can clearly send a message that state-sanctioned discrimination is wrong, that the further marginalization of trans people is unacceptable and the increased hostility that this law has brought to communities everywhere must stop, Gilberg said.

Kuehl, who is the first openly gay member of the board and was the first openly gay person to serve in the California Legislature, praised the advocates who pushed for anti-discrimination laws.

Governments come along behind and say well do our part. We have power; we must use it, and that is what we are attempting to do today, she said.

Solis said she had faced discrimination herself, as a Latina, and feels a personal stake in discrimination against other minority groups.

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The value is that we all stand together, because if one falls, we all fall, she said.

One speaker, Tarence Jones Bey, defended the North Carolina law.

Im not expecting to see a woman in the restroom, and Im sure women are not expecting to see a man in the womens restroom, Jones Bey said. This will cause a lot of confusion and even a lot of space for crime, especially rapists.

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich cast the lone no vote on the board.

Antonovich said in a statement on his vote afterward that common sense should dictate bathroom rules.

The politically correct agenda is full of hypocrisy, he said. The corporations, (PayPal, Google) and entertainers, (Bruce Springsteen) and others are calling for the boycott of North Carolina  however, they are more than happy to entertain or conduct business in countries which support and sponsor the persecution, oppression, and violence against individuals based on gender, religion, and sexual orientation.

The city of Los Angeles voted earlier this month to stop doing official business with North Carolina and with Mississippi, which passed a law allowing government employees to refuse to issue marriage licenses or perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples. It also allows businesses and faith-based groups to deny housing, jobs and adoption and foster-care services to people based on their sexual orientation.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority barred agency employees from traveling to Charlotte, N.C., for a conference.

Outside of California, a number of other jurisdictions, including the city and state of New York and Washington, D.C., have passed similar travel bans.

Twitter: @sewella

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A father whose infant son was mauled by the familys dog last week was unable to reach emergency dispatchers during two calls to 911 in which he waited for about 30 seconds each time -- triple the national standard for emergency call hold times.

The father hung up after waiting for an answer, and the parents of the 3-day-old boy decided to rush him to a hospital themselves. The baby, identified as Sebastian Caban, was declared dead at the hospital.

According to the San Diego County coroners office, UCSD Thornton Hospital Emergency Department staff began cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the infant to no avail. The coroner listed the cause of death as dog bites to the head.

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The incident occurred Thursday evening when the parents were in bed watching TV with their son and their dog. When the childs mother coughed, the pit bull mix was startled and reacted by biting the infants head, authorities said.

San Diego police officials said all 12 available dispatchers were handling other emergency calls at the time. The father, who was using a cellphone, made his first call at 7:27 p.m. and waited for an answer for 28 seconds before hanging up. He called again at 7:28 p.m. and waited 34 seconds.

This is a horrible situation, San Diego Police Lt. Scott Wahl said. Our goal is to answer these phone calls immediately, and our dispatchers are doing everything they can to make that happen.

During the half hour from 7:15 to 7:45 p.m., dispatchers received 73 emergency calls. The incident highlights an ongoing problem that has led to criticism of San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer from rival candidates in the June primary. Ed Harris and Lori Saldana have accused the incumbent of not doing more to boost hiring and retention of dispatchers.

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Its a supply and demand issue, said Harris, a lifeguard union chief and former interim City Council member. When you treat your employees poorly and you dont pay them competitively and youre in a region where people can leave, they leave. Had the mayor paid the dispatchers competitively, we might not see that issue.

In response, Faulconer has released a list of actions he says were taken to bolster dispatch centers, including funding for positions, increasing base and merit pay and ramping up recruiting.

The Police Department says it has struggled with an understaffed dispatch center for years and is working to fill 19 vacancies among 131 budgeted positions as of April 9. Recently, the agency offered to pay police officers overtime to staff a variety of dispatcher positions as a stopgap measure.

The department says wait times to get through to a 911 operator averaged about 13 seconds in 2015, although officials acknowledge some callers have had to wait minutes when lines are busy. The average wait times over the last two weeks has been 13 seconds.

The standard is to answer calls in 10 seconds or less 90% of the time, according to the National Emergency Number Assn.

Budget cuts in 2010 meant that unfilled positions were eliminated and employees were not replaced when they retired or left for other jobs, said Mike Zucchet, general manager of the Municipal Employees Assn., which represents more than 4,000 of the citys 11,000 workers, including police and fire dispatchers.

Dispatchers have been required to work mandatory overtime when necessary.

Its not sustainable, and its taking a huge toll on employees, Zucchet said.

In October, the city approved a new contract designed to boost employee recruitment and retention.

Winkley writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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A school bus driver accused of being responsible for the death of a special needs student appeared in court Monday to deny charges against him.

Armando Abel Ramirez, 37, pleaded not guilty to dependent abuse in the death of 19-year-old Hun Joon Lee, whose body was discovered in the bus aisle on a sweltering afternoon in September.

Lee regularly rode the bus to his home in Whittier, and Ramirez was the driver on Lees final ride, police say.

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The family filed suit against the school district and bus agency in December, alleging negligence in Lees death and in hiring Ramirez in the first place.

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According to the suit, Lee was picked up about 8 a.m. Sept. 11, and bound for Sierra Vista Adult School. There were only three students on the bus the entire ride, including Lee, the suit claims. When they arrived at the school however, only two left the bus and Lee remained inside.

Temperatures reached nearly triple digits that day, and Lee was left inside the bus for seven hours, according to the family.

The teen typically left school on the bus around 2:30 p.m. and arrived home at 4, said Brad White, a spokesman for the Whittier Police Department. When he didnt show up, his mother called the school, which then called the bus company. A driver went out to the bus yard and found Lee slumped in the aisle of the parked bus, White said.

Police arrived at the Sierra Education Center to find several bus drivers attempting CPR on the young man. The officers took over the lifesaving effort, without success. Lee was pronounced dead about 10 minutes after police arrived.

Officials are treating the death as suspicious because nothing that weve learned so far would lead us to believe he had any medical conditions, White said.

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There were no signs of trauma on Lees body, and no weapons were found at the scene, White said.

Lee attended the Sierra Vista center, which has a transition program dedicated to adult students with special needs, said Valerie Martinez, Whittier Union High School District spokeswoman.

Ramirez is free on bail and is due back in court in Norwalk on May 27 to set a date for his preliminary hearing.

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna.

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Anaheim is due to become an unlikely battleground Tuesday night in the debate over Donald Trump.

The City Council will vote on a resolution condemning GOP presidential candidate Trumps divisive rhetoric.

Anaheim was once a Republican bastion, as was the much of the rest of Orange County. But the home of Disneyland has seen some major demographic changes in recent years.

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Who is pushing the resolution?

The motion was requested by Councilwoman Kris Murray this month and notes that Anaheim, the largest city in Orange County, is a city of kindness.

Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked people of many races, religions and creeds, according to the resolution, which calls for rejecting Trumps statements as contrary to the state and U.S. Constitutions and not being reflective of the City of Anaheims guiding principles.

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 The Anaheim City Council Tuesday plans to vote on a resolution condemning what some members call Donald Trumps negative rhetoric.

How does this fit into the larger context of Anaheim politics and demographics?

Anaheim has a diverse population, with Latinos in the majority and whites now making up less than 30% of the population.

In a landmark vote in 2014, residents agreed to shift from at-large to district elections for the City Council, a move that Latino activists hoped would give better representation at City Hall to underrepresented groups.

There was widespread condemnation in the city earlier this year when the Ku Klux Klan held a rally at a park that turned violent. The KKK played a role in the citys history, but residents and officials stressed the group had no place in modern Anaheim.

Are pro-Trump forces expected?

Yes. A pro-Trump group, We the People Rising, will hold a demonstration before the meeting, scheduled for 4:30 p.m. at Anaheim City Hall. The group is also encouraging people to speak out against the measure during public comment.

Trump leads the GOP presidential field in recent polls of California.

An average of four polls from the past month in California has Trump up 15 percentage points over his rivals.

Its wrong, Trump backer John Bentley told the Orange County Register. There are a lot of Trump supporters in California. Its a negative for Anaheim.

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A Los Angeles man was charged Monday in the death of a woman whose body was found stuffed in an ice chest in a stolen vehicle, and investigators said they are looking for accomplices in the killing.

Prosecutors charged Anthony Moreno, 38, with murder and possession of a firearm by a felon.

Moreno is accused of killing Dawn McEveety, 19, in Artesia on Nov. 24 and then with others dumping her body in a stolen Toyota that was found abandoned in unincorporated Whittier five days later, sheriffs homicide Lt. John Corina said.

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McEveety died of multiple shotgun wounds, according to the L.A. County coroners office.

Authorities said that Moreno uses a wheelchair and would have needed help in moving the victims body.

We are still looking for a couple of people who helped this guy out, Corina said. Moreno is in a wheelchair, and he had help moving the body ... she was petite, and she was stuffed into a substantial ice chest.

The ice chest was found inside the rear cargo area of the 1991 Toyota abandoned in unincorporated Whittier.

Corina said Moreno was an acquaintance of the teenager. He said he could not provide further details or be more precise about the motive for the shotgun slaying because suspects are still being sought.

After the shooting, Moreno was arrested and sentenced to state prison for an unrelated robbery, Corina said.

A judge issued a removal order from state prison so that Moreno can be arraigned in Los Angeles County.

For SoCal crime & investigations follow me on Twitter @lacrimes

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Just in time for the election season, the Supreme Court has strengthened the rights of the nations 22 million public employees to protect them against being demoted or fired for supporting the wrong political candidate in the eyes of their supervisors.

The Constitution prohibits a government employer from discharging or demoting an employee because the employee supports a particular political candidate, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said Tuesday.

This applies, he said, even if a supervisor mistakenly assumes an employee is supporting a particular candidate. What counts is the employers motive, Breyer said.

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The 6-2 decision closes a gap in the law that prompted some judges to deny legal protection to municipal workers who were demoted because of their supervisors false perceptions about their political leanings. In these cases, judges said the 1st Amendment is only triggered when the employee actually spoke out or participated in a political campaign.

In Tuesdays opinion, Breyer said the 1st Amendment extends more broadly and forbids the government from acting upon a constitutionally harmful policy of punishing political views, whether real or perceived.

The decision in Heffernan vs. City of Paterson revived a free-speech lawsuit brought by a New Jersey police detective who was demoted because he was seen carrying a campaign sign supporting the mayors opponent. In fact, he was simply putting the sign in his car to deliver it to his mother, not because he was supporting the mayors opponent.

But a federal judge in New Jersey and the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals said Jeffrey Heffernan, the police detective, could not sue under the 1st Amendment because he did not engage in 1st Amendment conduct. The appeals court said demoted employees can sue for retaliation only if they could point to an actual, rather than perceived, exercise of constitutional rights.

The high court justices said Tuesday that made no sense.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

The governments reason for demoting Heffernan is what counts here, Breyer said. When an employer demotes an employee out of desire to prevent the employee from engaging in political activity that the 1st Amendment protects, the employee is entitled to challenge that unlawful action.

His opinion was joined by all the justices except Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

The demoted police officer did not show his employer infringed his constitutional rights to speak freely, Thomas said, even if the citys demotion of him may be misguided or wrong.

The decision is a victory for the UCLA Law Schools Supreme Court Clinic and professors Stuart Banner and Eugene Volokh. They helped write an appeal petition last year warning the 3rd Circuit Courts ruling would have disastrous consequences for public employees if it became accepted as law.

It would mean if the boss is left with the mistaken impression that an employee is a Democrat, or a Republican, or anything else, the employee can be fired, they wrote. Public employees would need to avoid even acting or talking in any way that a supervisor might think is characteristic of Democrats or Republicans. A rule with such bizarre consequences cannot be right.

In the past, the court has been divided on free-speech rights for public employees. The justices have said school teachers, municipal workers and others have a right to speak out as citizens on matters of public concern. However, the 1st Amendment does not protect them if they disagree with their employers about a workplace dispute, they said.

Ten years ago, in a case called Garcetti vs. Ceballos, the court by a 5-4 vote said a whistle-blower within the county prosecutors office could not claim free-speech protection for speaking out against the handling of a disputed police search warrant. In that case, the court said the complaint by the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney arose from a workplace dispute and therefore, did not have 1st Amendment protection.

A few weeks ago, the court split 4-4 on whether school teachers and other public employees had a free-speech right to refuse to pay collective bargaining fees to their union.

On Twitter: @DavidGSavage

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As Clinton and Sanders spar over gun control, Newtown, Conn., is drawn into unwanted spotlight
The school where the second-deadliest mass shooting in American history took place has been razed. The house where the killer lived with his mother has been torn down and left for open space.

Newtown seems intent on moving past the tragedy a disturbed young man left behind in 2012 when he killed 20 first-graders, six school employees and his mother before taking his own life.

What the town cant escape is being politicized in the debate over gun control in this country.

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Gun violence  notably the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School  has become a defining issue in the Democratic race for the presidential nomination. Of the handful of policy differences between front-runner Hillary Clinton and rival Bernie Sanders, gun control is the rare split that has allowed Clinton to position herself as more liberal than Sanders.

The debate has grown tenser in the days leading up to the Connecticut primary on Tuesday.

Sanders voted for a 2005 law giving gun manufacturers wide legal immunity and has stood by his support of the bill despite the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Newtown families against the manufacturer of the Bushmaster AR-15 that was used at Sandy Hook. The families contend that the company is liable for marketing a military-grade killing machine thats unfit for use by the general public.

Clinton voted against the immunity law and has castigated Sanders as siding with the National Rifle Assn. in his support of the bill. Her campaign believes the staunchly pro-gun-control message will resonate in states like Pennsylvania, which also is voting Tuesday, and Connecticut, which already has some of the nations strictest gun laws.

In recent days, Clinton launched ads in Connecticut and Rhode Island featuring the daughter of the principal who was killed at Sandy Hook. On Thursday, the former secretary of State appeared less than an hour from here in Hartford alongside people who lost family members in shootings to reiterate her criticism of Sanders support for the immunity bill.

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Clintons broader criticism of Sanders is that hes weak overall on gun control, a high-priority issue for Democrats. Clinton also notes that Sanders repeatedly voted against the Brady bill, which called for mandatory background checks and waiting periods to purchase firearms.

We also have to take on the gun lobby and take on the epidemic of gun violence, Clinton said Sunday at a rally in Bridgeport, noting that 90 people die in the U.S. every day because of guns. We cannot go on like this.

Im going to make this a centerpiece of what I do as president, and together were going to save lives, she said.

Sanders has called the Sandy Hook shootings murder, assault, slaughter, unspeakable act and said guns must be kept out of the hands of those who should not have access to them.

But the senator from Vermont has reiterated his support for the 2005 immunity law by pointing to the gun culture in his home state.

I was concerned that in rural areas all over this country, if a gun shop owner sells a weapon legally to somebody and that person then goes out and kills somebody, I dont believe it is appropriate that that gun shop owner who just sold a legal weapon to be held accountable and be sued, he said during a CNN debate this month in a scathing exchange with Clinton.

A family member of a Sandy Hook victim said Sanders owed them an apology; he repeatedly declined. The New York Daily News responded by declaring on its front page: Bernies Sandy Hook shame.

Sanders wife, Jane, countered that Clinton had politicizied the tragedy and had flip-flopped on gun control.

Newtown is used to the attention, as unwanted as it may be.

Newtowns been politicized since the beginning, said Curtiss Clark, editor of the weekly Newtown Bee, which was founded in 1877. We learned long ago that  Newtowns fate, its legacy  is shared by a larger audience.

In its historic downtown, a few signs adorn storefronts: We Are Sandy Hook. We Choose Love. Newtown Conn. Never Forget. These are the few overt, visible indicators of the massacre that stunned this enclave of 28,000 about 60 miles outside New York City. A memorial will be built.

Many of the towns residents do not want to be forever defined by the tragedy, and theres a general weariness about once again being in the spotlight.

Weve moved forward. Weve moved on. We dont need to rehash all that stuff, said Nick Heron, 21, a sales clerk at Sandy Hook Wine & Liquor.

Heron, born and raised here, remains annoyed by the media and politicians who overran the town immediately after the shooting. It should be over.

seema.mehta@latimes.com

Twitter: @LATSeema

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A New York judge has rejected what he calls Bill Cosbys fishing expedition to get journalists notes, film and audio to fight a defamation lawsuit filed against him by seven women.

Federal Judge Paul Gardephe said in Tuesdays ruling that Cosbys request to force New York Magazine to turn over notes, video and audio from interviews it conducted with six women bordered on the frivolous.

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The interviews came as the magazine was preparing a July 2015 piece titled Im No Longer Afraid. The article featured 35 women who described being sexually assaulted by the comedian.

Cosbys lawyers were planning to use the material to find inconsistencies in statements by six of seven women who filed a defamation lawsuit against him in Boston.

Cosbys lawyer declined to comment after Gardephe ruled.

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Seven of eight relatives who were killed in their southern Ohio homes had been shot multiple times, including one who was shot nine times, according to autopsy results released Tuesday. Some also had bruising, which matched a report from a 911 caller who said two appeared to have been beaten up.

The Hamilton County coroner said the victims  three women, four men and a 16-year-old boy  had wounds to their heads, torso and other parts of the body. Dr. Lakshmi Sammarcos report said one victim had a single wound, one had two wounds and the rest had three or more. The report didnt specify which victim had which number of wounds.

Ohio Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine has called the deaths carefully planned slayings carried out at four locations in Piketon, a rural Appalachian Mountain region community. DeWine also said there were marijuana growing operations at three of the locations where bodies were found.

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DeWine said Tuesday that investigators have received more than 300 tips and are continuing to serve search warrants in an effort to identify the killer or killers. He said 79 pieces of evidence have been sent to a state crime lab for testing and analysis.

Authorities have said members of the Rhoden family were targeted in the slayings.

A woman who called 911 Friday morning to report finding two of the bodies said that she saw blood all over the house and that the two looked like they had been badly beaten.

The victims are 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his ex-wife, Dana Rhoden; their three children, 16-year-old Christopher Rhoden Jr., 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden and 20-year-old Clarence Frankie Rhoden; Christopher Rhoden Sr.'s brother, 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; their cousin, 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; and 20-year-old Hannah Gilley, whose 6-month-old son with Frankie was unharmed. Two other children, a 6-month-old and a 3-year-old, also were unharmed.

Leonard Manley, father of Dana Rhoden, told the Cincinnati Enquirer that he first learned about the marijuana operations from news reports. Manley, 64, said hes sure his daughter couldnt have been involved in anything illegal.

They are trying to drag my daughter through the mud, and I dont appreciate that, said Manley, whose three grandchildren  Danas children  were among the dead.

Manley also noted that the assailant was able to get by his daughters two dogs.

Whoever done it knows the family, Manley said. There were two dogs there that would eat you up.

Pike County Prosecutor Rob Junk told the Columbus Dispatch on Monday that the marijuana operations included a grow house sheltering hundreds of plants.

It wasnt just somebody sitting pots in the window, Junk said.

DeWine said Monday there also was possible evidence of cockfighting at one of the properties, but he didnt know what was relevant to the investigation.

More than a dozen counselors, clergy and psychologists arrived at the local high school Monday to help friends and neighbors cope with their grief as they remembered the victims as loyal and caring people.

Dana Rhoden always wanted what was best for her kids, Scioto Valley Local School District Supt. Todd Burkitt said.

The youngest victim, Christopher Rhoden Jr., was a freshman at Piketon High School.

He was the first one that if he thought that someone wasnt being treated fairly or felt like someone wasnt being treated appropriately, he would speak up about it, Burkitt said.

Hanna and Frankie Rhoden also had attended the school.

While authorities have not released any details about a motive, the attorney generals office did confirm Monday that one of the victims had received a threat via Facebook. Authorities didnt elaborate.

A Cincinnati-area businessman offered a $25,000 reward for details leading to those responsible for the deaths.

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Donald Trump stacked up five more wins Tuesday, sweeping the East Coast primaries in a decisive showing that moved him significantly closer to capturing the Republican presidential nomination and avoiding a bruising fight at the partys convention this summer.

Trumps victories  in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island  were by commanding margins, giving him the overwhelming majority of 172 delegates at stake.

Speaking in New York City, at the gilded office and condominium tower that bears his name, Trump declared the fight for the GOP nomination ended  I consider myself the presumptive nominee, absolutely  and said his rivals, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, should immediately stand aside.

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As far as Im concerned, its over, he said.

We should heal the Republican Party, continued Trump, who cited his business success as proof he is the only one qualified to do so. Im a unifier.

The Manhattan real estate mogul, who won his home state of New York last week in a landslide, had been expected to do well Tuesday in the heavily urbanized Atlantic corridor.

Even so, and even if you dont like Donald Trump, its hard to deny the magnitude of his victories, said Stuart Rothenberg, an independent campaign analyst.

Trumps dominating performance was important from both practical and psychological standpoints, pushing him closer to the 1,237 delegates needed for a first-ballot victory at the partys July convention and also shaping perceptions of the race to his great advantage.

In exit poll interviews, nearly 7 in 10 Republicans who cast ballots in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Connecticut suggested the candidate who gets the most votes  which has been Trump  deserves to win the nomination, even if he falls short in the delegate count.

Theres kind of a growing sense of inevitability, said Rothenberg, publisher of the nonpartisan Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report. The trajectory now suggests he will be very close to 1,237 by the end of business on June 7, and probably close enough to sweep up the crumbs he needs to be the nominee.

California, with 172 delegates  more than any state  will be important in determining whether Trump clinches the nomination or falls just short.

He began the day with 845 pledged delegates and was on track to win at least 105 more. Cruz had 559 and Kasich 148, and picked up only half a dozen more between them, according to nearly complete returns.

The most crucial fight may come in Indiana, which votes next Tuesday.

Cruz and Kasich are both mathematically eliminated from winning the nomination outright, so their only hope is to stop Trump short of a first-ballot victory, throwing the Cleveland convention open to alternatives. Trumps two rivals forged a tenuous non-compete agreement this week as part of a last-ditch strategy to stop the front-runner, but it quickly showed signs of fraying.

Indiana, where Cruz is strongly competitive, may be their last realistic chance to stop Trumps momentum and deny him the 1,237 delegates he seeks.

Brian Howey, a longtime student of politics in the state, rated the contest a toss-up with a slight lean toward Trump, who has

enjoyed a small edge in

polls.

Its the classic ground game and political skills versus national figure and air war, said Howey, comparing the respective strengths of Cruz and Trump.

The winner will take most of Indianas 57 delegates.

Even as the Trump wave built Tuesday night, his opponents insisted they were undeterred.

The path to 1,237 remains narrow, Rory Cooper, a spokesman for the Never Trump political action committee, said in a written statement, and he just left the most favorable part of the map for him in the Northeast. Moving west, his ability to keep pace becomes more difficult.

The five states that voted Tuesday included only one pure winner-take-all contest: Delaware, which awarded all 16 delegates to Trump. The rest apportioned their delegates through a combination of statewide and congressional district-level results.

Pennsylvania was the days biggest prize and also the most complicated.

Of the 71 delegates at stake, just 17 will be required to vote for the winner on the first ballot of the Republican National Convention. The rest, elected by congressional district, can support whomever they choose, though many said before Tuesdays balloting they would support the candidate who carried their district.

Trumps commanding statewide victory  he was winning 57% of the vote with nearly all the ballots counted  made it all the more likely he would take most of Pennsylvanias delegates.

For his part, Cruz always faced a difficult road Tuesday, given his cultural conservatism and religiosity in a region that tends toward neither. For the last several days he has focused on Indiana, where a sizable evangelical population and buttoned-down Midwestern sensibility offer a better political fit.

Speaking even before the polls closed, in Knightstown, Ind., in the gym where part of the movie Hoosiers was filmed, Cruz minimized Trumps five-state romp.

The media is going to say the race is over, he said. But Ive got good news for you. Tonight this campaign moves on to more favorable terrain. Can the state of Indiana stop the medias chosen Republican? There is nothing Hoosiers cannot do.

On Sunday night, his campaign announced an alliance with Kasich, in which the governor would essentially cede Indiana in return for Cruz standing down in primaries in Oregon, which votes May 17, and New Mexico on June 7. Kasich made no public remarks Tuesday night.

But the accord was quickly mired in confusion, with Kasich refusing to explicitly steer his Indiana supporters to Cruz and a pro-Cruz political action committee continuing to air anti-Kasich TV ads in the state.

Howey, who publishes the nonpartisan Howey Politics Indiana newsletter, said it was unclear how the arrangement would play in his state.

Hoosier voters dont like being told what to do, so its hard to see how it plays out, Howey said.

I suspect the question will be answered late next Tuesday night. If Cruz pulls out a win, everyone will say it was a brilliant move. It not, people will say it came too late.

mark.barabak @latimes.com

Twitter: @markzbarabak

noah.bierman @latimes.com

Twitter: @Noahbierman

Barabak reported from San Francisco and Bierman from West Chester. Times staff writers Kate Linthicum in New York and Lisa Mascaro in Knightstown contributed to this report.
Donald Trump to Ted Cruz and John Kasich: Get out

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Donald Trump called on his rivals to drop out of the Republican primary race Tuesday night after he swept the nights five contests, saying he is the only one poised to unify the GOP.

Its over, Trump said at a victory celebration at the same gilded office and condo tower on New Yorks Fifth Avenue where he launched his campaign last summer.

Sen. Cruz and Gov. Kasich should really get out of the race, he said. We should heal the Republican Party.

Trump, whose calls for mass deportations and a temporary ban on Muslims have provoked regular protests of his rallies, said he was uniquely qualified at bring people together, and called himself a unifier.

Surrounded by his family and friends, Trump abstained from the harsh criticism of his rivals that has dominated his campaign rallies in recent days.

Speaking to thousands of supporters at a college campus in a Philadelphia suburb Monday, Trump lobbed harsh personal criticism at Lyin Ted Cruz and at Kasich, whose eating habits he mocked as disgusting.

He was responding to an announcement from his rivals that they plan to divvy up campaigning in coming states in an attempt to win delegates.

Trumps tone and persona have been closely watched in recent days after a newly installed top campaign aide suggested that Trump would be altering his self-presentation, including adding more appearances in formal settings, to appeal to more voters.

One such attempt is a foreign policy speech Trump will give in Washington on Wednesday.

But on Tuesday night, Trump told reporters he wouldnt change too much.

Why would I change? he said. If you have a football team and youre winning and you get to the Super Bowl, why would you change your quarterback?

Trump also took swings at Hillary Clinton, who after a strong showing in Tuesdays primary elections appears poised to be the Democratic nominee.

He complained that Clinton is funded by Wall Street folks and called her use of a private email server to conduct government business while she was secretary of State an outrage.

He also said he would beat Clinton among female voters.

The beautiful thing is, women dont like her, he said.
Im Davan Maharaj, editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times. Here are some story lines I dont want you to miss today.

TOP STORIES

Senate Showcase Showdown

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There are 34 candidates vying for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer  the biggest field of statewide contenders since 135 ran in the 2003 special election for governor. On Monday night, just the top five squared off for a debate in Stockton, with front-runner Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris escaping serious attacks from her rivals. But Rep. Loretta Sanchez was not as lucky. Heres how the night unfolded.

A Changing of the Jail Guard

Over the last three years, Terri McDonald has had a mission: to turn around an L.A. County jail system reeling from allegations of mismanagement and abuse. Now, as she steps down, supporters are crediting her with transforming the jails through empathy and toughness. But some guards are complaining that the reforms have given inmates too much power and led to an increase in attacks on them. Read on for more about the assistant sheriffs legacy.

The Mystery of the Missing 43

What happened to the 43 Mexican college students who went missing on a rainy night in September 2014? A 605-page report from a panel of lawyers and human rights experts from Latin America and Spain has discredited the official government account. But heres why it doesnt answer the basic questions of where the 43 are or how high the blame should go in the Mexican government.

Whats Next for Tribune?

Gannett Co. wants to buy Tribune Publishing, a move that would mean an ownership change for The Times and solidify Gannetts status as the nations biggest newspaper publisher. But a deal is far from certain. While Tribune will evaluate the offer, CEO Justin Dearborn said management is working on its own plans for a significant transformation. Heres how it could play out.

Where Fat Man Was Born

It looks like a sleepy valley along the Columbia River in Washington. It isnt. The Manhattan Project National Historical Park 100 miles west of Walla Walla is a birthplace of nuclear weaponry. Travel writer Christopher Reynolds recently paid a visit to the Hanford B Reactor, which made the plutonium for the bomb the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki. He found a place that is being reinvented  to get families talking about a lot more than just the physics behind the bomb.

CALIFORNIA

-- A former Berkeley law school dean blasts a new sexual misconduct review against him.

-- The Assembly has voted to ban the use of tobacco and electronic cigarettes on all state college campuses.

-- Pay phones are relics, but there is still demand for them in the state.

-- A decomposing whale carcass threatens to draw sharks to the Trestles surfing area.

NATION-WORLD

-- The Cruz-Kasich merger and four other things to watch in todays primaries.

-- Afghanistans president vows no more peace talks with the Taliban.

-- The editor of a Bangladesh LGBT magazine and his friend were stabbed to death; an Al Qaeda branch claimed responsibility.

-- Meet the Catholic grocer who helps Mexican Jews keep kosher.

-- A study finds child obesity in the U.S. has increased unabated since 1999.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

-- At a Jehovahs Witness hall, congregants remember Prince as Brother Nelson.

-- The strategy behind the release of Beyonce's Lemonade album.

-- The new JFK opera is a surreal spin on the presidents last night in Texas.

-- At 90, artist Ed Moses is still finding out as I go. Im an explorer.

-- Unlike in The Meddler, Susan Sarandon takes a hands-off approach as a mom.

-- Five horror movies to see this summer.

BUSINESS

-- Apple could report its first quarterly revenue drop in 13 years today.

-- The FCCs chairman and the Justice Department have signed off on Charters takeover of Time Warner Cable.

-- Four consequences of a $15 minimum wage  the good and the bad.

SPORTS

-- Chris Pauls injury is the worst blow as the Clippers suffer a blowout.

-- History does not favor the Ducks as they face another Game 7.

-- The Lakers felt an urgency to part ways with Byron Scott while top coaching candidates were still available.

OPINION

-- Do older women face age discrimination in the job market? Absolutely. Heres proof.

-- Restoring voting rights to Virginia ex-felons is a welcome move, but for a whiff of partisan politics.

WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING

-- How thousands were rounded up before the 1988 Seoul Olympics and subjected to abuse. (Associated Press)

-- A giant steel arch is being built to cover the Chernobyl reactor, 30 years after the accident. (Wall Street Journal)

-- Downward spin cycle: Coin laundromats have been closing. (89.3 KPCC)

ONLY IN CALIFORNIA

Is it an olive branch or crazy? L.A.'s Department of Water and Power has created a $4.6-million artwork on a dry bed of Owens Valley featuring a plaza, sculptures and trails as a gesture of reconciliation for taking the regions water more than 100 years ago. Read on to see why some locals are skeptical but one admirer calls it Californias version of Stonehenge.

Please send comments and ideas to Davan Maharaj.
Some values are so ingrained in American society that we have developed cliches to describe them. We know immediately, for example, what it means to say a person has done his time or has paid his debt to society: That person was convicted of a crime, completed a prison sentence and returned home to restart life with a clean slate. The rights and privileges of full citizenship that may have been revoked while the sentence was carried out  the right to vote, for example  ought to be returned when the term is completed.

Isnt it quite a coincidence, then, that most of the states that flout this American value by denying the vote to ex-inmates (unless they win a pardon from the governor or approval from a judge) just happen to be those same states that for much of their history denied or severely restricted voting rights to African Americans?

Virginia, for example. Until two years ago, a Virginian who had done his or her time still couldnt vote without petitioning the governor and winning back the franchise. It was a racially discriminatory policy because black Virginians, like their counterparts in other states, are disproportionately charged with and imprisoned for crimes, and are therefore disproportionately disenfranchised, just like in the bad old days.

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In 2014, Gov. Terry McAuliffe took the wise and welcome step of restoring the vote to designated nonserious offenders. But others still had to jump through hoops that dont exists for most former inmates, including those in California.

So when McAuliffe followed up last week by granting clemency to Virginias more than 200,000 ex-felons, restoring their voting rights and sweeping away all those hoops, it was a good thing  right?

It would have been  were it not for the fact that it comes just when those voters might be needed to carry Virginia in the November presidential election for (the increasingly likely nominee) Hillary Clinton, who just happens to be a close friend of McAuliffe, who in turn just happened to have been national chairman of the Democratic Party, and just happened to have chaired Hillary Clintons 2008 presidential campaign and Bill Clintons 1996 presidential campaign.

The movement to restore voting rights for former inmates has long suffered from partisan political resistance from Republicans, who were too willing to accept the racial discrimination that comes with voting restrictions because it helped keep the lid on the turnout of African Americans, who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. McAuliffes move plays that same partisan card from the other side of the table.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Someone slap a photo of Mike Pence on a milk carton.

The Indiana governor may not have been abducted, but hes certainly missing in action on the central question facing the Republican Party: Are you with Trump, or against him?

Pence is not alone on the sidelines, of course. But the crowd of politicians with wet fingers trying to determine which way the wind is blowing doesnt matter. Pence does. If Donald Trump loses the Indiana primary May 3, it is all but certain he will fall short of the 1,237 delegates necessary to win the nomination on the first ballot. Indiana is now the Gates of Vienna for stopping the Trumpian takeover of the GOP.

If current general-election poll results are even remotely accurate, Trump will go down to a defeat of biblical proportions in November.

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Thats why Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have struck a deal to coordinate their campaigns to keep Trump from winning there. Kasich is dropping out of the Indiana race, and Cruz will clear a path for Kasich in New Mexico and Oregon. Theres nothing unusual about campaigns coordinating this way, what is unusual is their decision to make the deal public. Its a united front against the longtime Democrat turned Republican pretender.

And where is Pence? In his bunker insisting that hes for anybody but Hillary and Bernie Sanders.

To be fair, Pence is in a pickle because hes up for reelection in 2016 and the beleaguered Hoosier thinks he cant afford to alienate any Republican voters. Boo hoo.

If current general-election poll results are even remotely accurate, Trump will go down to a defeat of biblical proportions in November. His standing with women is so low, he even puts automatic Republican states such as Mississippi  and Utah!  into play. Meanwhile, in many of the swing states that any Republican nominee has to win, Hillary Clinton trounces Trump.

Trumps new de facto campaign manager, Paul J. Manafort, recently told fellow Republican insiders not to worry. All of this can be overcome because Trumps vulnerabilities merely reflect personality problems while Clintons reflect character issues. Fixing personality negatives is a lot easier than fixing character negatives, Manafort said. You cant change somebodys character, but you can change the way a person presents himself.

Lets say its possible that personality and character arent synonymous in the minds of voters. But the notion that Trump  a litigious, thrice-married confessed adulterer with a history of hawking snake oil products among other sketchy business practices  has no character issues must have Clintons opposition research team spit-taking lattes out their noses.

Trump says he can start acting presidential with a flip of a switch, but does anyone who is not besotted with Trump Kool-Aid think this is actually possible?

Pence is surely aware of Trumps unfavorables. But what he may not have considered is that when Trump loses in a landslide, the recriminations will be ferocious. The postmortems will undoubtedly focus on who had a chance to stop Trump when it was possible. Among the first in the dock: the Hamlet of the Hoosiers.

Most conservatives in Indiana have rallied to Cruzs side already. Curt Smith, the president of the Indiana Family Institute, told the Washington Examiner that Pence would lock in his base by endorsing Cruz, giving Cruz the advantage of Pences well-organized ground forces. Scott Walker, the governor of neighboring Wisconsin, helped deliver Cruzs blowout victory there last month. Its unlikely hell regret that decision down the road.

Then of course theres the case for supporting Cruz on the merits.

As Ive been saying for months, the Republican primary season will end in tears no matter what. If Trump is the nominee, many conservatives will stay home or vote for a third-party candidate. If hes not the nominee, many of Trumps supporters will stay home. So why not fall back on principle and pick a side?

Pence has spent his career cultivating a reputation as a principled, full-spectrum conservative with a populists disdain for D.C. Beltway games. In other words, he is entirely simpatico with Cruz ideologically. With Kasich out in Indiana, Pence can no longer claim that voters dont face a stark choice. Its time for him to show that he has the courage of his convictions.

jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Federal regulators are poised to approve Charter Communications $71-billion purchase of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, but with conditions that will be a boon to online video companies such as Netflix and the millions of people who love them.

Theoretically, cable-industry mergers shouldnt draw flak from antitrust regulators because cable companies dont compete with one another. Their networks almost invariably serve different cities, and when theyre in the same city, their cables are installed in different neighborhoods.

But as cable operators have grown bigger, other potential threats to competition have emerged. Thats opened up opportunities for regulators either to block further consolidation or to set rules -- temporarily -- for merged entities that they couldnt have imposed on the companies individually.

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For example, when Comcast tried to buy Time Warner Cable, federal regulators nixed the deal for fear that it would hurt content companies that reach millions of customers through Comcasts TV and Internet services. Among other factors was Comcasts ownership of NBC Universal, which gave the company an incentive to favor its own content over other companies programming.

Charter doesnt own a major movie and TV studio. But its purchase of Time Warner Cable, like Comcasts bid, would give Charter a significantly larger share of U.S. homes with cable TV or broadband Internet connections.

Put another way, purchasing Time Warner Cable (and Bright House, a smaller cable and broadband provider) would put Charter in position to act as a gatekeeper to about one-sixth of U.S. pay-TV customers, and about one-fifth of broadband customers -- one-fourth if you consider only those homes whose connections are at least 25 Mbps. That would increase Charters leverage when negotiating for the rights to popular broadcast and cable networks. It would also give Charter more power to throw hurdles into the path of online companies such as Netflix, whose services compete with Charters offerings.

Its worth remembering, though, that those same online content companies help persuade people to buy broadband service from the likes of Charter. And the Federal Communications Commissions new (albeit embattled) Net neutrality regulations are designed to prevent Charter and other Internet service providers from obstructing (or discriminating in favor of) the Netflixes of the world.

Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of Justice is insisting that Charter abide by extra restrictions for seven years in order to win approval of the deal, and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has circulated a similar plan at his agency. (The California Public Utiltiies Commission, which has not yet acted, must also sign off on the merger before it can take effect here.) These include bans on data caps and usage-based pricing for Charters broadband service, and on interconnection fees for the privilege of exchanging Internet traffic with Charter. The DOJ also forbade Charter from blocking TV programmers from making available online the same shows that they transmit to Charters cable customers.

All of these moves, along with the requirement to compete for broadband customers in more communities, are designed to keep the door open for online video services that are trying to compete with cable. Netflix is the most advanced of these, but others include the online versions of HBO and Showtime, Hulu Plus and Dish Networks Sling TV.

By banning data caps and usage-based pricing, regulators are preventing Charter from making it more expensive for its broadband customers to be heavy users of online video services, particularly those that offer data-gobbling high-definition movies. The flip side is that the ban forces Charter to spread those users costs onto its entire customer base, which rules out the possibility of light users paying lower monthly rates.

Similarly, the conditions bar Charter from locking up popular channels and programming, making sure it remains available to online video distributors. Whether the studios that own the programming want to license it to Charters online competitors is another question; some have been reluctant to do so for fear of cutting the lucrative fees they command from Charter and other cable operators.

The conditions imposed on the deal address longstanding concerns among regulators about the problems would-be online video services have been encountering as theyve sought to compete with cable. Even such powerful companies as Apple, Intel and Sony have struggled to cut the programming deals necessary to offer an alternative to cable online.

The FCC and the Justice Department dont have the clear authority to act on those concerns, however -- not unless cable operators tee up a merger like Charter-Time Warner Cable. As much as consumer activists complain about consolidation in the media industry, heres one case where it seems to be working in their favor.

Email Jon Healey

Follow Healeys intermittent Twitter feed: @jcahealey
To the editor: I had the incredible opportunity to visit Hiroshima in 2007. Walking through the serenity of Peace Park did not distract from the realization of what had happened there more than six decades earlier. (See Hiroshima for yourself, congressman of Japanese descent tells President Obama, April 22)

The museum is amazing  it not only teaches about the devastation wrought by Little Boy, but also the impact on the everyday human existences that were forever changed or snuffed out entirely by the bombing. Childrens toys, a workers wristwatch and additional otherwise mundane items bring home the reality of what war does to us all.

One thing in particular left a strong impression on me. Inside Peace Dome itself, I heard a group of tourists whispering and pointing at a cat sleeping on a concrete table. The dichotomy of that image  a resting cat underneath a burnt out dome  was astounding.

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I echo Rep. Mark Takanos call for President Obama to visit Hiroshima. The notion that we still have the ability to destroy civilization cannot be brushed aside.

John Aston, South Gate

..

To the editor: I too hope Obama will visit Hiroshima. But we must remember that among the victims of the bomb in Hiroshima were 12 American prisoners of war. These were the airmen who had been captured by the Japanese when their planes were shot down while attacking the Kure naval base near Hiroshima in July 1945.

Ten of them were detained in the military police headquarters 1,300 feet from Ground Zero. When the bomb was dropped on Aug. 6, they were killed instantly. Two others, who were kept in prison four miles north of Ground Zero, survived the initial blast but died days later.

If Obama visits Hiroshima, I hope he will also use this occasion to honor and mourn these brave men who had fought for the country, were killed by an atomic bomb dropped by their own government and have been forgotten.

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Santa Barbara

The writer, a professor emeritus of history at UC Santa Barbara, is the author of the book Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan.

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Ted Cruz and John Kasich may well have been forced by money problems and desperation into an alliance divvying upcoming states in a move to block Donald Trump from the Republican presidential nomination.

The problem? That same sort of insider deal-cutting is what spawned revulsion with the political class that has in turn propelled Trumps campaign. The deal now risks inspiring even more rage within the voters he has energized in this electoral cycle.

Perhaps the plan, in which Sen. Cruz of Texas will campaign in Indiana and Ohio Gov. Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico, will drive one of them to the partys nomination after a wild convention in Cleveland this summer. But from the outset, some odds are stacked against it.

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Trump already has hundreds more delegates than second-place Cruz, and Kasich has only a few outside of his home state. The campaign is only six weeks from its end, with only 10 states waiting to vote after Tuesdays primaries, when odds are Trump will record huge victories.

Its not certain that abandoned voters in the upcoming states would turn instead to the other non-Trump candidate. And it was not even clear the two candidates would ask their voters to do that. Kasich, for one, said he hoped his voters would continue to side with him in Indiana, which seemed to negate much of the point.

Trump wasted no time Monday in reminding Republicans yet to vote  and the delegates that he hopes to win over before the convention  that insider tactics are part of the political environment they so hate.

Voters casting ballots in Republican races this year have had a strong affinity for sending an outsider to the White House, exit polls have shown, and that has been a huge benefit to Trump in places as different as New York, Florida and the Southern states.

In last weeks New York primary, 64% of Republican voters said they wanted an outsider as president rather than an experienced politician. Among the outsider voters, Trump won 85%.

In a state Trump didnt win  Cruzs home state of Texas  45% wanted an outsider, higher than the percentage favoring an experienced politician. Trump won 61% of those voters.

The same dynamic was true in Alabama and Georgia in the South, Massachusetts and Vermont to the north, and traditional general-election swing states like Nevada and Virginia. In Florida, always a general-election target, 52% of Republicans wanted an outsider, and Trump won 74%.

The stakes involved in doing anything that further upsets Trumps voters were made clear in a Suffolk University/USA Today national poll released Monday. In it, Trump led among Republicans with 45%, to 29% for Cruz and 17% for Kasich.

About 7 in 10 Trump voters said the candidate who has the most delegates at the end of the primaries should get the nomination  and that is the position that Trump is likely to be in regardless of the Cruz-Kasich deal.

By a 2-1 margin, Trumps voters said they would support a third-party effort by the New York businessman if he did not get the nomination. Trump may decide against that dramatic gesture, of course, but the results suggested the depths of anger that the GOP would face if the nomination process didnt go his way.

Deals like the one struck by Cruz and Kasich, though long desired by establishment Republicans this year as Trump tallied victories, are not typical of presidential campaigns.

Both Cruz and Kasich had reached the point of urgency: Both want a convention fight in which pledged delegates will eventually be relieved of their promise to support a specific candidate  and, both think, switch to them.

But getting there would mean fighting not only with Trump but also with each other. Some of that will ease with the deal.

Both of them also lack the money to compete in every remaining contest as the campaign season drags on longer than anticipated. At the end of March, Kasichs campaign had just over $1 million in the bank, while Cruzs had less than $9 million. In California, which votes June 7, a week of television ads can cost $3 million to $4 million.

The two had to make their alliance public partly to alert their allies in super PACs and independent organizations. But that let voters know too, creating some early discomfort.

Tom John, an Indiana party official named to Kasichs Indiana steering committee only Wednesday, looked distinctly uneasy Monday when asked during a CNN interview whether he now planned to vote for Cruz.

He ended up quoting an old proverb: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. But he also said he wouldnt decide for sure whether to switch to Cruz until he got into the voting booth next week.

The Cruz-Kasich deal seems likely to put the final flourish to an odd recalibration in the public images of the Republican candidates.

Cruz came into the race the enemy of official Washington, having intensely angered Republicans with his efforts to shut down the government and his willingness to impugn party major-domos like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whom he labeled a liar.

But in a year in which Trump, the businessman-turned-entertainer, has thwarted political normalcy to the extreme and redefined authenticity with his often angry denunciations, Cruz has looked more a part of the establishment than he has ever actually been.

Cruzs and Kasichs insider standing was reinforced Monday. Just days removed from assailing each other, Cruz and Kasich spoke in stilted language about the deals communal effect on their resources  a word they both used  even as their aides and associates spoke from agreed-to talking points about the wisdom of it all.

Cruz and Kasich also played down the agreement; Whats the big deal? a testy Kasich said during a visit to a Philadelphia diner.

Trump, in contrast, was up to his usual tricks of hyperbole, the ones that have worked so well for him among so many Republican voters this year. He went in for the kill, saying in a Rhode Island speech that the two were colluding  a legally loaded term  and calling their attempt to take him down pathetic.

If his effort to cast it as one of political expediency works, the deal could prove to be a costly one for two candidates with few additional cards to play.

cathleen.decker@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter: @cathleendecker. For more on politics, go to latimes.com/decker.

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Live coverage from the campaign trail
Some are calling Tuesdays batch of elections the Acela primary, after the high-speed train route that runs through all five states holding contests: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Theres good reason the name hasnt caught on, however; these states vote so late in the primary season that they seldom attract much attention.

Not so this year, especially on the Republican side, which remains unsettled. Any of the states could play a crucial role in deciding whether front-runner Donald Trump gets his partys nomination. Here are a few things to look out for:

The Cruz-Kasich merger debuts.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich pulled a Sunday night surprise, announcing that they were teaming up to prevent Trump from winning the nomination.

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Kasich has agreed to stop campaigning in Indianas May 3 contest to give Cruz a chance to beat Trump there. Cruz has ceded Oregon and New Mexico, which vote later, to aid Kasich.

The pact does not include the states voting Tuesday. But it is a tacit admission that neither Cruz nor Kasich has much of a chance to notch any wins among them. Polls show Trump with a huge advantage in these states, and another thumping could further diminish the chance that the pact succeeds in preventing Trump from securing the nomination before the Republican National Convention this summer.

Bernie Sanders dwindling rationale.

For quite some time, the senator from Vermont has lacked a mathematical case that he can win enough pledged delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. What he has had is a rhetorical rationale, fueled by a string of victories in Wisconsin, Washington and elsewhere in recent weeks.

Then came New York. Hillary Clinton won there decisively last week, and Democrats intensified pressure on Sanders to ease his attacks on her, while stopping short of asking him to leave the race. Polls show Clinton ahead in Tuesdays two largest states, Pennsylvania and Maryland. The three smaller states have not been polled as much, and results are tighter in the few surveys that have been taken. But even if Sanders wins one or two, he will endure more insistence from party leaders that he tamp down the fight against Clinton and perhaps even withdraw.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

Pennsylvania, the laboratory.

The biggest prize of the night will be a great place to examine exit polls for general-election hints.

The large swing state has almost every type of voter: diverse urban populations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh where Democrats tend to rack up huge tallies; white working-class voters in the old manufacturing centers of Bethlehem, Erie and York being targeted by Trump and Sanders; conservative Christians in Lancaster and other rural communities who could give Cruz an opening; moderate suburban communities around Philadelphia that often decide statewide elections.

The state is also home to the much-discussed Reagan Democrats, Rust Belt whites who began voting for Republicans in 1980. Trump is already being partly credited for a 145,000 increase in new Republican registrations in the state since fall, including 61,500 Democrats who switched parties.

Despite the increase in GOP interest, Democrats continue to hold a registration advantage of nearly 1 million votes.

Its the delegates, stupid. (OK, even smart people have trouble figuring it out.)

Pennsylvanias Republican delegate process is among the most confusing in the country.

Of the 71 delegates at stake Tuesday, just 17 will be required to vote for the winner of the statewide Republican presidential primary on the first ballot of the national convention in Cleveland this summer.

The rest of the delegates, elected by district, are free to support whomever they want. It could take hours, if not days, after the results are announced to figure out which candidate those delegates plan to support in Cleveland. And their loyalties may change over time as they face competing pressures from voters, candidates and party insiders.

In other words, Tuesdays vote does not really settle who wins the primary. That could give the states delegates unusual power in a contested convention.

The general election begins?

For weeks, political analysts have insisted that this or that primary could finally signal the beginning of the general election.

But it appears to be happening this time. After Trumps and Clintons big New York victories last week, both front-runners began shifting into general-election mode, spending more time attacking each other than their respective primary opponents.

Neither candidate is likely to emerge from Tuesdays primaries without a challenger. Trump still faces the threat that he will not secure enough delegates to win the nomination without a convention fight. Sanders has enough money and enthusiasm among his supporters to keep pushing his populist message.

Still, strong showings from Trump and Clinton on Tuesday could allow both candidates to spend even more time, money and rhetoric on the general election.

noah.bierman@latimes.com

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MORE POLITICAL COVERAGE

Kamala Harris in drivers seat at Californias first U.S. Senate debate

As Clinton and Sanders spar over gun control, Newtown, Conn., is drawn into unwanted spotlight

Will Trump Democrats play a role in the 2016 presidential race?
The first debate in Californias sleepy U.S. Senate campaign seemed to present a question: Who has the best chance of securing the second and final spot on the November ballot, alongside Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris? Because Harris ended the evening where she started  firmly still in the drivers seat.

Harris and Rep. Loretta Sanchez, both Democrats, have the best chance at making it past the states top-two June 7 primary to face each other in a general election. The Republican hopefuls used Mondays debate to attempt to sully Sanchezs record more than go after Harris, who leads all public opinion polls and had nearly $5 million in the bank at the start of this month.

The Orange County congresswoman was pressed by George Duf Sundheim about missing a slew of House Homeland Security Committee meetings in 2015. Moderators kept Sanchez on the defensive, asking about past remarks about native Americans, the Vietnamese and regarding the number of Muslims supporting a strict Islamist state. She adamantly denied she was anti-Muslim and dismissed the comments as being taken out of context, while also saying no one had refuted her claim.

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The only real knock on Harris came from Republican Tom Del Beccaro, who criticized her investigation of an anti-abortion activist while her campaign was drumming up support for Planned Parenthood. Even then, Harris turned that into a platform to express her staunch support for reproductive rights groups, a line that earned her praise from one of them minutes after the debate wrapped.

Sanchez was asked about her shoot from the hip style and whether California voters should be worried about sending her to the Senate.

John Diaz, editorial editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, specifically mentioned comments she made after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino in December, when Sanchez said 5% to 20% of Muslims worldwide supported the idea of a caliphate  a strict Islamic state. Following those comments, the congresswoman was criticized by immigrant rights group and the Council on Islamic-American Relations.

Harris had gotten in a subtle dig at Sanchez earlier in the debate, saying anti-Muslim rhetoric does not belong in any conversation about Americas fight against terrorism.

The five candidates on stage at the debate at the University of the Pacific in Stockton provided vastly different viewpoints of President Obamas record on foreign policy and keeping American safe from terrorists attacks.

Sanchez said she has told Obama he was wrong on occasion during her time in Congress. But she didnt offer any precise criticism, except to say that the Obama administration failed to prevent Libya from becoming a breeding ground for extremists. She also took the opportunity to decry those who want more military intervention and to tout her own opposition to the war Iraq.

Ill use everything before we have to go to war with anybody, she said.

As Sanchez repeatedly spoke of her experience on the House Homeland Security and Armed Services committees, saying it set her apart from her rivals, Sundheim cited some figures from a Los Angeles Times story about the congresswomans sagging attendance record at Homeland Security hearings.

She defended herself by saying the committee meets at the same time as the Armed Services committee, where she has taken on more duties while the ranking member faces health challenges and at the request of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

Two of the Republicans, Del Beccaro and Sundheim, sounded similar themes of criticism. Sundheim called for a blend of economic, military and political power.

Del Beccaro hewed more to the right, suggesting that the U.S. should have done more to intervene in Iraq and Syria to ensure that the Islamic State could not expand its territory and influence in the Middle East. He also suggested words also matter when discussing how to combat terrorism.

If they are Islamic, or Islamic terrorists, then we should call them that, he said.

Perhaps the man who proved most unpredictable on the Senate debate stage was Silicon Valley software developer Ron Unz, the newest entrant in the race. While he has an unusual political resume, he kept up that unusual bent in the 90 minute televised event.

Unz described the Iraq War one of the nations greatest foreign policy blunders in recent history. He blamed the military action, launched by then President George W. Bush in 2003, for destabilizing the entire region and called it even worse than Obama.

He also said it will be very difficult for any Republican to win, the seat held by retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Sundheim, while advocating for ramping up high-tech security measures along the U.S. Mexico border, said he supports giving the estimated 11 million immigrants in the county without documentation a pathway to legal status.

It was one of the issues  along with his support for abortion rights  that prompted one of the debate moderators to ask Sundheim whey he was a Republican.

Im not a blind Republican, and when I see something wrong, Im to say something about it, Sundheim said.

Unz also didnt shy about splintering from the GOP, and blamed the anti-immigrant rhetoric of former Gov. Pete Wilson for driving California voters away from the Republican Party.

He noted his support for increasing Californias minimum wage, including his short-lived 2014 ballot initiative to increase it to $12 an hour. He held it up as proof that he was not beholden to any political ideology and added to that call by lashing out at a familiar target of Democrats.

I think we have to crack down on Wall Street, just like Bernie Sanders is saying, Unz said.

Del Beccaro disagreed: Im not at all concerned about Wall Street and the rich. Im not for them.

He said the real culprit has been stagnant economic growth, which has diminished wages for most Americans in recent years.

What weve heard so far from everyone else is they want a government solution to this. But government cant solve everything. If it did, wed have heaven already on earth because we have six trillion worth of American government.

Sundheim said hes opposed to raising the minimum wage. Instead, he advocated for a boost in the earned income tax credit  aimed directly at the lowest-income Americans.

On the economy, the two Democrats on stage each sounded similar themes. Sanchez talked about an affordable college education. Harris talked about helping working parents.

The contenders mostly kept it civil and short  limited to 90 seconds for most of their answers  and attempted to articulate why they are the most worthy to advance six weeks from now.

It was one of their best opportunities to make an impression on voters statewide. The final debate will be held on May 10 at San Diego State University, with the same five candidates invited.

Harris is the solid front-runner, but Sanchez is in second place and far ahead of the Republican pack, according to the most recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.

With most voters entranced by the blustery, political theatrics of the presidential race, the Senate campaign has toddled along unnoticed in California.

The USC/Times poll in late March found 32% of registered voters in California were undecided on which candidate they will vote for in the primary.

Among Republicans and independent voters -- those registered as no party preference -- roughly 40% were undecided.

Most of the Senate candidates have been campaigning for months up and down the state, but the radio and television ads that usually flood the airwaves in major statewide political races have not yet materialized.

In reality, only Harris and Sanchez have enough money to even consider a media campaign which, in California, can cost millions of dollars. Sundheim, Del Becarro and Unz all have less than $100,000 in their campaign accounts. Harris had nearly $5 million and Sanchez had $2.3 million in the bank as of March 31.

phil.willon@latimes.com

Follow @philwillon on Twitter for the latest news on California politics

Myers reported from Sacramento

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Monday nights debate between the most prominent Californians vying for the U.S. Senate might best be summed up like this: Six weeks. Five candidates. One burning question.

Good morning from the state capital. Im Sacramento Bureau Chief John Myers, and heres why those topics seem most important in the race to replace the retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Six weeks from today, voters go to the polls. Five candidates  two Democrats and three Republicans  are considered the leading contenders.

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And that burning question: Who has the best chance of securing the second and final spot on the November ballot, alongside Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris? Because as Tuesday arrives, Harris still seems firmly in the drivers seat.

SENATE DEBATE: STATUS QUO

The debate, held on the campus of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, was one of only two scheduled Senate face-offs before voters cast their ballots. And it came after polls, including our own USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll showed the race to be in slow motion.

Phil Willon has our recap of the evenings best moments on issues ranging from jobs to immigration and beyond.

UNZ THE UNUSUAL

Perhaps the most unpredictable candidate on the Senate debate stage was Silicon Valley entrepreneur Ron Unz. Willons profile of the man and his unusual political resume offers up a pretty good explanation of how Unz performed in the 90-minute event.

Consider these un-Republican-sounding Unz quips from Monday night.

On whom to help in America, and why: I think we have to crack down on Wall Street, just like Bernie Sanders is saying.

On President Obamas foreign policy: The Bush administration was even worse.

On the Senate race in which hes a GOP candidate: Its going to be very difficult for any Republican to win, at which point Unz criticized the immigration stance of former Gov. Pete Wilson.

One of two theories seems most likely about this race. Either a center-right candidate (Unz, Republican Duf Sundheim or Orange County Democrat Rep. Loretta Sanchez) finds enough crossover votes to wind up as Harris final challenger, or these same three candidates split that centrist vote and leave Harris the strong favorite in November against the most conservative of the leading GOP candidates, Tom Del Beccaro.

If you missed any of the Senate debate, we covered it live on our Essential Politics news feed.

PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY ON THE ACELA CORRIDOR

Rise and shine, voters along much of the Eastern seaboard: Its primary day. The most frenetic presidential race in a generation now lands in the lap of Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

Noah Bierman has our preview of the big day and what to watch for as voters in these five states weigh in on both the Republican and Democratic candidates.

And with all of Mondays buzz about the Sen. Ted Cruz-Gov. John Kasich campaign strategy, Cathleen Decker points out it just might play perfectly into the narrative that Donald Trump has been promoting all along about insider politics.

Meantime, Seema Mehta reported on Monday that Cruz is considering Carly Fiorina as a vice presidential running mate. Since abandoning her own presidential race, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO has become one of Cruzs most visible surrogates. Californians, of course, remember well how she was handily defeated in 2010 by Sen. Boxer.

Mehta also takes a close look at how guns have become a big issue in the Democratic battle between Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Of the handful of policy differences between them, gun control is the rare split that has allowed Clinton to position herself as more liberal than the senator from Vermont.

For full results from Tuesday nights primaries, keep an eye on Trail Guide and follow @latimespolitics.

You can also track the delegate race in real time.

TODAYS ESSENTIALS

 Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer is turning some of his focus, and cash, toward voter registration. On Monday, he announced a $25-million effort to boost the ranks of the nations millennial voters.

 A ban on smoking and tobacco use on all 23 campuses of the Cal State University system? That would be the law under legislation passed by the Assembly on Monday. Now headed to the state Senate, the bill would mirror previous bans imposed by the University of California and a number of community colleges across the state.

 A gaggle of Assembly Democrats is pitching a $1.3-billion budget request to spur affordable housing. The money would target building for the states poorest residents, including farmworkers and homeless, but falls far short of addressing Californias larger housing affordability needs.

 The Anaheim City Council will consider a resolution tonight denouncing Trump for divisive rhetoric.

LOGISTICS

Miss yesterdays newsletter? Here you go. Did someone forward you this? Sign up here to get Essential Politics in your inbox daily. And keep an eye on our politics page throughout the day for the latest and greatest. And are you following us on Twitter at @latimespolitics?

Please send thoughts, concerns and news tips to politics@latimes.com.
Were there: Lt. Gov. Newsom says he has enough signatures for gun control initiative

Citing the failure of the state Legislature to act, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that he has collected 600,000 signatures of California voters to qualify a gun control initiative for the November ballot.

Were there. This is going to be on the November ballot, Newsom said Thursday. Over 600,000 registered voters want to take some bold action on gun safety.

Newsoms campaign plans to begin delivering signatures tomorrow to county clerks for verification. If at least 365,880 signatures are found to be valid, the measure will qualify for the ballot.

Newsom said most of the proposals in the initiative have one thing in common, that over the past number of years they have suffered the fate of either being watered down or rejected by the Legislature. Were hopeful and confident that the voters of California will overwhelmingly support the initiative.

The broad measure would require background checks for purchasers of ammunition; ban possession of ammunition magazine clips holding more than 10 rounds; provide a process for felons and other disqualified persons to relinquish firearms and require owners to report when their guns are lost or stolen.

The initiative would also address an issue caused by the previous adoption of Proposition 47, which made thefts of guns worth less than $1,000 a misdemeanor. The ballot measure would make all gun thefts a felony.

Last week, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) said key provisions of the initiative, including the ban on large-capacity magazines, are addressed by legislation this year, but that bills could be harmed by the initiative going forward.

A campaign committee including gun groups and law enforcement is being formed to defeat the initiative, according to one member, Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California. He noted that the measure has already been opposed by the California State Sheriffs Assn., which said it would put restrictions on law-abiding people without taking guns from criminals.

its an initiative that carries multiple proposals that were either killed by the Legislature as not workable or vetoed by the governor, Paredes said. Newsom has collected failed policy issues from the Legislature and put them up as an initiative. Its going to be a massive effort to defeat him.

Paredes said the initiative is a cynical attempt by Newsom to gain higher office.

We know hes doing this to pump himself up for his gubernatorial run, Paredes said.

Newsom said his campaign for governor is secondary to his effort to enact gun safety laws.

He said he has been active in the gun safety movement going back 15 years when he was mayor of San Francisco and a founding member of the group Mayors Against Guns. The National Rifle Assn. was so upset, they protested at his wedding in Montana, he said.

I expect a good challenge from them, Newsom said of the NRA. They have been very aggressive to date. But we are very enthusiastic to be getting to this next phase.

He cited internal polls indicating more than 70% of California voters support the initiative, and a Field poll that found greater support for provisions of the measure, including the ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
Ahoy!

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds is well known as the unofficial motto or, better, tribute to the United States Postal Service.

Well, how about, Neither seas nor storms nor shattering on rocks stays this bottle from keeping the contents secure for the worlds oldest message in a bottle.

The Marine Biology Assn. (UK) released more than 1,000 bottles in the North Sea between 1904 and 1906 as an experiment conducted by George Parker Bidder to study the ocean currents. A finder of a bottle, 55% from fishermen at sea, would receive one shilling as an incentive to return the postcard inside the bottle.

The North Sea is known as a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean situated off the eastern side of the United Kingdom between Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and France. The experiment showed that the currents carried the floating bottles with a postcard inside toward the continent, while some were found on Britains shoreline.

This was not a new method to study the currents, as messages in bottles have been used since 310 BC for that purpose, but it was the best method at the time. Now, the marine pollution act and most local regulations prevent you from throwing bottles into the ocean, but we have better trackable devices for the job today.

However, Marianne Winkler was on vacation with her husband strolling the beaches on Amrum Island, Germany, when she picked up the bottle on April 17, 2015. It is ironic to my opening sentence that, according to reports, a retired German postal worker found the bottle that had been floating for 108 years, four months and 18 days in the North Sea.

Recently, the Guinness World Records recognized Winklers find as the oldest message in a bottle recovered from sea.

It is interesting that the bottle may have not have appeared to drift far from release to Mrs. Winklers hands, but the story would be in its journey over 100 years surviving storms, battles at sea, and not being bashed upon rocky shorelines.

*

My tip of the week

The California Boaters of California is asking you to contact your elected representatives to vote no on Assembly Bill 2092 (Frazier), which will use recreational boating funds for commercial vessels.

The bill is amending the Abandoned Watercraft Abatement Fund revenues to delete the section that the fund cannot be used for abatement, removal, storage or disposal of commercial vessels. So your recreational boaters funds will be used to rid the waterways of abandoned commercial vessels.

RBOC is asking that you use its message or modify the text below:

Please vote no on AB 2092 [Frazier] when it is considered in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

This bill would target recreational boater funds for the cleanup of abandoned commercial vessels.

Commercial vessels are much more expensive to clean up and the cost of one vessel could exceed the entire amount of available funds.

The owners of commercial vessels do not contribute to our fund  only recreational vessel owners do.

The demand for cleanup of recreational vessels already exceeds the amount of available funds. These vessels should remain the top priority at this time.

There is no condition in the bill restricting the cleanup of abandoned commercial vessels to those that pose a danger to recreational boaters.

Recreational boaters need to be aware that there are many special interest groups that are targeting the monies designated for recreational boating, which boaters primarily fund through special taxes and fees. Please take a moment to contact your state representative to let them know to use recreational boaters dollars toward recreational boaters projects only.

The original boating program, Boathouse TV & Radio Shows, has stretched from coast to coast for more than two decades. See the details atwww.boathousetv.comwww.facebook.com/boathouseradio and www.twitter.com/boathouseradio.

Safe voyages!

MIKE WHITEHEAD is a boating columnist for the Daily Pilot. Send marine-related thoughts and story suggestions to mike@boathouse.com or go to boathousetv.com.
Thirty years ago, an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine released far more radioactivity than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan did, forcing the resettlement of more than 350,000 people. Scientists estimate that the most dangerous radioactive elements will take up to 900 years to decay sufficiently to render the area safe.

CHORNOBYL, UKRAINE - SEPTEMBER 29: A visitor touring the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant takes a photo through a window looking towards facilities that house reactors one and two on September 29, 2015 near Chornobyl, Ukraine. The Chernobyl plant is currently undergoing a decades-long decommissioning process of reactors one, two and three, which continued operation for years following the accident at reactor four. On April 26, 1986, technicians at Chernobyl conducting a test inadvertently caused reactor number four, which contained over 200 tons of uranium, to explode, flipping the 1,200 ton lid of the reactor into the air and sending plumes of highly radioactive particles and debris into the atmosphere in a deadly cloud that reached as far as western Europe. 32 people, many of them firemen sent to extinguish the blaze, died within days of the accident, and estimates vary from 4,000 to 200,000 deaths since then that can be attributed to illnesses resulting from Chernobyls radioactive contamination. Today large portions of the inner and outer Chernobyl Exclusion Zone that together cover 2,600 square kilometers remain contaminated. A consortium of western companies is building a movable enclosure called the New Safe Confinement that will cover the reactor remains and its fragile sarcophagus in order to prevent further contamination. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) (Sean Gallup / Getty Images) (Sean Gallup / Getty Images)

Untouched:A visitor touring the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant takes a photo through a window looking towards facilities that house Reactors Nos. 1 and 2.

(Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images)

Reactor No. 4: The sarcophagus of Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor 4 is seen on Jan. 25, 2006.

(Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images)

Abandoned preschool: Beds in an abandoned preschool in the deserted town of Pripyat, Ukraine, next to the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Pripyat, where plant workers lived, and the surrounding area will not be safe for human habitation for several centuries.

(Sean Gallup / Getty Images)

Control room: A worker makes a phone call in the control room of Reactor No. 2 inside the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

(Sean Gallup / Getty Images)

Instrument panel: Instrument panels in the control room of Reactor No. 2 are nearly identical to those that were in the control room of Reactor No. 4, which blew up on April 26, 1986.

A pair of flippers lie in a swimming pool in the abandoned town of Pripyat near Chernobyl, Ukraine, on Jan. 24, 2006. Pripyat and the surrounding area will not be safe for human habitation for several centuries. Scientists estimate that the most dangerous radioactive elements will take up to 900 years to decay sufficiently to render the area safe. (Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images) (Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images)

Swimming pool: A pair of flippers remains in a deserted swimming pool in the abandoned town of Pripyat, Ukraine.

(Sergei Supinsky / Getty Images)

Hotel room: Paint peels in a hotel in Pripyat, adjacent to the Chernobyl nuclear site.

(Sergei Supinsky / Getty Images)

Amusement park : An abandoned amusement park in the ghost town of Pripyat, where workers at the nuclear plant once lived.

(Sean Gallup / Getty Images)

Memorial: Visitors photograph a memorial to worker Valery Khodemchuk at a wall that separates Reactors 3 and 4 inside the plant. Khodemchuk was a circulating-pump operator killed in the accident; his body remains entombed inside Reactor No. 4.

(Sean Gallup / Getty Images)

Warning signs: A sign warns of radiation contamination and prohibits the picking of berries and mushrooms near Chachersk, Belarus. Chachersk, in southeastern Belarus, is in a zone still designated as contaminated with radiation from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

(Sean Gallup / Getty Images)

Guided tour: Tourists on a guided tour snap photos of one another outside an abandoned shop and apartment building in Pripyat, Ukraine. Pripyat, built in the 1970s as a model Soviet city to house the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and their families, now stands abandoned inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

(Sean Gallup / Getty Images)

Screening: A worker applying for a job at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant prepares to undergo screening for radiation levels in his body at the National Research Center for Radiation Medicine, a hospital and research institute established in Kiev, Ukraine, after Chernobyl disaster.

(Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images)

Radiated: Highly radiated helicopters used to dump concrete and water on Reactor No. 4 during the 1986 catastrophe lay in a field near the Ukrainian village of Rosoha.

(Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images)

Nuclear hazard signs: Nuclear hazard signs are seen in the village of Kopachi, Ukraine. Kopachi was one of the many villages close to Chernobyl plant that were buried soon after the catastrophe to avoid further radioactive contamination.
The return of opposition leader Riek Machar to South Sudans capital, Juba, offers the troubled nation its best hope of emerging from decades of on-and-off war. But the last-minute foot dragging of Machar and his opponent, President Salva Kiir, suggests that hope is tenuous, an echo of the reluctance and delay that has dogged every step of the peace process.

The men, equally jealous, stubborn and ambitious, both fought in the rebel army for independence from Sudan and became partners in the countrys first independent government in 2011. But they fell out bitterly in 2013 after Kiir made it clear he wouldnt make way so that Machar could succeed him, triggering ethnic fighting that spread from Juba to the north and east of the country.

Men, women and children  including hospital patients  were shot or hacked to death with machetes, and entire towns were looted and burned. The Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement government and army split acrimoniously, spelling disaster for efforts to improve lives in one of the worlds most corrupt and impoverished nations. The country is ranked 169 of 188 countries by the United Nations in terms of human development, as per capita gross national income plummeted 22% between 2010 and 2014. Deep suspicion and mistrust endure after the war that saw horrendous violence against civilians from both sides, with at least 50,000 people killed.

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The two have been pushed and dragged by the international community into a peace deal neither seems to want. Both sides threw up a flurry of last-ditch barriers over the last week, infuriating international diplomats, with the U.S. eventually pulling out of funding Machars flight on Sunday.

Kiirs close ally and hardline army chief, Paul Malong Awal, has sharply opposed the peace deal and return of opposition forces to Juba, which is part of the delicate, internationally brokered peace deal. Awal fueled the mistrust and suspicion with a remark earlier this month that Machar would not become president while he was around. The opposition condemned the comment.

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A few days later, government security forces beat up 16 members of Machars publicity team in the capital, the Associated Press reported.

The peace deal had taken nearly 20 months after fighting broke out to broker. Kiir reluctantly signed it last August, while enumerating a long list of concerns, calling for revisions and complaining that it had been imposed by the international community.

The deal turns back the clock to 2013, with Kiir as president and Machar his restive deputy. It sets up a government of national unity and a two-year transition process leading to national elections. But the process now enters a hair-trigger stage, with soldiers from both sides in or near Juba, posing the risk that an ill-placed remark or a new disagreement about procedures could trigger violence.

An international commission has been set up to monitor each step of the peace process and step in whenever there is disagreement.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

Machar told reporters at the airport that obstacles to peace could be overcome, if there is political will.

It is important to start thinking how we should kick off national reconciliation and healing in our country. The war was vicious, we have lost a lot of people in it, and we need to bring our people together so that they can unite, reconcile and heal the wounds, the mental wounds, that they have, he said. He was sworn in as vice president immediately.

One major factor that risks destabilizing the peace deal is that the unity government could turn into an informal presidential race, with rivalry between Kiir and Machar playing out over 30 months as each tries to win an advantage and discredit the other.

South Sudan is facing a severe hunger crisis, because of drought, a poor harvest and conflict, with 6 million people in need of emergency assistance, more than half the population. Food prices have rocketed in recent months and the local currency has depreciated, meaning many people can barely afford to buy food.

South Sudan fought a 22-year civil war for independence from Sudan. After a peaceful referendum voting to secede, the worlds newest country took off in 2011 amid wild hopes and optimism.

When the war came, the oil-rich nation had seemed poised for economic success. The government was on the brink of signing a multibillion-dollar loan with China for the construction of the airport and major highways. War broke out days before the deal was to be signed.

Ten days earlier, a business conference in the capital, Juba, was attended by 500 foreign companies eager to invest. The Economist had predicted the countrys economic growth would soar to 35% in 2014.

The war displaced more than 2 million people, many of whom are afraid to go home.

During the conflict, government forces were told they could rape women and loot in lieu of pay, according to a report the U.N. Human Rights Commissioner released last month. People were shot or burned alive in their houses, the report said, adding that government soldiers committed more of the abuses than the opposition.

Releasing the report, U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Hussein said the quantity of rapes and gang rapes described in the report must only be a snapshot of the real total. This is one of the most horrendous human rights situations in the world, with massive use of rape as an instrument of terror and weapon of war.

robyn.dixon@latimes.com

Follow @RobynDixon_LAT for news from Africa.

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Not a complaint - just a description! All the pain is long past now, yet there was a time when it hurt a lot both emotionally and physically to contemplate moving from that good old neighborhood.

My dad had bought the Brainerd property in the late 1930's and figured it would be his home for life. He had selected it because it was inside the city of Chattanooga, directly bordering on the county to the south; the lots were spacious, many stood vacant, and there were woodlands in the area. Also, we were approximately half way between the noisy Brainerd and Ringgold Roads. Our lot extended from the "old" South Terrace Avenue up to Anderson Avenue which WAS the county line; how could he have ever imagined that a superhighway would one day come through, leveling every building, tree, shrub, and blade of grass?

I cannot remember exactly when the earliest rumblings started, but perhaps as early as 1953 or '54 we began to hear that some big project was going to come through and claim our property. The idea seemed so unreal and remote that we and all the neighbors were in a state of denial about it and simply ignored the thought.

I was in the Air Force during those critical years, stationed near Nashville, so I got back to Chattanooga rather often. My parents were aging, and yet the rumors persisted that the whole neighborhood was going to become part of a new superhighway. Rumors turned into reality and the state of Tennessee started notifying all residents that they should begin planning their move. Properties were bought up and a date set for mandatory evacuation. We actually knew the state agent through a church connection, and I was interested in wood sculpture, wishing to cut down one particular walnut tree for eventual carving. We contacted the agent and he denied me the privilege of cutting the tree down, as all the trees possible were to be "spared" so as to "beautify the approaches" to the new highway.

My parents bravely accepted the dreaded task of looking for a new place, purchasing a nice brick house several blocks away, and had moved into it before I was discharged from the Service. They had been told that no one would be permitted to re-enter their former house once they closed the door. Very soon, though, we noticed a simple curtain over the large front window which indicated someone was living there, and at Christmas some of our evergreen shrubbery went missing. We felt violated even though the property no longer belonged to us! When the bulldozers and other earth-moving equipment finally came, they leveled EVERY bit of vegetation they could reach. Tree trunks were piled together and burned, simmering for days. My prize walnut tree was somewhere among them.

A goodly number of houses in the neighborhood had been designated for removal to nearby vacant lots, while others were bought up and removed to greater distances. It was interesting to follow where all the various "removed" houses were re-located to. A house that once faced north now faced south, and a house that looked "at home" in its original location now looked totally out of place on its new site. Stranger yet, was to drive south on Oriole Drive, for example, where nothing had been touched, until you reached the corner of my old street, and suddenly there was just an ocean of raw, plowed dirt and emptiness. The raw dirt and emptiness have, of course, long been replaced by pavement and speeding automobiles, but I can still drive to that spot - on occasion - for the fun of it, and it is always a very nostalgic "sentimental journey" for me.

I am a creature of habit and do my best thinking and work when I am in familiar surroundings. So it is no wonder that when I got married my new wife and I moved into the Belvoir area of Brainerd, about one mile from where I grew up. This was partially because of my aging parents ( I was to be their 911), and partially because I liked being in a place that was relatively familiar. The Belvoir area of Brainerd has always been a desirable place to live and raise families. We located a nice place about three blocks from my parents, and my wife, a former Red Bank girl, has had no problems with the move. We have lived here over 50 years.

As for the wrecking of my old street: that agony is long past, and in my opinion President Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Project '66" program to construct an Interstate highway system across America is one of the best uses of Federal money created in my lifetime. We could not live without it!

(Chester Martin is a native Chattanoogan who is a talented painter as well as local historian. He and his wife, Pat, live in Brainerd. Mr. Martin can be reached at cymppm@comcast.net )
An Al Qaeda affiliate claimed responsibility Tuesday for the killings of a gay-rights activist and his friend in the Bangladeshi capital.

Ansar al-Islam, a banned militant group and the Bangladeshi branch of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, posted Twitter messages claiming responsibility, saying the men were working day and night to promote homosexuality  with the help of their masters, the U.S. crusaders and its Indian allies.

Police said the victims  Xulhaz Mannan, editor of Bangaldeshs only LGBT magazine and a longtime employee of the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka, and theater activist Tanay Majumder  had been followed for several days before their slaying.

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The killings were planned extensively, said the inspector general of Dhaka police, Shahidul Haque. No arrests have been made in the case.

Mannan joined the U.S. Agency for International Development as an employee in Dhaka last year and had worked for the previous eight years at the U.S. Embassy. The USAID administrator, Gayle Smith, described him as a dedicated and courageous advocate for human rights.

The two were found hacked to death by machetes at an apartment in the capital Monday evening, a double-slaying that bore similarities to the killing of a university professor a few days earlier.

Ansar al-Islam has previously claimed responsibility for the killings of several secular activists.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

The spate of killings of secular and liberal activists has alarmed Bangladesh and raised fears of growing lawlessness and extremism in the overwhelmingly Muslim South Asian nation. The police inspector, Haque, said he was confident the killers would be found and rejected blame over the incidents.

Everybody should be aware of their own safety, Haque said. It is not possible for police to guard all houses.

Kader is a special correspondent. Times staff writer Shashank Bengali contributed to this report from Lahore, Pakistan.

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A wild elephant rampaged through an east Indian town on Wednesday, smashing cars and homes and sending panicked people running before the animal was tranquilized to be returned to the forest.

(Associated Press)

The elephant was scared and was trying to go back to the jungle, said Papaiya Sarkar, a 40-year-old homemaker who watched the elephant amble down a street near her home.

(Associated Press)

The elephant had wandered from the Baikunthapur forest, crossing roads and a small river before entering the town of Siliguri in West Bengal state.

(Associated Press)

Divisional Forest Officer Basab Rai said the female elephant appeared to be a loner without a herd, and was likely searching for food when it strayed into the town.

(Diptendu Dutta / AFP/Getty Images)

He said it did not attack any people, and appeared to be afraid of them. After several hours, it became clear the elephant was unable to find its way back to the forest.

(European Pressphoto Agency)

As the frightened elephant ran amok, trampling parked cars and motorbikes, crowds of people gathered to watch from balconies and rooftops. Some followed from a distance as the elephant moved through the streets.

(Diptendu Dutta / AFP/Getty Images)

Elephants are increasingly coming into contact with people in India, as the human population of 1.25 billion soars and cities and towns grow at the expense of jungles and other elephant habitats.

(Diptendu Dutta / AFP/Getty Images)

In India and Sri Lanka, elephant vs. people encounters result in more than 400 elephants and 250 humans killed each year.

(European Pressphoto Agency)

Authorities eventually shot the elephant three times with a tranquilizer gun and used a crane to lift it into a truck once it had calmed down. It was then taken to a park for domesticated pachyderms that is maintained by the forest department. Once the effect of the tranquilizer wore off, authorities planned to return the elephant to the forest, Rai said.
Ivan Ivanovich and his wife knew something was wrong in April 1986 when officials began handing out free vodka, which was supposed to protect against radiation exposure.

Soon after, the couple were evacuated from their village near the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

Like many others, they were sent to Kiev, away from their home in Paryshiv, as a result of what turned out to be the worlds worst nuclear disaster. But they made their way back despite warnings about radioactive contamination, choosing the risk of illness over city life.

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We are not afraid, Ivanovich, 80, said recently through an interpreter. I dont know if its contaminated around here and I dont care or worry about it. There are worse things, like hunger and war.

On Tuesday, Ukraine remembered the explosion at Chernobyl and many marked the 30th anniversary in their own ways, some with flowers or candlelight vigils remembering those who died, and praise for those who fought to contain the disaster. Many also worried about what remains unanswered, including the extent of the contamination, and issues such as government scalebacks for Chernobyl survivors.

At 1:23:58 a.m., the exact time of the explosion, bells and sirens sounded throughout Ukraine, where President Petro Poroshenko headed a ceremony at Chernobyl. He praised the thousands of liquidators - military personnel and volunteers - who rushed to the power plant to fight the ensuing fire and prevent an even greater catastrophe.

Its with an everlasting pain in our hearts that we remember those who lost their lives to fight nuclear death, Poroshenko said.

The Chernobyl disaster involved an experiment to test a cooling system at the energy plants Unit No. 4. In the early hours of April 26, 1986, an explosion caused by a buildup of steam blew the top off the reactor, sending radioactive material and dust from the fuel rods high into the air.

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The population of Ukraine and nearby Belarus, then part of the Soviet Union, were kept in the dark for a time about the deadly cloud heading their way. Schools and factories were told to continue with the traditional May Day parades and open-air parties, even as the clouds shifted and rained down on them.

Three decades later, there is still no agreement on the death toll from Chernobyl and its long-term consequences. The official figures are 41 deaths directly attributed to the catastrophe and between 4,000 and 9,000 premature deaths as a consequence.

At a Chernobyl conference at the Paris-based Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety in February, Director General Jacques Repussard said: There are a few thousand deaths that might be attributed to radiation. We will never know the true figure.

Greenpeace disagrees with the number of deaths and has accused officials and atomic energy bodies of whitewash and underestimating the consequences of the disaster. It says there will be 270,000 extra cases of cancer as a result and up to 100,000 will be fatal.

More than 6,313 square miles of land is classified as still unusable and more than 93,205 square miles of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine are designated as having suffered some radioactive contamination. Even biologists and environmentalists studying the dead zone cannot agree.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

Anders Pape Mller, who has been studying bird life in the dead zone, says he has found high levels of cataracts, tumors around the eyes and albinism - white feathers - in various species. He is convinced the radiation is causing DNA changes in wildlife in the zone, adding: We wont see the long-term effect on humans yet. It will take more than 30 years, but we are definitely seeing the changes in mice and swallows.

Mike Wood of Salford University, who is also tracking wildlife in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone using cameras, is not so sure.

There appears to be little impact in terms of overall species, he said. But its a pity 30 years on that we dont have more definitive answers and there are still so many conflicting theories in the scientific community. The sad fact is we still dont know.

Wood blames a lack of coordination, the secrecy and lack of openness in the old Soviet Union and ongoing bureaucracy for turning Chernobyl into a lost opportunity for serious research on the consequences of radiation.

As engineers prepare to place a newly built steel sarcophagus -- 350 feet high and 500 feet long, it costs more than $2 billion -- over the Reactor 4 next year in an attempt to make it safe for another 100 years, there is disagreement.

Yuriy Kostenko, former Ukrainian minister for environmental and nuclear safety, who in 1995 agreed with the G7 economic group to the definitive closure of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, is concerned about what is still happening inside in the reactor.

There are chemical reactions taking place underneath, reactions we are able to see, but the scientists cannot say what they are. They dont know what is happening so they cannot predict what will happen, Kostenko said. If nuclear material is left in an uncontrolled situation like this, its a danger forever. Thats what we need to be discussing. Throwing a new sarcophagus over the reactor is not solving the problem.

Willsher is a special correspondent.

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The Philippine military came under increased pressure Tuesday to rescue more than 20 foreign hostages after their Muslim extremist captors beheaded a Canadian man, but troops face a dilemma in how to succeed without endangering the remaining captives.

Abu Sayyaf gunmen beheaded John Ridsdel on Monday in the southern province of Sulu, prompting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to pledge to help the Philippines pursue the extremists behind the heinous act.

Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage takers and this unnecessary death, Trudeau told reporters. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage.

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Ridsdels head was placed in a plastic bag and dumped by motorcycle-riding militants Monday night in Jolo town in impoverished Sulu, a densely forested province about 590 miles south of Manila, where Abu Sayyaf and allied gunmen are believed to be holding 22 foreign hostages from six Western and Asian countries.

Its a politically sensitive time for troops to carry out major offensives, at the height of campaigning in a closely fought race among four contenders in the May 9 presidential election. President Benigno Aquino III and opposition politicians have had differences over the handling of the Muslim insurgency and the social ills that foster it.

The pressure on the armed forces is really immense, said Julkipli Wadi, who has conducted extensive studies on the Muslim secessionist conflict in the south.

The underfunded military has to contend with escalating territorial disputes in the South China Sea while dealing with Muslim and Marxist rebellions that have endured through several presidencies, fueled by the poverty, neglect and desperation that have not been tamed by political leaders, Wadi said.

A large-scale offensive could displace many villagers and draw attention to the long-standing security and social issues in the vote-rich south, homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation.

That could play to the advantage of Rodrigo Duterte, the tough-talking city mayor from the south who has emerged as the front-runner in the presidential race by a lofty promise to end crime in six months and restore law and order. Aquino has endorsed another candidate, Mar Roxas, whose platform focuses on continuing the presidents anti-corruption drive and economic reforms. All the presidential candidates condemned the beheading.

The Philippine military and police said there will be no letup in the effort to combat the militants and find the hostages, even though they have had little success in safely securing their freedom. Many hostages were believed to have been released due to huge ransom payments.

The full force of the law will be used to bring these criminals to justice, they said in a joint statement.

About 2,000 military personnel, backed by Huey and MG520 rocket-firing helicopters and artillery, are involved in the manhunt for the militants, who are believed to be massing in Sulus mountainous Patikul town, military officials said.

While under pressure to produce results, government troops have been ordered to carry out assaults without endangering the remaining hostages, including in the use of airstrikes and artillery fire, a combat officer told the Associated Press by cellphone from Sulu. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

Amid the offensive, Brig. Gen. Alan Arrojado resigned Tuesday in Sulu as commander of an army brigade due to conflict of approach in addressing the Abu Sayyaf threats in the province. Arrojado did not elaborate.

In past militant videos posted online, Ridsdel and fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipino Marites Flor were shown sitting in a clearing with heavily armed militants standing behind them. In some of the videos, a militant aimed a long knife at Ridsdels neck as he pleaded for his life. Two black flags with Islamic State-like markings hung in the backdrop of lush foliage.

The four were seized from a marina on southern Samal Island and taken by boat to Sulu, where Abu Sayyaf gunmen continue to hold several captives, including a Dutch bird watcher who was kidnapped more than three years ago, and Indonesian and Malaysian crewmen who were snatched recently from three tugboats.

Ridsdel was killed after the militants failed to receive a huge ransom demand by a Monday deadline. A police official said the killing of five and wounding of about 16 Abu Sayyaf gunmen in a military assault three days before the beheading may have angered the extremists and helped lead them to decide to kill him in revenge.

In Canada, Ridsdel was remembered as a brilliant, compassionate man with a talent for friendship.

He could bridge many communities, many people, many situations and circumstances and environments in a very gentle way, said Gerald Thurston, a lifelong friend of the former mining executive and journalist.

Thurston said Ridsdel is survived by two adult daughters from a former marriage.

Abu Sayyaf began a series of large-scale abductions after it emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a separatist rebellion by minority Muslims in the southern Philippines.

It has been weakened by more than a decade of government offensives, but has endured largely as a result of large ransom and extortion earnings. The United States and the Philippines have both listed the group as a terrorist organization.
Scores of people were arrested at cafes, metro stations and checkpoints as Egyptian security forces sought to head off a planned demonstration Monday over the governments decision to surrender control of two islands in the Red Sea to neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Army forces were assigned to secure public buildings across Cairo, while scores of police checkpoints were erected to prevent protesters from assembling. The train station leading to Tahrir Square  the epicenter of Egypts uprising in 2011  was closed.

The demonstration had been planned by a coalition of political groups and activists who urged Egyptians to take to the streets Monday to protest giving up on Egyptian soil and commemorate the lives of those who died while defending the two islands.

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As police forces tightened security throughout Cairo on Monday, others celebrated. Monday was a public holiday in Egypt that commemorates the liberation of Sinai after Israels occupation of the peninsula in 1967.

The crackdown, which spanned four days as security forces moved through the city, was probably in response to streets protests this month. Thousands had gathered in what is believed to be the largest demonstration against President Abdel Fattah Sisis administration since he was elected in 2014, one year after the army-led ouster of then-President Mohamed Morsi.

In contrast, Mondays planned demonstration was easily repelled by police forces in Cairo.

Today was a good day for the government  authorities took urgent precautions and were one step ahead of protesters by closing down areas where people were meant to gather, said Mustafa Labbad, director of Al Sharq Center for Regional and Strategic Studies in Cairo.

However, this does not mean that the public anger against ceding the islands will fade away, he added.

Egyptian and Saudi authorities say that the islands of Tiran and Sanafir belong to Saudi Arabia, and had been under Egyptian administration only because of a formal Saudi request for help protecting the islands in 1950.

The effort to contain a second wave of protests over the islands was designed to be swift and forceful, government officials said.

On Sunday, the Interior Ministry announced that it would confront with the utmost decisiveness and resolution any acts that could infringe [on] public security, adding that it will use all force to deal with any attempt to assault vital, important facilities or harm police utilities.

According to a statement issued by 17 Egyptian human rights organizations, at least 90 people were detained during the sweeps. The groups described the crackdown as an effort to intimidate the public.

Police have arrested young people from cafes in downtown Cairo, at metro stations, at random police checkpoints and from their homes. Lawyers tracking the arrests say that the number of arrests is expected to increase in the coming hours given the longer list of arrest warrants they have seen on prosecutors desks, the statement read.

A number of passersby on Monday were searched by police officers in downtown Cairo and scores of suspected would-be demonstrators were arrested before being released later in the day. Police closed the road leading to the Journalists Syndicate headquarters, the site of one of the largest gatherings during the April 15 protests.

In a speech commemorating Sinai Liberation Day, President Sisi said that it is the responsibility of the civil police and armed forces to confront attempts to alarm citizen security by those attempting to affect [Egypts] security and stability.

Whereas recurrent problems such as poverty, human and social rights failed to mobilize mass protests against Sisi, the islands crisis came to detract from the ruling governments legitimacy, analyst Labbad said.

It is a national issue that worked as a catalyst to bring political movements together. The debate is still ongoing and the parliament still has to approve the new maritime borders deal with Saudi, he said.

Hassan is a special correspondent.
On 25 April President Michelle Bachelet announced that Chile needed to undergo a significant diversification of the the mining sector in order to prepare for a post-copper economy.The price being fetched by copper internationally, in keeping with other commodities, is low, placing a constraint on economic growth in Chile, the worlds largest copper producer. Chile has met with some success in diversifying its economy away from its principal commodity in recent decades, unlike Venezuela, for instance, which remains heavily reliant on oil despite diversification having been a stated objective of the Bolivarian governments of the last 17 years. But speaking during the opening of the XIV edition of Expomin, the most important mining exposition in Latin America, Bachelet warned that Chiles development prospects hinge on its ability to adapt to the new times, increasing productivity, reducing costs and innovating. She said that the country needed to assume leadership in exporting goods and services linked to mining through the diversification and innovation of the mining sector.

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On 25 April the US State Department issued a statement commending the work of interdisciplinary group of independent experts (GIEI) sent by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to Mexico to help with the investigation of the September 2014 abduction and presumed murder of 43 students from the town of Iguala, Guerrero state, and calling on the Mexican government to continue with its efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice and incorporate the findings of GIEIs final report on the case into the official investigations.

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Five eastern U.S. states are hosting primaries on Tuesday and it all could go in favor for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Clinton Hopes to Build on New York Win

Since her victory in the New York primary, Clinton to solidify herself as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate. Similar to New York, the primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania are closed primaries, which may affect a bigger voter turnout for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Rhode Island, also hosting a primary, has a semi-closed contest.

In Maryland, where there are 95 pledged delegates at stake, Clinton is expected to win by double digits. Based on the latest poll from Monmouth University, the former secretary of state has 57 percent support from Democratic primary voters, while Sanders stands at 32 percent. Ten percent of Democratic voters were undecided in the poll conducted between April 18 and April 20.

"The demographics of Maryland's Democratic electorate are similar to past primary states where Clinton has done very well. However, it looks like that isn't as important a factor since she holds large leads among practically every voting bloc," said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, referring to the male, female, white, black, voters under 50 years old and over 50 years old voting blocs.

Traveling slightly north to Pennsylvania, home to 189 pledged delegates, Clinton is also expected to win and could receive another double-digit victory. In Fox Philadelphia affiliate WTXF and Opinion Savvy's survey, Clinton attracted 52.1 percent to 40.5 percent for Sanders.

The same WTXF survey asked Sanders supporters if they would support Clinton if she becomes the Democratic Party's nominee or if they'll vote Trump. Most, with 46.2 percent, of Sanders' supporters would vote for Clinton, while voting for Trump was the answer for 27.9 percent of respondents. Other Sanders supports would vote for a third party candidate (11.5 percent) and 7.9 percent would not vote.

Continuing north, the Connecticut primary, with 55 pledged delegates, could see a Sanders victory. According to Public Policy Polling (PPP), Clinton still has a lead over Sanders but only by two-percentage points. Clinton received 48 percent to Sanders' 46 percent, while 6 percent were undecided in the poll conducted between April 22 and April 24.

Polling data in Delaware, with its 21 pledged delegates, and Rhode Island, with 24 pledged delegates, were not available through RealClearPolitics.

To clinch the Democratic Party's nomination, the candidate must win 2,382 delegates. According to the Associated Press (AP), Clinton leads in the pledged delegate count with 1,428, ahead of Sanders' 1,153 pledged delegates. Taking into account superdelegates, Clinton is 439 delegates short from securing the party's nomination.

"Stop Trump" Won't Stop Trump

Republicans are also voting in the same five eastern primary states. While the Democrats' delegates are proportional, there are a few "winner take all" stipulations at place.

Delaware, a closed primary contest with 16 delegates, is a winner take all state. Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island offer varied winner take all contests. According to RealClearPolitics, Pennsylvania's at-large delegates are winner take all "by statewide vote, but congressional district delegates are elected directly. Pennsylvania's congressional district delegates are officially unbound." In Connecticut, the "plurality winner in each congressional district gets all three delegates." Finally, in Rhode Island, if a candidate received more than 67 percent in a congressional district, then he'll win all three of the district's delegates.

In Connecticut, home to 28 delegates, Trump is expected to be the big winner. PPP's survey with 512 likely Republican primary voters showed Trump with 59 percent of support, comfortably ahead of Ohio Gov. John Kasich's 25 percent and Sen. Ted Cruz's 13 percent.

Traveling south to Pennsylvania, WTXF's poll also has Trump with a comfortable lead with 47.9 percent, ahead of 28.2 percent for Cruz and 19.2 percent for Kasich.

Trump's streak continued in Maryland, home to 38 delegates. Trump received 53 percent in Gravis Marketing's survey. Kasich narrowly defeated Cruz with 24 percent to 22 percent, respectively.

"He (Cruz) is likely to finish third behind Kasich in many of Tuesday's primary states. After this week's primaries, all eyes should be focused on Indiana, as it's expected that it will have similar results as Wisconsin. However, Trump's numbers are improving in that state and the dynamics of the primary voters is much different in Indiana than in Wisconsin," wrote Gravis Marketing. "It's also very likely that Mr. Trump will do very well in California."

To clinch the Republican Party's nomination, the candidate must win 1,237 delegates. Trump leads the GOP delegate count with 844, ahead of Cruz's 559 and Kasich's 148. Trump is only 392 delegates short from securing the Republican Party's nomination.

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For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.
Parents of immigrant children suspected of illegally entering the U.S. unaccompanied may soon be required to submit fingerprints in order to recalim their child.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are pushing for the new measures, which critics charge could lead to thousands of families being unnecessarily separated. Among the biggest critics of the proposal are officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the chamber of government ultimately responsible for finding housing for migrant children.

Department of Health and Human Services Against Proposal

As the proposal was being formally introduced, HHS officials let it be known they have no intention of altering their current fingerprinting policy.

"One of our goals is to place children with an appropriate sponsor as promptly as we can safely do so," said HHS deputy director of children services, stressing that he and other reform advocates are convinced such a move would hamper the child-parent relationship by leaving parents fearing that fingerprinting would be used to trace undocumented immigrants for possible deportation.

Added Cleveland-based attorney and former American Immigration Lawyers Association head David Leopold, "It could keep parents away from their children if they think it is going to land them in a lock-up somewhere."

ICE: Changes Will Help Keep Kids out of Hands of Criminals

In a recent memo drafted by and distributed among ICE officials, execs expound upon their plan to expand fingerprinting to now include all the parents of impacted children. Current policy is restricted to non-parents.

In pushing for the change, ICE officials charge the enhanced powers would allow officials to check fingerprints against an FBI database of criminals, allowing them the chance to verify the identity of people claiming the children as their own.

In addition, authorities insist it would also slow the occurrence of children being turned over to individuals who have criminal histories.

To date, the Obama administration has yet to comment on the ongoing situation and it remains unclear if the White House would support such a measure if it ultimately landed before the president.

According to a Government Accountability Office study, over a 15-month period beginning in January 2014, more than 31,000 parents claimed children who entered the U.S. from as far away as El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. That figure accounted for 60 percent of all children being held, with most of the rest being claimed by other relatives. Ultimately, only 161 were claimed by non-relative sponsors.

By law, U.S. officials are required to find housing for minors awaiting trial to determine if they will be deported back to their native land. Over the first six months of this year, nearly 28,000 immigrant children were apprehended crossing into the U.S, unaccompanied.

That figure is reported to rival the record-high number hit over the same period in 2014.

Immigration Debate Playing Major Role in 2016 Presidential Race

The entire debate over immigration has become a hot-button issue in the 2016 race for the White House.

Republican frontrunners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have both vowed to work to deport some 11 million immigrants if elected, while Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both committed to a path marked by immigration reform.
Christ Church (Episcopal), the Richards, Fowkes & Co., Organ Builders and the Chattanooga Chapter, American Guild of Organists will present concert and recording artist Christa Rakich in a masterclass and concert designed to help church organists Improve Your Improv.

The events will be presented on Christ Churchs Richards, Fowkes & Co. Opus IX, dedicated in 1998, 663 Douglas St. at McCallie.

The Thursday masterclass will focus on simple, straightforward techniques that any keyboard player can use to embellish hymn tunes. Ms. Rakich will present ideas she published in a series of articles on improvisation in The American Organist magazine. She has been a member of the A.G.O. National Committee for Organ Improvisation, and appears regularly as a performer, presenter and judge at AGO conventions and competitions. The free workshop is sponsored by the Chattanooga Chapter, American Guild of Organists. Both participants and auditors are welcome and will equally benefit, said officials.

Her concert on Friday evening will include an improvisation utilizing these techniques, as well as sets of variations showing how other composers (Bach, Haydn and contemporary Dutch composer Margaretha Christina de Jong) have dealt with embellishing an existing melody. Works by Clara Schumann and New England composer James Woodman complete the program.

A donation of $10 is suggested. A reception will follow.

Ms. Rakich studied in Vienna with Anton Heiller for two years as a Fulbright Scholar. She holds Bachelors degrees in Organ and German from Oberlin College (Phi Beta Kappa), and a Masters degree with honors from New England Conservatory, where she subsequently taught, ultimately serving as Organ Department co-chair. A prizewinner at international organ competitions (notably Bruges 1976), Ms. Rakich has received particular acclaim for her interpretations of the music of J.S. Bach. With keyboardist Peter Sykes, she performed a complete cycle of Bachs keyboard works in a series of 34 concerts from 2003 to 2005 aptly named Tuesdays With Sebastian. Her discography includes a celebrated recording of J.S. Bachs Leipzig Chorales, a 2-CD set of J.S. Bachs Trio Sonatas, Deferred Voices: Organ Music by Women Composers, Transcriptions from St. Justins; and Christa Rakich in Recital at St. Marks Cathedral, a live recording of her performance at the 2000 National AGO Convention in Seattle. Her most recent recording, From the Ashes, features the Richards, Fowkes & Co. Opus XXI in Somers, Ct, where Ms. Rakich is artist-in-residence.

Ms. Rakichs performing career has taken her throughout North America and Europe.

The Improve Your Improv Masterclass will be Thursday from 8 a.m.-8 p.m. and is free. Participants and auditors should RSVP to Sarah Harr, sarahharr@ymail.com. Duelling Organists, with Keith Reas is Friday at 7:30 p.m. Suggested donation at the door is $10.

PROGRAM

(subject to change)



Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Aria and 5 Variations, BWV 988 (Goldberg)

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) String Quartet Op. 76, No 3, in C (Emperor )

II. Poco adagio; cantabile For organ four hands

Clara Schumann (1819-1896) Prelude & Fugue in B-flat major, Op. 16 No. 2

Margaretha Christina de Jong (* 1961) Praeludium, Choral Partita & Fugue on

Jesu, meine Freude, Opus 63 (American premiere)

Improvisation

James Woodman(* 1957) Sonata in Sea: Cape Cod (2003)

Barnstable

Wellfleet

Provincetown3

For more information: http://www.christchurchmacon.com/internationally-acclaimed-organist-christa-rakich-in-concert/

Karla Fowkes, Christ Church: karlafowkes@gmail.com

Christa Rakich: http://christarakich.com

Richards, Fowkes & Company: http://www.richardsfowkes.com/






On Thursday, the United Nations' Special Envoy for Syria assured peace talks will continue next week despite the main opposition's determination to leave early, a move he dismissed as "diplomatic posturing".

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, UN envoy, Staffan de Mistura, who is in charge of the talks in Geneva, acknowledged that the peace talks is in great trouble. De Mistura appealed to regional powers as well as the US and Russia, which brokered the truce, to step in and save the process.

Their chief negotiatior, Asaad Zoubi, confirmed that all the members of the main Syria opposition will leave the peace talks in Geneva. De Mistura, however, said it is a type of diplomatic posturing. He added that these conditions are fairly justifiable because of the questions of holding the ceasefires as per Reuters.

De Mistura, who is knowledgeable of the importance of the peace talks, said they cannot let the negotiations drop. UN plans on renewing the ceasefire as well as accelerating the humanitarian aid while asking other countries to co-sponsor the meet.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the UN's secret is to use the proximity talks in order to get the respective visions of both sides, their views of political transition, as well as the process they are working on.

The issue of political transition has been the main focus on the previous meeting, last April 13. But the opposition's demand of President Bashar al-Assad to go has not been accepted by the Damascus delegation that has been calling for a national unity government.

De Mistura claimed that al-Asaad's interest is to stay in power. He sees no other solution to the problem but political transition. But despite the increasing tension, both sides agree that a radical change must happen. The UN envoy has also confirmed that both sides have already met in Geneva. De Mistura firmly believes in diplomacy prompting him to ask both sides to extend their stay in order for the formal talks to commence.
United States President Barack Obama has rejected North Korea's offer to suspend its missile program if the US ends its annual military exercises with the South. He noted that the US will continue its ties with Japan and South Korea until the Kim Jong-un-led state gets more serious about denuclearization.

In a report by The Guardian, the president said on Sunday that he does not believe thAT North Korea is sincere regarding their offer OF halting their nuclear tests if and when U.S. suspends their military exercises with South Korea. He added that Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, should have a better proposal than the initial offer made.

This comes after North Korea's foreign minister, Ri Su Young, said in a statement that his county has the right to maintain a nuclear deterrent. He also warned that Pyongyang will not be intimidated by international sanctions, BBC reported. It could be remembered that the U.S. toughened its sanctions against the North after a series of ballistic missile tests and the officials' numeroyus human rights violations. Ri added, "Stop the nuclear war exercises in the Korean peninsula, then we should also cease our nuclear tests."

The comments of Ri came hours after North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine to show their defiance against this year's U.S.-South Korea exercises. Due to the latest ballistic missile test, the U.S. state department will limit the travel of Ri and his delegation to UN functions in New York.

The remarks of the U.S. president were made during a news conference on Sunday with German chancellor Angela Merkel in Hannover, Germany, The Washington Times reported. Obama continued to say that if North Korea shows seriousness in stopping their nuclear tests, "then we'll be prepared to enter into some serious conversations with them about reducing tensions and our approach to protecting our allies in the region."

Obama continued that they will not simply stop military exercises based on a press release. He also noted that until North Korea comes up with a better proposal, they will continue to ensure keeping the American people safe and keeping their allies safe, in reference to South Korea and Japan.
The people of the tiny West African oil producer Equatorial Guinea went to the polls Sunday in a vote expected to hand President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo another seven years in office.

Obiang, already Africa's longest serving leader who has ruled the country for 37 years since he ousted his uncle in a military coup, says he will get more than 90 percent of the vote, reported Reuters. Opponents say elections in this former Spanish colony have been consistently rigged with some calling for a boycott.

Voting went ahead without incident and was generally peaceful although observers noticed low turn out in some regions. As the 73-year old Obiang cast his ballot he said those voting for him "were voting for the continued develoment of Equatorial Guinea."

Critics accuse Obiang of presiding over the world's most corrupt and repressive governments and for failing to equitably distribute the country's oil wealth among its inhabitants of about 700,000. The poor in the slums say that money seems to go to only a few people, mostly, Obiang's family and his inner circle in government, said Al Jazeera.

The country boasts the highest GDP per capita in all of Africa about $37,000, thanks to an oil and gas drilling boom. But it ranks 144 out of 187 nations on the United Nations' 2014 Human Development Index that measures social and economic development.

Obiang came to power in a 1979 coup against his uncle Macias Nguema, a fervent nationalist who continued the ruthless methods of Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco after the country secured independence from Spain in 1968, according to Daily Nation.

Macias was a self-proclaimed sorcerer who collected skulls and had Nazi-style notions of ethnic purity. He ruled by fear and spared only a few families in waves of killings and atrocities that led to mass exodus to neighboring countries. Obiang had his uncle tried and strung up in a cage in a cinema. Macias was then shot by hired Moroccan soldiers who later became the backbone of Obiang's security.

The former putschist then consolidated his power and controlled almost all aspects of life in a country with few resources, unable at first to even afford a private jet. The discovery of off-shore oil in the early 1990s changed all that as investments by mostly American firms turned the country from being the backwater of the Gulf of Guinea to the third biggest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa next to Nigeria and Angola.
A number of Methodist leaders in Mississippi have voiced out their objection against the state's latest religious objections law. They are saying that it violates their religious principles.

In a report by Salon, more than 30 ministers from around the state published an open letter on Monday, saying the so-called religious freedom law goes against the Christian teachings, which is to love and respect all kinds of people. Some of the ministers who joined the open letter are from different parts of the nation.

The group of Methodist leaders is the latest to join major businesses, human rights groups, and legal experts in criticizing and opposing the religious freedom law. The law is believed to discriminate against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

The law basically lets churches and some private businesses deny their services to the LGBT community due to religious beliefs. Governor Phil Bryant signed the legislation into law earlier this April which caused major backlash. Some films have backed out from filming in the state due to the aforementioned law.

Pastor Bruce Case of Madison, Mississippi said in a statement that the law creates a problem where there is supposed to be none. He is one of the many who signed the open letter. He added that the LGBT people have always been a part of the church and that they are "our friends and fellow churchgoers. This law is unnecessary and just feels mean-spirited to me," ABC News reported.

Justin White of Greenville, Mississippi was the one who drafted the letter of the ministers. White said that many ministers have called him to ask to have their names added to the list since it was published. White hinks it is important as Methodists to speak out against what they see as injustices and that they believe in "fundamental rights for all and welcome all people unconditionally. If the Church should be anything it should be a sanctuary."

White also noted that the group was inspired by the 28 Methodist ministers back in the 1960s who spoke out against racism and segregation. The group published the "Born of Conviction" statement after riots broke out when James Meredith became the first African-American student to attend the University of Mississippi.
Malaysia's 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) confirmed on Tuesday, April 26 that the non-payment of US$ 50.3 million (S $ 68.1 million) in interest over a now defaulted US $ 1.75 billion bond had resulted in cross-defaults for RM 7.4 billion (S $ 2.6 billion) in other bonds.

The failure to pay interest that is due on Monday, April 25 arose due to a dispute with International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC), an Abu Dhabi state-owned sovereign wealth fund, which had guaranteed two US $ 1.75 billion 1MDB funds due in 2022.

IPIC announced that the agreement was terminated since 1MDB has defaulted on its payment of US $ 1.1 billion, however, 1MDB said it has kept its end of the bargain, Fayette Advocate has learned.

According to Singapore Law Watch, the troubled state of the Malaysian investment fund said it was withholding the payment because of a dispute with Abu Dhabi wealth fund and IPIC, guarantor of the bond, also failed to make the payment. 1MDB maintained it was an obligation of the guarantor to pay under a debt swap agreement entered into last June.

In withholding the interest payments to bondholders, 1MDB has confirmed that it has triggered cross defaults on its RM 5 billion sukuk Islamic bonds due in 2039 and the RM 2.4 billion sukuk to develop Bandar, Malaysia Sdn Bhd sukuk due between 2021 and 2024.

The rest of the debt remained undisturbed. However, an RM 800 million loan from Malaysia's Social Security Organization (SOCSO) could possibly be called in due to a material adverse effect clause, Malaysia Kini has cited.

The dispute is the latest twist in the ongoing financial fiasco at 1MDB, a brainchild of Datuk Seri Najib that is now the subject of investigations in seven countries including Singapore. The investigations, which center on billions of dollars that allegedly have gone missing at the state-owned strategic investment fund, has put the spotlight on Mr. Najib's administration as well as governance issues in Malaysia.
Chattanooga 2.0 is a countywide initiative to improve Chattanooga's education system and better prepare local students for success in the workforce. The group is hosting a presentation with investigative journalist and author Amanda Ripley.

The 2.0 Talk event is titled A Global Quest to Rethink American Schools and will take place Tuesday from 5:30-7 p.m. at Church on Main, 1601 Rossville Ave. This event is free and open to the public.

Amanda Ripley is an investigative journalist and author. Her bestselling book, "The Smartest Kids in the World: and How They Got that Way," is an in-depth examination of how other countries have created successful education systems - with a focus on recruiting, training and supporting great teachers. She has spoken at the Pentagon, the Senate, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as conferences on leadership, public policy and education.

To register to attend visit http://bit.ly/1SvWsn8. For more information on this and other upcoming events, visit www.chatt2.org/events.
Shaw Industries Group, Inc. has ranked among the top 25 Best Places to Work for Recent Grads in 2016.

Employers across the country participated in Symplicitys Best Places to Work for Recent Grads survey. The top 25 employers were chosen based upon six key criteria: Glassdoor.com ratings, work/life balance, benefits, company culture, mentoring, and training.

The survey revealed that the diversity that exists among Shaws associates coupled with the breadth of opportunities within the company lends itself exceedingly to feelings of opportunity and a sense of being valued for past successes as well as future potential. Also commonly attributed to the companys positive culture is the focus on a collaborative and inclusive workplace. Shaws top ranked training programs were also cited as a key factor in the ranking and in associate satisfaction.



By clearly defining how each role at Shaw connects with and contributes to the organizations goals, we are able to provide clarity around leadership expectations at every level and offer education and training to help associates reach their full potential, said Shaw Vice President of Human Resources Paul Richard. Shaws inclusion in this list is one of many indicators that our success in providing opportunities for associates at all levels is highly regarded by our newest team members.


Sonya Mace, physical therapist and Parkinsons specialist with HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital, will lead an educational discussion about the Parkinsons disease process on Friday, at 10:30 a.m., at Morning Pointe of Collegedale at Greenbriar Cove, at 9650 Leyland Dr. in Ooltewah.

The discussion is an opportunity for those with Parkinsons or caregivers of a loved one with the disease to learn coping and quality of life strategies to live beyond the diagnosis.



The public is invited to attend. Refreshments will be served. To RSVP, or for more information, call 423 396-6999.


A Lehigh County man is accused of holding a woman captive for three days, threatening her with a hatchet and depriving her of food, according to city police.

Aristotle Glean Tarboro (Courtesy photo)

Aristotle Glean Tarboro, 47, of the 1000 block of Cherokee Street in Fountain Hill, on Thursday allegedly picked up the female victim in a Dodge Magnum, took away her cellphone and told her she wouldn't be going home.

Bethlehem police said Tarboro then held the victim captive for three days at a Jefferson Street address in the city and forced her to go to the bathroom in a cup. He punched and scratched her multiple times during the three-day span, according to police.

Tarboro also held up a hatchet and told the victim he "did not wish to hurt her," court records said.

Police arrested Tarboro shortly after 9 a.m. Saturday. Investigators obtained a search warrant and seized methamphetamine from the Dodge.

This isn't Tarboro's first brush with city law enforcement.

City police in April 2015 had Tarboro committed to St. Luke's University Health Network for a mental evaluation following an alleged bomb threat in the garage below Bethlehem City Hall.

Tarboro pulled his pickup truck, with his girlfriend in the passenger seat, into the parking garage about 11:15 a.m. April 3, 2015 and told police Sgt. John Pesesko: "I have a bomb in my truck," records say. The garage is beneath Bethlehem City Hall and its Town Hall meeting room, as well as the Bethlehem Area Public Library, which was closed that day for Good Friday.

Pesesko got Tarboro to drive outside onto Sakon Place on the west side of the municipal complex, records say, where Tarboro refused to exit and locked himself and the woman inside.

Police negotiated Tarboro's surrender after an hour, but only after the incident drew a response from some 30 police officers, city paramedics and the city fire department's bomb squad.

In the most recent case, Tarboro is charged with false imprisonment, making terroristic threats, simple assault, reckless endangerment and possession of a controlled substance.

He was arraigned Saturday before District Judge Douglas Schlegel, who set bail at 10 percent of $40,000. In lieu of bail, he was taken to Northampton County Prison.

The judge ordered Tarboro stay away from the victim.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
UPDATE: Victimized councilwoman speaks out on domestic violence

A South Side Bethlehem man assaulted his wife after he couldn't find leftovers from food she had prepared and became angry, according to court records.

Juan E. Dipini Prado (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

The victim in the incident early Monday is Bethlehem City Councilwoman Olga Negron-Dipini, city police said.

Juan E. Dipini Prado, 49, awoke Negron-Dipini about 12:30 a.m. in the home they share in the 1300 block of East Fifth Street, asking where he could find the food she had cooked previously, records say.

He began to yell and later ripped a blanket off her and twice grabbed her by the neck, according to Negron-Dipini's statement to police in court records.

Negron-Dipini suffered a chipped tooth in the attack, police said.

Dipini Prado was arraigned Monday morning before on-call District Judge Douglas Schlegel on charges of simple assault and harassment. He was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $5,000 bail, with a preliminary hearing tentatively scheduled May 6.

Schlegel said he would permit bail of 10 percent of $5,000 if approved by Northampton County Pretrial Services, and set bail conditions that include prohibiting him from using drugs or alcohol and contacting the victim at home or work until the preliminary hearing or a protection-from-abuse order is entered.

Negron-Dipini, then a member of the Bethlehem Planning Commission, won a seat on council in 2015. She was sworn-in Jan. 4 by Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes in Town Hall.

She did not immediately respond Monday to efforts to reach her for comment.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
It looks as if the Bethlehem school district will be able to avoid cutting teaching jobs by tapping its savings and raising taxes 3.9 percent to close its budget gap.

Bethlehem Area School District Superintendent Joseph Roy said the state needs to pay its fair share or lessen mandates. (Lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

The district began the 2016-17 budget process with a $15.2 million deficit, which has been reduced by $6.19 million thus far through cuts and increased revenue.

Monday night the administration recommended to the school board that the district close the hole with a 3.9 percent tax hike and $2.9 million in savings. It would result in a $115 increase in the tax bill of an average Northampton County homeowner and $129 for the average Lehigh County homeowner.

The district's Act 1 cap on tax hikes is 2.9 percent but Bethlehem has state-approved exceptions to exceed it.

The school board is scheduled to vote on its proposed final budget at a May 9 special meeting and a final budget vote will take place June 13.

Superintendent Joseph Roy emphasized that the district has worked hard to control the costs it can. District spending was up .25 percent in 2014-15, 1.69 percent this year and projected to rise 3.43 percent next school year.

The major budget cost drivers are charter school tuition payments and employee pension contributions. Come next year, Bethlehem taxpayers will spend $26 million on charter schools and almost $30 million on pension contributions.

"It's the state mandates that are hurting us," Roy said.

Legislators could take steps to lessen those mandates but they don't.

"Without the charter schools, we'd have a surplus," Roy said.

Harrisburg lawmakers like to boast about their no tax increase budget but it is a shell game, Roy said.

"They force us into position where we are cutting $6 million and taking from our savings," Roy said. "There's your state tax increase that's been pushed off on districts."

The budget takes more from district savings than the administration likes, includes cuts they don't want and a larger tax increase than they wished.

"We bring this budget to you without a lot of excitement on any front," Roy said.

Nine months after the state budget deadline, Bethlehem and other schools finally know the current year's state funding.

"We're happy to at least have an answer," said Stacy M. Gober, district business manager.

Last weekend, a Senate and House backed state fiscal code lapsed into law that requires the $150 million in new state education funding be distributed according to a new state funding formula. Gov. Tom Wolf wanted to dole out the money with a restitution formula that restored funding lost in prior state budgets.

"If we don't restore districts than the gap is going to take years to go away," school board President Michael Faccinetto said.

For the majority of Pennsylvania school districts, the new formula is good news because 423 school districts see more money than under Wolf's plan.

Bethlehem isn't one of them. Bethlehem would have seen $360,760 more state funding under Wolf's plan.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A New Jersey man and a New York man have been charged following a scheme to obtain a Best Buy credit card with fraudulent identification, Bethlehem Township police said.

Mohamed Kouyate, 25, of the 2200 block of Kennedy Boulevard of Jersey City, shortly before 3 p.m. Monday was found by township police allegedly asleep in a car parked outside Best Buy in the Southmont shopping center.

Kouyate told police he was waiting for his friend, Edward Castro, 30, of the 300 block of Central Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. Castro had been arrested by officers for allegedly trying to obtain a Best Buy credit card with a fraudulent ID.

An officer searched Kouyate and found a fraudulent Illinois driver's license in his possession, according to police. Kouyate allegedly claimed he used the phony ID to get into bars when he was under age 21 -- four years ago.

Police said the car Kouyate was in was not his vehicle and it was towed. Police searched the vehicle Castro had been driving and found a grinder inside of it with marijuana residue.

Castro allegedly admitted to using the passport of another man in hopes of obtaining the store credit card. A store employee realized it was fraudulent and called police.

Kouyate is charged with two counts forgery, one count marijuana possession and one count possession of drug paraphernalia. Castro is charged with two counts forgery, one count theft, one count providing a false ID to law enforcement, one count marijuana possession and one count possession of drug paraphernalia.

Both were arraigned before District Judge Douglas Schlegel, who set bail at $40,000 each. In lieu of bail, both were taken to Northampton County Prison.

The judge ordered both enroll in Pretrial Services and stay away from Best Buy. He allowed 10 percent of $40,000 if Pretrial Services approved it for each.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The Lyndhurst Foundation is expected to fund $200,000 in additional bike share stations around Chattanooga.

Officials said the gift is still pending action by the Lyndhurst trustees.

It will fund four or five new spots to rent bicycles.



Macon Toledano, associate director at Lyndhurst, said the bike share program has proven a success and is in need of expansion.

Blythe Bailey, city transportation director, said the new stations would be along high-use areas along the Riverwalk.

That includes near Chickamauga Dam as well as serving the new extension of the South Chickamauga Creek Greenway starting at the Riverwalk.


An Easton woman has been arraigned on assault charges in what police called a brutal attack that left a woman bleeding and unconscious outside a Wilson Borough bar.

Beth Ann Dieh (Courtesy photo)

Beth Ann Diehl, 35, of the 900 block of West Lincoln Street, shortly before midnight Sept. 3 allegedly was driven by her boyfriend, Brian William Simmons, 26, of Philadelphia, to the 300 block of South 16th Street to beat up a female victim.

Police said Diehl spotted the victim outside the Lancer Hotel. The victim had told lehighvalleylive.com she was headed to the bar to have a drink.

The victim was then allegedly struck in the face by a pint-sized beer bottle carried by Diehl. The victim fell to the ground and Diehl continued punching her, police said.

Diehl then allegedly called out to Simmons, who was seated in the driver's seat of a white vehicle, to grab the victim's purse. Simmons stole the purse and then hit the gas, striking the victim, police said.

The pair fled, making off with the purse, which included $600 in cash, according to police.

The victim was found by a friend unconsciousness lying in the middle of the street in a pool of blood. She was taken to Easton Hospital by the friend before officers arrived, police said.

The victim later told lehighvalleylive.com the attack left her with broken bones in her face and multiple fractures.

When asked what led to the fight, the victim stated she was friends with Diehl until Diehl thought the victim was romantically involved with Simmons, who is the father of Diehl's child.

Simmons previously was arraigned on charges of aggravated assault, robbery, aggravated assault by vehicle, recklessly endangering another person and conspiracy. He currently is incarcerated at Northampton County Prison, online records said.

Diehl is charged with aggravated assault, robbery, aggravated assault by vehicle and reckless endangerment. She was arraigned Sunday before District Judge Douglas Schlegel, who set bail at 10 percent of $75,000.

In lieu of bail, Diehl was taken to Northampton County Prison.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The federal-state Delaware River Basin Commission said Monday it will conduct its own public hearings on the natural gas PennEast Pipeline proposed to pass through its territory.

Lawn signs seen in October 2015 along Route 523 in Delaware Township, Hunterdon County, voice opposition to the proposed PennEast Pipeline. (Lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

These hearings are on hold until 2017, the commission said in announcing the withdrawal of its request for a joint public hearing with the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on the proposal.

The announcement comes as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, last month set a deadline of March 16, 2017, for its decision on authorizing the pipeline.

PennEast had requested a certificate of public convenience and necessity from FERC by Aug. 1, 2016, ahead of construction beginning in the third quarter of this year.

The consortium of energy companies remains on schedule to build the pipeline in the second half of 2018, PennEast Pipeline Co. LLC spokeswoman Patricia Kornick said Monday.

The $1.13 billion pipeline would carry 1.1 million dekatherms per day of natural gas from Pennsylvania's Marcellus shale production region in and around Luzerne County to distribution lines along the route, which would terminate in Mercer County, New Jersey. PennEast says that's enough natural gas for 4.7 million Pennsylvania and New Jersey homes.

It needs approval from the Delaware River Basin Commission for the temporary withdrawal and discharge of about 45.26 million gallons per day of water for pipeline testing, drilling and ancillary functions, such as dust control, according to documents submitted to the commission.

The basin commission is responsible for managing the water resources within the 13,539 square-mile Delaware River Basin. Its five commission members are the governors of the basin states (Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania) and the commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' North Atlantic Division, representing the federal government.

Environmental groups applauded Monday's announcement by the basin commission, which promised multiple public hearings on the pipeline proposed to cross the Lehigh, Delaware and 86 other major waterways, according to a tally from the New Jersey Sierra Club.

"This will slow down this project even more and give us a better chance to stop it," club President Jeff Tittel said in a statement. "This pipeline is a threat to water quality and the environment in the Delaware River Valley and that is why we are glad to see that the DRBC will hold their own process in examining the pipeline."

Tittel said the project would affect thousands of Pennsylvania and New Jersey residents. PennEast argues the project will benefit residents of both states through lower rates for natural gas and electricity generated by burning the fossil fuel.

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network had requested the basin commission hold its own public hearing process.

"This is an important step in securing an independent, accessible and fully transparent hearing process from the Delaware River Basin Commission," Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper and leader of the network, said in a statement Monday. "It also shows us that the DRBC is listening to the concerns of the public and wants to instill public confidence in their decision-making process."

The commission has not scheduled its hearings but says they will be separate from its regularly scheduled quarterly meetings.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
It rained "steadily and heavily" overnight in the area of the 16-Mile Fire in Monroe and Pike counties, leaving officials optimistic that the nearly week-old brush blaze would eventually succumb to the massive firefighting effort.

Firefighters battling the 16-Mile-File in Monroe and Pike counties got a major break from changing weather. (Photo courtesy Pennsylvania DCNR)

"We have had a major break," Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources spokesman Terry Brady said about the change in the weather. The rain fell exactly where it was needed, he added.

With the wind dying down and the humidity going up, the chance for potential fuel drying has decreased, Brady said.

"The fire is no longer aggressive," Brady said.

Using equipment such as bulldozers, a firebreak was cut between the flames and nearly 300 cabins that were at risk on Monday in the area of Delaware State Forest, Brady said.

And with fresh firefighters rotating in from around the country, energy is higher with the 7,800-acre fire now 35 percent contained, Brady said. Firefighters who have been battling since Wednesday were getting tired, Brady said.

With the change in the weather, officials now have the chance to weigh where "we are," Brady said, and allow work to focus on areas that are still burning.

Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Secretary Cindy Adams Dunn addresses firefighters on April 26, 2016, near the 16-Mile Fire. (Photo courtesy Pennsylvania DCNR)

DCNR secretary Cindy Adams Dunn spent the night in the fire zone and got a firsthand look at the efforts, Brady said.

Worries about drones flying in tight air space is less of an issue as flying water and fire retardant in planes isn't as essential, Brady said.

As for any record-setting potential in the blaze, Brady said it is the second-biggest in Pennsylvania since 1990. That year a fire in Sproul State Forest in Clinton County grew to more than 10,000 acres, Brady said.

There was nothing new to report in the arson investigation involving the 16-Mile and Bear Town fires, Brady said. Both were lit on Wednesday, but Bear Town is contained, the DCNR said over the weekend.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Cameron Doody, co-founder of the Chattanooga-based moving company Bellhops, has earned Auburn Universitys Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

While studying business at Auburn, Mr. Doody and Stephen Vlahos saw an opportunity to launch a company built on helping college students move in and out of dormitories and apartments. Their business eventually moved out of the dorms and became Bellhops, a tech-enabled, on-demand moving company that Mr. Doody described as the Uber of moving. Through its mobile app, Bellhops outfits customers with the muscle necessary to move everything from dressers to refrigerators.

Mr. Doody was honored during the second Auburn University Entrepreneurship Summit. Sponsored by Auburn Universitys Raymond J. Harbert College of Business, the summit includes the Tiger Cage student entrepreneur pitch competition, the Top Tigers awards honoring fast-growing alumni-led companies and individual recognition for a Young Entrepreneur and Entrepreneur of the Year. Stacy Brown, co-founder of Chicken Salad Chick, the fast casual restaurant concept with two Chattanooga locations, earned the Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Mr. Doody, who earned a degree in supply chain management from Auburn, said his company aims to become the gold standard among movers. The company has raised more than $22 in venture capital and counts the likes of Canaan Partners, Lowercase Capital, Bullet Time Capital and Binary Capital among its investors.

Theyre making a bet on us revamping the moving industry, said Mr. Doody, who serves as Bellhops president and chairman. Three to five years from now, Bellhops will be a household name. In my mind, we will have made it when Bellhops is the first thing people think about when they see an apartment or house full of boxes  becoming that brand name, that gold standard, the company that shook up a dated industry.

Bellhops serves more than 86 cities and utilizes approximately 6,000 contractors.




A proposed new quarry in the Durrow area has been refused permission by Laois County Council, as it would be in conflict with the countys development plan due to the dangers of water contamination.

A number of State bodies expressed concerns over a planning application made to the council from J & N Quarries Ltd (with company directors Joseph and Alison OGrady, Templeogue, Dublin 16), requesting permission to extract sand and gravel from a site at Fermoyle, Durrow.

There were also objections from local residents, who feared the local water supply would be contaminated by the development.

As part of the application, a hydrogeological report was submitted by J&N Quarries in April 2015, and the council sought further information from the company in May 2015, regarding soils, bedrock geology and hydrogeology.

The company provided this information in February of this year, after carrying out work which revealed that water levels under the site are affected by pumping from the Fermoyle water supply boreholes.

There was also an outcrop of calcrete (hard gravel cemented by naturally occurring calcite) on the surface of the old quarry excavation, however the council felt J&N Quarries carefully deflected from this question by saying there was no calcrete, or they havd not recognised the evidence of the calcrete.

An Irish Water report on April 2 recommended refusal as the proposed development would impact on the quality of the water source supplying the Durrow 2 PWS and Ballinakill 2 PWS.

Based on the findings of Mr David Bell, consultant hydrogeologist, and the Irish Water report, it was considered that the applicants had not demonstrated that the proposed quarry is sufficiently isolated from the groundwater flow system that feeds the water supply boreholes at Fermoyle.

Laois County Council therefore said it was not satisfied that adverse impacts on the quality of the water source supplying the Durrow and Ballinakill public water supplies will not result and ruled that the development would be prejudicial to public health and the sustainability of the public water supply.

Hence, the development would be in conflict with the provisions of the Laois County Development Plan 2011-17.

Objections were previously raised to the proposed quarry by a number of residents in the area.

Mr Shane Lawlor, Fermoyle, Attanagh, who lives on the opposite side of road to the development entrance, said that the road in its current format does not lend itself to safe pedestrian use and he asked the council to undertake a new traffic count to factor in the increased amount of traffic expected.

As his private domestic water well is located 8m from the centre of the road, he also asked if the council confirmed there would be no deterioration in the quality of drinking water.

Mr Patrick and Ms Siobhan Dwyer, Water Castle, Durrow, also objected, claiming that the quarry would affect them and their childrens outdoor activities, as well as devalue their house. They also feared that the disturbance of land would cause a land-bank to collapse onto their property, plus the risk of flooding.

The Dwyers, as well as Mr Tom McEvoy, Grallow Lodge, Ballymullen, Abbeyleix, also highlighted the potential risk to local wildlife from the quarry.

Among the various species prevalent in the area are the pine martin, pygmy shrew, red kite, buzzards, goats, and white tailed eagle, as well as freshwater mussels in the River Nore which is 400m - 500m from the proposed site.

Mr McEvoy also claimed that unauthorised development has taken place at this site and called on the council to carry out a Strategic Environmental Assessment.

In separate submissions, the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht said there was a possibility that the development might have to be substantially altered to avoid archaeological remains. It recommended that a geophysical survey be carried out.

The HSE said that there did not appear to have been public consultation on the development, and no consideration was given to the location, quality and effect of the development on private wells in the locality.

The HSE alsorecommended that noise measurements be taken.

Meanwhile, An Taisce said that the proposed development should be assessed having regard to existing permitted quarries in the area.

In their application, J & N Quarries Ltd claimed that there would be no discharges to groundwater as a result of the development, and a process of rolling restoration would be carried out on the site.
AROUND 9.30pm at St. Marys GAA club in Leixlip on 1 September, there was talk of the miracle of loaves and fishes, writes Henry Bauress.

AROUND 9.30pm at St. Marys GAA club in Leixlip on 1 September, there was talk of the miracle of loaves and fishes, writes Henry Bauress.

It was not thought that either Fr. Michael Hurley, the chief guest at his going away party, or Bishop Raymond Field, would perform the miracle.

Was Cork born Fr. Hurley, leaving the Parish Of Our Ladys Nativity in Leixlip after nine year, indirectly responsible for fears of a food shortage?

Historians will determine who, if any was left without on the evening, but the large crowds that packed the Church for a 7.30pm thanksgiving and who later attended at the GAA club were a testimony to the esteem in which Fr. Hurley was held by so many.

He brought out laughter when he said: Im getting out alive, noting that three previous parish priests, Frs Hyland, Keavney and OSullivan, had died while parish priest there, two of them aged in their 60s.

Fr. Hurley, who will have a retreat in Wales and a visit to the Holy Land before returning to the Archdiocese of Dublin, estimated he had stood before the parishioners - an extremely tolerant and patient people - over 3,000 times in his nine years.

Speaking in the presence of his own mother, Theresa, his sister, Ann, nieces, Catriona and Eileen and nephew, Michael, and fellow priests, he said he was very conscious Im with friends.

Fifty two groups from the parish were represented in the ceremony. I love this town and its history and am conscious I am part of it, he said.

In particular, he welcomed Bishop Raymond Field, Town Council chairman, Joe Neville, and Rev. Scott Peoples from the Church of Ireland.

Rev. People said Fr. Hurley had set new standards in a wonderful invitation to all those new members of the community. He was grateful for his wonderful cordial kindness he extended to the Church of Ireland in Leixlip for his gifts and wonderful enthusiasm and his unstuffy evangelicalism.

At the end of the ceremony, Fr. Hurley has a special words of praise for sacristan, Paddy Kennedy, a beacon of all the best in humanity.

He described Mr. Kennedy as the real parish priest, and embraced him as he handed over a bunch of keys. He also had special mentions words for Sr. Liz, Emma Doran and John Stafford.

As he invited everyone to the GAA hall for the party to begin there was a cheer from Ciara, a special Olympian.

Thank you all for the beauty of this evening, he told the congregation.
Another day, another dollar, another Punches-town Festival. How time flies.

I know when you coming knocking on the office door, the Festival is just around the corner, laughs Dick OSullivan as we made our annual visit for our pre-Punchestown chat a couple of weeks ago.

Sitting comfortably in the same office since he arrived back in 2002 Dick OSullivan is more upbeat (if thats possible) than ever.

Not sure if it is because we got our act together better this year, or the economy is really taking off but we have never seen anything like the interest that we are witnessing this year; corporates are up; pre-booking is phenomenal; we are putting 450,000 up; HRI have injected more money as we ensure prize money for the Grade Ones stay high and the English horses will come.

We expect some sixty horses from across the water and with the exception of the the Curragh we would attract more than the combined jump tracks, insists Shona Dreaper, Head of Marketing at Pun-chestown.

I swore I would never again do it again but we have spent a half a million on temporary buildings including extra toilets adding in extra food area; cover seats etc, says Dick.

While looking forward to this years Festival, Dick is quick to point out that a major development programme for the next two years will kick in as soon as the 2016 Festival is over.

We are starting a capital programme immediately after this years festival; we have not spent any capital funding since 1998 we simply did not have it but now that we are coming to the stage that we can see the finish of what we owe we are about to spend 6m on a capital programme says Dick enthusiastically.

Shona explains that there is a plan to break up the entrance. It is a big tarmacadam area now it will be broken into areas; we will have a walk of champions; a walk of the Paddy Mullins, the famous horses, the Hurricanes, the Moscows and that will all be interesting and new to people.

The Grandstand area downstairs is a passageway from the Ring to the betting ring, work on that; brighten it; take those big heavy timber doors out; make it interesting; fresh cafes and bars and a lot more.

The big message is that while we said we would never do it again (temporary buildings), the demand is there and it makes financial sense so we are back up to half a million for temporary buildings for just a five day festiva and we know that it is not sustainable and we know it makes more sense to have a permanent building.

No doubt the corporate end of things is a vital ingredient to the Punchestown coffers but Dick OSullivan while admitting we must look after the corporate end but regardless of how much money we make out if it; it is a fickle market and if some-thing went wrong they will leave you very quick; we must never lose track of the man or woman; boy or girl that come through the front gate and that is the basis of our success.

I will never forget that lesson I learned when I came here first I couldnt believe that when the place was about to go down the tubes and a meeting with the receivers and a decision pending whether they would or would not accept the rescue package and I couldnt believe there was not a word out of Naas. I met a fella and he said very simple, you have lost touch with the locals.

Since then we have worked exceedingly hard to get locals back on track; we will now have local stewards; GAA clubs for stewarding and at concerts; we have contributed 160,000 to local charities over the years; we now use all local contractors where possible.

What we want to ensure is people who come here know they are at Punches-town and not just another race meeting. We have searched England and Ireland have had time and have enough to do this and do it over two years, says Dick.

On the racing front Shona insists most of UK horses will be journeying across. We were in England only last week, met all the big players, Nicholls, King, Pipe, Hobbs; Warren Greatrex, we need to get those up and coming trainers such as Warren, Dan Skelton, Neil Mulholland, these lads; they are going to have the Gold Cup horses of the future.

Shone says that despite Cheltenham and Willie Mullins' Aintree assault, he (Mullins) has told us there is no way he will sacrifice Punches-town this is his spot; any horse that is well will be here and there is three weeks between Aintree and Pun-chestown so itsuits and a lot of them are lightly raced; there is no way Willie Mul-lins is going to let a lot of the big money on offer escape from him.

On the social side of things Shona reminds us that Bol-linger is on board this year for the Best Dressed competition this is another huge draw for the Festival, adding the prize this year is absolutely fabulous.

Last year Dick OSullivan set his sights breaking the 110,000 attendance and we were right on track until the weather let us down on the Saturday says Shone.

This year, according to Dick O'Sullivan, weather permitting we are aiming for 120,000 (hes piling the pressure on now, says Shona). But we are 15 per cent ahead on our pre-sales, weather permitting we'll make it.

Credit to our staff here when Liam (Holton) who had done a marvellous job on marketing left, I did not have to replace him. Janet (Creighton) took over sponsorship and Shone took over Marketing; so it was great that we could do that.

Dick adds: I never met anyone yet that was a total disaster; if you can find the key everyone has something to offer, given the chancey; we have an exceptional bunch of people here, you're probably tired of me saying that to you butour success is down to that.

Dick adds that after this years Festival they will sit down and plan for the next five years; a definite plan, the only thing in business that wont work is if you stay standing still.

And Punchestown is certainly not standing still and that's for sure!
Nina Carberry's first Punchestown festival memory is Risk Of Thurder winning the

La Touche Cup in 1996. So its probably no surprise that, 20 years later, her partner in crime over the famous banks at the Punchestown festival is none other than Enda Bolger, the man who trained Sean Connerys crowd-puller to seven festival victories.

I started going to the festival when it was over three days and I remember being at Punchestown the day Sean Connery was there to see Risk Of Thunder win the La Touche Cup. He always got a great following and on that day, there was a huge crowd because of Sean Connery being there. It was great for racing that somebody like Sean Connery was involved in the horse.

I also remember Dad riding in the charity race and over the years, Dad and Arthur would obviously have had a great association with the festival so Ive got great memories growing up. re-embarks Nina.

It was in the 2005 La Touche Cup when Nina got her first taste of the famous race and it was at this time too when she linked up with Enda Bolger for the very first time.

I remember getting my first phone call from Enda and he wanted me to ride Shady Lad in a point-to-point. I jumped at the opportunity to ride him and he finished second.

Then, he asked me to ride the same horse in the Ladies Cup and I went down to school him beforehand and love him. He finished second again and JT McNamara beat me. Theres a picture at home of the two of us jumping a fence alongside and my hands are up in the air. I was very proud of that picture until one day, Mam sent it off to Enda to show him. Enda came back and gave me an awful slagging and it was the best lesson I ever learned. I still get slagged about that picture. laughs Nina.

While not old enough to ride against Risk Of Thunder, Nina did have the privilege of riding in opposition to another of Enda Bolgers festival favourites. However, it was her victory on Good Step over Spot Thedifference in the 2006 La Touche Cup which brings her best festival moment.

Spot Thedifference was there when I was starting out at Endas and he was a great horse. I finished second to him a couple of times but I did manage to beat him when I won the La Touche on Good Step. The course was totally different back then and there was a bullfinch as one of the fences.

It was a bit of a Foinavon-type moment as a few horses jammed on and some horses nearly got carried out. I was behind JT McNamara, on Spot Thedifference, and the horse in front of him dragged him out a bit and he only popped the fence while my lad jumped the whole fence. Thats the reason why I won that year because he wouldnt have been as good as Spot Thedifference. I was then second the following year on Freneys Well to Spot Thedifference so he got his own back on me then.

Spot Thedifference was another legend around Punchestown remembers Nina, who also landed the Champion Bumper that same 2006 festival on Leading Run.

Three years after winning her first La Touche Cup, Nina added a second triumph on Garde Champetre. This was a horse Enda particularly worked his magic on. He was a cautious jumper before Enda got him but he really loved the banks. He was quick and economical and had a great way of doing it. He did well around Punchestown as well as Cheltenham. He was probably the best jumper of the banks that Ive ridden.

Its been five years since Enda Bolger led in the winner of the La Touche Cup but its no coincidence that he has 14 victories in the race, according to Nina. He has all the bank-type fences at home and he basically replicates what the horses face at Cheltenham and Punches-town. He has his horses so well-schooled coming into the big bank races and he doesnt leave any stone unturned.

They all know what theyre doing when they get to the track and Ive had great times with Enda. Ive won the last two runnings of the Fr Breen Memorial Ladies Perpetual Cup on Be Positive and Wish Ye Didnt and Im hoping that Wish Ye Didnt might be back again so shed be one to look forward to. The Punchestown festival has been very good to me.

Nina explains how she picked up the bug for the banks, which has led to her being the punters pal in such races.

Enda obviously rode the likes of Rick Of Thunder and he got me going and thought me an awful lot. I also learned a lot from following around JT over the banks as well and he thought me how to ride in these bank races. The horses have to be good enough too though so it helps having these good horses to ride.

Come next Thursday, Nina will be hoping that Enda can stop the rot in the La Touche Cup and make it victory number 15. And Josies Orders looks her most likely ride.

Hopefully, Josies Orders will line up in the La Touche. He just didnt jump the way he normally does at Cheltenham and the gallop really caught him out.

We got further back than I wanted and we couldnt make it up in the end. He was going well when he got brought down in last years race and then I won on him on the Saturday of the Punchestown festival.

Some 24 hours after riding in the La Touche Cup, Nina will be expected to bash the bookmakers again when she gets back on board On The Fringe after missing out at Aintree. The 11-year-old will possibly make history should he complete a huge festival treble for the second time in the Donoghue Marquees Champion Hunter Chase on Friday.

Im looking forward to getting back on him and he was unbelievable at Aintree. It was great to watch him and that type of race at Aintree really suited him. He completed the festival treble last year and to do it again would be an unbelievable training performance.

Embarking on another Punchestown festival, the queen of the banks is gunning for more glory. Come dinner time on Saturday, shes likely to be the most popular female of Irish National Hunt racing once again.
Certainly, the run up to the Punchestown races event in 1916 was a little more subdued than the excitement experienced by some in previous years.

There was an obvious reasons.

Britain, which still ruled Ireland, had an army base at the Curragh.

Elsewhere its army, fairly well bolstered by Irish men, was embroiled in World War 1, which had been described as the war to end all wars.

It was not, of course, the end to war, Just twenty years later another international war began, World War 11.

By 1916, the Great War, as it was perversely called, had taken a huge number of lives, from all classes, lower, middle and probably to a lesser extend the very rich.

This war must surely have affected the mood as Punchestown approached.

Only weeks after the meeting the 1916 Rising began.

At the time also, horses had a much bigger role to play in military affairs than they do today.

That was to change soon afterwards with the arrival of the motor car, still in infancy.

But business went on as usual as the April 11 and April 12 dates approached for the Punchestown bash.

On March 25 1916, the Irish Times carried an advertisement for insurance to cover the death of horses from accident or diseases at Punchestown and Fairyhouse. One had to contact Coyle & Co at 7 Anglesea Street or some agents in Kildare.

There were more ominous adverts. On April 5, Sewells of Dublin announced it would hold its annual Punchestown Auction on April 13, the day after the races. That same day, Switzer's of Grafton Street, in a Punchestown exclusive, announced it was was showing some millinery for the event.

Grafton Street (No 102 and 103) was where the major cups for the event, the National Hunt Cup, the Kildare Hunt Cup, the Ticknell Challenge and the Bishopscourt Cup were on view.

On April 8, The Irish Times carried an advert from the Punchestown organisers advertised in which it announced revised charges for admission to the stand.A double day ticket would cost 1.0s.0d and a single day ticket, 15 shillings.

On April 9, it was announced that char-a-bancs (a horse drawn carriage or possibly a motor vehicle) would transport people from Thompsons Garage in Brunswick Street at a cost of 0.15s.0d return.

The newspaper also reported that Great Southern and Western Railways are running special trains from Kingsbridge each morning. The cost of a first class fare return fare had been reduced to 7 shillings and 6 pence.

A financial calculator might make 15 shillings the equivalent of almost 69 sterling today.

To put it in context, just a few years earlier, on the eve of the 1913 Lockout, the ITGWU union wanted the top rate of a first class motorman on the Dublin trams to be raised from 31 shillings a week to 33 shillings a week. The vast majority of unskilled workers earned between 15 shillings and 25 shillings a week with 18 shillings appearing to be the norm (according to Lockout Dublin 1913 by Padraig Yeates).

As to driving, on April 10, the clerk of the course, a Mr Waters advertised traffic directions, Hackney cars and cabs should vere to the left on entering the Paddock Gate enclosure. Private vehicles and hackney carriages holding Kildare Hunt Carriage enclosure tickets should got to the right gate at the back of the Kildare Hunt Stand.

On the morning of the first day, April 11, the newspaper said that although this years celebration will be to a great extent devoid of the animation we were wont to associate with Punchestown before the war, the racing will show but little falling away of the high standard we are accustomed to find at the premier steeplechase gathering.

Writing after the event, The Irish Times Saturday, April 15 editions said: Punchestown, owing to the war, was not itself on Tuesday ... .there was the gaiety and the bustle ... but the genuine spirit of Punchestown was lacking ... this could easily be seen by a glance at the Club enclosure, and by the absence of house parties usually associated with the meeting, while the fact that military officers have now something more serious to do than dispensing their usual hospitality at Punchestown also brought about a noticeable change.

But it also said that despite the subdued atmosphere, one of the most agreeable features was the presence of several officers who had been in the firing line for months.

The paper also was happy to see a collection in aid of the Disabled Soldiers Bureau.

Weather wise the event was not as good as in previous years and spring was late.

There were a few showers but nothing too serious.
The Chattanooga State Kimball Site is offering a personal defense class taught by James R. Hogwood, International Defensive Tactics instructor. The class, Defensive Tactics for Personal Protection is offered on Saturday, April 30 from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. CT.

"Mr. Hogwood has taught his techniques to bodyguards, martial arts instructors and security guards. Now you can learn from this master instructor on April 30. Would you be able to defend yourself and your loved ones if someone were to physically attack you? Its a question most of us dont want to consider, but violence is, unfortunately, a fact of life. Thankfully, regardless of strength, size, or previous training, anyone can learn several effective self-defense techniques.

"This class will teach you to prepare for and stay safe in common real-world violent situations. This course uses proven, common sense techniques, backed by science and Martial Arts. Learn and practice techniques for proficiency," officials said.

Minimum age requirement: is 13 years old. The cost $59 per person.



To register, call the Continuing Education Department at 423-697-3100 or register online.
We all hope that Donald Trump will not be the next US President; even if he wins the Republican nomination, its unlikely that he will win over a majority of states and voters. But his astonishing success so far, in mobilising the embittered, marginalised and nostalgic, all those who feel they have lost out through rapid economic and social change, has lessons for British politics.

The first lesson is that we need to pay much more attention to the bottom third of our society: the children of skilled working class and clerical workers whose communities, and self-respect, have been hit by technological transformation. They read of successful financiers and executives in London, earning vast salaries and appearing to pay very little tax, and feel that they have lost out while others have benefited excessively. What used to be called the white working class has deserted the Democrats in the USA for right-wing populism  just as in France the children of Communist voters now support Marine le Pen, and in Britain former Labour families have moved to UKIP.

The messages they absorb from right-wing media are often appalling; but many of their grievances are real. Inequality in the USA has widened sharply over the past generation, and Britain has not been far behind. Trump blames foreigners for some of their plight, but he also promises government spending and economic assistance, unlike the Tea Party Republicans who focused on social grievances to distract from economic woes. Failures in education and training in Britain have hit the bottom third hard: cuts in further education while university places have expanded, cumulative cuts in local government budgets that have hit former industrial communities hardest, the long-standing bias in favour of public investment in Greater London, and the equally long-standing failure to promote skilled apprenticeships. Direct recruitment from abroad of nurses, long-distance lorry drivers, skilled construction workers, computer technicians and others (in their tens of thousands per year) demonstrates this failure, and raises the resentment of the native unskilled (and unmotivated) as immigrants are pulled in to fill jobs that they are not qualified for.

The second lesson is that changes in who controls the media have reshaped popular perceptions and public debate. Fox News has played a major role in providing the context within which first Tea Party Republicans and now Donald Trump can command public attention: disregard for evidence and reasoned argument, right-wing prejudice pushing against the limits of acceptable discourse, rubbishing the establishment, the compromises of national politics, and the constraints of international commitments. In the broadcast media in Britain, the BBC has kept Sky News honest. The Daily Mail and the Sun are Britains equivalents to Fox News, hosting deliberately outrageous columnists to tell their readers that the respectable and powerful are betraying them. With commercial interests at stake in competition with the BBC, they also carry consistently negative stories about BBC programmes and personalities that are intended to bias their readers against this voice of the establishment.

Boris Johnson is the nearest we yet have in British politics to Trump: a similar disregard for accuracy or consistency, a similar mixture of flippancy and outrageous statements. The Brexit campaign taps into a comparable seam in British society, playing to their grievances and nostalgia. So how do we respond? Defending the BBC, as a national public institution, is a no-brainer: reasoned debate, against populist bias. Defending public investment, on education and training, on innovation and infrastructure, is more challenging: we will need to argue the case for some higher taxation, against the Conservative focus on shrinking the state further, and relying on the Chinese and the Gulf states to provide the necessary investment.

The most difficult argument to get across is to defend the compromises and give-and-take of liberal democracy against populist rhetoric. Liberal Democrats have learned bitterly how little credit you get from constructive coalition; opposition, attacks on the governing elite (in Washington, Brussels or Westminster), make for easier headlines and throw-away comments. British politics is suffering from a long-term decline in public participation and attention, but with entrenched resistance from both Conservatives and Labour to political reform. So how do we get across that the anti-democratic undertones of nationalist populism can only be pushed back by opening up our over-centralized and executive-dominated political system?

* William Wallace has fought five parliamentary elections in Manchester and West Yorkshire. He is a former president of the Yorkshire regional Liberal Democrats.
Alistair Carmichael has written a coldly furious article for the New Statesman about the vote last night when the Government defeated the Lords Amendment to the Immigration Bill which would have seen this country do its duty and take a relatively small number of child refugees.

Just last week, we saw the Government feign compassion to draw away attention from the calls for accepting 3,000 children, through their own announcement which completely sidestepped the issue of child refugees in danger within Europe, where Europol has estimated that as many as 10,000 unaccompanied children on the continent have disappeared, and will be spread out over four years to water down an already disappointing figure. They then went one step further by implanting a clause meaning that this will be the last time the amendment to accept 3,000 child refugees can be debated. Its pretty hard to look away from the simple truth that the Government simply doesnt care about these children. We can get disappointed by the many wrong decisions the Conservatives are making, be they selfish, misguided or unproductive, but its the decisions like the one taken yesterday which really show the Government at its worst and really make me and so many others across our country downright angry. Like cuts to tax credits or employment support allowance, failing to help these refugees is directly putting lives in grave danger.

Providing a safe home for these children, separated from their families and in desperate circumstances, was easily achievable, he said:

However its imperative that, as politicians, we do care and when this year alone approximately 171,000 refugees decided water was safer than land and made the treacherous crossing across the Mediterranean, its our duty to provide a sustainable solution to deliver help for the most vulnerable. The amendment which was voted on last night would have allowed a small number of child refugees into the UK, a number which our country could have easily handled. The Liberal Democrats carried out a consultation with experts and charities to provide a blueprint for resettling Europes child refugees and the clear evidence showed that it was possible. Members from across the House united to try to save these children, having been profoundly moved by their terrifying ordeal. The Government had an opportunity to show British values at their finest through showing compassion, and upholding the fundamental human rights which all people, young and old and across the world deserve. Instead it ignored its neighbours, the calls from charities but most importantly ignored these children.

You can read Alistairs whole article here.

I still cant get out of my mind that there are nearly 100,000 unaccompanied children already in Europe and our government couldnt even take 3% of them. Each one of us, even if we dont have children ourselves, has some in our lives as friends or family members. We would hope that, if they ever found themselves in that situation, alone, living in a refugee camp with no school, no support and at risk of all sorts of exploitation, the powerful would take action to look after them.

We can at least be proud of Tim Farron who has led the calls for us do more to help these 3000 children, who has visited the camps where they are several times. I was also very moved by speeches by Yvette Cooper and Dr Tania Matthias in the short bit of the debate I was able to watch last night.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
From May, AMs in the Welsh Assembly will get a whopping 18% pay rise, awarded by an independent pay review body. Only the Welsh Liberal Democrats voted against that and they have said that it must never happen again.

From the BBC:

Kirsty Williams has promised to peg AMs pay to general rises in the public sector.

AMs will get a salary of 64,000 from 5 May, up from 54,000, following an independent remuneration board decision.

The Lib Dems pledge would apply to the Senedd term after the 2021 election.

Ms Williams said: Its outrageous that, at a time when public sector workers have had their salaries either frozen or rise only slightly, politicians are getting a salary hike of 18%.

Never again can such a rise be allowed to happen.
Sheriff Jim Hammond and members of the HCSO and the Hamilton County Department of Education conducted the 7th HCSO LAWS Program at Central High School on Monday. Also participating in Mondays event was Judge Russell Bean.

Judge Bean spoke to the class on the importance of drivers safety and how the court system functions.

The Sheriffs LAWS Program stands for Law Enforcement Actively Working in Schools and is a new initiative created by Sheriff Jim Hammond to increase law enforcements presence in local schools in cooperation with the many programs already underway as part of the HCSO School Resource Officer Program.

During Mondays event, students participated in a mock traffic stop and got to don a gun belt and bullet proof vest as they learned how deputies properly and safely pull over vehicles that are speeding or suspicious in nature. They also were able to see and hold of the new gears available to law enforcement such as the new handheld ballistic shields for officers to use to cover their heads during traffic stops and other scenarios.

Topics included the history of the Sheriffs Office, how Sheriffs historically came to be in the United States, what Sheriffs offices are responsible for, and various discussions over what to do if you are pulled over, and issues young people may have to deal with as they pertain to law enforcement. The program concluded with Sheriff Hammond and several other law enforcement personnel touring the school and speaking with school administrators.

This makes the 7th school Sheriff Hammond has spoken to since the program was initiated earlier this year at Red Bank High School. The next round of programming will begin in the fall when school resumes after the summer break.
MIKE Fitzpatrick, director of Limericks 2020 bid and a director of Eva International, has said the States tourism agencies need to come on board and really drive Eva as a national cultural event.

Mr Fitzpatrick said the exhibition, Irelands biennial for contemporary art which opened last weekend, could be a real attractor for national, international audiences if given the right support.

Mr Fitzpatrick  who headed up City of Culture in 2014 and was Irelands commissioner for the Venice Biennale that attracts up to half a million people  said Eva had the potential to bring a couple of hundred thousand visitors to Limerick.

We need to get the national agencies, Failte Ireland and Tourism Ireland, to come on board and really drive Eva as a national cultural event, he said.

Eva is Irelands biennial and it is the only one in Ireland, so we better hang on to it, and also I think the responsibility goes back both to Limerick and to Ireland Inc to really host it at a level that is possible.

We probably operate on a very modest budget, in terms of worldwide, but we have punched very well, given our resources. We have this gem and we need to exploit it.

Eva received annual funding of 222,000 from the Arts Council of Ireland in 2015 and 2016, and was restructured as a biennial at the State agencys request a number of years ago. It is estimated that some 75,000 art lovers visited it in 2014.

We have developed it from an artistic point of view, now we need to grow it from a marketing and promotional point of view, and that means, in simple ways, to double the people, you have to double the budget. But isnt that a worthwhile achievement for Limerick to aim at? asked Mr Fitzpatrick.

He said Eva would be absolutely central to Limericks 2020 bid for European Capital of Culture, should it be successful.

Eva officially opened to the public on Saturday, featuring work by 57 artists, selected from a 2,000 strong pool of entries, placed across six city venues, the centrepiece of which is the reinvigorated Cleeves Factory and the City Gallery, with works also featuring in the Hunt Museum, Sailors Home, King Johns Castle and Mother Macs, plus an associated event at Ormston House.

It is curated by Cameroon artist Koyo Kouoh and called Still (the) Barbarians. Mr Fitzpatrick said Ms Kouoh was challenging us to say well, we have got it this far, where do we go next?

Eva chairman Hugh Murray said the exhibition, underpinned by a post-colonial theme selected by Kouoh in this year of 1916 commemoration, was better than the last one, as always happens with Eva.

That is no exaggeration. It is a combination of a really top-class curator who knows what she is at, the very strong theme relating to colonisalism, coinciding very nicely with the 1916 commemorations, and a vast array of artists that are from all over the world, as far away as you can go, with really interesting perspectives on colonialism and the diversity of cultures that they express, he said.

And then the venues that we have continue that tradition of making a big impact in the city itself, as distinct from being just in a gallery.

Ms Kouoh said the city would benefit from an influx of art professionals from abroad, and I think, I hope that, it will feed into the imagination of urban development and planning and creative industries.

People do come  you have a great international crowd in the city right now, people who would never come to Limerick on another occasion. Contemporary art brings them to Limerick. I think Limerick has a great potential to it, and it is still logistically very accessible.

She said of the selected work in the exhibition that there was many works that look at landscape, the imprint of history on the landscape. There are many works that look at the loss of language, and the silencing  and there are other works that look at migration, that look at the notion of independence in itself, that look at how historical events still play out in our present day.
FREEDOM of expression, democracy and politics were the drivers behind the third annual Limerick Spring Festival, which wrapped up yesterday evening.

From Thursday afternoon to Sunday evening, several events took place, ranging from theatrical displays, musical perfo-rmances, kids art workshops, panel discussions and interactive debates.

During the week, events included the festival-opener Minding the Idealist workshop for those involved in campaigns; cake and coffee at the Salon Du Chat on Thursday; and a night of protest music celebration at The Revolution Will Not Be Spotified in Dolans, on Friday night.

The Big Debate, which was the flagship event of the festival, took place at Dolans Warehouse, and included a panel of eminent figures, such as Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, UCC sociologist Kieran Keohane, activist Siobhan ODonoghue, Education Equalitys April Duff, and Seanad candidates Tom Clonan and Lynn Ruane. The debate was chaired by comedian Tara Flynn.

On Sunday morning, the Brunch newspaper review took place at the Strand, and reviewing the weekend headlines were Limerick Leader editor, Alan English, freelance journalist Kathyrn Hayes, and comedian Paddy Cullivan. It was chaired by University of Limerick journalism lecturer, Henry Silke.

Festival organiser Jennifer Moroney Ward said that the series of events was about celebrating the idea of free speech.

We heard journalists, here, talking about the pressures that they are under, journalistically, to not voice opinions because of defamation laws, because they are afraid to speak out against various media owners.

She also praised the festivals interactive debates.

Its so important that everyone can say something in a safe place, and that everybodys opinion would be listened to, respectfully. That is proper debate, and that is what should happen. And once you dont do that, you are going down a very dark road.

The festival ended with Paddy Cullivans The Ten Dark Secrets of 1916 (And how they shaped Ireland) performance in Dolans.

Pick up this weekends broadsheet editions for more Limerick Spring coverage.
MORE than 100 people attended a meeting at the Strand Hotel last night to voice their opposition to proposals for a controversial footbridge in the city.

Alongside Failte Ireland and a private donor, Limerick City and County Council is proposing to build the link between the Potato Market across the Abbey River to Arthur's Quay.

But the project - which has a price tag of 18m - has proven controversial, with many feeling it could destroy the view of the city, with concerns also being raised about the impact on the current on the River Shannon.

It has also been pointed out the money would be better used elsewhere.

At last nights meeting, those present were shown some new images of the bridge plan, which John Elliott, a member of the Footbridge Folly group, said could measure up to 75 metres in height.

During the presentation, the archaeologist and local historian said while King John's Castle has been around almost 1,000 years, most modern bridges are not designed to last more than 100.

Nicholas Street trader Tony Ryan said: "It would be a distraction rather than an attraction".

He pointed out Failte Ireland had promised investment in his street two years ago, "but now this has been dropped upon us".

Cllr John Gilligan, one of ten councillors present, described the proposal as "mickey mouse".

And both Cllrs Michael Sheahan, Fine Gael and Labour's council leader Frankie Daly, vowed to block the bridge in its current format when it comes before members in the form of a Part Eight motion.

"It is a bridge too far," said Cllr Sheahan.

For further coverage and photographs, see this weeks Limerick Leader, broadsheet editions.
A DRIVER who was apparently snap chatting himself out the window of a car has been fined by Gardai in Limerick.

A tweet sent by the @GardaTraffic account overnight this Tuesday reported that the driver, who was stopped snap chatting himself out the window of a car, was given a fixed penalty charge notice, three penalty points and a 60 fine as a result of his actions.

The tweet has received upwards of 43 retweets and 68 likes as of this Tuesday morning.

Driver stopped snap chatting himself out the window of a car,FCPN 3 points & 60 going to driver by Limerick Traffic pic.twitter.com/Y2Lm6ovkfg  An Garda Siochana (@GardaTraffic) April 25, 2016

The Garda Twitter account also reported that Mayorstone gardai had seized a car on the N18 that had no tax, insurance or NCT, with the driver disqualified for 15 years as a result.

Mayorstone Gardai, Limerick seized car on N18 No tax, Ins or NCT. Driver disqualified for 15years.Court to follow pic.twitter.com/VkZqfC82LH  An Garda Siochana (@GardaTraffic) April 25, 2016

Last week, the Garda Traffic account reported that a Limerick driver on the South Circular Road had been arrested for drug driving after reversing up one way street to avoid detection.

Limerick Traffic -1 person arrested for drug driving after reversing up one way street to avoid detection pic.twitter.com/wkKeOyu3PY  An Garda Siochana (@GardaTraffic) April 19, 2016

The same operation, overnight on Tuesday, saw seven cars seized on the SCR, four for no insurance, two for no tax and one for false tax.
THE LATEST in a series of plaques commemorating famous writers with an association with Limerick will be unveiled next week.

On Friday week, May 6, the Limerick Writers' Centre will inaugurate a commemorative plaque to Charles Dickens celebrating his visit to Limerick in 1858.

Dickens wrote to his nephew Willis from Limerick on September 2 of that year, describing it as the oddest place of which nobody in any other part of Ireland seems to know anything.

I read in the Theatre [Royal on Henry Street, now demolished]  a charming Theatre. The best I ever saw, to see and hear in.

I am bound to say that they are an admirable audience. As hearty and demonstrative as it is possible to be. It is a very odd place in its lower order aspects, and I am very glad we came, though we could have made heaps of money by going to Dublin instead, he wrote.

The Limerick Chronicle, sister newspaper of the Limerick Leader, complained at the time that Dickens recited several passages in a sing-song, schoolboy style.

William Wordsworth also visited Limerick in 1829, but only remarked about the weather, and in particular the relentless rain.

The actor Laurence Foster will unveil a commemorative plaque celebrating Dickens upstairs in Costa Coffee, on Cruises Street at 3pm.

The chosen venue for the unveiling is the former site of Cruises Royal Hotel, which was demolished in 1991, and where Dickens stayed.

Later that evening Foster will perform his one man show of Dickens in Limerick in the newly re-opened Belltable theatre on OConnell Street.

The plaque is part of a wider project to create a Limerick Literary Trail, to enable and encourage citizens and visitors to discover Limerick through its literary heritage.

A plaque to commemorate the war poet Robert Graves hangs outside the Locke bar; the late poet Desmond OGrady has a plaque in his memory outside the White House bar; the Angelas Ashes writer Frank McCourt was honoured with a plaque outside Souths bar, where he famously had his first pint, theres a plaque in recognition of Richard Harris, the actor and poet outside Charlie St Georges pub on Parnell Street, which the actor once described as his second home  second only to his mansion in Barbados.
FORMER Mayor of Limerick Cllr Maria Byrne has won a seat on the Agricultural panel in Seanad Eireann.

The Fine Gael member passed the quota of 93,667 on the 20th count.

By the 17th count, following a generous transfer from the outgoing senator, her Fine Gael colleague Pat O'Neill, Cllr Byrne had edged to within the equivalent of three votes of the quota.

On the next count, this narrowed to just one vote.

But it was not until the 20th count when she could finally celebrate her elevation to the Seanad.

It is a case of second time lucky for Cllr Byrne, who missed out on election to the same panel in 2007 by a solitary vote.

Meanwhile, a third Limerick candidate has been elected to Seanad Eireann this evening, after Sinn Fein's Paul Gavan was elected to the Labour panel.
Volkswagen of America officials say the company is seeking an appeal to a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board for the United Auto Workers to negotiate a labor contract for 160 maintenance workers at the VW plant in Chattanooga.

In a December election, skilled-trades employees voted to designate UAW Local 42 as their collective bargaining representative. The NLRB panel denied the Volkswagen request to review the election.

A Volkswagen spokesman said the company has not yet filed the appeal but will be challenging the ruling.

Volkswagen officials say a skilled-trades-only bargaining unit at the companys assembly plant in Chattanooga is not appropriate because it only represents a small percentage of the 1,600 employees.



The UAW has tried to get Volkswagen to negotiate a new contract for the 160 members of the unit approved by the NLRB.


Apr 28, 2021, 5 PM

DeForest Kelly, in character as Dr. Leonard McCoy from the original Star Trek television series, on a stamp from Canada's upcoming set.

By Michael Baadke

The fifth permanent-rate stamp revealed in Canada Posts upcoming Star Trek set honors another star from the well-known 1966-69 space adventure television series.

DeForest Kelly (1920-99), who was featured on the show as Dr. Leonard Bones McCoy, is pictured in that role on the horizontal commemorative, the fourth to show an actor from the original series. The stamps pictured previously honor actors William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock, and James Doohan as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott. One other stamp, in coil format, shows the starship Enterprise.

Shatner and Doohan were both born in Canada. Of the four actors depicted so far, only Shatner is still living.

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DeForest Kelly was born in Toccoa, Ga., and his Georgia upbringing became part of Dr. McCoys backstory as well.

Kelly served in the United States Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit during World War II, and continued in the acting field after the war. Following a number of film appearances, he took on guest roles on television programs including The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke and Bonanza.

After three seasons of Star Trek, Kelly reprised the role of McCoy in six Star Trek films from 1979 to 1991.

The new Dr. McCoy stamp was previewed, appropriately enough, Tuesday morning at the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in London, Ontario, with the participation of Kitchener-based medical monitoring firm Cloud DX, and of course, Canada Post. They were joined by 24 eighth-grade students from Londons Chippewa Public School, who are on-site taking part in a Museum School project all week.
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Racist Video Calls For Lynchings At Southern Illinois University Carbondale

By Mae Rice in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 26, 2016 6:01PM

Warning: This post contains racist language.

An anonymous clip posted to YouTube last Thursday called for lynchings and beatings of black students on the Southern Illinois University Carbdonale campus. After repeated requests from the university, the video was removed from the site on Monday for violating YouTube's hate speech policy. However, university spokesperson Rae Goldsmith told Chicagoist Tuesday that "we now have someone else who has posted it elsewhere on YouTube, so we've started all over again."

The second incarnation of the clip is available, though surely not for long, here.

In a news conference about the video on Monday, the university's Interim Chancellor Brad Colwell emphasized the "need to stay calm," SIU Carbondale's newspaper The Daily Egyptian reported. Colwell also sent an email to the student body on Sunday, in which he said the university was "fully prepared to take action" against the poster of the video, though the action was unspecified.

"Our campus public safety office is looking into the video and its source," Goldsmith added.

The clip in question is roughly two minutes long and features a black-and-white segment from the animated film A Bug's Life, edited so that the bugs repeatedly use the n-word and dismiss concerns of slavery as they band together to protect their "way of life."

Next, a figure wearing a Guy Fawkes mask appears on screen. A distorted voice introduces this figure with "This is SIU ATO," a reference to the the university's Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. (The Carbondale chapter of the fraternity and its national headquarters deny involvement, according to the Daily Egyptian and the Associated Press.)

"We send out this broadcast in the hopes of reaching out to all the hard-working white Americans out there," the distorted voice continues. "We will not stand for these n****** any longer. I want us all on May second to band together and beat ourself some n***** stew... I want to see the trees riddled with as much black fruit as they can hold."

The Daily Egyptian reported that Colwell advocated for "a dialogue" around racial issues following the video and a spate of other racial conflicts at SIU Carbondale this month. Goldsmith said this would involve "workshops" and "conversations with students." No policy changes are in the works as of yet, she said; at this point the campus is trying to "address immediate issues."

That means, in part, increased campus security on May 2. "We have confidence that our students will actually not rise to the video, but we will be prepared," Goldsmith said.

Goldsmith also said that when it comes to revising policy, it's important to note that "some things that people say are unwelcome but they may not be punishable, because we do also need to respect free speech."

The anonymous video is the latest of three racially-charged incidents on the Carbondale campus in April. On April 17, according to the Daily Egyptian, someone drew a swastika on a campus chalkboard, next to the messages "Build That Wall" and "This country is so sad." Earlier in April a black freshman student at the university, Leilani Bartlett, posted a Facebook video detailing how SIU Trump supporters told her to "go back to Africa" and called her the n-word. (Watch her full video here.)

According to Fall 2015 diversity statistics from the university, the student body is 19 percent black, and 32 percent students of color.
BYD Co Ltd, a major Chinese new-energy vehicle manufacturer, is likely to join the ranks of Global Fortune 500 companies in 2017 as the carmaker has grown rapidly amid the country's booming green automobile sector, according to a top executive of the company.

"A new era has come for Chinese homegrown vehicle makers, especially in the new-energy sector," said Wang Chuanfu, chairman and chief executive officer of BYD.

Driven by the electric- and hybrid-car sectors, BYD sales topped 80 billion yuan ($12.3 billion) in 2015, a year-on-year increase of 37.8 percent, according to Wang.

"The growing momentum will be maintained in the years ahead, due to growing demand for new-energy vehicles both in the domestic and overseas markets," said Wang, predicting the company's sales will surpass 100 billion yuan in 2016.

"If the fast-growing market trend continues, we will eventually become one of the global top 500 enterprises by 2017," said Wang.

BYD is based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, where companies, including Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China Ltd, Huawei Technologies Co, China Merchants Group, Amer International Group, have already become global top 500 enterprises.

"About a decade ago, electric cars were little more than just a concept. But now Chinese consumers have developed a growing interest in the new-energy vehicles," said Wang.

China's sales of new-energy cars reached more than 330,000 units in 2015, increasing by 3.4 times over the previous year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

BYD, listed in Hong Kong, has surpassed US firm Tesla Motors Inc to become the world's largest producer and seller of new-energy cars, selling 58,000 new-energy vehicles in 2015, an increase of 208.13 percent year-on-year, according to the company.

"The upward trend has arrived, with tremendous market opportunities ahead," said Wang.
Tesla Model X electric sport-utility vehicle is seen at the Auto China 2016 show, which opened in Beijing on Monday. [Photo/Shanghai Daily]

China's special fondness with sport-utility vehicles is helping to cushion the slump in the rest of its auto market, as foreign and domestic carmakers faced off at the Auto China 2016 show in Beijing.

Major automakers are set to launch nearly 40 models in this segment.

Carmakers from Germany's Volkswagen AG to domestic companies such as Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp are coming up with strategies to sell more SUVs in the world's largest auto market, as SUV sales soared 51.5 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2016, from a 6.8 percent overall growth in the same period, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufactures.

Jochem Heizmann, China chief of Volkswagen, said the company will invest 4 billion euros (US$4.5 billion) with its joint venture partners in China this year to expand its share of the SUV market.

"There is an SUV offensive on the way," Heizmann said, adding that the company's strategy is to sell a small version of the SUV in 2016, and plans to launch 10 locally made SUV models in the coming three to four years.

The SUV segment traditionally is not a specialty segment for German automakers as their home market tends to value wagons for the space and versatility promised by SUVs.

Though most of SUVs sold in China today are for city travel, their history is more about conquering off-road challengers. Jeep, a specialist SUV maker, tries to carve out a bigger market share with its Chinese-made compact SUV Renegade, which began pre-order at the auto show, which started yesterday, as the only SUV costing under 200,000 yuan (US$30,811).

While mass-market SUVs face stiff price competition, the premium SUV segment still seems to have much room to grow further as it boasts product differentiation, said Richard Shore, acting president of Jaguar Land Rover China. The company, whose sales grew 19 percent year on year in the first quarter, draws much of its momentum from Land Rover-branded SUVs. The cabriolet version of its Range Rover Evoque was introduced at the auto show as an extended choice of this popular SUV model known for its slant-back roof.

Meanwhile, the SUV's reputation as a gas guzzler is now being redeemed by Tesla Model X, the first SUV from the US-based electric car pioneer that just made its China premiere. Its purely electric power train leads to a unique engineering layout that lowers the car's center of gravity, and subsequently reduces the risks of toppling over by 50 percent compared with other SUVs.

However, the Model X has had its launch schedule postponed several times due to difficulties of mass-producing components. Its price starts from around 1 million yuan in China.

Domestic automakers, meanwhile, are working on futuristic technologies to be incorporated in SUVs including shared vehicles called by smartphone and Internet-linked onboard services. The new model Roewe RX5 showcased by SAIC yesterday is the first-of-its-kind mass-produced "Internet Car," part of a 1 billion yuan project between Alibaba Group and SAIC, to attract young customers born in the last three decades. The car will go on sale in the second half of 2016.

Analysts from IHS Automotive estimate that the overall sales growth of the auto market is likely to fall further this year to 6 percent amid a slowing economy, though the total volume might reach 25 million vehicles.

"Annual SUV production in China will reach some 7.2 million units this year, with possible sales reaching 7.7 million, nearly 30.8 percent of the overall sales," Narita Chow, an IHS analyst, wrote in a report.
The towering and shaggy Wookiee character Chewbacca from the "Star Wars" movies has a new namesake  a tiny weevil recently discovered in New Guinea.

Though the insect is significantly smaller and much less hairy than everyone's favorite "walking carpet," dense scales on the weevil's legs and head reminded the scientists of Chewbacca's fur, prompting their name choice.

Trigonopterus chewbacca is one of four new weevil species identified on the island of New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago in New Guinea. Discovered alongside it were the somewhat less whimsically named weevils T. obsidianus, T. puncticollis and T. silaliensis. [7 Animals with 'Star Wars'-Inspired Names]

T. chewbacca is a flightless weevil, a type of beetle typically found in leaf litter in forests. The male's body is black with hair-like structures on its antennae and legs, and measures 0.13 inches (3.34 millimeters) in length.

Scientists spent 10 days combing through leaf litter in unrelenting downpours to find the miniscule beetles, eventually collecting 18 specimens that represented the four new species.

Previously, only one known species in the Trigonopterus weevil group had been found in this region, although prior studies described Trigonopterus weevils in New Caledonia, Samoa and Fiji. While T. chewbacca was the first species in this group that was named for a "Star Wars" character, it's not the only one with a celebrity-inspired moniker. Trigonopterus attenboroughi  described in a study published in ZooKeys in 2014  was named for famed British naturalist Sir David Attenborough.

This isn't the first time that scientists who were also "Star Wars" fans incorporated their fondness for the Millennium Falcon co-pilot into a species name. A fuzzy Mexican moth was described as Wockia chewbacca in the journal Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington in 2009, and a wasp described as Polemistus chewbacca appeared in the journal Zoological Record in 1983.

Other "Star Wars" characters have also inspired scientists to tap those characters' names for new species discoveries, giving us an acorn worm named after Yoda (Yoda purpurata), a trilobite named for Han Solo (Han solo) and a slime mold beetle named for Darth Vader (Agathidium vaderi).

Even a fairly minor (but still well-known) character named Greedo, the ill-fated bounty hunter killed by Han Solo in "A New Hope," is commemorated with a species name  Peckoltia greedoi, a flat-headed catfish that bears a striking resemblance to the peculiar-looking alien.

Study lead author Matthew Van Dam, a postdoctoral researcher with the Zoological State Museum in Bavaria Germany, told Live Science in an email that studying weevils  one of the planet's most diverse groups of insects  can help scientists better understand the environments that weevils occupy, and can inform future conservation efforts in threatened areas.

This could be especially critical in parts of the world where the extent of animal diversity is still unknown. Scientists reported in the new study that there could be many more animal species on the island of New Britain that haven't yet been discovered, but that time would be of the essence to track them down and identify them, as palm oil plantation expansion has already claimed significant portions of land that were once covered by forest habitats.

The findings were published online April 21 in the journal ZooKeys.

Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitterand Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
Chernobyl used four Soviet-designed RBMK-1000 nuclear reactors, a design that's now recognized as inherently flawed. This system uses enriched U-235 uranium fuel to heat water, creating steam that drives the reactors' turbines and generates electricity. The nuclear core in the RBMK-1000 actually became more reactive as it produced steam, creating a positive-feedback loop known as a "positive-void coefficient."

Timothy Jorgensen is director of the Health Physics and Radiation Protection graduate program at Georgetown University, and author of "Strange Glow: The Story of Radiation" (Princeton University Press, 2016). Jorgensen contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

In the past two months, we have marked two anniversaries of catastrophic nuclear power plant accidents. March 11 was the five-year anniversary of the Fukushima accident in Japan , and April 26 was the 30-year anniversary of the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine . Both accidents involved reactor-core meltdowns, both accidents received the highest severity rating by the International Atomic Energy Agency (level 7), both accidents involved the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of residents, and both accidents still have people waiting to return to their homes. The accidents left a legacy of large-scale radioactive contamination of the environment, and that radioactivity will persist for years to come, despite the best cleanup efforts that money can buy.

Both accidents should have underscored the necessity for personnel highly trained in the radiation sciences to be stationed onsite, and marked the beginning of a redoubling of efforts to better educate the next generation of radiation-protection professionals to prevent future nuclear catastrophes. But ironically and sadly, they did not.

The U.S. federal government's investment in the training of radiation personnel has dropped, rather than risen, during the years since these nuclear accidents and is now at its lowest point in decades.

Admittedly, Chernobyl was a much bigger accident than Fukushima, both in terms of the amount of radioactivity released and the public health impacts. But there is another major distinction between Chernobyl and Fukushima: The Chernobyl accident was an entirely man-made event. It was the result of a "safety trial" gone terribly amiss, compounded by incompetence, and made even worse by misinformation and secrecy. The accident could have been prevented completely, and its consequences could have been mitigated, with effective training, management and regulatory oversight.

Fukushima, in contrast, was the unfortunate consequence of a natural disaster  an earthquake followed by a tsunami that breached seawalls and flooded reactor buildings. But even in the case of Fukushima, human error contributed to the problem. The true risks of tsunamis went underappreciated by the nuclear power industry, despite the evidence, so seawalls were of insufficient height. The reactor backup power supplies should not have been placed in the basements of the reactor building but rather on higher ground, well above a level that would pose a flood threat.

Moreover, there were engineering design errors at Fukushima. For example, a programming error resulted in a "fail-safe" switch automatically closing the valves in the cooling system that should have remained open, resulting in the core meltdown in Reactor Unit 1. Additionally, communication between the power company (Tokyo Electric Power Co.), the government and the public completely broke down, making it hard to manage the problem during the crisis.

Even though the earthquake and tsunami could not have been prevented, better foresight and training would surely have mitigated its consequences and possibly prevented the nuclear core meltdowns altogether. [Mutant Butterflies Linked to Japan's Nuclear Disaster ]

So what have we learned from Chernobyl and Fukushima, the two worst nuclear accidents of all time? Human errors, rather than outside forces, were largely to blame, and poor decisions by professional personnel are the major reasons we are still living with the environmental consequences many years after the events .

One would think that more and better-trained radiation professionals would be the key to preventing nuclear mishaps, and that such personnel would represent the first line of defense in averting future nuclear power plant accidents. Yet, amazingly, that has not been the prevailing trend in the United States. Fewer students are being trained in the radiation professions now than at the time of the accidents, and radiation training programs are closing down at an alarming rate, largely due to a lack of federal support for radiation education.

If you're a topical expert  researcher, business leader, author or innovator  and would like to contribute an op-ed piece, email us here

The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP)  a U.S. federally-chartered scientific organization that provides advice on radiation protection issues  recently convened a workshop to address the problem. The workshop findings concluded that "the country is on the verge of a severe shortfall of radiation professionals such that urgent national needs will not be met." The basic problem is that there are not enough radiation professionals currently being trained to replace the ones that are due to retire.

In the United States' nuclear power industry, the personnel shortfall has largely been masked by the movement of military radiation professionals from the nuclear Navy into nuclear power plant jobs in the civilian sector, but this personnel flow is not sustainable, and the NCRP anticipates severe shortages in qualified radiation professionals within 10 years.

Given that it can take two to seven years of graduate studies to become fully trained, there is not much lead time to reverse this ominous trend.

There is no doubt that training, management and oversight are expensive. But the cost of establishing and maintaining these preventive measures is but a fraction of the cost of cleanup.

For the kinds of money that has been spent on cleanup at Chernobyl and Fukushima, we could have trained and maintained an army of highly skilled and competent nuclear engineers, health physicists, reactor inspectors, risk managers, communication specialists and other radiation professionals.

With such an army, nuclear power could be among the safest of all energy options, in terms of both public health and environmental impact, even accounting for the insidious risks of natural disasters. But as long as we, as a society, neglect prevention and fail to provide funding for training of highly competent radiation professionals, we will always be living with the real threat of someday having to pack up and get out of town, leaving our radioactivity-contaminated lands to the wildlife.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates  and become part of the discussion  on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science .
Strange scour marks are visible on the bottom of the north Caspian Sea in this image acquired by the Landsat 8 satellite on April 16, 2016.

From 438 miles (705 kilometers) up, the floor of the north Caspian Sea looks like someone's just scoured it with a Brillo Pad. What could these bizarre marks be? Trawling scars? Propeller marks in sea algae or seagrass? An extraterrestrial message?

Don't get out the tinfoil hat yet: NASA scientists say these mystery lines are the work of sea ice.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center ocean scientists noticed the image this month, shortly after it was acquired by the Operational Land Imager on the Landsat 8 satellite, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. The space agency put out the puzzler on Twitter, asking readers what the lines might be.

Now, the answer seems clear. Stanislav Ogorodov, an earth scientist at Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russi, told the Earth Observatory that the phenomenon was almost certainly all natural: "Undoubtedly, most of these tracks are the result of ice gouging," he said. [14 of the Strangest Sites on Google Earth]

An image of the scoured area of the north Caspian Sea from Jan. 17, 2016, reveals ice at the ends of the marks, particularly visible in the upper right of this satellite photo. (Image credit: NASA images by Norman Kuring, NASA's Ocean Color web

The water in this area near Novyy Island is only about 10 feet (3 meters) deep, Ogorodov said, and the sea ice gets to be only about 1.6 feet (0.5 m) thick. But winds and currents sculpt this ice cover into jagged patterns called hummocks, which can reach the seabed. When wind or water pushes the floating ice around, Ogorodov explained to the Earth Observatory, the protruding parts can dig into the ocean floor and leave the scouring patterns seen from space.

Humans can cause similar-looking patterns. Propellers have scarred seagrass in the Everglades in Florida, and ships that fish by bottom trawling can bulldoze swaths of the seafloor with their nets. In the Caspian, though, the ice is almost certainly the predominant cause of these scours, according to the Earth Observatory. A look at a comparison image taken in January, when the ice was thick, shows chunks of ice at the ends of scour marks  the geoscience equivalent of a smoking gun.

The image also shows dark green coloration, which is likely seagrass or algae. The island in the image, Novyy Island, is the easternmost island of the Tyuleniy Archipelago, a group of islands in the northeastern part of the Caspian Sea that belong to Kazakhstan.

The Caspian is the largest inland sea in the world, and is bordered by Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran. The sea has no outflow to the ocean, and is, by an odd quirk of fate, below sea level. The northern end of the sea seen in the NASA image is in the Caspian Depression. The sea in this spot is about 92 feet (28 m) below sea level.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
Industrial robots demonstrate car-assembling capabilities at the China International Robot Show in Shanghai on July 9, 2014. [Photo/China Daily]

The market for industrial and service robots in China is expected to be worth 100 billion yuan (US$15.4 billion) within three years, according to a report from a robotic association.

Sales of robots in China are set to almost triple by 2018, defying a slowdown in the wider economy. Annual robot sales will jump to 150,000 by 2018 from 57,000 in 2014, said a report from Germany-based International Federation of Robotics.

Shanghai hopes to position itself as a leading center to develop service robots because the city has unique advantages to develop them because of its service industry and technological developments on chips, software and industrial design.

Robots include industrial robots in sectors like manufacturing, automotive and aerospace as well as service robots for taking care of children and aged people, home security, restaurants and banks.

"Service robot will soon become a part of intelligent home and smart community, taking care of children and aged people at home," said Gu Yancheng, marketing director of Suntotek, which develops service robots.
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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L), Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (C) and Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj attend the 14th Meeting of the Foreign Ministers of China, Russia and India, in Moscow, capital of Russia, on April 18, 2016 [Xinhua]

On April 18, the latest round of trilateral discussions between the foreign ministers of China, Russia and India took place in Moscow. These three countries, all major players in Asia, have now met regularly for fourteen years to discuss the many issues of common concern.

The three countries make an interesting combination. They are, of course, the Asian components of the BRICS group, and thus share joint concerns reinforced by their proximity. Geographical factors also create a joint interest in the progress of China's main regional and international economic cooperation project, the "Belt and Road" initiative .

Politically, though, the alignment is less close. For some years now, China and Russia have been working closely together on global political and security issues, sharing a concern to create an adequate counterweight to Western, and particularly U.S., preponderance on the world stage.

India, however, has hitherto aligned her interests along a slightly different axis. While India has historically maintained good cooperation with Russia, Sino-Indian relations have been a little trickier, ever since the two countries fought a brief border war in 1962. As they are both rapidly-growing Asian powers with huge populations, it was probably inevitable that they should find themselves to some extent in rivalry, especially as they have followed very different patterns of development. A further problem has been China's strong, consistent friendship with India's main regional rival, Pakistan. Thus, a three-way dialogue, with another country friendly to both, might well be a promising route to closer regional agreement.

Over the last two years, one key plank of the close Sino-Russian relationship has been mutual support on security issues relating to the immediate neighborhoods of the two major powers. Thus, China has always refused to endorse criticism of Russia's policies on the border with Ukraine, and in the same way, at the Moscow meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated Russia's opposition to any attempt to internationalize the dispute over the islands in the South China Sea, supporting the Chinese position that any problems need to be resolved through bilateral negotiation and consultation rather than attempts of international arbitration.

This Moscow meeting was of course one of the diplomatic stepping-stones to the further regular meeting to be held this year. President Putin will visit China in June, he told Foreign Minister Wang Yi during the latter's visit. The Russian leader did not go into details, just saying that "we'll have a nice detailed and friendly conversation with the Chinese leader, with whom we have really warm business and personally friendly relations." This implies that the Russian leader wants to send out a clear message that, whatever subjects for discussion may be on the table, there are unlikely to be any serious points of dispute.

As for the Sino-Indian relationship, it is notable that Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj's visit to Moscow coincided with the Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's visit to China, where he held bilateral discussions on common security issues and tension-reducing measures along India's troubled border with China. But the Moscow meeting included talks on one specific security issues relevant to all three countries; the restoration and maintenance of peace in Afghanistan. The issue of counter-terrorism was also discussed in Moscow; all three countries have a clear and common interest in fighting terrorism in central and southern Asia, but the Sino-Indian relationship has run into problems regardingthis issue, due to the fact that there are intense disagreements between India and Pakistan, and China's long and close relationship with the latter can make it difficult to reach any agreement. However, a bilateral meeting was held on this subject, and it is hoped that positions will move closer.

Later this year, Uzbekistan is to host a summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which will include further discussions on security and economic cooperation in Central Asia. This year, for the first time, both India and Pakistan will participate as full members. This is one more important reason why the three countries who met in Moscow need to work on developing a common perspective.

China's basic principle of foreign policy, as developed over the last few years, has been to use close and mutually beneficial economic links to underpin closer relations with other countries, and this trilateral combination is no exception. China may well be concerned that practical cooperation within the BRICS grouping has fallen behind expectation, and hopes that the RIC trilateral can become a powerhouse to energize the larger group.

On security matters, it will always be difficult to reach a unity of view between three countries with such differing interests and concerns. Nonetheless, China's multifaceted diplomatic policy, involving bilateral, trilateral and many forms of multilateral meetings and discussions, with a firm economic basis for political alignments, appears to be the best way to create a global network of dialogue and to build common interests.

The writer is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/timcollard.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
A woman who appeared at last weeks sitting of Longford District Court charged with criminal damage was sentenced to three months in prison, which the judge subsequently suspended.

Rose McDonagh (35), Halting Site, Harristown, Castlerea, Co Roscommon appeared before Judge Seamus Hughes charged with damaging two kids' jumpers; two ladies' jumpers and a ladies' jacket - value 110 - at Heatons, Ballymahon Street, Longford on November 11, 2015.

Outlining the evidence to the court Superintendent Fergus Treanor said that on the date of the incident, the defendant entered the store, picked up a few items and proceeded to take the tags from the clothing.

He then said that Ms McDonagh may have realised that she was being watched, because she threw down the clothes and attempted to leave the area.

It appears then that she may have seen that she was being observed because she left the clothes down and moved away, the Superintendent continued.

The clothes were then discovered damaged by staff.

In mitigation, the defendants solicitor Frank Gearty said his client had experienced a most disastrous visit to Longford on the occasion.

She came up on a trip and ended up getting into very serious trouble, he added.

Judge Hughes then asked how many previous convictions the defendant had and he was told 51.

They are mainly for road traffic offences, added Superintendent Treanor who provided the requested details to Judge Hughes.

Eight of them are for theft.

It then emerged that the defendant had been caught stealing in Dublin on a previous occasion and when the Judge asked her what it was that she stole, she said she couldnt remember.

It was also brought to Judge Hughess attention that Ms McDonagh had spent time in prison.

You are a prolific thief that seems to be only getting caught a percentage of the time, Judge Hughes fumed.

In mitigation, the defendants solicitor Frank Gearty said his client had three children aged 15, 12 and 10 years.

All these children go to school and have good attendance records, Mr Gearty continued.

Her sister took care of the children when she spent time in prison - she was there for six weeks in total - and Ms McDonagh is someone who is trying to do her best.

During his deliberations on the matter Judge Hughes said he never wanted to see the defendant in front of him again.

Upon her conviction the Judge handed down a three month suspended prison sentence and also fined her 200 in respect of the matter.
A woman who stole fabric softener from a local store was ordered to pay 150 after she was convicted during a hearing into the matter at last weeks sitting of Longford District Court.

Hana Buckova, 7 Weavers Hall, Longford appeared before Judge Seamus Hughes charged with stealing two bottles of Comfort fabric softener - valued at 20 - from Dealz, Market Square, Longford on March 12, 2016.

Outlining the evidence to the court, Sergeant David Gibbons said that on the date in question the defendant attempted to leave the store without paying for the items.

Sergeant Gibbons said he arrested the defendant in connection with the incident prior to the court sitting and subsequently charged her in respect of the matter.

She was then brought before Tuesdays court sitting to answer the charges brought against her.

The defendants solicitor Brid Mimnagh told the court that her client was pleading guilty to the offence.

Ms Mimnagh said the defendant was from the Czech Republic and had two children who lived in Germany.

She is living in Ireland for the last three years and gets 188 in social welfare payments, continued Ms Mimnagh.

During his deliberations on the matter Judge Hughes said he wanted 20 from the defendant in compensation for the items stolen.

A man then approached the defendant and handed her 20 which was then furnished to the court.

Who is that man?, the Judge asked.

This is Albert, added Ms Mimnagh.

Well Albert I want 150 along with that 20 by way of a fine..do you have it now?, queried Judge Hughes.

The Judge was told that Albert didnt have the money, but that it would be forthcoming the following day if the court was obliged to allow that time for payment.

The Judge subsequently adjourned proceedings to the Granard sitting of Longford District Court on April 15 for the payment.

I want it on Friday, not any other day, Albert, Friday, Judge Hughes concluded.
Family & Parenting, Nature & Weather, Local News, Press Releases, Seasonal & Current Events

By Long Island News & PR Published: April 26 2016

Hike it Baby Nassau-Long Island and over 230 other Hike it Baby branches will hit the trails on Saturday, June 4, 2016, in honor of American Hiking Societys National Trails Day. Hike it Baby Nassau-Long ...

Mark your calendar for Saturday, June 2, 2016! It's when Hike it Baby Nassau-Long Island will hit the trails in honor of American Hiking Societys National Trails Day at Muttontown Preserve.

Nassau County, NY - April 24, 2016 - Hike it Baby Nassau-Long Island and over 230 other Hike it Baby branches will hit the trails on Saturday, June 4, 2016, in honor of American Hiking Societys National Trails Day. Hike it Baby Nassau-Long Island has their hike scheduled at Muttontown Preserve at 10:00am on June 4, 2016.

Hike it Baby is an international organization dedicated to getting families out on the trails with newborns, toddlers, and children, and is the vision of Shanti Hodges, a 44-year-old first time mom from Portland, Oregon.

Hike it Baby Nassau-Long Island was founded in April 2016 by Jennifer Anne Camhi, Jericho and Kathryn Lattimer, Plainview. They love to spend time outdoors exploring with their boys.

Over 230 Hike it Baby branches across the country will also promote the 24th annual American Hiking Society National Trails Day by hosting free hikes. National Trails Day is a nationally recognized trail awareness program that occurs on the first Saturday of June and inspires the public to discover, learn about, and celebrate trails while participating in outdoor activities and trail stewardship projects.

About Hike It Baby

Hike it Baby hosts free hikes for families to help minimize the effects of postpartum depression in new mothers (and fathers), create a network of like-minded individuals, help families discover new parts of their cities and county, and teach children an appreciation for nature from the newborn stage on. The organization was founded in Portland Oregon in 2013 by Shanti Hodges and became a non-profit in 2016. Currently, there are over 230 branches in the US, as well as in Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, South Africa, and Italy, with over 100,000 members. For more information on Hike it Baby, please visit www.hikeitbaby.com

About American Hiking Society

Founded in 1976, American Hiking Society is the only national, recreation-based nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and protecting Americas hiking trails, their surrounding natural areas, and the hiking experience. To learn more about American Hiking Society, visit www.AmericanHiking.org.

For more information on National Trails Day, please visit www.nationaltrailsday.org
Nassau County, NY - April 25, 2016 - Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano, Presiding Officer Norma Gonsalves, Minority Leader Kevan Abrahams and County Legislators today announced a new local law to create the Service Disabled Veteran-Owned Business Program to help ensure service disabled veterans play a greater role in providing goods and services to Nassau County residents. The program provides service-disabled veterans additional assistance and support in forming and expanding small businesses by ensuring greater participation in contracting opportunities with Nassau County.

Service-disabled veterans sacrificed their health for our nation and its important that we honor them for their service to our Country, said County Executive Mangano. This program provides Disabled Veteran-Owned Businesses the opportunity to further participate in government contracts.

Fighting for our veterans, particularly our service-disabled veterans, has always been one of my top priorities. In addition to securing the Veterans Clinic at the Nassau University Medical Center, laws such as this one are just another way that we can help our veterans who have given so much to us, stated Presiding Officer Norma Gonsalves.

"Veterans are our most cherished resource here in Nassau. They have sacrificed so much that it is only right that we help lift, and invest in them when they arrive home. It is also smart for Nassau County to tap into the great talent pool that is veterans, as they have so much to teach us. Most importantly it is also the right thing to do, as they have already given us so much, this bill is a small way we can give back", said Kevan Abrahams.

Service-disabled veterans who have sacrificed so much for our nation, state and county will now have greater access to county business with the passage of this legislation. We are indebted for their service and obligated to create opportunities that encourage our veterans to seek business opportunities. This legislation is long overdue and a positive step forward to better assist veterans with county business opportunities, while having a positive impact on our economy and further reducing the low county unemployment rate, Legislator C. William Gaylor, III.

Empowering veteran-owned businesses is key in our mission to create jobs, boost the economy, and stabilize the middle class, said Legislator Laura Curran. Veterans are natural entrepreneurs. They are trained to think on their feet, to quickly adapt to unforeseen conditions, and to work in results-oriented teams. An added benefit is that veterans who own businesses also tend to hire other veterans  and thats welcome news for our soldiers when they come home.

Nassau County Veterans Service Agency Director Ralph Esposito stated, I thank County Executive Mangano for continuing to lead the way in providing a better life for our veterans. Whether veterans are in need of small business assistance, benefits, housing or even canned food and toiletries, the Nassau County Veterans Service Agency is here to help. If you serve, you deserve!

Service-Disabled Veterans-Owned Businesses must obtain certification from the New York State Office of General Services Division of Service Disabled Veterans' Business Development. The program will be managed by the Nassau County Office of Minority Affairs (OMA). This office will conduct outreach and monitor compliance with the local law. There are already more than 200 companies certified as Service-Disabled Veterans-Owned Businesses in New York State.

To apply for State certification, Service-Disabled Veteran Business Owners may visit here or call (844) 579-7570. To register with Nassau County for bidding opportunities Service-Disabled Veteran Business Owners may call (844) 773-2243 or visit here.

Since taking office in 2010, County Executive Mangano has enhanced services for Nassaus 100,000 veterans, including free transportation to the Northport VA Hospital and the East Meadow Clinic. The Mangano administration also established 42 homes, located on Mitchel Field, to provide affordable housing for veterans and their families and an additional 18 homes for active-duty military personnel. Additionally, the County helped rehabilitate five two-bedroom townhouses in Hempstead for homeless veterans and their families.

For more information on Veteran Service Agency programs, veterans may visit the Nassau County Veterans Service Agency at 2201 Hempstead Turnpike, Building Q, in East Meadow or can call (516)-572-6565. If transportation is needed, veterans may call (516) 572-6526.
The LIRR has issued its Belmont Park Spring Meet Timetable with train service information through May 17. Copies are available at stations and online. In all, Belmont Park will offer 54 days of racing through Sunday, July 17, including the 148th running of the Belmont Stakes  the oldest and longest race of thoroughbred racings Triple Crown - on Saturday, June 11.

New LIRR Belmont station and tracks. Photo via MTA LIRR on Facebook.

Fans making the short trip to Belmont Park aboard the LIRR will once again find a newly refurbished Belmont Park Station with its new 10-car high, train level platforms, new staircases, new lighting and a ramp that provides platform access to mobility-impaired customers. The upgrades were completed last year in time for the 2015 Belmont Stakes.

The Belmont spring/summer meet also will feature a second big event, the international themed Stars & Stripes Festival featuring the Grade 1, $1.25 million Belmont Derby and the $1 million Belmont Oaks on Saturday, July 9. And of course, in the weeks leading up to the Belmont Stakes, Belmont Park will be the place to watch the first two legs of the Triple Court as it hosts a Kentucky Derby simulcast on Saturday, May 7 and a Preakness Stakes simulcast on Saturday, May 21.

LIRR Service to Belmont Park on Wednesdays, Thursdays & Fridays

Eastbound

The LIRRs daily Belmont Special will depart from Penn Station at 10:58 a.m., making stops at Woodside at 11:10 a.m., Jamaica at 11:19 a.m. and arriving at Belmont Station at 11:33 a.m. You can still catch most of the racing day on a second train that leaves Penn Station at 11:41 a.m., arriving in Jamaica at 12:02 p.m., where customers can board a shuttle train to Belmont.

Brooklyn customers can catch the Belmont train at Jamaica by taking the 10:35 a.m. or 11:35 a.m. trains from Atlantic Terminal.

Westbound

At the end of each racing day, trains will depart Belmont Station at 3:42 p.m. and 6:25 p.m. approximately 30 minutes after the last race.

LIRR Service to Belmont Service on Saturdays, Sundays & Holidays

Eastbound

On Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, the first train departs Penn Station at 11:04 a.m., stopping at Woodside at 11:16 a.m. and Jamaica at 11:27 a.m. A second train leaves Penn at 11:55 a.m. and arrives in Jamaica at 12:18 p.m. where customers change for a shuttle train to Belmont. Customers coming from Brooklyn can take the 10:45 a.m. and 11:45 a.m. trains from Atlantic Terminal and connect with the Belmont train at Jamaica

Westbound

At the end of each racing day, trains will depart Belmont Park at 4:41 p.m. and 6:08 p.m., approximately 30 minutes after the last race.

Purchasing Tickets in Advance

To avoid higher on-board fares and save time, customers should purchase round-trip tickets in advance. City Ticket is not valid for travel to or from Belmont Park. Belmont Package tickets are available at LIRR ticket offices as well as from gray, blue and green ticket machines at stations. Tickets are NOT sold at Belmont Station. Weekly and monthly ticket holders can use their tickets for travel to Jamaica and need only purchase an $11 round-trip package ticket at an LIRR station prior to boarding the Belmont Special to cover the fare between Belmont Park and Jamaica. Round-trip tickets are not sold aboard trains.

For More Information

Again, customers should consult the special Belmont Park Spring Meet Timetable (below) available at LIRR stations and online and at the NYRA website. They can also call 511, the New York State Travel Information line, and say: Long Island Rail Road. If you are deaf or hard of hearing, use your preferred relay service provider or the free 711 relay to reach LIRR at 511.
Family & Parenting, Local News, Health & Wellness, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: April 26 2016

With legislation necessary to take on the Zika virus headed to the Senate floor within a month, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today announced he will push the Presidents emergency funding request of $1.9 billion ...

Washington, DC - April 24, 2016 - With legislation necessary to take on the Zika virus headed to the Senate floor within a month, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today announced he will push the Presidents emergency funding request of $1.9 billion to help prevent and treat the spread of the Zika epidemic. Schumer said that more than 800 Americans have already contracted Zika, with 60 confirmed cases in New York State. Just recently, the CDC confirmed the link between Zika during pregnancy and severe birth defects like microcephaly. Schumer said that these funds are critical in the fight against Zika and that Congress should deliver this funding before the epidemic spreads and more cases are brought to the United States come mosquito season.

With so many women and families across the country looking for action, it is critical that members of Congress work together to greenlight at least $1.9 billion in emergency funding as soon as possible so that we can help stem the spread of Zika, said U.S. Senator Charles Schumer. Simply put, anyone repellent to this emergency funding plan isnt serious about beating Zika. When it comes to fighting this epidemic, a stitch in time will save nine and so, I will do everything in my power to make sure emergency funding is delivered.

President Obamas supplemental emergency funding request, which is now part of a legislative bill sponsored by Florida U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, includes a comprehensive response to the Zika virus. Overall, the federal funds would allow the United States to take critical steps in the response to Zika at home and abroad. For instance, the plan would improve vector control, expand access to family planning and contraceptives and accelerate efforts to developing a vaccine. There is currently no treatment or vaccine available for Zika. Funds could be used to provide for mosquito control programs across the country. Mosquito control programs typically involve surveillance methods, source reduction methods and other control strategies. Additionally, the funds would help perfect diagnostic tools and testing.

Lastly, the funds would include strong support for Puerto Rico, where women and families are especially threatened.

Zika virus is spread to people through mosquito bites. Mosquitoes become infected when they feed on a person who has already been infected by the virus. The Aedes aegypti has spread most of the cases; these types of mosquitoes have been found in Florida and Hawaii. The Asian Tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, is also known to transmit the virus; these types of mosquitoes have been found in New York and Chicago.

Common symptoms of Zika include fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis, however, the virus may cause more serious risks to those who are pregnant. Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that the Zika virus can cause microcephaly and other birth defects. Microcephaly is a rare condition in which the babys head is abnormally small and can have brain damage. Thousands of infants in Brazil have already been born with microcephaly since last spring.

More than 800 Americans have been infected with the Zika virus, including about 90 pregnant women, in 40 states, Washington, D.C., and 3 U.S. Territories, including 89 pregnant women, have already been infected by the virus. In New York, there have been at least sixty confirmed cases.

According to the CDC, the imported cases could result in local spread of the virus in the United States. In May, the Pan American Health Organization issued an alert regarding the first confirmed Zika virus infection in Brazil. So far, approximately 1.5 million people have contracted the virus in Brazil. Zika virus has spread to more than two dozen countries including the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Saint Martin, Venezuela and others. Earlier this year, the CDC issued an Alert- Level 2 Practice Enhanced Precautions travel warning about the risk of traveling to countries affected by the virus. Also, earlier this year, the World Health Organizations (WHO) Director General Margaret Chan convened an International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on Zika virus as well as the observed increase in neurological disorders and neonatal malformations associated with the virus. The Committee, which convened in Geneva, determined the outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. According to WHO, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern is defined as an extraordinary event which is determined, as provided in these Regulations: to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease; and to potentially require a coordinated international response.

Previously, Schumer called for a three-point federal plan aimed at containing the Zika virus. First, Schumer called on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to prioritize and increase its involvement in Zika-affected countries abroad in order to better prevent, contain and treat the virus. USAID is one of the lead government entities that works overseas to help improve global health, help societies prevent and recover from conflicts, and more. Second, Schumer called on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute of Health (NIH) to focus resources to expeditiously develop a vaccine and to work alongside the private sector in doing so. Currently, there is no cure, treatment or vaccine available for Zika, which can be extremely serious to pregnant women because of possible birth defectslike microcephaly--linked to the virus. Lastly, Schumer successfully called on the U.S. to push the World Health Organization (WHO) to publicly declare a health emergency. On February 1st, the WHO official declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern soon after Schumers push. Schumer has also called for a Zika Czar to better help fight the virus before it spreads further and more cases are brought to the United States.
Remove valuables from the vehicle, especially what is easily visible. This includes all removable electronics, purses, wallets, loose change and packages of any kind. If you must keep these items in your car, please place in a locked glove box or the trunk.

Remove valuables from the vehicle, especially what is easily visible. This includes all removable electronics, purses, wallets, loose change and packages of any kind. If you must keep these items in your car, please place in a locked glove box or the trunk.
 Flash

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday said that although new malaria cases have fallen by 18 percent since 2000, the world is still far from eliminating malaria, and Africa remains the biggest victim.

A woman carrying a baby holds a treated mosquito net during a malaria prevention action at Ajah in Eti Osa East district of Lagos, on April 21, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

"In Africa, where the burden of malaria is greatest, the mortality rate has fallen by two-thirds," Ban said in his message for the World Malaria Day, which falls on April 25.

Between 2000 and 2015, an estimated six million deaths from malaria were averted, thanks in part to efforts linked with the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight anti-poverty targets which was replaced in 2016 by the Sustainable Development Goals, the secretary-general said.

"The increase in global financing for malaria has yielded impressive results," he said, adding that more than half of the people in Africa are now protected by mosquito nets, up from less than 2 percent in 2000.

"The development and distribution of rapid diagnostic tests means cases can be identified and action taken quickly to prevent further spread of the disease," Ban said.

"Investment in malaria prevention and treatment is one of the most cost-effective ways to spend money," he said. "The World Health Organization estimates that anti-malarial efforts have saved 900 million (U.S.) dollars in healthcare costs alone since 2001, in addition to the economic contributions of people who would otherwise be sick."

"Today, on World Malaria Day, we should celebrate these remarkable achievements in the battle against one of the world's biggest killers," he said. "But sadly, we are still far from eliminating malaria."

Last year, there were 214 million new malaria cases and more than 400,000 deaths, he noted, adding that nearly nine in 10 cases were in Africa.

"Malaria is a formidable opponent, so there is no guarantee that progress will continue," he said. "If we lower our guard, experience shows that the disease may come back. Mosquitoes develop resistance to insecticides and malaria parasites can become resistant to medicines."

Ban has commend the World Health Assembly for setting ambitious goals for 2030: reducing malaria cases and mortality by at least 90 percent; and eliminating malaria in at least 35 countries.

"Reaching these goals will require significantly greater investment in fighting malaria. But it will take more than money," he said. "It will take political will and leadership."

"On World Malaria Day, as we celebrate our progress against this ancient killer, I call on everyone involved to redouble our efforts to reach the 2030 malaria goals," he said.

World Malaria Day is an international observance commemorated every year on 25 April and recognizes global efforts to control malaria.

World Malaria Day sprung out of the efforts taking place across the African continent to commemorate Africa Malaria Day. It is one of eight official global public health campaigns currently marked by the World Health Organization.
Crime, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: April 26 2016

The Major Case Bureau reports the details of a Robbery which occurred on Monday, April 25, 2016 at 9:48 a.m. in New Hyde Park.

Police are on the hunt for the person or person(s) responsible for the series of commercial business robberies that are happening throughout Nassau County. The latest robbery occurred at the New Hyde Park Subway restaurant store.

New Hyde Park, NY - April 26, 2016 - The Major Case Bureau reports the details of a Robbery which occurred on Monday, April 25, 2016 at 9:48 a.m. in New Hyde Park.

According to Robbery Squad detectives, a male black, 6 tall with a medium build, in his mid-twenties with a dark complexion, wearing a dark colored hooded jacket, dark sunglasses, a dark cloth across his face, dark gloves, blue jeans and tan work boots entered the Subway store located at 1201 Jericho Turnpike armed with a large kitchen knife. He demanded money from the female counterperson, 20, who complied opening the cash register. The suspect took an undisclosed amount of cash before fleeing on foot northbound on N. 12th Street. There were no customers in the store at the time of the incident. No injuries were reported. This Robbery is being investigated as part of the recent pattern.

Detectives ask anyone with information about this crime to contact Nassau County Crime Stoppers at 1-800-244-TIPS. All callers will remain anonymous.
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Preparations for the burning of more than 100 metric tons of elephant ivory, rhino horn and other seized illegal wildlife products have entered the home stretch and a top Kenya wildlife protection official said Kenya had declared total war on the ivory trade.

Pupils from Stem International School assist in stacking elephant tusks for burning in Nairobi National Park. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]

A total of 105 tons of ivory and 1.35 tons of rhino horn will be set ablaze by President Uhuru Kenyatta on April 30 in Nairobi National Park in the presence of other heads of state and dignitaries from all over the world.

On Friday, the preparation attracted the participation of pupils from Stem International School, who were on a sightseeing drive in the park. The pupils visited the ivory-burning site and joined efforts to stack the ivory pyres.

Kenya Wildlife Service Director General Kitili Mbathi oversaw the opening of the container with ivory and said Kenya had declared total war on the ivory trade.

Volunteers, including the pupils, moved the ivory to one of the pier chambers to be used to burn the contraband wildlife products under the supervision of KWS staff.
A team of several jihadists posing as delivery men killed a LGBT activist, Xulhaz Mannan, and his friend in Bangladeshs capital of Dhaka yesterday. The men were reportedly hacked to death with machetes in Mannans flat.

Ansar al Islam, the Bangladeshi branch of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), quickly claimed responsibility for the slayings in a message released on Twitter and other social media sites.

Assuming AQISs claim is accurate, the murders are the latest in an orchestrated campaign against men accused of offending the Islamic faith and spreading supposedly immoral behaviors. More than one dozen victims have been killed or wounded in the assaults since 2013. AQIS previously said that the killings were authorized by al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri.

The assassinations demonstrate how al Qaeda is attempting to market its draconian version of the Islamic faith. AQIS even tries to claim the moral high ground after butchering innocent men.

Mannan was the founder of a LGBT magazine in Bangladesh and worked for the US Embassy there for eight years before joining USAID. He and his friend, Samir Mahbub Tonoy, were specifically targeted by AQIS for their LGBT activism.

By the grace of Almighty Allah, the mujahidin of Ansar al-Islam (AQIS, Bangladesh branch) were able to assassin [sic] Xulhaz Mannan and his associate Samir Mahbub Tonoy, the groups claim of responsibility reads. The English version of the message, which was released in multiple languages, can be seen on the right.

They were pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh, the AQIS statement continues. Xulhaz Mannan was the director of Roopbaan (A cult comprised of the gays and the lesbians) while Samir Mahbub Tonoy was one of its most important activists. They were working day and night to promote homosexuality among the people of this land since 1998 with the help of their masters, the US crusaders and its Indian allies.

The assassinations of Mannan and Tonoy are part of an ongoing, targeted campaign by AQIS, which selects specific men for death. AQIS deliberately contrasts its actions with indiscriminate acts of violence.

For example, the Ansar al Islam branch of AQIS released a statement earlier this month entitled, Whos Next? In it, AQIS sets forth the criteria for its slayings. The message can be seen on the right.

The group identified its next targets as belonging to eight categories of people, ranging from those who have allegedly insulted Allah or the prophet Mohammed to those who oppose the Islamic Shariah [law] by their talks or writings or show insolence towards it or insult it.

Mannan and Tonoy may have been marked for death because AQIS included them in the seventh category. It reads: Those who are engaged in spreading nudity, obscenity and shamefulness in the Muslim society. Note that, there is a huge difference in the Islamic Shariah between doing something haram (prohibited) personally and trying to spread it in the society.

Portraying its terror as a defense of Islam

Most of the victims targeted by AQIS thus far had allegedly insulted the religion of Islam. [See LWJ report, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent leader says attacks on blasphemers ordered by Zawahiri.]

In May 2015, AQIS leader Asim Umar, claimed responsibility for the murders of six people who were supposedly blasphemers. Umar claimed that his jihadists were responsible for killing Rajib Haider (a blogger murdered in February 2013), Muhammad Shakil Auj (who was the dean of Islamic Studies at the University of Karachi when he was shot in September 2014), Shafiul Islam (a professor at Rajshahi University who was killed in September 2014), Aniqa Naz (a Pakistani blogger), Avijit Roy (a prominent atheist blogger hacked to death in February 2015) and Washiqur Rahman (a blogger who was killed in March 2015).

Praise be to Allah, these assassinations are part of a series of operations initiated by the different branches of al Qaeda on the orders of our respected leader Sheikh Ayman al Zawahiri (may Allah protect him), Umar said in the May 2015 video. It is equally part of our commitment to fulfill the oath of Sheikh Osama [bin Laden] (may Allah have mercy on him).

Umar connected the series of murders to other terrorist attacks, including the massacre at Charlie Hebdos offices in Paris in January 2015. The jihadists have taught a lesson to blasphemers in France, Denmark, Pakistan and now in Bangladesh, Umar claimed. He said al Qaedas assassination campaign is part of the same warwhether it is fought with drones [in northern Pakistan] or with the cursed pens of Charlie Hebdo.

AQIS claimed responsibility for additional killings and attempted murders in the months that followed Umars message. In January, the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) posted an infographic online (seen on the right) in which several other attacks were claimed.

Earlier this month, AQIS said its men were responsible for the death of Nazimuddin Samad, whom the jihadists accused of mocking Allah on Facebook.

Supporters of the Islamic State have lashed out at individuals as well. Rezaul Karim Siddique, a university professor, was hacked to death earlier this week. Amaq News Agency, a propaganda arm of the Islamic State, said Siddique was killed because he was calling to atheism in the city of Rajshahi in Bangladesh. However, the professors family denied that he was an atheist.

AQIS claims that its victims are chosen with precision. We are not targeting every atheist bloggers [sic], the organizations targeting criteria reads. We dont have problem [sic] with other religions or beliefs but we will not tolerate anyone insulting [the] prophet Muhammad. We are targeting those who are insulting our Prophet in the name of Atheism, Free Speech or Free Thinking.

And the jihadists are now targeting LGBT activists as well.

Police officials in Dhaka say that previous AQIS claims were proven to be fake. But if they are right, then this would mean that roving bans of murderers have randomly and repeatedly targeted prominent commentators and activists in the same manner with machetes and knives. Although some of AQIS statements may be inaccurate, it is reasonable to assume that the jihadists are targeting victims just as they say.

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
Luton is a large town, borough and unitary authority area of Bedfordshire. Luton and its near neighbours, Dunstable and Houghton Regis, form the Luton/Dunstable Urban Area with a population of about 258,000. Luton is home to Championship team Luton Town Football Club, London Luton Airport and The University of Bedfordshire. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter. For all the latest news from Luton sign up to our newsletter here.
The FBI claims that being forced to share its iPhone-hacking tool with Apple wouldnt be worth itbecause the government agency doesnt actually know how it works.

On Wednesday, the FBI officially made its decision against sharing its iPhone-hacking tool with Apple, according to Bloomberg. The FBI claims that the reasoning behind the decision is that it lacks the technical expertise to decipher the underlying code that facilitated hacking into the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the FBIs intention against launching an internal government investigation to decide whether to share the information with Apple.

According to director James Comey, the FBI paid at least $1 million to an undisclosed third-party for this secret hacking tool after Apple refused to undermine the security of its own product and put customers at risk. Even though the FBI acquired the tool, federal agents are unfamiliar with how it actually works so they cant report it to the Vulnerabilities Equities Process, the government system that would determine whether there are any security weaknesses that should be reported to Apple.

While the FBIs million-dollar hacking tool could remain a secret, Apple told The Wall Street Journal that whatever iPhone vulnerability the tool exploited will have a short shelf life. Apple has vowed to continue improving the security of its products and to patch any vulnerabilities.

Why this matters: Even though the specific FBI-Apple court fight that sparked this debate has been defused, a broader back-and-forth between the government and tech companies continues. Now, its the governments Vulnerabilities Equities Process thats being put into question. In this process, intelligence agencies decide whether a specific software vulnerability needs to be disclosed to its manufacturer or the public. This decision is reached by weighing the risk of the vulnerability being exploited with the value to national security in keeping the vulnerability a secret.

The White House has said that the Vulnerabilities Equities Process is designed to help software makers patch weaknesses, but some privacy advocates argue that the process actually favors national security.

If the government can circumvent the process merely by buying vulnerabilities, then the process becomes a farce, Christopher Soghoian, chief technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the WSJ. The FBI is not interested in cybersecurity.
Speakers from Meta, Finnegan, Equifax and the LOT Network said it was important to use data, get involved and reach out more to improve diversity and inclusion
India must put quality control at the centre of its policies on IP filing if it doesnt want to deal with a mess of its own making later
MADISON  After years of disheartening failures, Democrats insist 2016 is the year the tide turns in the state Capitol.

Democrats have been relegated to the statehouse sidelines since the 2010 elections, when Gov. Scott Walker was first elected.

Republicans also captured both houses of the Legislature in that election  and havent looked back since. Republicans now hold a 19-14 edge in the state Senate, and their biggest Assembly majority, 63-36, since the Eisenhower administration.

The legislative majorities were what enabled the enactment of Walkers sweeping agenda: to curtail collective bargaining, partially repeal the prevailing wage, freeze property taxes and college tuition, slash college and university funding, and send more money to private voucher schools.

As lawmakers turn toward campaigning, Democrats see a chance to roll back those legislative majorities this fall. They envision two statewide, top-of-ticket races  the presidential and U.S. Senate contests  playing out in their favor. They also expect to benefit from what they describe as voter unrest with the states economy and the unpopularity of Walkers agenda.

I think its a combination of another favorable political environment for Democrats and the cumulative effect of the overreach weve seen from Republicans in the last six years, said Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki. (Voters) are seeing a Republican caucus focus on things that dont affect their lives  whether its voter ID, whether its (about) John Doe investigations, whether its open records. All of these things are kind of what happens when you have one-party control for a long time.

But Republicans rightly say theyve heard this story before. Democrats vowed to roll back GOP legislative influence in the 2011 recalls and the 2012 and 2014 general elections, yet Republicans now wield more statehouse clout than they have in decades. They also adopted legislative district boundaries in 2011 that have greatly aided their quest to retain control of the Legislature.

Assembly Republicans faced a similar headwind in the 2012 election, when Democratic President Barack Obama carried the state and Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin won statewide. Yet the GOP retained the same Assembly majority they had going into the election, 60 seats.

Assembly Republicans have had a track record of winning in tough  and better  environments, because we have candidates who know that its all about local connections, said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.

A key unanswered question in this election is who the Republican presidential nominee will be.

If its front-runner Donald Trump, GOP leaders admit it could hurt other Republicans on the ticket.

The big challenge for this cycle is, you just dont know what effect the top of the ticket will have on down, said Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau.

Senate will be battleground

Democratic leaders in the Senate and Assembly, optimistic as they are, wont predict their party will regain control of either chamber this fall.

The Senate, where Republicans have a 19-14 majority, is where Democrats have the better shot at regaining control.

Democratic Leader Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, highlighted three seats as pickup opportunities for her party: Senate District 18, an open seat; Senate District 12, now represented by Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst, and Senate District 10, represented by Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls.

Democrats would need to win all three to wrest control of the Senate  something Shilling isnt willing to pledge.

I always like to under-promise and over-deliver, Shilling said. This is a several-election-term plan that we want to implement.

Republican strategist Brian Fraley said if Trump is atop the ticket, Senate Democrats could see that as an opportunity to secure a majority.

But a wrench in that plan could be Shillings own re-election, he said. Former GOP Sen. Dan Kapanke of La Crosse is challenging Shilling.

Hes by far the best candidate that the Republicans could have recruited, said Fraley of Kapanke, a businessman who represented most of the area until he was defeated in a 2011 recall by Shilling. At the very least, its going to force Jennifer Shilling to spend more time worrying about her own re-election and less time focusing on helping the members of her caucus.

Part of the Democrats strategy includes getting Winnebago County Executive Mark Harris elected to the 18th District seat being vacated by outgoing Sen. Rick Gudex, R-Fond du Lac. The GOP candidates are activist Daniel Feyen and pastor and small business owner Mark Elliott, who will square off in the August primary.

The specter of Harris candidacy prompted Fitzgerald to push a bill that prohibits county executives from also serving in the state Legislature  which would force Harris to resign from his county post should he prevail in November.

A number of lawmakers  including some Republicans  characterized the bill as being driven by politics.

I think it was a good candidate recruitment on their level, and I think the bill that seemed to specifically target him was an unforced error on the part of Republicans. But the Republicans have a competitive primary there as well, Fraley said.

Trump could be a factor

Assembly Democratic Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, acknowledges its unlikely Democrats could gain control of the Assembly in the 2016 election. But Barca said hes confident Democrats will make significant inroads.

Fraley agreed, saying it would not be shocking to see them cut a few seats down.

Barcas targeted districts are mostly clustered in western Wisconsin, west of Madison or near Eau Claire.

The 8th U.S. Congressional District race could have an impact on some of the races down ticket, Fraley said. The incumbent, Reid Ribble, isnt seeking re-election and the district can be competitive, though it leans slightly Republican.

GOP candidates for the seat include state Sen. Frank Lasee, R-De Pere, former U.S. Marine Corps Captain Mike Gallagher and Terry McNulty of Forestville. Among Democrats, Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson has announced his candidacy.

Whether its coattails or overshadowing the candidates ability to get messages out, you might see a Republican lose with Trump at the top of the ticket and a very competitive 8th Congressional race soaking up the resources, said Fraley.

Then theres the possibility of a Trump factor. The GOP front-runner is deeply unpopular in Wisconsin, with 70 percent viewing him unfavorably in the most recent Marquette Law School Poll.

Asked if Trump as the GOP nominee could hurt the partys chances down-ballot, Vos said it definitely could in statewide races.

But Vos  who endorsed U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz for president last month, after initially backing U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio  said the Trump drag may not translate to legislative races because so many Democratic voters are packed into urban districts in Madison, Milwaukee, Racine and Green Bay.

Western Wisconsin was among Trumps few strongholds in the states April 5 GOP primary. That region also is home to many of the legislative districts that could be in play this fall, Vos noted.

There are significant chunks of Wisconsin where Donald Trump and his message of being an outsider resonates pretty well, Vos said.

At the very least, (former Sen. Dan Kapankes challenge is) going to force Jennifer Shilling to spend more time worrying about her own re-election and less time focusing on helping the members of her caucus. Brian Fraley, Republican strategist I always like to under-promise and over-deliver. This is a several-election-term plan that we want to implement. Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse
After serving as vice president of the Chippewa Falls School Board for the past four years, it came as no surprise that Amy Mason was elevated to the top spot by a board vote Monday night.

Mason steps into the presidents role that was inhabited by Jerry Smith for nearly the past year. Smith, who was 77 when he announced he would not seek re-election this year, served for 15 years on the board.

Mason, 40, is in her second term on the School Board. She was first elected in 2011.

Kathy Strecker slid into Masons former role as board vice president. Strecker, who lives in the town of Anson, was named to the School Board last summer and was elected to a three-year term earlier this month.

Staish Buchner remained as board clerk and Pat Allen will stay on as board treasurer.

Mason had turned down the presidency last year when Jim Dimock resigned, saying she wasnt ready at the time. But this time she had a different answer.

There were a number of variables last year, she said. That included having just served one term as a Chippewa Falls City Council member. Theres more to being president than chairing a meeting, and I wanted to make sure I was ready for the leadership challenge. We have a lot before us.

Im excited to be working with her, and I think she will provide great leadership for the Board of Education, said Superintendent Heidi Eliopoulos.

The monthly meeting was postponed to Monday so that newly-elected board members David Czech and Jennifer Heinz could be seated. The fourth Monday in April was the first day that could have happened.

Mason, who was a communications major at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, is a mother of four boys. It was her involvement in her sons lives that prompted her to run for a spot on the Chippewa Falls School Board five years ago.

She served seven years as an Army Reserve officer, and currently works for the U.S. Department of Agricultures farm-loan program.

I grew up on a farm, and never thought I would be working with farmers, Mason said. But I love it. Its very rewarding.

In other action

 Joel C. Jahnke, 28, a seventh-grade science teacher who was arrested in March on suspicion of having sexual contact with a student, had his contract terminated by the School Board Monday in a unanimous vote.

It sends a message that what he did was so terrible that we were not going to accept his resignation, Mason said. We would have (terminated him) last month, but we waited to make sure we had all the legalities in place.

Jahnke was suspended from his teaching position immediately after the school received allegations against him and notified police. At its last meeting, the School Board suspended him indefinitely without pay.

 Business director Chad Trowbridge presented the board with a preliminary budget, which the board approved.

 Michelle Golden, the school districts director of human resources and public relations, presented a report on adjusting compensation and benefits for support staff. She said the study group worked with a Chamber of Commerce wage survey and also compared salaries to other schools of similar size.

Compensation currently relates exclusively to a hiring date. The study found that some positions were below the average for a position while others were higher or in the average range, Golden said. Making adjustments to even out the wages by position would amount to almost $134,000.

Golden also addressed health insurance costs, which is where the biggest discrepancies were found.

If we currently take all of our employees who have insurance, the nine-month employees pay three months full premium, which can be up to $6,000, she said. We also have some conflicts with the Affordable Care Act.

By helping cover those extra three months of insurance premiums for support staff, as the school does for its full-time staff, it would cost the school approximately $166,000.

Were trying to be proactive with our insurance costs, she added, while also addressing compensation adjustments.

Golden noted that some support staff do not take the schools insurance plan. Should a number of those join the schools program, it would raise the districts costs.

With insurance premiums continuing to rise, Trowbridge and Golden said the district is considering raising premiums for its employees.

The insurance committee looked at how to address the shortfall, and is looking at doubling deductibles, and increasing out-of-pocket maximums, Trowbridge said.

The board decided to look further into the insurance piece of the puzzle, and voted 7-0 to accept the support staff compensation model at a cost of $133,700.

 Jerry Smith, a member of the Chippewa Falls Planning Commission, notified Eliopoulos that the commission has approved a development on the citys south side that calls for between 60-72 units, from 1-3 bedrooms.

The development would fall into the school boundary for Halmstad Elementary, and Eliopoulos noted that Halmstad is already past capacity for students.
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Loadsa luv, MC xoxo

We have a confession: For every email we send, at least a third of the time we spend on it is used pondering over how to sign off.

Unless you're emailing your nearest and dearest and can round it off with a series of kisses and 'love yoooouuus', trying to give your email a tone-appropriate ending is a diplomatic nightmare.

You dont want to sound too cold, blunt or annoyed, with a sincerely. Thanks seems a passive aggressive, especially in the midst of negotiations, and is a best wishes a bit like youre signing your autographed picture?

Perhaps its best not to sign off at all? Business etiquette Barbara Pachter diagrees, telling Business Insider, Not closing is way too abrupt. If you have a salutation, you should have a closing to balance it out. Will Schwalbe one of the writers of SEND: Why People Email So Badly And How To Do It Better, adds: We dont go around in life barking orders at one another and we shouldnt on email either.

5 ways to work smarter, NOT harder

So what is the best way? Patcher, Shwalbe, and author of career guide, Leave Your Mark, Aliza Licht, have spoken to Business Insider, and are all in agreement as to which is the best way to sign-off, with the winner being

Best.

All three agree that a simple best, is the safest possible choice, as its inoffensive and almost universally appropriate.

But what about the hundreds of other options out there? The experts have also given their thoughts on those...

Thanks

According to those in the know, this is rarely the best way to end an email. Schwalbe says its, Fine if its for the favour a person has done, but obnoxious if its a command disguised as a premature gratitude.

Sincerely

This isnt popular with the experts. Is this a cover letter? Because otherwise, no, says Licht. While Schwalbe adds that its very formal and cold if it follows more intimate sign-offs. If youre hell bent on being sincere though, Patcher says its appropriate if you start the email with dear.

Looking forward

This gets a thumbs-up from all three  but only if you are seeing the recipient soon.

Why the office is ageing you

xx

Now the email kiss is a bit of a minefield. Pachter says, Absolutely not, but Licht says she uses Aliza x in her own emails to be friendly yet professional, but states you must have a pre-existing friendship.

Cheers

Apparently this is a no-go, unless youre British. So hurrah and cheers for that, chaps.

- [your name]'

This is cold and abrupt.'

First initial [A]

Pachter is confused and says: I personally dont like it. What does it stand for?

Take care

Schwalbe says this can provoke anxiety, making him a bit paranoid. Like you know Im in danger and I dont.

Well we hope thats cleared a few issues for you. Happy emailing.

Take care.
Austal Limited has been awarded a not-to-exceed $9,937,228 modification to a previously awarded Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) contract to provide procurement and engineering efforts in support of scope changes on fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2016 ships.

This modification will incorporate additional accommodations to increase crew size on the LCS Independence-variant ships. Under the contract Austal will provide supplies, services, labor and materials, which includes program management and subcontracting management. Work is expected to be completed by August 2019. Funding in the amount of $7,452,921 will be obligated at the time of award.

Austal has delivered three Independence-variant LCS to the U.S. Navy; two as subcontractor (LCS 2 and LCS 4) and one as prime contractor (LCS 6) under a separate 10 vessel, $3.5 billion contract awarded by the U.S. Navy in 2010. The program grew to 13 vessels when the U.S. Navy funded an additional ship, LCS 26, to Austal in April 2016. Austal has seven LCS under construction at its U.S. shipyard in Mobile, Ala., with Montgomery (LCS 8) scheduled for delivery later in the year.

Austal is also constructing 10 103-meter Expeditionary Fast Transport (EPF) vessels under a $1.6 billion contract from the U.S. Navy, with six already delivered. USNS Carson City (EPF 7) is preparing for trials and is scheduled to be delivered later this year, while the two remaining vessels are under construction at Austals U.S. shipyard. Austal is also procuring long-lead materials for EPF 11 under an additional contract from the U.S. Navy.
Iran all set launch a shipping line to Europe, North and South American countries, as sanctions against Irans shipping industry has been recently lifted.

The Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) has resumed its routes to various destinations across Europe, says IRISL managing director Mohammad Saeedi.

According to Tehran Times, Irans shipping lines to Europe had been cut for seven years under the western-led sanctions against the country, but shipping lines to Homburg in Germany, Antwerp in Belgium, and Genoa in Italy are now re-connected thanks to the removal of sanctions, he said.

He also said the country plans to launch a shipping line to South American countries, as sanctions against the shipping industry have been lifted.

Just like a shipping line to Europe, Iran is planning to launch a shipping line to North and South American ports and there is no obstacle in this area, he aadded.

Given the countrys needs in the post-sanctions era, the volume of exports and imports will surge and accordingly, the number of vessels should increase to Latin America, the official noted.

The IRISL chief noted that the planned freight shipping line would boost bilateral trade through the Iranian port of Bandar Anzali and Kazakh port of Aktau, both on the Caspian Sea.

Meanwhile, Reuters report that Iran faces a struggle to increase oil exports because many of its tankers are tied up storing crude, some are not seaworthy, and foreign shipowners remain reluctant to carry its cargoes.

Tehran is seeking to make up for lost trade to Europe following the lifting of EU sanctions imposed in 2011 and 2012, which deprived it of a market that accounted for over a third of its exports and left it relying completely on Asian buyers.

Iran has 55-60 oil tankers in its fleet, a senior Iranian government official told Reuters. He declined to say how many were being used to store unsold cargoes, but industry sources said 25-27 tankers were parked in sea lanes close to terminals including Assaluyeh and Kharg Island for this purpose.
France's state-owned naval contractor DCNS Group has won a A$50bn ($40 billion) contract to build 12 submarines for the Australian Navy, beating bids from Japan and Germany.

Malcolm Turnbull, Australias prime minister, announced that DCNS awarded tender over Germany and Japan to build fleet of Barracuda-class submarines in South Australia. The decision to build a new fleet of submarines in partnership with DCNS represented a momentous national endeavour, he said.

The Shortfin Barracuda submarines will be built in Adelaide using Australian steel, creating 2,800 jobs, he said.

French President Francois Hollande hailed the decision as historic. "It marks a decisive advance in the strategic partnership between the two countries who will cooperate over 50 years," his office said in a statement.

Germanys ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) and the government of Japan were the two unsuccessful bidders in the bid to build 12 submarines to replace Australias Collins-class submarines.

The Government confirmed that while the bulk of the submarine build will occur in Adelaide, components will come from other parts of the country and the United States.

The Shortfin Barracuda is a 4,500-tonne conventionally powered submarine. It is closely related to the nuclear-powered Barracuda which weighs 4,700 tonnes.

DCNS has said the full details are confidential, but the vessel is known to be more than 90m long and to feature an advanced pump-jet propulsion system that is supposed to be quieter than propeller propulsion systems.
Libya has asked the United Nations Security Council to blacklist an Indian-flagged ship that is on its way to Malta carrying crude oil shipped by the rival eastern Libya government, Libya's U.N. envoy said on Tuesday.



Libyan Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi told Reuters he had written to the Security Council sanctions committee to complain about the first shipment of oil by the rival authorities, which left the eastern Libyan port of Hariga overnight.



The eastern government has set up its own National Oil Company (NOC) to act in parallel to the Tripoli-based NOC that is recognised internationally as the only legitimate seller of Libyan oil.



"We mainly asked the designation of the ship," Dabbashi said. "We spoke with members of the Indian Mission and gave them the letter we sent to the sanctions committee."



India's U.N. mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



In March 2014, the Security Council authorized states to board ships suspected of carrying oil from Libyan rebel-held ports and allowed the Libyan government to request that vessels carrying the oil be blacklisted by the sanctions committee.



A 2011 uprising in Libya toppled leader Muammar Gaddafi, but left the country in chaos.



Two competing governments - one in Tripoli and one in the east - backed by militias scrambled for control of the oil-producing country, creating a power vacuum that allowed Islamic State militants to gain a foothold in the North African state.



Leaders of a U.N.-backed Libya unity government, designed to replace the rival administrations, arrived in Tripoli last month. That government said on Monday it had taken administrative control of seven ministries in Tripoli.





(By Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Bernard Orr)
A government based in eastern Libya has shipped its first cargo of crude in defiance of authorities in the capital Tripoli, a bold move that could deepen the divisions that have brought chaos since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.

The Tripoli authorities asked the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to blacklist the India-flagged tanker Distya Ameya, which left the eastern Libyan port of Hariga overnight carrying oil they said could not be lawfully sold.

The eastern government has set up its own National Oil Company (NOC) to act in parallel to the Tripoli-based NOC that is recognised internationally as the only legitimate seller of Libyan oil.

The tanker departed Hariga carrying 650,000 barrels of crude late on Monday and was bound for Malta, a spokesman for the eastern NOC said.

The spokesman, Mohamed al-Manfi, said it had reached international waters. The ship last reported its position through the publicly available AIS tracking system earlier on Tuesday as still in Libyan waters.

Libya's economy depends almost exclusively on oil export revenue, and the fight over who controls those funds has driven chronic instability and civil war since long-serving autocrat Gaddafi was toppled and killed by rebels in 2011.

Parallel parliaments and governments have operated in Tripoli and the east since 2014. Much of the country is in the hands of dozens of armed groups that proclaimed loyalty to one or the other of the two rival governments, while small areas are controlled by Islamic State fighters.

Political division, labour disputes and security threats have reduced Libya's output to less than a quarter of the 1.6 million barrels per day produced before the uprising.

It was not immediately clear how the eastern NOC could attempt to complete a sale, given the international opposition. One possibility might be to attempt a ship-to-ship transfer in international waters.

In 2014, a group pressing for more autonomy in eastern Libya shipped crude from Es Sider terminal, but U.S. special forces boarded it off Cyprus and forced it to return.

UN Resolutions

Authorities in Malta said the Distya Ameya did not feature on the island nation's list of expected ship arrivals. Maltese national TV said the ship was in international waters near Malta but had not been given permission to dock there.

The eastern NOC has long been trying to sell its own oil, but until now those efforts have been blocked by the NOC in Tripoli, with the support of Western countries.

The NOC in Tripoli says any sale by its eastern rival would breach U.N. Security Council resolutions and put the future of Libya's economy at risk.

NOC Tripoli officials said on Tuesday they had notified the United Nations, countries with naval forces in the Mediterranean and a unity government now working in Tripoli that the shipment had not been authorised and should be stopped.

"We have done our job and we are waiting for them to do theirs," said spokesman Mohamed al-Harari.

The NOC in Tripoli has continued to run oil production throughout the crisis that followed Gaddafi's fall, with the funds paying state salaries across Libya, including many of the rival armed groups, which have generally been granted official status.

The Tripoli NOC has retained strong international backing, and says it is working to plan future oil sales with the new U.N.-backed unity government that arrived in the capital late last month. The unity government includes figures from across Libya's divides, but has not yet been fully accepted by either of the two loose alliances fighting for power since 2014.

Parallel Institutions

News of the eastern NOC's effort to export its first shipment of oil emerged late last week, when the NOC in Tripoli said it had prevented port workers from loading oil onto the Distya Ameya.

It said the shipment had been ordered for a company called DSA Consultancy FZC, registered in the United Arab Emirates.

Two businessmen whose business cards, seen by Reuters, describe them as executives at the firm did not reply to requests for comment.

A U.N. Security Council resolution last month said the unity government had the "primary responsibility" for preventing illicit oil sales, urging it to communicate any such attempts to the U.N. committee overseeing Libya-related sanctions.

On Monday the U.S. embassy for Libya said it was "very concerned about Libyan oil purchases outside of traditional channels".

(By Ayman al-Warfalli; Additional reporting by Ahmad Gaddar and Libby George, Chris Scicluna and Aidan Lewis; writing by Aidan Lewis; editing by Peter Graff)
Indian-flagged tanker leaves port with 650,000 barrels.



A government based in eastern Libya shipped its first cargo of crude on Monday in defiance of authorities in the capital Tripoli, a bold move that could deepen the divisions that have brought chaos since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.



The eastern government has set up its own National Oil Company (NOC) to act in parallel to the Tripoli-based NOC that is recognised internationally as the only legitimate seller of Libyan oil.



A tanker carrying the eastern NOC's first export shipment was en route to Malta carrying 650,000 barrels of crude, a spokesman for the company said on Tuesday.



Libya's economy depends almost exclusively on oil export revenue, and the fight over who controls those funds has been at the heart of the chronic instability and civil war since Gaddafi was toppled and killed by rebels in 2011.



Parallel parliaments and governments have operated in Tripoli and the east since 2014. Much of the country is in the hands of dozens of armed groups that proclaimed loyalty to one or the other of the two rival governments, while small areas are controlled by Islamic State fighters.



The India-flagged tanker Distya Ameya left the eastern Libyan port of Hariga on Monday evening, eastern NOC spokesman Mohamed al-Manfi said, adding that the tanker has entered international waters.



A Reuters tracking system showed the Distya Ameya about 250 km (155 miles) north-east of Hariga early on Tuesday.



The eastern NOC has long been trying to sell its own oil, but until now those efforts have been blocked by the NOC in Tripoli, with the support of Western countries.



The NOC in Tripoli says any sale by its eastern rival would breach U.N. Security Council resolutions and put the future of Libya's economy at risk.



The NOC in Tripoli has continued to run oil production throughout the crisis that followed Gaddafi's fall, with the funds paying state salaries across Libya, including many of the rival armed groups, which have generally been granted official status.



The Tripoli NOC has retained strong international backing, and says it is working to plan future oil sales with a new U.N.-backed unity government that arrived in the capital late last month. The unity government includes figures from across Libya's divides, but has not yet been fully accepted by either of the two loose alliances fighting for power since 2014.



PARALLEL INSTITUTIONS

News of the eastern NOC's effort to export its first shipment of oil emerged late last week, when the NOC in Tripoli said it had prevented port workers from loading oil onto the Distya Ameya.



It said the shipment had been ordered for a company called DSA Consultancy FZC, registered in the United Arab Emirates. Reuters was unable to locate contact information for the firm.



A U.N. Security Council resolution last month said the unity government had the "primary responsibility" for preventing illicit oil sales, urging it to communicate any such attempts to the U.N. committee overseeing Libya-related sanctions.



The resolution also restated a call for member states to cease contact with any "parallel institutions".



In 2014, a group pressing for more autonomy in eastern Libya shipped crude from Es Sider terminal, but U.S. special forces boarded it off Cyprus and forced it to return.



On Monday the U.S. embassy for Libya said it was "very concerned about Libyan oil purchases outside of traditional channels".



Political divisions, labour disputes and security threats have reduced Libya's output to less than a quarter of the 1.6 million barrels per day produced before the uprising.





By Ayman al-Warfalli
Japan says its concerns over China's military buildup in the South and East China Seas are shared by many other countries. The issue is expected to be discussed at upcoming talks between the two countries, says a report in Reuters.

"Honestly speaking, not only the Japanese people but also states of the Asia-Pacific region and the international community have big worries," Kishida said.

China has shown a "fast-paced and opaque increase in military spending, and unilateral actions to change the status quo in the East and South China seas."

Ties between China and Japan, the worlds second- and third-largest economies, have long been plagued by a territorial dispute, regional rivalry and the legacy of Japans World War Two aggression.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to parts of the waters, through which about $5 trillion (3.46 trillion) in trade is shipped every year.

Beijing, meanwhile, has opposed Tokyos interference in the South China Sea issue, urging Japan, which is not a claimant in the dispute, to refrain from entering the debate.

China will establish an outpost on Scarborough Shoal, 230 kilometres (143 miles) off the Philippine coast, the South China Morning Post newspaper cited an unnamed source close to the Peoples Liberation Army as saying.
FOND DU LAC (AP)  Sean Erickson is a convicted sex offender who cannot escape his past.

The 44-year-old Fond du Lac man served five years in prison for sexually assaulting a former girlfriend in 1991. He was 19 years old when he forced her to have sex with him, court records indicate.

Erickson said the incident started as an argument, then took a terrible turn.

"At that age, and the way I was thinking at the time, I only knew one way of trying to gain control," Erickson said. "I wanted to see my daughter and basically gave (the woman) an ultimatum."

Twenty-five years later, the shadow of the incident still darkens his life. Being labeled a sex offender has hurt his relationships, employment opportunities and caused him deep despair.

Erickson is now married but does not live with his wife, even though the Department of Corrections has placed no restrictions on where he resides other than reporting his address. The mobile home his wife owns is located on rental property, and the landlord allows Erickson only to visit, not reside there, because of his criminal past.

"People don't see me," Erickson said. "All they see are the words 'sex offender' and they judge me. Employers hold it against me. How can I get a chance to show people I have changed? I am a different person now."

Equally aggravating for Erickson and others on the sex offender registries is that, besides being stigmatized for a lifetime, the chance that a convicted sex offender will re-offend after prison is less than 5 percent, a rate lower than any other type of criminal offender, according to a recent study.

"We let our emotions take over and people have gone overboard thinking that every sex offender is a boogeyman," said Joe Harber, a state-licensed independent counselor who has worked with some 9,000 sex offenders over the past 25 years.

What is a sex offender

The crimes of people on the sex offender registries vary extensively. On the list in which Erickson's name appears are teenagers convicted of consensual sex with an underage partner (known among caseworkers as "Romeo and Juliet" cases), perpetrators of violent sexual crimes in which a person tried to kill his or her victim, serial pedophiles and people convicted of date rape after a he-said-she-said jury trial.

Once on the list, offenders can expect police in many communities to send out a media release stating where the offender lives if he or she is new to a community  information that is often reported by local media. Citizens and employers also can view the registries online.

Most of these people remain under scrutiny the rest of their lives, and lately in Wisconsin, state services have struggled to find areas to place them after they have served their time. Many state officials have passed ordinances restricting sex offenders from living in cities and counties.

In 2014, Milwaukee passed an ordinance that limited where they could be placed to a handful of pockets in the city. With few areas in Milwaukee open to offenders, officials started looking to other Wisconsin counties for placement.

Over the past two years, the state has initiated 11 statewide searches to place the offenders, nine of whom lived in Milwaukee County before serving time, according to the Department of Health Services. Nearing the end of their sentences, the offenders are legally designated as violent and must live in a supervised setting.

Placing Milwaukee County offenders in other Wisconsin counties is a new phenomenon. In the four years preceding 2014, no statewide searches were conducted, according to the DHS.

Where to live?

Last November, placement of two high-risk sex offenders in Brownsville near a home where two young children live caused an uproar and packed a town hall meeting. Residents in Brownsville, backed by Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt, were so up in arms a judge reversed the decision and removed the sex offenders from the home.

Four months later, no viable options have been found in Dodge County for housing the two men.

In December 2015, Manitowoc and Two Rivers approved ordinances that ban the placement of sex offenders who lived outside the cities before they were sentenced. The move came after Mark R. Rickert, a Milwaukee-area offender, was placed in Manitowoc the month prior.

Also that month, Fond du Lac County Sheriff Mick Fink fought against the placement in the Town of Eldorado of Clint Rhymes of Milwaukee. He is 51 and was convicted in 1988 of raping a woman, beating her with a tire iron and leaving her for dead.

About 200 citizens packed into the town's community center to voice disapproval of his living in the area.

"I can't guarantee your safety," Fink told an agitated crowd. "On a good night we have six deputies on patrol. I can't promise you anything."

The sheriff was so incensed, he was ready to take a busload of residents to a Milwaukee courthouse to fight the decision. Around the same time, the Town of Eldorado board quickly passed an ordinance prohibiting placement of sex offenders who weren't residents of Fond du Lac County.

Once again, a judge reversed the order. Rhymes is still awaiting placement.

Fink has no problem having sex offenders from Fond du Lac County placed back in the county after prison. Also, he said, it wasn't sex offender hysteria or fear that drove his reaction to the potential Eldorado placement of Rhymes.

"Of course we will take our own because they have done their time," Fink said. "I have always said that and sometimes it did not make me popular. But we don't want somebody else's. That's what caused the dust-up."

Recidivism

Sex offenders are generally placed on extended supervision, parole or probation after release. Services available may include offense-related counseling, employment services and other programs that have the overall goal of reintegrating them into society and minimizing recidivism, said Jeff Grothman, director of legislative affairs for the DOC.

A September 2015 DOC report of sex offender recidivism rates indicates a 40 percent decline between 1992 and 2010, which might be due to better rehabilitation programs. Moreover, their recidivism rates are lower than the overall offender population, such as people who committed robbery or assault. The report looked at 12,849 sex offenders during that time period and found that 4.9 percent ended up re-offending sexually.

Harber, the state-licensed counselor, believes that when communities tell an offender he can't live there, it adds gasoline to the fire. Currently, there are 3,000 homeless sex offenders in the state because of prohibitive ordinances.

"How safe is that? I would rather have a sex offender living in a supervised location, getting the support they need, than living out on the street angry, with no hope," Harbor said. "Lifting restrictions can help them be empowered to change their life."

After conducting a study of his own Milwaukee program over 10 years, Harber found a 2.6 percent recidivism rate. Most sex offenders knew their victims, he said, don't have significant criminal histories and are not pedophiles.

"Some I know have committed crimes when they were 14 years old, and that is ridiculous to label them for life," Harbor said.

Under Wisconsin's Chapter 980, people like Rhymes, convicted of a sexually violent crime, are committed to DHS supervised care at Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Center in Mauston. Those who complete treatment and are deemed safe for release are placed in supervised-housing communities, which include GPS monitoring and constant supervision, even when offenders leave the house.

Between 2009 and 2013, a total of 114 offenders were released from involuntary commitment at Sand Ridge, according to a Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism analysis. The increasing number of individuals on supervised release is explained in part by recent research that has determined that certain types of offenders are less likely to commit additional sexual crimes.

From 1994 through March 2010, the state discharged 67 sex offenders from Sand Ridge. Of these, 49 did not commit new crimes within three years, the standard time used to track recidivism, a state audit found. Of the 18 people who did re-commit crimes, five were sexual in nature.

Regarding the Rhymes case, Fink said, "A lot of experts have different opinions on whether or not you can cure a sex offender. I wasn't given enough information about whether or not I thought (Rhymes) would re-offend, and it wasn't about him personally. It was on principle."

Eugene Nell, 85, lives on a mile-long rural road in Eldorado, a few houses down from a mobile home shrouded by tall evergreens. Rhymes was going to be placed there with other offenders in a supervised-housing setting.

Men have been living there for several years, Nell said, but he hasn't seen or heard any trouble. Sometimes people in state-owned cars park in front of his house and appear to watch the residence, he said.

"It really doesn't bother me," he said, before adding that sometimes he's concerned for the children living in the house next door.

Another neighbor, Nancy Carroll, said that, though she never sees the mobile home residents or has been given any reason to fear them, she still wrote a letter last year to the Milwaukee judge deciding on Rhymes' placement.

Carroll took action because there are many senior citizens in the area with visiting grandchildren, she said.

There is hope

Sean Erickson of Fond du Lac checks in with his probation officer on a regular basis and has found a part-time job to help support his family. He wants a normal life without being held back by something terrible he did a quarter of a century ago, he said.

Currently, he's speaking with lawyers about the property manager refusing to allow him to live with his wife in her home. But so far nothing has changed, he said.

"By the time I had notified the state of my plans to move in with my wife, and was ready to fill out an application with the landlord, she had already received a notice in the mail saying she was going to be evicted for having a sex offender living with her. She has so far gotten three letters in the mail," he said.

According to Louise Gudex, executive director of the Fond du Lac County Housing Authority, landlords can refuse to rent to registered sex offenders. In fact, the U.S. Department of Urban Housing and Development prohibits sex-offenders from living in HUD-owned properties. When contacted, the property owners for the land where Erickson's wife's home is said there are strict policies in place for applicants, including criminal background checks.

In a recent email, the property owner said Erickson didn't go through the application process to live on the premises. The owner also said that while a felony conviction does not automatically disqualify someone from living on the property, convicted felons are a legitimate safety concern.

"The distortion out there is that there is no hope for these men, that they are social outcasts," Harber said. "Our goal in treatment is to give them hope. A more common-sense approach on where they can live is needed."
1860 - The screw steamship Mohawk captures the slaver Wildfire with 530 slaves on board in the Bahama Channel, taking them to a camp in Key West guarded by Mohawks Marines until returned home.

1869 - As a post-Civil War push for re-enlistments, the Good Conduct Medal, then called Good Conduct Badge, is authorized by Secretary of the Navy Adolphus E. Borie.

1918 - USS Stewart (DD 13) collides with an unidentified steamer near Brest, France. Just days earlier, Stewart crew members attacked a German submarine and saved the SS Florence H crew when she exploded internally.

1944 - USS Frost (DE 144), USS Huse (DE 145), USS Barber (DE 161) and USS Snowden (DE 246) sink the German submarine U 488 northwest of the Canary Islands.

1952 - While steaming at night in formation 700 miles west of the Azores, USS Hobson (DD 464) and USS Wasp (CV 18) collide as Hobson crossed the carriers bow from starboard to port and was struck amidships, breaking her in two. Hobson and 176 of her crew are lost, including her commanding officer, Lt. Cmdr. W. J. Tierney.

1960 - USS George Washington (SSN 598) conducts a Polaris missile test firing in Long Island Sound in the Atlantic Ocean.

2002 - The Watson-class vehicle cargo ship USNS Soderman (T AKR 317) is launched at National Steel and Shipbuilding Co., San Diego, Calif.







(Source: Naval History and Heritage Command, Communication and Outreach Division)
Last week, the Panama Canal participated as a part of the Panamanian delegation 69th Session of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) meeting that took place in London.



During this five-day meeting, participants discussed the energy efficiency of the international shipping industry and the development of a fuel consumption data collection system.



The Panamanian delegation shared a statement at the meeting highlighting the importance of the Panama Canal route helping in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by vessels using the waterway. This makes the Canal an important component of an efficient maritime industry, committed to reducing the effects of climate change, a key part of the Canals Green Route strategy.



The Panama Canal Expansion will allow greater capacity vessels to transit, which will require fewer cargo movements, therefore reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Once inaugurated on June 26, 2016, the Expanded Canal will reduce CO2 emissions by an estimated 160 million tons in the first 10 years of operation, contributing greatly to international global warming reduction efforts.



The Panama Canal will implement a module of CO2 emissions offered to the maritime industry. This module will calculate and report the CO2 emissions of global trade routes, helping organizations and shippers identify the cost variables and environmental factors of each route. The implementation of this module, among other initiatives, further positions the Panama Canal as an environmentally sustainable Green Route.



The Panamanian delegations statements will be included in the MEPCs final report.
The inauguration of new The Nautical Institute (Singapore) Branch was hosted by the Singapore Shipping Association and sponsored by the Shipowners Mutual Protection and Indemnity Association (Luxemburg), Singapore Branch, during Singapore Maritime Week.



Members of the Institute attending were welcomed by the President of The Nautical Institute (Singapore) Branch, Capt. Duncan Telfer FNI and the Honorary Secretary Capt. Venkat Padmanabhan.



Capt. Robert Mc Cabe FNI MSc Mgmt, President of the Nautical Institute, London, formally inaugurated the Singapore Branch on behalf of The Nautical Institute and presented the branch with a Nautical Institute plaque. In return, Capt. Mc Cabe was presented with an engraved pewter platter on behalf of the Singapore Branch.



In his address, Capt. Mc Cabe paid tribute the efforts made by Singapore to build an international maritime centre in the past few years and remarked that the republic was now one of the worlds leading international shipping centres.



I am pleased we have inaugurated a branch of the institute in Singapore as the scale and vibrancy of the place makes it an important centre for us. We believe our new branch here will flourish in many ways and we also believe it will be able to add something to the further building of Singapore as one of the worlds great shipping centres.



Capt. Mc Cabe also paid tribute to the work of the Singapore Nautical Institute and hoped that both The Nautical Institute (Singapore) Branch and the Singapore Nautical Institute could work closely together.



During the meeting Capt. Mc Cabe formally presented Fellowship certificates to Capt. Yashwant Chhabla and Capt. Nicolas White, both of whom were elected to Fellowship in December, 2015.



A limited number of Fellowships are considered each year by the Fellowship Committee, for Members who in the opinion of the Council have made a significant contribution to the advancement of nautical science, the nautical profession, or the objectives of the Institute.



The Nautical Institute is a leading international representative body for maritime professionals involved in the control of sea-going ships, and provides a wide range of services to enhance the professional standing and knowledge of members who are drawn from all sectors of the maritime world.



Shipowners, a leading P&I insurer for small and specialised vessels was proud to sponsor the inaugural meeting of the Nautical Institutes (Singapore) Branch.



The club has sponsored the MARS (Mariners Alerting and Reporting Scheme) initiative for many years, and the long standing association with the Nautical Institute through the Membership of their senior managers, strongly supports the aims of the Institute in promoting excellence within the maritime industry and the part played in providing a platform for the views of marine professionals to be considered by regulators and maritime law makers.



For these reasons the club values membership of the Nautical Institute and would encourage seafarers and maritime professionals to join so as to play an active part in promoting the industry.


Fleet of 12 submarines to be built in South Australia; decision has political implications at home, abroad.



France has beaten Japan and Germany to win a A$50 billion ($40 billion) deal to build a fleet of 12 submarines for Australia, one of the world's most lucrative defence contracts, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Tuesday.



The victory for state-owned naval contractor DCNS Group underscored France's strengths in developing a compelling military-industrial bid, and is a blow for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push to develop defence export capabilities as part of a more muscular security agenda.



Reuters earlier reported that DCNS would be announced as the winner, citing sources with knowledge of the process.



"The recommendation of our competitive evaluation process ... was unequivocal that the French offer represented the capabilities best able to meet Australia's unique needs," Turnbull told reporters in the South Australian state capital of Adelaide where the submarines will be built.



In a statement, French President Francois Hollande said the deal "marks a decisive step in the strategic partnership between our two countries", while Prime Minister Manuel Valls said it was "cause for optimism and pride."



The French shipbuilder's share of the overall contract will amount to about 8 billion euros ($9.02 billion), according to sources with knowledge of the deal. DCNS chief Herve Guillou said the deal would create around 4,000 French jobs, benefiting shipyards and industrial sites in Lorient, Brest, Nantes and Cherbourg.



Australia is ramping up defence spending, seeking to protect its strategic and trade interests in Asia-Pacific as the United States and its allies grapple with China's rising power.



Japan's government with its Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries boat had been seen as early frontrunners for the contract, but their inexperience in global defence deals and an initial reluctance to say they would build in Australia saw them slip behind DCNS and Germany's ThyssenKrupp AG.



POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

Industry watchers had anticipated a decision to come later in the year, but Turnbull's gamble on a July 2 general election sped up the process.



The contract will have an impact on thousands of jobs in the shipbuilding industry in South Australia, where retaining votes in key electorates will be critical for the government's chances of re-election.



"The submarine project .. will see Australian workers building Australian submarines with Australian steel," said Turnbull.



DCNS, which traces its roots to 1624 and is 35 percent-owned by defence electronics giant Thales SA, proposed a diesel-electric version of its 5,000-tonne Barracuda nuclear-powered submarine. DCNS enlisted heads of industry and top government figures to convince Australia of the merits of its offering and the benefits to the broader relationship.



"This is a great opportunity for DCNS because they will work with the Australian navy for the long run as it is a series of contracts and a huge opportunity to invest more and to develop business," French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron said on the sidelines of a trade fair in Hannover, Germany.



Japan had offered to build Australia a variant of its 4,000 tonne Soryu submarine, a deal that would have cemented closer strategic and defence ties with two of Washington's key Asia-Pacific allies, but risked antagonizing China, Australia's top trading partner.



Paul Burton, Defense Industry and Budgets Director at IHS Jane's said it was a surprise from a strategic standpoint that Japan didn't win. "Japan is very keen to secure a significant piece of overseas business following the relaxation of its export legislation, and this Australian submarine deal was widely regarded as becoming a landmark trade," he said.



"The tradecraft required to convince a sophisticated domestic buyer that Japan's was superior to that offered by France was lacking."



ThyssenKrupp was proposing to scale up its 2,000-tonne Type 214 class submarine, a technical challenge that sources had previously told Reuters weighed against the German bid.



Both losing bidders said they were disappointed by the decision, but remain committed to their Australian businesses.



"Thyssenkrupp will always be willing to further contribute to Australia's naval capabilities," said Hans Atzpodien, Chairman of Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems.



Japan's Defence Minister Gen. Nakatani said the decision was "deeply regrettable," and he would ask Australia to explain why it didn't pick Japan's design.



America's Raytheon Co, which built the system for Australia's ageing Collins-class submarines, is vying for a separate combat system contract with Lockheed Martin Corp , which supplies combat systems to the U.S. Navy's submarine fleet. A decision on the weapons system is due later this year. ($1 = 1.2967 Australian dollars) ($1 = 0.8864 euros)



Reporting by Colin Packham, Nobuhiro Kubo and Tim Kelly
DP World, one of the world's biggest port operators, and the Cypriot logistics and services company GAP Vassilopoulos Public have won two concessions to manage commercial activities at Limassol Port in Cyprus starting in January.

P&O Maritime Cyprus, a unit of DP World, won a 15-year concession to exclusively provide port marine services at Limassol. DP World will own 75 per cent of each joint venture, with its Cypriot partner owning the rest.

Three contracts on the privatisation of Limassol port services were signed today at the Presidential Palace, marking a new page for Cyprus great port according to Minister of Transportation Marios Demetriades.

DP World was awarded a 25-year concession to manage activities that include break-bulk, general cargo, ro-ro and the operation of the passenger terminal, the port operator said in a statement.

The container terminal is now under the management of the Eurogate/Interorient/East Med Holdings joint venture, while DP World/GP Vasilopoulos will manage marine services and the multi-purpose terminal.

The government will take in 10 million as a bonus for the signing of the contracts(7.5 million from Eurogate, and 2.5 million from DP World for two contracts).

DP World expects to have about 86 million units of gross global capacity by the end of this year, up from 79.6 million units at the end of last year.

A transition phase will follow during which the current Cyprus Port Authority will continue to operate the port while DP World and P&O Maritime Services undertake required activities for a smooth transition.
Newbuilding Department of Nauta Shipyard has begun construction of fully equipped fishing vessel - Ocean Star with a steel cutting ceremony held on April 26. The ceremony was attended by representatives of shipowner, DnV and Warthill Design .



Nauta has signed contract with a Scottish shipowner in December 2015. This is particularly important order,as it concerns building of a turn-key vessel and all construction process  from the beginning to the end  will be carried out at Nauta New Building Devision located in the former Gdansk Shipyard. Furthermore, this project perfectly refers to the long tradition of Nauta Shipyard in the construction of fishing vessels.



In recent years Nauta has built mainly partly equipped fishing trawlers, so this contract for building fully equipped vessel is an important step towards the further development of the yard.



Ocean Star will have over 87 m length and 18 m wide. The vessel will be equipped with the most modern fishing equipment such as fish finding, catching and storage system suitable for catching different type of school pelagic species. The complete propulsion plant, including main engine about 7 000 kW, together with two bow thrusters, will provide very good maneuverability during the catching operation and purse seining operation. The vessel will be built according to Wartsila design.



Steel cutting ceremony is one of the milestones of the newbuilding process  which highlights start of construction phase. We are glad that now we can start building - says Ewa Jagielska, Director of Marketing in Newbuilding Department.



Since start of the opening of Newbuilding Department in Gdansk, Nauta already has signed contracts for building 18 vessels of different types  both partly equipped fishing seiners and service offshore vessels and fully equipped research vessels. Nine of them was launched yet and eight of them are under construction. During recent three years Newbuilding Department of Nauta Shipyard has gained a strong position on the European market of the construction of fishing and research vessels.
India and the United States have agreed to strengthen their cooperation on maritime security, as concerns grow in Washington over Beijings growing military ambitions, reports AFP.

India and the USA had agreed to two new projects under the Defence Trade and Technology Initiative (DTTI).

According to a report by Sputnik, Washington and New Delhi agreed to strengthen cooperation in the sphere of maritime security in both Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions during the meeting of Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar and US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, a joint statement published following the talks said Tuesday.

The logistics agreement will allow India and the United States to share and exchange logistics.

Washington has increasingly turned its focus to Asia as it tries to counter Chinas growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, and is eager for India to play a greater role in its network of regional defence alliances.

What is evident is that the US-India partnership needs to continue apace to ensure that India can build up its capacity to deter potential conflicts with China (and Pakistan) as well as become a net security provider (in partnership with the US) in its area of primary interest. This is vital for India and global security.
The Panama Canal will hold a draw on Friday, April 29, to select the first vessel which will transit through the Expanded Canal when it is inaugurated on Sunday, June 26. The draw will take place at the Panama Canal Administration Building and a Notary Public to serve as witness.



The Panama Canal invited its top 15 customers to participate in the draw for the inaugural transit. Of the invited customers, those interested in participating were required to indicate the Neopanamax vessels name, type and dimensions that it plans to deploy on the inauguration day of the Expanded Canal. The Executive Vice Presidency for Operations will verify that each vessel complies with the Panama Canals requirements.



The proposed vessel is required to not surpass a maximum beam of 49 meters and a maximum overall length of 366 meters. In addition, the maximum draft or point of immersion for the inaugural transit will be 12.5 meters. For security purposes, gas carriers will not be considered for the inaugural transit.



The draw will be carried out with ballots labeled with the name of each participant. A child will select the first ballot and hand it to the Public Notary who will announce the winner of the draw. Afterwards, the same child will pick a second ballot for the shipping line that will be able to deploy a vessel for the inaugural transit in the event that the winner informs the Panama Canal by May 10 that it will not be able to deploy an approved vessel for the inauguration.



In the event that an invited customer declines participation, the Panama Canal may send an invitation to the next customer on the ranking list, up to the customer with a weighted ranking value of less than 16, according to the customer ranking used for bookings as of April 2016 published in https://www.pancanal.com/eng/maritime/transit/index.html



The winner will incur in all costs associated with the transit, including booking fees and other marine services, which will be charged in accordance with Panama Canal published tariffs.



Only one Neopanamax vessel in southbound direction will be allowed to transit the Expanded Canal for its inauguration during daylight hours. Regular commercial transits through the Expanded Canal will commence on June 27.


Six Turkish members of a cargo ship's crew who were kidnapped by pirates off the coast of Nigeria two weeks ago have been released and are safely back in Istanbul, a lawyer for the shipping company said on Tuesday.

"The six of them have been released and are back in Istanbul. All are in good health," said Fehmi Ulgener, a lawyer for the shipping firm Kaptanoglu Denizcilik. He declined to say whether or not a ransom had been paid.

The Turks, who included the M/T Puli's captain, chief officer and chief engineer, were abducted some 90 miles off Nigeria on April 11. Other members of the crew were left onboard, unharmed.

The tanker was carrying liquid chemical fuels and was travelling to Cameroon, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported.

Last month, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea agreed to establish combined patrols to bolster security in the Gulf of Guinea. The countries around the Gulf are a significant source of oil, cocoa and metals for world markets, but pirates pose a growing threat to shipping.

They target tankers in particular, usually seeking hostages for ransom and fuel to sell. Security analysts say the pirates have emerged from Nigerian militant groups such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.





(Reporting by Asli Kandemir, additional reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram; Writing by Nick Tattersall and David Dolan; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Its 100-degree weather. Landing Craft Air Cushions have just landed on a rocky beach that has been dubbed Gunsmoke Djibouti. Now that the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit has arrived in Djibouti, it must build up flat rocky soil into an encampment. On April 9, 2016, U.S. Marines and sailors with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit began sustainment training during Western Pacific Deployment 16-1.



The logistics combat element attached to the 13th MEU, Combat Logistics Battalion 13, quickly went to work to establish a secure perimeter, build the encampment, and maintain Gunsmoke Djibouti.



We started with flat, rocky land, said 1st Lt Hugh McShane, a logistics officer with the 13th MEU. But with the help of more than 200 Marines and Sailors, we were able to set security and build a command operations center before the first day was out.



After day one on Gunsmoke Djibouti, heavy machinery arrived to speed up the fortification process. Marines built 10-12 foot berms around the camp and surrounded it with concerntina wire.



My section worked a total of 72 hours to build the berms around the encampment, said Cpl. Joshua Lobue, a heavy equipment operator with the 13th MEU. We were able to move enough dirt to build a roughly half-mile berm, 10-12 feet high around the encampment.



With the encampment built up, the Marines and Sailors are ready to conduct follow-on training.



If we were cut-off from the world right now, we can be self-sustained for more than a week, said McShane. The 13th MEU is set to continue sustainment training in Djibouti with various ranges to maintain combat readiness and combat effectiveness during Western Pacific Deployment 16-1.



As a MEU, the Marines and Sailors at Gunsmoke Djibouti can sustain themselves autonomously for up to 15 days. This independent sustainability makes them a force multiplier in every clime and place. Wherever the Marines and Sailors of the 13th MEU go, they will be set and ready to train and will bring air, ground, and logistics capabilities.



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U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Jonathan Dowdell and his family received the keys to their new custom-built, mortgage-free home during a special welcome home ceremony in League City, Texas, April 14, 2016. National nonprofit Operation FINALLY HOME and local builder Harbour Classic Builders supported the construction of the home. The home dedication marks Operation FINALLY HOMEs 100th dedication for a deserving veteran or surviving spouse.

Operation FINALLY HOME is a 501(c)(3) organization that honors wounded, ill and injured veterans and widows of fallen soldiers with new custom-built, mortgage-free homes.

We were beyond honored to be approached to help build a brand new home for Cpl. Jonathan Dowdell and his wonderful family, said Murphy Yates, President and Owner of Harbour Classic Builders. We knew this would be a challenging project, but we couldnt be happier with the results. Jonathan deserved a home that would fit his needs and serve as a safe haven for him and his family.

Cpl. Jonathan Dowdell joined the Marine Corps in 2004 and served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He received a Purple Heart award after he was injured by an improvised explosive device June 24, 2010, while on a deployment to Afghanistan. Following the explosion, Dowdell was left with severe injuries, including above-knee amputation of both legs, amputation of his left index finger, and right arm deformity as a result of a forearm contracture. He and his wife, Rebecca, have one daughter.

Cpl. Jonathan Dowdell is a exceptional example of the power of faith and determination, and we couldnt be happier to celebrate our 100th home build in his honor, said Rusty Carroll, executive director of Operation FINALLY HOME. Thanks to the support of the League City community and generosity of Harbour Class Builders, we are able to give Jonathan and his family a beautiful home worthy of their sacrifices.

While construction on Cpl. Jonathan Dowdells home is complete, Operation FINALLY HOME is accepting donations to help fund future projects. The nonprofit currently has more than eighty ongoing home builds in 31 states. For more information about Operation FINALLY HOME and to make a donation, visit operationfinallyhome.org.

About Operation FINALLY HOME

Operation FINALLY HOME was established in 2005 as a nonpartisan/nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Operation FINALLY HOME provides custom-built, mortgage-free homes to Americas military heroes and the widows of the fallen who have sacrificed so much to defend our freedom and values. Operation FINALLY HOME partners with corporate sponsors, builder associations, builders, developers, individual contributors, and volunteers to help Americas military heroes and their families transition to the home front by addressing one of their most pressing needsa home to call their own. To find out more, visit OperationFinallyHome.org.
Christian Leaders from Across the Globe in Yad Vashem Christian Leadership Seminar Participants from diverse backgrounds coming to Jerusalem to grapple with challenges in Holocaust education



Contact: Simmy Allen, 972-2-644-3412,



JERUSALEM, April 26, 2016 /



Aimed at giving Christian leaders  both formal and informal - the tools necessary to speak about the history and facts of the Shoah and antisemitism, the seminar includes in-depth tours of the Yad Vashem museums and campus, meetings with Holocaust survivors, and leading historians and experts in the field of Holocaust education. Topics addressed include among others: the Bible including a tour of the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, antisemitism and its different manifestations throughout history, literary responses to the Holocaust, Yad Vashem's educational philosophy, the Allies and Nazi Germany, and the Righteous Among the Nations.



Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies, established in 1993, organizes educational programs for both students and educators from Israel and abroad. Following the seminar, Christian Friends of Yad Vashem intends to cooperate with the participants at churches across the US.



Christian Friends of Yad Vashem was established in autumn 2006 in partnership with the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) to promote Yad Vashem's activities worldwide. One of the main goals of the Christian Friends of Yad Vashem is Holocaust education through bringing Christian youth leaders, pastors and educators to Yad Vashem's seminars.



Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, was established by the Knesset in 1953. Located in Jerusalem, it is dedicated to Holocaust remembrance, documentation, research and education.

Share Tweet Contact: Simmy Allen, 972-2-644-3412, media.relations@yadvashem.org.il JERUSALEM, April 26, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Thirty Christian priests, pastors and leaders of organizations from across the world are coming to attend a week long intensive seminar at Yad Vashem. The seminar is organized jointly by The International School for Holocaust Studies' of Yad Vashem and the Christian Friends of Yad Vashem with the financial support of The Museum of The Bible in Washington D.C. as well as the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, USA Branch. The Seminar, titled "The Holocaust, Antisemitism, and Israel" runs from May 1, 2016 May 10, 2016 at the Yad Vashem Campus in Jerusalem.Aimed at giving Christian leaders  both formal and informal - the tools necessary to speak about the history and facts of the Shoah and antisemitism, the seminar includes in-depth tours of the Yad Vashem museums and campus, meetings with Holocaust survivors, and leading historians and experts in the field of Holocaust education. Topics addressed include among others: the Bible including a tour of the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, antisemitism and its different manifestations throughout history, literary responses to the Holocaust, Yad Vashem's educational philosophy, the Allies and Nazi Germany, and the Righteous Among the Nations.Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies, established in 1993, organizes educational programs for both students and educators from Israel and abroad. Following the seminar, Christian Friends of Yad Vashem intends to cooperate with the participants at churches across the US.Christian Friends of Yad Vashem was established in autumn 2006 in partnership with the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) to promote Yad Vashem's activities worldwide. One of the main goals of the Christian Friends of Yad Vashem is Holocaust education through bringing Christian youth leaders, pastors and educators to Yad Vashem's seminars.Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, was established by the Knesset in 1953. Located in Jerusalem, it is dedicated to Holocaust remembrance, documentation, research and education. www.yadvashem.org
An area boy who was reported missing was found early Tuesday, according to Henry County Sheriff Lane Perry.

Mason Lee Ryan was reported missing after having been seen at his home on Wagon Trail Road at about 5:30 p.m. Monday and was reported missing at about 7 p.m., according to Henry County Sheriff Lane Perry.

The boy was found unharmed at about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday between Wagon Trail Road and Evergreen Drive. Perry said about 250 people were involved in the search, which began at 1470 Wagon Trail Road.

It is possible that Mason wandered away with his small, brown dog, Banjo, Perry said.

Perry credited assistance from Henry County Public Safety as well as Horsepasture fire and rescue cures, as well as Virginia State Police, Department of Emergency Management, Martinsville Sheriff's Office and other agencies, as well as "numerous volunteers," Perry said.

Perry said the Martinsville Sheriff's Office will continue to investigate the matter.
Dr. Scott Cunningham, Chief of Police in Kernersville, North Carolina, came to the city to present information to the Martinsville Police Department, the Danville Police Department, and members of the community about racial profiling and biased policing.

In the article Dr Cunningham stated that people expect police officers to act fairly, impartially, legally, and professionally. In order to meet the communitys expectations, officers must have knowledge on how to stop stereotypical thoughts as soon as they start to enter their minds. He also stated that the police officers should expect the same from the community members.

Dr Cunningham stated All of us have knowledge of stereotypes. And because of that knowledge of stereotypes, it influences our perception and if we dont do anything about the stereotyping it would impact how we deal with each other, how we behave, and the decisions we make.

What I found puzzling was the comment Danville Police Chief Broadfoot stated when asked what he thought of the information he had learned from the training. He stated it was an eye-opener. He continued, What this training really brought out is that the implicit biases that we all have based on our upbringing, our education, our church affiliation, our jobs, all of those kinds of things affect us in everything that we do and our relationships.

That comment really alarmed me because he is a police chief and the information Dr Cunningham stated is basic knowledge to most. If the police chief finds it eye opening that stereotypes and our own biases determine how we treat each other eye opening information, thats frightening . His upbringing should have taught him this. I understand the police have a hard job and have to deal with the worst of the worst. I understand when I or anyone else break the law we should be respectful of the police we come in contact with.

The community expect the police to do their job without biases or stereotyping. The police and Judges must always remember they took a oath to uphold the law and treat people fairly. In the same respect those who commit crimes should be respectful of the police and Judges. This does not always happen.

We all want to be treated fairly and equally when we break the law. When this doesnt happen the police, courts, and community are at odds. The only way its going to work is if we all respect one another.

Michael Elder

Charlottesville, formerly of Martinsville
Unconstitutional Court Censorship Prompts Daleiden First Amendment Federal Court Appeal

Thomas More Society Defends Planned Parenthood Expose and "Undercover Journalism at Large"



Contact: Tom Ciesielka, 312-422-1333, tc@tcpr.net



SAN FRANCISCO, April 26, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- Thomas More Society attorneys filed an appeal last week with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for undercover journalist David Daleiden, arguing for reversal of a preliminary injunction that bars Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress from publishing undercover videos from the 2014 and 2015 annual meetings of the National Abortion Federation ("NAF"). Daleiden's appeal assails the lower court's decree as a blatantly unconstitutional "prior restraint" on free speech, based on repeated Supreme Court precedents that condemn such gag orders, most notably the famous Pentagon Papers case in which the Justices refused the federal government's plea to stop publication of top secret files discussing the Vietnam war which had been leaked to the New York Times and Washington Post. The appeal brief also argues that release of undercover video of significant (if not paramount) public interest should not be suppressed, in order to protect the public's right to know  a critical element of our professed democratic self-governance as an open and free society. Indeed, the United States Congress, numerous state legislators, and criminal investigators have subpoenaed and relied on Daleiden's video releases to instigate hearings, new legal and regulatory initiatives, defunding measures, and also possible civil and criminal enforcement actions against the abortion industry. Congress itself had subpoenaed the suppressed videos and the lower court upheld that subpoena, which in turn led to a public hearing by the House Select Committee on Infant Lives, held last week.



This prejudicial censorship targeted at civilian investigator Daleiden threatens undercover journalism at large, explained Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society, a national non-profit law firm. "The National Abortion Federation (NAF) is working in tandem with Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers and promoters to suppress David Daleiden's First Amendment rights and to shut down the resulting investigations focused on the abortion groups' involvement in baby parts trafficking," stated Brejcha.



The Society's appeal, filed with California-based co-counsel, comes on the heels of the preliminary injunction entered by District Judge William H. Orrick of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. NAF had sought entry of this censorship in response to Daleiden's public release of a series of videos exposing illegal and unsavory practices by Planned Parenthood and other abortion industry participants. NAF's principal claim in its lawsuit, filed last summer, is that Daleiden and CMP violated the federal Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act ("RICO"), a 1970 federal law designed to combat organized crime.



About the RICO claims, Brejcha said, "These are totally inapposite charges in this scenario  charges that have been decisively rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. Equally as other investigative journalists for so-called mainstream news media, such as CBS's Sixty Minutes, regularly resort to undercover journalism tactics to ferret out hidden crime, citizen journalists like David Daleiden have every right to penetrate the criminal underworld to bring to light and open to public scrutiny evidence of potential criminal wrongdoing."



Read the appeal filed on April 19, 2016 for David Daleiden in the lawsuit by National Abortion Federation here.



Find additional background on the case at the following links:

About the Thomas More Society

The Thomas More Society is a national not-for-profit law firm dedicated to restoring respect in law for life, family, and religious liberty. Headquartered in Chicago, the Thomas More Society fosters support for these causes by providing high quality pro bono legal services from local trial courts all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. For more information, visit www.thomasmoresociety.org.
amazon.jpg

In this Oct. 18, 2010 file photo, an Amazon.com package is prepared for shipment by a United Parcel Service (UPS) driver in Palo Alto, Calif.

((AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File))

BOSTON - After Mayor Marty Walsh and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey started asking questions, same day delivery from Amazon, the online retail juggernaut, appears to be coming to three ZIP codes in Boston that were previously left off the company's map of the city.

Walsh issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon after asking them to change a policy that creates a same-day delivery "hole in the heart of our city." The area includes three ZIP codes and has predominantly black and low-income residents.

Walsh said the company seemed to be unwilling to change and was making an "egregious mistake."

Shortly after the release of Walsh's statement, the company called Walsh and said they will be delivering to those ZIP codes after all, according to a tweet from Joyce Linehan, a top Walsh adviser.

Amazon called after Mayor issued statement. Mayor spoke to them and they said they'd change policy. Their statement has gone out. #bospoli  Joyce Linehan (@ashmont) April 26, 2016

"After speaking personally with the executives at Amazon, the company informed me today that they will now be offering same day service to every neighborhood in Boston," Walsh said in a new statement on Tuesday afternoon. "I thank Amazon for this decision, and look forward to its implementation."

Markey, D-Mass, had also written a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, expressing concern over the original policy.

"While Amazon has the right to use its own business analysis to determine where to offer same-day delivery, concerns emerge when the company offers services to the vast majority of an area but selectively excludes a few neighborhoods where low-income and minority residents call home," Markey wrote in the letter, dated April 26.

In a statement to the Boston Globe about its reversal, Amazon said, "We are actively working with our local carrier to enable service to the Roxbury neighborhood in the coming weeks."

But on-demand delivery remains an issue for Boston neighborhoods like Dorchester and Mattapan. The Dorchester Reporter, in a review published in January, noted that a number of delivery apps were not serving customers in those neighborhoods, despite their claims that they were serving "Boston."
harry.chadwick.jpg

Harry Chadwick of Hadley was appointed Holyoke city auditor Monday, April 25, 2016 by the City Council. He is shown above on March 24 interviewing for the job with the City Council Public Service Committee at City Hall.

(MIKE PLAISANCE / THE REPUBLICAN)

HOLYOKE -- Harry Chadwick, chief auditor with the state Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission, was appointed city auditor by the City Council Monday at City Hall.

"Thank you," said Chadwick, of Hadley, as he stood when council President Kevin A. Jourdain announced his name.

The council elected Chadwick on the first round of roll-call balloting. He received the minimum necessary to win, eight votes, or the majority of the 15-member City Council as a whole.

Carolyn Thomas-Davis of Springfield, consultant with Reliable Bookkeeping and Consulting, received six votes.

The speed with which the council filled the city auditor position was in contrast to the last attempt on April 5 when councilors deadlocked through five roll-call ballots without a candidate securing a majority.

The council has a vacancy with the April 5 resignation of Jennifer E. Chateauneuf as a councilor at large.

Brian G. Smith, who had been city auditor for 25 years, retired in 2014. Bellamy H. Schmidt has been acting auditor.

The city auditor salary was advertised as "commensurate with experience," Personnel Director Robert Judge said. The yearly salary for city auditor as listed in the city budget is $71,746.

In an interview with the City Council Public Service Committee last month, Chadwick said he would bring 26 years of experience in Massachusetts government to the job of city auditor. That has consisted of being chief auditor with PERAC since January 2008 and being Hampshire County treasurer and chairman of the county retirement board from 1990 to1997, he said.

Jourdain asked Chadwick at that meeting to expand on his PERAC duties.

When offered the job in 2008, Chadwick said he knew it would be a challenge going from a staff member to the staff manager. But the office had quality staff, he said.

"I think I've been a very good supervisor ..." Chadwick said.

The year 2015 was a challenging one for his PERAC division as it lost most of its workforce and had to rebuild, he said.

"It was a challenge....certainly we got behind," Chadwick said.

Jourdain asked how familiar Chadwick was with Holyoke's financial situation and its unfunded liability.

(That's the liability facing the city -- $365 million -- if all pension costs for retirees and existing employees had to be paid today. That figure is as of two years ago. Existing assets in the system reduce that liability to about $153 million. The funding schedule calls for that to be paid off at the current yearly rate of payment, which has been about $17 million a year including city and employee contributions, by 2032. That's according to Cheryl Dugre, executive director of the Holyoke Retirement Board.)

Chadwick said he was familiar with the Holyoke financial details and praised Dugre.

Councilor at Large Joseph M. McGiverin asked, regarding Holyoke's unfunded pension liability, whether the city should join the state retirement system.

Chadwick said, "I think Holyoke is doing fine. They're meeting their obligations for their funding schedule....I think Holyoke is doing a good job with that."

Jourdain noted the residency requirement and asked about Chadwick's willingness to move here.

Chadwick said he would move here if appointed city auditor.
This updates a story posted at 7:40 p.m.

WESTFIELD

- Two men are charged with placing explosive devices in yards on Woodmont Street, prompting a multi-agency hazmat and bomb squad response Monday evening.

Sean Barrett, 18, and Patrick Baker, 19, were arrested after police found four plastic bottles that were foaming and appeared to contain pieces of metal, according to Westfield police Lt. Jerome Pitoniak.

At around 5 p.m., a woman reported finding one of the devices in the front yard of 83 Woodmont St. Authorities found three more in the yard of number 88, where Barrett and Baker live.

Pitoniak said the substances in the bottles have not been identified yet, but he said they were comparable to Drano bombs that can be seen in numerous YouTube videos. The devices will be sent for testing. Massachusetts State Police is assisting in the investigation.

"It's pretty serious," said Pitoniak. "Someone could get hurt."

Woodmont Street was blocked for several hours as police investigated. The scene is now clear.
home US Suicide rate in the United States climbs over past 15 years

The number of suicide incidents in the United States is on the rise, reaching its highest across almost all age groups in the last 15 years, according to a new study.

The report, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), found that there has been a 24 percent increase in the number of suicides from 1999 to 2014. The climb in suicide rate appears to have been more pronounced from 2006 onward.

This finding was consistent for both males and females for age groups falling within 10 to 74 years old. However, for females, it was most apparent for the younger ones (10 to 14 years old). For males, the increase was observed most in the middle age group (45 to 64 years old).

Additionally, there have been 150 suicide incidents among those belonging to the youngest age range in 2014 alone.

"The rate of suicide has gone up nearly steadily since 1999," study author Sally Curtin from the NCHS said in a statement. She pointed out that the rising suicide rates among young people, particularly those that lead to death, are merely "the tip of the iceberg. For every suicide, we know there are many, many attempts and hospitalizations."

Dr. Christine Moutier, chief medical officer of the nonprofit organization American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said the organization is "very concerned" about the climbing suicide rate in the United States.

"Our nation has not made the level of investment on a federal level that can have the positive effect on suicide that has happened for the other leading causes of death," CNN quoted Moutier as saying.

Meanwhile, American Psychiatric Association President Dr. Maria Oquendo told CBS News that suicide among young people indicates that they are suffering from some kind of psychiatric condition. She said suicides rarely occur without a psychiatric condition.

Oquendo admitted it is difficult to explain the rising suicide rate.

"One of the most salient things the study illustrates is that despite our aggressive efforts to decrease suicide rates, we really haven't been successful. It's really not clear why it keeps going up," she said.
Jae Rhim Lee wants you to be less squeamish about death, and she thinks a suit lined with flesh-eating mushrooms might do the trick.

By KATIE ROGERS

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/23/business/mushroom-suits-biodegradable-urns-and-deaths-green-frontier.html?WT.mc_id=SmartBriefs-Newsletter&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=smartbriefsnl&_r=0
The Missoula City Council on Monday night expanded a standing ban on using cellphones while operating a motor vehicle, including motorcycles and bicycles.

While texting or talking on a phone while driving has been illegal in the city for the past four years, using a cellphone or electronic device in any capacity is now against the law unless its hands free.

By Martin Kidston/MISSOULA CURRENT

Full Story: http://www.missoulacurrent.com/government/2016/04/city-passes-tougher-cell-phone-bans-driving-vehicle/
Montana State University researchers will soon be able to more easily share work with other scientists around the globe thanks to a $472,000 award from the National Science Foundation to build a dedicated research data network on campus.

"This is a substantial investment by the federal government to improve our infrastructure so we can better share the discoveries by Montana State researchers nationally, internationally and across campus," said Jerry Sheehan, MSUs vice president for information technology.

Full Story: http://www.montana.edu/news/16130/msu-to-build-dedicated-research-data-network-with-award-from-national-science-foundation
The Indian Ocean country of Mauritius continues with its proactive and transparent response to the

global COVID crisis, as it prepares to complete the reopening of its borders to fully vaccinated visitors,

but in a safe and secure manner, on the 1st of October 2021.

The nation has one of the highest fully vaccinated rates in Africa, currently standing at over 60 percent of the overall population (82 percent of the local adult population). The vaccination campaign is ongoing, and the rollout will also include those below 18 years old as from the end of September 2021.

The nations modern health service has coped well throughout the pandemic, implementing strong protocols. The countrys successful vaccination programme and overall health management resulted in very low hospitalisation numbers  an average of just over 3% hospitalized patients over the last 28 days, most of whom being in health facilities because of associated comorbidities rather than COVID-19 suggestive symptoms. It is to be noted that the infection rate is being closely managed and that the recent spike has been decreasing steadily over the last 2 weeks.

We adopted a health-first approach with strict protocols to protect the population, from the beginning of the pandemic. Our public health services continue to operate to their normal capacity, with protocols being updated when relevant. Dedicated ICU facilities for COVID-19 patients have been set-up at the onset of the pandemic, and have been strengthened according to the Ministrys preparedness plan worked out in collaboration with the World Health Organisation, explained Dr K. Jagutpal, Minister of Health and Wellness. We instituted airport screening and the quarantining of travelers since 2020. Our vaccination rollout has been systematic, and we have already exceeded our target of fully vaccinated adults well ahead of the complete reopening of our borders to vaccinated travelers on the 1st of October, added Minister Jagutpal.

Since the onset of the pandemic in Mauritius in March 2020, the country sadly recorded 45 fatalities

directly inputted to COVID-19, out of a population of about 1.3 million.

We now all have to learn to live with COVID-19. The vaccination rollout in Mauritius was good and the vaccination rate high enough to make it safe to now ask the population to resume their normal lives, while respecting barrier measures, said Dr Laurent Musango, the local representative of the World Health Organisation. Of course, in the context of a pandemic, there are always more avenues to be considered to optimize safety, but Mauritius is doing well, adds Dr Musango.

Unvaccinated travelers can also travel to Mauritius, subject to a 14 days in-room quarantine in a state designated hotel/facility. In line with its health-first approach, this same protocol for unvaccinated travelers will remain when the country reopens on the 1st of October.

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Le Board of Racing Stewards du MTC Sports and Leisure Limited, compose de S. de Chalain (Chair), J. Keevy, P. Kalleechurn et A. Rousset, a rendu public le Racing Stewards Report de la sixieme journee hippique de 2021.

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Pravind Jugnauth a repondu a quatre questions lors de la seance a lAssemblee Nationale.

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Letters will soon be sent home to parents of elementary students who need food assistance over the summer through the Lunch Bunch Program.

The program started seven years ago at Grace Community Church by Pastor Jerry Lewis who met with other preachers to try and figure out a way to help students who need food during the summer.

We work with the schools, churches, large businesses and individuals. Its wonderful the support we have, its been a very successful program, said Lunch Bunch Director Mandi Pittman.

During the first or second week of May, students will get a letter to take home to their parents. If they decide they are in need of the food, they will fill out the application, which only asks for contact information, and send it back to school with their child.

I will send home another letter telling parents where to pick up their food, said Pittman. If parents feel like they need the food and going through a hard time, theres no questions asked.

In the program, students will get a breakfast, snack and lunch to last two weeks. If the students have brothers or sisters, they too will also get the same amount of food.

We have stuff like peanut butter, crackers, soups, oatmeal, cereal, macaroni and cheese and different non-perishable food items, said Pittman. Last year we started ordering potatoes, carrots and apples so they would have fresh fruits and vegetables. Im trying to gradually put in healthier items that wont spoil as easily and doesnt have to be refrigerated.

The program is supported 100 percent by monetary donations which purchases 20 to 25,000 pounds of food every two weeks.

We purchase the food from MDI that way its the same amount that each family gets. Most of the pickup locations set it up like going through a grocery store and they can choose between what their children prefer to eat so its not wasted, said Pittman.

This year she is going to show kids how to grow their own vegetables.

I want to teach them how to plant different things that are easy to grow. I think this year Im going to start with lettuce because you can grow it in pretty much anything that you can put holes in the bottom of with some soil,  said Pittman.

With eight elementary schools in the area and transportation an issue for some families, parents are assigned to a pickup location near their address. Over 500 students are served each year in the program, but Pittman said there are over 1,300 that are in need of food.

We are trying to figure out a better system for those people that dont have any transportation. We want to take tents and set them up in smaller rural and bring the food to them, she said. We are trying to work together and get as many kids fed that need food.

The program works with over 100 volunteers in the county, but they are always in need of more. For more information, or to volunteer, please call Grace Community Church at 724-9599 and leave a message for Mandi Pittman.

Monetary donations for the Lunch Bunch Program can be mailed to the church at 5182 U.S. 70 West in Marion.

Pickup Locations:

First Baptist Church of Marion

Nebo First Baptist

Clinchfield Presbyterian

St. Marks United Methodist

Christian Fellowship (old North Cove Elementary)

Grace Baptist (Shady Lane)

Glenwood United Methodist

Old Fort First Baptist
Chicken will be the best-positioned protein due to its low price position in times of pressure on consumer spending power but rises in production costs and the long-term impact of COVID-19 threaten to disrupt the sector, according to Rabobank.
by Tanya Gazdik , April 25, 2016

Mountain Dew has partnered with NASCAR stars Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kasey Kahne and Chase Elliott to help conduct a competition between two of its flavors.

DEWcision 2016 asks consumers to choose between Mountain Dew Baja Blast or Mountain Dew Pitch Black. Fans can vote to help determine which of these flavors will be added to the permanent lineup.

The racers revealed DEWcision paint schemes during the April 24 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race in Richmond, Virginia. They also star in a TV spot created by agency Motive that broke during the race. It features Kasey (representing team Pitch Black) and Chase (representing team Baja Blast) trying to buy Dale Jr.s vote for their flavor.

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PepsiCo has partnered with Hendrick Motorsports for the last 15 seasons, including eight years of Dale Earnhardt Jr. working with Mountain Dew, says Sadira Furlow, director of marketing, Mountain Dew.

This year is the first time the brand will field a three-driver lineup, welcoming drivers Chase Elliott and Kasey Kahne, in addition to Earnhardt Jr. PepsiCo recently signed a three-year extension for its partnership with Hendrick Motorsports, Furlow tells Marketing Daily.

NASCAR is a great fit for Dew because we each have a very passionate fan base that enjoys having a damn good time, Furlow says. Similar to how NASCAR fans full-heartedly get behind the drivers, the teams and the sponsors, so does Dew Nation behind the flavors and experiences they live.

Now through July 9, fans can vote for their favorite flavor on DEWcision.com or Twitter by including one of the following hashtags: #VoteBajaBlast or #VotePitchBlack. Every hashtag will count as one vote. Super delegates  or fans  can also complete challenges to rally for their favorite flavor. These challenges will be released every third week on the @MountainDew social channels. The flavor with the most votes at the end of the program wins a spot in the retail lineup.

Each year we get hundreds of thousands of requests for these two flavors on social, sometimes with fans organically pitting Pitch Black and Baja Blast against each other, Furlow says. We made this campaign for Dew Nation, to say thank you for being such awesome fans and giving them the power to decide which flavor stays.
by Jess Nelson , April 25, 2016

The paper-less email may seem like an environmentally sustainable marketing channel, but the pesky "print" button can quickly transform a once green channel into a deforestation machine.

In commemoration of Earth Day, email marketing service Campaigner revealed several tips for creating an environmentally sustainable marketing strategy and helping readers avoid clicking the print button.

Held annually on April 22, Earth Day is a day of action that celebrates the birth of the modern environmental movement and supports ongoing environmental protection. Originally founded in 1970 by Gaylord Nelson (no relation), a United States Senator from Wisconsin, the green-friendly holiday has now reached global proportions with the scheduled signing of the Paris Agreement today.

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More than 150 countries are expected to sign the international law, an accord that derived from the COP21 climate summit last December.

Although the Paris Agreement is a landmark event in global cooperation against climate change, its still incredibly important for every person to play a role in reducing their own carbon footprint and promoting sustainability.

Email is one of the most commonly printed content channels online, and email marketers can create more environmentally friendly campaigns by purposefully designing sustainable newsletters that do not need to be printed.

Internal data from Campaigner reveals that restaurants send the largest amount of printable emails as part of their email marketing, often including printable coupons or discounts for in-store redemption. This same theme is likely seen in the retail and event industries as well.

To stay eco-friendly we suggest using responsive design in your email marketing so your emails render properly on a mobile device and can be scanned in-store as opposed to printed and carried in, says Seamas Egan, Associate Director of Revenue Operations at Campaigner.

Egan recommends that marketers develop their email marketing campaigns with mobile users in mind.

Avoid using shrunken fonts, too much text, small buttons and links that are difficult to click, says Egan. Keep content brief and engaging, and make sure your website is also mobile-friendly so customers want to stay there once they've arrived.
by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, April 26, 2016

As IoT products gain consumer acceptance, the new report from Argus Insights reveals that market conversations are heavily concentrated around Big Data concerns. The report, State of the Internet of Things: Whats Leading Market Conversations, illustrates that as IoT grows, so does the volume of data collected.

Over 2.3M social mentions that make up the Twitter discussion about IoT between January and April 10, says the report, form the basis for the analysis. Among IoT topics addressed in the social conversations, Big Data leads market mindshare, substantially ahead of general discussions of wearables, cloud, smart home, smart cities and more. However, Among IoT in general, it is security concerns that predominate, showing significantly more social mentions than privacy concerns.

John Feland, CEO, Argus Insights, says  security concerns for consumers on the rise and goes double for any enterprise deployments security issues continue a real roadblock for IoT product acceptance 

The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing in breadth and popularity, but the market is becoming more difficult to define as more things gain the capacity to be connected to the Internet. The first definition to show up on a Google search of what is IoT defines IoT as an  ever-growing network of physical objects that feature an IP address for internet connectivity, and the communication that occurs between these objects and other Internet-enabled devices and systems.

In simple terms, says the report, the IoT is a group of objects with the potential to communicate with each other. This group of internet connected objects is expanding quickly as broadband internet is becoming more accessible in more places, and a dizzying array of wireless technologies is also improving to enable more devices to connect to the internet. Currently, the IoT includes everything from watches to coffee makers to cameras to thermostats to engines to stop lights to clothing to drills, and much more.

The Internet of Things is being leveraged to create smart systems. Among discussion of application areas of IoT, Big Data stands out as one of the most important factors. One of the biggest challenges is processing and interpreting collected data, recently made clear by interest in content that identifies and troubleshoots the intersection of Big Data and IoT.

The Internet of Things is exciting, says the report, as technology is developed to make the lives of humans easier. This has been true since the invention of the wheel allowed people to easily carry heavy loads over long distances. It has persisted as technology developed into what we use today, from the telegraph to the telephone to the smartphone to the smartanything, But as nearly every thing gains the power to collect and store data to communicate with other devices and humans, we are encountering issues with information overload.

In summary, the report notes that the Google-owned company, Nest, sees mindshare as people discuss their Smart Thermostats, Detectors, and Camera as part of the larger IoT. Amazon has seen an increase in mindshare in the IoT space since their Echo speaker turned hub entered the Smart Home scene as a viable controller. While there are several brands operating within the Internet of Things market discussion, talk of brands accounts for less than ten percent of overall IoT social discussion, suggesting that the market is actually more interested in how and where to apply the technology than which brands are actually doing it.

Concluding, the report says that the Internet of Things has the potential to greatly transform the world we live in, but companies must first find a way to effectively secure data collected from devices.

To gain access to the complete Argus report, please visit here.
by Maarten Albarda , Featured Contributor, April 25, 2016

It was the 400th anniversary of Shakespeares death this weekend.

Its quite an achievement to be remembered for what you wrote over 400 years later. The British bard was obviously an enormously gifted wordsmith.

I was reminded of the importance of wordsmithing as I was working with a client on process, architecture and organizational structure.

We jointly created a new approach to allocating budgets, defining target audiences and creating integrated marketing plans. But we soon realized that language stood in the way of clarity.

Our problem was similar to what another great writer, Irishman George Bernard Shaw, said: England and America are two countries separated by a common language. Here were several different departments separated by a common language (marketing).

For instance: what I call campaign might have a very different meaning from when you say campaign. I might be referring to the actual content and elements that make up advertising, whereas you might actually refer to the time period when an activity will take place.

When I say big idea, you might say campaign platform.

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I worked for a company where the customer was the person buying the product  and then I worked for a company where the customers were the middlemen that sold the product to the (end) consumer.

Many meetings are spent with people talking about the same thing without knowing it  because they each called it something completely different. Other meetings end in disarray because even though we used the same words, they hold a completely different meaning to the participants.

When you talk about digital with the PR department, the IT department, the media department or the brand manager, the definition of each might be completely different, and absolutely valid, but not helpful.

One example of when this becomes a real burden is when discussing ROI on invested budgets. The way IT, PR, media or brand teams evaluate the ROI of the digital budget will be 100% informed by the definition of what digital budget covers, and by what measure it should be evaluated. IT might be jumping for joy because their investment in servers and software worked really well and delivered a cost reduction. Meanwhile, the PR department talks about a digital budget disaster because influencers simply did not pick up on the activity.

A further complication of definitions is that much of our old marketing terminology simply does not cut it anymore in our always on, uber-connected world. Consumers do not live by a simple-to-follow linear marketing process no matter how much we, marketers, wish that were true. The only calendar or timing consumers care about is their own.

There are loads of companies out there that offer marketing or budget ROI solutions. But once you look closer, you may find what they really offer is typically a form of ROI measurement for only one touchpoint (e.g., paid social media) or a touchpoint collection (e.g., all social media touchpoints). The definition of ROI itself needs definition!

Ultimately, you have to look at marketing investment ROI from two angles. First, how did the totality of the investment do  that is, all touchpoints in concert, covering the budgets to create, distribute and activate everything. And secondly, what was the contribution and performance of each touchpoint individually? In order to do any of that, spend a little time on wordsmithing the definitions of all that you wish to measure.
by Sara Guaglione , April 25, 2016

Newsweek

today appointed Ken Li as managing editor. Li, who most recently served as founding editor of Re/code, will replace outgoing managing editor Kira Bindrim, who is headed to Quartz to become editor of its talent lab after three years at Newsweek.

Li will be based out of IBT Medias headquarters in New York City (IBT owns Newsweek) and will report directly to Jim Impoco, editor in chief of Newsweek.

Li told Publishers Daily that his top priorities as managing editor will be preserving and growing the fantastic investigative, in-depth and high-quality analysis that the brand, under Jim Impoco, has created.

As managing editor, Lis responsibilities include handling day-to-day operations for the site and production of the weekly print and digital magazine. He will work closely with Impoco to guide Newsweeks editorial direction, manage the team of reporters and editors and coordinate with sales, marketing and technology teams at IBT Media.

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We're going into a really important election season and want to keep pushing Newsweeks growth and momentum by putting the best digital minds at the forefront of our news operation, Impoco stated.

Li told PD that because he has spent his career covering the intersection of technology and media businesses at Re/code, he is excited to have [the Newsweek] team pursue stories in a sector that is driving the global economy and our culture.

I'm eager to work in print again, but also believe that there's a huge opportunity in digital, Li added.

Prior to Re/code, Li also worked as a reporter and editor at Reuters, the Financial Times, The Industry Standard and the New York Daily News.

Newsweek announced several other internal moves and promotions today: Kevin Dolak has been named national editor and will oversee the publication's 2016 elections coverage; Margarita Noriega has been named executive editor of digital; and Iva Dixit has been promoted to social media editor.
Voice search has become an amazing tool. Data supports the advancements -- not just in search engines like Bing and Google, but Internet-connected devices such as Amazon Echo. Alexa, Amazon's virtual assistant in Echo that allows users to schedule calendar events and call for services like Uber. Yet with all this positive innovation, major risk points to a future with malware and cybercrime becoming more prevalent than physical crimes.

As consumers and even advertisers begin to rethink their attitudes toward Internet-connected devices and take a more positive view, these connected devices -- from cars to coffeemakers -- present infinite ways for cybercriminals to disrupt our daily lives. In a report, authors James Scott, senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, and Drew Spaniel, ICIT visiting scholar at Carnegie Mellon University, say it remains conceivable that malware and ransomware will eventually target IoT devices and become more prevalent than physical crimes.

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Voice technology, cameras, or any open point of contact in a device creates a passage for thieves. Through these unsecured connections, malware and ransomware could become the next major type of burglary crime, and with IoT it comes increasingly easy to attack a home or an office similar to the way adversaries might attack a large-scale bank or healthcare network.

"A traditional burglary begins with an attacker observing your home from the outside and gleaning what information they can about the defenses, your activities, and the value of the contents in the home," according to the researchers. "In many cases, context clues, such as mail stacked up in the mailbox, can be employed against you and used to predict a vulnerability in your security; in this case, that the house is currently unoccupied."

While the attacker physically moves in to steal valuable possessions, these online attacks through IoT devices will not require an invader to physically enter the home or office.

American cyber culture is still lacking in the basics necessary to preclude the cyber-incidents that result from human error. Information about emerging threats or compromised networks is neither shared to benefit communities.

The report's authors define ransomware as a form of malware that can use five encrypted specific files or file types on a victim's machine without the effort and technical knowledge to infiltrate and exfiltrate a system. Most spread through malicious links in spear-phishing emails or through drive-by-downloads and advertisements, but some recent versions of the malware such as the Samsam ransomware used in the Medstar Healthcare attacks, were deployed without the victim interacting with any content on a Web site page.

Scott and Spaniel call on the security industry to create a method to create tighter connection points into the home, offices and other types of devices like cars. Companies offering cloud services and manufacturers will need to rethink Internet connections and protect users.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, April 25, 2016

The rise in programmatic media buying and publishing continues to drive up the cost of advertising, given the need to collect, use and better understand data, according to a GroupM study released Monday.

Although programmatic buying and selling produces much stronger results, GroupM futures director Adam Smith tells Media Daily News that "every layer of data added may create more cost -- sometimes "significant."

"There's been an assumption that more data is better, but now there's a realization that quality is better," Smith says. "Excess becomes difficult to manage."

This is far removed from the way advertisers buy traditional media, which has been a commissioned-driven business, he says.

The report, Interaction 2016, also questions and attempts to shed light on the effectiveness of these investments, citing fraud, viewability and measurement issues. It's based on data from 19 countries GroupM supports.

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GroupM defines programmatic, as any online display advertisement transacted automatically as opposed to being a manual insertion order. Those participating in the study were asked to estimate what percentage of local digital display ad investment was automated. The result is a global average in 2015 of 37%, up from 21% in 2014. Excluding the USA, this is 16% and 10%.

GroupM also asked the percentage of online video comprised of local digital display. Globally that number comes to 22% in 2015, up from 20% in 2014.

While data and technology have changed video advertising for the better, the challenges around programmatic point to reach, frequency, fraud and viewablity, Smith says.

It could be time to remove the "zero from the 30-second standard that has characterized video advertising for generations," per the report, suggesting the need for a new definition of earned media in which the dividend is calculated by the number of seconds viewed over and above the point at which the advertiser is charged.

Is three seconds to view an autoplay video in Facebook long enough to measure the impression, Smith said. The market will have to decide this with help from agencies like GroupM, he said, calling on agencies to spearhead a new standard.

The video metric would measure response rates while silent or with audio, compared with the time viewed, Smith said, who said the U.S. needs to lead efforts. The rest of the world will follow.
by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, April 25, 2016

Cable companies and other critics of the Federal Communications Commission's proposal to "unlock" set-top boxes have spent the last two months arguing that the plan poses a risk to consumers' privacy.

The proposal would enable Google and other non-cable companies to develop boxes that can access pay-TV programs. Google supports the plan, as do consumer groups and the White House.

But cable providers and other critics contend that the FCC won't be able to force Google -- and other device and app developers -- to follow rules aimed at protecting consumers' privacy. The FCC counters that it will require Google and others to certify that they comply with similar privacy rules as cable and satellite providers.

Now, the Federal Trade Commission is weighing in. FTC Consumer Protection head Jessica Rich says in a letter to the FCC that it's not enough for app and device makers to "certify" their compliance via behind-the-scenes contracts. Instead, Google and other companies should publicly promise to follow the same privacy standards as cable and satellite providers, Rich argues.

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That way, she says, the FTC will be able to bring enforcement actions against companies that engage in questionable privacy practices.

"The FTCs ability to enforce promises made by these entities serves as an important backstop to ensure that they are abiding by the required consumer privacy protections," Rich writes.

She adds that the agency's authority to sue companies for deceiving consumers is "clearly implicated" by public certifications. "Examples of enforceable statements to consumers could include statements within privacy policies, on other portions of a consumer-facing website, on a retail box, on the device itself, or in the user interface of the device."

Rich notes that the FTC previously brought high-profile privacy cases against Google, Facebook, and Snapchat, among other Web companies.

Although the FTC can't generally fine companies that violate privacy promises, the agency can enter into settlement agreements. If companies violate the settlement terms, the FTC can impose sanctions. In fact, Google -- which has made no secret of its ambitions to develop set-top boxes -- is operating under a consent decree that subjects it to sanctions for violating privacy promises made to consumers. Several years ago, the FTC fined Google $22.5 million for circumventing Safari's default settings in order to track consumers, despite saying in its privacy policy that the Safari browser blocks tracking cookies.

Proponents of the FCC's plan to unlock the box point out that it could enable consumers to purchase boxes -- which they currently rent for a collective $20 billion a year. The plan also would make it easier for consumers to watch TV on tablets and smartphones, and access over-the-top content from the same device used to watch TV programs.

A coalition of advocacy groups argues that the FCC's proposal may actually strengthen consumers' privacy rights. "A competitive market will allow consumers to choose between different providers, in part based on their different privacy policies," the Consumer Video Choice Coalition writes in papers submitted to the FCC Friday.

"A competitive market will present consumers with a variety of different choices, some of which may have stricter controls on the collection and use of viewing data, than ... customers have access to now."
Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, April 26, 2016 9:05 AM

Apple Inc. sold twice as many Watches as iPhones in each devices debut year. Yet the smartwatch is dogged by a perception that seems premature given the history of Apples most popular devices: disappointment. As the Watch marks its first anniversary on Sundaytwo days before Apples quarterly earnings announcementthe products fate is critical to the company. It is Apples first all-new product since the iPad and a test of its ability to innovate under Chief Executive Tim Cook, when sales of iPhones are slowing.

Read the whole story at Wall Street Journal 
by Thom Forbes @tforbes, April 26, 2016

Troubled Valeant Pharmaceuticals will have a new chairman and CEO next month  Joseph Papa  even as outgoing leader, J. Michael Pearson, is scheduled to testify about the repercussions of its business model on patients and the health care system as a whole before the Senate Special Committee on Aging tomorrow. Papa has led Dublin-based Perrigo since 2006.

Papa is an industry veteran with experience in the drug-wholesaler sector at Cardinal Health Inc. He led Perrigo for more than a decade and steered it through the successful rebuff of a hostile takeover attempt by Mylan NV last year, write the Wall Street Journals Anne Steele, Jacquie McNish and David Benoit in confirming the appointment they first floated in a story Friday.

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His experience as a drug-industry executive and personality drew the attention of Valeant, which had wanted a candidate who came with existing relationships to the customers.

But Benoit points out in a Market Talk sidebar that giving both the CEO and chairman titles to Papa may raise some eyebrows since Valeant only last month stripped departing CEO Michael Pearson of the chairman title and gave it to Robert Ingram.

For his part, in the release announcing the appointment, Ingram stated that Papa has a strong shareholder orientation, a background in science, and an unmatched track record of accomplishments, highlighted by his ability to lead companies through times of transition.  In addition, fostering an ethical culture and creating opportunities for professional development have always been high priorities.

Following the WSJs report Friday, Gimme Credit analyst Vicki Bryan said Papa could be just what Valeant needed, Katie Thomas writes in the New York Times. Papas management style evokes a dramatically more positive tone/culture versus the toxic do it or else environment revealed as so pervasive at Valeant, Bryan wrote in a note.

The longtime critic of Valeant, as the Financial Posts Damon van der Linde points out, also said that Papa seems to have importantly relevant experience running several major pharmacy enterprises. Indeed, before taking over at Perrigo in 2006, the 60-year-old Papa was a senior executive at four other pharmacy companies and 2012 Barrons included him in its 2012 list of Worlds Best 30 CEOs.

Pembroke Consulting president Adam J. Fein says Papa may help Valeant re-establish trust with insurers and pharmacy-benefit managers, which is sorely needed, the NYTs Thomas reports. Top pharmacy-benefit managers, including Express Scripts and CVS/Caremark, had recently said they were removing many of Valeants products from their list of covered drugs.

His hiring represents a significant positive development on multiple fronts, says Citigroup Global analyst Murali Ganti in a note quoted by Barrons Teresa Rivas. Ganti first applauds the speed with which it happened and Papas experience. Finally, we think the optics surrounding a potential fresh start incrementally stabilizes sentiment.

Optics, of course, are in the eye of the beholder and others have some doubts about whether Papa, accomplished as he may be, is the right executive to get Valeant righted.

Hes leaving his firm Perrigo in terrible shape, Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ram Selvaraju tells Bloombergs Michelle Cortez and Cynthia Koon. It looks like hes abandoning ship and going to another company thats even more troubled.

But, unlike Pfizers leaders, he was ahead of the tax-inversion backlash. In 2013, he steered the drugmaker, then based in Michigan, through a merger with an Irish rival, Dublin-based biotech firm Elan Corp., Anne Steele reports for the Wall Street Journal. He then established a holding company under its name in Ireland to take advantage of the comparatively low 12.5% corporate tax rate.

Papa does not have significant experience in branded prescription drugs, Valeant's area of focus, said Wells Fargo analyst David Maris, Reuters Business reports, pointing out that Perrigo sells over-the-counter products, which are a small part of Valeant's business.

Perrigo has limited international business; Valeant has a lot, says Maris. Perrigo has acquired a lot of products and divested very few; Valeants future probably has a lot of divestitures.

Meanwhile, Perrigos shares dropped 18% Monday, hit by the double whammy of Papas resignation and its cutting first-quarter and full-year estimates due to industry and competitive pressures in the sector, Fred Imbert reports for CNBC.

Perrigo named John T. Hendrickson, who had been president since October and EVP, Global Operations & Supply Chain since 2007 before that, as CEO. It also elected independent director Laurie Brlas as chairman.
by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, April 26, 2016

Google Accelerated Mobile Pages -- a collaborative open-source project between dozens of technology companies and publishers to make the mobile Web faster -- officially launched in February, yet less than one-fourth of search engine optimization experts have implemented AMP.

The survey -- conducted by SEO PowerSuite in partnership with Nathan Safran, founder of Blue Nile Consulting -- polled nearly 400 professionals representing a mix of in-house SEOs and agency SEOs across North America and Europe.

The questions focused on awareness, the impact SEOs believe AMP would have on the search results, and whether or not they are actively implementing or intending to implement the technology.

The study found that 75% of SEOs said they were aware of AMP, and 18% said they had researched it extensively.

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Some 49% of respondents expect AMP to significantly affect their rankings in mobile search results, and another 31% believe it will have a moderate impact, followed by 14% who said it will have a slight impact, and 6% believe it will have no impact at all.

About 23% have already begun to implement AMP on their mobile sites today, while an additional one-third of those surveyed plan to implement AMP in the next six months.

Some 29% plan to implement AMP in the next six months, 42% are researching it, and 5% do not have plans to support the project.

The survey shows that SEO professionals are paying attention to Google's project at a time when the search engine reportedly is giving increasing preference to mobile-friendly sites.

AMP is an open-source code framework, similar to HTML, which Google asked publishers and other companies to adopt late last year. Companies participating in the project include Pinterest, LinkedIn, and The Washington Post.
The magazine focuses on energy and environment issues, geared to policy makers in these areas. The Hills energy, environment, technology, national security and campaign writers will contribute, as will lawmakers and members of various DC committees.

It will serve as a platform for lawmakers to share their ideas and for readers to be informed on the latest events and innovations affecting Washington energy policy, according to the statement.

Adam Prather, publisher of The Hill, told Publishers Daily that the magazine has 11 paid advertisers, which includes two sponsored content executions.

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The Hill's core audience relies heavily on the publication to provide them with federal policy information energy and environment is one of our core coverage areas and a vertical with heavy readership, Prather said.

Prather said the brand wanted to create the model for the series now, in preparation for a new president and Congress in 2017.

Headlines on the online version of Energy & Environment range from 10 rising stars in the energy and environment world to Pentagon looks to reduce $4 billion energy bill.

Prather said the pub "shows our commitment to bringing energy and environment content to influential stakeholders in both the public and private sectors."

Energy & Environment will reach the same circulation as The Hills newspaper and digital platform. According to Prather, the magazine will have an audited and targeted, largely Washington-based print distribution of roughly 25,000.

The magazine will be heavily distributed to Congressional offices, the White House, federal agencies, K Street, think tanks and corporate government relations offices.

In the coming weeks, The Hill plans to announce the next magazine in the series: Technology & Security.
by Jess Nelson , April 26, 2016

Litmus announced the acquisition of Curated on Tuesday, extending the email testing company's services into the realm of email content creation.

The acquisition will soon add Curateds content creation tools to the Litmus email testing and analytics platform. Curated allows marketers to adapt content from different channels, such as social media, into reusable content that can be published in an email newsletter.

Curated optimizes and reduces the amount of time it takes to create an email, which is incredibly important to marketers crunched for time and looking to send out marketing as quickly as possible. The company helps marketers get more mileage from content, while still offering a consistent customer experience across channels.

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Paul Farnell, chief executive officer at Litmus, said the acquisition will help meet the challenge of bridging content strategy with email strategy in a conversation with Email Marketing Daily. Great content can improve email marketing, but the challenger is connecting those two things, says Farnell.

Based in Massachusetts and with an additional office in London, Litmus is a Web-based email testing and analytics platform that helps marketers render their emails for any screen. By integrating Curateds content workflow and email creation solutions into the Litmus platform, marketers will soon have an all-in-one platform for email subscriber engagement.
by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, April 26, 2016

Omnicom Groups DDB and longtime client Clorox are parting ways after a review. Assuming the bulk of creative chores on the account are two agencies: Interpublic's FCB and Dentsu's mcgarrybowen. DDB has been the marketers agency for two decades.

The company spent $523 million on advertising in fiscal 2015, according to its annual report.

Clorox began an agency review late last year, which was completed late Tuesday with confirmation from the marketer of its newly appointed agencies. Word of the split with DDB broke earlier in the day and initially Clorox said the review was still ongoing. But later in the day FCB and mcgarrybowen were confirmed as the big winners in the review.

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The official announcement on the new agency assignments from the client is due to be released Wednesday morning.

Wendy Clark, CEO of DDB North America, issued this statement: "We are immensely proud of the work we have created together with Clorox. Market share, sales and stock performance are all up, and advertising is at the core of driving growth of their brands. We wish Clorox the very best in their endeavors and are proud to have made an indelible mark on a company known for removing them."

Word of the split follows confirmation earlier this week that McDonalds is conducting a creative review. That account is split between DDB and Publicis Groupes Leo Burnett.

Clorox brands include its namesake bleach and cleaning products, as well as Brita, Burt's Bees, Formula 409, Glad, Hidden Valley, Kitchen Bouquet, KC Masterpiece, Soy Vay, Kingsford, Liquid-Plumr, and numerous other products.

Media, not part of the review process, is handled by DDB sibling OMD.
by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, April 26, 2016

Google is striking back at accusations that its set-top-box ambitions threaten people's privacy.

"Providing consumers new ways to discover and choose content likewise should not erode the important data protection and privacy safeguards that consumers demand," Google says in a Federal Communications Commission filing. "The devices and applications that consumers use to access content are subject to robust privacy laws at the federal and state levels, and consumers have access to privacy policies that inform them about how their personally identifiable information will be used."

The company's comments come in response to the FCC's proposal to "unlock" set-top boxes, enabling Google and other non-cable companies to develop boxes that can access pay-TV programs. Google has advocated for the plan since at least last October, but is hardly the only supporter: The White House and consumer groups also say the proposal will benefit viewers by giving them new, potentially cheaper options for accessing pay-TV. Currently, consumers pay an average of $231 a year to rent a set-top box from a cable or satellite company.

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Currently, cable and satellite providers that offer set-top boxes are subject to privacy rules. But the Communications Act doesn't empower the FCC to impose those same rules on other types of companies. For that reason, the cable industry argues that the FCC's unlocking proposal will enable "privacy scofflaws like Google" to collect more data about people.

But FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has come up with a workaround that he says will protect consumers' privacy: He wants to require Google (and other would-be set-top box makers) to certify that they will follow the same privacy rules as cable and satellite providers.

The Federal Trade Commission recently said the FCC should go even further and require app and device makers to publicly promise to follow the same privacy standards as cable and satellite providers.

For its part, Google says no new privacy laws are needed, given that the government already has the ability to bring cases against companies that violate privacy policies.

"Federal and state authorities, as well as private litigants, will ensure that providers of new navigation devices will be required to honor the commitments they make in their privacy policies," Google writes.

That statement, however, doesn't seem especially useful without knowing what Google intends to promise in its privacy policy.

Privacy advocate Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, characterized Google's position as " nothing short of a new digital data power grab."

He added in an email: "The FCC should reject this self-serving call for it to do nothing. It should adopt rules that require Google to actually take consumer privacy seriously."
The ITA.LI.CA prognostic system, a model integrating tumor staging, liver function, functional status, and alpha-fetoprotein level, builds on previous models of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) prognosis and shows superior survival prediction in Italian and Taiwanese cohorts, according to a study published this week in PLOS Medicine by Alessandro Vitale of Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria di Padova, Italy, and colleagues.

Primary liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Current prognostic models for HCC (the most common liver cancer) do not integrate a number of patient-level factors that affect prognosis and treatment eligibility. Using the ITA.LI.CA dataset, prospectively collected from 5,290 consecutive patients with HCC from 19 institutions in Italy, Vitale and colleagues created an ITA.LI.CA staging system using tumor characteristics, and then developed a parametric multivariable survival model integrating ITA.LI.CA stage, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status, Child-Pugh score, and alpha-fetoprotein. The resulting prognostic score had concordance indices of 0.71 and 0.78 in internal (a subset of ITA.LI.CA) and external (Taiwanese, n=2,651) validation cohorts, respectively, and compared favorably (p < 0.001) to other prognostic systems for HCC (BCLC, HKLC, MESIAH, CLIP, JIS). Moreover, it allows a simple but accurate clinical description of each HCC patient, with the potential to be used for deciding treatment or designing clinical trials.

Prospective trials beyond the two populations studied are needed to validate the generalizability of the ITA.LI.CA prognostic score. Nonetheless, strong performance in two distinct cohorts suggests that Vitale and colleagues have developed a promising tool. In a Perspective on the study, Neehar Parikh of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan (US) and Amit Singal of UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas (US) (both uninvolved in the study) discuss why ITA.LI.CA is timely and provides an advance, and propose next steps. On this study's impact, they say, "[t]his system is an important iteration in the evolution of staging for HCC, and, while it enters a crowded field, the ITA.LI.CA staging system is a worthy entrant."

The authors received no specific funding for this work. EG has received teaching and travel grants from Bayer AG. FP has received from Bayer and Bracco travel grants and honoraria for speaking or participation at meetings.

Farinati F, Vitale A, Spolverato G, Pawlik TM, Huo T-l, Lee Y-H, et al. (2016) "Development and Validation of a New Prognostic System for Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma" PLoS Med 13(4): e1002006. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002006

Source: PLOS Medicine
An international evidence review has found that certain nutritional supplements can increase the effectiveness of antidepressants for people with clinical depression.

Omega 3 fish oils, S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe)*, methylfolate (bioactive form of folate) and Vitamin D, were all found to boost the effects of medication.

University of Melbourne and Harvard researchers examined 40 clinical trials worldwide, alongside a systematic review of the evidence for using nutrient supplements (known as nutraceuticals) to treat clinical depression in tandem with antidepressants such as SSRIs**, SNRIs^ and tricyclics^^.

Head of the ARCADIA Mental Health Research Group at the University of Melbourne, Dr Jerome Sarris, led the meta-analysis, published today in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

"The strongest finding from our review was that Omega 3 fish oil - in combination with antidepressants - had a statistically significant effect over a placebo," Dr Sarris said.

"Many studies have shown Omega 3s are very good for general brain health and improving mood, but this is the first analysis of studies that looks at using them in combination with antidepressant medication.

"The difference for patients taking both antidepressants and Omega 3, compared to a placebo, was highly significant. This is an exciting finding because here we have a safe, evidence-based approach that could be considered a mainstream treatment."

The University of Melbourne research team also found good evidence for methylfolate, Vitamin D, and SAMe as a mood enhancing therapy when taken with antidepressants. They reported mixed results for zinc, vitamin C and tryptophan (an amino acid). Folic acid didn't work particularly well, nor did inositol.

"A large proportion of people who have depression do not reach remission after one or two courses of antidepressant medication," Dr Sarris said.

"Millions of people in Australia and hundreds of millions worldwide currently take antidepressants. There's real potential here to improve the mental health of people who have an inadequate response to them."

Dr Sarris said medical professionals may be hesitant to prescribe nutraceuticals alongside pharmaceuticals, simply because there has been a lack of scientific evidence around their efficacy.

"Medical practitioners are aware of the benefits of omega 3 fatty acids, but are probably unaware that one can combine them with antidepressant medication for a potentially better outcome," he said.

The researchers found no major safety concerns in combining the two therapies, but stressed that people on antidepressants should always consult with their health professional before taking nutraceuticals and should be aware these supplements can differ in quality.

"We're not telling people to rush out and buy buckets of supplements. Always speak to your medical professional before changing or initiating a treatment," Dr Sarris said.

The researchers are currently conducting a National Health and Medical Research Council study using a combination of these nutraceuticals for depression.

Adjunctive Nutraceuticals for Depression: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses American Journal of Psychiatry. Jerome Sarris, Ph.D., M.H.Sc., Jenifer Murphy, Ph.D., David Mischoulon, M.D., Ph.D., George I. Papakostas, M.D., Maurizio Fava, M.D., Michael Berk, M.D., Ph.D., Chee H. Ng, M.D. DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2016.15091228. Published online April 26, 2016.
New research from North Carolina State University and Pennsylvania State University finds that black female college students were often unlikely to use online resources related to HIV prevention, due to the stigma associated with the disease and concerns that their social network would learn they were accessing HIV-related materials.

"We assumed that providing information about HIV prevention online would be an effective way of reaching black female college students," says Fay Cobb Payton, an associate professor of information technology at NC State and lead author of a paper on the work. "We thought it would resonate and be accepted, and we were wrong."

The researchers convened eleven focus groups, consisting of a total of 60 black women who were college students. Half of the focus groups were based in North Carolina, the others in Pennsylvania.

Based on the results of those focus groups, the researchers developed a website and social media tools containing culturally relevant, culturally sensitive information about HIV prevention designed to address the needs of black female college students. The online resources were then shared with members of the target population. The researchers conducted follow-up surveys, meetings and one-on-one interviews to determine how effective and useful the online resources were.

The results suggest that there are several barriers, including stigma and societal perceptions, which limit black women's willingness to use social media to seek and share HIV prevention information even when the resources are tailored for the target population.

"We found that stigma by association was playing a significant role in limiting their use of our social media tools," Payton says. "Even just interacting with educational information about HIV carried a social stigma. There was a fear, particularly among the Pennsylvania students, that engaging with the information would lead peers to think they were HIV positive."

Both groups of students were concerned about how they'd be viewed as black women - by peers, family and larger social networks - if they were seen to be educating themselves about HIV. This concern motivated students to carefully manage where and how they seek HIV prevention resources.

"Study participants thought the online resources were great, but accessing the information appeared to carry a social cost," Payton says. "They would rather get information via hard-copy, like pamphlets or brochures, because there's no electronic footprint that their peers or family might see.

"Sometimes, as designers, we make assumptions about our audience," Payton adds. "When we talk about creating educational resources for stigmatized health conditions, we need to be aware that there are culturally imposed limits to what people want to access and engage with online. So, attempts to educate various audiences about HIV or other culturally sensitive topics need to take into account how the target audience wants to access information."

"Online Health Awareness and Technology Affordance Benefits for Black Female Collegians - Maybe Not,". Fay Cobb Payton, Lynette Kvasny. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. DOI:10.1093/jamia/ocw017. Published online 19 April 2016.

Funder: National Science Foundation.
Cancer development is a complex process involving both genetic and epigenetic changes. Genetic changes in oncogenes and tumor-suppressor genes are generally considered as primary causes, since these genes may directly regulate cellular growth. In addition, it has been found that changes in epigenetic factors, through mutation or altered gene expression, may contribute to cancer development.

In the nucleus of eukaryotic cells DNA and histone proteins form a structure called chromatin which consists of nucleosomes that, like beads on a string, are aligned along the DNA strand. Modifications in chromatin structure are essential for cell type-specific activation or repression of gene transcription, as well as other processes such as DNA repair, DNA replication and chromosome segregation.

In this review Angelo Ferraro of Kazan Federal University focuses on recently published work dealing with alterations in the primary structure of chromatin resulting from imprecise arrangements of nucleosomes along DNA, and its functional implications for cancer development.

While single aspects of chromatin architecture are reported daily, yet no comprehensive review has been published that summarizes mechanisms such as chromatin remodelling, histone modification, histone variant and nucleosome positioning in cancer.

Alterations in epigenetic factors involved in chromatin dynamics may accelerate cell cycle progression and, ultimately, result in malignant transformation. Abnormal expression of remodeler and modifier enzymes, as well as histone variants, may confer to cancer cells the ability to reprogram their genomes and to yield, maintain or exacerbate malignant hallmarks. At the end, genetic and epigenetic alterations that are encountered in cancer cells may culminate in chromatin changes that may, by altering the quantity and quality of gene expression, promote cancer development.

The primary chromatin structure is regulated by a variety of epigenetic mechanisms that may be deregulated through gene mutations and/or gene expression alterations. In recent years, it has become evident that changes in chromatin structure may coincide with the occurrence of cancer hallmarks.

The functional interrelationships between such epigenetic alterations and cancer development are just becoming manifest and, therefore, the oncology community should continue to explore the molecular mechanisms governing the primary chromatin structure, both in normal and in cancer cells, in order to improve future approaches for cancer detection, prevention and therapy, as also for circumventing drug resistance.

Altered primary chromatin structures and their implications in cancer development. Angelo Ferraro. Cellular Oncology. DOI:10.1007/s13402-016-0276-6. Published online 23 March 2016.

This work was supported by a grant of the Russian Government (agreement # 02.A03.21.0002) to support the Program of Competitive Growth of the Kazan Federal University among the World's Leading Academic Centers.
Ingrown hair is defined as the condition in which the hair have curled and grown back into the skin, causing inflammation of the same. Rarely some areas of dead skin may clog the hair follicle, causing the hair to grow sideways and laterally, instead of the normal outward and upward growth. Sometimes, shaving too closely on face and legs cause the sharpened end of the hair to pierce and grow back into the skin, causing razor bumps, since they appear red due to the inflammation, hence called red bumps.

Certain people who have thick and coarse hair develop a similar condition Pseudofolliculitis barbae, in the beard area due to excessive shaving, tweezing of the unwanted hair.

Ingrown hairs are the hair, which have curled and grown back into the skin, causing inflammation, instead of growing outward and upward normally.

Anyone with coarse or curly hair, which have been closely shaven or removed, causes ingrown hair. The general causes are:

Inflammation of the hair follicle (folliculitis)

Excessive removal of unwanted hair on the legs or close shaving by a razor (razor bumps or pseudofolliculitis barbae).

Excessive hair growth in certain men, causing removal of the hair on wearing tight garments, or excessive tweezing or shaving the same.

Women suffering from hirsutism and attempt to remove the same.

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Some of the signs and symptoms of ingrown hair include,

Raised red, flat topped area of the skin with a sharp part of hair (papule)

Raised top with inflamed hair follicle with pus (pustule)

Redness

Rashes

Darkening of skin (hyperpigmentation).

Permanent scarring (keloids)

Itching

Diagnosis of ingrown hair is clinical; with proper history and clinical lookup of the effected area one can easily diagnose ingrown hair.

The many different treatment modalities of ingrown hair include:

Use of topical retinoids, popularly isotretinoin or tretinoin for removal of hyperpigmented dead skin.

Use of topical steroids and antibiotics in case of mild to moderate inflammation, and oral antibiotics for severe inflammation.

Use of rotatable medical device

Medicated tweezers (this modality is painful but effective).

Sterile needle can be used to release the embedded hair tip by inserting it under the hair loop.

For persons with chronic coarse hair, or for women with hirsutism, LASER treatment and electrolysis is the mainstay of treatment.

Certain home remedies include:

Honey and Aspirin: Honey as a moisturizer, antiseptic, the salicylic acid of aspirin tends to loose ingrown hair.



Baking soda and Oatmeal: It is best for exfoliation.



Salt and Cucumber with Aloe Vera: Aloe Vera and salt increase the blood circulation; cucumber provides water for effective cleansing.



Warm compress helps alleviate the skin and hence helps in resurfacing of the ingrown hair



Apple Cider Vinegar with Teabags. Acts as an antiseptic and cleanser.

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For prevention of ingrown hair, following methods are satisfactory and remedying:

Before shaving, wetting of the facial hair or the areas concerned for removal of hair by warm water.

Application of skin lubricants, emollients, use of moisturizing shaving creams or gels before shaving.

Use of single blade razors in shaving proven helpful by showing fewer chances of the appearance of ingrown hair.

Always shave in the direction of hair growth to minimize the inward hair pull impact and rinse the blade after each stroke. Dont pull your skin taut while shaving.

Application of alcohol-based aftershave lotions and gels can be helpful for minimizing the appearance of the ingrown hair.

Electric razor with avoiding the closest shave setting, and use of blade slightly away from the skin.

Use of chemical epilators after testing on a small area.

Use of eflornithine cream for decreasing hair growth.

Topical application of diluted glycolic acid might help in some cases.
On April 5, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the decision to establish a National Guard for the country, that will be "formed on the basis of" the state's Interior Ministry Troops. Putin also announced that Russia's Federal Drug Control Service and Federal Migration Service would be incorporated into the Interior Ministry.

Putin made the announcement at a meeting with Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, Interior Ministry Troops commander Viktor Zolotov, Federal Drug Control Service director Viktor Ivanov, and Federal Migration Service first deputy director Yekaterina Yegorova.[1] During the meeting, Putin stated that the new federal executive government body would fight terrorism and organized crime: "We are creating a National Guard, responsible for the fight against terrorism and organized crime, and, in close contact with the Interior Ministry, we will continue to perform the functions that were previously the responsibility of the OMON [Special Purpose Police Unit], SOBR [Special Rapid Response Unit], and other crack police units."[2] Regarding the fight against organized crime, Putin explained that the Federal Drug Control Service would be incorporated into the Interior Ministry, where it would operate "independently and self-sufficiently" but within the ministry framework.

The same day, Putin signed an executive order appointing Viktor Zolotov director of the Federal Service of National Guard Troops and commander of the National Guard Troops, and relieved him of his position as Interior Ministry Troops commander.[3]

The following are excerpts from an article detailing the functions of the new National Guard, as published on the website of the Russian media outlet Rbc.ru:[4]

Putin (center) at April 5 meeting with, left to right: Federal Drug Control Service director Viktor Ivanov, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, Interior Ministry Troops commander Viktor Zolotov and Federal Migration Service first deputy director Yekaterina Yegorova. (Source: Kremlin.ru, April 5, 2016)

Use Of Firearms

"The National Guard, which is [to be] formed on the basis of the Interior Ministry Troops, will include all the special police forces (in particular, the OMON riot police and SOBR rapid deployment task force), and will be authorized to use firearms. According to the bill introduced by President Vladimir Putin, firearms may be used to protect citizens, free hostages, apprehend people who may have committed a grievous or extremely grievous crime, and prevent escape attempts. Guardsmen will also be allowed to use guns to raise an alarm. Finally, the National Guard will have the right to use firearms to counter an attack by military machinery, planes, or ships.

"Before firing a shot, a soldier will be obliged to issue a warning that he is from the National Guard and that he is about to shoot. Firing without warning will only be permissible if a delay endangers the lives and health of others. Shooting at pregnant women (the document mentions 'visibly pregnant' women), disabled people, and children is forbidden, unless they offer armed resistance. Opening fire in a crowd will also be prohibited, since random people may be hurt.

"These regulations correspond exactly to the laws for the police. The FSB [Federal Security Service, the main successor agency to the KGB] has broader powers: [in December 2015], the State Duma adopted, in an expedited manner, a law that allows FSB personnel to use firearms in crowded areas to thwart terrorist attacks or to liberate hostages.[5] Similarly, the use of firearms against women or minors is permitted if they have committed acts of terrorism."

Putin announces the creation of the National Guard. On right: Interior Ministry Troops commander Viktor Zolotov. (Source: Kremlin.ru, April 5, 2016)

Use Of Gas Grenades And Armored Vehicles

"National Guard troops will have the right to use physical force to stop a crime from being committed and to bring a detained person to the police. Guardsmen will also have special equipment at their disposal which they will be permitted to use to detain alleged criminals, to liberate hostages and buildings, to forcibly stop motor vehicles, and to hold off attacks against military towns, troop trains, and road convoys. Among the special devices whose use will be permitted are rubber truncheons, gas grenades, handcuffs, light/sound diversionary devices [such as flashbang grenades], devices designed to destroy obstacles [compact explosive devices],and equipment for stopping vehicles [road blocks]. In addition, the National Guard will have service animals. As with firearms, it will be forbidden to use special devices against pregnant women, disabled people, and children, unless they offer armed resistance. The National Guard will also have water cannons and armored vehicles, but these will be used only in counter-terrorism and military operations."

Detaining "Encroachers" For Up To Three Hours

"The National Guard will safeguard public order, fight extremism and terrorism, take part in the territorial defense of the country, patrol the border, escort special cargo, and guard important state facilities, as follows from the bill. National Guard troops will have the right to suppress crimes, inspect documents, draw up protocols for administrative offences, guard crime scenes until the investigators arrive, and detain curfew breakers, failed suicides, psychiatric hospital patients who have gone AWOL, and alleged criminals, including those who escaped custody. National Guard troops will be authorized to detain, for a period of up to three hours, people who encroach upon other people's property or secure facilities. They will also be authorized to conduct personal searches on such people and to check their cars."

Troops To Be Allowed To Enter Private Homes

"The National Guard will be authorized to search employees of nuclear power plants and to keep and destroy weapons that they find or are given to them by citizens. Guardsmen will also participate in disaster mitigation. National Guard troops will be allowed to enter private homes and other buildings to save civilians or detain alleged criminals. During disaster relief operations, anti-riot activities, searches for those who escaped custody, or the pursuit of fugitives, the National Guard will be permitted to seal off certain areas and restrict vehicle and pedestrian traffic. Currently, only the Interior Ministry troops, police, and the FSB have these rights."

Conducting Counter-Terrorism Operations

"During counter-terrorism operations, the National Guard will be authorized to restrict vehicle and pedestrian traffic, and to requisition and use cars to drive injured people to hospital or to pursue alleged criminals.

"According to the bill, the National Guard has no investigative powers. The functions of the National Guard will partially overlap with the functions of the FSB, says Mikhail Pashkin, head of the Moscow Police Workers Union. Talking to RBC, he notes that at the moment, the fight against terrorism is formalized in legislation as the FSB prerogative. 'You can't fight terrorism without investigative powers', Pashkin states, adding, 'If the National Guard carries out only the law enforcement tasks that the Ministry of the Interior, FSB, Customs, and others put before it, there shouldn't be any problems.'"

Endnotes:
Following the drop in global oil prices and the subsequent harm done to the economies of oil-producing countries, columnists in the Gulf states called on their countries to diversify their sources of income rather than rely solely on petrodollars.

In an article in the Bahraini daily Al-Wasat, Bahraini columnist Yousef Maki argued that the reason for his country's economic crisis is the flawed economic policy it adopted in the past four decades, which relied solely on petrodollars as a source of income and failed to leverage the profits to develop and diversify the Bahraini economy. According to him, this is why Bahrain experiences a financial crisis every time there is a drop in the global price of oil. Maki warned that the global and local economic crises will only get worse, and claimed that in order to emerge from it, Bahrain must adopt a new economic policy and diversify its sources of income, which requires political decisions that are taken in partnership with the citizens and are made transparently.

Similarly, Saudi columnist Khaled Al-Suleiman wrote in the daily 'Okaz that Saudi discourse should now focus on diversifying the kingdom's sources of income in preparation for the post-oil era, and that the Saudi regime is currently seriously examining this matter. He called to invest in human resources, since they are "the most important foundation for creating a productive environment" that can adapt to the changing times.

The following are excerpts from the two articles:



(Image: englih.alarabiya.net)

Bahraini Columnist: Bahrain's Economic Policy During The Past Four Decades Was Flawed

Bahraini columnist Yousef Maki wrote in Al-Wasat: "We are faced with a paradox: [while the price of] oil around the world is in unprecedented steady decline, in our local market [the price of fuel] is rising. The stated reason for the rising cost for citizens is the desire to compensate for [losses due to] the drop in global [oil] prices, because the state needs to get its income somewhere. Even if this [rise in the local price is really] due to the decline in [global] oil prices... it stems from the policy of national reliance on a single source of income, which is oil. This is nothing new - it is an old policy based on the belief of relevant parties [at the time] that oil and its profits would last forever, and that it could overcome any economic, social, or political upheaval.



Yousef Maki (Image: Alwasatnews.com)

"The state we are in today is not just about oil or the current period, but also stems from the way we have invested and exploited our oil [revenues] over the past four decades - meaning since the price of oil shot up in 1973. This brings us to analyze the rising costs and austerity measures we are experiencing these days through the lens of political economy - that is, our economy and resources, including oil, and their relation to the social powers and classes acting in our country and their methods of investment in recent decades.

"From this perspective, oil should have provided a prime opportunity to diversify our [sources of] income, that is, [provide] prospects for economic development as opposed to economic growth. [However], despite the development of other industries, oil continued to provide a large portion of our national income, compared to other sectors. Furthermore, there are sources of income that we could have developed by means of our oil revenues. An example is the marine resource, which is crucial, but it is sadly neglected and lacks economic weight compared to [other] national income sources. Additionally, the agricultural sector was ruined and other economic sectors were not developed, and were therefore weakened, due to our reliance on oil as the main source [of income] in social and economic development and in our GDP.

"The policy of investing petrodollars was not constructed on a solid foundation, and today we are reaping the fruits [of this]. This policy is the real main reason for the [current] economic crisis, while declining oil profits is the alleged reason. This is the nature of strategic goods such as oil and others, and this could have been taken into account and predicted at any given moment. Had we had an integrative economic structure, as well as a long-term policy of diversifying sources of income, then we would not have reached the situation we are in today. A robust economy with diverse and complementary sources of income becomes a position of power, since it is unaffected by negative changes to some source of income or another, and even if it is affected, then only to a limited extent, since such an economy is strong and productive... This is why declining oil prices do not have the same effects in all [oil-producing] nations, while in our country they have substantial, dangerous, and fateful effects...

"This economic crisis, as seen on both the local and global levels, is predicted to deepen further, and therefore there is no choice but to salvage matters by involving the citizenry in the debate on the situation and its implications and in taking the appropriate decisions.

"So what is the solution? Or in other words, what sources of income are appropriate for the economic situation in our country? The economic situation and all its aspects... is also a political matter, and therefore the political arena is the proper stage on which to solve the economic crisis. This is because when economic steps are directly related to the everyday affairs of the citizens, this requires a public policy that [is decided] in partnership with the citizenry... Therefore, we must begin [adopting] an economic policy based on three-pronged development - economic, political, and social - and rely on the principle of transparency in managing public economic matters. Additionally, we must set priorities regarding public expenditure... so that expenses and investments are conducted on a logical basis.

"Without taking [the necessary] political and economic steps, we cannot emerge from this stifling economic situation, which will exacerbate the future suffering of the citizens. And ultimately, what have we done with the oil? The answer is that we did not make the best use of it. And what has the oil done to us? The answer is that it is taking its vengeance upon us for exploiting it [so] poorly in our development programs." [1]

Khaled Al-Suleiman: Saudi Arabia Should Invest In Human Resources To Prepare For Post-Oil Era, Adapt To Rapid Global Changes

Saudi columnist Khaled Al-Suleiman wrote in 'Okaz: "Talk of diversifying sources of income in preparation for the post-oil era is not new. I have been hearing it since the dawn of my youth after every five-year plan, but it is usually nothing but aspirations that have little bearing on reality. Today there are signs that serious deliberation of the post-oil era has begun, as expressed in the 'National Turning Point' plan[2] and the [plan to] found a sovereign wealth fund.[3] We could be seeing a rebirth of a Saudi Arab kingdom...

"When we speak of the post-oil era, we do not necessarily mean that the oil will run out, since [the oil] could last forever. We mean that its importance as a valuable staple energy source could decrease with the appearance of alternative energy sources, as has happened with other such sources throughout history...

"The post-oil era is not only about money, since man is the true resource, and his enrichment with knowledge and professional training are the only guarantee for success in dealing with future challenges and in meeting changing demands. Talented people are the most important foundation for creating a productive environment that eliminates poor management, cleans up corruption, and founds a social culture that is rooted in respect for rules and regulations and in an understanding of duties and rights.

"The world is rapidly changing, and only those who change can adapt to its upheavals."[4]



Khaled Al-Suleiman (Image: 'Okaz, Saudi Arabia)
The National Council on Foreign Policy met in a constructive climate today, under the chairmanship of Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias. The meeting focused on the course of Greek-Turkish relations.



Mr. Kotzias briefed the representatives of the political parties on all of the aspects of Greek-Turkish relations and presented the Greek governments positions in detail. He also referred to Greeces relations with neighbouring countries in Southeast Europe, in light of the quadrilateral meeting held last week in Thessaloniki.



Finally, Mr. Kotzias presented to the participants the Foreign Ministrys planning for the coming time, highlighting, among other things, the Greek initiatives for promoting trilateral cooperation configurations and for hosting a multilateral meeting this coming September, in Rhodes, to be attended by six European countries and six Arab countries.
But there's a catch to the plan outlined by Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee: He's counting on President Barack Obama's successor to back him up.

Thornberry's annual defense policy bill shifts $18 billion from the account that finances ongoing war operations to prohibit further troop cuts and buy weapons the Pentagon didn't ask for in its $583 billion request. To make up for the large shortfall in war spending, the new president will have to submit a supplemental budget to Congress in early 2017.

Budget experts described Thornberry's bid as a gamble, especially in the House, where fiscal conservatives in his own party may refuse to go along.

Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Democrats might insist on an equal increase in non-military spending if they control the White House and Senate after the November elections.

"House Republicans would have a hard time stopping that because it would mean blocking funding for troops in the battlefield," Harrison said.

Thornberry's bill authorizes defense spending for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. The full Armed Services Committee is scheduled to consider the legislation Wednesday.

In a summary of the bill, the committee said defense spending hasn't kept pace with the rise in threats from Russia, the Islamic State group and North Korea, leading commanders to make decisions that have weakened the armed forces. Training time has been reduced, the procurement of new gear has been delayed and weapons maintenance has been deferred.

"Implementing budget cuts by slashing training and equipment for forces preparing to deploy is a dangerous and ultimately irresponsible strategy," the committee said.

The bill would prohibit the Army from falling below 480,000 active-duty soldiers, add 7,000 service members to the Air Force and Marine Corps, and approve a 2.1 percent pay raise for the troops.

Thornberry's blueprint rejects the Pentagon's proposal to cut one of the Navy's 10 carrier air wings. It also includes 11 additional F-35 stealth fighter jets, which cost roughly $100 million each, more Blackhawk and Apache helicopters, and troop-carrying V-22 tiltrotor aircraft.

The legislation would put Republicans on a collision course with Obama by maintaining a ban on moving prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility to the United States. The longstanding congressional prohibition has kept Obama from fulfilling a campaign pledge to shutter the facility.

Thornberry's bill recommends $930 million to train and equip rebel groups in Syria, the Kurdish Peshmerga, and Sunni tribal and government forces in Iraq that are fighting the Islamic State group. But the bill demands greater transparency and oversight of the program.

The legislation would direct the Pentagon to assure lawmakers that enough U.S. troops have been deployed to assist the Syrian opposition forces with retaking and holding the Islamic State stronghold in Raqqa, the extremist group's de facto capital in northeast Syria. The opposition forces also must be able to defend themselves from attacks by the militants and President Bashar Assad's forces, according to the bill.

In Iraq, the legislation would restrict more than $157 million until Congress receives a strategy for pushing the Islamic State out of Mosul, the country's second-largest city.

The bill would provide the $3.4 billion the Pentagon sought for the so-called European reassurance initiative, a quadrupling of last's year amount to counter threats from an increasingly aggressive Russia. The money pays for armored brigade combat teams, improved intelligence and warning, more Javelin missiles and other equipment U.S. commanders in Europe have said they need.

To assist Ukraine in its bitter tug-of-war with Russia, Thornberry's bill includes $150 million to provide Ukraine's military with training, equipment and logistics and intelligence support. Moscow annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and supports a pro-Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine, where fighting has killed more than 9,000 people since April 2014 and has devastated the nation's industrial heartland.

The bill guts the Army's helium-filled blimp program six months after the high-tech radar system broke free from its mooring at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and crashed 150 miles to the north in Pennsylvania. The Army had sought $45 million for the system, but the legislation authorizes just $2.5 million.

The legislation also rejects the Pentagon's bid to close more military bases and to retire the Air Force's A-10 Thunderbolt II close air-support jet.
Congress, however, has its own logic: Closing bases can hurt local economies, which can cost votes in the next election. Besides, some lawmakers say, the Pentagon has cooked the books to justify its conclusions or at least has not finished doing the math.

Lawmakers are fiercely protective of bases in their district or state and generally prefer to ignore or dismiss any Pentagon push to close them. Nearly every year the Pentagon asks Congress for authority to convene a base-closing commission. The answer is always the same: not this year.

And probably not anytime soon, either.

In a little-noticed report to congressional leaders this month, the Pentagon offered a detailed analysis  the first of its kind in 12 years  that concludes the military will have an overall 22 percent excess of base capacity in 2019. The Army will have 33 percent surplus, the Air Force 32 percent and the Navy and Marine Corps a combined 7 percent, the report says.

Base capacity is the total amount of acreage or work space available to support military forces at places such as a training range, an air base, a weapons storage site or an office building.

"Spending resources on excess infrastructure does not make sense," Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work wrote leaders of the relevant congressional committees on April 12. The letter was meant to support the Obama administration's case for a bipartisan base-closing authority, known as a Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC). This mechanism, meant to take politics out of the process, was used during the 1990s and again in 2005, but not since.

The Pentagon has not said a lot publicly about its latest pitch to Congress for another commission, perhaps because it sees little chance of success.

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said Thursday that the House version of the bill that authorizes military spending for the coming budget year will stop the Pentagon's base-closing campaign in its tracks. The bill will allow studies to answer the committee's questions about excess base capacity, but nothing more.

In Thornberry's view, the Pentagon is selling a half-baked argument.

"I'm not interested in sales brochures," he said. "I'm interested in objective data that leads them to think there is too much infrastructure."

The data is fairly clear, even if Thornberry doesn't believe it is objective. It is derived from a type of study, called a parametric analysis, which the Pentagon had not done since 2004. The new analysis compares base capacity to the expected shape of the military in 2019, when the next BRAC would be held.

It found a big mismatch: 22 percent more base capacity than will be needed for the military that is envisioned for 2019. By that time the Army is scheduled to be even smaller than today, shrinking from about 475,000 active-duty soldiers to 450,000.

The study calculated the amount of surplus base capacity in the aggregate, not by individual bases. So it does not point to any particular bases as candidates for shuttering or downsizing. The study concluded that reducing the overall surplus by about 5 percent would produce savings of $2 billion a year. The savings would be partially offset by an estimated $7 billion in closure costs, including the expense of environmental cleanup, during the first six years.

Military commanders do not like to get drawn into the debate about base closings, but they recognize that surplus capacity has financial implications.

Lt. Gen. Stephen Lanza, commander of the Army's 1st Corps, headquartered at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, sees a national review of base capacity as a way to search for savings that could be used to improve "readiness," or the combat preparedness, of his and other forces.

"I do think it's viable to examine, base by base, where we have infrastructure ... that perhaps is not being utilized properly," he said in a telephone interview. "If done correctly, and if we do it honestly and openly, then perhaps it's worthy of a discussion to look at our facilities and see where we could have some cost-saving measures."

The Pentagon may have to wait at least another year before Congress is willing to open the door to base closings, but it has some limited authority to act on its own. The study sent to Congress hinted at this by stating that BRAC is the fairest approach to resolving the surplus problem.

"The alternative is incremental reductions" as the Pentagon cuts spending at military installations. Those spending cuts, it added, "will have an economic impact on local communities without giving them the ability to plan effectively for the change."
Abigail Kopf told ABC's "Good Morning America" in a segment broadcast Monday that she's a "warrior princess." Vicki Kopf says her daughter can walk, negotiate stairs and move well on her own.

Mary Free Bed Hospital says Abigail was released last week from a rehabilitation center. Abigail spent six weeks at the Grand Rapids facility and a couple of weeks in another hospital following the Feb. 20 rampage that killed six people and injured another woman.

Uber driver Jason Dalton is charged with murder and attempted murder in the apparently random attacks. He faces a May 20 hearing on whether the case goes to trial.
Pilot Bertrand Piccard completed a risky, three-day flight across a great expanse of the Pacific Ocean while sleeping only 20 minutes at a time inside the plane's tiny cockpit with no heat or air conditioning and while having to keep constant contact with the Europe-based control center.

"You have interviews, navigation control, communications with the control center in Monaco. You have health checks, a lot of health checks," Piccard said. "It's very active, there are a lot of things to do, but you can nevertheless enjoy it."

Piccard said he uses self-hypnosis to keep his energy up and puts heating pads inside his shoes and gloves for warmth. He said he has no complaints about the ready-made meals he can warm up with a special heat packet and that can include risotto, chicken curry and potatoes.

On Sunday, special guests, many of them with Google, which is sponsoring the project, had a first look at the plane inside a huge white tent at Moffett Airfield. The guests also mingled and took photos with Piccard and fellow Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg.

Piccard landed the Solar Impulse 2 in Mountain View, in the Silicon Valley south of San Francisco, on Saturday night following a 62-hour, nonstop solo flight from Hawaii without fuel.

The landing came hours after Piccard made a fly-by over the Golden Gate Bridge as spectators below watched the narrow aircraft with extra wide wings.

Piccard and Andre Borschberg have been taking turns flying the plane on an around-the-world trip since taking off from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, in March 2015. It made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China, Japan and Hawaii.

The trans-Pacific legs were the riskiest part of the plane's travels because of the lack of emergency landing sites.

"We have demonstrated it is feasible to fly many days, many nights, that the technology works" said Borschberg, 63, who piloted the plane a five-day trip from Japan to Hawaii and who kept himself alert by doing yoga poses and meditation.

The project has helped to show that "as a human being you can be sufficiently sustainable to be able to fly at least five days in such a plane."

The aircraft faced a few bumps along the way.

The Solar Impulse 2 landed in Hawaii in July and was forced to stay in the islands after the plane's battery system sustained heat damage on its trip from Japan. The team was delayed in Asia, too. When first attempting to fly from Nanjing, China, to Hawaii, the crew had to divert to Japan because of unfavorable weather and a damaged wing.

A month later, with better weather conditions, the plane left Nagoya in central Japan for Hawaii.

The plane's ideal flight speed is about 28 mph, though that can double during the day when the sun's rays are strongest. The carbon-fiber aircraft weighs over 5,000 pounds, about as much as a midsize truck.

The plane's wings, which stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. The plane runs on stored energy at night.

Solar Impulse 2 will make three more stops in the United States before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Europe or northern Africa, according to the website documenting the journey.

Borschberg said the plane will again take flight this week, and the next stop could be Phoenix. But that will depend on weather.

The project, which is estimated to cost more than $100 million, began in 2002 to highlight the importance of renewable energy and the spirit of innovation.

"I think innovation and pioneering must continue," Piccard said. "It must continue for better quality of life, for clean technologies, for renewable energy. This is where the pioneers can really express themselves and be successful."

Solar-powered air travel is not yet commercially practical, given the slow travel time, weather and weight constraints of the aircraft.

"Maybe it will be boring in 20 years when all the airplanes will be electric and people will say 'Oh it's routine.' But now, today, an airplane that is electric, with electric engines, that produces its own energy with the sun, it can never be boring," Piccard said.
"This is the day the Lord has made," Clinton said recently at Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, New York, as sunshine streamed through the stained-glass windows and hit the packed pews. "Being here at this church with these beautiful people, knowing how grateful I am for this spring day. I feel blessed and grace is all around us."

Black Baptist churches may not seem like an obvious match for Clinton, a white Methodist from the Chicago suburbs. But the Democratic presidential candidate, who has been criticized for her tentative, sometimes awkward political skills, often seems most at ease in houses of worship. It's where she's shared her faith for many years and earned a loyal following.

"One thing not a lot of people really understand about her is the central role of faith in her life," said Mo Elleithee, Clinton's spokesman in her 2008 White House campaign.

Clinton points to her faith as having sustained her through hard times and informing her approach to public service. Her days in Arkansas, coupled with her strong religious beliefs, have helped her connect to churchgoers in black communities, where she enjoys overwhelming support. Democratic rival Bernie Sanders has visited churches, too, during the campaign, but doesn't have the same rapport from the altar.

"The first time I ever walked into a black church with Hillary, she knew exactly where she was, you could see an exhale from her, a big smile came on her face, she didn't just step into the building, she stepped into worshipping with them," said Burns Strider, director of faith and values outreach during Clinton's 2008 campaign. "I must have done that a hundred times with her."

Clinton visited two churches in Philadelphia on Sunday, two days before Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary. At Triumph Baptist Church and African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, she pledged to seek criminal justice reform and fight for tougher gun regulations before the largely African-American congregations.

"We as a people have to start showing each other more respect, more kindness more love," Clinton said, repeating a campaign mantra. "I am grateful for this chance to be with you and I would be honored and humbled to have your vote on Tuesday."

Visits to churches have prompted some of Clinton's most candid, intimate moments.

On a recent trip to the Holy Ghost Cathedral in Detroit, Bishop Corletta Vaughn referenced Clinton's strength in dealing with husband Bill Clinton's infidelities.

In response, Clinton spoke about the story of the prodigal son, alluding to, as she often does, a version written by Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest and writer. She said what the parable "teaches us is to practice the discipline of gratitude every day."

According to Vaughn, Clinton's remarks showed a "deep reservoir of faith."

"I've been in the faith business for 42 years," Vaughn said. "I know one who is authentic and genuine. Her language speaks of her faith. ... When she started talking about the prodigal son, you didn't learn that this morning."

Strider, who emails with Clinton most days about Scripture and faith, said she has seemed more willing to talk about religion during this campaign than in the past. He said Clinton had "to recognize that she's not using her faith for other means. That was really valuable for her to understand that she was actually showing her faith which could lead others to make more rational choices."

Seeking to organize religious voters for Clinton, Strider founded a group called Faith Voters for Hillary about two years ago. While he is no longer directly involved, he said the group has an active online presence and over 300,000 people in its database.

Still, some black pastors question Clinton's hold on religious voters.

Darrell Scott, the senior pastor of New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, has endorsed Republican Donald Trump and helped organize a meeting with Trump and black clergy last year.

"She's very, very liberal. This is what I don't understand about the pastors. Christians, by nature, should be conservative," said Scott, who serves as CEO of Trump's new National Diversity Coalition. "She's the absolute wrong choice for a voter of faith."

Trump's efforts to win over black churchgoers have been mixed. At that November meeting last year, some pastors criticized Trump for racially-charged language, though others emerged offering support.

Clinton reflected on her faith journey during a speech before the United Methodist Women's Assembly two years ago. She spoke warmly about her childhood church in Park Ridge, Illinois, where her mother taught Sunday school and a young Clinton helped to clean and prepare the altar for services. She also remembered her father's nightly prayers, her grandmother's hymns and the charismatic youth minister who introduced her to the idea of "faith in action."

"I loved that church," Clinton said. "I loved how it made me feel about myself, I loved the doors that it opened in my understanding of the world."
The U.S. will place a HIMARS rocket artillery system in Turkey to stop cross-border attacks by ISIS in Syria and also base the mobile system in northern Iraq to back an eventual push on Mosul, a top military planner said Tuesday.

"Those are two separate HIMARS systems -- one going to be used in Turkey to support our operations, one in support of our operations in Iraq," said Air Force Maj. Gen. Peter Gersten, deputy commander for operations and intelligence for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve.

The truck-mounted M-142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) will be placed in northern Iraq to support Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) for the eventual offensive on the ISIS stronghold of Mosul and will "absolutely" move forward with the ISF as it gains ground, Gersten said in a video briefing from Baghdad to the Pentagon.

Gersten said the HIMARS in northern Iraq would initially be placed in the Tigris River Valley, suggesting that the system would be used to support Iraqi forces near Makhmour, about 60 miles southeast of Mosul. The ISF has been using Makhmour as a staging area for a Mosul offensive that has currently stalled against heavy resistance from Islamic State of Iraq and Syria fighters.

Last month, U.S. Marines from the 26th Expeditionary Unit based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., set up a fire base at Makhmour for four .155mm howitzers.

Gersten said negotiations for the placement of a HIMARS system in Turkey were still underway, but Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the HIMARS was expected to arrive in southeastern Turkey in May.

"That is a recent development that we have been working on and we are looking at how it is going to be installed," Gersten said of the HIMARS positioning in Turkey. "We're working very closely with our strong partners in Turkey."

"As part of this deal, HIMARS systems will be arriving in Turkey's borders in May. Therefore, we will be able to hit Islamic State in a more efficient way," Cavusoglu told the Haberturk newspaper, Reuters reported.

In recent weeks, Turkey has repeatedly fired back with artillery and rockets at ISIS in Syria following a surge in cross-border ISIS rocket attacks on the Turkish town of Kilis.

"To wipe out Islamic State from this region, we need to support the moderate opposition both from the air and ground," Cavusoglu said.

However, "the range of our artillery is 40 kilometers (25 miles), while HIMARS has a range of 90 kilometers (56 miles),"he added.

Last November, the Army disclosed that the Lockheed Martin HIMARS systems had been in place in Iraq since last summer and had fired more than 400 rockets from positions at the al-Asad airbase and Taqqadum near Ramadi in Anbar province. In March, a HIMARS in Jordan fired into Syria in support of "moderate" Syrian rebels.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com.
Air Force Gen. David Goldfein, currently the service's vice chief of staff, has been nominated to take over the top job with the retirement of Gen. Mark Welsh, the Defense Department announced today.

Welsh is set to retire this summer, wrapping up a 40-year career.

As the vice chief, Goldfein heads up the Air Staff and also serves on the Joint Chiefs of Staff Requirements Oversight Council and Deputy Advisory Working Group, according to his official biography. He previously served as director of the Joint Staff.

Goldfein, a 1983 graduate of the Air Force Academy, is a command pilot who flew combat missions in the Persian Gulf War, the Kosovo Campaign and, most recently, the war in Afghanistan. Goldfein has garnered more than 4,200 flying hours, including in the F-16C and D. In addition, he has chalked up time on the MQ-9 Reaper, the unmanned intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drone, and the MC-12W, a turbo-prop ISR aircraft.

In December, guesses regarding Welsh's successor included Gen. Lori Robinson, head of Pacific Air Forces, and Gen. Darren McDew, head of U.S. Transportation Command, Defense News reported at the time.

Later that same month, in what may have been a hint as to the pecking order, Goldfein and his wife, Dawn, appeared in a holiday greetings to airmen alongside Welsh and his wife, Betty.

-- Bryant Jordan can be reached at Bryant.jordan@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BryantJordan.
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A former Navy bomb squad commander and the grandson of a legendary Naval Chief of Operations has joined the race for the Florida congressional seat now held by Rep. Jeff Miller, a Republican who has been a major Hill force pushing for reform at the Veterans Affairs Department.

Not surprisingly, given his family history and Capitol Hill experience, James Zumwalt says his top priorities will be national security and veterans issues.

Zumwalt's grandfather was the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt Jr., whose orders to spray Agent Orange over Vietnam while commander of naval forces there later contributed to the death of his namesake and eldest son, who served aboard a patrol boat in the war.

"My grandfather, after the war, dedicated his life to fighting for veterans sickened by Agent Orange," James Zumwalt told Military.com.

The younger Zumwalt intends to continue that fight to extend veterans compensation and healthcare to service members exposed to the defoliant who have been overlooked to date.

"I've spoken to hundreds of Blue Water Navy veterans suffering from ailments directly caused by Agent Orange, and many other Army and [Marine Corps] Vietnam vets who served inland. We have to get them covered," he said.

Miller, who has held the Florida district seat since 2001, announced he would not seek re-election. So far he has not endorsed any of the eight candidates vying for the GOP nomination.

Zumwalt is one of four veterans in the GOP race. The others are John Mills, a retired Navy pilot who commanded two Naval Security Force Units; Brian Frazier, also a former Navy pilot, who served in the Persian Gulf War and later in support of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and Cris Dosev, a Marine combat pilot of the Persian Gulf War.

But he argues he is the only one who has fought the enemy up close.

"I was deployed to al Anbar Province, which is now the hub of ISIS [in Iraq]," he said. "I'm really the only one who understands the enemy, I know what they're capable of. I know what they're looking to do and I know how to stop them."

Zumwalt said that the most important decision a member of Congress can make is whether to send troops into harm's way. For that reason, he said, he "absolutely" would demand in any future conflict a formal declaration of war.

"Frankly, you've had [Presidents] on both sides of the aisle fill in that power vacuum, which belongs to the people through Congress," he said.

Florida's first district is home to a huge number of active-duty service members, retirees, veterans and their families, according to Zumwalt. Among them are Vietnam veterans who remember the Zumwalt name and the "Z-grams" for which the admiral came to be known long before he became the inspiration for the Navy's Zumwalt Class guided missile destroyer.

Z-grams were policy directives Adm. Zumwalt sent out directly to all Navy personnel, and included messages tackling issues of equal opportunity for African-Americans, ensuring spouses have access to commanders, and permitting sailors to wear beards and sideburns. He is credited with modernizing the Navy.

Having a name like Zumwalt stands out, he said. "It's not like 'Smith.'"

"A lot of the Vietnam vets, they'll recognize the name and they'll ask me if I'm related to the Admiral, and I say, yeah, I'm his grandson," he said, adding, "and I tell them I have the eyebrows to prove it."

Whatever physical characteristic the younger Zumwalt inherited from his grandfather, the name has long been connected to the country's military and wars. There has been a Zumwalt in all the country's wars since the Revolution, James said.

Nearly four years ago he became the fourth generation since World War II to be awarded the Bronze Star during wartime.

As reported in The Washington Post in June 2012 his great-grandfather was awarded the medal for his actions as an Army doctor during the liberation of Nazi labor camps. His famous grandfather earned the medal for while serving on a destroyer during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the same war's Pacific theater.

His Uncle Elmo  the admiral's ill-fated son  was awarded the Bronze Star for actions as the commander of a Navy Swift Boat in Vietnam.

His own father is retired Marine Lt. Col. James G. Zumwalt, a Vietnam and Persian Gulf War veteran.

"I know his uncle, grandfather and great-grandfather must have been watching over him [in Iraq]," he told the Post. "Both times when he was on tour, I don't think I ever prayed as hard as I did."

-- Bryant Jordan can be reached at Bryant.jordan@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BryantJordan.
The U.S. has adopted an Israeli tactic called a "knock operation," or "roof knocking," before airstrikes in the overall effort to limit civilian casualties in the campaign against ISIS, a U.S. military planner for Iraq and Syria said Tuesday.

U.S. warplanes used the tactic on April 5 in an airstrike on an ISIS "cash center" in the northwestern Iraqi city of Mosul that was only partially successful in avoiding killing civilians, said Air Force Maj. Peter Gersten, the deputy commander for operations and intelligence for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve.

Gersten said U.S. intelligence and aerial surveillance had determined that the building was used by the ISIS' "emir of finance" to dole out money and possibly housed as much as $150 million in cash. "We also watched occasionally a female and her children" coming and going from the building, Gersten said.

When the airstrike was authorized, U.S. aircraft first fired a Hellfire missile that set off an airburst above the building as a warning -- Gersten called it a "knock on the roof." He said that, "We absolutely did see the woman and child leave. Men in that building literally trampled over her to get out of the building."

However, the woman for unexplained reasons "actually ran back into the building" just as a precision-guided bomb was released. She was believed to have been killed, along with the "emir of finance," Gersten said. "In this particular event, it ultimately ended up in a civilian casualty."

The Mosul strike was the only time the U.S. has used a "knock operation" thus far, but "it's now part of our operational procedures" and could be used again, Gersten said.

In a video briefing from Baghdad to the Pentagon that was broken up repeatedly by transmission problems, Gersten was not entirely clear on whether the U.S. adopted the knock operation tactic after consulting with the Israelis or learned of it from open-source reports on Israeli strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.

The Israelis occasionally would phone residents of buildings that had been targeted and also used the roof knocking technique during the 2008-2009 Gaza War, Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, and Operation Protective Edge in 2014.

In line with the U.S. commitment to avoid civilian casualties, "We have to measure every weapon and every effect we bring to the battle space," Gersten said. He disputed reports by human rights groups alleging that as many as 1,200 civilians in Iraq and Syria have been killed since the U.S. air campaign began in August 2014.

Last week, U.S. Central Command reported that at least 20 civilians had been killed and 11 wounded in airstrikes in Iraq and Syria between last September and February, bringing the total number of civilians killed in the air campaign to at least 41. The civilian death cited by Gersten in Mosul would bring the total to 42.

"We deeply regret the unintentional loss of life and injuries resulting from those strikes and express our deepest sympathies to the victims' families and those affected," CentCom said in a statement.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com.
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DETROIT, MI - Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne said Tuesday the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant will be retooled to make the new Ram Pickup.

Marchionne made the comments in a conference call with analysts, investors and the media, as FCA reported its first quarter results.

FCA confirmed earlier this month that it is temporarily laying off 1,300 workers at the Sterling Heights site amid slow sales of the Chrysler 200, which is currently produced there.

The layoffs will begin July 5 as the facility from two shifts to one.

Marchionne also said the automaker plans to increase its overall number of factory workers in North America, the Associated Press reports.

In January, Marchionne made it clear that the company would be shifting its production focus in North America toward trucks and SUVs, and away from smaller cars, which will be produced elsewhere.
medc-promo-328x200.jpg

(File photo)

DETROIT, MI - Investments announced Tuesday by automakers Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles are getting tax breaks from the state of Michigan.

Ford is investing $1.4 billion in its Livonia Transmission plant as part of plans to build a new, 10-speed transmission there.

The investment, hatched during 2015 UAW-Ford collective bargaining agreements, will create or retain about 500 jobs at the plant, where more than 1,550 people work. The plant currently produces a six-speed transmission used in products such as the Mustang, F-150, Transit and Expedition.

With the investment, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation said the Michigan Strategic Fund has approved an exemption from personal property tax for Ford valued at about $27.3 million over 15 years.



Meanwhile, FCA also announced Tuesday it's investing $74.7 million in its Trenton Engine Complex, where it will retool its north plant to build a next-generation, four-cylinder engine.

The move will retain 245 jobs the Wayne County site.

The state's MSF has approved a tax exemption valued at $770,000 known as the State Essential Services Assessment for FCA.
DETROIT, MI - Ford Motor Co. is investing $1.6 billion to upgrade manufacturing sites in Michigan and Ohio.

In Michigan, the Livonia Transmission Plant is getting $1.4 billion of the investment, while $200 million will go to Ford's Ohio Assembly Plant.



The money is part of $9 billion Ford has committed to invest in the U.S. as part of the 2015 UAW-Ford collective bargaining agreement.

The investment at Livonia Transmission Plant will retain 500 jobs, Ford said Tuesday.

The money will go toward building a new, 10-speed transmission that will be first introduced in the all-new F-150 Raptor and certain F-150 models.

Livonia Transmission Plant employs more than 1,550 people. The site produces a six-speed transmission used in products such as the Mustang, F-150, Transit and Expedition.

The plant will begin building the new, 10-speed transmission in June.

"We are proud that Ford employs more hourly workers and builds more vehicles in the United States than any other automaker," Joe Hinrichs, Ford president of the Americas, said in a release Tuesday. "We are committed to manufacturing in the United States, as we have been for more than 100 years."
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Los Tres Amigos is among four new tenants who've signed leases at the Chelsea Clocktower Commons.

(Matt Durr | The Ann Arbor News)

CHELSEA, MI -- Just across the street from the Jiffy Mix headquarters in downtown Chelsea, a different sort of mix is developing with the growth of commercial development at the Chelsea Clocktower.

Four new leases have been signed since the beginning of 2016 that bring a variety of businesses into the Clocktower Commons area of the property and help revitalize the downtown district.

Travis Cox, one of the owners and operators of Ink Frenzy said his company thought the commons are the perfect place for their growing screen printing and custom embroidery business.

"It has a historical presence. It seemed to be a big draw for the community," Cox said. "Between that and seeing more businesses going in down there, we thought it would be a great spot to have a business."

The clock tower was originally built in 1907 and is recognized by the state of Michigan as a historical site. It was built for Glazier Stove and used to store water for fire protection. The site of clock tower was purchased by McKinley founder Ron Weiser in 1998.

The company has since renovated the property on several fronts to create office and retail spaces throughout the site. The Chelsea Alehouse and the Plaid Melon Cafe are among the tenants in various portions of the development

Previously, things had been moving slowly with the property in terms of leasing at the Clocktower Commons. Last year, Swisher Commercial came on board to market the property and is now seeing a lot of interest in the available spaces.

"We've tried to get the information out to a broad base of potential users. At the same time, I think the city itself is experiencing some renewed interest," said Mike Jurgenson, a partner at Swisher. "The real estate in values have gotten to a point in Ann Arbor where it's more expensive. You have an opportunity to go into these outlying markets and find good space at reasonable rates."

Along with Ink Frenzy, Chelsea Hearth and Fireplace and Chelsea Strength and Conditioning have signed leases to occupy space in the commons. Restaurant chain Los Tres Amigos has also signed a lease and is in the process of building out their space.

The mixture of new tenants adds destination tenants for those who live outside the city and opportunities for those whose customer base lives or works in Chelsea. Chelsea Hearth and Fireplace has already moved into the commons.

Cox said his company is in the permitting phase and expects to complete its build out this summer. When it came time for his company to expand, he said it was an easy decision to stay in town.

"We knew we wanted to be in Chelsea," Cox said.

Depending on where the space is located in Ann Arbor, retail and office spaces can climb as high as $35 per square foot. At the clock tower development, Jurgenson said rates are advertised between $11 and $16 per square foot.

Because rates are so favorable, Chelsea and the Clocktower Commons have become favorable option for smaller businesses.

While being in Ann Arbor offers some advantages for growing businesses, Chelsea is not too far away from the heart of Ann Arbor, but is much more affordable for business owners and offers its own advantage.

"It depends on the business. With a market like Ann Arbor, there's a lot of competition, where an area like Chelsea offers an opportunity to offer a niche that may not be there yet," Jurgenson said. "As a company we feel very fortunate to be involved in the market."

Matt Durr is a business reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Email him at mattdurr@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter.
ANN ARBOR, MI -- Duo Security's aggressive expansion in Ann Arbor isn't slowing down any time soon. In fact, it's only getting started.

On Tuesday, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation approved a $2.5 million performance-based grant for Duo Security that will be used as a capital investment and for the creation of 297 jobs in Washtenaw County.

In its application for the grant, the Ann Arbor-based company also said it plans on expanding its office space by 30,000 square feet to accommodate the new hires.

Update: Duo Security to move into Allmendinger Building

The new space will be used for engineering, product development, sales, and other operations that will happen in Ann Arbor.

Duo Security currently occupies space over two floors of the office building at 123 N. Ashley. In 2014, the company signed a lease for a 14,440-square-foot space in the building, but has since expanded in the building.

In applying for the grant, Duo explained that its investments teams are located outside of the state and could pressure the company to seek talent outside of Ann Arbor because of the investor's familiarity with other markets,

The grant will give Duo enough leverage to show why the company should stay in Ann Arbor for talent. Ann Arbor SPARK has offered to help Duo in recruitment of high-level talent for the new positions.

Duo Security is a cloud-based security access provider that protects some of the world's largest and fastest growing companies including Etsy, Facebook, NASA, Palantir, Paramount Pictures, Toyota, Twitter, Yelp, and Zillow.

Earlier this year, Duo announced it tripled revenue for the third consecutive year and now has more than one million users of its products. In April 2015, the company added an office in London when it announced $30 million in new funding.

Duo launched in 2009 with two employees, but now employs more than 200 people, the majority of which are located in Ann Arbor.

Matt Durr is a business reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Email him at mattdurr@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter.
Duo building.jpg

Duo Security will open a second office in Ann Arbor as part of an expansion announced Tuesday. The company currently has an office at 123 N. Ashley (shown here).

(Matt Durr | The Ann Arbor News)

ANN ARBOR, MI -- On the heels of the announcement that Duo Security will receive a $2.5 million grant from the state of Michigan and add 297 jobs, the Ann Arbor-based tech firm confirmed Tuesday it will expand to new office space in downtown Ann Arbor.

"We're land locked here. There's no more room for expansion," said Anthony Nitsos, director of finance for Duo Security, referencing the company's current office space at 123 N. Ashley.

As a result, the company has signed a lease and will open a second office in the city in the Allmendinger Building located at 130 S. First St. The 30,000-square-foot expansion will begin later this year and will accommodate the nearly 300 new employees the company will hire over the next three years to work in Ann Arbor.

Duo Security will add 297 jobs over the next three years in its Ann Arbor offices.

"We're already in the process of hiring people," Nitsos said.

The Allmendinger Building is owned by Ann Arbor real estate company First Martin and was on the market earlier this year.

The performance-based grant was approved by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) Tuesday morning and requires Duo to add 297 jobs over the next three years. As Duo hits the performance goals related to job creation, the grant will be released to the company, Nitsos said.

"It's a great validation. It's a great moral boost; having the state of Michigan step in and place money on Duo," Nitsos said.

The money from the grant will allow Duo to ramp up expansion efforts in Michigan much faster than anticipated without the funds.

"Duo's expansion in Michigan rather than Silicon Valley means excellent, well-paying jobs for Michigan residents and underscores the strength of the talent in the state's technology sector," MEDC CEO Steve Arwood in a press release issued by the MEDC.

"We welcome Duo's commitment to Michigan, and in becoming a key contributor to the state's expanding cyber security industry. A vital part of Michigan's economic future is a highly integrative and collaborative cyber security platform that provides the necessary stability for businesses to thrive in the world of e-commerce."

The company will continue to expand operations worldwide - it already has offices in London, Austin, Texas and San Mateo, California - but the grant means they can scale in Ann Arbor much faster.

"Michigan, and Ann Arbor in particular, is where we want Duo to be," said Duo Security CEO Dug Song in the press release. "Ann Arbor has grown to be a robust tech community because we've got the smarts and innovation right here in our backyard. By expanding in Michigan, Duo hopes to support that growth of the tech community in Ann Arbor and to help attract talent back from the coasts."

As part of the grant, Ann Arbor SPARK has pledged to help recruit high-level talent for Duo's Ann Arbor offices. The new office space will be used for engineering, product development, sales, and other operations.

SPARK CEO and president Paul Krutko said the city's reputation for growth and innovation can be attributed to business owners like Song.

"There's a long history of companies that are solving complex problems - like Duo is doing - in Ann Arbor, and it's a legacy that speaks to the support these companies can find here," said Krutko in the release. "It's exciting to work with Duo as it expands, and actively advances Ann Arbor's reputation as a tech hub."

Nitsos said the company plans on building out the space this fall once they have access. The build out will be done gradually and employees will move in as work is completed.

Nitsos also pointed out that not only will the expansion help Duo add more jobs, it will also add to the local economy as Duo will retain local contractors for all work being done to renovate the space.

Duo Security is a cloud-based security access provider that protects some of the world's largest and fastest growing companies including Etsy, Facebook, NASA, Palantir, Paramount Pictures, Toyota, Twitter, Yelp, and Zillow.

Matt Durr is a business reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Email him at mattdurr@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter.
The momentum building throughout downtown Detroit - where billions of investment is generating new jobs and attracting new residents - conveys the hope for the city that's driving so many changes.

It contrasts to just a few years ago, when the city made history as the largest U.S. municipality to file for bankruptcy after years of erosion.

That bankruptcy is the topic of a new book by Nathan Bomey, reporter for USA Today and Michigan native who covered it as it unfolded, culminating in what's come to be known as the "Grand Bargain."

That book, "Detroit Resurrected," was published this week by W.W. Norton & Co.

While municipal bankruptcy is notoriously complex, Bomey's writing captures the elements of drama and conveys dense concepts in an accessible, straight-forward style.

It also provides a foundation for understanding just how historic the event was for Detroit and the nation.

"I understood that it was an incredibly dynamic story with fascinating personalities and incredible consequences for the people of Detroit," Bomey said.

The implications, he added, touched "people, politics and democracy."

Bomey began to consider the possibility of a book in early 2014, he said. He talked to an agent that summer, then - a month before Judge Steven Rhodes confirmed the city's plan of adjustment - signed a deal in October.

Bomey, a graduate of Saline High School and Eastern Michigan University, worked at Ann Arbor Business Review and AnnArbor.com - publications related to MLive.com - before moving to the Detroit Free Press in early 2012 to cover business and automotive topics there.

The bankruptcy was partially a business story, and Bomey embraced his role in it and his ability to dig into what he called "arcane" points of law and make them accessible to readers.

He and the reporting team at the Free Press balanced daily coverage of the bankruptcy with higher-level stories that kept the scope of the event in perspective.

That's something he had to consider with the book, which - at 247 pages - had to weave minute details with sweeping overviews.

"The complexity of the book cannot be overstated," Bomey said. "We're talking about 170,000 creditors; 32,000 (city of Detroit) pensioners; 11,000 court filings; 688,000 residents.

"When you're talking about a case of that size, the largest municipal bankruptcy in history, complexity could be an obstacle to readers."

The nonfiction account contains a large cast of characters and a dramatic arc, as Bomey delves into the creation of "Grand Bargain" to shore up the city, retain the Detroit Institute of Art's $8.5 billion collection, trim pension costs in a way that retirees could accept.

Along the way, there's digestible explanation of the murky and catastrophic financial decisions made by city officials, and a sense of just how many people with competing goals lined up behind the city in its darkest hours.

The story is about financial ruin and resurrection. It's not yet about redemption, Bomey said, because it only gave the city a second chance at survival.

"It finally established that the people of Detroit are the first priority of the city's government," Bomey said. "... Not bankers or politicians."

Results of the bankruptcy were improvements in the conditions for residents: Street lights, public safety, blight reduction, buses. All received funding and moved up on priority lists as the city shed $700 million in debt.

Bomey said the bankruptcy was necessary, though he thinks it should have been filed in 2009 before casino funds were pulled into debt payments - and when the Obama administration may have considered a bailout.

Years later, the situation in the city deteriorated: "The basic things that most communities take for granted were non-existant in Detroit."

Looking ahead, he said, determining how Detroit fares still rests with the politicians and residents who will influence pending decisions.

The bankruptcy "doesn't guarantee Detroit will thrive in future," said Bomey.

Schools are the number-one impediment to Detroit's recovery, Bomey said. Crime follows, as it "remains a significant barrier to investment and property values."

"Those two will be a significant problem for a long time," Bomey said. "... (But) I'm still optimistic."

Nathan Bomey, author of "Detroit Resurrected," will be the guest at a free talk and book signing at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 26, at the Detroit Institute of Arts. A Q&A with Rochelle Riley of the Detroit Free Press follows. Registration is encouraged. A second event is at 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 27, at Pages bookstore in northwest Detroit.
A new program in a Michigan prison is setting dozens of prisoners on a career path.

Vocational Village -- established early this year at the Handlon Correctional Facility in Ionia -- uses many traditional principles of occupational education, but in a much more concentrated format.

The goal is to set the inmates into motion toward work-readiness, with a certificate of employability and understanding of what employers seek -- and how employees need to function in return.

Participants are within 24 months of release, said Warden DeWayne Burton during a reception for employers and the media on Monday, April 25, to unveil the program.

"They're looking for a second chance to get out and take care of themselves and their families," Burton said.

By the time the program gets into full gear, it will be educating 224 prisoners: 165 for vocational trades; 27 tutors for the trades; 12 building trade workers and 20 students earning a bachelor's degree through on-site Calvin College classes.

The level-two security prison -- located near three other Ionia prisons -- has had the largest education program in Michigan's prison system. With a $2 billion annual operating budget for corrections, the state spends about $30 million on education and vocational training per year.

Even with its education component, the Hanlon facility didn't have a well-coordinated system for workforce development, and some of the classrooms, like the auto repair facility, had been dormant for years.

But with the new Vocational Village, there's a new vision for preparing inmates, who are motivated and facing imminent release, with skills that directly correlate with work force needs.

"It's a great time to be entering the job market in Michigan," said Stephanie Comai, director of Michigan's Talent Investment Agency.

She cited the statewide unemployment rate of 4.8 percent in March and the 100,000 jobs listed on the state's job listing site. She also said many of the open jobs are in the skilled trades, with pay rates of $12 to $24 per hour.

Training is offered in the building trades: carpentry, plumbing and electrical; machine tooling and Computer Numerical Controls; auto technology; horticulture; and welding.

Each classroom offers hands on instruction, like mock homes for the building trades and welding setups. The equipment is state-of-the-art, staff said, and is similar to many community colleges. One example: virtual welding stations, where inmates practice with technology before they get to molten steel.

There are collaboration components. And inmates get chances to serve the community while learning. Cabinets are assembled for Habitat for Humanity. Vegetables are grown for seniors using Meals on Wheels. Bird houses are donated to auctions.

But beyond the training comes a chance to feel productive and successful, said Heidi Washington, director of the MDOC.

"They're dedicated to learning and growing and success," she said.

Inmates from across the state's prison system had to apply to be a part of the program. Unique aspects include scheduling that keeps participants busy for most of the day and focused on homework and followup later. They also live in the same unit, so that the entire building shares a sense of purpose.

The program is new enough that few education benchmarks can be measured. Staff expects to track program participants at the one-, three- and five-year anniversaries of release to check progress. The expectation is that the support inside will result in fewer repeat offenses on the outside. The corrections department already is planning to expand it to Jackson, if legislators grant additional funding.

Meanwhile, the number of discipline reports among participants at Handlon dropped dramatically since February.

"They're virtually nonexistent," Washington said.

Washington addressed a crowd of inmates as she said: "You're busy all day, right? This is what the world is like."

That's also deliberate: Previous job training programs may have lasted only two hours per day. Inmates may have been taking classes for which there were few hopes for jobs once they went home. The training may not have targeted someone who was facing discharge soon.

Prison staff are teaching job related "soft skills," along with the focus on creating a career path.

And the efforts in Vocation Village also include building relationships with employers, many of whom attended the event on Monday. They were invited to talk to inmates in a job fair setting.

One was Daniel Shaw, vice president of furniture supplier OHM Veyhl in Holland, which is completing at 115,000-square-foot expansion. The company employs 310 and is aiming toward $70 million in revenue this year as it works three shifts on laser cutting.

"This is something they haven't seen before," said Washington of the inmates experiences in prison. "Real employers came here today to take an interest in them."

Paula Gardner covers statewide business for MLive.com. She can be reached by email or follow her on Twitter.
LANSING, MI - A $53 million apartment project on Grand Rapids' Northeast Side has been given permission to keep $8.9 million in local and school taxes to help prepare the 4-acre site for new construction.

The request for the tax capture authority was approved Tuesday, April 26, by the Michigan Strategic Fund Board.

The 286-unit project will replace 20 homes and businesses north of Michigan Street between Grand and Benson avenues. The project by RISE Real Estate Development of Valdosta, Ga. will include a 334-space parking ramp for residents.

The board authorized the project to capture $4.3 million in local property taxes and $4.6 million in school taxes over the next 14 years. Eligible expenses include demolition of existing buildings, site grading, new streets and the installation of new utilities.

The project is located east of the Mid Towne Village development, which includes a medical office building, Park Place condominiums and a Hampton Inn and Suites Hotel and several apartment buildings currently under construction.

RELATED: $50M apartment project along Medical Mile gets green light from city planners

Jim Harger covers business for Mlive Media Group. Email him at jharger@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter or Facebook or Google+.
Financial support for homeless college students varies wildly among Michigan campuses, and among low-income students raised by relatives.

The patchwork system of aid allows some of Michigan's most vulnerable students to attend college for free, while others attend universities where no staff member is assigned as a point of contact for homeless students, who like others in extreme poverty are far less likely to complete their degree.

"There are kids out here who are 19 and have gone through more than most people who are 90," said Joi Rencher, coordinator of the MAGIC program at Eastern Michigan University. Technically, MAGIC is a program for students who grew up in foster care, but Rencher expanded the program to include homeless students.

"There's this privileged attitude that education is available for everyone if you just work hard enough," Rencher said. "That's not the reality. People are out here struggling and they want to go to school.

"I talk to coordinators at other colleges about what they're dealing with. We get on the phone and cry."

Homeless college students have received attention in Michigan in recent months through Bridge Magazine's portrait of Ramone Williams, an EMU senior who was sleeping in the college library and showering in the student recreational facility for a semester with few EMU officials aware that he was homeless.

Williams and the MAGIC program received a flood of donations after Williams' plight became known. But systemic changes to help other homeless students have been slow to get off the ground.

The fate of students like Williams matters not only to individual students, but to the state as a whole. Michigan is below the national average in percentage of adults with college degrees. Experts say that improving Michigan's college completion rate is key to boosting family incomes and the state economy as a whole. Low-income students struggle the most to complete college, often because of inadequate financial support.

About 70 percent of teens who were in foster care in Michigan report that they want to attend college, but fewer than 10 percent of those who graduate high school enroll in college, Robin Lott, executive director of the Michigan Education Trust, which administers the scholarship program, told Metro Parent.

While there is no similar data on homeless students, advocates contend that homeless students face many of the same challenges as former foster youth.

EMU has held a series of meetings among students and staff to raise awareness of homelessness. But the school has yet to officially designate Rencher as the university's point of contact for homeless students. Currently, if a faculty member learns a student is homeless, there is no place to refer the student.

That may change soon. The university is considering creating a single point of contact for homeless student issues, according to a presentation made to the Eastern Michigan University Board of Regents April 22.

Students designated as homeless at Michigan State University typically get free tuition and housing through the school's FAME program. FAME matches students with academic mentors and holds social events. MSU also keeps some dorms open and rents hotel rooms for students who don't have a place to go over the holidays.

EMU's MAGIC program provides housing assistance for homeless students now, thanks to more than $50,000 in donations received after the Ramone Williams story went viral.

Wayne State University founded the HIGH program in 2013 to help homeless students, when Jacqueline Wilson, wife of Wayne President M. Roy Wilson, discovered that a Wayne State student was living in a car.

Both the EMU and Wayne State programs offer assistance to homeless students, but both are dependent on donations. Neither programs receives institutional support.

EMU Regent Michelle Crumm told Bridge she has pulled together a group of Washtenaw County community leaders to discuss ideas to obtain a sustainable source of funding for homeless student services at the Ypsilanti campus. That meeting is scheduled to be held Wednesday.

"We have to figure out how to get funding for this," Crumm said. "This is a manageable issue - it's a small amount of students."

Rencher said she worked with six EMU students who were homeless in the fall semester, and is currently working with three homeless students.

Crumm said she also hopes the Legislature will provide financial aid for homeless student programs at Michigan's 15 public universities.

Since 2009, the state has provided financial aid for college students who were in foster care at age 13 or older. The Fostering Future Scholarship offers up to $6,100 per semester for tuition, fees and housing.

The program doesn't offer financial aid for students raised in kinship care (children who lived with relatives rather than their parents). Kinship care is more common than foster care, said Lynn Nee, project coordinator for the Kinship Care Resource Center at Michigan State University, which offers training and resources for Michigan families raising the children of relatives.

"Foster children are easily identified," Nee said. "We've accepted that group over time. They're societally acceptable because we know (their lives) are screwed up. But if you ask the normal person what a kinship child is, they have no idea what you're talking about."

There are 13,000 children in foster care in Michigan, and 19,000 in kinship care, according to the U.S. Census.

Former EMU homeless student Williams did not qualify for state foster care college aid because he was raised by his grandmother.

"They (children raised by relatives) are coming in with a lot of the same challenges as foster care children - abuse, neglect, trauma. And they face the same challenges when they go to college. Kinship families have a higher poverty rate than the general population. A lot of them are grandparents on fixed incomes."

Nee said she is meeting with legislators to try to designate September as kinship awareness month. Down the road, she hopes to get funding for a study of kinship care children.

It's a slow process. "Just in the past six or seven years, we've made great strides for foster youth," Nee said. "Now we just need to make strides for youth in general."

EMU's Rencher hopes those strides happen quickly.

"These are kids carrying the world on their shoulders," Rencher said. "They're invisible, and no one knows they need help."
Lousma.JPG

Pioneer High School students take photos with Ann Arbor High School alumnus Jack Lousma, a retired astronaut, after his presentation at the school's annual academic awards assembly on Monday.

(Lauren Slagter | The Ann Arbor News)

ANN ARBOR, MI -- Pioneer High School encourages students to reach for the stars, and on Monday they heard from an alumnus who took that sentiment literally.

Col. Jack Lousma, a retired astronaut, spoke at the school's fourth annual academic awards assembly, an event organized by the Student Council alumni connections committee. Lousma, 80, is a 1954 graduate of Ann Arbor High School, and he went on to earn a degree from the University of Michigan, enlist in the U.S. Marines and then was one of 19 astronauts chosen to work for NASA in 1965.

He started off his presentation for the auditorium full of high school students Monday with a minute-by-minute recap of what it's like to take off in a space station.

"About 30 seconds before lift-off, you reach over, shake hands with your buddy and wish him good luck. You know your luck's going to be the same as his," Lousma laughed, and went on to describe the vivid colors of Earth when looking at it from 200 miles out in space.

Lousma was a member of the astronaut support crews for Apollo 9, 10 and 13, he was the pilot for Skylab 3 and spacecraft commander for STS3. Throughout his career, Lousma says he worked hard to be ready for whatever opportunity came next, and that was his main piece of advice for current Pioneer students.

"If you want to do something, prepare yourself for it. Get ready for it because you never know when the opportunity is going to come your way, and if you're not ready somebody else gets the job," Lousma said, giving the example of how he began learning Russian when he found out NASA was working on a joint fight with the Russian space program.

Other principles Lousma said served him well included: always do your best and stay humble, work hard, practice self-discipline, thank those who help you, develop your faith, take calculated risks and never give up.

"We want to make sure that as we move forward, we're doing all the things we do for the right reasons," he said. "We want to make sure we're not recognized for just what we do, but for who we are."

Lousma also thanked his wife of 60 years, Gratia Kay, for her support that made it possible for him to accomplish what he did.

After Lousma's presentation, the Pioneer students took some time to celebrate their own accomplishments. Student Council members called to the stage their peers who received academic awards in science, math, social studies, English and business, and the male and female outstanding senior athletes of the year also were recognized.

Senior Basil Baccouche, a member of the Student Council's alumni connections committee, said there are two facets to the awards assembly: celebrating students' academic achievements and motivating them to pursue their next goals.

"The rest of the student body doesn't always realize how smart and how achieved some of these students are," he said. "When we bring them up here and we're recognizing them, I think it's motivation for other students and encourages them to keep going."

The following Pioneer High School students received first place for the academic awards:

Science

Sylvia Nees, computer science

Alex Stensen, chemistry

Hojin Han, engineering and physics

Hamza Baccouche, environmental and earth science, plus first place for 11th grade

Phoebe Johnson and Alice Hill, science and society

Sylvia Nees, Jamie Johnson and Mackenzie Dalton, first place in 12th grade

Arundhathy Suresh, microbiology and biochemistry Winner, plus first place in ninth grade and best in the science fair

Math

AMC 12 Top Scorers: John Nicklas

AMC 10 Top Scorers: Christopher Jiang and Chenxin (Jayson) Song

MMC Top Scorers: Jason Hu (12th in state), Swaraj Nayegandhi, Stanley Chapel, Hojin Han, Aaron Kofsky and Xingyi Zhang

Computer science: Julia Hines and Nick Matton

Math performance: Heet Barot, John Fisher, Jodi Hawki, Hallie Dykstra, Tony Jones, Joseph Forster, Grace Lawrence and Nels Erikson

Social studies

Lizzie Williams, world history class enthusiast

Ben Tolo, U.S. history class enthusiast

Cameron Novar, U.S. government class enthusiast

National Economics Challenge winners: Rohan Janakiraman, Evan Pluth, Aubrey Wright and Sean Higgins

Applied psychology: Sam Greenberg, Ben Greenberg and Kyle Ren

Joy Williams, philosophy

English

Sean Higgins, satire

Miriam Hamermesh, journalism

Sam Kass, 9/10 poetry

Carly Nadeau, 9/10 analytical essay

Sam Kass, 9/10 personal or narrative essay

Annie Li, 9/10 fiction, drama or screenplay

Jay Rhodenhiser, 9/10 best argumentative essay

Dylan Gilbert, 11/12 poetry

Ross G-K, 11/12 analytical essay

Zachary Bernstein, 11/12 personal or narrative essay

Zoe Crane, 11/12 fiction, drama or screenplay

Alex Herrero, 11/12 argumentative essay

Ysabel Bautista, 11/12 rhetorical analysis

Distinguished business education award: Russell (Gage) Sansbury, Allison Menge, Jordan Dubreuil and Courtney Betts

Athletes of the year: Clare Brush and John Kunec
BAY CITY, MI -- The schooner Appledore IV is plying the waters of Lake Huron and the Detroit River this week after it departed Saturday, April 23, for a round of educational excursions.

After sitting under cover all winter at her berth in the Saginaw River at downtown Bay City, "She left Saturday morning for Detroit," said Shirley Roberts, the executive director of BaySail, owner of the Appledore IV.

The schooner will conduct "Science Under Sail" classes for students in Detroit and neighboring school districts, she said.

Then, the Appledore will head back north to Port Austin for another two days of Science Under Sail.

Finally, the schooner will sail across Lake Huron to Tawas City and East Tawas for two more days of school outing, Roberts said. In all, she'll be gone for two weeks.

Science Under Sail "Engages students in real-world problem-based learning, through scientific observations and measurements of weather, water quality, aquatic life, and human impact on the environment," according to BaySail.

And what about the Appledore IV's sister ship, Appledore V?

Saturday, April 30, four high school students will fly from Bay City to Key West, Fla., and help sail it back to Bay City in time for the Tall Ship Celebration July 14-17, Roberts said. The students will engage in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education programs during the trip.
Devan J. Williams

Anthony Tolson, a popular Detroit jazz musician who planned to become an ordained minister like his father, was gunned down by two suspects during a Christmas Eve carjacking in Detroit. The suspects drove away in Tolson's 2007 Chevy Trailblazer.

Tolson, 33, of Eastpointe, had just performed at a local church and was on his way to his mother's house with Christmas gifts for his children when he was fatally shot about 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve at Gratiot and State Fair Avenues.

Detroit police on Monday arrested Devan J. Williams, 28, of Detroit, the third man suspected of helping carry out the killing.

According to online Michigan Department of Corrections records, Williams was discharged from MDOC custody on Dec. 15, nine days before the deadly carjacking.

A judge sentenced Williams to between 1 and 10 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to felony larceny of a person and resisting or assaulting a police officer. The incident occurred in February 2013.

He has three other convictions stemming from two separate incidents in 2005, including third-degree fleeing police, unarmed robbery and receiving a stolen vehicle.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy charged Williams with six felonies, including first-degree murder, punishable by mandatory life in prison; felony murder; carjacking; and firearm crimes.

Alleged shooters Darnell Gene-Arthur Young and Charles J. Cox face similar charges, including first-degree murder.

According to Michigan Department of Corrections records, Cox has prior felony convictions in 2007 for conspiracy to commit armed robbery and felony use of a firearm; and in in 2013 for fleeing a police officer. Darnell has no prior felony convictions on his adult record in the state.

Tolson played bass guitar with nationally touring acts, including R&B artist Ne-Yo, and was considered a top-tier musician in the Detroit jazz community.
Kevin Fulgenzi opens his button-down teal shirt, exposing a faded bald eagle tattoo behind gray chest hair.

"To me, that means freedom," the formerly homeless 56-year-old says from the foyer of his immaculate new apartment in Detroit on Tuesday. "I got it when I got out of the Army in '84."

Fulgenzi is one of about 27 new low-income residents -- about 10 of them veterans -- selected to move into the Charlotte Apartments, 644 Charlotte, a $6.1 million development on the fringes of Detroit's Cass Corridor, an area sometimes compared to Skid Row in Los Angeles, due to its large homeless population.

The section of Detroit is undergoing drastic changes with an estimated $627 million going into construction of a new Detroit Red Wings arena and a surrounding business district.

Fulgenzi says his brand-new apartment with laminate wood floors, a stainless steal refrigerator and a donated dinette set and mattress -- it's still in plastic and he plans to keep it that way to ward off any possible bed bug infestations -- offer him another kind of freedom.

A chair cushioned with a hunk of packing foam faces his newly purchased TV. DVD movie cases, "Lord of the Rings" the "The Lion King," and his favorite XBox video game, "Medal of Honor," lie on the floor.

A faint new-paint smell hangs in the air.

He proudly rolls his mountain bike out from his bedroom, says he spends about three hours a day riding it around Detroit.

It's how he stays in shape.

After his honorable discharge from the U.S. Army in 1984 following a 5-year stint, he spent months without a roof.

He most recently lived in a homeless shelter, and in the woods of Oakland County's Highland before that. He preferred the latter. He says the shelter performed bed checks, enforced a curfew and had too many rules.

About $300 per month is deducted from Fulgenzi's $900-per-month benefits check to pay rent and utilities through the Housing and Urban Development Section 8 program.

Fulgenzi says he suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He's battled drug abuse, continues to struggle with alcoholism and has spent time in mental hospitals.

"A lot of people take their own lives because they don't feel like they fit into society," Fulgenzi says of other veterans he's known.

His new digs give him hope.

"There's going to be more opportunities for me now that I'm here," Fulgenzi says.

He'd like to work part-time at Comerica Park or the Red Wings arena when construction is completed in 2017.

While the neighborhood undergoes transformation, the grim reality of Detroit's high crime rate lingers. Fulgenzi says he was mugged around the corner from his new apartment complex about three weeks ago.

"Even though this isn't a bad area, it's like any place you live ..." Fulgenzi says. "You just have to learn how to adjust and how to deal with it."

Joseph Early, a developer with Early Construction, said he purchased the Charlotte Apartments in 2003 for about $110,000 in the Wayne County Tax Foreclosure Auction, at that time in its infancy.

"The condition of the building, there was no roof on the front half of the building and the front facade was falling off because of the water damage.," said Early. "We gutted out the first two sections of this building all the way down to the ground and rebuilt it ...

"We saved the three sides, just the footprint, we needed the footprint we wouldn't have been able to build on the same site."

Early also owns the neighboring apartment building at 624 Charlotte, which he said are market-rate units.

The waiting list for the newly renovated low-income apartments is 300 names long, he said. While the rooms are available to all low-income residents, Early said veterans will be assigned high priority for placement.

Presently, about 40 percent of the units are or will soon be occupied by veterans, Early said.

Early coordinated the rehabilitation with assistance from Detroit Central City, a nonprofit organization that employed nearly 160 and had revenues in excess of $9 million in 2014, according to online financial records.

Detroit, Michigan State Housing Development Authority and Home Depot, which donated $300,000 in construction funds, supplied the grant funds for the redevelopment project.
FLINT, MI - A lawsuit alleging a special city water theft investigator entered a home without a warrant has been settled.

City attorney Stacy Erwin Oakes said Monday, April 25, the city agreed to pay $90,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by Simeon King.

King filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in April 2015 in Detroit U.S. District Court after he was arrested and charged in 2014 with obstructing an investigation at his girlfriend's home. The charge was later dismissed by a judge who ruled a warrant was required for the search.

The lawsuit claimed that investigator Marcus Mahan, a former high-ranking member of the city's detective bureau who was deputized by Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell to conduct investigations for the city, illegally entered the home without a warrant or consent.

The city initially claimed that Mahan's actions were just and lawful based on city ordinance.

Mahan searched the home, citing a city ordinance that allows warrantless searches and inspections on water meter connections, according to the lawsuit.

However, King's Farmington Hills-based attorney, Thomas M. Loeb, had argued Mahan was required to get a warrant to conduct the search.

"The settlement was an amicable settlement," Loeb said.

He declined to comment on specifics of the settlement, citing a non-disclosure agreement.

Oakes and city spokeswoman Kristin Moore could not be reached for further comment on the settlement.

The lawsuit alleged King was staying at his girlfriend's Burroughs Avenue home on April 25, 2014, when Mahan knocked on the door around 10:45 a.m. When King answered the door, Mahan entered the home.

King, of Grand Blanc Township, claimed in court documents that he asked Mahan to leave, but Mahan refused. The lawsuit alleged Mahan then identified himself as a Flint police sergeant and demanded the right to enter the home to search and investigate an illegal water hook-up.

The lawsuit claimed King explained to Mahan that it was not his home and he could not give him permission to enter. However, Mahan refused to leave and repeatedly threatened King with arrest if he didn't allow him to search the home, according to the lawsuit.

King claimed Mahan demanded that he show him his driver's license and tell him the name of his girlfriend, which King refused to do, the lawsuit alleged.

Mahan continued to threaten King with arrest and told him he would get a search warrant, but King still refused to allow the search, according to the lawsuit.

King claimed Mahan then called in a uniformed officer for backup, allowed the officer inside the home and told King that the officer would arrest him if he did not give Mahan permission to search the home.

Mahan then also allegedly demanded that King provide the uniformed officer with his driver's license or face arrest. This time, the lawsuit claimed, King agreed to hand over the license.

The lawsuit claimed Mahan then began searching the house under the authority of the city ordinance. King claimed Mahan went to the home's basement and looked at the water meter. But, Mahan also went into the kitchen and began going through cupboards and drawers, the lawsuit claimed.

Two special investigators were hired to investigate potential water theft in the city, but the program drew controversy after documents revealed the city paid more than $52,000 for the two investigators even after county officials told residents in October 2015 to stop drinking the water.

The continued investigations surprised some in the city after a state-appointed emergency manager agreed to use city funds to finance the probes without notifying city residents or their elected officials of the deal -- an arrangement that one critic says could have violated the state law regulating emergency managers.

Two retired Flint police officers, Mahan and Daniel Mata, were hired by Flint in 2014 through two resolutions signed by then-emergency manager Darnell Earley to conduct investigations into potential water thefts inside the city of Flint. The contracts were to be paid by the county through the Genesee County Sheriff's Office, with the city reimbursing the county for the cost.

The resolutions signed by Earley, which were posted on the city's website alongside the other resolutions from the city's emergency managers, initially called for each detective to serve for a term of nine months at a rate of $30.35 per hour.

However, county records show the city approached the county in spring 2015 and asked for the contracts to be extended until January 2016. The board of commissioners approved the extensions and the water detectives continued working with city until Jan. 29, according to Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell.

The extensions, which were approved by Jerry Ambrose after he replaced Earley as the city's emergency manager, were never made public in an emergency manager order or resolution, according to city records.

Terry Stanton, a spokesman for the Department of Treasury, which is tasked with overseeing the state's emergency managers, said previously his office was never made aware of the agreements. He added that state statute only required Treasury to be notified if the contracts were in excess of $50,000 and not competitively bid.

Financial records obtained by the Flint Journal from Genesee County under the Freedom of Information Act show the inspectors have been paid nearly $80,000 in wages since the extension of the contract in May 2015. The initial contracts, capped at nine months, are worth more than $47,000 per investigator.

Water theft has been a stubborn problem for years in Flint. City officials estimated in 2012 that more than 30 percent of all water used in the city was not paid for -- partly due to theft and leaks.

Within six month of adding the special investigators, there were 79 open investigations of water theft in the city and approximately 450 more suspected cases identified.

The investigations led to multiple criminal charges against Flint residents, including at least one case against a city employee accused of turning resident's water on illegally.
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(MLive.com File Photo)

FLINT, MI - Researchers from the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and the University of Michigan-Flint are partnering with local organizations to address the public health challenges in Flint as a result of the city's water crisis.

The Healthy Flint Research Coordinating Center is a new initiative that's been started between the universities, Flint's Community Based Organization Partners, or CBOP, a coalition of community-based organizations, to drive research now and into the future in the city.

"We believe this joint effort between the universities, community members and local health advocates will become a national model for coordination because it will allow stakeholders to share information, resources and brainpower," said Susan E. Borrego, University of Michigan-Flint chancellor, in a statement.

The site for the center has not yet been determined.

The center is expected to become a central point for researchers from each university and community organizations to partner up and focus on economic, environmental, behavioral, and physical health of residents during and after the water crisis.

"Our goal is to work together to achieve the best outcomes for Flint residents," said Kent Key, assistant executive director of the CBOP. "We want to avoid situations in which the community might feel torn in determining which university to partner with."

Lou Anna Simon, Michigan State University president, said she was pleased to team up with the universities and "this effort will further complement the Hurley/MSU Pediatric Public Health Initiative and the other health, education and community building efforts we're involved in today."

The center will also be used for community-generated research, along with research by the universities, and include a community ethics review board composed of CBOP members, as well as a core leadership team of two representatives for each campus and the CBOP.

The leadership team includes Key, E. Yvonne Lewis, founding member of CBOP, and Rebecca Cunningham, professor of emergency medicine at the U-M Medical School and professor of health behavior and health education at the U-M School of Public Health, and Marc Zimmerman, Ph.D., professor of health behavior and health education at the U-M School of Public Health.

Suzanne Selig, professor and director of the UM-Flint Public Health and Health Sciences Program, and Vicki Johnson-Lawrence, assistant professor and research program manager in the UM-Flint Public Health and Health Sciences Program represent the Flint-based institute on the board.

Debra Furr-Holden, epidemiologist and professor in the MSU Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the College of Human Medicine, and Jennifer Johnson, and associate professor in the MSU Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology in the College of Human Medicine fill spots for the East Lansing university on the board.

"This partnership will build on the established relationships the universities already have with the Flint community," said Lewis of the center. "It is exciting for the community to be viewed as an ally and equal partner in community research."

For more information about the Healthy Flint Research Coordinating Center, call 810-762-3172.
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(MLive.com File Photo)

CLIO, MI - The attorney for a Clio medical marijuana dispensary claims Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton has no authority to padlock the facility following an investigation by the Flint Area Narcotics Group.

Attorney Michael Komorn, who represents the Clio Caregiver Connection, said Monday, April 25, that Leyton lacked the authority to proceed with the case against his client because of shortcomings in the intergovernmental agreement governing the FANG multi-jurisdictional drug task force.

"I think it is clear patients need a safe access point," Komorn said. "It's an over reach by FANG."

Komorn argues the county board of commissioners failed to sign the intergovernmental agreement giving approval for FANG to operate in Genesee County. FANG's agreement contains signatures from Leyton and the heads of multiple local municipalities, but not a representative from the county board of commissioners.

Without approval of the county board, Komorn claims FANG was acting without legal authority when it raided the dispensary.

The city of Clio is a signatory to the FANG agreement.

Leyton disputes Komorn's claim, arguing he is authorized by the state constitution and state statute to handle cases from the drug task force.

"It's a novel argument," Leyton said.

Gerald A. Fisher, a professor with Western Michigan University Cooley Law School, said prosecutors serve on behalf of the county and the state under state law. He added that he is skeptical Komorn's argument will prove successful.

However, if Genesee Circuit Judge Archie Hayman does agree with Komorn's argument, Fisher said previous cases handled by the drug task force may need to be reviewed.

"It would certainly bring it into question," Fisher said, adding that each case would need to be reviewed individually.

Leyton filed a nuisance ordinance violation March 3 against the business after an investigation FANG alleged the business at 105. N. Mill St. was acting outside of the state's medical marijuana act.

"I don't make the laws, I enforce them," Leyton said, adding that dispensaries are not included in the state's medical marijuana law.

FANG began its investigation into the facility Sept. 22, after receiving information that the facility was acting as a dispensary, according to the violation complaint.

Three separate controlled purchases of marijuana were conducted at the business, according to the complaint. The purchaser was a medical marijuana patient, but no person present at the facility was the registered caregiver for the buyer, the complaint claims.

State law allows individuals to serve as caregivers for medical marijuana patients, allowing them to possess up to 2.5 ounces of useable marijuana or 12 marijuana plants for each of their registered patients. Caregivers are allowed to have up to five patients.

Search warrants were obtained for the facility and executed Feb. 18. Officials claim they discovered multiple jars of marijuana in cases listed for sale, edible marijuana items, THC wax, suspected psychedelic mushroom cultivation, suspected LSD tabs in the business owner's vehicle, 12 marijuana plants and $860, according to the complaint.

State law allows officials to padlock a property for up to a year over complaints of drug dealing.

Hayman has issued a temporary restraining order against the business. A hearing is scheduled for May 16 to determine if the facility will be padlocked.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Over the past two weeks, West Michigan schools have had some fun, fashionable proms with cool themes, and this weekend is expected to set the bar even higher.

We need your help to decide which prom to feature Saturday, April 30, by assigning a MLive and Grand Rapids Press multimedia specialist to highlight the special celebration.

Pictures of the prom will also be featured in a Grand Rapids Press print edition.

Thornapple Kellogg won the poll last week beating our four other schools. Eight schools are competing this week: Comstock Park, Forest Hills Eastern, Grand River Prep, Jenision, Sparta, West Catholic, West Ottawa , Wyoming and Zeeland East.

Readers can vote once per hour through noon Friday, April 29. Repeat voting is allowed and encouraged. For mobile users (with MLive app and mobile website), simply click the name of your school and click "vote."

MLive and The Grand Rapids Press are excited to cover as many proms as possible through May to share the memorable senior moments.

Monica Scott is the Grand Rapids K-12 education writer. Email her at mscott2@mlive.com and follow her on Twitter @MScottGR or Facebook
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- It's spring and ducklings have a tendency to find trouble.

A tiny foursome of waddlers did just that in the Creston Neighborhood recently and city workers sprung into action to save them.

Workers with the Grand Rapids Environmental Services department received a call from a resident about ducklings down a drain.

The workers responded, removed a heavy grate and managed to scoop out the ducklings with the help of residents. The ducklings were quickly reunited with an anxious mother.

"The mother duck lined them all up, and they went on their way," according to the Grand Rapids Environmental Services Facebook page.

Residents in the Creston Neighborhood Association noticed a mother duck making a lot of noise near a storm drain. They... Posted by City of Grand Rapids Environmental Services Department on Tuesday, April 26, 2016

E-mail John Tunison: jtunison@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/johntunison
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The Central Bank is hoping the new government will support a law that requires all residents with overseas bank accounts to submit regular reports to the monetary authority, which would allow it to collect better data on capital flows, offshore holdings and Myanmar investment overseas.





Under the Foreign Exchange Management Law, residents and companies are expected to report to the Central Bank on transactions involving their overseas accounts, said U Win Thaw, director general of the Foreign Exchange Management Department.

The law was passed in 2012, but the Central Bank has not received any reports from residents, he said.

We need to cooperate with other departments like the Myanmar Investment Commission [MIC] to compile investment data on Myanmar citizens in foreign countries and the flow of foreign exchange as money is sent home, he said.

Until now, government departments have been reluctant to ask for reports on international investments and bank accounts, as they feared their investigations may lead them to the countrys former dictators and their friends and relatives, said U Win Thaw.

In early April, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists [ICIJ] released the Panama Papers, 11.5 million files from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, which included information about the offshore bank accounts of a number of Myanmar authorities, well-known businesspeople and their families.

I suppose law enforcement will be easier under the new administration. Perhaps authorities in this government dont have overseas accounts and will hopefully support our policy, U Win Thaw said.

U Kyaw Win Tun, director of the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA), said his department has been unable to put together data on investment outflows, while laws only cover investment into the country.





We still have some weaknesses in collecting data; that is, we cannot assign agencies like JETRO [Japan External Trade Organization] or KOTRA [Korea Trade Promotion Corporation] to other countries, he said. Myanmar investment abroad includes manufacturing and other large enterprises, he said.

We have also heard that people have not followed a law that states their money must be repatriated rather than sent to bank accounts in Singapore, he said.

Under the Foreign Exchange Management Law, Myanmar nationals can open bank accounts abroad for transportation, insurance, tourism, labour exports, construction projects, settling foreign debt, to open a branch office, operate foreign currency services, or for other purposes with the approval of the government or Central Bank.

Every transaction should be reported to the Central Bank, which is responsible for approving overseas investments.

Foreign investors must follow the policies and show all related documents, said U Win Thaw, and if they are unable to provide the necessary information, the Central Bank may not allow them to repatriate profits.

Myanmar residents must go through the same process, both for direct and indirect investment overseas. The Central Bank may also limit the volume of capital transfers by issuing new regulations, he said.

If the new government agrees to the new policy, he added, the Central Bank will ask for documents for every payment or settlement between a Myanmar national and a person living in a foreign country, and will record information about those involved in foreign exchange transactions.
The Union Minister for Commerce aims to triple the value of trade within his five-year term and will focus on promoting exports to help reduce the countrys widening trade deficit, as well as tackling smuggling networks to formalise illegal trade.





U Than Myint made the comments during a meeting with traders in Yangon, in which he asked for feedback and suggestions for new economic policies.

Our countrys exports as a percentage of gross domestic product is very low. To improve this, we must do two things, he said. The first is to support local industries and improve their quality for export and the second is to find markets for these products. To increase exports threefold, he will focus on agricultural development, encourage small and medium-sized industry and continue to promote the export of natural resources.

For example, to develop the farming sector, we must improve access to rural finance, and finance for small and mid-sized enterprises, he said.

Demand for products in the international market will be high, so long as the ministry cooperates with private enterprises and regional associations, he added. Myanmars largest trading partners are its neighbouring countries, he added, though trade links with Europe and the US improved during the former government term.

Now the ministry must actively promote new markets in ASEAN, the EU and the US. The new government will continue to follow the national export strategy drawn up by the previous administration, and will try hard to combat illegal trade.

Some say the value of illegal trade is as high as the value of legal trade. It is difficult to study this systematically. It is a very difficult problem and can only be solved by cooperation between many associations, the minister said.

He did not directly answer questions about how the new government planned to eradicate smuggling. In December, the former government abolished a mobile taskforce charged with preventing illegal goods from entering the country.





Government officials said at the time that immediate action to control illicit trade following the mobile taskforces abolition, such as opening more border gates, punishing illegal traders and developing an electronic system for border checkpoints, would not be taken.

U Than Myint said that the teams had been effective. It is better to stop illegal trade through respective regional authorities than through the central government. We will [tackle smuggling] using this system, he said.

Everyone must cooperate for the project to be successful, he said, adding that it depends on the rule of law. There are many sectors where we need to take action against smugglers. We must do this as a national duty and authority must be given to regional associations, he said.

Translation by Khine Thazin Han
The exploration activities of international oil companies in Myanmar offshore are continuing as normal despite crude oil prices falling over 60 percent globally since mid-2014.





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Myanmar authorities announced the latest offshore activities last week through state-run newspapers. International companies have now started surveys at almost half of all blocks awarded in the 2013 bidding round.

Meanwhile, production remains steady at Myanmars existing offshore gas fields  Yadana, Yetagun, Shwe and Zawtika  officials said.

Frances Total E&P Myanmar launched 2D seismic surveys in Yetagun West Block (YWB) on April 22, following approval from Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE).

Companies need MOGE approval for offshore activities. Exploration activities are going on as usual. As the price of crude oil falls, service companies have also lowered their fees and oil companies are taking advantage of this, said an official from the Ministry of Electricity and Energy.

Total is the operator of Myanmars largest offshore gas field, Yadana, and was awarded right to exploration and production in deepwater block YWB in 2013. Its seismic campaign will run from April 22 to May 23 according to the state media announcement.

PC Myanmar (Hong Kong) a subsidiary of Malaysian state-owned Petronas began a 3D acquisition survey in blocks M-11, M-12 and M-13 (Yetagun Project) on April 15, which will continue until May 31.





Petronas also drilled development wells in the Yetagun project in November 2015. But the Malaysian oil giant failed to start its planned exploration activities in late 2014 when international oil prices began to fall, drilling just one exploration well in the project though had planned two, according to MOGE.

An official from MOGE told The Myanmar Times late last year that Petronas would drill three development wells in the Yetagun project in 2016, M-12, M-13 and M-14, to maintain its production level which is declining.

Australias Woodside Energy has been conducting 2D seismic surveys in blocks AD-5 and AD-7 in Rakhine basin since the end of March. The company also led a 3D seismic campaign in the same blocks in November 2015 according a notice in state media. It announced two gas discoveries in blocks A-6 and AD-7 in January and February of this year.

Extensive 2D and 3D seismic surveys in blocks A-4, A-7, AD-2 and AD-5 started in late 2015 and will continue into the second quarter of 2016, according to the companys first-quarter report published on April 20.

Were especially pleased with our recent exploration success in Myanmar where we have announced two gas discoveries over the last six months, said Woodside chair Michael Chaney at the companys annual general meeting on April 21. The proximity of these wells to nearby infrastructure and our strong partnerships in Myanmar enhance commercialisation possibilities.

Woodside has interests in a total of six offshore blocks in Myanmar covering a total of 47,000 square kilometres and is close to completing more than 30,000 square km in approved 3D seismic surveys, he said.

The government awarded 20 blocks in the 2013 offshore bidding round. A total of 13 international oil companies were awarded the rights to explore and operate the blocks. Signing of all production-sharing contracts with MOGE was completed by mid-2015.

London-based Ophir Energy was the first company to begin exploration after the bidding round, starting surveys in block AD-3 in late 2014.

BG Group, which has since been bought by Royal Dutch Shell, started 3D seismic surveys in blocks A-4 and AD-2 in November last year.

Unocal Myanmar Offshore, a subsidiary of US-based Chevron, also started exploration activities in block A-5 in Rakhine offshore in October last year. The US oil company was awarded block A-5 in 2013 and signed a production-sharing contract in early 2015.

Last week reports emerged that Chevron plans to sell its US$1.3 billion Myanmar oil and gas assets, with Woodside Petroleum, Thailands state-owned PTT and companies from Japan and China expected to be among possible buyers, according to Reuters.

Another major international oil giant, Shell, has started conducting 3D seismic surveys in blocks AD-9 and AD-11 in Rakhine offshore.

Shell was awarded deepwater blocks AD-9 and AD-11 in the Rakhine basin and MD-5 in the Tanintharyi basin in the first 2013 offshore bidding round.

Shell and Japanese oil firm MOECO signed production-sharing contract for the blocks with MOGE in February 2016.

MOGE officials have said the coming years, in particular 2016 and 2017, will be the busiest period yet for Myanmars offshore petroleum industry, as companies in existing projects and newly awarded blocks carry out exploration activities.
He started the book launch as a world-record memory genius would: by reciting 30 numbers after hearing them only once.





That was memory master Eran Katzs introduction to the Myanmar translation of his 2010 book, Where Did Noah Park the Ark? The book, translated by Myanmar translator Hane Latt, details memory techniques through the ages.

At the launch held on April 6 at Tab Book Centre in Yangon, Katz wrote 30 numbers on a whiteboard for attendees to recite back to him. He then repeated the numbers, in order.

When I was high school student, I was looking for ways to succeed without working too hard. I looked for short cuts to remember lessons. I read books about memory improvement. It became my hobby, he told The Myanmar Times after book launch.

He has been developing memory improvement techniques on his own since he was a student.

Many people and students feel stressful in exams even if they know the lessons very well. They forget a lot during tests because they normally dont use proper methods and techniques. If you use good memory improvement techniques, you will always remember what you want to in exams, he said.

Katz has written several memory improvement books, including Secrets of a Super Memory and Jerome becomes a Genius: Ancient Jewish Techniques to Boost Brain Power.





Where Did Noah Park The Ark? focuses on dealing with methods and techniques to improve the memory.

Memory improvement techniques have existed for thousands of years in such cultures as Roman and Greek. The ancient people didnt have cell phones, computers and technology. They had to trust in their own memory so they started to develop these techniques, he said.

About 25 years ago, it took him one and a half hours to be able to recite 500 numbers. Today he can recite 500 numbers in 20 minutes from hearing them only once.

I dont have an unusual memory. I am not too smart. I am an average person. I just wanted to improve my memory to show people that almost every average person can do amazing things, he said.

Katz said it is nice to have a good memory because it saves time and helps reduce pressure in exams.

He has also written books on erasing memories to forget failure or trauma and help people move on.

Hane Latts translation of Where Did Noah Park the Ark? is available in bookstores for K2500 a copy.
Thura U Shwe Mann yesterday challenged the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party to justify his expulsion among 17 prominent members from the former ruling party.





The USDP was behaving like a dictatorship, said U Saw Hla Tun, one of the former Speakers allies who was also expelled.

The party should explain its motives, Thura U Shwe Mann said in a statement, insisting he would continue his work for the sake of country and people as chair of parliaments influential Legal Affairs and Special Cases Assessment Commission, to which he was appointed by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi two months ago.

The former Speaker, who was ousted as party chair by then-president U Thein Sein in an internal power struggle last August, confirmed on Facebook that he had received a letter from the USDP on April 22 notifying him and 16 others of their dismissal from party ranks.

The expulsions, believed to have been ordered by U Thein Sein, confirmed the deep rifts within the USDP which suffered a crushing defeat by the National League for Democracy in last Novembers election.

For some analysts, the disintegration of the USDP reflects the success of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in turning her touted policy of national reconciliation into a tactical tool to weaken her already diminished opponents. Two of the dismissed USDP members are government ministers appointed by the NLD leader in recognition of her close ties with Thura U Shwe Mann.

The opposition Arakan National Party, the largest of a handful of ethnic minority parties in parliament, has undergone a similar split, with the NLD leader also acting as catalyst by appointing one of its senior members, U Aye Thar Aung, as deputy Speaker of the upper house.

Thura U Shwe Mann, a former general who lost his parliamentary seat to the NLD in November, questioned whether the USDP had abided by its own rules and regulations in ordering the expulsions. He urged USDP members to consider their partys behavior.





Colleagues said he would hold a press conference in parliament tomorrow. He has not revealed his next moves amid speculation that he and his allies might form a new party or join the NLD.

The expulsions were not just a party affair, Thura U Shwe Mann said.

Even though this is an intra-party issue, it could affect the wellbeing of the state and people one way or another, he said.

U Thein Sein, who handed over to Myanmars first civilian-led government for more than 50 years on March 30, had been expected to return to lead the USDP following a brief spell as a monk before the Thingyan festival.

His formal resumption as party leader has not been officially confirmed, however. The letter sent to the 17 expelled members said the decision was taken by a meeting of the USDP central executive committee.

We plan to ask the party to explain its decision. We feel as if this was handled like a dictatorship. If they can do whatever they like, other party members could be affected too, said U Saw Hla Tun, also a member of the parliamentary commission led by Thura U Shwe Mann.

U Saw Hla Tun said that under party rules such a decision should be taken by a party conference and that those affected have the right to defence.

U Zaw Myint Pe, one of the 17, said he believed the decision came from U Thein Sein as party leader. The party was risking its future by breaking with internal democratic practice, he said.

The expulsions triggered a flurry of rumours. Radio Free Asia reported that U Ko Ko Naing, secretary of the legal affairs commission, had been called from his house for police investigation. But the report was soon removed from Facebook, and U Ko Ko Naing said he was still at home.

Political commentator U Yan Myo Thein said the USDP split would have no impact on the public and was not linked to the government either.

People do not support and are not interested in the affairs of the USDP. Its very clear that they lost in the November election. But I worry that this issue will push U Shwe Mann and his followers closer to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. If this happens, they will have more power to control parliament and government. Its not a good sign for the country, he commented.

Political analyst U Sithu Aung Myint also said the issue was not related to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The main source of the problem is a power struggle within the party. Now U Shwe Manns group are saying there is no democracy in the party, but actually there was never democracy within the USDP as it was set up to represent the military and not the people, he said.

Even though they made the partys rules and regulations, they never practised them. U Shwe Mann also understands that, he added.

Political commentators said the internal USDP rifts that burst into the open last August, when police took part in what was seen as a party coup, cost the USDP dearly in the elections. Attempts to reform the USDP ahead of the next 2020 election are unlikely to result in a comeback, they say.

They will never get the support of the people without cutting from the military, said U Sithu Aung Myint.

Some of Thura U Shwe Manns allies have dampened speculation they plan to set up a new party or join the NLD.

We wont join. We maintain our loyalty to the party that we have worked for over a long time. We have no plans to set up a new party. But we will continue to support the NLD by serving as members of the special affairs commission. But we want to get the USDPs reason [for the expulsions] to get a fair resolution, said U Saw Hla Tun.

The USDP did not respond to calls by The Myanmar Times for comment.
Ten Myanmar migrant workers are currently being detained against their will in a human-trafficking centre near Bangkok, according to a rights group. The men were identified as human-trafficking victims by Thai authorities.





The workers said they were willing to collaborate in a case against exploitative brokers and recruiters, but have not been given the choice to leave the shelter, according to U Sein Htay, chair of the Migrant Worker Rights Network which has been assisting the case.

According to the MWRN, the 10 workers have Myanmar passports and entered Thailand legally through a recruitment process outlined in a bilateral memorandum of understanding in November 2015. They attempted to change their jobs to a new position in Samut Sakorn province and were preparing to apply as new workers with the new employer.

The Myanmar victims are being involuntarily detained even though the Thai authorities promised they would not detain them but only bring them in for questioning, said U Sein Htay.

In a statement yesterday, MWRN expressed deep concern that the involuntary detention will create fear among the migrant community and prevent further victims from speaking about any abuse.

Whilst the 10 Myanmar migrant workers in this case are willing to be involved in enforcement action against Thai and Myanmar recruitment agencies or brokers who have unfairly exploited them and want to receive benefits they are entitled to as identified human trafficking victims, this choice should not be at the expense of their personal liberty to undertake freely chosen work and reside with other migrant workers in Thai society, said MWRNs statement.

Andy Hall, a migration expert and advisor to MWRN, said if all human- trafficking victims in Thailand are automatically forced into restrictive human-trafficking shelters as a matter of course, law enforcement goals will be undermined and victims prevented from rehabilitating.

The willingness of future human- trafficking victims to voluntarily come forward to law enforcement officials with the true facts of their abuse could be affected, he said. Such a situation can only undermine the effectiveness of future government efforts to genuinely combat human trafficking.





The Myanmar Ministry of Labour acknowledge that more must be done to protect victims who come forward and cooperate with law enforcement agencies.

Daw Khin New Oo, a senior officer of labour ministry, said the ministry would be taking action to put in place a better MoU system for future migration.

Ko Tun Tun Lwin, a senior member of MWRN, said the organisation has been training officials about best practices in avoiding and responding to forced labour and exploitation. The most recent training session was held this past weekend.

Myanmar and Thailand have been in talks since last December about renewing an expired MoU on migration. The expired agreement has been widely criticised as a system akin to legal debt bondage that has done little to minimise the exploitation of the workers.

If we train officials to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the MoU, we might be able to reduce illegal migration, forced labour, exploitation and trafficking, he said.
A global meeting on drugs failed to deliver a highly anticipated shift from a punitive approach to narcotics, disappointing Myanmar advocacy groups.





The outcome of the UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs held last week in New York instead resulted in a draft resolution that brings little new to the table, experts said.

Nang Pann Ei, a coordinator of the Drug Policy Advocacy Groups, called the UNGASS meeting significant because Myanmar civil society was able to speak up for opium farmers facing the constant threat of crop eradication. But she voiced disappointment about the resulting policy document, saying it has some serious gaps.

It did not mention harm reduction specifically, and decriminalisation of drug use and abolishing the death penalty for drug-related offenses was not mentioned, she said. This will impact Myanmar drug policies, which will still stick to repressive drug laws and not change to 100 percent human rights-based drug policies for the affected communities.

We hoped UNGASS would help change these outdated and repressive policies, but this unfortunately did not happen, she added.

In most Asian countries, including Myanmar, many small and first-time drug offenders languish in jail, convicted to lengthy prison sentences. Civil society and advocacy groups say the current punitive approach has cost billions but changed little.

Tom Blickman, a researcher at Amsterdam-based Transnational Institutes Drugs and Democracy Programme, said the UNGASS draft resolution, which was reached by consensus, continues existing approaches.

In particular, ASEAN countries remain committed to a world free of drug abuse and will do little or nothing for reform like harm reduction and decriminalisation, let alone regulation, he said.





In a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon handed out to UNGASS attendees, celebrities, business people and world leaders like Hilary Clinton, Jane Fonda and George Soros called for a change to the response to drugs.

The drug control regime that emerged during the last century has proven disastrous for global health, security and human rights, the letter read. Problematic drug use and HIV/AIDS, hepatitis and other infectious diseases spread rapidly as prohibitionist laws, agencies and attitudes impeded harm reduction and other effective health policies.

Myanmar representatives also signed the letter, which was reportedly confiscated from participants upon entering the UN building. The Myanmar signatories were Nang Pan Ei of the Drug Policy Advocacy Groups, Sai Lone of the Myanmar Opium Forum, Kyaw Thu of the National Drug User Network, and Hkam Awng of the Department of the Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control.

Civil society groups said the uptick in opium and methamphetamine production in the Mekong is evidence that current approaches to narcotics have failed.

But a report on the special meeting for Mekong countries revealed that no ground-breaking or new approaches were discussed as country representatives vouched for their ongoing commitment to the current strategy.

China also pledged support for the existing Mekong drug approach. The Greater Mekong sub-region is a priority for China ... China will in this framework continue to strengthen pragmatic cooperation, increase our support to member states by providing more funds and technology, said Guo Shengkun, Chinas Minister of Public Security.

On his sixth day in office at the time of the UN meeting, Myanmar Health Minister U Myint Htwe said the government was reviewing its drug strategies.

Drug use seems to be on the rise. This is a very serious problem for our country, he said.

Mr Blickman said that a regional shift in fighting drugs would come down to whether ASEAN countries are open to adopting new strategies.

It will depend on the will of individual counties to provide room for other strategies, he said.
Over 600 people joined a rally marking Kachin Anti-Drug Day in Kutkai in northern Shan State yesterday.





After the two-hour march, organised by the Kutkai All Christian Group, pastors leading the movement said drug-related problems had created a large support-base for the organisation.

We often see and hear about the troubles related to drugs and opium from the people in the region. Some people came out [when they saw us] and loudly shouted our slogan or applauded, said Zt Lum Nyoi, a spokesperson for the group.

The march started from Kutkais People Park and ended at the church on Tar Moe Nye junction.

The Christian group said that the planting, producing and trading of opium and other narcotics was not only illegal but also destroys peoples lives, relationships, businesses and education. The Kutkai All Christian Group urged the government to take a more aggressive stance in combating drugs and said it would join forces with other groups fighting for the same cause.

Zt Lum Nyoi said government authorities and the police cooperated during yesterdays march and urged similar support for anti-drug activists elsewhere.

In January and February, dozens of anti-drug activists from Christian vigilante group Pat Jasan were injured in Kachin State as they destroyed poppy fields that they alleged are under the control of pro-government militias. The authorities who had promised to protect them failed to do so.

Read more: Pat Ja San's controversial mission





In Muse and Lashio in northern Shan State near Kachin, about 500 people also marched to celebrate the second anniversary of Kachin Anti-Drug Day. In Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State, about 3000 people gathered at Manaw Park.

Myanmar continues to be the second largest producer of raw opium in the world. Though opium production in Kachin State was estimated to have decreased by 17 percent last year  from roughly 5100 hectares in 2014 to 4200ha in 2015  it still accounts for 7.6pc of the nationwide total, according to numbers from the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime.
The Kayin State government has pledged that it will not allow any stupas to be built inside church or mission compounds and will work to prevent religious conflicts after a dispute last week pitched a Buddhist monk against Christian communities.





A prominent monk built a disputed stupa in the Mark Anglican Church compound in Hlaingbwe township on April 23. He allegedly plans to build another near a church compound in the area.

State minister for religious affairs U Min Tin Win told The Myanmar Times yesterday that the state government was unhappy about the plans and would discuss the issue in a cabinet meeting today.

Im very disappointed. It can cause conflict between two religious groups. We will not damage the Buddhist image. This issue needs to end now and we dont want to see this anymore in the future, said the minister. We apologize to the Christian communities, he added.

Christian organisations and the state Sangha Maha Naryaka Committee had objected to the construction of the stupa but Myaing Kyee Ngu Sayadaw and his followers went ahead regardless. On April 24, the monk had attended the umbrella hoisting ceremony.

The Kayin State Sangha Maha Naryaka Committee sent a letter to Myaing Kyee Ngu Sayadaw on April 9 saying that the committee foresaw conflict if stupas were erected in church compounds. However, the sayadaw neglected the letter.

The state government called upon the Buddhist monk to cancel his plan, according to the minister, but the sayadaw refused.





Naw Sar Wah, secretary of the Hpa-an Anglican Missionary, said yesterday that the Buddhist monk already arranged to build the second stupa but that she believed the state government would handle the problem.

Most Kayin people, including Buddhist people, do not agree with what he is doing. We dont want to blame others but we dont want to see another stupa being built into compounds of other religions, she said.

The same sayadaw built a stupa in a Baptist church compound in Mi Zine village in Hpa-an township and told people it had been his dream. Local Christians lobbied the state government last September to stop construction immediately. He also enshrined a small Buddha statue into a Muslim residential area near a mosque.

U Thet Swe Win, co-founder of the Centre for Youth and Social Harmony, said that the state government needs to solve these issues decisively and that they are dangerous issues that would provide a challenge to the National League for Democracy-led government.

The government must handle these acts. It is becoming a big problem for the NLD government, he said.

U Saw Chit Khin, state MP for Hlaingbwe township, said that the state hluttaw would ask the state and Union governments to prevent the sayadaw from committing similar acts in the future.

We will meet with the state government and we want to know how they solve this issue, he said.

Mark Anglican Churchs Father Saw Stylo requested the Christian people not to quarrel with Buddhist communities and to build peace.

Dont answer the bad things with the bad, but defeat the bad with good things, he said.
Yangon's new chief minister U Phyo Min Thein has vowed to scrub the city of corruption and install a graft-free administration. The appointment of the former Pyithu Hluttaw MP from the National League for Democracy was protested by rivals who accused him of election fraud.





U Phyo Min Thein spoke with The Myanmar Times from his home in Hlegu township about how he plans on tackling his reform agenda.

As chief minister, what will you prioritise for Yangon Region?

The responsibilities of the chief minister are vast and accountable to the hopes of the 7 million people who call Yangon Region home. There are many important business cases and investment cases here and reforms made in conjunction with the government are needed. It is important to me to fulfill the responsibility assigned to me by the party and the people, but they will take time as the errors have built up over a long time. Short-term reforms wont be effective.

How will the legacy of the decisions and the activities of the former government effect the current government?

Some cases have been subject to very bad management, for example, the high-rise buildings being constructed in Yangon now. These projects crowd many people into one place. [The housing shortage] is the result of a weakness in management, and bad management has sprung from graft and corruption. We are suffering the consequences of business people and authorities colluding to make a profit through construction projects in prime areas.

Currently, the population of Yangon city is too high for the available infrastructure. Successive governments have made new town plans. Does the new government plan to proceed with the existing strategy, or make a new one?





Urban planning needs to be done with an eye toward developing the country in the long-term  We need to prevent land grabs through setting up good management.

To balance the situation, we need to set up systematic zones, like agricultural zones and farming zones, but they must be real zones. Having compounds and warehouses is not a real industrial zone.

Will you review the new city plan drawn up by the former government?

We will review all cases including construction of high-rise buildings. We dont mean we wont allow building construction, but we must do so under proper management. The results of poor management have lasting impacts on the people. We must grant permits and take responsibility to lead the countrys development.

The new city plan is already proceeding with building a bridge across the Hlaing River. Do you have a timeline for reviewing this project?

Our government does not yet know the specifics of the companies building the bridge, such as who is investing in it, or if all three companies are doing the project jointly. Land has been confiscated. Who will give compensation? There are many repercussions in the case.

Through the review process, we will determine how much land was confiscated, how much the farmers should receive in compensation, and what land is owned by who.

The former government suspended and in some cases disbanded projects, for example Dagon City. How will the new government avoid such equivocating?

The cabinet will strictly monitor foreign investments. We really need foreign investors to do businesses here, ones that seriously intend to do business here and have good reputations as well. Some that have come to do work here we have no clue where they are from, and they have not benefited anyone here either  Thats why things must be reviewed thoroughly. For now, the Myanmar Investment Commission is not signing any projects. If they want to do anything within Yangon Region, we will check them well, making sure they fill out all the paperwork and conduct actual work.

To address the citys increasing traffic jams, the Japan International Cooperation Agency was working with the previous government to build flyovers. How does this new government plan to address the traffic?

There are quite a lot of ideas about how to do it. There have also been international observers from four or five countries. Committees were formed, but members all had other jobs and other responsibilities. Actually, we must appoint someone who is solely responsible for creating solutions to the everyday traffic jams. To be able to solve this situation we will need to draw up a major transportation plan, because it wont work to patch the problem here and there.

What about the housing and squatter problem? How does this government plan to resolve that?

We must help the people who have no place to live and face difficulties. The state is responsible for helping its people. To start to address the issue, there must be exact statistics. Currently, Yangon doesnt have exact numbers about how many squatters there are or how many people have no exact place to live. There really are cases of people building shacks and then putting them for sale. This is a reality and we must deal with it. We also need to create more housing for people with nowhere to live.

After we have made a list of squatters, we will take their fingerprints, and will take photos of their faces. After the real number of people who are having a hard time is known, we will start on the solution. It is not that we will give land to them. If we did so, then people would think squatters could live for free and dont have to work. What is needed is affordable places to live and job opportunities. We have to help them to stand on their own feet.

How do you intend to handle corruption within the Yangon City Development Committee?

The minister for city development has already been assigned by the mayor and will take charge of handling that. We need to combat corruption in order to create prosperity. Otherwise, we will be turning back to a time when people can flout the laws by paying money. As a consequence of such practices, we have found ourselves in a stage of minimal development. Actions will be strict and effective, and according to rules and regulations.

Translation by Thiri Min Htun and Kyawt Darly Lin
For the first time in over half a century, Myanmar has a government with a popular mandate, led by the National League for Democracy. Although the armed forces still have extensive political powers under the 2008 constitution, and may seriously curtail the independent action of the new government, the inauguration of President U Htin Kyaw represents a radical increase in the internal and international legitimacy of the Myanmar state.





Paradoxically, this coincides with a setback for the ethnic minorities and their struggle for autonomous status within a federal state, to be negotiated as part of a national political dialogue. Myanmars ethnic minority organisations now face a double marginalisation  militarily as well as politically.

There are two main tiers in Myanmars peace process. The first is the process of negotiations between the government and the many ethnic armed groups. The second tier is a wider process of including ethnic minorities in political decision-making at the Union, state and regional levels, transforming the existing political structure from within. The success of the first tier is tremendously important for the second.

As for the first tier, after five years of negotiations and attempts to build trust between the ethnic armed groups and the Union government, a general agreement was reached on the content of a Nationwide Ceasefire Accord (NCA). The agreement signed on October 15, 2015, was meant to be applied nationwide, and most ethnic armed groups took part in its negotiation. However, due to disagreement between the Myanmar armed forces (Tatmadaw) and some of the ethnic armed organisations over the inclusion of additional armed groups, only eight of them decided to sign, and fighting has continued in the north and the northeast.

An unintended outcome of the failure to implement the ceasefire nationwide is that the NLD-led government may now get a chance to put its own stamp on the negotiations and gain ownership of the process. The outgoing and incoming government would then share the credit for having managed a successful peace process.

There are two problems, however. First, the Tatmadaw is unlikely to allow the new government to make any further concessions to the ethnic armed groups. The second problem is that the process so far has left these groups with little sense of achievement, and they may not see much gain from a ceasefire. Local distrust of the Tatmadaw has grown instead of diminished in the areas where fighting has continued, and a rift has emerged between signatory and non-signatory groups.

This division and marginalisation of the ethnic armed groups has coincided with a devastating political defeat for the ethnic minority parties in the November 2015 election, leaving many ethnic minorities with little or no representation in political institutions, severely affecting the second tier of the peace process. Ethnic armed groups might gain from signing the NCA if they can be sure that representatives of their ethnic group will be listened to in a meaningful national political dialogue, but the general weakening of the ethnic minorities in the 2015 election has reduced the prospects of this being the case. Ethnic minorities fear being sidelined by the Bamar-oriented infighting between the NLD and the military.





The ethnic minority parties secured only 55 of the 498 elected seats in the Union Parliament and most of these were won by the Arakan National Party and the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy. With the exception of Rakhine and Shan states, the ethnic minority parties also performed poorly in the State parliament elections. Why did they fail? There are three main reasons. The foremost is the extraordinary nature of this particular election, which most people viewed as a referendum for or against military rule. Voters saw the election first and foremost as a chance to end 50 years of military dictatorship and provide Daw Aung San Suu Kyi with a mandate to generate change.

Second, the rivalry between several political parties seeking to represent the same ethnic group also contributed, although the combined votes for the various parties would in most places not have been enough to beat the NLD candidates. Only seven more seats in the Union Parliament and nine in the state parliaments would most likely have gone to ethnic minority parties if they had managed to unite.

Third, the first-past-the-post electoral system favoured the NLD as the largest party. With 57 percent of the votes the NLD got 79pc of the elected seats in the Union Parliament  which equals 57pc of the elected and appointed seats combined. Within this framework of the 2008 constitution, where the military appoints 25pc of the Union and all state and regional assemblies, it would be unwise to change to a system of proportional representation or a hybrid system, as that would disproportionally favour the military and the USDP, which received 28pc of the popular votes, but only 8pc of the elected seats within the current system. It is also unlikely that the NLD would want to change to a less favourable system.

Perhaps the only imaginable way that the system might change in the foreseeable future is through a bargain, where the NLD agrees to a more proportional system and the military gives up its right to appoint the 25pc. In this way, Myanmar would take a significant step toward a genuine democracy, and one could hope that it would also enhance the chance of ethnic minority representation.

A consequence of the electoral defeat of the ethnic minority parties is that already marginalised ethnic minorities are now under-represented politically at a critical juncture in Myanmars democratic transition. Under-representation was already a problem in the democratic post-independence years (1948-1962) when ethnic civil wars broke out in many frontier areas, in turn providing a rationale for the army to seize power.

For the current peace process to succeed, there must be channels through which ethnic minority organisations can express their grievances and work for reforms. This is important in order to build trust between the Bamar majority and the ethnic minorities, and also to show the ethnic armed groups that there is space for ethnic minorities to contribute politically and have an impact on decisions. Any further marginalisation of ethnic minorities at the political level is likely to be detrimental to the peace process.

Marte Nilsen is a senior researcher and Stein Tnnesson is a research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. They lead the institutes project on democratisation and peace in Myanmar. A version of this article was first published on the East Asia Forum.
[April 26, 2016] Portage, Indiana, Signs SaaS Agreement for EnerGov Solution from Tyler Technologies

Tyler Technologies (News - Alert), Inc. (NYSE: TYL) has signed a three-year software-as-a-service (SaaS) agreement with Portage, Indiana, for Tyler's EnerGov planning, regulatory and maintenance solution. The agreement includes hosting, training and related professional services. Portage needed a fully integrated planning solution that could automate economic development functions and create efficiencies to help streamline workflows and improve customer service. City leaders also sought a solution with building permit application, asset management tracking, robust reporting, and mobile capabilities. The city conducted a competitive review and ultimately chose EnerGov, valuing Tyler's public sector experience and track record of successfully implementing the solution in similar-sized cites. As an enterprisewide system, EnerGov will help increase interdepartmental collaboration with the overall goal of delivering the best possible customer service and transparency to residents.



Having EnerGov delivered via a SaaS (News - Alert) model will save city IT staff time, allowing them to focus on other projects. EnerGov's mobile capabilities will provide staff real-time data access while in the field, and its online self-service component will expand government access for residents and businesses. The city of Portage has approximately 37,000 residents and is about 30 miles southeast of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan.

About Tyler Technologies, Inc. Tyler Technologies (NYSE: TYL) is a leading provider of end-to-end information management solutions and services for local governments. Tyler partners with clients to empower the public sector - cities, counties, schools and other government entities - to become more efficient, more accessible and more responsive to the needs of citizens. Tyler's client base includes more than 14,000 local government offices in all 50 states, Canada, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and other international locations. Forbes has named Tyler one of "America's Best Small Companies" eight times and the company has been included six times on the Barron's 400 Index, a measure of the most promising companies in America. More information about Tyler Technologies, headquartered in Plano, Texas, can be found at www.tylertech.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160426005508/en/

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Songstress Efya has launched her first studio album Janesis at the Plot 7 lounge and Club in Osu. The event was characterized by a beautifully decorated hall, as the lights and floral placements created a soulful ambience.

The event which was powered by One Nation Ent. and sponsored by Jack Daniel's, saw Efya answer questions from the fans and media, countdown to the album's official release, after which the first copy caught a $15,000 bid. This went a long way to prove the love Efya has received and continues to receive by lovers of her music. The fans present, also had the chance of hearing tracks from the album for the first time.

The album launch and autograph signing session was attended by fans and well wisher of the beautiful song bird. The celebrities were not left out as X.O senavoe, Jupitar, Episode, Reggie Rockstone, Trigmatic, Akuma Mama Zimbi, and many more, came out to support the Songstress.

The Janesis album features stars like Sarkodie, E.L, Ice Prince (Nigeria), and Bisa Kdei. Legendary Beats, Kill Beatz and a cross continental mix of music producers were involved in creating the sound of the album.

Speaking at the launch Efya said i am excited!! finally we are launching my album Janesis which means Ive just started. When you keep winning you tend to forget you dont have an album.
Gifty Anti

26.04.2016 LISTEN

Host of the Standpoint, Gifty Naana Afia Dansoa Anti has called on girls to take control of their private part and decide what to use it for and whom to give it out to.

She said this while discussing the topic on her latest episode titled; Own your v Young lady.

As a young lady, you should decide how to use your v**ina, whom to give it to, where to break it that is if you have not yet so that in the future, you do not regret it.

Even if after you dont get to settle down with the person, you will look back and say yes I did it with a better person, she said.

According to her, how you treat it will determine how life will be as some stories are sad.

Some ladies contract HIV/AIDs after their first encounter, yes I know someone like that.

Sometimes, we look back to how we broke our virginity and we have regrets, you look back and say damn, did I really do this with this person.

Most often this hits us after we have become successful, powerful and confident. We are not saying this so you feel bad about anything or point accusing fingers. We accept we have made mistakes but we thank God we are here.

Gifty Anti is a Ghanaian journalist and broadcaster married to Nana Ansah Kwao.

She is the host of The Standpoint programme; which discusses issues affecting women on Ghana Television.
A Lecturer at the Department of Marine and Fisheries of the University of Ghana says a better understanding of Ghanas coastline is crucial to manage effects of tidal waves.

Selorm Ababio says although tidal waves cannot be prevented, its effects on livelihood and living conditions on people living along the coastline can be properly managed.

We need a shore management plan as part of our coastal areas management because the population on the coastline is going to continue to increase  people will continue to want to live on the coastline, he said on PM Express news analysis programme on Monday.

He was commenting on the displacement of people and the destruction of properties following flooding caused by tidal waves in the Keta municipality of the Volta Region especially but also at other coastline areas in the countries.

On Sunday, strong sea waves for a fourth time this year displaced hundreds of residents and destroyed properties at Fuveme, Kporkporgbor, Dzita and Anyanui  all island communities at Keta.

Also in Elembelle District of the Western Region some 100 residents were displaced when their homes got flooded following strong sea waves.

On PM Express, Selorm Ababio said as the nation develops more people will be attracted to the coastline areas, hence the need for a comprehensive plan to deal with flooding that caused by rising sea.

Ghana needs an organic plan, not a static plan that is shelved, that helps us manage sea height in the future and what we should do in future  which part we need to protect, which part we need to encourage people to move away from and which part we need to advance with beautiful buildings, he said.

Although governemnt MP for Anlo, Kofi Homado, said on the show that governemnt plans to put up a sea defence project to tackle the situation, the University of Ghana lecturer says the type of sea defence being adopted is not the best.

"Putting rocks on the beach all the time is the not the best solution. It just shifts the problem from one location to another. Let's look at it holistically," Selorm Ababio said.

Meanwhile, some Environmentalists have projected that the flooded caused by strong waves will continue until June this year.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected]
Special Envoy for the African Great Lakes, Danae Dholakia, said:

The British Government is concerned by widespread reports of the arrest and intimidation of people carrying out political activity in Lubumbashi, Kinshasa, and elsewhere in DRC over the last week. The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in DRC has recently expressed similar concerns. The Congolese people must be allowed to express their political views freely in accordance with the law if an agreed solution is to be found to the current political impasse. We call on the DRC government to uphold the rights guaranteed by the Congolese Constitution and the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance.
The excessive heat being experienced in parts of Ghana has been described as normal by the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMA).

According to the agency, observations made indicated that temperatures all over Ghana were within the normal range of 20-43 degrees Celsius experienced within this season.

However, residents are complaining about excessive heat during the day and night which, in their view, is abnormal.

The panic is accentuated by a message being circulated on social media platforms that Ghana and some African countries are experiencing a heat wave.

What is a heat wave?

The Principal Meteorologist at the GMA, Mr Joe Tetteh Portuphy, in an interview with the Daily Graphic, said Ghana was not experiencing a heat wave.

'A heat wave is experienced when the temperature is high and humidity is also very high. It is defined as an extended period of hot weather relative to the expected conditions of the area at the time of the year. But when you compare temperatures with the relative humidity, it does not show that we have the corresponding figures to get a heat wave in Ghana,' he explained.

Mr Portuphy further indicated that current records showed that minimum and maximum temperatures in the coastal, middle and northern areas were between 23.8C and 43.6C, while the humidity level was between 50 and 80 per cent, adding that at places where the temperature was high, the humidity was low, and vice versa.

'Also, when the daily maximum temperature of more than five consecutive days exceeds the average maximum temperature by five degrees, then we have a heat wave. But, currently in Ghana, no observation has been made at any station of a temperature exceeding five degrees,' he further explained.

Why Ghana is hot

On why the sun is hot currently, he explained that the clouds which could cover the sun's rays were not forming and so the direct rays of the sun were beaming on Ghana.

That, he said, was also because there were no rains, a situation which would persist for a long while.

In addition, Mr Portuphy said after March 21, 2016, the sun crossed the Equator on its way towards the Northern Hemisphere, making Ghana hot within the period.

On why there was heat during the night, the meteorologist said during the night, the clouds blocked the outgoing radiation and that made the atmosphere very warm.

He noted that Ghana would endure the hot weather for a while due to the little rain that would be experienced this year.

To keep the body temperature cool, he advised the public to drink lots of water to keep the body hydrated, bath with cold water and also wear light-coloured clothes.

'The heat is not normal'

To bear the excessive heat, some people carry fans to fan themselves during the day, while others use umbrellas to protect them from the scorching sun.

In interviews to ascertain how some residents of Accra felt about the heat, some people complained about the excessive heat which in their view was not normal.

'The handkerchief is not even enough to wipe the sweltering sweat and so I am now using a face towel which can soak the sweat very well. This is not normal,' a trader, Mr Desmond Addison, said.

'This heat cannot be normal. We are used to heat in Ghana but in recent times the heat we are experiencing is different. You can feel it burning your skin and it causes severe headache', another trader, Mr Kojo Osei, said.

Iced water business booms

For 'iced water' sellers on the streets, it is the time for them to make enough sales, although they are terribly affected by the heat.

'Now I am making more than I used to because the demand for cold water and drinks is very high,' Ms Asana Mohammed said.

A hawker who sells around the 37 Military Hospital who gave her name as Akua also said sales were better than before.

The message

The message being circulated on social media reads: 'The continent is currently experiencing a heat wave. Please stay indoors as much as possible especially between 12pm and 3pm daily. The temperature will rise up till 40 degrees Celsius. This can easily cause dehydration and sun stroke. (Ps: This phenomenon is due to the sun directly positioned above the equator).

'Please keep everyone inclusive of yourself hydrated. Everyone should be consuming about 3 litres of fluid every day. Monitor everyone's blood pressure as frequent as possible. Many may get heat stroke. Take cold showers as frequent as possible. Reduce meat intake and increase fruits and vegetables.

'Heat wave is no joke! Place a new unused candle outside in an exposed area. If candle can melt, it's in dangerous level. Always place a pail or 2 of water half-filled in living room & in every room to keep temperature moist. Always check lips, eye balls for moisture.'

Similar situations are said to be prevalent in some parts of the country.

From Tamale, Zadok Kwame Gyesi reports that due to changing climatic conditions, many parts of the Northern Region have become very hot during the mornings, afternoons and evenings.

Temperatures range between 29 and 39 degree Celsius.

Many people in the Tamale metropolis have now resorted to the wearing of sunglasses in order to protect their eyes from the sun's rays.

In an interview, the Northern Regional Director of the GMA, Mr Jacob Lambon, said the temperature in the region would reach a maximum of 41 degree Celsius this year.
Although job figures released by government have stirred controversy over their reliability and verifiability, government has insisted that the figures are incontestable.

Communications minister Dr. Edward Omane Boamah says government did its best to account for the jobs it has created since 2013 despite the limitations it faced in gathering data.

Although Joy News puts the figure at about 800,000 jobs, the Communications minister disagreed and described the figure as erroneous.

Dr. Omane Boamah has been defending government following media scrutiny of a statement which listed job-creation initiatives, but refrained from putting an exact figure on the total jobs created.

While government was precise in revealing that the Kumasi Shoe Factory created 200 jobs, it could not state the jobs created through loans disbursed to 190,607 beneficiaries through the Micro Finance and Small Loan Centre (MASLOC).

In reality, however, credible data on unemployment in Ghana is proving a difficult science. It is still unknown the number of unemployed youth, but it is generally believed that the level of unemployment is a national security concern.

But in a year of political accountability, a poor data collection climate may prove an insufficient excuse for a failure to report on jobs created by a government determined to retain power.

Deputy Communications minister Ato Sarpong alluded to this reporting difficulty in an interview Monday stating the fact that we have not been able to tabulate numbersdoes not mean that we should not put the information out there...it is part of the policy of accounting to the people.

In a further defence, Dr. Omane Boamah who spoke on Joy FMs Super Morning Show Tuesday stressed that serious steps have been taken to account for jobs created by the government.

Government cannot conjure figures, he said adding the figures he released are yet to be challenged.

Even the previous NPP administration could not state the exact number of jobs it created, he said.

Contributing to the discussion, editor of the Finder newspaper Elvis Darko criticized government for reporting internships as jobs it has created.

How long can somebody be working as an intern and be paid? he questioned. Elvis Darko explained that jobs are different from employment because the former is short-term while the other is more permanent.

The editor called for a wider debate on job-creation within very defined parameters.

Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com|[email protected]
Linda Magapatona-Sangaret (left) and Sindiswa Mququ at the press briefing in Accra

Linda Magapatona-Sangaret, Chief Marketing Officer for Brand South Africa, has called for renewed conscious efforts on the part of African governments to improve their countries' brands to help project the continent as the preferred destination for investors in the Diaspora.

Speaking to the media recently in Accra, Mrs Magapatona-Sangaret, who was flanked by Ms Sindiswa Mququ, General Manager for Africa & Middle East, Brand SA, said such efforts would present Africa as a well-branded continent ready to do serious business with the outside world.

She also called for collaboration among countries on the continent, saying that would unify them and afford them opportunity to learn best practices from each other and position themselves to promote a vibrant Africa brand.

Noting that South Africa was seriously engaged in branding itself, she stressed: If we have nation brands all over the continent, those nation brands together are the ones that will project the image of Africa as a whole. We, of South Africa, cannot do it alone and we do not intend to. We also believe that the stronger and more prominent other African nations' brands are, the bigger Brand Africa itself is going to be.

.

When we go to Europe or the USA, it's more about promotion, but when we come to Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria or any other African country, it is about let us sit down and see what we can do together to take this continent forward and to represent it in a better light, take hold of our destiny and project the image that we want people to have of Africa and not allow others to define us.

Brand South Africa has three offices in the UK, New York and China.

Ms Sindiswa Mququ, in a remark, said Africa was making progress and it was important that such rich stories were told to the rest of the world.

According to her, the collaboration with Brand Ghana was very key, as it would help in the sharing of ideas and programmes between the two countries and ensure sustained mutual benefit.

South Africa's branding efforts helped it to attract R64.3-billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) between 1 April and 31 December 2015, the first three quarters of the financial year  surpassing its target of R45-billion by almost R20-billion.

By Samuel Boadi


The Art of Leadership

26.04.2016 LISTEN

By Dag Heward-Mills

King David judged Joab to be worthy of the position of commander of the armies based on his actions in the war against the Jebusites. Whoever goes first will be the chief. Joab went first and became the chief commander of Israel's armies.

And David and all Israel went to Jerusalem, which is Jebus; where the Jebusites were, the inhabitants of the land. And the inhabitants of Jebus said to David, Thou shalt not come hither. Nevertheless David took the castle of Zion, which is the city of David. AND DAVID SAID, WHOSOEVER SMITETH THE JEBUSITES FIRST SHALL BE CHIEF AND CAPTAIN. SO JOAB THE SON OF ZERUIAH WENT FIRST UP, AND WAS CHIEF. And David dwelt in the castle; therefore they called it the city of David.

1 Chronicles 11:4-7

What people say about themselves does not matter! Look rather at their deeds! Their deeds do not lie! A hard line of assessment is important in every sphere of life. Assess people by the fruits they produce! Jesus taught us to know people by their fruits and not by what they say.

YE SHALL KNOW THEM BY THEIR FRUITS. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Matthew 7:16

Everyone says good things about himself and everyone has explanations for what they did not do. Most men will proclaim everyone his own goodness: but a faithful man who can find? (Proverbs 20:6).

Over the years, I have come to think less and less of what people say. Sometimes, I know the exact explanation that would be given and I have learnt that they are all not true. The only thing that is true is the evidence and the actions that speak clearly and loudly. A leader cannot afford to make the childish mistake of trusting just what people say. He must trust what they do! What they do is who they are!

.

You cannot employ someone to work with you who has been disloyal to your fellow minister. That is, one who comes to you with a thousand reasons why things went the way they did, whilst the evidence that stares at you is the fact that he has not been loyal to his former leader!

Why do you take this person on when you have evidence of treacherous behaviour in his previous position? Why are you getting married to a beautiful lady who has nice words and beautiful smiles, but quarrels with everyone she works with? Why do you marry this lady who is unable to maintain a good relationship with anyone? Why do you believe you will receive nice things when you marry her? If the young lady is stubborn at home, why do you believe she is going to be submissive and yielding when she is your wife?

If you are going to war, you cannot afford to ignore evidence, actions and hard facts. If you are going into the ministry, you are going to war. You cannot put your life and everyone's life into jeopardy by taking childish decisions that are based on what you see and hear.

Watch out for how people treat their husbands. That is who they really are! If they are nasty, stubborn, rude and wicked to their husbands, that is who they really are. Do not believe their beautiful appearance and nice dressing. It is just outward paint! A leader must depend more on the evidence and the actions of people  not their nice words.

The Rubicon River

In the days of the Roman Empire, Roman generals would go out on great campaigns and conquer nations and territories, which they added to the empire. These generals of the old Roman Empire had great armies at their command. After battle, the Generals would be welcomed in Rome and be celebrated for their great conquests. But they were not to go to Rome with their armies. The presence of these powerful generals with their armies threatened the senate and the government in Rome. The generals were therefore given a marker beyond which they should not cross with their armies when they were on the way back to Rome. This marker was the Rubicon River. The Rubicon River is a small river in the northern part of Italy. Anyone coming home was not to cross the Rubicon River with troops.

When Julius Caesar was returning from the Battle of Alesia he crossed the Rubicon River with his troops. When the news got to Rome, the experienced men in Rome knew that crossing the Rubicon River was enough evidence of a looming war.

Remember that a wise person lives by the actions that people have taken. He does not just trust what people say about themselves. Trust what they do and remember what they have done!

Everybody has a Rubicon River. Don't take it lightly when somebody crosses the Rubicon River of your life!

[email protected]
26.04.2016 LISTEN

The General-Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) ought to get serious and stop playing cheap political games with the people of Asante-Akyem Agogo, who have been needlessly experiencing the wanton predatory activities of Fulani cattle herdsmen (See Sacking Fulanis Would Mean Sacking Bawumias Wife  Mosquito Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/13/16). The problem here involves only a certain narrow category of Fulani people, not the entire Fulani ethnic group in Ghana which has been in existence for centuries; and he darn well knows this, and so why is Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia arguing with such sophistical absurdity as if the issue at stake here was between the people of Agogo and the Fulani ethnic group in general?

General Mosquito, as Mr. Asiedu-Nketia is popularly known, is also characteristically reductive to cast matters as a simple conflict between crop farmers and animal farmers. This is inexcusably absurd, because the conflict that we have here is fundamentally one of culture and behavioral conduct, not merely one of ethnicity. Indeed, as I have called attention to several times in previous columns, the Fulani cattle herders and rustlers with whom the people of Asante-Akyem Agogo are locked up in conflict are largely nomadic people and seasonal migrants in search of forage and water for their livestock.

They often prowl the forested areas of the West African sub-region during droughts or the dry season, which severely affects water resources and forage for their livestock in the Sahel region, where their lifestyle and culture are best suited and they have been resident since time immemorial. They are not permanent residents of Ghana, unlike the wife of the three-time New Patriotic Partys Vice-Presidential Candidate, Mrs. Samira Bawumia.

In other words, it is the fluxional, or nomadic, lifestyle of the Fulani cattle herdsmen that is the cause of the conflict between the Agogo food farmers and this come-and-go reckless marauders of cultivated farmlands. I have in the recent past, for example, called for the leaders of the West African sub-region to put their heads together in order to find a constructive and amicable solution to the problem.

In the era of the postcolonial nation-state, the sort of nomadic culture being doggedly pursued by the Fulani herdsmen in Ghana, most of whose indigenous populations are sedentary, virulently militates against the socioeconomic stability of the country. Consequently, what needs to be done by governments of the sub-region is to create safe pastoral zones, preferably in the Sahel regions of West Africa that are better suited to the nomadic Fulani lifestyle.

Such designated safe-zones could then be adequately supplied with potable water, for both the herdsmen and their livestock, the lack of which is the number one cause of the endless Fula/Fulbe nomadism. We simply cannot allow Fulani nomadic existence to keep incessantly upending our own, merely because the human rights of these nomadic people have to be recognized and respected.

Equally valid, of course, is the imperative need for these Fulani herdsmen to recognize and respect the human rights of the Agogo food farmers. Besides, the law of primacy or antecedence dictates that the group of people who are historically known to have first settled and civically developed the Agogo environs into a globally recognized legitimate settlement and/or civilization be accorded priority in the conduct of their lives and activities.

In short, these Fulani cattle herdsmen must not expect to be accorded priority in grazing rights for their livestock over and above those of the people of Agogo, who created their otherwise civilized, settled and stable society long before these Fulani herdsmen arrived in the region. Indeed, were it such a facilely fair game, as Mr. Asiedu-Nketia would have the rest of Ghanaian society believe, nobody would require visas and other travel documents to move around the West African sub-region and, indeed, any humanly habitable region of the world, for that matter. Even in the free-movement era of members or nationalities constituting the association of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Mr. Asiedu-Nketia would also have his audience believe that it is perfectly legal for Fulani cattle herdsmen, often unaccompanied by any spouses or women, to rape, maim and murder their Ghanaian host populations because long before any critical mass of Fulani herdsmen arrived in the country, Ghanaian men were raping, maiming and murdering their own kind.

I dont know how anybody who reasons as morally and intellectually regressively as Mr. Asiedu-Nketia could have been elected General-Secretary of any legitimately registered and recognized political party in the country, let alone a governing party. And just to think of the fact that not very long ago this man was an elected Member of Ghanas Parliament and even a Deputy Minister in the Chairman Jerry John Rawlings-led government of the National Democratic Congress gives me goose bumps.

It is also an inexcusable commentary on how low the moral sensibilities of the average Ghanaian leader have sunk. Indeed, one is hard pressed to make a head or a tail out of Mr. Asiedu-Nketias trend of reasoning vis-a-vis what has been widely and aptly described as the Fulani Menace in the Ghanaian countryside. In other words, does Mr. Asiedu-Nketua reason the way he does primarily because he harbors any ineradicable ancient tribal resentment for the people of Asante-Akyem Agogo or the Asante in general?

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
26.04.2016 LISTEN

Mr. Robert Dwamena, ECG boss

Customers of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) at Half-Assini, and neighbouring communities, in the Western Region, have staged a demonstration against what they describe as outrageous, inconsistent and unrealistic electricity bills.

The demonstrators, who mobilised from Half-Assini, Ekpu and Atwebanso, held placards some of which read; ECG fo Mo Ho Ada Adi, ECG fo Mo Awia Yen Akye, Oh God Save Us, Outrageous Bills.They were clothed in red and black attires and wore red head and arm bands, and sang Yani Abre, Yani AbreKo o!, amidst brass band rhythms.

The three-hour-march took the protestors through the main street of the town to the District Assembly, the District Office of the ECG, and then to Akenya Egyanebo, where their leaders addressed them. They later presented their petition to the District Assembly and the ECG. The District Chief Executive (DCE), Mr George William Somiah, received the petition on behalf of the Government, while at the ECG, the District Manager, Alhaji Adamu Usumanu, received a copy for his company.

The Assembly member for Adonwozo, Mr Cyrus Wilson and Mr Emmanuel Erzah, the Assembly Member for Enosi -Half-Assini, read the petition to the gathering. According to the petition, ECG Customers who were previously paying between GH60 and GH70 monthly for their domestic consumption, had since January this year been paying between GH275 and GH472 monthly.

It said some customers who obviously consumed high electricity were paying lower tariffs than those whose consumption were lower. It said, however, the rates for the units were not indicated on their bills for easy calculation of the tariff. The petition said the March bills recorded payment debits, with some amounting to GH500.

Even in-operational meters, it said, were generating tariffs. For instance, Meter Number 0201244781, which has not been in use for some time now has been billed GH42.62 for March, although it shows no units consumed, it said. According to the petition, a customer who consumed 684 units in February was billed GH248.51 but this jumped to GH1,283.66 for March.

The demonstrators urged the customers not to pay their electricity bills until all the anomalies detected had been addressed. They urged the ECG to suspend all disconnection exercises in the area and also appealed to the Manager to remain at post to meet customers to address their concerns. The DCE, however, asked the demonstrators to calm down because he would take up the matter with the ECG for solutions to be worked out.

GNA
An unknown person pretending to be a Jamaican, speaking in threatening patois voices has been uncovered to be a Ghanaian. He was flushed out of his Jamaican camouflage by my true Jamaican lady who took him on on a tortuous Jamaican patois route. Having been faulted on his patois speaking, he came out from his pretence, starts speaking Twi and leaving numerous childish voicemail messages on various phones intended for the hearing of Rockson Adofo.

This Ghanaian in London who according to voicemail messages repeatedly left on various phones for the attention of Rockson Adofo, a Ghanaian freelance journalist, has been shopped to the British Police.

His messages have been played to the police. He is lucky that he calls from an unregistered Lycamobile Sim card phone number (0044) 07459022242 and at times precedes the number he calls to by keying in 141 so as to let his number appear on my phone as Unknown or else, he would have received a police visit and warning by now. This is how coward the person is, whoever he is. He aspires to cause some crime; however, he loves to hide his identity. Let it be known to this coward that he cant have his cake and eat it!

The person is from Kumawu according to a prophetic revelation. He claims to be fighting me on behalf of Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, Kumawuhene Barima Sarfo Tweneboa Kodua (Dr Yaw Sarfo) and Kumawuhemaa Nana Abenaa Serwaah Amponsah. Little did he know that the tone and the words of the messages left are rather making the above mentioned persons accomplices of his intended criminal action?

When he is caught by the police, he will have to explain his action and by so doing, Asantehene will surely be implicated. This will blow Asantehenes criminal involvement in the Kumawu chieftaincy case out of proportion to the international level.

I am sorry that someone will hire this uncivilized person who leaves traces all over the place to execute a crime for which he will surely be arrested and his hirers easily identified.

I know for sure it could be one of the following possible persons (names withheld for their safety & security) living in Dagenham, Streatham (London) and Manchester with the scale tipping heavily towards the one in Streatham. He knows himself and he must have started shaking like a leaf by now.

If he is a man with two hard balls dangling in-between his thighs, he should call from a registered mobile phone Sim card or his house landline or he had better get lost.

Being capable of engaging in intellectual political and social discourses, I shall not involve myself in base activities as being perpetrated by that unknown Kumawu citizen under discussion. He can carry out his irresponsible threats in Ghana but not in the United Kingdom.

Following the police advice, I should block his number from reaching my phone as he is a pure nuisance coward exhibiting his bushmans characteristics in a rather civilized Whitemans society.

I assure the reading public that all the voicemail messages left on phones for my attention will be made public in due course. This will prove how he has not only debased himself but also, his employers or those that he supports fervently hence going down that slippery slope of pure madness.

I could easily have dispatched friends to get him out of his Streatham lair to be handed over to the police but I leave it to the police to do their own work. I should not act in any way that will compromise my credibility as a law-abiding immigrant in the UK.

I invite those siding with Asantehene and his cohorts in the ongoing Kumawu chieftaincy dispute to take up the gauntlet to prove to the world that I am in the wrong trying to bring out the whole truth about the Kumawu chieftaincy affairs.

Is it not said, It hurts to tell the truth but in the end it brings comfort?

He who threatens will end up recoiling into their hole when the long arm of the British law catches up with them. Let that bushman from Kumawu continue to fool about and it is a matter of time that he will be caught and sent to do time in the British jails.

If you cant do the time, dont commit the crime!

Rockson Adofo
At the 5th edition of the annual Economic Forum of the Ivorian National Council of Employers, CGECI Academy, (CGECI) which was held in ABIDJAN, the Ivorian Capital, Tony Elumelu and Chris Kirubi were awarded with Lifetime Achievement Awards.

During the formal presentation to honour Elumelu and Kirubi on the leadership and key role they play as African business champions, the Prime Minister of Cote dIvoire congratulated both African Business Leaders and further stressed that his country had a lot of potential to support the development of entrepreneurship and growth of the private sector.

He enjoined young Ivorian entrepreneurs to come forward with their ideas and share them with business champions like Elumelu and Kirubi who have the money to help. ' MrElumelu, You are the Pride of Africa' Prime Minister Duncan said.

As he addressed the guests present at the event, Chairman of African investments company, Heirs Holdings, UBAPlc and Transcorp Plc, Mr. Tony Elumelu advocated for the collaboration of the private and public sectors to create value in the global competitive business landscape. He stressed that Africa must encourage champions for economic development. Development is not an option he stated.

No one can develop the African continent but us. We must always remember that no one can rescue us. When the private sector operators divorce themselves from the development agenda of the countries in which they operate, everyone suffers.'

"The SMEs are the backbone of any economy anywhere in the world and when governments ignore the private sector, the consequences are stark continued Elumelu. On his part, Kirubi motivated the young entrepreneurs present saying: Africa is a comeback kid. The future of Africa is in the hands of the young people. Of Business influencers who can move the continent towards development he said we have to open the markets in each others' countries. We cannot be swimming in small swimming pools and call ourselves champions'.

Mr. Elumelu tasked entrepreneurs to seek opportunities to accelerate their business success(including through The Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme, TEEP). We are champions of African development because we are Africapitalists. Through Africapitalism, I seek to evangelize what works for successful business investments and inspire other entrepreneurs like yourselves. TEEP Elumelus 10-year, $100 million commitment, to identify and empower 10,000 African entrepreneurs, create one million jobs and add $10 billion in revenues to Africas economy.

Since its initiation in 2012 by the Ivorian National council of Employers, the annual economic forum, CGECIAcademy, has provided a platform to raise awareness among African entrepreneurs about existing sources of capital and investors available to help grow and develop their businesses. The forum seeks to change the paradigm of access to finance in Cote dIvoire, creating a platform for sharing experiences and expertise. Furthermore, it aims to present the Ivorian private sector to regional and international partners and highlight the achievements and the opportunities within it. Other activities during the event include the announcement of the yearly business plan competition and a segment dedicated to sharing the experiences and testimonials of entrepreneurs.

The ceremony was attended by over three thousand delegates from across Africa including the Prime Minister of Cote DIvoire, Daniel Kablan Duncan and the Deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius, Sir Anerod Juganauth, amongst other business leaders and government officials.

Instructively, United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) is one of Africa's leading financial institutions, with operations in 19 African countries and 3 global financial centres: London, Paris and New York.

From a single country operation in Nigeria, Africa's largest economy, UBA has evolved into a pan-African provider of banking and related financial services, to more than 8 million customers, through diverse channels globally.
26.04.2016 LISTEN

The Electoral Commission says its new logo, which has generated hue and cry, represents a unified purpose and vision, and ultimately demonstrates the Commissions independence.

Ahead of the launch of its five-year strategic plan Tuesday, the Commission explained the elements of the circular logo in a brochure distributed to participants of the event which will also see the EC answer questions on its preparedness for the 2016 elections.

The whole identity represents a unified common purpose and vision and demonstrates our independence as an institution, the Commission explained in the brochure.

The new logo, which emerged in April this year, was criticised by Ghanaians, as they wondered why the EC was introducing at an election year. The logo, which comes with blue-black background with what appears to be eight abstract humans with their hands up.

It later came up that the new logo looks like that of a Turkish educational institution; something that caused a section of Ghanaians to demand an explanation from the designers on whether the logo is original, copied or modified for the EC.

Many interpretations were given to the controversial logo with some claiming it is an embodiment a wheel of fortune and that the colours represent the various political parties.

However, the Commission has given a different interpretation of the new logo, which approval is unclear. Prior to its official unveiling, the logo was used in its official brochures.

The EC explains that the circles in the logo represents unity, singular and unified in its purpose which it said is our democracy, adding the blue of the circle also represents the stability and independence of the Commission.

The inward moving arrows reflect all the people of Ghana and equally coming together for the common purpose- the right to select their political leadership, the Commission added.

The red, gold and green colours, it said, represents Ghana.

Clearly, the explanation is likely to generation further discussions in the coming days.
Electoral Commission Chair Charlotte Osei has said a lost voter ID card does not disenfranchise anybody from voting because all you need in Ghana to vote is your finger.

Speaking at a press conference in Accra Tuesday April 26, Mrs Osei said voters, who want their missing voter ID cards replaced must pay a fee of GHS5.

There is a GHS5 fee because the paper, the laminate, they all cost money and it doesnt disenfranchise you if you dont have your voter ID card, because you can vote without your card, she told journalists.

So, once you have your fingers and you show up, we will scan you on the register, your details will pop up, you will be verified, and then you will vote.

However, if you feel that you need the card because it helps you remember we are assuming you know your identity, it does help you remember your polling station and all that, that is where the card comes in and it makes queue management easier on election day. But you will have to pay the fee of GHS5 because we also have to buy those resources to enable you get a replacement.

The EC will commence its limited registration exercise from 28 April  8 May to register persons who have turned 18 years and older and others who have never registered. The EC is expecting to register about 1.2 million new voters ahead of the November 7 polls to elect a new president and fresh parliament.
26.04.2016 LISTEN

Accra, April 26, GNA - The Grains Quality Improvement Project (GQIP) of NestlA Ghana, as at 2014, trained more than 65,000 farmers in the north, to ensure high quality and reduce the level of mycotoxins in grains and legumes.

The training, which is ongoing, is aimed at enhancing the quality and quantity of cereals produced, and ensure that farmers meet the strict quality requirements of Nestle in the production of their cereal products, mostly consumed by infants.

Speaking to journalists who toured Nestle's factory to familiarise themselves with the processes of company's products, Mr Aarion Fenu, Corporate Affairs Manager of Nestle Ghana, said the GQIP, which was launched in 2007, is working in collaboration with the Grains Improvement Project of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to source local crops including maize, millet and rice for the production of 'Cerelac'.

The training he explained has also helped farmers in addressing the issues of aflatoxin, which is a big problem in Ghana years ago, resulting in having more than 50 per cent of maize being rejected.

'Currently, we have less than two per cent of maize now being rejected and that is a significant achievement,' he said.

Nestle, is currently working with the Grains Improvement Project of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to help farmers in the north to improve on the maize production to reduce the rate of aflatoxin, which could cause cancer if consumed for a long period.

Mr Afenu said Nestle Ghana Limited is committed to producing quality products under hygienic conditions for its consumers.

He pledged the Company's continuous support in maintaining its high quality standards, adding: 'At Nestle we do not compromise on safety and quality.'

Mr Walid Hobeika, Factory Manager, said the company sources 100 per cent raw materials of cereals locally in order to help rural communities to increase their income, and reduce the level of mycotoxins in grains and legumes.

He said the factory has staff strength of 700 with more than 90 per cent of them being Ghanaians.

'We want to help develop the local talent of the people that is why we give more opportunity to the Ghanaian workers.'

The journalists were taken through the total value chain of production, including the cereal plants, beverages and evaporated milk plants and also introduced to some of the latest food processing technologies employed at the factory.

NestlA Ghana Limited started business in Ghana in 1957 under the trading name of NestlA Products (Gh) Limited with the importation of NestlA products such as milk and chocolates.

In 1968, it was incorporated as Food Specialties (Gh) Limited to manufacture and market locally well-known NestlA brands.

The company became NestlA Ghana Limited in 1987. In 1971 the production of the IDEAL Milk and MILO started at the Tema Factory.

The factory has since been developed and now also produces Carnation Milk, Ideal, Chocolim, Chocomilo, Cerevita, Cerelac, Milo Cereal and NescafA 3 in 1. These products are not only produced for Ghana but also exported across West Africa.

In 2003, NestlA Ghana Ltd invested in a new warehouse, the Central Distribution centre, located next to the factory in Tema. The company also runs sales offices with warehouses in Kumasi, Takoradi, Koforidua and Tamale.

The business activity of NestlA Ghana Ltd is a direct contribution to the Ghanaian economy. For all these and other endeavours, NestlA Ghana Ltd has been recognised by Government and other bodies as a responsible citizen.

GNA
26.04.2016 LISTEN

Accra, April 26, GNA - Broll Ghana Limited, the country's premier formalised property-related services company, on Tuesday announced its 10th anniversary celebration on the theme: 'From Trailblazer to Torchbearer- 10 Years of Leadership in property management and related services.'

In the competitive challenging economic landscape of today, Broll Ghana is poised to meet the changing needs of its customers by collaborating with existing and prospective clients to provide them with tailor-made services and solutions,' said Kofi Ampong, Broll Ghana, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in a statement issued by the company.

'Our mission and vision are central to our operations and we are committed to improving service delivery and service excellence; this essentially promotes the growth of our clients and stakeholder operations,' he added.

Broll Ghana, which is a Joint Venture between Broll Property Group -South Africa, Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) and SIC Insurance Company offers the full spectrum of property-related services.

The services include: commercial broking, corporate real estate services, facilities management, property and project management, retail leasing and consulting, residential estate management, shopping centre management and valuation and advisory services.

Broll Ghana is affiliated with the globally renowned real estate firm, CBRE and this allows it to access global best practices and knowledge as well as client referrals.

The company would commemorate the occasion with a number of activities throughout the next four weeks, Doreen Akorfa Gagakuma, Broll Ghana, Head, HR/Administrative Unit said.

To kick off the anniversary celebration, Broll Ghana would roll out a series of activities, that include a media launch slated for Thursday, April 28, executive interviews on radio, facility visits, a cocktail with CEO's, a health walk on May 2, and varied CSR initiatives - such as 'Make A Needy Person Smile Barrel Promotions'.

This involves getting the public to give out personal effects for onward donation to a charity, beginning in May.

As part of its service delivery, a fire-fighting simulation would be held at the World Trade Centre in Accra to create awareness and promote public health and safety measures.

The company has over the years embarked on several Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes including sponsoring an award for the best graduating student in Real Estate at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

The company began this sponsorship in 2013.

Broll Ghana commenced operations on May 2, 2006, with 45,000 square meters of space and now manages properties with total space of 290,301 square meters with an asset value of nearly $ 735,550,863 or $ 736,000,000.

The company's clientele base has increased from two on inception to 22 and now spreads across the country.

The current portfolio includes Atterbury/Sanlam (Accra Mall), Delico InInvestmenpt I III (West Hills Mall & Achimota Retail Centre), RMB Westport (The Junction Mall), SSNIT, SIC Insurance Company, Ghana Shippers Authority (Shippers' House).

Others properties under Broll Ghana's management are World Trade Centre, Polo Court, Bertha's Court, Brandford Charles, Cascade and the Ridge Tower, Ernest Chemists (Nester Square) and Check Point (Dreams Court).

The rest are Judicial Services (The Law Courts Complex), Kasapreko Ltd (Amenfi and Nicholas Plazas), Agridev Real Estate Limited (Accra Financial Centre), MTN Ghana (MTN properties nationwide) and A&C Development (A&C Square).

Lately the company has added new acquisitions that include; Marina Mall - 9,000sqm, NCA Building - 10,800sqm, Oxford Street Mall - 6,500sqm and Accra Shippers House - 6,200sqm.

Broll aims to understand the core businesses of customers in order to provide prompt, flexible and tailored solutions.

'Fact is we customise our services and resources around our clients' needs. Our mission is founded on the need to provide professional property-related services,' the statement said.

Broll Ghana's continual upgrading of existing services reflects the company's ongoing commitment to delivering innovative property-related services.

The success story of the company is its longevity, which is due in part to research, and development and continuous improvement of services.

As the company's customer base has expanded during its 10-year history, the company has focused on research and service development. These services help clients to improve their operations.

The company directly employs more than 145 people and indirectly offers others work through the various service providers.

The Company for the past seven years has consistently won awards and the recent ones being; Winner of the 2012, Ghana Property Award for Best Facilities Management Company, 2013 Ghana Property Awards for Best Property Management Company, 2014 Ghana Property Awards for Best Brokerage Company and Valuation Firm and 2015 Ghana Property Awards for Best Valuation Company and Property Management Company.

GNA
Accra, April 26, GNA - Government has affirmed that the economy is set to create more jobs in both the formal and informal sectors as the various Ministries, Departments and Agencies complete pipeline projects and implement new interventions.

Dr Edward K. Omane, Minister of Communication, said in a statement issued in Accra and copied to Ghana News Agency that the economy had achieved considerable stability and expansion in addition to demonstrating resilience in the face of global economic challenges on the commodity market and the coming on stream of pipeline projects.

'We are convinced the recent discussions and concerns raised about the issue of job creation can be beneficial if it is situated within the context of specific measures taken to address the longstanding global and national challenge of unemployment.'

Below is the full statement signed.

Several interventions aimed at creating more jobs, as well as helping the private sector to expand and create job opportunities for the youth have been initiated.

While acknowledging the need for all stakeholders to do more to curb unemployment, we wish to give an account of some specific efforts in this regard not only to serve as an update but also to guide the youth seeking employment to explore the opportunities available:

1. Through direct Government interventions and partnerships with the private sector, numerous jobs that have been created are as follows:

 Between 2013 and 2015, Government through the Export Trade Agricultural and Industrial Development Fund (EDAIF) supported local industries to the tune of GHc 245.4 million. This amount funded over 125 different projects in the pharmaceuticals, rice, sheanut, poultry and textiles industries among others, thereby creating jobs for thousands of Ghanaians;

 The Skills Development Fund, implemented by COTVET, has disbursed a total of GHc 150 million to 654 businesses, which have trained 93,600 people in vocational and technical skills across sectors of the economy. A total of 43,485 businesses have also received support under the Fund;

 The printing and distribution of over 100 million exercise books under the free exercise books initiative has created thousands of jobs since its inception in 2010. The GHC100million worth of contracts for local printing of textbooks for schools will in addition create jobs for 4,000 people.

Duties on importation of raw materials for printing textbooks have been removed to incentivise the industry; and

 The distribution of over 2 million school uniforms under the Free School Uniforms Programme has also created thousands of jobs for people engaged in the production of these uniforms in the textiles industry.

2. Additionally, the following programmes have created the corresponding number of jobs:

 Under the Free Zones Board, a total of 69 companies were established between 2013 and 2015, leading to the employment of 16,372 people;

 The Youth in Agriculture programme employed 23,000 youth in 2013 bringing the total number of young farmers in the programme to 81,150;

 The National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI), Integrated Community Centres for Employable Skill (ICCES) and Opportunities Industrialisation Centres (OIC) have employed 21,802 people;

 The Graduate Business Support Scheme run by the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations has engaged 2,000 people;

Issued in Accra on Sunday, April 24, 2016.

 The Department of Cooperatives registered a total of 1,757 Youth Co-operatives in 10 Regions with a total of 34,657 jobs created;

 The Rural Enterprise Project created 21,045 jobs across the country between 2013 and 2015;

 GRATIS foundation under the Ministry of Trade and Industry also created 500 jobs through the production of over 1,000 agricultural implements and

 The Micro Finance and Small Loan Centre (MASLOC) has advanced micro credit to a total of 190,607 beneficiaries between 2010 and 2015.This has enabled the beneficiaries to set up micro businesses which are offering jobs to themselves and others. They have also distributed 953 vehicles for commercial transport, 25 tractors for agricultural use etc.

3. Apart from these state sponsored employment creation ventures, both direct and indirect jobs have been created through the opening of the under listed stated owned companies or public private partnerships since 2010:

 Kumasi Shoe Factory (DIHOC) - 200 jobs created;

 Ghana National Gas Processing Plant, Atuabo- 265 jobs created;

 The Oil and Gas Sector since 2010- 7,000 jobs created;

 Shea nut processing plant at Buipe - 50 permanent staff (and 2,000 shea nut pickers).

4. Notwithstanding the numerous verifiable job avenues that have been created over the past three to four years under the leadership of President John Dramani Mahama, this year brings more prospects for our enterprising youth ready to put their skills and industry at the disposal of the nation. Government, this year has began rolling out a number of interventions aimed at absorbing the youth. These include but not limited to:

Issued in Accra on Sunday, April 24, 2016.

5. The Youth Entrepreneurial Agency (YEA) is in the process of employing a minimum of 100,000 youth under the following modules-

MODULE

NUMBER OF PEOPLE TO BE RECRUITED

SANITATION

45,000

SECURITY SERVICES MODULE

5,000

COMMUNITY TEACHING ASSISTANTS

10,000

PAID INTERNSHIP

5,000

HEALTH EXTENSION WORKERS

10,000

YOUTH IN AGRIC AND AGRI-BUSINESS

20,000

TRADES AND VOCATION

20,000

VACATION JOBS

5,000

6. Also, the completion of major industrial projects this year will unleash more jobs:

 The Business Process Outsourcing Centre near the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange has been completed and will create 10,000 direct and indirect jobs. Another IT Enabled Services Centre has been completed by the Ministry of Communications at the Tema ICT Park in the Free Zones Enclave and is already employing about 250 people;

 The Komenda Sugar factory will also create 7,300 direct and indirect jobs (including outgrowers of sugar cane to feed the factory);

 The new Fish processing factory at Elmina will create 2,500 direct and indirect jobs;

 Tema Harbour Expansion will create 3,000 jobs

 Takoradi Harbour Expansion will create 3,000 jobs

Issued in Accra on Sunday, April 24, 2016.

7. Over 400,000 professionals such as architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, masons, carpenters, welders, steel benders, electricians and painters, among others, are currently employed at various sites where direct Government investment in the construction of hospitals, roads, schools, water, energy, housing and market projects are underway. When these projects are completed teachers, nurses, engineers, doctors, pharmacists and other professionals will be recruited to work in these facilities. These projects also have places for semi-skilled and unskilled labour.

8. This government is empowering Ghanaian youth and business people to be more entrepreneurial and innovative through targeted policies and programmes. The first batch of 107 beneficiaries of the Youth Enterprise Support (YES) has received financial support to establish and grow their own businesses after receiving intensive training and mentoring in business management. The implementation of the President's directive for GHc100 million worth of textbooks for schools to be printed locally is one such sign of empowerment being offered local businesses. This directive alone creates jobs for an estimated 4,000 people. As an additional motivation, duties on importation of raw materials for printing textbooks have been removed to boost the local printing industry to expand and employ more people.

9. Jobs have also been created in the Agriculture Sector. The 2016 State of the Nation Address delivered by President John Dramani Mahama recounts a number of initiatives as part of Government's transformational agenda in the area of agriculture with job creation as a core objective. Notable among them include:

 Distribution of 110 million cocoa seedlings to farmers, at no cost, in the 2014/2015 and the current 2015/2016 crop season. This has created 9,000 jobs across 418 nursery sites;

 Government is encouraging more people able and willing, especially the youth, to enter into cocoa farming.

Issued in Accra on Sunday, April 24, 2016.

Government through COCOBOD has put together a motivation package to boost early growth and substantial return on investment. This package includes provision of effective extension support, free cocoa seedlings and free sulphate of ammonia fertilizers;

 Since the programme was launched in 2014, over 30,000 youth have signed up in Ashanti, Central, Eastern and Western Regions;

 This year, 5million improved, early-maturing and high-yielding coffee seedlings are being raised and supplied to farmers. The supplies will be substantially increased every year to ensure that coffee production increases from the present 6,000 hectares to 100,000 hectares of coffee farms in some targeted locations by 2021. These locations are in but not limited to parts of the Volta, Eastern, Central and the transitional areas of the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions such as Techiman, Wenchi, Bechem, Nkoranza, Atebubu, Kwame Danso, Drobo, Akomadan, Offinso, Jamasi, Asante-Mampong, Kete Krachi and Dambai. Thousands of jobs will also be created along the coffee value chain;

 The pilot phase of the Ghana Broiler Re-vitalisation Project was launched in July 2014. A total of 650,000 birds were raised, processed and sold by 2015. This created 350 direct jobs and 7,800 indirect jobs for poultry farmers and the youth along the poultry value chain;

 The Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development is supporting the establishment of a Shrimp Project to promote processing and production for the Ghanaian market and for export. Production of fingerlings, laboratories, fish feed factories, production ponds, processing and marketing facilities will be located in parts of the Greater Accra, Volta and Eastern Regions. The project will create 76,000 direct and indirect jobs. Production is estimated to be 30,000 metric tonnes and projected export revenue ranges

Issued in Accra on Sunday, April 24, 2016.

between US$60 million to US$200 million. The project is expected to commence by the close of this year;

 Similar initiatives in oil palm and shea production will soon be launched.

These offer ample proof of both Government's commitment to create more employment opportunities for the youth and the pragmatic steps being taken to reduce this perennial global challenge to the barest minimum.

The Role of the Private Sector

Government duly acknowledges and welcomes the role of the private sector, both formal and informal, in creating jobs and remains confident that with the resolution of the power supply shortfall and the relative stability of the macroeconomic environment, the economy will expand between now and the years ahead leading to massive job creation and economic empowerment for all. We shall continue to collaborate with the private sector in this endeavour. The optimism is also shared by our development partners.

The World Bank

It will be recalled that barely two weeks ago (12th April, 2016) the World Bank was on record to have stated in a report on Ghana's economic outlook that, 'Ghana's real gross domestic product (GDP) growth is projected to rebound to 5.2% in 2016 from 3.4% in 2015 reflecting the positive impact of a more stable energy supply and increased contribution from the oil and gas and agriculture industries. Energy supply is expected to improve following the emergency measures including the use of power barges. The country's medium-term growth prospect is strong with 8.2% in 2017 and moderating to 7.5% in 2018 under the assumption that fiscal adjustment remains on track with the support of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other development partners.'

Issued in Accra on Sunday, April 24, 2016.

BRIGHTER PROSPECTS

In conclusion, the Government of President John Dramani Mahama remains committed to fiscal discipline even as we implement zero percent (0%) financing from the Bank of Ghana, the lender of last resort. We shall sustain the gains and ensure they translate into more jobs to empower the citizenry. Let us continue to be hopeful, for, just as many have been employed in both the public and private sectors, there are many more job opportunities in the months and years ahead.

GNA
Former Transport minister Dzifa Attivor says the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is a tribal party bent on prosecuting only Ewes if it wins the general elections in November.

Referring to the record of the NPP government between 2001 to 2008, Dzifa Attivor argued the NPP targeted only members of her ethnic group for prosecution.

When the NPP won power in 2001, most ministers who are Ewes were imprisoned, including Serlomey and Abodakpi and a host of other ministers. Does that mean that no individual from any other tribe has faulted in the discharge of their duties? she said in her native language.

Victor Selormey who was a former Deputy Minister of Finance under the Rawlings regime was jailed 13 days to Christmas in 2001.

[Right] Victor Selormey

A Fast Track High Court in Accra sentenced him to a total of eight years' imprisonment after he was convicted on all six counts of defrauding by false pretence, conspiracy and causing financial loss to the state.

He received presidential pardon three years into his prison term and died on 18 April 2005.

A former Minister of Trade and Industry Dan Abodakpi was also jailed 10 years in August 2007 by the same court. He was sentenced on three counts of conspiracy, two counts of defrauding and two counts of willfully causing financial loss of $400,000 to the State.

The fraud was committed when Abodakpi and the late Victor Selormey co-chaired a Trade and Investment Programme.

Dan Abodakpi

Dzifa Attivor who resigned her ministerial position last year following the controversial bus branding saga, was armed with this history when she mounted the campaign platform during the launch of a group called 'Ketu South For Fifi And Mahama' at Wodoaba in the Ketu South district of the Volta region.

She reminded the grassroots that the fate that befell some NDC top guns from the regions still holds true for any Ewe in the current government. The former minister explained that all that stands between her and prison time, is the Volta regional vote.

I want to remind you that it is your vote that will decide if Fifi Kwetey and I will be prosecuted and put behind bars or not, she rallied.

She expressed comfort and confidence in the fact that the Volta region remains the stronghold of the ruling government.

We the people of the Volta region will forever remain loyal to the NDC, Dzifa Attivor said.

She asked the NDC grassroots to encourage their relatives living in border towns like Togo to come back home and register during the limited registration exercise which begins 28th April 2016.

Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com
Togo's top internationally-branded five-star hotel has opened - providing delegates to the forthcoming Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF) in Lome on June 21-22 with a prime example of achievement in a continent often perceived as being difficult for developers.

The Radisson Blu Hotel du 2 Fevrier is the fruit of a private-public partnership between, the hotel developer, Groupe Kalyan; the management company, Carlson Rezidor; and the government of Togo. It took 18 months to develop and is the kind of project encouraged by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), the agency responsible for the promotion of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism.

The success in developing the hotel so quickly will form the basis of a case-study discussion at AHIF taking place on 5 and 6 April in Lome. The session entitled Lessons from a hotel development success story will explore how a highly-specified 320 room conference hotel was able to be completed in double quick time in a market which has a reputation for slow infrastructure development progress. The panel will consist of all the main protagonists who will explain what they did to bring the project to fruition.

Matthew Weihs, managing director of Bench Events which organises AHIF, said: "This is a great example of how to get things done in the hotel sector and another good reason why people can be optimistic about investing in Africa. We welcome this hotel opening and of course its timing will provide a great focus for one of our many discussions at AHIF."

The new hotel fulfils many of the criteria set down by UNWTO which promotes tourism as a driver of economic growth, inclusive development and environmental sustainability.

Bernadette Essossimna Legzim-Balouki, Minister of Commerce, Industry, Private Sector and Tourism, Togo, said: This new luxury hotel will give a much-needed boost to our countrys tourism industry which is already going from strength to strength.

Ashok Gupta, Managing Director & CEO, Kalyan Hospitality Development Togo said: This is a landmark hotel development which marks a new era for Togo and we are proud that it was achieved through a successful collaboration with Togos Ministry of Commerce, Industry, Private Sector and Tourism.

The AHIF conference will take place on 21 and 22 June at the new landmark Radisson Blu Hotel du 2 Fevrier in the capital. To see the full AHIF Togo programme, visit: www.africa-conference.com/togo/index.php/programme.
26.04.2016 LISTEN

We used the part 1 of this article highlighting the complicated nature of the cultures making up the member states of ECOWAS and the role democracy is capable of playing, in overcoming the challenges associated with cultural transformation.

The ideal behind the formation of ECOWAS took a more practical nature when the body of the heads of states and heads of governments of the now 15 members, adopted a body of treaties establishing the ECOWAS in 1975. In 1975 when the the ideal behind the formation of ECOWAS become a must and so the passing into law the treaties establishing the body, almost everyone of the member state was under a military rule.

Like the 1992 Maastricht Treaty of the EU that was introduce to re-energised the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the revised treaty signed in Cotonou, Benin Republic July 1993, had the heads of state and governments of now the 15 member states, reaffirming their commitment to the project.

The fourteenth session of the ECOWAS heads of states and heads of governments, is a clear act of responding to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, in adjusting the west African Project to live up to its ideals, by adopting into law 93 Treaties. The zeal by which the 300 million citizens of ECOWAS and their representatives adopted the 93 treaties, gave an impression that the West Africans have studied their EU counterparts enough to know what their European partners are about to start doing right, and are religiously going to be the embarked on by the ECOWAS too.

In reaffirming their commitment to re-energising the process of the regional cultural transformation, the 15 states sharing the ECOWAS ideal had it that every member state must achieve a set standard of internal democratisation, as necessary condition of transcending to the regional democratic agenda, to make real the workability of the 93 Treaties. The official ECOWAS web page capture this as "they took into consideration the African Charter on People's and Human Right and the Declaration on Political Principles of the Economic Community of the West African States adopted in Abuja by the fourteenth Ordinary Session of the authority of Heads of state and Government on 6 July 1991 and were further convinced that the integration of Member State into a viable regional community may demand the partial and gradual pooling of national sovereignties within the context of collective political will". (http://www.ecowas.int/ecowas-law/treaties/).

A very close study of the details of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty (EUT http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:xy0026) and the 1993 Cotonou Treaty expose that ECOWAS has carefully studied its challenges and realised that the problems faced by the two regional blocks are fundamentally the same. The adopted treaties are mirror of themselves and, justifiably so. All the institutions the EU had and their functions, were the same as those adopted by ECOWAS. The obvious fact about the EU and ECOWAS lay in both understanding that they are faced with a challenge of regional cultural transformation, surmountable by adhering to the principles of democratisation at the states and to some extent, the regional levels. The need for subjecting certain regional challenge to popular participation became a necessary condition to the two regional bodies.

The contention is the extent to which the two regional bodies will be democratising what must be democratise, at both level?

In how the EU was able to use democratic popular participatory approach, to overcome her challenge of regional cultural transformation, while the ECOWAS appear to be incapable of doing anything democratic beyond each member states' border, is what we intend to shed more light.

We shall be doing this by first acknowledging the fact that every one of the 15 ECOWAS member states, have done tremendously well to live up to their commitment in the actualisation of the ECOWAS democratic ideals at member state level, despite their respective internal constraints referred to in part 1. By considering all the institutional reforms shared by both EU and the ECOWAS, beyond each member state in brief, we intend to expose the key institutions that accommodate democratisation and popular participation at both the state and regional levels. We shall also be looking at how this popular participatory democratic exercise will be aiding the effectiveness of the 93 Treaties of ECOWAS, as is the case with the EU, in the course of regional cultural transformation. This will be the focus of our next publication titled, the "Mystery of ECOWAS Democratic Glass Ceiling" (Part 3).

Kofi Ali Abdul-Yekin

Chairman ECRA

(ECOWAS Citizens Right Advocates)

+233579096749

[email protected]
26.04.2016 LISTEN

As tertiary institutions, the polytechnics in Ghana are relatively young, having been upgraded to tertiary status only in 1992. The polytechnic mandates has been strengthened and expanded under the polytechnic Act 2007(Act 745) to offer qualification in a wide range of applied arts and science disciplines at sub-degree, degree and post graduate degree levels.

The mission of the Act 745 was specifically to provide tertiary education in the fields of manufacturing, commerce, science and technology, applied social science, applied art and also to provide opportunities for skills development, applied research and publication of research findings.

Evidently, the Act 745 which is less than a decade ago looks like a worthless agenda and has rarely been free of controversies, what has happened to our policy implementation as a nation?!

During the state of the nations address in 2013, President Mahama announced that polytechnics will be converted to Technical Universities. Students in the Technical Universities will be trained to acquire high level technical skills to drive the countrys economic and national development agenda.

The proposed technical universities would supposedly contribute to raising the quality and competitiveness of the Ghanaian working force and would reduce the admission pressures on the traditional Universities. The conversion will provide progression avenues for technical and vocational students and curb the growing phenomenon of academic top-up programmes for HND graduates, Be that as it may, havent these wrongs been redressed in the Act 745? Is that a Rebranding package for Polytechnics? Must it be one of the things we never get right as a country? Are we going to politize polytechnic education like we did with the Senior High Schools? Might I remind you that Ghana will attain 60 years of independence next year?

Currently, 60% of polytechnic student are enrolled in business and management programmes, where lies the argument of technical Universities not going to mimic traditional Universities. The crust of the problem can be traced back to Senior High schools were most known technical Institute have diversified into business and art related courses. Parent have psyched their kids to study and secure a good white collar job rather than taking a vocationally oriented courses.

Seemingly, there is no clear transformation strategy in the upgrading process. There are lessons from South Africa and United Kingdom that embarked on similar conversion and was not that successful because they did not develop the required curriculum to support the courses. Let take cue from that and stop the rush hour policies.

Its regrettable to believe the conversion is rather commencing in some selected polytechnics leaving four institutions which can be located in the poorest regions in Ghana. The prevailing system draws the most unemployed being traced in these regions. Research on rural-urban migration has demonstrated chunk of student move down from the Northern part of Ghana to further their studies in the south, so one may want to conclude that conversion of polytechnic should start from these poor regions as a development policy. They should be supported with the requisite infrastructure and necessarily logistics to enhance training of student with these skills and increase agricultural content to have ripple benefits on the surrounding inhabitant in the region hence reducing migration to the south. Doing a cherry picking in the conversion could be a recipe for the collapse of those not selected because there is going to be a massive decline in enrollment.

Education broadly speaking is central to development and very essential in building self-reliance, creating and strengthening the capacity of people to participate in planning making decisions. It would be inconceivable to always associate education with the School. There is a contempt on manual work, soiling ones hands, transmitted to the so called educated by the colonial educational system and has proved particularly detrimental to our development. The system stresses the academic rather than vocational character of teaching and nothing significant has been done to change this pattern left behind by the colonial masters.

It is therefore appropriate and imperious for Ministry of education and National Council for Tertiary Education to take a critical look at the conversion process and procedure to bring the best out of that policy, I believe strongly the required curriculum must be developed to support the courses to make the policy effective.

Bright Baah Egyir

[email protected]
26.04.2016 LISTEN

I am aware some people may not be comfortable with my title, but I need to share my perspectives nonetheless. Hear me and hear me well: If I were to do it again, I will vote Buhari. I have few regrets in my life, one of them is not voting for Muhammadu buhari in 2011.

Why? I was beclouded by ethnic ambitions to vote a shoeless person who expects me to get him shoes by voting him!

The reason I voted Buhari was simple: I do not want to vote Goodluck Jonathan a second time. Mark you; I dont regret voting for him in 2011. He was the best candidate. But in 2015, the demands and skills required are different. I have to be realistic and I am sure I took my decisions based on every assumptions of rationality!

Voting Jonathan on March 28, 2015 would mean I am deliberately promoting him beyond his level of existing competency, a reversal of the management theory known as Peters Principle where managers stop being promoted when they have risen to their level of incompetence. Jonathan was just at that point. This is why I have always maintained that last years presidential election more than just a rejection of Jonathan but of saving our country from the brink of total collapse.

For those wondering how I arrived at the conclusion that Jonathan is incompetent, check his records in the fight against insurgency. Our army became so demoralized that a ragtag team of 18 Boko Haram members arriving on seven motorcycles had our soldiers fleeing, ahead of civilians, as it happened in Mubi before the town fell to the sect. I cant even talk about Baga and the sadness of the massacre coupled with the presidential silence on the matter, especially when he couldnt wait to express grief at 17 people killed in France. Chibok girls were kidnapped and he has no clue as to the direction of whom to believe. My goodness!

Need I ask: How many fuel subsidy thieves have been prosecuted since the scam was revealed in 2012? If my memory serves me right, how does Jonathan rank in managing the economy? What was the exchange rate of the Naira when he came to power? What was it before he left? What was the pump price of petrol when he came to power? What was it before his uncelebrated end? What has become of our external reserves? The Nigeria became the biggest economy in Africa thanks to Goodluck Jonathan, not because of Ebele Jonathan!

Enter General Buhari. Since he was elected President, Buharis professional critics have settled into their new roles as opposition. Not wanting to be classified as failures after their hero last the presidential election, President Muhammadu Buharis opponents or better still critics appear to be cruising off with an early lead. They regret for those of us who voted and supported Buhari in the last election.

They are now in the Didnt I Tell You? mode. They appear to cry more than the rest of us these days on social media. At the comfort of their mansions built from syphoned public money, they give crumbs to some spin doctors to write on why the economy (they crumbled) is now crumbling. Some of them, having no shame, will even go as far as China to manifest symptoms of madness. Good enough we tolerate these madness at home, but what happens when this goes as far as the market place?

Watching from a far, I have come to realize that Buharis critics can fall under any of the following categories: First, are the career Jonathanians or Wailing Wailers (apologies to Femi Adesina) as they are now popularly known. Leading this pack is our dear Femi Aribisala. In fact one of these people had openly written that he will not accept Buhari as his President. These people were so sure that their boss or hero will win no matter the costs. They prophesized that Buhari will never smell Aso Rock. In fact, Aribisala once wrote under the title: How To LosePresidential Election Four Times in one of his columns stating his reasons why Buhari would lose the fourth time. If wishes were horses, they say, men will ride. How time flies. Anyways, they are foremost among Buharis critics!

Not all Buharis critics are pro-Jonathan as many may think though it is very difficult to vouch for this distinction. We can have a second group as those having issues either personally with Buhari himself or his party the All Progressives Congress (APC). This group accommodates people like a former Governor of old Kaduna state Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa and a renowned writer Okey Ndibe.

One really cannot explain Balarabe Musas issues with Buhari considering the fact that they are from the same state, Katsina. He was noted to have criticized President Jonathan vociferously at some points and I am not aware he has rescinded on his opinion about Jonathan. His criticisms of President Buhari is what one finds hard to explain, other than the fact that he may probably know something about Buhari (both of whom come from the same state) that is not to public knowledge. On the other hand, Okey Ndibes case can be because he had issues at some point with the way the APC was been run. I am not sure Ndibe will be your first choice of a Jonathanian or GEJite. Either way they constitute a pack of their own.

The third group is perhaps the most reckless. They are nothing but tribal pirates, ethnic buccaneers and religious Vikings. In this group, we boldly include Biafran agitators and their sponsors. They are myopic in views; tactless in approach and reckless in criticisms. On the one hand they urged their people not to vote in the election on the other hand they want Jonathan to win in an election they forced their people not to vote. I find it difficult to reconcile these contrasting objectives. More confused was I when I knew that former President Jonathan is Ijaw, a tribe that proudly supported the Federal Army during the Nigerian Civil War. It was only Radio Biafra (a source of dissemination of slanderous messages and propaganda) that broadcast the news that President Buhari authorized the bombarding of Biafran territories, by which they mean Cross Rivers and Akwa Ibom. While they told their viewers that Igbos are not Nigerians, one is left to wonder at what point did the Efiks, Ibibios, Orons, etc., (which they also claim as part of Biafran territories) became Igbos.

Apart from this pirate radio which, I later knew, broadcasts from London, no other credible news medium reported the bombardment!

The fourth group can be neglected as mere professional critics, wanting no more than mere attention or patronage. Some of them may have good intentions you never can tell!

Now that we have analyzed Buharis critics and their intentions, I guess the time has come for us to give them a direct replies to the issues they raised.

We voted Buhari, not to magically solve the problems created for more than 16 years of misrule, but to help us keep the goats far away from the yams. If he is doing this job (as we all agree he is doing), I wish to disappoint again that I will vote Buhari again if I have to!

Olusola Daniel writes from Lagos.
N'Djamena (AFP) - Chad on Tuesday extended by six months the state of emergency imposed in the Lake Chad region in response to cross-border attacks by Boko Haram jihadists, national radio said.

Members of the National Assembly voted unanimously to extend the state of emergency, which has been in force since November 9.

Security Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir told public radio that the measure would help diminish Nigeria-based Boko Haram's capacity to operate in Chad.

"This six month extension will allow us to put these Boko Haram devils, who attack where and when they can, where they can't do any harm," he said.

"We must reinforce the security in the region of Lake Chad and beyond, even nationwide, to thwart them."

Though cross-border attacks by the Islamist radicals have diminished in recent months, two suicide attacks killed three people and injured 56 in January in Guite and Miterine, areas in the region of Lake Chad.

Lake Chad itself has several islands which have been evacuated at the request of the Chadian army.

The area around the lake has thick vegetation which has helped the jihadists to pass into Chad undetected.

In a bid to detect would-be female suicide bombers, a favourite Boko Haram tactic, Chad has banned the Islamic face veil in a bid to help identify women carrying explosive belts before they are able to attack.

Since 2015, the four countries that share Lake Chad -- Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger -- have significantly weakened Boko Haram but have been unable to vanquish it entirely.

An estimated 20,000 people have been killed since Boko Haram launched its campaign of violence in 2009 to carve out a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria and beyond.

More than 2.6 million people have fled their homes since, but some of the displaced have recently begun returning after the Nigerian military retook swathes of territory from the insurgents.
It used to be pitch-dark at night in farming community Nyitavuta, sited in the heart of a forest in the Akatsi North District of the Volta Region.

But its now a glowing enclave, thanks to a Joy News documentary.

Nyitavuta lacks many social amenities including electricity, clean water, sanitary facilities, road infrastructure, health post, among others.

The plight of the residents was highlighted last year in a Joy News documentary produced by Joseph Opoku Gakpo, entitled Jungle Poor.

Jungle Poor assessed Ghanas efforts at meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which expired last year.

Residents complained snakes invaded the community at night because of the absence of electricity. Darkness at night also made it impossible for school children to learn at night.

Below is a link to the full documentary.



But following the documentary, charity organisation Cooper Union has provided 25 locally manufactured solar lamps and a solar panel to the community.

An electrical engineer who leads the organisation, Prof. Tode Cumberbatch and his team were in the community on last weekend to donate the solar lamps to them.

A charging station for the lamps attached to a mobile phone charging spot was also manufactured by the team.

The team spent two days in the community to install a solar panel which is connected to the charging station to harness solar energy to charge the lamps and mobile phones as well.

Joy News Volta regional correspondent, Fred Quame Asare, who was in the community with the team reports some members of the community were also trained to help with assembling of the solar lamps.

We wanted to put in a new system and my colleague Dr. (Felix) Akorli had seen the previous documentary on Joy News, and thats what got him into contact with the District Chief Executive (DCE), Prof. Tode Cumberbatch said.

The DCE, James Gunu, expressed gratitude to the team for their kind gesture.

The residents were also happy to have lamps now. It will help the school children to learn properly and promite education, a resident told Joy News.

Below is Fred Quame Asares video report.


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IVA Struggling with debt? Compare your debt options and write off up to 80% of your unsecured debts  from 80 per month Get Started for free

What is an IVA? With an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) you can make affordable monthly payments towards a percentage of your debt for 5 years. At the end of the 5 year plan, your remaining debt will be completely written off.

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There is no office guidelines to who qualifies for an IVA. It is a legally binding, Government legislation designed to help all people. Generally speaking, insolvency practitioners (IP) will look at your situation if they think the IVA proposal they submit is beneficial to both yourself (the debtor) and your creditors. This often restricts people to a certain criteria which you will have to meet:

Over 5000 worth of unsecured debt You must have 2 or more creditors of 2 or more lines of credit Must live in England, Wales or Northern Ireland Must be insolvent Must be willing to pay at least 70 per month into their IVA Must have some type or types of regular income

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IVA stands for Individual Voluntary Arrangement. It is a formal way to consolidate your debts into one affordable monthly repayment, resulting in the debtor becoming debt free at the end of their payments.

Can I apply for an IVA online?

Use the IVA Calculator to check your eligibility Prepare your IVA proposal and apply for your IVA. When your IVA is accepted, your creditors can no longer contact you. Pay 60 low monthly payments. After 5 years, you are out of your IVA and completely debt free.

Will an IVA affect my employment?

In most occupations, your credit rating or credit scoring is not a factor and it may never have been checked in the past, it may also be likely that it is not checked in the future either.

There is no law to tell you that you must advise your employer that you have entered an IVA or that you owe money. They will not be notified by your insolvency practitioner. If you wanted to keep it a private matter, in most cases this would be absolutely fine. With some roles such as financial advisors, solicitors or bank workers it may make up part of your contract to advise them of changes like this. In these situations we would advise to inform your employers of your intentions before you enter into any arrangements. This way there will be no nasty surprises for you later down the line. More often than not, we find that your employer would not be concerned by your IVA and that it would not affect your employment status. An IVA is a formal solution and could affect some employments, such as if you were a solicitor or accountant for example. We would always recommend that you receive approval from your employers that your job isnt affected before you sign up for anything.

Will an IVA impact my partner?

There are certain situations where you may not want to involve your partner at all in your IVA proposal due to personal reasons. Insolvency Practitioners are very aware of these circumstances and can operate solely via telephone and email and at your convenience, so rest assured that your matters can be kept completely private.

If the debts which you are looking to place into your IVA are in joint names, then this would be different. Your IP would look to place all of your debts into an IVA, including joint debts therefore you would have to inform your partner of your plans.

If your debts are solely yours, then there would be no negative impact on your partner, their credit score would remain unaffected and they would not be entered onto any registers or be tainted in any way.

Will an IVA affect my credit score/credit file?

Whilst you are in your arrangement, you will not be able to get any credit. An IVA will stay on your credit file for 6 years, so 12 months after a typical IVA. When this time has passed and your monthly payments have ended, you will be able to rebuild your credit rating.

What proof will I need to apply for an IVA?

Proof of ID  Passport/driving license/birth certificate/utility bills/national insurance identification/credit agreement Bank statements  3 months bank statements with all transactions displayed Proof of income  3 months payslips/P60/proof of benefits

How long does it take to set up an IVA?

Your initial call will only last around 5-10 minutes. The IVA process will be explained to you and you will be told what further information you will need to provide to proceed with your IVA proposal. Once you have returned the required information, an IVA will usually take between 7-14 days to get into place. You will be protected from creditors within this time, your advisor will provide you with documentation via email.

How long does an IVA last?

Most IVAs will last for a length of five years. The i v a will remain on your credit file for a period of six years and is placed on the Insolvency Register for that period. You can work out what date it will be removed from your credit file, it will be six years from the start date of the IVA term. So if the IVA started on 1 January 2000, it should be removed from your credit file six years from that date, which would be 1 January 2006. When you apply for an individual voluntary arrangement your Insolvency Practitioner (IP) will tell you if you qualify for an IVA, how long it lasts, how much it costs and provide you with any other debt advice which you may need.

How much will debt advice cost for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement?

The advice cost for individual voluntary arrangements is free of charge. Your I.V.A company will tell you if you qualify for an IVA. They will talk to you about your different debts, provide you with free debt advice and check if your creditors are likely to approve your proposal for your IVA for debt.

How does an IVA affect your life?

By taking out an IVA you may affect your overall financial position. You will not be allowed to take out credit for 6 years. You will struggle to get a mortgage or remortgage your existing property. It also may affect any future increase in earnings or windfalls you may receive, as these will need to be paid to your insolvency practitioner. Your insolvency practitioner will take control of your debts for this period, they will deal with all of your creditors and this is legally binding. That means you will not be allowed to take out any more debts whilst in the IVA.

Once the plan is completed, any debts which you accrue will be managed by yourself. Your ability to take out further debts in the future will not be impacted once the IVA has completed.

What is the IVA protocol?

The I.V.A protocol is a voluntary set of guidelines which your Insolvency Practitioner (IP) can sign up for which improves the efficiency of Individual Voluntary Arrangements. When you apply for debt advice, it is important that you understand the steps of the debt solution, so you can decide whether or not the solution is the best one for your circumstances.

How do I know if creditors will accept my IVA?

Generally speaking, most creditors will approve voluntary arrangements for unsecured debt. But some debts can not be included within one formal debt solution. Your Insolvency Practitioner will tell you how likely it is that your creditors will be willing to accept your proposal, based on the voting creditors.

Can I pay in one lump sum?

There are occasions when you may be eligible for a debt solution which is payable in a one off lump sum as a final settlement to your creditors. This is usually when the money is being gifted from some one else, or you have received inheritance or a windfall for example. With a one-off lump sum payment, the advice is usually the same as when you normally apply for an IVA. You wouldnt have to make regular payments into the solution, your IP can provide you with more advice on one off lump sum solutions for your debts. Your IP will provide you with more advice on the debt IVA and explain what is IVA to you.

Who regulates the debt industry?

At present the debt industry is not regulated. Some Insolvency Practitioners offices choose to sign up to the Insolvency Practitioners Association (IPA) or register with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). You can contact the IPA using the contact details or email address on their website. Your creditors do not regulate the debt industry and your creditors will not be able to impact any decisions which the IPA or FCA make. In our experience, the regulators will take assertive action on any advisers or businesses which do not comply with their strict codes of practice. To check if a person is regulated by the FCA, enter their name into the search box in the FCA website.

Should I use a debt charity?

There are thousands of companies which provide debt help in the UK. You may be looking for an alternative to a private company. You should know that charities usually pass their fee charging products to sister companies which charge fees and disbursements, just like private companies. So what you initially thought was a good option, on further analysis could be different to what you originally thought. Charities do have their part to play though. They can help you if you have a problem with your bank accounts, maintenance arrears, living costs, credit reference agencies, child support arrears, bankruptcy, assets, accountancy issues, mortgages, creditor issues, insurance providers, mobiles, your bank account, rates arrears, PAYE contributions or if you want to work out your expenditure. They can make sure that you speak to an adviser or supervisor and look at proposals to offer your lender. A petition has started with the possibility of a debate in parliament about how charities represent themselves and their services.

Which charities help with debt?

You can contact Money Advice Service, National Debtline, Step Change, Shelter or a combination of the three. Charities are particular useful for a low debt level under 1,000. If the debt is high (such as a debt value of 10,000 or more) you would usually seek an assessment from a professional adviser. If you do decide to use a charity to guide you, make sure you check their charity number and the registration number on their website to make sure you are content that their team can answer your questions in the right ways. A lot of clients of charities have a minimum debt level which does not meet the basis for an IVA, so you could always chat to a charity that is happy to act on your behalf for low debt levels.

Although an I.V.A could be the answer to your debt problem, its important to understand the monthly payment so call us on our free phone number. Anyone customers can receive expert feedback on their rights from debt charities, if they cant help they will usually point you in the director of firms which help with IVAs.

We are homeowners, will lenders see my proposal differently?

In some cases yes. In the majority of cases, if you are a homeowner you will not need to remortgage or take out any additional finances that will effect your property. You will need to sign a additional restrictions which remove your ability to take out additional credit tied to your property, which is something that is restricted once you are in an i.v.a. There are exceptions to this, such as when you have a lot of equity in your property/properties. If you own half of a property and another party owns the other half, only your equity will be affected.

If you are landlord and you are in a position of equity, your IP may review your trading position or business to make sure the figures in question are in order. This is usually the case if you have two or more properties, as sometimes the equity can be used to form a repayment to your creditors. But this usually depends on the amount of value built up in your properties.

Banks and building societies will not change the terms of your mortgage as long as a contribution is still being made for the duration of your arrangement. Your mortgage payments will be added to your expenses and accounted for within your budget, as long as you can provide evidence that you can afford to continue to make payments into your mortgage for duration of the plan.

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business In low-demand era, Maruti has a different problem: capacity Even as auto sales have been flat for two years, market leader Maruti Suzuki has seen its market share grow.
business Sun Pharma joins hands with ICMR for malaria eradication prog The project will first be launched in malaria-ridden district of Mandla in Madhya Pradesh, says Altaf Lal, Senior Advisor, Global Health & Innovation at Sun Pharma.
business Godfrey Phillips tanks 17%, DIPP mulls FDI ban in tobacco Currently, foreign direct investment (FDI) is prohibited in manufacturing tobacco. However, what DIPP is also considering a ban in technology collaboration. It will mean including the licensing of franchises as well as brand name in management contract and in case of Godfrey Phillips this regards with the brand name of Marlboro.
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business Private banks to continue outperforming PSU banks: Quantum AMC Investors need to be careful while investing in small and mid-cap PSU banks as a large portion could be in value-trap right now, says Nilesh Shetty of Quantum AMC.
business Bull's Eye: Buy M&M, Jet Airways, RCF, RComm; sell DLF Jay Thakkar of Sharekhan recommends buying Manappuram Finance with a target of Rs 42.50 and Mahindra & Mahindra with a target of Rs 1381.
business Sell Bharat Forge, IRB Infra; buy Jet Air, Tata Chem: Gujral Ashwani Gujral of ashwanigujral.com recommends buying Jet Airways, Tata Chemicals and Glenmark Pharma and advises selling Bharat Forge and IRB Infra.
Family tree

U.S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Aubree Bruce, 23d Equipment Maintenance Squadron aircraft armament systems specialist, center, poses with his dad, retired U.S. Army Maj. Irvin Campbell, left, and his son, Khalen, during a redeployment in support of the 75th Fighter Squadron, April 22, 2016, at Moody Air Force Base, Ga. More than 250 Airmen supported the 75th FS while deployed. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Greg Nash/Released)
Maggie Stiefvaters Raven Cycle is now complete! And The Raven Boys is your starting point for esoteric YA that treats readers like adults.

Blue Sargent is the only non-psychic in a family of psychics. While Blues presence can heighten the powers of her family, shes never experienced a vision, mysterious dream, or magical prophecy. Every April, Blue joins her mother on Saint Marks night and waits patiently for the ghostly procession of the soon-to-be-dead so her mother can record the deaths for the coming year.

Only a clairvoyant can watch the procession. Her Aunt Neeve says, There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Marks Even Either youre his true love, or you killed him.

And thats when she sees him.

Since she was a child, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die if she kisses him. Since Blue doesnt believe in true love, she never thought this would be a problem. Of course, she never thought she would see the specter of Richard Gansey the Third on Saint Marks night, either.

Gansey is one of The Raven Boys, a group of wealthy students who attend the private Aglionby Academy. The Raven Boys are trouble. Blue does her best to stay away from them, just as she always has, but she finds herself being drawn into the charismatic Ganseys quest to find a mythical Welsh king he believes is buried in the Virginia countryside.

Blue slowly finds herself as part of the Raven Boys and begins to accompany Adam, the scholarship student who works hard to earn his place in the academy, the impulsive and abrasive Ronan, and the quiet Noah, as they follow Gansey on his impossible quest.

The Raven Boys is the first novel in Maggie Stiefvaters Raven Cycle and was originally published by Scholastic in 2012.

Stiefvater animated the books trailer using hundreds of pencil drawings.

The Raven Boys is a novel of friendship and adventure. Stiefvater skillfully weaves together multiple characters with beautiful, haunting prose to create the first novel in a series that drags the reader through the heart of the sleepy Virginia Countryside to a place that is truly magical.

Though published as Young Adult fiction, Stiefvater treats her readers like adults and surprises them with esoteric references and an eccentric cast of characters.

The Raven Boys has romance, but it is not a love story, unless the love is with the feeling of the sun shining through a car window on a hot summer day while the radio is turned up high.

The Raven Boys has psychics and ghosts, but it not a paranormal adventure. The magic in The Raven Boys is subtle and coincidental. It is the kind of magic that tricks you into thinking you can find it buried somewhere in the woods.

Its the kind of book that can only be explained by reading it, loving it, and passing it on to another reader so they can share in the magic and adventure Stiefavter has crafted. Dont want to take my word for it? The Raven Boys has won a variety of awards and lists, including YALSAs 2013 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults, Publisher Weeklys Best Books of 2012, and appears on Rolling Stones Best 40 Young Adult Novels.

If theres one book youre going to read this summer, make it The Raven Boys. The entire Raven Cycle to date (including The Dream Thieves and Blue Lily, Lily Blue) has been released by Scholastic Books and is available at your local library, independent bookstore, or Amazon.

Keep your eye out for the much-anticipated final book, The Raven King.
The new owners of Saint Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy gave staff a 3 percent raise when they took over in December, but workers and their union are unhappy with the pace of promised improvements and afraid of painful layoffs.

We have been notified of Veritys intentions to cut positions at Saint Louise Regional Hospital and other facilities and we are very disappointed, said Sean Wherley, media relations representative for the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West.

We intend to hold them accountable to our contract language that says they must make every effort to avoid layoffs, and follow the conditions laid out by the attorney general requiring that they maintain services, Wherley wrote in an April 5 email.

Verity Health Systems was formed to run SLRH and five other health facilities when Attorney General Kamala Harris last December approved the takeover of the financially strapped Daughters of Charity Health System by BlueMountain Capital Management.

The SEIU-UHW represents 1,900 non-nursing employees in the Verity system.

On Tuesday, a Saint Louise employee said staffing levels at South Countys only hospital are so depleted that employees cannot take vacations, broken equipment as basic as elevators and doors go unfixed and even operating room supplies are not reliable.

We were going downhill with Daughters. Verity said they would put money in the system and we looked to them as our saviors and they have done absolutely nothing, said the employee, who asked not to be named.

She acknowledged that it might all be due to how long it takes to effect improvements in a hospital system that had been going downhill for years before the takeover.

But even that does not change the fact that Robert Minkin, the hospitals new interim chief executive officer, told the staff at a forum that 27 layoffs could be expected, she said.

In a statement released last week, Minkin acknowledged the layoff process had begun. While we continue to employ substantially all of our employees . . . we are implementing a reduction-in-force across the system to reduce labor costs immediately. Notices began last month, and implementation will likely occur over a period of weeks or months, depending on the collective bargaining process.

At Saint Louise, negotiations with SEIU regarding the planned reduction in force have been very productive even though the topic is difficult, Minkins statement continued. The relationship between management and union representatives is growing closer through the process as we work together to minimize the impact on employees.

A source close to Verity management who asked not to be named said that fewer than 27 SLRH employees will be laid off.

In a just-published report about its first 100 days as the hospital groups operational management, Verity chief executive officer Mitchell R. Creem warned that change will not come quickly, but said it is happening.

Since Verity Health System came into being just three months ago, we have begun a process of transformational changechange that is needed to ensure the Verity Health System hospitals and physicians are able to treat patients for generations to come with high quality, compassionate care, he wrote.

In addition to SLRH, which includes De Paul Medical Center in Morgan Hill, the five other DCHS facilities now under the Verity banner are Saint Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, Saint Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles, OConnor Hospital in San Jose, Seton Medical Center in Daly City and Seton Coastside in Moss Beach.

Creems comments continued: The task of turning around our hospitals to a state of sustainable financial success is going to take time and hard work. We arent there yet, but we are on our way.

The report cites achievements so far, including:

 A 3 percent pay raise for staff, the first in several years.

 Forums to introduce staff and physicians to leadership and invite feedback.

 A three-year contract for all SEIU employees, including a 3 percent per year wage increase, maintained defined contribution plan for retirement, job security protections and a groundbreaking guarantee of full-time work for most employees.

 Negotiating a new contract with the California Nurses Association.

For SLRH, the report also states the Emergency Department is fully staffed, plans for upgrades to it will be finished by the fall with funding from the Saint Louise Regional Hospital Foundation and the facilitys Medicare purchasing score improved from 8 percent to 61 percent.

The report notes that under the agreement approved by the attorney general, more than $250 million will be invested in the six California hospitals and the medical foundation, thus assuring the communities served by the hospitals an opportunity to continue to pursue their missions.
A would-be scammer was shut down thanks to a couple of concerned citizens looking out for a member of their community.

Linda Thwing, of Morganton, said her mother-in-law received a phone call just before noon on Monday. The caller, who called himself Jake, pretended to be the womans grandson and said hed gotten into some trouble and was at the police station in Greenville, Tennessee, where he lives.

The caller, who said he had a cold, told the woman that the police were going to wait 48 hours to charge him, but he needed to come up with $3,000 within the next two hours. Then Jake gave her a very detailed set of instructions, which included buying six $500 iTunes gift cards using cash shed taken out of the bank. She was supposed to call a number and read off the serial numbers of each card, but luckily a couple of local women stepped in and stopped the scam.

Bi-Lo was among the short list of stores that the caller said the woman could buy the cards, but one cashier, Christina, said the whole situation threw up a bunch of red flags to her.

She had a notebook with all the information written down and said her grandson couldnt receive medical treatment until the police got the serial numbers, she said.

Both the cashier and Thwing said the woman kept repeating that she wasnt supposed to tell anyone about what was happening.

Christina called her manager and the two convinced the woman to allow them to call her son. He quickly confirmed that everything was fine and the real Jake was in school.

Morganton Department of Public Safety officers were contacted and Thwing said they escorted her mother-in-law back to the bank to re-deposit the cash shed taken out. They also ensured that the scammers werent lying in wait in the parking lot.

The Grandparent Scam isnt new to law enforcement. According to information from the Consumer Federation of America, the womans experience is indicative of the way the scammers operate. The caller often claims to be a grandchild who says there is an emergency. The scammer may or may not know the name of the grandchild, but might get the information by saying, Hello grandma/grandpa. The caller will then say something like, Jake, is that you?

Often these crooks will call in the middle of the night and take advantage of the fact that a person may not be awake enough to ask more questions or may not want to disturb other people by calling them to confirm the information, according to the CFA.

Sometimes the scammers do know the names of friends or relatives. They can get that information from a variety of sources, according to the CFA. Relatives may be mentioned in an obituary or on a social networking site. Email contact lists also may contain the names of friends and relatives.

Thwing said her family is very lucky that the employees at Bi-Lo refused to ignore their gut feeling when they knew something was wrong. But she said they shouldnt be called heroes. Instead, she says they were doing what everyone should: look out for the members of their community.

Weve got to be accountable to each other, she said. Weve got to watch out for each other.

For more information on the Grandparent Scam and others, visit www.consumerfed.org/fraud.
Western Piedmont Community College invites the community to a screening of award winning films produced by WPCC students and graduates on Wednesday, April 27 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. in Leviton Auditorium on the Colleges main campus at 1001 Burkemont Ave., Morganton. These films showcase ten years of the Colleges participation in the annual 48 Hour Film Project competition in Asheville.

WPCC has participated in the Asheville competitions since 2005. The 48 Hour Film Project is a competition where filmmaking teams write, shoot, edit and produce a movie in just 48 hours. Teams draw a genre from a hat and are then given a character, prop and line to include in their films. In a wild dash to complete the film and submit it on time, films are dropped off in Asheville and teams celebrate their accomplishments! The film is then screened at a local Asheville theater in front of an audience of filmmakers, friends and families.

This event will also feature a Q and A session with WPCC students, faculty and alumni who participated in the recent 48 Day Film Project. This project placed Morganton in the international spotlight as WPCCs team of Burke County residents collaborated with four other countries to create a feature length film. This international collaboration was viewed on screens around the world and was produced here in Burke County.

The films include the following:

 2005 A Complicated Order Team WPCC

 2012 Dark Dealer Team WPCC

 2013 Twooth Love Team WPCC

 2014 Denouement Team WPCC

 2015 Rondo and Delilah Team WPCC

 2015 Hair today Gone Tomorrow Team Artivational

 2015 Bad Investment Team Green Leaf Arts

Admission to the screening is free and everyone is welcome. Come and support the amazing talent we have in our community and be amazed by the films that are created in only 48 hours.

WPCC complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act and will make every effort to honor reasonable requests made by individuals with qualifying disabilities. Accommodations must be requested three business days in advance of school events or activities through the office of disability services in room 126 Hildebrand Hall or call 828-448-3154.
Coleson Berlin, part of the ensemble the Hickory Community Theatres production of Young Frankenstein, has shared ancestry with Irving Berlin, composer of the famous song, Puttin on the Ritz.

Its a pretty distant connection, but it is there, Coleson said. Our families have a common ancestor back in the 1400s. My branch of the family tree headed off to Russia about that time, while Irving Berlins (family) remained in Germany.

In one of the most humorous moments from the original film Young Frankenstein, Frederick Frankenstein and the Monster perform Puttin in the Ritz for an audience of distinguished scientists to demonstrate that the creature is a sophisticated man-about-town. The scene is also pays homage to the 1933 RKO version of King Kong. The scene is recreated in the musical on a grander scale with a full chorus of dancers.

Coleson has been in several productions at the theatre, including last seasons blockbuster musical, Shrek. His largest role thus far has been Billy Ray in On Golden Pond, where he got to perform opposite James Best. He is currently a freshman at St Stephens High School.

Hickory Rings! to hold 2016-17 auditions May 5

Local handbell ensemble Hickory Rings! will hold auditions for its 2016-17 season on Thursday, May 5 from 7-9 p.m. at Concordia Lutheran Church in Conover.

Hickory Rings! rehearses on Thursdays from 7-8:30 p.m. at the church and presents two Christmas and two spring concerts each year. Rehearsals will begin in late August.

The group was formed in April 2012 from the vision of local handbell and music directors who desired to have an ensemble performing the best in existing and new handbell repertoire. The group includes musicians from Catawba, Alexander, Caldwell, Burke, Iredell and Lincoln counties, bringing about 340 years of expertise to the tables. The musicians represent 11 churches in the region, 10 area schools, colleges and universities, and more than 25 professional organizations.

To schedule an audition time or for more information contact Director Mike Watson at mikewatson3737@yahoo.com.
David Wang: Shares of iron ore and met coal miners have rallied recently, driven by increased optimism around Chinese demand for these commodities.

The most leveraged miners have more than doubled in price as iron ore prices have risen to $60 per tonne from $37 in December. We expect falling Chinese steel demand and increased Chinese scrap availability to cut iron ore prices in half. We think these miners are overvalued as a whole. The most leveraged ones have more than 50% downside, with this group including Anglo American (AAL), CSN, Fortescue, Teck Resources, and Vale.

While investors have accepted that Chinese steel demand has peaked, most continue to underestimate how far it will fall. Consensus sees Chinese steel demand stabilising around last year's 700 million tonnes, but we see continued declines to 630 million over the next decade due to faltering construction activity.

The threat of steel scrap availability is another factor that's not fully appreciated due to the long-term nature of the threat, but we think the impact will be significant. Leveraging academic work on steel product life cycles, we forecast scrap supply to more than double by 2025, with growth accelerating in the decades beyond as buildings and long-lived structures approach end of life. This drives greater production from electric arc furnaces and displaces iron ore and met coal demand.

Over the next 10 years, these factors should reduce China's iron ore demand by the size of total consumption of Japan, the world's second-largest consumer.
Morningstar's "Perspectives" series features investment insights from third-party contributors. Here, Neville White, Head of Socially Responsible Investing Policy and Research at EdenTree, explains how aviation is on the cusp of a golden age of growth.

Aviation has seen sustained growth through all economic cycles and currently generates around $600 billion of GDP per year, which is forecast to rise to $1 trillion by 2026. In the UK, one of the worlds major aviation economies, the sector contributes 3.4% to GDP.

Aviation is marked by two compelling global phenomena: ageing fleets in Europe and the US, and air traffic growth in Asia and the emerging markets  both contributing to a significant backlog of new aircraft required within the next two decades.

Asia Offers a Compelling Growth Story

The highest growth is predicted to come from Asia-Pacific, particularly from internal traffic within China and the wider region. Chinas airlines surpassed 100 million passengers per quarter for the first time last year, but domestic flights remain dominant at around 90% of all flight activity.

Both Boeing and Airbus predict that Asia will see the strongest growth, driven by rising GDP and a growing affluent middleclass. Boeing expects the fleet in China to surge to over 7,000 by 2034  from a capacity of 2,570 capacity in 2014.

Asia is also leading the way in airport infrastructure, with Beijing the second busiest airport in the world by passenger numbers. Airport investment is at its strongest in Asia and the Middle East with 35% of airport investment occurring in Asia. We therefore expect to see more investment coming through as capacity lags passenger growth across the region.

A Diverse and Vibrant Investment Arena

Aviation has a diverse value chain encompassing manufacturers, airports infrastructure, airlines, support services, engineering and technology. The sector is a diverse and vibrant arena in which to seek investment returns.

While manufacturing is broadly non-investible for us, there is ample investment quality in engineering and technology. Airports infrastructure is ripe for consolidation or privatisation as a means of delivering much needed investment, such as the recent flotation of a minority stake in Aena of Spain.

As a house, we gain exposure from quality investments across the value chain, but we have avoided airlines on environmental grounds. We will refine this, allowing investment in the most sustainable airlines on a case-by-case basis, which deliver superior long-term shareholder returns.

Balancing Environmental Concerns

Aviation is a global success story. However, the industry presents several environmental impacts of interest to the ethical and responsible investor. Aviation is responsible for 2-3% of all human induced carbon emissions. Without intervention, aircraft emissions could reach 15% of global GHGs by 2050, given growth projections.

Slow to respond to the challenge of climate change, the industry is now placing emphasis on technology - particularly cleaner and younger fleets. Lowering fuel burn by reducing aircraft weight has a significant impact on CO2 generated.

Engine technology has evolved considerably. Improvements in fuel efficiency of 0.8% per annum to 2050 is viewed as credible based on evolving airframe and engine design. Carbon intensity under this scenario would reduce by about 30%. Moreover, a cumulative carbon intensity reduction of 35% by 2050 would allow up to 55% more aircraft movements  equating to passenger growth of around 60%.

The industry has coalesced around achieving 1.5% annual efficiencies in fuel, carbon neutral growth from 2020, and a net reduction in aviation carbon emissions of 50% by 2050  relative to 2005 levels. Ultimately to reach more ambitious targets, some constraint on our desire to take to the skies may be necessary. The ultimate goal is to decouple growth from emissions. Responsible investors will need to balance all of these ESG risks before taking flight.

Disclaimer

The views contained herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of Morningstar. If you are interested in Morningstar featuring your content on our website, please email submissions to UKEditorial@morningstar.com